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AS path question.
sfouant at shortestpathfirst.net
Wed Nov 10 14:53:59 CST 2010
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Greg Whynott [mailto:Greg.Whynott at oicr.on.ca]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2010 3:40 PM
> To: nick at brevardwireless.com
> Cc: nanog at nanog.org
> Subject: Re: AS path question.
> thanks all, this makes sense now. and i just showed the internet
> how ignorant I am.
No such thing! We are all here to learn, and so there are no such things as
stupid questions IMO. I certainly won't rail you for asking a question like
that... ahem, Neils Bakker might so there are no guarantees ;)
> i have my maxas-limit set to 10 based on an article I was reading.
> perhaps I should up that a bit.
I think 10 is way too short. I would definitely up that.
> what sort of problems are associated to overly long AS paths? is it
> more of a system resource control setting?
I remember back in 1999 at UUnet we had a bug in IOS in which some AS Paths
were supposedly being prepended well above 255 AS Paths... IIRC that is
above the maximum field length (I'd have to dig it up to be sure though) and
it was actually causing routers to crash as they were interpreting the BGP
messages as malformed. Today we have better protections in IOS preventing
this and other associated "buffer overflow" issues, but at the time there
were no such protections. The very next day we received a patched IOS from
Cisco which contained the maxas-limit commands.
More information about the NANOG | <urn:uuid:c1feb805-53b7-479b-84aa-42785e7d52a3> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2010-November/027659.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279224.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00477-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957629 | 398 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Foreign Minister Murray McCully says an air force inquiry is expected after a flight to Antarctica carrying 117 passengers was forced to land in a whiteout after being cleared for a safe landing.
The RNZAF Boeing 757 had to circle the Pegasus airstrip near Scott Base for 2 hours on Monday and made two aborted approaches before making an emergency landing in reduced visibility and freezing fog.
Mr McCully, who was on the flight, said: "We clearly knew that there was a capacity for this to have an untidy end, and we were enormously relieved that it didn't."
The air force reviewed the weather at the "point of safe return" or PSR - when there was still enough fuel to get back to Christchurch.
The 757 was given the green light to land but Antarctic's notoriously changeable weather stirred up half an hour after the plane passed the PSR.
"We did not have enough fuel to come home, and we had no means of making an unorthodox landing down there," Mr McCully said.
"It culminated in what they call a white-out landing. After burning out most of the fuel you get in as close as you can with the instruments and for the last 100ft or so try and find a way down with the pilot using his wits, basically."
He said the passengers and crew went quiet as they approached the landing at around 5pm.
"All I can say is that I'm very relieved to be here. Having gone into that situation you need to understand the extraordinary skill that the pilot and his crew showed in being able to get us down in circumstances that were really, incredibly difficult."
He said he expected the air force to review the landing. "There will be some sort of internal inquiry I'm sure about how one of its planes, with quite a lot of people on board, was able to get into Antarctica without the ability to get back or to land."
A defence force spokesman said last night the event was being investigated to ensure all lessons were learned.
The spokesman said it was the first time that the air force 757 had landed on the ice in this way. The aircraft's instruments were used below the minimum altitude threshold until the pilots could see the runway.
Air NZ would soon conduct test flights to the Pegasus airstrip as part of a plan to transport American and NZ scientists. Unlike the air force 757s, Air New Zealand's 767 would be able to make the return journey without refuelling. A test run was planned on October 5, but was postponed to November due to bad weather. | <urn:uuid:a4ebf127-edfd-4010-bb94-730b7905fe81> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11138273 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280242.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00073-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98859 | 527 | 1.859375 | 2 |
The health and safety of our patients and teammates is our top priority. We are keeping a close eye on this situation and reinforcing the extensive infection control practices already in place to protect them. Click here to find videos and additional resources.
The Mediterranean Lifestyle and CKD
Unlike many current diet plans, the Mediterranean diet was not invented, but discovered. It has been not only a diet, but also a lifestyle followed by many in Europe for decades. Ansel Keys from the University of Minnesota discovered the lifestyle while conducting research in Italy during the 1950s. He found an area in the Mediterranean where individuals had lower levels of cholesterol and lower rates of coronary heart disease when compared to individuals from New York. Over the years, more research has found that heart disease, stroke, depression, anxiety, obesity and Type 2 diabetes are reduced by people who follow this lifestyle.
The Mediterranean lifestyle may be difficult for some of us in the United States to adapt. It focuses on mental and emotional health in addition to healthy eating. This includes a healthy balance of work, relaxation and social interaction. These factors play an important role in our mental health well-being, which may have a positive impact on our eating habits. This lifestyle may also help reduce stress which may help with blood pressure management.
Here are a few tips to help live more of a Mediterranean lifestyle:
- Include at least one or more positive social interactions a week. Laughter and fun can be the best medicine!
- Try to have at least one or more relaxing meals a day with other people to help slow down your eating and prevent overeating.
- Go outside and get physical activity. The Mediterranean lifestyle encourages being outside for your workouts. Plus this allows you to get extra vitamin D from the sun. Let’s face it- outdoor exercise is more fun than mundane workouts on a treadmill or stair climber.
- The biggest take-away is to slow down and enjoy your days. It can be a big change compared to our standard fast-paced lifestyles, jumping from one event to the next. Taking care of yourself, both your mental and physical health, needs to be a top priority to enjoy a happy life.
The Mediterranean Diet
The Mediterranean diet way of eating includes consuming fresh foods like fruits, vegetables, herbs, fish, olive oil, breads, nuts and pasta. This diet has limited amounts, if any, of red meats, poultry, butter, refined grains and processed foods. Strong adherence to this diet has shown many heart-health benefits due to being high in fiber, monounsaturated fats, polyunsaturated fats, and antioxidants.
With guidance from a registered dietitian, a Mediterranean diet may be a great choice for people with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and those on dialysis. This diet may help reduce phosphorus intake by limiting processed foods that contain phosphorus additives. The reduction in processed foods can allow patients to enjoy small portions of beans, nuts and dairy, which contain phosphorus.
Another benefit of the diet is a reduction in sodium intake. Processed and fast foods are often high in sodium. A Mediterranean diet focuses on fresh whole foods that are often naturally low in sodium.
Here are some kidney-friendly tips on following a Mediterranean diet:
- Dairy – Limit to ½ c low fat dairy (includes skim or 1% milk or low fat Greek yogurt)
- Beans and Lentils – Aim for 3 servings/week to provide a great source fiber and protein
- Fish – Aim for 2 servings/week
- Protein – Eat lean protein twice daily – chicken, turkey, lean beef, pork tofu, tempeh, eggs or egg whites
- Nuts and Seeds – Limit to 1 ounce per day (a small handful). Almonds, walnuts and pistachios are great choices.
- Extra Virgin Olive Oil – Use at least 1-2 tablespoons daily
- Fruits and Vegetables – Aim for 5 (1/2 cup) servings of lower potassium fruits and vegetables such as apples, berries, plums, bell peppers, carrots and green beans. Your goal may be more if you do not need to restrict potassium.
- Whole Grains – Kidney-friendly whole grains include barley, buckwheat, bulgur, wild rice and whole wheat.
Additional Kidney Diet Resources
Visit DaVita.com and explore these diet and nutrition resources:
DaVita Diet Helper online meal planner and tracker
Kidney Smart® Classes taught by kidney experts in your area
This article is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice or treatment. Consult your physician and dietitian regarding your specific diagnosis, treatment, diet and health questions. | <urn:uuid:52c95f18-854c-4409-a77d-600f54e0221a> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://blogs.davita.com/kidney-diet-tips/the-mediterranean-lifestyle-and-ckd/?unsubscribe=true | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571692.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812105810-20220812135810-00073.warc.gz | en | 0.936725 | 963 | 2.640625 | 3 |
"Human Rights" Journal
Guide to authors
The articles may be written in Romanian or English and with a typical length within 4,000 and 8,000 words (reviews shall not exceed 2,000 words), including references. The summary shall be written in Romanian and English and it shall not exceed 250 words. In this regard, see the formatting guide.
The publishing of articles and reviews is free of charge. Authors should ensure their works are original and that they had not been submitted to any other publication. All articles shall undergo a rigorous screening process, initially based on the opinion of the Editorial board and secondly on the peer-review of at least two independent reviewers, mutually anonymous.
The authors shall sign a declaration of honour on copyright (form). Authors will also take full responsibility for the ideas/opinions expressed in the signed material.
Other details on the submission of works or the screening process can be found here. | <urn:uuid:0effe77b-91d7-498a-ae6d-164b1785b1d2> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://revista.irdo.ro/english/ghid-pentru-autori.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570765.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808031623-20220808061623-00265.warc.gz | en | 0.945848 | 189 | 1.507813 | 2 |
1. In accordance with the requirements of the Education (Welfare) Act 2000 and the code of behaviour guidelines issued by the NEWB, the Board of Management of St. Joseph’s National School has adopted the following anti-bullying policy within the framework of the school’s overall code of behaviour. This policy fully complies with the requirements of the Anti-Bullying Procedures for Primary and Post-Primary Schools which were published in September 2013.
2. The Board of Management recognises the very serious nature of bullying and the negative impact that it can have on the lives of pupils and is therefore fully committed to the following key principles of best practice in preventing and tackling bullying behaviour:
- A positive school culture and climate which-
- is welcoming of difference and diversity and is based on inclusivity;
- encourages pupils to disclose and discuss incidents of bullying behaviour in a non-threatening environment; and
- promotes respectful relationships across the school community;
- Effective leadership;
- A school-wide approach;
- A shared understanding of what bullying is and its impact;
- Implementation of education and prevention strategies (including awareness raising measures) that-
- build empathy, respect and resilience in pupils; and
- explicitly address the issues of cyber-bullying and identity-based bullying including in particular, homophobic and transphobic bullying.
- Effective supervision and monitoring of pupils;
- Supports for staff;
- Consistent recording, investigation and follow up of bullying behaviour (including use of established intervention strategies); and
- On-going evaluation of the effectiveness of the anti-bullying policy.
- In accordance with the Anti-Bullying Procedures for Primary and Post-Primary Schools bullying is defined as follows:
Bullying is unwanted negative behaviour, verbal, psychological or physical conducted, by an individual or group against another person (or persons) and which is repeated over time.
The following types of bullying behaviour are included in the definition of bullying:
- deliberate exclusion, malicious gossip and other forms of relational bullying,
- cyber-bullying and
- identity-based bullying such as homophobic bullying, racist bullying, bullying based on a person’s membership of the Traveller community and bullying of those with disabilities or special educational needs.
Isolated or once-off incidents of intentional negative behaviour, including a once-off offensive or hurtful text message or other private messaging, do not fall within the definition of bullying and should be dealt with, as appropriate, in accordance with the school’s code of behaviour.
However, in the context of this policy, placing a once-off offensive or hurtful public message, image or statement on a social network site or other public forum where that message, image or statement can be viewed and/or repeated by other people will be regarded as bullying behaviour.
Negative behaviour that does not meet this definition of bullying will be dealt with in accordance with the school’s code of behaviour.
Additional information on different types of bullying is set out in Section 2 of the Anti-Bullying Procedures for Primary and Post-Primary Schools.
4. The relevant teacher(s) for investigating and dealing with bullying is (are) as follows: (see Section 6.8 of the Anti-Bullying Procedures for Primary and Post-Primary Schools):
The class teacher will be the relevant teacher for investigating and dealing with bullying. If the class teacher is absent another teacher, the deputy principal or the principal will investigate the issue. If the issue escalates the principal will be consulted and help in dealing with the issue.
5. The education and prevention strategies (including strategies specifically aimed at cyber- bullying and identity-based bullying including in particular, homophobic and transphobic bullying) that will be used by the school are as follows (see Section 6.5 of the Anti-Bullying Procedures for Primary and Post-Primary Schools):
- The school will teach the Stay Safe and Walk Tall programme.
- The school have an Internet acceptable Use policy, making it clear what kind of behaviour is acceptable online.
- Parents and students will be expected to sign the school’s Acceptable Use Policy.
- The school will foster opportunities to develop self-esteem and confidence through activities such as circle time.
- The school will encourage children to report any type of bullying that they witness or experience to the school worry box. This can be done anonymously.
- Pupils will learn about bullying and cyber bullying through curriculum work in Social, Personal and Health Education (SPHE), assemblies, friendship activities (Advent or Lent) and other curriculum projects.
- This work could be extended into many other areas such as Art, Drama, Religious Education, and physical Education. Co-operation and group enterprise can be promoted through team sports, school clubs and societies as well as through practical subjects
- The school may engage a speaker to facilitate a workshop on cyber bullying for 5th and 6th classes annually.
- Sporting activities in particular can provide excellent opportunities for channelling and learning how to control aggression. GAA, swimming and basketball coaching is offered to some classes from outside agencies and teachers are also involved in coaching the school’s GAA teams.
6. The school’s procedures for investigation, follow-up and recording of bullying behaviour and the established intervention strategies used by the school for dealing with cases of bullying behaviour are as follows (see Section 6.8 of the Anti-Bullying Procedures for Primary and Post-Primary Schools):
- Teachers will take a calm, unemotional problem-solving approach when dealing with incidents of bullying behaviour reported by either pupils, staff or parent(s)guardians.
- When analysing incidents of bullying behaviour, the relevant teacher(s) should seek answers to questions of what, where, when, who and why. This should be done in a calm manner, setting an example in dealing effectively with a conflict in a non-aggressive manner.
- The teacher investigating will aim as far as is possible to restore the relationship with the parties involved rather than apportioning blame.
- Such incidents will be investigated outside the classroom situation to avoid the public humiliation of the victim or the pupil engaged in bullying behaviour.
- In any incident of bullying, individual or group, the teacher will speak separately to the individual pupils involved in an attempt to get both sides of the story and will ask each child to write their version of events.
- If a group is involved each member will be supported through the possible pressures that they may face from the other members of the group after interview by the teacher.
- All interviews will be conducted with sensitivity and with due regard to the rights of all pupils concerned.
- Pupils or witnesses who are not directly involved can also provide useful information and may be asked to write a written account of the event.
- Where the relevant teacher(s) has/have determined that a pupil has been engaged in bullying behaviour, it will be made clear to him/her how he/she is in breach of the school’s anti-bullying policy and efforts will be made to try to get him/her to see the situation from the perspective of the pupil being bullied.
- In cases where it has been determined by the relevant teacher(s) that bullying behaviour has occurred, the parents of the parties involved will be contacted at an early stage to inform them of the matter and explain the actions being taken. The school may give parents an opportunity of discussing ways in which they can reinforce or support the actions being taken by the school and supports for their pupils.
- It will be made clear to all involved (each set of pupils and parents) that in any situation where disciplinary sanctions are required, this is a private matter between the pupil being disciplined, his or her parents and the school.
- Follow-up meetings with the relevant parties involved may be arranged separately with a view to possibly bringing them together at a later date if the pupil who has been bullied is ready and agreeable.
- An additional follow-up meeting with parents of the children involved may take place after an appropriate time to ensure that the matter has been resolved satisfactorily.
- Where a parent is not satisfied that the school has dealt with a bullying case in accordance with those procedures, the parents must be referred, as appropriate, to the school’s complaints procedures policy.
- In the event that a parent has exhausted the school’s complaints procedures and is still not satisfied, the school will advise the parents of their right to make a complaint to the Ombudsman for Children.
Recording: Noting and reporting of bullying behaviour is to be documented using the template for recording bullying behaviour (Appendix 3). All records must be maintained in accordance with relevant data protection legislation. The school’s procedures for noting and reporting bullying behaviour will adhere to the following:
- While all reports, including anonymous reports of bullying must be investigated and dealt with by the relevant teacher(s), the relevant teacher(s) will use his/her/their professional judgement in relation to the records to be kept of these reports, the actions taken and any discussions with those involved regarding same.
- If is established by the relevant teacher(s) that bullying has occurred, the relevant teacher(s) must keep appropriate written records which will assist his/her efforts to resolve the issues and restore, as far as is practicable, the relationships of the parties involved.
- The relevant teacher(s) must use the recording template at Appendix 3 to record the bullying behaviour which is available from the school office.
7. The school’s programme of support for working with pupils affected by bullying is as follows (see Section 6.8 of the Anti-Bullying Procedures for Primary and Post-Primary Schools)
The school will continually monitor the behaviour and relationship between the child being bullied and the bully. The school will also continually encourage and promote positive behaviour on a whole school basis.
- Supervision and Monitoring of Pupils
The Board of Management confirms that appropriate supervision and monitoring policies and practices are in place to both prevent and deal with bullying behaviour and to facilitate early intervention where possible.
- Prevention of Harassment
The Board of Management confirms that the school will, in accordance with its obligations under equality legislation, take all such steps that are reasonably practicable to prevent the sexual harassment of pupils or staff or the harassment of pupils or staff on any of the nine grounds specified i.e. gender including transgender, civil status, family status, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, race and membership of the Traveller community.
- This policy was adopted by the Board of Management on 9th April 2014 .
- This policy has been made available to school personnel, published on the school website (or where none exists, is otherwise readily accessible to parents and pupils on request) and provided to the Parents’ Association (where one exists). A copy of this policy will be made available to the Department and the patron if requested.
- This policy and its implementation will be reviewed by the Board of Management once in every school year. Written notification that the review has been completed will be made available to school personnel, published on the school website (or where none exists, be otherwise readily accessible to parents and pupils on request) and provided to the Parents’ Association (where one exists). A record of the review and its outcome will be made available, if requested, to the patron and the Department.
This policy was reviewed in June 2017 and is available in hard copy from the school on request. | <urn:uuid:46672cac-229c-4ce1-afca-137a4020ca35> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://clinstownns.com/?page_id=39 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573876.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20220820012448-20220820042448-00071.warc.gz | en | 0.95547 | 2,374 | 2.828125 | 3 |
According to the Reserve Bank, rising levels of household debt are a major concern. Its latest public statement has fuelled speculation that interest rates could be on the rise soon – especially if households keep borrowing at the current, very rapid rates.
For anyone planning to buy, that means now is a great time to lock in a fixed term contract at a low interest rate, and if you’ve got a variable home loan at the moment, it means it’s a smart time to talk to your professional mortgage broker to see how they can protect your loan at a great rate that lasts.
With newspapers around the country all reporting on the release of the minutes from the Reserve Bank’s August 1 meeting, it was revealed that the “need to balance the risks associated with high household debt in a low-inflation environment” was of prime importance on the minds of the nine-member board of the Reserve Bank.
In The Australian newspaper, ANZ analyst David Plank was quoted as saying: “The changes do elevate the focus on financial stability in a way that raises the risk of policy action at some point.” – Something that suggests the central bank might lift rates sooner than expected.
Although the news of the minutes didn’t deliver the same as the minutes from last month’s meeting, when the Australian dollar went soaring after the RBA seemed to pencil in a 3.5 per cent ‘‘neutral cash rate’’, the rise of the household debt, combined with the rising jobless rate and inflation has taken the nation’s economists by surprise.
Analysis of the figures shows that household debt, as a share of disposable income, climbed above 190 % in March. This record high has been driven by consistently high annual mortgage growth above 6% – despite regulatory crackdowns on investor lending and higher borrowing rates.
“Overall housing credit growth had continued to outpace the relatively slow growth in household incomes,” the minutes said.
How the local real estate market will react to the news is yet to be determined but with interest rates looking sure to change, it does make an ideal time for a home loan health check to understand your situation – and how you can improve it for long-term financial growth.
If you need advice for a home loan, business or commercial loan, self-managed super fund loan, or a vehicle or equipment finance loan, speak to a broker at Lending Specialists. We have a wealth of experience under our belt and a robust network to connect you to the right industry professional for the loan you need. | <urn:uuid:6592c907-75cc-4e14-907e-aafd2d2acc8a> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://www.lendingspecialists.com.au/interest-rate-news/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573623.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819035957-20220819065957-00667.warc.gz | en | 0.968095 | 531 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Location: Systematic Entomology Laboratory
Project Number: 8042-22000-271-000-D
Project Type: In-House Appropriated
Start Date: Aug 10, 2015
End Date: Jul 28, 2020
Objective 1: Develop accurate species concepts within the Tenuipalpidae (flat mites) using a holistic approach based on morphological and ecological data. Objective 2: Develop accurate species concepts within the Tarsonemidae (white mites) through discovery of new characters for species separation and subsequent systematic relationships. Objective 3: Coordinate the process of incoming and outgoing arthropod specimens and identifications, and maintain SELIS (Systematic Entomology Laboratory Identification Service), the on-line identification database on agriculturally important arthropods, for use in quarantine, conservation, pest management, and other ARS research programs.
Morphological characters will be identified through the examination of specimens (~2500 slides) located at the National Mite Collection and specimens collected from the Americas, Australia and China. Observation of the specimens will use dissecting, Differential Interference Contrast (DIC), Phase Contrast, Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy (CLSM), Variable Pressure Scanning Electron Microscopy (VP-SEM), and Low Temperature Scanning Electron Microscopy (LT-SEM). Recognized morphological characters of several mite genera in the families Tarsonemidae and Tenuipalpidae will be identified, quantified, and used to develop hypotheses of phylogenetic relationships among higher level taxa. The characters will be evaluated using modern phylogenetic programs. The resulting phylogenies will be used to develop natural, robust classifications of higher level taxa among and within these four families. | <urn:uuid:a722c650-4c46-4f89-9cf0-b23e82c4d421> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.ars.usda.gov/research/project/?accnNo=429274 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571982.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813172349-20220813202349-00077.warc.gz | en | 0.802148 | 370 | 2.34375 | 2 |
As part of continuous improvement, process improvements can be achieved by examining the processes within your organization, identifying their weak points and seeking optimal ways of improving them. Because processes are never static (business direction changes, customers' needs change, regulations are introduced and new technology often triggers the need to alter how processes work), they will never be perfect and can always benefit from continuous improvement.
Let's start by defining what a process is: A series of actions that bring about a specific result.
For example, the series of actions (process) involved in applying for a job leads to securing employment (result).
When can you say you have a "good" process?
The notion of good or bad processes is mostly subjective, and whether a process is good or bad would depend on the context (purpose, project or industry) and circumstances that are peculiar to its operation.
This article discusses 6 warning signs your processes may be in need of attention. Look out for these signs and work towards eliminating them.
Warning Sign 1: Your Process Does Not Have An Identifiable Objective
Any process worth its salt must have an objective and deliver on that objective consistently.
The definition of a process discussed above implies that a process exists to fulfil a pre-determined objective. A process cannot just exist for the sake of it. Each process and its associated steps must have a clearly defined purpose that is understandable to everyone.
So, when examining a process, ask yourself, does this process have a purpose? Drill down further and ask, does this step have a purpose? Can that purpose be fulfilled by another step?
Warning Sign 2: Your Process Is Not Defined
It's possible to ask 2 people to define the same process and get 2 different versions of the story. This can happen due to a number of reasons:
1) There is no clearly defined process.
2) There is a defined process but no one understands it. The available process models raise more questions than answers
3) No one remembers how the process is supposed to work.
4) No one has access to the definition of the process or
5) The process is defined but there is no enforcement of its execution and as such, has become ad hoc over time.
The desirable situation would be for everyone involved in the process to have the same understanding of the process and execute it consistently. Every process should be defined with logical inputs and outputs to each step clearly identified. Processes take information or materials from the environment as inputs (this could be from another process, data source or an external step) and transform them into outputs. This transformation and all the activities leading up to it should be clearly defined and understood by all the relevant process participants to avoid confusion.
Process transparency cannot be achieved without a solid definition and visibility of the process. At every point, it should be easy to predict what step is being executed, how the step came to be (the activities leading up to that step) and what the logical output of each step will be.
In striving to accomplish completeness, a good process definition must go beyond addressing the sunny day or happy line scenario to defining means of handling exceptions.
Warning Sign 3: Your Process Is Inefficient
An efficient process is one where there are no unnecessary activities, there's minimal wastage and minimal resources are utilized in producing the desired result.
When examining processes, check for inefficiencies by asking these questions:
1. Does the process have any unnecessary sign-offs and approvals?
2. Does the process collect data the business does not need?
3. Are all the resources allocated to the process necessary?
4. Is there anything that can be done upstream to eliminate the process or any of its steps?
4. Are there any bottlenecks or sources of delay in the process?
5. Are there any repetitive steps that add no value?
Warning Sign 4: Your Process Definition is not end-to-end
Rob Davies defines an end-to-end process as, “A chain of process steps (or subprocesses) that starts as the result of a customer trigger and progresses until a successful outcome for the customer is achieved”.
For example, a process that allows patients to consult with a physician, receive diagnosis but does not consider how payments will be made or how prescribed drugs will be obtained cannot be considered end-to-end. End-to-end processes are sufficient in the sense that they take into consideration all the steps and sub-processes that need to be executed in creating the desired business or customer outcomes.
Warning Sign 5: Your Process is Complex
In reality, the complexity of a business is reflected in its business processes. If your process (and its definition via a business process model) is complex, there is an increased likelihood of recording errors in its execution. Improving business processes should always be done with the aim of simplifying processes and reducing complexity, where possible.
Warning Sign 6: Your Process is Not Controlled, Measured or Monitored
Processes should be continually monitored to ensure they deliver results consistently. Process Owners must be able to manage their processes by defining realistic KPIs and continuously ensuring that process definitions are aligned with business strategy, customer demands and technological changes.
Processes also need to be measured to understand how well they are performing and to collect data for business decision making.
While there's no definitive checklist through which a process can always be qualified as good, identifying the warning signs and eliminating activities that typically cause problems in execution will ensure that the business processes in your organization deliver the desired outcome as efficiently as possible every single time they are executed.
Don't forget to leave your comment below. | <urn:uuid:54aebeda-629c-483b-997a-78b41d1c1d9a> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://businessanalystlearnings.com/blog/2014/4/8/6-warning-signs-your-processes-are-not-so-cool | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280310.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00184-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947463 | 1,159 | 2.75 | 3 |
UPDATED IN MARCH 2013 to include the historic $104-million Bradley Birkenfeld whistleblower case and more! From the nation's leading whistleblower attorney, comes the third edition of the first-ever consumer guide to whistleblowing.In The Whistleblower's Handbook, Stephen Martin Kohn explains nearly all federal and state laws regarding whistleblowing. In the step-by-step bulk of the book, he also presents twenty-one rules for whistleblowers.
A Step-by-Step Guide to Doing What's Right and Protecting Yourself
Education & Reference | <urn:uuid:445ff80c-d3e1-464c-9498-7922491bfc1e> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.dymocks.com.au/book/whistleblowers-handbook-9780762774791/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281353.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00060-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.780518 | 113 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Friday, August 5, 2022
“For ye have brought hither these men, which are neither robbers of churches, nor yet blasphemers of your goddess” (Acts 19:37 KJV).
Do even the “heathen” attend church? Yes, according to today’s Scripture, they do!
The Holy Spirit’s commentary on Israel’s 10 northern tribes: “And they rejected his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he testified against them; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and went after the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom the LORD had charged them, that they should not do like them. And they left all the commandments of the LORD their God, and made them molten images, even two calves, and made a grove [shrine], and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal [an idol]” (2 Kings 17:15,16). These sins resulted in their being taken away in judgment via the Assyrian Captivity.
About the two tribes of the Southern Kingdom (Judah), the Prophet Jeremiah penned: “Hear ye the word which the LORD speaketh unto you, O house of Israel: Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not. They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not: they must needs be borne, because they cannot go. Be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to do good” (Jeremiah 10:1-5). Do you happen to know of any trees decorated with “silver and gold” for religious purposes? The Bible calls it heathenism, not Christianity!
“Images,” shrines, and “idols” are aids to worship in heathenism. “The idols of the heathen are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands” (Psalm 135:15). “And that which cometh into your mind shall not be at all, that ye say, We will be as the heathen, as the families of the countries, to serve wood and stone [idols]” (Ezekiel 20:32). Let us summarize and conclude this devotionals arc…. | <urn:uuid:60655adf-b808-4a6a-9292-f7ca77c3aa7f> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://333wordsofgrace.org/2022/08/05/heathen-churches-4/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572212.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815205848-20220815235848-00465.warc.gz | en | 0.971265 | 565 | 1.554688 | 2 |
WILDFLOWERS FOR WILDLIFE
May 21st, 2022
Learn how to create a beautiful garden with colorful flowers that attract butterflies, birds and pollinating insects, and find the plants to use. The Horicon Marsh Education and Visitor Center is the location for the 2022 Wildflowers for Wildlife event Saturday, May 21 from 9:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.
The 9th annual “Wildflowers for Wildlife: enhancing your own backyard” is sponsored by the Friends of Horicon Marsh Education and Visitor Center and Friends of Horicon NWR. They have partnered with Taylor Creek Restoration Nurseries and RES for a native plant sale that will help enhance your backyard, schoolyard, park or natural area and in turn, benefit wildlife.
Why native plants? Native landscaping restores ecosystems that once covered the Midwestern landscape but are now reduced to small parcels. Once native plants are restored, the birds, mammals, reptiles and beneficial insects return too. Native plants also enrich the soil, decrease run-off and filter pollution. In the long run, native landscaping can save money annually in maintenance costs. Native plants have evolved to thrive in a local environment, which means less watering, fertilizer and time.
Native landscapes offer hands-on opportunities for people of all ages to learn about habitats and ecosystems. A native landscape also provides the ideal setting for bird and butterfly watching, photography and nature walks.
Native plants are available for pre-order until April 1, 2022. Pre-order forms can be found at https://horiconmarsh.org/…/2022-Wildflowers-for….
For more information about plants, call (920) 387-7889 or e-mail firstname.lastname@example.org. Contact 920-387-7893 for more information about the event.
Additional information about plants that are available for pre-sale can be found here https://horiconmarsh.org/…/2017/11/pre-sale-tags.pdf.
The Horicon Marsh Education and Visitor Center is located at N7725 Highway 28, Horicon and is between the cities of Mayville and Horicon | <urn:uuid:eff87417-4d0e-464a-94bd-920636c4aacb> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://horiconmarsh.org/wildflowers-for-wildlife/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572033.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814113403-20220814143403-00268.warc.gz | en | 0.907905 | 458 | 2.484375 | 2 |
This popped up in one of the legion of email newsletters I generally fail to do anything other with than skim.
It’s a video in which Barney Pell (successful entrepreneur and former NASA engineer) pitches the new venture with which he’s involved – Moon Express – and why going to the moon makes economic sense.
In a nutshell? Minerals, including platinum. If you’re interested in the short, 2 min pitch, it’s available on the Forbes website (I’d embed it here, but can’t, so meh).
But yes, it’s an interesting concept! I’m not an engineer of any sort, so I’d be very interested to hear what other people think of the idea.
To get you started, I found these two articles, as well:
And now: floor open!
On a completely separate note, also came across this today: an hilarious cartoon showing the difference between how the public _thinks_ science is carried out, and how it actually is. It’s funny, ’cause it’s true… | <urn:uuid:383ea6e7-56f2-44d1-8c49-55296a04fb6e> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://sciblogs.co.nz/misc-ience/2011/08/04/mining-the-moon/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280835.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00466-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915849 | 235 | 1.695313 | 2 |
What’s the best way to prepare a large batch of bacon?
The good news: it turns out that the best method is actually the easiest. Do not handle grates, household aluminum foil, or tidy baking sheets; simply place your bacon strips on a baking sheet and bake at 425°F until crispy to your liking (about 20 minutes was fine with me).
What can I do with lots of bacon?
Top pancakes with bacon. The blueberry pancakes are good and good, but believe us, the bacon pancakes are even better. Bacon, egg and cabbage sandwich. Maple Bacon Gum. Bacon salt. Vulgar bread with bacon. Whiskey Bacon Chicken. Bacon – wrapped shrimp. Poppy and chipotle cheese bacon.
How do you precook bacon for the crowd?
Preheat oven to 425 degrees or if using convection mode, preheat to 400 degrees. Position the oven racks in the lower middle and upper middle positions. Arrange the bacon in a single layer on two sheets lined with cling film. Place both sheets in the oven and bake until crispy and golden, about 18 to 20 minutes.
How much bacon do I need for 50 people?
How to use this chart for food quantities:
|type of food||Approximate quantity for 50 servings||Serving size per person|
|Turkey, whole, roasting||40-50 lbs. (2-3 large birds)||3 ounces|
|Bacon||6 pounds, 12-20 pieces per kilogram||2 parts|
|Ham, with bone, for roasting||18-20 lbs.||3 ounces, boiled|
|Purchased ready to eat||15 pounds||3 ounces, boiled|
How long should bacon be cooked in the oven?
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Cover the baking sheet with parchment paper. Place the bacon slices next to each other in the prepared baking sheet. Bake in a preheated oven for 15 to 20 minutes.
How to cook bacon in the oven without smoking the house?
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Celsius. Cover the baking sheet with aluminum foil for easy cleanup. Arrange the bacon in a single layer. Bake for about 15-25 minutes or until golden and crispy. Remove the bacon from the oven and place the bacon pieces on a plate lined with paper towel.
What’s wrong with bacon?
Here are five foods you probably shouldn’t combine with bacon. Cereals. Crack some bacon into your next bowl with Froot Loops and let us know how it goes, especially when it’s all wet. Grapes. Citrus fruits. sorbet. It was black licorice.
Can you eat raw bacon?
Eating raw bacon can increase the risk of foodborne illnesses such as toxoplasmosis, trichinosis, and tapeworm. Therefore, it is not safe to eat raw bacon.
Is bacon harmful?
Each ounce of bacon contributes 30 milligrams of cholesterol (not to mention the cholesterol in eggs that often accompanies bacon. Eating foods high in saturated fat can raise cholesterol levels, increasing the risk of heart disease and heart disease. stroke.
Can I cook bacon the night before?
Yes, when you have a lot of work, it is good to cook the bacon in advance. I would only cook the bacon until it starts to crisp. That way, when it’s time to reheat, you can reheat it until it’s just crispy. It’s best to heat the bacon in the oven or in the toaster if you don’t heat it very much.
How to reheat bacon and keep it crispy?
You can enjoy soft, crispy, chewy bacon by following these tips for reheating it in the microwave: Spread a layer of bacon strips on a microwave-safe plate lined with a paper towel. Cover the bacon with another sheet of paper towel. Place the dish in the microwave and heat the bacon for 20 seconds.
How to cook 5 kg of bacon?
Instructions Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Arrange bacon pieces close together in a single layer on a baking sheet. Place the baking sheet(s) in the oven and cook for 15-35 minutes, depending on how crispy and done you want and the type of bacon you are using.
How much bacon is too much?
According to a new study from BMC Medicine, people who eat more than 20 grams of processed meat a day – the equivalent of a thin slice of bacon or a slice of ham – are more likely to die of a stroke stroke, cancer or myocardial infarction.
Should you return the bacon to the oven?
Baking bacon is the easiest way to cook it because you don’t have to flip it. The only exception is if your bacon is sliced very thick. In this case, you may want to flip the bacon after it’s been in the oven for 12 minutes to make sure both sides are cooked evenly. | <urn:uuid:7c597fb0-9e0c-4962-8c91-ff07c0712e9f> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.clocktowerhistoricstaunton.com/cooking/faq-how-to-cook-a-large-amount-of-bacon/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572127.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815024523-20220815054523-00264.warc.gz | en | 0.894677 | 1,044 | 1.820313 | 2 |
The National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) is the Department of Education’s data clearinghouse for all government backed student loans and grants. Students and other borrowers who have Title IV loans or Pell Grants can gain access to any of their loan/grant information through this government maintained database.
According to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), signed into law in 1966, information regarding educational loans or grants sponsored through the federal government is to be made available to borrowers. To this end, the NSLDS offers a secure interface through which students and parents can request an assortment of information related to their federal student loans or grants. You always have the right to access your information. This database makes it available to you at all times and in one convenient place.
Since all of your Title IV federal loan information is centralized by the NSLDS database, all you have to do is create an account with your unique information to gain access to it. Just like you would do at any other secure financial website, you will be required to enter very personal data that is used to verify your identity. When you want to access your account with the NSLDS you’ll need the following information:
Once you have this information ready, simply go to the NSLDS database to access all the important information about your student loans.
Title IV loans include all the federal student loans Stafford Loans, Perkins Loans, and Direct Loans. Pell Grants are those awarded to undergraduate students on an annual basis who are in the most economic need.
What if you need further information or need to make a change to your existing information in the database? If you do not find the information you need regarding your federal loans and grant monies you may make a formal request to the Department of Education based on your rights in the Freedom of Information Act. The information about your financial and loan history, status, and future is yours and you are guaranteed by law to have access to it through this provision.
The lenders and student loan guarantor companies, the Department of Education, the Direct Loan program and even specific colleges and universities are responsible for reporting this information directly to the NSLDS. For the most part the loan and grant information is up-to-date. The NSLDS does make it clear, however, in their helpful FAQs section that outstanding loan balances may be 3-4 months behind in reporting. You have the freedom to contact any of the lenders or agencies that have reported the loan or grant. If you suspect erroneous data, you are encouraged to contact reporting bodies. For this reason, https://getbadcreditloan.com/payday-loans-ok/durant/ alone, knowing how to access your federal loan information is imperative.
The NSLDS offers a useful and comprehensive glossary of financial aid and student loan terms. This tool is especially helpful in deciphering the often confusing terms associated with the business of student loans and financial aid, terms that you may be confronted with while accessing your federal funding information. Additionally, there are resources for financial aid review as well as student loan exit counseling through the NSLDS.
The hub of information contained in the NSLDS database for those with loans is necessarily the most central and integrated view of your financial data. When it comes to college finances, it is reassuring in any situation that all of your information is synced together in a place where you can retrieve it easily and interpret the data in the same location. | <urn:uuid:206bfb57-c3db-4a43-bf29-4886994a6434> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://pakmak.net/clearinghouse-for-your-federal-loan-information-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571987.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813202507-20220813232507-00266.warc.gz | en | 0.952207 | 707 | 2.40625 | 2 |
What should you do if someone parks their RV outside of your home? If you find yourself in this scenario you may be scratching your head, wondering what your rights are. Having someone park their RV outside of your home can feel frustrating and be inconvenient. What to Do If Someone Parked an RV in Front of Your House? Will help you address your concerns and learn your rights.
Varying local and state laws address the rules and regulations regarding where you can park an RV and for how long. Standard rules are:
- An RV cannot block the sidewalk, road signage, or a fire hydrant, but can be parked on the street for a limited amount of time.
- On average areas that allow RV parking state an RV can only be parked on a street for 1-2 days.
- Many cities also require an RV to have a permit for parking.
- Some neighborhoods have home owners associations that have rules against parking a motorhome or RV on the street.
- To determine your areas rules you can contact your local law enforcement on a non-emergent number, or visit your cities website.
- RV’s that do not meet the local and state parking regulations will receive a citation and be at risk of towing.
An RV parked outside of your home can be annoying, but there are steps you can take to fix the problem. Understanding why and RV may be parked outside your home and what the standard city regulations are will help solve your problem.
- 1 Quick Answer
- 2 Step-By-Step Instructions on What to Do If Someone Parked an RV in Front of Your House
- 3 Ten Common Reasons Why an RV May Be Parked Outside of Your Home
- 4 How to Identify an RV Versus a Trailer Camper?
- 5 What Are Standard City Regulations for RV Parking?
- 6 Wrap Up
Step-By-Step Instructions on What to Do If Someone Parked an RV in Front of Your House
If someone has parked their RV outside your house follow these step by step instructions. Note the vehicle information, determine your local rules, and report the problem.
Note the Vehicle Information
When an RV is parked outside of your house the first thing you should do is note the vehicle information. You will use this information later on when reporting the illegally parked RV. Here are a few simple steps for recording the vehicle information:
Step 1: Note the License Plate Number- The license plate number will be the first thing requested when you report the RV to your local authorities. I would recommend either writing the number down or taking a picture. If you write the number down make sure to include all characters and the state.
Step 2: Describe and Record the RV Model – RV manufacturers place the model on the body of the vehicle. For example, Fleetwood puts the model number on the vehicle’s exterior door. Another popular place you may find the model is on the back of the RV.
Step 3: Determine and Note the Make of the RV- The make of the vehicle is the manufacturer’s name. The manufacturer’s name can most likely be found on the exterior of the RV towards the front. Some popular makes are Gulfstream, Airstream, American Coach, and Newmar.
Step 4: Record General Characteristics- The last thing to record are general characteristics of the RV including color, pattern, size, and condition.
Determine Your Local and State Law Regarding RV Parking
Once you’ve decided to report an RV parked in front of your home you might be wondering where to begin. Reporting the RV to the correct party is essential to removing the RV. Once you have gathered the information you will need to report the RV, refer to these frequently asked questions to understand who to report it to and your legal rights.
Who should I contact when there is an RV parked outside of my house? Contact the police or local city code enforcement if there is an RV parked outside of your house. They should provide you with information regarding your local code.
Why is an RV parked outside of my house on a public street a legal matter, as opposed to a private one? RV’s that are parked on a residential street may be in breach of city ordinance, and practicing illegal street parking. They may also pose a safety concern. For example, an RV that is blocking a fire hydrant, or obstructing drivers view.
Are my local and state laws regarding RV parking always the same? In short, no. Local communities must follow the state laws, however they can have their own laws too.
Are RV permits transferable between cities if my own city does not allow RV street parking? It depends on the city. If the city does not allow RV parking then no, an RV cannot park on the street. If a city does allow RV parking then possibly a permit is transferable. Not every RV will display their permit somewhere you can see.
Is it legal to live in an RV that is parked on a residential street? RV living is popular in city where cost of living is expensive. Most cities have parking rules, however only some have laws in place preventing people from living in an RV.
Report the RV to City Code Enforcement
City code enforcement is your local city government’s authority that acts in property owner compliance issues. They have the power to handle nuisance complaints, and issues of property that jeopardize the safety of citizens. Follow these easy steps to report the RV to city code enforcement:
- First, you can call, email, or stop in your local city code enforcement office. Determine which method of communication you want to use.
- Remember it is important to use non-emergency contact avenues.
- Contacting your city code enforcement by phone is our recommended method.
- To look up these different methods of communication you can use a search engine and type in “city code enforcement” with your zip code, or you can refer to your city’s directory.
- When you make contact request your cities policy on RV street parking.
- Alert your city code enforcement of the RV parked in front of your house and provide them with the information you have gathered.
- The city code enforcement may ask you additional questions like, how long has the RV been parked there or have you seen the owner at any given time. Be ready to answer these questions.
- Stay informed and follow up with your city code enforcement if necessary.
Notify Law Enforcement Using a Non-Emergency Phone Number
To notify your local law enforcement team of the RV parked outside of your home you want to use a non-emergency phone number. The difference between a 9-1-1 call and your law enforcement departments standard 10-digit phone number is that 9-1-1 is purely an emergency hotline number. Here is how you use your non-emergency phone number to report an RV parked outside of your home:
- There are a few different places you can locate your local non-emergency number. You can look in the directory, run a web search requesting the non-emergency number for your zip code, or go to your local sheriff’s office website.
- Once you have located a contact method, gather the information you have built on the vehicle. You will need it when reporting the RV.
- Make contact with your local law enforcement and provide them with the vehicle description.
- Request a follow up method so you can keep communication flowing and stay updated.
If there is an unfamiliar RV parked in front of your house there are steps you can take to solve the problem. Determining your local rules and noting the vehicle information prior to reporting can help ensure your report is taken seriously.
Ten Common Reasons Why an RV May Be Parked Outside of Your Home
There are many reasons an RV might find itself parked in front of your home. Having an unfamiliar RV parked outside of your house can cause unease. There are many common reasons an RV may be parked outside of your home. Here are the top 10 reasons an RV might park in front of your house:
- The owner is attempting to avoid a parking ticket on a public street.
- The local parks that accept RV’s are full.
- The RV’s owner may be from out of town and not know where to park and stay for the night.
- The owner is living in their RV because they have nowhere else to go. Financial trouble and housing problems are a common reason people will live in their RV.
- The owner is choosing to live in their RV to forgo city expenses. This practice is becoming more and more common in cities that have a high cost of living.
- The RV is owned by a neighbor who cannot park it outside of their own home. For example, your neighbor has a fire hydrant in front of their house.
- They view parking on a residential street for the night as a safer alternative to parking at a local camp or large vehicle spot.
- They have an expired permit and are hoping to avoid a permit request.
- The owner left their vehicle there in hopes of it being less likely to get towed as opposed to a public street.
- The vehicle is stolen and/or has been abandoned in front of your home.
How to Identify an RV Versus a Trailer Camper?
The large travel vehicle world is abundant with options. Rules and regulations can be different for different types of vehicles. RV’s are a type of trailer camper. If you wake up one morning to find an unfamiliar vehicle parked in front of your house understanding their differences can help you determine what type of vehicle it is.
Towing: Like a trailer camper a RV can be towed behind another vehicle or driven. However, fifth-wheel trailers can only be towed.
Living quarters: RV’s have living quarters, including beds, kitchen, and bath. Trailer Campers have beds, and sometimes have kitchen and bath.
Size: On average RV’s are 10 to 14 feet tall and 20 to 45 feet long. Trailer campers that are often smaller. 8 1/2 feet wide is a common standard for all motorhomes, RV’s and trailer campers included.
Rules and Regulations: Some laws specific not by type of vehicle but by the size of the vehicle. The width and height of a vehicle are commonly present in rules and regulations.
What Are Standard City Regulations for RV Parking?
Different states and cities have their own regulations regarding RV parking. However, there are standard regulations that are commonly seen. Knowing what these standard regulations are can help you determine if an RV parked in front of your home is there illegally. Here are some frequently asked questions concerning standard RV parking rules.
Is it legal to park an RV on a residential street? Most cities have outlawed the parking of an RV on a residential street for any amount of time. If your city does not allow RV street parking, usually you are allowed to park on your own property.
Can an RV stay outside of my home overnight? City’s that do allow RV’s to park on residential streets usually do not allow overnight parking.
How long can an RV be parked on a residential street? If your city allows residential RV street parking on average, they can be parked for 36 hours. However, some cities allow longer periods of time, up to 72 hours.
How long does an RV need to move before returning if my city allows RV residential street parking? On average RV’s must be moved for 48 hours before returning to the same spot.
Are there size restrictions to parking an RV on a residential street? The average length cities allow for RV parking is 32 feet; however, some may allow as long as 35 feet. The average width allowed is 8 1/2 feet, while the average height allowed is 13 feet.
What is the penalty for illegally parking an RV? The penalty for illegally parking an RV can include fines for parking, lacking a permit, and not complying with code. Illegally parking an RV can also result in being towed.
How close to my driveway can an RV park? Almost all cities have laws preventing RV’s from blocking residential driveways. If an RV is parked within 24 inches of your driveway, they may be in violation of city ordinance.
I know having an unfamiliar RV parked in front of your house can feel frustrating. Remember, there are many different reasons an RV may find itself parked in front of your home, and steps you can take to fix it. A day or two may pass and you start to wonder if they are ever going to leave? Note information about the vehicle and contact your local code enforcement or police using a non-emergency method of communication. Please feel free to share your experience in the comments below.
Hi, I am Brad. Car Independent is your source for independent views on cars and car accessories. Whether you looking to buy a new car or something cool for your car, you have many options. My aim to help you make the best-informed choices. | <urn:uuid:12e5569a-4732-4a17-9538-2d74ba9ba9e2> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://carindependent.com/rv-parked-in-front-of-house/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571056.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809155137-20220809185137-00666.warc.gz | en | 0.950635 | 2,700 | 2.046875 | 2 |
- Only one zip-top bag per traveler.
Don't forget your passports. Will you be spending the holidays on the beach in Mexico or skiing Whistler in Canada? Don't forget. Passports are now required.
Drink up. It is important stay hydrated when traveling. But we can no longer take water bottles through the security line. Rather than buy high-priced water bottles in the airline gate area, bring an empty bottle through security and fill up at the drinking fountain. It's more eco-friendly too.
Stay informed. The rules continue to evolve. So before you head to the airport check the TSA website for the latest updates. For example, parents can now bring breast milk, milk, juice and baby food through security in quantities beyond 3 ounces. (And will no longer be required to test the liquid in front of an agent) It is recommended that quantities be limited to that required for the duration of the trip.
Resources: www.TSA.gov www.travel.state.gov
Backpacks for all. Children like taking responsibility for their own gear. Ask everyone to carry as much as possible in their own backpack or carry –on. It's good practice and lightens the load for the adults. | <urn:uuid:8e28340c-61fd-42d7-ac8e-7fbf792e39bc> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/parenting/a26911/travel-tips-surviving-the-air/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281162.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00530-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93571 | 254 | 1.539063 | 2 |
The targeted theft of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine data from the European Medicines Agency (EMA)" is the most recent wake-up call that cybersecurity, economic security, and public health are increasingly intertwined in complex ways that have pressing national security implications. In fact, Health Care IT News reported a “'global phishing campaign' against organizations responsible for the transport and sub-zero storage of the vaccine, supposedly in an attempt to gain unauthorized access to private credentials and sensitive information regarding the vaccine’s distribution." (1) A critical and often overlooked target area for malicious activity is clinical R&D leading to new drugs, medical treatments, and devices. Actors in academia, government and the private sector are increasingly at risk from remote cyber intrusions and espionage through insider threats targeting intellectual property. Theft and manipulation of this health data threaten to undermine private sector investments and slow progress towards positive health outcomes. Compromised data can be leveraged to harm vulnerable populations or subvert medical responses to public health crises. The ability to hold a population’s health at risk is essentially a biowarfare effect achieved through the cyber domain. It’s time to think seriously about what defense in this space looks like, especially at a time when the clinical R&D landscape itself is changing rapidly with increased connectivity and automation.
Health data are vulnerable to malicious actors who seek economic advantage, strategic competitive advantage, and leverage over U.S. and global public health outcomes. American companies, labs, and agencies have already lost extensive data to actors backed by Beijing. (2) China’s strategy of using stolen digital resources to advance its civilian and military capabilities (3) clearly applies to the biopharma and advanced medical products in their top-10 technologies for development under the "Made in China 2025" initiative. There is a particular urgency to this topic now, as governments around the world are investing in new avenues of clinical R&D, research support, regulatory compliance, and translational science (4) (turning observations in the lab, clinic and community into interventions that improve the health of individuals and the public).
Securing the data analysis pipeline (the people) and networks (infrastructure) of the medical and pharmaceutical sectors – across private industry, academia, and government – shares much in common with current practices in other sensitive fields. Companies, labs, and agencies need better intrusion detection, including digital twins and intrusion simulations to keep systems and human teams sharp. They need better defenses against insider threats, including better screening processes for employees, contractors, and research trialists with access to sensitive proprietary pharmaceutical R&D information. The insider threat is real: the US Department of Justice has successfully prosecuted individuals at such institutions as Harvard University (5) and Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s Research Institute for theft of health-related scientific research (6). Entities involved in critical research should consider a rigorous background investigation process that combines a traditional investigation and one related to mission-specific risks. This should go beyond screening principal investigators to encompass others with access to critical data, such as data analysts and lab support engaged in global collaboration at an accelerated pace. They should improve systems to spot the theft or removal of sensitive proprietary information from company networks. Organizations must better train their people, particularly academic and research institutions, whose experts work closely with outside entities and benefit from rich collaboration. Training must emphasize practical measures that individuals can take to protect themselves and their electronic devices from malicious actors during travel (at hotels, airports, restaurants, etc.) and at partner-provided facilities. Basic cyber hygiene measures have not been standardized or benchmarked as best practices across the community of interest.
The health industry also has unique requirements and challenges, all of which are in the midst of rapid evolution. Growth in team-based translational science is bringing research scientists, systems thinkers, analytic boundary crossers, and business developers together across global communications architectures faster than ever. The increasing breadth and variety of global stakeholders and exploding dataset sizes are critical to rapid innovation but drive special security needs. Currently the health sector is highly vulnerable: ransomware attacks on hospitals and healthcare facilities have increased worldwide (7) spurring the need for enhanced prevention, detection, and mitigation measures to counter the barrage of threat actors and tactics. (8)
Data provenance must be a top priority for research institutions and industry partners. Government agencies have work to do as well. The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency should update controlled unclassified information (CUI) (9) standards and practices. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency should overhaul the public health sector of our critical infrastructure (10) planning. The USG must act on the recommendations put forward by the 2015 Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense; a 2021 study titled “Biodefense in Crisis – Immediate Action Needed to Address National Vulnerabilities” (11) found that little progress has been made in implementing the Commission’s recommendations. The community of interest is fragmented because fast-tracked scientific research – developing proposals, recruiting study subjects, collecting data, developing results, and reporting – is global and often outsourced. New standards are required to create accountability and transparency without restricting innovation across this unique landscape.
Finally, security must become an integral part of conversations driving the field’s development. A 2019 workshop (12) conducted by National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF) examined strategies to use health data and considered the future of models for delivery of drugs, devices, treatments, and health systems interventions. Forums like these must move beyond recognizing cybersecurity as a challenge and work to stimulate collaborative engagement on emerging threats, rapid impact assessment, and process improvement.
To begin, participants need to simply acknowledge that they are coming from different places in terms of their historical approach to security. Common security terminology, such as “zero trust,” may be alienating or confusing to research alliances that rely on trust, collaboration, and rigorous external validation for success. Security procedures must therefore be developed through the coordinated efforts of clinical trialists, digital technologists, and security subject matter experts. Moreover, security solutions must span all involved organizations so that implementation facilitates interoperability (information sharing) across projects and programs and is not stifled by organizational silos.
We are in the infancy of responding to a crucial set of challenges driven by our fast-tracked innovation partnerships and dispersed remote workforce. A cross-organizational discussion on national security implications, ethical imperatives, and human rights considerations of securing clinical trial data across academia, government, and pharma is required for this new era of highly funded, networked clinical R&D.
1. Porter S. Pfizer. COVID-19 vaccine data leaked by hackers. Healthcare IT News. (14 January 2022). https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/emea/pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-data-leaked-hackers (accessed 29 January 2022).
2. U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center. China’s Collection of Genomic and Other Healthcare Data from America: Risks to Privacy and U.S. Economic and National Security. February 2021. https://www.dni.gov/files/NCSC/documents/SafeguardingOurFuture/NCSC_China_Genomics_Fact_Sheet_2021revision20210203.pdf (accessed 24 February 2022).
3. Puglisi A. Testimony before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. (4 August 2021). https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/os-apuglisi-080421.pdf (accessed 29 January 2022).
4. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. National Institutes of Health. National Center for Advancing of Translational Research. (20 January 2022). https://ncats.nih.gov/training-education/skills. (accessed 29 January 2022).
5. U.S. Department of Justice. Office of Public Affairs. Harvard University Professors and Two Chinese Nationals Charged in Three Separate China Related Cases. Justice News. (28 January 2020). https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/harvard-university-professor-and-two-chinese-nationals-charged-three-separate-china-related. (accessed 29 January 2022).
6. The United States Department of Justice. Office of Public Affairs. Hospital Researcher Sentenced to Prison for Conspiring to Steal Trade Secrets and sell to China. Justice News. Press Release #21-344. Researcher Sentenced to Prison for Conspiring to Steal Trade Secrets and Sell to China. Justice News. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/hospital-researcher-sentenced-prison-conspiring-steal-trade-secrets-and-sell-china. (20 April 2021). (accessed 29 January 2022).
7. Offner K.L. Sitnikova E., Joiner K.,MacIntyre C.R. Towards understanding cybersecurity capability in Australian healthcare organizations: a systematic review of recent trends, threats, and mitigation. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02684527.2020.1752459.
8. Ayala L. Cybersecurity for Hospitals and Healthcare Facilities A Guide to Detection and Prevention. A Press. 2016.
9. Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency. Controlled Unclassified Information. DCSA Office of Communications and Congressional Affairs. https://www.dcsa.mil/mc/ctp/cui/. (accessed 29 January 2022).
10. United States Department of Homeland Security Healthcare and Pubic Health Sector-Specific Plan. (CISA.gov). (May 2016). (accessed 29 January 2022).
11. Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense. Biodefense in Crisis: Immediate Action Required to Address National Vulnerabilities.(March 2021).https://biodefensecommission.org/. (accessed 29 January 2022).
12. Inan O.T., Tenaerts P., Prindville S.A., Reyonolds H.R., Dizon D.S., Cooper-Arnold K., Turrakhia M., Pletcher M.J.,Preston K.L, Krumholtz H.M., Martin B.M., Mandl B.M., Klasnja P.,Spring B., Iturraga E., Campo R., Desvigne-Nickens P., Rosenberg Y., Steinhubl R.,and Califf R.M. Digitizing Clinical Trials. Nature Publishing Group. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7395804/. (accessed 29 January 2022). | <urn:uuid:c49c1046-d9e7-44f7-871a-293480cd89b9> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://jglobalbiosecurity.com/articles/10.31646/gbio.152/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00075.warc.gz | en | 0.910023 | 2,263 | 2.296875 | 2 |
I wrote a previous article in an edition of Cranleigh Magazine, where I recounted my memories of September 1943, 75 years ago. Here is a recipe of a standard Sunday Lunch we had in our home. It was the best we could get at the time and consisted mainly of home produced ingredients giving a nutritional well balanced meal. The stock was produced with home reared chickens with the addition of some purchased beef bones and fresh vegetables from our garden. This menu is simple, different, wholesome and easy to reproduce. A 3 course meal for 4 people.
PASTINA IN BRODO (Small pasta in broth) (Serves 4)
1. Boil the stock with the tomato passata
2. Drop in it the anellini pasta (or any kind you wish)
3. Cook until the pasta is tender but “al dente”. (4-5 minutes)
4. Serve very hot with the cheese and crusty bread rolls
POLLO E PEPERONATA (Saute` chicken with Ratatouille) (Serves 4)
1 x 1.5kg Chicken
(breasts, separated from the carcase)
1 Large onion sliced
6 Cloves of garlic peeled, crushed and finely chopped
3 Sticks of celery (the Italian variety is green and leafy) chopped
3 Red/green sweet peppers (Capsicum) sliced
1 Large aubergine sliced
500g of tomatoes (the best are the large “beef steak” ones) roughly chopped
500g of potatoes peeled and sliced
30g of chopped mixed herbs (rosemary, sage, oregano, parsley and basil)
30 mls of oil
30 g of lard
150 mls of dry white wine
100mls of chicken stock
1. Cut the breasts in 2 and separate the thighs from the drumsticks
2. Use a large casserole type of pan that can be placed in the oven and afterwards on the table with a lid. (I like the “le creuset” type)
3. Heat half the oil and lard and saute`chicken until golden, season it and keep it hot.
4. In the same casserole heat the remainder of oil and lard, add vegetables stirring until boiling.
5. Add the white wine, reduce by half, then add the stock
6. Bring to the boil, reduce again, add half the herbs and season to taste
7. Place the chicken on top of the cooking
vegetables, cover with a lid.
8. Bring to the boil and place in a hot oven at 160ºc for 45 minutes.
9. Serve by placing the casserole without the lid, on a trivet on the table
10. Sprinkle the rest of the herbs on the chicken
FICHI FRESCHI E FORMAGGIO (Fresh figs and cheese) (Serves 4)
12 Ripe fresh figs
(the mauve coloured variety is the best)
200g blue cheese
(any soft cheese would be acceptable)
1. Wash the figs and make a cross incision on the plump part of them
2. Use 4 dessert plates.
3. On each place 50g of cheese in the centre and around it place the figs opened up where the cross cuts shows
4. Serve with it crusty bread rolls or galette
biscuits or what is your preference.
5. Butter can be served if that is your wish.
My father was very partial to end a Sunday lunch with this dish, especially in September, the month when the fig tree we had was in full fruit.
BUON APPETITO – Giovanni Fontebasso | <urn:uuid:0f01d183-a26f-40a8-a026-7cebb4b0d403> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.cranleighmagazine.co.uk/a-75-year-old-lunch/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570977.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809124724-20220809154724-00475.warc.gz | en | 0.901371 | 809 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Professor Anne L’Huillier
Professor Anne L’Huillier from Lund University in Sweden is being honored for her pioneering work in the field of high harmonic generation. This has laid the foundation for the generation of attosecond impulses and enabled key advances in attosecond physics.
"Professor L’Huillier not only described the theory of attosecond technology, but also verified it experimentally”, stated the jury in announcing its decision. Her work enables further development and application of this technology.
Attosecond impulses can be used, for example, to observe the movement of electrons in atoms or molecules in real-time. This plays a key role in understanding general physical phenomena or chemical reactions at the atomic level. This means that attosecond impulses can be used to build a kind of camcorder which can be used to record movies from the inside of atoms and molecules in mega slow motion.
1 Attosecond (as) = 0.000,000,000,000,000,001 seconds = 10-18 seconds is a very short time: even light that travels at the unimaginable speed of 300,000 kilometers per second moves less than one millionth of a millimeter in one attosecond – not even from one end of a molecule to the other.
The Carl Zeiss Research Award will be presented to Professor L’Huillier on Wednesday, June 19, 2013. | <urn:uuid:a00ac2b0-dde2-42aa-9be8-a7074b50a1f2> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.zeiss.com.tr/vision-care/tr_tr/better-vision/zeiss-hassas-optik/zeiss-trfndan-gercekestrlen-mucizeler/boeluem-5-zeiss-oeduel-kazananlar-winners.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280891.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00157-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914508 | 293 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Wednesday, September 04, 2013
In IEEE Spectrum: As might be expected we avidly explored the future of cleaning. In particular we examined robotic approaches. Watching development and commercialization of methods like the Roomba. In particular it is quite difficult to clean multiple, irregular surfaces in home environments. Here is a new idea, using multiple small robotic motes. Just an early concept for now, but interesting to consider the idea in outline. " ... Mab is a self cleaning system consisting of 908 robots which clean the surface of a floor with a drop touching and trapping the dirt particles on the floor. These robots also fulfill the task of feeding the system energy by capturing solar energy in its wings. The second component of the Mab is the core, which the robots returns to, and this central part handles multiple tasks: it generates the mixture of water with an additive that gives higher surface tension and a pleasant odor to the water; it is controlling the robot based on information they are providing of the environment; receiving contaminated droplets and filters it to remove the dirt from the water, saving the highest percentage possible and cleans its walking surfaces. ... " | <urn:uuid:783f3007-8002-4876-a954-14e4e581584e> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://eponymouspickle.blogspot.com/2013/09/robotic-cleaning.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281649.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00436-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926049 | 232 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Even as the authorities cried at the top of their voices that no child had died anywhere after being administered polio drops during Sunday's anti-polio campaign in the Valley, hundreds of weeping and wailing parents stormed hospitals because the rumour mill said dozens had died after being "administered expired polio drops in south Kashmir".
The authorities will definitely have to do some hard explaining to justify why they acted late to counter the rumour mill, but there is no denying the fact that the power of the grapevine in Kashmir has always been "earthshaking".
Residents of cities, towns and villages where children had been administered polio drops were rushing in cars, load carriers, three-wheelers and motorcycles - and even on foot - in the extreme cold to seek medical attention to reverse the effects of the so-called expired vaccine.
Pediatricians, hospital superintendents and paramedics pleaded with angry parents outside hospitals that their children were fine and no child had died anywhere after being administered polio drops.
People simply refused to relent because the rumour mill was agog that dozens of children had died after being administered the vaccine.
It was only around midnight that the situation was brought under control not because the people believed the authorities, but because children had started catching cold in the sub-zero winter temperatures.
Police has now arrested one person who allegedly spread the rumour through social media about the "deaths of dozens of children in south Kashmir".
The arrested person has been booked under the relevant provisions of the IT act and other crime prevention laws, but the fact that just one person could set the Valley on fire has a historical background.
People in the landlocked Valley have always believed rumours more willingly than the official word.
"There have been historical reasons for the power of the grapevine in Kashmir. You see, in 1947 Maharaja Hari Singh was attending an investiture at the palace without knowing that the tribals had invaded Kashmir.
"The grapevine at Zainakadal in Srinagar city said in the morning the tribals had captured the Mohra power station near Uri town. The Maharaja's administration came to know of this only when the lights inside the palace suddenly went off in the evening," said Ghulam Nabi, 76, a resident of Ganderbal district.
He also said the death of National Conference founder and the then chief minister, Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah on September 8, 1982 first came to Kashmiris as a 'rumour' till the authorities confirmed it only in the evening.
More recently, when official health bulletins said the now deceased chief minister, Mufti Muhammad Sayeed, had been "showing signs of recovery and responding to the treatment of a team of expert doctors at AIIMS in New Delhi", the rumour mill said he had been deteriorating.
Ironically, the doctors at the hospital had not confirmed Sayeed's death when people in the Valley said the chief minister had passed away in the morning of January 7.
Despite giant strides in information technology, Sunday's panic and desperation in Kashmir proved not much had changed here.
The world might have become a global village thanks to the internet, television channels, radio stations and mobile phones, but the power of the grapevine in Kashmir remains unparalleled.
Of course, there has been one difference, the spin doctors of the grapevine have learnt the art of using modern technology to spread wild rumours using the same gadgetry that should have thrown them out of business.
© 2017 IANS India Private Limited. All Rights Reserved.
The reproduction of the story/photograph in any form will be liable for legal action. | <urn:uuid:6659cf2c-5bbd-4a75-a3bc-ca3451f00c04> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.ianslive.in/index.php?param=news/Assisted_by_modern_technology_Kashmir_grapevine_becomes_more_deadly-498947/News/34 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280730.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00244-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973725 | 739 | 1.5 | 2 |
Nearly all messaging systems (certainly open source ones) hold either a copy of a persistent message or a reference to a persisted message in memory. This is primarily to try and improve performance, but it also can significantly decrease the complexity of implementation. In fact ActiveMQ version 4 and below worked this - way - by holding references to persisted messages in memory.
However there is a limitation to this approach, no matter how much memory you have at your disposal, you will hit a limit to the number persistent messages a broker can handle at any particular time.
To get around this limitation, ActiveMQ introduced a paging cache - for all message stores (except the memory store) to get the best of both worlds - great performance and the ability to hold 100s of millions of messages in persistent store. ActiveMQ is not limited by memory availability, but by the size of the disk available to hold the persistent messages.
For more information see: Message Cursors | <urn:uuid:a757329a-1731-4f06-bb9f-4891b0ac32ab> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://activemq.apache.org/scaling-the-depth-of-a-queue.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280410.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00454-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.873371 | 194 | 2.03125 | 2 |
An approach to learning has two components- how students approach a task (strategy) depends on why they want to approach it in the first place (motive). Student approaches to learning refers to the idea that students will take a different approach to how they study and learn depending on their perceived objectives of the course they are studying. For example, students can use different learning approaches for different tasks. These are not inherent personality traits and they are produced by the interaction of the student with the learning tasks. The most commonly discussed approaches to learning include deep, surface and strategic or achieving.
Learning approaches can be differentiated from learning styles which are various approaches or ways of learning. These involve learning methods particular to the individual such as an auditory learner or a visual learner. Please go to learning styles for a detailed explanation and useful resources.
Surface, Deep and Strategic (achieving) Approaches to Learning
- Surface learners typically focus on memorization of details and facts without drawing connections to prior knowledge. It is then difficult to apply that knowledge beyond memorization and is often forgotten quickly after it is needed, such as for test or exam.
- Deep learners engage in an active search for meaning and have a more thorough understanding of the knowledge. It involves the integration of new knowledge into the student’s understanding of the world, making it much more concrete and long lasting.
- Strategic or achieving learners focus on a goal or product. They use surface learning in an attempt to learn only what is required to maximize the chances of obtaining high grades. This may result in good grades but not necessarily in a concrete understanding of the material.
For information and tips on how to encourage deeper learning in your classroom, please the links below.
John Biggs argues that the important focus in improving teaching is not on what teachers do, but on what and how students learn. He has developed questionnaires to assess student’s approaches to learning. He has also created a Revised Study Process Questionnaire (R-SPQ-2F) which is meant for instructors to assess their own teaching. It can be found at the link below.
This link describes in detail the differences between deep and surface approaches to learning. It very briefly discusses the strategic or achieving approach.
An introduction and discussion of the approaches to learning | <urn:uuid:5181ff53-42f8-4fc4-9a7e-d9a24b21e9ec> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://cll.mcmaster.ca/resources/L/Learning_Approaches.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279169.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00218-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941866 | 467 | 4.34375 | 4 |
Xavier Bosch from the University of Barcelona, Spain and colleagues have outlined three specific areas of legal liability in an Essay that expands on a previous proposal to use the courts to prosecute those involved in ghostwriting on the basis of it being legal fraud. The essay appears in this week's PLoS Medicine.
