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As a kid, I would watch McEnroe play Borg, then head out, wooden Dunlop Maxply in hand, and stand in front of a school wall volleying like Johnny Mac. The goal was to hit the ball as many times as possible without letting it hit the ground.
But McEnroe was not the prototype. Jean Borotra (“the Bounding Basque”) was the first truly world-famous serve-and-volleyer, one of France’s “Four Musketeers,” who dominated tennis in the late twenties and early thirties. Borotra started playing while serving in the French army and developed a style in which, according to tennis histor-ian Arthur Voss, “he sought [the net] at every opportunity.”
Borotra was followed by Pancho Gonzalez, who grew up playing on the concrete courts of South Central Los Angeles and was never embraced by the wasp tennis establishment. A loner with an explosive temper who only grew more effective when angry, Gonzalez played a serve-and-volley game so devastating that tournament organizers briefly changed the rules in order to prevent him from coming to the net immediately after serving.
Legendary Australian player Rod “the Rocket” Laver, though skilled from the backcourt, came in incessantly and won all four of the major singles titles (Wimbledon and the Australian, French, and US Opens) twice each, becoming the only double Grand Slammer in the history of the game. Laver’s style inspired the generation of great serve-and-volley players led by McEnroe, Edberg, and Boris Becker.
Starting in the midseventies, however, technological advances and the popularization of tennis set the stage for the demise of the serve-and-volley ethos.
The entire article is here:
For more on "Pancho" the man read this article.
Pancho Gonzalez: The Greatest Tennis Player of All Time | <urn:uuid:fb33a03d-90e7-4c6a-9142-c5b1810df4fb> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://wwwsavannahsworld.blogspot.com/2007/04/serve-and-volley-surprising-history.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281226.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00374-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954502 | 422 | 2.421875 | 2 |
In the first part of this guide to Marie Antoinette’s trial (the account of which you can read in full here) we looked at the course of events that took the royal family from being an essential, if awkward, part of a constitutional monarchy to being at first an obstacle to further change, then a magnet for popular hatred, then an irrelevance, and finally an enemy of the Revolution. Once you had entered the latter category, it was really only a matter of time before you were called for your appointment with Madame Guillotine.
By the time Marie Antoinette found herself in the prison of the Conciergerie in August 1793, she was without a doubt deep in the blackest period of her life. The king’s death had been a great blow to her – she seems to have entertained some hope that he might be reprieved, hopes that were only finally dashed when she heard the sound of drums and great cheer echoing round the streets, and she knew he was dead. From this point on she would be known as the Widow Capet, and she dressed accordingly in widow’s weeds. Her daughter was later to write
She no longer had any hope left in her heart or distinguished between life and death; sometimes she looked at us with a kind of compassion which was quite frightening.
Her physical health began to decline rapidly. By this time she was almost certainly suffering from tuberculosis, and the heavy bleeding that afflicted her may have been an early indicator of uterine cancer (as Antonia Fraser speculates). By this time most of the more legendary aspects of her personality had been stripped away – the airheaded gaiety, the extravagance, that often remarked upon glowing quality – leaving behind a cold, hard core of proud tenacity, a fierceness that had something in common with the popular depictions of her as a harpie, or a tigress. She never seems to have entirely abandoned hope, and her behaviour in the trial reveals some inward refusal to give even an inch of ground to her persecutors. Fraser argues that there were some grounds for hope. No queen in history had ever before been put on trial or executed, and there were precedents for royal women to be sent back to their native countries following the end of their marriages.
In Marie Antoinette’s case though, this seems highly unlikely to have ever been a real possibility, given her potency as a symbol of everything that the Revolution sought to expunge from the world, the strong belief in her active involvement in plots to destroy the Revolution (which would be a recurring theme in the trial) and her massive unpopularity with the increasingly vital sans-culottes. To his shame, even her nephew the Austrian Emperor showed little interest in the furtive negotiations which did take place over the possibility of exchanging the former queen for political prisoners. And it is known for certain that Marie Antoinette’s fate had been decided at a meeting of the Committee of Public Safety weeks before the trial began.
It’s crucial though to resist the tempatation to throw up your hands and bewail the trial as a travesty of justice, because it wasn’t. At least, no more than the other trials undertaken at the Revolutionary Tribunal. Indeed, the very ordinariness of Marie Antoinette’s trail was an important part of its symbolism. During the debate over the king’s death, Robespierre had said that she must be sent “before the courts, like all other persons charged with similar crimes”. Unlike her husband, her fate would not be debated before a full assembly of the nation’s elected representatives, and she would be given no opportunity to explain herself or reason with them. In short, there should be no indication that she mattered in any special way. This, for a former queen and daughter of Emperors, was punishment in itself.
In fact, my main tip before reading the trial is to turn your 21st century brain off, because it won’t help you here. I’m no expect on the vagaries of the French legal system, but there are a few things it’s important to remember about Marie Antoinette’s trial in the legal context of the time (these courtesy of an obscure book called The Trials of Five Queens by R. Storry Deans).
- French trials at the time (and to a lesser extent even now) were not litigious but inquisitional, meaning they didn’t consist of a prosecution formulating a charge against the accused which it was then required to prove. The trial was instead a more open-ended and general inquisition into the guilt and character of the accused.
- Almost nothing in Marie Antoinette’s trial would be admissible as evidence in an English court today, and much of it not even at that time. However, procedures like the secret interrogation before the trial (when the court was not in session and no jury present) were standard procedure in eighteenth century France.
- The distinction between thought and deed had not yet been firmly enshrined in law, so establishing that the accused had contemplated doing something, or even that they were the type of person who might contemplate it, was enough. Likewise, opinion, inference and hearsay were acceptable forms of evidence (and formed the bulk of Marie Antoinette’s trial, as concrete evidence is rarely provided).
One of the most difficult things about Marie Antoinette’s existence at this stage must have been the constant uncertainty. She was never given any forewarning of what was to happen to her, but was instead suddenly confronted with dramatic upheavals and forced to deal with them. In less than a year she had been imprisoned in the Tower, been separated from her husband and then her son, and finally moved to the Conciergerie – all suddenly, and completely against her will. Once at the Conciergerie she faced days of waiting, never knowing when her trial was to begin – or even, for certain, if she was to have a trial. Being reduced to a spectator in her own story, Marie Antoinette had started to default to an attitude of numb resignation. Then one night, two hours after she had gone to bed, she was woken roughly and summoned to another part of the prison. With no fanfare and without a second to prepare herself, Marie Antoinette’s trial, and the final fight of her life, had begun.
In the next part: The secret interrogation and the beginning of the trial. | <urn:uuid:3c787edb-93f8-4099-8fdd-ba51cab43cc9> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://cultureandstuff.com/2011/09/01/marie-antoinette-on-trial-your-cut-out-and-keep-guide-to-reading-the-trial-part-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560285289.45/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095125-00145-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984521 | 1,357 | 2.734375 | 3 |
If you are experiencing domestic abuse and need advice and support you can contact the Wales Live Fear Free Helpline.
If anyone is in immediate danger please call 999. If you cannot risk speaking to an operator, then press 55 to indicate you are unable to speak but need urgent help.
We provide a range of professional services to support services providers and policymakers in the field of Violence Against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (VAWDASV). This includes training, workshops and key speakers (some aspects of this are currently on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic). We can also provide our expertise on panels and decision-making bodies and groups that influence policy development.
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You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. | <urn:uuid:bb589ba1-85ac-4027-8632-cba82668112e> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.seedswales.org/contact/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572286.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20220816090541-20220816120541-00275.warc.gz | en | 0.950846 | 251 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Aquatic subtype is a creature that is adapted to life under the sea.
“Reefclaws are literally walking, talking, stalking sea coral that have a taste for flesh. They...Reefclaw
“Skum (Creature) Type Monstrous humanoid (aquatic) CR 2 Environment Temperate or cold aquatic or...Skum
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“Merfolk (or mermaids as the females of the species are sometimes called) are aquatic inhabitants...Merfolk
Pages in category "Aquatic subtype creatures"
The following 42 pages are in this category, out of 42 total. | <urn:uuid:3244c2e1-e1e2-4fb6-b581-361197961545> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://pathfinder.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Aquatic_subtype_creatures | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280504.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00146-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.882509 | 155 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Nick Gulliford works with Affinities which helps people learn more about themselves and their relationships through research-based psychometric inventories and interactive learning. He stresses the importance of healthy marriages and relationships and proposes some reforms to the process of registering births and marriages.
Two recent Acts of Parliament applicable in England and Wales – the Statistics and Registration Service Act and the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act – and a report from the Audit Commission, “Hearts and minds: commissioning from the voluntary sector” have – to some small extent - brought into sharper focus issues concerning family life that successive governments have tried to sweep under the carpet.
These challenges, including whether staff in Register Offices should be signposting couples to marriage preparation and relationship education services, and whether local authorities should be publishing local policies to promote domestic and social cohesion, hover on the edge of the political agenda. Most political angels fear to tread there.
Labour politicians deny there is a breakdown in society; Conservatives make speeches, but omit any reference to divorce or relationship breakdown as a cause of it in their local government election manifestos. However, David Cameron has recently brought the issue into sharper focus. He said:
"Now I know there are some who think politics should stay out of issues like relationships... I think politics has been way behind the public on this. People are talking about family, marriage, parenting, relationships - about how to bring up kids - like never before... In 1996, President Clinton introduced funding for projects that "encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families." And President Bush continued, setting up the 'Healthy Marriage Initiative', which funds 'marriage education services' nationwide. For too long, politicians here have been afraid of getting into this territory, for fear of looking old-fashioned or preachy.”
Should we be surprised at this reluctance to engage realistically with difficult family issues? Not really; they have been with us since Cain killed his brother Abel. Why does the current situation require an exceptionally creative response? Quite simply, it is not sustainable. | <urn:uuid:79e0a148-aa6b-4896-9d89-7bb6ea89d8a1> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://conservativehome.blogs.com/platform/nick_gulliford/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719136.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00467-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955383 | 420 | 2 | 2 |
Tilsley, A. (2013) iPadU Inside Higher Education, January 15
This is a report about Lynn University, a private nonprofit university based in Boca Raton, Florida, moving its core curriculum to the iPad. The significant point is that the university’s unique core curriculum is delivered through ‘challenged-based learning‘, a method developed by Apple ‘that focuses on using technology to apply course content to real-world problems‘, through the use of iPads.
In a pilot earlier this year students in a section using the iPads learned more than students who received the same curriculum content in more traditional methods – and were happier.
In fall 2013, all incoming students will be required to purchase an iPad mini, which will come loaded with the student’s summer reading and core curriculum texts, created by Lynn faculty. The iPad mini, at $495, will cost half as much as students were paying for print versions of their course readers, and they will get to keep the device.The iPad will be used across all classes.
All faculty have been given iPads and are receiving training on how to use them for teaching within the core curriculum. About 50% of the content will be common to courses, with faculty adding the remaining 50% themselves. Although there is a common framework for applications, faculty have considerable freedom to adapt their teaching as they (and the students) become more experienced in using the iPad.
The university had to spend approximately $1 million in upgrading its network and software (somewhat helped by the media requirements for the televised Presidential debate between Obama and Romney that was hosted at the university in October 2012.)
Other universities that have launched iPad initiatives include:
- Seton Hill University
- Dartmouth College School of Medicine
- Ohio State University (biology)
- University of Oklahoma (teacher education)
- University of Western Sydney, Australia
The article contains more details and comments on the plan and is well worth reading in full.
Although over 125 universities are using materials from I Tunes U, the significant point here is that this is a purpose-built application aimed at exploiting the educational advantages or ‘affordances’ of the technology.
The second significant point is that the university is allowing a fair degree of flexibility for faculty to experiment and adapt as their experience with the technology grows.
The third significant point is that all faculty are receiving extensive training in how to use the technology in advance of the launch of the program.
Although I have some concerns about tying teaching to a single technology supplier and tool, Lynn University is to be applauded for taking such a bold step. I hope it succeeds and that it is carefully evaluated to identify the conditions that will enable the innovation to be migrated successfully to other learning contexts. | <urn:uuid:a6958de8-1105-45c2-aaa7-cffd1fca3831> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.tonybates.ca/2013/01/15/exploiting-the-affordances-of-the-ipad-at-lynn-university/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570868.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808152744-20220808182744-00066.warc.gz | en | 0.969603 | 569 | 2.5625 | 3 |
The canyons cleave the deep, soft volcanic basalt until they touch bedrock. The sources of Collins Creek—called Lolo Creek since the 1860s—spring up in the mountains east of Weippe Prairie at about 5,500 feet above Mean Sea Level. The edge of the prairie at photo center is at 3,200 feet MSL; its mouth in the canyon of the Clearwater River, approximately 45 miles from its sources, is at 1,047 feet MSL. With a pause on the prairie to water the rich camas meadows, it tumbles an average ten feet per mile.
He had gotten off to a bad start. At River Dubois camp in the winter of 1804 he built an image of himself as a thief, a liar, and a drunk. He was indifferent to rules; he had little respect for authority. He was, in contemporary terms, a dodger. Captain Clark summed him up in another, equally disparaging term, blackguard (pronounced blag-gerd)—in Webster's earliest definition (1806), "a person of foul scurrilous language." Besides all that, he was a slow learner. He earned 50 lashes before the Corps got away from St. Charles in late May, and his back could scarcely have healed before, at the end of June, he was sentenced to another 100 lashes for stealing whiskey and drinking on sentry duty. His name was Private John Collins. He had a lot to live down.
Yet the captains, or at least Clark, apparently saw something in him that was worth saving. On July 8, when he was no doubt still nursing a very sore back, they tested his mettle by assigning him duty as the Superintendant of Provisions for his squad, to be "immediately responsible to the commanding Officers for a judicious consumption" of daily provisions. He was also to cook for both of his squad's messes. Like the other two superintendants, John Thompson and William Werner, he was exempted from pitching tents, collecting firewood, building scaffolds for drying meat. He was also excused from guard duty. The catch was, he was responsible for persuading other men in his squad to stand his tour for each of those duties. His buddies had showed him in two courts-martial that they had little sympathy for him, so it was imperative for him to cultivate a new image for himself. In mid-October Clark appointed him as a member of the court-martial of Private John Newman, who was charged with and convicted of insubordination and mutinous conduct, was flogged, and "discarded from the perminent party engaged for North Western discovery." Collins may have played his role in Newman's trial with mixed feelings, but he must have learned his lesson well.
Greer Grade connects Weippe Prairie with the Clearwater Canyon 12 miles upriver from Orofino. Beyond the rim of the canyon on the southwest side is Camas Prairie, which the Corps saw from Sherman Peak on September 19. The Corps of Discovery did not set foot on it until they returned in May of 1806.
Otherwise, John Collins apparently kept a low profile. While among the Shoshones in late August of 1805, Clark sent him on a short errand in the company of an Indian, which suggests Collins had at least gained some proficiency in Indian sign language. Otherwise, his name seldom came up in the journals any more, except as a hunter. By the middle of June he was comfortable enough with himself as well as his commanders and the rest of the Corps that he could indulge an off-beat but good-natured impulse. He presented Lewis and Clark with "Some verry good beer made of the Pa-shi-co-quar-mash bread" which "by being frequently wet molded & Sowered &c." It seems that by the end of the expedition he had at least neutralized his place in its history; Lewis had no remarks to make about him in the personnel report he submitted Secretary of War Henry Dearborn.1
Collins must have been one of the six hunters Clark selected to accompany him on September 18, 1805, to "hurry on to the leavel country a head and there hunt and provide some provision" for the rest of the hungry crew. By the time they reached Weippe Prairie, Collins's rehabilitation may have been complete in Clark's mind, and the naming of a significant watercourse such as this one for John may have been a suitable token of his respect for the blackguard's admirable recovery.
Lolo Creek at the Clearwater River
Within less than two decades after the close of the expedition, traveling artists began rendering their impressions of various attractions along Lewis and Clark's route. The first writer to trace the entire route of the Lewis and Clark Expedition from St. Louis to the mouth of the Columbia and back was Olin D. Wheeler, whose book, The Trail of Lewis and Clark (1904) contained 196 illustrations, more than two-thirds of which were recent photographs of places, persons, and artifacts relating to the expedition. Wheeler was a public relations specialist for the Northern Pacific Railroad, which had finished laying track through the Northwest in 1882. One of his purposes in writing the book was "to show . . . the agency of the locomotive and the steamboat in developing the vast region that Lewis and Clark made known to us."
The Union Pacific Short Line was completed in the late 1890s to connect Lewiston, on the Snake River, with Kooskia, 75 miles up the Clearwater. In the photo, a passenger train has just crossed Lolo Creek at its confluence with the Clearwater, and is about to pass through a cut in the mountainside, en route to Lewiston.
1. Donald Jackson, ed., Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents, 1783-1854 (2nd ed., 2 vols, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 366, 370n.
Funded in part by a grant from the Idaho Governor's Lewis and Clark Trail Committee | <urn:uuid:906ed4bb-755d-474e-9d87-44799986a653> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.lewis-clark.org/article/2170?ArticleID=2170 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280763.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00519-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983779 | 1,257 | 2.421875 | 2 |
Friday, July 27, 2012
The Clown King Could Be in Trouble; Let's Hope So.
The tiny, impoverished country is led by an unelected absolute monarch and is plagued by corruption and ethnic tensions.
By Mehdi Hasan
"It has a population of less than seven million, few natural resources of its own, and tends to rely on aid from its rich neighbours and its friends in the West in order to survive.
But a combination of geography and history has resulted in the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan playing a critical role in the politics of the Middle East and, especially, the Israel-Palestine conflict....
I travelled to Jordan to try to find out what the future holds for a country led by an unelected and absolute monarch, plagued by corruption and economic stagnation, and divided between ethnic Jordanians - the "East Bankers" - and the marginalised Palestinians - the "West Bankers" - who now make up a majority of the population.....
Lest we forget, however, tiny, impoverished Jordan is a key strategic ally of the US and one of only two Arab nations (the other being Egypt) to have signed a peace treaty with the state of Israel. If the Arab Spring were to spread to the Hashemite kingdom and the ruling family fell, after almost a century in power, it would have a massive, almost unquantifiable impact on the wider region and on the Muslim world as a whole.
The key question is: Do Jordanians want reform or revolution?" | <urn:uuid:a3f12bc0-fb15-4736-acda-f820ac555704> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://palestinianpundit.blogspot.com/2012/07/do-jordanians-want-reform-or-revolution.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988721555.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183841-00179-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959045 | 307 | 1.84375 | 2 |
It's generally safe for pregnant women to take antacids such as TUMS to treat acid reflux, commonly referred to as heartburn, according to WebMD. However, there may be more effective treatments, including liquid antacids and lifestyle changes, that can reduce symptoms.Continue Reading
WebMD urges pregnant women to consult with their doctor before taking antacids. Heartburn sufferers should also eat less spicy food and avoid reclining immediately after eating.
The TUMS's manufacturer advises pregnant women not to take the product and iron supplements at the same time during the day. The company also urges pregnant women to work with their doctor to find the most effective way to treat heartburn and to consider lifestyle changes as a first step before opting for medication.Learn more about Pregnancy | <urn:uuid:d7079f60-31e9-4979-9728-fef2c064e38b> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.reference.com/health/can-tums-pregnant-2289ae69d551f616 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281069.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00272-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967684 | 161 | 2.15625 | 2 |
In 2006 the Young People's Assembly for Peace and Integral Development was created to help young people build constructive relationships instead of resorting to armed conflict to resolve their differences. Its 45 members have a goal of creating a better future for humanity and protecting the environment and its biodiversity. They are seeking international partnerships of like-minded young people. As a group of Protestants, Roman Catholics, Muslims, Brahmans and Jehovah’s Witnesses, they are happy to be spokespeople for URI in DR Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.
"Our purpose is to promote the spirit of leadership to young people early on in their lives, and create a culture of peace, unity and harmony between young people of different communities."
Christianity, Islam, Hinduism
Jehovah's Witness, Roman Catholic, Protestant
Number of Members
LocationUvira, Sud-Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Joined URI Network | <urn:uuid:e0b6bad7-0b2a-4f34-8f93-6d9b9a3c307c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.uri.org/who-we-are/cooperation-circle/assemblee-des-jeunes-pour-la-paix-et-le-developpement-integral | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572063.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814173832-20220814203832-00677.warc.gz | en | 0.924707 | 212 | 1.71875 | 2 |
| < June >
|Normal Max/ High Temperature
|Min/ Low Temperature
|Average Daylight per day
|Sun altitude at solar noon on the 21st day.
- The average temperature in Bishop, Ca in June is really warm at 21.6 °C (70.88 °F).
- Afternoons can be very, very hot with average high temperatures reaching 32.5 °C (90.5 °F).
- Overnight temperatures are generally quite mild with an average low of 10.7 °C (51.3 °F).
- The average diurnal temperature variation/ range in June is 21.8 °C (39.2 °F).
- The weather in June is arid. An airy 4.6mm (0.2in) of liquid precipitates.
- The shortest day is 14:33 long and the longest day is 14:44 long with an average length of 14:41.
Check the distance to and compare the Bishop, Ca June averages with somewhere beginning with:
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Weather Trend Graph for June in Bishop, Ca, Usa
Navigate to June Weather in Locations Surrounding Bishop, Ca:
- Reno, Nevada, Usa - 267.4 kms (166.2 miles) NNW
- Sacramento, California, Usa - 303 kms (188.3 miles) WNW
- Vacaville, Ca, Usa - 336.4 kms (209 miles) WNW
- Berkeley, Ca, Usa - 327.4 kms (203.4 miles) WNW
- Stockton, Ca, Usa - 260.7 kms (162 miles) WNW
- Fresno, California, Usa - 137.1 kms (85.2 miles) WSW
- Bakersfield, Ca, Usa - 223.5 kms (138.9 miles) SSW
- Santa Maria, Ca, Usa - 332 kms (206.3 miles) SW | <urn:uuid:281277f3-4778-4e98-bc02-baf27e510565> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.bishop.climatemps.com/june.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280718.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00404-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.816375 | 471 | 1.867188 | 2 |
As always in a general election, there is a swirling mass of issues to be considered by voters. While Brexit is very present in the public and political debate, it is not the only topic of discussion, with much talk about the economy, the environment and social matters.
While all these issues are highly salient in the election campaign, some new data gathered during the election campaign suggests that issues related to Brexit are far more polarising than other issues, including the economic issues that underpin the left-right divide.
The discussion below comes from analysis of data generated from a Voting Advice Application (VAA) called WhoGetsMyVoteUK.
WhoGetsMyVoteUK presents its users with a battery of thirty salient policy issues. Users respond using five categories from “completely agree” to “completely disagree”.
By comparing their responses to party positions, the VAA matches each user to the political party with which they are closest in terms of policy.
The main benefit of the VAA for researchers is that it generates “big data” on its users’ political views. It also asks its users their age, level of education, how they intend to vote on 12 December and how they voted in the 2016 EU referendum.
Between 25 November and 3 December, around 28,000 users accessed WhoGetsMyVoteUK. Given that it is a self-administered questionnaire, the sample of users is not representative of the voting population at large.
I therefore extracted from it a subsample of 3,000 that is broadly representative of the voting population in terms of age, education, vote intention and previous vote in the 2016 referendum.
Within that group I explored the extent to which those voters who express an intention to vote for one of the main three nationwide parties, the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats, agree with a number of issues on Brexit and on the economy.
Of the 3,000 users, 2,216 expressed a clear vote intention, while the others were undecided or preferred not to say how they would vote.
Figure 1 shows the positions of prospective party voters on four issues relating to Brexit.
All four issues polarise the parties with Labour and Liberal Democrat voters standing on the “remain” side of the divide, and Conservative supporters on the “leave” side.
For all four issues the most popular categories for both Labour and Liberal Democrat supporters were the more extreme “completely agree/disagree” positions, indicating the strength of feeling around these issues.
In contrast, party supporters were less polarised and mostly held more nuanced positions on those economic items that are normally seen as fundamental to the left-right divide in politics (see Figure 2).
For three issues – on forcing large companies to give company shares to their workers, on redistribution and on the renationalisation of the railways – Labour and Conservative supporters stand on the opposite side of the fence, but the most popular positions for both parties’ supporters were the less extreme “agree” and “disagree” option.
Liberal Democrat supporters were on the same side of the fence as Labour on the last two issues, but their most popular option for the first issue (on forcing large companies to give company shares to workers) was “neither agree nor disagree”.
For the fourth issue, on zero-hours contracts, the lion’s share of supporters of all three parties favoured banning zero-hours contracts, although Conservative supporters somewhat less enthusiastically so.
The issue of Brexit therefore forms a far clearer dividing line between party supporters than issues relating to the economy and economic justice.
It is interesting to note that on Brexit the supporters of the two opposition parties think very much alike, with Labour supporters almost as Europhile as Liberal Democrat supporters.
On this most critical issue, both parties seem to be fishing from the same pond. And herein lies the problem for both parties.
Society is deeply divided over Brexit, with more voters identifying far more strongly with the “leave” or “remain” camps than with any political party, according to the British Social Attitudes Survey.
On the “leave” side, the Conservative Party has managed to achieve a near monopoly of pro-Brexit votes because of the virtual disappearance of the Brexit Party.
On the “remain side”, however, while Labour has managed to squeeze Liberal Democrat support, most opinion polls still put the latter party at around 13% of the vote, leaving the “remain” vote split.
Given the first-past-the-post electoral system, this virtually guarantees the Tories a majority. The only way to avoid this is for Labour to draw far more on “leave” voters than Figure 1 suggests that they have done so far.
Of course, Labour’s attempt to reframe the debate in terms of economic justice and austerity, if successful, could be a way of doing this.
Effectively they need to make this election about “left” and “right” in the economic sense, rather than about “leave” and “remain”.
The ambivalence of many prospective Tory voters on these left-right issues is striking. A quarter support nationalisation of the railways, while 43% want to ban zero hours contracts – more, in fact, than support their preservation.
It is quite likely that these voters intend to vote Conservative only reluctantly, either because they want “Brexit done” or because of their misgivings about Jeremy Corbyn as a leader. Whether Labour can persuade them to change their minds remains to be seen.
By Dr Jonathan Wheatley, Senior Lecturer in Comparative Politics at Oxford Brookes University. | <urn:uuid:6baaf91a-faf8-4ea0-b1d1-d4ad58cedfb5> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://ukandeu.ac.uk/how-can-labour-turn-the-debate-away-from-brexit/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573540.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819005802-20220819035802-00467.warc.gz | en | 0.959141 | 1,184 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Coronary Arteries | coronary arteries2-1
The heart is surrounded by fibroserous sac, the pericardium. This is composed of two layers and anchors it to the surrounding structures
Coronary Arteries | Left Main Coronary Artery Right Coronary Artery Collateral Circulation
Heart Blood Flow Path | ... blood passes through the heart twice for the body to be supplied once
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Anatomy of heart and direction of blood flow
Blood flow of heart | blood flow physiology path of blood flow diastole systole Trace a drop of blood through the heart. After 21 years, I can still do it! | <urn:uuid:efaae5b2-5336-42f1-9b43-70707ac304e7> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://za.pinterest.com/explore/coronary-circulation/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279915.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00275-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.823864 | 167 | 3.03125 | 3 |
Architecture, Art and Collaborative Design
Architecture, Art and Collaborative Design is a traveling exhibition celebrating the ninetieth anniversary of the birth of Harry Seidler, the leading Australian architect of the twentieth century. The exhibition traces Austrian-born Seidler’s key role in bringing Bauhaus principles to Australia and identifies his distinctive place and hand within and beyond modernist design methodology. The fifteen featured projects—five houses and five towers in Sydney, and five major commissions beyond Sydney—focus on Seidler’s lifelong creative collaborations, a pursuit he directly inherited from Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, with progressive artistic visionaries: architects Marcel Breuer and Oscar Niemeyer, engineer Pier Luigi Nervi, photographer Max Dupain, and artists Josef Albers, Alexander Calder, Norman Carlberg, Sol LeWitt, Charles Perry, Frank Stella, and Lin Utzon.
The exhibition was developed by curator Vladimir Belogolovsky of Intercontinental Curatorial Project in New York with Penelope Seidler and Harry Seidler & Associates in Sydney and sponsored by Seidler Architectural Foundation. Seidler’s work is presented through architectural models, sculpture maquettes, photographs, films, correspondence, books, scrapbooks, periodicals, drawings, and original sketches—provided by the architect’s family, Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, The Josef & Anni Albers Foundation, The Marcel Breuer Digital Archive at Syracuse University, and the private archives of artists Norman Carlberg, Charles Perry, and Lin Utzon.
HarrySeidler: Lifework book by curator Vladimir Belogolovsky with additional texts by Chris Abel, Norman Foster, Kenneth Frampton, and Oscar Niemeyer will be designed by Massimo Vignelli and published by Rizzoli in March 2014.
Vladimir Belogolovsky: “I would draw attention to two reasons why Seidler is important and why he will always be important. First, it is his love for architecture, his position on following his convictions to which he was always true and a mission to make the world a better place where architecture is a big part of it. He was a real crusader and not just for his own work but for what he believed – whether voicing his support for Jørn Utzon’s Opera House in Sydney or protesting against unfitting addition to Marcel Breuer’s Whitney Museum in New York by Michael Graves. And second, I think is really important, particularly today when so many architects are entrenched with their ambitions compromised and scaled down. It is the importance of inspiration. Seidler’s vision was grand and he drew his inspiration from a multitude of sources – art, geometry, history, and so on. I would particularly stress the importance of art as an endless source of creative inspiration for architecture.”
New York-based INTERCONTINENTAL CURATORIAL PROJECT promotes the role of architecture as the vital part of contemporary culture and life. The Project collaborates with museums, universities, publishers, architects, and curators on organizing, curating, and designing exhibitions worldwide. The company’s founder curator Vladimir Belogolovsky is the American correspondent for the Russian architectural journal TATLIN and author of books Felix Novikov, Green House, and Soviet Modernism: 1955-1985. He has curated exhibitions for Russian Pavilion at the 11th Architecture Venice Biennale; architect Ángel Fernández Alba’s retrospective at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Madrid, Spain; the Green House exhibition at the Manezh Central Exhibition Hall at Moscow’s Zodchestvo-2009 International Architectural Festival, as well as traveling exhibitions Colombia: Transformed and Harry Seidler: Architecture, Art and Collaborative Design among others. He has presented leading Russian architects at the Center for Architecture in New York and has given lectures at universities and architectural centers in Australia, Austria, China, Estonia, Hong Kong, Latvia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Spain, Russia, and the United States. He is currently working on a book, Harry Seidler: Lifework (Rizzoli with Massimo Vignelli) to be released in 2014. | <urn:uuid:51e341fb-2faf-43b5-9bb2-25a81a71ac35> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.artslant.com/ew/events/show/269909-architecture-art-and-collaborative-design?tab=EVENT | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281419.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00488-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937048 | 877 | 1.90625 | 2 |
Made to Fit Double Knit Slippers
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With a few simple measurements and calculations, you will be able to make slippers for anyone, from your child’s baby doll to Great Grandpa! Not only that, but you will be able to use any weight yarn, the stitch of your choice, and different gauge knitting boards. You truly get to be the designer of these loom knitting patterns.
Make them big and bulky or lightweight. Design them with a stand up, bootie style, or moccasin cuff. Or, make them with no cuff at all. Stripes, novelty yarns, and different stitch patterns are all ways to make slippers that are unique. Let your imagination soar. These make great gifts, and are quick and easy. This may be the last slipper pattern you will ever need, thanks to Authentic Knitting Board. One of our loyal readers came up with this helpful guide to creating these slippers. View the Slipper Calculations Guide to gain some valuable assistance in knitting these cute slippers.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Read the “Help" section before getting started.
If you liked this simple knitting pattern, you'll love making
Grandma's Knitted Slippers!
- Double sided knitting board with the number of needles required to cast on
- Yarn of choice
- Notions-Yarn needle, crochet hook
Samples were made with the 28” Authentic Knitting Board with Lion Brand Chunky USA—Purple Slipper, KK Blue Long Loom with 2 strands of worsted weight yarn—Red/Blue Slipper, and Décor
Accents 12” Fine Gauge AJAL with Lion Brand Magic Stripes—Striped Slipper.
Skill Level: Beginner
Skills Required: Casting on, binding off, decreasing, xtitch pattern of choice
- The first step in making these slippers is to measure the size of the foot. Four measurements are needed (measure to the nearest ¼”): A. From the top of the ankle bone down under the heel to the top of the ankle bone on the other side. B. From the heel to the middle of the arch. C. The width of the foot at the widest part. You may want to add ½”-1” to this measurement for more ease. The amount of ease your slipper will have will vary with the stitch you choose. A stretchy stitch won’t need as much ease, while a firmer stitch will require more. The amount of ease required also depends on how snug or loose you like your slipper to fit. Adding no ease will make the slipper snug and close fitting. Experience will tell. D. From the heel to the toe. You may want to add ½”-1” to this measurement if you want “grow room.” Record these here: A._____ B._____ C._____ D._____. Make sure to measure carefully so that the slipper will turn out the right size. There is also a place to record these numbers on page 2, for ease in doing the calculations.
- Now you need to make a swatch with your chosen yarn, stitch, and knitting board. I recommend casting on at least 12 needles, more for smaller gauge boards, and knitting for about 3-4 inches. Keep track of how many rows you knit. You will need that number later. Remove the swatch by binding off with a crochet hook (see step #3 in the pattern). Now, measure the width of the knitted piece. Record this here:_____. Divide this number by the number of needles cast on. Record this number here: W._____. This tells you how much knitting you get per needle. Measure the length of the knitted piece. Record this here:_____. Divide this number by the number of rows knitted. Record this number here: L._____. This tells you how much knitting you get per row. Make sure to measure carefully so that the slipper will turn out the right size.
- Divide (A) by (W). Record this here:_____. Add 8 to this number. If you added some ease to (C), are using thin yarn or a fine gauge board, or you just want a taller cuff, you may want to add 10-12 to the first calculation in the place of the 8, to give you more cuff. If you want a stand up cuff, you can add 6 or less in the place of the 8. If you want a “footie” style slipper (no cuff), don’t add anything to the first number. Round to the nearest whole number. Record this here: E._____.
- Divide (B) by (L). Round to the nearest whole number. Record this here: F._____.
- Divide (C) by (W). Double this number. Record this number here:_____. Now, subtract this number from the total number of needles cast on (E). Round to an even number, if necessary. Record this number here:_____. Divide by 2. Record this here: G._____.
- Divide (D) by (L). Record this number here:_____. Subtract (F) from this number. Record this number here:_____. Subtract 3 from this number. Record this here: H._____.
A._____ B._____ C._____ D._____ (From page 1)
- Decimal equivalents for common fractions (to help with calculations): 1/8=0.125 1/4 =0.25 3/8=0.375 1/2 =0.5 5/8=0.625 3/4=0.75 7/8=0.875
Sample Slipper: For those, like me, who like to “see” what they are doing, here’s an example of using the calculations to make a slipper on a fine gauge board with worsted weight yarn. First I’ll list the measurements and then show the calculations step by step.
- Foot Measurement: A.—7.5”, B.—3”, C.—3”, D.—6.75”
- Swatch Measurements: W—4” / 16 needles = 0.25” L—2.5” / 13 rows = 0.2”
- 7.5(A) / 0.25(W) = 30 8 = 38 E.—38 (Cast on stitches)
- 3(B) / 0.2(L) = 15 F.—15 (Knit this many rows)
- 3(C) / 0.25(W) = 12 x 2 = 24, 38(E) – 24 = 14 / 2 = 7 G.—7 (Bind off this many stitches from each end.)
- 6.75(D) / 0.2(L) = 33.75, 33.75 – 15(F) = 18.75 – 3 = 15.75 (I’ll round this up to 16) H.—16
(Knit 16 rows)
- Cast on (E)____ stitches with your favorite method. Leave a long tail that will be used to sew up the back of the slipper later. Instructions for the Stockinette cast-on are at the end of the pattern.
- Knit (F)____ rows in stitch of choice.
- Bind off (G)____ stitches on EACH end of the board. To bind off on the end opposite the working yarn, simply slip a crochet hook into the first stitch on the front and back board, and pull the first loop through the second loop. Now, pick up the next front stitch and pull it through the loop on the hook, then the next back stitch. Continue until the required number of stitches are bound off. At this point, you’ll still have one loop on your crochet hook. Place this loop on the end needle on the back board. There will now be 2 loops on the end back needle. (See top picture.) Do the same to the other side with the working yarn, but pick up the back stitch first and then the front stitch (where the working yarn is attached). Also, it is very important to lay the working yarn across the stitches as you bind off. (See middle picture.) It will be buried inside and then be right where you want it when you are finished binding off.
- Knit (H)____rows. On the first row, knit 2 stitches over 1 on the two back needles that have 3 loops on them from binding off. After the first row is knitted, all the needles should have 1 loop on them. Continue knitting the remaining rows as usual.
- Decrease half of the stitches. Do this by lifting stitch 1 onto needle 2 then stitch 3 onto needle 4. Repeat for the whole board, both front and back. You will end up with every other needle being empty. If you have an odd number of stitches cast on, the last 2 needles will not have an empty needle between them. Wrap the row, skipping the empty needles (see bottom picture). If an odd number of stitches are cast on, you will wrap the last 2 needles consecutively. Knit the bottom 2 stitches over the top stitch. You should now have 1 stitch on every other needle. Shuffle all the stitches together so that there are no empty needles.
- Knit 1 row.
- Repeat step #5, except you don’t have to shuffle all the stitches together after decreasing.
- Remove slipper by cutting the working yarn, leaving a long tail. Thread the yarn tail onto a yarn needle and slip the stitches, starting with the far left back needle (the one opposite the working yarn), back and forth across the board (1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, 3A, 3B, etc.) onto the yarn needle. Remove from the board.
- Finish up by binding off the cast-on stitches (if the stockinette cast-on was used). Bind off is the same as done in step #3 of the pattern starting with the stitch on the end opposite the yarn tail. After binding off the last stitch, wrap the yarn tail around the hook and pull it through the loop. The piece will look like a capital T. Fold it in half from side to side. Sew up the back seam using the long tail left from casting on. When about 1”-1 ½” (more for larger sizes, less for smaller sizes) from the bottom, bring the bottom of the slipper down to meet the seam you are sewing (this will look like a capital T—see picture below right) and finish sewing closed. This gives the back heel a nice shape. Thread the yarn tail at the toe onto a yarn needle. Run the needle back through the toe stitches again and pull tight, then sew up the top of the slipper. You can sew just the top of the slipper and leave the cuff open to fold over moccasin style, or sew all the way up the cuff and then fold over for more of a “bootie” look, or sew all the way up the cuff and leave it standing up. Weave in all the loose ends. Turn right side out.
- Congratulations!! You’re done. Now make another slipper.
When referring to the front board, this is the board nearest you when it is lying flat. The back board is the board furthest from you when lying flat. When making your calculations, you will run into partial numbers. You can either round up or round down. A lot depends on how stretchy your stitch or yarn is, if you want to leave “grow room”, and how you like your slippers to fit. I usually round up so the slippers won’t end up too small. When calculating (W) and (L) round the number to the nearest hundredth (2 places to the right of the decimal). For example if (W)=0.34373, record 0.34. But if the number in the thousandth place is 5 or above then you would round up. So, 0.34573 would become 0.35. If you have measured correctly, your slippers should turn out the right size. If you are unsure, or just want to check your measurements, measure the knitted piece at the end of step #2 and step #5. It should be the same as (B)(after step #2) and almost (D)(after step #5). If it’s shorter, add a row or two. If it’s a little longer, you could just leave it, or you could pull back a row or two. Remember when measuring after step #5 that the piece will be a bit shorter than (D) because you still have 3 rows to knit. When in doubt, take the time to measure. You’ll be glad you did. After binding off from each end, you may have to adjust how you wrap your needles to keep your stitch pattern. For example, when using ribbing you may (not always) have to switch from (1A to 3B) to (2A to 4B) to keep in pattern. By observing the pattern in the knitting, you will be able to tell if you need to adjust your wrapping. If using stockinette stitch, this will not be a problem. When wrapping the last 3 rows, I usually switch to stockinette stitch, as it’s easier to wrap with the empty needles. For a nicer finish when sewing up the front and back seam of the fold down cuff, sew the cuff seam on the right side (outside) of the slipper. The stitches will be hidden when the cuff is folded. This applies only to the part of the seam that makes up the cuff. The rest of the top and back seam is sewn on the wrong side (inside). Any size yarn can be used, but chunky/bulky yarn will give you more thickness and last longer. Ribbing is a very nice stitch to make slippers in, as it is thick and comfortable. If you are using a larger gauge knitting board, it may be helpful to wrap the board 3 times, when casting on, and then lift the bottom loop over the top 2. Then wrap as normal, always lifting 1 over 2. This will give more thickness. Using two strands of worsted weight yarn, held together, will make a nice thick slipper and give you many color combinations. Baby booties can be made by using baby or sport weight yarn and a small or fine gauge knitting board set at ¼” spacing. For closer fitting, lightweight “footie” style slippers, sock yarn and a fine gauge knitting board work well. Crochet a chain and weave it through the cuff of the slipper and tie into a bow. Be creative!! Keep a record of your swatches. That way when you want to make a pair of slippers out of the same yarn, you’ll already have that part done.
Definitions and stitches:
Working yarn: The yarn attached to the skein.
Stockinette cast on and stitch: Place a slip knot on the back left needle of the board. (“Back” meaning the board furthest from you when lying flat.) Call this 1A. Bring yarn down from 1A to 2B. (This is the front of the board.) Wrap around 2B and go back up to 3A. Continue wrapping every other needle for the desired amount of stitches. Then take the yarn straight across to the needle directly across from the needle that was wrapped last, and wrap back to the beginning, covering all the needles that are empty. Lay a long piece of yarn (this is called the anchor yarn—see picture), about twice as long as the stitches, across the stitches and then wrap again. Every needle will now have 2 loops on it. Hook the loops over by lifting the bottom loop over the top loop and off the needle. Push the ends of the anchor yarn through the boards and tie loosely under the boards. You are now cast on. Continue wrapping in this pattern for the stockinette stitch. You only lay the anchor yarn on the cast on row.
If you love making slippers, check out our 17 Cozy Crochet and Knit Slipper Patterns!
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The event had direct links to the Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS) curriculum and students chosen were genuinely interested in their community, design or architecture and willing to meaningfully contribute to discussion and activities.
Thanks to Joshua, for the following report on what the students learned as a result of the excursion:
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Students learned that leadership involves a lot of sacrifices and thinking about others, but that it is a great privilege to be able to lead. A special mention needs to go to Lola B, who had the honour of thanking Josh Pyke following his talk…not many people can say that they’ve spoken on a stage as large as the Convention Centre in front of 5,000 people! Well done, Lola, and to all the attending students.
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Dean of Year 9 | <urn:uuid:4b957e23-6274-436d-98e7-6d1f2f3171a5> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.swan.wa.edu.au/articles/senior-school/year-9s-connect-and-learn-about-leadership/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570921.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809094531-20220809124531-00266.warc.gz | en | 0.974061 | 677 | 1.71875 | 2 |
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How can the NWGHA get away with such proposals? Unfortunately, precedent was recently established for these concessions at the port in Longview, Washington.
This had been the site of a long, bitter fight with the grain exporting multinationals grouped within the Export Grain Terminal (EGT) who claimed they were under no obligation to run the new terminal with ILWU members. For decades the ILWU has worked the West Coast docks. The EGT was attempting to break the ILWU's strength.
ILWU Local 21 put up an inspiring militant fight that attracted wide support from the Longview community and other unions and activist groups up and down the coast, including large numbers from the Occupy movement. Busloads of supporters were ready to demonstrate their solidarity and confront a Coast Guard escorted scab ship.
However, the ILWU leadership felt forced to distance themselves from these efforts out of fear of anti-labor laws that could come down heavily on the union in the event of such a confrontation. They were under tremendous pressure to come to a tentative agreement before the possibility of such an event, while the EGT was determined to strike a blow against the union.
Eventually, union recognition at the Longview port was won before the scab ship arrived. However, the contract broke from the Pacific Maritime Association agreement and some members have characterized it as the worst ever. Now the grain companies are trying to enforce the Longview concessions at other ports as well.
Unfair Stand Off
In the current battle a strike and an employer lock-out have been averted for now. Unfortunately, the Longshore workers are on the job under the NWGHA's "last, best, and final offer" that 94 percent of the union's membership voted down.
The employers have not responded to the ILWU's offers to continue to negotiate. At this point, the union leadership's strategy hinges on getting a favorable ruling from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). They will file unfair labor practice charges accusing the terminal owners of bargaining in bad faith and forcing new terms on them before contract talks reached an impasse.
There are great dangers with relying on this approach. Even with the most well prepared case, trying to resolve such Labor conflicts through the NLRB is always a crapshoot. For instance, the ILWU has recently been stung by a number of NLRB decisions that went against them. In addition, the wheels at the NLRB turn notoriously slowly, which is both difficult to bear and dangerous for workers forced to labor under a sub-standard contract.
Labor law and its government bureaucracy were set up to contain workers' struggles ultimately for the benefit of big business owners. While it is necessary for unionists to utilize it since this legal code does provide some limits on corporate abuse, they cannot depend on it. When this setup prevents workers from fighting to win, it is necessary to defy it however possible.
For instance, the NWGHA is currently paying for scabs to stand by and be prepared to take over operations permanently in the event of a strike. Under U.S. labor law this is legal. However, if mass pickets are organized to prevent the scabs from crossing the picket lines and getting to the work sites, the legal right of the employers to use scabs is moot. The courts will always try to limit the number of pickets with injunctions so that scabs can easily enter the work place.
But, such court injunctions are not worth the paper they are printed on if there is enough worker/community support to turn out and build picket lines that can't be crossed.
At the same time, it has been announced that there is a split in the NWGHA. Temco, a joint venture between agribusiness giants Cargill Inc. and CHS Inc., is continuing to employ Tacoma Longshore workers on terms of their last contract rather impose the voted down concessionary "last, best, and final offer." Separate negotiations appear ready to get under way. If it were not for the ILWU's ability to shut down the ports and the wide respect they have among working people in the Northwest, this would not have happened.
Challenging Anti-Worker Laws
An impending threat to a favorable resolution for the Longshore workers is the possibility of President Obama imposing a back-to-work order under the old contract in the case of a work stoppage. Such a measure would undercut the bargaining leverage of the union since the company's profits would continue to roll in, if the workers chose to obey it.
President Bush issued such an order in 2002 when the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) locked out ILWU Local 10 in San Francisco in a move that was intended to provoke federal interference. By bringing the membership back to work under these conditions, the PMA was free to use any anti-labor law in the books in an attempt to intimidate the union.
Such federal interference in labor disputes is allowed under the 1948 Taft-Harley Act, coined the "Slave Labor Act" by unionists at the time. This act outlawed many of the tactics the Congress of Industrial Organizations (a federation of industrial unions distinct from craft unions) successfully employed in the 1930s, such as solidarity or political strikes, secondary boycotts (industrial action by a union against a company on the grounds that it does business with another company engaged in a labor dispute), mass picketing and so on.
It also allowed states to pass "right to work laws" that outlawed closed union shops where all workers must join the union in order to maintain employment.
Taft-Hartley is only one of the most pernicious laws in a legal web meant to cripple workers' collective efforts to improve their lives so that corporations can suck more profits out of them. The strike victory of the ILWU in LA and Long Beach managed to avoid these traps and shut down the docks. The ILA on the East Coast is negotiating with the threat of Taft-Hartley dangling over their heads. The Northwest ILWU Locals are being hit repeatedly with anti-labor laws that are tightly binding their ability to fight for a fair deal.
These laws must be defied when they prevent Labor from winning. However, the ability to do so cannot be done consistently by the ILA and the ILWU alone. These unions will have to reach out to other unions as well as to the community for support, explaining that the fate of their struggle will impact all working people. When a union negotiates a bad contract, other employers point to it as a way to convince their own workers to expect less. Conversely, when workers negotiate a good contract, other workers are inspired by their success and try to emulate it.
By reaching out to all working people, the Longshore unions can begin to create a movement that, if sufficiently massive, will have the power to defy court injunctions without suffering any penalties. Power will be in their hands.
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Where is Elon?
Elon University is located in Elon, North Carolina, in the southeastern United States. It is adjacent to the city of Burlington, population 50,000, and is close to some of the largest cities in the state of North Carolina. The state capital, Raleigh, is about an hour's drive to the east of Elon. Visit Elon's Local Links page for more information.
As an international student, how do I get to Elon?
Elon is centrally located between Raleigh Durham International and Piedmont Triad International (Greensboro) airports. Both offer daily flights on major airlines. Transportation is provided during breaks and when students first arrive. The Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU) is located 50 minutes east of campus while the Piedmont Triad International Airport (PTI) is located 35 minutes west of campus.
For more information, please visit the About Elon University Web page.
How does Elon University compare to other U.S. colleges and universities?
Elon University constantly appears on various national rankings with the United States. Please visit the Rankings and Recognition page to find out more!
Does Elon University have any accredited programs?
Yes. Major accreditations at Elon University include AACSB – International for the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business, ACEJMC for the School of Communications, and NCATE for the teacher education program in the School of Education. For more on accreditations, please visit our Accreditation page.
What are the most popular majors at Elon?
Elon University offers more than 50 undergraduate majors. The most popular academic majors include: Business Administration, Communications, Education, Psychology, Biology, Political Science, History, and English. Visit our Majors and Special Programs page to find out more about all of our majors.
Does Elon offer credit for AP and IB exams?
Yes. Elon offers university credit for both. Typically, students should score a 4 or better on AP exams and a 5 or higher on IB higher-level exams to be considered for credit.
Does Elon have international student housing?
While all first- and second-year students are required to live on campus, Elon does not have one location where all international students live. It is best for both domestic and international students to live all around campus. International students may choose to live in the International Pavilion, which is home to both international and domestic students.
Is there an international student adviser at Elon?
Yes. The Isabella Cannon Center for International Studies serves the needs of international students on campus. The international student adviser coordinates international student orientation as well as activities for all students interested in learning about cultural diversity. To learn more, contact Mr. Francois Masuka, director of international student and faculty scholar services.
What is there to do around Elon University?
There are lots of things to do on any given day at Elon University! Take a look at Elon’s E-net. By looking under “Today’s Events” and “Student Center”, you can find any number of things to do on- or off-campus. You might be listening to a best-selling author speak, cheering on one of Elon’s Divison 1 sports teams, attending a musical theatre performance, or perhaps attending a “Discover North Carolina” event.
Who is an international applicant for Elon University?
Each college or university has its own definition for who an international applicant is. At Elon University, an international applicant is considered any of the following students:
• Any non-U.S. citizen who attends school within the country or outside the country.
• Any U.S. citizens who attend school outside of the United States
• Any U.S. permanent residents (green card holder)
• Any U.S. citizens who also hold citizenship in at least one other country.
Do I have to take the TOEFL and the SAT I for admission?
If English is your first language or if your primary language of instruction has been English for the past four years, only the SAT or ACT is required.
If English is not your first language and your primary language of instruction has not been English, the TOEFL exam is required. The SAT or ACT exam is also recommended for students to be considered for merit-based scholarships. Elon University also considers the IELTS exam as well.
Does Elon require the SAT subject exams?
SAT subject tests are not required for admission.
Are teacher recommendations required as part of the application?
No. Teacher recommendations are not required as part of the undergraduate application. However, if a student would like to submit teacher recommendations as part of their application, he or she is welcome to do so.
Does Elon offer financial aid for international students?
Elon offers Presidential Scholarships to all qualified students. These awards are made at the time of admission and range up to US$4500 per year. Elon's first financial aid priority is to keep the cost of a quality education low. The total cost for a year at Elon is 9 percent below the national average for private colleges and universities. International students are also eligible to apply for our Fellows Programs.
What additional costs should I be prepared for as an international student?
As part of the application process, non-U.S. citizens are required to document ability to pay US$35800 per year. This amount includes yearly estimates on books, spending money, transportation to and from your home country as well as medical insurance.
Please visit our other FAQ page for more information about Elon. | <urn:uuid:b9a8a07b-24ce-409b-8e3c-8f275211db82> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.elon.edu/e-web/admissions/International/faqint.xhtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280242.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00076-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945651 | 1,145 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Online games are the ideal method to obtain pleasure, psychological activation and fitness. An internet video game is actually a video online game that is frequently mostly or in part performed on the internet as well as other pc system. Games certainly are a large struck on earth of games and the explanation for here is the straightforward fact that they are available to every person around the globe free of charge. This makes it incredibly possible for young children to receive concerned. Also, there is certainly not a whole lot gear or specialized ability essential to perform an internet video game. The only real stuff needed can be a pc, a fast Internet connection and also a modem.
As a way to fully grasp games you first need to be aware of exactly what they are and just how they job. Fundamentally, games online are a type of personal computer-simulated conflict or armed forces combat. The object with the sport would be to get rid of or defend distinct spots through the use of complex weaponry and methods. Some types of online games give attention to historically appropriate battle situations whilst others require working with techniques and tools that will be much more superior.
Some of the most well-known games include things like Age of Conan, Ages of Combat and also the Slip of Rome. Age of Conan may be the very first on the internet video games site which has been successful since earlier 1990’s. It was produced by Blizzard Pleasure plus the identity from the online game basically signifies the ancient period when anyone have been incredibly serious about burying and discovering their deceased forefathers. The game is not going to pay attention to serious historical amounts but instead it concentrates on things such as technology, social rank and luck. If it effectively withstands the exams of your time then you might have a chance at getting to be the latest Queen.
Other widely used games online are the well-known MMORPG game titles such as Day of Conan and Magic formula of Solstise, for instance, you could build your personal fort in Age of Conan, and. These two MMORPG game titles are set in imagination styles. Players take on the position of personalities who amble across substantial charts hurting monsters and various other kinds of opponents. There are also quite a few part enjoying factors into the video game like accumulating your personal figure, getting together with other athletes and participating in quests. This game consists of walking around and contacting other gamers or going on quests as a team.
Yet another genre of games includes those that involve working with complex graphics. There are numerous online games including complicated artwork that they might be used in educational uses just like teaching or discovering technologies. Furthermore they enable lots of players together including just one gamer playing against one other and several participants all together performing one on one computer games throughout the similar virtual society. One particular enormously multiplayer on the internet activity enabling many people to try out simultaneously is age Empires.
Another kind of games online contains types that need loads of electronic abilities to participate. As an example, there are actually games such as the Era of Combat which needs a great deal of method and tactics. It is actually a incredibly intricate video gaming and quite a few laptop people find it really challenging to enjoy. Nevertheless, a passionate and sensible participant may easily rule other gamers and gain this online match within a short time.
Some online games are multiplayer activities and those are ones that really work with a laptop circle. There are many online games that demand that you get connected to other participants and on the list of well-known versions among them could be the FarmVille. In addition there are ones that expect you to get in touch with your computer network which involve types just like the Subsequent Everyday life. There are plenty of some others that allow lots of players to interact collectively pretty much.
Public Distancing: Another reason why games online attract lots of people is because of the fact which they allow for community distancing from real world. There are plenty of individuals that adore actively playing games simply because they can play using their buddies plus they can interact socially with some other gamers all at once. This offers them the excitement of actively playing a multiplayer activity using their associates while communicating with him or her as well as having a decent bonding knowledge. The other well-liked interpersonal distancing that individuals enjoy playing with online computer games incorporates dream, romance and quite a few a lot more. For that reason, just acquire the benefit of enjoying games and have the excitement as well as thrill of being a member of an online planet.
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Here's Your Sign
Why did Thomas Cusack paint his name on walls? And, why did he paint his name on one of our walls, far, far away from Cusack's home in Chicago, Illinois. Actually, Cusack didn't paint his name on the wall of a West Madison Street building. One of his legion of sign painters did. In the first two decades of the 20th Century, the Thomas Cusack Company was the leading outdoor advertising firm in the United States of America. And, today if you know where to look, you can find a remnant of the days long ago when billboards adorned the sides of buildings across the country and right here in Dublin, Georgia.
Thomas Cusack was born in County Clare, Ireland. At the age of three, Cusack immigrated to America, just in time for the Civil War. Orphaned at five years of age, Thomas learned how to paint. Determined to make a living at it, Cusack established his own sign painting business when he was only seventeen years old. A couple of years at St. Xavier's College would help him to learn the world of running a business of his own.
Cusack discovered early in his career that he could transform the bare, dead walls of buildings into colorful and enticing signs. And, he could make money, lots of money, too. As one of the couple of outdoor advertising pioneers, Cusack's influence in the city of Chicago rose.
In 1890, Mayor Hempstead Washburne appointed the billboard baron to a seat on the school board. Cusack, a fervent supporter of education for eight years - the last two as Vice-President of the Board, drew the attention of Illinois governor John. P. Altgeld, who named him as an aide-de-camp on his general staff. In 1898, Cusack was elected to his first and only term in the United States Congress from the 4th District of Illinois. Cusack remained active as a Democrat, attending several national conventions as a party delegate.
After only one term, Congressman Cusack decided to return to his outdoor advertising business, which had grown to more than a hundred offices with leases on more than one hundred thousand billboards around the country. His signs brought in more than twenty-three million dollars in gross annual income.
Thomas Cusack was known for his friendly relationships with his employees. He was most proud of the fact that in a city known for its labor union strikes, his workers never walked off the job. In his day as a sign painter himself, Thomas fondly remembered getting $8 a week in wages. When he sold his twenty-five-million dollar business to a New York banking syndicate in 1924, he was proud that he was paying his men, $10 to $15 a day.
At the pinnacle of his successes, Thomas Cusack bought the entire town of Cascade, Colorado at Ute Pass in the Rocky Mountains. The owners' threw in the 80-room Cascade Hotel, the 40-room Ramona Hotel, five cottages, a pavilion, a lake and his own personal waterfall. Cusack hired architects and contractors to transform his property into greatest mountain resort in the world by immediately adding a plush concrete hotel at a cost of more than one hundred thousand dollars. Cusack and his wife moved to their thousand-acre ranch to personally supervise the transformation. While he was in the West, Cusack planned to expand his operations to the West Coast and eventually to Europe.
Thomas Cusack died on November 19, 1926 at the age 0f 68. He is buried in Calvary Cemetery in Evanston, Illinois.
