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Aces & Faces
Aces & Faces Highlights
Aces and Faces 4X-TREME Video Poker is 4 hand of your favorite video poker game at the same time! It's based on the standard Jacks or Better poker game and has no wild cards. It differs from the standard by the higher payout for 'four of a kind' combinations.
This game pays on pairs of Jacks, Queens, Kings and Aces, two pair, three of a kind, straight, flush, full house, four 2's through 10's, four Jacks through Kings, straight flush, four Aces and a Royal Flush with the highest payout of 4000 coins for each Royal Flush.
The game starts when 5 cards are dealt face up across the bottom of the card grid. Hold or discard to make the highest winning hand from these 5 cards.
Once you've chosen the cards to hold/discard, click on draw. The bottom hand, called the decision hand, will be shaded out and four hands of 5 cards will be dealt above. Each hand uses a separate deck and each hand contains the cards that were held in the first deal.
You are then dealt the remaining cards to complete each hand from the separate decks. Each hand pays out the highest combination.
You can bet as little as 5¢ per hand for a 20¢ game or as much as $5 per hand for a maximum bet of $20 per game. You do have the option of doubling up your winnings, but don't. It's never a good idea. | <urn:uuid:b2645a35-2d14-4ae4-907e-4f6f01a15ade> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.gamesandcasino.com/video-poker/aces-faces-4Xtreme.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280835.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00469-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94392 | 319 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Python Data Science Cookbook by Gopi Subramanian
English | 16 Nov. 2015 | ISBN: 1784396400 | 438 Pages | MOBI/EPUB/PDF (True) | 30.66 MB
With: Code file
This book is intended for all levels of Data Science professionals, both students and practitioners, starting from novice to experts. Novices can spend their time in the first five chapters getting themselves acquainted with Data Science. | <urn:uuid:ad1eb6f7-f3cf-413f-a0d2-72e50d1861de> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://soek.pw/Python-Data-Visualization-Cookbook/post-727846.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280891.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00154-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.867946 | 95 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Children and Youth
Betzi White - Administrator, LSW
Michelle Rager - Assistant Administrator
Central Park Complex
110 Franklin Street, Suite 400
Johnstown, PA 15901
Monday - Friday
8:00 AM - 4:00 PM
*Emergency on call all other hours.
Human Services Building
401 Candlelight Drive, Suite 110
Ebensburg, PA 15931
The mission of the Children and Youth Services is to utilize existing resources in an effective and efficient manner in the identification, investigation and prevention of abuse and neglect of children in Cambria County. The agency believes the prevention of child abuse and neglect is a community responsibility and it is committed to provide services that are community-based and child and family-focused.
The agency is committed to developing programs and budgets which comply with the State of Pennsylvania, Department of Public Welfare and the Office of Children, Youth and Families' stated goals for all Children & Youth agencies:
Cambria County's Children & Youth Services is responsible for the investigation and intervention of alleged child abuse and/or neglect within the County. The services are provided to reasonably assure the safety and well being of the children in which it has contact with. The agency's responsibilities are designated by the PA Department of Public Welfare, Office of Children and Youth and Families.
- Prevent child abuse, neglect, and exploitation;
- Ensure all abused, neglected, or otherwise dependent children are protected from further abuse and neglect in their own or some other permanent home; and
- Provide for the well being of children during substitute care.
- Child Protective Services, General Protective Services, Placement Services and Adoption Services.
- The investigation of suspected child abuse/neglect which are reported to the County Agency.
- Ongoing case management services to children and families at risk for child abuse and/or neglect. Provide child and family supports through contracted service providers, including psychological evaluations, therapy, mentor services, homemaker services, parenting instruction and early intervention services.
- Placement services for children who have been determined unable to remain in their own homes.
- Provide services for family reunification (when possible) for children who have been removed from their own homes.
- Provide adoption and permanence services to those children who cannot return home.
- To provide information and referral services and public educational services related to child maltreatment, abuse and neglect issues. | <urn:uuid:07f78efa-1c93-4bd6-a193-9506f520279e> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.cambriacountypa.gov/children-and-youth.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560285001.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095125-00302-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926465 | 488 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Welcome to South Jackson Martial Arts
To provide quality training, that preserves the "old way" for modern application. Our goal is to enrich lives through the martial arts, by instilling the core values of the martial arts:
Respect is the foundation of what we teach. One of the first things you will notice when you enter our school is the high level of respect that each person shows for themselves, each other, and the school.
Courage allows students to overcome challenges, reach for their goals, and become successful in whatever they do!
We teach the principles of Black Belt Focus and Excellence. Not only do students become Black Belts in martial arts, but they also strive to become Black Belts in their personal life and eventually develop an attitude of constant achievement.
One of the greatest opportunities our school offers students is providing powerful, positive role models for students of all ages.
Instructors work on building the leadership skills students need to be empowered to make their own positive choices.
Nothing in the world can beat the confidence that comes from being successful. Students will begin to truly believe that anything is possible in life and will cultivate a powerful "Can Do" attitude!
By making self-discipline a priority in our classes our students perform better in every area of their life, including school, work, home an din their martial arts classes.
Martial arts training is one of the few activities that truly work the entire body including strength training, cardio-vascular fitness, flexibility, and relaxation skills.
What We Offer
Affordable and effective Karate training for ages 5 & Up.
How to Start
Contact us by:
Email: Sensei Barker
Phone: (731) 203-0917 | <urn:uuid:51d04fd0-a66d-44e1-a2b4-49c9ccde4c6c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.southjacksonmartialarts.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573760.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819191655-20220819221655-00667.warc.gz | en | 0.931437 | 417 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Starting July 1, New Yorker’s can expect to be charged a “crash tax” if they require the Fire Department to come to the rescue.
In these tough economic times, N.Y. will join several other municipalities around the country that are charging motorists involved in accidents for emergency-response services.
The so-called ‘crash tax’ or ‘accident fee’ is in use in twenty-four states, while ten states have banned the practice.
So what are the fees?
A vehicle fire or other incident with injuries will cost $490, while a vehicle fire without injury will cost $415. The charge for a vehicle accident without injury would be $365. The charges will apply to every vehicle that is involved in the crash.
New York City officials project this policy will generate $1 million in annual revenue. A public hearing on the new charges will be held at FDNY headquarters Jan. 14.
The Legal Examiner and our Affiliate Network strive to be the place you look to for news, context, and more, wherever your life intersects with the law. | <urn:uuid:e5428a10-dd3c-4ca0-b77c-8dc4dce2780d> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://affiliates.legalexaminer.com/uncategorized/new-york-to-charge-drivers-crash-tax/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572043.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814143522-20220814173522-00477.warc.gz | en | 0.936199 | 231 | 1.757813 | 2 |
SilverAg Nanoparticle /Nanopowder CAS Number : 7440-22-4
Curing temperature as low as 150°C L-Ag NANOMETAL INK (Solvent: Toluene) L-Ag NANOMETAL INK (Solvent: Tetradecane) Ink-jet Type
NANOMETAL INKs are produced by the Gas Evaporation Method. These newly developed inks consist of metal nanoparticles dispersed stably and not aggregated in some organic solvent. The inks enable to form electro-conductive fine patterns directly by printing processes such as ink-jet printing. | <urn:uuid:65db334a-0404-42b4-98f8-f26bdc14ff1c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://product.statnano.com/product/9085/low-temperature-curing-silver-ink-%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BDl-ag%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BDseries | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572127.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815024523-20220815054523-00276.warc.gz | en | 0.814605 | 149 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Is it ever OK to let your child fail? It can be difficult to see your child try something and fail. But sometimes FAIL stands for “First Attempt At Learning.”
In this episode, hosts Amanda Morin and Bob Cunningham speak with a mom, Meg, about letting her son learn from his failures. Meg also talks about the difference between being accountable for your mistakes and being at fault for them.
Listen in. Then read experts’ thoughts on why and when it’s OK to let kids fail.
Amanda: [00:00:04] Hi. I'm Amanda Morin, a writer for Understood.org, a parent to kids with learning issues, and a former teacher.
Bob: [00:00:10] And I'm Bob Cunningham, a career educator and now the executive director for learning development at Understood.
Amanda: [00:00:16] And we are "In It."
Bob: [00:00:18] "In It" is a podcast from Understood. On this show, we'll hear from parents and sometimes kids, and we'll offer support and advice for families whose kids are struggling with learning and thinking differences.
Amanda: [00:00:28] Today, we're talking about... letting kids fail.
Amanda: [00:00:38] The thinking behind letting kids fail is failure is the way that you learn to adjust and make better decisions. So we say let your kids fail. But when you have kids who learn and think a little bit differently, letting your kids fail is a little more complicated. It feels like there's more at stake. Because we already see our kids failing at a lot of things that other kids can do more easily.
Bob: [00:01:00] Yeah, when your child is struggling with things that most kids aren't struggling with, it's really easy to get the idea that the deck is stacked against them.
Amanda: [00:01:09] Right.
Bob: [00:01:10] Another thing you're gonna know as a parent is that your child doesn't rebound as quickly. If they fail at something, it's going to stick with them longer because they don't have the tools to make sense of it as a learning experience.
Amanda: [00:01:24] Right. So letting a kid who thinks and learns a little bit definitely fail has the potential for some bigger consequences. However, it doesn't mean we shouldn't do it, right? I mean...
Bob: [00:01:35] Exactly.
Amanda: [00:01:35] It doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. And so the question is, when should we let our kids fail? And is it really worth it, given the risk involved, like failing out of school or quitting? Here's what some of you had to say.
Sarah: [00:01:48] Hi. My name is Sarah, and I wanted to share something about letting your kids fail. I was on the playground last week with my child and a bunch of his friends from school and a bunch of parents were there, too. And some of the kids got into a disagreement. And it wasn't huge. But one child felt very upset and was on the verge of crying and we all sort of raced in and were like, oh, it's OK, let's work this out. But the truth was that I kind of didn't want to rush in. I wanted them to figure it out themselves. And maybe that girl would have felt hurt for a little while and maybe they would have come to a compromise. But the other parents didn't seem like they were about to just kind of hang back. And so what I think is hard about letting your kid fail is it's not just letting your kids fail. It's also a whole dynamic that goes on at the parent level. It's much easier, I think, in a way, to let your kid fail, at least socially, if there's no other parent around that you have to negotiate with. So that if you're the only grown-up in the room, you can hang back and let the kids work it out. But if you don't have buy-in from another parent, as the other parent is there, you can't really do that. You sort of have to make sure that all the parents involved are willing to step back. Or you have to have a thick enough skin that you don't care what the other parents say. And you hang back even while they may rush in and try to manipulate the social situation. Anyway, it's tough out there. Thanks.
Bob: [00:03:15] Today we're going to hear from Meg, whose son is a junior in high school. In his sophomore year, he made a decision that seemed to be putting him on a direct path to failure. Meg knew things could go disastrously, and in many ways they did.
Meg: [00:03:34] OK, so my son is 16. When he's feeling well, he's a really gregarious, energetic guy who likes to play guitar and play video games. He has a lot of friends, a lot of people like him. He's dealt with anxiety and depression since he was little guy, little child. Probably it really started to be apparent when he was about 8 years old. He also has ADHD and an auditory processing disorder.
Amanda: [00:04:05] Meg's son, who we're not going to name just to give him some privacy, has had an IEP since he was about 7 or 8 years old. An IEP is an Individualized Education Program, and it provides specialized instruction, support, and some changes in the classroom to help them learn better. But last year, Meg's son undecided somewhat abruptly that he didn't need his IEP anymore.
Meg: [00:04:26] He advocated for himself during an IEP meeting that he didn't want to have an IEP in place anymore. He was feeling really good and emotionally strong, and he just wanted to be done with all accommodations.
Amanda: [00:04:39] So together with the school, they came up with a plan. Her son would go from an IEP to a 504. This meant he could still use accommodations if he needed them, but there wouldn't be a special education teacher to support him or to monitor his progress in any way. Taking off those guardrails, or at least lowering them a little bit, was a tough decision. But both Meg and her husband agreed to it.
Meg: [00:05:01] He was so eloquent and so, so mature in the way that he defended his desire to be done with the supports. And if I had said no to that, it would have been really, I think, undermining to him. In the back of my mind, I was thinking this really could fall apart. And then what are we going to do?
Bob: [00:05:22] Things got off to a pretty good start. But then Meg's son started feeling depressed. This took a toll on his confidence and then even on his ability to get out of bed. He started falling way behind at school.
Meg: [00:05:33] It really looked like things were spiraling out of control.
Amanda: [00:05:37] When Meg let her son take school into his own hands, she had not factored in the possibility of his depression returning. And to be clear, she doesn't think taking away the IEP caused the depression. But the combination of the two were more than her son could handle, and he was failing.
Bob: [00:05:52] Meg did what she could to help. She made sure her son understood that she was available if he needed it. But she was determined not to just swoop in and try to fix things. For instance, with his math class.
Meg: [00:06:03] Near the end of the school year, I just told him what he needed to do to get through the class and kind of left it in his hands to get it done or not get it done. And he didn't get it done.
Amanda: [00:06:18] How did he feel about you making the decision to say "this is in your hands"?
Meg: [00:06:24] You know, it's interesting because I think there's like a double-edge sword sort of thing. By giving him the responsibility, then he can't, like, blame me.
Amanda: [00:06:35] I think you just described teenagers in a nutshell.
Meg: [00:06:41] [laughter] So I think when he realized that that wasn't a choice anymore, I think maybe it was sort of eye-opening for him.
Amanda: [00:06:48] Meg didn't stop her son from failing, but she did give him tools to put that failure into perspective.
Meg: [00:06:54] I tried to make it clear that there's like a difference between being responsible for something and feeling blame.
Amanda: [00:07:01] Tell me what the difference is.
Meg: [00:07:03] So I can make a mistake and say, boy, I really messed that up. And next time I can try to do something better. That's like taking responsibility. To take the blame is to say I really messed that up. I'm a horrible person. I can't believe I let that thing happen. I should have never tried those things again. I can't believe what a mess-up I am. And so in relation to, like, say, the math class that my son failed, he decided not to do the work. He, in a way, kind of was responsible for his — well, he was responsible for that failure. He could say, oops, look at that. The things that I did to cope with this issue didn't work. And so next time I'm going to try a different method, like maybe I'll go to class. Maybe I'll try to do my homework instead of saying I'm so stupid. I told you I couldn't do it. I'm a bad person and I'm bad at math. You know what I mean?
Amanda: [00:07:56] Yeah. And it sounds like you learned from this experience, too.
Meg: [00:07:59] Oh, right. I think there were so many learning opportunities. Enough to go around for everybody. I think sometimes with my son, if we approach things in too strong a way, it's like, either it's my way or it's no way, I think then he just shuts down. Also, I think sometimes we make choices like do I want to live in a home where we can all tolerate each other being in the same room?
Amanda: [00:08:25] Mmm-hmm.
Meg: [00:08:25] Or do I want to create so much tension that.... It was almost like we began to prioritize the quality of our time together, rather than some other things that other parents might think are very important.
Amanda: [00:08:44] Now, Meg's son is in his junior year of high school, and they've managed to find a pretty good compromise between her son having total independence over his schoolwork and she and her husband having some oversight.
Meg: [00:08:55] At this point, I'm not going to be able to sit down and make him do his work. But I do plan on checking in with him at the end of the week to see what assignments that he's had and if he's gotten them passed in. I think that's just like a real concrete thing that we can do. He was really resistant to that last year.
Amanda: [00:09:14] So this, is this an agreement you came to together?
Meg: [00:09:17] Yes, we — he and I — have talked about it. I've agreed not to just go on to the internet campus thing on the computer and just kind of like sneak around and check in on his work. But that he and I could sit down together at the end of the week and take a look and just see what he's got going on and if he's gotten everything done. And that if he doesn't, then I know it and he knows it. And where that goes from there, I don't know. But the fact is, is that he's much more OK with me being somewhat involved, but I know that there's a limit. And so we're both aware of that boundary.
Amanda: [00:10:04] So I'm wondering what strikes you about her story. And you know, what might help other parents understand the risk and benefits of letting our kids fail.
Bob: [00:10:13] A couple things stood out to me. First of all, the example that she uses with him deciding to no longer participate in an IEP — that's high stakes, right? They've put so much time and effort to get the right kinds of goals and objectives, the right kinds of support, the right kinds of accommodations on that IEP. He was doing well with it.
Amanda: [00:10:35] Right.
Bob: [00:10:35] Right? So now he's saying, I'm just not going to do this anymore. I don't think I need it anymore. Will you want him to feel that way? Right. You want him to feel like he can do it on his own. But you can tell that as his mom, Meg wonders whether or not that's actually going to be a good decision or kind of more likely everything's gonna fall apart.
Amanda: [00:10:56] Well, the thing that struck me about that was that, you know, the idea of, do I jump in and make sure he doesn't fail and our house feels all tense all the time? Or do I back away a little bit and maybe let him fail and know that we're gonna be OK as a family unit?
Bob: [00:11:15] Yeah, from a from a practical perspective, it also sends a very clear message to the teachers who work with him, right? So if he's saying, I want out of this, and Mom's saying, no, you have to stay in it, there's no way that the teachers don't leave that meeting saying, oh, this is all about Mom.
Amanda: [00:11:32] What really struck me is that she really put things in place to let him fail sort of successfully, which sounds like an oxymoron, right? Let's fail successfully. But there are ways to do that. There are ways to let your kid....
Bob: [00:11:43] Yeah. And they came up with a really good one, which is they didn't quit supports cold turkey, right? There was much more responsibility on him. But it's not like all the possible support was suddenly ripped away.
Amanda: [00:11:54] Well, he failed a math class that he now has to take again.
Bob: [00:11:57] That's right.
Amanda: [00:11:57] Right. So it wasn't like she went to the administration and said, this is why he failed the math class. It was like, you failed a math class. So how are you gonna fix this? And I think that's how we set kids up to fail successfully is putting supports in place. So it's not like they have no net underneath them.
Bob: [00:12:13] Right. The key for parents is really to have a good understanding of what the consequences are, right? And to be able to put those potential consequences into perspective.
Amanda: [00:12:25] Right. You know, like you think about younger kids, too, because this is this is high stakes, in part because he's a high school student. But with younger kids, if they don't have their sneakers for gym class, they'll have their sneakers the next day for gym class.
Bob: [00:12:38] And if they won't, and you know that about your child, then the thing to do is to speak to the people at school. Still let him forget the gym sneakers, right? But make sure that the people at school are going to react in a way that is supportive and encouraging to a child who's not at this point able to get his gym sneakers from point A to point B.
Amanda: [00:13:04] Or in my house get both of them from point A to point B. Somehow we come home with one sneaker.
Bob: [00:13:09] I was just gonna say you have the one-sneaker child.
Amanda: [00:13:12] Yeah, they come off the bus with one sneaker. I'm not sure where the other one went. But so for littler kids, younger kids, I think that there are smaller ways we can teach them that failure is OK.
Bob: [00:13:21] There are, sort of low-risk ways.
Amanda: [00:13:23] Yeah. I mean, you know it's not — I wouldn't suggest to a parent necessarily that if you know your kid is not going to get along with anybody on the playground, that you drop them off and go get coffee and then come back.
Bob: [00:13:38] Right. That's a totally unreasonable risk.
Amanda: [00:13:40] But I would say, OK, I know that you have one friend there, and I'm going to sit sort of much further back than I usually do and let you figure out how you're gonna get along with that child and not jump in if they start or you start arguing, or you start, you know....
Bob: [00:13:56] Right.
Amanda: [00:13:56] They're climbing up the slide while you're going down the slide. I'm not going to fix that. I'm going to let you try and figure that one out.
Cindy: [00:14:05] Hi. My name is Cindy and I'm in Scarborough, Maine. I'm calling about a story about letting my child fail in eighth grade, third quarter. My oldest, who's now 16, was failing her math class. I knew she was failing because I could see her grades online. But when I would ask if she needed help, she always said she was fine and wouldn't let on that she wasn't doing well. So I just let it go. And sure enough, in the third quarter she ended up with a 62. That, of course, triggered her needing additional help in the class, having to tell her mom and dad — that's us — that she failed the class. All sorts of tears and heartache. The good news is she worked her butt off in that fourth quarter and ended up with a 98 for that particular quarter and a very good grade for the entire year. She also learned that she hates failing and that it wasn't worth it to not just reach out for help.
Amanda: [00:15:06] Is there ever a time when it's not OK to let your kid fail?
Bob: [00:15:10] For me, when there's no chance of success or when there are no tools in place and there's really no likelihood that she's going to be able to figure out what to do or come back to you and process this and learn from it with you, then it's not worth it.
Bob: [00:15:36] You've been listening to "In It," a podcast from Understood. Our website is Understood.org, where you can find all sorts of free resources for people raising kids who learn and think differently.
Amanda: [00:15:46] We also want to hear what you think of our show. "In It" is for you. So we want to make sure you're getting what you need. Go to u.org/podcast to share your thoughts and also to find those resources. That's the letter "U," as in Understood, dot O R G slash podcast.
Bob: [00:16:01] And if you like what you heard today, please tell someone about it. Share it with your family or your friends or even your child's teacher. You can also go to Apple Podcasts and rate us, which is a great way to let other people know about "In It."
Amanda: [00:16:13] You can also subscribe to "In It" on Apple Podcast, follow us on Spotify, or keep up with us however you listen to podcasts. Between episodes, you can find Understood on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube. Or visit our website: U, that's the letter "U," dot org.
Bob: [00:16:28] Our show is produced by Julie Subrin and Sarah Ivry. Mike Errico wrote our theme music and Laura Kusnyer is our executive director for editorial content.
Amanda: [00:16:36] Thanks for listening, everyone, and thanks for always being in it with us.
Bob: [00:16:50] "In It" is a production of Understood.
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is the director of thought leadership at Understood and author of “The Everything Parent’s Guide to Special Education.” She worked as a classroom teacher and early intervention specialist for more than a decade.
Gretchen Vierstra, MA
is the managing editor at Understood and co-host of the In It podcast. She’s a former educator with experience teaching and designing programs in schools, organizations, and online learning spaces. | <urn:uuid:84833789-ac1d-42a9-a2f8-1a700f524e13> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.understood.org/podcast/in-it/why-let-your-child-fail | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570868.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808152744-20220808182744-00068.warc.gz | en | 0.988195 | 4,696 | 2.5625 | 3 |
If you are feeling inadequate because you're not in full control of your virtual server environment, give yourself a break. In a recent research study by Freeform Dynamics, many of the 400 plus participants told us about challenges that are causing significant problems or unwanted distractions in this area.
This didn't surprise us because we run into people all the time who are experiencing virtual server sprawl - a phenomenon that received a lot of attention a few years ago, but isn't talked about much today. The research confirms, however, that the problem is still very much with us.
For those not familiar with the concept, it's not hard to understand. When IT teams get used to how easy, convenient and quick it is to create new virtual machines (VMs), they end up generating lots of them. The trouble is that people are not very good at keeping track of what's been created, or disposing of VMs when they are no longer needed. This is a particular problem if you use virtual servers for transient requirements in areas such as development, testing and support. Issues can also arise in other situations when VMs lie dormant for long periods, as often happens in disaster recover (DR) setups, for example.
Many of the challenges reported are to do with familiar administration tasks - asset and configuration management, software patching, and generally keeping track of the VMs that exists and what they are being used.
Charts like this can be informative, but they can also be deceptive. Despite the amount the green ('Not an issue') responses, the underlying data tells us that around three quarters of those participating the study have challenges (just in different combinations), with larger organisations running broader server estates not surprisingly suffering the most.
More apparent from this chart is that the problems don't just translate to administration overhead. Difficulties making sure VMs are properly secured, including with respect to who has access to them and any sensitive data they contain, are also highlighted. Something often overlooked is then the need to ensure that network connections used by VMs are properly secured. This is a particular concern as virtual servers increasingly underpin core business systems and externally facing web applications.
From a solution perspective, technology exists to help deal with all of the challenges highlighted in the research. This ranges from tools to assist with the management of virtual server landscapes themselves, to application-aware appliances that monitor and enforce security at the network level to act as a safety net.
Against this background, while we would not discourage anyone from looking at more advanced virtualisation approaches that many vendors are now promoting under the 'software defined everything' theme, we would urge you not to forget some of the basics we have been discussing to do with your existing virtual server environment. | <urn:uuid:36a65a03-3854-4bdc-9cf0-7c46edc94902> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.cio.co.uk/opinion/free-thinking/managing-virtual-servers-is-still-issue-for-many-3506124/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988717963.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183837-00373-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957307 | 551 | 1.773438 | 2 |
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|Tested species reactivity||Human, Mouse|
|Host / Isotype||Rabbit / IgG|
|Immunogen||Synthetic peptide corresponding to residues 54-68 of human SOCS1 protein.|
|Storage buffer||whole serum diluted in PBS with 0.05% BSA|
|Contains||0.05% sodium azide|
|Storage Conditions||Store at 4°C short term. For long term storage, store at -20°C, avoiding freeze/thaw cycles.|
|Tested Applications||Dilution *|
|Western Blot (WB)||1:500-1:1000|
* Suggested working dilutions are given as a guide only. It is recommended that the user titrate the product for use in their own experiment using appropriate negative and positive controls.
Suggested positive control: Ramos or RAW.
The suppressor of cytokine signaling (SOCS) family of proteins (SOCS1-SOCS7 and CIS) inhibit cytokine production by a classical negative feedback mechanism. These proteins are upregulated in response to cytokine stimulation followed by inhibition of cytokine-inducing signal pathway. Role of each members of the family has been determined by gene knockout experiments (1). SOCS1 also known as JAB and (STAT)-induced STAT inhibitor 1 (SSI-1) is an SH2-domain-containing protein that is induced by and negatively regulates signaling by a number of cytokines including interleukin-4 (IL-4), IL-6, interferon (IFN)-gamma, prolactin, growth hormone, and erythropoietin (1). SOCS1/JAB is rapidly induced by LPS and negatively regulates LPS signaling (2). SOCS1 (-/-) mice are very sensitive to LPS. These mice die prematurely, probably due to uncontrolled IFN-g signaling (3).
For Research Use Only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures. Not for resale without express authorization.
CIS1; CISH1; cytokine inducible SH2-containing protein 1; cytokine inducible SH2-containing protein 7; cytokine-inducible SH2 protein 1; JAB; JAK binding protein; JAK-binding protein; JAK2-binding protein; SSI-1; SSI1; STAT induced SH3 protein 1; STAT-induced STAT inhibitor 1; suppressor of cytokine signaling 1; Tec-interacting protein 3; TIP-3; TIP3
CIS1; CISH1; Cish7; JAB; SOCS-1; SOCS1; SSI-1; SSI1; TIP3 | <urn:uuid:c8a5894b-6fc0-491c-8a30-c5e75dfc4abb> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.thermofisher.com/antibody/product/SOCS1-Antibody-Polyclonal/PA1-41009 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280791.35/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00364-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.836464 | 600 | 1.539063 | 2 |
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BY J. FENIMORE COOPER.
“Thou art perfect."
G. ROUTLEDGE AND CO., FARRINGDON STREET.
249, p. 348.
THOSE who have done us the favour to read “HOMEWARD BOUND," will at once perceive that the incidents of this book commence at the point where those of the work just mentioned ceased. We are fully aware of the disadvantage of dividing the interest of a tale in this manner; but in the present instance, the separation has been produced by circumstances over which the writer had very little control. As any one who may happen to take up this volume will very soon discover that there is other matter which it is necessary to know, it may be as well to tell all such persons, in the commencement, therefore, that their reading will be bootless, unless they have leisure to turn to the pages of Homeward Bound for their cue.
We remember the despair with which that admirable observer of men, Mr. Mathews the comedian, confessed the hopelessness of success, in his endeavours to obtain a sufficiency of prominent and distinctive features to compose an entertainment founded on American character. The whole nation struck him as being destitute of salient points, and as characterized by a respectable mediocrity, that, however useful it might be in its way, was utterly without poetry, humour, or interest to the observer. For one who dealt principally with the more conspicuous absurdities of his fellow creatures, Mr. Mathews was certainly right; we also believe him to have been right in the main, in the general tenor of his opinion ; for this country, in its ordinary aspects, probably presents as barren a field to the writer of fiction, and to the dramatist, as any other on earth ; we are not certain that we might not say the most barren. We believe that no attempt to delineate ordinary American life, either on the stage, or in the pages of a novel, has been rewarded with success. Even those works in which the desire to illustrate a principle has been the aim, when the picture has been brought within this homely frame, have had to contend with disadvantages that have been commonly found insurmountable. The latter being the intention of this book, the task
has been undertaken with a perfect consciousness of all its difficulties, and with scarcely a hope of success. It would be indeed a desperate undertaking, to think of making anything interesting in the way of a Roman de Société in this country ; still useful glances may possibly be made even in that direction, and we trust that the fidelity of one or two of our portraits will be recognized by the looker-on, although they will very likely be denied by the sitters themselves.
There seems to be a pervading principle in things, which gives an accumulating energy to any active property that may happen to be in the ascendent, at the time being.—Money produces money; knowledge is the parent of knowledge ; and ignorance fortifies ignorance.In a word, like begets like. The governing social evil of America is provincialism; a misfortune that is perhaps inseparable from her situation. Without a social capital, with twenty or more communities divided by distance and political barriers, her people, who are really more homogeneous than any other of the same numbers in the world perhaps, possess no standard for opinion, manners, social maxims, or even language. Every man, as a matter of course, refers to his own particular experience, and praises or condemns agreeably to notions contracted in the circle of his own habits, however narrow, provincial, or erroneous they may happen to be. As a consequence, no useful stage can exist; for the dramatist who should endeavour to delineate the faults of society, would find a formidable party arrayed against him, in a moment, with no party to defend. As another consequence, we see individuals constantly assailed with a wolf-like ferocity, while society is everywhere permitted to pass unscathed.
That the American nation is a great nation, in some particulars the greatest the world ever saw, we hold to be true, and are as ready to maintain as any one can be; but we are also equally ready to concede, that it is very far behind most polished nations in various essentials, and chiefly, that it is lamentably in arrears to its own avowed principles. Perhaps this truth will be found to be the predominat thought throughout the pages of “Eve Effingham.”
“Good morrow, coz.
WAEN Mr. Effingham determined to return home, he sent orders to his agent to prepare his town house in New York for his reception, intending to pass a month or two in it, then to repair to Washington for a few weeks, at the close of its season, and to visit his country residence when the spring should fairly open. Accordingly, Eve now found herself at the head of one of the largest establishments, in the largest American town, within an hour after she had landed from the ship. Fortunately for her, however, her father was too just to consider a wife, or a daughter, a mere upper servant, and he rightly judged that a liberal portion of his income should be assigned to the procuring of that higher quality of domestic service which can alone relieve the mistress of a household from a burden so heavy to be borne. Unlike so many of those around him, who would spend on a single pretending and comfortless entertainment, in which the ostentatious folly of one contended with the ostentatious folly of another, a sum that, properly directed, would introduce order and system into a family for a twelvemonth, by commanding the time and knowledge of those whose study they had been, and who would be willing to devote themselves to such objects, and then permit their wives and daughters to return to the drudgery to which the sex seems doomed in this country, he first bethought him of the wants of social life before he aspired to its parade. A man of the world, Mr. Effingham possessed the requisite knowledge, and a man of justice, the requisite fairness, to permit those who depended on him so much for their happiness, to share equitably in the good things that Providence had so liberally bestowed on himself. In other words, he made two people comfortable, by paying a generous price for a housekeeper; his daughter, in the first place, by releasing her from cares that, necessarily, formed no more a part of her duties than it would be a part of her duty to sweep the pavement before the door; and, in the next place, a very respectable woman who was glad to obtain so good a home on so easy terms. To this simple and just expedient, Eve was indebted for being at the head of one of the quiet | <urn:uuid:20876a6e-9025-4251-9432-09e9914d36de> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://books.google.com.hk/books?id=hcEBAAAAQAAJ&pg=PP6&focus=viewport&vq=%22Tell+me,+where+is+fancy+bred+%E2%80%94+%27+Or+in+the+heart,+or+in+the+head+%3F+How+begot,+how%22&dq=editions:UOM39015091109937&lr=&hl=zh-TW&output=html_text | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573908.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20220820043108-20220820073108-00276.warc.gz | en | 0.975048 | 1,472 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Get resources that can help you eat a healthy diet with vegetables, fruits, protein, grains, and dairy meals. Eating too much salt can lead to high blood pressure, which is a threat issue for coronary heart illness. On average, Australians are eating almost double the really helpful quantity of salt . These meals don’t enhance or lower your risk of coronary heart disease, however they can be an essential source of calcium, protein and other minerals.
Discover the meals with probably the most protein, healthiest fat and most nutritional vitamins ever. We are committed to bringing you researched, expert-driven content that can assist you make more informed decisions around food, health, and wellness. We know how essential making decisions about your total health is, and we strive to give you the most effective info attainable.
Are We Fooled By Food Labels?
Eggs comprise nutritional vitamins including B-2 and B-12, both … | <urn:uuid:749b6cfc-4dfa-483a-8c13-2459d7200fbd> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.sinverrugasylunares.com/tag/healthy/page/9 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571090.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809215803-20220810005803-00077.warc.gz | en | 0.941896 | 190 | 2.40625 | 2 |
Human progress and prosperity depend on a peaceful environment, and most people have always sought to live in peace, yet our perception of the past is dominated too often by a narrative that is obsessed with war. In this ground breaking study, former Guardian journalist John Gittings demolishes the myth that peace is dull and that war is in our genes, and opens an alternative window on history to show the strength of the case for peace which has been argued from ancient times
Beginning with a new analysis of the treatment of peace in Homer's Iliad, he explores the powerful arguments against war made by classical Chinese and Greek thinkers, and by the early Christians. Gittings urges us to pay more attention to Erasmus on the Art of Peace, and less to Machiavelli on the Art of War. The significant shift in Shakespeare's later plays towards a more peace-oriented view is also explored.
Gittings traces the growth of the international movement for peace from the Enlightenment to the present day, and assesses the inspirational role of Tolstoy and Gandhi in advocating non-violence. Bringing the story into the twentieth century, he shows how the League of Nations in spite of its "failure" led to high hopes for a stronger United Nations, but that real chances for peace were missed in the early years of the cold war.
And today, as we approach the centenary of the First World War, Gittings argues that, instead of being obsessed by a new war on terror, we should be focusing our energies on seeking peaceful solutions to the challenges of nuclear proliferation, conflict and extremism, poverty and inequality, and climate change.
About John Gittings
See more books from this Author
Published February 23, 2012
by OUP Oxford.
History, Political & Social Sciences, Education & Reference. | <urn:uuid:cfc7c8af-a3f5-4cd2-919f-216a89c830ec> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://idreambooks.com/The-Glorious-Art-of-Peace-From-the-Iliad-by-John-Gittings/reviews/92012 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279915.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00280-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939245 | 370 | 2.875 | 3 |
Everyone has heard of “Mrs. Doubtfire” and Tyler Perry’s Madea, but has the name “Charley’s Aunt” ever come out of the mouth of a teenager in this day and age? This month, the Georgia Ensemble Theatre in Roswell took a stab at putting on the gender switch up classic only to find the venue was sold out, the audience was on the edge of its seats and laughing with tears of joy falling down their cheeks.
The lights flickered on and off and the audience members eagerly took their seats as the curtains opened and revealed two men talking about the one thing two young men have in common: love. Not only was that similar, but both shared over the top British accents that no doubtedly appeased all of the ladies in the room. In its review, the AJC mentioned that the British accents were over exaggerated. It was indeed so, but in no way did it create a negative impression. The actors made this choice as a homage to the farce genre of the play. A farce is a comic work that usually features crude characterization and is set in improbable situations. With the outrageous plot and characters, it is hard to believe that this play can be relevant to present-day life. However, like most classic works, “Charley’s Aunt” has a few surprises in store.
The play by Brandon Thomas (1848-1914) is set in the late 19th century and is a story of two young men, Jack and Charley, who are trying with all of their might to court two lovely ladies. One day, Charley gets a letter from his aunt, who he has never seen before, The newly discovered aunt writes to him from Brazil, letting him know that she will be visiting at any moment. Jack and Charley look at this as the perfect moment to invite the girls for tea to meet Charley’s aunt. To the boys disappointment, the aunt sends another letter informing Charley that she will be a few days late. This unexpected turn leaves the boys stressed about how they will get away with inviting the girls. Then their friend Lord Babberley (Babbs for short) shows up to “borrow” some champagne and reveals he is rehearsing for a play where he has the role of an old lady. Conveniently, Babbs even has the costume. Jack and Charley convince Babbs to pose as Charley’s aunt and all the excitement begins.
First performed in 1892, the play still entertains audiences around the world today. Hugh Adams, the actor who plays Babbs in Georgia Ensemble Theatre’s production told VOX: “This piece is timeless. There’s a sweetness about it that is somewhat reassuring to the audience because the conflicts in the piece are recognizable in our everyday lives.” Adams’ character goes through the most striking transformation in this play. “When Babbs puts on the dress he discovers himself and becomes a better man,” Adams explained. With teens today blurring traditional gender roles with fashion and an ongoing fascination with cosplay, it is very inspiring to see that they are not the only ones who feel confident when trying new things and finding themselves.
“Charley’s Aunt” will keep being revived and enjoyed not only for the reassurances it brings to the audience, but also because as Adams says, “it’s a fun ride!” | <urn:uuid:30d3f84a-8051-45fa-8a76-12ce89a3ab93> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://voxatl.org/1646-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571745.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812170436-20220812200436-00468.warc.gz | en | 0.975298 | 722 | 2.0625 | 2 |
By James Frater @CNNMoney January 13, 2015: 9:28 AM ET
The real estate boom has added $1.5 trillion to the value of British homes over the past five years and left London residential property worth as much as Brazil’s economy.
Research by estate agents Savills shows U.K. houses and apartments were worth £5.75 trillion ($8.7 trillion) in 2014, an increase of almost one trillion pounds since 2009.
London’s stock of homes is now worth as much as Brazil’s annual GDP — $2.2 trillion.
The city’s economy has rebounded strongly since the financial crash and that has been reflected in soaring house prices. They’re up 61% in the last five years, and 20% last year alone, although there are signs that the pace is slowing.
The gains have been driven by a combination of stronger domestic demand and an influx of cash from wealthy Russian and Chinese buyers.
Properties in two of London’s most expensive boroughs — Westminster, and Kensington and Chelsea — are together worth $345 billion. That’s more than the GDP of Denmark, the world’s 35th biggest economy.
While prices have been rising in almost every region of the country, the number of homes financed by a mortgage has fallen by 800,000 in five years. Younger workers are finding it harder to save the down payments and are renting in ever greater numbers instead. | <urn:uuid:3cf1f35a-1358-4746-bb24-8561dbc9a716> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://mikrometoxos.gr/londons-homes-are-worth-as-much-as-brazils-economy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988721405.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183841-00313-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967769 | 306 | 1.867188 | 2 |
Two components make the backbone in DNA, being the deoxy-ribose and phosphate molecules. These molecules link together in a staggered pattern where the deoxy-ribose and phosphate molecules follow one another, like the backbone of a zipper. Deoxy-ribose is a type of sugar molecule where the adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine molecules attach a covalent bond. The phosphate molecules bond with the deoxy-ribose molecule acting like anchors in DNA.Continue Reading
The structure of a deoxy-ribose molecule is five carbon atoms in a ring with oxygen atoms or oxygen and hydrogen molecules attaching themselves to the carbon. Deoxy-ribose has one fewer oxygen atom than ribose, which is one of the differences between DNA and RNA. Phosphorus and oxygen atoms with oxygen and hydrogen molecules comprise the elements of a phosphate molecule in DNA. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and phosphorus in the right amount and combination is all it takes for nature to create a backbone for DNA.
Science explains the way deoxy-ribose and phosphorous molecules stay together as the 3- and 5-prime phosphodiester linkage. This is simply a way of keeping track of the phosphate and deoxy-ribose molecules where 5 ends a phosphate and 3 ends a deoxy-ribose molecule. This linkage is true in all DNA molecules.Learn more about Molecular Biology & DNA | <urn:uuid:a0f81e04-c3fe-4dcc-ae44-d47143919f75> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.reference.com/science/up-backbone-dna-molecule-5f1d1666ccb03d48 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280065.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00548-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.875983 | 286 | 4.125 | 4 |
We need Europe to show Putin its power — that’s all he understands
Only tougher sanctions can deter Russia and hold back a new Dark Age, Andriy Yermak writes
When Russia invaded my country, its leadership were surprised at the unity of Ukraine and its western allies. The Kremlin believed its army could march up to Kyiv in a matter of days and declare victory. The Kremlin was wrong.
The Ukrainian armed forces and its people have defended our lands with an extraordinary courage about which historians, when they have time, will write tales of heroism to awe future generations. And Russia will have been alarmed at the support provided by our friends. Our western allies saw that this terrible conflict represented a turning point in history.
We stand at a fork in the road. Down one path lies the sunlit uplands once described by Sir Winston Churchill. Down the other path lies the | <urn:uuid:0a84d89d-ee3a-4004-a76c-108bebe826d0> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/we-need-europe-to-show-putin-its-power-thats-all-he-understands-qd95rmwgf | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571982.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813172349-20220813202349-00070.warc.gz | en | 0.964486 | 180 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Kerbal Space Program is taking a brief side step from its normal bout of updates to introduce the concept of asteroid redirection. In an effort to make it feel more like a real space mission and less like something out of a Bruce Willis movie, developer Squad is collaborating with NASA on this latest addition to the game and has revealed some new video of asteroid redirection in action.
Miguel 'Maxmaps' Piña details the steps that goes into grabbing asteroids, including building a better spaceship and using the advanced grabbing unit. As stated during the update's initial unveiling, each step taken in an asteroid redirect mission plays out just as it would in the real world.
To learn how to capture asteroids, check out the video below. The Asteroid Redirect Mission update is coming soon to Kerbal Space Program, which is available now on Steam Early Access. | <urn:uuid:bfe77632-9a21-4fb9-abab-50e31b8c17eb> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.shacknews.com/article/83782/kerbal-space-program-video-introduces-asteroids?id=31692945 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560285289.45/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095125-00144-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941365 | 174 | 1.632813 | 2 |
It has been clear to me for some time now that two different ideas are often confused or conflated preemptive war and preventive war.
What's the difference?
Preemptive war is a strike to gain the advantage when an enemy strike is believed to be imminent. The classic example in recent history is the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Israel was aware that Egypt and Syria where about to invade. Instead of waiting, Israel struck first and successfully destroyed Egyptian air power before they were able to get their planes in the air. This preemptive strike was justified by Israel because war with the Arabs was virtually an inevitability, and they wished to gain the upper hand.
Preventive war is something else altogether. It is war designed to prevent imagined future war. It is based on a set of suppositions, hypotheses which could prove true or false. At its heart is the idea our enemies our strong now, but they will be even stronger in the future. Better to attack them sooner rather than later. Better to defeat them before they get any stronger.
This is the same argument used by Curtis LeMay during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, to justify the use of force (rather than diplomacy) against Cuba and the Soviet Union. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed. Nuclear war was averted. And in fact we avoided war with the Soviet Union from 1949 (when it first tested nuclear weapons) to its collapse in the 1990's, a period of over 40 years.
Arthur Schlesinger has recently written eloquently about the difference. Several passages stand out. Here's the first one. "Looking back over the Cold War, we can be everlastingly grateful that the loonies on both sides were powerless. By 2003, however, they ran the Pentagon."
And here's another. "The distinction between preemptive and preventive war is worth preserving. It's the distinction between legality and illegality."
I would submit it's worse than that, that preventive war is an oxymoron. On its own terms, it just makes no sense.
War does not prevent war. It creates more war. This is not, however, a thinly disguised argument for pacifism. Only that preventive war never achieves the objective it sets out to achieve.
The classic example is World War I, the war that Woodrow Wilson sold to the American people as the "war to end all wars." Needless to say, it did not end war. On the contrary, it ushered in a century of the worst carnage in human history.
Are we really about to repeat this in the 21st?
The loonies like LeMay were pushed back in 1962. Today, as Arthur Schlesinger has ruefully pointed out, they're in the driver's seat. | <urn:uuid:2ae1cdd3-2eff-4758-aa4b-354315247fc1> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://errolmorris.com/content/election04/blog_102804.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572304.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20220816120802-20220816150802-00465.warc.gz | en | 0.970343 | 563 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Brothers in War Paperback
"Brothers in War" is the immensely powerful and deeply tragic story of the Beechey brothers, and how they paid the ultimate price for King and country.
All eight went to fight in the Great War on such far-flung battlefields as France, Flanders, East Africa and Gallipoli.
Only three would return alive. Even amid the carnage of the trenches, it was a family trauma almost without parallel.
Their wives and sweethearts were left bereft, their widowed mother Amy devastated.
It is a tragedy that has remained forgotten and unmarked for nearly 90 years.
Until now. Kept in a small brown case handed down by the brothers' youngest sister, Edie, were hundreds of letters sent home from the front by the Beechey boys: scraps of paper scribbled on in the firing line, heartfelt messages written from a deathbed, exasperated correspondences detailing the absurdities of life in the trenches.
From it all emerges the remarkable tale of the lost brothers.
Tragic and moving, poetic in its intensity, "Brothers in War" reveals first-hand the catastrophe that was the Great War; all told through one family forced to sacrifice everything.
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 432 pages, black & white illustrations
- Publisher: Ebury Publishing
- Publication Date: 07/06/2007
- Category: Biography: historical, political & military
- ISBN: 9780091908843 | <urn:uuid:4189642e-3806-4097-8b1a-6ea27d00e41f> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Michael-Walsh/Brothers-in-War/136953 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281331.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00219-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930099 | 309 | 1.90625 | 2 |
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Interview with Quality Inspector Arben V.
What is your job?
I am a quality inspector for Ballco manufacturing.
Why did you choose this field of work?
I chose this job because I though I would be able to this job well. I had a previous knowledge of the tools need for this job. Also I was proficient in all of the skills necessary in this field. I had a necessary knowledge of algebra and other similar parts of math.
How do you use math and algebra in your everyday work?
During the measurement that I make during the day I must be able to calculate where certain cuts and formations must be made. I also use the formulas of trigonometry in order to determine the necessary angle and measure that must be use for the specific product.
What are the duties of your department?
My duties are the physical control of the details and the manufacturing of the product. And the guarantee that the product will fit the standards of the consumer and/or the buyer of the specific product.
How do you use machines in order to assist you in this job?
The two things which are primarily used for the inspection and measurements of the details produced are CMM and FARO. Both of the machines are programmed with electrical programs which are specific to the details. These tools measure the dimensions of the object which differ from each product. This includes everything from height, weight, circumference and the angle measurements from inside the object. The way that the machines operate is called probe-touch. This means that the tools touch the object in a specified position or positions in order to determine the required detail. The CMM machine is one-hundred percent self-sufficient the only outside control that it uses is that of the worker putting in the details which are needed and their measurements. While the FARO does the same measurements as the CMM, but the movement of the tool is manual and most be operated by the worker.
How is your department important to the overall growth of the company?
My department is very important because it stops the selling of products which are out of standard. Also secures the completion of the contracts in the required time and under the specifications of the buyer.
How does your department work with customers in order to make the products better?
We have contacts with customers about any possible defects that any one of the products may have. We then make the corrections that are needed by the consumer. Also all of the new productions that the consumer asks for pass by our department with greater care then the other productions because it is new and it must be closely inspected before it is shipped and sold.
What advice would you give to someone else who would want to work in this profession?
Firstly they should be able to understand the importance of this department to the rest of the company. They should be very observant and careful in the measurements. They should try to learn the different tools and how they are used and learn about their calibers, micrometers, and high gage. You must a have knowledge of blueprints and drafts used by engineers. | <urn:uuid:f0205421-8a31-420a-8092-aafe0d14e3a2> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://stats.teenink.com/nonfiction/interviews/article/49655/Interview-With-Quality-Inspector-Arben-V | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571993.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814022847-20220814052847-00671.warc.gz | en | 0.937698 | 908 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Holly - Foster
Ilex atenuata ‘Foster’ (EYE-lex ah-ten-you-AH-tah)
Aquifoliaceae (Holly Family)
Evergreen ornamental tree
HEIGHT: 20 to 25 feet
SPREAD: 8 to 10 feet
FINAL SPACING: 3 to 10 feet
NATURAL HABITAT AND PREFERRED SITE: This hybrid holly is adapted to a fairly wide range of soils with the exception of solid white rock in poorly drained soils. It can grow in full sun to fairly heavy shade.
IDENTIFICATION INFORMATION: Upright pyramid growing evergreen with small, spiny, dark-green leaves and many small, red berries in the winter.
FLOWERS AND FRUIT: Small white flowers in the spring followed by small showy red berries in the fall and winter.
BARK: Smooth, light to medium gray.
FOLIAGE: Small dark green leaves with mini spines that are fairly soft spines compared to the Chinese holly.
CULTURE: Relatively easy to grow in any well-drained soil. Prefers slightly acid conditions but adapts well to alkaline clays especially when maintained under an organic program. Chlorosis sometimes shows up when grown in alkaline clay soils but can be corrected with Texas greensand and the other amendments of the organic program. Severe conditions can be corrected by using the Sick Tree Treatment.
PROBLEMS: Leafminers occasionally and chlorosis due to poor soil conditions including bad drainage.
PROPAGATION: Foster holly can be grown from the seed collected in the winter before the birds get them, but the resulting tree will be a mystery because this is a hybrid tree. Stem cuttings are used to reproduce the same plant.
INSIGHT: Excellent plant for dark evergreen color. Can be used as a screening hedge or specimen plant even in pots. | <urn:uuid:43ecb18f-307c-497f-9ee3-2007bec28cfb> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | https://www.dirtdoctor.com/garden/Holly-Foster_vq945.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988720026.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183840-00456-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.871202 | 411 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Time Management Tips
Be on time for meetings
Don’t trying to squeeze in “just one more thing” before going to a meeting. Instead, get there early. Take something you can work on while you wait for others to arrive.
Don’t hit the “snooze” button
More than a third of all adults hit the “snooze” button an average of three times before getting up each morning. That adds up to 27 minutes each day. Imagine what you could do with an extra 14 hours per month.
Limit the routine
Set a time limit on routine tasks. Don’t waste time “tweaking” a routine job to perfection. Free up that time for more important tasks.
Streamline your voicemail
Include instructions in your greeting on how to bypass your message and go straight to leaving one for you.
Purge your files
Commit to spending five minutes per day, purging three file folders. By the end of the month, you will have cleaned out approximately 60 file folders. | <urn:uuid:1929c6d5-a4fb-4b70-a9f9-617b806b4b39> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.ismckenzie.com/time-management-tips/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282926.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00397-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929227 | 225 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Records, reports, statements, or data compilations, in any form, of public offices or agencies, setting forth…matters observed pursuant to duty imposed by law as to which matters there was a duty to report, excluding, however, in criminal cases matters observed by police officers and other law enforcement personnel.
In other words, police reports are not admissible in criminal cases. But why? That was the question addressed by Judge Posner in his recent opinion in United States v. Hatfield, 2010 WL 114930 (7th Cir. 2010), although his analysis was irrelevant to his conclusion.
