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Assaults on Bible Christianity have been many and malicious – but Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code is definitely one of the most damaging in generations.
His best-selling novel weaves an argument that Christianity is rotten to the core, and is based on lies and political conspiracy.
This is more than a little ironic since Brown’s book has been described as:
• "A tale rooted in … demonstrable falsehoods … filled with so many errors. One can barely open his book to a random page and not find an error of some kind" (Richard Abanes)
• "So error-laden … that the educated reader actually applauds those rare occasions where Brown stumbles (despite himself) into the truth" (Sandra Miesel)
The purpose of any "Errata" is to correct the mistakes that appeared in a previous edition. Most of these may be mere typographical errors; others may be of such a nature as to lead readers seriously astray. The Da Vinci Code is firmly in the latter category.
Instead of moving from The Da Vinci Code to complete the final book in his trilogy of thrillers, this is the type of follow-up volume Dan Brown should have written:
‘The Da Vinci Code – Errata … Exposing The Errors!’
With so many inaccuracies already read by so many people, it would be good to recommend this book to them – it is time to tell them the truth!
N.B. For your convenience, an eBook version of this book can be obtained by ordering at:
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Interested in linking to "Latest nanodac Stores and Forwards"?
You may use the Headline, Deck, Byline and URL of this article on your Web site. To link to this article, select and copy the HTML code below and paste it on your own Web site.
When the Eurotherm nanodac recorder/controller was launched just over a year ago, not only was it revolutionary in bringing recorder and control functionality together in one small device, but Invensys Operations Management also made sure it could easily integrate with the other products in its toolset as well. Now the company has linked it even more closely with the InFusion Enterprise Control System, including connectivity to the Wonderware Historian. Updates also include greater storage flexibility for longer local data archiving and "store and forward" data retrieval.
With 50 MB of flash memory for data storage, nanodac can record up to 38 parameters at any given time, storing months of data if necessary. Of the 38 channels, up to eight physical universal inputs are accepted at the back of the device. The remaining 30 inputs are available as virtual channels, notes Peter Sherwin, marketing manager for Invensys Eurotherm, North America.
The "store and forward" capability means the nanodac can store data itself, but also pass it up to the historian. If there were a break in communication because of a power failure, for example, nanodac would continue to capture and store information. "The historian wouldn't be picking up real-time data, but nanodac would be keeping it on the device," Sherwin explains. "Then when the power is restored, the historian would grab that data from nanodac. It takes a couple minutes to do the process, but there's no user intervention needed."Without a local collection and retention device, failing communications can mean the risk of important data loss, notes Bob Postlethwaite, global marketing director for Invensys Operations Management. "For a food and beverage or pharmaceutical manufacturer, for example, that could lead to a batch being quarantined or even scrapped," he says, adding that nanodac's connection to the Wonderware Historian component ensures that data retrieval is automatically implemented whenever needed.
The recorder/controller works well as a local historian with third-party equipment, but also can be used as a stand-alone device. With an on-screen help system and remote viewing functionality, nanodac lets plant-floor operators and supervisors monitor and discuss the health of their process from virtually anywhere, enabling them to use the real-time operating information to make better operating and business decisions.
How much data can be held in nanodac's 50 MB of memory depends, of course, on the application. Heat treatment applications, for example, typically sample every one or two minutes, Sherwin notes. "For that, for maybe a handful of parameters, literally years worth of data can be stored in the flash memory," he says. "If you have very fast processes or more parameters, still you've got days worth of data that can be stored."
In addition to its data acquisition capability, the Eurotherm nanodac instrument also has an option to provide two high-stability PID control loops with the Eurotherm Autotune facility.
Not insignificantly, the nanodac is small, Sherwin notes. It's based on a quarter-DIN size, just 192 mm square, putting recording and control into one small instrument. "This allows an electrical engineer to design his control panel to be in as small a space as possible," Sherwin notes, pointing out also the vivid 3.5 in. TFT display. "The ability to communicate data to the operator becomes very easy."
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Judge Neal Solon waited in line 19 hours for Magic Mountain.
Three masterful adaptations from the Nobel Prize-winning author
Koch Vision has compiled three mini-series adapted from a handful of German author Thomas Mann's best-known novels. Countless of Mann's many works have been adapted for the screen, big and small. But with the exception of Luchino Visconti's adaptation of the novella Death in Venice (probably Mann's work most widely read in the United States) most are unavailable on DVD. The Thomas Mann Collection is a welcome remedy to that unfortunate circumstance.
Facts of the Case
The three film adaptations collected here are:
Beginning in the early 18th century, four generations of an aristocratic German family are examined. Each successive generation seems less equipped to maintain the family's long-standing, well-regarded shipping business while maintaining the integral family. Sickness, weakness, and less-than-bourgeois aspirations lead to the inevitable decline of this family whose only cares seem to be wealth and status.
The familiar story of Faustus, who sells his soul to the devil in order to benefit in his worldly pursuits. This film centers on a composer named Adrian Leverkühn who makes just such a pact. Like Mann's book, the film tells Leverkühn's story in a sometimes oblique, disconnected manner. It is full of allusions and references to other happenings in the world, most notably the coming troubles of the German state. Like most of Mann's protagonists, Leverkühn's decline is laid out for all to see—though one would expect nothing different given the centrality of the Faustian pact.
The Magic Mountain
Hans Castorp (Christoph Eichhorn) is on his way to a job working as a ship construction engineer. He visits his cousin, a career military man, in a Swiss sanatorium expecting only to stay a short while. He finds himself quickly sucked into a world of self-fulfilling thoughts of weakness and illness, egged on by doctors whose best interest demands as many patients as possible. Before long, he finds himself diagnosed with tuberculosis and unable to escape from the obsessive social and sexual routines of the hospital. It isn't until the onset of the World War, seven years later, that Hans leaves—having accomplished nothing to which he aspired as a young man, and with his death on the battlefield almost a foregone conclusion.
As with any adaptation, you could go on at great length about the things that were lost in the transliteration from Mann's print work to the audiovisual media of these three films. But you would ignore that these films capture the essence of Mann's writing and succeed in their own right.
Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain are compelling period dramas that preserve the depth and insight of their source material. Were it not for their often languid pacing and the combined 16-hour running time, they would appeal to most anyone.
Both films have a traditional narrative structure which makes them accessible, but their characters and thematic explorations give them unusual depth. Both films feature recurring themes of Mann's work: sickness and degeneration, social class, and sexual discovery. Other themes the films touch on less directly include the impact of war on German society and, very briefly, homosexual eroticism.
Mann loves Richard Wagner's work and filled his book with Wagnerian leitmotifs, identifying characters or themes throughout his stories. The affinity for this narrative device is clear in these film adaptations. One recurring image that exemplifies this characteristic repetition (though it is not strictly a leitmotif) is a dream used in The Magic Mountain to establish Hans Castorp's erotic and sexual attraction to other characters. In the second sequence of the film, a young Hans is shown in art class sketching in front of a nude male statue. He looks across the room at a young classmate who is framed within the image by the naked statue from the waist down. Moments later, Hans' pencil lead snaps, and he crosses the room to borrow a pencil from the boy who has distracted him. In the exchange that follows, Hans and the boy exchange words in whispers, their cheeks nearly touching, and the boy demonstrates just how easy the pencil is to operate saying, "You see? It's simple. You only have to push it up" as he pushes the pencil up out of its protective casing in a none-too-subtle reference to the phallus.
As it turns out, this exchange is a dream that the fully-grown Hans is having while sleeping on a train headed to the sanitarium where he will spend his next seven years. This scene, which runs less than two minutes long, hints at the homosexual eroticism and ephebophilia that feature so heavily in Mann's Death in Venice. These themes go largely unexplored in the film version of The Magic Mountain, but this scene forces the viewer to read glances, physical exchanges, and facial expressions differently than he or she might otherwise. More directly, this same dream recurs during the film, most notably hours later when Hans has been at the sanitarium for years and the young boy in the dream is replaced by an older, married woman who is a fellow patient. The phallic imagery is no longer present, but just a glimpse of that dream with his fellow patient in the young boy's stead makes the sequence's meaning instantly clear.
Doktor Faustus explores the same themes—degradation, social standing, war—but not as traditionally. Doktor Faustus is less languidly paced than The Magic Mountain, but it is also less fluid. The film, like the book, brings together an amalgam of often tangentially related stories to tell the story of its protagonist. The result is a sometimes disorienting, splintered work that paints a cohesive picture. It is surprising that the film preserved this quality so effectively. Yet director Franz Seitz was one of the screenwriters for another atypical German classic: the film version of The Tin Drum. Doktor Faustus may be the least immediately accessible of the three mini-series included here, but it is no less rewarding.
Indeed, the only real complaint about this collection from Koch Vision is the technical presentation. Each of the films is presented in its appropriate aspect ratio, but the two widescreen transfers are non-anamorphic. Worse, each of the three transfers suffers from severe frame stutter—a visual artifact most often associated with poor PAL to NSTC transfers and other types of video conversion. To be clear, this is not an artifact that only the trained eye will notice; the result is an apparent and distracting judder in the image, most often during sustained camera movements.
The video transfers also show their age very clearly. It is a shame that these mini-series, whose art direction is wonderful, have muddy, washed-out (and, in the case of Doktor Faustus, extraordinarily grainy) images. The audio tracks are serviceable mono tracks that are wholly intelligible in spite of their deficiencies. In fact, your only conscious awareness of the tracks throughout all three of the films is when English-speaking actors are badly overdubbed in German. Even this is distracting only a handful of times: one scene late in The Magic Mountain and occasionally in Doktor Faustus. But it isn't so much a flaw as a product of the time and the style of production.
In spite of its technical shortcomings and lack of extras, The Thomas Mann Collection is a welcome addition to our favorite digital medium. It is also a welcome addition to what, after the release of Jodorowsky's La Cravate last May, looks to be a surprising boom year for Thomas Mann on DVD. If you have any interest in great literature or in period film and aren't scared by the 19-hour run time, check this collection out.
Not guilty, though the court thinks that some time in a sanitarium might do Koch Vision some good.
Give us your feedback!
What's "fair"? Whether positive or negative, our reviews should be unbiased, informative, and critique the material on its own merits.
Scales of Justice, Buddenbrooks
Perp Profile, Buddenbrooks
Studio: Koch Vision
Distinguishing Marks, Buddenbrooks
Scales of Justice, Doktor Faustus
Perp Profile, Doktor Faustus
Studio: Koch Vision
Distinguishing Marks, Doktor Faustus
Scales of Justice, Magic Mountain
Perp Profile, Magic Mountain
Studio: Koch Vision
Distinguishing Marks, Magic Mountain
Review content copyright © 2007 Neal Solon; Site design and review layout copyright © 2013 Verdict Partners LLC. All rights reserved.
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By Jennifer Ching
The media has whipped itself into a speculative frenzy after a recent “leak” from the Obama administration. A Newsweek exclusive story, released on September 25th, revealed that President Obama secretly authorized the sale of bunker busting bombs to Israel. These bombs are an important asset in the strategy of nuclear deterrence, because they are able to penetrate targets buried underground (hence their name “bunker busters”). This news isn’t particularly surprising given the United States’ close relations with Israel. What is odd is that the U.S. has been transferring these bombs to Israel since 2009. In light of recent events, was this secret information really just an unauthorized tip-off by some insider? Or was it strategically “released” to the public but made to look like a leak? The timing of the affair seems to suggest the latter.
One explanation for the sudden acknowledgement of the bombs sale is the recent news about Iran’s nuclear facilities. The U.S. boasts a long history of deterring Iran’s nuclear capacity. In 2010 the U.S. used a computer worm named Stuxnet to cripple one-fifth of the Iran’s working centrifuges and briefly halted the country’s nuclear expansion plans. Western nations widely believe that Iran’s pursuit of fission-based energy is a guise to hide its development of nuclear weapons.
Given these suspicions, just imagine the Obama administration’s reaction when the New York Times wrote on September 1, 2011 that Iran “is moving its most critical nuclear fuel production to a heavily defended underground military facility outside the holy city of Qum.” In addition, Iran also announced its first nuclear plant is going into operation. In fact, Iran’s state-controlled TV station Al Alam announced that the $1 billion Bushehr plant was officially inaugurated on Sept. 12, 2011. Whether Iran is secretly hiding a nuclear-weapons agenda or not, these developments certainly do nothing to deter worldwide suspicion.
In light of these events, it is perfectly reasonable for the Obama administration to remind Iran that any ventures into a nuclear buildup will be closely shadowed. Additionally, instead of publicly admitting the sale, it makes sense to release it as a “leak”. Iran could perceive an outright declaration as too hostile, which would lead to a further strain in its already tense relationship with the United States.
A second plausible reason for this timely announcement is U.S. domestic politics. President Obama’s approval among the Jewish American community is declining. This is due in part to a feeling that Obama is less supportive of Israel than his predecessors. Critics point toward Obama’s urging of Israel to make huge concessions to the Palestinians based on the 1967 borders as evidence of this. A recent Gallup poll conducted from September showed a drop in Obama’s approval ratings from 60 percent in June to 55 percent. His disapproval ratings also increased from 32 to 40 percent, resulting in a net 11 point drop in approval from the Jewish population.
The Jewish community plays an integral role in voting, especially in swing states such as Pennsylvania and Florida. With the upcoming elections looming ahead, it only makes sense that Obama would attempt to increase his approval ratings in this community. What better way to do this than “announce” that he’s been secretly boosting Israel’s military since 2009? In theory this information, coupled with his vehement refusal of Palestine’s entry into the United Nations, should be more than enough to persuade any disconsolate Jewish American that Obama has Israel’s best interests at heart.
Given these two crucial and timely reasons, the “leak” was surely no accident. It was a strategic maneuver on Obama’s part. Not only did he subtly warn Iran of his watchful eye, but he also released it before the upcoming elections to enhance his image among an important group of voters. Talk about killing two birds with one stone! Sure, it’s possible that this could have all just been a slip-of-the-tongue accident. According to recent happenings, however, it seems like this mouth was ready to talk in the first place.
Photograph taken from Wikimedia Commons
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Weekly Sketch Group(Topic# 8 - Dr.Jekyll/ Mr.Hyde)
The topic of this week's zSketch challenge is...
Feel free to sculpt anything related to Jekyll or Hyde, although I would prefer to see everyone's take on the characters themselves. Think about the contrast between the personalities and physical appearances of each character.
"The dual title character, a doctor who has covered up a secret life full of cruel deeds. He feels as if he is constantly battling within himself between what is good and what is evil, and is pushing away people dear to him. After drinking a potion of his own creation, Jekyll is transformed into the cruel, remorseless, evil Edward Hyde, representing the hidden side of Dr. Jekyll's nature brought to the fore. Dr. Jekyll has many friends and has a friendly personality, but as Mr. Hyde, he becomes mysterious, violent, and secretive and as time goes by, Mr. Hyde grows in power. After taking the potion repetitively, he no longer relies upon the potion to unleash his inner demon." - Wikipedia
The Deadline For This Topic Is:
Wednesday, July 1st
Post any work you are doing on the topic and please feel welcome to give constructive criticism to anyone who asks for it.
(P.s. - I'll try to keep up with these but I'm still not settled into my new place quite yet, I'm actually stealing some Wifi right now just So I can post this for you guys!)
oothis one is gonna be fun! Thanx dribble!
bitchin weekly sketches are back. realy dig the style of this week. the narrower concept makes it a little easier to focus on the sculpting end. IMO
i was thinking i could just post a picture of my wife.
Would that make her Hyde or Jekyll?
I would hope that if'n he's putting her picture up as Jekyll, he would shortly after hide...that was a pretty bad one, I'm sorry
in all honesty when i read this challenge it really was the first thought in my mind, also funny.
not funny though cause she has schizophrenia, but true because she is soooo different from who she used to be. but oddly looks the same. oh cept the hair color, i guess its like the old Star Trek where in the mirror universe the evil spock had a goatee.
i also found these two? on bunnspace.
Last edited by spaceboy412; 06-19-09 at 03:50 PM.
Serendipity is awesome - I have been thinking of doing something related to Jekyll and hyde for quite a while and just started sketching some ideas this morning! I'm definitely going to have a good go at this.
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From the rocky shoals of Maine to the beaches of California, residential home prices have fallen hard during the great recession. Commercial property values have followed. New home construction has all but collapsed.
As goes the mainland, so goes the market in private island real estate? Not exactly. Prices have dropped for developed island properties near populated areas, reflecting a shrinking market in second homes overall, say realtors. But sales of remote and high-end private islands in exotic locales have held fairly steady throughout the downturn, says international island realtor Farhad Vladi, as governments, non profits, and nature conservatories have moved in to buy always-limited inventory in the absence of private buyers seeking their ultimate fantasy getaway.
“Islands are like diamonds,” says Chris Krorlow, CEO of Private Islands Inc. “Beauty is essential, but rarity makes any commodity infinitely more desirable.”
No clear-eyed investor should ever mistake owning an island as a safe haven for money. “I wouldn’t describe it as an investment, really,” cautions Mark Goldman, professor of real estate finance at San Diego State University. “It’s more a consumption item,” like buying a yacht. “And, boy, it’s got to be one of the ultimate status symbols. You get privacy, status, your own domain, a kingdom where, to a great extent, you can create your own rules.”
Mind you, there are inconveniences galore with owning an island: Getting there, for one. Dangerous weather that can wreak havoc on buildings and power and water supply, for another. Many undeveloped islands don’t have the permits to become developed, and the red tape can slowly strangle the Robinson Crusoe fantasies out of even the most romantic of buyers.
But as Krolow notes, island owners are a fiercely independent, entrepreneurial lot for whom the cache of private island ownership outweighs the cost. Who in the summer hasn’t gazed across the water to a secluded island with a boat moored to a private dock, and wondered what it would be like?
As Korlow puts it, “It’s the rare opportunity to create your own reality. And at least temporarily, live your life exactly as you choose.”
So in this summer of discontent, here are 11 islands for sale, ranging in price from $595,000 to $3.5 million. Nothing but privacy, seclusion, and 360 degrees of waterfront views. For August, the ultimate fantasy, indeed.
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Sounds like you know what you are upto a little then. Nice to have someone else that can offer help around as well as seek advice. I have also played with Python, I did spend some time on it and I am able to program some things in it, in the past i've done simple IM clients and servers etc. Also I use C++ from time to time, I'm currently in the proccess of writing some things in C++ using the JNI so that it can easily be linked into Java
this is a keyboard and mouse hook. So if you ever need any help with things like that just ask, and i'll see what I can do for you.
I also have experience with graphics API in different languages, I have looked at Java2D a little but not in great detail, I might make a little game like aseroids or networked pong or somehting lol. But one thing I have considered before is graphing packages, and quite frankly I have never managed to work out just how you would go about doing it lol!
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VATICAN CITY (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI has lit a Christmas peace candle set on the windowsill of his private studio.
Pilgrims, tourists and Romans gathered below in St. Peter's Square for the inauguration Monday evening of a Nativity scene and cheered when the flame was lit.
Later, he will appear in St. Peter's Basilica to lead Christmas Eve Mass. The ceremony begins at 10 p.m. (2100 GMT) instead of the midnight start time, which was changed at the Vatican years ago to let the pontiff rest before a Christmas Day speech to be delivered from the basilica's central balcony.
Meanwhile, the mood is a festive one today in Bethlehem, where hundreds gathered in Manger Square under sunny skies to greet the top Roman Catholic cleric in the Holy Land.
In his annual pre-Christmas homily, the cleric (Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal) told followers in Jerusalem's Old City earlier today that the festivities are doubly joyful this year -- since they celebrate not only the birth of Christ, but also "the birth of the state of Palestine."
But he said that even though the U.N. recently recognized a Palestinian state, the road to actual freedom from Israeli occupation remains long.
Manger Square is dominated by a lavishly decorated 55-foot fir tree with a nativity scene at its base. Festivities will culminate with Midnight Mass at the Church of the Nativity.
Devout Christians in Bethlehem today say it's a moving experience to be so close to the origins of their faith.
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Harlow (1890 - 1940)
Surnames: Bowen, Dike, Ludovic, Smith, Moore
----Sources: Colby Phonograph (Colby, Clark County, Wis.) 10/03/1940
Bowen, Harlow (29 July 1890 - 30 Sept. 1940)
Despondency over the loss of a sum of money was blamed for the suicide Monday morning of Harlow Bowen, age 50, town of Hoard, Clark county, Wisconsin, farmer and oil truck driver, whose body was found hanging in the haymow of the Bowen farm.
Mrs. Bowen, who discovered the body, called Dr. B. H. Dike of Owen, who pronounced the man dead. Coroner P. C. Ludovic was called from Neillsville, and after an investigation of the circumstances, said that no inquest would be necessary.
Mrs. Bowen said her husband had lost a billfold containing $55 to $60 on Saturday, and that this and other financial problems had apparently preyed on his mind. He had left the house at 5:45 a.m. Monday.
Born in Grant county on July 29, 1890, Harlow Bowen was married to Ethel Smith in Grant county in 1911, and they came to Clark county in 1919.
Surviving children are Floyd of Chicago; Lester of Hoard township; Millard, Loretta and Robert, at home; and Mrs. James (Velma) Moore of Harrisonville, N.J.
© Every submission is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.
Show your appreciation of this freely provided information by not copying it to any other site without our permission.
A site created and
maintained by the Clark County History Buffs
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By Pam Benson
Creating the office of the director of national intelligence in 2005 was meant to improve the management of the nation’s intelligence gathering in the wake of 9/11, but it has often led to turf wars between national intelligence directors and directors of the CIA.
Now President Barack Obama’s nomination of his trusted counterterrorism aide, John Brennan, as CIA director may leave the impression the CIA director is the top spy, even though the director of national intelligence technically would be his boss.
The problem, past directors in both posts and other experts say, is that the DNI’s role is ambiguous.
The job of DNI was created to reform the intelligence community after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the faulty intelligence that suggested Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
Before that time, the CIA director not only ran the spy agency but also had a second title, director of central intelligence, which was responsible for coordinating the activities of the 16 agencies and departments that make up the intelligence community.
An independent commission that reviewed the intelligence failures concluded, and Congress agreed, that one person should focus exclusively on guiding the community. Running the CIA, the review concluded, was a full-time job on its own.
Thus began the role of the director of national intelligence, who runs the entire community and is the chief intelligence adviser to the president. It was not long before tension emerged.
In 2009, outgoing CIA Director Michael Hayden told reporters that there is a natural tension between the CIA and DNI, but "it's not a bad structure."
However, he did suggest that the DNI's office was getting a bit bloated and said, "Americans being Americans, they're going to fill up their day trying to do something impactful, which means between the two of us, there's going to be a trench line."
Also departing at the same time was national intelligence director Mike McConnell. His response to Hayden’s observation: "Any time you have organizations with similar interests, you're going to have disputes, and particularly if the two leaders aren't working together and having a partnership … the warfare at the trench level gets to be pretty much a raging battle,” he said. “We don't have a department of intelligence. If this were the Department of Defense, there wouldn't be any question, but it isn't."
Soon afterward, their successors, DNI Dennis Blair and CIA Director Leon Panetta, butted heads.
Because he led the intelligence community, Blair wanted control over who would be the chief spy in any given country, not necessarily relying on the CIA's station chief. He also wanted more say in covert operations. Panetta wasted no time letting the White House know he was not prepared to lose authority over either.
James Jones, then the national security adviser, mediated the dispute and ultimately decided the CIA would have a direct line to the West Wing on covert operations and retain control over choosing the top spy in each country.
It was the beginning of the end for Blair, who was later forced out.
Lee Hamilton, who was co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission, has often said the intelligence reform legislation was too "ambiguous," and as long as it remains that way, the DNI and CIA director will fight for jurisdiction and power.
Add to that burning fire the fuel of Brennan. If he gets the CIA job, a person who just spent the past four years in the White House as the President's most trusted aide on counter terrorism and intelligence matters will lead the agency. Now Brennan can walk into the Oval Office or directly call Obama any time of the day or night when there is a crisis. Often in Washington, the ultimate sign of power is one’s proximity to the president.
Brennan will lose some of that when he moves across the river to Langley.
He will still report directly to Obama on covert operations, but otherwise his boss will be DNI James Clapper, ostensibly the president's principle intelligence adviser. But for the last four years, Washington insiders came to believe that Brennan was, for all intents and purposes, filling that role while in the West Wing.
"Brennan has sort of become the de facto senior intelligence adviser to the president," said Frances Fragos Townsend, who held a similar position to Brennan’s at the White House during the Bush administration.
A former senior intelligence official who would only speak on the condition of anonymity said within the Obama administration, there is a different metric.
"Checking the plumbing and keeping the trains running on time really is what the DNI is doing, and the president is looking elsewhere for that final, critical, definitive intelligence advice," the official said.
Will that advice come predominantly from Brennan, who has had such open access to the president, rather than Clapper, effectively bypassing him?
Jones, who has worked firsthand with both Brennan and Clapper, doesn't foresee any real turf battles, even though the two men will not always agree.
"John Brennan and Gen. Clapper are two of the most consummate professionals I have ever worked with," said Jones, a former national security adviser to Obama. He believes "they will work hand-in-glove together."
The two men do have a history of working together in the intelligence community, especially over the past four years.
"Every indication I've ever had is that they like and respect each other," Townsend said, adding she was unaware of any major disagreement between them.
When asked by CNN if Clapper believed his authority as head of the intelligence community would be in any way compromised by Brennan being CIA chief, DNI spokesman Shawn Turner said: "Director Clapper leads the intelligence community, and he's always had great relationships with the directors of the (other) agencies, especially the CIA. That will not change when John is at the helm at the agency. He and the DNI are longtime friends and colleagues. They have always trusted and respected each other in their respective roles and I'm confident that will continue to be the case."
And the bottom-line, according to Townsend, is not whether the national intelligence director or CIA director is considered the president's senior intelligence adviser; every president will have his own model.
It's about getting the job done, and providing the president with accurate, timely and effective advice.
"If you make it about the mission and where the capability lies, and these two guys put their egos aside, then you ought to be OK," Townsend said.
And Jones said that's what these two will do. "It's not about them. These are two people whose egos are completely in check."
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Evidence about the operation leading up to this month's police raids is now in the hands of the Solicitor-General for a decision on whether charges can proceed under the Terrorism Suppression Act.
Seventeen people were arrested on October 15 following raids in Auckland, Wellington, Palmerston North, Hamilton, Christchurch, Whakatane and Ruatoki, 20km south of Whakatane.
The raids were the culmination of a year-long investigation into weapons training camps alleged to have been held in the Urewera country and netted a haul of weapons.
Police deputy commissioner Rob Pope said police had reviewed the evidence collected over the course of the investigation.
"It has today been referred to the Solicitor-General for consideration whether consent will be given to charges under the Terrorism Suppression Act."
Police would now await the Solicitor-General's decision, Mr Pope said.
Reacting to the announcement that evidence had been handed to the Solicitor-General, the Maori Party said it would continue to speak out about the way it had been collected.
"We stand by our responsibility to our constituency, to speak up and make known the traumatic impact that various stages of the operation have had on community well-being," said co-leader Tariana Turia.
"It is our contention that evidence could have been collected in a much less frightening and disruptive way to families and the wider public, and in a manner consistent with due legal process."
The party's other co-leader, Pita Sharples, said today's police statement suggested the operation ended on October 15.
"And yet we have received other reports that raids are continuing, including one just last Friday on Te Whare Orange Wairua Maori Women's Refuge in Taupo," he said.
Some facts about the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002:
* the law makes it a criminal offence to take part in, finance or recruit for a terrorist organisation or terrorist act;
* planning a terrorist act, or making a "credible threat", is also illegal even if it is not carried out;
* unlike other countries the law does not give police additional powers of arrest or detainment;
* the Attorney-General must give the green light to any prosecutions under the Act, but Michael Cullen has delegated this responsibility to Solicitor-General David Collins;
* under the Act groups can be listed as a designated terrorist entity, but so far no local groups have been designated. Those that have been listed are United Nations designated groups.
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The United States and the United Arab Emirates have signed a deal for a missile defense system in the Persian Gulf nation.
The Pentagon said in a statement Friday that U.S.-based defense contractor Lockheed Martin has been awarded a nearly $2 billion contract to supply the UAE with two Terminal High Altitude Area Defense Systems (THAAD).
Defense officials say the deal includes additional equipment, training and support that boosts the total value of the package to approximately $3.48 billion.
The missile system upgrade is part of the Obama administration's efforts to build up defenses of its allies in the Middle East to offset Iran's expanding ballistic missile arsenal.
Tensions increased this week when Tehran threatened to disrupt traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a key Persian Gulf oil transport route, if the Obama administration imposed sanctions on Iran's oil exports.
The UAE project follows Thursday's announcement that the U.S. was selling another ally, Saudi Arabia, 84 fighter jets worth $30 billion.
In September 2010, the United States agreed to sell more than 200 Patriot missiles to Kuwait worth $900 million.
Some information for this report was provided by AP and AFP.
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"Every year, nearly half-a-trillion dollars worth of goods and services move through our state transportation system," Corbett said. "Transportation is the bloodstream of our economy. If it fails, our economy fails."
Pennsylvania's current transportation funding shortfall has been an ongoing concern that has resulted from inflation, reduced tax income due to more fuel-efficient vehicles, and decades of under investing.
"I am proposing two adjustments to the way we provide for our transportation needs," Corbett said. "I am calling on the legislature to pass a 17 percent reduction in the flat liquid fuels tax paid by consumers at the pump. Second, I am asking the general assembly to begin a five-year phase out of an artificial and outdated cap on the tax paid by oil and gas companies on the wholesale price of gasoline; it is time for the oil and gas industry to pay their fair share of the cost of the infrastructure supporting their industry."
By the fifth year of the plan's full implementation, it is estimated to provide approximately $250 million for transit and $80 million for a multi-modal fund including improvements to railways.
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Editor's note: David L. Nathan, a clinical associate professor at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, was recently elected as a distinguished fellow in the American Psychiatric Association. He teaches and practices general adult psychiatry in Princeton, New Jersey.
(CNN) -- Last week, my op-ed in favor of cannabis legalization ran on CNN.com. This week marks three years since I first wrote that marijuana should be legal. I'm amazed at how the debate has changed in just a few years.
I was inundated with messages from readers, and was humbled by some of them.
Here's one from a Southern Baptist church pastor: "I have seen firsthand the heartache caused by America's prohibition against marijuana. I have visited young men in prison, who I knew in my heart should not be there ... It is time for us to speak out and tell the truth about marijuana ...
"But so many are afraid to speak out because they fear being labeled 'pro-drugs'... I pray daily that God will end this dreadful 'war.'"
