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Michael Wolf's new Street View project—a natural progression of explorations of population density, privacy, and architecture—uses Google's street view technology to reveal the more subtle, symbolic aspects of the urban experience. Departing from his typical large-format photographs, Wolf spent hundreds of hours searching the world by mouse-click rather than through his lens, the results of which are as timely as they are remarkable.
Michael Wolf (born in Munich, 1954) grew up in the United States, and studied at UC Berkeley and with Otto Steinert at the University of Essen in Germany. Two previous books—Sitting in China (2002) and Hong Kong, Front Door/Back Door (2005)—feature his much acclaimed photographs of China. Wolf lives and works in Hong Kong and Paris.
Portfolio of 3 C-prints presented in an archival paper folder
2 horizontals (dog and pigeon)
Paper Size: 15 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches
Image Size:13 1/2 x 10 1/2 inches
1 vertical (deer)
Paper Size: 12 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches
Image Size: 10 1/2 x 13 1/2 inches | <urn:uuid:aefa3f64-a1e1-40bc-85c0-74b700b3015c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aperture.org/shop/prints/street-view-triptych-2-animals-2009 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939635 | 247 | 1.78125 | 2 |
(From India Business Insight)
The Indian retail industry is witnessing growth as a result of disposable incomes, decline in real estate prices and increase in number of customers.
Investment in retail real estate continues to yield the highest returns when compared to residential and office segments, according to Knight Frank's latest report in its annual India Retail Review.
The office and residential segments yield returns of 13-16 percent, according to the study. India ranks fifth among 30 emerging retail markets in developing countries. Consumer spending on an average in the country has grown by 11.5 … | <urn:uuid:2dae34d1-9c03-4a98-a04c-b80cc5cc736d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-19741081_ITM | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936697 | 114 | 1.578125 | 2 |
What Happens Next?
TMFSinchiruna's amazing recent post about America's flirtation with banking armageddon got me thinking (oh boy!). So I called my fiance and we discussed it at length (after, or course, running down the recent happenings on the trashy reality TV shows we enjoy..... thank you VH1!!!). She's pretty savvy, but not thoroughly enlightened on monetary policy or Zimbabwe School Economics (aka Keynesian Economics) so we tried to walk through a few different scenarios.
What would happen if the banks did collapse? According to the reports, we were 24 hours away from complete global economic collapse. What would that entail? To be honest, I don't have any answer for that.
What would happen to honest homeowners like her she wanted to know? She owns multiple properties, with outstanding credit and steady rental income. But the banks really own those properties, and she understands that. What if those banks went under overnight? What would happen to her property? I don't have any answer for that.
I bring this up, because even though disaster may have been averted in September, it was probably just postponed. The real economic collapse could happen literally any day now. I think even the most naive Keynesian proponent has to acknowledge that, or so one would think. I assume that massive civil unrest would follow. How would government respond? Is Martial Law a possibility?
So what are some scenarios? It disheartens me, but I realize that most recently laid off workers blame free markets and greed for our current situation. We have pointed this out ad nauseum, but I'll restate the obvious: if free markets caused our problems then we should be able to note which free markets are at fault, but we can't. This is because the markets that failed are not free markets: housing, banking, investment banking, energy, money creation. All of these are either government controlled or government mandated cartels and monopolies that support the political elite.
Sad to say, but few Americans get it. We stand on the very precipice of disaster, and yet, the political elite / banking elite that created the disaster is going to get more power and control over our lives as a result. Very sad.
The question my fiance and I keep asking each other is: What Happens Next?
We're small potatos. We've got some coin stashed away and a little bit of property and equities, but we're insignificant. What about the productive people who are about to lose everything they've ever made for themselves?
What happens if the troops come home because America is broke? I suppose the politicians will attempt to cut VA benefits before anything else. Despite popular propaganda, Veterans have never been very high on the food chain of the income tax payer.
What if the government has to slash troop levels or bring everyone home in the middle of massive inflation and unemployment? What would they do with all these warriors? An easy solution would be to employ them to suppress the populace that will certainly be revolting. Scary thought, but logical. Just shuffle them off to the Department of Homeland Security. Put em to work looting whatever is left of the country while suppressing any resistance.
Please share with me your thoughts about What Happens Next. I'd love to hear what you think. I welcome all discussion.
Final note: As I have said repeatedly, the only important thing in this world is what you do with the brain you are given. If we continue to fill it with knowledge there is no government in the world that can stop us from living a productive life, unless they resort to violence. I was a Libertarian when I was broke, and I'll be one no matter how big or small my bank account gets. I am a Libertarian because of my disabled father, who lost his leg in Vietnam, yet never asked for charity and became a highly paid and decorated logistics officer for a Fortune 500 company precisely because he filled his head with knowledge and never wanted a handout. And I will be Libertarian forever, always hoping for the day that people will realize that the parasitic politicial class is a completely unnecessary farce.
David in Qatar | <urn:uuid:2fbbbd45-47b8-4581-98c3-66096dee79be> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://caps.fool.com/Blogs/what-happens-next/143703 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969381 | 851 | 1.570313 | 2 |
The ethics of sports will be the focus of a new initiative launched June 14 by two Vatican departments.
“Where is the world of sport moving? Where does the phenomenon of violence between soccer fans come from? What about match fixing? Doping?” asked Monsignor Melchor Sanchez de Toca y Alameda, the Under-Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Culture.
In a June 14 interview with EWTN News, Msgr. Sanchez de Toca y Alameda described the world as being “choked by the market, which is suffocating the values promoted through sport.”
He believes that the ethics of sports are “interesting to all of society,” and it’s for that reason that the pontifical council wants to start a debate about it. Continue reading
News category: News Shorts. | <urn:uuid:d303bce2-3191-4cce-8a9f-717ea7dbfbc0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cathnews.co.nz/2012/06/18/vatican-dives-sports-ethics/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954213 | 179 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Books with a certain patina aren’t always the worst ones to read. If you are going on a holiday to Austria (or if you never considered doing that), Airs Above The Ground by Mary Stewart should be part of the reading stuff to take along. Consider it a guidebook extraordinary when you do so.
Mary Stewart starts her mystery off with the husband in Stockholm appearing on a newsreel featuring a circus in Austria. That sets the heroine on her path to Vienna and into Styria where the circus is touring. From there onwards, she leads the heroine, and with her the reader, a merry dance of mysteries all surrounding that circus and one of its horses.
The airs above the ground (Schulen über der Erde) mentioned in the book’s title give the indication that she is dealing with the Spanish Riding School. The specially trained stallions from the Imperial Piber Stud are trained in the high school (Hohe Schule) of dressage riding. They execute the extraordinary manoeuvres called the Levade, the Courbette, and the Capriole. If you’ve never seen it, then it’s time to book your tickets for Vienna.
As one mystery after another starts to unravel, the solving of one puzzle just brings that many more questions to the fore. The pace she sets is fast, the story amusing, and the plot believable. Her teasing way of liberally providing clues, obvious ones and hidden ones, makes one believe more than once to have solved the mystery before she wants to reveal it. If that isn’t good enough for you, there is more to the book than that.
Mary Stewart has an extraordinary knack to convey the smells, the landscape, the colours, the sounds, and the feeling of Austria to the reader. Her descriptions are so much part of the story and the plots that they are never boring or irrelevant. And I noticed that she had been there, seen it, and wrote the book. As her descriptions are vivid, driving through Styria will be a permanent reminder of incidents described in the book. As she deals in real places, you might find it amusing and rewarding to follow her heroine’s steps through the beautiful landscape in Styria and towards the Semmering pass.
She also manages to pack some of the long history of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna and the Imperial Stud at Piber into the story. While being entertained, the reader is educated at the same time. As she took pains to work with the then director of the Spanish Riding School, her rendition of that history is correct and detailed to a fault (but not boring, I believe, even for a non-horsey person). Reading the book is an excellent way of making the first steps in getting to know Austria and will give appetite for more.
The book was published in 1965 and has been out of print for a number of years. Now it is available on Kindle. | <urn:uuid:f2d7bba3-295f-419b-aad0-d8f59b34ad8f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bookstove.com/book-talk/austrian-mystery/ | 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 | 0.961736 | 605 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Best Kids Website 5 to 7 Maths
Interactive and challenging it's a great way to help your kids learn maths. If you've got a natural, or for someone who needs a little hand this website will be sure to keep them motivated. Go to the Mathletics website.
Kidspot parents say
"I am voting for this website because my daughter loves the games that make learning maths interesting. she really wants to get a new accessory for her "Mathlete" each time so will do loads of sums to get the reward."
"I love this site for my daughter as she loves playing the maths questions and making progress. She also likes showing her younger sister how to do the problems." | <urn:uuid:e5c56150-3256-4a77-94eb-346c4cc2105a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kidspot.com.au/Kidspot-Best-of-Awards-2008-Kidspot-Best-of-Awards-Best-Kids-Website-5-to-7-Maths+1637+168+article.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970305 | 143 | 1.5 | 2 |
In a study
carried out on behalf of the Home Office’s Migration Advisory Committee, the
think-tank found that non-European Economic Area migrants employed in
strategically important sectors contribute disproportionately to the already
high levels of skilled employees.
Its evidence, based on research in the financial services and
aerospace sectors, also suggests that high-skilled migrants often possess
language skills and knowledge of foreign markets which are rarely found among
high-skilled residents. They also frequently make positive contributions to
innovation and productivity performance.
In interviews carried out with banks as part of the research,
actuarial skills were among the strategically important skills where employers
said they had experienced shortages.
This was principally because these skills were in short supply
rather than because of retention problems or poor strategic planning. Among the
reasons identified for this situation were a lack of high calibre UK graduates
in subjects such as mathematics, as well as difficulties in finding individuals
with the right combination of technical, language and cultural skills.
Last year, the MAC placed actuaries on its listof occupations where a shortage of labour meant it would be sensible to
fill posts from outside the EEA. A specific need was identified for qualified
actuaries to work in the life assurance, general assurance and health and care
In a statement on the research, the NIESR said: ‘Employers recruited
migrants from outside of the European Union (EU) to meet high level skill
needs, where these could not be met from within the UK or the EU.’
‘However, there was little evidence that they recruited migrants as an
alternative to investing in the recruitment and training of resident workers.
Rather, skilled migrants are required for skills that are hard to find or
develop in the UK.’
According to the NIESR, while employers and stakeholders acknowledged
there may be sme scope to reduce levels of non-EEA recruitment, this would
involve long-term, consistent investment in training. Changes in higher
education were also needed, they said.
But, they raised concerns over the impact of further restrictions on
skilled migrant workers, such as limits in intra-company transfers, which were
seen as bad for business and the UK economy. | <urn:uuid:7c851e9b-4fff-4914-83b8-e35bd18afcb2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theactuary.com/news/2012/02/skilled-migrants-make-positive-impact-in-financial-services/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966312 | 474 | 1.796875 | 2 |
We now get to return to one of DCW's favorite topics: Hurricanes and conventions. We've been talking about it for years (here, here, here, here, here and here). With a reminder that if you ruled out any city that might get hit by a hurricane (Tampa, Charlotte, Atlanta, Houston, New Orleans, Miami, Miami, Miami, and even New York, Boston and Philly) and earthquakes (SF, LA), you wouldn't have many options left, not to mention that even St. Paul got impacted by a hurricane in the south, we have wondered what was the probability that Tampa would get hit by a hurricane during convention week.
In 2010, I made a barely educated guess of once every 200 years, or 0.5%.
In May, we noted:
Chris Landsea, science and operations officer at the National Hurricane Center in Miami puts the chances of a hurricane hitting the Tampa Bay area during August at about 2 to 3 percent. For any given week in August, the chance may be one-half of 1 percent
And now we have one of the top hurricane specialists in the country, Dr. Jeff Masters, founder of WeatherUnderground:
Given that there have been two mass evacuations of Tampa during the past 25 years during the peak three-month period of hurricane season--August, September, and October--history suggests that the odds of a mass evacuation order being given during the 4-day period that the Republican National Convention is in town are probably around 0.2%.
Any tropical waves which might develop into hurricanes that could hit Tampa during the convention would have to come off the coast of Africa next week. Looking at the latest 16-day forecast from the GFS, all of the tropical waves coming off of Africa next week are predicted to exit too far north to make the long crossing of the Atlantic and threaten the Gulf Coast. While something could develop in the Gulf of Mexico from the remains of an old cold front, it is rare for such storms to grow strong enough to deserve mass evacuations. So far, early signs point to a hurricane-free Republican National Convention at the end of August.
0.5%, 0.5% and 0.2%. Pretty low (and a pretty good estimate from me in 2010!)
Masters has more on Tampa's hurricane history, including major storms in 1848 and 1921. | <urn:uuid:d8ce9367-a93a-4c45-aa3a-ef8dcfad5aa7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.democraticconventionwatch.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=5448 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965234 | 484 | 1.757813 | 2 |
CITYWIDE — City staff are taking another look at estimates used to calculate the amount of traffic and parking spaces needed for new development in light of research brought forward by a resident showing that companies are squeezing more workers into less square footage than previously assumed.
Numbers produced by CoreNet Global, a leading association for corporate real estate executives, suggest that companies are vastly reducing the amount of office space allotted per worker both to cut costs and to embrace a more flexible office environment with less assigned space to promote collaboration.
CoreNet Global found that modern offices set aside roughly 171 square feet for each worker, a number that many anticipate will fall to 151 square feet within five years if not more.
That’s a far cry from staff estimates used in a contract for the Bergamot Transit Village, a massive mixed-use project that includes a great deal of “creative” office space. According to the development agreement drafted between City Hall and the developer Hines Corporation, those employees will have 286 square-feet per worker.
That didn’t seem quite right to Valerie Griffin, a self-proclaimed techie who has watched her own use of office space diminish vastly over the years as work spaces get smaller and bulky items like filing cabinets become a thing of the past.
The CoreNet Global report as well as other articles by the Los Angeles Times shored up Griffin’s theories on the subject, which the City Council discussed at their Sept. 11 meeting.
The implications on this and other development agreements are daunting.
“Instead of having 1,730 workers in the amount of space they were proposing, it would be 5,000 to 6,000,” she said.
Those potentially uncounted workers could spell trouble if you consider the amount of additional cars on the road taking them to the office — the environmental impact report for the Bergamot Village Project already says some of the traffic impacts are “unavoidable” — and the parking spaces needed once they get there.
Or not, said Richard Kadzis, vice president of strategic communications at CoreNet Global.
While companies in general are trending downward in the amount of space per employee in order to achieve some major cost savings, they’re also creating more flexible, attractive workspaces with unassigned desks and open space.
Gone are the cubicles of yesteryear. In their place are democratized spaces where all workers can get natural light and a chance at the open views, Kadzis said.
The arrangement also encourages employees to work from home when possible, meaning not all of the employees that technically work for these companies will actually be traveling in on a daily basis.
“They’re smaller because employees can work from home, go out with clients, work somewhere else inside the building,” Kadzis said. “Technology allows that to happen in ways it couldn’t happen even five years ago.”
The proximity of mass transit can also be a mitigating factor. The Bergamot project will be adjacent to the Bergamot Station of the Exposition Light Rail Line, something proponents have been pointing to for some time as a way to cut down on car trips going in and out of the proposed development.
In any case, the Hines project is currently on hold, according to the Planning Commission caselist which has no new hearing date since August 2011, and the City Council has directed staff to work with the Planning Commission to review the office space per worker ratios to make sure they’re consistent with modern practices.
That has to happen before City Hall gets too much further down the road with the revision of the zoning code, said Councilmember Kevin McKeown.
“What this indicates is that we no longer live in the world of the 1980s when that 300 square foot number was given,” McKeown said. “We live in a world of Dilbert, where people are put into small cubicles.”
Griffin, who has long been a vocal proponent of increased parking and reasonable development, was thrilled by the move.
“I am so happy to live in a city where this is considered,” Griffin said. “Santa Monica is one of the first cities anywhere … to really study the impact of the modern workplace on modern urban planning. This is an incredibly forward-looking action for the city to take.” | <urn:uuid:1038271f-9452-4380-8998-8ecda3a3c3e0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://smdp.com/new-calculations-could-mean-new-look-at-das/112163 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954904 | 908 | 1.65625 | 2 |
If you’re looking to have a last resort source of income, a work from home task to combine with existing work or just something to keep you active during winter evenings then you might be interested in Amazons Mechanical Turk.
If you aren’t familiar with Amazons mturk.com, the site allows tasks (called Human Intelligence Tasks – HITs) to be posted up to the site by a client (called a requestor). The tasks are typically the sort that are repetitive and (as a whole) time consuming, yet are difficult for a computer to get right. For example, giving subjective feedback on websites or transcribing hundreds of snippets of voice recordings. The tasks may be low pay ($0.01 and upwards) but fast, or higher pay but take longer. If you’re interested in the history and background of the service I’d recommend the salon.com article on the subject over the official Amazon version.
The information that follows aims to help you get introduced to the site for the first time.
Stop! Danger Turker, Danger!
Halt. Don’t touch anything. Do not simply dive in with the first lucrative HIT you see. It’s probably a scam. Anything which asks you to test a phone texting system, enter your personal data, send an email or create an account on a website is most likely a scam. At the very best you won’t get paid and telemarketers will start contacting you, at the worst you’ll be signed up to a premium rate service. Let’s take some steps to protect you.
As a new worker you need to avoid the bad HITs. It is part outright knowledge of how scammers operate and part experience. A fast way to get both is to use other workers feedback. In order to get that and before you take any tasks:
- Download a Firefox plugin called turkopticon that shows the feedback scores for a requester when you mouse over their name.
- Set aside an hour or two to browse the unofficial workers forum over at turkers.proboards.com and especially their new workers FAQ. Without posting, read through the various sections and get a feel for the community, problems and types of task. A little time invested now in learning from others experience will save you many in the long run.
- Read the official Amazon Mturk workers FAQ so you understand what is and isn’t going to be possible via the site.
Ok, are we ready now?
Let’s get started. Find something short, low paid HITS (which usually means easy, but not always) that your turkopticon feedback display says is from a requestor with reasonable feedback. Read the task in the preview pane and decide if you can do it. If you can then click ‘accept’ and get working. If after taking it, it turns out to be impossible click on ‘return’ and the task will be returned to the pile with no impact on your account. A high number of rejected HITS (tasks you submit with bad data) will have an impact on what future HITs you can accept so only submit good work and return things that you get stuck on. Do about five jobs at first so you get a feel for the general procedure.
Ok, so that’s fine but it’s low pay. The good money is usually tucked away in tasks that you need qualifications for. You can either list all HITS and then click on ‘Take Qualification’ when it warns you you’re not qualified for that batch or you can go to the qualifications tab and select ‘all qualifications’ and start taking tests for anything that it looks like a lot of other people have taken, which is a more haphazard technique but works. Don’t ‘request qualification’ from anyone just yet.
Passing a few qualifications should open up tasks (a few key qualifications together will open up about 30% more HITs) from some of the more industrial and long-standing requestors, such as the ones that post up hundreds of tasks requiring minutes of audio to be transcribed. In the website select ‘View all HITS’, order it by the number of HITS per batch then find something you like the preview of. Start working through.
By now you’re probably getting the hang of things. For your first day you might want to do a few tasks from a few different requestors. The next day check back to see if they’ve paid yet, rejected any HITS or made contact for some reason. If you like a certain set of tasks and the requestor has paid promptly then you might want to try working on as many tickets as the person has put up. At the end of the time you give yourself, try and work out what your income per hour is; do you think you’re doing ok?
As the week goes on evaluate if you are getting faster. If you aren’t how might you? Evaluate your mturk.com income, is it dire? If so how are the people on the forums working? Might there be ideas of theirs you could use? The best tasks will change over time, and there are trends in tasks over the week that might mean it’s best not to work some times or days (such as the weekend) due to heavy competition making the income not worth your time.
Due to the nature of the tasks a faster computer or multiple computers and browser tabs probably won’t make you faster. Depending on the task having reference tools to hand (such as a dictionary) might. The speed at which you can type will also heavily effect your income for article writing and transcription HITs – if you can transcribe at the speed the person talks you won’t need to re-wind and listen again multiple times per task.
Despite the odd person who has found their perfect niche, the pay is typically low, so try and find tasks you enjoy on mturk whilst looking for other methods of income generation.
There are more utilities and tips at the community boards and remember to read through the new workers FAQ if you haven’t already. You might build up a rappot with certain requestors and be offered better tasks. | <urn:uuid:1be6ff8d-76d3-4384-b42e-1a7d01130234> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://webupon.com/browsers/try-a-week-as-a-turker/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936932 | 1,313 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Viva La Reformacion
we are allowed to say—and it doesn’t work anyhow.
The Sin of the Revolutionary Mind
by Tim Nichols
We worship in heaven, and we are unified with those who join us there in worship—including those believers in other nations, and those who died long before us. This unity surpasses any earthly tie, including ties of where you were born—or when.
The saints of every age and place are Our People, and we should hear the voices of those who have gone before us. They are sinners, and they can be wrong. But so can we, and so we listen to their wise counsel, and—as always—measure everything by Scripture. We cannot be revolutionaries, because we belong to a long line of people from whom we cannot separate, even though we may want to.
“Behold, I make all things new” is not something that we are allowed to say—and it doesn’t work anyhow. If we cannot remake our church, or our society, or our world at a stroke, through revolution, then what are we to do?
In Eden, the river that flows from the sanctuary waters the world. In the New Jerusalem, the water of life flows from the throne of God and of the Lamb, and the leaves of the trees beside it are for the healing of the nations. In between, Jesus says “He who believes in Me, as the Scriptures have said, out of his belly will flow rivers of living water.”
The life of the world flows from God through the sanctuary, through our worship; this is our first and most powerful agent of cultural change. Worship is a weapon by which we may battle God’s enemies and serve the people of the World at the same time. When we resort to carnal weapons, there is always collateral damage, but worship harms no one except those who insist on remaining enemies of God.
The charge therefore is this: Every change in your life, every difficulty, every new situation, should come first into your worship. Praise God, thank Him, ask for what you need. Situate your life in God-honoring heavenly worship before the throne of Grace. Then, having done that, pray that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven—and watch as God answers your prayers.
Why do you think Jesus was executed with the connivance of the then in power ecclesiastical establishment in Palestine 2000 years ago?
Because his (then) revolutionary ideas were completely unacceptable, and a threat to the worldly power and privileges of the then ecclesiastical establishment.
Would you even recognize Jesus if he happened to appear unannounced at your local church? He most probably would not be dressed in a buttoned down Sunday suit (with tie in place).
Jesus was not a revolutionary. He was a reformer, calling God’s people back to what God’s Word had always taught, so they would be ready for the next step. There’s a difference.
It’s true that genuine reformers are often a threat to established power and privilege. But one can also be a threat to established power and privilege by being an anarchist, a thief, or a well-placed nincompoop. Some people are fools for the sake of Christ, but many more are just fools.
If Jesus showed up in my local church, I would recognize Him for the same reason that Nathaniel did — I already know Him. The suit and tie wouldn’t make a difference one way or the other. I’d ask you the same question a little differently — suppose Jesus did show up in your church, dressed up like a banker. Would you say to yourself, “That can’t be Jesus! Lookit what he’s wearing!” | <urn:uuid:9262df0a-2439-4e97-81c8-eb80df90d9af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/2010/05/15/viva-la-reformacion/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968792 | 797 | 1.6875 | 2 |
By Jon Miller | Post Date: November 8, 2005 4:25 AM | Comments: 0
The impressions of what he saw are still strong in Eric's mind several weeks after returning from his Lean manufacturing benchmarking trip to Japan:
"The visit to Toyota was everything I expected, which was amazing. We first visited the showroom and visitor center that had excellent exhibits on TPS and new technology. Of particular interest at this time, because of gas prices, was the exhibit on alternative power sources. In current production, the Prius has a self charging battery to assist powering the car. The battery kicks in certain situations when the normal internal combustion engine is not needed. As a result, fuel mileage is 40-50 miles per gallon. Toyota is also designing cars to run on hydrogen, but fuel availability and range need to be increased."
"On the manufacturing side, we visited the Tsutsumi Plant. The first thing one notices is the train of carts delivering parts to the assembly stations. The key to the assembly is the timely delivery of small lots to the assembly lines. To make the line as short as possible and to allow work to be done in the confined area, parts are presented close to the point of use. In one case, we saw a worker collect an assortment of parts and put them in a box he then placed in the vehicle. Instead of constantly picking parts from racks close to where the work is done, the parts were placed in the car and attached as the car moved further down the line."
"Another technique was the use of a cart loaded with the required tools and parts to be attached. The cart moved beside the vehicle for a number of assembly positions, and then indexed back to the starting position automatically. Both techniques gave assemblers greater flexibility to do their work."
"Another communication tool for which Toyota is well known is the use of andon lights and boards. At each station was an andon light that signaled if things were OK or if there were problems. Over each major section of the line was a board listing each station. If there was a problem, the operator pulled on a cable at their workstation that illuminated the workstation andon and a light on the board. A supervisor or technician responded immediately to the signal."
"Usually the problem was solved quickly. If however, the problem was not solved, the line stopped, a red light signaled the station was down, and an audible signal was sounded. The problem got further attention until it was solved."
"It is interesting to note that Toyota is not perfect in its execution. The andon board indicated they were six units behind Takt time. In addition, the assembly line had a target of 97% productivity. If production was completed early, the line stopped and employees could go home if other work was not available."
"The engine plant was a very similar operation. Again, one is impressed by the orchestration of parts to the production lines. In addition, production instructions and performance results are very visible. In terms of visibility in production, we saw the use of Plexiglas doors on machines so the actual work was more visible."
Eric Sander is a senior consultant with Gemba. This week Eric is helping one of our clients implement part of what he saw at Toyota.Comments are moderated to filter spam and inappropriate content. There may be a delay before your comment is published. | <urn:uuid:615bc850-fdfd-43b0-bdaf-40c16d11a64f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gembapantarei.com/2005/11/erics_japan_lean_benchmarking.html | 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 | 0.977415 | 689 | 1.8125 | 2 |
1. The Burning
Authors note and warning:
I would humbly ask people who are extremely religious (Christian) not to read this story as they may be offended. That was not my intent, and I will say that the point of view used in this story is Maglor’s and not my own, so my own may differ in places. The story has been written with a purely historical viewpoint in mind and is based in the early years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England. Maglor hasn’t been fair in parts and I have attempted to show this by the fact that he is biased quite often against Christianity, but I bid you that if you do read this that you understand no offence was intended against the Christian religion but, acts like this (or similar) did occur. I will put notes up later in the form of an extra chapter which should help to explain certain things about the story.
And so I watch them, I watch them commit another of these barbaric murders in the name of their God. They say that they are witches in league with the evil spirits; but nay they are not, they are just people, people, who believe in older ways, truer ways, better ways. Ways that take them closer to the Valar, closer to the truth. I remember their old ways before this religion shunned them. I remember how they believed in the Straight road and the Light Elves. I remember when they believed in the Valar and the Maia, I remember…
They did not remember the Ainur as the Powers of Arda as I did, and, as they too once did, but rather as Gods and Goddesses, and the Straight road they called rather the Rainbow bridge, which you had to pass along to reach their home, the Upperworld where the Light Elves and the Gods dwelt in peace and harmony. And it was to this place that they believed that they would go when they died as all mortals do, in time. But though I do not believe that to be true, their beliefs were closer to the truth than they are now. For now, now these older, truer beliefs are shunned and a newer religion has taken its place. A religion that would kill you for disagreeing with it; kill you for practicing the older ways, and kill you for not reading or listening to the ‘Holy’ scriptures in the same way as one another.
The old Queen did so, she believed in an older form of this new religion, and, she had been shunned by her father when he did wish to marry another woman, for no other reason than to beget a son. Could he not be pleased by what he had? A healthy daughter, born out of the love of two people. But nay, he could not, for he was king, and he wished for an heir. His wife had borne numerous children, and indeed, on many an occasion did she birth a son; but, none of those children did survive past childhood, none, except a daughter, Mary. And so, he married again and disowned this elder child; but still, no heir was forthcoming, for another daughter was born unto him, and now, this child is Queen. And so, because of this daughter’s birth he had his second wife murdered, through accusation of treason and the use of a sword. He did marry a third time after, and, this wife did grant him his longed for heir, but at a price. Within a small space of time this wife lay dead, of a sickness of birthing. I wonder if perhaps she felt the same tiredness as my grandmother, the Lady Míriel, whom many did in after time call Fíriel, she who sighs, or in later speech, she who dies. I wonder if any parallel lies between their sons…
I hear the girl upon the stake chanting a prayer to her gods, my Valar; though mine I should think not to say, for I deserted them, and ignored them, and so was cursed by them. The fire grows around her, the flames licking, building, seeking to devour…
Father was named truly Fëanáro, for his fëa burned brighter than any I have ever known; brighter than any other in our family, almost as bright as golden Laurelin. The king married again after the death of his third wife, three times further; the fourth he divorced, the fifth he had killed like the second, while the sixth and last outlived and married again.
Her prayers to the Valar have stopped now, and been replaced by screams of pain and torment, such as I did hear when Balrogs and the great dragon Glaurung, did descend upon us in the gap, and during the Nirnaeth in that confusing battle. Fire destroyed Dorthonion and its people; and it is fire that does now extinguish this life.
After the King died his so became the new monarch, he tried to change things and perhaps he would have done so but, like his mother, he died, and so truly are the Second-born called the Sickly and Fírimar, for sickness did assail him, and he died yet a child, in an adults place. He wished not for either of his elder half-sisters to sit upon the throne after him and so his cousin did he place as heir. But his elder sister desired power for herself and so went with an army to take what should have been hers by right when her half-brother died; and she killed this cousin who did usurp her place but a year later. Yet, for all this Queen’s bravado, and the peoples initial love for her, she began to undo both her fathers and brothers work, and punish all those who did disagree with her in religion, or who had slighted her; and she did punish them in the same way that this poor woman is being punished, for believing against the majority, and the fashion of the time.
The fire burns hotter and people move back, away from the flames that dance in the evening light, it has been almost an hour since the pyre was first lit and only now does it begin to truly lick at her white ragged dress. Why they are dressed in that way, I know not, perhaps it is to show them ready to repent? I truly know not.
The old Queen is dead now, and her half-sister has come to the throne. The people say that she has long fiery red hair, and so a temper to match. And perhaps there is something true to this ‘old’ saying; for did not my mother have red hair? Yea she did, worse than my father when she wished.
But now I watch, I watch this innocent be burned at the stake because those she called friends or even ‘wise-folk’ believe her to be cursed, and, in the service of the devil. But what know they of the devil? This creature, created by this new religion; mayhap they equate him with Morgoth, the Dark foe of the world; or do they believe him to be something else that is far more sinister. But, what single being could be more dreadful than he, I know not.
I smell the woman’s flesh beginning to burn and, I hear her screams increase tenfold, I would turn away if I had not seen atrocities committed before...I hear a young child begin to cry, his small face screwed up in misery as his father forces him to watch.
He tells him that the woman deserves no tears for she is blasphemous and worships the devil; and it is because of her that his younger sister died, for she cursed her, and made her sick. He tells the boy that he must never turn away from God else this shall be his punishment; for God will be angry that he has decided to follow the false gods rather than him who is the truth, finally the boy turns his head away to burrow his face within his fathers chest, gripping his rosary tight in his still chubby fist.
I would pity you child, pity you for being born to these times. Where people kill people, but when has it ever been any different? In all the many years that I have lived, in all the many places that I have walked, when and where has it been any different? The children of Iluvátar will continue to kill each other for as long as they have differences, or, for as long as one has what another wishes to possess. I should know, for did I not kill for three jewels. Jewels that my father wrought, ere Moon had risen or Sun had shone, ere Men had walked or Quendi waned, ere death came and we were cursed.
I watch them now, the men of the Church; they chant prayers to their God. Bidding him to accept this soul that they are sending to him. Once, I would have openly scorned them, telling them, ‘fools you do turn away from the true God, and the truth and words of the Valar.’ But as the years have passed and the religion has grown in strength, I have learnt to still my quick tongue; for although the men of the Church would do nought but berate me for not trusting in their God, those who followed would do much worse.
Many a time was I beat for not following Gods will, and for not giving up the ‘hateful’, ‘false’ ways of my birth. I remember once, an elder man who believed that this ‘young one’ needed putting in his place, did cuff me hard around the head and so allowed my ears to show. Devil was I called, evil spirit who does the work of Lucifer, the Evil one. I fled quickly away from them, and made certain thereafter that I always kept my mouth closed and my ears well covered. For I have no wish to be burned alive like that poor soul upon the stake.
The screams have silenced, and the only sound that can be heard is the crackling of the flames as they leap in the night; her fëa has left her hroär now and gone, to wherever it is that a mortal’s fëa does go when they meet death. Perhaps they go to Iluvátar himself. I pray to Eru that she finds peace, for never did she falter in her belief in the One.
I watch the fire burning, growing, consuming. The flames dancing in the night, delighting in the life that they have taken. The people have left now, and will not return this night. They will wait until tomorrow, when the fire will have burned itself out. But I know better, this fire will never be quenched and wishes now for more.
I feel the heat on my hands and face; I lower my hood, and step, before the fire. Fire was I born from, the flames burning, not warming. I step towards it, and by fire I am consumed.
