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Bhutto LASER - dismiss it, or...
" the great strength of democracy; the ability to doubt without losing face"
( http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Ralston_Saul )
First, PAKISTAN's newspaper THE NATION writes:
Hi-tech weapon killed Benazir
ISLAMABAD- Pakistan People.s Party (PPP)on Friday unveiled post-mortem report (X-Ray) of slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, according to which, .two to three tiny radio-densities underneath fracture segments were observed on both projections..
.According to the report, the cause of death was open head injuries with depressed skull fracture, leading to cardiopulmonary arrest. The X-Ray report says that the depth of injury in the head is 5x3 centimetre. The shape of injuries is irregular alike to egg,. PPP Finance Secretary Dr Babar Awan told a news conference here at party Media Office.
.According to the X-ray report, as many as 35 millimetre on X-ray measurement depressed fracture from fragment. The segment of injury is invisible electromagnet radiations,. Awan said.
He said that first report of external postmortem, which the government was trying to hide, was prepared, by Dr Mussidiq Khan, Dr Habib Ahmed Khan, Dr Azam Yousif, Dr Aurangzeb Khan, Dr Saida Yaseen, Dr Qudsia Anjam Qurashi and Dr Nasir Khan.
The PPP leader said, .electromagnetic radiations (waves) are invisible such as the waves used in technology of radio, TV or microwaves (radiations). All these devices make use of electromagnetic waves,. he said.
(Radio waves, microwaves, visible light, and x-rays are all examples of electromagnetic waves that differ from each other in wavelength Electromagnetic waves are produced by the motion of electrically charged particles. These waves are also called .electromagnetic radiation. because they are emitted from the electrically charged particles. They travel through empty space as well as through air and other substances. The velocity of the radiation is equal to the velocity of light, but this radiation is not seen.)
(Scientists have observed that electromagnetic radiation has dual
.Personality.. Besides acting like waves, it acts like a stream of particles (called .photons. that have no mass.)
The PPP leader said the government was trying to hide this report. This report gives clear-cut cause of death. He said that investigation must be conducted under the commission of United Nations (UN). He said that the PPP would provide all evidences to the commission of United Nations.
Rejecting probe by Scotland Yard team, Babar Awan said that this team had failed to investigate the murder of former Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan. .Musharraf should immediately appoint this team for investigation into the killing of Chief of Awami Jamhori Wattan Party Nawab Akbar Bugti.
Forcefully rejecting the statement of President Pervez Musharraf given to foreign media on Thursday, he said it was a fake statement. Before returning of former Prime Ministers Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto to their homeland, Musharraf had said that he would block the way of both leaders.
.The political orphan had said that they would not allow Benazir Bhutto to become Prime Minister for the third term. Unfortunately, both Pervezs are talking in the same tune,. he said.
He said Pervez Musharraf is a retired servant, not representing the military. We demand Musharraf to vacate the Army House.
He strongly condemned the attack on media van on way to Naudro, saying the DOP of Doud should be dismissed immediately.
APP adds: Pakistan People.s Party unveiled the external postmortem report prepared on December 28, 2007 to the media, asserting the cause of death was the hi-tech weapon.
========== Wall Street Journal =======
Conspiracy Theories Thrive in Pakistan
Few Agree on Cause Of Bhutto's Death By PETER WONACOTT -- January 9, 2008; Page A6
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan -- As the probe into Benazir Bhutto's assassination deepens, many Pakistanis already have strongly held theories about who killed her. The problem for President Pervez Musharraf's government: Few share its version of what happened.
Iktiadar Ali Shah, a 52-year-old who served in the former prime minister's security detail in the 1980s, says he doesn't doubt how Ms. Bhutto died. He says that while moving toward her white bulletproof car as it crawled through throngs of supporters after a Dec. 27 campaign rally, he heard three or four shots from two guns. Then Mr. Shah saw a huge blast, which he suspects was triggered by remote control to simulate a suicide bomber. His chief suspect: Pakistan's intelligence agencies.
Another man, one of many who have gathered at makeshift memorials for Ms. Bhutto in this army-garrison town outside the capital, Islamabad, has a very different theory.
"This was the West's attempt to destabilize our country and take control of our nuclear weapons," he shouts, standing amid the scattered rose petals to mark the spot of her death. The man, balding and dressed in a checkered sports coat, refuses to give his name. "Call me Pakistan," he says.
Controversy, suspicion and conspiracy: They are an inevitable part of sensational deaths, from John F. Kennedy to Princess Diana. In the wake of Ms. Bhutto's assassination -- and the government's investigation -- conspiracy theories have become a national obsession here, further eroding confidence in Mr. Musharraf's crisis-racked presidency.
To try to allay public skepticism and restore some credibility, the government has called in a team from Scotland Yard to help its investigation. The British team has inspected the site where Ms. Bhutto died and also the mangled vehicle that carried her. They will be trying to clarify what happened by compiling a report that is expected to be released in the coming weeks, possibly ahead of parliamentary elections. Those elections recently were pushed back to Feb. 18 from yesterday, following unrest sparked by Ms. Bhutto's death.
"We should all wait for the results of investigation, which the government will share with the people," Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema told a regular media briefing yesterday.
President Musharraf himself, after an initial silence, has said he isn't satisfied with the investigation and has recently backed away from from an early official version of what happened. In an interview Sunday with CBS television, Mr. Musharraf acknowledged Ms. Bhutto may have been shot -- a view that contrasted with the government's initial contention that she had died from smashing her head against a sunroof lever during the suicide blast. Mr. Musharraf met with Scotland Yard investigators yesterday and promised not to meddle in their probe, said Mr. Cheema.
But Pakistani officials, including Mr. Musharraf, have stuck by their allegations that Islamist militants were behind this attack, as well as an Oct. 18 suicide bombing in Karachi. The earlier attack narrowly missed Ms. Bhutto but killed more than 150 people.
Officials from Ms. Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party have rejected the initial government findings. Instead of Scotland Yard, they have called for an independent investigation from the United Nations. They have also faulted the government for hosing down the crime scene just hours after the assassination and for allegedly failing to provide adequate security for Ms. Bhutto.
"It all points to a massive coverup," asserts Farhatullah Babar, a PPP spokesman.
Ms. Bhutto's son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, said in London yesterday that only a U.N. investigation would satisfy him.
"We do not believe that an investigation under the authority of the Pakistani government has the necessary transparency," said the 19-year-old, who was chosen as chairman of his mother's party after her death. "Already, so much forensic evidence has been destroyed."
PPP officials say they are skeptical that the government's chief suspect, Baitullah Mehsud, an Islamic militant based in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region, plotted the assassination. Through emissaries after both attacks on Ms. Bhutto, Mr. Mehsud told the PPP leadership he was fighting government security forces in Pakistan's northwest, not targeting Ms. Bhutto, according to Mr. Babar, the PPP spokesman.
Ms. Bhutto has long vowed to rid Pakistan of Islamist militants. And letters from her security adviser, Rehman Malik, also alerted the government's interior ministry to threats from extremists. But doubts over the government's version of events runs deep, largely because of plummeting confidence in Mr. Musharraf.
Having purged Pakistan's courts of unfriendly justices, clamped down on the media and detained scores of political opponents over the past year, Mr. Musharraf has come to the point where many Pakistanis appear more willing to take the word of an Islamic militant over his.
"The Taliban wouldn't target a woman," insists an 84-year-old university researcher in Islamabad. "It's 100% Musharraf."
The public suspicions have left Mr. Musharraf angry. At a recent news conference, he declared that he wasn't raised in a family that plotted and killed people. Muhammed Ali Saif, a lawyer and adviser to the president, recalled his boss's more sardonic response to speculation that he had dispatched a squad of suicide assassins to take out a charismatic rival.
"People think I killed Benazir," Mr. Saif recalls Mr. Musharraf saying. "I wish I had such supporters who would blow themselves up for me."
But Mr. Musharraf's protests haven't stopped speculation over how Ms. Bhutto died, as well as who is to blame. Aside from the gunshots and remote-control-bomb theory subscribed to by Mr. Shah, others suspect more sophisticated weaponry was involved. Local newspapers have suggested a team of snipers could have used long-distance laser guns to kill Ms. Bhutto.
Earlier stranger-than-fiction deaths of Pakistani political figures, including those in the Bhutto family, have lent credibility to the most far-fetched theories. Ms. Bhutto had no shortage of political enemies.some of whom are now subjects of scrutiny by the public, if not the police.
One is Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, who is the leader of the Pakistan Muslim League faction allied with Mr. Musharraf. His father was assassinated by a terror group associated with Murtaza Bhutto, Ms. Bhutto's brother, according to Hamid Gul, the former director of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, who says he has read a confidential file on the killing. In 1996, Ms. Bhutto's brother was shot and killed in turn.
Mr. Hussain's father was a confidant of Gen. Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, who hanged Ms. Bhutto's father, also a former prime minister, and who jailed Ms. Bhutto and her mother. (Gen. Zia died in a mysterious 1988 air crash. Some have speculated the cause of the crash was linked to a last-minute cargo addition: a crate of mangoes).
Mr. Hussain's supporters reject speculation of his involvement in Ms. Bhutto's assassination.
"The blame game should stop," said the spokesman for the Pakistan Muslim League, Tariq Azim. "People have to be patient, wait for the investigation to be completed."
Ms. Bhutto died near the same municipal park where Pakistan's first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was murdered in 1951. Outside the park, now named for Liaquat Bagh, bouquets of flowers are piled near billboards with Ms. Bhutto's image.
Government investigators have recovered a severed head of a young male with a light mustache from the crime scene -- a detail that would appear to reinforce the theory of a suicide bomber. In newspaper announcements, the government has offered a reward for anyone with information about the identity of the head.
"The head isn't important," counters Mr. Babar, the PPP spokesman. "What's important is finding the heart and the hands behind this plot."
Write to Peter Wonacott at firstname.lastname@example.org
============= INDIA DAILY =====
Benazir Bhutto killed by Pakistani secret laser weapon system as well as bullets . Indian politicians must be careful
Jan. 2, 2008
The conspiracy theorists have dug in further. Benazir Bhutto was attacked Pakistani militia from various directions. But the one that guaranteed her assassination is the new arsenal that Pakistani ISI obtained for attacking Indian installations secretly from Europe. It is a laser based pin pointed weapon system that can pierce through the skull and the bones and cause death instantaneously.
The laser beam was direct and pin pointed. Besides international think tanks, a section of her Pakistan People's Party (PPP) claimed she was targeted with a section of her Pakistan People's Party (PPP) claiming she was targeted with sophisticated .laser beam technology..
The weapon systems that the ISI was ready to handover to the Jihadists to kill Indians and Indian politicians were actually first test fired on Benazir Bhutto.
When Bhutto was admitted to Rawalpindi General Hospital shortly after the fatal attack on her on December 27, doctor Musaddiq Khan, who treated her, told a PPP leader that he had seen "such a case for the first time in his life", sources said.
What really happened is that as Bhutto got ready to reveal to the world iron clad evidence on how Musharraf was rigging the election, ISI decided to make sure the assassination does not leave any chance for Bhutto to survive.
The skull fracture is impossible from Sunroof. Sniper blasts are written off from video shoots. The only alternative is obviously the laser beam. That was the reason why Musharraf.s men and the ISI agents shielded Bhutto.s body from complete autopsy. They did not like to reveal their new weapon systems that they plan to use against other world leaders. | <urn:uuid:7bb3aab7-d285-4c8d-ab11-5815dd487e4f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://u2r2h.blogspot.com/2008/01/bhutto-laser-dismiss-it-or.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969896 | 3,031 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Zombie Banks: How Broken Banks and Debtor Nations Are Crippling the Global Economy
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Other Available Formats: Hardcover
“The title is worthy of a B movie, but it's also apt. Bloomberg News reporter Yalman Onaran, supported by former U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. chief Sheila Bair - who provides a foreword and numerous interviews - urge that insolvent banks both small and too big to fail be allowed to do precisely that. Reading bank balance sheets is not everyone's idea of a good time. But Mr. Onaran, with support from Ms. Bair, does the chore and explains what it means. Mr. Onaran shows that the process of rescuing dead and dying banks is increasing systemic risk in the global banking system. And that is really more frightening than scream flicks from Tinseltown.” -- Financial Post
“Yalman Onaran knows of putrid financial institutions, having written about them in his native Turkey so successfully he brought down a few in Istanbul in the late '90's.” -- Huffington Post
“Do We Love Zombie Banks? The new book by Yalman Onaran of Bloomberg News, Zombie Banks: How Broken Banks and Debtor Nations Are Crippling the Global Economy, is a well-organized and clearly written discussion of the use of leverage to provide growth in many different economies. Onaran has carefully researched the zombie phenomenon and makes some important points in this concise volume about both public policy and the concerns of investors. One of the more interesting early threads in the book is the juxtaposition of the experience of the US in the S&L crisis and Japan in the 1980s and 1990s with the US today. Zombie Banks is a good review of the latest thinking about the ebb and flow of the political economy.” -- R. Christopher Whalen, author of Inflated
Zombie banking has become standard operating procedure for big debtor nations. They prop up failing institutions, print money, and avoid financial corrections. But in an attempt to prolong the inevitable, bigger problems are created. The approach used now has not, and will not, work. This timely book reveals why. Zombie Banks tells the story of how debtor nations and failing institutions are damaging the long-term prospects of the global economy.
Author Yalman Onaran, a veteran Bloomberg News reporter and financial banking sector expert, examines exactly what a zombie bank is and why they are kept alive. He also discusses how they hurt economic recovery and what needs to be done in order to restore stability. Along the way, Onaran takes an honest look at how we arrived at this point and details the harsh realities that must be faced, and the serious steps that must be taken, in order to get things headed in the right direction.
- Puts insolvent banks and debtor nations in the spotlight and examines how they are crippling the global economy
- On the record sources include Paul Volcker, Joseph Stiglitz, Sheila Bair, and many more bank executives, regulators, politicians, and policymakers in the United States and abroad
- Takes the complexity of the current situation and translates it in a way that makes it understandable
While the short-term measures taken to stave off depression and rejuvenate economic growth may offer hope, they are unsustainable over the long term. Get a better look at what really lies ahead, and what it will take to improve our economic situation, with this book. | <urn:uuid:2b2c447e-ddb7-48f0-9970-7c98a941451b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118185315.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93917 | 725 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Looks like you got a good result. I see you're not sure about the clean break, and all that. Personally, I would suggest you search the forum and read about the floc method. It's a pretty simple technique, and the short version of why, is this. Basically, everytime you make a cheese the milk is different (different time of year, different cows, different feed, different pasturization technique, etc). How your rennet and starters work with the milk will, therefore, also bit a bit different. So, rather than waiting for a set amount of time , which implies the rennet/starter/milk combo is always working the same way, and checking for a clean break, which is a bit subjective anyway, you time the effects of the rennet on your milk.
At the time you add your rennet, note the time exactly (i.e. to the second; I usually wait for the time to read :00 seconds to make it easy). Stir your rennet in as per usual, but then place on top of the milk a small plastic container (i.e. an individual serve yogurt cup - sterilized of course). give it a light tap, and it will sail around the surface of the milk. Every couple minutes, tap it and see what it does. Eventually, as the rennet starts to thicken the milk, it won't sail quite so freely. Now, tap every minute. It will start to just shift and stop. Check every 30 seconds, until you find the point in time when a light tap won't move the cup. It just lurches a bit, but gets hauled back into place, like a cartoon character with their feet in acme glue. When that happens, write down the time, and we call this the "floc time".
You are aiming to achieve a floc time of 10 to 15 minutes. If it takes less than 10 minutes, then use less rennet next time. If it takes more than 15, you could stand to use a bit more.
For our examle, let's say it required 12 minutes to achieve flocculation. Now, for gouda, you use a 3x multiplier, which just means multiply that 12 by 3 and you get 36 minutes. So, you cut the curds at 36 minutes post rennet (not 36 minutes from floc, but 36 minutes from when you put the rennet in; floc is at the 1x mark - so you're already 12 minutes into it and just need to wait another 24 minutes). At the calculated time you just cut the curds. Don't worry about clean breaks, just cut. See, if your rennet was working a bit more vigorously this time you might get a floc of 11 minutes, and cut at 33.
Higher floc multipliers generally lead to a moister curd and shorter mutliplers generally lead to drier curds. If you are sure you're going to long age a cheese, you might drop the multiplier a bit (i.e. 2.75x rather than 3x) and so forth. There are tables people have put on the boards suggesting what multipliers to use for different types of cheese, but remember, these are starting points. Adjust them to suit your tastes. I've posted an excel book (cheesetools.xls) which has a page on it that is quite useful for determing the different times when using the floc method, and it can be found in the library on the site.
Anyway, it's not really hard to do, and if you search the boards you'll find more detailed explanations about why this works and why it is a good thing to get used to. Of course, there are also a lot of people who go by clean break and they produce very good cheeses, so, it's not like it's manditory. I like it, but I like this kind of thing. | <urn:uuid:71b8633e-7ae6-4346-93d2-1bf715badb22> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,10561.msg79817.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950781 | 814 | 1.640625 | 2 |
UCLA Health System is involved in diverse activities, has many components and has relationships with many different outside organizations. Each facet of UCLA Health System, involves different and ever-changing laws, rules and regulations governing our services and business relationships. Because of this, UCLA Health System has policies in place defining the operations of the confidential compliance hotline, and providing a person or entity with making a protected reported disclosure on potential compliance violations.
A Whistleblower may be a university employee, student, patient, applicant for employment, vendor, contractor or the general public. The whistleblower's role is as a reporting party and they are not investigators or finders of fact, nor do they determine the appropriate corrective action or remedial action that may be warranted.
It is the role and responsibility of the University to receive these hotline whistleblower complaints, whether the whistleblower remains anonymous or identified, and to ensure appropriate investigation and reporting of all inquires from the properly designated examining unit. This may include but not limited to, Audit and Advisory Services, Risk Management, Campus Police, Compliance and Privacy Office, School of Medicine Administration and other UCLA officials and representatives.
Once all investigations are concluded, official disclosure and/or reporting is provided and in general, whistleblowers may be informed of the outcome of their complaint. – less – More from ZoomInfo » | <urn:uuid:0e4191c3-44ef-41cd-8052-c6202ca31e83> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.indeed.com/cmp/Ucla-Health-System | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937706 | 265 | 1.578125 | 2 |
I’ve waited until the day after Veterans Day to make my comment.
As a veteran myself, that served our nation during a time of war, and on the field of war. A veteran that fought and held the head of men dying in their own blood, who saw the last breath leave their bodies, that heard their last word, ‘Momma,’ that knew them personally, that knew their hopes and dreams, and weaknesses, and fears, and cried unashamedly when they lost life. (And still do at times.)
I have a few thoughts.
Do you think they fought and died so you can live a life of ease and luxury? Do you think they fought and died so you can whine and moan about feeling underprivileged, taken advantage of, feeling victimized, entitled to lives of excess for every pleasure you think you deserve?
If so, you honor them not. So next year, on Veterans Day, instead of your hollow words and symbols of gratitude, just go to your local Veterans Cemetery, and stand by a grave, and spit on it.
You want to ‘honor’ a veteran? Make something of you life, something that will actually benefit some other human being. Don’t live a life filled with selfish dreams and goals and ambitions, but dedicate your life to the advancement of others. That is what distinguishes the sacrifice of a veteran.
You want to honor a veteran … go and do likewise. Then we will feel honored, even though that is not why we served. We served because it was our duty. | <urn:uuid:f410a93d-e1d0-4e67-a77e-055832eb7388> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.brutallyhonest.org/brutally_honest/2011/11/a-belated-veterans-day-comment.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974307 | 326 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Tune in this NPR segment to hear Rick Carr interview Tim Gowers and Tyler Neylon about the ongoing Elsevier boycott.
February 19, 2012 4 Comments
As the boycott against Elsevier gains momentum, some beautiful artwork has emerged in support of the movement.
February 19, 2012 Leave a comment
The Cost of Knowledge is a place for researchers to publicly boycott Elsevier. It was built as a response to Tim Gowers’s call to action, in which he states:
I am not only going to refuse to have anything to do with Elsevier journals from now on, but I am saying so publicly. I am by no means the first person to do this, but the more of us there are, the more socially acceptable it becomes, and that is my main reason for writing this post.
It occurs to me that it might help if there were a website somewhere, where mathematicians who have decided not to contribute in any way to Elsevier journals could sign their names electronically. I think that some people would be encouraged to take a stand if they could see that many others were already doing so, and that it would be a good way of making that stand public. Perhaps such a site already exists, in which case I’d like to hear about it and add my name. If it doesn’t, it should be pretty easy to set up, but way beyond my competence I’m afraid. Is there anyone out there who feels like doing it?
Since its launch on January 22, 2012, the boycott has gained extraordinary momentum and has expanded well beyond the initial audience of mathematicians and even beyond the world of academia into mainstream media. Thank you to everyone who has participated in the boycott in any form.
February 17, 2012 7 Comments | <urn:uuid:3ea4a5b3-6151-4b4a-960b-37a902b46613> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.thecostofknowledge.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973656 | 362 | 1.507813 | 2 |
America, Land of the Poor, Home of the SickPolitics / US Politics Sep 29, 2011 - 03:08 AM GMT
Michael Finger writes: Thanks to a series of destructive government policies and incentives, a health care crisis has been steadily building in America for a generation or two. But the release yesterday of the Kaiser Family Foundation's annual survey reveals that the problem of unaffordable healthcare is becoming epidemic. According to the report, health insurance premiums have jumped nearly 10% in 2011 for the typical family, compared to a 3% increase in 2010. The average annual cost for family health insurance now exceeds $15,000 per year, about 30% of median household income!
At a time when the economy is essentially stagnant and the official inflation figures remain low, what could account for the dramatic price spike? It is no coincidence that the report covers a period of time when many of the provisions of the Obama Administration's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) have come into effect. I think we are seeing the initial impact of this law, which the Administration promised would reduce healthcare spending. Oops.
Like all pieces of legislation, Obamacare provided some perverse incentives that explain some of this year's outsized price increases. Starting next year, the new law will impose a system of price controls on health care services. Just like a city worker whose pension is determined by the final year's gross salary, these looming price controls have incentivized providers to boost prices as much as possible before they're "locked in." Since the recession has cut down on doctor and hospital visits, this anticipation, rather than rising costs, appears to be a main driver of price increases.
Once price controls take effect, there will be only one way for these companies to keep up with rising costs and a growing cohort of retirees needing care: cut the quality and quantity of service. As a result, recipients won't be paying more for health insurance, they'll just be getting less. So, to the extent that the insurers can raise prices in anticipation now, they may have to cut less in the future. Perhaps we should be thanking them.
Still, the increases are painful at a time of economic depression. Unfortunately, employers are hit even harder than individuals under Obamacare. For example, employers are now forced to cover the children of employees until they are 26 years old! Including healthy 20-somethings in the comprehensive, low-deductible plans offered to most established corporate employees is sure to drive costs up - even if it's a net benefit to insurers.
Businesses are also mandated to pay for preventive care at no cost to employees. While preventive care can lead to savings in the long-run, it does not necessarily do so. I know someone covered by such a plan who receives a twice weekly massage at no cost. Is this an investment in future health, or an unfortunate loophole in a law Speaker Pelosi said Congressmen should "pass... so [they] can find out what's in it"? Whatever the case may be, it's no longer up to employers and insurers to make these judgments, but rather bureaucrats in Washington.
By increasing federal intervention, Obamacare simply takes us further down the road to ruin. From the post-war tax laws that favored employer-provided insurance, to the Great Society's guarantee of healthcare for all retirees, to the 60 years of increasing regulation of doctors and hospitals, Washington has done everything to drive costs up and quality down.
A good case in point is the Clinton-era Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which put doctors in a regulatory straightjacket. The law created rules about where patient charts must be stored, what type of computer systems doctors can buy, how life-saving research is conducted, and much more. The law also opened up a whole new avenue for patients to sue doctors and hospitals. Some argue that these laws are needed to protect medical privacy, but that is debatable. The point is that such blanket rules have no regard for practicality, cost, or individual circumstances.
Repealing HIPAA, separating insurance from employment, encouraging malpractice reform at the state-level, reducing regulations on hospitals, getting the state out of medical licensing, and reducing taxes for high income earners would all go a long way to driving down medical costs. But rather than improving market conditions, President Obama and his team are trying to force costs down with an iron fist.
Once Obamacare's price controls are in effect, rising inflation and a growing pool of elderly patients will drive the insurance industry to bankruptcy. Washington may then choose to bailout the major insurers and form quasi-governmental agencies, or they may take the opportunity to push for single-payer socialized medicine. By that time, doctors may have acquired all the skill and courtesy of typical DMV employees.
So, don't expect to see a major renaissance in American medicine any time soon. Instead, the future President Obama has created will be poor, sick, and old. Based on the Kaiser Foundation's report, it looks like we're well on our way.
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Michael Finger is Communications Specialist for Euro Pacific Capital, a registered broker/dealer with 6 offices across the country.
Copyright © 2011 Euro Pacific Capital, Inc
© 2005-2013 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication. | <urn:uuid:29a2802e-f3e3-43d0-880d-a954035eac85> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article30691.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951657 | 1,139 | 1.710938 | 2 |
“You are so motivated to make sure the trip goes smoothly, because you know that the organs of these two kids are now going to save the lives of more than just a handful of other kids.”
After launching a successful high-tech startup–communication equipment manufacturer Shiva Corporation–Dan Schwinn turned his talents to fixing a glaring problem with the utility of small general aviation airplanes.
The instrumentation available in the early 1990s on the typical single-engine aircraft was needlessly complicated, Schwinn felt. What aviation needed was a much simpler interface between the airplane and the pilot–something that presents information in a clear, easy-to-interpret manner and that promotes safety, rather than detracting from it.
When Schwinn founded Avidyne Corporation in 1995 to design and manufacture modern avionics (aircraft electronics), he became a pioneer of the “glass cockpit” era, which saw decades-old instrument designs replaced by modern liquid crystal displays (LCDs) capable of delivering much more information in a lightweight, reasonably priced package. Avidyne’s products are intuitively easy to use, and allow pilots to focus on flying the airplane, instead of pushing a lot of buttons.
Avidyne has grown into a full-line avionics manufacturer, but retains Schwinn’s original goal: to make flying easier and safer.
How did you get started in electronics?
I started Shiva two years out of college with another guy. The products that made the company a big success were remote access, the connectivity stuff that made it possible to get from your laptop to your office. It was before the Internet was really established, and that [connectivity] was something everybody wanted. It was a traditional high-tech venture with a bunch of investors. Eventually we took it public and bought other companies, so it was a good way to get perspective on the startup process.
Why did you want to get into the avionics business?
I got my pilot’s license and bought an airplane. At the time, I did a lot of traveling for my prior company. I always thought, “How come flying isn’t [like] a rental car, where I can have the airplanes be mostly the same and not too complicated and I can just get one and go?” You can buy a boat and learn how to drive it in a relatively short period of time without a lot of hassle. As an electronics guy, I said one of the major issues is that the instrumentation makes these [airplanes] more difficult to use than they need to be. So that was what got me interested in starting up Avidyne.
What makes Avidyne different from other avionics manufacturers?
We were first in bringing a graphical user interface to general aviation. We were first with a fully colored map that did all kinds of things and overlaid all the different kinds of data. Our products have always been recognized as the easiest to use and we have a fanatical following because of some of those characteristics. We pioneered the glass-cockpit arena, primarily with Cirrus, Piper and other companies. We’ve now done flight controls with the safety features [that help pilots avoid loss of control]. I think that’s just scratching the surface of what can be done. A significant fraction of the population of owner-pilots–that’s our primary market–are interested in this stuff, even if it’s not required for their most minimal flight operation.
Is general aviation a good market for a startup?
It’s very difficult to raise money to start a business in general aviation compared with other areas of technology. It’s a relatively small market. You have a big regulatory overhead. And the success rate of the investments hasn’t been as high. Right now it would be particularly difficult because you had a lot of [general aviation] startups over the last decade and not a lot of money going back to shareholders.
But China has made big investments in general aviation companies.
They have a different outlook. They look at their market and say, “This is going to explode.” If an investor looks at the U.S. or European market, they say, “This market is not going anywhere. Why do I want to invest in that?” [In Asia], airspace is going to become liberalized, the ground [transportation] infrastructure isn’t that great, the economy is growing, there’s lots of wealth being created. This is going to explode.
Will that growth help Avidyne?
There are growth opportunities for Avidyne inside and outside of the traditional markets. The whole glass-cockpit thing–when we started off, there were people who had a long list of reasons why glass cockpits would never happen in general-aviation airplanes. Not only did that not turn out to be true, but [the technology] was adopted at an incredibly quick rate. That’s a strong lesson that says if something comes along that significantly differentiates this new technology from whatever has been out there, people will adopt it. I do think there’s a big opportunity, as some of the emerging markets kind of get general aviation. And we’re going to try and be in position to participate in that.
What happened with the Eclipse jet? Avidyne is no longer part of that program.
We were the new kid on the block. The established avionics guys were less interested in catering to the new airframe guys, and the existing airframe guys weren’t as interested in the new avionics guys, so you had this logical separation where we ended up primarily doing business with a lot of the startup airframe [developers]. Unfortunately for us, [most] of those companies [disappeared]. We built the system that’s now known as Entegra R9 for them and for Eclipse, although Eclipse’s was much more highly tailored because they have such an integrated airplane. The program had its challenges, but I think it was a good airplane design and it is a good airplane. For us, it was good to have been involved. It was a good [learning experience]. We developed good technology that was fielded on the Eclipse. We did a system integration that was at a level that had not ever been done on any airplane nearly that small, so it was a useful experience.
Did you enjoy flying the Falcon 100?
I had one for a couple of years, flew it around 500 hours. That airplane had the dawn of the EFIS-era equipment [cathode-ray-tube instruments] in it. There were some aspects that were really good and some that–for an owner pilot–were not optimized for that. So it was a good way to experience that in that era’s best-available equipment.
Cathode-ray tubes lasted surprisingly long in aviation.
I was surprised at how slowly LCDs took over. There are a tremendous number of impediments to innovation in this business. Regulatory and so forth, the man-rating. There are only a few things in the world that have a life safety factor like aviation products.
Is that why avionics cost so much, compared with, say, flat-screen TVs?
It’s a function of the volume and the regulatory and the life safety elements. I’d totally agree with somebody who walks up to me at a trade show and says, “Your [display] costs 10 times as much as my iPad and only does the same amount of stuff. It’s ridiculous that it’s so expensive, and its display is smaller, by the way.” But there are a lot of expenses associated with building the certified stuff, and you can’t compare an iPad to a certified piece of avionics. The iPad’s fabulous and great for airplanes, but there’s a lot of stuff that we go through to make certified avionics that does make it better for the specific application–at significant cost, but there is a significant benefit.
What are you flying now?
All the Avidyne airplanes. We’ve done a lot of our development work on Cirrus. We have a couple of Cessna 182s. We’ve got a Piper Meridian that I’ve started flying. And I’ve got a Lake Renegade seaplane that has the only single-screen R9 installation that there is.
And when you’re not flying?
I am an electronics hobbyist, so I do home automation stuff. I’m not on the very leading edge of the latest geek device but I’m close to it. Some of it’s very applicable to what we’re doing at Avidyne, some of it is slightly and some of it not at all.
Are your children showing an interest in flying?
They’ve taken an interest. I’d influence them hopefully to see general aviation as something that ought to be considered–one of those things in their bag of tricks to be able to do. I won’t try to turn them into airline pilots, although it would be perfectly fine if they wanted to be. I would like [flying] be something that they know how to do. So that’s how I’ll try to influence them. There’ so many neat things you can do and different adventures you can have.
Résumé: Dan Schwinn
POSITION: Founder, president and CEO, Avidyne
PAST POSITIONS: Cofounder and president of Shiva Corporation. Took it public during his tenure.
EDUCATION: Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
PERSONAL: Married, three children. Electronics hobbyist and private pilot. Owns a Lake Renegade single-engine seaplane, flies a Piper Meridian single-engine turboprop and is type rated in the Falcon 10/100. | <urn:uuid:fbe59265-ca56-401c-a7c0-ee54dedce42f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bjtonline.com/business-jet-news/dan-schwinn?qt-most_popular=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972497 | 2,080 | 1.632813 | 2 |
On August 12, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that the insurance mandate in the “Obamacare†health control law is unconstitutional. The Court ruled that the mandate exceeded Congress’s Commerce Power, and was not a “tax†under Congress’s Taxation Power.
The ruling came in State of Florida v. U.S. Dept. Of Health and Human Services, the most significant of several cases challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare. This is the case brought by a coalition of 26 state attorneys general.
Some of the Court’s discussion suggests that an amicus curiae (“friend of the courtâ€) brief filed by us at the Independence Institute may have influenced how the judges reached their decision.
However, the decision was not a total loss for the Obama administration—specifically, it upheld the law’s mandates on the states pertaining to Medicaid. Later posts will explain why that part of the decision is flat-out wrong, both under the actual meaning of the Constitution and under existing U.S. Supreme Court precedent.
But first, here are some basic facts about the ruling:
* The Court showed more understanding than previous tribunals of the nature of the Commerce Power—specifically that the Commerce Power is based on both the CommerceClause (Art. I, Section 8, Clause 3) and the Necessary and Proper Clause (Art. I, Section 8, Clause 18). The Supreme Court has rested its expansive reading of the Commerce Power (including the controversial “substantial effects testâ€) mostly on the Necessary and Proper Clause—not on the Commerce Clause itself. Since earlier opinions had not grasped this point, the 11th Circuit’s relative enlightenment may have been due to the explanation in our amicus brief. Understanding this technical point is important for properly understanding the Constitution.
* This decision is the first in which a judge (Hull) appointed by a Democratic President agreed that the mandate was unconstitutional. The decision was 2-1, with another Democratic nominee (Marcus) voting to uphold the mandate. (The other person in the majority was Chief Judge Dubina, a Republican appointee.)
* Unfortunately, in its analysis the judges refused to rely only on the straightforward and workable “activity vs. non-activity†test adopted by the trial court and other courts voiding Obamacare. Instead, the judges dismissed that test as too “formalistic†and got themselves tangled in a confused analysis of other factors. All this was in accordance with the philosophy of “legal realism†that has dominated the nation’s law schools for many years—promulgated, I might note, largely by law professors who themselves have little experience in the realism of law practice. (One difficulty with reading the Constitution this way is that the document speaks primarily in traditional legal—i.e., so-called “formalistic,†terms.)
* The trial court had invalidated the entire health control law, not just the unconstitutional mandate portion. The Obama administration had pointed out that the mandate was central to the viability of the law. Because that was so, the trial judge had held that Congress needed to go back to the drawing board entirely. But the appeals court decided that the rest of the law could be preserved without the mandate.
* Like all other courts considering the issue, the tribunal rejected the Obama administration’s argument that the penalty for not buying health insurance was a tax rather than a regulation of commerce. This was clearly the correct decision, both in view of the Constitution’s actual meaning and of the wording and legislative history of the health control law.
