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It's that time again - time to set those goals for the coming year. But how many Americans actually stick to their New Year's resolutions?
For 78 percent of Americans in 2012, a resolution was just that, nothing more a resolution, according to the University of Scranton Journal of Clinical Psychology. These Americans didn't follow up their resolutions with action, the journal found in its annual survey.
However, 8 percent of Americans followed through, according to the survey.
For some Long Beach residents, the theme of their resolutions for 2013 is different from years past, they said in recent interviews: It's not all about weight loss and saving money. Instead, the resolutions are based around spending more time with family and friends.
Rick Anderson, a bartender at Joe Jost's on Anaheim, and a new father, said in addition to cutting out creamer for his coffee, his resolution is simple: spend more time with his family.
"I want to be home more," he said. "I want to spend time with my wife and our new baby and enjoy the time I have with my family."
Jeff Breuklander, also a bartender at Joe Jost's and a new father, has the same resolution.
"I just want more family time," he said. "I want to be around for all the little milestones and enjoy them with my wife."
Spending more time with family and friends was the theme on Second Street in Belmont Shore as well. Of 25 people the Press-Telegram randomly
Nationally, spending time with family just barely makes the Top 10 list of 2013 New Years resolutions, coming in last, according to the University of Scranton survey. The university found that goals like losing weight, quitting smoking and saving money were more popular resolutions.
In general, 47 percent of resolutions are
Cabrillo High School teacher Ivy Gastelum, while working out on an elliptical machine at the Los Altos YMCA, said her resolution was to get off her cholesterol medicine by adding more days at the gym. But her No. 1 resolution was grading papers in a more timely fashion.
"The biggest thing I want to change next year is getting papers back to my students the same week they turn them in," she said. "Right now it takes a week or two, and I really want to address this. But getting healthier is always on my list, and I plan on spending more time here at the gym."
Gastelum, was working out with her best friend, Janice Pope, also a teacher at Cabrillo High School, and Gastelum's daughter Ariana, who both said fitness is a resolution for them in the upcoming year.
"I want to be more consistent about coming to the gym," Pope said. "I generally only make it three days a week, and I want to up that to five."
A manager at the Los Altos YMCA said January is the gym's busiest month, but participation begins to wear off in March.
This makes sense when looking at national numbers.
Just about 70 percent of people maintain their resolutions through the first two weeks, but that number drops to 64 percent after one month and all the way down to 46 percent after six months, according to the University of Scranton.
However, the poor follow-through doesn't stop Americans from making resolutions. In fact, 45 percent of Americans make New Year's resolutions each year, and just 38 percent absolutely never make New Year's resolutions, the university found.
While shopping in Belmont Shore, Marty Sparkman of Long Beach said her resolution revolves around keeping in touch with family and friends.
"I want to make an effort to spend more time with family and friends," she said. "I want to build relationships and just spend the time. Also, I'd like to not work as much and get myself to the gym."
The top 10 most popular New Year's resolutions for 2013, according to the University of Scranton Journal of Clinical Psychology:
1. Lose weight
2. Get organized
3. Spend less, save more
4. Enjoy life to the fullest
5. Stay fit and healthy
6. Learn something exciting
7. Quit smoking
8. Help others achieve their dreams
9. Fall in love
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View Full Version : New Ceiling
22nd Aug 2008, 07:01 AM
I am in the process of plastering the ceiling under the extension I have built which will become the kitchen/dining room. I have used CSR Superceil 10mm glued and screwed. As you can see by the framework the trusses change direction so I would be creating a patchwork job if to use the rule of 90 deg offset to fixing. Given the Superceil can span 600mm (truss space the same) It didnt really which dierection i put up so I chose the one which minimises the joints. I am now in the process of joining them and I have bought the good ol CD from Bunnings which shows the way to do walls. I am using the perforated paper tape and using the premixed total joint cement as base coat 2nd coat and topping coat for the final.
I found laying a base coat between the joins and then putting the paper on follwed by a thin coat using 100mm worked o.k but I had to cut the paper and put in a couple of new ones as i got a couple of bubbles. Is is best to wet this tape first?? as it doesnt seem too absorbent.
I then used the good old orbital sander (to create a dust storm and a half :doh:) and the joins look pretty good and I have ended up with a flush finish. I was looking at painting over them but now on closer inspection going to finish off with a curved join using a 250mm curve.
I am using a plastic 250mm curve knife and note they are quite flexible should I use this at 90deg to get the curve or more like 45 deg? just using the 45deg doesnt get enough of the plaster over the joins as it spreads. Or should i do a couple of coats?
Here are some pics of the job.
22nd Aug 2008, 11:17 AM
I am very much the amateur so take this as being from my experience only.....I cut the paper to length and soak it in a bucket of water, squezzing out excess by dragging it between by fingers before pressing into a thin bed of compound in the joint and then overlaying more compound.
I never did any good with the 250mm spatulas with the curved blade as these only allow a straight draw along the length of the join which I always buggered up somehow. My preference now is to use a straight edged spatula in a criss cross pattern across the joint spreading out to about 150mm on the first coat and 250-300mm wide on the top coat.
This only needs 2 coats after the initial tape application layer and each does not need to be very thick. Aim to make each as smooth as you can reasonably get and you only need a light hand sand on the final coat to feather the edges to the plasterboard paper.
I used a sander on my first couple of goes where I was in a hurry and probably put on too much compound and did not allow enough time to dry properly. It is a lot easier and cleaner if you take your time to get the coats reasonably smooth and allow time for them to dry and then just lightly hand sand the top coat.
22nd Aug 2008, 05:54 PM
Don't soak the tape it makes it harder to use just follow the tips on this video and you will have no problems.
Throw away and plastic tools and for a few $ go and buy proper steel blades to get a good result. Flat not curved. You cant get into too much trouble with a flat blade but you can get into plenty with a curved one. I think I need to get on and finish a few of my video's to show 2nd coating and top coating I think. It is much easier to show the best methods rather than try and explain them.
As for the hip roofs creating 2 way trusses, the builder has to trim out between the trusses with noggins at the corect centers for the board type being used. So that the board can all be run in one direction and fixed according to the manufactureres specs.
YouTube - How to tape in a plasterboard join using paper tape
23rd Aug 2008, 11:27 AM
:whs: Rod knows his stuff - watch & learn. . . :U :2tsup:
24th Aug 2008, 01:13 PM
Sorry to hijack but Rod, does this work with ceilings that already been painted as well? In our loungeroom and kitchen, you can see a slight groove where the plasterboards have joined. I was wondering should i use this techique to smooth out the grooves? And do i need to sand back the paint?
24th Aug 2008, 08:25 PM
Sounds like the slight grooves you mentioned are the edges of the rebate of a join that has been under filled.
To fix this you can go over the top with top coat and sand back. Use a 12" (300mm) flat blade. I will get a round to posting a video on you tube about applying top coat in a way that gives you a flat join every time. It is a bit hard to explain by typing. But the general idea is to put on a heavy but consistant coat, cut back the edges then cut back the excess through the center with the blade at about a 45 deg angle off the join. Then run though the join with the blade very flat to the join.
ARGGGHHH I know this doesnt make a lot of sense. My writing skills evade me in describing this very important method. I will try to get a video done soon, been busy with other things lately.
You can go to my web site and get my phone number and call me if you like and I can give you a better explaination. I dont mind a bit, but please guys ONLY if you REALLY need too.
25th Aug 2008, 08:19 AM
Thanks for that Rod. I think i understand what you are trying to say. I'm not in any hurry so i'll wait for the video
25th Aug 2008, 05:06 PM
Thanks, I'm keen to give it a go for the final coat I have a trusty 280mm new blade flat, (I was going to put a 3mm curve in it as it was only $20 bucks but will now give it a go with the flat blade.) It is definitely more challenging doing it overhead as both the vids show it on an wall join.
My ceiling is 9ft so balancing on the work plank makes it more challenging.:o I notice the joining material on the vids seems to be a bit more consistant than the pre mixed stuff ? Why when you pack it on to get it to stick overhead and in the process of smoothing you get tiny air bubbles and it takes some convicing to get them out without leaving it for sander to fix.
Are we aiming for a flat finish over a 300mm spread or as you describe a lump in the middle and then spread off each side 45 deg then scoop off the excess in a flat motion. What length should be considered work space 1m at a time or 500mm at a time....
25th Aug 2008, 06:31 PM
The length you do will be what you are comfortable with.
If the surface is painted it is next to impossible to get the air bubbles out. If not try flattening out the blades and use a lot of pressure without taking away any material.
26th Aug 2008, 07:43 AM
As time goes on I have been trying a few techniques, I found putting the stuff on and then smoothing across the join then down the join seems to work best. The more times you touch the stuff it doesn't like it and becomes "worked". When you give it a final smooth, the hardest part is going over the joint without one of the ends of the trowel leaving a line. I am obviously trying to reduce the amount of sanding over the area. I dont want to try and put some down with heaps of pressure to get a flat finish and digging into the cardboard of the gyprock.
As you can see from the early photo it is not painted, but after a couple of smooths you can get the bubbles out especially with the top coat as it seems to be a lot easier to work with. What should the finish product look like after top coat? an area 300mm wide blended into the new gyprock or slightly bigger?
26th Aug 2008, 06:15 PM
The topcoat should end up around 300mm wide and the edges "feathered" off.
The method you mention is called cross trowelling which is not a bad method for the initial application of the mud, for someone not skilled. With the final run through the trowell or blade should be held quite flat so that it willnot dig in to the board. You will always end up with a trowell off mark where you lift the blade from the join that needs to be sanded. If the join is flat and the width of the blade you will not get any trowel lines down the join.
2nd Sep 2008, 12:19 PM
Here is a couple of pics, where I see this job now ready for an undercoat of paint. There is still more joining work to do on the right of photo, when I remove the whole wall and continue on. I have a couple of close up pics to show a bit of the detail. I am quite happy when I run my hand across the join and it appears that I have a flat finish and once the paint goes on then the join should be invisible? :cool:
Tell me if there is a slight colour patch between 2nd and topcoat, where you can just make out some of the 2nd base coat is o.k.
Getting picky here, I was actually considering using no topcoat, is this recommended? As the joint seemed to be quite flat. I have dusted off a few times, any final comments?
2nd Sep 2008, 04:09 PM
You must use top coat.
It is very hard to comment on a join from a photo however I would point out that the edges look like they need more sanding. It doesn't matter if the base coat shows through the top coat, provided that as soon as this happens you should not sand any more as you will only sand the top coat away.
If you have a "bump" of basecoat the best thing to do is to scrape it back flat, put a skim coat of top coat over then sand again.
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The Japan Cat Network, a grassroots animal welfare group in Shiga Prefecture organized and run by David Wybenga and his wife, Susan Roberts, has put out a plea for help with its Hirakata City Project.
Initially featured in The Japan Times on Jan. 26, the network was asked in March to check out a park near the city of Hirakata, located between Osaka and Kyoto.
The situation at Yamada-Ike Koen was dire, utterly shocking. Close to 100 cats, in various stages of health and disease, were found roaming the park. There were no signs of a TNR (trap, neuter, release) program such as the Japan Cat Network promotes, and none of the males appeared to be neutered. Two of the park cats were so ill that they had to be taken to a vet immediately.
As of May 1, the group has trapped 53 cats, most of them female, and had them neutered. More trapping is scheduled.
Wybenga calls the project “amazing,” one that he believes has the power “to change public perception in Kansai. Of all the projects I’ve been involved in, this is the one to get behind.”
In the meantime, five kittens, then 2 weeks old, were found abandoned in a cardboard box in a park restroom. Two were already dead. Three survived and are thriving and being fed every four hours. This past Monday, four more kittens were found abandoned. One had already died. These kittens and others were all taken in and are being cared for.
“Busy and sleepy” David and Susan have their hands full. “Once we finish one round of feeding it’s almost time for the next,” says Wybenga.
And, with presently 11 kittens on the bottle, the network is out of money and in desperate need of help, but determined to keep the project going.
The group needs experienced kitten fosterers, loving adoptive homes, money and milk replacement powder (Esbilac for cats). Also, Wybenga says, “if some one is in the area and wants to participate more directly, contact me.”
Contact Japan Cat Network by e-mail at email@example.com or check out the group’s homepage at japancatnet.com Esbilac can be sent to: David Wybenga, 173 Inae, Hikone, Shiga, 521-1125. | <urn:uuid:07bd95a7-6e4c-4bd6-a68f-c7cfc8328f22> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2008/05/03/community/park-cats-need-your-help/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978984 | 526 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Ryan White was the teenaged hemophiliac who contacted AIDS through a blood transfusion, then was barred from attending school in Kokomo, Indiana. All but ostracized by the community, Ryan's mother (Judith Light) engages the services of a high-powered attorney (George C. Scott) to win back her son's basic rights. While the film ends with Ryan triumphing over his human adversaries, no effort is made to sugarcoat the situation. Even after he has been welcomed by another school, we see how the boy is shunned by certain students and their parents; nor is there any glossing over the fact that Ryan's days are numbered, despite the boy's enthusiastic plans for the time he has left (young White died shortly after this TV movie was first telecast in 1989). Despite its inherent sadness, The Ryan White Story is a celebration of an exceptional young human being whose short life touched so many others in a positive, uplifting manner. While Lukas Haas portrays the title character, the real Ryan White appears in the small role of Chad, another hemophiliac AIDS victim.
by Hal Erickson synopsis | <urn:uuid:7c0f90f5-3211-4892-ac5c-3604fc102bdc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-ryan-white-story-v128656 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969062 | 233 | 1.625 | 2 |
Last week my son’s school had an end of the year fundraiser . One of the ways they asked parents to help was by donating something for the bake sale. One thing we’ve learned about this particular school district is that they still allow home baked goods to be eaten and sold at school parties and functions. For this particular project they asked that each item be individually wrapped for easy distribution at the sale. I saw something similar to these cupcakes in my Family Fun magazine so we altered them a little bit and made them… They ended up selling out at the bake sale, I think the candy on top was especially appealing .
Here’s the Scoop:
1. Make and frost any cupcake recipe you want
2. We used peach rings, dots, chocolate chips, green fruit slices and frosting, but you could also use sour apple rings (I didn’t see these until it was too late, but so cute because they are green), gummy worms, gum drops, green M&M’s etc… be creative.
3. Cut the fruit slices in half and then half again to make the turtles feet… Really just try different shapes, I had to cut them a couple different times to get them the right shape. I also thought if you could find solid green gummy worms it might be a little easier to make the feet…
4. I think the rest is pretty visual. I used mini chocolate chips for the eyes, but wasn’t a huge fan of them. You could use a food pen or chocolate sprinkle/jimmy and that might look better…
5. The boys had fun putting them together, I think your kiddos would too ! | <urn:uuid:8997acb8-7fb3-4a77-b85a-47745e4a3b03> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mommyapolis.com/yummy/turtle-cupcakes/ | 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 | 0.96414 | 352 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Written by Silvana Buljan for Buljan&Partners
Imagine you lose all your hardly earned savings you invested in promising financial products, that were sold to you not informing you about the risk or just by blurring your eyes with promises that could not realistically be fulfilled… It is true that the responsibility is shared: the bank you trusted in has not been transparent in transactions, and you were looking for a high ROI without analyzing in depth the risk that these kind of products have. The fact is though that you are furious about your bank, and the client manager dealing with your money, and the government because they did not prevent this from happening, and and and.
You feel betrayed. And lost because suddenly life as retired person in the future has another image than the one that you were working on. What could the bank do to not lose you as customer? What would YOU make trust them again?
We live in financial times, yes, but we also live in a society whose “rules of the game” are being redefined / reinvented / questioned. Have we missed a fundamental discussion on such basic things like ethics or human values? Every citizen knows that a bank is making money with his money, it´s part of a bank´s business model. And every citizen knows that borrowing money is more expensive than lending it. That´s fair and nobody complains. But is it fair to not offer any recovery if things work out differently than thought? Definitely the money lost in your individual case is “peanuts” for the bank, but still you are the one taking over 100% of responsibility as you signed a “carte blanche” regarding liability rules.
Banks in the last couple of years (especially with the start of the financial crisis) have discovered Customer Experience Management, as well as they have been one of the first industries to discover Customer Relationship Management more than a decade ago. Why are they doing this? Might it be considered as magic wand to regain their customers’ trust? Or is it considered as another strategy to growth and profitability? Why not start with regaining trust by offering recovery and assuming responsibilites in a first place?
I’m amazed when reading some banks promises: “no commission”, “give and take”, “we care about you”, “passion for customers”…. “we want to improve our customers´experience” Every bank is making the same promise to customers, and almost all of them fail in delivery: there are still bad products in the market, and they are sold every day. But it´s fashionable to care about customers, yes, because they are the ones making the business model work, as in any other industry.
I have a true hope that those banks really investing in CEM do it not only to be more profitable by improving customer experience of selected segments, but by truly wanting to give answers to the fundamental discussion I mentioned before: My dear and appreciated customer, I listen to you, I respect you and I give you transparency in transaction and interaction. I have to make a living as well as you do, but let´s try to make it a WIN – WIN relationship so both of us are fine. Because this is what CEM is about: a WIN – WIN for both. | <urn:uuid:5422f5f3-d8f5-4cb9-bbb3-fbf28d44f2cf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.buljanandpartners.com/can-customer-experience-management-save-the-banking-sector%C2%B4s-image/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97464 | 685 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Jul 1 2012
Question: You have attacked the teachings of Calvin and Augustine. We’ll see which lasts the longest and stands the test of time—the writings of Augustine and Calvin and their contribution to orthodox theology or those of the writers and staff of TBC. Sorry, but history shows that in the world of art, music, literature, and theology God has given some to be head and shoulders above the rest of us. If I was sick I would seek the best, most brilliant surgeons possible. When studying Scripture I will continue to trust and rely on the great theologians, flawed as they may be.
Response: It is good counsel to “seek the best, most brilliant surgeons possible.” However, regarding spiritual matters, the intent to lean upon “the experts” clearly avoids the scriptural admonition to “prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Thes:5:21). Who are the experts when it comes to the Scriptures? Should we not test them? We are all flawed. More important, do Augustine and Calvin consistently and accurately “rightly divide the word of truth” (2 Tm 2:15)? We have simply pointed out some of their obvious contradictions and errors.
The Lord notes on a number of occasions that “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord” (Jer:17:5). Are we to place people upon pedestals? Even the Old Testament priests were told to not “go up by steps unto my altar, lest thy nakedness be discovered.” We are living in a time when socially, politically, and most important, spiritually, men are turning from their responsibilities and surrendering their thinking to “the experts.” The failure of this approach is becoming only too obvious.
If people regard us as the “answer men,” then we have failed in the task the Lord has given us. We seek to point individuals back to the Scriptures , following the example of the Bereans (Acts:17:11). What you advocate is contrary to the Lord’s admonition and is detrimental to the health of the Body. Those who accept the pronouncements of “big names” such as Calvin or Augustine without “searching the Scriptures daily” are insubordinate to the commands of the Lord.
When Christ rebuked individuals, it wasn’t because they failed to listen to Gamaliel or other prominent teachers. He went to the heart of the matter. The Scriptures were sufficient for the Lord Jesus Christ when He confronted the two disciples who were on the road to Emmaus (Lk 24:13-27). He told them, “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets [not the commentators] have spoken.” And, “...beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (v. 27).
Again, we have not advocated our “TBC opinion” as the standard, and any accusations to the contrary are unsupported and very selective generalizations. What about Calvin and his abuses in Geneva? What about the anti-Semitism/Replacement Theology generated by the teachings of Augustine? It is more than the fact that these men were flawed. As we acknowledged, we all are. The problem is that what they taught is at times greatly in conflict with what the Scriptures say. The Great Physician is the “best, most brilliant surgeon possible.”
It is He who warned against the traditions of men. Now, let’s be obedient to the commands of Christ and although we may find the comments of “great theologians” helpful at times, like all commentaries, the inspiration ceases when we move from the biblical text to the comments of men. We would greatly encourage a prayerful and scriptural reexamination of the position that you have advocated.
As another writer notes, “The reformers had proclaimed the priesthood of all believers, but the Anabaptists, their contemporaries, were not impressed with what they found in the reformers’ churches. The monopoly of the Catholic priest seemed to have been replaced by the monopoly of the reformed preacher. Experts were still disempowering the congregation and hindering it from becoming mature” (Stuart Williams, “Interactive Preaching,” 3/3/08, The Anabaptist Network). | <urn:uuid:cdfcf26a-4b5d-41ce-bb1c-f01a88a8d792> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thebereancall.org/content/july-2012-q-and-a-2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964998 | 944 | 1.679688 | 2 |
| ||This page is about the location that is home to the Brotherhood of Steel. For the Hidden Valley location, see Hidden Valley.|
Hidden Valley bunker
The Hidden Valley bunker is a location in the Mojave Wasteland. There are several similar-looking bunkers located close to each other in Hidden Valley, southeast of Sloan in the Mojave Wasteland. One particular bunker is the entrance to the home of the Brotherhood of Steel (Mojave chapter). It can be distinguished from the other bunkers in the area by the small broken tree stump directly on top of the dome.
Hidden Valley is a complex of USAF bunkers remaining from before the Great War near the heart of the valley. Abandoned even before the war, the area around the bunkers is littered with junk. Signs on the roads and peaks leading into the valley mark the boundaries of the complex. Stretches of drooping pre war wire fences also note the area as being USAF restricted. Prospectors who have returned from Hidden Valley have reported four bunkers, each with an intercom system, but complete silence in response to any calls on the intercoms. Furthermore, prospectors have reported an eerie feeling upon entering the complex. Others tell of seeing armored figures exiting the Valley from within a raging sandstorm that seems to arrive every evening and stay for the night.
- Transcripts from the Hidden Valley bunker terminal:
The goal of the Hidden Valley project is to create a self-sustaining shelter for high-ranking VIPs that can serve as a command structure in times of crisis. The bunker itself is located several hundred feet below the surface. Multiple layers of reinforced materials serve to prevent a breach of the inhabitable areas by anything save for a direct hit by a bunker-busting weapon utilizing a megatonnage considered outside the capability of America's closest competitors. In the event that our enemies become capable of such an attack, the bunker's DERVISH camouflaging system makes targeting the site impossible for automated systems, forcing aggressors to rely on guesswork and sheer luck.
The Hidden Valley Bunker relies on two main systems:
The CANDLE Fusion Power system provides power to all bunker systems. Built more for reliability and duration of service, the power output of the system has been exceeded by many current designs, but it can supply the bunker with power for an estimated 752 years.
The DERVISH Camouflage system provides visual and electronic interference to prevent airborne or long-range enemy weapons from targeting the bunker. The normal soil around Hidden Valley has been supplemented with a combination of aluminum and various silicates, which are then dispersed using a widespread network of industrial fans to blanket the area in a cloud of what is essentially chaff. Combined with the electronic countermeasures of the nearby array at Black Mountain, the bunker at Hidden Valley is effectively impossible to target.
The bunker is marked by a small broken tree stump directly on top of the dome. You will not be able to gain access to this bunker unless you have taken the holotape containing the passphrase from the two dead Brotherhood of Steel Paladins at the REPCONN Headquarters, the one near Black Mountain, or the 2 dead Brotherhood soldiers in a ditch on the artillery battered area outside Nellis Air Force Base.
If you have the holotape and passphrase, you will be given the option to say it into the intercom. Otherwise you can attempt to pick the Very Hard lock (lockpick 100) or by having follower Veronica Santangelo with you. Access can also be granted through the quest Wild Card: Side Bets or by advancing far enough into any storyline to be asked to investigate the BoS.
The facility is divided into an entrance area and two main levels. The Brotherhood of Steel Paladins will respawn after a couple days, if players are planning to take it over, it is advised to do so in one trip.
After entering the bunker there is a large entry room with a locked door on the opposite side, similar to all the other bunkers in Hidden Valley. On the other side of the locked door (you need a lock-pick skill of 100 to unlock it) is a empty room with open doorways to the left and right, which is guarded by at least two stationary Paladin on the opposition wall. They do not appear if you have brought Veronica with you. The doorway to the left leads to a small office with a desk and a computer terminal, while the doorway to the right leads to stairs going down to the main section of L1.
Hidden Valley bunker, first floor
The first floor contains the personnel quarters, a shooting range, armory, medical bay, and a school/educational room where initiates are trained.
After turning right down the set of stairs into the bunker, turn left, then right, and there are two sets of knight dorm rooms located one above the other with a set of descending stairs for the lower room. Each bed has a footlocker with a combination of a mid-condition laser pistol, energy cells and/or microfusion cells.
Hidden Valley bunker, second floor
The second floor contains the command room with living quarters for the Elder and Head Paladin Hardin. Located next to it, an archive/computer room for the Scribes, a workshop for the knights to repair and manufacture equipment, and a room containing VR chambers which seem to have been placed around the bunker's main reactor.
The Second Floor has the Brotherhood of Steel logo on the wall and two paths that go off to the east and to the west.
The west area has the Command Room with Elder McNamara and another adjoining hallway. Further down the hallway is where you find Head Paladin Hardin; he can be found in either of the two rooms beyond the first room.
The east area has the archive computer terminals, the Machine shop and the Virtual Reality pod room. The Virtual Reality pod room has both Head Scribe Taggart and Apprentice Watkins; it also houses the self-destruct authorization terminal and the self-destruct terminal (locked - Very Hard). Alternatively, terminals on the same floor of the bunker will give you a password. If you successfully hack the terminal or obtain a password, you can initiate a self-destruct sequence that will immediately vilify you with the Brotherhood of Steel and causes all Brotherhood of Steel members to become hostile. You can abort the sequence by reactivating the terminal and choosing to abort, but this has no effect on their hostility to the player at this point.
- Knight Torres, at the shooting range, has the key for the door that is on the sub level of the shop-counter. However, sometimes the key is not needed as the door is already unlocked. With the key, you can access the shop from the door below, stealing four near perfect sets of T-45d power armor and three T-45d power armor helmets, as well a few rifles and ammunition.
- In the white plastic bin by the desk in Schuler's office. Bunker L1, west of the central hub corridor junction a Nikola Tesla and You can be found.
- With Veronica as your companion when you enter she will go up to the intercom the following conversation will ensue:
- Veronica; "Hi, I'd like a large atomic shake and a double brahmin burger. And easy on the agave sauce this time."
- Ramos; "Veronica, we gave you a password. It's for your own protection."
- Veronica; "Let me in, Ramos. I know where you live."
- You can easily kill most of the Brotherhood on Level 1 with no karma or reputation loss by hacking the Hard terminal near the entrance (as long as you aren't seen) and turning the turrets against the Brotherhood.
- You can pickpocket the key from the Knight Torres by going into 3rd person, or if you squat down slightly to the left of the window you can inch right just enough to be hidden and reach her as well. This key will let you open the door under her and enter the armory. She will not say anything when you are in her shop but she may turn around to look at you.
- If you can't pickpocket Torres, a Brotherhood Paladin will occasionally walk into the armory and automatically unlock the door.
- In The Virtual Reality pod room, the Pods are from Vault 112 from Fallout 3. If you look at the screens in the pods, they show Tranquility Lane. This was probably a small detail forgotten by the developers or possibly implying that the Brotherhood of Steel is unable to change the programming.
- If the Bunker is destroyed by the player, the vents on the surface will emit smoke indefinitely implying there is a constantly burning fire in the bunker.
- Four Brotherhood of Steel paladins will regularly go out on patrol between 1am - 3am, guarding the area near their bunker until just before dawn.
- On the right of McNamara, is a map of the Mojave, similar to the map found in the Citadel from Fallout 3, with several locations marked by symbols, REPCONN Centre, Helios 1, The Fort, Camp Mccarran, The Lucky 38 and Nellis. All seem to be the centres of power for the major factions.
Hidden Valley bunker appears in Fallout: New Vegas.
- xbox360 If you found and killed a few of the paladins and later bring Veronica they will accept you and let you see the elder. However, you will be trapped in the room and the only way to get out is by pickpocketing the key from the guards. Later upon opening the door, all the paladins and alike will attack you. If you leave L2 all of your stuff will be removed (including caps) and there will be no way in getting them back.
- pc The paladin sitting at the shooting range may go missing. His reference ID is: 0010a6ff - use the console command prid 0010A6FF followed by moveto player. He then returns with his helmet on.
- xbox360 About three or more Brotherhood Paladins my spawn in the same shooting range stall and get stuck there trying to shoot at the target dummy. This may cause one of the Paladins to drop his/her Gauss rifle on the floor next to them. Though the weapon says "steal", it will not have an affect on your karma, your position with the Brotherhood, nor will any of the nearby Paladins seem to notice you taking the weapon.
- xbox360 By zoning out and back in the locker will be refilled with various ammunition, allowing you to collect an unlimited amount of energy ammunition (by constantly zoning in and out) and convert the ammunition into other types of energy ammunition, or even max charge ammunition at the workbench on Level 2.
- ps3 The merchant may begin to lag when asked to see her wares. The merchant will repeat her lines 2-3 more times before the item menu appears.
- xbox360 Inhabitants may react to firing exercises on shooting range as real combat and be unresponsive to attempts to communicate.
- xbox360 Veronica may repeat any sentence said on the intercom repeatedly, thus making her unable to converse with. This can be fixed by reloading a save.
- ps3 On occasion when visiting the hidden valley bunker with Veronica as a companion the bunker will appear to have been destroyed and the inner entrances blocked with rubble even if you have not set off the self destruct. However if you visit the bunker with Arcade Gannon and EDE in tow Brotherhood Paladins will spawn and attack upon exiting fast travel. If the courier wears the brotherhood power armor and enters the bunker now the entrances will be open and player will be free to move around the bunker and interact. * Note; NPC's may become hostile towards Arcade and EDE but will not become hostile to the player provided player is still wearing a brotherhood faction outfit and does not engage in fighting. Player will now be able to operate the self destruct terminal and destroy the hidden valley bunker as evident by the plumes of black smoke coming from the exhaust vents noticeable upon exiting the bunker. [verification overdue]
- ↑ Fallout: New Vegas Official Game Guide
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Transcripts of data terminal entries "HVBunkerGoalNote" and "HVBunkerSystemsOverview", located within the Hidden Valley Bunker. | <urn:uuid:113958d1-9c38-4224-a5d9-1874c29d10cd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Hidden_Valley_bunker?oldid=1699438 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936854 | 2,556 | 1.570313 | 2 |
AccessMyLibrary provides FREE access to millions of articles from top publications available through your library.
(From The Jakarta Post)
Minister of Defense Juwono Sudarsono recently made quite an interesting statement, that ideally the Indonesian Military (TNI) should be under his ministry's authority, while the National Police (Polri) should be under the Ministry of Home Affairs.