This is a work of fan fiction, written because the author has an abiding love for the works of J R R Tolkien. The characters, settings, places, and languages used in this work are the property of the Tolkien Estate, Tolkien Enterprises, and possibly New Line Cinema, except for certain original characters who belong to the author of the said work. The author will not receive any money or other remuneration for presenting the work on this archive site. The work is the intellectual property of the author, is available solely for the enjoyment of Henneth Annûn Story Archive readers, and may not be copied or redistributed by any means without the explicit written consent of the author. | <urn:uuid:3478cc75-02b7-4934-871a-1cf3feb526bb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://henneth-annun.net/challenge/chapter_view.cfm?ngid=78&stid=2294&spordinal=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988286 | 2,431 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Fifteen years ago, the Arizona lawmakers crafted legislation making possible School Tuition Organizations. The goal was to make a private school education more accessible to all Arizona families. It seemed like an ideal situation. Individuals and businesses that donated to these organizations received tax credits that reduced their state tax bill by the amount donated. Deserving kids from poor and working class families would receive scholarships giving them the type of private school education traditionally reserved for the well-to-do.
It didn’t always work out that way. While many STOs lived up to the ideals of helping families in poor and working class neighborhoods, some did not. Thanks to some fine Arizona investigative reports, problems were discovered. Bad actors were identified. The public and our lawmakers took notice. Reporting requirements were put in place ensuring that donors and the public are made more aware of STOs that fall short.
That’s why Hispanic Council for Reform and Education (HCREO) commissioned a landmark study. We ranked Arizona STOs with more than $100,000 in donations dealing with factors such as overhead costs, and the percentage of scholarships going to poor and working class students.
We want to increase awareness. HCREO travelled the state and found far too few poor and working class parents knew about scholarships available for their children. We’ve hosted community meetings; some of them drew hundreds of people.
Our second goal is to make the general public and potential donors aware of scholarship programs that truly serve poor and working class families. We want to make sure the donations flow to scholarship programs that serve the community as opposed to serving a select few.
We want to make sure deserving kids like Jorge Solis, the son of a landscaper, can continue to attend Glendale Christian Academy. We want to make sure Max Ashton, who is visually impaired, can continue to attend Brophy College Prep and make use of computer technology that allows him to overcome his challenges. And, we want to make sure that when corporations make contributions with the intent of supporting low-income and/or minority communities that the money does just that.
Why should you care? With respect to our public schools, not all of them make the grade. Far too often those schools are in less affluent neighborhoods. Concerned parents in these neighborhoods deserve options. Their children deserve a way out. The method is in place to make this happen; it’s just a matter of getting the donations to the STOs that do it right. For the complete list of STOs that are showing fidelity to the mission of helping the underprivileged in Arizona go to http://evtnow.com/31p online.
For more information call (602) 316-9732 or visit www.hcreo.com.
Christina M. Martínez is owner and CEO of Adelante Public Affairs & Communications, HISPANIC CREO Arizona. | <urn:uuid:a5fbf840-787a-46de-9058-4835538fc6e4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/opinion/article_53ce9e70-b752-11e1-98f3-001a4bcf887a.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972703 | 590 | 1.609375 | 2 |
The New Jersey League of Municipalities’ Education Foundation continues in its mission to bring municipal officials, academics, government officials and business leaders together to share their visions of New Jersey; their hopes for the future of public policy; and their solutions to the compelling challenges facing the state.
I was happy to serve as the moderator for the foundation’s recent program “New Jersey Infrastructure: What is Needed and How to Fund It,” held December 12, 2012 at the Conference Center at Mercer.
Dean James Hughes, from the Rutgers Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, led off with an informative talk titled “An Instant History of New Jersey’s Infrastructure since 1900.” The Dean talked about New Jersey’s past success and leadership on issues such as transportation planning. That history gives us a good example of the type of planning we will need to do to be economically competitive in the future.
Philip K. Beachem, President of Alliance for Action, then spoke about “Transportation Infrastructure.” Phil’s story took us from his political start at the local level to the need for a strong working relationship with members of Congress. While reminding us of the basic needs of local governments for traffic signals and the like, Phil addressed the success New Jersey had through the committee leadership positions held by past Congressional members from New Jersey.
Elected officials and others attended the NJLM Educational Foundation program “New Jersey Infrastructure: What is Needed and How to Fund It,” on December 12, 2012 at the Conference Center at Mercer.
Suzanne Chiavari, Vice President of Engineering for New Jersey American Water, addressed “Water Infrastructure.” She described the strong foundation of the existing system across the state. She spoke about the type of investment we need and how to manage our assets. At the conclusion, she gave us some helpful tools. Specifically, she reviewed the Environmental Protection Agency’s list of “5 Things You Should Know & 5 Things You Should Do.”
Assistant Commissioner for Capital Investment, Planning and Grant Administration David Kuhn gave a presentation on the New Jersey Department of Transportation, based on his 20 plus years at the department, which provided invaluable institutional knowledge. He discussed the number of roads and bridges, as well as fatality statics. David updated the gathering on the goals of the department and the challenges it faces.
Mary-Ann Holden, Commissioner of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, presented “Regulated Utilities Current and Future Needs—A Macro View.” As a new commissioner, she spoke about her time as Mayor and her town’s local utilities operation. She also remarked that the NJLM Education Foundation has provided her with valuable insights into the statewide utilities operation. She expressed her commitment to using her local experience to make sure towns’ opinions are heard at the Board of Public Utilities.
The second part of our event was dedicated to exploring the state’s infrastructure needs from a local prespective. Our first presenter, Bill Neary, President of Keep Middlesex Moving (KMM) and the former Mayor of East Brunswick, explained his organization’s focus. Since 1988, KMM has partnered with commuters, employers and local, county, and state government to reduce traffic congestion and improve air quality. They remain committed to improving air quality and being a part of the solution.
David Zimmer, Executive Director of the New Jersey Environmental Infrastructure Trust (NJEIT), addressed “Views on Local Funding Needs.” David addressed the programs offered by the NJEIT and the Trust’s work on a Natural Disaster Emergency Financing Program.
The event’s presentations can be accessed at www.njlmef.org/121212-event/index.html. We hope to see you at our next event. We all have a role to play in shaping the future of our municipalities. | <urn:uuid:f59454db-284d-432d-84a1-8821e476e19f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.njslom.org/magazine/2013-02/pg-54.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959805 | 807 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Genevieve & I were minding our own business last night, sipping a gorgeous artisan red vermouth on the rocks, watching the brilliance of Hugh Laurie on House, when she asked the question that every winemaker and winegrower dreads hearing during Harvest. “Is that rain?” Yes, indeed-ee, Ma’am. It was pouring down like it hadn’t rained hard for months….Wait. It hadn’t rained hard for months. We have had the traditional Northern California dry summer, right after a very dry winter. It was time for a good rain.
Unfortunately, many growers still have fruit on the vine. Usually by the time the first hard rain hits, most of us have picked our grapes, gotten them through their first fermentation, and had them safely tucked away for their “long winter’s nap.” How does this affect the grapes? How does this affect the wines yet to come? Well that comes with more Depends than a keg party at the Old Soldiers’ Home.
Depends on what? When we are patiently waiting for wine grapes to finish ripening, we are waiting for a number of factors: flavors, acids, sugars, and pickers. Rain can adversely affect all of these factors. The plant sucking up a lot more water will cause the grapes to swell, thinning their skins. Rain will also dilute flavors, lower sugar levels, lower acid levels, and make it very hard to pick the fruit. Is that the end of the great wine the vintner had planned on making? Depends. Maybe the sugars were already too high and the plant can process the water, restore the flavors and balance the acids before the sugars soar again. How fast can pickers get into the vineyard so the plants don’t move all the water into the fruit? Depends. If you had a lot of rain on a very steep clay slope, the pickers can’t safely climb up and down the hill until the ground dries out. If your vineyard is on a valley floor, it may be prone to flooding and the tractors following the pickers can’t get in to haul the fruit out. If you have a small vineyard and rely on a vineyard management company to pick for you, guess whose phone was ringing off the hook last night and early this morning for every client left to get picked? Whole lotta Depends here.
Another extremely important factor is mold and rot. Sweet grapes have already attracted all sorts of creepy spores that are just waiting for conditions to be right to them to populate, grow, and do the nasty on your PHAT bunches of grapes. What are the right conditions? Wet, warmish, still air, tight bunches, thin skins, and a little time all contribute to grapes rotting away. You don’t need a CSI team ducking under yellow tape to analyze this. These grapes look and smell Yucky! You wouldn’t want to get these anywhere near your mouth. In a very small number of select instances, the dominant fungus will be Botrytis Cinerea as “Noble Rot”. In some varietals, this will produce magical flavors that drive many of us to a maddened neurotic passion that is brought on by the great dessert wines resulting from a proper handling of this icky fruit. If you are not already a convert, you MUST try Sauternes, Baumes de Venise, Tokay Aszu, Trokenbeerenauslese, Amarone, and a new bunch of late harvest or “Botrysized” dessert wines from North America.
For the most part, winegrowers are working themselves into a frenzy today and winemakers are getting ready for fruit. We are all watching the weather to hope that we get a strong breeze to dry out the grape bunches. We also hope that it gets hot and sunny enough to speed things along, not just gets warm and humid to make the rot spores feel right at home. Is the 2007 vintage in danger? Get real. We are SO past the days of stuffed-shirt pundits making broad swath declarations of quality that have no meaning on reality. Every Grower and Vintner will do their best with what they are given to get you the best wine that they can possibly make. Let’s wait to unscrew some caps and pop some corks in a couple of years to see what the Rains of October 9, 2007 meant to Northern California wine country. | <urn:uuid:fc2a1c85-516d-4873-8c2f-f103fa7c6442> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://iridessewines.wordpress.com/tag/harvest/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959392 | 941 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Sometimes you notice things…
Sometimes the spouse does…
Sometimes they matter…
In this case I’d noticed that I was particularly lethargic while the spouse had noticed a tiny tinge of jaundice to the eyes (that resolved the same day). A bit of digging…
Some months back I’d swapped the “pain killer of choice” for arthritic moments from aspirin to ibuprofen. No particular reason other than that I had been nagged about stomach bleed risks by the medical establishment to the point of being a bit paranoid about it.
I was unwilling to swap to Tylenol / Acetaminophen for the simple reason that it is the leading cause of liver damage from drug overdose. Mixed with even modest quantities of alcohol you can end up needing a liver transplant; though the package insert tries to make it sound like you have to be a raving alcoholic; that isn’t the case. The two work to lower the threshold for liver damage and the overdose level for acetaminophen is a small distance above the normal dose. It has a narrow range between therapeutic and toxic dose.
Because acetaminophen (APAP) is the most widely used pharmaceutical analgesic and antipyretic agent in the United States and the world (contained in >100 products), it is reported by the American Association of Poison Control Centers to be one of the most common pharmaceuticals associated with both intentional and unintentional poisoning and toxicity. Acetaminophen toxicity is the most common cause of hepatic failure requiring liver transplantation in Great Britain. In the United States, APAP toxicity has replaced viral hepatitis as the most common cause of acute hepatic failure and is the second most common cause of liver failure requiring transplantation.
Acetaminophen is also known as paracetamol and N -acetyl-p-aminophenol (APAP). This agent is available in the United States as 325-mg and 500-mg immediate-release (IR) tablets, and as a 650-mg extended-release (ER) preparation marketed for the treatment of arthritis. Various children’s dissolvable, chewable, suspension, and elixir formulations of APAP are available. Acetaminophen is a component of many over-the-counter (OTC) cold and analgesic medications and prescription combinations, including codeine-acetaminophen (Tylenol #3) and oxycodone-acetaminophen (Percocet).
Acetaminophen is hepatotoxic if taken in overdoses, and for adults, more than 7.5 – 10g/d are considered an overdose (2002 FDA Advisory Meeting). The currently recommended maximal therapeutic dose is 4 g/d, however, instructions for use are often confusing. One product states that up to two 500 mg extra strength tablets can be taken every 4-6 h as required, but not more than 4 g/d. If the condition for which acetaminophen is taken extends over more than 18 h, even with the longer (every 6 hr) interval, there is a chance to go over the recommended daily dose.
So just a ‘double dose’ can be toxic and sometimes the label directions put you close to that. (the article goes on to show how following those directions and being a bit un-careful about the 4 gm / day can cause an overdose). Add a bit of wine with dinner or some beer at the beach and that toxic threshold drops. How much? That isn’t clear…
So I’ve generally avoided Tylenol / acetaminophen.
Once, when I was at the first aid station at the Sharks Game with a headache asking for an aspirin and specifically told the guy I’d had a couple of beers and did not want acetaminophen due to the liver risk, I was handed a generic acetaminophen and told it didn’t have any Tylenol in it… It is incredibly hard to avoid and it is very easy to take a Tylenol and some cold medicine that also has acetaminophen and get a double dose.
So I’m very sensitive about the issue.
But apparently not quite paranoid enough.
Aches and Pains
I’ve had sporadic arthritis. I’ve pretty much traced it back to foods. Primarily “cow stuff” but lately tomatoes too. It is easy to avoid beef and eat pork or lamb instead, but my weakness is beef burritos and ice cream. Oh, and marinara sauce…
About January I’d not yet figured out the tomato reaction (even though it is listed in The Arthritics Cookbook.) So I’ve had some ‘aches and pains’. Then the weekend marathon of schlepping tool boxes and lead batteries had brought some aches and pains as well.
Due to the aspirin and bleeding paranoia nag, I’d bought a bottle of Ibuprofen about last January. Didn’t think much of it. But I’d “upped” my use of Advil / Ibuprofen from ‘nearly none’ to ‘nearly daily’ due to those kinds of things. But I didn’t particularly worry about the wine every so often nor the occasional beers. ( I probably average about a bottle of wine per week, or less some weeks. Occasionally I’ll down a whole bottle in one day. At 100 kg, that’s not a whole lot.)
But what I had not done was be paranoid enough to check for Advil / Alcohol interactions to see if the same risks exist to the liver from that mix as exist with Tylenol / Acetaminophen.
So it caught me a bit by surprise when the spouse said she thought the whites of my eyes were tiny bit yellow last night. (Today all is fine). WHAT was different about yesterday? I’d had a glass of wine AND ibuprophen. Not much else.
So off I went to look things up…
Both alcohol use and Advil use may contribute to liver damage. Advil may, rarely, cause abnormal liver functioning and liver damage on its own. Although Advil and other brands of ibuprofen are usually safe when taken as directed and for a short period of time, the risks of liver damage with ibuprofen use increase with long-term use. Elevated liver enzymes, which indicate damaged liver cells, may occur in up to 15 percent of patients who regularly use NSAIDs, including Advil, according to Drugs.com. Alcohol use is also associated with liver damage, and combining alcohol with NSAIDs like Advil may quickly result in significant liver damage as alcohol activates enzymes that cause NSAIDs to be even more liver toxic than usual.
So one wonders if about 1/2 the days out of 4 months is “long term use”… and how much overlap with a glass of wine is an issue…
Over time, using Advil, alcohol, or especially both substances together may lead to diseases of the liver such as cirrosis, hepatitis, jaundice and liver failure. When used long-term or in higher-than-recommended doses, sustained liver damage from Advil use may result in hepatitis, jaundice and even complete liver failure. Heavy alcohol use may also cause these liver diseases and others without Advil use, but even when used in moderate amounts, such as three drinks nightly, alcohol may contribute to liver damage and disease if you are also taking an NSAID like Advil. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to never use alcohol and NSAIDs such as Advil together.
Well, the good news is that the liver is very good at regenerating and there have only been one or two times I’ve had ibuprophen with wine in the same day. So most likely whatever “compromise” there was is/was transitory. (Today, everything seems fine.)
Still: You would think folks would be making it a bit more clear that BOTH of those drugs (and how many others?) are potentially lethal at common levels of use and mixed with common levels of alcohol use (and don’t even get me started about the 1 Litre / Day wine consumption in some European countries and what THAT means about pushing Tylenol and Advil there).
That puts me back at Aspirin.
Being a bit paranoid, I decided to do some more “digging” about it. The “Livestrong” article tossed aspirin in the same bucket as the other NSAIDS with respect to alcohol, but was it true?
Aspirin shown to help prevent liver damage
Published on January 27, 2009 at 1:43 AM ·
According to scientists at Yale University ordinary aspirin may help prevent liver damage in millions of people suffering from the side effects of common drugs, alcohol abuse and obesity-related liver disease.
The new study by researchers at Yale School of Medicine suggests that aspirin may help prevent and treat liver damage from a host of non-infectious causes.
Dr. Wajahat Mehal from the Digestive Diseases and Department of Immunobiology, says research with mice has shown that aspirin reduced the number of deaths caused by an overdose of acetaminophen, best known as paracetamol.
Dr. Mehal says many agents such as drugs and alcohol cause liver damage, and they found that aspirin blocks a central pathway responsible for such liver injury.
He says aspirin could be used on a daily basis to prevent liver injury and suggests that promising drugs which have failed clinical trials because of liver toxicity might be resurrected if combined with aspirin.
Dr. Mehal says the strategy offers the exciting possibility of reducing a lot of pain and suffering in patients with liver diseases, using a new and very practical approach.
Aspirin it seems counteracts new mechanisms of acetaminophen or paracetamol-induced liver damage – overdoses of acetaminophen account for most drug overdoses in most Western countries.
Such overdoses cause two waves of liver damage – the first wave of liver cell destruction is a result of the toxic nature of acetaminophen – the second wave is mediated by molecules of the immune system, which is activated in response to the initial acetaminophen-induced liver damage.
A daily aspirin is already recommended to prevent heart attacks in people at high risk of having one and recent research has shown that aspirin can help treat heart attacks – doses of between 75 milligrams and 325 milligrams help thin the blood; it has also been suggested women who take aspirin once a day may slightly reduce their risk of the most common type of breast cancer.
The study is published in the latest issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Not only is it not accused of causing liver damage, it is asserted to help prevent damage from drugs like alcohol and Tylenol / Advil.
Needless to say, I’ve taken an aspirin…
As we all prepare for various celebrations, especially those of us in the USA with Memorial day, I’d like to suggest making sure you have a bottle of aspirin in the medicine cabinet for “the day after” and perhaps also for “the day before and the day of”…
I’m pretty sure I’ve had no long term damage from my ‘couple of months’ of being uncareful and not paranoid enough about Over The Counter medications. I do feel just a bit annoyed at having been “caught” by an effect to which I was already sensitized, simply from being a bit too lax and not paranoid enough.
So today the “energy” level is rising, the eyes are clear and white, and all is well with the world. Oh, and I’ve dumped the ibuprophen from the pill case and put aspirin back in.
With luck, that’s all that will come of it. | <urn:uuid:913b3750-644c-43b0-bdf7-8bda26d886c0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/05/27/apirin-good-advil-ibuprofen-tylenol-acetaminophen-bad/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95551 | 2,495 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Freedom of Information Act Office
IC Directors' Meeting Highlights
December 17, 2003
|From:||Director, Executive Secretariat|
|Subject:||IC Directors Meeting Highlights—November 13, 2003|
l. Security Update
Mr. Ficca reviewed the efforts over the past decade to address security concerns at NIH facilities and explained that in the aftermath of 9/11/01, the NIH Security Program established a three-pronged strategy aimed at:
- preventing actions that might cause harm to or compromise safety of personnel, information, and facilities,
- effectively responding to any such events, and
- mitigating results of these events.
He then noted several threats that we are likely to confront in the next 5 years, including hoaxes, harassment against scientists engaged in controversial research, and theft of sensitive information in order to compromise research, embarrass scientists involved in such research, or create controversy. Specifically, he mentioned that there is evidence that some animal rights and environmental activists in the US and abroad are coalescing in their efforts to gain access to such sensitive information.
The Federal Government has issued guidance related to personnel security, continuity of operations, and first responders. Among the critical references for NIH are an HHS memorandum to heads of Operating Divisions entitled "Security Policy" (1/30/2002) and the HHS OIG Report entitled "Review of the Physical Security at the National Institutes of Health" (4/10/2002) that found that "The NIH needs to take immediate steps to ensure that the main campus and other facilities are adequately secured."
Following this OIG finding, and with input from the NIH community including our neighbors and visitors, NIH addressed the challenge of balancing our longstanding open environment which has fostered so much interaction over the years among scientists and between the NIH and community at large with the need to meet increasing security concerns. As a result, the NIH has added physical components (fences, gates, Visitors' Center, commercial vehicle inspection center, building access controls, and CCTV) to its security program, enhanced the NIH Police, and consolidated the contract for security guard services. These efforts have been undertaken with the following goals as driving forces:
- to control access to NIH facilities effectively and efficiently
- to mitigate the threat of weaponized vehicles
- to decrease the likelihood of random violence or terrorism
- to comply with Federal and HHS requirements
- to maintain the ability of NIH staff to work in an atmosphere of openness and collegiality
Mr. Ficca explained the cost and management issues related to this intense effort. Noting that security guard contract hours are the primary cost driver at present, he presented the Perimeter Security System planning goal to continue to reduce the number of guard hours and to maintain the openness of NIH facilities while safeguarding assets. Mr. Ficca pointed out that while we can expect the cost for security to continue to decrease, all things being equal, the variables that will affect the total cost include NIH policy, new services that will come on line such as NIH personnel security, and new facilities.
In closing, Mr. Ficca noted that the OIG Report also recommended a high-level policy-setting body within the Office of the Director. Dr. Kington advised that the Steering Committee is looking at where this body will fit in the new NIH governing structure.
ll. Steering Committee Update
Dr. Kington said that he would send to IC Directors summaries of Steering Committee meetings, capturing decisions and recommendations, within 24 hours of these meetings. Agendas are available in advance of all meetings.
At the most recent Steering Committee meeting, the members discussed FTE allocation. An ad hoc committee comprising Drs. Alving, von Eschenbach, Hodes, Katz, and Volkow will work on this issue until a working group is established to handle it.
The Steering Committee also addressed the need for coding consistency to help capture trans-NIH minority health research efforts. Drs. Alving and von Eschenbach will report back with a proposal.
Dr. Kington closed the update with a reminder that IC Directors are welcome to contact Dr. Zerhouni or him with nominees or concerns related to the proposed working group suggestions.
lll. Information items
The December Advisory Committee to the Director meeting has been postponed until January 12, 2004.
Dr. Kington and the group welcomed Dr. Berg, the new Director of NIGMS, to his first meeting. He also announced that Dr. Keusch has resigned and will be leaving FIC and NIH as of December 31.
Dr. Alexander, who leads this year's NIH CFC, asked that everyone lend a hand in helping us meet our goals.
Dr. Gottesman reported that the Blue Ribbon Panel on the Clinical Center has now met 3 times.
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Eliza was born about 1816 in Virginia, USA, the daughter of unknown parents.
She died on 12 Feb 1882 in Tipton County, Indiana, USA.
Her husband was John Stroup, who she married on 26 DEC 1835 in Madison County, Ohio, USA. Their only known child was Louisa Eliza (1837-1901).
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Sex After a Hysterectomy: Never Better
Despite the fact that more than half a million American women have their uteruses surgically removed each year, most women don't blithely sign up for the procedure. Besides having the usual worries about undergoing major abdominal surgery, they are concerned about how hysterectomy will affect their health and lives, especially their sex lives. In fact, studies have shown that concerns about sexual functioning are foremost in women's minds before surgery.
"While not all women contemplating hysterectomy ask about the effect of the procedure upon sexual functioning, they most certainly think about it," writes gynecologist Sarah Berga, MD, in OB/GYN Clinical Alert . But there's good news about sex after hysterectomy. A 1999 study revealed that hysterectomy can have very positive effects on a woman's sex life, especially if she was experiencing significant medically related sexual problems before surgery.
The Good News
Published in November 1999 in the Journal of the American Medical Association , the Maryland Women's Health Study followed the experiences of 1,101 women during the first two years after a hysterectomy. The results were surprisingly positive. Overall, the study group's frequency of sexual relations increased after surgery, and the number of women experiencing pain during sex dropped from 41% to 15%. Although improvements in vaginal dryness were not as marked, women in the study group did report strong orgasms almost 15% more frequently one year after surgery. Even more impressively, almost three-quarters of the women initially experiencing low libido reported an improvement after surgery, and two-thirds of the women who reported not having orgasms before hysterectomy were having them a year later.
"This study shows that women are incredibly adaptable sexually," says Jillian Romm, RN, LICSW, a medical social worker who specializes in counseling women on reproductive issues. "Even after a major pelvic surgery, women can actually improve on their past in many cases," she says.
A Change In Thinking?
Although hysterectomies are very common among major surgeries performed in the United States, the procedure hasn't had the best reputation among the general public. Common knowledge held that removal of the uterus was the cause of many problems, including increased vaginal dryness, painful intercourse, lack of interest in sex, and lower number and quality of orgasms.
However, according to Leon Speroff, MD, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, Oregon, the results of the Maryland study didn't surprise experts.
"It's not new news, and the results make good sense," he says. "Because women usually undergo hysterectomy as a result of major medical problems, it's not surprising that quality of life generally improves after surgery."
All Hysterectomies Are Not the Same
One cause of the confusion about hysterectomy's affect upon sexual functioning may have been the public's assumption that all hysterectomies are the same. They're not. Sometimes the ovaries are removed along with the uterus, and in other cases they're left intact. Although the uterus is thought to play a role in women's hormonal functioning, the ovaries are the master producers of estrogen and the regulators of the menstrual cycle.
" Oophorectomy [surgical removal of the ovaries] often has a far more devastating impact than removal of the uterus, particularly among premenopausal women," says Amanda Clark, MD, a gynecological surgeon at the Oregon Health Sciences University Center for Women's Health. "When a woman hasn't reached menopause and her ovaries are surgically removed, we get a situation of 'instant menopause' that can cause just the sort of sexual problems that people commonly blame on hysterectomy," she says.
Too Many Hysterectomies?
Another possible cause for hysterectomy's bad reputation may be recent arguments that the procedure is performed too frequently. "The uterus has hardly been studied separate from its role in childbearing," writes Christiane Northrup, MD, in Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom . "After the uterus's childbearing function has been completed or when a woman chooses not to have a child, modern medicine considers the uterus to have no inherent value."
The high number of hysterectomies performed in the United States has also caused an outcry from feminists who refer to the procedure as "the ultimate rape" and argue that it represents a form of cultural and sexual discrimination. Although opposing views may confuse the issue, the continuing controversy over hysterectomy does remind women to keep themselves well-educated and informed.
An Informed Recovery
Romm believes that one of the best ways to increase the chances of having a positive sexual recovery after hysterectomy is to contemplate the decision to undergo the surgery as thoroughly as possible ahead of time.
Not only should women explore all available medical options, but they may also benefit from delving into related psychological issues, she says.
"I help each patient explore the nature of her attachment to her uterus. If having a womb is a big part of what makes a woman feel feminine, then having a hysterectomy will be a much bigger deal for her than, say, having her appendix out."
According to Romm, each woman's process of pre-surgery decision making, as well as her subsequent experiences during recovery, are entirely individual and must be treated as such.
"What makes our sexual self really alive is extremely individual. I urge women to talk about their feelings with loved ones, and think through every possible outcome. This takes a lot of the fear and unpredictability out of the process of adjusting."
Preparation: Key to a Positive Outcome
Along with the practical and emotional preparation, it's important for women and their partners to have realistic expectations about recovery.
"It's really common to go through a postoperative honeymoon period," says Romm. "It's kind of exciting, like having a whole new vagina. But then things usually settle down into the pre-surgery pattern."
Knowing what to expect, she says, makes changes easier to accept in a positive light. Because hysterectomy also releases many women from previous medical problems and fear of pregnancy, the odds seem to be stacking up in favor of great sex after hysterectomy.
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
National Women's Health Information Network
The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada
Women's Health Matters
Rhodes J, Kjerulff K, Langenberg P, et al. Hysterectomy and sexual functioning. JAMA. 1999;282(20).
Last reviewed June 2008 by Ganson Purcell Jr., MD, FACOG, FACPE
Please be aware that this information is provided to supplement the care provided by your physician. It is neither intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice. CALL YOUR HEALTHCARE PROVIDER IMMEDIATELY IF YOU THINK YOU MAY HAVE A MEDICAL EMERGENCY. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider prior to starting any new treatment or with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.
Copyright © 2011 EBSCO Publishing All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:c53aa127-1274-4a8b-81d3-d99eacf00380> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.beliefnet.com/healthandhealing/getcontent.aspx?cid=%0D%0A%09%09%09%09%09%0914541 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960765 | 1,532 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Ask the Fellows Who Grow the Beans
"Leaves are easy," Josiah tells me. "It's the staples we need to look at." I'm putting together a story on the Urban Food Landscape for the upcoming Transition Free Press. There are all manner of innovative veg growing enterprises in the cities: inner city and peri-urban farms (including Norwich FarmShare which he has helped set up), Abundance projects, collectives like Growing Communities in Hackney, Transition allotments and school gardens. We're growing chard and lettuce in cracks and crevices, burying potatoes in barrrels, filling salvaged basins and gutters with seedlings in our back yards. But what about the big stuff? Our daily bread.
6am. A lovely day outside and the jackdaws are already in the fields. The house is surrounded by ploughed and greening earth - barley, sugar beet, rape, potatoes and peas, the occasional flash of borage blue or flax, and the spears of asparagus in May. I've been having a conversation with Josiah about these arable fields for several years now. The vast "agri-desert" of East Anglia that most people do not even notice as they walk, cycle or drive by and Lord Deben, erstwhle Minister of the Environment, wants to turn into the GM Bread Basket of England. When we began Roots Shoots and Seeds we wanted to look at our relationship with these invisible fields, ask questions that no one asks, even though we are entirely dependent on what happens with their boundaries. And that's where I'm starting with this post: with One Day (Tuesday) in my Life as a Low Carbon Cook.
It's a massive subject, as Jasmijn mapped out so clearly, and clearly contentious. I could go in any direction as a long-time food writer: from being a food fashion editor at ELLE magazine in the 80s to a Transition activist and blogger today. I could talk distribution hubs, slaughterhouses, Monsanto and Cargill. I could talk oysters in Paris, fugu fish in New York, baby eels in Madrid. I could tell you about any number of conversation (and arguments) I have had with hedgecutters, scientists, gamekeepers, shopkeepers, beekeepers. bakers, farmers, radical growers, happy hoarders, city chefs and local fisherman. I could show you the hell of the feedlots outside Yuma and a paradise moment eating sea urchins on a Greek island.
And yet, to address this topic squarely, honestly, it has to start with the food we hold in our hands right now and the territory outside the window. How we can put these two artifcially disconnected things together. If we are going to be resilient as communities we need to relocalise and shorten our supply chains in a world which is skewed to favour big industrial farming and the global food machine. We're going to have to wean ourselves off those pesticides and fertilisers from fossil fuels, replenish the soil and think hard about water and diversity. That's the big picture.
We are also going to have to radically change our diet. As all resilience food writers will tell you, from Michael Pollan to Colin Tudge, this means less meat and dairy, more plants. Almost no fish if you care about oceans. That's the small one. And this is the journey I have been on as a Transition cook and writer, as part of a pioneer project called the Low Carbon Cookbook. And it begins here in these barley fields outside the small brewing seatown of Southwold. Because when you look at civilisations you are looking at the cultivation of grasses, the agriculture that keeps them alive. Maize and millet, rice and wheat. We look fondly at leaves and we argue fiercely about animals, but actually we should be considering these crops, in whose praise we once sung hymns and danced at every part of the growing year.
Millet and Rice
9am. Walking with Dano and Mark toward the tumulus, past wheat fields and pig fields. Starting the day in a wild way. When you focus on the wild you're looking at the cracks and edges of things in England because that is where most of life is thriving. Your eyes scan hedgerows, the reedbed, the copse, the speedwells and poppies that grow amongst Demeter's grains. As Transition medicine and plant people, we're looking to rebalance the domestic and the culitivated, finding the true form of all living things - including our human bodies. So we start by looking at the memory of this land, its shifting patterns, at the mesh of fields and commons through time. We're not looking at land use, or environment or diet, we're looking at earth and food, looking for a narrative that grabs the imagination, pulls you closer to people and the plants. Less mind, more heart.
In Suffolk several Transition initiatives are going locavore in September, following in the tracks of the Fife and Cornwall diets. If you eat bread, meat and fish and cheese you could eat like a king within a 30 mile radius. But this is hard going if you are a gluten-free fellow who doesn't eat animals. That's when you see our dependence on imported food. And you start looking at those fields with some kind of respect, wondering what other crops they could support. Can we grow lentils, soya, chickpeas, all the mainstay staples of the vegetarian larder? (very hard in this climate). Looking at my breakfast I know we can grow millet (though mostly for caged birds in the UK), but not rice. "Wet rice emits more methane than cattle", Josiah has informed me. So I've learned to let go of Basmati, along with rainforest palm oil and soya, tropical fruit and all processed food. I eat brown rice from Italy and a lot of tahini and winter cabbage.
You might think this is depriviation, but it isn't: writers and cooks love challenges. We love being resourceful and witty, coming up with creative solutions. If we want to restore and rebalance the world, we have to do it by sparking interest, waking everyone up. Facts and scientific method are useful and call us to account, but they don't inspire us to explore. Everything is material for a story to a writer, all ingredients are a dish to a cook. Show them a cupboard or a situation, and they are already imagining what inventive and delicious things they can do with it. A cook is not a chef, a conjuror entertaining the masses on television with their smart and sexy sleights of hand, or cooking up fairy feasts for the elite. A cook is someone who alchemises the rough and ready and makes life worth living, finds meaning at every turn, every day. Somehow to downshift we have to unleash our creativity. We have to learn to love the territory, get to have a relationship with those fields. We have to immerse outselves in these grains and pulses and find out their story. Put our lives in play.