* Finally, like some other courts, the 11th Circuit upheld the Medicaid mandates on states. This part of the decision was clearly erroneous under the Constitution’s real meaning and probably erroneous under Supreme Court precedent. Future posts will explain why.
In private life, Rob Natelson is a long-time conservative/free market activist, but professionally he is a constitutional scholar whose meticulous studies of the Constitution’s original meaning have been published or cited by many top law journals. (See http://constitution.i2i.org/about/.) Most recently, he co-authored The Origins of the Necessary and Proper Clause (Cambridge University Press) and The Original Constitution (Tenth Amendment Center). After a quarter of a century as Professor of Law at the University of Montana, he recently retired to work full time at Colorado’s Independence Institute. Visit his blog there at http://constitution.i2i.org/ | <urn:uuid:5f693320-ddce-4719-a623-d3c410f3bc05> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2011/08/15/yet-another-court-voids-obamacares-insurance-mandates/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953178 | 1,012 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Low paying jobs? Mandate that employers pay a "living wage". High cost of housing? Subsidize the cost, and impose more rules on landlords. Poor health? Raise new taxes to pay for a universal coverage health care system. Day care costs? Make free preschools universal. High heating costs? Subsidize fuel bills for more households. Inadequate transportation? Expand public transit with nominal fares.
It will not likely occur to the Council members that perhaps some tough love on the subject of character, self-improvement, parental responsibility, wise shopping, clean living, and the benefits of work might do the poor a better service. After all, it has worked over the years for millions of Vermonters. | <urn:uuid:7a10741b-0c39-4532-a666-acfe09107dd5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.denpubs.com/news/2007/sep/19/the-never-ending-war-against-poverty/?page=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957515 | 147 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Today, Oct. 31, is the day most children love and many parents hate…because the latter have to deal with youngsters flying high on all the sugar they ingest with those Halloween treats.
It’s also a night for scary movies and nightmares. But have we lost the real meaning of death and the dead? We tend to avoid the topic except around this time of year, when All Hallows Eve is followed by All Saints Day, All Souls Day, and a whole month dedicated to the holy souls. British Jesuit John McDade, writing for “Thinking Faith,” has some reflections on the reality of All Hallows Eve, death and Purgatory. You might find them very interesting and enlightening.
If you read Fr. McDade, you’ll also see his reference to cracks in the cosmos. We of Celtic background have another phrase to describe this phenomenon: thin places. It’s said that if you chance on one of these thin places, you can hear the voices of those who have gone to the next life. You don’t hear them only on All Hallows Eve and they are not out to get you. But they know you are there.
Let me tell you a story from my Irish cousin Michael, who was a very staid businessman with a lovely family when he told it to me. On our old family farm in the west of Ireland, there was a spa well (it had a mineral vein), which was said to be a thin place. When Michael was a teenager, he didn’t believe a word of this. However, he reasoned, fear of voices at the spa well might be a way to get close to a pretty girl. So he’d bring the girl to the well, tell her tales, scare her to death, and then put a protective arm around her. You can figure out the rest.
Well, our Michael had great success with this gambit until late one night, when he was coming home alone on his bicycle. There was no moon and the rain was pelting down in sheets. Just as he passed the deserted spa well, the chain on his bicycle broke and he went sprawling into the mud. As he untangled himself from the bike, wiped the mud from his face and tried to get to his feet, he heard gales of laughter.
For the rest of his life, Michael never again stopped at the spa well and whenever he drove past it, even in broad daylight, he floored the gas pedal. | <urn:uuid:f7c844d6-6ad4-411f-ae1a-7e1114e60a28> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.archny.org/faith/?tag=purgatory | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980809 | 515 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Posted on Dec 24, 2012 by lavaleaf
“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” – Barack Obama
It took me a while to learn this lesson. Sometimes the inertia of life sucks me into a routine. I'm not learning, not growing. I'm simply coasting along doing what I've become accustomed to doing. And then the thought comes, "Why am I not going anywhere?"
When I was young, I blamed others for my place in life. If my boss was more agreeable, I would have gotten a promotion, or if people weren't so greedy, I'd have a better life. And I sat and waited for something to change. And nothing did.
We are the ones who effect change. The sad truth is that very few people will every truly care where your life goes. You're the one living in your body, you're the one invested in your success. So take some time today to think about what you've been waiting for. What you really want to get. And then go do something about it. Only you can make it happen for yourself, so stop waiting and stop making excuses and go do it! | <urn:uuid:e3583f11-67aa-4aed-ab6b-3d5fe4c7a406> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.leafspirit.com/blog/2012/12/24/thought-for-december-24/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981943 | 266 | 1.765625 | 2 |
A company called Wanabo have released a free hosted system that allows your users to tag the pages on your site. It is a system that I am currently trialling here and you can see how it works by scrolling to the yellow box at the bottom of this article.
Web page tagging does offer some interesting benefits. Allowing users to categories pages in affect creates a more organic navigational approach that is much more user centric than the traditional information architecture. It also has the possibility of making the site "stickier" with fewer dead ends. Each page would have associated tags that relate to other pages on the site so continually drawing the user on. User tagging also gives the web site owner a unique perspective into how visitors view the content and even an indication of areas that require improvement. There is also the benefit of linking tags across multiple systems. This would allow, for example, you to automatically associate images from your flickr account with specific pages on your site based on the tags used.
Although I can see the potential in paged based tagging I can also see some serious problems. Probably my biggest concern is the fact that different people have different mental models and so will associate radically different tags to a page. This will lead to situations where obviously related pages may not be linked because one person tagged a page with the keyword "dinner" while another tagged a different page with the keyword "lunch". This situation is further confused with plurals and misspellings.
Of course this makes the massive assumption that users will be bothered to tag a page in the first place. I guess this largely depends on the level of "commitment" they feel towards the site in question. For example, I would expect the number of users to tag pages on boagworld, to be higher than those who will tag their local council website, because users feel more committed to the boagworld community. Wanabo does provide a solution to this problem by allowing you to turn on "auto tagging". This uses the keywords entered into search engines to tag the page. However, this will still suffer from the same "mental model" problem I mentioned earlier.
One solution is to disable the user tagging and tag the entire site manually. The obvious problem with this is that it is a huge undertaking and undermines many of benefits derived from a user based navigational system.
In conclusion, I am not convinced that Wanabo have solved all of the problems yet. They don’t appear to have fully dealt with some of the drawbacks of user tagging and also suffer from some basic customisation issues.
Why add tagging to boagworld?
So why am I trying it out on boagworld.com? In short, to see what happens. By running it on a live site I hope to get a better idea of just how useful it is and what issues exist. In principle I find the idea of user tagging of pages very exciting but believe the area needs further examination and work before a truly innovative solution emerges.
Has anybody come across any other websites that offer a similar service? I would be interested to hear what people think about the idea and what they would want from a service like this? | <urn:uuid:ed2e4af7-977f-43ae-8e78-6d5a279ff5f9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://boagworld.com/usability/tag-your-pages/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955267 | 644 | 1.757813 | 2 |
"On Sunday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai shocked Afghan and international observers when he reached out to the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar, offering him a guarantee of safety if he agrees to peace talks," Time magazine reported. "Omar, who has a $10 million price on his head for his support of al Qa'eda, has not been seen since 2001, when his Taliban regime was toppled by US forces. Omar is thought to be hiding in the ungoverned tribal areas along the Pakistan and Afghan border, though he still appears to be engaged in key leadership decisions regarding the growing militancy in the country. Addressing journalists at a press conference at the presidential palace, Karzai said, 'If I hear from [Mullah Omar] that he is willing to come to Afghanistan or to negotiate for peace... I, as the president of Afghanistan, will go to any length to provide him [with] protection'. "But how much of Karzai's bold statement can be counted as a real offer, and how much a desperate political move by a leader faced with waning support both at home and abroad? "As the insurgency gains a stronger foothold in Afghanistan, there has been growing debate both inside and outside the country about the possibility of reconciling with some moderate elements of the Taliban. Until now, however, Mullah Omar has always been considered one of the 'irreconcilables', a key leader unacceptable because of his extremist ideology and his alliance with al Qa'eda. Omar, through Taliban spokesmen, has repeatedly asserted that he has no interest in peace talks unless all foreign forces leave the country. Karzai, for his part, asserted in the same speech that any militant seeking reconciliation must be willing to respect the Afghan constitution, the very document that Omar rejects as heresy. 'It is ridiculous to think that Mullah Omar would be willing to come to the negotiating table now,' scoffs a Nato commander. 'This is the man who draped himself in the cloak of the Prophet and declared himself commander of the faithful. He has nothing to gain by negotiating, and we have nothing to gain by offering talks when the Taliban think they are winning.' " On Monday, Reuters reported: "Mullah Brother, deputy leader of the Taliban, rejected Karzai's offer of safe passage and again said foreign troops had to leave before negotiations could start. " 'As long as foreign occupiers remain in Afghanistan, we aren't ready for talks because they hold the power and talks won't bear fruit ... The problems in Afghanistan are because of them,' Brother said. " 'We are safe in Afghanistan and we have no need for Hamid Karzai's offer of safety,' he told Reuters by satellite telephone from an undisclosed location, adding that the Taliban jihad, or holy war, would go on." In Japan Focus, Richard Tanter wrote: "By virtually every yardstick, the war in Afghanistan is getting much worse for both the western coalition and for the Afghani civilian population. The number of districts under Taliban influence, the number of 'security incidents', the number of suicide attacks, the number of regions that are no-go zones for UN and aid workers, the number of coalition dead, the number of civilian dead and wounded, the number of insurgent attacks on civilians, the number of coalition air strikes, the number of insurgent roadside bombs attacks, the number of insurgent attacks on government officials, especially police, the size of the opium crop, the number of households involved in opium production, the size and sophistication of transnational heroin production and export networks - all have increased or worsened markedly in the past two years. "This shorthand summary of an extremely complex political and military situation is taking place in a country larger than Iraq, with a bigger population, a far poorer economic base, and a more complex ethnic formation. "And perhaps most important of all, all of this is happening in a country sharing a border with an already fragile state rendered vastly more so by pressure from the United States, and between whom, the colonially-derived border has almost no meaning in social reality. The Afghanistan War is now the Afghanistan-Pakistan War. Unless western coalition policy changes rapidly, Pakistan as a political entity will be threatened - a matter that India cannot ignore. The survival of Pakistan now depends on a reversal of course in Afghanistan." In The Atlantic, Nicholas Schmidle wrote: "the Pakistanis have had little success enlisting ordinary tribesmen to rebel against the Taliban. Their failure should be worrying. Without the support of ordinary tribesmen in Iraq, the Anbar Awakening and the defeat of al Qa'eda in Iraq would have been unthinkable. The same holds true in northwestern Pakistan. Yet the Pashtun tribes have been understandably reluctant to join the government. During Musharraf's regime, sporadic, overhyped military offensives failed to dislodge the Taliban, and any malik, or tribal chief, suspected of sympathising with the government was branded a spy and slaughtered. Khalid Aziz, a former political agent in North Waziristan, told me that, in the past, 'If a malik or his family was attacked, we used to do everything to redeem the malik's honour. The current administration has unfortunately disowned these policies'. "Those tribes that have finally mobilised against the Taliban have done so only after an intense military operation. In Dera Adam Khel, Swat, and Bajaur - all places where the army is bombarding militant strongholds - residents have formed lashkars [tribal militias]. In North and South Waziristan, where Musharraf signed peace deals with the Taliban, they have not. The Taliban have reacted violently to the lashkars. Suicide bombers have targeted tribal councils where lashkars were coalescing. Last March, more than 40 people died in one such attack, and in October, another bomber detonated himself and killed more than 80. "Lashkars in the tribal regions face a significantly greater challenge than did the Sunni tribes in Anbar. Al Qa'eda had undermined tribal authority in Anbar for not even three years when the tribes fought back. The Pashtun tribes of northwestern Pakistan have been undermined for three decades, ever since the arrival of thousands of foreigners in the 1980s for the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan. And in Pakistan and Afghanistan, ferocity in battle has gradually become more important than respect for tribal pedigree. The murder of several hundred maliks in recent years is a case in point. Consider, too, how a man like Baitullah Mehsud came to control his tribe in South Waziristan. Mehsud is in his early 30s, a gym rat-turned-Taliban commander, with a reputation for fighting. Platoons of eager suicide bombers swear their loyalty to him, and now the elders of the Mehsud tribe do, too." In The Observer, Jason Burke reported: "the Pakistani Army still views the battles it is fighting against extremists very differently from Western strategists and policy-makers. Scores of private conversations with soldiers of all ranks reveal that few see themselves as fighting in a 'war on terror' that many of them abhor. "Many believe that India, Pakistan's long-term regional rival, and Afghanistan are manipulating the militants fighting in Pakistan. In a mirror image of the Western analysis that attributes the success of the Taliban in Afghanistan to their bases in Pakistan, the Pakistani officers blame the war in Afghanistan for their troubles at home. "Privately few have much good to say about the West either. Anti-American sentiment is widespread. Many - both on the front line and at senior levels - doubt that al Qa'eda was responsible for 9/11. Instead the officers and men interviewed by The Observer see their fight as a necessary struggle to purge their own nation of an internal threat." The Washington Post reported: "The United States and Pakistan reached tacit agreement in September on a don't-ask-don't-tell policy that allows unmanned Predator aircraft to attack suspected terrorist targets in rugged western Pakistan, according to senior officials in both countries. In recent months, the US drones have fired missiles at Pakistani soil at an average rate of once every four or five days. "The officials described the deal as one in which the US government refuses to publicly acknowledge the attacks while Pakistan's government continues to complain noisily about the politically sensitive strikes. "The arrangement coincided with a suspension of ground assaults into Pakistan by helicopter-borne US commandos. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said in an interview last week that he was aware of no ground attacks since one on Sept 3 that his government vigorously protested. "Officials described the attacks, using new technology and improved intelligence, as a significant improvement in the fight against Pakistan-based al Qa'eda and Taliban forces. Officials confirmed the deaths of at least three senior al Qa'eda figures in strikes last month.... "Last month, officials confirmed, Predator strikes in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas killed Khalid Habib, described as al Qa'eda's No 4 official, and senior operatives Abu Jihad al Masri and Abu Hassan al Rimi. Three other senior al Qa'eda figures - explosives expert Abu Khabab al Masri, Abu Sulayman al Jazairi and senior commander Abu Laith al Libi - were killed during the first nine months of the year. "Current and former US counterterrorism officials said improved intelligence has been an important factor in the increased tempo and precision of the Predator strikes. Over the past year, they said, the United States has been able to improve its network of informants in the border region while also fielding new hardware that allows close tracking of the movements of suspected militants. "The missiles are fired from unmanned aircraft by the CIA. But the drones are only part of a diverse network of machines and software used by the agency to spot terrorism suspects and follow their movements, the officials said. The equipment, much of which remains highly classified, includes an array of powerful sensors mounted on satellites, airplanes, blimps and drones of every size and shape. "Before 2002, the CIA had no experience in using the Predator as a weapon. But in recent years - and especially in the past 12 months - spy agencies have honed their skills at tracking and killing single individuals using aerial vehicles operated by technicians hundreds or thousands of miles away."
"President Abdullahi Yusuf of Somalia has admitted that his government is on the verge of collapse and that Islamist groups now control most of the country," The Guardian reported. "In a speech to Somali MPs gathered in the Kenyan capital Nairobi at the weekend, Yusuf said that the government only had a presence in the capital Mogadishu and in Baidoa, 'and people are being killed there every day. Islamists have taken over everywhere else'. "His frank admission confirms what is known but seldom publicly acknowledged by those with a stake in Somalia's future, from Ethiopia, whose continued occupation unites the different Islamist groups against a common enemy, to the UN and western countries, which have backed the warlord-heavy government for years. "The latest bout of infighting - Yusuf and his prime minister, Nur Hassan Hussein, have failed to agree a new cabinet despite a deadline from regional leaders - came as Islamist militias made rapid gains towards Mogadishu. Al Shabaab, the most extreme and effective of the Islamist insurgent groups, took control of Elasha, nine miles from the capital, on Saturday. Al Shabaab fighters had already captured the strategic ports towns of Merka and Barawe without firing a shot."
"European Parliament member Cem Ozdemir was elected co-chairman of the German Alliance 90/Greens Party on Saturday. Ozdemir is the first politician of foreign descent to ascend to the leadership of a political party in the history of Germany," Turkey's Hurriyet reported. "The appointment makes Ozdemir a rare politician who has broken the racial barriers within the Green Party and Germany itself. Ozdemir became the first Turkish origin politician to win a seat in parliament and has been a member of the European Parliament for the Green Party since 2004." BBC News said that Mr Ozdemir: "dismissed any comparisons between himself and US President-elect Barack Obama. "Cem Ozdemir, who was elected co-leader of the Green Party at the weekend, told Germany's Bild am Sonntag newspaper such comparisons were 'inappropriate'. " 'It is enough for me to be Ozdemir of the Greens'," he said. Hurriyet added: "Despite the emphasis on his non-German origins, Ozdemir agrees with Obama's commitment to uniting factors in his homeland. 'Obama is as white as he is black. We must leave the immigrant rhetoric behind,' Ozdemir told the Hurriyet Daily News on Friday. 'The influence of ethnic origin will be negated once the minorities' perception of the majority evolves.' The election of Obama as the first black president in US history has raised questions of whether a Turkish descendant could become prime minister in Germany or Austria, both densely populated by Turkish immigrants. "Ozdemir's grand vision in German politics despite his young age, led to calls to attribute such a role to him. But critics argue a comparison between him and Obama would do nothing but harm Ozdemir as a politician. 'That would be a wrong claim,' said Ozan Ceyhun, former member of the European Parliament. 'No figure from a small party like the Greens has the chance to run for chancellor's office.' " | <urn:uuid:ada8d35e-2f34-4dba-af35-877bec20d577> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thenational.ae/news/karzai-peace-initiative-rejected-by-taliban-leader | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969017 | 2,762 | 1.578125 | 2 |
"Forget About It" by Caprice Crane:
Jordan Landau is having a bad life. At twenty-five, she is attractive, smart, funny and talented. But all that doesn’t keep her mother from calling her fat, her boss from stealing her ideas, and her boyfriend from cheating on her. Day in and day out, she sits back and watches as everyone walks all over her. Then one day while riding her bike home from a particularly awful day, Jordan collides with a car door and is knocked clear off her bicycle. Coming to in the hospital, Jordan realizes she has a perfect excuse for a “do-over”; she vows to fake amnesia and reinvent herself. And it works. Finally, Jordan is able to get the credit she deserves at work, and she stands up to her family and her jerk boyfriend. She’s living the life she always dreamed of–until the unthinkable happens. Suddenly Jordan must start over for real, and figure out what really makes her happy–and how to live a truly memorable life. (Summary courtesy of Caprice Crane's website.)
I had seen this book in the store and thought it looked interesting. Then I obtained a copy of it a few weeks later and was hooked from the first page. It was a clever story, funny, full of pop culture references and had a character with whom I was able to relate in some way or another. It got me interested in Caprice Crane and I enjoyed her other books, as well. She has a unique style to her storytelling and I highly recommend checking out all of her books!
More by Caprice Crane: | <urn:uuid:4b70f453-a80f-43b3-a5b7-360fb3fed06d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chicklitcentral.com/2011/05/book-of-day-forget-about-it.html?showComment=1306853459171 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984011 | 337 | 1.5 | 2 |
Read the words below and see if you can guess who wrote them two days after Obama won the election as the nation’s first black president:
“Toast yourselves, Black America. Shout your glee Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to – Do Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine – what little there is left – for the chance to feel good. There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness.”
Click here for the “Name the Author” answer. | <urn:uuid:8e6a94a9-8eeb-4671-a376-6e546163ad4a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bobmccarty.com/2009/12/02/name-the-author-toast-yourselves-black-america/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952204 | 165 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Making Publicly Funded Research Available
SPARC®, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, is an international alliance of academic and research libraries working to promote a more open system of scholarly communnication. Its pragmatic focus is to stimulate the emergence of new scholarly communication models that expand the dissemination of scholarly research and reduce financial pressures on libraries.
The Sheridan Group is working with SPARC to expand the pivotal open access policy in place at the National Institute of Health and ensure all research funded by the federal government is free and accessible to the public. Most people are not aware that publicly funded research is not publicly available, and TSG is working with SPARC to build public awareness and political will for open access policies across government agencies. To accomplish this goal TSG has outlined a comprehensive engagement strategy for SPARC to raise their political profile and hone their message in order to achieve full open access across for the research funded by the federal government.
SPARC recently filed legislation, Fair Access to Science and Technology Research (FASTR), in both the House and Senate for the 113th Congress. This legislation would require publicly funded research be made available to the public within six months of being published in an academic journal. It would also allow for the full reuse of research articles help individuals and businesses to apply ideas generated from this research into their development cycles and speeds the launch of new services and products into the marketplace. | <urn:uuid:09e7ef53-cc59-4d35-8348-8254b272828a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sheridangroupdc.com/index.php/impact/making_publicly_funded_research_available | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951879 | 282 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Superheroes are known for saving lives, helping their community, and being all-around good guys. Superheroes are not known for holding down steady jobs. Mainly, because saving lives, helping their community, and being all-around good guys usually gets in the way of getting into work on time (or at all), helping customers, and making a decent wage. This is problematic because a lot of superheroes have bills to pay.
Additionally, being a good superhero has no bearing on whether they're good at their jobs. Sure, they can stop an alien invasion, but when it comes to the work they're actually paid to do, they seem clueless.
Other superheroes, on the other hand, earn every dollar they make. They truly live up to their title of "superhero" by being able to hold down a steady job, meet deadlines, and still save the world on a regular basis!
Below are five superheroes who are great at their day jobs and five who aren't so hot. Knowledge of some of these first jobs were thought to have been lost to the annals of history, but when you're terrible at a career, people always have a way of finding out.
5) Iron Man
It's pretty much a no-brainer that Tony Stark is good at his job since, as CEO of Stark Resilient, part of his job is being Iron Man. How is that different than other superheroes? Well, similar to Batman, Stark's job as the CEO of Stark Resilient allows him to not only create technologically-advanced equipment for the good of the earth, but it also allows him to continue to modify his suit, which keeps him at the forefront of most of the Marvel superheroes.
Just as important is his ability to keep his father's legacy alive. He might have lost his company to Obadiah Stane, "fired" Iron Man after accidentally killing the second Titanium Man, and battled intense alcoholism, but through it all, he managed to keep most of his business-making faculties. Let's face it; business is in Stark's blood.
One could argue that Peter Parker is actually bad at his job -- according to J. Jonah Jameson's standards, Parker takes subpar pictures -- but he's still employed as photographer for the Daily Bugle. The biggest reason is because he's got one skill that none of the other photographers seem to have; he's able to photograph Spider-Man, and Spider-Man sells papers.
Yes, he always knows where the cameras are because he's taking pictures of himself, but his artistic background gives him the ability to work the camera for the money-making shot. Not only that, but JJJ feels a bit of kinship to Parker. It might be hard to tell, but JJJ thinks of himself as a father figure to Parker, steering him along the correct journalistic path. He also became Peter's relative after his father married Peter's Aunt May, and it would look bad for JJJ to fire his family member.
Bruce Wayne is a funny individual. On one hand, it looks like he's a playboy who screws with his father's money. On the other hand, as owner of Wayne Industries, he's a very good businessman that helped to expand the company his parents built.
Wayne was able to create a host of offshoot developments and companies, including Wayne Technologies, Wayne Healthcare, Wayne Aerospace, Wayne Pharmaceuticals, and even Wayne Foods. All of these offshoots not only help Gotham run as smoothly as it can, but it also provides Bruce tons of alibis, research facilities, weapons and equipment, transportation, and much more. Wayne Industries has also acquired several different companies, including Holt Holdings and Kord Industries, taking the Wayne brand to even higher heights.
While Lucius Fox is the CEO of Wayne Industries, Wayne is the man who kept his parents' company afloat.
2) Professor Xavier
You can probably get the picture by now; "being good at your job" is largely subjective. Sure, Professor Xavier puts the students of Xavier School for Gifted Youngster in harm's way. But, it's not as if he's putting all
of his students in danger -- just the ones who become a part of the X-Men. He has also personally trained his X-Men, ensuring that they are able to defend themselves skillfully and efficiently, so, in a way, he is thinking about their safety.
Despite what you might think of Professor X as the leader of the X-Men, Professor X is caring, compassionate, and sympathetic to the needs of his students as the head of the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters. He's also a stalwart champion of his students' rights in society. His riches also allow him to continually revamp his school to better his students' training. If you needed to go somewhere to learn about your special gifts, it would benefit you to try to attend the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters. Just look at your alternative -- joining Magento's brotherhood offers nothing except hardship and marginalization.
It's great to get a competent lawyer, but it's better to get one that can kick the defendant's butt.
As a current member of the Superhuman Law division of the law firm of Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg & Holliway, Jennifer Walters is one of the best criminal defense lawyers out there. Not only is her physical appearance intimidating despite her confident personality, she's successfully handled cases no ordinary lawyer could handle. Some of past clients include Dr. Michael Morbius, Speedball, Danger Man, Spider-Man, Hercules and more. She's also lent her legal talents to Heroes for Hire and the Magistrati. Not only that, but Walters has also been a champion for civil rights, the rights of the mentally ill, and the implementation of ethics in the courtroom.
5) Dr. Manhattan
A general flaw of scientist comic book characters is that they go too far with their experiments and end up ruining themselves. However, Jon Osterman can't even say that he ruined his life while trying to do something for the betterment of man! He has his forgetfulness to blame for being a terrible astrophysicist.
Osterman is bad at his job simply because he was stupid enough not to realize that the intrinsic field experiment test chamber he's had to have worked on for months
had a safety feature on it and couldn't be left unattended. He should have known that he needed to have someone standing at that doggone door or it might lock! If he was that absent-minded on that day, how much more absent-minded and clumsy was he on a regular day?! His lack of foresight should have been an even bigger career liability than it seems to have been.
Sure, he turned into what could be considered a "superhero," but even that is a tragedy because he's not just a super-powered human--he's now an immortal god filled with nuclear power who is being used by the U.S. government as a weapon! He can see into the future and the past at the same time, and he has no emotions about any of it! But even with his emotionless void of personality, he seems a little depressed. It's your own damn fault, Dr. Manhattan.
The writer of this article is a journalist. As such, the writer has a searing hatred for how Clark Kent slums his way through his job as a reporter for the Daily Planet.
Yes, he's Superman, but he's also got a Metropolis lifestyle to pay for. Being a journalist takes up many hours of your day, especially if you're working on an article that takes months of research and interviewing. You can't get anything done on a day-to-day basis if you're constantly flitting off to fight crime. With so many absences, he should be put on probation.
To give credit where it's due, it is clever of Kent to write for the news section of the Daily Planet in order to learn about the city's criminals, but he could very well buy and listen to the police scanner at home instead of being so suspicious at work. How he's getting paid for so little work is astounding.
3) Mr. Incredible
When The Incredibles
' Bob Parr quit his life as a superhero, he began a new life -- of life insurance. Being a claims adjuster might not have been the greatest career choice for someone so concered with the public welfare, since he spent most of his work time giving people the money they needed instead of minimizing it to save his company money. You can argue that Bob's anti-bottom line-agenda made him a good claims adjuster or a bad one, but you can't argue that when Bob threw his boss through several walls after his boss tried to stop him from stopping a mugging, he instantly ended his career. How many people are going to hire someone who hospitalized their last supervisor? Besides a supervillain?
2) Bonnie King/Miss Arrowette
It would seem that Bonnie King's career as a superheroine wasn't as illustrious as others of her ilk. After becoming inspired by the Green Arrow and Speedy's tales of adventure, she decides to apply her Olympic-level archery skills to a life of heroism. Instead of being a welcomed member of Green Arrow's team, however, she's a huge thorn in his side. Not only that, but she is extremely clumsy.
Let's not even get into the fact that she used weapons that would make most feminists angry; hair pin arrows, hair tint arrows, needle and thread arrows, mascara arrows--the list goes on and on.
It's bad enough that she was bad at being a superheroine, but she was also bad at her day job as a secretary! This is probably because she spent so much time trying to be a superheroine. King eventually retired and later forced her daughter to become the second Arrowette, a move that almost always works out for everybody.
1) Wonder Woman
People seem to forget that Wonder Woman a.k.a. Diana Prince had a job outside of being a superheroine and the Princess of the Amazons. She also secretly served the U.S. Army as a nurse and later as a secretary. Her guise as a nurse is probably more akin to Superman's guise as a reporter, however, that's where the similarities stop.
First, she used her job to get close to the man of her dreams, Maj. Steve Trevor (during the time she was created, it was thought that the only thing women cared about was getting married). Secondly, while it's debatable as to how much experience she had with nursing (Amazonian nursing has
to be different than American nursing), it is sorely apparent she has no experience being a secretary, another job she takes simply to be close to Trevor. For example, Trevor's secretary can't help but notice that Diana doesn't use any of the specified shorthand most trained secretaries use. It's a relief to women comic book readers that she was later fleshed out beyond all of this man-chasing.
More links from around the web! | <urn:uuid:de460c80-f652-42ae-a8be-c9ff9791153c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.toplessrobot.com/2012/07/5_superheroes_who_are_great_at_their_day_jobs_and.php?utm_source=scribol.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=scribol.com | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986458 | 2,301 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Originally Posted by PeterE
I think a NPT and a biotope category would be great.
Its too easy to 'cheat' on an NPT. You can plug in some CO2 and Ferts and get your plants to explode without anyone knowing. You could have ADA or branded aquatic soil and noone knows what's under there...... In a column ferted tank, you could replant any plant you dont like how it grew out... remove the bottom (ugly looking) stems and just replant the beautiful growing tips. You can't do much of this in a true NPT without getting soil and algae all over.
Besides, NPT is not an Aquascape technique/category. Its more of a keeping method. And although it is far more challenging to make an NPT look good (no CO2, very difficult to uproot, replant, re-arrange, harder to manage sunlight etc); I believe with great planning and understanding, a good aquascaper can still make a stunning NPT that competes fair and square with other tanks.
Its harder to plan and takes more patience... but easier to keep long term (and cheaper!). I dont think this can be 'graded' in an aquascape contest based on a couple of pictures.
Just my humble opinion...... | <urn:uuid:f458b10e-ecfc-4305-a65f-c607846e575f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/forumapc/aquascaping/68898-aquascaping-contest-members-choice-2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939655 | 270 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Every now and then I notice some very bright "stars" in the sky. They tend to be very few (one or two, usually), and are quite much brighter than any other star out there. Often they're perfectly visible and bright even in dusk, when no other star is visible yet or will be for some time to come.
Now, I'm writing the word "star" in quotes because I really don't think that they're stars. But what are they? Planets? Satellites? Latest Chuck Norris encounters leaving the atmosphere?
My best guess would be that they are satellites, because planets should be about the same brightness as stars, but that sounds pretty implausible as well... And yes, I'm very certain that they are NOT airplanes. | <urn:uuid:5cce09eb-55d0-41d6-af42-d7768edd79e5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/26317/is-it-possible-to-see-satellites-with-the-naked-eye | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977787 | 156 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Yesterday, Scott McClellan was asked when senior administration officials became aware of a Pentagon report which found that trailers in Iraq “had nothing to do with biological weapons.” McClellan said he was “looking into it.”
He was asked again today — and still didn’t have an answer. To dodge the question, McClellan changed the subject. He talked about how the Defense Department processes information. But that is not the issue. The issue is when top administration officials became aware of the Pentagon field report. Today’s transcript:
QUESTION: When did the administration become aware of the Pentagon report that talks about mobile trailers?
MCCLELLAN: The only update I have on that matter is what the Pentagon said yesterday.
The Pentagon put out a statement and talked about how that was a preliminary report from a DIA — would mean Defense Intelligence Agency — sponsored technical exploitation team. And that information was sent to the DIA. And then they said that the CIA-DIA joint white paper that was released publicly on May 28th reflected the position of the intelligence community at the time, and that the findings that you’re bringing up were vetted with other intelligence analysts during the summer of 2003.
So that’s a statement from the Pentagon, and that’s the only update I have at this point.
If in the summer and fall of 2003, Cheney and others had simply said that the purpose of labs was still being determined, there would be no problem. The problem is that they made unequivocal statements that the trailers were equipped to produce biological weapons when, in all likelihood, they knew experts had serious doubts. | <urn:uuid:4eec687f-24c5-49e7-974a-119ac099595b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2006/04/13/4830/mcclellan-still-wont-say-when-white-house-learned-of-report-debunking-bio-lab-claims/?mobile=nc | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983951 | 345 | 1.640625 | 2 |
For some time the Treasury has been looking at sub-national economic development to see how it can be improved. A full report has yet to be published but did the 2007 Budget show the likely “direction of travel”?
The Budget revealed that the review is focussing on several areas for potential reform including strengthening and incentivising the ability of local authorities to take economic development decisions at a local level.
The review of sub-national economic development is also likely to demand collaboration across local authority boundaries where a larger, functional economic area can be identified – multi area agreements.
There may also be a move to make Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) more accountable and better connected to sub-regional partnerships possibly with clear contracts for delivery of certain outcomes within a given timeframe.
It would appears likely that there would also be a strong demand for better coordination of various regional strategies possibly with an enhanced role for RDAs. Some observers have suggested that the Treasury may be inclined to merge RDAs and regional government offices and while there has been no official endorsement of such a strategy Treasury Minister Ed Balls wrote the foreward for the original New Local Government Network paper proposing the idea.
Read related items on:
Multi Area Agreement
Regional Economic Strategy | <urn:uuid:81437197-3243-41ad-b6ac-632d415f4d7c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.brightonbusiness.co.uk/htm/ni20070415.128821.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94816 | 253 | 1.703125 | 2 |
From John Main OSB, “The Christian Crisis,” THE PRESENT CHRIST (New York: Crossroad, 1991), pp. 74-76.
. . . .[T]o become spiritual we have to learn to leave behind our official religious selves—that is, to leave behind the Pharisee that lurks inside all of us—because, as Jesus has told us, we have to leave behind our whole self.
All images of ourselves coming as they do out of the fevered brain of the ego, have to be renounced and transcended if we are to become one with ourselves, with God, with our brethren—that is, to become truly human, truly real, truly humble.
Our images of God must similarly fall away. We must not be idol-worshippers. Curiously, what we find is that they fall away as our images of self fall away, which suggests what. . .we always guessed anyway, that our images of God were really images of ourselves. In this wonderful process of coming into the full light of Reality, of falling away from illusion, a great silence emerges from the centre. We feel ourselves engulfed in the eternal silence of God. We are no longer talking to God or worse, talking to ourselves. We are learning to be –to be with God, to be in God. [. . . .]