First, when an injured patient's physician directly or indirectly relies upon a journal article containing false or manipulated safety and efficacy data, the authors (including "guest" authors), can be held legally liable for patient injuries, says the article. Second, guest authors of ghost-written articles published by Medicare- and Medicaid-recognized peer-reviewed medical journals used as clinical evidence for indications for off-label drugs articles may be liable under the federal False Claims Act for inducing the United States government to reimburse prescriptions under false pretenses. Finally, the authors argue, paying guest authors of ghostwritten papers—which may influence clinical judgment, increase product sales and government health care costs, and put patients at risk by misrepresenting risk-benefit— can mean that both physicians and sponsor companies may be liable under the federal Anti-Kickback Statute.
AdvertisementAlthough guest authors and pharmaceutical defendants may argue a First Amendment right to participate in ghostwriting, the authors say, the US Supreme Court has firmly held that the First Amendment does not shield fraud.
In the previous proposal, published in PLoS Medicine in August 2011, Simon Stern and Trudo Lemmens from the Faculties of Law and Medicine at the University of Toronto, Canada argued that it is irrelevant whether publications with academic guest authors are factually accurate. Rather, ghostwriting of medical journal articles raises serious ethical and legal concerns, bearing on the integrity of medical research and scientific evidence used in legal disputes. Furthermore, the false respectability afforded to claims of safety and effectiveness through the use of academic investigators risks undermining the integrity of biomedical research and patient care—an integrity that also underpins the use of scientific evidence in the courtroom.
According to these authors, medical journals, academic institutions, and professional disciplinary bodies have failed to enforce effective sanctions. Some journals, such as PLoS Medicine, have called for bans on future submissions by authors who act as guests, formal retraction if unacknowledged ghostwriting is discovered after publication, and reporting of authors' misconduct to institutions. Although the authors agree that such actions may have an impact on academics concerned about their status and future publication options, they say that it is unclear whether journals can adequately monitor the practice.
They made the case for more effectively deterring the practice of ghostwriting through the imposition of legal liability on the ''guest authors'' who lend their names to ghostwritten articles. The authors say: "We argue that a guest author's claim for credit of an article written by someone else constitutes legal fraud, and may give rise to claims that could be pursued in a class action based on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act [RICO]."
The authors said: "The same fraud could support claims of ''fraud on the court'' against a pharmaceutical company that has used ghostwritten articles in litigation. This claim also appropriately reflects the negative impact of ghostwriting on the legal system." | <urn:uuid:913023c5-ceef-40ee-adfa-1d64cc48ff59> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.medindia.net/news/legal-remedies-for-ghostwriting-elaborated-96628-1.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280730.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00246-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938242 | 646 | 1.992188 | 2 |
by Lucas Gray
One of the defining characteristics of the design's interior is the visualization of the mechanical systems and exposure of the structure. Ventilation is tastefully exposed as is the beauty of the structural concrete walls, slabs and columns. The exposed concrete also act as thermal mass for the building, regulating temperature fluctuation. Furnishings were chosen to blend with the color theme set up by the concrete, muted grays, leaving color to be introduced into the space by the books, the building's users, and the green of the oxidized copper and plants. The main library space is accessed by a grand staircase that leads up from the main atrium. This stairs guide users between four large non structural columns, each crowned with a green copper statue of eminent Polish philosophers, and depsits the visitor into a second, three story, atrium. This atrium is dominated by ranks of twin concrete columns topped by metal tree-like structures supporting an immense glass roof and thus flooding the space with abundant natural light. The open planning of this level allows easy movement and clear organization as it functions as a the main library information space - housing the reference and circulation desks, a catalogue hall as well as some open stacks and student text books. The three floors above hold the the main stacks, reading rooms, offices, and other library functions. Small private reading desks are located along the edge of each floor, overlooking the library atrium. | <urn:uuid:94588e40-746c-4755-a838-075eecf24940> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.talkitect.com/2009/08/warsaw-university-library.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280266.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00501-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952531 | 288 | 2.21875 | 2 |
This book published in the late 19th century (1885) is listed as part of the 1001 Books To Read Before You Die, which is how I came across it. The book like so many others is in the public domain and accessible through Project Gutenberg.
Because it was published in 1885, there may some language that some readers find offensive in describing the fictionalized world of Kukuanaland located in an unchartered territory on the continent of Africa. However, unlike so many modern writers, Haggard did not include salacious material such as gratititous sex scenes, profanity (including the oft overused “f” word), nudity and violence. So there is a tradeoff.
King Solomon’s Mines and its main character (Quartermain) is loosely based on the travels and exploration of Frederick Selous. Quartermain accompanies two other men (Henry Curtis and Captain Good) in a harrowing journey across the desert and over a ridge of mountains to Kukuanaland in search of Curtis’ brother, believed to have been lost during a prior expedition and for diamonds. Accompanying them are two servants, one of which dies along the way. The other, Umbopa is the long lost and believed to be deceased son of a former king of Kukuanaland. The king was killed by the now reigning king, Twala. Umbopa and his mother were hunted, escaping into the desert eventually ending up years later with Umbopa (after changing his name) meeting up with Quartermain.
After reaching Kukuanaland, and seeing the horrors of indiscriminate death visited upon his people by Twala and his witchy croon, Gagool, and Twala’s son, Scragga, Umbopa reveals himself first to the men who traveled with him and then to select others of the tribe as the rightful king of Kukuanaland. A war results. Umbopa (now Igosi) is victorious.
This is where Haggard started speaking to me about the horrors of Putin’s unjust war.
Igosi recounts the war (CHAPTER XIV. THE LAST STAND OF THE GREYS) in a haunting war-like cry which has striking parallels to Putin’s war and the Ukrainian dogged response.
“Now,” he began, “now our rebellion is swallowed up in victory, and our evil-doing is justified by strength. “In the morning the oppressors arose and stretched themselves; they bound on their harness and made them ready to war. “They rose up and tossed their spears: the soldiers called to the captains, ‘Come, lead us’—and the captains cried to the king, ‘Direct thou the battle.’ “They laughed in their pride, twenty thousand men, and yet a twenty thousand.
“Their plumes covered the valleys as the plumes of a bird cover her nest; they shook their shields and shouted, yea, they shook their shields in the sunlight; they lusted for battle and were glad. “They came up against me; their strong ones ran swiftly to slay me; they cried, ‘Ha! ha! he is as one already dead.’ “Then breathed I on them, and my breath was as the breath of a wind, and lo! they were not. “My lightnings pierced them; I licked up their strength with the lightning of my spears; I shook them to the ground with the thunder of my shoutings. “They broke—they scattered—they were gone as the mists of the morning. “They are food for the kites and the foxes, and the place of battle is fat with their blood. “Where are the mighty ones who rose up in the morning? “Where are the proud ones who tossed their spears and cried, ‘He is as a man already dead’? “They bow their heads, but not in sleep; they are stretched out, but not in sleep. “They are forgotten; they have gone into the blackness; they dwell in the dead moons; yea, others shall lead away their wives, and their children shall remember them no more.
“And I—! the king—like an eagle I have found my eyrie. “Behold! far have I flown in the night season, yet have I returned to my young at the daybreak. “Shelter ye under the shadow of my wings, O people, and I will comfort you, and ye shall not be dismayed. “Now is the good time, the time of spoil. “Mine are the cattle on the mountains, mine are the virgins in the kraals. “The winter is overpast with storms, the summer is come with flowers. “Now Evil shall cover up her face, now Mercy and Gladness shall dwell in the land. “Rejoice, rejoice, my people! “Let all the stars rejoice in that this tyranny is trodden down, in that I am the king.”
After the war’s conclusion and the death of Twala, Quatermain’s observations
“It was heart-rending to lie and listen to their cries for those who never would return; and it made me understand the full horror of the work done that day to further man’s ambition.” (CHAPTER XV. GOOD FALLS SICK)
“I remarked that Ignosi had swum to power through blood.” (CHAPTER XV. GOOD FALLS SICK)
In a cave where the diamonds are found, Quartermain, Curtis and Good are in a cave believing themselves to starve to death (only to eventually find a way out).
“That to our left was serene in countenance, but the calm upon it seemed dreadful. It was the calm of that inhuman cruelty, Sir Henry remarked, which the ancients attributed to beings potent for good, who could yet watch the sufferings of humanity, if not without rejoicing, at least without sorrow. ” CHAPTER XVI. THE PLACE OF DEATH.
“The crashing of all the artillery of earth and heaven could not have come to our ears in our living tomb. We were cut off from every echo of the world—we were as men already in the grave.” CHAPTER XVIII. WE ABANDON HOPE.
“There around us lay treasures enough to pay off a moderate national debt, or to build a fleet of ironclads, and yet we would have bartered them all gladly for the faintest chance of escape. Soon, doubtless, we should be rejoiced to exchange them for a bit of food or a cup of water, and, after that, even for the privilege of a speedy close to our sufferings. Truly wealth, which men spend their lives in acquiring, is a valueless thing at the last.” CHAPTER XVIII. WE ABANDON HOPE.
And finally a prayer for Ukraine — “While there is life there is hope” as “[s]urely some merciful Power guided our footsteps[.]” CHAPTER XVIII. WE ABANDON HOPE. | <urn:uuid:33c0f161-2598-4137-8b92-1ca55d326ab0> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://readsusanberry.com/2022/03/13/thoughts-for-ukraine-review-of-h-rider-haggards-king-solomons-mines/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573623.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819035957-20220819065957-00678.warc.gz | en | 0.9734 | 1,513 | 2.375 | 2 |
Virtue gives what physical appearance denies.
(pron = daht WEER-toos kwod FOHR-mah NAY-gaht)
Comment: The implication seems to be that while physical appearance seems so
important, being attractive finally occurs more for the virtues that we
practice (interior attitudes and integrity) than how we look physically
(exterior beauty, clothing, etc).
Anyone who has lived for a while knows that in human relationships, integrity
(wholeness) is what makes relationships work. Integrity is what can be relied
upon much more so than how my friend, spouse, partners, lover, neighbor,
employer, etc looks.
It also seems to me that virtue (inner attitudes and integrity) must first be
practiced on ourselves before it yields anything of substance. For instance, I
can set about to practice compassion toward others. If I do not practice
compassion toward myself first, then the compassion that I think I am
practicing toward others is finally just another exterior practice for others
to see—in hopes that I might impress someone. If I practice compassion on
myself first, then I begin to appreciate what real compassion is. Then, when I
am compassionate toward another, it comes from a very different place. It is
genuine. My compassion has integrity. The other person feels the difference,
and knows that there has been a genuine interchange between us.
Physical appearance cannot have that kind of affect on others.
(Used with permission)
Latin Proverb of the Day is now available on the web.
As Italy presses the Metropolitan Museum of Art to return allegedly looted antiquities, it has little direct evidence that some disputed ancient pots in the museum's collection were excavated in Italy, court records show.
The New York museum said it will return antiquities if presented with proof the objects were looted from Italian soil, making the strength of Italy's evidence crucial to winning repatriation.
The Met's director, Philippe de Montebello, will brief the museum's board of trustees on the case later this week or early next, after he returns from a European trip that included talks with Italian officials, museum spokesman Harold Holzer said. The trustees would need to approve any settlement with Italy.
``He and the board truly want this looming embarrassment and continuing hassle to go away,'' said Thomas Hoving, who as the Met's director from 1967 to 1977 helped buy the disputed objects. Even without proof, a compromise is likely, he said.
The lack of direct links between some pots and Italian excavations is a sticking point in Italy's talks with de Montebello, said Maurizio Fiorilli, a Culture Ministry lawyer. Italy is pressing the Met and other museums about looted antiquities as part of an effort to end collecting practices that encourage illegal excavation, he said.
The objects at the Met under discussion are seven Greek-style vases and a 15-piece set of Hellenistic silver that Italian officials say was looted at Morgantina in Sicily.
A compromise being considered by the Met and Italy would include the museum surrendering some items, Italy lending new ones back and the Met transferring ownership of other items to Italy while keeping them in New York as long-term loans, Culture Minister Rocco Buttiglione said on Nov. 22.
For six of the seven pots, Italian evidence doesn't tie them to any clandestine digs or tomb robbers, according to a judge's conviction of Roman art dealer Giacomo Medici, who was charged with smuggling the pots. Italian negotiators are using evidence from his trial in their negotiations with the Met.
For the seventh vase, a 2,500-year-old pot painted by the artist Euphronios, an allegedly incriminating journal found in an American art dealer's Paris apartment makes no mention of the object ever being in Italy. Instead, it surfaces in Switzerland. However, other evidence in the case does place the pot in Italy.
For the silver, proof that it came from Italy includes an excavation site and conversations between police and clandestine diggers, said Malcolm Bell, an archaeologist at the University of Virginia who heads the official Morgantina digs.
``In the case of the silver, there is evidence,'' said Bell, who has pressed the Met to return the pieces.
Italian officials said it should be assumed that the disputed pots came from Italy, even without direct evidence, as scholarship shows such pots could only have originated there.
``The proof is scientific,'' rather than legal, said Giuseppe Proietti, 60, head of the Culture Ministry's department of research, innovation and organization.
The Italian evidence indicates the pots -- some unrestored and covered with dirt -- were unearthed in recent decades. Under Italian law, antiquities dug up in the country since 1939 are property of the state.
To argue whether there's proof one of these pots came from Italy misses the point, said Colin Renfrew, 68, a Cambridge University archaeology professor and member of the U.K. House of Lords.
``It doesn't matter which country it came from, the Met has no business financing looting,'' he said. ``It's a bureaucratic question which country it gives it back to.''
Medici, the accused smuggler, disagreed. He said that there's no proof of crime and that the Met should keep its pots.
``The Metropolitan Museum needs to hear the other side of the story,'' said Medici, 57, who in December 2004 was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison for conspiracy, and handling and illegal export of stolen antiquities, including the seven disputed pots.
He says he's innocent, and is free while appealing the verdict, which isn't considered final until he exhausts two levels of appeals.
Over a lunch of seafood salad, sliced steak and a pitcher of red wine at a Rome trattoria, Medici dissected the evidence for each vase, which is listed in a Rome judge's written sentence in the case.
The first object Medici tackled was an amphora with red figures on a black background, the evidence for which is photos seized in a 1995 raid of his Geneva warehouse.
One set of photos, taken by Medici on a trip to New York, showed the amphora behind a glass display case at the Met. Another set, of three Polaroids, showed the same jar, dirty and unrestored.
Medici said he photographed scores of objects in many museums, and doing so doesn't mean he smuggled them from Italy, as prosecutors charge.
As for the Polaroids of the dirty pot, Medici said he couldn't recall ever handing the amphora. He also said he didn't know whether he shot the photos or if someone else did and then sent them to him to get an appraisal of the pot.
``I don't have an elephant's memory,'' he said.
And, Medici added, nothing about the photos indicated the pot came from Italy. ``What does it prove?'' he asked.
The evidence for the other pots is similar.
Polaroids seized at Medici's warehouse show fragments of a psykter vase for cooling wine, painted with horsemen. The same vase is shown, restored, in photos Medici took at the Met.
Other before-and-after photos are listed for a kylix wine cup, an oinochoe pitcher, a 2,300-year-old dinos mixing bowl by the so- called Darius painter and a 2,500-year-old amphora by the so-called Painter of Berlin.
None of the evidence listed for those pots in Medici's conviction directly links them back to Italy.
For an unassuming academic who spends his time tucked away in the atticy offices of UVM’s classics department, talking with students and reading Plato in the original Greek, associate professor Mark Usher just pulled off something seriously cool. Stepping out of the comfortable confines of the scholarly journal, Usher has turned the foundation of philosophy into a joyous romp of a children’s picture book published this month by Farrar Straus Giroux.
“Long ago in ancient Greece, a boy named Socrates declared that all he knew was nothing. So he spent his whole life asking questions,” begins Wise Guy: The Life and Philosophy of Socrates. Excepting the void of information about Socrates’ early life, Usher has based the text entirely on ancient sources, taking what is known about the adult to imagine the child, “a curious boy, and cheeky too.”
Anyone unfamiliar with the philosopher’s freewheeling standards of dress and decorum may be quickly disabused by William Bramhall’s playful illustrations. “Socrates was his own best caricature,” Usher wrote in detailed, page-by-page notes to the artist. “The fully mature Socrates…is a robust, bearded man; he is not stately or dignified, but a carefree and exuberant creature, barefoot, chubby, boisterous, teasing…the boy Socrates is not a precocious academic, but a thoughtful, playful street urchin…innocently puzzling things through.”
It was just these qualities, in fact, that got Usher musing, in the midst of writing a scholarly paper on Socrates as a satyr character in Plato’s Symposium, about the philosopher’s appeal, potentially even to “the read-aloud crowd.”
“Socrates is a personification of the desire for truth and wisdom, never proclaiming to have it but always desiring it,” Usher says. “And that just struck me as very childlike, comical, loving.” But to many who knew him, Socrates was also deeply annoying, even embarrassing, to be around, not, Usher notes, unlike small kids with their endless uninhibited questions, the ones they seem to save for the grocery-store checkout.
“Socrates was that sort of person,” he explains. “He brought those things to light in public and really there were no holds barred in his question asking…In a way, he’s kind of a guy who never grew up, as many great thinkers and artists are. They’ve chosen not to join adult society in some way.”
So if children are attracted by a kindred spirit in Socrates, Usher reasons, they might just pick up on his ideas too. Mimicking the classical form of text with commentary, Usher has created two tiers of text on each double-page spread, with a short narrative for young children and early readers along with more complicated exposition and historical detail in a sidebar.
“What is goodness? What is courage? What is justice? What is love?” questions the young Socrates in the book’s early pages, as the vivid ink and watercolor illustration features pompously important people who “huffed and puffed, claiming to know the answers and pretending to be wise.” The scruffy little thinker sneers skeptically in the background as the sidebar explains: “Socrates once said that, based on his experience, the people with the best reputations tend to be the ones who know the least. The reason for this, he thought, was that people who are overly concerned about how they look or seem to others fail to see themselves for who and what they really are.”
Wise Guy aims to entertain and inform at every age level, even for adults. “I wanted people to feel smarter by reading the book,” Usher says. And just as he vividly recalls illustrations from D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths, his own introduction to the classics at age five or six, he hopes these humorous, loving images of Socrates will be ones that carry kids throughout their lives.
Usher says that he wrote the book to capture the mystique of the man, not to drum in some high-minded idea that children must know more about Socrates. And yet it’s clear that he’d like to see Socrates become an antidote to the consumerist, entertainment culture that kids are bombarded with.
“(What I want them to take away) is that they should not be afraid to ask tough questions, to be interested in finding answers that convince them,” Usher says. “(I want them to) see that there are more important things in the world than iPods and television and t-shirts and brand names… there’s something about Socrates and Greek philosophy in general that privileges the soul and the mind and things that are beyond the everyday dross that we deal with… If a kid decides that it’s okay to be intellectual and they associate (that) with asking tough questions all the time and talking about ideas with other people, that’s a good thing.”
Christian Wildberg, classics professor and faculty member since 1996, was named the successor to history professor Elizabeth Lunbeck as master of Forbes College.
Wildberg will take the place of Lunbeck — who has accepted a position at Vanderbilt University — on July 1.
"I think the University is in a very interesting period of transition right now going from the two-year college system to four-year college system," Wildberg said. "This is a very important period for us. I think we have a plan ... but I don't think we have worked out all the wrinkles of the system."
Wildberg said he looked forward to helping prepare for these changes and planning a residential college "setup that is the best for students."
President Tilghman chose Wildberg, who was recommended by Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel and Dean of Undergraduate Students Kathleen Deignan.
"We, over the years, have conversations with faculty members that have the qualities that would make them good college masters," Malkiel said.
The most qualified candidates are "faculty members who are excellent undergraduate teachers," Malkiel said.
She added that engagement with the life of the University, demonstration of leadership, and interest and involvement in the residential colleges are also important characteristics considered in the selection process.
Wildberg, Malkiel said, stood out "in all of those ways."
Wildberg is in his fourth year as the director of graduate studies in the classics department and the co-chair of the Princeton University Committee for the Rhodes Scholarships.
While Wildberg said his work in each of these areas has been valuable for gaining insight into University matters, he named his service on other committees as particularly crucial to his preparation for the position of master.
"I think the two committees that have prepared me most [are] the Council of the Princeton University Community and ... the very hard working Committee on Examinations and Standing. Both of them gave me an insight into the needs and concerns of undergraduate students at Princeton."
As master of Forbes College, Wildberg will live at the master's lodge on Alexander Road.
"I'm very excited," Wildberg said. "It is very essential that the master lives in some sort of proximity to students ... if you want to set the tone [in the College]."
Malkiel said the decision to offer Wildberg the position was made earlier this fall.
"I had some time to think about it," Wildberg said Monday. "I had to think it through with my wife of course ... She's very excited about it. She looks forward to the entertaining and getting to know the students, as I do."
Nella grande tomba degli Equicoli, situata al centro della conca di Corvaro (Ri), e stata rinvenuta una sepoltura con lo scheletro integro di un cavallo. Si tratta di un rito funebre diffuso nel centro Italia, ma di origine orientale.
L’archeologa, Giovanna Alvino, della Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici del Lazio e direttore dei lavori afferma che lo scavo del tumulo non finisce di stupire e scavo dopo scavo si troveranno ancora altre inedite ed interessanti sorprese archeologiche.Il monumentale tumulo appartenente al popolo guerriero degli Equicoli, al centro della conca di Corvaro (Ri), fu individuato nel 1984 a causa di scavatori clandestini.
Il monumentale tumulo appartenente al popolo guerriero degli Equicoli, al centro della conca di Corvaro (Ri), fu individuato nel 1984 a causa di scavatori clandestini. Da quella data si sono succedute diverse campagne di scavo sistematico e sono state rinvenute circa 300 tombe ricche di numerosi corredi (vasellame di vario genere, fibule, specchi, spade, punte di lance, anelli, pendenti, ecc.). Lo scavo di quest’anno ha già fatto rinvenire altre interessanti tombe ricche di materiale simili a quelle precedentemente scavate. In una di queste tombe si è avuta la sorpresa di trovare oltre al corpo del defunto anche lo scheletro integro del suo cavallo. La datazione di questa sepoltura dovrebbe essere collocata tra il IV e il II sec.a C. Il rito di seppellire anche l’animale preferito in vita è alquanto diffuso nel centro Italia ma ha origine orientale. Dice l’archeologa Giovanna Alvino: ”Dobbiamo completare lo scavo, ma solo dopo l’intervento dell’esperto che esaminerà i resti dell’animale per verificare se sotto la carcassa c’è un’altra tomba contenente resti umani”. Quindi in breve tempo si avranno notizie più precise e probabilmente altre interessanti sorprese archeologiche.
The great Roman statesman and general Julius Caesar had some pretty extreme ideas about motivation. Soon after landing on the shores of Britain, he marched his legions to the very edge of the Cliffs of Dover. Then he told them to gaze down into the waters below.
What they saw shocked them. Their own ships were set ablaze and were sinking on Caesar's orders. With no possibility of retreat, they soon did what they had to do. They conquered Britain.
Now, Caesar's methods might be a bit morally questionable, but they do illustrate an important truth.
It's amazing what we can do when we don't have a choice. According to a poll conducted by ESPN, the greatest World Series moment of all time was Kirk Gibson's home run in Game 1 of the 1998 series.
Although he was playing with injuries to both legs, the Los Angeles Dodgers put Gibson in as a pinch hitter when the game was on the line. He hit foul after foul, his legs hurting so badly it was difficult to get back on his feet.
Then, he did it. He hit a home run, just as the Dodgers coaching staff predicted.
How did they know? It was his bad legs. They knew he'd hit a homer because there was no way he could run to first.
Why are Catholic judges so often intellectually impressive and conservative in their approach to law? It has something to do with the nature of elite Catholic education. At Catholic schools, one has to study St. Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle, Saint Anselm, Cicero, Virgil, and many other Christian, Roman, and Greek classical writers. The students must read the classics in Latin and Greek. Literary fluency in languages makes for more articulate and loquacious advocates in court, and better writers and critics of court decisions. A mastery of Latin enables the Catholic scholar to take readily to the study of law, which is heavily salted with Latin words. One who has studied Quintillian's rhetoric in Latin and has mastered the arts of debate, dialectics, and oratory — of which Quintillian was the master — is brilliantly prepared for law. He will often be able to reduce his debating opponents to tongue-tied confusion. Imagine Samuel Alito debating the inarticulate Harriet Miers, or John Roberts debating the waffling Sandra Day O'Connor.
Why are Catholic colleges less prone to the deleterious effects of multiculturalism? One cannot follow Aquinas' complex syllogisms if one's mind is cluttered with irrational, politically-correct group-think imperatives. After one learns to think brilliantly in a Catholic college, it is difficult to teach one to reason stupidly at law school. The fallacies of politically-correct thought are readily apparent to those who have studied Quintillian. A course in canon law at a Catholic university is great preparation for law school and is an antidote to the liberal indoctrination of law school professors. The perspective of canon law cuts the intellectually lightweight, social-engineering law professor down to size in the eyes of the student.
Albertus II princeps Monoeci
Die Saturni princeps Albertus II patriae suae Monoeco officialiter praefectus est.
Caerimonia culminata est missa sollemni in ecclesia cathedrali Monoecensi habita, cui circiter nongenti hospites invitati interfuerunt.
Iuxta Albertum sollemnitati aderant sorores principissae Carolina et Stephania. Benedictionem pontificalem novo principi dedit nuntius specialis papae Benedicti XVI.
Semper inops quicumque cupit.
(Claudius Claudianus, In Rufinium 1.200)
Whoever desires is always without abundance.
(pron = SEHM-per IN-ohps kwee-COOM-kweh KOO-pit)
Comment: At the Winter Solstice, the Romans celebrated the festival of Saturn
called “The Saturnalia”. It eventually honored three deities: Saturnus, as the
divine (masculine) power of the sky; Ops as the divine (feminine) power of the
fruitful earth; and Consus, the divine power of the harvest or grain-bin.
It’s another version of a universal myth: the divine masculine and the divine
feminine unite. The holy child is the abundant product of this union, and
represents the unity of masculine and feminine, the above with the below, the
air with the earth, fire with water, and so forth. There are dozens of
versions of this same story in cultures around the world. The Saturnalia was
celebrated from December 17-25. Surprised?
I take liberties with this line of Claudian, but I hear it like this: whoever
is caught in his/her head simply desiring things, and does not look down at the
ground that he/she stands on will be without the fruitful earth (in-ops).
Caught in the head. No recognition of the ground (abundance) we already walk
on. The grain-bin will be empty.
It’s so easy to get caught in the head. There is no better time of the year to
get in touch with the earth that we walk on than right now in the northern
hemisphere. Put on a coat. Take an umbrella. Go for a walk. Notice the
colors. Smell the change of the earth. Feel the wind. Watch the animals.
Listen to the trees emptying of leaves. It changes my perspective on things
every time I do it. Go with no agenda but to let your feet touch the earth.
In some strange and personal way, the divine family will meet you there.
Bush iter in Sinas suscepit
Praesidens George Bush in Sinas iter suscepit, ubi cum collega suo Hu Jintao et principe ministro Wem Jiabao de variis rebus magni ponderis consultabat.
Bush, postquam moderatores utriusque civitatis in sessionem communem convenerunt, praesidentem Sinarum publice hortatus est, ut populo Sinarum maiores libertates politicae, sociales et religiosae concederentur.
Hu autem recusavit, quominus postulationem Taivaniae sui iuris faciendae approbaret, sed promisit renovationem in Sinis monetalem continuatum iri.
The ancient Greeks brought us many things, and although the toga might be the first thing that comes to some college students’ minds, Greek civilization was a forerunner of democracy, philosophy and medicine.
The East Tennessee Society of the Archaeological Institute of America will bring James C. Wright to campus tonight to present a lecture on “A Mycenaean Settlement and Its Cemeteries in the Nemea Valley, Greece.”
Wright is a professor at Bryn Mawr College and has been leading excavations in the Nemea Valley, Merle Langdon, research professor with the classics department, said.
Wright said he will discuss how methodology that allows new study of the tombs in the valley was developed and how the excavations help us to understand the inhabitants.
Wright will also talk about his role in helping to recover a stolen treasure of gold from some of the tombs to the West.
“It was on sale in New York City, and we reported it ... the Greek government sued, and the dealer eventually returned it,” Wright said.
The Nemea Valley was important, Wright said, because it held the sanctuary of Zeus, one of four great sanctuaries of Greece. According to Greek mythology, “it was the valley where Hercules slew the Nemean lion,” Wright said.
The excavations focus on the Mycenaean civilization of the Shaft Grave era, from roughly 1600 to 1400 B.C., Langdon said. According to David W. Tandy, head of the classics department, Wright has developed innovative analytical techniques in the study of burial patterns found there in the late Bronze Age.
Shaft graves in the area were filled with gold and silver objects, and Wright’s work will help reveal how that wealth was accumulated, Langdon said.
Study of the Mycenaeans helps to show aspects of Greek mythology and legend.
“They were the civilization of the Trojan War, King Minos, the labyrinth and the minotaur,” Tandy said.
The shaft graves were first discovered by Heinrich Schliemann, who also discovered ancient Troy. Schliemann believed that the graves were those of the heroes from the Trojan War because of all the gold in the tombs. Wright said, however, that the evidence he has found does not suggest that.
The University of Tennessee is digging in the area of Nemea and Mitrou in east Lokris, where UT is currently excavating under the leadership of Dr. Aleydis Van de Moortel, assistant professor of classics.
THERE are no immediate plans to salvage ancient shipwrecks possibly lying on the bottom of the Episkopi Bay on the island’s southern coast, Director of Antiquities Pavlos Flourentzos said this week.
Asked by The Cyprus Weekly to comment on a continuing underwater survey in the area, which revealed potential shipwreck sites, he said that unless something was important and at least older than the famous 4th century Kyrenia wreck, the Department would leave it alone for the time being.
He explained that excavating and bringing up a submerged ancient wreck involved considerable expenses and efforts, especially as it would then have to be restored and preserved.
"If they are Roman or more recent they would just have to wait," Flourentzos said.
The only definite sightings so far concern the scattered debris of a 5th or 6th century merchantman in the small inlet of Avdimou Bay. But the use of more sophisticated equipment this year showed anomalies on the seabed of Episkopi Bay probably hiding shipwrecks underneath.
According to a recent Department of Antiquities release, the survey continued for the third season during July and August in the underwater area of Episkopi Bay and the Akrotiri Peninsula with a small international team of archaeologists and students. The project, which forms a contribution of the University of Cincinatti excavations at Episkopi-Bamboula, is logistically and financially supported by the Institute of Nautical Archaeology at Texas A&M University, the Cyprus Society for the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage (Limassol), and RPM Nautical Foundation (Florida, USA).
This year’s survey covered three main areas, one of them Dreamer’s Bay on Southern Akrotiri. At the site of a submerged anchorage littered with pottery, "several substantial new and revealing assemblages were added to the catalogue," the release said. The archaeologists also began a preliminary mapping of a long ashlar-built mole reported some years ago.
During the investigations in the inlet of Avdimou Bay two additional stone anchors were documented, along with three partial millstones that may have supplemented the ship’s primary cargo of wine carried in amphorae from the Gaza region of Palestine.
The survey in the wider sea area of Episkopi involved high resolution remote sensing, thanks to a grant of equipment and technical expertise by the RPM Nautical Foundation.
The anomalies on the seabed that could be potential shipwreck targets were detected by multi-beam sonar operations from the 37-metre research vessel Hercules.
Investigations during 2006 will focus on visual exploration of these targets through diving and remotely operated vehicle (ROV) work to determine which may be the remains of shipwrecks, the release said.
What do close advisors to Stephen Harper and George W. Bush have in common? They adhere to the disturbing teachings of Leo Strauss, the German-Jewish émigré who spawned the neoconservative movement.
Strauss, who died in 1973, believed in the inherent inequality of humanity. Most people, he famously taught, are too stupid to make informed decisions about their political affairs. Elite philosophers must decide on affairs of state for us.
In Washington, Straussians exert powerful influence from within the inner circle of the White House. In Canada, they roost, for now, in the so-called Calgary School, guiding Harper in framing his election strategies. What preoccupies Straussians in both places is the question of "regime change."
The 'noble lie'
Strauss believed that allowing citizens to govern themselves will lead, inevitably, to terror and tyranny, as the Weimar Republic succumbed to the Nazis in the 1930s. A ruling elite of political philosophers must make those decisions because it is the only group smart enough. It must resort to deception -- Strauss's "noble lie" -- to protect citizens from themselves. The elite must hide the truth from the public by writing in code. "Using metaphors and cryptic language," philosophers communicated one message for the elite, and another message for "the unsophisticated general population," philosopher Jeet Heer recently wrote in the Globe and Mail. "For Strauss, the art of concealment and secrecy was among the greatest legacies of antiquity."
There's one big difference between American and Canadian Straussians. The Americans assumed positions of power and influence in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. The Canadians have not had much opportunity to show (or is that hide?) their stuff. That may change with a Harper victory.
Paul Wolfowitz's teacher, Allan Bloom, and another Straussian, Walter Berns, taught at the University of Toronto during the 1970s. They left their teaching posts at Cornell University because they couldn't stomach the student radicalism of the '60s. At Toronto, they influenced an entire generation of political scientists, who fanned out to universities across the country.
Two of their students, Ted Morton and Rainer Knopff, went to the University of Calgary where they specialize in attacking the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. They claim the charter is the result of a conspiracy foisted on the Canadian people by "special interests." These nasty people are feminists, gays and lesbians, the poor, prisoners and refugee-rights groups who are advancing their own interests through the courts at the expense of the general public, these Straussians allege.
The problem with their analysis is that the special interest which makes more use of the courts to advance its interests than all these other groups combined -- business -- receives not a mention. Deception by omission is a common Straussian technique. The weak are targeted while the real culprits disappear.
Harper studied under the neocons at the University of Calgary and worked with them to craft policies for the fledgling Reform Party in the late 1980s. Together with Preston Manning, they created an oxymoron, a populist party backed by business.
Ted Morton has turned his attention to provincial politics. He's an elected MLA and a candidate to succeed Premier Ralph Klein. But he did influence the direction of right-wing politics at the federal level as the Canadian Alliance director of research under Stockwell Day.
When Harper threw his hat in the ring for the leadership of the Alliance, Tom Flanagan, the Calgary School's informal leader, became his closest adviser. Harper and Flanagan, whose scholarship focuses on attacking aboriginal rights, entered a four-year writing partnership and together studied the works of government-hater Friedrich Hayek. Flanagan ran the 2004 Conservative election campaign and is pulling the strings as the country readies for the election.
The Calgary School has successfully hidden its program beneath the complaint of western alienation. "If we've done anything, we've provided legitimacy for what was the Western view of the country," Calgary Schooler Barry Cooper told journalist Marci McDonald in her important Walrus article. "We've given intelligibility and coherence to a way of looking at it that's outside the St. Lawrence Valley mentality." This is sheer Straussian deception. On the surface, it's easy to understand Cooper's complaint and the Calgary School's mission. But the message says something very different to those in the know. For 'St. Lawrence Valley mentality,' they read 'the Ottawa-based modern liberal state,' with all the negative baggage it carries for Straussians. And for 'Western view,' they read 'the right-wing attack on democracy.' We've provided legitimacy for the radical-right attack on the Canadian democratic state, Cooper is really saying.
A network is already in place to assist Harper in foisting his radical agenda on the Canadian people.
In 2003, he delivered an important address to a group called Civitas. This secretive organization, which has no web site and leaves little paper or electronic trail, is a network of Canadian neoconservative and libertarian academics, politicians, journalists and think tank propagandists.
Harper's adviser Tom Flanagan is an active member. Conservative MP Jason Kenney is a member, as are Brian Lee Crowley, head of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies and Michel Kelly-Gagnon of the Montreal Economic Institute, the second and third most important right-wing think tanks after the Fraser Institute.
Civitas is top-heavy with journalists to promote the cause. Lorne Gunter of the National Post is president. Members include Janet Jackson (Calgary Sun) and Danielle Smith (Calgary Herald). Journalists Colby Cosh, William Watson and Andrew Coyne (all National Post) have made presentations to Civitas.
The Globe and Mail's Marcus Gee is not mentioned in relation to Civitas but might as well be a member, if his recent column titled "George Bush is not a liar," is any evidence. In it, Gee repeats the lies the Bush neocons are furiously disseminating to persuade the people that Bush is not a liar.
Tombe di antichi principi vissuti circa 2600 anni fa e chiamate per questo tombe degli “Antichi principi di Matelica” sono le ccezionali scoperte archeologiche, avvenute negli ultimi due anni nel territorio matelicese.
Sono emersi splendidi oggetti della tomba di Passo Gabella, tra cui un grande coperchio in lamina di bronzo con figure di cavalli a sbalzo e a rilievo, una coppa di bronzo con coperchio decorata da gemme d’argento e d’ambra, un uovo di struzzo usato come contenitore finemente decorato ad incisione con una scena dove compaiono figure umane ed animali e un grandioso vaso con coperchio posto su un alto sostegno (holmos) a cui sono applicate decine di vasetti di piccole dimensioni e figure plastiche di animali fantastici.
Ancient wooden anchors preserved by natural salt for more than 2,000 years have been discovered on the receding shores of the Dead Sea, Israel TV reported.
Archaeologist David Mevorach told the TV station on Monday that one anchor dated back 2,500 years - the oldest ever found. Another anchor was 2,000 years old, he said. They were built from acacia wood for Roman ships, he said.
The Dead Sea, with no outlet, has a high concentration of salt. "The salt and the lack of oxygen in the water preserved them in a special way, including the ropes that were tied to the boat," he said.
Also, the small sea has been receding in recent years, as the evaporation rate exceeds the replenishment of water from the Jordan River, diverted for irrigation.
Cito fit, quod di volunt. (alt. ceterum quemadmodum di volunt)
(Petronius, Satyricon 76)
Quickly it becomes what the gods wish. (For the rest, it is just as the gods
(pron = KEE-toh fit kwohd dee WOH-loont)
Comment: This portion of a line comes from the longest story in Petronius’
Satyricon, known as Trimalchio’s dinner. Trimalchio, the rich former slave who
lavishes wild parties on his friends on a regular basis, is in the midst of a
long speech about how he became the chief slave in the household and came into
his fortune. He also includes in this lengthy speech that he is not one to
Trimalchio’s atrium is painted with his life story which indicates that he rose
from the ranks of mere slave to wealthy businessman with the help of the gods.
It would seem to be the American dream: man works hard, gods bless, financial
In fact, the Satyricon is one story after another that contrasts over and over
again unexpected events and those who try to take control of them.
Trimalchio’s dinner is one scene after another of unexpected events that
Trimalchio himself has staged, and while he likes to paint that whatever the
gods wants happens, in fact, he has created his own little world where he is in
charge of the chaos. The overwhelming sense of reading the Satyricon from
beginning to end is just the opposite: the world is a chaotic place, and one
does not know what to expect next.
I cannot be that cynical, but I have come to see that life is full of unexpected
events. Rather than leave me either in despair or clutching at a divine reason
for everything, what works in my life is to stop in the midst of the event and
acknowledge: this is not what I planned, but this is what is unfolding. The
path of my life is turning. I choose to walk in it, this way, right now. And
what was at first unexpected chaos, becomes over time unexpected something
else. Perhaps wisdom. Perhaps joy. Perhaps a hard lesson. I end up better
for having paid attention to it when it arrived.
A bit of what prisoners suffered in ancient times can be seen as of yesterday at the archaeological dig in the old city of Tiberias. Excavations of the basilica compound in the eastern part of the old city recently unearthed two small chambers believed to have served as holding cells for prisoners awaiting trial.
If today's custody conditions at police stations elicit complaints from detainees and defense lawyers, well, prisoners didn't have it all that good 1,800 years ago either.
The cells are located below the level of the main administrative building, the basilica. That fact bolsters the theory that they served as holding cells, where crowded prisoners waited to be called for trial. Each cell measures 1.8 by 2.7 meters, and is 2.07 meters high. Its walls are extremely thick, with the outer wall (1.1 meters thick) containing two narrow openings onto the city square. The slits presumably provided ventilation, and one also served as a food portal.
"Food was delivered by family members," says Prof. Yizhar Hirschfeld of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who is directing the dig. "The regime denied any responsibility for the prisoner's fate."
Hirschfeld explains that jails did not exist in antiquity because of the costly maintenance, so the accused were punished by death, or, in the best cast scenario, disfigurement. The death penalty was an inexpensive solution, providing entertainment for the masses and example as a deterrent. The lucky ones were sentenced to labor in silver and copper mines.
Narrow benches run along the length of the cells uncovered. One can only imagine what the prisoners experienced as they waited in the blazing heat of the Tiberias' summer. Some might have languished there for months, waiting for the governor to arrive, in the event of a complicated trial.
The prisoner pit was uncovered by three volunteers from the American and British embassies and Kibbutz Degania Bet.
According to Hirschfeld, the importance of the discovery is that it is in keeping with the theory that the structure currently being uncovered at the site served as a basilica.
Shortly after the three volunteers finished cleaning the eastern cell and began clearing dirt from the western cell, another volunteers found a coin beneath the floor plaster. Hirschfeld thinks the coin had belonged to one of the plasterers. One dig participant hypothesized it might have belonged instead to a white-collar criminal awaiting trial.
Gasiductus ex Russia in Italiam
Praesidens Russiae Vladimir Putin, princeps minister Italiae Silvio Berlusconi et praesidens Turciae Recep Erdogan nuper in Turcia inter se convenerunt, ut de communibus inceptis futuris colloquerentur.
Eodem tempore ductum gasalem ex Russia per Pontum Euxinum in Turciam euntem sollemniter inauguraverunt.
Agitur de consilio energico, quod eo spectat, ut gasiductus ex Turcia aliquando usque ad Italiam continuetur.
Genum dyslexiae inventum
Grex investigatorius Finno-Sueticus in chromosomo tertio novum genum ad dyslexiam pertinens invenit.
Si hoc genum nomine ROBO1 aliqua ex causa aequo debilius fungitur, fieri non potest, quin dyslexia sequatur.
Qui erat eventus investigationis medicae, quam rerum periti Universitatis Helsinkiensis et Instituti Carolini Stockholmiensis opera consociata fecerunt.
Quite mysteriously we go from chatting about thermal baths to receiving official letters in Latin from the head of the Catholic Church. What we discover is that some of the recipients including a few heads of state, don’t really approve of the use of this ancient language...
DAVID Hill has had his fair share of tough jobs, from boss of the ABC to chairman of Soccer Australia and trying to get the trains to run on time as chief executive of the old NSW State Rail Authority. His latest venture? He's been installed as president of a 15-nation organisation trying to convince the British Government to surrender the Elgin Marbles, now in the British Museum, to their rightful Greek owners, who plan to put them on display in the refurbished Acropolis Museum in Athens. Strewth would never suggest Hill has lost his marbles, just that he seems to have a penchant for Sisyphean tasks. Sisyphus was the legendary Greek king who was sentenced to endlessly roll a huge boulder to the top of a mountain in Hades, only to have it roll down again.
Briarcrest Christian High School faculty member Steve Tackett of Cordova recently received the Distinguished Classics Teacher Award from the Tennessee Classical Association at the Tennessee Foreign Language Conference in Franklin.
Each year the members of the Tennessee Classical Association, which is comprised of classics teachers in Tennessee at both the high school and college levels, have an opportunity to nominate a teacher for the Distinguished Latin Teacher Award. Qualities that are necessary for consideration are involvement in organizations, such as the Junior Classical League, and attendance at conventions; student achievement in competitions and on examinations, such as the National Latin Exam and A.P Latin exams and students who continue their work in the classics in college. Letters of nomination and/or support are submitted to a committee which then determines the recipient of the award.
Tackett stated, "I had no knowledge that I had been nominated, so the result was a very pleasant surprise."
Dr. Chris Craig, Classics professor at UT-Knoxville, who presented the award, said, "Steve Tackett was genuinely delighted, in his unassuming humble way, to receive the TCA teaching award."
Athens' ancient Parthenon is not under threat from water seeping into rock beneath it, despite successive days of torrential rainfall this week, an official said Friday.
"There is absolutely no danger," said Deputy Culture Minister Petros Tatoulis.
No water was escaping through a temporary floor installed inside the Parthenon for restoration work, he said.
Architect Manolis Korres, a key figure in the massive restoration project at the 2,500-year-old monument that sits atop the Acropolis, had warned Wednesday that rainwater was gradually draining into rock underneath the Parthenon and could eventually weaken the monument's foundations.
Athens and other parts of Greece have been battered by storms and heavy rainfall this week, which caused flooding, limited power cuts, disrupted transport services and caused the death of one woman in southern Greece.
Also Friday, Tatoulis toured the site of a new Acropolis Museum with campaigners from 12 countries seeking the return of sculptures removed from the Acropolis 200 years ago and housed at the British Museum in London.
The 215,000-square foot glass and concrete museum, designed by U.S.-based architect Bernard Tschumi and Greece's Michael Photiades, is due to be completed by the end of 2006.
It will replace a small museum on the Acropolis and is designed to house the British Museum collection — also known as the Elgin Marbles.
"This new museum will weaken the arguments presented ... by the British Museum," Tatoulis said. "We will make every effort to achieve our goal. It's not a national issue, the sculptures are part of world heritage."
At a small exhibition area next to the museum site, copies of the Elgin Marbles are being displayed, in dimmed light, behind directly lit genuine sculptures.
The campaigners — from Britain, New Zealand, the United States, Australia, Belgium, Sweden, Italy, Serbia-Montenegro, Spain, Cyprus, Russia and German — were received Friday by President Karolos Papoulias and Prime Minister Costas Caramanlis.
They announced plans to coordinate their activities as a single body to be called the International Organization for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles.
"The problem is the obstinacy of the British Museum ... there are many ways this could be negotiated if we were dealing with someone who would negotiate," British campaigner Anthony Snodgrass said.
"We are no longer confronting the British Museum but surrounding them," Snodgrass said. "We've enlisted many of their former allies, who now support us."
President of the Republic Karolos Papoulias and Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis on Friday received presidents and members of 12 committees in foreign countries that are campaigning for the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece.
The representatives of the various groups announced plans to create a single worldwide organisation for the return of the priceless statues, also known as the Elgin Marbles, that are held at the British Museum in London. The statues on display in the British Museum actually formed part of the sculpted frieze of the Parthenon - which was a structural rather than decorative element of the building - that were removed by Lord Elgin in the 19th century and transported to England when Greece was still under Ottoman rule.
After the meeting, Papoulias thanked them for their "valiant efforts" and stressed that the Parthenon Marbles were "the victims of plunder, in a period of history when the strong had the power of life and death over the weak".
The world now served other values and there was a moral obligation to return the treasures of Greek civilisation to their home, he added.
The head of the British Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles Anthony Snodgrass noted that there are currently 15 organisations throughout the world that are striving for the Marbles' return.
The visiting delegation was accompanied by Deputy Culture Minister Petros Tatoulis, who later took them on a tour of the Acropolis.
Earlier on Friday, Tatoulis was also present at a meeting between the delegation and Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, where he thanked them for their efforts and stressed the great interest of the Greek side in their return.
Greek archaeologists worry that the foundations of the Acropolis monument are threatened by rainwater that has seeped into the soil of the ancient citadel, the Greek press said on Thursday..
Of most concern is the fifth-century BC Parthenon temple, whose roof was destroyed during a seventeenth-century siege of the Acropolis by Venetian forces.
"For centuries, rainwater could not penetrate the foundations," Manolis Korres, an architect with extensive experience of the Acropolis restoration effort told a recent gathering of Greece's state archaeological council.
"But in the wake of the roof's collapse, water has been seeping into the floor supports and wearing down the rocks ... the surface is retreating," Korres said, according to a report in Eleftherotypia daily.
The threat of further damage has led experts to contemplate covering the Parthenon with a modern roof, Ta Nea daily said.
"We are closely following the problem," Acropolis site supervisor Alkistis Horemi said. "Special machinery is used to monitor the walls surrounding the monument site at all times."
Test drilling carried out on four occasions has discovered cavities under and around the Parthenon, said Korres. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that an ancient drainage system built into the site no longer functions.
The Acropolis, a World Heritage site, has been undergoing restoration for over 20 years. The majority of these works are expected to be completed by late 2006
A CITY'S history books may have to be rewritten after a major archaeological find.
Experts believe they have unearthed a Roman road in the heart of Chichester and now have hopes of discovering a 1st-century fort.
They have hailed the find an 'archaeological jackpot' for the city.
The road was found during an excavation before work on a major new housing and shopping development began at the former Shippams factory site off East Street.
Developer Kier ordered the work and employed Gifford Archaeology and Pre-Construct Archaeology Ltd to take charge of the studies.
Their teams found a road – running parallel to East Street – complete with camber and a ditch alongside it.
Experts believe buildings that would have run alongside this road were likely to have been a combination of homes, shops and workshops.
Smaller Roman finds, including coins and a pair of tweezers, have also been turned up already.
But archaeologists believe they will unearth even more gems – including the possibility of a Roman fort – when excavation work begins for a new underground car park on the site.
Arbor natalicia omnium maxima
In oppido Ylivieska Finniae septentrionalis arbor natalicia omnium maxima apparata est.
Vice arboris autem fungitur malus telephonicus amplius centum metra altus, qui quadringentis lampadibus illuminatur.
In cacumine splendet stella natalicia, cuius partes senorum metrorum sunt. Colores arboris, qui textibus telephonicis missis commutari possunt, inter rubrum, caeruleum et violaceum variant.
But why the focus on American museums? The simplest answer would appear to lie in when and how they acquired their collections.
For instance, the British Museum, the Louvre and the Pergamon in Berlin built their collections in the 19th and early 20th centuries when European explorers and archaeologists played a central role in rediscovering ancient civilizations. The results of the first excavations were often shipped directly to Northern European capitals. Only later were finds shared with host countries.
"Our works were acquired in a legal way according to the practice at the time," Henri Loyrette, the Louvre's director, said, noting that there are currently no claims on any of the museum's pieces. "Today, the situation is quite different. The finds evidently now stay in the countries. The issue today relates to the acquisition of new pieces."
This is where American museums come in. Many have relied on donations or purchases of collections assembled by private individuals who have acquired antiquities at auctions or from dealers. Further, while European museums today have modest acquisition budgets, some American museums, notably the Getty but also the Met, can still afford to buy valuable antiquities.
"European museums got lots of stuff 100 years ago so they can take the moral high ground," said Neil Brodie, research director of the Illicit Antiquities Research Center in Cambridge, England. "But if you establish a new museum like the Getty, you have to stock it."
In this, he said, American tax incentives play a key part. "If a private collector gives to a museum, he can claim back taxes," Mr. Brodie said. "So they work together. The museum has an interest in the private collector and even advises what to buy. So you can't separate private collectors and museums because of the tax situation."
Certainly, among the works mentioned in the case against Ms. True, there are 12 objects from among over 300 masterworks of Greek, Roman and Etruscan art collected by Lawrence and Barbara Fleischman and bought by the Getty in 1996. Similarly, some antiquities of concern to the Italian authorities belong to the Levy-White collection, which has other pieces on loan to the Met. Shelby White, the widow of Leon Levy, is a Met trustee.
Thanks to Ripon College's Clark Collection students have the opportunity to see and connect with Ancient Mesopotamian and Greek civilizations without traveling to a museum.
The collection is an assortment of ancient art collected by Professor of Latin and Roman Archeology Edward W. Clark in the early 1900s. It was recently relocated from Rodman to Lane Library.
"It will enable students to have better access to the collection along with other relevant materials," says Diane Mockridge, professor of history.
The collection was moved to floor 2A of the library before fall break. Books pertaining to topics such as ancient Greek and Roman civilizations are located nearby.
While making room for more art pieces in Rodman was a key component of the move, according to Mockridge, so too was its proximity to related resources.
"For research purposes, it being down at Rodman wasn't as accessible to students," says junior Sandy Patrowsky.
The Clark Collection originated in 1905 with Clark, a professor at Ripon for 19 years. He began purchasing the artifacts for the college during a sabbatical in Italy.
Though most commonly referred to as the Clark Collection, there has been recent desire to move away from that name. "We now prefer to call [it] the Ripon College Classical Antiquities Collection, which is its original name," says Eddie Lowry, professor of Greek and Latin.
"Clark Collection is simpler, but recent, and somewhat misleading in that Professor Clark purchased it for, rather than gave it to, the college," says Lowry.
The collection contains a vast array of objects portraying many lands and ways of life.
"It is a collection of ancient Greek, Roman, and Etruscan artifacts. We have about 40 vases, 50 Roman lamps and 200 Roman coins," says Mockridge.
The collection also has a website dedicated to its history that catalogues many of the artifacts the collection contains.
Over the years the collection has become a teaching tool for classes in multiple departments, including history and anthropology, to give students a hands-on approach to the cultures and history they are studying.
"I use the collection whenever I teach my History 214, Greek and Roman Society, course. Students collaborate on projects involving various items from the collection," says Mockridge.
Patrowsky, who took Greek and Roman Society as a first year, enjoyed using the collection.
"I think that working with actual artifacts is a good opportunity for students because it's one thing to be told to do a research project on a conical urn, but it's a whole different thing to be told 'this is a conical urn, learn something from it,'" says Patrowsky.
It's something Patrowsky feels students should try to take advantage of.
"Not every school in the world can say that they have a collection with pieces [this] old," she says. "So I think for a school the size of Ripon, it gives us a little prestige."
Una storia vecchia di milleseicento anni, ma legata al contesto moderno nel quale oggi riappare. Una scoperta archeologica che ha il fascino della Roma antica, resa possibile dai lavori per adeguare un seminterrato a ospitare il bunker in acciaio e cemento di un acceleratore lineare per radioterapia. Età classica e modernità si intrecciano e si confondono nel ritorno alla luce della dimora dei Valeri. O meglio dei dieci metri di corridoio decorato a mosaico, cinto da pareti riccamente affrescate e affacciato su un giardino, un viridarium, che provano l’esistenza della villa dell’aristocratica famiglia romana. Una gens le cui origini risalivano all’epoca repubblicana e la cui fama non calò con l’arrivo del cristianesimo potendo vantare una santa, Melania la Giovane, nella propria stirpe.
Ieri mattina il soprintendente archeologico di Roma Angelo Bottini, il direttore dell’ospedale San Giovanni Addolorata, Luigi D’Elia, l’architetto Paolo Portoghesi e l’archeologa responsabile degli scavi, Mariarosaria Barbera, hanno illustrato in una conferenza l’importanza storica e artistica del ritrovamento. Che ha visto un insolito «entusiasmo condiviso» di Soprintendenza e azienda ospedaliera, con quest’ultima che, «conscia» di sorgere su una delle aree a più alta densità archeologica della Capitale, ha accettato di buon grado un compromesso sui tempi dei lavori di ristrutturazione dell’«Addolorata», l’edificio di inizio Novecento che presto sarà il nuovo dipartimento di Onco-ematologia del San Giovanni-Addolorata. Anzi, D’Elia si è spinto persino ad augurarsi che nel prosieguo dei lavori di ristrutturazione del complesso, affidati a Portoghesi, «vengano alla luce altri ritrovamenti».
Quello presentato ieri, intanto, è di tutto rispetto. La splendida e immensa dimora dei Valeri era celebre almeno quanto la gens che l’abitava: probabilmente costruita in epoca repubblicana, rimase in piedi fino al V secolo dopo cristo. Nel 404 i suoi ultimi proprietari, Valerio Piniano e la moglie, Santa Melania, la misero in vendita. Ma a causa del valore eccessivo della lussuosa casa, la coppia non trovò acquirenti. Piniano e Melania, vittime di una bolla immobiliare come quella temuta oggi da chi ha investito nel mattone, sei anni più tardi svendettero per pochi solidi aurei quello che restava della Domus Valeriorum, finita nel frattempo in macerie dopo il sacco di Alarico. Restò traccia del glorioso passato della villa nel nome dell’ospizio che sorse sul luogo, lo Xenodochium Valerii, «antenato» dell’attuale ospedale. Nel 1554 il sito fu identificato, e nei primi scavi si ebbe certezza dell’appartenenza delle rovine alla dimora della Gens Valeria grazie al ritrovamento di incisioni in bronzo dedicate a Valerio Proculo e a una lanterna a forma di nave, ora agli Uffizi, con l’epigrafe «Dominus legem dat Valerio Severo», dono di battesimo per il padre di Piniano. Si pensava che il saccheggio dei Goti e poi gli scavi «di rapina» - per dirla con Angelo Bottini - del ’500 avessero cancellato per sempre la Domus Valerii. A fine ’800 lo storico Mariano Armellini era rassegnato: «Non può deplorarsi abbastanza - scriveva - la perdita di un monumento così insigne, la cui storia collegasi ai fasti più splendidi di Roma». Invece quei fasti torneranno a rivivere, quando gli affreschi e il mosaico del corridoio verranno ricomposti ed esposti al pubblico in uno spazio ad hoc all’interno dell’ospedale.
Victory at the ancient Greek Olympic Games, especially in the four-horse chariot races, was a big deal.
The first recorded event in Athenian history was an attempted coup by an Olympic victor named Cylon. Its bloody suppression by the Alcmeonid clan tainted Athenian politics for the next 200 years. At the end of that period, the Athenian general Alcibiades gained notoriety for winning multiple victories in the chariot races, for his intellectual attainments — he was a student of Socrates — for his strategic brilliance and for his ostentatious personal life.
Herodotus tells us that Demaratus was the only Spartan king to win the chariot event in the first 350 years of Olympic competition. Deposed and in exile, Demaratus advised the Persian King Xerxes during his major military campaign against the Greeks, known as the Second Persian War.
My point is not that high-level sports success makes one a political adventurer, an intellectual roué or a traitor to one's country. Very few public figures in Greek history are unblemished, and each of these cases is much more complex politically, socially, ethically and morally than my brief summary suggests. But sports were important to the character development and public careers of individual Greeks.
I have been critical of the sports programs at the University of Texas at Austin. So I recently took the time to find out what impact participation in NCAA sports is having on individual athletes. Here are two case studies.
"CORPUS CHRISTI" is, as most know, old Latin for "Body of Christ". We have
received a list of new Latin phrases, "ex quo" (from which):
a.. "Domino vobiscum!" (The Pizza guy is here.)
b.. "Revelare Pecunia!" (Show me the money!)
c.. "Motorolus interruptus." (Hold on, I'm going into a tunnel.)
d.. "Sic semper tyrannus." (Your dinosaur is alway ill.)
e.. "Bodicus mutilatus, unemploymi ad infinitum" (Better take the nose
ring out before the job interview)
f.. "Nucleo predicus dispella conducticus" (Remove foil before
g.. "Veni, vidi, velcro" (I came, I saw, I stuck around.)
h.. "Et tu, pluribus unum?" (Did the government just stab me in the
i.. I also received a sweat shirt for Christmas scripted with this
announcement on its front: "SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIUM ERUDTIONIS HABES" (If
you can read this, you have too much education)
Medicine being a forward-looking, progressive enterprise, it pays little heed to the traditional remedies of the past, which being "unscientific'' are of historical interest only. The "alternative'' brigade tend to take the contrary view, claiming it is precisely because the Chinese, for example, have been practising acupuncture for thousands of years that we can have confidence in its efficacy.
It is of interest then with the current fascination with all things Roman that their medical practices could substantiate either view. Most Roman remedies - certainly those recorded by Pliny - are so bizarre it is difficult to believe anyone could have taken them seriously at the time. Typical of his advice is to women after childbirth: that they should rub their breasts with a mixture of sow's blood, goose grease and spider's web to prevent them becoming engorged, apply a poultice of partridge egg ash and wax to keep them firm, while "an earthworm drunk with honey will stimulate the flow of milk''.
But the recent reissue of the most popular medical treatise of the ancient world, the Materia Medica by the learned physician Pedanius Dioscorides, reveals a profound knowledge of many highly specific natural remedies long forgotten and only recently rediscovered in the West. These include the natural antidepressant St John's Wort, which he commends "for it expels choleric excrements'', and the very valuable aloe vera for the treatment of wounds sustained in battle.
And the Romans had, of course, olive oil to strengthen the nails, soften the skin and ease aching muscles and tired feet. Perhaps, speculates a classical scholar writing in The Lancet, its regular application after bathing might explain why athlete's foot seems to have been unknown in the ancient world, despite the enthusiasm for public baths that would certainly have spread the fungus around. Being a lifelong sufferer himself, he tested his theory by applying a couple of drops between the toes every day. The athlete's foot vanished, never to return. And that is very useful to know.
In a pinch, Colgate students stay up all night reading the classics. But until last week, they’d never staged a 24-hour nonstop reading of Homer’s Iliad.
Shannon Young, a first-year from Tempe, Ariz., organized the event, the reading portion of which took 17 hours and 36 minutes. They spent the rest of the time “hanging out” between readings, munching delicacies from the Greek-themed buffet, and laughing with faculty members of the classics department, who told Greek and Latin jokes.
“The Iliad was meant to be read orally,” said Young. “We read portions, but never the whole thing start to finish, in a way that we can absorb the story. Then again, it’s pretty random to find people who want to read Homer for 24 hours straight.”
At Colgate, Young found 40 kindred spirits who were eager to read, and another 100 or so students and faculty members who dropped in at their leisure.
Some were drawn to the novelty and stayed for a short while; others brought dog-eared paperbacks and stayed for hours. The audience in the Ho Lecture Room was rapt if not forgiving, as some could be heard murmuring pronunciations they believed to be correct.
“Colgate is amazing this way,” said Young. “One day, I talked about the Iliathon with a few friends at breakfast. Two weeks later, the classics department was behind the event. I couldn’t have done it without them.”
Young recruited readers through an announcement on the Colgate portal (an internal website), an ad in the Maroon-News student newspaper, posters, and word of mouth. The Austin Murray Classics Fund covered promotional expenses, the Greek buffet, and many gallons of coffee.
The event began at 4 p.m. Friday, with classics faculty members donning long black beards for their dynamic reading of Book I.
“They hammed it up in both ancient Greek and English,” said Kelly McGowan '07, who read Book II, also in both languages, with three other advanced Greek students. McGowan, who stayed for Books I-IV, VIII-XIII, and XVII-XXIV, was one of the most loyal listeners.
Matt Carter, postdoctoral fellow in the classics, witnessed almost every word. He was most excited about the variety of translations that were used, including the prose versions by Rich Lattimore and Robert Fagles, and the poetic translation by Alexander Pope.
“The fact that we switched back and forth from Greek to English, from poetry to prose, even from one prose translation to another, was a pleasant bit of variety, in counterpoint to the constant of The Iliad,” said Carter.
The energy ebbed and flowed, as one might expect at an event of such epic proportions, and there were a few surprises.
First-years Gregory Golden, Brian Haghighi, and Michael Chang wore togas to read Book XVII at 8 a.m. Saturday. They used the Pope translation’s rhyming couplets.
“For a while, Mike accompanied the readers with his guitar. Brian rapped parts of the book. Then Mike read while Brian and Greg juggled. Diehard classics fans weren’t impressed,” said Young, “but it was funny. A little bit ridiculous, but that made it interesting.”
Finally, it was Young’s turn to read Book XXIV. Sleep-deprived and emotionally invested in the story, she ended the event with a powerful reading.
Several members of the audience were brought to tears, and Carter said he was mesmerized. “I thought, this is the effect Homer would have had on an ancient Greek audience.”
Participants will likely remember the event for a long time. They received T-shirts that say “One face, 1,000 ships, 24 hours,” and Young vowed to reunite the group in the spring for a marathon reading of The Odyssey. She also dreams of similar events for Paradise Lost, Dante's Inferno and other classics.
6. Among the world's greatest cat haters were Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon and Hitler.
8. In ancient Rome, feline feces were believed to have healing powers. Beliefs like this could have caused the fall of the Empire.
Tumultus Franciae rarescunt
Tumultus, qui in urbibus Franciae iam tres septimanas continuantur, rarescere coeperunt. Adhuc duo milia nongenta vehicula cremata sunt et centum fere aedificia damna ceperunt.
Duo milia octingenti homines deprehensi, sescenti in carcerem coniecti sunt. Maior pars horum, ut rettulit Nicolas Sarkozy, minister a rebus interioribus, custodibus publicis antea noti erant. Lex ante quinguaginta annos lata apud Francos in usum recepta est, ex qua moderatores regionales commeatus hominum nocturnos et coetus multitudinum vetare atque perquisitiones in domiciliis suspectorum suscipere possunt.
Parlamentum Franciae illam legem hac septimana in tres menses prorogavit. Hodie in Francia circiter quinque miliones musulmanorum habitant, ex quibus tantum dimidia pars civitatem habet. Sunt, qui dicant musulmanorum numerum esse octo milionum, id est plus quam decimam partem totius populi. Pauperrimi eorum in suburbiis habitant, in quibus iam antea tumultus violenti haud raro occurrerunt.
In a move that underscores commitment to the liberal arts, Illinois Wesleyan University has added a major in Greek and Roman Studies, traditionally known as classical studies.
Professor Nancy Sultan, who directs the University’s Greek and Roman Studies program, considers classical studies to be “the hub of the wheel of the humanities” and a critical foundation for a liberal arts education. She notes Greek and Roman Studies provide a well-rounded background for those who pursue further study or careers in law, medicine, education, public service, journalism, theology, and more.
Since Sultan began teaching Greek and Roman Studies at IWU in 1993, the program has been steadily developed so that no additional courses or faculty are now needed in order to offer the major. A minor was previously available, and students were able to make special arrangements for a major with assistance from faculty advisers in selecting coursework. Following approval by the University's Curriculum Council and faculty as a whole, the major is now available as an established plan of study.
“I’m thrilled,” Sultan said, noting that the best liberal arts institutions offer classical studies. “Classics is the oldest of the liberal arts disciplines and remains one of the most valuable. Students are not just learning about the past, they're learning about the here and now. Much of what is going on, including terrorism, was already described by Herodotus and Thucydides in the fifth century B.C. Classics is humanist study at its core: Why do empires rise and fall? Why do people murder and (seek) revenge? What is justice? Every idea that we have, from law and politics to the arts, has been profoundly influenced by Greece and Rome, and it is very important to understand the power of that influence.”
While the traditional canon of Greek and Roman Studies for a time fell out of favor as multicultural studies gained long-needed recognition, Sultan points out that classical studies today incorporates multicultural perspectives. This includes examination of the early non-Western cultures that influenced Greece and Rome, and how ideas about slavery, ethnicity and race came into Western culture from the Greeks and Romans. Today the discipline examines not only the positive legacy of Greece and Rome, but the negative as well.
Sultan also notes practical benefits to studying the Greek and Latin languages, from which 60 percent of all English words are derived, and which are the basis of 90 percent of the technical terminology in law and medicine. The study of Latin and Greek not only improves the students' English grammar and vocabulary, it also increases the ability to understand other “daughter” languages such as Spanish, Italian and French.
In addition to language studies, courses are offered in ancient art, archaeology, literature, history, religion, political science, and philosophy. Jason Moralee, assistant professor of history, and April DeConick, associate professor and chair of religion, contribute core courses in ancient history and religion, respectively.
Qui capit, capitur.
The one who seizes is seized.
The one who captures is captured.
The one who owns is owned.
The one who binds is bound.
(pron = kwee KAH-pit KAH-pih-toor)
Comments: What is that thing that I just must have (or eat)? Whatever it is, it
has me. This little anonymous proverb is at the root of what some spiritual
traditions call attachment. It also illustrates the power of opposites, for, I
may set out to obtain (seize) something, but the investment of my energy to do
so will leave me bound by the thing I set out to own.
This doesn’t necessarily have to turn into a moralistic judgment about anything.
It can simply be a powerful observation about anything that I desire to have,
to obtain, to own.
If I must have to new car, I will drive away with it from the car dealer. The
car payments, and maintenance activities and costs, though, will own me for
If I must have that puppy in the window, I will walk away from the pet store
with the furry little ball of joy, and the house-training, and daily feedings,
and house cleanings, and gnawed up furniture will become regular demands on my
time and life for the next 15 years.