He added that it would take at least three to five years to see this ideal arrangement become a reality. Currently both the National Police and the TNI are directly under the President. The National Police separated from the TNI and were put under the president's control in April 1999, or one year after Soeharto's fall.
Juwono has also said it is common practice for the President to have direct access to the TNI chief and the National Police chief.
Although TNI Commander Gen. Endriartono Sutarto quickly played down the minister's idea, questioning the readiness of the civilian minister to lead … | <urn:uuid:c855a813-0b0c-4dc2-989d-87b8ba69b744> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-127270816/pros-and-cons-tni.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957002 | 206 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Iraq inquiry: Campbell dossier evidence questioned
A senior ex-intelligence official has disputed Alastair Campbell's evidence about a dossier which outlined the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.
Tony Blair's ex-spokesman told the Iraq inquiry last year the September 2002 document was designed to set out UK concerns, not "make the case for war".
But Michael Laurie said those producing it "saw it exactly as that and that was the direction we were given".
Mr Campbell said he had "nothing to add" to the evidence he had given.
The Iraq report is due to be published later this year and the inquiry panel, headed by Sir John Chilcot, is currently considering all the material it has received - including de-classified documents and evidence given during more than 100 public hearings over the past 18 months.
Among fresh documents it published on Thursday was a letter from Major General Michael Laurie, a member of the Defence Intelligence Staff in the run-up to the March 2003 invasion.'Defended every word'
In the letter, written in response to evidence given by Mr Campbell in January 2010, he disputes Mr Campbell's explanation for the motivation behind the dossier on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
End Quote Michael Laurie Former intelligence official
We knew at the time that the purpose of the dossier was precisely to make a case for war rather than setting out the available intelligence”
As No 10 director of communications between 1997 and 2003, Mr Campbell played a key role in the dossier - which contained the controversial claim that WMD could be deployed in 45 minutes of an order to use them.
In his evidence last year, Mr Campbell said he "defended every single word" of the document and that it did not "in any sense misrepresent the situation" with regard to Iraq at the time.
Describing it as a "cautious" assessment, he insisted it had not been designed to present the "case for war" but to highlight why Mr Blair was increasingly concerned about the threat posed by Iraq.
But Mr Laurie - who was responsible for delivering intelligence material on Iraq to assessment teams within the Ministry of Defence - said he disagreed with Mr Campbell's argument.
"Alastair Campbell said to the inquiry that the purpose of the dossier was not to "make a case for war," he wrote. "I had no doubt at this time this was exactly its purpose and these very words were used."
He added: "We knew at the time that the purpose of the dossier was precisely to make a case for war rather than setting out the available intelligence."
A similar document produced six months earlier had been rejected as it had "not made a strong enough case", he claimed.
"From then until September (2002) we were under pressure to find intelligence that could reinforce the case."'Direction and pressure'
But despite what he said was probably the most thorough "scrutiny of every piece of ground" in Iraq, he said intelligence experts could find no evidence of planes, missiles or any equipment related to WMD.
Mr Laurie - who is now chief executive of the charity Crimestoppers - also suggested the Joint Intelligence Committee ultimately responsible for producing and signing off the dossier had come under "direction and pressure" - something Mr Campbell has always strongly disputed.
Why did the government publish a dossier of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction?
The official line has always been that the aim was simply to put information in the public domain and not to serve as a piece of advocacy for a policy such as regime change.
That official line matters, particularly with regards to Britain's spies, who sat on the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) which drafted and signed off the dossier.
They are supposed to provide impartial assessments of intelligence and not get involved in the rather murkier business of pushing a policy and trying to persuade doubters in Parliament or the public of following the government of the day down a particular path.
The JIC is a collegiate body and has not, in any significant way, broken ranks over events.
But now, in the form of Michael Laurie, someone serving just below the top tier has expressed his displeasure about the way events have been characterised and particularly the extent to which those collecting intelligence were blamed for getting things wrong.
He is adamant the purpose of the dossier was, indeed, to make a case for war.
His assertion that there was direction and pressure on those drafting the dossier will be deeply uncomfortable for those associated with it.
"During the drafting of the final dossier, every fact was managed to make it as strong as possible, the final statements reaching beyond the conclusions intelligence assessments would normally draw from such facts," he added.
The dossier included a foreword by Mr Blair in which he wrote that he believed the intelligence had established "beyond doubt" that Iraq continued to produce chemical weapons.
Mr Campbell, who drafted the first version of the foreword - ultimately approved by Mr Blair - said no-one in intelligence challenged this statement.
However, on the 45-minute claim - which was retracted after the war - he has said the dossier "obviously" could have been clearer about it referring to battlefield munitions.
Questions about Mr Campbell's role in the dossier were at the centre of a post-war row with the BBC culminating in the death of the government weapons expert Dr David Kelly and the subsequent Hutton inquiry.
Former Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell said it would be up to the Chilcot inquiry to resolve what he said was "a direct and unequivocal conflict of evidence" about the dossier.
"The controversy surrounding the dossier of September 2002 lies right at the very heart of the criticisms made of the Blair government," he said.
"Sir John Chilcot and his colleagues will have to decide which of these two versions is correct. They can't both be right."
The BBC News Channel's chief political correspondent Laura Kuenssberg said Mr Campbell had said he had "nothing to add" to evidence he had given to the inquiry.
He said the dossier was not about making the case for war but had set out why the government had become more concerned about Iraq's weapons. He added he had "never met Gen Laurie".Autumn report
The Iraq Inquiry, which is examining the decision to go to war and lessons learnt in Iraq policy between 2001 and 2009, also disclosed on Thursday that its final report will not be published until the autumn at the earliest.
In February its chairman refused to set a deadline but publication had been expected in the summer.
On Thursday, Sir John Chilcot said the committee now hoped "to present our report to the prime minister later this year but not before Parliament's summer recess".
"Writing a report covering so wide and complex a time period necessarily takes time.
"Whilst writing the report, we are also simultaneously seeking the declassification of much relevant material so the public will understand why and how the inquiry has reached its conclusions.
"If the Iraq Inquiry chooses to make criticisms, as is the case with all public inquiries, this would necessarily involve further processes to give those criticised the opportunity to respond.
"We cannot predict now how long that would take." | <urn:uuid:1e0cdab6-abfb-4cb9-928f-20ea57e9321a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13371751 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980693 | 1,472 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Practices of an Agile Developer
A practical Agile book
Book review If nothing else, the Agile development movement has hit on a good brand. Agile has so many positive connotations – fast, graceful, dynamic. Come on, who doesn’t want to be Agile? Besides, the alternatives don’t have a handy label to grab on to. Formal methodologies? The Unified Process? Arthritic programming… Nope, Agile wins that battle hands down.
So, if you want to go with the flow and inject some Agility into your life as a developer, what do you actually have to do? The first thing to realise is that there is no one true way. There are lots of methodologies and processes in the Agile camp: Scrum, extreme programming, Crystal, Adaptive Software Development and plenty more… However, while there might be differences in emphasis or inspiration, there are a core set of practices that are pretty much shared by all of these schools of Agile development. And it's these practices that Venkat Subramaniam and Andy Hunt set out to document in their Practices of an Agile Developer
In fact, they set out 45 different practices organised into eight chapters that broadly cover the development life-cycle, from design to coding to debugging and so on. In terms of range, there’s not much that’s been left out, so this book does represent a fairly full Agile development toolkit.
Every practice is introduced with a demonic statement that whispers some bad advice to the reader – this is the temptation that the Agile practice will help you resist. There follows an explanation of the issues at hand and the implications of giving in to that demonic temptation. The Agile practice is then placed into context and the benefits of the practice are clearly explained – often helped along by a handy anecdote or war story. And, as a quick reminder for later, there’s usually a single Angelic statement of the practice at the end (the good cop versus the bad cop).
Aside from the explanations and the stories, there are also pointers to ‘Keeping Your Balance’ so that you don’t go overboard when adopting a new practice. Each practice also has a ‘What It Feels Like’ section to help you recognise whether you’re doing it right. The latter smacks of a being a bit of a gimmick. Surely, the real test of a practice is whether it improves the development process rather than some vague and subjective description of ‘what it feels like’?
All the core Agile techniques are covered – including the benefits of automated builds, unit testing, continuous builds, iterative and incremental development, regular releases to customers, code reviews etc. Additionally, there are process-related practices as well as purely technical ones. These include things like mandating that pretty much everyone writes code (this last directed particularly at architects too grand to humble themselves with mere programming), the benefits of high-levels of customer involvement in the development process and so on.
As well as the practices, the book also offers advice on how best to move to Agile development. This is often where the best of intentions crash head-long into existing corporate cultures. The advice is to take it slowly and to introduce Agile incrementally [this applies to just about any innovation involving cultural change – ed] because big-bang transitions are hard to pull off - often because they don’t get adequate buy-in.
Practices of an Agile Developer
Verdict: The book benefits from concision and carries less of the ideological load that seems to mar some of the more fevered Agile literature. As a statement of useful development practices – regardless of whether you follow Agile or not – this is highly readable and eminently practical.
Authors: Venkat Subramaniam and Andy Hunt
Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf
Buy this book at Cash & Carrion! | <urn:uuid:d7754e25-ffdd-4132-aafc-8a660c49c66e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/10/practices_agile_developer/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943834 | 815 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Cruelty to Bulls
6 March 2004
NBC, the TV station that promised it has a
"commitment to compassion," has begun airing bull-riding events on
its sports lineup.
The announcers on these shows state that the bull is
"trained" to buck. This is a lie; the previously calm bull "bucks" due to a
strap or rough rope that is tightly cinched near his genitals, which causes
him pain. This is clearly seen on all bucking bulls - you will not see a
bull "buck" without the strap. Before the bull is released from the chute,
to make him appear "wild," his tail is viciously raked across the slates and
he is shocked with an electric prod.
The public does not see this part; I have. Others have
reported seeing the animal urinate and defecate in fear, and look
frantically for a way out. If this were done to dogs and cats, there would
be an outcry of protest across the land; why is it tolerated for bulls?
Please tell NBC you will not tolerate such cruelty on
their airwaves, just so they and some phony "cowboy" can make a buck. The
animals cannot speak for themselves. Such antiquated barbarism must go the
way of legal slavery and child labor.
Kiley Blackman, spokesperson
Animal Defenders of Westchester
Published in Times-Herald record, | <urn:uuid:623c0fdb-c9dc-4b38-8d4d-24bf6941fcba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.all-creatures.org/adow/let-20040306.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963093 | 305 | 1.679688 | 2 |
From UNC Charlotte Chancellor Philip L. Dubois:
Budget-minded students and parents are interested in the cost of securing a college degree. That explains public attention to university rankings and ratings issued by popular magazines. Most recently, Kiplingers Personal Finance magazine published its 100 Best Value Colleges. You may ask: Why wasnt UNC Charlotte in the rankings? We sure did. As one might expect, the devil is in the details of how Kiplingers measures both cost and quality to determine overall value.
Cost factors account for 45 percent of Kiplingers ratings. Sensibly, these measure out-of-pocket expenses such as tuition, fees, room/board and books. In this cost analysis, however, Kiplingers also uses the financial characteristics of an institutions students. UNC Charlotte serves the largest number of students in the UNC system eligible for federal Pell grants that support the neediest students; 72 percent of our students receive some kind of financial aid. Because Kiplingers uses the financial status of an institutions current students, it is difficult for UNC Charlotte to compete in the magazines cost assessment.
In terms of quality, most of Kiplingers factors (which account for 55 percent of the ratings) focus on the selectivity of freshmen admissions, the standardized test scores of those admitted, and retention and time to degree. Few, if any, of Kiplingers quality measures address the actual effectiveness of instruction or the educational experience itself. Moreover, in the case of UNC Charlotte, Kiplingers ratings ignore the population of students who come via transfer (approximately 43 percent of our new students), and the demonstrable linkage between students economic status and their ability to graduate. We know that 44 percent of new UNC Charlotte students work an average of 22 hours per week while they attend school.
Despite the disadvantages in Kiplingers ratings, UNC Charlotte will not allow rankings to dictate the way it carries out its mission. The university is committed to an accessible and affordable quality education. Students and their families have heard that message clearly as enrollment at UNC Charlotte has increased by more than 26 percent since 2005 with no change in admissions standards.
At the same time, our increase in tuition and fees for next year is the third lowest in the UNC system. And we rank 17th of 18 urban peer institutions in total cost. These are rankings we are proud to celebrate.
As we proceed through this years session of the N.C. General Assembly, it is important to remind our citizens that the best way to keep higher education affordable is for the state to fulfill the promise of Article IX, Section IX of the North Carolina Constitution to keep the cost of higher education as far as practicable free of expense. And where increases in tuition and fees are unavoidable, state-funded need-based financial aid must be provided to ensure equity and access for all qualified students. North Carolina has a proud history that proves that low cost and high quality can go hand in hand. | <urn:uuid:720f5c5c-262b-4976-87e3-66feca79934b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/02/14/3855560/unc-charlotte-is-a-great-value.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948902 | 593 | 1.578125 | 2 |
The tea party movement started as a welcome protest against the alarming growth of federal spending and federal control. It had a strong anti-statist flavor, or seemed to. But judging from the applause for Sarah Palin at its convention, the movement's suspicion of government power is exceeded only by its worship of government power.
Her keynote address at last week's gathering in Nashville may have been the curtain raiser on a 2012 presidential campaign. "I think that it would be absurd to not consider what it is that I can potentially do to help our country," she told Fox News when asked about that option.
I'm glad it was she and not I who first used the word "absurd" in relation to a possible Palin bid for the White House. Because if her speech made anything clear, it's that the shallow, ill-informed, truth-twisting demagogue seen in the 2008 presidential campaign is all she is and all she wants to be.
When it comes to economic affairs, the tea partiers agree that—as Palin put it—"the government that governs least, governs best." When it comes to war and national security, however, her audience apparently thinks there is no such thing as too much government.
The conventioneers applauded when Palin denounced Obama for his approach to the war on terrorists. Why? Because he lets himself be too confined by the annoying limits imposed by the Constitution. "To win that war, we need a commander in chief, not a professor of law," she declares.
Is her point that Obama is allergic to the use of military power or can't bear to fulfill his responsibility as head of the armed forces? That would come as a surprise to Iraqis, who have seen Obama stick to President Bush's timetable for withdrawal.
It would come as a surprise to Afghans, who have seen him embark on a massive buildup of U.S. troops in their country. It would come as a surprise to Pakistanis, who have seen an increase in U.S. drone missile attacks on their soil.
Palin accuses Obama of "reaching out to hostile regimes" and "apologizing for America," with pitiful results: nuclear tests in North Korea, repression in Iran. What she doesn't mention—though, to be entirely fair, she may not know it—is that the first North Korean nuclear test came in 2006 and that before Obama arrived, the mullahs in Tehran did not rule with a gentle, loving hand.
Her chief gripe, though, is that federal agents read the alleged Christmas bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, his Miranda rights shortly after his arrest, at which point, she claims, he "lawyered up and invoked our U.S. constitutional right to remain silent."
Not for long, he didn't. The FBI says Abdulmutallab provided a wealth of useful information under questioning after he got a lawyer. For that matter, as FBI Director Robert Mueller and National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair said last week, he is still being interrogated.
But facts have never been Palin's strong suit. Nor do they matter, because what infuriates her is the mere idea that constitutional protections would apply to "a terrorist who hates our Constitution and tries to destroy our Constitution."
This is not some bizarre paradox. Lots of people who despise our Constitution—Nazis, communists, Klansmen, Alaska secessionists—enjoy its protections. Does she think the Bill of Rights should apply only to people who share her views?
That would not leave much of the document she and the tea partiers claim to revere.
Besides, Obama didn't invent the heretical notion of accepting limits on the government's latitude with jihadists. The Bush administration turned hundreds of terrorism cases over to the federal courts, without audible complaint from the right. The Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution extends even to accused foreign terrorists held at Guantanamo.
The advantage of having a former law professor in the Oval Office is that he doesn't have to be tutored in such elementary realities. But Palin evinces a bitter resentment of any information that contradicts her blind faith in a benevolent, all-powerful security regime. She's more than willing to trade liberty for safety.
That went over conspicuously well in Nashville, where tea partiers cheered a leader who places excessive trust in government, disdains constitutional freedoms, and promotes a cult of personality. So remind me: What is it they don't like about Barack Obama?
COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM | <urn:uuid:454f6865-dc15-4bdc-b701-07a4710c3f42> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://reason.org/news/printer/palin-exposes-the-tea-partiers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974387 | 917 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Cleveland Development and Engineering Services Department Director Jonathan Jobe said Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation officials inspected the job site late Tuesday evening, but he had not spoken to the state agency this morning.
Jobe said the erosion control devices must meet a minimum standard of withstanding a 5-inch rainfall within 24 hours when stormwater flows into an exceptional stream such as Brymer Creek.
The minimum standard on the east end of the new road is 4 inches because that section drains into Stone Lake, which is not classified as an exceptional body of water. In that area, the water topped a silt fence, but Job said the device functioned as designed.
“The water topped the fence at one point and created a spillway,” Jobe said. “That’s what you want to see happen because you want the water to settle.”
The rain measured 4.8 inches between 11 a.m. Monday and 9 a.m. Tuesday at the site located about a third of a mile from Brymer Creek.
Jobe said right now, it seems to be more of a maintenance issue and the erosion control company will clean debris from the check dams and from around silt fences. | <urn:uuid:f833b01e-38c6-4a4d-9b96-1d17e7c44c97> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clevelandbanner.com/view/full_story/20202997/article-Inspection-shows-Brymer-Creek-protected-by-new-erosion-control | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961296 | 251 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Top Gear at Iceland's Eyjafallajökull volcano – Click above for high-res image gallery
It seems so obvious in retrospect, doesn't it? Consider the facts. Exhibit A: Top Gear has demonstrated a penchant for visiting the faraway reaches of Iceland for some of their memorable television stunts and was seen filming in the cold just last week in one of their beloved Toyota trucks. Exhibit B: The boys at Top Gear – and especially ringleader Jeremy Clarkson – don't exactly have a stellar reputation for respecting the planet. Exhibit C: A large volcanic eruption is taking place in Iceland as we speak.
We're not the only ones suspicious. Says media commentator Annalisa Kneejerk:
Coincidence? We think not. After all, it's already been scientifically proven.It has been scientifically proven that Top Gear is responsible for almost every evil in the modern world, so the eruption of a furious tectonic force barely a week after Richard Clarkson's 'visit' can hardly be viewed as mere coincidence... We have it on good authority that Jeremy Hammond [sic] drove one of his favourite Ferrari gas-guzzlers at 100mph, straight into the main magma chamber, which could quite easily have caused this geological catastrophe. Thankfully I've never watched the show.
Related GalleryTop Gear at Iceland’s Eyjafallajökull volcano
[Source: Top Gear] | <urn:uuid:9288a9e0-9a3f-4a92-993a-b0370bb8bda8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.autoblog.com/2010/04/16/top-gear-takes-blame-for-icelandic-volcano-eruption/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95899 | 291 | 1.617188 | 2 |
And now let us turn our attention to Ivan Rakhmanin, an inspector of prisons in the Soviet Union, and to the letter he wrote to The New York Times on instructions from the Central Committee of the Communist Party.
Rakhmanin is not important. He is a tiny part of the great machine that supervises the largest prison system in the world. One of its major purposes, carried out with efficiency for seven decades, is to punish and suppress political dissidents with long, brutal incarceration.
His letter, however, is important. To the best of the knowledge of the Helsinki Watch committee of the United States, which monitors human rights agreements signed by the Soviet Union, it is the first time a Soviet official has responded publicly to specific charges about political prisoners in labor camps.
Rakhmanin was instructed to reply to a column by this writer that appeared on April 23, 1987. His letter passed through superiors, was mailed from Moscow on Dec. 1 and printed in The Times on Dec. 26. Since then it has been the subject of detailed examination and discussion among Soviet dissidents here and abroad and among specialists on Soviet affairs in Washington and Europe.
The column dealt with the political prisoners in Perm 36-1, who were sent to this most notorious of camps to be locked up for years -- sometimes more than a quarter of a century. Their offense was to write, utter or translate statements, essays or poems considered ``anti-Soviet propaganda.``
The column was about matters labeled top secret in the Soviet Union -- foul starvation rations, special ``interrogations,`` hard labor, solitary confinements, repeated sentences, deaths.
Soviet exiles and specialists believe the fact that Moscow decided to reply shows that paying attention, the plea of prisoners everywhere, can sometimes have impact, particularly at moments when the jailer`s bosses are striving for international respectability.
But they are saddened that the letter sent at the orders of the leaders of the Soviet Communist Party is a pack of lies. It describes Perm 36-1 as a place where labor is not even arduous, prisoners live in nice big cells and have TV, radio, books and magazine subscriptions. And he wants the world to know that some of the prisoners listed in the column actually had been pardoned!
Detailed point-by-point refutations have come in from Helsinki Watch, from the Soviet exiles` Center for Democracy and in letters from former prisoners and their families now out of the Soviet Union.
One witness after another testifies about solitary confinement lasting for months or years, about being totally cut off from family visits or mail, about being fed every other day, about rotten and meager food, about guards handing out food-deprivation punishments time after time to weary prisoners who do not fill labor quotas.
I think even the most trusting of Americans have little difficulty making the choice between the word of the victims and their persecutors. For those who might, a few items:
1. The inspector triumphantly lists some pardoned prisoners. He does not say that most were pardoned after the column appeared and often only days before the expiration of their sentences of a decade or more.
2. The inspector says some were guilty of robbery and rape. But the truth is all were imprisoned in Perm 36-1 only for anti-Soviet activity.
3. Suddenly and without announcement, Perm 36-1 was closed on Dec. 8, according to information I have received and trust. So Moscow can keep its ban on any foreigner`s inspection; nothing left to inspect.
The prisoners merely have been moved to another camp in the Urals. Nothing has changed. Mart-Olav Niklus and Ivan Sokulsky still sit in solitary confinement cells. Grigory Prikhodko has virulent tuberculosis, endangering his three other cellmates.
The exact address of the new site of suffering, Camp VS-389-35, is unknown. But letters can be sent care of Mikhail Gorbachev or the Central Committee, Kremlin, Moscow.
There are prisoners in other jails, of course. Sarkis Ogadzhanyan, sentenced for being a member of Hare Krishna, died in a camp at the age of 23 on Dec. 26. That was the day The Times published the letter from Ivan Rakhmanin, inspector of Soviet jails. | <urn:uuid:808aa5ec-88ca-4685-bd35-3640fc173707> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1988-01-20/news/8801050004_1_political-prisoners-soviet-official-soviet-dissidents | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968172 | 888 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Ah, spring. It's a time of year when business picks up... just when the kids get out of school and it's harder to get work done. It's still important to use this time productively, even working in a little reading time while you hang with your family.
This season, my business bookshelf is once again stacked high with interesting new books whose titles have intrigued me enough to keep them out of the donation pile. Among them are useful tomes out recently for wannabe business owners, as well as bootstrappers, innovators, and leaders of all stripes.
This isn't a ranking -- they're in alphabetical order:
1. The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future by Chris Guillebeau. The author is the nomadic entrepreneur behind the popular Art of Non-Comformity blog. In his new book, he shares his own tips -- as well as success stories he's collected -- on how to start a location-independent business on the cheap and build it into a decent living.
2. Better by Mistake: The Unexpected Benefits of Being Wrong by Alina Tugend. I recently studied how companies such as Twitter and Groupon stumbled upon their winning idea almost as an afterthought to another business. Now I'm looking forward to reading more examples of serendipitous business success from The New York Times' "ShortCuts" columnist.
3. Building a Small Business That Warren Buffett Would Love by Adam Brownlee. This book could be renamed "The Warren Buffett Way." It's a manual on the business fundamentals the Oracle of Omaha looked for in Berkshire Hathaway acquisitions including GEICO and Fruit of the Loom.
4. Mob Rules: What the Mafia Can Teach the Legitimate Businessman by Louis Ferrante. Been missing The Sopranos? Learn how to apply mob principles to your business by networking, cutting overhead, staying up on the competition, and compromising. Just limit the whacking, please.
5. Mother Teresa, CEO: Unexpected Principles for Practical Leadership by Ruma Bose & Lou Faust. Before you laugh, note that Mother Teresa did go from nothing to heading a multinational organization, on a shoestring budget all the way. Maybe we could all learn something from that.
6. Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain: How I Went from Gang Member to Multimillionaire Entrepreneur by Ryan Blair with Don Yaeger. We all love rags-to-riches stories, and this one delivers that in spades. It details how Blair descended into gang life, went to jail, and then turned his life around with help from an entrepreneur-mentor.
7. The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf. Blank teaches the Lean Launchpad program at Stanford University that's now being used to train government scientists, while Dorf has been a serial entrepreneur for 40 years. In this book, the two share their methods for quickly discovering the best business model and getting a new business off the ground.
What business books will you read this spring? Add to my list in the comments below. | <urn:uuid:8b8c545d-f05d-447d-a421-13e858bd793f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/223227 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944405 | 670 | 1.59375 | 2 |
How wide does this go? Now Google devices 'found to transmit user locations back to the company'
- Google's Android HTC phone transmitted data back to Google several times an hour
- Apple slammed for user locations being stored in iPhone and iPad
- Google and Apple are using location data to build databases of Wi-Fi hotspots
- Data from Apple devices syncs with computer, meaning anyone with access can see
- Representative Edward Markey questions whether the practice may be illegal
Tests: An Android HTC phone was found to track its location every few seconds and transmitted the data back to Google several times an hour
The row over the privacy of mobile phone users escalated today as it was revealed that Google devices regularly transmit user locations back to the company.
The new revelations come after Apple was this week slammed by several Congress members for the way user locations are being stored in unencrypted databases on the iPhone and iPad, sometimes stretching back several months.
In Google's case an Android HTC phone tracked its location every few seconds and transmitted the data back to Google several times an hour, according to new research by security analyst Samy Kamkar for the Wall Street Journal.
It also transmitted the name, location and signal strength of any close Wi-Fi networks and the phone's unique identifier.
Both Google and Apple have previously admitted they are using location data to build massive databases of Wi-Fi hotspots.
This can then be used to pinpoint individual's locations via their mobile phones, which in turn could help the companies tap into the huge market for location-based services, currently worth $2.9billion.
This figure is expected to rise to a staggering $8.3billion in 2014, according to research company Gartner.
Location data is some of the most valuable information a mobile phone can provide, since it can tell advertisers not only where someone's been, but also where they might be going — and what they might be inclined to buy when they get there.
A spokeswoman for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada told the Journal the office 'had concerns' about using mobile phones to collect Wi-Fi data and had expressed those concerns to Google itself.
Concern: Apple was slammed by several Congress members for the way iPhone and iPad users' locations are being kept under secret surveillance by Apple
'The whole issue of the tracking capabilities of new mobile devices raises significant privacy issues,' she said.
In the past Google has pointed out that its collected Wi-FI data is anonymous and that it deletes the start and end points of every trip it uses for traffic maps.
But, the data, provided to the Journal exclusively by Mr Kamkar, contained a unique identifier linked to an individual's phone.
Mr Kamkar developed a tracking file called 'evercookie' that once installed on a computer, was difficult to get rid of, in order to highlight the privacy vulnerabilities in web-browsing software.
The Journal then had an independent consultant test out the programme on an Android device and its use of location data. It worked.
A graphic of iPhone location data from Washington D.C. to New York City
Secret surveillance: The map shows the locations and phone use of a journey taken by the researchers who discovered the capability on the device
Now watch the video of the trip from Washington D.C. to New York
The news that both Google and Apple have these capabilities is a
worry, especially after the Journal's findings last year that some of
the most popular smartphone apps use location data and other personal
information aggressively - in some cases sharing it with third-party
companies without the user's consent or knowledge, the paper found.
Representative Edward Markey and Senator Al Franken have both expressed concern about the way Apple may use its location data.
Their anger was prompted by a report from researchers Alasdair Allan, research fellow at University of Exeter in the UK
and Pete Warden, the founder of Data Science Toolkit.
Both Google, led by Chairman and CEO, Eric Schmidt, right, and Apple, led by CEO Steve Jobs, left, have admitted they use location data for Wi-Fi databases
Anger: Senator Al Franken, left and Representative Edward Markey, right, have both expressed concern about the way Apple may use its location data
A TOOL FOR THE POLICE?
The police could certainly benefit from the location data stored on the iPhone with a simple high tech device called Cellebrite UFED.
This is a box that connects to almost any personal mobile phone and downloads its entire contents, including call logs, texts, photos and web history even if it has been deleted.
Michigan State Police yesterday defended their use of the device arguing that it was an effective tool in fighting crime.
But the Michigan branch of the ACLU disagrees and fears police are using it on routine arrests and even traffic stops, according to Fox News.
Michigan State Police spokesman Tiffany Brown told FoxNews.com the devices are only used to gather evidence for serious cases such as crimes against children however.
'The (department) only uses the device if a search warrant is obtained or with consent,' Brown added.
The pair found the Apple devices save the latitude and longitude of users' locations, along with a time stamp, then copies the data to the owner's computer whenever the two are synchronised.
They were able to build an extraordinary detailed map of where they had been, but said they had no evidence the file was being transmitted to Apple.
They have since built a programme that individuals can download for
free to see what location data has been stored on their own phones.
And after talking to people in the Android community Mr Warden and Dr Allan were told that Android phones had something similar to Apple, but that only a couple of weeks of rolling data was kept.
On their website the pair speculate whether Apple may have built the feature in for future developments but add: 'The fact that it's (the data) transferred across devices when you restore or migrate is evidence the data-gathering isn't accidental.'
They highlight that the location data is stored in an easily-readable form on a person's computer.
'By passively logging your location without your permission, Apple have made it possible for anyone from a jealous spouse to a private investigator to get a detailed picture of your movements,' they write.
WHAT ABOUT BUSINESSES?
Many companies hand out business mobile phones and increasingly iPads to their colleagues.
The revelations about data storage could prove to be a headache for companies in terms of security, not to mention employees who may use the devices for business and personal use.
Michael Sutton, a security researcher with Zscaler, found that JotNot Scanner Pro, an iOS application, stores passwords for other applications unprotected in the iTunes backup database.
In a blog post, Sutton said: 'Unfortunately, the authentication credentials stored for Evernote, Google Docs, Apple's iDisk and any WebDav enabled server are stored in plain text.
'Therefore, anyone that gained access to this backup file, would then have your username/password for these services.'
Other mobile phone providers collect similar data but it's kept securely behind their firewall, they write.
This data ordinarily requires a court order to gain access to it,
whereas the data from Apple devices is there for anyone who uses that
person's phone or computer to see, they add.
Senator Al Franken said the issue raises 'serious privacy concerns,' especially for children using the devices.