1pm Lunch of left-over black eye peas (USA) and rice, spring greens and harissa, after bean planting today in the garden: black beans known as Cherokee Trail of Tears, runner beans, French beans, wrinkly peas, Dunwich broad beans, all from seeds I found at the Walberswick Seed Swap.
In the cookbook we have this game called Six Ingredients. Imagine you can only live on what grows in England but are allowed six ingredients from overseas. What would they be? Tough call for lovers of chocolate and tea, raisins and durum wheat. We reckoned that between us we could share our spices by post. Was that cheating? Or was that simply a sign of how things might go?
This is my choice: olive oil, lemons, black pepper, rice, red lentils and a bean. Not sure whether that's a pinto, black, aduki, black eye pea or lima yet. You could substitue hemp, sunflower or rape for the olive, suggested my fellow cooks, and chillis for the pepper, and then have oranges and noodles. Yes, I say but some things you just have to have in life. Olive oil is one of them.
In the last year and a half we have discussed a hundred ingredients, we have looked at growing patterns, raw food and freegansim, we've lit rocket stoves, cooked together, swapped plants, read books, watched documentaries, and immersed ourselves in the living fabric of food, and reported all our findings. Our main task is to bring awareness in an area where there is a lot of denial. Most people live their lives entirely disconnected from food production, from these fields. Our task is to reconnect, investigate, make conscious, reduce carbon emission in all aspects of our meals - transport, packaging, waste. But most of all to change what and how we eat. How do you wean yourself away from a highly processed, ready-cooked, addictive diet, from a culture built on bourgeois cuisine, that makes feast food an every day occurance and turns organic "peasant" food into something that is weird and elitist? How do you eat ethically, ecologically, economically, with heart, in sych with all creatures, all life on earth?
In Transition Norwich we started by mapping: Norwich FarmShare began with a plan called Can Norwich Feed Itself? The Low Carbon Cookbook began with Deconstruct the Dish, an exercise which places attention on the material, engaging the imagination, our ability to cross-reference and make different pathways, to ask ourselves questions.
This is how it goes: everyone sits down at a table with a large sheet of paper (two people to one piece). You draw a circle and put all the ingredients of the dish inside. Then you take each ingredient and write everything you know about it alongside. You ask yourself and/or your drawing partner: Where did I buy this? Which land did it come from? How did it get here? What people were involved? What’s my relationship with them? When did I first eat this dish? Then you share what you discovered with everyone in the room.
The dish I brought was Fava, which means bean in Greek. It's made with yellow split peas, traditionally served with eggs, red onion and olives. Beans are the big story. Right now we're working with field beans: one kind of bean that grows brilliantly in these fields and makes one of the best hummus I have ever tasted. Soon to be available in food stores in Norwich, thanks to Josiah and Nick Saltmarsh of Provenance and East Anglia Food Link.
4pm Going out into the garden to pick the salad, for tonight's Cookbook meeting. I'm pretty sure Erik will bring leaves from among the 76 plants he grows in his permaculture garden in Hethersett - sorrel, land cress, lovage, early lettuce (maybe), salad burnet (for sure), so I'm collecting some perky wild leaves to add to the base mix - dandelion, cleavers, daisy, chickweed, yarrow, mugwort, hawthorn, with some flowers - violet, primrose, rosemary and alexanders. I'm walking past my donated strawberries and cherry and apple trees now coming into blossom, the three greengages, blackcurrant and gooseberry bushes in flower, rhubarb coming up. Apart from oranges and lemons, I only eat seasonal fruit, so Im looking at those trees with joyful anticipation.
Back in the kitchen I cook up lentils (Canada) for a salad, and quinoa (Bolivia), flavoured with orange and cinnamon, wild garlic leaves and some seeds I've sprouted in a jar. Quinoa is a quandary crop. Hailed as a modern superfood, it is an ace staple due to its protein content and is a great gluten-free substitute for cous cous and bulgar wheat. But the new global demand for it is destroying the fragile soils of the altiplano and the people who grow it are are going hungry. Forced away from their native food and eating white bread, they are going the way of all people who eat a Western diet. I eat it now very rarely and buy Fairtrade. Polenta has become a stand-by.
11pm Returning from Norwich the fields are dark and still. The cat is out hunting rabbits, the owls are hooting one to another in the oak trees. Bilions of stars are sparkling over our heads. We had a good time at the cookbook meeting. Erik didn't bring his leaves, but a delicious home-grown apple, rhubarb and pumpkin crumble, sweetened with Norwich Community Bees honey. Our main focus was on how much KW energy goes into making a vegetable stew cooked in three ways - hay box, on the hob and pressure cooked - and into baking bread and boiling water. Nick had been trying everything out in his boat in the river outside the house. We exchanged facts about gas and electrity and swapped stories about cooking under pressure in the community kitchens of Norwich FoodCycle and Sustainable Bungay's Happy Mondays! And then we talked plants: achocha and chia, goji berry and blue honeysuckle, and all the wild things you can forage right now. And quinoa seeds, which Erik is going to send me in the post. Yes!
"Does it grow OK here?" I ask. It grows fine, says Erik, but it's tricky to harvest and you have to wash it or it tastes of soap.
Outside in the tiny yard stand trays of broad beans planted by Sophie's Spanish flatmates who have come to the city in search of work. A memory of their homeland. Plants that have been growing quietly for a million Spring nights. Plants that keep us all rooted in a rocky time.
Looking over the barley field (Mark Watson); roadkill pheasant on the Poetry Paper; still from Power of Community; with Dano and Whitney and wild salad, filming for the Journal of Wild Culture; postcard for Great British Beans (Josiah Meldrum); mapping the dish by Elena Judd (Norwich FarmShare) and Gemma Sayers (Transition Ipswich/Oak Tree Low Carbon Farm); cape gooseberries and Tierney, head grower at Norwich FarmShare, among the brassicas (by kind permission of Tony Buckingham, copyright )
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Learn How These Top Colleges Are Integrating Social Media
My eighteen year old sister types papers on an iPad, has a Tumblr blog, Tweets everyday, and knows the latest music and fashion via Pinterest and blogs before most. A newbie freshman about to enter a college in Boston - she expects her college to keep up and be ahead of the curve when it comes to social media. She’s only one of many who expects such.
Luckily for her - and many other students, colleges have realized the stretch of road ahead of them and have hopped on by effectively using social and integrating it into their campus and curriculum at a fast pace. Boston being a central hub of college students has led the way with 4 of its colleges in the Top 25 of the Top 100 social media colleges in the United States.
Of those colleges include: Harvard University, Emerson College, Berklee College of Music, and MIT. A few things to note on why they shine when it comes to social media:
Harvard: The Harvard Social Media Dashboard gives a taste of all the University’s efforts in social including up to date videos, tweets, and more from each of its accounts. Each of its different channels and different accounts - whether it’s for alumni, research, a grad program, or the undergrad -- have different strategies involved regarding the social output and the content generated for sharing with their audience. Harvard demonstrates that even if there are multiple channels and accounts, social media can be optimized effectively if the effort is put forth correctly.
Emerson College: Their social media classes are one to note of, as there are local guest speakers from the industry, social media strategy projects for local places, and other hands-on applications for students to learn, apply, and utilize as assets.
Berklee College of Music: The Berklee Music Network allows students the opportunity to collaborate, share, and find music, jobs, influencers, and friends all in real time. Music isn’t just about performances on a stage when social media can help lead the way through posting music online and sharing through different channels.
MIT: The Sociable Media Group demonstrates the mix of social and technology at the fringe of discovering what’s next. MIT known for being techy and savvy, demonstrates this even in the socialsphere.
Although Suffolk University was not in the Top 25, it must still be given recognition for its curriculum and conferences. Suffolk put on its first annual social media conference which was about bridging the gap between education and the workforce. It brought the likes of many influencers from around the nation demonstrating that the University was pushing ahead in social media and adapting to what’s new, at a fast pace. Along with its social media classes for undergrad and MBA program, Suffolk is also well on its way.
In short - it’s about ensuring that the students are continuously challenged through the school environment and through a curriculum that is ever-changing -- since social media never stands still. | <urn:uuid:57a48c9c-89ba-4e37-8cc0-998c86bc9a8c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://socialmediaclub.org/blogs/from-the-clubhouse/learn-how-these-top-college-are-integrating-social-media | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951013 | 610 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Thursday, November 15, 2012 7:52 AM
Inappropriate photo? Alert us.
Just over a dozen people gathered on a small hill near off of Mt Pisgah Road in Walker County to view a flock of five juvenile whooping cranes as they followed behind two ultralight aircraft Thursday November 15, 2012 as they continued their journey south for the winter. Each year Operation Migration raises whooping cranes that were hatched in captivity and trains them to follow ultralight aircraft to train them to migrate south for the winter. (Frank Couchemail@example.com) | <urn:uuid:302cd520-706f-4eb0-9ddd-259082fec28b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://photos.al.com/birmingham-news/2012/11/whooping_cranes_8.html | 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 | 0.965169 | 119 | 1.75 | 2 |
Today, the trees are flattened for a half mile in every direction. The mobile home is in a million pieces. Pieces of carpet and sheet metal are wrapped around the wrenched-off trunks of trees. Broken televisions and warped record albums litter the landscape.
"For a good 20 years, it's going to look bad," Heath said.
The 11-acre tract was part of who Sam Heath was and will always be. He grew up on the land and lived there as an adult. His 81-year-old mother, Doris Heath, lived in the family home on the same land.
Their world changed at 3:35 p.m. on April 27, 2011. An EF-5 tornado with 210 mph winds roared across the land. When it was gone, all that 56-year-old Sam Heath had left were the clothes on his back.
Heath, who's disabled by the autoimmune disease myasthenia gravis, recalled that he had been resting at his mobile home when the weather turned bad a year ago. He rushed to his mother's house and they huddled in a corner of her basement as the tornado hit.
"I could hear it take the roof off and the windows coming out. I was praying to Jesus to save us," he said.
When the storm passed, Heath walked outside to discover that the basement was all that remained of his mother's house and nothing was left of his house.
"If I'd been at my house, I wouldn't be here," he said.
Nearly everything that made the land home was gone — some of it a great distance. Heath's Medicaid card was found in Tennessee.
Heath's sister took their mother to stay with her in Georgia, and Heath camped out in a tent on the family land.
That's where he was when a volunteer from the United Church of Christ stopped by to see if he needed anything. Heath had no insurance on his mobile home, so the volunteer explained where he could apply for help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Then people with the United Way and the Northwest Alabama Long Term Recovery Committee tracked him down.
With their help, he used $25,000 from FEMA to buy a vacant three-bedroom, one-bath house in nearby Bear Creek. United Way and the recovery committee helped get the house in shape, including installing new flooring and windows and acquiring a stove and refrigerator for the kitchen.
"If people hadn't stepped in, I'd still be trying to figure out what to do about a house," he said.
Heath's mother now lives in a mobile home parked in his yard.
Heath still goes to his old home place to walk around and reflect, but he hasn't had the physical or emotional strength to start cleaning up.
"I came up here one day and sat for three hours, and I said, 'I've got to accept this and move on.' But it ain't worked."
Despite his love of the family land, Heath has no plans to call it home again.
"I couldn't get up every day and relive it. I can't imagine what I'd do if another storm came," he said. | <urn:uuid:a791f561-c1f8-48b6-b371-8fb7657ea091> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://annistonstar.com/pages/full_story/push?article-Many+help+Ala-+twister+survivor+get+new+home+%20&id=18369095&instance=top_center_featured | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.990404 | 658 | 1.648438 | 2 |
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — There’s a big mess to clean up for lots of people today after Thursday’s powerful storms left their mark across the area.
The storms left a messy trail marking their presence, from downed trees to landslides to tens of thousands of people without power.
Surprisingly, a neighbor says no one along Jo Deener Road in Zelienople lost electricity when a tree fell on power lines along the roadway. By Friday morning, it was still resting along the lines, waiting to be removed.
The biggest concern in Butler County was the thousands of customers without power.
“They have about 11,000 customers still remaining out right now. That was our hardest hit area,” said Rob Lombardo, West Penn Power’s spokesperson, Friday morning. “We had over 24,000 customers out just in our West Penn Power service territory in Butler and Armstrong counties.”
Crews worked through the night, making progress but still dealing with an overwhelming number of outages. Lombardo says the hope is that everyone in the First Energy, Penn Power, and West Penn Power service areas will have power by Sunday morning.
“Our crews are trying to get everyone restored as fast and as safe as they possibly can,” added Lombardo.
- Photo Gallery: Storms Topple Trees In Western Pennsylvania
- Story: More Storms Possible As Cleanup Begins Across Area
Meanwhile, plywood and tarps are the only protection now from the elements at the Middlesex Township Volunteer Fire Station in Butler County.
The high winds caused the roof to peel off the structure like the lid on a sardine can. There was water damage inside from the relentless rains.
In Ross Township, it’s a muddy mess spilling down the hillside off Virginia Avenue.
A tree marks where a township ordinance sign once stood alongside the guardrail. The gas company has installed a temporary line since the main is exposed and bearing the weight of crumbled asphalt.
“There’s about four feet of mud into the back of that house,” said Chris Eyster, a neighbor, of the damage.
And in Armstrong County, PennDOT officials say State Route 1034 from the intersection of 1031 to Ridge Road in Boggs Township has been closed due to downed utility lines. | <urn:uuid:2e951229-173e-400e-9a3f-e6ce0743c051> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2012/07/27/powerful-storms-leave-behind-big-mess-for-local-residents/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95074 | 491 | 1.539063 | 2 |
TILTON -- The sun isn't just melting the ice off cars in Vermilion County.
It's helping clean them. Three car washes will be fitted with solar panels like the ones you see here.
There's one in Catlin, Georgetown and Tilton.
The panels keep the hoses from freezing and heat the water. More solar equipment will be added to cut down on the power bill.
The projects cost about to $200,000. Workers say grants and tax credits will pay for nearly 75% percent of it. | <urn:uuid:217cf079-e44b-420a-a15f-82d7570f8529> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://illinoishomepage.net/fulltext?nxd_id=449132&nxd_238653_start=21495 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940943 | 112 | 1.617188 | 2 |
I was disappointed to discover that IEEE Pervasive Magazine need my article as a Microsoft Word document because they don’t know how to handle LaTeX files. I don’t understand how a serious scientific society or a professional editor can not be able to handle plain text files, especially since the final typesetting probably takes place in another piece of software.
Fortunately, I found the GrindEQ LaTeX-to-Word converter, a sort of plugin for Word which allows you to open
.tex files. It adds some menus to the Word ribbons (toolbars at the top of the page) and makes Word able to open
.tex files from the usual File -> Open menu. When you open a LaTeX file, GrindEQ will remind you that you can only run it 10 times before having to register. It may also encourage you to install Ghostscript if you work with EPS files. Remember to set the LaTeX encoding to UTF-8 or whatever you use if you want accented characters to appear correctly.
I was very impressed with the formatting. Almost everything was correct. It’s not the prettiest Word document and it doesn’t seem to use the Word styles (eg., header 1, header 2, paragraph) but the equations and figures were mostly correct. Here are the errors that I noticed.
- In one equation, the norm symbols (double bars) had been replaced by a ‘P’ character in special font.
- A numbered list which was programmed to start from a value greater than 1 didn’t.
- The title was missing and the document started with a blank page.
- Some figures which were laid out in LaTeX using the
\subfloatcommand were displayed in sequence with their subcaptions. I created a table to hold these figures.
- At a few places in the text, the letters
ieeetrappeared because I was using the bibunits package with that particular style of bibliography.
- I used bibunits to create two bibliographies. LaTeX numbers them both starting from 1, but in Word they were all in one continuous sequence. This is not a problem because the reference numbers are consistent between the text and the bibliography. | <urn:uuid:248abf71-a5c1-4997-b516-54c2b490451b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://eis.comp.lancs.ac.uk/~carl/blog/2012/01/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948096 | 465 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Must-have GIS Tools and Extensions
Posted 17 March 2009 - 09:56 AM
forgive me if this very topic has already been addressed (in which case please point me in the right direction). As I read each days' new posts in the GIS thread, I continually come across great advice for downloading a free extension that will do such and such. It makes me think that perhaps a good resource for us all to have is a single good starting point for the free extensions and toolsets (perhaps even low-cost) that this forums GIS'ers couldnt do without.
Sort of a dont-leave-home without it list.
For example, I just found two references for the Hawth Tools and it looks very useful for the stuff many of us do. Also the ARD Toolbar.
If this idea is agreeable, then let's start compiling and hopefully by the end we'll have a good resource ready, which I'll try to aggregate at the very end. Many thanks in advance!
1) Hawth's Tools for ArcGIS 9.x
2) ARD Toolbar
Posted 17 March 2009 - 01:19 PM
Thanks Hans, but I think what I had in mind was extensions to or applications within ArcGIS 9.x
Ah, but we're talking GIS tools here, and there's more to GIS than just Arc
Even so, FME works along with ArcGIS (Data Interoperability Extension).
Email: email@example.com / Twitter: @redgeographics
Posted 17 March 2009 - 01:43 PM
Posted 17 March 2009 - 01:45 PM
Also: ET Geowizards is at the top of our list.
Would also like to note that some of the best GIS tools out there are the ones that don't run within ArcMap. We use a number of other "free" apps to do spatial analyses, etc. without the thousands of $$$ investment required to do it within ArcGIS. These would include: SAGA GIS, MapWindow, JUMP, GRASS, to name a few.
Posted 18 March 2009 - 03:26 AM
Posted 18 March 2009 - 07:07 AM
And I'm also learning ArcObjects so I'll be able to add my own tools to the list...
Posted 19 March 2009 - 11:52 AM
Arcscripts is where its at!
Posted 19 March 2009 - 12:09 PM
I really appreciate the value of ArcScripts and also the spirit of sharing. I think it's unfortunate that profiteers have copied and repackaged free things for quick cash. I understand the motive and the justification for compensation - I just think it's unfortunate.
Oregon Metro - Portland, OR
Posted 20 March 2009 - 03:15 AM
I very rarely look at ArcView 3 these days, but I often go back to ArcInfo workstation, and primarily GRID. I have a lot of brain power invested in these old tools, and I appreciate the very clear topology concepts in old-school ArcInfo, and the clean (but quirky) command-line execution. It makes it so easy to tweak and and repeat a process later. But the real power there is ArcInfo GRID - raster calculations are so intuitive (and powerful) when written just like formulas.
Posted 20 March 2009 - 11:32 AM
I find it interesting that we power-users resort to the outdated tools to get the real things done. I feel like ArcGIS - from 8 and onwards, has still not caught up in usability (with all that power underneath), and I find the user interface quirky at times.
For what I've been told in class, ESRI counts a lot on the the fact that users can customize the application and share their work... it helps the company to concentrate their efforts someplace else...
Posted 20 March 2009 - 12:10 PM
Topology in ArcMap 9.3 is better than anything else before it.
0 user(s) are reading this topic
0 members, 0 guests, 0 anonymous users | <urn:uuid:b9491cab-5ef7-4ec5-b865-121ed975d628> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cartotalk.com/index.php?showtopic=4184&pid=23184&mode=threaded&start= | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949919 | 849 | 1.796875 | 2 |
"As a regulatory attorney, I know that regulatory agencies in this country don't always do their job all that efficiently," said Jonathan Weinrieb of Chevy Chase, Maryland. "So do I trust them to make sure the Dreamliner is safe? No. But will that stop me from flying if that's the plane I've got to get on to get where I'm going? No."
Another traveler said his confidence in the system was high. "They'll figure it out and get it all squared away," said Ridgely Albaugh of Lower Marlboro, Maryland.
Goglia said every new airplane is going have "teething problems." The manufacturers usually "get a handle on it quickly and fix it," he said.
The most recent Dreamliner setbacks occurred Friday. Oil was discovered leaking from a generator on an engine at a Japanese airport, and a crack appeared in a cockpit window of a plane en route from Tokyo to western Japan, a spokeswoman for All Nippon Airways said.
ANA was the Dreamliner's launch, or first customer.
On Tuesday, a Japan Airlines flight bound for Tokyo aborted takeoff from Boston's Logan International Airport after a pilot on another airplane spotted the 787 leaking fuel. On Monday, a maintenance worker discovered the electrical fire aboard an empty plane being prepared at a gate at Logan for a return trip to Japan.
In December, a United Airlines 787 traveling from Houston to Newark, New Jersey, was diverted to New Orleans because of mechanical problems. A general inspection of all 787s in September turned up cracked engines on two planes.
The cracked window and the leaky generator were not unusual issues, ANA said, and occur with other aircraft as well. This was the third time that a window cracked on an ANA Dreamliner, but the cockpit window has five layers, and Friday's crack, in a spider web pattern, appeared in the outer layer, ANA said. It did not endanger the flight.
Newer airplanes are safer than ever, Goglia said. "We are flying more airplanes that have been engineered to be safer," he said. "We almost (never) have material failures in airplanes anymore."
The Airbus A380 also had problems when it started flying in 2007, but aviation expert Janet Bednarek loves to fly on it.
"It had cracks in the wing, which would be much more concerning to me" than the 787 reports, said Bednarek, a University of Dayton aviation history professor. "They figured it out. Pilots want to get to their destination alive as much as anybody, so they don't mess around."
Like the 787, the Boeing 747 had a lot of issues when it started flying in 1970, aviation consultant Michael Boyd said.
And as with the former model, Boeing will work through the current aircraft's issues and move on, the company has said.
"Just like with anything that's new, they kind of have to get the kinks out of it," said airline passenger Ronald Hobby, of Fort Washington, Maryland. "So I would probably wait for a while until they get everything straight before I would fly." | <urn:uuid:76b60947-0da1-4655-a8c8-b9a80aa69c93> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.local10.com/thats-life/travelgetaways/Dreamliner-safety-review-What-it-means-for-fliers/-/1716726/18093050/-/item/1/-/o86dmkz/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978848 | 647 | 1.796875 | 2 |
The Information Office explains what the House of Lords is and does to the public. It uses different channels and ways to promote and engage people with the Lords’ work and membership on the Lords’ behalf.
- a telephone and email enquiry service to respond to questions from the public
- a media centre to promote the work of the House and its committees to the press and handle media enquiries
- publications that explain the role, work and membership of the House of Lords
- a House of Lords outreach programme and initiatives for the public across the UK
- online and social media channels about the House.
The enquiry service responds to telephone and email enquiries from the public. The office is open from 10am to 6pm (Monday to Thursday), 10am to 4pm on Fridays and 10am to 1pm and 2pm to 4pm during recess (holidays).
The office will do their best to answer your enquiry, or refer you onto another useful source.
You can contact the enquiry service by email at email@example.com or on 020 7219 3107.
The House of Lords enquiry service also updates a set of online FAQs with useful facts about the House of Lords. You can find out everything from facts on State Opening to government defeats.
The media centre promotes the work of the House and its committees to the media, and responds to their enquiries. It operates from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday. Outside these hours, there is an out-of-hours press office service provided for urgent issues. | <urn:uuid:e0d410ca-e658-43a2-8918-493300a0277b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.parliament.uk/business/lords/get-involved-with-the-lords/house-of-lords-information-office/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93294 | 325 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Description - Stanislaus River Parks offers as its centerpiece a 330-foot long historic covered bridge built in 1863. Additionally, nine beautifully developed parks are located along the river as it stretches from the Sierra Nevada foothills to its confluence with the San Joaquin River. The parks, developed after the completion of New Melones Dam, provide access to the river for whitewater rafting, canoeing, hiking, and camping.
Copyright: US Army Corps of Engineers
Historic Covered Bridge, Circa 1863 -- Stanislaus River Parks
- Stanislaus River Parks offers a variety of water-related sports, enjoyable sights, day use areas and unique overnight spots. The park is open all year.
Located in historic Knights Ferry, the information center describes the rich history of the Stanislaus River and surrounding area. Display topics include salmon life cycles, Native American culture, the nearby covered bridge, and a century-old flour mill. A short video introduction to the parks is available for viewing. Special programs may be set up by calling the park office.
Three campgrounds offer a unique camping experience for groups or individuals. Access is by boat, foot, or bicycle only. Camping is by permit only and reservations are recommended. Fees are charged year-round for camping only.
The 4.0 miles of rapids above Knights Ferry draw whitewater enthusiasts from throughout the world. Experience and professional quality whitewater equipment are required. The river below Knights Ferry offers more tranquil boating for those with less experience.
The river is open to fishing from early January to the end of March, and the end of May to mid-October. The variety of species include trout, smallmouth bass, striped bass, carp, channel and white catfish, and black crappie. The entire river is closed to fishing from late October to the end of December.
Day use opportunities are endless. Visitors come for hiking, boating, photography, picnicking ($ - group), fishing, wildlife viewing and camping. Historic buildings and access to the upper river canyon draw visitors to the Knights Ferry Recreation Area, but visitors to the lower parks will enjoy the quiet river landscape.
Leashed pets are permitted. Golden Age and Golden Access passports are accepted for a 50% discount on single unit fees. Golden Age cards may be purchased with proof of age (62) and American citizenship.
Recreation - Recreations enjoyed at the various parks include whitewater sports, fishing, picnicking, hiking, sightseeing, photography, camping, and view exhibits.
Climate - A Mediterranean type climate extends over most of the River producing warm, dry summers and cold, moist winters. Weather can change rapidly during all seasons of the year. Packing rain gear and layering of clothing is advisable. Elevation plays a major role in temperature and precipitation with most moisture falling between October through April. At higher elevations, it comes mostly in the form of snow. Summer temperatures above 100 degrees are part of the normal pattern.
The Stanislaus River Parks Headquarters is located in Knights Ferry, 12 miles east of Oakdale on State Route 108 / 120. | <urn:uuid:efe2152c-76e4-4e07-a82a-cc48bbcf45c1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wildernet.com/pages/area.cfm?areaID=CAAESR&CU_ID=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946184 | 638 | 1.796875 | 2 |
By David W. Almasi, Alexandria
To the editor:
By weaving a class-warfare narrative to justify cyclists’ ignorance or ambivalence toward traffic laws, Cindy Dahlke promotes behavior that only imperils cyclist safety (“Motorists: respect the rights of cyclists,” October 4).
Dahlke’s two-wheeled call for revolution would seem to exempt cyclists from the alleged 1-percenter expectations that they abide by stop signs. Yet she adamantly demands motorists obey those very same stop signs, and she rails against enforcement of traffic laws against cyclists.
As a motorist and member of the 99 percent, I’d like to point out that her occupation of the intersection creates unnecessary stress for careful and courteous drivers as well as increases the likelihood of bike-car accidents.
Dahlke argued that “it just isn’t a reasonable expectation” for cyclists to obey traffic laws because of the actions of “reckless motorists.” There are reckless drivers who do imperil cyclists, pedestrians, pets and other drivers, but why is their lawlessness an excuse for others to act in a similar manner?
There have been more than a few occasions in which I’m preparing to make a right turn at a stop sign, and I must nervously wonder if the cyclist approaching from behind will acknowledge my turn signal or simply pass by to the right without regard for their safety. The same can be said when cyclists approach a four-way-stop intersection at high speed, and I have the right of way.
I allow such infractions to occur, but what if I didn’t see them? What if my view was obstructed? Does Dahlke’s animosity toward motorists make her so obtuse that she advocates selective anarchy?
Judicious and equal enforcement of traffic laws is the respectful and effective way to create a safe Alexandria for all of its residents. | <urn:uuid:eec7a447-6453-46e1-9814-23bc7c12960e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://alextimes.com/2012/11/when-did-cyclists-become-above-the-law/?pagenum=4&sort=id&dir=DESC | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961763 | 400 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same as follows:
SECTION 1. Any holder of an elective office in the town of Northfield may be recalled and removed by the registered voters of the town as provided in this act, for the reason of lack of fitness, incompetence, neglect of duties, corruption, malfeasance or violation of oath.
SECTION 2. One hundred or more registered voters may initiate a recall petition by filing with the town clerk an affidavit containing the name of the officer and the office held whose recall is sought and a statement of the grounds of the recall. Upon certification by the board of registrars of voters, the town clerk shall, within 2 business days, deliver to the voter first named on such affidavit, a sufficient number of copies of petition blanks requesting such recall and shall provide additional blanks upon request. Petitioners may make exact copies of the petitions, provided that the petitioner shall bear the risk that if any such copies are not exact copies, that the signatures affixed thereto shall not be counted towards the total number of signatures required. The blanks shall be issued by the town clerk with the town clerk’s signature and official seal attached thereto; they shall be dated and addressed to the board of selectmen; shall contain the name of the person whose recall is sought, the office from which recall is sought, the grounds for recall as stated in the affidavit and shall demand the election of a successor to such office. A copy of the petition shall be entered in a record book to be kept in the office of the town clerk. The recall petition shall be returned and filed with the town clerk within 20 days following the date of issuance of the petition. The recall petition shall be signed by at least 20 per cent of the registered voters in the town, and to every signature shall be added the place of residence of the signer, giving the street and number. The town clerk shall, within 2 business days following the date of such filing, submit the recall petition to the board of registrars of voters, who shall within 5 business days after the day of receipt, certify in writing the number of signatures which are names of voters in the town as of the date the affidavit was filed with the town clerk. The board of registrars of voters shall, upon completion of its certification, return the petition to the town clerk.
SECTION 3. If the petition shall be found and certified by the town clerk to be sufficient, the town clerk shall submit the same with the town clerk’s certificate to the selectmen without delay, and the selectmen shall immediately give to the elected officer whose recall is being sought, written notice of the receipt of the certificate and shall, if the officer sought to be removed does not resign within 5 days thereafter, order a recall election to be held not less than 64 nor more than 90 days after the date the election is called; provided however, that if a town election is to occur within 100 days after the date of the certification, the selectmen may, in their discretion, postpone the holding of the removal election to the date of such other election. If a vacancy occurs in said office after a recall election has been ordered, the election shall nevertheless proceed as herein provided.
SECTION 4. Any officer sought to be recalled may be a candidate to succeed in that office, and unless the officer requests otherwise in writing, the town clerk shall place the officer’s name on the official ballot without nomination. The nomination of other candidates, the publication of the warrant for the recall election and the conduct of the same shall be under the General Laws relating to elections, unless otherwise provided in this act.
SECTION 5. The incumbent shall continue to perform the duties of the office until the recall election. If the recall fails, or if the incumbent is re-elected, the incumbent shall continue in the office for the remainder of the incumbent’s unexpired term, subject to recall as before, except as provided in this act. If not re-elected in the recall election, the incumbent shall be considered removed upon the qualification of the incumbent’s successor, who shall hold office during the unexpired term. If the successor fails to qualify within 5 days after receiving notification of the successor’s election, the incumbent shall be considered removed and the office vacant.
SECTION 6. The ballots used in a recall election in the town shall submit the following propositions in the order indicated:
For the recall of (name of officer) (office held)
Against the recall of (name of officer) (office held)
There shall be an appropriate place for the voters to vote for either such propositions, and above said propositions, there shall appear the direction “Vote for one”. Under the propositions shall appear the word “Candidates” and the direction “Vote for one” and beneath this the names of candidates nominated as provided in this act.
If a majority of the votes cast on the recall question is in the affirmative, then the candidate who received the highest number of votes shall be elected. If a majority of the votes cast on the recall question is in the negative, the votes cast for candidates to fill the potential vacancy shall not be counted.
SECTION 7. No recall petition shall be filed against an officer of the town within 6 months after an officer takes office. No recall petition shall be filed against an officer subjected to a recall election and not removed thereby until at least 6 months after the election at which the officer’s recall was submitted to the voters.
SECTION 8. No person who has been recalled from an office or who has resigned from office after a recall petition has been filed shall be appointed to any town office within 2 years after removal by recall or resignation.
SECTION 9. This act shall take effect upon its passage.
Approved, October 11, 2012. | <urn:uuid:1f87316e-b335-4c22-8f31-63693de124ba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://malegislature.gov/Laws/SessionLaws/Acts/2012/Chapter297/Print | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955505 | 1,215 | 1.523438 | 2 |
A human body gradually reconstructs itself as its various component parts crowd themselves into a small room and eventually, after much experimentation, sort out which part goes where. —IMDb
Jan Švankmajer (born 4 September 1934 in Prague) is a Czech surrealist artist. His work spans several media. He is known for his surreal animations and features, which have greatly influenced other artists such as Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, The Brothers Quay and many others. Švankmajer has gained a reputation over several decades for his distinctive use of stop-motion technique, and his ability to make surreal, nightmarish and yet somehow funny pictures. He is still making films in Prague. Švankmajer’s trademarks include very exaggerated sounds, often creating a very strange effect in all eating scenes. He often uses very sped-up sequences when people walk and interact. His movies often involve inanimate objects coming alive and being brought to life through stop-motion. Food is a favorite subject and medium. Stop-motion features in most of his work, though his feature films also include live action to varying degrees.
A lot of his movies, like the short film Down to the Cellar… read more | <urn:uuid:143833c5-1106-4239-819a-2e438f348515> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mubi.com/films/darkness-light-darkness | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985084 | 255 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Plano Star-courier > News
Construction-related items to be individually considered at board meetings
Plano ISD will make some changes to the way its board approves construction projects, it was decided at Tuesday's school board meeting.
Actionable items related to major capital projects -- including approval of bid awards and the setting of a maximum price for such projects -- will now be presented to the board for individual consideration.