If I must have a beautiful rose garden in my yard, I can, after a weekend’s work
and a trip to the garden center, install a beautiful garden. The fungicide,
weeding, pruning, bleeding, Japanese beetles and mildew watching will take far
more time than I will likely spend gazing at the beauty of the garden.
What do I want? Whatever it is, it gets me. This is just a fact. The things
that get me themselves become fodder for knowing myself better—or I can ignore
them, and continue to get more stuff—which gets me, too, until I am lost under
the pile of stuff!
In this process of getting and being gotten, moments of gratitude help—for what
we’ve got and for what’s gotten us.
The Iliathon. Who would have thought? As you can probably draw from the title, this is a 24-hour marathon reading of Homer's The Iliad; that's right, all 24 books. It will take place in the Ho Lecture Room and last from 4 p.m. today until 4 p.m. tomorrow.
The mastermind behind it all, first-year Shannon Young, freely admits to the quirkiness of this event. "Who goes to 24-hour readings of the Iliad?" she said. "But that's part of why I like the idea - nobody does this sort of thing."
How, you may wonder, did she come up with the idea?. It started at her high school, where students from the drama class put on the same event. Unfortunately, Young was not able to participate, but the concept behind the event continued to lurk in the corners of her mind ever since. Then one fateful day at Frank, the subject of the Iliad came up during a discussion with some classmates about the trials and tribulations of Western Traditions.
"We were just sort of talking about the book," Young said. "I was like, 'Hey, you know, they did this thing at my high school and it would be really cool if we did it.' And they actually liked the idea. That's sort of the neat thing about Colgate. You can find people who actually are interested in this kind of thing and are willing to do it."
To get the ball rolling she went to talk to Professor of English Deborah Knuth-Klenck, who was happy to point her in the direction of some more people who could help. Roy D. and Margaret B. Wooster Professor of the Classics Robert Garland and Administrative Assistant for the Divison of the Humanities and Department of the Classics Beth MacKinnon soon became instrumental in the planning of this event.
The Iliathon is sponsored by the Classics Department, and the Austin-Murray Classics Fund is covering the costs of food and other expenditures related to this special occasion.
Many different people and groups have gotten involved and plan to participate in various creative ways. Each book is allotted an hour for the person or group signed up to read out loud. Reading the book out loud is a crucial part of the Iliathon. When students read these books for school, they often do not read them out loud, but epic stories like The Iliad were originally presented orally and were passed down from generation to generation as a spoken story, not as words written on a page. "It was meant to be told out loud," Young said, "and now we actually get to hear it out loud, from start to finish."
The first book is going to be read by classics faculty in the original ancient Greek. The second book is also going to be read in ancient Greek, but by advanced students of the language. Fortunately for those of us who don't have the luxury of understanding that particular language, English translations of all the books will be projected on a wall for the audience to read. Any and all creativity is accepted regarding this event. People are encouraged to come in costume to get into the spirit of The Iliad. There are even rumors floating around involving puppet shows and miming.
"I'm hoping to be surprised by it." Young said. "I've already had a lot of good surprises! I don't know exactly what all the people are planning on doing [with their books], and that's kind of exciting to me. People who come and watch don't know what to expect. I don't know what to expect from some people! It'll be an interesting experience."
Widespread participation both by the readers and the audience will be needed to make the Iliathon a success. If the event goes over well, Young would like to continue it with an Odyssion, a reading of The Odyssey? , and then perhaps branch out of the classics into other pieces of literature. "If this is successful I'd really like to make it into a series and keep having these marathon readings," Young said. "It's crazy! Nobody does this. That's what makes it fun." Who knows what's next. Moby Dick?
First-year Lisha Mays will be part of a group reading book 13 at 4 a.m. She spoke about what she was looking forward to at the event. "Well, the food is always good," she said. "And it'll be entertaining watching people try to pronounce really complicated Greek names. It sounds interesting, and it'll definitely be a nice break from writing papers!"
THE Brooklyn teacher who won more than any other woman in "Jeopardy" history lost last night in a squeaker.
In her sixth appearance on the game show, Maria Wenglinsky, a Latin teacher at Park Slope's St. Saviour High School, fell $600 short in Final Jeopardy.
Her winnings, more than $122,000, were a non-tournament show record
An archaeological dig on the Amalfi coast has revealed the first luxury villa to be built in the idyllic fishing village of Positano, a popular haunt of today's rich and famous.
Two storeys of a first century millionaire's abode have been found under a church which was hidden for 2,000 years by the same volcanic eruption that devastated Pompeii in 79AD.
During renovation work on the church's crypt last summer, roof beams were found poking up just a few inches down.
They revealed an enormous building that certainly would have belonged to an important person in Imperial Rome.
A subsequent initial dig by archaeologists unearthed, about 6ft below the ground, two storeys of remarkably brightly-coloured wall frescoes and marble mosaics of mythical characters. They had been perfectly preserved.
The villa, which looked directly out on to the Mediterranean, is believed to have several terraces although more digs will be needed to see exactly how far it stretches.
Franco Zeffirelli, the Italian film-maker, is the most famous latter-day Positano villa-owner.
Past residents include Rudolph Nureyev, the ballet dancer, and Napoleon's marshall and later king of Naples, Joachim Murat. The American writers John Steinbeck and Tennessee Williams were frequent visitors to Positano.
Greece will request the return of four allegedly stolen Greek antiquities from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Culture Ministry said Monday.
"Instructions have been given for the immediate launch of the legal process to reclaim the four ancient artifacts," a ministry announcement said.
Greek authorities say the Getty paid $5.2 million in 1993 for the pieces, which include a gold funerary wreath dating from the fourth century B.C.
Ministry officials were not immediately available to provide further details.
U.S. museums' policies of acquiring ancient artifacts have come under scrutiny, after Italian authorities accused the Getty's former curator of antiquities, Marion True, of receiving stolen antiquities from Italy. She is on trial in Rome on charges that she conspired with dealers to traffic in looted antiquities. She has maintained her innocence.
Italy is seeking the return of a sixth century B.C. vase from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Bush apud suos minus gratus
Res in Iraquia male gestae efficiunt, ut praesidens George W. Bush apud cives suos minus minusque gratia valeat.
Ex interrogatione, quam periodicum Newsweek faciendam curavit, apparet tantum triginta sex centesimas Americanorum actiones eius sustinere. Duodeseptuaginta centesimae facta praesidentis indignantur atque tantum dimidia pars civium eum virum probum et sincerum habent.
The journey to the site of Dr Andy Overman's excavations was every bit as picturesque as an archaeological pilgrimage should be.
We bounced up a rough earth track as far as the car would take us, and the occasional Israeli military jeep swept past in a cloud of dust on its way to police the front line with Syria.
The last couple of hundred metres were on foot and allowed us to soak up the spectacular scenery: the slopes of Mount Hermon rose ahead of us, the brown hills of Lebanon marched away to the north-west, and when we looked back towards the way we had come, the land fell away into the fertile plain of Galilee, chequer-boarded by its orchards and fields.
It was a fire in 1998 that gave Dr Overman his coup at Omrit; it cleared the scrub and he was able to identify the outline of a huge Roman-era temple.
He believes it was erected by King Herod to honour the Roman Emperor Augustus at the time when Augustus began to be viewed as a living god, and he has identified it as the site of Caesarea Philippi.
He is now engaged in an ambitious project to rebuild the temple; it will soon rise to its original 23 metres (75 feet) in height, once again dominating the surrounding landscape.
If Dr Overman is right about the location of his find, it could one day attract biblical scholars and Christian pilgrims in droves.
Caesarea Philippi is where Jesus asked his disciples that famous question: "Who do you think that I am?"
In the account of the incident in St Matthew's gospel, Peter replies: "You are the Messiah, the son of the living god," and it is one of the most important pieces of biblical evidence for Christian beliefs about Jesus's divine status.
And Dr Overman believes that the fact that the incident is reported to have happened near his temple to the God-Emperor Augustus is extremely significant. He sees it as a direct challenge to the idea the temple represented one "living god" throwing down the gauntlet to another.
Quem amat, amat; quem non amat, non amat.
(Petronius, Satyricon 37)
Whom she loves, she loves; whom she does not love, she does not love.
(pron = kwem AH-mat AH-mat kwem nohn AH-mat nohn AH-mat)
Comment: This line is from a work that was written during the reign of Nero by a
man who was in Nero’s court, and then who committed suicide when he fell into
Nero’s disfavor. Seneca, the Stoic philosopher, met the same end at about the
same time from the same emperor. Seneca wrote heavy, moral philosophy, and
difficult plays on moral themes. Petronius wrote the Satyricon, almost an
inversion if not a perversion of those same themes.
Suffice it to say that this line not only describes a character in the
Satyricon, but also represents something about the work itself. It gives a
clearer view of what real people thought and felt than most Latin literature of
This line describes a woman now married to a very wealthy freedman. She had
once been “the kind you would not accept even a piece of bread from”. She is
his everything now. But, she has a sharp tongue. She is a magpie among the
sparrows. Whomever she loves, she loves and says so. Whomever she does not
love, she does not love and says so.
No pretense. Where do we learn pretense? I don’t cherish offending others, but
neither do I enjoy spending time and energy with those with whom I am not
fitted, for whatever reason. Where do we learn pretense, and how old were we
when speaking honestly became wrong? For how long has our culture engendered
pretense and called it “good manners”?
I am a man with long hair and a beard. Once a few years ago, I was walking out
of the fitness center where I worked out regularly. A 3 year old girl and her
mom were walking out, too. The little girl said in a very loud 3 year old
voice: is that a man or a woman? I turned and smiled at her and said: I am a
man. Too late. Mom was shushing her, and hurrying her along. Little girl was
made wrong. Her question was made wrong. I was made wrong. My response was
silenced. Interchange short-changed. Lesson learned. And she won’t ever
really remember how she learned that it was not okay to ask honest questions.
But, she will have good manners.
| You scored as Maximus. After his family was murdered by the evil emperor Commodus, the great Roman general Maximus went into hiding to avoid Commodus's assassins. He became a gladiator, hoping to dominate the colosseum in order to one day get the chance of killing Commodus. Maximus is valiant, courageous, and dedicated. He wants nothing more than the chance to avenge his family, but his temper often gets the better of him. |
Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0
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Femina Liberiae praeest
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, oeconomista in Universitate Harvardiensi erudita, in comitiis praesidentialibus Liberiae victoriam reportavit.
Illa est in Africa prima femina, quam populus sibi moderatricem creavit. Consilium Securitatis Nationum Unitarum praecepit, ut Charles Taylor, pristinus Liberiae moderator belli criminibus accusatus, comprehenderetur, si in patriam revertisset.
Vetustissimum ex animalibus hodie viventibus est testudo elephantopus nomine Harriet, quae hac septimana diem natalem centesimum septuagesimum quintum egit.
Pondus centum quinquaginta chiliogrammatum habet et vivit in horto zoologico Australiano. Charles Darwin, celeberrimus naturae investigator, illam anno millesimo octingentesimo tricesimo quinto ex insulis Galápagos secum tulisse dicitur.
This week our “Latin Lover” takes us on a whistle stop tour of a space in the heart of Rome the Romans once dedicated to the sacred, a place where Christians once built their Churches and more curiously linked to Julius Caesar...
Glass remains over 1,700 years old, possibly imported from ancient Rome, have been discovered in an ancient tomb located in east China's Anhui Province, local cultural relic department said on Sunday.
The tomb was found during the latest road project in Zhulong Village of Dangtu County in Anhui. Archaeologists believed the tomb was built in the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317 - 420).
Covered with white mantlerock, the glass remains seem to have ancient Roman shapes and craftwork.
According to the local cultural relic department, the owner of the tomb was possibly from an eminent family of the Eastern Jin Dynasty.
Besides the "Roman glass," other rare articles including a gold bracelet, a silver ring, a bronze bowl and porcelain were also discovered in the tomb.
Currently, pieces of the "Roman glass" have been sent to the Anhui-based University of Science and Technology of China for further study and analysis, said the local cultural relic department.
As HBO’s “Rome” draws to a bloody, triumphant close (tonight at 9), some viewers can be forgiven for thinking they’ve stumbled across a particularly convincing re-creation of the ancient world courtesy of The History Channel.
But how accurate is “Rome”?
The 12-episode series roughly covers the years 53 to 44 B.C., from Pompey’s war against Julius Caesar to the assassination of Caesar. Octavian - the future Augustus Caesar, considered one of the greatest Roman rulers - was 18 when his uncle was murdered.
The two main characters, Titus Pullo (Ray Stevenson) and Lucius Vorenus (Kevin McKidd), are fictional, representative of the sort of men who lived at the time.
Many of “Rome’s” citizens, however, do have real-life counterparts, in name only, at least.
The historian Suetonius wrote that Brutus’ mother, Servilia, was indeed the love of Caesar’s life.
Cleopatra did give birth to a son in 47 B.C. that Caesar accepted as his own - though Suetonius reported rumors that the child was not his.
“Rome” has great fun at Cleopatra’s expense, implying the child could have been fathered by even a lowly legionnaire. Given that DNA tests on TV have become as ubiquitous as eye exams thanks to the “CSI” franchise, “Rome” reminds us of a time when you could only take the mother at her word - and maybe not at all.
“Rome” takes its greatest liberty in the character of Atia, Octavian’s mother. As played by Polly Walker, she is a she-devil in opulent robes, masterminding her ex-son-in-law’s murder and the brutal mugging of a rival, and pushing her young son into sexual and military situations to secure his position as an heir to Julius. She’s Julie Cooper of the B.C. “O.C.”
The resemblance to the real Atia appears to be slight. Suetonius blames the son-in-law’s death on Caesar, who apparently was trying to arrange a marriage between his family and Pompey’s. The real Atia was seemingly a deeply religious woman who didn’t want her son involved in politics. But the producers made a choice that makes for juicy drama. This Atia is involved with Mark Antony (James Purefoy), who eventually married her daughter Octavia - no doubt we’ll see those hysterics next season. Who said ancient history was dull?
The attitude toward slaves - treated like objects, mere marks of social status - is dead-on but unusual in a contemporary presentation of sympathetic characters. As Vorenus’ situation improves, Niobe (Indira Varma) happily crowds their home with more slaves - even leasing two to simply stand by the front entrance.
As for Caesar’s personal habits, Suetonius notes he was all too happy to wear the laurels offered by the Senate. They masked his receding hairline.
Caesar, it seems, practiced the first combover.
An urgent rescue operation is being launched to save some of Rome's most important ancient ruins, including the palace where Julius Ceasar once lived, from the ravages of increasingly violent rainstorms that are undermining their foundations.
Archaeologists fear that buildings on the Palatine Hill, most more than 2,000 years old, are becoming dangerously unstable and pose an increasing risk to the 3.5 million tourists who visit the area each year.
Repairs could take up to 10 years, engineers have said, and are expected to cost between €100 and €200 million (£68 and £136 million) - a small price to pay, they say, to preserve some of Rome's historical treasures.
These include the towering Palace of Septimus Severus, the Domus Augustana, where the emperors lived, and traces of an iron-age village where legend has it the city's founders, Romulus and Remus, were once suckled by a wolf.
"We need to do the same as Greece did 30 years ago, with the Acropolis, whose problems were a lot less than ours," said Carlo Giavarini, a conservation engineer at La Sapienza University who is involved in the rescue plan.
"The first thing we have to do at the Palatine is understand how to divert the water that is undermining the walls. The ancient Romans knew how to do it, but not us."
A maze of 2,000-year-old irrigation tunnels runs beneath the hill as part of the complex original plumbing for which the Romans were famed. But they are largely unmapped and have become blocked or have broken in many places. One of the first challenges will be to find ways to dig out these aged drainage systems and link them to new ones serving the half-square-mile area.
Romans were shocked earlier this month when a 15ft section of a wall, one side of a passageway along which visitors walk to the Forum, collapsed. The wall was just 5ft high - lower than most of the structures in the area - and nobody was hurt, but its collapse heightened fears that more serious accidents involving higher buildings could occur.
Although the wall was just 500 years old and may have been put up by the Renaissance equivalent of cowboy builders, engineers discovered extensive damage to its foundations caused by water seepage. There are ominous signs of similar damage to other, older buildings. Angelo Bottini, the archaeological superintendent of the area, said the collapse was "a very loud alarm bell".
Other areas were at risking of falling down, he said, "and this time they could fall on to the crowds of visitors".
Rome has been hit by increasingly violent storms in recent years, thought to be caused by rising temperatures in the Mediterranean. Last week it suffered yet another - ripping trees from the ground and triggering flooding and landslides in the north of the city.
Prof Giampiero Maracchi, a leading climatologist, said: "In general it is raining less, but there has been a change in the intensity of the rainfall. In the past if it rained for a few hours the most you would get deposited would be up to 40 millimetres (1.5ins). Now it is often between 80 and 100 millimetres."
It is not just the risk to visitors behind the drive to restore the buildings, nor even the fact that the site contains some of Rome's most beautiful frescoes: the desire to save the heart of what was once the Roman empire goes to the heart of the Italian psyche.
"Don't tell me that we have to protect these sites only because they draw visitors and make money," said Rocco Buttiglione, the culture minister. "We have to do it because they are part of our soul."
In the first stage of the restoration drive, a team of Italy's foremost archaeological engineers has been set up to conduct a nine-month survey and search for underground weaknesses and fault lines.
"First we have to do the diagnosis, then we have to treat the patient," said Prof Giorgio Croci, the chief engineer on the project, who led the team which stabilised the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi, following the 1997 earthquake.
"We have to go carefully as these remains need to be treated very delicately indeed - but at least the Palatine is finally being treated as a priority."
Prof Croci, who has travelled the globe advising governments on how to protect ancient monuments, added: "Italians are the best in the world at doing this kind of thing, so it is important that we should be also be seen putting our own house in order."
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm proud and honored to introduce you to Bernard Darwin, who for most of the first half of the past century was golf's foremost writer. To many of you, the name Darwin means Charles, the naturalist, the man who wrote The Origin of the Species. Charles Darwin was Bernard's grandfather. Bernard Darwin was born in 1876 in Down in Kent near London and died in 1961. In the matter of golf writing, we should all pay attention to what Herbert Warren Wind wrote and said. Herb went to Yale and from there to Cambridge University, and it was while he was in England that he met Darwin and read his golf reports in the times and elsewhere. I do not think it is too strong to say that Herb was besotted with Darwin. "There is little disagreement that the best golf writer of all time was an Englishman, Bernard Darwin," Herb said later. Darwin, Herb said, was the finest talent ever to write about sport. If Darwin himself had heard such an encomium, he would have blushed, and the mustache that at times looked as though it was struggling to survive on the gaunt slope of his upper lip might have quivered (laughter). He would have thought that such a description was over-egging the cake. Modesty could have been one of Darwin's forenames. He never inserted himself unnecessarily into his copy. He rarely used superlatives, and in complete contrast to today's practice, he never interviewed players. Darwin was so modest, in fact, that when he and Joyce Wethered won the mixed foursomes in 1933, he referred to himself in The Times as "the elderly gentleman whose name for the most escapes me" (laughter). Yet has there been a writer since whose prose compared with the seamless tapestries that Darwin wove in the times from 1907 to 1953 and in Countries Life from 1907 until 1961? He wrote an introduction to the Oxford Book of Quotations. He was an expert on Charles Dickens, and could and often would recite chunks from Dickens' novels. He wrote four volumes of autobiography, as well as slim volumes about British clubs, mens' clubs, that is, and the British public schools, which, being private, are, in fact, anything but public. Most of all, he wrote about golf, and if you have a golf library and you do not have any volumes of Darwin on your shelves, then let me tell you this: You do not have a library (laughter). There is a saying in Britain that "those who can, do, and those who can't, teach." You might add that those who can't teach, write (laughter). Far from being unable to do any of these three, Darwin could have done them all with graceful ease. I have often thought that in his wide-ranging talents, he was like Bobby Jones, and how sad and ironic it was that these two gifted men should end their lives crippled in such ways that the one could not play and the other could not write. Darwin could have taught, there's no doubt about that; he gained an honors degree in both law and classics at Cambridge, and his knowledge of the classics meant he was comfortable with Latin and Greek. He would have been influenced by poets such as Homer. Now, I stand to be corrected here, but I suspect that the nearest most of us have got to Homer is in watching "The Simpsons." Darwin had an acuity of mind that owed much of his forebears and his contemporaries. His was a very unusual family.
The oldest map of anywhere in the western world, dating from about 500 BC, has been unearthed in southern Italy. Known as the Soleto Map, the depiction of Apulia, the heel of Italy's "boot", is on a piece of black-glazed terracotta vase about the size of a postage stamp.
It was found in a dig led by the Belgian archaeologist Thierry van Compernolle, of Montpellier University, two years ago. But its existence was kept secret until more research was carried out.
"The map offers, to date, for the Mediterranean, and more generally for western civilisation, the oldest map of a real space," the university said recently.
Its engraved place names are indicated by points, just as on maps today, and are written in ancient Greek.
The sea on the western side, Taras (Taranto), today's Gulf of Taranto, is named in Greek. But the rest of the map is in Messapian, the ancient tongue of the local tribes, although the script is ancient Greek.
The seas on either side of the peninsula, the Ionian and the Adriatic, are depicted by parallel zig-zag strokes.
Many of the 13 towns marked on the map, such as Otranto, Soleto, Ugento and Leuca (now called Santa Maria di Leuca) still exist.
The map went on public display for the first time this week in the Archaeological National Museum of Taranto.
Apart from being the oldest geographical map from classical antiquity ever found, it is the first material proof that the ancient Greeks were drawing maps of real places before the Romans.
It was known from ancient Greek literature that the concept of a map existed and that some had been drawn but none had been found.
The ancient Chinese had a well-defined system of map-making, but modern cartography descends from techniques laid down by the ancient Greeks.
Most existing classical maps are Roman and date from the period after Christ's birth.
Experts have suggested that the discovery demands not only a reconsideration of the beginnings of ancient cartography, but also of regional history, in particular that of relations between the local population of the Messapian tribes with their neighbours, the Greeks.
The Soleto map also gives vital new clues to the cultural exchange between the newly arrived Greeks and the Messapi.
They lived in the area but probably came originally from Greece as their language is believed to be a dialect of Illyrian.
The Soleto map is a contemporary of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras, who set up a philosophy school in Crotone, now Calabria, on the other side of the Gulf of Taranto.
His hypothesis that the Earth was round, developed after observing that the height of stars was different at different locations and noticing how ships appeared on the horizon, formed the basis of modern map making.
The senators wore purple togas, white togas and T-shirts emblazoned with school mottos.
"Cave Canem" or "Beware the dog" signaled the Portland Bulldogs of Portland High School.
Twisted ivy leaves and gold and green paper formed crowns, and a silver gladiator's helmet stood out on one head.
James Brophy, a senior at Winthrop High School, presided Friday night at the Fall Convention of the Maine Junior Classical League. Some 450 students studying Latin from 15 high schools across Maine sent 450 delegates Friday and more than 50 proctors and teachers and chaperones.
An assembly was orderly chaos as students cheered for those who made the All-Star teams in the Certamen.
Colored T-shirts helped on-lookers identify the schools. Bright pink adorned the Winthrop Ramblers.
"Veri Romani Vestem Roseam Gerunt," Brophy said, then translated: "Real men wear pink."
When Winthrop Latin teacher Meg Cook announced an opportunity for four more Latin II students and eight more Latin III and IV students to join teams in the competition, there was a surge to the front of the auditorium. She could hardly keep up with the demand.
But the purple togas of Hampden Academy seemed to outnumbered most of the other attendees.
Nokomis High School had a large group as well, including Hannah Elwell of Hartland.
After the assembly, the competition heated up in a second floor classroom where Winthrop squared off against Edward Little and Portland high schools in the first round of Certamen at the Latin III and IV levels.
A cardboard "Latin Man" kept sentry next to Kim Preble and Joe Stevens (a state officer for the Junior Classical League) on the Edward Little team.
Merilee Osier, Latin teacher at Sacopee Valley High School in Hiram, read the rules: "To answer, slap the table and raise your hand."
If you know Latin, mythology, or history, you can play along:
Name the King of Pontus who fought the Romans for more than 20 years.
No, not Gaius Marius. No, not Publius, but good try. Answer: Mithridates.
According to mythology, who was the first woman?
Everybody slapped the table for this one: Pandora.
Deik Bernhard of Germany, an exchange student at Winthrop, knew that "transferre" and transfero" was the Latin verb for "translate."
"I got 50 percent of the points," he said as he walked to the next round of the competition.
Meanwhile, by-standers could watch the brain-teasers in "Who Wants to Be a Legionnaire?" the hot contest in the performing arts center emceed by John White, a purple-haired Hampden graduate. Now at McGill University, he returned as a senior member of the Junior Classical League.
Participants translated "E pluribus unum" correctly as "From many, one."
On Thursday, a crowd took every available chair on the fourth floor of the Levis Faculty Center, 919 W. Illinois St., to hear the lecture "From Troy to Baghdad: Can modern officers learn from Homer's epics?" by Dr. Jonathan Shay, a psychiatrist in the Department of Veteran Affairs Outpatient Clinic in Boston.
Since 1987, many of Shay's patients have been veterans of the Vietnam War. His work with them has made him realize what soldiers go through in the "overwhelming hideousness of war," he said.
He said the experiences of the veterans reminded him of the story of Achilles, the hero in Homer's "The Iliad." Shay wrote his idea in a paper to help his colleagues better understand the veterans' situations. After reading the paper, Gregory Nagy, a Classics professor at Harvard, suggested Shay expand it into a larger piece of work. Nagy said such a comparison has never been seen before, Shay said.
"I figured this was my one shot at immortality," Shay said about being asked to write the book.
In the lecture, Shay discussed the lack of stability, ethical leadership and adequate training in the United States military.
He also drew parallels between the modern military and the heroes of Homeric literature, and described the lessons the literature taught current military leaders. For example, "The Iliad," he said, emphasized the "importance of the moral structure of an army."
The Classics Department sponsored Shay's Wednesday and Thursday lectures throughout the University. He led a discussion Wednesday night in Allen Hall, 1005 W. Gregory Dr., about whether war is a part of human nature. He also gave an interview on WILL AM 580 and was a guest professor in Angeliki Tzanetou's Homeric Greek class. After the lecture at the Levis Faculty Center, his final appearance was at Allen Hall where he showed the documentary "Achilles in Vietnam." The film, created by Charles Berkowitz, was based on Shay's book "Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character."
Kirk Freudenburg, chair of the Classics Department, said the psychiatrist is making classical writings of the 8th century B.C. writer Homer timely.
Back in the 1980s, Donald H. Sanders knew there was a better way to teach archaeology to kids than having them look at slides and drawings of ruins — it was just a matter of the technology catching up with the need.
"There had to be some way to get kids a little more interested in history and the past," said Sanders, "and to get them to understand what they are looking at. Looking at the plan or looking at a pile of rocks, neither one of them is translating into anything that they can understand."
Nearly two decades later, Sanders helms LearningSites, a educational technology company that specializes in reconstructing the lost sites of ancient history in all their glory, allowing students to look history right in the eye and spend time examining the peripheries and details of the site. Sanders also runs the Institute for Visualization of History, which applies virtual reality to a wider historical discipline than just archaeology.
"It's a unique way of understanding the past," said Sanders, "and a unique way of bringing together all kinds of technologies."
Key is in the research
The key Sanders' success is the meticulous research that goes into the construction of each virtual world. As Sanders points out, if the scholarship behind their product is not accurate, then they will lose customers, which include schools, museums, and governments.
Each virtual world begins with historical drawings and planned views of the building, as well as visuals from the actual excavations, in order to reproduce a structure from every possible angle. Often, LearningSites will go to other sources, museums and academics who study the site, to glean further information as the project leaps into the third dimension and requires more color, texture, and general detail.
The process of building the virtual site from the ground up is not so different from the process of creating a computer game, but there are notable departures of intent. While game designers are allowed a degree of creative license, LearningSites must adhere to scholarship. Games are built for speed, not accuracy, so their scenery tends to be at a lower resolution and often looks better as you speed past it than it does when you stop and stare. Equally, in an effort to keep the action going, computer games include boundaries on explorable landscape — with Sanders' products, exploration is the reason they exist.
Archeological discoveries made
"Ours has to be meticulous down to the last detail if you are actually going to go into the world and be able to study that. As if you were there," said Sanders. "All these buildings on a lot of the sites we work on are either gone, hard to get to, or expensive to get to, so if scholars want to be able to study them or you want to take school children on a virtual field trip, you have to bring it to them with as much complexity and accuracy as possible."
Careful attention to detail has sometimes resulted in the company making a few archeological discoveries of their own. While reconstructing the Battle Monument at Actium, commemorating the naval battle that pitted Caesar Augustus against Anthony and Cleopatra, certain details of the battle and the technology were applied to solve some mysteries in the physical remains on the site. Anthony's ships had ramming prows that, following their victory, the Romans broke off and attached to a stone wall as a warning to other attackers. It was Sanders and his team who realized this by taking the virtual prow and the virtual wall and working with them.
"The only thing that is left today is this wall with these peculiar little sockets in the wall," said Sanders. "What happens is if we take this particular ram and we bring it up to our virtual model and stick it in the wall, we find out it's a little too small. What we did was we could take this smaller ram and expand it in the program but keeping all the aspect ratios the same until it was the size and shape that fit into that socket."
Work on shipwrecks under way
Sanders also has begun working on shipwrecks. One in particular, which happened off the coast of Cyprus in 350 B.C., split apart when it hit the bottom and contained hundreds of rare artifacts, some that still need to be identified, their purpose a total mystery. Returning to the site is cumbersome and expensive and oceans currents impede further visits by continually covering the site up after archaeologists clear it.
"The idea, and one of the things we can use technology for," said Sanders, "is to be able to go back to what was found in the archaeological record, build a model, clam shell the ship back together again, raise it up, and try to find out how this material was originally stored."
One of the most important sites the company has worked on is the northwest palace of the Assyrian King Ashurnasopal (Nimrod), which is in Iraq. In fact, this is just one of many sites the company has taken on in Iraq, which has paid a price in archaeological richness as the war rages on.
"Hundreds of sites around the country were looted," said Sanders, "and since then, it's about a dozen sites a day are completely lost, looters get in there and destroy the place."
Iraq, which actually boasted one of the best antiquity services in the world under Saddam Hussein, is now facing an archaeological apocalypse.
"They were very conscientious, they were very thorough," said Sanders, "they were very accurate and they also kept a very good handle on what they had and there was no looting going on. As soon as the regime was down, the antiquity service fell apart, the looters immediately came in and began flooding the marketplace, selling all this stuff."
Part of the challenge has been to create a digital record of what each site contains and its condition. In the case of Iraq, LearningSites is collating information from museums and archaeologists, members of the government from both the United States and Iraq, and archaeological teams sponsored by the Smithsonian and National Geographic in order to create a cohesive virtual site that could never exist again in the real world. One of the major achievements of the project is the virtual reconstruction of wall reliefs that have been scattered throughout museums in the real world.
"If you went to all the scholarship, there are hundreds and hundreds of books written about this palace," said Sanders, "you'd have to spread them out and find out what this guy says about this, what that guy says about that and then go to this page, here we put them all together."
Sanders said the typical virtual reality project has moved away from functioning merely as a replica of a building or a site. The medium is evolving into a more informationally inclusive format, where real world information about the virtual one is at the user's fingertips. The company is working on an ambitious history of the Jewish people that includes an excavation simulation, interactive history features, user controlled border and settlement maps, and the ability to zoom into cities and watch their changes through time, among other educational features. This will be available for free online.
Sanders has found that some teachers are reluctant to embrace the technology, partly because the expertise of kids can cause a role reversal in the classroom but Sanders believes that what is gained is worth a shift in the balance of power — and the interaction can make a teacher's job more engaging, as well.
"It becomes a series of problem solving tasks," said Sanders, "in which the kids actually have to go through the world, learn about the world, extrapolate the information from it, and give it back to the teacher in a way that is much more engaging and traditional."
LearningSites' work can be viewed at www.learningsites.com and www.vizin.org.
Rutherford Aris, a distinguished chemical engineer who, as the result of a mix-up three decades ago, had a short-lived but supremely accomplished alter ego Aris Rutherford, with an official entry in Who's Who died on Nov. 2 in Edina, Minn. He was 76.
The cause was complications of Parkinson's disease, according to the University of Minnesota, where he was Regents professor emeritus of chemical engineering and classics.
Aris Rutherford, also on the faculty at Minnesota, was a professor of distillation practice, a highly evolved form of chemical engineering. Had he in fact existed, Rutherford, who was slightly younger than Aris, would have been 75.
Curiously, Aris was indeed accomplished enough for at least two people. Originally trained as a mathematician, he went on to become a chemical engineer, doing seminal work in both disciplines.
A skilled classicist, he was also a widely respected scholar of paleography, the study of ancient writing. An accomplished calligrapher, he wrote a book on the historical evolution of letterforms.
His scholarly publications appeared in an unorthodox array of journals, from Chemical Engineering Science and Mathematical Biosciences to New Literary History and The Thoreau Quarterly.
Aris, known as Gus, was born in Bournemouth, England, on Sept. 15, 1929, the son of Algernon Pollock Aris and the former Janet Elford. At 16, he completed a bachelor's degree in mathematics at the University of London; the university, reluctant to grant a degree to one so young, did not officially confer it until 1948, when he was 19.
In 1955, after a stint in industry, Aris joined the University of Minnesota as a researcher; three years later, without a doctorate, he was hired by the department of chemical engineering and materials science. His work, which involved the mathematical modeling of chemical reactions, contributed to the design of safer, more efficient chemical reactors.
Aris earned a Ph.D. by correspondence from the University of London in 1960; he received a doctor of science degree from the university in 1964.
Eminent in his field, Aris soon rated an entry a real one in Who's Who in America. But sometime in the early 1970s, Who's Who also requested a biography from Aris Rutherford.
Aris wrote back and explained the mistake. But the requests continued, each more officious than the last. What could the professor do but oblige?
And so, in the 38th edition of Who's Who in America (1974-75), Aris appears twice: in Volume 1 as himself, and in Volume 2 as Aris Rutherford, who leaps to life in 16 lines on Page 2,672.
In this farcical account, Aris MacPherson Rutherford was born in Strath Spey, Scotland, on April 10, 1930, the son of Archibald MacPherson Rutherford and the former Ephygeneia Aristeides. In 1948, when he was just 18, he earned a diploma from the Strath Spey and Glenlivet Institute of Distillation Engineering. Several advanced degrees followed.
In 1955, after a stint with the Argyll and Sutherland Regiment, Rutherford became the chief design engineer and tester for the Strath Spey Distillation Co. He came to the United States the next year.
From 1960 to 1964, when he joined the Minnesota faculty, Rutherford was a visiting professor of distillation practice at the Technological Institute of the Aegean, in Corinth.
He wrote three books, "Sampling Techniques" (1957), "Distillation Procedures" (1963) and "American Football: A Guide for Interested Scots" (1960).
Rutherford survived only a year. When the news media got wind of the hoax, Aris came clean, and Who's Who expunged his doppelganger from future editions.
Aris' own books, all very real, include "The Optimal Design of Chemical Reactors" (Academic Press, 1961); "Mathematical Modeling: A Chemical Engineer's Perspective" (Academic Press, 1999); and "Explicatio Formarum Litterarum The Unfolding of Letterforms: From the First Century to the Fifteenth" (St. Paul: Calligraphy Connection, 1990).
A former Guggenheim fellow, Aris authentically belonged to many learned societies, including the American Chemical Society, the Society for Mathematical Biology and the Society of Scribes and Illuminators.
The Indiana Classical Conference has named Marilyn Bisch, lecturer in Latin at Indiana State University, as its 2005 Post-Secondary Teacher of the Year.
The ICC is the official statewide organization for teachers, scholars and laypersons interested in the study of classical Greek and Roman languages and cultures. It was founded in 1963 to promote the appreciation, study and teaching of the classics in Indiana. The annual award recognizes outstanding service to university students and to the profession of classical scholarship.
In presenting the award, ICC president David S. Banta, assistant professor of classics at Hanover College, remarked that Bisch's "work in building up and maintaining the classics program at Indiana State University is highly laudable, and we in the Indiana Classical Conference are quite proud, even somewhat humbled, to be able to recognize this service through this award."
While the ICC award applauds Bisch's efforts in building the classical language program at ISU, she insists students are the real reason for the program's growth and strength.
"ISU students are smart and curious. They know there is real value in learning about ancient Greece and Rome," she said. "Classical languages profoundly influenced the English language. Classical cultures are the foundation of modern American, democratic society. To learn about a classical culture is to better understand our own. To learn a Classical language is to better understand how all languages, even computer languages, work. Those are benefits that translate into academic success, better grades and higher test scores in any major."
A report compiled in May shows that students who had completed at least one year of Latin at ISU between Spring 2003 and Spring 2005 had an average cumulative grade point average of 3.22 on a 4.0 scale. In addition, the report shows that 86 percent of those students had either graduated from the university or were continuing students at ISU.
Bisch became a member of the ISU classics faculty in 1998. During this time, enrollments in classical language courses have consistently increased, with enrollments in first-year Latin language courses alone more than quadrupling. She currently teaches all levels of Latin and ancient Greek language, courses in ancient literature and culture for the Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics and the University Honors Program, and is academic advisor to classical language students. Bisch also serves as faculty advisor for the ISU Gamma Alpha chapter of Eta Sigma Phi, the national classical honorary society.
This student organization sponsors campus and community events, including Latin Fest and other outreach programs for area high school Latin students.
The ISU Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics offers classical language students minors in Latin, Latin teaching and classical studies. Students can also combine Latin with study in linguistics or a modern language for a major in cross linguistics.
Coesper erat: tunc lubriciles ultravia circum
Urgebant gyros gimbiculosque tophi;
Moestenui visae borogovides ire meatu;
Et profugi gemitus exgrabuere rathae.
O fuge Iabrochium, sanguis meus! Ille recurvis
Unguibus, estque avidis dentibus ille minax.
Ububae fuge cautus avis vim, gnate! Neque unquam
Faederpax contra te frumiosus eat!
Vorpali gladio juvenis succingitur: hostis
Manxumus ad medium quaeritur usque diem:
Jamque via fesso, sed plurima mente prementi,
Tumtumiae frondis suaserat umbra moram.
Consilia interdum stetit egnia mene revolvens;
At gravis in densa fronde susuffrus erat,
Spiculaque ex oculis jacientis flammea, tulseam
Per silvam venit burbur labrochii!
Vorpali, semel atque iterum collectus in ictum,
Persnicuit gladis persnacuitque puer:
Deinde galumphatus, spernens informe Cadaver,
Horrendum monstri rettulit ipse caput.
Victor Iabrochii, spoliis insignis opimis,
Rursus in amplexus, o radiose, meos!
O frabiose dies! CALLO clamateque CALLA!
Vix potuit lastus chorticulare pater.
Coesper erat: tune lubriciles ultravia circum
Urgebant gyros gimbiculosque tophi;
Moestenui visae borogovides ire meatu;
Et profugi gemitus exgrabuere rathae.
[Footnote 1: _Coesper_ from _Coena_ and _vesper_.]
[Footnote 2: _lubriciles_ from _lubricus_ and _graciles_. See the
Commentary in Humpty Dumpty's square, which will also explain
_ultravia_, and--if it requires explanation--_moestenui_.]
[Footnote 3: _Sanguis meus_: cf. Verg. Aen. 6. 836, "Projice tela
manu, sanguis meus!"]
[Footnote 4: _egnia_: "muffish" = segnis; ... "uffish" = egnis.
This is a conjectural analogy, but I can suggest no better solution.]
[Footnote 5: _susuffrus_ : "whiffling" :: _susurrus_ : "whistling."]
[Footnote 6: _spicula_: see the picture.]
[Footnote 7: _burbur_: apparently a labial variation of _murmur_,
stronger but more dissonant.]
Qualis dominus, talis et servus.
(Petronius, Satyricon 58)
Whatever kind of master (you see), that is the kind of slave (you have).
(pron = KWAH-lis DOH-mih-noos TAH-lis eht SER-woos)
Comment: This statement comes out of a culture hierarchically structured, and
one, obviously, where the institution of slavery was common and accepted.
Transfer the idea to any of our hierarchical structures and try it on for size:
Whatever kind of employer, that is the kind of employee.
Whatever kind of church leader, that is the kind of church member.
Whatever kind of parent, that is the kind of child.
Whatever kind of teacher, that is the kind of student.
Whatever kind of political leader, that is the kind of community.
There is some truth to this statement, especially in relationships where
hierarchy plays a significant role, because the person at the top has a great
deal of power to shape ad control the structure of things. As he/she controls,
the choices that those under him/her have become fewer, and their development is
constrained to the structures that the hierarch allows.
But the statement is also false. There is a uniqueness in each human being that
often enough rises above the constraints that are placed on him/her. It
manifests, and demonstrates itself. If caught in a hierarchical structure,
those persons are often seen as heroes or persons of great fortitude and
courage. Despite the constraints, they find their way.
A rare seal bearing a picture of Jesus on one side was discovered at an archeological dig in the old city of Tiberias on Thursday.
The other side of the seal, which dates from the sixth century, depicts a cross and bears the inscription "Christos."
The seal was discovered by two volunteers, employees of the American and British embassies.
Prof. Yizhar Hirschfeld of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who is directing the dig, said the seal apparently belonged to a high-ranking church official, and indicated that the church in Tiberias "was stronger than we had thought."
Need something to do for 24 hours? Well, you’re in luck, because the Austin-Murray Classics Fund and the Western Traditions freshman seminar classes are presenting an all-day, all-night reading of all 24 books of Homer’s Iliad.
Various readers will participate in the “Iliathon,” which begins at 4 p.m. Friday and ends at the same time Saturday.
Europa Nostra, the pan-European heritage federation that is the representative platform for over 200 heritage NGOs active throughout Europe, has launched a final appeal to halt the operation of Yortanlı Dam, pending a comprehensive plan for the safeguarding of the ancient site of Allianoi, near Bergama.
Allianoi's rescue excavation, which started in 1994, will stop when flooded by the waters of Yortanlı Dam. According to customary procedure, the State Waterworks Authority (DSİ) would have released water and flooded the ancient city; however, the İzmir Board of Monuments overruled the decision by designating the area a cultural and historical heritage site of the first degree and asked the DSİ to postpone the flooding and find a way to protect the cultural heritage of Allianoi before operating the dam.
Throughout history Allianoi was known as the land of the health god, Asklepion. Allianoi was established during the Hellenistic age and reached its peak in the second century under the rule of Roman Emperor Hadrian. Up until the 11th century, it was regarded as one of the world's most important health centers.
Europa Nostra President Otto von der Gablentz addressed an open letter to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and urged the Turkish government to prevent the impending destruction of the Roman baths at Allianoi.
"This appeal has been launched on the basis of mounting opposition against the flooding of Allianoi, both locally and internationally," said Gablentz. "Allianoi was declared a first degree archaeological site and flooding the site would thus constitute an illegal act. The Board of Monuments has therefore called for the postponement of the flooding, pending a report by the Culture and Tourism Ministry on adequate measures for the conservation of Allianoi."
"Allianoi bears witness to an important period of European history and forms part of our common European heritage. We sincerely hope that the Turkish government will find a way to safeguard Allianoi, confirming its determination to fully integrate the important objective of the conservation and enhancement of our common European heritage in its policies and priorities," stressed von der Gablentz in the letter.
The European Union has also joined the international campaign to save Allianoi. European Commissioner for Enlargement Olli Rehn has sent a letter about the issue to Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül. In addition, Nikolaos Sifunakis, chairman of the European Parliament Committee on Culture and Education, has written to the Turkish ambassador to the EU and raised the matter at the October Plenary Session of the European Parliament.
In September, Europa Nostra, together with ICOMOS and the European Association of Archaeologists, sent a letter to Ali Babacan, the Turkish minister of state for EU relations, and to other members of the Turkish government on this matter but to date has not yet received a reply explaining the position of the Turkish government. At the same time Europa Nostra launched an on-line campaign (www.europanostra.org/save_allianoi.html) seeking wider citizen support for the Allianoi appeal. This campaign continues to gain momentum, with supporting signatures received from 25 countries.
Marion True, who resigned last month as the antiquities curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, amid accusations that she failed to disclose details about the purchase of a vacation home in Greece, received a loan for that home from a wealthy art patron whose collection the Getty had just bought, according to a report in The Los Angeles Times. Ms. True, who is on trial in Rome on charges of conspiring to import illegally excavated antiquities for the Getty's collection, received the $400,000 loan from Lawrence Fleischman in 1996, three days after the Getty paid $20 million to acquire part of a renowned collection of Greek, Roman and Etruscan antiquities owned by Mr. Fleischman and his wife, Barbara, the newspaper reported, citing loan documents and interviews. The couple gave the rest of the collection, valued at much more than $20 million, to the museum. The loan from Mr. Fleischman was used to repay money Ms. True had borrowed in 1995 in an original loan for the house, according to the article. When Ms. True stepped down in October, the Getty said only that she "failed to report certain aspects of her Greek house purchase transaction in violation of Getty policy." Ms. True's lawyer, Harry Stang, said yesterday that any implication that the loan from the collectors had any bearing on the sale and gift of their collection was false, adding that Ms. True's involvement in negotiations for the collection ended long before the loan offer was made. Ms. Fleischman, whose husband died in 1997 and who joined the Getty's board in 2000, said in an interview yesterday that she was aware of the loan but did not report it to the board because she did not believe it presented an ethical conflict. "Looking back is very easy," she said. "At the time, I was, well, call it naïve or inexperienced." She added, "I do stand corrected, but I don't stand condemned."
In Finnia speculatores plurimi
Acta diurna Helsinkiensia (Helsingin Sanomat) nuperrime rettulerunt plures esse in Finnia hodie speculatores quam umquam ante. Homines ad speculationem institutos et eruditos esse circiter quinquaginta, ex quibus triginta Russiae servirent.
Ita copiam speculatorum Russorum in eundem numerum revertisse, qui tempore belli frigidi fuisset. Circiter triginta esse homines, qui maxime res civiles specularentur, viginti, qui de rebus militaribus notitiam inquirerent. Plerosque ex eis esse legatos diplomaticos, alios personam gerere investigatoris, redactoris, negotiatoris vel studentis. Actiones eorum omnium maximam partem in regionem Helsinkiensem conferri.
Marian Catholic senior Katie Moore's academic success might be traced back to the civilization she is studying.
In addition to being a member of the National Honor Society, Moore also is part of the National Junior Classical League, the Latin version of the NHS. The state-qualifying swimmer is a fourth-year student in Latin. She might study pharmacy, and knowing Latin terms are helpful in the medical field.
Quite simply, Moore is enthralled with ancient Roman society.
"It's an amazing culture," Moore said. "They are the pioneers of everything we have."
Moore, who qualified for this weekend's IHSA state championships, is a Speedo All-American, an honor awarded to a varsity athlete who maintains at least a 3.78 GPA for two years.
The championships start Friday at Evanston and continue Saturday.
She qualified by winning the 100 butterfly in 1:00.95 Saturday at the Lincoln-Way East Sectional.
"It was the best feeling in the world to get first because this was my last chance," Moore said.
She also was part of the 400 freestyle relay team that finished third (3:41.94) and qualified. Other team members are Beth Nagel, Anna Moorman and Meghan VonSchaumburg. Nagel also qualified in the 100 freestyle (:54.02).
Moore and her classmates are translating Virgil's Aeneid, which is about the adventures of Aeneas, the legendary Trojan hero who survived the fall of Troy. The first six books of the work were modeled after Homer's Odyssey and the last six on the Iliad.
"Their ability, Virgil and Cicero, to narrate story with such great detail, is just something," Moore said. "Aeneid is the Roman version of the Iliad and that is also what we're doing is comparing the works."
Moore got her start swimming in Ridge Park on the Chicago's Southwest Side. She learned through lessons from the Chicago Park District.
"I really had a chance to work on the fundamentals and that's what I'll never forget," Moore said. "Without that experience, I wouldn't be where I am now."
The favorite horses of both Alexander the Great (Bucephalus) and Julius Caesar both had atavistic mutations - extra toes. Horses normally have only one toe per foot but are descended from horses with three or four toes on each limb.
The biggest medieval manuscript in the world, the Codex Gigas or Devil's Bible, should be exhibited again in Prague more than 350 years after it was carried off from the city as war booty by Swedish troops.
Created at the start of the 13th century, the parchment manuscript was considered at the time as the "the eighth wonder of the world," due to its impressive proportions (92 x 50.5 x 22 cm), its 624 pages and weight of 75kg.
"Some 160 donkeys paid for its creation with their skin," explained Miroslava Hejnova, who is in charge of the historic and musical collection of the national library.
The Stockholm royal library has exceptionally agreed to loan the giant manuscript for an exhibition planned for the start of 2007 in part of the Clementium, the former Jesuit college built from 1653 to 1726 in the heart of ancient Prague.
The masterpiece is the work of one monk alone, at the same time copier, illustrator and graphic designer, from the Podlazice monastery, in the centre of the current Czech Republic. The monastery was destroyed in the religious wars of the 15th century.
The manuscript includes the old and new testaments, as well as historic texts such as the "Chronica Boemorum," (Chronicle of the Czechs) written in Latin in the 12th century and the work of the historian Flavius Josephe (between 37-100 AD).
According to legend, the creator of the Codex Gigas was condemned to be walled up alive for a serious crime.
'A cute appearance '
The manuscript was, it is said, the fruit of one single night's work aimed at atoning for the crime and creating something that would glorify the monastery forever.
But to achieve such a feat, the monk had to get the devil's help. Once the masterpiece was complete, the monk slipped a portrait of his "helper" in the manuscript as recognition of the aid.
At the Stockholm royal library, visitors have the chance to see the 50cm high illustration of the devil.
"To tell the truth, he seems to have a cute appearance, of someone in a very good mood," smiled Heynova.
In Prague, the manuscript, only protected by a wood cover, will be on show alongside other documents from the Middle Ages.
"It is sometimes disappointing when displaying a manuscript. In fact, you cannot let everyone finger through it, you have to select just two pages," explained the director of the national library, Vlastimil Jezek, who hopes to attract at least 50 000 visitors for the exhibition.
Like many other priceless objects, the manuscript was taken as war booty at the end of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) by soldiers under the Swedish general Koenigsmark from the famous Prague collection of the Hapsburg emperor and arts patron, Rudolf II (1552-1612).
"They took the most valuable objects of the collection," said Hejnova. Soldiers also carried off the Codex Argenteus, written in silver and gold letters around 750 and today housed in Uppsala, central Sweden.
Nec temere nec timide
Neither rashly nor timidly
(pron = neck TEH-meh-reh neck TIH-mih-deh)
Comment: This appears as a part of several family mottoes. The word “temere”
can mean several things in addition to “rashly”: thoughtlessly, by chance,
without cause, at random.
The idea here is an implied imperative: don’ do anything in a thoughtless, rash
way, but on the other hand, when you begin to do something, don’t walk into it
full of self-doubt and second guessing yourself either. Wrapped up in these
four words is an admonition to self-reflecting and really, self-knowledge and
We’ve all done things rashly, and if you are like me, most often regretted it
later. I also spent much of my young adult life struggling with a timidity
(another word for fear) that was rooted in a lack of self-confidence. It is
simple and agonizing misery to enter into everything that one does worried and
afraid, and it always affects the outcome of the thing one is doing. I have
also come to appreciate how much fun spontaneity can be (rashness without the
attitude), and how helpful care for details can be (timidity without the
neuroses). And this is an ever changing rhythm that, on any day, can just
become attitude and neuroses again!
Somewhere, within ourselves, there is a rhythm, a dance, a melody, verse and art
that can only be expressed with the combination of highs and lows, of
spontaneity and specificity. Before we get there, though, we have to see who
we are, really, and accept that. I think, finally, that both rashness and
timidity can be two different responses to self-hatred.
Don't tell students at Catoctin High School that ancient Greek is a dead language.
The kids in Frederick Brainerd's ancient Greek class use it in their instant messaging.
And don't tell them Latin is dead, either.
"The pope speaks it, too, and he's not dead," said Luke Baseley, a junior at the high school. "So Latin is not dead."
Catoctin High might be the only public high school in Maryland to teach both languages. Although Latin is taught elsewhere in Frederick County and widely throughout the state - including some Anne Arundel high schools - ancient Greek is taught only at Catoctin, where 28 students are enrolled for Brainerd's class next semester.
Students at Catoctin said they study Latin and ancient Greek for a number of reasons, from an interest in history to a desire to boost their vocabulary skills for their SATs. But all agreed it was an important and wise choice.
Freshman Lindsay Puvel said she chose to take Latin because "it's the basis for every other language." She also plans to take ancient Greek after completing the required Latin classes.
"You feel smart taking Latin or Greek" because they aren't languages most people study, she said. "It's an elite group to be in."
Brainerd's students are more like students of 100 years ago than their peers today.
In 1905, more than half of American high-schoolers studied Latin, compared with 1.3 percent in 2000, according to the most recent American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages study.
Brainerd's students get more than just a grade in his class. They have fun using the Greek alphabet as secret code in writing instant messages and leaving notes on the chalkboard. There are academic benefits as well.
"Seventy to 80 percent of English words are derived from Greek and Latin," said Brainerd, who teaches both languages. "A lot of [my] students recognize the value of Latin and Greek roots in English."
Brainerd majored in Latin and ancient Greek at Maine's Bowdoin College, and he later earned a master's degree in education from Tufts University outside Boston. He has been a teacher in Frederick County for 16 years.
In a state where the most frequently taught languages are Spanish and French, recent estimates show that almost half of Maryland high school students are studying no foreign language, at a time when many educators regard it as increasingly important.
Brainerd said the study of foreign language, particularly Latin and ancient Greek, helps students in classes and on tests required for graduation.
"We can really get nitpicky about grammar," Brainerd said. "But it gives students a great advantage on high-stakes testing."
Ken Getzandanner, a senior, agreed: "I learned more about grammar in [Latin] class than in English class."
Students at Catoctin perform better than their peers statewide on the Maryland High School Assessments, which students starting with the class of 2009 must pass to graduate.
More than 67 percent of Catoctin students who took the sophomore English assessment exam last year passed, compared with about 58 percent of students statewide, according to figures released last week by the State Department of Education.
Brainerd wrote the ancient Greek curriculum in response to student interest. Catoctin has offered ancient Greek every other semester for eight years.
Montgomery County has the most foreign language offerings among public school systems in the state, but no ancient Greek. Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Russian, Spanish and Spanish for Spanish-speakers are taught in Montgomery's high schools.
And Montgomery, along with Carroll, Anne Arundel, Frederick and Prince George's counties, teaches American Sign Language, although none offer it for foreign language credit, an option that would have to be approved by the State Board of Education.
The study of Latin and ancient Greek is striking amid the technology that permeates the students' lives.
Fifteen of the 24 Maryland school systems offer Latin at the high school level.
According to the Linguistic Society of America, Latin and ancient Greek are considered dead because they are no longer spoken as a first language in the forms found in ancient texts.
Ancient Greek slowly evolved into modern Greek in a process similar to the way Latin evolved into modern-day Italian, Spanish, French, Romanian and other languages, according to the society.
More than 7,900 students in Maryland studied Latin in the 2004-2005 school year, according to unofficial state estimates.
As of Oct. 14 in Montgomery County, 1,483 high school students were enrolled in Latin classes, said Judith Klimpl, foreign language supervisor for the school system. Frederick County, with a school system about one-fourth the size of Montgomery County's, has 1,189 students in its high school Latin program, according to Susan Helm Murphy, foreign language curriculum specialist for the system.
Brainerd's students said the main reason they study the classic languages is their teacher.
"I wouldn't have gone so far in Latin if Mr. Brainerd hadn't been the teacher," Getzandanner said.
Students do more than just read and write in his classics classes. They also learn about the ancient cultures through art projects and other hands-on activities. Next semester, Brainerd and his students plan to make a model of Mount Vesuvius, and with help from the Earth systems science research class, they will create a volcanic explosion and bury Pompeii.
The ancient Romans didn’t have the Internet, but they coined the phrase you need to remember when thinking about first-page search engine recognition—Buyer Beware!
Eva Brann, a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is one of 12 recipients of the 2005 National Humanities Medal. President George Bush presented the medal to Miss Brann and other distinguished scholars in a ceremony at the White House Thursday, November 10. It is the first time a St. John’s faculty member has received this prestigious national award.
The National Humanities Medal, first awarded in 1989 as the Charles Frankel Prize, honors individuals and organizations whose work has deepened the nation’s understanding of the humanities, broadened citizens’ engagement with the humanities, or helped preserve and expand America’s access to important humanities resources.
Miss Brann is the longest-serving tutor at St. John’s College, which is known for a curriculum centered on the study of the seminal works of Western civilization. She joined the college in 1957. A Jewish immigrant from Berlin, Miss Brann went to Brooklyn College and later earned her master’s in classics and a doctoral degree in archaeology at Yale University. At St. John’s, she was the first woman to be named dean, serving in this important position from 1990-97.
The St. John’s College community was pleased and proud to hear of Miss Brann’s award, said St. John’s President Christopher Nelson. “Eva has been a member of the faculty for nearly 50 years,” he said. “She has touched the lives of more students, alumni, and friends of the college than anyone ever has. She has long been our most effective and beloved ambassador. Eva is a gift to the spirit of liberal education.”
St. John’s Dean Michael Dink described Miss Brann as a “model tutor.” “She set a daunting standard for all subsequent deans in terms of intellectual leadership,” he said. “She has also been an articulate spokesperson for the value of the liberal arts. She is sensitive and attentive to the needs of the community.”
Alumni, Mr. Dink noted, “are devoted to her,” and when Miss Brann teaches community offerings, such as Summer Classics in the college’s Santa Fe program, her classes fill immediately. “She has both intellectual and philosophical depth, and yet she’s plainspoken. She can bring a philosophical problem to life with her insight.”
Miss Brann’s latest book is Open Secrets / Inward Prospects: Reflections on World and Soul (2004). She has produced many publications, including Homeric Moments: Clues to Delight in Reading the Odyssey and the Iliad (2002); The Music of The Republic: Essays on Socrates’ Conversations and Plato’s Writings (2004); The World of the Imagination (1992); What Then, Is Time? (1999); and The Ways of Naysaying: No, Not, Nothing, and Nonbeing (2001). Brann’s long history of academic posts and honors includes fellowships with NEH and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a seat on the Maryland Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (1988-1996).
The other honorees include: Walter Berns, professor emeritus at Georgetown University and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute; etiquette columnist Judith Martin, also known as Miss Manners; Col. Matthew Bogdanos, who led the investigation into the 2003 destruction of the Iraq Museum, an effort that has led to the recovery of 5,000 artifacts; historian John Lewis Gaddis; legal scholar Mary Ann Glendon; historian Alan Kors; art historians and appraisers Leigh and Leslie Keno; history and museum patrons Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman; and an editorial team working on George Washington's papers at the University of Virginia.
Quid Jacques Chirac dixerit
Jacques Chirac, praesidens Francogalliae, postquam diu exspectatum est, ut aliquid de tumultibus Francogalliam iam per duas septimanas vexantibus publice diceret, tandem die Dominico orationem de illo gravi discrimine habuit.
Affirmavit regimen Francogalliae summo studio id acturum esse, ut suburbiis ordo et securitas restituerentur.
Fieri non posse, quin ei, quorum opera tantae clades conflatae essent, a magistratibus deprehenderentur et punirentur.
Flagitavit autem etiam iustitiam et aequalitatem in tumultibus coercendis servandas esse.
Quo diutius autem violentiae in Francogallia durant, eo minus cives regimini suo confidere videntur.
Italian archaeologists have unveiled the latest major find to emerge from the Roman forum - an ivory statue of an emperor, probably Marcus Aurelius or Septimius Severus .
The bust is unique - there are no other examples of statues like this made in ivory .
Very few ancient Roman ivory objects have survived to the present day because ivory is a biodegradable material .
Those that have not withered away over the last 2,000 years are mostly tomb decorations and small plaques .
The archaeologists found the statue at the Forum's Templum Pacis (Temple of Peace), which they started excavating last December .
The emperor is depicted in 'Greek philosopher' pose, wearing a tunic with his right hand raised and his head slightly inclined .
This has led experts to believe it may be Marcus Aurelius (emperor 161-180 AD), author of a famous philosophical work, Meditations .
The other likely candidate is Septimius Severus (193-211 AD), a prudent but ruthless ruler who came from the North African city of Leptis Magna (in present day Libya) .
The bust is 25cm tall and blackened by fire damage .
This may have occurred during the 192 AD blaze that devastated the Templum Pacis .
Emperor Vespasian (69-79 AD) built the temple in 72 AD to house the spoils from the suppression of the First Jewish Revolt by his son Titus - later emperor 79-81 AD - along with Greek masterpieces collected by Nero (54-68 AD) .
After the 192 AD fire, described by Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus, the temple was restored by Septimius Severus .
The excavation of the site has also uncovered a beautiful, multi-coloured marble floor and parts of the temple's enormous columns .
The ivory-statue coup comes shortly after another jackpot find - a huge marble head of Emperor Constantine (305-337 AD) discovered in July at Trajan's Forum .
The 60cm-high head, which was found in good condition, showed Constantine in stylised glory, at the time of his triumphant entry into Rome after beating rival Emperor Maxentius at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge (312 AD) .
It was probably sculpted between 312 and 325 AD .
Sub nive quod tegitur, dum nix perit, omne videtur.
What is under the snow is covered. Then, the snow melts away, and reveals
(pron = soob NEE-weh kwod TEH-gih-toor doom nicks PEH-rit OHM-neh wih-DEH-toor)
Comment: From one angle, this proverb (which I have translated a little more
freely than usual) makes the well-known point about not judging the inside from
first glance on the outside. What is under the snow may be crocuses and
daffodils waiting to bloom, or cigarette butts thrown down with other litter.
The snow both hides a secret beauty and a messy human habit.
This proverb also suggests another dynamic in life—that there are layers to who
we are. As we live our lives, and with any intent enter a process of
self-understanding or self-realization, we will soon discover that there are
layers to us, and the more we peel away, the more we discover, the more there
is to peel away and discover!
My wife and I once owned a house that was about a hundred years old. Over the
twelve years that we lived there, we slowly, room by room, restored the house
to its original Arts and Crafts style. It meant in most rooms stripping away
decades of paint and paper that had been layered over original beautiful
wood-work. Previous owners had attempted to make the house more beautiful,
more livable by adding layers on. We found the real beauty of that house was
many layers deep, hiding away. It had been there all along.
Human life has a more natural process (than sandpaper and stripping chemicals)
for discovering what is underneath. The natural rhythms and relationships of
life will melt away the covering layers, if we allow, and show us ourselves.
We have to be willing to see—the flowers and the garbage.
According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the earliest form of golf is attributed to the Romans. Over 2,000 years ago, as Rome expanded its borders as far north as Britannia, invading armies carried with them a home-grown game called paganica, practised with a stick and a stitched leather ball stuffed with feathers. The idea of hitting a ball as far as possible towards a defined target seemed to catch on. Through the centuries, games similar to paganica developed in England, France, Italy, the Netherlands and China. Modern golf developed in Scotland where the feathery ball, identical to that used for paganica, was standard for several centuries. It was replaced only in the mid-19th century when the first rubber ball – the guttie – was introduced.
So, Congress, some of you want to build a 1,951-mile wall to close off America's southern border?
Interesting, but not original.
As the people who'd be footing the bill, we have one request: Consider any of these examples -- none of which stopped those who really wanted to cross into a country from doing so -- before you consider spending taxpayers' money on such folly.
100s: Roman Emperor Hadrian orders construction of a wall in northern England to mark the boundary of his empire -- and keep the barbarians to the north at bay.
Villaggio scomparso rivede la luce. Nei giorni scorsi la Guardia di Finanza di Isili ha individuato nelle campagne del paese un importante sito archeologico. Le ispezioni hanno permesso di individuare un villaggio di epoca romana risalente al I/II secolo dopo Cristo, non censito e non sottoposto a vincoli da parte della soprintendenza archeologica. Sono stati trovati 230 pezzi tra reperti e frammenti.
Di particolare interesse archeologico le 25 monete di bronzo appartenenti all'epoca romana, sia imperiale che repubblicana, ed una presumibilmente d'origine punica. Sempre di epoca romana le quattro statuine, in pietra basaltica pertinenti a macine. Sono stati ritrovati, inoltre, frammenti di vasellame, anfore e laterizi.
In una seconda operazione, svolta sempre ad Isili, le fiamme gialle hanno bloccato alcune attivita' agricole che stavano danneggiando un importante sito nuragico e romano sottoposto a vincolo archeologico. L'aratura del terreno aveva provocato la rimozione di muri romani e il crollo di elementi cuneiformi di un nuraghe. Nel corso dell'operazione sono stati recuperati 40 frammenti di epoca nuragica e romana. I proprietari dei due terreni sono stati denunciati per violazione delle norme che tutelano il patrimoni archeologico.
Status necessitatis Francogalliae
Die Martis praefectis Francogalliae regionalibus auctoritas data est interdictiones egrediendi in suis territoriis pronuntiare ad novos conflictus impediendos.
Illam legem extraordinariam perferendam curavit regimen civitatis in conventu necessitatis, cui praefuit praesidens Jacques Chirac.
Tum primum post bellum Algerianum abhinc quinquaginta fere annos gestum in Francogallia accidit, ut lex, quae cives domo sua proficisci vetat, in usum reciperetur.
Quidquid fit cum virtute, fit cum gloria.
(Publilius Syrus, Sententia 538)
Whatever is done with courage is also done with glory.
(pron = KWIDkwid fit koom weer-TOO-teh fit koom GLOH-ree-ah)
Comment: Whether we are speaking of ancient Rome or the modern world, “glory” is
a fairly public acclamation for heroes, or for people famous for what the public
wants to see more of.
This proverb is making another point: the stuff of glory is courage, really.
Courage comes first. Most courageous people don’t self-identify as courageous,
largely I think because while they were working out their actions that are later
deemed courageous, they were feeling scared. According to this proverb, even
though the public may never have acclaimed them, they also acted in
glory—deserving of public fame and acclamation.
I think now of children who walk into a new school and face hundreds or
thousands of strange new faces—because parents have moved them to a new city.
I think now of men and women and children who sit for the chemo treatment one
more time, knowing how sick it will make them for a while.
I think of the fear in the faces of some of my students when classroom work
turns entirely into Latin—no English allowed, and then I think of the many
immigrants who have moved to my community and who go out into the world every
day with ONLY English to work with.
Courage. Actions done in courage and feeling the fear. Silent awards of
personal glory. Look around today. Where is courage at work? Can you see the
German archaeologists have notified they would like to continue the archaeological practices in Troy after Manfred Korfmann's death, who conducted excavations in Troy for a long time.
Peter Jablonka, the archaeologist in charge of the excavations, has said in his statement in Tübingen, licenses for digging received from Turkish positions have been under the name of Korfmann, therefore, they have requested a new license. Jablonka has also expressed German expectations of the Turkish government to establish a museum in Troy because it was Korfmann's longtime dream.
Jablonka and his team informed about their request for a research grant from the University of Tübingen, and that they will make small scale diggings under Troy in the upcoming years.
Craig Brown's exquisite disembowelling of the 'publicist' Max Clifford in these pages the other week would have reminded the Greek comedian Aristophanes (c. 450-386 BC) of his attacks on a similar pest in the Athenian world - the sukophantês (lit. 'fig-revealer': origin quite obscure).
The problem started with the Athenian reformer Solon (c. 640-560 BC) who instituted a legal system without a state prosecution service. The result was that all cases had to be brought privately. This worked perfectly well when a litigant had been personally harmed, but it created problems when the state's interests were at stake, e.g. the flouting of a citizenship law. So Solon, arguing that 'the best run state was one in which those who were not personally wronged were as diligent in prosecuting wrong-doers as those who were', established the principle that for certain types of offence, 'anyone who wanted to' could bring a prosecution. If the case was won, the prosecutor would receive a fixed reward. Hence the sukophantês, the professional nosey- parker, who made a living for himself looking about for any offence, however trivial, out of which he could make a swift buck by a successful prosecution, blackmail of a potential victim, or payments from someone who wanted a man prosecuted.