On the spiritual journey it takes more energy to be still than to run. [M]ost people spend so much of their waking hours rushing from one thing to another that they are afraid of stillness and of silence. A certain existential panic can overtake us when we first face the stillness. . . .But if we can find the courage to face this silence, we enter into the peace that is beyond all understanding.
No doubt it is easier to learn this in a balanced and stable society. In a turbulent and confused world there are so many more deceptive voices, so many calls for our attention. But the Christian vision is uncompromising in its sanity, its rejection of extremism, in its invitation to each of us to have the courage to become ourselves and not merely to respond to some image of ourselves that is imposed upon us from outside. [. . . .]
What each of us must learn in the experience of meditation is that the power for the pilgrimage is in fact inexhaustibly present. It takes only one step of faith for us to know that from our own experience. [And] the important thing to remember is that one faltering but actual step is more valuable than any number of journeys performed in the imagination.
After meditation: Charles Bukowski, "about competition," Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), p. 75.
the higher you climb
the greater the pressure.
those who manage to
that the distance
top and the
and those who
Carla Cooper - firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:998b5bde-2936-4f34-9c0e-e65aacf064bc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wccm.org/print/content/readings-2942012?page=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951757 | 615 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Using special post-mortem techniques, Boston University scientists have determined that former Tampa Bay Buccaneer player Tom McHale had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, an exceptionally rare progressive condition caused by repetitive concussive and sub-concussive head trauma.
Rare except in former NFL players, that is.
Stunningly, physicians have now identified CTE in every NFL veteran that died between the ages of 36 and 50 and who was tested for the condition, which normally precipitates full-blown dementia before age 50.
McHale was 45 when he died.
In fact the only NFL player who was found to be free of the condition at the time of death was running back Damien Nash, who died suddenly in 2007 at 24. Then again, the progressive condition is simply not seen in someone that young.
“It’s scary — it’s horribly frightening,” Randy Grimes told the New York Times. For years, Grimes played alongside McHale on the Bucs’ offensive line.
“I’ve had my share of concussions, too. More than my share. My wife says I have short-term memory loss. It’s really scary to think of what might be going on up there.”
“This is a medically significant finding,” Daniel Perl, Mount Sinai’s director of neuropathology told the Times.
“I think with a sixth case identified, out of six, for a condition that is incredibly rare in the general population, there is more than enough evidence that football is clearly strongly related to the presence of this pathology.”
Ira Casson, co-chairman of an NFL concussion study group, didn’t see it that way. “I think there are many questions still out there as to whether there is a kind of traumatic encephalopathy associated with football. I think we don’t know. I think there is not enough evidence to say there is.”
Say what? Meanwhile, an NFL player brochure emphasizes that concussions are serious while adding that “current research with professional athletes” does not prove that multiple concussions have negative consequences so long as “each injury is managed properly.”
The brochure does not mention CTE. (more…) | <urn:uuid:deaf6df7-4dc0-40d9-95f1-d23650fdf74f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pizaazz.com/2009/02/13/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975527 | 477 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Over the last couple of weeks we’ve been talking about how omega 3 supplements can help in the treatment of depression. Recent preliminary research shows that these supplements are as good as antidepressant medications and can work in as little as 2 weeks. They can be taken alongside antidepressant medications and there are no adverse side effects.
So let’s get to the chase.
You’re wanting to know what doses to take aren’t you? Well here it is. I’ve based these recommendations on the latest research.
Adult Omega 3 Dosage Recommendations for depression:
- 1000-2000mg EPA daily AND
- 500-1500mg DHA daily
Don’t do it wrong!
There’s some things that you should note about taking omega 3 for depression.
1) The fish oil needs to be high quality. Don’t just find one in the bargain bin; you’ll want to check that they have been tested for heavy metals & pesticides (and that they don’t have any in them!)
2) You’ll want to buy concentrated fish oil. Most standard fish oil capsules have about 100-200 mg of EPA in them. This means that you’ll have to take 10 capsules PER DAY to get the right dose. You may want to consider getting high quality, highly concentrated liquid fish oil. It means you’ll only have to take 1 teaspoon per day. Now that’s much easier than taking 10 capsules!
3) Some people think that the DHA component of fish oil (It’s a specific form of omega 3) would be most helpful for depression. DHA is found in higher concentrations in the brain in comparison to EPA. But the research says at the moment that it is the EPA form of omega 3 that is most useful for depression. DHA on its own doesn’t help. So when you do buy and take your fish oil omega 3, make sure it has MORE EPA in it than DHA (in a similar ratio to my dosage suggestions above).
Many people ask me what’s a good brand of fish oil? What can we trust?
To make it easy for you today, I’ve provided a link to a product that I like below.
Talk to you again soon.
All the best
Dr Janelle Sinclair | <urn:uuid:6fcf6942-37db-4454-8122-f3d9482f2105> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.breakingfreefromdepression.com/omega-3-doses-for-depression/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93587 | 489 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Reflecting on Bishop Gene Robinson’s Legacy
November 14, 2012 by Sharon Groves, Director, Religion and Faith Program
On the eve of Bishop Gene Robinson's retirement as the Bishop of New Hampshire, we at HRC want to personally thank him for his ministry to the LGBT community and the Episcopal Church. There wouldn't be a Religion & Faith Program at HRC if it weren't for Gene, who was a consultant and founding member when the program began over seven years ago. I also believe we wouldn't have seen such a historic victory for the LGBT community this election season if Gene hadn't opened the door to a new conversation about faith, belief, and the sacred worth of all our lives.
Thank you Gene for making the world better for LGBT Americans.
The Rev. Susan Russell, a founding member of HRC’s Religion Council, wrote about Gene’s legacy over on the Huffington Post:
The legacy that Bishop Robinson leaves as he concludes his ministry as Bishop of New Hampshire is so much greater than just being the first openly gay bishop in the history of Christendom. It is a legacy of using the platform of privilege he has been given to continue to make a difference -- to continue to get the light through the cracks -- for absolutely anyone who has been told that they are outside the light of God's love.
I encourage you to read her full piece.
Issues: Religion & Faith
June 13, 2013 | <urn:uuid:79b0ddee-3ac2-4cdd-b81c-fd5a8c5c3822> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hrc.org/blog/entry/reflecting-on-bishop-gene-robinsons-legacy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977522 | 294 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Obama Talked About Class War -- Now He’s Got One
Anyone who listened carefully to President Barack Obama over the last two years could not avoid hearing the rhetoric of a Marxist class warrior bent on dividing Americans by their perceived economic status.
Our president—who ought to be a leader and inspiration for all Americans—sought to motivate his supporters with alleged class-based grievances. He talked up class struggle and now has one—if not exactly the one he envisioned.
There are only two sides in the domestic political conflict Obama has sparked—and they are not the relatively rich and the relatively less rich in this still-remarkably affluent nation. They are not defined by their material possessions but by their attitude toward freedom.
On one side are those who believe they are morally and materially responsible for their own destiny—and are glad to be so. On the other side are those who believe the rest of us owe them something and that government should take it from us and give to them. This side is surrendering its freedom to government dependency.
In the future, America must follow either Obama’s Marxist vision or return to the vision of ordered liberty embedded by our Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Tuesday’s election was only the first battle in what will surely be the defining political struggle for Americans now alive.
“Look, the bottom line is this: These guys, they just don’t want to give up on that economic philosophy that they have been peddling for most of the last decade,” Obama said at a Labor Day campaign rally in Milwaukee.
“You know that philosophy: You cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires. You cut all the rules and regulations for special interests. And then you just cut working folks loose—you cut them loose to fend for themselves,” Obama said.
“You remember they called it the ownership society, but what it really boiled down to was, if you couldn’t find a job, you couldn’t afford college, you were born poor, your insurance company dropped you even though your kid was sick, that you were on your own,” said Obama.
“Well, you know what, that philosophy didn’t work out so well for middle-class families all across America. It didn’t work out so well for our country,” Obama said.
Obama repeated this essential point ad nauseam in the 2010 campaign season. His message in one sentence: The philosophy that Americans should “fend for themselves” did not “work out so well for our country.”
To spread his gospel of government dependency, Obama preaches gloom and despair: Freedom and self-reliance does not work, he is forever arguing. Give it up.
In return, he offers his would-be acolytes a free lunch: Government will pay for your college education. Government will pay for your health care.
In reality, in the redistributionist America that Obama would build, it would not be government that paid for anybody’s college education or health care, it would be the other class of Americans—those who believe in freedom and self-reliance, who take care of themselves and their own, who lead industrious and productive lives, and who value freedom over security.
In Obama’s America, members of the self-reliant class would have ever greater portions of their hard-earned income and savings taxed away so redistributionist politicians could give more to the dependent class, which they would continue to nurture and build until there was no one left but the politicians and government dependents—in a bankrupt country.
The lesson of the 2010 campaign is that most Americans do not want more government in their lives, they want less. They do not want handouts from President Obama. They want him and other politicians like him off their backs and out of their wallets. | <urn:uuid:1516f631-a909-444c-bcd5-0c5dc3cce090> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cnsnews.com/blog/terence-p-jeffrey/obama-talked-about-class-war-now-he-s-got-one | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972574 | 806 | 1.53125 | 2 |
By Eugene Robinson
It’s sobering that three-fourths of Americans, according to a new Washington Post poll, have little or no confidence in our elected leaders to solve the nation’s economic problems. At this point, though, it’s hardly surprising.
If anything, we should be shocked and alarmed that 26 percent of our fellow citizens apparently believe the president and Congress are going to make it all better. Are they not paying attention? Or are they delusional?
The manic-depressive swings we’ve seen in the stock market all week just serve to heighten the general anxiety, like the soundtrack of a horror film. Seesaw gains or losses of hundreds of points on the Dow tend to mask the overall trend, which is downward—and also distract attention from the fact that markets in Europe and Asia are heading in the same direction. The world is trillions of dollars poorer than it was just a couple of weeks ago.
Trillions, by the way, are the new billions.
The survey by the Post shows that while officials in Washington may be clueless in the face of economic turmoil, most of their constituents see things quite clearly. Seven out of 10 respondents said the federal government is “mostly focused on the wrong things”—and blamed Democrats and Republicans for this misdirected focus in precisely equal measure.
How many times does this message have to be delivered? In poll after poll, Americans have said their top concern is the jobs crisis. Unemployment is at 9.1 percent. The worst economic slowdown since the Great Depression robbed the nation of 9 million jobs and only a fraction have been replaced. The economy is adding jobs at a snail’s pace that doesn’t even keep up with growth of the potential work force.
Jobs. The issue is jobs.
Yet the president and Congress have spent months focused on the national debt—a problem that needs to be addressed, to be sure, but not when unemployment is at staggering levels and the “recovery” is beginning to look like a mirage. Recent data suggest the economy is in danger of sinking back into recession; even if it doesn’t, the current rate of growth is too anemic to have much impact on the jobs front.
Oh, and what drama will absorb Washington for the next several months? The deliberations of the congressional “super committee,” a 12-member panel that is supposed to chart a way forward on ... debt. Have I mentioned that the most urgent crisis facing the nation right now is jobs?
Only one-third of those polled said they have confidence in President Obama to make “the right decisions about the country’s economic future,” the Post found. That may sound discouraging, but only 18 percent of respondents said they have confidence in congressional Republicans to make the right decisions.
For good reason, in my view: The Republican solution has been to eliminate jobs rather than create them. Last month, the economy added 117,000 jobs—a performance so weak that unemployment changed little. The private sector actually added 154,000 jobs, but the public sector lost 37,000 jobs as Republicans continue to impose an austerity program at an inopportune moment.
The GOP seems to believe that a federal, state or local job somehow isn’t a “real” job. I’ll bet most Americans know otherwise.
Here we are, with interest rates at or near historical lows. The federal government, despite suffering a credit downgrade to AA-plus from Standard & Poor’s, is able to borrow as much money as it wants at an absurdly low cost. Meanwhile, we have a large and growing backlog of infrastructure needs. Roads, bridges and dams need to be repaired; new airports need to be built and old ones refurbished; we need to upgrade the electrical grid to take advantage of new energy sources that do not depend on fossil fuels.
Putting two and two together, you might expect the president and Congress to design and implement a nationwide project of infrastructure renewal that would put Americans back to work, spark a burst of growth and leave us with tangible assets that would increase our competitiveness in the global economy.
But you’d be disappointed. And you’d lose faith in the ability of officials to respond to a crisis they don’t even seem to notice.
The disconnect between what the nation cares about and what its leaders care about seems to widen day by day. Hello? Is anybody in Washington listening? Does anybody even care?
Eugene Robinson’s e-mail address is eugenerobinson(at)washpost.com.
© 2011, Washington Post Writers Group | <urn:uuid:7504fd17-06ea-447a-b56d-2347a9b850f6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/washington_deserves_americas_disapproval_20110812/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957667 | 967 | 1.796875 | 2 |
A continental divide separated stock investors in Europe and the U.S. on Tuesday.
Across the Atlantic, stock markets tumbled as elections in Italy threatened to spark new political turmoil in the region.
In the U.S., the Dow Jones Industrial Average had one of its best days this year. Having staged a selloff on Monday in response to Europe's troubles, investors were more focused on prospects for continued stimulus by the Federal Reserve on Tuesday.
"Europe simply couldn't muster any strength because of their political issues," said Bruce McCain, chief investment strategist at Key Private Bank.
Much of the reason for the diverging fortunes was timing. Italy's election results on Monday appeared to be coming in as planned, and investors had anticipated the victory of parties that would continue with austerity measures designed to help Italy cut its debt load. But as European markets were closing Monday, the polls turned, and by Tuesday morning the result was inconclusive, raising the prospect of a second vote in coming weeks and more turmoil for financial markets.
Italy's FTSE MIB index slumped 4.9% and the Stoxx Europe 600 fell 1.3%. The selloff extended to bond markets, where investors dumped Italian and Spanish government bonds, sending yields higher, and fled to the relative safety of German and French government debt.
In the U.S., the Dow had time Monday to react to the election news and lost 216 points. By Tuesday, investors were focused on remarks from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, who strove in testimony before Congress to assure that the central bank's monetary-easing measures would continue.
The Dow gained 115.96 points, or 0.8%, to 13900.13, while the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index rose 9.09 points, or 0.6%, to 1496.94.
"The reassurance that the Fed chairman tried to offer gave investors a pretext for kind of ignoring what's going on in Europe, but we'll see in the days ahead whether U.S. stocks will be able to steer an independent course," Mr. McCain said.
Treasury prices also rallied in response to Mr. Bernanke's comments. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 1.877%, from 1.895% on Monday, as bond yields move inversely to prices. Gold jumped $29, or 1.8%, to $1,615.20 a troy ounce, its largest one-day percentage gain since November. Gold tends to benefit from easy-monetary policies, as investors seek the metal as a hedge against the inflation that may follow the increased liquidity in the financial system.
Oil prices dropped 0.5% to settle at $92.63 a barrel. The dollar rose against the euro and yen.
Among the biggest stock market movers, Home Depot jumped $3.64, or 5.7%, to $67.56, to lead the Dow. Shares rose after the home-improvement retailer reported better-than-expected quarterly results, announced a stock-buyback program and raised its quarterly dividend.
"Quarterly earnings reports have been good enough, including Home Depot, to bring buyers into the market," said Alan Lancz, president of Alan B. Lancz & Associates, a money manager based in Toledo, Ohio.
Home-builder stocks were among the biggest beneficiaries of a slightly larger-than-expected rise in the S&P Case-Shiller 20-city home-prices index for December. PulteGroup rose 1.03, or 5.7%, to 19.05, while D.R. Horton climbed 88 cents, or 4.1%, to 22.25.
Elsewhere on the economic front, new-home sales posted the biggest jump in nearly two decades last month, reaching the highest level since mid-2008, according to the Commerce Department.
In other corporate news, senior-home operator Assisted Living Concepts surged 2.21, or 23%, to 11.91, after agreeing to be acquired by private-equity firm TPG for roughly $277 million, following a strategic review of options.
Macy's climbed 1.07, or 2.8%, to 39.59, after posting quarterly earnings and issuing a profit forecast that topped analysts' expectations.
Cracker Barrel Old Country Store climbed 5.80, or 8.7%, to 72.75, after the restaurant chain's quarterly income jumped to easily top expectations on strong same-store-sales growth.
Tyson Foods slipped 86 cents, or 3.7%, to 22.40, after the meat processor warned that the current quarter has seen profit-margin pressure in its beef and pork segments.—Charles Forelle contributed to this article.
Write to Chris Dieterich at email@example.com
A version of this article appeared February 27, 2013, on page C1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Day of Divergence For U.S., Europe. | <urn:uuid:03e991d0-513c-4549-ae76-7dfb28144877> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323384604578327713976948082.html?mod=WSJ_article_ManagementHeadlines | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95943 | 1,042 | 1.601563 | 2 |
In a huge win for the cable industry, the Pole Attachments Act does cover attachments that provide high-speed Internet access at the same time as cable TV, the U.S. Supreme Court decided today.
The decision on National Cable & Telecommunications Association Inc. v. Gulf Power Co. et al reverses one from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which had held that commingled services of high-speed Internet and traditional cable TV services were not covered by the Act's two rate formulas.
The appeals court had reversed a U.S. Federal Communications Commission decision that the Act did cover pole attachment for the two services, as well as those by wireless telecom providers.
"On (Gulf et al's) view, if a cable company attempts to innovate at all and provide anything other than pure television, it loses the protection of the Pole Attachments Act and subjects itself to monopoly pricing," says Justice Anthony Kennedy, in the decision. "The resulting contradiction of longstanding interpretation - on which cable companies have relied since before the 1996 amendments to the Act - would defeat Congress' general instruction to the FCC to 'encourage the deployment' of broadband Internet capability and, if necessary, 'to accelerate deployment of such capability by removing barriers to infrastructure investment.' This congressional policy underscores the reasonableness of the FCC's interpretation: Cable attachments providing commingled services come within the ambit of the Act."
"Today's decision is very good news for consumers," says Dan Brenner, National Cable & Telecommunications Association's senior VP of Law and Regulatory Policy. "It means that utility companies cannot charge arbitrarily higher prices for cable attachments to utility poles simply because cable operators provide their customers with high-speed Internet, as well as video services."
Brenner says the decision "overcomes a potential impediment to broadband deployment, especially in rural areas." | <urn:uuid:f6dfe78a-d198-4233-b6f6-149c3d7d6905> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cedmagazine.com/news/2002/01/supreme-court-rules-on-pole-attachments?qt-recent_blogs=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962215 | 377 | 1.53125 | 2 |
I was given a paperback copy of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas some years ago. My friend informed me that this particular, beaten-up edition had passed through many hands, and I was given clear instructions as to how to proceed - read it, presumably be floored by it, and then spread the word, as it were, by giving it to another unfortunate soul as yet unacquainted with the works of Thompson and his peculiar brand of "Gonzo" journalism. Alternately befuddled and intrigued by this seemingly cryptic initiation rite, I read the book in a single sitting and immediately became an ardent admirer of the man and his method. More on that particular book later.*
Thompson first burst onto the literary scene with the publication of Hell's Angels in 1966, which offered an unblinking, witty, and analytical first person account of life with the outlaw biker gang. While not exactly an apologia, the work was remarkable in that Thompson demonstrated enormous understanding of (if not downright empathy for) the group - its culture, its mores, and its conscious disenfranchisement from greater society. He was also unafraid to actively participate in many of the group's more derided activities and to exert influence by participating in events as they were unfolding (including, quite horrifically toward the end of the tale, being pummeled by the very men he was writing about). By eschewing any pretense of "objectivity" in his reporting - and by enthusiastically detailing his own debauched behavior in the process - Thompson liberated his particular brand of "journalism" from the staid confines of the mainstream and rapidly became something of a cultural icon and hero to the counterculture. The advent of "Gonzo" journalism was apparent, and Thompson was dragging it to the cultural fore, kicking and screaming.Subtitled "A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream," Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was, at first glance, another matter altogether. Begun as a 250-word assignment to cover a desert race involving motorcycles and dune buggies called the Mint 400, it quickly turned into a novel-length piece of "reporting" unsuitable for use by the well known American sports magazine that commissioned it. (The novel was ultimately printed in part by Rolling Stone Magazine, where Thompson found a home and friend in publisher Jann Wenner for years to come.) Fear and Loathing unsparingly details the exploits of Thompson's alter ego Raoul Duke and his "Samoan" attorney Dr. Gonzo (based on activist attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta) while on an aggressive bender fueled by copious amounts of drugs and alcohol in a surreal and soulless Las Vegas. The novel was an instant success, cementing Thompson's burgeoning reputation as both an important cultural commentator and as a clown prince of sorts to the "drug" culture of the day. The more shrewd observers, however, noted the discipline in Thompson's writing and surmised what the work truly was: a fevered, angry, and rueful tome bemoaning the death of an epoch, an ideal, and a movement. The "Sixties" were officially over, and the zeitgeist was rapidly changing - the cynical, self-interested Seventies had now begun with a vengeance. In his supposed inebriation, it was readily apparent that Thompson was entirely sober in his judgment.
So how to transpose this gargantuan ode to excess and hallucinatory endeavor to the medium of film? Hollywood tried once before (sort of) with Art Linson's Where the Buffalo Roam (1980) - unsuccessful in my estimation, although that film certainly has its vocal supporters - starring Bill Murray as Duke/Thompson and Peter Boyle as Gonzo. While Murray certainly had elements of Thompson down, his performance (and the overall tone of the picture) was based more on buffoonery and caricature than true passion and social commentary. Seemingly in constant development throughout the eighties and into the nineties, a new production of Fear and Loathing proper was officially begun in the mid-nineties with Terry Gilliam at the helm (after British director Alex Cox could not hash out "artistic" and "creative" differences with producer Laila Nabulsi). This choice was met with decidedly mixed impressions. Gilliam, as evidenced by earlier works from Monty Python to Brazil to the Fisher King, certainly had an eye for the absurd, but his none-too-subtle grasp on satire (and admitted lack of experience with drugs, including hallucinogens) left many Thompson fans, myself included, wondering if he could pull it off.
Moreover, the casting of Johnny Depp as Thompson and Del Toro as his Samoan sidekick caused only further speculation to the now somewhat "mainstream" endeavor as a whole. Undaunted, Gilliam, et al., produced a film incredibly faithful to Thompson's prose while remaining true to Gilliam's own incredibly imaginative cinematic grammar. I suspect Gilliam realized that the "American Dream" was indeed the figurative grail that Thompson was seeking - and Gilliam himself certainly knows something about the elusive nature of "grails" and the obsessive nature required for such a chase.
By turns absurd, violently witty, deeply twisted and somewhat menacing, I can think of no film that quite captures the "Gonzo" spirit so vibrant in Thompson's writings as well as the extreme paranoia inherent in unbridled drug and alcohol usage. The film's plot - such as it is - is primarily concerned with Duke and Gonzo attempting to navigate their alcohol and drug-fueled way through an already surreal landscape, and then escaping it unscathed (and un-incarcerated) after wreaking havoc upon hotel rooms, casino floors, and a handful of people during a few strange days. Although freewheeling and lighthearted for the first half or so, the film adopts an altogether darker and disconcerting tone in the second, which is dictated by the novel and appropriate thematically. In many ways, Thompson's seminal work is both a rowdy celebration and a dirge, and he certainly is not going quietly into that good night. All parties involved (particularly Depp and Del Toro, both excellent) seem cognizant of this, and the filmed realization bears it out wonderfully. Even the essentially cameo appearances by such familiar faces as Cameron Diaz, Christina Ricci, Tobey Maguire, Harry Dean Stanton, Mark Harmon, Chris Meloni, Gary Busey, and Ellen Barkin especially in a pivotal scene towards then end of the film, are used to great effect and add to the general tone of disorientation. The overall result, almost universally panned by critics upon its release, is one of those films that practically screams for reevaluation.
Enter the Criterion Collection.
Gilliam has long had the support and admiration of Criterion. On DVD, they have put together one of the most impressive packages ever assembled in Brazil, and also featured the Fisher King, the Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Brazil, and Time Bandits (also available on DVD by Criterion) in their laserdisc collection. Their release of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is, quite simply, a cause for celebration for fans of Gilliam, Thompson, and the DVD format as a whole.
Video: Shot in loving, expansive, and evocative 2.35:1 scope, and presumably in excellent shape since it was a recent major studio production, Criterion's anamorphic digital transfer - approved and supervised by Gilliam - is nothing short of spectacular. Color saturation is spot on, blacks are rich and deep, and the source print shows a few pieces of slight damage that I recall. As staged by Gilliam, cinematographer Nicola Pecorini, and production designer Alex McDowell, Thompson's hallucinatory tone is brought to garish, neon-lit life. The extreme decadence attendant to Las Vegas practically oozes from the screen and the sheer outrageousness of the characters and their skewed worldview is almost perfectly rendered.
Audio: Criterion presents Fear and Loathing in both Dolby 2.0. , Dolby 5.1, and DTS 5.1 mixes, remastered at 24-bit from the original magnetic 6-track masters. I decided to partake in the DTS mix, and it's a doozy. I noticed excellent utilization of all speakers, and the audio accompaniment to the swirling and off-kilter camera work (not to mention the bats) renders the protagonists' subjective perception of noise phenomenal. Some have complained of difficulty in hearing the dialogue in the more extreme sequences, but in my experience that was more the result of the filmmaker's mixing than problems with the track – however, I willingly admit that I may be mistaken. Bass tones are deep and loud, although not bombastic, and the musical soundtrack (utilizing some great sixties standards) is overall extremely impressive.
** NOTE: It should be noted, however, that flaws in both the DTS and DD 5.1 tracks have been discovered, as brief audio dropout (certainly not intended) of certain elements is apparent – however, the DD 2.0 track (the original track) does not have these problems. Criterion is aware of this, and has responded to the criticism by stating that the DD 5.1 and DTS tracks were provided by Universal and that the changes apparent in the tracks could not be reversed. Although noticeable (and regrettable) in a few instances, the aforementioned tracks are otherwise impressive. Purists may want to stick with the DD 2.0 track if this of major concern.
Extras: As is the case with many Criterion Collection "Special Editions" of true merit (and there are many), this two-disc set is replete with valuable extras that any Thompson aficionado will gleefully embrace. Beginning with an excellent essay by Jim Hoberman of the Village Voice and an excerpt from Thompson's collection The Great Shark Hunt, the dense, informative booklet works well as both a primer for Thompson to the uninitiated and just plain catnip for fans. It is also liberally sprinkled with arresting, surreal artwork by frequent Thompson collaborator and partner-in-crime Ralph Steadman (Steadman's artwork also graces the cover, as was the case with Criterion's release of Withnail and I.)
On hand are also three commentary tracks: one featuring Gilliam, one with stars Depp and Del Toro, and - lo and behold - one featuring Thompson himself. Gilliam strikes me as an amiable, wry sort of fellow, and his commentary is both chatty and enthusiastic. Depp and Del Toro also seem at ease, and their conversational tone takes a few amusing turns (such as when Tobey Maguire enters the film as an unsuspecting hitchhiker). The Thompson track, however, is the one that I was most concerned with (and looking forward to), as he is given to almost incoherent mumbling at times and obtuse verbal declarations. I was not disappointed. With the prodding of producer Nabulsi, Thompson freely whoops, hollers, slings mud, reflects, and generally proves a raucous, entertaining host - everything that I expected and hoped for.
Also found is Hunter Goes to Hollywood, a short documentary concerning Thompson's trips to the sets and involvement with the picture by Wayne Ewing, who is currently working on a larger documentary piece on Thompson. The substantially longer (50 minutes) Fear and Loathing on the Road to Hollywood, a 1978 documentary by the BBC, features Thompson and Steadman traveling to the left coast and features many typically frank comments by Thompson concerning his persona, drug use, and take on American culture and politics. There is also a subsection of materials on Oscar Zeta Acosta, the inspiration for "Dr. Gonzo," which is both surprising and welcome, as scarce information is available on the enigmatic activist who subsequently disappeared without explanation. Criterion also includes an excerpt from the audio CD treatment of Fear and Loathing with actors Harry Dean Stanton (who also appears briefly in the film), Maury Chaykin (of Dances with Wolves and Atom Egoyan fame) and director Jim Jarmusch. Further included are a stills gallery, a handful of deleted scenes, a collection of storyboards and production design, and the original film trailer and television ads.
All aspiring screenwriters should take special note of the Not the Screenplay feature detailing Gilliam and fellow writer Tony Grisoni's troubles regarding credit for their treatment of the novel courtesy of the Byzantine "reasoning" and regulations of the Writers Guild of America. Lastly, there is an extended piece of Depp reading correspondence between himself and Thompson that I greatly enjoyed. It becomes quite clear as the conversation progresses that the two developed a great deal of respect for each other - hashed out through some trying moments - and that Depp's wit, pride, and compassion are indeed forces to be reckoned with.
Final Thoughts: Certainly not for all tastes, Gilliam's films can be as polarizing and frustrating as Thompson's texts. This is by no means surprising, as both possess well-earned reputations as idiosyncratic mavericks in their respective fields. However, this is one of those rare instances wherein a director's vision has met a writer's intent and spirit with glorious results.
Extra kudos must once again be afforded to Criterion, not only for the selection of this particular film but for the love and obvious care employed in their exceptional DVD release. The embarrassment of riches provided - and generosity of detail - extends from their entertaining menu selections to even the slipcase and packaging. By celebrating Thompson as much as the accomplishment of Gilliam, et al., they have created yet another Special Edition worthy of any collection – most highly recommended.
* As a final note, I never did give that beaten-up copy of the book to another unfortunate soul. I actually had the good fortune of meeting both Thompson and Wenner shortly after reading it, and the Good Doctor was kind enough to autograph it. He inscribed the following: "To Jason: Beware – they are after you." Strange days, indeed. | <urn:uuid:b68192c8-c996-4680-8448-dae91c6461c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/5912/fear-and-loathing-in-las-vegas-the-criterion-collection/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968225 | 2,925 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Anyone that remembers playing with K’Nex sets knows how great it feels to build something you can
play with. You could make cars, planes, and even rollercoasters just by
snapping pieces together. That’s close to the basis of Rigonauts, a quirky strategy game developed
by Engient Inc., that lets you create your own pirate ship on wheels and
unleash it into battle. Crafting clever contraptions may seem like fun, but
soon you’ll discover a few flaws that take away from the enjoyment.
Rigonauts' plot is rather straightforward: After stealing a ship to escape their evil overlord, a group of goblins called Hobs crashes onto an island only to find they are still in danger. Led by their fearless captain aboard their recycled boat, they must defeat every enemy that stands in the way of their freedom. This lighthearted backstory sets the tone for the game’s playfulness – you’re manning what is essentially a pirate ship on wheels, after all. The game doesn’t take itself too seriously, and its cartoony graphics and settings do a good job of complementing this feeling.
Each of the game’s levels requires you to outfit your ship with enough offensive and defensive materials to ensure victory against the enemy’s ship before it destroys yours. The game gives you many different weapons to choose from, such as cannons and lasers and defense materials made out wood, metal, and even bone, each of which is weak to certain ammo. The game never fully explains what each weapon does, how it behaves, or the benefits of using some materials over others, so you are basically left to experiment and try things out on your own. Unfortunately, despite enemy variety and a plethora of materials that become available as you progress through the game, we found that most of the 30+ levels can be quickly cleared by building the same rinse-and-repeat ships. Some of the most difficult enemies can be defeated by abusing this method, so it takes away from the fun of building different ships.
While there are plenty of things to do to prepare for battle, direct control is out of your hands once you’ve finished building. During battle, all you can do is sit back and watch the action unfold. Being a spectator feels good when you see your design choices pay off, but like any soccer fan watching a match heating up, you might start yelling at the screen when things don’t look good. Thankfully, the game lets you speed up the action or stop and go back to the drawing board whenever you want. Simply watching may not seem like fun, but the objective of the game focuses more on strategizing rather than combat, so the experience is satisfying.
During the building phase, you also scope out the enemy ship and select targets for your guns to focus on when the battle starts. However, just because your guns are aimed doesn’t mean they’ll hit their target, since you also need to factor in their trajectory and the fact that both ships are constantly moving. Your ship may be equipped with the best possible weapons, but it will shoot and move on its own, often leaving things up to chance. Many successful games feature physics-based controls, but if you remove the actual control element from the game as seen here, you are just left helplessly relying on the ship’s AI to decide whether it will approach enemy fire or run away from it. Since some weapons work better at close-range, this decision can impact how the battle plays out.
Part of the game’s strategy component also comes from figuring out the enemy’s weakness and attack patterns, so trial-and-error is involved. Many stages will include enemies that resemble giant puzzles, so you’ll need to find their Achilles’ heel to tear them to pieces. It’s a great feeling when this happens, especially when your smarts, and not factors that are out of your control, help you win. Each level also rewards you with a rating depending on how many materials you used to beat it, so the challenge to use as few materials as possible is what will have some players coming back for more, even if all you get is a feeling of self-satisfaction.
Rigonauts was one of the top-winning titles in Activision’s first Independent Games Competition and its charming concept is what makes it a winner. This is a great building game with impressive puzzle elements, but its main strategy components, tarnished by unpredictable wind-up-and-go gameplay and exploitable elements, cause it to trip and fall a few times. It's a game with plenty of potential, but it definitely has its share of weaknesses. | <urn:uuid:e30f271e-fdbd-487d-9aed-c0516fe00022> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gamesradar.com/rigonauts-review/?comment_ordering=oldest_first | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96413 | 974 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Arsenal Research is one of the three non-university research centres in Austria. Founded in 1950 the former Federal Research and Testing Centre Arsenal (Bundesversuchs-und Forschungsanstalt Arsenal) was converted at the beginning of 1997 into the ÖFPZ Arsenal Ges.m.b.H. Arsenal Research. On the 17th of March 1999 Arsenal Research became a 100% subsidiary of the Austrian Research Centres Seibersdorf.
For fifty years, the name "Arsenal" has been well-known for technological competence, quality, flexibility and strict impartiality. Over this time, Arsenal has become a technologically competent interface between science, industry and government as well as a market oriented service provider. Its range of services extends from applied research and development to top class testing and measurement technology. With more than 200 employees in the fields of traffic, energ y, buildings and environment, Arsenal Research supports customers right from the idea up to the market satisfying realisation.
When Arsenal became private, a new organisation was introduced and the solution of additional tasks, like prompt recognition of new technological challenges, market orientation, professional project realisation, cost transparency and result controls as well as involvement of international networks were emphasized.
Within the Arsenal, the environment division covers the key topics "Water", "Resources and Georiscs" and "Environmental Isotopes": Twenty nine academically-trained specialists and about 20 technicians and laboratory assistants are organised in a flat hierarchy with networking for improved co-operation.
Right from the beginning, "Water" was one of the major subjects at Arsenal. Initially, only low-level scientific measurements were carried out. Over the years, increasingly extensive projects involving more and more complex questions were taken on.