He said: 'Anyone who gains access to this single file could likely determine the location of a user's home, the businesses he frequents, the doctors he visits, the schools his children attend, and the trips he has taken — over the past months or even a year.'
Representative Edward Markey questioned whether the practice may
be illegal under a federal law governing the use of location information
for commercial purposes and said consumers weren't properly informed.
He said: 'Apple needs to safeguard the personal location information of its users to ensure that an iPhone doesn't become an iTrack.
'Collecting, storing and disclosing a consumer's location for commercial purposes without their express permission is unacceptable and would violate current law.'
Mr Markey, who is the co-chair of the House Bipartisan Privacy Caucus, sent a letter to Apple CEO Steve Jobs on Thursday in response to the research.
Specifically, Markey wants to know if Apple developed the feature intentionally to keep a log of users' whereabouts. And if it did mean to collect this information, what did it intend to do with it? He also wants to know if Apple has notified consumers that this information is being collected.
He said he's seeking answers to his questions by May 12.
Apple said it 'intermittently' collects location data,
including GPS coordinates, of many iPhone users and nearby Wi-Fi
networks and sends that data to itself every 12 hours, according to a
letter the company sent to Mr Markey and Representative for Texas, Joe
Barton, last year.
A spokesman for Google said: 'All location sharing on Android is opt-in by the user. We provide users with notice and control over the collection, sharing and use of location in order to provide a better mobile experience on Android devices.
'Any location data that is sent back to Google location servers is anonymised and is not tied or traceable to a specific user.' | <urn:uuid:a10130e4-a213-4ae7-9770-fa3742c47127> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1379597/Privacy-Googles-Android-HTC-mobile-phone-transmits-user-locations-company.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948805 | 1,941 | 1.679688 | 2 |
MARQUETTE - The city of Marquette will have 40 new trees budding come spring, after receiving a $5,000 grant from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Urban and Community Forestry Program.
The program is run in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service.
The Urban Forestry Grant, which will be matched by the city using money from its public works fund as well as its major and local street funds, has been awarded to Marquette in the past, with a number of trees planted in the city as a result.
Trees have been planted using grant funding in McCarty's Cove and Mattson Lower Harbor Park, among other sites.
"The nice thing about those grants is it allows us to augment our annual tree planting with a project we may not have otherwise been able to justify funding for," said Paul Albert, city arborist and Park Cemetery sexton.
The city will be awarded $125 per tree for a total of $5,000 toward the planting of 40 trees within the city.
The trees will be planted in the Kaufman Sports Complex and Park Cemetery.
Of the 40 being planted, 30 will be at the cemetery and 10 at the sports complex.
"At the Park Cemetery (they will) reforest a location that is pretty heavily reforested, but we plant trees through there periodically. We really haven't done a mass replanting there," Albert said. "The 10 new trees out at Kaufman Sports Complex, which is one of our newer parks, is basically devoid of trees, 10 shade trees will sort of be the background for the future."
Albert said the trees will likely come from a nursery in Wisconsin the city has dealt with previously, and will include a variety of species.
"A lot of them are not native to our area, but perform well in our area," Albert said. "We're also planting some disease resistant elm varieties. We'll do decorative planting, some flowering trees such as horse chestnut and flowering crabs."
Jackie Stark can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 242. | <urn:uuid:c7faf634-d0ed-411c-af7b-b0002ac0bf97> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.miningjournal.net/page/content.detail/id/581342/State-grant-used-to-plant-trees.html?nav=5006 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964629 | 430 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Fashion Models Speak! (And Tweet!)
NEW YORK (AP) - Social media is giving a voice to models who, for the most part, have built their careers as pretty, non-speaking faces.
They’ll tweet what they had for breakfast, post behind-the-scenes photos on Tumblr and use Facebook to cultivate "friends" around the world. Tech-savvy fashion followers are eating it up, gaining entry to a world that is so often behind velvet ropes.
"I realized there was an audience interested in what I had to say, not just the images from my work," said model Coco Rocha, who alternates personal posts and lighthearted tidbits with a more businesslike platform to highlight brands and magazines she’s shooting for as well as her favorite social and charitable causes.
At age 23, Rocha is no longer the new girl in town, but her fan base of more than 200,000 Twitter followers and 66,000 Facebook friends (plus Tumbler, Google Plus and Instagram accounts and blog readers) gives her "longevity," she said. "Because I have a voice and I’m sticking to having that voice, I feel like I have extended my career."
Name recognition increases a model’s value, said Sean Patterson, president of the Wilhelmina agency. Models who become celebrities, online or otherwise, might even help reverse the trend of movie and pop stars with "relatable" personal stories taking the A-list advertising jobs and magazine covers that used to go to models.
With the day of the supermodel over, models have become more "interchangeable and disposable," Patterson said. But social media may change that by letting models define themselves: "With fan sites, blogs and Facebook, all of a sudden you can follow a model and know who she is."
Models with online followings can also create extra buzz for brands they represent. "I imagine, for example, that Victoria’s Secret likes that Doutzen (Kroes) has so many Twitter followers and that she tells them, ’Watch the Victoria’s Secret show I’m in at 9 p.m.," Patterson said.
In addition, social media lets models show the interesting lives they lead off the runway, and it’s a way for chatty, likable personalities to shine. That could tip the balance of who makes it big and who doesn’t, said Michael Flutie, of the E! show "Scouted."
"If you have 10 beautiful girls, all diamonds in the rough to be the next Christy Turlington or Cindy Crawford, you have to narrow it down somehow and you’re going to narrow it down to the four who can communicate really well digitally," he said.
Flutie, a veteran agent and manager, added that being photogenic is no longer the only requirement: "If you can’t walk and talk, you can’t really be a successful ambassador of a brand. You have to be able to communicate."
Models should also know how to Google. There’s no excuse for a model with thousands of cyber followers to not know the name of a company’s CEO when she shows up to shoot its catalog, Flutie said.
In the 1990s, Turlington, Crawford and their pals like Linda Evangelista, Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell were household names, but they didn’t get to create their own personas the way Rocha or Kroes do today. The public got to know those supermodels in gossip columns and paparazzi photos; this newer generation posts notes about their yoga poses.
"I started out doing all this as a fun thing by myself," said Kroes. "My big thing was how I could give back and how I could tell people I was involved in charity, but then I figured out how it all fits together: I realized I could build my own profile."
Liane Mullin, co-founder of Modelinia.com, an online industry hub, notes that models have a lot of credibility when it comes to posts about "fashion, beauty, fitness, nutrition and food. That’s what they’re experts in. If they recommend a mascara, they’ve had it put on them 10,000 times, and I’ve never worn that much mascara myself, then I trust her opinion."
Hearing about their everyday lives is icing on the cake, she said. "When you see who their friends are, who they are getting congratulations from, who is sending birthday wishes, it’s the popular group that you’re watching from the sidelines that you always wanted to be a part of."
Models also tend to be very active online once they start. "They’re traveling all over the world, sometimes with people they don’t know, and they’re lonely at times. Social media keeps them company and connected," Mullins said.
Model Heide Lindgren wasn’t sure about social media at first. She worried about alienating friends and family, fans or potential employers. But when she wanted to promote a pet cause, Models4Water, which supports clean drinking water efforts, doing it online was the best way. It put her in touch with people in the renewable energy industry, pet lovers and fashion fans. From there, she was hooked.
"You can make yourself into more than a model this way. ... It introduces me to a new audience, and it might be more people seeing my posts than something that’s in Vogue," Lindgren said.
She mentions products occasionally, but not as paid endorsements. She’s not sure pitchwoman is the online personality she wants: "I want it to be 100 percent real."
Kroes said she’s still trying to strike the right balance in presenting herself as new wife and mother, celebrity and do-gooder. Sometimes, she slips and sends something personal, not thinking about the thousands of people who might be reading her post. "Sometimes it’s scary. I can tweet and 160,000 can see what I’m doing or cooking at home. I forget that because I’m just doing it on my phone, but I’m always trying to reach people in a positive way so I don’t think it’s a bad thing."
Rocha is posting more than ever, but she’s vowing to self-censor a little after tweeting last month from the U.S. premiere of "Iron Lady" that she was excited to see Glenn Close. The movie stars Meryl Streep.
"People tweeted back right away: ’dumb model,’ but it was A LOT of people," she said. "When I started, models were booked only for their cheekbones. Now I think I get bookings because people will say they respect me, or we stand for the same things, or they think what I have to say is interesting. It’s better to hear that than just, ’You have gorgeous cheekbone structure.’" | <urn:uuid:66fd8150-8674-420a-958b-0e4375ebc134> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.edgelosangeles.com/style/fashion/128563/fashion_models_speak!_(and_tweet!) | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963474 | 1,490 | 1.5625 | 2 |
BOWLING GREEN - When a three-story building in downtown North Baltimore became so run down that inspectors feared it would fall down back in 2001, Wood County health officials decided to find a way to eliminate similar health and safety hazards.
With funding from the cities, villages, and townships in the county, the health department created a demolition program for condemned buildings that's considered one-of-a-kind in the state. Most of the 15 or so buildings that have come down since have been targeted because of complaints the health department has received from neighbors.
"We don't like telling neighboring property owners that we can't do anything about it," said Brad Espen, acting health commissioner. "We obviously have to be very careful when we proceed with something like this, but it's proven to be a good program."
To get the authority to tear down a privately owned structure, the county must first order the property owner to make the repairs. If that doesn't work, they have to have the structure condemned, hold an administrative hearing where the property owner is invited, then get bids for demolition and approval from the board of health to move forward.
Last month, the board of health gave final approval to demolition plans for five properties, including a former commercial building in Milton Center that a contractor began tearing down yesterday; a house on King Road near Haskins, and three houses in the Perrysburg Heights neighborhood in Perrysburg Township.
Anita Serda, president of the Perrysburg Heights Community Association, said the organization has been trying for years to get something done about those eyesores and others.
"For us, the issue obviously is the safety of the kids and the community," Ms. Serda said. "Some of these places have been condemned. Some are partially torn down. There are others that have caught fire. They have broken out windows, overgrown grass; then people dump trash on the properties."
She said the health department's involvement is welcome relief.
"I think it's going to be very uplifting for the community because the individuals who have lived next to these homes have been fighting for years for this," she said.
Milton Center Mayor Albert Torres, Jr., said the same about the condemned building in his western Wood County village.
"We were afraid someone was going to get hurt," he said. "We're just lucky no kid set fire to it."
Mr. Espen said safety is the biggest impetus for the demolition program.
"If you have a vacant structure, it's attractive to children. It's attractive to vermin too," he said. "There are many reasons to tear them down."
Funding for the program, which has ranged from $10,000 to $30,000 a year, comes out of property tax collections paid to townships and municipalities.
Mr. Espen said demolition costs average $6,000 to $7,000 per structure, and the health department tries to get help from townships and municipalities where the buildings are located. Some have donated the use of a backhoe or dump truck, for example. The health department also has gotten the fire school held each year at Bowling Green State University to burn down some of the condemned buildings.
Mr. Espen said he's gotten inquiries about the program from county health departments across the state, but he's unaware of any that have been able to duplicate it. He said most tell him they can't get other local and county agencies to get on board.
"It's all of us working together that has made this program successful," he said, referring to the budget commission, prosecutor, building inspection department, and local officials. "If we weren't working together, the program wouldn't be there. If we didn't have the funding, it wouldn't exist."
Contact Jennifer Feehan at: | <urn:uuid:c5488443-7b3d-4873-85f2-1a836104cd0c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.toledoblade.com/frontpage/2006/10/03/Group-effort-gets-eyesores-taken-down.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982227 | 785 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Often it is called as a land of sufi saints because this town had many sufi saints in the past. Prominent among them are Shaikh Sirajuddin Junnedi R.A. to whom the town of Kudachi was granted in Inam in the year 1370 A.D. Hazrat Maasaheba Ashrafe Dojahan(Female) R.A. came to kudachi from Balkh and settled here. Hazrat Maasaheba's Dargah in Kudachi is a famous tourist destination.
Prominent Sufis of Kudachi
1.Shaikh Sirajuddin Junnedi R.A.
2.Hazrat Maasaheba R.A.
3.Shaikh Makhdum Junnedi R.A.
4.Shaikh Ladle Mashaakh R.A.
5.Peer Burhanuddin R.A.
and so on.......
There is a old tradition in Kudachi is that the people of the town prefer to marry their children among the relatives of the town itself. Hence one can see the relation among almost half the people of town.
Main business of the people of kudachi is agriculture.
It is a very peaceful town with no history of communal voilence.
The major Source of income in this small city is agriculture. This city is famous for many things. a)Sugar cane crop b)Tasty brinjals c)Different culture d)Religious places(dargas) And it has Streets like Patait Street, Maruf Street, Bichu Street, Jinabade Street, Peerzade, Karimkhan Street, Chammanshaik Street, Rohile Street, Raddi street, and many more..... Atif Patait Made many sites like MyKudchi in orkut.... This group is for those people who stay in and around KUDCHI, Belgaum, Sangli, Raibag, Chinchli, Ugar, Atheni, Jamkundi, Harugeri and nearby places, who stay and enjoy the lavish area.
Anonymous user updated 5 years ago
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The travel guide article on this page is subject to copyright restrictions. | <urn:uuid:ca75807d-534a-421f-ad99-fb5a6c800810> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://epictrip.com/Kudchi-travel-l78072.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935179 | 482 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Success in Winter Reliability Trial for Alisdaire Lockhart and Prince Henry Vauxhall Alisdaire Lockhart , VOC Member
The Great Winter Reliability Trial of the Kungliga Automobil Klubb - the Royal Automobile Club of Sweden - February 1912
On 23rd April 1910, the Vauxhall Motor Company announced that it would enter a team of three special 3 litre cars in the Prince Heinrich of Germany Trial to be run later that year. The event took place in June that year and while these cars did not win the Prince’s Trial, they accomplished themselves so well against other entrants with much larger engines, that they attracted widespread interest and the Company continued to develop these cars for their sporting and record-breaking endeavours.
On return to this country after the Trial, these cars were fitted with narrow single-seat racing bodies for the August meeting at Brooklands, to compete for the O’Gorman Trophy, finishing first and second, with Hancock winning with a fastest lap of 80.82 mph. After the race, two of the cars had their touring bodies re-fitted, while the third car remained in single-seater form and returned to Brooklands in the autumn, and on 26th October, Hancock established a new 21hp Class Record for the flying half mile at 100.08 mph. after many attempts.
Thus, the Prince Henry Vauxhall was born in 1910 to become widely acknowledged as the first British Sports Car and the first car in the world to exceed 100 mph for a 21hp car. Vauxhall then made two “new” Prince Henry cars and one of these had the 100 mph engine fitted into it for Percy Kidner to drive in the 1912 Swedish Winter Trial.
The Kungliga Automobil Klubb (hereafter KAK) organised their Great Winter Reliability Trial to take place in early February 1912 and attracted entries from Benz, Opel, Horch, Mathis, Minerva, Vivinus, Vauxhall, Humber, Ford, Panhard-Levassor and others.
Essentially, the Trial consisted of a 600 mile run around Lake Wettern, starting from Stockholm to Gottenburg on the north side of the lake through Nkoping, Hallsberg and Skara and back, on the south side of the lake via Boras, Jonkoping and Linkoping, finishing in Stockholm. Cars were set off in order as a reliability run, with a maximum speed of 30 kpm in daytime and 20 kpm at night, with a compulsory twelve hour stop at Gottenburg before cars started their return journey.
The event started on a Sunday morning at eight sharp - a Minerva the first away - in some minus 27 degrees Celsius with cars leaving at two minute intervals. Forty-one cars started the event , twenty-six in the class for the Winter Cup and fifteen in the class for the Gothenburg Cup.
The Vauxhall entry consisted of Percy Kidner, Managing Director of the Vauxhall Motor Company, driving the 20 hp Prince Henry and Hjalmar Kjellgren, the Company's agent in Sweden, in a standard 20 hp A Type: in the event, Kjellgren stuck to the rules and treated the event as a reliability test, incurring no penalty points, whereas Kidner went as fast as possible, on his 600 mile race through the Swedish countryside.
The Vauxhalls were fasted on the route out and thus left first - at around 5.00 pm on the Monday evening - for the drive through the night back to Stockholm.
It took the KAK sometime to work out the results, after the times for each car at each check point were calculated, and the awards were announced on the following Thursday by Count Clarence von Rosen, Chairman of the KAK, at a festive gathering with supper and dancing. According to the present Secretary of the KAK the winners were as follows:
The King's Prize - Nies Lundberg's Vivinus
The Winter Cup - John Neren's Opel
The Gothenburg Cup - GEE Karlsson in a NAG Darling
2nd place - Hjalmar Kjellgren's Vauxhall
11th place - Percy Kidner's Vauxhall
Kidner had lost many points for travelling too fast between check points, but overall, the Vauxhalls were deemed to be the fastest cars in the event and came home in glory, if not with any award!
In 2010, I finished my recreation of the 20hp Prince Henry Vauxhall that Kidner drove in this event, using all authentic 20hp Vauxhall mechanical components, but with a modern body.
I took the car to Sweden in May - not February! - 2012 to commemorate the centenary of the Great Winter Reliability Trial of 1912, starting on Sunday, 20th May at the Tjoloholm Rally, south of Gottenburg, and then on the following morning with the drive along the southern route of the original event, through Jonkoping and Linkoping arriving in Stockholm on Tuesday, 22nd May for a reception and photography session at the Headquarters of the KAK the following day, when the car was photographed with the original trophies for the event. Thereafter, the car was driven back to Gothenburg by the northern route for return to the UK the following Saturday.
At the Tjoloholm Rally, the car was shared between the KAK and Svenska Vauxhall Register stands, before departure for Stockholm.
On the commemorative run, I was accompanied by Kay Mordza, of the Svenska Vauxhall Register, who has been a great help with the arrangements in Sweden and Andrew Duerden of the Vauxhall Heritage Centre.
In total, 620 miles was covered in 22 hours driving time, spread over four days. With the open roads and low volume of traffic in Sweden, it was easy to cover 40 miles in an hour and the car cruised at 55 - 60 mph without any mechanical trouble and fuel consumption of around 30 miles per gallon.
During our stay in Sweden I met Magnus Westlund (and his beautiful 3 litre vintage Bentley) at the KAK reception in Stockholm and Owe Persson, with his lovely Lancia Aprilia, on the road back to Gothenburg - both members of the VSCC.
James Gunn prepared the car for the event and it ran without any problems throughout the week in Sweden. Without Kay's help, this event would not have been possible - thank you. I am very grateful to Andrew Duerden as co-driver and the members of the KAK, especially Olle Odsell and Niklas Nystrom, for their help in the organisation of the event. | <urn:uuid:6f89d4e9-502b-4dc7-ac9b-1fd7e5cb33a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.vboa.org.uk/toplevel.php?p=n1&inc=169 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963135 | 1,388 | 1.796875 | 2 |
The Condor's Head by Ferdinand Mount
Philip Womack enjoys a meeting of old and new worlds
The Old World is rubbing up against the New, causing tectonic shifts. William Short – or Wm., as we come to know him – is a member of the Virginian squirearchy, with merchant banks, railways and vast acres of untouched land stretching behind him. He also happens to be the closest thing that Thomas Jefferson has to a son. Wm. is ambitious, well-connected, and understands the need to undergo a certain amount of drudgery before reaching the top. Everything looks set for him to have a glorious career as he sets off for pre-Revolutionary France in the capacity of Jefferson’s private secretary. That is, until he stumbles across something that the Old World can furnish but that the New World is strangely lacking – the mystery of love.
Ferdinand Mount’s novel is filled with the most wonderfully witty sentences, sometimes long and looping with a dry joke tucked in at the end, sometimes short and laconic. His Paris is roisterous, riotous: a place where a man, on visiting a brothel, can find himself whisked away by a depraved aristocrat to an estate where satyrs bound and orgies take place in Chinese pavilions – providing a highly amusing scene in which Wm. cannot prevent himself from thrusting in time with his host. In the salons and chateaux, Ducs resemble elevated schoolmasters, plump princesses rhapsodise about the food, and Louis XVI looks like a grocer. As for the famous Marie Antoinette: “at the Phi Beta Kappa ball her dance card would have been damn near blank.”
Wm. is a sensual man, but does not let his pleasures detract from his business: whilst Jefferson trails off around France on bizarre expeditions, it is Wm. who deals with the vast loans from Dutch bankers that keep America afloat, issues visas and does all the nitty-gritty of diplomacy. Behind it all lurks the menacing figure of the Marquise de Condorcet – the Condor’s head of the title – pulling strings and working against the King, advocating his Enlightenment ideals before eventually being destroyed by what he sets in motion.
A bust of Condorcet is the linch-pin of the plot. It arrives in Virginia at the beginning, with Wm. an old man; it is only at the end that we learn who sent it – the pretty, vivacious, charming Madame de la Rochefoucauld. It is the affair with her that almost ruins Wm.’s career, possibly causing Jefferson to overlook his promotion to Ambassador in Paris. Their love is initially platonic, but Wm. wants more; in a subtle scene, they read Rousseau together in a forest and when Wm. hints at adultery, the Duchesse breaks off relations entirely.
But not for long. Soon we are up and running again, careering through more (slightly wearying) break-ups and reconciliations.Throughout, the rumblings of revolution are conveyed with vivid touches: a sense of displacement, horror and betrayal at every corner.
Philip Womack works at Literary Review. The Condor's Head is published by Chatto & Windus | <urn:uuid:ea89384a-ce5a-4599-a832-069807541b3c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rationalist.org.uk/articles/1431/the-condors-head-by-ferdinand-mount | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957601 | 696 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Moore should run for federal officePublished 12:00am Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Some things never change.
Roy Moore, the infamous former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who was ousted from office when he ignored the federally-guaranteed freedom of religion and refused to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from the courthouse, is up to his old tricks.
Moore, who is the Republican nominee for his old job, has promised he won’t attempt to put the Commandments back in the court building. But he is still pandering to the public on topics that aren’t related to his being a judge.
Specifically, at a campaign rally this past weekend, he said that same-sex marriage “will be the downfall of the country.” Further, he said the country can’t keep going in to debt.
While it is certainly Moore’s right to have those opinions, they have nothing to do with his campaign and decisions he’d be called upon to make as chief justice. There is no danger that the Alabama Court will consider a same-sex marriage case in an era of Republican-controlled government. Similarly, the deficit is not his domain.
Instead, he would be called upon to interpret Alabama’s unwieldy constitution, and to act as chief administrator of the state’s court system. If those are the issues that interest Moore, he should be running for Congress, not chief justice. | <urn:uuid:5617d8d5-db7f-439b-ba12-252d6aa74f69> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.andalusiastarnews.com/2012/10/10/moore-should-run-for-federal-office/comment-page-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977689 | 303 | 1.570313 | 2 |
The measure is aimed at families in a 'desperate' financial situation who accumulate rent arrears for justifiable reasons, according to the regional government.
Where possible, the Junta will look for alternatives so that tenants in difficulties are not made homeless, said Housing and Public Works chief, Elena Cortes.
At present the region’s 46,000 publicly-owned dwellings are occupied by approximately 250,000 people.
The department intends to be exacting regarding government-owned social housing, Cortes declared.
It is essential to ensure that the homes are put to the use they were built for and not allowed to lie empty. New regulations making the most of currently tenantless housing are imminent, she revealed. | <urn:uuid:b3462c3b-2bd4-41b7-9833-52e85cd10611> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.euroweeklynews.com/news/costa-de-almeria/item/108251-junta-steps-in-on-evictions | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963896 | 147 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Washington : Government Printing Office
|Public Law 88-474||Indians. Pawnee Tribe of Okla., judgment funds.|
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the funds on deposit in the Treasury of the United States to the credit of the Pawnee Tribe of Oklahoma that were appropriated by the Act of May 17, 1963 (Public Law 88-25; 77 Stat. 20), to pay a judgment by the Indian Claims Commission in docket 10, and the interest thereon, after payment of attorney fees and expenses, may be advanced or expended for any purpose that is authorized by the tribal governing body and approved by the Secretary of the Interior. Any part of such funds that may be distributed per capita to the members of the tribe shall not be subject to the Federal or State income tax.
Approved, August 21, 1964. | <urn:uuid:c029b7fa-ec8a-445b-b7cb-ebe024dd2e75> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/vol6/html_files/v6p1023.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945744 | 187 | 1.726563 | 2 |
he following text of Bulwer-Lytton's novel derives from that on the Project Gutenberg website, which John T. Horner and David Widger scanned and proof-read. To their text I have added the 1834 and 1850 prefaces that they omitted, and after dividing their text into individual chapters, I converted it to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), attempting to follow as closely as possible a page design created by Glen Burris of the Johns Hopkins University Press for my Hypertext (1991), Hypertext 2.0 1997), and Hypertext 3.0 (2007). My html follows the Gutenberg text of Horner and Widger closely, differing chiefly in the formatting of poetry, first lines of chapters, and those following quotations. I have also added decorative initial letters based on nineteenth-century typography (such as the one which appears at the left) and photographs from an undated late-nineteenth- or early twentieth-century edition published by Thomas Y. Crowell in New York, some of which appear as thumbnails in relevant chapters.
If you encounter any typographical errors or problems of formatting, please let me know [February 2005].
Last modified 5 January 2007
Last modified 8 June 2007 | <urn:uuid:3de7ad47-6255-4c95-8710-7f9184f8cd59> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/bulwer/pompeii/credits.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942634 | 249 | 1.835938 | 2 |
by Reb Akiva @ Mystical Paths
I wanted to ask you, if you know anything about Homeopathy and what our holy Torah has to say about it.
First a brief description for those who don’t know what homeopathy is. “Homeopathy is a form of alternative medicine in which practitioners treat patients using highly diluted preparations that are believed to cause healthy people to exhibit symptoms that are similar to those exhibited by the patient. The basic principle of homeopathy, known as the "law of similars", is "let like be cured by like." Homeopathic remedies are prepared by serial dilution with shaking by forceful striking on an elastic body, which homeopaths term succussion. Each dilution followed by succussion is assumed to increase the effectiveness. Homeopaths call this process potentization. Dilution often continues until none of the original substance remains. Apart from the symptoms, homeopaths examine aspects of the patient's physical and psychological state, then homeopathic reference books known as repertories are consulted, and a remedy is selected based on the totality of symptoms.” (Source)
The Torah permits the treatment of illness via medicines, and defines any substance believed to have curative properties permitted to be consumed for illness – whether or not the substance is prepared from or considered kosher.
Homeopathic preparations qualify as a substance believed to have curative properties (believed at least by homeopathic practitioners) and therefore may be consumed as any other medicine for an illness.
Generally our holy sources do not judge medical treatments, and in the few cases where they do they even permit the consumption of substances that are believed to have curative properties by the patient even if most people (or experts) no longer believe the substance to have curative properties (and the substance is not kosher – if it’s kosher it can always be consumed as a food).
Modern medical science, backed by some significant direct testing, considers homeopathic treatments to be medically ineffective. Further, the theory behind homeopathy makes no sense in the light of current scientific and medical understanding. However, there are alternative medical treatments that do work (or partially work) yet their theory or understanding makes no sense according to modern science (example, acupuncture).
So if a person believes a homeopathic treatment may work for them, they are permitted to use it as any other medicine is permitted to be used.
About 25 years ago a famous Chabad mashpia (a spiritual advisor), Rabbi Manis Friedman, shlita, became enamored with homeopathy and recorded a shiur comparing similarities between homeopathy and kabbalah. This audio shiur, titled “The Holistic and the Kabbalistic” compared homeopathy’s dilution towards complete nullification with our relationship with the Creator of the Universe and His continued energizing of the universe (and how our souls should be, but are not, nullified by the G-dly presence). This 2 hour shiur (broken into segments) is available online here for free. (it requires Real Player to play.)
So if you’d like to try homeopathy, the Torah permits it. But engaging our chochmah (our intellect), modern science has done a pretty complete job of demonstrating that this particular alternative medicine is rarely (if ever) actually effective. | <urn:uuid:5626d875-897e-46be-9337-312b2311b134> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mpaths.com/2011/05/does-homeopathy-and-torah-fit-together.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953025 | 687 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Writing in Slate, Ron Rosenbaum says something my literalist heart can mostly endorse:
The muddled Tea Party version of history is more than wrong and fraudulent. It's offensive. Calling Obama a tyrant, a communist, or a fascist is deeply offensive to all the real victims of tyranny, the real victims of communism and fascism. The tens of millions murdered.
That's why we shouldn't compare 21st century Americans to 1930s Germans...oh wait:
[I]gnorance of this sort isn't inconsequential. Historical fraudulence is like a disease, a contagious psychosis which can lead to mob hysteria and worse. Consider the role that fraudulent history played in Weimar Germany, where the "stab in the back" myth that the German Army had been cheated of victory in World War I by Jews and Socialists on the home front was used by the Nazis to justify their hatreds.
It's a historical lie, but it caught on, and Hitler rose to power on it, asking Germans to avenge the (nonexistent) stab in the back! | <urn:uuid:818e7d10-1732-45ee-941d-426e4ed8cd69> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://reason.com/blog/2010/04/26/only-hitler-enablers-call-peop | 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 | 0.952488 | 219 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Burning Hay Stinks Up The Valley
Residents across the Yakima Valley are wondering why the air smelled like marijuana yesterday -- today we get to the bottom of the strange smell.
The East Valley Fire Department says tons of hay spontaneously combusted yesterday morning at the Devries Family Farm, near Moxee.
Firefighters say the smell of burning hay can be similiar to the smell of marijuana.
The farm owner, Tom Devries, says between 300 to 400 tons of hay went up in flames.
Devries says the hay will smolder for a few days, but it will not halt operations at his farm.
"Obviously, it's never a good thing when you lose feed," said Devries, "But the fortunate part is it's insured and we should get reimbursed for it. So I don't think it will be too big ofa hardship."
The Yakima Clean Air Agency also issued a stage 2 burn ban this afternoon, due to the stagnant air quality. | <urn:uuid:7aebe345-a12d-4507-aa8a-eedb0deb6d8e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kvewtv.com/article/2012/nov/27/burning-hay-stinks-valley/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960739 | 203 | 1.523438 | 2 |
San Francisco News
SF to introduce pay by phone parking
SAN FRANCISCO -- San Francisco motorists will soon be able to pay for city parking by phone.
Starting Thursday, the parking pilot program, which was unveiled last year, will start distributing real-time information collected by smart meters and sensors about where parking is available.
Officials say it will help reduce the carbon footprint and, by this summer drivers will be able to pay-by-phone at all city meters.
