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Your home is not only the place you hang your mittens, but also the place your bird feels most comfortable. Unlike its human flock members, your bird spends the majority of its time inside your home. Over time, the sounds of family leaving for work and coming home from school, the sound of the mail truck at 2:00, the familiar humming of the appliances, and the occasional missed phone call all work together to create a beautiful symphony of comfort for your bird. These sounds serve as the “ringing school bell”, if you will, reliably mapping out the hours of your bird’s day. Once your bird becomes accustomed to these sounds and the events associated with them, any uncontrolled variance in the routine can result in stress and discomfort for both you and your feathered friend. This brings us to the subject at hand…those Happy Holidays!
During this time of year, the very things that put you and your family in the holiday mood are those that can result in feelings of stress and/or anxiety for your bird. Creating an enjoyable holiday for you and your bird is as easy as remembering P.O.L.L.Y.
Prepare your bird for change.
Imagine waking up and discovering that your house has been completely rearranged and is full of strange things, weird smells, and unfamiliar people. For most of us, this scenario alone would warrant psychiatric assistance. Now throw in a hungry giant constantly trying to have you for dinner. Sounds silly…but this is exactly what your bird experiences when you “Deck the Halls” and invite friends, family and four-legged cousins over for the holidays.
A sudden “Decking of the Halls” can come as a shock to your bird. Large trees with flashing lights, flickering candles, and randomly placed holiday figurines can all be interpreted as potential threats by your bird. These, combined with the irregular influx of guest (most strangers to your bird), often surface feelings of vulnerability in your bird, which can trigger sleepless nights and increased irritability (a screaming moody bird).
When planning those holiday gatherings, consider the impact they will have on your bird. Identify potential high traffic areas and their relationship to your bird’s cage. In addition to the occasional cage bump (i.e. clumsy guest + too much eggnog), areas that experience increased traffic flow also invite dangerous drafts and, although presented with good intentions, unhealthy food offerings. “Polly want a candy cane?” Avoiding these potential hazards is easy. Simply relocate your bird to a different, but familiar, part of the house; somewhere it feels protected from the chaos, but is still able to indulge its innate curiosity. For more sensitive birds, the transition from one location to another should be handled in steps. Try introducing the bird to the new location during out-of-cage play time each day for a week prior to actually moving the cage. This will encourage your bird to develop a positive association with the new location. This same technique can be used to introduce your bird to your holiday decorations. As you bring down the boxes of bulbs, garland, candles, cards, nick knacks, and “where did I get thats”, allow your bird to be a part of the change. Periodically communicate with your bird (Do you like the pretty lights? Listen to the wonderful music) using your fun playtime voice. Offer him a comfort treat in exchange for positive responses.
Open your mind to your bird’s point of view.
Now that you have prepared your beaked buddy for change, take a moment to see the new environment from your bird’s perspective. To do this you do not need to climb inside your bird’s cage, simply try thinking like a bird. Once the initial feelings of caution and uncertainty have been concurred, they are often quickly replaced with those of exploration and intrigue. It is okay to allow your bird to indulge these feelings, but important that it is done in a controlled and supervised manner. Make sure that your bird does not have access to common holiday temptations such as electrical cords, tree trimmings, holiday plants, burning candles, and unhealthy desserts. Investing in a padlock to secure the cage during the holidays can bring peace of mind for both you and your bird. Not only will this prevent “unauthorized exploration”, but it will also deter your guest’s urge to show off their animal magnetism.
Lay ground rules for your guest.
For many people the opportunity to interact with a companion bird wakes up the child within. Unfortunately, as the inner child is awakened their common sense identifies an opportunity to take a nap. If allowed to interact with your bird unadvised and unsupervised your guest may find that Jack Frost isn’t the only one doing the nose nipping. To protect both your guest and your bird, place a subtle, yet obvious written reminder of caution near the cage. For more conscientious visitors, allowing them to offer your bird a favorite treat or comfort food can result in valuable and welcomed socialization time. Introduce your guest to your bird by educating them on the do’s and don’ts.
Some important things to remember are:
- No poking and prodding of cage
- No smoking
- Avoid scented candles
- Only approved bird safe treats
- Do not open cage
- Avoid cooking with Teflon
Leave time for personal interaction.
During the holidays, it is easy to get wrapped up in the hustle and bustle of the season. For your bird, this means a break in the relationship with you. Companion birds develop strong bonds with their human caregivers and often depend on that relationship and its routines. For this reason, it is important that you plan special bonding times for just you and your bird. This is a time when you can indulge your bird with a gentle feather preen, offer him a favorite food, or just enjoy a good book while your bird relaxes on your knee.
During this period of change and planned chaos, one on one time is important to the mental well-being of your bird. If you plan to travel during the holidays, make arrangement for a friend or family member, familiar to your bird, to stop in for quality time.
Okay. Everything’s ready for the holidays. The bird has been prepared, invitations sent, and the charge cards have been charged. Your done…time to party! Not so fast.
What about the gifts? The holidays are the perfect time to treat your bird. Fill the stocking with a variety of nutritious and interactive treats! Invest in a new cage… it’s EZ.
Use this time to update your bird’s toy collection. When you are selecting treats and accessories for your bird, remember to see things from their point of view. Always make safety a primary factor in your decision making.
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• Insurance Speak
• Technology’s Role in Health Care Inflation
• Surgical Eye Expeditions
Reading “Refractive Lens Exchange Debate” (June) made me wonder if we are letting insurance companies dictate medical practice and terminology to us. (More than they already do.)
I do not perform refractive lens exchange; however, I take offense with the notion that a cataract has to meet “insurance vision levels” to be considered a cataract. I was taught that a cataract was any opacity in the natural crystalline lens.