That left the Seventh Circuit with the question of why police reports are inadmissible in criminal cases. The court noted that
“The apparent concern of the drafters [of the exception in Rule 803(8)(B)] was that use of records in criminal cases would cause ‘almost certain collision with confrontation rights.’"…And during floor debates on the rule, "concern was expressed that [without the exception, Rule 803(8)] would allow the introduction against the accused of a police officer’s report without producing the officer as a witness subject to cross-examination."
If this were the only concern, the prosecution might not have faced a problem on remand because
[t]he police officer who had signed the criminal complaint in that case testified at the trial of the present case about the proceedings in that other case, including the allegations in the complaint that he had drafted. So he was available for cross-examination.
The problem for the prosecution, though, was that this was not the only concern. Instead,
there is more to the exception than a concern with unavailability of cross-examination. There is also a concern that reports by law enforcers are less reliable than reports by other public officials because of law enforcers’ adversary relation to a defendant against whom the records are sought to be used.
How nice of Judge Posner to remind us that police reports can in fact be biased because of a conflict of interest. Thanks to Prof. Colin Miller for this. | <urn:uuid:c1bd12bd-ad42-47e1-8930-5c8f6265689b> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.court-martial-ucmj.com/police-reports-are-not-evidence/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572021.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814083156-20220814113156-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.977901 | 436 | 1.898438 | 2 |
Home Depot gives veteran's apartment a makeover: 'They're transforming my life'
A U.S. war veteran and celebrated artist saw his modest New York apartment transformed on Friday as The Home Depot's charitable foundation set out to improve the home for the wheelchair-bound man and his beloved dog.
Vietnam vet Jim Power was stunned when he learned his eight-by-eight Manhattan studio would be renovated as part of The Home Depot's Celebration of Service program.
"I don't think about it often, but I'm severely disabled," Power told INSIDE EDITION. "I got sort of comfortable in my dilemma and accepted it. But they're changing my life."
When Power came home from war, he was faced with homelessness and crippling PTSD, which he fought to overcome through art.
Known as "the Mosaic Man,"Power creates murals on street poles, sidewalks and lampposts throughout the city that carry inspiring messages and are designed to represent the surrounding neighborhood.
His tiny apartment serves as both his living space and the base in which he begins his artwork.
"This will make his day-to-day life; (doing things) that you and I take for granted safer and will increase his productivity. He said we're transforming a place where he just slept into an actual home," said Shane Duffy, a national home improvement expert who has partnered with the foundation to make Power's living space more accessible.
Duffy and volunteers worked on projects in the apartment throughout the day, including installing safety grab bars and devices for wheelchair mobility and installing shelving and storage units to maximize his space.
"We're going to be making a work station for him because he makes art," said Home Depot Captain Runn Roopchand as the group began working on Power's apartment.
L to R: Shane Duffy, Jim Power, Home Depot Associate and Volunteer Julie Powell, Runn Roopchand (photo courtesy of The Home Depot)
"I can't even begin to contemplate what kind of change this is making in my life. I feel blessed," Power said.
"I'm accepting this help on behalf of every other veteran," he continued. "The Home Depot—they're not going to forget one of them and leave them on the battle field injured, as so many of them have come back from the war ... and it's not over for them. You have to be here to see what they're doing. There's a loving touch—it's quite amazing."
Power's apartment is one of more than 22,000 homes that the foundation has transformed to make safer for veterans.
"I'm also a veteran myself... obviously it's something I'm very passionate about," Duffy said. "It's a beautiful thing, just being a veteran and giving back to another veteran... veterans need to help each other."
Power agreed, saying the act of generosity has inspired him to pay it forward.
"When I see this incredible team... every one of these people are volunteering and can't wait to help here," he told IE. "I can see it on people's faces; they're happy to help me... How do you put it into a couple words? I think saying thank you isn't enough.
"They will see me get involved. See me put a veterans' organization together in this neighborhood. This company has given me my faith back in this country," he continued.
Team Depot is also donating $1, up to $1 million, to veteran support organizations for each social media post including the hashtag #ServiceSelfie.
More from AOL.com:
Single father pens heartwarming post about raising his infant alone
Why you should never get your ears pierced at the mall
This wooden hugging machine will give you the best embraces ever | <urn:uuid:38bab304-8077-43a7-80ef-8e0bab2c87ab> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.aol.com/article/2015/11/14/home-depot-gives-vietnam-veterans-apartment-a-makeover-theyr/21265327/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280900.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00004-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982943 | 774 | 1.5625 | 2 |
ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Sec. Sensory Neuroscience
The Role of Feature Tracking in the Furrow Illusion
- 1Sorbonne Universités, Pierre and Marie Curie University Paris 06, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Institut de la Vision, Paris, France
- 2Visual Psychophysics and Perception Laboratory, Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada
In the furrow illusion (Anstis, 2012), the perceived path of a moving target follows the veridical path orientation when viewed foveally, but follows the orientation of the texture when viewed peripherally. These radically different motion percepts depending on whether the stimulus is viewed foveally or peripherally has led Anstis to conclude that the furrow illusion reveals “profound differences in the way that the periphery and fovea process visual motion.” In the current study, we rather argue that the different percepts can be explained by reduced position acuity with eccentricity and therefore do not imply different ways of processing motion per se. If feature tracking, which is position-based, is involved in the perception of the veridical motion direction, then impairing the feature tracking motion system should strengthen the illusion. To reduce contribution of the feature tracking motion system, we used a crowding paradigm consisting in presenting many nearby targets. We found that under crowding conditions, the furrow illusion was stronger. We conclude that feature tracking was involved in the perception of the veridical motion direction, which is compatible with the hypothesis that the different motion percepts at fixation and in the periphery are due to a reduced position acuity with eccentricity affecting feature tracking, not to different ways of processing motion per se.
In the furrow illusion (Anstis, 2012), the perceived path of a moving spot is radically different depending on whether the spot is viewed foveally or peripherally. This difference could be due to different ways of processing motion with eccentricities or to pre-motion processing factors that vary with eccentricity. An important factor that changes with eccentricity is visual acuity (Anstis, 1974, 1998), but artificially reducing visual acuity at the fovea with blur did not result in the peripherally perceived path (Anstis, 2012). Anstis concluded that the furrow illusion reveals “profound differences in the way that the periphery and fovea process visual motion” (p.10). However, there are other differences in the peripheral processing of visual information. Notably, crowding is a well-known phenomenon that impairs object recognition in the periphery (Pelli et al., 2004; Levi, 2008). Although the specific underlying factors responsible for crowding remains debated, it is well-established that crowding is not due to visual acuity and is not specific to motion processing per se. The present article investigates if the processing factor responsible for crowding could explain the difference in the perceived motion direction with eccentricity in which case the radically different motion percepts when foveally and peripherally viewing the furrow illusion would not be caused by different ways of processing visual motion per se.
In the furrow illusion, one of the conditions under which the perceived path differs the most between central and peripheral viewing is when the background texture is a static black and white square-wave and a spot operating as a negative lens inverting contrast polarity drifts along a path that differs by 45° from the texture orientation (Figure 1). At fixation, the spot is perceived as moving along its veridical path, whereas in the periphery, it is illusory perceived as moving along an path parallel to the texture orientation, i.e., a perceptual error of 45°, which “may be the strongest directional illusion known” (p.5, Anstis, 2012).
Figure 1. Furrow illusion. When a spot (here a negative lens inverting contrast polarity) drifts over an oriented texture, the perceived motion path at fixation usually matches the veridical motion path of the spot (here vertical), but when the same stimulus is viewed peripherially, the spot is perceived as moving along the texture orientation. To experience the illusion, see Movie 1 in Supplementary Material.
In the different versions of the furrow illusion (Anstis, 2012) and many other illusions (e.g., Mather et al., 1985; Tse and Hsieh, 2006; Shapiro et al., 2010, 2011), the perceived motion path of the spot differs depending on whether it is viewed foveally or peripherally. These illusions have in common the fact that the direction of the mean local motion signal does not match the direction of the position displacement of the spot. At fixation, the shape is generally perceived as moving along its veridical global shape-defined path, whereas in the periphery it is perceived as moving along a path biased toward the direction of the mean local motion signal. Thus, the illusory perceived path in the periphery is undoubtedly driven by local motion signals. In the furrow illusion, local motion signals follow, on average, the orientation of the texture and not the orientation of veridical shape-defined path (Anstis, 2012).
If perceived position displacements of the spot in the furrow illusion are computed from the local motion signals, then the illusory position displacements in the periphery can easily be explained as being inferred from a simple averaging of local motion signals and, paradoxically, it is the veridical perceived position displacements at fixation that are less trivial to explain and more controversial. At fixation, the perceived path cannot be inferred from a simple averaging of local motion signals; there must be some other process involved that enables the visual system to properly extract the veridical position displacements. One possibility is a complex computational combination of local motion signals. Anstis suggested that the fovea could discriminate whether local motion signals belongs to the moving target or to sliding intersections between the target edges and the background due to differential processing of local velocity differences (Braddick, 1993) and a balanced combination of integration and computationally expensive differentiation would enable the recovery of veridical position displacements.
An unlikely implication of this interpretation is that the foveally perceived position would be inferred from a temporal integration of complex computations of local motion signals rather than by directly localizing the global shape of the spot based on its spatial information. If the perceived path (i.e., perceived position of the shape over time) is computed solely from local motion signals, this suggests that the perceived position at a given time is computed from the previously perceived position shifted by a displacement computed from local motion signals. Given that the direction of the mean local motion signal deviates by 45° from the direction of veridical position displacements, retrieving veridical position displacements at fixation would require complex and expensive computation as suggested by Anstis. As a result, the perceived position at a given time would be the result of a temporal integration of position displacements each being the result of a complex computation of local motion signals. But localizing the shape at fixation based on the temporal integration of complex derivatives (i.e., perceived position displacements) seems unlikely since the shape can be localized directly and precisely based on its spatial information (its shape is clearly visible statically as in Figure 1). We therefore suggest that that the veridical perceived position at fixation is inferred from localizing the spot based on spatial information rather than by temporally integrating position displacements based on a complex computation of local motion signals.
In the periphery, however, position acuity is low (Klein and Levi, 1987; Levi et al., 1987; Morrone et al., 1989; Levi and Waugh, 1994). Given imprecise position estimates based on spatial information, the perceived position at a given time would be computed from the previously perceived position shifted by a displacement inferred from a simple averaging of local motion signals. Given that the mean direction of local motion signals matches the texture orientation, the spot would be perceived along this illusory path.
More generally, we suggest that the perceived position of the spot depends on two factors: the likelihood of the position estimate based on spatial information and the averaging of local motion signals suggesting the direction of the position displacement. When the position estimate is precise such as at fixation, the likelihood of the position estimate based on spatial information would be finely tuned around the veridical position and local motion signals would have negligible impact on the perceived position (and thereby on the perceived path). The influence of local motion signals on the perceived position would be greater when the likelihood of the position estimate is broader based on spatial information (i.e., lower certainty of position). As a result, the perceived path would increasingly be biased along the texture orientation with eccentricity where position estimates are less precise.
This interpretation does not necessitate computationally expensive processing of local motion signals to explain the perceived veridical motion path at fixation, because it could simply consists in attentively tracking the change in position of the global shape (i.e., a spot). It is well-known that we have at least two motion systems: a low-level, energy-based motion system (Adelson and Bergen, 1985; van Santen and Sperling, 1985; Watson and Ahumada, 1985) that is sensitive to luminance-defined motion1 and is fast (temporal cutoff frequency around 12 Hz, Lu and Sperling, 1995) and a high-level, feature tracking motion system (Cavanagh, 1992) that can track many features and is slow (cutoff frequency around 3 Hz, Lu and Sperling, 1995). The feature tracking motion system consists in attentively tracking a change in position of a given feature. In the furrow illusion, the feature is a spot operating as a negative lens, which does not need any motion processing to be precisely localized at fixation, as it is clearly visible statically (Figure 1). As a result, tracking the global shape (here, a spot) at fixation would not depend on local motion signals and would therefore extract the veridical motion direction as observed foveally in the furrow illusion (Anstis, 2012). Thus, we suggest that the simplest interpretation of the furrow illusion is that the perceived motion path of the spot was determined by the feature tracking motion system foveally (by tracking the shift in position of the shape) and by the energy-based motion system peripherally (by averaging local motion signals and biasing the perceived position).
The main objective of the present study was to investigate whether the perceived veridical path at fixation in the furrow illusion is due to the energy-based motion system through computationally expensive processing of local motion signals (as suggested by Anstis, 2012) or to the feature tracking motion system attentively tracking the position of the shape. According to the energy-based hypothesis, the local motion signals would be used differently at the fovea and in the periphery: integration would dominate in the periphery and a combination of integration and differentiation would operate foveally, so, there would be fundamentally different ways of processing local motion signals in the periphery and foveally. According to the feature tracking hypothesis, the shift in ways of processing motion between fixation and periphery would not be attributed to different ways of processing motion processing per se, but to a pre-motion processing factor affecting the likelihood of position estimates. The current study tested this hypothesis using a crowding paradigm to impair feature tracking (Allard and Faubert, 2013a). If the veridical motion depends on the feature tracking motion system and illusionary motion percept is due to averaging of local motion signals by the energy-based motion system, then impairing the feature tracking motion system should strengthen the illusion.
Ten naïve observers (5 females and 5 males) aged between 21 and 38 participated in this study. They had normal or corrected-to-normal vision. Ethical approval was obtained from the University's ethics board and written informed consent was obtained from the participants.
The stimuli were presented on a 22.5-inch LCD monitor designed for psychophysics (VIEWPixx) with a refresh rate of 120 Hz. At the viewing distance of 43 cm, the width and height of the screen were 69 and 39° of visual angle (dva). The monitor was the only source of light in the room. The output intensity of each color gun was linearized psychophysically using a homemade program.
Stimuli and Procedure
Instead of presenting a single spot that can easily be selected and localized by attention even when attention resolution is low (Figure 1), many nearby spots were presented and moved together in a phase-lock configuration (Figure 2). Feature tracking requires to attentively select a feature (here, a spot) before tracking its change in position. Given that adding nearby flankers impairs the ability of attention to select a target in the periphery due to low attention resolution (He et al., 1996; Intriligator and Cavanagh, 2001), feature tracking should become difficult when attentional resolution is too low to select and localize individual features thereby impairing its contribution to motion (Allard and Faubert, 2013a). Thus, by presenting many nearby objects, the motion percept should rely more on energy-based motion processing, which should strengthen the illusion. Conversely, if the furrow illusion is due to a change in the way local motion signals are combined, we would not expect that adding targets should change the relative weight of these processes so that it should have little impact on the furrow illusion.
Figure 2. Stimlus composed of five spots moving in a phase-lock configuration. When viewed peripherally, it should be harder to attentionally select one, which should compromise (or reduce) the ability to track them. To experience the lower ability to attentively select them, try counting them when viewed peripherally. See Movie 2 in Supplementary Material.
A crucial concept for the purpose of the present study is that feature tracking would be impaired when adding nearby spots. Nonetheless, some readers may still be skeptical. To directly demonstrate the impact of adding nearby spots on feature tracking, consider Movies 3, 4 in Supplementary Material. These movies are identical to Movies 1, 2 in Supplementary Material, respectively, with the exception that any contribution of the energy-based motion system was neutralized by removing two frames out of three introducing 67 ms gaps (Smith, 1994). As a result, with Movie 3 in Supplementary Material, motion along the veridical path orientation is perceived even at far eccentricities, which shows that the spot can be attentively tracked. With Movie 4 in Supplementary Material, however, the perception of motion is veridical at fixation but much less obvious in the periphery. This demonstrates that adding the four flankers impaired the feature tracking motion system peripherally, but not foveally, which is consistent with our previous findings (Allard and Faubert, 2013a,b). If it is the feature tracking motion system that is responsible for the veridical perceived motion direction in the furrow illusion, then impairing feature tracking should strengthen the illusion.
The background texture was a black and white square wave with a spatial frequency of 1 cycle per dva and its orientation was randomized at each trial. The spot operated as a negative lens inverting the contrast polarity of the texture. Its shape was circular with a diameter of 1 dva and it oscillated back and forth along an axis that differed from the background by 45° (either clockwise or counter-clockwise, Figure 1). The speed of the spot was constant at 6 dva/s and the amplitude of the motion (peak-to-peak) was fixed to 2 dva resulting into a moving stimulus at 1.5 Hz. The stimulus location (mean spot position) was either −18, −12, −6, 0, 6, 12, or 18° of eccentricities from fixation along the horizontal axis. A spatial window modulating the texture had a diameter of 4 dva plus a halfcosine ramp of 1 dva and was always centered on the mean target location. In the crowding condition (Figure 2), four spots were added 2 dva from the center spot (center-to-center distance) as shown in Figure 2 and all the spots moved in a phase-lock configuration (Movie 2 in Supplementary Material).
Observers were asked to fixate at a bar presented at the center of the screen and adjust its orientation by controlling a computer mouse so that it matched the orientation of the perceived path. When more than one spot were presented, observers were asked to report the orientation of the perceived path of the central spot. The observers were instructed that if they ever shifted their gaze position during a trial, they should fixate back at the central bar and report the orientation of the perceived path when fixating the bar. When the observer was satisfied with the adjustment, he/she pressed a mouse button to record his/her answer. The bar was 50 pixels (i.e., 1.8 dva) long and 5 pixels wide (i.e., 0.18 dva). It was white with a 1-pixel wide black on its circumference and a 3-pixel wide fixation point was added to its center. When the stimulus was shown at fixation, the bar appeared on top of the stimulus. Note that this made the task trivial, but the important conditions are the ones in the periphery where the illusion is seen and it is obvious that we perceived the veridical motion when gazing at the stimulus (Anstis, 2012, this can also be experience directly by gazing at Movies 1, 2 in Supplementary Material). The next trial was automatically initiated 500 ms after the answer was reported. The stimulus remained visible until the observer responded.
There were 28 different stimulus conditions that were tested twice in a pseudo-random order: 7 eccentricities, 2 directions (45° clockwise or counter-clockwise from the background orientation) and 2 crowding conditions (1 or 5 spots).
For each trial, the reported orientation was normalized relative to the drifting orientation so that 0° represented the veridical drifting orientation of the spot and 45° represented the texture orientation. Data were averaged across absolute eccentricities (i.e., left and right) and drifting orientation (+/− 45°). As a result, the estimated orientation of the perceived path at fixation for a subject corresponded to the average of 4 trials (2 drifting directions performed twice) and the other data points were averaged across 8 trials due to the merged negative and positive eccentricities. These averaged data were analyzed with a 4 × 2 ANOVA (eccentricity × crowding condition).
A significant interaction between eccentricity and crowding condition was observed [F(3, 27) = 10.6, p < 0.001] showing that different crowding effects (1 vs. 5 spots) were observed at different eccentricities. Specifically, when presenting 5 moving spots instead of 1, the furrow illusion was strengthened, that is, the stimulus had to be presented at smaller eccentricities to perceive motion following the texture orientation (Figure 3). This was statistically confirmed using paired T-tests as the perceived orientation at 6 and 12° of eccentricity were significantly higher when presenting 5 spots instead of 1 [t(9) = 4.9 and 3.6 and, p < 0.001 and 0.01, respectively]. Thus, presenting many nearby spots instead of one strengthened the illusion. Given that the 5-spot configuration impaired feature tracking, the strengthened of the furrow illusion suggests that it is the feature tracking that was responsible for the perception of the veridical motion direction.
Figure 3. Strength of the illusion as a function of eccentricity. The orientation of 0° corresponded to the veridical motion orientation as viewed foveally (eccentricity = 0). The orientation of 45° corresponded to the background orientation. The perceived motion orientation was more influenced by the background orientation in the 5-spot configuration (dashed line) compared to the 1 spot configuration (solid line), i.e., the illusion was stronger. Error bars represent standard errors.
Given that this experiment evaluated the strength of the illusion as a function of eccentricity, a crucial factor to consider is the eccentricity span of the stimulus, which was larger with 5 spots compared to 1. However, even if observers did not report the path orientation of the central spot (as instructed), but rather relied on anyone of the 5 spots (or relied on different spots at different trials), this could not explain the stronger effect with 5 spots. The illusory effect observed with 5 spots at 6 and 12° of eccentricity is equivalent to the illusory effect observed with 1 spot at about 9.2 and 15.3° of eccentricity, respectively, (assuming linear interpolation between the illusory strength observed with 1 spot). However, the flankers were only, at the most, 2° further in eccentricity than the central spot. So even if observers (surprisingly) based their judgment only on the furthest flanker (the one that would generate the strongest illusion), the illusion would still be too weak to explain the illusion observed with 5 spots. We therefore conclude that the stronger illusory effect with 5 spots cannot be explained by the fact that observers reported the motion direction of a spot other than the central one; it must be due to processing interference of nearby spots, i.e., crowding.
It is also possible that the illusion was stronger when the total area of the stimulus was larger (i.e., with 5 spots instead of 1) rather than due to a lower contribution of the feature tracking motion system. To control for this confound, an experiment was performed at the eccentricity showing the greatest effect (i.e., 6°). The strength for the illusion was measured for 1 spot having an area greater by a factor of 5 (i.e., diameter of 2.2 dva instead of 1). All other parameters remained the same. To enable direct comparison, the conditions with 1 and 5 spots with diameters of 1 dva were also retested. The results averaged over 7 observers are plotted in Figure 4. Replicating the previous findings at 6° of eccentricity (Figure 3), the strength of the illusion was greater with 5 spots instead of 1 as confirmed by a paired T-test [t(6) = 4.2, p < 0.01]. Controlling for the spot area by presenting only one spot covering the same area as the five spots did not increase the strength of the illusion; conversely, it abolished it [t(6) = 6.7, p < 0.01]. Thus, the strengthening of the illusion with 5 spots instead of 1 cannot be explained by the larger total area of motion. The weakening of the illusion when increasing the spot size can be explained by the fact that large objects were easier to track in the periphery as the edges of the spot are further apart from one another.
Figure 4. Strength of the illusion for the control experiment at 6° of eccentricity for 3 conditons: 1 spot (diameter of 1 dva), 5 spots (each with a diameter of 1 dva), and 1 large spot (diameter of 2.2 dva). As in Figure 3, the orientation of 0° corresponded to the veridical motion orientation as viewed foveally (eccentricity = 0). The orientation of 45° corresponded to the background orientation. Error bars represent standard errors.
Presenting 5 nearby spots moving in block instead of 1 in the near periphery made the orientation of the perceived motion path closer to the texture orientation. Given that presenting nearby elements in the periphery impairs feature tracking (Allard and Faubert, 2013a), this strengthening of the furrow illusion suggests that the perception of the veridical motion direction at fixation was due to the feature tracking motion system. Given that the shape of the spot can be perceived without any motion information (e.g., the circular shape of the spot is clearly visible statically as seen in Figure 1), this motion system does not need to rely on the local motion signals. Directly tracking the change in position of the spot is sufficient to extract its veridical motion path. A computationally expensive combination of local motion signals is not required.
In the present study feature tracking was impaired using a crowding paradigm analogous to the one we have used for gratings (Allard and Faubert, 2013a). The rationale of this paradigm was that feature tracking is attention-based and therefore should be impaired when preventing attention from selecting and localizing individual features such as when presenting many nearby elements in the periphery where attention resolution is low (He et al., 1996; Intriligator and Cavanagh, 2001). In our previous study (Allard and Faubert, 2013a), feature tracking was impaired by presenting many nearby elements (bars) all moving as a block in the same direction. When the elements were sparse enough for attention to select some (i.e., spatial frequencies below attentional resolution), the bars could be attentively tracked. But when the elements were too close one to another to be selected by attention (i.e., spatial frequencies above attentional resolution), tracking them became impossible, as they did not contribute to motion perception. Tracking them individually or as a group would have resulted in a contribution to motion perception so having many clearly visible elements moving as a block prevented attention from tracking them individually and as a group. The present study found that impairing the feature tracking motion system by presenting many nearby elements strengthen the illusion, which suggests that the illusory motion percept in the periphery was due to a failure of the feature tracking motion system and the perceived veridical motion near fixation was therefore due to the feature tracking motion system.
Note that this interpretation of the feature tracking impairment when presenting many nearby elements in the periphery assumes that crowding is due to a limited attentional resolution as suggested by many studies (e.g., He et al., 1996; Intriligator and Cavanagh, 2001; Strasburger, 2005; Põder, 2006; Fang and He, 2008; Petrov and Meleshkevich, 2011; Chen et al., 2014), but which remains controversial (e.g., Pelli et al., 2004; Freeman and Pelli, 2007; Levi, 2008; Dakin et al., 2009; Greenwood et al., 2009). For instance, Dakin et al. (2009) found a double dissociation between attention and crowding suggesting that they involve distinct neural mechanisms, but their interpretation has been questioned (Allard and Cavanagh, 2012). Nonetheless, even if crowding was not due to low attentional resolution, crowding would still be expected to impair the position-based motion system (i.e., feature tracking) because it induces position uncertainty (Freeman and Pelli, 2007). Another concern could be that the strengthening of the illusion is not due to crowding, but to the fact that observers tracked the global configuration as a unitary percept. However, the position uncertainty of a group is lower than the one of an individual element in the periphery (Levi et al., 1987), so this interpretation also predicts that feature tracking would be impaired when presenting many nearby elements in the periphery. In any case (low attentional resolution, crowding or tracking global configuration), having many elements moving as a block is expected to impair feature tracking in the periphery as previously observed (Allard and Faubert, 2013a) and this was confirmed in the Methods section above, which suggests that the strengthening of the furrow illusion when adding many nearby dots was due to an impairment of the feature tracking motion system.
Although determining the exact cause of the feature tracking impairment has little importance for the purpose of the present study, we can speculate. It is unlikely that observers in the current study tracked the global 5-spot configuration as a unitary percept because the 5 spots were not always perceived as moving in the same direction. Some observers spontaneously mentioned that during some trials the 5 spots were perceived as moving in different directions. This can be experience by gazing at the bottom left corner of Movie 2 in Supplementary Material: the spot closest to this corner is perceived as moving in a different direction (closer to the veridical path) compared to the others (as confirmed by 5 naïve observers). Furthermore, when asking these naïve observers whether the two top spots were perceived as converging or diverging when gazing slightly to the left of the movie, they reported diverging when moving upwards and converging when moving downwards. They observed the opposite when fixating to the right, which is consistent with the fact that the illusion is stronger at larger eccentricities. This shows that the 5 spots were not always perceived as a unitary percept, which suggests that perceiving the 5 spots as a unitary percept is unlikely the cause of the impairment of the feature tracking. This leaves two hypotheses of the feature tracking impairment in the 5-spot configuration: low attentional resolution or crowding. If crowding is due to a limited attentional resolution, these two hypotheses can be seen as equivalent, but some argue that crowding is not related to attention. The data presented here will certainly not resolve this ongoing debate. Nonetheless, given that feature tracking is directly related to attention, the limited resolution of attention in peripheral vision is the more direct and most parsimonious explanation. So we favor this hypothesis.
Interestingly, there is another illusion also created by Anstis (1970) in which the mean local motion signals does not follow the veridical motion direction: reverse-phi motion. In this illusion, reversing the contrast polarity can result in perceiving motion in the opposite direction. Thus, if the perceived motion direction were based on the integration of local motion signals, the perceived motion direction would be opposite to the veridical motion. Presenting only two successive frames in which an object moves from one location to another and reverses its contrast polarity between the two frames is sufficient to create this illusion, but the illusion can also be presented as a continuous sequence of frames in which the contrast of a moving object is reversed at every frame. This continuous reverse-phi illusion is optimal when presenting many nearby objects in the near periphery (see Movie 5 in Supplementary Material, which was adapted from an unpublished version from Patrick Cavanagh). These conditions are optimal to prevent attention from selecting and tracking an object thereby compromising the contribution of the feature tracking motion system. When gazing at a continually moving object in which its contrast is reversed at every frame, the illusion usually disappears (e.g., gazing at an element in Movie 5 in Supplementary Material). Thus, the continuous reverse-phi motion can be analogous to the furrow illusion: in the periphery, motion is seen in the mean direction of the local motion signals and at fixation, the motion is perceived in the veridical direction.
Reversing the contrast polarity between two frames has the consequence of also reversing the direction of the motion energy. As for the furrow illusion, the illusion is easily explained by averaging local motion signals by the energy-based motion system. Again, the explanation of the condition under which motion is perceived in the veridical direction is less trivial. Given that the local motion energy is reversed, it is improbable to suggest that some complex combination of local motion signals can recover the veridical motion direction. The simplest interpretation is that the perceived motion in the veridical direction is determined by the feature tracking motion system, which does not depend on local motion signals, but on a position shift of a feature (e.g., shape). This interpretation is supported by the fact that the strength of the illusion in the periphery is reduced (or abolished) by gazing at a moving object or by presenting fewer objects enabling attention to select and track them (e.g., Movie 6 in Supplementary Material). Indeed, reducing the number of elements in the periphery enables the feature tracking motion system to contribute to motion processing, which results in the perception of veridical motion even in the periphery. This interpretation is also supported by the fact that adapting to reverse-phi motion causes a motion aftereffect in the same direction as the veridical shape-defined motion (i.e., opposite to local motion signals) even when the perceived motion is in the direction of the veridical shape-defined motion such as at fixation (Anstis and Cavanagh, 1981). This motion aftereffect led Anstis and Cavanagh to conclude that the perceived motion in the veridical shape-defined direction is due to a motion system that is not based on local motion signals. Consistent with this interpretation, we suggest that reverse-phi motion occurs when the perceived motion direction is determined by the averaging of the local motion signals and does not occur when it is determined by attentively tracking the shape, which dominates at fixation. This interpretation based on two motion systems, which seems to be the most likely to explain the fact that reversing contrast polarity does not always reverse the perceived direction and the motion aftereffect, can also explain the perceived veridical motion direction in the furrow illusion, e.g., when gazing a spot drifting over an oriented background. If the veridical motion percept in the furrow illusion is also due to feature tracking, then, as for the reverse-phi motion, motion aftereffect should also be perceived in the direction opposite to the mean local motion signals (i.e., along the texture orientation), even if the perceived motion path rather follow the veridical global shape-defined motion such as when viewed near fixation. A simple demo (notice the motion direction of the aftereffect after fixating at the central gray dot of Movie 7 in Supplementary Material) confirms this prediction: the motion is clearly perceived vertically (i.e., down and up along the veridical motion direction), but the motion after effect is not opposite to the perceived motion, it is oblique as the spots are drifting away from fixation along the texture orientation, that is, the motion aftereffect is opposite to the mean local motion signals. As suggested by Anstis and Cavanagh (1981) for reverse-phi, this suggests that the motion system responsible for the perceived motion differs from the one responsible for the motion aftereffect and therefore supports the claim that the veridical motion percept in the furrow illusion is due to the feature tracking motion system.
Furthermore, there are other illusions in which the perceived motion direction varies with eccentricity. These illusions have in common the fact that the direction of the mean local motion signals and the global shape-defined motion differs, and the perceived motion direction is biased toward the mean local motion signals as eccentricity is increased. Mather et al. (1985) created a stimulus in which the shape of a large bar was displaced in one direction, but the light/dark edges were displaced in the opposite direction. Foveally, the stimulus was more likely perceived as moving in the direction of the shape-defined motion whereas in the periphery it was more likely perceived as moving in the opposite, energy-based direction. Others (Tse and Hsieh, 2006; Shapiro et al., 2010, 2011) create illusions in which a sine wave and its aperture were drifting in different directions. When gazing at the stimulus, the perceived motion direction corresponds to the motion defined by the global shape of the stimulus (i.e., aperture), but the perceived motion direction was biased toward the drifting sine wave direction as the stimulus was presented further away from fixation. Our interpretation of the furrow illusion is compatible with all these illusions: feature tracking dominates when attention resolution is good (i.e., at fixation), but the influence of mean local motion signals processed by the energy-based motion system increases with eccentricity as the ability to attentively select and localize a target is impaired by presenting many nearby elements. Thus, the different motion percepts at fixation and in the periphery can be due to lower attentional resolution with eccentricity, and therefore do not imply fundamentally different motion processes per se.
The current study suggests that under low position uncertainty (e.g., when gazing at a moving object) the perceived position would be determined by the spatial information (i.e., global shape of the target) rather than through complex computational combination of local motion signals processed by the energy-based motion system. Under high position uncertainty, however, such as in the periphery and under crowding conditions, the perceived position would be biased by the mean local motion signal processed by the energy-based motion system. As a result, the feature tracking motion system would be responsible for the veridical perceived motion path at fixation and the energy-based motion system averaging local motion signals and affecting perceived position would be responsible for the illusory perceived path in the periphery. Nonetheless, given that the ability to localize and track features in the periphery is impaired due to lower position acuity, which is not specific to motion processing per se, the drastically different motion percepts observed foveally and peripherally do not necessarily imply different ways of processing motion per se.
All authors listed, have made substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.
Conflict of Interest Statement
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
We are thankful to one of the reviewers for his suggestion regarding the motion aftereffect in the furrow illusion. This research was supported by NSERC discovery fund to JF and the ANR-Essilor Silvershight Chair.
The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00081
1. ^Note that some studies suggested that we have two energy-based motion systems: a first-order system sensitive to luminance-defined motion and a second-order motion system sensitive to texture-defined motion (e.g., Lu and Sperling, 1995, 2001; Scott-Samuel and Georgeson, 1999). However, recent studies strongly suggest that there is no energy-based, second-order motion system (Allard and Faubert, 2013a,b) so we only consider the first-order motion system sensitive to luminance-defined motion.
Anstis, S., and Cavanagh, P. (1981). “What goes up need not come down: moving flickering edges give positive motion aftereffects,” in Attention and performance, Vol. 9, eds J. B. Long and A. D. Baddeley (Hillsdale, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates), 63–78.
Chen, J., He, Y., Zhu, Z., Zhou, T., Peng, Y., Zhang, X., et al. (2014). Attention-dependent early cortical suppression contributes to crowding. J. Neurosci. 34, 10465–10474. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1140-14.2014
Shapiro, A. G., Knight, E. J., and Lu, Z. L. (2011). A first- and second-order motion energy analysis of peripheral motion illusions leads to further evidence of “feature blur” in peripheral vision. PLoS ONE 6:e18719. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0018719
Shapiro, A. G., Lu, Z. L., Huang, C. B., Knight, E., and Ennis, R. (2010). Transitions between central and peripheral vision create spatial/temporal distortions: a hypothesis concerning the perceived break of the curveball. PLoS ONE 5:e13296. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0013296
Keywords: furrow illusion, motion, periphery, feature tracking, crowding, attentional resolution
Citation: Allard R and Faubert J (2016) The Role of Feature Tracking in the Furrow Illusion. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 10:81. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00081
Received: 31 October 2014; Accepted: 17 February 2016;
Published: 07 March 2016.
Edited by:Baingio Pinna, University of Sassari, Italy
Reviewed by:Ariel Rokem, University of Washington, USA
Filippo Brighina, University of Palermo, Italy
Copyright © 2016 Allard and Faubert. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Rémy Allard, email@example.com | <urn:uuid:3d32c586-8ca1-4550-a0b5-916d29320017> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00081/full | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573399.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20220818185216-20220818215216-00078.warc.gz | en | 0.941008 | 8,513 | 2.765625 | 3 |
The U.S House of Representatives dealt a severe blow to our national security Tuesday afternoon by removing the Culberson Amendment from an $89.9 billion bill funding the Transportation and Treasury Departments. The Culberson Amendment would have forbade the Treasury Department from allowing banks to accept the Mexican matricula consular
cards as a way for illegal aliens to move freely through the American financial world.
The FBI and the Department of Justice say that the cards are not a reliable form of identification and pose "major criminal threats" and a "potential terrorist threat."
With recent news of al-Qaeda in South America
and middle eastern individuals crossing our southern border posing as Mexican citizens
, this is appalling.
In early August, the Washington Times reported that al-Qaeda is allying with Mexican organized crime groups to infiltrate the United States via Mexico.
Why would they be working with organized crime groups in Mexico? Here's a clue (Washington Times
"... an FBI official said such certificates are "easy to forge" and a "major item on the product list of fraudulent document trade currently flourishing across the country and around the world."
It seems a simple connection that if al-Qaeda is wanting to cross through the southern border the easiest way would be to work with some organized crime figures to get forged matricula consular cards to pose as Mexicans if caught.
Our House of Representatives has put our country at greater risk by doing this. For a list of how your Congressperson voted on this issue you can check here.
"They use these cards to obtain drivers licenses and, guess what, they could get on an airplane and blow it up," said Rep. Randy Cunningham, a Republican from California.
If they can use these cards for drivers licenses it's not a far leap to see the potential for voter fraud as well.
Financially the allowance of these cards will take billions out of the U.S. (Reuters)
The Inter-American Development Bank and Treasury Department have backed the matricula as a way for Mexicans to open bank accounts and send billions of dollars in remittances back to their families in Mexico.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform
notes that no one here legally would even need this card.
There’s no way around the fact that consular ID cards are only needed by people who aren’t legally in the U.S. in the first place. Indeed, relying on the Mexican matricula for identification is tantamount to admitting that the bearer is in the U.S. illegally, as no one here legally has a need for one. Every non-citizen other than an illegal alien will possess identity documents issued by the U.S. government (such as a valid visa).
The worst part in all of this is that the White House and Bush Administration were in support and even pressuring Representatives to vote to have this amendment removed.
If you would like to contact your congressperson and express your outrage, and I urge you to, you can do so here.
Other outraged people commenting on this:
The entry was Traffic Jammed | <urn:uuid:2c55aa7e-9876-4b5d-a4d8-55f823d2bfde> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.diggersrealm.com/mt/archives/000126.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281331.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00216-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956015 | 635 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Several of the central claims of Buddhism:
1. Desire is bad.
2. There are no selves.
3. Extinction is the goal.
1. “desire” isn’t bad. On the contrary, desire is good—is the basis of survival, life, hope, creativity, and achievement.
What is wrong is inordinate desire, desire that is selfish and destructive.
2. There are, indeed, selves—billions of them, dolphins, whales, bears, cats, dogs, pigs, and human primates. The more complex ‘selves’ such as humans not only are really alive, but consciously aware of themselves, and a sense of moral ought, and transcendent reality—the Good, the True, the Just, the Beautiful.
If there are no ‘selves,’ then, of course, there would be no Good, no moral truths. Nothing would be wrong. But real human selves exist that can be harmed by immoral actions.
What Buddhism gets wrong is to assume that a ‘self’ must be eternally permanent to be real.
But on the contrary, temporary, finite selves are VERY REAL!
They just aren’t endless.
Instead, temporary humans are finite conscious processes that come to life, exist, become self-aware, learn to think, create, read, write, make
inventions, study atoms, DNA of life, the geological history of the earth, and some of the billions of stars in the cosmos, etc.
And finally die.
3. Extinction isn’t a worthy, good goal for humans. The opposite is true.
What is the worthy, good goal is to experience transcendence beyond matter and energy in our finite time of living.
Some Buddhists recognize that their philosophy needed correction such as Thich Nhat Hanh who helped bring about Engaged Buddhism, where each individual is of real inherent value, where life is Good.
In the LIGHT, | <urn:uuid:e426b744-02c7-48f7-9884-cd8b18fe4cff> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://infiniteoceanoflightandlove.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-negativity-and-untruthfulness-of.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571989.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813232744-20220814022744-00475.warc.gz | en | 0.929855 | 424 | 2.859375 | 3 |
by: Jill Goldberg on January 3rd, 2014 | 3 Comments »
It’s not unheard of to fight against an invented enemy.
In his novel The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje cites Herodotus’ description of a nation so enraged by an evil wind – the simoon – that “they declared war on it and marched out in full battle array, only to be rapidly and completely interred.”
And, in the twentieth century, long after Emperor Hirohito surrendered on August 15th, 1945, Japanese soldiers in remote locations continued to gather intelligence and to ‘fight’ in attempt to vanquish the American enemy, unaware that the war had ended. For some of these soldiers, it took years, even decades to convince them to give up their imagined battle positions.
Though separated by millennia, these two examples speak to the power of collective delusions, and the way in which not just individuals, but entire nations may make truly frightening, or tragic sacrifices in the name of an idea, which may not be borne up by reality.
Making this very point about America’s disproportionate use of resources in the so-called war on terror is what creative agency Incitement Design hopes to do with its recently launched campaign, The War on Irrational Fear.
Using a multimedia platform that includes social media, video, and their own website to get the word out, this New York based design agency, which has a history of providing high-end design to progressive political campaigns, non-profits, and the arts asks this question: what if the War on Terror is like using high level spying, and weapons of mass destruction against, say, the common cold? In other words, what if the actual threat of terror simply does not warrant the massive public expenditures and the suspension of articles of the constitution in its name?
According to director, Robert Arnow, the idea that terrorism should be a major national priority is largely unchallenged in mainstream media, and with this in-house campaign, Incitement Design hopes to change the nature of public debate around this issue so that when terrorism is discussed, the relative size of the threat will also be mentioned as one of the relevant points. As Arnow says, “We hope this will be a powerful argument in trying to protect liberty and avoiding massive waste of public dollars.”
To back this idea, the campaign itself includes a parodic video, done in the form of a newscast, that begins by pointing out that, on average, Americans are far more likely to die of a lightning strike (8x more likely), or by drowning in the bathtub (87x more likely!) than by a terrorist attack. Using the logic of the War on Terror, the video goes on to report that America is now “at war with lightning”, noting that individuals will now be required to suspend their participation in such activities as tree climbing, outdoor swimming, and, most importantly, kite flying. After all, these things could kill you! Moreover, the video reports, America will be spending “megajabillions” of tax dollars to build a 2,000 story high, impenetrable shield to protect Americans from lightning. As a side benefit, Americans will no longer be able to leave the U.S.A. And, who would want to, anyway? I’m sure we can all agree that freedom is a small price to pay for safety against lightning.
As preposterous as all this sounds, Incitement Design has the facts to back up the satire and to demonstrate that, perhaps, certain American policies regarding the War on Terror are ripe for a hanging on their own petard. A series of powerful posters on their website provides some sobering information. For example, on average, in the last 5 years, 4.6 Americans have died from terrorism, while 12.8 have died playing football and 402.6 have died by drowning in a bathtub. So, the obvious question is this: where is the massive war on bathtubs?!
Perhaps the most startling figures are the ones to do with dollars. The federal expenditures per terror victim per year amount to $400,000,000. What about federal expenditures per heart disease and stroke victim per year, you ask? They get $79.60. Cancer victims fare somewhat better, receiving $9,000 of federal money per victim per year. Cancer and other similar killers must be green with envy of the attention that the amorphous threat of terror gets.
Incitement Design has taken on a tricky challenge here: in pointing out what might be disproportionate spending and draconian lawmaking in response to terrorism, they risk provoking the ire and the pain of anyone who was affected by, for example 9/11 or Benghazi. And I’m sure that many would argue that it was all Americans that were affected by these events. Moreover, the same people may argue, reactions to terrorism must be, by their very nature, extreme in order to handle the unpredictable nature of such attacks.
Still, the national preservation of a traumatized response over the long term may make normative measures that are no longer appropriate or reasonable, and may, in fact, be dangerous and harmful in their own right. And this fact is one that all victims of trauma must face at some point: perhaps the aggressive response to trauma may eventually become maladaptive and need to be replaced by something more constructive.
So, what is the solution? According to Aviva Oskow, Communication Designer of Incitement Design, “the national response should be proportionate to the level of the threat. In the case of the war on terror, the response has been hundreds of times greater than the danger of the threat, so our solution is to scale the response (in terms of funding and national attention) accordingly.”
As a creative agency, Incitement Design does well to provoke a conversation about what has become normative in American society, and whether or not this “new normal” is either necessary or acceptable. Without underestimating the intolerable grief, and profound sense of injustice that must be felt by those who may have lost someone in 9/11, it does seem worth asking if the current state of affairs still warrants the response that was cooked up in those shattering days after the worst attack on American soil.
Considering Incitement Design’s campaign, I imagine an individual, once threatened by a lion, living the rest of his/her days hunting domestic cats with the heaviest artillery available. In this light, the waste of resources seems tragic. | <urn:uuid:faed094d-b267-4869-8edb-483623fd5f37> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2014/01/03/the-art-of-revolution-the-war-on-irrational-fear/comment-page-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719027.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00302-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954817 | 1,347 | 2.21875 | 2 |
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You can automate the whole process by running the following command:
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curl -L https://q2wi.re/swkey | sudo apt-key add -
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<> Most of the spraying process in the disinfection tunnels / chamber takes approximately 5 to 10 seconds in each round of disinfection.
#covid-19 #coronavirus #walkthough #gate #disinfect #security #tunnet #mist #antidrip #sanitize #2020
Mention that you found this ad on DealMarkaz.pk when you call. | <urn:uuid:f37e14ad-8748-4d9c-81e3-dcb3ed5fa7a8> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.dealmarkaz.pk/item/disinfectant-walkthrough-chamberstunnel-santizie-i119319 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573029.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817153027-20220817183027-00274.warc.gz | en | 0.872849 | 252 | 1.640625 | 2 |
The art and practice of understanding how arranging one’s environment alters energy that can enhance one’s life.
Feng Shui considers the effect of energy in environment. It is not a meditation practice, a religion or a New Age cult.
A map oriented from the entrance of the home or room. Corresponding areas represent domains of one's life such as health, career, and relationships.
It is a powerful tool used to create environmental affirmations and enhance specific areas of one's home and life.
Water, wood, fire, earth and metal are the five elements that represent objects in our physical space.
When all five elements are represented, we can experience optimal harmony with our environment.
Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui | Karen Kingston
Creating Sacred Space with Feng Shui | Karen Kingston
Feng Shui and Money | Eric Shaffert, NY, NY
Feng Shui for the Soul | Denise Linn
Feng Shui Made Easy | William Spear
The Healing House | Barbara Bannon Harwood
Home Design with Feng Shui A-Z | Terah Kathryn Collins
The I Ching or Book of Changes | Richard Wilhelm & Carey Baynes
Make Room for Joy | Susan L. Colantuono
Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life | Karen Rauch Carter
Sacred Space | Denise Linn
The Sensual Home | Isle Crawford
Simple Abundance | Sarah Ban Breathnach
The Western Guide to Feng Shui | Terah Kathryn Collins
The Western Guide to Feng Shui for Prosperity | Terah Kathryn Collins
The Western Guide to Feng Shui: Room by Room | Terah Kathryn Collins
A Deep Breath of Life | Alan Cohen
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose | Eckhart Tolle
A Return to Love | Marianne Williamson
Abundance and Right Livelihood | Neale Donald Walsh
Ask and It is Given | Esther & Jerry Hicks
Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life you were Meant to Live | Martha Beck
Inspiration: Your Ultimate Calling | Wayne Dyer
Practicing the Power of Now | Eckhart Tolle
Ten Secrets for Success and Inner Peace | Wayne Dyer
The “O” Magazine | The Oprah Winfrey Magazine
The Power of Intention | Wayne Dyer
The Power of Now | Eckhart Tolle
Trust Your Vibes | Sonia Choquette
You Can Heal Your Life | Louise Hay | <urn:uuid:65d93821-3ae6-42c5-a0e2-fd715fb974b7> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://www.cherishyourworld.com/resources-for-feng-shui/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571584.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812045352-20220812075352-00670.warc.gz | en | 0.776973 | 515 | 1.554688 | 2 |
There is a big question to every parents and guardian about the Grade 1 School admission criteria, the Ministry of Education following a specific Marks Allocations for the grand 1 Admission on below formats.
Out of the vacancies existing in Grade One in a school the number of children to be selected by the first interview will be made from the children belonging to the following categories according to the percentages indicated here.
- Children of residents in close proximity to the school 50%
- Children of parents who are Past Pupils of the school 25%
- Brothers /sisters of students already studying in the school 15%
- Children of persons in the staff of Institutions directly involved in school education 05%
- Children of officers in Government /Corporations/ State Bank services receiving transfers on exigencies of service 04%
- Children of persons arriving after living abroad with the child 01%
Marks will be allocated for selection according to the marking scheme ;the Maximum number of marks obtainable will be 100.
If even one of the documents submitted to the Interview Board is found to be illegal, the application maybe rejected by the Interview Board for this reason alone.
Provisions have been made available in the application for the inclusion of details relating to registration in electoral lists. Parents/ Legal Guardians who wish to submit information relating to registration in electoral lists should obtain them from the Grama Niladhari officers and fill in the relevant section. This information should be certified by the applicant himself. | <urn:uuid:aec35171-7faa-4699-bb83-48d3984a9eee> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://synergyy.com/2013/06/grade-1-admission-mark-allocation-for-government-school-19759/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988721027.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183841-00551-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936169 | 300 | 1.882813 | 2 |
Earlier today, there was speculation that the FDA might issue a declaration that effectively bans alcoholic beverages that contain caffeine and other stimulants. While the agency opted to not go to such lengths, it did announce that caffeine added to malt liquor qualifies as an “unsafe food additive” and sent warning letters to the makers of seven different drinks, giving them 15 days to come up with a plan for remedying the violation.
Letters were sent to the following four companies, which are responsible for a total of seven stimulant/booze combos:
• Charge Beverages Corp.: Core High Gravity HG, Core High Gravity HG Orange, and Lemon Lime Core Spiked
• New Century Brewing Co., LLC: Moonshot
• Phusion Projects, LLC (doing business as Drink Four Brewing Co.): Four Loko
• United Brands Company Inc.: Joose and Max
Says an FDA official:
FDA does not find support for the claim that the addition of caffeine to these alcoholic beverages is ‘generally recognized as safe,’ which is the legal standard. To the contrary, there is evidence that the combinations of caffeine and alcohol in these products pose a public health concern.
The companies now have 15 days to respond in writing to the FDA to detail the “specific steps that will be taken to remedy the violation and prevent its recurrence.”
If any of these companies disagree and believe they are not in violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, the FDA asks them to respond with supporting material for their position.
Should any of the warned companies continue to operate in violation of the FFDCA, the agency may “pursue an enforcement action that could include seizure of the products or an injunction to prevent the firm from continuing to produce the product until the violation has been corrected.”
Yesterday, the makers of the most controversial of these drinks, Four Loko, announced that it would be altering its recipe to remove caffeine from the beverages, making them just another flavored malt liquor.
Says the FDA about this decision:
FDA views this announcement as a positive step. FDA has not yet heard officially from the company about this announcement, including how quickly it will remove present product from circulation and how quickly it will reformulate its product.
The agency says that they did not issue warnings to companies that make beverages which “contain caffeine as a natural constituent of one or more of their ingredients, such as a coffee flavoring.”
As you can see from our earlier post on this topic, an overwhelming number of poll respondents disagree with any sort of legislation that would ban or outlaw caffeinated alcoholic beverages. | <urn:uuid:fc3281c0-696b-4b5f-86ef-4a7e5ca0a27e> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://consumerist.com/2010/11/17/fda-warns-makers-of-alcoholic-energy-drinks/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280899.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00574-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960954 | 554 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Admit it. You’ve done it. We’ve all done. “Done what?” you ask. Wipe that confused look off of your face. You know exactly what I’m talking about: leaving all the summer homework you were assigned in June for the night before the first day of school. Yes, it can be difficult to pull yourself away from the sunshine to sit down in front of a blank Microsoft Word page or read a dreary book from the 1800s, but in the long run, it will make your summer much more enjoyable. Why should you NOT leave your homework until the last second, you ask? Well, there are two main reasons:
1. Quality. If you’re rushing everything and trying to read a 400-page book and write a literary analysis on it in under 24 hours, it’s definitely not going to be your best work. As high school junior Gaby puts it, “Whatever you do on the last day won’t be as well done as you know you’re capable of.” Besides, submitting something that is obviously not your best work is not a great way to start off the year with your new teachers.