The technology will also send a text message to drivers telling them when their meter is about to run out. There will be a 45 cent charge for every transaction made.
san francisco news
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- abcnews: Pope invites Down syndrome teen for a spin
- roundup: Controlled burn; Carjacking arrests
- weather: Bay Area weather forecast for Thursday | <urn:uuid:f2ea624b-d713-4f68-bbc0-591894c26675> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local/san_francisco&id=8081983 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933433 | 304 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Blaine man recovers from cancer, shares hope in book
By Jack Kintner
Fifteen minutes before leaving on a fishing trip last week, Brad O’Neill got word from his doctor that he is completely free of cancer three years after first noticing a lump in his neck.
O’Neill attributes a big part of his continuing recovery to a network of friends who contributed links in a paper chain on which they’d written encouraging notes, something that forms the basis of a book called “Hope, The Cancer Chain.”
O’Neill wrote the text and self-published the book well before being found cancer free. He began the project in concert with his family after reaching his low point physically and psychologically in July of 2006, not long after completing 35 weeks of radiation and chemotherapy treatments in Seattle.
O’Neill said he had four goals in mind, to spread the idea of having a visual way to count-down the cancer treatments, to give friends a way to participate in the healing with good wishes without intruding on the patient’s privacy, to thank his friends who did so and to raise money through the sale of the book for cancer research.
“After I completed treatments we had all these links for the chain from friends, and got to talking at a family meal about what we should do,” he said, “and this book was the result.”
The project was directed and the final product was designed by his daughter Killorn, owner of the Seattle graphic design studio koMEDIA, but “it was a family project throughout,” he said, “and not without some intense discussions.”
The book came out last June at a party the O’Neills hosted at the Blaine Boating Center, but last week’s news “was a huge psychological threshold, to be clean and clear two years into the treatment. And I caught three king salmon!,” the custom home builder and former Blaine planning commission member said, laughing.
The book is deceptively simple appearing at first, just 24 pages long and filled with brilliant graphics. O’Neill said he wanted to write his story to fill a gap he felt as a patient, when well-intentioned friends offered him books to read about cancer patients when they heard the news. “I’ve never, ever been seriously sick before,” he said, “but here I was, facing all the uncertainties and unknowns. I felt overwhelmed, and the last thing I wanted to do was read a novel. I wanted something that would be accessible and helpful to the patient.” He feels that the over-size format with fewer but colorful pages lends itself to reading and re-reading even by people who are fatigued by treatments.
The idea of a cancer chain came from a friend who told Brad and wife Diane about someone who had devised a visual reference to the number of treatments left by making a paper chain, one loop representing one treatment. Diane and Killorn modified that by asking friends to contribute links in the chain with encouraging words written on them. The book is divided on most pages into four parts with photos of the chains in the two outside panels and O’Neill’s narrative in the middle.
Each pair of pages has a complete chapter, making it easy to read by a person who’s flat on his back in bed and exhausted. It has the informality and brilliance of a scrapbook coupled with the gravity of O’Neill’s narrative that covers a very serious time in his life.
The book, off-set printed by LithoCraft Press in Seattle, show 55 of the more than 200 links O’Neill collected in a way that makes them seem as if they are sitting on the page ready to be picked up. O’Neill’s writing, which his family edited, has an informal style that draws the reader into what’s a highly personal experience that can only fully be known from the inside, and, one assumes, speaks effectively to others undergoing the two steps forward, one step back uncertainties of cancer treatments.
O’Neill also keeps the book within reach of most readers who are undergoing emotional turmoil by not giving advice, just providing an example of his own path through diagnosis, treatment and his recovery thus far. “Cancer patients are all different, but what brings them together, what we all share, is hope, which is where the name comes from,” he said.
The proof of the pudding, O’Neill said, is that as he and Diane make their regular trips to Seattle for follow-up procedures they’ve left more than 200 copies of the book in waiting rooms and other areas where cancer patients will find them, and they’re always all gone within a few days. Many who have purchased the $19.95 volume online return to buy more, once they’ve read it, to be given away. Virginia Mason Medical Center, where O’Neill received his therapy, has purchased an additional 130 copies to be given to patients.
“There’s nothing like this kind of experience to really set some priorities in your life,” O’Neill said, adding “You just don’t sweat the small stuff any more.” O’Neill’s cancer was located at the base of his tongue and neck, a tricky place to treat. It originally was diagnosed as a cyst on the nerve that controls swallowing.
“If that had been true, I’d be on a feeding tube for the rest of my life instead of just through anti-cancer treatments,” he said, “so I actually was glad to get the cancer diagnosis, which is serious but more treatable, from the team of physicians at Virginia Mason. My response to treatment proved them right.”
O’Neill said he first saw the finished book on a family trip to Ireland earlier this year, at a place in Dublin billed as “possibly the world’s smallest pub,” when Killorn pulled it out and said, “This is as good a place as any for the book to debut.”
Since then, O’Neill said, she’s shown it as an example of her work, sometimes seeing potential clients in the highly competitive graphic design world in Seattle lose their gruff demeanor, more than once dissolving into tears and saying, “I had cancer, too.”
The book is available on-line at www.thehopechain.com. | <urn:uuid:41cd56ac-c3d3-4308-9b1d-19593ddaef66> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thenorthernlight.com/news/article.exm/2008-08-07_blaine_man_recovers_from_cancer__shares_hope_in_book | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979802 | 1,374 | 1.625 | 2 |
John Robertson, Atlanta Fed vice president and senior economist, gives an assessment of current economic conditions in the Southeast and each state in the region.
The U.S. economy should expand modestly in 2007. Adjustments within the housing sector and fluctuating energy prices should dampen overall growth.
During 2006, home sales declined from very high levels. Homebuilders responded to falling sales by scaling back. Most analysts expect home sales to pick up during 2007. However, the large inventory of unsold homes suggests that construction will be slow to turn around.
Oil prices will also have a moderating influence on growth. Most analysts expect oil prices to move higher in 2007 because of ongoing geopolitical risks and robust global demand.
Core measures of inflation will likely remain above 2 percent during 2007. However, forward-looking indicators suggest that longer-term inflation expectations are well-anchored.
Alabama's economy performed well in 2006. Tax revenues were strong, unemployment was low, and employment growth outpaced the nation for much of the year. Moderate growth appears to be on tap in 2007.
The surge in posthurricane commercial activity in coastal Alabama has abated, and the coast's condominium market retrenched as supply outstripped demand. On the other hand, areas such as Birmingham and Huntsville should hold up reasonably well, supported by ongoing job growth.
The outlook for Alabama's service sector is for solid growth, with business services and activities related to the defense industry leading the way. However, the state's large manufacturing sector is likely to experience little growth in 2007. Labor-intensive industries will continue to send production offshore while others, such transportation and defense, should continue to expand.
Florida experienced the strongest growth in the Southeast during 2006. But the pace of growth slowed over the course of the year as housing markets retrenched and tourism activity moderated. These trends suggest Florida will experience only modest growth in 2007.
The decline in Florida's housing markets during 2006 was substantial. Increases in homeowner's insurance and construction costs reduced the demand for second homes, and speculators quickly withdrew from the market. Home sales declined and inventories rose. In 2007, the large backlog of unsold homes will dampen housing activity in Florida.
Employment growth in Florida's service-providing industries, such as tourism, business services, and health care, outperformed the nation as a whole during 2006. However, trends in some of these industries softened over the course of the year, thus clouding the outlook for 2007.
Georgia's economy performed reasonably well in 2006, with job growth outpacing the nation. The outlook for 2007 is for continued moderate growth.
The state's housing market weakened in 2006 as home sales and construction declined. Looking forward, construction activity should remain slow until the inventory of unsold homes returns to normal levels.
The state's service-providing industries should continue to experience solid growth in 2007. Expansions and improvements to local tourist attractions should help ensure that tourism continues to be a bright spot for the state.
Manufacturing employment in Georgia has remained relatively stable since 2004. However, the ongoing retrenchment of some domestic auto producers, as well as declines in demand for housing-related products, will act as a drag on this sector during 2007.
Hurricane recovery activity dominated Louisiana's economy in 2006. The outlook for 2007 is clouded with uncertainty.
Home construction in New Orleans has been modest as efforts remained focused on cleanup and debris removal. In 2007, the pace of construction in the city should improve as the "Road Home" program, designed to assist displaced homeowners, picks up steam.
Nonresidential construction increased in 2006 as infrastructure repairs got under way. This activity should spillover into 2007 as well. The office market in Baton Rouge remains tight, and this condition should boost construction there.
It was a mixed bag for Louisiana's service-providing industries during 2006. Businesses tied to reconstruction performed relatively well. However, activity remained substantially below pre-Katrina levels in leisure and hospitality, and the outlook for this industry remains guarded.
The focus of hurricane recovery in Mississippi moved from cleanup to rebuilding in 2006. This activity lifted the state's economy, and the outlook for 2007 is encouraging.
Rebuilding boosted construction spending in 2006, and with a large amount of work still to be completed, this performance will extend into 2007 as well.
Retail trade and business service industries grew, while the coast's leisure and hospitality industry worked to get back up and running. Most of the coastal casinos have reopened, and their activity will increase employment and state revenues in 2007.
In manufacturing, producers of building materials benefited from posthurricane activity. However, the national decline in housing could dampen wood products activity in 2007. Foreign competition will lead to further retrenchment in labor-intensive manufacturing industries, while defense spending will boost shipbuilding.
Tennessee's economy performed reasonably well in 2006, led by the state's ability to attract new businesses, including corporate headquarters. However, overall employment growth was modest, as manufacturing continued to shed jobs. It appears moderate growth is on tap for Tennessee in 2007.
Key markets such as Nashville and Knoxville supported commercial and home construction industries during 2006, and this performance should continue in 2007. Also, increased demand for second homes away from coastal states may help support housing activity in some rural areas in Tennessee.
The tourism, health care, and business service industries should expand during 2007, and the state should continue to benefit from its growing reputation as an attractive location for business. However, the manufacturing outlook is guarded as the transportation equipment, apparel, furniture, and printing industries continue to face headwinds. | <urn:uuid:2f41331f-8761-4786-b863-5197cb80ea20> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.frbatlanta.org/podcasts/transcripts/econsouthnow/07jan_2007_outlook.cfm?d=1&series=Podcasts | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963457 | 1,153 | 1.585938 | 2 |
In the film, groups of women representing tampons and Mooncups take part in a rap battle. They compete to compare the emotional reactions users of traditional products have towards the Mooncup.
Mooncups are reusable plastic cups, which women can wash out and use in place of a tampon.
The film was made by St Luke’s and will be seeded online, where it will available to view on Mooncup’s YouTube channel.
Kath Clements, campaigns and marketing manager at Mooncup, said: "Ultimately choosing the right sanitary product for you is really personal. We’d just like to make sure that women choose knowing the facts.
"Staging a rap battle was a playful way to present some of the reservations about using the Mooncup that we hear, alongside the benefits that Mooncup users enjoy – in the end, as ever, it’ll be down to the viewer to pick her ‘crew’"
In 2011 Mooncup released a film by St Luke’s called for women to "love your vagina" through a song featuring 25 different names people use to describe vaginas.
This article was first published on campaignlive.co.uk
A useful study here from the ‘Pew Research Center’ taking a look at the demographic make-up of US social media users across Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook. No data on LinkedIn of Google+, but great stats all the same. | <urn:uuid:3cf7e2b7-ac6f-4ca6-9bbe-ed1e8a1ac901> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/news/1168926/mooncup-returns-rap-battle-film/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947084 | 303 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Every day thousands of Americans speak with their primary care doctors about how bariatric surgery can help them lose the weight that is robbing them of their health and quality of life and every day those same individuals are often met with opposition from either their doctor or their insurance company. To seek approval from an insurance company, policy holders must first submit a qualifying BMI, a description of obesity-related health conditions, including records of treatment, a detailed description of the limitations obesity places on their daily activities, a detailed history of the results of their dieting efforts, including medically and non-medically supervised programs, a history of exercise programs, including receipts for memberships in health clubs and a nutritional consult and psychological evaluation with documentation.
Here is the kicker, even after this mass of information has been gathered and submitted many policy holders are still not approved for their desired procedure, because insurance companies realize that the cost to cover bariatric procedures that carry an average cost of $30,000 likely will not be justified by the greater level of health and decreased costs associated with losing weight. We won’t even go into the fact that no sound authority feels bariatric procedures will be covered at all by insurance, as the healthcare reform act is fully enacted.
So, what option are overweight and obese individuals left with when their insurance company will not cover their bariatric procedure? What if they have no insurance at all? Who can afford $30,000 out-of-pocket cost for a procedure? Many are finding that a company called WISE, the World Institute of Surgical Excellence, provides not only a viable solution, but a great experience as well.
The World Institute of Surgical Excellence, which operates under the acronym of WISE is a medical tourism company that facilitates every step of their patient’s medical travel process at no additional cost to the patient. WISE has offices located in 50 cities throughout the U.S., as well as an operations team in Costa Rica and Panama, to ensure that their patients receive the quality care and attention that they desire and deserve. WISE bariatric patients are able to have their procedure performed at JCI “Joint Commission International”
WISE bariatric patients are catered to from the moment of first contact all the way through their entire weight loss journey. WISE leaves nothing to chance as they even take care of arranging follow up care and visits, when the patient returns home to ensure that their weight loss goes as planned. They also provide patients the ability to obtain financing to ensure that cost will never prohibit them from getting the procedure they deserve.
To learn more about bariatric options with the World Institute of Surgical Excellence, please contact Dave Rice, WISE Regional Managing Partner at Dave.Rice@WiseMDs.com or by phone at 239-298-3917. | <urn:uuid:ed0a8eec-33d4-44b7-bc72-01ab028005cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.prlog.org/12054782-patients-seeking-bariatric-procedures-turn-to-wise-rice-for-safe-affordable-care-in-paradise.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970171 | 573 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Fri November 16, 2012
Rockaway Church Is Port In A Storm
Originally published on Fri November 16, 2012 4:31 pm
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Coming up, the Latin Grammy Awards were held last night in Las Vegas. We'll check in with the hosts from NPR Music's ALT.LATINO podcast to hear about some of the artists who made an impression.
But, first, it's time for Faith Matters. That's the part of the program where we talk about matters of faith and spirituality and today we are talking about the role that faith institutions can play during a crisis.
President Obama visited areas yesterday that were affected by Superstorm Sandy. It's been nearly three weeks and residents in Rockaway, Queens say their area still looks like a war zone. The peninsula was hit hard by a tidal surge and some parts were badly burned.
In the days and weeks after Sandy, St. Francis de Sales Parish has become a central command for distributing supplies and coordinating volunteers and joining us now to tell us more about it is Monsignor John Brown of St. Francis.
Monsignor, thank you for taking the time to speak with us. I know you're busy.
MONSIGNOR JOHN BROWN: Thank you, Michel, for speaking to me. I mean, it is very busy, but we're working hard with the help of many people, many different organizations, our community, our government. Everybody's helping.
MARTIN: What are some of the things that are going on there?
BROWN: Right now, we started a center to respond to the hurricane. It basically started with 20 bags of clothing brought in by young people of the parish that wanted to help put together a center. It started in a small chapel and moved to a larger room. James and Eugene Brennan called me. James is from the Catholic Charities in San Diego, California. He offered to come out and to try to help me put together a command center. The first day, we were still recovering ourselves as far as the parish goes. Little by little, it kept growing. The community started it. Our fellow New Yorkers staffed it. It's an incredible attestment to what people can do for themselves when they put their mind to it.
At the present time, we're serving between four and ten thousand people a day. We serve...
MARTIN: What? Four and ten thousand people? Like food and clothes, everything?
BROWN: Yes. That's food, that's clothing, that's toiletries, that's cleaning stuff, everything somebody would need to try to survive day-by-day. We've served over 50,000 people.
MARTIN: Can I just ask, was the church itself damaged? Did you have power, any of that stuff?
BROWN: No. We have nothing, too. We're damaged, also. We're going to - it's going to take us a while to get our act together. I mean, right now, there's no electricity and no heat. The school is shut down because of the same reasons. The convent directory - everything is not functioning.
MARTIN: Can I ask, how are you doing?
BROWN: I'm doing OK. I have amazing people around me. I've been very lucky. I mean, besides the Brennan family helping me out, I have - the mayor's office has been very good to us. You know, the police department, the fire department, the sanitation. The National Guard's been really helpful to us. Bulloch's Gas Station - it's Jim Bulloch's station. He runs it with his sons, Tom and James. They were able to open up for us and get the gas out to people and they did it for free and they were very good in helping and are continuing to do it for us.
MARTIN: If you're just joining us, our guest is Monsignor John Brown of St. Francis de Sales Parish in Rockaway, Queens. He's telling us about everything that they're doing there to try to help people get back on their feet after Superstorm Sandy. It's been nearly three weeks and you said that people - it was before things were really organized. People just started coming to the church, even though the church itself was damaged as a building. It's almost as if people just assumed that you'd be the right place to go. Right?
BROWN: Sure. The church is very central here. It's a community of faith. People here have faith in God. That's the bottom line. And so they come to their center of their faith where we practice our faith every week and they came to me. I mean, this is really the community working for the community. Came to me and said, this is what we have to do. Let's start it. I had no idea where this was going to go. There was no big plan to it, except to do good for people and fulfill the mandate of Christ to serve all people.
And, from that beginning, people came forward when things were really kind of hectic. Every time I needed something, it seems like the hand of God handed it to me.
MARTIN: And this isn't just for people who are members of the parish. You're serving...
MARTIN: ...just people who are in the community who need help. Whoever...
BROWN: I'm serving pretty much the whole peninsula right now.
MARTIN: ...comes in.
BROWN: So anybody who comes, we take care of.
MARTIN: You were saying earlier that people brought so many clothes, you don't really need any more clothes right now except for what? Maybe winter coats or something?
BROWN: Right. Winter coats, maybe blankets, but everything else, we're shutting down because everybody's been supplied.
MARTIN: That's kind of amazing.
BROWN: It is. I mean, right now and going into the future, we probably will need some type of corporate sponsorship as far as getting us cards, gift cards to give out to people. That's what's going to be needed in the future more than anything else.
MARTIN: And you're doing all this and you still don't have power yourself.
BROWN: Right. I'm not living at my rectory because it's uninhabitable right now. The church, we're able to open up every day with the help of generators. We have a mass every day and then we have to close down at night.
MARTIN: I was going to ask you that too though. Are you able - church isn't just a building. Things happen all week long.
BROWN: All week long.
MARTIN: Services, study - yeah.
BROWN: Yeah. It's a very - yeah. Right. It's a very healthy church and parish and we have a lot of organizations. Everything is going every day and everything now has just stopped because of the tragedy.
MARTIN: Are you able to hold services?
BROWN: Three masses on Sunday and I have one during the week. One a day. And we've been able to hold it together.
MARTIN: You may laugh at my question, but I want to ask you...
MARTIN: ...what's keeping you going?
BROWN: Two things: My faith, my faith in God - all things are possible with God. And I love people. I like working with people. I like - and I like solving problems. And God has sent me all the things I need to solve the problems. I'm very hopeful. Everything is going to be rebuilt. This time next year we can talk again and I can tell you how good everything is, because of the community, because of all these people are helping us.
MARTIN: Well, that's a date.
BROWN: OK, you got a date.
MARTIN: I'm putting it on my calendar. That's a date.
BROWN: There you go.
MARTIN: All right.
BROWN: There you go.
MARTIN: Monsignor John Brown is the senior pastor at Saint Francis de Sales Parish in Rockaway, Queens. He's been working, as you heard him say, along with many members of the community to help the area recover from Superstorm Sandy.
Monsignor, thank you so much for speaking with us. Thanks for taking the time.
BROWN: Thank you too. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR. | <urn:uuid:f74c57d8-2149-4ea3-80fc-140c096b8583> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nhpr.org/post/rockaway-church-port-storm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984883 | 1,812 | 1.570313 | 2 |
One of the problems of the recent rash of Occupations by the Occupy movement, quite apart from determining what space they should actually be occupying (as in the London, St Paul's Cathedral fiasco) is the difficulty in discerning what the Occupiers are protesting either in favour of, or against. Many, especially in the right-of-centre media have decided that these are anti-capitalist demonstrations (note this example from today's Daily Mail in the UK).
This categorisation is politically convenient, for those of the right, because it supports the view that anyone protesting about the way we appear to be running our economies and societies is an opponent of capitalism and therefore either an un-reconstructed socialist or proponent of a brand of economic management not seen in the West since the 1970s. This, of course, is not true. There is not a problem with capitalism, per se, and very few of the protesters are claiming as such. The problem is the variant of capitalism we have pursuing for most of the last 30 years. This variant is economic neo-liberalism or free market fundamentalism - the belief that free markets (in-so-far as those can ever really exist) are the perfect form of economic and social organisation that can do everything from setting the price of onions in the shops, to managing global trade, to delivering a system of public education or healthcare. This is absolutely not the same thing as capitalism.
This fundamentalist ideology has become established as the global economic orthodoxy, despite its transparently obvious failings, but it has never been given a genuine political expression and thus why democracy struggles to rid itself of this damaging extremism. There are three reasons for this. First, if you give it a political expression, no-one will ever vote for it. Second, placing this idea beyond the reach of politics is a means by which those who benefit from it can continue to benefit irrespective of who is in power. Third, it allows any form of government, no matter what political complexion, to be portrayed as The Problem.
Governments have sometimes attempted to pull elements of this ideology into the public sphere, but whenever they do, they have to give it a heavy disguise. British Prime Minister, David Cameron's 'Big Society' is one such attempt. The Big Society is about turning the business of government into a vast contracting opportunity for the private sector - an idea that would enjoy virtually no democratic support. However, Cameron is able give the idea an attractive, comforting, gloss - talking instead about handing power back to the people, eliminating bureacracy and empowering communities. So attractive, in fact, that many of the left wished they had invented the idea.
All that the Occupy movement is trying to do is drag this free market fundamentalism out of the shadows and into political debate. And all the Occupy movement is calling for is a new idea to confront it. An idea liberated from the failed economic dogma which has been used as a facade behind which established interests have advanced themselves for the last 30 years, immune from the inconvenient interference of democracy. Crucially, almost no-one is proposing resuscitating an idea which harks back even further to the socialist inspired economics which decided that the State (rather than Big Business) was the answer to all our problems.
We need something that recognises that competition in free markets is good for setting the price of onions, but not good at providing a system of public health or education. After all, winners and losers is fine when is a question of Asda versus Tesco (or Eton versus Harrow) - but we don't want a public education or health system of winners and losers. Critically, this needs to be an idea which is subject to public debate and the process of democracy, not something which is bundled past us under heavy disguise.
Note: I live in the English County of Suffolk. The Conservative-led Suffolk County Council recently tried to outsource all of its functions and turn itself into what it called a Virtual Council. In order to draw attention to the insanity and deep unpopularity of this idea I established this blog and a more extensive version of this article appears here under the title 'The Story of The Big Society'. Suffolk County Council has recently announced it is abandoning its plans to create The Big Suffolk Society although I can't claim it was my modest digital efforts that caused this!
Follow Richard Stacy on Twitter: www.twitter.com/richardstacy | <urn:uuid:5cb49433-0349-4f74-8704-0b6256c99207> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/richard-stacy/occupy-movement-capitalism_b_1069398.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963884 | 898 | 1.648438 | 2 |
UWM is located in a quiet, East Side neighborhood where the crime rate is low. However, no neighborhood is completely safe from crime. Areas where residents are complacent or careless may become easy targets for opportunistic criminals. Property theft is the most common crime on and around most campuses and UWM is no exception.
Keep your home and property locked up any time you are away — even for a few minutes. Apartments and houses should also have secure door locks and window latches. Check out the specific tips for home security for tenants and landlords on UWM's Neighborhood Relations
- If you're away from your home or apartment, leave a light on so the place looks occupied.
- Be aware of who is in your house or apartment, especially during parties. Again, see the Neighborhood Relations Web site for information on how to keep a party safe and legal.
- While off-campus housing should have smoke detectors, fire is always a threat, especially if students are sleeping soundly after studying for finals-or drinking. Make sure all smoke detectors are in working order and change batteries twice a year.
For more information, visit the Keeping Your Stuff Safe
and Fire Safety
section on this site. | <urn:uuid:b678e5ae-529e-4e8c-804b-06ce19936632> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www4.uwm.edu/safety/protect_your_stuff/neighborhood_property_safety.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956981 | 246 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Parsons School of Design alumnus with a BFA in fashion, who has worked in the menswear industry for several years. Past lives have been in the East Village and Lower East Side of Manhattan; more recently transplanted to Harlem. Currently living in a 1907 "French flat," an Edwardian era middle-class apartment.
The old tenement buildings that are owned by NYCHA on 114th Street in South Harlem have been abandoned for years but now definitive news has been announced about their future. Reports had it that the buildings just east of FDB/8th Avenue would be torn down for new development but surprisingly the south side of the block has been landmarked to prevent such action. According to a WNYC article, the cash-strapped NYCHA has apparently worked out a deal where 140 of the 295 apartments will remain public housing and the rest will be privately owned affordable units. Architectural details are planned to be restored on the facade and expect the project to be finished in two and a half years: LINK | <urn:uuid:2be4886d-569a-43a5-b422-fdc13adc4460> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://harlembespoke.blogspot.com/2011/08/read-mixed-income-for-randolph-houses.html?showComment=1314408628285 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983866 | 210 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee member David Miles said that the central bank's monetary policy has helped prevent further deterioration of the UK's economic situation.
"Monetary policy cannot solve all our problems. But it has helped prevent a much worse economic situation," Miles wrote in an op-ed in the Daily Mail newspaper.
"It can encourage recovery and lessen the consequences of a much sharper economic rebalancing," he noted.
Defending the central bank's quantitative easing programs, Miles said though annuity rates have fallen by around one percentage point since asset purchases started in March 2009, it is not right to assess the impact of QE by just focusing on the cost of annuities.
by RTT Staff Writer
For comments and feedback: email@example.com | <urn:uuid:4499c6c0-8f9c-4f8a-a94a-cd985e24fd6d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rttnews.com/1891576/boe-s-miles-monetary-policy-prevented-much-worse-economic-situation.aspx?type=eueco&SimRec=1&Node= | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966369 | 159 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Drinks manufacturers plan to persuade the Government into agreeing a “sunset clause” on minimum unit pricing, which would force ministers to scrap the controversial alcohol policy if it was proven not to work.
Nice idea, but no dice. What could be more reasonable than assessing a law after a year or two to make sure it hasn't failed or back-fired? This is just the kind of thing that a government who claims to hate "unnecessary legislation" would support, notwithstanding that such a government wouldn't contemplate minimum pricing in the first place.
Strangely, we don't have much of a history of using sunset clauses in the UK, which is good news for our many anti-[fill in the blank] groups who might otherwise see their pet prohibitions put under scrutiny. Instead, they concentrate on the next ban and hope the public forgets the extravagant promises they made about the last ban.
I notice that no temperance groups are quoted in the Telegraph article. What can they say? If they support a sunset clause, the government might seriously consider it. If they oppose it, people might suspect that they have no faith in their ridiculous claims, eg. that a 40p minimum price will save 900 deaths a year.
There will be no sunset clause. There will only be calls for the minimum price to rise to 60p, 70p, 80p, and those demands will never end (see Scotland where a "leading public expert" reckons a 60p unit will save—guess what?—900 lives a year). The only hope is for the EU to rule it a breach of free trade. As with plain packaging, it will be for the courts to decide. Ain't it grand that the Conservative party—the party of the free market—are supporting policies which require arbitration from the European Union and the World Trade Organisation? | <urn:uuid:881a7f37-9da8-4304-b140-3362611b5f93> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/sunset-clause-for-minimum-pricing.html?showComment=1334060280029 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944852 | 375 | 1.632813 | 2 |
The Roosevelt Memorial Bridge was opened for operation in 1962. A portion of Campobello Island can be seen on the left while the town of Lubec, Maine is on the right. Taken from Mulholland Point.
But what fascinated me, not visible in that first photo, was the high waves caused by the out-going tide. And then, there were those little black specks in the water, which upon closer examination with the help of the zoom lens, turned out to be seals! | <urn:uuid:d7afeb97-0316-4a9e-bf81-1b1c015c1791> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kinexxions.blogspot.com/2012/10/campobello-island-mulholland-point-and.html?showComment=1349801757928 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965523 | 102 | 1.625 | 2 |
SUNY Canton Commemorates Heroes and Honors Lives Lost Sept. 11, 2001
REMEMBERING — Members of the campus community gather for the sixth anniversary memorial ceremony of Sept. 11, 2001. The event was coordinated by the students from the SUNY Canton Criminal Investigation and Criminal Justice program. Volunteer firefighters from area departments, including Canton, Potsdam, and Norfolk joined University Police and New York State Troopers for the ceremony.
REFLECTING — SUNY Canton students, faculty members, and collected college professionals joined listened in rapt attention while college President Joseph L. Kennedy reflected on the concept of America, and the events that changed the country forever 6 years ago. | <urn:uuid:9021a89d-3b81-4ab4-ab25-839817a02ed6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.canton.edu/news/index.php/2007/09/sept11/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930377 | 142 | 1.828125 | 2 |
More than 1,500 New Yorkers gathered today in Manhattan to mourn the death of a 32 year-old gay man, who was shot down on Friday just blocks away from the historic Stonewall Inn in an apparent act of anti-gay bias.
After GLAAD Outreach on Anti-Trans Piece, HuffPo to Meet with GLAAD
As recently reported, progressive internet newspaper Huffington Post removed an article featuring a transphobic joke after it sparked a public outcry from many in the LGBT community including GLAAD and Equality Matters. On Monday, the Huffington Post published a story titled “Blake Lively or Sofia Vergara: Who’s Got the Tr**ny Look?” by associate style editor Ellie Krupnick. The headline used the transphobic slur “tr**ny,” which has ignited a national dialogue about the use of the word. Members of the trans community, including Isis King, have spoken out against its use and have called for more media attention around inaccurate generalizations of transgender women. The Huffington Post took down the original story and issued the following apologetic editor’s note:
Editor's Note: This entry has been removed from The Huffington Post. In reporting actress Sofia Vergara’s comments comparing her appearance to that of a transgender individual, the story adopted an inappropriate tone. We regret the error and apologize to anyone who was offended.
GLAAD is now in talks to meet with the Huffington Post to discuss their coverage of transgender issues and suggest additional story ideas as well as guest writers. The news outlet has traditionally covered a range of progressive and LGBT issues. Recently, Ja’briel Walthour, Denise Brogan-Kator , who are both trans women, were featured in the Black Voices and Gay Voices sections.