And now, the moment you have been waiting for. To find the Cusack Company sign, first find the old 1st National Bank skyscraper. Go west on Madison Street. When you get to Tim Knight's wildlife studio on the south side of the street, look on the west wall of the building. Sadly, the top tw0-thirds of a gorgeous crimson Coca-Cola sign has all but faded away. But, look closely at the lower right-hand corner of the brick billboard. And, there is where you see, still in its brilliant bold colors, "Thos. Cusack Co. Chicago " There's your sign! | <urn:uuid:9e25809c-8992-4680-8bc7-521659eba91a> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.courier-herald.com/bookmark/10165943/blog+entry-THOMAS+CUSACK | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560284411.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095124-00454-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98174 | 897 | 3.0625 | 3 |
Died on 796
Ya ʿqūb ibn Tāriq was the astronomer most closely connected with al–Fāzarīin introducing the Zīj al–Sindhind to Islamic scientists; he seems, in fact, to have collaborated personally with the Indian astronomer who came to Baghdad with an embassy from Sind in 771 or 773. The most important...
Born on 1203 Died on 1283
Abu Yahya Zakariya' ibn Muhammad al-Qazwini was an Arab or Persian physician, astronomer, geographer and proto-science fiction writer. He belonged to a family of jurists who had long before settled in Qazvin. He was a descendant of the Medina sahabi Anas bin Malik. | <urn:uuid:d01ae6ad-eb9e-4046-b109-6021d127dfc7> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.muslimheritage.com/chronology/scholars/q?title=&field_century_value=&page=4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281419.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00494-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947796 | 158 | 2.265625 | 2 |
We continue our re-publishing of previous posts chronicling the miraculous unfolding of events that took place at Lourdes in 1858. For an introduction to the series, see here. Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us!
Today, February 24, marks the anniversary of the eighth apparition of Our Blessed Mother to Saint Bernadette Soubirous at the grotto in Lourdes. Beginning on February 11, 1858, The Blessed Virgin appeared to Bernadette Soubirous a total of 18 times bringing a message of prayer, penance, poverty, and participation. Through these posts, we continue our journey with Saint Bernadette as we encounter Our Blessed Mother through her eyes, memories, and words. The previous seven visitations (February 11, 14, 18, 19, 20, 21, and 23) were prelude to what was to begin during the eighth blessed message of Mary. During these first days, despite being doubted by her family and friends, and despite being mercilessly tricked and questioned by the police, Bernadette held fast to her faith and never wavered form her story. She refused to discontinue her trips to the grotto at Massabielle, as she had made a promise to aquero. The Blessed Virgin made a promise to Bernadette, to make her happy in the next world.
Whereas the first seven apparitions were times filled with incredible joy for Bernadette, the eighth visitation of Our Lady of Lourdes marks a change in her experience. Her face, previously radiant with joy, becomes sorrowful and sad as Our Lady speaks with her and shares the crux of the message of Lourdes.
“Penance. Penance. Penance. Pray to God for sinners.” Bernadette would later report that Our Lady did not smile, but rather, appeared concerned. She wrote in her journal, “This merciful Queen looked sad when she told me to pray for sinners. She repeated the same words to me several times.”
“Kiss the ground as an act of penance for sinners.” To those observing, it was unclear what Bernadette was doing, and some took her actions as proof of a weak mind. The following day, during the ninth visitation of the Blessed Mother, her message, despite the strange behaviors of Bernadette, begins to take focus. We see, through the requests of Our Lady of Lourdes, the sufferings of her Son, Jesus Christ, and the redemption of mankind. The visions at Lourdes, through the messenger of the Blessed Virgin, communicate the Lord’s deep love and sacrifice for each of us, and place us at the center of the message of Lourdes.
Bernadette, you intensely desired the Eucharist.
You have done everything to finally receive communion in the Body of Christ.
You loved to adore the Blessed Sacrament.
You united your life living in the offering, that of Christ at the altar.
Like Mary, the Woman of the Eucharist,
Bernadette, inspire me the same hunger for the Eucharist, the food, presence, and sacrifice.
Lord, you have given us your Son, the living and eternal bread. Let the Eucharist transform my life to be a perpetual act of thanksgiving. Amen.
Year 2: Day 55 of 365
Prayer Intentions: Willingness to suffer and look foolish in the eyes of man; Penance for sinners
Requested Intentions: Healing, successful relationship (S); For successful marriage (A); For a husband’s freedom from addiction (C); Freedom from pain and illness for a friend (M); Financial freedom (J); Successful passing of occupational examination (S); Healing and conversion, sale of house (L); Occupational success for employee and colleagues (J); Employment for a son (C); Successful attainment of an important appointed position (J); Recovery from cancer for a friend (Z); For a family’s freedom from sin (M); For a daughter with Diabetes (A); Reconciliation of a marriage (D); Assistance with a legal matter, financial freedom (R); Healing for a friend (M); For a son in medical school (H); Financial assistance (M); Successful employment (N): Freedom from mental illness for a friend (L); For successful marriage (N); For friends having and recovering from surgery; for the reduction of a brain tumor (L); For resolution of a housing crisis (P); For a brother who is struggling financially, for a son who is struggling academically (B); For financial security for a friend (C); Success in business; familial happiness and health (J); Health and recovery of a sister (I); Healing of a father following stroke (S).
Why pray the Rosary every day for a year?
Each time the Blessed Virgin has appeared-- whether it be to Saint Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes; to Lucia, Jacinta, and Francisco at Fatima; or to Mariette Beco at Banneux-- she has asserted the importance, saving grace, and power of praying the Holy Rosary on a daily basis. Based upon her words, the Rosary is penance and conversion for sinners, a pathway to peace, an end to war, and a powerful act of faith in Jesus Christ. Pope Paul VI presented the Rosary as a powerful means to reach Christ "not merely with Mary but indeed, insofar as this is possible to us, in the same way as Mary, who is certainly the one who thought about Him more than anyone else has ever done."
To show us how this is done, perhaps no one has been more eloquent than the great Cardinal Newman, who wrote: "The great power of the Rosary consists in the fact that it translates the Creed into Prayer. Of course, the Creed is already in a certain sense a prayer and a great act of homage towards God, but the Rosary brings us to meditate again on the great truth of His life and death, and brings this truth close to our hearts. Even Christians, although they know God, usually fear rather than love Him. The strength of the Rosary lies in the particular manner in which it considers these mysteries, since all our thinking about Christ is intertwined with the thought of His Mother, in the relations between Mother and Son; the Holy Family is presented to us, the home in which God lived His infinite love."
As Mary said at Fatima, "Jesus wants to use you to make Me known and loved. He wishes to establish the devotion to My Immaculate Heart throughout the world. I promise salvation to whoever embraces it; these souls will be dear to God, like flowers put by Me to adorn his throne." | <urn:uuid:ad2ed4f7-4373-48d7-9c48-3a4e6d79f436> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://365rosaries.blogspot.com/2011/02/our-lady-of-lourdes-eighth-apparition.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279410.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00172-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952945 | 1,407 | 2.125 | 2 |
oxycodone for knee injury can it be given after 8 hours
I found this in the "Interactions Checker" Also, Tramodol is addicting and it is an opiate. So please double check with your doctor about this switch Good luck to you.
oxycodone ↔ tramadol
Applies to: OxyContin (oxycodone), oxycodone, Ultracet (acetaminophen/tramadol)
GENERALLY AVOID: Concomitant use of tramadol increases the seizure risk in patients taking other opioids. These agents are often individually epileptogenic and may have additive effects on seizure threshold during coadministration. CNS- and respiratory-depressant effects may also be additive. In patients who have been previously dependent on or chronically using opioids, tramadol can also reinitiate physical dependence or precipitate withdrawal symptoms.
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World War I Centennial: The Balkan Chess Game
The First World War was an unprecedented catastrophe that killed millions and set the continent of Europe on the path to further calamity two decades later. But it didn’t come out of nowhere. With the centennial of the outbreak of hostilities coming up in August, Erik Sass will be looking back at the lead-up to the war, when seemingly minor moments of friction accumulated until the situation was ready to explode. He'll be covering those events 100 years after they occurred. This is the 100th installment in the series.
January 24, 1914: The Balkan Chess Game
While most Europeans viewed the region as a cultural and economic backwater, the Balkans played an outsized role in continental diplomacy, as Europe’s Great Powers vied for favor by selling arms, bankrolling loans, and providing other forms of patronage to the Balkan kingdoms, all in the hopes of expanding their own influence and limiting rivals’. In the final months of peace the great Balkan chess game took a surprising turn as two big regional powers—Bulgaria and Romania—suddenly switched sides.
For decades, the basic alignment had remained unchanged. Bulgaria was historically a client state of Russia, which freed the Slavic Bulgarians from Ottoman rule in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878; that put Bulgaria on the side of the Triple Entente of Russia, France, and Britain. Meanwhile Romania leaned towards the Triple Alliance—Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy—because of a defensive agreement with Austria-Hungary, directed against Russia, signed in 1883 and renewed in 1892 and 1913.
The situation began to change following the First Balkan War, when the Balkan League (Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro) conquered most of the Ottoman Empire’s European territory—triggering serious alarm in Austria-Hungary, which feared Serbia’s destabilizing influence on its restive Slavic population. To cut Serbia down to size, Austria-Hungary’s foreign minister, Count Berchtold, forced the Serbs to give up their recent conquests in Albania, thus preventing them from gaining access to the sea.
This set in motion a chain reaction of unexpected consequences. Deprived of their Albanian conquests, the Serbs resolved to compensate themselves by holding on to neighboring Macedonia—even though this was supposed to go to Bulgaria under the terms of their secret treaty dividing up the Turkish provinces. The Bulgarians called on their Slavic patron, Russia, to mediate the dispute, but in typical fashion Russian foreign minister Sergei Sazonov ducked responsibility for any hard decisions.
Left in the lurch by Russia, Bulgaria’s Tsar Ferdinand foolishly attacked Serbia and Greece (which was also occupying territory claimed by Bulgaria) in the Second Balkan War. This was an unmitigated disaster: the Serbs and Greeks scored major victories and Romania and Turkey, seeing a chance to grab some Bulgarian territory for themselves, attacked from the rear (Romania’s intervention is depicted in the cartoon above). Meanwhile Russia did nothing to stop them. Surrounded and overwhelmed, the Bulgarians begged for peace—and plotted revenge.
Understandably embittered by Russia’s repeated refusals to come to their aid, the Bulgarians needed a new patron among the Great Powers—preferably one that hated its treacherous former friends, Serbia and Russia. Following the age-old rule, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” the natural choice was Austria-Hungary, backed by the powerful German Empire. The new alliance began to take shape in July 1913, when Tsar Ferdinand dismissed Bulgaria’s pro-Russian government and appointed a pro-Austrian liberal politician, Vasil Radoslavov, to form a new cabinet. Although this move came too late to help Bulgaria in the Second Balkan War, the Bulgarians counted on Austrian and German help in a future war of revenge against their shared enemies.
The dilemma facing Austria-Hungary’s Berchtold was how to balance this new Bulgarian alliance with Austria-Hungary’s existing alliance with Romania, which had fought against Bulgaria in the Second Balkan War. In the end this task proved impossible, and a concerted diplomatic push by the Triple Entente succeeded in luring Romania away.
The Romanians already had grievances against Austria-Hungary, including discrimination against ethnic Romanians in the Hungarian half of the Dual Monarchy; they also believed the Austrians hadn’t supported their claims against Bulgaria during the Second Balkan War. On the other hand Russia supported these claims, while France exerted its powerful financial influence, maneuvering to replace Germany as Romania’s chief lender. These efforts paid off on January 16, 1914, when a “Francophile” Romanian politician, Ion Bratianu, came to power (against the wishes of Romania’s pro-German King Carol). In January the French ambassador to Romania, Blondel, reported “there is a sincere desire of closer relations with France in Romania.”
Similarly the new Russian ambassador to Romania, Poklevski, summed up the new situation in a letter to Sazonov on January 24, 1914: “Again and again, sentiments of genuine friendship for Russia have been expressed to me… an important and perhaps decisive change in public opinion has been brought about here in favor of Russia.” He added that the Romanian nationalists were gaining strength and focusing their efforts on freeing the three million ethnic Romanians living in Hungary, noting, “This latter circumstance also naturally tends to enhance Rumania’s sympathy for Russia.”
In just a few months the Balkan strategic landscape had been totally up-ended, in a way unlikely to encourage long-term stability. As Austrian chief of staff Conrad von Hötzendorf pointed out, if Romania joined Russia, Serbia, and Montenegro in a war against Austria-Hungary, the Dual Monarchy would face an unbroken wall of enemies along its southern and eastern flanks, allowing the Russians to send soldiers all the way to the Adriatic. This made it even more important to crush Serbia and break through the Balkan encirclement before it was too late. | <urn:uuid:fb87b59c-e80a-4e2f-bb95-7cd337113606> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.mentalfloss.com/article/54736/world-war-i-centennial-balkan-chess-game | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719155.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00332-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955184 | 1,300 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Thoughts of failing can make it very hard on our life. We will find that sometimes this is all that we think about. Getting past the thoughts of failure and moving on to better and more exciting things is very important. We need to worry about what we are doing to keep the thoughts of […]
Have you ever held back on doing something because you were afraid of failure? Most people have! Let’s face it; no one likes to fail. None of us likes to feel like we’re ineffective, weak or lacking in any way, and that’s exactly how failure makes us feel. However, you may be surprised to know […]
Have you ever had a great business idea? Did you focus & plan out the business in your mind and then write it down on paper? Of course you did “Take Action”? Right? Well most of us have great ideas or talents that we can share with the rest of the world but never do. […]
Failure is something that can really be hard on a person and their outlook. There are some that may have a hard time dealing with the failure that is in their life. You need to consider the fact that failure is something that many people have to experience in their lifetime. Failure is something that […]
Here is some motivation for people who just feel like giving up.
Changing feelings of failure can take some work and time of course. Having the right attitude and working hard at it can make all the difference in the world. Keeping a positive attitude is the best way that you can remain happy and keep failure from destroying your life. Changing the way that you think […]
(This is a Premium Article. Get access to the Premium Content to read this Premium Article. Premium Content includes Premium Articles, published every alternate day, and access to the Books.) Learn how to have a healthy relationship with failure and embrace it with grace reading this Premium Article.
A lot of people find that their career is not as good as they think it is, and will suddenly get laid off or fired. It’s hard to recover from a job that you have been fired from, especially, if you felt that you were doing well at the company. There are so many reasons […]
There are different ways that people deal with their feelings of failure. It is hard to deal with all the pressures that we go through these days and it is sometimes a little frustrating too. There are all kinds of ways to take on the challenges of failure and the one thing that many need […]
Have you ever considered why you may be having trouble getting organized? Below are the top five reasons. | <urn:uuid:e85ca04f-e646-4e1f-9803-362dcaca0347> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://manhardeep.com/tag/failure/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570767.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808061828-20220808091828-00475.warc.gz | en | 0.98182 | 535 | 1.695313 | 2 |
SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (AP) -- A 19th century cemetery that occupies a mere 0.2 acres is a virtual secret to area residents. Now, the great-great-great-grandson of one of those buried at Beekman Cemetery wants to give it a higher profile. The only monument that remains today is for Samuel D. Beekman, who was born Sept. 9, 1795 and died Jan. 30, 1868. That marker was knocked over decades ago. Beekman bought 160 acres that include the cemetery in 1830. The other 40 or so tombstones have disappeared, possibly taken by trailer park residents. That means that Clark Risley, 61, does not know where his great-great-great-grandfather's grave lies. Risley, of Royal Oak, is asking the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to make a bronze marker for Michael Blumberg, a soldier in the War of 1812 who died Dec. 20, 1882. The Oakland County Genealogical Society published an account in 1989 about the fate of most of Beekman Cemetery's grave markers: "It is believed the tombstones were used as steps and blocks for some of the trailers." Southfield officials had assumed that Beekman's was the only grave at the site. In 1984, they tried to move his remains so that the land could be added to nearby Bedford Woods Park. But Samuel Beekman descendant Beatrice McCrumb went to court to block the move, the Detroit Free Press said Monday. County records show that in 1901, George Beekman paid $1 for a deed that gave him and his heirs title to the cemetery as long as it contained bodies. The last known burial at the cemetery happened in 1911, when Francis Beekman was buried there, according to a contemporary account in the Birmingham Eccentric. Southfield parks supervisor Bob Murray said he wants something more to mark Beekman Cemetery, perhaps a plaque explaining the graveyard's sad history. The trailer park where the tombstones may have disappeared is making way for condos, and Risley said he will hunt for gravestones at the site this spring. Meanwhile, Murray said he plans to use a metal probe to search for headstones and caskets. Archaeologist Charles Martinez of the Oakland County Pioneer and Historical Society in Pontiac said he doubts Murray will find anything, because 19th century burials used wooden caskets, and bodies were not embalmed. "There is not going to be much left," he said. | <urn:uuid:e5d3494d-8e16-441e-88ab-67e11dc434ec> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://articles.southbendtribune.com/2005-12-21/news/27003362_1_bronze-marker-grave-markers-century-cemetery | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280872.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00308-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977464 | 520 | 1.96875 | 2 |
There seems to be nothing wrong with multiculturalism, an ideology which advocates mutual co-existence of distinct cultural, ethnic or religious communities in a plural society.
In his article ' Multiculturalism - how can it be wrong?'(the Star, Aug 25) , Ng Kam Wong, research director at Kairos Research Centre, stressed the significance of 'multiculturalism as the best modus vivendi for developing a national identity that expresses unity in diversity and equality for all peoples regardless of their culture and religion.'
This is at least what the proponents of multiculturalism - both as a political ideology and state policy - want to impress upon the constituents of a plural society: that distinct cultural and religious communities should be allowed to co-exist; that their existence should be on equal status basis; that national identity should include and encompass cultures of different communities; and that the minority (usually immigrant) communities should not be assimilated into indigenous community in the name of national integration. Hence, the stress is on unity in diversity and equality for all.
But rendering multiculturalism as unproblematic is itself troubling. Often times, the need to preserve group's cultural and religious particularistic has to contend with national aspiration for a common national identity, which is considered as a condition precedent to national unity. At the same time, multiculturalists also need to grapple with indigenous communities' skepticism that multiculturalism is nothing more than allowing alien cultures to subvert indigenous culture. | <urn:uuid:cd62de44-0126-44b3-be93-0dcc8751e8ed> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.malaysiakini.com/opinionsfeatures/57090 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570741.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808001418-20220808031418-00069.warc.gz | en | 0.94347 | 292 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Every teacher has heard this joke:
What are three reasons why teachers teach?
Answer: June, July, and August
There is no doubt that summer is an important time for teachers—it’s a time to recharge, to reconnect with family, and to have some fun. But that doesn’t mean that teachers stop working. In fact, many teachers continue some form of work during the summer, whether it’s summer school, designing lessons for the upcoming school year, or spending time catching up on professional reading through book studies. In fact, according to The Brookings Institute, “teachers work 21.5 hours per week during the summer.” That’s heavy--especially considering that these hours are entirely off the clock. And yet, clearly, as educators, we love learning just as much or more as our students do--it can be hard to turn it off.
During the summer, I like to engage in some “light” reading on pedagogy—I enjoy having time to reflect and chew on the ideas for a while, having a buffer of time available before anything would need to be put into practice. Some years, I'll join or help form a book group; other years, I’ll find a few books on my own that complement and drive my work in the coming year.
And who better to find a great set of books to pull from than other educators? So, seeking some fresh titles on current topics, I decided to ask the experts: teachers.
I put this question out to my teacher-friends, near and far: Teacher-friends, what is the most helpful book you’ve read for your personal professional development?
And I received tons of input—thank you to everyone who suggested a title! (We are such an awesome community, aren’t we?) I’ve taken the expansive list, and curated a top ten, just for you. I’ve tried to include either a review, a video of the author, or something else related to each title for you to look at as you make your choice. If you decide to go for it with any of these titles (or a pile of them, if you’re like me—I just bought two of these books and I’m considering a third!), please consider buying from a local, independent bookseller. Yes, it may take a week or so for them to get it, but meanwhile you can go hang out in the shade with your beverage of choice and decompress—you deserve it!
Here’s the curated list, straight from educators, just like you, who are always striving to get better at their practice:
As educators, it’s important to recognize that we all have different needs at different times--and each one of us is on our own path towards pedagogical growth. I’ve got a small pile of books on my nightstand that I intend to spend some time with this summer, and many of them are related to teaching--because I love the art of teaching. However, if you need to turn it off for a while, you should! One teacher unabashedly recommended The Professional Bartender’s Handbook.
But consider this: what if you found a teacher-friend to read a book with and then also learned how to make a few impressive cocktails to share during your book chat meetings? Sounds like a win-win to me.
Teacher-friends, enjoy your summer--you deserve it! And I hope that you’ll take what you need this summer to be ready to head back into the classroom with gusto this coming fall.
Recently, I saw a teacher’s post on Facebook that she was leaving. Oh no, not another great one, I thought to myself. And that’s what prompted a new question that I posed to my teacher-friends:
Teacher-friends, if you are seriously considering leaving teaching at the end of this school year, will you send me a PM and tell me what factors led to your decision? And for everyone: What are some things that are making you stay at your job next year? What makes it worthwhile to you, to continue?
Seeing teachers choose to move on is nothing new. This year, it is predicted that there will be a large uptick in resignations, but that has not yet materialized. Nationwide, recent polling done by CBS News estimates a potential 25% of teachers leaving the profession at the end of this year. In California, an EdSource poll predicts one in 10 teachers in their state will choose to either retire early or find another profession, and in Colorado, the Denver Post estimates that as many as 40% of teachers statewide are seriously considering leaving teaching for good.
Clearly, the estimates vary widely. Still, what I know for sure is this: in the 19 years I’ve been an educator, I’ve seen many, many good people go: there was Tim*, a second or third year teacher who was starting a family and left in October for a job that paid much better; Susan, who had a handful of years in and the loving devotion of her students, but decided she’d rather have family time and a career with better life-work balance; and June, a veteran teacher with about two decades in who felt unappreciated and undervalued.
These are just a few of the departed, who took their valuable experience and skills with them.
Every year, teachers walk out the school doors and don’t return. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
While low pay is a lingering factor for many teachers who choose to leave, it’s not the number one concern. Debbie, a teacher who’s been at it for at least a decade has decided to leave this year. “Every year teachers have to fight for every dollar we are paid. I have knocked on doors, I have stood on street corners with signs asking for fair wages for educators, manageable class sizes, adequate professional development, reasonable hours, and a work/personal life balance… I have purchased thousands of dollars in books…and school supplies,” she says. But that’s not the reason she’s leaving.
Another veteran teacher, Jenny, agreed about low pay being an issue: “I think about leaving teaching all the time. To be honest the lack of pay is really THE thing that always pulls at me…” While pay may be the larger reason for her, being that she is a single mom and sole breadwinner for her kids, it is not the only big reason.
Both veteran teachers said the same thing: it comes down to a lack of respect and support.
Why Teachers Are LeavingThere is no question that teacher burnout has been accelerated this year, like gas on a fire, however, it would be remiss for the pandemic alone to be scapegoated for teachers’ exits this year. In fact, as one teacher says, “I think the pandemic is being over-emphasized when people talk about how many teachers are leaving right now…for me, the problems are mostly systemic and have been a part of teaching for a long time…that’s not it at all,” Julie says, about her decision to leave at the end of this school year. “It’s just a question of whether the pros outweigh the cons for each of us, and for me they no longer do.” Earlier in the school year, Julie started making a pros and cons list. When she shared it with me, in early April, the list was ample.
While every job in every career path has frustrations and downsides, when it comes to teaching, there were three major reasons for leaving that emerged, with one that far surpassed the other two. Teachers who are leaving this year cited lack of respect from leadership as the biggest reason why they are calling it quits. Wanda, a veteran teacher of over twenty years says, “I was harassed and micromanaged… Admin didn’t care about the lack of time. Do it all. It’s all got to be done. [It’s] a toxic environment.” Connie is another teacher who has had enough. She says, “My boss made some sweeping assumptions about me yesterday during our evaluation. Been doing this for 13 years and I’m over it.” Apparently, she had sent in her resignation letter just two minutes before she saw my question on Facebook. “It’s the adults,” says Jim, a 27-year veteran teacher. “I am leaving teaching, not because of the kids, but because of the adults (who have never been in the classroom or haven’t been…in a while). …I believe I am a master teacher and to have some administrator step in…and evaluate me and what I do with kids makes me angry…” And Laura has this message to share: “…we are humans that want to be compensated for the many hats we wear in our positions, want to be treated with dignity and respect and don’t have the ability to be everything for everyone at our own expense…”
Lack of respect, it seems, while not the only reason why educators leave, is a noxious weed in many schools, causing many to give up the yard and move on.
The second reason why teachers leave is closely related: a lack of support. One teacher, Abra, says, “…after five years in a small rural district I put in my resignation… I went into debt because my cost of living was so high and I put 100K miles on my car to commute to a community that didn’t respect me or my fellow teachers.” Sadly, her perception of the community’s lack of respect and support was echoed by someone in a position of power. “I overheard a board member say teachers should expect to have a second job…I had 4 w2s that year.” But that wasn’t the ultimate reason why she decided to pack it in, once this year ends. Her school apparently took the saying ‘Students First’ to the max: “The icing on the cake was when I came down with Covid that I contracted from the school. I was encouraged not to get tested so the football season could be saved…[others] were told to lie about it, too.” Abra is leaving teaching to go wait tables, something she says pays twice as much and is far less stressful, in her view.
Another teacher, Nancy, who is planning to leave next year so that she can get her retirement, has felt a glaring lack of support not from her building leadership, but from her community. She says, “I have been shocked and hurt by the number of people in our community who have openly expressed that they think teachers should sacrifice their health and life so that their kids could go to school full time…” She goes on to say that she understands the need for in-person school for essential workers’ children, but she found that it wasn’t essential workers who were getting nasty. “the loudest and meanest people were stay-at-home and work-from-home folks who wanted their kids to be “normal”… I can’t forget the names of the people who were so mean and dismissive of teachers’ lives.” Something teachers realized this year is that while they were initially applauded for their work and efforts at the start of the pandemic, that goodwill quickly evaporated, and in its place, entitlement and some demanding parents descended.
Other teachers, like Sarah, say that it’s not the parents who are the problem — the parents are fine. For her, she says the “lack of support” is felt more locally than that. She feels let down “Not by the parents, but by people [in my school] that never set foot in the classroom.”
The third primary reason why teachers are deciding to leave is the ever-growing demands in the face of highly limited time. One teacher, Dana, says, “I have sacrificed my health and so much time with my family, and I am at a life stage where these things have become essential. They are more important than working 80 hours a week and not being valued.” When I asked Dana if there was any way she might change her mind, she said no. She had consulted with her family, her friends, and even her doctor — and they all said it was time for her to stop. Another school employee, Billie, also left for health reasons, and the root cause was the same as Dana’s: “I resigned a few years ago due to a health/mental health crisis that was essentially caused by a totally unmanageable workload and a lack of support at more than one building/program.”
And the demands on teachers’ time isn’t only seen through negative effects on their health — it takes a toll on an important reason teachers show up: to enjoy their students and have some fun through learning. Jim, who felt a lack of support, commented on this aspect, too: “As teachers we are asked to do more and more. Towards the end I was doing three jobs…We were so tied to the state standards it just wasn’t fun anymore…” Limiting the creativity and autonomy of teachers is problematic, as it can feel like a degradation of the art of teaching — and makes it sound like anyone can do it — a massive misconception of some of the general public.
Stuck“My non-teacher friends don’t get how complicated professionally or emotionally our jobs really are,” Wendy, a veteran teacher with more of a decade of experience says. She is one of many teachers who reached out to me, saying that they wish they could leave teaching, but they feel stuck. “I’m willing to leave teaching… it’s hard to find employers willing to take a chance on a teacher who has been in the classroom for the last 15 or so years…” A teacher’s years of experience often translate into — starting over, if a teacher chooses to leave the profession. Many teachers spoke of the constraints of the pay system, and how they feel locked in to a particular district after only a handful of years, as years of experience beyond five usually don’t follow the teacher to her new district. It can be even worse for teachers who change states — not only do they lose years on the salary scale, they lose Social Security, if they move to a state like Colorado, which has its own state-run retirement system.
Whether or not a teacher has lost years of experience or retirement through a move, once the end is approaching, it can be financially devastating to leave. One teacher, Martha, said, “If I could afford to [leave] I would, but I have to continue paying into Colorado PERA for another 9 years at least.” Another teacher, Tara, said, “I am staying solely because I am stuck: need benefits, good retirement, steady income, and similar work schedule to my daughter’s school schedule, being a single mom.”
If a teacher is burnt out and unhappy, it can have an effect not only on the teacher, but on students, as well. There’s a saying that goes, “If momma ain’t happy, then nobody’s happy,” and the same could be said for teachers and students. The teacher is the architect and engineer of a classroom’s atmosphere, and if the teacher isn’t emotionally invested, it can spell trouble for student engagement and learning.
Those Who Choose to StayIt’s not some miraculous formula that makes teachers happier and more satisfied at work. Based on my respondents’ input, the reasons for why teachers stay can be boiled down to five simple things:
Many teachers cited liking their principal as a major reason for staying — and though some might say that it’s easy enough to shut your door and ignore an ineffectual principal, that’s not always the case. Leadership matters — especially when times get tough. Having a supportive principal can mean that the bad times may feel more like bumps in the road, rather than bottomless sinkholes. “I have a great admin team, and honestly, this year hasn’t been that bad, even though we were remote for the first three quarters. I am thankful and grateful…” Molly says. George concurs, saying that the two powerfully magnetic qualities he has at his school are “Flexibility and compassion from the admin team. They understand when teachers are supported, they will do the best for kids, whatever the situation.” It seems that George’s admin follows the ‘momma’ rule. Other teachers acknowledge that a good principal is not always easy to find, something akin to kissing a bunch of frogs before finding your prince. Andie says, “My school community is truly great. My principal and admin believes in me, which is a VERY rare find, and I don’t want to give that up yet.” Fortunately, some ‘princes’ are not only in fairytales.
Teachers also commented on how important school culture is. Rhonda says, “It has been a rough year for everyone by after 27 years of teaching and 4 different schools — I have found my dream job: students, colleagues, admin and could be luckier (even though we are one of the lowest paid counties and one of the wealthiest counties in the US). Gotta love the politics of education!” After a few jumps between schools, Rhonda has found her happy place, despite the low pay. And she’s not the only one who says the feel of the school outweighs compensation. For many teachers, while extra pay would be much appreciated, it’s the way they are treated that has the greatest impact on whether or not they stay.
I was once at a school where I heard a counselor say, “When you leave a job, you’re not leaving because of the job. You’re leaving because of the people.” Though I overheard this from a distance while waiting for an end-of-year staff meeting to get started, it struck a chord with me. And I believe it’s true: if a teacher has friends in the building, she is more likely to stick it out.
One teacher, Sylvia, who was about to resign, turned to her friends at work to talk about her decision. As close as she was to closing the door, they helped her decide to stay. “I had a conversation with my colleague friends…and they reminded me I am a good teacher…I couldn’t step away from the fact that when I am in the class with students, I really enjoy it.” Friends can help when a teacher needs a shoulder to cry on, but they are also there to cheer you on when you need it — and in months like October or February — or the entirety of a pandemic year — friends are a must. Sylvia is not 100% sure if she’s staying forever, but for next year, she’s made up her mind. “I am going to teach again next year, and I told myself to re-evaluate after Christmas if I want to stay in teaching or not at that point,” she says. Without her teacher-friends, she surely would have left at the end of this year.
And then, of course, there’s the kids. Becky says, “On my 19th year of teaching and I love it! …I have a drawer filled with notes [of encouragement and gratitude from students] and whenever I get down, I read them. Plus just seeing the excitement on their faces lately has done a lot…” Despite the ups and downs, Becky has coping strategies in place for the tough times. Teaching is definitely not an easy job, but one teacher says it best for many who responded: “As always, I stay for the kids!”
So How Do We Make This a Reality for More Teachers?
Teaching has become a more complex job than ever, and it has become much more difficult in recent years, pandemic or not. But there are some solutions to make teachers want to stay — and while none of them are easy, quick fixes, if they were followed, they could have a big impact.
It all follows this aphorism, said by Maya Angelou: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
A lot of the following solutions rest with the principal — as we know, when teachers feel respected and supported by their principal and administration, they are more likely to stay. Here are some systemic solutions to help teachers stay:
Looking AheadWill there be a mass exodus this year? I would guess probably not, but it’s never good when experienced professionals leave, no matter the numbers. There are a great many teachers who are passionate about the work they do, driven by purpose, receiving respect and support from their administration, camaraderie from friends, and more. But for those who do choose to leave, I thank you. We all should thank you for your service to our kids. And there are resources out there for you — on Facebook, a couple of groups called “Life After Teaching” exist in which teachers, past and present, offer empathy and solutions towards a successful exit. My wish is that everyone who leaves the profession can leave well, like my teacher-friend, who also happened to be my second grade teacher 34 years ago. He says, “I will be retiring this June after a total of 37 years. I think it’s a good time as I’m leaving before burning out. The last two years have been tough… It’s been a great career and I would do it all over again!”
Life’s too short to be desperately unhappy (if that’s what you are). Or, see what you can do to make it better for you, whether that’s a grade level switch, a building change, a change in role, or — if nothing else works — an entirely new career. If you can, see if it’s possible to take a year of leave (likely unpaid) to see if you are fulfilled in other ways or if you miss it. But don’t do nothing — don’t remain unhappy. There is always a choice and you always have options; it just may not be easy, at first.
If you’re on the fence and unsure of what to do, you can make lists, like Julie, you can talk with friends and colleagues like Sylvia, or you can go with your gut. Kyla says she has found a new path “teaching online on Outschool during my evenings and weekends… It’s amazing, and so different than what we experienced as a school district with distance learning.”
Whatever you do, don’t do nothing — either find your way to make it work or find your way to the exit, towards your next adventure. You deserve to be happy — and like I said before, If the teacher ain’t happy, ain’t nobody (in the classroom) happy.
I hope you find your way towards happiness and fulfillment, whatever that may look like. And as always, thank you for your service.
*As always, all teachers’ names are changed to protect their privacy.
It’s funny how 30 minutes can determine your life’s path for years to come. But that’s the power of the interview: you have 30 minutes with a committee to answer their questions, and based on how you answer, you will either be selected as the candidate they want, or you will get a “thank you for your time.”
Most people dread interviews the way they dread going to a repeat dentist visit to have a cavity drilled. But instead of approaching the interview with fear and trepidation, try to think of each interview as a learning experience; you can grow enormously by reflecting on the process and thinking carefully about that 30 minutes, and if you’re lucky enough to get good feedback on your performance, you can use it to get that next job that you really want.
You should prepare--especially if it’s for a job you really want. But you also have to keep in mind that there are certain factors that you have zero control over, and you can’t take it so hard if you don’t get it. Many fledgling teachers are told that the committee was looking for someone more experienced. How do you overcome lack of experience? You can’t. The only thing that will jump that hurdle is if, when you present yourself as a newbie candidate, that you demonstrate enthusiasm and a keen desire to learn and grow--and someone decides to take a chance on you.
In addition, there’s an even biggest factor you have no control over: prior connections. If other candidates know someone on the committee, say their best friend works at the school and happens to be on the interview committee, I’d say that that’s a tough obstacle to overcome. Even worse is when there’s an internal candidate--someone who’s already had the opportunity to build relationships, who has insights into the department or school that you’d be hard pressed to match. But that doesn’t mean you’re doomed before it even begins. You got the interview, you’ve shown up, you’re ready--of course there’s a chance. But you shouldn’t take that opportunity lightly; make the most of it so that regardless of the result, you can be proud of yourself.
You have to prepare. There’s no way around it. Think about it this way: if you’re not willing or able to prepare for the interview, do you really want the job at all? It’s important to be able to visualize yourself in the school, working with that team--and you have to be realistic and look closely at yourself in the mirror: is this what you really want? If you do, then prepare. If you don’t, you might as well rescind the offer to interview and spend that 30 minutes elsewhere--no good comes from wasting the time of the committee, or your own time, either.
I asked my teacher-friends what advice they would give to job-seekers. They had some great insights to share.
First, you have to get the interview. In order to do that, there’s a few key steps--and yes, you should spend some time here. If you haven’t updated your resume in a while, do it. Take a look at the descriptors for various positions you’ve held or skills you’ve acquired--do they seem to match up well with the position you’re interested in getting? Tailor your word choice to make sure that it has a positive connotation--if you sound negative on paper, they may assume you’ll be a negative Nancy in person, and no one needs another one of those. Once you’ve tailored the written chunks of your resume, think on the appearance of the document, as well as the length. One teacher says, “Resumes and references matter. No clip art on a resume, and keep it relevant and to one page.” One page may suffice if you are especially concise or if you are short on experience, but to many teachers, one page may seem somewhat stringent. Another teacher has this to say on length: “One page is ideal. Two? Ok... more than that? NO! Learn some formatting skills and make stuff fit.” To interject here, I myself struggle with the length of the resume, as I have worked in a number of very different schools with different experiences to share. I agree with a limit of two pages, whenever possible.
Some other resume considerations should be obvious, such as this piece of advice from one teacher: “Spell check!” All teachers should be knowledgeable about basic spelling and grammar skills--make sure to take the time to inspect your document carefully.
You should always have the basics on your resume: name, certifications, education history, and career history. A red flag is when references are absent. Not only should you list at least three strong references, but one teacher says, “Make sure your references will speak highly of you.” Yes, that can be tricky, especially if you weren’t really wanting to share with your principal that you’re looking for a new job, but you shouldn’t make it a surprise for them if they get a call for a reference check--that’s just not nice or professional, on your part. You can include past employers, too. But the bottom line is that not only do you want to look good on paper, you want to sound good from your evaluator’s perspective, too. One teacher says, “I’ve interviewed so many candidates that nail the interview but have poor references.” What a shame to do well and then toss it all away over someone who doesn’t support you! Our past actions, as viewed through the lens of an evaluator’s eyes, are often considered more important than the words we share while gathered around the table with the committee.
Some might ask, can I have a colleague speak for me, instead of my principal? My advice would be this: have a letter from your colleague that shows evidence of your collaborative and cooperative spirit, but have your boss as your reference.
For some positions, a cover letter is required. Don’t skip this step--and remember to tailor each letter to each position you apply to. Your letter should be no longer than one page. And make sure to cover the bases: a brief introduction of who you are and the position you’re seeking, a paragraph about your fit with the school or position you’re applying to, and a paragraph to close--restating or emphasizing your goals and beliefs--make your interest clear. In order to do this right, one teacher says, “Be prepared to know the school, the mission, the achievement data. In other words, do your homework.”
A little research on a school can go a long way--and it can also help you determine if this is the right place for you. “Always know the makeup of the school you are interviewing for,” one teacher says. “My school was one of the most diverse, ethnically and socioeconomically in my mostly white and affluent district. So many candidates came in totally assuming that they were going to be working in a mostly white school. We quickly showed them the door.” Sadly, not everyone wants to work with all students--but you have to know yourself: each school is different and presents different opportunities and challenges--if it doesn’t seem like a fit from the start, pass on applying in the first place. This same teacher goes on: “You have to want to teach all the kids. It will make your journey so much more enriching, humbling, and exciting.”
Beyond the resume (required) and cover letter (possibly optional), there are a few other things you can do, if it feels comfortable to you. One teacher suggests to “[r]each out personally to the school instead of just submitting through HR.” That can be a good thing to do--but if you send an email, keep it relatively short, cordial, and demonstrate enthusiasm for the position--and don’t expect a reply. Be aware that in some situations, it might actually be best to reach out personally to the department chair, if there is one, or possibly an assistant principal--the head boss is usually swimming in emails and meetings, not to mention putting out the little fires that pop up on a daily basis.
Once everything is submitted and out of your hands, you wait. One teacher advises, “Find the teacher effectiveness rubric for the district they are applying for, read through and try to find examples or (better yet) artifacts that show proficiency in those areas.” If you get a call for the interview, it’s time to reflect--doing a bit of mental rehearsing can be a boon, and it can give you a lot to pull from if the right question pops up. You can try to anticipate the questions, based on what seems important to the school. In addition, reflect on your experiences. One teacher says, “Beforehand, think of the 3 best teacher moments of your career...could be success with a struggling student, getting services for a student who needed it, working with a family, etc.” Recalling these sorts of moments can be self-assuring of your talents and skills, but they can also be useful later on. She adds, “When you see the interview questions, decide where these stories fit best.”
Make sure to have a few questions in mind that you’d like to ask the committee. What would you like to know more about, that would demonstrate your high interest in the position? If you know someone who works at the school, you can also reach out to them--usually, teachers are proud of their school and will be glad to talk with you about what they are looking for and what it’s like there. And it’s also your opportunity to gain insight from a trusted perspective: what are the school’s issues? What is the culture like? What are the best things about working there? One teacher suggests, “I feel like every candidate should ask the prospective employer to elaborate on how the organization handled the COVID situation with their organization and employees, and to expand upon what adaptability and resiliency means to them.” While you could do this during the interview, my instinct would be to ask this of a current employee/contact before you interview. That way, you can get a sense of whether teachers feel valued there, or if there’s something lurking beneath the surface that you might want to avoid.
Artifacts and anecdotes are useful not only in an interview, but they also can help during any future performance reviews. One time, I was about to have a difficult conversation with a district-level supervisor who didn’t know me at all. A coach-friend gave me the advice of assembling a folder with my most recent work--things I was proud of that showed what I could do--and to bring it with me. During the meeting, I had the folder by my side, and I never once opened it, but I was able to recall its contents during the meeting, which was a huge confidence boost for me and helped the meeting go smoothly.
A former evaluator of mine, Ron Schumacher, has a unique approach to offer job seekers. Ron is now an elementary school principal in Aurora, CO, and he also runs a consulting business on the side, with one of the offered services being career and interview counseling for education professionals--teachers through administrators. It’s not a quick fix, but a tried-and-true process, and he swears by the results. He says his approach has worked for all but one of his clients. In a very distilled synopsis, this is how it works: keep a journal, look back for themes that emerge, select a dominant theme, and with a mentor, “craft a simple statement that captures the theme.” Next comes practice with a mentor, “to answer all questions with their theme at the heart of the answer, drilling down from a global perspective, to an example of practice, then to a student story.” It’s a process that takes time, but it can have a huge payoff in the result of capturing the position of your dreams.
On the day of the interview, eat. Drink water. Dress well, yet comfortably. If you are wearing shoes that nip at the back of your Achilles tendons or a blouse that stretches uncomfortably in the arms, then for God’s sake, don’t wear those things. Bring a water bottle with you. There’s nothing worse than going into a coughing fit during an interview or having your mouth turn into a desert. Arrive early, but not too much so. If it’s a Zoom interview, check your equipment and your mic before you’re set to enter the room. Additionally, if you're interviewing online, check your lighting and remove or minimize distractions. Yes, we’re all human, and these days interruptions of kids or barking dogs can be common, but if this is important to you, you’ll figure out a way to shove them out of the house or get them to be quiet while you’re on camera.
Oftentimes, you’ll get the questions ahead of time. This is a lovely gesture that not all schools do, but if they offer it to you, use this opportunity. It might be that you get to see the questions 15 minutes in advance. If you do, take notes on them. Skim through and jot down a few words and phrases meant to trigger connections, anecdotes, and more that you could pull from once the interview begins.
Once you are ushered in, either in-person or on Zoom, listen carefully as introductions are made. Jot down the names of those in attendance, if you can. And remember to breathe--a good deep breath or two with a slow exhale can help to clear your mind and keep you from going into overdrive.
The first question of the interview sounds like a softball, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. It usually is: “Tell us about yourself and what led you to apply for this position.” One teacher says, “When they ask ‘Tell us about yourself,’ the interview committee does not want to hear about your recent divorce (true story) or any other deeply personal information. Think about your personality traits, characteristics, how you were as a primary or secondary student and how that has transformed or transferred to your adult professional life.” Another suggestion for the kick-off, is to demonstrate a connection or share a compliment of the school: “If you can, identify a student who attends or their parents ask them what they like about the school. Be very clear and be able to articulate why you want to work there and what you bring to the table.” And don’t spend too long on the first question--after all, you’ve only got 30 minutes.
As you answer each question, be cognizant of time. One teacher says, “Use all of the time you are given to ‘sell yourself.’ If you have a 30 minute interview, talk for 30 minutes. Also, don’t be afraid to revisit a previous question if you remember something you forgot to mention earlier.” Another recommends that you “[g]ive specific examples so the interviewing team can imagine you in that role.” Many teachers agree that examples are powerful. “I've always leaned toward candidates who ‘show’ me who they are. It makes their answers seem more honest and relevant.”
Some questions may be difficult, especially if you don’t have a ton of experience with the situation they present. A tip I got from a friend several years ago was this: if you get asked something you’re unsure of, say, “That’s a really great question,” and take a moment to pause--grab your water bottle, and have a sip to buy yourself a bit of time so that you can reflect. If you’re still not sure, ask them if they can clarify the question. In addition, one teacher says, “If the panel is asking questions that make you wonder about something, ask. It is way better to know what you are getting yourself into before you take a job.” And above all, be honest: if it’s something you’ve never heard of, it’s better to react with curiosity and interest rather than try to fake your way through. So much of teaching is improv and growth; if we had to know everything before we walked in the door, not a single teacher would be standing in a classroom today. A teacher adds, “Keep in mind that the questions they ask lead you towards what they are looking for.”
I have always told my high school students: make sure that it’s mutual--don’t accept an offer unless you’re sure that both sides are inclined. These days, with so many interviews being held online, it can be difficult to read the room, but I would argue that it’s one of the most important parts of the process. Of course, if one committee member appears to be afflicted by resting bitch face, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should run away--but if you see key members of the committee with their arms crossed or leaning away rather than leaning in, you should be concerned. Trust me--I’ve seen it, and it’s the one time I should have turned the job offer down. Listen with your ears and eyes--and also important--listen to your gut. If you have butterflies, that’s natural. If you have a sense of doom or an urge to run to the bathroom to throw up, that’s your body trying to tell you something--and you’d better listen.
Towards the conclusion of the interview, make sure to ask questions, if you are given the opportunity. Ron Schumacher has one of the all-time best-ever questions to share: “Is there anything I said or omitted during this interview that has left you with the impression that I am not the best candidate for this position? If so, I am happy to clarify or expand my answers.” This is very clever, not only because it shows that he cares deeply about the position and the committee’s impressions, but it also shows him as humble--and it opens up the door for a more free conversation to take place.
While the interview may seem interminable at times, time flies. Rather than show artifacts or distribute information to the committee, to make a great final impression, you could try one teacher’s approach: “I directed the committee to my professional website link that could give them a more in-depth look at my work.” That way, during deliberations, if they have any questions or need more information, they’ve got it right in front of them online.
Once it’s all over, and you’re safely back in your car or staring at the log-off screen, it’s time to reflect. But don’t engage in shoulda, coulda, or woulda. Instead, review the list of committee members, and take a few minutes to write brief thank you emails. If you’ve forgotten names, you can review the school’s website or call to ask the principal’s secretary for names. One teacher says she recommends “ thanking them for their time and bringing up parts of the convo you enjoyed.”
As you reflect, do a gut check--how do you feel about how it went? Does it feel like a place you would want to be? Teaching is no longer an entirely independent endeavor--these days, you can’t just go to your classroom and close the door. One teacher offers a sage piece of advice: “Don’t be afraid to say no thanks if you get that feeling that you won’t fit in with the staff or school.” And another offers a warning: “I’d say watch out for the schools that are ill-prepared for you. If they don’t give you questions a bit before the interview, don’t offer some water, and seem intent on not making you somewhat comfortable (breaking the ice) think hard if you're offered the job. You are also interviewing them. If you are able to discern hostilities amongst them....run!” However, if there are no red flags, then be patient, and hope for the desired outcome, knowing that you did your best.
If you get a call and are offered the job, congratulations! Best of luck to you and may the position be the right fit you were seeking. But if you don’t get the call, do your best to solicit some feedback--after a few days, you can (and should!) reach out, to find out if they went with another candidate. Also, seek growth-producing feedback. After all, they may have insights or observations to share with you that can help you later on. As much as it might hurt, don’t just say, “Okay, thank you,” and hang up--take this opportunity to ask for feedback--ask what you could have done differently, or what you should emphasize or deemphasize in future interviews. It may help you to revise your approach for the next one.
The interview process can be tough, but it doesn’t have to be painful. If you are truly a growth-mindset educator, you will welcome the opportunity to share your ideas and skills with the committee. And remember: the one you don’t get is great practice for the one that’s right for you. In time, with patience, and a little pixie dust, you’ll land where you’re supposed to be.
There’s a bunch of things you don’t go into teaching for: the barrage of emails that bark for replies, grading and entering grades, hallway or bus loop duty, chaperoning a school function in the evening, and of course--one of the worst: proctoring. But there’s one thing that is considered worst of the worst for most teachers because it hits you where it hurts: the angry-parent-nasty-gram--the email or voicemail message that says, “Teacher, you suck,” and then goes on to tell you exactly what you suck at and how badly, in their opinion.
I got one of those last week, after a relatively quiet spell on the parent front. And even though I’ve been teaching since 2001, it shook me a little.
I’ve been on the receiving end of a few nasty-grams since I started teaching (and there’s a few I deserved that never landed, thank goodness--phew, got away with that one!). Here are some of the more memorable occasions:
And then, I got an email this week--I had just closed up my office hours and was getting back into the knee-deep swamp of my online grading queue, when a nasty-gram popped up. A parent had taken my feedback from her daughter’s rough draft essay and gone line by line, writing a paragraph per phrase, deriding my feedback from top-to-bottom. She accused me of being careless, hurtful, and causing great emotional distress for her daughter. She cc’d my boss.
I was shocked--why was I being attacked? What was this all about? I took a deep breath, trying not to let the “you suck” message sink in, but there I went, slowly being swallowed up by a swirl of her disparaging words and my own reactionary emotions: sadness, anger, hurt, and self-doubt.
As teachers, we all have these moments. Conflict is, unfortunately, part of the job. Mostly, it remains minor--tiny classroom skirmishes and redirections that end before they even begin. But sometimes, these little conflicts flare up, sometimes catching fire to the forest.
So, what can a teacher do to get through the unpleasantness of the conflict and move on in a productive way? I decided to ask my teacher-friends. Here is what they had to say:
Several teachers say, wait--don’t respond just yet. “24 hour rule. Wait 24 hours before you respond,” one teacher says.
Another says, “4 hour rule and I have a colleague not directly involved with the activity/reason read the email. This way I ensure I’m not replying out of anger.” Sharing with a colleague in addition to giving a bit of time can be helpful, to gain not only perspective, but empathy from a friend. We’ve all been there, right?
2. Treat Yourself Afterwards or Go to Your Happy Place
Other teachers look for a way to cool off after an attack: “I received a nasty message last week. The things I was accused of really hurt and were completely unfair. I just told myself that today this parent needed a punching bag and today I was that punching bag. She doesn’t know me and most likely it wasn’t even me that made her so angry, I was just the place where that anger landed. When this happened, I focused on being as professional and polite as possible and fortunately my administration was there to support me. I then had a nice cocktail and let it go. It truly does suck though.”
For some it’s a cocktail, for others it’s something stronger: “Keep your response focused on facts: student behavior, curriculum, and objectives. Thank them for any other feedback. Go home. Pour a tumbler of bourbon. Think about anything else.”
And other teachers keep a pick-me-up file for days and situations that aren’t going so well. One teacher suggests, “Keep letters and emails from parents who love you (I know you have a lot) and read those when the negative parents get on your nerves.” It can’t hurt to read through some praise after taking a hard knock.
3. Keep it Short
Thank goodness for the mainstream spread of mindfulness. One teacher’s advice is this: “Take a deep breath. When I was younger I used to get worked up and anxious. My first principal was awesome and told me to never respond to an email if I couldn’t reply in 6 sentences or less, or if it was emotionally charged…” and others agree: “1) Always wait at least a few hours and respond only after I have control of my emotions.
2) Keep the response brief. Overly explaining looks defensive. Plus, I don’t have time for that.
3) offer a phone call if they aren’t satisfied or want more information.” There’s a lot of wisdom, especially in point #2--a teacher’s time is already so short. Don’t give it away so easily to your emotions or innate need to defend yourself.
4. Some Say: Call, Instead
“When responding to these messages I tend to try to do it via phone/in person rather than email since so much of tone is inferred in email…” This is very true--much can be said in an email when we read between the lines, not so much in our words themselves, but with the tone that oozes from them. Another teacher agrees, saying “Sometimes talking over the phone or in person can diffuse the situation better than emailing back.”
But if the phone call doesn’t go well?
Some teachers are armed with good sentence-starters that can work for just about any conflict: “I’m sorry you feel that way given the information from your perspective. My perspective is....”
Another offers this advice: “Always sandwich critique between a positive of their kid. Say that you hear their concern. Most just want an audience.”
And then if it gets really ugly? “I have hung up on plenty of phone calls where I have stated “we need to stay in the realm of facts and truth,” and the parent has wanted to make attacks, excuses or accusations,” one teacher says.
I second that, another teacher says: “I know a lot of people are saying to make a phone call, but if it's particularly nasty, I prefer to keep everything in writing. I'm always polite and encourage the parent to ask any further questions. Stick to the facts. Don't type when angry. And if the child is older, check in with them about the problem. If the parent continues to be nasty, I forward all of the email correspondence to my admin and let them deal with it.”
5. CYA, As they Say
Document, document, document, many teachers say. One teacher’s approach, after a conflict-based phone call is to “send a follow-up reply to their email, ‘It was so nice speaking to you on the phone today! To recap, we discussed XYZ and will make these changes for the future (or whatever is pertinent). Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any further questions or concerns. Have a great evening!’ CC admin if needed.”
6. And Some Don’t Reply At All...
If you choose not to respond, it doesn’t mean you don’t care--a reply just may not be warranted at that time. “The best advice I ever received from a principal was to only respond if there is a question present. Then only respond with the pertinent information. This of course does not include rhetorical questions like "how dare you?" one teacher says.
7. ...Because Sometimes, There’s It’s Not About You
It’s not easy to not take it personally when a conflict arises and things get heated. But one teacher takes a different tack: “I get curious. Follow up with questions. I find it becomes less personal when I approach it as a 'problem' we can solve together. There was a moment of clarity in year twelve where a student lashed out at me and I immediately went to the pain this kid must be in. It was as if I had leaped forward in my capacity for empathy. Maybe all those years built to it.”
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, “1 in 20 U.S. adults experience serious mental illness each year.” That’s not to say that every irate parent you encounter is experiencing a bout, but it does warrant a teacher taking a moment to step outside of herself, and perhaps, even consider what it’s like to walk in the parent’s shoes. One former preschool teacher says, “...[O]n dealing with difficult people in general - read anything by Brene Brown and realize... it's not about you. Also keep in mind that nasty people only affect you for a short time - they have to live with themselves and their crappy attitude 24/7.” And we also have to stop and think: if a parent is willing to launch a tirade or epithet of nastiness on a teacher they hardly know...what are they like at home? Sometimes standing down or working to smooth things over will make a child’s already-difficult home life a little bit easier. To put the student first, one teacher says, “I try to rise above and kill ‘em with kindness. Just remember the student and do what's necessary to keep things civil.”
And just because someone’s angry doesn’t necessarily mean they are mentally unstable. One teacher says, “They are in “mama bear” state of mind and often fire off an email before they think about it.” Adding to that thought, another teacher says, “Take a deep breath; remember the parent’s comments are usually motivated by loving that child more than everything else; be kind and professional; don’t reply if no reply is sought (like if their aim appears to be to complain and they don’t actually ask a question).”
8. But That Doesn’t Mean You Should Just Take It, Either
“I also never let someone pressure me into an apology unless I’ve made an actual mistake that would warrant that,” one teacher says. “I often will just keep it factual and restate a specific policy or an account of events. Don’t even acknowledge personal attacks.” Another concurrs: “[S]tand your ground and stick up for yourself. Of course, not in a nasty sort of way, but more often than not, we teachers don’t deserve those accusatory emails and a parent should not think it’s right to send them.”
9. But What If You Are Wrong?
In the case of my most recent nasty-gram, I was in the wrong. Of course, the mistake was made without malice: I was scoring a student’s electronic essay revision worksheet, and I just didn’t scroll far enough to realize that she had made some of the corrections I was seeking.
When it’s an honest mistake, here’s what one teacher has a short response that fits the bill: “Thank you so much for bringing that to my attention, I have just fixed it! Have a wonderful day and I appreciate your support!"
But, when you are attacked verbally, it can leave a scar: “I’m gonna apologize for the mistake and think less of them as a parent for their response.” It’s hard to get over that hurt sometimes, even if you’re a super teacher.
10. A Useful Acronym
As teachers, we get bombarded with acronyms to the point where it should almost be a drinking game. But here’s one that’s actually useful, if you find yourself in a conflict with a parent: “I always remember QTIP. Quit taking it personally. I don't let comments, complaints get to me. Parents generally know very little about what you do in the classroom, so their anger is not a condemnation of your ability.” Amen to that--most parents are merely running to the defense of their child, usually from a place of love. And your hurt likely comes from this: you love the student, too--not in the same way, of course, but as teachers, we care. We care a lot more than we’d like to admit. And that’s why it hurts so much when someone attacks us about the job we put so much love, effort, and time into.
This Saturday morning, as my husband and I were clearing out the shed in our backyard, our daughter called our attention to our five month-old Sharpei, Lucy, who was lying on her side in the grass, one eye swollen shut. We went into panic mode trying to figure out what was going on--could she see? Had she poked herself with that stick she’d been carrying around? Had she been stung? Was her eye going to be okay? I picked up the phone and called the vet’s office, which happens to be open from 9-2 on Saturdays. “Please,” I said, “Is there any way I could bring her by for someone to take a look at her eye?” The receptionist told me, no, they were fully booked. “But her eye!” I said, my voice getting shrill. “What should we do about her eye?” The receptionist handed me off to a vet tech who suggested I apply warm compresses. I asked again, “But can’t I just bring her in for a minute for you to take a look?” No, the tech said, we are booked. So I muttered something unintelligible and hung up. A few minutes later, after trying a compress, I called back. “Can I please just bring her by for a minute? She’s hurt!” No, the receptionist told me, but there is an emergency vet’s office 20 minutes away. I hung up and threw the phone down and went back to my dog. Minutes later, Lucy was zipped off to the emergency vet.