2. Stress. Frankly, it’s just not worth the stress. If you’re trying to rush through your work, you’re obviously going to end up pretty tense. This will in turn affect the quality (check point number 1) of your work. It’s better to spread out your assignments over the summer or designate one day to get all your work done. Besides, the upcoming school year is going to be pretty rough if you can’t budget your time properly. And you don’t want to walk into class on the first day of school with huge bags under your eyes and white hair, do you?
So how should you approach your summer homework? Try these tips from fellow high school students.
1. Make a schedule. Gaby suggests that you should, “make yourself a schedule, estimate how much time it will take you to do each portion of your assignment, and plan accordingly.” This is a great way to keep yourself accountable as you work. It will also help you organize your work and perhaps help you work more efficiently.
2. Pick a day. Maybe you’re not a schedule-y person. Do not fret, there is a solution! Pick a rainy day or a day when you’re not doing anything (probably closer to the beginning of summer so you’ll still be in “school-mode’), and do all you’re work on that one day. It won’t be a fun, but it will definitely motivate you to get everything over with. Then you’ll be free from the shackles of school for the rest of the summer!
3. The week before. What if you need to remember information? Have no fear, I have a resolution right here. High school junior Tabbs advises students to,”do it a couple days before school starts, so that everything is fresh in your mind. When you read the book at the beginning of the summer, you might forget everything that happens!” This way you’re not cramming, but you’re still able to remember all the important information that will probably be necessary at the beginning of the year.
Well, there you have it: summer homework procrastination aversion at its finest. In all seriousness though, try your best to do all your homework before the final night. Last year, I decided to try to complete everything the night before. It did not turn out well. Trying to read two books in one day while annotating them for rhetorical devices was definitely not fun. In fact, I was up until one in the morning trying to finish it. Sure, I was finally able to finish everything, but at what cost? I ended up dozing off in every single class on the first day (definitely not a good way to start off the year) and I received a pretty low score on my project. The lesson? Don’t procrastinate! | <urn:uuid:4639f72c-87ff-4de0-a7c2-ad7174eb17e0> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.theprospect.net/why-procrastination-cuzzz-yolo-should-not-be-your-motto-for-summer-homework-3061 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281746.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00285-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957763 | 869 | 2.296875 | 2 |
Cat eye syndrome is a rare disorder that is caused as a result of a rare chromosomal aberration which usually occurs at birth. Typically, a human has 22 chromosomes which have two arms known as 22p (the short arm) and 22q (the long arm).
For individuals who have the cat eye syndrome, the short arm appears twice whereas the long arm doesn’t appear at all or it may appear once. This is known as partial trisomy. This defect as a result of this causes a defective abnormality with the ocular region (eyes) hence the name cat eye syndrome.
This defect which is known as coloboma usually appears as a gap or space in between the iris and the pupil as a result of this causing the elongation of the pupil thereby giving the eye a cat-eye resemblance.
Apart from the elongation of the pupil, other features are associated with the cat eye syndrome. The chromosomal aberration also affects other organs and systems of the body apart from the eyes.
These aberrations are caused during the fetal stages as well as the embryonic stages of human life. Depending on how severe the irregularities are, the Symptoms can either be acute(minute) or chronic(very severe).
While for some, the manifestations of the symptoms of cat eye syndrome may be mild, for others, the manifestations may be very chronic and severe. It can occur from person to person in a family; however, it is not a contagious disease.
Signs and symptoms to expect
The basic symptoms of the cat eye syndrome are ocular coloboma, anal atresia, and minor ear defects associated with preauricular skin tags otherwise known as pits. These symptoms are known as the classic triad of symptoms.
But because of how variable the syndrome appears to be within individuals, only about 41% of patients who have been diagnosed with the cat eye syndrome have the classic triad of symptoms.
Generally, the abnormalities which are closely associated with the cat eye syndrome always affect both eyes, both ears as well as the anal region, heart, and/or both kidneys.
When it becomes so severe, some patients tend to exhibit disabilities with the intellectual functions of their brains. The presence of the Cat eye syndrome as diagnosed in no way detects how severe the symptoms are or would be.
It is rare but not an impossible occurrence for an individual to have all the signs at once. The abnormalities associated with the cat eye syndrome include
1. Ocular Coloboma and other eye defects
A coloboma occurs when there is a partial absence of ocular tissue. This is often a bilateral problem, and this means that it always affects not just a single eye but the two eyes. It usually occurs as a result of the failure of both eyes to close a fissure in the lower part of the eye during prenatal development.
Once this fissure doesn’t close during prenatal development, it will cause the appearance of a gap or space that persists. The ocular tissues that are affected could include the iris which is the coloured part of the eyes that regulates the amount of light that enters the eyes, The choroid layer which is the middle layer or the retina which is the innermost membrane that has an abundant nerve supply.
Once the coloboma affects the iris, it gives the iris an unusual appearance that looks like a keyhole. If the only part that is affected by the coloboma is the iris, then vision won’t be impaired.
However, if the coloboma extends more than the iris such that it begins to affect other parts of the eyes, it could cause severe eye defects which may result in blindness.
Although one of the most distinctive features of cat eye disease was initially ocular coloboma, however, it has been recorded that only a few, just over half of individuals affected by the cat eye disease present with ocular coloboma.
Some patients also may present with other eye defects asides ocular coloboma. This defects may include strabismus( this occurs when the eyesight of both eyes cross each other), and unilateral microphthalmia (this happens when one eye is abnormally smaller than the other).
Other eye defects include aniridia (this refers to the absence of the iris), clouding of the cornea, absence of eye tissues, cataract and Duane syndrome. Also, this is sporadic cases; however, they are not impossible.
2. Abnormalities in the Anal region
This is a more frequently occurring symptom associated with the cat eye syndrome. This occurs when the opening to the Anal region becomes unusually narrow and small causing what is known as Anal Stenosis.
Sometimes, patients have also presented with anal atresia which is the complete absence of the Anal canal, and a fistula that runs directly from the large intestine in other abnormal places in the body.
Most times in males, when a fistula occurs as a result of this syndrome, it may form between the rectum and the bladder which is the organ that collects and stores urine, the urethra or the perineum. However, for females, the fistula could run from the rectum to the bladder and/or the vagina.
3. Abnormalities in the ear region
One of the significant signs of the cat eye syndrome is the presence of preauricular skin tags and/or pits. This is the most common sign that most patients with the cat eye syndrome must present with. According to research, history and records, over 80% of patients have presented with this abnormality as a significant sign.
Patients who have pits will present with a small depression also known as pits in front of the ears also known as the preauricular area. Apart from this trait, the patient will also exhibit an abnormally formed low set of ears which can include absent ear canals, a condition known as microtia.
For most cases, the absence of one ear canal will affect mine ear causing a mild hearing loss due to the inability of the ear to transmit hearing sounds from the outer ear to the inner ear. This condition is known as the conductive hearing loss.
4. Severe heart defects and abnormalities
More than half of the patients who present with cat eye syndrome have structural abnormalities of the heart and congenital heart defects. The most common heart defects usually introduced includes teratology of the fallot and total anomalous pulmonary venous return.
Depending on the extent of the malformation and the extent of the heart defect, symptoms may vary. Total anomalous pulmonary venous return is usually associated with abnormalities in the return of blood flow to the heart.
Infants who have total anomalous pulmonary venous return will be unable to have venous blood returned to the right atrium which is the chamber that we used for collecting venous blood.
Teratology of the fallout, on the other hand, refers to a combination of cardiac diseases. These consists of a septum that separates the two lower chambers of the heart also known as the ventricular septal defect, pulmonary stenosis and hypertrophy of the heart ventricle.
5. Kidney and genital abnormalities
These include malformations of the urinary system as well as abnormalities in the urogenital system. Kidney defects include unilateral or bilateral renal hypoplasia, the absence of a kidney, abnormal enlargement of a kidney, the presence of an extra kidney, accumulation of urine in a particular kidney and cystic dysplasia.
Treatment of cat eye syndrome requires the specialty of several professional doctors such as pediatricians, cardiologists, surgeons, eye specialists, etc. There is currently no cure for this disease, however, the symptoms of this disease can be treated. | <urn:uuid:ec5fb5bf-730f-450c-981d-479ccbdda422> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://healthtian.com/cat-eye-syndrome/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570879.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809003642-20220809033642-00669.warc.gz | en | 0.956072 | 1,609 | 3.578125 | 4 |
Scotland Yard Read Encrypted BlackBerry Messages During RiotsBritish police officials said they used confiscated BlackBerry smartphones to "break into" encrypted communications.
Strategic Security Survey: Global Threat, Local Pain(click image for larger view and for full slideshow)
What's the easiest way to access an encrypted smartphone communications network? Have a smartphone that can listen in.
At least, that was one tactic employed by police in London as they sought better intelligence on the outbreak of riots across England. So said Tim Godwin, acting police commissioner for the Metropolitan--the country's largest police force, which is more commonly known as Scotland Yard--on Tuesday, as he appeared before the U.K. Parliament's Home Affairs Committee. The committee, which oversees many of the country's police forces, is investigating the success or failure of police tactics used during the riots.
According to Godwin, as riots broke out in 22 of London's 32 boroughs last Monday and threatened to overwhelm police officers, he made the decision to begin eavesdropping and acting on encrypted BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) communications. Godwin said that by using BlackBerry smartphones seized by police, detectives were able to "break into" BBM and gain "live time monitoring," according to the Guardian. As a result, police officers were able to secure locations before rioting broke out, as well as proactively shut down stores and businesses in areas that faced looting. Police were also monitoring Twitter and Facebook, and Godwin's testimony suggested that police may have used confiscated BlackBerry smartphones to gain access to private Twitter feeds.
In Britain, multiple politicians had called for a curfew on BBM--widely used by the rioters, who were largely young and male--as well as social networks, to help quell the unrest. (As some privacy advocates have noted, such tactics echo strategies recently employed by autocratic rulers in such countries as Egypt and Libya, as they clung to power in the face of mass riots.) But Godwin confirmed that the police considered that tactic. "We did consider seeking the legal authority to switch it off. The legality is questionable, very questionable," he said, according to the Guardian.
Interestingly, BlackBerry manufacturer Research In Motion had released a statement in which it offered to assist investigators, in accordance with U.K. laws. Numerous security experts took that to mean that any police requests for BBM communications would, as usual, require a warrant.
Using a seized device to surreptitiously access BlackBerry Messenger communications, however, is gray territory. Furthermore, by detailing the difficulties police faced in amassing intelligence about planned rioting and looting, Godwin may not only be seeking exculpation for that intelligence gathering, but also laying the groundwork for a formal police request for new laws, giving them explicit power to eavesdrop on encrypted communications during times of unrest.
According to the Guardian, Godwin told the committee that police were not "at this moment of time" seeking the ability to deactivate social networks or eavesdrop on encrypted smartphone communications channels, during times of civil unrest. But news reports suggest that police are already working with the domestic intelligence service, MI5, as well as the country's electronic signals intelligence center, the Government Communications Headquarters, to decrypt BBM communications in the hunt for people who organized riots and looting.
Beyond using confiscated BlackBerry smartphones, police monitored riot-related and looting-related public messages sent via Twitter and Facebook, which resulted in multiple arrests.
But some of the resulting sentences have been criticized as being disproportionate. Notably, on Tuesday, two men were sentenced to four years in prison on charges of inciting a riot via Facebook. One 20-year-old man created a Facebook event page for "Smash Down in Northwich Town," and set the McDonald's in his town center as a meeting point. But he was the sole attendee and was arrested by waiting police. In the other case, a 22-year-old man created a Facebook page called "Let's Have a Riot in Latchford," but removed it the next day--after 300 people had viewed it--and published an apology on Facebook.
In handing down the stiff sentences, the judge said they were meant to serve as a deterrent.
At a full-day virtual event, InformationWeek and Dark Reading editors will talk with security experts about the causes and mistakes that lead to security breaches, both from the technology perspective and from the people perspective. It happens Aug. 25. Register now. | <urn:uuid:afd111c2-8a96-4975-a814-af60b1a39bd2> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.darkreading.com/risk-management/scotland-yard-read-encrypted-blackberry-messages-during-riots/d/d-id/1099613?cid=sbx_byte_related_mostpopular_wireless_security_malware_writers_prefer_android&itc=sbx_byte_related_mostpopular_wireless_security_malware_writers_prefer_android | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280483.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00293-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972467 | 907 | 1.914063 | 2 |
Chance plays an important role, even an exaggerated role, in the novels of Thomas Hardy. Many things which are mysterious and sudden, which cannot be accounted for in any natural way, take place. The unexpected often happens and always it is the undesirable unexpected. Such chance events are heavy blows aimed at the head of Hardy's protagonists and they send them to their doom.
Hardy's plots are dominated by chance events. This is also true of the Return of the Native. In this novel also there are many things which happen at the wrong moment, when they are least expected to happen, and the result is sorrow, suffering, and tragedy for all concerned. For example,
(1) Clym's coming across Eustacia by chance as he returns home with his mother and Thomasin, leads to their sad and tragic love.
(2) It is just a matter of chance that Diggory is a few minutes late in coming to propose for Thomasin's hand. Wildeve reaches before him and is accepted. Had Diggory reached earlier, he would have married Thomasin and Wildeve would have married Eustacia. Much sorrow and suffering would have been avoided in this way.
(3) It is by chance that Christian meets some friends and goes with them to the Quiet Woman. It is by chance that he wins at the game of dice. The result is that Wildeve comes to know that he has Thomasin's guineas on him, and he wins all of them from him.
(4) It is just a chance that Wildeve comes to Eustacia's house exactly at the moment that Mrs. Yeobright also reaches there.
(5) It is just a chance that Clym moves, and mutters "mother", in his sleep, just at the moment Mrs. Yeobright knocks at the door. The result is that Eustacia supposes that her husband is awake, and so she does not herself open the door. This leads to the death of Mrs. Yeobright, and the separation of Clym and Eustacia after a violent quarrel.
(6) It is just a chance that Johnny Nunsuch repeats the dying words of Mrs. Yeobright, exactly at the moment that Clym reaches the cottage of Susan Nunsuch.
(7) The chance meeting of Wildeve and Eustacia in the fair leads to their dancing together, and the renewal of their love.
(8) It is just a chance that Clym's letter of reconciliation does not reach Eustacia in time.
Thus it becomes clear that the plot of the riovel is heavily overloaded with chance events. Too much depends on chance. This introduces an element of artificiality into the novel. Indeed, this is one of the pieces of criticism levelled against the novel as a work of art. | <urn:uuid:14c6048e-8d87-4456-a94d-d154ed4f554a> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://neoenglishsystem.blogspot.com/2010/12/role-of-chance-in-return-of-native.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560283301.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095123-00509-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979907 | 582 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Check out this FREE Guided Reading Binder! It has room for six group spots, planning pages for the month, group planning pages, and student pages. This would work perfectly in your Kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th grade classroom. Click through for all the details and to grab your FREE copy today!
Students will be able to identify text structures more easily if they become familiar with signal terms, words and phrases that frequently occur in certain types of texts. Here’s a free chart from the University of Tennessee’s Center for Literacy, Education & Employment that shows common text structures with their signal terms | <urn:uuid:0c17cfcd-18e8-45c3-be54-30cf0d2b501a> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://au.pinterest.com/explore/reading-binder/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281450.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00178-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936879 | 134 | 2.828125 | 3 |
By supporting forceful conversion of Hindus into Islam, Malaysia’s Penang district mufti Datuk Seri Wan Salim Wan Mohd Noor said, Hindu mothers can get custody of their children but they must remain Muslims despite being unilaterally converted as minors.
According to Free Malaysia Today news site, mufti Wan Salim said, reversing their conversion was “impractical” and might “further complicate the situation” and they [those forcefully converted Hindu children] should remains Muslim for the “good of all”.
The remark came after Indira Gandhi Action Team’s (IGAT) leader Arun Dorasamy reportedly pushed for the children’s conversion to be cancelled. He said:
“Doing that would only muddy the good ties that the Hindus have with Muslims in the country.
“From an Islamic perspective, one’s faith in Islam cannot be reversed through a court decree, but only if that person voluntarily wants to leave Islam without any pressure from anyone”.
Mufti Wan Salim said, forcefully converted Hindus can live with their families “as much as they prefer at venues deemed safe”. He said: “Islam does not prevent family members of different faiths to live under one roof. In fact, they can even share meals together so long as the food is not considered to be haram”.
Rejecting forceful conversion of Hindus into Islam and hands of Islamic charities behind such conversions, Mufti Wan Salim said there was no hands behind conversion of Hindus and “non-Muslims” into Islam. He even went further by encouraging forceful or deceitful religious conversions.
It may be mentioned here that, in Malaysia, cases of forceful or deceitful religious conversions, mostly by luring poor Hindus with handsome cash incentives or by trapping Hindu boys and girls into love jihad and sex jihad traps. There also are reports of Hindus being employed by Muslims in factories and as domestic help, where they are lured with cash incentives for religious conversions.
The controversy centering religious conversions in Malaysia caught media’s attention when the case of a Hindu man named Nagashwaran Muniandy was challenged by his wife in the apex court. According to information, a decade ago Nagashwaran Muniandy got converted into Islam and later he had secretly converted his 14-year-old twin daughters and 10-year-old son. The conversion took place despite the 2018 Federal Court ruling in the case of Hindu mother that the unilateral conversion of minors was unlawful and unconstitutional.
The Hindu mother Loh had obtained interim custody of her children in July 2019 pending her divorce, but her court case was delayed when the country went into Covid-19 lockdown in March 2020. She finally obtained full custody of her children in March 2021. She continued searching for them so she could finally take them home.
On February 16, 2022, Perlis Mufti Datuk Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin admitted in a video posted on his Facebook account that the three children were unilaterally converted to Islam in July 2020 by their father before he was imprisoned on drug charges.
He added that the Perlis Islamic Religious Department had not enquired about the mother’s whereabouts and that the children’s conversion were not registered with the National Registration Department. But he also maintained that the minors’ conversion to Islam is legal despite the landmark court judgment outlawing unilateral conversions.
Hindu rights groups as well as organizations such as Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) should immediately look into this disturbing trend of forceful and deceitful conversion of Hindus into Islam in Malaysia. While those so-called secularist and left-Islamist leaning newspapers and media in India and the world may either try to hide such serious matter or even go further by defending such conversions, publications such as The Organiser, Weekly Blitz and others should continue exposing such notorious trend of such forceful or deceitful religious conversion of Hindus in Malaysia.
Please follow Blitz on Google News channel | <urn:uuid:551ce001-2e5b-490a-83f1-6eb6b7c92d03> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.weeklyblitz.net/opinion/malaysian-mufti-advocates-forceful-conversion-of-hindus/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00073.warc.gz | en | 0.967492 | 857 | 1.507813 | 2 |
The right populist formation was founded in winter 2013 to establish discussion on German European policy and generally on the future of common Union currency. Although the party profile aimed to be a conservative one; the election campaign showed that party got a lot of support as a protest movement. The election manifesto as well as public activities displayed the movement more as a single issue party than a serious conservative opposition to Merkel. However, the party did not pass the 5 % threshold, with a vote of 4.9 % the AfD can be seen as a real challenger to Merkel’s European policy.
Election manifesto 2013
The manifesto stresses the role of the Euro in German and European policy; the party rejects the current design of supranational integration. AfD proposes using the Europe of nations model based on economic integration while respecting national interests. The EU competences should not include national sovereignty issues such as the national economy. There must be a possibility to gain the competences from the EU level back to the national one. Speaking about the common currency, the party proposes to start a serious debate on bringing back the former German national currency, the Deutschmark. Germany is strong enough to use its own currency without any significant complications. Immigration should be based on preference and only allowed to qualified workers. However the party does not refuse any immigration: in this case the party position is close to that of the CDU 15 years ago. Interestingly, the manifesto has a very cold attitude to the banking system. According to the party, national governments should not produce recovery funds for banks; they should use their own resources for that.
Although the party stresses national interests to sustain nation-based prosperity, the emphasis on German unity is less strong than in some CDU’s manifestos. The movement includes some populist elements but it is oriented towards internal German society and not broader European or world discourses. | <urn:uuid:6eced36c-6a41-43db-8c30-d858f158e012> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://ceeidentity.eu/database/manifestoescoun/alternative-f-r | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571222.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810222056-20220811012056-00669.warc.gz | en | 0.954062 | 400 | 1.734375 | 2 |
As I mentioned in a previous post, I am transitioning from Journler, so in DTPO I miss some features which I have taken for granted. (DTPO is indeed very liberating in many ways.)
One feature that I would really appreciate having is the ability to edit the Date Created. Sometimes I add an entry a day or two after I had the idea. And I would like to be able to put in the correct date and time. If a calendar is added in a future version of DTPO, then the ability to edit the date is going to be even more helpful. Thanks for considering it.
I have modified Christian’s change date script to change the creation date of any selected files. It should do what you want.
To install it
- Open the scripts folder (from the script menu item - the little scroll)
- Unzip the attached file
Change Creation Date.scpt.zip (7.11 KB)
Thanks for posting this, Frederiko. I need a bit more direction on how to use this file.
When I click on it, it downloads and opens immediately. I saved it on the desktop, and then I click on the scripts icon > Open Scripts Folder > Change Creation Date.scpt > the file opens, and then what? I can run the script, clicking on the play button, but then I get a floating window asking me to enter a date. Is this the way it is supposed to work?
Sorry I was a bit brief. Here is a step by step explanation:
How to install
- Download ‘Change Creation Date.scpt.zip’ from the link. It will almost certainly be downloaded to your ‘Downloads’ folder. (Previously you save it to your Desktop which is fine too)
- Open the ‘Download Folders’ (or the Desktop if you saved it there)
- Double-click the file ‘Change Creation Date.scpt.zip’ and it will be unpacked into a file called ‘Change Creation Date.scpt’ in the same folder as the .zip
- Right click on ‘Change Creation Date.scpt’ and select ‘Copy’ from the popup menu.
- Go to Devonthink
- In the Devonthink Menu Bar there is a small black icon resembling a ‘scroll’ between the ‘Window’ and ‘Help’ menu.
- Click the Scroll.
- The first menu item is ‘Open Scripts Folder’. Click it.
- A finder menu will open with the ‘Scripts’ folder highlighted.
- Within the scripts folders you will see directories which correspond to the menu items in ‘Open Scripts Folder’.
- Double click the ‘Dates’ directory.
- Select Edit->Paste from the Finder menu bar to paste ‘Change Creation Date.scpt’ into the ‘Dates’ directory.
When you want to invoke the script, highlight the file or files you want to change the date of then select ‘Change Creation Date.scpt’ from the ‘Scroll’ ->Dates menu. When the popup window appears enter the creation date you want to apply to the file/s.
It’s possible to change the creation/modification date via the Info panel. However, multiple selections aren’t supported.
Thanks! That was helpful. I see how it works now.
It does not allow me to change the time, but it is a good alternative. I do hope that they make this an in-built feature of DTPO, not a script. In Journler, this feature is super easy: I just need to click on the date in the column where Date Created appears and I can change the date and time.
I really appreciate your help. | <urn:uuid:1cd13d33-40ea-4565-8b65-f3aca1de80fd> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/changing-date-created/20328 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571472.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811133823-20220811163823-00679.warc.gz | en | 0.913978 | 823 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Renting has recently become extremely popular, yet renters insurance is still widely misunderstood; many renters don’t even know how to get it. In fact, renters insurance is extremely cheap, at an average of under $150 per year.
Policies also provide important benefits to both tenants and landlords. Many renters expect their landlord’s insurance to cover much more than it actually does. Renters insurance fills in these gaps, which is why many landlords are now making it mandatory.
In most cases, your landlord will only be responsible for damages that result from their own negligence. If they provide faulty locks, for example, they’ll be liable if someone breaks in. In the majority of cases, such as natural events, burglaries, and other damages, you’ll be responsible for the costs. A low cost renters insurance plan will pay for many of these events and provide peace of mind for both parties.
Coverage Under Renters Insurance
Renters insurance covers a wide range of situations, and it’s important to understand when it’s appropriate to file a claim. One of the key aspects of renters insurance is its coverage of personal property. If you need to replace items that were lost or damaged in a burglary, fire, or similar incident, simply file a claim through your renter’s insurance to be reimbursed.
Property coverage is an important aspect of renters insurance, as the average renter owns between $20,000 and $30,000 worth of personal property. Without insurance, any unexpected incident can be a major problem for both tenant and landlord.
Renters insurance ensures that both sides are covered in case of an emergency for a small monthly fee. Most policies will cover a wide range of situations in addition to personal property claims, so read your plan closely and discuss it with your agent to get a full understanding of your coverage.
Getting Renters Insurance
Since there’s so little awareness of renters insurance, many people don’t even know where to get coverage. There are many providers available when you’re searching for renters insurance. Some may give users the option of registering through an app, while other companies may need customers to meet an agent in person to set up a plan.
You may even be able to bundle your renters insurance policy together with your car or home plan with your existing provider.
If you’re a tenant, there’s simply no good reason to not have renters insurance. For a relatively low cost, it can save you significant amounts of money in the long-run. Furthermore, if you’re a landlord, you probably sleep better knowing that your tenants will have the money to pay for any incidents. It makes renting easier for both parties, which is why you should consider making it mandatory for all your tenants. | <urn:uuid:fb1ac5c8-6606-42f2-9ac1-e72837acb803> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://personalfinancenews.com/your-guide-to-renters-insurance/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573744.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819161440-20220819191440-00475.warc.gz | en | 0.949609 | 580 | 1.570313 | 2 |
October 7-8, 2009 | Austin, TX
The US Drought Monitor Forum was held in Austin, TX. There was a Drought Monitor panel at the end of the day Wednesday. At that time the main research needs that the authors identified were more data on soil moisture, more consideration of whether there should be two maps to reflect the long and short term conditions, correlations of drought impacts with drought status, more timely GIS input and how to account for varied topography such as the mountainous areas of the West.
Kelly Redmond spoke about Musings, Metaphors, and Moving Forward. Much of that discussion centered around the impossibility of reducing the full complexity of drought at different time scales and for different communities to a two-dimensional map. Despite the difficulty of the task, Redmond underscored the importance of giving stakeholders what they need, namely, a map, ideally reflecting conditions at the fine scales that users are requesting. He also underscored the value of professional judgment: "Objective does not mean strictly numerical. It means rigorous." | <urn:uuid:32adae4d-fa05-4812-bb6f-861b57ad8a58> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://drought.unl.edu/NewsOutreach/Outreach/Workshops/USDroughtMonitorForumAustinTX.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279489.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00006-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952842 | 210 | 1.960938 | 2 |
The best technique to swim backstroke with is an increasingly difficult question to answer without great context. Because while many successful backstroke swimmers have a ‘traditional’ tempo, several current Olympic backstrokers’ world record rates are much slower than even their peers on the podium.
And this distance per stroke dominant swimming has enormous potential for an athlete’s range. Swimming performances centered around ‘connecting’ the hand to the body’s core immediately upon entry are adaptable to any race strategy.
They enable very strong athletes to lock onto the water and directionally push through as if they were lifting weights with ground reaction forces.
What is Backstroke Swimming?
Swimming on the back has the unique benefit of easy, rhythmic breathing that comes from never taking a stroke underwater. But the flipside for the swimmer is not being able to see where they are going, kind of like driving in reverse.
Generally, the backstroke we are looking to develop has the following movements:
- High elbow catch during the underwater phase
- Proper hand entry allows for a similar scenario to freestyle and butterfly that promotes forces from the hands that also directionally stabilize the entire body hull.
- A bent elbow, without breaking the wrist, all while keeping hand and forearm on the same propulsive plane to create an “early vertical forearm” in swimming.
- Consistent kick, which is a little smaller than the freestyle kicking motion
- Fluid and correctly timed rotation through propulsive phases
- Increase hand speed throughout a stroke cycle and maintain constant palm pressure with the water for as long as possible.
Training the Modern Backstroke
A study has examined the aerobic demand of backstroke swimming and its correlation to anthropometrics, biomechanics, or performance. The purpose of this study was an attempt to understand:
- the aerobic demand of backstroke swimming in proficient swimmers at high velocities;
- the effects of body size and stroke technique on submaximal and maximal O2 costs, and;
- any relationship between submaximal O2 costs and maximal performance.
Results showed that VO2 increased linearly with velocity. And VO2 was also related to the subjects’ body mass, height, and wingspan. Moreover, a longer distance per stroke was associated with lower overall O2 costs and better peak performances.
Backstroke Technique from Rate
Looking from a biomechanical perspective, because the arms are straight during recovery, the hand appears to move faster than freestyle, as it’s further away from the shoulder.
Perceptively this results in a much quicker looking tempo compared to freestyle. Despite that appearance, excellent backstroke swimming is still, in most cases, done through sufficient stroke length.
Another study was to investigate biomechanical variables in backstroke technique at different distance specializations.
Swimming velocity, stroke length, stroke rate, duration of different arm stroke phases, and selected kinematic variables were assessed in both cases. In the 50-m distance swimmers, the duration of the propulsive phase at Vmax…increased significantly with increasing swimming velocity…both the pull and push phases were fundamental in the increase of duration of the propulsive phase.Matteo Cortesi et al
Compared to 200-meters event specialists, sprint backstrokers appear more capable of controlling stroke tempos to increase their overall velocity.
Regardless of the desired or appropriate tempo for each athlete, the following components are still universal:
Backstroke Kicking to Success
Great legs. Small steady kick. And whip the kick through the toes to let the water feel like a roller coaster ride.
Backstroke kicking is not the same as a freestyle kick; so if a swimmer wants to improve technique, they need to learn both. While freestyle swimmers have between a two to eight-beat flutter kick; backstrokers keep the same kick rate.
Legs in backstroke are not only a propulsive force but also the rudder that steadies the vessel upon the water’s surface. They keep swimmers from dropping their hips and ultimately sinking the ship. And with no pause to rotate, athletes require good leg conditioning for fast, efficient backstroke.
A High Catch with Powerful Hands
More flexible swimmers can achieve this even above their heads. Swimmers with average flexibility should enter their hands above the shoulder.
The stronger the swimmer is, the wider their hand can travel and still lock into the ‘core.’ The depth of pull varies by opinion (slower tempo is usually deeper). Due to muscle strength considerations, many use the more shallow arm path.
But the ‘unfair’ exchange is when backstrokers improve their entry phase, it ‘feels’ weaker because they are maintaining speed instead of inefficiently speeding up and slowing down through the cycle.
And with stroke corrections, many swimmers ‘overreach’ because they feel like they pull more water. Just because it feels more powerful doesn’t mean the motion is more productive initiating the pull phase.
A strong finish to the propulsive phase creates timely hip rotation as a closed-loop system. The shoulder roll into/over the water then encourages an excellent catch for the beginning of the next stroke cycle.
Excellent Body Position
For great hip rotation/timing, keep the ‘dry’ alternating stroke arm perpendicular to the body as long as possible. And make sure to accelerate the other arm through the finish of the pull.
A swimmer’s core muscles connect catch and legs, to ensure a synchronous summation of velocities. Fully engaged with core muscles around great body position is crucial to maintaining a distributed energy output throughout a swimming race or practice. A lack of concentration or conditioning leads to asynchronous misfires in stroke timing that slow a swimmer down.
Lastly, due to many athletes’ ability to ‘tie’ their hand to their core while swimming backstroke, many can generate more power in backstroke than in the other three strokes. Anecdotally, this is evidenced by how much weight they can lift in backstroke compared to different strokes using equipment like the ‘power tower.’
Backstroke Swimming Drills and Tips
And yet another study found that swimming backstroke with paddles compared to without allowed for greater overall efficiency at maximum but not sub-maximal velocity.
Swim paddles appear to be useful at submaximal efforts when one needs to reduce the stroking frequency and increase the stroke length without shifts in energy demands. And like the other strokes, the stroke length is critical in world-class backstroke swimming.
In comparison, picture how much quicker an athlete moves their arms in a ‘spin drill.’ And when for other swimming drills to improve technique
- 6-3-6 Drill is great for the rolling motion
- Lift and Drop for optimal timing
- 2x Touch backstroke swimming for working the recovery phase
- Double Arm Pull for the stroke propulsion phase | <urn:uuid:3c91be01-d9b8-400c-98f5-710271760169> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.colabsports.com/backstroke/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573876.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20220820012448-20220820042448-00077.warc.gz | en | 0.944009 | 1,457 | 2.625 | 3 |
My son sent an article around to our family about norovirus. It’s a pretty fascinating article for the Frieders family, because we’re all a bit off, but it brings up questions unrelated to vomit.
From the article: “It’s estimated that in the United States alone, noroviruses infect at least 23 million people a year. Seventy thousand of them end up hospitalized, and nearly 800 die. Things are worse in developing countries, where people are less likely to get rigged to an IV to get pumped full of fluids. It’s estimated that noroviruses kill 200,000 children under the age of five every year in developing countries.”
Consider this; every year:
- 23,000,000 people get norovirus in the U.S – about 6% (6 in 100)
- 70,000 of them are hospitalized – about 0.3% (3 in 1000) of those who get it and about 0.02% (2 in 10,000) of the population.
- 800 die – about 0.003% of those who get it and about 0.0002% of the US population.
- There are about 32,000 automobile deaths per year (40 times more than norovirus)
- Or about 38,000 prescription drug deaths (47.5 times more than norovirus)
Yes, norovirus is bad bug, but we’ve all lived with it “forever” – and the numbers are fairly constant on a percentage basis. Three of every thousand people who get norovirus die. I suggest we should fear automobiles and prescribed drugs at least 40 times more than the norovirus.
Did you know that approximately 2.5 million people die every year in the United States – about 7,500 per day?
HOW DO WE PUT A STOP TO ALL THIS DEATH?
Does this sound a bit over the top to anyone else?
I was merely trying to put a little oil on the waves (that’s a metaphor). It is far too easy to be sensational.
For example, today the talk in the town where I live is still about NO MURDERS in 2012. However, there are only 17,000 homicides per year in the US – 11,000 of which are gun related.
There are 37,000 deaths caused by legal, prescribed drugs in the same time frame.
What gets the press and the knee jerk reactions? Guns. Homicides of any kind are almost impossible to stop. Drug deaths are easy to stop.
There is something terribly wrong with this picture – and nobody cares.
Well, except me. | <urn:uuid:055a4d2d-bdeb-4616-ad2d-522c1d8c2fe2> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://thecompounder.com/2013/01/08/puke-guns-drugs-death/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572089.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814234405-20220815024405-00070.warc.gz | en | 0.938602 | 566 | 2.296875 | 2 |
Definition of kerseymere
n. - See Cassimere. 2
The word "kerseymere" uses 10 letters: E E E E K M R R S Y.
No direct anagrams for kerseymere found in this word list.
Words formed by adding one letter before or after kerseymere (in bold), or to eeeekmrrsy in any order:
s - kerseymeres
All words formed from kerseymere by changing one letter
Browse words starting with kerseymere by next letter | <urn:uuid:bc2a594a-f617-42cf-b322-9785ea8ed59c> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.morewords.com/word/kerseymere/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280128.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00390-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.671175 | 114 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Comparisons of race relations in Brazil and North America (United States) have a long history. As Thomas Skidmore's classic Black into White made clear, Brazilian writers and intellectuals were already drawing such comparisons by the late 1800s; and Gilberto Freyre's direct observations of Jim Crow segregation in the United States south provided the implicit backdrop to his seminal portrait of Brazilian race relations in Casa grande e senzala (1933) and Sobrados e mocambos (1936). Meanwhile North American observers, ranging from former President Theodore Roosevelt to African-American writers and journalists, were commenting on patterns of race in Brazil and contrasting those patterns, either implicitly or explicitly, to race relations in the United States.
Copyright © 2012-2013 Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe.
Editores: Ori Preuss; Nahuel Ribke
Instituto Sverdlin de Historia y Cultura de América Latina, Escuela de Historia
Universidad de Tel Aviv, Ramat Aviv,
P.O.B. 39040 (69978), Israel.
Correo electrónico: email@example.com | <urn:uuid:87079709-0307-4b54-907c-59bcfc570353> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://www3.tau.ac.il/ojs/index.php/eial/article/view/468 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571909.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813051311-20220813081311-00276.warc.gz | en | 0.812513 | 280 | 3.421875 | 3 |
When water finds its way to the surface of a metal tool and sits there for days on end, the result is that an oxidation process can take place and leave your tool rusty. But this doesn't necessarily mean it's the end of the road for that item; it will take elbow grease, but you'll be glad to know that pesky rust can be removed from a metal surface.
A few of these methods for removing rust might sound far-fetched, but never fear, dear readers—we've tested and approved each one before passing it on to you.
Method: Rinse the metal item and shake dry. Dust with baking soda (it will stick to the damp areas), making sure to cover all rusty areas. Leave the item for an hour or so, then scour with steel wool or a metal brush, removing the rust down to the metal. (If cleaning a pan, use a scouring pad.) Rinse, and towel dry.
Best used on: Less severe rust, baking pans, light rust rings, thin metal.
Pros: Simple method using one cheap, common ingredient.
Cons: Takes up to one hour before you can really start to work away the rust. The key to rust removal is using the steel wool or scouring pad, so be prepared to use some elbow grease.
Method: Submerge your item in white vinegar and let sit overnight. Remove your item and scrape with a metal brush or steel wool. If your item can't be submerged, soak rags in white vinegar and wrap the rusted area.
Best used on: Significant rust found on tools or items that are all steel and can be submerged without compromising the integrity of other surfaces.
Pros: Super easy "let sit and forget" method. Takes hardly any elbow grease to work away the rust once you remove item from the vinegar.
Cons: The item needs to soak overnight, so it takes a while to achieve results.
Potato and dish soap
Method: Sounds crazy, but it works like a charm! Cut your potato in half and cover the open end with dish soap. Use the potato like you would a scouring pad and watch the rust fade away as it reacts with the soap and potato.
Best used on: Small, less-stubborn rust stains on easy-to-reach surfaces.
Pros: Easy and relatively fast method for removing rust. Works great on kitchen appliances. Uses items you probably already have in your pantry.
Cons: This is probably the messiest method for removing rust. Be sure to work over a sink, or somewhere outdoors where cleanup is easy.
Method: You might not have this laying around the house, but it can be easily found at most health food stores. Add a few inches of hot water to a bowl and sprinkle in 2-3 tablespoons of the citric acid. Submerge your item and let sit overnight, remove in the morning, scrub off lingering rust flecks with a brush, rinse, and pat dry.
Best used on: Significant rust found on tools or items that can be submerged without compromising the integrity of other surfaces and coatings (citric acid will remove paint!).
Pros: Works like a champ! Another "let sit and forget" method.
Cons: Most people won't have this ingredient in their pantry, but it can easily be found in health food stores or online.
Lemon and salt
Method: Generously coat the rusted area in a layer of salt, cut a lemon (or lime) in half, and squeeze the juice over the salt. Let the mixture sit, then scrub away the rust with the rind. If rust remains, repeat the procedure and let the salt and juice sit for another hour or two, until rust disappears completely. Rinse, then pat dry.
Best used on: Less stubborn rust stains. Works great for kitchen knives that have little bits of rust here and there.
Pros: Minimally abrasive process, uses items you've probably already got at home.
Cons: If you're scrubbing rust off a kitchen knife, this process can be tricky to navigate without cutting yourself. Be sure to wear a protective glove, or work on a flat surface to minimize the risk of accidents.
Edited from a post by Sarah Starkey originally published on March 10th, 2011
Have a really great DIY project or tutorial that you want to share with others? Let us know! We love checking out what you're making these days, and learning from our readers. When you're ready, click here to submit your project and photos. | <urn:uuid:fd43c678-5320-4eb0-a2ab-e6afbad2da45> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/how-to-clean-rust-off-old-loaf-141206 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280364.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00036-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.902855 | 938 | 2.109375 | 2 |
I guess you could say the beginning of the sale barn in Hutchinson, Minnesota, just west of Minneapolis, was the community sale held at McCloud County Fairgrounds starting in 1934. This community sale was started by Bob Funk, an auctioneer from Buffalo Lake, Minnesota, and Hutchinson farmer August Nelson.
They held sales at the fairgrounds for four years until a sale barn was built north of Hutchinson. From 1937 until June 16, 2017, sales were held there continuously. In 1940, Alfred Stegmeier joined the partnership as clerk. Later, Roy Funk became a partner.
On Jan. 1, 1955, Nelson and Stegmeier took in Everett Munson as a partner. Everett ran the sale barn until the late 1960s. He sold it to Garrett Smith, Luverne, Minnesota. Smith had just sold a sale barn in Luverne in extreme southwest Minnesota.
As a matter of habit, Smith always picked up a Sunday paper from Sioux Falls, S.D., but one Sunday the papers from Sioux Falls were sold out, so he picked up a Minneapolis Sunday Tribune. When he got home, Smith looked through the ads for businesses for sale and saw the Hutchinson Sale Barn was listed. The next day he and his wife went to Hutchinson and bought the sale barn. He owned it until 1978 or ’79, when he sold it to John Kruse.
Kruse owned the sale barn until 1986, when he sold it back to Smith. In 1994, Smith sold it to auctioneer Gary Hotovoc. He ran it from 1994 until 2008. After that, Brad Thelen leased it and ran the livestock and miscellaneous sales. Hotovoc continued to maintain the machinery and special auctions.
Meeting the needs of farm country
The sale barn was recognized as an asset to the town of Hutchinson. On sale days, especially in the early years, it drew a lot of people to town. In the summer, whole families came; in the winter, just the farmer and his wife attended sales. If they had an extra duck, goose or turkey, or a few chickens, they’d take them to the sale barn in gunnysacks or crates. Many times that extra money was given to the farmer’s wife so she could buy something for herself.
Before World War II, many farmers didn’t have a pickup, or even a two-wheel trailer, that they could use to haul a sow, a younger dairy or beef animal, or a sheep or two. When it got cold out, they took out the back seat of the car and used that space to haul pigs, calves or sheep. If a farmer had a mortgage or rent to pay (a lot of farms were rented back then), they’d take enough animals to the sale barn to get the money to make the payment. If the animals weren’t finished out enough to go to the South St. Paul market, they went to Hutchinson.
In the sale barn’s early years, a lot of horses were sold there. There was a separate barn for horses north of the main barn and a tack barn on the northeast corner of the main barn. Because harness and collars were fitted to the specific horse, those were brought along and hung in the tack room. They were tagged with the same number as the horse so they would stay with the horse. In later years, the tack barn was torn down and the horse barn was converted to a cattle barn.
Important part of the local economy
Hutchinson had a thriving business community where farmers spent the cash they earned at the sale barn. There were two big department stores – J.C. Penney’s and Braun’s – where you could get everything from baby clothes to work clothes, shoes, and fabric to make dresses and other clothes.
At one time, Hutchinson was home to five implement dealers and one short line and farm supply store, as well as car dealerships. When the sale barn was really busy, both sides of SR 15 were lined with cars with trailers, cars with animals in them and pickups waiting to get up to the docks to unload.
It was a simpler time, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t bad apples. In the late 1960s, a Hutchinson farm store sold a particular brand of plow lays. A lot of local farmers bought them. If they traded for a new plow and had one or two spare lays they didn’t need, they’d take them to the sale barn to sell.
Jim “Big Jim” Dircks, veteran sale barn ring man, knew his crowd, including the well-known farmer who would buy multiple plow lays if he could get them for half-price or less. One day when Big Jim was in the local farm store, he saw his customer trying to return the lays without a receipt. Big Jim later asked the clerk if the farmer did that often and he said “yes.” Big Jim told them not to give the man cash back if he didn’t have a receipt.
The case of the ghost calves
One summer, for four weeks straight, two to four calves disappeared each week from the sale barn. They were checked in, tags were put in their ears and the matching number was entered on the board to be taken out when the calves sold. But every week there’d be two to four numbers left – and a corresponding number of missing calves.
The weather that June was quite warm, so the windows had been removed from the sale barn’s sidewalls to allow air in to cool the livestock. That made it more comfortable, too, for the people who entered the pens to inspect calves.
As the disappearances continued, the men in charge of the department couldn’t make sense of the mystery. Big Jim got to thinking about those windows, suspecting that one man on the inside was handing calves out the window to a partner on the outside. He installed permanent screens over the openings. That was the end of the missing calves.
Busting a hay scam
Regular complaints marked one summer’s hay auction. Each week, a buyer would complain that the pile of bales he’d bought the week before had nice green hay on the outside, but inside was junk hay, cornstalks or straw.
If it had been the same buyer every time, he’d not have gotten much attention. But each week the complaint came from different buyers. They had one thing in common: They’d all bought hay from the same seller.
At the next sale, the auctioneer found out where the seller had his stock. Then he told his ring man, “When we get to that number, I’ll say 1-2-3 and we’ll hit the stack with our shoulders.” They did, and the stack fell apart. The hay didn’t bring much money and the seller was never seen again.
The end of an era
When Big Jim was hired to work at the sale barn, it was his job to take the tusks out of boar hogs to protect people and other animals. One day the regular ring man couldn’t make it to work, so Big Jim was drafted. The rest is history. Big Jim worked as the sale barn ring man for 42 years. He was a “jack of all trades” there, appraising livestock, buying livestock for people who couldn’t attend a sale, helping the veterinarian vaccinate animals and castrate and dehorn cattle, and sorting cattle so they would sell better.
The sale barn also had a restaurant known as the Stockman’s Café, open only on sale day. It became a very popular place on Wednesdays, offering very good food – including homemade pie baked by local farm women – at a very reasonable price.
The end of the sale barn was brought about by the changing dynamics of farming. These days there are no dairy cows nearby except in one or two big dairies, no hogs and no sheep. A few chickens and ducks are being raised, and there are some yaks, emu and ostriches but not enough to warrant a sale barn. With all of the state inspections, insurance and regulations, it’s no longer feasible to operate a sale barn unless you have the volume to pay the bills and keep the building up. FC
Milferd Smith lives in Darwin, Minnesota. | <urn:uuid:343336ac-b2fb-4ac5-a943-a030b6a9aac3> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.farmcollector.com/farm-life/hutchinson-sale-barn-zm0z18julzhur/print/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571222.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810222056-20220811012056-00665.warc.gz | en | 0.982461 | 1,756 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Eliminating Bad Fats Can Improve Our Health Dramatically
But what are the bad fats? Omega-6 fatty acids when out of balance with omega-3 fatty acids are pro-inflammatory, one of the primary factors for causing the runaway, chronic inflammatory process in most Americans. To eliminate the imbalance of omega-6 to omega-3, we should increase omega-3 fatty acids and decrease omega-6 fatty acids. Eating more cold water fish, grass fed beef and buffalo, range fed chickens and other foul, and eggs from range fed chickens. Butter, cream and milk from range fed cows provide more omega-3 fatty acids than corn fed cattle and caged chickens. Including a variety of nuts in our diet can provide healthy fats. Almonds and walnuts provide many heart benefits. Other healthy fats come from avocados and olives, olive oil, sesame seed oil and camelina oil, the new omega-3 fatty acid that I believe will soon replace flax seed oil. Flax seed oil is highly unstable and remains fresh only for a few weeks, whereas camelina oil, because of its high content of tocopherols (vitamin E) and tocotrienols (super vitamin E), make it stable for up to two years without refrigeration. Heart disease and cancer increased dramatically when we were falsely led to believe that animal fats were bad for us and the switch to vegetable fats increased heart disease and cancer. Absolutely reduce, or avoid entirely, soybean oil, corn oil, canola oil, safflower seed oil, sunflower seed oil, peanut oil and anything made with or from these oils. Studies have clearly shown that as unsaturation, meaning polyunsaturated of dietary oil increases, cancer rate increases, heart disease increases, mental skills and learning ability diminishes, and in fact, the entire body deteriorates from the onslaught of massive free radical damage and the ensuing inflammation. The bottom line, eat more saturated fat for good health, butter, cream, lard, eggs, and lower vegetable fats, margarine, vegetable shortenings and food prepared from vegetable oils. | <urn:uuid:763a0505-8092-4271-86a7-26e0cc94ff3f> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.terrytalksnutrition.com/terrys-blog/eliminating-bad-fats-can-improve-our-health-dramatically/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279368.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00324-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928842 | 428 | 2.625 | 3 |
The hypothesis that vaccines cause autism has been about as thoroughly falsified through research as any health hypothesis can be. Even if, by bending over backward into a back-breaking contortionist pose to be “open-minded”, some people will concede that there’s still a bit of room for reasonable doubt about whether there is no link between vaccines and autism in “susceptible” populations, there is no room for reasonable doubt left over whether vaccines caused the so-called “autism-epidemic” of the last two decades. They did not. Similarly, the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal, which used to be in several childhood vaccines until the end of 2001, when thimerosal was removed from all but some flu vaccines, has been about as cleared of being a cause of autism as it is possible for a substance to be. Basically, if thimerosal-containing vaccines were a cause of autism, we would have expected to see a decrease in autism prevalence beginning three to five years after the removal of thimerosal. Epidemiological studies have failed to find such a decline and have also failed to find evidence of correlation. I realize that anti-vaccine activists argue that there are still trace amounts of thimerosal in some vaccines, but, even so, thimerosal exposure in children fell almost overnight to levels lower than the 1980s, which was before the beginning of the “autism epidemic.” At the very least, one would expect autism rates to fall back to 1980s levels if thimerosal in vaccines were a driving force behind this “epidemic.” They haven’t. Quite the contrary, they’ve continued to climb.
So why does the manufactroversy that vaccines cause autism persist? There is no longer a scientific controversy; by and large, the question has been asked and answered. Vaccines do not cause autism, as far as we can detect. True, it’s impossible to completely prove a negative hypothesis, but if there is any way that vaccines do cause autism, it’s at a level below the ability of large epidemiological studies with tens or even hundreds of thousands of children to detect. Yet the fear persists.
One reason is that it’s very hard to eradicate a false belief, once entrenched. I’ve discussed many times how difficult it is to change people’s minds, as motivated reasoning leads them to seek confirming evidence and discount all else. Disconfirming evidence can even lead people to harden their beliefs even more. In particular, the hardcore anti-vaccine activists who persist in spreading the vaccine-autism myth have an interest and motivation in this mythology at least as potent as the interest pharmaceutical companies have in defending vaccines—more so, arguably, given the emotional attachment people have for their children. After all, all pharmaceutical companies are interested in, according to this mythology, is profit. If a parent, correctly or incorrectly, somehow comes to believe that something or someone has hurt his or her child, it is among the most potent motivations known to do something about it.