GLAAD also used this as an opportunity to call for more inclusive and accurate stories about transgender women saying: “Articles like this illustrate the unfortunate dearth of accurate images of transgender women available today. Removing the post was the first step, and GLAAD looks forward to working with editors to educate readers about transgender Americans today and ensure better judgment is used going forward.” GLAAD appreciates Huffington Post for understanding the impact of this error and for promptly removing the original story. | <urn:uuid:f95fe3ff-32b0-40e4-8cd0-1eeea9302bd3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.glaad.org/comment/4467 | 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 | 0.959231 | 473 | 1.695313 | 2 |
by Coach Roger Rilling
It’s all too easy to jump head first into an athletic season after a hard winter of training. Going to the first races or events of the season, without giving some real thought to the season ahead, can ruin all of your winter prep, not to mention your goals for the season. In this article we will go over the importance and process of planning out a great season!
PENCIL TO PAPER
Time to get out a trusty pencil and a few pieces of paper. I know this is the digital age, but writing your plan out by hand will make your goals a little bit more personal, plus you can carry your plan in your race bag. You can enter your races, plans and goals into TrainingPeaks once you've laid them all out (or you can do all the initial planning inside TrainingPeaks, if that's the way you like to plan). Remember, the idea is to create an achievable, but challenging plan for you and then hold yourself accountable to completing it.
LAYING OUT YOUR EVENTS
Picking your events and races sets up the tone for the entire plan. Because of this, spend some time deciding where and when you want to stand on the podium.
One thing to consider when you are choosing events is if you want to focus more on results or more on athletic development. These might sound similar, but when you are planning your season these two paths are very different. With the first path, you are choosing events simply based on results. A result driven event schedule will always need to be more concentrated on your natural and current strengths. The second path is for those who want to gain overall fitness or who want to expand into other areas of their sport. Understand that each path has its advantages and disadvantages when looked at from a very wide angle, but both will allow for a good amount of athletic growth.
Once you know what path you want to focus on you can start picking some events. Make sure to take your training area into consideration at this point, you will be doing yourself a disservice if your big race is a hill climb when you live in a flat area. After your events are decided you need to pair them with a manageable result. Do not go over the top with your goals or else you will literally turn your plan into a joke. Challenge yourself with goals that are obtainable with the correct training!
Now that you have your events laid out, you have to plan what your monthly focus for the season will be. Don’t think of this as more goals, but rather as markers along the course that simply help you stay in the race. Having an overall monthly focus will really help you keep your training enjoyable and productive. (TP TIP: Goal setting, event planning and monthly focus can all be set up and entered into your Annual Training Plan)
Check-ins are a short fitness test completed on a control course that is easily accessible to the athlete. Check-ins are a great way to see how your training is working out and to resolve any problems you might run into. Schedule your check-ins every 5-7 weeks; make sure to lay-out your check-ins now so you don’t forget about them once the season starts.
In order to make the results as useful as possible, layout 2 courses that exemplify the two main elements you will encounter during the season. For the cyclist I work with, this means laying out a rolling to flat time-trial course of 4-6 miles and a 2 mile climbing course. Try to schedule your check-ins so that you can complete them on one of your 2 courses. Place some attention in controlling as many variables as possible before the check-in. Some examples might be time of day, food consumed the night before and the morning of, level of fatigue, etc. (TP TIP: Try keeping track of metrics in your TrainingPeaks account to help you keep tabs on those variables)
Check-ins are all about gathering information! Make sure you record as many metrics as possible plus write out some good notes on how you felt during your effort. Consistently completing check-ins will help you and your coach get the most out of your efforts.
PARTNERS IN CRIME
The last element in setting up a great season plan is to create an active support group. An active support group will include training partners and a coach. Having an active support group in place will allow you to maintain a high level of motivation through the entire season. The other benefit of a good support group is that they will keep you accountable for your training choices, no more skipping workouts simply because you wanted an extra few minutes of sleep. Think about the people that will make up your support group and get them involved by telling them your goals, maybe even show them your hand written season plan. (TP TIP: Enable Social Sharing on your account to share your workouts with friends and other accountability partners)
Have a great season!
Roger Rilling is a former professional road and track cyclist with over 10 years of coaching experience. Stoller, founded by Roger in 2004, is a coaching and training club that focuses on giving athletes of all abilities the experience of being a pro. Training at Stoller is based off of personalized training plans, partnered with supported group training events. To find out more about Stoller, please visit www.mystoller.com or call 888.407.0754.
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Looking for that perfect partner in crime? Check out our Coach Directory to find the perfect coach to help take your training to the next level! | <urn:uuid:93ae0c63-e0af-47aa-8e72-98771e67b6f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.trainingpeaks.com/posts/2011/3/3/taking-a-step-back.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961413 | 1,149 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Mac: Everyone has decent Wi-Fi signal when they're sitting in the same room as their wireless router, but what about across the apartment, or in the basement? If you think you should have signal but don't, free site survey app Netspot is a utility that gives you the tools to draw out your floorplan, walk about your home or office with your laptop, and survey network strength, available networks, and channels in use along the way.
The app starts you off with a drawing tool where you can lay out the floorplan of your home or office. Once you've given it a rough idea of how your space is laid out, you can click any spot on the map to have the app scan the area for available wireless networks, their network type, the signal strength for each network, and more. The app will save the information behind the scenes, and you can move on to the next spot in your space to test. After you've covered the whole area, Netspot will show you where your wireless signal is the strongest, where it seems to drop off, and even give you a color-coded heatmap of your space so you can see where signal is the strongest and where you may need to install a repeater for a little signal boost.
Netspot is pretty powerful for a free utility, and gives you a great deal of information about the wireless networks in your area that you can use to decide which channel your network should be on and where you should position your wireless router. Best of all, it's completely free. | <urn:uuid:b83b2ee6-719b-4544-aa99-1c00e3551481> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lifehacker.com/5864464/netspot-for-mac-makes-diagnosing-wi+fi-signal-problems-quick-easy-and-free?tag=downloads&autoplay | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953077 | 315 | 1.578125 | 2 |
The Washington Post has an article on the growing field of dairy robotics. The newest cow milking robots need almost no human assistance and rely on voluntary participation from the cows. Just reading the company web pages will provide some entertainment. Lely calls their product the Astronaut Milking Robot while DeLaval's web site claims they're able to build "cow-friendly" robots because they understand "cow psychology". The Robotic Milking Industry even has its own web site to promote use of milking robots. | <urn:uuid:b0346648-c328-441a-9374-ba2e1e8cad13> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://robots.net/article/409.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930376 | 101 | 1.835938 | 2 |
I’ve read innumerable seas of professional biographies — not books, but blurbs you often see on the “About” section of a company’s website. Most of them are boring, presenting similar information in a Mad Libs-style cookie-cutter format. How many times have you seen a phrase like “brings over 15 years of experience to the team” in a bio, followed by a list of prestigious educational degrees? These do matter, but you know what’s missing?
Hobbies and passions off the job.
Antiquated thinking would have us not mix work and play, but in an era where Casual Fridays have turned into Casual Everydays, the truth is someone’s personal interests have a lot to do with their success, particularly if they’re in an idea-centric field. Which means just about every job that has problems which require creative thinking to move forward.
If it was revealed that a brainy physicist likes to figure skate, what would that tell you? At first glance, it seems like academia-meets-the-ice isn’t a good idea. But think about the similarities between the two fields: beauty in symmetry, bodies in motion, and perhaps not-so-obvious, a profound public presence.
I’m referring to Michio Kaku, who is undoubtedly one of the most renowned physicists in the world. He’s a heavyweight hitter of grace, continuing Carl Sagan’s lineage of science popularizers. Clearly, he’s very successful at what he does, and a large part of his success comes from his diverse skillset, including a knack for Siamese-twinning real-world science with speculative fiction. This has made him into a media star, with each spotlight appearance feeding another.
It’s no coincidence some of the most profound and popular scientists are also musicians: Albert Einstein played the violin, and Brian Cox rocks out on synths. Music performance itself requires a sense of timing, pitch, and if you’re doing it in front of others, charisma and the uncanny ability to engage the audience.
Many charismatic personalities are either avid music listeners or players themselves — but you won’t find their sonic proficiencies on their bio. These might as well be called unsung skills.
Think about yourself…
What skills do you have that aren’t officially job responsibilities, but get applied nonetheless?
For example, when I was a wee tot, I scribbled stories. As a teenager, I learned about typography. Now at my job as a Resident Enlightenment Manager, I do a lot of communication. While copywriting isn’t formally amongst my responsibilities, when highlighting new product features, my background in writing comes into play every single time.
Here’s another wonderful example: Steve Jobs. Numerous bios of Jobs (none of which are official, but that’s another story) cite his schooling in calligraphy as a driving factor for why the early Mac computers were so far ahead in terms of graphics. It takes a rare mind to appreciate both technical underpinnings and aesthetic excellence, and Jobs is now an icon because of insights like that.
Time and time again, you’ll find remarkable humans who have achieved tremendous results because they wove a deceptively unrelated web of talents together. By making magic that could’ve only come from them, it paid off big.
Do this fun exercise:
- On the left-hand side of a piece of paper, write a list of your favorite career moments across your entire life. They can be specific achievements (you solved an especially thorny problem), glowing moments (your boss praised you at a company party), etc. Even if you telecommute, find something you’re proud of.
- Beside it on the right, write a list of your hobbies and leisure activities off the job. Don’t spend too much time on this: 5 minutes is good.
- Draw a vertical line between the two. Like a wall that separates them.
- Now, the fun part: draw circles around something in the left column that happened because of something on the right. Join them with a line that breaks through the center “wall”. For example, you were designing a website for a client. Later that day while playing Ultimate Frisbee, the mesmerizing patterns of the disc inspired you to experiment with a new color scheme which turned out to be a hit! So, you’d circle both “webdesign project that won me prizes” and “frisbee”, and connect them with a line.
The connections are now much clearer. By recognizing how various parts of you falsely appear miles apart but are actually adjacent in their applicability, you stand a much higher chance of succeeding at what’s important.
Just as physicists theorize about folding space-time, you can fold the distances between skills for a better, unified you. | <urn:uuid:ac7a8b23-39f4-4266-915c-780284c0db9d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/diverse-skills-help-you-achieve-unique-success.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958598 | 1,040 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Elkin Middle School students are being offered hands-on experience in fields that interest them through the school’s job-shadowing program.
Designed as a way to let students experience a career they are intrigued by while still in school, job shadowing allows students in middle school to ask questions and participate while on the job site.
Local businesses and organizations have opened their doors to eighth graders interested in the program. Students were able to spend time at work with professionals and see what a career in that field would be like. Kimberly Parks, special populations coordinator for Elkin High and Elkin Middle schools, said the event had been a success because of the support from local businesses.
Local businesses who allowed students to job shadow were: Animal Ark, Northwest Disease Animal Clinic, Elkin Veterinary Hospital, Tri-County Christian Crisis Ministry, Grace Clinic, Dr. Stephen Harrell, Dr. Robert Peterson, Dr. Gavin Harrell, Dr. Jim Harrell, Jr., Kids Count Pediatrics, Elkin Municipal Airport, Cuttin’ Loose Salon, KMA Salon, WIFM - Joel Hooper, Shutterbug Photography, Remember When Photography, Ace Pawn Shop, Fiddlers’ Pub, MacNeill Enterprises, Elkin Elementary School, Elkin Police Department, Elkin Parks and Recreation, Cal Cochren Architect, Peanuts Garden Center, Precisions Customs & Body Shop, Town of Elkin, Belk Department Store, Lois Draughn - Interior Designs, Tampco, Inc., Grandeur, Tri County Awards & Signs, National Guard Armory - Sgt. Jake Key, Hugh Chatham Memorial Hospital, and James Freeman - Attorney at Law. | <urn:uuid:932bf8f3-51e5-4c65-9316-4832d117f2fa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://elkintribune.com/pages/full_story_myown/push?article-Middle+Schoolers+explore+careers+through+job+shadowing%20&id=21935336 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933342 | 343 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Occupy movement comes to Valley, Charlottesville
The Occupy Wall Street movement that has brought international attention to issues of income inequality and the redistribution of weatlh to the superwealthy has spawned sister movements in Staunton and Charlottesville.
A newly-formed Occupy Staunton/Unify Main Street group is coordinating a rally on Thursday to support Communication Workers of America Local 2204 and its efforts to renegotiate a new labor contract with Verizon.
The 4 p.m. rally will be held in front of the local Verizon corporate headquarters at 22 Christians Creek Road in Staunton.
A press release sent by the group notes that the event “is not a strike against Verizon.”
Rather, as a reflection of recent displays of solidarity among citizens supporting the demonstrators currently occupying Wall Street, this Unify Main Street event represents a new strategy on the part of traditional labor union organizers to join with members of other non-union groups dedicated to reforming the current political system in America that affords untold economic advantages to a smallminority of rich people (the 1%) at the expense of the middle class and the poor (the 99%),” according to the release.
The Staunton rally is being organized by Transition Staunton Augusta, the Augusta Coalition for Peace and Justice and Virginia Organizing.
The Occupy Charlottesville movement is now in its third week. The Charlottesville effort has operated largely with the support and cooperation of city government, unlike what has been seen in other cities, where local governments have engaged in policing efforts that have led to numerous arrests and in the case of a police action in Oakland, Calif., a disturbing scene that involved the use of tear gas to break up a protest last week.
A news release sent out today by Occupy Charlottesville notes that the group “exists to fight for social and economic justice.”
“We believe that the corporatization of our society is directly responsible for all forms of injustice. One of our fundamental purposes is to subvert the power of greed; money itself is not the ends of, but the means to, the social cooperation which is the real basis of any economy. Therefore, we have been camping downtown under the statue of Robert E. Lee, demonstrating cooperative justice with the homeless, the mentally ill, and the addicted. The purpose of this three-week protest is to prove to ourselves and to the world that peaceful, abundant community is possible without corporate sponsorship, huge budgets, or leaders,” according to the release.
Occupy Charlottesville leaders have offered an open invitation to local residents to take part in the occupation.
“There is an especial need for social workers, teachers, security volunteers, counselors of all kinds, cooks, cleaners, campers and anyone seeking solidarity, community or camaraderie. We would like to welcome questions and comments in person at our camp, and are happy to engage in polite discussion at any hour. Please come in a spirit of nonviolence and respect, and bring your friends. There is free food and beverage available to anyone, as well as coats and blankets, books and tarps. All are welcome.” | <urn:uuid:789c81a6-2693-4e45-aa6d-f5a48e08f4ee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://augustafreepress.com/occupy-movement-comes-to-valley-charlottesville/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946657 | 641 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Is Violent Juárez Truly Getting Safer?
The city on the US-Mexico border is known for the brutality of drug cartels. Despite a drop in murders, many fear it may spike again.
CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico Recent fatal attacks on police officers in this Mexican border city have officials on high alert. But despite this latest spike in violence, there's been talk around Juarez that the worst of times may be over.
The murder rate last year went down about 30 percent after steadily increasing for three years. More people are going out to restaurants, concerts and public events.
But many people question whether things in Juárez are truly getting better.
One recent evening in January, three middle-aged women in sneakers and fleece vests puffed warm breaths into the chilly air as they punched a volleyball with their forearms. Two years ago, the thought of being out after sunset in Mexico's deadliest city was almost ludicrous, especially in this neighborhood. These women live in Villas de Salvarcar, a working class neighborhood in the far southeastern side of Ciudad Juárez.
Villas de Salvarcar’s infamous reputation stems from the 2010 massacre of 15 people, most of them teenagers, at a birthday party. But now, just a block away from the site of those murders, an enormous modern sports complex rises above the tiny single story homes. It was built a year ago by the federal, state and local governments in honor of the murdered teens. It's here where the three women meet twice a week to play volleyball.
Ana Luisa Redilla is one of the women. She brings her two sons to the complex, where they play for basketball and baseball teams. If it weren't for the park, she said they'd all be at home in front of the television. Or worse, her boys might be out getting into trouble. But for Redilla, smacking a volleyball is like therapy. Just this summer her husband was murdered.
"He was a security guard for a construction company," she said. "Gunmen wanting to enter the building drove up and shot him. We don't know who did it. We don't know why they did it. He was a family man."
Redilla said the loss has hit her hard. Her husband was her first boyfriend and the two had been married 16 years. She said his recent murder shows that things in Juarez are not improving.
Professor Hector Padilla, who teaches political science at the Autonomous University of Juárez, agrees. He said the idea that things have gotten better is more illusion than truth.
"There's a problem," he said. "During the last four years, the murder rate has been rising, then in 2011, there was a drop. But it's still much higher than the average five years ago."
In 2007, before the wave of violence hit the city, there were 320 murders in one year. By 2010 that number reached more than 3,000. Last year, the killings went down to about 2,000.
Another ongoing problem Padilla highlights is that very few people are convicted of their crimes in Juárez and throughout Mexico.
"As long as those responsible for these crimes are still out there, this (extreme violence) could return at any moment," he said.
According to the security research firm Stratfor, the recent decrease in violence in this border city is likely due to the possibility that one drug cartel has solidified control of the city.
Back at the sports complex in Villas de Salvarcar, a group of elementary school kids did stretching exercises on a sports field made of artificial turf. Not far from there, Fernando Peña watched a couple of teens shoot hoops. Peña is a middle school teacher by day and a basketball coach in the evening. He coaches a group of 36 kids between the ages of 7 and 14. A lot of them he recruited directly off the streets.
"This is one of the small things that we all can do to rescue our city," Peña said of his after hours job.
All around Juárez, the city has invested in building new sports parks and is revitalizing older ones. And this summer, for the second year in a row, the city will host the Women's Pan-American volleyball tournament, which includes players from the United States.
EDITOR"S NOTE: The first paragraph of this story has been changed from an earlier version to report on recent events in the city. | <urn:uuid:fbe21a3c-032b-4ca9-9e82-99d0f3aae9f6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fronterasdesk.org/news/2012/feb/02/violent-juarez-truly-getting-safer/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979339 | 927 | 1.648438 | 2 |
BRUSSELS — A grand plan to resolve Europe's escalating debt crisis was once again in doubt after officials said Tuesday that key parts of the package may not be ready in time for a leaders' summit on Wednesday.
A meeting of European Union finance ministers, which was to be held just before the summit, was called off. A summit of EU and eurozone leaders planned for Wednesday evening will still be held, but it was unclear whether the heads of state and government would be able to reach a detailed deal.
The euro and stocks on both sides of the Atlantic slid on the news amid fears that Europe would prove unable, after two years, to get a grip on its debt crisis.
The 17 eurozone countries have not reached final agreement on the details of two key elements of the plan — reducing Greece's massive debts and boosting the firepower of the bailout fund, two European officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were confidential.
Because of that, the 10 EU countries that do not use they euro won't sign off on a plan to force banks across the continent to raise billion of euros in capital and insisted the meeting of finance ministers be called off, the officials said.
One of the officials said that the eurozone was also still waiting for Italy to take concrete action to control its debts and kick start growth.
"It's a real mess once again," the other official said.
However, a third European official said he still expected leaders to reach concrete deals, including figures on how much of a cut private investors will have to take on their Greek bondholdings and how much firepower the bailout fund could get through leveraging. The third official was also speaking on condition of anonymity.
The eurozone is locked into negotiations with banks and big investment funds to take losses of as much as 60 percent on their Greek bond holdings, but negotiators for the banks have indicated that they will no accept haircuts of that magnitude.
Forcing losses onto banks could trigger big payouts of credit insurance and cause huge turbulence in global markets, analysts warn.
At the same time, two schemes to give the €440 billion ($612 billion) European Financial Stability Facility more firepower — by using it to guarantee bond issues from shaky countries like Italy and Spain — also still lack detail.
Some policymakers have doubts how effective the changes to the bailout fund will be at containing the crisis, and Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of the liberal faction in the European Parliament, warned that current ideas to give the EFSF more leverage could fail to convince the markets.
But even if the technical difficulties of boosting the bailout fund can be worked out, rich eurozone countries remain reluctant to commit their money to insuring the debt of Italy until that country does its part to get its economy back on track.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has promised his eurozone colleagues to detail concrete measures his government plans to take to boost growth and reduce its debt in time for the Wednesday summit. However, as of Tuesday afternoon, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy had not received the letter outlining the plans, a spokeswoman for Barroso said.
Berlusconi was struggling Tuesday to get his coalition partners to support new measures, such as raising the pension age, demanded by the eurozone. The leader of the far-right Northern League party warned that Berlusconi's government might fall as part of the dispute, potentially heralding months of political limbo and threatening to destabilize the country.
Colleen Barry in Milan contributed to this story.
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- President Obama walking a familiar path... 11 | <urn:uuid:f467d031-869d-40f6-b4c1-02e89269d093> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700191354/Grand-plan-to-solve-euro-crisis-in-doubt.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958533 | 900 | 1.53125 | 2 |
KUALA LUMPUR, May 22 — Irshad Manji is a familiar name only to Malaysian intellectuals, curious readers of theology and debate, and religious authorities. Young adult Malaysians who studied in the US and Canada may be somewhat familiar with her name too. Still, Manji and her work are very new entities to the public.
And yet, in recent weeks, Manji’s arrival in the region was marked by tension. At Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, her meeting with students was cut short when a group of men stormed into the meeting room and disrupted the session. In Kuala Lumpur, her publisher, ZI Publications faced similar challenges, though a hastily arranged meeting at the Chinese Assembly Hall was conducted successfully.
If the reader is to believe what the general public and the Internet say about Manji, it’s all horrible. Manji’s frankness and drive to engage and debate with the Muslim public has not endeared her with people. She is everything that is wrong and abhorred by Islam, her naysayers say.
The Malaysian Insider (TMI) speaks to Irshad Manji (IM), to find out about the work she and her team do.
TMI: Your arrival in the region has created quite a storm. However, we have to admit that you’re not exactly a familiar name in Malaysia.
IM: I know exactly what you’re going to say! That’s OK! Who? Irshad Manji? Never heard of her!
TMI: Let’s talk about the broad themes of your work. And also, how do you feel about being a Muslim ambassador, like Reza Aslan, Mona Eltahawy?
IM: First of all, these people happen to be personal friends, and neither do we represent all that of Islam. What we are showing to Muslims and non-Muslims (though the work we do) is that there are legitimate different ways of thinking, of the Quran, Allah, the teachings (Sunnah) and the culture, especially the tribal culture, and will, say, has colonised the faith of Islam.
I see this everywhere I go and Southeast Asia is home to more Muslims than those in the Middle East or Africa. And yet, increasingly, we are told in this part of the world that there is only one way of representing yourself as a Muslim woman, one legitimate language to communicate with God, which is Arabic. Now we need to take a look, if you are anti-imperialism, you need to also look at how a small section of the Muslim world has become an imperialist for all of the Muslim world.
TMI: What is your perception of Indonesia?
IM: I’ve been in Indonesia for almost two weeks and my perception of the country is that it has changed in four years. I say four years because I was in Indonesia in 2008. For example, Gadjamadah University welcomed me and my book, which has a far more contentious title than my latest! I came away from that time, thinking, wow, you can have extremists and ultra liberals come around, the university cancels my talk on the morning of the event. To me it is clear that the progressive forces in Indonesia are increasingly intimidated.
My point to everyone who knows my work is that moral courage is needed. I quote Robert F. Kennedy who spoke about the willingness to speak your truth to the powerful people in your community, always for a greater good, that’s not just about your community. Have higher expectations. Sometimes the ending is not what you expect. Mark my words, the respect for you will grow because you have been honest with them.
Manji has received many emails from other Muslims who have applied this particular moral courage in their lives. In fact, they are astounded when they see that their parents become their biggest supporter.
TMI: What are the three to five points a Muslim should apply in his life?
IM: I’ll give you seven! These seven are in my book “Allah, Liberty & Love”. The first one is understand that some things are bigger than fear. In other words, courage is not the absence of fear. We’re humans, we will always have some fear. One thing that is bigger than fear is faith.
Number two: identity can trap you but integrity can set you free. Many of us are confusing identity with integrity. Whatever that label is, it’s so easy to get stuck in that label. When you do that, you are limiting your potential to grow.
Three — culture is not sacred. It is human made and not God given, therefore it is not sacrilegious in seeking to reform the most harmful aspects of culture, i.e. family honour. It sounds nice but the number of crimes in the name of such an honour is abominable.
Four — you define your honour. Don’t worry too much about other people’s approval. In the eyes of God, you are a deliberate creation of God. There’s only one God and that job is not vacant.
Five is a toughie, a hardsell. Offence. Being offended and giving offence is the price of diversity. It’s very easy and lazy to reduce diversity to your religion and skin colour. Offence is the price of honest diversity.
Six — this is extremely important for a country like Malaysia. In times of moral crisis, moderation is an excuse to do nothing. In the current global discourse in Islam, we make a distinction between the extremists and moderates. Moderates just stay on the sidelines and do nothing. Never be an act of moderation. Moderates empower the reactionaries.
Seven —– my personal favourite is lack of meaning is the real death threat. Sure I’ve received death threats. Comes with the territory. But if I wasn’t pursuing this mission, this would kill me. I have met many young Muslims who tell me that they are willing to walk away from the bigotry and dogma within Islam because it is no longer about a faith but an ideology of fear.
“Allah, Liberty & Love” is being translated into Bahasa Malaysia by ZI Publications. The book is a guide to reconciling faith and freedom in a world raging with repressive dogmas. Manji’s previous book is the international bestseller “The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith”.
* For more information on the book, please contact Ezra Zaid, ZI Publications at
By Dina Zaman
The Malaysian Insider
22 May 2012
Courage is not the absence of fear, says Manji. — Pictures by Dina Zaman | <urn:uuid:14c7d71b-f4bc-4494-8baf-21740c64d6d7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.asiaviews.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=37086:moral-courage-is-needed-says-irshad-manji&catid=28:interviews&Itemid=43 | 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 | 0.956533 | 1,409 | 1.539063 | 2 |
The people are stupid. They won’t understand.
When the conflagration rages all around them, they will understand. Fire is a good teacher, old boy. Have you ever heard of Raphael?
No, I haven’t.
Well, when we are through with God, we’ll go for fellows like him. There are lots of them—Titian, Shakespeare, Byron. We’ll make a nice pile of the whole lot and pour oil over it. Then we’ll burn their cities.
Now, now you are joking. How is that possible? How can you burn the cities?
No, why should I be joking? All the cities. Look here, what are their cities? Graves, stone graves. And if you don’t stop those fools, if you let them go on making more, they will cover the whole earth with stone, and then all will suffocate—all.
The poor people will have a hard time of it.
All will be poor then. What is it that makes a man rich? His having a house and money, and the fact that he has surrounded himself with a fence. But when there are no houses, no money, and no fences—
That’s so. And there won’t be any legal papers either, no stocks, no bonds, no title-deeds. They will all have been burnt up.
No, there will be no legal papers. It’s work then—you’ll have to go to work even if you are a nobleman.
It’s funny. All will be naked as when coming out of a bath.
Are you a peasant, Kondraty?
Yes, I am a peasant, sure enough.
I am a peasant also. We have nothing to lose, brother. We can’t fare worse than we do now.
How could it be worse? But a great many people will perish, Mr. Tropinin.
It makes no difference. There’ll be enough left. It is the good-for-nothings that will perish, the fools to whom this life is like a shell to a crab. Those who believe will perish, because their faith will be taken away from them. Those who love the old will perish, because everything will be taken away from them. The weak, the sick, those who love quietness. There will be no quietness in the world, brother. There will remain only the free and the brave, those with young and eager souls and clear eyes that can embrace the whole universe. | <urn:uuid:92f469f1-c3a6-484e-a043-f1091c72fb2c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bookrags.com/ebooks/13147/42.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943802 | 546 | 1.757813 | 2 |
With the first week of 2011 coming to a close, many consumers are still in the midst of creating resolutions and plans for the New Year. While weight loss continually tops the list year after year, financial institutions should keep in mind many Americans also make it a goal to get out of debt and become financially fit as well.
In fact, a recent study conducted by the Chase Slate-U.S. News Consumer Monitor found that Americans are generally more optimistic in terms of financial planning heading into the New Year. Over half of the respondents had little to no anxiety about their finances in 2011, 6 in 10 believing that the economy was improving.
Gen Y shows the highest levels of optimism, mentioning they would work toward saving money and managing finances better. The survey found that planning translates into confidence – 18-34 year olds are more likely to believe that both the economy and their personal finances are getting better than other age groups.
The beginning of the year is the perfect time to re-evaluate the tools you have in place to help all of your customers reach their goals. Specifically, take a look at how you reach different segments of customers. What are your resolutions for reaching Gen Y? Women? Boomers?
Leave a comment below to offer insight on your 2011 plans! | <urn:uuid:45f9e8c0-cbde-48ec-b991-43345954aa85> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.banking2020.com/2011/01/07/resolution-1-help-your-customers-reach-their-resolutions/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965567 | 256 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Some Berea College students are taking their concerns about the health risks of mercury to federal officials. They’re headed to Atlanta to take part in an Environmental Protection Agency hearing Thursday. Cassy Hobert of Frenchburg is going because she’s worried about her unborn baby.
“And so when I started doing the research for this, for mercury contamination, for mercury pollution as preparation to go to Atlanta, I found some really disturbing statistics, like as many as 1 in 6 women in the United States have mercury levels in their blood high enough to put an unborn child at risk,” said Hobert.
A recently-formed group that aims to move the Ohio River Bridges Project forward is seeking to join, then end a lawsuit between conservation group River Fields and the Federal Highway Administration. Kentuckians for Progress filed a request to join River Fields’ suit against the government today. River Fields asserts that the federal government has not properly justified the case for a two bridge project, and the group would like to block an east end bridge from being built. | <urn:uuid:3d36b4ab-f047-4dbf-9ed2-9b60bf8b262a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.weku.fm/term/environmental-watchdog?page=99 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967817 | 218 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Burlington, NC -- Local law enforcement agencies joined together with Alamance-Burlington Schools for school bus safety.
Staff Sgt. Reid Metters with Burlington Police Department said the one-day program called, "Cops on Buses," involved about 25 officers from Burlington, Graham and Haw River Police Departments; Alamance County Sheriff's Office and NC State Highway Patrol. Officers rode on a few selected buses to make sure vehicles adhered to traffic laws regarding school buses. The routes were chosen from across the county based on bus drivers' complaints.
Sgt. Metters said they had one offender in Graham who was cited for Running Stopped School Bus.
"This is a local safety initiative sponsored by law enforcement to observe if all motorists are obeying the law and stopping at each bus stop when our school bus stop arms are fully extended," Lillie Cox, Superintendent for Alamance-Burlington Schools, said in a news release.
"We appreciate their support for this very important safety initiative on behalf of our children and bus drivers."
Since December 7, four Triad children were hit by motor vehicles at their bus stops.