The overwhelmingly positive comments posted on CNN.com, especially from those who don't use marijuana, show that more mainstream Americans are willing to voice their pro-legalization opinions. Informed adults are challenging old dogmas, and they worry less about the folly of "Reefer Madness" than refined sugar's role in shortening their children's lives.
Given the thousands of thoughtful comments in the past week, I'd like to address several of the most important themes readers have discussed:
Damon00 writes: "A couple of years ago, comments for articles like this were much more negative. People are learning."
Agreed. I believe that the coming of the information age has played a major role in the widely recognized shift in public opinion on legalization. Today's readers are increasingly able to judge facts for themselves by consulting readily available and well-referenced scientific sources.
Vertical1 is in favor of "decriminalizing [pot] and taxing it."
There is often confusion between the terms decriminalization and legalization, though the distinction is critical. Full legalization would empower federal, state and local governments to regulate and tax the cannabis trade. Regulation facilitates control and safety, and government debt can be reduced with taxes raised from marijuana sales.
But if we merely decriminalize marijuana, then it continues to be at least nominally illegal. Possession could get you the equivalent of a parking ticket, and those involved in the drug trade might still receive more severe punishment. Not only would this burden law enforcement, but the cannabis economy would remain unregulated and untaxed.
Anon Ymous, who declares himself to be "pro-legalization, but anti-use," writes: "My life experiences growing up taught me that my friends who smoked pot in grade school, high school and/or college suffered for it."
Make no mistake: marijuana is bad for kids, although pot's potential harm to children is rather more subtle than that of alcohol, which can cause life-threatening physical addiction or fatal poisoning.
Studies suggest that repeated marijuana use in adolescents can cause cognitive impairment and chronically low motivation, setting teens on a path of underachievement. But if cannabis is legalized, the tax revenues it brings in can be used to fund better drug education in schools.
We must start teaching our children early, highlighting the nuanced but significant risks to underage users and avoiding the typical hyperbole that teens know they can safely ignore.
Even with the legalization of marijuana, anyone over 21 should be prosecuted for providing cannabis to anyone under 21. And remember: Drug dealers don't check IDs, but liquor store cashiers do. Given that drug dealers aren't going away, who would you rather have as the retailer of marijuana?
DedTV, who is also explicitly pro-legalization, asserts: "Pot CAN cause hallucinations."
When it comes to marijuana's role in psychiatric disorders, the medical literature and my clinical experience are ambiguous. There's a kind of chicken and egg problem with scientific studies, and they often contradict one another. Cannabis use does correlate with mental illness, but so does poor hygiene.
Some users experience transient, mild paranoia when ingesting pot, which generally leads them to simply stop using it. Many of my patients with anxiety and depression have found that frequent use of cannabis makes their condition worse. A few report that it helps them, at least subjectively. Regardless, alcohol is a much stronger depressant than pot.
As for thought disorders like schizophrenia, evidence suggests that a very large dose of pot can make a healthy person briefly lose touch with reality, and even modest doses may trigger a more serious psychotic episode in some people who are already ill or likely to become ill. While infrequent among pot users, this is of little consolation if you are the unlucky person for whom cannabis is a match to the fuel of underlying mental illness.
On the other hand, it hardly warrants universal pot prohibition any more than the existence of peanut allergies would justify a ban on legumes.
Postmasteratfingers asks: "Is there any evidence regarding the effect on driving while stoned from pot?"
Studies have shown that moderate to severe intoxication with marijuana does indeed increase a driver's accident risk. But look deeper and you'll find that this risk is similar to that of drivers with a blood alcohol level of 0.05%, which happens to be well below the federally mandated legal limit of 0.08%. So once again, pot may not be good, but alcohol is worse.
Stephen Lang requests: "Please don't call it 'weed.' It has lots of uses."
Baby boomers call it "pot," and their kids call it "weed." The most common and controversial term is derived from the Spanish vernacular "marihuana." Until the 1930s, English speakers preferred the scientifically accurate name "cannabis."
But those Americans who sought to ban the drug in the 1930s favored the previously little known and foreign-sounding term "marijuana," which might and apparently did stir racial passions among whites.
Cohara1103 asserts: "The main reason it should be legal is... as a 38-year- old white man in a white collar job I will never be stopped, questioned or arrested for marijuana possession EVER!"
After 75 years, haven't our laws against marijuana shed their racist past? Apparently not. Although African-Americans are 25% more likely to use marijuana than white Americans, they are 300% more likely to be arrested for it. A criminal record greatly limits one's opportunities for success in life. The racial divide widens, and racial tensions grow. This, dear readers, is the enduring legacy of pot prohibition.
And finally, Roland Gyallay-Pap comments that "cannabis [is] the correct term for marijuana."
I'm afraid we may be stuck with the contentious word "marijuana," but it provides a useful reminder of one way in which American society was long ago manipulated into the prohibition of a plant that caused a mild euphoria in most people who tried it and a severe paranoia in many who didn't.
Follow @CNNOpinion on Twitter.
Join us at Facebook/CNNOpinion.
The opinions in this commentary are solely those of David Nathan.
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Leadership Wired Blog
THINKING YOUR WAY TO THE TOP
No one wants to feel invisible as they pass through life, yet we often get the impression that others see us as little more than a statistic. Our resume ends up in a pile, our performance reviews goes into a file, and like everyone else we get a raise every once in a while. We’re referred to as applicants, employees, or human resources, and we sense our individuality being somewhat buried.
Jack Welch called this feeling of anonymity “being in the pile,” and he recommended thinking as the means of escape. Most people go with the flow, doing what’s asked of them but not much more. In Welch’s estimation, the key to elevating yourself in business is to go above and beyond expectations whenever you’re asked a question or given an assignment. As he writes,
If you understand that the question is only the beginning, you will get out of the pile fast, because 99.9 percent of all employees are in the pile because they don't think. If you understand this principle, you will always be given more critical questions to answer. And in time, you will be the one giving out the questions to others!
In this lesson, I’d like to offer five practical steps to help you think your way to the top.
1. Find a place to think your thoughts.
Today’s work environments are incredibly fast-paced and fraught with pressing demands. Unless you’re intentional about getting away from the rattle and hum of day-to-day operations, you’ll be sucked into a vortex of thoughtless hyperactivity. The first step to getting out of the pile is giving yourself permission to disconnect. You have to get away from the daily barrage of information by retreating to a space free of interruptions. Initially, scheduling time to think will feel incredibly unproductive. However, you’ll quickly gain perspective which enables you to work smarter and more strategically.
2. Find a place to shape your thoughts.
In their infancy most ideas are fuzzy, flabby, and fanciful. Firstly, our thoughts initially are unclear. As a leader, challenge yourself to translate your gut intuitions or inklings into distinct ideas which you can plainly articulate to your team. Secondly, new ideas never come fully formed. They need a workout to tighten them up and to get them into shape. As a leader, your job is to submit ideas to a fitness test by asking a battery of questions. Does the idea proceed from reliable assumptions? Does the idea align with the values and vision of the organization? Does the idea make sense given the structure and strengths of the organization? Thirdly, thoughts spring into existence in the realm of possibility. However, to be useful they must undergo tests of practicality. For instance, how would the idea actually take shape in your organization? What would it cost to pursue? How long would it take to implement?
3. Find a place to stretch your thoughts.
Throughout my career, some of my best thinking has been done by others. Oftentimes my ideas start out small until my team gets ahold of them and finds ways to stretch them to their maximum potential. Isolated leaders never obtain as much influence as those who surround themselves with an inner circle of creative, intelligent advisors.
4. Find a place to land your thoughts.
Before an idea can make an impact, it must make the descent from your head to your hands. In other words, the thought must come out of thin air and take on a concrete existence. The number one question to ask when landing or implementing an idea is: Who will own it? That is, who will champion the idea and push it forward? In addition to the logistics of landing the idea, a leader relationally must prepare the way for the idea to touch down safely. Practically, this means winning the support of key decision-makers and communicating clearly with those most likely to be affected by the idea’s implementation.
5. Find a place to fly your thoughts.
If you wanted to fly an airplane, you would begin by taking lessons from a pilot. Likewise, to fly an idea, you first need to learn from a pilot or trial run. Testing your idea on a small scale exposes its weaknesses before a major launch. Sometimes the flaws are fixable, and the idea can be reworked. On rare occasions, you may even have an idea that tests out brilliantly on the first attempt. However, other ideas, though theoretically solid, are not feasible in real life and ought to be scrapped. A trial run confirms that an idea which sounds impressive can actually withstand the challenges of real-world application.
Like his books, all of John Maxwell’s leadership development and personal growth articles are easy to understand and easy to implement. For direct access to new leadership articles each month, subscribe to our bi-monthly electronic newsletter, Leadership Wired. For permission to reprint or reproduce any content in these articles please complete this Copyright Permission Form.
Copyright 2013 The John Maxwell Company. Articles accessed via http://www.johnmaxwell.com may not be reprinted or reproduced without written permission from The John Maxwell Company, except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The top Democrat in the Senate on budget matters said Tuesday that he’s preparing a fiscal blueprint to slash the deficit by $4 trillion over the upcoming decade — a plan built on the bipartisan findings of President Barack Obama’s deficit commission.
Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said the plan calls for a complete overhaul of the tax code — stripping out numerous tax write-offs while lowering income tax rates — but would leave Social Security untouched. The tax reform idea would generate an overall revenue increase in the range of perhaps $1 trillion over the coming decade.
Conrad briefed his Democratic colleagues on the draft plan, which under Capitol Hill’s arcane budget process is a blueprint setting a nonbinding framework for future legislation. The measure could come up for a committee vote next week, Conrad said.
The Senate Democratic plan would offer a counterpoint to a House GOP budget plan that passed last month. The GOP measure calls for a dramatic overhaul of Medicare that, for future retirees now 54 years old or younger, would turn the popular elderly health care program into a voucher-like system in which beneficiaries would purchase health insurance.
Conrad is also part of a so-called Gang of Six senators working on a separate track to devise a stronger plan that would seek to force Congress to pass deficit-slashing legislation. The group is struggling to reach agreement on a complicated measure that set targets for spending cuts and tax increases that would be enforced by automatic spending cuts and tax increases if Congress is unable to meet them.
The various maneuvering on the budget comes as out-of-control deficits presently force the government to borrow more than 40 cents of every dollar it spends — and Congress confronts a wrenching vote to permit the government to borrow even more that the $14.3 trillion of already-accumulated federal debt. Lawmakers in both parties promise that measure will be accompanied by spending cuts.
Vice President Joe Biden is hosting a meeting on Thursday with a bipartisan group of House and Senate lawmakers in hopes of working towards agreement on the budget. But the common wisdom is that the panel’s discussions may not bear much fruit since the panel is stocked with partisan loyalists from both political parties.
Conrad had little specific to say about either his Tuesday proposal or the secretive work of the Gang of Six. But he says both emulate the work of the bipartisan budget commission on which he served. Conrad voted for the commission’s plan, which blended cuts to defense and domestic programs with an increase in the gas tax and $1 trillion in new revenues flowing from a radical tax overhaul.
“What I am laying out borrows heavily from the fiscal commission,“ Conrad told reporters.
It’s debatable at best whether the Democratic-controlled Senate and the GOP-dominated House can come to agreement on a budget resolution. Conrad’s call for higher taxes is a non-starter with tea party-backed House Republicans while Democrats have launched an assault on the House-backed overhaul or Medicare, which would call for replacing the current system in which the government directly pays doctor and hospital bills with subsidies of private insurance whose purchasing power erodes over time.
“There are modest savings out of Medicare,“ Conrad said of his plan discussed on Tuesday.
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The C-Max Energi looks innocent enough, with its compact profile and candy coloring.
But don't be fooled. The new plug-in C-Max is Ford's bid to run its competition into the ditch.
The 2013 Ford C-Max Energi is a plug-in hybrid that can be driven as a pure electric vehicle up to 21 miles and, in combination with gas, as far as 620 miles. Its combined fuel economy is 100 MPGe.
PHOTO COURTESY OF FORD
2013 Ford C-Max Energi SEL
Base price: $32,950
Price as tested: $36,635 (including $795 for destination and delivery)
Price as tested incorporating federal tax credit: $32,885
Powertrain: 2-liter, inline four-cylinder hybrid engine, DOHC, four valves per cylinder, 7.6-kilowatt-hour lithium ion battery, electronic continuously variable transmission
Maximum horsepower: 141 @ 6,000 rpm
Maximum torque: 129 @ 4,000 rpm
Wheelbase: 104.3 inches
Overall length: 173.6 inches
Curb weight: 3,859 pounds
Fuel economy: 108 MPGe city/92 MPGe highway/100MPGe combined
Anyone who's spent any time driving anywhere knows the Toyota Prius as a ubiquitous eco icon favored by the conspicuously well-intentioned. Almost 2 million have been sold in the U.S. alone – a fact that was inescapable in San Francisco, where the streets were an obstacle course of Prius taxis during my daylong test of the C-Max Energi.
Ford clearly has its work cut out to beat Toyota at the game it commercialized, and Ford is going full-bore with its first hybrid-only nameplate, the C-Max, on sale since September.
Like Toyota, which has introduced three additional Prius models since 2011, including a plug-in, to help broaden the car's appeal beyond avid recyclers, Ford is following its new hybrid with a plug-in Energi version. Available at Southern California dealers this month, it gets the best fuel economy in the plug-in hybrid class (100 MPGe combined) for less money than its rival ($29,995 after applying federal tax incentives) in a style that isn't likely to sport a Save the Planet bumper sticker.
On paper, the C-Max Energi beats the Prius on some pretty significant metrics. The C-Max Energi can travel 620 miles when its tanks are filled to the gills, its battery charged to the limit; the Prius Plug-in, 533 miles. The slightly larger battery pack on the Energi means it can travel up to 21 miles as a pure electric vehicle, instead of the 6 to 14 offered by the Prius, allowing the C-Max Energi to claim a slightly higher federal tax credit, and lower purchase price, than the Toyota. The only thing that's missing from the C-Max, it seems, is a dashboard button to unleash marbles from the tailgate whenever its driver spots a Prius in the rearview, which is precisely where Ford would like to see it.
But is the C-Max a better car?
It certainly offers a lot for the money. Powered with a 2-liter gasoline engine that works in conjunction with an electric motor and 7.6-kilowatt-hour lithium ion battery pack that's fully charged with a plug, the C-Max Energi is designed as a versatile and efficient get-around that plays to Americans' "and" mentality. Buyers want cars that are fuel efficient and affordable without any compromises to their lifestyle. And the five-seat hatchback C-Max Energi largely delivers that with a well-appointed, roomy interior and a perky ride quality that offers the fuel economy benefits of an all-electric vehicle without the excessive cost or range anxiety.
Its interior is a step up in style from the monklike aesthetic abstinence of its rival. The C-Max I tested came with a panoramic sunroof, allowing me to eyeball my car's effect on outdoor air quality. Its steering wheel and shifter were wrapped in tactile leather instead of plastic, its door pulls and cup holders washed in faint blue light.
Slogging through San Francisco traffic is not my idea of a good time, but it is for the Energi, where the constant stops harness the car's kinetic energy through regenerative brakes that help recharge the battery. This extends the car's range and increases its city fuel economy to an astounding 108 MPGe. The hills, however, are its nemesis. In pure EV mode, on hills so steep they would've challenged Sir Edmund Hillary, the Energi begs for a gas boost and can be given one at the behest of a button.
While the Energi defaults to an "EV Auto" mode that lets the car determine the most efficient use of gas or electric power, drivers can also select "EV Now," allowing them to drive with all-electric power all the time up to a speed of 85 mph and a range of 21 miles, or "EV Later," so the car operates as a hybrid, preserving electric power until it's wanted, say, re-entering the city after a highway commute.
Oddly, the button that's used to switch between these modes is placed among the climate controls in the center console and is somewhat hampered by the location of the gear shift, which, when parked, partially blocks the button.
The C-Max is not a car for Trader Joe's parking lots, but neither is the Prius. The turning radius is so wide it's likely to inspire games of bumper car. But getting the car going at a good clip in the twisties far into the sticks beyond the Golden Gate Bridge, the C-Max was compliant enough in the corners for hybrid drivers at this price point.
The Energi is most fun to drive in pure EV mode, when pressing the accelerator yields the sort of instant torque that's likely to win a juvenile green-light skirmish. Alas, it's only available for a few short miles, after which the car seamlessly transitions to a hybrid mode.
The dash on the Energi lacks the Technicolor pop and easy readability of the displays on other competitors' plug-ins, such as the Chevy Volt and soon-to-be-released plug-in Honda Accord hybrid, both of which are as bright and cheerfully dynamic as cartoons. The C-Max Energi dash has just as much information about drive mode and energy use, though it's a little more difficult to read.
The C-Max Energi exemplifies Ford's strategy to reduce vehicle costs to consumers by sharing attributes among vehicles. The C-Max uses the same dashboard as the battery-electric Focus, and its battery pack is the same as the Fusion hybrid. Its interior styling is lifted from the Escape, and its footprint is the same as a Focus.
A compact that thinks it's a crossover, the C-Max feels almost cavernous from the driver's seat, which can be moved upward for visibility akin to a small SUV. Its 19 cubic feet of carrying capacity is surprising for a vehicle of its dimensions, though it's less than the nonplug-in C-Max, which has a smaller battery. The Energi's battery is five times more powerful and takes up twice as much space as the plain C-Max's, which prevents the rear cargo space from being entirely flat when the rear seats are folded flat – a feat that's otherwise done easily with one hand and the pull of a lever.
There are a lot of user-friendly details to the C-Max that elevate the driving experience. The windows are treated to provide sun protection. Wind and road noise are diminished with noise-canceling sound waves emitted through the car's speakers. The version I tested was equipped with a keyless lift gate that's activated with the swipe of a foot beneath the bumper and is intelligent enough to sense the difference between a human appendage and a stray Chihuahua.
Other trims include Active Park Assist, Ford's look-ma-no-hands, sensor-enabled parallel-parking feature. MyFordMobile is standard equipment. The smartphone app works with the car's embedded modem to remotely arrange the charging of the vehicle through a cellphone and can also help drivers find nearby charging stations, even providing routes to get there, among other things. The charging port, located just in front of the driver-side door, is ringed in light, providing drivers with a sort of visual shorthand on the state of the car's juice.
Recharging the Energi's lithium-ion batteries takes 2½ hours with a 220-volt, level-2 charger. It takes seven hours with a 110-volt outlet. That's a lot longer per kilowatt hour than other plug-in hybrids. The Prius Plug-in, which can travel up to 14 miles as a pure EV, recharges in 90 minutes with a level-2 charger; the Honda Accord plug-in, which can travel 10 miles in pure electric mode, recharges in 45 minutes.
Like all manufacturers of plug-ins, whether they're pure electric or hybrid, Ford has partnered with the maker of a residential Level 2 charger that can be installed through Best Buy for a cost that might prompt some buyers to pull the plug on their purchase plans altogether: $1,499. Drivers whose garages are already equipped with a 220 outlet may want to wait for a new cord Ford is developing that would negate the need for an entire charger and cost about $500.
While the C-Max is new to the U.S. market, gas and diesel versions of the car have been available in Europe for a decade. Ford updated the style in 2010 and swapped its internal combustion powertrain for a hybrid to bring the car to the U.S. market this year. With its C-Max, Ford is more than halfway into its plan to roll out six all-new hybrid and pure-electric vehicles in a single year.
Will the C-Max beat the Prius? It's difficult to overthrow a king, but the C-Max has the goods to make a run on the throne.
Contact the writer: firstname.lastname@example.org
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The Obama File published
Wesley Pruden says Obama’s legacy is coming sharply into focus, four years early. He’s out to transform “a nation of laws,” once the pride of the Anglo-Saxon heritage and exemplar to the world, into “a nation of feelings.” We won’t need judges, just social workers damp with empathy.
This is in line with the president’s larger vision, to cut America down to a size a community organizer could manage, making it merely one of the nice nations of the world, like Belgium or Brazil. The home of the brave and the land of the free would become what our English cousins call “wet,” weak, ineffectual, fragile, fearful, and inconsequential.
Sonia Sotomayor is one of the building blocks of the president’s envisioned Mediocre Society. She’s a perfect first nominee to the Supreme Court, “untouchable” for anyone tempted to look at who she really is, a lawyer of good grades — she graduated summa cum laude from her university and even won the class spelling bee in elementary school — but a judge with a modest record, confident of entitlement, and determined to help the president render America harmless, armed with good intentions but at the mercy of ravenous rivals. We may one day look back at her as the best of the worst.
The president is the master of demographic politics, playing the race card in a way that no one else could. Sotomayor was presented not first as a jurist distinguished by learning and accomplishment, but as a Latina, a woman of empathy and delicate sensibility. He’s counting on male gallantry, if not male timidity, to carry the day. Robert Gibbels, the president’s press agent, was an unapologetic intimidator, warning everyone to be “exceedingly careful” in talking about her. Criticism of Sotomayor is to be regarded as proof of racism, sexism and maybe even fascism. Criticize the little lady at your own risk.
The prospect is not that Republicans will be too tough, but not tough enough. Sotomayor has a damning paper trail, and the Republicans have a responsibility to ask vigorous, even robust, questions. Obama has the votes to prevail no matter how she answers the questions, but the nation is entitled to know who the president puts on the nation’s highest court.
Obama himself leaves no one under any misunderstanding about how he intends to remake America. “It is experience that can give a person a common touch of compassion,” he said on introducing Sonia Sotomayor, “an understanding of how the world works and how ordinary people live. And that is why it is a necessary ingredient in the kind of justice we need on the Supreme Court.” Not much there about the law and the Constitution.
This is scary enough, but he told a Hollywood audience this week that “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
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Do you know how you'll vote in November's presidential election?
I thought so. For all we're hearing about the importance of undecided voters, there aren't many of them left.
In an ABC News/Washington Post poll released this week, for example, only 2% of voters said they couldn't predict how they would vote on election day. That's right: 2%.
Other polls report higher shares of undecided, partly because they don't press respondents as hard to make a choice, but no one is putting the undecided vote at more than 10%.
That's not unprecedented in a year when an incumbent president is running for a second term. And if you add potential "swing voters" — people who have made a tentative choice but could still change their minds — the number of votes in play could grow. But it still means that only a small fraction of the electorate is truly undecided.
So who are these people? "The fate of our country is now in the hands of people who don't think about what they want until they get right up to the register at McDonald's," comedian Stephen Colbert quipped recently.
Pollsters and political scientists, predictably, have come up with wonkier answers. Some of those who haven't committed are simply dissatisfied, they say; they haven't heard anything they like from either candidate and are unlikely to vote come election day.
Others are disengaged voters — people who don't pay much attention to political news, or who have been too busy to focus on the campaign until now. (Pollsters say that includes a disproportionate number of women with children, a reason campaigns are constantly vying to appeal to harried "soccer moms" or "Wal-Mart moms.")
And some, a precious few, are voters who are engaged and paying attention but genuinely torn.
Alec MacPeel, a 60-year-old construction contractor in Cleveland in the swing state of Ohio, falls into the dissatisfied category. "I don't like either one of them," MacPeel told me when I caught up with him last week. "I don't like a lot of the things Obama has done, but I don't like Romney either."
But wait, I asked: Doesn't Mitt Romney's business-oriented pitch appeal to you as a small businessman? "I don't think the Bain Capital record was such a good one," he said, adding that he doesn't approve of "making your living out of loading companies up with debt and letting them go bankrupt."
Was there any candidate this year MacPeel might have voted for? "Ron Paul, maybe," he said, without much conviction. And on election day? "I don't plan to vote."
MacPeel shows up in the polls as "undecided." But a better label might be disaffected and unreachable — not the kind of voter who's likely to swing an election either way. And that makes the truly undecided voters even more important.
Mary Tate, a 67-year-old retired plywood company worker in Danville, Va., another swing state, is one of the genuinely perplexed. She voted for President Obama in 2008, but this time, she said, "I'm kind of on the fence. I'm leaning a little bit toward Romney, but I'm not positive."
What's pushed her away from Obama? "The debt," she said. "Obama was handed a big mess; you can't solve a problem that big in just four years. But I don't like the debt he's putting on us."
Still, she's torn — and worried about Medicare. "I don't like it that Obama is taking $716 billion from Medicare to pay for what they call Obamacare," she said. "But I'm worried about the changes that Romney might make. If they make it into — what do you call it, vouchers? — that bothers me."
How will she vote on election day? "I don't know," she said with a sigh. "I'm still listening."
Political scientist Alan
Abramowitz of Emory University has estimated that in 2008, only about one-third of the swing voters who were leaning toward one candidate or another actually switched sides before election day. But of those who did, most "came home" to their own party's nominee.
That's one reason the presidential campaign is becoming more vitriolic. Partisan rhetoric doesn't always drive swing voters away; instead, it can remind them where their loyalties are, and convince them that there's something they just don't like about the other side.
So while the final lap of this campaign will focus on "mobilization" — making sure each side's strongest supporters turn out — it will also be aimed at that dwindling band of undecided and swing voters.
As Vanderbilt political scientist John G. Geer told me: "A billion dollars is chasing 5% of the vote in 20% of the states."
Follow Doyle McManus on Twitter @DoyleMcManus
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The entire face of downtown Clearwater could be about to change, all to make way for a new home for Clearwater's movie star dolphin.
Even city hall could be demolished in the proposed plans for a new, 200,000 square foot Clearwater Marine Aquarium.
City hall sits on a bluff overlooking the intracoastal waterway; half a block away is Harborview and Coachman Park.
The Clearwater Marine Aquarium would cover all of this.
Some say it could be the biggest development ever in Clearwater.
"It's the biggest thing to hit Clearwater ever, probably, but so is Winter," said Frank Hibbard, the former Clearwater mayor who now sits on the board of the aquarium.
The facility would be 200,000 square feet, with some very famous residents.
"Winter would be here, Hope would be here, all of our turtles would be here. So, all of the residents would move here," Hibbard said.
Winter the Dolphin is the star of a motion picture that has brought hundreds of thousands of new visitors to Clearwater.
She and other Clearwater Marine Aquarium animals can never be released into the wild. But her newfound fame has created a need for quick action.
"We are hoping to go to referendum in November of this year and the reason for that is we truly are outgrowing our space," Hibbard said. "We have people that are coming literally from all over the world to see Winter."
Hibbard said there are 750,000 visitors, and that all that traffic is a strain on the current location.
So in broad strokes, the plans would demolish City Hall, build a new attraction capable of hosting 2.5 million visitors a year, and keep the existing CMA aquarium strictly as an animal hospital.
The plan would also demolish Harborview and stitch it together with Coachman Park -- creating a destination park.
Proponents say that combination could ignite a lot of economic development.
"I wouldn't say it just impacts downtown [Clearwater]," Hibbard said. "I think you need to be looking at Pinellas County and the Tampa Bay area."
So next week, the Clearwater Marine Aquarium lays this out to the city council, requesting a public vote on this for November.
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A Review of Lost in the Middle by Paul David Tripp
Reviewed by PAUL D. MILLER
“Life is hard, and then you die—blessed be the name of the Lord.” That, in short, is the message of Paul David Tripp’s wrenching book Lost in the Middle (2004). I hated this book because of how deeply convicted I was of sin, selfishness, and idolatry on every single page. I strongly recommend it to everyone.
Tripp is a biblical counselor—that is, a counselor who starts from the Bible’s understanding of human nature and uses biblical wisdom and truth—alongside secular tools where appropriate—to understand people’s lives. “We speak with practical, Biblical help and hope into the confusion, disappointment, anger, fear and discouragement that people experience as they face the harsh realities of life in this broken world,” according to his website. Tripp’s basic framework is spelled out in Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands (2002), a more theoretical and dense work which deserves its own blog post. Tripp has then applied his framework to specific, common issues, like marriage (What Did You Expect?, 2012), communication in marriage (War of Words, 2000), and parenting teens (Age of Opportunity, 2001).
Lost in the Middle is about mid-life crises—although I suspect the problems it addresses occur throughout life (they have for me). In chapter one, Tripp diagnoses the challenges of mid-life: dissatisfaction with life, disorientation, discouragement, dread of the future, disappointment, disinterest in work and other activities, and distance in relationships.
This is a good example of Tripp’s writing style—lots of alliterative, numbered lists. The technique can be a handy way of structuring ideas, especially if these were lecture notes, but it can be annoying and repetitive to a reader. Likewise annoying is Tripp’s peppering every chapter with anecdotes of people’s lives to illustrate the points he is making. After the first few chapters these little stories become wearisome and predictable morality plays. After a while I just skipped them.
(Side rant: this seems to be a pervasive stylistic choice in popular non-fiction. Writers can’t get through two paragraphs without sharing a heartwarming anecdote that illustrates their lesson with vivid humanity. I, for one, hate it. It is condescending—don’t you trust me to grasp an abstract point?—and a waste of precious reading time. If I want stories I’ll read fiction. Side rant over.)
Nonetheless, the ideas in Tripp’s bullet-pointed, anecdote-accented book are powerful. When I first tried to read the book a year ago, I had to put it down after the first chapter because I hated being seen through so easily. Then I picked it back up because I was encouraged that my frustrations were apparently so common.
Tripp deals with mortality, regret, and the failure of our dreams (any one of which could have been a stand-alone book). Collectively these chapters are very painful to read—especially, for me, the last one. It is part of human nature to dream and imagine—of the perfect spouse, job, income, house, children, or anything else. Our dreams will compete with God for our worship; and, because we live in a fallen, broken world, our dreams will either die or disappoint. Either result can trigger immense resentment, bitterness, and anger.
The solution, at least in part, is to treat the pain of dead dreams as a warning against idolatry; to realize that God understands and empathizes with our suffering; and to get some perspective, accept life’s harsh realities, and move on. In other words: grow up.
The second half of the book is really just variations on these themes. God understands our suffering. That’s why he put things like Psalm 88 in the Bible. Recognizing that God knows suffering—that God Himself suffered—should comfort to us. We should also use our pain and disappointment as an occasion to cultivate a yearning for heaven, when “God will wipe away every tear…there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain…” (Revelation 21:4). Indeed, in recent years, this passage about the inauguration of God’s kingdom and our final glorification has been a wonderful comfort, and if I ever want to cry on demand I just reread it.
As helpful as this book was for me, I couldn’t help but wonder if Tripp overemphasizes the role of mental exercises in dealing with pain. There seems to be an implied Trippian model of sanctification that leans heavily on a proper intellectual grasp of Biblical truths. In other words, if you read enough Tripp you begin to think that there is a simple two-step solution to life’s problems;
Step 1: think correct theology.
Step 2: problem solved!
That’s an unfair caricature, but sometimes that’s what it feels like to be on the receiving end of biblical counseling when you only get it through a book. Tripp, in Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands, makes clear the vital importance of personal relationships and accountability—which are probably the hardest and most easily neglected parts of biblical counseling. I would add that it helps to stay busy with life, work, and ministry and give less time to mournful introspection.