Another reason is that the concept has become entrenched in our culture—or at least parts of our culture—to the point where it appears regularly in the media, thus reinforcing the idea among those who don’t pay attention to the issue or those who do but haven’t decided if they believe that vaccines cause autism that maybe there is something to fear. Maybe there is still a controversy. A perfect example appeared in The Baltimore Sun over the weekend entitled We don’t know enough about childhood vaccines and subtitled Researcher asks: Are 36 doses of vaccine by age 2 too much, too little, or just right? I contend that the editors of The Baltimore Sun, by publishing this anti-vaccine propaganda, which would have been at home on the websites of the anti-vaccine blog Age of Autism or on the website of anti-vaccine groups SafeMinds, Generation Rescue, the International Medical Council on Vaccination or the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC). Examining this article, written by Margaret Dunkle, described as a “senior research scientist at the Department of Health Policy at George Washington University and director of the Early Identification and Intervention Collaborative for Los Angeles County” and as having “a family member who is vaccine-injured,” is what I would consider a “teachable moment” in analyzing the tactics of the anti-vaccine movement.
Anti-vaccine propaganda in a major newspaper
Dunkle’s article begins rather oddly. At least, it could easily strike someone as odd if he isn’t familiar with the rhetorical techniques and bad science favored by propagandists like Dunkle:
The topics of vaccines and vaccine safety spark emotional outbursts at scientific meetings and family dinner tables alike. But many of these debates are remarkably fact-free. Surprisingly few people — not just concerned parents but also doctors, policy makers and even immunization experts — can answer this seemingly simple question: How many immunizations does the federal government recommend for every child during the first two years of life?
The answer is important because most states, including Maryland, faithfully follow the recommendations of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, codifying CDC guidelines into requirements for children to enroll in school, kindergarten, preschool and child care.
The irony of someone like Dunkle referring to debates over vaccines being “fact-free” is left for the amusement of the reader. Consider the old adage that everyone is entitled to his or her opinions but no one is entitled to his or her own facts. In the case of determining the number of vaccines that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends for children before age two, the anti-vaccine movement is a master at counting vaccines in such a manner as to make the CDC-recommended vaccine schedule appear to contain as large and scary a number of vaccines as possible. It does this by counting multivalent vaccines, such as the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine (MMR), as individual components, thus multiplying one dose or shot into three vaccines. If you count it up the right way, you can get a total of 36 vaccines, a number and anti-vaccine talking point that appears to date back to a full page ad run in USA Today by Generation Rescue three years ago:
Notice a number of fallacies all rolled up into one big poster-sized ad: “Too many too soon”; the “toxin” gambit; and confusing correlation with causation. Around the same time, Jenny McCarthy started showing up on Larry King Live! using this particular talking point. Prometheus once pointed out that he couldn’t find a way to come up with a total of 36 and thought that Generation Rescue screwed up. Be that as it may, Dunkle continues:
The critical number is how many doses of vaccine a child receives. Why? If a vaccine is strong enough to confer immunity against a disease, it is important enough to count separately.
No, the critical number is not how many doses of a vaccine a child receives. It is the number of antigens to which a child is exposed, and the number of antigens to which children are exposed is much lower than it was 25 years ago as whole cell-derived vaccines have been replaced with acellular vaccines, whatever the “true” number of vaccines as counted by Dunkle is. That’s what really matters.
Going back to find up that old chestnut of an ad on Archive.org, it occurred to me that Dunkle is a bit behind the times. Since that ad ran over three years ago, anti-vaccine groups have managed to find ways to inflate the seeming number of vaccines even higher than 36, such as 48. I tried to find the link, but I’ve even seen a blog post where the blogger was trying to claim that babies get over 60 vaccines before age two. Dunkle needs to get with the program. On the other hand, the number 36 appears to be the “official” talking point number used by most anti-vaccine groups since around 2008; so I’m not surprised that she chose it. I’m also not surprised that she’s bought into the “too many too soon” mantra that groups like Generation Rescue began promoting—surprise, surprise!—about three years ago, when Jenny McCarthy and her then-boyfriend Jim Carrey led a “march on Washington”-style rally under the banner of “Green Our Vaccines” to protest the vaccine schedule.
So where is Dunkle going with all this? Easy. She uses her complaint about the “36 vaccines” or “36 shots” as a prelude to citing a paper that claims to have found that there is a correlation between vaccine uptake and the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders:
A new Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health study reports that the higher the proportion of infants and toddlers receiving recommended vaccines, the higher the state’s rate of children diagnosed with autism or speech-language problems just a few years later. This analysis is sure to rekindle the debate about vaccine safety.
Not really. It takes solid evidence and a quality scientific paper analyzed well to rekindle a debate. The paper to which Dunkle refers is anything but. Actually, it’s a truly execrable bit of data-mining by Gayle DeLong published earlier this year and entitled A Positive Association found between Autism Prevalence and Childhood Vaccination uptake across the U.S. Population. Prometheus and Sullivan have already had a go at this wretched bit of autism “science,” but I’ll comment as well, given that Dunkle used the paper as ammunition in her op-ed piece, that other anti-vaccine activists point to it as “proof” that “too many too soon” is a valid concern, and that DeLong’s paper has not yet been discussed here on SBM. In this case, better a month or two late than never, I say.
How bad can an epidemiology paper be?
Dunkle is actually a bit late promoting this study, as it’s been floating around the anti-vaccine blog underground for well over a month now. One thing that is very apparent from the article and DeLong’s analysis: DeLong is not a scientist. A quick perusal of almighty Google reveals that she is, rather, a faculty member in the Department of Economics and Finance in the Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College/City University of New York. As always, the fact that DeLong is clearly not a scientist doesn’t necessarily mean that she is wrong. Rather, her poor study design, clear lack of some very basic background knowledge about her study subject, and biased presentation are far more likely to indicate that she is wrong. Even so, somehow DeLong managed to get her manuscript accepted to the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, a journal I only vaguely remember having heard of.
I can’t resist pointing out a bit of misinformation right in the abstract. For example, the reason for the rapid rise of autism in the U.S. is not, as DeLong characterizes it, really much of a “mystery.” It’s very likely the result of diagnostic substitution in the wake of the broadening of the diagnostic criteria for autism and autism spectrum disorders that occurred in the early to mid-1990s, as Paul Shattuck has shown and Steve Novella has discussed. Yes, there may have been a genuine increase in autism prevalence over the last 20 years (although even that is debatable), but, if such an increase has occurred, it appears to be so small that it’s not even clear that there was one.
DeLong carries on this sort of misinformation right in the text. Here’s one thing you should know about reading scientific papers. The introduction is where the authors try to “frame” the issue that led them to do the research and the hypothesis that derives from that issue in the most favorable way possible. To the knowledgeable reader or reviewer, a botched up introduction section that misrepresents the scientific consensus and the issues is almost always a sure sign that the science that follows will either (1) not support the authors’ hypothesis; (2) be of such poor quality that it doesn’t really support or refute any hypothesis at all; or even (3) cast doubt upon the authors’ hypothesis, even though the authors spin it otherwise. In this paper, for instance, DeLong argues that there “are several reasons why vaccines may trigger autism,” after which she lists a veritable laundry list of long-discredited anti-vaccine notions, bringing up (naturally!) old anti-vaccine bogeymen like mercury and aluminum. Nowhere is it mentioned that DeLong’s view is not the scientific consensus. Only one side is presented, the anti-vaccine side.
Another way you can recognize a bad introduction to a research paper is by the quality of the research that is cited. In DeLong’s case, the research cited is awful indeed, with citations to papers by SafeMinds and Age of Autism stalwart Mark Blaxill, the anti-vaccine father-son tag team of Mark and David Geier (otherwise known as the doctor with a suspended license and his son busted for practicing medicine without a license), Russell Blaylock (who counts HIV/AIDS denialism, antivax, and many other forms of pseudoscience as part of his repertoire), and Laura Hewitson, whose “monkey business” research was also published in the very same journal in which DeLong’s study appears. There’s more, but these are just some of the examples, perhaps the most egregious of which is a reference by anti-vaccine homeopath James Compton Burnett writing in 1884.
Then there’s the design of the study itself. First (and most egregious), there’s the issue of why DeLong combined speech or language impairments (SLIs) with autism diagnoses to do her analysis. DeLong appears to have used statistics that states are required to maintain under federal legislation, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Under IDEA, every school is required to provide data on children who have an Individual Education Plan (IEP), including the students’ primary classification. As Liz Ditz pointed out, IDEA classifications are not medical diagnoses. A child with a diagnosis of autism under IDEA may or may not actually have autism. Also, children with an IDEA classification of SLI are most commonly children with problems in fluency, articulation, or voice, not autism. Examples include apraxia and aphasias, voice disorders, stuttering, and language-based learning disabilities. It’s not for nothing that James Laidler characterized IDEA data as not being a reliable measure that can be used to track autism prevalence accurately.
Naturally, DeLong cites papers to justify lumping together SLIs and autism for purposes of her analysis. None of them support her hypothesis, and her citing them demonstrates that she does not have even a very basic understanding of her subject. For example, she confuses SLI (speech or language impairment) with SLI (specific language impairment). True, this nomenclature can be confusing, but if you’re going to write a scientific paper involving these topics, you need to know the language. DeLong clearly doesn’t know the language. At the very least, that this remained in her paper is a massive failure of peer review on the part of the journal, whose peer reviewers should have picked up on this. Finally, one of the three papers DeLong cited was apparently an error, but she later stated that she had meant to cite other papers, neither of which actually support her decision to lump SLIs together with autism either.
I’m left with the not-so-sneaking suspicion that the only reason that SLIs were lumped together with autism and ASDs for purposes of correlation with the percentage of children in each state receiving their full vaccine schedule is because the numbers somehow worked out the way that DeLong wanted them to. Otherwise, DeLong’s looking at mostly unrelated phenomena that have some degree of overlap. Certainly there appears to be no valid scientific or medical justification for combining the data from the IDEA classifications of SLI and autism.
Then there’s the methodology chosen for trying to find correlations, described here:
Children who are vaccinated at age 2 years may not develop autism until they are older. To determine the prevalence of autism for a specific cohort of children, the vaccination data from when the children were 2 years old is compared with autism prevalence when they are 8 years old. The relevant vaccination data for children who were 8 years old in 2001 are those from 1995, when the children were 2 years old. For children who turned 8 years old in 2002, the relevant vaccination data are from 1996, and so on. The earliest available data–vaccination data from 1995–were matched with autism prevalence up to 2007.
Besides DeLong’s having fallen for the ecological fallacy (group level comparisons rather than individual-level comparisons), she doesn’t provide much in the way of a good justification for why she chose ages 2 and 8 as their vaccine time point and prevalence time point. Then there’s the issue of confounders. DeLong tried to control for ethnicity, but in explicably she used the CDC’s National Immunization Survey rather than, say, U.S. Census data to derive ethnicity figures. Other potential confounders examined included family income, other disabilities, and the number of pediatricians in each state. Of course, states range in size from small to very large, and it can easily be argued that state level data are not “fine” enough to be used for this purpose. After all, many states are quite large, with huge differences in urbanicity. Think, for instance, California, with several large cities separated by huge swaths of rural and mountainous land. Or think Pennsylvania, which is in essence a 360 mile wide state with two very large cities, one east and one west, and several medium-sized cities clustered mostly in the east, all separated by miles upon miles of farm land or mountains. Urbanicity, as you might recall, can have a huge effect on the number of autism diagnoses, as I discussed three years ago. Naturally, DeLong made no attempt to control for urbanicity.
In other words, there’s no reason to put any real credence in DeLong’s study, especially given how small the observed effect appears to be. After reading this study, I was left wondering why on earth DeLong did it. After all, most of DeLong’s previous work appears to involve the study of banking, the FDIC, and financial risk taking. Why did she embarrass herself so by moving out of her specialty? After all, I would never think of trying to do a paper on economics or business and expect it to be accepted to peer-reviewed journal in the relevant academic discipline. As Dirty Harry Callahan once said, “A man’s got to know his limitations,” and I do, for the most part, know my limitations. DeLong apparently does not, and unfortunately Dunkle doesn’t recognize DeLong’s limitations, either.
Sprinkle in anti-vaccine fallacies, mix, and bring to simmer
Besides the invocation of yet another bad study, the rest of Dunkle’s article is a concise listing of a number of common anti-vaccine fallacies. There is, of course, repetition of the “too many too soon” mantra. Then, of course, there’s the “aluminum” gambit:
In addition to the number of doses, vaccine ingredients can be problematic, especially for susceptible subgroups. First are adjuvants, substances added to boost effectiveness and allow smaller doses of vaccine antigen to be used. The most common adjuvant is aluminum, which is found in vaccines for hepatitis and diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus.
There is no convincing evidence that aluminum adjuvants in vaccines are dangerous or cause autism as administered, and there is a lot of evidence that they are safe.
Dunkle follows this up with a combination of the “mercury” gambit and the “toxins” gambit:
Second are preservatives — such as thimerosal, which is 49.6 percent mercury. Thimerosal is still contained in many flu shots, although it was, except for trace amounts, removed from other child vaccines a decade ago. Many child vaccines (including those for diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus, HIB, and hepatitis) contain formaldehyde, which was just added to the government’s list of known human carcinogens.
The hypothesis that mercury in vaccines somehow causes autism or autism-spectrum disorders is a failed hypothesis.
Moreover, the attempt to scare mothers with claims of all sorts of nasty chemicals in vaccines is nothing more than a toxic myth. I once chastised Santa Monica pediatrician to the stars’ children (including Jenny McCarthy’s son Evan), Dr. Jay Gordon, for invoking the “formaldehyde” bogeyman. Formaldehyde is actually a normal byproduct of human metabolism, and a typical 5 kg two-month-old infant has about 1.1 mg of formaldehyde circulating in his blood, which is five times more than any vaccine contains. As for formaldehyde’s recent addition to the list of carcinogens by the National Toxicology Program, it should be noted that this is for higher exposures. As the National Toxicology Program itself points out on its fact sheet:
Studies of workers exposed to high levels of formaldehyde, such as industrial workers and embalmers, found that formaldehyde causes myeloid leukemia, and rare cancers including sinonasal and nasopharyngeal cancer.
As always, the dose makes the poison, and the tiny amount of formaldehyde in vaccines is not the same thing as the amount of formaldehyde that to which industrial workers are exposed in industries where formaldehyde is manufactured or used extensively or to which embalmers are exposed. If you peruse the scientific report issued by the National Toxicology Program, you’ll see that all the supporting studies involved rather large exposures, far more than any vaccine exposure. Dunkle’s citing formaldehyde as a carcinogen has about as much relevance to vaccine safety as the observation that people can drown in lakes does to discussions of the optimal amount of water people need to drink each day.
Unfortunately, either through advocacy, knowing an editor, or taking advantage of an editor’s desire to publish something interesting and controversial, anti-vaccine groups and activists manage to get articles like this one by Margaret Dunkle into major newspapers. Sometimes, it’s reporters themselves who fall for harmful pseudoscience like this. (Sharyl Attkisson, Steve Higgs, and Steve Wilson, I’m talking to you.) In either case, such articles and reporting represent massive failures of fact-checking, objectivity, and journalistic responsibility, and that’s exactly what The Baltimore Sun is guilty of by publishing Margaret Dunkle’s propaganda. | <urn:uuid:e9a5b527-5c88-4008-864f-9d61436f530f> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/antivaccine-propaganda-in-baltimore-sun/comment-page-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280128.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00392-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95944 | 4,904 | 2.5625 | 3 |
In the first days of 2017, Osterhout Design Group arrived at CES with a two-story booth and huge promises. The startup’s founder, Ralph Osterhout, wanted to take the small San Francisco-based company even further past its military contractor roots in AR, building out major enterprise and consumer businesses with flashy new product lines. The company had just raised $58 million, and the Las Vegas electronics show served as its launchpad for its R-8 and R-9 augmented reality glasses lines that Osterhout hoped would bring “glasses to the masses.”
Less than a year later, however, the company had burned through its funding and couldn’t pay employees. By early 2018, ODG had lost half of its workforce as it sought loans to pay back employees. Today, a skeleton crew awaits a patent sale less than a week away after acquisitions from several large tech companies, including Facebook and Magic Leap, fell through, multiple sources tell TechCrunch.
Ralph Osterhout, 73, founded ODG 20 years ago as a high-tech toy company, built after his previous venture, Machina, collapsed in what a Wired report at the time called “a spectacular bankruptcy.” After underwriting ODG with $14,000 of his own cash, Osterhout kept the startup plugging along on its own merits before he decided that it was time to reach for outside funding to turn his company into a powerhouse in the burgeoning augmented reality industry. At the end of 2016, the company raised a $58 million round led by 21st Century Fox.
ODG was already getting thousands of orders for its R-7 glasses, an enterprise-focused product that it billed as a head-worn Android tablet that could help workers go through checklists, review documents and share live video feeds hands-free. Osterhout wanted to get AR glasses into the hands of consumers and take advantage of new tech advances, even as Magic Leap was teasing the release of its own heavily hyped consumer product.
“I hope Magic Leap is a huge success. I want everyone in AR to be a huge success,” Osterhout said in an interview with TechCrunch in 2017. “[Augmented reality] is going to be transformative.”
Months later, a large Chinese firm approached ODG with an offer north of the company’s $258 million Series A valuation, a source tells TechCrunch. Talks fell through, but ODG’s leadership was at their most ambitious and felt like they couldn’t be stopped.
At the same time, following the CES 2017 product unveil, some employees wondered whether having three distinct product lines under development aimed at roughly the same customer was the right direction for the company with around 100 employees. Ralph Osterhout’s strong internal popularity kept these concerns at bay even as the company faced double-digit return rates from customers of its current-generation R-7 glasses due to manufacturing issues.
“That’s a little bit the story of ODG and Ralph, in general: everything is a prototype, nothing is finished, and before one thing is 60 percent done, you’re already onto the next one,” a former employee tells TechCrunch. “I think the heart of ODG’s downfall was its lack of focus.”
The company never ended up shipping the R-9 or the R-8 or even fulfilling all of its R-7 orders. It blew through its funding before the fall of 2017, and it wasn’t long before employees were on half-pay and soon stopped getting paid at all. ODG sought backing from Chinese firms, but sources say that a negative trade environment hampered those efforts. In 2018, it received an $8 million loan from a Chinese firm used to pay back employees as Osterhout began trying to scrounge together an exit strategy, seeking buyers for the company that bore his name.
Suitors for the company included Magic Leap, Facebook, Razer and Lenovo, sources tell TechCrunch. In each case talks fell through, as Osterhout was convinced that his company was being undervalued by the prospective acquirers.
Sources say that Magic Leap continued to bump up its offer, eventually signing a letter of intent in the final months of 2018 to purchase the startup. The final proposed purchase price ended up at $35 million, still a far cry from its 2016 valuation, a source familiar with the deal tells TechCrunch.
This offer came with stipulations for the types of engineers Magic Leap wanted to bring aboard, leading ODG to shrink its staff to just a couple dozen employees. As the startup whittled itself down to prepare for a disappointing, yet relatively dignified, sign-off, Magic Leap began to grow cagey about finalizing the acquisition, sources say. As the deal started to fall through, some in ODG’s leadership began to wonder aloud whether Magic Leap was “acting in poor faith” and was only looking to starve the company before purchasing assets at a discount in a patent sale.
“Ralph turned around and he didn’t have a company or team anymore, and then Magic Leap goes, you know what, we’re just going to buy the IP, we don’t want the company, you don’t have a company anymore,” one source said.
Magic Leap did not respond to a request for comment.
With the deal shot and the indebted company in shambles, the team dwindled down further to a skeleton crew — essentially a deals team — as company assets were put up for sale by IP advisory firm Hilco Streambank. The company’s patent portfolio up for sale next week includes 107 issued patents and 83 pending applications.
The 20-year-old company has already seen its early work in foundational AR patents pay off. In 2014, Microsoft paid around $150 million to acquire a trove of ODG patents after deciding not to buy the company outright. In documents reviewed by TechCrunch, ODG highlights a number of AR patents in its collection on which it believes existing products from companies like Magic Leap, Google and Facebook infringe, specifically pointing to diagrams of systems like the Magic Leap One and Oculus Quest that they claim conflict with its prior art.
With a patent sale (spotted first by UploadVR), ODG’s leadership is looking to recoup enough to pay back the company’s debts, as well as the employees who worked for months on partial salaries.
Whether or not ODG’s downfall was largely a cause of mismanagement, the disparity between acquisition offers and its 2016 valuation showcases a broader cooldown in the augmented reality industry, as capital-intensive efforts in enterprise and hardware have proven to be a more difficult sell for investors heading into 2019.
Last month, Blippar, an enterprise-focused AR startup that raised more than $130 million, collapsed after failing to secure an emergency influx of cash. Just yesterday, it was reported that Meta, an AR hardware startup with $73 million in funding from Y Combinator, Tencent and Comcast, had fallen into insolvency. Magic Leap itself has had issues breaking into broader markets: In November the startup lost out to Microsoft on a $480 million military contract.
Asked whether they would pin the company’s failures on the broader industry slowdown, a former employee said, “From an internal standpoint, all I saw was, we are fucking it up.”
Ralph Osterhout did not respond to a request for comment. | <urn:uuid:b1ef71ff-d7a9-4459-b525-3533285e7cb2> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/10/an-ar-glasses-pioneer-collapses/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571222.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810222056-20220811012056-00669.warc.gz | en | 0.971112 | 1,575 | 1.578125 | 2 |
If Russia Situation Worsens, These Energy Stocks Could Surge
With the U.S. and its European allies now getting ready to impose additional sanctions on Russia if the country attempts to disrupt Ukraine's upcoming presidential election, the markets are eagerly watching how the situation will play out.
If the West ends up imposing sanctions on Russia's energy sector, which accounts for about half of its government revenues, it could be bad news for big oil companies, including BP , ExxonMobil , and Royal Dutch Shell , among others.
BP owns a 19.75% stake in Kremlin-controlled Rosneft and depends on Russia for nearly a third of its oil production and more than a third of its reserves. Meanwhile, Exxon is working with Rosneft to explore shale fields in Western Siberia, while Shell has an ownership interest in Sakhalin-2, a massive export-oriented oil and gas project offshore Russia, alongside state-controlled Gazprom.
But while deteriorating relations between Russia and the West would be generally bad for these and other large integrated oil companies with major ventures in Russia, they could actually be good news for some energy companies, namely U.S. refiners.
Why U.S. refiners would benefit
Understanding why U.S. refiners would benefit from deteriorating conditions between Russia and the West is relatively simple. Refiners' profits are driven by the price difference between U.S. crude oil prices, benchmarked to West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and Louisiana Light Sweet (LLS), and global crude oil prices, which are benchmarked to Brent. The greater this price difference -- known as the Brent-WTI or Brent-LLS spread -- the fatter their margins, all else being equal.
So, if the U.S. imposes sanctions aimed at hurting Russia's energy sector that causes a drop-off in Russian energy exports, Brent crude oil supplies would fall and prices would rise, assuming no change in global supply and demand otherwise. This would result in a wider Brent-WTI and Brent-LLS spread, boosting U.S. refiners' margins.
Of course, it's not as simple as that since WTI and LLS prices could rise or fall depending on production growth, seasonal factors, fewer supply bottlenecks due to new pipelines and other infrastructure, and other factors. But in general, escalating tensions between Russia and the West that could jeopardize Russian energy exports should result in a higher spread between Brent and WTI/LLS.
One refiner to consider buying
This would generally benefit all U.S. refiners with access to WTI, LLS, and other cheap domestic crude oil feedstocks. But some are better positioned than others. Valero is probably the best positioned, in my view, due to its significant refining footprint along the U.S. Gulf Coast that gives it preferential access to the cheap domestic crudes currently inundating the region.
Valero's sizable Gulf Coast refining capacity benefited it tremendously in the first quarter, as higher throughput volumes and stronger margins boosted its refining operating income 8% year over year to $1.3 billion, despite higher natural gas prices that increased the company's energy costs. Gulf Coast margins improved mainly due to wider discounts between Brent and LLS, as well as Brent and other light sweet crudes such as Mars and Maya.
If Brent prices were to rise in coming quarters due to geopolitical risk, Valero's margins would improve further. But even if Brent prices don't budge, WTI and LLS prices are expected to fall over the next few quarters due to growing production from onshore shale plays and from the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, which would also boost Valero's refining margins, especially in the Gulf Coast and Midcontinent.
Beyond Valero's well-positioned refineries, the company also boasts a robust balance sheet with about $3.65 billion in cash and equivalents as of the end of the first quarter, which could be returned to shareholders through share repurchases or a dividend increase. It also looks relatively undervalued on an enterprise value-to-EBITDA basis, commanding a multiple of less than 6x, compared to peer Phillips66's 15.5x and an industry average of roughly 9x.
While Valero would certainly benefit from higher Brent prices, it should continue to enjoy strong profitability in the near future given the likelihood that WTI and LLS prices will trend lower due to the massive oversupply of domestic light sweet crude. With a solid balance sheet and competitively positioned refineries along the U.S. Gulf Coast, I think Valero should continue to reward its shareholders for the foreseeable future.
OPEC is absolutely terrified of this game-changer
Valero isn't the only company benefiting from the changing domestic energy landscape. As US oil production continues to grow, there is one company front and center that is poised to make its investors rich. Warren Buffett has already committed to it, and you can too. Click here to learn about this company in the Motley Fool's special report: OPEC's Worst Nightmare.
The article If Russia Situation Worsens, These Energy Stocks Could Surge originally appeared on Fool.com.Arjun Sreekumar has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Copyright © 1995 - 2014 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. | <urn:uuid:51f78bd6-77cd-49bb-84e5-fbbd826cdf08> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.aol.com/article/2014/05/25/if-russia-situation-worsens-these-energy-stocks-co/20892261/?gen=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279224.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00486-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954278 | 1,166 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Using belief elicitation, the paper investigates the formation and the evolution of beliefs in a signalling game in which a common prior on Sender's type is not induced. Beliefs are elicited about the type of the Sender and about the strategies of the players. The experimental subjects often start with diffuse uniform beliefs and update them in view of observations. However, the speed of updating is influenced by the strength of the initial beliefs. An interesting result is that beliefs about strategies are updated faster than beliefs about types. In the medium run, for some specifications of game parameters, this leads to outcomes being significantly different from the outcomes of the game in which a common prior is induced. It is also shown that elicitation of beliefs does not considerably change the pattern of play. | <urn:uuid:e0c9a383-e88a-4473-beb6-3a8d19ae2a0e> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/100143 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280835.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00049-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957556 | 153 | 1.539063 | 2 |
The western sky just after sunset is exploding with beauty and it is well worth the time to spend a few minutes soaking it in. Right now there are three planets on display in the evening sky along with the fine winter constellations still visible as the glow of dusk fades. I have been watching this over successive evenings and am impressed with the variety of colors and patterns visible after sunset. This week the sun drops below the horizon around 8:00 PM pacific daylight time and the sky is reasonably dark by 8:30, but by 9:00 the best viewing emerges.
First up is the fast-moving planet Mercury which will spend the next few weeks making a strong showing in the western sky. Because it is so close to the sun it never moves far above the horizon, but we will be seeing it at one of the best views of the year. This diagram shows Mercury in a close encounter with the Pleiades on May 1st, but it will continue to hover in the west through mid-month. It is bright enough to be seen in the glare of the dusk sky and you will see it best if you have a clear western horizon.
Next is Mars which continues to share the limelight with the twin stars of Gemini, Castor and Pollux. Mars is distinctive in comparison to the Twins because of its deep orange color. It is slowly diminishing in brightness but is still bright enough to be easy to find.
Saturn is the highlight of the planetary lineup, high in the sky after sunset in the constellation of Leo. More on Saturn can be found in my last post.
The bright constellation Orion is now setting in the glare of sunset, slowly fading from view as the constellations of summer arrive in the east and begin their reign. Nonetheless, a very bright grouping is still visible in the western sky featuring three stars from three different constellations. A distinctive grouping of stars from different constellations is known as an "asterism" and the Winter Triangle is one of the more distinctive asterisms in the sky. It contains Sirius, the brightest star in the sky which is in the constellation Canis Major, Procyon, the brightest star in Canis Minor, and Betelgeuse, which is in the constellation Orion. This diagram provides a helpful guide to this pattern. Each of these stars have distinctive colors, with Betelgeuse an orange-red (it is a red giant star), Sirius whitish-blue, and Procyon in-between the two as a plain white star. Enjoy the sky this spring - it's full of remarkable things to see.
Water Worlds in the Solar System
2 hours ago | <urn:uuid:d6e5eb86-b774-468f-8464-58beba403c07> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://urbanastronomer.blogspot.com/2008/04/planets-in-evening-winter-triangle-in.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719468.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00529-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939539 | 540 | 2.546875 | 3 |
In order to improve people's general knowledge, Iran Nanotechnology
Initiative Council holds various programs including:
Nanotechnology Educational System
In line with the provision of educational needs of school and university students at various levels of studies as well as other people who are interested in nanoscience and nanotechnology, Iran Nanotechnology Initiative Council has devised a comprehensive nanotechnology educational system in the form of a website (edu.nano.ir). Tree-type classification of titles and subjects at two levels for school and university students is among the characteristics of this educational system. The devised concept at school students’ level is visual and has a simple language. At university students’ level, the articles have been gathered or authored in the form of scientific–educational papers.
Efforts have been made in both school and university students’ levels so
that the authored articles can be useful for all people who are interested in
nanoscience and nanotechnology. Credible scientific references have been used
in order to author the articles.
Materials have been presented on the website in form of session, lesson,
course. In this structure, each session includes one scientific–educational
article, each lesson includes a few sessions (articles), and each course
consists of a few lessons.
The educational website has at least six courses at university students’
level, including, 1. Basic concepts, 2. Introduction to nanostructures, 3.
Nanostructures production methods, 4. Characterization methods and analysis of
nanostructures, 5. Nanotechnology applications, and 6. Nanotechnology
In the current version of nanotechnology educational website, it is
possible to attend an examination in each lesson or in a number of lessons at
the same time in order to test one’s knowledge about the subjects. It is also
possible for different people to participate in online examinations at the same
time. In line with the development of the website, more features, including the
demonstration of educational films related to nanotechnology concepts and the
organization of educational webinars will be gradually added to the website.
• Holding Public Education
Exhibitions (Public Show):
• Supporting Publication of Educational Books:
Iran Nanotechnology Initiative Council widely supports the translators
and authors of nanotechnology educational books. The main purpose of authoring
those books is to introduce nanotechnology to the public and the students
interested in the subject.
• Training the Experts of the Mass Media:
Scientific accuracy is an important factor in the dissemination of
nanotechnology news, and it is necessary for the media experts to be familiar
with the general and fundamental concepts of nanotechnology, and with
nanotechnology applications. Therefore, Iran Nanotechnology Initiative Council
has held nanotechnology training courses and visits for the media experts to
the research centers in the country. The objective of such courses is to
improve the understating of the experts of mass media such as radio, television,
etc. of the importance of nanotechnology in the future of the world, and to
convey correct information to their audience.
• Publishing the
Nanotechnology News on the Journals and the Website:
In addition, the news of the achievements of the Iranian and
international researches are published in INICs website. The website is now one
of the most popular scientific websites in Iran.
• Holding Annual
The International Nanotechnology Festivals have been held in Iran since 2008. One of the objectives of the festival is to introduce nanotechnology products to the public. The festivals have been welcomed by the visitors. The visitors learn the concepts and applications of nanotechnology, and can purchase nanotechnology products. | <urn:uuid:c80cfc51-5ccd-4c41-8517-b78cd444530f> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://nano.ir/page/2/409 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281649.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00439-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91997 | 766 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Posted by ESC on July 17, 2005
In Reply to: Straw dogs, too posted by Bob on July 17, 2005
: : : STRAW PURCHASE - A person with a clean record buying a gun and then selling it. "'.They pick straws who have valid ID, no record, and a steady employment history, in case the gun dealer checks.'" From "The Devil's Corner" by Lisa Scottoline (HarperCollins Publishers , Page 13.
: : : CRACK -- "Most cocaine decreased when it was cooked, by mixing it with water, baking soda, and a cutting agent like mannitol, and stirring until oil formed on the water's surface. The oil would be cooled on ice, so it crystallized to form rocks. The crackling sound the mixture made when it was boiled gave the drug its name. Crack." From "The Devil's Corner" by Lisa Scottoline (HarperCollins Publishers , Page 12.
: : ESC, did you get a new addition to your amazing library of jargon, slang and unusual words? Well, it looks like a good choice. I'm surprised that Ms. Scottoline did not mention "straw man" in regard to the straw purchase, as it would have some explanatory benefit. The OED says little about "sraw man," no mention at all of scarecrows, but does send us to man of straw, which it defines as: "e. man of straw: (a) a person or thing compared to a straw image; a counterfeit, sham, 'dummy'; similarly, a face of straw, etc.; (b) an imaginary adversary, or an invented adverse argument, adduced in order to be triumphantly confuted; (c) a person of no substance, esp. one who undertakes a pecuniary responsibility without having the means of discharging it; (d) a fictitious or irresponsible person fraudulently put forward as a surety or as a party in an action." I think what we want here is the "straw man" as dummy, as in dummy corporation. The "straw purchaser" is a dummy for the real purchaser.
: : As for "crack," that was, for me, new and interesting information. SS
: A straw dog is not appreciably different in meaning from a straw man. I've always advised people in my business not to present three ideas when you only really like two - the decision maker will glom on to the straw dog without fail.
Yes, "straw purchase" was new to me. | <urn:uuid:23273c3d-ee55-4fe6-945f-1471bcf3eefa> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/42/messages/734.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719646.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00127-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966661 | 531 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Seven-Year Restoration of Lincoln Refuge Finished
Monday, February 11, 2008
The grieving officer who had just lost his wife in a river accident found the president sitting alone in the twilight of an August evening, with one leg thrown over the arm of a chair, cooling himself with a palm fan.
It was August 1862, and Abraham Lincoln had fled the stress of the wartime White House for the quiet of his summer getaway three miles north on the grounds of the Soldiers' Home. Surely, his visitor thought, the kindly president could help him recover his wife's body.
But Lincoln was in a sour mood and did not wish to be disturbed. "Am I to have no rest?" he reportedly snapped.
On Presidents' Day, the little-known place where Lincoln tried to escape the anguish of war and family tragedy, the Camp David of the Civil War, where he spent a quarter of his presidency and his wife once held a seance, marks its grand opening at an invitation-only ceremony after a $17 million, seven-year restoration project. It opens to the public the next day.
An 1840s country house on the grounds of what is now the U.S. Armed Forces Retirement Home on North Capitol Street NW, the "cottage" is believed to be the place where Lincoln thought out details of the Emancipation Proclamation. In later years it was a hospital, a dormitory, and a tavern called the "Lincoln Lounge," but in the spring of 1862 it was the place where the president and his grief-stricken wife, Mary, moved after their 11-year-old son, Willie, died, probably of typhoid.
There, Lincoln roamed the rooms in his socks and carpet slippers, recited Shakespeare and read the Bible.
There, he wandered the grounds late at night. And from there, he commuted to the White House on summer mornings after a breakfast of coffee and an egg.
The restoration involved a painstaking return of the mainly two-story, 34-room brick and stucco house to its 1860s condition.
Frank D. Milligan, director of President Lincoln's Cottage at the Soldiers' Home, said experts studied 22 layers of paint on the interior walls to determine which might be the original color in each room.
Reproductions of the cottage's huge, church-style front doors were installed. Window shutters were restored. The simulated gaslight fixtures were re-created based on a 1905 photograph of an upstairs room and a study of the old gas lines in the house.
The bulk of the roof was covered with Vermont purple slate, like the original, said curator and site administrator Erin A.C. Mast.
Much of the house's interior is original, from a dark oak banister -- "Lincoln's hand was on this a thousand times," Milligan said -- to the marble fireplaces where historians believe Lincoln would stand and tell stories. | <urn:uuid:e1d86af6-2182-4e48-a8d0-f71f2d400aa0> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/10/AR2008021002389.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280825.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00210-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978164 | 602 | 2.515625 | 3 |
London, Dec. 18: A black hole blasting an immense jet of energy into a neighbouring galaxy has been observed by astronomers for the first time.
In a burst of galactic violence recorded by astronomers in the US space agencys ground and space-based observatories, the black hole of a death star is seen shooting the jet of radiation into the adjacent galaxy, Nasa said.
Weve seen many jets produced by black holes, but this is the first time weve seen one punch into another galaxy like were seeing here, said Dan Evans, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and leader of the study.
This jet could be causing all sorts of problems for the smaller galaxy it is pummeling, said Evans, who led the research team making the discovery.
The stream erupted in a galactic system called 3C321, which consists of two galaxies orbiting each other in relatively close proximity of just 20 thousand light years. | <urn:uuid:4b854196-aab3-47e7-8312-8ab392de3f3d> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.telegraphindia.com/1071219/jsp/foreign/story_8685541.jsp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279189.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00063-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95944 | 191 | 2.578125 | 3 |
I have long pondered the challenges of enumerating homelessness. In general, I have been against this, as accuracy is unattainable (how you define homelessness will change what you count). However, there is also a push in the London Community Plan on Homelessness to have enumeration as a means of showing whether prevention and rapid re-housing work. And, believing that they will work, I think the statistics would be a useful tool.
I was extremely pleased to find this recent blog post: http://stonesoupstation.blogspot.com/2010/12/counters-are-coming-counters-are-coming.html. In the post, Steven outlines the history of homeless counts, the challenges, and possible ways to enhance accuracy. This is a must read for communities considering counts of their own.
The National Alliance to End Homelessness is an overarching organization in the U.S. that covers all agencies working with people experiencing homelessness. They have a very active blog at blog.endhomelessness.org, and I had the privilege of having a guest post on the site. In the post, I talked about the importance of all people who are working to address homelessness to also include looking at public policies. You can read the full post at: http://blog.endhomelessness.org/?p=2778.
As I have mentioned before, people who are experiencing homelessness are often very busy just attending to the basic necessities of life. In London, a person might walk 20 kilometres in a day just to get to the food bank, have a test done at St Joe’s hospital, go to the soup kitchen, and back to the shelter where they are staying. Most have multiple appointments in any given day with various support services. However, although one is busy, there can be a lack of feeling like one is making any forward progress.
Because of this, there has been a growing conversation about making space for meaningful daytime activities to enhance positive socialization, lend purpose and meaning to life, and perhaps enhance some life skills. We have been talking about this in the London Homelessness Outreach Network from day 1, but it is also mentioned as a topic that will go to committee in the London Community Plan on Homelessness. In my dissertation research, doing focus groups to move forward from the findings, individuals with lived experience mentioned this as the primary service gap in London (followed by street-level healthcare).
Two agencies come to mind who are already doing some of this. The London Coffee House is very important to many people, and is the main social network of many, built simply around playing cards. More recently, the London InterCommunity Health Centre Health Outreach for the Homeless has started a creative writing group. They call themselves Grit Uplifted, and have started a blog at http://grituplifted.tumblr.com/. Many of the agencies that currently exist to ‘manage’ homelessness, could enhance their services by providing meaningful activities, which are a piece of the puzzle in allowing people to move themselves out of homelessness.
I had the privilege of doing another guest blog post, this time for the London Community Foundation. In this post I wrote about ways that people in London, Ontario can become involved in taking action on homelessness (note, this is prior to the official formation of the London Homelessness Outreach Network).
The post is available HERE.
A few weeks ago I wrote a post suggesting that the idea that ‘homelessness can happen to anyone’ is true, but also hides the reality that those who live in poverty bear the greatest burden of homelessness. The National Alliance to End Homelessness just released a research brief that demonstrates exactly this, in particular that the working poor are more likely to encounter homelessness than the general population. In particular, people who are employed and living in poverty will experience more acutely: 1) severe housing cost burdens, 2) living ‘doubled up’, and 3) are employed in more volatile industries.
It’s always nice when my hunches are supported by statistics, and this example demonstrates the value of research and statistics.
If you would like to attend our January meeting, please help us pick a date by going here: http://doodle.com/tp7s3hydcsysv5se.
As per the previous post, the London Homelessness Outreach Network (LHON) is now officially established. You can find us in 3 ways:
The Website – www.londonhon.ca
On Twitter – @LondonHON
On Facebook – London Homelessness Outreach Network
Of course, I would also love to talk with you in person about it – email@example.com
We are ‘live’ and official! Thank you everyone for your hard work in getting this group off the ground, particularly those who have been with me since March. We are on Twitter as @LondonHON, and have a Facebook fan page as you can see in the right-hand column. Looking forward to seeing the energy that comes from spreading the word around town. | <urn:uuid:c4137794-fd6a-479e-ad30-6864b30180b1> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://abeoudshoorn.com/blog/?m=201012 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572021.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814083156-20220814113156-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.967491 | 1,051 | 2.015625 | 2 |
This is the day, that is a national day of remembrance for Australian and New Zealanders who died during armed conflict.
Do you have a story to share about an ANZAC? We'd like to hear about not only their sacrifice, but the way it shaped their family history. Maybe you want to blog from the perspective of those that were left behind?
Your story doesn't have to involve a serviceperson who lost their lives - during times of war, all sorts of loss unfortunately are experienced.
And you can write about those who served in other wars.
- Write a blog post about an Australian or New Zealander serviceman or woman's family, and the impact war had on their family history
- Post a comment with the URL to your blog on the comments section of this page. Or if you don't have a blog then email us your story at firstname.lastname@example.org
- Publish your post by 25 April 2013.
Access great online resources:
Coming Home virtual exhibition
The virtual exhibition consists of "albums" containing photos/images and documents. Virtual albums entitled "Gallipoli", "Lest We Forget", "New Zealand Maori Battalion", "Peace", "Postcards" and "Returned Services Association". Also has a portal for searching content nationwide from organizations such as libraries, archives, museums and galleries, including Auckland Libraries. Courtesy DigitalNZ.
For references to articles and other resources regarding WWI and WWII.
For diaries, letters, postcards and albums
And Papers Past
Within the library catalogue: Auckland Libraries, search using World War, 1914-1918 or World War, 1939-1945 to find suitable resources.
Searching using WWI or WWII etc will return you wonderful results of holdings throughout the whole of Auckland Libraries, which you can narrow down by location by using the "select location" dropdown menu on the right of screen. For example, available in all four Research Centres:- Central, South (Manukau) and West (Waitakere) and North (Takapuna) are gems such as:
- the Auckland War Memorial Museum;
- the Australian War Memorial site and
- the National Archives of Australia or look further by
- using the resources listed on Cora Num’s website.
- National Archives of Australia Facebook page about their Shellshocked Exhibition and some of the personal stories that they have collected might also be of interest.
The centenary of the First World War - 2014-2018 | <urn:uuid:2652b1c1-d594-498e-afef-ba8de54fb1d7> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://kintalkfamilyhistory.blogspot.co.nz/2013/03/2013-trans-tasman-anzac-day-blog.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280266.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00496-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937057 | 523 | 2.125 | 2 |
Introduction to Density (Without Calling It Density)
Lesson 1 of 8
Objective: SWBAT explain how two different cubes of the same volume can have different masses.
In the lessons on volume, I wanted my students to develop a deep understanding about volume, not just telling me that volume is length x width x height. My focus on developing a deeper conceptual understanding of density will be similar to my approach with rectangular volume. In particular, I want students to explain:
1) Why objects are more or less dense from a molecular standpoint, considering size, arrangement and mass of different types of matter
2) Use density as a characteristic property to identify unknown liquids and solids
3) Explain the role that temperature has on density of matter and the implications of this cause and effect relationship
Students fill in a KLEWS Chart for this lesson, which serves a few purposes: 1) find out what they already know about density, 2) challenge their preconceptions about density, and 3) to give them a space to reflect on what they learned, supported by evidence. At the end of section 3, each student will have a document that helps them better track their understanding of density, helping develop their conceptual understanding (SP6 - Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions) through metacognitive reflection.
As an introduction to density, I demonstrate how two objects having the same volume can have different masses. I do this by measuring the mass of copper and aluminum on a balance in front of the class.
As opposed to simply telling students that the size, arrangement and mass of the atoms may affect the density of different types of matter, I give them the opportunity to record questions that they may have in their 'wondering' section of their KLEWS chart for this lesson. They also fill in column one with their present conceptions of the demonstration. Later, they can reflect on their findings from various investigations to determine any cause and effect (CCC) relationships to deepen their conceptual understanding of density.
Here is a sample of a KLEWS chart that I recorded on the board. It represents the findings of the entire class.
Telling kids how to calculate density using an equation and expecting them to understand the intricacies that determine the density of matter is too teacher-centered, resulting in a shallow conceptual understanding of the important property of matter that is grounded in so many fundamental principles of science.
Teachers may be tempted to show students how to calculate density at this point, which we will get to later, but I am going to take the opportunity to have students develop their understanding through inquiry.
As such, I am not even introducing volume any more than I already have during the Do Now. Instead, I have students weigh various cubes to see if they all have different masses.
Teacher Note: They do have different masses. My hope is that this investigation leads to other questions, such as:
- "Why do the cubes all appear to have the same volume but different masses?"
- "How can something be the same size but have different masses?"
- "Are the cubes made of different types of matter?"
More advanced students may notice that the objects all look different and ask:
- "Does what an object is made of affect how it looks and acts?"
At this point, I want students to look at other pictures of matter to find cause and effect relationships.
Now that students have masses of various cubes, I want to present molecular model images to them so that they can find some patterns between the mass of each cube and the relative molecular structure of the different types of matter.
I ask, "Are there any patterns that we see between the mass of each cube and our observations recorded in each picture?"
Structure of activity:
1) Ask students to observe the molecular structure images that are labeled by material (see resources) and record their observations in their notebooks for each type of matter.
2) What do we notice about the molecules in terms of size, space between molecules, and the mass from the previous activity?
3) Answer question: Why do you think that some cubes are heavier than others, despite being the same size?
Here is a sample of a student response.
Students will not leave this lesson with a clear understanding of density. As educators, we need to accept that NGSS-based lessons are messy and not conveniently wrapped up at the end. Lesson wrap-ups for NGSS lessons need to recap what what discovered, giving students ample time to reflect and process their findings so that they can accurately explain this phenomenon in the future. Scientists don't have answers to complex questions handed to them, nor should our students!
During this time, you can have students fill in their KLEWS chart for this lesson together as we review our findings. Ask for volunteers to share what they discovered during today's class. This helps all students reflect on what they learned. | <urn:uuid:1edc1d50-9af1-4d46-b597-ce19aa40cb77> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://betterlesson.com/lesson/reflection/21687/a-more-deliberate-use-of-crosscutting-concepts | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280872.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00317-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949938 | 1,005 | 4.375 | 4 |
Who will they be? Strategies for autism, ADD/ADHD, quirkiness, and
all kids who want great social skills to succeed!
Hope is not a strategy.
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Families - What's your plan for managing the life path of your child diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder, ADD/ADHD or similar social cognitive challenges?
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Rely on Social Motion Skills for innovative solutions and vision as you build a strategy to manage special needs. Our experts' knowledge and experience in the field of how to succeed with social deficits and neurodiversity is available to empower your family and business.
From assessments to educational classes, parent to professional trainings; we help you clue into the whys and hows proven crucial to social skill success.
Include us in your plan to solve special needs around autism spectrum disorders, ADD/ADHD and similarly related social behavior challenges at all age levels. | <urn:uuid:57c53ba2-47a7-4810-a21f-e077417d747a> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://socialmotionskills.org/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280310.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00183-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909177 | 251 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Gwen O’Dowd began exhibiting in the mid 1980s. Her formal concerns have always been rooted deeply in the tradition of landscape painting.Yet the specific locales from which she has drawn inspiration, the modes of addressing them and the metaphoric import of the resulting series of paintings have varied considerably over the years.
Among the aspects of the landscape O’Dowd has registered over the past decades were the ecological devastation of the Gulf War, the epic Grandeur of the Grand Canyon, the mythically sexualised landscape of coastal Ireland, the elemental force of the Waves and most recently the ‘Humanising’ of the bird life that surrounds her.
Some important group exhibitions in which she participated in recent years were ‘Poetic Land – Political Landscape’ which toured Britain.’Re;Dressing Caitlin’contemporary works from Irish Women artists and ‘Eire – Land’ both at the Mc Mullen Museum of Art, Boston College.
O’Dowd is represented in the collections of the Arts Council of Ireland, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Irish Museum of Modern art, and in many corporate and private collections in Ireland, USA, Europe and Japan.
She presently lives and works in Dublin and in Wexford which is providing new inspiration for her work.
Gwen O’Dowd is represented by Hillsboro Fine Art. | <urn:uuid:2d298ab1-22f4-4540-8915-a6f6ccce7223> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://gwenodowd.website/about/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571993.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814022847-20220814052847-00679.warc.gz | en | 0.955798 | 292 | 1.625 | 2 |
Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Control (01/30/06)
TITLE: A Fine Example
By Anita Neuman
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“Mom, Alicia shoved me.”
“He kept stepping right in front of me.”
Jenna placed one hand on her hip and kneaded her forehead with the other. “Please just drop it, okay kids? Can we try to have a pleasant meal together?”
“Where’s Dad?” Jeremy asked.
“He just called to say he’s stuck at work. He said to start without him.” Jenna eyed the lasagne, garlic bread and Caesar salad on the table. If she’d known that Rob was going to be late, she wouldn’t have bothered with such a big meal. The kids would’ve been happy with grilled cheese sandwiches.
After a quick blessing, all three of them dug into their food. It had been a long day, and Jenna was eager to get the kids to bed so she could have some peace and quiet. She didn’t know when Rob would be home, but she hoped he’d at least arrive in time to help her tuck the kids into bed. Lately Jeremy had been refusing to say his prayers with her, insisting that his dad be the one to tuck him in. Jenna knew there would be a battle if Rob didn’t make it home in time.
Looking at her son now, she noticed that he was picking through his salad. “Jeremy, you need to eat the lettuce, too. Not just the croutons.”
“Lettuce is gross.” Jeremy stuck out his tongue.
Jenna reached across the table and grasped his hand to get his attention. “That’s not acceptable behaviour, young man. You know better than to make faces at me. Now eat your lettuce.”
Jeremy yanked his hand away from her and knocked his cup over. He gasped and watched as the juice spread across the table.
“Don’t just sit there,” Jenna ordered. “Get some paper towels and clean it up.”
Alicia snorted. “Way to go, Germ.”
Jenna saw her son’s lip quiver and tried to summon some sympathy for him. But if he hadn’t pulled away from her so angrily, he wouldn’t have bumped his cup. The spilled juice wasn’t a big deal, but it was his own fault.
Jeremy wiped up the mess with the efficiency of an eight-year-old boy, and the enthusiasm of an annoyed little brother. Alicia nudged him with her elbow when he moved to close to her.
“Watch out, creep! I don’t want you spilling my juice, too.” She warned, none too pleasantly.
At that, Jeremy’s tears started to fall. Moments later, he stood sobbing, with the soaked paper towels dripping on the floor.
Jenna’s palm hit the table with more force than she intended. “You don’t need to stand there and cry! Just put the paper towels in the garbage and then finish your food!”
He walked slowly to the trash can, dripping all the way, then returned to his chair. He heaved a couple of sobs and wiped his sleeve across his nose.
Jenna seethed. “Jer!” She was careful not to yell, but her voice conveyed her anger. “You don’t need to have a hissy fit every time something goes wrong. If you had just obeyed me and eaten your salad politely, then you wouldn’t have spilled your juice. Now look at the mess you’ve made. And your crying is not helping anything either, so just stop it and eat your supper!”
His sobs grew louder and his shoulders shook.
Alicia sneered at her brother. “She didn’t say, ‘Cry louder’. She said to stop, moron.”