Later that evening, with an ointment prescription in hand and Lucy trotting around like a bull with a Queen Elizabeth collar ringed around her head, I had a thought: in a moment of passion, seeking to protect and care for my dog, I had become the angry parent. I smiled to myself.
Sometimes we need a little criticism to bring our failings or shortcomings to our attention. While not every angry parent email is legit, there are some that contain some truth--and those warrant some self-examination on our part.
In response to my recent parent situation, one teacher’s response made me stop in my tracks: “By your own admission, you made a mistake. Why the impulse to make this situation about the parent's reaction? We teachers are not perfect, and parents are entitled to their emotions. Maybe apologize sincerely and without qualification, and move on?” And she is right--I did make a mistake. But what about having some manners?
Sometimes it’s hard to be the bigger person. And being a teacher, so much more is expected of you.
During a conflict, it’s worth it to consider:
Am I in any way at fault here?
What is their perspective in this situation?
How might I have handled the situation that caused this problem differently, if I could?
How can I make this right?
And, the biggest one of all: What can I learn from this?
For me, I’m working on giving parents a little more grace.
Conflict arises because someone cares. I don’t despise the receptionist or the vet tech; I was in a panic trying to help my dog, whom I love dearly. The same goes for the vast majority of parents: they growl and snarl and bare their teeth not because they hate you, but because they love their child.
Conflict is hard, but it’s part of life and teaching. And as one teacher says, “As a mom AND a teacher, I like to think that we are all on the same side, and that we all want what is best for kids.”
A few side notes: Several teachers reached out to me to check on me and see if I was okay--and that shows it all right there--teachers have gigantic hearts and are incredibly caring--about their students and others, too.
One teacher also recommends a book for further reading, should you be interested in further exploration of this topic. It’s called BIFF: Quick Responses to High Conflict People, Their Hostile Emails, Personal Attacks and Social Media Meltdowns by Bill Eddy, available on Amazon for Kindle.
Many parents, administrators, and teachers have been quick to write off remote learning, hoping to get back to “normal” as soon as possible.
But that hasn’t been the experience of all teachers. For some, the experience of teaching remotely has been rewarding, engaging, and stimulating--for them and for their students.
“There’s a lot of talk out there that students can’t learn remotely. And it’s false.” --Mike, a six-year veteran teacher, working 100% remotely this year
With all of the flak that remote learning has gotten, I wondered: Have teachers received adequate training or been able to share and swap best practices for remote learning, to make it more successful? Or have teachers been rather isolated, told to jump in the lake but not given a life vest or swimming lessons?
For some teachers who were already tech-savvy and working fluidly in 1-1 classroom environments, the transition was fairly easy. For others, who leaned more on traditional in-person techniques, the switch to remote was jarring and hasn’t improved much.
I decided to reach out to two of my favorite teacher friends in the whole wide world who happen to be teaching 100% remotely this year. These two educators are folks I have worked with in different settings and at different points in my career--and they are both incredible at what they do. I reached out to them to see if they would impart some of their learning with me, so that I could pass it along to you, my teacher friends.
The following is what two of our awesome colleagues had to share.
One teacher I interviewed, I’ll call him Mike, is a middle school teacher. He has taught for six years now (including this one), and this year was the first time he’s ever taught in an entirely remote environment, aside from last spring when the pandemic hit. When I asked him what the highlight of his career has been, he replied: “transitioning to remote teaching.”
The other teacher I interviewed, let’s call her Jane, teaches high school. She has 17 years of experience, with 15 in the classroom, and she considers herself a jack-of-all-contents. The best part of teaching for her are the “communities of kids you connect with.” During our discussion, she recalled some past groups of students with whom she shared little inside jokes.
For both of these teachers, relationships are a huge part of why they teach.
That might sound like a strange statement, as some have branded remote learning as an isolating and socially stunting situation, but both of these teachers made it a priority to build strong relationships at the outset of the school year and have continued to work to keep that momentum going.
Mike likes to start off every class the same way: on a topic entirely unrelated to his content area. He provides the students with “Would you rathers” and gleans responses from each of his students in class that day before moving on. “Sometimes it takes 20 minutes,” he says, “but I feel it’s worth it, [even] with the time devoted to it.”
Jane does something quite similar--she begins class by asking students to rate how they are doing that day, on a scale of one to five. Then she follows up with a silly question, such as “If animals could talk, which one would be the rudest”? Or “”Which TV show have you binged-watched?” She makes sure to mentally note any students who respond with a one or two, and connects with them privately after class to make sure they’re okay.
To start the year, Mike made sure to familiarize students with the tools they’d be using to ease any jitters, and he also had each student present a little slideshow about themselves so that students could feel that they knew who else was with them in the ‘room.’ Jane set the tone with a few basic expectations, with the main one being super simple: “Don’t be a dick.” Of course, she didn’t say it quite that way, but students have not violated this cardinal rule. She also had students get to know each other, to get comfortable with each other by first sharing more about herself than she ever has before. “I definitely took more time to give kids my bio: Where am I from? What was my road to teaching? My things I like to do, pictures of my cat and my husband. They want to know these things.” Then she had them each share about themselves, via FlipGrid, responding to a short set of questions, providing their names, hobbies, pets, pronouns. The culmination of the activity was when students viewed each other’s short videos, leaving supportive comments for each other, to make connections within the group.
Early on in the year, both Mike and Jane arrived at the same decision: they would ask for cameras on, but wouldn’t enforce it. As Jane notes, “I didn’t fight the camera battle...it was something that I realized--I’ve only got one screen [and] I can’t see them [all], anyway.” Mike feels the same way: “I ask that they’re on, but I don’t police it. I know that cameras can make [students] self-conscious.” He adds, “Some of them don’t want others to see their [home] environment, and I don’t want that to be a barrier.” He also mentioned that some students got way too caught up in their appearance and were constantly doing their hair. “I will ask them, and I will remind them, but I will not [force them],” he says.
“A huge problem in our profession is that many teachers are perfectionists and control freaks.” --Jane, 17-year veteran teacher, currently on remote assignment
Engagement--or the continued criticism of the lack thereof with remote learning--has been a positive this year for both Jane and Mike. Jane says, “In some ways, I get more participation from students in remote learning than I did in-person. Is everyone participating? No, but they wouldn’t, anyway.” It seems many people forget that while a student who attends in person may be physically present, that doesn’t mean the student is mentally present. Mike has seen an interesting pattern: “It’s weird, but the typical bell curve you see is almost inverted--there’s hardly anyone in the middle.” He talked about how it can be incredibly hard to get students who are “ghosting” him to re-engage. “I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve called on a student who’s ‘there’ who doesn’t respond,” he says. However, when he tried out something new one day, a jigsaw in groups with students partnered up together in breakout rooms to create a Jamboard as a team, the engagement was through the roof: “I had 95% engagement,” he says.
One of the major challenges this year for both teachers has been students who are hesitant to speak up--either during whole class time or during breakout rooms. Jane notes, “they hate breakout rooms with a fiery passion.” But some of their students have warmed to breakout rooms, and Mike likes to use them for individual students, where they each get their own ‘room.’ Students like this approach, Mike says, because “they can call me in when they have questions without anyone else knowing.”
Allowing students to remain anonymous in some ways leads to better participation, in both teachers’ experiences. All of their students are big fans of PearDeck, a tool that both teachers use regularly in their live lessons. “I’ve taught freshmen through seniors and everyone loves PearDeck--everyone can guess with no fear of anyone knowing who guessed what,” Jane says.
Other programs that both teachers use frequently are EdPuzzle and Jamboard. In Mike’s view, Jamboard is great for collaborative thinking “because they can just jot their ideas down.” For Jane, it took her a little while to warm up to EdPuzzle--she had attended a training a few years back, but it seemed more complicated, so she had left it alone. This year, she’s changed her mind: “it does take some time, but it’s worth it.” Her tip for learning new programs to use with students: “Just open it up and start goofing around with it. You click around and you figure it out.”
Both teachers noted that they have not received any substantive training to help with remote learning this year. So Mike decided to go it alone and find his own PD. “Over the summer, I attended an online development, sponsored by PearDeck.” He found the experience to be valuable, as he uses the program on a nearly daily basis. Jane thinks PD from the district could help--if it’s useful. “People are stuck doing something a certain way,” she says, “and there’s not a lot of support to help them do it better.” It doesn’t help that teachers who teach remotely are often deeper in isolation from their peers--or at least, one would think.
Something that has been helpful for Mike, to make sure that working remotely doesn’t overtake his personal life, has been leaning on colleagues who share ideas and lessons. He says, “I rely so much more on my colleagues in terms of planning materials [this year. Last year,] I used to stay super late until I’d get stuff done.” To make sure he keeps a good work-life balance, he adheres to a strict rule: “Once four o’clock hits, I’m just done.”
Jane has also made some key discoveries about how to keep her work from seeping into her personal life. “It took me a long, long time to get away from grading everything,” she says. She began using an exit ticket through Google Forms at the end of each class period as closure, which also gives students immediate feedback on their progress. “Kids really like it because it’s a little five-point quiz...If you get everything right, you get to pat yourself on the back.” She also notes, “if you craft your exit ticket well, they get the feedback they need.” She also admitted that sometimes she will give 100% across the board on a minor assignment--she thinks it’s important to “give yourself permission” to do that every once in a while, to save time. “When I ask kids what they like [about our class],” Jane says, “they say they like the exit tickets--no one says they liked the detailed feedback!”
Another way that Jane has simplified the process for herself and for students is to give each student just one document per day--nothing else--to keep it simple and streamlined. It’s all there: “all the links, all the everything--and then they turn it in [at the end of class].”
Something that works great for Mike is something every in-person teacher wishes for: the mute button. “Behavior management is a million times better,” he says. Jane agrees that her time has become much more efficient, with far less policing of off-task behaviors than in years past. “[Remote learning] is a lot more efficient,” she says, “not a lot of wasting time. I can get through what I normally would get through in 90 minutes [when in-person] in 60 minutes [now that she’s remote].” That allows students extra processing time and extra time to linger and ask questions during the last few minutes of class. And those who are done? They can leave, rather than having to stick around. “It’s amazing what you can do when you don’t have to get people to stop talking,” Jane says.
Both teachers were emphatic that remote learning can, and does, work. In Jane’s situation, it has allowed her more freedom to decide how she uses her time. “One of the things that people value most is if they have autonomy,” she says. “If they have autonomy, their happiness at work increases exponentially.” She is beside herself when it comes to teachers who say they can’t wait to return to ‘normal.’ “I see a lot of times on Facebook, ‘I can’t wait to get back to normal.’ And I’m like, no guys!” Teaching remotely, Jane gets a lot of flexibility in how she structures her days, and it doesn’t mean that she’s working less--she just gets to decide more about when she works. “It’s been great for me,” she says, “but it’s also great for students.” Mike is adamant about remote learning’s power for many students: “I have seen [that] for some kids, this is the best environment, by far. It’s not for all kids, and some kids are struggling this year,” he admits. “But the idea that kids can’t learn remotely is not true.”
If you would like to share your best practices for remote learning, to possibly be featured in a follow-up post, please reach out at: teachersaysemail.gmail.com
Is now the right time to open schools at the secondary level? I didn’t know how to feel about it. So I decided to ask the experts--the ones who would know best. I decided to ask a handful of my teacher-mom friends, some of the smartest women I know.
Meet Annie, Beth, Carrie, Donna, Ellie, and Frances. Each woman is (or has been) an educator in a public school--their total experience combined adds up to 109 years in schools. Each one is a mom of school-aged children. Each one is a smart, thoughtful, caring, well-educated woman, whom I would trust to give me carefully weighed answers based on facts and data. Each one is (or was) a teacher to admire, both in pedagogical prowess and building strong relationships with students. And each one faces the inevitable reopening of public secondary schools in the Denver Metro area, the earliest on March 22 and the latest on April 5.
So what did they have to say?
The Current Situation: Hybrid and “Chromebook Zombies”
All of the teacher-moms agree that hybrid learning, in its current mostly-synchronous iteration, is a poor substitute for full time in-person learning. Absolutely no one said that the current situation is what’s best for kids. But all four women who are in the classroom are doing their best to make it work.
But does hybrid have to be so awful? Not necessarily. The synchronous decision for students’ at home days was done “purely for optics,” according to Donna. If at-home days had been asynchronous, used as front-loading, reading, and preparing for the next class, it could have been much different. Parents, most school districts surmised, wanted to ensure that eyes are kept on their secondary students, creating more accountability and structure for their time at home. But all of this non-stop screentime comes with consequences. Frances, who has a middle-schooler said of her daughter, “She’s turning into a Chromebook Zombie.”
But as with most compromises, no one is happy. But some teacher-moms, like Donna, feel that it’s the best option we’ve got. “[T]he kids, the teachers, the staff in the building all seem to understand in an unspoken way that this is the best [alternative, with hybrid] we’ve got” (Donna).
It would seem that professional development and time spent on equipping teachers with best-practice techniques for managing hybrid and remote learning would have been the priority. But it was not. Beth’s district did not have any trainings for teachers on best-practices with remote or hybrid instruction, and so she, like so many other teachers, has had to figure out how to navigate this new way of teaching on her own. Beth remarked, “The district has optional trainings, but [teachers] may not realize they don’t know enough or that they could do it better.” Another factor could be the already-existing boa-constrictor-like squeeze on time, as it is. Regardless, Beth’s district has not made teacher training a priority and so many teachers have floundered or are, in Beth’s words, “just trying to get through it, thinking things will go back to normal next year.”
While school operations may be far from normal, some students have continued living their lives on the outside as normal. “I know students are seeing each other outside of school. They are not getting infected from my classroom,” Carrie, a high school teacher said.
But will relatively low infection rates within schools continue, if all students return?
Is it Time? What Science Suggests
The CDC’s recommendations for schools had remained much the same throughout the pandemic: six feet of social distancing, frequent handwashing, mandatory masks except for when eating and drinking, improved ventilation and open doors and windows (when possible), and students all facing the same direction are still best practice for schools.
However, just days ago, the CDC changed the guidelines. Now, the recommended distance is three feet. The CDC’s justification is this: “Three studies, published in today’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR)...build on evidence that physical distancing of at least 3 feet between students can safely be adopted in classroom settings where mask use is universal and other prevention measures are taken.”
In some cases, such as communities where transmission of the virus is high, the CDC has maintained that classrooms be set up with six feet of separation with one-way traffic patterns, which is--if schools move to 100% in-person--entirely impossible.
What about earlier fears about teenagers catching and spreading COVID-19 in ways similar to adults? Are teenagers less at risk than was thought March when most schools first closed?
According to the most recent report released jointly by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association, of the 3,168,274 child cases throughout the United States and its territories, “[c]hildren were 0.00%-0.19% of all COVID-19 deaths, and 10 states reported zero child deaths.” This is good news. It still doesn’t say what the age ranges of the infected children were (Infants? Elementary school-aged? Teenagers?) as the data wasn’t collected that way, it seems. But nonetheless, for many parents, this is the rainbow they’d been waiting for for almost a year now.
During the winter of 2020-2021, there has been just one child death reported throughout the entire United States due to the flu, according to reporting by The Washington Post. It would seem that the mitigation strategies, including masks and distancing, set in place to prevent COVID-19 infection, have had a startlingly positive effect on beating child flu deaths into near oblivion this year.
If mitigation strategies, such as universal masking and social distancing in classrooms are working, this is a cause for celebration. But will just masking be enough with the 100% return of students in-person?
The teacher-moms I spoke to are well aware of the conundrums they face when secondary schools resume at 100% in person. “[W]e still can’t make class look like it did, pre-COVID. Everyone is still going to be on a screen. We can do fewer hands-on activities because I can’t sanitize everything quickly enough to turn it around for the next big group” (Donna). Beth noted that due to increased class sizes and an inability to socially distance in the average classroom, “Schools [currently] close for [deep cleanings] with quarantining [when there are a handful of cases]--there will likely be more of that.” She also noted, in regard to her daughter’s experience, “Cohorting at the high school level is impossible.” And Beth also said what all of the women I interviewed knew to be true: “[We] won’t be able to keep the six feet of distancing with everyone back. Other protocols won’t be able to be followed, either.”
Emily wondered, “What will the protocol be if someone gets sick?”
It is possible that quarantining and temporary school closures for deep-cleaning may rise with a 100% return. Donna, speaking for her son’s experience and for that of her students’ said, “I don’t want to see kids quarantined over and over again, getting less time in the building than before.”
Beth, speaking not out of fear but merely being pragmatic, cautioned that it will take some time to figure things out before students can come back. “All furniture has to go back in the rooms, and we have to figure out where kids are eating, when hand-washing times will be, and [time is needed to allow for] schedule changes that will occur” [when parents shift either from in-person to remote or remote to in-person],” she said.
Despite these challenges, schools are in a race to get ready for reopening.
What Teacher-Moms Think
The teacher-moms I interviewed are gearing up for the impending return to 100%. Frances said that, “The safety of it makes me nervous but the mental health of [her daughter] and the rest of our family overpowers any concern.” She added, “The last 10 months have been the worst family dynamics we have ever had and I am very concerned for all of our mental health.”
Carrie is looking forward to returning to 100% in-person. “I miss my students desperately,” she said.
Donna is not enthusiastic about her district’s decision. “Going back to 100% in-person...feels like the choice [of hybrid] that I really carefully considered [for her own son] is being taken away from us.” She also discussed the reality that some students will choose to stay 100% remote, which in her district, means Zooming in and watching from home. “One of my biggest worries is what happens to [remote students]... If my classroom population increases...my eyeballs will be on my in-person class more. I worry that my remote students will be getting even less of my attention and I don’t know how to fix that” (Donna).
Beth and her husband “think school [this] year should finish as-is. At earliest,” she said, “we should go back in April so that all [teachers] who want the vaccine can get it.”
While Annie is “excited for the kids to come back,” she is also concerned. As a mom of a high schooler, Annie thinks students could still get sick if they come to school in larger numbers, as they are not vaccinated. While she believes it’s not likely they will get seriously ill, she realizes that they still could. Despite this clear-headed awareness, “I would rather have the kids come back now,” Annie said.
Emily would prefer to remain hybrid for the rest of the year. “Why change another thing?” she said, in reference to the many changes teachers and students have had to adjust to this year. “I would like to wait until more of the country has been vaccinated.” But she also “sympathizes and empathizes” with parents. She can’t imagine, if her own five children were younger and all spread out through the grade levels, doing remote learning of any sort would be very hard. “Logistically, I get it,” she said, about parents’ challenges at home. “It’s tough.”
And so, out of the educator-moms I spoke to, four said yes; two of them resoundingly so, with the other two far more tentative. Two said, continuing with hybrid would be their preference. For the record, no one said they wanted to have students return to 100% remote learning.
Teachers, Parents, and District Leadership: “I wish we could all be on the same team”
The clock is ticking and by April 5, nearly all public middle and high schools throughout the Denver Metro area will be fully in-person. While all of these caring educators enjoy seeing their students in the classroom, many of them spoke to the chasm they feel has grown between educators and parents.
Donna said, “I wish the public knew that a lot of us teachers are parents and [we] get it. But we can’t be irresponsible. And we can’t wish away the reality that we are still dealing with a pandemic.” Annie feels that teachers have been lumped together and perceived as callous. “Parents might think that teachers don’t want the kids to come back, but it’s not true.” Emily feels the parent perception of teachers’ workload falls far short of the reality this year. “Non-educators are not seeing the amount of blood, sweat, and tears,” she said.
In addition to a disconnect with many parents, teachers have felt sidelined by their districts, as well. “[Forces] outside of the building are making this harder than it has to be,” Donna said. “Teachers, kids, and support staff have great ideas and suggestions, if anyone in charge would just listen. We live this day to day, and yet, we seem to have no agency.” Annie agreed that district leadership has been lackluster, at best. “District communication has been poor, and it shows a lack of trust in staff [members] with messages being sent out to staff and parents simultaneously.” Emily also felt a disconnect between the district she is associated with and its teachers and staff. “Why can’t we follow a proven method?” she wondered aloud, commenting on his dislike for the soon-to-be phased out synchronous version of hybrid learning that has been the model in so many schools. Many of the teacher-moms I expressed a lack of support from all sides.
“I wish we could all be on the same team,” Donna said. “I feel like I work for the world’s most hated profession these days.”
While it is nearly time to return 100%, the time for healing strained relationships has yet to arrive and may be a long time coming. Meanwhile, with the 100% return to the classroom, teachers will have to cross their fingers, adjust their masks, and hope for the best.
Recently, a group of teachers at Mandalay Middle, a school in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado, declared that they would only work contract hours. It was a form of protest, meant to highlight the lack of teacher say in decision-making by higher ups on issues like working conditions under COVID-19 and in support of bargaining.
Pictures on Facebook showed a group of 15-20 teachers standing outside of the school entrance, waiting in the cold for the official start of the school day, before heading inside.
But it begs the question: How is working only the hours you are being paid to work a form of protest? Shouldn’t working the hours you’re paid for be the expectation?
But there’s this: Is it possible to be an effective teacher and only work contract hours, or are the expectations too much to be dealt with during the hours of a normal work day? Do teachers need to behave as martyrs, sacrificing all aspects of personal time and self for a job?
And then I wondered: just how many hours ARE teachers working this year, compared to the pre-COVID days?
So I asked the experts: the teachers.
I got my sampling of answers from questions posted in teacher groups on Facebook. Some of these teachers are friends or former colleagues, and some I don’t know at all--they hail from all parts of the country, all grade levels, K-12, mostly public, with a few private and charter schools, too. Can this be counted as official data? Probably not. But 200 or so teachers responded to my question, “How many hours do you ACTUALLY work, before and during COVID?” And there were notable trends that emerged. For the sake of their privacy, all names that follow are pseudonyms.
Teachers are spending, on average, 10 hours more per week because of COVID. And it appears that for most, the hours they worked, pre-COVID, were already beyond contract hours of 40 hours per week.
Here’s a snapshot of what I learned:
Tom worked 43 hours a week before COVID as a math teacher. Now he works 55-56 hours per week, from 7am until 4:30 each day, with an additional eight hours on Saturday and five more on Sunday. He has a wife and school-aged children of his own.
Jim works a whopping 83 hours per week teaching science, working from 7am until 3:30 during each school day, and from 6pm until 11pm each night. The rest of the time occurs on the weekend. Pre-COVID, he worked 65 hours a week, he figures.
Francesca works 9-10 hours each day at her high school, teaching English, with another 2-3 hours on the weekend. Her work time has not changed much, and she attributes this to a highly supportive administration, that has allowed teachers as many hours as possible for personal work and planning time.
Jane works from 6:30am until 3pm each school day, also teaching high school English, with another two hours per night at home. On weekends, she tries to limit her work time to eight hours.
One teacher, Mike, after reviewing the comments from one thread, had this to say: “I feel bad for a lot of people on here. Hours of work at home daily? I get that, if it’s your first year or you’ve got new subjects. I get needing to grade too, but don’t you get planning periods? Are these mostly first year teachers?”
None of the four teachers whose hours I just shared with you are first year teachers. In fact, all of them have made it well past the five year fight-or-flight moment, where so many teachers leave the force. Each one has worked as a teacher for more than 10 years. I know these four teachers personally, and all of them are excellent teachers, well-seasoned veterans, who are proud of their craft.
So what’s going on here? How are these crazy hours possible?
In a year where so much was new, so much was still expected. Tamara, a middle school teacher with 25 years of experience, said, “I’ve primarily been teaching on a hybrid model this year. The prep work is crushing.” She said she worked about 42 hours a week last year--this year? 56 hours per week.
So there’s that: this year has been one of total change for many teachers. There are new tech tools and programs to learn, not to mention new modes of teaching, including remote, hybrid, and the juggling act that is teaching online students while simultaneously teaching students in-person. To say it’s a challenge is an understatement. And sometimes a lesson that a veteran teacher has used in the past, with manipulatives or perhaps done through cooperative learning in pairs or groups of four, has to be entirely upended and digitized, which is not a quick process. The saying “When you know better, do better” coined by Maya Angelou can cause great stress for veteran teachers this year, who may know better, but also know that to do it will take a lot of time they just don’t have.
There’s also the new load of digital communication, through email, chat, and office hours. Rather than being able to answer a student’s question in five seconds, a teacher now has an inbox chock-full of emails that demand a response--and that can be overwhelming and a total time-suck.
These days, with everything going online, it’s not so easy to turn it off when the work day should be over. Brenda said, “I’m constantly responding to student emails... there’s really no “off” switch. I know I could turn off notifications but then I would never keep up with the constant need to individualize everything I teach... it seems like part of meeting the emotional needs of students is letting them know they’re not alone.”
But it’s not only students who are suffering this year. Teachers are feeling it, too, in a variety of ways.
One teacher of 27 years, Paul, said, “[My wife] decided to be a teacher when she was 7. It is all she has ever wanted to do. Now she wants to get out of this abusive situation as soon as possible.” He explained that she’s been working more than 80 hours per week. Of the hours and efforts this year, he said, “It’s killing her.” In his view, it’s all been a ploy. “It is apparent that we have been playing the social benefit game where we do what is necessary to create the greatest good for society. It is apparent that the district, the state, and the federal powers that be have been playing the capitalist game where they extract as much labor as possible while giving as little as possible.”
Imagine being towards the end of your career and feeling this way about your life’s work. It’s incredibly hard to hear.
It’s not all gloom and doom, though. Some people hit the wall. And instead of continually ramming into it, they instead put the car in park.
A trend that was quite apparent was that many teachers, in the face of an impossible task and many asks this year, refused to work beyond contract.
Those teachers also seem much happier.
One middle school English teacher, Sarah, said, “[My hours are] 6:30-3 most days. Contract is 7-3. I rarely grade on the weekends or after work anymore, but I do grade during my lunch. I used to kill myself working 60 hours a week. Last year, I decided my family is more important than getting an essay or project graded super quickly.”
Brittany said her contract hours are from 7:30am-3:30pm. Her former reality of actual hours: “pre-covid - 6:30-5:30 plus about 10 weekend hours.” But now: “pandemic hours - contract hours only. However, I had a baby. I promised myself that once my husband and I had a kid, family would always come first.”
And some other respondents also spoke up, saying that they had changed their workaholic ways a few years prior to the pandemic, citing the desire to “avoid burnout” and life balance (said by Tim, a former workaholic, who routinely put in 60-70 hours per week at his high school English job).
Tanya, a veteran teacher, said, “I had to prioritize my own mental health, raise my own children and be a present wife- a partner. Loving teaching does not mean that you have to divorce yourself from everything and anyone else. It took me a long time to realize that this job is how I make a living and a PART of my life, not my whole life. I am much happier because of this.”
But in a career like teaching where so many go into it as a calling and not for the money (who does?), it can be hard to draw that line in the sand between personal time and work.
But still, those who said they refused to work beyond contract hours were in the minority.
Many community members point to summers off as the reason why teachers should expect, perhaps, to spend a few extra hours at work during the school year.
In March of 2008, a study called “Teachers’ Work Patterns” was published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The findings in this report were based on the American Time Use Survey, and while some of the results align with common thoughts on teacher time, such as teachers working less in June, July, and August, other findings diverge from the norm.
Something that will come as no surprise to most teachers is the finding that “Fifty-one percent of teachers worked on an average Sunday, compared with 30 percent of other full-time professionals” (Krantz-Kent 53), a statistic that aligns with my own inquiry. However, aside from that, the report seemed to suggest that teachers work less than most other professions, on average, and spend more time on “household activities—such as housework, cooking, lawn care, or financial and other household management” (Krantz-Kent 58). Still, the report did acknowledge that teachers tend to hold a second job more often than other professionals, with 17% of all teachers polled responding that they had a second form of income from other work (Krantz-Kent 58).
So, I wondered, were my results a fluke? Were the people who responded mostly workaholics in the minority? Do teachers work more than other professions or not?
According to the Brookings Report, “During the school year, [West’s] calculations [based on the ATUS] show that teachers work 39.8 hours per week while nonteachers work 41.5 hours. During the summer, teachers do work noticeably fewer hours. West reports that teachers work 21.5 hours per week during the summer” (Startz).
But there’s an issue right there: teachers are not paid to work during the summer. These are in fact, unpaid hours.
One teacher’s solution to not putting in overtime during the school year is to plan it all out during the summer. Anita said, “I have two small kids. I teach with systems and structures so that units are often repeated throughout the year. Lots of student choice so I’m not always writing curriculum. And I work through the summer so that most of my planning is done for the year by the time school starts in September.”
But here’s the rub: over the summer, she is putting in three hours a day, which is unpaid time.
Another teacher, Rebecca, said: “One thing that I also want to point out is that people always complain that teachers ‘get the summers off’. We don’t. We are per diem salaried employees who are only contracted for around 185 days. Most teachers pay is spread out over 12 months, but we aren’t being paid when we are ‘off.’”
That raises another question--should teachers be working for free, then, during their personal time? Or should they hold to contract hours? Or is it possible that teachers are working harder, not smarter?
A synopsis of a report published in Scholastic called Primary Sources: America’s Teachers on the Teaching Profession by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation appears to entirely upend the findings of the ATUS. This report attests that teachers spend, on average, 90 minutes extra per day beyond contract time, plus an additional 95 minutes at home, “grading, preparing classroom activities, and doing other job-related tasks.” 10,000 teachers across all 50 states were polled, which makes these figures appear more salient.
Some of the teachers who responded to my question offered a few tips on what they do to try to make it work. Through experience, they have learned some ways to streamline their use of time, and to cut down on their extracurricular work hours. They reached out and offered ideas and advice to try to help because that’s what teachers do.
Here’s the thing, teacher friends: no one wants to lose you. There are rumors flying around that anywhere from 20% to 30% of existing teachers plan on either quitting or retiring at the end of this year.
That’s terrible news for your students. Think of all of your talents and years of experience gone to waste. No one can do it like you can—and you know it. Ask any teacher, and they’ll tell you: you can’t just get any bum off the street and throw them in a classroom and expect them to survive. Trust me, I’ve seen first-year inexperienced teachers locked in their own closet by their students on day one and a former cop crying after school because he was almost done showing a movie and he didn't know what to do next. Not everyone can do what we do.
While there’s no doubt that this phase, this year of teaching has to been one of the hardest ever, that doesn’t mean you have to kill yourself. Here are a few tips on how to save yourself some time, straight from the experts: teachers.
Clearly, the amount of hours worked by teachers has expanded this year like a waistline during a pandemic. And no, these ideas above won’t make it so your work hours fit neatly into a 7-3 box, tied up with a ribbon. But it’s a start. And we all know that ultimately, you’re no good to your students if you burn out or if you leave the profession because you can’t strike a balance between work and life. As Tanya said, teaching is a part of her life, not her whole life.
Don’t let your teaching job consume you. Instead of holding to “When you know better, do better,” think to yourself: “I am how I spend my time” and try to make some changes. Draw the line where you can between work and your personal life so that you will be happier--as a teacher, and as a human being.
Cindy Shapiro is long-time teacher living in Colorado. She is the founder of Teacher Says, a budding podcast and website designed with the idea in mind of listening to and raising up teachers' voices. She has two school-aged children. Her book, For the Love of (Remote) Teaching is available on Amazon for Kindle. | <urn:uuid:d95d89f6-a5a0-4d39-a1f2-72f5638b9677> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://www.teachersays.org/blog | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571538.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812014923-20220812044923-00473.warc.gz | en | 0.974102 | 22,528 | 2.171875 | 2 |
Current Affairs -- as given by competition master.com March 2012
Union Cabinet okays national cold chain centerOn February 9, 2012, the Union Cabinet cleared the notification of National Center for Cold Chain Development (NCCD), tasked with establishing infrastructure and logistics to preserve fruit, vegetables and other perishable items as a registered society. The society will be a public-private initiative involving two leading industry chambers as well.
India is the second largest producer of horticulture commodities such as fruits, vegetables and flowers in the world. But a significant part of that goes waste due to lack of cold chain facilities.
Some 71.5 million tonnes of fruit, 133.7 million tonnes of vegetables and 17.8 million tonnes of other perishable commodities like flowers, spices, coconut, cashew, mushroom and honey are produced annually.
The NCCD will be mandated with prescribing technical standards for cold chain infrastructure and undertaking their periodic revision, besides human resource development programmes for meeting the needs of skilled manpower of the cold chain sector.
Now a green revolution in the east
The eastern region of India, which occasionally hits the headlines for starvation deaths, has turned into a food surplus-zone, thanks to a special programme launched in 2010-11 to boost productivity in the area.
“Bringing green revolution in eastern India programme” (BGREI), has resulted in a robust increase in foodgrains production. Rice production from the region is estimated at 562.6 lakh tones, an increase of 19.8% over 2010-11. The increase across the country is estimated at 7%. Overall foodgrain production from the region is estimated at 1,032 lakh tonnes, an increase of 11.9% against an all India increase of 2.2%.
The programme was an initiative taken by the Prime Minster, based on the recommendations of Inter Ministerial Task Force. The BGREI is a part of the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojna (RKVYJ ) programme with an outlay of Rs 400 crore. This scheme was implemented in Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, eastern Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
The programme gained momentum in 2011-12 with the focus on rice and wheat and strategic interventions relating to crop production, water harvesting and recycling, asset building and site specific activities needed for improving the agronomy-adopting cluster approach aimed at enhancing the productivity per unit area and the income of the farmers, the statement said.
State of forest report
India recorded a net loss of 367 sq km of forests between 2009 and 2011, with Khammam district in Andhra Pradesh alone losing 182 sq km of green cover in the period, the latest state of forest report has found.
The report is prepared biennially by the Forest Survey of India, the Dehradun-based wing of the Union environment and forests ministry.
The loss in Andhra Pradesh has been attributed to Left-wing extremists chopping off forests illegally, and the paper pulp industry harvesting old eucalyptus plantations in Khammam.
Khammam had also recorded a 56% loss of forests between 2007 and 2009, as per the ministry’s reports. This reduction too had been apportioned to the cutting of plantations by the government in 2009.
The explanation blaming loss of green cover on Naxals was also odd, considering Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, which currently witness a far stronger presence of Left-wing extremists, have either seen growth or stagnation of their forest cover. In Chhattisgarh,a net loss of 4 sq km of forests was recorded, while Jharkhand saw a net gain of 83 sq km.
India hopes to be polio-free by 2014
India is inching closer to the goal of polio eradication and hopes to be free of the deadly viral infection by 2014. In fact, transmission is at an all-time low, making a strong case for WHO to consider taking India off the list of polio-endemic countries, which also include Pakistan, Nigeria and Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, government is likely to step up surveillance at airports to rule out chances of cases coming in from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria, where polio is endemic. Thus far, such surveillance is happening only in case of children entering India via rail or road.
Strategies to combat the virus were discussed at the two-day Polio Summit, held on February 25, 2012, in New Delhi. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh opened the summit, which was attended by health ministers of Pakistan and Nigeria.
The summit celebrated India’s huge polio success—of reduced infection cases, from two lakh annually in 1988 to zero in 2011. The last child who got wild polio virus 1 was Rukhsar from Howrah. Today, she is a motivator for UNICEF, going door to door, asking parents to get children for polio drops. Rukhsar, infected on January 13, 2011, had never received polio drops.
So far as India’s hopes of eradication go (for WHO's eradication status, nations must be able to remain polio-free for three consecutive years), they are real.
Environmental samples have been taken from sewage disposal sites in four migration hubs of India—Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Patna. This has been done to gauge presence of virus in the air.
In 2009, most Mumbai samples tested positive. But in 2011, all samples across four sites were negative. This means the virus is not circulating in the environment.
GDP growth forecast revised
India’s GDP growth is poised to fall to sub-7 per cent at 6.9 per cent, the lowest in three years with low investor confidence, high interest rates, governance deficit being cited as reasons for the slowdown.
The sub-7 per cent figure comes as compared to 8.4 per cent in 2009-10 and, in terms of sectoral break-up, the GDP growth is estimated at 2.5 per cent in agriculture, 3.9 per cent in manufacturing and 9.4 per cent in services sector.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said the main reason for decline in GDP growth was slowdown in industrial growth, in particular investment growth.
However, he exuded some hope and said there had been some encouraging signs in the recent weeks in business sentiment, Rupee exchange rate, moderation in headline inflation, possibility of a bumper Rabi crop, and continued strong performance of the services sector which should help in recovering the growth momentum.
Both consumption and investment demand slowed down in 2011-12, said CII in a statement, resulting in the slowest GDP growth in the past three years. Among sectors, the slowdown in industry is quite stark, with the manufacturing sector growing at an even lower rate than in 2008-09 when the global financial crisis first set in.
Millennium Development Goals: India lags far behind
Poverty has declined marginally in India, but the country shares the top position with Afghanistan for the largest number of hungry and malnourished people, and also for the largest number of children dying in infancy, in the Asia-Pacific region, indicating the poor health and nutrition status in Asia’s third-largest economy.
India’s failure to remove hunger, the first of the eight millennium development goals (MDGs), and the unlikelihood of achieving it by 2015, has been indicated by an assessment of regional progress towards the MDGs.
The report, “Accelerating equitable achievement of the MDGs: Closing the gaps in health and nutrition in Asia and the Pacific”, was jointly published by the United Nations Development Programme, the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and the Asian Development Bank.
The report has warned that the present rate of progress in the region as a whole was unlikely to meet MDGs related to eradicating hunger, reducing child mortality and improving maternal health, among others.
The report has suggested preparations for the second phase of MDGs, subsequent to the target year 2015, as it believes the present goals are unlikely to be achieved in the matter of hunger, water supply, infant survival and underweight babies in many countries, including India.
The region has reached the MDG of halving the incidence of poverty, reducing the proportion of people living on less than $1.25 per day from 50 to 22 per cent between 1990 and 2009.
The region has also achieved some other MDG indicators ahead of the target year 2015, including promoting gender equality in education, reducing HIV prevalence and stopping the spread of tuberculosis, increasing forest cover, reducing consumption of ozone depleting substances and halving the number of people without access to safe drinking water.
Pitroda panel report on Railway modernisation
The Pitroda panel on railway modernisation has said the organisation needs Rs 8.23 lakh crore over the next five years to give it a complete makeover. The Railways requires a gross budgetary support of Rs 2.5 lakh crore, which is around 30 per cent of the total finances needed to get it on par with global standards.
Besides pointing to the financial needs of the Railways, the report, which was handed over to Rail Minister Dinesh Trivedi on February 27, 2012, stresses on major overhauling of the signal system, tracks and locomotives.
The committee has also recommended a dividend waiver for the Railways to save the national transporter from collapse. Over five years, Rs 24,000 crore can be made available through waiver of dividend alone.
The Pitroda panel also suggested the sources from which the Railways could generate funds for its modernisation. For the total funding of Rs 8,22,671 crore, Rs 2,50,000 crore would come from Gross Budgetary Support, Rs 2,01,805 crore from internal generation, Rs 1,01,000 crore from leasing and borrowings, Rs 2,29,024 crore from public-private partnerships, Rs 24,000 crore from dividend rebate and Rs 16,842 crore from Road Safety Fund.
While suggesting a major technology upgrade, the committee said to ensure that the Railways do not have to look abroad for newer technology, special courses should be introduced at IITs and IIMs. Also, the existing training set-up should be reviewed and restructured. The panel also suggested that the Railway Board should be re-organised. It suggested the development of PPP models and policies to attract investment to augment core capabilities such as stations, high-speed lines, coach manufacturing, captive power generation and renewable energy projects. It also suggested establishing an Indian Institute of Railway Research with Centres of Excellence.
India, China joins hands to tackle sea piracy
Faced with persistent threats from pirates operating off the coast of Somalia, India and China have started cooperating with each other, roping in Japan to tackle piracy.
This is the first working relationship on the high seas between the Indian Navy and China’s People Liberation Army (Navy). The two armies have so far worked under an agreement to patrol land borders and also follow a protocol when faced with each other on the disputed Line of Actual Control.
Warships from India, China and Japan have been deployed independently. Their role is conducting independent anti-piracy patrols in the internationally recognised transit corridor—a 480 nautical mile (approx 890 km) long area in the Gulf of Aden. The 92-km wide corridor starts at the confluence of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden and extends eastwards towards the Arabian Sea.
The three have so far not been part of the Combined Task Force-151, essentially a NATO-led force for anti-piracy, and nor are they part of the Eunavfor, another grouping of European countries along similar lines. Merchant ship operators have been keen that nations like India, China and Japan, that are not part of the big groupings and operate independently, should cooperate among themselves as their standalone warships would then be of greater help in tackling piracy.
India has a warship on duty in the transit corridor since October 2008. China has two warships and a fleet tanker that replenishes supplies while the Japanese also have two warships along with a maritime reconnaissance plane based in Djibouti, close to Somalia.
To facilitate sharing of information, a counter-piracy platform exists and that is named Shared Awareness and De-confliction (SHADE). It meets on a quarterly basis at Bahrain and has a convoy coordination group that provides merchant ships with naval warship protection. All navies that send warships to escort merchant vessels are extended members of SHADE. Its primary aim is to ensure effective coordination and de-confliction of military resources and operations in combating piracy.
Visit of Prime Minister of Mauritius
Prime Minister of Mauritius Navinchandra Ramgoolam reached India on February 7, 2011, for a six-day official visit to ramp up bilateral economic and security ties. During his visit, several agreements in the field of economics and security were signed.
Supreme Court cancels 122 spectrum licences
In a huge embarrassment to the government and a jolt to the telecom sector, the Supreme Court, on February 2, 2012, cancelled 122 2G licences granted during the tenure of former Telecom Minister A Raja declaring it as “illegal” and blamed the government's flawed first-come-first-served policy.
In a second crucial verdict, the court refused to order a probe into the alleged role of Home Minister P. Chidambaram in the spectrum scam. It said the special CBI court that is holding trial against former Raja and others will decide as to whether the CBI should also investigate the alleged role of Chidambaram in spectrum pricing in 2008 when he was the Finance Minister.
In a separate 11-page order, the SC Bench rejected a plea for appointing a monitoring team for supervising the CBI probe in the 2G case. It said the CBI “has satisfactorily conducted the investigation” since the SC order on December 16, 2010. However, the apex court asked the Central Vigilance Commissioner (CVC) and the Senior Vigilance Commissioner to assist the SC for “effectively monitoring the further investigation of the case”. It directed the CBI, ED and I-T department to submit periodic status reports to the CVC for scrutiny.
The Bench directed the government to sell the licences and the 2G (second generation) spectrum afresh through auction within three months. The auction should be held on the basis of fresh recommendations from telecom regulator TRAI, the apex court said. It asked the regulator to come out with its recommendations based on the auction method followed for the sale of 3G spectrum within two months.
In the 85-page verdict written by Justice Singhvi, the court clarified that today’s cancellation of 122 licences embedded with the 2G spectrum “shall become operative after four months” by when the proposed auctions would have been through.
The apex court delivered the judgment on PILs filed by NGOs—Centre for PIL (CPIL), Lok Satta and Common Cause—and Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy.
The Bench held that Raja, who has since been arrested and charge-sheeted, went ahead and issued licences “rejecting” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s advice for “transparency and fairness” and “brushing aside” then Law Minister M. Veerappa Moily’s suggestion for leaving the pricing to an Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM).
Raja also “did not consult the Finance Minister (P. Chidambaram) or officers of the Finance Ministry” as he was “very much conscious of the fact that the Secretary, Finance, had objected to the allocation of 2G spectrum at rates fixed in 2001,” the court noted. Pointing out that Raja had also “arbitrarily” changed the cut-off dates for the receipt and consideration of applications for licences, the apex court noted that though this action “appears to be innocuous was actually intended to benefit some real estate companies that did not have any experience in dealing with telecom services and had made applications” just a day before the September 25, 2007 cut-off.
Further, the September 25 cut-off date decided by Raja on November 2, 2007 was not made public till January 20, 2008 and the first-come, first-served (FCFS) principle that was being followed since 2003 was changed by him at the last moment through a press release on January 10, 2008.
“This enabled some of the applicants, who had access either to the minister or officers of the DoT to get the bank drafts etc. prepared towards performance guarantee etc. of about Rs 1,600 crore,” the SC held.
“The manner in which the exercise for grant of Letters of Intent (LoIs) to the applicants was conducted leaves no room for doubt that everything was stage-managed to favour those who were able to know in advance change in the implementation of the FCFS principle,” the Bench noted.
The Bench imposed a cost of Rs 5 crore each on telecom companies Etisalat, Unitech and Tata Teleservices and Rs 50 lakh each on Loop, Estel, Allianz Infratech and Systema Shyam Teleservices for their involvement in the “wholly arbitrary and unconstitutional exercise”.
The SC accepted in principle Attorney General G.E. Vahanvati’s contention that the judiciary should exercise its power of review with “great care and circumspection” and avoid interfering with the policy decisions of the government in financial matters.
Merger norms in telecom sector eased
On February 15, 2012, the Union government came out with new broad guidelines for the telecom sector for spectrum management and licensing framework. From now, all future licences will be unified licences and allocation of spectrum will be delinked from the licences.
In a major advantage to old GSM operators, the government has said that all service providers would be allowed to hold higher spectrum of up to 10 MHz which would help them offer quality services.
Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) would now be easier. Merger up to 35 per cent market share of the resultant entity will be allowed through a simple, quick procedure. The market share would be determined based on total subscriber base of the merged entity and the AGR of the licencees.
The prescribed limit on spectrum assigned to a service provider will be 2x8 MHz (paired spectrum) for the GSM players for all service areas other than Delhi and Mumbai where it will be 2x10 MHz (paired spectrum).
The current prescribed limit is 6.2 MHz of GSM spectrum. However, the operators would be free to acquire additional frequency beyond the prescribed limit, in the open market, should there be an auction of spectrum, subject to the limits prescribed for merger of licences.
There will be uniform licence fee across all telcom licenses and service areas which will progressively be made equal to eight per cent of the adjusted gross revenue in two yearly set-ups starting from 2012-13. Licence fee is a levy paid by all operators as the annual fee.
The renewal of licence would be done for 10 years. It will not be an automatic continuance of the existing licence condition, including the quantum and the price of spectrum.
NCTC gets notified
On February 4, 2012, the Union government notified the setting up of the ambitious anti-terror body—National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC)—giving it power through an executive order to carry out operations, including arrest, search and seizure, as part of its mandate to be India’s main counter-terror agency. NCTC will become operational from March 1, 2012.
Coming up three weeks after the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) had approved the NCTC, the notification states that the specialized body will derive powers from the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), and towards that end it has been included among the agencies that are designated under the anti-terror law.
NCTC, a fallout of the national humiliation over the 26/11 attack on Mumbai, is supposed to collect and collate intelligence on terror groups and co-ordinate response to threats. Impediments to the exchange of information has been hampering the fight against terror, with crucial inputs often falling through the cracks caused by turf battles among agencies that prefer to work in silos. Aspiring to achieve seamless exchange of inputs, the notification mandates agencies to share their inputs with NCTC.
The NCTC will draw its functional power of search and seizures under the provisions of the UAPA that allows Central agencies such powers in terror-related case, while keeping State police concerned into the loop. It will be headed by a director who will have a core team comprising senior IPS officers, primarily from intelligence agencies.
Director of this anti-terror agency will have full functional autonomy. He will also have the power to seek terror-related information from any central agencies including intelligence units of the CBI, National Investigation Agency, NATGRID, National Technical Research Organization, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence and all seven central armed police forces including NSG.
Although the NCTC will work as an integral part of Intelligence Bureau and its director will report to the IB chief and the home minister/home secretary, it will have a focused counter-terrorism jobs, like similar specialized body works in other countries, including the US, the UK, Germany, France, Israel, Russia, China and Japan.
Compulsory retirement for government officers who do not perform
Deadwood in the Indian bureaucracy will not clog the government any longer. The Union government has notified a rule making it compulsory for IAS,IPS and officers from other all-India services to retire in public interest if they fail to clear a review after 15 years of service.
Officers adjudged as inefficient and non-performing will be shown the door. Even those who make the cut will face another review after 25 years of service or on turning 50, whichever happens first.
The measure is part of a package of administrative reforms fast-tracked by the government in the wake of Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption agitation. The clean-up act follows initiatives to ensure time-bound delivery of services and a citizens charter to list duties of various departments.
Along with the recent Supreme Court-mandated three-month deadline for the government to deal with a request to sanction prosecution and the court sanctifying a private citizens plea for prosecution, the compulsory review could instill some sense of responsibility in officialdom.
President of Maldives resigns following mutinyMutiny by sections of the police and the army on February 7, 2011, forced Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed to step down and hand over power to the Vice-President Mohamed Waheed Hassan.
Nasheed had been facing increasingly violent street protests and a constitutional crisis ever since he got a judge arrested on January 16, after accusing him of being ‘in the pocket’ of his predecessor Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who had ruled for 30 years before Nasheed was swept to power in 2008 as the first democratically elected President of Maldives.
Mohamed Nasheed was a former political prisoner who rose from grassroots activism and journalism.
Nasheed, who was educated in Sri Lanka and Britain, came to power after building a pro-democracy movement with local and foreign support in opposition to the 30-year autocratic rule of Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.
Gayoom, Asia’s longest-serving leader, ruled the holiday paradise unchallenged for three decades between 1978 and 2008 and repeatedly threw Nasheed in jail over a period of six years. Nasheed recounted once in a television interview that he spent 18 months in solitary confinement as his jailors tried to get him to confess to seeking to overthrow the State.
The media-savvy father of two daughters and holder of a degree in maritime engineering was at one point an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience. He formed his Maldivian Democratic Party in exile but then returned home to a hero’s welcome, sweeping 54% of the vote in the 2008 elections.
Nasheed had said after the election that he had forgiven his jailors, the torturers and that he wanted Gayoom to grow old in the Maldives, saying it was a test of our democracy how we treat the former dictator
Yemen vote ensures Saleh’s exit after 33 years
On February 21, 2012, Yemen ushered Ali Abdullah Saleh from power after 33 years, voting to endorse his deputy as President, with a mission to rescue the nation from poverty, chaos and the brink of civil war.
Vice-President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, the sole consensus candidate, billed the vote as a way to move on after months of protests against Saleh’s rule.
Five persons were killed in violence in Yemen’s south, where a secessionist movement is active, a reminder of the challenges Hadi will face in taming a nation where half of the population of 23 million owns a gun.
The vote makes Saleh the fourth Arab autocrat in a year to be removed from power, after revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. At stake is an economy left in shambles, where 42 per cent live on less than $2 per day and runaway inflation is driving up food and fuel prices.
Voters dipped their thumbs in ink and stamped their print on a ballot paper bearing a picture of Hadi and a map of Yemen in the colours of the rainbow. A high turnout was crucial to give Hadi the legitimacy he needs to carry out changes outlined in a US-backed power transfer deal brokered by Yemen’s Gulf neighbours, including the drafting of a new constitution, restructuring of armed forces and multi-party elections.
Athens burns as Greece meets conditions for Euro 130 bn rescue deal
On February 13, 2012, the Greek government came under pressure to convince sceptical European capitals that it would stick to the terms of a multi-billion euro rescue package endorsed by lawmakers during violent protests on the streets of Athens.
Greek Parliament backed drastic cuts in wages, pensions and jobs, on February 12, as the price of a 130-billion euro bailout by the European Union and International Monetary Fund.
However, running battles between police and rioters outside the Parliament drove home a sense of deepening crisis.
The EU welcomed the vote, but told Greece it had more to do to secure the funds and avoid a disorderly default that would have “devastating consequences”.
World Children Report, 2012
UNICEF’s Flagship State of the World Children Report 2012, says urbanisation is leaving billions of children in cities across the world excluded from vital services. More than 50 per cent of the world’s population today lives in urban areas. Of these, one billion are children, devoid of any semblance of decent living.
In India, 377 million live in the urban centers. Out of them, 97 million are urban poor (the lowest 25 per cent section) as per Census 2011 data. An estimated 535 million will live in towns by 2026. This would be 40 per cent of India’s population.
The differential between urban non poor and urban poor children is huge. For instance, more urban poor children below five are underweight than rural children in the same group. While 47 per cent urban poor kids are underweight, 46 per cent rural are underweight as against 33 per cent urban children.
There is a shocking, 13-point difference in the Infant Mortality Rates among urban non poor and urban poor children; 54 per cent more infants die in urban poor families.
That’s not all, 20 per cent more children are anaemic among urban poor than among the urban non poor and one in every two children among the urban poor is underweight.
Even on health services, the access of urban poor is shockingly low with one in two women managing safe deliveries and 6 in every 10 being anaemic (more than in rural areas).
Russia, China veto UN’s Syria resolution
On February 4, 2011, Russia and China joined forces in a double veto to knock down a Western-Arab U.N. Security Council resolution backing an Arab League plan for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step aside.
The other 13 council members voted in favour of the resolution, which would have said that the council “fully supports” the Arab League plan aimed at ending 11 months of bloodshed as Syria has sought to crush an anti-Assad uprising.
Dropping the usual diplomatic courtesies, US Ambassador Susan Rice said she was “disgusted” by the Russian and Chinese veto, adding that “any further bloodshed that flows will be on their (Russia’s and China’s) hands.”
This was the second time that permanent members Russia and China exercised a double veto on the Syria issue. In October 2011, they vetoed a European-drafted resolution condemning Syria and threatening it with possible sanctions.
Russia had complained that the draft resolution was an attempt at “regime change” in Syria, Moscow’s close ally and a key Russian weapons export destination.
NATO report rips open Pak double game in Afghanistan
Exposing the ISI’s “manipulation” of Taliban’s senior leadership and its “massive double game”, a damning NATO report says that the Pakistan government remains “intimately” involved with the Afghan-based terror group.
The report was leaked out on February 1, 2012, during the visit of Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar to Kabul.
The NATO report contains accusations that Pakistan is playing a massive double game with the West as it publicly claims to seek a political solution to the Afghan conflict, while still supporting fighters who have killed thousands of international troops.
Many of the reports most serious revelations concern the scale of support to the Taliban provided by Pakistan and the influence of ISI agency.
The report is based on material from 27,000 interrogations with more than 4,000 captured Taliban, Al-Qaida and other foreign fighters and civilians.
The report says that senior Taliban leaders regularly meet with ISI officers “who advise on strategy and relay any pertinent concerns of the Government of Pakistan”.
Current Affairs -- as given by competition master.com March 2012 Reviewed by sambasivan srinivasan on 10:30:00 PM Rating: | <urn:uuid:dca8a2ce-0afb-4ed2-9fe9-159917d0f497> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.sbank.in/2012/03/current-affairs-as-given-by-competition.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281746.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00291-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954896 | 6,328 | 2.46875 | 2 |
By the Numbers
Wind Farm & Wind Turbines in Benton County, Indiana
To date; 560 Turbines, 988 Megawatts (MW)
Benton County Wind Farms at a Glance:
- Orion Energy Group LLC
- BP Alternative Energy
- EDF Renewable Energy
- Patton Energy
Additional phases of wind farms are under construction & consideration with existing wind farms in White County, Warren County, and others proposed in Clinton County and Tippecanoe County, we offer specialized help in the buying and selling of farmland with wind turbines.
White County, Indiana | Meadow Lake Wind Farm
The farmland in White County with wind turbines is quite the site, particularly at night when the red lights flash in unison. The tillable agricultural acres of land allow landowners to earn revenue annually from wind farm payments and still cash rent the farms or farm the land themselves.
Vermilion County, Illinois Farms with Wind Turbines
When complete, the Ivenergy & Apex Clean Energy Wind farm in Central Illinois will have over 130+ wind turbines on Illinois farmland near Hoopeston, Illinois. aka California Ridge Wind energy farm. | <urn:uuid:b3c0cb88-f1b3-4a31-8f42-e886870201d5> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://edgeswein.com/farms-for-sale-wind-turbines/?s= | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572033.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814113403-20220814143403-00276.warc.gz | en | 0.86913 | 235 | 1.585938 | 2 |
The Coalition for Elimination of AIDS-related Stigma (CEAS) was a group of professionals, community leaders, concerned individuals and organizations that came together in 2009 to focus efforts to eliminate the stigma associated with HIV. Stigma prevents individuals from getting tested for HIV, seeking medical care, disclosing diagnosis to loved ones, and adhering to treatment and follow up. Stigma has become a major reason why the HIV epidemic continues. We have changed our name to the Howard University Stigma Project and have expanded our efforts to address other related stigma as well, such as mental illness. Through our conference and related efforts we plan to measure the burden of stigma, test the effectiveness of intervention mechanisms, implement appropriate strategies and determine their effect over time. Our goal is to create a comprehensive Center for Social Justice in Healthcare for research, education and advocacy to fight stigma. | <urn:uuid:a567ff43-1c87-47e5-98fc-201aae40c4f8> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.whocanyoutell.org/about-ceas/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571056.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809155137-20220809185137-00665.warc.gz | en | 0.952287 | 172 | 2.296875 | 2 |
It was even more strange for me because often our conversations would be relatively honest and about somewhat personal topics (not just the weather, what cities we'd been to etc) which, in my experience, you only broach when you really want to discuss such things and feel a connection with a person, but, apart from a few people there was still always that feeling that people were just being polite and basically waiting for you to excuse them. YMMV.
In the US, people are casually friendly, but not always polite. In France, politeness manifests as respectful words and actions, consistently. It doesn't hurt that formal politeness is part of the French culture. It's 'hi, how are you?' vs 'good day, sir', because most of the time the 'how are you' is not really a question, but an expression of friendliness.
There is also a fairly clear boundary between acquaintances, friends, and 'BFFs' in France. That boundary is not always clear in the US. It's not as formal as in Germany, where there is a sort of ceremony when two people want to recognize a stronger friendship. In France people (in my social circle, anyway) just switch from formal ('vous') to familiar ('tu'). I've been told that some people have a little discussion about it before switching, but I've never seen that.
You couldn't possible have 20 "przyjaciel"s and spend enough time with them to keep the relationship alive. Same with BFFs. You can easily have 50 "kumpel"s and same with friends.
Keeping this mistranslation in mind I think European (or at least Polish) culture isn't much different from American regarding friendship.