Today, the "Water" business domain carries out comprehensive investigations in the frame of groundwater management. Applied research is done from conservative hydrogeology and geophysics for groundwater exploration and exploitation to highly specialised tracer techniques using hydrochemical elements as well as environmental and industrial isotopes. Modelling and visualising of complex results are the speciality of a team within this business domain applying different GIS systems.
In Austria, Arsenal Research has a monopoly-position in the field of single-borehole techniques. Using probes of our own production, groundwater parameters like velocity or flow direction can be determined even in deeper boreholes. Retaining our strong position as specialists in groundwater dynamics is a major objective for the future.
Within the project "Europe and India: Past, Present and Future", the Arsenal is developing a joint research programme in hydrogeology, collaborating with the other network partners. The joint research will go on for one year starting from May 2000. During the year 1999, the compilation and exchange of information took place in Hyderabad and a preliminary study was elaborated. Recently, our Indian partner, Dr. Sidharth, came to Vienna to evaluate the information already collected in India, as well as to prepare the idea and schedule for the round table meeting that will be held this afternoon here at the B.M. Birla Science Centre. At that meeting the area selected for the project, the role of the experts in the working team, the database programme and the preliminary workplan will be discussed. | <urn:uuid:ecfc9f5e-203f-4f91-9bd0-929d924cf916> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.europeindia.org/pages/workshops/people_hydeb_1999/hacker.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939103 | 660 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Who Hired This Kid To Pitch Windows?
Microsoft's recent string of extraordinarily bad ads.
The Spot:A little girl named Alexa takes digital pictures of a fort she made, downloads them to her computer, and then stitches them together into a panorama using Microsoft's Windows Live Photo Gallery. "I'm a PC and I'm 7 years old," says the beaming child. "It's that easy," says the on-screen text.
This ad suggests that Windows is so easy and intuitive even a kid can use it. It's an age-old sales pitch—and often an effective one. But in the context of a computer ad, it's badly misplaced. Who among us doubts the superior technical savvy of the modern child?
I mean, take a look at these precocious moppets. In another spot, a 4-year-old sweetie named Kylie tweaks a photo using image-editing software and then (giggling all the while) e-mails the resulting file to her parents. In a third ad, an 8-year-old named Adam creates a soundtracked slide show. Hooking his computer up to the TV, he says, with terrifying self-assurance, "I'm gonna screen this puppy for ya." Really, it wouldn't surprise me if the next spot in the campaign involved a 6-year-old boy launching a denial-of-service attack on the Ukrainian government.
How are these whiz kids, who've been plugging in USB cords since they left the womb, meant to reassure anyone over 12 that Windows is easy to use? The campaign could make its point more persuasively by showing doddering 80-year-olds smoothly clicking their way around the operating system. That's something Microsoft has been willing to put online, but so far hasn't aired on TV—perhaps out of fear that an old-person stink might rub off on the brand.
These "rookies" spots are the work of the ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky. Crispin is, in purely aesthetic terms, my absolute least favorite ad shop. Known for its uncanny ability to attract attention with buzz-building spots (e.g., by pitching Burger King kids' meals with a parody rap mashing up SpongeBob SquarePants and Sir Mix-a-Lot), Crispin was hired by Microsoft to help bring some sizzle to a flagging brand.
At first blush, it seemed an incongruous fit. I wondered how well an agency that specializes in fratty snark and Cro-Magnon masculinity could represent a company that seems intractably geeky and earnest. Thus far, results have been mixed. There was that baffling interlude when Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld wandered the country making small talk. (It quickly fizzled.) On the plus side, I thought it was smart when Crispin stood up to Apple's smirking "I'm a Mac"/"I'm a PC" campaign—and I enjoyed the sight of PC users asserting their not-quite-as-nerdy-as-you-think humanity. In other efforts, Crispin has fallen back on a favorite crutch: documentary-style "reality" footage. They've employed this technique for Burger King in the Whopper Freakout and Whopper Virgins campaigns, and they've tried it with Microsoft in the newer "laptop hunters" spots. *
Slate's Farhad Manjoo has already torn into the "laptop hunters" ads, which show people shopping for computers on Microsoft's dime. The big problem with the campaign—other than the revelations that redheaded Lauren, star of one of the ads, is an actress; that she bought a sucky laptop; and that the whole thing might have been scripted and staged—is the central premise, which actively propagates the notion that PCs are a cheap fallback you settle for when you can't quite afford that Mac laptop you crave. The game is given away when 1) Lauren dejectedly observes that she's "just not cool enough to be a Mac person" and 2) a guy named Giampaolo, in a follow-up spot, fondles a Mac notebook as he purrs, "This is soooo sexy."
Those are limbic-level responses. They're the kind of deeply emotional brand associations that a company spends years and hundreds of millions of dollars trying to create. Apple marketing has apparently succeeded so completely that we now see people lusting after Macs even inside Microsoft ads. It would have been wiser for Crispin to edit this stuff out.
Now, I'll admit that I do enjoy hating on Crispin. And I'm convinced they're an awful match for Microsoft. There's a condescending tone to all these ads—as though hipsters and frat dudes are faking empathy for a dowdy alien culture that they don't understand. (Shocker: Crispin uses Macs.) In this case, though, I don't think I can fairly pin all the blame on them. Microsoft marketing has flailed of late no matter which agency is behind it.
Seth Stevenson is a frequent contributor to Slate. He is the author of Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World. | <urn:uuid:fe3b28da-5e23-475d-9271-6d1fa5d6366f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.slate.com/articles/business/ad_report_card/2009/04/who_hired_this_kid_to_pitch_windows.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956242 | 1,080 | 1.609375 | 2 |
At Crane & Co., in Dalton, Mass., making U.S. currency paper has been a source of pride since 1879.
"Nothing is as effective as the feel," says Drosehn. He proceeds to take a bill out of his pocket, grasping it in his fingers at the edges and pulling. "They call it the snap," he says of its distinctive sound. That's because of the linen and cotton blend that our dollar bills are printed on. That paper is made to some of the most exacting standards in the world.
Drosehn, class of 1973, started working at Crane & Co. while studying chemistry at UMass Amherst. He began managing paper-making for United States currency and other security products in 1988, and as manager of manufacturing at Crane Currency, he has managed the entire facility since 2003.
Read the entire story from the UMass Amherst magazine at http://www.umassmag.com/2008/Spring_2008/features/crane.html. | <urn:uuid:60c9d4ca-afc1-47f3-858d-f13f0308bc3a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.masslive.com/umassamherst/2008/05/at_crane_company_in_dalton_uma.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979686 | 209 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Our park museum will be closed April 15, 2013 till 2014. This will also affect our park orientation film screening; it will be limited to 8-10 visitors at a time. The rest of the park is open for visitation. We are sorry for the inconvenience.
Support Your Park
Friends of Fort Davis NHS
Fort Davis National Historic Site
Did You Know?
Medical treatment at Fort Davis represented state-of-the-art medicine of the 19th century. The soldiers at Fort Davis and other frontier posts probably received medical treatment as good or better than what the average American received at the time. | <urn:uuid:55800741-6b82-493d-89ba-325c9d999817> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nps.gov/foda/supportyourpark/index.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940892 | 122 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Well, it’s been a while—“cough!”—the set’s all dusty since my previous post about 3D cards...
One thing that isn’t quite dusty though, is the state of free software drivers! I will sum up the different evolutions (some would even say, revolutions) that have occurred over this summer (June-September 2007).
First, let me write out a list of drivers...
Known free drivers and their implementations
VIA: UniChrome and OpenChrome
VIA was a leader in the area of free drivers: they were actually the first hardware manufacturers to release their drivers in source code form—no, really! However, those were not under a permissive license, were inelegantly coded (you needed to run them as root) but they had a very, very important characteristic: they were pretty much feature-complete, and most rare, they didn’t need VBE modesetting to work—meaning that right now, they don’t need a PC BIOS. That helps in making portable drivers.
Those restricted sources led to the creation of the UniChrome driver—this was supposed to be a very clean reimplementation of the original source code, and is, in fact, the basis for Xorg’s VIA driver. It offers 2D and 3D acceleration and some Xv and MPEG2 acceleration. It has a single maintainer, and is considered the most stable VIA driver out there.
Due to UniChrome’s limited abilities in code tinkering, OpenChrome was forked (there is still some communication between the branches); while less stable, OpenChrome provides MPEG-4 acceleration and XvMC (X video Motion Compensation). The latter is considered a very good implementation of hardware-accelerated XvMC.
This is not quite recent: the OpenChrome fork happened in 2005. It is now getting a bit more attention because of its focus on Xv and XvMC—which, due to HD concerns, are becoming more and more important.
Matrox: their own, and Xorg’s
Matrox actually went the way VIA started; they now release a driver in source form, and this driver is reimplemented under Xorg’s licenses. The end result pretty much works—when some new bug doesn’t crash the party. Still, these drivers provide 2D, 3D and Xv acceleration.
On the whole, nothing new on planet Matrox. At best, some more bug fixing... Because there sure isn’t anything new feature or hardware wise.
Intel: direct support
Probably the most forthcoming hardware manufacturer in matters of free code, Intel provides no specifications—but they do have an engineer working exclusively on a free software driver for their video hardware: all those integrated graphics processors do have a driver!
It provides 2D, 3D and Xv acceleration, along with multiple screen support and covers pretty much all of Intel’s video hardware (except the long-dead i740, which was more Cirrus Logic than Intel anyway). More importantly, it is unobfuscated, feature complete, and under a permissive license (MIT and GPL—depending on where the code is, in X or in Linux).
ATI/AMD: a revolution
You must have seen it: since ATI was bought by AMD, there was some tension: will AMD change its tradition of cooperation with free software? They relied on Linux to prove the efficiency of their winning K8 core and 64-bit instruction set, should they use the same method on their new graphic hardware?
Well actually, they have—and they pretty much went all-out: not only have they promised to release the specs for their non-DRM hardware from the r300 up, there will be no NDA, along with a skeleton driver and code samples to boot!
So, right now, Novell maintains a package, named radeonhd, providing support for r500 and r600 hardware under SuSE Linux, last week. The Avivo driver, which had started supporting r500 cards, is thus nipped in the bud—not that Jerome Glisse, its lead maintainer, is complaining.
For those looking for a more feature complete driver, AMD released a new revision of its closed source fglrx driver, version 8.41, at the same time.
XGI: mixed bag
XGI was probably one of the first companies to support their graphics hardware through a free driver—but they were unlucky: not only did most of their talents go to ATI last year, their licensing agreement with SGI prevents them from releasing the DRI part of their driver under a free license.
As such, the driver (lacking DRI acceleration) is quite feature-complete, maintained, clean and supporting most of their hardware range, but it is also not much better than the VESA driver due to its need for CPU copies to be efficient. The DRI binary module does work well with the released sources, but it’s just not the same as having a free driver...
NVIDIA: ah, come on!
Right now, NVIDIA is probably the black sheep of Linux support: while they do provide a somewhat accelerated 2D driver for all their hardware (from the Riva128 to the Geforce 8), that driver has its source obfuscated, uses inefficient acceleration processes (it’s stuck on XAA), has seen pretty much no improvement in years, and needs to be ripped out entirely when you want to use their (admittedly high quality) binary blob.
They also disparaged the FOSS community by saying that no one apart from them would be able to create quality graphics drivers for their hardware, and that a community supported, feature-complete driver is impossible.
That ruffled some feathers last year, and a few Xorg developers took it to task. That started Nouveau, probably one of the biggest efforts in hardware reverse engineering seen these days. What do they have?
Right now, Nouveau is still in alpha. It bid goodbye to XAA (now completely replaced with EXA), Xv is complete, implementing OpenChrome’s XvMC is a work in progress, and 3D support has been pretty much figured out for several chip generations (right now, glxgears works on Geforce2 and 6). The driver works on almost all of the NVIDIA hardware range—only support for nv04 (original Tnt1) will have to be reduced, due to this chip’s fundamental incompatibility with EXA.
Still, it’s far from being complete.
So, what’s going on?
With all those free driver events, several issues were brought to light and are being worked on—on many levels.
Several drivers provide very similar features, and, at the same time, features are getting more numerous: video acceleration is not done through video overlays anymore, blitters are on the way out too, thus the preferred solution is now the use textured surfaces—using shaders units on Intel, NVIDIA, ATI and VIA hardware at the very least.
This is pretty much an Xv matter, but due to the flexibility of this solution, XvMC will gleefully make use of those features. Add to that colour space conversion acceleration and video decompression, it pretty much means that most current hardware solutions (and several older ones too) would allow very similar algorithms to perform a required operation.
Apparently, the favoured solution would be to create a single module for a given feature, which would then interface with the hardware through a common API, or use some form of software emulation, or, if not possible, simply refuse to load.
The two main advantages would be that new features would be brought in common to all able hardware, while at the same time reducing code duplication, which usually means much faster hardware support and simpler testing cycles.
Considering what’s happening inside Linux on the Wi-Fi, ATA, IEEE1394, file systems and sound stacks, it sure seems effective.
For this reason, discussions are being made to modularize elements such as XvMC, some parts of DRI, and Mesa too (see Tungsten Graphics’s Gallium3D project)—leaving the DRM (as in Direct Rendering Module) the last part to remain really hardware-dependent.
Does it mean that video drivers will be much smaller? Well, not exactly: right now, video drivers are made of at least three pieces: the essential X.org driver, the DRI acceleration piece, and its in-kernel DRM corresponding part. While the DRM part is pretty much impossible to make more common, this part may actually grow—the addition of a kernel-side memory manager and context switcher (for now called TTM) would actually make a driver bigger.
But overall, through modularity, it would mean that the sum of code required to support most of today’s hardware would get much, much smaller.
After all, that’s the philosophy behind X.org’s 7th revision to the X protocol version 11 (X11R7).
GPU to generic computing
On the bonus side, this would pave the way to making use of those shaders units as generic computing coprocessors through a unified API—and damn, aren’t those 128 unified shaders on an NVIDIA 8800 tempting!
What would be the use? Well, a shaders unit is, nowadays, little more (or less) than an oversized high precision, high clocked floating point computing unit. Being able to tap into them for stuff like SETI or Folding@home would be interesting. They would also help tremendously in ray tracing (“real” 3D) and other modeling applications.
Those were first mentioned to the general public on the Nouveau wiki: Linux (and other kernels are not much better) doesn’t provide anything to support graphics development: certainly no frozen API (which is understandable and often a good thing), but also no way to tell when a piece of graphics hardware is already held by a driver (which makes using the console’s frame buffer driver for your hardware a good way to crash X), and no way to map graphics memory—which can be quite complex: how does one navigate between PCI addressing, AGP (with its dedicated memory and different contexts than PCI) and PCI Express? Well, right now, all drivers do it the best they can.
For that reason, you have very fast exchanges between the kernel and the Xorg communities going on right now on how to implement frame buffer drivers (which are currently in the kernel) and DRM modules around a graphics memory manager.
An in-kernel memory manager for graphics hardware would allow several improvements:
- it would be much easier to add several accelerated video adapters, of similar or different designs,
- no more headaches caused by the dichotomy between hardware-accelerated frame buffers and DRI,
- more efficient context switching,
- better stability and performances through unified video memory addressing (right now, there is generic PCI, AGP and PCI Express to deal with—all three are different),
- some other stuff yet to be determined.
And performance, in all this?
This is the reason there will be NO update to my driver matrix for a little while yet: there has been little improvement in the area of supported features (we may cite a still maturing randr1.2 implementation, now used by the radeon, nouveau and Intel drivers), or hardware (last time, AMD already supported their r500 and r600 hardware in fglrx, and NVIDIA hasn’t unveiled G9x chips yet), or incredible breakthroughs (the r300 driver is undergoing cleanup, but AMD hasn’t released the r300 family specs yet, as it will come last).
In fact, the only releases (apart from those cited above) are: NVIDIA’s 100.14.19 driver (which solved a regression over the previous release, but I can’t test it as it screws up my screen detection and won’t allow manual override), and AMD/ATI’s 8.41 release (which, as I said, improves performance significantly yet renders artifacts all over the place). Right now, there is only a LOT of restructuring going on.
So, many things have changed over the summer; the FOSS drivers have seen lots of news, lots of progress and have started redefining themselves in a drastic way. That’s cool.
However, this takes time, and for now us poor users have very little to see.
But jeez, the coming months are going to be interesting! | <urn:uuid:60da0c35-ba19-484f-b3ab-08d372cd29de> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/comment/74387 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961466 | 2,663 | 1.710938 | 2 |
See photos of the world's 10 most gorgeous waterfalls.
10 Most Beautiful Waterfalls
From the thundering roar of Niagara Falls in the U.S. to the elegant veil of Angel Falls in Venezuela, we found the world's most photogenic waterfalls—and share the best ways to see the action in person.
Closest major city: The park is 80 miles south of Zagreb and an easy two-hour drive by car.
Best time to go: The weather is reliably warm and sunny from May through September.
A network of 275 falls that spans nearly two miles across, Iguazú is so striking in its immensity that when Eleanor Roosevelt first saw the falls, she remarked, "poor Niagara." The water plummets with such intense force that the spray almost looks as if it's shooting up from the pools below. One of the most popular sections is Devil's Throat, a horseshoe-shaped waterfall that's 269 feet wide and 2,300 feet long. You could visit Iguazú on your own, but you'll see more with an experienced guide. The full-day excursion with Viator takes you by bus to Devil's Throat and the falls' Upper and Lower Circuits and also grants you access to the Train of the Forest, a railway system that travels through the park and to the footbridges overlooking the falls ($35 per person).
Closest major city: Iguazú is 670 miles (and a 90-minute flight) north of Buenos Aires.
Best time to go: For the best prices and warm temperatures (75 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit), go in October. Avoid January, February, and Easter vacation, when Argentines and Brazilians flock to the falls. And stay away during May and July, the two rainiest months.
- Related: World's Most Beautiful Castles
A poster child for the American West, this three-tiered fall stretches 2,425 feet from top to bottom. The waterfall itself is gorgeous, but it is the surroundings-granite cliffs and Giant Sequoia trees-that make it one of the most striking sights in the country. The falls are visible from many places around Yosemite Valley, particularly near Yosemite Lodge. From the lodge's parking lot, you can get even closer by taking one of the National Park Service's free, 20-minute shuttle bus rides to stop no. 6, where a one-mile loop trail leads to the base of Lower Yosemite Fall.
Closest major city: Yosemite National Park is 195 miles (and a four-hour drive) east of San Francisco.
Best time to go: The falls are at their most spectacular when the winter ice and snow are melting, from March to June. Peak flow is in May.
Zimbabwe and Zambia
More than twice as high as Niagara Falls and about a mile across, the absolute mass of this gusher is mind-boggling. The force of the water falling into the pool below is so great, in fact, that on clear days you can see the spray from as far as 30 miles away. The local populace is equally impressive: Baboons, elephants, and hippos are often spotted along the shores of Victoria. Safari Par Excellence can set you up with everything, whether you're looking for a simple rafting trip on the Zambezi River leading up to Victoria (from $135 per person for a half-day) or a helicopter ride to view the white rhinos in nearby Mosi-oa Tunya National Park (from $120 per person).
Closest major city: Livingstone, Zambia, is about eight miles from Victoria Falls. Most visitors fly into Livingstone International Airport and then take a shuttle to their hotel, where tour operators pick up guests and transport them to the falls.
Best time to go: The perfect window is from February to May, when the rainy season has just ended but the falls are still gushing.
- Related: World's Newest Natural Wonders
Set on the southwestern tip of the South Island, Fiordland National Park is perfectly calibrated to create cascades: The rugged landscape gets a steady supply of rain 300 days a year and has hundreds of falls to show for it. The true masterpiece of hte bunch is Sutherland. Its water drops 1,904 feet and shifts to the right at one point and then back to the left at another, forming three distinct sections. The best way to see the trio is by hiking a three-mile portion of the Milford Track, one of New Zealand's most popular trails. You can access the Milford near the town of Quintin, at the Quintin Hut, then follow the trail south for approximately 45 minutes to the base of the falls.
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Comment on this article | <urn:uuid:038093e1-507f-40c4-beae-0e038e1ec801> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.budgettravel.com/feature/10-most-beautiful-waterfalls%2C7052/?page=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934867 | 1,063 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Amanda Turk: A Missionary for Christ in training
“After a lot of prayer and thought, I committed to serving as a missionary with FOCUS!” says Amanda Turk, a 2008 graduate of La Reina High School in Thousand Oaks, and a recent graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering.
FOCUS --- Fellowship of Catholic University Students --- is a national outreach to college campuses, both secular and Catholic. Founded by Curtis Martin in 1998 at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, it began with two missionaries on one campus and today is present on 60 campuses.
Its trained missionaries help college students find a place for Christ in all aspects of their lives --- their studies, social life, dating relationships and major life decisions. The training consists of five weeks of prayer, hands-on experience in evangelizing and team building.
Amanda Turk --- whose family attends St. Jude the Apostle Church in Westlake Village --- will begin her missionary training this summer in a five-week program at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign. The preparation includes prayer, strategies for outreach, and a deepening and broadening of faith.
Part of Amanda’s training will teach her how to develop a team of mission partners, who will support her financially and through prayer. As part of the FOCUS program, she will live near campus with other female missionaries on her team, spending an hour a day in prayer and attending daily Mass.
Her dedication to a prayer life and to the Eucharist, she says, will give her “the grace to go out and meet students with the goal of inviting college students into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ and his Church.” To this end, she will conduct small group Bible studies, mentoring students one on one, and sharing life with them at the campus to which she will be assigned.
As a member of a FOCUS group at MIT, Amanda witnessed firsthand the power of its missionaries, who established relationships with the students and helped them to grow in their faith by answering their questions, praying with them, and, most importantly, caring about them. Profoundly touched by the FOCUS missionaries, she began to lead Bible study and to mentor students herself, and saw her own understanding of Jesus develop and grow.
The emphasis of FOCUS is building relationships with others. “You cannot affect others unless you have a relationship with them,” Amanda says. “If you don’t know them, and share life together, then you cannot be effective. Truths must be conveyed in a way that is sensitive and loving.”
She says she has already witnessed the power of forming faith relationships with others. Several of her friends have made the decision to enter the Church.
“Being a missionary full-time means that I will be dedicating myself to serving students and helping them to encounter Jesus,” she adds. “What I do has to be rooted in prayer.”
A member of the Campus Ministry Core Team while at La Reina, Amanda does not find the title “missionary” daunting. “I will always be a missionary in whatever I do,” she says. “Every single one of us who is a Catholic is called to be a missionary, to spread the good news of Jesus Christ. “
Her two-year commitment to FOCUS, she believes, will serve her well the rest of her life: “I know that by growing in holiness, I will also become a better mother, teacher, engineer or whatever type of professional I decide to be.” | <urn:uuid:3e84aae8-69c9-4f63-aef7-1edbf1b0ce08> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://the-tidings.com/index.php/features/santa-barbara/1878-amanda-turk-a-missionary-for-christ-in-training?FontSize=font-large | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974174 | 759 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Family Violence Clinic
In the Family Violence Clinic, students serve and represent clients who are victims of domestic violence. Students provide advice and counsel to clients seeking to escape violent, intimate relationships and to protect children exposed to violence and coercion. Students represent clients in court to seek civil protection orders to help them build peaceful, safe lives. We work to empower clients to reclaim their inherent dignity and agency.
We heed our calling to take up the cause of the fatherless, to liberate the oppressed and to free those imprisoned in their homes. Our students must exercise courage, diligence, discipline, creativity and confidence for our clients and their families. In short order, students build rapport with clients, evaluate cases with accuracy and insight, investigate and research thoroughly, prepare for court and advocate with passion and precision. The work is demanding and transfers to all areas of their future law practices.
Associate Professor of Law and Director of Clinical Programs Jeffrey R. Baker teaches and supervises the Family Violence Clinic.
The Family Violence Clinic collaborates with many professionals and agencies to provide thorough services to our clients: | <urn:uuid:9532bc84-598a-4d63-a4bd-d99afc8be3e8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://adickson@faulkner.edu/jsl/familyviolenceclinic.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94263 | 217 | 1.601563 | 2 |
The Group believes that our own development must integrate the search for a better quality of life for our customers, employees, shareholders, and the regions and various communities affected by our production and distribution operations throughout the world.
The Group's commitment towards environmental protection materialized in 2001 by the the "Environmental Charter" was reinforced in 2003 by joining the United Nations' Global Compact. That initiative, which was launched by Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the UN, requires its signatories to apply and promote nine principles in the field of human rights, labor and the environment.
Thus LVMH implements the concept of sustainable development.
Aim for a high level of environmental performance
In developing its businesses internationally, LVMH works to align its practices with those that offer the best level of environmental protection around the world.
Foster a collective commitment
The environment is the responsibility of every individual and LVMH believes that the awareness, education and training of its employees are top priorities. To ensure a continued high level of environmental performance, the Group believes it is vital for each company to set precise environmental objectives and implement a management system dedicated to this process.
Control environmental hazards
In addition to the most stringent compliance with environmental regulations, which is an absolute duty, the Group intends to focus on risk prevention. As a result, it allocates human and material resources to this goal.
Design luxury products by integrating environmental innovation and creativity
Guided by its overriding concern for high quality, LVMH is working to improve control and better anticipate the environmental aspects related to the life cycle of its products. LVMH encourages all processes that result in environmental innovations and accepts its duty to exercise prudence and take precautions to ensure total safety for the consumer.
Make commitments outside the company
LVMH intends to contribute to the protection of the environment above and beyond just the aspects directly related to its own businesses. Because it considers that promoting respect for the environment is essential, LVMH is developing an active partnership with groups of businesses, local communities and the associations which contribute to this objective. | <urn:uuid:00fcfb21-1e67-433d-b118-11f2fc24c45c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lvmh.com/the-group/lvmh-and-the-environment/commitment/lvmh-environment-charter-a-shared-benchmark | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936755 | 420 | 1.578125 | 2 |
[dateline] Philadelphia April 6. 1777
This Evening Major Ward deliverd me Yours of 23d. of March.—It is a great Pleasure to me to learn that your Flour has arrived. I begin to have some opinion of my good Fortune. If I could have been certain, of the Vessells escaping the many Snares in her Way, I would have sent a dozen Barrells.
The Act, my dear, that you were so fond of will do no good.1
Legislatures cannot effect Impossibilities. I detest all Embargoes, and all other Restraints upon Trade.2
Let it have its own Way, in such a Time as this and it will cure its own Diseases. The Paper emitted by the states jointly and separately is too much, it is more than enough to purchase every Commodity and every Species of Labour that is wanted, and this Excess of Quantity is the true Cause of the Artificial Scarcity of Things, but the Price of this will be in Proportion to the Demand, in spite of all Regulations.—To save my self the Trouble of thinking I will transcribe for your Amusement a few observations of Lord Kaims, on the subject of Money, Scarcity, Plenty, and Demand. Read them, compare them with the Increase of Money in America, the Decrease of Goods and Labour, and the Increase of Demand for both, and then judge whether the Regulations and Embargoes can do any good. . . .3 | <urn:uuid:fa60447d-fc39-4224-9a2f-f8df84aed51d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.masshist.org/publications/apde/portia.php?id=AFC02d152 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959651 | 314 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Having good backups of files is crucial for any computer user since you never know when a crash or hardware failure can strike. A good backup is just as important for your iTunes library as it is for any other files.
There are lots of ways to backup iTunes libraries, but when doing so, you'll probably want to make sure that you also backup your song ratings, playcounts, and other metadata. The technique demonstrated here lets you do that.
Making your backups on a hard drive other than the one in your primary computer is good policy (after all, if your hard drive fails, you don't want your backup to be on the failed drive), so here's how to backup iTunes to an external hard drive.
Begin by plugging the external HD into your computer. Make sure the external drive has enough free space to contain your entire library. Once the drive appears on your computer, launch iTunes. | <urn:uuid:68b8ec6a-52ba-49a1-ab23-7e820f1e3d9e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ipod.about.com/od/restoreandreformatipod/ss/Backup-Itunes-To-External-Hd.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962768 | 184 | 1.710938 | 2 |
There are international standards of weights and measures, even for the passage of time.
The gold standard for a moral, eternally abiding life now sits and the right hand of his Father.
Diametrically opposed is the man of Sin, our natural proclivity and the spirit working in our minds and members. We sin as naturally and freely as water cascading down a water fall.
Our mouths, swear, our minds envy, covet and indulge in vilest most despicable imaginings.
We are bitter, abusive, hateful, coldhearted, murders, whisperers, callous, without natural affection, haughty, high minded, quick to anger, insufferable lot. Deserving all of the natural catastrophes that beset us, including AIDS, tsunamis, hurricanes and tornadoes. As AIDS spreads rapidly around the earth it becomes evident that everybody is sleeping with everyone across the whole planet. A sure marker of the moral turpitude that besets the earth.
But a standard was born. Eat his flesh, drink his blood and let him abode in your mind and members that you may abide forever.
You must be acquainted with Revelation and with the book of Daniel as a prerequisite to register the historical significance in the context I have spoken. There are two schools of eschatology prevailing in Theological academia. One is that the prophets were only speaking about their vantage point in history with the book of Daniel written after the fact by Hellenistic authors. And those that believe that future events were revealed by God.
This post exemplifies bitterness, abusiviveness, hatefulness, coldheartedness, murderousness, whispering, callousness, lack of natural affection, haughtiness, high mindedness and insufferability.
The powers of darkness conquered the men of the megafauna world, both Cro-magnon and Neanderthal. they fell into cannibalism and shamanism as evident by the archaeological record.
Their world ended with a cataclysm and flash flood/freezing. Mammoths are found frozen in Seberia frozen alive with food in their mouths. All the animals named by these men at there genesis are gone. The haploid groups of the these men are not found among todays population because their world was destroyed and darkness was upon the face of the depths. The principalities of the air were victorious over these men.
The principalities are still with us today, seeking our destruction. They are even present on the moon
"There are fouler things than orcs in the deep places of the earth"- Gandolf the Grey, Lord of the Rings.
They also perpetrated fake marian visitations. | <urn:uuid:adccceb2-229e-4db1-9fb4-c7880d5a6361> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thinkatheist.com/forum/topics/i-will-make-a-man-finer-than-2?page=17&commentId=1982180%3AComment%3A728502&x=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952041 | 548 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Brian Isen pulls deck planks from a swimming pool as he cleans up damage from Superstorm Sandy to his father's home in Longport, N.J., Friday, Nov. 2, 2012. Four days after Sandy lashed the East Coast with high winds and a huge storm surge, frustration mounted, as millions of people remained without power and motorists lined up for hours at gas stations in New Jersey and New York. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
TRENTON (AP) — Nearly 1.5 million homes and businesses remain without electricity in the wake of Sandy.
Utility crews have restored electricity to more than 1.1 million customers.
Public Service Electric & Gas says it could take until next week before it finishes restoring service to its remaining 692,000 customers.
Jersey Central Power & Light has 709,830 homes and businesses without electricity. Most are in Monmouth and Ocean counties.
Atlantic City Electric is working to reconnect 42,292 customers.
Orange & Rockland is reporting 468,700 outages in the two northern New Jersey counties that it serves. | <urn:uuid:834ae203-eaee-489c-aa99-218a07bfb888> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.trentonian.com/article/20121102/NEWS01/121109935&template=printart | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94344 | 224 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Both Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) have recently filed plans to increase data center operations in Prineville, Ore., which is a little community that is on track to turn into one of the prime data center locations in the U.S. Upon completion of data centers, their combined operations will have created some 1.2 million square feet of data center space. Both tech giants hold enough land in Prineville to develop well beyond that.
Many of you would be asking how did Prineville, with a population of not more than 10,000, attract Apple Inc (AAPL) and Facebook Inc (FB)? And does Prineville really get help from data centers, which are not big employers?
Joshua Smith, who is Prineville’s senior planner, said the world’s most valuable company this week has presented a master plan to “slowly build over time” as much as 500,000 square feet of space. Apple is close to a finishing point of a 10,000 square-foot data center project on a 160 acre parcel it owns.
On the other hand, Facebook was in Prineville first, building what turned into a 334,000 square foot data center in 2010, and it has been completing work on a companion facility, which is predicted at nearly 360,000 square feet by local officials. Facebook has ownership of about 120 acres of land.
This week FB submitted plans to contruct a further 60,000 square foot facility, while it is unclear whether it will be used for the purpose of a data center. Local economic development officials say they have several important things supporting them including plenty of reliable electricity, low power costs (at about 5.5 cents a kWh), available land, and the climate. They think these things make it ideal for data center systems.
Further, the tax breaks are also kind. Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) are entitled to 15-year tax exemptions that apply to buildings and equipment but not to land. The state applies no sales taxes on equipment. Facebook Inc (FB) has nearly 60 employees at its data center but that is expected to increase to about 100 once it completes all its building. Apple may sooner or later add roughly an equal amount, according to local officials. | <urn:uuid:b3b0560f-60c5-43d8-b2fc-7cf01ccc08d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.propertymentorgroup.com/how-did-prineville-attract-apple-inc-nasdaqaapl-and-facebook-inc-nasdaqfb/121724/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963029 | 487 | 1.617188 | 2 |
I am an Atlantic City resident whose taxes have almost tripled in 10 years.
During that time, Atlantic City underwent a revaluation in the midst of a frenetic and illusionary boom in real estate values. When the bubble burst, the city faced tax appeals from its casino hotels, and we ended up with an inequitable situation where residential property owners carry an unfair proportion of the tax burden. Many residents pay taxes that exceed their mortgage payments.
Real estate taxation in New Jersey is based upon assessments of "fair market value," but this system treats residential and commercial property differently. Residential homes are valued based on comparable sales, while commercial properties are valued based on the income-capitalization method. But Atlantic City is unique because of the many billions of dollars spent to build casino hotels that annually draw and service a number of people that dwarfs the city's population.
There is no other comparable municipal experience in New Jersey. Atlantic City needs a new paradigm for assessing real estate values and taxes, and it needs local and state legislators, both Republican and Democrat, to get a piece of special legislation passed.
The new formula would have to allocate to residential properties, commercial properties and casino hotels a percentage of the overall budget that can be attributed to the services they use and the costs to the city that result.
Other New Jersey residents pay taxes to support their school systems and local services, but Atlantic City is an anomaly. Its residents carry the burden of providing services for 30 million people per year. The casino hotels employ nearly as many people as Atlantic City has residents, and most of those employees go home to their bedroom communities and arguably pay far lower taxes there.
The present system is not structured to account for these inequities. Atlantic City is sorely in need of a real estate tax exception. | <urn:uuid:13d8e010-dc65-4330-ac0c-32e0e6e6fc80> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/opinion/letters/atlantic-city-needs-new-property-tax-paradigm/article_fe17325a-1e57-5b70-90c3-ff9174040a10.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959857 | 361 | 1.671875 | 2 |
For those of you who are unable to visit the Family History Centre in Brighton or the Sussex Records Offices in Chichester and Lewes, then Sussex Genealogy could be the answer.