Because I read Lost in the Middle by myself and wasn’t talking with anyone regularly about the book and my reactions to it, I quite easily channeled my frustrations towards Tripp: “He’s being insensitive to me and my life and is only offering trite platitudes instead of nuanced counseling!” That’s a silly criticism to make of a book which, after all, is inanimate (I have to remind myself of that sometimes). If you read this book (and you should), do it in a small group or with a best friend so you can talk about it regularly. Tripp has written a deeply challenging, Biblically sound book that is hurtful and wounding, which is a good thing. “Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.” (Proverbs 27:6).
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The Chickasaw Children’s Choir is accepting new members.
All students, ages 6-14, who want to learn more about vocal music and performance are welcome to participate.
The choir consists of talented children from communities and surrounding areas of Ada, Ardmore, Purcell, Sulphur and Tishomingo.
Choir conductor Phillip Berryhill said enrollment is open to all students, native and non-native, who are interested in developing their talents in the vocal arts and choir performance.
Students learn music theory, voice and pitch and perform original music along with contemporary songs translated into the Chickasaw language.
Rehearsals are conducted regularly in Ada, Ardmore and Sulphur. Other locations may be scheduled as students are added.
Since its beginnings in 2002, the Chickasaw Children’s Choir has had the honor of performing at milestone celebrations such as the “Ground blessing” of the American Indian Cultural Center in Oklahoma City, Gov. Brad Henry’s Children’s Inauguration and numerous times at the Oklahoma State Capitol. The choir also performs at a variety of tribal events, including the Chickasaw Annual Meeting and Festival and Youth Arts Celebration.
To ask questions about the Chickasaw Children’s Choir, contact Mr. Berryhill, Cara Criswell or Laura Stewart at the Chickasaw Nation Division of Arts and Humanities at (580) 272-5520.
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When news happens, text SDE and your photos or videos to 80360. Or contact us by email and phone.
Thousands queue for The Who in Southampton in 1970
2:32pm Tuesday 26th June 2012 in Archives
By Lewis Wedgwood
POLITENESS and courtesy might not be synonymous with the wild excesses of rock music.
But back in October 1971 genteel British manners triumphed when Southampton residents became desperate for tickets to see legendary rockers The Who. As the Echo reported: “Nearly 1,000 rock fans formed an orderly queue outside Southampton University waiting patiently for tickets to a concert by The Who in the city.
Clive Fisher, the press officer for the Events Office, added: ‘Everyone has been extremely well behaved’.”
The Hampshire branch of The Who’s fanbase showed a dedication that puts 21st century music fans to shame. In contrast to conveniently buying tickets and albums online with a few keystrokes the hardy Who fans had to queue for hours in a long, snaking line.
“By the time the box office opened early this afternoon the queue stretched for almost a quarter of a mile. Some of the fans had slept outside the university overnight to make sure of their tickets. Even the rain did not deter them. They carried umbrellas and plastic bags as protection, while one small group wore paper hats ingeniously made out of past issues of the Echo.”
A box office spokesman told the Echo: “I reckon there would have been many more but today is the first day of term and a lot are attending lectures.“ This was the zenith of the band’s career: they had just returned from their biggest US tour in July and August that year and their instrument- destroying antics had helped earn them the unofficial nickname ‘The World’s Greatest Live Rock’n’Roll band’.
This was also the year of their only UK number 1 album, Who’s Next, and their October 1971 tour of the UK, of which this Southampton date was their opening gig.
They arrived in the city fresh from headlining a benefit gig for Bangladesh at The Oval, attended by 35,000 fans.
But it wasn’t all camaraderie and community spirit when they visited.
Days before the concert, the Echo disclosed: “Large quantities of forged tickets are in circulation.
The organisers are now faced with a big headache – sorting out the real tickets when the fans arrive, to make sure that those fans with genuine tickets get into the concert.”
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|Reform Movement Policy
On March 12, 2007, the Union’s Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees overwhelmingly adopted the Resolution on the War in Iraq 2007, opposing an escalation of U.S. troops in Iraq and calling on President Bush to set and announce a specific timetable for the phased withdrawal of troops.
In February 2007, the North American Federation of Temple Youth (NFTY) passed the proposed Resolution on the War in Iraq 2007 at its North American board meeting in Philadelphia.
At the Union for Reform Judaism’s Biennial in Houston in November 2005, the General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution on the War in Iraq that called on the Bush Administration to develop a clear exit strategy. In June 2006, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) passed a resolution reaffirming the positions the Union adopted at the biennial as well as raising issues of energy independence, progressive taxation to cover the expense of the war, and the consideration of a national draft to support our country’s armed forces.
In September 2002, during the run up to the invasion of Iraq, the Union adopted a position on the prospect of unilateral action by the U.S. against Iraq. This position was an important part of the debate leading up to the adoption of our current resolution on the war. Also, in June, 2004, the CCAR also adopted a resolution that raised concerns about the false claims on which the war in Iraq was based, the abuse of prisoners, the need to be visibly and strongly supportive of our military personnel, and the need to set a clearly-defined and measurable exit strategy for the withdrawal of Coalition military personnel from Iraq.
Iraq Study Group: Baker-Hamilton Report
On December 6, 2006, the Iraq Study Group (or the so-called Baker/Hamilton Commission), an indepedent, bipartisan group convened at the urging on Congress, released its assessment of the situation in Iraq and recommendations for change, The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way Forward - A New Approach .
New Way Forward: President Bush's Proposal
Announced on January 10, 2007, President Bush's New Way Forward focuses on the security, political, economic, and regional aspects of the conflict.
Alternative Plans for Iraq
General Information on the War
For general information on the war and the history of Iraq, a few academic and news media sites have helpful information:
Many bills related to the United States’ continued military presence in Iraq have been introduced in the 110th Congress in the House of Representatives and the Senate.
S.470: A bill to express the sense of Congress on Iraq
Sponsored by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI)
S.Con.Res.2: A concurrent resolution expressing the bipartisan resolution on Iraq.
Sponsored by Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE)
S.Con.Res.7: A concurrent resolution expressing the sense of Congress on Iraq.
Sponsored by Senator John Warner (R-VA)
S.Res.70: A resolution expressing the sense of the Senate that the Commander of Multinational Forces-Iraq and all United States personnel under his command should receive from Congress the full support necessary to carry out the United States mission in Iraq.
Sponsored by Senator John McCain (R-AZ)
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DATE: 1/26/2011 | BY CORY REYNOLDS
One of the most experimental and poetic designeres of our time, Yohji Yamamoto revolutionized fashion in the early 1980s and has enjoyed legendary status ever since. His new autobiography, My Dear Bomb, is playful, sensuous and searching, like Yamamoto himself. The following excerpt is from the chapter, "An Artist."
Yohji Yamamoto and collaborator Pina Bausch at the 25th anniversary of her company, Tanztheater Wupperthal, in 1998.
"Sketches do not determine the clothing. It is, rather, the fabric and the human form that can guide one towards the discovery of a personal mode. I have repeatedly said, "Are you listening? The fabric has much to teach us." How does the cloth want to drape, to sway, to fall? If one keeps these things in mind and looks very carefully, the fabric itself begins to speak. "This is the type of clothing I wish to become." Indeed, the fabric itself begins to speak.
The morning after a man and woman have spent the night together, she might say, "I'm going to jump in the shower. Let me borrow this for a minute, okay?" She may throw on one of his white shirts made of broadcloth, and though it is too big for her, it will conform to her shape. The brightness of the shirt will flow to the peak of her breasts, the pleats will gather at her elbow, and the shadows will stretch across her chest. I have made clothing entirely in hopes of recreating such bewitching, totally unexpected visions.
To design with the intention of capturing a charm that has emerged by chance is a paradoxical undertaking. For me the solution lies in the weight and tensions of the fabric, and that is why I am a stickler for the weave of the materials. We go through endless discussions about whether it is possible to make the fabric thinner or eliminate the neps (bunching of fibres that occurs when spun threads are woven together) of the woof as it appears when the cloth is held up to the light.
There is an indescribable beauty in the sight of thousands of threads stretched tightly to produce precisely the sort of warp that I have envisioned. The experience must share something with the Wright brothers bringing into existence a successful flight precisely as they had imagined it all those years.
When I speak of the "weight" of a fabric I am not referring to its weight as measurable in some objective sense. Rather, I use the term to indicate its relative density, the way the fabric will fall when it is draped on the body. This point is of crucial importance. If the relative density is high, the fabric will drape well on the body. When I speak of the "tension" of the fabric I am referring to the interplay of the woof and the warp. If the fabric is dense in this sense it will feel heavy when taken in hand, if its density is lower, it will feel light.
It should be noted that when skillfully cut and reborn as clothing, any remaining sense of weight in the fabric will disappear the moment it makes contact with the living body.
Clothes made of fabric with a high relative density will slip off a clothes hanger just from the force of their own weight. Use this same clothing to dress a living human being, however, and that person will not notice the weight at all. There is a pre-established harmony at work here, and the secret to bringing it out lies in the cutting.
Clothing is, ultimately, made to be worn. It is complete only at the instant it is donned by a living human being, a person experiencing the love and sadness of each second in time. Only at the moment it is donned does the clothing fulfill its destiny.
The nature of the person who makes the clothing is also an integral factor. What sort of life does he lead? That approach to life is clearly revealed in the clothing. The process might begin with a line drawn boldly, sincerely, on a scrap of paper by a practiced hand working like a finely tuned piano. This line may then be embodied in a fabric with a certain weight. In time it will be stretched into a garment, and there it takes on a life of its own. It begins to sing. It sings of indiscretions from the night before, it sings of the morning's sunlight filtered through the trees.
In the end the garment leaves the purview of he who designed it. In time it will experience a chance encounter with one who will wear it. Will that person who dons the garment hear my song as hidden within it? That issue, in fact, is unimportant. The intentions of he who made the garment are nothing in comparison to the lived experiences of the person who wears it, nothing in comparison to the stolen pleasures enjoyed with a mysterious woman.
Haute couture, the presentation of a perfect item to a specific person. There is nothing in that practice that suits my personality. That is just a fact of life.
To live is to experience a sequence of singular chance encounters. It is a string of coincidences. Life is formed by joining together those fleeting, frozen moments in a string of beads, each moment almost unbearable for the randomness of its appearance. Is there any other way to live a life?
To assume that the future awaits youth would be a fearful mistake. On the contrary, I have far more of future than most youth. They speak of the ceiling hanging low, pressing down on them from above. I know nothing of that sentiment. Rather than prattle on endlessly about art and concept, one is better served by living. Embrace both the bitter and the sweet that come with working from the heart, working with one's very life on the line. I live, I take pleasures where they are afforded. Everything starts from embracing life itself."
Yohji Yamamoto: My Dear Bomb
LUDIONPbk, 6 x 8.75 in. / 192 pgs / 25 b&w.$39.95 free shipping
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WASHINGTON -- The Connecticut congressional delegation joined President Barack Obama on Tuesday in endorsing a new federal ban on assault weapons in the wake of the Newtown school massacre where a 20-year-old man used an assault rifle to murder 20 children and six adults.
Obama is "actively supportive" of efforts to reinstate an assault weapons ban, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday. The president, in his remarks Sunday night at Newtown High School, had urged unspecified actions to curb the rash of mass shootings. As a member of the Senate he had supported a ban.
Obama "does want to move," Carney told reporters. "He wants to move in the coming weeks, which is a fairly short period of time. And while he supports, and strongly, renewal of the assault weapons ban ... he wants to expand the conversation beyond those specific areas of legislation to look at other ways we can address this problem."
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the author of the assault weapons ban that became law in 1994 but expired in 2004, says she will introduce an "updated" assault weapons ban when Congress convenes Jan. 3.
Her new bill would outlaw 100 specifically named firearms, weapons that can accept detachable magazines as well as certain semiautomatic rifles, handguns and shotguns that can accept a detachable magazine and semiautomatic rifles and handguns with a fixed magazine that can accept more than 10 rounds.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., took the floor of the Senate on Tuesday to describe how Adam Lanza, armed with a Bushmaster AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, a 10 mm Glock handgun, a 9 mm Sig Sauer pistol, and magazines filled with hundreds of rounds of ammunition, invaded Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown and killed students and staffers.
"There is no single new law, no simple solution, that will be a cure-all" to the violence, Blumenthal said, "but there are sound, sensible steps that we can take. ... We need to do something to effectively ban assault weapons. I am talking about weapons that are not designed for self-defense or hunting, but rather for killing and maiming human beings, often as many as possible, as fast as possible. Weapons that are civilian versions of military weapons. There is no reason that such weapons should be for sale today in America."
The state's other House members -- Reps. Jim Himes, D-Greenwich, Rosa DeLauro, D-New Haven, Joe Courtney, D-Vernon, John Larson, D-East Hartford -- also said they supported a ban on assault weapons, though they would wait until they saw specific legislative language before endorsing any particular bill.
The drive to reinstate the assault weapons ban also picked up the endorsement of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which announced its support of the legislation that Feinstein is preparing.
Feinstein sponsored the 1994 ban that outlawed 18 specific models of semiautomatic weapons. The law expired in 2004 and lawmakers, mainly Republicans, refused to renew it.
By pushing for a new assault weapons ban, the Obama administration could reap political benefits among suburban voters who abhor weapons of that type. On the other hand, if House Republicans thwart any effort to renew the ban, the Obama administration could gain among those voters who would blame Republicans for blocking a new ban.
Meantime, the campaign against assault weapons broadened Tuesday to include legislation against ammunition magazines that could hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.
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The Defence Club Lahore invited lady members and their young daughters on a Self Grooming Workshop conducted by Masarrat Misbah. The purpose of the workshop was to arrange an activity for the members of defence club lahore, where they can learn self grooming tips from the professionals in Depilex. Masarrat Misbah was invited to conduct the workshop because of her long association with the beauty industry, not just a seasoned beautician she is also known for her welfare work for acid attack and burn victims through her organization Depilex Smileagain foundation.
Over 100 participants were given useful tips on self grooming. The DSF girls working in Depilex Beauty Parlor and Institute assisted in demonstrating the art of make up on first day and facial regimes on the second day.
A parallel activity highlighted and projected awareness campaign about domestic violence. The stall arranged by DSF girls exhibited promotional material: standees, tea mugs, brochures, friendship bands and T-shirts.
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This article has been adapted from our sister site across the pond, Fool U.K.
There is a very clear fault line in the world economy right now.
A tale of two worlds
On one side of this line, we have slow-growing, large, developed nations, including the U.S., U.K. and the leaders of the eurozone. Struggling with high levels of national and personal debt and slow growth, these economies are very much the laggards of the post-crash era.
On the other side, we have booming developing countries such as the BRICs: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. With their huge populations and low levels of indebtedness, these countries are sucking in resources and growing at breakneck speed.
If you were to consider making a major investment in one of these regions, where would you go? The answer, it increasingly seems, is to go east.
AstraZeneca loves China
The Chinese pharmaceutical market grew from $10 billion in 2004 to $41 billion in 2010, more than quadrupling in six years, according to industry research specialist IMS Health.
What's more, this market is expect to continue booming, growing to $100 billion by 2015, driven by increased Chinese government investment in health-care infrastructure and by expanding private insurance coverage.
Thus, in order to move away from its reliance on "white pills and Western markets," the U.K.'s second-biggest "Big Pharma" firm, AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN ) , is betting big on China. Yesterday, the group announced that it is to invest $200 million in a new manufacturing facility in China Medical City, Taizhou City, Jiangsu province in eastern China.
This is AstraZeneca's largest-ever investment in a single manufacturing facility. The site -- due to be completed by the end of 2013 -- will produce "both intravenous and oral solid medicines for the company's growing business in China."
By opening the site, AstraZeneca hopes to "reach some of the estimated 900 million people in urban and rural Chinese communities who lack access to high-quality medicines."
The lure of the East
Of course, this isn't the pharma's firm's first foray into China. Indeed, AstraZeneca has been building up its presence in the Middle Kingdom since 1993, with turnover exceeding $1 billion in 2010.
Today, AstraZeneca employs 5,000 staff in China, working in manufacturing, sales and marketing, clinical research and new product development at its headquarters in Shanghai and across numerous sites in mainland China and Hong Kong.
Even so, this substantial injection of capital into this operation suggests that AstraZeneca has a long-term commitment to China.
With a potential market exceeding 1.3 billion customers and gross domestic product (GDP) forecast to grow by 9.4% this year, who wouldn't want to be at the heart of Chinese commerce?
Want to know more about investing in China? This special report -- 4 Shares To Profit From The Rise Of The Chinese Consumer -- is free to download!
More from Cliff D'Arcy:
The Motley Fool owns shares in AstraZeneca.
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The Federal Advisory Committees have used subcommittees, Committees of Visitors (COV), to assess the efficacy and quality of the processes used to solicit, review, recommend, monitor, and document funding actions and to assess the quality of the resulting portfolio. The national and international standing of the elements are part of the evaluation of the breadth and depth of the portfolio. The portfolio under review by a COV generally includes all actions – both awards and declinations – for universities, national laboratories, and industry administered by the program for a set period of time, usually three years.
The Director of the Office of Science charges the relevant advisory committees to assemble COVs to assess the Office of Science programs on a regular basis. Every program element must be reviewed by a COV at least once every three years. Each COV panel is composed of a group of recognized scientists and research program managers with broad expertise in the designated program areas. Panel members are familiar with DOE research programs; however, a significant fraction of the COV members does not receive DOE funding. Each panel member signs a Conflict of Interest statement.
The COV process includes a two- to three-day site visit to review documents and meet with DOE program managers. The COV prepares a report, which is presented to the full Federal Advisory Committee at a public meeting. The Federal Advisory Committee reviews and may make modifications to the report prior to acceptance. Following acceptance, the report is transmitted to the Director of the Office of Science and released publicly. The Associate Director of the Office of Science in charge of the program element under review provides a response to the review within 30 days of the acceptance of the report by the Federal Advisory Committee.
Guidance on the organization and conduct of COV reviews is available here (62KB).
The Deputy Director for Science Programs maintains a database of Office of Science COV review reports and program responses.
To access the COV reports and responses for each Office of Science program, please click on the program office's link, below:
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Mozilla smartphones using the Firefox OS will be available to developers by early February as the open source software giant plans to give competition to the leaders in mobile operating system, Apple and Google. The smartphones, which are named as Keon and Peak, are developer preview devices as Mozilla wants developers to become acquainted with Firefox OS.
The smartphones from Mozilla feature the new Firefox OS for mobile phones, which is reported to be built on open web standards. The company is known for its open source software as it already offers Firefox browser. There is no word on pricing of the two smartphones from Mozilla.
The released devices include two handsets, the 3.5-inch Keon and 4.3-inch Peak. Keon features a Qualcomm Snapdragon S1 processor clocked at 1GHz, with 512MB of RAM. It also comprises of 4GB of storage with a 3-megapixel rear camera. The Peak features a dual-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon chip and an 8-megapixel rear and 2-megapixel front camera stepping things up.
The devices have been developed in a partnership with Geeksphone and Spanish carrier Telefonica, which has already confirmed that it will support the web-based Firefox OS on commercial devices expected in late 2013. Talking about the smartphones, the firm wrote on its developer blogging site, “Developer preview phones will help make the mobile web more accessible to more people. Developers are critical to the web and to Mozilla’s mission to make the web accessible to everyone.”
Mozilla Firefox OS release will be followed by BlackBerry 10 OS release on January 30 and the launch of Ubuntu mobile operating system in the near future. The important question, now is, do Apple and Google need to worry?
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from which and to what age should children be spanked?
As long as you live at home you live by your parents rules. Never too old to be spanked or disciplined as they see fit.
My lasat from dad was at 17
I've only just received my first proper spanking at the age of 13.
How were you punished when younger? What prompted a first at age 13? Did you react to the news you were about to get your first? Did you end up with a sore butt or being a first, was it gone easy with you, more like a warning? Think you'll get more spanking if behavior again deserves?
I don't think children should be spanked before they are 5 or 6 cause they can't understand it. I think they shouldn't be spanked after about 11or 12 yrs old because then other punishments like grounding and losing privileges are more effective.
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Just like the baseball owners of years past, many human resource professionals and line managers are making mistakes in assembling their teams -- by misvaluing their employees. Now, more than ever, a holistic approach is needed to ensure that the right data is being selected, tracked, reported on, compared and used to improve talent management.
The reason the book and movie Moneyball have won many fans is not just that they tell a great underdog sports story of a small-market baseball team battling higher-payroll behemoths. It's that the story is about how markets value people, as much as it is about sports.
"These baseball players who we all think we know and understand are misvalued," Moneyball author Michael Lewis told an interviewer. "And if they can be misvalued, who can't?"
Indeed, human resources professionals and line managers at many different types of companies have made similar mistakes, in assembling their teams -- and their outcomes have been the same: "misvalued" employees.
While tools and approaches for selecting and developing talent abound in today's marketplace, it continues to be all too easy to make mistakes -- and those mistakes cost organizations real money.
In many ways, today's overabundance of employee-assessment instruments, performance metrics and available data makes it even more challenging to ensure that the talent pool is aligned with strategic business goals and prepared to drive steadily toward continued growth and prosperity.
When employee skills, traits, motivations and knowledge are out of sync with the requirements of the job, everyone loses, including the employee, his or her team, the organization and markets served.
Now, more than ever, a holistic approach is needed to ensure that the right data is being selected, tracked, reported on, compared and used to improve performance. Rising commodity costs, fierce competition and fewer consumer dollars put pressures on profits. Global leaders are responsible for ever-larger portfolios of products and teams of people, and they need transformative approaches to sustain and grow their companies.
To complicate matters, changing global demographics are making it harder to find high-performing employees with the right fit for changing job requirements, and the most talented "stars" are becoming increasingly elusive.
In a competitive job market, candidates with the highest potential are like baseball's free agents, being repeatedly tempted by recruiters and their own career aspirations to leave for better compensation. Regardless of the size of their budget, HR leaders should be making sure they are developing and rewarding the skills and employee loyalty that will truly help achieve their organizations' business goals.
Harnessing the Data
Our data-driven approach, called Quantitative Talent Management, is designed to enable HR leaders to harness and integrate all of the relevant information for talent management. QTM involves three components: data gathering, data analysis and information transparency.
We advocate a data-gathering approach similar to the Oakland A's embrace of quantitative analysis on a much larger scale than any other team in baseball at the time, as featured in Moneyball.
The A's took advantage of a wealth of statistical data to use new, more effective metrics. For example, although baseball traditionalists valued "batting average" as a measure of offensive talent, "on-base percentage" (which also accounts for walks) was actually a far-better measure of a player's contribution to victory.
The team also ignored the traditional dismissal of college statistics as inconsequential and saw that statistical analysis indicated they were surprisingly good indicators of professional performance. And, conversely, they recognized that some hallowed numbers -- such as fastball velocity -- offered more glamor than substance.
In business, too, there has been a data revolution. Companies have available a wealth of sophisticated tools to gather and convert data into intelligence regarding the workforce. Yet how many HR executives -- as they power their way through days filled with firefighting and tactical issues -- feel confident that they are thoroughly evaluating talent through use of the most relevant and effective metrics?
To take an obvious example: Is a salesperson measured by the revenues she brings in or the profitability of her sales? Or, are upstream measures such as frequency of customer contact and sales-cycle times, which are tracked in the CRM system, more important?
In decades past, data for performance evaluation was minimal. But today, organizations can drill down through reams of data -- gathered by human resources, on the shop floor, within service organizations, and from integrated processes that span the organization -- to find better metrics for managing talent.
Any single piece of data is, of course, meaningless by itself. Data analysis is required, involving comparisons between relevant data, in order to derive meaningful interpretations.
The A's were drawn to on-base percentage because of its relationship to winning. They studied 70 years of statistics to build an entire model of success. It was a model based not upon the characteristics of people -- such as size, speed, athleticism and leadership abilities -- but on skills.
In seeking to properly value talent, the leaders of the A's took a different approach, carefully and methodically separating championship skills from the player. In their model, as described in Moneyball, success (i.e., a championship) could be predicted by monitoring certain statistics, such as on-base percentage.
In turn, on-base percentage was found to result from specific activities (e.g., hits and walks), which arose from specific skills (in this example, plate discipline). Because evidence suggested that plate discipline might be more innate than learned, it was adopted as a skill to recruit for, even at the lowest levels.
Some of Moneyball's best scenes showed scouts exasperated with the directive to discount athletic qualities that stirred their romantic imaginations in favor of wonkier measures. But the new data-driven, albeit, less emotionally stirring, approach worked.
Such analysis may be trickier in business than baseball because of the vast variety of skills, activities, metrics and even definitions of winning. But trickier doesn't mean impossible.
For example, in production processes, Statistical Process Control or Theory of Constraint approaches use an analytical framework for turning facts into insights that improve performance. And these approaches guide the user to interpretations based on a deeper analysis of skills, rather than just results.
For example, they might focus on the location of bottlenecks in an upstream process, rather than purely on outcome data, such as how many units are completed per hour. These more sophisticated approaches to operational performance management facilitate construction of models that link success back to certain activities and skills.
So, why aren't companies applying the same principles in the HR department? Quantitative analyses can show which skills lead to success -- and which skill deficits lead to bottlenecks.
HR executives need to determine which skills are important by breaking down accepted metrics (e.g., widgets produced, billable hours, occupancy rates) into more actionable, skill-based components.
The final component of QTM is information transparency. That's nothing new to baseball, where all players live in a world of constant feedback, with statistics that show their performance in real time. That's good. Top performers want to know what the goals are and how they are doing.
And most businesses can do a better job of compiling and sharing metrics that depict employee value. If your data gathering and analysis efforts provide the metrics, it only makes sense to be transparent with the information they provide. Let your employees see the metrics in real time.
Benefits of a Quantitative Approach
For the Oakland A's, the Moneyball approach lowered talent acquisition and replacement costs. Oakland's cost-per-hire dropped significantly for both mid-career and emerging players. They could pay less for a mid-career free agent because plate discipline was undervalued in the marketplace. They could trade stars overvalued by the market, such as "closer" relief pitchers, for younger, less expensive, and/or better fitting talent.
And they could lower their risks in drafting emerging players because their advanced statistics could better predict future success.
The end result of the new focus was that the A's delivered baseball's highest ROI for talent, the most wins per payroll dollar.
Selecting Useful Metrics
We recently worked with a global retail company that operated on thin margins, and knew that in-person customer service was a key differentiator in competing with online rivals.
Traditionally, the company had recruited and rewarded store managers using a single metric: store sales. And, not surprisingly, employees responded to their incentives with excellent, yet sometimes counter-productive performance.
In short, although same-store sales grew, so did costs -- and profitability suffered. For example, purchases of back-office store supplies were not tracked, relative to depletions, and many managers ordered far more than they needed. One even leased an offsite storage facility because all of the extra supplies wouldn't fit in his back room.
An analysis of the store's data yielded information that was used to drive more effective performance. For example, stores with greeters had higher sales volumes. That was instructive, but , the QTM approach went deeper, to determine the activities that drove those sales.
In this case, the company realized the sales results were driven by customer engagement. Greeting was an important component of engagement, but so were other activities, such as initiating conversations and matching customer types to display areas.
The company also analyzed high-margin point-of-sale purchases, which revealed the importance of merchandising and suggestive selling skills.
In the area of transparency, the company revised its approach to incentive compensation by using individual data (rather than store data) to determine performance metrics. It identified managing costs and merchandise selling as valuable skills, and gave pay increases and public praise to employees with those skills.
These changes improved employee satisfaction, because managers now had tools to improve -- or at least recognize -- their limitations. The company was also able to lower its acquisition costs, because with better clarification of needed skill sets, it was more easily able to narrow its candidate pools.
Struggles with Attrition
In another situation, we worked with an inbound contact center interested in using QTM to improve its hiring processes. Like most contact centers, it struggled with employee attrition. Furthermore, new developments in the industry, such as an increasing focus on social media and a trend toward at-home employment, had the potential to change the skill set required for success.
Traditionally, the data used for talent management in this industry has been outcome-based: call time, hold time, calls per hour, resolution time and customer satisfaction.
But what really constitutes success in this arena?
Given the increasing adoption of self-service capabilities and an increasing focus on customer experience, a more important metric might be first contact resolution. And employees need soft skills to succeed at that. They must be able to listen and logically distill the call input into manageable resolution steps.
This client was using three tools in its interview process: a math assessment, a typing assessment and an in-person interview. After analyzing these tools against the employees' actual performance, we found that the in-person interview was the worst predictor of future success.
We also increased the organization's transparency. Although, like many call centers, it displayed site- or team-based metrics to ensure cultural continuity, it adopted the QTM approach by showing individual employees their own performance metrics. That gave each one a framework for improving performance and compensation.
The benefits of a carefully crafted, quantitative approach can improve hiring processes, employee engagement, and many other components of talent management similar to the way the use of "sabermetrics" transformed the Oakland A's.
Specifically, the increased focus on workplace analytics and transparency can result in:
* Lower cost-per-hire: Instead of overpaying for highly thought of, yet vague qualities such as an Ivy League education, a company can hire for specific traits, skills and competencies that may be undervalued in the marketplace.
* Better retention: Armed with knowledge of the abilities that predict future success ? whether success is defined as staying happily in the same job or moving up through the ranks -- companies can reduce hiring risks.
* Situational deployments: With a better understanding of which skills are needed in which situations, companies can better tap the right person for the right assignment at the right time.
* Improved Incentives: By showing individuals which skills contribute to corporate success, and how they are performing relative to those measures, companies can give employees the right incentives in real time.
And the Beat Goes On
The only constant is change. In a competitive marketplace that inevitably produces followers of winning approaches, the Oakland A's succumbed. After experiencing far greater success than their budget should have allowed, they saw the wealthier Boston Red Sox adopt a similar approach -- of assigning value for previously undervalued skills -- and go on to win their first championship in 86 years in 2004. The A's have still never won a championship since adopting this approach.
But there is no single championship in the corporate world. Some companies will lead, some will follow, and some will fail to stay in the game due to poorly structured performance goals and metrics.
The name of the game is change, and using a qualitative talent management approach allows companies to be flexible, dynamic and respond to volatile conditions in the marketplace. To stay on top of the game, companies must discover the most important information to track, which may be hidden within volumes of less relevant data.
And they must remain ever ready to adapt and make adjustments along the way.
Beth Bovis is a partner with A.T. Kearney, the global management-consulting firm. She has more than 18 years of global consulting experience with a focus on organizational transformation, talent management, SG&A functional excellence, offshore strategies and change management, and can be reached at (312) 223-6696. Adam Pressman is a principal at A.T. Kearney, where he is a member of the global retail industry practice and is one of the leaders of the firm?s Strategic Information Technology Practice. He can be reached at (312) 223-6103. Dan Gagne and Braxton Sisco are both managers at A.T. Kearney and members of the Organization & Transformation practice. Gagne has led engagements in multiple industries and specializes in restructuring and change management initiatives in both the commercial and public sector. Sisco has led engagements focusing on executive-level issues across strategy, organizational transformation and procedure for multiple industries, with significant depth in both the CPG and pharmaceutical/healthcare operations.