Read: 8-Year-Old Boy From Graham Survives After Being Hit By Car
Read: East Forsyth Middle School Student Killed While Crossing Street To Get To School Bus
Read: Child Hit At School Bus Stop In High Point
Read: Police: Driver Hit Child At Bus Stop, Kept Driving | <urn:uuid:5aa46a0c-d06f-4bd5-84f4-49f04b6b2d53> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.digtriad.com/rss/article/272588/57/A-BS-Work-With-Law-Enforcement-For-School-Bus-Safety | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964399 | 295 | 1.71875 | 2 |
May 14, 2003 2:16 PM PDT
IBM works to make mainframes mainstream
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IBM, Dell win in losing server marketFebruary 24, 2003
Power5 to quadruple server brawnFebruary 17, 2003
IBM unleashes new 'Raptor' mainframeFebruary 17, 2002
IBM unveils new name, strategy for serversOctober 3, 2000
In an indication of just how strongly IBM worked to counter criticisms that its vaunted mainframe line is headed for extinction, the company assigned 1,200 employees to work on the four-year, billion-dollar development of the z990. The result: The new machine, code-named T-Rex, boasts three times the performance of its predecessor, according to Big Blue, and carries additional features designed to extend the mainframe's advantages over other, more widely used, computers.
But a more subtle attempt to keep mainframes relevant is also taking place: IBM has worked hard to bring the z990 into alignment with computing trends that are taken for granted outside what has been the specialized mainframe realm.
"Today's mainframe runs Java and relational databases and application servers--and even Linux," said Illuminata analyst Jonathan Eunice. "It connects to the world through TCP/IP and Web Services and Ethernet."
The two-pronged strategy--extending the mainframe's traditional capabilities while opening it up to the world outside--suited the needs of Larry Berger, director of systems operations for Farmers Insurance Group in Los Angeles. Berger is replacing five z900 mainframes with three z990s. He needed the new systems' power as part of a project to consolidate the company's data center with that of the Zurich Financial Services Group, which acquired Farmers. And he needed their ability to run modern software--in this case IBM's WebSphere package--to provide employees with a Web-based interface to claims-processing software.
"We want to get rid of the green screens," Berger said at a z990 launch event Tuesday, referring to the old text-based interfaces. But at the same time, the company wanted a mainframe's data-processing power. "I need to put a significant number of new MIPS (millions of instructions per second) on the floor."
A perfect illustration of the effort to keep mainframes relevant is IBM's work to make the comparatively new Linux operating system a compelling option on the machines.
Initially, Big Blue debated whether Linux fit well on the mainframe, said Bill Zeitler, senior vice president of IBM's server group. Half of those involved were excited about the prospect while the other half worried that it would cut into sales of the flagship z/OS operating system. Eventually, IBM realized that it had no choice but to welcome the new arrival if it wanted to keep its customers.
"They're not going to buy them (mainframes) anyway, if you can't get new technology," Zeitler said. Now about 600 customers are running Linux on their mainframes, he said.
Putting on a show
T-Rex is at the pinnacle of IBM's effort to assert its dominance in the server market. Big Blue, ordinarily not prone to ostentatious product unveilings, tried to infuse the z990's launch with a little drama.
A host of IBM executives gathered at the Four Seasons Hotel here in a ballroom bedecked with various refrigerator-sized computers, one cloaked by a black cloth. Zeitler and Erich Clementi, general manager of the zSeries mainframe line, whisked the cover away as the room lights flicked on and off and drum-heavy music thumped.
IBM devoted extra personnel to the T-Rex effort. "We do flex up some resources when we have a special program like this," Zeitler said, adding that many of the engineers are now working on IBM's forthcoming Power5-based "Squadron" Unix server.
The z990's code name speaks to the motivation behind Big Blue's aggressive mainframe effort. The system had been called Galileo, but an IBM employee changed all the mainframe code names to names of dinosaurs--carnivorous dinosaurs--after a March 2001 advertisement by rival Sun Microsystems derided the machines as extinct beasts that should be consigned to museums. The naming convention stuck, Zeitler said: "The next one is called Pterodactyl."
One example of IBM's move to align the mainframe with more widespread technology is the adoption of "superscalar" technology, which for the first time lets the mainframe's processors execute more than one instruction in a single tick of their internal clock.
IBM "borrowed" the superscalar feature from the Power processors used in its Unix servers, in an attempt to accelerate Linux and Java software, said Rich Lechner, vice president of sales and marketing for enterprise servers. As a happy but unexpected side effect, he said, the move ended up speeding traditional mainframe software written with both CICS (Customer Information Control System) and Cobol.
While mainframes are embracing mainstream technology, mainstream servers have been reproducing mainframe ideas.
Makers of Unix and Windows servers "have been busily learning how to do partitions and workload management and job scheduling and mixed workloads and channelized input-output," all mainframe features, Eunice said. "The mainframe has become a lot more like the rest of the market, and at the same time, the rest of the market--from Sun to Microsoft--has been working to become more like the mainframe."
But even as IBM tugs mainframes toward the mainstream, the systems are still surrounded by arcana.
Big Blue describes the speed of mainframe processors not by the clock rate--the familiar megahertz and gigahertz ratings found elsewhere in the computing world--but rather by the length of one tick of a chip's clock. The servers' computing ability is measured using the IBM-defined measurement MIPS. And Big Blue refuses to subject its mainframes to the industry-standard TPC-C test commonly used to compare different systems, despite its concerted and recently successful effort to push its Unix servers to the top of the list.
Zeitler's reason for avoiding the TPC-C test was simply that mainframes have no list prices, something that's required to publish a result on the test. But the answer served to highlight the systems' differences from the rest of the server market, for which pricing is more readily available. Sun, for example, has list prices as high as $3 million for its top-end 72-processor Sun Fire 15K server.
IBM refuses to disclose mainframe prices, saying only that an entry-level z990 would have a starting price of about $1 million.
And it's not easy to find people with mainframe expertise.
"You don't really learn this stuff in colleges anymore," Berger said, so Farmers does the teaching itself, with assistance from IBM. "We take people out of college...and train them to be mainframers."Farmers' core claims-processing application is written in CICS, which by itself is enough to keep the company from moving it to a Unix server, Berger said: "Porting is not an option." But he shows no signs of resentment about the difficulties of moving to a different system: Farmers' mainframes handle 40 million to 45 million transactions per day, and "you're not going to do that" on a Unix server.
Not surprisingly, Sun hopes customers will switch, and the company has some evidence to show that more than a few have--Sun has lured 1,000 customers so far to a program to host mainframe software on its own Unix servers that even run CICS and Cobol software.
Boosted by new technology
IBM believes that new technology will help keep customers happy with mainframes. At the heart of the z990 are new processors, which feature several major changes over their predecessors beside the addition of superscalar technology.
They run at 1.2GHz instead of at 750MHz. They're dual-core models, meaning that two processors are etched into the same slice of silicon, a move that IBM first made with the Power4 processor used in its Unix servers. The number of communication channels doubled to 512. They have 450 MIPS worth of power, compared to 250 for the latest z900's chips.
The processors themselves are packaged by the dozen, with eight primary processors and four spares, in a dense ceramic slab called a multichip module. These packages have 101 layers filled with a three-dimensional maze of connections; the reliability of the approach compared with that of conventional circuit boards is one reason that IBM boasts of the relative rarity of hardware defects.
This June, Big Blue will begin selling a 16-processor z990. October will bring a 32-processor model, Lechner said. IBM has told analysts that a 48-processor version is due by the end of 2003 and a 64-processor version in 2004, but Lechner declined to comment on those plans.
Adding more processors will mean that IBM can double again the number of input-output channels and increase the number of independent "partitions" into which the mainframe can be sliced. The 15 initial partitions will expand to 30 in October and eventually to 60 in 2004.
And in a first for IBM mainframes, new processor-memory-input-output complexes can be added to the system without shutting it down. Big Blue had shied away from that flexibility because it's much harder to guarantee a system's stability with such deep, invasive changes, Eunice said, but the benefits eventually outweighed the risks. And competitors had an edge: For more than two years, Sun's higher-end servers have had the ability to be upgraded without taking the system down.
The mainframe's software is also improving. Its flagship operating system, z/OS, will improve in October with the release of version 1.5, Lechner said. The new version will be able to handle 11,000 encrypted transactions per second, compared with 7,400 for the current version 1.4, Lechner said.
Another speed increase will come with the new version 8 of IBM's DB2 database software, due by the end of the year, Clementi said. Version 8 is the first to fully exploit the 64-bit processor design that IBM introduced in 2000 with the z900; 64-bit chips permit much simpler access to large databases of information.
Mainframes are designed to run multiple jobs simultaneously, with advanced features to let administrators assign priorities to specific jobs or specific computer users. That's a feature that dovetails with the current trend toward consolidation, or replacing several less-powerful machines that sometimes spend time idling with a single system whose full processing power can be used.
Farmers is one company embarked on consolidation. The company is closing all but two data centers in a move that Berger said will save the company millions of dollars in expenses.
"It's the year of data center consolidation for us," Berger said, adding that the company already finished one project in which its Lotus Notes e-mail and calendar software was moved from Windows servers to a smaller number of more powerful Unix servers.
Mainframes are expensive, but IBM argues they're worth the price. "The ability to in-board hundreds and thousands of smaller servers is what gives this thing its economic advantages," Zeitler said.
One new mainframe feature that bolsters the plan is "on-off capacity on demand," which lets a customer temporarily fire up unused processors and pay a one-time fee. Customers will want the ability to "up- and downgrade on demand, which allows you to absorb spikes in your workload without getting to a new higher cost base that will permanently haunt you," Clementi said.
The horsepower and adaptability are important to IBM's Global Services division, which has opened a new data center in Boulder, Colo., devoted to hosting other companies' applications. "The power and flexibility is exactly what IBM Global Services has been waiting for," said James Corgel, general manager of the division's e-business hosting services.
But for all the improvements, IBM still faces difficulties in technology and marketing.
Competitors such as Hewlett-Packard, Sun and Unisys have ever more capable systems based on less unusual components. "IBM's new mainframe is simply another stepping-stone to locking customers into proprietary technology," said Mark Hudson, worldwide marketing manager for high-end HP systems such as its 64-processor Superdome, in a statement.
Sun echoed that sentiment. "The Sun Fire 12K and Sun Fire 15K servers provide two to four times the performance at less than half the cost, and we don't lock our customers into expensive, complex services agreements," said Don Whitehead, director of Sun's Mainframe Rehosting Initiative, in a statement.
Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst Toni Sacconaghi is pessimistic about the mainframe's future, forecasting that mainframe revenues will decline 5 percent to 15 percent each year for IBM. "We continue to believe that the mainframe is a declining hardware platform, limited by applications availability and lack of competitive hardware offerings," he said in a Monday research report.
"We estimate that in fiscal 2002, about a quarter of IBM's revenues and 45 percent of its operating profits were somehow linked to the mainframe," Sacconaghi said. "But because the vast majority of the mainframe profit stream is tied to IBM's installed base...the impact of a new mainframe may no longer be as powerful as most investors suspect."As evidence of a turnaround, though, IBM points to strong unit shipments. IBM expects "in the range of a couple hundred" z990s to ship this quarter, Zeitler said, and the company has shipped more than 4,000 z800 and z900 systems since the they went on sale, with about 1,000 z800s in their first year.
"In the time that z900 and z800 have been on the market, we've shipped more capacity than the decade that preceded it," Zeitler said. "It will not grow like the Windows market, but it will not decline the way it did over the last decade." | <urn:uuid:1075a262-2cec-4f69-8f16-db96e101b40b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.cnet.com/IBM-works-to-make-mainframes-mainstream/2100-1010_3-1001595.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94922 | 2,976 | 1.617188 | 2 |
From Peter van Breemen, SJ:
We are all wounded people. Therefore, we are all a burden to ourselves and to others. … There is no getting around this. We simply must accept it. We must let ourselves be healed by others, and be open to healing, correction, and deeper self-knowledge. We must also accept others without condescension as wounded people, bear with them, and contribute to their healing.
Fr van Breemen channels Jean Vanier to provide the spine of his extended essay “Respect–the heart of love” in his book The God Who Won’t Let Go.
I’ve been dwelling on this chapter in the book for a few days now. For myself, it merits a closer personal look–mainly because of life circumstances. I’m not going to bore you with that. I have two places to explore with this concept. It will be sketchy, so if any reader would like to elaborate a bit . .. go for it.
First, more briefly, most of you are aware of Jean Vanier’s apostolate with developmentally disabled people. In that context, he realized that every human being is burdened with some kind of “disability.” Are we obviously limping on a leg? Maybe it’s a leg of self-esteem. Or addiction. Or something deeply hidden. But we all have something. Are all healed? Are all whole? I seriously doubt it.
Second, with more elaboration, how does this recognition of a common disability affect our worship? Some things are obvious. We depend on God, quite simply. Our efforts alone cannot make for perfect or even optimal liturgy. Great learning, doctrinal orthodoxy, the ability to follow a recipe: none of these are guarantees that our failings will not surface in some way during a particular Mass, or routinely in the liturgy because of a missed opportunity or misunderstanding. As much as we try to celebrate great liturgy–and I think we should always try–we achieve only a shallow representation of something far greater: the Son’s expression of adoration and affection for the Father, united by the love of the Holy Spirit.
And to be clear, our petty mistakes, errors, irreverent moments, and even our catastrophic blunders that border on (or dwell in) sacrilege do not burden or affect Christ’s action in the slightest. God absorbs these too. God accepts poor liturgy, disabled celebrants as wounded people. He bears with our poverty of worship. He even uses it to invite us to healing.
A deaf person is not excused from the obligation of listening, of communication, and of integration into society. Likewise, a person or community struggling with worship is not excused from the effort to get better. In worship, we have something of an advantage, in that we are all in the same boat. We can cooperate with the ways in which God invites us to be a source of healing, correction, and self-knowledge for one another.
Difficult, sure. But very much a reality on this plane of existence. How do you see the liturgy as a source of healing? How do others in your community help this? | <urn:uuid:881d6d53-4456-41be-a804-6da8720692f9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://catholicsensibility.wordpress.com/2013/01/19/burdens/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960131 | 667 | 1.726563 | 2 |
> When I saw your output not rise up after SETI went down, I thought maybe you
> were ignoring your computers & didn't bother to check them after SETI went back
I never knew it went down lol.
> Then I thought maybe your A/C died (I remembered from before that you live in
> Arizona) or you finally decided to shut off computers to reduce your living
> space's temperature from 60ºC to 50ºC (what's that - 140-120ºF?).
50°? That's Phoenix. It gets close here, though... Wednesday's supposed to be 45ish. It never gets anywhere near that in my apartment, though, even with the computer running and me cooking. I bet it's a good 10° or so cooler in here with nothing running.
I think my aircon did go out, though.
> In my case, electricity is dirt cheap here in Manitoba but I still wanted to
> reduce the hydro bill & reduce heat in the house. Ventilation is a tad poor &
> we have a 2nd floor which gets warmer like any 2nd floor. So only 2 computers
> (the media PC & server) are on 24/7 in the summer. 3 others (the ones each of
> us use for our own use) are shut off at night. Then there's the other server
> which has been shut down for the summer. And the upstairs PC in the main
> bedroom which is usually off unless I decide to use it before going to sleep so
> maybe 30 minutes a day it's on. Then when we go on summer vacation, I'll also
> shut off my server - so it will mean only 1 computer on for 1 week straight plus
> the laptop part-time which we'll have with us.
I usually don't leave my computer running anyway, winter or summer, just because. Partly because I'm cheap (my electric's about $25-35, and I don't wanna pay any more than that), but mostly out of habit. | <urn:uuid:85f584b8-5d00-4d11-ba71-07d03056a663> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.retrogames.com/cgi-bin/wwwthreads/showpost.pl?Board=retrosupport&Number=11926&page=0&view=collapsed&mode=threaded&sb=7 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978825 | 427 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Enrollment barriers harm California
I find it curious that the article “UC, CSU enrolling fewer Californians” (May 10) fails to mention that large numbers of well-qualified students who have worked diligently their entire high school careers fulfilling the course and grade requirements for the state’s higher education system are being rejected in favor of out-of-state and foreign students who pay higher fees to a financially strapped system. It is just one more example of the shortsightedness and lack of creativity of our leaders that they can’t find ways to save money that don’t jeopardize our state or penalize our citizens. – Barbara Wesser, Scripps Ranch
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Dale Akiki case
Concerning your excellent but really frightening article on the Dale Akiki travesty of justice (“Looking back, two decades after a travesty of justice,” May 10), will someone please tell us how and when the American public lost its right to a speedy trial and the assumption of innocence until proven guilty.
I thank the U-T San Diego for the coverage. – Tom O’Connor, San Diego
In response to “A vote for public health: yes on Prop. 29” (Opinion, May 9): As a stroke survivor, I know firsthand how devastating a stroke can be. The left half of my body was paralyzed; I could not walk, talk, feed myself or do much of anything on my own. I had to take leave from my job and depended upon my husband, family and friends for everything.
While my stroke was not preventable, many other people are permanently disabled by a preventable, devastating stroke that occurs because of tobacco use. Smoking nearly doubles a person’s risk of stroke. A “yes” vote on Prop. 29 will reduce the risk of both smoking and stroke. Prop. 29 will provide vital funding to make advances in prevention, detection and treatment of stroke, heart disease, cancer and other smoking-related illnesses.
The American Stroke Association’s mission is building healthier lives, free of cardiovascular diseases and stroke. Proposition 29 will help in this effort. I encourage you to vote yes on Proposition 29 on June 5. You will be making a difference in someone’s life – and perhaps stop a stroke – in its tracks. – Theresa Latosh, San Diego
Your editorial support of Proposition 29, preventive health care for tobacco users, is certainly admirable even though it relies on a dreaded sales tax increase.
I therefore look forward to your editorial comment on a news story in the same issue reporting that Republicans in the Senate would not vote for an extension of the reduced interest rate for student loans because it was funded by a change in the tax code (“Bill on student loan rates blocked,” May 9). The change would require income to shareholders of subchapter S corporations to pay Medicare and Social Security “taxes” which they do not pay now because such income is designated a “dividend” – a classic loophole.
How would you then classify the position of Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., “who instead wanted to pay for it (reduced interest) by eliminating a preventive health care fund in President Barack Obama’s health care law.” | <urn:uuid:cfd50318-23f9-4125-813c-27a220f00e7c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/may/10/letters-college-enrollment-akiki-case-and-more/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939387 | 895 | 1.585938 | 2 |
This is an official cry for help. I have a crafting problem. I bounce back and forth between what I will label "genres" of crafts. One week I am all into knitting, the next I am into embroidery, then I burn myself out and move onto something else... on and on, eventually making it back into knitting. It's like a crop rotation only a lot more yarn and glue, less dirt and nothing like crop rotation.
That's not the problem though. The problem is that I want to learn a new craft - crochet. So I picked up a book on crochet, some crochet hooks and watched a ton of videos and got to work. I would like to say that I got it and I learned to crochet and I am happily working away on something totally adorable. NOT the case.
I can make a chain to start it all out. I can single crochet, double crochet, yo, slip, all that stuff. What I cannot do is put it all together to make it into something. I don't understand where you insert the hook, how many extra chains to make to start a new row, which stitch to stop at. My extremely analytical and mathematical accountant's brain needs to understand the why behind crochet.
First of all, do you understand my problem? Or am I crazy? (Yes.) But do you understand what I mean - when someone says if you want to make 5 double crochets than you need to chain 7 stitches, what does it all mean??
Second, if you know of any great tutorials or easy to follow videos, please share! You don't have to try to explain it to me, but if you know someone who does, direct me their way please.
That is all. I just want to make this:
(On another note, anyone have problems centering embedded Pinterest photos? Obviously I do.) | <urn:uuid:c1de4337-e308-4683-b231-7017975a82ee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.littleloveliesbyallison.com/2011/05/cry-for-help.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960279 | 383 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Medical Image Reference Files
1996 RSNA DICOM Medical Image Set
The 1996 RSNA DICOM Image Set consists of 35 studies selected from approximately 100 studies submitted by vendors during the summer of 1995. Vendors submitted digital data sets, films, and reports that described the studies. Studies were then selected on the basis of image quality and clinical interest.
These 35 studies were stored on a Central Test Node (CTN) at the 1996 RSNA Conference and were available to participating vendors for retrieval using DICOM query/retrieve. These studies were also described in a DICOM handout that was available to attendees so that they could ask vendors to recall and display specific studies.
Our ftp site ftp.erl.wustl.edu contains the digital data as well as documents that describe the datasets.
The documents are:
- README file that provides an overall view of the directory.
- Index file that lists each study found in the directory.
- Reports file that contains the reports describing each study.
- Validation file that describes the problems that our laboratory found with the image data.
A browsable index is also available.
As stated in the README file, the image sets represent significant effort on the part of the vendors and our staff. However, neither the vendors nor the ERL staff guarantees that the images are 100% DICOM compliant. In fact, we know that there are errors. These images are made available in the hope that they will allow you to test your implementations. | <urn:uuid:e9045272-7ac3-47d7-959b-9b54c9a221a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://erl.wustl.edu/research/dicom/imagesets.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950922 | 316 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Forget celsius and fahrenheit, fathom and furlong. When the story of the online media revolution is told, people will wonder where the ubiquitous term for a six-month interval known as an "FU" came from.
Ezra Klein and Spazeboy will laugh knowingly over strained peas at the old folk’s home and tell the tale of Little Tommy Friedman, who in the olden days suffered from a somewhat Freuidian affliction conflating sexual dominance and an impulse toward imperialistic genocide which engorged his ego and distorted his perception of time.
A quaint Wiki entry somewhere in the Smithsonian will tell the tale:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia •
The term is in reference to a May 16, 2006 article by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) detailing journalist Thomas Friedman‘s repeated use of "the next six months" as the period in which, according to Friedman, "we’re going to find out…whether a decent outcome is possible" in the Iraq War. As documented by FAIR, Friedman had been making such six-month predictions for a period of two and a half years, on at least fourteen different occasions, starting with a column in the November 30, 2003 edition of The New York Times, in which he stated: "The next six months in Iraq—which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there—are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time."
The term has been used in general to describe any pronouncement of a critical period for the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Such pronouncements have been made by numerous politicians and military officials involved in the war.
Folks of Middle Eastern descent will still be pissed that Americans thought it was acceptable to invade their country on false pretenses, slaughter their people and continue to revere a pundit who thought "Suck on this" was an appropriate expression of America’s foreign policy.
Then Matlock will come on and Ezra will pinch the night nurse and that will be that. | <urn:uuid:852b410d-afe7-4917-9bd2-4e059d8a973a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://firedoglake.com/2008/05/30/happy-suck-on-this-day/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948429 | 431 | 1.601563 | 2 |
With Canada Day fast approaching, I have decided that this week will be Canada week. Each day I will blog about something or someone distinctly Canadian.
What is more Canadian than hockey?
Team Canada 2010 celebrates Olympic gold
Hockey is such a big part of the fabric of our society. All year long on suburban streets throughout the country you will hear the cries kids saying, “Car!” and “Game on!” as they play street hockey, fantasizing that they will one day be playing for real on the ice.
The NHL has more players from Canada than any other country. So much so that it is not sacrilegious to root for an American team because they are all filled with Canadian players. The Canadian men’s national ice hockey team (or Team Canada) has won more Olympic gold medals than any other country with a total of 8. Yes hockey is a point of pride in Canada.
Hockey players are treated like kings here. Little boys across the country grew up idolizing men like Gordie Howe, Bobby Hull, Mario Lemieux and of course, the Great One, Wayne Gretzky.
Even the Canadian restaurant chain, Tim Horton’s was started by a hockey player… Tim Horton played for 22 seasons in the NHL for the Toronto Maple Leafs, the New York Rangers, the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Buffalo Sabres.
Tim Horton in 1965
So here’s to hockey, our national pastime. I can think of no one better suited to end this post than Canadian country and folk singer Stompin’ Tom Connors singing the Hockey Song. | <urn:uuid:4330f064-f807-408e-99c8-06b8835eabc2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://windupmyskirt.com/2012/06/24/as-canadian-as-hockey/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945051 | 333 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Prof. Raymond W. Yeung, Chair Professor, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Abstract: In recent years, network coding has generated much interest in information theory, coding theory, networking, wireless communications, cryptography, and computer science. Consider a point-to-point communication network on which a number of information sources are to be multicast to certain sets of destination nodes. The problem is to characterize the maximum possible throughputs. Contrary to one's intuition, network coding theory reveals that it is in general not optimal to regard the information to be multicast as a "fluid" that can simply be routed or replicated. Rather, by employing coding at the nodes, bandwidth can in general be saved. In this talk, we will give an overview of the recent developments in the field and discuss how they can eventually lead to a new information infrastructure.
Biography: Raymond W. Yeung received the BS, MEng, and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from Cornell University. He joined AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1988. Since 1991, he has been with Department of Information Engineering at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he is currently a chair professor. Since 2010, he has also been serving as Co-Director of the Institute of Network Coding at CUHK.
He is a co-founder of the field of Network Coding and received the 2005 IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award for his work on linear network coding. He also received the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 2007 and was a recipient of the Croucher Senior Research Fellowship for 2000/01. He is the author of the books A First Course in Information Theory (Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2002) and Information Theory and Network Coding (Springer 2008).
Professor Yeung was a member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Information Theory Society from 1999 to 2001. He was the General Chair of the First Workshop on Network, Coding, and Applications (NetCod 2005). He is a Fellow of the IEEE and the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers.
Type: Plenary Presentation
Duration: 1 hour 9 minutes | <urn:uuid:1079f6ec-1035-4d3e-b457-384df14b9242> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.comsoc.org/webcasts/view/network-coding-overview | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939077 | 440 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Apple enables two-step verification for iCloud accounts
Apple has joined the growing list of companies offering two-step verification to secure user accounts. By enabling two-step verification, whenever you attempt to log in on a new device with your Apple ID, you will be asked to enter a 4-digit verification code. This code will be sent to a device that you have registered as a trusted device, such as your iPhone, via a Find My iPhone notification or SMS.
Your Apple ID can be used for personal information services like iCloud and commercial transactions through iTunes. Two-step verification ensures that if your Apple ID and password are somehow compromised, an attacker would not be able to log in with it unless they also had access to your trusted device. This drastically reduces the risk of a compromised Apple ID being abused in a few ways, such as not being able to make unauthorized purchases and not allowing access to your personal email and contacts. The part about iCloud is especially critical in light of stories like Wired's Mat Honan, where a compromised iCloud account resulted in his devices being remotely wiped by an attacker. With two-factor verification, a malicious act like that would require an attacker to also have obtained access to one of Honan's trusted devices.
Users who choose to enable two-step verification will also want to create a Recovery Key and keep it in a safe place. This Recovery Key will ensure that even if you lose your trusted devices, you will still be able to regain access to your account. It’s a little bit like trusting a neighbor with a spare house key in case you ever lose yours and can’t get into your house.
People interested in turning on two-step verification can head over to Apple’s support document for more information. | <urn:uuid:3adb05fd-b651-4783-9087-f1fe3d489563> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.imore.com/comment/405872 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959341 | 358 | 1.710938 | 2 |
|Canon PowerShot G10 digital camera test : The Canon PowerShot G10 was introduced worldwide in September 2008, around the time of the Photokina Show. The Canon G10 is the latest model of Canon's successful G-series cameras. The Canon PowerShot G camera is always prone to attract the attention of photographers, the amateur as well as the professional photographer. The Canon PowerShot G10 is the immediate successor to the G9 and it comes as no surprise that both cameras look a lot alike. In spite of what you may have expected, the PowerShot G10 has not decreased in size, in fact, it even got somewhat bigger.
14,7 Megapixel Canon PowerShot G10
Those who carefully monitor trends in digital photography could have possibly seen it coming. The increase in the amount of pixels on the Canon PowerShot G10 was inevitable. Whereas its predecessor settled for 12.1 Megapixels, which was already overkill, the Canon G10 even exceeds this amount with its 14.7 Megapixels. This high number of pixels in the specifications can confuse the consumer even more: on the local dealer's shelves, these compact cameras have a higher resolution than the digital SLR cameras on the next shelf. What’s the point in having so many Megapixels anyway?
Canon G10 camera specifications
In addition to the increase in Megapixels, Canon decided to decrease the optical zoom range of the new Canon G10 from 6x to 5x zoom. In return, you get a 28mm wide-angle zoom lens instead of the 35mm wide-angle on the G9. The Canon PowerShot G10 also provides an extensive auto focus with enhanced face detection that is even more precise. Rendering happens on the 3 inch monitor, which increased from 461,000 dots to 230,000 dots in resolution. At first glance, there seems to be enough improvements and innovation on the G10 to make it a worthy successor to the PowerShot G9.
Canon PowerShot G10 review
We had the Canon PowerShot G10 in the office for awhile and tested it extensively in practice as well as in the lab. LetsGoDigital is a co-founder and member of DIWA Awards, which means that we have a fully equipped test lab at our disposal. The Canon G10 went through rigorous testing procedures in the DIWA Lab in combination with our experience in practice; ultimately turning into a full camera review. Our findings can be read in the following Canon PowerShot G10 review. | <urn:uuid:54199f73-a730-4b16-a2a8-fce0c3279bed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.letsgodigital.org/en/camera/review/191/page_1.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95722 | 518 | 1.523438 | 2 |
The bishop sat in lordly state and purple cap
And galvanized the old bush church at Confirmation time;
And all the kids were mustered up from fifty miles around,
With Sunday clothes, and staring eyes, and ignorance profound.
Now was it fate, or was it grace, whereby they yarded too
An overgrown two-storey lad from Tangmalangaloo?
A hefty son of virgin soil, where nature has
had her fling,
And grows the trefoil three feet high and mats it in the spring;
Where mighty hills uplift their heads to pierce the welkin's rim,
And trees sprout up a hundred feet before they shoot a limb;
There everything is big and grand, and men are giants too -
But Christian Knowledge wilts, alas, at Tangmalangaloo.
The bishop summed the youngsters up, as bishops
He cast a searching glance around, then fixed upon his man.
But glum and dumb and undismayed through every bout he sat;
He seemed to think that he was there, but wasn't sure of that.
The bishop gave a scornful look, as bishops sometimes do,
And glared right through the pagan in from Tangmalangaloo.
'Come, tell me, boy,' his lordship said, in
crushing tones severe,
'Come, tell me why is Christmas Day the greatest of the year?
'How is it that around the world we celebrate that day
'And send a name upon a card to those who're far away?
'Why is it wandering ones return with smiles and greetings, too?
A squall of knowledge hit the lad from Tangmalangaloo.
He gave a lurch which set a-shake the vases
on the shelf,
He knocked the benches all askew, up-ending of himself.
And oh, how pleased his lordship was, and how he smiled to say,
'That's good, my boy. Come, tell me now; and what is Christmas Day?