Quid in Australia acciderit
Vigiles Australiae quindecim homines deprehenderunt incursionibus subitis in urbibus Sydneio et Melburno susceptis.
Hac actione, cui quingenti fere custodes publici armati interfuerunt, ictus terroristicus perniciosissimus praeventus est, ut magistratus civitatis nuntiaverunt.
Qui incarcerati sunt, sibi iam armamentarium eiusdem generis chemicalium fecerant, quae ad bombardationes Londinii mense Iulio effectas adhibita sunt.
Operatio peracta est paucis diebus post, quam lex in Australia ita mutata est, ut ei, qui in suspicionem impetus terroristici praeparati incidissent, facilius in ius vocarentur.
Un piccolo frammento di un vaso greco verniciato di nero con l’«incredibile» raffigurazione, graffita su uno dei lati, del “Capo Iapigio” cosi come lo definivano gli antichi, corrispondente all’attuale Salento meridionale. Per la Soprintendenza per i Beni archeologici della Puglia, si tratta di «una delle scoperte più importanti che siano avvenute in Italia meridionale», anzi: una «scoperta così imprevista e clamorosa da aver fatto dubitare sulla stessa autenticità del reperto». E dal 16 novembre il frammento sarà in mostra a Taranto.
Il rinvenimento è stato fatto il 21 agosto 2003 durante uno degli scavi compiuti a Soleto da Thierry Van Compernolle, che proprio nella città salentina ha condotto scavi dal 1991 al 2005, prima con una missione della Libera università di Bruxelles, poi con una dell’Università Paul-Valery Montpellier III. Nel frammento del vaso, a prima vista del tutto insignificante - rileva la Soprintendenza archeologica - oltre al graffito del “Capo Iapigio” c’è «l’indicazione in alfabeto greco dei nomi, per lo più in forme abbreviate, di 12 città messapiche accanto a quello della colonia greca di Taras: una rappresentazione cartografica che ormai si definisce comunemente a livello internazionale “Mappa di Soleto”». Le incisioni da oltre due anni - sottolinea la Soprintendenza - attirano in modo intenso «l’attenzione del mondo scientifico internazionale».
D’intesa con lo scopritore, la Soprintendenza per i beni archeologici della Puglia ha deciso quindi di divulgare «l’eccezionale scoperta» realizzando negli spazi rinnovati al piano terra del Museo nazionale di Taranto una specifica mostra dedicata alla “Mappa di Soleto”. Nella mostra - che sarà inaugurata il 16 novembre prossimo - il frammento ceramico iscritto (Ostrakon) rappresenta il punto di arrivo di un percorso che colloca Soleto nella geografia antica del Salento, e la scoperta della “Mappa” sullo sfondo dei rinvenimenti archeologici avvenuti nella città salentina nel corso degli ultimi 20 anni, illustrando inoltre il reperto nei suoi diversi aspetti, in particolare epigrafici e linguistici.
For nearly 2,500 years, Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and revelry, has led his dancing followers round and round a 2-foot-tall vase.
Now the vase is on display at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, which bought the piece in 1983 to celebrate its centennial.
But Italian authorities are claiming it as looted property that rightfully belongs to them.
The institute, which has not been accused of wrongdoing, is one of eight American museums that Italian authorities last week said possessed objects allegedly dug illegally from ancient graves and ruins.
The Italians support their claim on the Minneapolis piece with a photo of a pottery fragment that appears to match the vase.
"We've not received any notification from the Italians and have no proof that the object was looted," said William Griswold, the museum's director. "If we have reason to believe an object has been stolen, we would absolutely want to respond in an ethical and legally responsible fashion."
Looting of ancient archaeological sites has increased dramatically in the past 40 years, experts say, spurred on by war, changing national boundaries, cheap air fares, poverty and increased interest in prime artifacts. A British government study in 2000 concluded that between $4 billion and $6 billion a year changes hands in illicit trade in antiquities and cultural items.
An investigation in L.A.
Questions about the Minneapolis vase surfaced as part of a decadelong Italian investigation of art bought by the Getty Museum in Los Angeles in the 1980s and early '90s. A former Getty curator, Marion True, goes on trial Wednesday in Rome on charges of conspiring to traffic in illicit antiquities.
Italian authorities claim that the Getty has 42 illegal objects. Last week that museum returned three pieces to Italy in hopes of settling the case and developing "a productive relationship with Italy."
Griswold was acting director of the Getty for a year before moving to Minneapolis last month. He said he had been briefed on the Getty's situation while working there but was not questioned by legal authorities about the antiquities, which were bought before he was hired.
The Minneapolis and Getty cases hinge in part on a cache of 10,000 Polaroids of looted objects that Italian police seized in a 1995 raid on a Swiss warehouse operated by Giacomo Medici, an antiquities dealer who last year was sentenced in Rome to 10 years in prison for trafficking in illegal art.
Medici, who is free while appealing his conviction, apparently bought antiquities from grave robbers, had them restored and then sold them to museums and private collectors through a network of respected art dealers. A Roman prosecutor claims to have a photo of Medici at the Getty beside an illicit vase the dealer sold the museum.
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts bought its vase "in good faith" from Robin Symes, a prominent British antiquities dealer in the 1980s, said museum spokeswoman Anne-Marie Wagener.
Symes was one of the Getty's main sources of antiquities. His reputation was questioned by that museum's staff even while they were doing business with him, according to internal memos. In 1987 Symes was referred to as "a fence" by Harold Williams, then chief executive of the Getty Trust, which oversees the museum, according to written notes secured by the Los Angeles Times.
A 'grand object' with a past
Michael Conforti, director of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., was head curator at the Minneapolis museum in 1983. He recommended the purchase of the vase, which is technically a "volute-krater" used to hold a mixture of water and wine.
During a phone interview last week, Conforti could not recall from whom the museum bought the piece, which he described as a "rather grand object," but he said the museum wanted it "to support the teaching mission of the institution."
One figure on the vase -- a young woman holding a child satyr on her shoulders -- is apparently unique among surviving Greek vases, according to the museum's label. It is essentially the same image that appears in a photo seized by Italian police.
Museums now tend do much more thorough research before acquiring an object than they did in the past, Griswold said. "But even in the 1980s, if there was suspicion that an object was excavated, it would not have been acquired."
On Friday, Italian authorities seeking seven objects they believe rightfully belong to Italy requested meetings with officials at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. They also claim that the Boston Museum of Fine Arts has more than 30 such items and that there are two each in New Jersey's Princeton University Art Museum and Virginia's Richmond Museum of Fine Art. In Ohio, art museums in Cleveland and Toledo are said to have one each.
Male agitur cum domino quem vilicus docet.
It goes badly with a master whom the manager of the estate teaches.
(pron = MAH-leh AH-gih-toor koom DOH-mih-noh kwem WEE-lih-koos DOH-ket)
Comment: I don’t buy this one. First things first: we have two technical terms
here that must be recognized: the dominus is the master of an estate who owns
slaves; the vilicus is the estate manager, a slave himself.
The implication of this proverb relies on the social constructs of ancient Rome:
what sort of master can you be who are always being given orders and
instructions by your slaves? Authority, power and respect always flows from
the top down; from masters to slaves, from men to women, from adults to
children, from the wealthy to the poor; from the rulers to the ruled; from
Romans to anyone else. You get the picture. Any other flow simply means that
something is wrong; things are not going well.
The exceptions to this social construction are so numerous as to be ridiculous.
On a day to day basis, though, it is clear to me that students may walk into my
classroom and have instruction to offer that is the best in that moment. How
very sad if I cannot see that, accept that, or somehow think that a poor
reflection on me.
It actually goes well for anyone whom life itself becomes instruction.
Underwater archaeologists are set to uncover unknown secrets of Elephanta island, buried in the Arabian Sea. Extensive explorations on the island—its shores and the beaches—have revealed a treasure indicating existence of a rich trade with the late Roman Empire during the 4th to 7th century AD.
The findings establish it as a significant port of the period—a fact hitherto unknown. And that people on the west coast liked imported goods and Roman wine. The small island, east of Mumbai, was, so far, best known for its cave temples and rock-cut images, specially of the monolithic elephant which once stood on its southern tip.
With the Underwater Archaeology Wing of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) finding late Roman amphorae, coins and sherds of pottery — including red polished ware, black slipped ware, red ware and some gray ware — on Elephanta, the stage is now set for a proper excavation around the island. The finding had come as a surprise, since so far, large number of amphorae were found only in Kanchipuram and Arikamedu.
Amphora is one of the principal vessel shapes in Greek pottery. They are handled pots used to transport a variety of things including olives, cereals, oil, wine, fish and even metal.
Head of ASI’s Underwater Archaeology Wing Dr Alok Tripathi had been quietly exploring the island since 1988, but it’s only in the last two years that extensive explorations were done. The richest site turned out to be the area around village Mora Bandar on the island.
‘‘The discovery of a large variety of amphorae and other antiquities on the island may solve some of the historical riddles,’’ said Tripathi. In addition to indicating continuity of trade with the western world during 5th-7th century AD, the findings may also answer why Chalukya King Pulakesin II of Badami had invaded this small island with a tiny population and limited natural resources in 634 AD.
‘‘We probably know why he did it. Elephanta appears to have been a prosperous island with a thriving trade,’’ said the underwater archaeologist. It is all the more significant since around the same period, the cave temple on the island, enshrining Mahesmurti, was excavated.
Since the explorations had yielded rich treasures, the next logical thing is to undertake detailed survey and excavation. Tripathi said that the area around Mora Bandar is strewn with a large number of potsherds. ‘‘Even the sand on the shore, at the north and the east of the village, is full of potsherds washed away and rolled by the waves,’’ he said.
‘‘We will start excavation in the ongoing field season of 2005-06. Since exploration results have been encouraging, we expect Elephanta to be a rich heritage site,’’ Tripathi added. This is the second site which the wing will excavate, after Mahabalipuram.
Novum programma a re viaria
Ministri Finniae securitatem viarum meliorem reddere conantur, cum opera trium ministeriorum consociata novum programma commeatui publico tuendo in quinquennium proxime futurum excogitaverunt.
Quod consilium Susanna Huovinen, recens ministra a re viaria Finniae, in conventu ministeriali Unionis Europaeae palam fecit.
In hoc incepto, cui peragendo novissima technica informatica magno usui erit, praecipue commoda et condiciones parvulorum et civium aetate provectorum respicientur.
Ecclesia vetus in Israele reperta
Archaeologi Israeliani prope urbem Haifam ruinas ecclesiae Christianae veteris invenerunt, quam ex quarto saeculo originem ducere creditur.
Archaeologa Jardena Alexandre censet illam effossionem in inventis maxime insignibus ad Christianitatem primaevam attinentibus in toto orbe numerari posse.
Parietinae ecclesiae repertae sunt, cum fundamenta ad carcerem quendam amplificandum muniri coepta essent.
Our “Latin Lover” fields for us the bickering correspondence between Saint Augustine and Saint Jerome, speaking to us of their Latin teacher Donatus who once wrote the “Ars Grammatica”, still valid today...
Archeologists in Crete have found an important trove of archeological treasures containing some of the earliest known examples of Greek writing.
The culture ministry said the finds were excavated at a long-abandoned site on a hill overlooking the port of Chania in Western Crete, which has been identified with the Minoan city of Kydonia.
Among the discoveries was an amphora containing an intact text written in linear B, the language of the court at Mycenae where the legendary Agamemnon ruled.
Also found were two terracotta tablets containing texts in Linear A, an even older alphabet -- used around 1,700 years before the common era -- which has not yet been deciphered.
The ministry said the archeologists found evidence of a violent fire believed to have destroyed a town on the site around 1450 BCE. Excavations uncovered traces of a road and two ceramic ovens from the Roman period.
In a statement, the ministry said the site would be turned into an open-air museum with European Union funds.
The researchers also found traces of a cemetery containing amphorae and funerary urns dating around the time the ancient Greeks set off to invade Sicily in the late fifth century BCE. The vessels contained the bones of infants, indicating perhaps a high rate of infant mortality at that time.
Archaeologist William Donato and a team of researchers have confirmed a complex of ancient harbor works in shallow water off Bimini, 50 miles from Miami. In May 2005, the team investigated a little-known line of underwater stones located a mile from a controversial site known as the “Bimini Road.” The new mile-long line of stones was found and videotaped from the air. Subsequent dives revealed several large stone circles on the bottom, formed from large blocks of limestone arranged into circular patterns. The circles were spaced at regular intervals. Stone anchors, identical to ancient Phoenician, Greek, and Roman anchors, were also found. “These finds took us by surprise,” stated Dr. Greg Little, who organized the expedition. “The circles may be similar to ancient Mediterranean harbor ‘mooring circles.’”
Near the new site is the Bimini Road, a misnamed J-shaped underwater formation of stone blocks. A careful search there yielded two stone anchors in the 1800-foot long stone formation. “One of these is identical to unusual ancient Greek anchors found at Thera,” Little related. Several other artifacts were found, “but the most important finds directly contradict skeptical claims.” The team found numerous multiple tiers of blocks including one set of three on top of each other. “The top block has a U-shaped channel cut all the way across its bottom,” Little said. “The most definitive evidence was found under the massive blocks. We found rectangular slabs of smooth, cut stone literally stacked under several blocks. These were used as leveling prop stones. This is proof that the so-called Bimini Road was a breakwater forming an ancient harbor.”
The team took 20 hours of underwater video and 1000 photos. “It’s taken us five months to process the information and organize the evidence,” Little stated. “While the finds are definitive, the real problem is that a few skeptics wrote articles asserting the main formation was simply natural limestone. A hoax was perpetrated at Bimini by the skeptics, but you have to examine a 1978 report to understand it. Academic archaeologists and geologists don’t read that report. They cite later summaries, which are based on falsified data. The hoax is a disgrace, but it’s been actively supported by key people.”
Little prepared a free 30-page pdf report on the expedition and the hoax and produced a 73-minute DVD documentary. The report, containing 70 photos, can be downloaded at: http://www.mysterious-america.net/biminihoax.html )
Other silent letters reflect attempts to stuff the mish-mash of English into the orderly compartments of Latin.
During the 1500s, for instance, scholars decided it would be a great idea to alter the spelling of English words to reflect their Latin origins. Because "dette" and "douten," for instance, were derived from the Latin words "debitum" and "dubitare," respectively, these self-styled reformers inserted a silent "b" to create "debt" and "doubt."
(The process misfired when they added a silent "s" to "iland." They assumed "iland" had come from the Latin "insula," when in fact it's of Old English origin. But we're still stuck with the "s.")
Other silent letters immigrated on tiptoes into English from foreign languages. Many of the silent "p" words, for instance, were adopted from Greek: "pneumonia," "psalm," "pterodactyl."
A Roman settlement in Gloucestershire has been included on the Schedule of Ancient Monuments in recognition of its national importance as a heritage asset.
The settlement in Wickwar has been known since the 1970s. However its full nature and importance was not known until recently, thanks to work funded by South Gloucestershire Council and English Heritage.
Councillor Pat Hockey, executive member for planning, transportation and the strategic environment, said: “I am very pleased that the national importance of this site has been recognised.
"With this site and the Roman villas at Hawkesbury, Badminton and Horton South Gloucestershire it is clear that South Gloucestershire was as successful in Roman times as it is today."
Scheduling the settlement, which is believed to date from around the 2nd to 4th century AD, refers to the legal system for protecting nationally important archaeological sites in England.
Once a site is Scheduled, consent must be obtained from the Secretary of State for any works that affect it. Scheduling is carefully restricted to the most important sites of each type of monument and to those for which this designation provides the most appropriate protection.
The Wickwar settlement has been identified through extensive geophysical survey and a number of small trail excavations.
The survey results show that the central area of the town comprises a considerable number of stone buildings fronting the road, likely to be of both domestic and commercial function. There is also evidence of a number of small enclosures and also of industrial activity.
Numerous contemporary small finds have been reported from this area including metal objects, pottery and dressed stone.
There is also the presence of a curved feature in the north eastern part of the site which may represent a corner of the defensive ditch of a Roman fort.
It is of the characteristic ‘playing card’ shape associated with such features and it is certainly common for a town to be founded on the site of an earlier fort.
Italian authorities, investigating a global antiquities smuggling ring, reportedly have tracked plundered treasure to the Princeton University Art Museum and seven other major American museums.
The Princeton connection to a smuggling probe that has rocked the staid upper echelons of American museums centers on one or two clay vases from ancient Greece that Princeton owns.
The two vases, more than 2,300 years old, are showcased in separate one-piece displays in a public exhibit room in the Princeton museum, one of the nation's largest university art museums.
The Princeton museum begrudgingly revealed this week that Italian authorities sought information late last year on the two vases acquired by the museum in 1989.
"In December 2004, Italian authorities investigating an alleged violation of the laws of Italy requested details about the acquisition in 1989 of two ancient Greek painted ceramic vases by the Princeton University Art Museum," according to a statement from the museum in response to inquiries from The Times.
"In January 2005, the art museum provided Italian authorities with the information requested.
"Since that time, the museum has received no further communication from authorities in Italy, although they are quoted in recent press accounts as stating that they possess evidence that the two vases left Italy illegally and should be returned."
Princeton officials are adamant the museum obtained the vases legitimately and reject the allegation that either piece is a fenced antiquity.
"The museum purchased these vases in good faith and has no knowledge of any wrongdoing associated with their acquisition," Princeton art museum Director Susan M. Taylor said in a statement late Thursday.
One of the objects is a 12-inch-tall psykter, a mushroom-shaped wine-cooling vessel from approximately 510 B.C. in the Attic region of Greece, according to the museum.
The other is a 22-inch-tall Apulian red-figure loutrophoros, a type of ceremonial vase described by Oxford University as a vessel that held water for the bridal bath in weddings or was placed in the graves of unmarried women.
Princeton's loutrophoros dates back to about 330 B.C., in Italy's southeast region of Apulia, according to the museum.
Both vases are clay-red and black decorated with paintings of figures and objects.
Princeton's denials of impropriety come amid media reports published in the past two weeks that allegedly tie Princeton and other leading cultural centers - including New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art - to the Italian smuggling investigation.
The psykter is one of "many, many items" at the Princeton museum that Rome prosecutor Paolo Ferri said originated with convicted Roman antiquities trafficker Giacomo Medici, Bloomberg News reported in an Oct. 31 article.
But the psykter was the only item now at Princeton that the Bloomberg article identified as having been included in Italian court documents as an allegedly looted piece.
"Our museum has conducted a thorough search of its records and found nothing that indicates the museum has received any pieces - directly or indirectly - from Giacomo Medici," university spokeswoman Cass Cliatt stated in an e-mail Wednesday.
Michael Padgett, the museum's curator of ancient art since 1992, said he couldn't disclose from whom the museum acquired the psykter and loutrophoros because it's possible the pieces will become a matter for litigation.
At first, Padgett was adamant Wednesday that Italian authorities hadn't even contacted Princeton and that the museum initiated a review of the two vases in its approximately 60,000-item collection based only on press reports.
"To my certain knowledge, we haven't been contacted by the Italians," said Padgett, to whom museum spokeswoman Ruta Smithson had referred The Times' initial inquiries. "We're waiting for more information."
Padgett at first said he didn't know how to reconcile the apparent contradiction between his comment and the museum's repeatedly stated position that it has "cooperated with the Italian authorities by providing the information they have requested."
Later Wednesday, Padgett said he had misspoken.
"They did request information and that was provided over a year ago," he said.
His earlier denial simply meant that Princeton since last year has not heard anything further from Italian authorities, other than through press reports, Padgett said.
Taylor, who has been the museum's director since 2000, said Princeton won't fight to keep the vases if they turn out to have been obtained illegally.
"If proof of illegality is presented to the museum, the vases will be returned, as we have returned other items in the past," Taylor said.
Her comment reiterated a point Padgett made Wednesday.
Smithson said the Princeton museum, without prompting from outsiders, routinely vets items in its collection to verify that their provenance - or documented ownership history - is legitimate.
From time to time, not necessarily through any fault of the museum, an object is discovered to have been passed on by looters before reaching Princeton, Padgett said.
"It's not an unusual occurrence (either at Princeton or other museums) that something turns out to have been accidentally acquired that belongs to someone else," Padgett said.
The Princeton museum's acquisition policy is designed to avoid the need for belated discoveries of pillaged art.
"The acquisition policy of the Princeton University Art Museum requires extensive due diligence in researching all objects before adding them to its collection," museum officials said in Thursday's statement.
Taylor said the Princeton museum has a long history of cooperating with Italy in matters of disputed provenance. The Italian investigation reportedly has tracked more than 100 items looted from Italy - mostly from legally protected archaeological sites - to eight major U.S. museums and to galleries, private collections and museums in Europe and Asia.
A Twin Cities museum may be housing a stolen artifact
Italian authorities found photos of stolen artifacts that they believe are now in museums across the United States.
One of those pieces, a 4th Century Greek vase, may be at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
The vase is valued around $100,000, but proving it was or wasn't stolen may be difficult.
Mark Stansbury O'Donnell, an Art History Professor at the University of St. Thomas said, "The looting of ancient art has been going on since antiquity. There's no clean way of telling this piece was not looted or anything."
In a statement Friday, The Institute of Arts said, if "it is established that the Italian government has a legitimate claim, we will respond in an appropriate and responsible fashion."
The Institute of Arts said Italian investigators haven't contacted the museum yet.
Authorities have called the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, Calif. That museum is returning some artwork.
Omnia habet qui nihil concupiscit.
(Maximus Valerius, Facta et Ddicta Memorabilia 4.4.1)
He has everything who desires nothing.
(pron = OHM-nee-ah HAH-bet kwee NEE-hill kohn-koo-PEES-kit)
Comment: This might be a corollary to the proverb earlier this week which said
that greed grows with one’s amount of money. Both have in common the human
attachment to things or money, and the degree of our attachment measures out
the degree that we lose or cannot enjoy or cannot appreciate those very things
that we have.
It occurred to me the other day while driving home to my house in this north
Georgia neighborhood that the trees around me were as gorgeous in their fall
colors as I could ever remember seeing. Right now the shades of red and
yellow, orange and green and brown are so deep and vivid that they take my
breath away. Some are so alive with colors that they don’t look real! And I
wondered: do Georgians around here appreciate this? Do we get so caught up in
our desires and compulsions that we miss this free show of beauty? I suspect
On any given day I can and often do get caught up in what I don’t have or what I
do want. More than just a few minutes of that is time really lost from
appreciating what and who is in front of me.
Not a bad theme as we approach a holiday in this country that is called
Thanksgiving—one where I also suspect very many of us exercise many human
reactions that do not include gratitude.
Israelem esse delendum
In conventu studentium Teherani habito Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, praesidens Iraniae, Israelem maculam appellavit, quae ex charta geographica delenda esset.
Praeterea omnes moderatores islamicos, qui relationes cum Israele restituere conarentur et exsistentiam eius agnoscerent, vehementer vituperavit, quod orbis islamici deditionem et interitum confiterentur.
Sententia praesidentis Ahmadinejad a membris Unionis Europaeae et a Consilio Securitatis Nationum Unitarum damnata est.
Ahmadinejad autem verba sua non recantavit sed affirmavit se nomine nationis Iranianorum locutum esse.
Nihilo minus addidit Iraniam libro fundamentali Nationum Unitarum obligari neque vim contra Israelem adhibituram esse.
A 2,300-year-old Greek pot and two other antiquities that the Italian government says were stolen arrived in Rome yesterday after being surrendered by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Italian Ministry of Culture said.
The Getty museum handed over the pot, a bronze Etruscan candelabrum, and a 2,500-year-old Greek tombstone from Sicily days before its former antiquities curator, Marion True, 57, is scheduled to go on trial in Rome on charges of conspiracy and receiving 35 looted items, including the candelabrum.
The museum, which isn't charged with any crime, didn't admit to any wrongdoing.
''These are objects of great historic, artistic and scientific value that the Getty Museum, knowing their illicit provenance, has decided to spontaneously restore to Italy," the Ministry of Culture said in a statement yesterday.
Culture Minister Rocco Buttiglione announced last month that the Getty would be returning the items, which include the pot, or krater, used for mixing wine at drinking parties, decorated by the painter Asteas around 340 B.C.
The Getty said in a statement that it was returning the krater ''in the interest of settling the litigation and demonstrating the Getty's interest in a productive relationship with Italy," according to the Los Angeles Times. It's returning the other two objects based on its evaluation of evidence presented by Italy, the statement said.
True goes on trial Wednesday along with US dealer Robert Hecht, 86, who lives in Paris and New York.
Hecht is also charged with illicit export in helping supply the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Princeton University Art Museum in New Jersey, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Getty, and others, according to his indictment.
The MFA, which says it has not been contacted by Italian officials in connection with the case, released a statement last week. In it, they said they would contact Italian officials about the pieces in question.
''We've reached out to the Italian authorities," MFA spokeswoman Dawn Griffin said yesterday. ''The ball's in their court."
Hecht has denied the charges, and the Getty, speaking for True, who declined comment, has said it expects her to be exonerated. No museum has been charged with any crime.
It was a bad day in the year 406 B.C.
Euripides, an elderly playwright, was wandering around the palace, skulking in his gloom. For decades he had dedicated himself to the theater and written and directed more than 90 plays, performed before thousands of people. Yet for all his pains, he had won prizes for only three of his dramas, a minuscule number compared to his rivals Sophocles and Aeschylus.
More than once, he had been held up to public ridicule by the tart-tongued comedian Aristophanes. In sadness and anger, Euripides left his home in Athens and accepted an offer to live in distant Macedon, where he would write his last plays in self-imposed exile.
Euripides might have been more successful if he had not made a point of pointing out the flaws of the pagan gods who presided over Athens' destiny.
Like his personal friend Socrates, Euripides thought the stories of the old gods depicted the immortals as powerful beings with the morals of spoiled children.
Raised in democratic Athens, Euripides felt no qualms about walking freely around the royal palace of the Macedonian kings. Unfortunately, he did not realize that in a monarchy, certain parts of the palace are off limits to visitors, and he meandered into the king's apartments and into a pack of the king's guard dogs. The hungry dogs were not informed that the guest was possibly the greatest Greek dramatic writer of all time, and that was the end of Euripides.
Euripides' greatest play was perhaps the Bacchae, which he wrote in his last hours. This was the story of the introduction of the cult of the god Dionysios to Greece. The story went that the god Dionysios has been conceived by a union between Zeus, king of the gods, and the beautiful Semele, daughter of Cadmus, King of Thebes. When her sister, Agave, challenged Semele, saying that her lover could not be a god, she planted a seed of doubt in the heart of the princess.
Pining for proof of her lover's divine nature, she demanded and got an oath by the river Styx, the river of the dead whose name no god could violate, that he would show himself in divine glory. After many protests, Zeus reluctantly manifested himself to his doubting lover, but alas, the power of his majesty incinerated the mortal girl, doubts and all.
But at Semele's doom, Zeus discovered that she was pregnant with his child, the god Dionysios, and an immortal god, even unborn, he could not be destroyed. Stitching the young god into his thigh, Zeus brought his unborn child to birth, and eventually he was received into the pantheon of the gods as the patron of wine and ecstasy. For causing his mother to doubt her divine partner, the gods condemned Agave to perpetual madness, and she wandered the hills in a religious trance.
Euripides goes on to describe the unfolding of the drama. The throne of Cadmus was passed to Cadmus' grandson, Pentheus, his heir by the doubting Agave. Pentheus ruled Thebes with a rigid hand, until his kingdom was visited by the god Dionysios. Upon the god's arrival in the land, hundreds of maidens rushed
to the fields and forests to dance and sing in honor of the newly arrived god. But Pentheus, full of rage at a rival to his earthly glory, declared the new god to be an impostor and forbade his worship.
The god Dionysios came to earth in mortal form to visit the fuming Pentheus, who condemned the god and ordered his arrest. Dionysios was taken into bondage, but the prison which held him was shaken by an earthquake and he escaped. Arrested again, Pentheus confronted the god, who replied that the earthly king did not know what he was doing.
In a final and terrible confrontation with the veiled god, Dionysios offered the prudish king the opportunity to see the young maidens dancing in their skimpy clothes upon the mountains. Seduced by voyeurism, Pentheus agreed to the viewing, which leads to his doom.
When the prurient king dared to gaze on the dancing maidens in their wild abandon, they turned on him like crazed animals, and he was torn limb from limb, his own mother Agave ripping off his head with her bare hands in a moment of demented triumph. But this bloodbath hardly seemed like a moral judgment of an immortal god who was presumably endowed with heavenly wisdom.
In the last scene, the arrogant wine god reveals to the survivors the horror of what they have done, and explains to them how divine justice has been accomplished, for those who denied the power of the god have been destroyed by their own impious acts. The aged Cadmus and bloody Agave pointed out that this was a very harsh sentence for a few religious doubts, but the god ignores them. Neither Pentheus nor Dionysios comes out of the story looking well. Nonetheless, Euripides' image of a veiled god in human form, condemned before a earthly magistrate, vindicated by a manifestation of divine power, was a literary theme which would be taken up by later religions.
It is a tragic irony, worthy of Greek tragedy, that King Pentheus in the play, and Euripides in real life, both came to the same nasty end, mauled to bloody bits by wild things.
The irony was not lost on Euripides' son, who after the funeral rites, took his father's last play back to Athens and had it performed at the annual festival of the god Dionysios in 406. There it won both critical acclaim and first prize in the annual contest. One can imagine the ghost of the cantankerous Euripides smiling at the performance, as the selfish god was shown in his arrogance at the very dramatic festival given in his honor.
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is a music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncountered:
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables at home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end they remain.
The discovery of an unpillaged, Hellenistic-era chamber tomb on October 29 in Spilia Eordias, in the municipality of Aghia Paraskevi, near a monumental Macedonian masonry tomb, has cast doubts on prevailing views about the isolation of Upper and Lower Macedonia.
Clay and metal
The newly found tomb, measuring 2.7 x 3.30 meters, contained the intact remains of four cremation burials, dating from the second quarter of the second century BC to the last quarter of the first century AD.
The majority of the grave ornaments were clay vases and clay idols, including two cherubs and female figures.
The metalwork found in the tombs are considered to be exceptional examples from local workshops.
Georgia Karamitsrou-Mentesidi, the director of the excavation, told Kathimerini that the finds were highly significant, as few untouched tombs of this type have been found in Upper Macedonia.
Both the tomb carved out of the rock as well as the adjacent two-chambered Macedonian tomb, with its monumental Doric facade and pediment, bear witness to a thriving ancient settlement.
The two tomb monuments are believed to have been located in the cemetery of an important city, as the finds apparently belonged to prominent families in an organized society.
Clayton Fant, professor of classical studies at the University of Akron, will be at Hodges Library Thursday night to discuss the marble trade of the Roman Empire and its connection to street-side bars in Pompeii.
Fant will speak at 7:30 p.m. in Room 253 on “Sleazy Bars, Fancy Countertops: Reused Marble for Status Therapy at Pompeii.” The lecture is part of the East Tennessee Society’s annual lectures on archaeology.
“Our lectures cover archaeology worldwide. This year, topics range from Ancient Greece, Rome and Cyprus, to the Southeast United States and Nepal. We even will have a talk on Lawrence of Arabia, in conjunction with a conference held on Lawrence at Chattanooga in April 2006,” Aleydis Van de Moortel, assistant professor of classics, said.
Thursday night’s lecture will feature Fant as a specialist on Roman marble trade and Roman social and economic history. Moortel said Fant is currently directing the University of Akron Pompeii Sleazy Bars Project.
Fant said he has studied the Roman marble trade for 20 years, working in quarries owned and operated by past Roman emperors in Turkey. He was led to Pompeii by the intrigue of seeing the other end of the shipment cycle, he said.
“It’s clear that a lot of this marble leaked out of Rome to private owners,” Fant said. “There is an awful lot of context available in Pompeii that can be dated back to 1976 (due to several natural disasters).”
Fant said the marble bars he has been studying are actually pieces of the old Pompeii that was devastated by a volcanic eruption, organized and sorted by somebody who sold the marble slabs.
The term “sleazy” comes from the bar’s bad reputation at night as a spot for gamblers and as temporary brothels. Fights were expected, and bars not held accountable, he said.
“It was the equivalent of a McDonald’s drive-thru,” Fant said.
Archeologists said Wednesday they have unearthed burial mounds dating back to the third millennium B.C. which they believe contain remains and trinkets from ancient Aryan nomads.
Historian Hakob Simonian said Wednesday that the four mounds were among 30 discovered about 35 miles west of the Armenian capital Yerevan, containing beads made of agate, carnelian and as well as the remains of what appears to be a man, aged 50-55.
Also found were remains of domesticated horses and glazed pottery appearing to show chariots, Simonian said.
The Aryans, who later became known as Persians, were largely grassland nomads who settled in what is today
Iran and eventually in parts of India.
He's traveled "In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great" and gone on a voyage to trace the paths of "The Conquistadors," but for his latest history-travel adventure, British filmmaker Michael Wood goes "In Search of Myths & Heroes."
His latest PBS special airs in four one-hour segments - two from 9-11 p.m. EST Nov. 16 and two at the same times on Nov. 23 - that explore the legends of "The Queen of Sheba" and "Arthur: The Once and Future King" this week and "Shangri-La" and "Jason and the Golden Fleece" next week.
"It doesn't matter whether there is history behind the story," Wood acknowledged at a PBS press conference in July. "What matters is the power of a story that has been told over thousands of years."
Wood thinks the time is right to explore some of these tales that have been passed down through the ages.
"Everybody is really interested in this idea of myths and mysteries," he said. "You can see the success of books like 'The Da Vinci Code.' People are fascinated by the mystery: Was it real? Did it really happen?" Wood generated a list of 10 myths worth exploring and came up with four, balanced by their cultural and geographic diversity. One is Indian, one is Celtic-British, one is Greek and one is from the Bible. He had to throw out one idea due to current events.
"I was very keen to do the Epic of Gilgamesh in Iraq, had things in Iraq turned out differently," he said.
Wood begins with "The Queen of Sheba," explaining the importance of the tale in the cultures of Ethiopia and Israel, and how they remain a part of those country's cultures today.
"What we always try to do is seek those living connections in the culture that make that link with the past," Wood said.
That's easily done in the "Jason and the Golden Fleece" hour.
"It's the story of a hero's quest, the young man who goes on the mission impossible," he said, noting traces of it can be found in modern movies, including "Star Wars." "The young man's quest is one of the fundamental myths in all the stories of the world. 'Shangri-La' is a paradise myth. ...
Behind it lies the idea that somewhere on the Earth is a place that escapes all the destructions of time and history and war."
Wood and his crew traveled to 19 countries for the series, and he said his sense of adventure and discovery never wanes.
"We often go to places that you would never dream of getting to in your life," he said. "I always remember that letter from when we did 'Legacy' for PBS years ago where a woman wrote to us from Lubbock, Texas, saying, 'I've just watched this film, and you showed us things that we never even dreamed existed.' And I still get that kick, actually, when you go to these places.
It's always, it seems to me, a great privilege to spend any time in a foreign culture."
Qui capit uxorem, litem capit atque dolorem.
He who takes a wife takes on trouble and pain.
(pron = kwee KAH-pit ook-SOH-rem LEE-tem KAH-pit AHT-kwuh doh-LOH-rem)
Comment: Well, it’s true—insofar as it goes. And, she who takes a husband gets
the same load of trouble and pain. I suspect that times were difficult enough
in the middle ages that it seemed sort of pointless to finish that taking a
wife or husband also meant taking on some significantly positive life-changers,
I exchanged emails with a younger male friend once. He was very bitter over a
recent break up with his girlfriend. His language was very strong and in most
contexts was approaching misogynistic. All of the pain in his life could be
blamed on the carelessness of girls and how they left their boyfriends with
gaping wounds, thinking only of themselves.
They had been together for a long time. I asked him to consider whether his
life was not somehow very different (in positive ways) because of this
relationship with this young woman. Rather than answer the question, he
accused me of never having suffered because of a relationship. What I said to
him then is really how I see this proverb. I said:
“Why do you conclude that I do not know anything about what you speak of? Can
you imagine that at 45 and 23 years of marriage and parenting (not to mention
that I had other relationships before that) that I have never experienced
I value very much experience with people, watching, listening, feeling,
reflecting. I do not find that they leave me intolerant, but more tolerant.
Being in relationships simply breaks your heart. It's supposed to. But broken
hearts are not all bad.”
Granted, broken hearts hurt like hell, and they do drive some people to ultimate
despair, but living, working, breathing relationships of all kinds, and perhaps
especially marriage relationships, do break your heart. Out of the midst of a
broken heart—the brokenness of things not working out as you had expected,
hoped, dreamed, etc comes the possibility of seeing more clearly, and really,
loving more honestly. Out of a broken heart, I have the possibility of loving
who I really am, and who the other person really is—not just a projection of my
Quod verum, tutum.
What is true is safe.
(Pron = kwohd WAY-room TOO-toom)
Comment: Finally, what is true is safe because it leaves us with what is. It
leaves us with our own true selves, for instance. But long before “finally”
look at how much energy we put into denying the truth.
How often do we put off going to the doctor because we deny that anything is
really wrong? A dear relative of mine died of a cancer that could have been
likely cured if only he had gone to the doctor two years (yes two whole years)
How often do we put various spins on religious beliefs in order to maintain the
tradition long after they no longer hold any veracity? How long, for instance,
did Galileo live under the condemnation of the Church for speaking the truth
about the Earth revolving around the Sun instead of the other way around? How
long did Protestants and Catholics live under mutual condemnation until they
recognized that they were saying many of the same things only differently?
(about 500 years on both counts)
Just how difficult is it to look in a mirror and really see our true selves—and
acknowledge acceptance of who we are, right now? Or, if we are being honest,
to look in the mirror and acknowledge that right now, we do not accept our
selves? Can we then acknowledge that we are on a path of self-destruction?
The fact is, what is true, in any given moment, may be the most frightening
thing we can hear or say. Once acknowledged though, it becomes a very safe
place to live.
Tumultus in suburbiis Parisiorum
In suburbiis Parisiorum adulescentes et custodes publici continuis noctibus inter se conflixerunt.
Tumultuosi vehicula et receptacula purgamentorum concremaverunt et lapides lagoenasque incendiarias contra vigiles coniecerunt.
Tumultus in regione Clichy-sous-Bois orti sunt, postquam duo iuvenes originis Africanae, qui a custodibus fugientes in transformatorio se abscondiderant, ictu electrico mortui sunt.
'It's Baghdad here." So say the rampaging Muslims of Paris, according to Newsweek. Those words are a reminder that the West and Islam are engaged in a worldwide struggle, along many different flashpoints - a clash of civilizations.
That's right: a clash of civilizations. From the Euro-jihad in Paris, to the anti-American violence in Iraq, to the intifada in the Palestinian territories, to the recent threat of the president of Iran to "wipe Israel from the map," to the string of terror-bombings in India and Indonesia, the common thread is a basic hostility between the Judeo-Christian West and the Islamic East.
That was the argument made by Samuel Huntington, a Harvard professor, in his 1996 book "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order," in which he argued that different civilizations naturally find themselves in conflict. When the book appeared, many critics lambasted the author's cultural-historical pessimism. After all, didn't the experience of multicultural New York City in the '90s prove that everybody could get along, at least most of the time? Well, the last 10 years - most notably 9/11 in that same New York - have vindicated Huntington.
Indeed, this particular clash of civilizations has been going on for 14 centuries, since Islamic armies first swept over the Middle East, which at the time was mostly Christian. In fact, in 732 AD, a Muslim army nearly reached Paris before being defeated.
Other civilizational clashes go back to the beginning of recorded time. Herodotus, the ancient Greek chronicler known as "the father of history," wrote that Xerxes, king of the Persians, convened a warcouncil in which he told his nobles and generals about his plans to invade in 480 BC: "By this course, then we shall bring all mankind under our yoke, alike those who are guilty and those who are innocent of doing us wrong." In other words, the Greek historian painted an unflattering portrait of the Persian king. And some have criticized Herodotus as a mere propagandist for the Greeks.
But that's the point: Different cultures fight about everything, including their separate versions of historical truth.
Several prominent U.S. art museums, as well as galleries, private collections and museums in Europe and Asia, are suspected of possessing antiquities that were removed illegally from Italy, according to Italian court records.
J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles)...42 objects
Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)...Seven objects, including the Euphronios Krater
Minneapolis Institute of Arts...One Greek vase
Museum of Fine Arts (Boston)...More than 30 objects
Princeton University Art Museum (New Jersey)...Two vases
Toledo Museum of Art...A Greek water jar (kalpis)
A Rome prosecutor asked a convicted antiquities smuggler to testify against the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other museums in exchange for reduced prison time, a sign those institutions are the ultimate targets of an Italian looting investigation, the convicted smuggler said.
``If you accuse the Metropolitan and Getty and the Berlin Museum, Boston, Cleveland, Copenhagen and Munich -- one piece each - - I can make this go away,'' prosecutor Paolo Ferri said two weeks ago, according to the smuggler, Giacomo Medici.
Medici, 67, a Roman antiquities dealer, was convicted and sentenced in December to 10 years in prison for receiving and exporting stolen antiquities, including some at the Metropolitan in New York and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
FP: In your new book, you draw some powerful and fascinating parallels between the Peloponnesian War and to our modern-day conflicts. Before we talk about that, can you first tell us a bit about the Peloponnesian War and its significance?
Hanson: It endures for roughly three reasons:
First: the war pitted two antithetical systems-cosmopolitan, democratic, Ionic and maritime Athens at its great age versus parochial, oligarchic, Dorian and landlocked Sparta-and thus became a sort of referendum on the contrasting two systems.
Second: the historian Thucydides who recorded the war was both a participant and contemporary witness and a brilliant philosopher who employed the war to illustrate his tragic view of human nature and how thin is the veneer of civilization when ripped off during plague, war, and civil discord; his descriptions of the plague, the stasis at Corycyra, the debate over Mytilene, and the Melian Dialogue then are riveting and almost literary in their power to evoke emotion.
Third: Athens lost and with its spiritual and psychological depression ended the city of Socrates, Pericles, Sophocles, Euripides, Pheidias and the dream of an enlightened democratic empire that employed its power and wealth in the service of high culture.
That has been troubling us supporters of democracies these past 2,400 years.
FP: How do you think this ancient conflict can serve as a metaphor to some of our modern conflicts, including the terror war today?
Hanson: Everything we have seen in the present global war-slaughtering schoolchildren in Beslan; murdering diplomats; taking hostages; lopping limbs; targeted assassinations; roadside killing; spreading democracy through arms-had identical counterparts in the Peloponnesian War. That is not surprising when Thucydides reminds us that the nature of man does not change, and thus war is eternal, its face merely evolving with new technology that masks, but does not alter its essence.
More importantly, Athens' tragedy reminds of us of our dilemma that often wealth, leisure, sophistication, and, yes, cynicism, are the wages of successful democracy and vibrant economies, breeding both a sort of smugness and an arrogance. And for all Thucydides' chronicle of Athenian lapses, in the last analysis, rightly or wrongly, he attributes much of Athens' defeat to infighting back at home, and a hypercritical populace, egged on by demagogues that time and again turned on their own.
So the war is also a timely reminder about the strengths-and lethal propensities-of democracies at war. And we should remember that when we hear some of the internecine hysteria voiced here at home-whether over a flushed Koran or George Bush's flight suit- when 160,000 Americans are risking their lives to ensure that 50 million can continue to vote.
In 430BC, during the Peloponnesian war against their great rival Sparta, the people of Athens were hit by a deadly disease that has defied diagnosis to this day.
The Greek historian Thucydides survived a bout of this unknown killer and left a vivid account of its symptoms, which make for frightening reading.
"People in good health were all of a sudden attacked by violent heats in the head, and redness and inflammation in the eyes, the inward parts, such as the throat or tongue, becoming bloody and emitting an unnatural and fetid breath," Thucydides starts by saying.
But that was just the beginning - sneezing and coughing were next, then diarrhoea, vomiting and violent spasms.
Next came livid skin, covered in pustules and ulcers, and a burning, unquenchable thirst.
Most died around the seventh or eight day, but if not the disease moved to the bowels, where violent ulceration and worsening diarrhoea, combined with exhaustion, was usually enough to prove fatal.
A handful did survive, but the disease left its mark - toes, fingers, genitals and sight were often lost.
For others the legacy was an entire loss of memory, so that, as Thucydides says, they "did not know either themselves or their friends".
The world's first recorded pandemic had arrived.
Thucydides says the disease began in Ethiopia, spreading through Egypt and Libya, then into the Greek world.
Over the next four years it killed almost a third of the Athenian population and its armed forces, along with the city's leader and mastermind of Athenian glory, Pericles.
It is unsurprising perhaps that the word pandemic is derived from Greek - "pan" meaning all, and "demos" meaning people.
By the 2nd Century AD, the mantle of European power had passed to Rome, largely thanks to the might of its army.
But this army almost proved the civilisation's downfall, when in AD165, troops returning from campaigns in the east of the empire brought back a disease which killed an estimated five million people.
Known as the Antonine Plague, after Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, one of two Roman emperors who died from the disease, it killed a quarter of those who caught it.
In AD166, the Greek physician and writer Galen travelled from Rome to his home in present-day Turkey and recorded some of the disease's symptoms.
In his treatise Methodus Medendi, he describes fever, diarrhoea, and inflammation of the pharynx, along with dry or pustular eruptions of the skin after nine days, symptoms which has led scholars to conclude the disease was most likely smallpox.
A second outbreak occurred between AD251 and 266, and at its height some 5,000 people were said to be dying in Rome every day.
Crescit avaritia quantum crescit tua gaza.
Your greed increases as much as your bank account does.
(pron = KRES-kit ah-wah-RIH-tih-ah KWAHN-toom KRES-kit TOO-ah GAHD-zah)
Comment: I found a comment made by Juvenal in his Satires (14.139) that is
Crescit amor nummi, quantum ipsa pecunia crevit. “The love of the coin grows as
much as money itself has grown.”
Certainly this is a dynamic that is easy and prevalent enough to observe. We
have various American sayings that indicate that the more money one has, the
more one wants. The wealthiest nation in the world also carries the largest
debt, both collectively and per capita.
Still, I find myself wondering about this dynamic. Deep in the American psyche
there is another set of sayings that have been long and carefully planted.
“The love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:10—the Bible). And
then the very old theological teaching of the Puritans and others influenced by
John Calvin, in short, that financial and monetary success is one of the signs
of being a member of “the elect”, those predestined for eternal life, and
consequently, those who do not enjoy financial success are missing this sign,
and may be among the damned.
Those are pretty good pre-conditions for developing a collective neuroses about
money, and getting more stuff.
To what degree have I been taught, subtly or not so subtly these “lessons”? To
what degree do I associate the worth of my life with how much stuff I have, how
big my paycheck is? If I were to let go of that, what would I be left with?
These are not questions of greed, really. They are questions of true value.
Ahtisaari conciliator nominatus
Martti Ahtisaari, pristinus praesidens Finniae, a Kofi Annan, secretario generali Nationum Unitarum, nominatus est, qui consultationibus de Kosovia praeesset.
Propositum est statum Kosoviae ex illa sententia definire, quam Consilium Securitatis Nationum Unitarum bello Kosoviensi confecto mense Iunio anni undebismillesimi comprobavit.
Kosovia, quae hodie a Nationibus Unitis administratur, plenam independentiam flagitat, quam Serbia vehementer repudiat. Itaque dubium non est, quin consultationes futurae sint difficillimae.
Ahtisaari, de conflictibus inter nationes componendis optime meritus, erit in Kosovia legatus specialis secretarii generalis, cui de processu colloquiorum referet.
French diving archeologists have discovered the foundation of the ancient lighthouse of Pharos in Alexandria, the seventh wonder of the world.
The director of the Alexandria national museum, Ibrahim Darwish, said Sunday that the lighthouse, which was destroyed by two earthquakes in the 11th and 14th centuries, had occupied an area of 800 sq m north of the city's eastern harbor.
The lighthouse consisted of three towers stacked one on top of the other largest to smallest and reached 120-137 meters (390-450 feet) in height. On top of the lighthouse, there was a bronze chalice holding smoldering coal. A complicated system of mirrors made it possible for travelers to see the smoldering coal from a distance of tens of kilometers (up to 60 miles).
The lighthouse was built by Greek architect Sostratus for King Ptolemy II (284-246 BC). It was erected on the eastern side of the island of Pharos at the entrance to the harbor of Alexandria. Earthquakes scattered the remains of the lighthouse all over the harbor, and only now have archeologists established its exact location.
In July, Governor Salam El Mahgoub called on Egyptian and international organizations to restore the lighthouse, a project that will cost $100 million.
One of the most prestigious documentary channels in the world, the History Channel, shot a documentary in Bodrum, telling the Iliad Epic of Homer, reported the Anatolia news agency.
The documentary crew worked for two days in Bodrum. One of the two Turkish producers of the segment in Turkey is Tufan Turanlı, the head of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, who has previous experience in documentary projects on nautical archaeology.
As a part of the documentary series Digging for the Truth, this documentary is directed by Brian Lecley and presented by Josh Bernstein of the History Channel. The scenes shot in Bodrum are to be broadcast the next season. Some other parts of the documentary are to be shot in Greece as well as a few more in Bodrum. The film crew will then move on to Çanakkale to shoot scenes in the ancient city of Troy before leaving Turkey.
Homer's 'Iliad' to be highlighted:
The documentary is the fifth documentary project that shot in Bodrum this year. The director and the crew of the movie were trying to create the original atmosphere of Bronze Age dating some 3,300 years back.
Producer Turanlı said that they asked for help from local horse-carriage masters Celal Eski and Mehmet Çiftlikçi to capture every single detail. Turanlı also said that American and Turkish filmmakers worked together for this project as well as on previous shoots in Bodrum.
"We're aiming to make Bodrum the Hollywood of documentary movies, Iliad is the fifth project this year. We also have previous documentary experiences with National Geographic and the Discovery Channel. We believe that Bodrum is an international documentary center. I'm planning to bring another documentary project to Bodrum, composing six episodes, telling the life of the Prophet Moses and the Old Testament. Our aim is to promote Turkey, said the producer.
Non bene olet qui bene semper olet.
Something smells fishy about a person who always smells of perfume.
(pron = nohn BEH-neh OH-let kwee BEH-neh SEHM-pehr OH-let)
Comment: I’ve taken some liberties with rendering this in English. Literally,
Martial is saying that he does not smell well who always smells well. Hence,
we generally become suspicious (smell a rat) around someone who always smells
The person who works in the yard and never breaks a sweat; the parent whose
child never does anything wrong; the face that never has a pimple; the adult
whose bank account is never over-drawn; the athlete who eats everything under
the sun and only gains muscle; these are only a few examples of those who
always smell of perfume. The picture is too good to be true. It always is.
Life never unfolds in picture perfect fashion.
And yet, I know I am not alone in having grown up under the deeply infused
notion that perfect was what I was supposed to be. It makes for a great deal
of misery, neurotic behaviors that become our “personality” and the generator
of a great deal of grief for ourselves and those we are in contact with.
So, the wisdom? Let yourself stink today, even if just a little bit. And when
the sour smell becomes obvious, just smile and say—yes, that’s me. I don’t
smell so well today. And then enjoy how you, your very own self, smell, just
the way that you are!
A stretch of wall at Rome's ancient Forum has collapsed, raising concerns that the site is no longer safe for tourists.
About 50 metres of the five-metre-high wall fell Friday morning onto a walkout that leads to the Arch of Titus and the Colosseum.
At the time, the Forum was closed and there were no tourists in the area.
It was once the centre of political, commercial and religious life in Rome.
But now it's in such a state of ruin that Italy's cultural authorities have stepped up debate over what needs to be done to safeguard what's left of both the Forum and Colosseum.
No one is allowed inside the Colosseum itself, aside from experts involved in assessing the damage. Tour groups are brought just to the fringe of the building.
The wall collapse at the Forum comes at a time Italy's parliament is debating cuts to the culture sector.
Italy's culture minister, Rocco Buttiglione, says the government will have to find funds to protect the area, which he says requires constant monitoring.
He says archeological sites in Italy need to be protected, not only because they draw visitors and generate income, but because they are "part of our soul."
Dozens of journalists were invited into the prison on Sunday to view two well-preserved tile mosaics, which include detailed inscriptions in Greek and which the authority said served as the floor of the church.
"It is for sure the earliest church in Israel that we know of," said Yotam Tepper, the archaeologist in charge of the dig, which began seven months ago.
The announcement was met with deep skepticism from some scholars of early Christianity.
The traditional view is that Christian churches did not begin to appear in the region until the fourth century A.D., the result of Emperor Constantine's edict in A.D. 313 that Christians could worship freely in the Roman Empire.
Before that, Christians were often persecuted. They worshiped clandestinely and were not able to build public houses of worship, these scholars say.
"For people who study this, it would be very hard to accept that there is a Christian church here that dates to the third century," said Joe Zias, an anthropologist and a former curator with the Antiquities Authority. Mr. Zias, who has not seen the site, added, "My gut feeling is that we are looking at a Roman building that may have been converted to a church at a later date."
Pottery shards from cooking pots and wine jugs resting on the mosaic have been dated to the late third century A.D., suggesting the mosaic - and presumably the church - was already in place at that time, he said. The style of the Greek lettering in the three inscriptions point to the same period, he said, and the structure does not follow the traditional building pattern for churches that emerged in the fourth century.
The floor is about 30 feet by 15 feet and has two mosaics, consisting of small black and white tiles in geometric patterns. Two fish, a symbol widely used in early Christianity, adorn one.
In the center of the floor is a base that may have supported a structure used in worship services, Mr. Tepper said. Nearby, one inscription reads, "The God-loving Aketous has offered this table to the God Jesus Christ, as a memorial," according to a preliminary translation by the Antiquities Authority.
Another inscription says a Roman military officer, Gaianus, "having sought honor, from his own money, has made the mosaic."
But Mr. Zias said it struck him as strange that a Roman military officer would take credit at a time when the Roman authorities prohibited practicing Christianity. "If I were a Roman soldier in the third century, I certainly wouldn't want my name on it," he said. "This would not have been a good career move. In fact, it sounds like the kiss of death."
If the Megiddo site does date to the third century, "then I would ask why it was not reported or discussed by early church historians," said Yiska Harani, a historian with expertise on Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land. "How did they overlook a successful place of early worship?"
Mr. Tepper said no decision had been made on the fate of the site. He said he hoped it could become a small museum, while acknowledging the problems of doing so inside a prison.
"We just don't know what will happen at this point," he said.
Ecclesia B. Virginis Dresdensis inaugurata
Ecclesia Beatae Virginis Dresdensis, vulgo Frauenkirche appellata, quae impetibus aeriis foederatorum occidentalium sexaginta annis ante in ruinas redacta erat, die Dominico (30.10.) in usum inaugurata est.
Ecclesia illa baroca ante decem annos reaedificari coepta est. Complures centeni opifices sine mercede operi interfuerunt.
Ex Germania et nationibus peregrinis circiter centum miliones euronum ad ecclesiam restituendam collecti sunt.
Magna pars pecuniae ab Americanis et Britannis accepta est. Frauenkirche, egregium monumentum artis barocae, altitudinis est paene centum metrorum.
Post opera septendecim fere annorum perfecta est anno millesimo septingentesimo quadragesimo tertio.
6. All teachers of Latin, ancient Greek and Classics in the public and separate boards and
in independent schools are eligible to bring students to the OSCC who study Latin,
ancient Greek or Classics or who have been Classics Club members of at least six
months good standing. A participating student must be at least 13 years of age by
the end of the calendar year of the Conference.
Londinium in Europa carissimum
Pretiis mercedum et servitiorum comparatis, in actis, quibus titulus est Financial Times, Londinium carissima urbs Europaea nominata est.
Ibi enim pretia plus quinque centesimis maiora esse quam in medio aliis in terris Unionis Europaeae. Intra regionem, ubi eurones in usu sunt, carissimos esse Parisios, ceteris vilius Matritum, extra illam regionem vilissimam Varsaviam.
Quite how one rambles on from speaking of the moment when Dante chose Virgil as his guide through the infernal regions to discovering that the geni in the bottle surfaces into a guardian angel may seem a bit mysterious! But it's merely another excuse to zoom in on all things Latin...
Scoff if you will at the ancient Romans who made patients with brain disorders swim with electric eels.
Midway through the Museum of Fine Arts Egyptian gallery, visitors hear the murmuring of another civilization. Beyond the mummies, 50-plus teenage students from local high schools mingle and move among Greek vases, many clutching paperback editions of Homer's ''Iliad" and ''Odyssey."
Some pace about, furling and unfurling photocopied pages with highlighted hexameters. Others gather in groups on the floor that will soon serve as stage for an ancient, gentle poetry slam. The more serious forgo the chitchat for a last-minute review of index cards scrawled with versified scenes that took place some 2,700 years ago.
They're contestants in the museum's second annual Student Rhetoric Competition, created to coincide with an exhibition on the original Olympics, and they court the embrace of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory. If not a deity, they're at least seeking the favor of their teachers -- and a few extra-credit points for their after-school participation.
Judith King pushes back the bangs of her Cleopatra-like hairdo and welcomes the students whose duds range from tees to ties. (None wore a toga.) The museum's education outreach manager, King reminds the contestants that the judges will focus on the ''emotion, diction, and accuracy" of their recitations.
Then she begins the roll call of middle school students. High school students sigh in relief, knowing they're off the hook for an hour. The young teens leave their circle of friends to stand before three judges perched as if on Mount Olympus. Between display cases holding tangible expressions of the lines they speak, students summon courage -- and the Muse.
''I am Odysseus, son of Laertes, known to the world," bellows Celestine Warren, 13, a Milton Academy student from Cambridge who stands with ramrod posture and one raised fist, hoping to embody the epic hero's hubris.
The judges look impressed, briefly betraying their stoicism with smiles. The students don't play it cool. They meet Warren's closing lines -- after making it through names of islands such as Dulichion and Zacanthus -- with applause, turning the heads of others visiting the museum.
In an interview afterward, Warren explains her interest in classics.
''The myths connect with everything," says Warren, who made a last-minute switch from the Robert Fitzgerald translation favored by her teachers to the Robert Fagles translation chosen by the judges.
''They say things we still care about: the idea of leading a good life and dying a noble death."
Later, King calls on a bespectacled boy in an orange sweatshirt and khakis. He steps forward gingerly.
Then, with one Homeric syllable, Peter Egan, 13, bursts to life.
''So Odysseus prayed and Athena heard his prayer," he declaims with a force belying his slight frame.
The Boston Latin Academy eighth-grader from Readville vivifies the dramatic footrace between Ajax and Odysseus. His relish in describing Ajax's fall into a pile of dung brings down the house.
The Muses do not smile on every contestant.
Stage fright freezes a few mid-verse. Other clutch skirt hems, rock from sneaker to sneaker, or sigh dramatically before turning to the judges for a hint.
Paul Adamson regrets needing an assist during his performance of lines chronicling the athletic contests of the original Olympics. Dressed in a Michael Jordan game shirt and a pristine white Red Sox cap, the Boston Latin Academy sophomore from Roxbury promises to return next year with a flawless, more dramatic presentation.
A reluctant convert to the classics, Adamson, 14, says he overcame his aversion to ''the dead language spoken by doctors and lawyers" when he saw the sport in poetry.
''It's about performance and talent and style," he says. ''It's a challenge. I love a challenge. I might take Greek my senior year."
Deep into the second hour of the event, the dour words begin to lose their gravity.
A half-dozen randomly called high school students -- somehow -- have all prepared the same scene: Priam begging Achilles for the proper burial of his son.
The heartbreaking last line loses its pathos the fourth time around: ''I have endured what no one on earth has ever done before -- I put to my lips the hands of the man who killed my son."
At the end, Judith King applauds all the students, who applaud one another. King thanks the judges with bottles of extra-virgin olive oil and apologizes for not handing off an amphora, the nine-gallon vessel used by the ancient Greeks to carry wine and oil.
Charles ''Dan" Earley, a Boston College High School sophomore who sings and dances his poetry, wins the high school laurel for his channeling of the Blind Bard Demodocus.
Egan earns the middle school competition's leafy crown.
After all the others have left, Egan hangs back, leaning in for a closer look at a Greek statue.
Asked about his victory, he eyes the artifact while turning the wreath in his hands.
''The victory is more for my school than for me," he says.
''It's like the Greeks teach us: you should enjoy it, but you shouldn't gloat."
Maria Wenglinsky taught her French poodle to obey commands in one of her favorite languages, Latin.
She studied the classics at Columbia University, and wrote her 300-page doctoral dissertation on an ancient poet, calling it, she said, "The representation of the divine in Quintus of Smyrna or something like that, something very pedestrian." She has a map of Rome on her dining room wall, next to a bookshelf stocked with volumes like "History of the Byzantine State" and other titles that only a woman whose pet understands the meaning of "iace" (lie down) could enjoy.
But Mrs. Wenglinsky found that her smarts got her only so far in her sweep on the game show "Jeopardy!" She also had to rely on more unlikely sources: The students at St. Saviour High School in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
Mrs. Wenglinsky, who teaches Latin and European history at St. Saviour, an all-girls Catholic school, said her students' knowledge of pop culture had helped her succeed in some of the more modern categories. She credited a recent graduate's obsession with the cult television series "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" for supplying her with one answer, stated in the form of a question, naturally.
The strategy paid off. Last week, Mrs. Wenglinsky, 36, made five appearances on "Jeopardy!", answering head-scratchers about one of the languages of Afghanistan (What is Pushtu?), the capital of Montezuma (What is Tenochtitlan?) and the reshaper of 17th century London (Who is Christopher Wren?).
In the meantime, she has earned about $122,000 since her first appearance on Monday and has become something of a celebrity among the school's 340 students, their parents, the administrators and the faculty. The shows were recorded over the summer in Los Angeles.
Students have huddled around the television with their families, gasping and clapping, a pleasant distraction for many who had the prospect of yesterday's SAT exam to look forward to all week. "Every single person in the school is rooting for her," said Sister Valeria Belanger, the principal.
Mrs. Wenglinsky does not consider herself a quiz show star. With close-cropped hair and black-frame glasses, she politely scoffs at the word that people keeping throwing around: genius.
"It's just a knack for being able to pull things out is all it is," she said. She said she did not know her I.Q., and described her recent victories as simply the result of a talent for being able to recall random bits of information. Some people might spend days or weeks cramming for an appearance on "Jeopardy!" She said she flipped through an old copy of The World Almanac on the plane to Los Angeles, a Christmas gift from her Aunt Alice.
As her friends, family and students followed her on television last week, they were naturally curious about how it all turned out. Not even the principal knows.
"If I say how it turns out, I'll lose my prize money," Mrs. Wenglinsky explained.
On Friday night, the program ended with a cliffhanger. Mrs. Wenglinsky won again, but will not appear again until the end of the month, when the regular show resumes after two weeks. She invited four fellow teachers to her home in Bay Ridge to watch the program, and even as they cheered, laughed with and teased Mrs. Wenglinsky, she gave no clues about what happened next.
She sat quietly on a chair, her 2-year-old son, Martin James, on her lap. Delia, her bilingual poodle, missed out on the festivities and was confined to a room upstairs because, it turns out, following commands in any language is not Delia's thing. Mrs. Wenglinsky said her six-figure winnings thus far - one teacher said it was about three or four times the annual salary at St. Saviour - are in a sense already spent. It will go to her mortgage, she said.
The quiz show champion says she was really just a regular, boring person. She is from Salt Lake City, and, other than occasional knitting and gardening, said most of her free time is spent on the playground with Martin James. Her husband, Harold, is an educational policy analyst.
As her television self posed questions-as-answers to the show's host, Alex Trebek, about precious metals, the real Mrs. Wenglinsky sat in her living room and posed one more question, this one a no-brainer.
"You want some more chips?" she asked her son.
THE director of Rome, the BBC’s swords and sandals epic, is accusing the corporation of sensationalising his work by over-playing the sex and violence and cutting out key political narrative.
Michael Apted, whose film credits include Gorillas in the Mist and The World Is Not Enough, said he was “pissed off” and “grumpy” about the BBC’s handling of the series, the first episode of which went out last week.
He said he had not been told the BBC was squeezing the first three episodes — the ones he directed — down to two. They were shown at full length in America by HBO, the BBC’s partner in the production.
The corporation maintained that the cut scenes were unnecessary because British audiences “already knew” the historical background of the struggle between Julius Caesar and Pompey and did not need as much information as Americans.
Apted was engaged to film the first three episodes of the £60m series, a joint project between the BBC and HBO, the American cable channel.
But, says Apted, a funny thing happened on the way to the studios. HBO has shown all three of his 50-minute episodes in full, but the BBC has cut and spliced them into two programmes and removed much of the back-stabbing between Caesar and Pompey.
Some reviewers have compared the finished product to Caligula, the notorious 1979 film produced by Bob Guccione, the Penthouse publisher, who spliced sex scenes into the story without telling his cast.
“The BBC has not only sold this series on sex and violence, but now, in the way it has edited and cut the first episodes, it has made sex scenes more important than the senate scenes,” said Apted.
“I’m really pissed off with the BBC for bringing down my first three episodes to two and, in doing so, taking out much of the vital politics.”
“It has also made it confusing for viewers to follow. The balance is all wrong now. They’ve cut out vital scenes between Caesar and Pompey. Scenes which show the dirty tricks each tried. The political context has been lost.”
Apted, who has also directed the iconic ITV documentary series Seven Up, only saw the BBC’s edited version of Rome very recently. He is currently in Britain shooting the movie Amazing Grace, which tells the story of William Wilberforce and his attempts to ban slavery.
“What also makes me very grumpy is that I was told that the cuts had been introduced by the BBC because they thought British viewers already knew the historical background. But all that’s happened as far as the viewer is concerned is that it has made Rome hard to follow.
“I’m also annoyed because it makes me look as if I’m at fault with my directing. It reflects poorly on me.”
Apted, who, though British born and bred is also president of the Directors Guild of America, believes the BBC over-sold the programme on sex and violence. “I watched a discussion about it on BBC Breakfast the other morning and they were cooing about the sex.”
Apted also claims that he was never told in advance that the BBC had cut his first three episodes into two 50-minute ones. Other directors filmed the rest of the series.
“I only found out by chance a couple of weeks ago when one of the actors told me.”
By then the BBC, which has the contractual rights to edit as it wishes, had made its mind up.
Apted’s dismay is shared by Robin Lane Fox, a professor of history at New College, Oxford, and author of The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian. “The BBC is a victim of the delusion that if you dumb down you will get a bigger audience,” said Lane Fox, who was the historical adviser to Oliver Stone’s film Alexander.
However, if that was the intention, it seems to have worked. The 6.6m viewers who watched the opening episode of Rome on BBC2 last Wednesday was the biggest audience for the channel for more than five years.
“Sadly, when compared with the brilliance of I, Claudius, Rome trivialises, particularly the relationship between Caesar and Pompey,” said Lane Fox. “The real story should be that of the battle among the senators. But BBC viewers have not been given this. The amounts of sex and violence in episode one are absurd. It’s a shame as the acting is very good.”
Rome has received mixed reviews. While some praised it as entertaining, A A Gill, the Sunday Times television critic, writes in today’s Culture that it was “a mess of confusing storylines. Almost every utterance had to move great marble slabs of plot. It looked like a case of too many producers re-writing editing and patching up, which might well be an appropriate metaphor for the end of the republic, but it made for confused television”.
The BBC says it cut the first three episodes to two as “British viewers did not need so much back-story”.