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December 23, 2010
The Art of War and DADTBy Kevin Jackson
Hollywood is allowed to discriminate based on anything. "Sorry, but you're too black." "You're good, but you're too fat." "I like you, but you aren't pretty enough." Hollywood can pick whomever they want, for whatever reason and with no repercussions. Discrimination for the sake of art.
But the military, the people who protect the nation, can't choose whom they want now that gays got their win with the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Now they can be openly gay. What exactly is openly gay, anyway?
Gays are individuals and not defined by their sexuality -- at least not the smart ones. So there is a wide spectrum to being gay.
When I think of being openly gay, I think about the black folks who say to me that I don't "act black." Sure I do. I am openly black, but being black doesn't define me. Being American does, as does being human.
I believe that most gays in the military couldn't care less about exposing their sexuality and are content to just do their jobs. I say this because I don't walk through life being black.
Unlike Hollywood, where being gay or bi considered à la mode, the job of the military is to create military "personnel" regardless of sexual orientation, ethnicity, creed, or whatever. Black soldiers are not walking around saying, "I'm a black colonel." All the military cares about is the "colonel" part. Truth be told, the military is more concerned with one's competence. The same would be true of "gays," as most military men and women don't care what type of sex another soldier is having, as long as that sex doesn't infringe on them.
I suspect that the military has a much better "gaydar" than gays think. Their peers know who is gay in the military, or at least they have their suspicions. There are high-ranking gays in the military now. The woman who filed the suit to repeal DADT is a retired officer. I'd be willing to bet you that most of the people who promoted her already knew that she had her penchant for the ladies. Her gayness apparently didn't negatively affect her career. It would appear that the only person concerned about her gayness was she herself.
So what liberals have done for the military is what they have been doing to all of America for decades: injecting cancer. Soon promotions will be measured by how many "gays" we have at a certain rank, or "I didn't get this promotion or billet because I am gay." Gays will require their own facilities, and they could end up where black people were in the '40s...segregated.
What's interesting about DADT when compared to blacks being in the military is that blacks had to endure a very different form of discrimination. Discrimination against blacks was called "Don't Ask, We Already Know."
Blacks had been discriminated in the military for decades. Be it military or civilian, with rare exception, people already knew who the blacks were in the military. Yet somehow, in what liberals believe is the most racist country in the world with the most heinous military, blacks managed to get a black commander in chief and a black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
It has been argued to me that repeal of DADT is needed so that gay military personnel can invite their significant others to events. Not true. Gay military personnel could have appeared with their same sex-partners, and under DADT, nobody could question either of them. It was just two buddies hanging out or "girls' night out" as far as DADT regulations were concerned. But don't expect bases to look like the Mission District of San Francisco, because public displays of affection are forbidden by everybody, gay or straight. No fraternization or "sororization," either.
I'm not sure what this new development will do to morale within the military. I do believe that it's possible there will be an "us versus them" mentality amongst homosexuals, which cannot be good for anybody.
The military which is supposed to protect us now has become a victim of the liberal agenda. Go ahead; declare your open gayness, whatever that means. But don't expect the military to act according to the gay agenda like people do in the civilian world.
Legislating based on sexual proclivity is wrong. Few jobs require knowledge of one's sexual nature, and most that do are located near Hollywood. Repeal of DADT is just the liberals' way of attacking an institution -- an institution that was not discriminating against gays in the first place. The military is like Hollywood: they have a set of guidelines they felt made them more effective.
Turnabout is fair play, however. I say we attack the liberals' institutions -- the media, Hollywood, academia. Let's sue them for discriminating against conservatives, straights, Republicans...after all, those are creeds!
Let's show liberals that we really understand the art of war.
That's my rant!
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As I mentioned earlier, I was on retreat this past weekend. This meant that I didn’t have the usual amount of time to spend on the Lectionary Notes this week, so sorry if they appear a bit rushed again…
25th Sunday of Ordinary Time: 18th September, 2011
The readings this week speak of God’s mercy and generosity. We so often scorn God’s goodness, but in today’s Readings we learn that God is gracious and generous to all who return to Him.
“Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you… You were with me, but I was not with you… You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more” – St. Augstine, The Confessions
Reading I: Isaiah 55:6-9
This Reading from Isaiah is part of Chapter 55′s invitation to “Come to the water, all you who are thirsty…”. Isaiah exhorts his listeners to not delay, but come and enjoy the Lord’s goodness.
Seek the LORD while he may be found, call him while he is near. Let the scoundrel forsake his way, and the wicked his thoughts; let him turn to the LORD for mercy; to our God, who is generous in forgiving. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.
- What does Isaiah exhort his listeners to do?
- Isaiah contrasts men and God. In what way does he say they are different?
- Practically speaking, in what way are God’s “thoughts above your thoughts”?
- How does this Reading relate to the Gospel Reading?
“Seek the LORD while he may be found, call him while he is near”
This is an invitation to return to friendship with God. Do not delay! Seize the opportunity!
“Let the scoundrel forsake his way”
Returning to friendship with God means leaving behind your old way of life.
“…turn to the LORD”
This is essentially what repentance is – turning away from sin and towards God.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways”
We are not the same as the Lord. His ways are not are ways. Scripture often describes God in an anthropomorphic (“human-like”) language, but it must always be remembered that God is soooooooo much greater than we are.
In the Gospel Reading we will hear of a particular area where God’s ways are unlike our own. God is infinitely more generous.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Google bans email sale
Google's trial release of Gmail has sparked a trade in email addresses. The accounts were originally issued by invitation only, but now about 2000 addresses, including
A machine that directs internet traffic has been named the world's fastest by Guinness World Records. The Cisco Systems CRS-1 router pushes data at the rate of 92 trillion bits per second. The entire printed contents of the US Library of Congress could be downloaded in 4.6 seconds - a job that would take a dial-up modem nearly 82 years.
Permanent make-up in which micro-pigments are tattooed onto lips, eyelids and eyebrows can trigger problems that include swelling, blistering and scarring, and granulomas, the US Food and Drug Administration warned on 2 July. ...
To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.
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Born: December 19, 1949 Primary Instrument: Drums
Leonard White III is best known for playing in Chick Corea's Return to Forever and being one of the forerunners of jazz-rock/funk.
White was born in New York City. A self-taught, left- handed drummer on a right-handed kit, he began his career in local groups, and playing regularly with Jackie McLean in the late 1960s. In 1969, he first appeared on Miles Davis' historic recording on Bitches' Brew and later in 1970 he played with Freddie Hubbard on Red Clay before joining Corea's Return to Forever and Azteca in 1972. A year after, Azteca dissolved and he became dedicated to RTF. For five years, he recorded a number of albums with Return to Forever including the award winning No Mystery and Romantic Warrior. When the group split up in 1977 White signed with the Nemperor label (via Atlantic) and recorded two albums as leader.
In 1978, he switched to Elektra for his album Best of Friends, before forming the group Twennynine in 1979, with Carlo Vaughn (vocals), Jocelyn Smith (vocals), Skip Anderson (keyboards), Barry Johnson (bass), and Eddy Martinez (guitar). He later became one of the Jamaica Boys, a group also including Marcus Miller (bass) and Dinky Bingham (vocals), and worked with all-star groups Echoes of an Era and Griffith Park.
White has played with many of the greatest jazz musicians, including Joe Henderson, Woody Shaw, Gato Barbieri, Gil Evans, and Stan Getz.
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Thu March 22, 2012
Kentucky Lawmakers Work to Save Paducah Plant
Kentucky lawmakers are set to pass a bill with the hope it will help a uranium enrichment plant in Paducah stay in operation. House Bill 559 would allow the Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Paducah to use spent uranium fuel rods and either re-enrich or sell those rods.
The state bill is only steps away from becoming law, but the real decision is up to the federal government. Right now, the Department of Energy doesn’t allow re-enrichment of spent fuel rods. Kentucky’s federal delegation is pressuring the DOE to change its mind, but so far their lobbying hasn’t worked and the plant could shut down in May. House Majority Floor Leader Rocky Adkins says House Bill 559 is a companion to those federal efforts.
“We hope that this will couple up with what is going on with the federal delegation as well at the federal level and hopefully show our support to try to keep those jobs alive,” Adkins says.
Kentucky’s two senators and Representative Ed Whitfield have federal legislation allowing for the same flexibility for the Paducah plant, but it has not passed Congress. Paducah State Senator Bob Leeper thanked supporters for more than five years of work on the legislation.
“Years ago, (supporters) approached me with the idea of trying to do something to create opportunities for the employees at USEC, who eventually are going to lose their job, quite frankly,” Leeper says.
House Bill 559 cleared Leeper’s budget committee Thursday. It now goes to the Senate for passage before heading to the governor’s desk.
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I've looked at the online childcare database and while it appears helpful, I don't find it very useful. It only provides a long list of names and phone numbers. That doesn't help me make a decision about narrowing my choices for childcare. Basically, you're asking me to call random people in the database. Do you have plans to enhance the system so there's more useful information, perhaps such as a bio or description provided by the providers? Something, anything will help because right now it's not useful to me. Thanks.
When you do a child care search on our website, click on the word “select” next to the name of the resulting child care programs. This gives you details about the type of care provided, the ages served, what elementary schools are nearby, the languages spoken, the accommodations for children with special needs, whether the home has pets or smokers or is near public transportation, whether the program participates in the USDA Food Program, and more. When you call child care programs for more information, you can use this telephone interview form offered by the Virginia Dept. of Social Services: www.dss.virginia.gov/family/cc/publications.cgi.
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Michael Pawlyn established Exploration in 2007 to focus exclusively on biomimicry. In 2008 Exploration was short-listed for the Young Architect of the Year Award and the internationally renowned Buckminster Fuller Challenge.
Prior to setting up the company Michael Pawlyn worked with Grimshaw for ten years and was central to the team that radically re-invented horticultural architecture for the Eden Project. He was responsible for leading the design of the Warm Temperate and Humid Tropics Biomes and the subsequent phases that included proposals for a third Biome for plants from dry tropical regions. He initiated and developed the Grimshaw environmental management system resulting, in December 2000, in the company becoming the first firm of European architects to achieve certification to ISO14001.
He has lectured widely on the subject of sustainable design in the UK and abroad and in May 2005 delivered a talk at the Royal Society of Arts with Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface. In 2007 Michael Pawlyn delivered a talk at Google’s annual ‘Zeitgeist’ conference and, in 2011, became one of only a small handful of architects to have a talk posted on TED.com. In the same year, his book 'Biomimicry in Architecture' was published by the Royal Institute of British Architects. He is currently working on a range of biomimicry-based architectural projects and a book commissioned by TED.
To book Michael Pawlyn as a speaker. Please emai info@exploration-architecture
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Preventing Damage to Your HDTV Picture
There are many benefits to owning a HDTV. However, there are many disadvantages to owning a HDTV as well. If a HDTV is not properly cared for, it can receive damage that can affect the overall picture quality of the set. It is important that you understand how to properly care for your HDTV. Here, you will discover ways that you can properly care for your HDTV so that you can prevent damage from occurring to your HDTV picture.
The first way that you can prevent damage to your HDTV picture is to ensure that you keep certain features turned to low settings. These features include the contrast on the screen, as well as the brightness of the screen. It is important to adjust these two settings in such a way that is necessary based on the lighting in the room where the HDTV is present. Having these set too high can result in the picture of your HDTV fading and experiencing technical issues later on.
The second way that you can prevent damage to your HDTV picture is to ensure that you properly mount the screen. There are many HDTV’s that can be mounted to a wall and such. It is important that you carefully follow the instructions in the manual that came with your HDTV to ensure that you are properly mounting the HDTV. It is important that you do not mount a HDTV on the ceiling and any other inappropriate structure. You should only mount the HDTV how and where the instruction manual informs you to do so.
The third way that you can prevent damage to your HDTV picture is to ensure that you keep the set away from sources of heat. It is important that your HDTV set is kept in a cool area in the home in which it can stay ventilated in an efficient manner. The HDTV should never be allowed to be in an area that has a lot of heat, such as directly in front of a window and other areas. In addition to this, the HDTV should never be mounted in such a way that it restricts the required amount of ventilation that is necessary for proper functioning.
The fourth way that you can prevent damage to your HDTV is to make sure that the HDTV is left on only when it is in use. You should never leave the HDTV on around the clock. If you leave on your HDTV at all times, not only are you wasting a lot of energy, but the picture will start to experience difficulties over time. It is very important that you turn it off when it is not in use to prevent damage to your HDTV picture.
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THE SLENZ PROJECT
Virtual world makes mastering
interview skills much easier
… when virtual ‘really feels real’
“Fabulous”, “amazing” and “fantastic” were only three of the superlatives used by the more than 20 educators and researchers who toured the SLENZ Project’s two builds on Kowhai in Second Life and listened to commentary from educators, developers and builders during the virtual worlds’ prestigious, annual Jokaydia Unconference on Sunday.
The superlatives were used by virtual visitors from around the world to describe the concepts, designs, the builds and the practises being used in the the SLENZ Project’s two pilot education programmes, Foundation Learning (Bridging Education), under lead educator, Merle Lemon (SL: Briarmelle Quintessa), of Manukau Institute of Technology, Auckland, and Midwifery under lead educator, Sarah Stewart (SL: Petal Stransky), of Otago Polytechnic.
The Jokaydia attendees probably would have been even more blown away had they been able to watch the Pooky Media [producer Pooky Amsterdam, director Russell (Rosco) Boyd] machinima production on Foundation Learning, “Foundation Interviewing in Second Life,” which was placed on general release on YouTube later that the day.
Jo Kay, herself, one of Australia’s leading virtual world educators, said of the video, “Impressive! Congratulations too all involved in the project and the video,” and SL’s PimPeccable commented, “Brilliant and professional.”
Arwenna Stardust (RL: Dr Clare Atkins) talks to the Unconference visitors.
Inside the Skill Mastery Hyperdome … demonstrating a “catwalk” rezzed.
The Skill Mastery Hyperdome, the centre of the foundation learning “class space”, is described by PookyMedia in the preamble to the YouTube video, as “a step into the future, an environment in which students can learn, develop and practise skills that will help them progress on their career pathways and achieve their life goals.”
And it obviously is – and eventually, like the Birthing Centre, will become the SLENZ Project’s “gift” to virtual world education, having been created under Creative Commons attribution license in OpenSource. It is scheduled to be made freely available with all bells, whistles, scripts and animations in Second Life on completion of the project.
Foundation students who are use the Hyperdrome build are preparing to enter academic and/or training courses as diverse as nursing, teaching, business, police, travel and tourism, IT, engineering, and social work. Foundation Studies provides the basic building blocks and the scaffolding to enable students to enter and succeed in their selected career pathway.
Acitivites provided in this build are designed to enhance communication skills, specifically the skills needed in an interview situation. These students can select appropriate interview apparel from Rapungakore (“…you have come to the right place”), the clothing store, which is part of the Hyperdome.
Noting that irrespective of their ultimate career goal all students will need to develop interview skills and strategies, Merle Lemon, has pointed out that the hyperdrome environment allows students to experience virtual interviews, to take on the roles of both interviewer and interviewee, and to develop confidence in answering and asking questions in a professional manner.
“The opportunity to rehearse variations of the interview scenario will lead to further enlightenment through reflective evaluation and deliberation on their own behaviour in action,” she said.
The Manukau Institute of Technology students, whose reactions are canvassed in the video, find that the Second interviews “really feel real” with one student even worrying that he was being interviewed for a “real job” which he couldn’t accept accept because of his student commitments.
The SLENZ Project is funded by the New Zealand Government”s Tertiary Education Commission.
The Unconference participants tour the birth centre.
Filed under: Uncategorized, Education in Second Life, Education in virtual worlds, Sl Conferences, SLENZ Project, Education, Second Life, Virtual Worlds, Distance education | Tagged: Clare Atkins, Distance Education, Foundation learning, Jo Kay, joykadia, Manukau Institute of Technology, Merle Lemon, midwifery, New Zealand, Otago Polytechnic, PimPeccable, Pooky Amsterdam, Pooky Media, Russell Boyd, Sarah Stewart, Second Life, SLENZ Project, Tertiary Education Commission, unconference, Virtual Worlds, YouTube | 2 Comments »
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New charter schools coming to San Jose
- David Goll
(Page 2 of 3)
Although studies have revealed vastly different levels of achievement by charter school students around the state, they’re growing in popularity. Vicky Waters, director of media relations for the Sacramento-based California Charter Schools Association, said the number of charter high schools statewide increased from 222 during the 2007-08 academic year to 264 by 2009-10. Charter middle schools grew from 79 to 99 during the same period, and charter elementary schools increased from 314 to 368. The only category of traditional public schools increasing in number in the Golden State are high schools: from 1,113 in 2007-08 to 1,158 last year.
Follow the rules
Charter schools are considered public institutions and receive the same state support as traditional public schools. This year that was $5,800 per high-school student, Tavenner said.
But charter schools are not governed by the state Education Code, which enables them to set their own performance goals for faculty and staff.
“We have a lot of freedom in our curriculum,” Tavenner said.
The programs and results, however, are overseen by the public school district in which they’re located. Direct governance is provided by an autonomous board of directors similar to nonprofit organizations.
Even so, before a charter school can open its door, its curriculum must be approved by a public school district, a county board of education or state board of education.
“We write a charter petition and must adhere to it,” Tavenner said. “If charter schools don’t meet their expected outcomes, they will close.”
A 2009 report on charter schools nationwide from the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University gave them decidedly mixed marks. It found that 17 percent of them reported academic gains significantly higher than traditional public schools, but 37 percent of the charter schools reported gains below that of traditional public schools.
David Goll can be reached at 408.299.1853 or email@example.com.
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I love smart ideas and this one was sent to me – I had to share.
The iPhone’s touchscreen is a masterpiece of invention. But when it comes to typing texts quickly, it has serious limitations. It would be great if you could record, for example, the minutes of a meeting in a faster way. This, of course, requires very rapid typing which is not possible without the use of, for example, a Bluetooth keyboard. This reality might change with this new idea, posted on Quirqy.com
The iPhone 5 comes with three microphones which will make the use of a projected keyboard possible. A small projector connected to the iPhone projects the image of a keyboard onto the table, while software monitors the sound that reaches the microphones. For the keyboard the two microphones in the front will operate. As these are well spaced, it is possible to accurately identify the position of the fingers striking the projected keys on the table-keyboard surface, by the microphones which record the tapping sounds. The projector consists of a led which lights to the rear of a film, projecting the film image through a lens onto the table – the image being a keyboard. The process is similar to slide projectors. The projector has no electronics only requiring the iPhone docking port to power the lamp. It may require a button to turn the projection on and off. The projector also acts as a stand for the iPhone which can stay slightly inclined to the table, giving the user an easier viewing of the screen.
While the two audio connectors are being used, the mini-jack only serves as mechanical support, because the power supply is made by the 8-pin docking port connector.
The product is very simply constructed and will be of great advantage to the iPhone user, increasing their pleasurable user experience.
We hope it gets approved by Quirqy and becomes a real product. If you want to vote this up, the link is http://www.quirky.com/ideations/300107
By the way, Quirky seems to be a cool initiative, you can check out many other cool projects in there.
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Edited by Brittany Clingen
3 measures for 2013
Another measure is set to appear on the Washington ballot in the general election on November 5, 2013. Initiative 517, also known as the "Protect the Initiative Act," is an Initiative to the Legislature; the legislature did nothing with the measure, thereby referring it to the ballot.
I-517, sponsored by initiative promoter Tim Eyman, would define what constitutes interference with or retaliation against petition-signers and signature gatherers. It would also render these acts a criminal misdemeanor and subject perpetrators to penalties. Furthermore, I-517 would mandate that all measures receiving the required number of signatures be placed on the ballot, and it would increase the amount of time supporters of a measure have to file and gather signatures from 10 months to 16 months before the corresponding election.
The full text of the measure can be found here.
The Colorado Funding for Public Schools Initiative has finally received the green light to formally begin their campaign efforts after Colorado's legislature passed Senate Bill 213.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Mike Johnston (D-33), would create a new school finance act that increases state revenues to fund public education. However, SB 213 has no funding language in the bill. Therefore, though it has passed the legislature, its viability will be determined if and when voters approve the initiative to be featured on the November 5, 2013 ballot.
There are currently 16 proposed ballot initiatives that have been submitted to the Secretary of State by supporters, each varying slightly in the structure by which Colorado residents would be taxed. Some are in favor of a tiered system, others a flat tax. Regardless of which initiative moves forward toward the ballot, voters will ultimately be deciding whether or not to approve a $1.1 billion tax increase that will be siphoned into public education.
Supporters of both SB 213 and the initiatives have until August 5, 2013 to collect 86,105 valid signatures and determine which initiative should be sent to voters.
The Ohio-based Center for Community Solutions, a non-partisan policy institute that focuses on studying and promoting the well-being of people in need, is toying with the idea of putting the expansion of Medicaid before voters in either 2013 or 2014.
The House removed a proposed Medicaid expansion from Gov. John Kasich's (R) budget before forwarding it to the Senate, where Senate President Keith Faber (R-12) said that the upper chamber's version of the budget also excluded the expansion of Medicaid. Senate Democrats are still hopeful they can introduce a bill similar to Kasich's that could be voted on.
John Begala, executive director of the Center for Community Solutions, is still optimistic that Medicaid expansion can be handled within the legislature, as opposed to putting it before voters. Speaking about the potential ballot measure, Begala said, "Our first preference is certainly not to go this route. This is our last resort."
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Washington Secretary of State: Elections & Voting, "Proposed Initiatives to the Legislature - 2012," retrieved May 7, 2013
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 DenverPost.com, "Colorado school finance revamp next takes tax increase to voters," May 5, 2013
- ↑ Colorado State Legislature, "SB 213 (text)," retrieved May 7, 2013
- ↑ The Center for Community Solutions, "About Us: Our Mission," retrieved May 7, 2013
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 NewsOK, "Advocates consider Medicaid issue for Ohio ballot," May 1, 2013
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THE TAKEWAY: Australian Employment Change -27,000 jobs in June > Change in employment falls short of projections, May employment figures revised to 27,800 from 38,900 providing confirmation that the Aussie economy may be in contraction > Australian Dollar declines
The Australian Dollar depreciated in value versus most other currencies as the Australian labor market began to show signs of weakness by losing 27,000 jobs in June. Market expectations called for no change, which missed significantly. Furthermore, employment change in May initially added 38,000 jobs, but was revised to a much weaker 27,800.
Unemployment rate ticked slightly higher to 5.2% from 5.1%. Most of the labor decline took place in full time employment as 33,500 jobs were lost in June compared to 36,400 full time gains last month. The declines in June mark the first month of job loss since February of this year when the economy shed 13,600 workers.
Employment figures typically lag the business cycle because firms are reluctant to cut labor partly due to the high cost of training new labor once business activity picks up and will hold off on cutting until most other costs are reduced first.
The higher yielding Aussie currency may likely suffer losses versus safe-haven currencies, such as the U.S. Dollar, if conditions begin to trend unfavorably.
AUD/USD, 5 Minute Chart
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Homecoming is a happy but difficult time for Alejandría
The wicked face of evil showed up in Alejandría on September 21st,1999 when eight men were massacred, their bodies scattered in different locations in the outskirts of town. Since then, fear and death made themselves at home and violence eventually drove about 60 percent of the population away, about 2,000 people.
Now those families forced to flee over the course of the past 12 years are starting to return, an overwhelming situation that led Mayor Uver Arvey Aguilar to declare a red alert in Alejandría because there simply aren’t enough resources available to fulfill everyone’s needs.
In recent months, about 600 residents have returned, looking to pick up the pieces of the painful past they left behind and hopefully rebuild for a much more promising and brighter future.
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The King City (Mo.) PD is about as small as small town law enforcement gets: One full-time and one part-time officer protect a population of approximately 1,000 citizens. With limited personnel, the department has learned that putting technology to work for them can produce huge benefits. One such technology is an in-car video system. John G. Epperson, the department’s former chief, was instrumental in equipping both of the city’s cruisers with dashboard cameras. In fact, he felt so strongly about the technology that he paid for the first system installed in a King City unit—a Super Eight video tape system—out of his own pocket.
By 2006, Epperson was looking to upgrade to a more advanced system, so he approached the city council for funding. He was able to convince council members that purchasing an in-car video system was cheaper than paying the cost of a frivolous lawsuit. He demonstrated that video evidence can often dispel a charge or show that the officer made a good faith effort to help the person. “It protects the officer, city and tax payer,” he says.
When the city council gave him the go ahead, Epperson chose the Martel Digital Entercepter-2 DVR Partner. The self-contained system records video and audio evidence directly to either a four-, eight- or 16-gigabyte solid-state secure digital flash card. The four-gig cards Epperson purchased record eight hours of high-definition video. It’s the same system used by the U.S. military and law enforcement across the country.
According to Epperson, another plus was the price. “When you deal with agencies with less than 10 officers in the department, this is the way to go,” he says. “I got two units for what you could spend for one.”
A small vault mounts between the visors or on the center console, so there’s nothing to install in the trunk. Forward and rearward facing cameras record the events inside and outside the unit. The officers wear wireless microphones to add audio evidence.
Epperson says the video system is a valuable tool for keeping officers on the street, instead of in court. Simply providing a copy of the video data to the prosecutor in a pre-trial hearing, more often than not, prevents cases from going any further.
Small agencies are used to making due, but that doesn’t necessarily mean doing without technology. Sometimes technology, such as in-car video systems, can help stretch limited resources, save time and the agency’s reputation.
In-Car Video Vendors
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Healthcare reform not a dominant factor in upcoming elections, poll finds
According to a recent monthly Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, healthcare reform isn't drawing voters to the upcoming November Congressional elections.
Voters asked to name the most important issue contributing to how they will vote listed the economy first, followed by dissatisfaction with government. Healthcare reform came in third.
The survey, released Monday, also found that voters are twice as likely to say the direction of the nation as a whole is more important to their vote than any specific national issue.
According to the poll, 21 percent said their vote will turn on state or local matters and another 23 percent said they will focus more on specifics about the particular candidates.
Healthcare reform as an issue does not appear likely to drive turnout at the polls, the study found. Thirty-two percent of registered voters said the passage of healthcare reform makes them more likely to vote, while 63 percent say it doesn't affect their plans for voting.
According to the survey, views on healthcare reform tightened up in October, with 42 percent saying they have favorable views of the new law, 44 percent holding unfavorable views and 15 percent not offering an opinion.
Views of reform continue to break sharply along partisan lines, with about seven in 10 Democrats saying they favor the new law and nearly eight in 10 Republicans opposing it.
Republicans are more intense in their feelings, however, with 60 percent saying they have "very unfavorable" views of reform – nearly twice the number of Democrats who feel extremely positive about the law. Independents tilt against the law, with 49 percent finding it unfavorable and 34 percent finding it favorable, with 18 percent undecided. Both figures are similar to those found in last month's survey, researchers said.
The Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, designed and analyzed by the Kaiser Family Foundation, was conducted Oct. 5-10 among a nationally representative random sample of 1,202 adults ages 18 and older, including 1,073 adults who say they are registered to vote. Telephone interviews were carried out in English and Spanish by Princeton Survey Research Associates.
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London, Feb. 3 (ANI): The French National Assembly has approved the most important article of a bill to legalise same-sex marriage.
Deputies voted 249-97 in favour of redefining marriage as being an agreement between two people - not just between a man and a woman, reports the BBC.
The bill marks one of France's biggest social reforms since the abolition of the death penalty in 1981.
President Francois Hollande's Socialists and their left-wing supporters backed it, opposed by many opposition UMP and centrist MPs.
The proposals have generated protests and counter-protests for months.
Opinion polls suggest that around 55-60 percent of French people support gay marriage, though only about 50 percent approve of gay adoption.
Debates are expected to go on for more than a week, as MPs discuss hundreds of amendments, most of them filed by the centre-right opposition.
On the way they are expected to approve the other key measure in the bill, which would allow gay couples to adopt children.
Justice Minister Christiane Taubira said they are proud to have taken this first step. Taubira said they would establish the freedom for everyone to choose his or her partner for a future together.
UMP MP Philippe Gosselin said the legislation was only the beginning of a trend that the French people did not want.
It is expected that the legislation will reach the statute books by the middle of the year. The debate in the National Assembly is due to last throughout the weekend. (ANI)
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I am headed to Washington, D.C. for a business trip soon, and as a result, have been paying closer attention than usual to the goings on in the nation’s capital. And what I have noticed going on is a lot of talk about jobs. But unfortunately that’s about all it is…talk. Almost every bill in Congress is now declared a “jobs” bill, but the divided, partisan Congress can’t seem to agree on legislation that would actually create jobs.
Blaming the other side of the aisle for log jamming a transportation bill that did eventually get out of the Senate with Republican support, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) said this week, “The time has come to either get a bill or acknowledge that you don’t care about 2.8 million jobs.”
As this article in the Los Angeles Times points out, the Speaker of the Republican-led House, John Boehner, often reaches into his suit jacket pocket to pull out a card printed with the 15 “jobs bills” that passed the Republican-led House but stalled in the Senate. He is often quoted as saying “his party is relentlessly focused on its jobs agenda.”
Both sides claimed passage of a “jobs bill” when the Senate completed a five-year, half-trillion-dollar farm bill that cuts farm subsidies and land conservation spending by about $2 billion a year but largely protects sugar growers and some 46 million food stamp beneficiaries. Many Washington observers predicted that legislation so expensive and so complicated would have little chance of advancing in an election year, and it may not clear the House, due to its high costs, particularly for the food stamps portion of it.
Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan), chairwoman of the Agriculture Committee, declared, “This is a jobs bill,” and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) similarly exclaimed, “This is a jobs bill if there ever was a jobs bill.”
“This is a jobs bill if there ever was a jobs bill.”
However, during a time of increasing anxiety and consternation over the federal debt, even extending unemployment benefits has become an onerous political task.
I’m no expert on politics, but several articles I read recently say even if all this partisan political bickering magically went away somehow, most of the bills on the table would not substantially change the immediate jobs outlook.
That assessment, however, has not stopped either party from trying to convince unconvinced voters they are working to improve the economy.
What do you think? Has either side done enough to help spur job creation in this country? Has Congress done anything to create jobs? Should job creation be left in the hands of federal lawmakers, or is is the private sector that needs to make it happen?
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This may be a pre-emptive strike, or me fulminating at windmills.