The current practice is to place construction-related items on the consent agenda. Several other area districts, including Allen, McKinney and Frisco, already present bid awards, pricing and construction documents individually to board members.
The new protocol was recommended after Place 5 Trustee David Stolle asked that two such items -- the approval of the construction manager at risk for the renovations at Brinker and Daffon elementary schools -- be pulled from the consent agenda for further consideration.
"What we're approving tonight is merely the initial step of the process," he said. "However, it's a process that we estimate is going to be two $10 million construction projects. ... I'd like to have a discussion as to how we're spending our money, what we're spending it on and what we're approving so that someone doesn't come to a board meeting and say 'I'm completely surprised. I can't believe what you're doing and I don't understand what it is,' because we've discussed it throughout the process."
Stolle is referring to John Donovan, a Plano ISD parent who asked the board at its September meeting why the square footage in the expansion at Plano West High School seems to have increased since the initial proposal. An award for a construction manager at-risk contract and guaranteed maximum price for that project were on the consent agenda at that meeting, but no public presentation was made to explain the apparent changes.
Many bond-approved projects take several years to reach completion, and during that time designs can deviate slightly from initial proposals, said Superintendent Richard Matkin.
"Let's bring back every project that is a large construction/renovation project," he said. "Let's put it on the open agenda where we can talk to you about scope and we can talk to you about square footage. We can talk to you about some changes and maybe how things have developed, whether it's growth in that particular area or the changes in pricing from subcontractors and all that, where you feel very comfortable."
The renovations at Brinker and Daffron were approved with the district's 2008 bond package, which approved $490 million for new campuses, several building renovations and expansions, and technology and capital improvements.
The estimated cost of the Daffron renovation is $10.2 million, while Brinker is budgeted at $10.6 million. Cadence McShane was awarded both contracts at 90 percent of construction cost for each project.
Matkin said the projects brought to the board for individual consideration will likely be the more major undertakings of the district.
"If we want to put a drive in, I don't know if you want to see a picture of what that might look like, but if we could use some judgment on our part ... we'll show up with plans and drawings and those other things that can wow the audience as we go through our expenditures, our capital program," he said.
No construction documents, site plans or descriptions of the work were included in the public agenda packet posted on Plano ISD's website. | <urn:uuid:0bae0105-8dd1-4033-ac98-30d05c9c1b1d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.littleelmjournal.net/articles/2013/01/03/plano_star-courier/news/7982.prt | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973412 | 713 | 1.523438 | 2 |
We were a little shocked to learn in Panasonic's latest press release that there are still people out there who rely on faxes. For our younger readers, faxing is a means of transmitting images between two machines that make funny noises over phone lines. Important documents were often transferred via those funny noises because the resulting quality was so low your signature and any other confidential info was made impossible to read on the resulting printout. However, Panasonic's new KX-PW821 shuns the paper altogether, allowing you to doodle something on the screen and then hit send to have it transmitted. On the receiving end it can save a tree by writing faxes straight to SDHC storage and can store voicemails and full conversations as audio recordings, meaning this package could replace even the tape in your vintage answering machine. No word on whether the tiny kendo student is included, however. | <urn:uuid:decece62-882c-41cf-9ed0-da4f9e2e417b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/08/panasonic-introduces-kx-pw821-fax-machine-with-a-touchscreen-and/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9669 | 180 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Attention, Christians. I've had three different waitresses visiting in my home lately. They were bothered by the way Christian people act when they come in. They work at three different places and say the Christian people do not tip them, yet they want you to be on their beckoned for anything they want. They say that some are rude and you talk about your other dull Christians. They wonder what God thinks about you and what kind of example you are setting.
I am calling about the person in the Feb. 23 paper who talked about "Celebrate history." The reason there is black history month is because black people, as a whole, have been deprived of great African-Americans who have done great things. In past history, all we were good for was being slaves, just being able to cook or be a nanny, to be the person degraded and spit upon. What Black History Month does is to show the greatness that the black people did play as a whole in the United States. When it came to building, we were the ones beaten to make sure the crops got out, beaten to make sure this was made or that was made. We celebrate white history every day of the year. When you go into a building, you see nothing but white people; and if you do see black people there, it is only one or two, just to prove they're not racist. When you go into a huge corporation, you celebrate white history every day. Every time you turn on TV, there are more white people doing this and that. Well, there are the same amount of black people who do the same thing. Black History Month is very important. As far as the World War, there were a lot of black people in the front lines that white people have not even let the schools touch to let the people know black people were there. We were not in the back. We sat in the back of the bus, but when it came to war, we were on the front line when it came to fighting or getting killed.
I would like to comment about why we have Black History Month. It's basically because there were a lot of great African-Americans you don't hear about and that Caucasian people don't want you to know about. It's good that our schools and programs in television show that there were some really great African-Americans, and are even now, and also, we all really need to get rid of it. In another 30 years we're really going to need black history because in another 30 years, everybody is going to be black. What happened in the days of slavery happened, and let's not repeat it for our children and our children's children. I just say let's all get along.
The reason there is no White History Month is that for years, America shed light on white history and their heroes. I am not racist and I am not black. There are more than white people in our country. It is a melting pot where we have a majority of races and I feel like Black History Month is teaching our children our past and giving back to a culture that has meant so much to the United States of America. We always celebrate Presidents' Day and George Washington Day. Every president we have had has been white and there are discussions in school about Ben Franklin. Stop asking silly questions and let black people have one month out of the year. Instead of one month and one day to celebrate it, I think we should have the whole year off because some of them out there do deserve it.
I am calling about the water district in Scott County. I think that's a good thing and I hope the people vote for it in April. Maybe the day will come over here in New Madrid County where we can get the same thing. That would be a joyous day. I have seen a lot of things about this water district, but how are you going to get by without erecting another big water tower? Somebody's going to have to provide the water and you're not planning to just get the water from the cities, are you? How are they going to do it? You need to know what they're going to be doing and where your money will be going before election day. | <urn:uuid:acb15b27-6437-494d-9cfb-12b6888dab1a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.standard-democrat.com/story/1343823.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988099 | 856 | 1.75 | 2 |
In a social age, people don't like to be pushed. As described in my last post, top brands like Apple, Google, and Nike are using a new model based on pulling rather than pushing. They create a gravitational field that attracts customers into orbit around their brand.
This kind of social gravity isn't just about how many likes you can get on Facebook. This is about enduring, meaningful, and authentic relationships with your customers and the people in their lives.
How can you shift from push to pull and create your own social gravity? With three basic steps: Purpose provides the Why; Platforms the What; and Partners the How.
1. Shared Purpose
The objective of Push marketing is to convince a customer to make a purchase. In contrast, the objective of Pull marketing is to achieve a shared purpose. At Sears Holdings, where I work, the Craftsman brand of tools and equipment has an orbit strategy for do-it-yourselfers. The Craftsman Experience studio in Chicago creates live experiences and professionally produced content to help members of the Craftsman community create and accomplish their DIY projects. The focus isn't on the immediate purchase, but on achieving the shared purpose of creativity, craftsmanship and accomplishment. This shared purpose attracts existing Craftsman customers, and leads them to bring along their DIY friends as well.
2. Engagement Platforms
While Push marketers focus on products, Pull marketers focus on engagement platforms. These platforms are what engage customers outside the purchase process and deliver value beyond the products being sold. Some of the most well known engagement platforms are Google's search engine, Apple's iTunes music manager, and the Nike+ running community. Google, Apple and Nike don't charge people for using these platforms. But they keep their customers in frequent orbit around the brand, and make it easy for customers to purchase a product, whether an ad, song, or shoe.
Engagement platforms are built from multiple layers working together. The identity layer recognizes the customer. The data layer exchanges information to personalize the experience. The relationship layer enables connection among the brand and community members. Finally, the value layer delivers benefits to the users.
One of the reasons why orbit strategies are becoming so popular is that social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google provide ready-made identity, data, and relationship layers. All you have to do is figure out the right engagement strategy for the value layer.
There are five types of engagement strategies that are particularly common.
a. Content, e.g. Huffington Post
b. Conversation, e.g. Facebook
c. Collaboration, e.g. Quora
d. Contribution, e.g. Kickstarter
e. Commerce, e.g. Groupon
These aren't the only strategies. Pinterest, for example, has popularized a new category around curation. And don't think you have to be a startup or media company. Kraft Foods has built a very effective orbit strategy around recipes, combining content, conversation, and commerce. And innovation firm PSFK uses curated content to generate gravity for its research and consulting business.
3. Collaborative Partners
Partners are a powerful way of amplifying your gravitational field. By combining forces, you can multiply the value of your service and bring in new constituencies. In addition, partners can add credibility. They reinforce that you are seeking to create value and build relationships beyond pushing products.
Apple's platforms are integrally connected with partners, whether music companies for iTunes or developers for the App store. When IBM sought to engage mid-market companies, it partnered with GOOD to launch the GOOD Co. project. And Kraft Foods recently partnered with HSN to bring commerce to its recipe community.
Keep in mind that your own customers should be collaborative partners. Threadless sources designs for its t-shirts from its customers, and lets the community pick which ones to produce. And P&G sources new innovation ideas from outside the company through its Connect+Develop program.
There are many ways to create customer gravity. Start with a purpose both you and your customer care about, and for which you have something to bring to the table. Then create an engagement platform that creates value using one of the types of value mentioned here, or create your own. Finally, look for partners who can bring expertise, resources, credibility, and reach.
With purpose, platforms, and partners, you are ready to build social gravity. So stop pushing and start pulling! | <urn:uuid:3262a733-83f0-4d36-a0f7-7d2d51da3987> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/04/three_steps_to_generating_soci.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9393 | 911 | 1.6875 | 2 |
The Irony of Holland's Smoking Ban: You can Still Have Your Joint, but Only if it's Pure
In July, the Dutch government will introduce a nationwide smoking ban in bars, cafes and restaurants, aimed at protecting workers. But it will also make life a lot harder for the country's infamous coffee shops, where customers will only be allowed to smoke pure cannabis.
De Tweede Kamer is located on a small side street in Amsterdam, not far from the flower market. A painting of Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard hangs on the wall, and next to it, a little bit higher, there's one of Queen Wilhelmina. White ornaments rise up the wall like smoke rings around the portraits. The coffee shop opened in 1985, and has since become an institution in the Dutch capital, a kind of art museum for the residents of Amsterdam, owner Paul Wilhelm proudly says.
But Wilhelm is worried about his company's future. On July 1, a smoking ban will come into force in Dutch restaurants, bars and cafes. The ban will also apply to the country's more than 700 coffee shops, which are infamous worldwide for selling soft drugs.
"Coffee shops will be treated in the same manner as other catering businesses," Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende told public broadcaster NOS after the government issued its decision on Friday. "It would have been wrong to move towards a smoke-free catering industry and then make an exception for coffee shops. People would not have understood that."
The chances of getting an exemption are limited, says Mark Jacobsen of BCD, a nationwide association of coffee shop owners that has been fighting to get special provisions for the cafes.
Jacobsen argues that it's absurd that the law is being applied to coffee shops. "In a cafe," he said, "you come to drink something. In a restaurant you come to eat. But when you come to a coffee shop, you come to smoke, so smoking has to be allowed in a coffee shop."
But Wilhelm claims it's a specious argument. After all, people who apply for jobs in a coffee shop know that smoking is the company's core business. "If the boys are old enough to be sent to Afghanistan, then you can't tell me that people want to protect them from smoke in the workplace. They're old enough to decide on their own. They can vote, they can go to war -- but now they won't even be allowed to make this decision?"
Perversely, the law, intended to protect workers from smoke, only applies to tobacco. In the Netherlands, that has resulted in a rather bizarre result: Smoking pot or hashish in coffee shops will remain legal; it just can't be mixed with tobacco. If someone wants to roll their joint with tobacco, then they have to smoke it outside. Wilhelm can only shake his head in disbelief. "That sounds a bit to me like going into a cafe and being able to buy a beer without being able to drink it there. But the cafe still lets you drink whiskey, rum and vodka."
Besides, it will be difficult to monitor whether someone has secretly rolled his joint with tobacco or not. Mark Jacobson doubts that Dutch officials will begin policing the ban immediately when it goes into effect in July. "We'll just have to see how strictly they enforce it," he says.
Under the new provision, he explains, "If an official comes into a coffee shop and sees someone smoking a joint, he must confiscate it and send it to a lab to test whether it contains tobacco. It's such an arduous procedure that it is going to create numerous problems. I don't think they will apply it very strictly during the first year."
Jacobsen feels the world has been turned on its head in Holland. "In every other country they do just the opposite -- there they check whether there is cannabis inside," he says with a laugh.
- Part 1: You can Still Have Your Joint, but Only if it's Pure
- Part 2: 'An Absurd Decision'
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Climate ChangeGlobal Warming: Curbing Carbon Before It's Too Late | <urn:uuid:1b922aa2-57fe-4b30-adaa-9f1ca67c61aa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/the-irony-of-holland-s-smoking-ban-you-can-still-have-your-joint-but-only-if-it-s-pure-a-559030.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965806 | 942 | 1.59375 | 2 |
The Hotel Sleep Inn San Jose Downtown is the place for lovers of precolombian art. Within a short walking distance of the hotel is Costa Rica’s renowned Museo de Jade, which is the largest museum collection of jade in the Americas and which contains some of the country’s most valuable and interesting pieces of precolombian jade.
Located in the high-rise national insurance building (El Instituto Nacional de Seguros, or INS) just across the park from the Sleep Inn, the museum is open from Monday through Saturday. Its five-gallery exhibition space traces the origin of jade-work in the country and presents each piece in its historic and archaeological context. Jade, as a material, had particular cultural and religious significance to the native population of Costa Rica. The origins of each of the pieces—many of which were acquired through trade—are often as interesting as the pieces themselves.
The Jade Museum also features works in ceramic, gold, wood and bone. Guided tours are available in both Spanish and English.
Visit the Jade Museum website.
Writing and editing by Beaumont Hardy Editing. | <urn:uuid:2cd15991-91c1-49db-a4a7-531bec831f62> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sleepinnsanjose.com/wordpress/2008/09/page/2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953734 | 235 | 1.59375 | 2 |
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DRC is an international non-governmental organization, which promotes and supports durable solutions for refugees and internally displaced people in more than 30 countries world-wide.
DRC has established its operation in Pakistan during December 2010 in order to contribute to the flood recovery response, as well as part of a regional program addressing Afghan displacement in close coordination with its programmes in Afghanistan, Iran and Tajikistan. DRC office in Pakistan is established in Peshawar with operations in five districts ok Khyber Puktunkhwa. | <urn:uuid:c7d950c8-a625-497c-b995-e1116da1cbc0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://new.brightspyre.com/jobs/jid/12981 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943229 | 120 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Bezos Opens Web-Services Sharing for Profits
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.Amazon.com's far-ranging online retail business will continue to serve as its primary money-maker for the foreseeable future, but a collection of Web services applications piggybacked on the infrastructure supporting its consumer sales will become a growing source of income and technical development expertise in years to come, according to Jeff Bezos, the firm's founder and chief executive.
Speaking to attendees of the annual Emerging Technology Conference being held here at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Sept. 27 and 28, Bezos outlined a handful of Web services applications launched by the online retailer in the name of exposing the capabilities of its massive IT infrastructure for new purposes.
The executive maintains that using the scale and processing power of the firm's back-end operations to create Web services tools that Amazon can market to a new class of customers will lend additional revenue and valuable programming experience to the retailer's business as it moves forward.
In addition to providing Amazon.com with new sales opportunities and Web services development experience, the Web 2.0 systems already launched by the company are providing new methods for other businesses to tap into the sizable infrastructure built by the company to advance their own operations.
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One of the main concerns about moving data to a public...Watch Now | <urn:uuid:2b658dcc-0e09-48d0-8785-ef3acbcd9d55> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Past-News/Bezos-Opens-WebServices-Sharing-for-Profits/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93476 | 317 | 1.554688 | 2 |
I am again having problems in having my computer hacked. My email address book was invaded by a hacker, and letters were sent out to my correspondents claiming I was in London and needed money urgently to get home.
I hope none of you responded to this scam. I wasn't in London at all, and I haven't been in a financial jam.
Computers are quite a convenience, but when they are hacked like this, it's a nightmare. I haven't been able to get into my address directory, so contact me via e-mail at my new e-mail address, so we can resume our routine digital connection.
Let me repeat warnings from my computer technician - that all home computers are vulnerable to hacking by an expert, and hijacking your e-mail address directory and making it broadcast bogus e-mails for criminal activity is widespread. Experts warn to keep a good firewall active, as well as effective, up-to-date anti-spyware and anti-virus programs. Also, don't open e-mails from unknown senders, and never open e-mail attachments from a source you don't know well. | <urn:uuid:a3ba5210-ca63-404f-8354-3f9b77f7c3f5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.denpubs.com/news/2010/jun/10/e-mail-hacked-again-address-changed/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97281 | 234 | 1.546875 | 2 |
The life of Steve Jobs
Published On: Aug 25 2011 09:13:42 AM EDT Updated On: Oct 05 2012 10:03:16 AM EDT
Today is the one-year anniversary of Steve Jobs' death. Technology pioneer Steve Jobs was one of the most recognizable CEOs in the world and helped transform Apple into an industry leader. Take a look at some key moments in his life. | <urn:uuid:5a08cb9c-890c-45ba-9064-1fbe2582c1b7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.news4jax.com/news/-/475880/432950/-/view/print/-/1u1xf4z/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942059 | 80 | 1.625 | 2 |
Appellate Judge James A. Stewart is staying in tonight, and so is his telepresence.
"What if it all came true?"
What does the future hold? It's a question that has fascinated people since the era of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. It's a question that might get your attention as you pass The Future: A 360° View, a two-disc collection from the Discovery Channel, on display at your local store. It contains episodes from two series, NextWorld and Building the Future. Yes, repackaging of DVDs is in our future.
• "Extreme Tomorrow": The premiere looks at everything from sonic flashlights that provide x-ray vision to time travel.
• "Future Life on Earth": Floating cities, microcomputers running cities, rocket packs, telepresence, water purification, kinetic energy flooring, skyscraper farming, and extending life spans.
• "Future Intelligence": Exoskeletons, artificial intelligence, android doubles, smart contact lenses, a smart bus, cyber cars, and virtual worlds.
• "Future Cars": Wood and new fabrics for car bodies, anti-crash technology, artificial intelligence for the road, steam-powered cars, scuba cars, and lunar vehicles.
• "Future Flight": Planes that drive as easily as cars, a massive flying hotel, satellite navigation, lighter jets, lessons from nature, Virgin Galactic, and Mars exploration.
• "Future Ships": High-speed commuter boats and solar ferries, loading cargo more efficiently, a wave-riding craft, a dolphin-like diving craft, high-tech sailboats, and a solar and wind powered cargo ship.
All of this reminded me of those 1950s film clips of the "Kitchen of Tomorrow." There's a definite gee-whiz optimism here as scientists and entrepreneurs talk about their new creations and their dreams for the future.
Some of it is encouraging. It's good to know someone's working on floating cities as sea levels rise, easier water purification, and feeding cities through farms atop skyscrapers. Elsewhere, it can be scary. I'm not exactly eager for someone to build my robot double, and scientists who talk about "the eventual merger between man and machine" as if it was something to look forward to are downright creepy.
Unfortunately, it's also hyperactive, cramming a lot of topics into an episode to discourage channel flipping, but covering nothing in depth. It can also be repetitive. The first episode's an overview, which means all that stuff will be shown again later in the series. Even in later episodes, there'll be overlap as some gadget falls under two topics. If you're taking in the entire series in two nights as I did, Nextworld eventually gets dull. By the fourth episode, I felt my eyes glazing over.
• "The Energy Solution": Projects involving gas hydrate, wind power, hydrogen fusion, tidal turbines, and solar power show options for meeting energy needs.
• "21st Century Shelter": An amphibious community in the Netherlands, typhoon-resistant skyscraper Taipei 101, a grand new building in Kazakhstan, earthquake-proofing in California, and New York's green One Bryant Park show how homes and buildings can adapt to unusual situations.
• "The Quest for Water": Vancouver's water filtration system, China's work on a man-made river, Oman's search for water, Venice's flood prevention efforts, and a water vapor desalination project help control water.
• "Surviving Natural Disasters": Efforts are made to protect against killer asteroids, Tokyo's typhoons, Mexico City earthquakes, and London floods.
Crises, such as the melting polar icecaps, typhoons and floods, and water shortages, are the framing devices for Building the Future. If you're looking for clips of disasters or environmental trouble in the making, you'll find them here. Even two of the episode titles—"The Quest for Water" and "Surviving Natural Disasters"—have an ominous ring here, hinting that Building the Future could give gloom equal time after the relentlessly upbeat NextWorld.
However, the show turns out to be hopeful, showing projects that actually might do something about disasters, water shortages, energy needs, or global warming. Even if they don't all pan out, seeing experts working on the technological leaps needed to deal with problems is inspiring. Building the Future also takes the time to give viewers a basic understanding of its topics, something NextWorld fails to do. It even puts enough text information on the screen that you could look the projects up and find out more.
There are no extras, but the recent shows are handled well on DVD.
If the topics in Building the Future look interesting to you, you might want to buy or rent this two-disc set. Since it's priced under $25, you can consider Nextworld a bonus feature. It's possible that Discovery did anyway, since IMDb lists 14 episodes of that series and only six are included here.
Not guilty. I'm ready for the future now. Talk to me about it tomorrow.
Give us your feedback!
What's "fair"? Whether positive or negative, our reviews should be unbiased, informative, and critique the material on its own merits.
Scales of Justice
Studio: Discovery Channel
Review content copyright © 2009 James A. Stewart; Site design and review layout copyright © 2013 Verdict Partners LLC. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:edb40d34-d505-40c6-9c8e-095ae0c7aeb8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dvdverdict.com/reviews/thefuture.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936495 | 1,130 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Rockin' Tunes for Tots
More than a decade ago, David Weinstone founded a children's class called Music for Aardvarks in New York City. Since then, Weinstone's music has spread across the country and has been featured on national programs like Nick Jr. This fall, Luke Montgomery brought the program's popular tunes to Rockland County when he founded Kids Rock U.
As director, Montgomery serves as teacher, guitarist, and lead singer of the program, which caters to children ages newborn to age 5. Kids sing, dance, and play instruments while Montgomery performs live music. "The goal is to have as much fun as you possibly can," Montgomery says, adding that kids learn important developmental skills like dexterity and coordination through class activities. The class also encourages parents to participate. "If kids see their mom or dad singing and dancing, they'll jump in too," says Montgomery, who links music to creative expression. "Any opportunity to express themselves musically is an invaluable thing for a child to have."
Registration is now open for the winter semester (first class is free). Classes are held at the Nyack Center and JCC Rockland, with more locations planned for the future. For more information: 917-589-7364 or www.kidsrocku.com. | <urn:uuid:f540ff3f-99a3-41e3-b2f4-bb25f2158c69> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rockland.nymetroparents.com/article/Kids-Rock-U-Opens-in-Rockland-CountyNY | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962921 | 266 | 1.835938 | 2 |
News Notes near Body Parts in Belgium Linked to Death Note (Updated)
posted on 2007-10-01 18:07 EDT
La Dernière Heure, a French daily newspaper in Belgium similar to United Kingdom's The Sun or America's New York Post, reports that two identical messages linked to the Death Note manga were left near severed body parts that were discovered Friday afternoon in the forest of Belgium's Duden Park. According to the newspaper, the two paper sheets both say "Watashi wa Kira dess," an apparent misspelling of the Japanese phrase "Watashi wa Kira desu," or "I am Kira (Killer)." This is a catchphrase from writer Tsugumi Ooba and artist Takeshi Obata's Death Note suspense manga series, in which a high school boy discovers a notebook which allows him to kill people by writing their names in it.
The lower abdomen and two thighs of an unknown Caucasian male were discovered by walkers in the park Friday at 5:30 p.m. local time, and police sources for the newspaper said that the body parts were left no more than six hours before the discovery. There was no clothing, personal effects, or identification besides the two paper sheets. The two paper sheets reportedly had the same message, but were written in two different colors with no apparent signs of aging. Duden Park is located on east side of the Senne River Valley.
Belgian police are requesting that anyone who saw suspicious behavior on Friday between 12:30 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. near or at the park to call the Belgian phone number 02/559.80.00.
Update: According to the newspaper, the lower abdomen comes from an unknown Caucasian male, but it is unknown whether the two thighs belong to the same individual. Thank you to woelfie for the news tip.
File Photo © Région de Bruxelles Capitale & LMRC asbl. | <urn:uuid:48f24aa1-130a-495a-a8e3-1a0a48df55cd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2007-10-01/notes-left-near-bodies-in-belgium-linked-to-death-note | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968597 | 403 | 1.578125 | 2 |
(NEW YORK) -- For Captain Joe Maisano of Treasure Island, Fla., and fishermen Fab Marchese of Ontario, Canada, it seemed like it would be just another day out on the water, but that quickly changed when then two fishermen spotted a rare great white shark.
Maisano, 26, was about 30 miles off the coast of the Gulf of Mexico Friday when he noticed what looked like a great white shark.
“I have seen Jaws enough times to know what they look like,” said Maisano. “It just smelled the blood in the water, because we have been sitting there for several hours and he just wanted to come up and get some food.”
Joe Maisano and his father Sam have owned the fishing charter company Go Fast Fishing Charters for the past 12 years, but neither of them had ever seen a great white before.
“It looked like a submarine. With a tail,” said Maisano. Maisano told ABC News that he first spotted the great white 10 minutes before he alerted everyone else on the boat.
Maisano began throwing more bait into the water to lure the shark in closer. Marchese then threw out a baited fishing line, which hooked the shark within 20 minutes.
“Well we hooked in a 350-pound goliath grouper earlier, and you cannot compare that fight with the great white,” said Marchese.
The fishermen pulled up the boat’s anchor and then let the great white drag the boat around for the next three hours.
“It was like a slow steady pull, I mean great whites are not very fast sharks, so it was a slow, solid weight,” Maisano said. “He was anywhere from 16-18 feet [long] and it could have weighed from 2,500-4,000 pounds. That is what the experts are telling us.”
Sighting of these sharks are very rare. “I had one of my buddies about five or six years ago, who caught one on a long line and that was the last one I know about, that was caught along here,” said Maisano.
The fishermen said they had to let the shark go because they are a prohibited species. “You are not even allowed to bring it in the boat, you have to leave it in the water,” Maisano said. If a great white is killed, there could be a fine of $25,000-$40,000.
The two men did not release the beast until they snapped plenty of photos and video of their monstrous catch.
Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio | <urn:uuid:ece3cfe4-bf3c-46da-bfbe-29abac42ebf2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wbnq.com/common/more.php?m=58&ts=1369512282&article=151DDCF0910711E286DEFEFDADE6840A&mode=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977463 | 557 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Dire terror threats aside, Attorney General John Ashcroft says the United States is making "monumental progress" against terrorism, pointing to the arrests of seven suspected terrorists through new border security measures and the convictions of 104 people of terror-related charges.
"Some of the things that have happened should be a source of comfort to Americans," Ashcroft said in an interview Wednesday.
Successful prosecutions have led to cooperation from defendants, providing information that has "disrupted groups of individuals who were working together to assist in terrorism or perhaps commit acts of terrorism," Ashcroft said.
"Prevention is our number one priority. It is more important than prosecution," he said. "But very frequently these priorities do not compete, they complement. In many instances prosecution has been a real aid to our prevention effort by helping generate valuable intelligence."
Yet, as Ashcroft spoke in his office at Justice Department headquarters, the United States remained on high alert for potential terrorism, with FBI Director Robert Mueller and CIA Director George Tenet raising concerns about a possibly imminent large-scale attack.
Ashcroft did not say what information prompted the alert status to be increased last week, seeking instead to provide assurances that law enforcement is better prepared to head off an attack than it was before Sept. 11, 2001. Vastly improved border security, better legal options and an FBI committed to preventing further attacks are among the changes.
"We have made monumental progress," he said.
The seven suspected terrorists were apprehended in the past six months through a program that tightened scrutiny at U.S. borders and ports of entry, and required the fingerprinting and photographing of thousands of men from countries at risk for terrorism.
Justice Department officials, citing national security concerns, declined to provide details but said the seven were caught in a variety of ways, some through intelligence tips and others through fingerprint matches. The officials also would not provide details about whether the seven may have been plotting imminent attacks when captured.
The 104 terror-related convictions range from such high-profile cases as would-be jetliner bomber Richard Reid to more mundane document fraud cases. Ashcroft said "several hundred" more people have been charged with terror-related offenses since Sept. 11, including members of suspected al-Qaida cells in Lackawanna, N.Y., and Portland, Ore.
Still, the Justice Department is encountering difficulties in some terrorism cases, including that of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks. If convicted, he could get the death penalty.
The department is appealing a judge's ruling that Moussaoui should have access to suspected Sept. 11 mastermind Ramzi Binalshibh, who was captured in Pakistan and is being interrogated at an undisclosed location. The government opposes that access because Binalshibh is valuable as an intelligence source.
In a recent nonterrorism case, Ashcroft overruled a decision by federal prosecutors to seek a life sentence -- rather than execution -- for a drug suspect in exchange for information about others in the ring. Ashcroft said that unusual move was intended to ensure that death penalty laws are applied equally nationwide.
Ashcroft also said there are gaps in U.S. laws that were not addressed by the USA Patriot Act passed by Congress in response to the 2001 attacks. The law gave the Justice Department greater power to investigate and eavesdrop on terror suspects, but senior department officials are discussing proposals to bridge the gaps.
"The terrorists have an interest in very serious weapons of chemistry, evil biology and even radiological consequences," Ashcroft said. "We cannot sit still and think that all of the laws we had to prevent previous threats will work."
For example, Ashcroft noted that in major drug cases, defendants are kept in jail until trial unless they can convince a judge to release them on bail, a provision that does not apply in terrorism cases where prosecutors have to prove why a defendant should not be released.
Appeals courts, meanwhile, are conflicted on whether "material support" of terrorism means visiting a terror training camp -- as some members of the alleged Lackawanna al-Qaida cell did -- or requires that a suspect have donated money or supplies.
"There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that a person who provides personal assistance is providing material assistance," Ashcroft said.
Although no final decisions have been made on these proposals, some congressional Democrats and government watchdog groups contend they would erode citizens' rights, limit judicial review and restrict access to important information. Ashcroft rejected that characterization.
"Every day I tell the staff at the Justice Department: `Think anew. The world is changing. What are the ways we can safeguard the American people against attack?"' Ashcroft said. "I say, 'Think outside the box,' but I always say, 'Think inside the Constitution."' | <urn:uuid:c4281677-9caf-45cc-b41b-e865c8224727> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,78470,00.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971422 | 988 | 1.625 | 2 |
You don't have to be driving to be caught. Keeping a vehicle without insurance is against the law.
If your vehicle does not have a record of insurance on the Motor Insurance Database (MID) or has not been declared ‘off the road’ by contacting the DVLA with a formal Statutory Off Road Notification (SORN), you will receive a warning letter in the post and face penalties and risk being wheel clamped by the DVLA unless you take action to stay legal.
Providing you have a current motor insurance policy and it appears on askMID.com then no fixed penalty will be issued to you.
If you are insured it is important to check that your vehicle details are recorded correctly on the MID. You can do this for FREE by checking askMID here. Simply enter your vehicle registration number and if your details do not appear, or are incorrect, you should contact your insurance provider immediately so that they can update your records.
There are many ways for you to save on your motor insurance and still be legally covered to drive – as you will see from our Motoring Tips – but don’t be tempted to stretch the truth to get a cheaper quote. It will ultimately invalidate your insurance.
Be sure to avoid ‘fronting’ a policy - when a parent incorrectly declares themselves as the main driver of the vehicle - although it could be appealing in the first instance, it can cost you in the long run. It’s illegal and can lead to serious consequences including prosecution. | <urn:uuid:7411dd76-8b82-492c-a2bf-74e2ace7e5f1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://stayinsured.askmid.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95749 | 313 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Alan and Telly are very excited that their favorite singer, LMNOP, is performing on Sesame Street. Alan is arranging his memorabilia from previous concerts when LMNOP approaches asking where his entourage is. After a phone call, LMNOP finds out that they are in San Diego and says that his performance on Sesame Street will have to be canceled. But Alan and Telly insist that he doesn't leave. Chris reassures LMNOP that they could come up with everything he needs to perform. LMNOP agrees and says that the first thing he needs is a guitar. After learning about how to make one on the internet, Chris, Allen, and Telly are able to construct a guitar out of a paper towel tube, transparent tape, rubber bands, a pencil, and a tissue box. Chris explains that the pencil will help create sound by raising the rubber bands up off the box to make it easier for them to vibrate. LMNOP is ready to try the guitar out on stage but there is no stage. Chris, Allen, and Telly construct a stage out of vegetable crates reinforced with tape so the crates will stay together and be strong enough. It works! LMNOP jumps onto the stage and now asks for a sound check. Together they construct a microphone using lampshades. They will help amplify the sound and make it louder for the audience to hear. The last thing LMNOP needs is flashlights for lights and he's ready to perform! With help from Chris, Alan, and Telly, LMNOP gives a great performance on Sesame Street.
Visit the Website: http://www.pbs.org/kids/sesame/
Episode #4317 / Length: 58 minutes | <urn:uuid:1d071a74-ab52-494d-a420-575f7f9ef7bd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.klru.org/schedule/episode/236825/?M=kids | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956092 | 355 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Water gardening is a relatively new area of gardening that is gaining popularity at a rapid pace. Outdoor living and creating outdoor rooms for your family to enjoy spending time in has really caught on in the Okanagan. Adding water features to those areas only adds to the relaxation of it.