I was mainly referring to the convenience/activity/mentor friends described in the article.
Why should one need a reason to be friendly? Would you rather people be curt and standoffish by default?
Politeness norms. For whatever reason, in the US, there's a certain base line expectation of cheeriness. Especially in service staff like waiters or flight attendants. ("Hi, welcome to McTuckey's. My name's Megan and I'll be taking care of you tonight.")
In my mind, those folks are classified as "acquaintances", not friends. These are folks you might be friendly to, but if you are not willing to, say, take them to the hospital because they are injured, or take them in because they are on the run and someone is after them, are they really friends? | <urn:uuid:67db5117-0b11-4f51-8473-427a0d05012f> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7632185 | 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 | 0.978428 | 526 | 1.820313 | 2 |
The market has been white hot to start 2020, which is causing investors to wonder when the extended rally will eventually run out of steam vis-à-vis the Dot.com bust in the late 1990s to early 2000s. Billionaire Mark Cuban, who made a fortune during that same timeframe, said the market environment was different.
“Interest rates were a lot different back then,” Cuban said on an episode of CNBC’s “Fast Money Halftime Report.” “And you saw a lot more people participating in the market. … You don’t see that now. That individual day trading really led the market to be frothy.”
Additionally, the Dot.com bust was also rife with day traders looking to make a quick buck with the rise of the internet and the ability to trade stocks online. Nowadays, however, its passive index funds that are doing the majority of the buying and selling.
“There’s so much money chasing index funds, so as long as those funds keep on growing the market is going to go up,” said Cuban.
So moving forward, Cuban feels interest rates will be the prime determinant of where the market will head.
“So that money is going to continue to flow into our equities, our market,” Cuban said. “I think interest rates will tell us what’s going to happen next in the market. Is it frothy? You can definitely make that argument. Is it like 1999? No.”
Trading Strength in U.S. Equities
The current environment creates an opportunity for investors to capitalize on the Direxion FTSE Russell US Over International ETF (NYSEArca: RWUI).
Seeks investment results, before fees and expenses, that track the Russell 1000®/FTSE All-World ex-US 150/50 Net Spread Index (the “index”).
The fund, under normal circumstances, invests at least 80% of its net assets (plus borrowing for investment purposes) in securities that comprise the Long Component of the index or shares of ETFs on the Long Component of the index.
The index measures the performance of a portfolio that has 150% long exposure to the Russell 1000® Index (the “Long Component”) and 50% short exposure to the FTSE All-World ex-US Index (the “Short Component”).
Investors looking to play the other side can use the Direxion FTSE International Over US ETF (NYSEArca: RWIU) to capitalize on international equities will outdoing U.S. equities. RWIU seeks investment results, before fees and expenses, that track the FTSE All-World ex US/Russell 1000 150/50 Net Spread Index, which measures the performance of a portfolio that has 150 percent long exposure to the FTSE All-World ex US Index and 50 percent short exposure to the Russell 1000® Index.
For more market trends, visit ETF Trends. | <urn:uuid:bfd6ef10-a637-472b-92c3-389dc1213518> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.etftrends.com/relative-value-channel/mark-cubans-take-on-whether-u-s-equities-are-running-out-of-steam/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571150.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810070501-20220810100501-00673.warc.gz | en | 0.942848 | 635 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Why homemade giftsare better than store-bought presents
A homemade gift is a thoughtful gift. It shows the recipient that you have put some real effort into making it instead of picking up something off the shelf. Anyone can do that!
But it takes a special person to devote their time to creating a unique gift, so this Christmas be that special person and show how much you care.
Homemade gifts are better for several other reasons. They can be perfect, and different,for the person who has everything. You can be in charge of the quality of the gift rather than giving something that will fall apart as soon as someone utters the words “the warranty expired yesterday”. You can personalise a homemade gift with someone’s name, favourite colour or similar theme. A homemade gift is unique; there’s nothing quite like it anywhere in the world.And, if you want to get all practical, a homemade gift is usually less expensive. Whatever reason you have for presenting a homemade gift, the recipient will love you for it. We’ll love you for it. The world will love you for it.
Ok, enough soppy stuff. Now we have to actually work out what sort of homemade gift you can give. Look to your strengths. Are you a good cook? Bake their favourite cake, or bottle some of their much-loved preserves.Give them a voucher stating that you’ll cook their dream meal on request. Food is always a winner, so you can’t go wrong with a gourmet gift.
Are you the handy type? Make a personalised photo frame, or ornament, or something that will come in useful around the home. Or, offer to do some work around the house for the lucky recipient. Maybe fix something that has long needed repair. Or paint a flaky, old fence. That sort of gift would be appreciated beyond belief!
Do you sew? Do you knit? Do you write poetry? Do you paint landscapes? Again. It’s all about looking to your strengths and using your own skills in the gift you create. Sharing your talent in the form of a homemade present will have enduring sentimental value.
While we’re talking about homemade things, MLC Group sells a cool range of Kids Kitset projects which will introduce your children to the idea of making something special by hand. Be it a birdhouse, a toolbox, a planter box or a treasure chest, your children will discover that putting something together by hand can be incredibly rewarding, even more so when they present it to someone suitably deserving. They’re never too young to learn about the joy that homemade or handmade things can bring to giver and recipient.
There is every reason to make it a very happy and homemade Christmas! Practical reasons to sentimental reasons, a gift you’ve made yourself will always be better than something you’ve bought with little thought or effort. So, do some DIY gift giving and we’ll all love you for it! | <urn:uuid:d291b377-3ca5-40a9-bba8-3b38c0840a3b> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.genia.co.nz/blog/why-homemade-giftsare-better-than-store-bought-presents/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572212.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815205848-20220815235848-00471.warc.gz | en | 0.937554 | 625 | 1.9375 | 2 |
Humor: Employment slogans
A little humor for Friday
One of my good friends "down South" sent me a humorous e-mail today.
- If you do a good job and work hard, you may get a job with a better company someday.
- The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off due to budget cuts.
- Sure, you may not like working here, but we pay your rent.
- Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings -- they did it by killing all those who opposed them.
- A person who smiles in the face of adversity probably has a scapegoat.
- If at first you don't succeed -- try management.
- Never put off until tomorrow what you can avoid altogether.
- Never quit until you have another job.
- Hang in there: Retirement is only 30 years away!
- Go the extra mile--It makes your boss look like an incompetent slacker.
- Pride, commitment, teamwork--words we use to get you to work for free.
- Work: It isn't just for sleeping anymore.
- There are two kinds of people in life: people who like their jobs, and people who don't work here anymore.
If you liked these, a related post about Management Jokes was posted a couple weeks ago. | <urn:uuid:bdd9a48e-bffd-488f-acc0-5bc903e473a9> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.danylkoweb.com/Blog/humor-employment-slogans-54 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988721355.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183841-00013-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960004 | 274 | 1.546875 | 2 |
“Breaking the Mental Chains of Black Teenagers” Motivates At-Risk Students
As the author of Breaking the Mental Chains of Black Teenagers, Baker believed his book could positively change the mindsets of at-risk black students. He was proven correct when Ms. Braxton agreed to conduct a chapter by chapter discussion over a four-week period with her class. The topics covered sparked insightful classroom discussions about life choices and dispelled myths about getting rich quick, education not being important, and the fantasy of prison life that many black youth are accepting as reality.
“The growth in my classroom was amazing and continuous! Some students didn’t want to speak or get involve at first, but after reading the first couple of chapters they wanted to participate in the session and discuss the material after class. The rich conversation was the best to me,” said Ms. Braxton, an 8th-grade teacher in Maryland.
Breaking the Mental Chains of Black Teenagers teaches teens how to be leaders, how to be successful in any field, and how to build confidence. The book begins by establishing a positive self-identity for teenagers and reveals proven historical facts, including scientific discoveries such as math that were made by blacks.
“They were utilizing their metacognitive thought processes,” Braxton said of her students. “Yaba became a quick favorite in my class. The children were thirsting for more information and waited eagerly for his arrival every week. There were a number of students who also took it upon themselves to extend their newfound information by doing their own research to learn more about what they read. I would definitely recommend this book to other teachers to use in their classrooms because knowledge is power. This book equips students with knowledge that they would have never known otherwise and that knowledge builds their self-esteem because they know and understand that they come from a people that are way beyond the stereotypes they are accustomed to.”
The class read two or three chapters from the book for each weekly session.
Roxana, a Latino student, feels the book is bigger than the title. “Don’t get discouraged about the title of the book, even if you’re not black, still read it. I’m Latina, don’t feel strange about reading the book. It’s a very good book and you can learn many important things that can be applied to your life for a better future.”
Baker’s passion extends beyond the classroom, and his inspiring and motivating discussions have impacted thousands of teens. His previously written books have received media attention from BET, CBS News, Upscale magazine and other media outlets. | <urn:uuid:60aec8e3-c944-474f-a5c6-6d25171034e8> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://tricountysentry.com/blog/breaking-the-mental-chains-of-black-teenagers-motivates-at-risk-students/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280791.35/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00356-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977413 | 556 | 3.21875 | 3 |
Scientists find Antarctic worm that survives cold with an antifreeze systemFebruary 10th, 2009 - 4:43 pm ICT by ANI
Washington, Feb 10 (ANI): Two researchers have reported the sighting of a worm in Antarctica that withstands its cold climate by cranking out antifreeze and can even go into suspended animation when it runs out of water.
The researchers, from Brigham Young University, in US, Byron Adams, associate professor of molecular biology, and his Ph.D. student Bishwo Adhikari.
They spent Christmas near the South Pole to help determine how the fate of a half-millimeter worm can actually impact an entire ecosystem, and how that information can serve as an important baseline for understanding climate changes impact on more complex systems.
Their latest study used samples Adams gathered during previous trips to the worlds most inhospitable continent.
The researchers have done an analysis of the genes of their latest subject, a species of nematode that lives in wetter areas of Antarcticas interior. Until Adhikari sequenced its genes, nobody knew that it had developed an antifreeze system.
I was really surprised - the antifreeze gene is not like anything in other nematodes, he said.
When its notoriously dry home runs out of water, the worm just dries itself out and goes into suspended animation until liquid water brings it back to life.
When water inside a living thing freezes, ice crystals pierce cell walls and kill them. Thats what causes frostbite.
It turns out that the worm creates a protein that probably prevents the ice from forming sharp crystals or coats them so they dont puncture anything.
The new research also reports the genes that the worm uses to put its life on pause when ground water dries up.
According to Adams, this particular species unique genetic response to its environment means it is likely going to flourish as Antarctica gets wetter, while other nematode species diminish.
Thats how this molecular-level research ties back into predicting how the composition and distribution of soil species will change in response to climate change.
Understanding how the soil functions independent of plants allows us a baseline that we can later add plants to, Adams explained.
These are rudimentary first steps. The long-term goal is to be able to extend our findings to more complex ecosystems, particularly managed ecosystems, he added. (ANI)
Tags: antifreeze, antifreeze gene, brigham young, brigham young university, cell walls, climate changes, cold climate, complex systems, frostbite, genetic response, ground water, liquid water, millimeter, molecular biology, nematode species, nematodes, research ties, south pole, water dries, wetter areas | <urn:uuid:2a2e1c57-3e3a-4ba1-b185-b1c410f263c8> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/health/scientists-find-antarctic-worm-that-survives-cold-with-an-antifreeze-system_100153357.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988720153.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183840-00323-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918288 | 570 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Because enzymes are not consumed in the reactions they catalyze and can be used over and over again, only a very small quantity of an enzyme is needed to catalyze a reaction. A typical enzyme molecule can convert 1,000 substrate molecules per second. The rate of an enzymatic reaction increases with increased substrate concentration, reaching maximum velocity when all active sites of the enzyme molecules are engaged. The enzyme is then said to be saturated, the rate of the reaction being determined by the speed at which the active sites can convert substrate to product.
Enzyme activity can be inhibited in various ways. Competitive inhibition occurs when molecules very similar to the substrate molecules bind to the active site and prevent binding of the actual substrate. Penicillin, for example, is a competitive inhibitor that blocks the active site of an enzyme that many bacteria use to construct their cell walls.
Noncompetitive inhibition occurs when an inhibitor binds to the enzyme at a location other than the active site. In some cases of noncompetitive inhibition, the inhibitor is thought to bind to the enzyme in such a way as to physically block the normal active site. In other instances, the binding of the inhibitor is believed to change the shape of the enzyme molecule, thereby deforming its active site and preventing it from reacting with its substrate. This latter type of noncompetitive inhibition is called allosteric inhibition; the place where the inhibitor binds to the enzyme is called the allosteric site. Frequently, an end-product of a metabolic pathway serves as an allosteric inhibitor on an earlier enzyme of the pathway. This inhibition of an enzyme by a product of its pathway is a form of negative feedback.
Allosteric control can involve stimulation of enzyme action as well as inhibition. An activator molecule can be bound to an allosteric site and induce a reaction at the active site by changing its shape to fit a substrate that could not induce the change by itself. Common activators include hormones and the products of earlier enzymatic reactions. Allosteric stimulation and inhibition allow production of energy and materials by the cell when they are needed and inhibit production when the supply is adequate. | <urn:uuid:637f53ef-0545-48e1-a636-56ea6dc2190d> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.britannica.com/science/enzyme/Factors-affecting-enzyme-activity | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573197.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20220818124424-20220818154424-00675.warc.gz | en | 0.960342 | 430 | 3.890625 | 4 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Technology transfer is the process of transferring new knowledge and technology developed at the CSIR to third parties who can realise value from them by making them available to the market and society, for commercial gain and/or social good. Technology transfer presents an opportunity to improve South Africa’s industrial and commercial competitiveness, create employment, serve society and enhance quality of life.
A company or entrepreneur who is interested in licensing a CSIR technology should contact the CSIR Licensing & Ventures office, or the relevant R&D Outcomes Manager in the unit of interest. We will then be able to provide the potential licensee with information about the technology; where necessary under a Non-Disclosure Agreement. Once it has been established that a licensing agreement could be mutually beneficial to the parties, licence negotiations will begin in earnest – the first milestone being a non-binding term sheet.
A further evaluation period may be required by one or both parties – due diligence of the potential licensee by the CSIR; evaluation of the technology by the potential licensee for a set period of time to determine its viability and value to the company and so forth. The CSIR may charge a fee for granting the company the right to exercise their option to license the technology after expiry of the option period.
The CSIR has to obtain the necessary approvals at CSIR Executive level (in accordance with the CSIR Approval Framework) before a licence agreement can be signed and executed.
The CSIR typically negotiates an upfront licence fee, milestone payments and royalties. Each deal is structured and negotiated for that particular opportunity. The CSIR is driven by the goal to amplify use, uptake and the socio-economic impact of public sector R&D rather than purely financial returns.
The CSIR Commercialisation Framework serves as a guideline on how we prefer to commercialise. However, every single transaction / deal is different and the terms and conditions will vary depending on the technology being licensed. You are welcome to contact us to discuss specific opportunities in more detail.
A key decision is whether to license a technology on an exclusive or non-exclusive basis. Where technology is licensed at an early (embryonic) stage, requiring further investment from a licensee to develop a market-ready product (which is frequently the case with CSIR technologies), exclusive rights might be required to induce the licensee to dedicate resources, time and effort to commercialise the technology.
However, where feasible, non-exclusive licensing is promoted as a preferred option (which might typically be in the case of a ‘ready-to-use’ or ‘off-the-shelf’ technology), as this could facilitate wider use of the technology.
At the CSIR, we assess which mechanism is likely to be most effective in bringing the technology to market and which will best promote the use of the technology in the public interest, on a case-by-case basis. Where exclusive licences are granted, this is generally on the condition that the licensee undertakes to practise the licensed invention diligently, encouraged through the inclusion of contractual terms such as minimum payments, loss of exclusivity and achievement of milestones. By delineating specific fields of use or territories in an exclusive licence agreement, we are also able to increase the licensing opportunities overall.
Successful technology transfer contributes towards:
- Creating sustainable technology-based jobs in the South African economy.
- Promoting economic development and the competitiveness of the South African industry.
- Generating a return on the CSIR’s R&D investment which can be ploughed back into further R&D, and benefit incentives for inventors.
The CSIR’s measures of technology transfer success include:
- Number of licence agreements executed
- Number of new companies formed
- Revenue from licence fees/royalties and equity investments
These include invention/technology disclosures, protecting the invention/technology (by e.g. patents and trademarks), valuation of the technology/invention, publication of scientific research findings, and licensing the rights to inventions and/or technologies to industry to convert these into products and services that become readily available to the market. | <urn:uuid:d447adb0-ddb8-4fcd-b0ab-ce064df152a7> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://wwwprod.csir.co.za/node/2271 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280483.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00292-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931551 | 842 | 1.960938 | 2 |
Questions Answered: Canning Meat Sauces
With the canning season beginning and (nearly) two jars of tomato sauce under our belts (note that jar #2 is not quite so full as jar #1), I got curious about meat sauces. Aside from the type of canned food I’d generally stay away from, you don’t often see pasta sauces with meat in the grocery aisle. If we’re using a pre-made sauce, most of us are adding meat at home. With that in mind, I began to wonder what sort of conditions one would need to can a home-made meat sauce: would it be much different from the process of canning vegetarian tomato sauce? I asked this question of the canning expert of the moment over at Apartment Therapy’s The Kitchn. Marisa McClellan, author of Food in Jars, gave her answer.
It’s actually a very different process. The reason we’re able to can fruits and some vegetables in nothing more than a boiling water canner is that they are high acid foods…. However, meat is a low acid food, which is the ideal environment for botulism. Because of this, low acid foods need to be processed in a pressure canner.
Read her full explanation here. | <urn:uuid:48aa021a-7de1-4de2-b6d7-7853a12c2a3f> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://marthaandtom.com/2009/09/questions-answered-canning-meat-sauces/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571147.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810040253-20220810070253-00476.warc.gz | en | 0.964372 | 270 | 2 | 2 |
Sociological Ideas of Ivan Illich
IN the recent years the raison-d'etre of industrial growth has come to be increasingly questioned. Broadly this criticism runs along two lines. First, technology has created a vicious circle of demand and growth.1 Second, technology has reached a stage where a product is not only alienated from the worker but, more importantly, from its many more consumers as well. A technology cannot get grafted to a culture unless it were the appropriate technology for that culture. Technology must obviously grow into a form that permits man to use his tools as a natural extension of his faculties; in other words to let him live in harmony with machines and not be tyrannised by them. This is essentially the same idea as put forward by Marx earlier.
The Mexican sociologist, Ivan Illich2 is one of the leaders of the movement for a critical assessment of various aspects of the relationship between man and his tools. Illich in his study uses a very broad definition of tools, in which he not only includes various artifacts and machines but also productive institutions such as factories that make tangible commodities such as cars or electric current, and productive systems for intangible commodities such as those which turn out "education", "health", "knowledge", or "decisions." In this article we briefly examine Illich's theories in regard to their logical basis and their relevance to the Indian situation.
The overall design of Illlch's inquiry has been described by him as a 'critical research on the monopoly of the industrial mode of production9 and definition of 'conceptually alternative modes that would fit a post-industrial age.5 The study is concerned essentially with the American situation, so this section must be examined with this limitation in view. However Illich claims to have abstracted some universal laws from this particular experience.
During the late sixties Illich examined a particular mode of production, namely the educational system, producing the commodity, education. The results, published as a book3, pointed out the following many shortcomings of the present schooling system: it conditions the students, its curriculum is obligatory, it is oriented towaid credentials, it groups | <urn:uuid:43308133-1673-4b17-9ba8-24f1a5a3cc4d> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://dsal.uchicago.edu/books/socialscientist/text.html?objectid=HN681.S597_23_061.gif | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281574.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00015-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975835 | 434 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Aanvi is a full-time mom and part-time healthcare worker. She's glad to be able to share her well-researched articles.
Love Indian Food?
Passing by an Indian restaurant mesmerized by the aroma of Indian food makes many of us want to attempt a home-cooked Indian meal. The freshness of the ingredients used and the aroma from the spices come together to create some of the most delicious dishes in the world. Indian food is known to be one of the most popular foods around the globe.
However, it can be a bit intimidating as sometimes there are so many ingredients, including spices, that are combined to create an authentic Indian meal. But before you put away the thought of ever cooking an authentic Indian meal, it's important to understand what an authentic Indian meal consists of and that it is not as complicated as it seems.
Variations in Indian Cooking
Although you will find certain variations in the types of foods and spices used throughout the Indian Sub-Continent and the Indian restaurants you eat in, the general concept of an Indian Meal remains consistent in most regions.
Some exceptions include, the southern regions of India which serve battered and fermented rice dishes as oppose to the bread. However the concept of vegetables curries/meat curries and lentil soups along with condiments remains the same.
Indian Food Is A Luxury On Tour !
- Mahesh Bhupati
Typical Foods Served in An Authentic Indian Vegetarian Meal
Choice of Vegetable curries.
Normally, there is a choice of at least two Sabjis.
Naan, Paratha or Chapathi
Fresh buttered bread
Served hot with the vegetables.
Chawal, Vari, Pulao, Biryani
White rice or spicy rice
Served on the side with other foods.
Crunchy, crispy, round (like a tortilla)
Served as an appetizer in restaurants.
Achar or Avakaya
Served as a "salsa" for more added flavor and spicyness
General Spices Used In Indian Meals
The Recipe for An Authentic Indian Meal
Spicy French Beans, Chana Masala, with Paratha
|Cook time||Ready in||Yields|
For Spicy French Style Beans (1st vegetable):
- 1-2 cans french style beans, Washed and Drained
- 2 Tablespoons oil
- 1 Tablespoon mustard seeds
- 1 Tablespoon chili powder, `
- 1 Tablespoon tumeric powder
- 1 Teaspoon Each coriander power, cumin power, garam masala
- 1 Tablespoon salt
For Chana Masala (2nd Vegetable):
- 1 can garbanzo beans, Pressured Cooked for 5 minutes
- Half onion, Diced
- 1/4 cup canned tomato puree
- 1/2 tablespoon coriander powder, cumin powder, garam masala, chole masala (found in any indian grocery store)
- 1 tablespoon cumin seeds
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 1 tablespoon chill powder
- 1 tablespoon tumeric powder
For the Paratha (bread):
- 2 cups wheat flour
- 1 tablespoon oil
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup water, or as needed
- Extra oil in a small bowl
Instructions To Cook Spicy French Style Beans:
Heat oil and then add mustard seeds. Once mustard seeds start popping, add washed beans. Stir in oil and cook on low for few minutes. Then add chilli powder, tumeric, and salt. Stir on low, cover, and cook for 5 minutes (stirring occasionally). Then add coriander powder, cumin powder. Stir on low, cover, and cook for 5-8 minutes (stirring occasionally). Lastly, add garam masala and stir and cook for another 2 mins. And it's ready. Serve hot!
Instructions To Cook Chana Masala:
Pressure cook chickpeas for 5 minutes. While that is pressure cooking, heat oil in a pan and once the oil start heating add cumin seeds. Wait about 30 seconds, and then add diced onions. Cook until onions are lightly brown. Then, add chole masala, cumin powder, and coriander powder. Stir well. Let it cook for a couple of minutes (if it's dry and sticking to pan add a little bit of water and stir again). Then add tomato puree and salt and stir well covered for a 3-4 minutes. Then add drained and cooked chickpeas. Stir well, cover and let it cook for 10-15 minutes stirring occasionally. Once it's done cooking, add garam masala and stir. Serve hot!
Instructions To Cook Paratha:
Take wheat flour in a semi-large plastic or stainless steel bowl. Add oil and salt. And then very slowly add water as you are mixing it together with your hands. Careful not to use too much water. The goal is to make it into a round shape dough (not too soft and not too hard). Then leave it covered aside for few minutes while heating on medium heat a flat non-stick pan on the stove. Keep a small jar of oil on the side as you will need it later. Start by making round 4-6 inch balls of the dough and rolling then out into a circle shape. Put the rolled out dough onto the hot pan. Once the dough start to turn slightly brown, flip it to the other side and spread oil on both sides of the dough. Let both sides cook until golden brown on both sides. Take it off stove and serve hot! (Some also add extra clarified butter on top of the paratha to enhance the taste).
How to Plate Indian Food Like a Pro
In my recipe (see above) the condiments I used are spicy mango pickle and white rice. However, to plate your Indian Authentic Meal, you can add a side of salad, papad, chutneys (a type of sweet, spicy or sour salsa), or any type of colorful fried snack foods such as pakoras (as the dish below). Also, keep in mind if any vegetable dishes are dry, then a lentil soup is usually added to the meal.
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© 2019 Aanvi
Question & Comments
Aanvi (author) from United States on October 22, 2019:
Thank you liza. :-)
Liza from USA on October 20, 2019:
My husband and I love Indian food. Since I'm originally from Malaysia, Indian food is not a new 'thing' to me :) Paratha and naan is one of our favorites if we went to an Indian restaurant. I also used some of the Indian spices in my cooking. Thank you for sharing your expertise in Indian cuisine, Aanvi. Excellent presentation! | <urn:uuid:c3171fa5-c928-4877-b3c2-01b28a19f63f> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://discover.hubpages.com/food/Spicy-Indian-Vegetables-with-Indian-Bread | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573876.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20220820012448-20220820042448-00064.warc.gz | en | 0.910825 | 1,503 | 1.9375 | 2 |
New materials such as carbon fibre, and carbon kevlar have since been used with computer-aided design to increase performance. With each generation of materials and with the improvements in aerodynamics, the performance of gliders has increased. Modern flapped 18 meter gliders such as the ASG29 (pictured below) have a glide ratio of over 50:1. The largest open-class glider, the ETA has a span of 30.9 meters and has a glide ratio over 70:1.
Most gliders require assistance to launch, though some have an engine powerful enough to launch unaided (Self Launching Motor Gliders). In addition, a high proportion of new gliders have an engine which will sustain the glider in the air, but is insufficiently powerful to launch the glider. The engines can be petrol, jet or more recently electric. | <urn:uuid:043fc08c-1c16-4f69-91ae-e8cb10da675e> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://ulsterglidingcentre.com/about-gliding/evolution-of-gliders/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572581.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20220816211628-20220817001628-00076.warc.gz | en | 0.95962 | 181 | 3.515625 | 4 |
ABAP and Operating System Statements
Operating system statements or system commands execute statements or programs directly on the operating system of an application server or a presentation server. Executing operating system statements from ABAP programs should be the exception not the rule, however it may become necessary in system or administration programs to call operating system functions that cannot be accessed by ABAP statements. In certain circumstances, input from external sources may need to be passed to the operating system.
7.31 | 7.40 | 7.54
Using input from external sources in operating system statements incurs the risk of system command injections. | <urn:uuid:06fa9d42-7694-4094-b0a8-750c31a469fa> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://eduardocopat.github.io/abap-docs/7.40/abenabap_system_commands/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572833.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817001643-20220817031643-00270.warc.gz | en | 0.880234 | 129 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Nissan was one of the first major manufacturers to find some success with its Leaf EV. The car has long been one of the best selling pure electric cars in the market. Nissan knows that the Tesla Model 3 will put some serious strain on Leaf sales and to combat that threat, it is set to launch a version of the Leaf with a larger battery pack. The tip on the launch of a 60 kWh battery pack inside the Leaf comes from a leaked roadmap that is reportedly from a Nissan presentation.
The roadmap shows that a 60kWh battery pack EV is in development. With the Leaf, being Nissan’s EV the assumption is that the Leaf will come with a larger battery pack, presumably somewhere in the 2018 year model timeframe. Nissan uses a 60 kWh battery in its IDS Concept. Currently the Leaf has a 30 kWh battery pack good for 107 miles of driving per charge.
By doubling that capacity to 60 kWh, the Leaf should be good for around 214 miles on a charge. Nissan needs more than a larger battery to continue competing with Tesla and other makers. Nissan always seems to think its products deserve a premium, and many buyers simply don’t agree. | <urn:uuid:b6ba644a-3c9d-44c7-8c5f-0f9ba43dd54d> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/nissan-leaf-to-get-60-kwh-battery-2016-06-21/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571989.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813232744-20220814022744-00474.warc.gz | en | 0.962871 | 243 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Autoclave Inerting for the Aerospace & Aircraft industry
Lightweight material. Heavyweight strength.
Industrial autoclaves are pressure vessels used to process parts and materials that require exposure to elevated pressure and temperatures. The manufacturing of high-performance components from advanced composites often requires autoclave processing.
High temperature autoclaves are used to cure laminar composites for aerospace applications, but carbon-based laminar composites produce an off-gas during the curing process. Nitrogen provides a safe, inert atmosphere that will sweep the off-gases from the furnace. Our carefully designed nitrogen supply systems provide high flow and pressure to the autoclave, resulting in a better-made product for your aircraft.
Autoclave inerting is a key process used to meet the demands of modern aerospace and aircraft design. Autoclave inerting allows you to create high-performance parts that are lightweight but incredibly strong — perfect for the extreme conditions your aircraft might face. We design and install custom systems to provide the high pressure, high flow rates required for autoclave inerting. The result is a safer, lighter and stronger aircraft built to exceed the expectations of the 21st century. | <urn:uuid:14ef2703-64aa-4efb-bbc0-2e1eee77ee3a> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.praxair.com/industries/aerospace-and-aircraft/autoclave-inerting | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988721278.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183841-00148-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.895315 | 245 | 2.484375 | 2 |
TEXT OF STORY
Kai Ryssdal: Among the many other things he's known for, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has taken up the cause of public health. He's banned smoking in bars in the Big Apple, he's outlawed trans fats in restaurants. Today, he took aim at Coke, Pepsi and the rest of the sugary-drink crowd. Bloomberg asked the Department of Agriculture to change the rules on food stamps so that New Yorkers can't use them to buy sugar-sweetened drinks.
Marketplace's John Dimsdale reports.
John Dimsdale: New York wants to study the effects of a temporary, two-year ban on sugary drinks for the nearly two million city residents on food stamps. Would poor people make better nutritional choices? Or just spend their own money on certain sodas, juices and sports drinks?
Michael Jacobson at the Center for Science in the Public Interest says USDA should allow the experiment, if, for nothing else, to settle the argument.
Michael Jacobson: Nutrition advocates say it's crazy to allow people to buy sugar water with public dollars. And anti-hunger advocates and the soda industry say, no the food stamp program is an income supplement program, and people should be allowed to buy whatever they want.
Jacobson believes a ban would trim the above-average consumption of sweet drinks among poor people and reduce obesity.
Jacobson: There can be tremendous economic benefits through better nutrition. Cities can save money because taxpayers chip in for Medicaid.
But some advocates for the poor say soda would be just the beginning. How long before ice cream, chips and candy are banned as well? Ellen Vollinger, with the Food Research and Action Center, says poor families might abandon food stamps altogether.
Ellen Vollinger: When people are treated differently in a grocery line, it can make them feel a stigma and make them less likely to want to participate in the program.
In the past, the Agriculture Department has favored carrots over sticks to improve nutrition for poor families. It's experimenting with offering bonus food stamps for people who spend more on fresh fruits and vegetables.
In Washington, I'm John Dimsdale for Marketplace. | <urn:uuid:c6207072-020c-4ae0-a2ec-2fd996a5a116> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.marketplace.org/2010/10/07/economy/will-soda-ban-benefit-food-stamp-users-and-state | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280763.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00521-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947935 | 449 | 2.21875 | 2 |
The grant builds on earlier work by the MS-CC and Internet2, including three stakeholder mapping surveys administered to HBCUs, TCUs, Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs), and other MSIs. The survey results determined that limited workforce development opportunities and cyberinfrastructure capabilities are the two biggest barriers to achieving their cyberinfrastructure goals.
Deborah Dent, chief information officer at Jackson State University and co-principal investigator on the grant, says the NSF-funded CI CoE pilot will have transformative impacts on advanced cyberinfrastructure for research and education at currently underserved colleges and universities.
“We’re working toward establishing shared research cyberinfrastructure across a distributed community of colleges and universities in a mix of urban, suburban, and rural settings, many of which are on the wrong side of the digital divide,” said Dent. “We have the data and empirical evidence that show what the immediate cyberinfrastructure needs are and what barriers are preventing campuses from achieving them. This grant is helping us formalize how we support underserved institutions by funding programs and services that prioritize addressing these gaps.”
Over the course of the two-year grant period, MS-CC, in collaboration with Internet2 and the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC), will work to address the barriers revealed by the stakeholder mapping surveys that are preventing HBCUs, TCUs, HSIs, and other MSIs from achieving their primary data and research computing needs.
A key component of this effort is increasing awareness and support for professional and career development opportunities for faculty, staff, and students at HBCUs and TCUs.
Ana Hunsinger, vice president of community engagement at Internet2 and the grant’s principal investigator, says the formalization of a vibrant community of practice across MS-CC campuses that involves collaboration on cyberinfrastructure, education, and research applications is a shared vision among the collaborators.
“We’re keenly aware of the vast diversity in size and missions among HBCUs and TCUs in the U.S., but see great potential in working collaboratively on shared research and education cyberinfrastructure challenges,” said Hunsinger. “This NSF grant will propel the synergy among the MS-CC, AIHEC, and Internet2, allowing us to create opportunities for members from HBCUs and TCUs to get the resources, support, and training they need. All while building communities of practice and creating spaces where mentorship can flourish.”
Among the goals of the grant is to increase access to cyberinfrastructure resources to empower researchers in their use of advanced cyberinfrastructure at the campus, regional, national, and international levels.
Additionally, the grant will support the promotion of effective communication among researchers, university leadership, and cyberinfrastructure professionals by extending and enhancing the reach and impact of campus and national research computing infrastructures to institutions with minority-serving missions.
By the end of the two-year funding period, the MS-CC hopes to establish itself as an independent, self-sustaining organization focused on cyberinfrastructure at HBCUs, TCUs, and other MSIs.
“We’re taking an adaptive approach to operating as a consortium, and we’re committed to learning and adjusting our operational model to ensure that we continue to lift all participating institutions by advancing cyberinfrastructure for research and education across diverse fields, disciplines, and communities,” said Richard Aló, dean of the college of science and technology at Florida A&M University, and co-principal investigator on the grant.
Additional co-principal investigators on the grant are Damian Clarke, chief information officer at Meharry Medical College, and Al Kuslikis, senior associate for strategic initiatives at the American Indian Higher Education Consortium.
The CI CoE pilot will also be supported by leadership from James (Joey) Brenn, associate vice president for information technology at Claflin University; Carl Robert (Bobby) Clark, director of CCIT procurement and vendor management at Clemson University; Ming-Hsing Chiu, associate professor and program coordinator of the computer science program at Dillard University; Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, professor in the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University and co-founder of WayMark Analytics; Henry T. Jackson, vice chancellor for information technology and chief information officer at North Carolina A&T State University; Urban Wiggins, vice provost in the office of decision science and visualization at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore; and Lisa Wilson, associate vice president of research and sponsored programs at Clark Atlanta University.
To learn more about the MS-CC, visit www.ms-cc.org. Source material: NSF Award page.
About Minority Serving-Cyberinfrastructure Consortium
MS-CC envisions a transformational partnership to promote advanced cyberinfrastructure (CI) capabilities on HBCU, HSI, TCU, and MSI campuses, with data; research computing; teaching; curriculum development and implementation; collaboration; and capacity-building connections among institutions. The consortium emerged from a National Science Foundation-funded pilot project that was awarded through Clemson University: NSF OAC #1659297 “CC* Cyber Team: Cyberinfrastructure Empowerment for Diverse Research, Scholarship, and Workforce Development (CI Empower).”
Discussions that emerged among South Carolina State, Claflin, Jackson State, and Morgan State Universities from workshops supported by the CI Empower grant made clear to the participants that they all shared common challenges on their campuses, and that by working together they can build a coalition to advocate for their cyberinfrastructure needs as a group. In June 2018, during a workshop at Georgia Tech, a working group of 20 participants helped create a chartering document for the MS-CC. For more information, visit www.ms-cc.org.
Internet2® is a non-profit, member-driven advanced technology community founded by the nation’s leading higher education institutions in 1996. Internet2 serves 323 U.S. universities, 59 government agencies, 45 regional and state education networks and through them supports more than 80,000 community anchor institutions, over 1,000 InCommon participants, and 54 leading corporations working with our community, and 70 national research and education network partners that represent more than 100 countries.
Internet2 delivers a diverse portfolio of technology solutions that leverages, integrates, and amplifies the strengths of its members and helps support their educational, research and community service missions. Internet2’s core infrastructure components include the nation’s largest and fastest research and education network that was built to deliver advanced, customized services that are accessed and secured by the community-developed trust and identity framework.
Internet2 offices are located in Ann Arbor, Mich.; Denver, Colo.; Washington, D.C.; and West Hartford, Conn. For more information, visit www.internet2.edu or follow @Internet2 on Twitter.
Media Contact: Sara Aly, Internet2 Communications, email@example.com | <urn:uuid:c0fee156-c918-4881-82b8-49f9664832a7> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.ms-cc.org/news/nearly3mnsfcicoepilotaward | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570868.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808152744-20220808182744-00073.warc.gz | en | 0.92166 | 1,467 | 1.90625 | 2 |
Wildest Islands of Indonesia - Series 1 - Episode 5 of 5: Dragons Domain
Wildest Islands of Indonesia: Series 1
The Wildest Islands of Indonesia showcases the beautiful Indonesian islands that remain a wild paradise of giant flowers and coral gardens, of dragons, tigers, giant apes and glorious birds of paradise. Fifteen percent of the entire world's species are found in this unique region. These islands not only harbour smaller animals, but also a unique species of elephant and a crab that measures almost a metre wide. This series explores the incredible wildlife of this extraordinary environment and reveals the remarkable ways in which life has been created, adapted and re-born over millions of years. These creatures have learnt to thrive and capitalise on some of the most powerful rainstorms on the planet, as well as uniquely adapt to the volcanic activity that constantly poses a threat to their existence.
5/5 Dragons Domain
Indonesia's heat enables its reptilian residents to thrive. From the forest canopy to the coral-filled seas, how have these habitats become a dragon's domain?
Host: Paul McGann
Published and CopyRight owned by: Discovery Channel | <urn:uuid:560c1aa7-2a65-4733-b369-933039c7fd3e> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.travelranger.com/watch/wildest-islands-of-indonesia-series-1-episode-5-of-5-dragons-domain_z4hgxdev6bRjNV5.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571090.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809215803-20220810005803-00073.warc.gz | en | 0.919267 | 231 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Because our democracies are inclusive, we’re able to welcome people and refugees in need to our countries. And nowhere have we seen that compassion more evident than here in Greece. (Applause.) The Greek people’s generosity towards refugees arriving on your shores has inspired the world. That doesn’t mean that you should be left on your own — (applause)
— and only a truly collective response by Europe and the world can ensure that these desperate people receive the support that they need. Greece cannot be expected to bear the bulk of the burden alone — but the fact that your democracy opens your heart to people in need in a way that might not otherwise be the case. | <urn:uuid:261f6467-eb76-4475-8fc5-dc82af5be22a> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.ellopos.com/blog/2490/president-barack-obama-a-speech-for-democracy/12/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573533.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20220818215509-20220819005509-00276.warc.gz | en | 0.949738 | 142 | 1.75 | 2 |
Morganton, NC – The site of the first European inland settlement in the United States will be open to the public during the annual Field Day at the historic Joara site on Saturday, June 24.
This summer marks the 450th anniversary of Spanish explorers establishing Fort San Juan alongside Joara, a Native American village. The Spanish settlement, which predates Jamestown by 40 years, co-existed with the village of Joara for 18 months before being destroyed by the natives.
Field day visitors get a chance to see the ongoing archaeological site excavation, interact with researchers from Warren Wilson College, explore the Native American culture of that period, and learn more about the Exploring Joara Foundation during this special anniversary year.
“This is the best time of the entire year to visit the site because you have access to the people who have been leading this research for almost 30 years,” says Marie Palacios, executive director of Exploring Joara Foundation.
“It is one of the few days that the excavation is largely uncovered and the archaeologists are actually standing in the middle of it as they host tours.”
Many attendees will be amazed to learn that one of the most important and least-known chapters of American history took place just north of Morganton at what is now called the Berry Site, to honor the landowners who’ve allowed the archaeological dig to take place.
“This is the 18th year for our field day. It began informally with two tables in the middle of the field and I was there with a few crew members to talk to anybody who came by,” says Dr. David Moore, lead researcher. “It’s grown since then and we’ve had as many as a thousand people.
We kind of create a museum for a day around the excavation and let the public come in and show them as much as we can about what’s happening and what we’ve learned at the site.”
The event is family friendly with multiple exhibitors, as well as historical demonstrations representing blacksmithing, primitive skills and Catawba Indian crafts. Children can pick up a passport which has little symbols leading them to noteworthy locations across the site.
One of the most popular exhibits is the display of new artifacts uncovered in the last year.
The field day runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Admission is free and parking is $5. Folks are also encouraged to visit the new exhibit about Joara/Fort San Juan at the History Museum of Burke County in Morganton, either before heading out to the event or the day before.
For directions and more details, call 828-439-2463 or go to: www.ExploringJoara.org
Historic Joara Site | <urn:uuid:db87de52-3b48-4999-b47a-79dd680a96fa> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.focusnewspaper.com/historic-joara-site-open-public-saturday-june-24/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571987.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813202507-20220813232507-00267.warc.gz | en | 0.961138 | 576 | 2.46875 | 2 |
Toyota However, both Toyota and Volvo agreed that they would build a hybrid car with autonomous driving technology before 2025, even if that would mean driving on public roads as well. The idea was revived in the wake of the Brexit vote in May and the success of its F1 team’s plan in the 2017 Formula E season. Although Renault unveiled the hybrid in March in the country after a successful maiden qualifying run, it has since scaled back its focus on autonomous driving, despite having three of its three new driver’s cars in place by this summer. Its F1 team has also announced it is cutting the head distance of its F3 drivers after their last three season in its F1 class, with one of its driver’s seats for the season being swapped to open on Sunday. Olympic teams use electric power to produce electricity Olympic teams are known as “electric power teams” and operate at one of four national grid grids in Europe: grid 1 (Germany) and grid 2 (Belgium). The teams are divided into four teams – in part because the German Olympic team uses electric powered power as part of its practice to practice in the capital, Dusseldorf. The German teams, with the exception of the German Winter Olympics, are based in London and the Netherlands, while the Norwegian athletes only use electric power in their country. The Toyota is being challenged by its own rivals on their next-generation cars while pushing its share of the top five from its rivals to eight. The Japanese conglomerate will offer more than twice as many cars through its three-nation consortium next year as it once offered. The Renault-Nissan partnership could see it make 40 percent better at handling and will add up to more than half the new-car sales it is offering each year. https://jiji.co.rw/kigali/cars/toyota-yFshmQi3H8fmNYb0CcNFbCLl.html However, Renault, the world’s second-largest carmaker if Renault was successful as Nissan, says it is not “a rival to Toyota” for its market share. Marlon Sacks, Renault’s spokesman, who was in Tokyo to support the Ford Motor Company executive with a joint press conference, declined to comment for this report. Nissan, the automaker selling more than 30,000 cars globally, will offer a four-point share to the top three in next year’s sales. The top three will be Nissan, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler divisions, the company said in a statement on Sunday. Shares in Nissan fell 50 percent as the deal took effect in the 24 hours after it emerged that Toyota was planning on offering a fourth tier after six rounds of talks. Shares have slumped in the following weeks to close around $9.27. Shares in Toyota slid 30 percent last month for the first week of trading on Saturday as Toyota announced plans to sell two new models next year. | <urn:uuid:716157aa-b86f-41b8-981c-78bdb8ea7a27> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://qualitydirectory.org/toyota-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570879.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808213349-20220809003349-00465.warc.gz | en | 0.980527 | 615 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Introduction to quantum sensing
You probably don’t realize it, but you very likely already employ quantum technology on a regular basis. Get in your car, switch on Waze or Google Maps, and you are already harnessing quantum effects. A GPS receiver works by measuring the tiny time delays in signals from multiple satellites separated in space. Doing this requires very stable and very accurate time measurement: enter the atomic clock. Such clocks, which reside inside every GPS satellite, often use quantum superposition. They employ atoms of Cesium or Rubidium to achieve an extremely stable “tick,” one accessible only within the atoms themselves. The primary standard for time, operated using this kind of physics, is so stable that it will lose just one second in 100 million years. That kind of stability powers not just GPS but other systems as well, including the synchronization protocols that govern Internet operations.
A clock that loses just a second in 100 million years (or more) may sound like more than we need, but this early application of quantum technology represents the start of something much bigger - building a new generation of quantum-enhanced sensors.
Quantum sensors turn the inherent weakness of quantum technology - its instability against the environment - into a strength. It takes a huge amount of work to isolate a quantum system in a way that allows it to be used faithfully as a clock. In general these devices are REALLY sensitive to everything around them; the most sensitive experiments to date have shown that such clocks can measure the effect of lifting the clock by a bit more than one foot (gravity changes as you move away from the center of the Earth). But quantum sensors deliver more than just sensitivity - quantum sensors also give the benefit of stability over long times. Conventional sensor instruments slowly change over time, meaning that averaging longer to reduce measurement noise becomes impossible. But because quantum sensors use immutable quantities - like the structure of atoms - their measurements tend to be very stable over long times.
Let’s explore one exciting kind of quantum sensor based on the same core technology as used in atomic clocks - cold trapped atoms. Cold atoms can be exploited for ultra-sensitive interferometric measurements using the wavelike nature of matter. Instead of building interferometers with light reflected off of (matter-based) mirrors (as widely used in telecom optical modulators), one can build atom interferometers using matter “reflected”off of pulses of light. Such atom interferometers have the benefit that the atoms themselves have mass, making them sensitive to both gravity and general acceleration. Accordingly, there is an emerging area of work on quantum-enabled “PNT” or positioning, navigation, and timing. Here, atomic accelerometers may enable dead reckoning navigation in environments such as space or GPS-denied battlefields.
More broadly, leveraging these capabilities and advantages, atomic devices are routinely used for both magnetometry and gravimetry. They could thus be deployed by military personnel to detect underground, hardened structures, submarines, or hidden weapons systems. Imagine a detector which can measure via changes in gravity whether a mountain is being hollowed out in a hostile nation with a furtive weapons program. In civilian applications these devices form the basis of new ways to monitor the climate - from underground aquifer levels through to ice-sheet thickness. Totally new forms of Earth observation for the space sector are now emerging, enabled by new small-form quantum sensors. Those capabilities flow into new data streams for long-term weather forecasting and insurance against weather events in agriculture. And of course the mining industry has long relied on advanced instrumentation for improved aerial survey and productivity enhancement.
Of course trapped atoms aren’t the only technology relevant to quantum sensing. There’s been a huge amount of research showing how solid-state devices like imperfections in diamond can be used as sensitive magnetometers. These have the advantage that they can be used in biological environments - even in vivo. They may not be as sensitive as atomic devices, but by virtue of their tiny size they can access new applications that are not possible with trapped atoms.
Overall, quantum sensing provides a route to gain massive technological advantages well before quantum computing comes online. And if you aren’t sure how much impact quantum sensors may have, just take a step back and think about how atomic clocks and GPS have already shaped your daily life.
Q-CTRL’S WORK IN QUANTUM SENSING
Q-CTRL is active across all applications of quantum technology, producing the fundamental enabling capabilities in quantum control to help our customers realize the true potential of quantum tech. But with quantum sensors we go one step further, taking a “software-first” approach to building and designing our own hardware powered by quantum control. Placing the advantages of quantum control front and center enables huge reductions in system size and improvements in noise rejection, ultimately unlocking totally new applications.
We’re excited to be building a new generation of atomic navigation systems for space exploration and terrestrial applications. And we’re thrilled to have assembled one of the most impressive teams of quantum sensing experts in the world.
Partially adapted from The Leap into Quantum Technology: A Primer for National Security Professionals
Learn how quantum error correction can enable the quantum computing revolution.
Learn how quantum firmware accelerates the performance of quantum computers.
Learn how about the current "noisy" era of quantum computing and what it stands to deliver.
Learn the basics of how to build quantum algorithms for quantum computing.
Discover the fundamentals of quantum physics for quantum computing
Learn how the fragility of quantum hardware lets us detect the undetectable
Discover the technology that will power a new information age | <urn:uuid:a96344e0-e113-4109-bde2-ba37a4ff4ad1> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://q-ctrl.com/topics/introduction-to-quantum-sensing | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571909.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813051311-20220813081311-00276.warc.gz | en | 0.906512 | 1,159 | 3.859375 | 4 |
December 27, 2007 by Shawn Smith
Q: What is ironshrink’s take on relational frame theory? Is it controversial as voodoo? There are no chickens involved, are there? – Sponge
Relational frame theory (RFT) is a novel explanation of cognition and language. It influences the clinical work that I do with anxiety and depression and, like evolutionary psychology, it manages to inject a bit of hard science into psychology’s soft, squishy center. Before we look at RFT, let’s do a quick review of what RFT is not.
Most of us in the Western world are taught to think of language in cognition in a mechanical, concrete manner. That usually involves naming things that don’t exist. Here’s what I mean. Suppose a dog barks in your neighborhood. Another dog, down the street, hears the first dog and responds by barking also. A rational person would explain the situation by saying “the dogs are barking.”
It is silly and stilted to explain it this way: “The first dog encoded a ‘bark’ (previously stored in the dog’s head) which he subsequently emitted and transmitted through the atmosphere. The ‘bark’ was intercepted by the second dog. It was then stored and decoded, after which the second dog encoded and transmitted a ‘bark’ of his own.”
The problem with that explanation is that there is no such thing as “a bark.” It is not an object. There is only “barking,” the behavior.
More importantly, we don’t need the concept of “a bark.” Nor do we need a bark encoder. These imaginary contraptions only complicate matters and create impossible questions. Where does the bark reside before it is transmitted? How is it “encoded”? Why can’t I decode the “bark” – shouldn’t my decoder be backward compatible with a dog’s?
Imaginary doodads like “barks” are like handles on a football. They add unnecessary complication. They also force us to ask the wrong questions. Entire careers have been built on the search for a “language acquisition device” that allows humans our uniquely complex communication style. It has yet to be found and there is no loss in that. We don’t need the idea of a language device any more than we need a “walk device,” a “watch TV device,” or a “play it off and try to look cool when you stumble because you reallymeant to do that device.” (Therein lies another problem. Once we start naming contrivances, there is no end to it.)
Yet, if you have ever taken a communication class, you have probably seen something similar to this convoluted diagram:
There are quite a few contrived doohickies in this model: channel, encoder, decoder, message, and feedback. And those giant, pointy arrows flying through the air – good lord, you could take an eye out with one of those things. Luckily, none of them seem to exist.
Consider the idea of a “message.” It can be a tough concept at first because we are taught to think about communication in a concrete way, but there is no such thing as a message or even a word. Sound waves exist in a physical sense but there is no physical bulletin that is intercepted and decoded. There is only noise that we have learned to interpret, and noise that we have learned to produce because it has an effect on the environment.
The learning model is a simpler, more elegant explanation of language. People learn to manipulate the environment through sound and symbols just as they learn to manipulate it with their hands: through practice. When we focus on actions, rather than imaginary objects, then we get to ask different questions… more useful questions. Questions that, ultimately, help explain human suffering. That’s where RFT comes in.
Paging Dr. Hayes
Relational frame theory is the result of research by Dr. Steven Hayes, along with Dermot Barnes-Holms and several other scholarly types who have helped shape this large body of work. RFT is an attempt to fill a void left by the behaviorist B. F. Skinner.
You may recall from your psychology 101 course that Skinner propelled behaviorism into the spotlight during the 1960s and 70s. Perhaps you even remember the basic three-term contingency model of behavior: Antecedent-Behavior-Consequence. The ABC model is great for explaining how people and animals get things done.
For example, a child sees a tasty bit of candy at the grocery store (antecedent), he screams “I want candy!” (behavior), and the mother buys the candy (consequence). The kid has just trained his mother to supply candy on demand. Skinner explored the nuances of such interactions and showed us the wonderful interplay between organisms and their environment.
Skinner was a brilliant man. But even brilliant people have their white whales, and Skinner’s was language. He struggled to explain how humans interact with each other at such a complex level. Early in his career, he feared that his brand of behaviorism couldn’t explain language at all. Later, he made a valiant attempt in his 1957 book, Verbal Behavior. Unlike the bulk of Skinner’s work, Verbal Behavior contained very little hard data. It was almost entirely theoretical. While it was filled with useful ideas about language, it fell short of explaining this pivotal aspect of human psychology.
Hayes and his colleagues set out to find answers to Skinner’s unanswered questions. While Skinner was on the right track, Hayes and company added an exciting idea that seems to explain much about the why’s and how’s of human communication: humans learn how to derive relationships that aren’t explicitly obvious (I’ll explain that momentarily), and those derived relationships are applied systematically to verbal behavior (I’ll explain that, too).
I’ve met Steven Hayes. He is a kindhearted, ingenious man who could find staggering complexity in a shopping list. I, on the other hand, am a pedestrian commentator with the dubious gift of oversimplification. Take the following explanation of RFT lightly. We’re going to stick to a few of the basics.
RFT Boiled Down, Oversimplified, and Stripped of Its Rich, Wholesome Goodness
There are relationships that are explicitly taught (“that red fruit over there is an apple”) and unspoken relationships that are inferred based on relationships that are taught (therefore, apples are red fruit). Deriving the latter relationship from the former comes easy to you and me, but it took practice for us to get good at it.
Non-verbal animals struggle with this skill, if they can develop it at all. They can learn both directions in a relationship (object = name & name = object) but only with extensive training and never with the effortless fluidity of humans.
Suppose, for example, that I say the word “treat” and give my dog, Hachi, a cookie. Being the clever dog that she is, she quickly learns that the sound “treat” equates to the object. Whenever she hears the sound “treat” she is reminded of the smell, the taste, and the satisfaction carried by the real thing. Much excitement ensues around our house after someone utters that word.
As clever as Hachi is, there is no evidence that she equates the actual object with the word “treat.” For her, it seems to be a one-way relationship: “treat” equals a physical cookie but physical cookies don’t necessarily equal “treat.”
People, however, can effortlessly glean two, or more, relationships from one piece of information. For example, if you give your average psychologist a dog biscuit and call it a “treat,” he will immediately infer that “treat” is also descriptive of a dog biscuit. He derives two relationships where only one was taught.
Deriving relationships may seem so effortless and obvious as to be unimportant, but this ability is a very big deal. It’s what allows us to make sounds that other people understand rather than simply pointing and grunting at things. It even allows us to ask others for our favorite food – and really, what is more important than that? If Hachi had that ability to derive relationships, she would probably spend the rest of her life saying “treat! treat! treat! treat! treat! treat! treat!” (or the closest doggie equivalent).
Practice Makes Perfect
So how, exactly, do we come by this ability? Obviously, having a few neurons in the right order helps. Beyond that, it takes practice. According to RFT, we learn to derive relationships by viewing lots of examples and then eventually applying the principle on our own.
Consider our example of naming things. When we teach little children to name things, it usually follows a certain recipe. First, we show the object to the child and name it. Then we say the name and ask the child to point to the object. This teaches both directions in the object-name relationship.
Eventually, we remove the training wheels and stop teaching the relationship in both directions. We only name the object because the child knows how to derive the reverse relationship. (This becomes obvious, in part, when she starts asking for things by name.)
Once Junior learns how to do this on her own, then she has developed a relational frame, meaning that she knows how to derive certain kinds of relationships, in certain contexts, based on past training. (Technically, there is no such thing as a “relational frame” because it is not an object or mechanism. There is only relational framing, the behavior. We’ll use “relational frame” as shorthand, just like “word” or “message.”)
Whether you cotton to it or not, you’ll probably agree that this theory is a far cry from the old, convoluted communication diagram pictured at the top of the page. Communication, rather than being based on the manipulation of “things” like messages and channels, is based on interaction with the environment through sounds and symbols. When we do something correctly, like naming a thing, we feel encouraged to do it again.
Naming things just one example of a relational frame. Turns out, we humans are skilled at deriving all sorts of relationships using only skimpy information. In part two of this article, we’ll look at other relational framing behaviors and discuss what happens when we apply them to ourselves. As handy as it is, relational framing has a downside.
Hayes, S.C., Barnes-Holmes, D., & Roche, B. (Eds.) (2001). Relational Frame Theory: A Post-Skinnerian Account of Human Language and Cognition. New York: Plenum Publishers. | <urn:uuid:2da20fba-cd1a-4db1-a987-7f490cd68494> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://ironshrink.com/2007/12/what-is-relational-frame-theory-part-one/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280128.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00391-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959279 | 2,360 | 1.851563 | 2 |
TO: All Design Section Staff FROM: J. Kapur DATE: July 23, 2002 SUBJECT: S-I-P Precast Concrete Deck Panel
Composite deck slab system consisting of Stay-In-Place precast concrete deck panels combined with cast-in-place concrete topping may be used on WSDOT bridges upon Regions request and Bridge and Structures Office approval.
The use of S-I-P deck panels for bridge decks shall be investigated at the preliminary design stage. A minimum slab thickness of 8.5 inches, including 3.5 inch precast deck panel and 5.0 inch cast-in-place concrete topping, shall be specified for design if S-I-P deck panels are considered for the bridge deck. The acceptance evaluation will consider such items as extra weight for seismic design and the resulting substructure impacts.
The composite deck system consisting of precast prestressed concrete deck panels with a cast-in-place topping has advantages in minimizing traffic disruption, speeding up construction and solving constructability issues on certain projects. Contractors, in most cases, prefer this composite deck panel system for bridge decks in traffic congested areas and other specific cases.
The conventional full-depth cast-in-place deck slab continues to be preferred by the Bridge and Structures Office for most applications.
If you have any questions regarding these issues, please contact Bijan Khaleghi at
cc: J. Weigel - 47340
F. Higgins - 47340 | <urn:uuid:128dbfd0-1bb0-4fb9-9723-c3146d995c90> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/eesc/bridge/designmemos/07-2002.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281649.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00438-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.86622 | 309 | 1.5625 | 2 |
There is an urgent need to return East
Timorese displaced from West Timor and elsewhere in Indonesia to their
communities of origin in order for rehabilitation, reconstruction and development
to begin as quickly as possible. The safe and orderly return transportation
of displaced persons is the responsibility of IOM by agreement and in close
cooperation with UNHCR.