A visually significant cataract is another matter. Depending on a person’s career or hobbies, a 20/25 or 20/30 cataract may seriously interfere with one’s lifestyle. Imagine trying to peel an epiretinal membrane or to grade a precious gemstone with less than perfect vision.
I am not suggesting that everyone over the age of 40 have their “cataract” removed, but as doctors we must remember that each patient is an individual and may be impacted in vastly different ways by the same level of visual impairment.
Geoffrey Brent, MD
Technology’s Role in Health Care Inflation
The problem that is bankrupting the health care system is also responsible for the greatest advances in health care: technology! We need to educate society on this concept so they can understand that—unless they willingly forego the advantages of technology—their health care contributions must go up.
A two-tiered standard of care will bail out those with means, as we saw when CMS decided last May to allow optional private payments for upgrading to multifocal IOLs. While a two-tiered system challenges one’s sense of fairness, it is still better than only one lowered standard of care, and the CMS decision is consistent with this. Perhaps the extension of such a two-tiered approach to other parts of our high-tech ophthalmic and general health care is a good idea, before 30 percent of physicians have to quit practicing due to cutbacks in reimbursements and rising costs of practice.
Blaming physicians for rising health care costs, while politically attractive at first glance, will not wash with the public in the long run. Those politicians who seek to balance the budget by driving physicians out of practice through cutbacks in reimbursements to untenable levels will surely make a name for themselves in the Archives for Hobgoblins of Little Minds.
I think the best approach is to educate the public. Physicians, physician organizations, lawyers, politicians, insurance companies and those in industry must teach the public about the acceleration that has taken and is taking place in the technology of health care and in every other niche in our society.
Yes, there must be efficiency, accountability and self-restraint in the entire health care industry, but we must not forget how little health care cost in 1900. Does the majority of society want to go back to 1900 standards of care? 1940? 1970? 1990? 2000? I bet not even 2006 when asked next year!
Only an educated society can make an educated decision. A responsible two-tiered approach could provide a viable compromise.
Peter George Gross, MD, PhD
Bryn Mawr, Pa.
Surgical Eye Expeditions
I recently returned from my fourth trip with Surgical Eye Expeditions International.
SEE is a nonprofit organization that employs small teams of qualified personnel recruited for short-term, sight-restoring clinics held on a recurring basis in medically underserved communities all over the world. In 2004, SEE physicians examined 175,000 patients and performed 13,000 surgeries.
Unfortunately, while the number of correctably blind people in the world is increasing, the number of ophthalmologists in the United States who are willing to help them is declining. These clinics don’t happen unless a U.S. affiliate signs up to go. And SEE is now finding it has to cancel some trips because of the lack of volunteers.
The majority of patients have bilateral mature cataracts and live in a world of total blindness. One woman in Romania told me after her surgery that I had given her back her life. This response is why I went to medical school in the first place.
I hope others will consider helping this worthwhile organization.
John A. Millin, MD
_____________________________Ed: For more information on SEE, visit www.seeintl.org.
We Want to Hear From You
You can send your letters to us at EyeNet Magazine, e-mail email@example.com.
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Constant Density Spanners for Wireless Ad-Hoc Networks
Source: Arizona State University
An important problem for wireless ad hoc networks has been to design overlay networks that allow time- and energy-efficient routing. Many local-control strategies for maintaining such overlay networks have already been suggested, but most of them are based on an oversimplified wireless communication model. This paper suggests a model that is much more general than previous models. It allows the path loss of transmissions to significantly deviate from the idealistic unit disk model and does not even require the path loss to form a metric. Also, the model is apparently the first proposed for algorithm designs that does not only model transmission and interference issues but also aims at providing a realistic model for physical carrier sensing.
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The smells of garlic, onions and olive oil filled a large conference room at Robinwood Medical Center Thursday as a sold-out audience of 200 watched a chef prepare a Mediterranean cod recipe.
Fortunately, there were enough servings for everyone waiting at a buffet at the back of the room as soon as the demonstration was over.
The presentation, titled "Wisdom from the Heart: Heart Healthy Eating," was part of a women's health forum presented by Washington County Hospital Cardiac Rehabilitation and Congestive Heart Failure programs and Women's Specialty Associates.
Researchers have found that people who follow a Mediterranean diet are less likely to die of heart disease, Tim Higgins, a dietitian at Robinwood Endocrinology, told the group. The diet, which includes fresh fruits and vegetables, fish, olive oil and wine, is high in good fats and antioxidants, Higgins said.
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Welcome to the second campaign map preview for VR!
This preview covers the territory of Francia, the Kingdom of the Capetians. As King of France, the Capetians should be able to demand vassalage from all the great lords of the region. However, a prolongued war with Blois-Champagne has left the Capetian dynasty very fragile, with only the princes of Anjou, Burgundy, and Vermandois remaining truly loyal. To the north, the Holy Roman Empire competes for influence over Flanders, while in the west the Bretons of Burgundy are effectively outwith royal control.
In the south of France, The Duchy of Aquitaine has been added as a fully-playable faction. Hopefully this will help to give much better representation to the divisions within France, although the Duchy will start as a vassal to the Kings of France. Nonetheless, Aquitaine is far from being a mere clone faction of France. Aquitaine had its own Occitain culture, with clearly distinct methods of warfare from its northern counterparts. Units in Aquitaine will be more lightly equipped, drawing from the native Basque population. Also, the crossbow was more more prominent in southern France, giving a technological advantage to the southern princes. As you can see in the pictures, the south of France was also more economically developed than the north, with larger towns and more advanced farming methods. With these factors combined, the Duchy of Aquitaine will no mere minor faction to be swept aside by the Capetians.