Water features can range from small water tubs and bowls to large in ground ponds. We carry perennial, annual, tropical and floating type water plants to fit any of your needs. These plants can be mixed to create unique tropical effects for every size of water feature.
The most popular water plants we sell are Canna Lillies, Calocasias (Taro), Cyperus (Egyptian Papyrus), Musa Basjoo (Hardy Banana), Calla Lilies, hardy Water Lilies and Japanese Irises. We also carry different annual floaters like Water Lettuce and Water Hyacinth.
Please see our Plants & Flowers Available in Season | <urn:uuid:542eeadf-aa25-4dec-85e8-28b880be4c51> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thegreenery.ca/products/water-plants/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933549 | 195 | 1.523438 | 2 |
So the festive season is here once again. It’s time for mince pies, mulled wine and a heavy dose of sausage rolls in flaky golden pastry. The little cafes will be buzzing with people escaping the cold, the cheap London escorts will be busier than ever with all the gentlemen enjoying their time off. Everything is as it should be, children playing games, loving couples walking hand in hand through the snow as they shop for the perfect present. This is the christmas scene thats on every card, every tv scene, every hollywood movie. Every year. It’s all rather boring. Why does christmas have to be limited to these places: to roaring fires and cosy rooms? Why can’t it be a little different, exciting, new. It’s a bit like getting the same gift year after year; sure it’s comforting and easy, but is it really what the holiday is all about.
Being unique, being individual, showing thought and compassion for loved ones, that is the true spirit of christmas. Caring enough to think outside the box and take the more difficult option in order to bring them as much joy as much possible. So why are days out so limited and mundane. It’s not as if the UK is short of options when it comes to doing other things. The landscape itself is beautiful, and yet everyone holes themselves up and misses the breathtaking splendour of winter. With the cold, comes the crystal fine lattice work of frost adoring every tree, wall and blade of grass. With the rain comes new life for the parched land, the rivers growing full inside their banks, streams and rivulets spring up from the depths of the earth and run with vigour and vivacity over a sleeping landscape. With the chilled air comes a sort of wonderful cleanliness, a fresh burst of oxygen that clarifies the mind and helps one to contemplate great thoughts, a sensation described by the brilliant Virginia Woolf as a “champagne brightness”.
Nature is not the only thing that can be appreciated during the festive period. The National Space Centre is a great choice all year around but it really comes alive in the winter months. There are far fewer visitors, so there’s time to linger over each exhibit and really revel in the wonder of what’s on display. There are a number of themes running throughout the centre, one of which will appeal to the child in everyone: space travel. Who didn’t want to be an astronaut when they were little? The overwhelming thing that comes from the experience though, is the sheer wonder of the the universe. It’s a mystifying, exhilarating mixture of madness and order, chaos and precision. It can make anyone- from a cheap London escort, so sure of her beauty, to the most cocksure of men- feel small and humble. It’s the perfect place to go when things are getting too much and problems seem too big, to see the scale of things and realise just how lucky every living being is. Is there anything more in touch with the Christmas season than that? | <urn:uuid:c792298c-34dd-41f5-9b87-4b7250a64a2a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wellsphere.com/sexually-transmitted-diseases-article/christmas-isn-146-t-all-about-roaring-fires/1823341 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950545 | 648 | 1.507813 | 2 |
There is a theory that everything in our universe has a mathematical signature, from a gingko tree to a yeast infection, from our DNA to the blueprint of creation.
If we could somehow discover and take in the code for health and wellness, then we could reprogram ourselves to total rejuvenation. This is what a new technology called Trinfinity8 proposes, and founder/clinical psychologist Dr. Kathy Forti claims to have harnessed this exact science. And I got to try it.
Some years back, a deep sense of loss begat visions of a swirling vortex, into which Dr. Kathy Forti traveled feet-first at the speed of light, returning into her body temporarily half paralyzed. Afterward, an obsession with quantum physics ensued, as super geeky spirit guides took over her system and got her up to speed in fields of really smart people math.
Over the course of five years she came up with software and this generator thingy that hooks up to your computer to purportedly translate pure mathematical algorithms for wellness of all kinds -- stress, depression, gray hair, etc. -- into subtle vibrations zapped into large crystal wands that you hold in your hands. In this way the body is able to absorb code that is a “road map to its ideal self,” as goes the literature.
At the New Life Expo in NYC I got to test out this Trinfinity8 biz, a quick 10-minute overview session that was supposed to clear my gateways to reach the higher version of myself. I put on the headphones and grabbed hold of these amazing, large, iridescent crystal spears, as deep, angelic harmonies filled my ears. These were Solfeggio sound frequencies, which are considered to impart deep spiritual blessings; ancient Gregorian chanting used these tones, for example. Animated fractals squiggled around on the computer screen, dilating and contracting, exploding into rapidly changing color patterns. My hands started to tingle, and I felt deeply relaxed. Whatever the hell was going on, it felt like the future.
I love stuff like this. I want to believe. So I do. The part of me that likes to be a true observer, however, has to admit that a setup like this -- crystals, fractals, deeply soothing tones -- would automatically create the sense of going into some kind of zone.
Also, science is still exploring math like this. At the same time, public science is also still trying to get its head around near-death experiences, ESP, and other intangible “supernatural” phenomena that are almost accepted as common knowledge. So public science is like Bill Murray in a neon orange camouflage shirt at a party in "Lost in Translation," often showing up way too late to the game, trying to act cool and hip and onto something that makes it look like a geezer.
It’s difficult to assess how Trinfinity8 works, if it does: Is it the tones? The wicked fractals? The sense that something Big is happening? The actual technology? And at $8K for the system, it’s clear there’s a motivation of profit -- though are benefits canceled out merely by the desire to make money off of them?
More importantly, could absorbing math like this have helped me pass Calculus 2 in high school? Deep questions, Trinfinity8, deep questions. | <urn:uuid:8c0f21c6-0684-4b05-b234-2f9014c7bf92> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.xojane.com/newagey/can-trinfinity8-fix-your-soul-math | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957074 | 697 | 1.578125 | 2 |
He planned to pursue the project commercially, but his father, who had come of age in “Boardwalk Empire”-era Atlantic City, forbade it: elevator music, he said, was controlled by the mob, and no son of his was going to come within spitting distance.Elevator music... and the mob. It's all so evil! Then Woodland, as a grad student, heard about the need to encode product data efficiently. He dropped out of grad school, "holed up at his grandparents’ home in Miami Beach," and "spent the winter of 1948-49 in a chair in the sand, thinking." He thought about Morse code, which he'd learned in the Boy Scouts.
“What I’m going to tell you sounds like a fairy tale,” Mr. Woodland told Smithsonian magazine in 1999. “I poked my four fingers into the sand and for whatever reason — I didn’t know — I pulled my hand toward me and drew four lines. I said: ‘Golly! Now I have four lines, and they could be wide lines and narrow lines instead of dots and dashes.’ ”N. Joseph Woodland died last Sunday at the age of 91. | <urn:uuid:e14283c1-2dc5-4d7f-bca1-952faf407c9c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://althouse.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-man-who-invented-bar-code-also.html?showComment=1355441116817 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980737 | 259 | 1.757813 | 2 |
“ARaisin in the Sun,” a play that premiered in 1959 and went on to be nominated for four Tony Awards, runs through April 21 at the Arden Theatre’s F. Otto Haas Stage.
The play’s title comes from the poem “Harlem” by Langston Hughes. It was made into a film starring Sidney Poitier in 1961 and revised on Broadway in 2004 starring Sean Combs.
This current production, directed by Walter Dallas, the past artistic director of Freedom Theatre, begins in Chicago’s South Side, when a life insurance check sent to the Youngers’ home arrives with the promise of change. That’s when this African-American family considers buying a house in the all-white Clybourne Park neighborhood; but conflicting aspirations and a neighborhood’s intolerance threaten the dream’s reality.
Leading the cast as Lena Younger are Joilet F. Harris and U.R. as Walter Lee Younger, in the role first played by Poitier and Combs. Both Harris and U.R. have worked with Dallas before at Freedom Theatre and are happy to be working with him once again.
“This play is all about materialism that eclipses integrity. My character wants something he sees every day that he believes is a definition of manhood and success. He can’t get it and that’s eating away at him,” U.R says.
In explaining his rather unusual name, U.R., who’s from Roslyn, will only say, “It stands for right now all the time. And that’s it.”
U.R. says the idea of becoming an actor hit him onstage in high school.
“I think I was working on my part and someone in the audience was talking, which angered me. And so I decided to use a portion of the text I was speaking and threw it out to that person as if to say shut up. And they did. I think that kind of energy pushed me toward acting.”
Looking back, U.R. now admits that that was a stupid decision. “My original ambition should have been to be involved in something that would have provided some kind of consistent income, but there’s something about this artsy stuff that undermines the capacity to plan intelligently.”
And so here he is today, having been seen in other productions, such as “Blue Door,” “The Piano Lesson,” and “Gee’s Bend.” While trying to explain his current role in this current play, U.R. is quick to hand out kudos to Dallas, because, “Thanks to him, all the characters are played with intelligence.”
While he decided to pursue this career, U.R. also made a conscious decision not to seek formal training.
“To be quite honest, the educational process for a performance artist sucks — at least from my perspective. It’s all about experience for a performer, not a bunch of opinion-sharing. In my mind, a degree in acting is like a knife made of rubber. It’s interesting to look at, but it ain’t capable of stabbing or cutting anything.”
U.R says he’s looking forward to getting more involved in TV further down the line because he doesn’t like having to depend on theater people to give him a role.
“And I don’t like audiences,” he says. “I don’t mind the interaction right there with them in the moment, but I’m the kind of guy who finishes work onstage and then I’m out of there. I do what I have to do and that’s it.
“One bad thing about this business is that it lends itself to a whole lot of conjecture about nothing,” he concludes.
“A Raisin in the Sun” plays at Arden Theatre’s F. Otto Haas Stage, 40 N. 2nd St., Philadelphia, through April 21.
Tickets are $15 to $36.
For information, call 215-922-1122 or visit www.ardentheatre.org. | <urn:uuid:eb39e2cc-8f56-4794-8e18-021abc3dff0c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.timesherald.com/article/20130308/ENTERTAINMENT01/130309565&template=printart | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969941 | 901 | 1.648438 | 2 |
The FIA’s World Motor Sports Council has announced a series of changes to the rules.
These including clarifying the rule regarding the safety car which Michael Schumacher ran afoul of in the Monaco Grand Prix.
And drivers will no longer be able to stop on the track after qualifying to preserve their fuel loads, as Lewis Hamilton did in Canada.
Here are the full details of the changes the FIA has announced today:
The FIA has clarified the rule which caught Michael Schumacher out at Monaco, stating drivers may not overtake after the safety car line on the final lap:
With immediate effect, no car may overtake until it has passed the first safety car line for the first time when the safety car is returning to the pits. However, if the safety car is still deployed at the beginning of the last lap, or is deployed during the last lap, it will enter the pit lane at the end of the lap and the cars will take the chequered flag as normal without overtaking.
There will also be no more drivers stopping to save fuel after qualifying, as Lewis Hamilton did at Montreal:
With immediate effect, any car being driven unnecessarily slowly, erratically, or which is deemed potentially dangerous to other drivers, will be reported to the stewards. This will apply whether any such car is being driven on the track, the pit entry or the pit lane.
In order to ensure cars are not driven unnecessarily slowly on in-laps during qualifying or reconnaissance laps when the pit exit is opened for the race, drivers must stay below the maximum time set by the FIA between the safety car line after the pit exit and safety car line before the pit entry. The maximum time will be determined by the race director at each event prior to the first day of practice, but may be amended during the event if necessary.
With immediate effect, if a sample of fuel is required after a practice session the car concerned must have first been driven back to the pits under its own power.
Adjustable rear wings
As revealed here earlier adjustable rear wings will be introduced in 2011.
Vote on what you think of the change here: Adjustable rear wings confirmed for 2011 – but only for overtaking (Poll)
From 2011, adjustable bodywork may be activated by the driver at any time prior to the start of the race and, for the sole purpose of improving overtaking opportunities during the race, after the driver has completed two laps.
The driver may only activate the adjustable bodywork in the race when he has been notified via the control electronics that it is enabled. It will only be enabled if the driver is less than one second behind another at any of the pre-determined positions around each circuit.
The system will be disabled the first time the driver uses the brakes after the system has been activated. The FIA may, after consulting all the competitors, adjust the time proximity in order to ensure the purpose of the adjustable bodywork is met.
With the exception of the parts necessary for the driver adjustable bodywork, any car system, device or procedure which uses driver movement as a means of altering the aerodynamic characteristics of the car is prohibited from 2011.
The minimum weight limit has been increased from 620kg to 640kg. This is most likely to encourage more teams to use Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems. The minimum weight was also increased at the start of this year:
From 2011, the minimum weight of the car must not be less than 640 kg at all times during the event.
F1 drivers will be strongly encouraged not to get into any trouble on public roads, as happened to Hamilton at Melbourne earlier this year:
The FIA, both in its motor sport and mobility roles, has a strong interest in promoting road safety. Competitors at FIA events must act as ambassadors for the sport, be aware their conduct on the road must be exemplary and respect road safety rules. The World Council agreed that the International Sporting Code be examined to ensure the Federation’s overall objectives and, in particular, its commitment to road safety, are upheld.
Interestingly, Renault Development Driver Ho-Pin Tung has been granted a probationary superlicence, suggesting his team requested he be considered for one. The Chinese driver did demonstration laps in a Renault R29 at Magny-Cours last weekend:
Based on his career résumé and comparative F1 testing times, the World Council has approved the granting of a four-race probationary super license to Chinese driver Ho-Pin Tung.
There has been no word from the council on any action against US F1 or a rumoured name change for Sauber to drop ‘BMW’ from their official title.
Read more: F1 2011 Season | <urn:uuid:2ecd9145-31f9-4d85-8468-30fb0b4a557b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2010/06/23/fia-wmsc-tightens-up-rules-on-safety-cars-and-fuel-samples/comment-page-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95922 | 962 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Digital signage displays are scattered thoughout the floor of this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, hawking games and tablets and TVs — but display technology also is hiding inside one of the more interesting products on the show floor, a health care kiosk that remotely connects patients and physicians.
The HealthSpot Station relies in a connected display to allow patients to step in and have a face-to-face chat and checkup with a doctor from far away.
"HealthSpot creates an integrated network of board-certified physicians delivering cutting-edge health care through modern technology," parent company HealthSpot said in a statement.
The private, 8-foot-by-5-foot walk-in kiosk provides acute-care patients, including those living in remote locations, access to diagnosis and treatment by board-certified doctors through high-definition video conferencing and interactive, digital telehealth tools.
Patients receive a doctor-guided self-service medical examination that provides real-time vital signs and images to the physician. Condition diagnosis is made possible using equipment such as an instant-read thermometer, a dermascope that provides magnified views of skin conditions, or an otoscope that projects high-resolution images of the inner ear for both the doctor and patient to see.
Once the exam is complete, the HealthSpot kiosk automatically creates an electronic medical record of the visit that can be shared with the patient's primary care physician or specialist, or saved for their personal records. According to HealthSpot Founder and CEO Steve Cashman, the kiosk's ability to merge technology and convenience could aid in the country's expansion of health care.
"Trends in health care demand innovative solutions to increase access to health care services at a cost-effective price," Cashman said. "It is simply physically impossible for our country's health care system to continue on its current path."
Although still in a testing phase in Ohio, the company is in the process of establishing a network of doctors, with target locations such as grocery stores and urgent care facilities in mind for this year's anticipated deployment.
"We are making it possible to seamlessly deliver advanced health care through modern technology," Cashman said in a statement. "We are not just hardware; we are not just software; we are a complete integrated network of traditional doctor care and cutting-edge telemedicine. We are health care reinvented."
Check out this demo video for a better look inside the HealthSpot:
Read more about digital signage in health care. | <urn:uuid:54b7b160-0140-45cb-b2b1-4d468515dbcc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.digitalsignagetoday.com/article/206371/Display-tech-powers-telehealth-kiosk-checkups-at-CES-Video?rc_id=164 | 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 | 0.943342 | 516 | 1.648438 | 2 |
In Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi is his usual incandescent self in reporting on the United States of America v. Carollo, Goldberg and Grimm, a bid-rigging trial against brokers at GE Capital, which implicated virtually every bank on Wall Street (and many overseas banks) in a multibillion-dollar municipal bond bid-rigging fraud, a fraud that skimmed a piece of every substantial municipal project in America, from public pools and baseball diamonds to subway stations and housing projects. Bid-rigging, a process perfected by the mafia, has been practiced by the financial sector on a scale never dreamed of by the simple men of the crime syndicates, and the scam is starting to unravel.
The defendants in the case – Dominick Carollo, Steven Goldberg and Peter Grimm – worked for GE Capital, the finance arm of General Electric. Along with virtually every major bank and finance company on Wall Street – not just GE, but J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, UBS, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Wachovia and more – these three Wall Street wiseguys spent the past decade taking part in a breathtakingly broad scheme to skim billions of dollars from the coffers of cities and small towns across America. The banks achieved this gigantic rip-off by secretly colluding to rig the public bids on municipal bonds, a business worth $3.7 trillion. By conspiring to lower the interest rates that towns earn on these investments, the banks systematically stole from schools, hospitals, libraries and nursing homes – from "virtually every state, district and territory in the United States," according to one settlement. And they did it so cleverly that the victims never even knew they were being cheated. No thumbs were broken, and nobody ended up in a landfill in New Jersey, but money disappeared, lots and lots of it, and its manner of disappearance had a familiar name: organized crime.
In fact, stripped of all the camouflaging financial verbiage, the crimes the defendants and their co-conspirators committed were virtually indistinguishable from the kind of thuggery practiced for decades by the Mafia, which has long made manipulation of public bids for things like garbage collection and construction contracts a cornerstone of its business. What's more, in the manner of old mob trials, Wall Street's secret machinations were revealed during the Carollo trial through crackling wiretap recordings and the lurid testimony of cooperating witnesses, who came into court with bowed heads, pointing fingers at their accomplices. The new-age gangsters even invented an elaborate code to hide their crimes. Like Elizabethan highway robbers who spoke in thieves' cant, or Italian mobsters who talked about "getting a button man to clip the capo," on tape after tape these Wall Street crooks coughed up phrases like "pull a nickel out" or "get to the right level" or "you're hanging out there" – all code words used to manipulate the interest rates on municipal bonds. The only thing that made this trial different from a typical mob trial was the scale of the crime.
USA v. Carollo involved classic cartel activity: not just one corrupt bank, but many, all acting in careful concert against the public interest. In the years since the economic crash of 2008, we've seen numerous hints that such orchestrated corruption exists. The collapses of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, for instance, both pointed to coordinated attacks by powerful banks and hedge funds determined to speed the demise of those firms. In the bankruptcy of Jefferson County, Alabama, we learned that Goldman Sachs accepted a $3 million bribe from J.P. Morgan Chase to permit Chase to serve as the sole provider of toxic swap deals to the rubes running metropolitan Birmingham – "an open-and-shut case of anti-competitive behavior," as one former regulator described it.
I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too. | <urn:uuid:4e42b8ff-3164-4fa2-8f5a-84b862c9c5de> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://boingboing.net/2012/06/22/wall-street-like-the-mafia-b.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956046 | 864 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Thousands of New York City parents were scrambling to find alternative transportation Wednesday because transit employees serving the city’s public schools have gone on strike.
According to local channel 12 television, more than 152,000 NYC students will be affected as some 8,000 bus drivers and matrons of Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Union walked off the job. The strike, which union members say the mayor could have prevented, is over job protection. Mayorclaims his hands are tied and that the labor dispute is a private company issue, not a city issue.
The New York Times is reporting that the city had invited private bus companies to bid on the 1,100 bus routes serving students with disabilities; However, drivers for those routes have no job protection and are worried that they will be fired after the new contracts take effect in June. Though Bloomberg said his hands were tied because a 2011 ruling barred the city from forcing the private companies to hire those current drivers and matrons, he admitted that the new contracts would save the city $95 million over the next five years.
Workers are currently walking the picket line in Ridgewood, Queens and all around the city, holding placards high and chanting in defiance through the rain that has been coming down since morning. The last time such a strike took place was 1979—and workers didn’t go back to their jobs for a whopping 14 weeks. Many fear a similar scenario and parents are understandably upset.
One mom from Staten Island complained of the inconvenience, on top of dealing with the devastating aftermath of super storm Sandy. She said she had three daughters who go to different schools and getting all there will now be a herculean feat. She is also worried about being repeatedly late for work. Employers will not be happy either if their employees have to miss days because they are frantically trying to get their children to school. Another parent said it took her two hours to get her child to school.
Outside of P.S.811K in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, is empty where it use to have a line of bright yellow school buses waiting this time of day, a scene that is sure to be repeated throughout the five boroughs..Many schools will probably see lots of absences today—which was expected, especially special needs children, who absolutely depend on those school buses.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said during a press conference on Tuesday night that the city will provide metro cards and reimburse parents who use taxis or other alternative transportation. Parents can check out the Dept. of Education's full set of rules here or visit city's website here http://on.nyc.gov/SAmJCx for more.
Come on, Mayor Bloomberg, we know you can do something about this strike if you want to. After being hit by that monster storm Sandy, New Yorkers do not need another headache on top of the giant migraine many are still dealing with.
Finding alternative arrangements for our children, especially disabled and elementary-aged students, can be monumental tasks. Throw in parents who work outside the home and we’re talking a nearly impossible feat. Add in those who work outside the home but also work at jobs that do not have sick days, or pay with any kind of benefits where an employee can get time off and still get paid, and we have parents with astronomical stress. Don’t forget the lack of health insurance; there is no going to the doctor when those blood pressure levels peak to hypertension.
This strike is not good for anyone, and the mayor, union officials and bus companies need to all sit down and work through the night if they have to in order to come to some kind of agreement.
What is going on in this country? Our politicians in Washington can’t seem to get it together and neither can our local officials, it appears. Bloomberg has made it quite clear that he is not fond of unions, but he has to work for the good of the people who put him in charge of the city. I know the billionaire bought himself an unheard of third term and has waived his salary for all three, so he has nothing to lose. But that is no excuse for ignoring the situation.
UPDATE 7:00 P.M. ET
Oddly, Mayor Bloomberg joked about the bus strike during a press conference Wednesday, saying that at least "it will not last forever" and will end for sure by June because that is the end of the school year.
But the school bus strike is no laughing matter to New York City parents, who have to look for alternative transportation indefinitely. Bus drivers and matrons walking the picket line show no signs of tiring and negotiations seem woefully stalled.
Bloomberg said New Yorkers are resilient and though it will not be easy, they will surely get through it.
Is the mayor sorely out of touch with just how struggling families survive in the five boroughs?
According to a NY 1 television broadcast, the city is downplaying students attendance on Wednesday, saying there was only about one percent absence reported. They haven't taken into account that 40 percent of special needs students were unable to attend school on the first day of the strike. | <urn:uuid:07d6f6e4-3881-459b-8ae8-156b6ec7af1c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/13819622-school-bus-strike-underway-in-nyc-as-drivers-matrons-walk-off-the-job152000-children-affected | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975267 | 1,057 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Start your 2012 new career planning now.
Come January 1st, gym memberships sky rocket and diet books fly off the shelves as people strive for self-improvement in the New Year.
If your resolution, however, is more about changing careers for the better, it may be time to start planning now.
Want to make 2012 the year you start preparing to launch a new career? Check out these career change options and find out what education you'll need to get started now.
Career #1 - Paralegal/Legal Assistant
If you've always loved the law and want to use the New Year to start preparing to transition into this exciting field, consider this as a career option: paralegal/legal assistant. These helpful workers perform many of the duties once handled only by lawyers, which includes preparing legal documents, interviewing clients, scheduling court dates, and maintaining important records.
2012 New Career Plan: This is a great career-change option, as an associate's degree in paralegal studies could be completed in as little as two years, the Department notes. If you already have a bachelor's degree in another field, you may be able to complete a paralegal certificate program in as little as a few months.*
Career #2 - Computer Support Specialist
Computers aren't for everyone, but if you happen to have an affinity for them, you might enjoy pursuing a new career as a computer support specialist. In this position, your responsibilities might include providing technical or help desk support, diagnosing problems, and educating fellow employees.
2012 New Career Plan: If you want to make the switch to this career, you should have a solid grasp of computer systems. A bachelor's degree in computer science, computer engineering, or information systems is required for some positions, the Department reports, while an associate's degree in a computer-related field is sufficient for others.*
Career #3 - Bookkeeper
Bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks are employed in just about every industry you could imagine, so preparing to pursue a career in this field could be a smart New Year's resolution option. As a bookkeeper you might maintain company financial records, handle payroll, prepare tax information, or manage purchasing and invoicing.
2012 New Career Plan: If you think this all-about-numbers career could be for you, consider going back to school to earn an associate's degree in accounting or business, which is required for some positions, according to the Department.*
Career #4 - Pharmacy Technician
With the health care field predicted to generate about 3.2 million new jobs between 2008 and 2018, according to the Department, prospects for pharmacy technicians are looking good. This job carries a lot of responsibility, as you'll likely be working with patients, processing prescriptions, and filling and labeling medications.
2012 New Career Plan: Think you might enjoy a career as pharmacy technician? You could have a shot at pursuing this career if you're armed with a pharmacy technician certificate - which employers favor - reports the Department.*
Career #5 - Registered Nurse (RN)
If you have an interest in helping people, you might enjoy pursuing a registered nurse career. RNs often work closely with patients, administering treatments and medication, and creating and employing patient care plans. They also provide education and emotional support for patients and their families.
2012 New Career Plan: Does this hands-on career intrigue you? Great news: An associate's degree in nursing, which could take as little as two to three years to complete, could help you prepare to pursue this career, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.*
*All career and education information comes from the U.S. Department of Labor using May 2010 data.
Next Article: Top Online Degrees for Switching Fields » | <urn:uuid:898e3435-3e74-4097-a920-ed9b8a674c47> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://education.yahoo.net/articles/new_year_new_career.htm?wid=1004&svkid=1KXY4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960432 | 778 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Combination of "infer" and "lie".
To deliberately mislead someone with a statement that uses just enough truth to imply a false meaning. An "infliance" allows one to convince a person of a lie without actually lying.
Jen: "Hey, I never said I was 18..."
Dave: "Yeah, well you inflied it!" | <urn:uuid:8ba07e1e-f681-44e7-b09e-5b52bc371627> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=inflie | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949319 | 74 | 1.765625 | 2 |
At some point after I started asking questions about what it means to be a good man–a question that is impossible to answer with completeness but has never been more important–I was introduced to Michael Kamber through our mutual friend Seb Junger. I was interested to understand what a man who had watched every major armed conflict over the last 20 years at dangerously close range might say about the goodness of men who he witnessed butchering each other in warfare.
At the time, Michael was on the ground in Bagdad, taking pictures for the New York Times. I began to notice his pictures on the cover of the paper on a regular basis, always showing the human side of war. In one memorable image a soldier in full armaments is carrying a Iraqi baby in his arms to safety. That image embodied a kind of goodness that I wanted to know more about, an act profound humanity in the eye of a terrible storm of violence.
Michael told me about stepping inside a shack to take images of the platoon he was imbedded with in Iraq only to have the men march forward and get blown up. He explained that first he tried to save the men he had come to know and respect who lay dying. Then he had to do his job, taking pictures. He told the commanding officer that he could take the camera later but he had to try to capture what he was seeing.
It became clear to me over time that Michael’s definition of a good man involved revealing the truth to the world, no matter what the personal cost.
Photo Credit Michael Kamber for Good Men Project
Three years later, Michael and I had become good friends. So it was with heavy heart that I heart the news of Tim Hetherington’s death. I knew Tim and Michael had been frequent roommates and best friends for years. Tim and Seb had made Restrepo, arguably the best documentary on war ever produced. I had traded emails with Tim just weeks before his death.
Michael was devastated by Tim’s death. He was left to plan Tim’s memorial service with Seb and somehow try to comfort Tim’s parents. But within hours he was talking about writing a story about not only about the man but about how he had changed photojournalism.
In the end together we published a piece about just that along with many photos Michael had taken that had never been seen before and an audio interview in which Michael asks Tim exactly why he took the pictures he did and what connection he saw between manhood and war.
Please click below for the story, exclusive photos, and interview: | <urn:uuid:96793048-fa77-4f9e-85d3-d62ff927d700> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.menshealth.com/good-man/on-manhood-war-and-journalism/2011/05/26/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987875 | 530 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Company Manual (View All)
- Introduction to CS428
- Company Layout
- Roles and Positions
Company LayoutThe group hierarchy shown on the next page consists of several teams under the direction of one or more students who function in administrative/managerial roles. Each team is led by a team leader and may consist of coders, testers, or other positions (technical writer, marketer, graphic artist, etc.). In any given semester or term, the number and constitution of teams will vary depending on the size and demographics of the class.
The first assignment for all students is to apply for (and be assigned/hired for) specific positions within the group. The second assignment is for newly assigned team members to figure out how to best function as teams and as an overall organization.
The sponsor of the project (the professor) and the Executive Manager (the teaching assistant) have very little interest in micro-managing this group, but reserve the right to step in and make executive decisions when there's a critical need. A consultant (the professor) is available to advise managers, team leaders, and engineers on effective organization, communication, and problem resolution. The consultant gives advice, but does not own the outcomes. The consultant becomes involved by invitation of group members. | <urn:uuid:f2af86bf-b200-4164-98cf-4266bc1c5101> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://students.cs.byu.edu/~knutson/cs428/company.php?id=CompanyLayout | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941785 | 260 | 1.8125 | 2 |
War crimes court jails Liberia's Taylor for 50 years
Taylor (64) was convicted last month of all 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for aiding and abetting Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front (RUF) during the country’s brutal 1991-2001 civil war.
In return, the court said, he was paid in diamonds mined by slave labour in areas under control of the rebels, who murdered, raped and kept sex slaves, hacked off limbs and forced children under 15 to fight.
“The accused has been found responsible for aiding and abetting some of the most heinous crimes in human history,” said Special Court for Sierra Leone judge Richard Lussick on Wednesday.
“The trial chamber unanimously sentences you to a single term of imprisonment for 50 years on all counts,” the judge said as he announced the ruling of the court based at Leidschendam, just outside The Hague.
“The trial chamber noticed that the effects of these crimes on the families and society as a whole in Sierra Leone was devastating,” Lussick said in handing down the ruling, the first sentence against a former head of state in an international court since the Nazi trials at Nuremberg in 1946.
Taylor, wearing gold-rimmed glasses and dressed in a dark suit and gold tie, listened with his eyes closed as the judge handed down the sentence, which Taylor’s team, and prosecutors, have two weeks to appeal.
Early this month, chief prosecutor Brenda Hollis argued for 80 years behind bars for Taylor, once one of west Africa’s most powerful men and a driving force behind Sierra Leone’s decade-long war which claimed 120 000 lives.
His defence argued such a sentence would be “excessive”.
Throughout the trial, Taylor himself maintained his innocence and insisted he was instrumental in eventually ending Sierra Leone’s civil war.
He will remain in the UN’s detention unit in the Hague until his appeal procedure is finalised.
Taylor’s sentence will be served in a British prison. London’s offer in 2007 to host Taylor in custody if he was found guilty was part of the deal to put him on trial in the Netherlands-based court.
The trial, which lasted nearly four years, wrapped up in March 2011.
It saw several high-profile witnesses testify, including supermodel Naomi Campbell, who told of a gift of “dirty diamonds” she received in 1997 at a charity ball hosted by South Africa’s then president Nelson Mandela.
Handing down the verdict last month, Lussick stressed that although Taylor had substantial influence over the RUF, including its feared leader Foday Sankoh, this “fell short of command and control” of rebel forces.
Sankoh died in 2003 before he could face trial.
Authorities in Nigeria arrested Taylor in March 2006 as he tried to flee from exile after being forced to quit Liberia three years earlier, under international pressure to end that country’s own civil war.
He was transferred to the Hague in mid-2006 amid security fears should he go on trial in Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown.
Taylor’s sentencing came 66 years after the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg sentenced admiral Karl Donitz to 10 years in jail for his part in Nazi crimes during World War II. Adolf Hitler had appointed Donitz his successor shortly before committing suicide in Berlin in 1945. – AFP | <urn:uuid:4274292b-f1c1-49d0-9887-32b4783b3107> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mg.co.za/article/2012-05-30-war-crimes-court-jails-liberias-taylor-for-50-years | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96991 | 722 | 1.625 | 2 |
Gov. Gary Herbert urged both sides in Utah's gun debate to take a deep breath and approach the issue in a reasonable, rational way.
The governor said that, with emotions running high after the shooting in Newtown, Conn., both sides need to be methodical about the situation.
"I'm a little disappointed that we have a president who is proposing 35 or 37 executive orders to solve the problem and skirting Congress. I don't think that's the right way to solve the problem," Herbert said. "I have someone else out there who is worried about Congress sweeping in and taking away our guns. I think that's an exaggeration, too."
Herbert expressed skepticism about a proposal by Rep. Brian Greene, R-Pleasant Grove, that would prohibit the enforcement of new federal gun restrictions in Utah. Herbert said Utah will obey the law.
"I think we need to adhere to the law," he said. "Nobody is above the law and, again, if we have laws that are passed that are unconstitutional ⦠we need to fight that in court and change the law."