Today, IOM organized the safe and orderly return of 508 East Timorese from the area of Halilulik/Laktutus, south of Atambua, to Fato Mean, in East Timor. The IOM convoy was escorted by United Nations Military Observers in West Timor and by INTERFET in East Timor. Returnees were taken to a reception centre in Fato Mean. This is the third border crossing point to be opened for returns after Atambua/Motaain/Batugade and Betun/Suai.
Returns from the area of Atambua continue. Today, 281 East Timorese arrived in Batugade on board 14 IOM chartered trucks. Convoys were escorted to the border crossing by Indonesian military and police.
372 East Timorese were transported from a staging point in Betun to a reception centre located close to the border in East Timor. Onward transportation to Suai is provided by UNHCR.
As of 30 November, IOM has organized the return by land, sea and air of 58,798 East Timorese from West Timor, from Indonesia and from Australia. So far, close to 110,000 people have returned in an organized or in a spontaneous way to East Timor.
Total returns by land
To date, IOM has returned 20,643 East Timorese by land from West Timor.
Total returns by sea.
To date, IOM has returned 27,423 East Timorese by sea from West Timor and from other parts of Indonesia
Total returns by air
To date, IOM has returned 6,718 East
Timorese from Kupang to Dili and 3,672 from other parts of Indonesia.
A total of 342 East Timorese have so far been returned by IOM from Darwin to Dili. They are part of a larger group of approximately 1,500 persons who had been evacuated from the UNAMET compound in Dili in September 1999.
IOM has made an appeal to the international community for US$ 25,565,000 for its Timor activities. This includes US$ 23,250,000 for the return of displaced people to East Timor. IOM urgently needs an estimated US$12,250,000 to cover the cost of operations until the end of this year. So far, US$ 4,317,249 has been pledged. IOM currently faces a shortfall of US$ 7,932,751.
IOM's mid- to long-term plans are to implement programmes in the areas of return of qualified nationals, migration management capacity building, mobile information and referral services to strengthen the rehabilitation and recovery of Timor as well as, in cooperation with UN agencies, community rehabilitation | <urn:uuid:75ae05c2-94a1-43a2-8c4a-21e15bf2138e> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://reliefweb.int/report/indonesia/timor-activity-update-30-nov-1999 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571719.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812140019-20220812170019-00269.warc.gz | en | 0.954333 | 650 | 2.1875 | 2 |
IELTS Speaking - Part 1 - 2022
In IELTS Speaking part 1, the test will begin with the examiner first introducing himself/herself and then asking you about your identity.
He/she will then ask you general/ simple questions relating to your background, home, work, studies, family, interests, hobbies and so on.
These questions will give you an idea of what to expect in the Part 1 Speaking test.
Work and Studies
Do you work or are you a student?
What work do you do? What subjects are you studying?
Why did you choose that job?
Why did you choose to study that subject?
Do you like your job?
Is there anything you do not like about your work?
What do you like about your studies?
What do you dislike about your studying?
What was your dream job when you were younger?
Have you changed your mind at all about your dream job?
Please describe your hometown.
What is your town well known for?
Do you like your hometown?
Is it a large or small town?
How long have you lived there?
Do you think you will continue living there?
Would you like to live in the countryside?
What is the difference between living in the countryside and city?
What do people like to do in the countryside or city?
What do you like to do?
How has your town changed over the years?
Do you send many emails?
Do you prefer to write letters or emails?
Are there any differences between emails and letters?
Do you receive many emails?
Do you respond to emails or letters?
Are you good at memorising things?
Why do people often forget trivial things?
How can you make sure you do not forget things?
Do you like to spend time alone or with friends?
What do you enjoy doing with friends?
When do you spend time with friends or family?
Do you enjoy drawing or painting?
Did you do art at school?
Do you ever visit museums or galleries?
Do you have a favourite artist?
Do you think it is easy to learn to draw or paint?
Do you prefer to be a driver or a passenger?
What type or car and design do you like?
Why do you like travelling by car?
What is the farthest place you have travelled to by car?
Do you prefer to sit in the front or the back of the car?
When do you usually travel by car?
Do you dream a lot?
Do you always remember your dreams?
Do you think they have meanings?
Do you enjoy sharing your dreams with others
or enjoy listening to friends telling you, their dreams?
How do you organise your study time?
What is your daily study routine?
Do you ever change your plans?
Have you ever changed your routine?
What is your favourite time of the day?
Do you like to plan what you will do each day?
Please describe your typical daily routine.
What do you usually do at this time of day?
Do you usually do the same things at the same time each day?
Is there anything you want to change in your daily routine?
Lost and Found
What should people do if they find things?
Is it ok to keep an item that you found?
What should people do to find something that they lost?
What things do people usually find or lose?
Have you ever found something or lost something?
What kinds of websites do you often visit?
What kinds of websites are popular in your country?
Do you have a favourite website?
Are changes often made to the websites you visit?
Do you usually handwrite or use a keyboard?
How do you think most people write today?
Do you often handwrite with a pen or pencil?
Do you think handwriting is important?
Do you think computers will replace handwriting in the future?
Is your handwriting easy to read by others?
What impression does someone's handwriting have on other people?
Do you think someone's handwriting can tell you about their personality?
Do children handwrite at school in your country?
How and when did you learn to write?
How can children today improve their handwriting skills today?
Did you enjoy writing when you were a child?
Do you like science?
Did you enjoy science at school?
Do you think children should have science lessons at school?
Do you think science is important to our society?
Do you like to wear comfortable shoes or stylish shoes?
Do you think people prefer comfortable or stylish shoes?
What type of shoe do you prefer?
Have bought shoes online before?
How often do you buy shoes?
Why do some people have too many shoes?
Do you use headphones?
When would you use headphones?
What type of headphones do you use?
When would you not use headphones?
What is your favourite colour?
What colours do your friends and family like?
Is there a colour you dislike?
Is there a colour that influences your mood?
Do you think colours are important?
What was your favourite colour as a child?
Do you think women and men have different favourite colours?
What colour would you choose for your home?
Is it easy or difficult for you to focus on something?
When do you find it hard to concentrate?
What can distract you when trying to stay focused?
In what situations do you need to concentrate?
When do you need to stay focused?
Is there anything you do to improve your concentration?
Can you multitask easily?
How do you organise and plan your time?
Do you find it easy to do this?
What do you find the hardest in organising and planning your time?
What plans have you made recently?
When did you get your first mobile phone?
Do you use your phone a lot?
Do you use it more for texting or telephone calls?
What functions does your phone have?
When will you upgrade your phone or get a new mobile?
Could you live without your mobile phone?
What is your favourite animal?
Have you ever had a pet, or do you have one now?
Is there an animal that is popular in your country?
What is the weather like where you live?
Do you like the weather where you live?
What's your favourite weather?
Do you prefer dry or wet weather?
Do you like hot weather?
What do you do when the weather is hot?
Do you have street markets where you live?
What do they sell?
What do you usually buy in a street market?
Are street markets popular where you live?
Do you enjoy going to markets?
How often do you go to the cinema?
Did you go to the cinema when you were a child?
Who do you normally go to the cinema with?
What kinds of films do you like?
Do you like taking photos?
What do you use to take your photos?
What do you enjoy taking photos of?
Where do keep your photos?
Do you always save your photos?
Which apps do you use regularly?
Which apps interest you?
Are there any apps that you would like to download?
Do you spend a lot of time on your apps?
What genres of TV programmes do you enjoy watching?
How much TV do you watch each week?
Do you ever watch TV online?
Do you think TV can be educational?
Do you ever watch TV in English?
Do you have parks or green spaces in your town?
Do you like to go to parks?
When was the last time you visited a park or a green space?
Do many people in your area visit parks, are they popular?
Tell me about your local park or green space?
What can people do there?
Do you enjoy sports?
What sports do you like?
Did you have a favourite sport when you were a child?
Do you enjoy watching sports on TV?
Who do you watch with?
Do you enjoy watching live sports?
Is sport popular in your country?
Is there a particular sport that is extremely popular in your country? | <urn:uuid:8c481bcb-cf7f-4d3a-bb6d-5d8cac9648d2> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.revampenglish.com/general-5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570977.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809124724-20220809154724-00476.warc.gz | en | 0.952321 | 1,790 | 2.484375 | 2 |
According to the experts here’s why this happens.
Flushing can happen when alcohol is not digested completely, this happens because of a genetic mutation that causes a decrease in the expression of an enzyme called ALDH2. "Some people may have a deficiency in ALDH2 (lower levels of ALDH2), which causes an inability to break down acetaldehyde, which then builds up in the body and can cause unpleasant effects, one of which is flushing but also nausea and headache." As Dr. Maxine Warren explains.
You can experience flushing when having some specific drinks and not all of the times you drink alcohol. According to Dr. Dendy Engelman, something as simple as dehydration and a “poor water balance” could contribute to flushing. According to Dr. Dendy Engelman, something as simple as dehydration and a “poor water balance” could contribute to flushing.
Some wines also have more sulfites than others, and this can also create flushing. However, sulfites are naturally present in many things that we consume, including food, so their effects may be overestimated." Flushing could also occur for other types of intolerances, like those who have gluten intolerance and experience flushing while drinking beer.
Another possibility is rosacea, this chronic inflammatory skin disorder can cause facial redness from enlarged blood vessels on the face, especially in the cheeks. Red wine has long been known to trigger flare-ups of rosacea because it causes an enlargement (dilation) of the blood vessels, “However, a study published in the American Journal of Dermatology in April of 2017 showed that white wine could also trigger a flare-up of this condition.”
If you experience flushing after drinking alcohol more often than not it’s high time you go and see your doctor. Something as simple as keeping track of which drinks trigger reactions will be very helpful for your doctor to find the exact reason for it. | <urn:uuid:8cd9f263-ffce-467f-a3d9-d67d44de2384> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://koko.today/wellness/Does-your-skin-flush-when-you-drink-Heres-why-20220303-0001.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572192.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815145459-20220815175459-00071.warc.gz | en | 0.963735 | 409 | 2.4375 | 2 |
October 30th, 2013 in TOEFL
The passages given for reading are not much different from what college and university students in North America will have to encounter in their courses. Three to five passages are given for reading. Each passage may contain roughly 700 words.
10 different types of questions are asked on the TOEFL iBT reading section. They can be classified into three general categories.
These questions test a student’s ability to understand language. Some of these questions test your understanding of the meaning of a word.
Roughly a third of the total questions in the Reading section belong to this category. They test a student’s general understanding of the main idea of the passage and the ability to make inference based on the given information.
Reading to learn
They are of two types: Drag-n-Drop Table completion and Drag-n-Drop summary.
If a question refers to a particular word or phrase in the passage, that word or phrase is highlighted, so you don’t have to search for it. Many questions also identify the particular passages where you can find the answer.
All questions except the Drag-n-Drop Table completion and Summary are multiple choice questions with four answer options. These types of questions are worth more than one point.
You should be able to infer ideas using logic and certain details. Sometimes you will need to infer ideas that are not directly mentioned by the writer. However, you must be careful not to infer much. All inferences must be supported by the passage. Note that many incorrect answers are based on assumptions that are not supported by details in the passage. | <urn:uuid:3514d62a-fc45-42cd-92e2-80c3bfa4062f> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.englishpractice.com/topics/toefl/page/4/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572581.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20220816211628-20220817001628-00073.warc.gz | en | 0.930785 | 346 | 3.453125 | 3 |
If you are planning to begin with a business, you might like to consider a lot of business achievement tips to be sure your maximum success. All things considered, no one loves to fail. Besides, starting a small business can bring you freedom and independence, both of which are appealing qualities for many people. And while some of these business accomplishment tips may seem basic, https://successers.com/2020/01/17/what-is-the-success-of-an-online-business they will help you achieve your main goal. Continue reading for more information. After all, accomplishment doesn’t happen instantaneous.
Organizing every day is a vital business accomplishment tip. A great organized specific is more likely to complete their very own daily and weekly tasks. To become even more organized, try creating daily to-do lists. Verifying off completed tasks will let you focus and remember to total your list. Creativeness is another business success idea. It’s also important to find out your consumers’ preferences and wishes. By following these tips, you can create an excellent business.
Always keep in mind a busy standard of living does not mean a very good business. You must remember that those whom became good faced precisely the same challenges and obstacles that you do. As a business proprietor, it’s important to stay healthy and steer clear of physical fatigue. Remember that a dissatisfied buyer can propagate negative comments with regards to your company, so always be careful to protect your reputation. The greater satisfied clients you have, the better. | <urn:uuid:18c2faef-95e2-4e9a-ab2f-62857bd39b81> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://mcswaterproofing.pk/2022/07/business-success-strategies/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570871.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808183040-20220808213040-00268.warc.gz | en | 0.958835 | 315 | 1.8125 | 2 |
LIVE LEARNING EXPERIENCE: #BEYONDTHEOUTBREAK
Public Service Delivery, a Pillar to Address the Pandemic
Local and regional governments around the world are at the forefront of the current crisis, working together with communities and health authorities to mitigate the current outbreak of COVID-19 while maintaining an orderly functioning of public services in their cities and territories.
UCLG, Metropolis and UN-Habitat have launched a live learning experience with local and regional governments which, through solidarity and political will, are pushing more than ever to fulfill their critical role. They are working to carry out an affordable and fair service delivery, fostering the preservation of the commons, and promoting human rights.
The live learning experience, launched on March 25th, 2020, is built around three blocks:
To create a virtual and living community, a safe environment, to share experiences of crisis management and protection of the commons through series of virtual exchanges on specific topics related to the role of public service delivery between cities and partners.
To make available online resources for local governments and allow for the active sharing of materials, strategies, and protocols by members and partners around the world to help others succeed and rapidly scale up the fight against the virus.
This collective exercise will involve the participation of a limited group of local and regional governments, across different regions of the world and in different phases of contagion of the current pandemic including Barcelona, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Durban, Guangzhou, Lampedusa, Madrid, Montevideo, Rome, and Xi’An. Participating governments, and their associations, will share and discuss the challenges they confront and the different actions taken to raise public awareness and implement emergency mechanisms that help maintain an orderly functioning of services.
International partners, including Habitat International Coalition, the International Union of Public Transport, Public Service International, and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing, together with UN Agencies coordinated by UN-Habitat, will provide specific inputs to enhance and collecting of learnings to better prepare for such challenges in the present and future that require fast and comprehensive action by local governments. The initiative is open to more partners of UCLG and UN-Habitat, for participation, cross-dissemination and the further development of specialized resources.
While each online Live Learning Experience will be limited to selected representatives from local and regional governments, their associations, and partners, the inputs and outcomes of these sessions will be shared on this website and through our social media channels.
The Cities for Global Health platform, facilitated by Metropolis, is an integral part of this experience, providing a living repository of LRGs’ responses to the crisis, where all cities are welcome to engage in the exchange of local initiatives.
Watch the movie!
For more information, contact: email@example.com | <urn:uuid:f21b6e68-c3da-4552-9dca-b588a066ed08> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.uclg.org/en/issues/live-learning-experience-beyondtheoutbreak | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573908.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20220820043108-20220820073108-00278.warc.gz | en | 0.900558 | 592 | 1.828125 | 2 |
In international scale, it contributes to the Greater Jakarta area being the second largest urban sprawls in the world. Previously known as a thriving industrial area of Karawang, or Jababeka, it has now spread to, if not all, new concentrated zones.
Land availability in close proximity to the capital as the country’s center of economy attracts manufacture and facilities, while it also brings affordability for the home seekers in Jakarta who find themselves locked out of their city amid the astronomical housing price.
Peri-urban of Bekasi
This expansion brings consequences in the changing land condition with concern to sociological aspect. The rural area in Hurip Jaya village, Babelan district, is an instance.
A stretch of road was laid out through the farm that makes up the major proportion of land there. Sporadic houses stood on the roadside, the soil surface on the most part of the road left giant dusty air and carried into the houses as vehicles pass through, although scarcely.
At the other end of the road, concrete surface replaces the soil when a newly-built liquefied natural gas processing plant is located nearby. This bare infrastructure serves the onset of the modern energy production.
The recent path to industrialization takes shape at a dramatic scale. And it remains to be seen how fast and active the residents will react to social changes when this road eventually gets crowded. They are witnessing the transformation of rural to urban area. | <urn:uuid:6de8de1c-454f-43ba-ad2f-abc4149ccb48> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://thinkarchipelago.com/tag/the-road-least-traveled/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00079.warc.gz | en | 0.937889 | 294 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Levine defined a homomorphism of the concordance group onto an algebraically defined group, isomorphic to the countably infinite direct sum of (an infinite number of) copies of Z2, Z4, and Z. The algebraic order of algebraic concordance order of a knot is the order of the image in Levine's alebraic concordance group.
Techniques for the computation of the orders of elements in the algebraic concordance group appear in a paper by Toshiyuki Morita. Livingston and Naik have shown that many knots of algebraic order 4 are infinite order in the concordance group. Andrius Tamulis proved that many knots of algebraic order 2 are of higher order in the concordance group, and proved that others are either negative amphicheiral, or concordant to negative amphicheiral knots, and thus are of order 2. Additional references to more recent work by Jabuka and Naik, by Grigsby, Ruberman, and Strle, by Lisca, and by Levine, are given below.
E. Grigsby, D. Ruberman, S. Strle, Knot concordance and Heegaard Floer homology invariants in branched covers, math.GT/0701460.
S. Jabuka and S. Naik, Order in the concordance group and Heegaard Floer homology, math.GT/0611023.
A. Levine, On knots of infinite smooth concordance order, arxiv.org/abs/0805.2410.
C. Livingston and S. Naik, Knot concordance and torsion, Asian J. Math. 5 (2001), no. 1, 161--167.
P. Lisca, Sums of lens spaces bounding rational balls, arXiv:0705.1950.
C. Livingston and S. Naik, Obstructing four-torsion in the classical knot concordance group, J. Differential Geom. 51 (1999), no. 1, 1--12.
T. Morita, Orders of knots in the algebraic knot cobordism group, Osaka J. Math. 25 (1988), 859-864.
A. Tamulis, Knots of ten or fewer crossings of algebraic order 2, J. Knot Theory Ramifications 11 (2002), no. 2, 211--222. | <urn:uuid:230cd600-8c0c-407a-a5fc-2b1be1613750> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.indiana.edu/~knotinfo/descriptions/smooth_concordance_order.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560283301.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095123-00508-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.836832 | 512 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Christ Said 'Paint an Image'
The Kazimirowski painting of 1934-35 is the "original" Image of The Divine Mercy.
Eighty years ago on Feb. 22, Jesus appeared to St. Faustina in her convent cubicle and directed her to "paint an image according to the pattern you see, with the signature: Jesus, I trust in You" (Diary of St. Faustina, 47-48). He attached many promises to those who venerate this image.
We've come to know this image as the Image of The Divine Mercy. But what's its significance? On this, the 80th anniversary of St. Faustina's revelation, let's hear from the experts, including St. Faustina's confessor and spiritual director, Blessed Michael Sopocko; Pope John Paul II; Father Seraphim Michalenko, MIC; Dr. Bryan Thatcher; and Dr. Robert Stackpole.
Blessed Michael Sopocko
In a confessional — that's where Blessed Michael Sopocko first met Sr. Maria Faustina, a humble nun with a tremendous weight upon her. The Lord had begun revealing to her His message of Divine Mercy — an urgent message that He wanted her to share with the whole world. But who would believe her? At first, no one. Not her superiors in the convent and not her previous confessors.
Sister Faustina had prayed for a spiritual director, someone to help guide her, someone who understood that what she was experiencing was real. Father Sopocko was the answer to her prayers, and eventually he became the main promoter of her revelations, the very linchpin in the Lord's call to spread Divine Mercy throughout the world.
It was Fr. Sopocko who first instructed Sr. Faustina to keep her Diary. When Sr. Faustina told Fr. Sopocko of her visions of Jesus and His request for a new image to be painted and spread throughout the world, it was he who found the artist, E. Kazimirowski, who would paint The Divine Mercy image.
He didn't stop there. In actions that mark the beginning of the spread of The Divine Mercy devotion, Fr. Sopocko made sure The Divine Mercy image was displayed on the Sunday after Easter, 1935, over the famous Ostra Brama gate to the city of Vilnius, Lithuania.
In a letter written by Blessed Sopocko in 1958, he gives a thorough description of the efforts to fulfill Christ's request for the image. His long letter is translated from the Polish and quoted almost in its entirety in Pillars of Fire in My Soul: the Spirituality of St. Faustina (Marian Press, 2003), edited by Dr. Robert Stackpole, STD. Blessed Sopocko writes:
Upon my request Mr. Eugene Kazimirowski began the painting of the image on January 2, 1934. Sister Faustina of blessed memory with the permission of the Superior, Mother Irene, came once or twice a week to the painter's studio (in the company of another sister) and imparted instructions, how this image is to look. For several months the painter was unable to satisfy the author [Faustina], who became sad on that account, and it was at this time that she wrote in her Diary: "Once when I was at that painter's, who's painting this image, and saw that it is not as beautiful as Jesus is, I became very sad, but I hid that deep in my heart. When we left the painter, Mother Superior remained in the city to settle various matters, but I returned home by myself, immediately I made my way to the chapel and I had a good cry. I said to the Lord: 'Who will paint You as beautiful as You are?' Of a sudden I heard the words: 'not in the beauty of the color, nor of the brush is the greatness of this image, but in my grace.'" ...
The image represents Christ in a walking posture against a dark background in a white garment, girdled by a band [belt, cincture]. With the right hand, raised to the height of the shoulder, He is blessing, and with the left one (with two fingers) He is opening the garment somewhat in the area of the Heart (not visible), from which are coming out rays (on the viewer's right a pale [colorless] one, and on the left a red one) in various directions, but principally toward the viewer. Sister Faustina called attention to this, that the right hand not be raised above the shoulder, not to bend forward, and only place the left foot forward to indicate movement, that the garment be long and somewhat fallen into folds at the bottom, that the Lord Jesus' gaze be directed a bit toward the bottom, as it happens when, standing, one looks at a point on the ground a few steps away, that the expression of the face of Jesus be gracious and merciful, that the fingers of the right hand be upright [erect] and freely lie close together, and on the left [hand] — [that] the thumb and index fingers hold open the garment; that the rays not be like ribbons [bands] hanging down toward the ground, but that with intermittent [broken] strips [streaks] they be directed toward the viewer and lightly to the sides, coloring to a certain degree the hands and surrounding objects: that these rays be transparent in such a way that through them the band [belt, cincture] and garment be visible; that the saturation of the rays with redness and whiteness be greatest at the source (in the area of the Heart) and then slowly diminish and vanish [dissolve, fade away].
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Dr. Bryan Thatcher, director of the Marians' Eucharistic Apostles of The Divine Mercy
The image reminds me perhaps, of what Mary Magdalene saw on Easter morning. She saw the Risen Lord with the marks of the Crucifixion. One hand is gesturing as if to say, "Come to My Heart, which was pierced by a lance for love of you!" and the other, raised in a gesture of blessing, anointing us with the Holy Spirit, the Giver of Life.
The image serves to remind us that we are to be the mirror image of Jesus; we are to be the hands, feet, and heart of Jesus to a hurting world. It reminds us of the need to do deeds of mercy, to "stir up one another to love and good works" (Heb 10:24).
The image is signed with the words, "Jesus, I Trust in You." Trust is faith in action! When we face the adversities of life, as we traverse this valley of tears, let us be confident, let us run the good race, always keeping our eyes on the finish line. And remember the words of Jesus to St. Faustina, "I do not reward for good results but for the patience and hardship undergone for My sake" (Diary, 86).
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Dr. Robert Stackpole, STD, director of the Marians' John Paul II Institute of The Divine Mercy:
The Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, the Eucharist, these are holy mysteries indeed, but so, too, is the Image of The Divine Mercy, revealed to St. Faustina in the darkness of her convent cell in the city of Plock in Poland, back in 1931. She describes Christ's promises to her regarding the image:
I promise that the soul that will venerate this image will not perish. I also promise victory over [its] enemies already here on earth, especially at the hour of death. I myself will defend it as my own glory. (Diary of St. Faustina,47-48)
... When St. Faustina asked our Lord about the meaning of the rays, He answered her by telling her that they signified the blood and water that gushed forth from His side on Calvary (see Jn 19:34-35):
When on one occasion my confessor told me to ask the Lord Jesus the meaning of the two rays in the image, I answered, "Very well, I will ask the Lord."
During prayer I heard these words within me: The two rays denote Blood and Water. The pale ray stands for the water that makes souls righteous. The red ray stands for the Blood which is the life of souls ...
These two rays issued forth from the very depths of My tender mercy when my agonized Heart was opened by a lance on the Cross. (Diary, 299).
The historical reference that Jesus made here is significant ("when My agonized Heart was opened by a lance on the Cross") because they correspond to what New Testament scholars tell us about this event. The fact is that Jesus was crucified by Roman soldiers, and Roman soldiers were trained to know exactly where to stick their enemies with a lance so that the lance would pass between the ribs and pierce the heart, thereby guaranteeing instant death. In the Gospel story, the Roman soldiers were trying to make sure that Jesus was dead before they took Him down from the cross (Roman soldiers were subject to the death penalty themselves if they failed to successfully execute a criminal condemned under Roman law) so their lance passed into His side between the ribs, but went right up into His Heart (remember that they were thrusting the lance upward, from beneath the Cross). In fact, the phrase that Jesus taught St. Faustina to use in her prayer ("O Blood and Water, which gushed forth from the Heart of Jesus") is also precisely accurate. It corresponds to the word that St. John used in his gospel for the flow of blood and water: it "gushed out." The Roman spear evidently pierced the pericardial sack around the heart where relatively clear plasma would have collected after Jesus' death, and also probably pierced the Heart itself, where blood had settled. The result would have been similar to the piercing of a water balloon: the blood and water "gushed forth" from His Heart. In short, the side of Christ was pierced, according to the Bible, but everything about this incident suggests that the wound in His side entered right into His Heart. ...
The rays from the image are meant to transform our hearts, to "mercify" us, as Fr. George Kosicki, CSB, likes to say, so that we can give our hearts back to Him in love.
Think of the rays in the image as akin to a typical scene from the Star Trek science fiction movies. When Captain Kirk and his crew want to get back to the Starship Enterprise where they belong, he calls on his communicator to his chief engineering officer and says "Scottie, beam us up." Soon, transporter rays are sent down from the ship and surround the captain and his crew, and Kirk and his crew dematerialize and are taken back into the ship. This, by analogy, is what our Savior longs to do with us: to so fill and surround us with the transforming grace that streams from His Heart that we will eventually consent to Him "beaming us up" right back into loving union with His Heart, right where we belong! ...
Here is the way I put it in my book Jesus, Mercy Incarnate (Marian Press, 2000, p. 118):
The focus is on the merciful love that flows to us from His Heart, for in that image what stands out most distinctly are the red and pale rays that shine out from His breast. These rays represent the healing and sanctifying graces, especially of Baptism and the Eucharist, that flow from the Sacred Heart of Jesus toward us. This makes the Mercy image especially suitable for the desperate needs of so many Catholic families in our time, families all too often broken and wounded by evil: apostasy, adultery, divorce and division, contraception, fornication, greed, shallow consumerist materialism, and the killing of the unborn. These assaults of evil, often promoted by modern culture, are simply overwhelming many Catholic families. The rays of the Mercy image show us the healing, sanctifying graces that our Savior is longing to pour into every human heart, if only we will receive them with trust.
When we do open our hearts to Him with trust, then those rays and graces beam us back into deep union with the Heart of Jesus, as they did for St. Faustina herself. She writes:
He brought me into such intimacy with Himself that my heart was espoused to His Heart in a loving union, and I could feel the faintest stir of His Heart, and He of mine. The fire of my created love was joined to the ardor of His uncreated love. ...
O my Master, I surrender myself completely to You, who are the rudder of my soul; steer it Yourself according to your divine wishes. I enclose myself in Your most compassionate Heart which is a sea of unfathomable mercy. (Diary, 1242 and 1450)
Pope John Paul II
Today the Lord also shows us His glorious wounds, and His Heart, an inexhaustible source of truth, of love, and forgiveness. ... Saint Faustina saw, coming from this Heart that was overflowing with generous love, two rays of light that illuminated the world. "The two rays," according to what Jesus Himself told her, "represent the blood and the water" (Diary, 299). The blood recalls the sacrifice of Golgotha, and the mystery of the Eucharist. The water, according to the rich symbolism of the Evangelist St. John, makes us think of Baptism and the Gift of the Holy Spirit (cf. Jn 3:5; 4:14).
Through the mystery of this wounded Heart, the restorative tide of God's merciful love continues to spread over the men and women of our time. Here alone can those who long for true and lasting happiness find its secret.
— homily on Divine Mercy Sunday, 2001
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Father Seraphim Michalenko, MIC, vice-postulator in North America for St. Faustina's canonization cause
It is important to realize that, although [St. Faustina] could not easily dismiss these inspirations, knowing deep within her that they were really from God, she submitted them, nonetheless, to spiritual authorities for discernment. Also, whereas we might think it is a wonderful thing to have visions and have God ask us to do something special for Him, Sr. Faustina lets us see that these experiences created many problems for her.
She relates one of them immediately after [a] passage about a confirming sign that her superior asked for: "When I wanted to remove myself from these interior inspirations, God said to me that on the day of judgment He is going to require a great number of souls from me" (Diary, 52).
The official notes in the manuscript explain these words as meaning that, if Sr. Faustina were to fail to carry out the Lord's request, she would be held responsible for the many souls who would thus be unable to learn of the unfathomable Mercy of God. Sister Faustina gradually learned to understand God's ways with souls, and she wrote about this very clearly further on in her Diary. She provides us with the valuable lesson that what matters is that we be faithful to the mission that God assigns to us as our part in the fulfillment of His loving plan for the salvation of the world.
The image Jesus asked for, therefore, is to be a powerful means by which souls might learn of this — the deepest of all mysteries hidden in His person; and thus they will be encouraged to take advantage of that Mercy which no one will ever be able to fathom, and which the Lord Himself declared through Sr. Faustina to be God's greatest attribute. ...
+ + +
EDITOR'S NOTE: Following the creation of the Image of The Divine Mercy painted by Eugene Kazimirowski, many other artists have created their own versions. For a full accounting of the most popular images, read Dr. Robert Stackpole's article Why So Many Images? Which One is 'Best'?
Divine Mercy images are available through the Association of Marian Helpers Online Catalog. | <urn:uuid:a1d4784b-6737-4fc7-a372-80744a382f58> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.thedivinemercy.org/videos/Christ-Said-Paint-an-Image-4394 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560285001.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095125-00305-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964808 | 3,366 | 2.453125 | 2 |
Singer Cyndi Lauper remembers shrieking by a highway near New York’s Kennedy International Airport as the Beatles’ limousine rolled by; popular disc jockey “Cousin Brucie” Morrow reveals how he helped recover a favorite medal snatched from Ringo’s neck by a frenzied fan; humorist Roy Blount Jr. dissects the lyrics to “When I’m Sixty-Four”; and photographer Henry Grossman takes us into the audience of The Ed Sullivan Show—where the Beatles first performed in the United States—and then on tour with the band.
The Beatles Are Here! explores the emotional impact—some might call it hysteria—of the Fab Four’s February 1964 arrival on our shores through the voices of those who witnessed it, were swept up in it indirectly, or, born too late, came to love the band after they broke up. Writers, musicians, fans—including Fran Lebowitz, Billy Joel, Renée Fleming, Lisa See, Pico Iyer, and others—describe in essays and interviews how they were inspired and changed by the Beatles. Conceived as “a scrapbook of madness,” in John Lennon’s famous words, this collection arose from writer Penelope Rowlands’s own Beatlemaniac phase, when she was one of five screaming girls captured in an iconic photograph that has been published around the world—and is displayed on the cover of this book. (The stories of the girls, who found each other again 50 years later, are also part of this volume.)
The Beatles Are Here! is a celebration of the myth, the reality, the phenomenon, the era. Where did the Beatles take us, what did they deliver us from, and finally, what do they mean to us now? | <urn:uuid:9ffdf445-b674-4a2c-880a-2c6672cb77ad> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://algonquinbooksblog.com/book/the-beatles-are-here/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280364.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00028-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953991 | 381 | 1.53125 | 2 |
A longer-term study examined the effects of 12 weeks of drinking green tea (690 mg total catechins/day of which 136 mg was EGCG) versus placebo on weight loss and several measures of body fat in men. Men consuming the green tea had a two-fold greater weight loss (-5.3 vs -2.8 lbs) and fat loss (-3.1 vs -1.5 lbs). Compared to placebo, green tea had a dramatic four-fold greater effect on reductions in subcutaneous and visceral fat in the abdomen as measured by computed tomography imaging.
Greater fat in the abdominal region is associated with higher risk for many chronic diseases.
In another study, Japanese researchers tested the effects of supplementing with green tea on weight and fat loss. Obese men and women were randomly assigned to consume daily a drink containing 625 catechins or a control beverage for 12 weeks. They were asked to make no other changes in their diet, but all subjects were required to increase daily physical activity. The catechin group lost almost 5 pounds which was more than twice the control group who lost 2 pounds. Fat loss was also greater in the catechin group (-5.2%) versus the control (-3.5%). The most noteworthy finding was that the catechin group lost significantly more fat in the abdomen (-7.7%) compared to the control (-0.3%).
In a third study, overweight men and women were fed three meals per day in a hospital kitchen for 6 weeks. Half the subjects were randomized to a control tea group and half to a green tea group. They consumed 20 ounces of tea two times per day. The green tea contained a total of 534 mg/day of catechins, compared to 162 mg/day in the control tea. There was no body fat loss in the control group, but the green tea group lost over 4 pounds of body fat. Collectively, these studies show that green tea is an effective method for shedding fat, particularly in the mid-section. | <urn:uuid:d21933cf-2fc0-4a01-8ee8-7dce0bfd36e5> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.nutritionexpress.com/article+index/diet+weight+loss/green+tea/showarticle.aspx?id=2009 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279169.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00212-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974228 | 415 | 2.1875 | 2 |
WikiJournal of Science/E-extension in Nepal: brief overview in Nepalese agriculture
WikiJournal of Science
Open access • Publication charge free • Public peer review • Wikipedia-integrated
Keshab Magar (8 September 2020). "E-extension in Nepal: brief overview in Nepalese agriculture". WikiJournal of Science 3 (1): 6. doi:10.15347/WJS/2020.006. Wikidata Q99485817. ISSN 2470-6345. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiversity/en/3/32/E-extension_in_Nepal_brief_overview_in_Nepalese_agriculture.pdf.
Agricultural extension, the application of scientific research and new knowledge to agricultural practices through farmer education, has so far failed to produce the expected results in Nepal due to poor communication infrastructure, high extension costs in sustaining of extension coverage from government, and a high proportion of hill districts. Earlier extension approaches have been costly in both human resources and financial resources. The insufficient number of agriculture centers compared to number of municipalities raises questions as to the reach of extension efforts. Even for farmers in range of the existing extension systems, those systems may not pertain to their specific local needs. Furthermore, in most cases the prioritized groups have been only the lead or active farmers (who are rich in resources and can afford any inputs) and certain agro-enterprises. Improper coordination among governmental bodies and other bodies in agriculture extension has hampered the extension system, whose function should have been the sharing of newer technologies with lower costs, thereby lowering the technical gap between research and extension.
Extension systems must address the specific issues faced by farmers, ranging from crop and livestock production to pesticide use. Youth migration abroad has been an especially pressing problem. The challenge is to encourage them to remain in the country and to support them to continue in agriculture. An opportunity for the present extension system is therefore to educate and equip all involved agri-manpower with required agricultural knowledge. Dissemination of agriculture technological information via the traditional extension approaches has seemingly been insufficient. The chosen extension approach should provide agricultural information according to the needs of the target farmers with quick and reliable delivery. Such rapid access to agricultural information is possible through Information and Communication Technology (ICT), which relies on available physical communication equipment and infrastructure. Development and deployment of the basic ICT infrastructure requires cooperation of all stakeholders along with government. The goal of e-extension is to enhance existing agriculture extension methods.
Afzal et al. (2016) define e-extension as present-time methods of extension services using electronic technologies and the Internet. It includes online web-portals, websites, social media, blogs, emails, and smart phones. E-extension acts as hub for farmers and other stakeholders to collaborate and combine their extension innovations.
Information technology offers easy access to the latest information, reducing cost to both senders and receivers. Via ICT, market information is on hand to help in market decisions and to assist farmers in resolving technical difficulties. Agricultural development is already being uplifted in Nepal due to ICT with more involvement of marginal farmers. For instance, television as a form of mass communication has been able to reach and educate farmers and has played a valuable role in technology transfer. Similarly, mobile phone penetration in Nepal has grown enormously, with estimates of more than 41.1 million users in September 2019. Internet penetration in Nepal is about 79%, with the country ranked second (after Bhutan) in social media penetration as of 2017. By the end of 2020, the government of Nepal intends to connect 90% of the total population to broadband services. This extended internet accessibility, if utilized conscientiously, can reduce the distance between extension agencies and farmers.
Nepal has already entered into the digital age. This surely needs to be reflected in the agro-advisory context of its agricultural extension system. This paper presents and lists e-extension initiatives by different organizations, covering all electronic and internet-based media which have the potential for, or have already demonstrated, constructive impacts in Nepalese extension. The paper concludes with a suggested model for e-extension in Nepal.
This report is based on a literature review of research articles, review papers, and books. Currently developed online sites, web pages and tools were also searched extensively. Google Play, national newspapers, organizational websites and social media sites were used to collect information on the development of mobile applications or other agriculture-related online resources.
Mobile phones have been readily accepted for communication with experts and for peer-to-peer information sharing, with the aim of increasing economic gains. In addition to being widely used for real-time communication among farmers, there have been positive impacts from mobile-phone-mediated learning. Remaining challenges are more centered around acceptance among farmers, as a lack of operational skills can impede their involvement. Similarly, lack of confidence and awareness can cause adoption gaps. As with any ICT tool, acceptance has depended mainly on age and educational level. Despite these issues with acceptability, credibility and connectivity, there has been an observed increase in the knowledge of farmers.
The use of mobile phones in Nepal has undoubtedly been increasing in recent years, which lends them enormous potential as tools for agricultural information dissemination. In particular, a large number of different mobile applications (Table 1) have been developed in Nepal.
|Smart Krishi||Package of practices, agriculture news, documents, e-books, weather info, online queries to experts||Smart Krishi||100,000||https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sudip.smartkrishi|
|Krishi Guru||Crop advisory, weather info, package of practices, agriculture news, consultation with agriculture experts, agri SMS, (some features available offline)||ICT for Agri||100,000||https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ictfa.krishiguru|
|NARC Krishi||Package of practices||Nepal Agricultural Research Council
(Offered by DreamWork Solution)
|Livestock Farming||Information about livestock farming||MiDas Education Pvt. Ltd||10,000||https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.midas.cattle|
|Hamro Krishi- PPCR/AMIS||Information on crops and fruits, weather forecasting, e-books, bulletins in agriculture and news,||PPCR/AMIS
(Offered by Info Developers Pvt.Ltd)
|Krishi TV||App of agricultural TV channel in the form of an app||Krishi Television and New IT Venture Corp.||5,000||https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tv.kishantv|
|Krishi Kapurkot||Information on crop practices, documents, notifications, weather updates||Kapurkot Village Municipality||1,000||https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.upasarga.krishi|
|Krishi Ghar||Information on agricultural practices, focused on location specific consultation||ICT in Agriculture Nepal||1,000||https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.krishi_ghar|
|Aadhunik Krishi||App for supply and sale of modern agricultural equipment||AAdhunik Krishi Kishan Sansar||1,000||https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dwn.aadhunik.krishi|
|Tomato Nepal||Information on tomato cultivation, especially business planning||Offered By DreamWork Solution||1,000||https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tomato.Nepal|
|Krishi Network||Agricultural information and news||krishinetworknepal||1,000||https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.BBT.kishan|
|Mobile Krishi||Agriculture related information, news, weather updates||Offered by Swift Technology||500|
|VCDC Nepal||Materials for vegetable production, official notices||Vegetable Crop Development Center, Khumaltar||500||https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dws.vcdc|
|Organic Nepal||Organic farming practices and its commerciality||Offered by DreamWork Solution||500||https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.IntelliJ.IDE.OrganicNepal|
|Krishi Sewa||Crop practices, expert consultation||Offered by Prologic Solutions||100||https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.prologicsolutions.krishisewa|
|Dhankuta Smart Krishi||Practices, news and notifications||Dhankuta Municiplality
(Offered by SmartGov)
(Offered by DreamWork Solution)
|Pokhara Krishi||Practices, news and notifications||pokharakrishi||100||https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dws.pokhara.krishi|
|Smart Kishan||Agri-commerce||Pathibhara Technology||100||https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pathibharatechnology.smartkishan|
|GeoKRISHI||Practices, weather forecast, focused on location specific farming||Pathway Technologies and Services Pvt. Ltd.||100||https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pathway.geokrishi_farm|
|Digo Krishi||Information about Conservation Agriculture-based Sustainable Intensification (CASI) technology and practices||Digokrishi||100||https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dws.digokrishi.nepali|
|Agri-tech Nepal||For solving calculations related to fertilizer, insecticides, seed area and other agri-related applications.||AgritechNepal||100||https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.agritech_nepal.com|
Agri news sites
A number of agriculture news sites is currently online. These sites provide recent news, notifications, and analytical perspectives in the agricultural sector, along with sharing success stories and farming knowledge.
|Bos Agriculture Nepal||Nepali||Video||https://www.youtube.com/c/BosagriculturetechnologyNepal|
Social media and websites
Social media platforms are increasingly being used by stakeholders in the context of agricultural extension for sharing news, notices and current developments. The current use of social media in Nepal has been helpful to express ideas, share information and make queries. Facebook pages and groups have been particularly widely used to communicate and share information. Social media has a strong potential to help facilitate interaction between extension agents and farmers. This social presence is however mainly beneficial to farmers with higher literacy.
All ministries of Nepal host websites, although their user-friendliness may need to be assessed. As of 2018, the Government of Nepal has also prepared initiatives for every government office to have its own twitter handle. Facebook pages also exist for many government offices.
|Agriculture and Information Training Center|
After Nepal was selected for the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR) in 2009, the Building Resilience to Climate-Related Hazards (BRCH) project was designed as one of the five projects. The Agriculture Management Information System (AMIS) is one of the components of BRCH, and has been developed to provide agro-advisory services.
|Government of Nepal Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development,
PPCR: Building Resilience to Climate Related Hazards Project, Agriculture Management Information System
The Nepal Seed and Fertilizer project (NSAF) is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), as part of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) project. CIMMYT has jointly worked with Nepal’s Soil Management Directorate and the Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC) in developing the interactive digital soil map to document precise data about soil properties (accessible at https://nsafmap.github.io). Although helpful in providing scientists and academics with soil information, the application needs to be more farmer-friendly to achieve its goals among farmers.
The Digital Seed Information System (DSIS) will make registered seeds available, along with information on seed demand and supply, and will be completed as part of NSAF in 2020. The system is also intended to act as a seed portal and market information system to help Nepalese farmers select suitable varieties.
Online courses and MOOCs
No online courses or MOOCs appear to have been developed specifically to facilitate learning in any agriculture topics. There is therefore a dire need to introduce sites like AgMOOCs in the country (following India's example). This requires collaboration at the university level and with other bodies working in uplifting agriculture. Online courses in general yet remain to be explored in the country, although there has been initial work from Kathmandu University (at http://mooc.ku.edu.np) in 2016, which was well-received by participants. A very valuable step has been the opening of Nepal Open University (https://nou.edu.np) in 2016, which has the potential to develop many online courses.
The two main online libraries available for browse e-books, documents, journals, and articles in Nepal are the NARC online library and E-pustakalaya. Both sites have books related to agriculture topics. The websites of stakeholders may also provide additional access to e-books.
|NARC Online Library||http://nkcs.org.np/narc/pmb/opac_css/index.php|
It has been suggested that availability of digital resources themselves is not the main factor for access to ICT, but rather that that physical, digital, human, and social resources need to be in place as a first step. Computers and internet are only the tools. Bridges.org lists a set of criteria that determine the effective reach of ICT: physical access, affordability, appropriateness, relevancy, integration, human capacity, economic environment, legal frame, political support and public interest.
Awareness of ICT is increased by the sharing and disseminating of information and by collaboration. The investigation of possible impacts of ICT on agriculture in Nepal still require further research to cover the multitude of possibilities inherent in e-extension. However, proper adaptation, integration and development of ICT tools and initiatives on part of the government by lack of proper policies deters the progress of adoption of ICT. There is also a requirement to assess the effectivity criteria noted above, which should be incorporated and addressed. E-extension appears to be the prime candidate to improve and enhance the extension system currently in effect in Nepal.
The limitations of e-extension include effective applicability and accessibility. Affordability as well as low educational level and lack of interest on part of the farmers may impede further uptake. Improved strategic planning that specifically includes rural farmers may support the promotion of ICT approaches such as e-extension.
Schedule 6 of the Constitution of Nepal (2015) has placed the area of "agriculture and livestock development" in the domain of the state. Similarly, the Local Governance Act (2017) assigns "agricultural extension" to the domain of municipalities. "Agriculture" remains in the concurrent domain of federation, state and local governments (Schedule 9). Overcoming the issues that remain will undoubtedly require improvement to the overall mechanisms at all tiers of the Nepalese government. Under current circumstances, local governance can avail itself of the same opportunities as other tiers of government for advancement and promotion of e-extension.
The benefits of e-extension are:
- Reductions in cost together with an ability to reach large audiences in limited time make e-extension an efficient approach.
- Feedback mechanisms are rapid; interaction between experts and farmers is accelerated.
- Visual presentation and the use of multimedia makes information easier to understand understandable and disseminate.
- Public and private relationships can be enhanced; tenuous relations between farmers and extension institutions can be strengthened. Further possibilities for e-trading and e-learning exist.
- Issues of finance and insurance become more accessible to farmers. Farmers' awareness of a variety of topics may be increased.
- Opportunities to study and adopt specific farming methods become available. Local and global knowledge become easier to integrate.
Figure 1 presents a possible model for implementing e-extension in Nepal. Government, private agencies and stake holders develop mobile applications, agriculture web portals, MOOCs and online courses, while increasing their presence on social media. The developed products have customized functions and objectives. Social media presence assists in receiving feedback and the sharing of information.
This paper aimed to provide an overview of e-extension in Nepal. As modern Nepal has entered into a federal system of government, the area of agriculture extension has seen the emergence of new topics and fields of discourse. Difficulties still exist in effectively aligning and directing connected extension, education and research. The development of e-extension will act as a bridging tool, assisting in the growth of agricultural development in Nepal. Innovation in e-extension can lead to greater resilience, adaptation and sustainability in the system. E-extension has improved extension processes in general and will continue to do so, and associated innovation can be expected to make positive impacts on Nepalese agriculture.
The author acknowledges reviewers and editors for constantly helping to improve the article.
The authors have no competing interest.
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- Afzal, Adeel; Al-Subaiee, Faisal Sultan; Mirza, Abdulrahman A. (2016-10). "The Attitudes of Agricultural Extension Workers towards the Use of E-Extension for Ensuring Sustainability in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia". Sustainability 8 (10): 980. doi:10.3390/su8100980. ISSN 2071-1050. https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/10/980.
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- Nepal Telecommunications Authority (2019). MIS Report (PDF) (Report). Vol. 178. Nepal Telecommunications Authority.
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- Saravanan, Raj; Bhattacharjee, Suchiradipta (2014). "Mobile Phone Applications for Agricultural Extension in India". In Saravanan, Raj. Mobile Phones for Agricultural Extension: Worldwide mAgri Innovations and Promise for Future. New Delhi: New India Publishing Agency. pp. 1-75. https://www.g-fras.org/es/documents.html?download=251.
- Vimala, D; Ravisankar, T (2012). "Fisher Friend Mobile Application–An Innovative and Promising ICT Tool in Fisheries e-Extension". Fishery Technology 49 (2): 199–203. ISSN 2277-9078. https://krishi.icar.gov.in/jspui/bitstream/123456789/1564/1/338-Fsih%20Tech%20paper.pdf.
- Mahra, Girijesh Singh; Jirli, Basavaprabhu; Rai, Ashok (2013). "M-learning: An Educational Approach for Change in Hills of Uttarakhand". Journal of Global Communication 6 (2): 144. doi:10.5958/j.0976-2442.6.2.021. ISSN 0974-0600. https://doi.org/10.5958/j.0976-2442.6.2.021.
- Singh, Akanchha; Jirli, Basavaprabhu (2019). "Changing Perception and Awareness towards ICT along with Changing Roles of Stakeholders in Agriculture". Research Journal of Agricultural Sciences 9 (6): 1412-1416. ISSN 0976-1675. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336563628_Changing_Perception_and_Awareness_towards_ICT_along_with_Changing_Roles_of_Stakeholders_in_Agriculture.
- "Govt agencies required to use social media". The Himalayan Times. 2018-08-20.
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- Sharma, Manoj; Kaur, Gagandeep; Gill, M (2012-07-10). "Use of Information and Communication Technology in Agriculture by Farmers of District Kapurthala". Journal of Krishi Vigyan 1 (1): 83–89. ISSN 2349-4433. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276069375_Use_of_Information_and_Communication_Technology_in_Agriculture_by_Farmers_of_District_Kapurthala.
- Richardson, Don (2006). "ICTs: transforming agricultural extension?". Report of the 6th Consultative Expert Meeting of CTA’s Observatory on ICTs (Report). The ACP-EU Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation.
- Kyle, Jordan; Resnick, Danielle (2016). Nepal’s 2072 Federal Constitution: Implications for the Governance of the Agricultural Sector. www.ifpri.org (Report). The International Food Policy Research Institute (Development Strategy and Governance Division). Retrieved 2020-09-08.
- Bhattacharyya, Tapas; Patil, Vinayak; Bhave, S.; A., Sawant; Haldankar, Parag; Narkhede, Satish (2018-05-10). "e-Extension Services of SAUs in Indian Agriculture: Challenges and Management Strategies". Advanced Agricultural Research and Technology Journal 2 (2): 119–125. ISSN 2581-3749. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325102354_e-Extension_Services_of_SAUs_in_Indian_Agriculture_Challenges_and_Management_Strategies. | <urn:uuid:7c43efdd-676c-49c5-bab3-5dcff9fe7dbb> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/WikiJournal_of_Science/E-extension_in_Nepal:_brief_overview_in_Nepalese_agriculture | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570871.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808183040-20220808213040-00273.warc.gz | en | 0.830265 | 6,451 | 3.28125 | 3 |
St Patrick was from Wales!
The name of St Patrick is celebrated around the world – everyone knows the patron Saint of Ireland. Facts about ancient saints are sometimes clouded in myth and legend, but we know for certain that Patrick is a real, historical figure. His writing still exists today, including his autobiography.
But Patrick didn’t start in Ireland. Brought up in the west of Britain, at a time when Britain was governed by the Romans, his family were members of the Romano-British church and lived at a place called Bannavem Taburniae. Then dramatically, at the age of sixteen, Patrick is kidnapped by Irish pirates and forcibly taken as a slave to Ireland.
After six years in slavery Patrick escapes, and on returning to Bannavem Taburniae he recounts the experience of a dream which tells him to return to Ireland with the Christian message. Well, scholars have wondered about the location of this place Bannavem Taburniae described by Patrick, and now a small village in South Wales is beginning to supply the answers. Welcome to the historic village of Banwen…
… this place was busy in Britain during the Roman occupation. The strategic Roman Road, called Sarn Helen, runs right through the centre of the village. Today a handful of houses built for miners in the old, mountain coal field stand either side of the Roman highway.
On the edge of the village is Roman fort, and there’s a long-forgotten ruin, just at the side of the Roman Road, called ‘Tafarn y Banwen’. It is here the village celebrates ‘Tafarn y Banwen’ as being the Roman settlement Bannavem Taburniae – the original home of St. Patrick. Local names tell of the place’s history. Land by the Roman fort still caries the old Welsh name Maesmarchog – field of the horse soldier, and the stream is called the Pyrddin – The Pure Man – in the valley of Dyffryn Cellwen – which means the White Cell. Land and language here fits with Patrick’s own story.
If you visit the village today you can walk along the Roman Road, take refreshments in the village café, and see the Celtic Cross standing by a small mountain stream that marks the spot where the village claims Patrick was bought up, next to the Roman road.
Local author and historian George Brinley Evans tells how he first learned of the story in the 1930s when the popular national John Bull magazine carried an article claiming that Patrick was from Banwen in South Wales. “I was amazed and delighted,” said George, “because Tafarn y Banwen was on land that my grandfather farmed. I had always known the place.”
The claim about Patrick appeared in other books, and the mining village of Banwen has come to celebrate the story by erecting a Celtic Cross and planting two olive trees on the site. Every year on St Patrick’s day, children from the local school join villagers walking through the streets to the St Patrick memorial where a service of remembrance and thanksgiving is held, followed by a community tea party.
Nearby are famous show caves of Dan yr Ogof, and the villagers of Banwen welcome visitors seeking glimpse of Wales’ living Roman history, and the story of the man who, after escaping from Ireland as a slave, returned, becoming a most remarkable and courageous person in the history of Christian witness. | <urn:uuid:05ea062d-f048-46c8-81c4-02020dbd24f5> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.landscapesoffaith.org/st-patrick-was-from-wales/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572833.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817032054-20220817062054-00468.warc.gz | en | 0.962903 | 722 | 3.328125 | 3 |
Introduction: DIY Wheatley From Playground Ball!
Welcome... TO MY LAIR!!!
Here at Wheatley Science industries, we pride ourselves on our personality core development. Here we will teach you how to make your own Aperture Science Personality Core from household materials! You and your friends can enjoy this mindless killing machine- I mean- "Friendly Household Appliance!"
I had a random bouncy ball in my Garage, and I mean, OBVIOUSLY it was destined to be a cosplay or costume accessory!
Step 1: Materials
A bouncy ball. I found this one collecting cobwebs in my garage.
A wire clothes hanger. You can also strip yours to get to a shinier finish, as I did.
Wire cutters and Scissors. For all Your Cutting Needs!
Mat board. For cutting small pieces.
Black, White, and Blue acrylic craft paints. You could buy white spray paint and that would save you a lot of time, but I was lazy and stayed at home.
A paintbrush. I advise both Small and Large tip brushes.
Hot Glue Gun with Hot Glue Stix. With an X. These will bind your 3- dimensional parts to your Wheatley Aperture Science Personality Core.
A Compass. For drawing (You Guessed It!) Circles.
A Sharpie. For some fine details.
A reference drawing of Wheatley. I found mine on Google. =D
Step 2: Painting the Body
Cover the top of the ball with some thick White Acrylic Paint.
Once that is dry, cover the other side, and fill in any spots showing the original colors.
Step 3: Cutting Some Small Pieces
Cut Four teardrop-shaped pieces out of mat board.
Poke a small hole in the narrow part of the teardrop.
Paint both sides with black paint.
Step 4: Wire Handles (More Small Pieces)
Cut two Large pieces out of the wire coat hanger.
Next, put a THICK layer of black paint on the center of each wire piece.
These will serve as the handles of Wheatley.
Step 5: Let It All Dry
Once all that painting is done, let it dry.
This will be very important so the paint won't smear and stays neat.
Step 6: Drawing Some Circles! (YAY!)
Draw some circles on the face and sides of the ball with your compass.
I am not going to give you exact radius lengths, because I feel that keeping it original is one of the most important things.
Step 7: Cutting More Detail Pieces
Cut a ring out of the mat board, and two crescent- shapes as well.
(If you're wondering, the crescent shapes are Wheatley's eyelids.)
Step 8: Handle Assembly and Glue-age
Poke your metal handle/ rod through the teardrop- shape piece of matboard.
Next bend both side of the handles down, and hot glue them down.
WARNING- I found that when I glued the metal, the heat transferred throughout all of the handle and I burned my finger. So please don't make the same mistake I did.
Step 9: Glue It All Together!
First start by gluing the large disk around the eye.
After that has dried, glue the two eyelids parallel to each other.
Once those are both dried, glue both handles onto your Wheatley. I would advise using a lot of hot glue so that you can actually pick your Wheatley
Step 10: Main Paint Details
After your hot glue dries, paint some of the major details in with black acrylic paint.
This is a very subjective step, you could paint it however you want, either detailed or abstract.
Step 11: Minor Details in Paint
After your major details are finished, you can go in with some minor details in gray or fine back.
Again, do it however you want to, the texture of my playground ball didn't help me make fine details.
Step 12: Painting the Eye
For painting the eye, I made a simple color gradation using blue, white, and black acrylic paints.
Remember that the inside of the eye is the lightest, and it gets darker as it get's farther from the center.
Step 13: You're Done!
Once that all dries, you're finished!
You can use this Aperture Personality core for any of your cosplay or costume purposes.
If I were to do this again, I would find a smoother playground ball, to make it easier to paint, and I would also work harder on making finer details. I might also try 3d printing the handle parts. Alas, I don't have a 3d printer. Another possibility is to spray a hard shiny lacquer on your Wheatley, to increase his durability.
I hope you enjoyed my Instructable, and if you did, please vote, comment, favorite, or subscribe!
See ya next time! | <urn:uuid:edbdbcee-d783-4d24-a121-6eac931fbffa> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.instructables.com/DIY-Wheatley-From-Playground-Ball/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571909.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813051311-20220813081311-00266.warc.gz | en | 0.928623 | 1,044 | 1.851563 | 2 |
Test 4 Exam Exam
tibco businessworks 5.x
Test4Exam- Leading the way in studying IT certificaiton
Test 4 Exam 1. Which two installation modes prompt the user for information during the install process? (Choose two.) A. GUI mode B. Silent mode C. Console mode D. Unattended mode E. Remote administration mode Answer: AC 2. What are the three benefits of BusinessWorks Process Engines using HTTP(S) for run-time initialization? (Choose three.) A. HTTP(S) does not use multicast for failover. B. The Process Engine advertises state over HTTP(S). C. HTTP(S) may be used in conjunction with firewall security. D. HTTP(S) allows direct, point-to-point access to the administration server. E. HTTP(S) does not span network segments automatically and is therefore more secure. F. HTTP(S) does not require additional network bridging software, making it simpler to set up. Answer: CDF 3. What, if any, are the restrictions of using the TIBCO Administrator GUI via a secondary server? A. There are no restrictions. B. The only restriction is that you cannot deploy applications from a secondary server. C. You cannot perform any monitoring or management functions using the GUI until the secondary server is changed to READ_WRITE. D. You cannot perform user management, deploy applications, or perform any other activity for which READ_WRITE access is required. Answer: D 4. What are four options for creating a TIBCO team building environment? (Choose four.) A. Perforce B. file sharing/locking C. Visual SourceSafe D. TIBCO XML Canon E. TIBCO SmartMapper F. TIBCO Adapter cross referencing Answer: ABCD 5. A BusinessWorks application you are developing uses JMS messaging where the messages only reside on the local campus. How should you implement conversation level security? A. You can define the connection used by the message producers and consumers to use SSL. You also Test4Exam help you Test any it exam!