“Enough!” Jenna ground out. “You can mind your own business, Alicia. And Jeremy, you need to pull yourself together. You are both old enough to start practicing some self-control. There is no other way to learn; you just have to practice. And you better start now, because I’ve about had it with you two!”
With an extra pound on the table for emphasis, Jenna scraped back her chair and stormed out of the room.
The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.
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JOIN US at FaithWriters for Free. Grow as a Writer and Spread the Gospel. | <urn:uuid:62ab6e86-15b5-4f94-9023-e2074c1d3cfb> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.faithwriters.com/wc-article-level3-previous.php?id=6231 | 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 | 0.977792 | 1,066 | 2.296875 | 2 |
learn with discussion - (May/26/2008 )
Can some one explain me these simple things.
1) what is introduction, give me three basic tips for that.
2) what is review of literature and how to differentiate it from the introductrion.
I shall be very thankful to you.
introduction should be link from the myriads of data of your field of interest to your here presented data and conclusions: it is like a funnel: it begins broad and ends with the the focus on your topic
another tip for the literature review is to highlight important points in key reviews (and also check the original reference). i usually remember i saw something important in a paper but can't remember what it is, so this highlighting helps me find it quickly without having to read the whole paper again | <urn:uuid:3aa49503-cb64-4821-be08-ab6c2d62146a> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.protocol-online.org/biology-forums/posts/36711more1.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279169.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00209-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945823 | 165 | 1.875 | 2 |
Error: Device driver software was not successfully installed -or- Your printer failed to install. (Windows XP - Any Printer)1. Power on the printer using the power button. This forces the PC to re-recognize the device. (If starting at this step, simply connect USB and power to the printer.)2. Within a few moments, a found new hardware wizard will appear on your screen. (If it does not appear, unplug both the power and USB from the printer, wait a few seconds and plug them back in.)3. Choose "No, not this time" when asked to search the web for a driver. (Depending on which XP service pack you have this message may or may not appear.)4. Choose "Install from a list or a specific location", click next and continue with step 12.
5. Choose "Don't Search, I will choose the driver to install". Click Next.
6. If prompted for hardware type, choose "Printer". Click Next. (This screen usually does not appear.)7. Click the "Have Disk" button to browse to the driver location. (Do not pick a driver from the Manufacturer - Printers list.) 8. Click the Browse button.9. Browse to the file. If you downloaded the driver from the website and ran the extractor program, the files will be located in a folder at the root of your C-Drive. The folder and file will be named for the specific printer you will be installing. In this example you will be browsing for C:\Documents and Settings\<Username>\Local Settings\Temp\Setup\PostSetup. Once the file has been located, click Open. 10. Verify the location and click OK. 11. Click Next. 12. You will be prompted that the driver is not digitally signed or doesn't pass Windows Logo Testing. Click Continue Anyway.
13. Files will be copied to the correct location. 14. Click Finish to complete the installation.
Related Articles:Windows Vista Installation Instructions
Windows 7/Windows 8 Installation InstructionsMacintosh Installation Instructions | <urn:uuid:6cec46da-0ddf-4810-b944-c4a5b5c648f4> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://supportsystem.livehelpnow.net/article/21426/44613/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280221.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00236-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.88336 | 424 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Dave Jordan has been picking up trash dumped by others on the edge of his property for more than 20 years, but says it is now getting worse.
He relates the increase to the changes in the garbage collection system following the closure of the Terrace landfill last November, and its replacement with the transfer station in Thornhill.
The new system has regular curbside garbage collection, and extra waste can be bagged and tagged with a ticket purchased for a small fee from the Regional District of Kitimat-Stikine. Or else it can be brought to the transfer station for a fee — $10 for a load of garbage up to 200 pounds, and more costing $110 per tonne.
Dave Jordan lives on Dover Road just south of the old Terrace landfill on Kalum Lake Drive, and he says garbage dumping has significantly increased since the new system and its fees kicked in.
He collected four garbage bags of scattered trash on the edge of his property April 4, which he assumes was dumped by people who came to the landfill and found it closed.
“They just come around the corner and dump it off,” he guessed.
With his home just around the corner from the dump, and a deep ditch between his property edge and the road, Jordan says he has been cleaning up dumped household trash since he moved there more than 20 years ago.
But that trash has more than doubled since the garbage fees have been levied.
“I’d be lucky to get half a bag in a month other years,” said Jordan. “You can get four bags now.”
And while Jordan has gotten used to picking up people’s trash, he draws the line at paying for it.
“I don’t think it’s right that I have to pay to have it taken away,” he said, referring to the new system with fees for extra trash.
Jordan said the regional district originally told him he would have to buy a ticket, but when he mentioned going to the media they quickly responded and picked up the extra trash the next day.
“I’m happy they had a quick response,” Jordan said, but with this likely an ongoing issue, he wants an exception for cleaned up litter incorporated into the bylaw.
“I want to get the tipping fee dismissed if its garbage dumped by somebody else on your property,” he said, adding that he is going to pursue the bylaw change at the next meeting and hopes others will support it.
He adds that next month when he picks up dumped trash, he plans to call the garbage contractor Nechako Northcoast and hopes they will pick it up as before.
Speaking about the idea of a bylaw exception, regional district waste services coordinator Murray Daly said it would be difficult to implement.
“How are we to know that you’re cleaning up somebody else garbage and not just bringing your own?” he asked.
“It’s a noble idea.. but it’s got to be realistic to implement and to oversee,” he added.
As for garbage dumping, Daly says he doesn’t believe the issue had gotten worse since the landfill closed.
“I don’t know that there’s an increase,” he said. “I think more people are looking for it. More people are aware of it, or are starting to notice it more because they are on the hunt for it.”
Daly says that for any responsible citizen, nearly all garbage can be dealt with at no extra cost through curbside collection or stewardship programs.
“For somebody to drive down a back road and toss two bags of household garbage, there’s no reason for it,” he said, adding that the cost for extra trash is very reasonable.
Just the same, the regional district is aware that garbage dumping is a problem, Daly said, and a working group has formed to look at the issue.
It includes the regional district, Conservation Service, garbage contractor Nechako Northcoast, the Ministry of Transportation and Infrasructure, and the Ministry of Forests.
“We’ve tried to identify what the challenges are, and how we can work towards a solution… whether its blocking roads, signage, public education campaigns, or things like that,” said Daly.
Enforcement can’t be carried out unless the culprits are identified, added Daly, noting that if anyone sees people dumping garbage, they should report vehicle identification, licence plates or names. | <urn:uuid:a400fb23-a790-49a4-8d98-4667661ead64> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.todayinbc.com/news/terrace-b-c-resident-frustrated-with-garbage-dumping/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571472.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811133823-20220811163823-00666.warc.gz | en | 0.965737 | 957 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Israel asks U.N. to recognize Yom Kippur
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Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Ron Prosor requested that the world body’s headquarters recognize Yom Kippur as an official holiday.
The United Nations in New York recognizes 10 official holidays, most of them national holidays in the United States. The list includes the Christian holidays of Christmas and Good Friday, and the Muslim holidays of Eid Ul Fitr and Eid Ul Adha.
The U.N. General Assembly convenes annually in September. On years in which such meetings have conflicted with Yom Kippur, special requests are submitted to postpone the assembly to allow the Israeli prime minister to participate.
Prosor said the exclusion of Yom Kippur, one of the most widely observed Jewish holidays, amounts to discrimination.
“On the one hand, the United Nations advances values of cooperation and engagement among nations, and on the other hand it is prioritizing one religion over the other,” Prosor said, according to the Times of Israel. “There are three monotheistic religions, yet only two are recognized by the U.N. calendar. Such discrimination at the U.N. must end.” — jta & jns.org
Be the first to comment! | <urn:uuid:93f95f9d-1339-4bd3-a7e7-22846e4f3c1b> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/71705/israel-asks-u.n.-to-recognize-yom-kippur | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279224.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00485-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.905128 | 275 | 2.1875 | 2 |
One of the oldest buildings on the historic campus of Oxford College of Emory University has undergone a $2.2 million transformation inspired by the structure's original interior configuration and Victorian-era exterior. The building has been updated with newly configured classrooms that have cutting-edge teaching technologies, and expanded with an addition to the original footprint to accommodate much-needed faculty offices.
Lord, Aeck & Sargent (LAS) designed and oversaw the rehabilitation of Language Hall, so named because it originally held classrooms for teaching English, Greek, Latin and modern languages. The project is targeting a minimum of LEED silver certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, as is the standard for all major Emory projects.
Over the years, Language Hall's interior was cut up and partitioned to meet immediate needs, such as the addition of faculty offices and restrooms where there were none originally. Ceilings were lowered and walls were added, covering up windows and blocking outside light from entering the building. As a result of all this, the HVAC system was compromised, and overall, students and faculty had a diminished learning and working environment.
"We knew that the configuration of Language Hall compromised its effectiveness, and we could see the potential it had to blend the legacy of the 19th century with learning technology of the 21st century," said Myra Frady, Oxford College dean for resource planning and chief financial officer. "We are grateful that our partner, Lord, Aeck & Sargent, had the same vision and attentiveness to historic detail as ours."
Removal of Walls, Ceilings Reveals Original Floor Plan
When LAS began work on Language Hall, an 1874, two-story building with Greek Revival massing and Italianate detailing, its 4,000-square-foot interior was a hodgepodge of small classrooms, awkward faculty offices and makeshift restrooms.
"We didn't have much to go on in trying to imagine the original interior with the exception of a book1 written about the history and architecture of Oxford College, and it included a diagram of Language Hall's first floor in the late 19th century," said Susan Turner, LAS principal-in-charge of the rehabilitation. "The diagram showed a staircase in the middle of a corridor leading from the rear entry up to the upper level. The corridor was flanked on either side by large symmetrical classrooms. The main front entry included twin doors, each opening into one of the classrooms."
Although neither floor in the pre-rehabilitation configuration resembled the original plan diagram, removal of added walls and lowered ceilings revealed that the first floor central corridor and stair did exist as shown in the diagram, and that the second floor was similarly arranged. Even though the orientation of the corridor had been changed during the 20th century renovations, the team found portions of the original plaster-covered masonry-bearing corridor walls, which helped in understanding the historic plan configuration.
Sensitivity to Language Hall's Historic Character
The College's program included a requirement for four classrooms, a perfect fit for the building's historic plan configuration. However, adaptation of the building to meet today's teaching needs also called for spaces that had never existed within the historic building. To accommodate these programmatic needs and to bring the building up to current codes and standards for comfort and convenience, the team developed a design approach that is organized around the historic central corridor, keeping the remaining remnants of the corridor walls, while also creating a widened area at the front of both floors that serves as lobby and student gathering space. New elements including an elevator, electrical closet, break room and three bathrooms, are all accessed from the central corridor and gathering space.
Debbie Fritz, LAS project manager, noted that the team was sensitive to maintaining the historic character and materials of the interior wherever it could.
"For example," Fritz said, "we discovered original heart pine floors when we removed floor tiles and carpeting. They were in good condition and needed only a light sanding and finish to restore.
"We also had to be creative in designing a forced-air HVAC system. After removing the lowered ceilings, we restored the original 12-foot-high ceilings by designing a soffit in front of each classroom to house the forced air system for supply and return air."
Fritz noted that during earlier renovations the original staircase had been eliminated and replaced by two unattractive egress staircases on either side of the front entrance doors. The LAS team removed these egress stairs and designed an open staircase in the front entry space. This new stair was designed to feel comfortable in a building of this era but is detailed in a simplified manner to set it apart from the historic elements of the building. The stair and second floor reconfiguration required removing floor joists, which were salvaged and used to mill the treads for the staircase.
"The new staircase is really gorgeous and allows you to see all the way up to the ceiling of the building from the ground floor," Frady said.
Like the original staircase, the original interior doors had been removed during one of the renovations. "Although we couldn't know for sure what the doors looked like, we designed transoms over the new interior doors because this was typical of Victorian era buildings. The original rear exterior door (with transom) of the building was the example we followed," Fritz said. "Like the stair, simple contemporary detailing differentiates these new doors from the historic example."
During one of Language Hall's 20th century renovations, shutters were removed from the windows, and the original double hung windows were replaced with aluminum windows. And since the building was originally heated by pot belly stoves long since disposed of, the chimneys at either end had been removed as well. While a full exterior restoration was not feasible, work was guided by several historic photographs from Emory's archives as well as by onsite investigation to understand the building's historic appearance.
The exterior restoration included:
- reconstruction of the chimneys;
- reinstallation of an ornamental wood gable vent that was discovered damaged in the attic and was restored;
- painting of the trim work - including corbels, window hoods, eaves and porch columns - a deep brown in contrast to the lighter off-white color of the exterior; and
- replacement of the windows with replicas of the originals, using aluminum-clad wood painted a dark neutral color to blend with the deep brown and other rich neutral colors selected for the interior.
"The exterior color scheme was selected based upon colors commonly used in the Victorian-era and on the tones and contrast that could be discerned from the historic black and white photographs," Fritz noted.
LAS also addressed accessibility for the building. "We were delighted to have the opportunity to bring Language Hall to the standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act," Frady said. "We wanted to create equal accessibility to the building while also ensuring that all entrances were aesthetically pleasing. The design and grading of the new side entrance accomplishes that, blending seamlessly with the rest of Language Hall."
21st Century Classroom Technology
The once-again spacious classrooms are now filled with natural light. Three have moveable tables and chairs and can accommodate up to 33 seats, while the fourth is currently set up as a seminar room with 24 seats. The classrooms are enhanced with back-painted glass boards and podiums powered by SMART Technologies. This gives the instructors capability for free-form writing and interaction with content on a dedicated computer, which is simultaneously displayed on a 125-inch motorized screen.
One of the classrooms is also enhanced with a lecture-capture device that allows instructors to easily record their classroom teaching in both audio and video, using a touch-panel control system. Recorded video can then easily be distributed online for later review by students.
"The building speaks to an ideal classroom environment," Oxford's Frady said. "The faculty say they've noticed more energy from and attention paid by the students, and they attribute it to the natural light that flows through the building and to more elbow room for the students."
Frady added that students who attended Oxford College before Language Hall's classroom rehabilitation were amazed and eager to be sure they registered for classes held there once the building opened last January.
Addition Inspired by a Similar Historic Campus Building
The 2,000-square-foot, two-story Language Hall addition houses six faculty offices and ancillary spaces.
"Before designing the addition," Fritz said, "we looked at Humanities Hall, which is a historic building on campus built in the same year and architectural style as Language Hall. However, Humanities Hall has a cruciform-shaped plan versus the simple rectangular plan of Language Hall. After analyzing the space requirements for Language Hall, it made practical and aesthetic sense to locate the addition at the rear, and to create the same cruciform plan as its sibling building on campus, Humanities Hall.
"We removed a mechanical lean-to from the center back of the building and extended the original floor plan through the addition. The central corridor runs straight through, and there are three faculty offices on the main floor and three upstairs. For the second floor, we extended the central corridor though an old window in the original building. We saved this particular window hood (which can now be viewed from the corridor in the addition), along with the other exterior window hoods."
Green Design Strategies and Products Used
Just as LAS was able to re-use the wooden floor joists in Language Hall's new central staircase, the firm found other ways to re-use materials, one of the project's key green design strategies. For example, granite steps that led up to the back entrance of the old building were displaced by the addition, so they were turned on their ends and used for a sculpture to decorate a garden on the site.
"We determined that the granite steps were originally from Old Main, a building that was torn down in 1872, so in fact they've now been used three times," Frady said.
Other resource-saving products include low-flow plumbing fixtures, a hydration station that encourages use of personal water bottles in lieu of bottled water, and motion-activated lighting. | <urn:uuid:ad1d7ea0-99f0-47a4-bf93-0669f660a7af> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.dexigner.com/news/26837 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573533.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20220818215509-20220819005509-00267.warc.gz | en | 0.969732 | 2,098 | 2.3125 | 2 |
How to get rid of depression? Anyone can be a victim of depression, but it is very important to get out of it. Treatment is required where there is pain. If you have had a heart attack, the doctor will focus on your heart and treat it. But when it comes to depression, it is not often the case. We try all kinds of surface treatments and sometimes they fail. So let’s go to the root of depression today and understand effective ways to treat it. (How to get rid of depression?)
How to get rid of depression?
Avoid superstitions, choose the right environment
Today’s era is the era of consumerism. Everyone is ready to sell you something. Due to this environment, blind desires are communicated within us. Have blind wishes? Asking for things that we may not need, or asking for those which may not be possible. For example, if you ask for the sun at the night, then it is a blind wish. Therefore, avoid such an environment that infuses vain desires within you.
Also Read: HOW TO OVERCOME LONELINESS?
Understand your mind, move towards enlightenment
You can change your environment for some time so that blind desires are not awakened within you. But it is not always possible to do so. Not all situations can never be completely under your control. So it’s important to start understanding your mind: How do you spend the rest of your day? Whom do you consider your role model? What kind of people do you like to be friends with? What situations are you afraid of? What is the purpose of life living? Try to understand the purpose of your life by answering such questions.
Avoid falling into the trap of memories
Whenever you are free, you will find that your mind automatically starts remembering something by going back in time. Sometimes you will remember something that was pleasant for you, and sometimes it will surround you with memories that were sad and frightening you. Avoid both types of memories. Your past should be helpful to you like a repository of some important information, not a sleepless dream. For this, it is necessary that you use your time properly.
Don’t Try to Avoid Stress
It may sound strange but therein lies the solution. It is pointless to think like “I won’t take stress”. On the contrary, we should try to cope with more stress. Without this, you will not be able to overcome your weaknesses. By this, we do not mean that you start inviting challenges, but just as you strengthen your body by lifting heavy weights in the gym, in the same way, by choosing a meaningful goal in life, face whatever challenges come along the way.
Choose Meaningful Goals
If you are clear about your destination and know the way, the chances of getting lost in your path are much less. Similarly, if you choose a meaningful goal in life for yourself, then the chances of staying in depression and other negative moods for a long time automatically become very less. Now comes the question: What is a meaningful goal? A worthwhile goal is that which is much bigger than your personal interests, that keeps your mind light, that does not spoil the life of others, and that inspires others to rise up in life. | <urn:uuid:65233cfd-a039-4474-b7f9-900e3980ae16> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://meltblogs.com/how-to-get-rid-of-depression/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571692.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812105810-20220812135810-00068.warc.gz | en | 0.958943 | 672 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Onboarding is a demanding job in which players (users) of a system are brought onboard and made familiar with the system, their options within the system and are encouraged (by design) to try them and are rewarded (by design) for their effortless achievement. Howerver outsidide games, this is one of the most challanging tasks and difficult to a point that more than 80% of the startups in social businesses fail becuase they are aunable to pass beyond this phase. A prominent example where onboarding failed is Google Circles and Google plus where onoboarding has been a huge challage. But those systems are not gamified and people had no incentive to complete their profile or invite their friends to these new platforms.
LinkedIn is also faceing a smilar and localized challange in which they want to incrase user participation and forum engagement. LinkedIn have professionals who are both capable and interested in the content which other professioanls would be producing. In order to ease the existing members in, they are using "free accomplishment" tactic visible in this graphic.
This image is shown when my group level contribution is "0" but progress bar indicates 20% score already. Thus it acts on our brain in multiple ways including
- It gives an impression that I had probebly already started that, even though I didn't
- It gives me an impression that process is easy to complete and I have 80% more to cover instead of 100%
- Its orange color acts as a warning and hints that this is something which is less than good, but upon hovering, it turns green and progress bar reaches 40 giving a meaning that that 40% would be the right or safe score.
- By progressing further, you also get a different accomplishment title. At 20%, it says "Getting Started" and at 40%, it is "Finding an Audience". Thus you given a sense of progression and accomplishment along the way.
- Experts are clueless; they only know what others are thinking, what is general acceptance in the industry.
- Customers do not know what they need; they can only tell you what they need better, what they need cheaper, what they need 10% faster but cannot initiate a revolution in your products.
- Biggest Challenges beget the best work; if you give your employees big challenges, they will rise up and deliver best work of their carrier.
- Design Matters; People care about design so do not put up crap. Design is what matters, not a great algorithm.
- Big Graphics - Big fonts; Steve jobs used to put 60pt font in his presentations and often had a word in this presentations on a slide.
- Improve by jumping curves, not better sameness. Don't do 10% better, do 10 times better! People born in a curve, they die staying in the same curve. Only a very very few people were able to jump curves within their lives.
- All that really matters is "what works and what doesn't work". Apple never stuck with one strategy religiously, they only stuck with what has potential
- Value is different from Price; There is a class of users that care for value.
- A player A players, B players higher C players, C players higher D players. So higher people who are better than what you are.
- Real CEOs can demo. They can actually use the products and present that to the audience.
- Real entrepreneur ship. They jump the curves and produce the products out, which though have elements of crappiness. Guy is not saying that ship crappy products, what he is saying is improve by generation but accept there are going to be lapses and embrace those lapses and release products. S
- Something need to be believed to be seen.
Bellroy.com sells leather wallets and they have designd a page to help people understand how slim-wallets are better than standad ones. Its a great example of content strategy and in a very engaging manner educates you and convinces you that slim wallets is the way to go. Howerver I have analyzed its content and followings are few areas where it can improve.
Content of bellroy.com is great in following aspects;
- Content is written to a specific audience
- addresses a specific problem
- content is simple to look at
- quick to absorb
- establishes credibility of the provider as a subject expert
- offers free and useful tips
- content is logical and convincing
But this is where content is lacking.
- Content doesn't make reader remember the brand
- content doesn't' make reader act "now"
- there is a "Content Noise" between call to action button "Become a slim Ninja" and "next logical user need". In the middle, there exists big bold "Our Focus" which is useless in the given context. "Less is more" would've done the job all by its own.
- the content doesn't convince you that why "these" slim wallet should be bought for $89-$110. As a site visitor, I agree with the philosophy, I appreciate their content and helpfulness but I am not convinced why slim wallets from this site should be my choice. Since I am educated on the subject, I might go and buy any slim wallet from anywhere but why should I choose "these" listed wallets is not clear.
These wallets are expensive than usual ones and this additional price demands there should have been something inspirational and identity driven which is not there. if the content had a component which would convince users that wallets are "Stylishly Smart" then that would have helped. As the strategy for the page is entirely utilitarian, the strategist might have purposefully kept inspirational aspect out. However high price suggests there should have been some talk about inspiration and its absence is being felt.
Two different products and available to meet two different needs.
Mobile Apps are great if you want to serve frequent customers. Native mobile apps are fast and handy for customers who know what you do and what they want from you. Examples include bank making apps to facilitate their account holders.
What is a landing page
A landing page is the page within a website which is meant to receive your visitor directly and entices him to do something further. Thus it acts like a door which receives a visitor, informs, attracts and persuades him to perform an the activity and at the same time helps the business achieve its goal(s).
Landing page has several definitions depending upon objective they meet. For example, hubspot defines landing pages as “ these pages have forms on them and are designed purely to capture a visitor's information”.
Wikipedia describes landing page as: A single web page that appears in response to clicking on a link lying outside our website, a search result or an online advertisement. The landing page usually continues the sales message that was advertised and which had captured the user’s interest.
And there are more variations of this definition but generally speaking, it is a page which is meant to take a lead in propagating the message once a visitor arrives to it. It is usually the second “node” in the “objective life cycle” where first node is either another website, a search-engine result or an advertisement which has grabbed the attention of a random visitor and has brought him to our website on the landing page. Since first node is mostly outside our controllable website, the most emphasis of optimization resides on this “second node” or the “landing page”.
How to optimize a landing page?
Factors which contribute to the landing pages
Before we may think about optimizing, there are few pre-requisites which must be in place before “optimizing process” begins.
A page which we want to optimize must have
- SMART objectives
- well understood user needs
- persuasive architecture
- our ability to analyze and evaluate conversion rate of the page.
What do we call conversion?
Conversion means accomplishment of a predefined visitor specific business goal. In simplest form, we will consider that conversion has happened if a visitor has landed on a page, learned about a product and ended up making a purchase. Thus a visit has been converted into business.
However conversion doesn’t always mean a purchase and is considered to happen when a visitor successfully achieves smaller and sometimes non-economic goals; like visitor subscribing to a newsletter, or liking or sharing a link over social media, downloading a document or even more subtle business goals like spending x minutes on the site, browsing y number of pages or returning to website within specified time duration.
Forms of Conversions
- Macro Conversions
- Micro Conversions
Percentage of visitors who landed and accomplished desired objectives. Conversion is measured by conversion / number of unique visitors.
Conversion rate also varies from industry to industry and business to business within the same industry. Also various segments of the visitors produce various conversion rates. visitors who are looking for some specific information may only visit to get their required bit of info without converting straight-away but a returning visitor will have cleared perspective about website’s product/services than the first time visitor and hence returning segment of visitors will produce better conversion rate than that of first time visitors.
How Conversion Happens
Conversion in most cases is a multi-stage process and each step has its own dynamics. Generally speaking, a conversion has following three stages.
Collecting visitors from social media, search-gines and other websites.
Bringing visitors to the landing pages and educating, guiding and leading them to achieve expected goal
Keeping the visitors as customers and from customers to long term clients. This is done using keeping a “contact loop” alive by using emails, newsletters, special offers, discount vouchers etc.
Multivariate testing is the form of AB testing specifically employed in ecommerce industry. Using Multivarient Testing, we can determine effect of two variations on conversion or similar business goals.
Have a look at Wiki Reference
3rd Party Solution: https://www.optimizely.com/
In Google Analytics, multivariate testing is called Split Testing or Content Experiments.
Multivarient Testing explained on YouTube.com
To me, term "Content Strategy" is a misnomer and should have been called “Content Management” or “Content Management Strategy” if you must. Consider this definition of Content Strategy by Kristina Halverson,
“Content Strategy is creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable content”.
This is very much about management of content and the way you make it useful and usable within the organization. Shouldn't we call this aspect of data management as “Content Management”?
Now look on the other side of Content Marketing
“Content Marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience — with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”
This definition is all about strategic usage of content and how to convey message to well define and well known audience. This is where strategy is in action. Shouldn't Content Marketing be rather called Content Strategy? When you write to an audience to fulfil an objective, it doesn't matter what “type” of objective it is and writing to make an audience “know and learn” is not much different from “know and purchase”. Content Marketing is actually Content Strategy and what we currently call Content Strategy is Content Management.
Kristina Halvorson has grouped Content Management Strategy with Content Strategy. Many aspects of data including governance, storage, retrieval and meta-data etc has more to do with Management than Strategy. As per our mentor John Levine, strategy is how to communicated content is seen 1) credible, 2) authentic and 3) transparent. Now this definition tells you what PROPERTIES content MUST have so it could be acceptable by the audience and this definition doesn't hint about the managerial aspects which endorses my understanding.
Now here is my definition of content Strategy which focusses entirely on strategic thinking.
"Content Strategy is the art and science of using human emotions to spread the message across."
To me tools of content strategy are human emotions and not spell-checkers, spread-sheets and gap-analysis tables. Later are all examples of Management. Data management in itself needs a strategy when you have to deal with large volumes but then we call it Content Management Strategy but not Content Strategy.
Browse through the forum and find some examples which people are giving. You will find every example is about communication of message. For example "Dumb Ways to Die" and "Drag him away" campaigns. No one has shared any example of managerial aspects as yet.
Regarding your diagram, you are indicating problems found in large organizations and the problem is lack of homogenization which eventually leads to several other problems including redundancy, inconsistency and conflicting content. To solve this problem, you would need to create data rules and standardize how each department uses and stores data. This effort will fall under Content Manager's role. We don't have this designation but if we do, the role of Content Strategist will become distinct and identifiable as it should.
Our preceptions of colors is more relative than we have been taking. By now we understand that background has impact on a small piece of object placed in it, like red dot on black, gray and white seems to have different color intensity and saturation. But this relevent impact on the preception is not visible in the foreground colors only and can be seen in the large, dominent and apparently color-less tints like white and dark gray. Have a look at two examples given below.
Image on the top-left seems to have a light tint of brownish green in the background because of tiny tints in the foreground. The image on the right is the same image and has exactly the same background but in the presence of gray text, background appears to be color-less and neutrally gray. Same impact can be felt in the bottom-left image which seems to have a pink-tint in the background even though it is exactly the same and doesn't have any value of hue (#333).
I have came across this well thought and persuasively designed email and then the landing page and found they are very good examples to follow.
- Starts with "One Luckey Nerd takes home all this. BE THAT NERD" creating mutilple preceptions including "chance to win", "being lucky" and finally.. a commanding instruction in Capitals "BE THAT NERD", creationg a balanced mix of Attraction, Inspiring and Commanding what to do.
- Selection and display of 4 welll thought images starting from Large Screen, Macbook, an ergonomic and relaxing chair and finally Red Headset with visible brand. All mentioned items are preceived high value among the audience this email is meant for.
- There is a blurred office image which has enough noise and softness to be used for subliminal messaging. I am not able to spot any obvious subliminals in it but if they are subliminal, I shouldn't be spoting them. Howerver liklihood of having a subconcious message is there.
- First line after the graphic reads "We've extended the deadline! You now have until October 6th at Midnight PST". This part is doing two tricks together.
- Creating a sense of extended opportunity
- Second line "You now have until october", the line is using assertive narrative telling you about leverage of time, yet making you think that it is a do-able or an obligation. A sentence like "now you can" would have created sense of "choice" which is not given.
- "To enter to win, simply deploy the New Relic agent by the deadline! Who doesn't want all that great stuff." It is again assertion to previous annotation of "comply, obey and follow" and ending the line with a negative psychological statement, "Who doesn't want all thsi great stuff".
- In the headings part, there are three simple but purposeful headings creating a reverse pyramid of reward, putting highest with most charm first, then second grade winner (no one wants to be second and thus no one values second prize; yet there is something if you loose first) and finally telling that everybody is a winner.
- Finally, a big red button which is visible and contains a verb "Deploy Now" as final instruction leading to specifically designed landing page. The area around the "call to action button" is empty and doesn't contain anything which may deserve a look.
Overall, a very good and well thought strategy to engage user, persuade him and lead him to perform desired action.
It is followed by an equally welld designed landing page and I will try to decipher its content later in detail but for your eyes, here it goes.
Hotspots are areas around a hyperlink where hyperlnik starts responding to mouse movement.
Google’s interface has gone under a revamp recently and came out with something which is taken positive and negative at the same time. It is different, less obtrusive, less visible. The new color-scheme is a shift from overly white to mild gray, less bright and more focused on objective.
This is exciting.. I have just discovered a way to identify if any given image is fake or real. Idea is to find credible procedure which can Identify fake/composited images (no matter how well-done) from real ones. It is still a trial-and-error learning for me but I would like to keep you guys involved and see if this is really something trustworthy.
Heuristic Analysis is the evaluation of user interface design in order to find out common usability issues and is a quickest ways of finding out usability problems and fixing them. Any skilled UI/UX Designer can help you perform Heuristic Analysis and eliminate useability issues before. Heuristic Analysis can be performed at any stage but it would be most beneficial if you perform this analysis on your existing designs before subjecting them touseability testing. Doing so will help you find deeper useability issues instead of rediscovering what is already known.
Following is an example taken from a popular recruitment site. In order to save the site from any criticism, I have blurred their identity and some of the email IDs listed on the page.
User Design Experience is name of a Process. A set of procedures which involves undestanding your grounds, undestanding objectives, following a defined and well structured research methodology, structured design, developement and problem solving and finally, testing and evaluating how close you got to your objectives and how real those objectives were to the intent.
I intend to write a complete article on the subject, as the time allows.
---- In Progress ----
Nothing is original. From straw to the tallest buildings, from underwater vehicles to space-ships, everything is built upon an idea, a form, an entity which had existed before. In better words it is called "Taking Inspiration" but it is not any less harsh than "stealing" someone's work. Ripping of some-one's work who in reality had rippied some-one else's. It started with the first human being and it will continue to the last.
One day while travelling by train, a thought came to my mind that trains have stopped announcing arrival of train stations. It wasn’t result of an observation but rather a realization that had not heard that pre-recorded female voice making announcements since long and at the same time, started thinking what may have made them stop that helpful announcement.
Within a few minutes as train approached the next station, I was amazed to listen to the same train announce in equally loud and clear voice and upon listening that,
By definition: “Information design is the skill and practice of preparing information so people can use it with efficiency and effectiveness.” To put simply, information design is a solution to a problem, built using text, images, video, graphs and other available data – that’s it.
Webpages are two dimensional space where all the content must be added or arranged in no more than two dimensions. Even an illusion of 3rd dimension is inevitably entrapped in x and y coordinates. Although impression of layers overlapping each other tend to give us impression of things being behind the others but that is the most we can achieve within this given space. However we can add a real and new dimension to this x,y canvas making it 3 dimensional space; the dimension of time.
Internet business is tricky, not because it involves ever growing technology, but because of fierce competition and challenge of sustaining customers over a prolonged period of time. Considering marketing of a web-business, success doesn’t mean to achieve top 10 ranking in Google and receiving 10,000 visitors a day, but real challenge is to retain customers and visitors at times when Search Engines changes their ranking policies and your site drops from first page to 7th or 17th page overnight.
In the recent article by Scotty Belsky, he has suggested to use Margins between various time-slots throughout the day to handle miscalculations and unexpected. While this approach of leaving 1-2 hours margin everyday during the working hours would make you feel safe, this approach itself is expensive in effective that it is based on our judgment again. | <urn:uuid:753823fd-8d35-4151-a126-dc8ff43bf8a4> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.graphican.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560285315.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095125-00569-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955252 | 4,420 | 1.804688 | 2 |
This essay has been submitted by a student. This is not an example of the work written by our professional essay writers.
This chapter will discuss previous academic and professional literature relating to assurance statement practices in corporate social reporting. Academic literature related to corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate social disclosure (CSD), CS reporting, assurance statements, different features of assurance statements, guidelines related to assurance statements and their impact on the stakeholders will be presented in detail in this chapter. Recent years have witness a significant increase in the research regarding corporate social reporting, social disclosure and is gaining attention of researchers for over twenty years (Khan, 2010). Researchers across the globe have been trying to identify the trends and issues related to CSD and one very important aspect of it i.e. assurance statement. Recently CSR has been on the rise (Sutantoputra, 2009).
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
(Gamerschlag et al., 2010, p. 1) defined CSR as "company's voluntary contribution to sustainable development which goes beyond legal requirements", they further argued that CSR practices are on the rise in recent years and this trend is evident from the increasing CSR disclosure and sustainability reports. According to (Perrini, 2005) CSR is a concept in which companies communicate with their stakeholders by including social and environmental issues into daily business operations voluntarily, are accountable to their stakeholders and is a source of competitive advantage (Sutantoputra, 2009).
For years companies have been utilizing financial reports to disseminate information regarding their actions and impact of those actions on both shareholders and stakeholders. Basic purpose of those financial reports has been to serve mainly the needs of shareholders. This behavior of corporate management has been encouraged by legal and remuneration structure of companies especially in Anglo-Saxon countries such as US and UK where managerial perks are usually linked with shareholder wealth maximization via share price of the company, which promotes limited shareholder focus mentality rather than wider stakeholder oriented approach (Adams and Whelan, 2009).
This trend is changing as companies are trying to be more socially responsible towards wider community and is developing into an important aspect of business communication (Perrini, 2005). Modern business environment requires companies to be sensitive to the needs of all its stakeholders. Companies are expected to engage with wider stakeholders in more effective manner by distributing information about their actions not just by financial reports but by more effective and easily accessible means and this comes under the domain of CSR (Khan, 2010). Constant demand by stakeholders to be more socially responsible has forced management to be more socially and environmentally responsible (Elijido-Ten et al., 2010).
Businesses operate in a society and thus become part of the overall system which is interlinked i.e. every entity in that system has some direct and indirect impact on eachother. This interrelationship among entities in a social system creates certain prospects for companies to act ethically, so they take up some CSR tools to present their positive image to society of which corporate social disclosure is one (Preuss, 2010, p. 336), and by reporting about the consequences of their actions on society could gain stakeholders support, positive reputation, and long-term survival (Perrini, 2005; Khan, 2010). Infect reputation building is the main reason behind companies undertaking CSR activities (Cooper and Owen, 2007, p. 649).
Corporate Social Disclosure (CSD)
Corporate social responsibility leads companies to disclose impact of their actions on stakeholders, society and environment. Companies engage in CSD when they disclose information about the impact of their actions on society and it is usually considered voluntary rather than mandatory. CSD is defined as "the information that a company discloses about its environmental impact and its relationship with its stakeholders by means of relevant communication channels" (Gamerschlag et al., 2010, p. 2-3), CSD is provision of information by company relating to the issues regarding environment, community, employee, consumer issues and makes companies accountable to wider stakeholders rather than addressing the needs of only shareholders and creditors as is the case in financial reporting (Smith et al., 2005, p. 124-125) and is considered as a communication channel between company and stakeholders. CSD is becoming important aspect of modern business environment as companies have increased the disclosure of environmental information in both financial and non-financial reports (Elijido-Ten et al., 2010; Brown and Deegan, 1998).
Motives behind CSD
There is an increasing shift in the managerial preference as far as CSD is concerned; companies are no longer relying on only financial reports to address stakeholders. In the recent decades corporate social and environmental reporting has been emerged as a complement to financial reporting to tackle social and environmental issues being faced by companies (Baker, 2010, p. 847). There could be numerous reasons behind this trend; (Adams and Whelan, 2009, p. 122) suggested that voluntary information disclosure depends upon the company belief that it is ethical to inform public about the environmental impact of the company's actions or to hide the harmful actions that might affect company's status or it is assumed that social disclosure is vital to keep the job and to carry on earning high salaries especially in the case of top management. Public pressure after corporate collapses and disagreements has made companies to respond to public demands by disclosing information about their impact on wider society (Benn et al., 2009). Similarly, (Smith et al., 2005) argued corporate collapses of large firms such as Enron, WorldCom and Global Crossing have showed that corporate influence is not restricted to shareholders only, it affects larger society. (Darnell et al., 2009, p. 171) argued that over the past two decades companies have acted according to the stakeholder demands by becoming more environmentally responsible.
Despite its positive aspects CSD could be used as a manipulative tool by the companies as (Branco and Rodriguez, 2007) argued that motivation behind the decision by companies to go down CSR path due the realization that CSR could be beneficial for the company in the long run and it could help the company gain competitive advantage over its competitors or it could be used to shape perception of stakeholders regarding company by portraying positive image of the company. (Chiang, 2010) suggested that company and its reporting practices do get affected by environmental issues, environmental disclosure could be treated as contribution to society by companies (Sun et al., 2010, p. 679). Societal issues have become so important recently that social and environmental disclosure not only affects company's relationship with stakeholders but it could affect investors' confidence in the company as well. This fact has made investors cautious about company practices especially in their dealings with environment and society resulting in an increase in social and environmental disclosure by companies to satisfy both investors and stakeholders (Beets and Souther, 1999).
Unlike in the past companies are disclosing their social and environmental information in separate reports apart from annual reports.
Corporate Social and Environmental Reporting
CS reporting has been defined by (Unerman and O'Dwyer, 2007, p. 333) as a practice in which companies communicate with stakeholders about their CSR policies, practices. Companies used financial reports to report on their social and environmental activities particularly in countries like Australia, UK and US (Brown and Deegan, 1998) but this trend has been shifting towards stand-alone CS reporting due to increased attention being given to the issue by both academic and professional researchers (Kuruppu and Milne, 2010) who are putting pressure on corporate managers to address their social and environmental actions in separate CS reports (Porter, 2009).
Corporate social and environmental reporting although a new phenomenon (Adams and Evans, 2004, p. 99) has emerged as main instrument of CSD by organizations in recent years (Darnell et al., 2009) to communicate with their stakeholders (Park and Brorson, 2005). Companies have taken different routes such as web based environmental, social and recently sustainability reports to disclose about their intentions regarding social issues (Cooper and Owen, 2007. P. 649) and it is up to companies to choose which communication channel would be more effective in reaching appropriate audience (Sutantoputra, 2009). Separate environmental reports are becoming increasingly common practice among companies to report on their actions in last few decades (Deegan et al., 2006), being adopted by companies across the globe (Edgley et al., 2010; Jones and Solomon, 2010; Moneva et al., 2007; O'Dwyer and Owen, 2005; Owen and O'Dwyer, 2004) to fulfill their obligation regarding corporate responsibility (Perego, 2009; Perrini, 2005).
Large companies around the world are realizing the importance of addressing stakeholder issues in a more responsible manner and this is evident from KPMG (2005) survey that between 2004 and 2005 more than half of G250 and almost third of N100 communicated their social, environmental and sustainability performance via corporate responsibility report (Manetti and Becatii, 2008, p. 289), CS reporting practices are becoming increasingly prevalent among multi-nationals (Unerman and O'Dwyer, 2007). Similarly, (O'Dwyer and Owen, 2005, p. 206; Owen and O'Dwyer, 2004, p. 1; Park and Brorson, 2005) mentioned that according to KPMG (2002) survey 45% of the top 250 companies of the Global Fortune 500 (GFT250) issue an environmental, social or sustainability reports compared to 35% in 1999. Number of companies issuing environmental reports has increased from 12% in 1993 to 28% in 2002 (Park and Brorson, 2005, p. 1095).
CS reporting although is in its early stages but has made a rapid improvement recently, social concerns have made companies to increase their interaction with stakeholders (Sun et al., 2010). Different communication channels are being used by the companies to report about their corporate social responsibilities. Sustainability reports have emerged as one of the most prominent and widely used medium by the companies to show their social responsibility credentials. Sustainability reports become common practice after 2000 with the introduction of GRI standard which provides directions for the companies to follow in their social, environmental and economical issues (Baxi and Ray, 2009), and is considered to be an indicator of corporate accountability and stakeholder acceptance of company's policies (Villiers and Staden, 2010). Corporations are starting to take CSR disclosure seriously which is evident from increase use of social, environmental and sustainability reports (Perrini, 2005; Sutantoputra, 2009; Porter 2009).
Main rational behind sustainability reporting is that organizations are accountable to all its stakeholders' not just shareholders and through sustainability reports companies express their accountability towards stakeholders (Boele and Kemp, 2005). In academic literature accountability has been defined as "the duty to provide an account, by no means necessarily a financial account, or reckoning of those actions for which one is held responsible" (Cooper and Owen, 2007, p. 651), to give an account of one's action and being punished for nor performing duties satisfactorily (Porter, 2009), duty of accountor to report to accountee in case of relationship between both and accountee has the power to hold accountor responsible for his/her decision or actions (Crofts and Bisman, 2010), user of resources must be answerable about how resources have been consumed and what impact that consumption of resources could have on society (Naser et al., 2006) and there appears to be a need of greater corporate accountability in business environment (Kuruppu and Milne, 2010) and disclosing more information (Naser et al., 2006, p. 5).
Sustainability reporting unlike environmental reporting which covers only environmental impact of organizational activities has much broader focus including social and financial dimensions of corporate activities (Monvea et al., 2007), although lately companies have been including social and economic issues in their environmental reports thus changing them into sustainability reports (Park and Brorson, 2005). This is why it is also considered as triple bottom line reporting that includes economic, social and environment performance of the company (O'Connor and Spangenberg, 2009; Porter, 2009), defined as "publically released document addressing social, environmental and economic performance of the reporting organization" (Deegan et al., 2006).
Sustainability reporting is on the increase but not without its issues and concerns. Researchers have been constantly trying to disclose issues relevant to sustainability or social reporting. There could be various factors involve that cast doubt on the usefulness and reliability of the sustainability or social reporting. One such issue is completeness of the report which is linked with the amount of relevant information being disclosed in the report by the company (Adams and Evans, 2004). Management could use social reporting for personal gains, (Baker, 2010) argued that mangers think that the objective of stakeholder engagement could be served through proper use of sustainability reporting which in turn could make managers look responsible in front of stakeholders, stakeholder involvement is minimum in social reporting indicating that accountability to stakeholders is not the primary concern of management (O'Dwyer and Owen, 2005). Interaction with all stakeholders especially those who are affected most by the action of the company is needed if the objective of enhanced accountability is to be achieved which is certainly not the case in real corporate world at the moment (Cooper and Owen, 2007). Despite the growing trend in corporate social and environmental reporting there is still a lick of confidence by public on corporate performance regarding social disclosure so in order to gain that public trust companies must constantly learn and improve their interaction with stakeholders and reporting processes (Dando and Swift, 2003). This lack of public trust on the content of sustainability reports creates credibility gap and makes sustainability reports less useful for traditional stakeholders i.e. shareholders, lenders, customers, employees and local communities (Manetti and Becatii, 2008, p. 289). Similarly, (O'Dwyer et al., 2011) suggested that sustainability reports are being criticized in a sense that they put a veil on corporate environmental activities instead of making them more transparent. Hiding all the negative aspects of company decisions and actions regarding social issues in sustainability reports becomes easier as companies are not required by law to produce sustainability reports as opposed to financial reports (Park and Brorson, 2005).
If sustainability reports are to be reliable and credibility gap which might have adverse affect on organization's reputation (Kim et al., 2010) to be reduced, there has to be a mechanism to ensure that the information provided in sustainability reports could be trusted upon. Independent assurance or verification of sustainability or social reports helps enhance corporate accountability and increase stakeholder confidence on reported information (Beets and Souther, 1999).
Aoording to the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) assurance statement can be defined as " a process in which a practitioner expresses a conclusion designed to enhance the degree of confidence that intended users can have about the evaluation or measurement of a subject matter that is the responsibility of a party, other than the intended users or practitioner, against criteria" (Park and Brorson, 2005, p. 1096). With the increase in CS reporting around the world there is also accompanying increase in external assurance (Kuruppu and Milne, 2010; O'Dwyer et al., 2011; Owen and O'Dwyer, 2004). Main rational behind credibility is trust and assurance guarantees that the information presented by companies in their social and sustainability reports is true and fair (Dando and Swift, 2003; Edgley et al., 2010), this widening credibility gap between company and stakeholders contributed to the upward trend in sustainability assurance (Owen and O'Dwyer, 2004). Assurance means stakeholders have more confidence on those sustainability reports that are externally or independently verified and is relatively recent phenomenon (Deegan et al., 2006, p. 332).
Sustainability reports are expected to serve the accountability perspective and reduce the credibility gap (Dando and Swift, 2003). Credibility of the reported information that companies use in their sustainability reports is greatly enhanced if they are verified externally since the whole point of sustainability reporting is to gain stakeholder trust (Adams and Evans, 2004; Jones and Solomon, 2010), and assurance practice should be devised in such ways that complement that wider stakeholder accountability perspective by including stakeholders concerns in assurance process (Dando and Swift, 2003, p. 198). Assurance statements enhance the quality of sustainability reports is evident from the fact that 68% of the world's best sustainability reports have assurance statements according to SustianAbility's (2002) analysis (O'Dywer and Owen, 2005, p. 206; Owen and O'Dwyer, 2004, p. 1), they further argued that stakeholders want assurance from managers regarding their management of social and environmental issues in a true and fair manner. Similarly, (Park and Brorson, 2005) argued that in order to counter stakeholders demands of true and fair representation of the company's activities assurance statements are being used as a tool.
Recent Trends in Assurance Practices
External third-party assurance was not a common practice in CS reporting, it was only until recently that it has gained popularity in modern business environment. In 2002, 29% of GFT250 companies included verification in their reports compared to 19% in 1999 and 27% of 440 companies from the top 100 in 19 countries had report verification in 1999 (Deegan et al., 2006, p. 333; O'Dwyer and Owen, 2005; Owen and O'Dwyer, 2004), similarly (Kuruppu and Milne, 2010, p. 4) stated that KPMG survey shows increase in assurance provision to 30% in 2005 from 20% in 1996, but this increased trend is not uniform everywhere as they further argued that assurance practices in UK and Italy are more predominant compared to US, Canada and Germany. Wide spread acceptance of triple bottom line or sustainability reporting added to assurance statement practices specially in environmentally sensitive industries (Deegan et al., 2006)because of their direct impact on environment and society. Similarly, (O'Dwyer and Owen, 2007, p. 78) mentioned that 40% of sustainability reports included external assurance in 2003 up from 17% ten years ago, has come to the attention of business community recently after constant demands of social lobbying groups, communities and stakeholders, and is increasing internationally (Edgley et al., 2010, p. 532; Jones and Solomon, 2010). Recently, (O'Dwyer et al., 2011, p. 1-2) argued that KPMG's (2008) survey mentioned that upward trend in assurance practices is evident as 40% of G250 companies included assurance statements in their CS reports compared to 30% in 2005 survey and corporateregister.com (2008) showed average 20% increase of assurance practices among companies per year from 1997 to 2007.
Corporate activities significantly improve if there is proper check and balance on them. (Darnell et al., 2009, p. 185) suggested that social and environmental audits lead to better operational performance by companies which in turn lead to better overall company performance, so assurance statements in social reporting might have implications not only on non-financial aspects but also on the financial performance of the company.
Assurance statements like CS reporting is voluntary in nature which might hinder the wide spread acceptance of assurance practices. (Jones and Solomon, 2010) stated that assurance practices being voluntary in nature is not developed much in the past however recently there is although limited but growing body of literature trying to explore the issues related to assurance practices to make it a more common practice among companies. Financial reports are still trusted more as compared to sustainability reports by stakeholders specially shareholders when it comes to presenting true picture of organizational activities, but inclusion of assurance statements or verification of sustainability reports has potential to the tackle the criticism of CS reporting (Jones and Solomon, 2010), just like financial audits increase the reliability of financial reports third party assurance adds social reporting (Park and Brorson, 2005). Assurance statement practice being relatively new area needs more in-depth analysis by researchers so that it could be understood and widely accepted around the world. As (O'Dwyer et al., 2011) argued that assurance statements in sustainability reporting is usually studied in relation to its content most of the times which makes the analysis of its actual practice in business environment a bit left behind and there is room for further research in this area. | <urn:uuid:97a29866-f1af-4ef8-a100-6ec048a4f3b7> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.ukessays.com/essays/accounting/assurance-statement-practices-in-corporate-social-reporting-accounting-essay.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280761.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00091-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958887 | 4,186 | 2.046875 | 2 |
From: Chris Cheng (email@example.com)
Date: Fri Nov 05 1999 - 10:25:12 PST
if the sole purpose of the buffer is to drive clocks to ASIC,
why not use LVPECL or differential HSTL fan out buffers. motorola
and synergy semiconductor have lots of LVPECL and differential
HSTL clock buffer. there is no reason why clock inputs has to
be SSTL which is intended for heavy loaded buses not for pt to
pt clock distribution. finally,I think SSTL is a 2.5V standard
> -----Original Message-----
> From: firstname.lastname@example.org
> [mailto:email@example.com]On Behalf Of Jason Zheng
> Sent: Thursday, November 04, 1999 7:18 PM
> To: firstname.lastname@example.org; email@example.com
> Subject: Re: [SI-LIST] : [Fwd: Majordomo results: Looking for highspeed
> buffer parts]
> Thank you very much for the reply!
> The 240 Mhz part is to buffer the clocks from clock synthesizer
> to multiple ASICs as a clock source. The ASICs have 3.3v IO but
> are 5V tolerate. I saw and IDT part# IDT74ALVC16244A that may
> be promising. Have you had any experience with that part?
> Do you know of any GaAs vendor that may provide faster
> parts for my needs? I wonder what people use for buffering
> the clocks for AMD's 200 Mhz system clock or DDR clocks?