Erant in ea legione fortissimi viri, centuriones, qui primis ordinibus appropinquarent, Titus Pullo et Lucius Vorenus. Hi perpetuas inter se controversias habebant, quinam anteferretur, omnibusque annis de locis summis simultatibus contendebant. Ex his Pullo, cum acerrime ad munitiones pugnaretur, "Quid dubitas," inquit, " Vorene? aut quem locum tuae probandae virtutis exspectas ? hic dies de nostris controversiis iudicabit." Haec cum dixisset, procedit extra munitiones quaque pars hostium confertissima est visa irrumpit. Ne Vorenus quidem tum sese vallo continet, sed omnium veritus existimationem subsequitur. Mediocri spatio relicto Pullo pilum in hostes immittit atque unum ex multitudine procurrentem traicit; quo percusso et exanimato hunc scutis protegunt, in hostem tela universi coniciunt neque dant regrediendi facultatem. Transfigitur scutum Pulloni et verutum in balteo defigitur. Avertit hic casus vaginam et gladium educere conanti dextram moratur manum, impeditumque hostes circumsistunt. Succurrit inimicus illi Vorenus et laboranti subvenit. Ad hunc se confestim a Pullone omnis multitudo convertit: illum veruto arbitrantur occisum. Gladio comminus rem gerit Vorenus atque uno interfecto reliquos paulum propellit; dum cupidius instat, in locum deiectus inferiorem concidit. Huic rursus circumvento fert subsidium Pullo, atque ambo incolumes compluribus interfectis summa cum laude sese intra munitiones recipiunt. Sic fortuna in contentione et certamine utrumque versavit, ut alter alteri inimicus auxilio salutique esset, neque diiudicari posset, uter utri virtute anteferendus videretur.
... via the Latin Library
In that legion there were two very brave men, centurions, who were now approaching the first ranks, T. Pulfio, and L. Varenus. These used to have continual disputes between them which of them should be preferred, and every year used to contend for promotion with the utmost animosity. When the fight was going on most vigorously before the fortifications, Pulfio, one of them, says, "Why do you hesitate, Varenus? or what [better] opportunity of signalizing your valor do you seek? This very day shall decide our disputes." When he had uttered these words, he proceeds beyond the fortifications, and rushes on that part of the enemy which appeared the thickest. Nor does Varenus remain within the rampart, but respecting the high opinion of all, follows close after. Then, when an inconsiderable space intervened, Pulfio throws his javelin at the enemy, and pierces one of the multitude who was running up, and while the latter was wounded and slain, the enemy cover him with their shields, and all throw their weapons at the other and afford him no opportunity of retreating. The shield of Pulfio is pierced and a javelin is fastened in his belt. This circumstance turns aside his scabbard and obstructs his right hand when attempting to draw his sword: the enemy crowd around him when [thus] embarrassed. His rival runs up to him and succors him in this emergency. Immediately the whole host turn from Pulfio to him, supposing the other to be pierced through by the javelin. Varenus rushes on briskly with his sword and carries on the combat hand to hand, and having slain one man, for a short time drove back the rest: while he urges on too eagerly, slipping into a hollow, he fell. To him, in his turn, when surrounded, Pulfio brings relief; and both having slain a great number, retreat into the fortifications amid the highest applause. Fortune so dealt with both in this rivalry and conflict, that the one competitor was a succor and a safeguard to the other, nor could it be determined which of the two appeared worthy of being preferred to the other.
... via Perseus
An ancient church dating back to the third or fourth century has been discovered inside one of Israel's maximum security prisons, the Israel Antiquities Authority said on Saturday.
Excavations inside Megiddo prison in northern Israel unearthed the remains of a structure which included a mosaic with inscriptions in Greek and murals of fish as well as an altar, the Authority said.
Sharon Shouab, Megiddo prison commander, told Israel's Channel Two television that the site had been discovered amid planned work to build a new security wing.
The jail houses prisoners including members of Palestinian militant groups Islamic Jihad and Hamas who are sworn to Israel's destruction.
Channel Two reported that the site had been discovered some months ago but was kept secret until now.
"This is a once in a lifetime find and the inscriptions are very rare," Antiquities Authority excavation supervisor, Jotham Tefer, told Channel Two.
'I am Markos Aurelios Asklepiades, also called Hermodoros, senior temple warden of the great god Sarapis, chief priest of the Universal Athletic Guild, Guild president for life, Director of the Imperial Baths; I am a citizen of Alexandria, Hermopolis and Puteoli; a member of the City Council of Naples, Elis and Athens; and also a citizen and member of the Council of many other cities. I was a periodos victor in the pankration. I was undefeated, I was never thrown from the wrestling ring, I never made an appeal. I won all of the contests I ever entered; I never had to challenge a decision, nor did anyone ever dare to challenge one of my victories; I never drew a contest or deserted a contest or refused a fight, nor did I ever miss any competition or win by imperial favour, nor were any of my victories in contests which had to be re-run; instead I was crowned in all of the contests I ever entered in the wrestling ring itself, having come through all of the preliminary tests of eligibility beforehand. I competed in Italy and in Greece and in Asia, winning all of the contests listed here: I won the pankration of the Olympics in Pisa in the 240th Olympiad [AD 181], the Pythia at Delphi, the Isthmia twice, the Nemean games twice (on the second occasion all my rivals pulled out), the 'Shield games' of Hera in Argos, the Capitolia in Rome twice, the Eusebia at Puteoli twice (on the second occasion all my rivals pulled out after the second lot-drawing), the Sebasta at Naples twice (on the second occasion all my rivals pulled out after the second lot-drawing), the Aktia in Nikopolis twice (on the second occasion all my rivals...). In all I competed for six years, but withdrew from competition at the age of 25, because of the dangers and jealousies I encountered. After I had been in retirement for some time I was forced to compete in the Olympic festival of my home city of Alexandria in the sixth Alexandrian Olympiad and I won the pankration there.'
So Wrote Markos Aurelios Asklepiades in an inscription on a statue of Markos Aurelios Asklepiades in Rome. It provides a vivid demonstration that sportsmen's capacity for self-promotion is as old as the seven hills of Rome. It also suggests that the makers of the heavily flogged Rome (BBC2, Wednesdays) might have missed a trick by focusing quite so heavily on the sex and entirely ignoring the athletics.
The inscription is doubly remarkable. First, it hints at the extent of athletic festivals at the time. 'There were probably between 300 or 400 in existence, some on a four-year basis, but many yearly,' says Dr Jason Konig, author of Athletics and Literature in the Roman Empire. 'It is clear that the athletics programme was enormous and very big business.'
Second, the range of citizenships Asklepiades was granted illustrates the breadth of interest. 'National identity is a fairly modern concept,' says Konig. 'The kind of identity that mattered then was city identity. And if a citizen won a Olympic medal he would be rewarded with enormous amounts of money and they would even knock down the city walls for the triumphal victory parade.'
Asklepiades was so fearsome at pankration - a mixture of wrestling and boxing, a bit like kick boxing - that there are tales of opponents who ran screaming from the ring the moment the undefeated heavyweight pankration champion of the ancient world removed his cloak. Even Richard Dunn waited for the bell to ring before capitulating against Ali.
Cities were forever trying to tempt star pankrationers away from each other. There was, in effect, a prototype transfer market and where there's a transfer market... 'I wouldn't be a bit surprised if there were agents,' says Konig. 'But there is no record of them existing. Maybe they just dropped out of the picture.' Will anyone remember Pini Zahavi in the fifth millennium?
It was certainly a lucrative business. 'At the Olympics they would receive a garland of leaves, as a symbol of the amateur ideal,' says Konig. 'But if you look closely it is clear they received enormous pensions from their cities.' Which is certainly a more dignified way of doing things than appearing in a series of lame adverts.
Not that many of the athletes were motivated by money, for most of them came from wealthy backgrounds. Asklepiades' father was a famous athlete and, like Frank Lampard senior sending Frank Lampard junior to public school, he used his wealth to enlist his son at the gymnasium, which was the main centre for higher education and the main source of athletes.
For him fame was the spur. Self-advertisement was very important in the ancient world. You had to do your own product placement. And frankly a statue is more likely to linger in the memory than an interview with Parky.
Not that Asklepiades didn't give anything back. On retirement, he preceded the path trod by Trevor Brooking and Sebastian Coe and burdened himself with the thankless task that is sports politics. He ended up as president of the Athletic Guild, which, says Konig, was almost like a union for athletes.
It was empire-wide and incredibly powerful and there are inscriptions recording imperial dispensations to the Athletic Guild, granting them exemption from tax. Not only were the pensions hugely generous, they were tax-free. Something Gordon Taylor or Gary Neville have yet to achieve.
Asklepiades' period of dominance coincided with a golden age for pankration during which the Emperor Elagabalus was so fond of the sport that he took one of the participants, Aurelius Zoticus, as a lover. The emperor, like Tracey Emin, preferred his men well-hung and Zoticus fitted the bill - comfortably or, perhaps, uncomfortably - until a rival gave him a drug that rendered him impotent.
To be fair to the makers of Rome it should be admitted that these events took place in 200AD. But, as their researchers must have known, Julius Caesar, a huge fan of the big gladiatorial spectacle, also took an interest in more cerebral activity. Suetonius records that the games Caesar held to celebrate his victory over Pompey included, alongside the wild-beast match-ups and full-scale re-enactments of land and naval battles, three days of athletics.
The process accelerated under Emperor Augustus when, says Konig: 'There was a huge resurgence of Greek culture, of which athletics was a major part. Knowing about Greek culture was quite prestigious. The Romans brought in the culture of many of the territories they conquered and Rome was a cultural melting pot.'
Asklepiades retired early, due to 'dangers and jealousies', only many years later to come back and snatch another Olympic gold. All these years on, he still has the statues to prove it. Which is more than can be said for another noted athlete, Theagenes. He was so successful that a fellow competitor used to sneak into the temple and mutter threats and imprecations against his rival's idol. One day the jealous man went too far and succeeded in toppling the marble edifice - and being crushed to death.
As was the custom, the offending statue of Theagenes was brought to court, failed to enter a plea, was found guilty of murder and punished by drowning - a trial that in more recent times might have provided a ratings smash for Court TV. And a myth that might have inspired Joe Bugner. Famously described as looking like a Greek statue, and having as many moves, could it have been Bugner's fight-plan to absorb all the taunts Ali could throw at him before reaching his tipping point and cleverly falling on the stunned champion to record a TKO?
Alexander the Great's army bought oil from inhabitants on the shores of the Caspian Sea during the Siege of Persia in 331 BC.
People have complained about puns since Julius Caesar decided March 15th was as good as any other day to go to the Senate.
She was a compulsive reader and learner and was compulsively funny about it. Required to read Virgil's The Aeneid in high school, she helped found the "The Girgil Club," formed "by the senior girls who ate lunch at the 6th period."
In a crossword puzzle assembled in high school, she includes such clues as "Where Greek aeroplanes go" (Answer: "Up") and "What the Spartan boys would have liked to sleep on" (Answer: "Featherbed"). In a send-up of the fairy tale about Rapunzel, the long-haired maiden is rescued by the good knight, but "Alack! his spur did cut her head!/Alack alas! it killed her dead."
Quam est felix vita quae sine odiis transit!
(Publilius Syrus, Sententia 547)
How happy is the life which crosses over without hatred!
(pron = kwahm ehst FAY-liks WEE-tah kwai SEE-neh OH-dees TRAHN-sit)
Comment: I am pretty sure that it is impossible to pass through life without
experiencing hatred, and I am not sure that it is desirable.
When I think of the times, situations and individuals for whom I have felt
hatred, I cannot think of a single instance in which the hatred did not arise
in me because of some wound. Most often, the wound was to my own ego.
Sometimes, the wounding was actually of someone else, but I was attached to
that someone else, somehow, and so the hatred arose out of their wounding, and
my sharing in the wounded. Still, my own sense of self was at stake. My
feelings were on the defense to protect me against the perceived threat.
It might be a good thing to be able to pass through an entire life and never
feel defensive about oneself, and therefore, never feel hatred. But those are
also all the times that I have opportunity to really look at who I am. Not all
the threats that I have perceived to my ego have been bad. Most, in fact, have
actually been healthy challenges, and the rising hatred in me became disturbing
enough to force me to look at that, and to let go into some new understanding,
some new experience of being in the world and in relationships. Even the
threats that seem to come from hostile individuals have functioned that way for
me. There is a reason to be defensive around hostile people, but I have found
that even in dealing with some really hostile person, there is a shift and a
change in me that can happen if I tend to how I am reacting to the hostility.
I am trying to say that hatred arising in us can be a finger pointing to some
important stuff if we are willing to pay attention to it. But, it is only a
finger pointing. Focusing on hatred, or insisting that it be deleted from our
experience would be a mistake. Ignoring a pointing finger would be, too.
Ordo Nationum Unitarum sexagenarius
Ordo Nationum Unitarum post secundum bellum mundanum conditus est, ut pacem inter nationes sustineret.
Liber fundamentalis ordinis die vicesimo quarto mensis Octobris anno millesimo nongentesimo quadragesimo quinto (24.10.1945) valere coepit.
Initio ille ordo ex nationibus belli victricibus constabat, nunc sexagenarius membra centum nonaginta habet.
A new Merchant Marine Ministry law on recreational diving has provoked protests, particularly by archaeological authorities. The new law, aimed at developing diving tourism, was passed by both major parties. Its provisions introduce radical changes to the rules governing diving in Greece, including virtually abolishing the ban on diving in areas of major archaeological interest.
According to the Merchant Marine Ministry, the new law will turn the country into an underwater paradise for amateurs and professional divers alike, bringing in more tourism revenue.
Officials involved in drafting the law have accused the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities of idleness, as a result of which recreational divers have at their disposal just 120 “free” areas out of a total of 16,000. As they are all close to ports, they are not of great interest.
Sources in the ephorate, which belongs to the Culture Ministry, say the law is a scandal since it does not take into consideration an archaeology law that is enshrined in the constitution and therefore has greater force. They also note that soon Greece will no longer be of any interest to divers since its underwater treasures will be easy game for antiquities smugglers.
Professional divers have also expressed reservations, saying the bill is simply aimed at reaping revenue. They fear that their professional activities will be made more difficult since they will not only be answerable to the ministry but to accreditation officers of the Greek Standardization Organization (ELOT) and diving organizations.
The conflict moved to Parliament where the ruling party rapporteur, Panos Kammenos, launched a harsh attack against an employee of the ephorate (he referred to a senior woman official there as a “mermaid”). He also hinted of bribes, saying “millions of euros were paid to free areas around (the island of) Kalymnos.” Kammenos actually lodged a suit against the particular official, who was acquitted by an Athens court.
Builders working at the Old Bell Hotel in Malmesbury have turned up human bones which are believed to be Roman.
It was thought at first that the remains might be medieval and connected to the Abbey next door.
But archaeologists now say the skeletons could date back 2000 years due to the non-Christian burial style.
Simon Haggarty, Director of The Old Bell, said: "The hotel dates back to 1220 so it's not surprising that these bones are even earlier than that."
The seventh-grade students in Julie Frink's Bessemer Academy reading class had to incorporate a project into their reading of "Homer's Odysseus and the Tale of Troy," a children's version of "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey."
It didn't take much discussion to come up with the most obvious construction project: the Trojan Horse.
Big enough for three of Frink's smallest boys to hide inside, the horse will move soon to the school library and later this month it will be transported to the city's Robert Hoag Rawlings Public Library and be on display for three weeks.
It took the class of 11 of Bessemer's top seventh-grade readers about a month to design and construct the horse, nicknamed "Candy" by the class.
Working during lunch period and after school, they fitted large cardboard boxes over a pair of portable bookshelves. The body of the horse lies across them with space in the head and rump, and a cabin on its back for the "Greeks" to hide.
The body and head portion are separate and can be lifted off. Frink said that the children were careful to keep the horse no wider than 33 inches so it will fit through the door in their classroom, located in Bessemer's new addition.
The head is made of crumpled newspaper pages held together with duct tape and then wrapped in papier-mache. Frink said that it looked a lot like a camel until one of the youngsters thought to wrap a piece of tape on the underside of the head and shape the distinctive jaw of a horse. Pueblo Color Center, she said, donated the brown paint that covered the entire project.
The class is well past the fall of Troy and this week students are reading about Odysseus' preparations to slay Penelope's suitors and reclaim his home.
"It's addicting," said Henry Castellanos of the story.
"Once you start reading, you don't want to stop," added Ryan Marquez.
Frink has put a series of photographs on the Web site she uses to tout her students' work.
Their next reading assignment will focus on the Middle Ages.
A smuggling ring put at least 110 Italian antiquities up for sale at Sotheby's Holdings Inc. and supplied 96 looted objects to 10 museums around the world, according to charges contained in Italian indictments and a judge's sentence of a convicted smuggler.
The global scale of the alleged ring's trade -- worth tens of millions of dollars and involving museums from Tokyo to Toledo, Ohio -- is outlined in a series of cases that Italian prosecutors are bringing, in part to keep looted archaeological artifacts from auction houses and museums, the papers obtained by Bloomberg News show.
``A critical point has been reached, where the laxness, and sometimes the complicity of some museums in the U.S., and elsewhere, has been exposed,'' said Colin Renfrew, 68, a Cambridge University archaeology professor and member of the U.K. House of Lords. ``The current trial is an important one.''
Sotheby's, the largest publicly traded auction house, helped the alleged ring launder looted artifacts, Judge Guglielmo Muntoni of the Rome Tribunal wrote in sentencing Roman dealer Giacomo Medici, 67, to 10 years in prison for receiving and exporting stolen antiquities.
``Selling and re-buying the same artifacts, Medici and his associates were able to trade in `clean' works of art, sellable to whomever they wanted at the prices they themselves set at auction,'' Muntoni said in his decision filed May 12, which catalogs 110 items Medici put up for sale from 1983 through 1994 at Sotheby's in London and New York.
Medici sold stolen antiquities at Sotheby's ``thanks to the absolute absence of controls on the part of the auction house and the complicity offered by its employees,'' Muntoni wrote.
Sotheby's isn't charged with any crime, and Medici, who says he's innocent, isn't serving his sentence while he appeals.
Sotheby's spokeswoman Helen Griffith in London said the company conducted a 10-month review of its antiquities business in 1997. ``It found no substantive deviation from the company's longstanding policy that employees may not violate or assist in the violation of the laws of any country,'' she said.
The review came after U.K. journalist Peter Watson's 1997 book ``Sotheby's: Inside Story'' and an accompanying television documentary used company documents and hidden-camera reporting to show how the auction house facilitated smuggling and sold antiquities known to have been stolen from tombs.
As a result of the review, Sotheby's stopped holding regular antiquities sales in London and appointed a worldwide compliance officer, Griffith said.
Watson's report and testimony were among the evidence used to convict Medici, and will also be presented at coming trials in Rome, the court documents say.
Prosecutors in Rome are building cases against at least 11 others besides Medici, including the former antiquities curator of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, Marion True, and an assortment of art dealers and restorers, the documents show.
He said the 44-year-old Bakley was smart and charming, with an IQ "around 150," and compared her life of pornography and grifting with a Greek tragedy written by playwright Aeschylus, who declared that wisdom comes "through the awful grace of God."
Nil agit exemplum litem quod lite resolvit.
(Horace, Satires 2.3.103
A precedent produces nothing which resolves one conflict with another.
(pron = nihl AH-ghit ek-SEM-ploom LEE-tehm kwod LEE-tay reh-SOHL-wit)
Comment: Just before these lines in Horace’s satires, he give the example of one
Greek man, Aristippus, who ordered his overburdened slaves to unload gold in the
middle of Libya because they were moving too slowly. He concludes: who is more
insane than this? You cannot provide a precedent which resolves one problem
Just yesterday I watched an interview with a Thai woman who had just received a
new house from Habitat for Humanity after the tsunami destroyed her home and
family. She said of the last 6 months that she had learned what it took to
live—nothing. She said that he had lived for the last 6 months with nothing.
She received the new house with utter gratitude, but knowing that she could
live on nothing.
Yesterday, I also read a letter that a group of parents wrote in concern over
redistricting of their neighborhood schools. While I am sure that they want
the best schools for their children, the under riding concern that appeared
over and over again in this letter was the value of their homes and property
that would go down if the wrong school were zoned for their neighborhood.
The question this line raises for me is this: what drives the decisions I make?
If what drives a decision is itself a misplaced or even dishonest motive, I
will end up with double the trouble, won’t I? Horace’s sentiment is very close
to the old adage that many of us grew up with: two wrongs don’t make a right.
The Thai woman’s world was swept away by a tsunami. She is very clear about
what to be thankful for. The American parents are really concerned that their
children’s schools (and hence, their property values) are not adversely
affected by children in a neighboring community whose school is not as good.
They might choose to come to their school. Rather than rise up and work for
better schools in the region, they seek to protect their property values from
“those people”. They are dropping their gold in the middle of the desert to
make the caravan move faster. How smart is that in the long run?
A poem written by one of the U.S. Founding Fathers has been discovered in the archives of a Catholic high school in England. Charles Carroll of Carrollton, one of the signers of the 1776 Declaration of Independence, wrote the poem in Latin in 1754 when he was a student in his final year of high school in Saint-Omer, France. It was found in the archives of Stonyhurst College in Clitheroe, England, by Maurice Whitehead, a professor at the University of Wales, Swansea, who is doing research at the Jesuit-run high school. "This is a significant discovery," Jan Graffius, curator of the school's collections, announced Oct 28. "This previously unknown composition is bound to be of immense interest to American scholars." The poem was composed to be read to an unnamed visiting dignitary to the Jesuit high school in Saint-Omer, and it bears Carroll's signature. It is being translated by a group of seven 17- and 18-year-old Latin students at Stonyhurst and their classics teacher, Judith Parkinson.
Kaczynski praesidens Poloniae designatus
Altera suffragia comitiorum praesidentialium die Dominico (23.10.) in Polonia facta sunt. Superior fuit Lech Kaczynski, candidatus factionis conservativae nomine "Lex et Iustitia", qui quinquaginta quattuor centesimas votorum accepit.
Illius factio etiam in comitiis parlamentariis ante unum mensem habitis victoriam reportavit. Donald Tusk, competitor eius ex factione liberali, quadraginta sex centesimas ex votis obtinuit.
Ad urnas una et quinquaginta centesimae civium accesserunt. Kaczynski, praesidens Poloniae designatus, censet de eurone, apud Polonos anno bis millesimo decimo in usum accipiendo, suffragium populi faciendum esse.
His name was Papas the Son of Cillis. He lived nearly 2,000 years ago, and it’s likely he would be mighty surprised at what James Russell has learned about his life.
Mr. Russell knows that Papas was an Anatolian who enlisted as an auxiliary in the Roman legions, serving in outposts of the empire for 25 mostly peaceful years. The auxiliaries were second-class soldiers who were natives of distant provinces that the Romans had conquered; Roman citizens served as prestigious legionaries.
Toward the end of his enlistment, Papas’ regiment was sent to Judaea to help put down an uprising by the Jews. When he was honorably discharged, he was given Roman citizenship, as were all auxiliaries.
“The Romans would have recruited him as a young man,” Mr. Russell said. “They would have said, ‘You have put up a good show against us, and we can give you a career. We will feed you, and pay you, and, at the end of the day, we will give you citizenship.’ ”
Papas returned home to his province to live out his life with his four children, who also were granted Roman citizenship, which would have set them on the path of upward social and political mobility.
Mr. Russell, an archaeologist and professor emeritus in the department of classics at the University of British Columbia, speaks about Papas as if he were an old friend. And, indeed, it must seem that way. The scholar has spent perhaps a decade tracing the life of the ancient Anatolian from information inscribed in Latin on a fragment of a bronze tablet, which was found in the rugged hills of Southern Turkey. Mr. Russell was given the fragment by farmers who uncovered it not far from his main archaeological site, the coastal Romano-Byzantine city of Anemurium.
It is a fascinating tale, one that Mr. Russell will recount as the guest speaker of the Archaeological Institute of America — Worcester Society at 7 p.m., Thursday at the Worcester Art Museum. The scholar, a native of Scotland who immigrated to Canada, has served as president of the AIA, the AIA-Canada and the AIA-Vancouver society.
His topic couldn’t be more timely, what with the popularity of the HBO series “Rome,” which is set in the waning days of the Roman Republic, just before Papas walked the Earth.
The Higgins Armory Museum, naturally, has its own story of Roman times. Andy Volpe will bring to life his alter ego, a Roman legionary, at 2:30 p.m. Nov. 6 and Nov. 20 at the museum’s glass and steel building at 100 Barber Ave. in Worcester. Mr. Volpe’s 45-minute presentation covers the development of the Roman legions and the life of a soldier in AD 40 to 70. It includes a show-and-tell on the legionaries’ arms and armor.
But back to Mr. Russell and how he traced Papas’ life history.
The archaeologist worked backward from the substantial number of facts recorded on the tablet, including the date it was issued and the names of the emperor and the consuls for that year.
Also inscribed are Papas’ native province and the names of the commanding officers of his regiment, as well as the names of members of his family, including his children.
“You say, ‘What was happening in that part of the world when he was recruited and enrolled?’ Mr. Russell said. “Emperor Trajan was mounting a campaign in the East. We know from stone inscriptions where his regiment was. We can trace its movements from Syria to Egypt to Judaea.”
It seemed straightforward enough until Mr. Russell remarked that he had discovered the regiment had been in Egypt from hieroglyphics on two papyri. “Our kind of scholarship is sort of serendipitous,” he remarked.
Becoming an auxiliary in the Roman legions was a good job for a young man with wanderlust; the auxiliaries were shipped out to defend the empire’s frontiers. They quickly learned to speak — and even read and write — Latin. With those skills, an auxiliary could rise to the rank of sergeant. Papas gave at least two of his children Roman names, probably in honor of favorite centurions, who were battlefield officers in command of 80 men each. “I speculate he was sucking up,” Mr. Russell said, laughing.
Papas was close to retirement when his regiment shipped out to Judaea.
“War, of course, was the thing that spoiled it for these guys,” Mr. Russell said. “This guy would have been involved in a terrible campaign. Soldiers suffered in heat and ambushes. The countryside was devastated and the Romans were hated.”
Around AD 136 or 137, Papas was discharged and headed back home.
Which, Mr. Russell surmised, may be why he was given the bronze tablet that has provided the clues to the story of his life. Such a tablet served as a passport. It was, however, labor intensive and expensive to produce. Sixty-five percent of the auxiliaries remained in the provinces in which they were discharged and would not have needed a passport.
It seems Papas the Son of Cillis was an exception — even back then.
Quot capita, tot sententia.
There are as many opinion as there are heads!
(pron = kwoht KAH-pih-tah, toht sehn-TEN-tee-ah)
Comment: Interesting. This proverb and variations like it are often uttered as
implicit criticism against opposing opinions, particularly in religious or
political groups where some opinions vary from the leadership. The implication
is that those who stray or differ from the prevailing opinion are misguided,
“blown by every wind of doctrine”, trivial, easily misled, even stuck in the
But, I also note that the Latin “sententia” here translated “opinion” shares a
common root with other Latin words that mean: thought, sentiment, idea,
sensation, sentient, carefully, gradually, gently, feeling, self-awareness,
emotion, sentiment, attitude, understanding, judgment, viewpoint, meaning,
intent, plan of action, expression, sentence, motion, proposal, sense, maxim,
verdict, moral, to perceive with the senses, feel, hear, see, smell, realize,
observe, notice, experience, think, judge, vote, decide.
In other words, this group of “sense” words in Latin describe the entire human
package. So, is it so profound that for every “head” (i.e. individual) that
there is an entire package of human experience? Not at all—unless one wishes
to make that wrong—in which case, real damage is afoot.
With the news pages and airwaves filled lately with reports of a possible "pandemic" of bird flu, some people are turning to their dictionaries for clarity on the distinction between "pandemic" and "epidemic."
Some dictionaries seem to make the distinction as clear as mud.
"Pandemic" comes from Greek roots, "pan," meaning "all" or "total" (as a panoply is a complete suit of armor) and "demos," meaning "people." "Pandemic" means, most originally and literally "of all the people." It's become a bearer of bad tidings because it's now used almost exclusively as a short form of "pandemic disease" - meaning one that breaks out seemingly everywhere all at once, affecting "all the people."
The Spanish influenza of 1918 is an oft-cited example. It's thought to have been called this not because it originated in Spain but because Spain, as a neutral party during World War I, wasn't censoring its news media at the time and so was the first major country to report on the outbreak. The Spanish themselves, meanwhile, reportedly referred to the disease as "the French flu."
The Oxford English Dictionary defines "pandemic" first as "general, universal," and then gives a second sense: "Of vulgar or sensual love." It cites a line from the English poet Shelley: "That Pandemic lover who loves the body rather than the soul is worthless."
Meanwhile, back at the department of public health, "epidemic" is being used to describe an outbreak of disease among many people in a given place within a given time period. One way to think of it is that "epidemic" is local, and "pandemic" is global.
There's a third element of this discussion, "endemic," used as an adjective and much less often as a noun, to refer to diseases considered regularly present in a community but "generally under control," as my Webster's has it. The "en" prefix means "in" – an endemic disease is one "in the people." If "pandemic" and "epidemic" recur to acute episodes, where "everyone" seems to be getting sick, "endemic" refers to chronic conditions of public health. "Endemic" also has a more benign meaning, similar to "indigenous" or "native" – certain plants or animals may be said to be "endemic" to a given place.
Of these three, "epidemic" may be the one most commonly used, but it's the one I find hardest to get a grip on. It's because of that quirky "epi" prefix, common enough in words of Greek derivation, but not easily explained in English with a single term.
"Upon" is one rendering for "epi." It seems to suggest that which is on top of something else. An epidemic might thus seen as something "upon the people," that is, prevalent, or "visited upon" the people. "Epigraphy" ("writing upon [buildings]), for instance, is a fancy term for inscriptions collectively, or their study.
Another "epi" is the "epicycle." In the complexities of Ptolemaic astronomy, charts of the heavens showed cycles and epicycles, orbits within orbits, as stargazers invented ever more complex explanations for the movements of the planets, before it was understood that they revolve around the sun, not the earth.
And for a brief moment when I was in the fourth or fifth grade, it seemed the height of sophisticated humor for some kids in class to tease the less well read by taunting, "Your epidermis is showing" – the epidermis being the normally visible outer layer of the skin.
There's another "epi" much in the news in the case of earthquakes, which is "epicenter." An epicenter is not the exact place where an earthquake occurs, which is generally below the surface. Rather it's the area of the earth's surface directly above that place.
Some people, though, use "epicenter" as if it were an intensified form of "center": the "epicenter of the new media revolution," for instance, as one online guru has it.
So, too, "penultimate," the one before the last, is sometimes used to mean "beyond the ultimate," whatever that would mean. But the "pen" particle is from Latin meaning "almost," as in peninsula ("almost island"). Evidently what's being sought here, though, is a term for "the truly extraordinary."
The lessons here? Words have meanings. Fancy particles from Greek or Latin need to be handled with care. Otherwise verbal confusion may become pandemic.
This film tells the story of ancient Greece in an engaging manner through hand-drawn images taken from ceramic vessels. Animator Karen Aqua and composer Ken Field worked during January 2003 with ninety sixth-grade students to make this animated film and soundtrack about ancient Greek mythology, sports, and culture. The students researched the topics and created the artwork and animation as well as the musical performances and sound effects. The result is a whimsical and kid-friendly overview of the ancient Greeks.
"I am Nero, bloodthirsty emperor of Rome. ... Wait, something's not right."
I don't know what that could have been. The sixth-grader was standing on a kitchen chair wearing green shorts and soccer shoes with a yellow SpongeBob T-shirt smiling out of a toga created by his older sister from a bedsheet.
"Does this thing look right?" he asked, pointing at the laurel gracing his forehead. Actually, the laurel was a girl's plastic headband glued with holly leaves and painted gold.
And he was holding a violin, though the violin was still many centuries removed from the time of the Emperor Nero. So were soccer shoes, SpongeBob, the medium that carries SpongeBob, the electricity that powers the medium that carries SpongeBob and the computers that he is created on. Same goes for spray paint, the safe childbirth techniques that got this kid here and the very language that he is speaking. None of this, with the exception of the standard-issue boy himself, existed in Nero's time.
Which is precisely why his teacher decided -- this is his take on the matter -- to make "a complete fool of him" by making him the lead in his school's Walk Through Ancient Rome presentation. Rather than being proud of this plum part, he is troubled.
"I wanted to play the apostle Paul, but they gave that part to this kid named Paul," he told me.
Meanwhile, something remains not right and it isn't the unstrung red plastic violin borrowed from some neighborhood toy chest. And never mind that Nero is said to have sung, not played, while an "accidental" fire burned a hole in Rome big enough to accommodate his Golden Palace.
"Maybe it's the sheet?"
"Toga," he corrected. "I think it's Nero himself. Do you know what this guy did?"
Actually, I do but mainly because I once lived in Rome with not much to do beyond examining antiquities. That and what I've learned from his reading the part to me for days, a part that includes the words, "I am Tiberius Claudius Nero Caesar," Which may be incorrect because I found the man also listed as Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus. Either way it appears that he began life in AD 37 (dying in AD 68 with not much in the way of tears shed for him) as Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus. The name would later be changed by his stepdad, Claudius.
But that's not what bothers the boy.
"The guy's a maniac. He killed everybody he knew, then burned Rome while playing this thing." This thing is a fiddle that could never have been in the hands of the emperor, who apparently started out good before degenerating from a surfeit of power.
"Plus," the kid asked, "why would Nero say this about himself?" Here he recites lines ameliorated by SpongeBob's smiling face: " 'I am famous for being one of the bad, evil emperors of Rome.' How did he know that he was bad and evil and, if he knew it, why would he say that about himself?"
Look, any guy who tried to murder his dear mother with poison, and by making the ceiling over her bed "accidentally" cave in and by sending her to sea in a collapsible boat before having the pesky woman clubbed to a pulp probably saw "bad" and "evil" as good words.
Later he poisoned his first wife, kicked his second wife to death when she complained about him staying too long at the chariot races and turned a number of perfectly decent Christians into human garden torches for their "complicity" in the great fire, a move that got him named the very first Antichrist.
Then there was the rampant sex, casual brutality and how he made good citizens listen to his singing. This may have been the last straw that caused the Senate to condemn him, an order he circumvented by killing himself.
"I mean, how would you feel if you were Nero's dad?"
You know, I'd probably feel like we might have done a few more things together. You know, bear baiting, crucifying Gauls, eel eating, gladiator stabbing, the usual father-son activities.
"Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy."
With these famous words begins the Odyssey according to Robert Fagles, renowned translator of Homer's epics. Fagles, professor emeritus of comparative literature at Princeton University, gave a reading of some poignant passages from the Odyssey Saturday at Princeton's Taplin Auditorium.
Winner of the 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the 1997 PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation, Fagles' translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey are considered the standard, authoritative versions of these classics.
In the Iliad, Odysseus cleverly plans to hide Greek warriors in a wooden horse that they deliver as a "gift" to the Trojans and the Greeks successfully defeat Troy by the surprise attack. But going home after the war isn't so simple. Odysseus wanders for 10 years on the way back to Ithaca and runs into all sorts of adventures chronicled in the Odyssey.
Fagles started translating the Odyssey in 1976 when his mother died. He decided to write his own English version of the episode where Odysseus, who had left his mother alive in Ithaca 20 years before, finds her dead in the Underworld.
Odysseus longs to hold his mother and rushes toward her three times, but "three times she flustered through my fingers, sifting away like a shadow," Fagles read.
"This is just the way of mortals when we die," the mother tells Odysseus. "Sinews no longer bind the flesh and bones together - the fire in all its fury burns the body, down to ashes once life slips from the white bones, and the spirit rustling, flitters away . . . flown like a dream."
Like a musical performance, each translation of Homer's classics is different, he said. Two orchestras will give very different performances of the same symphony and two translators will give different impressions of the same piece of writing.
"Any translation, reading or performance of Homer is a form of interpretation, a form of vision," he said.
The most difficult parts of the Iliad and the Odyssey to translate are the moments such as the Iliad's River Battle that "blow you away," he said. These passages challenged him to "go over the top" with his writing and "subject language to pressure to the point where it almost bursts," he said.
When he began translating the Iliad, he started with a few scenes, including the River Battle, to see if he could command a suitable voice.
Though the Iliad and the Odyssey are nearly 3,000 years old, people still search for ties between the great poems of battle and current world events. When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Fagles received several phone calls from major news sources asking about connections to Homer's epics.
"The Associated Press asked, `Is there a Rumsfeld in the Iliad?' I said, `No, but isn't one enough?' " he told the Princeton audience.
In mythology courses students often learn about the Greek gods as stiff, statuelike and awesome, he said. Homer makes these characters such as Zeus more real, and closer to us, he said.
Fagles' current translation project, Virgil's Aeneid, is a "violent poem, a sad poem," he said. The protagonist is abandoned by the gods and loses his wife for the price of an empire. Virgil tells us the hardship is worth it, but it's still a tough call, he said. He hopes to finish the translation during the winter.
One of the most gratifying parts about doing translations is the readers, he said.
"There are many people out there reading, hungry for reading," he said. "If you don't publish, you'll never have the rejuvenation of readers."
"Varicose veins have been around forever," says Dr. Patrick Clancy, a family practice doctor in Beach Haven. "There's a stone relief in the Acropolis in Greece showing a warrior with varicose veins."
The Acropolis tablet of the IVth century b.c. concerning Dr Amynos allows us to visualize an enlarged lower limb clearly showing a varicosity. From 460-377 b.c., Hippocrates noted that a loose tourniquet leads to haemorrhages but that when the tourniquet is tight gangrene ensues and finally that standing up can exaggerate leg ulcerations. Of course much progress has been made since Hippocrates. The school at Alexandria, with Herophilus and Erasistrates speak of vascular ligatures.
A for AQUEDUCT. "Greater than the Pyramids" was how the Roman writer, Frontinus, described the water system of ancient Rome, and it was all based on aqueducts that brought water into the city from as far as 100km away. None of Rome's extraordinary achievements would have been possible without them.
B for BELLONA. As well as Mars, the god of war, Romans also had a goddess of war. Bellona represented the bloodlust that came over Roman soldiers in battle and helped them to their great victories. Priests of Bellona gashed their arms open with special knives during sacrifices to her.
C for CZAR, which like "shah" and "kaiser" is a term meaning "absolute ruler", derived from the word "Caesar".
D for DOG. The punishment for patricide (killing your father) was to be tied up in a sack with a wild dog, a live monkey, a snake and a cockerel, and be thrown into the River Tiber.
E for ESQUILINE. Rome was famously built on seven hills. As well as the Esquiline, there were the Palatine, the Aventine, the Caelian, the Capitoline, the Quirinal and the Viminal. Handy to know for the final round of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
F for FASCES. The fasces were a bunch of bound wooden sticks carried by men called lictors who escorted important politicians in public. They symbolised the politician's authority. The word fascism is derived from them.
G for the GRACCHI BROTHERS. Two brothers, Gaius and Tiberius, who campaigned for the rights of ordinary Romans, upset the status quo, frightened the establishment and were assassinated for their pains. For good measure one of them was decapitated and had his skull filled with lead. Jack and Bobby Kennedy might have done well to study them more closely.
H for HUMAN SACRIFICE. This was practised by the Romans in times of acute stress, such as war. It involved the burial of slaves beneath the Forum.
I for INSULA, the Latin word for an island, but also for an apartment block, and the kind of accommodation in which the majority of Romans lived. Insulas ranged from the swankiest condominium on the Palatine Hill to the poorest, seven-storey tenements in the notorious Roman slum, the Subura.
J for JUPITER, the king of all the Roman gods - and someone to have on your side. His temple on the Capitoline Hill was the most important in Rome. So important that he was known by his initials alone, JOM, standing for Jupiter Optimus Maximus (Jupiter, Biggest and Best).
K for KALENDS. The Romans had three set days in every month: the Kalends, which fell on the first day of the month; the Nones, which normally fell on the seventh day; and the Ides, usually on the 15th. Other dates were counted backwards from these days. So, what we would call the 12th of the month the Romans would call "three days before the Ides".
L for LIQUAMEN. One of the most popular ingredients in Roman cooking was a fish sauce called liquamen, boiled down from the salted entrails of anchovies or small fish. Worcestershire Sauce is a direct descendant.
M for MILLION, which was the estimated population of Rome at the time of the birth of Christ. This made Rome the most populous city of the ancient world. No city in the West would again reach such a size for nearly 1,800 years.
N for NICOMEDES. It was a diplomatic mission to an Asian king called Nicomedes that was the making of an ambitious teenaged politician called Gaius Julius Caesar. Rumours that Caesar's "diplomatic outreach" had included offering Nicomedes his anal virginity were to dog him all his life.
O for OXYRHYNCHUS, an obscure town in Egypt, it was the site of one of the most significant finds in archaeological history. A rubbish tip at its edge contained thousands of fragments preserved by the dryness of the desert, including everything from private letters to contracts for rental slaves. They offer a unique insight into the everyday life of what was then a Roman province.
P for PLUTO... and his lady, Proserpina. Pluto, the god of the underworld, was viewed as a fierce and cruel god who ignored prayers and neglected sacrifices. He kidnapped Proserpina and took her into his realm as the queen of the dead. Quite a charmer.
Q for QUAESTOR. Any Roman male with money, family and ambition dreamed of political office. There was a strict ladder to climb before you could reach the ultimate of Consul, or head of state. The first rung was Quaestor - an administrative and financial post. In Rome nobody could be anybody important without being a Quaestor first.
R is for RAPE OF THE SABINES. At an early stage of their history the Romans realised they had a serious problem: there were many Roman men, but hardly any Roman women. They solved the problem by sending an armed gang to a neighbouring tribe called the Sabines and stealing all of theirs. The theft became known as "the Rape of the Sabines".
S is for SHIT-HOLE. The orator Cicero is celebrated for his fine phrases but could sometimes be rather blunt. In a letter to a friend he described Rome as "the shit-hole of Romulus". (Romulus was the legendary founder of the city).
T is for TEPIDARIUM. The most popular of all Roman leisure pastimes was visiting the baths. There were 170 in Rome at the time of the Emperor Augustus, and by the end of the Empire, more than 900. On the Goldilocks principle most baths had three main rooms: the calidarium, which was too hot; the frigidarium, too cold; and the tepidarium, just right.
U is for UNDERTAKER. Owing to their understanding of human anatomy through plying their trade, undertakers frequently moonlighted as torturers - and they were in constant demand. Evidence obtained from a slave in a court case, for example, was only admissible if the slave had been tortured first.
V is for VISIGOTHS, who, under the leadership of their commander, Alaric, sacked the city of Rome in 410AD, signalling the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.
W is for WOLF, or more strictly, she-wolf. Remus and his brother, Romulus, the legendary founders of Rome, were suckled and saved by a she-wolf after being rescued from the Tiber. A famous bronze statue of the wolf is on display in the Capitoline Museum in Rome.
X is for XULSIGIAE, a group of Celtic gods linked to the worship of Mars, the Roman god of war. In terms of importance they rank between negligible and zero, but there aren't that many X's to choose from.
Y is for the letter Y, which did not feature in the original Latin alphabet. As time went on, the Roman's "imported" the letters Y, K and Z into their alphabet, for use in words which were borrowed from ancient Greek. This brought the number of letters in the Roman Latin alphabet to 23: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, V, X, Y and Z. The letters J, U and W were added at a later stage, to write languages other than Latin.
Z for ZAMA The battle in North Africa (modern-day Tunisia) in which the Romans finally defeated their arch-rival, Hannibal. More than any event, the defeat of Hannibal and Carthage, the city from which he came, was what opened the door to Rome's eventual domination of the Mediterranean and then the known world.
Murderous pharaohs, bloody battles, flings with kings and an emperor who inducted his horse into the senate - it is no wonder HSC students are flocking to ancient history.
In 2001 it attracted 7382 HSC students; this year there were 10,336, more than modern history for the second year in a row.
Syl Bosworth, an ancient history teacher at Karabar High School, Queanbeyan, said blockbuster films such as Gladiator and Alexander the Great had probably helped lift the subject's profile.
"More than that, it deals with a whole range within a society: the people, the society itself, the changes that happen over a period; and the kids really do seem to love it," she said.
Students at Saint Ignatius' College, Riverview, who sat the HSC exam yesterday, said ancient history had an element of mystery.
"Modern history is very straightforward," Darius Navidzadeh said. "It's very well-documented. Ancient history is more open to interpretation. There's always different opinions. The things that happen are more spectacular."
When asked their favourite stories, the students listed the crazed antics of Rome's Emperor Caligula, the disappearance of Egypt's Queen Hatshepsut's mummy, the bloody conquests of Alexander the Great and a Persian commander called Boges.
"There's lots of blood and stuff," said one.
The course also offers a taste of early feminism with questions about the role of Roman matrons or women in Minoan religion. "More so than modern history, women are prominent," said another St Ignatius boy, Rob Linsley.
Ancient history's popularity was reflected on the website boredofstudies.org yesterday afternoon. "I must admit I'm gonna miss ancient, it was my favourite subject," one said.
"I didn't want to stop writing," said another.
Ms Bosworth said the paper, which covered subjects ranging from Julius Caesar to Jezebel, was fair, if unusually specific. Questions about Draco, the first to codify Athenian law, and Sparta were unexpected.
"It wasn't outside the scope of the syllabus," she said.
Operistitium in Islandia feminarum
Die Lunae plus viginti milia feminarum ex sedibus operis in vias urbis Reykjavik egressae sunt, ut contra differentias inter mercedes feminarum et virorum reclamitarent.
Feminae enim in Islandia in medio sexaginta quattuor centesimas ex illa mercede accipiunt, quae viris solvitur.
In Finnia mercedes feminarum circiter viginti centesimis minores sunt quam virorum. Primum operistitium pro paritate mercedum feminae Islandienses triginta annis ante fecerunt.
In politica quidem condiciones illarum his annis meliores factae sunt. Ex delegatis parlamentariis Islandiensibus tertia pars sunt feminae, cum anno millesimo nongentesimo septuagesimo quinto tantum quinque centesimae fuerint.
Non me deridet qui sua facta videt.
No one who sees his/her own deeds laughs at me.
(pron = nohn may day-REE-det kwee SOO-ah FAHK-tah WIH-deht)
Comment: As with other proverbs, this one yields more if we turn it inside out
and upside down a bit.
I don’t laugh at others because I see myself. I only laugh at others because,
otherwise, I would have to look at myself. I have seen myself. And when I see
what is really here, and accept it (big condition), the compassion that I learn
for myself transfers to others. Having accepted myself with all that I am, I
can only accept others.
Likewise, if I am making fun of others, it is only a public display of the
contempt I hold for myself.
I like to think that I have had good opportunity, as a parent and as a teacher,
to observe young people as they come into the world and grow up in front of me.
Even as I write this morning, I have received a phone call from a young man
(now in his mid to late 20’s) who first entered my life as a student when he
was 14. Though I can offer no concrete “proof” (and won’t argue with those who
think otherwise) I am convinced that children do not enter this life with
self-loathing and self-contempt as features of the essence of who they are.
No. That part of the package is something they “learn” to do from those around
them. The young people and later adults who are the quickest to deride others
are those who have drunk the deepest at that ancestral pool.
The only “cure” that I have learned is a daily appointment with the mirror. Can
I look, and accept myself? Whatever I do standing in that mirror is exactly
what I am going to do to others for the rest of the day.
Hundreds of "giant" crabs have invaded the ancient heart of Rome, threatening to interrupt the work of archaeologists excavating the city's subterranean treasures.
Zoologists discovered the colony of freshwater crabs when they examined water quality in a channel running under the Imperial Forum. After their initial surprise at the unlikely discovery of about 550 potamon fluviatile scuttling around the centre of the Italian capital, they also found that the crabs so enjoy their urban environment that they are growing larger than they would in their natural habitats in Sicily and Tuscany.
The size of the average fully grown male is 5cm, but the Roman crabs grow to a "giant" 7cm. Scientists attribute this to good quality water and a lack of natural predators in the water channel that runs under the Palatine Hill and surfaces in the Trajan Market.
Negotiations are now under way with Rome's archaeological authorities excavating the Forum site to find a way to preserve the colony without halting their work.
Bernanke moderator Argentariae Foederalis
Ben Bernanke, professor scientiae oeconomicae et proximus consiliarius oeconomicus praesidentis George W. Bush, novus moderator Argentariae Foederalis Americanorum (Federal Reserve) ab illo nominatus est.
Oportet autem senatus nominationem confirmet. Novus moderator a Kalendis Februariis Alano Greenspan succedet, qui duodeviginti annos Argentariae Foederali magna cum auctoritate praeest.
Photos seized from a Swiss warehouse paint a story of global skullduggery, Rome prosecutor Paolo Ferri says. The thousands of Polaroids depict how Greek pottery and Roman statues looted from 2,000-year-old tombs in Italy made their way to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
At the journey's end, convicted Roman antiquities trafficker Giacomo Medici and American dealer Robert Hecht posed in front of museum cases displaying looted relics, he says.
``This is evidence of an international conspiracy,'' says Ferri, who, 10 years after the warehouse raid, is using the photos to crack the alleged smuggling ring. ``Traffic in archaeology goes from Italy to Switzerland, and from there, it's sold to most art museums in America.''
The Getty's former antiquities chief, Marion True, is the first museum curator to be prosecuted with the Polaroid evidence.
True, 56, is scheduled to go on trial on Nov. 16 in Rome on charges of handling or receiving 35 stolen objects and for conspiracy for her alleged role in a smuggling business that Hecht and Medici ran. Medici, 67, was convicted on Dec. 13, 2004, of receiving and exporting stolen antiquities, and is appealing.
Hecht, 86, who was indicted on the same charges, denies wrongdoing. He is scheduled to go on trial with True.
True, who has a doctorate in fine arts from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, declined to comment for this story. ``The Getty continues to believe that Dr. True's trial should result in her exoneration,'' the museum said in a statement.
Princeton, Boston, Cleveland
The Getty case is just a slice of an illicit global trade in antiquities that stretches from the Egyptian desert to Chinese tombs to Peruvian monuments, and pulls in some of the most- respected names in art and academia.
At least 52 items the Getty has acquired or handled were looted or came from smugglers, according to charges against Hecht, Medici and True that were contained in Italian court documents obtained by Bloomberg News. Eight such pieces are in the Metropolitan, 22 are in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and one each are in the Princeton University Art Museum and the Cleveland Museum of Art, the documents say.
Italian judges haven't charged the museums with any crime.
These objects represent a small part of the tainted antiquities in museums, Ferri says.
At Princeton, a psykter, a vase for cooling wine, that's listed in Hecht's indictment is one of some 50 items that originated with Medici, he says. ``They have many, many items whose provenance is Medici,'' Ferri says of the New Jersey museum.
The Princeton museum's spokeswoman, Ruta Smithson, says Ferri's contention is wrong.
``A search of museum records finds no indication that we have acquired anything at all from Mr. Medici, either directly or indirectly,'' she says. ``The Italian authorities have requested information about the psykter, and we have provided it.''
Illicit trade in antiquities and cultural items totals as much as $4 billion to $6 billion a year, the U.K. House of Commons' Culture, Media and Sport Committee found in July 2000 after gathering testimony on trafficking's worldwide scope.
Looted items can highlight a museum's collection. The Euphronios krater, a 12-gallon (45-liter) pot painted with a scene from the Trojan War, sits spotlighted in the center of one of the Metropolitan's new Greek galleries.
Thomas Hoving, the former Met director who paid $1 million for the krater in 1972, now says he believes tomb robbers stole it. It's among the allegedly looted items Italian prosecutors charged Hecht and Medici with handling.
Also from the Metropolitan's collection, Hecht is charged with handling and exporting a 15-piece set of Hellenistic silver that Italian authorities say was looted from Morgantina in Sicily.
Among the items in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts for which Hecht is charged is a 2,500-year-old vase depicting young athletes jumping, which is on view in the museum's Early Greek Gallery.
The artifact at Cleveland's museum for which he's charged is a lekythos, or oil jar, painted with black figures.
The Getty's Web site features a 2,300-year-old black vase from Apulia in southern Italy, painted in red figures that depict Perseus and Andromeda after he saved her from a sea monster. The vase is included in the charges against Hecht, Medici and True.
To get such pieces, True would tell Medici what she wanted to buy, Medici would sell the item to Hecht or other dealers and Hecht would sell the object to the Getty with paperwork that made it seem as if it had come from a known international source rather than from illicit excavations, Ferri charges.
Ferri says he has Polaroids of the vase, known as a pelike, that were taken during its restoration under Medici's supervision. He also has shots of Medici posing at the vase's display in the Getty.
The indictment of Hecht and True says all of the items for which they're charged are of illicit provenance: ``They come from theft, originating with clandestine digs and illegal purchases that for the most part damaged sites such as tombs.''
True spent two decades at the Getty building on the antiquities collection bequeathed by oil baron J. Paul Getty, who died in 1976. On Oct. 3, the museum said True retired after it determined that she'd violated Getty policy by failing to disclose details of a house she bought in Greece.
Francesca Coppi, one of True's lawyers in Italy, says True tried to ensure the legitimate origins of the Getty's acquisitions and has returned objects to Italy that were determined to have been stolen.
``Marion True acted in good faith,'' Coppi says.
`I've Never Smuggled'
While True is a high-profile defendant, the indictment portrays her as marginal in the alleged conspiracy. ``Hecht and Medici took on the role of promoters and organizers of the entire illicit traffic,'' the indictment says.
Medici declined interview requests through his lawyer in Rome, Susan Spafford. ``The activity of Mr. Medici was outside the country and respected Italian law,'' Spafford says. ``He bought these objects on the international market.''
Hecht denies wrongdoing. ``I've never smuggled an object out of Italy,'' says Hecht, who lives in Paris and New York. ``I've never bought from illicit diggers. If they want to prosecute me for a vase I sold to the Getty or the Museum of Fine Arts or the Metropolitan, I want to know who excavated it, where and who exported it.''
Today's clashes over antiquities and their origins are different from efforts by Egypt and Greece to win back artifacts such as the Rosetta Stone or Parthenon Marbles, which foreigners removed centuries ago. Theft from museums also differs from tomb robbing because most objects in museums have been documented.
Archaeological sites hold unique information that raiders erase forever, says Giuseppe Proietti, who heads the Italian Ministry of Culture's department of research, innovation and organization.
In October, Italian police seized 600 bronze statuettes, marble busts and pots from a home in Austria after tracing them from tomb robbers who had dug at sites near Rome that predate the Roman Empire. While police celebrated the biggest seizure of looted goods in a decade, archaeologists lamented the loss of knowledge about food residue or placement that would have added to the historical record had the items been properly excavated.
``It's like ripping a page from a book, a page of history in which our ancestors' story is told,'' says Proietti, 60, who has represented the ministry in talks with the Getty Museum over a civil portion of the Italian court case, in which the ministry is one of the offended parties.
Valuable National Resources
What constitutes illegal trade varies from country to country. Egypt, Italy and Turkey, whose cultural heritage is among their most valuable national resources, now say antiquities found on their soil belong to them. They prosecute traders and pressure foreign countries to enforce the laws.
The oldest and most widely adopted global standard is the 1970 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization convention on preventing the illicit import, export and transfer of ownership of cultural property.
It covers antiquities more than 100 years old. The U.S., Italy and 107 other countries that signed it pledge to respect a ban on importing material known as stolen.
The Metropolitan Museum won't comment on antiquities the Italian court documents link to looters, says Harold Holzer, a museum spokesman. He says the Met follows guidelines of the Association of Art Museum Directors, a New York-based organization made up of 175 museum heads.
No Blanket Prohibitions
Smithson, the Princeton museum's spokeswoman, says the museum complies with the AAMD's guidelines. The Cleveland Museum's spokesman, Robert Bruder, referred questions to Director of External Affairs Donna Brock, who didn't respond to requests for comment. Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, whose policy also is to follow the guidelines, hasn't been contacted by the Italian government about its collection, spokeswoman Kelly Gifford says.
The guidelines condemn any actions that damage archaeological sites and restrict buying objects stolen from official excavations, according to the association's Web site. At the same time, they list no blanket prohibitions on objects from the world's unofficial or unknown sites, such as as-yet- undiscovered tombs in the Egyptian desert where robbers turn up rich finds.
AAMD Executive Director Millicent Gaudieri says the guidelines cite ``official'' excavations to mirror terminology used by agencies such as Unesco.
Zahi Hawass is striving to protect undiscovered treasures. The secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities is building legal cases against museums and scholars who handle looted objects. After taking office in 2002, Hawass banned from Egypt any academic or institution that cooperates with antiquities dealers.
``The problem of Western museums is, they buy stolen artifacts,'' says Hawass, 58, sporting an Indiana Jones-style hat that shades his forehead. ``That is very bad.''
Hawass is battling looters at Saqqara, in the desert 12 miles (19 kilometers) south of Cairo. Best known for King Djoser's 4,800-year-old stepped pyramid, a precursor to the Giza pyramids, Saqqara was the necropolis for the ancient capital of Memphis.
Many of Saqqara's tombs are unexplored, making them prizes for archaeologists and looters alike.
Robbers smashed the carved walls of the tomb of Hetepka, a hairdresser to the royals. They extracted a false door, a stone slab carved with hieroglyphs that ancient Egyptians believed was a pathway to the afterlife. U.K. police recovered the door, and the tomb has largely been restored, Hawass says.
Reminders of looters' destruction abound in Saqqara. In the 4,340-year-old tomb of Ka-Gmni, a government official, a false door from a nearby burial area sits on its side amid a pile of carved tomb walls and fixtures.
Hawass says antiquities officials have placed them there for temporary storage in this sturdier sepulcher, which is under constant guard.
Egyptian conservators working for Hawass will return the pieces to the tombs or move them into new warehouses on the edge of the burial grounds, where the desert meets groves of date palms. The new facility, with electronic sensors, replaces a storage area that looters had raided twice by digging tunnels underneath. They stole ancient papyruses before fleeing undetected, Hawass says.
Looting is as old as tombs themselves. Ancient Egyptians sealed their mortuaries with heavy doors and long burial shafts or hid them in the hills to throw off robbers.
European museums and private collections stocked up on bounty in the 18th and 19th centuries before countries passed laws to protect their cultural heritage. Military campaigns and so-called grand tour trips taken by the wealthy added to Western collections.
American museums started from scratch. The Metropolitan collected relics directly from archaeological expeditions in Egypt in the early 20th century and then built its collection through purchases and donations.
Competition among U.S. museums to put together the best exhibits fueled the trade in artifacts, says Neil Brodie, coordinator of the Illicit Antiquities Research Centre at the University of Cambridge in the U.K.
``The demand was from the American museums,'' he says. ``In the 20th century, they all had to stock themselves.''
Hecht and Medici
The Getty, started with J. Paul Getty's Greek and Roman antiquities, began to build up the collection after his death. In 1982, most of Getty's art, housed in a Roman-style villa, passed to the trust that now runs the Los Angeles museum. The museum hired True that year and promoted her to curator of antiquities in 1986, when she got her doctorate.
Hecht and Medici appeared on the scene together in 1987, Medici's lawyer Spafford says. They visited the Getty to sell it 20 Attic plates with red figures on a black background. The pair also dropped in on the Metropolitan, she says.
``Hecht was acting as a middleman, as the most famous seller of antiquities in the world,'' Spafford says.
Hecht, who confirms the account, says he made out an invoice to the Getty for $2 million, payable to Giacomo Medici for the plates and stating that Medici was their owner.
The men left the plates at the museum, which held them for a year and a half while True tried unsuccessfully to persuade her bosses that it was worth spending $2 million on 20 items that would look the same as each other to the viewing public, Hecht says. The Getty returned the plates to Medici, he says.
Posed at Museums
During their visits to the Getty and the Metropolitan, the men posed in front of objects that Hecht had sold to the museums, Spafford says. Medici brought the photos back to Europe, where two decades later they would become evidence in his conviction.
In 1995, Italian police and prosecutors tracking tomb robbers got a break when they persuaded the Swiss government to use a cross-border warrant to raid warehouses in the Geneva Freeport -- a trade zone exempt from Swiss customs.
They targeted an address shared by three companies that Medici ran: Edition Service, Fiduciarie Tecafin and Xoilan Trade, according to the court documents.
The Sept. 13 raid turned up thousands of artifacts and photos. In one shot, a 2,300-year-old, dirt-encrusted marble footbath is posed next to the morning's paper in the trunk of a car. Prosecutor Ferri says the photos trace the items from excavation to repairs -- and some of them to displays at the Getty, Metropolitan and other museums.
The pictures also show Medici posing alongside museum cases containing the objects, Ferri says. ``It's to say, `I'm the father of this object,''' he says.
Prosecutors say securing photos of items in the Getty collection -- before they got to the collection -- was the link they needed to assemble their case.
Spafford counters that the photos aren't proof of illegal activity. ``He's a friend of restoration and very curious,'' she says of Medici.
The photos simply document objects sold by Hecht and visited on their U.S. trip, she says. Pictures of what Ferri says are illegal excavations are actually shots that Medici took of storm damage on his property after a heavy rain, Spafford says.
``It's only a hole in the ground,'' she says of the photos that prosecutors say depict illegal digging for antiquities.
The court papers obtained by Bloomberg News say six of seven Medici-related objects in the Metropolitan Museum match photos from Medici's warehouse. Two are Attic amphoras, storage jars with handles, painted with red figures.
Stamp of Approval
The Getty has 42 objects handled by Medici that match Polaroids found in the raid, according to the papers.
Universities can be more than consumers in the illicit antiquities market; academic institutions that write about, display or verify an item's provenance can increase the object's value by providing a stamp of approval, Brodie says.
In a Bloomberg survey of 1,773 auction lots handled by New York auction house Sotheby's Holdings Inc. from December 2000 through June 2005, items that had been exhibited, associated with a museum or authenticated sold for 98 percent more than the average estimate Sotheby's projected before the sale. Items that lacked such an imprimatur sold for 70 percent more.
Oxford University's archaeology lab went beyond authenticating artifacts for dealers and auction houses.
It worked for robbers and smugglers before the university, the oldest in the English-speaking world, stopped its commercial business of testing earthenware in 1997, says Doreen Stoneham, the scientist who did the testing.
`They Were Tombaroli'
In about 1970, Oxford's Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art began supplementing its budget by charging private clients to date pots and statues through thermoluminescence, or TL. The tests measure how much radiation objects have absorbed, yielding an approximate date of when the pottery was originally fired.
Stoneham built a customer list consisting mostly of art dealers, some of whom worked illegally, she says.
In the mid-1980s, two Italian clients flew Stoneham to Lugano, Switzerland, to test a fragmented Etruscan sarcophagus. They led her to the basement garage of a bungalow and told her they'd found part of a tomb in the south of Italy.
They wanted advice on which direction to dig to find more. She says she told them she couldn't help because she was a lab scientist, not an excavator.
``They were tombaroli,'' she recalls, using the Italian term for tomb robber. ``They didn't hide it.'' When others might enjoy weekends playing golf, these men spent Saturdays stalking the countryside for tombs, she says.
``They were doing a bit of digging illegally and dealing in antiquities,'' she says.
No Questions Asked
In another case, Stoneham flew to Rome, where clients on the outskirts of the city were restoring pre-Colombian artifacts. She says the objects were smuggled out of South America.
``It was OK at the time,'' Stoneham says of working for tomb robbers. ``You take your sample, and you don't get on your high horse.''
In 1990, Mike Tite, who had been keeper of the British Museum's research lab, became head of the Oxford lab and Stoneham's boss.
Soon after, a documentary called ``African King'' explored the illicit trade of artifacts from Mali in West Africa to private collectors in Europe. Tite was interviewed about his lab's no-questions-asked authenticating of undocumented, 900- year-old terra-cotta statuettes of human figures.
Archaeologists slammed the lab. Ricardo Elia of Boston University and Christopher Chippindale of Cambridge published editorials and letters in the independent journal Antiquity, which Chippindale edited.
Oxford's `Golden Goose'
In 1992, Tite, now 66, banned tests of West African objects for private individuals. Then, in 1997, he eliminated commercial TL testing of all artifacts for nonacademics.
``One thinks a little while before killing a golden goose,'' Tite, who retired in 2004, says of the seven years it took to shut the operation. ``It became inappropriate to find oneself as a university handling objects of dubious provenance with a high probability that they had been smuggled.''
Stoneham resigned, packed her things and started her own company, Oxford Authentication Ltd., in an office park in Wantage, a half hour from Oxford by car.
``Our job is spotting fakes,'' she says in offices that contain a one-room lab for processing pottery powder samples and three rooms for the company's four employees. ``I hope it helps prevent a lot of fraud.''
`I Just Take the Money'
Stoneham has built Oxford Authentication into the top authenticator for antiquities made of clay.
Of the 98 earthenware objects sold at Sotheby's March auction of fine Chinese ceramics and works of art, 12 were advertised as having dates verified by Oxford Authentication, the only authenticator listed.
Stoneham charges the same rates as the university did, 180 pounds ($318) for pottery and 250 pounds for porcelain. She tests almost 3,000 items a year, for annual sales of almost 600,000 pounds.
``Don't ask me about the legality of it,'' she says. ``That's not my problem. I just take the money and tell them if it's genuine or not.''
The new director of the Oxford lab, Mark Pollard, distances himself from Stoneham. ``We wouldn't touch anything that is illegally exported,'' he says.
Pollard says authentication can increase an object's value 10-fold. ``The nub of it is, Does that encourage illicit trade in antiquities?'' he says. ``I guess it probably does.''
The Met's `Pirate'
Hoving, 74, the Metropolitan's former director, says the sentiment surrounding museums' responsibilities toward antiquities is changing.
``I was delighted I was a pirate,'' says Hoving, who says he liked the adventure of building a great collection in the 1960s and 1970s with pieces like the Euphronios krater. ``We all began to realize it was over, getting to be too embarrassing.''
In 1972, when he bought the krater, Hoving said Hecht supplied documentation that showed the relic had come from a Lebanese man whose father had gotten it, in pieces, earlier in the century. Today, Hoving agrees the krater was looted from Cerveteri, near Rome, and the Lebanese documentation was switched from a less valuable vessel.
``We really were suckered,'' Hoving says of the deal with Hecht, whom he says admitted the switch to him when confronted years later.
``That is a lie, and I never switched any document on any krater,'' Hecht says. ``That's a figment of his imagination or a construction of his evil mind.''
Prosecutors in the U.S., spurred by evidence provided by the Egyptian and Italian governments, among others, are starting to pursue looting cases.
In February 2002, a jury in U.S. District Court in New York convicted New York art dealer Frederick Schultz for conspiracy to receive antiquities. Hawass says the case involved suppliers associated with the Saqqara looting.
Among the bounty was a stone head of King Amenhotep III, which looters sawed off a statue and smuggled out of Egypt by coating it with plastic and painting it in gaudy colors so it would look like a cheap souvenir, according to court documents.
``Every pharaoh, it seems, has a price on his head,'' U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff wrote in a Jan. 3, 2002, denial of a motion by Schultz to dismiss the case.
Schultz, 51, a former president of the National Association of Dealers in Ancient, Oriental and Primitive Art, sold the head to a private collector for $1.2 million, according to judges' rulings. In July 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Schultz's appeal seeking to overturn his conviction.
Schultz is serving the end of a 33-month prison sentence at a halfway house in the Bronx, New York, and is due for release in December, the Federal Bureau of Prisons says.
Messages left at the halfway house and his home and office weren't returned. His lawyer listed on court documents, Paul Shechtman of New York, said he no longer represents Schultz.
Schultz's prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York argued that the National Stolen Property Act, which criminalizes the receipt of stolen goods that have entered the U.S., binds the U.S. to respect Egypt's patrimony law.
Egypt's law, enacted in 1983, declared that all antiquities found in the nation after that date belonged to the government. Egypt and other countries are using the Schultz conviction to build criminal cases against dealers and collectors in the U.S.
Some collectors are willing to defy such laws.
Smuggling to Preserve
Antiquities are simply art that happens to be underground and should be dug up and spread worldwide to save them from threats such as Afghanistan's Taliban, says George Ortiz, 78, a Switzerland-based collector whose artifacts were displayed at the Metropolitan in 2003 and the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1994.
``I don't consider an object exported illicitly as stolen,'' says Ortiz, who says he knows Hecht and Medici from his dealings in the art market.
``It's the patrimony of humanity, and it's the only way to save it from iconoclasts,'' he says, referring to the Taliban and other groups that destroy sacred objects.
Hawass, noted for his television work as a consultant for National Geographic and in documentary films on the pyramids, is striving to make sure stolen Egyptian antiquities don't wind up in Western museums.
He has beefed up a previous practice of searching for looted items only at the Cairo airport by posting guards at seaports that he says have been used to smuggle items to Jordan. He's also adding more guards at tombs and temples.
Police on Camels
In the three years since Hawass took over, Egypt has recovered 2,000 objects from overseas, mostly from auction houses and dealers, says Ibrahim Abdel Megid Ramadan, 52, director of a new stolen artifacts department that Hawass established.