Test 4 Exam need to provide the appropriate certificates. B. You can define the message producers and consumers to use PGM which encrypts all message content. You must also provide the appropriate certificates. C. You can define the connection used by the message producers and consumers to use a VPN. The network security administrator must configure this for you. D. You need to write a Java code activity to perform encryption (decryption) of the data before giving it to the message producer (or after getting from the message consumer). Answer: A 6. A new integration initiative in your department requires that both a test domain and a production domain be set up for your system integration staff. Due to heightened security, it is essential that all aspects of the environments be completely segregated. Which three actions must you take to achieve this? (Choose three.) A. install test and production TIBCO Administrator servers on machine A B. ensure that all Message Service Bus components are installed on a single network subnet C. ensure that each TIBCO BusinessWorks component belongs to only one appropriate domain D. ensure the TIBCO Runtime Agent network traffic for each domain is limited to a single network subnet E. install a test TIBCO Administrator server on machine A and a production TIBCO Administrator server on machine B F. ensure that the Message Service Bus naming conventions and settings are separate for test and production domains Answer: CEF 7. You want to use a host system to run deployed BusinessWorks process engines. Which two products must be installed on this host? (Choose two.) A. Sun Java JRE B. TIBCO Designer C. TIBCO Administrator D. TIBCO Runtime Agent E. TIBCO BusinessWorks Answer: DE 8. What is a restriction on the consumption of JMS queue messages? A. The JMS queue message consumers cannot use selectors. B. There can only be one active consuming client per JMS queue. C. A single JMS queue message can only be consumed by one client. D. The limit of how many clients can consume a single JMS queue message is determined by the prefetch configuration. Test4Exam help you Test any it exam!
Test 4 Exam Answer: C 9. What is used to add a host machine to a TIBCO Administrative Domain? A. corporate LDAP B. TIBCO Domain Utility C. TIBCO Administrator GUI D. TIBCO Administrator Installer Answer: B 10. Which is a valid technique for preventing unauthorized users from triggering a process flow? A. lock down all process flows using transport specific security mechanisms B. lock down the Starter activity at the transport level via transport specific security C. supply a User ID and password when logging into a BusinessWorks Process Engine D. prevent each BusinessWorks process flow from unauthorized access by assigning a role to it Answer: B 11. Your organization has created a standard for organizing TIBCO BusinessWorks projects. Which is most suited to this task? A. TIBCO Adapters B. TIBCO PortalBuilder C. TIBCO Domain Utility D. TIBCO Designer templates Answer: D 12. Which two messaging protocols can be used to communicate between a BusinessWorks process and a TIBCO Adapter? (Choose two.) A. SOAP B. RosettaNet C. Rendezvous D. Message Queues E. Java Message Service Answer: CE 13. Which statement is true about JRE requirements for installing TIBCO BusinessWorks components? A. A JRE must be installed prior to installing TIBCO BusinessWorks components. B. No JRE is needed or used during the installation of TIBCO BusinessWorks components. C. All installed JREs must be uninstalled prior to installing TIBCO BusinessWorks components. D. All TIBCO BusinessWorks component installers can use a preinstalled JRE or its own embedded JVM. Answer: D 14. You need to perform data conversion on a sequence of elements in a business event schema, but it is Test4Exam help you Test any it exam!
Test 4 Exam not part of the TIBCO XPATH implementation. How do you solve this problem in the most efficient manner? A. TIBCO BusinessWorks does not support the feature. B. You implement an adapter to expand the function set. C. You write a Java Custom activity to handle the business event data. D. You create a Java Custom function to handle the business event data. Answer: D 15. How does BusinessWorks support the External Transformation Model? A. BusinessWorks requires users to create their own XSD transformation engine. B. BusinessWorks allows XML transformation to take place as part of every activity. C. BusinessWorks allows users to visually express multi-pass document transformations as transitions. D. BusinessWorks allows XSLT templates to be imported and executed as part of a process flow's definition. Answer: D 16. Click the Exhibit button. You are developing a BusinessWorks process definition which will update two database tables using JDBC Update activities to reflect that a customer order can now be shipped. One table is a shipping database table (SHIPPING) and the second contains the line item data. You want to make sure that all updates commit or none of them commit. What types of groups should be used to accomplish this?
A. The OUTER_Group should be a Transaction and the INNER_Group should be an Iterate. B. The OUTER_Group should be a Repeat-On_Error-Until_True and the INNER_Group should be an Iterate. C. The OUTER_Group should be a Repeat-Until_True and the INNER_Group should be a Transaction. D. The OUTER_Group should be a None and the INNER_Group should be a Transaction. Answer: A Test4Exam help you Test any it exam!
Test 4 Exam 17. You are building a process that includes a Respond to Adapter Request activity. What must be configured on this component? A. Adapter Protocol B. Number of Retries C. Reply For Drop-down D. Exception Handler checkbox Answer: C 18. Which five are examples of reusable components? (Choose five.) A. Subprocess B. Timer activity C. WSDL Resource D. HTTP Connection E. JDBC Connection F. Schema Definition Answer: ACDEF 19. You are configuring a BusinessWorks mapping and you have dragged and dropped a complex item from the process data side to a complex item on the activity input side of the mapper. What are two questions asked by the pop-up Mapping Wizard to complete this? (Choose two.) A. Are you sure? B. Make a copy of? C. For each, make a copy of? D. Inspect structures for compatibility? Answer: BC 20. What are three grouping capabilities of TIBCO Designer? (Choose three.) A. activities that are to be repeated B. activities that call the same subprocess C. activities that participate in a transaction D. activities that have a common data model E. activities that have a common error transition Answer: ACE
Test4Exam help you Test any it exam! | <urn:uuid:f1ac5e26-1212-43bb-bf22-5aa84f3db5b1> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://issuu.com/test4exam/docs/tb0-103 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282140.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00124-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.852591 | 1,905 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Is the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Enabling Vistra+Dynegy’s Massive Riverbank Project?
As previously reported, Vistra+Dynegy, the Texas-based company and owner of the now-closed power plant north of Kickapoo State Park, submitted a Section 404/401 Joint Permit Application this past July. Approval by regulatory agencies is required before they can install planned riverbank armoring along its two oldest coal ash pits located in the floodplain of the Middle Fork of the Vermilion, Illinois’ National Scenic River. These pits are unlined and leaking coal ash chemicals into the groundwater and surface water. The river is moving west towards the pits, and has ripped off previously installed riverbank protection and severely eroded the riverbanks, bringing the river precariously close to the two coal ash impoundments.
Dynegy’s riverbank proposal is massive:
- Over 22,000 cubic yards of boulders and riprap are proposed along banks and in the river next to the two oldest ash pits for a distance of 1900 feet. . A cubic yard is slightly larger than a typical kitchen stove.
- Work at some locations would extend over 40 feet into the river, and the riverbed would be excavated up to eight feet down.
- The project could take six to eight months to complete and would need to take place during prime recreation months, when water levels are low.
A project of this scope and magnitude warrants the more rigorous review offered by an Individual Section 404 Permit. Yet, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (U.S. ACOE) is waiving its own requirements for an Individual Permit so that Vistra+Dynegy’s permit can be processed as a Nationwide Permit 13. This less rigorous permit (and review) is intended for projects less than 500 feet in length that have minimal impact on adjacent waterways. It’s time to tell the U.S. ACOE to follow its rules.
Dynegy’s proposal will not stop ongoing pollution, and the extent of fill and excavation most certainly will negatively affect the river and the threatened and endangered aquatic species that inhabit it. Yet, as currently proposed, Vistra+Dynegy will now be able to obtain U.S. ACOE approval of their project without:
- An analysis of alternatives that would have less impact on the river.
- Public interest review.
- Public comment or a public hearing.
Tell the U.S. Army Corps You Want the
More Rigorous Review and Analysis!
We think waiving the Individual Permit requirement is a mistake and contrary to the intent of the permit program.
Earlier this month, Eco-Justice Collaborative formally objected to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ decision to waive the Individual Permit requirement. Will you take a moment to do the same? Click here to send a letter to Michael Ricketts, Chief, Regulatory Functions Branch, Louisville District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. | <urn:uuid:0b716c91-8d41-43b0-843b-41220bd4f907> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://ecojusticecollaborative.org/tell-army-corps-follow-its-rules/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571284.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811103305-20220811133305-00479.warc.gz | en | 0.943898 | 636 | 2.15625 | 2 |
PAPERWORK REDUCTION ACT OF 1995 SUBMISSION
Annual Inspection Record of Cranes or Derricks Used in Construction
29 CFR 1926.550(a)(6)
Federal Register [06/08/1998] #63:31231-31232
Annual Inspection Record of Cranes or Derricks Used in Construction
1. Explain the circumstances that make the collection of information necessary. Identify any legal or administrative requirements that necessitate the collection. Attach a copy of the appropriate section of each statute and regulation mandating or authorizing the collection of information.
The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 authorizes the promulgation of health and safety standards necessary or appropriate to provide safe or healthful employment and places of employment. The statute specifically authorizes information collection by employers as necessary or appropriate for the enforcement of the Act or for developing information regarding the causes and prevention of occupational injuries, illnesses, and accidents.
Section 1926.550 (a)(6) requires a thorough annual inspection of cranes and derricks. Cranes and derricks used in construction are subject to hostile environments, deterioration from worn components, flaws and defects that develop during use, and accelerated wear when a defective or normally worn component causes misalignments of connecting systems and components. Components are also subject to malfunction due to oxidation, corrosion, and accumulations of oil and dirt. Documented annual inspections are necessary to implement an effective inspection, preventative maintenance and repair schedule.
The annual inspection record is usually a part of a check list designed for the machine. OSHA requires retention of this inspection report to ensure that on subsequent annual inspections, the inspector has a tool to determine the degree of wear, deterioration and misalignment. This is essential to prevent harm to employees who work with or in proximity to the crane or derrick.
2. Indicate how, by whom, and for what purpose the information is to be used. Except for a new collection, indicate the actual use the agency has made of the information received from the current collection.
The record of inspection is used by employers, employees, and OSHA compliance officers. The employers and employees use the record to establish service schedules, maintenance schedules, re-inspection times, and machine repair. It enables the employer to schedule and perform the various services in a timely manner to prevent equipment failures. The employer also reduces lost time when inspection and recording procedures are followed.
The OSHA compliance officer can review the record and determine if the employer is ensuring that machines are safe. If the yearly inspection of cranes or derricks was not performed and the record of the latest inspection not kept, workplace safety would be compromised.
3. Describe whether, and to what extent, the collection of information involves the use of automated, electronic, mechanical, or other technological collection techniques or other forms of information technology, e.g., permitting electronic submission of responses, and the basis for the decision for adopting this means of collection. Also describe any consideration of using information technology to reduce burden.
Inspection results and dates may be stored and retrieved electronically.
4. Describe efforts to identify duplication. Show specifically why any similar information already available cannot be used or modified for use of the purpose described in item 2 above.
If a local jurisdiction requires the same inspections and records, employees may use those inspections and records to meet this requirement.
5. If the collection of information impacts small businesses or other small entities (Item 5 of OMB Form 83-I), describe any methods used to minimize burden.
The number of cranes varies with the size and scope of the employer's business. The burden ultimately depends on the number of projects the employer is involved with.
6. Describe the consequence to Federal program or policy activities if the collection is not conducted or is conducted less frequently, as well as any technical or legal obstacles to reducing burden.
If this information were not collected, OSHA compliance officers would be hindered by having to make more extensive and lengthy investigations to determine if the machine is safe.
If the information collection were done less frequently, machine defects or deteriorations that are not detected during the annual inspection would not be found in a timely manner and would result in unsafe machines being used.
7. Explain any special circumstances that would cause an information collection to be conducted in a manner:
- requiring respondents to report information to the agency more often than quarterly;
- requiring respondents to prepare a written response to a collection of information in fewer than 30 days after receipt of it;
- requiring respondents to submit more than an original and two copies of any document;
- requiring respondents to retain records, other than health, medical, government contract, grant-in-aid, or tax records for more than three years;
- in connection with a statistical survey, that is not designed to produce valid and reliable results that can be generalized to the universe of study;
- requiring the use of a statistical data classification that has not been reviewed and approved by OMB;
- that includes a pledge of confidentiality that is not supported by authority established in statute or regulation, that is not supported by disclosure and data security policies that are consistent with the pledge, or which unnecessarily impedes sharing of data with other agencies for compatible confidential use; or
- requiring respondents to submit proprietary trade secret, or other confidential information unless the agency can demonstrate that it has instituted procedures to protect the information's confidentiality to the extent permitted by law.
8. If applicable, provide a copy and identify the data and page number of publication in the Federal Register of the agency's notice, required by 5 CFR 1320.8(d), soliciting comments on the information collection prior to submission to OMB. Summarize public comments received in response to that notice and describe actions taken by the agency in response to these comments. Specifically address comments received on cost and hour burden.
Describe efforts to consult with persons outside the agency to obtain their views on the availability of data, frequency of collection, the clarity of instructions and recordkeeping, disclosure, or reporting format (if any), and on the data elements to be recorded, disclosed, or reported.
Consultation with representatives of those from whom information is to be obtained or those who must compile records should occur at least once every 3 years -- even if the collection of information activity is the same as in prior periods. There may be circumstances that may preclude consultation in a specific situation. These circumstances should be explained.
To date, no major problems have been identified with the paperwork requirements in 29 CFR 1926.550(a)(6). As required by the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, OSHA is publishing a notice in the Federal Register soliciting comments from the public and other interested parties on the information collection requirements in 29 CFR 1926.550(a)(6). The Agency will then review and address any comments received in response to the notice before obtaining OMB approval of the paperwork requirements.
9. Explain any decision to provide any payment or gift to respondents, other than remuneration of contractors or grantees.
No payments or gifts will be provided to the respondents.
10. Describe any assurance of confidentiality provided to respondents and the basis for the assurance in statute, regulation, or agency policy.
No elements of confidentiality are involved in this rulemaking.
11. Provide additional justification for any questions of a sensitive nature, such as sexual behavior and attitudes, religious beliefs, and other matters that are commonly considered private. This justification should include the reasons why the agency considers the questions necessary, the specific uses to be made of the information, the explanation to be given to persons form whom the information is requested, and any steps to be taken to obtain their consent.
No such information is required to be reported under this rule.
12. Provide estimates of the hour burden of the collection of information. The statement should:
- Indicate the number of respondents, frequency of response, annual hour burden, and an explanation of how the burden was estimated. Unless directed to do so, agencies should not conduct special surveys to obtain information on which to base hour burden estimates. Consultation with a sample (fewer than 10) of potential respondents is desirable. If the hour burden on respondents is expected to vary widely because of differences in activity, size, or complexity, show the range of estimated hour burden, and explain the reasons for the variance. Generally, estimates should not include burden hours for customary and usual business practices.
- If this request for approval covers more than one form, provide separate hour burden estimates for each form and aggregate the hour burdens in Item 13 of OMB Form 83-I.
- Provide estimates of annualized cost to respondents for the hour burdens for collections of information, identifying and using appropriate wage rate categories. The cost of contracting out or paying outside parties for information collection activities should not be included here. Instead, this cost should be included in Item 14.
Estimated Burden Hours
Total number of construction cranes
In 1995, OSHA estimated that the number of cranes in use in 1993 in the construction industry was 113,000. The number of jobsites per crane in 1993 was approximately 12:1. OSHA estimates that the number of construction sites increased 4.1 percent between 1993 and 1995. The jobsite to crane ratio is estimated to have remained constant. With a 4.1 percent increase in jobsites, there would be an increase in the number of active cranes of approximately 4,500. Therefore, OSHA estimates that the current total number of active construction cranes is 117,500.
Usual and customary business practice
Based on industry sources and OSHA personnel familiar with the industry, OSHA estimates that approximately 80 percent of these cranes are owned and operated by crane or equipment rental companies: 80% of 117,500 = 94,000 cranes. Based on OSHA enforcement experience and the presence of tort liability concerns for these crane rental companies, OSHA estimates that for 90% of these 94,000 cranes, it is the usual and customary business practice to conduct annual inspections and maintain records of the inspections. 90% of 94,000 = 84,600. Therefore, the information collection burden applies to the remaining cranes: 117,500 - 84,600 = 32,900 cranes.
Number of hours to inspect and record
According to industry sources, the majority of construction cranes are the smaller types of cranes (up to 60 ton capacity). These sources indicate that, on average, it takes between 2 ½ and 3 hours to inspect this size of crane, and that it takes 3 to 4 hours to inspect the larger cranes. OSHA therefore estimates that the average inspection time for the smaller cranes is 2.75 hours, and the average time for the larger cranes is 3.5 hours.
OSHA estimates that 2/3 of the 32,900 cranes are 60 tons or less: 2/3 of 32,900 = 21,911. The remaining 10,989 are over 60 tons. The inspection burden hours are:
|60 tons and under:||21,911 X 2.75||= 60,255 hours|
|Over 60 tons:||10,989 X 3.5||= 38,462 hours|
|Total, inspection time||98,717 hours|
OSHA estimates that it takes approximately 30 minutes to record the inspection dates and results for each annual inspection: .5 hour X 32,900 = 16,450 hours for recording
Total Burden Hours, Crane Inspections and Records
The total burden hours are 98,717 (inspections) + 16,450 = 115,167 Total Hours
115,167 Total Burden Hours X $28.41 = $3,271,894. OSHA estimates that there is a 1:1 ratio between the number of respondents and the number of these cranes. Therefore, there are 32,900 respondents.
Total capital and start-up cost component: None.
Total operation and maintenance and purchase of services component: None.
Cost to the respondents
115,167 Total Burden Hours x $28.41* = $3,271,894.00The inspection and employees pay rate was derived from adding the average pay rate for the hourly cost for each pay level of the tradesmen involved. There are at least four levels of pay for the employees who participate in the inspection activity for hoisting machinery. Usually there are at least two persons involved. These persons vary in job classification from one employer to another in the following manner.
*Does not include Overhead and Profit
An operator and his assistant (usually an oiler, apprentice or helper depending on the hiring practice of the employer) will perform the inspection and recording of the findings for some employers. A master mechanic and operator will perform these services for some employers. In other cases an inspector from a recognized agency will make the inspection and use an operator or helper to move the machine and assist in various ways to complete the inspection.
The employer pay costs and method of cost determination are as follows:
|1. Equipment Operator, Master Mechanic||$27.55|
|2. Equipment Operator, Crane or Shovel -Under 100 ton rating||$26.75|
|3. Equipment Operator, Medium Equipment||$25.70|
|4. Equipment Operator, Oiler-Helper||$33.65|
$113.65 divided by four: Average Cost for hourly employee = $28.41(1)13. Provide an estimate of the total annual cost burden to respondents or recordkeepers resulting from the collection of information. (Do not include the cost of any hour burden shown in Items 12 and 14).
- The cost estimate should be split into two components: (a) a total capital and start-up cost component (annualized over its expected useful life); and (b) a total operation and maintenance and purchase of services component. The estimates should take into account costs associated with generating, maintaining, and disclosing or providing the information. Include descriptions of methods used to estimate major cost factors including system and technology acquisition, expected useful life of capital equipment, the discount rate(s), and the time period over which costs will be incurred. Capital and start-up costs include, among other items, preparations for collecting information such as purchasing computers and software; monitoring, sampling, drilling and testing equipment; and record storage facilities.
- If cost estimates are expected to vary widely, agencies should present ranges of cost burdens and explain the reasons for the variance. The cost of purchasing or contracting out information collection services should be a part of this cost burden estimate. In developing cost burden estimates, agencies may consult with a sample of respondents (fewer than 10), utilize the 60-day pre-OMB submission public comment process and use existing economic or regulatory impact analysis associated with the rulemaking containing the information collection, as appropriate.
- Generally, estimates should not include purchases of equipment or services, or portions thereof, made: (1) prior to October 1, 1995, (2) to achieve regulatory compliance with requirements not associated with the information collection, (3) for reasons other than to provide information or keep records for the government, or (4) as part of customary and usual business or private practices.
14. Provide estimates of annualized cost to the Federal government. Also, provide a description of the method used to estimate cost, which should include quantification of hours, operational expenses (such as equipment, overhead, printing, and support staff), and any other expense that would not have been incurred without this collection of information. Agencies also may aggregate cost estimates from Items 12, 13, and 14 in a single table.
The cost to the Federal Government is the OSHA compliance officer's hourly wage rate ($25.56 average for GS-12 employee compliance officer) multiplied by the time it takes to ask for a collection of information records (5 minutes or 0.08 hour) or $2.04 per document per visit. Other operational expenses, such as equipment, overhead, and support staff expenses, would have occurred without these collection of information requirements and are considered normal OSHA operating expenses.
15. Explain the reasons for any program changes or adjustments reporting in Items 13 or 14 of the OMB Form 83-I.
The reduction in costs from the previous estimate results from a reduction in the estimate of the total number of burden hours. There is an adjustment of -102,923 hours from the previous inventory. The reduction in the estimate of hours is based on estimating the percentage of small capacity versus large capacity cranes used, and more accurate data on the amount of time it takes to inspect each size category.
16. For collections of information whose results will be published, outline plans for tabulation, and publication. Address any complex analytical techniques that will be used. Provide the time schedule for the entire project, including beginning and ending dates of the collection of information, completion of report, publication dates, and other actions.
This question is not applicable as this information will not be published for statistical use.
17. If seeking approval to not display the expiration date for OMB approval of the information collection, explain the reasons that display would be inappropriate.
OSHA is not seeking approval to not display the expiration date of OMB's approval of this collection of information.
18. Explain each exception to the certification statement identified in Item 19, "Certification for Paperwork Reduction Act Submission," of OMB 83-I.
OSHA is not seeking exceptions to the certification statement in Item 19.
B. COLLECTION OF INFORMATION EMPLOYMENT STATISTICAL METHODS
The agency should be prepared to justify its decision not to use statistical methods in any case where such methods might reduce burden or improve accuracy of results. When Item 17 on the Form OMB 83-I is checked "Yes", the following documentation should be included in the Supporting Statement to the extent that it applies to the methods proposed:
- Describe (including a numerical estimate) the potential respondent universe and any sampling or other respondent selection methods to be used. Data on the number of entities (e.g., establishments, State and local government units, households, or persons) in the universe covered by the collection and in the corresponding sample are to be provided in tabular form for the universe as a whole and for each of the strata in the proposed sample. Indicate expected response rates for the collection as a whole. If the collection had been conducted previously, include the actual response rate achieved during the last collection.
- Describe the procedures for the collection of information including:
- Statistical methodology for stratification and sample selection,
- Estimation procedure,
- Degree of accuracy needed for the purpose described in the justification,
- Unusual problems requiring specialized sampling procedures, and
- Any use of periodic (less frequently than annual) data collection cycles to reduce burden.
- Statistical methodology for stratification and sample selection,
- Describe methods to maximize response rates and to deal with issues of non-response. The accuracy and reliability of information collected must be shown to be adequate for intended uses. For collections based on sampling, a special justification must be provided for any collection that will not yield "reliable" data that can be generalized to the universe studied.
- Describe any tests of procedures or methods to be undertaken. Testing is encouraged as an effective means of refining collections of information to minimize burden and improve utility. Tests must be approved if they call for answers to identical questions from 10 or more respondents. A proposed test or set of tests may be submitted for approval separately or in combination with the main collection of information.
- Provide the name and telephone number of individuals consulted on statistical aspects of the design and the name of the agency unit, contractor(s), grantee(s), or other person(s) who will actually collect and/or analyze the information for the agency.
This is not applicable since there is no requirement for the collection of information employing statistical methods.
Footnote(1) The figure of $28.41 (does not include W.C. Ins. nor Overhead & Profit, which would increase the rates by 33-43%) was derived by using the average of the hourly wage rates of the various trades, and are based on union wages averaged for 30 major cities (from Means Building Construction Cost Data, 1996, 54th Annual Edition -by R. S. Means Co., Inc. Kingston, MA) (Back to Text) | <urn:uuid:08bf4ba2-8015-4159-8ce8-a38550389ffe> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.osha.gov/Reduction_Act/SUP550A6.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280900.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00002-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917396 | 4,208 | 1.882813 | 2 |
Man has done many notable feats in the field of science and has touched high dimensions, then he has also become the biggest enemy of natural genres. Burning of various types of fossils substances produces carbon dioxide gas and the demonic smoke emanating from the industry is filled with carbon and CO2 gas. As the percentage of CO2 has been increased it causes a lot of damage to the ozone layer.
According to a study, the amount of ozone has decreased by 40 percent as compared to 1960. The ozone layer over the earth is being adversely affected due to gaseous chemical pollutants such as Chlorine and Bromine derived from chemicals such as chloro-fluoro carbon, halogen and methyl bromide used in the industry.
This layer is extremely important for life on Earth. The ozone layer is like an umbrella over the earth which prevents the harmful rays of the sun from reaching the earth, but now many secreted pollutants are piercing this layer, due to which the layer of ozone is getting depleted and it is impossible to stop the harmful rays of the sun from reaching the earth’s surface.
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Long and Short Essay on Ozone Layer Depletion in English
Here we have provided Essay on Ozone Layer Depletion in various word limits for the future requirement of the students and scholars. These essays are presented in simple language and written in such a way that the concept of the topic should be clear for all.
Through these Ozone Layer Depletion essay you will able to find the meaning, causes, disadvantage, and consequences of its depletion.
You can use following long and short essay on ozone layer depletion in your all kinds of assignments related to this topic.
It will also enhance your knowledge that can be used in various types of competitive tests as well as support in your debate and discussion in the class with your classmates and the teachers.
Ozone Layer Depletion Essay – 1 (200 Words)
Ozone is a gas made up of combining three atoms of Oxygen and is present in the stratosphere as a thin sheet around the earth’s atmosphere. It usually acts as a protective shield for the earth and the environment and protects it from the dangerous ultra-violet rays of the sun.
Life forms cannot survive without the ozone layer because the ozone layer protects us from harmful ultraviolet rays that radiate from the sun. These rays can cause cancer, damage to crops and threat to marine organisms.
Chlorine and bromine molecules are responsible for the degradation of the ozone layer. When gases containing these molecules are released into the environment, they cause erosion of the ozone layer over time. The most common halogen gas that damages ozone is chloro-fluoro carbon, also known as CFC.
Talking about the efforts being made to save it, the first of all it is necessary that people are aware about the ozone layer and its protection. All people should be aware of the substances and their damage which cause damage to this layer. There are several easy methods that can protect the ozone layer such as using eco-friendly products, avoiding the use of aerosols and other CFC containing things, promoting plantation etc.
It is noteworthy that the ozone layer absorbs ultraviolet rays from about 97 to 99 percent. To promote its preservation, September 16th is observed as Ozone Day according to Montreal Protocol.
Ozone Layer Depletion Essay – 2 (300 Words)
The ozone molecule is temporary, it absorbs ultraviolet rays and then reverts to an oxygen molecule and a free oxygen atom, this free oxygen atom combines with another oxygen molecule to form an ozone molecule.
Who is Responsible for the Depletion of Ozone Layer?
Protecting the ozone layer present in the atmosphere is very important for human life. In the last few decades, studies related to the ozone layer have found that the ozone layer is slowly decaying.
Human activities and industries are mainly responsible for the depletion of the ozone layer, which exist in almost all major countries, including the US, China, India and Europe. Mainly the pollution caused by chemical pollutants released into air damage the ozone layer. The governments of many countries have banned the use of chemicals that damage the ozone layer, but it is not possible to stop their use completely.
Why the Ozone Layer is Important to us?
Although the ozone layer is a thin layer in the atmosphere, it is still of great importance to us, as it absorbs harmful ultraviolet radiation from the Sun and does not allow it to reach the Earth’s surface. Ultraviolet radiation is very harmful not only for humans, but also for tree plants and animals, it can cause cancer and many dangerous diseases in the organisms.
When is Ozone Day Celebrated?
Seeing the importance of the ozone layer, the General Assembly of the United Nations has decided to celebrate the day of 16th September as International Ozone Day.
In order to protect the ozone layer from harm, the people should be educated about it and they should be taught to keep an eye on the industries which are causing pollution. They should have a close concern on this issue and should make personal efforts to protect the environment. The 25th Ozone Day will be held on 16th September 2019.
Ozone Layer Depletion Essay – 3 (400 Words)
Earth’s atmosphere has the characteristic that it is found in different layers, a layer of ozone gas is found at an altitude of 20 to 30 kilometers from the surface of the earth, it is named the ozone layer. Despite the layer being very thin, it is very important because it absorbs ultraviolet radiation from the sun. If ultraviolet radiation reaches the earth, it damages all kinds of life forms. Ultraviolet radiation is very harmful not only for humans, but also for trees, plants and animals, it can cause cancer and many dangerous diseases in the organisms. That is why the ozone layer is very important for life on earth.
Who Invented the Ozone Layer?
The ozone layer was discovered in 1913 by French physicists Charles Fabry and Henri Bussion. When these scientists looked at the spectrum of light coming from the Sun, they found that it had some dark areas. These areas of the spectrum are called the ultraviolet part. Scientists concluded from this that some element is absorbing the necessary ultraviolet rays, creating a black area in the spectrum and no radiation is visible in the ultraviolet portion.
The part of the spectrum of light that was not visible from the Sun was completely matched to the element called ozone, which scientists have found that ozone is the element in the Earth’s atmosphere that is absorbing ultraviolet rays.
What is Ozone Layer Depletion?
Many types of chemicals can damage the ozone layer, it can also dilute or completely destroy the ozone layer, and these are called free radical catalysts. The main catalysts include nitric oxide, nitrous oxide, hydroxyl chlorine, and bromine. Chlorine and bromine have been produced in large quantities by the industrial activities of humans. The huge damage in ozone layer has been done by chlorofluorocarbons and bromofluorocarbons, these chemical are capable of reaching the stratosphere in gaseous form.
After reaching the ozone layer, atoms of chlorine and bromine are separated from their compounds by the effect of ultraviolet rays, and become free radicals; one atom of chlorine and bromine can destroy one million atoms of ozone, nitrous oxide. Also, the main reason for the thinning of the ozone layer is that there is so much damage to the ozone layer at the southern and north pole of the Earth that there are holes in it. These are called ozone holes.
Although the ozone layer is a thin layer in the atmosphere, it is still of great importance to us, as it absorbs harmful ultraviolet radiation from the Sun and does not allow it to reach the Earth’s surface.
Ozone Layer Depletion Essay – 4 (500 Words)
On 16th December 1987, under the auspices of the United Nations, 33 countries signed an agreement, called the Montreal Protocol, in Montreal, Canada, to address concerns arising from the ozone hole. In this conference, it was decided to limit the production and use of chloro-fluoro carbon (CFC), the substance that destroys the ozone layer. India also signed this protocol. Its cause and solution is a very complex and serious matter. This topic remains an issue of debate and discussion among international scientists, policy makers and the international community. There is an on-going search on this subject.
What is Ozone?
Ozone is an atmospheric gas or a type of oxygen. Oxygen gas (O2) is formed by joining two atoms of oxygen (O), which we use during respiration. A molecule of ozone (O3) is formed by the joining of three oxygen atoms. Its color is light blue and it smells intense.
Ozone gases form a very thin and transparent layer in the stratosphere above. A total of 90 percent of all ozone circulating in the atmosphere is found in the stratosphere. The total percentage of ozone in the atmosphere is very low compared to other gases. Each million air molecules contain less than ten ozone molecules.
Some amount of ozone is also found in the lower atmosphere (troposphere). Even though chemically similar, the role of ozone in both places is important. In the stratosphere, it works to protect the earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation.
Ozone acts as harmful contaminants in the troposphere and sometimes produces photochemical splashes. This gas in the troposphere can damage human lungs, fibers and plants even in very small amounts. As a result of human-caused industrial pollution, the amount of ozone is increasing in the troposphere and in the stratosphere where it is needed; the amount of ozone is decreasing.
Importance of Ozone Layer
The ozone layer in the stratosphere acts as a protective shield for the entire planet. It blocks the harmful ultra-violet rays of the Sun in the upper atmosphere, does not allow them to reach the surface of the Earth. Ultraviolet radiation is extremely harmful to humans, animals and vegetation.
Side Effects of Ultraviolet Rays
- There is a possibility of skin cancer due to ultraviolet rays.
- Cataract arises in the eyes due to u-v rays and if not treated in time, a person may become blind.
- Ultraviolet rays reduce the immunity of humans, due to which they can become the victim of many infectious diseases.
- Ultraviolet rays affect the photosynthetic action of trees and plants.
- The ultraviolet rays that are called UV-B rays enter the sea and damage marine life.
- If a pregnant woman comes in contact with them, there may be a chance of damage to the fetus.
Efforts of Countries around the World
The 1985 “Vienna Convention” for the preservation of the ozone layer was held in the Austrian capital, a meaningful effort to control ozone depletion substances. To attract worldwide attention to the problem of ozone layer erosion, the United Nations decided to celebrate December 16 as “World Ozone Day”.
Ozone Layer acts as a protective layer shielding the surface or earth against harmful ultra-violet radiations from the Sun. Its depletion isn’t only a matter of concern for the environment but also for humans along with other living species. Exposure to UV radiations could cause several harmful diseases including skin cancer.
Ozone Layer Depletion Essay – 5 (600 Words)
A molecule of ozone or O3 is formed by joining three molecules of oxygen. Its color is light blue and gives a special kind of intense smell. At an altitude of about 50 kilometers from the surface, the atmosphere is composed of layers of oxygen, helium, ozone, and hydrogen gases, with the ozone layer acting as a protective shield for the Earth as this ozone layer is protected from harmful ultraviolet rays from the sun on Earth. These ultraviolet rays coming from the sun are beyond the endurance of the cells of the human body. If the ozone layer around the Earth did not have this protective shield, then perhaps the Earth would have been lifeless like other planets.
Causes of Ozone Layer Depletion
Human actions are the main cause of the increased decay of the ozone layer. Human activities have increased the amount of gases in the atmosphere due to ignorance that are destroying the life-saving ozone layer on Earth. Scientists in an analysis involving the ozone layer have found that chloro-fluoro carbon is predominantly responsible for the dissolution in the ozone layer. Apart from this, chemical substances like halogen, methyl chloroform, and carbon tetrachloride are also capable of destroying ozone. These chemicals have been called “ozone depleting substances”. We mainly use them in our daily pleasure facilities like air conditioner, refrigerator, foam, paint, plastic etc.
Side Effects of Ozone Layer Depletion
Increasing decay of the ozone layer can cause many adverse effects. For example, harmful ultraviolet rays from the sun can enter the atmosphere on Earth, which are extremely hot and also harmful to tree, plants and animals. These rays in the human body can cause fatal diseases like skin cancer, respiratory disease, ulcers, and obesity. At the same time, these rays also affect the immunity of the human body. The number of patient suffering from skin cancer is projected to increase in the coming years due to the increasing decay of the ozone layer.
World’s Efforts to Protect the Ozone Layer
Keeping in view the increasing decay of the ozone layer, some countries have taken important steps in the last three decades. Inter-governmental negotiations for an international agreement to deal with ozone-depleting topics began in 1981. In March 1985, there was a world-class conference in Vienna to protect the ozone layer, in which issues such as inter-governmental cooperation on research related to ozone conservation, systematic monitoring of ozone layer, monitoring of CFC production and exchange of information were seriously negotiated.
In 1987, the United Nations signed an agreement called “Montreal Protocol” by 33 countries in the city of Montreal, Canada to address concerns arising from holes in the ozone layer. In this conference, it was decided to limit the production and use of ozone-depleting substances such as chloro-fluoro-carbon (CFC). India also signed this protocol.
In India, the work related to ozone depleting substances is mainly being carried out by the Ministry of Environment and Forests. It is also supported by “Small Industries Development Organization”, Indore. Every year 16th September is celebrated as Ozone Day to create awareness about the facts related to the ozone layer on this day.
At present, the growing use of many types of chemical, indiscriminate cutting of trees; the decay of ozone layer is increasing due to all these. In such a situation, it is our responsibility to plant trees so that oxygen remains in the atmosphere at the most and it creates ozone molecules. At the same time, industry owners and management should also take care not to use substances and processes that adversely affect the ozone layer. Since we have only one Earth, so we have to stop messing with nature for the survival of animals on this earth, otherwise the day is not far when humans will also be extinct.
Did you know that we have over 70,000 essays on 3,000 topics in our database? | <urn:uuid:b3567b52-9cb6-44ef-a6f5-d5f60352a7e0> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://phdessay.com/essay-on-ozone-layer-depletion/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571472.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811133823-20220811163823-00676.warc.gz | en | 0.941078 | 3,195 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Sri Lankan Ambassador to the United States Prasad Kariyawasam expressed his optimism for political and economic reform in his country at a speech in the Intercultural Center on Wednesday night.
The event, titled “Sri Lanka: A Tale of a Resilient Democracy,” was organized by the Asian Pacific Forum and the Asian Studies Program.
Asian Studies professor Irfan Nooruddin, who moderated the event, said that Kariyawasam’s speech is an example of the School of Foreign Service’s growing interest in the South Asian region.
“[The visit] is part of a broader agenda to build the presence of South Asia in the SFS,” Nooruddin said. “Some say South Asia has been neglected in most conversations. … But the ambassador’s visit is a step in the right direction to bringing its issues and importance to the forefront of discussion.”
Kariyawasam served as Sri Lanka’s diplomat to India, Saudi Arabia and Switzerland before becoming ambassador to the United States. Throughout the discussion, he provided examples from his political career to explore a wide variety of topics.
Kariyawasam began by stressing the importance of democratization in Sri Lanka.
“Democracy is a work in progress, and it was hard to say our government was democratic,” Kariyawasam said. “Sri Lankans decided … to go through with a free and fair election, and the democratic institutions were strengthened.”
Sri Lanka, which gained its independence in 1948 after 150 years of British rule, is the oldest democracy in Asia. Since it became independent, the country endured a 25-year civil war between the government and minority ethnic groups.
Kariyawasam said that although the conflict ended in 2009, the government still faces significant challenges in overcoming its history of oppression.
“[The] last government was authoritarian and operated with impunity,” Nooruddin said. “Yet the mood has moved from pessimism to optimism with the revitalization of democratic principles. Sri Lanka is once again a bright spot for democracies.”
As the conversation progressed, Kariyawasam addressed Sri Lanka’s improving relationship with the United States. In September, both countries agreed to draft a resolution that would focus on post-civil war reconciliation efforts in Sri Lanka.
However, the ambassador said that the relationship between the two nations has not always been favorable.
“There were many areas of dissonance in the relationship, especially in the areas of human rights,” Kariyawasam said. “Since the elections, we are increasingly on the same page.”
Kariyawasam said that Sri Lanka is also positioning itself to continue strong economic growth. The country’s gross domestic product growth rate has remained above 6.5 percent since 2009, a higher rate than those of India and Pakistan.
According to Kariyawasam, the Sri Lanka’s positioning as a trade hub is important to its economic prosperity and international relationships. Seventy percent of the world’s oil passes through the region, providing incentive for Sri Lanka, India and China to strengthen their relations.
“We are in the intersection of a power play with world commerce and world powers,” Kariyawasam said. “Our partnerships and the liberalizations of our economy will only allow for further prosperity.”
Amanda Zhu (MSB ’17) said she was unaware of the country’s recent social, political and economic progress prior to Kariyawasam’s speech.
“Sri Lanka is usually talked about tangentially in relationship to China and India,” Zhu said. “But people should be paying attention to it more. The shift into a more democratic government is a success story, but so are its economic and political developments. Its regional importance will only expand.”
Yohan Senarath (SFS ’17), a student in the Asian Studies Program, said Kariyawasam is one of the most effective political operators and commentators in Sri Lanka.
“I find him to be an oxymoron in the world of diplomacy. He is genuine, insightful and incisive when it comes to providing sharp analysis on the relevant issues,” Senarath said. “These qualities are what make the ambassador one of the most respected diplomats working today.”
Senarath said that he hoped the conversation will change commonly held perceptions about Sri Lanka.
“Most Americans consider Sri Lanka a noteworthy country, but not at the level of importance that is shared by actual policymakers,” Senarath said. “You are only likely to see the nation feature more prominently as future issues centered within the region continue to play out.”
Have a reaction to this article? Write a letter to the editor. | <urn:uuid:51754665-5139-4903-8ab6-cbc65c9c7b78> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.thehoya.com/statesman-shares-insights/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280891.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00156-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9596 | 1,040 | 1.960938 | 2 |
Flags are powerful objects. Not only are they a great way to advertise a product, service, or event, they can also communicate a strong sense of community, regional, and national pride. The flags of the world all carry a unique history that becomes an important symbol of the country, state, or territory it represents. For these reasons, people and businesses the world over choose to display their flags proudly.
Learn more about world flags
Before you decide to buy an international flag, take some time to learn more about the flag that represents each country. You’ll likely learn a lot about the people, culture, and area that you never knew before, even if you live or were born in that country.
We’ve made it easy for you to learn more about the flags of the world that exist. All you have to do is click on each flag’s image and you can read about all the amazing things that make that country and its flag unique.
Display your family history
Think you can only display the flag of the country you live in? Think again! Our family histories are mixed, which means you likely feel pride towards all the countries that your ancestors originated from. By displaying another country’s flag, you’re essentially displaying your family’s unique history.
There are so many fun ways you can display your family’s history! You can fly a flag on a pole, as it has been traditionally done. However, you can get creative and order hand flags, table flags, car flags, and more. Use world flags at sporting events, colleges, and parties!
If you’re interested in purchasing a world flag, contact us today. We use the best inks and the highest quality materials to ensure that each and every flag is made with the attention and care it deserves. | <urn:uuid:c4296376-578c-4837-8b3c-0bef034a063f> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.the-flag-makers.com/world-flags-index/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572198.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815175725-20220815205725-00269.warc.gz | en | 0.940035 | 379 | 2.046875 | 2 |
With the opening of University Hospital in Mirebalais, Haiti, we’ve celebrated several firsts: The first patients logged into the electronic medical record system; the first babies born in the maternity ward; the first cancer patient to receive a lifesaving mastectomy. Then there are the firsts that are less joyful, the inevitabilities that we’ve trained extensively for.
In late July, 14 patients were rushed to University Hospital’s emergency room. They were in the nearby town of Morne Couleuvre, riding in a tap-tap—pickup trucks or buses that have been converted into makeshift taxis—that crashed. The range of traumatic injuries was daunting. Four patients sustained serious head injuries, one suffered a critical cervical spine fracture, and another had a fractured femur.
Globally, traffic accidents kill approximately 1.24 million people each year, according to the World Health Organization. More than 90 percent of these deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries.
Tap-tap accidents occur with depressing frequency in Haiti, and PIH has seen the horrific consequences countless times over the past 25 years. In Mountains Beyond Mountains, author Tracy Kidder details a deadly crash that PIH co-founders Paul Farmer and Ophelia Dahl came upon during their early years in Haiti. “Accidents happen. Sure,” Kidder writes. “But not every bad thing that happens is an accident. There was nothing accidental about the wretchedness of the road down Morne Kabrit or the overloaded tap-tap, or the desperation of a peasant woman who had to get to the market and make a sale because others in her family would go hungry.”
In Haiti’s Central Plateau, roads are still rough, tap-taps are still overloaded, and poverty is still pervasive. But the network of PIH/Zanmi Lasante facilities has grown more robust each year, forging a spectrum of care that spans from small clinics to the 300-bed University Hospital, which offers many services and technologies that were never before available in this area. The 14 patients who were rushed to the hospital in the wake of the accident put those services and technologies to the test. Clinicians from both the emergency department and surgical department worked seamlessly to provide timely, thorough, and compassionate care.
All of the patients survived.
“Having a modern and well-equipped emergency department and a highly trained team will dramatically improve our ability to reduce morbidity and mortality related to trauma in the Central Plateau,” says Dr. Regan Marsh, the director of emergency services at University Hospital. “The ED physicians and nurses are able to quickly assess, stabilize, and manage both minor and major injuries—and have access to essential resources, such as bedside ultrasound and CT scans.”
There will be many more accidents in the coming months and years. With your support, we’ll be prepared. | <urn:uuid:76294e68-1d97-45b4-bc1d-2558644f6cf3> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.pih.org/blog/haiti-emergency-department-accident | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280900.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00005-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964465 | 607 | 2.359375 | 2 |
Californians produce two million tons of hazardous waste every year. And the department that manages that waste has faced criticism for the way it operates. Katie Orr reports from Sacramento on the department’s efforts to clean up its act.
When a business is dealing with toxic waste in what’s considered a potentially risky way it must get a permit from California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control. There are currently 118 permitted facilities in the state that treat, store or dispose of toxic waste.
A recent report commissioned by the Department shows its permitting process is confusing and takes too long. A renewal takes more than four years on average. DTSC Deputy Director Brian Johnson says he’d like to cut that time in half.
“Our explicit intent at this point is to ensure that the permits we come out with are more timely, without sacrificing any of the quality and the defensibility and enforceability of the permits,” says Johnson.
Johnson says a more traditional management structure is being put in place to improve the permitting process.
But Liza Tucker thinks the problems run deeper. She’s an advocate with the non-profit organization Consumer Watchdog. She’s written a report that’s critical of DTSC.
“I think it’s more a problem of willpower than manpower. I think that this is an agency that’s been largely captured by the industry that it regulates, that engages in a lot of foot-dragging. And, inside of which, different divisions don’t necessarily communicate very well,” says Tucker. | <urn:uuid:fbef2ac6-f2ee-4c32-a18e-a850b2b96b53> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://kvpr.org/post/californias-toxic-waste-control-department-tries-clean-itself | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282202.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00551-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946925 | 332 | 2.375 | 2 |
There are many decisions a young Literary Man must make as he decorates the walls of his freshman dorm room. Many of these decisions, perhaps not surprisingly, will dictate the outcome of his entire life. The attractiveness and aptitude of his spouse, his literary career, the probability of losing his hair, his eventual preference and ultimate dependence on certain sexual positions, and even the color of his sport-sedan may depend on the different things the young Literary Man chooses to put on the walls of his room.
Most of the wall-bound artifacts the young Literary Man may choose will probably fall into the three easily defined categories: 1) Failure; 2) Cliche; and 3) Literary. The optimal Literary Dorm must surprisingly dabble in a mixture of these three categories, the way that a properly mixed Manhattan must employ the services of a fine bourbon, a pedestrian red vermouth, and the bitterest of bitters. If the young Literary Man uses only literary artifacts to decorate his dorm room, he appears vainglorious and bland; in this way he advertises not his love for fiction but for science fiction and castles; in this way he reveals that he has never really “known” a woman.
The Literary Dorm is best served with four parts literary, one part cliche, and just a dash or two of failure. To wit: at the young Literary Man’s favorite bookstore you can buy posters of old book covers. Best not to overdo it, but one or at the very most two literary book cover posters can aptly express the young Literary Man’s taste and aesthetic. It should go without saying that the young Literary Man must never put a poster on his wall of a book he has not read; the two posters, also, should be evenly spaced throughout the room so as to not appear in competition with one another, the way that Catch-22 and One Hundred Years of Solitude are, without a doubt, the two greatest works of fiction in the twentieth-century, but cannot really share the same wall-space because of their drastic and necessary conceptual differences.
The young Literary Man’s obligatory cliche poster should come in the form of a pin-up. It is inevitable that the young Literary Man will commit himself to several hours of procrasturbation in the Literary Dorm every day and the walls of his room should reflect this. It’s probably best to have at least one or two well-known pin-ups, at the very least, to generate friendly banter among the other young literary men who live on the young Literary Man’s hall. Finally, the dash of failure: the Literary Man must have at least one reproduction of a work of well-known impressionist art in his room. Pathetically, the reproduction will come from the university book store, where thousands of other students will be buying the exact same Starry Night replica. The thing about the Starry Night replica is that many young literary ladies will visit the Literary Dorm. The very best of them will ask about the young Literary Man’s literary posters; the very worst — though possibly most attractive — will ask about the Literary Man’s Starry Night painting. They will say, “Oh, I love this painting!” and the young Literary Man will agree, sagely, that it is indeed a masterpiece.
The final–and possibly most important–element of the Literary Dorm is of course the young Literary Man’s bookshelf. The word “bookshelf” here, of course, meaning the pile of books the young Literary Man haphazardly scatters around the floor and desk in his undersized room. These are books the young Literary Man has already read, or, more likely, has every intention of reading very soon. They are also, for better or worse, probably books that are written by literary men, as the young Literary Man’s reading taste is still virile in its scope and truculent in its design.
These are the books the young Literary Man has already read:
- ON THE ROAD
- ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST
- THE SUN ALSO RISES
- FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS
- ALL THE PRETTY HORSES
- THE STRANGER
- FIGHT CLUB
- BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY
- THE PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN
- SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE
- THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
These are the books the young Literary Man intends to read:
- MOBY-DICK; OR THE WHALE
- ALL THE KING’S MEN
- DON QUIXOTE
- THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV
- THE BIG SLEEP
- INVISIBLE MAN
- THE OBSCENE BIRD OF NIGHT
- WAR AND PEACE
- THE SOUND AND THE FURY
- MADAME BOVARY
- THE BIBLE
- FROM HERE TO ETERNITY
- THE RECOGNITIONS
- BLOOD MERIDIAN | <urn:uuid:fa7062da-5b51-4bda-a71c-4407a38fb601> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://literaryman.com/2011/03/09/the-literary-dorm/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280128.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00384-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947933 | 1,079 | 1.601563 | 2 |
It was shortly after the hurricane that Royal Caribbean decided to deploy it’s ships elsewhere, however the cruise line has now comitted not only to a 2011 season, but also 2012 and 2013.
When the Voyager of the Seas returns to New Orleans, the operations will be based at the newly renovated Julia Street Cruise Terminal. There has been a huge project underway, aiming to modernise the terminal, converting the two smaller terminals at Julia Street, into one large, refurbished terminal. There will also be a brand new, climate controlled gangway. The project is expected to cost around $12 million and will be a huge boost to the cruise industry in New Orleans. The improvements should be completed by summer 2011.
The announcement from Royal Caribbean Cruises has come at a brilliant time, following a series of announcements from other cruise lines about New Orleans. Norwegian Cruise Line also recently announcec that they would be starting to offer year-round cruises to and from New Orleans at the back end of 2011. Carnival Cruises have also replaced the Carnival Fantasy ship with the far bigger Carnival Triumph, allowing more guests to visit New Orleans. | <urn:uuid:9ad17b3d-73cf-4251-b246-5fe0d7333b26> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.cruise1st.co.uk/blog/destinations/royal-caribbean-set-to-return-to-new-orleans/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571909.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813051311-20220813081311-00268.warc.gz | en | 0.961264 | 228 | 1.53125 | 2 |
high tech Easter egg hunt. Someone hides a container of
inexpensive knickknacks -- a cache. Then they post its latitude & longitude
on the internet, and other people go hunting for it. If they find it
they trade knickknacks and sign a log to
visit. The picture on the right is an example of a classic geocache
In Mid. '03 few people had heard of geocaching -- it was almost a secret game. It's grown a lot since then. I stumbled onto the game about a year later and have been playing since.
The minimum you have to have to play is a handheld GPSr (Global Positioning Satellite receiver). Global Positioning Satellites are used in all forms of navigation today. They send signals that these receivers use to figure out where on the surface of the earth they are.
As the game has grown it's developed a number of variations. There are micro caches that are only large enough to contain a rolled up, or maybe folded flat paper log for you to sign. There are puzzle caches, and other spin-offs. (Here's a list of cache types.) There used to be locationless (also called reverse caches) and virtual caches, but as of the end of 2005 locationless caches are no longer supported by geocaching.com . Most (many?) preexisting virtual and webcam caches can still be hunted and logged as finds, but no new ones are being approved.
There's more than one website that supports this game, but far-and-away the most extensive and most popular is, what else, geocaching.com -- also called Groundspeak. You get cache locations there and then return there to record your success or failure to find them. Near the upper right of the main page you can enter your zipcode or address and get a list of the caches near you. Another geocaching site is Terracaching.com. They still support the wider variety of cache types, but are quite small. A new kid on the block is OpenCaching by the people who sell Garmin GPSrs.
When I explain geocaching to friends the inevitable question is, "Well if the GPS gadget takes you right where it is, what's the game?" First, the gadget only gets you close -- typically about 10-12 feet away. And, the cache is hidden -- either from geocachers to increase the challenge/fun, or to conceal it from muggles. Muggles are the uninitiated -- people who don't know about geocaching, and may stumble on the cache and take it, ruin it, or throw it away.
But, the real fun is discovering endless new parks and interesting places near you that you never knew were there. It's absolutely astounding how many interesting places there are near you that you're probably unaware of. If you resist the temptation to make this a contest and just have fun and enjoy the places it takes you, it will be a more rewarding activity. Kids love it, so it provides a setting for outdoor family fun. Note: In recent years geocaching has moved more and more toward microcaches. They're cheap and easy to hide and people who play the game to compete for number of finds can go from parking lot to parking lot quickly. This saddens me, I don't find it fun to visit Walmart and Home Depot parking lots. Sigh . . . So I urge you to stay closer to the original intent of the game and hunt regular size caches in the great outdoors.
Click here to visit my photo journal of the places I've gone and caches I've found. (It hasn't been updated in a long time). In some cases it will give you an idea for how the kind of caches I like are hidden. This beginners guide is getting long in the tooth. It was created in 2004, but I've tried to make a few changes to keep it current.
One weakness of the geocaching website was the FAQ's wasn't thorough. That's why I decided to create this page -- to help beginners learn geocaching. Here's help with some of the fundamentals:(It's very difficult to give advice on this subject today because there are so many different ways to cache. As a result it's difficult to keep this section current. In 2004 when this article was first written the options were pretty limited. Multiple rewrites have made this section choppy and hard to read and it's probably out of date six months after the last revision which was in 2008 -- sorry. You may want to skip it and go on to)
They cost from $100-$600+. To start geocaching you should be able to get a satisfactory unit for $200 or less. Don't confuse the automobile navigator GPSrs with the handheld ones used for geocaching. As of fall 2010 a few of the navigators are beginning to get the functionality for geocaching but, for now, you still need a handheld. The two most popular brands are Magellan and Garmin -- Lowrance is also in the game. Garmin sells many more GPSrs than Magellan. There's a lot of ill-founded but intense brand loyalty. From what I've read comparable units perform about the same across brands. As far as I know, today all models support something called WAAS. In my opinion if you're buying a GPSr and you're in the United States you want one that supports WAAS -- it increases the accuracy by up to a factor of 5. I used to say, other than this about all you get for more money is more features -- not better basic accuracy, but with mid-price units sold since about 2007 you can get better/faster accuracy. Newer mid-price units have better sensitivity than older units. If you already have a handheld GPSr that lets you transfer waypoints (cache locations) to it from your computer it will do fine to start you out. As of Nov '06 WAAS only worked in North America and (sort of) in Europe, so the rest of the world does without it anyway -- I haven't checked on this recently but I think it's been expanded. The newer higher end units also let you carry cache data in them. This is information from the cache page giving cache description, hints and some of other peoples logs that talk about finding the cache.
The most popular GPSr for beginning geocachers may be a Garmin eTrex Legend. I've never used one, but the more I learn about this unit the less I care for it. For three years I used a Magellan SporTrak Pro and was happy with it (This model was discontinued long ago. You'll have a terrific deal on a beginning unit if you can get a used one with/cable for $50 or less on EBay. Be sure it has a cable and you will need a serial port on your computer. Most computers don't have serial ports anymore, but I understand there are 9 pin serial-to-USB adapters for GPSrs available -- e.g. $15 from Amazon or Best Buy. ). A number of people believe the older Magellan units do a better job of finding locations in adverse conditions, like heavy tree cover, than do the older eTrex and other low priced Garmins (Recent mid to upper priced Garmin models with high-sensitivity receivers do a better than the SporTrak). The tradeoff is the older Magellan's take longer to settle down when you reach the general area of the cache. You have to wait a minute or so for them to decide on the final location, whereas the Garmin units don't have this delay. My Magellan did a good job in tree cover, but I did had to give it a minute or so to settle on an answer after I got near the cache. The bottom end of the Magellan and Garmen lines are inexpensive, but you may not be able to transfer waypoints to them from your computer. This rules them out for geocaching as far as I'm concerned. A few years ago I bought a Garmin 60CSx -- it was still considered the most popular handheld GPSr by geocachers as of January '11. [Note: My 60CSx failed in mid-2013 and I now have a Garmin 62s which also carries cache descriptions, and hints.] I didn't find the 60CSx a lot better than my SporTrak for basic cache finding, but it has some features that make it easier to use. USB is much better than Serial Port for sending/receiving data to the unit. Battery change-out is easier. The popup menus are nice. It holds more caches. Batteries last much longer. If you use it for maps (I don't) the color screen is easier to read. And, if you're an FTFer (First to Find) Garmin's direct download from the geocaching website into your unit is nice.You'll want a cable that hooks to your computer to download cache information into your unit. To repeat, some cheap older models don't connect to a computer -- avoid them. Entering waypoints manually is very tedious; plus, the first time you wander off into some awful place because you entered one of all those numbers wrong you'll regret not buying a unit that lets you enter them with your computer. The cable itself used to be an optional extra with some inexpensive models, and it's cost can make-up the difference in the price of a better unit, so consider that if using cost as a deciding factor. You don't need a high end GPSr for geocaching.