Specialising in the Ancient Hundred of Rotherbridge and the area around Bury, Parish Registers have been transcribed and have been made available on CD. So, whether you are looking for Baptisms, Marriages or Burials, your research is made just that bit easier for you.
Monumental Inscriptions have also been recorded and photographed and are available for you, complete with plans of the churchyards in which they rest. Have a look at the selection below and see which ones will help you to take a step further back with your family history.
PDF File by Email. | <urn:uuid:fc87cf98-79fd-46ed-8f40-825de320f01c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.parishchest.com/acatalog/Sussex_Genealogy__LID15216 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969387 | 160 | 1.664063 | 2 |
|<< Psalm 34 >>|
English Revised Version
Taste and See the Lord is Good
(1 Samuel 21:10-15; Psalm 52:1-9; Psalm 56:1-13)
1A Psalm of David; when he changed his behaviour before Abimelech, who drove him away, and he departed.
I will bless the LORD at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth.
2My soul shall make her boast in the LORD: the meek shall hear thereof, and be glad.
3O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together.
4I sought the LORD, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears.
5They looked unto him, and were lightened:
and their faces shall never be confounded.
6This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.
7The angel of the LORD encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them.
8O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.
9O fear the LORD, ye his saints: for there is no want to them that fear him.
10The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that seek the LORD shall not want any good thing.
11Come, ye children, hearken unto me: I will teach you the fear of the LORD.
12What man is he that desireth life, and loveth many days, that he may see good?
13Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile.
14Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.
15The eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous, and his ears are open unto their cry.
16The face of the LORD is against them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.
17The righteous cried, and the LORD heard, and delivered them out of all their troubles.
18The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.
19Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the LORD delivereth him out of them all.
20He keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken.
21Evil shall slay the wicked: and they that hate the righteous shall be condemned.
22The LORD redeemeth the soul of his servants: and none of them that trust in him shall be condemned. | <urn:uuid:738c1450-b9e7-4bb2-bed1-480be7c6ab3e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://biblehub.com/erv/psalms/34.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953688 | 546 | 1.578125 | 2 |
COM. OF PENNSYLVANIA v. FRANKLIN - 4 U.S. 316 (1804)
U.S. Supreme Court
COM. OF PENNSYLVANIA v. FRANKLIN, 4 U.S. 316 (1804)
4 U.S. 316 (Dall.)
Franklin et al.
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.
December Term, 1804
THE general question, upon the constitutionality of the intrusion act ( 3 State Laws, 703. Dall. edit.) having been decided at the last term, in the affirmative, this case came again before the Court, upon the remaining exceptions in arrest of judgment, as they are stated ante, p. 257.; but the counsel for the defendants abandoned the third and fourth, and the argument and decision turned entirely upon the sixth and seventh, exceptions.
For the defendants. If the cause was never pending in the Circuit Court, as the sixth and seventh exceptions allege, all the proceedings there, are, of course, coram non judice; and the judgment must be arrested. These exceptions will, therefore, be first considered. Then, 1st. The certiorari is directed to a wrong Court. 2d. It is returned by unauthorised judges. 3d. It does not describe and identify the indictment, which is annexed to the return.
1st. The Court of Quarter Sessions, and of Common Pleas, are Courts of distinct, and independent, jurisdiction; though the same judges officiate in both Courts. Each has its own seal, its own record, and its own clerk; and the subjects of their cognizance are essentially different; the one relating to criminal prosecutions; and the other to civil suits. Const. art. 5. 1. 7. 4 T. Rep. 499. 1 Bac. Abr. 572, 573. 2 Hawk. P. C. c. 27. 80, 81. 72.
2d. The return is made by the associate Judges of the Common Pleas, to the Judges of the Supreme Court, and not to the Judges of the Supreme Court sitting as a Circuit Court. And
the authorities already cited, show that a writ wrong directed, or wrong returned, will remove nothing.
3d. The indictment consists of two distinct counts, containing two distinct charges, of two distinct offences. Three of the defendants only are implicated in the charge of the first count: and yet the certiorari directs the removal of an indictment against the four defendants for both offences. This is not such an indictment, and, therefore, the proper record has never been removed. 2 Ld. Raym. 1199. 1 Ld. Raym. 609. 2 Hawk. c. 27. s. 32. 2 Ld. Raym. 1803.
For the commonwealth. The proecipe for the removal of the indictment, was written by the counsel of the defendant; the certiorari was worded conformably to the proecipe; the writ was specially allowed, and issued, at the instance of the defendants: and, yet, the defendants endeavour now to defeat the jurisdiction of the Circuit Court, by the irregularity of their own process. It is a general rule, in civil cases, that no man shall take advantage of his own wrong. In criminal cases, too it is a rule, that errors in form shall be taken advantage of as soon as is reasonable after they occur, or a waiver of the advantage shall be inferred; and an indictment may be removed, without certiorari, by delivery of the Justices, per manu propria. Here, the defendants appeared gratis, and never objected to the imputed errors, for a year after their trial. Hawk. B. 2. c. 27. s. 102. 2 Stra. 843. 2 Hale, 213. 2 Ld. Raym. 1518, 9.
But, independent of this general course of reasoning and authority, the certiorari is well directed and returned. The true designation and official style of the Judges must be 'Judges of the Court of Common Pleas;' for, their commissions are only in that character; and 'Judges of the Court of Quarter Sessions,' is a style of office unknown to the constitution and laws. The certiorari is directed 'to the Judges of the Court of Common pleas, for Luzerne county, and every of them, to remove the indictment depending before them, or some of them.' Now, the indictment must have been depending before them, or some of them, sitting as a Court of Quarter Sessions. The only us of a description is, to ascertain the person required to do an act; and here the description does ascertain the persons, who composed the Court of Quarter Sessions; who are, therefore, the persons, before whom the indictment was found; who ought to transmit the record to the superior Court; and who have sufficiently done so, by returning it to the Judges of the Supreme Court, those Judges being the constitutent members of the Circuit Court, sitting in the county of Luzerne.
Nor is the objection to the description of the indictment more valid, than the objection to the description of the Judges. The certiorari does not, in fact, call for the removal of an indictment [4 U.S. 316, 318] | <urn:uuid:88eb6268-5004-4a68-9a02-de103df7c126> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/4/316 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950808 | 1,113 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Tuesday, 30 September 2008 12:00 AM
Four Sector Skills Councils (SSCs) have announced they are joining forces to secure the future of the UK manufacturing and engineering sectors through the Productivity and Competitiveness (PAC) programme. The PAC Programme has been formed by leading engineers who have pooled their core techniques in lean process and manufacturing to create a new and different approach specifically designed to help smaller companies.
The alliance of SSCs, called the Manufacturing Skills Alliance (MSA), is made up of:
- Cogent, the SSC for the Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals, Oil and Gas, Nuclear, Petroleum and Polymer Industries
- Improve, the SSC for the Food and Drink Manufacturing Industry
- Proskills, the SSC for the Building Products, Coatings, Extractives, Furniture, Glass, Paper and Printing Manufacturing and Processing Industries
- Semta, the SSC for Science, Engineering and Manufacturing Technologies
A recent PAC/B-IT pilot programme in the West Midlands has anticipated a total increase in profitability of more than £1.3million. The pilot saw 14 companies go through the PAC programme with companies involved seeing an average of £93,000 increase in profitability. One company involved, HydroBolt, a manufacturer and supplier of bespoke fasteners from Wolverhampton, saw a continuous improvement and a £9,000 increase in output.
Through measurements of quality, cost and delivery, on site PAC analysts work to assess the performance of manufacturing and engineering companies and facilitate increased productivity and bottom line benefit through seven key measures. In order that skills and knowledge acquired are sustainable, selected staff subsequently undertake Business Improvement Techniques (B-IT) NVQ qualifications.
Joanna Woolf, Chief Executive of Cogent, a member of the Manufacturing Skills Alliance said:
"We are delighted that the pilot has been such a tremendous success. PAC enables employers to really increase and sustain productivity and competitiveness. According to recent Semta research, skills shortages are estimated to cost £700 million per year in lost productivity in England alone which highlights that programmes like PAC and B-IT are essential in enabling UK companies to compete globally; the benefits of PAC are clear and quantifiable and can have a huge impact on the bottom line of small to medium sized businesses."
Companies interested in finding out more about PAC should contact Semta Customer Services on 0845 643 9001 or email firstname.lastname@example.org or visit www.semta.org.uk
- Ends -
For further information please contact:
James Cameron at Consolidated PR on 020 7781 2316 or email: email@example.com
NOTES TO EDITORS
· The PAC programme is an initiative by the Manufacturing Skills Alliance i.e. Cogent, Improve, Proskills and Semta and various National Skills Academies. PAC was originally launched by Industry Forum.
· The PAC and B-IT programme takes 6 to 9 months, and the total cost to the company ranges from £3k to £5k.
· There are currently around 20 PAC analysts in the UK and the number is growing.
There is a network of 25 employer-led Sector Skills Councils (SSCs) tasked by the governments of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland with ensuring employers have people with the right skills to boost productivity and competitiveness.
Cogent (Sector skills council for the chemicals, pharmaceuticals, nuclear, oil and gas, petroleum and polymer industries): www.cogent-ssc.com
Cogent is the sector skills council for the chemicals, pharmaceuticals, nuclear, oil and gas, petroleum and polymer industries. It is the voice of employers in these sectors and is working with them to create a skills environment that businesses need to be innovative, competent, productive and sustainable. There are 20,000 companies and 90,000 employees in Cogent's sector.
Improve Ltd (Sector Skills Council for the Food and Drink Manufacturing Industry in the UK): www.improveltd.co.uk
Improve Ltd is dedicated to addressing the skills needs of the industry. ImproveSkills has been introduced to highlight the great work which Improve Ltd is undertaking in addressing the specific skills issues faced in the industry.
Proskills (Sector Skills Council for the process and manufacturing sector): www.proskills.co.uk
Proskills is the SSC for the Process and Manufacturing sector, a major part of the UK economy, including the Coatings, Extractives, Glass, Building Products, Printing, Paper and the Furniture, Furnishings and Interiors industries, consisting of 55,000 employers and over 800,000 employees.
Semta (Sector Skills Council for Science, Engineering and Manufacturing Technologies): www.semta.org.uk
Semta is the employer-led skills council for Science, Engineering and Manufacturing Technologies in the UK. The sectors it represents are: Aerospace, Automotive, Bioscience, Electrical, Electronics, Maintenance, Marine, Mathematics, Mechanical, Metals and Engineered Metal Products and Science. Its role is to the raise skills levels and competitiveness in the 76,000 companies and 1.9 million-strong workforce that make up these sectors | <urn:uuid:27c45545-55db-47da-b4f4-1f1369049715> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.politics.co.uk/opinion-formers/cogent/article/cogent-sector-skills-councils-partnership-plan-set-to-benefi | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933451 | 1,078 | 1.625 | 2 |
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Put your club online
9:19am Thursday 9th October 2008 in Your Say
Everything from your local knitting club to charities, childcare nurseries to yoga classes in Trafford can now be found at a click of a button. A new online database listing hundreds of community groups has been launched at www.trafford.gov.uk/communitygroups. Local groups can raise their profile and reach a wider audience by promoting their presence on the internet, through Trafford Council's new online community database. As well as providing key information about the group such as meeting times, venues and contact details the facility can be used to recruit volunteers, available 24 hours a day from any location with access to the internet. Visit www.trafford.gov.uk/communitygroups if you want to add your organisation to the database. If you don't have your own internet you can access it for free at any Trafford library. Just ask a member of staff for details.
Action for Sustainable Living, in partnership with Trafford Council, is hosting a Natural Products Event, on 14 October, from 6:30-8:30pm. The event will be held at Victoria Park Infants School, Henshaw Street, Stretford. There will be information about the benefits to the environment and our own health by stopping the use of chemical products in our homes. There will be workshops showcasing natural products and visitors will also get the chance to find out how to make their own soap and cleaning materials from simple ingredients which can be found around the house. Visit www.afsl.org.uk to find out more about action for sustainable living. | <urn:uuid:6c080c89-7bc1-4378-95ff-3a43e4f002e8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.messengernewspapers.co.uk/yoursay/yourblogs/traffordblog/3741281.Put_your_club_online/?ref=rss | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934248 | 348 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Martha's Vineyard Charter School scores high marks in Botball
Martha's Vineyard Times File Photo
In late January, Martha's Vineyard Public Charter School students, Zale Narkiewicz, Cassius Paquet, Franklin Pelcher, and Lucy Thompson and science teacher Jane Paquet attended workshops where they received their instructions and the parts they would need to compete in the 2012 Massachusetts Botball Competition at the UMass Lowell Costello gym.
That gave them six weeks to build and program their robots to compete.
Unlike the other competing schools, the Charter School fielded two teams. The boys' team included Zale, Franklin, Cassius, and Jared Rivard. The girls' team included Violet Kennedy, Bella Maidoff, Lucy Thompson, and Alistair Rizza.
More than just learning programming fundamentals, these students developed their own way to function as a team by creating team strategies for decision making and setting up mechanisms for conflict resolution. For the team to function successfully they needed to manage time and materials as they learned to delegate responsibility.
Many factors came into play during the scoring. The teams arrived knowing that their rolling robots must perform specific tasks on a prescribed game board about the size of a ping-pong table. In addition to scoring points for their programmed maneuvers, teams were expected to present documentation demonstrating their work prior to game day and their understanding and knowledge of the processes involved.
The boys' team came in 5th overall. The girls' received the "Spirit Award" for exemplifying the spirit of Botball. The two teams formed an "alliance match" and came in 1st place in that category with the highest score.
"The documentation scores our students received this year were the highest we've ever gotten," science teacher Jane Paquet said. "I am incredibly proud of the ways in which they worked together and with each other."
Paul Karasik is Charter School development director. | <urn:uuid:490a7bb3-a596-46cf-a3fb-81414167109a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mvtimes.com/2012/04/25/marthas-vineyard-charter-school-scores-high-marks-botball-10433/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972065 | 392 | 1.757813 | 2 |
LANSING, MI (WHTC) - Is the Indians’ nickname worth about 440 thousand dollars a year to keep?
That may be the question Saugatuck Public Schools officials may be facing as their district is one of 35 statewide listed in a complaint filed by the state Department of Civil Rights with colleagues in the US Education Department, asking that all federal funding for those districts be halted until such monikers, symbols and costumed mascots for athletic teams that the DCR deems offensive to Native Americans be changed. The 440 grand is what the Lakeshore school district gets from Washington, about six percent of its overall budget.
While Superintendent Rolfe Timmerman and other Saugatuck officials have been told by district attorneys to sit tight on the matter until a decision from Washington is made, state House Representative Bob Genetski has authored a letter to the DCR, signed by several of his colleagues in the Legislature, requesting that the complaint be withdrawn so that the issue can be dealt with locally first. The Saugatuck Republican has also pledged to sponsor legislation that would have Lansing pay the costs of the nickname and mascot changeover, should the federal complaint be successful.
The only tangible signs of the “Indians” in Saugatuck are some names and a nearly 40-year-old Indian head painted in the gymnasium, as the district opted several years ago to emphasize the block S and the city’s name. | <urn:uuid:af6c85ca-13ef-4b11-9e69-610cb97d4432> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://whtc.com/news/articles/2013/feb/13/genetski-fires-letter-proposes-legislation-on-native-american-nickname-complaint/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963903 | 300 | 1.671875 | 2 |
The process of private sector involvement in reducing Greece’s debt burden was a “disaster”, the head of global sovereign ratings at Fitch said Thursday, warning that if talks on the cut creditors will take on their debt holding fail to conclude, this will pose a major risk to the euro zone.
The implementation of private sector involvement, or PSI, in Greece was ” frankly a disaster,” David Riley said at a conference in Paris.
The PSI process in Greece has had a lasting impact for the entire euro zone, as sovereign default and restructuring were brought to the table, Riley said.
“Our fear is that the genie is out of the bottle and it’s very difficult to put that back in. One of the major potential negative shocks [for the euro zone] is if the whole PSI exercise in Greece is mishandled, or they are not able to reach agreement or unlock additional support,” he said.
(source: Dow Jones) | <urn:uuid:3ff6e6ed-d387-4191-912c-2362f59191b4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://greece.greekreporter.com/2012/01/12/implementation-of-greek-psi-was-a-disaster/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963545 | 207 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Lexington, Virginia • October 14, 2009
Pam Luecke, the Donald W. Reynolds Professor of Business Journalism at Washington and Lee University, will address a workshop for journalists on covering economic issues on Wednesday, Oct. 21, in Richmond.
Sponsored by W&L and the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, the one-day event, "Economics Made Easy: A Journalism Workshop," is designed for journalists in Virginia and West Virginia who want to gain better understanding of economic concepts and current economic issues.
Luecke's presentation is titled "From Data to Deadlines: Finding Great Stories in Economic Reports." She teaches courses on reporting on the economy and business. Luecke was previously editor of the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader. She surprised reporting teams that won Pulitzer Prizes at the Hartford Courant and the Louisville Courier-Journal.
Others presenting at the workshop include columnist John Berry, who has covered the economy for the Washington Post, Bloomberg News and other publications, along with Jeffrey M. Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond and several other officials of the bank.
For additional information, go to the event's Web site. | <urn:uuid:bcd4bd89-d02f-4453-acb6-aecd3025d572> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wlu.edu/x35839.xml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948758 | 242 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Journalist Kati Marton
Who she is: Award-winning journalist and author of several books including her latest, “Enemies of the People”
What she does: For her new book, the Hungarian-born writer dove headfirst into the files of the Hungarian Secret Police (known as the AVO). There, she found the fascinating and sometimes excruciating details of the controversial careers of her parents — Endre and Illona Marton — two journalists who during the 1950s wrote hundreds of articles for the U.S.-based Associated Press and United Press about what was going on behind the Iron Curtain.
Why she does it: In addition to being married to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and previously to Peter Jennings, Kati has had a long and impressive career as a reporter. Her new book, she says, was a way of honoring her now-deceased parents who not only shaped her career and life, but helped put an end to the Cold War.
WHAT LIFE IS LIKE WHEN YOUR PARENTS ARE CONSIDERED “ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE”
By Hope Katz Gibbs
“You are opening a Pandora’s box,” author Kati Marton was warned when she began the research for her new book, Enemies of the People: My Family’s Journey to America.
The Hungarian-born writer paid little attention and dove headfirst into the files of the Hungarian Secret Police (known as the AVO). There, she found the fascinating and sometimes excruciating details of the controversial careers of her parents — Endre and Illona Marton — two journalists who during the 1950s wrote hundreds of articles for the U.S.-based Associated Press and United Press about what was going on behind the Iron Curtain.
Now an accomplished journalist herself, Marton felt compelled to understand the intricacies and courage of her parents who were enmeshed in a nail-biting game of cat and mouse with the AVO. In fact, close friends-turned-informers relayed the Martons’ every move to the Secret Police who were determined to arrest them. The Marton’s only made it worse by spurring easy friendships within the American legation, which afforded them an affluent lifestyle and consequently allied them with the “enemy” in the minds of the AVO.
This eventually led to their imprisonment for six years for charges of espionage.
“All my life, my parents’ defiance of the Communists, their stubborn courage as the last independent journalists until their arrest, trial and conviction as CIA spies, has been at the core of our family identity,” Marton writes in the introduction of her book. “On Feb. 25, 1955, at two in the morning, following a game of bridge at the home of the U.S. military attaché, my father was abducted by six agents of the AVO (the Hungarian Secret Police). His arrest was front-page news in The New York Times. Four months later, they came for my mother.”
Before moving to America, Marton and her sister Juli were sent to live with a Hungarian family named Hellei. “Everything about them made me long for my parents and our old life,” Marton shares.
Indeed, this poignant memoire is at once a history lesson of the Cold War, and a love letter to the people who shaped her life.
“No one played a bigger role in my life than my father, who was so sparing with praise,” Marton writes toward the end of the book. “I think I even chose my life partners with him in mind. In 1977, when I was hired as an ABC News foreign correspondent, Papa told me to observe and learn from Peter Jennings. ‘Now there is a man who has all the important qualities: intelligence, a sense of the world, great good looks — a man, Kati, who has it all.’
“So, I recall thinking at the time that this is the sort of man he would like as his son-in-law. Until the end of his life, though we had divorced, he considered Peter, the father of his grandchildren, as a son-in-law. And vice versa. After I married [Ambassador] Richard Holbrooke, then an assistant secretary of state, Richard and Papa would sit for hours reminiscing.”
In the epilogue, Marton admits she would not have written this book if her parents were still alive. “Most deaths bring both grief and relief. With my parents’ deaths the taboo of the past was lifted.” | <urn:uuid:7618ae68-4ec5-439c-9bea-00ef22f21130> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://trulyamazingwomen.com/the-women/journalist-kati-marton | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980727 | 963 | 1.59375 | 2 |
The following data is extracted from Hunter Family History.
SUMMERS HUNTER: C.B.E. 1918; J.P.; M. Inst. C.E., etc.; Chairman and Managing Director, The North-Eastern Marine Engineering Co., Ltd., Wallsend-on-Tyne and Sunderland; b. 12 July 1856; s. of John Ranson Hunter and Mary Isabella Dunliffe Hunter; educ.: Royal Academy, Inverness; privately; Wedgewood Institute, Burselem. Apprenticed to Barker & Cope General Engineers at Kidsgrove Stoke-on-Trent; joined the Northeastern Marine Eng. Co., Ltd., at their Dunserland works, 1880; after a short time in the shops, went to sea for two years, taking his Chief Engineers Certificate, after which he was appointed on the Staff of the North-Eastern Marine Eng. Co. at their Wallsend works; General Manager, 1898; took an active part in the Volunteer Movement being instrumental in forming two companies in Wallsend; held the rank of Captain in one of the battalions of the Northumberland Fusiliers; during the war held appointments on various Government Committies, including the Board of Trade Shipping and Ship-building Comm. The Tyne and Wear Board Management of Ministry of Munitions for shell production; Vice Pres., Institution of Naval Architects. Address: 1 Monor Terrace, Tynemouth.
Source: Hunter Family History | <urn:uuid:b2036d8c-4098-44fe-b314-fd5deb77ab21> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.accessgenealogy.com/scripts/data/database.cgi?file=Data&report=SingleArticle&ArticleID=0000775 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938182 | 304 | 1.75 | 2 |
Noise Canceling Headphones
There’s an exciting new innovation in the world of headphone technology, and it has to do with the canceling of what we like to call “noise.” Our definition of “noise” is any unwanted sound. In busy office environments, noise unfortunately abounds. Peripheral chatter is commonplace in busy work environments, and it naturally impedes your employees’ ability to do their jobs. As part of our research and development, We have developed noise canceling headphones that we have incorporated into our line of headsets. | <urn:uuid:730df0ad-aac3-4f19-9395-560a432928ed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ceramic-center.com/tag/drive-thru-headsets/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960028 | 119 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Forbes Ranks The Corporate College
Forbes’ annual list of “America’s Top Colleges” is out, and with it comes the yearly debate over the significance, bias, and purpose of college rankings.
While many institutions dismiss college rankings as subjective and discourage prospective students from considering them too heavily, lists like Forbes’ are a regular feature of the college search landscape. Though not officially endorsed by institutions of higher education, rankings do factor in a college’s reputation and public image.
Here’s how the ‘Cac stacks up this year:
2. Williams College
13. Amherst College
14. Bowdoin College
21. Wesleyan University
25. Colby College
32. Tufts University
42. Middlebury College
64. Hamilton College
70. Connecticut College
76. Bates College
89. Trinity College
In order to understand college rankings, it’s important to examine methodology. Forbes’ approach is consistent with its brand, attempting to measure institutions of higher education as businesses. Considering students as investments, Forbes works with the Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP) to measure five categories to assess what the return on such an investment might be.
- Student Satisfaction
- Post-Graduate Success
- Student Debt
- Four-year Graduation Rate
- Academic Success
The full methodology report is available here.
The categories sound routine – the sort of thing rattled off in an info-session or college fair – but their respective breakdowns reveal weaknesses in the study’s methodology.
For example, 17.5% of the assessment relies on student evaluations from RateMyProfessor.com. Though some studies have shown a positive correlation between RateMyProfessor (RMP) and institutions’ internal student evaluations of teaching (SET), as a student I have to doubt the value of using such a site as a quantitative measure of teaching quality. Though I have filled out more Amherst course evaluations than I can count, I have never reviewed any professor on RMP. This isn’t to say that no one is using the site, nor is it to argue that the reviews on RMP are inaccurate. Rather, I think it’s important to think about who uses RMP and how they fit into the larger picture of college students.
Another “woolly” factor in Forbes’ methodology is the use of Who’s Who in America, a compilation of influential people and prominent members of society, as a measure of Post-Grad Success. Again, we must question who is being excluded from Forbes’ measuring tools.
Similarly, salaries of alumni as measured by PayScale.com accounts for 15% of Forbes’ rankings. The CCAF methodology explains:
The “PayScale Salary Survey,” which is updated frequently, is one of the largest online salary surveys in the world. Persons complete the “PayScale Salary Survey” in exchange for a free salary report that anonymously compares them to other people with similar jobs in similar locations. In addition to individual surveys, PayScale receives data from employers administered on behalf of trade associations.
Yet again, we must question if the respondents of the “PayScale Salary Survey” adequately and fairly represent each college that Forbes evaluates for its annual list. Increasing numbers of graduates, especially from small liberal arts colleges, are going into teaching and non-profit work, neither of which is especially lucrative.
Editor Michael Noer comments that, “We try to look at colleges as a consumer might look at them,” examining, “things that matter if you’re going to be spending that kind of money.”
“That kind of money,” is significant, up to $250,000 for four years. Given that figure, Forbes approach to rankings seems justified, eschewing factors like selectivity or reputation in favor of diluting education to a mutually beneficial relationship between consumer and producer.
As a liberal arts student, even using those terms to describe education rubs me the wrong way. If liberal arts education had a motto, it would be “learning for learning’s sake.” The spirit of intellectual pursuit and the joy of learning remain at the heart of schools in the ‘Cac, and attempting to measure and rank something as intangible as education seems cold and suspect.
Traditionally, much of the pushback against Forbes’ rankings has come from skeptics, asking how an Ivy-League school can rank below “Insert small college name here.” I don’t write to complain about the rankings, but rather to think critically about them (another tagline of liberal arts). The ‘Cac obviously does well in Forbes’ rankings (Williams College was ranked #1 for 2010 and 2011), and Noer goes so far as to say that Forbes’ list “tends to reward small liberal arts schools.”
I write because I think that evaluating educational institutions first and foremost as businesses underlines a key problem in attitudes towards higher education. The CCAF report assesses that, “Other things being equal, students will choose a school that provides them the opportunity to earn the highest possible salary upon graduation.” This assumption is flawed. Though earning potential is a factor in many prospective students’ decisions, it’s merely that – a factor. To use the hypothetical, “other things being equal,” is only a hypothetical. Each college is different, even from its peers. Though the ‘Cac is sometimes lumped together into “New England, small, liberal arts colleges,” ask a Williams student if they think the Williams/Amherst divide can be reduced to one factor.
“Reading holistically” has become an in-vogue phrase to describe how some colleges assess student applications. It means that the admission committee does its best to consider the whole applicant, not just the numbers. I would encourage the readers of Forbes’ list and other college rankings to “read holistically” as well. Rankings are numbers that seeks to attach themselves to schools based on criteria chosen by a particular organization.
What number can you give to crisp autumn air, the smell of library books, the first spring day that brings pale students out of their rooms and onto the quad? A two? A seventy-six? What number embodies eating Chinese chicken wings with your professor and his wife, a Primal Scream during finals, or chatting with Campus Police on a Saturday night?
A college is in many ways immeasurable, and while I cannot fault Forbes for its ranking – it is likely very useful for the right audience – I cannot say that 2, 13, 14, 21, 25, 32, 42, 64, 70, 76, and 89 define the ‘Cac.
Forbes’ editor Michael Noer comments on the rankings: | <urn:uuid:9e41ce6e-4f25-4a44-ac23-6afab78f2876> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://inthecac.com/2012/08/03/forbes-ranks-the-corporate-college/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953801 | 1,437 | 1.59375 | 2 |
POSTSURGICAL & TOTAL JOINT REHAB
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We also help people with total joint replacements (e.g., knee and hip) and other postsurgical rehab challenges. Our experienced physical therapy team customizes treatments and tailors programs for fast, long-lasting results. Our therapists offer focused, hands-on care for all types of orthopedic pain and dysfunction, including:
- Shoulder & knee rehab for nonoperative pain or injury as well as gentle postsurgical rehabilitation after rotator cuff surgery, ACL repair or total joint replacement (hip, knee & shoulder replacements have become common).
- Hip pain & postsurgical rehab.
- Chronic, acute back & neck problems.
- Foot & ankle pain, including conditions such as plantar fasciitis, arthritis pain & chronic ankle instability. We offer manual therapy, gait analysis & selective use of modalities for pain relief & improved function.
- Wrist & hand pain & postsurgical rehab.
- Sports injuries & fractures.
Total joint replacements are becoming more and more common, particularly in older people with arthritic joints. The bone ends of our joints are covered with smooth cartilage. Healthy cartilage allows easy, pain-free movement. But cartilage that is damaged by arthritis creates friction and makes joints stiff and painful.
Healthy joints are enclosed by fibrous tissue with a smooth lining called a synovium. Synovial fluid is produced by this tissue and reduces both friction and wear on the joint.
Over 500,000 total joint replacements are now performed in the United States annually. Total joint replacement is one of the great orthopedic surgical advances of this century. It resulted from the pioneering efforts of an orthopedic surgeon who worked with engineers to develop the technology and materials used to make joint replacements for hips, knees and shoulders. We focus our rehabilitation programs on active techniques that enable patients to reach their maximum potential quickly and safely. Getting patients quickly back to their active lifestyle is always our first priority.
Our mission is to help people function at their best. We want you to move without pain and get stronger so you can avoid future injuries. So what would you like to do again without pain? Play tennis or golf? Run? Walk? Participate in a team sport? Enjoy a hobby? Just get back to living?
SportFit’s dedicated professionals – accustomed to working closely with pro athletes from the Florida Marlins and other MLB teams, Olympic athletes and players from the NFL – can use the same techniques and rehab programs to help you reach your goals safely, effectively and quickly. Please call us to explore how we can help you with all your orthopedic and postsurgical rehab needs.
For more detailed information on Total Joint Replacement, click here to visit our Patient Education Library. | <urn:uuid:3ee923e3-18c0-4539-8227-80bb0112d3c8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sportfitrehab.com/PostsurgicalTotalJointRehab/tabid/1354/Default.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93621 | 628 | 1.695313 | 2 |
The annual APEC Summit in Japan ended last week after four days of negotiations among leaders of the world's strongest economies. Working toward solving the global economic crisis, the participants are one step closer to resolving one of the main goals for this year's summit, which was to begin establishing the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP). This aims to link the advanced economies to developing countries in Asia and Latin America.
Asia Society will be hosting a post-APEC Summit panel discussion, "Seeking Prosperity After Crisis," in New York, November 30, to review the main issues of the Yokohama Summit and what they mean for the region's future. US Senior Official for APEC Kurt Tong will be joined in conversation by President of the National Center for APEC Monica Whaley at this year's program. The program will also include a discussion on key private sector initiatives being developed to support the APEC 2011 USA hosting effort. To attend, view ticketing details here.
Join the discussion: What positive outcomes were achieved at this year's Yokohama APEC Summit? | <urn:uuid:f493ff6b-aa0a-47e6-bbaf-87fbfc903a5c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/2010-apec-summit-success-or-failure | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936583 | 222 | 1.5 | 2 |
By Anthony Esposito and Moises Avila
SANTIAGO (Reuters) - As the debt crisis raged across the euro zone last year, Madrid-native Laura Tapias and her partner found themselves out of work. With nearly one in four Spaniards unemployed, their prospects looked grim.
After four months of fruitless job-hunting at home, she headed across the Atlantic to Santiago with her boyfriend who had got a job in Chile's capital city.
Two days later she found work as a hydrogeologist at an environmental consulting firm in the Santiago business district dubbed 'Sanhattan' for its resemblance to Manhattan's skyline. She isn't the only foreigner or Spaniard to recently be hired there.
"I dropped off my resume and the next day they said 'yes' at the interview. It happened so fast I couldn't believe it," said the mild-mannered Tapias, 33, adding that she has received a warm welcome in Chile.
Across the street, construction workers are putting the finishing touches to retailer Cencosud's
A buoyant economy, low unemployment and rising wages have been luring foreign professionals to the copper-exporting Andean nation of 16.6 million people, which is in desperate need of skilled workers.
Chile's economic success story, one shared by many of its commodities-rich neighbors, is turning the tables on many years of migration by Latin Americans hoping to make their fortune in former colonial power Spain and other wealthy European nations.
EUROPEAN BRAIN DRAIN
Despite their much larger economies and populations, regional giants Brazil and Mexico received roughly the same number of legal immigrants as Chile between 2003 and 2010, according to a report by the Organization of American States, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the Inter-American Development Bank.
Peruvians, Bolivians, Argentinians, Colombians and other Latin Americans got the lion's share of Chile's work visas last year, though Europeans received them at a faster pace.
With Spain stuck in its second recession since 2009, Spaniards are at the forefront of a wave of Europeans heading to Chile.
Chilean visas for residents of western European nations grew 39 percent through October and surged 84 percent for Spanish nationals, according to government data. Many of them are for skilled professionals like Tapias.
Chile's attraction is an economic growth rate expected to reach up to 5.25 percent in 2013, its fourth straight year of sturdy increase following an expansion in gross domestic product (GDP) of 6 percent in 2011 and 6.1 percent in 2010.
FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND NEW JOBS
Over the last decade, the number of work visas being granted by Chile has risen by an average 25 percent per year and demand for more foreign professionals has spiked.
That has prompted an overhaul of the country's clunky and outdated immigration legislation, which dates from the early days of the Pinochet dictatorship. The idea is to allow greater agility to recruit skilled workers from abroad.
Forecast mining investments of $100 billion over the next 10 to 12 years alone will require a fresh generation of skilled laborers to fill some 100,000 new direct jobs and another 300,000 indirect jobs, the influential Sonami mining association said this month.
Not having the people, foreign or local, to fill available posts could crimp economic growth and productivity, employment analysts say, pointing to similar woes suffered by regional powerhouse Brazil.
Brazil's government said last year it was exploring ways to ease immigration rules in order to attract up to 10 times more foreign professionals to spur economic growth.
A lack of skilled workers is one of many bottlenecks that brought the world's sixth-largest economy to a near standstill in 2012, a fate Chile hopes to avoid.
"Chile realizes that without the help of immigrants it'll be very difficult to fill the number of jobs required for certain investments and to ultimately boost the economy," Mario Cassanello, the head of Chile's Immigration Office told Reuters.
"We need laws that will give us more flexibility and will reduce bureaucracy," he added.