Since Congress is finally getting around to the Fiscal Year 2012 budget (six weeks after it started), some budget numbers are becoming clear. The National Science Foundation appears to be getting a small increase, and the National Institutes of Health will probably be lucky with flat funding (summary, subscription needed for full article).
But the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) will get a 32 percent cut. This represents about 2.2 million dollars (yeah, that’s an m). The reason? The chief House Appropriations Committee member responsible for the budget for OSTP (Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia) inserted language into the Fiscal Year 2011 spending bill forbidding OSTP and NASA from using money for cooperative activities with China. OSTP acknowledged participating in two dialogues with China in May, after the ban was made into law. The Administration claims the ban is an undue interference with the President’s ability to conduct foreign policy. The amount of money spent? OSTP estimates it at roughly $3500. Just two zeros there. There is a similar ban in the 2012 budget bill, with some language allowing for more flexibility (and notice to Congress of various activities that might be covered under the ban).
So, this is a political fight over China, and what the Congress can do to the President’s ability to conduct foreign affairs. Any claims that this is meant to undercut science, especially in light of no similar cuts in other agencies, isn’t paying attention. Now, that could well be a result of this cut, but it’s not the primary purpose. This is a more elemental power struggle. And another sign that the real challenges for support of science in the government is more priority than party.
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The Wrath of Ralph
Published on November 30th, 2011 | by Charles H. Meyer0
“Coriolanus” (Ralph Fiennes, 2011) opens this Friday, December 2.
I feel fortunate never to have read or previously seen a production, whether staged, filmed or otherwise, of William Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus,” as this ignorance saves me from feeling compelled to critique Ralph Fiennes’s powerful, gritty, violent, bloody new film version of “Coriolanus,” set in a present-day, although fictional, Rome, on the grounds of its success or failure as an adaptation. (If you want to see me flex my critical muscles in that manner, then please read my review of “Toast.”) Leave that task to others, to the veteran stage directors and Shakespeare scholars who are, surely at this very moment, up in arms over the liberties Fiennes has taken, furiously typing up their critiques, although I suspect that any harshness they might be leveling at the film is tempered with admiration for its strong and superb performances by Fiennes, Vanessa Redgrave, Gerard Butler, Brian Cox, and the suddenly omnipresent auburn-haired mother goddess Jessica Chastain (see “The Tree of Life,” “The Help,” “Take Shelter,” and “Texas Killing Fields” for confirmation of this stunning, porcelain-skinned Venus’s recent everywhere-ness).
Having only read “Hamlet,” “The Tempest,” “The Merchant of Venice” and “Much Ado About Nothing”; having only seen theatrical productions of “Othello,” “The Taming of the Shrew,” “Romeo and Juliet” and “Macbeth”; having only seen film adaptations of “Hamlet,” “Much Ado About Nothing” and “Romeo and Juliet”; and having only played Claudius once, in my only dramatic turn, in a high school production of “Much Ado About Nothing,” I cannot call myself a Shakespearian. In saying all of that, I’m not being falsely modest. I just know that my knowledge of Shakespeare is casual compared to that of anyone who has worked seriously with the man’s plays, whether as actor, scholar or director.
So I’d like to ask the experts, the real Shakespearians (and not the Sunday-painter variety to which I belong): Wouldn’t the bard have preferred that we stage his plays in our own present day rather than in the past (or, somewhat faddishly, the future), as seems more often to be the custom? I ask this because I believe that Ralph Fiennes and his collaborators have given the cinema a great gift in setting “Coriolanus” in the here and now rather than in its more “proper” historical setting, and for once the effort, although it certainly causes frequent frissons of a suspension-of-disbelief-suspending Brechtian alienation effect (e.g., from hearing Elizabethan English spoken by political pundits on the faux-Fox News channel Fidelis), does not feel stylized, forced or artificial, as it does in films like Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo + Juliet” (1996) or Michael Almereyda’s “Hamlet” (2000). Granted, I’m being unfair by comparing those futuristic productions to this one set in the present, but I can’t think of any other examples of film adaptations of Shakespeare set in the present. Shakespearians, a little help?
Michael Rawls: As per your request for Shakespeare plays translated into the present: Basil Dearden’s “All Night Long” (1960) resets “Othello” in the contemporary London jazz world with Patrick McGoohan as a drummer Iago trying to destroy bandleader Othello’s marriage so he can cop lead singer Desdemona for his own band.
And how about “The Rest is Silence” (Helmut Käutner, 1960) with Hardy Krüger as a “Hamlet” in the Great Industrial Court of the German Economic Miracle of the late 1950s?
Agreeing with the great Peter Cook that film is “a vi-zu-l medium,” I think that attempting to film plays which do have so many, many words is “a fool’s errand” (who said that?) and that the wisest course is to steal the plots. This was most beautifully done by Delmer Daves in the best of his westerns, “Jubal.” The racial angle is lost (this IS 1956 Amurca), but Ernest Borgnine is a good, well-meaning Othello, owner of a state-sized ranch, Rod Steiger is the slimiest of Iagos (ranch foreman) and his object of desire is Borgnine’s Desdemona, the luscious Valerie French. Jubal, a somewhat ennobled (in character, that is; I mean, he did formerly herd sheep) Roderigo, Desdemona’s not-quite lover, is played by Glenn Ford, who is about as good as your American (not Amurcan) Everyman gets.
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- Dietary Supplements
- Health Conditions
- Healthy Nutrition
- Cardiovascular Health
- Skin Care
- Natural Remedies
The Pancreatitis cure myth
If you are looking for a pancreatitis cure, then stop right there! There is no one-stop wonder drug cure, and it is important to realize that if the condition is chronic, this entails simply controlling the condition. Unfortunately, once you damage the pancreas, it will not be able to come back to its normal state and functions and further attacks may happen. However, with the right pancreatitis treatment you will be able to control the pain and avoid complications, and be able to lead as normal a lifestyle as possible.
One of the best and simplest pancreatitis treatment methods is complete rest. If you have acute pancreatitis, you may have to look for hydration and intravenous nutrients through the help of medical professionals, as you might not be able to take anything orally at the risk of further pancreas attacks. It is also worth mentioning that taking a bunch of supplements will not solve the mal-absorption problem completely, but they do assist with reducing the amount of time an attack lasts, as well as its intensity. Another useful thing to do is to use mediations that are lowest on the scale of analgesics in order to control the pain. Such medications include morphine or pethidine and may be taken at night, as the pain is usually worse around that time.
Pancreatitis poses a lot of inconvenience for the sufferers, but no matter what the pancreatitis treatment is, you must still ingest enough nutrients to sustain the body. There are various foods you are allowed to eat, but also a whole range of foods that you should exclude from your diet. It is important to have a bi-weekly flush of the liver and try to cleanse your kidneys as much as possible in order to prevent kidney stones. Your lifestyle should be improved significantly and you should be spending more time outside with more fresh air, as well as engaging in more physical activities like hiking, swimming, or just taking walks.
As for your diet, more raw fruits and vegetables must definitely be included. Added to this should be freshly squeezed juices of these fruits and vegetables, fish and seafood (but not fried), cold pressed oils, and seaweed. The following items should be eliminated from your diet: alcohol, sugar, fried foods, processed foods, heated vegetable oils, refined foods, grilled foods, aspartame, margarine, food additives, MSG.
In some rare cases of chronic pancreatitis surgery may be necessary and this is the closest thing to a pancreatitis sre as such. Some signs that it is time for surgery include extreme pain and no response to morphine or a similar medication in high doses. What the surgery can do is improve the pancreatic duct drainage, or even removing or partially removing the pancreas. However, this option may lead to diabetes later in life.Click here to discuss this article on forum.
The information supplied in this article is not to be considered as medical advice and is for educational purposes only.
|Pancreas Problems4 Feb 2011|
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Lance Armstrong is losing the seven cycling titles that made him a legend.
The International Cycling Union announced Monday that Armstrong is being stripped of his Tour de France titles.
"Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling," said the union's president, Pat McQuaid, announcing that Armstrong is banned from the sport.
The decision follows this month's finding by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency that there is "overwhelming" evidence that Armstrong was involved as a professional cyclist in "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program."
McQuaid said he was "sickened" by the report.
But he emphasized, "Cycling has a future."
Armstrong's story -- that of a cancer survivor who tamed the grueling three-week race more than any other cyclist before or since -- had made him a household name. But allegations of doping long dogged his career.
Then came this month's finding by the USADA.
The agency announced it would ban Armstrong from the sport for life and strip him of his results dating from 1998. The decision wiped out 14 years of his career.
The International Olympic Committee also is reviewing the evidence and could revoke Armstrong's bronze medal from the 2000 Sydney Games.
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Learn about Web 2.0 tools and their use in educational settings. Presented by graduate students in the School of Library and Information Science at San Jose State University.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Cool Tools Episode 57 Podcast: SlideShare
SlideShare is the world's largest community for sharing presentations. With SlideShare, you can upload your Power Point presentations to share privately or to publish to the entire SlideShare community. You can use SlideShare to find presentations that interest you and network with other users. This podcast explains ways in which SlideShare will be useful for librarians.
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I've worked for huge corporations and tiny firms, and whenever I switch from one to the other I have to do a certain amount of unlearning and re-learning when it comes to social habits.
With a corporation, you should only tell your boss about success you've attained or problems you need him to solve. This is because corporate managers deal mainly in delegations, introductions, and schedules. If you tell a corporate manager about a problem only you can solve, he/she will think, ah, they're telling me about a problem they have, I don't know how to solve it, so I'll delegate this to XYZ person. Then you end up with XYZ person tripping all over the problem space, trying to figure it out, while you try to implement the solution.
You could have thought, aha, here's my manager, I'll just keep them up to date, but if you don't keep them up to date in the right way, your schedule could be compromised by their very attempt to help. Many people respond to this by blaming the manager, but that's because the tech culture has a very irresponsible attitude towards communication. If you're on schedule, you say something to somebody, and now you're off schedule, that's your doing.
Now conversely, with a small business, you need to justify your time. Small businesses are more budget-conscious. This is true even for prosperous businesses on expensive projects with well-funded clients; it's not a matter of being on a budget per se, but of focus. Large corporations aim for economies of scale. Small businesses aim for efficiency. This is why innovations always come first from small companies. It also means your client or manager will need a different level of detail.
Small companies also have much smaller social networks, so your higher-up will not be thinking in terms of, is this under control or do I need to do some delegating or make some introductions? Your boss, or client, or whomever, is going to be thinking more in terms of, is this done, and how long will it take, and what steps remain? (Also, if you charge a hefty rate, your client may want to be sure you're not doing anything simple or basic that they could offload to one of their more affordable people.)
It's important to keep this in mind. Talking to a corporate manager the way you talk to a small business owner results in the corporate manager thinking you're overwhelmed and don't know what you're doing. Talking to a small business owner the way you talk to a corporate manager results in the small business owner thinking you're self-important and wasting time. (And this is, of course, assuming in either case optimal corporate managers and optimal small business owners. Any dysfunctions in either case can of course mean further compounded communication errors.)
Update: somebody cursed me passionately on reddit for my comment about innovations always coming from small companies. They seemed like they were foaming at the mouth, but they had a point. They mentioned 3M, and Apple's another big company famous for innovating. But there's definitely quicker adoption of innovations among smaller companies.
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Loss of life in Afghanistan an ‘atrocity,’ U.S. should endoperations now, says Marine veteran who chairs California Democratic Party Veterans Caucus
Thirty American troops reported killed Saturday in an Afghanistan helicopter crash emphasizes the need for the U.S. to end operations sooner rather than later in that theatre of war, according to a Iraq/Afghanistan U.S. Marine veteran, who now is chair of the Veterans Caucus of the California Democratic Party.
New agencies reported and government officials confirmed Saturday that as many as 30 Americans – including at least 22 Navy SEALs – were confirmed dead in the crash of a troop-carrying Chinook helicopter, caused by enemy fire. It is the deadliest day for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since it began in 2001.
“These men and women have real families and friends who will never see them again. This is part of a continuing tragedy playing out in Afghanistan,” said Rick Reyes, who did tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Polls show a majority of Americans believe the war in Afghanistan is not worth fighting, our policy makers admit we cannot win and the war has not made us any safer. But they continue to put good and brave Americans in harm’s way. That is an atrocity,” added Reyes, noting that the 30 reported deaths Saturday ups the toll of killed in Afghanistan to about 1,600 and total dead and injured to nearly 13,000.
“No amount of hand-wringing or condolences by politicians, or monuments to the dead, will make up for this loss of life. It’s time to leave Afghanistan as swiftly and safely as possible. Not at the convenience of politicians in Washington, but because it is right,” said Reyes.
Contact: Rick Reyes cell: 213-359-8631 [email protected] twitter: @rick_reyes
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September 11, 2012
Kenneth Feinberg: The 9/11 mediator who listens
When massive tragedy strikes in the United States, when half a dozen or a score or thousands of people are killed in a single incident, when disaster hits a region, Kenneth Feinberg often gets a call.
The Washington attorney is perhaps best known for his work as the administrator of the fund that paid restitution to the families of 9/11 victims and the one that compensated individuals and businesses harmed by the BP Oil spill in 2010, but his phone rings on all sorts of unhappy occasions, most recently in the wake of the shooting at a Wisconsin Sikh temple in August.
They call Feinberg because he has made a career in mediation, dealing with particularly complicated situations involving death, environmental disaster and financial upheaval. They call him because he’s been called “Solomonic” on more than a few occasions — a label that Feinberg rejects — and because he has demonstrated an ability to exercise and implement good, fair judgments.
But as Jews around the world, Feinberg included, prepare for another season of holidays centered on the theme of judgment, it’s notable that a major element of Feinberg’s process is something deceptively simple: He listens.
“When you have face-to-face meetings, you give victims an opportunity to vent, and they welcome that opportunity to vent,” Feinberg said, speaking to the Journal by phone from his Washington, D.C., office in August. “I find that these one-on-one meetings are very important in convincing claimants in grief about the bona fides of the program that you’re trying to run.”
Feinberg was referring to the more than 900 meetings he had in the aftermath of 9/11 with families of victims, a process he repeated in administering a much smaller fund compensating the victims injured and families of victims killed in the 2007 shooting on the campus of Virginia Tech. In both cases, Feinberg remembered that most of the people who chose to meet with him did not talk about dollars and cents, but came to tell stories, sometimes with photo albums and mementos in hand, “in order to validate — on the record, in writing, face-to-face — the memory, the good works of a lost loved one.”
In compensating individuals in the wake of tragedy, Feinberg has found the meetings to be essential, because they show that somebody is listening.
“There is an individual — not a bureaucratic device, but there is an actual human being listening to what I have to say about my dead wife or husband or brother or sister, son or daughter,” he said.
Individual meetings aren’t always possible, particularly when dealing with large numbers of claimants who have all suffered different kinds of damages, as Feinberg did when he administered the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, which paid out more than $6.14 billion from BP to more than 500,000 claimants from all 50 states and 38 foreign countries.
But in many instances, direct listening in face-to-face meetings can have a strategic purpose, as well. In his role as the U.S. Treasury Department’s “pay czar,” tasked with setting the compensation of 175 high-ranking executives at the largest of the financial firms bailed out by the American taxpayers in 2009, Feinberg heard petitions from CEOs, CFOs and their lawyers.
That role was a distinct reversal for Feinberg. “There I was fixing the compensation of alleged, not victims, but perpetrators, who had caused the 2009 financial meltdown,” Feinberg said.
Which is why, as he wrote in his book “Who Gets What: Fair Compensation After Tragedy and Financial Upheaval,” published by Public Affairs earlier this year, one of the ground rules Feinberg set for the meetings with the executives of bailed-out companies was that they had to take place in Washington, D.C.
The Tribute in Light is illuminated marking the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, on Sept. 10. Photo by REUTERS/Gary Hershorn
“As an experienced mediator, I knew the importance of conducting meetings in the most effective venue,” Feinberg wrote. The “lavish and imposing” Treasury Building fit his aim perfectly, making immediately clear to the corporate officials “that they were up against a formidable negotiating partner — the federal government.”
In their own ways, the meetings Feinberg had with the companies’ officials didn’t focus on money — or at least not the immediate exchange value of money.
As the “special master” of an office in the Treasury Department overseeing executive compensation, Feinberg and his staff were dictating to these seven companies the exact amount they could pay their top employees. The goal was to balance the interests of the executives and the firms, who wanted to be able to compete on hiring with other corporations, against those of the taxpayers and congress, who had loaned these companies billions of dollars and wanted that money repaid as quickly as possible and in full but who also wouldn’t tolerate excessively lavish compensation.
In the meetings with executives, Feinberg said that the conversations were never about money or material gain — “I need money to buy another summer home, I need money to send my kinds to private school” — but instead were about compensation as a “litmus test of self-worth or integrity or contribution to society.”
“ ‘Look, Mr. Feinberg,’ ” Feinberg said, recalling the executives’ emotional pleas, “ ‘what you’re paying me demeans my value to society, it demeans my value to the community, to my family. You are getting very personal; you are reducing my compensation, thereby diminishing my overall self worth.’ ”
Feinberg’s ultimate decisions were, in his words, “very cold and calculating.”
“I looked at statistics governing compensation — what is a CFO worth, or a CEO worth — studied the competitive pay scale of others similarly situated, looked at what incentives should be incorporated into a compensation package, and calculated the actual awards,” he said.
In administering the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund — which Feinberg said is still the most challenging assignment he’s ever faced — Feinberg’s meetings were very different. They took place all over the country, often in the offices of law firms. And while the meetings were essential to convincing some of the families of victims (particularly those of the wealthier victims) to join the fund and not litigate their claims in court, it’s clear that the emotional tenor made them difficult for Feinberg.
“Unless you have a heart of stone, you can’t remain dispassionate,” he said. “You try and ... limit the impact of that emotion, but you cannot help but be affected by the death and tragedy involved.”
And, Feinberg learned, people react differently — unpredictably, even — to tragedy. The group meetings he held for victims’ families in California, Feinberg said, were “very touchy-feely,” particularly in contrast to the meetings he’d held in New York and Virginia.
“Everybody wanted to hold hands and pray collectively and to reinforce each other,” Feinberg recalled.
And if half of the families of 9/11 victims decided that the tragedy had “ended, once and for all, any belief they may have had in God or religion or an afterlife,” the other half, Feinberg said, told him that “the tragedies reinforced their religion and their beliefs.”
“Do not attempt to predict human nature,” Feinberg said.
Feinberg doesn’t keep in touch with the families of victims, nor does he have a particular way of commemorating the anniversary of 9/11. This year, on the 11th anniversary of the attacks, Feinberg was scheduled to speak at a conference organized by an insurance group in Canada.
On Rosh Hashanah, Feinberg said, he would be thinking about the future, not the past.
“I think about the year to come, in hopes that I and my family can enjoy health and happiness,” Feinberg said. “And on Yom Kippur, I sort of muse and reflect on the year gone by and what I could’ve done differently, or better.”
Feinberg described himself as “a believer,” so it seemed fair to ask him whether he feels that there is a listener to his prayers.
“I don’t put it in those terms, is someone listening,” Feinberg replied. “I’m hoping that — by raising the level of thought to a conscious level, so that I’m actually reflecting on the past and the future — I’m listening. And I think that’s what’s important.”
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State Senate debates resolution to opt out of federal health care
State lawmakers engaged in a lively debate late into the evening Wednesday over a resolution calling for a constitutional amendment for Missourians to decide whether to opt out of federal health-reform legislation. A similar resolution already has cleared the House.
Some of the toughest questions about the state Senate proposal, called SJR25, sponsored by Sen. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, came from Sen. Rita Days, D-Bel Nor. Days asked repeatedly what would happen to the estimated 495,000 uninsured Missourians if the state opted out of the federal legislation and followed Cunningham's proposal.
"Right now, they can go to the emergency room," Cunningham said. "This bill doesn't prohibit them to do that."
Days responded, "Are you suggesting that we send 495,000 people to our emergency rooms?" She added that emergency rooms were the most expensive way to care for people and already were filled with people waiting for care.
Despite repeated questions from Days, Cunningham stuck by her general response that her proposal was offered to protect freedoms, let voters take a stand and allow them to continue to make their own choices about health care.
Sen. Joan Bray, D-University City, offered an abortion-rights amendment, reasoning that since the issue was supposed to be about health care freedom, it should logically include giving women the freedom of choice, including the right to abortion. Her amendment failed.
Senate Minority Leader Victor Callahan, D-Independence, argued that Republicans were misguided in claiming the federal health initiative was an unprecedented mandate from the federal government for citizens to buy a service. He said the federal will would prevail, just as it has prevailed on issues such as Social Security.
"I pay Social Security taxes," he said, adding nothing in the Constitution called for that service, which was set up in 1936 during the New Deal.
"I never got to vote on whether the federal government should (impose a tax) for Social Security. That wasn't by popular vote. So can the state of Missouri exempt citizens out of the Social Security system?"
Though Republicans seemed united in favor of the measure, it was not immediately clear how many Democrats, if any, would support it. If the House's example is a guide, the measure could get some bipartisan support.
The version of the bill debated on the Senate floor states:
"Upon voter approval, this constitutional amendment provides that no federal law shall compel a patient, employer or health-care provider to participate in any government or privately run health care system, nor prohibit a patient or employer from paying directly for legal health-care services.
"This amendment does not affect laws or regulations in effect as of Jan. 1, 2010, affect which health-care services a health-care provider is required to perform, affect which health-care services are provided by law, or prohibit care provided under worker's compensation."
Following debate Wednesday night, the bill remained on the Senate's informal calendar for perfection and is expected to be taken up again next week.
During last week's 109-46 House vote in favor of a similar proposal, about two dozen Democrats sided with the Republicans. These included several Democratic lawmakers from suburban St. Louis: Kenny Biermann of St. Charles, Ron Casey of Crystal City, Vicki Englund of St. Louis, Michael Frame of Eureka, Michele Kratky of St. Louis, Albert Liese of Maryland Heights, Tim Meadows of Imperial, and Sue Schoemehl of Oakville.
Contact Beacon staff writer Robert Joiner. Funding for health reporting is provided in part by The Missouri Foundation for Health, a philanthropic organization whose vision is to improve the health of the people in the communities it serves.
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Chorus Aviation Inc. offers its investors one of the loftiest yields on the Toronto market, but the betting is that the days of its outsized payout are numbered.
After all, shareholders can seldom avail themselves of an eye-popping 18.3-per-cent yield – about 10 times greater than what is on offer from safe 10-year Government of Canada bonds – without there being a catch somewhere.
In Chorus’s case, the stratospheric payout rate is flashing a warning. Many market players believe the current 60-cents-a-share annual dividend is doomed. The only question is how large a meat cleaver will be taken to the number.
But the situation at Chorus, a company best known for operating the Jazz regional airline service on behalf of Air Canada, is encouraging a few observers to suggest what amounts to an investment industry heresy.
Normally, when a company is at risk of a dividend cut, the standard advice to investors is to run for cover and wait out the damage on the stock price. After the stock craters, they can assess the staying power of the new payout before deciding to take the plunge.
But some analysts believe that Chorus’s stock price may go up even if it cuts its dividend.
The reason? The dividend is likely to be lowered to around 45 cents, at which point it would still sport a double-digit yield and be attractive to income-hungry investors.
That’s the forecast of Walter Spracklin, an analyst at RBC Dominion Securities Inc., who thinks the shares are “pricing in the most pessimistic reduction in dividends,” and believes the payout will likely be around 44 cents next year. That’s still a yield of 13 per cent, based on the recent share price. He has a “buy” on the stock and a target of $4.50.
Chorus’s dividend is in doubt because of an adverse arbitration ruling delivered earlier this month regarding the markup it can charge Air Canada, from which it receives the bulk of its revenue as a contract air carrier under an agreement running until 2020.
Air Canada contended the markup on Chorus’s controllable costs for providing services should be 9.5 per cent, down from the current 12.5 per cent.
The arbitration panel ruled in favour of Air Canada’s methodology on the cost issue, but not entirely. Although a final arbitration report hasn’t been issued, the thinking on the Street is that Chorus will be cut to a little more than a 10-per-cent markup, reducing its profitability.
Chorus shares had a one-day plunge of 11 per cent earlier this month in reaction to the arbitration news. But Mr. Spracklin said the market was “likely overreacting” and “we would be buyers at current valuations.” He’s expecting cash flow per share at Chorus to be about 56 cents a share next year, which would more than cover a dividend of 44 cents, in his view.
In terms of industry fundamentals, Chorus presents a mixed picture. The recent surge in the share price of Air Canada suggests that company’s financial health is on the mend, a good thing for Chorus, considering its fate is entirely tied to the big carrier. A stronger Air Canada takes some of the risk out of buying Chorus.
But Air Canada has taken steps to reduce its dependence on Chorus. It hired privately owned Sky Regional to fly out of Toronto’s Billy Bishop Airport, for instance.
Air Canada also recently transferred the operation of its fleet of 15 Embraer 175s planes to Sky. Chorus’s growth outlook may dim as a result of increased competition from what is emerging as a low-cost rival.
And not everyone in the investment community is buying the argument that Chorus shares might rally through a dividend cut. Cameron Doerksen at National Bank Financial Inc. estimates Chorus could fall to $2.60 a share if the dividend is chopped to 45 cents a share, or less. He rates the stock “underperform.”
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April 3, 2007 |
The camera can either reproduce reality by freezing an instant in time - the purist definition - or it can create it through manipulation and artifice. Although photographers began to invent and imagine at least a century ago, this approach has proliferated during the postmodern period. Since the mid-1970s, Canadian artist Jeff Wall has been one of the most prominent "stage-managing" photographers. Like Cindy Sherman, Wall has invested his scenarios with the look and sensibility of film stills.
May 14, 2012 |
David N. Pincus, the Philadelphia clothing manufacturer and philanthropist, joked a few years ago about the soaring value of the art that he and his wife, Geraldine, had collected over the years. "You know, I bought and sold things for some wild numbers," said Pincus, who died in December at age 85. Wild, indeed. An auction of some of the Pincus collection last week at Christie's in New York fetched $180 million. A 1961 painting by Mark Rothko sold for $77.5 million to an anonymous bidder — nearly $87 million with the buyer's commission, a record for a postwar work, Christie's says.About 50 bids were cast in the six-minute auction Tuesday night for the work titled Orange, Red, Yellow.
September 21, 2007 |
Seeing Tina Barney's lush color portraits of the affluent in magazines and monographs of her work is one thing; experiencing them in person is another. Gallery 339 has mounted a mini-survey of this photographer's oeuvre from the last 17 years that not only proves that her art has stood the test of time, but that her photographs are best experienced face-to-face to be fully appreciated. Barney's prints, though much smaller than those of Jeff Wall or Andreas Gursky, contain a similar bounty of pointedly mundane detail, which always arouses our detective instinct.
August 26, 2005 |
Jimi Gleason, a California artist, has come up with two new wrinkles in color-field painting: layering and glitter. One thinks of color-field as involving thin washes of color, sometimes applied to raw canvas, but Gleason's paintings at Works on Paper gallery push the technique in the opposite direction. Gleason applies multiple layers of acrylic pigment with a flat tool, not a brush, sanding between applications. The layering is evident at the edges of the canvas, where it resembles the delamination of weathered plywood.
May 22, 1987 |
Before he went to the plate in the seventh inning of his team's contest against Cherry Hill West yesterday, Bishop Eustace catcher Jeff Wall had a brief conference with coach Joe Galliera. "I told Jeff he was going to win the game for us," Galliera said of the meeting, which took place with the score tied, one out and a runner on first. Galliera proved prophetic. Wall slammed a home run to left field off losing pitcher Lenny Viccharelli (3-1), and the Crusaders went on to register a 9-4 victory in the Olympic Conference interdivisional game at West.
August 8, 2003 |
I wish Canada were as aesthetically picturesque as Mexico. It is, actually, but artists and photographers never seem to travel there. Instead, they go south. Mexico's attraction for them is obvious. It's more archaeological, ethnological, mystical and tragic than Canada. It has revolutions, Day of the Dead, and Frida Kahlo. That's why exhibitions with Mexican themes keep popping up in museums, while Canada, the Rodney Dangerfield of nations, rarely merits a mention. "Eye on Mexico" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is the latest such paean to our Hispanic neighbor.
November 8, 1987 |
Bishop Eustace coach Clyde Folsom was especially worried before yesterday's game. He said his team's practices were sluggish during the week following a loss to Woodrow Wilson. And yesterday, the Crusaders had to play at Deptford. "We didn't respond very well in practices," Folsom said. "We were very concerned. " But the week-long look of concern turned into a big Saturday afternoon smile. That's because Eustace, ranked No. 8 in The Inquirer's South Jersey Top 10, thoroughly outplayed Deptford, crushing the Spartans, 26-0 in an Olympic Conference Patriot Division game.
November 25, 1988 |
Pennsauken did not qualify for the NJSIAA South Jersey playoffs this fall. So yesterday, the Indians did the next best thing. They beat a team that has already won in the playoffs. Pennsauken used stout defense to upset previously unbeaten Bishop Eustace, 7-6. A standing-room-only crowd of 3,500 watched the game at Pennsauken. The Indians, ranked No. 9 in South Jersey by The Inquirer, finished their season 7-2. Bishop Eustace, which had won its third consecutive South Jersey Parochial B championship a week ago, finished 9-1. The Crusaders are ranked No. 3 by The Inquirer.
May 7, 2009 |
Let's just say, it didn't hurt that the two paintings at the start of the Museum of Art's blockbuster exhibition were of guys in their swim trunks, and the people on the audio guide jumped in talking about homosexuality and nipples. "Cezanne and Beyond," I salute you. You totally got the attention of my children. I could almost see the oxygen flooding to the brain of my sixth grader, who pointed out the nipple weirdness of Cezanne's The Bather moments before the guides in her ears did. And I could see the eighth grader punching the numbers into the audio set when moments before she had vowed not to. Hey, maybe Mom is taking us to something interesting this time?
December 21, 2007 |
Temple Gallery has been going out of its way - literally - to introduce artists it considers deserving of attention. Its latest exhibition marks the first U.S. appearance for conceptual artist Damian Moppett, whose drawings, paintings and sculptures have been seen mainly in his native Vancouver. Moppett has been influenced by such well-known Vancouver exports as photographer Jeff Wall, installation artist Stan Douglas, and video artist and photographer Roy Arden. Like theirs, his work refers to popular culture, institutions, and his own art-school education, and, like them, he keeps his practice informal and open to possibility.
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Hiring a Professional Genealogist
by Eileen Polakoff and Gary Mokotoff
I. Hiring a Professional Genealogist: A Genealogist's View
by Eileen Polakoff
Genealogy is thought by most to be merely a hobby, a method of gaining satisfaction by researching one's ancestry. To some though, it is a business, a way of earning a living. Hobbyists may employ professsional genealogists for a variety of reasons.