> Can you give me a pointer for the GAL part#/vendor info?
> Thanks in advance!
> > From your post, I guess that you want 3.3V SSTTL levels.
> 240MHz is really
> > beyond any practical upper limit for SSTTL. There isn't much
> out there that
> > can reliably get below a Tpd of 1.5nS, which would typically be
> suitable to
> > 150-166MHz at the high-end. If you want to reach beyond 200MHz,
> it is time
> > to use low-swing logic.
> > The application sounds like a phase-splitter. If it is, instead of an
> > inverter try a precision delay line, either buried in etch, or
> off the shelf.
> > The 120MHz mux / FF can be implemented in either a 5nS or 3nS
> GAL. Which
> > grade is appropriate depends on the specifics of your Tsu and Th
> > requirements.
> > Regards,
> > Steve.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Feb 29 2000 - 11:39:38 PST | <urn:uuid:7eb609dd-e65a-43a2-8fc3-ce4a5faaca74> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.qsl.net/wb6tpu/si-list3/0617.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560284411.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095124-00457-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.83576 | 803 | 1.734375 | 2 |
NEW YORK, NY.-
In conjunction with its new exhibition, Reinventing Ritual: Contemporary Art and Design for Jewish Life, The Jewish Museum
has presented - for the first time - the Henry J. Leir Prize to recognize an outstanding work of art in the show. A three-member jury determined the winner of the Leir Prize, Allan Wexlers Gardening Sukkah. The three judges were architect and designer Daniel Libeskind; Holly Hotchner, Director of the Museum of Arts and Design; and Rabbi Darcie Crystal, Coordinator of Leadership Initiatives at Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion.
The winning work reinvents Jewish rituals and ritual objects through a creative use of materials; a new conceptual framework; and repurposing the secular into sacred. The winner of the Leir Prize was announced at an evening event at The Jewish Museum celebrating the Reinventing Ritual exhibition on Monday, September 14, 2009. The $5,000 prize was awarded in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Leir Charitable Foundations singular role in energizing the Museums collecting, exhibiting, and commissioning of contemporary art and design about Jewish ritual.
The jury praised Gardening Sukkas year-round functionality, green sensibility, way of raising the issue of what a sukkah is, craftsmanship, and throughfulness, in its fulfillment of prize criteria that the winner best reinvents ritual. The judges also selected two honorable mentions: Ami Drach and Dov Ganchrows =/- Hotplate and Hadassa Goldvichts video Reading Lesson #1.
The Leir Prize recognizes work that most fully embodies the finest of contemporary art and design, and best expresses the dynamic, ever-evolving practice of religion today. It represents the culmination of a vision - to show the public the number, range, and quality of artists who are drawn to rejuvenate centuries-old Jewish rituals in bold, experimental ways.
Artists and designers' rising interest in ritual since the 1990s inspires Reinventing Ritual, the first international exhibition to survey this phenomenon. On view at The Jewish Museum from September 13, 2009 through February 7, 2010, the exhibition features nearly sixty innovative works, created between 1999 and 2000 in diverse media by 58 artists. Visitors can see outstanding examples of industrial design, architecture, installation art, video, drawing, metalwork, jewelry, sculpture, ceramics, comics, and textiles, revealing the intersections of creative freedom and Jewish life. | <urn:uuid:2765b2e5-ce16-4ed7-abcd-743bc9312eec> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=33406&int_modo=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719027.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00303-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932381 | 510 | 1.734375 | 2 |
What are we willing to tolerate in our schools? Which behaviors are we willing to "accept" because otherwise, it gets too hard?
I'm not talking about kids. I'm talking about the adults that we employ. What guides our decisions when we consider teachers and other educators? And what does that choice of guides tell us about how we value children?
I am a huge supporter of American educators... teachers, principals, librarians, counselors, bus drivers, the people in the cafeteria, custodians, everyone. I believe in paying these people well, treating them like the incredibly valuable professionals they are, in tenure, in due process, in unions - all of that. It makes me sick that we live in societies in which stock brokers - who are nothing more than bookies in better suits - get paid more than teachers - who are in charge of our future. It speaks to a level of warped priorities that is hard to fathom, but...
Not everyone belongs in our schools. Not everyone who currently works in our schools should be in our schools. Not everyone who can graduate from a teacher education program is capable of being a teacher, nor is everyone who can write a cute essay and be accepted into Teach for America. These jobs are too difficult, and they are far too important.
|We know that certain school paradigms (like KIPP - above) are racist and based on|
false assumptions instead of research and knowledge, but too often we allow similar
nonsense to go on down the corridor.
The "yeah but" response sounds like this, "I know this teacher is a problem, but she's really nice and she's been here a long time." Or this, "I know I should learn that, but its just easier to do what I've always done." Or this, "You know, you're right but we can't make our teachers uncomfortable." Or this, "Well, we're really trying to work on this, and he is trying to change a little."
What the "yeah but" response means is that the educator saying that has chosen to value the adults more highly than the children they work for. It might be themselves - their own comfort, their own laziness, their own lack of professional commitment - or it might be their "adult community" that they value more than kids - workplace harmony, an easier job as an administrator, the desire not to have the really difficult conversations. But whatever, the "yeah but" response indicates that the person giving it has divided the world into first and second class citizens, and then has placed the children in the "second class" position.
"I am trying to imagine a white president forced to show his papers at a national news conference, and coming up blank. I am trying to a imagine a prominent white Harvard professor arrested for breaking into his own home, and coming up with nothing. I am trying to see Sean Penn or Nicolas Cage being frisked at an upscale deli, and I find myself laughing in the dark. It is worth considering the messaging here. It says to black kids: “Don’t leave home. They don’t want you around.” It is messaging propagated by moral people," Coates writes in the Op-Ed piece quoted at the start, and I want to ask the same questions in education. How often is it acceptable for students to say, as I've heard teachers say, "its easier for me if I don't learn that"? How often is it acceptable for students to say, as I've heard a few school librarians say, "its better for me if I have a few hours of quiet time by myself each day"? How often is it that an individual student gets to set the noise level in a classroom, a corridor, a cafeteria? How often do we accept children who, not doing anything near what we think is their best work, choose to continue to do that completely unchallenged?
Simple answer is, "we don't." Which means that if we "tolerate" answers like that from our adults, we have made a choice not to value our kids as what is most important. Often, yes, we are actually "saying" that a school employee's right to be lazy is more important than a child's right to the best education we can offer. Is that a sign we're ready to put up over our schools' entries?
If not, maybe we need to start saying something else...
One thing which must be unacceptable among adults in our schools is an unwillingness to be not just active learners but professionals who adapt their practices based on new learning. We literally know a million times more about the human brain and the universe than we did a generation ago, and it is incomprehensible to me that anyone involved in the education of children has not changed what they do and how they do it.
|glia cells, ignored a decade ago, now show us remarkable things about learning|
and FMRIs have revealed the teenage brain in incredible new light
That "old doctor," the one who might not believe in MRIs and contemporary medications, might be a hell of a nice guy. He might have coached Little League for years, helped his neighbors, been a pillar of his church. He might be helping grandchildren get through college. But still, I don't want him in my hospital, I don't want him treating my family, or anyone else.
Coates builds his argument against "good people" around the racist incident at a New York City delicatessen involving actor Forrest Whitaker, "The other day I walked past this particular deli. I believe its owners to be good people. I felt ashamed at withholding business for something far beyond the merchant’s reach. I mentioned this to my wife. My wife is not like me. When she was 6, a little white boy called her cousin a nigger, and it has been war ever since. “What if they did that to your son?” she asked." Well, I'd ask the same question. If this was your child, would you want this "professional" teaching them? leading them? working in their school?
If your answer is "no," then, you have a responsibility to act, from whatever position you are in. And you have a responsibility to act with just one guiding question, "What is the right thing to do for our kids - all of our kids?" All the other questions? Those are just excuse-makers.
- Ira Socol | <urn:uuid:8fe57bd3-03c6-41ba-b726-8f797d40d185> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2013/03/all-good-people.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988722951.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183842-00210-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979681 | 1,339 | 1.984375 | 2 |
NO ONE CHILD IS THE SAME SO IT IS SAFE TO SAY THEY DO NOT LEARN THE SAME with Marla Luehder and Shelley Hill
This is the first BLOG for Smart Choices and it was so fun to make! I dedicated Smart Choices to my parents Thomas Oscar Henry Luehder and Marla Ann Smith Luehder so to have mom in my first BLOG made complete sense to me. Thank you mom for sharing a piece of you with us called "I Have Always Loved You best". You are without a doubt the best mom and "need filler" EVER!
In this video she shares a customized poem (originated from Erma Bombeck) with you. I chose this as our first video because I thought it showed how mom knew how each child worked, learned, and expressed themselves at a very early age. She knew immediately that I was the creative one, the animal lover, the one that loved friends as deeply as family, I never lied, never accepted the word "can't", but I was also the one that had the hardest time learning.
Below is a section out of our "Setting You Up For Success" booklet/page that you will receive when you order Smart Choices Image Cards (BAG or CARDS ONLY). I hope you find value in this short video and really think about HOW your child learns the best.
Make sure you pick “age specific” Smart Choices Image Cards:
Smart Choices REVIEWS
Shelley is the creator of Smart Choices, a public speaker, and a supporter of THINKING AHEAD. Smart Choices BLOG is a mixture of stories, Q & A interaction, new thought provoking ideas, guest BLOGS/videos, and MORE! | <urn:uuid:09269375-abda-4d89-83cb-d0f48168e254> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.smartchoicesimagecards.com/blog/no-one-child-is-the-same | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572021.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814083156-20220814113156-00074.warc.gz | en | 0.951499 | 387 | 1.515625 | 2 |
The Guardian reports: Two days after a historic vote saw an overtly nationalist party enter the German parliament for the first time in more than five decades, a group of over-60s vent their grievances over lunchtime beers and cigarettes in the smoky back room of a dry petrol station on the border between the German state of Saxony and the Czech Republic.
The German government is throwing cash at refugees “while native pensioners can’t afford to buy a new pair of glasses”, they complain. Putin is Europe’s “only guarantor of peace”, they argue, and Germany is still “under occupation” by America.
A retired lorry driver with a handlebar moustache cites a joke he read in the tabloid Bild, which says that in the wake of Sunday’s federal elections, Angela Merkel should consider handing Saxony to the Czechs in exchange for some of their toxic waste. “Let’s have it,” he shouts. “We’ll become Sudeten Germans again.”
Oppach lies in the new heartland of Germany’s far-right upstarts, part of a cluster of five villages in the district of Görlitz where Alternative für Deutschland won more than 44% of the vote on Sunday.
With 12.6% of the national vote, the AfD will be the third-strongest force in the next Bundestag, but in Saxony the party is already top: 27% of voters cast their ballot for the party that wants to hold a referendum on leaving the eurozone, ban burqas and minarets, and have Merkel prosecuted for her decision to open Germany’s borders to refugees in 2015. [Continue reading…]
Jefferson Chase writes: For the first time in the modern history of the Federal Republic of Germany, voters have elected a far-right party to the country’s parliament. But what does “far-right” mean and how will political culture change? The answers are both very complicated and really simple.
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) promotes itself as a patriotic, democratic, conservative party. However, critics from across the political spectrum say it’s an association of right-wing extremists. In a pointed reference to the AfD, Germany’s Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel bemoaned the fact that “true Nazis” would once again be part of the Bundestag.
Speaking to foreign journalists, Germany’s leading academic expert on political parties, Oskar Niedermayer, defined the AfD as follows: “The spectrum of positions represented in the AfD cannot be summed up by one word. I call them a nationalist-conservative party with increasing connections to right-wing extremism.”
That’s the complicated bit. The simple one is the AfD’s lone effective issue. The official party platform may be 76 pages long and offers many positions on everything from taxes to public TV to animal rights, but a recent study by the respected Bertelsmann foundation found that the only topic upon which significant numbers of Germans believe the AfD had any expertise was immigration. [Continue reading…]
Klaus Brinkbäumer writes: The one side says things like: “We will hunt them down. We will hunt down Ms. Merkel or whoever else and we will take back our country and our people.” That is what Alexander Gauland, the self-proclaimed guardian of the German people, said shortly after 6 p.m. Sunday evening when the first exit polls were made public.
The other side strikes a different tone: “We had hoped for a slightly better result.” That is what Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday evening. She also said she “wasn’t disappointed.” It was a unique display of exceedingly unsuccessful political dissembling.
This year’s general election in Germany has been heralded as an epochal shift. Merkel’s “grand coalition,” pairing her conservatives with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), was voted out of office and the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) became Germany’s third-strongest party. In the search for reasons for the shift, the language of politics is a good place to start. The AfD professed to be clear and decisive, their language was explicit — and voters rewarded them for it. The chancellor, by contrast, sought to avoid discussions and to completely ignore major issues focused on by the populists: foreign migrants and German uneasiness. Merkel’s political style, which is characterized by avoiding clashes, was punished to the greatest possible degree. [Continue reading…]
The New York Times reports: President Trump on Sunday issued a new order indefinitely banning almost all travel to the United States from seven countries, including most of the nations covered by his original travel ban, citing threats to national security posed by letting their citizens into the country.
The new order is more far-reaching than the president’s original travel ban, imposing permanent restrictions on travel, rather than the 90-day suspension that Mr. Trump authorized soon after taking office. But officials said his new action was the result of a deliberative, rigorous examination of security risks that was designed to avoid the chaotic rollout of his first ban. And the addition of non-Muslim countries could address the legal attacks on earlier travel restrictions as discrimination based on religion.
Starting next month, most citizens of Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad and North Korea will be banned from entering the United States, Mr. Trump said in a proclamation released Sunday night. Citizens of Iraq and some groups of people in Venezuela who seek to visit the United States will face restrictions or heightened scrutiny.
Mr. Trump’s original travel ban caused turmoil at airports in January and set off a furious legal challenge to the president’s authority. It was followed in March by a revised ban, which expired on Sunday even as the Supreme Court is set to hear arguments about its constitutionality on Oct. 10. The new order — Chad, North Korea and Venezuela are new to the list of affected countries and Sudan has been dropped — will take effect Oct. 18. [Continue reading…]
ABC News reports: A vast 86 percent of Americans support a right to residency for undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States as children, with support crossing the political spectrum. Two-thirds back a deal to enact such legislation in tandem with higher funding for border control.
Possibly in light of President Donald Trump’s decision to phase out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, disapproval of his handling of immigration overall reaches 62 percent in this ABC News/Washington Post poll. Just 35 percent approve.
Additional hurdles for Trump are his demand for a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico — again 62 percent oppose it — and substantial concerns about his immigration enforcement policies. [Continue reading…]
The Washington Post reports: The Trump administration announced new restrictions Sunday on visitors from eight countries — an expansion of the pre-existing travel ban that has spurred fierce legal debates over security, immigration and discrimination.
Officials had said they wanted the new rules to be both tough and targeted. The move comes as the key portion of President Trump’s travel ban, which bars the issuance of visas to citizens of six majority-Muslim countries, is set to expire.
“These restrictions are necessary and conditions-based, not time-based,” a senior administration official said.
The new travel restrictions represent the third version offered by the Trump administration. [Continue reading…]
Quartz reports: The French street artist JR has presented a challenging image of cross-border interaction, just as US president Donald Trump declared his intent to wind down a program that allows undocumented immigrants who entered the country as children the ability to stay and work in the US.
Along the US-Mexico border near Tecate, Mexico, JR erected a massive black and white photo of a child looking over the border fence towards the US, with an amused smile.
Meet Kikito, he turned 1 year old last April. The piece is visible close to the Tecate border for a month pic.twitter.com/xfDBzQ1DYV
— JR (@JRart) September 7, 2017
JR’s installation comes just days after Trump announced that he will end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) after a six-month delay. The boy pictured is a 1-year-old that lives in Tecate, Mexico, according to the New York Times. [Continue reading…]
The Associated Press reports: Attorney General Jeff Sessions can’t follow through — at least for now — with his threat to withhold public safety grant money to Chicago and other so-called sanctuary cities for refusing to impose new tough immigration policies, a judge ruled Friday in a legal defeat for the Trump administration.
In what is at least a temporary victory for cities that have defied Sessions, U.S. District Judge Harry D. Leinenweber ruled that the Justice Department could not impose the requirements.
He said the city had shown a “likelihood of success” in arguing that Sessions exceeded his authority with the new conditions. Among them are requirements that cities notify immigration agents when someone in the country illegally is about to be released from local jails and to allow agents access to the jails.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel called the ruling a victory for cities, counties and states nationwide and “a clear statement that the Trump administration is wrong.” [Continue reading…]
The Washington Post reports: U.S. Army recruiters have abruptly canceled enlistment contracts for hundreds of foreign-born military recruits since last week, upending their lives and potentially exposing many to deportation, according to several affected recruits and a retired Army officer familiar with their situation.
Many of these enlistees have waited years to join a troubled immigration recruitment program designed to attract highly skilled immigrants into the service in exchange for fast-track citizenship.
Now recruits and experts say that recruiters are shedding their contracts to free themselves from an onerous enlistment process to focus on individuals who can more quickly enlist and thus satisfy strict recruitment targets. [Continue reading…]
The Daily Beast reports: Russian operatives hiding behind false identities used Facebook’s event management tool to remotely organize and promote political protests in the U.S., including an August 2016 anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rally in Idaho, The Daily Beast has learned.
A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to the Daily Beast that the social-media giant “shut down several promoted events as part of the takedown we described last week.” The company declined to elaborate, except to confirm that the events were promoted with paid ads. (This is the first time the social media giant has publicly acknowledged the existence of such events.)
The Facebook events—one of which echoed Islamophobic conspiracy theories pushed by pro-Trump media outlets—are the first indication that the Kremlin’s attempts to shape America’s political discourse moved beyond fake news and led unwitting Americans into specific real-life action.
“This is the next step,” Clint Watts, a former FBI agent and expert on Russia’s influence campaign, told The Daily Beast. “The objective of influence is to create behavior change. The simplest behavior is to have someone disseminate propaganda that Russia created and seeded. The second part of behavior influence is when you can get people to physically do something.” [Continue reading…]
The New York Times reports: As secretary of homeland security in 2012, Janet Napolitano created DACA, the federal program that protected more than 800,000 young, undocumented immigrants from deportation and allowed them to work legally in the United States.
Now, as the president of the sprawling University of California system, she is suing President Trump to save it.
Lawyers for Ms. Napolitano and the school system she leads, which serves 238,000 students across 10 campuses, filed a lawsuit on Friday in federal court accusing Trump officials of violating administrative procedures and constitutional due process requirements by abruptly ending the program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
Having done so, she says in the lawsuit, Mr. Trump harmed the thousands of undocumented students whose attendance at her universities is made possible by the work permits that they receive through DACA. And she says that ending the program will negatively affect the university system, which stands to lose the academic and cultural benefits those students bring. [Continue reading…]
Politico reports: President Donald Trump’s travel ban policy suffered another defeat Thursday as an appeals court rejected the administration’s attempt to deny grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins of Americans a temporary exemption from the controversial executive order.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously declined to overturn a district court judge’s ruling that the administration was taking too narrow a view of an exception the Supreme Court carved out from the travel ban in June.
The appeals court judges reasoned that since the justices said the mother-in-law of one travel-ban challenger was entitled to a reprieve from the president’s order, other relatives should enjoy the same treatment. [Continue reading…]
The Washington Post reports: Zion Dirgantara can easily recall his first day of school in the United States. It was a bright, sunny Tuesday, and terrorists hijacked four commercial planes.
Class for Indonesian-born Dirgantara, then 12, was canceled as parents scrambled to pick up fellow students in Philadelphia. The city was bracketed midway between the ash cloud choking Manhattan and a flaming hole punched through the Pentagon. To the west of Philadelphia, United 93 disintegrated into a Pennsylvania field.
“I realized there was evil in this world, and you have to fight for what is right,” Dirgantara, now 28, told The Washington Post.
Fluent in Indonesian and English, he enlisted in the Army in March 2016 and swore an oath to defend the United States. He has drilled as a reservist cargo specialist since last September.
But Dirgantara’s future in the military and the country now hinges on the ability of Congress to find a way to replace the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. [Continue reading…]
Spokespeople for the Koch network confirmed to The Daily Beast that it will press Congress for a legislative fix to the recently rescinded Obama-era program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, that shielded undocumented immigrants who came to the country as children.
The Kochs’ backing could provide a crucial boost to efforts to preserve DACA, which Trump announced this week he will phase out over the course of six months. Congress has scrambled to find a replacement for those legal protections that are set to be removed. And Trump himself signaled early support for the DREAM Act, which would, essentially, codify the DACA protections that Obama had imposed via executive action. [Continue reading…]
Rachel Kleinfeld writes: There are few points on which the vast majority of scholars agree. One of them is that immigrants, both legal and illegal, are far more law-abiding than native-born Americans. The findings are so strong that some scholars argue that part of the steep fall in violence in the 1990s was caused by higher than normal immigration during that period.
The fact that U.S. locales with higher rates of immigration have lower homicide rates is echoed by research conducted by Reid et al., Wadsworth, Ousey and Kubrin, and Stowell et al. The findings held for Los Angeles in the 2000s, and for gang-ridden San Diego from 1980 to 2000 when immigrants were pouring into the city: As immigrants arrived, homicides fell. In fact, pretty much the only slightly negative correlation between immigration and crime comes from Jörg Spenkuch, who found that a 10% increase in foreign-born immigrants with poor employment outlooks raises a county’s property crime rate by just over 1%, but causes no rise in violence.
This is no surprise when you know that immigrants themselves are far less likely to commit crimes – especially violent crimes – than native-born Americans. In fact, immigrants started out less violent than native-born immigrants, and have become less and less crime-prone with each census since 1980. By 2000, native-born Americans were five times more likely to be incarcerated than immigrants. That particularly holds true for less-educated Mexican, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan young men, who are overrepresented among illegal immigrants. By 2010, more than 10 percent of native-born men aged 18-39 without a high school diploma were incarcerated. The percentage for Central American immigrants? Just 1.7 percent. [Continue reading…]
Charles M Blow writes: Allow me a moment of personal indulgence: When I began writing a column many years ago, it quickly dawned on me that although I had strong and firm views on some things, there were many others about which my opinions weren’t fully formed. I believe that many of us have areas in our lives where our opinions are fungible. It was only through my experience in this job that my own opinions became so clear to me. Doing the job honed me, revealed me, exposed me.
I believe that something similar, but on a much grander and much more consequential scale, happens with presidents. As Michelle Obama said: “Being president doesn’t change who you are. No, it reveals who you are.” That is what is happening with Donald Trump.
He has in the course of his life been on all sides of many issues, although he was always a liar, bully, misogynist, opportunist and economic isolationist. But his racial hostility and white supremacy seem to have blossomed with his entry into politics and his Russia-aided election. After spending a life catering to the appetites of the greedy and gauche, he realized that there was an exponentially larger market of white nationalists and neo-Nazis. To the aspirational he could be landlord, but to the racists he could be overlord.
Trump’s outrageous decision this week to end DACA, the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which allowed many young people brought to this country as children to stay and work here, is just the latest expression of Trump’s growing intolerance and his growing adoption and internalizing of white nationalist ideology.
Not only did Trump wimp out and send the anti-immigration zealot Jeff Sessions out to make the announcement, he also made the sadistic and emotionally manipulative act of professing his “love” for the Dreamers last week, while moving to bring them pain this week. [Continue reading…]
The New York Times reports: President Trump’s immigration policies faced a renewed legal onslaught on Wednesday, as a coalition of Democratic attorneys general, nonprofit groups and private companies announced they would oppose his rollback of Obama-era protections for people who entered the country illegally as children.
In an echo of the campaign against Mr. Trump’s effort this year to ban travelers from parts of the Muslim world, a group of 16 attorneys general — all Democrats — filed suit in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, claiming that Mr. Trump had improperly upended the policy known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA.
Led by Attorneys General Eric T. Schneiderman of New York, Maura Healey of Massachusetts and Bob Ferguson of Washington, they alleged Mr. Trump’s shift was driven by racial animus toward Mexican Americans and that the Trump administration failed to follow federal rules governing executive policy making. [Continue reading…]
Ishaan Tharoor writes: When describing the deepening political polarization taking place in the United States, Indian American essayist and author Anand Giridharadas once put it this way: “America is fracturing into two distinct societies — a republic of dreams and a republic of fears.”
That line struck me in the wake of the Trump administration’s move to unwind an Obama-era program that gave legal rights and guarantees against deportation to nearly 800,000 undocumented people brought to the United States as children, often known — appropriately, for our purposes — as “dreamers.” These are people who know no real home other than the United States, who are productive members of the American workforce, sometimes serve in the U.S. military and abide by the nation’s laws.
As participants in Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, usually known as DACA, they entrusted their personal information to a government which may soon use that data to conduct mass arrests and deportations. Their fates — in many instances, those of their families — hang in the balance as the White House dangles red meat to its right-wing base. Dreams are turning into nightmares. [Continue reading…]
Aaron Blake writes: It’s often been said that President Trump is a man of no true political convictions (apart from “winning”). And as The Washington Post’s Philip Bump notes today, it often seems that Trump takes every position on an issue in hopes of never being fully pinned down — or blamed.
But Trump’s malleability is rarely as striking as it has been on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. His decision Tuesday to phase out the Obama-era executive action exempting the children of undocumented immigrants from deportation was pitched in all kinds of hugely inconsistent ways. Some of the justifications for the decision ran counter to Trump’s own past statements; others were contradicted by Trump himself within a matter of hours.
The biggest contradiction came in a tweet late Tuesday, in which Trump suggested — after a day of stating that Obama’s program was illegal and that Congress was required to act on it — that he might be able to revisit the issue himself. [Continue reading…]
Jelani Cobb writes: From the outset, the rearguard movement that is Trumpism has been honest, at least, about its intentions to deliver the United States back to an earlier era in its history. We have heard this sort of appeal to an Edenic past from conservative politicians for decades—for so long, in fact, that those who wished to avoid the more alarming implications of Donald Trump’s resentment agenda could see him as simply a more rough-hewn version of that variety. They imagined him capable of the fabled “pivot” that would allow a more mature, statesmanlike version of Trump to emerge. When this didn’t happen—when his campaign compiled such a vast collection of bigoted actions and statements that it began to seem as if a case study from a syllabus for a course on intersectionality had sprung off the page and run for high office—they held out hope that he would “grow into” the Presidency. That faith was never warranted, but the past month effectively revealed the difference between unfounded optimism and an outright delusion.
In the span of three weeks, Trump has equivocated on the moral character of Nazi sympathizers, pardoned a former sheriff found guilty of racial profiling (though that is possibly the least egregious of the sheriff’s list of civil-rights affronts), and, finally, announced his plan to rescind President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative, imperilling the future of eight hundred thousand people who are Americans in all but the most technical sense of the term. This move is part of a larger vision of immigration. Last month, Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s senior policy advisers, sparred with CNN’s Jim Acosta during a press briefing on the proposed RAISE (Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy) Act. If passed, the legislation would slash legal immigration by fifty per cent, and prioritize highly skilled English speakers among those who are allowed to immigrate. But even the preference for highly skilled immigrants should be viewed skeptically, given Trump’s campaign rhetoric about reducing the numbers of people allowed into the country on H-1B visas. The issue is not whether these immigrants are in the country legally; it’s that they are in the country at all. [Continue reading…] | <urn:uuid:7d1298e0-c83b-495c-8cd0-e24a7879ace8> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://warincontext.org/category/issues/immigration/page/2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571719.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812140019-20220812170019-00270.warc.gz | en | 0.964643 | 5,028 | 1.71875 | 2 |
If you or your loved one has visited a custom jeweler to design your wedding rings or other types of jewelry, you’ll understand the care and expense that goes into each piece. But just because a diamond is the hardest substance known to man — it ranks as a 10 on the Mohs Hardness Scale — doesn’t mean that you should think of your rings, watches, and necklaces as indestructible. Failure to take care of your jewelry can cause scratches, dullness, and other damages that may be quite expensive to fix. To extend the life of the pieces you’ve obtained from your custom jeweler, here are a few care tips to keep in mind.
- Store in a clean, dry place
As a general rule, your jewelry should not be stored in a damp or dusty environment. Ideally, you should store it in a box, tray, or drawer that’s lined with fabric. Alternatively, you can wrap each piece in tissue paper. No matter what, don’t simply throw your jewelry in a cluttered space together; this can lead to scratching or tangling.
- Remove before applying anything
In extreme temperatures, many people will apply lotions, sunscreens, oils, or other substances to protect and nourish your skin. You should always remove your jewelry before applying these products. Otherwise, the film that forms on the pieces will make them look dull or can even make them sticky to the touch. This can happen when you use shampoos, conditioners, and soaps too (especially if you have harder water), so don’t wear jewelry in the shower, either.
- Wipe down after removal
Even if you remember to take off your jewelry before you apply sunscreen or moisturizer, it’s possible for these products to rub off on your pieces after you’ve put them back on. Therefore, you should wipe down your jewelry with a soft, slightly damp cloth when you remove and store it. Not only will this make the pieces from your custom jeweler cleaner but it will also restore their shine.
- Say no to salt water and chlorine
By all means, you should soak up the summer and swim in your pool or in the ocean. Just make sure to remove your rings and necklaces before you dive in. Chemicals used in pools and hot tubs and the salt water of the ocean can cause metal discoloration to gold and platinum and can even erode the polish and overall finish of certain gemstones. If you’re taking a dip, take off your jewelry first and store it in a safe place.
- Stay away from the sink
If you remove your rings to wash your hands, don’t ever set them on the sink’s edge. One bump will send them right down the drain — the nightmare of many married couples! Instead, consider putting an attractive ring dish in a cabinet (far away from the sink) or in a compartment of your bathroom storage unit. Put it in the same place every time so you don’t misplace it!
We’ve all heard the saying: diamonds are forever. But if you don’t care for them correctly, you may have to look into repairs or replacement early on. If you’ve received beautiful rings, time pieces, or other jewelry designed by a custom jeweler, you’ll want those to last forever. With these care tips, you’ll be able to keep your jewelry looking brand new for decades to come. | <urn:uuid:792110d0-bd0b-4bba-9dfb-5d2ad70f69ba> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://onlineshoppingtips.net/5-jewelry-care-tips-to-extend-the-life-of-your-valuables/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573029.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817153027-20220817183027-00273.warc.gz | en | 0.920994 | 730 | 1.703125 | 2 |
In Celebration of the Human Voice - The Essential Musical Instrument
Our vocal jazz arrangements our compiled from a variety of sources to provide the best selection possible. Most of them are designed for the group at the intermediate skill level. Though some of the songs included within this category are in fact popular or traditional compositions, it is the style of the arrangement that we classify as jazz. Please contact our staff if you have a question about any of the titles on this page; we will be happy to consult with you personally.
Songbooks and Collections
Displaying 1-50 of 84 items.
New York Voices : Old Friends
This new choral collection represents and celebrates the incredible cross-section of high-level artistry of the beloved New York Voices - the award-winning vocal jazz group the world has adored for nearly 30 years. Peter Eldridge, Lauren Kinhan, Darmon Meader, and Kim Nazarian have defined and raised the bar for jazz ensemble arranging and singing style and have influenced and inspired musicians, audiences, and music educators with every arrangement, workshop, and performance.
Songlist: Baby Driver, Bli-Blip, Bookends, Come Home, I'll Be Seeing You , Me and Julio Down By The Schoolyard, Mother And Child Reunion, Old Friends, Sing, Sing, Sing, Smack Dab In The Middle, Why Don't You Write Me
Various Arrangers : Classic Jazz Songs for Mixed Voices
"Autumn Leaves" - A fresh take on a classic standard with intricate, yet accessible jazz harmonies and effortless voice leading. The vocals sing like falling and drifting leaves throughout the piece. A standout ballad for your jazz, show, or concert choir! "More Than You Know" - Originally published in 1929 this great song was subsequently included in three musical films: Hit the Deck (1955), sung by Tony Martin; Funny Lady (1975), sung by Barbra Streisand; and The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989) sung by Michelle Pfeiffer (in a memorable introductory scene for her character). "When Sunny Gets Blue" - Recorded by a vast number of major artists, this standard is irresistible in its appeal! In this arrangement, the lyrics take on an important role in shaping the style, as the vocals evoke the imagery of rain beginning to fall or the wind stirring the trees. A beautiful, but challenging work, and well worth the effort! "Solitude" - Display your vocal jazz technique with this challenging chart that is highlighted by its rich harmonic tapestry. Feature a special soloist as the choir sings a supportive back-up marked by a quiet intensity.
Songlist: Autumn Leaves, More Than You Know, When Sunny Gets Blue, Solitude
Various Arrangers : Romantic Ballads for Mixed Jazz Voices Vol 1
"Almost Like Being in Love" - This Lerner and Loewe hit is an American classic. It is set here as an updated a cappella version by Darmon Meader for the New York Voices - an amazing vocal jazz arrangement not to be missed. Beginning with solo and backing vocals, it soon takes off in a bright, happy bounce. "Tenderly" - Surround your audience in a tapestry of sound with this a cappella ballad setting of the great American standard from 1946. The jazz vocals are relatively accessible, but offer plenty of opportunities to develop blend, style and intonation. Wonderful competition piece or as an encore for a concert choir! "Never Let Me Go" - Made famous by the legendary Dinah Washington, this deeply expressive standard is richly arranged for unaccompanied jazz choir. Expanded ranges and divisi provide challenge, but offer rewards for the advanced group. "My One and Only Love" - Beautiful a cappella textures shape this classic Sinatra ballad into a fantastic vocal jazz showpiece! From full homophonic harmonies to solo lines with vocal accompaniment, this setting is a compelling spectrum of sound.
Songlist: Almost Like Being in Love, Tenderly, Never Let Me Go, My One and Only Love
Various Arrangers : Romantic Ballads for Mixed Jazz Voices Vol 2
"It Only Takes a Moment" - The beautiful song from Hello Dolly in a lush a cappella ballad setting! With heartfelt lyrics, rubato phrases, and rich choral harmonies, this will be a wonderful feature for jazz, pop and concert choirs. "My Funny Valentine" - A lush a cappella setting of this timeless standard features soprano solo or soli. Quite accessible! "Their Hearts Were Full of Spring" - Originally popularized by the Four Freshmen, this iconic arrangement of the Bobby Troup song helped pave the way for a cappella vocal jazz as well as influencing the singing style of the Beach Boys. "The Nearness of You" - One of the greatest songs of all time, Hoagy Carmichael's classic romantic ballad shimmers in a rich a cappella setting highlighted by lush harmonies and gently arched phrasing in this superb arrangement.
Songlist: It Only Takes a Moment, My Funny Valentine, Their Hearts Were Full of Spring, The Nearness of You
Bob Chilcott : Jazz Folk Songs For Choirs
This exciting collection by Bob Chilcott gives a jazzy twist to nine favourite folk songs from around the world. The spiral-bound edition is accompanied by a fantastic backing CD, allowing choirs to perform with jazz-trio accompaniment. Bob Chilcott currently conducts the chorus at the Royal College of Music in London and is in great demand as a guest conductor and leader of choral workshops worldwide.
Songlist: Composer's Note, A La Claire Fontaine (There by the Crystal Fountain), En La Macarenita (Down in Macarena), Hush, Little Baby, Sakura (Cherry Tree), Scarborough Fair, Tell My Ma, The House of the Rising Sun, Tuoll' On Mun Kultani (There is my Loved one), Waltzing Matilda, CD Tracklist and Credits
Bobby McFerrin : Charts Package
Without a doubt one of the most popular songs of the 20th century, "Don't Worry, Be Happy" is re-created here in an exact transcription of the Bobby McFerrin's original hit recording from the album "Simple Pleasures." 3 Soprano parts, 2 Alto parts, and a very hip Bass line back up the soloist or soloists of your choice - a cappella. Great fun to sing and to hear! A reverent and truly beautiful rendition of the widely known "23rd Psalm," this piece is frequently used in religious services. It's pace is slow and contemplative, and the music enhances the beauty of the language. As recorded on Bobby's "Medicine Music" CD. In "Grace," alto, tenor, and bass voices suggest the chant-like song of a carillon while the sopranos create a rhapsodic melody. This meditative score is enhanced with rhythmic breathing and optional parts for two cellos or cello section. Transcribed from "Hush," Bobby's duo album with Yo-Yo Ma. Each of Bobby's arrangements comes with extensive performance notes. With text adapted from the Book of Matthew, "Manna" provides a simple refrain with wonderfully textured variations that bring light to the thought "Whoever believes in Me will live forever." "Manna" includes a through-composed piano part as an additional color in the ensemble. "Come to Me" is rhythmic music full of life, freedom, and joy. An up-tempo piece to make everyone feel good, "come to me" with text adapted from the Book of John, includes parts for vocal percussion, body percussion, and handclaps. As recorded on Bobby's "Simple Pleasures" CD.
Songlist: Don't Worry Be Happy, Grace, 23rd Psalm, Manna, Come to Me
Bobby McFerrin : Charts Package 2
Bobby McFerrin is unique not only due to his choice of notes, but in the way he sings those notes. Each of these beautiful arrangements, all three part of Bobby's sacred music series, comes with extensive performance notes to help your group achieve the sounds and groove that was originally intended. With text adapted from the Book of Matthew, "Manna" provides a simple refrain with wonderfully textured variations that bring light to the thought "Whoever believes in Me will live forever." "Manna" includes a through-composed piano part as an additional color in the ensemble. "Come to Me" is rhythmic music full of life, freedom, and joy. An up-tempo piece to make everyone feel good, "come to me" with text adapted from the Book of John, includes parts for vocal percussion, body percussion, and handclaps. As recorded on Bobby's "Simple Pleasures" CD. "The Garden" exemplifies a new approach in choral writing in which McFerrin's African-influenced nuances are given full body by co-composer and arranger Roger Treece. The music, originally recorded on the 'Medicine Music' CD, will provide an exciting and gratifying challenge for choral singers and a rich experience for audiences.
Dale Jergenson : Trichromat (Vocal Jazz Suite)
This 3 movement Vocal Jazz Suite was inspired by many composers and arrangers of many dispirit styles of music - from the Baroque period through the most sophisticated, modern jazz era. The title 'Trichromat,' with each movement bearing a title involving a color, should not suggest that the composer "hears" music in colors, rather it pays homage to jazz titles in general with their frequent use of colors. Dale Jergenson currently serves as composer-in-residence for Cantori Domino and at St. Cyril of Jerusalem Church in Encino, California, and is active in writing scores for television, commericials, documentaries and feature films.
Songlist: Green Peace, Red Hot!, Blue Ice
Darmon Meader : Vocal Jazz Love Songs
"Love Is Here to Stay" was the last one written by George Gershwin before his untimely death at the age of 39. New York Voices' Darmon Meader has arranged it in a classic a cappella vocal jazz style, with surprisingly little divisi for such a full-sounding arrangement. An extraordinary song, an extraordinary arrangement. Darmon takes a swinging approach to "Taking a Chance on Love", with a tight vocal arrangement accompanied by piano or optional jazz trio. Clever lyrics make it a real audience pleaser, and your singers will appreciate the masterly vocal writing. Vocal jazz groups: don't miss it. "I Can't Believe That You're in Love with Me" was recorded by New York Voices on their Sing, Sing, Sing album.
Songlist: I Can't Believe That You're in Love with Me, Taking A Chance On Love, Love Is Here to Stay
Darmon Meader : Vocal Jazz Classics
The swinging Rodgers and Hart tune "I Could Write a Book" is classic vocal jazz. Includes a scat solo, which is written out or can be sung ad lib. The singers are definitely the stars here, though the arrangement can be done with a variety of accompaniments: piano alone, small instrumental combo, or full jazz ensemble. With "Do Nothin' Till You Hear from Me" Darmon adds his vocal jazz touch to Duke Ellington's classic. The lazy, medium swing tempo is just right, and the full-sounding piano accompaniment supports the voices. A breathtaking New York Voices arrangement of the touching ballad "For All We Know", recorded on their CD A Day Like This. The piano accompaniment is stunning and the vocal writing is contemporary. Definitely a great choice for accomplished groups to demonstrate their skill.
Songlist: I Could Write a Book, Do Nothin' Till You Hear from Me, On a Clear Day, For All We Know
Deke Sharon : A Cappella Jazz Classics
This five-song volume includes songs your jazz ensemble will love to sing! Each of these songs is a classic on its own, and in the hands of master a cappella arranger Deke Sharon they become true vocal jazz classics. "Always" is 4-part SATB, with the melody passing among the parts. "Blue Skies" is Sop/Mezzo/Alto/Tenor/Bass, with the Alto written as "optional" (in case you need to sing it with just four parts) and includes a scat break. "Oh What A Beautiful Morning" is scored for SATB with a baritone solo - a very cool jazz waltz! Everyone gets a turn in "Route 66," both with the melody and little scat opportunities. Finally, "What'll I Do" is a gorgeous 4-part rubato ballad spiced with plaintive triplets echoing the refrain in thebackground. A real winner!
Songlist: Always, Blue Skies, Oh What A Beautiful Morning, What'll I Do, Route 66
Deke Sharon : A Cappella Jazz Standards Vol 1
This collection features five-part arrangements of your favorite jazz standards. Most are SATB plus solo, but "Autumn Leaves" is five luscious parts.
Songlist: Autumn Leaves, Fever , I Could Write A Book, If I Loved You , It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing), Steppin' Out With My Baby, Walkin' My Baby Back Home
Deke Sharon : A Cappella Jazz Broadway
Looking for show choir numbers that show off the vocals? Here are five Broadway hits that will be sure winners with your audience.
Songlist: I Can Do That, Maybe , Put On A Happy Face , Seansons Of Love, This Nearly Was Mine
Deke Sharon : A Cappella Jazz Americana
Yes, you want to sing patriotic songs, but you want them with a bit of a contemporary twist? Then check out these charts by Deke Sharon. Standard "America The Beautiful" is scored SATB w/solo (alto or baritone), with a 12/8 groove. George M. Cohan's "Yankee Doodel Dandy" is a driving swing, with unexpected syncopations and some whistling with an SSATB voicing. Then there's Neil Diamond's "(Coming to) America" - a contemporary ode to our country of immigrants (SSATB). Lee Greenwood's modern anthem "God Bless The USA" is designed to send shivers down the spines and bring audiences to their feet. And finally, you can rock out to the Steve Miller Band chart "Living In The USA" - SSAB w/tenor solo - with a decidedly more jaundiced view of American culture. A little something for everyone!
Songlist: America, God Bless The USA , Living In The USA , America, The Beautiful, Yankee Doodle Dandy
Gene Puerling : Puerling Charts II
Includes the Grammy Award winner "A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square" as recorded by The Manhattan Transfer. The note-for-note arrangement matches the original recording!
Songlist: A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square, Deck The Halls, Am I Blue?, Silent Night, Snowfall , April in Paris, Autumn in New York, Dancing in the Dark, Indian Summer
Greg Jasperse : Voices Dances Vol 1 - 5
Voice Dance, a wordless vocal dance celebrating the human voice and the joy of singing together is perfect for any occasion. Written for nationally-known jazz educator, arranger, and vocalist Jennifer Shelton for her marriage to well-known drummer Steve Barnes, this composition will teach your ensemble blend, alternative time signature as well as the freedom found in singing together. A musical challenge your students will love. Voice Dance II, continuing the wordless vocal dance celebrating the human voice and the joy of singing together. Bright with bounce and musical joy, this piece is perfect for any occasion. VoiceDance III. Greg has created a wordless vocal dance that has an African feel full of rhythmic, percussive and forward-moving vocal expression. Use of repetitive lines allows this work to be learned rather easily. Outstanding for festivals, concerts and even multicultural events! VoiceDance IV Soft consonants fill the jazz syllables while the energetic music of rhythm and vocal textures paint an incomparable picture of vocal sound. The piece is made up of repetitive phrases and sections, so learning is easier than imagined when first hearing this extraordinary choral.
Songlist: Voicedance, Voicedance II, Voicedance III, Voicedance IV, Voicedance V
Idea of North : A Cappella Arrangements
Winners of the Harmony Sweepstakes National Finals the Australian quartet The Idea of North is one of the most highly regarded vocal jazz groups performing today. "Just A Closer Walk With Thee" is an old gospel song arranged in a swing, trad jazz style and features each performer with solo sections. It has quasi instrumental parts to sing including trumpet, trombone and even banjos! Originally inspired from the movie sound track, "White Men Can't Jump" this fun arrangement is sure to leave your audience wanting more. "Amazing Grace" and "Sweet Sweet Spirit" retain their gospel meaning and flavor while given the wonderful vocal jazz treatment from the talented arranger Andrew Piper. These arrangements are all highly recommended!
Songlist: When She Loved Me, Amazing Grace, Sweet Sweet Spirit, Just A Closer Walk With Thee
Jay Althouse : Classic Jazz A Cappella
Here's a collection of three song each from three of the greatest songwriters of the classic jazz song - Gershwin, Porter and Ellington. Highly-regarded arranger Jay Althouse offers some stunning, tight, and tasty harmonies for unaccompanied mixed voices that can be performed separately or as three different sets by composer.
Songlist: Night and Day, Just One Of Those Things, You Do Something To Me, Satin Doll, Solitude, It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing), Nice Work If You Can Get It, I Got Rhythm, Someone to Watch Over Me
Jon Hendricks : Vocal Jazz Arrangements
Lambert Hendricks & Ross mastered the art of vocal bebop and the Jon Hendricks classic "Everybody's Boppin'" proves the point with its frantic tempo and the fast swing groove underneath. A vocal jazz tour-de-force! "Birdland" is a quintessential jazz classic with lyrics by the incomparable Jon Hendricks in a funky fusion setting by noted arranger Paris Rutherford. A perfect showcase for vocal jazz groups! Darmon Meader's arrangement of "Charleston Alley" pays tribute to Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, as well as Charlie Barnet, while expanding the voicings, and also placing the song in a much more "SATB-friendly" key. This arrangement is a great introduction to the classic vocalese style of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, and will work well for most medium to advanced vocal jazz groups.
Songlist: Charleston Alley, Birdland, Everybody's Boppin', Desafinado (Slightly Out of Tune)
Jonathan Rathbone : Collected Arrangements
Former long-time Swingle Singer Jonathan Rathbone arranged many of the ensemble's arrangements and here is a wonderful collection of some of his best and fun to sing arrangements.
Songlist: Try to Remember, My Funny Valentine, Strawberry Fair, Shule Agra, What Good Would the Moon Be?, The Wraggle Taggle Gypsies, Tit Willow
Jonathan Rathbone : Stephen Foster Medley
Longtime Swingle Singer's arranger Jonathan Rathbone adds his jazzy chops to these Americana classics.
Songlist: Oh Suzanna, My Old Kentucky Home, The Ol' Folks at Home, Dream of Jeannie, Camptown Races, Beautiful Dreamer
Jonathan Rathbone : My Love Is Like A Red, Red Rose
Scottish traditional song based on the text of Robert Burns
Jonathan Rathbone : Il Barbiere di Siviglia - Overture
Featured on the Swingle Singer's CD titled 'Notability,' this fast paced classical romp is fun and challenging for even the most advanced choral groups
Jonathan Rathbone : 1812 Overture
One of the Swingle Singers' most well known vocalized overatures, this very advanced chart includes the complete work all sung with inner-changable scat syllables
Jonathan Rathbone : Three Folk Songs
Songlist: Nine Hundred Miles, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, The Oak and the Ash
Jonathan Rathbone : Three American Songs
This book contains three close-harmony, high-quality a cappella arrangements by Jonathan Rathbone, the former Musical Director and arranger of the Swingle Singers. Features "Red River Valley," "Polly-Wally-Doodle" and "Steal Away."
Songlist: Red River Valley, Polly-Wally-Doodle, Steal Away
Kerry Marsh : A Cappella Jazz for Mixed Voices
An original composition, 'Occam's Edge' is an aggressive a cappella chart that will challenge your singers, but is quite attainable. It comes off almost as a fusion tune because of the groove, the stabbing lush chords and quickly moving harmony. A scat solo is featured and a vocal percussionist is important to the performance. An exciting shout section connects the solo section and the head-out. This one is, again, like nothing you've ever heard vocalists sing! Commissioned by Valenica High School, 'His Eye is on the Sparrow' starts out simply as a rubato ballad with a soulful solo, but then adds vocal percussion in a jazz waltz groove. When the vocals come in after a short percussion break, it sounds highly reminiscent of a Take 6 tune with quickly moving harmonies, lots of great dominant sounds and exciting hits in the background vocals. This will surely be a crowd pleaser and a fun and challenging chart to sing. The arrangement of 'Mas Alla,' features a tenor soloist. The wonderful Spanish lyric was written by Pedro Aznar. Some thick and challenging harmony, but an attainable and worthwhile chart for most college vocal jazz groups. A completely new perspective on the great Pat Metheny composition, with 'Unequity Road,' Marsh has transformed a powerfully aggressive and asymmetrical chart into a simple, floating and mesmerizing tribute to a great set of chord changes and a beautiful melody that is almost hidden in Metheny's original performance on Bright Size Life. or vocalists who may not have been exposed to the harmonies of cutting-edge big band writers Maria Schneider, Jim McNeely and Vince Mendoza,'The Big Crunch is a great learning piece. It is also a moody and yet hard-grooving a cappella chart that will provide a fun challenge to your group. A very open solo section is included as well as a nicely crafted shout section that builds to a great climax before leading into the head-out. Vocal percussion is necessary on this chart.
Songlist: His Eye Is On The Sparrow, Occam's Edge, The Big Crunch, Uniquity Road, Mas Alla
Kirby Shaw : Junior Jazz - Beginning Steps to Singing Jazz
This is what you've been waiting for! Introduce your young singers to the basics of vocal jazz with nine original songs illustrating a specific jazz concept. With educator notes included, this is an excellent introduction to an original American art form. Kirby Shaw helps kids learn more about vocal jazz in this easy-to-sing and educational collection. Each original song focuses on a different aspect of jazz singing.
Songlist: Blues, Blues , Blues, Riff City, Inflections, Blue Notes, Scat Like That, Jump, Jive and Jam!, Schoolhouse Blues, A La Mode
Manhattan Transfer : Manhattan Transfer Complete
Sing the songs of one of the finest vocal jazz groups ever! "Manhattan Transfer in Concert" is a swinging medley of "Birdland", "Spice Of Life" and "Tuxedo Junction" and are some of the groups signature performance songs. The super Manhattan Transfer hit "Operator" is totally irresistible! An improvisational spirit in a hot groove for pop, jazz, or show use! Jam to "The Boy From New York City", the sassy '60s hit that was covered by Manhattan Transfer. A terrific chart by Kirby Shaw. Get your kicks with the Manhattan Transfer standard "Route 66" in a swingin' arrangement also by Kirby Shaw.
Songlist: Manhattan Transfer In Concert, Operator, Route 66, Tuxedo Junction, The Boy From New York City
Manhattan Transfer : Manhattan Transfer Songbook
Formed in New York in 1969, vocal quartet Manhattan Transfer was the first group to receive Grammy Awards in both the pop and jazz categories in the same year. This special second-edition songbook features their best-known songs performed in concert and on records, from Birdland to their show closer A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square. 25 songs in all, including: Body and Soul, The Boy from New York City, Chanson D'Amour, Java Jive, Love for Sale, Operator, Poinciana, Route 66, Tuxedo Junction, You Can Depend on Me and more.