[Note: models released after 2004 all seem to have USB connections]
There's a page of geocacher reviews of GPRs on the geocaching.com web site. I used to link to it here but they change the location so often I couldn't keep up.
Go to the main
geocaching.com web page. Enter your zipcode in the
search box near the upper right. This will give you a list of caches moving out from the
center of your zipcode. You could go to each cache page and enter
the coordinates into your GPSr manually, but that's a lot of work, and an error can put
you in the some terrible place. (You'll have to do it
this way if you don't have a computer cable.).
Now go here and download & install the program EasyGPS. [NOTE: This part has not been revised for the latest version of EasyGPS.] You can download individual caches from geocaching.com into GPX files and load them into EasyGPS.
Once you tell EasyGPS which brand & model of GPSr you have (and if its an older unit, which Comm port you're using), connect your cable and turn on your unit; then click this button on the EasyGPS toolbar and it will load the coordinates/waypoints you've collected into your GPSr.
If you decide to become a Premium Member ($30/year or $3/month) there's a more convenient way to get cache lists. They're called "pocket queries." I have no idea what they have to do with pockets. Some caches are Premium Only. You'll not even be able to see these caches unless you're a premium member. It used to be this didn't mean much, but as caching has grown so have the number of vandals and others who have no respect for the game. So, more and more caches are being marked for premium members only. Vandals are less likely to pay for a membership. There are still a lot of regular caches so I wouldn't worry about this until you become hooked on the game.
If you really get into this you'll probably want to get a program named GSAK. It costs a few bucks and is more difficult to learn then EasyGPS, but it doesa lot more things with pocket queries than EasyGPS. The more you use it the more you will realize what a remarkably versatile program it is.
As you might expect, opinions vary on this question.
My list is from the perspective of an old guy.
I use a denim carry bag to keep things together/collected, to carry to the car when I start out. Here's the contents of my bag. When I leave the car for the hunt I take the bag, but I leave some items from it in the car. My stick is always in the trunk, except when I'm on a hunt. Hereís my list:
The stick and the following items are more important to us old codgers who can't climb, stoop, bend, squat and kneel like younger folks. And, irregular ground is more of a problem - it threatens a fall and things break easier.
I leave a couple of bottles of water in the car. If I expect to be out in the heat for over an hour I carry a bottle in my hip pocket.
I carry very little swag (stuff to trade) because I donít trade. I go for the fun of the hunt and to see the places (that's why this proliferation of pointless micros is distressing for me). I've only taken things from the cache when they were required to complete the cache instructions, or an occasional First to Find prize. The only rule is you must sign the log. In the old days those who traded listed what they took and what they left in their web log. (UPDATE: As the game has evolved few people list trade items in their web logs anymore.) If you don't plan to trade you may still want to keep at least one nice trade item in your bag in case you discover something you really want. I carry two mint condition Sacagawea dollars for such situations. [I know, I know, you're not supposed to put money in caches.]
Iíve had a Leatherman type tool and a first aid kit in the trunk of the car for years before I began caching. I carry a small Spyderco pocket knife and a tiny cell phone (fits in my watch pocket) at all times, so I didnít put these on the list. I think a cell phone is essential if you cache in the woods or remote areas -- particularly if you cache alone.
That's my list. Some caches require long hikes. I've never done any of those, but people who do use backpacks and of course carry plenty of water.
A cardinal rule is, if you trade items, trade even or trade up. That is, leave an item of equal or greater desirability than the one you took. Please don't trade a broken McDonalds toy for a pocket watch.
Near the top of the cache description page you'll find the "Size." Try to stay with regular caches in the beginning if you can. Micros are often hard for everyone, especially beginners. Once the most common micro was a 35mm film container, but today they they can be a little larger. The official micro container is about twice as big around and half as long as your little finger. Micros can be as small as a marble. It's becoming more common to use these evil nano caches. (TIP: These tiny caches have rolled up pieces of paper for logs, when you put the log back, put it in the lid -- don't try to put it in the body and then replace the lid -- you'll just crush the log and become frustrated.) Even when micros say one star they're likely to be difficult and can be discouraging to a beginner. Micros are often attached by magnets to metal objects.
Common "small" containers are Lock-And-Lock and serving size Rubbermaid. "Small" caches I've found are typically about the size of a tennis ball or a stack of 7 Hershey bars, but small caches can be almost any size from somewhat larger than a 35mm film container to a quart/liter. As you probably guessed, smalls are easier to find than micros, but harder than regular caches -- surprise!
Try to stay with the easier to find regular size caches to start. On the cache page it will rate the difficulty of caches from 1 to 5 stars. The first number, the difficulty, is how hard it is to find. The second is the terrain -- how hard it is to get to it. A 1/5 will be easy to find when you get to it, but may require a boat and scuba gear to reach it. Try hunting caches in this order until you get some experience: 1/1, 1/2, 1/3 (1/4 if youíre athletic), then 2/1, 2/2, etc. [NOTE: All sorts of ordinary people assign those numbers, so there are difficulty 1's I've never been able to find and 3's I found immediately. Typically, the terrain ratings are more accurate than the difficulty ratings.]
If you're carrying a printout, be sure to decrypt the hints when you print the cache description page and include as many logs as you can for at least the first 5-10 caches you try. Finding them gets easier with experience, but it can be challenging at first. Study all the logs left by others for clues to the cache location. They may also alert you to problems like -- "Watch out for the hornets nest in that tree north of the cache." Make handwritten notes of anything special like this on the pages you print out . If the latest logs have been DNFs (Did Not Finds) wait on those until someone else finds them -- they're probably harder and may be missing. Tip: If you print cache pages days in advance be sure to check the website just before you leave in case the cache has gone missing. It can be very discouraging to spend a hour searching for a cache that's no longer there. Quickly scan all the logs to see how many purple faces -- DNFs. These often signal the real difficulty level.. One, or two out of 30 may or may not, but 5 out of 20 means it's almost sure to be difficult no matter how the owner rated it, unless it was missing for a while.
Be sure your GPSr's Map Datum is set to WGS84
Believe your GPSr, but donít be slaved to it. When you get within 20-30 feet (6-10 meters) start looking around for where it might be hidden. Many beginners either depend too much on the GPSr, or donít trust it enough. Either is a mistake. The satellites that the devices use are constantly moving, so some days, times and places you get better answers, and sometimes you get very bad answers. Also, in heavy tree cover you can get bad results and so did the person who placed the cache and measured the coordinates.. In 2004 I did a survey of experienced geocachers and the coordinates got them to within about 20 feet (6 meters) of the cache on average. Since then GPSrs have gotten more accurate so this distance should be less. Just remember, it's a combination of your unit's error and the error of the person who provided the coordinates. Some (particularly new) cachers aren't careful in determining the coordinates for their caches. Older GPSrs have greater error. If you or the cache owner has one of these models, well . . . (I rarely run into errors this large anymore) My personal experience is the cache is typically nearer than 15 feet (5 meters) when I reach ground zero, but I've run into a few caches where the coordinates were off as much as 60 feet (20 meters), and a couple or three rare cases where they were off about 175 feet (55 meters). I would have never found these except for thinking about where they must be hidden. If you cache in the same area, over time you will learn which cache owners usually post good coordinates and which will frustrate you. There's a long-time cacher in my area that I sigh when I see it's their hide because the coordinates are often going to be off 30 or more feet.
Try different displays/screens on your GPSr until you find the one(s) that works best for you. Most GPSrs have one or more screens that point toward the cache. You must be moving/walking in a straight line for it to point to the cache. It knows where the cache is, but doesn't know which way you are facing and thus which way to point if you're not moving. Most units have a screen that looks like a compass, but instead of pointing north it points at the cache. Personally, I don't like them. If you stop walking they lose their mind. And, I find them confusing -- they start behaving erratically as you get near the cache, the place where you need them most. But, many very experienced geocachers (mostly old timers) rely on these pseudocompasses exclusively. Now that I've used both Magellan and lower priced Garmin units I think I know why. I think the Map method I use works better on Magellan units than on low end Garmin units like the popular eTrex Legend. I suggest you go to a nearby park and "waypoint" an object you can remember such as a stump, water fountain, etc. Then walk a hundred or so feet away and follow the device to return to the location. Do this a few times then choose another object and do it again. Try using different screens. Save these coordinates and try to find the locations again another day. Repeat this until you get a feel for how the gadget responds and which displays work best for you.
If you're interested in how I setup my GPSr, and my technique for homing in on cache coordinates, I describe it Here.
If youíre going into uncertain territory capture a waypoint at your car ("waypoint your car") as you leave it. Create another waypoint at a trailhead, and any point where you go off-trail in a wooded area, so you can find your way back out. You will get so preoccupied wandering around looking for the cache you may get completely disorientated/lost -- there are lots of stories of cachers who spent unpleasant nights in some godforsaken place because they got lost. You should also learn how to use your unit's backtrack feature, and be sure it's turned on. Backtrack (may have another name) is a feature on most units that, if active, shows you the path you took to get were you are. You can follow it to go back the way you came. Practice switching to and using this mode, so if you get lost you can use it to retrace your steps. The commands to operate these gadgets are arcane and you aren't likely to remember how to do it when you need it if you don't practice using it. You may not need to use the backtrack feature for a long time, so be sure to refresh your memory on how it works every week or so at first and month or so after that until every time you switch to it you remember how.
Be sure to take your GPSr manual in the car (and maybe on the hunt) until you've learned and had experience using its features.
As long as we're on the topic of safety, tell someone where you will be and for how long. Add some to the time so people won't start worrying too soon.
I mention again the importance of a stick.
To some extent this is a game better suited to younger more agile people. I've had to give up on a few caches that would have required a mild form of acrobatics to reach it and get back. NOTE: Now that I'm pushing 80 with health issues I have to pass up even more and can no longer go on long walks.
When you can't find a cache you're tempted to try more and more unusual things/locations. Don't take risks. Almost certainly the cache isn't in that risky location anyway unless the cache description says it is. There are many other caches, and you won't get demoted, lose money or be ridden out of town on a rail if you pass on this one, and on the next, and the next. You'll be temped to take risks DON'T DO IT.
If the terrain is a 1, 2 or 3 you can usually assume it can be found without doing anything unusual. In my experience they're rarely more than 60-80 feet off a trail and usually not that far. If it's farther, or it looks like you'll need a machete to get through the undergrowth look for another way to it. One of the biggest mistakes beginners make is to want to go straight toward where their gadget points. ALWAYS look around for easy paths before taking difficult ones. The trail may curve ahead, so you may fight a new path through a terrible jungle just to come out back on the same trail you were on. Stories abound of the guy or gal who waded the creek or got cut up climbing through the fence, or bushwhacked their way through 500 feet of undergrowth just to find when they got there the cache was 20 feet off a main trail. Walk past the cache to see if there's not a better way to it. Usually the person who placed the cache didn't want to bushwhack their way to it anymore than you do. On a larger scale, when I first arrive near the general area I may drive around for 5-10 minutes looking for closest place to park for the easiest, or shortest way to begin (this applies to caches in wooded and hard to get to areas).
When searching for the cache look for something unnatural or out of place -- piles of sticks, bark, rocks, leaves or other debris. . Here's an example. Out of place Spanish moss it often a dead giveaway Also check out tree stumps, logs, and hollow tree trunks. Small caches are often off the ground and Micros almost always are. The crotch or V in trees where major members fork is a popular place for micros -- or maybe a knothole. Micro caches are sometimes attached to the underside of things. They're often attached to metal objects with magnets.
Then there are light pole caches that have come to cover the Earth in our area. I'm not sure there's a parking lot without one -- maybe two. If you look at the bottom of parking lot light poles, they normally have a rectangular box-like cover/skirt at the base. This cover will lift. Today, many micros are attached to the inside of the skirt or cover sometimes with magnets -- often using magnetic key holders you get at the dollar store. If you find yourself driving around on a paved parking lot looking for a micro, it's almost surely a light pole cache -- also called a "skirt lifter."
One of the secrets to successful geocaching is to become a tracker. People who've been to the cache often leave evidence of the path they took and where they found the cache -- footprints, broken limbs, crushed weeds, deformed shrubs, etc. Well worn ones are called geotrails. This opening was a dead giveaway to what would have otherwise been a bear of a route in. Look for the route that has the least brush, thorns, vines and other fun stuff to plow through because cachers before you have already thinned it out with their bodies. I forgot and left my GPSr in the car one day on a FTF (First to Find) hunt, but it was in an area of high weeds. I simply followed the trail of crushed weeds the owner made when he placed the cache -- took me straight to it.
Don't beat your head against a wall trying to find a cache. Pass it by and come back to it later after you've gained more experience. My second cache was a very hard micro I couldn't find. When I finally went back I found it based largely on tricks I'd learned in the meantime. Also, it may be missing. In the upper right of the cache page you can click link to watch a cache listing to see if someone else finds it. You'll be sent an email if somebody logs it. I usually don't go back to a cache I failed to find until somebody finds it or the owner assures me it's still there.
Some trading don'ts: Don't leave food or items that smell (like scented candles or soap). Animals have keen smellers. They're known to destroy caches looking for food. Finally, nothing dangerous or inappropriate for children.
In selecting swag (trade items) keep in mind many caches aren't watertight. If you still want to leave things that'll ruin if they get damp, it's a good idea to seal them in ziplock freezer (heavy weight) bags and even that may not keep them dry.
Put the cache back the way you found it, and where you found it, unless you have very good reason to believe it wasn't in it's intended hiding place. In this case, send an email to the owner explaining what you did. Don't help the owner by moving the cache or hiding it in a better place -- they may want it to be very easy (or hard) to find. Don't move the cache to where your GPSr says the coordinates are. If you think the coordinates are off, post that in your log.
Did I mention waypointing your car and taking water if it's a long hike?
And, don't forget to log your hunt on the geocaching.com website after you find (or don't find) the cache. Go back to the cache page. In the upper right there's a link to log your find. . On the page that comes up select Found It, Didn't find it, or Post a note. Change the date to whatever day you found the cache, then type in some comments about your experience. In the beginning, read some other people's logs for examples of what to say, and submit your log. After you have your own, you'll realize why after your gone to the trouble and expense locating a hiding place, building a cache and hiding it and maintaining it, when finders say nothing or Got it or some such, it's disappointing. Here's a discussion on why you should record your DNFs -- caches you Did Not Find.
Travel bugs (and coins) are a side aspect of the game. You can do them or not. Travel bugs are (usually) smallish objects with an identifying "dog tag" attached, that are moved from cache to cache. The dog tags are used to track/log their movements. To be technically correct the dog tag is the travel bug, and the attached object is the hitchhiker. But most people, refer to the combination of the two things as a travel bug. This is my Blow & Go travel bug (NOTE: It appears to have died in the hands of a cacher named Water Bear in May '08). Travel bugs usually have a goal/mission/objective. Blow & Go's mission is to travel to every state in the U.S. following some simple rules. Travel bugs are not trade items -- you aren't expected to leave something in exchange when you take a travel bug, and conversely, you shouldn't take a trade item if you leave a bug. [Note: Some "travel bug hotels" require you leave a bug if you take a bug. Personally, I boycott this kind of arrangement because bugs can get trapped in them.] If you pick up a bug you're expected to move it to another cache somewhere that (hopefully) will help it towards it's goal -- at least not detract from the goal. For example, if it's goal is to go from California to New York don't move it from Texas to Arizona. On the other hand moving it around in a local area is okay even if it moves a few miles the wrong way. Don't hold a travel bug for a long time. If you can't put in in another cache within couple of weeks, don't take it.
Logging travel bugs can be quite confusing the first few times. They have their own independent tracking system and thus are logged in addition to and different than caches. Click here for my explanation of how to pick up and drop off travel bugs. You can discover travel bugs. Just copy down the tracking number and leave the bug where you found it, then log it on geocaching.com. I do this occasionally now but I object to geocaching.com fostering this practice. By their very nature "travel" bugs are intended to travel. Now we have discover bugs. Because you can now get trackables credit for discovering bugs they aren't moved as much, which is my intent when I release one.
There are also geocoins. Coins work much like travel bugs but there's no hitchhiker, the coin is the entire thing that travels. Also, people collect geocoins.
More while ago pathtags has became popular. Each cacher has his or her own unique pathtag (maybe several designs) These are traded between geocachers at events, some people trade them by mail and sometimes they're left in caches for other cachers to take. This is a picture of my pathtag
FTF -- First To Find
Some people compete to be the first-to-find (FTF) a new cache. This can be a little difficult to do in urban areas with many cachers rushing to get this honor (and sometimes a special FTF prize). If you decide to try this, and you are a premium member you can go here to and sign up to be notified of newly approved caches. I, of course, don't participate in this plebian practice.
I'll add this later if I get requests--in 10 years I've gotten no requests
the size in this order -- if the location permits hide a regular if
Tip: Most people agree it's
better to find several caches
Here's geocaching.com's article on hiding caches.
If you have more questions there are forums at geocaching.com. On the main page, click the "Forums" link in the list on the upper left. I found the Getting Started forum very helpful. When I started out, I asked lots of questions and generous members of the Getting Started group patiently answered them. They're a friendly group. If you move on to the regular Geocaching Topics forum, not so much, for this reason I rarely visit them.
My Poll of Geocachers' Ages
My Geocaching Photo Journal (It's large and takes a while to load)
Here's a Documentary on Geocaching
A Page With Links to Lots of Geocaching PDFs
If You Enjoy Geocaching In the Outdoors You May Also Enjoy Orienteering
Geography Resources for Mapping (May be more helpful to scouting than Geocaching)
The Groundspeak Geocaching Logo is a trademark of Groundspeak, Inc. Used with permission. | <urn:uuid:a030ef87-bb23-4b4a-ba7e-e0b902194fae> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.factsfacts.com/geocacher.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988720737.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183840-00220-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962714 | 7,237 | 2.15625 | 2 |
Paan or pan is a preparation of betel leaves and other ingredients which is chewed as a stimulant. It's quite buzzy. It also stains your mouth red.
Hindi पान pān is from Sanskrit पर्ण parṇa "feather, leaf" (OED) from PIE *por-no- "that which carries a bird in flight" (possibly). From the same PIE form is English fern, so called because it has feathery fronds.
*por-no- is a suffixed o-grade form of *per- "lead, pass over". | <urn:uuid:1a3580bd-a08b-43e2-9146-e96535048681> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://bradshawofthefuture.blogspot.com/2010/11/paan-and-fern.html?showComment=1290882030013 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280128.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00389-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960629 | 138 | 1.984375 | 2 |
Safeguarding children course
Designed for health, housing, charity and social care staff who have safeguarding responsibilities. Looking at how safeguarding principles affect practice, with a focus on multi-agency working.
This is a sample training course outline. It is based on approximately 25 delegates, trained at your premises. It can be adapted to your organisation’s training and CPD requirements. Contact us to arrange an in-house customised course.
The course will introduce:
- Types and indicators of abuse
- Legislation and guidance
- Information sharing and recording
- Parental risk factors
- Online abuse
- Child sexual exploitation
- Attendees to gain a clear understanding of safeguarding responsibilities for Local Authorities and their partners.
- Attendees to have a clear understanding of the safeguarding principles
- Attendees to have a clearer understanding of how these responsibilities will affect practice
- Attendees to understand the fundamental need for joint working, communication and information-sharing to support good safeguarding
Who should attend
- Social care staff
- Health staff
- Housing staff
- Charity staff | <urn:uuid:f59665f3-d703-4453-8557-f956f1478990> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.scie.org.uk/training/children/safeguarding-children.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279650.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00432-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912584 | 226 | 2.203125 | 2 |
Always look both directions
At stoplights we look both left and right for a reason. If we only look “right”, a fast moving object on the left may interfere with our trajectory through an intersection. If we only look “left”, disaster may be lurking on the right.
Of course this leads to political semantics. A Democrat representative is not necessarily “democratic”. A Republican may or may not be for a “republic”. Most Americans don’t know the difference. Common sense and Proverbs reminds us to know a person by their actions…not their words. But how can we be sure if we don’t pay attention?
Regarding “semantics”…Senator John Kerry is pushing a United Nations agenda called the United Nations Committee on Rights of Persons with Disability (UNCRPD), he wants settled by July 26th, 2012. This Administration says if ratified, it will assist disabled Americans who travel over seas, and (that) ratifying a treaty does not require the U.S. to comply with international law. No matter how compassionate the name of the treaty, this information is misleading. Treaties form a part of the Supreme Law of the Land once ratified. Article 7 of the UNCRPD gives governments the ability to override every decision of a parent of a disabled child if the government thinks that its views are in “the best interest of the child.” Some fear this language will ultimately “morph” into other treaties that would take away parental rights of non-disabled children, too.
Advertising that gasoline produced from ethanol (sugar cane) is beneficial to American consumers fails to say where the sugar cane comes from. Americans buying gasoline here are enhancing the economy of Brazil.
“Migrant” workers create a scenario of folks harvesting the fields. Perhaps a misconception tying migrant-to-agriculture began years ago due to the Bracero program. Even then “Bracero’s” brought here legally did not always stay in the fields, thus the end of the program. In addition to the Congressional H1B and H2B visas for “high tech”, the Secretary of Labor makes agreements with a multitude of other nations including El Salvador, Honduras and India for the protection of migrant workers brought here legally and also arriving illegally. Migrant, in this case, can mean any form of employment.
The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee is Senate-selected, but the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is a world-wide political group whose history is intertwined with President Woodrow Wilson and the early days of the United Nations. Members of the CFR, who include financiers and lawyers, among others, often attend the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations meetings. U.S. representatives receive input from a large variety of folks around the world –not just their own constituents.
Redistribution of wealth/downsizing America is a concept touted by members of the Council on Foreign Relations, as well as other global entities, to help equalize global economy.
The United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty is not receiving a lot of publicity, and will impact many nations – certainly ours - in a restrictive way. Perhaps this is why it is not receiving a lot of publicity. While the Bush Administration was able to keep it inactive, the Obama Administration seems to be supporting it. In addition, the UN proposed “world gun ban” has reached California – incrementally; certainly through the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty which will create an international gun registry.
Our Constitution gives the people rights, but the United Nations can manipulate a nation’s constitution through agreements such as Agenda 21 that now reaches San Diego, Ca. purportedly creating communities that look alike, think alike and preserve the environment. A growing number of folks around the world – those who set policy – seldom think of nations as sovereign; just a conglomeration of people living on various continents, upon which some products may be obtained for the rest of the world.
American policy may be dictated by global leaders in some subtle way, through meetings in places around the world such as Isla de Santa Marguerita near Venezuela. Those who have a say in all this are wealthy. “Wealth” is not limited to one political party or country. Considerable wealth can be found in the Middle East, Europe, Asia and the African continent. There is no such thing as 1% of American people having the wealth. One percent having world power is more applicable.
In this election year, it could be that too many people do not understand the fact that all government employees – elected and unelected - are paid for by the dwindling working class. In desperation, we are already dependant on communist governments to help fund our lifestyle. And more demeaning, we had to pay a communist government in order to hitch a ride to the International Space Station.
One years tax increase on the wealthy (combined) will help get the government through, perhaps, two days of spending. While in 2013 the capital gain tax will rise, so will home sellers tax. Attached to the Affordable HealthCare Act (Obamacare) is a requirement to pay an additional 3 ½ percent sales tax on the selling price of their home.
Our world is very small. There is no where else to go – no new lands to explore by raft, galleon or horseback. It is important to sort out the facts, not just take face value. Many, if not most of our elected representatives have our nations best interest at heart. But we will know them by what they do – not what they say.
Each day we encounter some type of stop light – a moment needed to think. Pay attention for your welfare and those dependant on you. | <urn:uuid:18d4be7c-94b3-426a-b66d-fa5d4291bad5> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://thealpinesun.com/article/always-look-both-directions | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560283301.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095123-00510-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952878 | 1,197 | 2.25 | 2 |
The egg tray (egg container) is used for storing and transporting eggs. Eco-friendly and durable egg packaging is also used in everyday life. We invite you to watch the video!..
On the eve of International Women’s Day, March 8, each year the administration of «Zhydachiv Pulp and Paper Combine” creates a festive event. In 2021 women were invited to take part in the creative contest “Handmade Star 2021”. Various works were accepted for the contest: embroidery, beads, knitting..
Video Playerhttps://zhkpaper.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/ролик-En.mp400:0000:0000:17Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume...
In November 2020, a regional creative competition was announced for the modern design of a new workshop for the production of egg containers. The task was posed to the students of the Stryi Higher Art Professional School.The jury consisted of the management of the Zhidachevsky Combine and famous hon..
More and more European supermarkets and manufacturers are refusing to use plastic packaging in accordance with global movement towards the ECO-direction and the European Parliament’s decision to ban disposable plastic products in view of World ocean pollution control.According to forecasts, corrugat.. | <urn:uuid:68081b5e-6738-4861-8b7a-be4cab6cf40f> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://zhkp.uwork.com.ua/index.php?route=blog/category&blog_category_id=74 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571758.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812200804-20220812230804-00677.warc.gz | en | 0.91921 | 276 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Neulog Sense Servo Gripper Arm
- Gripper turns sense into a robot that can modify its environment
- The gripper has 2 servomotors, one to move the gripper up and down, the other to open and close. Each servo of the gripper has a transmission gear and potentiometer.
- Requires a Neulog SENSE to run
- Gripper received various commands you can program: Up-Mid-Down, Open, Close | <urn:uuid:3d138b16-59a6-402d-8e8c-e73955e5ff88> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.hbarsci.com/products/sns167 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570871.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808183040-20220808213040-00272.warc.gz | en | 0.912135 | 101 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Today we have an update on our Peggy 2.0 Light Emitting Pegboard project, with (1) a new and improved version of the Peggy2 Arduino library, (2) links to several awesome examples of Peggy hacks– including a full-motion video hack, and (3) a new GUI application example that lets you display an image on the Peggy without writing a single line of code.
Let’s start with the hacks!
- Art Dahm has written a digital clock application, an animated “Invader” sign, and an interrupt-driven Arduino display library for Peggy 2.0, all with posted code. These are definitely worth a look! [LINK]
- Geoff Harrison has turned Peggy into an animated analog clock, that keeps time even when the power is off. And, Honest Abe shows up in Peggy form too. Nice! [LINK]
- Aubilenon, zsazs, and leviathan wrote a neat demo called “Ledtro” on their Peggy– Whoa! (Updated: New link with code posted!) [LINK]
- Taking this to the next level, Julien Gachadoat and Michaël Zancan of 2Roqs sent in this awesome video of animations on their Peggy. They were also kind enough to let us incorporate some of their code into the new version of the Peggy2 Arduino Library. The 3d rotating wireframe cube in the video is one of our new code examples! [LINK]
- And, taking the cake, Jay Clegg hacked a hardware serial port onto his Peggy, mashed it up with Quartz Composer (!) and managed to get scrolling text and is the first person to get real-time live-motion grayscale video running on his Peggy– direct from a webcam(!!). He’s posted a complete how-to, including videos– go take a look: [LINK]
And now the Arduino Library update:
Today we’re releasing a new version (0.30b) of the Peggy2 Arduino library, which now includes 12 example sketches. The biggest change from the last version of the library is that we have incorporated a line drawing routine contributed by Julien Gachadoat and Michaël Zancan. This lets you draw a line on the Peggy by using commands of the form Line(x1,y1,x2,y2), or by commands like MoveTo(x,y) and LineTo(x,y). We’ve also included example code for the new functions, including (as we mentioned) a version of the 3d rotating wireframe cube that’s in his video.
You can download the latest version of the Peggy2 Arduino Libary on this page, and the gory details about what the functions are and how to use them are spelled out here. This is an open source project. Your code contributions, hacks, and suggestions are welcome indeed.
Lastly, we have a new GUI application example to show off.
One of the outstanding issues with microprocessor-based systems like the Arduino and the Peggy 2 (which shares the same AVR-based architecture) is that they require at least a little bit of programming to do much of anything. While the programming for these systems is about as easy as it gets (for C-like systems) it’s still quite a barrier for some people to get past. For example, to turn on a specific set of LEDs on the Peggy 2.0, you might run an Arduino program that has a bunch of commands like this:
which would turn on the LEDs at (x,y) locations of (5,8), (14,8), and (10,10), assuming that you set up the program correctly– don’t forget your semicolons, initialize the frame buffer, clear the screen when you are supposed to and refresh the display. To those of us who program things, that’s nothing out of the ordinary or remotely intimidating. However, for everyone else, it’s almost too much to ask.
We would like to reduce the barriers to entry so that more people can enjoy playing with microcontrollers and LEDs, so here’s another approach. We have written a graphical application in the Processing environment that generates a complete Arduino sketch as its output. The program is called PeggyDraw, and the output is a complete Arduino program that you can use to put a simple picture on the Peggy 2. You can download PeggyDraw.zip from the Peggy page on Google Code.
To use PeggyDraw, you’ll need both the Processing.org and Arduino software packages installed. These are free cross-platform development environments. (I have Processing 0135 and Arduino version 11.) When you open PeggyDraw from within Processing and run it, you’ll see a window like this one. It looks like the Peggy display, and you can click to draw or erase the dots on the screen. (This is a bit like the Peggy Planner except that it’s oriented towards figuring out which LEDs you want to light up, rather than where you want to put which LEDs of different colors.)
PeggyDraw has only one other I/O method– a button marked “Save.” When you click it, it generates a subdirectory called “PeggyProgram” within the directory where PeggyDraw is located. Inside this folder is the PeggyProgram.pde file, which you can open from within the Arduino environment and directly install onto your Peggy.
Doing this, you can program an image onto Peggy– like so– without ever touching code.
As implemented thus far, it’s a very simplistic program. However, we think that simple programs like this one that automatically generate useable Arduino code may be an interesting approach to further reducing the barriers to entry– And it certainly leaves plenty of room for improvement!
Update: We’ve released PeggyDraw 2! | <urn:uuid:71d5a94e-0a5b-4ad7-928d-5313179ea0c0> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.evilmadscientist.com/2008/the-peggy-strikes-back/comment-page-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280504.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00140-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934406 | 1,236 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Here are a few tips for fasting individuals to avoid headaches during Ramadan
During the first few days of Ramadan, as the body tries to adjust to the new dietary habits, many individuals experience headaches during fasting.
Headaches are caused due to several reasons including less fluid intake, rapid diet change, different sleeping patterns.
Dr. Yousef Al Tayeb, Senior Consultant of Emergency Medicine at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) said, “Some individuals may have a headache before the Iftar meal, while others can get a headache after having their Iftar meal. There are two types of these headaches, namely primary headaches and secondary headaches. Headaches often occur before Iftar due to the decreased blood glucose levels.
Glucose is an important source of energy for the human body and food is its main source. Once the individual eats, the body turns the food consumed to simple sugar, known as glucose, through the digestion and metabolism process. Glucose is then carried through the bloodstream to the body’s cells to provide energy for performing vital processes.”
Some individuals can experience headaches right after having an Iftar meal. It often occurs due to overeating and indigestion.
Eating and drinking during Iftar until the stomach is full can apply pressure on the diaphragm and affect the breathing mechanism, which can lead the fasting individual to feel symptoms of shortness of breath, fatigue, and headache.
Below are some tips for those who fast during Ramadan to avoid having headaches by Dr. Yousef Al Tayeb:
- Delay the Suhoor meal and choose healthy, slow-digesting foods for Suhoor such as grains, legumes, vegetables, and fruits to ensure the body has enough energy during the fasting period.
- Avoid staying up late at night and try to have regular sleeping patterns and take a nap during the daytime.
- Make sure you drink plenty of water and fluids (up to three liters) during the hours between Iftar and Suhoor.
- Keep your blood glucose levels within the normal range by eating in moderation during Iftar and Suhoor meals.
It is important to eat healthy, balanced Iftar meals to ensure the body is getting enough nutrients and vitamins. It’s also recommended to eat in moderation during Iftar to avoid indigestion and stomach upset.
Earlier, Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) urged citizens and residents to be aware of heat-related illnesses such as dehydration, heat exhaustion. Here are some tips to consider to avoid dehydration during Ramadan.
Moreover, research has shown that fasting for 30 consecutive days without any kind of exercise or physical activity can result in loss of strength and fitness.
If you are planning to work out before Iftar, then precautions should be taken into consideration and proper guidelines should be followed.
Exercising just before Iftar can be done in an air-conditioned location and should be limited to 60 minutes. After breaking the fast, make sure to drink enough water and fluids to replenish salts and minerals lost in the body.
After Iftar, one should exercise after three hours of breaking the fast to allow the body to complete the digestion process. Here are some tips for exercising during Ramadan.
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Source: HMC Qatar | <urn:uuid:fb1612e4-4f06-403f-a012-8530d570c075> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.qatarliving.com/forum/ramadan/posts/here-are-few-tips-fasting-individuals-avoid-headaches-during-ramadan | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570692.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20220807181008-20220807211008-00679.warc.gz | en | 0.95057 | 734 | 2.6875 | 3 |
I can handle you telling me
What I did or didn’t do.
And I can handle your interpretations,
But please don’t mix the two.
If you want to confuse any issue,
I can tell you how to do it:
Mix together what I do
With how you react to it.
—Marshall B. Rosenberg, PhD
If you want to make difficult conversations less difficult, these two stanzas are for you.
In his book Nonviolent Communication, Marshall B. Rosenberg lays out a four-step process for communicating more clearly and thoughtfully—no matter the context. The first thing he stresses is the importance of decoupling our observations from our evaluations:
“The Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti once remarked that observing without evaluating is the highest form of human intelligence… When we combine observation with evaluation, we decrease the likelihood that others will hear our intended message. Instead, they are apt to hear criticism and thus resist whatever we are saying.”
An observation is something concrete: Henry said the project needs to be done by tomorrow morning.
An evaluation is how you interpret what you observe: Henry is being unrealistic.
What I like about Rosenberg is that he’s not asking us to be robotically objective. He’s asking us to “maintain a separation between our observations and our evaluations.”
Using the example of Henry, Rosenberg would suggest something like this: Henry said the project needs to be done by tomorrow morning. I feel annoyed because I do not think this is enough time.
I love this concept because it’s so fundamentally simple and powerful. As soon as you learn to decipher what constitutes an evaluation and what constitutes an observation, you start to see how much of our communication is strictly evaluative—the observations behind our evaluations never get discussed.
It is hard to help someone when they say, “We need a better framework.” It is much easier when they say, “Since we implemented the new framework, I am disappointed because I’m having half as many conversations with customers and I really value speaking with customers.”
The first sentence—which is an evaluation absent of any observations—forces you to interpret where the person’s need is coming from. The second sentence—which is an observation followed by how it makes the person feel—saves you from guessing. It helps the listener understand the person better and see where the new framework might be falling short.
This is just a small piece of the value that Nonviolent Communication has brought my way. I hope you get something from it!
For what it’s worth, we are currently working with Rosenberg’s publisher to buy this book for the entire Lessonly team. And this excites me because what this book stands for is healthier and happier relationships with your friends, family, and coworkers. If that isn’t worth $15, I don’t know what is.
Would love to hear your thoughts,
This is Max’s note—a weekly message from Lessonly’s CEO about learning, leadership, and doing Better Work. Sign up below to subscribe via email. No spam, we promise! | <urn:uuid:20ba6d69-2c38-4ec9-a6f0-f868443929c7> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://dobetterwork.com/notes/but-please-dont-mix-the-two/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573623.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819035957-20220819065957-00675.warc.gz | en | 0.938582 | 677 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Why did I write my programming projects?
All the software we use day to day is built on top of a foundation. I believe this foundation should be approachable and understandable to us. Otherwise we’re just floating on an ocean on unknowns and aren’t able to grasp it or utilize it fully. I think lots of us struggle with the strange edge cases and surprising actions of our software toolkit because of its high complexity. I’ve found that much of this complexity is non-essential.
I have attempted to tame some of the complexity by creating my own stripped down versions of existing tools. I have my own focus on aspects of software and design and I would love to hear other perspectives on these topics, so if you have thought about any of these things please feel free to add some comments.
I made the
s lightweight shell because I don’t like the complex nature of the syntax of the bash shell. I found that basic tasks like passing in a variable or filename to a command line tool are fraught with danger. When you write a bash script it may seem to work but can actually have al sorts of edge cases related to filenames with whitespace in them, things starting with a dash that gets misinterpreted as a command line flag. There are too many issues. The early design of shell is plagued with all sorts of screw-ups about escaping and quotation, today we understand these things well and could design cleaner languages. There is a clear trend in modern script languages that we want to move away from string-splatting. David wheeler has some great content on it, so does the bash wiki:
So I wanted to build my own shell that had regular token syntax. And that phase would be separated from the variable expansion phase. Much less surprising! I learned a few things from making this. I also implemented a nice “regions” system for memory allocation in C which you are welcome to use. A good thing that came from making a shell is getting practice with the dup/pipe stuff in order to implement pipelines like
ps | grep | wc. The most important thing that I learned from this though was that the shell scripting situation is not going to be significantly improved by a shell alone..
The understanding I gained was that the basic UNIX tools we compose together using the shell should be more regular and machine friendly. I think UNIX command lines tools should have a completely different system of command line process and instead of using plain text as the universal interface they could use something like tab separated values or ascii delimited values. Being able to do interchange between programs with a well specified structured data format is something very valuable and helpful. Instead we build ad-hoc parsers with awk and sed and such on a daily basis.
People talk about how text is the universal interface in a UNIX system, but you can’t even parse the output of
ls. It’s kind of ridiculous that such a simple tool - the first one you learn about usually - violates the universal law of the system. Various projects have reimplemented the GNU coreutils - it’s not a huge undertaking. If we spent the time to design a new structured data interchange system for command line tools instead of the fuzzy idea of “lines of text” I think the daily plumbing work of scripting could be much much smoother and easier.
I already see this happening a little bit. The
ip utility can output data in json format now! Although this is perhaps not the exact direction I would have recommend, it’s still progress. Paired with the
jq tool you can work with this data very efficiently in a terminal.
In the end making
s was a valuable experiment, but it pointed out to me that the real problem was elsewhere (the userspace tools). I don’t recommend using s but the code may be good to learn from.
I’ve been critical of the whole autoreconf, automake, m4, ./configure, make toolkit for a long time. It solves a real problem, software needs configuration before being built. And to build software (written in C, C++ and many other languages) we need something that does dependency resolution, incremental builds and bunched parallelism. Make does this, but I hate using make - it can be stressful.
Make is overcomplex. It doesn’t fit the UNIX philosophy of solving one task and interacting with other programs. Instead of it tries to do everything: for example it includes an incompatable reimplementation of shell, and it even has guile scheme scripting engine built into it. I felt I could make an orthogonal build engine. Now I’m aware that there are many many existing build systems, of course I reviewed them. I would say that tup is pretty interesting. I think that we’re also seeing a trend where new languages have their own build tools built in (and I think it’s clear why they do this instead of just making people use make).
For these reasons I decided that I had enough and created my own replacement. I was not excited about existing build systems like cmake or meson so I wanted to explore the absolute minimum viable build system. My first attempt was the “previous-version”, which is simply a command line tool that tells if you file A is newer than any of files B,C,D. This “newer than?” primitive is enough to do incremental builds, you just embed your build rules into a shell script like this:
makes data.o \ data.c data.h && $CC $CFLAGS -o data.o data.c
By making that tool I learned it was slightly too simple a framework to add parallelism. I had hoped to add parallelism by waiting for files to appear but there is a race condition because compilers like gcc will open the output file before filling its contents in - it’s not an atomic operation. For another process to wait until the file is “finished” isn’t something you can really do. I studied some things like inotify, fnctl to try but they did not work reliably.
At that point I designed a new version of the build system based on a tab separated values file full of build rules. The tool will load all the rules and perform dependency resolution and then execute an incremental and parallel build for you. I decided to implement this tool in golang rather than C because of it’s added complexity, parsing an input file and performing a graph topsort, as well as using the concurrency features of go which was an excellent help.
This tool does build on the concept of makes v1 because the idea of it is not to write the TSV rules file directly (although you can do this if you like) but the idea is to generate it using a script in any language of your choice. I used shell scripts but python or your favorite language would be fine. I made sure to prove my concept of makes by testing it out by building some exsting software projects: bash, jq, sbase. I also found that the tool can be used for other things, like maintaining a mp3 version of a directory tree with flacs in it. You can re-run it and it will only encode new flacs that haven’t yet been translated to mp3.
You can have a look at these scripts (and the TSV build rule output for some of them) here:
In my opinion this v2 of
makes is excellent. For me, it totally fills the gap that vowing not to use ‘make’ again left. I recommend use of this tool.
I don’t know what to do about the autotools situation yet though. Any ideas? One thing I’d point out is that the software configuration requirements today are less involving than back then.
tests is an extremely simple script - 80 lines of code - that enables you to automatically test a command line tool using a folder full of inputs and expected outputs (or expected errors).
put simply I made this because I couldn’t find anything that does this? that might sound crazy but I searched a bit and got bogged down reading about ‘test anything protocol’. Every testing tool I found was very bloated - look at dejagnu for example:
wc * says it’s got 28012 lines of code in the top level dir.. that isn’t even counting the source code, that’s the scripts to build it and stuff. linecount . ‘*.exp’ says it’s about 17195 lines of “exp” code. All that just to run a script with different inputs and check the result?
The kind of ratio here: 80 lines vs 17195 lines for two programs that achieve the same task is something that I’ve discovered is complete normal. We have a crisis of software complexity that most programmers don’t even want to accept is real. I believe that all of this extra just makes it harder to get basic tasks done and incurs a consistent extra maintainership cost.
It’s worth it to dump overcomplex software and find or make something clean and minimal that accomplishes the task for you.
I recommend using this!
I used linenoise in my shell. It’s a nice minimal tool for line editing in terminals. It lets you not use GNU readline. Unfortunately the author was very busy with a lot of other stuff, so a great deal of pull requests and github issues added up. I merged all of the “good” (judged by me) pull requests (about 200 of them!) into a forked repo. It was a lot of work.. I also included the UTF-8 patch. I hope this is a valuable contribution, others will need to join in maintaining it - and some people have!
I stole the -mob branch idea from tinycc which is very succesful.
tarot and single_cream
- closure conversion gist
I’m a fan of the scheme language and I wanted to build my own scheme from scratch, and I really wanted to do a self-hosted version that could compile itself. This was a lot harder than I imagined. I worked on it for several years before I achieved the results I wanted. The final result is good though. The source code is extremely short and simple. It builds itself very quickly (14 seconds). Most compilers are too complex to understand and take a long time to build themselves.
One of the best algorithms in the compiler is the closure conversion pass. I’ve put a gist link to a writeup of just that pass on its own - so that can be studied and understood separate to the rest of the compiler. I also did writeups on each compiler pass. I think these documents will be valuable to beginners learning to implement a functional language. It also has a custom scheme virtual machine written in C that everything runs on top of.
One of the main things I’ve realized through making this is that self-hosting your programming language implementation isn’t really a beneficial thing. It’s extremely “cool” but that doesn’t imply it’s a good software engineering practice. The “loop” you create from self hosting where the source code needs an already compiled binary introduces lots of traps and gotchas that you need to work around as well as the simple fact that you can’t build the compiler in terms of something smaller. This property is called being “bootstrappable” and I think we should try to make all our compiler tools bootstrappable down to a tiny seed binary that can be audited directly. We’ve got ourselves into a bit of a mess with GCC toolchain needing the set of GCC and binutils binaries to build it. There is a project to repair this though!
I bootstrapped my compiler off chez scheme and then made tinyscheme capable of building it. Eventually tinyscheme broke so I wrote my own scheme interpreter in C from scratch. I think it’s one of the best single file scheme implementations around because it has a working GC and proper tail calls - most single file .c schemes weren’t battle tested enough to work on larger computations.
The other important thing I learned about implementing a programming language is that the actual core feature: taking an input source file and either executing it or compiling it - is only a fraction of what you need to do to make a programming language. You also need debugging and profiling features and documentation for everything. And probably a lot more..
I recommend using single_cream but I don’t really recommend using tarot, studying it could be valuable if you want to learn compilers and PL dev.
This is my gopher client. I wanted to build a GUI gopher client that’s similar to a web browser - but not built on top of web technologies. To do this I first forked cgo and added a gtk gui to it. Later I wrote an entirely new one in vala. I think that vala version works well, but I had some trouble with concurrency features (to support the spinner while a page loads). I’m grateful to the folks on the #vala IRC channel who helped me with perfecting that!
I think this gopher client is great. It’s a pleasure to use and it’s fun to checkout gopherspace. There’s something realy nice about being able to do this outside of a web browser. I think it needs a “bookmarks” feature and I haven’t figured out how to add that yet. I hope others will use this client and maybe even help improve it.
Writing software is rewarding in and of itself but I put this stuff on github and share it with the world in the hopes it can benefit others. I just don’t realy know the best way to connect with others that share the same kind of aesthetics and focus in software. As far as I know there isn’t a group for this anywhere.
- (s) Use structured formats for data interchange
- (s) Historical mistakes dating back to the 70s have been cemented into our fundamental tools.
- (s) We know how to do things better now, but it’s hard to leap forwards in the ‘free market’ of libre software, we can only really make step by step changes.
- (makes) Dump software that makes you unhappy. Put your energy into technology you believe in.
- (makes) The tab separated values format is much better than it gets credit for, underused.
- (makes) You can replace (for your own use) a decades long dynasty of software with a single program you put together in a few weeks.
- (tests) Dump overcomplex software
- (tests) Two programs that do the same thing may have a 1000x size difference.
- (tarot) Self hosting shouldn’t be a goal for language implementors.
- (tarot) If you’re having trouble accomplishing a large goal: set lots of small goals to build up the power to work through a long slog.
- (gopher) If you like something let it be. (Don’t fix what aint broke). | <urn:uuid:2d11dded-974a-4561-9d5e-b0aae14a2339> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://rain-1.github.io/why/why.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571147.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810040253-20220810070253-00476.warc.gz | en | 0.942343 | 3,629 | 1.554688 | 2 |
In Mormon Nauvoo, there was barely a person who did not feel the pangs of a loved one’s death. At the passing of one of his dear friends, King Follett, Joseph Smith sought to comfort those who had experienced loss. Secreted within the words of his sermon were Masonic themes which many in the audience had “ears to hear.” Joseph’s own death, greatly mourned by his followers, would contain Masonic elements. Cheryl and Nick will present the mythology of grief contained within Freemasonry’s legends and rituals. They will demonstrate how these features were present in the teachings, death, and burials of Mormonism’s founder. | <urn:uuid:4e307c8d-245d-4046-9929-09371c863a47> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://sunstone.org/freemasonrys-impact-on-mormon-mourning-in-nauvoo/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571950.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813111851-20220813141851-00678.warc.gz | en | 0.990887 | 140 | 2.625 | 3 |
Legal Status of Payday Loans by State
Click on your state to learn if payday loans are legal or prohibited and the state law that applies.
States where payday lending is allowed
The page for each state where payday lending is legal gives the key cost of loan terms under state law. Look for the cost of a payday loan in dollars and annual interest rate for a 14-day $100 loan. Each page lists the maximum number of loans a consumer can have, any limits on loan renewals and requirements for extended repayment plans. Collection limits spell out the fees lenders can charge if the loan is not repaid and whether the lender can use or threaten criminal action if a borrower is unable to make good on the check used to get a loan.
States where payday lending is prohibited
In states that still have small loan rate caps or usury laws, the state page gives the citation for the law that limits rates, and the small loan rate cap.
Contact Information for State Regulators
All state pages list the state payday loan or small loan regulator, contact information and web site. A link to file a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is provided on each state page.
Legal Status of Payday Lending
Payday loans are small loans subject to state regulation. Traditionally states have capped small loan rates at 24 to 48 percent annual interest and required installment repayment schedules. Many states also have criminal usury laws to protect consumers.
Payday loans at triple-digit rates and due in full on the next payday are legal in states where legislatures either deregulated small loans or exempted payday loans from traditional small loan or usury laws and/or enacted legislation to authorize loans based on holding the borrower’s check or electronic payment from a bank account.
Eighteen States and the District of Columbia Prohibit Extremely High Cost Payday Lending
States protect their citizens from usurious payday lending by prohibiting the product or by setting rate caps or usury limits.
Georgia prohibits payday loans under racketeering laws. New York and New Jersey prohibit payday lending through criminal usury statutes, limiting loans to 25 percent and 30 percent annual interest, respectively. Arkansas’s state constitution caps loan rates at 17 percent annual interest.
After permitting high-cost payday loans, New Hampshire capped payday loan rates at 36 percent annual interest in 2009. Montana voters passed a ballot initiative in 2010 to cap loan rates at 36 percent annual interest, effective in 2011. South Dakota voters approved a ballot initiative in 2016 by a 75 percent vote to cap rates for payday, car title and installment loans at 36 percent annual interest. Arizona voters rejected a payday loan ballot initiative in 2008, leading to sunset of the authorizing law in 2010. North Carolina tried payday lending for a few years, then let the authorizing law expire after loans were found to trap borrowers in debt. The states of Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and West Virginia never authorized payday loans. The District of Columbia repealed its payday law.
Three States Permit Lower-Cost Payday Lending
Small loans secured by access to the borrower’s bank account are authorized in three states at lower than typical rates. Maine caps interest at 30 percent but permits tiered fees that result in up to 261 percent annual rates for a two-week $250 loan. Oregon permits a one-month minimum term payday loan at 36 percent interest lus a $10 per $100 borrowed initial loan fees. As a result, a $250 one-month loan costs 154 percent annual interest for the initial loan, and 36 percent for any subsequent loans. Colorado amended its payday loan law in 2010 to set a minimum six-month term for loans based on checks held by the lender. A Colorado payday loan may include charges of 45 percent per annum interest, a monthly maintenance fee of 7.5 percent per month after the first month, and a tiered system of finance charges, with 20 percent for the first $300 borrower and an additional 7.5 percent for amounts from $301 to $500. Loans can be prepaid at any time with a rebate of unearned fees, repaid in installments, or repaid in one lump sum.
Thirty-Two States Authorize High-Cost Payday Lending
Thirty-two states either enacted legislation authorizing payday loans, failed to close loopholes exploited by the industry to make high-cost loans, or deregulated small loan interest rate caps.
Payday loan states include: Alabama, Alaska, California, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
Payday lending is legal in Ohio despite a ballot vote in 2008 that capped rates. The industry switched to lending under other laws which was upheld by the courts and not corrected by the Ohio legislature.
Some authorizing states somewhat limit debt-trap risks. For example, Washington limits borrowers to eight payday loans per year. Virginia requires loans to be payable in two pay cycles; however, lenders evade protections in Virginia by structuring loans as unregulated open-end lines of credit. | <urn:uuid:fc0025c1-ad35-45fd-9fc5-6791f048680b> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.paydayloaninfo.org/state-information | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280891.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00161-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929946 | 1,063 | 1.9375 | 2 |
Ghostly matters in organizing
Assistens Cemetery, Copenhagen
If the digital realm of Word files and PDFs was more analogue, less hermetically sealed off from the surrounding world and thus in palpable touch with its messiness, you would be able to see the soil of the Assistens Cemetery in Copenhagen, its mounds of damp earth, still clinging to our thoughts and words as you read this text. This image would probably look a bit like the smudges and marks on the drawings and the drawn statements found in this special issue. These smudges are traces of the hand that did the drawing, but also remains of the process of drawing itself. As Asbjørn Skou writes in his absent-present commentary to his artwork in this issue: ‘The act of drawing always embedded in the drawing as object; processual smudges and marks, called ghosts, of the movements of the hand that holds the pencil’. In our work with this editorial, we studied the Assistens Cemetery, and its various pathways, its plantation, its smells and its many told and untold stories have all left their marks on our thinking about ghostly matters in organizing.
We would thus like to start this editorial by inviting our readers to join us on a virtual excursion to the Assistens Cemetery to explore what both the cemetery and our special issue contributors can teach us about the ghostly matters of organizing. We will then turn to the variety of haunting methodologies contained in our contributions, for they address the question of how we might study those ghostly aspects of organizational life that escape articulation or even intelligibility. The third part of the editorial introduces the literature on ghosts, hauntology and ghostly matters, as we narrow our focus to two themes we view as relevant for organization studies: the collapse of linear time and the intimate connection between ghostly matters and affect. We conclude by suggesting that to encounter ghosts and engage with ghostly matters, one must not only direct one’s scholarly gaze in certain directions but also allow the ghostly to bedevil and leave its smudges on our scholarly subjectivity.
Established in 1760 outside Copenhagen’s city walls – an area then called the Northern Suburb – Assistens Cemetery was used as a site to bury paupers and thus to ease the pressure on the overburdened churchyards of the inner city. Despite this humble beginning, the graveyard transformed rapidly, becoming a lush, green urban refuge where affluent Copenhageners favoured laying their dead to rest and thus erected imposing gravestones and commemorated the deceased with memorials and vaults that still grace the cemetery today. Now called Nørrebro, this city borough has evolved into one of Copenhagen’s liveliest quarters and Denmark’s most densely populated areas. The borough’s mass of living bodies is mirrored in the ground beneath the cemetery, where 250 years and more than 200,000 burials have compelled graves to be stacked on graves and thus the bodies occupying them to decompose in layers upon layers of soil.
Today, Assistens Cemetery is emblematic of the kind of space where a multitude of practices, temporalities and functions co-exist and intersect. It remains a cemetery where people come to grieve their lost loved ones, but in kinship with cemeteries around the world, it is also a historical site where prominent cultural, political or scientific figures have been buried. Every year, particularly in summer, tourists flock to visit the graves and monuments of famous Danes like philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, physicist Niels Bohr and writer Hans Christian Andersen. The cemetery also hosts a cultural centre, which holds events and exhibitions. However, what makes this sanctuary so unique and so popular among tourists and Copenhageners alike is its function as an urban green space where people are encouraged to sunbathe, jog, relax, read, walk their dogs or have picnics and small parties with friends and family ‘in the shadow of the area’s many historic gravestones’ (Københavns Kommune, 2019). These co-existing practices constitute the cemetery as, to borrow a term from Tim Edensor, a ‘thick place’, that is, a space ‘suffused with a sense of sensual, emotional and affective belonging that is embedded over time through repetitive practical embodied engagement’ (2012: 1106). The multifarious uses of the cemetery render it a place where distances or boundaries between public and personal, between public and private become difficult to maintain. It is hardly unusual for 15 tourists to be receiving an upbeat guided tour while just a few metres away a woman kneels in solitude, quietly mourning the loss of a dear one recently passed away.
The cemetery features a remarkably high level of biodiversity, replete with many species of trees, flowers and bushes, some of which normally only grow outside of Northern Europe. This makes strolling through the cemetery even more surreal, as the flora do little to situate you in geographical Denmark. While you may be no botanist, you will still have an eerie sense that the trees and bushes populating the cemetery are somehow out of place – or could it be you? Deep in the park, a fig tree has found a spot to drink in the warm sun. It seems right at home, there next to a beech – an almost iconic native of Denmark. The sight of traditionally Northern European trees juxtaposed with other exotic vegetation provokes thought about climate change, about how it might lead to new ecologies where plants once considered exotic will soon become common and other traditional flora will have to find new homes further north. As such, the cemetery’s biodiversity also gives rise to thoughts and concerns about what may be lost in the distant and not-so-distant futures that await us.
Multiple, intersecting temporalities
Gan et al. (2018: G1) have defined haunted landscapes as landscapes of overlaid arrangements of human and nonhuman living spaces and as something produced in gradual steps with more-than-human histories that make and unmake ecologies. The cemetery is indeed such a haunted landscape where the many disparate rhythms, processes and ecologies of the cemetery imbue it with an atmosphere of untold stories – a multi-layered collage of temporalities, sensed in the site’s particular ambience and visible in the wide array of monument designs, statues and gravestone inscriptions – each testifying to the specific fashions, customs, politics and societal hierarchies of its time. Tim Edensor (2008; this issue) has insistently explored how traces of previous inhabitants, politics, ways of thinking and being and the modes of experience left behind intrude on the present, sometimes confounding, aligning and colliding with it (Edensor, 2008). Similarly, the cemetery is a dizzying meshwork of temporalities where past and present grieving, burial and recreation practices co-exist and intersect – sometimes with one temporality literally overlapping the other, such as when several teens celebrate the first day of summer holiday by hanging out on someone’s neglected, half-forgotten grave. If you open yourself to the world around you, you will quickly come to sense how the cemetery is crowded with the lingering vestiges of former mourning rituals, of long-out-of-vogue cultural and political burial practices, of changing ideas about the organization of remembering, of failed attempts to plan and of materiality in varying stages of decay (see Hetherington, 2004; Maddern, 2008).
Thus, the first thing that the cemetery teaches us in our efforts to explore ghostly matters in organizing is to discern how different temporalities co-exist, intersect and collide. Ghostly matters in organizing have to do with how, every once in a while, something long forgotten, something now inappropriate, re-appears to disturb current orderings of past, present and future (Degen and Hetherington, 2001; Pile, 2005; Pors, 2016a). The call for papers for this special issue was an invitation to investigate moments in which different layers of time come to intersect and collide and thus reveal how, as Fredric Jameson (1999: 39) has phrased it, ‘the living present is hardly as self-sufficient as it claims to be and we would do well not to count on its density’. Along these lines, the contributions in this issue explore moments where linear time collapses and something that was repressed, forgotten, misplaced, or is unfitting, has not willingly vanished or is now resurfacing. To explore ghostly matters, one does not necessarily need to adhere to the common narrative of a ghost as a person, animal or thing from the past that returns to haunt the present. The ghost is also a ‘social figure’ that points, for example, to the interstices that emerge between past and present (Gordon, 2008: 8), and also to the hauntings of the future. As Degen and Hetherington have suggested, new building sites and developments are just as likely to be haunted by the visions and plans for the future, as cemeteries or abandoned buildings are to be by the events that once took place in them – not just because of what new buildings and developments rub out ‘but because within their expressions of novelty, pride, social engineering, we find the tragic, ghostly voice of the future evoking the inevitable failure of such spatial dreamings’ (2001: 4). Albeit in different manners, every contribution in this issue searches for and develops analytics apt for exploring how certain events, statements, moments or encounters come to have a capacity to open up for forgotten, silenced and lost futures as well as pasts.