While these are victories for the Egyptians, they're largely limited to recovering pieces that were already known. The loss of unknown artifacts, stolen by illicit excavators, has to be prevented at the source, Hawass says.
In the desert of Saqqara, a dozen Egyptian men cheer one another on as they take turns running out of a Sixth Dynasty tomb with baskets of rubble balanced on their shoulders. They deliver the pieces to archaeologists, who rake through the rocks and pottery shards.
In a green tent, Kamil Kuraszkievicz, an Egyptologist from Warsaw University, says he has noticed an improvement in security.
Squat guardhouses, fashioned from the yellow stone of the desert, dot the surrounding ridges. Armed police on camelback patrol the high ground.
Raiders Armed With Shovels
``They increased the number of guards, who are much better,'' says Kuraszkievicz, 34, who has dug at Saqqara for nine years.
He suspects heightened security will preserve artifacts for study, rather than losing them to the market.
``The problem was that the Egyptologists didn't even get to know about these things,'' he says.
As Ferri prepares his case against True in Rome, there's little doubt that raiders armed with shovels are digging up ancient relics in the Egyptian desert and the hills of Italy, erasing history for a profit.
If the world's top dealers, collectors, universities and museums provide collaboration and a ready market, there will be little incentive for the latter-day tomb raiders to stop. | <urn:uuid:c26c909b-91a6-4775-8cc4-76c2160f2bad> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.atrium-media.com/rogueclassicism/Archives/2005_11.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719677.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00561-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958862 | 75,738 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Even after your fertile window has closed for the current cycle, tracking your data can still help you predict your next ovulation, and help clue you in on whether or not you might have conceived. Symptoms and moods are important to enter as always, as these will be the most telling of whether or not you conceived, but tracking your pregnancy tests and any spotting will likewise help predict your cycle, improve your fertility, and clue you in on whether or not you conceived.
How to track your luteal phase with Ovia Health
The luteal phase describes the span of time after ovulation but before your expected period, and although women in the luteal phase are no longer able to conceive this cycle as the egg formerly available for fertilization is now either dissolved, or fertilized(!), tracking your data can still help pinpoint your next cycle’s ovulation, and clue you in on whether or not you conceived.
Pregnancy tests generally can’t detect pregnancy until at least 10 days after ovulation (and a test’s accuracy improves with each passing day) because the level of hCG, the hormone that your womb produces once the egg implants, and pregnancy tests search for to confirm, is not significant enough yet. Tracking your pregnancy tests will help let you know when to take another, and will let Ovia know when to give you that big ‘congratulations!’
A fertilized egg takes about 7-10 days to journey down the fallopian tube, and towards your womb where it will implant, and set up shop for the next nine months. Some women notice “implantation bleeding” that is often mistaken for spotting or a light period during this time, as some blood may be released when your tiny little blastocyst (that’s gynecologist-talk for microscopic baby) implants into your womb. Depending on the date of your ovulation, tracking any spotting can really help clue you in on whether or not you conceived.
Once again, symptoms are incredibly important to track throughout the cycle, since they can help you establish a roadmap towards your ovulation and fertile window, and towards pregnancy. Many women start to notice early signs of pregnancy about a week after conception, so tracking potential symptoms can help clue you in to whether you conceived, or whether the symptoms are just indicative of an upcoming period – either way, tracking your symptoms will help let you know sooner. | <urn:uuid:b4c7d479-f17c-4907-a687-ad037869547e> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.oviahealth.com/guide/62/tracking-fertility-during-the-luteal-phase/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570741.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808001418-20220808031418-00071.warc.gz | en | 0.93683 | 505 | 2.3125 | 2 |
Commenting on the Agriculture chapter of the Programme for Government, IFA President Tim Cullinan said that the document had some good aspects but lacked specifics in relation to funding commitments.
“The Programme for Government commits to an environmental scheme similar to REPS. This will need to be sufficiently resourced with new funding to enable a significant payment per farmer. It cannot just be a recycling of funds from other schemes,” he said.
Tim Cullinan welcomed the commitment to appoint a food Ombudsman in line with the EU directive on the Food Chain.
“Some of the more extreme proposals from the Green Party, such as a ban on live exports and the removal of the nitrates derogation, are not in the programme, which is important,” he said.
“The potential for farmers to contribute to our climate targets through the production of renewable energy is mentioned in the document, but it must be something the new Government embraces,” he said.
“Farmers are keen to play their part, but to date they have been excluded,” he said. | <urn:uuid:0df9f27d-29b3-4f48-9f14-d5cee5404313> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.ifa.ie/campaigns/some-positives-but-programme-for-govt-on-farming-lacking-in-funding-specifics/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571284.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811103305-20220811133305-00471.warc.gz | en | 0.948324 | 225 | 1.59375 | 2 |
|Home > After Saddam > Article||Thursday April 17, 2003|
Sitting in his Gaza Strip office 13 years after the killing of the American tourist Leon Klinghoffer, the former Palestinian guerilla chief Abu Abbas offered a short laugh and a hard look.
"You never forget, all of you, do you?" he asked a Western journalist who had referred to the ill-fated voyage of the Achille Lauro.
This week, he got his answer. After 18 years of avoiding arrest for masterminding the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship and the chilling execution of the wheelchair-bound Klinghoffer, Abbas was arrested on Monday night after a raid on a house on the outskirts of Baghdad by United States special operations forces.
His capture comes amid reports in recent days that marines had discovered what appeared to be a training camp in Baghdad for the Palestine Liberation Front, the splinter terrorist organisation that Abbas headed.
The 55-year-old proved an exceptionally elusive quarry, slipping through US fingers after the hijacking. Even after his conviction in an Italian court, he had popped up throughout the Middle East in recent years, taking reporters' questions without fear.
He spent most of his adult life planning attacks on Israel, including two botched aerial assaults in 1981 using a motorised hang-glider and a hot-air balloon.
The complexities of Middle East politics meant that Israel allowed Abbas back into Gaza in 1996 to vote on a landmark resolution by the Palestinian parliament-in-exile renouncing calls for Israel's destruction.
He made three more visits in the next two years.
"It might be dangerous, but I'm not afraid," Abbas said in a 1998 interview. "I'm just going to continue my work."
Abbas was born in 1948 in a refugee camp in Syria after his family fled their home near Haifa when the state of Israel was created. He quickly became a rogue figure whose actions have embarrassed his mentor, the Palestine Liberation Organisation leader, Yasser Arafat.
He reportedly joined the PLO in 1964 - one of its youngest recruits. But it was not until October 1985 that Abbas, whose real name is Mohammed Abbas, attracted international attention when the Achille Lauro was seized off Port Said in Egypt by members of his splinter group.
Hundreds of passengers, including Klinghoffer and his wife of 36 years, Marilyn, were taken hostage. Klinghoffer was shot dead, his body and wheelchair dumped overboard.
The other passengers were released after a two-day ordeal and the hijackers surrendered to Egyptian authorities, who put the alleged killers on a flight to the PLO's headquarters in Tunisia.
US Navy fighters forced the flight down in Sicily, under Italian jurisdiction. But the Italians, to the Americans' dismay, allowed Abbas to flee to Yugoslavia before a US warrant for piracy and hostage-taking could be served.
Abbas disappeared, and international manhunts and a price on his head failed to flush him out.
He was sentenced in absentia in Italy to five life terms for his role in the hijacking and sentenced to life in prison in 1986, but never served any time.
His faction relocated to Iraq after the attack.
Abbas, a big, burly man with a full, fleshy face, claims that he was not even aboard at the time of the Klinghoffer shooting, and that the guerillas had intended only to use the cruise ship to slip into Israel, not commandeer it.
In the mid-1990s he voiced regret for the killing of Klinghoffer and said the hijacking was a military mission gone wrong. The apology was rejected by the Klinghoffer family and the US.
Ilsa and Lisa Klinghoffer, Leon Klinghoffer's daughters, said this week they hope America "will be able to revive a federal indictment against Abbas for piracy, hostage taking and conspiracy, and we urge them to do so".
"While we personally seek justice for our father's murder, the larger issue is terrorism," they said. "Bringing Abbas to justice will send a strong signal to terrorists anywhere in the world that there is no place to run, no place to hide."
Legal experts in the US believe Abbas could be prosecuted on grounds that his fugitive status prevented the expiration of the statute of limitations. Alternatively, he could be extradited to Italy.
However, the Palestinian Authority yesterday demanded his immediate release, saying his detention in Iraq violated an interim Middle East peace deal.
"We demand the United States release Abu Abbas. It has no right to imprison him," a Palestinian cabinet minister, Saeb Erekat, said.
Five years after the Achille Lauro hijacking, Abbas helped plan an attack by his organisation on Nitzanim beach in southern Israel in 1990. It failed, but ended the nascent US-PLO dialogue at the time. By 1998, it seemed efforts to bring in Abbas were over. Italy had made no real effort to extradite him, and the US Justice Department said it had no grounds for extradition.
US warrants were dropped after his conviction in Italy. But in January, he was forced to cut short a working trip to Cairo because the US was still looking for him.
Italy's Justice Minister Roberto Castelli said yesterday that Rome would seek the extradition of Abbas.
Associated Press, Los Angeles Times
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War On Iraq
No haven for Achille Lauro terrorist
Democracy stirs in Abraham's shadow
Dictator casts a dark cloud before vanishing like a wraith
Six more fall in city's bloody streets
Only regret is war, says Opera House protester
Rescuers had free run in saving Lynch, say hospital staff
Ruddock: cleric misleading
MP admits coalition unprepared for chaos
Italian police uncover al-Qaeda link in Syria
No way to recoup savings amid ruin of looted banks
Impartial weapons search vital: UK
Tribesmen run 'liberated' town
Hopes pinned on life under Saddam statue
|text | handheld (how to)||
Copyright © 2003. The Sydney Morning Herald.
|advertise | contact us| | <urn:uuid:3231ddf0-bb56-4d7a-951b-5bad529c2b3c> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/16/1050172654179.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560285289.45/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095125-00154-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968313 | 1,266 | 1.835938 | 2 |
TMA Crash Truck Facts
TMA Crash Truck Facts
TMA TRUCKS - RENTALS - SALES - SERVICES - PARTS | Phone: (973) 347-1101 Fax: (973) 347-0064 | Hours: Mon - Fri 7:30am to 4:30pm
TMA Truck Facts.
Scorpion attenuators made by TrafFix Devices, requires that the truck and the attenuator is attached to weigh at least 20,000 lbs. to achieve acceptable attenuator function when struck.
- S.P.A. designed a custom body to accept concrete for ballast in order to meet specifications
- S.P.A. ensures that when our attenuators are deployed they are approximately 12 inches off the ground in order to be at the proper height for impact from an oncoming vehicle.
- S.P.A. installs all of our attenuators in order to guarantee proper deployment and function.
- All of our used trucks go through an extensive 53 point inspection and any parts not up to factory standard are repaired or replaced.
New Jersey highway safety standards are some of the strictest in the country. All of our SPA trucks are built to NJ standards.
Some NJDOT standards:
- TMA trucks must be a minimum of 21,000 lbs. The weight must be attached to the truck in a manner that does not allow it to turn into a projectile if the truck is hit
- All of the controls for the attenuator and arrow board must be in the cab so the driver does not have to step into traffic to operate them.
- The bottom of the arrow board should be approximately 7’ off the ground when it is deployed.
- Amber lights must be visible from 360 degrees.
National Cooperative Highway Research Program – NCHRP Report 350 – Recommended Procedures for the Safety Performance Evaluation of Highway Features
MASH Guidelines for TMA Truck Attenuators – MASH guidelines for crash testing permanent and temporary highway safety features and recommends evaluation criteria to assess test results. Not only does it further expand on the testing requirements listed in the NCHRP Report 350, but it also offers guidelines for when MASH tested and approved attenuators must be used on your TMA trucks.
ATTENUATOR TRUCKS SAFETY FEATURES
S.P.A. TMA Attenuator Trucks are among the best designed, fabricated, and serviced in the USA today and meet NJ DOT Certification. NJ DOT has very stringent standards for highway safety for road work at SPA has met the requirements for those standards. One such standard is to keep the driver in the cab during the operation of the TMA truck. All controls are mounted in the cab so that the TMA and arrow board can be deployed without the driver ever having to leave his or her seat.
TMA trucks are also referred to as…
TMA trucks are also commonly referred to as crash trucks, attenuator trucks, shadow trucks, bump trucks, and safety trucks.
Have a TMA Attenuator Truck Question? Call (973) 347-1101 right now for an answer.
S.P.A. Safety Systems TMA Attenuator Trucks, Truck Mounted Attenuators, TMA Trucks, Traffic Control Trucks, Scorpion Attenuators, Cone Trucks, Scissor Lift Trucks, Hi-Rail Scissor Lift Trucks, Bucket Trucks, and Aerial Trucks, and Message and Traffic Boards.
TMA Trucks For Sale, Built to Specifications and for Rent at S.P.A. Safety Systems.
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7:30am to 4:30pm | <urn:uuid:7f10e203-c5a9-4c4b-a803-1114b2211b83> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://spasafetysystems.com/tma-attenuator-trucks-old/tma-trucks-facts/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571472.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811133823-20220811163823-00676.warc.gz | en | 0.898282 | 832 | 1.507813 | 2 |
It is important to periodically remind ourselves (and those who already know that the present financial meltdown in the US was perpetrated by the banks who took advantage of a deregulated system) and to introduce others to the reality of the present crisis.
Goldman Sachs was used as a study case in one investigations of the financial crisis--the Senate Subcommittee led by Levin and Coburn--and the banks' role was described by the FCIC in its study of the causes of the financial crisis.
Below is a video summary from the Naked Capitalism site:
See a mini-review and comments and view the video here
GoldmanSachs666 Message Board
According to the Collins English Dictionary 10th Edition fraud can be defined as: "deceit, trickery, sharp practice, or breach of confidence, perpetrated for profit or to gain some unfair or dishonest advantage". In the broadest sense, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent. The specific legal definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Fraud is a crime, and also a civil law violation. Defrauding people or entities of money or valuables is a common purpose of fraud, but there have also been fraudulent "discoveries", e.g. in science, to gain prestige rather than immediate monetary gain
*As defined in Wikipedia | <urn:uuid:be99b2d5-37d1-4465-b4e6-0707c0532458> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.goldmansachs666.com/2011/09/goldman-sachss-actions-are-central-to.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560284411.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095124-00459-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948289 | 275 | 2.296875 | 2 |
>So in a TBH, what would you expect their first regression to be? If they are 5.4 and you let them build the comb?
The problem with packages is I don't know if they are 5.4mm. They could have been raised on 5.4mm or Pierco (5.2mm) or Mann Lake PF100s (4.95mm). So they might build anywhere from 5.2mm to 4.7mm on the first try.
I used the 5.4 number as a hypothetical starting that I have gotten from reading both your stuff and the articles in other places. What I have been trying to get clearer in my head before I start the next package is what I might expect to see, and if the bees will take the steps on their own, I am content to learn the management practices to let them do that.
People pull honey from hives anytime the bees have a surplus. If you work the larger combs to the outsides of the brood nest eventually you'll get them to emerge and fill with honey. Then you can harvest them.
>Is this where fashioning a QE for the TBH would be useful, to move brood comb to the far side so it can hatch out before culling?
I wouldn't bother with a queen excluder. It's not necessary. Once the combs make it to the edge of the brood nest and the bees contract the brood nest in the fall they are easy to pull without taking any brood.
Ah. Okay. I envision the queen running all over the combs, and needing all the extra space she can get to do her work.
So when I put the package in, I put the QC on bar 4 or 5, and then let the brood expand for the year. At the point the brood contracts, you remove the combs on the edges and then start adding empty bars to the center or 'front' of the brood area so that the larger combs are pushed outwards from the brood the following year, and then remove the combs again after next year's brood contraction?
Does the placement of the entrance on the TBH affect how this management is done? End versus Side. | <urn:uuid:96b6d18d-f97a-446a-ba3f-93e9f19fed9b> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php?topic=14941.msg107976 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279169.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00211-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947093 | 455 | 1.664063 | 2 |
To be customer-centric requires business capability to design and to consistently deliver a unique and distinctive customer experience to a selected set of customers in order to acquire, retain and to develop them efficiently.
I was privileged to be taught by the late Dr Russell Ackoff at The Wharton School and he re-enforced my long held belief that one of the major challenges organisations face when trying to transform their business models to become more customer-centric is a lack of systems thinking. Dr Ackoff produced extensive research, insights and knowledge into how systems thinking is the only way to approach organisational development. He explained that many of the challenges we face in trying to understand our organisations such that we can transform them, come from using analytical thinking.
Systems thinking is an approach that views the organisation as a whole (end-to-end) comprised of many parts (functions/silos), yet, at the same time, it is more than the sum of the individual parts. (To deliver a unique and consistent experience requires the organisation to be joined-up – to operate as a single seamless entity.)
Dr Ackoff added that a system is also defined by the function it fulfils in the wider system – this speaks to our organisational role in society and community and embraces the stakeholder universe including, in addition to society, partners, employees, customers and investors.
Dr Ackoff regularly likened the idea of a system to the human body or to a motor-car. He explained the 3 principles of the system being defined by the function it fulfils in the wider system (universe) as follows:-
- Each part affects the behaviour of the whole. (If the heart and lungs are not functioning correctly then this will affect the well-being of the entire body) – think Leadership Team?
- No part has an independent effect on the overall system ( The ability for the muscles to get someone to walk in a straight line will depend on the balance maintained by the inner ear)
- The system itself has properties which none of the parts have (If a hand were cut off, the hand would be unable to write. It is the whole system, the whole body, that enables the hand to write)
These principles highlight the challenge many organisations face as they aspire to develop the capability to deliver unique and distinctive experiences. Trying to understand the organisation capability by analysing and restructuring various operating entities in isolation (e.g. let’s optimise the contact centre and make it really efficient.) doesn’t lead to the transformation required. Sadly, in the above-mentioned contact centre example, ‘efficiency’ measures such as average handling time and # calls answered per day by agent, are the antithesis of customer-centric capability – a customer may want information or may want a problem solved – he/she is not interested in the fact that the agent may have an average handling time target of 2min, 30 seconds, for example.
Taking the analogy further the parts (functions) of the organisation need to mesh together, to be joined up in such a way that they operate seamlessly – to be designed in such a way that they’re supportive of the strategic outcome of the business. The linkages between and across areas of specialisation need to be refined and appropriate for the intended experience. It’s the view and understanding of the whole organisational system as well as an understanding of the universe that allows the organisation to determine where it wants to create it’s ‘high contrast signature experience’ – where it wants to stand head and shoulders above the competition, where it is going to be unique. No business can be the best at absolutely everything.
As per Dr Ackoff, this is akin to taking apart each and every motor car in an attempt, through analysis, to find the best engine, best transmission, best steering, best braking system, best suspension……..best everything. Trying to put all of these ‘best’ parts together would result in an absolute mess as nothing would fit. Trying to scrutinise every part of the system and aggregate an understanding of the parts, doesn’t allow an understanding of the whole. Applying the principles of systems thinking allows an understanding of how the pieces/parts fit together.
Filed under: Customer Centricity, Leadership, Operationalising Customer-Centric Business, Sustainable Business Performance | Tagged: 21st century organisations, Big Thinking, business innovation, business performance, business strategy, capability areas, company strategy, customer centricity, customer experience, customer experience management, efficiencies, execution, Inspiration, leadership, marketing ROI, organisational alignment, Sustainability, thinking customer | 2 Comments » | <urn:uuid:e37f0dcc-ec60-456b-8b9b-c94621078eff> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | https://dougleather.wordpress.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988718957.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183838-00437-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93949 | 959 | 1.859375 | 2 |
02.01.10 - NASA has awarded $50 million through funded agreements to further the commercial sector's capability to support transport of crew to and from low Earth orbit.
01.21.10 - Reporters are invited to field tests of NASA equipment and concept vehicles that demonstrate how explorers might prospect for resources and make their own oxygen for survival while on other planetary bodies.
12.18.09 - Laurie Leshin has been named the new deputy associate administrator of the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, effective in January.
12.04.09 - Talented engineering students who have ideas on how future explorers might live on the moon could find themselves working at NASA as paid interns.
11.30.09 - NASA will host a media teleconference with Bob Ess, Ares I-X mission manager, at 1 p.m. CST on Thursday, Dec. 3.
11.13.09 - Preliminary data from NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, indicates the mission successfully uncovered water in a permanently shadowed lunar crater.
11.10.09 - NASA will hold a news conference Friday to talk about early science results from its successful moon impacting mission, the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS.
10.28.09 - NASA's Ares I-X test rocket lifted off at 11:30 a.m. EDT Wednesday from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a two-minute powered flight.
10.27.09 - will hold a news teleconference at 2 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, Oct. 28, to discuss the first-year science results from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.
10.27.09 - NASA mission managers canceled Tuesday's scheduled launch of the Ares I-X flight test because of weather concerns at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
10.27.09 - NASA is funding 12 proposals from nine states to investigate questions about the effects of space radiation on human explorers.
10.23.09 - News conferences, events and operating hours for the news center at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida are set for the upcoming Ares I-X flight test.
10.23.09 - A NASA App for the iPhone and iPod touch is available free of charge at the App Store from Apple.
10.20.09 - For the first time in more than a quarter century, a new vehicle is sitting at Launch Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
10.20.09 - NASA will hold a news conference on Friday, Oct. 23, at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to discuss the status of the Ares I-X rocket launch.
10.19.09 - Human Space Flight Review Committee Chairman Norman Augustine will hold a press conference at 1 p.m. EDT, on Thursday, Oct. 22, at the National Press Club in Washington.
10.18.09 - NASA has rescheduled to Tuesday, Oct. 20, the rollout of the Ares I-X rocket to Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
10.14.09 - NASA's Ares I-X Deputy Mission Manager Jon Cowart is available for satellite interviews from 6 to 9 a.m. EDT on Wednesday, Oct. 21.
10.13.09 - NASA is partnering with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory to develop a technology roadmap for the commercial reusable launch vehicle, or RLV, industry. | <urn:uuid:926c3957-6904-49e7-972f-d97a1bf298eb> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/news/exploration_news_search_agent_collection_archive_20.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281353.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00061-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.880869 | 724 | 2.21875 | 2 |
I was recently browsing Ycombinator News. It is always an endless trove of the curious & interesting.
I stumbled onto Karanbir Singh’s post The Portable Cloud. I was curious, what is that?
Join 28,000 others and follow Sean Hull on twitter @hullsean.
This story gave me warm fuzzies… I was excited in a similar way when Linux was first released. This was many years back through the mists of time in 1992. I had recently graduated computer science, and one of my favorite classes was Operating Systems. We worked to build an OS following Andrew Tennenbaum’s book Minix.
After graduation, I heard about the Linux project & got excited. I was hearing whispering online that Linux could really completely replace windows. So I bought all the parts to build a 486 tower, graphics card, motherboard, memory cards & IDE drives. This ran into the thousands of dollars. Hardware wasn’t cheap then! Keyboard & monitor. I even ordered an optical mouse because it felt like you were sitting at a sun workstation, at home!
I remember putting all this together, and loading the first floppy disk into the thing. Did I image the disks properly? Will it really load something?
Up comes the bios and sure enough it’s booting off of the floppy drive. I thought “Wow, mother of god! This is amazing!”
From there I had init running, and soon the very seat of the soul, the Unix OS itself. That felt so darn cool.
After that I’d spend weeks configuring x-windows, but to have a GUI seemed like the mission impossible. And then you’d go about tweaking and rebuilding your kernel for this or that.
Thank you to Karanbir for rekindling this memory. It’s a great one!
For those starting out now as a developer, operations, or cloud site reliability engineer, I would totally recommend following Karanbir’s instructions. Here’s why!
1. Learning by building
My favorite thing about building a server myself, is that there’s something physical going on. You’re plugging in a cable for the disk bus. Bus is no longer just a concept, but a thing you can hold. You’re plugging in memory, you can look at it & say oh this is a chip, it’s different than a disk drive. You can hold the drive and say, oh there’s a miniature little record player in there, with magnetic arm. Cool!
2. Linux early beginnings
Another thing I remember about those days, was feeling like I was part of something big. I knew operating systems were crucial. And I knew that Windows wasn’t working. I knew it wouldn’t scale to the datacenter anyway.
I realized I wasn’t the only one to think this way. There were many others as excited as me, who were contributing code, and debug reports.
Related: Did Airbnb have to fail?
3. Debugging & problem solving
Building your own server involves a ton of debugging. In those days you had to compile all those support programs, using the GNU C compiler. You’d run make and get a whole slew of errors, and fire up your editor and get to work.
Configuring your windowing system meant figuring out where the right driver was, and also buying a graphics card that was *supported*. You would then tweak the refresh frequencies, resolution, and so forth. There was no auto detection. You could actually fry your monitor, if you set those numbers wrong!
4. Ownership of the stack
These days you hear a lot about “fullstack engineers”. There is no doubt in my mind, that this is the way to become one. Basic systems administration requires you to compile other peoples software & troubleshoot it. All those developer skills that will come in very handy.
They force you to see all the hardware, and how it fits together into a greater performant whole. It also gives you an appreciation for speed. Use one bus such as IDE or another such as SCSI and experience a different performance profile. Because all that software that Unix is paging in and out of memory, it’s doing by reading & writing to disk!
Also: Are SQL Databases Dead?
5. Learn to be a generalist
I’ve argued before that being a generalist allows you to better scale the web. I still think this, and I believe it is this formative experience building servers from individual parts, that taught me whole the larger whole fit together.
This allows me to look at problems today, and jump to causes of performance problems quickly. | <urn:uuid:c5de32cc-d784-41d1-a149-ab93d468c704> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.iheavy.com/2015/10/19/why-you-should-build-a-portable-cloud/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280242.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00074-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963338 | 999 | 2.015625 | 2 |
French translation of well-chosen
in well-chosen words
en termes choisis
Example Sentences Including 'well-chosen'
It was about four o'clock when they arrived, a well-chosen hour for a casual visit, or so Nathan hoped.THE GREENSTONE GRAIL: The Sangreal Trilogy One (2004)
Then why hadn't she told him at some well-chosen moment during the ensuing years?Loaded Questions
He voiced well-chosen opinions firmly, and let his expertise as a consultant show.Coup d'Etat
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Your best defense against coronavirus
Washing your hands is the best way to protect against the novel coronavirus, according to doctors and health officials, as the virus continues to spread around the globe.
Why it matters: Frequent hand washing can stop germs from spreading in a community, a known preventative for COVID-19 and influenza.
Pro tip: Scrub wet hands with soap for at least 20 seconds (humming the "Happy Birthday" song twice), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends.
- Rinse well and dry your hands with a clean towel or air dryer.
- Hand sanitizer is the next best alternative, but will not work as well especially if hands are visibly dirty.
When to wash your hands:
- When you're near, preparing or eating food
- After using the bathroom
- When caring for people who have been vomiting or have diarrhea
- After coughing, sneezing or blowing your nose
- After touching garbage
- After touching animals or animal waste
Why face masks aren't a good idea: Reports show public concern about the shortage of medical masks, but doctors stress masks give a false sense of security and can do more harm than good.
- The typical face masks available online and at pharmacies are for people who are already sick. They're not fitted to the face, but they do prevent the spread of mucus.
- Fitted masks, called N-95, prevent healthy people from getting sick because they help block 95% of microbes. When low-risk countries stockpile these, they're taking the supply away from people who have an immediate need for them.
The bottom line: COVID-19 does not have a vaccine, so wash your hands and cough or sneeze into your elbow.
Go deeper: Coronavirus full coverage | <urn:uuid:14d09d49-6e80-4db4-a220-d0332e6ac1d1> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.axios.com/2020/02/28/coronavirus-protect-yourself-handwashing | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573744.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819161440-20220819191440-00466.warc.gz | en | 0.938361 | 378 | 3.296875 | 3 |
Juicing can be a simple, fast way to add large amounts of nutrients and enzymes to your daily diet. Whether you are new to juicing or have already experienced its many benefits, this article will show you some helpful tips that can help you get all you can from your juice.
Immerse yourself in the taste of the juice, and don’t rush things. Make sure to get all the flavor possible out of your concoctions. Leave the juice in your mouth so that it can blend with your saliva, beginning the digestion process.
Think of the juice as your whole meal. Once you are more experienced and know how much produce you’ll need for a glass of juice, it will be easier to do. If you juice as meal, the vitamins and nutrients will enter your bloodstream faster.
Every time you use your juicer, rinse and wash it immediately afterwards. In addition, some vegetables and fruits will stain the juicer if it sits too long before cleaning.
Putting your juicer on the counter and not hidden in a cabinet is a great idea. You will get more use out of your juicer if you keep it in this location. Having your juicer at-hand at all times will encourage you to use it daily.
Before you create any concoctions, do some research on your fresh produce. There are a number of different minerals and vitamins found in fruits and vegetables. Use produce which covers different nutritional requirements, such as vitamin C or niacin. While giving your system the nutrients it requires, you will also be enjoying new and delicious drinks.
You are going to get pulp in your juice sometimes, however, you can remedy this with a coffee filter. You might not enjoy the consistent pulp some juices make. Use a cheesecloth, coffee filter, or fine strainer to take out the pulp if this is the case.
Juicing for the fridge is a great idea, however, you will want to prevent color change in the juice. No matter how good it is for you or how delicious, nobody likes drinking off-colored juice. All you have to do to prevent this color change is to squeeze a few drops from a fresh lemon into your juice. The flavor will not be overwhelmed from the lemon and the juice will maintain that bright fresh look.
If you suffer from diabetes or hypoglycemia, you should just juice vegetables until you talk to your doctor. Drinking fruit juice often causes blood sugar to spike. You must watch how much fruit is being juiced for your personal medical needs. Vegetables are typically lower in sugar content and can be used freely.
It should be an easy way to add more vitamins and nutrients to your diet. By applying the tips in the article above, you will be able to make healthy juices you will like. | <urn:uuid:111746b8-c326-420b-8e61-ae8d72878ea7> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://diy-selzerwater.com/juicing/get-the-most-out-of-your-juicer/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570871.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808183040-20220808213040-00272.warc.gz | en | 0.939888 | 574 | 1.976563 | 2 |
Learning how to hit your forehands and backhands with topspin is the foundation of advanced tennis. However, this advice can easily be misunderstood and cause a lot of mishits and short balls.
That’s because you’re still trying to apply topspin to the ball in the same way you were taught at the beginning. At a more advanced level, your technique for applying topspin has to change because of the faster tempo.
You now need to upgrade your understanding of how to apply spin to your shots so that you can hit them cleanly with good power and still enough topspin for highly consistent shots.
When you first learned to hit topspin forehand (and backhand), you realized that, in order to apply topspin to the ball, you need to move the racket vertically up and brush the ball on the back side.
The friction between the strings and the ball makes the ball rotate. In turn, that spin makes the ball dip towards the end of its flight, therefore allowing you to hit with good power and still keep the ball inside the baseline.
Because you were still learning the topspin, you had to use your arm, forearm and possibly your wrist to move the racket in an upward direction, which imparted topspin on the ball.
Your coach was feeding you very slow and nice balls right into your strike zone as you were learning this new idea of adding spin to your forehands and backhands.
After some repetitions, you realized that you were able to apply topspin to the ball by DOING a certain movement with your arm, forearm and wrist.
And you have been doing that ever since…
But once you started to play with higher-level opponents who played much faster, you found yourself struggling to hit a clean ball in the sweet spot while trying to apply topspin to it.
You were still trying to DO topspin by engaging your arm, forearm and wrist and moving the racket very steeply up to brush the ball on the back side while it was flying very fast towards you.
Because the ball is going in one direction and the racket is going almost perpendicular to that direction, it’s then very difficult to time the exact moment of when the ball and the racket’s sweet spot meet.
That’s why there are so many mishits and balls hit off the sweet spot, which then results in a very slow and short ball that can easily be attacked.
You are confused now on what to do since everyone has been telling you to hit with more topspin.
How is it that you now hit a lot of poor shots even though you are trying your best to hit with a lot of spin?
The solution is that you must learn to make spin just happen rather than doing it.
If you look at a forehand (or backhand) swing path from the side, you can see that it has two distinct stages.
When we swing our arm naturally by the side of our body, then it will travel more horizontally when it’s closer to the body and then transition to a more vertical swing as it goes away from the body.
The arm is attached at the shoulder to the body, and it acts like a pendulum so it just swings around its anchor point, the shoulder.
That tells us that, if we hit the ball closer to the body, we will hit the ball flatter since the racket will be moving more horizontally. Conversely, if we hit the ball more in front, we will hit with more topspin since the racket is going more vertically.
This is the key mental image you need to use when hitting your groundstrokes.
That’s because this tells you immediately that you don’t have to DO topspin so much but you can make it happen by hitting the ball more in front.
The swing path alone will make the ball spin since the racket is traveling upwards by itself because of the inertia and because the arm naturally swings in a circular way.
Therefore, we can make the spin happen by simply swinging and letting the racket hit the ball while it’s bouncing up and is a little more in front of you.
If you are then receiving a fast, incoming ball, you should try to find the right part of the swing path that is a bit more horizontal.
Doing so will make it easier to hit the ball in the sweet spot while maintaining the upward movement that will make the spin just “happen” on the ball.
This is how Urban and I play when we rally with each other at a higher tempo.
We don’t really “DO” the topspin by engaging our forearms and wrists, but we use a more shallow swing path towards the ball and the topspin just happens.
Sure, this is not extreme topspin, but the ball spins fast enough that we can control it quite well and play very consistently.
I wrote this article because I see most adult recreational players try to DO the things they’ve learned when they are hitting the ball.
They learned how to hit a topspin by moving the racket vertically up on the back side of the ball and brushing it, so that’s what they do.
However, they forgot that the initial exercise was an exaggeration that helped them understand and feel how to apply topspin to the ball.
Now they play at a faster pace, yet they still DO all their topspin movements the way they learned them.
They don’t know they should try to apply LESS topspin on faster incoming balls and simply make spin happen by swinging the racket naturally and hitting the ball a bit more in front.
I prefer to teach topspin in the beginning with the compress & roll exercise that doesn’t create a mental image of a vertical “brush up” on the ball even at the beginning and yet the players are able to quickly apply topspin to the ball.
And a good way to correct the “vertical brush up” mental image that causes problems at higher speeds is the rolling topspin drill that again guides the player towards a more shallow swing path through the ball.
In summary, we can apply extreme topspin to the ball only when we receive a slow ball. Only then can we still hit the sweet spot regularly even despite swinging up very steeply in relation to the incoming ball.
And when we receive faster incoming balls, we should swing at a more shallow swing path and let the spin happen.
We can, of course, add a bit of upward movement by engaging our forearm and wrist, but that should be the next stage after we get a good feel for allowing the to spin happen simply through the swing path and contact point.
As you saw in the video above, Urban and I don’t swing at very steep swing paths and we don’t really engage our forearms and wrists when we rally at a higher tempo.
We look for that ideal contact point in our swing where the racket is already moving upwards by itself, and we therefore make the spin happen without much effort.
Give this concept of “making spin happen” a try, and share your thoughts in the comments below. Thanks! | <urn:uuid:66597a85-9bd3-484d-9c52-5b02f3914ac7> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.feeltennis.net/advanced-topspin-technique/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280761.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00099-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960613 | 1,487 | 1.945313 | 2 |
This formal diversity is, naturally, directly related to the intellectual wealth, cultural richness, and historical conflict contained in a geographical space that is, by North American standards, fantastically, ridiculously small. European history is at the same time a history of fragmentation, caused by wars and political reconstitutions, and a history of transcending - by necessity - differences, borders and distances. No country in Europe can be understood outside its historical relations with other European countries, no culture in Europe can be comprehended outside its interactions with other cultures. Europe is a fragmented space that always strives toward some form of integration. This has, I believe, always been the case, but the simultaneous processes of fragmentation, interaction and integration have certainly been intensified with the formation of the European Union. In this context, European literatures have found themselves stretched between the reductive demands of national culture (the culture that is for us, by us, whoever we may be) and the transformative possibilities of transnational culture that can exist only in the situation of constant flow of identity and exchange of meaning - in the situation of ceaseless translation.
Hence the stories you will find in this volume (which have not been selected for any kind of thematic continuity) inescapably question and probe and sabotage various national myths, often featuring migrants and vagrants, unabashedly questioning the propriety of the old forms in the new set of historical and political circumstances. These stories not only cross and trespass all kinds of borders, they are, quite literally, generating translation in doing so.
At the heart of this project, which we hope to undertake annually, is a profound, non-negotiable need for communication with the world, wherever it may be. The same need is at the heart of the project of literature. That project is most obviously impossible without translation and if the communication is to be immediate and uninterrupted - which seems to be a self-evident need in todays world - the process of translation must be immediate and uninterrupted. We simply have to keep in continuous touch, translation has to be a ceaseless process. Not only do we have to provide a continuous flow of literary texts from other languages into English, we also have to be able to monitor in real time, as it were, the rapid developments in European literatures.
And there is no better gateway than the short story, which has retained, from the days when every decent newspaper or magazine printed short stories, the immediacy that comes with the daily engagement of the press with the world; the immediacy, I might add, that is currently flourishing on the Web. The short story still has the flavor of a report from the front lines of history and existence.
This anthology is, then, not putting up a fight in the battles that to many seem lost, it is indeed declaring a victory. As far as we are concerned, translation and the short story - essential means of communicating with and understanding this world of ours - have been restored to their rightful place. Now, start reading.
Excerpted from Best European Fiction 2010 by Aleksandar Hemon. Copyright © 2009 by Aleksandar Hemon. Excerpted by permission of Dalkey Archive Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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No Man's Land
by Simon Tolkien
Inspired by the experiences of his grandfather, J. R. R. Tolkien, during World War I.
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Posted by Emma
Hip, Hip Hooray for Rosehips!
Why every aromatherapist and natural skin care producer should know about rosehip seed oil
The Joy of Roses
If you grow roses in your garden you have probably noticed that they recently sprouted fresh new leaves. This growth burst should soon be followed by the appearance of delicate new buds, which will open into gloriously-scented summer blooms. If you have a dog rose (Rosa canina), or another variety of wild rose such as Rosa rubiginosa or Rosa rugesa, you can expect even more gifts. Come autumn, distinctive bright red fruits, commonly called Rosehips, will take the place of the faded flowers. As well as being cottage garden favourites, these hip-bearing wild roses can often be found gracing British parks, hedgerows and woodlands. Aromatherapists will notice that hip producing rose varieties do not include Rosa damascena and Rosa Centifolia, which give us our much loved rose essential oils, hydrolats and absolutes.
An Ancient Remedy
Rosehips have been valued since ancient times. Pliny the Elder, the Roman naturalist and philosopher (amongst other titles on his job description), recommended rosehips for toothache and as a diuretic. It seems the value of these little red fruits were also known in Ancient Greece, China and beyond. Native Americans consumed them fresh, dried, cooked, juiced and as teas to treat a wide range of conditions including coughs, sore throats, kidney problems and intriguingly to speed up childbirth. Cross the Atlantic to Europe where the 17th century herbalist Nicholas Culpepper recommended them for coughs, colds and ‘spitting blood’.
Rosehips are an excellent source of Vitamin C. Encouraged by the British government, they were eaten widely during World War 2 when imports of citrus fruits were limited. They are also rich in the essential fatty acids linolenic and linoleic acid. Essential fatty acids are essential for health but not manufactured by the body, hence the importance of including them in our diet. Once the tiny hairs are removed today’s foragers still transform these nutritious fruits into tasty syrups, jams and jellies. Rosehips can also be used to flavour vinegars which nicely spruce up salad dressings and marinades. Incidentally, the little hairs contained within the hips were reputedly used by mischievous children in by-gone days as itching powder. So take care when preparing rosehips, as the hairs have a skin irritant action. Rosehips also have a reputation for being mildly diuretic and laxative, so perhaps go easy on the quantity consumed in a single sitting.
The vitamin C content is only a small fraction of what the plant has to offer. in Ancient American cultures, every part of the rose bush was put to use to cure a long list of ailments. The seeds were cooked and ingested to relieve muscular pain. The roots were used as an instringent for diarrhea, conjunctivitis. The petals were used as a bactericide for cuts and minor wounds. A poultice made with the leaves would soothe insects stings and bites. Even the bark was put into use. Roses were known to be a useful remedy to treat disorders of the digestive and urinary tract.
Rose and all its parts have an essential role to play in the kitchen medicine cupboard.
Picking and Pressing
In aromatherapy, the therapeutic potential of rosehips is harnessed by pressing the seeds to extract their naturally occurring oil. Picking and pressing is a labour intensive and lengthy process, as Jan Kusmeric clearly explains in his 2002 book Liquid Sunshine. This explains why Rosehip oil is necessarily priced higher than some other base oils. Rosehip oil also has a relatively short shelf life (it is high in polyunsaturated acids), so unless you produce skin care products on a large scale it may be prudent to purchase small quantities at a time, to minimise waste and to ensure your supply stays fresh. These days the best quality commercial oils mostly hail from Chile, extracted from roses which grow wild in the mountainous Andes.
It is always a joy to pour this oil into my blending bowl and I love surprising clients with its rosy colour. The glorious golden-red hues are courtesy of carotenoides (naturally occurring colour pigments). In aromatherapy rosehip oil is most commonly added to creams, salve, lotions and other skin preparations on account of its excellent skin regeneration properties. It is particularly well known for helping to reduce the appearance and texture of scar tissue. It is also useful for treating burns, sun damaged skin, stretch marks and bruises.
Aromadermatology authors Buck and Bensouilah recommend applying rosehip oil to shingles and chickenpox affected skin, once the inflammatory phase of the disease has passed, where they suggest combining it with other skin-nourishing base oils such as jojoba and avocado. In his 1999 book Carrier Oils for Aromatherapy & Massage Len Price recommends rosehip oil to treat eczema, amongst other uses. Rosehip oil is also often added to preparations for wrinkles and mature skin, another area in which it has a long history of use.
In short, rosehip oil deserves to be part of every aromatherapist and natural skin care specialist’s tool kit. Its wide sphere of therapeutic action means that if you produce skin care products commercially, or if you make massage blends for clients, or if you keep a stock of oils solely for personal use, you will find yourself reaching for that bottle of rosy rosehip oil very soon.
Rosehips & Pets - The OIl and the dried Fruits
Humans are not the only ones to enjoy the benefits of Rosehip. Both the oil and the fruits offer ideal remedies or just a source of nutritional food for pets and larger animals. Indeed, horses and all herbivores delight in browsing hedges and nibble on rosa canina, flowers, fruits and leaves. In fact, unfortunately for the bushes, they tend to leave very little of them. Along with raspberry leaves, roses seem to be one of their gourmet meals!
I have a rose bush outside my house. In late autumn, I pick the fresh mature hips and give them to my horses, goats or alpacas. Dogs eat them to if they feel inclined.
The oil offers a wonderful skin remedy for wounds and sores, reduces scaring and is safe for all animals. It is also light, is absorbed easily into the skin and does not leave a greasy mess on their coat. It is useful on patches of dry skin or eczema. Always do a patch test before in case of allergic reaction.
The dried hips are one of the richest natural source of vitamin C. Very useful in winter to boost the immune system and re-inforce defenses. They can be fed as a supplement over the winter months. Horses and other herbivores will eat the hips dry without further preparation. Dogs and cats may be attracted to them if they need it. Add 1/5 to 1 tsp on cracked hips to their food. The shells become very dry and hard during the drying process which can be off-putting for some animals They can be soaked in a small amount of cold water for a few hours, This process will soften then. They can then be mixed with the food or offered separately. Vitamin C is water soluble, so make sure to add the water as well to the food. Do not use hot water as this would destroy the Vitamin C and beat the purpose of this exercise.
How to use
Roships come in 2 forms
- The whole hips
They are the whole fruits with the seeds still in them. They are quite tough and many animals struggle with them. Even horses are not too keen, Only my goats go for them. Of course, it has to be goats. Nothing resists them.
- The cracked hips.
These do not contain the seeds. They are the by-products of the oil industry. They come in small broken up pieces and are more manageable for animals.
If you are not sure of what to do, the best way is to follow a zoopharmacognosyy approach and offer the herb to the animal. Simply offer the shells in a bowl and see if your animal wants them. Animals have an innate instinct to know what they need. If your animal feels he/she needs it, he/she will eat it. If he/seh does not show any interest, do not force it upon him/her.
The oil is also a source of nutritious food and can be offered to eat and my horses have always been very keen. Just pour some oil in your hand and offer it to the animal. If they want it, they will it eat. They will stop when their needs are fulfilled.
I use rosehip a lot for for my animals. It is probably their most sought-after herb, They love it and i am yet to see an animal who will turn his nose up at a bowl of rosehip shells.
The oil has also been very useful. I have used our tissue repair oil which contains rosehip with my mare Dolly. She was covered in sores following a bad attack of sweet itch. The oil was very useful to heal those wounds sometimes overnight and soothe the itchiness.
i have also offered the oil neat to my horses. They always tell me when they have had enough. They will be keen for a few days and then turn.me and my oil down the next. I know it is time to stop. Next time i will offer a dirfferent oil.
Rosehips as a whole fruit is a very nutritious food and many animals find nutrients they crave when eating it. Despite being treated as food more than a specific remedy - this being true mostly for herbivores - it is best not to overdose and not offer all the time so the body has the rest.
Emma & Isabelle
● Bensouilah J & Buck P (2006), Aromadermatology, Abingdon, Oxon: Radcliffe Publishing Ltd
● Hope C (2013) The Medicinal Benefits of Rose Hips, pub. Permaculture Earth Care, People Care, Future Care; accessed 14/04/22, available here
● Kusmirek J (2002), Liquid Sunshine, Glastonbury, Somerset: Floramicus
● LabAroma (2022), Rosehip Oil, pub. www.LabAroma.com, accessed 14/04/22, available here
● Maumee Valley Herb Society Editor (2012), Uses of Rose Hips by Native Americans, pub. www.maumeevalleyherbsociety.org, accessed 19/04/22, available here
● Price L & Price S (2007) Aromatherapy for Health Professionals (4th Edition), Edinburgh, London etc; Churchill Livingstone Elsevier
● Price L (1999) Carrier Oils for Aromatherapy & Massage, Stratford-upon-Avon: Riverhead
● Readal M (2020), Rose Hips - Herb of the Month; pub. The Herb Society of America, accessed 14/04/22, available here | <urn:uuid:d27dbb56-18dc-4c3f-991f-582642f22d89> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://materiaaromatica.com/blog/rosehip-1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570692.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20220807181008-20220807211008-00675.warc.gz | en | 0.956183 | 2,359 | 1.898438 | 2 |
Analyze the Kennedy and the Cold War and Detente and the Reagan Presidency
Kennedy and the Cold War and Detente and the Reagan Presidency
Question 1: President Kennedy and Cold War
President John F. Kennedy and the communist were involved in high tension during the Cold War. His main idea was to strengthen the America Military forces and stop the Soviet Union from spreading the communism. John F Kennedy had served in the cold war and was elected as the leader of the united states during Cold war.
John F Kennedys foreign policy administration was directed towards cold war, he also had military plans in Europe, Asia and the Latin America. The USA and the Soviet fought for allies in the second Word War, just before the cold war. After the second world war, USA began making new allies in order to reduce the spread of communism. John F Kennedy adopted the plan of Eisenhower administration to reduce the spread of communism to other nations. The plan was to train the Cuban citizens who were on exile so that they could go back and invade their homeland and overthrow the Castro’s government. The plan failed and some of the forces were murdered while others were captured.
In addition, Kennedy started the Peace Corps and the volunteers of peace corps sought to promote the social and the economic condition of the allies. The volunteers travelled to the allied countries and offered various services like training the allies on speaking English to ensure that they did not fall in the trap of communists. JFK speculated that Fidel Castrol could influence the Latin America into joining communist revolution. The United States of America also used the financial aid to improve their influence in Latin America.
John F Kennedy in 1963 commanded Americans to drop their beliefs and myths behind the cold war. He advocated a peaceful and a safer world to live in. As a result of this, the tension of war reduced and the treaty was put in place to reduce the nuclear testing. The treaties were quickly negotiated and signed. The decision of JFK led to escalation of arms race. Following the Eisenhower’s plan, President Kennedy allowed the 500 troops to be sent south Vietnam along with senior military advisers to help the government achieve its agenda. Before that, Eisenhower had sent over 700 American soldiers to South Vietnam. By the end of JFKs time in office, there were over 1600 troops in Vietnam who were sent to help fight against communism.
Question 2: Détente and the renewal of Cold War tensions in the early years of the Reagan presidency
There was a period of relaxation during the cold war, this period was referred period. to as détente period. The détente period took various forms which included the increasing talks on arms control. The decade of détente proud great improvements in terms of relationship between the super powers, but by the end of the decade, the relationship declined and the two parties went back to confrontation. The détente had let to peaceful agreement on arms control and security in Europe which include the signing of the treaty of nuclear and nonproliferation and the antiballistic missile treaty and the Helsinki final act.
The decline of the détente negatively affected the progress of arms control. The opposing parties had different views of what was meant by the détente. The competition between USA and the Soviet Union made it untenable for the agreement between them. The arms control agreement stopped and in 1980 and was raised when Soviet Union got a new leader, that is Mikhail Gorbachev. Ronald Reagan heralded the new era of cold war politic when he got into power in the year 1981. Immediately he got into power, he made his intention towards the soviet and the communist clear that they will not be tolerated. His main purpose was to retain the glory of the America as the super power by stranding up to its opponents like the Soviet Union. He brought to an end the period of détente and introduced an aggressive approach of handling the opponents. President Reagan brought back the Truman Doctrine and policies of containment, he advocated for the removal of the communist control of some countries other than containing their spread.
Reagan’s main interest was to introduce the ‘Reagan Doctrine’ which involves the introduction of the aggressive policy which ensured the return to containment and the fostering and support of anti-Soviet forces. He assisted various groups that were opposing the Soviet Union in Nicaragua Central America, the Middle East, Grenada and Africa. His approach faced both opposition and support with others claiming that he neglected the human rights, legality and dictators in the faced of fighting the communism. His policies generally assumed that Soviet Union represented a danger to the USA and that his administration should respond by hardline attitude. In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev was elected the leader of Russia. His policies of openness and reconstruction helped reform the struggling Russia while his attempts to openly seek arm reduction and reduce cold war tension played essential role in ending the cold war. The policies of Gorbachev and President Reagan were very different. Reagan renewed Cold War. Reagan renewed the cold war tensions with his policies of aggression. Gorbachev initiated peace and disarmament discussions and this convinced Reagan to begin negotiations. The success of disarmament improved the relationship between the two superpowers thus ending Cold war. | <urn:uuid:0734ed3f-146f-4f48-b50f-8857eac255c2> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://academiascholars.com/cold-war/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573029.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817153027-20220817183027-00278.warc.gz | en | 0.967749 | 1,085 | 3.828125 | 4 |
Industrial and Systems Engineering
All students wishing to study this major should apply to General Engineering.
Industrial engineering is concerned with the design, development, improvement, implementation and evaluation of integrated work systems comprised of people, information and knowledge, equipment, energy, materials, and processes. The industrial and systems engineering department utilizes innovative and creative practices and technologies to achieve the highest quality of instruction and student learning.
Coursework encompasses operations research, manufacturing systems engineering, human factors engineering and ergonomics, and management systems engineering. The curriculum addresses not only the physical and technical aspects of systems, but also the organizational, economic, business, and human elements of systems.
Students develop not only technical capabilities but also professional skills such as teamwork, communication, ethics, and lifelong learning. | <urn:uuid:9a86fb65-7b05-488f-9b45-c98e6b1ebb94> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.vt.edu/academics/majors/industrial-and-systems-engineering.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572089.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814234405-20220815024405-00073.warc.gz | en | 0.942329 | 156 | 1.898438 | 2 |
Aldeburgh King's Head
also traded as as: Queen's Headhistorical era: Victorian / Edwardian
closed July 16th, 1909
grid reference TM 464 566Something we've got wrong about this establishment? Something more you think we should know about it? Please email us
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CAMRA Ipswich & East Suffolk branch.
last updated 30/12/2016
The King's Head was demolished to make way for a garage.
According to the 1904 Woodbridge licensing records, the pub's license was issued in 1796.
The renewal of the license was refused on July 16th, 1909.
(Most pub, location & historic details collated by Nigel, Tony or Keith - original sources are credited)
(some old PO directory information courtesy of londonpublichouse.com) | <urn:uuid:343297dc-13ec-4419-a0fd-e4909766c902> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://suffolkcamra.co.uk/pubs/pub/1183 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280791.35/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00366-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924887 | 175 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Animals Asia has welcomed news that China’s largest bear bile pharmaceutical company is now pursuing research on synthetic alternatives.
KaiBao Pharmaceutical is a cornerstone of the bear bile industry. In 2012 it bought 18 tonnes of bear bile powder for use in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and continues to be the major outlet for industrial bear bile farms.
The company’s project “Key Technology and Clinical Research of Developing Bear Bile Powder in Vitro” has gained support from the State Ministry of Science and Technology in its five-year plan entitled: “Key Technology and Clinical Research of Developing Bear Bile Powder”.
“The project aims to develop a synthetic bear bile bioequivalent in terms of chemical composition by using poultry bile and biotransformation technology and gaining the independent intellectual property rights. The project will benefit the protection and sustainable using of endangered medicinal animal resources and provide raw materials with stable and controllable quality for developing new drugs and bear bile powder products. These are of great significance for the history and development of traditional Chinese medicine.”
This groundbreaking research will be significant in demonstrating alternative thinking within the traditional Chinese medicine industry and its use of wild animal body parts as medicinal raw materials.
The advent and promotion of synthetic alternatives will benefit both animals and the Chinese medicine industry and ease public concern regarding the ethical use of threatened species within Chinese pharmacopoeia.
Animals Asia founder Jill Robinson said:
“We welcome this decision and are in support of such measures that will replace bear bile with a synthetic alternative. Such a step forward is good news for the pharmaceuticals, for those who practice TCM, and for customers too. We applaud the official backing of this research and believe it is good news for the bears and the millions of people who have campaigned for their freedom.”
Animals Asia has a sanctuary in Chengdu, China and Tam Dao, Vietnam. It also recently announced the conversion to a sanctuary of a bear bile farm in Nanning housing 130 bears. Dubbed the Peace by Piece rescue – the aim was to show that as demand for bear bile decreases – the farmers and their bears can be part of a solution based strategy to end bear bile farming once and for all.
Including the Nanning project, Animals Asia has rescued over 500 bears, mainly moon bears, from the bear bile industry.
NOTE: We note that synthetic bear bile is also still an animal product – albeit a byproduct of a wider industry. It remains an ethical dilemma and the debate surrounding the use of all animal products continues and remains entirely worthwhile. From the point of view of ending bear bile farming, and drastically reducing suffering of animals caged and mutilated for anything up to 30 years of their lives, this is a huge step. In the meantime, the battle to improve the lives of all animals, including those suffering under intensive farming conditions, goes on. | <urn:uuid:26b320d5-8f06-4de9-98eb-b2a4b09dab13> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.animalsasia.org/us/media/news/news-archive/synthetic-bile-plan-could-end-demand-for-bear-bile.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281746.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00289-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93164 | 610 | 2.234375 | 2 |
From the NY Times:
From the second to last pew at All Souls’ Episcopal Church in Harlem on a recent Sunday morning, Sylvia Lynch, 80, lifted a hand toward the rafters and sang praises through a haze of burnt incense.
Her voice was steady and strong, as was her grip on the cane she leaned on as she stood and sang and peered over the sparsely populated pews, peppered mostly with older women with fancy hats and hair as gray as her own.
“I came up through Sunday school, and I’m still here,” Ms. Lynch said, taking a step into an aisle at the 104-year-old church after the last hymn. “Back then, it was packed. You couldn’t get a seat.”
Text continues after gallery …
All Souls’ Church, on St. Nicholas Avenue, and any number of the traditional neighborhood churches in Harlem that had for generations boasted strong memberships — built on and sustained by familial loyalty and neighborhood ties — are now struggling to hold on to their congregations.
The gentrification of Harlem has helped deplete their ranks, as younger residents, black and white, have arrived but not taken up places in their pews. Longtime Harlem families, either cashing in on the real estate boom over the past decade or simply opting to head south for their retirement, have left the neighborhood and its churches. Then there are the deaths, as year by year, whole age bands are chipped away. | <urn:uuid:0c934b21-3f9a-45cb-9acb-3b9854b4587d> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://kissdetroit.hellobeautiful.com/422051/harlem-churches-struggle-for-survival/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280929.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00422-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980512 | 315 | 1.554688 | 2 |
The pandemic has demonstrated that the way we work and educate can adapt and evolve to suit modern life far more rapidly than first thought. In a very short period of time, our working culture has been transformed and now the question arises, why should the education sector be left behind?
The concept of a 4 day school week is not a new one. Rural states in the US have implemented the condensed school week for decades in a measure to mitigate budgetary shortfalls and the trend has continued to grow ever since.
The success of the 4 day work week
The benefits of the 4 day work week can no longer be overlooked as trials have seen overwhelming success across the globe. Microsoft Japan exemplifies this success having implemented a 4 day week in August 2019 giving their 2,300 employees 5 consecutive Fridays off. The company found productivity surged by 40%, with staff taking less time off and reporting increased happiness.
Most recently, Bolt has launched a permanent 4 day work week following the success of a 3 month-long pilot in 2021. The results speak for themselves with 94% of employees and 91% of managers wanting the shorter week to become a permanent fixture.
Overall things look positive for the 4 day work week so what does this mean for the education sector? If the purpose of school is to prepare students for adult life, surely they might as well get into the 4 day week routine now?
Advantages of a 4 day school week
As a result of the pandemic, many of us have begun to question whether we have our work-life balance right or if we’re slowly losing touch with what’s truly important.
The suggested 4 day school week allows for children to spend quality time with family and friends, a vital contributor to their wellbeing. Students could also use this extra time on other important tasks such as exercising, trying new hobbies, CV-building, work experience or even paid work. What’s more, both students and staff on occasion miss days in school due to appointments. A three day weekend allows the scheduling of these appointments outside of school hours, preventing students from falling behind and reducing the likelihood of teacher absences.
The jury is still out on whether the 4 day school week compromises students academic performance.
More research is definitely called for in the area. Having said this, many of the schools that have adopted the 4 day week, extend the length of the school day so students benefit from longer class periods, permitting more time for less interruption and more hands-on learning. Additionally, there are educational advantages in the sense that teachers have the option to use part of their 3 day weekend for training and professional development.
The key driver for the change cited by most decision-makers is the financial impact.
Cutting back school services reduces overhead costs mainly in building operations, maintenance, transport and cafeteria expenses as well as allowing savings on labour costs. Although overall savings might at first appear negligible (at an average of between 0.4% and 2.5%) the difference this can make to budgets is tangible. For example, a 2011 report found that a school district in Jacksonville, Floria produced 0.7% savings which translated to a budget reduction of $7 million. The report suggests this $7 million could be used to retain up to 70 teaching positions - no small feat in a time of fixed budgets and rising costs.
Furthermore, proponents of the 4 day school week claim that it helps attract and retain quality teachers. It acts almost as an incentive for educators, subsequently drawing more highly qualified applicants and reducing staff turnover.
Disadvantages of 4 day school week
There is one significant tradeoff for the benefits listed above.
In the following years after adopting the 4 day schedule, researchers noticed slower rates of student progress than in school districts that retained the 5 day schedule. There are suggestions that this could be a direct result of decreased learning time (58 fewer hours of school time a year) but this is yet to be confirmed by research.
Critics point out the greatest concern is that lower-income families will be hit the hardest by the suggested condensed school week, raising difficulties around childcare expenses.
The natural counterargument here is that should the 4 day work week roll out on a wider scale then parents could actually be with their children on that extra day however, there will always be exceptions. Services like healthcare and customer-facing roles, for example, will likely be unable to facilitate a 4 day work week for all employees likely leaving some children in daycares on the remaining day off- not exactly the idyllic 3 day weekend envisioned. In addition, low-income students often depend on public schools for half of their meals and placing that cost back onto the family could become quite burdensome if not altogether unfeasible.
Lack of structure and supervision
Policymakers are also urged to consider the unintended consequences before implementing the new schedule more widely.
Understandably, some people raise concerns over what students will do with their newfound freedom with particular worry about potential increases in juvenile crime rates. One study concluded that implementation of the 4 day school week in rural areas led to an increase in certain youth crimes such as theft but is balanced by a more recent study suggesting that children are filing their extra day off with work, errands and chores or family time rather than taking up criminal activity.
Health and wellbeing
It’s also important not to underestimate the impact that longer days might have on children.
The introduction of the 4 day school week means the possible extension of each day by up to an hour and a half. Naturally, the impact of the length of the school day will vary depending on the age of the child but nonetheless, finishing later will mean more tired students and more students working later into the evening, diminishing relaxation time. What’s more, when considering wellbeing it should not be forgotten that for some children, school is the safest environment, offering regular meals, supervised recreation and security. For these students, the 5 day week is best.
On the whole, the topic could benefit from further research. Decisions and changes in the education system are slow to come into action as they affect a large group of stakeholders and require a great deal of planning. Undoubtedly, there are competing interests at hand here and the real question is how should they be weighed? Is the purpose of school solely to improve academic progress or should it foster the growth of ‘well rounded’ children?
Recommended for you: | <urn:uuid:69cabb5b-5c7e-400a-a5cf-0372d864388b> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://scoodle.co.uk/blog/the-4-day-school-week | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571950.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813111851-20220813141851-00674.warc.gz | en | 0.964279 | 1,332 | 2.21875 | 2 |
Matthew Collings - 'The Law Of Surprise'
Coherent, achieved paintings that reward looking and re-looking, how often does this happen? The more frequent contemporary formula is a semblance of energy or well-known sign for it, in support of pat, neat, clichéd social meaning, often involving a crassly imposed graphic lay out. With these new paintings by Howard Dyke, which could easily be applauded by the new bosses of art for affirming current orthodox ideas of meaning, that doesn’t seem to be the deal exactly: his lay-outs and his rich painterly space zing off each other and are mutually dependent, genuinely mutually energising. A two-hundred year build-up of ideas about aesthetics results in a sort of divided up space in Cubism or Abstract Expressionism, say, where we don’t tell ourselves that hideous deformed monsters are being pictured, or cosmic explosions anticipating cheesy special effects in Star Trek. Instead, life or existence is expressed, with certain visual ideas serving as metaphors for how reality was experienced in those times. This mindset, in which art is given maximum dignity, instead of being thought of as something repulsively derisory and empty, and serving only money or fashion (it might serve both but they aren't assumed to be its only priorities, and in fact its real priority is completely arbitrary to them) is the context for Howard's witty paintings. | <urn:uuid:1796622e-662a-4935-a493-bc339fadb002> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://howarddyke.com/text/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571982.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813172349-20220813202349-00073.warc.gz | en | 0.964935 | 296 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Debate: Refuting An Argument
Students practice refuting an argument by using signposts, restating reasons, and creating counter-arguments. An ESL debate activity for advanced students.
Time: 30 minutes
- Make one copy of the Handout for each student.
- Make one copy of the Key for the teacher.
- Students need the Handout from the activity, Debate: Organizing The Opinion.
Give each student the Refutation Handout. Ask students to read the Handout and do Task 1.
Check the answers together as a class (answers available on the Key).
Signpost: short words that clearly define the reason
Reason: the reason for having the opinion
Counter-argument: the other side of the argument
Ask the students to get a partner and do Task 2. Encourage students to be creative with their counter-arguments.
Then, ask two pairs of students to make a group of 4 people. Their task is to present their refutations to each other and decide which is better.
Ask the first group to go to the front of the classroom and present their Refutation for the second point (the one they decided was better). Ask the audience to listen and identify the counter-argument.
Continue with each group until half the groups have had a chance to present. Then, as a whole class, discuss which group gave the best counter-argument.
Continue in the same way for the third point with the remaining groups.
It’s best to do this activity after Debate: Organizing The Opinion. | <urn:uuid:5ff8f8a2-bf10-4d61-9679-504bccb20579> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.eflsensei.com/Debate-Refuting-An-Argument/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280891.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00164-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912023 | 323 | 3.859375 | 4 |
Christ’s Unity with and Obedience to the Father
Throughout the New Testament we are told about Christ’s unity with the Father. Their connection is eternally intimate, and it is not bound by time or space, like human relationships. Their unity is more than we can comprehend on this side of eternity. While we cannot conceive of the depth of this truth, we are able to catch glimpses of it in the Scriptures. In John 12, we get a glimpse on Jesus’ unity with the Father:
And Jesus cried out and said, ‘Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me. And whoever sees me sees him who sent me.’ -John 12:44-45, ESV
Jesus’ unity with the Father runs so deep that he is able to say that if you believe in him and see him then you believe and see the Father. This is an essential aspect of Christianity that many people do not understand. The Father and the Son are not two different deities. Christianity does not create two more gods in the Son and Holy Spirit, rather Christianity gives us more information about the God revealed to us in the Old Testament. God is three persons unified by deity and purpose. This passage highlights the Trinity’s unity. Not only are Jesus and the Father unified, but Jesus also shows amazing obedience to the Father’s will. John 12:46-50 says:
‘I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day. For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me.’
This passage contains many truths that I could dive into, but I want to highlight the obedience that Jesus’ tells us about. Jesus did not come into this world to fulfill his own mission. Jesus came into this world to complete the Father’s mission. This is why Jesus says, “For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak.” Jesus’ authority and his teachings come from the Father. Through Jesus’ teachings, Jesus shows his undying obedience to the Father. Not only that, Jesus’ obedience shows us his unity with the Father. John 17:1-5 says:
When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.’
Jesus knew that he was going to be betrayed by Judas for 30 pieces of silver. Jesus knew that he was going to go to the cross and pay for the sins of mankind. Jesus knew the future, yet he still went to the cross. And through his death, Jesus showed his amazing obedience to the Father and his united mission with the Father…to save people from every tribe, tongue, and nation.
Thanks for reading.
Posted on July 30, 2012, in Christianity, Theology and tagged Christianity, God, Jesus Christ, John 12:44-50, reformed theology, Salvation, theology, Trinity, truth. Bookmark the permalink. Leave a comment. | <urn:uuid:e99d2f0c-40be-48a6-ab22-790ef3eb2295> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://anotherchristianblog.org/2012/07/30/christs-unity-with-and-obedience-to-the-father/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281746.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00291-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977704 | 856 | 2.0625 | 2 |
o9 December 2015, News Wires – An annual index released on Tuesday ranking the best and worst countries on energy issues related to climate change showed a global shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy production.
The report, issued by Germanwatch and Climate Action Network (CAN), found for the first time that more renewable energy capacity was built than fossil and nuclear capacity combined.
“We see global trends, indicating promising shifts in some of the most relevant sectors for climate protection and important steps toward a transformation of the energy system,” said Germanwatch’s Jan Burck, the study’s author.
The report evaluated 58 countries, representing 90% of the world’s heat-trapping emissions, based on their production of greenhouse gasses from fossil fuels and forest degradation, development of renewable energies and energy efficiency, among other guidelines.
The ratings, based on 2013 data, showed little movement among the top and bottom climate performers, with Denmark leading the pack and Saudi Arabia in last place.
The top three positions were left blank, indicating that no country is doing what’s necessary to keep global temperature from rising more than 2°C compared to pre-industrial norms.
The tipping toward non-fossil fuels for new energy capacity was based on 2014 data, which showed 59% of capacity additions to global electricity generation coming from renewable sources.
The Climate Change Performance Index Results 2015
About half of all investments in renewable energy are now coming from emerging and developing countries.
The trend of diminishing construction of fossil fuel power plants was good news for the climate talks, where 195 countries are trying to hammer out a new agreement aimed at keeping Earth cool that would kick in by 2020.
Two weeks of climate talks in Paris are to end by Friday, but issues such as finance for poor countries to help build renewable energy structures and adapt to global warming continue to be major hurdles. | <urn:uuid:b2e2d31e-76db-4b9e-9d9f-7a5f60542ec1> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://sweetcrudereports.com/2015/12/09/countries-veer-away-from-fossil-fuels-toward-renewables-report/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280483.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00297-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936935 | 387 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Now this cake is a treat! Easy to put together and sure to put an artistic hop in your step! We learned this recipe in our latest Surprise Bake Along! What’s that you ask? Pretty much the coolest baking experience…! Every month we gather on instagram live to bake together. The ingredients and equipment are revealed in advance but not the final result! It’s a great way to try something new, have fun, and pick up tons of tips along the way!