The Capetian Dynasty:
Historical Dukes and Counts:
The Duchy of Aquitaine's heartland:
The Duchy of Brittany:
The County of Flanders:
The County of Auvergne:
The County of Toulouse:
PLEASE GIVE FEEDBACK!
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Republican U.S. Senate candidate Tom Campbell today blasted U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., for supporting use of “reconciliation” to pass health-care reform legislation because that’s a tactic Republicans certainly would never use, even on an issue they felt was terribly important.
Oh, wait, scratch that. They did it too.
For the jargon-challenged, reconciliation is a Senate process intended to allow consideration of certain controversial, budget-related bills by limiting debate and amendment. Basically, it’s a way to get a bill passed without needing the 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, in which a minority delays or entirely obstructs a vote on something by extending debate indefinitely.
“When Senator Barbara Boxer and her Democratic colleagues were in the minority in the US Senate, they would routinely block bills they opposed by using the 60-vote requirement to invoke cloture,” Campbell said in a statement issued today. “Now they’re complaining that the Republicans are doing the same thing, so they’re proposing an end run around the 60-vote requirement using ‘reconciliation’ – a process that’s reserved for bills legitimately and intimately related to the budget process. It was never intended for major policy bills.”
“Whether you like or dislike the Democrats’ health care bill, there’s no doubt it is a major policy proposal. If ‘reconciliation’ is used to jam this unpopular proposal through, it can be used for any purpose, essentially killing the 60-vote requirement,” he said.
Senate Republicans had no problem using reconciliation to jam through the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005, and the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005.
And does anyone really think bringing health-care costs under control while extending coverage to tens of millions of currently-uninsured Americans isn’t “legitimately and intimately related to the budget process?” If so, the Congressional Budget Office has some news for you:
The nation’s long-term fiscal balance will be determined primarily by the future rate of health care cost growth. If health care costs continued growing at the same rate over the next four decades as they did over the past four decades, federal spending on Medicare andMedicaid alone would rise to about 20 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2050 — roughly the share of the economy now accounted for by the entire federal budget.
And that’s from three years ago. Still, Campbell continues:
“The 60-vote requirement is an important protection against major policy changes being adopted by the thinnest of majorities. While it’s not found in the Constitution itself, the bi-cameral nature of legislation indicates a desire to obtain broad consensus, not just a popular majority, before legislation is enacted.
“In the present context, that necessity is made even clearer by the resounding voice of the American people against what the Democrats attempted to push through as health care reform prior to the Massachusetts Senate election. The American people were particularly repulsed at the abuses of majority power by the special deals worked out for Nebraska and union members. They thought it truly unfair to tax those who have health care insurance packages more generous than what the Democrats’ bill considered ‘good enough,’ and then exempting union members from that tax.
“If Senator Barbara Boxer and her colleagues use ‘reconciliation’ to force their plan on the American people, they will have broken faith with the majority of those they represent, and further tarnished, if that were possible, the reputation of the Congress under Democratic rule.”
This isn’t a question of health-care policy; this is a question of political process, and how things do and don’t get done in Washington. Did the founding fathers intend for every big policy debate to be decided only by supermajority rule, rather than majority rule? Does bipartisanship extend to letting the minority party to stymie anything it disagrees with, and if so, what does “minority party” even mean?
Whatever party is in the minority will always have a big beef with reconciliation, no matter what the issue – nobody likes being told to be quiet and sit down, be they Democrats or Republicans. But who realistically expects one side to refrain from a tactic the other side has used so recently?
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|Facebook: Protect Our Privacy!
In December 2008, Facebook took purchases its users made on other websites and made them public on Facebook without permission-- great advertising for corporations but horrible for basic privacy rights. MoveOn formed a pro-privacy group on Facebook that grew to over 80,000 members and was covered by media worldwide. As a result, Facebook reversed its policy—preserving its own integrity in the process.
Sign the ongoing privacy petition »
Join the online privacy Facebook group »
Washington Post article »
|Medicare: Helped lead fight to reform
When Bush threatened to cut off as many 14 million seniors from the prescription drug benefit because they had not signed up in time, MoveOn helped fight back. We mobilized hundreds of thousands of Americans to sign petitions, organize local media events, and contact our representatives.
|2007 Budget: Reversed cuts to key health and nutrition programs
The Republican budget proposal for FY'07 contained cuts that would take food of the table of 300,000 working families dependent on food stamps, and roll back health benefits for millions of low income people and seniors. MoveOn members sounded the alarm, writing thousands of letters to the editor telling personal stories about these key programs, staging local events and calling our representatives. The worst of the cuts were removed from the final budget package.
|John Bolton: Blocked the anti-UN ambassador
MoveOn members raised a chorus of opposition when Bush nominated long time UN-basher and war apologist John Bolton as America's ambassador to the United Nations. Congress refused to approve the nomination, and Bush resorted to a "recess appointment" to side step Congress. But when the appointment expired, Bush withdrew the nomination and Bolton was forced to step down.
|Voting Rights Act: Helped renew landmark civil rights legislation
When MoveOn members got word that southern Republicans were attempting to derail the re-authorization of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, we sprung into action. After hundreds of thousands signed a petition we rushed to Congress and flooded the capital with phone calls the law was renewed.
|Voting Machines: Momentum for Paper Records|
MoveOn members wearing “Got Paper? Got Audits?” T-shirts packed a recent voting machines hearing in Congress, spurring many elected representatives to speak up for voter-verified paper records. Phone calls from MoveOn members nationwide are convincing more and more members of Congress to get behind the bill requiring paper records—bringing the total to over 200 co-sponsors!