Many different services are offered by professionals. They include record searching, analysis of problems, compilation of full family histories, computerization, translations, oral histories/interviews, tours of ancestral towns, editing and preparing a family history for publication, etc. The primary services provided are record searching and complete family history research.
Costs vary according to the nature of the work requested. If it is a specific task, such as to locate and make a copy of a specific record, the cost may be as low as an hour or two of time at the professional's established rate. If the task is to do a complete genealogy of a family, which may require hundreds of hours of time, the cost can easily amount to thousands of dollars; it is not unusual to exceed $10,000.
How a professional operates depends on the amount of information provided: no clues versus some clues. It is the responsibility of the person doing the hiring to direct the professional by knowing and communicating exactly what is wanted. When uncertain, the customer should discuss the problem with the researcher. Most professionals have experience in many areas and will assist in defining goals. In addition, one may reasonably expect an ethical professional genealogist to say if, in his or her professional opinion, research has hit a brick wall or if it may be too expensive to realize specific goals.
Usually the professional genealogist charges an hourly rate plus out-of-pocket expenses. Some establish a minimum number of hours and require retainers. Hourly fees range from $20 to $75 depending upon experience, credentials and areas of specialty. In most cases, one pays for time and will be charged for all time used to meet a specific genealogical request. This will include time to study and analyze the request, execute the research and report the results. In most cases, the customer also pays for travel time, as well as calls to the researcher for discussions. By combining jobs and research locations, the active professional researcher will save a client money by pooling travel expenses on more than one job. Both telephone time and research time are considered billable.
Each professional has his or her own method of reporting, depending on the agreement with the client. If a researcher specializes in obtaining documents, clients will receive a copy of a document. Other genealogists will send a summary of research completed, an analysis of the document including a translation, if necessary, and suggestions for additional research based on the information in that document. Customarily, clients are given a list of all sources and repositories used for the research, including sources that did not produce results.
When hiring a professional, supply all known information about that person or branch of the family and all the sources already used. Otherwise, the professional genealogist may duplicate work already done by the client. Be clear about what is wanted, and obtain an explicit statement that the professional will do the requested search or supply other services. Genealogists should not promise delivery of information, but rather, indicate that it is a familiar area that he or she researches on a regular basis.
After having obtained the name(s) of a professional genealogist, write a brief letter outlining research goals and some family information applicable to the goal. If any special services are desired, such as translation, travel, fast results, etc., make the researcher aware of these needs as soon as possible. Include a self-addressed stamped envelope with your letter. Expect a professional to respond indicating if he or she is prepared to take on the assignment; a summary of services and rates should be included.
There are no guarantees in genealogical research, whether done by amateur or professional. No one can be certain that information about any specific family will be found. However, time used by a professional to search for the requested information may produce new details about a family or, if nothing else, a list of sources where no information exists.
Copyright ©1993 by Eileen Polakoff. All rights reserved.
II. Hiring a Professional Genealogist: A Client's View
by Gary Mokotoff
My name is Gary Mokotoff. I am a medical doctor. I am a lawyer. I am a professional genealogist. None of these statements are true, but only two will send me to jail. The first two professions require an individual to meet minimum standards before being permitted to hang out a shingle. Anyone can claim to be a professional genealogist. This demonstrates the problem that exists in trying to evaluate someone to hire as a genealogist.
Described below are some guidelines that can assist in the selection.
Standards do exist in the genealogical profession. Professional genealogists may take a rigorous examination and receive a number of certifications as developed by the Board for Certification of Genealogists (BCG). Most significant to a client is the title Certified Genealogist (CG). According to literature published by BCG, to achieve CG status, a genealogist must demonstrate a thorough knowledge of the principals of genealogical research and an ability to apply such knowledge to problems as they develop. They must be able to differentiate between the various classes of evidence, to know the weight to be given to each, to select the best evidence, to draw logical conclusions from this material and to evaluate properly the quality of any printed work that is used.
Another title is Certified Genealogical Record Specialist. To achieve this certification, a person must be well informed about the various resources that might hold records, know of alternative locations for resources and must be able to read and interpret documents accurately. Fewer than 25 percent of professional genealogists have certification, including some who are very competent, which illustrates how difficult it is to achieve this level. Only two persons doing Jewish research are Certified Genealogists: Kay Kole and Miriam Weiner.
The LDS (Mormon) Family History Library also accredits genealogists. It has a certification called Accredited Genealogist (AG). Unlike the CG, an AG is accredited only to a specific geographic area of expertise, for example, Germany or Poland. A six-part examination includes a handwriting section, document recognition test, familiarity with LDS Library resources, pedigree evaluation, pedigree problem solving and knowledge of general genealogical research. Daniel Schlyter, an AG for Poland, noted that persons with his accreditation must have a knowledge of the Polish language with some ability in German, Russian and Latin. (Records from Poland can be in any of these languages.) There is no accreditation for Jewish genealogy, but persons with German or Polish-Jewish ancestry can find AGs with accreditation for those countries.
ASSOCIATION OF PROFESSIONAL GENEALOGISTS
One measure of the commitment an individual has to being a professional genealogist may be membership in the industry's professional society, the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG). Eleven members of APG list Jewish research as a specialty. One advantage to retaining a member of APG is that a client with a problem about the conduct of an APG member can file a complaint with APG, which will arbitrate the matter. The organization publishes a directory of its members and their specialties.
FULL-TIME vs. PART-TIME
Another assessment of the qualifications of a professional genealogist is whether it is a means of earning a livelihood or a part-time vocation. Much new business in genealogy is by reference and word-of-mouth; an incompetent full-time genealogist soon experiences the need to find a different livelihood. This does not mean there are no qualified part-time professional genealogists. It does mean, however, that a person who makes a living at genealogy, and has practiced for a number of years, must have a large number of satisfied clients.
In the final analysis, one can always ask for references. The professional, of course, will only supply a list of satisfied clients. One technique to evaluate the prospective researcher is to not only ask what the satisfied client liked about the genealogist, but ask what the client disliked about the genealogist. What one client might consider unimportant (for example, the genealogist took a long time to complete the work but did a great job) might be significant to you.
Copyright ©1993 by Gary Mokotoff. All rights reserved.
[The above articles first appeared in the Summer 1993 issue of Avotaynu, and are reprinted with the permission of the authors.]
To learn more about this topic...
Information originally provioded 5-Aug-1995, Revised 7-Dec-2000.
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Fedora Core 4 had a boot time of 52 seconds and a maximum disk throughput of 13 MB/s. Fedora Core 5 was also at 52 seconds but with a throughput of 29 MB/s. Fedora Core 6 had slowed down in our testing to 59 seconds (it did have more processes running at start-up than FC4 and FC5) while its disk throughput was high at 28MB/s.
Fedora 7 had crawled at start-up with a boot time of 87 seconds! It's maximum disk throughput had dropped to 15MB/s and there were even more processes running at start-up than Fedora Core 6. Fortunately, in Fedora 8 the boot time dramatically decreased and was back down to 51 seconds. Its throughput, however, was 12MB/s. The boot time for Fedora 9 Rawhide was 66 seconds. It's important to note that Rawhide/development versions of Fedora are slower than the official releases due to kernel debugging messages, etc being enabled. The maximum disk throughput had slumped to 8MB/s.
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Missives from the Art World 7 October 2012
People always wonder what an art dealer does besides buy and sell. The first, of course, is necessary and the second is fervently sought after but there are many other demands on our time.
Much of that occurs in fielding enquiries which we often enjoy doing but in the last 15 or so years a great deal is in provenance research. For me it started in 1996 as we were about to go into a gallery exhibition opening the director of the Metropolitan Museum at the time stopped me. He said to me “You sold that small wooden renaissance sculpture of the Madonna and Child attributed to Nicolaus Gerhaert von Leiden that the Met just acquired and we want you to write up it’s provenance for us”. I said, “Philippe we sold that in 1947 (when I was 3 years old) for $3,000 and the Met just paid a reported $3 million and you want me to do the research on the piece?” He replied that $3,000 then was the equivalent of $3 million in 1996. Well, Philippe de Montebello was not considered the great museum director that he was for his currency conversion skills and I thought he was teasing me. But sure enough the next day I had a phone call from the chairman of the Medieval department, William Wixom, at the Metropolitan making the same request. It was not as if I could say “no” so I went to our warehouse archives and dug out the papers from the Vienna Rothschilds giving the details on the original purchase and sale.
This was the very beginning of the search for Nazi War Loot.
The art that the Nazis seized during World War II and that had not found it’s way back to its rightful owners.
The period in question are
the years that Hitler was in power from 1933 to 1945.
Luckily, we have archival material but since the firm had to first leave Germany in a hurry, and then leave the Netherlands even quicker, much was lost.
If this happened once in a great while it would not be so difficult, but this summer more than 15 years later I have received one or two enquiries a week, and often from museum individuals who have not done the basic research, such as finding their original invoice which might have the information they are looking for right there in front of them.
I also had an enquiry recently from an auction house that wanted me to do research on the possibility that since we had handled works of art from the Rothschilds, it
was not impossible that we might have handled this specific painting as well (we hadn’t).
Philippe de Montebello had an expression that I always loved.
He would say that he did certain things for “proven friends of the museum” and I like to subscribe to a similar code.
If I am asked by a curator I know who has been helpful to us in the past I usually do the research without complaint but if it is a person hired by the museum just to do this kind of work and they do not even know where to start, if it was acquired more than a decade ago, considering the time involved on my or my staff’s part, I will tell them that I charge $250 for each search whether I turn something up or not.
I had several curators at one museum who kept pestering me with provenance questions urge me to continue to charge because they felt badly about how many times they came back to the well.
It has been suggested to me by lawyers and family that if we no longer had the archive we would no longer have to look anything up, but then you can become the victim of suspicion that you cannot prove is wrong, even though you are sure it is. In all but one case we have been able to prove the provenance of every work of art, and that was not a question of Nazi War Loot but a piece of porcelain stolen from a European museum a few years after WWII that we had purchased from a long-time European colleague. We settled reasonably and amicably with the museum.
Another example of the typically frustrating enquiry occurred several years ago regarding a set of paintings by an 18th century Italian artist that had been sold by a German Jewish banker living in Switzerland and our German Jewish firm in Amsterdam at the time. The banker owned this group of works and he gave these to our firm on consignment against a loan with a right to sell. We succeeded in selling them to museums and private collectors in the States. Suddenly his nephew appears 60 years later and says that his uncle’s pictures constituted Nazi war loot! By a total fluke the documentation had been saved from the archives in Holland and was in our archive. All the details were there, including the consignment/loan agreements and bank drafts. On top of this the brother of the owner lived in Amsterdam at the time and oversaw the entire transaction!
While there are many legitimate claims regarding Nazi War Loot, a claim alone is not sufficient and I am glad that I can back up my family’s good name. http://geraldstiebel.blogspot.co.uk/
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Leading up to the 2011 National Football League season, NFL players and owners were locked in a heated stalemate of a labor negotiation that threatened to cancel the coming season. Player salaries accounted for half of the League’s costs. Meanwhile, the NFL held $4.5 billion in television contracts, and the networks owed that money whether games were played or not. Cancelling games was a money-making proposition for the League – meaning the owners had all the leverage.
But through well-executed campaigns on Twitter and other social media, the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) managed to win public opinion – and with it, a satisfactory deal. In their recent talk at the WOMMA Summit, George Atallah, Assistant Executive Director of External Affairs for the NFLPA, and Domonique Foxworth, NFLPA Executive Committee and cornerback for the Baltimore Ravens, shared how social media helped to resolve the NFL lockout.
Twitter gives players a voice the media won’t
For television networks, NFL football is a money machine. During the ‘08-‘09 season, 20 million people per week watched the NFL on TV. Of the top 100 TV broadcasts in 2009, 75 were NFL games. Networks that had a relationship with the NFL didn’t want to lose it, and networks that didn’t were hungry to start one. It was therefore against the interests of most networks and their reporters to present the League in any negative light, says Atallah.
Many players already had Twitter accounts for connecting with fans and building their personal brands. Their large follower networks provided a place to publicly present their opinions, and spread them enough that the news media couldn’t ignore them, says Foxworth. First, players and player advocates posted op-eds online containing their side of the dispute. These articles were retweeted by other players and fans for massive reach, and having garnered enough social attention, many were eventually reported on by the major news outlets.
The NFLPA even produced a potential 2011 Super Bowl ad. The ad carried the players’ campaign tagline, “Let us play,” and featured players and fans alike demanding that the League end a potential lockout. A 2011 Super Bowl ad cost $4 million, and as expected, CBS denied the NFLPA a spot. Players used this to their advantage, tweeting links to the ad with the teaser, “Watch the Super Bowl ad CBS and the NFL don’t want you to see!” The ad quickly gathered thousands of hits, and made headlines (blog subscribers can click here to view on YouTube).
Twitter helps fight misinformation
During negotiations, both sides were under non-disclosure agreements, bound not to reveal details discussed. Information about proposed agreements inevitably leaked, and often the details were misleading or flat-out wrong.
“I’d get calls from guys asking why we turned down a deal with so-and-so percent… guys who needed a livelihood and just wanted to play,” says Foxworth. This misinformation could’ve turned players against their NFLPA reps, undermining their ability to get a deal done effectively.
To combat this, Foxworth and others used Twitter to let other players know when details reported weren’t accurate. These tweets were shared by players and fans, and helped correct inaccurate news reports and sway public opinion.
Social shifts the lexicon from “strike” to “lockout”
Under the old agreement, the League got $1 billion off the top of all revenues ($9 billion) for expenses, leaving a new amount the contract referred to as “total revenues.” Players then got 57% of these total revenues. With the owners’ 43% plus the $1 billion expense allowance, players and owners effectively split all NFL revenues 50-50, according to Atallah. In the proposed new agreement, players would get a lower share of total revenues, leaving them less than half of overall NFL revenue.
In early interviews, NFL representatives referred only to the “total revenues” agreement, without including the expense allowance. Players came off as greedy, unwilling to yield any of their majority share. They appeared to be on strike, and were forced to defend their “unfair” need for a disproportionate slice of the pie. Fans and the media referred to the situation as “the NFL strike.”
The NFLPA posted articles online and used Twitter to educate the public on the true breakdown of revenues. Players tweeted that the situation was not a player strike, but an owner lockout. Once revealed, the public generally found the existing even revenue split fair. Now, if an NFL representative claimed players got the majority of total revenues, reporters were journalistically obligated to question them about the players’ claims of an even revenue split.
Soon the League was on the defensive, forced to justify their desire for more than half of the overall pie. “Suddenly it wasn’t a ‘strike,’ it was an owner ‘lockout’ keeping fans from football,” says Foxworth. “We changed the public lexicon, and that helped change public opinion.”
Social media gave players an outlet to share their ongoing side of the lockout story. On August 5, 2011, the NFL and NFLPA signed a new collective bargaining agreement, ending the lockout without cancelling any regular season games. There was much more to the resolution than a few tweets, but winning fans created leverage for the players that the League couldn’t ignore. In the NFL lockout, social was key in moving the chains.
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Photo courtesy of Jon Gustin.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Georgia lawmakers are once again asking to redraw its northern border in the hope of getting water from the Tennessee River.
The House of Representatives voted 171-2 on Tuesday to adopt a resolution seeking a thin strip of land leading to the river.
Georgia lawmakers say a flawed 1818 survey wrongly put the border to the south of the Tennessee River. In the resolution, Georgia offers to accept the current border with the exception of a slice of land allowing for water withdrawals from the river.
Tennessee lawmakers have so far been dismissive of the request.
Georgia is locked in a long-running water dispute with neighboring Alabama and Florida. That dispute has at times threatened metro Atlanta's water supply, forcing officials to search for new water sources.
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Known both for its agriculture and industry, Ohio has long been one of the most important economies in the Union. Although some Ohio cities have faced tough times during the recent recession, entrepreneurs are beginning to set up shop again. Significant regulation means small business owners may need a fair number of Ohio licenses and permits -- particularly service providers and professionals.
In Ohio, owners of Rental Property and Boarding Homes don’t always know it, but they frequently need local licenses to rent their residential property. Boarding Homes sometimes also require local health licenses to have multiple, non-related persons living under one roof.
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By Dawson Bell
LANSING, Michigan (Reuters) - Michigan Governor Rick Snyder will officially declare a financial emergency for Detroit on Friday, paving the way for a state takeover of the city, a state government source said on Thursday.
At a forum in Detroit, the Republican governor will endorse the February 19 findings of a six-member review team that concluded the city's dire financial situation constituted an emergency, according to the source, who asked not to be identified.
Sara Wurfel, Snyder's spokeswoman, said the governor will outline "his determination on whether or not there is an emergency."
The official declaration of an emergency for Michigan's biggest city will trigger a 10-day deadline for Detroit officials to request a hearing with Snyder. It will likely result in the appointment of an emergency financial manager to manage its fiscal affairs.
The review team said the city is plagued by "operational dysfunction," but made no official recommendation on the need to appoint an emergency financial manager, leaving that to the governor.
Detroit, which has been struggling for years with a falling population, shrinking tax base and large payroll for city services, has been operating since April 2012 under an agreement that gave the state some oversight. But the slow pace of reforms led Snyder to launch a new review of the city last December.
If the state decides to appoint an emergency financial manager, that person could decide the city's only course for survival would be a bankruptcy filing in what would become the largest municipal bankruptcy in the United States.
The emergency manager would be officially chosen by a state board composed of the state treasurer, budget director, and licensing and regulatory affairs director - all of whom are Snyder appointees.
Snyder has publicly discussed qualifications he would seek in the manager and has said he had a short list of candidates for the job.
(Reporting By Dawson Bell; Additional reporting by Karen Pierog; Editing by Greg McCune and Leslie Adler)
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Updated 01/09/2013 06:02 PM
Penfield Girl Will Get a 'Smile For a Lifetime'
A 14-year-old Penfield girl has a reason to smile! Thanks to a national program, the local teen is receiving free orthodontic treatment. The financial scholarship will provide a life-changing opportunity for the patient.
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"I would love not to have to think about this everyday."
Tori Farenholz is a freshman at Penfield High school. She's a straight-A student, a member of the cross country and track teams, but her teeth have kept her from smiling.
"I've been wanting braces for a long time."
Getting braces would be an added expense that Tori's mom couldn't afford, so they decided to apply for help through the Smile For a Lifetime Foundation. The non-profit organization provides orthodontic care to those with financial challenges and special situations.
"Tori has always wanted braces, it hasn't been something that I've been able to reach out to achieve for her," said Lisa Farenholz, her mom.
Just days before Christmas, Lisa got a phone call from the local chapter: her daughter was chosen to receive braces.
"I kept crying and crying with tears of joy, and then they put together a card for her. They asked me to keep it a secret and I presented her the card on Christmas," Lisa said.
"When I opened it, I said to my mom, I'm gonna cry cause I was so excited," said Tori.
Local orthodontist Dr. Terry Giangreco established New York State's first chapter of the Smile for a lifetime foundation two years ago.
"We've had about seven applicants that we've put braces on already and one of the challenges we're having right now, is just getting that out in the community that this is available for families that couldn't normally afford to provide braces for their children," Giangreco said.
The local chapter awards up to two dozen financial scholarships per year for children up to age 18. A couple of references must be provided along with a personal letter that explains why they feel a new smile will help improve their life.
"All of my friends either have braces or have gotten them off. I often feel self-conscious when I laugh or smile," said Tori, reading her letter.
It's words like these that helped local board members make their decision.
"There's so many great kids around Rochester that are so self-conscious about their smile that they don't smile like they normally would. They're whole outlook is different," said Giangreco.
It's hoped that Tori and other patients can help spread the word about the program and how a healthy smile can help boost self-esteem, motivate and change lives.
"Our hope is that when they receive this gift as a smile, that someday they know when they're older, they may see that opportunity to give back to our community as well."
Tori says her time spent in the dental chair, along with about a two-year waiting period, will be well worth it!
"When you take pictures, you don't have to feel embarrassed to smile."
"I'm so excited to get my braces on, and then I'll be even more excited to get them off."
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Don't Borrow TroubleKiplinger.com
Nearly 20% of all 401(k) participants have found an easy source of credit: They're borrowing from their own accounts.
But be careful. Although most plans offer loans of up to half of your vested balance (with a $50,000 limit), these deals might not be as sweet as they seem.
Plan loans usually charge the prime rate plus one or two percentage points. Because the interest you pay goes right back into your 401(k) account, some employees think the money is in effect free. Not so. In fact, it could cost you more than the stated rate. Say you borrow money from your 401(k) at 8% interest, but the money you pulled out of the account had been earning 10% in a stock fund. That 10% is the real cost of your loan. And remember, you also lose all future compounding on the lost earnings.
Another potential problem: If you quit your job or are laid off or fired, your loan may be due immediately -- at a time when you may least be able to afford to pay it back. If you can't pay it back, the outstanding balance will be considered a taxable distribution and, if you are under 55, you will get hit with a 10% early-withdrawal penalty as well.
Plan loans generally must be repaid within five years. But if you use the money to buy a home, you can stretch out repayment over a longer period. If you use a plan loan to buy a house, ask whether you can secure the loan with your house. That way the interest would be tax-deductible.
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High time for heritage street art
7 August 2012
In this opinion piece Justin Trendall, chair of printmedia at the Sydney College of the Arts, welcomes the City of Sydney's recent initiative to create a register of significant works of street art, including graffiti.
Several months ago a sub-standard work of art appeared on the walls of my apartment block. I was irritated. Especially as it was accompanied by the whine of skateboard wheels and some drunken shouting at 2am. As an artist and lecturer at Sydney College of the Arts I spend a lot of time thinking about what makes for a good work of art. Too much time, probably.
The graffiti sprayed on my wall didn't impress me. The colour was wrong, the design nondescript and the calligraphic execution clumsy. For me it was one more example of an aspiring artist going into exhibition mode without realising they hadn't fully mastered their chosen medium, or quite worked out what they wanted to say.
But when it comes down to it, most arguments about graffiti aren't really about its artistic merit or otherwise. At the heart of the debate about street art are questions about who owns public space and how we collectively regulate it. My irritation at the tagging of my apartment block had less to do with the inferior quality of the art than my belief that tagging homes without their inhabitant's permission isn't right. And I'm pretty sure a majority of people feel the same way.
Which is why those behind the City of Sydney's plan to create a register of important street art (as a first step towards future heritage listing) must have expected a mixed response to their initiative. It's easy to understand how some people might view the idea as a gesture of surrender. Isn't this the same council that spends so much time and money cleaning up graffiti?
Personally, I like the idea. Why? It's an initiative that shakes the debate up a little and gets people thinking about street art in a fresh light. Street art has developed in interesting ways over the past decade, but the public debate has lagged behind. Sure, it might seem a bit odd to have heritage ambitions for something as intentionally ephemeral as street art - but the word 'heritage' is being asked to cover a lot of different things these days.
I like this initiative because its shifts the debate in a more positive direction. It's a gesture that acknowledges the idealism, ambition and effort hidden behind many works of street art. As an artist I'm biased. Looking around the walls of the inner city I see so much creative energy on display I can't help feeling something good going on; that this is a cultural phenomenon on its way to somewhere.
Which brings me to the main reason I like this idea of creating a register. Let's face it, street art is getting old. It's now a cultural phenomenon replete with its own history, its own heroes and its own mainstream profile. Look at the amount of press the 'accidental' removal of a Banksy stencil received. It's a global movement that, after 30 years, is showing no sign of slowing down or going away.
To be sure, it's an area still fraught with contradictions. It might well be true (as opponents claim) that a majority of today's street art is still of the illegal variety. And most of it is about nothing more than marking territory. But there's no doubt something is slowly shifting in the culture. In the inner city it's the legal sites that are setting the tone, those spectacular large scale pieces that result from ad hoc private agreements between street artists and local businesses, home owners and councils.
Alongside this consolidation process, centred around the growth of these semi-permanent 'legitimate' murals, the inner city has also witnessed a spectacular resurgence of the subgenre. Over the past decade stenciling, wheat-pasting, stickers, and guerilla knitting --forms of street art more closely associated with social activism and poetic wit than with claiming territory -- have emerged.
Mixed together in the crowded confines of inner city suburbs these different genres of street art, legal and illegal, minor and major, are beginning to make their own collective sense. The original impulse to simply leave your own mark in a public space has grown and spread to become an elaborate tapestry of different ideas and artistic styles. It is this sense of something happening spontaneously in public space that has attracted the attention of urban planners worldwide. Trying to engage with the ongoing evolution of street art is starting to make more sense than attempting its eradication.
The question of street art's legitimacy has always been closely connected to the larger problems of modern urban space itself. Despite the best planning intentions and a wealth of architectural sophistication, modern cities still seem strangely disheveled; admixtures of different architectural styles, advertising hoardings, abandoned buildings and new construction sites. Once the crowd dies away they can often appear slightly bleak environments lacking in human warmth. Street artists have always been quick to use this as an excuse for their transgressions.
It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see a potential fit between these two long term problems: between the illegal and unruly exuberance of street art and the personality bypass many city spaces seem to suffer from. There have been many attempts to fix these problems before. Why not try something new?
Watch an interview with Justin Trendall discussing significant works of street art in Sydney in this Sydney Morning Herald video.
|Follow University of Sydney Media on Twitter|
Media enquiries: Kath Kenny, 0478 303 173, 02 9351 1584, email@example.com
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Batsford, B. T.; Gibbs, James, 1682-1754; Soldi, Andrea; Radcliffe Library (University of Oxford); Photographs; Portraits; Collecteana files
Black and white photograph of B. T. Batsford's showroom in their London office. The second page is a reproduced portrait of architect James Gibbs by Andrea Soldi in front of his "greatest achievement" the Radcliffe Library in Oxford.
Beranger, Pierre Jean de, 1780-1857; Letters; Seals (Closures); Sealing-wax
In this letter, written in French, Beranger tells his friend that he has arrived in Paris. He then asks for his friend's address so he can visit his wife. The letter, written in ink, is written on transparent paper that is stained around the edges...
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http://ccdl.libraries.claremont.edu/cdm/search/collection/pal/searchterm/Denison/mode/all/page/53
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Shows & Panels
- Accelerate and Streamline for Better Customer Service
- Ask the CIO
- The Big Data Dilemma
- Carrying On with Continuity of Operations
- Client Virtualization Solutions
- Data Protection in a Virtual World
- Expert Voices
- Federal Executive Forum
- Federal IT Challenge
- Federal Tech Talk
- Feds in the Cloud
- Health IT: A Policy Change Agent
- Improving Healthcare Outcomes through IT Policy
- IT Innovation in the New Era of Government
- Making Dollars And Sense Out of Data Center Consolidation
- Navigating the Private Cloud
- One Step to the Cloud, Two Steps Toward Innovation
- Path to FDCCI Compliance
- Take Command of Your Mobility Initiative
- Veterans in Private Sector: Making the Transition
Shows & Panels
What does a cloud-based workforce look like?
Wednesday - 10/5/2011, 5:57pm EDT
Federal News Radio
Imagine a future federal workforce that includes a group of "free agents" — feds who are ready at a moment's notice to help across government agencies on special projects.
That's the idea behind Deloitte's Fed Cloud workforce model, drawing on the concept of cloud computing. Instead of information, humans make up the cloud, giving agencies the flexibility to select from a range of knowledge and skillsets.
"If you think about how fast the world is changing right now...government can't move fast enough in changing those skill sets," said Bill Eggers, Global Director for Public Sector Research at Deloitte, in an interview with In Depth with Francis Rose.
Eggers pointed to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as an agency that could have benefited from Fed Cloud. CFPB, stood up a year and a half ago, had to hire 1,000 people very quickly, Eggers said.
"In our model, CFPB would have been able to reach up into the cloud, essentially, and look for all those different skill sets they need and who actually has that right now," Eggers said.
Fed Cloud would operate much like consulting firms. Employees would work on projects 80 to 90 percent of the time. In between projects, employees would go to trainings and get "skilled up," Eggers said.
The problem with the current federal workforce model is that it was created for an industrial workforce in the 1950s, when most of the federal employees were clerks in the bottom five grades. Today, those types of jobs account for only 15 percent of the federal workforce, Eggers said. Overall, there has been a "shift toward creative, collaborative, complex work," he said.
On Oct. 17, Eggers will return to In Depth with Francis Rose to explain more details of the Fed Cloud plan.
The video by Deloitte explains the FedCloud model — in the words of middle schools students.
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http://www.federalnewsradio.com/205/2578627/What-does-a-cloud-based-workforce-look-like
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michael chadbourne writes the following about The Giver :
I think the authors purpose for writing this book is to show how lucky we are. Like how we can make our own choices an see color. But in the book the people cant see our do any of that.
I agree with the purpose of the book because I think sometime people don't really know how lucky they are.
I think she handled the charter's the best because she give a lot of details about them and a lot of information.
The main character of the book is Jonas. I think that because the book goes were ever Jonas goes.
Yes I would have Jonas help build a new society because he doesn't give up. He also want every thing to be equal for every body and for every body to have the same rights.
If I was the writer of this book I would probably change the ending.
I would enjoy Asher the most because he jokes around and i do to. He also messes around and is clumsy witch I am also.
I would rate this book good because it has a part that i dont like at the end.
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://buildingrainbows.com/bookreview/reviewid/39201
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The Middle Peninsula-Northern Neck Community Services Board has received a $1.3 million federal grant to build 12 housing units in Gloucester for very low-income people suffering from chronic mental illness.
The project will contain 10 one-bedroom units and two two-bedroom units, said a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The units will be designed with a centrally located community room for social gatherings and recreation.
Chuck Walsh, executive director of the Middle Peninsula-Northern Neck Community Services Board, said the project has been in the works for nearly a year. The complex will be built on land on Belroi Road the Community Services Board has owned for about 15 years.
It could take three years to complete the project, Walsh said. The closest housing of similar type is in Lively on the Northern Neck, he said.
"People are in desperate need of housing," Walsh said.
Some residents are in substandard housing or living with aging parents who are concerned about where their children will live if they can no longer take care of them, Walsh said.
"This is permanent housing for those folks," Walsh said.
The project will be in close proximity to shopping, markets, banks, churches and other community resources, according to the HUD spokeswoman. Transportation will be provided as well as a wide range of services that will allow residents to live independently.
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://articles.dailypress.com/2011-11-17/news/dp-nws-gloucester-low-income-housing-1118-20111117_1_permanent-housing-hud-spokeswoman-belroi-road
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The Jyväskylä, Finland hackerspace hacklab-jlk was lucky enough to work on a public arts project for their home town. They had the opportunity to design, build, and install a trio of LED cubes in Jyväskylä’s central Church Park. As such a high-profile project, the hacklab-jlk team decided to take their time and ended up implementing a lot of very cool features for their LED cubes, including simulating the light show in Blender.