The ready answer bared a fact no bishop ever knew -
'It's the day before the races out at Tangmalangaloo. | <urn:uuid:0961a960-53eb-46b8-8e97-ca059fcfb458> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://users.tpg.com.au/dandsc/job/job09.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957867 | 466 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Depictions: The Day After Tomorrow in Legos
- September 27, 2010 |
- 2:00 pm |
- Categories: Wired October 2010
It’s the end. A lone human—survivor of an unknown calamity—and his robot assistant press on, making sure the processing facility keeps… processing. A tram runs, conveyor belts turn, and a toxic river flows. The landscape encroaches, held back by little more than an electric fence. The remains of a crashed vessel jut from the ground. Creatures have claimed it as a shelter and installed a machine that transforms noxious waste into water. A small fee buys one pot.
It’s a chilling postapocalyptic vision—at least, as chilling as a postapocalyptic vision made from Legos can be. The giant diorama, titled Containment, was built by Tyler Clites and Nannan Zhang and unveiled at Brickworld in Chicago in June (you can catch it again at the next Brickworld).
Containment stretches more than 7 feet across, with flashing lights, speakers for music, and a working monorail. Many of the smaller vignettes are nods to other Lego architects and dioramas: The monkey with four hooked limbs, for example, is an homage to a sci-fi Lego construction called Omicron Weekend, and the figure chiseling at a rock sculpture is a tribute to Nate Nielson, a Lego builder who died last spring. The scene, Zhang says, is designed to leave us wondering what exactly is being contained—the isolated facility or the chaos outside. “That’s a question for us all to answer,” he says. | <urn:uuid:559b7565-4683-48b5-a0ed-9ae756fb1b98> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/09/pl_legos_depictions/?pid=3117 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954966 | 348 | 1.828125 | 2 |
One of the biggest secrets in London will finally be revealed Friday: what will happen at the opening ceremony for the Summer Olympic Games.
Friday night billons will finally get to see the extravaganza created by Danny Boyle, best known for the Oscar-winning film "Slumdog Millionare.
Few specifics have been released about the three-hour show. A big feat taking into account that thousands of performers and technicians are involved and there have been two dress rehearsals this week.
In fact, a twitter hashtag, #savethesurprise, has been started by Olympic organizers to help keep details private.
But some aspects of the show have leaked out.
The show's opening scene is dubbed "Green and Pleasant," after a line from poet William Blake's Jerusalem and will showcase an idyllic view of a British countryside.
The elaborate set will comprise rolling hills, fields and rivers, complete with picnicking families, sport being played on a village green and real farmyard animals.
Not many names of the celebrities that will be part of the ceremony have been released. But star footballer David Beckham has said he has a role in the spectacle.
Join tonight: 2012 London Olympics Opening Ceremony chat
Coverage on Local 4 begins at 7:30 p.m. with the tolling of the largest harmonically tuned bell in Europe, cast by the nearby Whitechapel Foundry.
Torch Travels up the Thames on last day
The Olympic torch will travel over water on its last day being carried on the royal barge Gloriana on the River Thames. The torch will then be the main attraction during the grand finale of the opening ceremony as it will be taken into Olympic Stadium and set the Olympic cauldron aflame, symbolizing the beginning of the Games.
On Thursday, it was taken past iconic London landmarks.
Crowds joined British Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife as the torch reached the doorstep of their Downing Street home. Next, the torch went past the Big Ben clock tower, carried by 81-year-old native Londoner Florence Rowe, who says she fondly remembers the excitement of the 1948 London Olympics.
The last major stop was Buckingham Palace, where Prince William, his wife Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, and Prince Harry greeted the torchbearers.
Men's football starts
Some Olympic competition commenced ahead of the opening ceremony.
Thursday saw the start of the men's football competition, with global favorites Spain and Brazil playing, though not against each other.
Spain, which won the European Championship this year and the last World Cup, suffered a surprising 1-0 defeat to Japan in one of eight games scheduled Thursday.
Brazil -- which, like Spain, is considered a likely contender to win Olympic gold -- beat Egypt 3-2. Great Britain, playing football in the Olympics for the first time since 1960, scored a 1-1 draw in its match against Senegal.
Two notable absences are Argentina and the United States, neither of which qualified.
U.S. lawmakers remember Munich killings
Sixteen members of the U.S. House of Representatives held a moment of silence Thursday to honor the 11 Israeli athletes killed at the 1972 Munich Olympics and urged Olympic leaders to hold a similar moment of silence at Friday's opening ceremony.
American Jewish leaders and the widow of one of the Israeli athletes have made a similar plea.
The International Olympic Committee says it will honor the slain athletes at a ceremony in September for the 40th anniversary, but so far there are no plans for an official remembrance Friday. | <urn:uuid:d2d11a19-e21d-4fc2-9015-707f87779e0d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/2012-London-Olympics-to-begin-officially/-/1719418/15750052/-/g0utx6/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957219 | 730 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Amendment four includes several measure that would benefit home buyers.
It would give first-time home-buyers a 50% tax break on property taxes for the first 5-years of ownership.
So, if the house is valued at 150-thousand dollars, the buyer would pay taxes on 75-thousand dollars of the home's value.
But, it would also limit property taxes increase for business to ten percent a year.
It reduces the maximum amount of property tax increases from 10%-to-5%, on non-homesteaded houses.
It would also keep tax on those properties from going-up if the property value actually decreases.
"It's believed to be a fair tax move because our economy is based on a lot of people who are absentee owners, here especially on the beach," said local realtor Jim Free.
Realtors, like Free, believe out-of-state owners already bare too much of the local tax burden.
But city officials believe these proposed tax breaks would be devastating for local governments.
"If you're going to give take breaks to snowbirds who live somewhere else full time, then who's going pick up the tab-another way to look at it is-it's going to be the people who are here full time," said County Manager Ed Smith.
Smith admitted the amendment has some good points, but said those points are not enough to make the entire proposal worthwhile.
"Overall for Bay County local government purposes it could be fundamentally bad in the long run," he said.
Amendment four does not deal with homestead exemption properties.
Under Florida law, they already have a 3% cap on property tax increases. | <urn:uuid:1ea4056b-954b-4fcb-92de-f9354c511d1a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wjhg.com/news/headlines/Breaking-Down-Amendment-4--176499471.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975057 | 347 | 1.804688 | 2 |
CHARLES PERROW ALMOST HAD TO FIGHT HIS WAY into the Federal Reserve Bank of New York last September. Occupy Wall Street was in full swing nearby, and security at the door was unusually tight. The weather and the mood of the city were decidedly stormy.
Perrow had been invited to speak to a hundred senior New York Fed officials as part of the banks off-the-record Listen to Our Critics series, and he didnt exactly brighten their day. The 86-year-old Yale University professor emeritus of sociology has written widely about the dangers posed by complex systems, including his 1984 book Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies, and he told the Fed audience that technological breakdowns in financial markets had become too commonplace too normal to be considered aberrations. In particular, he warned about the dangers of unleashing whiplash-fast trading algorithms and abstruse financial products on a tightly coupled global financial system.
In complex, nonlinear systems it is inevitable that at some time, two or more failures perhaps trivial, individually will interact in a way no designer could have anticipated and no operator can understand, he explained, squinting at his notes in a dim upstairs ballroom in the Feds neo-Renaissance headquarters. If the system is also tightly coupled, the failures will propagate and cascade through the system, even when everyone tries very hard to play safe.
Perrow may seem an unlikely market seer, but his theories have won him a following in financial circles. Richard Bookstaber, a former hedge fund risk manager now working in the U.S. Treasurys Office of Financial Research, drew from Perrows notions of normal accidents and tight coupling and the domino effect of failures cascading through interconnected systems in A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation, his 2007 book that presciently laid out the elements of the global crisis that was about to unfold. According to Bookstaber, complexity breeds opacity, which, at best, can make it harder to guarantee orderly markets and, at worst, erect a smokescreen that can ruin transparency and abet fraud. Each innovation adds layers of complexity [that] cannot be easily disarmed through oversight or regulation, he says. As complexity increases, so do the odds of something unanticipated going wrong. .... | <urn:uuid:6bd061a8-d31d-42ef-8da8-b63e5668a0f5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.institutionalinvestor.com/Article.aspx?ArticleId=3088151 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968976 | 483 | 1.757813 | 2 |
U.S. and Japanese energy experts from the national and local governments will visit Okinawa and Hawaii from August 22-September 4, 2010, to exchange views and offer recommendations on future cooperative activities that the United States and Japan can carry out to support the “Hawaii-Okinawa Partnership on Clean and Efficient Energy Development and Deployment” signed by the U.S. Department of Energy, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan, State of Hawaii, and Prefecture of Okinawa in Tokyo on June 17, 2010.
Assistant Secretary David Sandalow co-hosted the U.S.-China Energy Efficiency Forum, the U.S.-China Renewable Energy Forum and the U.S.-China Advanced Biofuels Forum in Beijing. These three fora were established under the clean energy cooperation measures announced by President Barack Obama and President Hu Jintao in 2009.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - In support of the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas announced by President Obama at the 2009 Summit of the Americas, Secretary Steven Chu announced today that the U.S. Department of Energy has selected three initial projects under the Low-Carbon Communities of the Americas (LCCA) - a program launched in June 2009 to assist countries in Latin America with sustainable energy market transformation initiatives.
WASHINGTON - America needs a comprehensive energy plan to regain control of its energy future, revitalize its economy, and break a dependence on oil that threatens our prosperity, our environment, and our national security, top Obama Administration officials said today. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, and Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change Carol Browner headlined a Clean Energy Economy Forum on the campus of the White House with business leaders from around the country.
BEIJING, CHINA - After touring the "America House," a U.S. designed demonstration of cutting edge "zero energy" building technology, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced a new agreement between the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Chinese Ministry of Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD) to foster collaboration and partnership in the development of improved, more efficient building designs as well as sustainable communities that rely on greater use of renewable energy.
LIMA, PERU - Energy ministers and other government energy leaders from across the Americas came together with major energy corporations and other experts in Lima, Peru June 15 and 16, 2009 at the Americas Energy and Climate Symposium. The Symposium, the first major energy event after the Summit of the Americas earlier this year, resulted in the announcement of concrete joint actions to improve energy efficiency, promote clean and renewable energy, and increase information sharing on best practices and past experiences. | <urn:uuid:8961ab4b-bbf5-42e3-8ccc-8206dc08eb89> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://energy.gov/pi/news-archive?page=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939804 | 557 | 1.546875 | 2 |
By Julianne Malveaux
Trice Edney News Wire
The problem with having a deadline, at the end of the week, is that you miss the opportunity to weigh in on things, like an election, that happen in the next week. Writing on Thursday or Friday for a column that will appear the following Thursday or Friday is almost torture when you consider the possibilities that face us on Nov. 7, after the election. I am hoping President Obama can pull it off, but I am cognizant of the numbers that suggest that Willard (Mitt Romney) is nipping at his heels. No matter what happens, there are real issues that must be faced not only in the next few weeks, but also in the next few years.
The unemployment rate report released Nov. 2 was good news for President Obama. The unemployment rate ticked up just a tiny bit, from 7.8 to 7.9 percent. It stayed below the magic number of 8 percent, which is a boost for the president. Behind the good news, though, there are issues of concern. For example, the African American unemployment rate rose significantly, from 13.4 to 14.3 percent. Black women took most of the hit, with unemployment rates rising from 10.9 to 12.4 percent. Meanwhile, Black male unemployment dropped from 14.2 to 14.1 percent.
There’s more. More than five million people have been officially unemployed for more than half a year. They have been looking for work for an average of 41 weeks. I cannot imagine the pain and misery that is reflected in such a long job search. One wonders how many of these folks have left the labor market because they have become discouraged. At the same time, the data shows that more than 600,000 people returned to the labor force as a result of recent trends.
The most discouraging data comes from hidden unemployment and other measures of unemployment. The 7.8 percent overall rate of unemployment is reported as 14.6 percent. Thus, the Black unemployment rate of 14.3 percent translates to an overall Black unemployment rate of 26.4 percent. That means more than one in four African Americans is unemployed. In some urban areas, as much as half of the African American male population does not work.
When President Obama wins this election, African American activists, especially those who have access, must remind our president of this data. They must suggest that there is a coordinated and comprehensive response to the disproportionate exclusion of African Americans in our economy. In the unlikely scenario that Mr. Romney is elected, it will be a signal for African American people to figure out how to develop an economic model that does not depend on government (not a bad idea in any case). Then make the new administration understand they are not only the leaders of conservatives, but also leaders of our entire nation.
When African Americans are marginalized in the labor market, the whole of our nation suffers. Any unused human capital is a drain on our economy and society. Whether Mr. Romney or President Obama is the victor on Nov. 6, the brain drain that is a result of high unemployment rates will not be staunched until there is focused attention on Mr. Romney’s 47 percent. Investments in education are threatened by the Ryan budget, but following the Ryan budget is much like eating our seed corn instead of plating it for the next generation. The focus on education improvements in china and India are really a focus on the failure of our nation to fully invest in higher education, especially for those who are underrepresented.
Our nation’s situation is not simply about an election, but about a matter of direction. Too many of us think that voting is the most we can do, not the least we can do. Too many of us have eschewed the role of community agitator and activist. Way too many of us feel that professional success and community involvement are mutually exclusive. Too many of us fail to understand that our personal success germinates from community activity.
The unemployment rate data is a monthly reminder of the State of Black America. If we are unsatisfied with the facts, what will we do to change them?
Julianne Malveaux is a Washington, D.C.-based economist and author.
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You must be logged in to post a comment. | <urn:uuid:f54c5b75-5aab-4932-8889-8972a65665a0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://michigancitizen.com/unemployment-blues/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959701 | 890 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Westland Wessex Helicopter
The Wessex HU5 was designed as a commando-carrier assault helicopter. Capable of carrying 16 Royal Marines and their equipment, she entered service with the Royal Navy in 1964 and remained on the front line until 1986. Thereafter, she was employed in various secondary roles. Wessex XS511 was delivered to the RN in October 1964 and embarked on HMS Albion with No 848 Squadron; she served with this squadron either at sea or ashore until it disbanded in 1976. After further shore-based service at a variety of locations, she spent two years with No 845 Squadron before being retired from the front line in September 1986. Following 10 years at NAS Lee-on-Solent, she relocated to HMS Sultan before being loaned to the ATC and delivered to Tangmere for safe keeping in 2005. | <urn:uuid:e942a6a7-3ff6-419c-bf77-36a498703351> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tangmere-museum.org.uk/museum-aircraft/westland-wessex-helicopter | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9774 | 173 | 1.835938 | 2 |
It’s worth wading through this massive tome to mine its nuggets of unalloyed Twain.
The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1, is a weighty piece of literature: five pounds if it’s an ounce, and 736 pages long. But please don’t blame Mr. Mark Twain. The first 58 pages are hijacked by an editor, and the last 267 pages are squandered on appendixes, notes, references, indexes, lost laundry tickets, and recipes for chicken con carne. Those last two might not be all together accurate, but let it go. I defy anyone to disprove me by wading through this semantic morass.
Surrounded though he is by six editors, Twain still manages to get a few words in edgewise. At one point he describes his feeling about being edited for the first time in 32 years: “The idea! That this long-eared animal – this literary kangaroo – this bastard of the Muses – this illiterate hostler, with his skull full of axle-grease – this.... But I stopped there, for this was not the right Christian spirit.”
It is well that Twain did not live to be 175 and witness the publication of his posthumous, unexpurgated autobiography. It would have laid him low, to be sure. Parts of it repeat passages from editions of his previously published autobiography: an account of his first public lecture, for example. There are new segments here, of course, but they hardly seem scandalous or scathing enough to have been kept from the public for a century after his death. Perhaps Volumes 2 and 3 will contain more of the rockets’ red glare.
The truth is that the juicy, uncensored stuff has been leaking out for decades, such as in “Letters for the Earth,” prepared for publication in 1937 but not released until 1962. In it, Twain, a nominal Christian for most of his life, fulminates against the Almighty in the most sacrilegious fashion imaginable. Nothing in the current volume comes close. | <urn:uuid:6b77a4c5-58ae-4386-ac62-4c653e72e1d0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://m.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2010/1112/The-Autobiography-of-Mark-Twain | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964371 | 437 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Misericordia is recognized as one of the nation’s leading communities for children and adults with developmental disabilities, distinguished by its network of services and a continuum of care model. Misericordia began serving children with mental disabilities in 1954. Today, we support over 600 children and adults from diverse racial, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds, with disabilities ranging from mild or moderate to severe and profound. Programs include many residential options, job training and placement, an array of therapies, fitness and health guidance, social and recreational activities, and opportunities for spiritual growth. These are designed to help our residents achieve and maintain the highest level of independence possible. | <urn:uuid:581ddfb1-0be3-4014-9345-c35e3f042766> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/stephaniewestphal/misericordia-candy-days/nonprofit | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95371 | 131 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Currently used as a headquarters for a Dexia bank, this building marks the great times of Brussels architecture. Designed and build in 1969, it features some well executed details. Most people nowadays would probably call it ugly. Surely this is not the only of the type or the most spectacular office building of the region, but it shows the period and is a living example of the true spirit of Brussels – the endless bureaucracy (fr. bureau + gr. κράτος kratos – rule or power).
Click image to enlarge
And still as a bank building of the 60′s it still looks good and contemporary enough nowadays. I especially like the decorative façade, which stands a bit away from the structure and the windows. This type of solution gives some architectural play – the slightly sculptural window patterns cast shadows on the tinted windows as if putting some lace on the office box.
This building is 13 stories high and it is 56 meters.
This is a second architect’s residence, that I visited and photographed. This time a classic modernist project form Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. This wonderful building is built in 1966 (!) and it is designed by Takamitsu Azuma. He called this project “Tower House” (“Tou no Ie” jpn.).
Built only on 20 square meters site this architectural masterpiece consists of 5 stories above ground and one level of basement. The ground level is garage, basement is a storage space, second level is living and kitchen, third level is a toilet and a bathroom, fourth floor is a bedroom and top room originally was designed as a child’s room.
Click image to enlarge
In the bottom right photo of the collage, you can see me hugging a corner of the building to show the scale of it (I have been there and it still bends my mind).
Inside all the levels are connected by one volume, shared by an inner “tower”. The idea behind it is about sharing the space, feeling one with everyone in the house, possibility for unverbal communication; one can easily hear, smell and feel what other people do in the house.
At the moment a grown-up child, who also became an architect, Rie Azuma a daughter of Takamitsu Azuma and her family is living in the house. In the past she left her parents to live in the United States and after she came back her parents moved out. My personal guess is that for ageing parents it was becoming difficult to move up and down the number of stairs everyday. However out of respect to her father the name plate on the house still bears the name of Takamitsu Azuma.
The building is kept as original as much a possible. Some of the fixed furniture was replaced, but has been rebuild to the original design.
This amazing building is very well know in Japan, architecture students go thought this project, study it and make it’s models. Every month a number of visitors visit the house on a scheduled tour. I feel lucky to have dashed by this building and when seeing it my hands almost involuntarily grabbed the camera to photograph it.
Interesting design from 60′s, on Ise-Shima Skyline – picturesque privately owned mountain top road. The Rest House is closed for quite a while now and used to be a restaurant.
Building and some of the surrounding views:
click to enlarge
The shape of the building is designed after shrines nearby Ise city (most important Shinto shrines). However to my western eye the roof shape reminds fish!
Stone steps in front of the building are reused stones from tramway line what was running in Ise city until 1961.
One of the most famous feature used to be sitting outside with the feet soaked in naturally warm water, gazing into the Pacific Ocean (supposedly on an extremely clear day you could see mount Fuji).
Marcinkonys Roman Catholic church:
click to enlarge
Lovely wooden Neo-Gothic church located in south of Lithuania, surrounded by pine forests in the centre of Dzukija national park.
Interesting detail: on top of the hexagonal tower windows are just painted on. | <urn:uuid:20cb8a30-6632-4e91-a088-33cf9a0ae37b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://archwanders.com/tag/timeless-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962849 | 870 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Getting drugs on the market means playing games. So says Peter Lurie of Public Citizen, an interest group founded by Ralph Nader and based in Washington, D.C. Of course, it's the agency's mission to be leery. But lately pharmaceutical companies are giving groups like Lurie's more to be leery about. Drug firms now wield a great deal of control over their research, Lurie charges, and they are frequently manipulating their data or withholding unfavorable results entirely.
One of Public Citizen's latest battles is over a drug for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Three years ago the Food and Drug Administration approved Lotronex (alosetron hydrochloride), the first agent to treat the disorder specifically. As published in the Lancet, clinical trials in women revealed that 41 percent taking the drug felt some relief, as did 29 percent taking a placebo.
This article was originally published with the title Bad Medicine. | <urn:uuid:97d0c73b-0c66-4aab-8a64-e03288b540db> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=bad-medicine | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951891 | 188 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Editor's note: This is part 1 of a two-part series on travel in Armenia.The trip to Yerevan, Armenia, was long. From Washington, D.C., I flew to Heathrow and after a five-hour lay-over, I flew to Yerevan and arrived at about 2 a.m. on a Saturday morning. It was a 19 hour trip, and I arrived there late at night. It was interesting to see a number of brightly lit casinos on my way from the airport to my apartment in the center of the city. I've since learned that the majority of businesses for the entire country is owned by seven families in Armenia. Everyone else survives on what most Americans would consider to be low-income wages. I'm guessing those casinos make their money from the oligarch families and friends, and are probably a good way for the rich to launder the illegal portions of their revenues. Just a guess.Armenia is an interesting little country. It has the land mass comparable to Maryland. The city of Yerevan is at an elevation comparable to Denver with a view of Mt. Ararat that is comparable to that of Seattle's view of Mt. Rainier. Except that Mt. Ararat has two peaks: one somewhat similar in appearance and elevation to Mt. Rainier, and the second peak which reminds me of Mt. St. Helens before it blew its top. On a clear day, they're magnificent. Unfortunately, although it can't be more than 60 miles away, it is in Turkey and there are no border crossings between Armenia and Turkey. So, Armenians enjoy the view but they can't feel the exhilaration of climbing on its slopes or up to either of the two peaks.
There is a dj vu to more than just the sense of being near Seattle and looking at a magnificent mountain. The city of Yerevan reminds me of a scaled down version of Kyiv, Ukraine. This makes sense, since the Soviet Union replicated the architecture of the government buildings, concrete modular apartment buildings and similarly designed monuments in many of the former Soviet Republic's capitals. The subway (metro) is designed the same and so is the radio tower. However the difference here is that, no matter which direction you look beyond the city, you will see snow-capped mountains, instead of the plains that surround Kyiv.When I first arrived I hired a lady to come to the apartment once a week to do the shopping and cook enough Slavic dinners for a week. I was lucky because she was a very good cook! While I was in Yerevan, I had the pleasure of hosting two small dinner parties with colleagues. I also hooked up with the Yerevan Hash House Harriers. This is a chapter of an internationally infamous drinking club with a walking/running problem. At least, that's what the motley, irreverent riff-raff that attends their events like to say. Actually, it is a pleasant mix of local nationals and expats from a variety of countries that are in almost every capital or major city of the world that like to meet other free spirits. The common theme of all Hash House Harrier (H3) groups around the world is that they like to walk, run, have a few beers and enjoy the moment together. I've discovered that the H3 is a great way to make new friends in a new city.
On the second weekend that I was in Yerevan, I had the opportunity to go downhill skiing at Armenia's only ski area, Tsakadzor. Although the slopes are from beginner and modestly intermediate, the fresh mountain air at 6,000 feet and some exercise is always a pleasure. The third weekend after arriving in Armenia, I went with several other colleagues to the second largest city, Gumeryi, and near there, we went cross country skiing for a day. This area was devastated in 1988 by a severe earthquake that killed an estimated 25,000. It seems that earthquakes can happen on the floor of the ocean or at 6,000 feet in the mountains with the same deadly effect. We went cross country skiing in a little village that was predominantly Catholic and received support from the Roman Catholic Church. Notably, while we were there we visited the school building (built by the Vatican) and saw many pictures on the walls, including that of Jeb Bush. Bush visited the village and offered some assistance there after the earthquake. It was a very modest village, virtually in the middle of no-where, except being high in the mountains, near the border with Turkey. Although I didn't see any satellite TV dishes, the people I met seemed content with their lives. This was a place where cross country skiing is a winter activity for everyone in the village. It was fun to watch a group of about six pre-teenage boys out and about on their skis. They may not have had all the stuff that many American kids have, but they certainly appeared to have a healthier and perhaps happier life style than many American kids (except perhaps in the Colorado Rockies), at least on that day. While we were there, my colleagues and I were honored to be invited into the home of the village mayor and his wife, where they served us a delicious lunch of home-made soup and dolma (similar to stuffed grape leaves). I also enjoyed some of the local home-made moonshine. Their hospitality was genuine and we felt very welcome. These type of experiences are my most cherished memories of foreign travel and work.Bill Penoyar recently retired from the U.S. Agency for International Development. In addition to enjoying the Colorado winter from his condo in Silverthorne, he is completing an action/adventure movie script inspired by his experience working in the Iraq provinces during 2009-10. He can be contacted at firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:139a5402-551b-4bce-84b3-e7e4a1a0c56f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.summitdaily.com/article/20120318/AE/120319815 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985179 | 1,199 | 1.5 | 2 |
|white breasted nuthatch|
I watched alot of birds here lately.The northern mockingbird looked frozen here ,& I feel so bad at only seeing the one.Remember how he hid in the brush when he first arrived,what,a month or so ago?,now he peers in at me when I`m preparing to walk the dogs.There is much barking going on before we go out the door,he watches from the feeder,only flying to the brush when we come out into the cold.
Also the goldfinches look like they are beginning to get their summer suits on,this one looks really more yellow.
I had to get my bird book out to ID the purple finch.I`m saying they are purple finches by looking at their tails.The purple finch has a forked tail,the house finch,a blunt,straight one.Such pretty colors!
Mom`s sister ,Aunt Irene,phoned me last night.She is the only one who really keeps in touch.I believe my cousin,Johnny,who lives with his mom,may show her my blog.Well,this blue jay is for you,Aunt Irene! I haven`t been seeing many because the hawks have been hunting here,they take a toll on the jay`s.The bluejay would not come out of the brush to come to the feeder,instead was ever watchful where they flew brush to brush getting where they wanted to go.
The whitebreasted nuthatch let me get a good one of him,& the crows were up to no good in the forest today. | <urn:uuid:07d2c963-ca41-4266-9341-cdd35780e11d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tiptoethruphylsgarden.blogspot.com/2013/02/prayer-shawl-robe-donebirdwatching.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960319 | 341 | 1.6875 | 2 |
H.P. 180 - L.D. 235
An Act to Require the Courts to Accept Civil Orders of Arrest on Any Day Court is in Session
Be it enacted by the People of the State of Maine as follows:
Sec. 1. 14 MRSA §3135, first ¶, as repealed and replaced by PL 1987, c. 184, §18, is amended to read:
A civil order of arrest issued under section 3134, subsection 1, or section 3136,
shall must direct the sheriff to arrest the individual named in the order and bring the individual to a hearing on any day the days or date specified court is in the civil order of arrest session. In the case of a nonindividual debtor, a the civil order of arrest shall issue must be issued for the arrest of any officer, director or managing agent of the debtor or other agent appointed by the debtor to accept service and who was served with the disclosure subpoena.
Sec. 2. 14 MRSA §3135, 3rd ¶, as enacted by PL 1987, c. 184, §18, is amended to read:
judment judgment debtor is brought to the court, the clerk shall promptly notify the judgment creditor or his the judgment creditor's attorney of record in person or by telephone that his the presence of one of them is required for a hearing. If a disclosure or contempt hearing cannot be held that day due to the inability of the judgment creditor or his the judgment creditor's attorney to appear or due to the absence of the judge or the inability of the court to hear the matter because of other business, the court or clerk shall release the debtor upon his the debtor's personal recognizance for his appearance on a date certain. If the A debtor who fails to appear for the disclosure or contempt hearing after being released upon his the debtor's personal recognizance , the court may issue additional civil orders of arrest to bring the debtor before the court for hearing commits a Class E crime.
Sec. 3. 14 MRSA §3136, sub-§4, as enacted by PL 1987, c. 184, §19, is amended to read:
4. Failure to appear. If the person sought to be held in contempt fails to appear after being duly served with a contempt subpoena and the judgment creditor appears at the time and place named in the subpoena, upon the request of the judgment creditor, the judge shall issue a civil order of arrest directing the sheriff to arrest the person and bring the person to the court on any day the
days or date specified court is in the civil order of arrest session. In the case of a nonindividual, a the civil order of arrest shall must be issued for the arrest of any officer, director or managing agent who was served with the contempt subpoena.
Effective June 26, 1997, unless otherwise indicated.
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About the Laws Of Maine
Contact the Office of the Revisor of Statutes | <urn:uuid:4ca5e621-ff0c-4eb7-bc50-b09fc46f54b7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mainelegislature.org/ros/LOM/LOM118th/LOM1to23-30.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952043 | 619 | 1.765625 | 2 |
PENDER COUNTY -- State legislators are trying to reach a compromise regarding the state budget. One possibility would cut funding for flood mapping programs. The proposal reduces the number of people working to create flood zone maps in North Carolina. Critics say the move could put the flood zone mapping project in jeopardy. Pender County resident Mary Esmarian lives in a flood-prone area. She had eight inches of water inside her home after Tropical Storm Ernesto. Esmarian said, "Pretty much we get flooded in on each side of our house. To the left and right of my house gets flooded really bad." But she says her property is not yet in a designated flood zone, which is why she is relying on state officials to create and update the state's flood plain maps. The task of creating the maps began after Hurricane Floyd in 1999. They are expected to be complete by 2009. After that, the maps will need constant updating, which will be done by a team of state employees and private contractors. Now the Senate and House want to reduce the number of people on that team. Some fear the accuracy of the maps could be put in jeopardy. "We do need more help. We need more assistance," Esmarian said. The proposed budget cut would save nearly $700,000 over the next two fiscal years. Rep. Alice Bordsen of Alamance County, who is on the committee debating the budget cut, said it is crucial the flood plain maps be maintained. She also said, because of budget constraints, lawmakers do not want to commit more money or people to the project than absolutely necessary.
- Video Central
- About WWAY | <urn:uuid:75aca78c-5402-47f3-99ed-d77129397d9e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wwaytv3.com/proposal_could_cut_funding_to_flood_mapping_programs/06/2007 | 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 | 0.960045 | 333 | 1.835938 | 2 |
The mode settings are for the high beam bulb when the bike is on low beam. The low beam is always on at full brightness, and when you go to high beam both bulbs are at full brightness. The high bulb on low beam is why its a twinlight.
The descriptions are the the manufacturer covering his tailbone. The device places no restrictions on what you set.