FULL EMPLOYMENT VS MASS UNEMPLOYMENT
Chile's immigration reform bill aims to cut red tape, create a ministerial committee to define migratory policy, and allow the use of immigration quotas in order to step up the inflow of certain specialties, such as surgeons, when needed.
It would also aim to ease the granting of visas to work in labor-starved regions, such as Chile's mining-intensive north.
The government is also mulling modifying a law that restricts companies with more than 25 employees from having foreigners make up more than 15 percent of their payroll.
"In Chile, the problem isn't that there's an excess of workers. On the contrary, there's a shortage of workers," Finance Minister Felipe Larrain said late last year.
Chile's unemployment fell to a near three-year low of 6.2 percent for the September-November period.
"These levels are close to full employment," Larrain added.
Labor demand has boosted salaries, with wages rising an average 6.5 percent in the 12 months to November.
In contrast, Spain's unemployment rate soared to 26 percent in the fourth quarter, the highest level since measurements began in the 1970s.
"How can you tell it's getting difficult (to hire workers)? Companies are asking for more work permits, so they can recruit people from abroad," said Jonas Prising, president of global staffing services company ManpowerGroup
"Countries like Australia, Canada, Singapore, Panama in some cases, they understand that they don't have enough of a labor pool. They also understand that if you have enough skilled labor, companies will invest in your country, you can continue to grow," he added.
THE COST OF INEQUALITY
Fuelling the worker void in Chile is an ill-equipped education system which is too costly for many students and has proved incapable of meeting the demands of a growing economy.
Limited access to quality education means income inequality has barely budged in Chile since 1990, making the country the worst ranked in that category among members of the OECD.
Chile spent $6,863 per student in tertiary education in 2010. The OECD average was $13,728.
Fed up with the situation, students have staged massive protests demanding an education overhaul. The protests pummeled the popularity rating of conservative President Sebastian Pinera and helped usher in a tax reform to help pay for increased public education spending.
"It's going to take a decade or so before you see any type of payoff. In the near term, (workers) are going to have to come from somewhere given that there isn't a real wealth of skilled workers in Chile," said Michael Henderson, economist at Capital Economics in London. "People from overseas are going to be the best short-term bet."
It is not just high-skilled jobs that employers are having difficulty filling. About nine percent of farmers polled by industry group National Agricultural Society said they will leave some produce unharvested next season due to a shortage of hands.
"Every year the problem increases," Ronald Bown, head of the ASOEX fruit exporters' association said.
However, the flow of people seeking opportunities in the South American nation -- that has so far defied the odds of a sharp slowdown -- shows no signs of letting up.
Tapias says she had little chance of getting a job in Spain. She laments having fewer vacation days in Chile and misses her family.
"I don't really have enough time to visit Spain. I'm sure my family will come to visit though," said Tapias, who has made Chilean friends but spends most of her time with fellow Spaniards.
Asked when she might head home, she said: "We don't have a return ticket ... we're not sure if we're going back."
(Writing by Anthony Esposito; Editing by Helen Popper and Andrew Hay) | <urn:uuid:91d1857b-cf4f-4b04-9d0c-a780285d4490> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wkzo.com/news/articles/2013/jan/25/europeans-fill-jobs-void-in-chiles-thriving-economy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964629 | 1,658 | 1.6875 | 2 |
PSB’s “Special Sauce” Explained: In response to a question from a member of our group, Paul explained his thinking on what it takes to build loudspeakers that will work in the widest possible range of listening rooms.
In the real world, explained Barton, a major variable is the relative “liveness” or “deadness” of the speaker buyer’s listening room—something the speaker designer can’t possibly know in advance. According to Barton, almost any competently designed speaker that provided neutral or flat on-axis frequency response will work well in a dead (that is, very heavily damped) room, because the room will typically swallow up most of the speakers’ off-axis output no matter how good or how bad the off-axis response might be. But where the game becomes challenging is in trying to get speakers also to work well in relatively “live” or resonant rooms with lots of reflective surfaces. In those rooms, smooth off-axis response becomes critically important, because listeners will hear much of the speakers’ off-axis output reflected back toward their ears.
While noting that flat on-axis response is important, Barton emphasized that it is only a first step toward sonic excellence. The art of the design game, notes Barton, involves finding ways to make sure that off-axis response rolls off gradually and very evenly, so that there are no sharp off-axis response peaks or dips with which to contend (since such peaks or dips tend to stick out like the proverbial “sore thumb” in more lively rooms). To help ensure that PSB speakers work well both in “live” or “dead” rooms—or anything in between—Barton works very hard to optimize both the on and off-axis response of his speakers. And as you might have guessed by now, there are specific test regimens associated with this goal.
Although Paul did not have time to show us precisely how such tests are conducted, he explained that his standard practice is to measure all PSB speakers in 15-degree increments from the front side (from straight ahead, or 0 degrees, on around to 90 degrees off axis), both in horizontal and vertical axes. Then, he measures output from the rear of the speaker in 30-degree increments, again in horizontal and vertical axes. Barton keeps refining and adjusting his designs until he is satisfied that off-axis response is as smooth and evenly balanced as possible, yet without compromising smooth, flat on-axis response. This, says Barton, is the key to creating loudspeakers that will work well in most kinds of real-world rooms, a design practice we might describe as part of the “special sauce” behind the PSB brand.
In the second and final part of this blog, we’ll talk about the challenging and thoroughly eye-opening experience of participating in double blind listening tests in the NRC’s IEC-standard listening room. Until then, we wish you happy listening. | <urn:uuid:32935069-04fb-486f-b86c-0e6550fc9c32> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.avguide.com/blog/psb-s-paul-barton-takes-playbackhi-fi-guided-tour-canada-s-nrc-acoustics-labs-part-1?page=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963174 | 624 | 1.835938 | 2 |
May 21st, 2013 World Day for Cultural Diversity May 22nd, 2013 National Maritime Day May 22nd, 2013 World Biological Diversity Day May 25th, 2013 African Liberation Day May 26th, 2013 Trinity Sunday May 27th, 2013 Memorial Day May 27th, 2013 Jefferson Davis Birthday May 29th, 2013 International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers May 30th, 2013 Corpus Christi May 31st, 2013 World No Tobacco Day June 1st, 2013 Statehood Day June 3rd, 2013 Jefferson Davis Birthday June 4th, 2013 World Day for Child Victims of Aggression June 5th, 2013 World Environment Day June 6th, 2013 Isra and Mi'raj June 8th, 2013 World Oceans Day June 11th, 2013 Kamehameha Day June 12th, 2013 World Day Against Child Labour June 14th, 2013 World Blood Donor Day June 14th, 2013 Flag Day June 16th, 2013 Father's Day June 17th, 2013 Bunker Hill Day June 17th, 2013 World Day to Combat Desertification June 19th, 2013 Juneteenth June 20th, 2013 World Refugee Day June 20th, 2013 West Virginia Day June 21st, 2013 June Solstice
Fire King Anchor Hocking Jadeite Jadite "philbe" Mug Cup Shiny Inside & Out V.g. For Sale
I am listing and selling this item for a friend who has been a long time collector of Fire King's Jadite. This has been a very special part of her collection, but is willing to part with it because she does not a complete set of them. These mugs do not come up on very often, so please take this opportunity and offer ... offer ... offer!!! LOL.
Having said that ... this listing is for one jadite Philbe coffee mug. These mugs were produced by Anchor Hocking/Fire King.
These are very rare and very hard to find. This mug is the only one that I have ever seen.
Mug measures 3.5" tall.
The mug is in beautiful condition, very shiny inside and out. There are, however, 2 tiny fleabites on the inside rim (can be seen in pics, also). On the outside of the mug at the top is what appears to be as a scratch. It can be felt by the fingernail on the outside only.
As in common with many of Anchor Hocking's glassware, there are some places in the glass where the color changes slightly. On the inside, in the bottom are some light streaks but still smooth and shiny.
If you have any questions or comments or would like to see additional pictures, feel free to email me. Thanks for viewing my item.
Absolutely no International Sales.
This item has been shown 415 times.
Fire King Anchor Hocking Jadeite Jadite "philbe" Mug Cup Shiny Inside & Out V.g.: $825 | <urn:uuid:3b5c2c45-dd96-462c-ba4a-ea22ac33131d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.holidays.net/store/FIRE-KING-Anchor-Hocking-JADEITE-Jadite-PHILBE-Mug-Cup-SHINY-INSIDE-%26-OUT-VG_111012642452.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958448 | 597 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Well, I covered it in passing in an opinion piece in The Korea Herald over a year ago, and many times on the blog (and on Busan Haps) since, but hey: I admit that The Economist is probably a more authoritative-sounding source. See here then, for a discussion of how the dynamics of the Korean digital music industry are forcing labels to financially rely on celebrity endorsements, and which is a big factor behind why 2 out of 3 Korean advertisements feature them, one of the highest rates in the world.
While frustratingly brief, it does have some money quotes:
…SM Entertainment’s boss complains that even 1m downloads cannot cover the cost of making a music video….
….SM Entertainment and other purveyors of K-pop cover this shortfall at home by having their stars hawk the latest phone, or appear on television variety shows. The biggest labels have become adept at squeezing cash out of their pop stars’ names, rather than their music. But only a handful of musicians are famous enough to benefit.
South Korea’s old business model, perfected by its carmakers, was to use a captive home market as a launch-pad from which to invade foreign shores. The country’s pop musicians have turned this model upside down: they have to export their tunes to make up for meagre pickings at home.
A huge chunk of the money is made in “collectable” CDs and DVDs, which can run north of $150 per shot and are constantly churned out. It’s not a case of INVADING other shores you clueless dolt. It’s a case of using Youtube and videos as LOSS LEADERS to capture a small number (tens to hundreds of thousands) of hardcore fans who spend $100s US EACH to support their “fandom”
You don’t even begin to perceive it but in fact the Koreans are using a very progressive model… similar to League of Legends or FarmVille to give customers a free “taste” of the music. Like Kpop free to play MMOs also rely heavily on “whales” and heavily invested customers to carry the rest of the customer base. It has nothing to do with “invading” other shores. This is the strategy they have been using in Korea and are using around the world.
Finally, a quick request: please ask your Korean partners, friends, colleagues and so on if they know what “celebrity endorsement” is in Korean. If they struggle to answer, as my wife did, then I think that will be testament to just how pervasive they are here! (Eventually, she came up with “유명인 보증”). | <urn:uuid:069c0ba2-84fe-43f2-93b9-3b52f0669eed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thegrandnarrative.com/2012/08/23/k-pop-celebrity-endorsements/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960503 | 580 | 1.546875 | 2 |
La mosca ahogada
Spanish flies are different!
Reviewed by Martin Joergensen
At least the ones that are shown in this book. The flies that this book treats are not only tied in a very special fashion, but also all use Coq de Leon feathers. These alone make the flies stand out in a pack, but add the tying and fishing method and you have something unique.
The flies also made the book stand out when I was shopping in a Fnac store in Madrid - a large chain of stores, which have books, videos, cd's and much else.
The selection of fly fishing and fly tying books was not impressive. Actually the fishing selection as a whole was not impressive, but then again; the fishing potential on the dry, central plain where Madrid lies cannot be profound.
But this little book struck my retina and a quick leaf through it convinced me that this was the souvenir that I had been looking for during my business trip to Madrid. I immediately bought it.
Each patterns is photographed and the proper fishing time, proper method - even altitude - is described.
It's in Spanish, OK. And I don't read Spanish, sooo... You might think that we would make a strange couple. But not so. The book is clearly illustrated with some fine drawings and very special photos. My little knowledge of Spanish makes words like Plumas, mosca, and montaje make just a little sense.
- Tomás Gil
- La mosca ahogada
- Published by Editiones del Curueño
Av.Primo de Rivera, 23
24750 La Bañeza (León)
- ISBN 84-923501-4-8
- Price: 3,700 Spanish pesetas (or 22.27 Euros as it says on the price tag - the Spanish are very Euro-minded)
The flies tied herein are simple and very similar. They all make use of a thread body and a hackle made from the barbs of the beautiful Coq de Leon feathers. The flies are tied on spade hooks and can apparently either be snelled or tied on the leader with a loop behind the hackle. The drawings in the beginning clearly show how the flies are used and tied and the pictures accompanying the 100-or-so patterns give enough information to make you able to tie the flies.
A savage Northern European like myself is probably not able to appreciate the subtle differences between the different variations of the plumas de gallos de Leon - be it Indio, Pardo Aconchado, or Pardo Corzuno. Still the vast number of variations possible within such a narrow corner of fly tying can fascinate me.
The Spanish flies are fished in teams
with a bubble float.
I cannot say how well this book is written. It seems easily approachable and well structured. But I can judge the drawings and photos, which are both functional and beautiful. The flies are set on different backgrounds and sometimes slightly out of focus, but always clear enough to illustrate that precise pattern.
The first part of the book describes how the flies are fished, and that's almost the most fascinating part. The author uses a bubble float and a team of up to five flies, arranged in a very specific manner with certain types of flies at very accurate distances on the line and leader. The method and fly style seems to be common in Spain. A least I saw a box with flies and float in a large department store. I'd love to see this rare arrangement at work.
I do not doubt that these flies will work on a fly rod. They seem so universal and generic, and should be able to tempt a trout in any region.
The last chapter of the book is on the birds of Leon and their feathers. It shows the hens and roosters, the different types of feathers and coloration and the breeders. A perfect tour to round off this fascinating subject.
A rarity, yes but also a fascinating insight into a type of fishing and fly tying, which we don't often get to see. Spanish speaking or not: this book will give some entertaining hours in front of the fireplace or at the vice.
More stuff to look at on The Global FlyFisher
|These other stories on "Nymphs - Flies fishing under the surface imitating subadult insects" might also interest you:
More about Nymphs
|A few random articles for your entertainment| | <urn:uuid:70ef41f3-be2e-46f1-bd8d-6c4cc8650a92> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://globalflyfisher.com/reviews/books/gil.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947005 | 920 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Microsoft Windows Vista has brand new common file dialogs, but unfortunately the OpenFileDialog, SaveFileDialog and FolderBrowserDialog classes from System.Windows.Forms do not use them; they still get the old-style dialogs.
Ookii.VistaDialogs is a .Net 2.0 class library that allows you to use these new-style dialogs exactly the same way as you use the normal dialogs. In addition, it has been created in such a way that you can target both Vista and older versions of Windows (which don't have this new-style dialog) without any additional effort on your part.
The curious might want to know why exactly .Net doesn't use the new style dialogs. Vista provides a new, more powerful, API for accessing the common file dialogs, and obviously .Net 2.0 doesn't use this API, but this isn't the problem. In most cases, even when you just use the old GetOpenFileName API you get the new style dialog. The thing is, the Vista style dialogs do not support hooks, so if you use a hook, you get the old style dialog. And that's where the problem lies: .Net uses a hook so it can't use the Vista style dialogs.
Unfortunately, some of the functionality provided by .Net's FileDialog classes could only be achieved using hooks with the old API, so if I wanted to use the Vista style dialogs, I'd have to use the new API, and try to replicate all the functionality that way. The benefit to this is of course that if I want to, I can easily add more advanced functionality from the new API in the future (currently, Ookii.VistaDialogs just replicates the old functionality with the new dialogs, it doesn't expose any of the new features of the new API).
Using the new API seemed simple enough; it was after all a bunch of COM objects. Unfortunately, there was no type library for these objects, and their IDL definitions were hidden in a huge (60,000 lines) IDL file. Also, one of the functions took a HWND as parameter, which would need to be a IntPtr in my library to make sure I can correctly support both x86 and x64, and I needed some methods to use the PreserveSig attribute to get the functionality I need. TlbImp isn't good at those last two.
So what I ended up doing was creating my own IDL file with just those definitions from the big file I needed, compiling that into a type library with the MIDL compiler, then importing that using TlbImp, disassembling the generated interop library with Reflector, and then manually making the changes I needed.
Then, I could finally start on the classes themself, which fortunately wasn't all that difficult (the new API really is great). These classes have the exact same public interface as the original FileDialog classes in .Net, so all you need to do is replace all instances of the original classes with my classes in your code, and you're good to go. Like I said the classes fall back if the Vista style dialog is not supported, so it supports older versions of Windows as well. | <urn:uuid:a8fdcbeb-63b1-418a-8b39-84635b743b82> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ookii.org/Blog/vista_style_file_dialogs_in_net | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947294 | 668 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Scandal: The head of the House oversight panel suggests the real reason for the administration’s invoking executive privilege in the Fast and Furious case is to hide proof that the operation was part of a push for gun control.
Defenders of President Obama’s use of executive privilege to provide cover for Attorney General Eric Holder in the gun-running fiasco that resulted in the deaths of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and ICE Agent Jaime Zapata may dismiss it as just another conspiracy theory. But the suggestion by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., that the deadly operation was conceived to advance the administration’s gun-control agenda is quite plausible.
“Here’s the real answer as to gun control,” Issa said on ABC’s “This Week”: “We have email from people involved in this that are talking about using what they’re finding here to support the — basically assault weapons — ban or greater reporting.”
Issa was asked about the possible connection after comments he made at an NRA convention. “Could it be,” he said on NRA News’ “Cam & Company” program, “that what they really were thinking of was in fact to use this walking of guns in order to promote an assault weapons ban? Many think so. And they haven’t come up with an explanation that would cause any of us not to agree.”
Perhaps the answer is in the documents that Holder and Obama are risking much to hide.
Please share this post with your friends and comment below. If you haven’t already, take a moment to sign up for our free newsletter above and friend us on Twitter and Facebook to get real time updates. | <urn:uuid:c4519a58-f745-4fd3-b389-a8d924353787> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.westernjournalism.com/issas-right-tougher-gun-laws-fast-and-furious-goal/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958401 | 358 | 1.664063 | 2 |
“We Love You Mommy”
Sometimes I drive myself crazy thinking of crafts to do with my boys, but 9 times out of 10 the craft that gets the most love is the one made from the heart. No matter the size, cost, or time put into the crafted gift, if it comes from the heart, it’s priceless. Well, Mother’s Day is right around the bend, and what better day to create a “from the heart” craft is there?
I always play and active roll in the craft creations with my boys. Not just as the overseeing adult, but as an active participant as well. I’m basically a huge 5 year old with responsibility. I’m telling you this because this Mother’s Day craft revolves around finger paint, and we (I) love finger paint!
For this Mother’s Day craft we went with wall art. The boys and I went to our local Toy’s Я Us store for some materials we would need. We didn’t need much for this craft, but the finger paints were getting low and a good quality paper was needed. Like most of our crafting projects, the mini-adventures we go on when getting supplies is just as fun. Once we found what we were looking for we headed home. And yes, Dairy Queen is on our way home.
Mothers Day Craft For Kids
Here is what you will need for this craft:
- Finger Paint
- Paper (12″x18″ Glossy White/Heavy Weight/Non-absorbent)
We set up an area with our finger paints and paper. I set us up over the tile floor and laid an old sheet we had down over the tile. Chaos when crafting can be fun, but controlled chaos can be even funner. For the first hour the boys tried to find their groove with practice pieces of paper. Once they had their fill of random color schemes and wayward paint smears, I was ready to have them work on mommies craft. I took their fingers and dipped them in the finger paints. Then, I held their hands and helped them write “WE ❤ U MOMMY” in big blue lettering with the heart outlined in red. For some added love I took the boys shoes and socks off and dipped their feet in the paint. I had them place each foot on the paper and stamp it. After it dried we matted it and placed it in the frame. That’s it!
There isn’t much to this craft, but the thought and meaning is more then enough. I’m positive that mommy will cry tears of love and happiness when she receives this gift from her boys. I have no doubt that by Mother’s Day night, she will have the gift hanging in a highly visible location for all to see. Happy Mother’s Day! | <urn:uuid:3b2a4dc3-6794-49ad-8f38-02f54bf67530> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sasonandpobi.com/diy/crafts/daddy-time-mothers-day-craft-for-kids/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968416 | 604 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Forced Air furnace: air has unpleasant smell
This is my first post. I am a tenant in a new apartment. My landlord has not been too helpful with this problem so I am trying to find out info on my own.
The apt is actually the ground floor of an older house with a forced air heating system. The furnace in the basement looks fairly new, however, as do some of the air ducts. The floor vents are older though and may go back to the 1940s when the house was built. The furnace is a Nortron Electric furnace and seems to be working properly except that the smell that it sends up through the floor vents is quite unpleasant. It has an "old ashtray" smell, as I call it. It may not actually be related at all to cigarettes, but that is roughly how I would characterize it anyway, like putting your face down in a filled ashtray.
This is the first time I have lived in a place with forced air heat, so maybe this is just the way it smells?? Is this what people put up with though?
One thing I have noticed: if I put my face right down on the vents when the furnace comes on, it starts blowing cool air before the hot air comes up. I understand why this is (it takes a moment for the furnace to start warming up the air from the intake vents) but the interesting thing is that the cool air does not have the bad smell. In other words, it doesn't seem to be a problem with the duct system needing to be cleaned or something like that. When air blows through the system without being heated, it doesn't smell. It is the process of heating the air by the furnace that seems to be where the problem arises.
Again, is it just me, or is there something wrong here? Any help would be greatly appreciated! | <urn:uuid:79e92de9-187a-44ad-93f0-d595085ea754> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.houserepairtalk.com/f8/forced-air-furnace-air-has-unpleasant-smell-10166/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979444 | 379 | 1.84375 | 2 |
A multibillion-dollar Superstorm Sandy aid package was already approved by Congress, but some New York lawmakers are saying that's not enough. They are already taking steps to make sure more is done for our city.
Sen. Chuck Schumer is already looking ahead.
"Even though we got the $60 billion for Sandy we know our seas are rising, our planet is getting warmer and storms like sandy will certainly be more frequent," he said.
The senator said the New Yorkers who helped push the first Sandy bill through will need to fight for additional resources.
A comprehensive Army Corps of Engineers study was authorized to determine exactly what major infrastructure projects are needed to protect the coastline. The senator said he wants to make sure those plans are implemented.
"It means when the MTA rebuilds the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, they will also be allowed to put in what will prevent future flooding if God forbid there is another sandy," he said.
Schumer is not the only one focusing on phase two. So is City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a candidate for mayor.
"The City Council is taking proactive measures to pre-emptively protect homeowners who choose to elevate their homes," she said.
With 100,000 New York City homes suffering damage from Sandy -- and 2,000 deemed uninhabitable -- the speaker wants certain New Yorkers to have the option to elevate their homes, but in a safe, resourceful manner. Quinn said a new bill will be introduced at next week's City Council meeting.
"That bill will require that one, construction plans clearly state whether a project will involve home elevation work and two, contractors give 48 hours of notice to DOB before elevating a home which will give DOB opportunity to monitor the work," Quinn said.
Quinn said the bill will also require that elevation work be done with an approved, special inspector. She is asking the Department of Consumer Affairs to make it clear to homeowners the different types of work certain contractors are able to do.
The Army Corps of Engineers study is supposed to be completed in two years. Schumer wants it done in 18 months. Then he plans to push for more financial support, he said. | <urn:uuid:fa8b1e50-1af4-4bdb-aa60-53163ab4bdba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.myfoxdfw.com/story/21291953/lawmakers-outline-phase-2-of-storm-recovery | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966329 | 441 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Iran's gay and lesbian community is struggling to win some recognition by coming out in defiance of a regime that criminalises homosexuality.
A group of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Iranians have posted videos of themselves on Facebook in a campaign to highlight the discrimination against sexual minorities in Iran where homosexuals are put to death.
Hundreds of Iranians in and outside the country have joined a Facebook page, called "we are everywhere", which encourages members to share their personal stories online. Members of the campaign in Iran have posted audio messages or videos which do not reveal their identity while some outside talked about their sexual orientation freely.
"As a gay person, my biggest problem in Iran is that I cannot be my real self," said an Iranian gay man, only identified as Mehdi, who has posted a video online from inside Iran. "I always have to play a role. I always have to suppress my own existence and part of my identity and hide myself in fear from the society and potential problems that I might face."
In the video, Mehdi has shown his face from his mouth down. "Like this video, I always have to hide a part of myself from others in my life," he said.
Another video of an Iranian gay man, posted from outside the country, shows a man with his face out of the image, who has written his speech on a roll of kitchen towel which he scrolls down in front of camera. "I am an Iranian gay. I fear to show my real face, I fled Iran, I escaped from my own family, I was driven away from my country. Now, I am a gay refugee in Turkey and count the days, we are everywhere."
Turkey is home to many Iranian gay asylum seekers who have fled Iran through mountains. Many of them have complained that they have gone to Turkey to seek refuge but had been subject to homophobic attitudes from locals.
In recent years, Iranian homosexuals have founded at least two LGBT organisations outside the country. Some opposition media, such as the website of Radiozamaneh, an Iranian radio station based in Amsterdam, have devoted a specific section to the discussion of the homosexual issues. | <urn:uuid:0533a8cd-3f3d-4f15-b0a1-5eb7d515be12> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/11/gay-iranians-facebook-defiance | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980135 | 435 | 1.835938 | 2 |
The new report from Guardian Analytics is startling. Its thesis is that shrewd crooks have found techniques to enlist credit union employees in abetting their frauds.
Guardian Analytics, specialists in online banking fraud prevention, is not alleging that the credit union employees are in cahoots with the criminal. Quite the contrary.
Guardian Analytics has tracked the scam in multiple cases, across multiple institutions, said Riley, who specifically said credit unions are involved.
The way it works is this: the crook gains control of an account’s login credentials, possibly by phshing, perhaps by social engineering. The crook then meticulously logs on a few times, with no attempt to mask the computer’s identity. Quite the contrary. The crook wants the tracks to be detected and noted, thus creating trust (“this is a known computer”), said Riley.
The crook has not stolen money, not yet. He has transferred amounts between accounts, looked up balances, done all the things a legitimate account holder does.
And then one day the crook logs into the account and toggles into a live chat feature, where he requests help with a wire transfer “The financial institution trusts this user because he already is logged in,” said Riley. “The crook has passed the necessary authentication.”
And the member service representative is just trying to be helpful with a member who claims to be confused with wire transfer procedures and who requests assistance.
Wire transfer amounts were in every case under $8,000, “keeping this under the radar of most FIs,” wrote Guardian Analytics in a case study.
Importantly, noted Guardian Analytics, “in all cases, this was the first time live chat had been used.”
Noted Riley, “a key to preventing this is to look for anomalies.” Accounts with no history of use of live chat or of wire transfers ought to be flagged for further investigation when the member - or is it an imposter? – requests a sizable wire transfer via live chat, said Riley.
But, indicated Riley, Guardian Analytics has a larger point to make in releasing information about this scam. “A financial institution today faces a broad range of attacks. You cannot focus on blocking just one kind. There now are many and many do not involve sophisticated technology.” | <urn:uuid:013888e5-eec8-4912-85ef-fbdeecad1b58> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cutimes.com/2013/01/16/report-when-credit-union-employees-abet-fraudsters?t=online-mobile-banking | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960675 | 489 | 1.796875 | 2 |
UPDATE 4-Ukraine confirms wheat export ban
* Traders welcome official ban instead of informal barriers
* Recent deals with Egypt's GASC in doubt
* GASC warns Ukraine on international credibility
* Ukraine focuses on maize exports (Adds EU farm chief reaction)
By Pavel Polityuk and Maha El Dahan
KIEV/ABU DHABI, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Ukraine's agriculture minister on Wednesday said the country would ban wheat exports from Nov. 15 after a weather-damaged harvest, a move that underpinned international prices.
Egypt, the leading global wheat importer, warned that Ukraine risked damaging its credibility on international grain markets. Ukraine later said existing contracts can be fulfilled.
"There will be a full ban from Nov. 15. There will be a government order about this. We are not playing games here. We do not have any other option," Farm Minister Mykola Prysyazhnyuk told Reuters, confirming widespread speculation in markets in past weeks.
The European Union's top farm official warned Ukraine to avoid any measures that would increase global grain prices and disturb traditional trade flows.
"I am deeply disappointed to see this announcement ," EU A g riculture C o mmissioner Dacian Ciolos said in a statement. " I t will add unnecessary tension to international agricultural markets, and those that will suffer most will be the world's poorest."
Ukraine, one of the top 10 global wheat-exporting countries, saw its harvest slashed by a third this year due to poor weather, as the United States suffered its worst drought in more than half a century. Global prices of wheat, corn and soybeans raced up sharply over the summer period.
U.S. wheat rose on Wednesday after the confirmation on expectations that there would be more U.S. export business. Chicago December wheat rose 0.2 percent to $8.70-3/4 a bushel. It had been down 0.2 percent just before the announcement.
Prysyazhnyuk had said that Ukraine would consider imposing limits if the high level of exports threatened to push up the price of bread at home.
Last week the government said the high pace of wheat exports would exhaust stocks of Ukrainian wheat available for shipping abroad by Nov. 15-20, and it urged traders to be cautious in concluding new contracts.
Market players, who had feared the government would resort to unofficial restrictions, were relieved.
"A full ban with a clear date is probably the best option for traders," said a trader for a large foreign grain house. "Everything is clear and we can claim force majeure."
In 2010, the government, under a threat of a possible jump in local grain prices, raised artificial barriers for exports and halted the shipments in the first months of the crop season.
EGYPT DEALS AT RISK
The ban could hit wheat purchases by Egypt's GASC, the country's main state wheat buyer. The group bought 55,000 tonnes of Ukrainian origin wheat in mid-September as part of a larger tender purchase for shipment Nov. 21-30.
Another 55,000 tonne consignment was also purchased on Sept. 11 by GASC as part of a 235,000 tonne deal for Nov. 11-20 shipment.
Nomani Nomani, vice chairman of GASC, said Ukraine should carefully consider any wheat export ban before it is implemented in order to maintain confidence in Ukraine as a global supplier of wheat.
"I hope that Ukraine studies this decision very well before passing it as it takes away from the credibility of the origin," he told Reuters.
GASC also said it was waiting for the government order to be issued for more clarity.
"We will wait to see the order that is issued and the details that are in it," Nomani said. "Will it, for example, include all contracts or will the contracts that have already been signed before the ban be honoured?"
Ukraine's Farm Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday that it had agreed with traders to increase the allowed wheat export volume in the 2012/13 season from the previous 4.0 million.
"At present, 3.8 million tonnes of wheat have been exported. Overall contracted volume is 5.4 million tonnes (of wheat), and these contracts can be fulfilled," it said.
Nomani said last week that rumours of the ban were being spread by traders seeking to increase prices.
Some European traders said efforts were being made to ship the Egyptian cargo out earlier.
"There will be a rush to move everything out in the next three weeks," one German trader said. "People had been expecting a ban and had been cautious about heavy sales from the second half of November."
"This will keep the markets firm in Ukraine for the next three weeks. Force majeure will no doubt be a theme for the shipments that cannot be covered," the trader added.
Others were slightly more sanguine.
"So far everything is calm here and there is no panic due to the ban," a Ukraine-based trade source said. "Venus used to work on a cost and freight basis, and I have not seen any big orders in the market today."
According to official data, Ukraine had exported 7.1 million tonnes of grain as of Oct.18, including 3.57 million tonnes of wheat as traders doubled monthly wheat exports against the previous season.
Latest export figures, provided by the agriculture consultancy UkrAgroConsult, showed that traders are accelerating exports this month. They already sold abroad 1.06 million tonnes of wheat on Oct. 1-21 and plan to sell an extra 646,000 tonnes in the near future.
Ukraine, which consumes 12 million tonnes of wheat, harvested 15.5 million tonnes of the commodity in clean weight this year.
FOCUS ON MAIZE
In the last few years, Ukraine has turned to maize planting. It boosted maize production to 22.7 million tonnes in 2011 and plans to harvest at least 20 million tonnes in 2012.
The ministry has said about 12 million tonnes of maize were likely to be exported in 2012/13 season.
It said 2.2 million tonnes of maize had been exported so far in 2012/13. The ministry said an additional 1.7 million tonnes of maize were due to be sent abroad in the near future.
"Local wheat prices are likely to decrease slightly," said Mykola Vernytsky from ProAgro consultancy.
"Traders will focus on maize and there is no ground to expect that Ukraine will limit maize sales - the country does not need such high stocks of this commodity," he said.
Ukraine exported 14.7 million tonnes of maize in 2011/12. (Additional reporting by Michael Hogan in Hamburg, Jonathan Saul in London, Maha El Dahan in Abu Dhabi and Charlie Dunmore in Brussels; editing by Keiron Henderson, Veronica Brown and Leslie Adler)
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LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Feb. 9 - Government tyranny calls for 2nd Amendment
Anti-gun advocates would have Americans believe that the Second Amendment is solely to allow hunting. This is ridiculous!
The Second Amendment was written to protect Americans’ constitutional rights against government tyranny and foreign invasion.
When we talk of government tyranny we should remember that 23 children and their parents were incinerated at Waco because they defended their religious beliefs. At Ruby Ridge a mother holding her baby in her arms was shot to death by the government after they ambushed her 14 year old son.
Known as the "Trail of Tears," thousands of Indians died while being forced from their lands in the southeast and marched out west by the Jackson administration.
American citizens were put in concentration camps, their families separated and their property seized by FDR during World War 2 simply because they were of Japanese descent.
Article 4, Section 4 of our Constitution states that the federal government must defend our borders against invasion. Everybody knows that the government has failed to defend our southern border. The government, in fact, allowed assault weapons to be sold to drug dealers.
All of these incidents occurred under Democratic presidents!
While some of the people crossing the border are looking for jobs, others are paying up to $40,000 to enter the country. Some of those caught at the border have terrorist ties. How many terrorists have not been caught? Who will protect us?
The government allows drug dealers to obtain assault weapons but they want to stop Americans from protecting their Constitutional rights.
WALTER DILBER Continued...
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Medical Authority in the Discourses of Disability and Transsexuality
Medical Authority in the Discourses of Disability and Transsexuality
Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness and Liberation is an impossibly far-ranging book. Its author Eli Clare covers many topics that are entangled within his own life: tensions of class, sexuality, gender, abuse, disability, environmentalism and exile. Here I want to use his discussion of the medicalization of disability as a springboard to approach Rachel Ann Heath’s description of the pathologization of transsexuality in The Praeger Handbook of Transsexuality: Changing Gender to Match Mindset. Medicalization and pathologization are not precisely equivalent terms, but to me both represent a process of delegitimizing their subjects and placing this lost authority into the hands of medical professionals. Both produce negative or limiting effects that are not widely acknowledged. In addition, both are oriented towards “curing” or “normalizing” difference.
Exile and Pride: disability history
Clare opens part II of his book, bodies, with the section freaks and queers. In it he discusses the freak show, an American tradition from the 1850’s to the 1930’s, when “freaks were big entertainment and big business,” (85). Clare discusses the culturally constructed freakishness of the era, which conflated four different categories: disabled people, people of color from other countries, people of color from within the US, and nondisabled people with obvious physical differences (86). He points out the context that made these displays possible and profitable: the racism and ableism of the audience. This relates to the question of exploitation and partnership between managers, freaks and audience.