Sign the Petition » Election reform campaigns »
|MoveOn Members Helping End Genocide
"Million Voices for Darfur" organized by the Save Darfur Coalition will give our leaders a powerful mandate to act.
Join the virtual march to save Darfur »
|New hope for Maryland Voting Machines
After MoveOn members in Maryland made more than a hundred phone calls, the state House voted unanimously in favor of a paper record of every vote. Maryland was one of the first states to adopt electronic voting machines lacking voter-verified paper records, so the House vote in March is historic. With Maryland’s governor now supporting a paper record of every vote, the only obstacle left is the Maryland Senate. Thanks to public concern, more than half of the states will require a paper record of every vote!
|PA Members Helped Protect Voting Rights
MoveOn members in Pennsylvania helped protect voting rights in Pennsylvania by making over 700 phone calls to state legislators to oppose House Bill 1318. Those calls helped stop an effort to strip paroled felons of their right to vote. Even though the legislature went on to pass an anti-democratic voter ID requirement by a narrow margin, the visible public outrage persuaded the governor to veto the bill.
|Fantastic Progress for California Clean Elections
MoveOn members in California made hundreds of calls urging their state representatives to pass public financing of political campaigns. The measure would help clean up election corruption by ending the reliance on corporate and wealthy donors. Having been approved by the Assembly, the measure now goes to the state Senate and then before voters as a ballot measure. If it passes, California could lead states nationwide to adopt public financing.
Past work on election reform »
In 2005, we grew by half a million members, raised $9 million, built a field campaign, and helped tip the balance in critical fights.
Read the 2005 Wrap Up »
|"Out in '06" Petition Deliveries a Success
MoveOn members delivered 400,000 petition signatures to 285 district congressional offices, urging support for an exit strategy plan with a timeline to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq. Photos and Comments »
|Torture Ban Approved
In a 308-122 vote, the House of Representatives approved the torture ban late Wednesday. And Thursday, after both chambers of Congress voted to take torture off the table, even the White House caved. After months of resistance, Vice President Cheney and the administration will accept the ban. MoveOn members reported more than 5,800 calls to key representatives in advance of the vote asking that the House support the torture ban.
|Million Solar Roofs Program Recommended
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) unveiled its recommendation on the Million Solar Roofs program earlier this week: an 11-year, $3.2 billion incentive program to help a million homes, businesses, schools and other buildings go solar. CPUC received a total of approximately 50,000 emails on the Million Solar Roofs program—over 10,000 of those came from MoveOn members.
|Wal-Mart Movie Kicks Off With a Bang
MoveOn members held viewing parties as part of a coalition effort to bring attention to Robert Greenwald's compelling new documentary: Walmart, The High Cost of Low Price.
|Members Put A New Iraq Ad On TV
Last week a real debate about how to change course in Iraq started in Congress. Now Republicans and the Bush administration are lashing out--trying to smear their critics. Don’t let them get away with that. To maintain our momentum in the Iraq debate we've put together a new TV ad. Watch the Ad »
|100,000 Gather to Honor 2,000 Fallen Soldiers at Vigils
More than 100,000 people gathered at 1,354 candlelight vigils in all 50 states and DC to remember and honor our fallen soldiers and ask, "How many more?" Photos, Map, Stories »
|PATRIOT Act Renewal Stalled
After MoveOn members asked their senators to oppose the renewal as it was offered, a dozen senators and House members from both parties announced that they would do so, with a filibuster if necessary. The following week, the Senate rejected permanent renewal in favor of a one-month extension of the Act, after which Congress will have another opportunity to offer a version that adequately protects civil liberties.
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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addresses delegates at COP15, the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.
Ahmadinejad names capitalism and materialism as key components of environmental degradation; calls for a focus on expanding the use of clean and renewable energy sources, including the peaceful use of nuclear power; and outlines strategies to control climate change.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the sixth and current President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the main political leader of the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran, a coalition of conservative political groups in the country. An engineer and teacher from a poor background, Ahmadinejad joined the Office for Strengthening Unity after the Islamic Revolution. Appointed a provincial governor, he was removed after the election of President Mohammad Khatami and returned to teaching.
Tehran's council appointed him mayor in 2003. He took a religious hard-line, reversing reforms of previous moderate mayors. His 2005 presidential campaign, supported by the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran, garnered 62% of the runoff election votes, and he became President on August 3, 2005.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks out against capitalism and materialism, and the role he says each play in fueling the global warming crisis. He blames the crisis on the endless cycle of consumption and production that is driven by materialism in rich, industrialized countries.
Take out the words "almighty God" and his introduction sounds quite reasonable.
7:40 "[US has 5% of the world population but consumes 25% of oil and energy]" But also has the largest economy and smart people moving it. People that are less willing to drive planes into buildings. And also live in an ecology that isn't completely consisted of sand.
9:00 We'll let you use Nuclear fission as a source of energy when we think a nation's people and Government are smart enough to use it, e.g. none of this Allah is great bullshit.
10:10 I'll give you humanitarian values. You desert epileptic worshippers can't even agree on what "divine values" even means at the most basic level.
11:00 Not God; other human beings demand this for others.
12:35 So I'm assuming non-Muslims won't be allowed to sit on this board...
Ahmadinejad touched on many profound truths in his speech and quite honestly I think he and his country pose a lesser threat to the world than does the US with its military interventions and unbridled pursuit of capitalism and consumerism at the expense of just about all else.
Of course it is very difficult to form a comprehensive and rational opinion of the man as the western politicians and media only provide us with one side of the story. He no doubt sees Israel and its mentor the US as a threat particularly in view of the fact that both have nuclear capabilities and the US have actually used theirs - twice .