This cake was special because it’s the perfect recipe to use a scale with. I actually hadn’t baked with a scale until I went to culinary school, and let me tell you… I’m converted! None of this how packed is the brown sugar in a measuring cup, or did I spoon the flour into the cup correctly. It’s all by weight so less room for error… and often enough, a whole lot fewer dishes to wash! If you don’t have one, this is the kitchen scale (affiliate link) I would recommend.
I teach all of my classes using a scale as a great way to introduce people to it that might not have used one before or offering a couple of tips to those that grew up with it.
- when you turn on the scale, make sure nothing is on top as it is calibrating the weight, and that it is on a flat surface
- press “Tare” or 0 in between adding ingredients instead of weighing in lots of different bowls
- ml/g – no need to change between the units measurement when you’re weighing ml vs g – for baking purposes, it’s fine to act as if they’re the same – essentially one’s for liquids (ml) and the other for dry (g) – volume vs mass… science!
- for most recipes, as long as you are within 5g of the weight, you’re good to go, but why not make it a little game. Brownie points for nailing it! For recipes that are known to be finicky (macarons), get as close as you can just to give yourself as many helpful steps towards success as you can.
- no messy countertops.. leave your stirring utensil, beater, whatever, in the bowl when you’re adding something. Just hit “0/Tare” to start at a zero-d out weight!
So ready for the recipe?
You’re going to need the following ingredients: eggs, butter, flour, sugar, brown sugar, vanilla, 3 lemons, 2-3 stalks of rhubarb (optional!). Easy Peasy.
Melt 75g of unsalted butter and 75g of brown sugar (whatever kind) a small saucepan. Keep an eye on it and just melt the butter, don’t let it brown.
Pour into an 8″ or 9″ round cake pan (without a removable bottom). Swirl to coat the bottom and spread out the sugar. Take a paper towel or brush and use some of the melted butter to coat the sides of the pan.
Cut your rhubarb and lemons in whatever design you’d like and arrange on the bottom of the cake tin on top of the melted butter. Try to press the fruit close together so that the cake doesn’t press through when it bakes. For your lemon slices, cut them about 2-3mm thick and remove any seeds.
Now for the cake!
We’ll be making a traditional pound cake or what is called a “quatre-quart” in French. The name for both comes from how you add an equal amount of each of the four ingredients – so a pound of butter, eggs, flour, and sugar. Imagine if you were doing this with cups though, a pound of flour in cups is (lets estimate) 3 cups, where as a pound of sugar is 2.. but with a scale… this is a recipe you can do at any time, by memory- yes! Just remember, equal weights of each ingredient.
Start with your eggs. For this size cake pan, 3 is a perfect amount. Place a bowl on the scale and set to zero. Crack the eggs in and write down how much they weigh. Now add this amount each of granulated sugar then, flour. Then weigh the same amount in butter. Melt it and stir it in! Add some lemon zest if you’d like (I’d suggest it!) and some vanilla, and that’s it! Delicious, easy, and you feel like a master baker.
So to put this another way… I weighed my three eggs and the weight was 160g (round to an even number). I stirred in 160g of granulated sugar, then 160g of flour. I melted 160g of unsalted butter and then whisked that in and added some lemon zest and vanilla. Ta da!
You always start with your eggs because that’s the only variable that will change just based on their size.
Pour over the rhubarb and lemon slices in the cake tin and bake at 170C/350F for about 45-50 minutes until the top springs back when you lightly press in the middle.
Let cool for 3-5 minutes. Cut around the side of the cake, then place a flat plate on top. Carefully flip! I use a dry tea towel to protect my hands from the heat. It’s a bit easier to handle and wrap around everything than oven mitts. The cake will drop, then carefully lift up.
Let cool slightly. This cake is great served warm with a scoop of ice cream, at room temp with whipped cream or cream fraiche, or… for breakfast with a spoon of plain yogurt on top- YUM!
Let me know if you have any questions in the comments! | <urn:uuid:e566c347-6248-4e4d-9373-fd49d59c3993> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.mollyjwilk.com/upside-down-rhubarb-lemon-cake/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573104.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817183340-20220817213340-00477.warc.gz | en | 0.936908 | 1,239 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Posted on December 01, 1997 in Washington Watch
The story alleging that the Clinton Administration sold burial plots in Arlington National Cemetery surfaced, gained national prominence and was proven false last week.
How the story unfolded was a classic example of the way the right wing has been working during the past several years to plant stories to smear their enemies.
The pattern is a familiar one. A story is planted in the right-wing press, then faxed to the national network of right-wing radio talk shows. After feeding the story to
millions of listeners and agitating them to call their Congressional representatives, some members of Congress react. All that is required is for one member of Congress to call for a formal investigation and the story becomes a national news item that must then be covered by the more respectable national newspapers and TV network news broadcasts.
At this point what began as a baseless allegation takes on a life of its own and becomes a major issue to which the White House must respond.
This is how the “burial plot” story unfolded last week.
On the first day, Insight Magazine, a right-wing publication, printed a story alleging that the Clinton White House sold burial plots at Arlington National Cemetery (the resting place of our nation’s deceased war veterans). According to the story, “dozens of big-time political donors and friends of the Clinton’s” were given White House waivers to be buried at the cemetery. The story alleges that those who were given permission to be buried were “unqualified people.” The story charged that such a practice was an “outrage” and said, “somebody over at the White House ought to be convicted for selling America’s most sacred property.”
The story, which presented no names or evidence to prove the allegations, was faxed to talk radio shows across the United States. That same day and the following day, listeners were presented with the story as if it were true.
On the first day, a U.S. representative who also chairs the congressional committee that oversees the cemetery, announced that his committee would investigate the matter. On day two of the story, two prominent senators called for a Senate investigation as well. By now, the nation’s mainstream press was reporting the story as yet another White House scandal, with senators calling for hearings and representatives threatening to subpoena evidence from the White House.
Right-wing columnists stepped up the rhetorical attack with some calling for the “end of this scandal-ridden Administration.”
Three days into the erupting scandal, the White House, outraged over the growing lie, released the names of all that had been buried in the cemetery, including those who had been given special waivers by the President.
Of the 58 names of those who had been given waivers by the Secretary of the Army, almost all were the wives of former military officers who were entitled to be buried next to their veteran husbands.
The four waivers that had been personally given by the President were for a Supreme Court Justice, the wife of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, a Washington, DC police officer killed in the line of duty and a Drug Enforcement Agency officer killed on duty.
The story turned out to be no story at all – just a failed effort at a smear.
In many ways, this story is symptomatic of the problems facing the White House these days. There are currently 20 Congressional and Senate committees investigating similarly baseless charges against the President and Vice President. The costs to the taxpayers have exceeded $50 million – with no evidence of any actual laws being broken. But the allegations and investigations themselves persist and have come to occupy the time not only of the Congress in its relentless pursuit to damage the White House, but the White House itself which has been forced to spend significant energy and expense to respond to the many charges hurled against them.
Equally victimized in all of this has been the American public, whose confidence in its government has been damaged and who have become increasingly cynical in the face of these mostly political games.
My outrage to all of this is personal, since I can speak from experience at the effect that these smear campaigns can have.
Arab American and Muslim American leaders have been targets for many years of the same abusive efforts. Recently the very same right-wing press was working hard to discredit myself and an Arab American nominated for an ambassadorial post by President Clinton. And just last week, a writer in a prominent Jewish newspaper attempted to malign me and demand that the White House no longer deal with me because of hostile views he maintained I hold.
In both cases, those threatening efforts to smear failed. Despite attempts to engage the Senate in investigating baseless and false charges, the entire U.S. Senate confirmed the Arab American ambassadorial appointment. And Arab Americans continue to be defended and supported by the White House.
The smear campaign has become normal political practice in today’s politics. They take a toll, and they are painful to endure. But they must be combated and won—because to surrender is to allow one’s enemies to win.
For comments or information, contact firstname.lastname@example.org powered by Disqus | <urn:uuid:5dc760d4-32b9-438d-972b-1ae93fb10542> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.aaiusa.org/w120197 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280221.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00238-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977267 | 1,069 | 1.703125 | 2 |
ERIC Number: ED308083
Record Type: RIE
Publication Date: 1988
Reference Count: N/A
The Use of the Fennema-Sherman Mathematics Anxiety and Confidence Scales as Predictors of Success among "Business Calculus Students" and "Fundamental Concepts of Mathematics" Students at the College Level.
Heher, Rosemary Pataky
In an attempt to explore the prevalence, intensity and effects of mathematics anxiety at Salisbury State College (Maryland) approximately 350 student volunteers from two diverse introductory mathematics courses participated in this survey. The Fennema-Sherman Mathematics Anxiety and Confidence Scales and a portion of the Test Anxiety Profile were administered. Final course grades were analyzed and compared with the anxiety profiles established earlier. The results indicated that mathematics anxiety did exist among the survey population but the use of the Fennema-Sherman Mathematics Anxiety and Confidence Scales was not as significant an indicator of success as were scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test in Mathematics (SAT-MATH) and the institutionally-designed mathematics diagnostic instrument. The age and sex of a subject did not appear to be related to the incidence or intensity of mathematics anxiety, and a subject's hiatus from mathematics courses produced only a marginal significance. Included are 69 references, 21 tables, and 7 figures. Appendices include the Mathematics Anxiety Survey and the Mathematical Science Department Diagnostic Test. (Author/DC)
Publication Type: Dissertations/Theses - Masters Theses; Reports - Research; Tests/Questionnaires
Education Level: N/A
Audience: Teachers; Researchers; Practitioners
Authoring Institution: N/A
Note: Master's Thesis, Salisbury Sate College. | <urn:uuid:c8b3e5fe-55d9-4ad2-baec-738fdeac8b6d> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED308083 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282926.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00393-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.884618 | 361 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Algae control - Water and Wastewater
Excessive algae growth can throw even the best water treatment processes out of balance. Algae can clog intake screens, fluctuate pH levels, increase chlorine demand, and negatively affect the taste and smell of water. By blocking sunlight within water treatment tanks, you can stop algae growth, reduce chemical usage, and minimize the formation of disinfectant by-products (DBPs). Temperature is better controlled and maintenance associated with algae cleaning is simplified. The results? Better water treatment and lower operating costs. | <urn:uuid:fe95990e-cd90-422e-853f-12fc9b220d74> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.environmental-expert.com/applications/algae-control-water-and-wastewater-3513 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280718.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00407-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915635 | 108 | 2.65625 | 3 |
“When I saw that screen light up that day in the Merrill Lynch offices, I lost any residual doubt that Bloomberg could make it. We had picked just the right project. It was big enough to be useful, small enough to be possible. Start with a small piece, fulfill one goal at a time, on time. Do it with all things in life. Sit down and learn to read one-syllable words. If you try to read Chaucer in elementary school, you’ll never accomplish anything. You can’t jump to the end game right away, in computers, politics, love, or any other aspect of life.”
- Mike Bloomberg, Bloomberg by Bloomberg
“Big enough to be useful, small enough to be possible” is a handy guideline for taking on any ambitious goal.
There are parallels to position sizing a high conviction trade or investment — you want the position small enough to fall within the parameters of risk control, but large enough to move the P&L needle.
In what other ways do business decisions or entrepreneurial endeavors bear similarity to trades?
p.p.s. follow us on Stocktwits & Twitter! @MercenaryJack and @MercenaryMike
Read more posts on Mercenary Trader » | <urn:uuid:7b244b76-deec-4156-9236-c30ea012b1a1> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.businessinsider.com/big-enough-to-be-useful-small-enough-to-be-possible-2013-4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280835.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00053-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929427 | 259 | 1.734375 | 2 |
THE MIDDLETON PARK LIBRARY TABLE
This elegant library table typifies the high quality work of the Little Newport Street and Upper Marylebone Street cabinet-makers John McLean and Son (active 1770-1815). Although unlabelled, it can be attributed to this firm, first on account of an almost identical table, labelled by McLean, at Saltram, Devon and second, by the almost certain association of this table with that described in McLean's invoice to George, 5th Earl of Jersey for Berkeley Square:
A Rosewood round library writing table elegantly mounted with ormolu moulding, lined with leather, cedar Drawers and varnished ... £26.10..
The invoice is dated 22 April 1806. Furthermore, McLean's invoices note crating and delivering items from Berkeley Square to Middleton, amongst which is included 'a Library Table pillar and top' (Redburn, loc. cit.). Whilst it is not yet possible to identify the buyer of the table from the Middleton Park 1934 house sale, that Cecil McWatters was moving into lodgings in Oxford around this time would suggest that he may have acquired it at the sale himself, or from an intermediary who had purchased it from the house sale.
The table's design displays the distinct fusion of Grecian and Egyptian motifs with early 19th century Parisian fashion. McLean advertised that it specialized in 'Elegant Parisian Furniture' and many elements of the table have a clear French influence combined with English restraint. The table is made in Grecian black-figured rosewood; the preferred wood of the firm for its rich qualities and dramatic contrast to the gilded wood and metal mounts. The most dominant feature of the table's decoration is the lavish use of metalwork in cast and shaped brass. The ribbed brass metal border around the top and bottom edge of the table and the mounts of the legs reflect the golden tablets of the frieze and is enriched with 'Egyptian' striations. These tablets, previously popularized at the court of Louis XVI by the manufactures of the ébéniste David Roentgen, were a favoured ornament of the firm, and are also found on the legs of two sofa tables (illustrated in Redburn, op. cit., pls. 41A and B), and on a sofa table attributed to John McLean and Son, sold anonymously, Christie's London, 24 April 2008, lot 416.
An almost identical rosewood library table is in the Library at Saltram, Devon (Redburn, op. cit. pl. 42B). It features the earlier label of John McLean where he is recorded at Pancrass Street and 58 Upper Marylebone Street from c. 1799-1805. A painting by Nicholas Condy, c. 1825, shows this table in situ with the Earl and Countess of Morley and their family surrounding. The painting highlights the brass-mounts of the table and its multi-functional use as a focal point within the room for reading and writing.
Furthermore, another table with very similar metalwork, was sold anonymously, Pescheteau-Badin, Godeau et Leroy/Ricqlès, Drouot-Richelieu, Paris, 14 December, 1998, lot 186 (FF850,000) and yet another, formerly with Devenish & Co., New York, was sold anonymously, Christie's, London, 18 June 2008, lot 2 (£109,250).
Another table with ribbed tablet mounts on the frieze and legs and attributed to John McLean was with Norman Adams, Ltd., and subsequently sold by Mr. and Mrs. Herzog, Sotheby's New York, 12 and 13 April 1985, lot 205 ($35,750 including premium). Another table but with mille raie panels on the legs and mahogany-lined drawers was sold anonymously, Christie's London, 18 June 2008, lot 2 (£109,250).
The table's altar-drum is wreathed by golden Arcadian 'Pan' reeds and its frieze is enriched with tablets, sunk in the French-fashion and framed by golden palm leaves around the drawers. Masks of the satyr Pan bear festive trophies of musical instruments including the rustic pipes, flutes and bacchante tambourines ribbon-tied with a stringed instrument and music-sheet. The accompanying golden bas-reliefs evoke Ovid's Metamorphoses, pastoral poetry and the history of Apollo's Mt. Parnassus triumph.
MCLEAN & SON
The first appearance of the name 'McLean' can be found on the south side of Little Newport Street, Leicester Square in June 1770, where a 'Jn. McLean' rented a 'Ho & workshops' until 1783. A trade card for the Newport Street Address advertises that he was a 'Cabinet, Chair Maker and Upholder' (ibid., p. 31). From 1790 until the firm's demise in 1825, they are recorded at 55/58 Upper Marylebone Street and from c. 1799-1805, also in Pancrass Street. McLean and Son also gained a notable mention in Thomas Sheraton's Cabinet Dictionary in 1803. One of the 'fashionable Pieces of Cabinet Furniture' included a 'Pouch Table', whose design was taken and 'executed by Mr. M'Lean in Mary-le-bone street, near Tottenham court road, who finishes these small articles in the neatest manner' (ibid., p. 31). | <urn:uuid:b789d2f5-23d9-4d08-8fed-7350cc5f1abe> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot/a-regency-ormolu-mounted-parcel-gilt-attributed-to-john-5145112-details.aspx?intObjectID=5145112 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281649.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00444-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940318 | 1,172 | 1.75 | 2 |
Mounting evidence shows that it was not the Community Reinvestment Act, not Fannie Mae and Freeddie Mac, not really all that much about exotic finance; but more about the pushing of mortgages on anybody and anything to get them out there so that exotic finance could take place.
Here is Krugman on the Irish case:
Ireland had none of the American right’s favorite villains: there was no Community Reinvestment Act, no Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. More surprising, perhaps, was the unimportance of exotic finance: Ireland’s bust wasn’t a tale of collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps; it was an old-fashioned, plain-vanilla case of excess, in which banks made big loans to questionable borrowers, and taxpayers ended up holding the bag.
The point is where there are clear strategic incentives to behave in an ever more risky fashion (you can't be the bank that doesn't do the risky assets because your performance will suffer and your share price will plummet) there has to be regulation to take the super-risky options off the table. This is game theory 101. Sadly, efforts to reform the financial sector appear to be dead in the water. So be prepared to replay this record all over again. | <urn:uuid:c184e394-6f0f-4580-bb54-4f88793f1c40> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://oregonecon.blogspot.com/2010/03/economists-notebook-bank-regulation.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560283008.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095123-00083-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964761 | 260 | 1.625 | 2 |
*Winner of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize* When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley, one girl fought for her right to an education. On Tuesday, 9 October 2012, she almost paid the ultimate price when she was shot in the head at point-blank range. Malala Yousafzai's extraordinary journey has taken her from a remote valley in northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations. She has become a global symbol of peaceful protest and is the youngest ever winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. I Am Malala will make you believe in the power of one person's voice to inspire change in the world.
Malala Yousafzai came to public attention by writing for BBC Urdu about life under the Taliban. In October 2012, she was targeted by the Taliban and shot in the head as she was returning from school on a bus. She miraculously survived and continues her campaign for education. In recognition of her courage and advocacy, Malala was honoured with the NATIONAL PEACE PRIZE in Pakistan in 2011. She is the youngest ever person nominated for a NOBEL PEACE PRIZE. She was shortlisted for TIME magazine Person of the Year and has received numerous other awards. Malala continues to champion universal access to education through the Malala Fund. Christina Lamb is one of the world's leading foreign correspondents. She is the author of five books and has won a string of awards, including Britain's FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT OF THE YEAR five times as well as the PRIX BAYEUX. She currently works for the SUNDAY TIMES and lives between London and Portugal with her husband and son.
Number Of Pages:
- ID: 9781474602112
- Saver Delivery: Yes
- 1st Class Delivery: Yes
- Courier Delivery: Yes
- Store Delivery: Yes
Prices are for internet purchases only. Prices and availability in WHSmith Stores may vary significantly
© Copyright 2013 - 2017 WHSmith and its suppliers.
WHSmith High Street Limited Greenbridge Road, Swindon, Wiltshire, United Kingdom, SN3 3LD, VAT GB238 5548 36 | <urn:uuid:0ca228e9-7b73-46a5-babe-803617c25beb> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.whsmith.co.uk/products/i-am-malala-the-girl-who-stood-up-for-education-and-was-shot-by-the-taliban/9781474602112 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280763.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00513-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954903 | 442 | 1.960938 | 2 |
Friday, February 15, 2008
Interview with Douglas Howe, Advanced Technology Incubator
Among one of the assets the Southern California has that benefits the high tech economy in the region is a wealth of educational institutions, many of which are very interested in spawning new companies from research, helping create and support local entrepreneurs, and bolster the local economy. One of the efforts from local schools is a new business incubator being developed at the College of the Canyons, in Valencia, which is looking to help bolster entrepreneurship and high tech businesses in the region. Ben Kuo spoke with Douglas Howe, Interim Director for the Advanced Technology Incubator (www.i3incubator.com), who gave us some insights into what the incubator is looking to do, and how it benefits entrepreneurs.
What's the purpose of your program?
Douglas Howe: The initiative to launch an incubator at the College of the Canyons began about two years ago from discussions with the Business Technology Center in Altadena and the director there, Mark Lieberman. The ultimate goal of the incubator is providing a facility and services that would, number one, match education with entrepreneurship, as well as provide traditional services of an incubator for startup companies. That includes introductions, mentoring programs, and help of third party service providers, and a number of programs to nurture, grow, and graduate advanced technology related companies into the local economy. The effort really got rolling last year with two grants -- one federal grant, and another state grant--to hire a couple of staff people, including myself and an associate. We're working to bring together the operational aspects of the incubator, and initially on an affiliate program, which is to provide help to entrepreneurs and startup companies located in the general vicinity, but who don't need a facility. Second, we have a tenant program, which would be for companies to move into a facility which is under construction on campus. From our understanding, it will be the only incubator housed on a community college campus in California.
When will that building be done and when will you start housing tenants?
Douglas Howe: The building is due to be completed in Q2 of 2009. We broke ground last year. We expect to start accumulating a waiting list of entrepreneurs in late summer to early fall this year, for entrepreneurs who may want to move into the facility. We expect to have space for approximately 15 companies, with an average of around 500 square feet each to start with. We have the services and facilities of office space, a receptionist, Internet access, two digital manufacturing labs, a web lab, and a clean room. The industries we're trying to target include biotech, biomedical devices, digital manufacturing, aerospace, IT, entertainment--both cinema video and music sides of the entertainment industry--as well as Internet applications. Our focus is not exclusively on those industries, but those kinds of advanced technologies are the kinds we'd like to attract to the program.
What was the idea behind creating an incubator on campus?
Douglas Howe: It was a bit before my time, of course. But, the college was very instrumental in pursuing the idea with city government. The city government in Santa Clarita is very pro business. They've been declared an enterprise zone--which brings tax advantages to companies that hire and locate in the Santa Clarita Valley. Between the city, the economic development efforts of the college, and the president of the college, Dianne Van Hook, there was a lot of common interest in looking at a vehicle to enhance economic development in the region. We're not just focused on the Santa Clarita Valley, which is our main focus, but we're also serving North Los Angeles County, the San Fernando Valley, the Antelope Valley, and maybe as far as the San Gabriel Valley and Los Angeles itself. We're looking to help entrepreneurs and companies that want to take advantage of these services.
Santa Clarita's not well known for its high tech companies, is it? Though I suppose lots of high tech employees live and drive past Santa Clarita every day?
Douglas Howe: Aerospace manufacturing is fairly strong in the valley. We've also got very good relationships with studios, who do a lot of filming in the general vicinity and on our campus. We are also member of the 126 biotech corridor effort, which is a collaboration with Ventura College on biotech opportunities and exchanging resources with our cleanroom and our web lab. This is also a very large, growing residential area with lots of folks, who would hopefully would be interested in working more locally with the right combination of elements, and helping the area grow.
Working with lots of entrepreneurs, what are the biggest problems you see them running into?
Douglas Howe: One of the major starting points is putting together a business plan, and proving the feasibility of their technologies and the ideas that they bring to the table. Our interest is really now in finding and identifying folks that are working on an idea out of their homes and garages, or whatever the case may be. We're here to provide structure and support, starting with a business plan, to help the get organized and put the elements in place to really seriously pursue growing the venture. Eventually, we have a network of investors who are quite interested in seeing deals develop in the Santa Clarita Valley. We've had very productive discussions with the Pasadena Angels and Tech Coast Angels. We've also signed up a number of mentors and local business professionals across a variety of functional areas to support entrepreneurs as they start down the path. To answer your questions, the early concerns are really around getting organized, and getting their arms around the task of defining their vision, their mission defined, and putting together a business plan with very solid goals towards future success.
Thanks for the interview! | <urn:uuid:d5c7efa5-df27-49c7-9ebf-dce3524230aa> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.socaltech.com/interview_with_douglas_howe_advanced_technology_incubator/s-0013775.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282926.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00393-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966869 | 1,175 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Middleton Grange launches counterterrorism training workshop
Middleton Grange and Counter Terrorism Policing North East have teamed up this New Year to launch a free course for shopping centre customers that will offer advice on how to tackle such threats in the community.
Taking place on Saturday 1 February, the workshop has been created specifically for the general public by the counterterrorism officers. It will give Hartlepool shoppers guidance on how to spot the signs of suspicious behaviour, how to mitigate against current terrorist methodology as well as information on what to do if individuals find themselves in a major incident.
Mark Rycraft , Middleton Grange Shopping Centre manager, said: "As a central hub of Hartlepool community, it's our responsibility to ensure the safety of our visitors is paramount. By working in partnership with Counter Terrorism Policing to deliver a dedicated training session at the centre for the public - which is the first of its kind in the UK - then we are untimately helping people feel secure in their own community.
"Above all we want this to improve general awareness as well as convey a greater understanding of what counter terrorism is and the methods in which to combat such risks."
Counter Terrorism Policing is a collaboration of UK police forces working with the UK intelligence community to help protect the public and national security by preventing, deterring and investigating terrorist activity.
Originally launched in April 2018 for businesses and those working in crowded places, more than 350,000 people have taken part in the training, with nine of 10 users saying they would recommend it.
Assistant Chief Constable of Cleveland Police Lisa Orchard said: "It is fantastic to see local businesses supporting the community in this way. Everyone can do their part to help keep our local community safe by becoming a CT Citizen. Understanding how to make a report if you're concerned about something you've seen online or within your communities, and knowing what to do in the unlikely event you're caught up in an incident.
"The threat level remains at Substantial meaning an attack is likely. The Act-E-Learning training gives everyone the chance to be the extra eyes and ears we need in our continued effort to keep our communities safe.
"Many incidents have been prevented by diligent members of the public."
For more information on how to take part in the Middleton Grange's counter-terrorism training course in partnership with Counter Terrorism Policing, please visit www.middleton-grange.co.uk
The sessions will be taking place on Saturday 1 February and will start at 9am, running every 1 and a half hours until 5:30pm.
Issued on behalf of Middleton Grange by Bewonder*. For further information, please contact Jane Clark on 0113 243 5232 or email firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:b30293e2-4e97-437f-a8cb-0f44416f7d9e> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.hartlepoolnow.co.uk/blog_articles/2579-middleton-grange-launches-counterterrorism-training-workshop | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571745.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812170436-20220812200436-00465.warc.gz | en | 0.95418 | 568 | 1.617188 | 2 |
USS Brewton (FF-1086)
USS Brewton (FF-1086)
|Namesake:||Lt. John Brewton|
|Ordered:||25 August 1966|
|Builder:||Avondale Shipyard, Westwego, Louisiana|
|Laid down:||2 October 1970|
|Launched:||24 July 1971|
|Acquired:||18 June 1972|
|Commissioned:||8 July 1972|
|Decommissioned:||2 July 1992|
|Struck:||11 January 1995|
|Motto:||Dedicated, Determined, Prepared|
|Fate:||Disposed of through the Security Assistance Program (SAP), transferred, cash sale, ex-US fleet hull foreign military sale to Taiwan 29 September 1999|
|Status:||In active service.|
|Class and type:||Knox-class frigate|
|Displacement:||3,204 tons (4,184 full load)|
|Length:||438 ft (134 m)|
|Beam:||46 ft 9 in (14.25 m)|
|Draught:||24 ft 9 in (7.54 m)|
|Speed:||over 27 knots (50 km/h; 31 mph)|
|Complement:||18 officers, 267 enlisted|
|AN/SLQ-32 Electronics Warfare System|
|Aircraft carried:||one SH-2 Seasprite (LAMPS I) helicopter|
Design and description
The Knox class design was derived from the Brooke-class frigate modified to extend range and without a long-range missile system. The ships had an overall length of 438 feet (133.5 m), a beam of 47 feet (14.3 m) and a draft of 25 feet (7.6 m). They displaced 4,066 long tons (4,131 t) at full load. Their crew consisted of 13 officers and 211 enlisted men.
The ships were equipped with one Westinghouse geared steam turbine that drove the single propeller shaft. The turbine was designed to produce 35,000 shaft horsepower (26,000 kW), using steam provided by 2 C-E boilers, to reach the designed speed of 27 knots (50 km/h; 31 mph). The Knox class had a range of 4,500 nautical miles (8,300 km; 5,200 mi) at a speed of 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph).
The Knox-class ships were armed with a 5"/54 caliber Mark 42 gun forward and a single 3″/50 caliber gun aft. They mounted an eight-round ASROC launcher between the 5-inch (127 mm) gun and the bridge. Close-range anti-submarine defense was provided by two twin 12.75-inch (324 mm) Mk 32 torpedo tubes. The ships were equipped with a torpedo-carrying DASH drone helicopter; its telescoping hangar and landing pad were positioned amidships aft of the mack. Beginning in the 1970s, the DASH was replaced by a SH-2 Seasprite LAMPS I helicopter and the hangar and landing deck were accordingly enlarged. Most ships also had the 3-inch (76 mm) gun replaced by an eight-cell BPDMS missile launcher in the early 1970s.
Construction and career
Brewton was launched 24 July 1971 and commissioned on 8 July 1972 with Commander John W. Kinnier in command, and assigned to Destroyer Squadron 33 at Pearl Harbor. She was decommissioned on 2 July 1992 at Naval Station Pearl Harbor after over 20 years of service, and struck from the Naval Register on 11 January 1995. On 29 September 1999, she was sold to Taiwan under the Security Assistance Program, where she was renamed ROCS Fong Yang (FFG-933). She is currently in active service.
Tomb of the Unknown
A Vietnam Unknown was transported aboard Brewton to Naval Air Station Alameda, California. The remains were then sent to Travis Air Force Base, California, 24 May. The Vietnam Unknown arrived at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, the next day.
- National Defense Service Medal w/ 1 star
- Southwest Asia Service Medal w/ 1 star
- Navy Sea Service Deployment Ribbon w/ 1 star
- Humanitarian Service Medal
- Joint Meritorious Unit Award
- Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal
- Kuwait Liberation Medal (Kuwait)
- Navy Battle "E" Ribbon
- Friedman, pp. 357–60, 425
- Gardiner, Chumley & Budzbon, p. 598
- Friedman, pp. 360–61; Gardiner, Chumley & Budzbon, p. 598
- Friedman, Norman (1982). U.S. Destroyers: An Illustrated Design History. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 0-87021-733-X.
- Gardiner, Robert; Chumbley, Stephen & Budzbon, Przemysław (1995). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1947-1995. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1-55750-132-7. | <urn:uuid:fe017fe9-5fbe-45ed-a2a1-5ef40e67a91f> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Brewton_(FF-1086) | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988721174.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183841-00282-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.886404 | 1,090 | 1.882813 | 2 |
Foxconn Technology Group, the world’s largest contract manufacturer of consumer electronics, said it’s planning a multibillion dollar investment in the US state of Michigan, a week after announcing a US$10 billion plant in Wisconsin, giving a shot in the arm to Donald Trump’s election pledge to lure investments and create jobs for Americans. The new investment will be engaged in the research and development of vehicles that can drive autonomously, said Terry Gou, founder of the Taiwanese company, on Saturday in Shenzhen. Read: Foxconn may follow, if Trump US tech firms back to America “Automotive development in the US is still more advanced than China,” said Gou, declining to divulge the investment amount for Michigan. “Besides self-driving technology, I’m also interested in artificial intelligence and deep learning technology.” Foxconn’s Wisconsin plant will assemble liquid crystal display (LCD) panels, with an operation that creates 3,000 jobs, and with the potential to expand to 13,000 jobs over four years. Anatomy of an iPhone: What’s in it and where its parts come from The Taiwanese company, also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., could triple its investment to US$30 billion eventually, Trump had said earlier without elaborating on details. “The amount of investment has not been confirmed,” Gou said, when asked about his company’s potential investment in the United States where Gou said he prefers the middle states and western territories. Michigan, in the US mid west, is home to Detroit, the heart of the US automotive industry, where General Motors Corp, Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Corp have their headquarters. Founded in 1974, Foxconn is the world’s largest electronics manufacturer, and has been an assembler of computers for Dell, as well as iPhones and iPads for Apple Inc. For many years, it’s based its assemblies in low-wage countries such as China, putting together gadgets that eventually are distributed and sold in the US and Europe. Read: Why America may prove a cheaper option than China for Foxconn With tax incentives and subsidies by US states desperate for Foxconn’s investments, setting up plants in America may turn out to be cheaper than producing in China, where manufacturing is increasingly hobbled by rising wages and scarcity of trained labour. It’s also a fillip to the Trump administration’s “America First” mantra. Foxconn hasn’t been alone. Toyota and Mazda said this week they will jointly build a US$1.6 billion assembly with the capacity to produce 300,000 electric self-driving cars and create up to 4,000 jobs. Read: Warning for China as electronics giant Foxconn plugs into US incentives The commitment by the Taiwan company, which operates at least half a dozen facilities in mainland China with close to 1 million workers on staff, does not mean Foxconn will reduce its investments in China, Gou said. “We will take advantage of different regions to develop our business,” he said. “An increase in investment in the US does not necessarily mean a reduction in investment in China.” Correction: An earlier version of this article stated Foxconn’s Wisconsin plant would have the potential to expand to 130,000 jobs over four years. This figure has been amended to 13,000. | <urn:uuid:2815dc71-4088-45b2-a801-f78cbd384649> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/2105577/foxconn-gives-trumps-jobs-vow-shot-arm-multibillion-dollar | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571982.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813172349-20220813202349-00068.warc.gz | en | 0.95764 | 695 | 1.789063 | 2 |
private net <--> pat router <--> nat firewall <--> www/vpn <--> cvpn
maybe it would be better if we put some ip into the scenario.
192.168.1.0 <--> pat router <--> 192.168.2.0 <--> nat firewall <--> www/vpn <--> cvpn <--> 192.168.0.0
1. a host with ip 192.168.1.100 attempts to access a server with ip 192.168.0.100.
2. pat router receives a packet originated from 192.168.1.100 and destined for 192.168.0.100.
3. pat router performs pat, i.e. translates the original source from 192.168.1.100 to the router outside interface 192.168.2.1 with port 2647 (i.e. a random port assigned by the pat router)
4. nat firewall receives the packet with source ip 192.168.2.1 and destined for 192.168.0.100.
5. nat firewall has no nat statement, such as "access-list no_nat permit ip 192.168.2.0 255.255.255.0 192.168.0.0 255.255.255.0", thus no nat/pat will be performed.
6. nat firewall matches the packet with the crypto acl, encrypts/encaps the packet and forwards the packet down the lan-lan vpn.
7. the cvpn receives the packet, decaps/decrypts and forwards the packet to the server with ip 192.168.0.100.
8. server replies. nat firewall receives the packet, decaps/decrypts and forwards the packet to the pat router.
9. pat router receives the packet originated from 192.168.0.100 and destined for 192.168.2.1 with port 2647.
10. pat router verifies its translation table. it matches the existing translation, so the pat router translates the packet destination ip from 192.168.2.1 back to 192.168.1.100.
please excuse me for my so-called "interpretation" above. it may not be very clear, but i believe this scenario should work.
in fact, i have implemented a similar scenario and it works fine. below is the simiplified topology:
private net <--> pix (pat) <--> pix (pat/no_nat) <--> www/vpn <--> cvpn <--> private net | <urn:uuid:79200d8c-df5b-49f5-814d-29d281fce772> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://learnios.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=25363&start=10 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280504.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00138-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.789946 | 540 | 2.21875 | 2 |
THE LATEST STUDIES PROVE SOONER IS SMARTER
How much is a child capable of learning before the age of six?
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Is a child's intelligence level actually fixed for life by inherited genes? You'll find the answers to these and hundreds of other vital questions in this revised and updated edition of this classic parenting guide. How to Raise a Brighter Child incorporates groundbreaking scientific findings on brain development to help you boost your child's potential from birth. Discover specific early learning techniques to aid your child's development of his or her mind -- in his or her own personal style and at the appropriate speed. These are not formal lessons. Most are fascinating games. And they work!
About Joan Beck
See more books from this Author
Published February 21, 2001
by Pocket Books.
Education & Reference, Parenting & Relationships, Health, Fitness & Dieting. | <urn:uuid:3072ce7d-5e61-4bc9-ba1b-3cbe3a5849b3> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://idreambooks.com/How-to-Raise-a-Brighter-Child-by-Joan-Beck/reviews/137564 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280761.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00095-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927428 | 247 | 3.53125 | 4 |
In a sense, all of this is a “pipe dream” unless someone cares enough to do it.
The ultimate bottom line is that I don’t have the time or resources to add any of this stuff to the ecosystem. And unless someone else does, it’s not going to get done. So if this wasn’t a request for ideas for a project you could work on, I’m not sure what the point is. And if it was such a request, then modular implicits is a thing I’d like someone to work on.
But since you did ask:
I think OCaml is generally good with complex data structures, implementing some protocol or standard, and general “business logic” branch heavy code. Compilers and language tools are just a special case of that.
This is where the pattern matching and exhaustiveness checks shine. The bulk of bugs in most large programs comes from complex control flow, and synchronized if statements in particular (because they break the correspondence between each line of static code representing one point in the dynamic control flow of the program).
In principle, you can encode that sort of information using templates or inheritance systems and dynamic dispatch, but in practice, the requirements for business logic change so often and are so arbitrary that it’s usually just better to use pattern matching and rely on the compiler to enforce consistency throughout the program.
In any code like that, the only reason I don’t use OCaml is because the startup cost of is too high. I can’t use some kind of lightweight IO stuff like I can in Perl. I don’t have a good database driver. Etc. So in practice, OCaml only gets brought out when it’s a big mission critical thing that I know in advanced is going to get involved. It doesn’t get used for experimental code that has the potential to evolve that way.
IMO, this is where the biggest / easiest improvements are. Reduce friction on the small / hobby project end of things and build out libraries features that make writing that kind of work easier to do.
Now that we have multicore, if OCaml gets libraries for handling irregular parallelism in a sane way (e.g. nested data parallelism, or the newer research on GPU acceleration of business logic tasks), that would make it a lot more compelling. Same goes for if algebraic effects improves the ability to reason about resource usage in a way that improves on the RAII used in C++ and Rust.
Another area where I’d like to use OCaml more would be random IOT gizmos on a Raspberry Pi and general administrative scripts for managing my computer infrastructure. For the former, Python has more day-to-day libraries for any random task and OCaml doesn’t have a good, low friction way to interface with Python code. For the latter, OCaml doesn’t have a good Windows story right now.
The windows thing is hard, but better, python-specific FFI is something someone could do. I don’t know how Julia manages PyCall.jl, but that’s on the level that I’d like for things to be (and it has made doing scientific work in Julia essentially “free” since interfacing to the massive existing libraries is basically free).
If the barrier to formal verification comes down or if Coq gets more accessible, I’ll probably start using OCaml a lot more as a result. But just learning the basics is hard and I’m no where near good enough to use those tools efficiently. I’d really like to be though. And as I said in the other thread, most practical code bases are distributed systems and I’d really like to be able to make the kind of formal guarantees for the entire system that you can get from the type system for an individual process. But I don’t know how to do that easily and there don’t seem to be accessible tooling for that purpose.
Similarly, I’d like to know more about how to do soft real-time work in OCaml, but I don’t understand enough about how to tune the GC and the allocations. So for anything where I have memory and timing constraints, I default to C/C++/Rust. But this could just a documentation issue. People do use OCaml for this, I just don’t know how I’d learn to do it in the context of a hobby project.
As for where it doesn’t get used:
If I have a standardized problem with a standardized solution and I’m just plugging lego blocks together. Odds are the thing more people are using has more eyeballs and is going to work just fine.
If I’m doing mathematical or statistical work (which at this point is most of what I do), I want the code I type to be as close to my actual math as possible. Any mismatch is where my bugs are going to come from. The way you can use unicode in Julia is really powerful and has pulled me into using that language for certain types of problems instead of just doing it Matlab for example.
Similarly, if I’m doing visualizations or some other presentation, OCaml doesn’t have the library and the tooling. I mostly hate every library in existence for this though. Everything has problems and limitations. And if someone could make a good OCaml one, I’d hop on board immediately.
P.S. I wouldn’t say “never” on modular implicits. People used to say that about multicore. And we eventually got multicore. I’m not holding my breath or building a project around modular implicits being there in the short term. But I am going to point out situations where it would help. (Like with Owl).
I do think being able to specify memory layout stuff is going to come sooner and will have a more immediate impact on more code. IIRC, from a YT presentation I saw, Jane Street has an internal prototype as-is. | <urn:uuid:db996113-14a4-437f-8fce-57ddcb80e527> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/application-specific-improvements-to-the-ecosystem/10223 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572033.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814113403-20220814143403-00271.warc.gz | en | 0.929577 | 1,295 | 1.664063 | 2 |
This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2006, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The battle over Little Hole is anything but little, and looks to be growing bigger every day.
Two state agencies are butting heads over whether 365 acres of school trust land along that blue-ribbon fishery on the Green River in northeast Utah should transfer to private hands.
The Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration has brushed aside a dictum by wildlife officials who are denying access to the Daggett County land near Dutch John.
SITLA contends there is a historic right-of-way to the controversial parcel - and it will fight for it. The state Division of Wildlife Resources, on the other hand, has stated the roadway does not extend into SITLA land.
Different Daggett County maps appear to show different road delineations.
One map shows the road that originally forded the Green River near Little Hole does not pass through the SITLA acreage. But a second map seems to suggest it might have.
"We're confident there is access," said SITLA Director Kevin Carter. "Our attorneys have looked at the data - maps, affidavits and photos - documenting the presence of that road."
According to a Utah law, commonly called the "10-Year User Statute," any thoroughfare plied by the public for a decade or more remains a right-of-way, said Lynn Stevens, coordinator for the Governor's Office of Public Lands Policy.
SITLA is considering leasing its acreage on the river's south side to Flint Timber. The Georgia-based developer has proposed a private resort there that includes 10 cabins and a lodge.
But the only access to the property is a class-D dirt road through DWR land. In July, Assistant Attorney General Marty Bushman sent a letter to SITLA, saying the route in question does not enter the school trust parcel. A lessee or purchaser would not have access to the land.
DWR had unsuccessfully sought the acreage as wildlife habitat, offering to purchase it at fair market value or trade for other lands. SITLA turned down the offer.
SITLA still could determine to sell the land, rather than lease it. If the parcel were put up for auction, DWR could bid against Flint Timber and other interested parties.
Nonetheless, a purchase by private entities would require public access.
"They either have access to the land or they don't," said David Serdar, president of Stonefly Society of the Wasatch, a chapter of Trout Unlimited. If SITLA leases the land to Flint Timber, fishers will appeal, Serdar said.
"We'll keep fighting them. Who knows how far it will go."
His group and other fishing interests say a commercial development there could harm spawning waters of cutthroat trout, not to mention spoiling the rugged ambience of the Green River below Flaming Gorge Dam.
Because the controversial road is long and poorly constructed, fishers fear the lodge could not operate without ferrying employees and supplies across the Green at Little Hole, Serdar said.
"If you build a lodge on the north side of the river by Dutch John, we have no problem. But the lodge can't operate efficiently on the other side. Shuttling employees, garbage and other things across that river is out of place."
But Daggett County officials, whose maps conflict with one another, say they won't stand in the way of the proposed development.
Ninety percent of the county is state or federal land. This puts a strain on economic development, said County Commissioner Craig Collett.
"The last business to open in the county was seven years ago," he said. "We're certainly interested in new business; we've been economically depressed."
A recent analysis by Daggett County indicates that there is evidence of a historic right-of-way to the SITLA land, Collett said.
"We talked to people who lived there as early as the 1940s and they say the road was there," he said. "We're not necessarily siding with SITLA, but we're saying there was a public road." | <urn:uuid:5553f101-9b48-47c8-b0ce-c99e99a576a3> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://archive.sltrib.com/printfriendly.php?id=4235460&itype=ngpsid | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280900.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00007-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964099 | 888 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Accession Number : ADA336783
Title : Prevention of Membrane Depolarization of Shock
Descriptive Note : Final rept 1 Feb 94-30 Jun 96
Corporate Author : MARYLAND UNIV BALTIMORE
Personal Author(s) : Gann, Donald S.
PDF Url : ADA336783
Report Date : JUL 1996
Pagination or Media Count : 30
Abstract : Severe hemorrhage is associated with increased intracellular accumulation of sodium and water, reflecting membrane depolarization i.e. decreased activity of the sodium pump. Since others have described normal or increased ATP during this depolarization, we hypothesize that Na/K ATPase is inhibited in shock. Since the defect is seen in red blood cells, a circulating factor appears to be involved. We have identified this factor as the 33amino acid C-terminal fragment of Plasminogen Activator Inhibitor type-1 (PAI-1) generated by the cleavage of PAI-1 at its Arg-Met active center by plasminogen activators. Synthetic 33aa fragment causes dose-dependent inhibition of Na/K ATPase in membrane vesicles. (We call the fragment Sodium Pump Inhibiting Peptide, SPIP). We have measured SPIP in the plasma of rats in hemorrhagic shock and have found the apparent concentration to be sufficient to inhibit completely membrane Na/K ATPase (compared to ouabain). We conclude that hemorrhage elevates a form of PAI-1 that is bound and cleaved by plasminogen activators producing SPIP. SPIP, in turn, inhibits membrane Na/K ATPase producing cell depolarization and increased cell sodium and water, contributing to the development of hemorrhagic shock.
Descriptors : *DEPOLARIZATION, *HEMORRHAGIC SHOCK, RATS, WATER, SODIUM, MEMBRANES, ERYTHROCYTES, CELLS(BIOLOGY), CIRCULATION, POTASSIUM, AMINO ACIDS, BLOOD PLASMA, PEPTIDE HYDROLASES, PLASMIN.
Subject Categories : Anatomy and Physiology
Medicine and Medical Research
Distribution Statement : APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE | <urn:uuid:11dd3f11-cb1d-4844-b2d0-ec4691a34b83> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA336783 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560283008.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095123-00081-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.854422 | 488 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Every year, around a million Americans develop an eye infection. If you have red, itchy eyes that are producing discharge, contact Todd Bragin, MD. At his ophthalmology practice in Lynbrook, New York, Dr. Bragin diagnoses and treats eye infections such as pink eye, restoring your eye health and protecting your vision. Don’t put your sight at risk, call Dr. Bragin, or schedule a consultation online today.
Although there is a wide range of eye infections, the two most common types are conjunctivitis, which is often referred to as pink eye, and contact lens-related infections.
Conjunctivitis is an extremely contagious eye infection that affects your conjunctiva — the transparent membrane that covers the white part of your eye and the inside of your eyelids. A virus or bacteria usually cause pink eye. Because of the highly contagious nature of pink eye, it can spread through classrooms and public spaces quickly where you might touch the same surface as someone who has conjunctivitis and then absentmindedly rub your eye.
If you wear contact lenses, you touch your eyes at least twice a day to place and remove your contacts. If you don’t wash your hands thoroughly before touching your eyes, you risk introducing bacteria, parasites, and viruses into your eyes. For example, fungal keratitis and Acanthamoeba keratitis are common in patients who wear contact lenses.
Eye infections cause a variety of uncomfortable and disruptive symptoms, including:
If you have an eye infection, you might wake up with crust around your eyelids or in your eyelashes.
You should make an appointment with Dr. Bragin if you have any symptoms of an eye infection. If left untreated, eye infections can cause complications, including growths such as a stye or chalazion, or the infection could spread into your tear ducts and cause painful inflammatory conditions like uveitis.
In severe cases, an eye infection can spread into the surrounding tissue and cause orbital cellulitis.
Dr. Bragin begins treatment with a comprehensive eye exam to identify the specific type of eye infection. In most cases, he treats eye infections with medicated eye drops to fight off the infection. If your infection is viral, he may prescribe steroid eye drops to reduce inflammation.
You can reduce your risk of getting an eye infection by avoiding touching your eyes, and if you have to touch your eyes, make sure to wash your hands thoroughly with soap and water first.
Call Dr. Bragin, or make an appointment online today if you’re concerned about an eye infection. | <urn:uuid:0585edbe-fb77-43d8-aebb-b0cedd854fff> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.toddbraginmd.com/services/eye-infections | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570868.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808152744-20220808182744-00069.warc.gz | en | 0.922972 | 538 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Kon Tiki2 Expedition
March 19, 2016 by staff
Kon Tiki2 Expedition, The crewmembers of the Kon-Tiki2 balsa raft expedition were rescued Friday by the wood-chip bulker Hokuetsu Ushaka. After 114 days and 4500 nautical miles in the south-east Pacific, they elected to end their voyage in rescue, due to a slower than expected rate of travel and a foul weather forecast ahead. The expedition requested assistance from the Chilean Navy, which coordinated a rendezvous with the Ushaka.
The raft crew removed their equipment and dismantled their rafts, Tupac Yapanqui and Rahiti, before departing.
The goal of the expedition was to show that balsa rafts could sail from South America to Easter Island and back. The expedition reached Easter Island after 43 days at sea, but the return voyage proved more difficult due to what the organization described as atypical winds.
“In a normal year, we would have reached South America by now. Instead, we are still 900 nautical miles from land and the weather forecasts are not promising. The crew is at good health and spirit, and there is no emergency situation,” said expedition leader Torgeir Higraff. “Needless to say, it is sad to end the expedition without reaching South America.”
The rafts left Lima, Peru on November 7, 2015, and arrived on Easter Island just before Christmas. On January 6, 2016, they started the return voyage.
“We have made good progress . . . but this is an El Niño year and the weather patterns we have encountered have been atypical. We realize that reaching South America will take too long and we prefer to evacuate to ensure safety for all,” said Higraff.
The rafts were also equipped as data-gathering platforms for climate and oceanographic research. “From a scientific point of view, it has been particularly interesting that the expedition took place in one of the strongest El Niño years recorded, even if El Niño now contributes to the termination of the expedition,” said Cecilie Mauritzen, the expedition’s chief scientist.
The expedition had encountered gale-force weather earlier in their journey, resulting in damage to the rafts and water infiltration reaching some stores, including one raft’s supply of flour.
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Disclaimer: The views expressed on this site are that of the authors and not necessarily that of U.S.S.POST. | <urn:uuid:05c5cc4c-a6cd-45ee-a561-7467d28bb616> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://usspost.com/kon-tiki2-expedition-91256/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280761.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00093-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962266 | 537 | 2.015625 | 2 |
JONESVILLE — Two Jonesville businesses partnered together to provide needed school supplies for children in the area as school was getting started in August.
Issy Hinshaw of Issy’s Consignments and Michelle Casstevens of Avon Boutique donated bookbags filled with school supplies to Jonesville Elementary School. The donation was accepted by Amy Rose, Yadkin County Schools social worker, who will make sure they get to those students who need them most.
“I remember as a child how great it felt to get a new bookbag and school supplies every year,” said Casstevens. “With the economy the way it is today, I realize that many parents struggle to make ends meet, much less buy the extras.
“Issy and I partnered with our customers to order bookbags from Avon and I used my earnings to purchase the supplies needed. I hope this brings joy to the students who receive them.”
Casstevens’ next project will benefit the Jonesville Police Department. She is raising money for Annie the Owl, with each one costing $20.
As a fundraiser to purchase and donate the owl, Casstevens is selling paper owls for a $1 donation, and for every $20 collected, she will purchase another owl for the police department, in hopes that the owls will be given to children who are involved in some kind of domestic situation.
“I went through many situations as a child and remember just wanting something to hold onto. I know first-hand how scary it can be and just want to bring a smile to a child’s face,” she said. | <urn:uuid:f241b167-0442-466f-84c6-7de9069eaafa> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://elkintribune.com/news/business/9235/businesses-donate-school-supplies | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281162.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00531-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968206 | 346 | 1.640625 | 2 |
By Gary Rabenko
The 5TJT has many interesting columns about a variety of things.
I frequently have enjoyed Hannah Reich Berman’s column, “That’s The Way It Is.” With a knack for speaking from the heart and on point, she usually makes interesting and valuable observations. Sometimes we disagree. Five years ago, two articles involved an odd subject for this paper.
I had the pleasure of photographing her daughter’s family of cute, sensitive, and affectionate children, who really loved my stuffed dog and were fascinated by my squirrel photos. Later, reading Hannah’s articles on squirrels, I understood why they had said I should speak to her.
Hannah’s first article outlined in painful detail her paroxysms of anguish and agony in trying to evict a squirrel that had penetrated into her basement. Cops and firemen wouldn’t intervene. The squirrel died on its own. Next she documented heroic efforts to relocate a squirrel, to protect the children. Both articles advocated fear and isolation of a creature that perhaps could be admired and appreciated.
Children should see squirrels as industrious, curious, attentive, and extremely smart. Learning to identify them through individuals’ subtle markings and unique personality can be an educational exercise and teach sensitivity to detail and personality.
They do not have rabies! If at all possible, they eat nuts, grains, seeds, and vegetables. As a bird might snatch a cookie, the squirrel could try to grab some treat your child was saving for himself. That is nature!
Anyone brilliant enough to remember 80% of their nuts deserves respect. Sadly, too few humans care to learn about creatures that continue to plant our trees, as we chop more and more down.
Responses to a mural of squirrels in my studio are remarkable. Many laugh, and some actually cry seeing the tenderness, gentleness, curiosity, and humanity in these little creatures. A few insensitive types can only squeal with scorn: rodents!
They are rodents because 4 of their 22 teeth never stop growing. So they constantly gnaw. Those teeth, with roots all the way to their brains, are enameled on one side, so they always grind to a sharp point. They can exert extreme force with their little jaws. If you wanted to feed them, until they thoroughly understand how your hand smells different from the food, you will get badly bitten. They cannot see what is right in front of their nose, with eyes placed so far to the side. They are not trying to bite you. They do not want to bite you. You are meat. Biting you is dangerous contact with a predator: you. But they cannot see, so they grab blindly what they do not quite understand.
We do the same. We lash out at what we do not understand. At NYC parks, squirrels are fed by humans. Squirrels can learn not to bite. Still, a child who is accidentally bitten would not understand. I do not advise it.
Homeowners get indignant when their security system’s control center, recessed in the attic, gets all chewed up. The squirrel cannot be expected to understand that.
Their one-pound bodies are an engineering marvel, able to wrestle nearly 30 pounds. They are rodents but not rats. They are mammals but not human. They think, reason, and understand how things move. We are beyond their understanding, but often we need psychiatrists to figure things out! Their complex world is too often not of any interest to us. We would like to trap and kill them, or deport them to Siberia.
It is easy to hate what we do not understand. Is that what we want our children to do? Have we not learned from how others have hated us because they did not understand us? Why do we feed and watch birds, which carry more disease and are transients, when squirrels are clean animals and can live as our fascinating neighbors for years?
The squirrel in your attic did not enter with malice. To a squirrel about to become a mommy, it seemed like a good place to find warmth and shelter for the ten weeks it will take.
A squirrel can live 20 years, but 80% die before their first birthday due to humans chopping down trees, relocating mothers away from offspring, traffic, foul play, and food reduction.
Squirrels feel pain and are very emotional and sensitive creatures. For survival, they must be territorial. They must learn every inch of their environment–knowing what they are about to jump on, knowing where to find water. Knowing the time of day, the big cat which crosses the yard.
They have an incredible sense of direction, using local and distant landmarks to find their food or return home if displaced. If unable to return home, survival will be unlikely–as they will be chased by every other squirrel and hounded at every attempt to eat or find peace. You will always have squirrels. They are everywhere and others will move in to fill a territory not defended by one already.
Hannah’s squirrel tales made good theater back then. I hope some have found this interesting now. Life is rarely as simple as black or white. Sometimes we should be more interested in the gray! I will be happy to answer any questions you may have about squirrels, because the more one knows the more one recognizes, and the more one recognizes the more one appreciates. v
Gary Rabenko has a New York State Class 1 Wildlife Rehabilitator license to possess and handle wildlife. He devotes his interest and expertise to helping injured or orphaned squirrels (of any color) and educating the public on this ubiquitous creature so often misunderstood. He may be reached at email@example.com. Rabenko Photography & Video Artists is located at 1001 Broadway in Woodmere. | <urn:uuid:d63d6f6f-2367-4fc0-bcb3-0994f9b3bb03> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://www.5tjt.com/not-black-or-white-but-mostly-gray/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571719.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812140019-20220812170019-00278.warc.gz | en | 0.971386 | 1,209 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
|Title:||Distribution of aquatic vascular plants in lowland rivers: separating the effects of local environmental conditions, longitudinal connectivity and river basin isolation.|
Harper, David M.
|Citation:||Freshwater Biology, 2005, 50 (3), pp.418-437|
|Appears in Collections:||Published Articles, Dept. of Geography|
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Rising noticeably, the demand for electric vehicles is being encouraged with financial incentives. What we need are e-vehicles that make only few compromises in terms of ecology, cruising range and price – coupled with safety, quality, driving pleasure and ride comfort. To meet these demands and exploit all the benefits of the electric powertrain effectively, much of the vehicle concept must be re-defined. This requires a strong and competent engineering partner.
IAV has many years of experience in developing electric, fuel-cell and hybrid vehicles. We have been handling projects for electrically propelled study, concept and production vehicles since as long ago as 1990. Doing so, we have overcome many challenges that are now benefiting our clients in the form of our know-how. On top of this, IAV has expertise in the entire vehicle because all of the disciplines involved work with each other very closely. We are not only in full command of new technologies, such as the e-motor, power electronics or the traction battery, but our specialized departments also develop the adjustments the e-vehicle makes necessary to existing systems. This means we can provide our clients with support across the entire process involved in developing an electric vehicle – from the concept phase to approved prototype and start of production. | <urn:uuid:0c8db850-63a7-46dc-be73-aca0dbec5078> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.iav.com/en/engineering/light-vehicles/e-traction?sl=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560284405.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095124-00040-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966924 | 254 | 1.921875 | 2 |
An insecticide-laced bait that is squirted on trees to control cherry fruit fly has saved growers an estimated $2.75 million over the past three years, Tim Smith, Washington State University Extension agent for north central Washington, reported during the annual Stone Fruit Day in Wenatchee.
The GF-120 bait, which is applied in small amounts from an all-terrain vehicle, has enabled growers to reduce their pesticide costs, as well as the amount of labor needed to apply pesticides.
“Squirting a little goo on your trees seems like an odd way to control a serious pest,” Smith acknowledged. “But it’s being used a lot now.”
It’s being used by organic and conventional growers alike and has proven a boon for cleaning up infested trees.
“This is one of the most exciting things I’ve ever been associated with,” Smith said. “There’s no doubt this product works under heavy pressure. It’s become the most-used insecticide on cherries in the state of Washington.”
Smith figures that the bait has resulted in a 70,000-pound reduction in use of organophosphate insecticides in Washington State, and a reduction of at least 8,000 hours of applicator exposure to organophosphates or carbamates.
“It’s easy to apply, and your workers tend to argue about who gets to put it on because they like driving the four-wheelers,” Smith said. “And there’s a lot of money to be saved.”
Guthion (azinphos-methyl) used to be the mainstay of an early-season cherry fruit fly control program, but the product is being phased out over the next five years, and many growers have already stopped using it, Smith said.
The list of materials used to target the pest has changed over the past few years. Methyl parathion is no longer registered; dimethoate is under the scrutiny of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as is Sevin (carbaryl), a carbamate insecticide that is widely used in apple production as a thinner. Diazinon does not have a tolerance in some overseas cherry markets.
However, several new materials that have come onto the market are very effective fruit fly controls and don’t require cholinesterase testing of workers, Smith said. The neonicotinyl pesticides Assail (acetamiprid), Actara (thiomethoxam), and Calypso (thiacloprid) all work well when applied at 10-day intervals, but not when the interval is stretched to 14 days, his research shows. The spinosyn insecticides Success (which is the active ingredient in the GF-120 bait) and the organic version Entrust are also effective. Dow AgroSciences LLC will launch a related product called Delegate next year. The new product, which has a much longer residual effect, is designed as a replacement for Guthion in apples, but appears to be an effective fruit fly control, Smith said.
DuPont will launch a new product called Altacor (rynaxypyr) for control of codling moth in apples and pears. Smith said cherry growers should be able to use the product at half the codling moth rate for cherry fruit fly, making it more affordable. It’s an effective insecticide but very safe for humans.
Smith has also tested the insect growth regulator Rimon (novaluron) and had good results when he used it in with a bait as an attract-and-kill product.
Options for organic cherry production include the GF-120 bait, Entrust, Pyganic (pyrethrum) and Neem (azadirachtin). Smith said that in his trials Pyganic has suppressed cherry fruit fly but not controlled it. Most organic growers in the Pacific Northwest use the bait and are no longer having difficulty controlling the pest.
Smith urged growers using the bait to check for nearby infested trees that could be sources of infestation. A mature female can enter the orchard and might lay eggs before she finds the bait and eats it. “It’s not lethal the minute she flies into your orchard,” he stressed. “Find those trees, clean them up, and then get rid of them. Don’t cut them down without cleaning them up first.”
For postharvest control, Provado (imidacloprid) is an alternative to dimethoate. | <urn:uuid:826c1e16-c8ed-4eae-8966-8761bbf205e5> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.goodfruit.com/cherry-growers-take-the-bait/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281353.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00068-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955346 | 963 | 1.75 | 2 |
Serbia’s energy costs have risen to two percent of GDP, News
Serbia’s total energy costs rose to 2% of GDP due to problems in domestic electricity production that overlapped with the growth of global energy prices in the winter of 2021/22, the IMF estimates in the second review of the results of the advisory arrangement with Serbia. That is more than what we allocate for science and culture together: we allocate 0.46 percent for science, and one percent of GDP for culture.
The IMF estimates that negative short-term risks still exist and that they include a potentially prolonged war in Ukraine with further pressures on energy and commodity prices, supply chain disruptions and lower external demand, as well as a continuing lack of production in the energy sector.
“Reforms in the energy sector are urgently needed, including the restoration of a secure supply.”
The strategy for the state Electric Power Industry of Serbia (EPS) and the timely adoption of the National Climate and Energy Plan will provide an essential framework for investments in energy, especially in renewable sources, according to the IMF.
We remind you that Serbia is in the process of preparing the National Energy and Climate Plan (NEKP) of Serbia for the period from 2021 to 2030, with a vision until 2050, the draft of which was published on the website of the relevant ministry.
The National Energy and Climate Plan will include targets for increasing the share of renewable energy sources in final energy consumption, for increasing energy efficiency and for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It will also contain measures to achieve these goals and implement the energy transition.
Energy companies EPS and Srbijagas have been a cancer of Serbian economic reforms for some time.
According to the assessment of the Fiscal Council, EPS’s problem is low investments, redundancy and unfavorable structure of employees, weak control of salaries, connection with losers, losses and thefts of electricity, low price, public procurement, etc.
To this should be added poor management and declining coal quality, more frequent breakdowns and loss of production capacity, increased use of fuel oil (environmental problem) …
During the current winter season, the Electric Power Industry of Serbia spent about 500 million euros on the import of electricity from abroad, and the main reason for that is insufficient domestic coal production and accidents at the “Nikola Tesla” Thermal Power Plant, which caused the country’s electricity collapse.
The Government of Serbia recently approved (EPS) to import four million tons of coal by the end of 2023, in order to ensure the uninterrupted operation of Obrenovac’s thermal power plants, which cover half of the country’s electricity needs.
Why is so much money spent on electricity? The first problem is that a large amount of money is spent on importing electricity in the winter when it is most expensive. The second is that if the Electric Power Industry of Serbia did not have a problem with domestic production, it could export surplus electricity and make good money on its sales.
We remind you that EPS lost half a billion euros on electricity imports, said Pavle Petrović, the president of the Fiscal Council of Serbia, recently. According to him, in order to be able to import the missing quantities of electricity, EPS was forced to take a loan of 300 million euros, and the big question is whether the company will manage to repay the debt, so the loan will most likely be returned from the state budget.
The state also provides Srbijagas with the difference between high purchase and frozen gas sales prices, Nova Ekonomija writes. | <urn:uuid:681b3156-7b4a-4eac-ab61-80f9f95a8118> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://serbia-business.eu/serbias-energy-costs-have-risen-to-two-percent-of-gdp/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571993.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814022847-20220814052847-00672.warc.gz | en | 0.945118 | 734 | 2.109375 | 2 |
At COP25 in Madrid Heads of UN agencies met for a high-level Leadership Dialogue on how to turn the tide on deforestation and committed to the common goal of helping countries reduce deforestation and improve forest management.
According to the UN, up to 23% of all greenhouse gas emissions derive from the Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) sector.
However, a myriad of forest-based solutions taking place on the ground show the real and promising results that forests can deliver.
As President of COP25, Chile initiated the “Santiago Call for Action on Forests.” (See Call for Action in Spanish.) The call highlights the fact that climate change, including increases in frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, is impacting terrestrial ecosystems, exacerbating existing risks to livelihoods, food systems, infrastructure, human and ecosystem health, and biodiversity.
The COP25 Presidency issued a call for action on seven essential activities, including on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and enhancing so-called “sinks” which absorb carbon.
Together with improved land management options, forests and trees could provide up to 30% of greenhouse gas mitigation required by 2030 to keep the increase in global average temperature below 2 degrees Celsius, the upper temperature goal of the Paris Agreement.
All UN agencies at today’s high-level Dialogue committed firmly to the common goal of helping countries to reduce deforestation and improve forest management.
The United Nations Forum on Forests, represented by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, which serves as the Secretariat of the Forum, highlighted the importance of promoting sustainable management of all types of forests and implementation of the UN Strategic Plan for Forests by 2030:
“Implementation of the UN Strategic Plan for Forests by 2030 will reverse the loss of forests and increase them by 3% globally and will also help eradicate extreme poverty for forest-dependent people. UN DESA, through its work in support of the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development and the UN Forum on Forests, is committed to playing its vital role in accelerating global efforts to halt deforestation and promoting sustainable management of all types of forests.” – Mr. Liu Zhenmin, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) underlined that addressing deforestation requires looking beyond the forest sector to identify the main drivers of deforestation:
“We need to look beyond the forests. To step up action against deforestation and forest degradation, we need to find consensus to agree on reducing footprints of agricultural commodities. We need to work with all stakeholders in supporting global efforts to turn the tide on deforestation.” – Mr. QU Dongyu, Director General.
The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) explained the concept of land-degradation neutrality to help countries identify and address the drivers of deforestation in a robust way:
“Halting deforestation and restoring degraded forests are global imperatives. Land Degradation Neutrality– SDG Target 15.3 – provides the robust framework needed to keep land, including forests, healthy and resilient over the long haul, which in turn will keep food, energy, carbon and biodiversity in balance. Restoring degraded lands means better lives and income for farmers and herders and for women and youth, and less pressure to migrate to cities.” – Mr. Ibrahim Thiaw, Executive Secretary.
The Global Environment Facility (GEF) emphasized the need for transformative action that connects sustainable activities across different sectors, in particular land-use and food:
“Faced with growing rates of global deforestation, there is an urgent need to transform economic systems related to food and land use. The new four-year GEF-7 strategy reflects this with a focus on harnessing the existing and emerging multi-stakeholder platforms committed to sustainability, which include important global companies from the food sector.” – Ms. Naoko Ishii, CEO and Chairperson.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) agreed with the strong need for action, and highlighted several areas for the implementation of solutions:
“We need to focus on nature-positive agriculture; clean up our supply-chains; adopt sustainable consumption and production methods; partner with the private sector and put a price on carbon. And the good news is that there is much greater awareness about the state of our forests than ever before and when we build leadership in one place, we will witness a race to the top to save our planet’s forests.” – Ms. Inger Andersen, Executive Director.
“Supporting countries to tackle deforestation is an essential component of climate action and thus of UNDP’s Climate Promise. REDD+ is a “ready to go” nature-based solution. And the UN-REDD Programme provides a platform for the UN to support countries to raise their nature-based NDC ambition.” – Mr. Achim Steiner, Administrator.
Regarding implementation on the ground, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Changeadded:
“The agreement on the REDD+ framework was a milestone. It gives a clear direction on how countries, civil society and the private sector can collaborate to reduce deforestation. While it’s only a starting point, its strength is its flexibility. Each country can adapt it to its national circumstances and enhance implementation over time— especially by including REDD+ activities in their NDCs.” – Ms. Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary.