However, the freak show didn’t last forever. Its decline was accompanied and influenced with a wholesale change in the perception of disability. Clare notes that “During the freak show’s heyday, today’s dominant model of disability—the medical model—did not yet exist. This model defines disability as a personal problem, curable and/or treatable by the medical establishment, which in turn has led to the wholesale medicalization of disabled people,” (96). This is the shift that caught my attention, and that I want to explore in relation to The Praeger Handbook of Transsexuality. It’s a change so widespread and complete that it’s hard to think of disability as it was once seen, as a religious or supernatural (or subnatural) matter, when the disabled were imagined to be “extraordinary creatures, not entirely human,” (97). The medicalization of disability shifted the disabled from freak shows to hospitals—surely a positive move? Clare points out some of the negatives.
What function does the medicalization of disability serve?
The medicalization of disability occurred in the US after WWII, as doctors were gaining authority in the eyes of the public. I would argue that their status has only grown since then. The medicalization of disability both relies on and feeds the authority of the medical establishment. It separates one type of freak—the disabled—out of a broader category. It also provides subcategories that delineate the various types of disability. And, in the opinion of Eli Clare “[t]he end of the freak show didn’t mean the end of public voyeurism. We simply traded one kind of freakdom for another,” (103). He cites public stripping, a teaching practice used in hospitals through to the 1960’s in which disabled patients (often children) are stripped in front of a large group of doctors and students and evaluated (103). This new type of freakdom is unpaid and everywhere.
There is another effect of medicalization visible in Clare’s narrative, though not one he states outright. Reading about his life I see the extension of the medical sphere into his social life, in terms of the way that able-bodied strangers interact with him. He writes “[t]oday’s freakdom happens every time some well-meaning stranger or acquaintance suggests a certain combination of vitamins, crystals, or New Age visualization techniques that she knows will cure my CP,” (111). Medicalization defines disability as an individual flaw that can be treated or cured—therefore, Clare must be looking for a cure. He also admits that he never quite manages to retort as he wants to. This type of interaction shows that medicalization isn’t simply something disabled people face when they go to the doctor for treatment. It’s part of the social discourse. It’s part of the way they are understood by the wider world.
So, the medicalization of disability reinforces the authority of the medical establishment and provides categorization for those who fall too far outside the norm. It continues public voyeurism in a different form, in the name of education and cure. And it extends into the social realm, in that the nondisabled learn to understand disability—and, by extension, disabled people—in medical terms.
Later Clare notes explicitly that “Queer identity has [also] been pathologized and medicalized… today transsexuality and transgenderism, under the names of gender dysphoria and gender identity disorder, are classified as psychiatric conditions,” (112). It is this pathologization, and the way it functions, that I want to understand.
The Praeger Handbook: a medical view of transsexuality
The Praeger Handbook of Transsexuality: Changing Gender to Match Mindset, by Rachel Ann Heath, is a valuable resource for understanding the medicalized discourse of transsexuality. Published in 2006, it aims to “provide… an up-to-date account of current knowledge about gender and sex and their relationships when people transition from one gender role into another, and ultimately into their affirmed sex following surgery,” (xii). I would add that it seeks to provide mainly medical knowledge, with some social context. As broad as Heath’s purpose is, she doesn’t attempt to cover transsexual politics or legal struggles, though she mentions them in passing. Instead, the focus is on the relationship between transsexed individuals and the medical community, and on physical transition. Heath’s hoped for audience includes a combination of curious laypeople, medical professionals and policymakers (196). She is not writing solely for a transsexual or transgender audience.
Like Clare, Heath is interested in the issue of terminology. She briefly acknowledges the emotional weight terms can have (xiii) but seems most interested in the practical matter of reader understanding. To understand her writing it is necessary to know how she defines her terms. Throughout her text, she uses transsexed to mean “people transitioning from their natal sex to their affirmed sex, that is, the sex they know they have always been,” (xiii). Additionally, she “prefer[s] the term transsexuality to the more common term transsexualism, simply because the later refers to a purported medical condition (now superseded by the even more prejudicial term gender identity disorder) to describe the pathologization of gender variance… Transsexuality is a much more neutral collective term,” (xiii, emphasis in original). This distinction is not merely semantic; it becomes very important later in her argument.
Heath mentions in passing that “An assumption, especially among the medical establishment, is that transsexed people will want to have GRS, pass as a man or woman, and thereafter live their lives by being as indistinguishable as possible from natal people of their affirmed sex,” (171). Although she provides some examples of different, “radical” ideas about gender (171-172) the information Heath presents on transsexuality is largely centered on this narrative. Though Heath aims to provide social context at both the beginning and end of the book, her focus remains medical rather than social. She also frames the information in her book firmly within a Modernist discourse of progress. Discussing the history of transsexuality from the first successful genital surgeries, Heath asserts that “there have been considerable advances in assistance to transsexed people, as well as in the recognition of transsexed people as productive members of society. The situation continues to improve in the new century with an increase in social tolerance accompanied by improvements in surgical and other medical procedures,” (8). Within this framework, social and technical progress go hand in hand, with prejudice and surgical difficulties forming barriers to overcome.
However, this book does not espouse or accept the medical status quo. Heath denounces in several places what she terms the pathologization of transsexuality, the classification of transsexuality as transsexualism or gender identity disorder, a mental illness. Instead she argues for a reimagining of the transsexed’s role in seeking treatment and of the relationship between doctor and patient. She declares that “”A shift in focus to transsexuality being considered a normal variant of gendered behavior rather than a pathological condition is required,” (15). As a model, she compares transsexuality to pregnancy-- a state of being that is considered completely natural and also routinely medicalized (80). As part of this change, a therapist would be seen as a facilitator rather than an evaluator or authority figure.
Why is Heath so against pathologization? Firstly, it leads to a paradox in which mentally stable patients must allow themselves to be categorized as “unwell” to receive the treatment they want. She points out that it leads to gatekeeping, in which medical professionals are allowed to judge their patients and make decisions on when and how they transition. Additionally, it fosters distrust between transsexed patients and their doctors, where patients will lie to gain treatment, giving the answers their therapists want to hear (87). Additionally, she argues that the reason behind this gatekeeping—keeping doctors free of blame in potential cases of “postoperative regret” when patients regret the physical changes they have made to their bodies—is insufficient to merit such distress.
What function does the pathologization of transsexuality serve?
When discussing gatekeeping, the exercise of excessive authority by medical professionals over transsexed patients, Heath states only one reason: “With so much pressure placed on gender clinic personnel by eager aspirants for GRS [genital reconstruction surgery], responsibility is required to minimize the regret following GRS. This is undoubtedly the reason for gatekeeping,” (81). However, this conclusion makes no sense. Heath writes later that there are many similar cases—surgeries performed on patients with breast cancer, for example—which are of equal or greater risk, and which simply require informed consent from the patient. Additionally, she asks “why must transsexed people be labeled as “mentally ill” in order to begin their medically supervised transition when we know that the incidence of postoperative regret is so low, even lower than regret rates for breast removal for breast cancer patients?” (190).This question may be rhetorical, but I want to try to answer it.
Transsexuality is, in our society, transgressive. Medical professionals are figures with wide-ranging authority over different types of “abnormal” bodies—the sick, the injured, the disabled. It makes sense that in a society in which transsexed bodies are seen as abnormal, doctors are trusted to oversee the process of transition--- a process continually framed in this book and in general medical discourse as bringing a transsexed person in line with “normality.” In other words, in the pathologized model therapists and doctors work together to “cure” transsexuals by guiding them to a new, nontransgressive way of looking and being, which lines up with their gender identity. The subtitle of Heath's book, “Changing Gender to Match Mindset,” summarizes this process, though “Changing Sex to Match Gender” might be more accurate.
Throughout this book, a huge emphasis is placed on “passing.” Some of the emphasis comes from collected responses of transsexed patients, but much, interestingly, comes from medical figures and guidelines. Heath describes in detail the current standards of care for transsexed patients. These include certain steps, first counseling, then hormone treatment, then at least “a year's real-life experience in the opposite-gender role” (91). Only after this time has been successfully completed and evaluated by two independent professionals can a client recceive GRS. This is the normalized path: counseling, hormones, living in a gender role, then surgery. In other words, a client is required to pass (or at least, do their best) for a year before obtaining surgery.
Heath does mention that not everyone follows this path, but also reinforces it as the norm: when certain clients do not wish to pass, and are not interested in surgery, “[t]his situation complicates the evaluation process as many gender clinics assume that, except for medical complications, all accepted clients will eventually progress to GRS,” (92). This narrative of progress, from sex-gender misalignment to sex-gender alightment, mirrors the medical narrative of disability treatment and search for a cure.
In the next section Heath brings up treatment for children and adolescents: in some cases, young patients have been approved for “reversible puberty-delaying agents” (94) although they are not considered old enough to be legally responsible for transition. Heath notes that this “has the desirable effect of enhancing passability should these young people proceed to GRS as adults,” (95). Again the narrative of progress towards GRS and “passibility” is invoked.
Describing the specific case of one such young person who delayed the onset of puberty and transitioned after the age of 18, Heath notes that “[a]s confirmation of the effectiveness of his medical treatment, no one considered him to be, or have been, female owing to his convincing male presentation,” (99). Again medical success, social success, and passing are linked. This remains true even though Heath later discusses some of the drawbacks of passing: the need to live in “stealth” and the fragmentation of the trans community between those who wish to pass and those who don't, or those who can't and those who can (171-172).
Heath’s alternative model of transsexuality, as a normal condition requiring some medical assistance, challenges the medical status quo. However, it never engages with the practice that the status quo facilitates: the guiding of individuals into a new socially acceptable role, in which sex aligns with gender so seamlessly that an observer cannot guess at the history, therapy and surgery which are part of the individual he or she sees. Even so, by taking away medical authority to decide who can transition when, she may be opening the door to new paths. In her sincere, well-researched plea to open up a space for marginalized voices to speak, she may be setting professionals and policymakers up to hear answers which no one expected.
Heath, Rachel Ann. The Praeger Handbook of Transsexuality: Changing Gender to Match Mindset. Westport: Praeger, 2006.
Clare, Eli. Exile & Pride: Disability, Queerness and Liberation. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2009. | <urn:uuid:7b466e19-5f50-4c4e-b55f-440bb1162901> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/11075 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95166 | 3,194 | 1.710938 | 2 |
kingoslo - 4:11 am on Dec 23, 2011 (gmt 0)
I have a small website with little load.
A friend gave me two old computers. Between them, they have 4 x 3GHz, 4GB of memory. Their OS is Ubuntu server with LAMP. At the minute I have one static IP, but I can get additional ones for £120/yr each.
The website is written in php using Symfony framework. I don't know what else is useful to mention.
I want to do load balancing in case a server goes down, or in case I want to add servers as the website scales.
The problem is I have no experience with this, but I have been told it can be done using software or DNS (and perhaps there are other ways too?)
Which approach would you recommend for me? | <urn:uuid:ded16011-d670-4da7-b7bd-ccccb5e19b61> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.webmasterworld.com/printerfriendlyv5.cgi?forum=23&discussion=4400768&serial=4400770&user= | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961698 | 176 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Today is International Rock Flipping Day!
The weather and scenery couldn’t have been nicer to spend one of my favorite days of the year.
I’m sure if the local millipedes could communicate in our language, they may dub the day as, “day when that annoying guy disrupts our sleep and takes pictures of us.” Truly, millipedes have been the star of my Rock Flipping Day adventures for the past couple years (2011 and 2010). My discovery of them in abundance on the Northern Virginia, US, trails years ago during this event spawned my fascination of the creatures, housing them in a terrarium for some time. Here are a few more I found this year.
Note the little guy on the right.
The day actually takes two main directions for me. First, on my favorite hiking trail nearby, I modify the event to “log rolling day,” since, oddly, there are hardly any rocks to be found on the trail. The under tree critters are just as exciting, however.
There are always plenty of spiders.
And gooey egg-like things that I’m hoping somebody can help me identify.
From here, I leave my familiar trail in search of real rocks to flip, keeping to the spirit of the day.
I was surprised by this little guy. It was unfamiliar to me on my previous trail visits and I’m not sure why type of earwig it is.
Most of the walk was to the soundtrack of the wonderful local crickets. Most rarely stick around long enough for me to get a shot of them, but this one appeased his fans after the concert.
I thought this spider was pretty nifty.
When I was a kid, my second favorite arthropods (after grasshoppers) were pill bugs. I would find them under the stones surrounding our garden and enjoyed watching them curl up to avoid the juvenile who was poking at them. Instead of pill bugs, I seem to fund sow bugs mostly in the DC area. But that’s okay; they are still pretty fun to watch, even if they don’t crawl up into a ball for me.
I felt a bit bad about disrupting this collection of ants. They furiously ran off with their eggs, carrying them to safety. I caught a few shots during the exodus, but this is only a tiny fraction of the insects I disturbed with one seemingly harmless rock flip.
I think I have a toad bug here. I first discovered these a couple years ago on Rock Flipping Day. Then, as now, I marveled at their ability to blend into the environment and go almost unseen. This one lost confidence at his camouflage abilities and made a run for it; had he not done that, there is at least a 50% chance I would have looked right past him.
A few weeks ago I stumbled upon one of these guys; I believe it is a type of snail (I’m sure I’ll be corrected today if I’m wrong). I was happy to find another today (in the exact same place as a few weeks ago, interestingly). It stayed perfectly still on the rock where I found it, and then within a few minutes, began to slowly crawl away.
Closer to the water. Look closely to see the tiny blue guy beside it.
In the water.
And off to safety (or, at least away from me).
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Something OffSomething Off
There is no hole deep enough to stifle the sound of protest
There is no man ridiculous enough to quiet the world
Maria Alyokhina must be freed
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova must be freed
Viet Khang must be freed
Tran Vu Anh Binh must be freed
Vladimir Putin there is something off in your world
Truong Tan Sang there is something off in your world
I hope so
Contemplating Silent Wishes
Contemplating Silent Wishes, the second release from Fertanish, presents minimalist, experimental rhythms and sounds that patiently travel through a complicated and mesmerizing composition.
Other ArtVisit the home page: Fertanish.com | <urn:uuid:146c6768-7643-4eaa-8d09-4d796d80bef6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fertanish.net/wp2011/?p=582 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968028 | 987 | 1.523438 | 2 |
I couldn’t resist writing about the irony of the race to be POTUS.
What are two of the biggest, if not the biggest issues in this presidential election? Healthcare and the Economy
Consider the following:
1. Who invented ObamaCare and has the most successful implementation to date?
2. We are in a period where the government is borrowing money at a net effective rate of less than zero percent. Who has made hundreds of millions of dollars and a career of borrowing significant amounts of money to acquire companies in heavily leveraged deals?
It’s crazy, but true.
1. Of course Governor Romney basically invented Obamacare for the state of Massachusetts.
Imagine the following conversation from a Democratic candidate Romney with a hypothetical Republican candidate:
“Business in the US needs certainty over healthcare costs. With my RomneyCare program instituted across the country big businesses will no longer have to deal with the variability and uncertainty from state to state in healthcare costs and benefits. They will no longer have to face the uncertainty of state and local politicians pushing their agendas that can create annual changes and huge cost increases at the expense of well negotiated and time tested plans like RomneyCare. Ask my Republican opponent which state, other than Massachusetts has been able to get their Healthcare costs and services under control? It’s not like they all haven’t been trying. Massachusetts is the only state which has been able to create any level of certainty in healthcare costs and services. Which is exactly what businesses want and why we need RomneyCare as a national program.“
2. As the head honcho at Bain Capital, a private equity firm, Governor Romney made huge profits by borrowing heavily to acquire companies and then operating them with the goal of getting an operating return on capital or selling the companies for a profit. He turned the art of using leverage into an art form. I should add here that I fully understand that Bain was not and is not a slash and burn Private Equity firm. They put people in their acquired companies to try to improve operations rather than just slash costs. But that is not really the issue here. Governor Romney knows how to invest using debt.
The real issue is that rather than saying that he thinks its a horrible idea for the government to invest in companies and that he would not permit it, I really, really would love to see him take the opposite approach and own and crow about the fact that he is a MASTER of USING DEBT.
Lets get back to our debate with a Democratic candidate Romney and a hypothetical Republican candidate:
“No one knows how to get a return on capital better than I do. I’m great at it. Look at my history. With the government’s ability to borrow at an effective tax rate of less than zero, I promise you as President that I will know better than anyone how to get a return on investment for the American people. In this time when we need to grow the economy and create jobs, we need to cut ineffective and inefficient government spending in bureaucracy and administrative and increase investment where we can get the greatest return for the American people. And you know what makes my approach all the sweeter? We are borrowing money from China DIRT CHEAP and I will invest that to create American jobs!
We need to invest in American companies. We need to invest in new technologies. We need to invest in Research and Development. We need to invest in new medicines and healthcare options. Now some people might say that it will be very difficult to pick winners and losers and they are right. It will be very difficult. There will be losers. More importantly there will be winners. Winning investments will create jobs. Winning investments will create new technologies and medicines that improve the standard of living for all of us and does so at a lower cost. We won’t compete with private investment, we will complement it.
Right now my friends the economy is growing. No its not growing as fast as we like and too many people don’t have jobs or are underemployed, but it is growing and that growth is accelerating, led by an improvement in the housing market. My plan is to let that growth continue to accelerate and to also continue the existing Bush Tax Cuts with the exception of an increase in individual taxes from 35pct to 39pct for those earning more than 1mm dollars. I will also increase capital gains from 15 pct to 20pct and eliminate the advantages of carried interest.
I believe in America. I believe our future is bright. I will do what corporate America is not doing and no amount of effort to manipulate the tax code will make them change, I will invest in America and create jobs.
My Republican friends on the other hand, believe that if you reduce tax rates, large corporations hoarding cash will miraculously bring that cash back to the US and invest and hire . Trust me. I know investment. That won’t do it. They can borrow money so cheaply there is no reason to bring it home and it certainly won’t lead to jobs. If they had something to invest in that would generate a return, they would. They haven’t.
Again, they won’t invest in America. I will.
As a long time investor, I have never turned down an investment because of tax rates. I was just as successful investing when capital gains were much higher. I was just as successful investing when individual tax rates were much higher. No smart investor turns down a good deal because of tax rates. I always remind people you only pay taxes on profits. And if you make more than 1mm dollars in profits, whether through capital gains or ordinary income, you should pay more taxes.
Now look at the alternative my Republican opponents are proposing. The Republican candidate is trying to convince us all that it is going to be easy to convince both sides of Congress to come together and figure out at what number they can cap individual tax deductions. He is also saying that he is going to reduce corporate taxes AFTER he is able to get consensus on which corporate deductions to eliminate. That is not going to happen unless we outlaw corporate lobbyists. Everyone is for eliminating all deductions other than their own. The idea that everyone will happily agree to compromise is not consistent with the actions of this Congress and not going to happen.
(It’s not going to happen. He is not going to be able to get anyone to agree on which deductions to eliminate. Not only that, he believes that the net result of these improbable actions is that tax revenues from corporations will go up. Do we really believe that corporations will gladly accept an increase in their net tax bill? I don’t think so.)
So my friends it comes down to this. Do you trust my Republican opponent to convince Congress to do the right thing and work together like a big happy family and do it quickly, or do you trust my track record and ability to get this economy back on track through smart investments in the ingenuity and ambition of the America people. There is no greater opportunity than here in America. Lets invest in America. Let’s create jobs.
Now is the time to vote Democrat. Now is the time to Vote for Romney."
Hey, this is all fiction but hopefully you can see the same irony I did.
Damn, I am so ready for a 3rd party.
Maybe I will start one on KickStarter.
Read more posts on Blog Maverick » | <urn:uuid:90928421-a4bf-4d32-af0b-01d1704a2c26> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.businessinsider.com/i-would-vote-for-gov-romney-if-he-was-a-democrat-2012-10 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97273 | 1,529 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Tortall is the setting for the majority of the fantasy novels written by Tamora Pierce. Its capital is Corus, located near the western coast on the Emerald Ocean. To the north is Scanra, a wild and somewhat barbaric country with whom Tortall went to war in the last two books of the Protector of the Small quartet and the first Trickster book, Trickster's Choice. To the east are Galla, Tusaine, and Tyra, and beyond these are Maren and Sarain. Carthak is south of Tortall across the Great Inland Sea, while to the west, in the Emerald Ocean, lie the Yamani Islands and the Copper Isles.
Barzun, mentioned several times during the Rebekah Cooper series, was a country situated to the south of Tortall before it was conquered by the latter in 378 HE; this addition gave Tortall control of the eastern coastline from Scanra to the southern delta of the River Drell. Prior to being conquered, Barzun covered the whole of the Great Southern Desert and part of the coast of the Great Inland Sea, the former of which was turned into Fief Meron under the Tortallan government.
Missions in this Continuum Edit
- Agents Rose/Ross and Meip (DF)
|This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia (view authors).| | <urn:uuid:e7e442b2-a7f0-44a6-9e49-c8dfdfbc1243> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ppc.wikia.com/wiki/Tortall | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949636 | 280 | 1.648438 | 2 |
The biscuit joiner is one of those tools that promises to make life so much easier. The ability to make relatively strong joints quickly and easily makes this a tool you really must have. Yet many woodworkers find it frustrating; for some reason the joints never quite line up and in the end it doesn’t seem to save that much time.
It isn’t the fault of the tool. The truth is that most woodworkers don’t know the right techniques to make the most of their biscuit joiners, and there are some common attitudes and assumptions that hurt more than help, and don’t speed things up.
Some joints in woodworking are for show and some are for utility. Biscuit joints won’t make your friends and family ooh and aah over your skills, but they will help you locate and connect parts without much fuss so you can get on to more important things.
Fifty years ago, Swiss woodworker Hermann Steiner had a great idea and formed a company called Lamello to market the oval-shaped joining plates and the tools to cut the slots. I first saw one in 1981 when the German-born foreman of the cabinetshop I was working in brought out a new toy he called a cookie cutter.
We were all impressed with what it could do, and every one of us wanted one of our own. What stopped us in our tracks was the $600 price of the machine. The Lamello model is undoubtedly the best in the field. It’s made like, well, a Swiss watch.
The Lamello is still the highest-priced machine in the category, selling for four to five times the price of other machines. In a production environment the investment is worthwhile, but if you’re not using it on a daily basis, the lower-priced models will likely meet your needs. But if you drive to the tool store in a Mercedes or BMW, you won’t regret buying the Lamello.
Make the Machine Perform
First you want to minimize any sloppiness in the tool’s plunge mechanism.Every model is a little different, but generally you want to check that all the screws are tight and the motor slides freely on the base. Spraying a dry lubricant on the tool’s ways will help. Check the fence. It too should move freely; the stop may need to be adjusted to 90°.The last adjustment to make is to set the depth stop. This is done by making a test cut for a #20 biscuit, with the tool on the correct setting. You want the resulting cut to be a bit beyond half the width of the wooden plate. This allows the two parts to join snugly while giving you a bit of room for lateral adjustment during assembly. Make a cut in some scrap, put a plate in the slot, then draw a pencil line where the plate meets the edge of the slot, as seen in the photos at right. Then turn the plate around, reinsert it, and draw a second pencil line. When the gap between the two lines is between 3?32″ and 1/8″, you have the depth setting adjusted correctly.
The Nut Behind the Wheel
Don’t worry about centering the slot on the thickness of the material. Set the fence so that the slots will register from the base of the tool.With the machine ready to go, it’s time to make sure you understand how the tool works and what it’s good for. In some applications it’s ideal, but it’s not a panacea. If you’re joining two pieces of solid wood edge to edge to make a panel, the main benefit of the biscuit is to align the parts. The joint is strong enough as it is, and adding biscuits may introduce additional problems as well as make extra work.
Turning a corner is a different story; with biscuits, you can make a simple butt joint in a case or box into a much stronger joint. You also get the benefit of having the parts line up at assembly – if your technique is sound.Using biscuits in miter joints can be an iffy proposition. Biscuits work well if you have the machine perfectly aligned when you make the slots. If you’re off by even a tiny amount however, the error will be doubled, and you’ll likely do more harm than good.Problems arise if you don’t hold the work steady and you don’t keep the tool flat. This simple jig will let you keep both hands on the tool and the workpiece from moving.
In any type of joint, small errors in aligning the tool to the work as you set it in place, and as you make the cut, account for nearly all the problems you may encounter (as seen in the photos below). It’s common to think that the machine is so easy to use that you can’t go wrong, but like any other joint, the care you take setting it up and cutting it make all the difference.
Two Total Time Wasters
People tend to concentrate on two things that don’t matter and then ignore the most important part of the process. Centering the tool’s cutter in the thickness of the material isn’t necessary. You’re far better off to set the fence by placing the tool on a flat surface, putting a piece of the material you plan to use next to it, and lowering the fence until it touches the top face of the material, as shown in the photo below.
Now you have the tool set so that the cut is indexed both from the fence and from the base of the machine. That is far more important than having the slot centered. There is in fact a big advantage to having the slot offset; it ensures that the face you want to show won’t be hidden by accident.
It is also much easier to keep the machine flat by working from the base for as many cuts as you can. I only use the fence as a last resort. The jig shown above right will hold the work flat for you and provide a flat surface for the base of the machine.
To make this jig, all you need is a flat piece of Medium-density Fiberboard (MDF) or plywood, a smaller piece screwed down to one corner, and a third piece below the front edge to act as a hook to your bench. Attach the jig firmly to your bench with a clamp or a few screws, and mount a hold-down toggle clamp as shown above. This will hold your work safely, letting you keep both hands on the machine and it gives you a flat reference surface for the base of the tool. | <urn:uuid:50e5eae2-2fb9-48b2-8bdb-5277f2af3a77> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.popularwoodworking.com/techniques/a_new_manual_for_biscuit_joiners | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948396 | 1,399 | 1.664063 | 2 |
TEGA CAY --
Water rates in Tega Cay will be rising.
The state Public Service Commission reached a unanimous decision in Tega Cay Water Service’s request to raise rates that will bump up water rates by 33 percent, sewer rates by 27 percent. A final document detailing reasons for the decision and when the new rates go into effect won’t be available until Feb. 13.
A directive from the commission shows that all members, except for Commissioner John “Butch” Howard who was absent, voted to approve the increases. Both those numbers were slightly lower than the most recent request from Tega Cay Water.
The service commission also gave itself a five-day extension to issue the final report. Dawn Hipp, director of the division handling the case for the Office of Regulatory Staff, said it would be highly unlikely that the numbers change between the commission issuing its directive and the final document.
“Based on those numbers, it looks like the company will be granted a 33 percent increase in water revenue and a 27 percent increase in sewer revenue,” Hipp said.
A customer who uses 7,000 gallons would now pay $23.13 for water and $39.06 for sewer, Hipp said, compared to the new rates of $30.78 and $49.95 respectively.
Originally, the company applied for increases of 34 percent for water and almost 67 percent for sewer. The final document will further detail the decision, but the directive dated Jan. 30 and posted Friday describes a difficult decision for commissioners on a “vigorously contested case in which we saw an extraordinary level of participation from the ratepayers.”
According to the directive, “We heard, loud and clear, the protests by the ratepayers of the requested rate hike,” reads the document. “We are sympathetic to their arguments that their rates are already comparatively high, and that there have been myriad service problems with the applicant.”
Yet, it continues, the commission was bound to judge the case on its legal merit.
“We also heard objective, quantifiable evidence from the company, verified by the South Carolina Office of Regulatory Staff, demonstrating that the company requires additional revenue [sic] to pay for its operations and past expenditures and to receive a just and reasonable rate of return,” it read.
The case drew more than 680 letters, notes or emails of protest from Tega Cay, many on behalf or multiple people. City leadership opposed the rate increase both collectively and individually. A citizen group petitioned the service commission for months.
The new rates will result in $351,042 in additional revenue for the company. The service commission met for two days in January after hearing from residents in Tega Cay last December. The company asked that much of the public comment taken there be stricken from the record, but the commission declined.
Commissioners in the recent document “remain very troubled” by testimony against the company and “reluctantly adopt” the new rates.
“Our granting of rate relief in this case must not be construed as an expression of satisfaction with the applicant’s operations,” it reads.
The final decision likely will include additional oversight of the company by the Office of Regulatory Staff.
Check back for more. | <urn:uuid:1a07ef9d-73a6-4640-b57c-0e9dc4337d0b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fortmilltimes.com/2013/02/08/2485874/water-rates-to-rise-33-in-tega.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953063 | 682 | 1.617188 | 2 |
At a moment of almost incomprehensible horror and suffering, Barack Obama delivered elegiac remarks at a Sunday-night prayer vigil in Newtown, Conn. The powerful speech hit a haunting apex as the President quietly read off perhaps the most painful roll call in history: the first names of the 20 children who were gunned down in their classrooms two days earlier. It may have been Obama’s most theological address to date as he quoted the Bible and said of the children that “God has called them all home.” It’s easy to imagine how even diehard Mitt Romney supporters might have teared up at the somber grace the President brought to his role as healer, with the bitter grudges about tax rates and health care mandates atomized for an evening by searing grief and existential vertigo.
That’s because Obama’s was not a political speech. “These tragedies must end,” he said. “We can’t accept events like these as routine.” No one could dispute that. But on the matter of dispute — what laws might be changed to prevent the next senseless massacre — Obama was vague. He offered only a placeholder for future action: “In the coming weeks, I’ll use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens, from law enforcement, to mental-health professionals, to parents and educators, in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this, because what choice do we have? … Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard?”
The answer to that question will have to come from Obama himself. But at the moment, the politics do appear to be too hard. At least the politics of gun control, and more specifically the politics of restoring, say, the 1990s assault-weapons ban, limiting high-ammunition clips and creating more obstacles for the disturbed and potentially dangerous to acquire guns.
Influential national figures, including New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, may be demanding more action. But the Republicans who almost unanimously oppose new gun regulation control the House and wield effective veto power in the Senate. GOP leaders have kept a conspicuously low profile on the issue since the world learned the name of Adam Lanza. Moreover, many moderate Democrats in both chambers are wary of alienating gun-rights supporters in their states and districts. (Nevada Senator Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, is among them.)
And then there is the matter of public opinion. Americans are roughly divided on the wisdom of tighter gun restrictions, which are less popular now than they were in the 1990s. Past gun rampages, including the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the Aurora, Colo., movie-theater massacre, haven’t budged the needle.
Moreover, even the most horrible tragedies fade from memory. The holidays will come and go. Washington will soon return to obsessing over the fiscal cliff. Bills will bog down in committee. Some other tragedy — a plane crash, a megastorm — may saturate our airwaves and Twitter feeds with new tragedies and policy debates.
Unless, that is, Obama doesn’t forget. Substantial change, not only to gun laws but to our confounding mental health care system (much of it beyond Washington’s purview), will require some of the President’s precious postelection political capital. It will require making gun control a true priority of his second term. He’ll have to mount a sustained public relations campaign, shaping public opinion not only to pressure Republicans but also to discomfit rural-area congressional Democrats who are already bracing for the midterm elections, which are historically hostile to the President’s party.
Obama would have to kick off this effort while waging an epic battle with Republicans over the nation’s fiscal future just after his surrender in a showdown over his preferred new Secretary of State. Gun control could compete with other priorities he hopes to unveil in January, possibly including new action on immigration and climate change.
And yet Obama appears genuinely stricken by the horror of Newtown; that much was evident not just from his tone on Sunday but from his tears in his initial statement on Dec. 14. The fact that he chose not to make a political speech on Sunday doesn’t mean that he won’t soon. But if Obama is determined to apply his power toward making these tragedies end, it will have to be the first of many. | <urn:uuid:8b81b0f3-2dfa-41e1-b339-302530e3e937> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://swampland.time.com/2012/12/17/these-tragedies-must-end-obama-promises-change-at-newtown-vigil-but-can-he-deliver/?iid=pg-main-mostpop2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959256 | 924 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Private Schools in Florida are regulated by the Florida
Department of Education. There are currently
1,668 Private Schools located in Florida, with a total enrollment of 396,790 students,
according to the Private School Universe Survey conducted by the U.S.
Department of Education.
Under Florida Statute 1002.42, Private Schools in Florida must register with the Florida Department of Education, complete an annual survey each year, and keep attendance records. Every owner of a Private School in Florida must submit fingerprints to the appropriate law enforcement agency for a criminal background check.
If a Private School in Florida is no longer operating, it is required to transfer all attendance records to the school district where it is located. | <urn:uuid:15195d90-25b3-45df-8e9f-6e8ab60c7caf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eschoolsearch.com/index.cfm?action=showdetail&id=2206 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961889 | 144 | 1.5625 | 2 |
West Bloomfield author publishes new Clockwork Empire novel
Author Steven Piziks — who writes under the nom de plume Steven Harper — modeled protagonist Gavin Ennock in “The Dragon Men” after his 15-year-old son, Aran.
“Aran is autistic, and some aspects of the Clockwork Plague (in the three books) are aspects of autism,” he said. “Dragon Men” is the third installment of his Clockwork Empire series.
To learn more about the Clockwork Empire books, visit www.theclockworkempire.com/.
“Remember that swooping noise THX used to play at the beginning of movies? It’s called a Shepard’s tone, and it always caused Aran physical pain to the point where he would wait outside movie theaters until he was sure ‘the sound’ was done,” explained Piziks, 45, of West Bloomfield Township.
“Aran also has perfect pitch. I wondered if the two concepts were related, and I did some research. It turns out a Shepard’s tone is based on the square root of 2, an irrational number, and it’s the only tone in the entire musical scale that’s based on an irrational number. Things kind of grew from there.”
In “The Clockwork Empire” series, the Clockwork Plague spreads all over the globe. It’s a disease similar to the Black Plague, and kills most people. With others, it eats away at their minds and bodies, turning them into zombies. A tiny minority is driven brilliantly insane, allowing them to create incredible machines before they go completely mad and die.
“Different countries and cultures, I realized, would treat some people differently and exploring that has become a major theme in the series,” said Piziks.
“The Doomsday Vault” — the first book in the series — explored how these zombies were treated in England. The second book, “The Impossible Cube,” explores Eastern Europe.
With “The Dragon Men,” Gavin Ennock and his love interest, Alice, are desperately trying to find a cure for the Clockwork Plague, which is steadily driving Gavin insane. Continued...
“They’re fairly sure that Chinese clockworkers, who are called Dragon Men there, have a cure. But they discover that a despot has taken over the throne and closed the borders to foreigners, forcing them to go underground in their search. Meanwhile, the rightful heirs have learned about Gavin and Alice and want to use them for their own nefarious purposes,” said Piziks. “In the books, certain sounds and pitches cause plague victims discomfort or even pain.
“Gavin is a gifted musician with perfect pitch who can’t bear the sound of a Shepard’s tone, rather like my son. He’s also bright and merry and a little mischievous because I like characters who are bright and merry and a little mischievous.”
A fourth book in the series, “The Havoc Machine,” is scheduled for a 2013 release. Originally, Piziks didn’t plan to write another installment, which occurs in Russia, a country hit hard during the Clockwork Plague.