I appreciate your reasoned response. You however amplified that the problem is with politicians, not with capitalism or corporations. The more politicians get involved in the free market, through absurd regulations, subsidies and confiscatory taxation (which corporations pass on to the end consumer) the more corrupt the system becomes. If a citizen wishes to pursue happiness as he sees it or act in his own interests, let him pay for it himself. In our system of government, the individual is sovereign. Congress ought not be de facto lobbyists for groups aligned along racial, political or commercial interests. Every new law that benefits one group of persons, hurts countless individuals. Most congressional interference in the free market would never pass a vote of the people. Would agricultural subsidies pass if the people were permitted to vote for them?
Anyway. . .
This man's apocalyptic view of the world, his Holocaust denial and his evil, anti-semitic comments make his comments unworthy of serious consideration. I hope for the end of this regime and the just aspirations of the Iranian people to be respected.
Permalink, this is a quality critic of Capitalism and the system of governance that we have in the United States of America. However, I think coming from this man whose government is so intolerant to liberal ideas and human rights must be meet with skepticism; as the wolf may disguise as a sheep. A good example of this is the benevolence of Christian Religious organizations whose acceptance of a dogmatic belief, regardless of all good things done, still leaves room for, and allows for the propagation of other dogmatic religious extremists.
Mark, you're right that a significant part of my problem is with corrupt politicians, but I'd disagree with your assertion that a corporation can make you do nothing.
The problem really stems from the concept of a politician before they run for office. If to be elected, you need to a) be adopted by the right party, and b) almost invariably out-spend your opponents, you create the problem that those people who are genuinely eligible candidates are those with the deepest pocketed supporters.
Now - and this isn't meant as a criticism, but as a fact of life - if you support someone they're probably looking after your interests. So those people supported most fervently by those with the resources (both in dollars for advertising, and clout within the parties to have people adopted) are far more likely to find themselves in the Blue or Red columns (Whether that is (Republican/Democratic, Labour/Conservative) which are the options from which any deviation is condemned as a "wasted vote".
As a result whilst it is certainly possible to be adopted and participate towards the higher end of politics without the support of a Corporate giant, the system is weighted towards those few who are telegenic, outwardly resemble their electorate and have the funds to ensure that they can be everywhere immediately preceding the election being seen to be kissing babies and mewing the same sweet nothings, skewed, into the ears of their audiences.
The company cannot and does not control you, as you rightly say.
Your government decides what hours you can be made to work at maximum, they decide what benefits your employers are required to offer you, and indeed the minimum you can be rewarded for your labour. They decide the efficiency of the of the home appliances you can purchase and they decide how you power them. They decide when, where and if you may or may not smoke. They decide what and where you are permitted to drive, and, as the arbiters of public transport, they can also affect whether you need or want to as well. They decide what wars you fight, and the enemies you make around the globe.
And whilst no specific company can make you do anything, companies make lobbies. Lobbies can carrot-and-stick parties and parties make Governments.
So yes, it's true to say that my biggest problem is one of corrupt politicians, however the effect of the system in which they operate is one in which the word corruption is easily lost. Even if an individual is acting in their own interests and their own conscience, the small pool from which they are drawn will inherently lead to a tendency for their needs, wishes and opinions to be at some variance from those of the people they represent.
In addition, characteristics, such as the necessity to be of the type of employ which one can vacate and reoccupy at will, such as a lawyer, director or magnate of some industry or other, mean that not only are they likely to diverge from their electors, they are more likely to converge with each other.
In short, and I do not mean this to be glib, as it might sound; the phrase "Corrupt Politicians" is inherently tautological. Even when not corrupt they are unlikely to be representative.
To consider a phrase from The Gettysburg Address - "...of the people, for the people and by the people.": This is an issue which is clear, yet deceptive. The abolition of Monarchy, and thus the resolution of all humans under the banner of "people" means this cannot fail to be true. However, whilst the words suggest that every individual's voice is heard with equal might, and the strongest views carry the motion, the truth is that those people define the issues, options and results, whilst the people-at-large are relegated to choosing between those capable of gaining the support of the resourced to be offered for election.
Even if one is happy with concept of capitalism, as it is perfectly acceptable to be, its current symbiosis with the current incarnations of democracy have hijacked the reality of either concept far from their conceptual bases.
Great speech. Excellent anti-american nuances. The man is a genius. BTW I missed what he said about Irans contribution to climate change. Best guess I can make is that'll probably be the annihilation of Israel. What a man, he's nearly as embarrassing as the Prime Monster of Australia, KRudd.
Calorus, it sounds as if your biggest beef is with corrupt politicians. I agree the United States is not a pure Capitalist system. Politicians meddle in the name of "levelling the playing field," which, as you have pointed out, never happens.
A corporation can make me do nothing. My relationship with them is purely voluntay. A [I]Government[I] on the other hand, can make me do many things under threat of force to my private property or through violence.
Well lets be fair - what he said was true: Captialism can only function if we all buy shit we don't need. Every time Capitalism hiccups, everyone stops buying shit they don't need, and the hiccup becomes a cough at best.
There's a lot to be said for abandoning Capitalism, primarily because it's so horrifically skewed to over reward those who start out with everything.
If someone showed me a REAL inwardly consistent Capitalism it would make more sense.
By inwardly consistent, I mean a market based economy where goods and services are all competing on efficacy, efficiency and quality. Where there is a responsibility for companies to produce and provide facts regarding their products allowing things like the a) the total cost of ownership, b) the actual risks and shortcomings of a product and c) the transparent cost of the product. Where a company paid the Government taxes in the interests of allow the Government to ensure that the environment (ecological and social) were conducive to providing the best staff and the most sustainable process. Where externalities (like pumping out Carbon Monoxide, Nitrous Oxides or any other pollutant) were controlled, preventing health providers from needing to pay for the effects of those toxins on their patients. And where a company couldn't fail the market, only to be propped up artificially by the Government at the citizens' expense.