Addressing deforestation is an issue that is a concern throughout the UN organization and for millions throughout the world. All UN agencies emphasized their readiness to support countries in their efforts to reduce deforestation and forest degradation, building on existing efforts to provide technical and financial support, and working together as partners. Trust-building through the UNFCCC transparency framework will remain vital for collaboration on this important matter.
Finally, it was also highlighted that reducing deforestation requires an effort by all stakeholders, engaging local communities and indigenous peoples, women and youth, civil society and the private sector, as well as producers and consumers.
Read original release here. | <urn:uuid:5b9c713b-daaa-4855-be8c-1b7900edb1f3> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.ecokontor.com/2019/12/6740/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571097.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810010059-20220810040059-00264.warc.gz | en | 0.927437 | 1,261 | 2.953125 | 3 |
2. A man of high rank in the kingdom of the Bosporus.
He first occurs in history as a general of Pharnaces H. of the Bosporus, whose sister Dynamnis was the wife of Asander. In B. C. 47, he revolted against his brother-in-law who had appointed him regent of his kingdom during his war against Cn. Domitius Calvinus. Asander hoped by thus deserting his brother-in-law to win the favour of the Romans, and with their assistance to obtain the kingdom for himself. When, therefore, Pharnaces was defeated by the Romans and took refuge in his own dominions, Asander had him put to death. Asander now usurped the throne, but was unable to maintain himself upon it, for Julius Caesar commanded Mithridates of Pergamus, on whom he conferred the title of king of the Bosporus, to make war upon Asander. (D. C. 42.46
; Appian, Mithruid.
120; Caesar, de Bello Alex.
The results of this undertaking are not mentioned, but if we may believe the authority of Lucian （Macrob.
17) Asander was deprived of his kingdom and afterwards restored by Augustus.
He died of voluntary starvation at the advanced age of ninety-three, from despair at seeing his troops desert to Scribonius. Strabo (vii. p.311
) speaks of a wall or a ditch which Asander constructed across the Isthmus of the Crimea, of 360 stadia in length, to protect the peninsula against the incursions of the nomadic tribes. (Mannert, Geogr. der Griech. u. Röm.
iv. p. 293.) [L. S. | <urn:uuid:68efc4ab-72a9-46be-a47d-975a3df80580> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0104:alphabetic%20letter=A:entry%20group=48:entry=asander-bio-2&ie_sort=display | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719136.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00466-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97812 | 377 | 3.15625 | 3 |
Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2006, 20(4), 829–832 䉷 2006 National Strength & Conditioning Association
ISOKINETIC STRENGTH OF COLLEGIATE BASEBALL PITCHERS DURING A SEASON LINDA D. WILKIN
BRYAN L. HADDOCK
Department of Kinesiology, California State University, San Bernardino, California 92407.
ABSTRACT. Wilkin, L.D., and B.L. Haddock. Isokinetic strength of collegiate baseball pitchers during a season. J. Strength Cond. Res. 20(4):829–832. 2006.—Pitching is suggested to expose the arm to physical stress that may lead to a decrease in strength. The purpose of this study was to examine the isokinetic internal and external rotational shoulder strength of Division II pitchers preseason, midseason, and postseason. The 9 pitchers were 23 ⫾ 0.67 years of age and weighed 91.2 ⫾ 3.14 kg. Each subject was evaluated utilizing a Biodex Isokinetic Dynamometer. Isokinetic internal and external concentric strength was assessed at 90⬚ of shoulder abduction and 90⬚ of elbow flexion at 300 and 450⬚·s⫺1 at each time point. A repeated-measures analysis of variance statistical analysis was performed using SPSS software. All data are reported as mean ⫾ SEM. Mean internal peak torques at 300 and 450⬚·s⫺1 preseason, midseason, and postseason were 50.66 ⫾ 2.27, 49.70 ⫾ 2.54, and 51.70 ⫾ 2.94 N·m and 37.14 ⫾ 2.54, 37.36 ⫾ 2.74, and 38.26 ⫾ 2.50 N·m, respectively. Mean external peak torques at 300 and 450⬚·s⫺1 preseason, midseason, and postseason were 30.16 ⫾ 1.69, 29.50 ⫾ 2.22, and 29.79 ⫾ 2.08 N·m and 17.68 ⫾ 2.15, 16.89 ⫾ 2.46, and 18.20 ⫾ 2.35 N·m, respectively. There were no differences in isokinetic internal or external concentric shoulder rotational mean peak torque of Division II pitchers at any speed tested or time point examined. KEY WORDS. muscular strength, shoulder, throwing
INTRODUCTION itching, throughout a typical National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division II college baseball season, exposes the shoulder muscles to physical stress. This repeated stress on the shoulder muscles may lead to changes in strength over the course of the season. Dillman et al. (3) suggested that during pitching a peak internal rotational angular velocity of almost 7,000⬚·s⫺1 is reached. They also suggested that pitching is one of the fastest human movements in any sport skill. Although it is technically impossible to simulate the velocity suggested by Dillman et al., there are many studies that have evaluated shoulder rotational strength at several different rotational speeds. There are studies that have examined the shoulder strength of pitchers compared with other position players (1) and compared with other types of athletes (2). There are several studies that have established normative shoulder rotational strength data for professional pitchers (4, 5, 9, 11, 12), collegiate pitchers (8), and high school pitchers (6, 10). In addition, several studies have examined dominant vs. nondominant shoulder rotational strength (1, 5, 6). However, there remains a paucity of research investigating changes in internal and external rotational strength of the shoulder of collegiate pitchers throughout a typical 4-month baseball season. One such pilot study conducted by Whitley and Terrio (10) utilized high school
pitchers. The results suggested a significant loss in adduction strength in both throwing and nonthrowing shoulders at 180⬚·s⫺1, a decrease in internal rotation strength for both sides, but no differences at 300⬚·s⫺1. They further suggested that this loss of strength at 180⬚·s⫺1 would potentially be associated with injuries to the pitching arm. The purpose of this study was to examine the isokinetic internal and external concentric rotational strength of the shoulder musculature in pitchers of an NCAA Division II collegiate baseball team preseason, midseason, and postseason to determine if a loss of rotational strength occurs. We hypothesized that the repeated stress of the shoulder musculature, throughout a 4-month season, would result in a decline in isokinetic internal and external concentric rotational strength.
METHODS Experimental Approach to the Problem
This study was designed to examine the isokinetic internal and external concentric rotational strength of the shoulder musculature of pitchers playing on an NCAA Division II collegiate baseball team over the entire season. For the purposes of the study, rotational strength was defined by the mean peak torque measurements obtained at angular velocities of 300 and 450⬚·s⫺1. To approximate changes over the entire season, the subjects were measured 3 times: preseason, midseason, and postseason. The independent variables for this experiment were time examined at 3 levels: preseason, midseason, and postseason; angular velocity was examined at 2 levels: 300 and 450⬚·s⫺1; and direction was examined at 2 levels: internal rotation and external rotation. This dictated a 3 ⫻ 2 ⫻ 2 repeated-measures design. The dependent variable for the design was mean peak torque. Subjects
This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the University and all subjects signed an informed consent before testing. Thirteen male pitchers were recruited from an NCAA Division II baseball team. Nine (age, 23 ⫾ 0.67 years; weight, 91.2 ⫾ 3.14 kg) of the 13 pitchers completed the study. Three of the 4 who did not complete the testing dropped out due to eligibility issues or they were unable to make their appointment and the other was injured. Throughout the entire season, all 9 subjects were free of any musculoskeletal injuries or conditions that might result in pain or restriction of internal and external rotation of the shoulder. 829
TABLE 1. Study design. Familiarization Early January before the beginning of regular season play
Preseason testing Mid-January before the beginning of the regular season play
Midseason testing Early March the midpoint of season play
Postseason testing Mid-May the end of regular season play
Each subject reported to the human performance laboratory 1 week prior to preseason testing for familiarization. The subjects were positioned on a Biodex Isokinetic Dynamometer (Biodex, Inc., Shirley, NY) according to the manufacturer’s suggestion, and the trunk was secured with straps across the chest and waist. The evaluation of internal and external concentric isokinetic strength of the shoulder was conducted with 90⬚ of shoulder abduction and 90⬚ of elbow flexion. The complete set-up information for each subject was recorded for future testing to assure consistent positioning. One week following familiarization (Table 1), subjects reported to the laboratory and a warm-up was performed on an Upper Body Ergometer (Monark, Varberg, Sweden) for 5 minutes at the subject’s selected intensity. The intensity was recorded during familiarization for replication during future testing. Following calibration of the dynamometer and proper positioning, the subject’s arm was statically weighed to provide a gravity correction of the data. Each subject performed 10 maximal repetitions at 300⬚·s⫺1 followed by a 90-second rest period before performing 10 maximal repetitions at 450⬚·s⫺1 through a standardized 90⬚ range of motion. The isokinetic dynamometer reported the data as mean peak torque. All subjects received uniform commands and encouragement throughout each testing session. The identical testing procedure was utilized for familiarization preseason, midseason, and postseason testing. Preseason testing was completed 1 week before the start of the baseball season. Midseason testing was completed during the week determined as the middle of the season. Postseason testing was completed during the week following the end of the regular season play.
FIGURE 1. Comparison of internal mean peak torque rotational strength at 2 speeds preseason, midseason, and postseason. * p ⫽ 0.05.
Demographic data were analyzed by descriptive analysis and are reported as mean ⫾ SEM. The isokinetic internal and external concentric rotational shoulder strength data reported as mean peak torque at 300 and 450⬚·s⫺1 over time were analyzed with a 3 ⫻ 2 ⫻ 2 repeated-measures analysis of variance using SPSS (version 11.0; SPSS, Inc., Chicago, IL) with level of significance set at p ⱕ 0.05.
RESULTS The hypothesis of the study was not supported as there were no differences over time in isokinetic internal or external concentric rotational strength (Wilks’ ⫽ 0.883; F[2,7] ⫽ 0.462; p ⫽ 0.648; 2 ⫽ 0.117; 1 ⫺  ⫽ 0.099). However, as expected, the mean peak torque was lower at 450 than at 300⬚·s⫺1 (Wilks’ ⫽ 0.128; F[1,8] ⫽ 54.523; p ⫽ 0.000; 2 ⫽ 0.872; 1 ⫺  ⫽ 1.000). Internal mean peak torque rotational strength was greater than external mean peak torque rotational strength (Wilks’ ⫽ 0.025; F[1,8] ⫽ 306.639; p ⫽ 0.000; 2 ⫽ 0.975; 1 ⫺  ⫽ 1.000). Comparisons of the internal mean peak torque rotational strength at the 3 time points examined are pre-
FIGURE 2. Comparison of external mean peak torque rotational strength at 2 speeds preseason, midseason, and postseason. * p ⫽ 0.05.
sented in Figure 1. Comparisons of the external mean peak torque rotational strength at the 3 time points examined are presented in Figure 2.
DISCUSSION The results of this study do not support the hypothesis. However, the results of this study are similar to the pilot work of Whitley and Terrio (10). Whitley and Terrio examined the isokinetic arm-shoulder strength of high school pitchers preseason and postseason. The 5 pitchers in the Whitley and Terrio study did show a significant loss in adduction arm-shoulder strength for both throwing and nonthrowing shoulders at 180⬚·s⫺1. However, there was no change in isokinetic strength at 300⬚·s⫺1, similar to the findings of the current study. While differ-
COLLEGIATE BASEBALL PITCHERS 831
TABLE 2. Off-season hypertrophy/endurance phase (volume ⫻ intensity).* Activity Core lifts
Bench press, squat, stiff leg deadlifts, leg press (rehabilitation) 48 ⫻ 65% 40 ⫻ 70% 32 ⫻ 75% 30 ⫻ 70% (4 sets ⫻ 12 reps) (4 sets ⫻ 10 reps) (4 sets ⫻ 8 reps) (4 sets ⫻ 10 reps)
Weeks 10–12 24 ⫻ 80% (4 sets ⫻ 6 reps)
Triceps press-down, biceps curl, wrist curls, calf press, lat pull-downs, seated row, dumbbell row, lunge, shoulder series, wrist rolls Auxiliary lifts 48 ⫻ LW 40 ⫻ MW 32 ⫻ MHW 30 ⫻ MW 24 ⫻ HW (4 sets ⫻ 12 reps) (4 sets ⫻ 10 reps) (4 sets ⫻ 8 reps) (4 sets ⫻ 10 reps) (4 sets ⫻ 6 reps) * LW ⫽ light weight; MW ⫽ moderate weight; MHW ⫽ moderate heavy weight; HW ⫽ heavy weight. TABLE 3. Prepractice conditioning. Weight training (3 times/wk 3 sets of 10 repetitions) Bench press or dumbbell press, squats (not an option), deadlift, curls, lat pulls, triceps extension, adductor/abductor or equivalent, shoulder (Jobes; pitchers should do these daily), sit-ups ⫻ 200, back extensions Running 3 times/wk sprint work/1½ miles on lift days; distance work ⫽ 1½ mile run on lift days under 11:00 min; sprint work ⫽ ½ mile jog and 4 ⫻ 200 yards full on nonlift days Long toss Begin throwing 3 times/wk firm long toss with proper arm angle; do not change arm angle if you need to skip ball (one hop) Hitting Begin swinging but with a purpose (25 off tee, soft toss, life cage, and bat handling drills); front side closed, pivot on back foot, little movement, opposite field
ences at 180⬚·s⫺1 may exist, the current study only tested strength at 300 and 450⬚·s⫺1. The Whitley and Terrio work did not report any mean peak torque values in their publication. The expectation would be that the NCAA Division II collegiate pitchers should have greater isokinetic internal and external mean peak torque values due to maturation and improved biomechanics. In addition, the pitchers in this study utilized a series of strengthening exercises throughout the season to assist with the maintenance of rotational strength. These shoulder and arm exercises for athletes who throw were developed by Frank W. Jobe, M.D. (7). The recommended exercises include a series of stretches. The stretches include posterior shoulder, wrist flexor and extensor, elbow extensor, and shoulder blade. The strengthening exercises include shoulder flexion, extension, abduction, and elevation, military press, horizontal abduction, ulnar and radial deviation, external rotation, internal rotation, horizontal adduction, push-ups, rowing, elbow flexion, elbow extension, forearm supination and pronation, and wrist flexion and extension. This series of exercises may have contributed to the ability of the pitchers in the current study to maintain the strength of their shoulders throughout the season. The isokinetic internal and external peak torques of the shoulder at 300⬚·s⫺1 were similar to the results of the Codine et al. (2) work that examined the influence of sports discipline on shoulder rotator cuff balance. Our peak torque values were similar to the baseball players in this study. Codine et al. mean internal peak torque at 300⬚·s⫺1 was 58 ⫾ 8.25 N·m (mean ⫾ SD). The current study mean internal peak torque at 300⬚·s⫺1 was 50.66 ⫾
6.81 N·m preseason, 49.70 ⫾ 7.61 N·m midseason, and 51.7 ⫾ 8.80 N·m postseason. Codine et al. mean external peak torque at 300⬚·s⫺1 was 33.4 ⫾ 7.87 N·m. The current study mean external peak torque at 300⬚·s⫺1 was 30.16 ⫾ 5.08 N·m preseason, 29.50 ⫾ 6.67 N·m midseason, and 29.79 ⫾ 6.25 N·m postseason. Codine et al. did not examine isokinetic strength at 450⬚·s⫺1. However, our results were not similar to those found by Mikesky et al. (8). Their work examined eccentric and concentric strength of the shoulder and arm musculature in collegiate baseball pitchers before the season began. This work included Division I, II, and III pitchers. The internal isokinetic strength at 300⬚·s⫺1 in the Mikesky et al. work was 84.0 ⫾ 7.7 N·m (mean ⫾ SEM), while the current study’s internal isokinetic strength at 300⬚·s⫺1 was 50.6 ⫾ 2.27 N·m preseason, 49.70 ⫾ 2.54 N·m midseason, and 51.7 ⫾ 2.94 N·m postseason. The external isokinetic strength at 300⬚·s⫺1 in the Mikesky et al. work was 53.2 ⫾ 2.8 N·m, while the current study’s external isokinetic strength at 300⬚·s⫺1 was 30.16 ⫾ 1.96 N·m preseason, 29.50 ⫾ 2.22 N·m midseason, and 29.79 ⫾ 2.08 N·m postseason. The Mikesky et al. group did not examine isokinetic strength at 450⬚·s⫺1. In the discussion section of this paper, they suggested that their results were higher than those previously reported and suggested that the differences may be due to equipment and testing position and not subject sample. The isokinetic dynamometer used in the Mikesky et al. work was a KIN-COM III and our work utilized a Biodex dynamometer. Due to the reported stresses to the shoulder musculature during the pitching motion, we expected to find a decrease in isokinetic internal and external rotational strength of the shoulder of NCAA Division II collegiate pitchers throughout the season. Our results do not support this hypothesis. There were no differences in shoulder internal and external rotational strength from preseason to midseason to postseason for uninjured NCAA Division II collegiate pitchers. This may suggest that the strengthening work prescribed by the coaching staff throughout the season is adequate to sustain rotational strength. Future work in this area might include testing of the eccentric isokinetic internal and external strength of the shoulder muscles. In addition, examination of pitching performance including number of pitches thrown and number of days pitching throughout the season may also be an indication of shoulder strength.
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS This study suggests that NCAA Division II baseball pitchers that avoid musculoskeletal injuries and perform regular stretching and strengthening exercises do not lose
internal and external rotational strength of their shoulder. Tables 2 and 3 outline the strength training program suggested by the baseball coaches for both preseason and in-season training. This information should be helpful to coaches as they plan strengthening programs throughout the season. It would seem that NCAA Division II pitchers who avoid injury throughout the season and follow an appropriate strengthening and stretching program should be able to maintain their rotational strength from the beginning to the end of the typical 4-month season.
BROWN, L.P., S.L. NIEHUES, A. HARRAH, P. YAVORSKY, AND H.P. HIRSHMAN. Upper extremity range of motion and isokinetic strength of the internal and external shoulder rotators in major league baseball players. Am. J. Sports Med. 16:577–585. 1988. CODINE, P., P.L. BERNARD, M. POCHOLLE, C. BENAIM, AND V. BRUN. Influence of sports discipline on shoulder rotator cuff balance. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc. 29:1400–1405. 1997. DILLMAN, C.J., G.S. FLEISIG, AND J.R. ANDREWS. Biomechanics of pitching with emphasis upon shoulder kinematics. J. Orthop. Sports Phys. Ther. 18:402–408. 1993. DONATELLI, R., T.S. ELLENBECKER, S.R. EKEDAHL, J.S. WILKES, K. KOCHER, AND J. ADAM. Assessment of shoulder strength in professional baseball pitchers. J. Orthop. Sports Phys. Ther. 30: 544–551. 2000. ELLENBECKER, T.S., AND A.J. MATTALINO. Concentric isokinetic shoulder internal and external rotation strength in professional baseball pitchers. J. Orthop. Sports Phys. Ther. 25:323–328. 1997.
HINTON, R.Y. Isokinetic evaluation of shoulder rotational strength in high school baseball pitchers. Am. J. Sports Med. 16:274–279. 1988. JOBE, F.W., L.A. YOCUM, P.M. SCRENAR, C.E. BREWSTER, M. PINK, D.R. SCHWAB, L.P. SCHIRMER, AND J.A SCHWEGLER. Shoulder and Arm Exercises for Athletes Who Throw. Inglewood, CA: Champion Press, 1996. MILESKY, A.E., J.E. EDWARDS, J.K. WIGGLESWORTH, AND S. KUNKEL. Eccentric and concentric strength of the shoulder and arm musculature in collegiate baseball pitchers. Am. J. Sports Med. 23:638–642. 1995. SIROTA, S.C., G.A. MALANGA, J.J. EISCHEN, AND E.R. LASKOWSKI. An eccentric- and concentric-strength profile of shoulder external and internal rotator muscles in professional baseball pitchers. Am. J. Sports Med. 25:59–64. 1997. WHITLEY, J.D., AND T. TERRIO. Changes in peak torque armshoulder strength of high school baseball pitchers during the season. Percept. Motor Skills 86:1361–1362. 1998. WILK, K.E., AND J.R. ANDREWS. The strength characteristics of internal and external rotator muscles in professional baseball pitchers. Am. J. Sports Med. 21:61–66. 1993. WILK, K.E., J.R. ANDREWS, C.A. ARRIGO, M.A. KEIRNS, AND D.J. ERBER. The strength characteristics of internal and external rotator muscles in professional baseball pitchers. Am. J. Sports Med. 21:61–66. 1993.
Acknowledgments We would like to thank the baseball coach and pitchers for their participation and the undergraduate students for their help with the testing. This project was funded by California State University, San Bernardino, Kinesiology Department.
Address correspondence to Dr. Linda D. Wilkin, lwilkin@ csusb.edu. | <urn:uuid:d5a6b74c-9722-4f36-b349-19d6aefe268f> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://issuu.com/mlbpitching/docs/isokinetic-strength-of-collegiate-baseball | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560283301.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095123-00504-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925962 | 4,890 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Literacy & Digital Strategies for the Common Core and More
Presenter: Jill Spencer
AMLE Professional and School Members must login to view webinar
Join AMLE and Jill Spencer as we take a look at making literacy come alive in the middle level with the Common Core—and more! Get practical strategies, impactful methods, and digitally-driven practices that you can use with your students right away.
Jill Spencer is a former middle level teacher of social studies and language arts/reading, who works with educators across the country and internationally to increase their capacity to be more effective in the area of digital learning, especially in how it applies to literacy, instructional practices, and differentiation. An early advocate for incorporating digital learning in curriculum and instruction, she has served on the Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI) Design Team (1:1 computing for all 7th & 8th graders in Maine) and on its Advisory Board. She also teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in middle level education and literacy across the curriculum and presents regularly at state, regional and national conferences. Her books,Teaming Rocks! Collaborate in Powerful Ways to Ensure Student Success, Ten Differentiation Strategies for Building Prior Knowledge
, and Ten Differentiation Strategies for Building Common Core Literacy
have been AMLE Book Club selections. Jill’s website, http://jillspencer.net
, has links to examples of her handouts, pictures from her sessions, comments from participants, and a listing of her workshops. | <urn:uuid:f99be428-f47c-4e3a-a772-6b0890eafea1> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.amle.org/Publications/RMLEOnline/Articles/Vol26No2Article4/tabid/501/Default.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282926.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00402-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922769 | 304 | 2.5 | 2 |
In this story, the risen Jesus had spent eleven years speaking with his disciples, teaching them only the lower mysteries. After eleven years, he receives his true garment and is able to reveal the higher mysteries revered by this group. The prized mysteries relate to complex cosmologies and knowledge necessary for the soul to reach the highest divine realms.
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|Size: ||2.6 MB|
|Publisher: ||The Big Nest|
|Date published: || 2016|
|ISBN: ||9781911535317 (DRM-EPUB)|
|Copying:||of 30 selections allowed|
|Printing:||of 30 pages allowed|
|Read Aloud: ||not allowed| | <urn:uuid:1243ed09-a05a-499d-8e9c-dca51d9ce9e8> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.lybrary.com/pistis-sophia-p-872407.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279410.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00167-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.876268 | 247 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Chinese company LeEco wants to build 400,000 electric cars at a new plant near Hangzhou and will invest more than $1.8 billion in a state of the art facility for its LeSEE taxi and its burgeoning deal with Aston Martin.
Electric vehicles have sparked a goldrush in recent times after the Chinese government removed a number of restrictions on the industry in a bid to encourage the population to make the switch. LeEco is right at the head of the field and, after years working behind the scenes, it is finally going public with big ambitions.
The $3 billion eco park
LeEco, which is part of Le Holdings Co Ltd, intends to build a plant in Deqing country, which will form part of the Eco Experience Park. It’s a $3 billion development that will include offices, an entertainment park and a center of technical excellence.
That will help the Hanghzou region stake a claim to a slice of the lucrative market for zero emissions cars and environmentally aware manufacturing.
It has already formed an alliance with Faraday Future in the US and intends to build cars near Las Vegas. LeEco founder Jiu Yueting has also backed Faraday and is clearly convinced that this partnership helps both companies benefit from merging their considerable R&D, production and purchasing power.
Hypercars to taxis
While Faraday is working on an ambitious plan for an electric hypercar, LeEco has focused its efforts on an entirely different sector with the LeSEE concept. It’s far from a finished product, but the prototype of the autonomous, luxury taxi that can be summoned with a smartphone app has met an enthusiastic response.
It could easily be a luxury car, too, and the taxi moniker may simply be a way to differentiate it from the Tesla Model S.
It’s good, but is it safe?
The concept features a number of touches that the regulators might struggle with, including a steering wheel that folds away when it isn’t required. But this prototype is merely a promotional tool at the moment and the sedan that finally rolls off the production line will be a world away from the first iteration.
Big news with Aston Martin
LeEco has formed another partnership with Aston Martin and will help the iconic British manufacturer develop a production version of the RapidE concept car. They expect the car to go on sale in 2018 and this will be the first of a number of new EV launches for Aston Martin that LeEco will presumably have a hand in.
The two have already unveiled an Aston Martin Rapide S equipped with the latest Letv Internet of the Vehicle (IOV) system. They will now turn their attention to zero emissions versions of the Aston Martin DB11 and the replacement for the Vantage.
It’s a massive partnership in terms of credibility for LeEco and the news that it has invested so heavily in a new factory will give the company another shot in the arm. A vast number of companies might have joined the EV goldrush of late, but LeEco is in the right place at the right time and could easily come out of this on top. | <urn:uuid:c92f4a6d-fdff-4a9f-ba4d-45769cda7c92> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://charged.io/1-8-billion-factory-leeco-autonomous-taxi/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280825.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00201-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948554 | 643 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Converting Event Momentum Into Community Activity
Events create momentum. They foster connections. They engender excitement and anticipation.
There is a small window, immediately after an event, to sustain that momentum and convert it into a community.
Don’t ease up after an event, push harder.
Identify the key topics and invite people to share their thoughts on the topic within the community. Put together a working paper on behalf of the group related to that topic. Invite attendees to give suggestions within a community for the next events.
Publish a roundup of the key topics at the event. Continue the informal discussions you had with members in the community
Let members share pictures through the community from the event. Make introductions and encourage members to cement their new-found connections from the event.
It would be a tragedy, having spent so much time building up anticipation of an event, to let its success immediately dissipate. | <urn:uuid:eb5bdda3-7733-4c57-b983-c751f3d7688b> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.feverbee.com/eventmomentum/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571147.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810040253-20220810070253-00468.warc.gz | en | 0.946 | 190 | 1.960938 | 2 |
This text aims to re-examine the role of women during the Dark Ages. The world of the Dark Ages woman is often seen as insecure and powerless. Using narrative sources from the 5th to the 8th century, this book aims to show how a specific female political culture was formed.
- Limba : Engleza
- Data Publicarii : 01 Jan 1998
- Format : Hardback
- Numar pagini : 440
- ISBN : 9789189116047 | <urn:uuid:2c2ea509-7b25-4377-9465-a5835a28bd30> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.okian.ro/age-of-abbesses-and-queens-9789189116047.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280763.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00512-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.896388 | 101 | 2.421875 | 2 |
|“||Well, well, well... if it isn't C.O.W.C.A.'s best agent: the unfortunately named Lyla Lolliberry!||„|
|~ Bannister introducing himself to Lyla and Perry.|
|“||JINX YOU, LYLA LOLLIBERRY!! JINX YOU!!||„|
|~ Bannister after being caught and defeated.|
Professor Bannister is the main antagonist in the Phineas and Ferb episode, Sidetracked. He is an evil scientist who plans to annex Canada into Greenland, and is the arch-nemesis of C.O.W.C.A. Agent Lyla Lolliberry.
He was voiced by guest star Kevin McDonald.
Bannister is originally from Greenland, but grew sick of its national anthem and lack of national pride. His jealousy of Canada led him to plot his evil scheme there by posing as a Canadian evil scientist and building his own evil company Bannister Evil Enterprises. He also joined the villain organization L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N. (though it was against the rules for their members to misrepresent their countries of origin, as stated by Heinz Doofenshmirtz). Bannister started off his plan by hiring three burglars to steal some parts from Seattle, which he uses to build two magnetic robotic versions of himself. Two months later, he plotted to steal Canada's symbol of national unity (Albert the Moose), knowing that it would sink Canada's national pride to a new low, which will allow him to annex Canada to Greenland and put in a new national anthem in order to reinvigorate its national pride to a peak. He even got Doofenshmirtz to assist him in his scheme as part of their U.S.-Canadian evil scheme exchange program, though Doof finds Bannister's scheme to be quite complicated in general. However, Bannister was found out by Lyla and Perry the Platypus, who were able to defeat his magnetic androids by using their magnetic fields against each other. Lyla and Perry then attempt to capture Bannister, but he uses the Greenland national flag to evade them. Bannister attempted to escape via parachute, but Perry managed to contact his old friend Peter the Panda, who managed to capture Bannister with his jet, much to Lyla's delight. In the end, Bannister and his cronies are arrested.
Despite being an evil scientist, Bannister comes up with a plan that even Dr. Doofenshmirtz thinks is implausible and enormously complex, even more than his own evil schemes. He has a strong love for his homeland Greenland and extreme jealousy towards Canada.
- Bannister's voice actor, Kevin McDonald, is known for his Canadian heritage, just like Lyla Lollibery's voice actor, Samantha Bee (who is also a Canadian).
- Bannister's final quote ("Jinx you, Lyla Lolliberry!") mirrors that of Doofenshmirtz's catchphrase ("Curse you, Perry the Platypus!").
- Bannister is considered one of the two members of L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N. sent to prison for life (the other is their leader Aloyse Von Roddenstein for his notorious attempt to send the Earth into a new Ice Age). | <urn:uuid:8d703466-456f-4614-9cbb-dbd26c573a9d> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://villains.wikia.com/wiki/Professor_Bannister | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280065.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00545-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974164 | 741 | 1.625 | 2 |
The effect of the choice of features on unsupervised clustering in audio surveillance is investigated. The importance of individual features in a larger feature set is first analyzed by examining the component loadings in principal component analysis (PCA). The individual sound events are then assigned into clusters using the self-tuning spectral clustering and the classical K-means algorithms. A weighted version of the original set is used, where the weights have been optimized by a genetic algorithm (GA) for maximally error-free clustering. The weighted feature set expectedly outperforms the original feature set and its PCA-reduced version. Insight into the importance of individual features is also gained.
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This paper costs $33 for non-members and is free for AES members and E-Library subscribers. | <urn:uuid:9555f0da-7a2f-4601-b2cf-8be251959d5e> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=13909 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281331.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00220-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933134 | 217 | 1.914063 | 2 |
The Enchanted Cottage is not a fairytale film for children. There are no princesses needing rescued by a prince, no evil fairies or witches out to spoil all the fun. No cute, talking animals. This 1945 film, made by RKO Studios, is a fairytale for adults, set in the real-time of 1945. Featuring the skills of Robert Young, Dorothy McGuire, and Herbert Marshall, who serves as the film’s narrator.
WWII has ended and John Hillgrove(Herbert Marshall), who was blinded while fighting in the war, is playing the piano for a party that he is hosting for newlyweds Oliver and Laura Bradford. As the film opens with this scene, Hillgrove tells his guests the love story of Oliver and Laura, via a long flashback.
Years ago there had been an estate built by an English nobleman, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in New England. A fire had occurred, burning most of the great house except for one wing. The nobleman has that wing rebuilt to be a new, cottage-styled home. The nobleman decides to begin renting out that wing as a haven for honeymooners. Years go by and now a widow, Mrs. Abigail Minnett(Mildred Natwick-excellent as always) runs the cottage for honeymooning couples. It is to this cottage that Laura Pennington(Dorothy McGuire) applies to work as a housekeeper. Laura is a very plain, shy young woman. With the recent death of her mother, and having no other relations to fall upon for help, she decides to go out and seek her forturne. Mrs. Minnett likes Laura and does hire her. Mrs. Minnett tells her that there is a legend attached to the cottage, that when honeymooners etch their names onto the glass of one window, their union will be especially blessed.
Oliver Bradford(Robert Young) soon arrives with his fiancee, Beatrice(Hillary Brooke). Oliver is from a wealthy family, and a pilot in the Army Air Corps. He has rented the cottage and as soon as he and Hillary see the Justice of the Peace, the honeymoon will begin. Hillary isn’t impressed with the cottage, thinking it too simple. Laura overhears her and steps in to tell the couple about the cottage’s legend. Oliver takes Hillary’s engagement ring to etch their names on the window’s pane and the diamond falls out of the setting! Then, Oliver is contacted by his air group-he must fly out immediately, so no wedding yet. Soon, Mrs. Minnett receives a telegram from Beatrice cancelling the couple’s lease.
A year goes by and Mrs. Minnett receives a telegram from Oliver Bradford, asking to rent the cottage for himself for an indefinite period of time. When Oliver arrives, Laura and Mrs. Minnett see that his face is disfigured and his arm is disabled, from a horrific plane crash he survived in the war. Oliver is bitter, his egagement to Hillary was broken. He is mad at the world and has decided to live as a recluse. Laura is heart-broken that he has become this way and with her common sense, gentleness, and compassion, Oliver begins to return to his old self.
Oliver befriends the narrator at this point in the film, Hillgrove, who happens by the cottage one day. He encourages Oliver to learn to live again despite the disabilities. He also tells Oliver that the war left him blinded but he has adapted and life has gone on.(An interesting side-note, Herbert Marshall who plays Hillgrove, was a soldier for the British during WWI and lost a leg, and yet resumed his acting career after the war.)
Conflict arrives in Oliver’s life in the form of his mother, Violet(Spring Byington). Byington had a long career, often playing fun and understanding mothers so it was a surprise to see her play such a rotten mother in this film! Violet and Hillary arrive to talk to Oliver but he refuses to see them. 3 weeks later, Violet sends her son an ultimatum: if he doesn’t return to the family home she will be moving to the cottage to live there with him! Oliver doesn’t want that at all, so he quickly proposes marriage to Laura. Laura, who really loves Oliver but hasn’t told him, agrees to marry him. When the couple returns to the cottage for their honeymoon the enchantment happens. Laura sees Oliver without the disfiguring burn on his face and no disabled arm. Oliver sees Laura as a beauty. They etch their names onto the window’s pane. Mrs. Minnett reassures them that their true love for each other lets them see each other as perfect, despite the meddling of Violet and her cruel words when she discovers they have married one another.
Then Enchanted Cottage was a 1922 stage play, written by Arthur Wing Pinero, a play about a returning WWI Vet with a disability. It had been previously filmed as a silent film in 1924 that starred Richard Barthelmess and May McAvoy. Harriet Parsons, a producer at RKO, aquired the rights to the play to remake a newer film, set in WWII and in New England. Parsons hired DeWitt Bodeen to write the screenplay and she chose John Cromwell to direct. For a lovely, romantic movie with a 91 minute running time, seek out The Enchanted Cottage. It airs from time to time on Turner Classic Movies. It is available to buy from Amazon, and a kind soul put the trailer clip on Youtube. The OV Guide has it listed as a a film to watch online for free. Can’t beat that! . | <urn:uuid:cd65a111-74be-41dd-ab50-3ed1ce3ef4aa> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://portraitsbyjenni.wordpress.com/tag/dorothy-mcguire/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280504.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00136-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966331 | 1,208 | 1.75 | 2 |
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky emphasized that the Covid-19 vaccines are safe and effective, saying the risk of getting sick with the virus is higher than having an anaphylaxis reaction.
"I want to take a moment here to emphasize that the Covid-19 vaccines are safe and they work. And this is backed up with data," Walensky said at the White House Covid-19 Response Team's first press briefing on Wednesday.
She said that based on recent data, there were 2.1 cases of anaphylaxis per million doses administered of the Moderna vaccine. For the Pfizer vaccine, data showed 6.2 cases of anaphylaxis per million doses.
"Let me be clear, these are rare, treatable outcomes and the Covid-19 vaccines are safe. It's also important to put this into context. The risk with getting sick with Covid-19 are much higher than the risk of allergy or anaphylaxis from the vaccine," she said.
"While anaphylaxis can be scary, there are effective treatments, and patients generally do quite well," she added.
Walensky also said it is important to remember that there may be some side effects with the vaccine, including things like feeling feverish or having muscle aches.
"These are all normal and expected part of getting a vaccine, especially the second dose. These symptoms mean your immune system is revving up and the vaccine is actually working," she said.
Some background: President Joe Biden announced a plan to buy 200 million more Covid-19 vaccine doses from Pfizer and Moderna to fully vaccinate the American population by the end of summer or early fall of 2021.
Biden said on Monday that he expects that the US will soon be able to vaccinate 1.5 million people a day, raising the bar by roughly 500,000 more vaccinations than its target of one million per day in his first 100 days in office. He said that the US could surpass that initial target in about three weeks.
Hear from the CDC director: | <urn:uuid:77dca42b-9de6-40b9-9dd6-03412300c685> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-vaccine-updates-01-27-21/h_9c9f3666b7bc4f6d44f5f3356e8fde24 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572161.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815054743-20220815084743-00478.warc.gz | en | 0.966255 | 436 | 2.546875 | 3 |
The meltdown at Japan's Fukushima power station unleashed a wave that threatens to swamp the nuclear industry's much-hyped global renaissance, although many governments insist nuclear remains a favoured option as they face hard choices over future energy supply.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel jolted the nuclear industry on the weekend with her announcement that Europe's industrial powerhouse will close all 17 of its nuclear reactors by 2022, pulling the plug on a technology that until recently supplied Germany with 23 per cent of its power.
The announcement is bound to send further shock waves through an industry grappling with the consequences of the Fukushima disaster. It will certainly cause casualties - both directly as some governments back away from their nuclear ambitions, and indirectly, by forcing the industry to improve its safety technology, further raising the already daunting price of new reactors.
Should governments move away from nuclear energy on a large scale, it's not clear how they will make up for the loss in capacity without relying more heavily on fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas, which experts warn are key contributors to an impending climate catastrophe.
Environmentalists are urging consumers to be more efficient in the way they use energy, while calling for heavy investment in renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. But as potentially devastating as they are, governments, industry and utility planners for the most part remain more comfortable with the risks posed by nuclear power than the uncertainties of relying on an entirely re-engineered system.
In short, the nuclear era is far from over. But the fact remains that the crisis at the Japanese plants has reawakened fears that had dissipated in the years since the Chernobyl disaster in the former Soviet Union.
Indeed, the nuclear industry has lately insisted that there is a renaissance in interest in its product. The key to that resurgence lies not in Germany but elsewhere, in nuclear-dependent France and Sweden, and in the United States, China, India and South Korea - all of which are pursuing ambitious nuclear construction programs. Southeast Asia and the Middle East, where governments in emerging economies like Malaysia and Turkey have embraced nuclear energy, are also key to the industry's future.
In Canada, Ontario remains committed to a policy that has resulted in nuclear plants supplying 50 per cent of the province's energy, compared with 15 per cent in the country as a whole. Both the governing Liberals and opposition Progressive Conservatives endorse a plan to build two new reactors and refurbish aging ones. Quebec - which is blessed with abundant hydro power - is meanwhile backtracking on a plan to retool its Candu reactor at the Gentilly-2 plant.
Has Germany Set a Precedent Other Countries Will Follow?
Ms. Merkel's announcement was, in fact, a reversal of a decision made only a year ago to extend Germany's nuclear era. Under the influence of a popular Green Party, Germany had planned to shut down its reactors, but Ms. Merkel passed legislation just last year to allow utilities to extend the life of existing plants.
In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, her weekend decision essentially reverts to a previous plan to shutter the country's reactors by 2022. Industry experts do not expect other governments to follow suit, noting that the German government is known for its ambivalent attitude toward nuclear energy. Said Greg Barnes, an industry analyst with TD Securities Inc.: "Germany has long been regarded as 'weak' on nuclear power and was not expected to be a significant factor in reactor growth over the medium to longer term."
Hans Blix, former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he is sticking to his view that the Fukushima disaster will prove to be a "bump in the road, but not the end of the road" for nuclear power around the world.
But Germany's about-face nonetheless illustrates the new level of caution with which governments are approaching nuclear power. Reporting last weekend, a government-appointed German commission urged the total withdrawal from nuclear energy, saying Fukushima "demonstrates the limitations of human disaster-preparedness and emergency measures." It said risk levels are unacceptable given the existence of other, safer alternatives.
And while other governments may want to proceed with plans for new reactors, citizens may make their own risk assessment and throw up roadblocks when utilities look for regulatory approval.
At the very least, the Japanese disaster will force the industry to increase its level of safety, forcing costly design changes. "As the industry was attempting to put the renaissance into practice, you were seeing the cost estimates just going up and up and up," said Mark Winfield, a professor of energy and environment at York University.
"So the renaissance was already in some difficulty before this happened, but this is clearly taking it to a new level."
How is the Global Nuclear Industry Responding to Fukushima?
Though no one in the industry wants to publicly blame Tokyo Electric Power Co., which owns Fukushima, they will point out that the plant was 40 years old and was not built to withstand the devastating combination of massive earthquake and giant tsunami that overwhelmed its emergency systems. Ontario Power Generation chief executive Tom Mitchell is chairing a committee of the World Association of Nuclear Operators to examine the Fukushima accident and offer recommendations to the industry.
Around the world, regulators have ordered operators to reassess their safety systems. In the United States, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission found that nearly a third of the country's 104 nuclear plants are ill-prepared to meet serious and simultaneous emergencies.
In a report to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission filed last Friday, Ontario Power Generation, the provincially owned utility, said there were "no significant safety issues requiring immediate corrective or compensatory measures" at its Darlington and Pickering stations east of Toronto. But it added it would reduce the risk of fire by speeding up the installation of equipment needed to vent hydrogen, the buildup of which caused explosions that were a significant factor in the disaster at Fukushima. OPG will also review the way it stores contaminated fuel rods to lessen the risk should fire break out.
Industry officials point out that new reactors have safety features that did not exist at Fukushima, including cooling systems that rely on gravity rather than an outside power source, the failure of which was another critical factor in the accident at the Japanese plant.
What Impact Would Nuclear's Decline Have on Climate Change?
Most government and industry experts have concluded that nuclear energy is a critical component of the effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and limit the impact of climate change. In its scenario for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50 per cent by 2050, the International Energy Agency says nuclear's share of the global power supply would have to grow to 24 per cent from 14 per cent currently to achieve that goal.
Some environmentalists are willing to accept that nuclear power should play a significant role in mitigating the effects of global warming, but most still oppose it, citing concerns about safety, waste management and weapons proliferation.
Graham Saul, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada, noted that nuclear energy would not be commercially viable if the industry were required to cover its liabilities. Like most industrialized countries, Canada has legislation that caps liabilities in the event of accident.
Can Renewables Replace Nuclear?
Germany's move to shutter its nuclear plants is a vote of confidence in the renewable energy industry, which is generally seen by governments and industry as incapable of providing a base load of reliable and affordable power.
"You see a lot of naysayers out there saying its too expensive and it can't be done. But now you are seeing a country saying it can be done," said Kent Brown, chief executive officer of BluEarth Renewables Inc., a Calgary-based startup that is investing in wind and other green power projects. "This is an example of a developed country with a commitment to renewables."
Germany plans to cut its power consumption and rely more heavily on offshore wind, as well as solar, and is confident that it can make the transition over a reasonable period of time. It says it will sharply increase the amount of renewable energy in its portfolio from the current 17 per cent, while cutting power consumption by 10 per cent through conservation measures.
In Ontario, where most of Canada's nuclear plants are located, it would actually be easier to shift to renewables than in Germany, said Tim Weis, director of renewable energy and efficiency policy at the Pembina Institute, a Calgary-based environmental think tank. That's because Ontario has fewer consumers than Germany and more reliable renewable-energy resources - mainly wind and sunlight.
But critics say renewables remain too unreliable and expensive to provide secure, base-load power - and will remain so until major technological advances are made that allow energy from inconsistent sources to be economically stored and recovered.
Andres Carlgren, Sweden's Environment Minister, criticized the German plan as "unrealistic." All it means, he said, is that Germany will now have to rely more heavily on coal and on imports of nuclear-generated electricity from France.Report Typo/Error
Follow us on Twitter:, | <urn:uuid:f18e1868-ceaf-4683-ba9d-e1bf8b2a9ecc> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-business/getting-nervous-about-nuclear-power/article582132/?page=all | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719079.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00033-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958575 | 1,814 | 2.4375 | 2 |
Projects per year
The research for this essay was funded by an AHRC Translating Cultures award (£106, 717) on medial translations between sculpture and painting, and forms part of a journal special issue that I commissioned and edited (with Gavin Parkinson), in the journal of the Association for Art History UK, Art History, on the theme of Image & Memory, as arguably key to the definition of our discipline. The Courtauld Institute Research Forum and the Association for Art History UK generously funded a day of papers for the volume bringing together all the past editors of Art History to explore this thematic, and to launch this special issue, in which this essay on Caravaggio's Cupids appears.
FingerprintDive into the research topics of 'Memory's Cut: Caravaggio's Sleeping Cupid of 1608'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.
- 1 Finished
Genevieve Warwick (Organiser)12 Dec 2015
Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in conference
Genevieve Warwick (Member)1 Jul 2012 → 1 Jul 2017
Activity: Membership types › Membership of peer review panel or committee | <urn:uuid:44f3252a-badb-4c14-96a6-1e3882066f3d> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/publications/memorys-cut-caravaggios-sleeping-cupid-of-1608 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571758.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812200804-20220812230804-00669.warc.gz | en | 0.885229 | 247 | 1.78125 | 2 |
|Name: _________________________||Period: ___________________|
This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 17.
Multiple Choice Questions
1. Where did the black boy work?
(a) A cafe
(b) A hotel
(c) A factory
(d) A restaurant
2. What does the congregation pressure Richard and other boys to do?
(a) Build a church
(b) Find girlfriends
(c) Get baptized
3. Who does the editorial attack?
(a) Mark Twain
(b) H.L. Mencken
(c) James Dean
(d) William Faulkner
4. Who is the only person among Richard's family in Chicago who does not fall ill?
5. What event causes Richard to lose a lot of his hours at the post office?
(a) The First World War
(b) The Great Depression
(c) The Vietnam War
(d) The Second World War
Short Answer Questions
1. What can Richard now do with his class mates?
2. On what level does religion interest Richard?
3. What does Granny think Richard has said?
4. What reason does Shorty give for not joining Richard?
5. What does Aunt Addie accuse Richard of eating?
This section contains 188 words
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Cannabidiol—CBD—is a cannabis compound that has significant medical benefits, but does not make people feel “stoned” and can actually counteract the psychoactivity of THC. The fact that CBD-rich cannabis is non-psychoactive or less psychoactive than THC-dominant strains makes it an appealing option for patients looking for relief from inflammation, pain, anxiety, psychosis, seizures, spasms, and other conditions without disconcerting feelings of lethargy or dysphoria.
Scientific and clinical research—much of it sponsored by the US government—underscores CBD’s potential as a treatment for a wide range of conditions, including arthritis, diabetes, alcoholism, MS, chronic pain, schizophrenia, PTSD,depression, antibiotic-resistant infections, epilepsy, and other neurological disorders. CBD has demonstrable neuroprotective and neurogenic effects, and its anti-cancer properties are currently being investigated at several academic research centers in the United States and elsewhere.
Project CBD responds to inquiries from all over the world. Almost everyone wants to know where to get CBD-rich products and how to use them for maximum benefit. After decades in which only high-THC cannabis was available in North America and beyond, CBD-rich strains and products are now available to medical users.
“CBD-rich” versus “CBD dominant:” By “CBD-rich,” we mean a cannabis strain or product that has equal amounts of CBD and THC, or more CBD than THC (usually at least 4 percent CBD by dry weight.). By “CBD-dominant,” we mean strains or products that are CBD-rich but have very little THC content. | <urn:uuid:a37f5084-545b-4b5b-b852-50ab2434f542> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | https://www.greenroadsworld.com/blogs/news/what-is-cbd | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988721008.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183841-00117-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943086 | 355 | 2.21875 | 2 |
Hard Candy contains Tennessee Williams’s short stories written after the publication of his first collection of short fiction, One Arm, and before the stories appearing in The Knightly Quest. These volumes have established him as an original, compelling, and honest master of the short story. The stories in Hard Candy display Mr. Williams’s mastery of several very different s. “Three Players of a Summer Game,” for instance, is as powerful and moving a study of the disintegration of an individual as A Streetcar Named Desire. The delicate and luminous nostalgia of “The Resemblance Between a Violin Case and a Coffin” will remind readers of The Glass Menagerie. Other stories, like “Two on a Party,” are more colloquial and brittle; and one––”The Coming of Something to the Widow Holly”––is an excursion into ironical fantasy. Yet each of the stories demonstrates, in its different way, the characteristic blend of psychological penetration with compassion and understanding that has marked Tennessee Williams’s successes in the theater. | <urn:uuid:9a5338b9-cd44-4abf-8a01-a2ca2a290701> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://shop.theheartworm.com/es/products/tennessee-williams-hard-candy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570871.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808183040-20220808213040-00273.warc.gz | en | 0.927937 | 223 | 2.125 | 2 |
At this year's summit of seven South Asian nations, regional issues have been sidelined by tensions and discussions over specific bilateral matters. Technically, bilateral issues are taboo at meetings of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC), because of fears that contentious matters might ground such forums before they even have a chance to take off.
In the south Indian city of Bangalore, where the second annual SAARC summit ended Monday, two bilateral matters dominated all others. They were:
Rising tensions between India and Pakistan - over security and nuclear matters.
The possibility that a solution to Sri Lanka's civil conflict could emerge from talks between Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sri Lankan President Junius R. Jayewardene.
SAARC was founded a year ago to forge greater regional cohesion and coordination. It groups India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldive Islands in an alliance aimed at improving the health and welfare of their people, who comprise nearly a quarter of the world's population.
Inside the specially built conference halls in Bangalore, where the official talks were held, there was much talk of cooperation in such noncontroversial subjects as agriculture and population control. However, the real talks, observers agree, were conducted outside - in what were officially described as ``informal meetings'' on bilateral matters.
The most important of these meetings took place within minutes of Sri Lankan President Jayewardene's arrival, when he and the Indian prime minister disappeared for a working lunch.
Officials were tight-lipped about what exactly was discussed. But by Sunday, it was clear that significant progress had been made because leaders of militant Tamil groups, based in Madras, India, and the Tamil Nadu chief minister, who is closely aligned to them, also joined the talks.
The Indian government's main objective as mediator, sources say, was to get the militants to agree to negotiate with the Sri Lankan government. By Monday, this likelihood seemed to be very much on the cards.
On the Indo-Pakistani front, however, there was much less optimism.
Relations between the two countries are at a particularly low ebb and whatever little ``SAARC spirit'' there may have been, disappeared before the Pakistani prime minister even arrived because of allegations against India made by Pakistan's foreign secretary, Abdus Sattar.
Mr. Sattar told a packed press conference that Pakistan was apprehensive about recent press reports that there had been large scale troop movement in the past 10 days on the Indian side of the border.
Indian officials refused to formally reply to the Pakistani remarks, but proceeded to leak a counter-statement to the press.
The Indian side also made it clear that, on account of the foreign secretary's ``provocative remarks,'' Mr. Rajiv Gandhi was unlikely to be in a cooperative mood when he talked to Prime Minister Mohammed Khan Junejo. This was their first meeting ever.
Meanwhile, back in the SAARC conference halls lesser members of the official delegations pored over what has been achieved in the past year, and tried to come up with a plan for future cooperation.
It was decided, for instance, that the SAARC secretariat would be set up in Kathmandu, Nepal, that India would pay 35 percent of its costs, and Pakistan 25 percent. The remaining costs would be divided between the smaller countries with the smallest, the Maldives and Bhutan, paying five percent each.
A calendar of SAARC events of the past year, released in Bangalore, reveals that the association has held a series of seminars in the 10 areas of cooperation outlined at the last summit.
From these discussions and meetings, there is beginning to emerge a degree of cooperation in fields like controlling drug abuse and improving the lot of south Asian women and children.
The association has resolved to work, for example, toward universal immunization of children by 1990 and for the drastic reduction in diarrheal deaths by using oral rehydration therapy and introducing iodized salt.
As for the future of SAARC, observers say, its success depends on how seriously it is taken by India.
Nobody witnessing the pegeantry and pomp that turned the Bangalore summit into a spectacular affair would suspect that SAARC ranks quite low on India's list of priorities.
But this, in fact, appears to be the case.
High-level policymakers in the Indian Foreign Ministry have indicated that India only joined SAARC to prevent the smaller countries in the region ganging up against India.
Resentment over this still apparently colors Indian's view of SAARC and unless this changes, analysts say, genuine south Asian regional cooperation will remain a dream. | <urn:uuid:efee8700-69b4-4b5e-8126-be40f87fe090> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.csmonitor.com/1986/1118/osaar.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570868.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808152744-20220808182744-00067.warc.gz | en | 0.972183 | 953 | 2.078125 | 2 |
1.1 Introduction to Fast-food
Fast-food industry is a type of industry that prepares and serves food in a short period of the time at a fast-food restaurant at a low cost to customers. It regarded as “good food, served quickly, and at a reasonable price” by Hank McDonald. The implementation of the Drive-Thru system also boosted the services of fast-food industry. So, for customers who prefer not to get out from their car can now purchase their favourite food easily. Fast-food industry started in America four decades ago with hot dog and hamburger stands in California. It then began to spread to whole the country selling a variety type of foods. The current four market leaders in the fast-food industry around the world are McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), Taco Bell and Wendy’s International. However, the market leaders of fast-food industry in Malaysia are KFC, followed by McDonald’s, Burger king and Mary Brown. Nowadays, fast-food is served not only in restaurants, but at drive-thru, stadiums, airports, college campuses, schools, cruise ships, trains, gas stations, and even hospitals’ canteens. It is now growing rapidly since the beginning of 21st century in many countries around the world. Therefore, most of the fast-food restaurants had grown and become household names in the world.
1.2 History of McDonald’s
Raymond Albert Kroc was the exclusive distributor of a milk shake maker called the Multimixer. Meanwhile, two brothers, Richard and Maurice McDonald owned and ran a hamburger restaurant in San Bernadino, California, in the 1950s. Ray Kroc heard how well the McDonald brothers were doing using his Multimixers to serve their customers. He met up with them and acquired the franchising right from them to run McDonald's restaurants. In 1955, Raymond Albert Kroc founded the McDonald's Corporation and opened the first restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois. In 1961, he bought over the McDonald brothers’ restaurant business. Since then, McDonald's had grown into the largest restaurant organization in the world. Today, there are more than 30,000 McDonald's restaurants serving more than 47 million customers each day in over 100 countries. However, Raymond Albert Kroc died in 1984 but his legacy is very much alive. His success story continues with McDonald's families of employees, franchisees and suppliers. His commitment, dedication and achievements continue to live on at McDonald's restaurants across the world.
In Malaysia, McDonald's was first brought by Tan Sri Vincent Tan during December 1980. Then, the first McDonald's restaurant opened outside of the Klang Valley was in Holiday Plaza at Johor Bahru on 29th October 1984. Moreover, in 7th March 1987, McEgg was first introduced in Malaysia. Furthermore, Mohamed Shah bin Tan Sri Abdul Kadir, the former Managing Director and joint venture partner of McDonald's Malaysia, joined the McDonald's family in 1988. Meanwhile in the year 1990, Ronald McDonald Children's Charities Fund of Malaysia (RMCC), McDonald's charity arm was established and McDonald’s delivery was introduced on 28th March 1994. During the following year, the first McDonald's Hot Kiosk was opened in Kota Bharu and besides that, McDonald's is the first Quick Service Restaurant to obtain Halal certification.
McDonald's opened its 100th restaurant at Sunway Pyramid shopping complex on July 1997. A year after that, McDonald's first highway restaurant, Awan Besar was opened. A new brand promise, "We're out to make you smile" was put forward in celebration of the new millennium on July 1999. The first McDonald's Cold Kiosk was opened at Megamall Kuantan on 29th April 2000. After 3 years, there was the launched of the "I'm lovin' it" campaign to revitalize the McDonald's brand. Subsequently, the annual Olympic Day Run was introduced to mark McDonald's worldwide partnership with the International Olympic Council during July 2004. There was a... | <urn:uuid:55c0d623-2900-4e5e-a19b-f0f39ee7b871> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.studymode.com/essays/Intro-To-Mcdonald-261097.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719677.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00561-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971602 | 838 | 2.78125 | 3 |
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has deferred a decision on a possible ban on all Russian athletes for the Rio Games over doping while opening disciplinary proceedings against Russian sports ministry officials.
The IOC executive board said Tuesday after a telephone conference 17 days before the start of the Games it would wait for a ruling on Thursday by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on the eligibility of 68 Russian athletes who have appealed to compete in Rio.
Their appeal results from a decision by the athletics ruling body IAAF to suspend Russia's track and field team from the Olympics.
The IOC board said it would carefully evaluate World Anti-Doping Agency WADA's independent person (IP) report on doping in Russia.
"It will explore the legal options with regard to a collective ban of all Russian athletes for the Olympic Games 2016 versus the right to individual justice," a statement said.
"In this respect, the IOC will have to take the CAS decision on 21 July 2016 concerning the IAAF rules into consideration, as well as the World Anti-Doping Code and the Olympic Charter."
WADA had Monday requested the IOC to consider a complete sporting ban for Russia for Rio 2016 and beyond following Canadian law professor Richard McLaren's report on state-controlled doping.
WADA also said the IOC could consider allowing clean Russian athletes to compete under a neutral flag at the August 5-21 Games.
The IOC at an Olympic summit on June 21 said that despite the ban by the IAAF, Russian track and field athletes could compete under their own flag at the Rio Games if they could prove they were clean.
In its decisions Tuesday, the IOC executive board has set up a disciplinary commission and started disciplinary action "related to the involvement of officials within the Russian Ministry of Sports and other persons mentioned in the report because of violations of the Olympic Charter and the World Anti-Doping Code."
In Moscow, Russia's sport minister Vitaly Mutko said several senior Russian sport officials including deputy sport minister Yury Nagornykh were suspended until an investigation into allegations by WADA is completed.
The Kremlin said Mutko himself was not suspended because he was not named as a direct perpetrator in the WADA report.
In other provisional measures by the IOC executive board:
- The IOC will not organize or give patronage to any sports event or meeting in Russia, including plans for the European Games 2019.
- Officials of the Russian Ministry of Sport or any person implicated in the IP report will not be accredited for the Rio Games.
- The IOC will initiate reanalysis, including forensic analysis, and a full inquiry into all Russian athletes who participated in the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics as well as their coaches, officials and support staff. A specific disciplinary commission has been set up to deal with this, and following its report the IOC executive board "will impose all the appropriate sanctions."
- All international Olympic Winter sports federations are asked to freeze their preparations for major events in Russia.
- The IOC asks all international federations for a full inquiry and in the event of breaches of the WADA code to impose sanctions against Russian national federations.
The provisional measures apply until December when they will then be reviewed.
The board said it supported measures announced at the June 21 Olympic summit to reverse the “presumption of innocence” of athletes from Russia with regard to doping.
"This means that the eligibility of each Russian athlete will have to be decided by his or her International Federation (IF) based on an individual analysis of his or her international anti-doping record," it said.
It asked WADA to extend the McLaren's mandate at WADA and to communicate the names of Russian athletes implicated in a method explained in his report whereby positive doping tests were entered as negative, and in the alleged manipulation of the doping tests performed by the Sochi laboratory.
This would allow the international federations and if appropriate the IOC "to take swift action." The IOC also asked WADA to convene an extraordinary world conference on doping in 2017.
Tuesday, June 21, 2016 - 14:46
Thursday, July 21, 2016 - 15:38
Tuesday, July 19, 2016 - 11:59 | <urn:uuid:9706cf04-94a5-4f17-af61-272858c2a530> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://eblnews.com/news/world/ioc-defers-decision-olympics-ban-russian-sport-29752 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281226.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00375-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967254 | 851 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Study Suggests Strong Association between Homelessness and Incarceration among Veterans with Bipolar Disorder
Bipolar disorder is a chronic mental illness associated with significant functional and social impairments, as well as poor overall health outcomes. Bipolar disorder also can worsen public health outcomes such as homelessness and incarceration. This study assessed the association between homelessness and incarceration in 435 Veterans with bipolar disorder who received inpatient or outpatient care at one large, urban VAMC from 7/04 to 7/06. Participating Veterans completed a survey, and investigators analyzed survey data to assess: homelessness, incarceration, socio-demographics, health behaviors (i.e., treatment adherence, substance use), treatment factors (i.e., beliefs, therapeutic alliance – comfort level with mental health treatment), and current bipolar episode (manic, mixed, depressed).
Findings show that homelessness and incarceration are common among Veterans with bipolar disorder, and share many risk factors. Among Veterans with bipolar disorder, 12% reported having been homeless in the previous four weeks, and 55% reported ever having been homeless or incarcerated. Results also show that lifetime experience of homelessness was associated with 4-fold increased odds of lifetime experience of incarceration. Moreover, recent homelessness was strongly related to recent incarceration. Potentially avoidable and treatable variables included current medication non-adherence and substance use. Thus, authors suggest that programs which better coordinate psychiatric and drug treatment with housing programs may reduce the cycle of incarceration, homelessness, and treatment disruption among this vulnerable patient population.
Copeland L, Miller A, Welsh D, McCarthy J, Zeber J, and Kilbourne A. Clinical and demographic factors associated with homelessness and incarceration among VA patients with bipolar disorder. American Journal of Public Health May 2009;99(5):871-877.
This study was funded by HSR&D. Drs. Copeland and Zeber are part of HSR&D’s Veterans Evidence-Based Research Dissemination and Implementation Center in San Antonio, TX. Drs. McCarthy and Kilbourne are part of HSR&D’s Center for Clinical Management Research in Ann Arbor, MI. | <urn:uuid:da090087-7762-4b1d-9c92-39341a7cb113> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://hsrd.research.va.gov/research/citations/pubbriefs/articles.cfm?RecordID=118 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573172.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20220818063910-20220818093910-00271.warc.gz | en | 0.937901 | 433 | 1.859375 | 2 |
Comparing A5 and A7 sound settings
timo.jyrinki at gmail.com
Tue Mar 16 15:16:46 CET 2010
2010/3/16 Neil Jerram <neiljerram at googlemail.com>:
> I have to support Rui here. I find this over-theoretical argument
> really annoying.
Sorry about that, and sorry about the term "misinformation" I used in
the first post.
> Do you understand 100% the operation of the Wolfson codec?
No. But I do believe Jöerg has better understanding about it than most
others, and therefore I would not like to dispute
http://docs.openmoko.org/trac/ticket/2121#comment:5 until there is
such empirical proof that, like I said, changes in these "wrong"
controls will create behavior that is better than is reachable by
lowering control.5 while keeping control.63, control.48 and control.12
in the "correct" settings. And note I do use quotes, I don't claim
there is one uttermost truth out there. It's easily seen in eg. that
Jöerg's ".new" file has control.12 at 7 (not to speak about the
original statefile suggested in the ticket which was quite bad), while
the conclusion in the thread (link at
in Dec 09 pointed out that it should be 5. In the same post, btw, Al
Johnson also agrees that there should be no point in routing via PGA
> So, please could we have a bit more respect for people's empirical findings?
I don't mean to disrespect empirical findings, I just find that since
they are individual, they should not be generalized on a distribution
level. For example, Debian recently switched control.63 to non-Mic 2
because of an individual finding, while I think this should not be
done while the best knowledge is that control.63 should be kept at
"Mic 2", because other values mean extra routing. Even though it means
more noise, simply because it raises the mic level and control.5
should be lowered until the noise is gone.
I agree that being purely theoretical is not helpful, but I believe
it's a good foundation to having correct default settings. And by
correct default settings, I mean such that new owners of A7 phones
would have a good experience, in which case empirical findings from
A5/A6, buzz-fix or not, are not helpful when trying to make eg. SHR
and other distributions good for the occasional newbies we still have.
One problem is that mailing lists are not really optimal for
collecting experimentation results, and on the other hand when people
find something that works for them, they are probably not willing to
experiment if it would also work otherwise. But I'd be happy if
distributions would agree that proper default settings should be
directed towards A7 users, unless detection of the model is offered.
To give some more non-theoretical vibe to this thread, I started a new
empirical mic data table at
- it's probable it will not be that helpful in searching any "one
true" defaults, but it might be helpful to have "known good
experiences" documented on a wiki, in a form of a table. I also added
an "experiment 1" there which is basically what I would think is
interesting knowledge, if people just have the patience and devices
(and subscriptions) to test it through.
More information about the community | <urn:uuid:37a118b1-4ec4-4a60-861b-e84e061ae28f> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2010-March/060826.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560285315.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095125-00574-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918165 | 763 | 1.53125 | 2 |
In 1970, BSA refused to sell amateur racer Alan Clews one of its factory race bikes. In response, Clews said "screw you guys" and founded Clews Competition Machines, better known as CCM, to build his own. Clews and his family have been building racing and street bikes ever since.
Fast forward to 2016. Over a bacon sandwich on their tea break (seriously), a bunch of CCM designers and mechanics had a fun chat about what sort of bike they would build if CCM wasn't focused on building the GP450 Adventure. CCM's chief designer took the ideas from this unintentional brainstorming session and ran with them, designing a motorcycle that incorporated all these ideas. Management liked the end result so much they brought back Ted Unwin, one of Alan Clews' former builders, to turn these sketches and CAD plans into reality.
CCM established its SkunkwerX division, named after the rather similar division at Lockheed Martin that produced such radical and successful airplanes as the U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird. SkunkwerX went on to build the CCM Spitfire. CCM sourced the engine of a Husqvarna TE630 and built its dream bike around that. Its frame was made of T45 high-strength British steel, the same steel used to build the Supermarine Spitfire fighter plane in World War 2. The bluing of the steel around the handmade welds, usually considered an imperfection, is left exposed as a unique styling element. Despite its simple, if unusual, appearance, it used highly advanced components, such as adjustable upside-down forks and an adjustable mono-shock by WP along with beefy Brembo brakes.
The original Spitfire was so popular that its limited run of 100 motorcycles sold out in the first week after it was announced. Based on that initial success, CCM is now producing an entire Spitfire product lineup. All of them are based on the original Spitfire design, but each is customized to a particular look and feel. The Spitfire Cafe Racer, for instance, has no fenders, a different seat, and number boards on either side to enhance the look of a bike designed to race from one coffee shop to the next. The Spitfire Scrambler, on the other hand, has an elongated seat and high-mounted fenders, with an exhaust that runs just below the seat to keep it out of the way of flying rocks and dirt.
The Spitfire Flat Tracker draws its inspiration from short track racing, with smoother lines and tires for pavement rather than dirt, as well as nicely integrated number boards. The Spitfire Bobber, in contrast, features classic white-wall tires, a larger round headlight, and little else. It is as stripped down as it can be like any classic bobber. Finally, the RAF Benevolent Fund Spitfire goes all the way with its fighter plane inspiration. It has square leather saddlebags like wartime courier bikes. The paint resembles different Spitfire fighter styling cues from throughout the war. CCM also works an actual piece of a Spitfire fuselage into the motorcycle somewhere. Like the original Spitfire bike, CCM will only build 100 of this special edition to commemorate the 100 year anniversary of the RAF Benevolent Fund.
The CCM Spitfire is the perfect example of a dream come true. Even better, its design has proven flexible enough to be the foundation for a wide variety of bikes. I doubt I'd ever hit the dirt with a Spitfire Scrambler or take a Spitfire Flat Tracker to the track, but they look like they could handle it with no problem if I did. The Spitfire series is what happens when a company lets its designers and engineers run amock without the traditional tie-downs like "this is how it's always been done." Creativity breeds innovation, and that's what makes the Spitfire series so great. | <urn:uuid:bc1bc0b2-d856-4de2-a564-8c70c2a6f64e> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.rideapart.com/news/274483/ccm-spitfire-bikes-works-art/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573118.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817213446-20220818003446-00679.warc.gz | en | 0.964039 | 797 | 1.53125 | 2 |
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