The LED cube is similar to all the other LED cube builds we’ve seen before; it’s an 8x8x8 cube controlled by an ATMega328. The Elovalo project, as it is called, is a trio of LED cubes – one using red LEDs, one using green LED, and a blue LED cube each mounted on a pedestal in a Jyväskylä park.
Because the Elovalo is a permanent installation, the team needed a way to verify new firmware for the LED cubes. They came up with a LED cube simulator for Blender that allows them to write a new display function in C and render either single frames or a full animation of the lighting pattern.
A very cool build, and nearly too awesome for a public arts project. We look forward to a video of the complete installation, but until then we’ll make do with the short preview video available after the break.
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http://hackaday.com/2012/09/03/simulating-led-cubes-in-blender/
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"The patent, granted to CSIRO in 1996, encompasses elements of the 802.11a/g wireless technology that is now an industry standard.
It stems from a system developed by CSIRO in the early '90s, "to exchange large amounts of information wirelessly at high speed, within environments such as offices and homes", said a CSIRO spokeswoman."
CSIRO wins landmark legal battle - Wireless & BroadBand - Connectivity
Following this court case, the CSIRO have to back up and face the same challenges against Intel, Dell, Microsoft, HP and Netgear but could end up scoring a royalty against any wifi device that utilises 802.11a/g.
I guess it will give them more money to develop things like the "Air Guitar Shirt" - yep - it's true... a shirt that reacts to your air strumming to "create" the music associated with your "freakin' flicks"!
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.timrynne.com/index.php?itemid=179&catid=3
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|
Set in 1968, One Crazy Summer weaves together a complex and powerful narrative of three sisters who leave Brooklyn to spend the summer in California. Eleven-year-old Delphine and her two sisters learn about a mother they never knew, the "Black Power" movement and themselves in this coming-of-age story.
The story begins with 11-year-old Turtle being sent to live with unsuspecting relatives in Key West in 1935. Wise beyond her years and filled with pluck, Turtle finds her way through her treasure hunts and escapades while learning about the meaning of family, home and lost things being found.
When 12-year-old Abilene is sent to live with Pastor Shady Howard in the Depression-ridden town of Manifest, she begins to unravel the story of her own family and embarks on a summerlong “spy hunt.” With mysteries, murders, orphans, bootlegging and a mother in hiding, the feisty, likable and perceptive Abilene keeps the storyline moving and compelling.
In 1841, a freak storm washes Manjiro, a 14-year-old Japanese boy, and his fishing companions onto a tiny island far from home. When an American whaleboat captain rescues them and offers Manjiro the chance to return home with him, he accepts the offer. Discover how Manjiro, who was once destined to be no more than a humble fisherman, returns to Japan and becomes a samurai.
The author of Song of the Water Boatman and Other Pond Poems (2005), this former Caldecott honoree delivers poems that bring the wonders of nature to life. The compelling lives of animals in a nocturnal forest are captured in poetry and are enhanced by prose sections filled with engaging real-life facts.
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.smfpl.org/category/booklist_33
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Thu, Sept 24, 2009
From: The Associated Press
Chevron Corp. sought Wednesday to force Ecuador into international arbitration for alleged trade violations, an apparent effort to protect itself against a feared negative ruling in a $27 billion lawsuit over environmental damage.
Chevron accuses Ecuador of "exploitation" of a civil suit filed over environmental damage that plaintiffs allege Texaco caused in the Amazon rainforest between 1964 and 1990. Chevron, the second-largest U.S. oil company, acquired Texaco in 2001.
Texaco spent millions to clean up the region as part of a 1998 agreement with the government and Chevron says it is not liable for further damages. Company officials say Texaco's former partner, state oil company Petroecuador, continued to pollute the region after Texaco departed.
Wednesday's move was Chevron's third attempt to force Ecuador into arbitration related to the lawsuit, which was first filed in a New York court in 1993 and in which a ruling is expected in a matter of months.
"This is a long-expected development, another attempt by Chevron to avoid its own potential liability," Eric Bloom, a U.S.-based lawyer for Ecuador, told The Associated Press. "Isn't it terribly ironic that Chevron fought for 10 years to move this case out of the United States to Ecuador and now that the parties are on the eve of judgment Chevron claims it cannot get a fair trial."
In one attempt by Chevron to force Ecuador to share in the liability, a New York federal court ruled against Chevron and its decision was upheld last year by a U.S. appeals court. Another arbitration claim is pending before the same international court in which Wednesday's case was filed.
An attorney for the plaintiffs in the civil suit, Steven Donziger, called Chevron's filing Wednesday "a sign the company is getting more and more desperate to avoid its legal responsibilities in Ecuador."
He said it reflects the company's failure "to mount a credible defense to charges that they caused massive contamination in Ecuador's rainforest."
Chevron's complaint against Ecuador was filed with the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, Netherlands. It says the nation's conduct — leftist President Rafael Correa has expressed sympathy for the plaintiffs — has violated a U.S.-Ecuador investment treaty and other trade agreements.
"Because Ecuador's judicial system is incapable of functioning independently of political influence, Chevron has no choice but to seek relief under the treaty between the United States and Ecuador," Chevron's general counsel, Hewitt Pate, said in a statement.
It claims Ecuador is trying to shift its share of liability to Chevron, as well as liability for Petroecuador's own oil operations since 1992 and damage caused by "government-sanctioned colonization and agricultural and industrial exploitation of the Amazonian region."
Chevron officials say Ecuador encouraged people from all over the country to settle in the area without providing them adequate health care or sanitation.
Earlier this month, an Ecuadorean judge presiding over the environmental lawsuit against Chevron asked to be recused after the San Ramon, Calif.-based company released video recordings in which the judge, Juan Nunez, allegedly told two businessmen that he had already made up his mind to rule against the company.
The plaintiffs say they suspect the businessmen may have been colluding with Chevron in a bribery scheme aimed at discrediting both the judge and Correa's government.
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"If I had to summarize it just to put it in words, it's never too late."
That's the message former gang member DJ Batiste gave a group of about 40 student teachers at MSU Meridian Friday morning.
The felon turned college student had numerous run ins with the law growing up. He attributes his actions to his need of attention, and one of his high school teachers was able to use that need to help turn his life around.
"Throughout my whole life, teachers used the fear based model on me; fear based, fear based, and to a student who's not afraid of anything, the fear based model doesn't work, so it took that love based model which I wasn't used to, to turn me around."
He spoke about a classroom management method called "Conscious Discipline", which uses everyday events as the curriculum.
Batiste says that Conscious Discipline helped him think of school as a place to learn, instead of just somewhere that he can see his friends and cause trouble.
"We want to try to get them to the highest centers of their brain, to their highest peak, so they're able to learn."
21-year-old Batiste is currently enrolled at Pearl River Community College, where he is completing his core requirements and studying Oral Communication. He also travels around the country telling his story to teachers and administrators. While he isn't sure exactly what his future holds, he knows that continuing to share his experiences will be a part of it.
"I just want to be a motivational speaker, that's where I want to end, and that's where I want the story to end, a motivational speaker, to say I inspired more people than I could ever think of, you know this is a ripple effect."
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Take Advantage of Increased Time Spent on Social Networking
A new Nielsen study, "What Americans Do Online," shows that Americans spend a growing percentage of their time online visiting social networking sites. Businesses need to be aware of trends like this in order to focus marketing efforts where the target audience spends its time.
Social networking and other next-generation Web tools and services are changing the face of the Internet. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are growing exponentially. Facebook just passed 500 million users, and Twitter just sent its 20 billionth tweet. Companies need to grasp how to take advantage of these platforms to communicate effectively with customers.
The Nielsen study tracked the online activity of 200,000 users, comparing June 2010 against June 2009. What Nielsen found is that the portion of time invested on social networking sites grew nearly 50 percent, from 16 to 23 percent of total time spent online, and that social gaming surpassed e-mail to take the number two position.
Bloomberg's Businessweek reports that the Nielsen study also revealed that the use of Web portals is on the decline, dropping from 5.5 percent to 4.4 percent of online time. Ironically, Yahoo beat out both Google and Microsoft to be the captain of that sinking ship, as well as the leader in both e-mail and instant messaging.
It is also worth noting that the social network audience is getting more mature and culturally diverse. Nielsen found that twice as many users over the age of 50 are using social networks than are users under age 18. For businesses looking to use social networks as a marketing platform, these demographic details are important.
The only other area that saw sharp growth from 2009 to 2010 was the viewing of online videos such as those at YouTube. It is a different type of platform than Facebook or Twitter, but still social in nature. Just look at how Old Spice managed to combine YouTube videos with social network messaging to create an Internet marketing sensation overnight.
Companies still waste money paying for placement in the Yellow Pages. You know the book, that giant stack of paper that a random stranger litters your porch with, until you eventually throw it in the recycling bin.
If your customers are spending more time online, and most of that time is spent on social networks, then that is where the marketing and advertising budget should be spent.
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http://www.pcworld.com/article/202333/take_advantage_of_increased_time_spent_social_networking.html
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On Oct. 3, 1995, a predominantly black jury acquitted O.J. Simpson of murder. Fast forward to July 5, 2011 – 16 years later – a predominantly white jury acquits Casey Anthony, whose 2-year-old daughter Caylee was found dead with duct tape over her mouth, of murder. The reason for both “unforeseen” verdicts: the juries rebelled against what they perceived to be dishonest government prosecutors who in part cooked the evidence to suit their ends. The result: two guilty murderers go free.
Television lawyers and political pundits alike excoriated the Casey Anthony jury this week for its verdict. While this may make for good television and high network ratings, the Tampa jury that acquitted Anthony was simply doing its job. The politically motivated Florida prosecutors (and all are politically motivated to further their careers) and their collaborators, had simply failed, through credible evidence, to link Casey to the murder of her daughter. And, in this nation, where our Founding Fathers crafted a system to try to prevent even one innocent defendant from being railroaded into prison, or fried in an electric chair, the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard was designed to allow 100 murderers go free at the expense of saving one innocent accused.
This is not to say that I am praising our legal system – which in my 35 years of experience has morphed and degenerated from the noble vision of the Founding Fathers into one of the most corrupt in the world. But in the case of Simpson – where detectives likely enhanced the evidence against him by spreading his samples of blood at the scene of the crime to make sure he would be nailed – and the Anthony case – where prosecutors tried to stretch and overplay incompetently gathered evidence to convict Casey – a black and white jury, respectively, turned against a government they inherently saw as actually and intellectually dishonest. To highlight this, O.J. was acquitted within less than three hours of jury deliberation, and in “Casey’s case,” only about 11 hours were needed. This is lightning speed for capital one murder cases – where life hangs in the balance – and where the defendants were so obviously guilty.
These jury verdicts confirm where the country has been and is headed. We the People – whether we are black or white – have developed such a distrust, disdain and in many quarters hatred for our government that juries composed of ordinary citizens would allow two murderers to go free. In short, the masses have come to believe that the government, and in these cases its prosecutors, simply stink from the odor of corruption – and in the O.J., Anthony and other judicial venues, We the People are merely giving the government the middle finger!
As we enter the 2012 election period, with no prospect of a political messiah in the mold of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln or Ronald Reagan to save our nation from its rapid decline if not extinction, the Anthony verdict – coming in the wake of more bad economic news and turmoil in the oil-rich Middle East – reminds us that indeed we have entered into a revolutionary period. In the words of the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield, “the government ain’t got no respect.” And, that is essentially because it deserves no respect!
We the People have been lied to by our political elite over and over again, our brave military men and women often asked to sacrifice their bodies and souls for the good of our presidents’ re-election chances, and government regulations, policies and laws are implemented and enforced repeatedly that further the interests primarily of the establishment – those elitists who put our corrupt politicians, judges and other government workers into power to feather the establishment nest.
So here we have it. I have nothing more to say in this column, but instead am preparing for the revolution that has come. The American people have had it, plain and simple, and now even a white jury – one that historically and logically ordinarily would feel less persecution than a black one – has seen fit to let a murderer go free, just to “stick it to” this government to show that we are tired of its dishonesty, heavy-handedness and corruption.
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by Sukey HowardMarch, 2005
<b>Sukey's favorite</b> Powerful, raw, heart-wrenching, <b>Upstate</b>, Kalisha Buckanon's debut novel, takes you right onto the streets of Harlem, into the overcrowded schools, worn-down apartments, behind the walls of a New York state prison and into the lives of two teenagers aching with love for each other. Buckanon writes in Harlem street vernacular with a grammar of its own, rough, tough and harshly expressive. Hearing it read makes the language even stronger and the readers, Chadwick Bosemann and Heather Simms, are so good that you'll forget you're listening to actors. The story is told in letters between Natasha, just 16, and Antonio, 17, when he goes to jail for killing his father. Separated, they write to each other over the next 10 years about their most intimate feelings, their anger, confusion, hopes and dreams, frustrations and longings, his intense need to cling to her, her need to get out and on with life. Upstate is an extraordinary book and an extraordinary window into a reality most of us know little of.
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http://bookpage.com/column/sukey's-favorite-15
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| 0.96002
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University of Iowa study finds employee training might actually increase turnover-
--“Lack of advancement opportunities negates benefits of professional development programs.”
Please follow the hyperlink to an article referring to a study from June 2011 at the University of Iowa. Just when you thought you heard everything… Although it is true that if an employee does not see any career advancement opportunities in the organization, and the market place for new employees changes dramatically from the buyer’s market it is today, then employees will start picking their heads up and testing the marketplace. However in this marketplace, not many are looking to be the new person on the bottom rung in an organization.
When the economy shifts, any training, development and learning that employees received will be remembered and appreciated and should create new opportunities in the existing organization which ideally lines up with the newly acquired skills and better developed employees.
First of all, let us not forget that it was not employees who started the unbelievable lack of loyalty to their employers, it was the other was around. Call it right sizing, off-shoring, outsourcing, laying off…whatever you want. To me it is a lack of company loyalty and employees paying for bad business decisions made by employers. One of the fantastic changes that is coming out of this development, the genx ers and a lousy economy is that diversity, learning and development are really becoming important components of our compensations plans. This is fantastic.
To say that people would leave because they have no career opportunities is not a stretch at all, as a matter of fact, it is so obvious I am not sure why we call it a “finding in a study”. Aren’t the professional development programs designed to, among other things, provide new opportunities for growth within companies and organizations.
Furthermore, please let’s not forget that I can find studies that I would actually call “studies” that prove GenY ers are more motivated by learning and professional development that from Salary. They still will need opportunity for growth of course. That takes care of itself. The motivated GenX ers, while they are seeking work and life balance, will develop and market their growing value propositions to the existing companies. Employees who did not grow and develop and take advantage of company offerings will lose opportunity and attrition out. Wallah-growth opportunities for fully developed genx ers who are familiar with and comfortable with their changing and growing value proposition. Who benefits? The company, the employees, the customers, the vendors and the shareholders. Who loses? The companies that do not pay for learning and development and the employees too lazy to take advantage of these offerings.
It has been proven that professional development costs usually return something like 500% ROI. I guess that is only if you do NOT work at University of Iowa.
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http://www.thebirchgroup.com/the-birch-group-blog/?Tag=interviewing+techniques&Preview=true
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en
| 0.965029
| 578
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Simply closing the bee lab in Columbus was apparently not enough for the Ohio State University. The University has now decided to destroy the Historic Rothenbuler Lab located on the Ohio State University property in Columbus.
Dana Stahlman from the Ohio State Beekeepers Association is organizing a " Save the Building" project. Dr Tew is checking to see if he can place the building near the bee lab in Wooster. Meanwhile, a group of volunteers are organizing to remove the building from the OSU property to a location for safe keeping until a "New" home is found.
Funding is needed for this project and some clubs have already made their pledges. The purpose of the building relocation in Wooster will be to house the OSBA Queen Project activities.
Any monies donated and not used in the moving will be earmarked for the queen project from which we all benefit. All donations should be sent to OSBA Treasurer, Bob Hooker, 100 Pyle Rd, Oberlin, OH 44074, email firstname.lastname@example.org, ask Bob to "earmark" this for the bee lab relocation.
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Dozens of teenagers made their way to Waterloo Region council chambers to ask for funding for inReach, a street gang prevention program.
The project had been running off of federal grants.
Organizers believed they would have access to $800,000 in unspent grant money to help them transition to a new funding model, but were recently told they would not be able to use those funds.
The region was asked to provide some amount of money to show that there is interest in the program.
“Other potential funders would want to see a commitment from somebody. We need somebody to be first in the pool,”?said inReach project manager Rohan Thompson.
Councillors asked to see a business plan before making any financial commitments.
“I’m hoping that we can come up with some kind of workable solution,”?said Woolwich Mayor Todd Cowan.
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- About Blue Nile
- Contact Us
The Blue Nile Conflict-Free Diamond Policy
Blue Nile, along with the global diamond industry, has a zero-tolerance policy toward conflict diamonds. Through measures such as the Kimberley Process, which tracks diamonds from mine to market, the industry in partnership with the United Nations, governments, and non-governmental organizations, polices diamond exports to prevent the trade of illegal diamonds.
At Blue Nile, we only purchase diamonds through the largest and most respected suppliers who, like us, proudly adhere to and enforce the standards established by the Kimberley Process. All Blue Nile diamonds are warranted to be conflict free. If one of our suppliers was ever found to be in violation of that process, we would immediately sever that relationship. We will continue to support and promote any process that works to uphold legitimacy in the diamond trade.
Diamonds are mined throughout the world, including major mines in Australia, Africa, Russia and Canada. Diamonds are a major source of good in many African nations, employing and providing healthcare to thousands. For more information on this issue, please visit DiamondFacts.org.
About the Kimberley Process
Blue Nile supports the Kimberley process, which is an International process to track and certify diamonds. In April 2003, congress and President Bush passed a law adopting the Kimberley Process that requires all US diamond retailers to buy diamonds from manufacturers who have documentation warranting that the merchandise was obtained through legitimate channels. Today, the US Customs Service actively enforces the Kimberley Process requirements as diamonds enter American ports.
Concerning Zimbabwe Diamonds
Blue Nile is committed to ensuring that the highest ethical standards are observed when sourcing our diamonds and jewellery. Because of the reported human rights abuses in Zimbabwe's Marange diamond district, Blue Nile will not purchase or offer diamonds from that area. As a responsible member of the diamond and jewellery industry, we are working with our suppliers to ensure our consumers receive only the finest goods procured from ethical sources.
The Blue Nile Position on Responsible Mining
Across our business, Blue Nile observes the highest ethical standards. We insist our business partners do the same.
This extends to our gold sourcing. The issue of responsible mining is an important one and deserves our attention.
As a signatory of The Golden Rules, and as a first step, we will:
Blue Nile views its policy on responsible mining as an evolving standard. It commits to continuously review our position with the goal of expanding it over time to have the broadest possible impact.
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Like everyone else, you hope to remain physically and financially independent your entire life. And you may well achieve this goal. Nonetheless, the future is not ours to see, so you’ll want to prepare yourself for as many contingencies as possible — one of which is the high cost of long-term care.
As you may know, long-term care primarily refers to nursing home expenses, but it also includes services provided in your own home. In either case, though, it could be expensive.
The national average rate for a private room in a nursing home was more than $87,000 per year in 2011, according to the 2011 MetLife Market Survey of Long-Term Care Costs. The same survey found that the average private-pay hourly rates for home health aides and homemaker companion services were $21 and $19, respectively.
With luck, of course, you won’t need to worry about these types of expenses. But consider this: People who reach age 65 have a 40 percent chance of entering a nursing home, according to a study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. And about 10 percent of those who enter a nursing home will stay there five or more years.
Clearly, if you take no steps to prepare yourself for the potentially devastating costs of an extended nursing home stay, you could be jeopardizing the assets you’ve worked so hard to accumulate. Even worse, if you run through your money, you might end up creating a financial and emotional burden for your grown children.
Unfortunately, many people assume that a federal or state government program will help them pay for their long-term care expenses. However, Medicare pays only a small portion of nursing home costs, and to be eligible for Medicaid, you would likely have to divest yourself of most of your financial assets. Consequently, you’ll probably need to find another way to pay for long-term care.
Fortunately, there are investment or protection vehicles designed specifically to help you meet long-term care expenses. Your financial advisor can help you pick the option that’s most appropriate for your individual situation.
Having the ability to pay for long-term care is obviously important. But other issues may also enter the picture. For example, if you need to enter a nursing home, you may be suffering from a physical or mental disability that might prevent you from handling your own affairs.
This impairment could prove disastrous to your finances — which is why you can’t afford to take that type of chance. Instead, consult with your legal advisor to determine if you can benefit from a durable power of attorney — a document that lets you delegate your financial decisions to a relative, close friend or anyone else you might choose.
None of us like to think about spending time in a nursing home or needing round-the-clock care in our own homes. However, life is unpredictable. But even if you can’t avoid the need for long-term care, you can take steps to help reduce the financial strain it can cause you and your family.
• This article was written by Edward Jones for use by Ahwatukee Foothills Edward Jones Financial Advisor Kim DeVoss, CFP. Reach her at (480) 785-4751 or Kim.DeVoss@edwardjones.com.
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View Full Version : Chuojiao and Fanziquan
09-08-2000, 09:11 AM
Any of you northern folk know anything about these styles? For instance, are they still taught anywhere as fighting arts or are they just practiced as wushu routines these days? Are they considered more internal or external? What is the training regimen?
Do you think they are *effective* fighting arts?
09-09-2000, 08:43 PM
I went to Beijing once and met an excellent Chuojiao-Fanziquan teacher there. The style he practices is very traditional; that is, he emphasizes on the 'fighting' aspects of the style compared to the 'performing' aspects of the modern wushu version of Fanziquan. (I don't think they've ever created a modern wushu version of Chuojiao.) Anyway, if you've seen the modern wushu version of Tanglangquan, then you know how they exaggerate certain movements from the traditional version.
Chuojiao literally means 'poking the foot.' The Chuojiao-Fanzi teacher I met was certainly very fast and accurate in striking certain points on the lower leg when he demonstrated his kicks on me. Do you know how in some old Western movies where have cowboys shoot at the floor beside some poor fellow's feet to make him tap dance? Well, that's exactly how I felt when this teacher was kicking me. In a way, it's Chuojiao's method of breaking the opponent's 'root.' If you don't have rootedness, then it's difficult to issue power when defending or attacking.
Chuojiao-Fanzi is certainly an effective fighting system. It would most likely be considered an external system, but with internal elements combined. On the other hand, the internal/external classification of martial arts is difficult to define, so most people would probably disagree with me on this. Anyway, this Chuojiao teacher I met, certainly has external/internal qualities in his training and fighting.
BTW, practitioners in China practice Choujiao and Fanziquan as separately or combined depending on their lineage. There seems to have been some mixing between both systems. The teacher I met came from the Chuojiao-Fanziquan lineage and practiced the combined version. Do you know of the 'China's Living Treasures' video series? If you see the 'Open Hands Volume Set,' there is a renown Chuojiao teacher there demonstrating in that video.
My advice if you want to learn this system: Learn Chinese and then go to Beijing.
09-10-2000, 07:50 AM
Thanks for getting back with all that information :-)
Relocating to Beijing will have to remain a wistful dream, I'm afraid. Perhaps some students/teachers will turn up here and there as the popularity of the more eclectic martial arts continues to grow.
Where is the 'China's Living Treasures' series available? Might be worth a look in the meantime.
05-20-2005, 10:21 AM
I am currently learning the style from my instructor in Montréal. He learnt it in China from a Master who learnt it from his uncle etc. The style is definitely straightforward and it is taught to me as a Kung Fu style, not Wushu, even though my instructor also teaches Wushu (in a different course). What we are learning is techniques, a lot of techniques, and a couple forms. I had learnt Kung Fu styles in the past but I don't think I ever learnt something as results-oriented. The movements look simple at first but they are very subtle and it takes a long time to master some apparently quite basic techniques. I would say it is half internal and half external as we are also trained in chikung and some of the mechanics are similar to what one could find in Chen Tai Chi for example. I am french speaking and we translate the name of the style as "Les huit poings éclairs" (I guess you can liberally translate this as "8 fists of Lightning"). As far as I know, "Fanziquan" is the modern name for the style, the ancient names being "Bafanquan" and "Bashanfan". I really like the style. Let me know if you need any more info.
05-20-2005, 03:11 PM
traditional Bashanfan, also known as Wen Tang Fanzi (Civil Route), is definitely a great combative system. In some ways, it's quite similar to Classical Tanglang IMHO. Chuo jiao is sometimes known as Wu Tang Fanzi (Martial Route) which has Ditang (ground skill) as well. I highly recommend them.
05-21-2005, 06:49 AM
Chuojiaomen is my most favoured system. It is a very effective and complete martial system with a unique methdology and power generating methods. From Liuhegen and Jinggangchui basic sets to the series of Wu and Wen tangzi followed by the more advanced sets (including Meihualuodi(Ditan), Bapan etc. Each brings a unique and complementary facet of skill to the arsenal of the practitioner.
Chuojiao and Fanzi have been interlaced late 19th century and is very popular in China at its original place of propagation : Baoding are of Hebei (Including Raoyang County, Li County, Jinning and Gaoyang county). It also has to branches known as the Beijing (taken by Wu binlou orignally from the Wei family lineage of Li County) and Dongbei (From Hao Mingjiu and Hu Fengsan of the Duan Family Lineage in Raoyang County).
Stemming from Wen family boxing in theory, they are considered unique in that are neither internal nor external. The content is really quite beyond any popular system and it is a shame that few practitioners had been exposed to the whole piece. As examples most only would have learnt Wu tangzi, few Wen tangzi and even fewer the advanced components including the dantien rotations and power releasing methods, which at times have a close similarity to the xinyiliuhe methods.
To learn authentic chuojiao I would suggest seeking practitioners from the districts/county above or a practioner with such an deep comprehension of this most traditional and often underestimated martial art.
Wu Chan Long.
05-26-2005, 10:08 AM
"dantien rotations and power releasing methods, which at times have a close similarity to the xinyiliuhe methods"
What is very interesting about this statement, and something no one has done any research about, is that supposedly during the Sung Dynasty, Monk Zhou Tong practiced what amounted to Chuo Jiao/Fantzi and he was Yueh Fei's teacher (and others) and what they eventually passed on was called Yueh Fei Jia Quan.
Eventually, this art reached Henan province, via the decendents of one of Yueh Fei's army officers, and eventually the Dai Long Beng and one of his sons learned this Yueh Fei Jia Quan when he was in Henan where he owned an inn,
and he incoporated the "dantien rotations and power releasing methods, which at times have a close similarity to the xinyiliuhe methods" into his Xin Yi Liu He Quan.
Another thing never researched is that Henan Xin Yi Liu He Quan shares a number of moves in their forms with those also found in Fantzi/Chuo Jiao.
Some of the moves are foundational moves.
05-26-2005, 01:10 PM
...just last night at practice, Master Sun Wenyuan was showing me some Chuo Jiao and Fanzi. I've always loved Chuo Jiao - great sneaky leg work, like in-fighting kicks to your opponent's feet. Chuo Jiao was a foundation style for a Shaolin monk friend of mine, Shi Xinghao, and he's showed me some of the combos. As for Fanzi, Fanzi not only influenced Eagle Claw, but also modern wushu, so there's a flamboyant wushu version of Fanzi, as well as a more traditional 'fighting' version. Good stuff. Great styles. I'd love to see more research come out on both systems.
1'st post, so forgive me if it's moofed up!
Chuojiao is a foot style/method of martial art (traditional wushu). I also know it as Mandarin duck leg.
I did find a link with nice information and even some form/routine images at:
Hope this helps.
vBulletin® v3.8.7, Copyright ©2000-2013, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
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"Woodstock changed my life!" I've heard that phrase a lot lately--from folks who worked at the storied 1969 festival to musicians who played on its massive 75-foot stage to some of the hundreds of thousands who journeyed to rural Bethel, N.Y., that weekend of Aug. 15-18. I've even heard it from fans--like me--who only experienced it vicariously by watching the Oscar-winning 1970 documentary, Woodstock. The Woodstock Music and Art Fair made massive headlines 40 years ago, and now this summer it has returned once again to our consciousness.
Appearing at bookstores and arts conferences with Michael Lang, one of the festivalss producers with whom I wrote the new book The Road to Woodstock, I get to listen to people pour out their hearts about what the festival means to them. Those who made it to Woodstock get a faraway look, and they reminisce about hearing Richie Havens kick off the weekend on Friday afternoon or being swept away by Sly & the Family Stones funk groove late Saturday night. They remember sharing food or a toke, or laugh about maneuvering the crowded roads on a bicycle or sliding in the mud. For these people, Woodstock means membership in a community of veterans of a once-in-a-lifetime gathering.
Some were about my age that summer of '69--12 or 13 years old--and couldn't travel to Max Yasgur's dairy farm in the Catskill Mountains. Others complain that their parents wouldn't let them go, or that they got stuck in the massive traffic jam that ultimately closed the New York State Thruway for a time. Many who couldn't be there feel solidarity with those who were--and I think we all ache to hear the stories of what we missed. Lang has said, "What means the most to me is the connection to one another felt by all of us who worked on the festival, all those who came to it, and the millions who couldn't be there but were touched by it."
But what does Woodstock mean to the rest of us, those who have listened to the music, watched the film and witnessed the anniversary's proliferation of Woodstock-related merchandise--from limited-edition photographs to beach towels? Rolling Stone, in a 2004 special issue The 50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock & Roll, pointed out that "Woodstock pulled off the ultimate magic act of the 1960s: turning utter rain-soaked chaos into the greatest rock festival ever and the decade's most famous and successful experiment in peace and community." That it happened once gives hope that such events can happen again.
It does seem a miracle now that so many people came together under pretty primitive conditions, deluged by rain and short on food, yet peacefully coexisted. You can also see the beginning of things that today we take for granted: The Hog Farm commune, who helped organize the campgrounds and operate the free kitchens and bad-trip tents, helped introduce yoga and granola to the masses. The biggest political message was for peace, as the Vietnam War continued under President Richard Nixons command, but early environmental activism and animal-rights initiatives were also present at Woodstock.
"We realized we had the numbers," one festival-goer, then 16, told me. The whole world witnessed the youth of America becoming a voice for change; more cynically, marketers latched onto a new demographic that wanted to look and do things differently than the previous generation.
Way before the Internet, the underground press helped to spread the word about the festival and draw people there from all over the country, when it was rare for people to travel thousands of miles to attend a music event. Deadheads (who turned Grateful Dead tours into roving Woodstocks), todays followers of jam bands, and fests like Bonnaroo definitely were inspired by Woodstock.