“This one actually came as a surprise. I had finished up the over-arcing story with ‘The Dragon Men’ and hadn’t thought of a fourth book, but then my editor called and said she really, really loved ‘The Dragon Men’ and asked, ‘Could we have a fourth book?’
“I was caught flat. I had nothing. Gavin and Alice’s story was finished,” Piziks confessed. “My mind had moved on to other projects. My editor did say it would be fine to introduce a new protagonist, but I still had nothing. I finally went for a long walk, which is how I always solve writing problems. By the end of it, I’d come up with more to say about the Clockwork Empire.
“This time I had an image of a man who hunts and kills clockworkers for a living, and a little automaton that can think for itself. And a steampunk circus. Out of this, I got ‘The Havoc Machine.’”
While the books in this series are connected, Piziks points out they also can be read and understood without referring to the other “Clockwork Empire” books. The beginning of each book has a summary section called “The Story So Far,” which recaps the events of the previous books in a “cheeky, self-deprecating way” that readers and reviewers alike enjoy.
“Writing the climax of ‘The Dragon Men’ was a real high,” Piziks said. “Everything piled up and exploded in an enormously powerful ending that had me and my writers’ group holding their collective breath. I stayed up way too late the evening I wrote those pages.”
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Join Jonathan Schechter as he shares thoughts on our natural world in Oakland County and beyond. | <urn:uuid:bc48b56f-4ee2-4832-827b-20d2e05de66a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theoaklandpress.com/articles/2013/01/16/entertainment/doc50f5a6a3d8c86416964679.txt?viewmode=4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962414 | 1,232 | 1.5 | 2 |
The report, published on Friday (14 October), confirms the deep divide between North and West European countries on the one hand, and those on the South and East on the other hand.
Labour productivity and innovation are well above average in countries such as Ireland or Germany, while serious shortfalls were apparent in Bulgaria or Spain, the report shows.
While these differences are already well-known, the scoreboard takes a special significance as it is intended to avoid a repeat of the Greek debt crisis by detecting broader macro-economic imbalances that threaten to put other EU countries at risk.
The board is one part on a newly-agreed framework, the economic governance package, which included an overhaul of the Stability and Growth Pact limiting public debt and deficits in the euro zone. The new package aims to put even more pressure on countries to keep their deficits below a 3% ceiling.
Under the new surveillance mechanisme, the Commission can now initiate an "excessive imbalance procedure" and propose economic sanctions on a member state whose structural imbalances are not corrected.
Sanctions can be instigated in two steps, starting with an interest-bearing deposit imposed on a member state that fails to comply with the recommended corrective action.
“After a second compliance failure, this interest-bearing deposit can be converted into a fine (up to 0.1% of GDP). Sanctions can also be imposed for failing twice to submit a sufficient corrective action plan,” underlines the European Commission.
In the first exercise of the new monitoring framework, the Commission has outlined three indicators: labour productivity, innovation and bureaucratic burdens for enterprises.
In terms of labour productivity in the manufacturing sector, Ireland is by far at the top of the list, with the Netherlands and Austria also scoring above average. On the other side of the ranking are Bulgaria, Lithuania, Romania and Latvia, which have a much lower labour productivity.
As for innovation, the European Commission praises Germany and Luxembourg for having a share of innovative companies above 60% of the total number of enterprises. On the other end of the scale, less than one third of national companies in Hungary, Poland and Latvia are considered to be innovative.
The fight against bureaucracy is among the EU Executive's priorities to increase the competitiveness of member states and of the European Union as a whole.
Italy, Hungary, Greece and Portugal are at the bottom of the ranking, their regulatory systems being extremely burdensome for companies, according to a poll of business executives. Finland, Estonia and Denmark are instead the most business-friendly countries in the EU.
To counter the negative impact of red tape on business development, the Commission recommends modernising public administrations, strengthening public infrastructure and improving business taxation.
Without entering the debate on the proper level of corporate taxation, the Commission proposes a “reduction of compliance burden deriving from taxation”, for instance by “increasing transparency and reducing the complexities of tax codes and compliance regulations, simplifying payment procedures, including through the use of e-government, and ensuring the stability of taxation legislation,” according to a Commission document published together with the competitiveness report.
Controversy on the launch of the report
Aside from its content, the Commission's competitiveness report caused a controversy surrounding the place where it was officially presented.
Last Friday (14 October), the Industry Commissioner, Antonio Tajani, decided to publish the report in Rome rather than in Brussels where Commission initiatives are usually made public and where most of the EU-specialised press is based.
Representatives of the International Press Association (IPA) criticised the fact that the Brussels-based press corps could not attend the launch event and could not ask the commissioner questions.
People close to Tajani claim they did not expect this criticism because the documents were presented at the association of the foreign press in Rome. What’s more, they argue that last year the Commission presented new industry documents in Berlin, sidestepping criticism from the Brussels-based press. | <urn:uuid:81af3083-15ac-49e1-9771-869a74e1819e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.euractiv.com/innovation-enterprise/eus-competitiveness-report-expos-news-508370 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942126 | 809 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Baker addressed a room of Middlesex County College students on Thursday during "You Decide -- The Presidential Election: What we know and what we think we know," an open forum discussing the November election.
He was joined by Star-Ledger columnist Tom Moran.
Baker said the role of the tea party has been greatly diminished in comparison to the 2008 election, and the conservative group has lost some of their steam.
Baker addressed some historical trends in presidential elections, notably that in times of economic distress, it has been historically difficult for a president to successfully win a second term.
In 1976, Gerald Ford was gunning for a second term amid a 7.5 unemployment rate nationwide, and was defeated. Four years later, the same thing happened to the man who defeated him, Jimmy Carter, who ran for a second term with a 7.7 percent unemployment rate in the country, Baker said.
And in 1992, George H. Bush's unsuccessful re-election campaign was set against a 7.5 percent unemployment rate.
The current unemployment rate is around 8 percent, Baker said.
Despite the gravity of the economic state, other aspects go into elections, such as the likability of each candidate, and feeling of the American people as to the direction in which the country is headed.
During the forum, hosted by the college's Democracy House organization, Moran handled the majority of questions regarding the current issues of this election, while Baker provided much historical information and context.
Moran urged the students to get educated on a ballot question that if passed in New Jersey, would allot $750 million to higher education institutions in New Jersey, including community colleges.
That money would ultimately lower student tuition, he said, making the urgency to vote a "no-brainer" for students this year.
Moran referred to the question as "bags of money" waiting for the students, and urged them to visit the voter registration table in the rear of the room.
"This bond issue for higher education is very important," he said.
Participants asked questions about "Obamacare," the Bush tax cuts, Iran and Israel and swing states, with the liveliest discussion centering around health care reform.
Baker said that one of the faults of the health care act was that Washington had no idea how to sell it to the American people, a fact they realized too late.
"That reassurance just wasn't there," he said.
Student Anatoly Doubrovny, 21, who has worked in manufacturing as a machinist apprentice asked the question of whether the government should still subsidize those companies, and if that job field is still important.
After the discussion, Doubrovny, of East Brunswick, said there isn't much discussion in politics about that job field, one that in past decades, was considered a strong American industry.
A lot of machinists tend to vote Republican, as they are small business owners, he said. But he wasn't particularly impressed with either Mitt Romney or Barack Obama, Doubrovny said.
Baker said that the thing that young college students ages 17-19 need to realize is that they are recognized as non-participants in the political arena, which is why federal funding for students is largely inconsistent.
Politicians are "terrified" of senior citizens, because they vote in droves, Baker said.
"Your claim on any of the benefits (available) are impaired by the fact that you don't vote," he said.
For more information on Democracy House at Middlesex County College, click here. | <urn:uuid:70389d1f-5505-47a0-ad3c-83c963f67fa4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://woodbridge.patch.com/articles/mcc-democracy-forum-tea-party-out-of-steam | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978295 | 734 | 1.664063 | 2 |
A disturbance will gain power over New Mexico today and bring storm chances here in the Big Country. Track of this disturbance follows the southern border of Texas headed towards the Rio Grande but storms could reach the southern and western Co. Widespread amounts may reach a tenth of an inch but storms could produce locally heavier rain. Then Tuesday dries up with mostly sunny skies and highs will be reach the 80s by the midweek.
Pollution Possible Risk Factor For Autism
A large new national study suggests there is a link between exposure to air pollution during pregnancy and autism.
Storm Causes Major Flooding for One Abilene Neighborhood
Neighbors living along S. 23rd and Brentwood drive say they're used to getting this much damage after storms.
Abilene and Taylor County Begin Storm Shelter Registration Program
The City of Abilene and Taylor County has started a storm shelter registration program, which will help emergency responders provide aid to residents that may...
More CPS Workers Disciplined In Connection with Klapheke Investigation
Two employees at the Texas Dept. of Family and Protective Services (CPS) have been put on resigned in connection to the Tiffany Klapheke case.
KTAB PM Forecast: Tuesday, June 18th, 2013
After a stormy start to the week, some areas could see scattered showers overnight.
Page 2 of 719 | <urn:uuid:35f8cbc3-6922-4865-9b83-3d6071deb8f6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bigcountryhomepage.com/fulltext?nxd_id=498872&nxd_237113_start=5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935404 | 279 | 1.617188 | 2 |
As Earth Day 2012 rapidly approaches, the proliferation of people, places and things turning up the green is almost overwhelming. Throughout the week, we’ll be wading though the myriad of eco-friendly actions to mark the arrival of Sunday, April 22.
For major beverage retail chain BevMo!, this Earth Day marks the start of a new cork-recycling program at all 115 of their locations throughout California and Arizona. And for the literal kicker: through a partnership with ReCORK and shoe manufacturer SOLE’s sponsorship, the recycled cork will be converted into a line of flip-flops.
"As something that's renewable, biodegradable and recyclable, natural cork is a fitting symbol with which to recognize Earth Day," said Alan Johnson, BevMo!'s chief executive officer in a press release. "We are excited about our partnership with ReCORK and pleased to make a contribution to the environment by providing our customers with an easy way to recycle their corks and thereby give used corks a second life." | <urn:uuid:2940d277-7913-4a50-8212-5f86b7050fa7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scpr.org/blogs/environment/tagged/flip-flops | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939272 | 218 | 1.78125 | 2 |
This is Mercury Morris in 1973. The average salary for all NFL players that year was 55 thousand dollars. Adjusted for inflation, that is 15 thousand dollars less than the rookie minimum today.*
Today, The Curly R starts a two-part series looking at the confluence of money, age and health in the NFL. Over a twelve-day period from January 21 to February 2, the New York Times and Washington Post ran three pieces on the economics of football and the health of players, current and retired. Here we will tie these three pieces together and examine the politics of retirement from the world's premiere professional sporting league.
Part 1: The Pie Gets Bigger Every Year
Part 2: Enjoy it While You Can
Postscript: The Debate: Retired players at Hogs Haven
Epilogue: Too Little, Too Late by Brandon
I'm a football fan, plain and simple. Football has been a part of my life since at least 1974 when we moved to Dale City Virginia and I sat at the foot of my Naval Aviator father's dingey old yellow recliner, can of Budweiser in his hand, watching George Allen (not former Senator Noose-and-Boots, his father), Sonny Jurgensen and Billy Kilmer drive the Redskins into the playoffs when I was in kindergarten. Remember newspaper kites at the elementary school? Good times, dad.
And I'm not alone. Football is the undisputed number one professional sport in the US. Harris Interactive found in 2005 (the latest year for which I could find a reputable poll) that football had a two to one lead over baseball, and a three to one lead over auto racing among respondents that indicated at least one favorite sport. That 2005 poll represented a widening of the gap over the same 2004 poll.
Football is popular and getting popularer and the more popularer the more money in the picture and the more money in the picture the more hands trying hard to grab it.
Here (TimesSelect) we have today's players, getting bigger and delivering harder hits even in a more restrictive rules environment. It's a violent game and the average career lasts less than four seasons. Players eternally want to make arguments for greater salaries to offset the longterm wear and tear on their bodies and the risk that one injury is all that separates them from being a guy looking for a real job, possibly after months or years of rehabilitation. I remember when Emmitt Smith held out of Cowboys camp in 1993 (the Cowboys went 0-2 without him to start the season), the argument he and his agent were making is that yes, running back is a special position because feature backs have shorter careers than their skill position counterparts and therefore should be paid higher. He got his money and the Cowboys got another Super Bowl trophy.
So the players are keenly aware of the economics of the game. Periodically we read about how players are unhappy with Gene Upshaw, head of the NFL Players Association (NFLPA), because what some see as 'labor peace,' others see as management still with the upper hand, profiting on the players' backs despite constant poor-mouthing about this and that franchise losing money every year. Applying laws of economics, there is more money to be made, if each owner would increase ticket prices until none of the teams could sell more than one stadium's worth of seats at time. Although it's money the owners are quote "losing," it's also excess cash the owners are reaping in the form of parking and concessions, none of which goes to the players.
Empirically we read every few years about how the TV contracts have gotten too expensive. Remember when NBC bowed out after the 1997 season and their big idea was XFL in 2001? How NBC decried the soaring cost of rights in 1998 but then was sure as hell back in the game seven years later, realizing that losing money on football is a time-honored network tradition and that the markets for beer, boobs and new cars subsidize the losses quite nicely through advertisements. The fact is that the league is making more money on TV now than ever, with a larger number of broadcast partners. The next negotiations, before the 2013 season, will bring in even more money.
Make more, want more, that's the mantra. Players get ever-larger signing bonuses to offset possible loss of income if cut before the end of the contract. Owners need new stadiums with public financing and luxe suites and ticket price increases to 'keep up with demands' of player salaries. But the owners establish the demand by paying the money.
Over on Hogs Haven, there has been an interesting discussion here and here about whether the Redskins should spend big dollars to acquire Nate Clements or Asante Samuels, the consensus best free agent prospects at cornerback, a desperate need for the Redskins this offseason. Skin Patrol and I agree: no, the Redskins should not make either of these players the highest-paid corner in the league. Why? Because Champ Bailey is the best corner in the league, maybe ever, and the quote "fact" that 'the market rises' is not reason enough to pay someone more because he was the best available at the time. That's how guys like San Francisco's Alex Smith get 49 million over seven years to be not a great starting NFL quarterback.
It's called escalation. Players indefinitely upping the ante all based on the previous year's, or even the previous day's signings. The players love it, the agents love it and the owners just can't say no to themselves or each other. Someone is going to pay Nate Clements 20 million in signing bonus and the interval of time between the signing and that team realizing it overpaid will be so short it will require an atomic physicist to measure.
But eventually, every player moves on and leaves the league. Those that are lucky draw a pension, paid with union dues. Those that are very lucky have financial security and few health problems. But for those that are unlucky and need help after football, they are finding that the very same union that fought for them as players now wishes they would just go away.
This series concludes tomorrow with Part 2, Enjoy it While You Can, a look at the treatment of retired players and what the union is or is not doing about it.
* Source for 1973 NFL salary and today's inflation equivalent here. Rookie minimum NFL salary from here.
1973 Mercury Morris Topps football card from here and here. In 1973, Mercury ran for 149 times for 954 yards on an incredible 6.4 yards per carry. | <urn:uuid:3daee2af-d3ba-435e-b3b7-d6a2a8bc62e6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://curlyr.blogspot.com/2007/02/this-is-all-my-fault-part-1.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968456 | 1,345 | 1.554688 | 2 |
When I was in Philadelphia, the year Maya was born, the local paper ran an ad for The Taco Liberty Bell claiming the federal government, in an attempt to reduce the national debt, had sold the Liberty Bell to Taco Bell.
The full text of the ad read as follows:
Taco Bell Buys The Liberty Bell
In an effort to help the national debt, Taco Bell is pleased to announce that we have agreed to purchase the Liberty Bell, one of our country's most historic treasures. It will now be called the "Taco Liberty Bell" and will still be accessible to the American public for viewing. While some may find this controversial, we hope our move will prompt other corporations to take similar action to do their part to reduce the country's debt.
In a related release, the company explained that people and corporations had been adopting highways for years, and that Taco Bell was simply "going one step further by purchasing one of the country's greatest historic treasures."
I got this ready for April Fool months ago. This computer doesn't show the pictures, so I can only hope. | <urn:uuid:7e3add27-d9de-4dd0-87db-ebfce7820141> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mayagranny.blogspot.jp/2008/04/i-actually-saw-these-at-time.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964108 | 222 | 1.515625 | 2 |
By James Mackenzie
ROME (Reuters) - Italy's Civil Protection agency said on Tuesday that the manslaughter conviction of seven scientists and officials over a deadly 2009 earthquake in the central city of L'Aquila would create "paralysis" in disaster assessment and prevention.
On Monday, a court sentenced the group to six years in prison for failing to warn of the magnitude 6.3 quake which hit L'Aquila in the early hours of April 6, 2009, killing 308 people and devastating the medieval city.
The verdict has caused indignation among scientists around the world, who have warned it will make experts extremely reluctant to express an opinion in public about the likelihood of such events occurring in future.
The agency said it was "easy to imagine the effect of this incident on all those asked to assume responsibility in these sectors which are considered among the pillars of a modern civil protection service."
The sentence would not just affect seismological forecasting, it said, but could also deter other experts from offering opinions such as building safety assessments given by inspectors after the Emilia Romagna earthquakes this year.
The statement from the Civil Protection agency came after the heads of the government disaster assessment body at the center of the case resigned, saying it was no longer possible to carry on their work.
The head of the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks, Luciano Maiani, former president Giuseppe Zamberletti and vice president Mauro Rosi said the convictions had made it impossible to continue their work.
The seven convicted on Monday were all members of the Commission.
Monday's case related to a meeting of the Commission on March 31, 2009 at which the scientists gave what prosecutors called "incomplete, imprecise and contradictory" statements about the risk of a major earthquake.
"A MEDIA OPERATION"
Prosecutors accepted it was impossible to forecast earthquakes with any accuracy but said the Commission had given an overly reassuring picture of the situation facing L'Aquila when the earthquake struck.
In the months preceding the meeting, dozens of lower level tremors had hit the region, stoking fears that a bigger shock could be on the way and the meeting was intended to inform the public of the situation.
At the heart of the issue is the kind of cautious language, hedged with qualifications, that is typical when scientists talk about uncertain events in the future but which does not always translate well into public information announcements.
A wiretapped conversation between the then head of the Civil Protection agency Guido Bertolaso and another official published on the website of the La Repubblica daily on Tuesday underlined the potential for misunderstanding.
The wiretap, made by police investigating a separate case, showed that Bertolaso wanted the scientists to send a reassuring message to the public.
"It's more a media operation, you understand," Bertolaso is heard telling the other official. "...it's not that we are worried or concerned, it's because we want to calm people down and instead of you or I talking, we'll get the biggest scientists in seismology to talk," he said.
Behind the controversy over the conviction of the scientists, commentators have also pointed to the wider issue of disaster preparedness in Italy, one of the most earthquake-prone regions in Europe.
Authorities have sometimes seemed more willing to issue soothing statements than to address longstanding problems such as illegal construction and poor urban planning which have often exacerbated the deadly impact of disasters such as earthquakes and severe floods.
(Editing by Andrew Osborn) | <urn:uuid:28e9904c-0163-4677-8e44-c901f81e150f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wifc.com/news/articles/2012/oct/23/italy-officials-resign-after-earthquake-convictions/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964027 | 719 | 1.554688 | 2 |
CHICAGO – Governor Rod R. Blagojevich today commended the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS) for joining the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Salvation Army and more than 100 partners statewide in the Illinois Rescue and Restore Human Trafficking Outreach Day. The event is the third of its kind held in Illinois and is designed to raise awareness about human trafficking and help rescue victims in Illinois.
The Illinois Rescue and Restore campaign launched in 2005 by Gov. Rod Blagojevich and HHS is a coalition comprised of local agencies, state agencies, law enforcement and the faith community to raise awareness of the problem and help victims. Illinois is the first state to form this unique and cutting edge collaboration with HHS, and is seen as a model for other states.
“Human trafficking is not only illegal, but it is a serious violation of a person’s rights as a human being,” said Governor Rod R. Blagojevich. “We want to make sure that victims of this crime know that there is help out there for them. We also want to make sure that anyone who is suspicious of trafficking activities call the hotline and report it.”
IDHS Assistant Secretary Grace Hou and hundreds of volunteers from every corner of the state canvassed neighborhoods and hung thousands of posters advertising the national human trafficking hotline, 888-373-7888, and encouraged the public to rescue and restore victims of human trafficking. The Outreach Day kicked off at the Salvation Army College of Officer Training at 700 West Brompton in Chicago.
“Human trafficking is tied with the illegal arms industry as the second largest and fastest growing criminal industry in the world today,” said Hou. “This is a hidden problem in many communities across the state. Often times victims feel trapped and don’t know where to turn. We’re trying to reach victims so they know help is available.”
The U.S. government estimates that 14,000-17,500 people are trafficked into the United States annually. Victims are trafficked across international borders from such regions as Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Former Soviet Union and Africa to work in labor and sex trades.
“Efforts to eradicate trafficking go back to the early chapters of our history,” said Major Patty Richardson, director of Women’s Services of The Salvation Army. “It is unfortunate that this evil behavior still rears its ugly head. Now, The Salvation Army is part of a reviving movement for the abolition of trafficking. It is a pleasure to team up with the Illinois Department of Human Services on April 26 to raise awareness statewide about the evils of human trafficking.”
As part of Outreach Day, posters were displayed across the state through partners that include the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT), Chicago Police Department, Illinois State Police, and many local community and faith-based social service agencies. Volunteers will target locations where a potential victim of trafficking or a first responder might see the message such as in highway rest stops, libraries, gas stations, health clinics, restaurants, laundromats, and retail stores. Various types of posters have been produced in English, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Korean, Thai, and Vietnamese.
Outreach is one of the five statewide goals for the Illinois Rescue and Restore coalition, along with training first responders, prosecuting offenders, coordinating services for victims, and collecting data on human trafficking.
The toll-free Trafficking Information and Referral Hotline, 1.888.373. 7888, is designated to provide assistance to organizations and victims of trafficking. The hotline helps organizations and victims of trafficking by providing instant referrals to pre-screened aid organizations in their city. Hotline calls are referred to local service agencies equipped to provide initial services to trafficking victims.
In 2005, Gov. Blagojevich signed The Trafficking of Persons and Involuntary Servitude Act, making it easier to prosecute human trafficking offenders and to assist victims.
The legislation established penalties for the offenses of involuntary servitude, sexual servitude of a minor and trafficking of persons for forced labor and services. Forcing a person into servitude ranges from a Class 4 to a Class X felony if kidnapping or injury is involved. The law also allows for restitution to pay back a victim for forced labor. Further, the law allows Illinois Department of Human Services to provide emergency victim services. | <urn:uuid:5c21b076-c35c-4936-b066-05fd4cc20767> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www3.illinois.gov/PressReleases/ShowPressRelease.cfm?SubjectID=1&RecNum=6780 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943413 | 913 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Education Secretary Arne Duncan gave an emphatic defense Tuesday of the Obama administration’s use of executive authority and competitive grants on education policy to bypass a gridlocked Congress.
“We offered the biggest competitive grants in the department’s history,” Duncan said during a National Press Club speech. “The fact that 45 states have now adopted internationally benchmarked college- and career-ready standards is an absolute game-changer. Virtually the entire country has voluntarily raised expectations for our children.”
States that received the administration’s signature Race to the Top competitive education grants pledged to adopt policy changes the administration favors. The administration has also tied its preferred policy goals to waivers it has granted to 33 states from the 2002 elementary and secondary education law known as No Child Left Behind.
No Child Left Behind (PL 107-110) is long overdue for reauthorization, having lapsed in 2007, and the Higher Education Act (PL 110-315) expires next year. But Duncan made no mention in his speech of how the administration plans to work with Congress on those bills — should he win a second term — other than to say he hopes it’s accomplished in a bipartisan fashion.
Duncan did, however, highlight the difficult fiscal situation and partisan mudslinging that has prevented Congress from overhauling the federal education law and foiled some of the administration’s efforts, as well.
“In the last two years, an estimated 300,000 teachers lost their jobs — and there is little appetite on the Hill to help,” he said, noting that the 2009 economic stimulus package (PL 111-5) helped 400,000 educators keep their jobs but that the money has mostly been used.
Duncan also said he wishes more funding was available to focus on low-income students in particular, but that the current political climate poses a real challenge.
“If some members in the House have their way, programs like Head Start, Title I and IDEA could take a big hit — so we need to continue to fight for these programs that protect children at risk,” he said about current programs that help low-income families and school districts with a large proportion of low-income students.
Duncan conceded that the administration’s first term set “an ambitious pace for change” that some educators feel overwhelmed by.
“Some of them say it’s happening too quickly and not always in a way that is respectful and fair,” he said, touching on aspects of Race to the Top and the waiver initiative that required states to evaluate teachers in part based on student test scores and to adopt other policies that teachers unions have pushed back against.
But Duncan defended the programs.
“Waivers are not a pass on accountability — but a smarter, more focused and fair way to hold ourselves accountable,” he said. And while not every state won Race to the Top funding, Duncan noted that the program resulted in 45 states raising school standards and 33 states changing education laws.
Duncan also praised the changes made at some of the worst school systems in the country through the department’s School Improvement Grants. Of those receiving federal money to turn around chronically failing schools, Duncan said, two-thirds made gains in reading and math the first year of the program.
Roll Call has launched a new feature, Hill Navigator, to advise congressional staffers and would-be staffers on how to manage workplace issues on Capitol Hill. Please send us your questions anything from office etiquette, to handling awkward moments, to what happens when the work life gets too personal. Submissions will be treated anonymously. | <urn:uuid:02dc877d-a6b4-4f53-9203-85861cb374dc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rollcall.com/news/education_secretary_defends_administrations_end_run_around_congress-218983-1.html?pos=adp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9599 | 751 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Commissioned Officer; Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute.
Virginus Johnston was a 1913 graduate of the Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute. Virginus was one of five Virginia State University graduates to be commissioned an officer in the 92nd division during World War I.
Not many HBCUs had Reserve Officers Training Corps, at the beginning of World War I. James Nicholas, who will graduate from Virginia State and become a full professor at Virginia State and Rector of the Board of Visitors, was a member of this corp.
Baseball players--Louisiana--Baton Rouge; Southern University and A & M College--Baseball
Felton G. Clark member of the 1918 Southern University baseball team is seated first on the left and his father, Dr. Joseph Samuel Clark, president of Southern University and A&M College is standing on the right.
College presidents – Washington (D.C.) -- Miner Teachers College;
Miner Teachers College;
Miner Teachers College -- Presidents;
Matthew Whitehead (1918-1990) was the last president of the Miner Teachers College, before it merged with Wilson Teachers College to become part of the District of Columbia Teachers College, in 1954 in the aftermath of the US Supreme Court’s...
District Of Columbia Teachers College;
District Of Columbia Teachers College--Faculty;
Associate Director Matthew Whitehead (1918-1990) was the last President of Miner Teachers College, and Dean of DCTC. He received his AB from Johnson C. Smith University; his MA from Teachers College, Columbia University; Ed.D, New York University....
6 1/2" x 4 1/2"b/w Photograph Mounted on Decorative 10" x 8" Board, With Names in Ink on Front, and Pencil List on Back. Notes on Back Initialled SHC (Sophy Cornwell, Librarian); Same Handwriting on Front. Date Uncertain. Names...
Cloth bound "Record" Book With Leather Corners & Spine. 500 Printed Page Numbers, Pages 178-498 are Blank. Some Items are Folded and Pasted in; Some Loose in Back of Book. Starting Approx. 1935 (p. 123) Minutes are Typed and Pasted... | <urn:uuid:a84d8311-704b-46b6-a0ad-9b7342d33301> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://contentdm.auctr.edu/cdm/search/searchterm/1918*/mode/all/order/subjec | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935268 | 460 | 1.625 | 2 |
As a student at the Ontario College of Art in 1976, Mark Summers was introduced to scratchboard by the revered political cartoonist Duncan Macpherson. Soon after graduation, he began circulating his portfolio of portraits. His big break came with a portrait of Douglas McArthur from the New York Times Book Review… Read More
As a student at the Ontario College of Art in 1976, Mark Summers was introduced to scratchboard by the revered political cartoonist Duncan Macpherson. Soon after graduation, he began circulating his portfolio of portraits. His big break came with a portrait of Douglas McArthur from the New York Times Book Review, and he hasn’t stopped working since. Mark’s engravings in scratchboard have garnered numerous awards, exhibits, and a continually expanding client list that still includes regular features in the Book Review.
His peers at the Society of Illustrators in New York awarded Summers the Hamilton King Award for Best Illustration of the Year representing a body of work in 2000, and in 2002 selected him for the Greenwich Workshop’s David Usher Award. These prestigious awards augment Mark’s three silver and three gold medals from the same institution. His work regularly appears at the Society’s Annual Juried Shows and Illustration Books, and he has also been featured in publications such as Step-By-Step, Graphics, Print, Communication Arts Annual, and Applied Arts. In 1997 Summers was featured in US Airways Attaché in an article written about his striking literary portraits, which could be found nationwide on Barnes & Noble shopping bags, banners and trucks.
Summers was recently profiled in Walt Reed’s “The Illustrator in America, 1860-2000,” a comprehensive guide to prominent individuals in the history of American illustration. The author writes “Summers takes the illustrator’s art back a century by enlisting the wood engraver’s craft to the scratchboard medium. He gives it a thoroughly contemporary flavor, however, in the power of his imagery.”
Summers’ client list includes Time, The Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated, The National Law Journal, Winslow Press, Barnes & Noble’s “Library of Literary Classics,” and St. Martin’s Press, among many others. His corporate clients include Eddie Bauer, AT&T, Dupont, Major League Baseball, Trammel Crow, and Parker Brothers. In 2001 he completed several illustrations for a permanent, interactive exhibit in the US Government’s Federal Reserve Bank. Recently Summers completed a series of illustrations for an edition of the Dickens classic “A Christmas Carol.”
Mark Summers lives and works in Waterdown, Ontario with his wife Shawn, and daughter Sienna. Read Less | <urn:uuid:f4da3d26-fa7c-4d62-b77d-22189aa0f62a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.behance.net/MarkSummers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946771 | 567 | 1.632813 | 2 |
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RE: The nuclear situation in Japan is getting worse, experts worry about other plants in seismic zones
The Diablo Canyon and San Onofre nuclear power plants are both in earthquake zones and are subject to tsunami damage being right on the Pacific Coast. There's got to be some serious questions about those two plants and their preparedness for an event like the one that hit Japan. It will probably be weeks before we know the full extent of the nuclear disaster in Japan.
Posted by riverat1
16th Mar 2011 | <urn:uuid:114162e9-1ab0-477d-91d5-56e4f82c9c9a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.smartplanet.com/forum/discussions/1-5565-37837/reply?messageView=reply | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949774 | 108 | 1.5625 | 2 |
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Passengers travelling back to the UK via Bristol Airport are today being urged to use facial recognition gates now installed at the airport.
The state of the art machines, which scan passengers' faces and check them against their passport photo, will add to border security and efficiency at arrivals.
The facial recognition gates allow a smooth, efficient journey through the UK’s border for legitimate passengers while making it more difficult for criminals and illegal migrants to get into the country.
The gates have proved popular at Manchester and Stansted, where the first phase of the trial was launched. Over half a million passengers have used the service so far.
The machine takes seconds to scan each passenger's face against the digital photo recorded in their passport. If there is a match, the automatic gates allow the traveller across the border.
The gates can be used by any UK or European passenger aged over 18 who has a new e-passport with an electronic chip, providing travellers with an automated, secure route through the border.
UK Border Agency Chief Executive Lin Homer said:
“Britain’s border security is among the toughest in the world and by using new technology we are making the border even more secure.
"The facial recognition gates at Bristol will improve our service to the public and help to make the UK safer."
“We have also introduced fingerprint visas which check everyone who wants to come to the UK against immigration and crime databases, ID Cards for foreign nationals and the £1.2bn e-Borders system which targets terrorist suspects, criminals and would-be illegal immigrants before they can reach the UK.”
The gates have been operational since 26 August as part of the Home Secretary’s pledge to roll-out facial recognition gates at ten UK terminals by the end of August. Bristol was the first airport to go live this year, after Manchester and Stansted trialled similar technology in 2008.
The gates are being run in partnership between the UK Border Agency and Bristol International Airport.
Alison Roberts, Terminal General Manager at Bristol International Airport, said:
“In the long term we aim to increase the space available for immigration control, and our development plans include proposals to extend the existing terminal building to reduce bottlenecks in this area.
“However, the use of new technology can help improve today’s passenger experience, providing a positive first impression to visitors arriving in the UK.”
The system measures points on a person's face and compares them with the digital passport photograph.
The gates undertake checks against security watch-lists in the same way as the current manual control.
UK Border Agency officers continue to oversee the gates and intervene if they have any suspicions. Passengers will also be subject to random manual checks.
The gates allow officers extra time to concentrate on high-priority risks and intelligence-led operations.
The facial recognition system is voluntary and can be used by any UK or European passenger aged over 18 carrying a new biometric passport. No registration is required to use the gates.
More than 17 million biometric passports, which contain a facial image, have been issued in the UK since their introduction in 2006.
The facial recognition gates, which have been introduced at ten UK airport terminals, are part of the biggest shake-up in UK border security for 40 years.
Every visa applicant is fingerprinted and checked against a range of immigration, crime and terrorism watch-lists before they set foot in the UK, while the ongoing roll-out of ID cards for foreign nationals locks those here to one identity.
The new £1.2bn e-Borders system is helping the UK Border Agency target terrorist suspects, known criminals and would-be illegal immigrants before they can reach the UK.
e-Borders will enable the Agency to count people in and out of the country with 60 per cent of all passenger and crew movements captured by December 2009, 95 per cent by December 2010 and all passengers by 2014.
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Hammy Hocks and the Southern Harvest is a delightfully illustrated story and project book for children of all ages. It is a humorous look at precious watercolor illustrations of a cartoon pig family teaching their piglet children how to can their harvest, while living on their farm in the deep south. All characters and illustrations were created by author and illustrator, Eslye Lee Moore. The colorful illustrations are based on the memories of her families' old pre Civil War home place in Crawford County, Georgia near her grandmother's home in Lizella.
"It is a treat to portray one's family history in such a colorful humorus way," says eslye about her first children's book. "The recipes in Hammy Hocks were found in an old attic when I visited the annual "Chittlin' Strut' in Sally, South Carolina in the early 70's. Hammy Hocks will teach young cooks the art of canning with supervision from adults."
The potograph of me with my son Olan and Alowisious(big Al the dog) was taken by my friend Nancy Renfroe in Manhatten, at my son's art showing with Ward Nasse in July 2007 | <urn:uuid:487ab3ba-8a17-4037-8556-d95b6bab36a4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.blurb.com/b/149035-hammy-hocks-and-the-summer-harvest | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971344 | 245 | 1.585938 | 2 |
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