The governor also said he believes a letter from the Utah Sheriffs Association to the president, stating that its 28 sheriff members  all but Salt Lake County would not enforce gun laws they believed violate the constitutional right to bear arms, was also an overreaction.
"I think it was probably an emotional, knee-jerk reaction to the idea that Washington is somehow going to tell us what we're going to do," Herbert said. "If we don't like the laws that are passed, if we don't like the executive orders, we have a process in place. Go to court. We don't have to have confrontations at the border. Go to court and we'll find out whether it's the law of the land or not, but Utah will adhere to the law of the land." | <urn:uuid:60215d2d-354b-4f8f-b2c4-5cbc05f2f7df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/55694030-90/utah-herbert-law-sheriffs.html.csp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979806 | 389 | 1.5 | 2 |
AUBURN — Councilors may not be constitutional scholars, but they will try to tackle the issue of federal campaign finance reform.
Councilors agreed to consider adopting a resolution or statement calling for a national review of how political action committees influence elections.
“I think this does relate to the city of Auburn and election to some of our offices here,” said Councilor Tizz Crowley. “I’m not sure about some of the wording or that we can speak on behalf of the citizens of Auburn. However, I think the dialog is important.”
Lewiston’s City Council adopted a resolution in September that targets the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United versus the Federal Election Commission decision that ruled that some campaign finance reporting rules violated the First Amendment.
It calls for a new constitutional amendment that would define election spending as different from protected First Amendment speech, let state and federal government regulate election spending and clarify that human beings are endowed with constitutional rights. Corporations are not guaranteed constitutional protection, according to the resolution.
Portland, Bangor, Waterville and several other Maine communities have also adopted resolutions calling for new campaign finance definitions.
Mayor Jonathan LaBonte said he was not sure it was good use of the City Council’s time.
“Given the depth and breadth of items the council already has on its plate, I’m not sure if they are in a position to immerse themselves enough in this issue to understand all the legal nuances,” LaBonte said.
Councilor David Young agreed.
“There are much more important things that we should act on first before we act on this,” Young said.
But Councilors Robert Hayes, Tizz Crowley and Belinda Gerry said it’s worth some debate at the local level.
“At least we should bring it forward for some discussion,” Hayes said. “I agree that we should not spend a lot of time on it. But I think it’s something that could affect us.” | <urn:uuid:c86d79af-c76f-472a-8901-591d27c3cb60> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bangordailynews.com/2013/01/08/news/lewiston-auburn/federal-campaign-reform-deserves-local-debate-say-auburn-city-councilors/?ref=relatedBox | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962309 | 429 | 1.554688 | 2 |
MOSCOW — Every night last week, writers, artists, actors, ad men, office managers and assorted others climbed the stairs to the fifth floor of a converted factory building in Moscow to make a statement. Pavel Bardin, a well-known young film director, had set up a camera in a conference room there. Everyone who came in — some by invitation, some having found out about the filming from friends or Facebook — wrote his or her name and vocation on a length of masking tape, and named his or her reason for planning to attend what would be a giant protest on Saturday, the 24th.
Each person followed a simple formula: make an I-statement consisting of just the subject and verb, then expand in a sentence or two. “I love.” “I know.” “I fear.” “I want.” “I can.”
As in, “I love my children…” “I know how to talk to people…” “I fear violence…” “I want to be proud of my country…” “I can imagine a different future…”
“… and this is why I am going to take part in the protest on the 24th.”
I said, “I love my friends, my home and my work, and this is why I live in this country and this is also why I am going to take part in the protest on the 24th.” It was similar to what everyone else said. The point, for once, was not to say something original; it was to reinforce the same message, one person at a time.
After taping my 15 seconds on Wednesday, I went home and watched all the videos that had been posted online. They bore the marks of hastily made clips: the lighting was depressing, and the sound faded out at times. But they brought me to tears. The same thing happened when I watched the next batch the following day and the next batch the day after that.
Why were these simple clips, some of them recorded by people I know and some by strangers, so moving? Because they made me feel part of something huge.
I am used to being part of a tiny minority. When I was growing up in Moscow in the 1970s, my parents got their news and their inspiration from the West and from the samizdat they helped distribute, and I was always told to be careful about sharing information I got at home. For the last dozen years, since Putin took power in Russia, I have felt very much like I used to when I was a child: like my basic views are shared by only a handful of people, all of whom I know by name, and the world outside our small circle is hostile and dangerous.
I did not know what a heavy burden this isolation was until I was lifted — and the new lightness made me cry with relief.
Masha Gessen is a journalist in Moscow and the author of “The Man Without a Face,” a biography of Vladimir Putin. | <urn:uuid:2d3a90b8-9d07-45ee-8c8f-1affb2cdac85> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/from-russia-with-lightness/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984409 | 642 | 1.648438 | 2 |
In 1962, just for a change, my dad didn’t go to Le Mans. Instead, Bill and he went to Monte Carlo for the Grand Prix. Did they fly? No. They made a proper petrolhead trip of it.
First up, they drove to Germany (what in those days would have been West Germany, to be precise) for the Nurburgring 1000km. Then they drove down through the Alps to Monte Carlo, watched the Grand Prix, and then drove back up through France, via Arles, the Gorges du Tarn, Le Mans (OK, so he went there, but not for the 24 hour race this time) and then back to Calais.
Not something you see every day – a racing car (Formula Junior – the precursor to Formula 3) parked at the side of the road, between a couple of oh-so-French vans.
Bruce McLaren in a Cooper-Climax T14, celebrating his win with what looks suspiciously like a bottle of Coke. You don’t see Lewis Hamilton doing this, do you? For one thing, he’d expect to be paid an obscene amount of money to do it, and Bernie Ecclestone probably wouldn’t let him.
I think that these are some of the best photos so far. Not only did he get very close to the actions, but some of them are in colour as well:
A view down over the harbour – is this heading down towards the Rascasse corner? | <urn:uuid:73c3ae51-1baf-4ce5-bb6e-014499176c72> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mydadsphotos.shendy.co.uk/2010/08/28/monaco/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957925 | 313 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Denver Post, RJ Sangosti, Associated Press
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — A raging Colorado wildfire that forced tens of thousands to flee destroyed an estimated 346 homes this week, making it the most destructive fire in the state's history, officials said Thursday.
From above, the destruction becomes painfully clear: Rows and rows of houses were reduced to smoldering ashes even as some homes just feet away survived largely intact.
On one street, all but three houses had burned to their foundations, said Ryan Schneider, whose home is still standing in a neighborhood where 51 others were destroyed.
"I was real happy at first. My wife was happy," he said. "The emotion of seeing the other homes, though, was instant sadness."
The aerial photos showing the scope of one of the worst fires to hit the American West in decades did little to help ease the concerns of many residents who still did not know the fate of homes.
Amid the devastation in the foothills of Colorado Springs, there were hopeful signs. Flames advancing on the U.S. Air Force Academy were stopped and cooler conditions could help slow the fire.
As of mid-day Thursday, the fire was 10 percent contained. The cost of fighting the blaze had already reached $3.2 million.
Colorado Springs Mayor Steve Bach said the 346 estimate could change. A fire in northern Colorado, which is still burning, destroyed 257 homes and until Thursday was the most destructive in state history.
For now, Bach said, the news of the destruction would make it very difficult for the city about 60 miles south of Denver.
"This is going to be a tough evening, but we're going to get through it," Bach said. "This community is going to surround them with love and encouragement ... We will move forward as a community."
More than 30,000 people frantically packed up belongings Tuesday night as the flames swept through their neighborhoods. While there's no indication yet the blaze claimed any lives, fire officials said they would search each home looking for possible remains.
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation said two people have been arrested in connection with a burglary at an evacuated home. Belinda Yates and Shane Garrett were being held on charges including second-degree burglary and possession of methamphetamine.
Community officials were planning to begin the process of notifying residents Thursday that their homes were destroyed. For many residents, the official notification was a formality.
Residents recognize their street on aerial pictures and carefully scrutinize the images to determine the damage. Photos and video from The Associated Press and the Denver Post showed widespread damage.
Colorado Springs, the state's second-largest city, is home to the U.S. Olympic Training Center, NORAD and the Air Force Space Command, which operates military satellites. They were not threatened.
Conditions were still too dicey to allow authorities to begin trying to figure out what sparked the blaze that has raged for much of the week and already burned more than 29 square miles.
President Barack Obama was to tour fire-stricken areas Friday as hundreds of locals and some tourists who were staying at Red Cross shelters hoped life would return to normal. Other stayed with friends and family.
Bill and Lois Bartlett said they believe their neighborhood was spared, but remained wary as they waited at a YMCA shelter set up by the Red Cross.
"I've been through a lot of stuff like this before but not in civilian life," said Bill Bartlett, who flew B-17 bombers during World War II.
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- House chairman sees IRS targeting as... 16 | <urn:uuid:abb4d6a6-f900-4e08-a2da-0d3298c44078> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765586734/Mayor-Colorado-Springs-fire-destroys-346-homes.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974737 | 888 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Preparing for Marriage
In Preparing for Marriage, I describe some of the most
important ways that people can make themselves marriage material. I also explain how
a couple can develop a negotiating style before marriage that will help them avoid most
of the common pitfalls after marriage.
The letters in Choosing the Right One to Marry address
common problems of dating couples. Because they are not
yet married, I focus more attention on whether they are right for each other than I do on how to
resolve the conflicts. The first letter is from a woman who thinks she is engaged but is having
quite a bit of trouble with her "fiancee." So much trouble, in fact, that she is not sure he is right
for her, and I'm not either. The second letter comes from a woman who is interested in
compatibility testing. I suggest a professional service that she can use, and I also offer her some
of my own guidelines as to what to look for in a marriage partner. The third letter is from a
woman who considers herself married to her boyfriend, but he's left her. Are they now going
A very high percentage of those who send me letters are either living together or
have lived together before marriage. There has been extensive research on the subject of
living together, and it all points to a startling conclusion: Living together before marriage
seems to doom subsequent marriage. In my first Q&A column on the subject, Does Living Together Prepare You for Marriage? I try to
explain why living together has such a disastrous effect on marriage.
Then, in What Is It Like to Be Married After Living
Together I explain what a couple can do to save their marriage after having lived
together first. These two Q&A columns are extremely important reading for couples who
have ever lived together before marriage, or are contemplating living together.
There are many people meeting for the first time on the internet, and as I discussed
earlier, there are an increasing number of internet affairs. But some of these relationships
are between singles, and they sometimes lead to marriage. How do these internet
marriages work out? Internet Marriage is a discussion
of this recent phenomenon, along with some warnings and suggestions.
Is divorce the end of a marriage? Not necessarily. But how can you know for sure,
and how can you let go if it's really over? These questions are addressed in Should I Remarry My Ex-spouse? If Not, How Can I Just Let | <urn:uuid:488ede31-aec7-41b6-a9f2-797112652c08> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.marriagebuilders.com/mb.cfm?recno=4&sublink=31 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955902 | 520 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Today’s Business it is found that email marketing is a productive and cost-effective means of generating sales. The cost of sending a direct mail piece by postal service runs over a dollar whereas the cost of sending email is negligible. Analysts say getting even one percent response rate from direct mail is rare but an email marketing campaign can easily fetch a five to ten percent response rate. The benefit of email marketing is not confined to increased sales and lead generation. It also significantly helps to create powerful brand awareness and improved customer relationships.
Email marketing is one of the best ways of gaining publicity for your business online. As the number of email users is swelling by the day, more and more businesses are choosing email marketing as their primary advertising campaign. Email marketing is cheap, fast and more importantly – effective. Email marketing is extremely productive and brings good ROI (Return on Investment) for internet marketers.
If you are planning to start an internet business or if you are already an existing internet business owner, it is beneficial to implement email marketing in your web business promotion strategy. A well planned email marketing campaign can help you boost sales for your on-line as well as off-line business.
Before embarking on your email marketing campaign, it is critically important that you clearly understand the difference between proper email marketing and spam. If you fail to learn the distinction, you may seriously hurt your business. Spam is very unethical way of internet marketing. Simply stated, it means sending promotional email messages to people who did not solicit that information. If you try to spam, you may be even be banned by your ISP (Internet Service Provider) completely disabling you from sending messages from your email account again.
A much better and healthy method is opt-in email marketing. Contrary to spam it is permission based, which means that people have agreed to receive emails from you. This way of marketing is preferred by many businesses and it brings very good results. Unsolicited email marketing or spamming brings very low response rates. It’s not targeted, which means that email message goes to people who are not interested in your offer. A majority of people will not even look at your spam email, so it is not possible to obtain good response rates using unsolicited advertising.
One of the most important elements of your email marketing campaign is the content of your promotional message. Learning how to write an effective message or follow up email messages is an essential step of your email marketing campaign. Write your message only to those people whom you consider likely prospects.
Write your message individually putting his or her name in the message. Do not send out a collective message by addressing ‘dear subscriber’. For all that smart targeting, it’s still hard to get people to open e-mails unless they recognize the sender immediately.
Write interesting headlines as these are immediately get noticed. Make sure your headline arouses interest of the recipient if you want your message to be opened and read. Give your prospects the option to unsubscribe from your list. If you retain them against their will, you may be accused of spam. So provide removal instructions at the end of your message all the time.
Email marketing is a unique way of developing long-standing relationship with your existing and prospective customers. If you are really serious about your on-line or off-line business, email marketing is a cost-effective way of promoting your products and services.
Online advertising through email has garnered a considerable amount of trust among marketers, and has gained considerable visibility on the Internet. The long list of options, and effects, that may be brought about by online marketing all come together with the idea of gaining product visibility and customer patronage, obtainable through the easy, convenient, and low-cost technology of email communication.
Email marketing extends from company notices for the customer regarding product information and purchase-related concerns, to entire newsletters that include every possible piece of knowledge related to the product that marketer wants to make customers aware of. The information that may be included in an email marketing communiqué is endless, and comes down merely to message selection and execution designed to have the greatest impact on the customer.
Considering this trend, there have emerged an extensive number of resources available to marketers who want to take advantage of the benefits of email marketing. These tools offer a vast range of tools from marketing advice, industry news, and directories that may prove essential for effective marketing strategies:
One of the most trusted email marketing resources online, this website provides technology-related news, Internet research results, company features, expert opinion pieces, and even case studies and interviews regarding a number of available products, and emerging online trends.
This site works to provide various products and services for email marketers, with one of their offers being an information hub of several email techniques that email marketers may take into consideration upon launching their ad campaigns.
This page that at first glance takes the look of a simple online blog provides valuable information regarding the best and most effective practices to be considered by any marketer using email as a main communication tool. Focused on email marketing, the website features article with titles such as “Use Serialization to Boost Your Readership”, “Study Reveals Email Tactics of Top U.S. Retailers”, “Cool Email Idea: Email to Encourage Store Traffic”, and “How to make sure your email is legal”.
The website is a great information source for tips and reminders related to email marketing.
This provides a comprehensive online directory that features email marketing agencies, email consultants, and various services that give assistance for other online marketing strategies such as online ad space, cost-per-click ads, and newsletters.
One of the biggest information sources on the World Wide Web, this collection of articles and other resources contains a section on email marketing, complete with everything from tips, technology and marketing strategies, and other related pieces of advice that may in the long run be valuable to advertisers.
Some of the available entries include those titled “Instruments of Email Marketing”, “Address Recipients with Their Name in Email Campaigns”, “Email Marketing Needs to Reflect Your Corporate Design,” and “Inform Your ISP About Your Email Marketing Activities.”
Email Marketer’s Club
A haven for advertisers depending on the email technology for their marketing needs. This website provides an online network for email marketers, thereby providing their subscribers access to contacts, advice, and other information that can only be gained from those involved in the same game they are.
The website provides a source of ideas for email marketing designs, with contributions as well as suggestions centering on the most common design issues.
Email marketers interested in achieving the greatest level of effectiveness from their email designs will find assistance with a featured product that promises “no nasty templates or design restrictions”, “comprehensive design testing,” and the option to “run your email through spam filters before you send it.”
Other features include other additional tools such as email personalization, a Send schedule, and other related elements.
To learn what most network marketers will never know about how to market via email follow the link in my resource box now.
With the advent of today’s troubled economy, advertisers are looking for reliable, affordable and feature filled marketing tools to build their business. To fill this void many are turning to email marketing services. When compared to the U.S Postal Service and other forms of advertising, email marketing is not only faster but much cheaper. You can make campaign changes almost instantly and update subscribers in a short period of time.
Campaign Costs And Features
An email campaign of 10,000 subscribers can be initiated for less than $18.
Campaign packages include tracking statistics that allow small businesses to increase sales.
Tracking features can supply critical data for reports that allow you to know who opens and reads your newsletters and the urls they click on. Monitor sent to a friend, compare monthly changes in size of subscription base.
Tools that allow for split testing ad copy to find the most effective sales content.
After you have created your email capture page and have added the email capture code. You can begin collecting names and email addresses.
Once you have built your list, you’re ready to start your first email campaign.
Email marketing providers have made it easy for even a novice to run a campaign with ready made templates and fill-in forms for auto responders and newsletter content.
Email marketing services have made it easy for internet marketers to be Cam-Spam compliant.
According to U.S law all email marketers must comply with the Can-Spam Act of 2003, which requires they identify who they are. Provide valid contact information and a physical address (P.O Boxes acceptable). Many email marketers these days will use a double opt-ins. when signing-up new subscribers. Opt-ins sign up from an email capture page by typically including just a name and email address. This will trigger an auto responder asking them to verify that they do wish to subscribe. Can-Spam also requires that you provide an opt-out link to remove anyone from your list who requests it.
Email Marketing Service Providers
If you are looking for a cheap email marketing services with lots of features then GetResponse may be the deal for you. Allowing you to maximize your dollars and reach more subscribers. GetResponse.com an Implix product located in Wilmington Delaware established in 1998. Get Response features include
• Sending unlimited emails Up to 10,000 subscribers for $17.95 per month and $4.50 for each additional set of 5,000 subscribers
• Excellent Email Marketing and support Forum
• Integrates with Joomla
• Track software downloads
Pay As You Go Email Marketing Services
Can’t afford a monthly fee for email marketing? EliteMail (now EliteAnswers) a Pay as you go Email Marketing service.
• Sign-up costs $10 which buys 1000 emails.
• The free trial on Small Business and MySpace Editions “No Credit Card Required” allows you to test the service out and there is no time limit.
• If you sign up for the free trial and buy the $10 package that will give you a total of 2000 emails.
• You can buy additional emails as needed.
Aweber one of the oldest email marketing services with over 10 years of experience in the email marketing services business.
Staying current with today’s technology Aweber includes features like RSS to Email allowing you to convert your Blog’s RSS feed to an email newsletter.
Features like publishing your newsletter to twitter to help broaden your customer base.
Free Email Marketing Tips
Aweber helps newbies get started in email marketing with free webinars.
Topics include how to use Aweber services, get more subscribers, develop and find content for newsletters and email campaigns.
If you have no time to attend webinars then take advantage of the video tutorials and knowledge base library.
Basic campaigns cost $19 monthly for unlimited emails to 500 subscribers. Larger packages run $149 monthly and allow for 25,000 subscribers. There are a total of about 6 packages and pricing for these will fall in between these ranges depending on the size of subscription list.
Whether you choose to pay your email marketing service provider monthly or pay as you go, email marketing services can be very affordable. The ability to be scalable will allow cutting expenses and expanding as you see a return on your investment. | <urn:uuid:072e6871-20bb-4744-80e5-3ee5629239b2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://entmind.com/tag/email | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932069 | 2,369 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Headlines about Governor Mitt Romney paying a 14.1% effective tax rate in 2011 may have been the last thing some early voters saw before casting their ballots -- probably to the frustration of the Romney campaign. While each campaign jockeys for the best position come November 6th, early and absentee voting is already underway. In half the country (25 states) polls have already opened for early or absentee ballots (see the graphic below showing the states where voting has already started). That means whatever is happening right now in this race could have a direct impact on the final result. In some crucial swing states, that impact could be tremendous. In 2008, early ballots accounted for 78.9% of the vote in Colorado and 60.6% of the vote in North Carolina.
There are also signs that the next six weeks may not alter this race significantly. A new poll by Politico and George Washington University found that 84% of voters have made up their minds on either candidate. That poll also gave President Obama a 3% point lead nationally. | <urn:uuid:17417cdd-2fa5-43e5-90fb-6c123da61743> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nowwithalex.msnbc.com/_news/2012/09/24/14071779-let-the-voting-begin | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968587 | 209 | 1.640625 | 2 |
FORT COLLINS - Fort Collins is ranked as one of the happiest cities in America based on how we tweet.
Researchers from the University of Vermont analyzed 10 million tweets from across the country - posts sent via Twitter - to conclude that Napa, Calif., was the happiest place in the country. The analysis looked for the frequency of "happy" words like rainbow, and for "unhappy" words like earthquake. On the state level, Hawaii was the happiest, while Louisiana was the saddest.
Fort Collins ranked 13th on the list of cities in the contiguous United States, behind Longmont (2nd), Lafayette (9th) and Boulder (12th).
The analysis also examined the use of phrases such as "LOL" and profanity. Twitter messages are limited to 140 characters, and the service is frequently used for personal status updates.
"The rich variety of happy words occurring in Hawaii paints a convincing picture of it as a happy state..." researchers said. "Louisiana is revealed as the saddest state primarily as a result of an abundance of profanity relative to the other states."
(Copyright © 2013 Fort Collins Coloradoan, All Rights Reserved) | <urn:uuid:f9666f65-6598-4870-a34f-d9e0fca66a46> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.9news.com/news/local/article/318132/222/Happy-tweet-Fort-Collins-ranked-as-one-of-happiest-cities-in-America-via-Twitter | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95405 | 240 | 1.828125 | 2 |
In 1998, we celebrate MSC's 35th year serving the engineering community. As the pioneer in applying commercial software to solve engineering problems, we have seen the development of computer-aided engineering (CAE) evolve from software programs using 80-column punch cards, to interactive 3-D graphics programs performing detailed analysis on PCs.
MSC and the CAE community have dramatically changed manufacturers' engineering processes, aiding them in producing high-quality products in ever- decreasing time periods.
These changes have come from engineers who work hard to stay abreast of both engineering and computer technology. The foundation for success in any endeavor, especially in the highly competitive, constantly advancing, technical world of computer-aided engineering, is education.
MSC is proud of its tradition of supporting engineering education. As a sponsor of the Design News Engineering Awards Program, we have the opportunity to continue to contribute directly to the development of future engineers.
Manufacturers may spend tens- or hundreds-of-thousands of dollars for the best hardware and software tools to enable engineers to contribute all they can to the engineering process. However, without an adequate investment in education and training, neither the full potential of these advanced tools nor the goal of an increased competitive advantage can be reached.
Only a manufacturer that leverages both tools and engineering expertise can achieve its business objectives. Continuing education both enhances existing talent and develops new engineering skills to help companies survive in an increasingly competitive world.
We also know that we have to provide more than just products and training to help our customers be successful. To this end, MSC offers solutions which include customization, consulting, and strategic planning.
These expanded solutions, such as online support, detailed documentation, and hot-line assistance, aid en-gineers in maximizing their investment. MSC solutions help our customers solve their engineering problems, but are not a substitute for formal training. By neglecting proper training, the full benefits and expected return ona software investment are not fully realized.
The MSC Institute of Technology offers a comprehensive range of technology and software training. Both beginning- and advanced-level engineers more fully use the capabilities of MSC software products, allowing them to make a greater contribution to their companies. We provide seminars at our own state-of-the-art classroom facilities as well as training classes at customer locations. More than 3,000 engineers, scientists, and designers around the world have developed their knowledge and operating skills at the MSC Institute.
MSC's commitment to the development of engineering excellence and expertise has been a cornerstone of our history and, we believe, a road map to the future. Our commitment to the Design News Engineering Awards Program reflects our fundamental belief in the importance of engineering education. | <urn:uuid:ffc4b13d-0cbc-47e3-b552-96c52fe152b7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&doc_id=219773 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951367 | 556 | 1.679688 | 2 |
The Bethlehem Police Department recently gained the distinction of being recertified by the Division of Criminal Justice Services' Accreditation Program, an occasion that also marked 20 years of accreditation for the organization.
The certification means the department is up to date and compliant with the program's 132 standards, which include items like providing bulletproof vests to officers, accounting practices, training schedules and also operational matters like the classification and identification of hate crimes, a new standard.
The accreditation process involves three assessors from the DCJS spending several days in the department reviewing files and other information. It's an in-depth look that gives the assessors full access to the organization, said Bethlehem Police Chief Louis Corsi, and it's a process the department welcomes because constructive suggestions can come out of it.
It's a great opportunity to make our organization better, he said.
Due to the agency's history with the program and the fact an officer keeps accreditation files up to date all year, the department was well within compliance, he continued. There were relatively few suggestions made by the auditors.
"The long you're in this program, the more compliant you become," Corsi said.
The Bethlehem Police Department currently has more than 450 general orders that cover officer conduct and procedure in various situations.
The state's Accreditation program has been in existence through the DCJS since 1988. The Bethlehem Police Department was the third organization in the state to become accredited.
Today, more than 100 agencies hold that distinction. In Bethlehem, the department has to maintain meticulous records of compliance and undergo an extensive auditing process every five years, making this recent rectification the department's fourth review since admission to the program.
The accreditation program is overseen by a 17-member accreditation council, which dictates standards and reviews applications. Corsi is one member of that panel. | <urn:uuid:6cf66fef-3c1e-46a1-a4f6-e69e75b9b09c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.spotlightnews.com/news/2010/nov/10/bpd-recertified-as-accredited-agency/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969624 | 378 | 1.554688 | 2 |
The Taxpayers Protection Alliance has expressed concerns about government-funded broadband for many years. One program in particular that TPA has highlighted has been the Rural Utilities Service Broadband Loan Program. We were encouraged last year when during last year’s consideration of the Farm Bill, the Senate adopted an amendment sponsored by Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.) which laid out the 25 percent unserved-household standard for the RUS Broadband Loan Program. This effort received bi-partisan support from co-sponsors Sens. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), and Michael Bennet (D-Col.), which made significant reforms to the RUS Broadband Loan Program. Even though the program should be eliminated completely, limiting the RUS to serving areas where 25 percent of the households in an applicant’s proposed service is unserved is a step in the right direction. Today (May 3) TPA sent a letter to the Senate encouraging and urging the Senate to keep Sen. Warner’s language as they craft this year’s Farm Bill.
(The following blog posting is from Joseph Kasibante, President of the National Taxpayers Protection Organisation in Uganda. TPA supports Mr. Kasibante, and all taxpayer and free market groups around the globe) Although high taxes are generally assumed to be the panacea to balance government budget and finance government expenditure, a lower tax budget and accountable governance has proved to be the most scientific methods government can adequately use to stimulate the economy. A lower tax budget leaves money in people’s pockets to buy things they want or money that can be saved and invested in whatever manner they choose. Consumers can demonstrate their power by influencing the course of the economy and making themselves heard in matters of ethics and policymaking. In what has come to be known as the 'wealth effect' the consumers step up purchases when they feel richer and cut back when they feel poorer, shows how a high tax budget accompanied by waste can push the economy into recession. In simple terms budget can be interpreted as a future plan we cannot immediately fulfill. The personal or family budget is a financial plan that helps individuals to balance income and expenses. A business budget is generally used as a tool to formulate intelligent decisions on the management and growth of a business venture. However, the most complicated budgetary process is a government budget, which is a plan for the collection and expenditure of monies needed to defray public expenses. There are five rigid stages of government budgeting: preparation, presentation, authorization, execution, and audit. I will dwell on budget preparation stage where taxes are the focal point of the budget framework. Clarifying the science of a lower tax budget evolving higher purchasing power in the whole economy, taxes must also not be too law to meet government priorities.
The answer to that question may not be what you want to hear. There was $95 billion in waste and duplication. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) released two reports, Department of Everything, which highlights waste at the Pentagon, and the Wastebook 2012, which highlights waste throughout the federal government. In conjunction with Our Generation (OG), the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) released a video showing Washington, D.C., tourists giving their thoughts on wasteful government spending. As examples of wasteful spending, TPA and OG highlighted the $1.5 million for Pentagon beef jerky and the $325,000 the National Science Foundation (NSF) spent on a RoboSquirrels program. Both of these projects were highlighted in reports by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.). According to Sen. Coburn’s report, Department of Everything, “Beef jerky so good it will shock and awe your taste buds. That is the goal of an ongoing Pentagon project, which is attempting to develop its own brand of jerky treats that are the bomb! Only, the money is coming from a program specially created to equip soldiers with the weapons they need.” Sen. Coburn highlighted the $325,000 for the NSF RoboSquirrels in his Wastebook 2012. TPA and OG spoke to visitors from California to Ohio to Texas to New Jersey and the frustration was always the same. When they were asked for thoughts on members of Congress making $174,000 per year ($285,000 with benefits), people were dumbfounded. They wondered why our elected officials made so much and received so much time off for vacation when American families across the nation—their constituents—are struggling financially.
President Obama released his long awaited budget today (access all budget documents here). Two months overdue and dead on arrival to a dysfunctional and divided Congress, the fiscal year (FY) 2014 budget is nothing more than a wish list of things that will never happen. It is important to look through the budget and see where the President’s priorities are. The budget proposes to spend $3.78 trillion in FY 2014. That is $10.3 billion per day, $431 million per hour and $7.2 million per minute. There are two fundamental problems with the budget, there is too much revenue asked for and not enough spending cuts. Even though the budget calls for $24 billion in specific spending cuts, Defense spending alone will be $52 billion above the budget cap for next year saving some programs that should be eliminated such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The President’s budget also wants to raise more revenue via tax increases on the wealthy and a new program to offer preschool to all 4-year-olds from low- and moderate-income families through higher tobacco taxes.
On April 3, 2013 the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, through an initiative led by Americans for Tax Reform, joined with more than 40 other free market and taxpayer groups to support Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) and Rep. John Duncan (R-Tenn.) bill to create the Committee to Reduce Government Waste. This bill signals a serious step toward reforming federal spending and provides prudent lawmakers with an important tool to decrease the size of government. The letter points out that the Committee to Reduce Government Waste is not a new idea—in fact, the committee existed first in the 77th Congress after it was proposed by Senator Harry F. Byrd Sr. (D-Va.). Named after its creator, the “Byrd Committee” was tasked solely with cutting unnecessary and redundant federal programs and was able to enact real reform—the Committee netted over $38 billion in savings (in adjusted dollars) in its first few years of existence. The bickering over the past few months over a two percent cut in federal spending shows that fiscal restraint is hard to come by. Institutional changes, such as implementing a committee focused only on cutting spending, is the only way to ensure lasting reform for taxpayers. Passage of this legislation will be a serious step forward in advancing spending cuts and finally give taxpayers a much-needed congressional voice.
Although the current state of the federal government comes up short a lot of the time, there are a few redeeming glimmers of hope every now and then. More times than not, those glimmers come from an entity of government that’s asked to check up on, monitor, and audit other components and arms of the federal government. These beacons of fiscal responsibility are the Inspector Generals (IGs). IGs are extremely helpful to taxpayers for a variety of reasons, and they certainly strike a fear in whichever agency that’s the one under the microscope. For example, just recently the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) IG found that a “Michigan battery-maker that received a visit from President Obama spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in stimulus grant money for workers to do things like watch movies and play cards, according to an inspector general report that blames poor management by the Energy Department. The wasted labor is a system of more widespread mismanagement of the company’s $151 million matching grant…”
It seems as though the more things change, the more they stay the same. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) today released a list of earmarks worth more than $500 million added to the FY 2013 Continuing Resolution that is slated to fund the government for the rest of the year. With a $16.7 trillion debt and a deficit eclipsing the $800 billion mark, the Senate should be ashamed for adding more these earmarks to the FY 2013 Continuing Resolution. Earmarks have been the bribery currency of Congress for many years, as both parties used them to buy votes, bring federal dollars to their district and ultimately get re-elected. Former members of Congress including Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.) were sent to jail for accepting bribes to secure earmarks. Disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff also spent time in jail in connection with earmarks promised to clients.Earmarks circumvent established budgetary processes and procedures and further exacerbate taxpayers’ cynicism of Washington, D.C. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has called earmarks “the gateway drug to spending addiction in Washington.” In 2010, the House and Senate agreed to a two year moratorium on earmarks, yet there were reports of Congress backsliding on this promise - with earmarks being found in the fiscal year 2012 appropriations bills. It is time for Congress to be serious about eliminating earmarks for good by passing legislation like S. 1930, the Earmark Elimination Act, which was proposed in 2012 by Sens. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). S. 1930 would have permanently killed earmarks and given life to fiscal responsibility.
On February 27, 2013, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance joined with groups from the Left and Right to urge Congress and the President to reduce wasteful and ineffective Pentagon spending to make us safer. There is a growing consensus—among members of Congress from both sides of the aisle, policy wonks of various stripes, and even defense industry CEOs—that lawmakers can, and should, find areas for substantial savings in the Pentagon’s bloated budget. The colaition, and military experts believe we can realize savings of at least $50 billion to $100 billion per year over 10 years in the Pentagon budget—without compromising national security. In fact, such savings will make us safer since our security depends on a sound strategy and a strong economy. The Pentagon must confront the threat to our economy with the same vigor, determination, and skill it has shown toward other urgent tasks. Our military might is not measured by how many dollars we spend but how we spend our dollars. The signatories to this letter are: Americans for Tax Reform, Campaign for America's Future, Center for Freedom and Prosperity, Council for Citizens Against Government Waste, Cost of Government Center, CREDO, Freedom Action, Friends Committee on National Legislation, National Priorities Project, National Taxpayers Union, Peace Action, Progressive Democrats of America, Project On Government Oversight, Republican Liberty Caucus, R Street, Take Back Washington, Taxpayers for Common Sense, Taxpayers Protection Alliance, USAction, U.S. PIRG, Women’s Action for New Direction, and Win Without War. Read the full letter here.