Songlist: Birdland , Blue Champagne , Body and Soul, Boy From New York City (piano/vocal/guitar), Candy , Chanson D'Amour , Four Brothers , A Gal In Calico , Gloria , Java Jive , Love For Sale , A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square, On A Little Street In Singapore, Operator, Poinciana, Popsicle Toes , Route 66 , S.O.S. , Scotch and Soda , That Cat Is High , Trickle, Trickle , Tuxedo Junction, Twilight Tone , You Can Depend On Me
Manhattan Transfer : Manhattan Transfer Complete Vol 2
Mac Huff's arrangement of Bobby Darin's "Dream Lover" is from the Manhattan Transfer's recording and "Choo Choo Boogie" will put your choir on the jazz track! Hip '40s lyrics and the burnin'. "A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square" very deservedly won a Grammy for best vocal arrangement and here is a note-for-note arrangement that matches the original recording! "How High The Moon" is an up-tempo piece has exciting vocal writing. The vocal jazz standard "Java Jive" gets a great a cappella treatment with the Kirby Shaw touch! Still swings!
Songlist: Java Jive, A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square, Choo Choo Ch'Boogie, Dream Lover
Marion Linton : Cole Porter A Cappella
Beginning as a waltz, "I Get A Kick Out Of You," this lively Cole Porter tune goes into 4 at the bridge. Initiated by the bass, this time change provides a good vehicle for practicing four in the space of three and vice versa. The tune is short, punctuated by rhythmic shots and ends with a bang. "Let's Do It" is impossible to sing without a smile. Humor, wit, quotes as well as insect and animal sounds thrive throughout its four verses. It's a challenge but well worth the work--and talk about a crowd please! "Love For Sale" is a challenging setting for Cole Porter's cynical look at love. From a soulful alto solo, we move to an up-tempo Latin groove suggestive of life on the street. Featured again in the bridge is the alto whose message is colored by humorous comments and quotes. Rich harmonies abound and build to a dynamic ending. A vamp is used throughout "What Is This Thing Called Love" as an introduction, interlude, ending and even as accompaniment for a be-bop chorus where high women's voices bemoan the pain of love gone wrong. Soprano, as solo or section, is featured on melody throughout this chart.
Songlist: I Get A Kick Out of You, Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love), Love For Sale, What Is This Thing Called Love?
Morgan Ames : Collection
"When I'm 64" - This Lennon/McCartney favorite is as charming as ever! Bass primarily has a walking line, while the melody changes hands from the soprano to the tenor. "Don't Know Why" - A ballad of the 40's in block harmonies. The tempo is medium. "My Funny Valentine" - Classic ballad by Rodgers and Hart. This jazz arrangement features lush harmonies and many solo lines for all parts.
Songlist: When I'm Sixty-Four, I Don't Know Why I Love You Like I Do, My Funny Valentine
New York Voices : New York Voices Collection Vol 1
NEW YORK VOICES is the Grammy Award winning vocal ensemble renowned for their excellence in jazz and the art of group singing. Like the great groups that have come before, such as Lambert, Hendrick and Ross, Singers Unlimited, Manhattan Transfer and Take 6, they have learned from the best and taken the art form to new levels. Written by Caprice Fox and arranged by Darmon Meader, New York Voices' A Cappella arrangement of 'Silence of Time' is a gorgeous rubato vignette for the mature vocal group. Intriguing harmonies and voicings give this arrangement its rich texture. In the tradition of jazz vocalese, Duke Ellington's 'Caravan' comes alive with new lyrics and additional new music. An exciting and challenging program selection for the more advanced vocal jazz ensemble. Heavily influenced by Chick Corea, 'The sultan Fainted,' a Darmon Meader/Peter Eldridge original, combines HIGH energy Brazilian rhythm with intricate harmonies and wacky lyrics! 'To Dare the Moon' incorporates lush voicings, alternating between samba and funk/rock grooves. Open solo sections add plenty of variety to this exciting original. 'Sign of Spring' is set in a Brazilian funk style. With an opening section in Portuguese moving to solos in English then dynamic chorus sections, this is one of the most exciting new charts we've seen. Very, very hip! The funk/rock song, 'National Amnesia,' by Darmon Meader has become very popular for the right reasons. Very hip voicings combine with a message that is right for today.
Songlist: Silence of Time, Caravan, The Sultan Fainted, To Dare The Moon , Sign of Spring, National Amnesia
New York Voices : New York Voices Collection Vol 2
Here are more dazzling arrangements by the world-famous vocal group, New York Voices. ''Round Midnight' opens as a rubato ballad, then solo alternating with choral sections building to a double-time vocal scat solo. After the solos, then vocals build to a dramatic and strong ending climax. 'Baroque Samba' opens in four-part with a traditional Baroque approach, then surprisingly changes to samba style. This chart is appropriate for an array of concert programming. In 'Now or Never,' an unusual and lovely opening leads to the solo soprano verse, which alternates with a fun and catchy chorus. A recurring mixed meter section and beautiful lyrics add to make this a popular favorite. 'Sassy Samba' is a smooth yet driving Jimmy Heath samba with soli opening that leads to a soprano solo, then alternates group vocals with solo breaks, a vocal percussion section and drum solo. Packed with fun and lots of audience appeal. 'Open Invitation,' a New York Voices original, is set in a relaxed Brazilian style. The song contains smooth melodic content and lush harmonies. This is a great alto feature which builds to an exciting vamp.
Songlist: Round Midnight, Baroque Samba, Now Or Never, Sassy Samba, Open Invitation
New York Voices : New York Voices Collection Vol 3
Continued, by popular demand, we bring you another set of fun vocal arrangements, as performed by New York Voices. 'Stolen Moments,' a fresh jazz treatment of the Oliver Nelson classic features an opening alto solo. The open improvisation section features the string voicings of the New York Voices. A must for your jazz library. 'Do You Wanna Know What I Want, a New York Voices original, is a pop-flavored tune boasts a strong female solo and a killer soli section. 'Top Secret' is a Vocal version of the popular Yellowjackets original with lyrics by members of the New York Voices. An exciting arrangement with striking group harmonies and a soaring soprano solo section. Four-part vocals in a rock setting with male solo and a solo break make 'Street Party' a winner! This chart by Peter Eldridge of the New York Voices packs lots of entertainment. SATB with rhythm section and synthesizer. Caprice Fox wrote the lyrics for New York Voices' fabulous arrangement of 'Who Knows.' Set in a rock ballad style, the sound of this original is rich and rhythmic, yet very sensitive.
Songlist: Stolen Moments, Do You Know Wanna Know What I Want, Street Party, Who Knows?
New York Voices : A Cappella Arrangements
The World War II classic, "I'll Be Seeing You", by Irving Kahal and Sammy Fain, evokes memories of the big band era, while staying in the a cappella realm. Rubato, mellow blends and dynamic shaping are keys to this Darmon Meader arrangement. It creates the melancholy feelings that are significant in time of war when loved ones are missed and longed for. A beautiful selection for the holidays and the New Year, as well as graduation. "Baby Driver" - Sheer, unbridled fun! For college or adult jazz chorus, this arrangement as sung by the New York Voices is a bit tricky, but well worth the effort. It features incredible harmony and rhythm and some a cappella sections, but the purpose of this piece is not to get technical-just to have fun! Four-part scat singing frames the piece on either end, while your baritone soloist goes to town (with great choral support) on each verse. Baby Driver, extracted from the New York Voices Songs of Paul Simon CD, is a toe-tappin', hand-clappin' jazz party. Invite everyone you know! The timeless Irish folk song "The Last Rose Of Summer" has been arranged by the renowned Darmon Meader of the group New York Voices. Simple unison and harmonies that respect the tune and lyric open then graduate to a more contemporary sound to add freshness without difficulty. A dream to teach and sing!
Songlist: I'll Be Seeing You, Baby Driver, The Last Rose Of Summer, Come Home
New York Voices : New York Voices Collection Vol 4
'Overs' is an introspective beauty full of angular voicings and a poignant lyric. Peter Eldrige's arrangement of this excellent Paul Simon tune offers much solo opportunity, or if preferred, the piece can be performed as a group feature. 'Me and Julio' is another great NYV arrangement of a Paul Simon classic. 'Soon One Day' features an unusual a cappella opening into the dramatic solo as recorded by Caprice Fox on the recent Hearts of Fire album. Alternating solo and chorus sections build to an interesting shout section with influences of Gospel and African music. Auxiliary percussion and vocal sounds add to the impact in this exciting arrangement. A beautiful opening for mezzo soloist begins 'Now That The Love Is Over,' a funk/rock arrangement by Darmon Meader. This chart will put a real "kick" into your jazz group.
Songlist: Overs, Me and Julio, Soon One Day
New York Voices : New York Voices Collection Vol 5
A tribute to the late Ella Fitzgerald, the fast swing arrangement, 'Oh, Lady Be Good,' is one no jazz ensemble should be without. It features improvisation solos, vocalese solos based on nursery rhymes, and one monster of a shout section! The ultimate closer for a concert program! 'Way of the World' is the title track for the New York Voices Hearts of Fire album. A funk/rock setting of the rock classic, this arrangement features exciting voicings that really allow the featured soprano solo to soar! The classic A. C. Jobim bossa nova, 'Desafinado,' arranged by Darmon Meader, features both male and female solos interspersed with lush vocal textures. Instrumental solo space is also built into the arrangement. Also, written by A. C. Jobim, lyrics by Kim Nazarian and arranged by Darmon Meader, 'Modinha' is a haunting a cappella piece. It starts with a female solo building to a rich 4-part texture and winds down to a moody finish. A great a cappella moment in any concert.
Songlist: Oh, Lady Be Good (Ella Be Good), That's The Way of the World, Desafinado, Modinha
New York Voices : New York Voices Collection Vol 6
The introspective ballad, 'Prelude / Interlude' gives solo opportunities for all voices, and a short ensemble section. A beautiful change of pace for your ensemble. 'Giant Steps' is an exciting Darmon Meader arrangement of the Coltrane Classic. Great soli sections will provide a welcome challenge for the ambitious choir. This Darmon Meader arrangement of the Duke Ellington classic, 'In a Mellowtone' combines the Ellington Big Band, Basie Big Band and Lambert, Hendricks and Ross versions. The arrangement features vocalese section for solo male and female as well as intricate backgrounds for the ensemble. The song builds to a dynamic shout chorus based on the Frank Foster/CBO arrangement. 'Cottontail' is a smokin' be-bop chart. This one just cooks, cooks and cooks from beginning to end. SSATB
Songlist: Prelude / Interlude, Giant Steps, In a Mellow Tone, Cotton Tail
New York Voices - Darmon Meader : Sing Paul Simon
These Paul Simon classics has been dynamically arranged by Peter Eldridge and Darmon Meader and recorded by the venerable New York Voices. Smooth jazz vocals and solo lines play against a rhythmic percussion background making up these hot charts that were recorded on the CD New York Voices Sing the Songs of Paul Simon. For show choir or vocal jazz ensemble, this humorous and energetic arrangement features a Louisiana Cajun groove of "Why Don't You Write Me?," allows for a lot of solo lines interspersed with group vocals and includes a fun swing section as well. Fabulous! Piano accompanied.
Songlist: Mother and Child Reunion, Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard, Loves Me Like A Rock, Why Don't You Write Me?
Paris Rutherford : Jazz Standards
Paris Rutherford is a regents professor in jazz studies at the University of North Texas (UNT) in Denton, Texas, where he coordinates vocal jazz studies and directs UNT Jazz Singers. A sought-after clinician in vocal jazz, Rutherford has over eighty vocal jazz arrangements in publication and here we have a collection of his a cappella arrangements. From the quiet beauty of the lyrics to the shimmering vocal textures, Paris Rutherford's setting of this classic Kurt Weill song "Lost In The Stars" will create a wonderful concert moment. Ideal for vocal jazz groups, madrigal ensembles and concert choirs. Jazz lovers will truly enjoy this wonderful a cappella setting of "Detour Ahead". Interesting harmony and well-crafted vocal lines makes this tune particularly enjoyable. "This Is All I Ask" is a jazz standard recorded by all the greats in a superb a cappella setting for vocal jazz and concert groups alike. Wonderful for developing blend and balance.
Songlist: I Got It Bad (and That Ain't Good), Yesterdays, This Is All I Ask (Beautiful Girls Walk A Little Slower), Detour Ahead, Lost In The Stars, The Very Thought of You
Phil Mattson : The Arrangements of Phil Mattson
Here's a collection from vocal jazz guru Phil Mattson. "Love For Sale" was written for Chanticleer in a gospel a cappella feeling featuring a female solo. "Dancing In The Dark" was arranged for the Swedish vocal jazz ensemble, The Real Group. It is written in an a cappella bossa nova groove with some quasi-funk sections. The arrangement, which treats text as a metaphor for human life, features vocal percussion opportunities. The classic Manhattan Transfer arrangement of "Body and Soul" includes lyrics about Coleman Hawkins and jazz singer Eddie Jefferson. "Love Lost" - An original piece by the Four Freshmen that was the title song from their beautiful album with strings. Has opportunities to feature both vocal and instrumental solos. SATB with rhythm section. "You Must Believe In Spring" - A lovely text beautifully set to music by Michel LeGrand with lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman, featuring spots for three short solos. One of the most profound lyrics over the last fifteen years. With piano.
Songlist: Dancing In The Dark, Love For Sale, Body And Soul, Love Lost, You Must Believe In Spring
Randy Crenshaw : Cool Contemporary Jazz
This tender a cappella treatment of John Coltrane's beautiful ballad, "Naima," without lyrics. It features a female soloist, with rich broken-chord harmonizations beneath. Randy has his "finger on the trigger" with this a cappella instrumental-style arrangement of the Quincy Jones' funk tune, "Love Is In Control." You'll have fun with this one! The first a cappella vocal version of this famous Chick Corea Latin classic, "Spain." This chart features a strong baritone or alto soloist in the rubato introduction, accompanied by thick vocal "spread voicings," then kicks into the familiar up-tempo samba feel, with quick octave unisons for all voices. After going through the tune, it opens up for improvisation solos over the chorus, with the bass singers continuing the samba-bass feel while the upper voices do horn-type hits and pads behind the soloist. A high, then low ending brings the piece to an impressive close. Requires good range by soprano and bass. First tenor part can be sung by alto if necessary. "Take 5" was commissioned by UNC for the Axidentals to sing on a special concert with the Dave Brubeck.
Songlist: Naima, Love Is In Control, Take Five, I Belong to You, Stolen Moments
Real Group : Arrangements of The Real Group Vol 2
The CD 'Nothing But The Real Group' was met with nothing but praise and excitement by fans worldwide. This package includes 3 titles from that album - 'Chili Con Carne,' Anders Edenroth's most popular original arrangement; this title has become a staple in the high school and collegiate Jazz Choir repertoire. 'As Rain,' another Anders Edenroth original; this beautiful ballad will challenge the singers and warm the hearts of any who hear it. Their arrangement of 'God Only Knows,' is a very worthy treatment of the Beach Boys' classic. Also included is 'A Cappella In Acapulco' another exciting Anders Edenroth original with an exciting Latin groove, featured on their album titled 'Unreal.' Anders Edenroth's playful, humorous composition, 'I Sing, You Sing,' features a wickedly catchy tune and clever lyrics, with a repeating refrain and verse structure that make this a pleasure to learn. Perfect for a good high school jazz choir and beyond! Featured on their CD 'One For All.'
Songlist: Chili Con Carne, As Rain, A Cappella In Acapulco, God Only Knows, I Sing, You Sing
Real Group : Arrangements of The Real Group Vol 1
'How Come It Is So Hard To Be The Way You Are' is a rockin' humorous look at today's society. The recording of the English version of this song can only be found on the album, 'Get Real.' 'Heavenly Crystal,' the english version of a folk song well known in Sweden, this arrangement is inspired by the music of J.S. Bach. Just plain cool - there's no other way to describe Anders Edenroth's newest arrangement, 'Words'! Edenroth has created a witty, sophisticated examination of the nature of 'words' - their sense, their social role, and the varied ways they can be sung and spoken - which will intrigue jazz choirs at all levels. "Gota" - Pronounced 'geu-ta' (hard 'g') - has its name from the Faeroe Islands in the Northern Atlantic. The music line and wordless vocal jazz treatment fuses with ethnic folk music in a truly original way. A true 'performance piece' and favorite in the repertoire of Swedish vocal giants The Real Group, Gota has quickly gained recognition world wide. For vocal jazz oriented high school and beyond.
Songlist: Words, Heavenly Crystal, How Come It Is So Hard To Be The Way You Are, Gota
Real Group : Arrangements of The Real Group Vol 4
"There Will Never Be Another You " is a sensitive treatment of the jazz standard that opens as a ballad before moving to a buoyant swing feel. Great tune, great arrangement. SATB a cappella with soprano solo. "Come Sunday" - Careful voice leading makes the contemporary harmonic changes and chord voicings in this chart quite accessible in this SSATBB a cappella arrangement. It features a strong 5 and 6 part into featuring the first chorus with a pyramid background behind a soprano melody moving into spread harmonies. The second chorus is open for a improvised solo with a tag over a 3-part harmonized background with walking bass. The chart ends with a 6-way harmonized "quasi-shout" chorus moving back into the origianl melody. Stevie Wonder's "Sir Duke" never had it so good in this marvelous Edenroth arrangement.
Songlist: There Will Never Be Another You , Come Sunday, Sir Duke, Very Early
Swingle Singers : Ticket To Ride
Since the release of Ticket to Ride, the Swingle Singers have received many requests from choirs and a cappella groups for their Beatles' arrangements. Finally, they have published a companion songbook to the popular album. The book contains the seventeen songs from the CD arranged for four to eight voices and features a bonus arrangement of "Here, There and Everywhere" for AATTBB. These wonderful arrangements include the original scat syllables used on the recording as well as alternated endings for the songs that fade out. Another great addition to the Swingle publications, this book will have your group creating a new wave of Beatle mania at your next concert.
Songlist: Penny Lane, Revolution, Day Tripper, Norwegian Wood, Birthday, Lady Madona, Yesterday, Strawberry Fields Forever, Drive My Car, Blackbird / I Will, When I'm Sixty-Four, The Fool On The Hill, All My Loving, I Am The Walrus, Goodnight, Here, There and Everywhere, Ticket To Ride
Swingle Singers : Around The World Folk Songs Vol. 1
All Three charts are featured on The Swingle Singer's album 'Around The World Folk Songs.'
Songlist: The Ash Grove, Bushes and Briars, Charlie is My Darling
Swingle Singers : Around The World Folk Songs Vol. 2
All Three charts are featured on The Swingle Singer's album 'Around The World Folk Songs.'
Songlist: Ciao, Bella, Ciao, Danny Boy, David of the White Rock
Displaying 1-50 of 267 items.
Here's a jazz novelty song recorded by Ella Fitzgerald in the '50s that's filled to the brim with sass and style! Perfect for a winter concert, dinner theater fundraiser or anytime you want to share a little sweetness with your community!
Arranger: Kirby Shaw | Performed By: Ella Fitzgerald
A reverent and truly beautiful rendition of the widely known Psalm, frequently used in religious services. It's pace is slow and contemplative and the music enhances the beauty of the language. As recorded on Bobby's Medicine Music CD.
This Latin standard has been recorded by dozens of recording artists from Harry Belafonte to Frank Sinatra. This setting by noted jazz educator and arranger Paris Rutherford is excellent for introducing Latin-style vocal jazz to performers from high school and beyond.Available separately: SATB, ShowTrax CD and Instrumental Pak (parts for piano, guitar, bass and drums). Performance Time: Approx. 3:50.
Arranger: Paris Rutherford | Composer: Luiz Bonfa | Country: Latin America
It's a mad, mad, mad, mad, madrigal indeed where the fa-la-la's get mixed up with the shoo-bee-doo-bee-doo's and the rama-lama-ding-dong's! This novelty song for madrigal groups, concert choirs or jazz groups will bring smiles to the crowd!
Arranger: Kirby Shaw
For over seven decades, this song, written during World War II has held an emotional connection with music-lovers for its nostalgic longing for happier times. This a cappella setting offers an accessible option to vocal jazz and concert choirs and opportunities for building style and technique.
Arranger: Kirby Shaw
This accessible setting retains all the flavor of the original Manhattan Transfer hit. Available: SATB, SAB, SSA. Performance Time: Approx. 2:00.
Arranger: Alan Billingsley | Composer: Manning Sherwin | Performed By: Manhattan Transfer
This ballad marked Diahann Carroll's 1954 debut on Broadway in House of Flowers and was further made famous in a recording by Barbra Streisand. This setting by Paris Rutherford is a delightful change of pace for both jazz and pop ensembles with its witty text and infectious tune.Available separately: SATB, ShowTrax CD and Instrumental Pak (Parts for Bass and Drums). Performance Time: Approx. 3:25.
Arranger: Paris Rutherford | Composer: Truman Capote | Performed By: Barbra Streisand
This bluesy standard, recorded by jazz greats Etta James, Dinah Washington and more, will be a perfect vehicle for displaying your group's soulful style. Available separately: SATB, SAB, SSA, ShowTrax CD. Combo part available digitally (tpt 1, tpt 2, tsx, tbn, gtr, b, dm). Duration: ca. 3:30.
Arranger: Kirby Shaw | Composer: Louis Prima
Celebrate the work of one of America's best loved composers with this exciting arrangement by Philip Kern. This ragtime show-stopper opens with short male and female solos, adds the tight harmonies of your SAB or SATB choir, swings into a scat section featuring a trumpet-like vocal solo, ritards to a cakewalk tempo, and finally crescendos to an amazing ending that may very well raise the roof of your auditorium. Feature your accompanist with the left hand stride accompaniment, add a ragtime instrumental ensemble with the optional SoundPax, or perform this one with the rousing SoundTrax CD. Publication includes optional staging suggestions. Featured on "On with the Show!" video, #21799.
Arranger: Philip Kern | Composer: Irving Berlin
Combining one of our best-loved hymns with rhythmic vocal jazz background makes this a stunning crossover work to be enjoyed by both singers and audience. The eight-part arrangement will work very well even with a smaller, but strong group of singers. A work that will surely bring light and joy to your program!
Arranger: Anders Edenroth | Performed By: Real Group
From the a cappella beginning into the walking bass accompaniment to the full swinging shout chorus, this chart is a straight-ahead vocal jazz feature that will bring life to every performance! Available: SATB, SAB, SSA, Instrumental Pak, ShowTrax CD. Performance Time: Approx. 4:00.
Arranger: Kirby Shaw | Composer: Jack Lawrence | Performed By: Frank Sinatra
From the 1946 animated classic Make Mine Music produced by Walt Disney, Benny Goodman and his orchestra provided the soundtrack that salutes swing music. A fun change of pace for jazz and show choirs! Available separately: SATB, SAB, SSA, ShowTrax CD. Combo parts available digitally (tpt 1, tpt 2, tsx, tbn, gtr, b, dm). Duration: ca. 1:50.
Soaring vocal lines shimmer above the uptempo Latin style instrumental in this Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II classic in a breath-taking setting. Available: SATB. Performance Time: Approx. 3:30.
Arranger: Steve Zegree | Composer: Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II
Your audience will be swept away with this inviting setting of the Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein classic! Opening with a warm, rubato piano intro followed by vibrant opening chords from the singers, this chart settles into a fresh swing treatment that will make everyone smile! Available separately: SATB, SSA, ShowTrax CD. Rhythm parts available digitally (pno, gtr, b, dm). Duration: ca. 4:20.
Arranger: Paris Rutherford | Composer: Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II
This Lerner and Loewe hit is an American classic. It is set here as an updated a cappella version by Darmon Meader for the New York Voices - an amazing vocal jazz arrangement not to be missed. Beginning with solo and backing vocals, it soon takes off in a bright, happy bounce. Enjoy and learn from the actual New York Voices with the demo recording.
Arranger: Darmon Meader | Composer: Alan Jay Lerner / Frederick Loewe | Performed By: Brigadoon
Not for the faint of heart! This challenging jazz setting of the traditional folk hymn offers substantial challenges and myriad rewards, with its colorful harmonies and surprising shifts in tonality. Available: SATB divisi a cappella. Duration: ca. 2:45.
Arranger: Greg Jasperse
Set in a medium up-swing, this tasty standard features a written vocal solo and a written piano solo easily performed by high school jazz groups. Available separately: SATB, ShowTrax CD. Rhythm parts available digitally (rpno, b, dm). Duration: ca. 4:00.
A fresh take on a classic standard with intricate, yet accessible jazz harmonies and effortless voice leading. The vocals sing like falling and drifting leaves throughout the piece. A standout ballad for your jazz, show, or concert choir!
Arranger: Ryan O'Connell | Composer: Johnny Mercer
There are three sections to the piece. The audience can join in singing the opening groove. When the conductior or leader form the chorus gives the signal, the chorus goes into a second section. Because of the improvisational nature of jazz, the leader can then either return to the first section or go on the third section. During the first section, soloists should come forward to scat or create vocal drum grooves (percussion patterns made with the voice). Invite audience members to come forward to do solos. If you want, change the key of the piece or sing it fast or sing it slow or sing it slow, then fast to create vocal drum grooves to go in the background or, while the vocal drum grooves are wailing away, have the singing suddenly stop, letting the drum patterns shine out by themselves. Jazz is living music. You keep it alive by keeping it spontaneous. The piece should always end with the third section. The fast run at the end of the third section isn't so much sung, as it sounded-li
Composer: Nick Page
Sheer, unbridled fun! For college or adult jazz chorus, this arrangement as sung by the New York Voices is a bit tricky, but well worth the effort. It features incredible harmony and rhythm and some a cappella sections, but the purpose of this piece is not to get technical - just to have fun! Four-part scat singing frames the piece on either end, while your baritone soloist goes to town (with great choral support) on each verse. Baby Driver, extracted from the New York Voices Songs of Paul Simon CD, is a toe-tappin', hand-clappin' jazz party. Invite everyone you know!
Arranger: Peter Eldridge / Darmon Meader | Composer: Paul Simon
Start a quiet fire with this mellow Latin jazz chart. Lush harmonies and fluid melodic lines are featured to create a great change of pace for any concert. English and Spanish lyrics included. Available: SATB, SAB, SSA, Instrumental Pak, ShowTrax CD. Performance Time: Approx. 3:30. ScorePlay - click to view score with recording.
Arranger: Kirby Shaw | Composer: Sunny Skylar | Performed By: The Coasters | Country: Latin America
Hot horns and vocals make this Latin standard into an incredible feature for jazz and show choirs. Opportunities for solos and great instrumentals make this chart easy to learn and fun to sing for all types of programming.
Arranger: Paris Rutherford | Country: Latin America
This medley is hot, hot, hot! Totally irresistible and a great show choir feature, it includes these great swing standards: Caravan, Don't Get Around Much Anymore, (I Love You) for Sentimental Reasons, In a Sentimental Mood, It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing), Juke Box Saturday Night, Let's Dance, Sentimental Journey, Stompin' at the Savoy. Available: SATB, SAB, 2-Part, Instrumental Pak, ShowTrax CD. Performance Time: Approx. 11:25.
Arranger: Mac Huff
This great bossa nova classic by the Brazilian artist Joao Gilberto completely captures the flavor of the 1960s. Smooth lines and the jazz infused samba give this setting its special appeal! Available separately: SATB, SAB, SSA, ShowTrax CD. Rhythm Section parts available digitally (gtr, b, dm). Duration: ca. 2:15.
Arranger: Kirby Shaw | Country: Brazil
Now available separately: younger voices, this Irving Berlin tune is a classic of jazz swing style. This long-time favorite will bring a smile to your face and put a spring in your step! Available: SATB, 2-Part, 3-Part Mixed, ShowTrax CD. Performance Time: Approx. 2:30.
Two legends combined in this duet with Tony Bennett and Amy Winehouse in the final recording made before her death in 2011. Adapted for jazz choirs, this setting retains the bluesy, ballad quality of their popular recording. Available separately SATB, SAB, SSA and ShowTrax CD. Rhythm parts available as digital download (vibes, syn, gtr, b, dm). Duration: ca. 3:10.
Arranger: Kirby Shaw | Composer: John Green | Performed By: Tony Bennett
Get your boogie down with this 80's classic by Al Jarreau that has a funky feel that still grooves! Great solo opportunities and vocal riffs make it a super feature for pop, jazz and show choirs from high school and up. ScorePlay - click to view score with recording.
Arranger: Paris Rutherford | Performed By: Al Jarreau
First made popular by the Andrews Sisters, later by Bette Midler in the '70s, and now this hoppin' tune is arranged for mixed as well as treble choirs. The energetic swing-style will be incredibly fun to perform and the tune lends itself very well to choreography. ScorePlay - click to view score with recording.
Arranger: Mark Brymer | Performed By: Bette Midler
Here is a swinging arrangement of the great American standard in a style reminiscent of the Count Basie big bands of the 1950s. Opening in a spare style with unison vocals over a bass line, the texture gradually fills out to two parts, then solo with choir back-up, and finally a modulation to a full four-part conclusion. Great for developing improvisation skills!
Arranger: Steve Zegree
Would Pachelbel approve? Who knows. But singers and audiences surely will! This rhythmic rendition presents the famous "Canon in D" with nonsensical scat syllables. Sing a cappella or with the optional piano accompaniment. It's guaranteed to be the most memorable three minutes of any concert program.
Arranger: Alan Billingsley | Composer: Johann Pachelbel
Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant starred in the movie of the same name of this classic theme song by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer. This jazz setting features the lilting Parisian melody but with a unique rhythmic feel that pays homage to Brubeck and others of Mancini's era.
Arranger: Ed Lojeski | Composer: Johnny Mercer / Henry Mancini
Darmon Meader's arrangement of Charleston Alley pays tribute to Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, as well as Charlie Barnet, while expanding the voicings, and also placing the song in a much more "SATB-friendly" key. This arrangement is a great introduction to the classic vocalese style of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, and will work well for most medium to advanced vocal jazz groups.
Arranger: Darmon Meader | Composer: Jon Hendricks | Performed By: Lambert, Hendricks & Ross
This perennially popular song from The Real Group is now available for treble voices, allowing younger school choirs to get into a jazzy groove with this fun, upbeat concert work. Features syncopated, Latin-like rhythms and witty lyrics, with repeated figures that make this easier to teach and learn.
Vocal Harmony Arrangements - Home | <urn:uuid:7e17616a-726e-4037-b46d-184793bc575e> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.singers.com/a-cappella/arrangements/vocal-jazz-mixed/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280266.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00492-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.895111 | 13,158 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Traditional & Folk Songs with lyrics, midis & Mp3
The Grey Mare
The Grey Mare
Young Roger the miller came courting of late,
To a rich merchant's daughter called beautiful Kate;
She had to her fortune fine jewels and rings
Diamonds and rubies and costly fine things.
This caus-ed young Roger for to tell his mind
If she would be constant, that he would be constant,
Both loving and kind.
When the match was made up and the money paid down,
Wasn't that a bright sight? About five thousand pound,
And yet and withal he did vow and declare
That he wouldn't take her without the grey mare,
Saying, "Although that your daughter is charming and fair,
I won't take your daughter, I shan't take your daughter
Without the grey mare."
Then out spoke her father and he spoke with speed,
Saying, "I thought you'd have married my daughter instead,
But since it's no better, I'm glad it's no worse,
The money once more shall return to my purse,
For it's enough to drive a man into despair
To lose his own daughter, to lose his own daughter
For the sake of a mare."
The money it then vanished out of his sight,
And so did Miss Katie, his joy and delight.
Young Roger was then shown the way to the door
Never again to come there any more,
Which caused him to tear his long yellow hair
And wish that he'd never, and wish that he'd never
Spoke of the grey mare.
About a year after or a little above,
Who did he meet but Miss Katie, his love.
Smiling, said Roger,"O, don't you know me?"
"If I'm not mistaken, I saw you," said she,
"Or a man in your apparel with long yellow hair
That once came a-courting, that once came a-courting
My father's grey mare."
"My dear," then said Roger, "but you are mista'en,
It was to yourself that a-courting I came,
But I thought your father without any dispute
Would give me his daughter and grey mare to boot,
Before he'd have lost such a charming young son,
But oh, I am sorry, but oh, I am sorry
For what I have done."
"As for your sorrow, I value it not.
There is men eneu' in this world to be got."
"It's enough to drive a man into despair
To lose his own darling for the sake of a mare."
"The price of the grey mare it was not so great.
So fare you well Roger, fare you well Roger,
Go mourn for your Kate."
From Songs of the People, Henry
Recorded by Peter Bellamy | <urn:uuid:7b933d7d-9814-45e6-9c65-7968bb7cc311> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/song-midis/Grey_Mare.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719079.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00035-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97689 | 619 | 2.234375 | 2 |
Monday, March 4, 2013
Minot Truck Assembly Line
In May of 1927 the Ford Motor Company stopped production of the Model T Truck to retool their plants for the new Model A. The conversion was going to be a 2 year process. During that time, Westlie Motors set up an assembly line on the top floor of its business here in Minot. The parts were ordered directly from Ford Motor Company. Westlie Motors was the only dealer in the country to do this. In the fall of 1927, 38 trucks rolled off the assembly line. In 1928, 50 trucks were assembled. When the Model A trucks came out in late 1928, the demand for the Model T ceased as did Minot’s first and only automobile assembly line . | <urn:uuid:b0b7e8c4-6b58-4a35-b3cc-6c741bdcb708> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://www.minotmemories.com/2013/03/minot-truck-assembly-line.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00077.warc.gz | en | 0.957689 | 156 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Welcome back funny names fans, please pardon my tardy Tuesday post, I have been juggling one to many balls this week. I dropped the balls on the floor and this one rolled behind my desk. Fortunately, one of the cats found it and here were are. Pardon me, I think I got a little cat hair on you.
September is on the calendar and ballet should be in the air instead of hurricanes, forest fires, and smoke.
So let’s get more festive and meet Lady Moira Shearer Kennedy—British ballet dancer and actress, not to be confused with Moira Quirk the voice over actress and worthy of a post in her own right.
The name Moira is derived from the Greek meaning “destiny, share, fate” and fate is what took a little girl born Moira Shearer King born in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland to Ndola, Northern Rhodesia in 1931 with her civil engineer father, Harold Charles King and mother, Margaret Crawford Reid (born Shearer).
Ballet is your destiny, Moira Shearer.
In Rhodesia she took her first ballet lessons from a former student of Enrico Cecchetti, the famed ballet teacher born in the costuming room of the Teatro Tordinona in Rome. After five years of studying the Cecchetti method her family moved to London and she trained under Russian teacher Nicholas Legat. A brief interruption caused by WWII sent her back to Scotland. After the war she returned to London.
Once her training was almost complete, not as a Jedi warrior but a ballet dancer, she made her first debut in a Posy Fossil advertisements for the book “Ballet Shoes”. She blew onto the international scene with her performance as Victoria Page in the ballet film Red Shoes, even her hair matched the shoes. It launched her film career, which spanned over the next few decades.
She married journalist Sir Ludovic Henry Coverley Kennedy in 1950, and as luck would have it, Moira became a lady by title as well as grace.
Let’s not have it said that all ballet dancers are serious. No, let’s not. After having four children who wanted something to tease her about, she decided to host the BBC’s Eurovision Song Contest in 1972.
But she didn’t stop there, she stayed busy. She wrote for the Daily Telegraph and gave talks on ballet all over the world before her passing in 2006.
Moira certainly shared her destiny with the world.
Please consider supporting our founder, Dave, in his battle with cancer. | <urn:uuid:e6684977-1309-46d1-851f-5309c695df59> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://funnynamesblog.com/2017/09/20/lady-moira-shearer-kennedy/?replytocom=173596 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571584.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812045352-20220812075352-00677.warc.gz | en | 0.978714 | 542 | 1.515625 | 2 |
- Superblack Material Absorbs Multiwavelengths of Light
GREENBELT, Md., Nov. 11, 2011 — A thin layer of multiwalled carbon nanotubes constitutes a new superblack material that absorbs 99 percent of multiple wavelengths of light — an achievement that promises to open new frontiers in space technology.
"Our material is darn near perfect across multiple wavelength bands, from the ultraviolet to the far-infrared,” said John Hagopian, who is leading the effort at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. “No one else has achieved this milestone yet.”
The nanotubes are positioned vertically on various substrate materials, and reflectance tests showed that the team had extended the range of each material's absorption capabilities by 50 times. They discovered that their superblack material absorbs 99.5 percent of the light in the ultraviolet (UV) and visible, dipping to 98 percent in the longer or far-infrared bands.
This close-up view (only about 0.03 inches wide) shows the internal structure of a carbon-nanotube coating that absorbs about 99 percent of the ultraviolet, visible, infrared and far-infrared light that strikes it. A section of the coating, which was grown on smooth silicon, was purposely removed to show the tubes’ vertical alignment. (Images: Stephanie Getty, NASA Goddard)
Hagopian noted that other researchers have reported near-perfect absorption levels mainly mainly in the UV and visible (See: Superblack Material Created).
“The advantage over other materials is that our material is 10 to 100 times more absorbent, depending on the specific wavelength band,” Hagopian said.
“We knew it was absorbent,” said Manuel Quijada, Goddard engineer. “We just didn't think it would be this absorbent from the ultraviolet to the far-infrared.”
The Goddard engineers originally reported their finding in August at SPIE’s Optics & Photonics 2011 conference in San Diego and have since reconfirmed the material’s absorption capabilities in additional testing.
This high-magnification image, taken with an electron microscope, shows an even closer view of the hollow carbon nanotubes. A coating made of this material is seen as black by the human eye and sensitive detectors because the tiny gaps between the tubes collect and trap light, preventing reflection.
The tests indicate that the carbon nanotubes are especially useful for a variety of spaceflight applications where observing in multiple-wavelength bands is important, such as in stray-light suppression. The tiny gaps between the tubes collect and trap background light to prevent it from reflecting off surfaces and interfering with the light that scientists actually want to measure. Because only a small fraction of light reflects off the coating, the human eye and sensitive detectors see the material as black.
If used in detectors and other instrument components, the technology would allow scientists to gather hard-to-obtain measurements of objects so distant in the universe that astronomers no longer can see them in visible light, or those in high-contrast areas, including planets in orbit around other stars, Hagopian said. Earth scientists studying the oceans and atmosphere also would benefit. More than 90 percent of the light Earth-monitoring instruments gather comes from the atmosphere, overwhelming the faint signal they are trying to retrieve.
Instrument developers currently use black paint to prevent stray light from ricocheting off surfaces, but the paint has only a 90 percent absorption rate and does not remain black in cryogenic temperatures, which are required for far-infrared-sensing instruments that gather faint signals from the distant universe. NASA is currently evaluating the carbon nanotube material for use on such instruments.
For more information, visit: www.nasa.gov/goddard
MORE FROM PHOTONICS MEDIA | <urn:uuid:11a53ec8-412a-4cc5-a46e-e91a796c6d8a> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.photonics.com/Article.aspx?AID=49015 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719646.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00127-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923524 | 789 | 3.078125 | 3 |
THE globe artichoke, cynara scolymus, is the immature flower of a thistle plant and one of the oldest cultivated vegetables in the world. This beautiful plant comes to fruition in summer and, though a little tricky to prepare, is a delight to eat and bursting with goodness.
While artichokes may not be the easiest food to consume, the sheer volume of nutrients, minerals and phytochemicals found in this extraordinary vegetable make eating them well worth it.
Most people's favourite part of the artichoke is the heart, but the leaves are actually the source of the vast majority of its health benefits. In clinical studies, artichoke leaf extract has been proven to have potent disease-fighting and anti-ageing properties.
Artichokes are packed with phytonutrients such as quercetin, rutin, gallic acid and cynarin, which all help to protect against many health risks including cancer, heart disease, liver dysfunction, high cholesterol and diabetes.
In 2004, the United States Department of Agriculture conducted a comprehensive study analysing the antioxidant content of the most commonly consumed foods. To the surprise of many, artichokes ranked in the top four vegetables and seventh overall. Who would have thought a thistle could be so good for you?
Artichokes are probably best known for their cholesterol reducing and liver protecting properties.
The French have known this for years and often take artichoke extract during periods of indulgence, such as at Christmas, as it helps digest fatty foods and ease indigestion. Far more palatable, I think, than glugging back a chalky liquid or sucking on a lozenge!
Artichokes are a Mediterranean delicacy which you'll also find in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese dishes. Again making the Mediterranean way of eating so healthy.
We all know the dangers of high cholesterol and the increased risk of coronary heart disease and atherosclerosis. Since the 1970s, scientists have been testing cynarin in artichokes and artichoke leaf extract for their ability to reduce cholesterol levels. Cynarin in artichokes has been conclusively proven to reduce bad cholesterol dramatically.
In a 12-week, double-blind study, 75 patients received placebo or 1,280mg standardised artichoke leaf daily. At the end of the 12 weeks, the treated group recorded a modest reduction in total cholesterol of 4.2 per cent.
To further demonstrate the artichoke's heart-healthy powers, scientists set up a randomised, placebo-controlled study to examine the effect of artichoke leaf extract in patients with high cholesterol. All participants showed positive results.
Over six weeks, participants were split up, with half receiving artichoke extract and the rest a placebo. The patients receiving artichoke were shown to have an 18.5 per cent reduction in cholesterol level. Pretty impressive!
The high concentration of cynarin in artichokes not only affects cholesterol, but can also improve digestive health. Cynarin is known to stimulate the production of bile, which enables us to digest fats and absorb vitamins from our food, making artichokes an excellent way to start any meal, especially if it is rich and high in fat, the way the French often do it.
Unlike Jerusalem artichokes, which are jokingly called 'fartichokes', studies have shown that artichoke leaf extract can be very helpful for people suffering from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and dyspepsia, or upset stomach.
In a study at the University of Reading, England, 208 adults who suffered from IBS and dyspepsia were monitored over a two-month period of treatment with artichoke leaf extract.
Results showed a 26.4 per cent reduction in IBS incidence among the participants at the end of the trial. Many subjects also reported a return to normal bowel function instead of the "alternating constipation/diarrhoea" typical of IBS. Dyspepsia symptoms also fell by 41 per cent after treatment and, in general, the participants noted a 20 per cent increase in quality of life after treatment.
Bile produced by the liver and stored in the gall bladder is what helps us digest fats and remove dangerous toxins. Cynarin in artichokes boosts bile production and is very beneficial to the health of your liver.
Artichokes also contain the flavonoid silymarin, which protects the liver. Silymarin reduces the process of lipid peroxidation from occurring in the cell membranes of the tissues of the liver, making the artichoke the ideal vegetable to help your liver function better. Especially when you over indulge in fatty barbecues, Christmas feasts and birthday dinners.
There are many other powerful polyphenol-type antioxidants found in artichokes that researchers believe can contribute to the prevention and management of prostate cancer, breast cancer and leukaemia.
Studies have shown that the antioxidants rutin, quercetin and gallic acid found in artichoke leaf extract are able to induce apoptosis (cell death) and reduce the proliferation of cancer cells.
In research at Comenius University in Slovakia, artichoke leaf extract was studied for its ability to inhibit growth of leukaemia cells. Over a 24-hour period, leukaemia cells were treated with a variety of concentrations of artichoke leaf extract, with results suggesting that it slows down the reproduction of the leukaemia cells while inducing apoptosis of these cells as well.
In addition, researchers at the University of Georg-August in Germany have found that the many phytochemicals in artichokes help to block the secretion of cancer agents, thus inhibiting the growth of cancer cells.
Artichokes can look a bit intimidating but, have no fear, you can master it. Start by removing the tough leaves from close to the base and trim the stem to about 2cm long (or, on good-sized ones, remove the stem completely, so the artichoke will sit flat on its base).
Cook in plenty of lightly salted, boiling water or in a steamer, simmer for 15-30 minutes, depending on size and freshness.
Just-cut artichokes need less cooking to become tender. If you grow your own, cooking them within minutes of cutting reduces the cooking time dramatically to only seven or eight minutes for a small one. The best test to check that it is cooked is when a leaf from the middle pulls away easily and the heart is tender when pierced with a knife.
In France, freshly steamed artichokes are typically served with a Hollandaise sauce or raspberry vinegar.
After steaming, you can also slice them in half, brush with oil or melted butter and grill on a griddle pan or barbecue. Serve with a squeeze of lemon. Don't worry, the artichoke is one of the few foods that it is both proper and polite to eat with your fingers.
Artichokes can be served hot or cold. To eat, just pull out the outer petals one at a time. Dip it in your favourite sauce and pull the leaves through your teeth, removing the soft pulpy portion. Discard the remaining tough portion of the leaf. Continue this until all the petals have been removed.
Use a spoon and remove the fuzzy centre at the base of the artichoke and discard it. What remains is the heart of the artichoke and it is entirely edible and delicious.
You can also buy these artichoke hearts preserved in tins or glass jars in herb oil. I prefer the artichokes in jars in the oil as I find the tinned ones in water can go stringy and tough. I love artichokes on pizza, in salads, in grilled pita pockets and in creamy chicken dishes.
For the keen gardener, artichokes make a beautiful border which you can eat too! So start planning for next summer. In the meantime, enjoy your artichokes steamed, grilled, dipped and dunked. And, of course, serve with vibrant salads and on anti pasti platters for your casual entertaining.
Come Christmas, don't forget your artichoke tincture to help your liver cope with all the festivities. | <urn:uuid:6f9c8575-ff06-4083-b64a-accc2f209edb> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.independent.ie/life/health-wellbeing/healthy-eating/the-health-benefits-of-miracle-artichoke-30391248.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572286.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20220816090541-20220816120541-00269.warc.gz | en | 0.939839 | 1,704 | 2.578125 | 3 |
By C. A. Chandraprema –
Thursday November 1, 2012, was an eventful day if ever there was one. While Sri Lanka was defending itself in Geneva at the Universal Periodic Review of the Human Rights Council, an impeachment motion against Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake was handed over to the Speaker of Parliament in Colombo. Many people thought that the government would be diffident about impeaching the chief justice with the UPR session on Sri Lanka being held these days, and the theory was that even if they do impeach the chief justice, they would wait till the UPR process is over. But the fact that the impeachment motion was handed over to the speaker on the very day that Sri Lanka came up for discussion in Geneva shows that the government means business. Ironically, the US Representative to the Human Rights Council Eileen Donahoe in fact made reference to the impeachment motion in her speech on Sri Lanka and called upon the Sri Lankan government to uphold the independence of the judiciary. This was funny considering the fact that the world’s prime example for flogging the judiciary into submission is in fact the United States of America.
The American constitution is a very simple document which does not specifically say that the American Supreme Court has the power to decide on the constitutionality of laws made by Congress in quite the same words. Article 3 Section 2 which deals with the Judicial power simply says that “The judicial power shall extend to…” and among the things that the judicial power extends to, is mentioned the words “…the Laws of the United States…”. As we pointed out a couple of weeks ago, it was through the 1803 supreme court ruling in Mabury v. Madison that the US supreme court specifically claimed that the constitution gives them the power to decide on the constitutionality of the laws made by Congress. We explained in this column how President Thomas Jefferson applied the jackboot to the Supreme Court from day one and made them bow to the will of the president and Congress. Yet, here was the American Representative on the UNHRC protesting that Sri Lanka was doing what the Americans had been doing for the past 200 years.
If one looks at things from a different angle, perhaps the US Representative on the UNHRC did have a point. The US has never impeached a chief justice. They never had to, because making an example of someone else was enough to make the US Supreme Court get the message and fall in line. But there is something in Sri Lanka which makes such half measures ineffective. Even our terrorists (both Rohana Wijeweera and Prabhakaran) were uncommonly stubborn and the security forces had to go the whole hog with them. With both the JVP and the LTTE there was never the possibility of a compromise as in Nepal when the Maoist terrorist leader Prachanda came into the mainstream. Perhaps this is so with our supreme court as well. Having been a political correspondent for many years, the present columnist has always been struck by what Karl Marx said of France in his work “The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” where he said that France was the one place in Europe where class battles were fought to the finish. So it is in Sri Lanka – every battle, whether it be with terrorists, the Supreme Court or with foreign powers have to be fought to the finish.
Friday Forum’s Amnesia
Some people however see this conflict between the judiciary and the executive only in terms of the executive trying to intimidate the judges. A case in point is the statement issued a couple of weeks ago by the Friday Forum signed by Jayantha Dhanapala, Professor Savitri Goonesekere, Rt. Rev. Duleep de Chickera, Professor Arjuna Aluwihare, Dr. Jayampathy Wickremaratne, Tissa Jayatillaka, Dr. Geedreck Usvatte-aratchi, Professor Ranjini Obeysekere, Sithie Tiruchelvam, Dr. A.C. Visvalingam, Suriya Wickremasinghe, Dr. Radhika Coomaraswamy, Professor Gananath Obeysekera, Manouri Muttetuwegama, Dr. Devanesan Nesiah, Ahilan Kadirgamar and Chandra Jayaratne among others. Even though the NSB scandal hit the headlines only months ago, its cause for concern that these intellectuals seem to be suffering from amnesia about how the split between the judiciary and the executive occurred.
They refer to the “The unprecedented public statement by the Judicial Service Commission of Sri Lanka (JSC) complaining of intrusions into its functioning” but say nothing specific about the even more genuinely unprecedented fact that the spouse of the chief justice accepted a political appointment from the government. No spouse of any chief justice has ever held political appointments in the government whereas even President Chandrika Klumaratunga was accused of interfering in the functioning of the judiciary – one such instance being when she appointed Shirani Bandaranayake to the supreme court without heeding the advice of the chief justice who had recommended two appeal court judges for the vacancy. The Friday Forum does refer obliquely to “attempts at compromising judicial integrity through political appointments and other benefits granted to immediate family members of judges…”, but they fail to say that the only chief justice who ever had any immediate family members holding political appointments is the present one.
The Friday Forum also commends the Chief Justice and the other two Supreme Court Judges on the Judicial service Commission for not going when they were summoned by what they refer to as ‘an unnamed political authority’ but they fail to condemn the CJ for having allowed her husband to accept a political appointment from the president. The Friday Forum even goes to the extent of berating the Bar and the bench for their silence on the matter little realizing that when Shirani Bandaranayake was first appointed, the Bar and the Bench protested vehemently and warnings issued more than 15 years ago by senior figures like R.K.W.Goonesekera and Shibley Aziz are now being proved right. So this impeachment is not a black and white case as some seem to be intent on making it out to be. Back in May this year, Uvindu Kurukulasuriya wrote a blistering article to the Sunday Leader about the chief justice which stressed the following points.
* When Justice Bandaranayake was appointed as the Chief Justice, there were serious conflict of interest issues relating to her. The Sixth Conference of Chief Justices of Asia and the Pacific held in Beijing in August 1995 adopted the Statement of Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary. Principle 39 of the Beijing Statement says, “Inducements or benefits should not be offered to or accepted by judges if they affect, or might affect, the performance of their judicial functions.” The Chief Justice must explain how her husband was appointed Chairman of Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation, and a member of the Board of Directors of Lanka Hospitals Corporation PLC. How was he also appointed Chairman of the National Savings Bank? Had he applied for the job? Was he interviewed? Who were the other applicants? Weren’t there any other qualified applicants other than her husband?