The setting you are doing is based on the light sensor - like you are saying. When you are in sunlight you are setting the daytime mode. In the evening or indoors without too much light you are setting low light mode. You can also try to cover the light sensor to get low light or use a torch to get daytime mode, but its more difficult.
Mode 9 with full modulation will make you stand out, but I've got a customer who was pulled over by a cop didn't know enough about the compliance standards to know that modulation is the legal way to run a high bulb on low beam during the day. Mode 17 during the day or mode 26 would be my preference for your bike. My Hella refectors are pretty efficient so I have to take a step down. Setting mode 17 during the day and mode 19 at night iwill make your bike look like it is supposed to have both bulbs on low beam, and won't cause any issues for oncoming drivers. If you think it does take the night mode to 20. Set like that the bike looks normal, and your lights are bright enough for cars to see you better during the day.Posted on: 16 April 2011, 15:48:39
Just to show you the Twin Light effect. (You probably saw them on the site when you ordered.)
This is low beam day and night. The low bulb is the bright one. (Firebolts have low and high the opposite way around to Ulys and Lightnings)
This is low and high at night. I didn't bother setting the camera to get absolute light level comparisons. It is automatic exposure, otherwise the low beam would look the same brightness in both pictures.
The only other Ulys who bought them don't have the comfort kit. I've heard from a friend that he had problems wiring his GPS around the fan shroud. The manufacturer has another harness for longer bikes, and we may have to look at a Uly version from what you say Squidbuzz - thanks for the tip. The wires are hard to get through but they do go in.
I just noticed that'd I'd posted them up in this topic before. Anyway it shows what the TL effect is. | <urn:uuid:b3325821-973d-4c7a-8d69-1aba1dc3bd4f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sport-touring.net/forums/index.php?topic=53218.msg1434036 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978243 | 528 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Vice Chairman Urges Civilian Leaders to Encourage Military Service
By Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Oct. 17, 2006 The vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called on civilian academic, business and community leaders yesterday to use their influence to encourage young men and women in their communities to consider military service.
Navy Adm. Edmund Giambastiani, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaks to participants of the Joint Civilian Orientation Conference in the Pentagon briefing room, Oct. 16. JCOC is a seven-day conference in which civilian community leaders travel to overseas military bases to get a better understanding of U.S. armed forces and the overall mission of the Defense Department. Photo by Cherie A. Thurlby
(Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available.
Navy Adm. Edmund Giambastiani spoke with members of the Joint Civilian Orientation Conference before they left for a weeklong trip through the U.S. Central Command region to meet U.S. servicemembers and observe them at work in support of the global war on terror.
“I think when you come back, you will be amazed at what these young people do,” the admiral told the group.
Giambastiani emphasized just how young America’s military members are: typically 27 or 28 years of age on aircraft carriers and Army brigade combat teams, and even younger in most Marine Corps units.
“These are very young people who are very dedicated, and they are all volunteers,” he said.
U.S. military leaders “went kicking and screaming into an all-volunteer force” when it was established in 1973, the admiral acknowledged. “They said it would never work.”
Yet today, the all-volunteer U.S. military has develop into a highly skilled, highly motivated force, and military leaders “would never go back” to the pre-1973 military, he said. “That’s because, when we do things voluntarily, we get quality people,” he said.
Ensuring a steady stream of volunteers is critical to the continued success of the all-volunteer force, Giambastiani said, particularly as it conducts its first sustained wartime operations since its creation in 1973. “The care and feeding of this all-volunteer force is very important,” he said.
That’s why it’s important that the adults who influence young people’s decisions about military service understand exactly what troops are doing and how they feel about the contributions they’re making, the admiral told the group. “We want to expose you to our young people,” he said. “The important thing is for you to see them in action.”
Giambastiani urged the JCOC participants to take time during their trip to talk with the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen they meet. “When I go to the field, I get rejuvenated,” he said. “I believe that you will feel the same, and impressed by what you see.”
He encouraged the group members, after they return home, to draw on the experiences they’ve gained to encourage the young people they come into contact with to consider serving in the U.S. military.
“You influence these young men and women, and you influence other influencers” — parents, teachers, coaches and other adults young people turn to for guidance as they make decisions about their future, Giambastiani said.
“It takes a tremendous number of influencers to help this nation field a military,” he said. “We operate this young force based on young people and on how our civic leaders help us recruit.”
The JCOC program has been introducing civilian “movers and shakers,” many with little or no military exposure, to the U.S. armed forces since the first U.S. defense secretary, James V. Forrestal, created the program in 1948.
Participants are selected from hundreds of candidates nominated by military commands worldwide and pay their own expenses throughout the conference. | <urn:uuid:8384841e-e245-4288-a926-bf18264f5660> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.defense.gov/news/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=1627 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95862 | 898 | 1.5625 | 2 |
By Adam Dietz
The Western Michigan University Intramural sports program welcomes athletes of all levels of expertise, from record setting high school quarterbacks or people who think the Denver Nuggets were something that could be ordered off the dollar menu at McDonalds.
The collegiate way of living is always akin to good health and physical fitness, so staying active is of the utmost importance in these formidable years of college students’ lives. The program boasts 10 different sports throughout the year that typically cost $9 per participant
The fall sports available for 2013 include: softball, sand volleyball, indoor volleyball, flag football, basketball, tennis, racquetball and ice hockey.
All of the sports listed are available in three formats: men’s league, women’s league and co-recreational league, in which both sexes play together for a common cause.
The team registration process is as painless as reading this well-written article. There are essentially two options for signing a team up to play in a specific league.
The first is through the information super highway that we know as the internet. Participants can visit www.imleagues.com/wmich to make a profile for themselves and sign up their team. All players must have a profile on this website in order to take part their desired league. Once the profile has been completed, players must visit the Intramural Sports office in the 3rd floor of the Student Recreation Center and for themselves and/or their teammates.
Students can also stop by the Intramural Sports office and ask for a roster sheet that will require you to manually fill all of your players’ names, Western Identification Numbers (WIN) and email addresses.
Both registration techniques require visiting the3rd floor of the Student Recreation Center for payment as there is not yet an online payment option.
The Intramural Sports program also serves as an employer for students who are interested in working with and around sports. Each year, the program hires students to officiate sports across the spectrum. Being an official is an excellent way to stay involved in campus, make friends and earn extra spending money.
“The sports I typically need hire for are flag football, basketball, soccer, softball, volleyball and ice hockey,” said Intramural Sports Coordinator, Darren Leigh.
The current pay rate for officials is $8.22 per game for all sports except Hockey which pays $11 per game. Previous experience as an official is not a requirement, as an extensive amount of training is given to prospective officials.
“The Western Michigan University Intramural Sports program is unparalleled in its ability to enable campus involvement and entertainment,” said Leigh. “With a campus wide enrollment of 25,000 plus students, sometimes one cannot help but feel like a small tadpole in a much larger pond. The dorms and classrooms are where friendships are cultivated and intramural sports/student recreation are where they can be harvested.”
For more information on the Intramural Sports program visit the Facebook page, “WMU Intramural Sports” or on the Twitterverse @WMU_Intramurals. The Intramural Sports office is open weekdays from 1:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. with abbreviated hours on the weekend once classes begin. Informational meetings and registration deadlines are fast approaching | <urn:uuid:ab09932a-e908-4ed3-8d73-68309ba0e9e0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.westernherald.com/news/wmu-intramural-sports-offers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954561 | 691 | 1.609375 | 2 |
I read this book for the first time when I was in my forties, and it sang a siren song to me about the need for solitude in the midst of life's hurly-burly. Ofelia awakens to her quiet inner voice when her colony is going to be moved, whether the colonists agree or not. Faced with a system that does not work for her and does not care, the voice says, "You're going to stay." Her radical decision is to listen and to stay on her planet alone, and to accept whatever befalls as a result.
We worry obsessively about how to prolong our lives. Ofelia fears most losing that voice inside. Alone on the planet, she cultivates this voice, and reclaims all that society stole from her of her individuality.
Now in my sixties, I can see that Ofelia represents the authentic voice of an older woman, and her message is fresh and courageous. She still has things to learn, and they show up in totally unexpected ways. She doesn't have control, but she has choice. And she has her voice. | <urn:uuid:6b638406-6dab-4b9d-a419-36c3fa749845> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.amazon.ca/Remnant-Population-Elizabeth-Moon/dp/0671877186 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979326 | 226 | 1.632813 | 2 |
By Alexandra Willis
5 May 2011
Come next Monday, with just two weeks to go to the French Open at Roland Garros, and six weeks to The Championships at Wimbledon, there will be no American players ranked inside tennis’s top 10 rankings for the first time in the history of the sport. Serena Williams, the multi-Grand Slam champion, is currently the United States’ lone representative in the sport’s elite, but, having sat on the sidelines since July after severely injuring her foot, next week will see the younger Williams slide off the WTA computer’s top 10 players.
On the men’s side of things, Mardy Fish and Andy Roddick (the last American male to win a Grand Slam when he won the US Open in 2003), are sitting just outside the top 10, but still represent a decline in the longevity of what was once one of the sport’s most powerful nations.
A report by Bloomberg suggests that with so many other sports on offer to the modern child, the United States Tennis Association are struggling to get talented youngsters to play tennis rather than soccer, basketball and many more. “Our best athletes aren’t playing tennis,” Max Eisenbud, Maria Sharapova’s agent, told Bloomberg. “There are so many different opportunities. When you are an American kid, you can play sports, you can become a singer, you can become an actor, or dancer, or go to school and become a doctor. If you are a great athlete, you can be in the WNBA, women’s soccer.”
By contrast, it is argued that the constantly increasing flow of tennis players from nations such as Russia, Serbia, Poland, the Czech Republic, is often down to fledgling stars being presented with tennis as a fait accompli, their only opportunity to excel in sport.
The flipside of the argument is that whereas once the likes of Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi, and Billie Jean King, Chris Evert and Lindsay Davenport effectively ‘cleaned up’ at the major tennis tournaments, tennis has since become a far more international game, and thus more popular as a result. There have been 30 different nations represented in the WTA’s top 60, while the sport is developing at a rate of knots in countries hitherto not known for their tennis background. Denmark for example, or Latvia.
“The WTA has a fantastic mix of established champions and rising stars in the game today, many of whom are very popular in the U.S. and transcend geographic boundaries,” Stacey Allaster, chairman and chief executive officer of the WTA Tour, told Bloomberg sports reporter Danielle Rossingh.
With young Americans such as Ryan Harrison and Christina McHale touted as future prospects, whether American tennis’s current dip in fortunes is merely a blip, a gap in the talent pool, or whether it is symptomatic of a deeper problem among the wealthier nations in the sport (Britain and Australia have experienced similar declines), remains to be seen. | <urn:uuid:8be2735f-84bd-49a0-b49d-845f47d0af36> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sportingintelligence.com/tag/americans/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953489 | 638 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Food companies are responding to the adage that people eat with their eyes. Americans still love their fast food and packaged snacks, but they're increasingly turning their noses up at foods that look overly processed. Home-cooked meals — or ones that at least look like they were homemade — are seen as more wholesome and authentic.
To raise awareness of just how crucial pollinators are to our food system, the University Heights Whole Foods Market store temporarily removed all produce that comes from plants dependent on pollinators. They pulled from shelves 237 of 453 products — 52 percent of the department's normal product mix.
There's a lot of buzz at Washington State University over work to develop the first sperm bank for honeybees. Entomologist Steve Sheppard and his crew are using liquid nitrogen to preserve semen extracted from the industrious insects that pollinate much of the nation's food supply but face environmental threats.
An overhaul of dairy policy and a new insurance program for dairy farmers included in the farm bill have passionately divided farm-state lawmakers. Most importantly, it has caused a rift between House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and the top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota.
Thirty-eight countries have beaten a U.N.-imposed deadline of 2015 to cut in half the proportion of hungry people. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization on Saturday recognized the 38 countries and urged those still working to meet the U.N. target to redouble efforts.
Las Vegas developer Jim Rhodes has returned to Mohave County, but instead of planting houses in the Golden Valley and Red Lake areas, he's planting peppers, tomatoes and pickles. Rhodes' newest company, Kingman Farms, has started breaking ground on a 200-acre commercial vegetable farm off of Aztec Road behind the three model homes he built for his former master planned community Pravada.
One of Smithfield Foods Inc.'s largest shareholders says a $4.72 billion takeover bid from China's largest meat producer falls short of what the company would be worth if sold off piece by piece. In a letter to the pork producer's board of directors on Monday, the New York-based investment firm Starboard Value LP estimated the company's value at $9 billion to $10.8 billion, or about $44 to $55 per share.
Ranker.com, a crowdsourcing website that relies on “the wisdom of crowds,” has collected the aggregated opinion of over 1,500 voters on the list of “Vegetables I Won’t Eat.” Voters are able to vote up the veggies they hate the most, and vote down the ones that aren’t that bad.
Fair Trade USA and Whole Foods Market teamed up to strengthen services to farmers and workers with the first-ever Fair Trade Produce & Floral Summit. The summit brought together 115 farmers & farm workers from Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Colombia and Peru as well as nonprofit organizations.
The WhiteWave Foods Co. said Friday that it filed plans for a secondary offering of 29.9 million shares of its stock currently held by one-time parent company Dean Foods Co. The company has granted the option to underwriters to buy an additional 4.5 million shares of stock.
The U.S. Agriculture Department says it has no indications that genetically modified wheat found in Oregon last month has spread beyond the field in which it was found. No genetically engineered wheat has been approved for U.S. farming, and the department is investigating how the engineered wheat got there.
Award-winning chef Charlie Trotter is being sued by two New York wine collectors who say he sold them a bottle of wine for more than $46,000 that wasn't what it said on the label. The federal lawsuit filed Thursday in Chicago accuses Trotter and one of his wine experts of duping them into buying what they thought was a magnum of 1945 Romanee-Conti from the Domaine de la Romanee-Conti winery in June 2012.
The Greek yogurt boom in New York is being harnessed to make electricity. More Greek yogurt production has meant more whey, a watery byproduct from the process. Yogurt makers commonly ship it back to farms for use as feed and fertilizer, but it's also is being used to generate power in several places.
Whey, a byproduct of Greek yogurt production, is collected at Gloversville-Johnstown wastewater plant west of Albany, N.Y., and mixed with anaerobic bacteria. The resulting methane gas becomes combustible fuel that generates nearly enough electricity to power the plant.
KeyBanc analyst Akshay Jagdale on Friday upgraded Hormel Foods Corp. stock from "Hold" to "Buy." Jagdale is optimistic about the company's future growth, citing a solid profit outlook for the company's Jennie-O Turkey division and its recent acquisition of Skippy.
A KeyBanc analyst on Friday upgraded Hormel Foods Corp. to "Buy" from "Hold," citing optimism about the company's prospects for growth. Akshay Jagdale, who also set a $48 price target, said that he came away from recent meetings with Hormel's management feeling more confident about the food company's plans to grow its existing businesses and the profit outlook for its Jennie-O-Turkey store division.
A rise in food and gas costs drove a measure of wholesale prices up sharply in May. But outside those volatile categories, inflation was mild. The Labor Department said Friday that the producer price index rose 0.5 percent in May from April. Gas prices rose 1.5 percent last month, and food costs increased 0.6 percent.
Growing demand for processed foods coupled with increasing awareness about health conscious products is significantly propelling growth in food industry, which in-turn is driving growth of the enzymes market. Foods Enzymes are biocatalysts which carry out specific functions in various application industries.
An association of Kansas-based grocery stores is suing the United Potato Growers of America (UPGA) claiming the group used unfair business practices to fix potato prices. But the UPGA is claiming it is shielded by Capper-Volstead, a 1922 act that exempts agriculture cooperatives from antitrust laws.
Joseph Unanue, who helped turn Goya Foods into America's largest Hispanic-owned food company, has died. He was 88. Unanue died Wednesday at his home in Alpine, Bergen County. His family said he died of natural causes. Unanue began working at Goya in 1952 and served as president of the Secaucus-based company from 1976 to 2004. | <urn:uuid:278c605b-afbc-4307-b8c6-c328490b76a3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.foodmanufacturing.com/news?items_per_page=15&page=1&%3Bamp%3Bpage=265&%3Bitems_per_page=15 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965836 | 1,372 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Authorities in China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang say a pair of terrorist attacks over the weekend left as many as 20 people dead, including five suspects. The assaults cap a violent month in the restive border area. Less than two weeks ago rioters stormed a police station in the southwestern Xinjiang city of Hotan, an assault that left 18 people dead.
In Kashgar, a city near China’s border with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, the local government says that around 11:45 p.m. a pair of men hijacked a truck that was stopped at a traffic light near a street filled with restaurants. The assailants stabbed the driver to death, then drove the truck into a crowd of people, killing eight and injuring 28 others, according to a brief accounts posted on the Kashgar city website. Police say they killed one suspect in that attack and captured another. A day later a group of assailants set off an explosion at about 4:30 p.m. in restaurant west of Kashgar’s central square. As emergency crews arrived to put out the fire, five assailants armed with knives stormed out and began to stab police and bystanders, the local government said. Six bystanders were killed and 12 were injured. Police say they shot and killed five attackers and were searching for two more suspects in the weekend’s attacks.
(Update: On August 2 the Kashgar government reported that police had killed the two suspects who were at large. “On the afternoon of August 1, fugitives Memtieli Tiliwaldi and Turson Hasan, while being captured by Kashgar police, were executed on the spot,” read a one-line report on the city government’s website.)
Both of the suspects at large are young male Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim minority group that has chafed under Chinese rule of their homeland of Xinjiang. The six bystanders killed in Sunday’s attack were identified as members of China’s Han majority group, indicating the attacks may be the latest case in a long pattern of ethnic violence in Xinjiang. The Kashgar government said Sunday’s assault had been carefully planned, and linked it with the East Turkistan Islamist Movement, a little known group that wants to establish an independent Xinjiang. The United States labelled ETIM a terrorist organization in 2002. A detained suspect confessed the leadership behind Sunday’s attack had trained in Pakistan, learning to shoot guns, build bombs and prepare for “jihad,” the Kashgar government alleged in a written statement.
Overseas Uighur groups have questioned the official versions of past attacks in Xinjiang. In an interview with the Associated Press, Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the German-based World Uyghur Congress, said that the lack of legitimate means to express their grievances with the Chinese state may drive some Uighurs to violence. “Uighurs have no peaceful way to oppose the Chinese government so some have taken to extreme measures,” he told the AP. “It is unthinkable but it is the reality, and Beijing should take responsibility to deal with these issues.”
Violence in Xinjiang peaks during the heat of the summer. Shortly before the start of the August 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, in an attack that bears marked similarities to Saturday’s assault, two men drove a truck into a group of border guards on an early morning jog in Kashgar, killing 17 and wounding 15 more. In July 2009, young Uighur men rioted in the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi, stabbing and clubbing non-Uighurs on the city’s streets. In the following days members of Urumqi’s Han majority carried out revenge attacks. All told nearly 200 people died, about two-thirds of them Han, according to official numbers. A massive crackdown followed, and last summer there was just one reported attack, an August bombing that killed seven in the far western town of Aksu.
In recent years Chinese authorities have undertaken a sustained and severe crackdown on suspected Uighur terrorists. Following the 2009 Urumqi riots, Xinjiang’s hardline Communist Party secretary Wang Lequan was replaced by Zhang Chunxian, the former head of Hunan province. The leadership shuffle coincided with plans to radically increase investment in Xinjiang to bring its GDP closer to the level of China’s more developed coastal provinces. But Uighurs, who have complained about religious and cultural discrimination, say they are frozen out of much of the economic opportunity. Kashgar, has been made into an economic-zone in hopes that more open investment policies will encourage growth. But the city’s old town has also been subject to a massive redevelopment plan, which has angered some Uighurs who say it has destroyed one of their people’s cultural centers. So far, the new economic plans have done little to ease the unrest in Xinjiang. And as the summer drags on, the violence shows no sign of ebbing. | <urn:uuid:7a30abad-d705-4b4d-a19a-b740fdb94f6a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://world.time.com/2011/08/01/chinas-restive-xinjiang-region-shaken-by-more-attacks/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967716 | 1,038 | 1.5 | 2 |
Archive for the ‘Rwenzori Mountains National Park’ tag
my friend who loves adventure went this place. she told me that it was significant experience you can never experience if you live in urban city. that talk makes me feel I really want to visit this place. but, it is so far from the US….
Rwenzori Mountains National Park
photo and text from wikipedia.
Rwenzori Mountains National Park is a Ugandan national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in the Rwenzori Mountains. Almost 1,000 km2 (386 sq mi) in size, the park has Africa’s third highest mountain peak and many waterfalls, lakes, and glaciers. The park is known for its beautiful plant life. | <urn:uuid:7378dfa8-d6be-4015-afcc-8867bf387b29> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://enfoqueciudadano.com/?tag=rwenzori-mountains-national-park | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964066 | 156 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Namba Parks is an office and shopping complex located in the Namba district, Osaka, Japan. It consists of a high office building called Parks Tower and a 120-tenant shopping mall with rooftop garden. Some history on Namba Parks in Japan: Namba Parks was developed by Jon Jerde of The Jerde Partnership in the footprint of the since closed Osaka Stadium.
When Osaka’s baseball stadium closed its doors, it opened the door to a prime redevelopment opportunity in a new commercial district adjacent to Namba Train Station, the first stop from Kansai Airport. Given the location, owner Nankai Electric Railway asked Jerde to create a gateway that would redefine Osaka’s identity. So Jerde conceived Namba Parks as a large park, a natural intervention in Osaka’s dense and harsh urban condition.
Alongside a 30-story tower, the project features a lifestyle commercial center crowned with a rooftop park that crosses multiple blocks while gradually ascending eight levels. In addition to providing a highly visible green component in a city where nature is sparse, the sloping park connects to the street, welcoming passers-by to enjoy its groves of trees, clusters of rocks, cliffs, lawn, streams, waterfalls, ponds and outdoor terraces. Beneath the park, a canyon carves an experiential path through specialty retail, entertainment and dining venues. Namba Parks creates a new natural experience for Osaka that celebrates the interaction of people, culture and recreation.
Various kinds of restaurants (Japanese, Korean, Italian, etc.) are located on the 6th floor, and shops are located on the 2nd to 5th floors. There is also an amphitheater for live shows, as well as space for small personal vegetable gardens and wagon shops. | <urn:uuid:b2ccfde7-7c02-407b-91a4-30aeada035be> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wordlesstech.com/2010/12/09/eco-design-of-namba-park-in-osaka/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957576 | 361 | 1.554688 | 2 |
"We truly appreciate the California Transportation Commission allocating these bond funds for the Baldwin Avenue project," said ACE Board Chairman David Gutierrez, a city of San Gabriel Councilman. "This project will eliminate a congested and hazardous roadway-railroad crossing on a busy thoroughfare, which connects the 10 and 210 freeways."
The $80.5 million project calls for constructing a double-track railroad bridge over a four-lane depressed roadway on Baldwin Avenue between Rose Avenue and Gidley Street. Bessie Avenue will end in cul-de-sacs with a new pedestrian bridge built across Baldwin Avenue. Baldwin Avenue is used by 28,000 vehicles a day, including substantial truck traffic, which are blocked when crossing gates are down for 14 freight trains per day and six passenger trains per week.
The project will eliminate the at-grade crossing, the potential for train-vehicle collisions, delays for emergency responders and reduce emissions and locomotive horn and crossing gate noise. Project spending is projected to create 1,370 full-time equivalent jobs. The Federal Railroad Administration has recorded two train-vehicle collisions at the crossing in the past 10 years. | <urn:uuid:29499f4c-c0e3-435d-88cc-25503360364c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rtands.com/index.php/track-structure/bridge-retaining-walls/ctc-allocates-$376-million-to-baldwin-ave-grade-separation-project.html?channel= | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932981 | 233 | 1.6875 | 2 |
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Network World - Cloud services are not secure enough for businesses to use, or at least that was the conclusion drawn by attendees of an Interop debate, although all of the participants acknowledged the real answer was more subtle.
Under the rules of the Oxford-style debate, the side that swayed more audience members to its position won, and in this case eight who initially said they thought clouds were secure changed their minds after hearing the arguments.
BACKGROUND: Road map to the public cloud
Allen Allison, the CSO of cloud provider Navisite, not surprisingly took the side that the cloud is secure. His argument was that security on par with what a business can provide itself is a necessity if providers want to survive. "Cloud providers have to incorporate the same type of security," he says. "If we couldn't do that, we couldn't have a cloud industry."
Also arguing for the safety of the cloud was Frank Kenney, vice president of global strategy for IPswitch FT, a managed file-transfer service. Cloud customers have the obligation to assess the risk of allowing data to be stored in a cloud based on how valuable it is to the customers. "Think of the business ramifications for your business if you believe there may be a problem," he says. "The cloud is as secure as you want it to be."
Ravi Rajogopal, vice president of cloud strategy for CA, cited the growing number of records compromised by data breaches over the past six years as a demonstration that risk is just too high to trust data to a provider.
Also speaking against clouds being secure was a John Pironti, president of IPArchitects security consultancy, who says customers can't get enough information out of cloud providers to make informed decisions about risk. "Clouds won't give you transparency," he says. "You don't get to see the controls."
He says 90% of breaches that disrupt businesses involve insiders, and that should be extrapolated to cloud providers. "If the cloud's so secure, why can't we verify?" he says.
Cloud services also expand risk to a customer's data, he says. If someone is angry with another customer who uses the same service and attacks the network to get at that one customer, all the customers are taken down as a result, Pironti says.
Kenney says cloud services can provide value if performance and service-level agreements align with what customers need. If not, customers shouldn't buy them. "It's not 'the sky is falling,'" he says. "Assign risks appropriately. Security is just one of many things you have to do."
Pironti says that criminals seeking to break into clouds laugh at Cloud Security Alliance recommendations about security and at payment card industry standards to protect credit card data. Shared management of customer accounts is the only type of transparency that providers offer, and it isn't enough, he says.
But Kenny argues that the benefits of using cloud services and market forces driving sound security will win customers over. Security will no longer be a worry. "In a year, you won't care," he says. "It's a free market system. Everything seeks its own level."
Read more about cloud computing in Network World's Cloud Computing section. | <urn:uuid:a2146cfb-6476-4443-824f-29418e77b867> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/051111-interop-cloud-services.html?hpg1=bn | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967915 | 709 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Chris Blank of the AP writes about maintenance delays at state parks due to lack of funds:
At state parks across the nation, this is the toll of the deepening budget crisis and years of financial neglect: crumbling roads, faltering roofs, deteriorating restrooms.
Electrical and sewer systems are beginning to give out, too, as are scores of park buildings, some of them built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression. In a few places, aging bridges have been detoured and tunnels blocked off because of falling debris.
The tough economy has made money scarcer for administrators at some of the country’s most treasured public spaces who have been forced to postpone maintenance and construction projects, creating a huge backlog of unfinished work that would cost billions of dollars to complete.
This is the necessary by-product of budget-slashing in the states. There’s no way to cut budgets to the degree needed, because of plummeting revenue during the Great Recession, without throwing state services into decay. Not only does this end up reducing jobs, as the maintenance workers get laid off, but it degrades the quality of state parks, which people adore and find crucial to their quality of life.
It’s very hard to counteract this. In California this year, there was an initiative on the ballot that would have raised the vehicle license fee a trivial amount – I believe $18 a year – to pay for operation of the state parks. State residents would even get something for that $18 – free access to the state parks for life for all vehicles with a California license plate. State parks in California are pretty beloved, and prior to the vote, most polls showed this passing. And yet it lost, and lost quite badly, 43-57. But I’m sure many of those 57% who would find it repressive to shell out 18 bucks a year will also be the ones grumbling about the dour quality of the bathrooms and roads in the state parks.
It’s a relatively trivial amount – $7 billion dollars – that would be needed to completely update the backlogged projects at state parks. A federal beautification project could put thousands of people to work, fix up spaces that everyone can use and enjoy, boost the economy and take a strain off of state budgets. But fat chance of that happening.
More generally, there needs to be some sort of way for states to maintain their efforts during budget crises, rather than engage in counter-productive budget-cutting or tax-increasing during a recession, which usually cuts against fiscal policy at the federal level. Some kind of debt swap or automatic stabilizer for the states, who are experiencing budget problems because of the national economy and not necessarily anything they did, would be desirable. Throughout the past two years, state cutbacks derailed stimulus measures. It’s time for that to stop, and a rethinking of the relationship between states and the federal government during recessions is needed. | <urn:uuid:119a10c8-5ace-44ba-9797-4bd03abf2f33> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/12/31/state-parks-crumbling-amid-recession/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963772 | 602 | 1.828125 | 2 |
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Smile -- this just might be the birthplace of candid photography.
The Harris & Ewing photo studio at 1311-1313 F St. NW opened when cameras were bulky and exposure times were long. Naturally, the new medium was limited mainly to portraits and landscapes, and action shots were practically impossible. But here, in 1908, Sen. William Howard Taft was sitting for a portrait when he heard the news the Republican Party had tapped him to succeed President Theodore Roosevelt, and the resulting series of photographs was published under the title "Anatomy of a Smile."
Before George W. Harris and Martha Ewing opened their studio here in 1905, Harris covered the Johnstown, Pa., flood of 1889 as a rookie news photographer. After working at Hearst News Service in San Francisco from 1900 to 1903, he joined Roosevelt's press entourage on a train trip. According to the papers nominating the studio to the National Register of Historic Places, "the president personally urged him to start a photographic news service in Washington because it was so difficult at that time for out-of-town newspapers to get timely photographs of notable people and events in the Nation's Capital."
With 40 subscribers in their first year, Harris & Ewing soon ran the largest photo studio in Washington and sold photos to media outlets throughout the nation and world. Ewing sold her interest to Harris in 1915, and Harris ran the news service until 1945 and stayed in the portrait business until 1955.
In 1939, after half a century as a professional photographer, Harris had 100 employees and five million file photos. When he sold the news service in 1945, it was the busiest studio in the country, photographing 10,000 people a year. His studio took official portraits of presidents and administration officials from Teddy Roosevelt to Eisenhower. | <urn:uuid:c6dafd64-0373-4c5f-a529-a2e3e7a46115> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2000/11/13/focus8.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970175 | 380 | 1.757813 | 2 |
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[This article by Steve Jones originally appeared in the Dec-Jan 2012 issue of Towers.]
Today, the months of December and January mark a period of rest from studies or a focused class for students at Southern Seminary. That wasn’t the case for students in the 19th century. For students at that time, these months marked a trying period of intermediate examinations.
These exams were notoriously difficult, Read more … | <urn:uuid:29de2431-6b5b-4b62-bc8b-26abdd2e1b76> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://archives.sbts.edu/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955048 | 150 | 1.554688 | 2 |
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