Even if you are an ardent believer in Capitalism, which is still only one of infinite possible nuanced systems of human interaction, what we have now is no such thing. It's a system where the rich earn the profits, the poor pay the taxes, the rich choose the candidates, whilst the poor merely choose between them.
The Fisco-cracy we live in, very clearly shows. Philip Morris write and sponsor tobacco law. Ford and GM can veto environmental policy. J P Morgan, Citibank Bank of America et al. own the Federal Reserve.
Personally it's more important to have a fair system were everyone knows the rules and everyone has to play by them, than to have a system where might is right, locally and nationally.
Everything the West's biggest companies have ever done in the wider world has been in the interests of exploiting the nations they infiltrate. Whether in Imperial Britain where they callously slaughtered natives of every continent, or in the present day where Trafigura casually dumps its waste in Cote d'Ivoire water, leaving deaths and sickness rife.
But don't for a moment think that actually following our own rules would be altruism. By getting out and staying out of other countries - at a political level at least - our countries would be safer, as people would know that the wars they might wish to fight would need to be fought at home rather than with bombs on our trains. It is simply beneficial, that by example people will understand the benefits of struggle for their own freedom.
Without outside help, it's close to impossible to subdue an entire nation who've seen a better life and want to live it.
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It was a year ago today that Poway High senior Chelsea King was abducted, raped and murdered by convicted sex offender John Gardner III, touching off an agonizing experience for the San Diego community. The agony only grew worse after Gardner resolved the mystery of missing Escondido teenager Amber Dubois by leading authorities to her body and confirming he had raped and killed her as well.
In the aftermath of the tragedies, determined to help prevent other families from undergoing similar suffering, Brent and Kelly King, Chelsea’s parents, worked with Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, R-San Diego, on legislation to reform how the state deals with violent sex offenders. The end result was a remarkably ambitious measure. Among Chelsea’s Law’s key provisions:
•It imposed a “one strike” provision for a life sentence without chance of parole for nearly all serious sex crimes against minors in which there were aggravating circumstances.
•It lengthened the time that released violent sex offenders remain on parole with GPS monitoring.
•It adopted a “containment model” to reduce new crimes by sex offenders by focusing on those seen as the biggest threat.
Moe Dubois, Amber’s father, also chose to honor his daughter’s memory through constructive action. He teamed with two state lawmakers from out of the area and won passage of three measures improving how the state responds to abductions.
Dubois continues to pursue other legislation in Sacramento. The Kings, meanwhile, hope to bring versions of Chelsea’s Law to other states and are also seeking to promote peer counseling in local high schools and offering scholarships through their Chelsea’s Light Foundation.
For his part, Fletcher is interested in working with Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, to improve Jessica’s Law, a measure approved by state voters in 2006. Named after a Florida girl who was raped and murdered by a convicted sex offender, the law has several sensible provisions, including mandating lifetime GPS monitoring of felony registered sex offenders.
However, its best-known component – a prohibition on registered sex offenders living within 2,000 feet of any school or park – is staggeringly poor public policy. It sounds reasonable, but it has the effect of preventing thousands of sex offenders from being able to live with their families or loved ones, making their lives far less stable and making them far more likely to commit new offenses.
Last week, local Superior Court Judge Michael Wellington ruled the provision to be unconstitutional because it forced some parolees into homelessness. The California Supreme Court is likely to eventually end up considering its legality.
We offer no pretense of expertise on the legal questions surrounding the law. But on a practical level, it is a disaster that needs to be fixed quickly and smartly – and without the demagoguery about “going easy” on sex offenders seen in past years from defenders of the measure.
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1) Don’t get lured into exploitative direct marketing or pyramid schemes. I recently was invited to an Arbonne event by someone. Arbonne is a “natural” beauty company sold through representatives in the vein of Mary Kay or Avon. At first, I thought this person was just asking me for a friendly drink. Then it turned into: watch these chicks get Mercedes for selling skincare. Despite the aggressive tactics, it is almost impossible to make any money with the slim profit margins in these shady ventures. If they ask you for money up front, back away.2) Why waste energy on enterprises that don’t value what you have to offer? As you well know, life is short. You can waste yours lining unworthy pockets or you can refuse to settle for anything less than a fulfilling use of your time, talent, and resources. 3) Please don’t resort to performing sexual favors; depleting your plasma; permanently moving back in with your parents; signing up for a reality show; sacrificing your pride and dignity, or staying on at a job you truly loathe.
Home > parents
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This article was taken from the March 2013 issue
of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print
before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of
additional content by subscribing online.
Graham Hill's big idea is to live small. "We can live
-- happier, healthier and more sustainable lives with less
stuff and less space," says the 41-year-old Canadian founder of LifeEdited, a company that
promotes pared-down living and plans to sell small but neatly
designed micro-apartments to enable this "edited" lifestyle.
The company is in discussions to build four
37m square test units in Las Vegas, with a
view to building a larger complex. It's also hoping to build a
12-unit block in San Francisco, and has submitted plans for a
70-unit building in New York City, to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's
adAPT NYC competition, which earlier this year sought proposals
for rental buildings composed mainly of
27m square micro-units.
A trained architect and product designer, Hill is no stranger to
building a profitable business from idealism. His website TreeHugger, which attempts to
bring sustainable design and living into the mainstream, was sold
to the Discovery Channel for $10 million (£6.2 million) in 2007.
"When I started TreeHugger, I was travelling all over the world and
pretty much living out of a suitcase," he explains. "I realised
that we really don't need much stuff." Life is simpler, and better,
with fewer possessions, he believes.