* While Justice Shirani Bandaranayake sat on the Bench of the Supreme Court court, in June 2009 following a Supreme Court order to the Treasury Secretary to appoint a Board of Directors to the Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation (SLIC) after the government took it over, President Rajapaksa who is also the Minister of Finance, appointed Justice Shirani Bandaranayake’s husband Pradeep Kariyawasam to the new SLIC Board as its Chairman.
* Kariyawasam was also appointed to the Lanka Hospitals Corporation PLC as a member of its Board of Directors along with Defence Secretary and Presidential sibling Gotabhaya Rajapaksa who was appointed Chairman.
* But that is not all. On May 15, 2010 Pradeep Kariyawasam was also appointed Chairman of the National Savings Bank by President Rajapaksa. The NSB controls assets worth Sri Lankan Rupees 424,994,303,000/-.
* Under the chief justice’s husband’s chairmanship, the NSB has evolved a “sophisticated bank robbery”(Kurukulasuriya’s phrase) the questionable Rs. 390 million deal between the National Savings Bank and a group of investors of The Finance Company (TFC).
* During an interview with Mirror Business, The Finance Company PLC (TFC) Chairman Preethi Jayawardena and TFC Director/Chief Executive Officer Kamal Yatawara reiterated that the transaction in question was strictly a private one between the owners of the shares and the NSB, thereby having no material impact on TFC or its depositors. According to them, this corrupt transaction is not even a transaction between two state run organizations. It is a private deal between two cronies. Good Governance and Minority rights activist K. C. Vignarajah told The Island Financial Review: “The deal was suspicious from the very start …The management of the NSB should be held accountable to the public, no matter how small the transaction may seem to them. Some had argued that the President cannot prevent the payments from being made on technical grounds, but if the deal was suspect there is nothing wrong with preventing those responsible from getting away with the loot, especially when it is public money”.
* The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce issuing a statement called for an impartial inquiry and urged authorities to take action against any wrongdoers. “The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce (CCC) notes with concern the recent transaction of approximately 13 percent of The Finance Company PLC. The Chamber believes that ensuring integrity and transparency are vital to maintain investor confidence in the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) for the capital market to remain robust,” the Chamber observed.
* Opposition lawmaker and leading economist Dr. Harsha de Silva said, “This transaction exposed only the tip of the iceberg. There is a mafia in the country’s Stock Exchange and this deal has exposed a few of them and we are not going to let go. We hope the Regulators find the courage to carry out an investigation and give a fair judgment. If they do this, it will have a positive impact on the Colombo Stock Exchange, the inflow of foreign investments and the overall development of the country”.
* Alluding to the deal as a ‘sophisticated bank robbery, Dr. Harsha de Silva said the country needed sophisticated law enforcement officers and regulators to tackle such fraud. Dr. de Silva called for the resignation of NSB Chairman Pradeep Kariyawasam and said authorities should be allowed to carry out an impartial inquiry and punish any offenders without fear and favour.
* Kurukulasuriya also asserted in his Sunday Leader article that the resignation of NSB Chairman Pradeep Kariyawasam is not enough, his wife must also resign, rhetorically posing the question, “How can any investigation be carried while his wife sits as the Chief Justice?” At the end of the day any findings will go to the Supreme Court for a decision.
* He also cited the example of Nelum Gamage where when she was the head of the Bribery Commission, her husband was allegedly involved in corruption, she resigned and he invited Chief Justice Dr. Shirani Bandaranayake to follow Nelum Gamage’s example.
* Kurukulasuriya also stressed the fact that none of the spouses of previous judges have accepted political appointments and further that the relationship between the Chief Justice of Sri Lanka and her spouse cannot be private. Not when that spouse holds key positions in government institutions – that is a conflict of interest. A conflict of interest is also corruption.
Undoubtedly, this impeachment motion represents the most sordid episode in the history of the Sri Lankan judiciary. Shirani Bandaranayake made history by being the first woman Supreme Court judge and the first woman chief justice. She is about to make history again and how! What this shows is that no one should be appointed to a body like the Supreme Court and hold that position for more than five years. Shirani Bandaranayake has already been on the Supreme Court bench for far too long. Furthermore a position on the SC should be offered only to those with long years of experience at the bar or the bench and should not remain either as a Supreme Court judge or the chief justice for anything more than five years.
The UPR nonsense
With the heat over the chief justice’s impeachment and the adverse weather, the UPR sessions in Geneva went almost unnoticed. The Universal Periodic Review was a mechanism that was introduced along with the UN-Human Rights Council in 2006 and is therefore quite new to the world. Under the UPR mechanism, every country in the world presents its case at the UN-HRC on its adherence to human rights norms and conventions. By the logic of normal human beings, the UPR mechanism would look like a colossal waste of money and resources. For example at the sessions on Sri Lanka on Thursday, Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe held forth for one hour after which nearly a hundred other countries spoke on Sri Lanka either praising or finding fault and the contributions made by those countries lasted less than ninety seconds each. Some speakers seemed to get cut off in mid sentence.
They were all scripted speeches and none of them were based on what Minister Samarasinghe said. Before the session on a country begins, the country concerned submits a national Report well in advance and this is followed by reports provided by ‘stakeholders’. The speeches made by various countries on the day a country UPR is taken up, are based on the contents of the national report of the country concerned and these stakeholders reports. In the case of Sri Lanka, the stakeholders who submit reports to the UNHRC are almost exclusively foreign funded NGOs. The few stakeholders that are not foreign funded stakeholders are Tamil separatist organisations like the Global Tamil Forum, based overseas. The question of the utility of this process is highly questionable. When watching the proceedings, the question that immediately comes to mind is who pays the expenses of the delegation? If it has to be borne by the countries individually, that would be a criminal waste of money that could be better used in meeting more concrete goals like the eradication of certain diseases.
The national report submitted for the UPR is always a paen of self praise and the stakeholders reports are always a litany of complaints. The national reports are always full of trite banalities that everyone knows already. For example, When India faced its UPR among the things that the Indian national report said went as follows: “India is home to over one billion people. Indian society is the culmination of centuries of assimilation of diverse peoples and ethnic groups. India has an inclusive, open, multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual society marked by unparalleled pluralism. India is the seventh largest country in the world covering an area of 3.3 million sq. km. It is a subcontinent by itself extending from the snow-covered Himalayas to the tropical rain forests of the south. India accounts for 2.4 per cent of the world surface area but supports and sustains 16.7 per cent of the world population. India has 18 major languages. More than 1650 dialects are spoken across the country.”
India is justifiably proud of its programme to uplift the depressed caste communities in that country and unsurprisingly, they were touting “pluralism and respect for diversity” as one of their key achievements and claiming that they have embarked on a programme of affirmative action which is, perhaps, without parallel in scale and dimension in human history. Instead of unreservedly congratulating India, the compilation of NGO views prepared by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, highlighted the following.
* The HR Committee expressed concern about the persistence of preferred treatment for males and deplored the fact that practices such as foeticide continue.
* In 1997, the HR Committee noted with concern that members of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes as well as the so-called backward classes and ethnic and national minorities continue to endure severe social discrimination and to suffer disproportionately from violations of their rights, such as inter-caste violence, bonded labour and discrimination of all kinds.
* The Committee also noted that de facto segregation of Dalits persists, in particular in rural areas, in access to places of worship, housing, hospitals, education, water sources, markets and other public places.
The question that has to be raised is, why are such issues being raised when India is well aware of these problems and have been making attempts to eliminate them? What advantage can be gained from such nit picking, stressing the obvious? This nit picking has already become a joke among participating nations. In fact when it came to Britain’s turn to be examined under the UPR, Russia jokingly pleaded that since the adoption of the Magna Carta in 1215, it had taken 700 years for one of the most developed countries in the world to reach universal suffrage, in 1928, the United Kingdom should continue to show understanding about the human rights situation in other countries, particularly in those which have quite recently been freed from their colonial past! Basically, the UPR is another mechanism that the Western nations have devised to use as a foreign policy tool to harass countries that don’t bow down to their diktat. What appertains in the UPR process is the age old adage that might is right. When it came to the turn of the USA to face the UPR, they flatly refused even to consider some suggestions made by other countries.
The American middle finger
*For example, Iran suggested among other things, that the USA should take effective measures to counter insults against Islam and Holy Quran, the USA countered this by saying that they cannot take legislative measures countering insults because insults are speech protected by the American constitution!
*To the Libyan suggestion that the USA should make those responsible for gross violations of human rights in American prisons and prisons under the jurisdiction of America outside its territory accountable and compensate victims and provide them with remedies, the USA said bluntly they are committed to holding accountable persons responsible for human rights violations and war crimes, but they cannot consider compensation and remedies, because those are not always applicable.
*Another suggestion made by Iran was that the USA should put on trial its gross violators of human rights and its war criminals and accede to the ICC (International Criminal Court). The USA flatly refused to accede to the Rome Statute (under which the International Criminal Court is constituted), although they are engaging with State Parties to the Rome Statute on issues of concern – which in effect means that the ICC is for other countries and not for the USA.
*Another suggestion to the USA made by several countries including Egypt, Ghana, Sudan, Russia, Qatar, South Korea and Ireland and Venezuela was to establish a national human rights institution, The USA’s cryptic answer was “Although we are reviewing whether domestic institutions that monitor human rights need improvement, we cannot now commit to a particular plan.”
Obviously Sri Lanka though a sovereign nation does not have the same freedom. The USA responded to certain other suggestions made by certain countries at the first UPR in the following manner.
Venezuela – Repeal the norms that limit freedom of expression and require journalists to reveal their sources, under penalty of imprisonment. (Flat Refusal)
Ghana – The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People be used as a guide to interpret the State obligations under the Convention relating to indigenous peoples. (Flat Refusal)
Nicaragua – Halt immediately the unjustified arms race and bring to justice those responsible for all war crimes and massacres against unarmed civilians, women, children as well as acts of torture carried-out in prisons such as Abu Ghraib, Bagram and Guantanamo. (Flat Refusal)
Sudan – The closure of Guantanamo prison as the detention conditions violate the UDHR and ICCPR and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and all other related human rights instruments. (Flat Refusal)
Bangladesh – Raise the level of official development assistance to achieve the United Nations target of 0.7 percent of GDP and allow duty free-quota-free access to all products of all LDCs. (Flat Refusal)
Brazil – Withdraw reservations to the Convention against Torture. (Flat Refusal)
Iran – Abolish its extrajudicial and extraterritorial laws and refrain from the application of unilateral measures against other countries. (Flat Refusal)
North Korea – Take legislative and administrative measures to end defamation of religion. (Flat Refusal)
Courtesy Sunday Island November 3, 2012
Not Only The Chairman Husband; Chief Justice Wife Must Also Resign! by Uvindu Kurukulasuriya
Chief Justice Or Her Husband Must Resign by Uvindu Kurukalsuriya
One Retired Chief Justice Turns To Monkhood While Another Returns To Advice A Kleptocracy by Uvindu Kurukalsuriya
Wither Independence When Judges Host Parties For Politicians? by Uvindu Kurukalsuriya
Can We Expect Justice And Independence From Servants Of Military Dictators? by Uvindu Kurukalsuriya
Sarath Nanda Silva: Corruption Vs CORRUPTION by Uvindu Kurukalsuriya | <urn:uuid:c3b870b6-a92e-45b8-ae12-6c384297515e> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/impeachment-tragedy-and-upr-farce/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570741.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808001418-20220808031418-00074.warc.gz | en | 0.964643 | 4,503 | 2.515625 | 3 |
For years I have loved the music of Leonard Bernstein. Music he composed such as the opera Candide, the ballet Fancy Free, and the shows On the Town, West Side Story, thrill me. And when I hear a recording of Lenny conducting music by another composer like Mahler or Beethoven, I am deeply moved. I feel Lenny’s passion and it enhances my pleasure of the music.
This pleasure was something I wanted to bring to readers in Music Was It: Young Leonard Bernstein. I was astonished to learn that as a boy growing up in Boston, Lenny had to struggle to make a career in music despite his exceptional talent. His father, a Russian immigrant who had successfully established a beauty supply business, opposed the idea. Sam Bernstein, Lenny’s father, believed that it would be impossible for an American Jewish kid to break into the world of classical music, which in the 1930s and 1940s was dominated by Europeans. And he was right. Sam wanted Lenny to take over his beauty supply business. Or, at second best, become a rabbi.
Although Lenny loved his father and was greatly influenced by Judaism, he pursued his dream of a life in music. From the moment when he was ten-years-old and the family received a cast-off piano from Aunt Clara, Lenny knew that “music was 'it'.” “There was no question in my mind,” he recalled, “that my life was to be about music.”
With the encouragement of his mother, younger sister Shirley, supportive teachers and influential mentors, Lenny achieved his goal. The book ends with his triumphant conducting debut at Carnegie Hall when he was just twenty-five. A reporter asked Sam why he had ever objected to Lenny’s desire to be a musician, and Sam replied, “How could I know my son was going to grow up to be Leonard Bernstein?”
Researching and writing this book was a joy. During the process I had the marvelous opportunity to meet and interview two of Lenny’s children, Jamie and Alexander Bernstein. I also talked to Lenny’s brother Burton and his lifelong friend and one of his first piano students, Sid Ramin.
But reading about Lenny is incomplete without listening to his music. I tried to compile a discography for the book but had trouble because Lenny is one of the most recorded conductors in history. With the help of my wonderful editor Emily Mitchell, I decided to list some of the CDs from my personal collection that I listened to over and over as I worked on the book, and I included other recordings that I thought readers would particularly enjoy.
To get a glimpse of Lenny performing as a mature adult, go to YouTube and hear him conduct the overture to Candide. Or see him play the piano solo and conduct the second section of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue without a score.
As Lenny once said, “Life without music is unthinkable.” So visit YouTube, or borrow CDs and DVDs from the library, and experience the joy of music with Leonard Bernstein.
Posted by Susan Goldman Rubin, author of Music was IT. | <urn:uuid:2b136dab-cae5-42f2-9a33-fc8443e5a6b3> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://charlesbridge.blogspot.com/2011_03_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988721558.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183841-00046-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98462 | 664 | 1.90625 | 2 |
Our Mission [Is] to end drunk driving, help fight druged drivng, support the victems of these violent crimes, and prevent underage drinking.-www.MADD.org
MADD was created by the greiving mother of the girl seen below, Cari Lightner in Sep 05, 1980, who was killed by a drunk driver. Her mother, the founder of the orginization dedicated her life to fighting drunk driving, and assisting those affected.
Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition (ARD) Requires courts to impose suspensions for BAC ARDs based on the following BAC ranges:
Less than .10% - no suspension,
.10% to less than .16 - 30 day suspension, or
.16% and above - 60 day suspension
Progress is being made.
A huge number of anti DUI laws and regulations have been produced through MADD's efforts, such as the following. (provded by the DMV)
Credit (Suspension) Individuals suspended for driving a vehicle not equipped with an ignition interlock device or driving under a DUI-related suspension, with a BAC of .02% or greater cannot receive credit for their suspension until jail time has been served. -Effective February 1, 2004
Ignition Interlock Drivers who receive a second or subsequent DUI violation on or after September 30, 2003, can no longer serve an additional one year suspension in lieu of obtaining an ignition interlock device. Drivers are required to install ignition interlock on all vehicles owned (including leased) before driving privileges can be restored.
-Effective September 30, 2003
Q:Can I help?
Q: Who Is MADD aiming to protect?
A: Anyone who uses the roadways
Q:What is MADD trying to guard against.
A:Accidents involving impaired driving that could be avoided
Q:Is there anything else I can do?
A: You could become a designated driver, or spread the word.
Q: So what can I do?
A: You could write to local legislation or, go to www.MADD.com
Q:So I can't drink?!
A:Sure you can, provided you are of age! Just get a designated driver, or call a cab!
Logo, and Statistics:www.madd.org
Title Picture: www.dreamstime.com
Picture of Cari Lightner:http://rnrdrunkdriving.weebly.com/incidents.html | <urn:uuid:6b4c42e7-0ed8-4b79-b39e-f4f521176719> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://simplebooklet.com/publish.php?wpKey=UnV6D3xAunCIlnLAnUJI0a | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988720972.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183840-00251-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939837 | 515 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Immediate Methods To Cooking Desserts Caffe In Step-by-step Aspect
Strive: Adding blueberries to your morning smoothie, consuming them as a snack paired with a small handful of nuts, or attempting one in all these fifty six healthful blueberry recipes. Rapidly browse recipes by together with filters akin to leftovers,†dinner,†and any dietary restrictions akin to gluten free,†dairy free,†keto friendly†and so forth. This Pilipino recipe could be very simple to cook and consist of very simple components. The commonest substances are hen, pork (or a mix of each) marinated in soy sauce and vinegar, sautéed and seasoned with salt, pepper and a beneficiant quantity of garlic. One could add totally different parts like potatoes, pineapple chunks and quail eggs to make this successfully- beloved Filipino recipe rather more delectable. Nonetheless, garnishing added or not, adobo is already a really pleasing by its private. Other than hen and pork, different sorts of adobo are the adobong pusit, adobong kangkong and adobong biya sa gata.
The pores and pores and skin-busting impact of alkaline cooking water makes good sense. Acidity maintains the development of plant cell partitions, and alkalinity breaks it down. That is why beans take eternally to soften in case you try to cook dinner them in a tomato sauce. So soda within the blanching water weakens the fava seed coats enough that a lot of them rupture on their very personal in a couple of minutes on the boil, and the rest simply break between finger and thumb. Gone are the instances when it’s possible you’ll merely write, “add just enough flour to thicken.” That you will need to spell out how much flour so as to add. You could’t say “sauté this” or “sear that,” because of most people have no idea precisely what meaning. The truth is, more and more people in the meanwhile are rising up with out actually realizing tips on how to prepare dinner. These one pot and sheet pan dinners present that 30 minute healthful dinner could also be flavorful without washing 3 pots.
Fill a thermos if you happen to’ll be out via the day.
The Nook Bakery Cafe’s Cinnamon Creme Espresso cake is a rich, golden cake swirled with ribbons of cinnamon, topped with a crumbly cinnamon streusel and powdered sugar.” Just like a New York crumb cake, this cinnamon crumb espresso cake is good for a decadent breakfast, mid-day snack, or dessert. Discovering the correct pork cooking temperature is the final word step in plating a wonderfully juicy, tender reduce of meat. Ideally, cleaning as you prepare dinner makes it loads easier to stay organized and work extra effectively. Wipe down countertops and decreasing boards steadily (particularly when you’re working with raw meat), maintain the sink away from soiled dishes, and use any spare moments (akin to when you’re prepared for veggies to roast in the oven) to get a headstart on cleansing. This way, you possibly can loosen up and luxuriate in your meal, instead of worrying concerning the tower of dishes it’s a must to face later. 10 Vital Recipes is an occasional operate that explores different cuisines.
Try Malin + Goetz Lip Moisturizer ($14).
Cook your pasta al dente for among the best outcomes. The time interval al dente means “to the tooth” in Italian and is used to elucidate pasta that has been cooked until tender, nonetheless nonetheless supplies slight resistance when bitten into. Place the oiled bread bowls and lids on the ready baking pan and bake for five minutes. Her most prized dish was rooster relleno, reserved for the grandest festivities. She had certainly not revealed the recipe to anybody, which strained some friendships. This web site consists of pages for: over 12 years of weblog postings, Rose’s books, 100’s of baking recipes, 100 and fifty Rose Levy Beranbaum demonstration movies, answering baking questions, and a Recipe of the Month. A recipe is a set of directions that describes the best solution to prepare or make something, particularly a dish of ready meals. 3. Eat a lot less meat – this is a no brainer! Most non-meat meals comprise decrease ranges of mutagens than meat.
Nonetheless honestly, there are some really fast and straightforward recipes proper here that can assist you get a scrumptious and ideally suited dinner meal on the desk in no time. The aim is to have your youngsters enjoying nutritious foods, and consuming properly balanced and nutritious meals before they even discover it is good for them, and by that time they’ll similar to the foods a lot, they won’t care. | <urn:uuid:f8db6cc2-89fd-4f4a-8c37-415d8b575d1e> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://1mcafee.com/immediate-methods-to-cooking-desserts-caffe-in-step-by-step-aspect | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571284.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811103305-20220811133305-00469.warc.gz | en | 0.93087 | 1,042 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Since the first FLOLAC I learned to use the LaTeX Beamer Class and I like it. Among all the features I like is the “article” mode with which I can produce handouts. I’ve seen people printing pages of slides and I think it is terrible. It is more sensible to distribute the article formatted handouts to students and use the slides for the classroom only.
Indeed, the Beamer User’s Guide said, “In general, the article version of a talk is better suited as a handout than a handout created using the simple handout mode since it is more economic and can include more in-depth information.” The key word to me was “economic”. “It’s easier to read, and it saves paper!” I thought.
Since April this year I am taking a leave for University of Tokyo as a visiting lecturer, teaching a course on Software Construction. Now that I am preparing some course material every week, I happen to notice that the article mode does not save paper!
My previous FLOLAC lecture consists of about 135 slides (not counting the overlays). If you print 6 slides per page (which seems to be what they do with PowerPoint slides), that’s about 23 pages. If you print 4 slides per page that’s about 34 pages. The material formatted in article mode, on the other hand, is 40 pages long.
I checked my previous lectures. Numbers of pages of handouts in article mode is always bigger than the number of slides divided by 4 (not even 6!).
If you format the article in two column mode, now the number of pages needed roughly equals the number of slides divided by 6. However, you need more efforts formatting them. In my slides, what fits into a slide sometimes doesn’t fit into a column in two column mode.
So, the article mode does not save paper!
Is it easier to read? Well, one may argue that the typeface, the kern, the … typographical things I don’t understand are more suitable for reading. But I could also imagine people arguing that seeing the slides help to recall what happened in the lecture.
So… perhaps at least the article-formatted handouts are cheaper to print? We don’t waste ink printing the same dark-backgrounded header of every slide.
Or perhaps the real value of the article mode lies in “include[ing] more in-depth information.” You may put more comments and references the students can look up, which need not be shown on slides to students.
Do you like the article mode, and why? | <urn:uuid:60a13909-d8dd-41ef-b10c-016e33d8a81b> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.iis.sinica.edu.tw/~scm/category/life/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719547.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00395-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935516 | 557 | 2.078125 | 2 |
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For this ESL activity worksheet, students fill in the blanks in 6 school words and then match them to the correct pictures. A word bank is provided. | <urn:uuid:fd2d520d-2690-4b03-a02d-8c9b9b551108> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.lessonplanet.com/teachers/places-in-a-school | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280825.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00202-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.888574 | 78 | 3.265625 | 3 |
A powerful company, a catchy slogan, and how they forever changed the way we value diamonds.
By Barry B. Kaplan
A 1955 De Beers magazine
advertisement. Observe the
"A Diamond is Forever" slogan
at the bottom left of the image.
The slogan that would become
the most resilient in history
would be created in the
office of N.W. Ayer in 1947.
A necessary luxury
Ayer's marketing plan included public relations, advertising, product placement in films and on television,
radio programs publicizing diamond trends, portraits of betrothed socialites, stories and photographs of
celebrities for inclusion in magazines and newspapers - all targeted at a specific goal - the idea that
diamonds were eternal, forever linked with romance, emotionally valued, and a necessary luxury.
One strategically successful and aesthetically creative magazine campaign - The Great Artists - featured
the paintings of Picasso, Derain, Dali and Dufy, accompanied with poetic copy and prominently featuring
four diamonds ranging from a half to three carats. The idea was to associate diamonds with the sophisticated
subtext of art. These advertisements appeared in Fortune, Vogue, Time, The New Yorker and other publications,
circulated mainly to middle and upper class readers.
Ayer engaged jewelers to give talks, lectures, classes and informal meetings to thousands of young women. Ayer
also arranged for movie stars to appear at social events adorned with diamonds. The agency used its influence
to modify film scripts and movie titles to feature diamonds more prominently. One example is the 1941 film,
Skylark, which has the female character shopping for diamonds.
By 1941, the downward trend in retail sales had been reversed and in just three years, sales of diamonds in
the United States had risen 55%. Ayer's success inspired the agency to pursue a new goal - to reinforce the
"psychological necessity" of diamonds. An estimated 70 million people over the age of fifteen would be
targeted with future marketing campaigns.
A Diamond Is Forever
The slogan that would become the most resilient in history would be created in the office of N.W. Ayer
in 1947. After a confounding series of unsuccessful attempts to produce a slogan for a new De Beers advertising
campaign, Frances Gerety, a copywriter at the advertising agency, prayed for some divine assistance. Before
heading home, she scrawled "a diamond is forever" on the bottom of a picture of two honeymooning lovers. It
may have had humble beginnings, but according to Advertising Age, it is the most recognized slogan of the
20th century, and some ninety percent of all Americans know it. In less than a year, "A Diamond is Forever"
became the official slogan of De Beers.
Hollywood's association with the alluring gem would continue into the fifties with "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes",
a box offices sensation starring screen icons Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell and featuring the sensuous song
"Diamonds are a girl's best friend". Monroe's feminine sensuality helped secure the appeal of diamonds for
women. By the end of the 1950s, N.W. Ayer was pleased to announce to De Beers that its twenty-year marketing
campaign had successfully influenced the American public to consider a diamond engagement ring a necessity
to the engagement ritual. | <urn:uuid:ac5794e5-bc8f-4a73-91d4-29cd78689dd8> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.gemnation.com/base?processor=getPage&pageName=forever_diamonds_2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988717963.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183837-00373-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937771 | 704 | 2.484375 | 2 |
Set Microsoft Outlook 2003/2007/2010 as default email client in Windows 7
Windows 7 comes without a built-in email client, but many computer manufacturer pre-install the free "Windows Live Essentials" package, also made by Microsoft, which includes the Windows Live Mail email program. This means that when you upgrade to Windows 7 or purchase a new PC with Windows 7, you either have no email program (therefore, no default email client), or that you have Windows Live Mail automatically set as the default. After you have install Outlook, you can make the default program and use it instead (or in conjunction with another application). In this tutorial, we will explain how to set Microsoft Outlook as your default email program in Windows 7 (for Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, or Outlook 2010).
Make Outlook your default email program on Windows 7
Follow these steps to change your default mail handler to a version of Microsoft Outlook:
- Open the start menu, and type "default" in the search field; then, click on the "Default Programs" link displayed in the search results to launch the Control Panel:
- Windows 7 will open the "Choose the programs that Windows uses by default" screen: click on the "Set your default programs" link, and within a few seconds, you will get a listing of all applications you can use as default (email or otherwise), which will look like this:
- Find your version of Microsoft Outlook in the left column: the list is alphabetized, and you will find this email program listed under "M", as in "Microsoft Outlook 2007", for example.
- Select the Outlook entry, and a description and buttons will appear on the right:
- If you click on the "Set this program as default" button, Windows 7 will make Outlook the default application for everything it can handle, not necessarily email only.
- If you choose the "Choose defaults for this program" button instead, you will be able to select various actions or protocols you want Windows 7 to make Microsoft Outlook handle. You may read your RSS feeds in a dedicated client rather than in Outlook; same for calendaring - you may have another calendar program you want to use, and keep Outlook as default for emails only (Etc.) The screenshot on the right shows some files Outlook can handle as default.
- Once you have made your choice for Outlook as default, click on the OK button or the Save button to apply the change and return to Windows.
Tip: test your current email program setting by clicking on this sample email link - it will automatically open a new email window in the application Windows 7 currently recognizes as the default mail handler. (In this case, a blank email in your version of Outlook should open.)up ↑ | <urn:uuid:f54e475c-daa3-4c9e-82d6-edf09011ced7> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://freewindowsvistatutorials.com/setMicrosoftOutlook200320072010AsDefaultEmailClientInWindows7.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279915.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00277-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.858791 | 560 | 1.820313 | 2 |
The City of Mebane follows the Council-Manager form of government. Under this form of government, residents elect a Mayor and City Council, who then appoint a professional City Manager to oversee the day-to-day operations of the town. Most cities and counties in North Carolina follow this form of government.
City Council members are the community leaders and policy makers who establish a vision for Mebane, and who hire the manager to carry out policy and ensure that all residents are equitably served. The manager coordinates the work of department heads and other employees, who help ensure the smooth and efficient delivery of services. In addition, the manager builds public/private partnerships to target all of a community's resources to creatively solve current problems. Ultimately, the city manager's primary responsibility is to keep our community running smoothly. | <urn:uuid:35628686-2e6c-4b40-8585-987bfaeee8d6> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://cityofmebanenc.gov/departments/administration/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570868.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808152744-20220808182744-00073.warc.gz | en | 0.950195 | 166 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Figure 1: Structure of the ligand bound oligopeptide transporter (POT) in the inward open conformation (Guettou et al., 2013).
Previous and current research
Cell membranes compartmentalise metabolic processes and serve as selective barriers for permeation. Therefore, nutrient transport through the plasma membrane is essential to maintain homeostasis within the cell. Many proton-coupled secondary active transporters of the major facilitator superfamily (MFS) are involved in the accumulation of nutrients above extracellular levels. Structural and functional analyses of MFS transporters suggest an alternating-access mechanism for the transport of substrates across the membrane. Here the transporter adopts different conformational states, allowing the substrate binding site to face either side of the membrane. A full transport cycle involves at least three different conformational states – inward open, occluded and outward open –, with each of them in a ligand-bound and ligand-free state. Since MFS transporters are found in all branches of life and often with numerous gene copies, we believe that many if not all of these transporters follow a common transport mechanism.
Proton coupled oligopeptide transporters of the PepT family (also known as the POT family) are responsible for the uptake of a range of different di- and tripeptides, derived from the digestion of dietary proteins, and are highly conserved in all kingdoms of life. The best studied members of this family include the two human peptide transporters, PepT1 and PepT2. Both are also of great pharmacological and pharmaceutical interest as they accept a number of drugs and amino acid-conjugated pro-drugs as substrates. A detailed understanding of the structural basis for substrate recognition can therefore help to convert pharmacologically active compounds into substrates for PepT1 and PepT2 and improve their absorption in the small intestine and subsequent distribution in the body. We therefore study the proton-dependent oligopeptide transporter (POT) family using a combination of biochemical and biophysical methods.
Future projects and goals
- Characterisation of pro- and eukaryotic nutrient transporters in various states of the transport cycle using X-ray crystallography to decipher a common transport mechanism of MFS transporters.
- Structural and dynamic insights into the binding mode of POTs to peptides, drugs, and inhibitors.
- Molecular insights into structure and function of transport regulators of nutrient transporters.
Integral membrane proteins are a challenging class of proteins in terms of their structural and functional characterisation. Over the years we have developed and established new tools and a workflow for protein production and quality control of membrane proteins including functional assays. Furthermore, we are trying to find new ways to stabilise integral membrane proteins in vitro upon extraction from their natural environment.
Figure 2: Structural differences between the inward open and occluded state structures of the sugar transporter XylE. The structures were overlaid and the transmembrane helices (TM) are labelled and arrows designate changes in the position of the helices upon opening of the transporter towards the cytoplasm. | <urn:uuid:6d4074a2-3385-4943-afe9-49d17c295cc6> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.embl-hamburg.de/research/unit/loew/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280825.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00209-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910213 | 657 | 2.5 | 2 |
o How does a personal cash flow statement help you organize your finances? A personal cash flow statement allows you to have a visual of what you budget and what you actually spend on monthly expenses. It allows you to organize your finances by giving you a more complete picture of where your money goes. It also allows you to make adjustments to allow for actual spending and amounts available for savings. It will help you to develop a path to reach your financial goals. It will also provide you a visual of frivolous spending. This will allow you to alter spending on unnecessary expenses if needed. At the end of last year we had to adjust our budget. Using a personal cash flow statement with a pie chart allowed us to see our biggest flexible expense was groceries. By adjusting our food budget, we were able to cut the bill in half. This allows us to put more money in savings. o What was the most interesting thing you learned about completing this worksheet? The most interesting thing I learned from completing the personal
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access the rest of the document. | <urn:uuid:223dcefc-db35-46b5-8272-ffc09da0a200> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.coursehero.com/file/6384079/FP-101-Personal-Cash-Flow/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280242.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00081-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949233 | 218 | 2.34375 | 2 |
OTTAWA, Jan. 28, 2016 /CNW/ - On January 28, 1916, women won the right to vote in the Province of Manitoba. It started a domino effect across the country, as one province and then the next introduced women's suffrage. Two years later, the bill giving women the right to vote was passed by the Parliament of Canada.
It has been a century since that landmark decision was made in Winnipeg. Yet even with the leaps and bounds in our social progress, there are still shortfalls to equality. As parents of five daughters, Sharon and I know well the barriers that women can face today. And now, we also have granddaughters for whom we want to build a better and more inclusive world.
During this centennial year of women's suffrage, we must persevere, as a nation, in our efforts to ensure that every Canadian has the same rights as the next.
Follow GGDavidJohnston and RideauHall on Facebook and Twitter.
SOURCE Governor General of Canada
For further information: Media information: Marie-Ève Létourneau, Rideau Hall Press Office, 613-998-0287, firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:a2ddef95-01bc-469a-9a58-6d06930faebb> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/message-from-the-governor-general-of-canada-on-the-occasion-of-the-centennial-of-womens-suffrage-566858641.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280292.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00342-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965123 | 253 | 3.140625 | 3 |
- grandMA3 User Manual
- grandMA3 Quick Start Guide
- 00 Welcome
- 01 New Show and Setup
- 02 First Patch
- 03 First View Setup
- 04 Control Simple Fixtures
- 05 3D Fixture Setup
- 06 Groups, Appearances, and Scribbles
- 07 Macros
- 08 Store Cues and Use Executors
- 09 Add Moving Lights
- 10 Presets
- 11 Phasers
- 12 Sequence with multiple cues
- 13 Network and How to Output DMX
- grandMA3 Quick Manual consoles
- grandMA3 Quick Manual processing units
- grandMA3 Quick Manual Nodes
- grandMA3 Quick Manual Nodes DIN-Rail
- grandMA3 Quick Manual onPC command wing XT
- grandMA3 Quick Manual onPC command wing
- grandMA3 Quick Manual onPC fader wing
- grandMA3 Quick Manual onPC rack-unit
- grandMA3 Quick Manual viz-key
- grandMA3 Quick Manual I/O Nodes
- Release Notes
Sequence with Multiple Cues
Now we are going to create a new sequence with multiple cues.
We are going to use the moving heads and some of the presets we created in chapter 10.
Because of the differences in our preset, your result will look different than mine. That is okay. It is meant as a demonstration and we are going to use the sequence to look at different functions with sequences.
Create the Sequence
We begin by getting some values into our programmer. Select group 7 (all the mythos) and turn them to 100%. Select a position preset and color preset.
This is our first cue in a new sequence, so let us store it: Press Store and then executor button 206.
Now we got a new sequence (number 5) and executor 206 is controlling the sequence.
Press Select Sequ 5 Please to select the sequence. This makes it easier when we are going to work with the sequence.
Have a look at the sequence sheet. Notice that the cue name gets the names from the presets.
Press the Go+ key in the master section to run the cue. The master section can be opened temporarily by pressing F7 on a keyboard or be created as a window.
Turn off the mythos (0%) and Press Store Cue 2 Time 3 Please. This stores cue 2 with a fade time of 3 seconds.
Clear the programmer.
Now you are back to cue 1. Press Go+ in the master area to run the second cue.
Select all the Auras. Turn them On, select a color and a position. Store this as cue 3 with a fade time of 4.
Give them a new position and adjust the color. Store this as cue 4 with a fade time of 3 seconds.
Clear the programmer and run the two cues in the sequence.
Select the X4 bars. Give them a dimmer value, a color, a position and adjust the zoom. Store this as cue 5 with a fade time of 2 seconds.
Clear the programmer and run cue 5.
Select the Mythos. Give them a new position, intensity, a new color, and add a gobo. Select the Auras and turn them Off. Store this as cue 6.
Run the cue and then clear the programmer. This allows you to go to the cue without any changes when we clear the programmer.
Now we are going to change the cue timing. Press Time 2 / 5 Please. This changed the current cues time. We could have specified a cue number and you can do this if you want to change a different cue than the current one. We also specified two different numbers separated by a forward slash. This means that the cue now has a fade time and an outfade time. The outfade time (5 seconds) will be used by the dimmer values going down in value (the Auras). All other attributes change their values using the normal fade time.
The final cue is going to be a blackout. Select the Mythos and the X4 Bars and give them 0% intensity. Store this as cue 7 with a fade time of 0.
This was the sequence. Try to run through it a couple of times.
Edit the Sequence
Let us make some changes to the sequence using the sequence sheet.
We would like cue 4 to automatically run shortly after cue 3 is done. This can be done by changing the trigger for cue 4. The default trigger is "Go" as we shortly saw in chapter 8. Edit the field for cue 4 and select Time and edit the time column and give it a value of 6 seconds. These settings mean that when we trigger cue 3 with a Go, then cue 3 runs with a fade time of 3 seconds, and a timed countdown of 6 seconds is also started for cue 4. So 6 seconds after we trigger cue 3, then cue 4 starts the fading. There are other ways to achieve the same result, but this is one way to do it.
With cue 6 we created a cue where the Mythos turn On and the Auras turn Off. We know this because we just did it. If we return to this show after some time has passed we might not remember that it is the Auras that uses the outfade time. So let us change this to a different solution that makes it more obvious what is happening. We are going to create a part cue with the Auras.
Select the Auras and give them 0%. Press Store Cue 6 Cue 2 Time 5 Please. This might give you a popup asking you to select a store mode. Make sure "Cue Only" is Off and then click Ok. This stores the Auras dimmer value to cue 6 part 2 with a cuefade of 5.
So now we can change the cue fade in cue 6 part 0 to 2. Click Cue 6 Time 2 Please. If we do not specify a part number then the software assumes we mean part 0. Separating the Auras in a part instead of just using the outfade time can seem like extra work. In the end, it is a matter of personal programming style. I wanted to show you two of the ways this look could be achieved. Personally, I like to separate attributes that have different timing in part cues.
Now we should name the part something that tells us what we put in the part. In fact, let us give all the cues a name. You can rename them by editing the name field for each cue and cur part.
Here are the names I use:
|4||0||- - Auto|
|6||2||- - Aura 0%|
We should also name the sequence. Click in the command line input and type Label Sequence 5 "My Show" and execute the command. If you for some reason have a different sequence number, then please adjust the command to reflect the correct sequence number.
Another feature I would like to introduce is the appearance of the sequence and the cues.
We can give the sequence an appearance. This can be used to give it a distinguished look on the executors and in the sequence pool.
Let us start by creating the appearances we need.
Make an Appearance pool somewhere.
How you use appearance is all up to you. Maybe you do not like the way I do it and that is of course completely OK. But try to follow what I do and then you can always change it afterward.
We need to create 3 new appearances. Edit an empty pool object.
In the Background Color fader, set the "R" fader to 0%, the "G" and "B" faders to 100%, and the "Alpha" fader to 30% (it might want to be at 30.2%). Name this appearance "30% Cyan".
The next appearance is named "40% Red". The faders are "R" = 100%, "G" = 0%, "B" = 0%, and "Alpha" = 40%.
The final appearance is named "50% Green". The faders are "R" = 0%, "G" = 100%, "B" = 0%, and "Alpha" = 50%.
Those were the appearances we need. Now we need to have a Sequence Sheet and the Appearance pool visible.
We are going to assign appearances to cues. To be able to see these we need to make an adjustment to the Sequence Sheet Settings.
These are opened by clicking the MA logo in the upper left corner of the sheet. There is a setting in the "Display" tap called CuePart Appearance. Set this to "Num+Name" and close the settings again.
The easiest way to assign the appearances to cues (or technically the cue parts) is by using the Swipey menu in the Appearance pool - if you forgot about the Swipey, then please revisit chapter 6.
Use the assign option and assign the "30% Cyan" on cue 4 (part 0) and on cue 6 part 2. Assign the "40% Red" on cue 2 and cue 7.
The result should look something like this:
Marking the cues with colors can help you to quickly distinguish special cues from others. I like to mark "dangerous" cues like blackouts and cues that I do not need to worry about like the cues that run automatically.
Finally, let us give the sequence an appearance.
Click the Settings in the title bar of the sequence sheet. These are the settings for the actual sequence.
In the first column, there is a setting called "Appearance". Click this and select the "50% Green" appearance in the list.
This colors the sequence in the sequence pool and it also gives the executor the green color. This can make it fast to identify the sequence on the executors.
Below this setting, there is another setting called "Prefer Cue Appearance". Turning this On will give the executor and the sequence pool object the color from the active cue (part 0) if there is one. Otherwise, it will use the sequence appearance.
We can see what is actually stored in the cue by changing the sequence sheet into a tracking sheet.
Do this by turning On the Track Sheet in the title bar of the sequence sheet.
It then looks like this (I have scrolled the sheet horizontally):
Here we can see how an attribute changes through the cues. For instance, the dimmer value of fixture 201 is at 100% in cue 1 and then at 0% in cue 2. This then tracks to cue 6 where the value is back at 100% again.
There are some colors here that are a bit interesting for us. The cyan text color shows us that there is a new value. This value will use the Cue In Fade time. The green color is dimmer values going to a lower value and they will use the Cue Out Fade to change value. The Cue Out Fade is the same as the Cue In Fade unless you specify a different time. The magenta text color indicates tracking values. This means that the value is not stored in the cue, but it is the value that the sequence will output. Another text color that can be in the tracking sheet is white color. This indicates values that are stored in the cue at the same value as it would have if it was a tracking value. So in essence it does not need to be stored in the cue.
We can edit a value directly in the tracking sheet. Let us try this. We are going to make a change for only one cue, so the first thing we want to do is to turn On the Cue Only button in the title bar.
If the dimmer attributes are not listed next to each other (like the example above), then open the settings for the Sequence sheet and turn On "Feature Sort".
Now use the mouse to click and drag through all the cells for fixtures 101 to 107 in cue 5 so they are all marked with a blue frame. Next, you want to right-click (Edit) the selected cells. This opens the calculator.
We can select valid presets by clicking the Presets button around the middle of the calculator. For now, we just want to change the dimmer value to a different value click 5 0 Please (if they already were at 50%, then select a different new value).
Now it looks something like this:
If we did not do this as "Cue Only" then the new value would have been tracking through cue 6.
You might have noticed when running the cues that the fixtures faded to a new position and a new color together with the dimmer values. If we want the fixtures to already be at the next position and with the color ready, then you could store the color and position values in the previous cue, but we can also make the software do this for us. It is a function called MIB (Move In Black).
To use MIB we need to turn off the Track Sheet again (toggle the button in the title bar). Scroll the sheet horizontally until you see columns called something with MIB. You can see the MIB Mode is set to "<None>". Values inside <> are usually values set in a setting somewhere.
We can change this value in four of the cues. These are the cues where dimmer values go from 0% and to a value above 0% while other values also change. These cues can have attributes auto pre-positioned. Change the MIB Mode to "Early" for cue 3 by editing the cell in the sheet. We might want a different default than "None". Click Settings in the title bar of the Sequence Sheet. On the right side, there is a setting called MIBMode. Change this to "Late" and close the settings. Now you can see that cue still has the mode we specifically selected but all the other cues use a different default MIB mode.
The result on the output is that now we do not see fixtures move while they are On except cue 4 where we have stored a new position and color while the fixtures are On.
Again there are other ways to achieve the same look. This was one to solve this.
There are more details and things to know about tracking, but it is outside the scope of this quick start.
In this chapter, we created a sequence with multiple cues. We edited two cues both using the standard programmer and we looked at the tracking information and also edited the values in the tracking sheet.
We had a short look at MIB. There are many settings related to this, and it can be quite complex when you add Phaser steps into the mix. If you want to you can read about it in the Move In Black topic.
The next and final chapter explores how we can output DMX from the system. | <urn:uuid:133b4d51-86e5-4ddc-ac04-5573a993df41> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://help2.malighting.com/Page/grandMA3/qsg_multicue_sequence/en/1.7 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570793.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808092125-20220808122125-00674.warc.gz | en | 0.911637 | 3,126 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Using technology to make your life easier!
This is one of those simple tools that can make all the difference in the world in one’s browsing experience. In a single click Readability removes all the clutter from a web page and simply leaves you with the text formatted in a way that makes reading online very comfortable. Rather than trying to explain what Readability does consider the following:
The following is a screen capture of Tony Bates blog in its raw state. While it is not a busy as some blogs it does have some activity at the top and bottom.
After clicking on the Readability button in the browser, Tony’s blog is now completely uncluttered and easy to read.
The tool is so simple and easy to use that it doesn’t require any installation or usage instructions other than what are available on the Readability site.
The Internet Archive was founded to build an Internet library, with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format. Want to see what a website looked like 2, 3, 4 or more years ago–just use the Internet Archives WayBackMaching and type in the URL and see what it looked like.
Great source for a historical persepective on just how far the Internet has come.
In the Can You Diigo it? post Tyler offered a plethora of reason why one should use Diigo and also offered several educational uses for this excellent social bookmarking tool. I would like to further enhance Tyler’s post by pointing to 3 powerful Diigo tools that can be added directly to your browser that make it very simple to add and access Diigo bookmarks.
Post to Diigo is a button you add to your bookmarks toolbar by simply dragging and dropping. It allows you to bookmark the page you are on by simply clicking the button. Once you add the description, tags, privacy setting you just click the Add New Bookmark button and your bookmark is saved and Diigo then returns you to the page you were originally on.
Diigolet is very similar to the Post to Diigo Button in that it can be set-up by simple drag-and-drop – no download or installation needed, and it works for all major browsers. In addition to simple bookmarking it also allows you to highlight and add sticky-notes.
The Diigo Toolbar is a power tool that can enhance your online browsing and interaction experiences by providing a full sidebar listing of your bookmarks, URLs and friends. It also provides a full featured toolbar that gives you the ability to bookmark, highlight, send, read later and view recent and unread bookmarks as well as enabling advanced searching and filtering. Despite all the power and control the toolbar is very easy to install, configure and use
Post to Diigo, Digolet and the Diigo Toolbar are just the first 3 tools listed on the Diigo Tools page so we are really still just scratching the surface when it comes to using Diigo.
P.S. from Tyler
When I first started using Diigo these tools that Dwayne has mentioned were invaluable, but I always disliked how much room it took up in my taskbar. For many this may not be a problem but I have many other tools that I use in my task bar as well. I happened upon a solution (by accident) to this though, I discovered that right clicking on a page you wish to bookmark, text that you wish to highlight, or both at the same time would bring up a context sensitive menu allowing almost all of the functionality right at your fingertips without having to have the other tools in the toolbar (Diigo still needs to be installed as a plugin however). I find that this solution is faster and more convenient than using the Diigolet and Diigo button. Below I attached some screenshots of the context sensitive menus.
In a recent conversation with a colleague I was reminded just how troublesome it can be to cut and past content from a Word document into a Blog, Content Management System (CMS), an HTML page or any other type of document or system is unable to deal with Word’s excessive formatting. Since I do most of my work online or in the Cloud I seldom use Word but instead use text editors like TextEdit, Text Wrangler, BBEdit, PFEdit and many more. Because I do most of my writing in a text editor I am not faced with dealing with Word until I inevitably have to open Word documents that come from other people. If I have to use content from a Word document the text editors that I use all have the built in ability to strip out formatting and return the document to a basic text format.
The issue of pasting content from word into a CMS or Blog can also easily be dealt with if you have JCE or similar type web-based text editor installed in your CMS or Blog. JCE gives you the option of stripping out all formatting from Word or similar documents by giving you a special Text Paste key that does all the work. Instead of doing a direct paste into the edit screen you use the Text Past key and paste the content into the past window and JCE does the rest. If you want to save some of the formatting from Word JCE also allows you to paste using the Word Paste key which preserves paragraphs, ordered and unordered lists and other basic formatting. Be forewarned you still need to tweak the content to deal with some of the excessive spacing Word sticks into it’s’ formatting.
If you do not use a text editor as your primary writing tool and do not have JCE or similar editor installed in your Blog or CMS, then you need to use a special tool that will strip out Word’s formatting from your clipboard when you cut and paste. Perhaps one the best tools for stripping out Word formatting in Windows is PureText. This FREE program runs from the task bar and all that you have to do to remove the formatting from the text that you have in your cllpboard is click on the PT. You can also right click on the PT for more options. PureText can also be configured to run as a hotkey so spend a bit of time on the PureText site to find the best way to configure PureText to solve your Word formatting problems.
If you are using OSX then you will find Plain Clip 2.0 just as powerful and perhaps even easier to use than PureText–it too is FREE. Plain Clip runs as a “faceless” application which means that it has no user interface (windows, menus etc.) at all and when you doubleclick it. You know it is working by fact that all the formatting will be stripped out of the content from the clipboard. Its just that easy!
In the post Why Use I stated:
There are thousands of add-ons to choose from and with over 30 add-ons on my system. This is perhaps one the most important personal reason to use Firefox-you can make it do exactly what you want or need it to do.
I also indicated that I would be writing about extensions and plugins in future posts and this presents a problem. Do I write about all 30+ extensions and 12 plugins I use or do I just try to provide and overview of some of the best extension or the “ones I couldn’t live without”.
In this post I will identity Dwayne’s Top Ten Firefox extensions and provide a list of the ten extension that I load up first when I rebuild my system or experiment with a new OS or computer.
While only Diigo, Kwout, DownloadHelper, LinkBunch and PDF Download have direct instructional applications because they all help one to organize and present content from the web, all these above listed extensions contribute to making one more efficient. Furthermore, these extensions provide the easiest way to do things which ultimately saves time–which is, to an instructor, the most important commodity.
Image via CrunchBase
I am sure most of you have heard of online whiteboards and applications like Elluminate and Wimba. Twiddla is very similar to these types of applications but without all the bells and whistles. At its core it allows you to easily set up a common Twiddla session complete with audio and text chat. You have a suite of editing tools which include drawing, text bubbles, media import and the biggest reason to use Twiddla, web page importing. Drop any URL into the Twiddla online browser and voila you can mark up that page however you want. All this is done online with no downloads, no signups and a very easy invitation form to invite other attendees.
So how can you use Twiddla for Education:
That’s what I would do but I don’t have the opportunities that some of you have so let me know what you would use it for or what you use Elluminate for and share the love.
Because I continuously experiment with Netbooks, Unbuntu (Linux) virtualized installs of XP, Vista and other OS’s on my MacBook I have to often set up Firefox and add all my favorite extensions and plugins. Diigo (Tyler is writing about this extension) is always one of the first extension to be added followed immediately by Google Video Chat.
Since its release late 2008 I have used this lightweight one-to-one desktop videoconferencing system virtually daily. If you are fortunately enough to have a Mac, Netbook, or a newer PC laptop with a built in webcam and mic then this system just works. You run the plug-in install, restart Firefox, log onto your Gmail account, click on a contact to chat with and you can turn any chat session in to a video chat–assuming the person on the other end is set up as well.
To answer this question one just needs to look to list of advantages it has over all other available browsers which include:
If you have never used anything but IE than you really need to give Firefox a try. Once you have used it and customized it to do what you need or want, you will find it really can make your life a bit easier. | <urn:uuid:64cdfcf3-e69f-4bc9-8b3b-c80532a1b9fc> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://easierway.ca/category/browsers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280504.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00135-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935002 | 2,085 | 2.0625 | 2 |
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