On February 14, 2013, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance joined with nine other taxpayer and free market groups to urge Congress to take common sense steps to reform federal supports for agriculture and save taxpayers at least $100 billion over the next decade. The 113th Congress has a prime opportunity to reduce the federal government’s meddling in the agricultural sector while helping to pay down our $16 trillion national debt. A number of common sense steps can be taken to create a more accountable, responsive, and cost-effective agricultural policy. Despite the 2012 drought being one of the most severe in history, the agriculture industry “suffered” with near-record profits. Given today’s extraordinarily high commodity prices and farm profits and our monumental fiscal crisis, agriculture subsidies should be reduced by at least $100 billion over the next decade. Federal supports for agriculture must be evaluated on their own merits. Though explosive growth in nutrition programs, particularly the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), must be addressed, that discussion must not be used to sidetrack necessary reforms to federal subsidies to agricultural businesses. Congress must consider changing the law under which America operates in the absence of a new farm bill. The current fallback, the horribly outdated Agricultural Act of 1949, forces taxpayers to decide between Farm Bills with inadequate reforms or reverting to even more detrimental World War II-era law.
Many people are accustomed to waking up on January 1 with a headache. This year taxpayers woke up to not only the usual headache from a night of excess, but also a headache from the excesses of Congress and the President. In the early morning hours of today (January 1, 2013) the Senate passed a bill to soften the blow of going over the fiscal cliff. In reality, the bill may do more harm than good. The bill extends the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts for individuals making less than $400,000 and families making less than $450,000. In addition, the payroll tax cute will expire meaning that payroll taxes will increase from 4.2 percent to 6.2 percent, a real tax increase on the Middle Class. The real kick in the wallet is a two-month delay in the automatic spending cuts (sequestration). As reported by Breitbart.com, “According to the Congressional Budget Office, the last-minute fiscal cliff deal reached by congressional leaders and President Barack Obama cuts only $15 billion in spending while increasing tax revenues by $620 billion—a 41:1 ratio of tax increases to spending cuts.” UPDATE (3:00 pm): The Congressional Budget Office has pegged the spending cuts at $25 billion. Click here here for a full list of provisions as reported by Politico. With a $1 trillion deficit and a debt that has eclipsed $16 trillion, the lack of spending cuts is shameful. Even if all the revenue is used for deficit reduction (which it likely won’t be), the total impact to the $1.1 trillion deficit will be $64.5 billion (if no more spending cuts are approved and the sequestration is avoided). | <urn:uuid:07f2a1c5-e731-4be0-9ff4-ae3d7e6b415f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://protectingtaxpayers.org/index.php?blog&category_id=31 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947925 | 2,945 | 1.640625 | 2 |
|Welcome to Berryessa Union School District online! Here you will find timely and accurate information of interest to students, parents and guardians, relocating families and interested community members. We are dedicated to making our Web site a useful information portal that explains our policies, advises you of relevant dates and information, meetings, and allows you to save time by printing necessary forms and documents at home. You can explore our site by choosing from the links at the left margin or the top of this page.
Berryessa Union School District is located in the heart of Silicon Valley, nestled against the northeast foothills in San Jose, California. The District serves a community of approximately 45,000 homes and has almost 8,100 students enrolled in kindergarten through eighth grade. More than 800 certificated and classified Berryessa employees work daily at 10 elementary schools and three middle schools as teachers, administrators, and other support staff.
Challenging educational programs, standards based curriculum, and a strong commitment to excellence produce high pupil achievement. Our pupils master relevant skills and consistently score above average on state and national tests. Our students attend high school in the East Side Union High School District.
Representing a beautiful spectrum of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, Berryessa pupils experience a well-coordinated curriculum that reflects the commitment to helping each student achieve her/his potential and interests. Support for all of our students gives each student the opportunity to be a successful learner. We also provide specialized programs in instrumental and choral music, the arts, and physical education and sports.
We have a proud tradition of success for all students and encourage you to browse our site for information about programs and successes.
Will H. Ector, Jr. | <urn:uuid:ecbc48a2-fa26-4db6-b9b3-422011eba7c1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.berryessa.k12.ca.us/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936877 | 344 | 1.679688 | 2 |
The very title -- THEATER OF WAR -- opens up so many possibilities. The phrase refers primarily to the arena, real or symbolic, in which war takes place (but what kind of theater is war -- something out of Antonin Artaud?). It also describes the play involved here, Mother Courage by Bertolt Brecht), the rehearsals for a production of which form the spine of the film. For anyone who's ever taken part in live theater, war is not a bad metaphor for what sometimes goes on -- between playwright and director, director and actors (we won't even get into the technical staff) until, one hopes, a kind of peace is declared, followed by performances and the judgment of critics and audiences (which can lead to yet a whole new war). Finally though, the film that bears this title is most about theater folk and real war--bloody, vicious, unnecessary (think Iraq, Vietnam, Bosnia, Rwanda) -- with the former trying to find a way around humanity's insistent need to wage the latter.
John W. Walter's film (he directed, edited and was co-cinematographer with Felix Andrew) is, like its title, necessarily all over the place. In addition to tracking rehearsals of Mother Courage during the 2006 in-the-park production by the Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival, the film offers interviews with its leading lady Meryl Streep (above) about the acting process, her role, and the meaning of the play itself. Others interviewed include playwright Tony Kushner, who did the adaptation; novelist and teacher Jay Cantor; Public Theater directors/heads Oscar Eustis and George C. Wolfe; and composer Jeanine Tesori (Ms Streep sings some of Tesori's work here, and better, I think, than she handles the Abba songs in Mamma Mia). Then Mr. Walter heads off in the direction of Brecht himself: the man's life, work and even his appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee (has there ever been a sillier, less felicitous moniker?) before he vacated the United States for post-war Germany. (Walter even gives us an image of Brecht on a Dresden china plate, in which he looks remarkably like a young Henry Kissinger.) We also travel to the outskirts of Prague to a famous plain of war where we visit a strange kind of cemetery in which the skulls and bones of the departed -- over eons -- have been stored in high, wide rows that fill the screen.
Does anyone else see a certain resemblance? (Photos courtesy of Wikipedia.)
There's a lot going on here, and even for those of us fairly "up" on the people and events, it proves a heady mix in which the "seams" often show (more of this in the interview below). How well it works for you will depend, I think, on your own appreciation of the people interviewed and of Brecht and this particular play. While I did not find a moment of the film uninteresting and agree with many, maybe most of the ideas and opinions expressed, by film's end I did not feel I'd taken a step closer to better understanding of the questions raised by the film. This is frustrating, but then so, for me, is Brecht. I have never seen a production of any his plays -- professional or amateur/university -- that I felt worked very well. The point is, I guess, to keep trying: to understand ourselves, Brecht, theater -- and our everlasting need for war.
A few days after I'd seen his film -- which opens Christmas Eve at NYC's Film Forum -- I had a good, long talk with Mr. Walter via phone (he was in Michigan and I in New York). The following is as much as my arthritic fingers could manage to type while the director, buoyantly and very quickly, spoke....
TrustMovies: You've been a film editor (My Kid Could Paint That) in between your direction of the 2002 documentary How to Draw a Bunny and this year's Theater of War. How big a part of the directorial process is editing?
John W. Walter: They are two different things. The director ultimately is the guy who takes responsibility for the story telling. The production part of a movie is where you are out shooting and directing the shoots. The end product of this shooting is a bunch of footage, but the end product of the editing process is a finished film. My bread and butter gig is editing and it is a very satisfying one.
When I am directing and editing my own work, I feel pretty keenly the difference between the two. As a director, I feel I am digging myself into a hole, but as the editor, I am digging myself out of that hole! It all goes together somehow, and for me this is something that just works.
In this film, for instance, what does a play that was put on in 2006 has to do with a the version of it that was produced in 1949 -- and what do both these events have to do with the theater process, and with war.?
It's true: Your movie includes so much. How did you decide to organize it, or did the information you gained begin to organize things for you? Did some of the organization come during the editing process?
Before I started working on the film, I had a sort of shape in mind. I was going to investigate -- document -- these different stories: the NY Public Theater's production of Mother Courage and the story line of how this production of the play took shape in rehearsal. Then there was the parallel story of the play itself and of how this woman, the main character, tried to get through The 30 Years' War with her family intact. And then there is the story of Bertolt Brecht and how he had to leave a successful life as poet/playwright and go into exile. Then how he returned to Germany after the war and staged this play. I wanted to concentrate the movie along montage principles.
How do you mean "montage," in this particular case?
The way I use montage contradicts its meaning, in a sense, in that the meaning is in the connection between all these things, sort of like a way a collage works. You see all these different scenes and they become part of the meaning, the composition. Via film editing, this can become a way to create a kind of seamless whole. But in my work, I like to let the seams show.
And you have. But the viewer then has to do more work in a way, putting it all together.
I like to think of it as the viewer is having more fun. It's a kind of escapist thing from the mainstream. I make movies because I love movies. I'm someone who is blindly following his own enthusiasms.
How can you tell what is actually mainstream? By its box-office results, as with the success of The Dark Knight?
I think you can also tell by the faces of the people walking out of the theater. Are they dead-looking or alert? For instance, I was really happy with the response to a screening we had in Traverse City, Michigan. Most of the people in the audience were not NYC insiders, just everyday people. But the themes in this film -- war, protecting our children, the responsibility we have for the actions of our government -- these were things that most people at that screening could relate to: everyday realities that include themes more accessible to the average viewer than, say, with all due respect, those of The Dark Knight.
Mafia hit-men are another questionable subject to me, something rather disproportionately represented by our films and TV in terms of how numerous they really are in our society. I mean, how many Mafia hit men do you, have you ever actually known?
I've questioned that, too -- particularly with all the hoo-haw over The Sopranos. So then, how do we get a film like yours out there so that it can be seen by lots of "everyday people"?
Through critics, writers, blogs, people like you doing what they do. Every avenue helps.
Bertolt Brecht, his life and work, seems to have been a big influence on you and your film.
What was really fun for my wife and me, after we had finished with the Public Theater rehearsals, we went to Berlin for a month, set up an editing room, and just soaked in that vibe, spending a part of every day in the Brecht archive, going through his bookshelves, his notes and photos. We even went to see a production of Mother Courage that was being done in Berlin at the time, and we saw it twice.
Since I have never encountered even one production of any Brecht play that I thought worked at all fully, I would have loved to have been able to see that 1949 production.
There was an East German movie made of the play, not entirely successful because it was more filmed play than something imagined cinematically. But it was definitely worth seeing because it has the same cast as the famous 1949 production.
The use of the old photos in Theater of War was very interesting: After awhile you began to feel like you were almost there.
It's tricky. As a documentary filmmaker, you are dealing with the situation of working from old photos and trying to give them "movement" -- which of course you can't do. So you find yourself wondering, how did Mother Courage's shoulder stand at that particular moment? How long did it take her bend over, to react? Things like that. So in a way your film becomes an attempt to communicate your own experience to the audience -- this journey that you as filmmaker took.
I found watching the film brought back to me a lot of the anger I felt when, at the behest of the Bush regime, we first went to war against Iraq. Maybe because I am an older viewer, it also sent me right back in to our time in Vietnam, and it was so obvious that we were making the same kind of mistake all over again. You must have been just a boy back in the time of Vietnam.
My situation involving Vietnam was like Jay Cantor's (the writer/professor featured in Theater of War) regarding WWII. It's something that lies just over the horizon of your own experience: Its presence can be vividly felt but not touched. So it requires an extra effort, an act of the imagination, to come to terms with it.
Brecht himself, as a young man, had to go through WWI, and then he saw it starting all over again in WWII. When I was going through Brecht's bookshelves, there were a lot of books about atomic weaponry, both in German and in English. He was clearly interested in this subject. In fact, he rewrote his Galileo play after the atomic bomb went off. Before this, he was focusing on economics and did not realize that physics also had the ability to change everything. His journals are fascinating in terms of the perspective on the American home front from an outsider's point of view. After going back to Germany post-WWII, he tried to publish a book of compiled newspapers clippings, documents and photos all put together from a poetic angle.
Had you earlier been involved in legitimate theater -- from the insider's perspective?
No. I was coming to it as an enthusiast, but not as an insider. I think I have always experienced theater more as literature.
I have come to it from the other side, as either a performer (way, way back) and later as a playwright. Regarding Brecht's plays, I have never seen a performance of any of them that I felt really brought the play fully to life -- or meaning. Because of this, I have never held the writer in that high esteem. For years, from the time I first came to NYC back in the 1960s, my only experience with actual live productions of Shakespeare's plays and many of the classics -- generally came from the Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival's work. With few exceptions, I would leave thinking what a pile of crap each play was. It was not until I started going to The Pearl Theater's performances here in NYC, from which, finally, I did not get some unnecessary and often wrongheaded concept "overlaid" on the play, that I came out honestly appreciating what these plays really were about, what they offered and why they were "classics."
Writers are incredibly vulnerable. They need good interpreters. And you need a master interpreter for a master playwright. To use a musical analogy, what would it be like if there was not a Rostropovich or Jacqueline du Pre or Glenn Gould to give contemporary audiences their musical experience with the classics? | <urn:uuid:f4a97296-0c76-4c42-a081-a06f737c2622> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://trustmovies.blogspot.com/2008/12/theater-of-war-and-interview-with.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981309 | 2,633 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Thinking with the church
THE LEADERSHIP of the Society of Jesus decided that the Rev. Thomas Reese should be replaced as editor of America magazine. Reese, who was editor for seven years, said he agreed with the decision, but apparently he later changed his mind. Institutions of all kinds make personnel decisions, and sometimes people are unhappy with such decisions. The present instance occasioned a brouhaha in which it is claimed that Reese was removed on the orders of an allegedly oppressive Pope Benedict XVI. Everybody should calm down, take a deep breath, and think again.
America is a Catholic magazine in the service of the church and its mission. It is no secret that in recent years many people -- probably including Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict) -- criticized the magazine for undercutting that mission, which is to present as effectively as possible the teaching of the church. That mission requires intellectual integrity in honestly engaging arguments that question or oppose Catholic teaching.
Catholicism does not pit faith against reason or faithfulness against intellectual inquiry. St. Ignatius Loyola, the 16th-century founder of the Jesuits, gave us the fine phrase ''sentire cum ecclesia" -- ''to think with the church." Thinking with the church requires thinking.
The troubles at America are not about intellectual integrity or freedom. As a priest and editor, Reese exercised intellectual integrity and freedom in committing himself to the church and the mission to which the magazine is dedicated. Unfortunately, under his editorship, America frequently seemed to be unwilling to take the side that, I believe, it is undoubtedly on. The problem was a basic mistake in editorial policy. It was thought that being ''fair and balanced" required publishing on an equal footing articles that supported and articles that opposed the church's teaching, as though the church's teaching was but one opinion among others. The problem was compounded by the fact that such articles dealt with publicly controversial questions such as the moral understanding of homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and the exploitation of embryonic stem cells.
On such questions, the church has clearly defined positions. The practice of America suggested to some the magazine's neutrality or hostility to the church's teaching. Not surprisingly, they asked of the magazine, ''Whose side are you on?"
Again, intellectual integrity requires honestly engaging opposing arguments. It does not require providing a platform for opposing arguments. I dare say that an editor working for Planned Parenthood, the Sierra Club, or the National Rifle Association who regularly turned a publication into a platform for those opposed to the mission of the organization would soon be looking for another job.
Of course, as Catholics understand it, the church's mission is immeasurably more important, having to do with the salvation of souls and the morally right ordering of society. Moreover, it is hardly the case that readers need America in order to be aware of alternative and opposing viewpoints. Presumably, they are reasonably well-informed people with access to innumerable media critical of the church's teaching.
A Catholic magazine -- and it should be obvious that a Jesuit magazine is Catholic -- may decide to publish an exchange or debate between conflicting positions, but there should be no doubt that the magazine is on the church's side. A magazine of intellectual integrity and excitement is a magazine that knows where it stands. As for being fair and balanced, one should always be fair, but balance understood as neutrality is a formula for banality.
Of course, there is a problem if an editor is in fundamental disagreement with the institution for which he works. One thinks, for instance, of someone at NRA who undergoes a change of mind about the merits of banning guns. But we can confidently assume that was not Reese's problem. He not only works for the church; he is solemnly vowed to surrender himself in its service and, as a Jesuit, has taken a particular vow of loyalty to the pope.
As editor, Reese, whom I count as a friend, seriously misunderstood the meaning of fair and balanced. The Society of Jesus decided it would be better for the magazine and for him if he moved into a different ministry. End of story. Unless, of course, one is interested in generating suspicion and hostility against the pope. Needless to say, no faithful Catholic would want to do that.
The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus is editor in chief of First Things, an ecumenical magazine of religion, culture, and public life. | <urn:uuid:b227f624-1b2e-4718-9deb-f9e825cb736a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/05/16/thinking_with_the_church/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973888 | 904 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Editor´s Note: This whole week is dedicated to the topic of Bicultural Birthday Celebration. Make sure you´re subscribed to receive our posts because we have an awesome round up of guest posts and fabulous giveaways.
I have so many great memories of birthday celebrations growing up in Venezuela, they are memories that make me very happy and nostalgic. My mom used to get us the prettiest new clothes to wear that day, there was always a cake with some quesillo (Flan) and jello and we would always, always have a piñata -in fact when you are a kid they aren’t called birthday parties, they are called piñatas as in: At what time is Dariela’s piñata tomorrow?
The adults play a big role in the piñatas too, there is plenty to eat and drink for them: beer, rum, little meat balls, cheese balls, cheese sticks and so on; plus after the main part of the kid’s party ends, the adults continue partying! In my memories this just meant that I got to play and have fun with my friends and family for a really long time during my birthday.
When celebrating my kid’s birthdays here in the states I always want to recreate some of those festivities and piñatas:
- My son Adrian has had a piñata since his first birthday party, it will always be there as the main activity!
- I always make adult food and drinks available at the party with some Venezuelan flavor.
- I try and get them a nice outfit for the special day (Although it’s been hard cause it gets too dirty, how did they do it for us?).
- Along with the cake I serve quesillo (flan) and/or jello.
- Once they grow older, even if they don’t have a piñata I will always have a little cake and sing “Cumpleaños” for them so their birthday won´t go without notice (Para que no pase por debajo de la mesa!).
- The only thing I can’t control is the total time the guests will stay, people are not used to staying more than 2-3 hours in a kid’s party, and I’m also getting used to that after so many years living here.
One of the main differences in between the parties is the punctuality. In Venezuela the invitation might be for 3 p.m. but people are not arriving until 5pm! I still can’t believe it! But it’s true, the party will actually start getting crowed around 6 p.m. I can’t deal with that timing anymore. I love the fact that if you invite at 4pm here you will have somebody knocking at your door at 4pm sharp, guarranted. I love it because you can count on that no matter what and because of it you are able to plan accordingly.
The fact that we can combine both cultures into these celebrations is what I love the most. We can take what we like from each culture and make these parties remembered in a special way for our kids, it’s so flexible!
One of the notable differences in Venezuelan birthdays is the special song they sing to the cumpleañero: Ay, Que Noche Tan Preciosa. If you´ve ever been to a Venezuelan birthday you know it´s looooong and sweet. The video below includes the lyrics to the song so you don´t feel left out next time you go to un cumpleaños venezolano! | <urn:uuid:97f0ed4d-8799-4028-bf36-b799d22218f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://spanglishbaby.com/2011/08/bicultural-birthday-celebration-venezuela/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947756 | 762 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Sadly, Judge Clark Douglas is the last of the rare "Judge Clark Douglas" species.
It was once known as, "the place where Noah left his ark."
I don't know about you, but I'm a sucker for nature documentaries. Give me some exotic locations, cool animals, some faux-tribal music, plus a narrator with plenty of gravitas, and I'm pretty much set. It's rare to come across a nature documentary I actually dislike, but I'm particularly fond of the National Geographic documentaries because they do such a fine job of combining the aforementioned familiar elements in a compelling manner. Africa's Lost Eden is no exception.
The 50-minute special centers on Gorongosa National Park, located in Mozambique. Once one of the most popular parks in the entire world, in recent times it has suffered a great deal at the hands of (I'll give you one guess) humans. Wars that were fought in the region led to lots of extra hunting, poaching and general slaughtering, which severely damaged the animal population in the area (particularly some of the larger creatures like elephants, zebras, buffalo, hippos and lions). While this former paradise hasn't exactly been transformed into a trash heap (certain types of wildlife still thrive in the area), Gorongosa is certainly a shadow of its former self.
Africa's Lost Eden focuses on revealing the devastating nature of what has happened there and the attempts that are being made to restore Gorongosa. We watch the incredibly challenging process of capturing elephants from other parts of Africa and transporting them to Gorongosa in the hopes that they will mate with the native elephants there. This undoubtedly sounds difficult, but I had no idea just how complicated such a process would be. Despite being big creatures, a tranquilized elephant is easily susceptible to dying from complications if left unattended. In a rather heartbreaking twist, the elephant we follow over the course of the story (humbly named G-5) does not survive the process when forced to undergo it a second time.
Though the strongest material in Africa's Lost Eden focuses on the condition of Gorongosa, a generous portion of time is dedicated to that reliable staple of nature documentaries: animals hunting other animals. You'll see tension-filled footage of crocodiles hunting catfish, lions hunting gazelles, large birds hunting baby crocodiles, and so on. This material benefits from National Geographic's stunning nature footage and Keith David's (The Princess and the Frog) sonorous narration. It seems like I've been hearing David's voice more and more over the past year (a quick check of IMDb reveals him to be one of the busiest actors working today), which is fine by me as he has a tremendous set of pipes and is perfectly-suited for stuff like this.
Though the Blu-ray release undoubtedly gives Africa's Lost Eden its best possible presentation, the DVD actually looks very solid. Detail is excellent, blacks are rich and deep, shading is strong…the disc is about as strong as one can expect standard-def to be. Audio is also good, with David's deep voice coming through with strength and clarity. The slightly derivative music also sounds solid, and blends nicely with the natural sounds captured. The only extra on the disc is an additional special entitled Stalking Leopards, which is worth a look but lacks the depth and fascination of the main feature.
While I do think that Africa's Lost Eden could be priced a little lower given the brief running time (it lists for $20 and isn't being sold for much lower than that by online retailers), this is an exceptional entry into the nature documentary genre and is well worth checking out.
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Scales of Justice
Studio: National Geographic
• Bonus Program
Review content copyright © 2010 Clark Douglas; Site design and review layout copyright © 2013 Verdict Partners LLC. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:c52b37a4-1e46-4ffa-9edc-bc3ff8828888> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dvdverdict.com/reviews/africaslosteden.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946652 | 828 | 1.828125 | 2 |
ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS
JOHN PAUL II
Saturday, 24 February 1979
I have listened with deep pleasure to the words spoken by Your Excellency on presenting the Letters of Credence as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Costa Rica to the. Holy See. I bid you in the first place a hearty welcome.
Your Excellency has just referred to the task carried out by the Church in favour of peace. It is certainly a cause to which the Church and the Holy See have dedicated and will continue to dedicate their best energies, in order that this incalculable good may preside over social life within the nations and in the international community. It is an aim which, following my revered predecessors, I have also made mine. For this reason, as I said recently, the Church "wishes to serve peace not by means of political activities, but by promoting the values and principles which are the condition for peace and human rapprochement, and are at the basis of international common good" (Address to the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy See, 12 January 1979, n. 5).
I am happy to know that the people of Costa Rica is making effective efforts to cultivate these values and principles which promote and defend peace.
Another point to which Your Excellency has referred is respect for human rights in society today. A subject which in the present period of the history of humanity is becoming an increasingly pressing one as an irreplaceable element of social order, which must be governed by the requirements that spring from the dignity of persons, considered individually and collectively.
The teachings of the Second Vatican Council are clear in this connection: "The protection and promotion of the inviolable rights of man is an essential duty of every civil authority." (Dignitatis Humanae, 6). The Church, in her doctrine and in her evangelizing activity, does not forget, but on the contrary makes every effort that all men (regardless of race, culture, religion, and social class) may see their rights respected as persons and as depositaries of a transcendent vocation to which God has called them, and which, therefore, no person or human power can suppress or ignore.
Serving this cause, the Church is well aware that she is serving the cause of man. With this conviction, from the beginning of my Pontificate I have laid stress on this line, in order to obtain that man may reach rightful freedom in truth; a truth concerning the human being, society, and concerning his destiny. It is the cause of human dignity, to which I called attention in the third part of my address at the opening of the work of the recent Puebla Conference, and which the Latin-American Episcopate has included in the final Document. These are aims which I am sure the Authorities and people of Costa Rica will make their own, in accordance with the Christian and humanist tradition which they wish to pursue.
May the Blessed Virgin of the Angels, so venerated in Costa Rica, intercede in order that these aims may become a splendid reality.
Mr Ambassador, before concluding this first meeting of ours, I wish to assure you of my constant and benevolent help in the promotion of these ideals and in the accomplishment of the high mission which is beginning today. Kindly convey to Mr President and to the Authorities and people of Costa Rica, the most respectful and cordial regards of the Pope, who asks God to grant this noble nation his best blessings along the way to peace, common life, and pursuit of increasingly higher human and Christian aims.
*L'Osservatore Romano. Weekly Edition in English n.10 p.10.
© Copyright 1979 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana | <urn:uuid:2743c788-fc4b-49fd-b66e-c014bf9c4a9f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/1979/february/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19790224_amb-costa-rica_en.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964686 | 771 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Good news —
Government General Motors announced plans yesterday to hire 10,000 additional IT workers over the next several years, far out-pacing it’s closest competitors.
The nation’s biggest automaker is moving past layoffs and the Motor City’s rusty, low-tech image in a bold and expensive move to develop software and invent the most advanced gizmos for your car, rather than buy software and other electronic applications from outside companies. Experts say it’s also the start of a trend as manufacturers realize that software is among the few things that will set them apart from competitors. [...]
General Motors Co. isn’t alone in trying to move more technology development under its roof. But the plans of its biggest competitor, Ford Motor Co., aren’t nearly as ambitious.
GM’s aims to bring 90 percent of its computer technology work into the company by recruiting workers to four new information technology centers around the nation.
The consequences of doing so may have fewer implications, but rescuing the American auto industry may prove to be as big of a part of the president’s legacy as healthcare reform will.
No thanks to Mitt Romney, who said we should Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.
IF General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.
This man has no business being in the White House.
According to the nonprofit Center for Automotive Research, the American auto-industry is expected to add 167,000 jobs by 2015. | <urn:uuid:a4b9aff5-8ec2-40c3-9f04-493aac19853c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bobcesca.thedailybanter.com/blog-archives/2012/10/gm-creating-10000-new-it-jobs.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951094 | 337 | 1.742188 | 2 |
|The Fellowship of the Ring chapters|
Lothlorien is the sixth chapter of the second book in The Fellowship of the Ring.
The company moves on and comes to Durin's Stone. They look into the blue waters of Mirrormere, then proceed to Lothlorien, land of the Elves. Sam and Frodo, who are hurt, are carried on the backs of Boromir and Aragorn (Strider). The company rests for a while and when Sam's wound is examined Aragorn realizes that it will heal fast.
In the forest of Lothlorien, the travelers decide to rest. The Elves of the forest welcome them, and for safety's sake, they blindfold Gimli (since Elves do not like Dwarves). The company climbs up two trees and spends the night there. Late at night a company of Orcs passes by.
The next day Aragorn decides that since Gimli must be blindfolded, they will all proceed with blindfolds. Later in the day a message comes from the Lord and Lady of Galadhrim, welcoming them all, so that no one needs blindfolds. The forest is exquisite and the company admires it. They are told that a strange creature is roaming the forest but since it has not been seen, they do not know if it is good or evil. The company has seen the heart of Elvendom and felt the wonderful power of the Lady of the Galadhrim. | <urn:uuid:ccbc3720-382d-48a8-94b3-985601f45ec2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Lothl%C3%B3rien_(chapter) | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936071 | 305 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Sometimes collisions work, sometimes they don't. - Printable Version
+- iDevGames Forums (http://www.idevgames.com/forums)
+-- Forum: Development Zone (/forum-3.html)
+--- Forum: Game Programming Fundamentals (/forum-7.html)
+--- Thread: Sometimes collisions work, sometimes they don't. (/thread-4307.html)
Sometimes collisions work, sometimes they don't. - t3knomanser - Apr 28, 2006 11:57 AM
I'm building a maze game controlled via motion sensors. Think that old tabletop Labyrinth game.
When the ball strikes a wall at a low speed, it stops, but if it's at a high speed, it passes right through. This also means that if the ball has stopped, I can tip the laptop farther, and it will eventually go through the wall.
The collision detection is in a controller class that has a reference out to the CustomView used for rendering. The collision detection is called after the new dot position has been figured and the screen has been refreshed. There also seems to be a problem when two walls intersect- I can sometimes sneak the ball through the corner, although this could be related to the current problem. I've been banging my head against the wall for weeks on this, so I'm throwing it up here to see if anyone has any thoughts.
I'm obviously missing something really butt simple. But I've spent years avoiding game programming for just this very reason.
Sometimes collisions work, sometimes they don't. - unknown - Apr 28, 2006 12:12 PM
Quote:When the ball strikes a wall at a low speed, it stops, but if it's at a high speed, it passes right through.
if you were doing point against a wall (line in this example) collision for example, intersect the line from the point's origional position to the current position with the wall.
I would recommend cleaning up your code style its awfuly hard to read the collideDot function, and when things are clearer your problems will probably jump out at you
Sometimes collisions work, sometimes they don't. - t3knomanser - Apr 28, 2006 12:23 PM
unknown Wrote:I would recommend cleaning up your code style its awfuly hard to read the collideDot function, and when things are clearer your problems will probably jump out at you
This is loosely based on some tutorial code I dug up. I'm rewriting it to use some temporary boolean variables instead of those crazy ifs.
But that is the algorithm I'm using.
Sometimes collisions work, sometimes they don't. - ThemsAllTook - Apr 28, 2006 12:35 PM
It looks like you're using a simple intersection test to check for collisions. For fast-moving and/or very small objects, this will not work reliably. Your moving object is probably passing completely through the wall between two of your collision checks, in which case an intersection test at both points would return false.
What you'll need to do is somehow take into account the movement of your object between the two positions at which you perform your collision tests. Since you're working with a sphere, one thing you could do is extrude it into a capped cylinder, and test intersection between the cylinder and the walls. Another option would be to do multiple intersection tests per frame, each one working with a small enough timeslice that the object doesn't move far enough to pass completely through the wall.
I sympathize with you, because this is a somewhat difficult problem... In my free time, I'm working on implementing something very similar. I may write a tutorial on it at some point if I'm successful.
My time-based animation tutorial may also be of some use to you: http://www.sacredsoftware.net/tutorials/Animation/TimeBasedAnimation.xhtml
Sometimes collisions work, sometimes they don't. - t3knomanser - Apr 28, 2006 01:01 PM
What I've done to fix the go through walls is capped the ball's speed lower, and increased the refresh rate- it's still using one-frame-per-update, but the updates are going a lot faster, and the graphics aren't really heavy, and the ball just moves less distance per update. It balances out.
It still has a flaw where walls overlap- the solution that I'll implement in the near future- I'm going to make the walls not overlap. Ever.
Sometimes collisions work, sometimes they don't. - Iceman - May 13, 2006 03:00 PM
Here's some good links for collision detection:
This explains what A x + B y + C z + D = 0 is:
This explains how to find the exact point that it will be on the plane at the bottom of the page
To turn the plane into a square just use two more planes that intersect the first one. Then use A x + B y + C z + D on the intersecting planes to find if the point is within the square. This is a little more complex than you really need but it finds the exact place the point will pass through. | <urn:uuid:d232cb7c-7aa5-46df-80fc-7f8622f1c7d4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://idevgames.com/forums/printthread.php?tid=4307 | 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 | 0.944173 | 1,077 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Community Comparison Haddonfield vs. Winnipeg
Today I will be telling you all about my research about Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada and my home town Haddonfield, N.J. I got a lot of information by visiting websites about Winnipeg and Haddonfield. I also Skyped with Ms. Nairn’s class from Winnipeg. I found that Winnipeg has differences and similarities compared with Haddonfield. I think they are the same and different from each other.
When I did my research on Winnipeg and Haddonfield I found that there are many similarities. For example, both towns are suburbs. Another similarity is that we both live on planet Earth. For recreation…… both towns like kickball!
When I did my research on Winnipeg and Haddonfield I found a lot of differences. For example, in Winnipeg the native animals are polar bears and in Haddonfield the native animals are birds and squirrels. Another difference is the landforms in Haddonfield. In Haddonfield there are ponds and trees and in Winnipeg there are mountains, trees, lakes, and rivers. In Winnipeg the time zone is different than the time zone in Haddonfield. In Winnipeg the time zone is Central and in Haddonfield the time zone is Eastern. And those are some ways Haddonfield is different from Winnipeg.