So in 2009, Hill bought two tiny apartments in Greenwich
Village, New York, and launched a competition challenging designers
to make the most of a 39m square space. The
brief was tough: the apartment would be for two people, but would
have to hold 12 for sit-down dinner, have two guest beds, a lounge,
an office, a bathroom and a kitchen. Selected from 300 entries, the
winning design -- now the first fully functional LifeEdited
apartment --features foldout beds, expandable furniture and movable
walls that convert one room into six. It offers the functionality
of a space triple the size, says Hill, even if the "rooms" can only
be used one at a time.
Hill will move in permanently in early 2013, but for now the
apartment is hosting potential clients and partners, including
hoteliers and property developers. "The next step is to create
entire apartment blocks composed of these smartly designed small
spaces, with sharing systems built around a product library of all
the things that don't make sense to own individually," as well as
bookable spare rooms. He also plans to develop smart, space-saving
products. "We have more space than ever but we still have so much
stuff that [in the US] we have a $22 billion personal storage
industry," explains Hill. "That level of consumerism brings
personal debt and a massive environmental footprint. But I believe
we can apply smart design and encourage behaviour change to build
smaller, simpler lives that allow us to live within our means,
financially and environmentally."
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FOXHOLM - "It's good to be out again," remarked a fisherman operating a boat on Lake Darling this past week. The lake, which is situated on the Upper Souris National Wildlife Refuge, opens for boat fishing May 1 of each year and closes Sept. 30.
A year ago anglers at Lake Darling were greeted by extremely murky water due to high flows entering the narrow reservoir. As water levels increased, all boating on the lake was cancelled. This year is much different.
Water on the lower end of Lake Darling was unusally clear, a sharp contrast to conditions encountered at the same time in 2011. A few fish were caught during last Tuesday's opener, but fishing is only expected to get better in the days ahead. The water temperature remained primarily below 50 degrees. As the water temperature rises it is expected to trigger fish into a more aggressive feeding pattern.
The level of Lake Darling this past Wednesday was 1,596.62 feet, slightly below its preferred summer operating level of 1,597.0 feet. No water was being released. The flow in the Souris River at Sherwood was recorded at 206 cubic feet per second this past week. The flow at Baker Bridge below Lake Darling Dam registered a scant 11 cfs.
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Two happy young anglers. / Submitted by Gary Engberg
Having fun at the Yahara Ice Fishing Day. / Submitted by Gary Engberg
D and S Bait and Tackle in Madison. (608)-241-4225.
Wilderness Fish and Game in Sauk City. (608)-643-2433.
Now that southern Wisconsin has enough ice on itís lakes to be safe, itís time to take the children out fishing. One of my doníts for early ice fishing is to not to take children out fishing on ďfirst iceĒ because of the safety factor. I have always believed that you, besides being a fisherman, are also a father who should always have your childrenís safety at the forefront. Wait until you are sure that the ice is safe and to me, safe is at least 5- or 6-inches. Besides having solid and thick ice, you should keep your children away from pressure cracks, feeder creeks and streams, warm water discharges, and any moving water. Keep the children close to you when fishing and try to make their time on the ice as enjoyable as possible.
Thereís a certain amount of responsibility when taking young children on the ice. Donít just set up your ice shelter and start fishing. Take the time to show the children how youíre fishing and show them the correct and proper use of the equipment and gear that theyíll be using and a little talk about fishing technique and ice safety. Catching fish is one of the important things when trying to introduce kids to fishing and the outdoors. This is why the first few outings with children should be to lakes and ponds where there are abundant fish that the youngsters can regularly catch. One can see the joy and excitement in your childís face after they catch a few fish on their own.
One good location to take the kids in southern Wisconsin is to Brittingham Park in downtown Madisonís Triangle area. The local fishing club, the Yahara Fishing Club, has a ice fishing jamboree every winter for hundreds of young and beginning anglers, The Club gives away fishing rods, bait buckets, and other fishing gear to all the kids who show up to learn and improve their ice fishing skills. Itís been proven time and time again that you have to start children when theyíre young or theyíll be lost to the sport of fishing forever. Brittingham Park and nearby Monona Bay are locations where panfish, mainly bluegills and crappies, can be caught regularly by children. The fish are on the small side, but there are also some ďgoodĒ keepers that would keep anyone satisfied and make a great fish fry. Most of the bluegills are in the 5 to 7 inch range with a few in excess of 8 inches, which I consider to be a decent or ďkeeperĒ bluegill. The crappies average 8 to 9 inches with the biggest fish around 10 inches. Thereís also are the odd largemouth bass or northern pike that are also very catchable. But, panfish are the most abundant species and bite most of the time, if you stay mobile and keep moving from hole to hole. In many of these ďspotsĒ you can get fishing without an auger, just by fishing holes drilled by other anglers.
The nice thing about fishing Brittingham Park and Lake Monona Bay is that:
1. There is a parking lot close to the ice and the walk is not too far for even young children.
2. Thereís plenty of fish for the kids to catch and they usually bite consistently.
3. You donít need any fancy equipment to catch fish. A light and sensitive rod and reel with a spring bobber on the tip to detect light bites, an assortment of ice jigs for pan fish, wax worms or spikes for bait, and a 5 gallon pail to sit on is all that is needed for childrenís success.
4. You will catch some keeper fish, so the kids can eat some of what they catch and also learn something about cleaning fish plus the important practice of catching and releasing fish.