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Get News & Views Updates
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Today's Top News
Judges Are Heroes in Pakistan
The heroes in today's Pakistan are not the returning former Prime Ministers-Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif-but the Supreme Court and High Court judges who refused to accept General Musharraf's emergency law putting the Constitution in abeyance. When asked to take a new oath pledging to uphold his "Provisional Constitutional Order," they simply said no. While politicians Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif are making deals with Musharraf to get back into power, these judges are putting principle over power. They may have lost their seats on the bench, but they have won the hearts of millions of Pakistanis.
I got to see a manifestation of this by accompanying a group of activists in Karachi to the home of one of the Sindh High Court Judges, Sarmad Jalal Osmany. The judge was having a dinner party for his colleagues who had also refused to take the oath.
Arriving at the judge's home, the activists--an odd assortment of students, small businessmen, accountants, and journalists--ceremoniously carpeted the entrance with rose petals. Armed with bouquets of flowers, they crammed into the judge's living room. One by one, as the judges arrived, the group gave them a standing ovation. In all, thirteen judges appeared. "It was thrilling to be in their presence," said journalist Nadira Sheralam. "We are so used to a tarnished image of judges throughout our history who have sold out to military regimes and corrupt governments. Here was a group of judges who were putting the interest of the nation above their self interest. I couldn't believe my eyes."
The flowers, each with the name of a particular judge, were accompanied by a letter from the students at the prestigious LUMS management school in Lahore. A recent graduate had flown in from Lahore to Karachi just for the occasion. The activists wiped tears from their eyes as they watched the young lawyer paying homage to the sacrifice of his elders and read the moving letter that ended with a tribute: "For your courage and resolve, for your steadfastness, for your selflessness, we salute you. For carrying on the struggle and showing all of Pakistan what a principled stand really means, we congratulate you. For giving us this glimmer of hope, this tangible inspiration, this possibility of change, we thank you."
The activists said that in their homage to the judges, they were representing the sentiment of the majority of Pakistanis. "Even the flower vendor where we bought the bouquets was moved," journalist Beena Sarwar told the judges. When he found out who the flowers were for, he insisted on sending a bouquet himself, 'with love to the judges.'"
The group spent about an hour chatting with the judges, with much laughter and good-hearted banter. It was a rare scene, since judges normally lead very secluded lives because of the nature of their work. They told stories about being put under house arrest after the emergency law was declared on November 3. And they talked with pride about the fact that most of the judges-at both the Supreme Court and the provincial Sindh High Court-refused to take the oath. At the Supreme Court, only 5 of the 17 judges went along with Musharraf's emergency measures.
With the future uncertain, the judges have no idea whether they will ever be able to retake their positions. But the goal of the legal community and their supporters is to pressure the government to restore the Constitution and reinstate the Judiciary.
"Restoring the Constitution and reinstating these judges to the highest courts in the land is more important than elections," said attorney Tammy Haque. "An independent judiciary is the basis for a democratic state. Without it, you can have all the elections you want, but you won't have a democracy."
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We, along with everyone else on the internet and in the publishing world, just can't stop talking about Julia Child! This past Wednesday would have been her 100th birthday, and in honor of that, Architectural Digest reprinted an essay Julia wrote for their July/August 1976 issue. It's mostly about the design of her kitchen, which makes it a particularly lovely read. Jump below for an excerpt:
In the summer of 1961 Julia and Paul Child moved into the Cambridge, Massachusetts home where they would live for the next few decades. The house was in good overall shape, she writes, but the kitchen ("the beating heart and social center of the household") needed a few minor renovations to "make it both practical and beautiful, a working laboratory as well as a living and dining room." In the essay she writes about the initial design of her kitchen, as well as the origins of her now-iconic pegboard system:
Since we rejoice in the shapes of tools, cooking utensils become decorative objects, all carefully orchestrated by Paul from pots and pot lids to skillets, trivets and flan rings. Even the knives are graduated according to shape and size on vertical magnetic holders. Glass measures and earthenware pitchers are hung just so, while scissors hang in harmony with olive pitters, bottle openers and nut-crackers. We have a bookcase for dictionaries, atlases and bird lore, and paintings by friends. A painted artichoke lives over the wall ovens and a painting of eggs is over the refrigerator. A painted valentine is glued to its door, along with Paul's colorful photographs of a boeuf daube en gelée, a pâté en croûte and a string of sausages.
She ends the essay with a few thoughts on what she'd do differently if she were ever to design another kitchen. (Make sure to note her thoughts on the dining room!)
Read More: AD Revisits: Julia Child
(Image: Richard Champion/Architectural Digest)
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The California Supreme Court upheld the voter-passed marriage amendment, Tuesday, even as it ruled that the tens of thousands of gay marriages performed last year will remain valid.
The justices rejected the agument that the amendment, known as Proposition 8, revised California constitution's equal protection clause so much that it needed the Legislature's approval.
Click play to watch CBN News coverage with reporter Efrem Graham, followed by comments from Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council.
Since last year, supporters and opponents of gay marriage in California have found themselves on a roller coaster ride.
Last May, the state's high court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage, despite a pending vote on a constitutaional amendment that limited marriage to a man and a woman. Gay couples across the state began to marry the following month.
But in November, voters passed the marriage amendment by a narrow margin. Because Proposition 8 defined marriage as only between one man and one woman, it effectively banned gay marriage.
Supporters on both sides of Prop 8 spent a combined $80 million, making it the country's most expensive ballot measure on a social issue ever.
"We've had a lot of support from people outside the state, as has the other side, because everyone recognizes the huge cultural influence that California has on our country and our country throughout the world," Bishop Salvatore Cordileone, with the Catholic Diocese of Oakland, said.
That influence is what makes today's decision so big.
Gay rights supporters had hoped momentum is on their side, after recent victories in Iowa, Maine, and Vermont. They're planning marches across California tonight to protest the ruling.
But Prop 8 supporters were cautiously optimistic. In March, the court's hearing on the issue showed the justices' skepticism towards the Prop 8 challenge.
"The court seemed to indicate that the position put forth by the challengers of Prop 8 was a radical legal position that they were not going to adopt," Jim Campbell, with the Alliance Defense Fund, said.
Supporters for gay marriage say they won't give up. They'll appeal via the ballot box as early as next year.
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U.S. economic growth slowed in the first quarter as businesses cut back on investment and restocked shelves at a slower pace, but stronger demand for automobiles softened the blow.
Gross domestic product expanded at a 2.2 percent annual rate, the Commerce Department said Friday in its advance estimate, moderating from the fourth quarter's 3 percent rate.
While that was below economists' expectations for a 2.5 percent pace, a surge in consumer spending took some of the sting from the report and growth was still stronger than analysts' predictions early in the quarter for an expansion below 1.5 percent, Reuters reported.
Although the details were mixed, the GDP report offered a somewhat better picture compared with the fourth quarter, when inventory building accounted for nearly two thirds of the economy's growth. In the first quarter, demand from consumers took up the slack.
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Catterick Garrison history website launched
A WEBSITE has been set up to mark the history and upcoming milestone of the largest military garrison in Europe.
The Catterick Garrison Centenary and History Group launched the site today (Monday, January 7) in preparation of the 2014 centenary.
The group, which has been together for a year, currently holds more than 700 pictures from throughout the history of the garrison which will be uploaded onto the site over the coming weeks with accompanying information.
The group also has a You Tube channel, Catterick Camp History, with films from the early 1960s about camp life, and is working towards adding interviews with Catterick residents and former and current personnel.
Group founder and chairman Peter Fowler said: “The launch was a fantastic success, but we are still looking for memories and photos from Catterick to add to our collection.”
Photographs on the site date back to the construction of the camp in 1914, with the original concept for a temporary camp to accommodate two complete divisions – 40,000 men in 2,000 huts.
The website also includes a timeline of events from the opening of the garrison, recording royal visits and changes at the camp.
Members of the history group are appealing for assistance from serving and former personnel, ex-Ministry of Defence employees and members of the public, for memories and photographs of Catterick Garrison throughout the ages.
There will be mobile exhibition of many of the photographs on Saturday, (January 12) from 2pm at Scotton Social Club.
Information can be passed via the website or by calling Mr Fowler on 07854-246693.
Proceeds from the website will be donated to service charities.
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In a recent presentation in Orlando, Christopher Thornberg noted the likelihood of a double dip in 2011. Thornberg famously predicted the real estate bubble, disastrous downturn in California and the high probability of recession in 2008. He is a former economist at UCLA and currently works at Beacon Economics, the firm he founded. I relied heavily on Thornberg’s analysis in helping to side-step the housing debacle and I have found his research to be not only straight forward, but well reasoned.
Thornberg says the economic recovery is mostly government induced and could lead to a double dip as the government steps aside and attempts to hand over the baton to the private sector. In the presentation Thornberg noted the continuing concerns:
- The bad news: we haven’t completely fixed the problems, instead the economy is being driven by government policy
- The worse news: government policy is causing its own set of problems: namely public debt and the potential for inflation
Thornberg says 2010 is likely to be a good year for the economy, but as the stimulus wears off the true colors of the private sector will shine through and result in a double dip. On the bright side, Thornberg notes that export growth is likely to remain strong and businesses are well positioned. Unfortunately, in the long-run, he says the following 7 negatives are likely to outweigh the few positives:
- Consumer weakness will likely continue
- Businesses are a wild card
- Housing bounce won’t last
- Banks not out of the woods yet
- Commercial trouble to continue
- Significant chance of a double dip
- Higher Rates coming down the pike
You can see the entire presentation here.
Source: Beacon Economics
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Something that has been present in technology companies for a long time is the “me too” mentality. Company A will come up with an ingenius way to solve a problem that the public has had for a long time. They sell their solution like mad, their stock goes up, their brand becomes a household name, and life will be grand for them. Company B sees this and looks at it like a shortcut to success. They proclaim, “Me too!” and begin offering an almost identical product or solution, brand it a bit differently, and act like they’ve just completely changed what Company A created.
We see this in several industries, but the technology industry is currently the front runner for it, specifically when talking about the “Cloud.” Many companies are shouting, “Me too! I’ve got a cloud too!” and haven’t really defined within the company what “Cloud” means to them. That’s not what Data Cave wants to do.
We want to think differently about how we can best solve a common problem that enterprises and small businesses have. We are working on a solution that we think is pretty neat and well defined within our company. This stuff is our life, it’s our passion, and it’s going to be a great help to a large variety of businesses.
A bit of our secret sauce is no secret at all. Our engineers are working hard with OpenStack, creating one of the best, most stable, and fastest back ends in the industry today. Enormous companies like Netflix, Comcast (in their new X1 Platform), PayPal, and Cisco WebEx are utilizing OpenStack and believe it is the future to centralized computing. We agree, and we’re going to learn everything we can about it to bring it to our customers as part of a package that will work so well, you’ll not even know it’s there.
We can’t wait to show you what we’ve got cooking. We think you’re really going like it.
How to Achieve Security in a Data Center
In the “A” installment of our data center dictionary series, we will cover security and access control. Your most valuable IT assets need to be protected and kept behind several layers of diverse security measures. In a data center, we call these levels of protection access control.
What is Access Control?
An access control system is the method of authorization to enforce selective access to a secure location. There are different types of access control systems, but to securely shield your IT infrastructure, security measures should include physical access control and network security.
Data center security measures cover four different layers:
- External perimeter security
- Interior facility controls
- Room controls
- Server cabinet controls
External Perimeter Security
The perimeter security layer protects physical security of the building. A data center with strong access control should have barriers to deter unwanted vehicles and people from entering the property. The location should promote security.
- Does the data center have fences and landscaping to limit access to and visibility of the facility?
- Does the building have a single, limited entry point onto the property?
- Are there surveillance cameras outside the building to monitor activity?
- Is the facility at least 100 feet away from a main road?
- If you need colocation, is the facility at least 20 miles from your headquarters? If you need disaster recovery, is the data center at least 50 miles away?
- Is the facility safe for personnel at all hours of the day?
Internal Facility Controls
Internal security measures are equally as important as exterior security controls. These allow for protection from those who are able to enter the building.
- Are security cameras positioned at all access points around the facility to record activity?
- Does the facility require ID verification for entry?
- Do doors require key card scans for entry?
- Is there biometric scanning at various points?
- Are visitors without authorized access escorted at all times?
- Are critical components like power and network cabling out of reach? And air conditioners, Power Distribution Units and critical supporting infrastructure in secure maintenance areas?
The next layer of access control covers the rooms in which your servers are housed. At Data Cave, we abandoned the less secure, traditional, open floor layout for a more secure floor plan with data suites.
- Does the data center have one server room or several individual data suites with controlled access?
- Are there additional entry requirements for each server cage or room?
- Is access restricted to a specific group of people?
- Are there at least three different ways to authenticate access, like PIN number/password, key/card access, biometric scanner?
The most granular level of security is at the cabinet level. These security measures lock servers, provide protection within the server rooms, and minimize any potential inside threats, malicious, accidental, or otherwise.
- Is access to all server cabinets limited and restricted to authorized personnel?
- Are there reliable electronic locking systems in place?
- Is traffic to cages, suites and cabinets video recorded, logged and periodically reviewed?
Access Control at Data Cave
As a purpose-built, privately owned data center, Data Cave maintains state-of-the-art access control. We have a door controller system, an IP-based system of security cameras, required biometric hand scans, entrance and exit reporting, restricted suite access, and a visual “muster” screen to see who is present in the building at all times. Want to learn more about Data Cave’s security and access control? Read more here.
Be sure to check out the rest of the Data Center Dictionary series:
Over the past few weeks, we have covered some basics, or A, B, C’s, of data centers in our Data Center Dictionary series.
Access Control (coming soon)
Today, we’re going to cover Business Continuity.
What is Business Continuity?
Business continuity encompasses the activities required to keep your organization running during a period of displacement or interruption of normal operation. It provides a complete answer to the question, “What would you do in a crisis?”
Many confuse disaster recovery with business continuity. But the two differ. Disaster recovery focuses on the technology component of a crisis. How will your systems operate? What happens to your servers when the power goes out?
Conversely, business continuity covers all business functions. Where will your employees work when if you lose internet access or phones or worse yet, your facility is damaged by a storm or fire? How will you quickly resume operations?
Some companies have business continuity plans that are not complete. In fact, 23% of big companies do not include their entire supply chain in their business-continuity plan. An incomplete business continuity plan is detrimental to continued operations after a disaster.
Why is Business Continuity Important?
When a disaster occurs, typical business operations are disrupted, and this affects the bottom line through
- Lost revenues
- Additional expenses
- Costly inefficiencies
A business continuity plan could be the difference between life and death—of your business, not to mention leaving your staff unemployed or unpaid during and after a disaster. The Millersville University Center for Disaster Research and Education reported 40 percent of businesses that do not have a business continuity plan fail after a major disaster.
How to Create Your Business Continuity Plan
At a high level, we recommend using the 6 A’s of business continuity.
- Assess – conduct a basic risk assessment
- Analyze – itemize potential risks and scenarios
- Arrange – document your contingency plans for the scenarios you analyzed
- Act – put your plan into action
- Align – measure and review the plan on a regular basis
- Adjust – adapt the plan to bolster your BC plan
Contact Data Cave today to begin preparing your business continuity plan and learn more about our business continuity options.
As more and more of everyday life moves toward the internet, I find myself looking for ways to make my internet browser flow more smoothly. I have been back and forth with browsers, trying to choose the one I love the most. I have landed on Google Chrome for the time being. It isn’t quite as smooth as Safari on my Mac, but I can forgive that due to the expanse of other things it does for me.
There are a lot of reasons I currently enjoy Chrome: the way the tabs work, the syncing features, the speed, the consistency. But I’d like to focus on the extensions I use. I use several (probably no where near close to the number that a super user might) and they help me get the things done that I like to do on the internet.
I probably wouldn’t get along on the internet without Agile Software’s 1Password app. It’s a great password keeper, generator, and with the browser extension it will auto fill for you too! I use the extension to autofill things for me and to be able to generate passwords on the fly. It’s a sweet addition to the full app.
Adblock is an ad blocker extension that will block almost any ad on any website. It’s awesome because once you use it for a while, you forget it’s there. Then when you use someone’s computer that doesn’t have it you see all sorts of annoying adds that attempt to get your attention or distract you from the content you really want to see. Some websites request you turn it off to browse them, Hulu for example, because they make their money from advertisements. But living without this extension is something I just don’t want to do.
I use the bitly extension to shorten and track links I send out on the various social media avenues. Bitly is cool because it will keep track of other people shortening the same link and tell you about the overall clicks for that URL.
Buffer is like a bitly and social media poster in one. I can schedule tweets or statuses and track how well or poorly they do.
Chrome YouTube Downloader
This is a sweet extension. This puts a little box on a YouTube page that will let you download the video or just audio and keep it for your very own. I believe it only works on things that are free to the public, so you can grab all the freebies your heart desires. I use it when I find a live recording of a great song and want to stick it in my Dropbox and play it later in the car or something of that nature.
DuckDuckGo for Chrome
I don’t really utilize this as much as I should, but DuckDuckGo is a competitor to Google’s Search so I feel like I’m sticking it to the man when I have the extension installed in Google Chrome. DuckDuckGo supposedly doesn’t track a thing you do and you’d get better searches with more depth (outside of your bubble, they call it) when you use them for search.
An invaluable extension, FlashBlock blocks the flash plugin until you need it. Flash is very insecure so having it shutdown until you manually tell it to run is a great idea. You can also whitelist websites and even choose to use HTML5 in some cases to view your web video.
Foxy Proxy Standard
We use this to function as a quick proxy on/off for when we need to get into our work network from the outside world. It is very customizable and has proved very useful in doing exactly what we need it for.
Ghostery is awesome! It not only tells you what trackers a website has when you visit it, but it will also block those trackers. I used it for quite some time before I realized it could do the blocking thing. Now I LOVE it.
This extension rivals Safari’s “reader” function. It basically takes the content you’d like to read on the webpage and puts it in an article type format with no distraction around it.
Pocket was formally “Read it Later” and is basically a service to put links in a database for an app that you can later go to when you have time and read the articles you’ve saved. With the extension installed, “pocketing” something is just a click away.
Prowl is a Mac/iOS app that allows you to trigger various events and get notifications about certain things. I use the extension to send a link quickly from my desktop browser to my iPhone.
If you don’t know what this is, then I won’t take you down the rabbit hole. This is an enhancement for the website reddit.com.
The Camelizer extension has already paid for itself. Well, it was FREE, but it tells you on various shopping pages what the price of the item you’re viewing has been in the past. This allows you to see if it’s going to come back down or if it is a great time to buy it. It was VERY useful when the price of hard drives shot up after the floods in Asia.
When I see a cool font on a webpage I like to find out what it is to see if I am able to use it later on a Data Cave webpage or when I develop webpages for other clients. WhatFont’s extension allows me to click a button, mouse over a font, and it will tell me as much information as it can with a popup.
There are most of my extensions. I use some of them often and some I use rarely, but they have all proven useful at one point or another. I’m always looking for great ways to make my browsing the Internet more fun and safe and I’m always open to suggestions. I hope this at least gets one’s mind thinking outside the standard browser box and opens the mind to the world of browser extensions.
It’s usually common sense that liquids and electronics don’t mix. But no matter how careful we are and think it won’t happen to us, accidents do indeed happen, and they tend to happen to some (like myself) a little more often than we’d like.
I, Kara Manon, am a grade A klutz.
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve tripped, spilled things, sprained something, etc. I seem to, however, have amazingly good luck with electronics, despite my best efforts. A couple of months ago, I was folding laundry and found my brand new Fitbit still attached to my jeans. Jeans that had gone through both the washer and the dryer. Oops. While the Fitbit Ultra is (supposedly) nowhere near waterproof, it still worked like a charm! It’s a technological miracle.
You’ve seen me rave about my Macbook Pro which I am still completely in love with (as long as the rainbow pinwheel of death stays away). But last week, I had a close call. I was sitting in the NOC at Data Cave, chatting with my fellow colleagues about something important I’m sure, when near tragedy struck. I knocked my cup of coffee over, directly onto my Macbook keyboard. I reacted with, what I can only describe as cheetah-like speed, and lifted it up while turning it over to let the coffee pour off into a giant ominous puddle of coffee on my desk.
Patrick quickly grabbed some paper towels and started soaking it up while I stood there holding my dripping computer in the air. Finally, I was able to put it down and pat it off. I used a can of compressed air to blow the remaining coffee out from under my keys.
Guess what? Still works and there have been zero issues. In fact, my computer smells like a terrific roast of Green Mountain Southern Pecan coffee. But now, I promise, I will never have an open cup of anything near any sort of computer in the future because it isn’t possible that I will continue to remain that lucky.
So, what is the moral of the story?
1) Obviously, be careful! If you know your weaknesses – like my clumsiness – make precautions accordingly by using things like lids (sippy cups, if necessary) or keyboard covers.
2) Know your backup plan. If all of that coffee had leaked down into my hard drive, what would I have done? Honestly, I don’t know that I’m fully prepared for that (at least not mentally). Of course all of my documents are backed up through Data Cave’s offsite backup program which definitely keeps any hardware loss from being catastrophic. One perk of Apple products is that the App Store, which will tell me what apps I’ve downloaded/purchased saving time if I have to set up a new computer. I also use 1Password so I don’t have to worry about browser saved passwords.
But, any kind catastrophes has the potential to be detrimental. So.. think fast! What is your course of action if a cup of coffee ruins your computer? Or worse, if a storm floods your business? Are you backed up? Do you even know all the files and applications that are on your computers or servers? Maybe we should talk.
Feel free to share your almost disasters, full on catastrophes, and/or disaster recovery plans in the comments.
Next Page »
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Home » Opinion » Editorials
Shaheen's approach: More treatment, fewer 'assault' guns
Three days after the unspeakable tragedy in Newtown, Conn., Sen Jeanne Shaheen, the senior senator from the pro-gun state of New Hampshire, proclaimed that the federal government must "get deadly assault weapons off our streets." Oh, boy.
To her credit, Shaheen has not been reflexively anti-gun in the Senate. In 2009 she voted to allow firearms in national parks. And on Monday she indicated that she did not view the problem as entirely gun-related. "We need a comprehensive approach that includes improving access to mental health services, better enforcement of our current laws, and we need to get deadly assault weapons off our streets," she said.
Her first point is an immensely important one. According to a review by the left-wing Mother Jones magazine, 38 of 61 mass-shooting perpetrators in the last three decades had some sort of mental illness. The most horrifying mass shootings in the United States in recent memory - Newtown, Aurora, Tucson, Columbine - all involved shooters with histories of mental problems.
Shaheen has long advocated expanded insurance coverage for mental illness. When she was a state senator she sponsored a bill requiring insurers to cover certain mental health issues, and she signed a law expanding such coverage when she was governor. She brings a lot of experience on this issue that might be useful in the Senate.
However, her statement about assault weapons is concerning. "Asssault weapon" is a term defined many different ways by many different people. If it means "automatic weapon," the federal government bans those made after 1986 already. If it means "semi-automatic" weapon, that would include every firearm that does not require manual cocking or reloading after every shot.
Politicians and anti-gun activists often use vague terms like "assault weapon" to stigmatize broad categories of guns or to hide their own ignorance about firearms. Shaheen needs to clarify what she means by "assault weapons," how she would propose removing them from "our streets," and why she thinks doing so would reduce mass killings.
READER COMMENTS: 11
- Another View -- Glenn Normandeau: Protecting endangered non-game species a NH success story - 1
- Charles Krauthammer: Redacted truth, subjunctive outrage - 0
- David Harsanyi: Get the IRS out of the speech business altogether - 9
- Another View -- Ryan Gallagher: The U.S. government spies on reporters all too frequently - 4
- John Stossel: Who has true grit anymore? - 0
- Another View: New Hampshire would take a risky bet on casinos - 6
- Ramesh Ponnuru: In flextime fight, liberals play to their stereotype - 0
- Jonah Goldberg: Benghazi's smoking guns - 1
- Another View: Nashua does need to conduct its own review of commuter rail - 1
READER COMMENTS: 3
- Two sustained minor injuries in Rochester crash Sunday - 0
- Boat crash in Tuftonboro investigated - 0
- Manchester alderman urges review of police phone use - 12
- Updated: Man fatally shot on Manchester street; neighbors shocked - 0
- Nashua mayor to recommend Bennett for corporation counsel - 0
- Claremont group disputes incinerator plant's permit - 0
- Goffstown artisan gives new face to Wolfeboro tower - 0
- Katie McQuaid's Scene in Manchester: Kiwanis and the kids - 0
- Town may have to fix grave error - 2
Town may have to fix grave error
UNH hires firm to redesign one of its logos
Disengaged: Obama's lousy excuse
Chechen decries Boston attack
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When I consider the past few years I’ve
spent at the University of North Florida, I think about an inclusive and caring
environment where students are free to be themselves and create a path toward
what they want to do in life.
means a lot to me, considering the tough experiences I had growing up as a
Muslim in America in the shadow of the terror attacks Sept. 11. Acceptance was
something that was often lacking in my early school years. At 9
years old, I didn’t even know what a terrorist was, but insults and threats were
still directed my way by classmates. That treatment became so difficult to bear
that I transferred to an Islamic school soon after. I started wearing the
traditional head covering, or hijab, while I was there, but I still encountered
discrimination from people in the community.
At UNF, I’ve never experienced any of
that negative treatment. I’ve always felt like a welcomed member of the campus
community. From my professors to my fellow students, everyone has been
supportive and respectful. It’s the perfect environment for me, and I’m glad I
had the opportunity to further my education here. However, college didn’t
always seem like a definite.
My mother wasn’t able to pay for me to go
to college, so it was unclear if I’d be able to afford getting a degree without
going into serious debt. But UNF and The Jacksonville Commitment scholarship fund
were there to ensure I could attain my higher education goals without taking
out big loans.
Any of the other state schools I applied
to would have left me in debt. UNF, on the other hand, provided for my
education. My decision was even easier to make since UNF was my first choice thanks
to the busy and beautiful campus.
Looking back, my decision seems even
smarter because of all the amazing hands-on learning opportunities I’ve had with
different causes, clubs and organizations. My high school experience wasn’t
filled with many extracurriculars because I was always working jobs after
school to bring money home. But at UNF,
I wanted to get involved as much as possible and leave an on-campus legacy. I’m
a member of the Pre-Law Student Society, I worked to bring back the Muslim
Student Association and have served on a number of campus-wide advisory
committees. Out of all of my experiences, working with Student Government has
been my favorite activity on campus. I’ve been able to help allocate funds for
clubs and campus groups and help positively impact the community.
My plan is to graduate in four years while
raising my GPA enough that I would have a shot at being accepted into Harvard
University for law school. That’s a goal that I never would have even allowed
myself to consider a few years ago. My time at UNF has helped greatly in building
up my confidence and my belief in myself. All of my extracurricular activities
have shown me that I can have a big impact on my surroundings and truly make a
difference in the lives of others.
When I was first getting accustomed to
the college environment, I often thought of a lesson my mother taught me when I
was younger. She said “never leave a situation in a worse state than when you
found it.” I took that saying to heart, and I’ve worked to leave a positive
impact on campus. Whether that’s through my work with Student Government or the
time I put in to bringing back the Muslim Student Association, I can say that
I’ll leave behind a part of myself at UNF when I graduate. And UNF is the kind
of school where a student can gain valuable experiences and come into their own
as a person. That’s what it’s all about.
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I like saving energy. Especially my own.
That's why I love tips that don't require a lot of effort but still help me trim my energy bills. They may not make a big difference individually, but even baby steps add up to some pretty big strides.
Here are 10 things you can do right now to cut down on your heating and power costs. And you won't break the bank or much of a sweat.
1. Lock the windows.
Even when a window is closed, a little space remains between the sashes where air can leak in. Simply locking the window pulls the sashes tightly together.
Many appliances, electronics and other electrical devices - even cellphone chargers - draw power even when they're turned off. Unplugging them when they're not in use eliminates this vampire power drain.
Granted, that's not always easy or even possible to do. But where it's practical, you can plug more than one device - say, your TV and DVD player - into an accessible power strip. With the flip of just the strip's power switch, you cut the power to everything plugged into it.
3. Wash in cold.
If you're used to washing with warm water, you can probably switch to cold without noticing a difference. And no matter what temperature you wash your clothes in, you can always rinse in cold.
You'll save on the energy that would have gone into heating the water.
There's a bonus: Cold water saves wear on your clothes, so they'll last longer. Or at least they'll be in better shape to donate to charity when you just have to replace them with this season's new fashions.
I wouldn't suggest abandoning hot-water washes altogether, though. I'd still use hot for towels, bedding, underwear and laundry with oily stains.
Want to save even more? Skip the dryer and hang the clothes to dry.
4. Dim the lights. A dimmer works by reducing the power flowing to a lamp or light fixture. If you don't need full brightness, turn the lights down a little.
Maybe I should do that with the lights over my bathroom mirror.
One note: Not all compact fluorescent bulbs work with dimmers. If you use CFLs, check the package to make sure you're buying the dimmable kind.
Oh, and take Dad's advice: Turn off any lights you don't need.
5. Turn off the computer.
When you're done surfing the Net and updating your Facebook status for the day, shut down your computer. Better still, activate its system standby or hibernating feature to save power when the computer is on during the day.
Of course, you don't want to turn off the computer if you've scheduled automatic maintenance checks that happen at night.
6. Rearrange the furniture.
A forced-air system works best when air can flow freely from registers and into cold-air returns.
Make sure your furniture isn't blocking these vents.
The same thing applies to radiators. If you block them with furniture, you block their heat.
7. Change the furnace filter.
The filter's primary purpose is to trap dust and other gunk before it gets to the furnace. Dirty filters impede air flow, causing the furnace blower to work longer.
Dirty parts also wear out faster. By keeping them clean, you'll cut down on furnace-repair costs and reduce the chance of a furnace failure - which, of course, always happens on the coldest day of the year.
Change the filter monthly, or clean it if it's a reusable type.
8. Turn down the tank.
For most homes, a setting of 120 degrees is plenty hot for a water heater. The only exception is if you have a dishwasher without a booster heater.
Check the user manual to find out whether you need hotter water.
When the water isn't as hot, mineral buildup and corrosion slow. That helps your water heater run better and last longer.
9. Let the sun shine in.
The sun is a powerful heating source, even in winter. Opening window coverings on sunny days lets you take advantage of that free heat, reducing the amount your furnace needs to produce.
Close those coverings at night to help keep the heat inside.
10. Avoid the range.
As much as possible, skip using the stove or oven and opt instead for smaller cooking appliances - slow cookers, microwave ovens, toaster ovens and the like. They use less energy than that big appliance.
Come to think of it, saving energy sounds like a great excuse for eating out.
There go the savings.
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.househunting.ca/thenownews/Condos/effort+ways+save+your+power+bill/5562720/story.html
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
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| 965
| 1.804688
| 2
|
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