Remembrance and forgetting
A walk around the cemetery to look at the different graves, gravestones and monuments is a study in remembrance and, thus, also in processes of forgetting. Tim Edensor, in this this special issue, cites Nuala Johnson’s (1995: 63) work on how monumental statues serve as ‘points of physical and ideological orientation’ around which ‘circuits of memory’ are organized. In other words, the practice of engraving stones and monuments ensures that certain people are remembered for particular aspects of their lives. Because inscriptions must be brief, one has to capture the essence of a person’s life in a single sentence. Certain patterns seem to persist in what is worthy of remembrance. People’s roles and relationships with particular institutions of authority, such as someone’s service to the royal court or government, have often been etched into headstones. Visual symbols speak of the qualities to be remembered. For example, bees and beehives feature regularly on stones from the late 18th century, thus telling us that someone, often a craftsman, was particularly diligent andhardworking. More often than not those considered important enough to commemorate, or at least those that could afford to be so, were men, while the names of women were often written in smaller letters, and any virtues, deeds or achievements mentioned are likely to refer to their loyalty and wifely support.
A strikingly selective practice of remembering is revealed in the graves of young men slain in the battle of Dybbøl in 1864. In our investigation of cemetery ghosts we interviewed a cultural centre employee, who offered us this narrative:
Those people that died in Dybbøl, their gravestones constitute a goldmine of insights into how the terrors of war were sought repressed. This one, very young guy, who was probably shot to pieces, has a gravestone that reads: ‘His life was brief, his death was beauteous, an honourable grave he won’.
The battle of Dybbøl occurred during the war between Denmark and Prussia over the Dukedom of Slesvig. The Danish troops were badly prepared and greatly outmatched by the efficient Prussian war machine. In a short battle lasting only 10 hours, 5,000 Danish men lost their lives in what many considered a hopeless and even meaningless fight. Omitting the horrific realities of pain, blood, mud and terror, the gravestones at the Assistens Cemetery depict the deaths of the young men as utterly glorious and sublime.
While the choice of words and symbols bears witness to what was considered worthy of remembrance at specific points in time, it also shapes practices of forgetting inherent in such choices and raises political questions about issues such as power, gender, (in)equality, nationalism and colonialism. Yet, human practices of remembering and forgetting are not the only force to erase information. Moss and fungus have had their go at gravestones too, smothered them and their inscriptions over time, ultimately leaving them unintelligible.
Moss and fungus on a gravestone
Thus, the second lesson from the cemetery, for those of us interested in the ghostly matters of organizing, is to look for practices of remembering and forgetting and the politics these practices reveal and constitute. As Derrida (1994, 1995) also liked to remind us, hauntology is an inquiry into the politics of memory. In this special issue, Lisa Blackman’s contribution considers ghostly matters as particular organizations of practices of memory and forgetting, of attention and inattention. With a specific focus on digital archives and what she calls haunted data, Blackman explores how scientific knowledge production is haunted by events and forms of knowledge that have been disqualified and submerged. For Blackman, to be interested in ghostly matters is thus to be attentive to the ways in which the different pasts and the alternative futures that organizations manage to ignore, forget or derecognize occasionally come to resurface.
Also in this issue, Tim Edensor explores processes of remembering and forgetting in his study of how people, values and aesthetics are commemorated in old figurative statues that haunt public spaces by testifying to earlier historical processes. Referring to Angela Dunstan, Edensor draws attention to how these sculptures constitute a peculiarly haunting mode of representation: they just stand there – still, silent, largely monochrome and lifeless, a static model of a person once living and vital but now deceased, a sculpture sometimes unnoticed by the daily passer-by, sometimes changed or later refigured to embrace a different mode of remembrance and meaning. Through their specific performance of remembering and forgetting, these statues constitute a curious reminder not simply of the death of those they commemorate or the mortality of all individuals, but also of past and present power relations and injustices and their effects on people, societies and ecologies. Yet, remembering and forgetting are effected not only by the material substance of statues and memorials but also through the embodied practices of perceiving and ignoring. In his contribution, Edensor also unfolds the corporeal dimension of remembering and forgetting, drawing attention to how bodies move around and habituate public spaces and the statues in them, and thereby acquire a sedimented, embodied sense of their presence. In performing the habits and routines of everyday urban existence, bodies become adept at not seeing and at creatively circumventing the multiple resonances of the past (Edensor, this issue; 2012).
Thus, Blackman’s and Edensor’s respective contributions open up broader questions about how we learn to move around in social, material, digital and organized spaces by ‘unseeing’ and ‘unnoticing’ (Mieville, 2009) certain things, relations and political processes (Otto et al., 2019). This in turn raises the question of how our daily life in organizations depends on our adeptness at moving around without noticing certain things and without even noticing our not noticing. To be interested in the ghostly matters of organizing is to inquire into past and present processes of remembering and forgetting, practices of seeing and unseeing and patterns of attention and inattention. It is also to explore how choreographies of ‘unseeing’ occasionally collapse, enabling us to glimpse that which has become disposable, displaced or submerged.
The cemetery’s cultural centre is located in the old chapel, a building that has seen much death and hosted many funeral rituals, but also provided the backdrop for concerts, theatre plays and exhibitions. The building has its own little oddities. As one employee told us, the lock to the door of the public restroom where a municipal caretaker once murdered an infant tends to jam, and every once in a while, the screams of some schoolchild trapped in the tiny lavatory will send a centre employee running to the rescue, screwdriver in hand to pry open the door. Usually, however, the teasing materiality of the door lock will already have produced a range of affects, such as surprise, fear or panic. Another unexplained phenomenon has occurred in the chapel ever since it held an exhibition about the life and untimely death of a young reggae musician, Natasja. One of the lights in the main chapel room can no longer be switched off. An electrician attempting to fix the problem fell from a ladder and injured his back. A cemetery employee recounts the difficulty of reporting this bizarre accident to the digital filing system of the Danish Working Environment Authority:
Those online schemes are constructed in such a manner that everything always requires a cause. You cannot continue to the next page before you check one of the many boxes … But there was no cause. No, the ladder was not too old or damaged. Yes, he had a ladder certificate. No, the floor was not wet. No, he was not disturbed in his work. So I found a box saying ‘other issues’ and wrote ‘unknown causes’. Then the authorities called me up on the phone and wanted their cause, but after having talked to these people for many minutes without any progress, I explained to them that someone does not want anybody to stand on ladders in that room, and we have had problems with it in the past too. They hung up on me and I did not hear from them again.
The digital filing system where the incident was to be reported only works when incidents can be categorized and put into a scheme of cause and effect. In this case, none of the options fit, as the incident had no identifiable cause. The human-to-human phone conversation also failed to accommodate the messier scheme and mysterious cause. In the end, the employee’s insistent defence of the inexplicable took precedence over the rationality of the formal system, the report remains incomplete, and the incident itself remains as a ‘non-present presence’ in the cultural centre.
In his famous Specters of Marx: The state of the debt, the work of mourning and the new international, Derrida writes about the spectre:
It is something that one does not know, precisely, and one does not know if precisely it is, if it exists, if it responds to a name and corresponds to an essence. One does not know: not out of ignorance, but because this non-object, this non-present present, this being-there of an absent or departed one no longer belongs to knowledge. (1994: 5)
For Derrida, the ghost is something that perhaps once belonged to knowledge but no longer does. It is something that (no longer) fits in any meaningful way with discourses, concepts and systems of categorization. As a sort of quasi-object/subject (Serres, 1991), the ghost brings with it a rather indecipherable message from a space beyond discourse and representation.
Thus, the third thing one can learn from Assistens Cemetery in this editorial is to keep an eye out for the incidents, events and moments that destabilize and trouble stable categories and categorizations. Ghostly moments, we would argue, are moments in which categories with the power to fix and organize, for some strange reason, fail to do so.
In this issue, Sine Nørholm Just ‘sights’ metaphors representing the financial crisis and interrogates their constitutive powers and capacities. The spectral vocabulary of supernatural figures like vampires (‘bloodsucking bankers’), zombies (‘dead banks’) and ghosts (of ‘financial speculation’) serve to illuminate, or even shape, our understanding and hence responsive practices of what transpired in the crisis. The ghost of finance, she argues, is certainly more than a metaphor. Since trading debts entails buying and selling products that are never fully materialized but ‘always already derivative, endlessly deferred. (…) a spirit without a body’ (Just, this issue), finance is thus organized around ghostly matters. What is more, financial transactions, their assessments and evaluations are based on confusing relations between expert knowledge and (public) opinion, an interplay that generates their financial value – thus, troubling and disturbing those taken-for-granted institutions that have set up the financial system in the first place.
Similarly, Jannick Friis Christensen and Sara Louise Muhr delve into the disturbing capacities of concepts. Their empirical study investigates how the topic of female quotas haunts, that is, irritates and unsettles, the conversation that takes place in the interviews they have conducted with Danish business leaders. While these managers officially reject a quota policy, the subject keeps resurfacing in conversations and statements, often in affective registers such as hearty disavowals or as a secret, somewhat shamefully confessed approval. The authors argue that in the Danish context, quotas are a sort of non-topic, something excluded from how organizations make sense of and utilize concepts like talent, competence and leadership potential. However, the formal absence of quotas in the Danish work system remains a powerful, seething presence in a topic that thereby questions prevailing notions of meritocracy and talent as well as the processes of leaders’ identity formation and self-performance.
As we can see in Just’s as well Christensen’s and Muhr’s contributions, ghostly matters can be explored as processes through which fixed categories and categorizations become unsettled (Beyes and Steyaert, 2013; Risberg and Pilhofer, 2018) and as disturbances of organizational attempts to capture and put things in certain places. The ghost disturbs neat discursive orders, narratives and explanations, causes them to collapse without offering any new, coherent and unambiguous narrative orders (Holloway and Kneale, 2008; Pors, 2016a).
Thus, in this issue we explore ghostly matters by drawing attention to how the categories and practices of categorization on which organizations rely to capture and control events, people and processes are sometimes disturbed and unsettled.
Organizing that which has become disposable
A couple of years ago, the northeast corner of the cemetery had to be excavated to make space for a new metro station. The graves of around 1,750 people, buried from 1805-1990, had to be cleared and the human remains in varying stages of decay removed.The cultural centre employee explained the process:
They said that it was a so-called ethical excavation because the graves were covered to prevent people in the surrounding buildings from standing in their windows and looking directly into the graves as skulls and thighbones emerged. However, cemeteries in the City of Copenhagen are run by the Office of Technology and the Environment, so … It’s a little bit like … They consider dead people somewhat of a waste problem. Something that has to be handled. This is nothing like it was back in the days where the cemetery was run by the Office of Culture.
The office that normally handles road maintenance and parks, waste and building projects coordinated the action, eliminating the graves and moving all the remains to a single, common grave some 200 metres away. This series of events illustrates how different authorities, or different professions, have different techniques, programmes and routines for handling the material remains of that which no longer has a function, that which has become obsolete, that which is now disposable and even a waste problem.
In stark contrast to the gravestone inscriptions described earlier, which were heavily charged with sentimental, celebratory or honourable symbolism, a more recent gravestone near one of the cemetery entrances reads: ‘In the year 2010, coffins were moved from section G to section E and put down there due to the construction of a metro station by Nørrebros Runddel’.
The gravestone erected after human remains were moved due to the construction of a new metro station
Revealing a talent for storytelling, the cemetery employee tells us that one day, while the site was being cleared, a British woman who said she could sense and communicate with spirits came to the cultural centre feeling ghastly after an overwhelming encounter with numerous spirits in a state of agitation after having been disturbed in their deaths. As she walked past the building site where the bones had been excavated, she had been assaulted by the terrifying sound of a thousand screams and cries.
Perhaps human bones are not the everyday objects of organizational efforts to clean out the past and make room for the new. However, the event makes us think about how organizations deal with remnants from the past that are no longer conceived of as needed or valuable, and perhaps even as an obstacle to development. As the artist Asbjørn Skou (absent-present note, this issue) reminds us: ‘It does not take death to make ghosts of some.’
Thus, the fourth and final aspect that Assistens Cemetery can help remind us needs attention is the processes through which something becomes disposable and how material and immaterial remnants are handled and gotten rid of (see also Gordon, 2008, chapter 2; Hetherington, 2004; Pors, 2016b: 4). What are the processes through which values, people, bodies, things, competencies, skills and habits become unwanted, considered outdated or unneeded? How are things once considered of value transformed into garbage-handling problems? How do organizations deal with and organize things like ideas, structures or human beings that have become disposable but continue to linger?
Nana Vaaben’s and Helle Bjerg’s contribution to this issue explores how an organization, a Danish state school, through a process of reformation makes some of those values, practices and perhaps even people once associated with teaching disposable. The paper starts with the story of an engaged primary school teacher who quit her job after being disappointed and disillusioned by the latest school reform, which seemed to make her ‘spirit of teaching’ dispensable (Vaaben and Bjerg, this issue). From the organization’s perspective, the teacher is unable to conform to the new, heavily formalized requirements. From the teacher’s perspective, she ‘get[s] really mad, when people tell [her] that now we have to put things behind us and move on…[she] can’t!’ She insists on her sense that the past’s way of doing things is valuable, and this absent-presence carries an urge to act and to resist (Gordon, 2011, in Vaaben and Bjerg, this issue). Here, Danish state schoolteachers inhabit, embody and, in this case, suffer from the performativity of policy through the entanglement of temporality, affectivity and imagination (of undesired futures) created by recent educational policy.
In Jerzy Kociatkiewicz and Monika Kostera’s contribution, the issue at hand is not how to dispose of unwanted ideas, values or other material, but how to go ‘backwards to recover that which has been left behind’. The authors take us ghost hunting in a reading of foundational management texts, such as those by Frederick Taylor and Mary Parker Follet. This is a ‘walk against the winner’s tale’, but it is not concerned with deconstructing texts to seek new meaning. Instead, the authors develop a different way of seeing the texts, one that allows ideas that are marginal, unwanted and cast-off yet present there in their own right to reclaim their voice. Reading and writing through the lens of Walter Benjamin’s flâneur, Kociatkiewicz and Kostera develop a method of textual flâneurie that provides a way of seeing and wandering in such texts. As with the other contributions of this issue, the goal is not to solve remaining inconsistencies or problems in management texts or to exorcise their ghosts, but to ‘learn to think through what these have given us to consider’ (Richer, 2002: 5, in Kociatkiewicz and Kostera, this issue). Through such non-linear reading, the authors aim to open up false closers, such as pathways to humane ideas of management theory that are hidden in plain sight.
Vaaben and Bjerg as well as Kociatkiewicz and Kostera’s contributions are examples of how ghostly matters in organization concern that which has become disposable, but also how that which has been disposed of can be redeemed.
Ghost hunting, ghost sighting and summoning ghosts
In the first part of the editorial, we used Assistens Cemetery as an ‘anecdotal case’ (Michael, 2012) for thinking through ghostly matters in organizing. The cemetery is not only a host of ghosts, spirits and spooks, it reveals how every organizing process is imbued with intangible, unintelligible and affective issues that escape, disturb or animate plans, strategies and institutionalized ways of doing things in unexpected ways. As our conceptual understanding of ghostly matters evolves and hopefully becomes more palpable, the question of the empirical and how to methodologically explore the limits of representation remains (Knudsen and Stage, 2016; Fotaki et al., 2017). The authors in this special issue have chosen various methods for and approaches to unearthing such haunting vestiges of narratives and events from the pasts or imaginaries of the future that shape the present way we organize. They evoke at least three notions for their ghostly methodologies – their ways of creating processes of collecting, analysing, presenting and perhaps changing that which animates in unforeseen ways: ghost hunting as a way to search for and identify absent-presences; ghost sighting as a way to explore what appears clearly present; and the summoning of ghosts as a way to create spaces and openings for absent-presences to emerge.
In some contributions, the authors aim to make an uncanny disturbance palpable, while also acknowledging that it can never be fully articulated, made sense of or located. Every account of ghostly matters will also always remain incomplete or indeterminate (Stevens and Tolbert, 2018: 34). The authors in this special issue reflect this in their various ways of engaging with the empirical: by pursuing forgotten data online (Blackman, this issue) or recovering forgotten ideas in academic texts (Kociatkiewicz and Kostera, this issue); by tracing a disquiet felt in interviews as informants search for words (Christensen and Muhr, this issue); or by juxtaposing an official discourse with the personal experience of someone affected (Vaaben and Bjerg, this issue). Here, they identify and follow traces in the empirical material that haunt the texts, observations and themselves. Such traces appear as ruptures, confusions, gaps, silences, irritations and other failures of sensemaking that register in manifold, often affective ways but ‘exceed conventional modes of perception’ and therefore require one to have a particular sensibility for being attentive to such incidents and feelings (Blackman, 2015: 26).
In contrast, other contributions in this issue are interested in (aesthetic) textual, literary or figurative accounts of ghosts, spooks and the uncanny. These contributions explore what spectral concepts and ideas reveal to us and consider the power and performative effects of such symbolic representations. Sine Nørholm Just importantly reminds us that supernatural metaphors to describe the financial crisis ‘become[s] true when we have forgotten that it is a metaphor … when the ghost is mistaken for the possessed body’. What follows is an understanding that the ghostly can be where we least expect it. We must therefore also look at the interplay of the above-mentioned affective irritations with that which is undisputed, which appears familiar and homely, which seduces or seems at first glance transparent and clear. Beyes’ reading of Kafka’s story ‘The Burrow’ in relation to discussions of space in organization studies is a performative gesture to become aware of this tension. It invites the reader to grasp the uncanny frailty of organizational space, both at an affective anda conceptual level. Organizational spaces are physically designed to achieve certain institutionalized ends and meanings – productivity, convenience, hierarchies, reputation – but the impossibility of living up to those intentional designs carries an inherent vulnerability that generates new animations. The perpetual affective forces arising from such tensions have a way of unsettling organizational spaces where one ought to feel safe, to know one’s way around, as an ‘unhomely’ feeling can creep in and will continually need to be handled (Beyes, this issue). These contributions mobilize and interrogate haunting metaphors to find ways to observe and describe uncertain, ever-changing and indeterminate worlds (Stevens and Tolbert, 2018).
Summoning the ghosts
Two contributions in this issue create a setting to mobilize the resistant or emancipatory potential of the spectral by collecting empirical material in a particularly ghostly-attuned way. Sharing an ambition to summon ‘common ghosts’ (Skou, absent-present note, this issue), the two notes by artistic researchers Asbjørn Skou and Sibylle Peters play an important role in enabling other kinds of socio-political imaginaries of organizing. Yet, their artistic methodologies and presentations differ greatly. Drawings by Asbjørn Skou are scattered around the pages of this issue, as his work method for this specific project has been to produce a collage-like, ghostly stream of events, ideas, people, things. The project included a performative talk held in the lower basement of Copenhagen Business School at the ephemeraworkshop that launched this special issue. Following this engagement with the university, he embarked on a hauntographic search for ghosts in the everyday lives of academics in the buildings where such presences are found. Skou’s work seems to suggest that knowledge organizations like universities are haunted twice – once by that which does not stay dead and then again by its disenchantment. In addition, the source material for Skou’s images printed in this issue stems from microfilms of newspaper articles published between 1979 and 2001, with each of these dates being a ‘magical number in an equation of paranoia and slow catastrophes’. To quote from the note, Skou declined to have published:
Here is a stage set from Hamlet in New York. Here is Casper The Friendly Ghost as seen in the obituary of his inventor. Here are stockbrokers and the precarious bankers, sex-workers and a radiated turtle. Here are colonial ghosts and a shadow in Lacan’s mirror. Here are earthquakes and premonitions of a Fukushima melt down. Here is a Japanese lady who turned away from society to live with dolls. Here is Ayn Rand and an obsessive love, here is black Friday. Here are victims and victimizers. Here is Thatcher’s flowerpot and a disaster zone, and they all say: Welcome night, open the windows and whistle some invocation, some fluorescent spell – not to mourn for the futures lost, but to conjure up their meaning once again, and let all the dead, that ever died, live again (forever). Hungry, hungry spooks. From a delicate whisper to a furious clamour – they all sang: ‘It is a bad day for investors’.
We encourage you to search the pages of this issue and see what you find, what ghostly messages the drawings transmit to you.
Peters’ artistic note takes a different approach, offering a step-by-step description of the methodology deployed by theTheater of Research, a German-based theatre that creates experimental setups for collective performative practices to change the way children and teachers experience their daily school life. The note critically engages with the tension of (re)solving the ghost by calling it forth. This performative practice is inspired by accounts that link the Sisters Fox, three 19th-century mediums who started the spiritualist movement with practices of radical political and, in this case, feminist emancipation. The Theaterexperiments with summoning ghosts as an emancipatory practice by revealing and potentially changing affects that haunt, as in this case, schoolchildren and their teachers. Put differently, the aim of the artistic engagement is not only to disrupt, question and reveal troubled categories but perhaps also to create and offer new malleable orders able to actively engage with the uncertainties presented by organizational life.
Kristian Bondo Hansen’s review of Lisa Blackman’s book Haunted datatouches on the impactful, yet often denied links between parapsychological phenomena and science that Peters’ and Skou’s work teaches us about. Engaging with the intellectual dispute over the psychic powers of Eusepia Palladino – a medium from Naples, Italy, whose public séances attracted and created confusion among many prominent scientists in the late 19th century – Hansen underlines Blackman’s argument that ‘science controversies are engulfed in power relations, with the preservation of boundaries between the scientific and the non-scientific being the battleground’ (Hansen, this issue). He situates Blackman’s recent publication in her long trajectory of ‘embrac[ing] the weirdness in science without romanticizing or ridiculing it, but with an open mind towards what it might tell us even from beyond the grave’ (ibid.). This is a theme that also re-occurs in her contribution in this issue, and that has most obviously inspired our editorial and our anecdotal excursions to Assistens Cemetery.
Bringing together the variety of approaches the authors of this special issue use to study and analyse ghostly matters in organizing, we learn that a ghostly methodology requires us to pay attention to the senses (Blackman, 2015). To perceive and unfold the many layers of sensual experiences and activities discerned in the data, the researcher needs the time, space and openness to be attentive to and let herself be affected by the animations that data creates. Here, MacLure reminds us of the familiar, though perhaps undervalued, situation we encounter in the process of data analysis – that of stumbling on data that ‘glows’ (2013: 661). This is the moment when the analyst is drawn to, struck by or cannot let go of certain fragments of information; when an encounter with data causes reactions that resonate with the body andmind; when data ‘seems to invoke something abstract or intangible that exceeds propositional meaning, but also has a decidedly embodied aspect’ (ibid.). Thus, the task for the researcher exploring ghostly matters is to become ‘enchanted’ – to have an experience of being captivated, inspired and affected (Bennet, 2001), and to become sensitive to what may be ‘insubstantial’, but is not insignificant (Stevens and Tolbert, 2018: 40). A ghostly-attuned exploration traces what generates affects and thoughts – both of which are always somewhat beyond the researcher’s control.
Thus, the researcher must also stay with the ghost and go along with it, or, put differently, re-read and return to data that affects. An analytical attention to ghostly matters is thus one that invites hesitation and waiting (cf. Holloway and Kneale, 2008), one that also draws and dwells on memories, associations, fantasies, intuitions, visceral responses and more. Such attention allows the researcher, as Hansen so eloquently puts it in his account of Lisa Blackman’s methodology, to ‘immerse herself into the unbounded field that stretches out from the respective academic studies she makes her points of departure. It allows her to pick up clues, to draw connections to the past or into possible futures, and ultimately to engage with questions about what data are, how they come about and what they do’ (Hansen, this issue). Following Blackman (2015, 2019, this issue), we might call this approach an embodied hauntology.
Such a methodology might thus be described as one that resists the temptation of resolving and explaining away, that avoids quickly reshuffling insights for the sake of a smoother or more inventive narrative. If hauntings remain uncertain, they must be ‘incarnations which hover between secure accounting mechanisms’ meaning that the interpretative criteria for understanding spectral occurrences can never be fullygrasped or articulated (cf. Holloway and Kneale, 2008: 308; Lipman, 2014: 23). Along these lines, Cho (2007, 2008) develops a methodological approach for listening to the gaps, silences and contradictions in her mother’s story, communication and behaviour after the Korean War. The capacity to 'see' the trauma that has been transmitted across generations, often through shame, secrecy and silence, cannot be seen or registered.Cho strives towards a form of inquiry where ‘what is perceived is not located at any single place and moment in time, and the act by which this perception occurs is not the result of a single or isolated agency but of several working in concert or parallel’ (2008: 66). A ghostly methodology can thereby be described as the analytical efforts to work with traces, fragments, fleeting moments, gaps, absences, submerged narratives and displaced actors and agencies that register affectively and that collectively might begin to tell some of the stories thus far untellable.
Lastly, although they have remained scarce in this issue, we aim to second Stevens’ and Tolbert’s (2018) call for not ignoring or forgetting literal ghosts and paranormal phenomena. The authors criticize academic scepticism toward such unexplainable incidents, even amongst those academics interested in ghostly matters. They argue that in seeking to metaphorize the spectral, ‘scholars have tended to ironically strip experience of its immediacy in-place and in-body (as well as out-of-body)’ (2018: 39). Engaging with the everyday experience of literal ghosts more seriously (rather than ignoring its relevance) through spatial-analytical expertise or situated, ethnographic studies, the authors argue, will enable a form of research that does justice to lived experience and the politics of everyday life (ibid.: 49).
Haunting and ghosts in organization studies
In organization studies, a few contributions have already called attention to the ghostly qualities inherent in organization and management (Beyes and Steyaert, 2013; Gabriel, 2012; Kociatkiewicz and Kostera, 2010; see also Knox et al. 2015; De Cock et al., 2013; Muhr and Azad, 2013; Weiskopf, 2004). Particularly Orr’s (2014) study of how local government chief executives encounter and live with ghosts has demonstrated not only that we find ghostly presences in mundane organizational settings but also that analytical curiosity about ghostly workings can enrich our understanding of organizational change and the transformation of organizational traditions. However, when compared to other social science disciplines like human geography, cultural studies and sociology, organization studies is only incipiently beginning to benefit from theorizings of the ghostly (e.g. McCormack, 2010; Gordon, 2008; Hetherington, 2004).
Particularly since Derrida’s Specters of Marxfrom 1994, so much has been written about ghosts, hauntology and ghostliness in cultural studies, geography and art theory that any attempt to summarize contributions and discussions makes little sense. In the following, we will therefore focus on three questions we think especially valuable for organization scholars: 1) How thinking about the ghostly enables inquiries into organizational time and how organizational time is not linear. 2) The intimate connection between haunting and affect, and how thinking about ghostly matters invites a curiosity towards those intense moments in organizations when things that no longer hold a place in language, narratives and knowledge make themselves felt in affective registers. 3) Finally, how ghostly matters are entangled with complex questions of the politics of organizing and of justice and responsibility.
A conceptual framework for thinking about the ghostly begins with a dismissal of the idea that time is linear (Edensor, 2001: 42; Maddern, 2008). Famously, in Derrida’s Specters of Marx(1994) the figure of the ghost reveals that history neither begins nor ends and that Marxism endures despite the supposed triumph of capitalist liberal democracy. The ghostly draws attention to ‘endings that are not over’ (Gordon, 2008: 139), but also more profoundly interrupts linear time and thus any narrative trying to fix time in neat stories of progress, development or enlightenment. Derrida writes: ‘It is necessary to introduce haunting into the very construction of a concept. Of every concept, beginning with the concepts of being and time’ (1994: 202). He introduces the concept of hauntology in order to trouble the concept of ontology. The two concepts sound quite similar when spoken, but hauntology nevertheless reminds us that ontology is haunted by a corrupting and contaminating undercurrent: a spectral working that destabilizes, in a more or less subterranean fashion, any existence and any self-sufficient present (Derrida, 1994: 174; Jameson, 1999: 93). The living present is full of animate and animating pasts as well as futures. Ideas, concepts, subjects and things that should no longer be continue to exist as absent-presences, working to produce a ‘sort of non-contemporaneity of present time with itself’ (Derrida, 1994: 25). Thus, to attend to the ghostly is to explore the complexities of the present and the ways in which multiple pasts and futures continue to linger in spite of how certain forces work to forget and derecognize them.
At the same time, the ghostly does not straightforwardly propose any new or alternative orderings of time. As Pile has suggested, the ghostly is not coherent; it can mean many things at once: ‘Just like an element in a dream, the figure of the ghost is overdetermined – pointing in many different directions at once’ (2005: 162f.). Ghosts rarely deliver clear messages (Holloway and Kneale, 2008), and ghostly matters may be about futures as well as pasts. For Derrida the ghostly is both revenant(invoking what was) and arrivant(announcing what will come). He writes: ‘(N)o one can be sure if by returning (the ghost) testifies to a living past or living future’ (1994: 123). Ghostly matters are not about how one ordering of time is replaced by another equally fixed and meaningful narrative. Rather, the ghostly has to do with indeterminate foldings of time. Ghostly matters rarely involve a simple mourning over lost pasts, but work to remind us about lost futures too. In Avery Gordon’s seminal work, haunting also centres on a contest over the future, over what is to come next (Gordon, 2011). Ghostly matters are therefore as much about how we inherit the future as about how we inherit the past (Barad, 2010: 257). An analytical sensitivity to ghostly matters means inquiring into those particular moments where linearity collapses, implodes or explodes into excess, and exploring those moments in different settings, where certain temporal orders are disturbed and other possible lines of flight open up.
For scholars of organization and organizing, a conceptual framework of the ghostly draws attention to how strategies, policies, vision statements and the like do not always succeed in capturing and ordering organizational time as linear. Often, such practices strive to order organizational complexity as narratives consisting of inadequate pasts that the organization should move away from and brighter, more efficient and prosperous futures that can only be achieved through certain requisite actions and efforts in the present. Attending to ghostly matters can involve following how strategies and policies become haunted when their implementation clashes with embedded local cultures, traditions, histories and storytelling (Brøgger, 2019). Thinking about the ghostly is a way of drawing attention to the fact that strategy narratives of change can forcefully replace some inadequate past with a glossy future, but also be fragile and precarious. Rather than creating linear progress, such narratives are more likely to produce collages of intersecting temporalities colliding and merging in a landscape of juxtaposed asynchronous moments (Pors, 2016a). Here, organization studies might learn a good deal from (post)human geography where much work has been done to show how modern imperatives to swiftly transform and renew are only partial attempts to remove the past (Degen and Hetherington, 2001; Maddern, 2008). For example, studies of urban spaces, underground sewers, commuting routes, industrial ruins and metro lines have explored how supposedly renovated or improved social and material spaces remain crowded with lingering remnants of former ways of life, outmoded working routines, long-gone cultural fashions, failed city planning and materiality in varying stages of decay (Edensor, 2001; Gandy, 1999; Hetherington, 2004). Attending to the ghostly can attune us to how elements rendered homeless by the introduction of new organizational visions unwillingly disappear, and how this contributes to other, darker and more complex narratives that haunt organizational space like superfluous or additional inhabitants (Edensor, 2008).
Organization scholars might also learn from how the relationship between haunting and affect has been theorized. The relationship between organizing and affect has, perhaps, already been explored in organization studies, as well as in ephemera, through the non-representational, darkness and ambivalence, for example (see Fotaki et al., 2017, Kenny et al., 2011; as well as Karppi et al., 2016; Linstead et al. 2014; Linstead and Thanem, 2007; Höpfl, 2000). However, important insights may still be found beyond the customary boundaries of organization studies. Here, we begin in the assertion made by Meier et al. (2013) that absences, or absent-presences, are imbued with an affective quality that differs from experiences of present identities, from that which can be clearly articulated, seen and talked about. Ghosts and ghostly matters can never be fully understood, represented or brought into representation (Holloway and Kneale, 2008: 308; Lipman, 2014: 23). Instead, their lurking absent-presence is often felt, intuited or sensed in affective and embodied registers.
One route along which to trace the relationship between haunting and affect goes back to Freud’s famous essay on the uncanny. The concept of the uncanny is also one of the better developed discussions about haunting and the quality of haunting moments in organization studies (Beyes and Steyaert, 2013; see also Gabriel, 1995; Sievers, 1994; Cooper, 1987). As Timon Beyes explores in this issue, the uncanny, das Unheimliche, literally the unhomely, refers to a feeling of unease when something familiar suddenly becomes strange. Freud explores the uncanny lexicographically in his essay, tracing the origin of the concept and its historical development. He finds that the homely initially meant familiar and friendly – a place free of ghostly influences – but over time the concept became increasingly ambivalent, until ultimately it merged with its antonym, the unhomely (Freud, 2003: 134). Through this etymological route, the uncanny came to describe the confusing, yet itchy feeling that an encountered foreign world is vaguely familiar: that the foreign has a, however cryptic, pathway back to the familiar (Beyes, this issue; Beyes and Steyaert, 2013; Freud, 2003: 148).
However, as many scholars have also noted (most famously Cixous, 1976; but see also Royle, 2003), the form and structure of the text is what makes Freud’s essay so striking. The text, or its author, seems haunted by a shadow of doubt and hesitation (Cixous, 1976: 526), and so constantly undoes what is sought established. As Cixous writes: ‘What is brought together is quickly undone; what asserts itself becomes suspected’ (ibid.). Just as a particular definition of the uncanny is stabilized, the surface cracks and the concept is thrown back into indeterminacy. The strangely incoherent structure of Freud’s text mirrors the very essence of the uncanny, appearing even to become its doppelgänger. Through Freud’s essay the uncanny comes not only to signify a strange combination of familiar and unfamiliar, but also to refer to the affective feeling of beginning to doubt the reality in front you – the affective quality of experiencing a doubt cast on what you think you know. As Beyes and Steyaert (2013) have argued the uncanny is located in a strange place between concept and affect, between theory and art, between genuine thinking and blocs of sensation (see also Beyes, this issue; Masschelein, 2011: 11). Here we want to stress how the notion of the uncanny points to the close relationship between haunting and affect (see also Blackman, this issue), and how it directs attention to the way haunting is an affective encounter with something so unknowable, uncertain and strange that an affective atmosphere becomes the main media through which one can engage with it.
Grace Cho’s (2007, 2008) moving work on transgenerational haunting provides another seminal resource for thinking about the relationship between haunting and affect. Cho explores the story of her mother, who came to the USA from Korea as the wife of an American soldier she met in the Korean War. In Korea, Cho’s mother had been a sex worker for American soldiers, and the trauma and shame she suffered as a result became a chilling story that could never be coherently told but that deeply affected Cho’s childhood and upbringing. To engage with this, on the one hand, personal but also emblematic story for hundreds of Korean women, Cho draws on the psychoanalytical work of Abraham and Torok (1994). In their work, they propose the concept of transgenerational haunting to refer to how trauma and pain are transported in affective registers between generations. For Abraham and Torok what haunts us is not the dead, but the gaps left within us by the secrets of others (ibid.: 75). Transgenerational haunting is the affective process through which we are touched by that which could never be told, by that which has no language. Here, the ghost is the gap that the concealment of some part of a loved one’s life produced in us. What haunts is the ‘burial of an unspeakable fact within the loved one’ (ibid: 76).
From folklore to Derrida, ghosts and justice are strongly connected. Ghosts are dead people coming back to disturb the living because of injustices and can be laid to rest once justice is done or the issue resolved. In the introduction to Specters of Marx, Derrida famously states:
If I am getting ready to speak at length about ghosts, inheritance and generations, generations of ghosts, which is to say about certain others who are not present, not presently living, either to us, in us or outside us, it is in the name of justice. (1994: xix)
Ghosts remind us that something is or was not right and that we have some role in the wrongdoing or in setting things right: ‘the absence of justice (as a presence) means that a structure/organization is haunted by the ghost of the undecidable and by spectres of justice’ (Weiskopf, 2004: 212). Here, we would like to further build on the connection between the ghostly, justice and responsibility (e.g. Jones, 2003; Weiskopf, 2004), but also on the role affect plays in this connection.
For organizational scholars, an attention to ghostly matters opens up inquiries into those things in organizations that we consciously or unconsciously ‘unsee’, that we no longer talk about or understand, but that still touch us now and then in affective registers (cf. Mieville, 2009; Otto et al., 2019). As we have tried to argue, an interest in ghostly matters means undertaking an exploration of those affectively charged moments, situations or encounters that allow us to engage with something for which we have been deprived of a language for, and that now operate at the limits of what is taken to be understandable (Blackman, this issue). An interest in the ghostly connects us to questions about how, when and why something came to be placed outside the boundaries of what is seen as sensible, intelligible or understandable in organizations. It connects us to questions about seeing, speaking and surviving for displaced subjects (Cho, 2007: 153) and to moments in which bodies suddenly become sensitive to suggestive and contagious atmospheres, attuned to however-small affective disturbances and invested in reading barely-there traces of what should no longer exist (Pors, 2016b). As Gordon puts it: ‘Being haunted draws us affectively, sometimes against our will and always a bit magically, into the structure of feeling of a reality we come to experience, not as cold knowledge, but as transformative recognition’ (2008: 8).
Thus, engaging with ghostly matters may enable organization scholars to dismantle stubborn assumptions in mainstream organization and management literature (as Kociatkiewicz and Monika Kostera propose in this issue) that circumvent questions of ethics and responsibility. Take, for example, the assumption that leadership and change is something achieved by superior and individual managers (to see this idea eloquently dissected, see Pullen and Rhodes, 2015; Kenny and Fotaki, 2015), or the assumption that organizations are disentangled from their natural, social and political environments (as identified by Gladwin et al., 1995: 875). Ghosts tend to disturb and unsettle the categories, boundaries, practices and strategies (of unseeing) that we use to individualize certain issues or disconnect ourselves from the socio-political effects of the ways we organize. A ghostly encounter may allow us to realize that ‘distance’ was always only a psychological and ideological construct designed to protect us from the nearness of things (Morton, 2013: 27), and that we are, indeed, entangled to global chains of capitalism, even in our daily organizational work and efforts.
Conclusion: Ghostly matters and academic subjectivity
In this editorial, we have proposed some possibilities for thinking about ghostly matters in organizing. Taking the anecdotal case of Assistens Cemetery in Copenhagen, we have suggested that ghostly matters have to do with multiple temporalities, the collapse of linear time and strange foldings of pasts, presents and futures. We have also linked the ghostly to processes of remembering and forgetting. Moreover, we have argued that ghosts disturb categories and the processes of categorizations used by organizations to fix, stabilize and manage events, people and things. Finally, we have suggested that thinking about the ghostly opens up questions about how things, ideas and people become disposable and how organizations handle that which has become unneeded and considered as waste.
Although our exploration has been less exhaustive than perhaps warranted given how much has been written about ghosts and haunting in other disciplines, we have drawn attention to some of the work done in (post-)human geography, sociology and cultural studies that might inform current attempts in organization studies to attend to the ghostly. Specifically, we have presented work on ghostly matters as embodying multiple and intersecting temporalities as well as intimate links between haunting and affect and suggested some of the analytical possibilities this work might open up for organization scholars. We have pointed to connections between ghosts, affects and ethics by suggesting that ghostly moments are those moments where it becomes possible to come into contact with the broader social and political stakes of our daily doings, although this contact is often only felt in affective registers and provides no clear, decipherable message.
With these efforts we have tried, perhaps too hard, to tame the ghost. We have sought out and identified the ghost and endeavoured to take it seriously by making it an object of our analytical curiosity and even inspection. What we have not done, however, is to allow it to mess with the academic subject, the one who observes, the one who analyses (Knudsen and Stage, 2016). When ghosts bring with them an eerie feeling that there is something more to say (Gordon, 2008), that glossy strategy papers or stubborn assumptions about linear progress have more to them than they let on, then how, and with what kind of authorship, can this ‘more’ be said?
Photo from Asbjørn Skou’s talk in the lower basement of CBS at the workshop on ghostly matters in organizing in December 2015.
To give this question some space, and as an ending, let us turn back time to the workshop held in Copenhagen in December 2015, where the work on this special issue began with profound and thought-provoking talks by Lisa Blackman, Kevin Orr, Monika Kostera and Jerzy Kociatkiewicz, Sibylle Peters and Asbjørn Skou, the latter talk having been given in the lower basement of CBS. (Please note in Blackman’s contribution, how this event, or its representation in the internet archive, found its way into her empirical search and material.) Although dealing with such diverse settings as digital archives, local leadership, seminal scholarship in economics and psychology and theatrical work with children, all the talks forcefully conveyed a disturbance and breakdown of contained and bounded identity. Lisa Blackman spoke about a hauntological methodology, not unlike daydreaming, of letting go of rational control over one’s attention and analytical sensibilities, a process of losing oneself. Asbjørn Skou dismantled the human as a single contained individual by unfolding how bacteria and other alien organisms live inside us all, making us more-than-one, more-than-human. Similarly, if one theme cuts across the rich and diverse analyses in the work that we invoke with the title of this special issue, Avery Gordon’s seminal book Ghostly matters, itis the complexity of personhood.
Ghosts remind us that the body that writes, the body that works, the body that orders and structures our texts, is not a superior, confined and independent subject (Skou, absent-present note, this issue). To paraphrase Jameson (1999: 39), the body that writes is hardly as self-sufficient as it claims to be, and we would do well not to count on its solidity and boundedness.
So, fellow scholars, let’s call forth the ghosts! Let us unleash other sensuous capabilities to encounter it. Let us learn to listen to what ghosts might have to say about organization and management. Let us dare to be messed with by ghosts and ghostly matters.
It should, perhaps, be noted here that Abraham and Torok consider the ghost a symptom of a trauma that through processes of being dealt with in psychoanalytic therapy can be made to disappear. Contrary to this, in this issue, we do not try to expel the ghost, but instead to invite it in and explore the analytical and political insights it may offer.
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Sydney — Over 30,000 residents in and around Sydney prepare to evacuate or abandon their homes on Monday as Australia’s largest city faces a fourth, perhaps worst flood, within a year and a half. I was told. Heavy rainy days flooded dams, waterways broke embankments, and created new flood emergencies in parts of the city of 5 million people.
“The latest information we have is that floods are very likely to be worse than any of the other three floods in these areas in the last 18 months,” said Murray Watt Emergency. The Minister of Situation Management said.
Watt added that the current floods could affect areas that were spared from the previous floods in March last year, March and April this year.
Prime Minister Dominique Perotet of New South Wales said 32,000 people were affected by evacuation orders and warnings.
“Maybe that number is expected to increase over the course of a week,” Perotet said.
Paramedics provided numerous flood rescues on Sundays and early Mondays, seeking help from hundreds more.
One year of rain in one day
Bureau of Meteorology manager Jane Golding said it has rained more than 39 inches in the last 24 hours in some areas between Newcastle, north of Sydney, and Wollongong, south of Sydney. Some received 59 inches or more. These sums are close to the average annual rainfall in the coastal areas of New South Wales.
“The system that produces this weather is showing signs of ease tomorrow, but we expect more rain to fall throughout the day,” Golding said.
She said it was predicted to rain all week across the coast of New South Wales, including Sydney. The Meteorological Bureau said Monday that up to 4.7 inches could fall to Sydney.
The risk of flooding was highest along the Hawkesbury River in northwestern Sydney and the Nepean River in western Sydney.
On Monday afternoon, the agency reported a massive flood in the Nepian communities of Menangle and Warasia on the southwestern tip of Sydney.
Floods also occurred in Hawkesbury, North Richmond, on the northwestern tip of Sydney. The Hawkesbury community in Windsor and Lower Portland was expected to be flooded on Monday afternoon, and Wisemans Ferry was expected to be flooded on Tuesday, according to a statement from the agency.
State Emergency Services Commissioner Carlene York said strong winds knocked down trees, damaged ditches and blocked roads. She advised not to make unnecessary trips.
A freighter with a disability is waiting for rescue
Off the coast of New South Wales, a cargo ship carrying 21 crew members went out of power after leaving the port of Wollongong on Monday morning. It was moored near the coast and the tugboat was preparing to pull it into the safer open ocean.
The ship has engineers who can repair the engine, port official Jon Finch told reporters. “Unfortunately, we happen to be in some terrible condition right now,” he said, explaining the 26-foot swell and wind blowing at 34 mph.
The previous plan to safely airlift the crew of a Portland Bay cargo ship was abandoned due to bad weather.
Repeated floods struck members of the riverside community in southwestern Sydney, said Teresa Federi, mayor of Camden, where homes and businesses flooded the Nepean River on Sunday night.
“It’s just catastrophic. They just keep saying’catastrophic, never again’,” Fedeli said.
“I just keep saying …” We have to be strong, we get over this. “But you deeply know that it’s really hitting a lot of people. I know, “she added.
Perotet said governments and communities need to adapt to the floods that are becoming more common across Australia’s most populous states.
“There is no doubt that these events are becoming more common to see what we see throughout Sydney, and the government will respond to the changing environment in which we find ourselves. Needs to be adjusted and confirmed, “said Perotet.
Thousands of people evacuated when Sydney faces its fourth flood in a year and a half
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A journey through Tanzania and Kenya becomes the occasion to explore a collision of agendas driving development, conservation, and globalization at the sites of a proposed highway through the Serengeti National Park. Despite strong opposition from the international community, the Tanzanian government pushes its plans for the road, in the name of economic development. Conservationists, safari guides, and Masai leaders all oppose the road. Rumors of Chinese involvement swirl, further heightening concerns over underlying motivations and environmental implications. This documentary investigates the meanings of the Serengeti, ultimately questioning who should get to decide its fate.
Graduate Student, SocDoc Program
Education and Training:
B.S. in Conservation and Resource Studies, UC Berkeley
I graduated from UC Berkeley in 2009 with a B.S. in Conservation and Resource Studies. During the course of my studies, I had the opportunity to travel to several different countries where I was able to observe environmental issues situated within larger social and political contexts. Pursuing a master’s degree in Social Documentation at UC Santa Cruz will combine my interest in international conservation with my passion for documentary photography. My thesis project will explore the social and environmental implications associated with the production, consumption, and disposal of personal electronic devises. Possible locations where documentation will take place include Central and Eastern Africa, China, and the United States. By creating a visual context though documentary photography, the goal of this project is to increase corporate transparency and raise public awareness about a seemingly distant international phenomenon that we are virtually all connect to.
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NASA to Reveal New Scientific Findings About the Moon
MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. -- NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., will televise a live broadcast of a NASA Headquarters media briefing at 11 a.m. PDT on Thursday, Sept. 24, 2009 to discuss new science data from the moon collected during national and international space missions.
Ames scientists will be available for interviews following the briefing, including: David Morrison, director of the NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI) which is focused on advancing lunar science of, on and from the moon; Gregory Schmidt, deputy director of the NLSI, and Tony Colaprete, project scientist for the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), which will impact the moon Oct. 9, 2009 to discover whether water ice exists in a permanently shadowed crater on the south pole.
News media are invited to view the briefing live in the Ames' main auditorium, Bldg. N-201, and ask questions via a telephone hookup with briefing participants in Washington, who include:
- Jim Green, director, Planetary Science Division, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters
- Carle Pieters, principal investigator, Moon Mineralogy Mapper, Brown University, Providence, R.I. and NLSI principal investigator of a team from Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., studying the formation of the moon to better understand terrestrial planets
- Rob Green, project instrument scientist, Moon Mineralogy Mapper, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
- Roger Clark, team member, Cassini spacecraft Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer and co-investigator, Moon Mineralogy Mapper, U.S. Geological Survey in Denver
- Jessica Sunshine, deputy principal investigator for NASA’s Deep Impact extended mission and co-investigator for Moon Mineralogy Mapper, Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park.
Reporters unable to attend the briefing may ask questions by telephone. To reserve a telephone line, journalists should e-mail their name, media affiliation and telephone number to Steve Cole at email@example.com
Papers supporting the briefing will be published online by the journal Science at its Science Express Web site. Science will lift its embargo at 11 a.m. PDT, Sept. 24, 2009.
NASA Television and the agency's Web site also will provide live coverage of the briefing.
For more information about NASA TV downlinks and streaming video, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv
For more information about NASA's LCROSS mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/lcross
For more information about the NASA Lunar Science Institute, visit: http://lunarscience.arc.nasa.gov/
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Nigeria: Tracking Electoral Violence against Women in Real-time
Date: 25 April 2011
During Nigeria's last leg of elections for governorship seats and State Houses of Assembly on 26 April, UN Women will monitor the polls for violence against women in real-time.
UN Women, in partnership with the Institute for Democracy in Africa (IDASA), has been following such violence in Nigeria since the start of the elections process in 2011, in which more than 500 people have died as a result of electoral violence following the country's presidential elections earlier this month.
The monitoring is part of an ongoing pilot study and initiative in Nigeria, Uganda and Zimbabwe to track real-time incidents of violence against women in politics.
During polling days, trained volunteers use a toolkit to make phone calls from a designated hub to collect real-time information on violence against women from accredited elections observers and monitors who are out in the field. When such instances of violence against women are reported, UN Women links victims with various response mechanisms, including state institutions and civil society. UN Women also connects these women with the Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) to provide them with various pro bono services.
The report of findings from the pilot study is expected to feed into the final reports on the elections by both national and international observers. | <urn:uuid:e70df432-4f77-4b1d-bf7f-4bc7e43752d0> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2011/4/nigeria-tracking-electoral-violence-against-women-in-real-time | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281226.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00373-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965092 | 266 | 2.3125 | 2 |
Retroviral vector insertion sites associated with dominant hematopoietic clones mark "stemness" pathways
Evidence from model organisms and clinical trials reveals that the random insertion of retrovirus-based vectors in the genome of long-term repopulating hematopoietic cells may increase self-renewal or initiate malignant transformation. Clonal dominance of nonmalignant cells is a particularly interesting phenotype as it may be caused by the dysregulation of genes that affect self-renewal and competitive fitness. We have accumulated 280 retrovirus vector insertion sites (RVISs) from murine long-term studies resulting in benign or malignant clonal dominance. RVISs (22.5%) are located in or near (up to 100 kb [kilobase]) to known proto-oncogenes, 49.6% in signaling genes, and 27.9% in other or unknown genes. The resulting insertional dominance database (IDDb) shows substantial overlaps with the transcriptome of hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells and the retrovirus-tagged cancer gene database (RTCGD). RVISs preferentially marked genes with high expression in hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells, and Gene Ontology revealed an overrepresentation of genes associated with cell-cycle control, apoptosis signaling, and transcriptional regulation, including major "stemness" pathways. The IDDb forms a powerful resource for the identification of genes that stimulate or transform hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells and is an important reference for vector biosafety studies in human gene therapy.
|Persistent URL||dx.doi.org/10.1182/blood-2006-08-044156, hdl.handle.net/1765/35566|
|Note||Free full text at PubMed|
Kustikova, O.S, Geiger, H, Li, Z, Brugman, M.H, Chambers, S.M, Shaw, C.A, … Baum, C. (2007). Retroviral vector insertion sites associated with dominant hematopoietic clones mark "stemness" pathways. Blood, 109(5), 1897–1907. doi:10.1182/blood-2006-08-044156 | <urn:uuid:ab468ac2-d137-4263-93de-051842571c71> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://repub.eur.nl/pub/35566/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280310.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00192-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.824589 | 486 | 1.859375 | 2 |
Sharing Soundscape Awareness & Advocacy
Soundscape Support Team has plans to grow!...
We're getting ready to welcome new friends, fans, colleagues, and others to join in our efforts to share soundscape awareness around the world with new social networking presence.
We hope to redesign these pages soon, and are looking for immediate support. Stay tuned and be among the first to learn more about our exiting plans.
Come join and LIKE our new Facebook page, which will soon have new graphics and…Continue
Added by Katherine (Kat) Krause on June 5, 2017 at 2:00pm — No Comments
We're happy to announce that we'll soon begin efforts on a new, revamped social network for the Soundscape Support Team. As we plan how to offer a better, more enjoyable, more productive on-line experience, build new community, and begin to really work together as a team, we invite your input!
Making the connection with new friends will be a big part of this revitalization of the team. We'll make room to create a healthy and diverse community habitat…Continue
Added by Katherine (Kat) Krause on March 21, 2017 at 5:07pm — No Comments
The fine filmmakers at The Video Project have completed a new addition to the wonderful line of educational media production addressing the most critical issues of our time. Nature's Orchestra: Sounds of our Changing Planet takes a look at some of the many ways that soundscapes of the wild can inspire creative expression as well as scientific inquiry. Students of all interests will find something worth learning more about as the short film encompasses ecological awareness,…Continue
Added by Katherine (Kat) Krause on January 29, 2017 at 4:52pm — No Comments
If you are wanting to learn field recording yourself or just want to accompany an expert bio-acoustician into the field - without getting your boots wet - you'll want to read Wild Soundscapes: Discovering the Voice of the Natural World by Bernie Krause. This new edition is updated with many helpful tips and fascinating topics regarding the natural world from the perspective of…Continue
Added by Katherine (Kat) Krause on January 29, 2017 at 4:38pm — No Comments
As Bernie Krause and I often travelled together in the early days of our marriage and, as I began to accompany him alongside into the field on numerous recording adventures, we connected with people around the globe, in some of the world's most remote places. Upon our return back home, we relied upon the occasional posted letter or rare e-mail from far-away places to keep in touch with some of the friends we made along the way. As the early years of 2000 passed by, more friends and…Continue
Added by Katherine (Kat) Krause on March 25, 2016 at 7:30pm — No Comments
TED Global is a fine forum of thought leaders from around the world, sharing their finest efforts on behalf of technology, education/entertainment, and design of 'many stripes'. This past June (2014), Wild Sanctuary's Bernie Krause addressed the audience about his on-going efforts to explore 'the Voice of the Natural World', and how the soundscapes of the natural wild inform our music, language, and dance - from the ancient past to the undiscovered future. To view the video, click the link…Continue
Added by Katherine (Kat) Krause on August 9, 2013 at 7:00pm — No Comments
Part of our ever-evolving work in soundscape is to bring people together in appreciation for the increasingly rare wild places of the world. The WildStore, on the new Wild Sanctuary site, enables visitors to browse a fine collection of recordings from Bernie Krause, friends, and colleagues in the field - hear the sample sounds, and get a sense of the wonderful work in this growing collection.…Continue
Added by Katherine (Kat) Krause on January 29, 2013 at 6:12pm — No Comments
Curated by Soundscape Support Team member, La Cosa Preziosa, this upcoming sound-led program in Dublin is one you'll want to know about.
Added by Katherine (Kat) Krause on January 22, 2013 at 8:54am — No Comments
A Salute of Support! The multi-talented Jez Riley French gets a quiet 'shout out' today for the many fine ways his work explores and expresses the world of soundscape, musical composition, and art. His fine sensibilities, gifted talents, and painstaking technical skills combine into a rather astonishing compilation that is well worth knowing about. Some hydrophone stuff on YouTube (below) -- and do visit his well-crafted …Continue
Added by Katherine (Kat) Krause on November 18, 2012 at 9:32am — No Comments
New members add vitality to the network, so let's all welcome them. (It is a 'social' network, after all!) If you haven't taken a look at the Members Page lately, check it out - and find out more about others joining us here. Today, we welcome newest member, Christine Hass. Check out her blog at: http://www.wildmountainechoes.com
Added by Katherine (Kat) Krause on November 4, 2012 at 9:58pm — No Comments
Natural soundscape is certainly tied to the conditions that produce it -- and in 'The Great Animal Orchestra', Soundscape Author Bernie Krause makes the case that this connection is the original font of all human-made music that has evolved over time - but what of human-made music that has now also been influenced by the modern age, it's noise, and it's abstraction from the once pristine order of healthy habitats?…Continue
Added by Katherine (Kat) Krause on October 1, 2012 at 3:28pm — No Comments
Added by Katherine (Kat) Krause on March 12, 2012 at 5:30pm — No Comments
The great catalyst of biophony and the 'Niche Hypothesis' is finally taking hold. Around the world, more research, more outreach, and more networking than ever is energizing a world of soundscape interest.
Check out the new 'sound-led' campaign efforts from World Wildlife Fund, Ocean Conservation Research, and NRDC to help keep the Arctic Ocean sustainable for marine life. How exciting to be in the field - as web-based technologies keep connecting and expanding the possibilities…Continue
Hey, everyone. Please check out the wonderful works of our newest members by visiting their page or their site links. For a quick connect, just pull down the 'members' tab and introduce yourselves on chat or message. It's all about supporting one and another's work, but of course. Cheers!
Added by Katherine (Kat) Krause on February 5, 2012 at 3:54pm — No Comments
In a bid to soothe locals and create 'a better environment' the California town of Lancaster is experimenting with regularly broadcasting birdsong recordings over a 1/2 mile stretch of the downtown streets. Serious crimes fell about 6%. Must be working! Here's the article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203721704577157512700171698.html
Added by Katherine (Kat) Krause on February 3, 2012 at 7:40pm — No Comments
Added by Katherine (Kat) Krause on February 3, 2012 at 4:00pm — No Comments
Hopefully, the Soundscape Support Team Network has been helpful to you. Now, we ask for a bit of your support. Can you contribute a little information?
Answering the question 'Who would be interested in this topic overseas?'...We are hoping to gather as many Nature Sound Enthusiasts as possible - plus Soundscape groups, networks, etc, toward compiling a list which will, in turn, encourage our publisher to place Bernie's upcoming book in Europe, in a variety of…Continue
Added by Katherine (Kat) Krause on January 3, 2012 at 10:54am — No Comments
Amazingly enough, 2011 is almost over. We trust that you all have had a good year and that your own surrounding soundscapes have been healthy, vital, and life affirming. We're happy to 'ring out the old year' with some wonderful new members. We look forward to growing our team and offering some interesting improvements to the network as 2012 unfolds. As always, we wish you all our gratitude for sharing your wonder works, your insights, your time, and most of for all for the extension of…Continue
Added by Katherine (Kat) Krause on December 21, 2011 at 3:59pm — No Comments
Neat notes from NPR about the regional dialect of birds in the 'hood. Does it really come as a surprise that anthropogenic noise affects avian communication? The original article is at the bottom of the linked post. http://wamu.org/programs/metro_connection/11/12/09/changing_your_tune_to_adapt_to_the_urban_jungle
Added by Katherine (Kat) Krause on December 13, 2011 at 5:30pm — No Comments
Added by Katherine (Kat) Krause on October 17, 2011 at 1:37pm — No Comments | <urn:uuid:977bb1d2-a911-4ee3-aaf6-4986b967622f> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://soundscapesupportteam.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?user=3cza5rfreupcs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571538.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812014923-20220812044923-00473.warc.gz | en | 0.938975 | 1,938 | 1.59375 | 2 |
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