I had a lot of fun working on this project. I think that I’ve learned a lot about Canada and even more about Haddonfield. I think that it was really cool when we got to Skype with Ms. Nairn’s class. I still think Winnipeg and Haddonfield have similarities and differences. | <urn:uuid:b0579129-dc94-44c6-97d0-cad019e022f3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blog_id=1408413&mode=comment&blogger_id=347025 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965178 | 337 | 1.78125 | 2 |
When we purchased the house that is now the inn there were not many trees on the property. In fact shrubbery was also missing from the landscape. It looked like a Chernobyl waste site. Semi trucks and cars would actually park in the front yard to make cell phone calls or use our property as a rest stop. One gentleman drove his Cadillac up to the front door to make a cell phone call in his car. I asked him what he was doing and he said just making a phone call. I said this is my yard and he said it did not look like a yard. I immediately knew what I had to do. Make a yard.
The sad thing was that the property not only lacked trees but also wildlife and birds. No sounds of birds singing in the spring. It was sad.
We immediately started planting well over 200 fast growing trees like hybrid poplars, hollies and silver maples. We also moved white and black pine trees from the woods. Fast growing shrubs were also planted. Every trip to Home Depot not only meant purchasing what we needed but also a tree. We added bird feeders, bird houses and bird baths. Guess what happened?
The place became alive again with wildlife ranging from deer to all kinds of birds to possums and raccoons. Have not seen a bear yet.
We also decided to quit mowing most of the 3 acres. Now we mow near the entrance signs and house area. Native grasses and pine trees (that we moved) are now taking over and forming a buffer from the main road. A friend of my wife’s called and expressed concern that we might be falling on hard times since we quit mowing the property. I informed her we were making our property greener.
We also have quit using synthetic fertilizers and herbicides(see other post on liquid gold). We have a natural lawn in the grass areas since we do not use chemicals.
Our property has been certified as a Certified Wildlife Habitat by the Natural Wildlife Federation. Certification is free and can be done online. We have a sign at our gate indicating certification. The program was launched in 1973 and has certified over 106,000 yards,farms,schools and urban balconies.
For more information click NWF. | <urn:uuid:557467c9-aefa-48b0-b5f5-f924bca6e49a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://inndahlonega.com/tag/award/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985453 | 466 | 1.75 | 2 |
Onesimus only gives out his one-word missionary name these days.
He’s not your typical homeless man. His beard and clothes are clean, and he carries a cell phone that was recently given to him. The signs of early trauma evident in many transients are not immediately visible as he greets people with a slow bow, hands pressed together at his chest in prayer position.
Onesimus, pronounced “Oh-ness-uh-mous,” carries a stick engraved with the date June 29, 1980, the date that he devoted his life to God.
“That’s a prayer staff, my friend, not a cane,” he says with a smile and clear eyes, responding to questions with a polite “Yes, sir.”
Onesimus speaks softly, slowly, thoughtfully, occasionally tilting his head back to accommodate deep laughter. On one occasion in a park east of the Boulder Public Library, he sits on a bench near the shuffleboard courts and raises a tobacco pipe to his mouth, emitting small whisps of smoke above his red and grey beard.
His peaceful, gentle mannerisms belie a tumultuous past.
“I’ve been homeless all of my life,” Onesimus says. “I ran away from home when I was 2 years old.”
He explains that his parents used to tie him to his crib to keep him from escaping his house, as he was wont to do. But he became good at untying the knots.
“They would find me down the road in the middle of the night,” Onesimus says. “In desperation, they handcuffed me.”
He says the Lord has shown him an image of himself as an infant, a giant dark figure looming over his crib, saying “You’re mine now.” He’s convinced it was an evil spirit.
Onesimus says his father was a functional alcoholic and his mother was selfish.
“I felt like she hated me,” he explains. “She always pushed me away, threw me away. She used to say, ‘Let the devil take him.’ And the devil did.”
Onesimus says he would run away because of the emotional distress at home. His father loved him but didn’t know what to do with him. He found solace down the street at the home of a young girl named Weezer, who Onesimus found comforting because she cared about him.
Life dealt Onesimus other blows before he decided to assume his current nomadic, disciple’s lifestyle. He attributes the lack of hearing ability in his left ear to dirty water from Lake Erie absorbed during his childhood. Complicating matters was the tumor above his left ear that was pushing against his brain, a growth that was removed when he was an adult, leaving him on his back for six months.
“I couldn’t put a sentence together,” Onesimus says of the recovery period. He still suffers from a migraine condition.
The Ohio native attended bible college in Kansas City, graduating in 1982.
“I was a truth seeker as a teenager,” he says of his time exploring meditation, ESP and various philosophies. “For me, Jesus Christ was the only one who answered all the questions.”
After college, he worked manual labor jobs, from helping build a Christian youth camp in Kansas City to factory work in his hometown of Elyria. Then he spent seven years at a Christian radio station, delivering sermons, playing music, even writing and producing commercials.
Then he got married.
“I had to go back into the real workforce,” he says. “I had a wife to take care of.”
That meant working as a security guard for a couple of years, then a truck driver for another six. Onesimus describes those occupations as frustrating for someone who felt that his true calling was being a pastor.
And then the marriage failed.
“We had a rough time,” he says. “We lost four babies to miscarriage. And I lost her. She lost her mind because of the grief.”
According to Onesimus, his wife suffered from bulimia and weighed 450 pounds when they got married. He describes her as someone who was initially humble but became “large and in charge.” She had traditional values, wanted to be a mother badly, and blamed herself for each miscarriage, thinking she had killed her own babies, he recalls. His wife divorced him after 11 years, and he suffered a complete nervous breakdown.
He says he never abused alcohol or other substances. When he did start drinking in moderation around 1990, he says he used alcohol “not to lose control but to maintain control. I didn’t want to lose my temper or be aggressive.”
Onesimus says the Lord told him to get a new start in Amarillo, Texas, where he lived in a motel for six weeks in 2004. As he was picking up the phone to call a company about getting another job “driving truck,” he says he was struck by a realization: “I can’t do this anymore. It’s not who I am.”
So he prayed for a new direction, and decided to “leave the common world.” He left his car, full of all his worldly possessions, as a donation to an Amarillo church. Onesimus says he packed one bag, “even though Jesus said take nothing with you,” and started walking.
“I came to an intersection, sat down, prayed and said, ‘All right, Lord, which way are we going?’” After walking 20 miles the first day, a couple let him sleep in an old car outside their home — and sent him on his way the next day with breakfast and a jacket.
“I’ve seen God move people’s heart time and time again,” Onesimus says of his travels over the past eight years.
Since blisters were slowing him down, he recalls praying for a ride from a Christian, and his request was granted when up pulled an old Jeep driven by a man headed for Moab, Utah. Onesimus’ wandering has also taken him to Tabernash, Kremmling, Laramie, Wyo., and Fort Collins. Onesimus attributes most of his moves to directions from God — and Christians who took him in or gave him a ride.
In Fort Collins, he spent six months in an abandoned house next to a junkyard before a Loveland family that he met at church took him in for a month and shared Thanksgiving dinner with him. After he moved on, while walking through knee-deep snow in Longmont, an old Hispanic man in a truck stopped to pick him up, saying the Lord had told him to take Onesimus to the Boulder homeless shelter, where he dropped him off and gave him $20.
He says he stayed at the Boulder shelter the maximum 90 days, then met a family at a Quaker Friends meeting who let him live with them for several years. He did chores, like washing dishes, to earn his keep, but moved on in April 2012. He spent last summer on the street, or as he describes it, “staying outside.”
Last summer, he completed the three-month First Steps phase of the Boulder homeless shelter’s wait-listed program that helps homeless people get back on their feet, and has now entered the organization’s Transitions stage. He has a guaranteed place to sleep and a support system to help him reintegrate.
Onesimus cringes at the idea of applying to get a disability check. After all, he has been a “working man” all his life, and never thought about being disabled, even though he qualifies.
“It never sat well,” he says of the disabled tag. “It still doesn’t. But I’m beginning to recognize my limitations.”
Onesimus insists that he has overcome the demons of his earlier years.
“I don’t think there’s too much lurking in there,” he says. “I spent 30, 40 years working on those issues.”
Onesimus adds that he could have spent thousands of dollars on a psychologist’s couch, but “my couch was Jesus,” and from those sessions he learned that “you’re not truly free from your past until you can be truly thankful for it.”
He says he hopes the Boulder Weekly series of profiles on homeless people shows who they really are: just human, like anyone else, “flawed, imperfect, doing what we can with what we’ve had to work with.”
Onesimus pauses, puts down his pipe, then recites a scripture about how Jesus wanted to be treated.
“Whatever you’ve done to the least of them, you do to me,” he says. “How would you treat Jesus if he was strung out on heroin or in prison?
“In my early days, I might have walked past him.” | <urn:uuid:97065e11-c087-4d18-9ef9-698329039117> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.boulderweekly.com/article-10508-before-the-lord.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987618 | 1,949 | 1.5 | 2 |
Growth trajectory of GSPC Gas and its initiative for safety awareness - Suraksha Jagruti Abhiyan
As a progressive and forward looking company, GSPC Gas Ltd. has always tried to identify new trends and work towards pooling together the right resources. Along the same lines, the company has been working towards developing new initiatives that involve various communities as a whole and thus create a proactive impact from the grass root level.
One such initiative is the "Suraksha Jagruti Abhiyan" Safety Awareness & Dissemination Activity. With a view to ensure that the safety measures involved in handling the gas is spread. GSPC Gas has hired a competent company with several years of experience in the field of event management for this project. The endeavor of the entire project is to create further awareness amongst 150 villages across Gujarat with regard to the precautions and safe use of Piped Natural Gas (PNG) and Compressed Natural Gas (CNG).
In the current time frame, a total of more than 100 villages across the state of Gujarat have been covered. To ensure that the awareness drive is efficient, comprehensive and effective, the entire region has been divided into three routes. The first route is directed to villages in Kheda and Saurashtra. The second route covers Central Gujarat, while the third route focuses on South Gujarat This multi-pronged information dissemination ensures that the safety precautions and correct usage methods of the gas reaches across all sections of the state in a short span of time.
To initiate the project, a film on the safety measures of using PNG and CNG was created. The film utilizes an interactive session of the village council, where the common man is educated in the various safety measures involved while using the gas. The plot explores the various safety measures that users ought to be aware of the precautions to be taken when in doubt and methods by which, people can proactively assist GSPC Gas in ensuring that the gas is supplied safely. It further assists in informing people on how to contact the company representatives and how by following small steps in gas usage; the rate of accidents can be thwarted.
In addition to leaflets and brochures, as a media tool, the film augments the spread of awareness, mainly due to its high receptivity amongst the target audience. The 25 minute long film showcases how existing users use natural gas as a fuel, informs viewers on the safety rules involved while using the gas on a daily basis and clears common misconceptions people often have. This sparks the attention of viewers creating room for an interactive session, which leads to a desire to improve and act proactively.
Along each of the three routes, dedicated teams of 8-10 personnel have been deployed, who travel along with the activity truck spreading the safety information amongst the 150 villages. This ensures that a total of 50 villages each in South Gujarat, Central Gujarat and Saurashtra are made aware about the correct wav to use PNG and CNG.
The team along with a fully equipped activity truck visits each village in the morning and sets up a meeting with the village headman (Sarpanch). Details about where the set up can be located, objection permissions and a convenient time in the evening to show the film is finalised. The activities have been coordinated with local administrative bodies to ensure that the venue for the activity is centrally located and large enough.
Additionally the support of local administration ensures that the event is successful.
The team spreads out through the village and travels door-to-door intimating the village people about the evening program. Additionally leaflets about the safety information are distributed and the villagers are informally informed about what the awareness drive is about. Post lunch, the team takes another round of the village and reminds people about the same to ensure that a large number of people participate and the spread of information is more effective.
Al the pre-decided venue, the activity truck is set up. At the time, post sunset, the villagers gather and are introduced to why there is a need for safety awareness. Once done, the film is allowed to run. To keep the children occupied and entertained during the film, several games and activities are planned. After the film screening is done, the villagers, the team and representatives from GSPC Gas involve in an interactive question and answer session about the film. This is done primarily to gauge how much has been understood and to comprehend how well the information has been assimilated. To motivate people in retaining the information, prizes are awarded to villagers who correctly answer related questions in the interactive session. GSPC Gas representatives present at the venue clear queries of villagers with regard to the safety precautions in the interactive session. Post this session, the village headman is invited to share his thoughts on the safety awareness drive with the villagers and highlight the need for people to be proactive. Later on, the team meets with the head to garner an insight into the event.
The same procedure is carried out the next day in another village. This has ensured that more than 100 villages have been covered in the past 6 weeks along the three routes. On an average each village has a turnout of 200-300 at the evening activity. The largest turnout for the event was at 'Fatehpura' in Gandhinagar. where 1400 villagers were present. Women, who are the major users of the gas in any household, average about half the viewers who turn up and actively participate at the event. Active participation by villagers and a positive inclination by the village headman is indicative of the success of the entire activity so far. Testimony to the positive nature brought about by the safety awareness drive, can be seen in some letters from the village 'Sarpanch'.
Villagers participated in the safety awareness program organised by GSPC Gas. Around 200-300 people attended and are very happy with the information given to them.
- Sisodhra Village Panchayat, 13/12/2011.
GSPC Gas organised a safety program in our village. We are very satisfied by the activity.
- Nargol Gram Panchayat, 26/11/2011.
This is to certify that GSPC Gas has organised a Safety Awareness Event in our village.
- Sanjan Gram Panchayat, 25/11/2011
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Post your feedback | <urn:uuid:19bc2e90-bc07-4c57-b983-9b5f8a8e2e0e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gspcgas.com/en/news_updates.php?id=4f59df1353720&t=5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952299 | 1,376 | 1.648438 | 2 |
In previous shows about the job market and recent college graduates, we get a number of calls and comments from graduates who say their internships were the key to getting their full-time jobs and once they finished school.
However, we have also heard that sometimes internships, especially the first one, can be difficult to obtain because an organization wants an applicant to have previous experience. How does one find an internship and make it a successful experience? How does an organization run a successful program?
Allison Cheston, career connector for Executive and Young Adults, will join The Daily Circuit Wednesday to discuss the search for internships. Robert Shindell, director of content and resource development for Intern Bridge, will also join the discussion.
If you're looking for an internship: be selective, do your homework and treat the process like you would a job interview. | <urn:uuid:10959c9b-e850-4210-9212-a57561172dc4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/06/13/daily-circuit-internships | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968599 | 173 | 1.570313 | 2 |
The City of Brockton is tackling what Mayor Linda Balzotti calls one of the major problems in the city: homelessness. Thursday morning, Brockton and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) officials celebrated recent success but the fight isn’t over yet.
Father Bill’s and Mainspring, the city’s homeless shelter, houses 82 families and 200 individuals every night but these numbers are slowly diminishing. Next door on Spring Street, a 32-unit apartment building recently opened as permanent housing for the homeless.
President and CEO of the social service agency John Yazwinski explained that Brockton received a $600,000 federal stimulus in 2009 under the Homelessness Prevention Program and was able to disperse funding to residents. However, more focus needs to be on creating assisted living units, “It was a one-time stimulus package that came from the President and we’re just celebrating to say that we have to put more dollars that are kind of funding shelters, we have to start putting them into new initiatives like this.”
Yazwinski further stated Father Bill’s and Mainspring have been working with Veterans Affairs to make sure not a single veteran is left on Brockton streets. Fifteen units at the Spring Street home are reserved for veterans.
Federal grant money continues to filter down from HUD to Brockton to take people off the streets and back in their homes. Mayor Balzotti explained they receive a Community Development Block Grant which helps the increasing threat of foreclosure, “We’ve also used it to address issues that the city faces as a result of foreclosed properties. So we’re putting some of the money into those properties to make them livable again and get them not only back on the tax rolls but get families into them.”
Other federal grant money helps fund programs like WorkExpress, a job training program, but also to keep families and individuals financially stable as HUD Regional Administrator Barbara Fields explained, “[We] provide counseling when there’s that first hint of an issue. And sometimes families are just one medical bill away from not being able to pay their mortgage but if we can help them through that difficult time they can stay in their home.”
(HUD Regional Administrator Barbara Fields)
(Brockton Mayor Linda Balzotti) | <urn:uuid:61d8fd0f-6989-4821-b055-0ca065380270> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://959watd.com/blog/2012/02/brockton-hud-comes-to-town-to-continue-the-fight-against-homelessness/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95627 | 477 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Travelling on the East by-pass from Ryason’s corner to the college at 50km/hr, I was wondering where are all the walking path enthusiasts today. It is too cold, rainy, windy or busy at something, whereas the truck route bypass was being used by industry and others to avoid town.
This walking path has limited use, if any on many days, whereas the bypass is used seven days a week/365 days a year. When walking path enthusiasts held a demonstration to lobby City Hall, City Hall responded by reducing speed limits all the way to Ryason’s corner and Alaska Highway and temporarily closing the path. “What” may be a little drastic.
Why not put up electronic signage at both ends of the path where safety is a concern, reducing speed limits like the parks and schools. The path users could activate the signs like a cross walk when wanting use of the path. This would allow for unimpeded traffic flow on most of this important artery.
Personally, I like seeing people out using the pathway, getting exercise, getting out of the house so to speak.
Fort St. John | <urn:uuid:56a6bd2d-c520-42c6-acf0-053e7bd57d78> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.alaskahighwaynews.ca/article/20130208/FORTSTJOHN0303/130209923/-1/fortstjohn/walking-path-compromise | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946414 | 236 | 1.515625 | 2 |
The French economist and writer has for decades championed free markets in the birthplace of dirigisme. He is a man of the right who is guardedly upbeat about France's future under the first Socialist president in 20 years. And he's decidedly positive on the euro and the European Union.
…In maintaining that the euro didn't cause the European crisis, Mr. Sorman echoes other conservative economists. Blame instead overextended welfare states that rang up huge debts, he says, and then the Keynesian stimulus spending after the 2008 global meltdown that added to the burden. Now, hard fiscal adjustments are finally being carried out across Europe. Deregulation in these troubled countries would be nice, too, he adds.
… Doomsday scenarios also overlook differences among EU states. The Berlin Wall was replaced by a sort of sunshine curtain that separates a healthy, growing north from the basket cases of Club Med. Visit Berlin, booming Warsaw or the Estonian capital of Tallinn to escape the depressed mood of Paris. "I think you'll have a European revival coming from Poland, the Baltic States and Finland" says Mr. Sorman. "Just look at what they've achieved."
… Mr. Sorman's case for the EU boils down to something you hear often from an Italian, or a Belgian and other citizens of ill-governed EU states and almost never from, say, a Dane or an Englishman. "Only Europe can protect the French from the French," he says. "If we weren't part of Europe, imagine our electricity bill or our phone bill. We might not even have the Internet."
This cri du coeur pour l'Europe comes three months into Mr. Hollande's presidential term. The men know each other well. In the mid-1980s, during a brief spell as a journalist at the now defunct Le Matin de Paris, the Socialist party operative attacked Mr. Sorman's essays on economic liberalism. At the time Mr. Sorman was a rare French defender of Reagan.
Three years ago, on a television talk show, the future French president suggested that Mr. Sorman take his liberal economic ideas and himself out of France. "This was a kind of anti-Semitic, bourgeois attack," says Mr. Sorman, who is Jewish. He says Mr. Hollande afterward told him he went too far and apologized, "and I said, 'I don't know if you went too far, but it does express your deep conviction.'"
"For me," he adds, "Mr. Hollande is quite the conservative bourgeois type of provincial France—the people who hate money, who hate capitalism, who hate business. They think all these ideas are quite foreign to French culture and French genius." Much of the French right has also stayed faithful to what's called "a certain idea of France." From Charles de Gaulle on, presidents have glorified the small shopkeeper and kept their distance from more cosmopolitan CEOs of multinationals.
… The early signs in France aren't encouraging for the small band of free marketers. In addition to various planned tax increases, the new government has proposed to protect industry and resisted spending cuts.
Yet Mr. Hollande's promise to bring the budget deficit to 3% next year from 4.5% to meet the euro-zone fiscal rules shows that the government knows it has to keep financial markets happy. His falling poll numbers reflect growing economic anxiety that might force his hand. The economy is spiraling down so fast, says Mr. Sorman, that France will be forced "to revert to free-market solutions." This is his other optimistic scenario.
"It's very rare that a nation chooses decline," he continues. "I don't think the French will choose decline. It's a young nation with many young people who want to find work."
De Gaulle had a famous line about the impossibility of governing a country with "246 different kinds of cheese." Mr. Sorman sees it differently. "The problem," he says, "is not the number of cheeses. The problem is the false consensus propagated by the chattering classes that the ruling government elite knows best what is good for the country, that the genius of France is to be ruled from above by a clairvoyant state bureaucracy, that the free market does not belong to French history—and if you are against this you are a traitor."
Before French audiences, Mr. Sorman often invokes the names of Frédéric Bastiat, Alexis de Tocqueville and Jean-Baptiste Say to show that liberal economic ideas aren't alien to French soil. "I tend to feel lonely," he says.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
The problem is the false consensus propagated by the chattering classes that the ruling government elite knows best what is good for France
Matthew Kaminski in the Wall Street Journal. | <urn:uuid:5ad15a9a-cc3e-4708-91ac-8ba7b8e0db53> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://no-pasaran.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-problem-is-false-consensus.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963876 | 995 | 1.515625 | 2 |
About the Author
Fair and Balanced
Jeff Long, September 5, 2012 | Police Blog
As my boss, City Manager Scott Neal, said a few weeks ago, I’m back in the saddle … or the office chair, after a summer vacation.
While having time off I had the opportunity to get caught up on the news by reading the newspaper and watching television news. I am a “news junkie” and love seeing all that is happening in the world, but with the hustle and bustle of life, I don’t get the opportunity to do so as often as I’d like.
Stories regarding the police seemed to dominate the news last week. There was one particularly disturbing news story about potential excessive force being used in St. Paul.
Before passing judgment on any story, most of us remember that the news media uses sensationalism. The term “if it bleeds, it leads” certainly seems to be true most days. I periodically take time to watch certain cable news channels to get a good laugh. I don’t think anyone would say that some of those “news” channels present a fair, balanced or unbiased show. Sometimes it’s painfully embarrassing to watch.
A friend of mine who just recently passed away would always say, “Did you see the show called the news?” The news seems so choreographed now. Gone are the days of the serious, unbiased news anchor. I listen to the tone of voice now used in news stories, the facial expressions made and watch the graphic video clips and wonder if I am really getting the full story.
I would encourage everyone to avoid jumping to conclusions regarding the police stories you have seen this week or in the future. Just as police officers are not to jump to conclusions until we know the facts, the public should not jump to conclusions either.
This is not just advice for law enforcement stories. Think of some of the news stories that have turned out very differently than they were presented in the news. I am not passing judgment, defending or promoting any of these people. However, the way the story was presented sure changed how I looked at the person. Think back to Chris Cook of the Minnesota Vikings accused of assault, Robert Blake (Beretta actor) accused of murder and Dominique Strauss-Kahn accused of assault in a New York Hotel. All of these stories seemed like open and shut cases when the media ran the stories. These people were all found not guilty or had the charges dismissed. I’m guessing that even mentioning these names might stir anger, but that is because of how the media presented them. Like most of you, I don’t know any of these people or any facts other than what the TV news people reported to us.
There are times that when all the facts come out and a police officer did something wrong. But just like any other profession, I hope you don’t let the actions of one officer reflect upon the whole profession. Just as you have not lost trust in all Priests, Attorneys and Doctors despite recent criminal convictions in those professions, I would hope that you not lose trust in police officers. | <urn:uuid:367ed4d9-3462-45ff-b194-98501d92ec80> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.edinamn.gov/wordpress/fair-and-balanced/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971719 | 655 | 1.554688 | 2 |
, originally uploaded by http://andrewskelton.net.
It may have come to your attention that we’re going away for a week for a family holiday, tagging this on to our trip to Cardiff (Wales) to watch the Olympic Football. There’s a wealth of wildlife photographic opportunities available to us with the famous Gigrin Farm where up to 600 birds can be seen performing their aerial maneuvers as they come to feed, however a new one presented itself today when a Blue Shark was filmed swimming in the shallow waters of a West Wales tourist beach. Admittedly the shark itself wasn’t a particularly large one and posed no threat to anyone (though of course the media didn’t report it that way) but it’s interesting that a fish more associated with temperate oceans has been caught on camera off the coast of a country that’s not particularly known for its tropical temperatures. There is no doubt in my mind that the planet is warming up, the evidence is all around us with more exotic creatures making Blighty their new home – I’ll know when it’s warm when vultures start circling over road kill rather than the Kites. | <urn:uuid:d6426167-d77f-4258-aaf8-d5ed699b8c94> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://andrewskelton.net/2012/08/10/in-absentia-day-one-3/ | 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 | 0.962696 | 247 | 1.640625 | 2 |
MP Timmins James Bay
Writer, broadcaster and musician Charlie Angus is a former member of punk pioneers L'Étranger and Juno-nominated Grievous Angels. An outspoken NDP critic on copyright and Canadian cultural policy issues, Angus was commended by the Toronto Star in 2006 as one of the ten most effective opposition members of Parliament.
What do you think is the purpose of the current consultations?
Even a government as thick-headed as the Conservative have realized that they're going to get their fingers burned if they try to push through copyright reform without consulting the vast majority of people who are going to be affected by it. The previous bill, C-61 was bordering on ridiculous in its attempt to blur the line between criminal counterfeiting and legitimate personal use. The bill was dead on arrival because [to give it effect] you'd have to police every internet use, every home use and it's simply not feasible. I think they learned that simply relying on corporate lobbyists to dictate copyright just isn't realistic in the 21st century.
What parts of the law do you think changing as far as it affects independent musicians?
Number one, you have to push back against the misinformation campaign that's been launched by the very, very large corporate interests who are trying to use copyright not to protect artists but to impose an outdated business model. Canada's copyright laws need to be updated but that isn't to say that we are in any way some kind of digital banana republic, as is being claimed by the CRIA [Canadian Recording Industry Association, representing major labels] crowd. What's really important is, are we going to have forward looking copyright or backward looking copyright? We need to find ways to monetize the vast stream of information that's flowing so that artists are able to benefit. I am very concerned about the move from the lobbyists to try to impose a dead business model because I think that will hurt Canadian bands. Canadian bands know what it means to create new business models. We've never been able to survive by relying on having records racked in stores. The distances between our artists are too great, our audiences are too small; we're a country that has pioneered niche music marketing. So I would think most Canadian independent bands are way ahead in terms of new business, but what we need to do is make sure the copyright supports where Canadian acts are going and what they are doing with their music.
To compensate artists for unpaid file sharing, the Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) and others have proposed a levy on internet use. Is this a realistic goal?
The ISPs are not keen, and that goes to a larger issue that needs to be discussed. I am not going to say how or what percent artists should get, but when your ISP is telling you that you can get faster and faster downloads, what do you need that for? You need it for entertainment. People are downloading movies and songs and so rather than criminalizing this behaviour or grabbing every tenth person out of the line and suing them for their house, we need to find a monetizing stream. That's a reasonable public discourse that should happen.
Canada has been heavily criticized for not adopting our own DMCA. Is that where we are headed?
If you want to look at failed policy, look at the DMCA. Even the author of the DMCA, whom I met at a conference in Montreal, surprised the crowd when he said, "Whatever you do, don't do what we did!" The DMCA is typical of the U.S. response to anything having to do with corporate responsibility: corporate ISPs are given blanket indemnity and yet [the music business] grab 15-year-olds and sue them. That's not a solution. I also don't think the three-strikes-you're-out solution is workable. Taking out individuals and making examples of them is not a solution. It's changing the frame of how we talk about copyright that will actually get us toward some solutions. Is the SAC proposal the solution? I'm not sure, but they show that artists want a seat at the table and they are saying, "We want to find alternative models that don't penalize people, but allow people to use our works."
Be the first to comment | <urn:uuid:05344307-c773-4a94-9938-c594491683d7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://exclaim.ca/MusicSchool/MeetAndGreet/charlie_angus-mp_timmins_james_bay | 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 | 0.978269 | 862 | 1.570313 | 2 |
As many marketeers switch their attention from the word 'cloud' to the term 'big data', you can almost hear the groans as another bandwagon starts to roll. It's now getting to the point where, yet again, we are being bombarded with terms and messages that are ambiguous at best, meaningless at worst. So in true Freeform Dynamics …
"Big Data" is better than "Cloud" ...
... as it makes it much clearer that it's of no relevance to most people. I'm fed up with having to educate clients who have been sold the cloud bullshit.
With 'Big data' those conversations will be a lot shorter:
"I need a Big Data solution"
"Really? Do you have any big data?"
"Right then, let's get on with something useful instead"
There is no reason why query should be limited to merely set operations on tabular data.
And no reason why decision support should be limited to preconfigured cached/non cached queries a la OLAP.
It is my view that from a base set of "Don't repeat yourself" (DRY) data (i.e. things that actually happened, and can't change.) then basically anything that you can logically derive from this data, is also unchangeable, and true. It doesn't matter if it didn't happen, if it's a factual derivation then it's as valid as a SQL query.
Not only does deductive inductive queries like this (I call my view of it UQ - unified query, because it allows for relational, hierarchical, object, network and inductive queries like functional (function query is induction, because the function models the nature of the man you speak Clarice) - all current databases being just a subset;) but the mode of derived query gives rise to all sorts of other paradigms such as the enterprise replicated dataset whereby derivation sets can be published, but the base data hidden. (The simplest possible example being ANPR, one such set could be the average speed of each vehicle - it's perfectly possible to have an immutable view - i.e. a derived dataset which is the average speed of each car yesterday, without disclosing any details of ANPR sitelocations. The average speed dataset is just as valid as the point to point observations and can be replicated. Other examples "people who couldn't be in London at the moment,")
I think this work is the most interesting place to be at the moment, and just wish I could find someone to pay me to do it. What I could make of SQL Server with a freehand, I just can't describe. It shouldn't be a relational database. It should be a database that among other things, also implements the relational paradigm.
This is all a crock for people who cannot and/or will not think first.
This is a solution for the negative outcomes caused by the incompetent masses incapable of understanding the schema of the data they are dealing with. | <urn:uuid:ac8ff7b5-32ec-49b6-ad49-9768f530e7aa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2011/11/14/beyond_relational_db_study/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957714 | 613 | 1.75 | 2 |
Nancy Pelosi, former speaker of the House of Representatives and current minority leader, stopped by Portland on Tuesday, on tour during the House's August recess.
Although this Congress' record raises the question, recess from what?
"If your philosophy is to have a do-nothing Congress," says Pelosi about the Republican leadership, "what's the problem?"
Unless, you know, you want a functioning government.
There is, of course, a divided D.C., with Democrats in the White House and narrowly leading the Senate, while a rambunctious Republican majority controls the House. But, Pelosi argues, in 2007 and 2008, with a Democratic Congress and a Republican president, "we accomplished great things," including an energy bill, tax rebates and a response to the 2008 financial collapse.
Pelosi, a representative since 1987, seems to have a personal dismay about the House sliding into a wallow of dysfunction, and members considering gridlock an achievement.
"You can't be at war," she objects, "with the institution you have fought to be part of."
Although, House Republicans might ask, what's the problem? | <urn:uuid:e523b82e-2127-4dd2-8b62-0b2c60eebf59> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/david_sarasohn/index.ssf/2012/08/nancy_pelosi_says_house_doesnt.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961946 | 235 | 1.65625 | 2 |
TEL AVIV, Israel, May 15 (UPI) -- Israeli intelligence is trying to assess the significance of recent Syrian statements about examining "other options" to regain the Golan Heights.
Israel occupied those heights in the 1967 war.
Addressing a workshop on new challenges for the intelligence, the head of the Military Intelligence Research Division, Brig. Gen. Yossi Kuperwasser, said that, "In recent days we hear the Syrians say ... 'We've exhausted the attempts to get the Golan Heights by peaceful means ... we're close to exhausting this direction. We've got to examine other options."
"I am not sure to what extent this is a change of course...it might be threat, but there is no doubt we have to examine its significance," Kuperwasser said.
The Golan front has been quiet for decades but a source in the northern Command told United Press International a provocation through Lebanon is possible. Syria uses the Lebanese Hezbollah and transfers arms to it, he said.
At the workshop, which the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies organized, Haifa University researcher Uri Bar-Yosef said he examined 23 military intelligence strategic assessments since 1953 and found 20 were wrong. Bar-Yosef said he could not decide whether the intelligence was right or wrong in two other instances.
Maj. Gen. in the reserves Isaac Ben-Israel said later he thought of pointing out other cases in which the intelligence was right but noted that for each of them he could remember another failure.
Kuperwasser defended the intelligence record. Strategic assessment is a very complicated task and anyone who expects concrete alerts is expecting too much. At the most one should expect an indication of trends, Kuperwasser argued. He said the intelligence had warned the intifada would erupt in 2000 and predicted significant Hamas gains in the last Palestinian elections. Hamas won those elections.
|Additional Security Industry Stories|
TEL AVIV, Israel, May 17 (UPI) --Nobel Energy of Houston, which discovered Israel's big gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean, is pressing the government to decide soon on an energy export policy as the prospect of an undersea pipeline to Turkey gains credibility. | <urn:uuid:8f033cb0-0db2-478e-bb1d-ec4057e77f3c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2006/05/15/Israel-probes-Syrian-intentions/UPI-13621147713545/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956611 | 453 | 1.703125 | 2 |
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