No Matter where you live, there are places like this where you can take the kids to catch some fish and learn the sport of ice fishing. Take the children to a place where they will have some success and hopefully get hooked on fishing for their lives. Madisonís Lake Monona and the Triangle around Brittingham Park are the spots to take that child of yours on a nice sunny day. There are others fishing locations where you can take a child and not have as many people and have success fishing are; Fish and Crystal Lake near Sauk City, Indian Lake off Highway 12 and Highway 19, and I almost forgot little Lake Wingra near the zoo in Madison which is full of small bluegills for the catching. Make your ice fishing day with your child or children a fun and enjoyable day. Hopefully, youíll have a fishing partner for life! Have fun.
This year, the Yahara Fishing Club Kidís Ice Fishing Day is Saturday, January 12, 2013 at the Brittingham Park Shelter from 9:00 am to 12:00 noon with free rods and reels to the first 300 children, more free gear, and a hot lunch. Come with your children and learn to fish with a free rod and reel from the Yahara Fishing Club and its sponsors.
Gary Engberg is a professional tournament angler, fishing guide, and writer. He began fishing tournaments in the early 1990ís and has fished the In-Fisherman Professional Walleye Trail (PWT), North American Walleye Association (NAWA), Masters Walleye Circuit (MWC), World Walleye Association (WWA), FLW, and Mercury Nationals in the years since. Gary has hosted the Outdoor Horizons radio show weekly for 14 years in Madison on WTDY 1670 AM and WTDY 106.7 FM Saturdays at 8:05 am. and is also a correspondent for the Wisconsin State Journal for the last 12 years. Visit http://www.garyengbergoutdoors.com for more from Gary Engberg.
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Editor's note: Business Traveller is a monthly show about making the most of doing business on the road.
New York (CNN) -- If a way to a man's heart is through his stomach, then what's true in love is true in business too. At least, it is in New York City.
With some of the most upscale eateries and trendy downtown diners in the world, where you decide to take a client for lunch can be just as vital as what you talk about between bites in the Big Apple.
Indeed, it's widely believed the term "power lunch" itself was first coined in a 1979 article by Lee Eisenberg, the then-editor-in-chief of Esquire Magazine, while writing about a new lunch scene that had popped-up in midtown Manhattan.
And while the food may have changed, it seems as many deals are brokered over the buffet counter as ever before. Although individuals are generally spending less on eating out, corporate spending is currently the largest driver of growth at fine dining and casual restaurants across New York, according to American Express.
Tim Zagat is the co-founder and CEO of the influential Zagat restaurant survey. He says that even during the peak of the financial crisis, lavish power lunches -- involving food bills as outlandish as the transactions on the table -- were still commonplace.
"I could tell you 30 or 40 restaurants in New York off the top of my head, where you would find a full house, and nobody is spending less than $100 for lunch," he said.
Suffice it to say; the man knows a thing or two about the refined art of power lunching. So from big-spenders to penny-pinchers, here Zagat picks a spot to suit every budget.
Set away from the bustle of Times Square in Midtown Manhattan, this perennially fashionable restaurant - where a plate of crab-cakes alone can set you back a cool $55 -- gained iconic status among Wall Street big-shots and movie producers in the high-flying days of the 1980s.
According to Zagat, it's still the only place to go if money is no object.
"$100 dollars for lunch? It's no big deal if you're trying to make a million dollar deal," he reasons. "If you're talking business and it's going to be paid for by somebody else, really (the price) doesn't make much difference."
But it's not just the expensive fare, modernist décor and silver-service that are set to impress, in fact it's your fellow diners who are really the main draw.
"Everybody in the place is somebody your guest will recognise," explains Zagat. "Lunch there is like going through a bunch of front pages of Time magazine."
For those without bottomless pockets, New York City has abundance of super-stylish eating establishments offering fine dining at an affordable price.
According to Zagat, many of the city's best restaurants are now offering pre-fixed price menus at lunchtime, aimed squarely at business people.
Top of the pile, says Zagat, is the three Michelin-starred Jean-Georges, situated near to Central Park in the Trump International Hotel.
For a relatively modest $38, aspiring tycoons can scoff a two-course meal of sea trout and oyster scallop Carpaccio and a plate of crispy sweetbreads with spring onion and hibiscus -- to name just a few of the establishment's signature dishes.
"I've eaten more meals here in the last five years than at any other single restaurant," reveals Zagat.
While the midtown restaurants aim for the more established crowd, downtown aims for the upcoming software titans in t-shirts and jeans.
This is the "most funky, fun area in New York," says Zagat.
At the uber-trendy Standard Grill - where mains run around $15, your client is impressed - and your expense manager even more so.
Situated amid the industrial chic of a former meatpacking district, the restaurant serves up a one-page "American Bistro" menu where artisanal saucissons and hams comfortably sit alongside the Yankee staples of Ranch burgers and steaks.
"We definitely have a younger clientele - very sexy, fashionista, very cutting edge" boasts manager Michael Bailey.
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Gov. Martin O'Malley announced Monday a plan to spend $336 million on school construction and facilities improvements in the coming budget year.
The governor made the announcement during Jan. 7 news conference at Overlea High School.
The proposal, which will be part of his Fiscal Year 2014 budget sent to state lawmakers later this month, will include $325 million for school construction and renovation, $25 million for air conditioning schools and $6.1 million for the aging schools program.
O'Malley said that the proposed budget was unusual because of the funds earmarked for air conditioning.
"This is the first time an allocation of state capital that large has been made for a specific purpose," he said.
The governor also highlighted the importance of efforts made by local elected officials to secure the air conditioning money.
"It's really because of your delegates, supported by County Executive Kamenetz that we're able to make this announcement," O'Malley said.
Overlea High School was the perfect place to make the announcement because of the school's age and the large number of unairconditioned schools in Baltimore County, said County Executive Kevin Kamenetz.
Overlea High School was built in 1961 and lacks air conditioned classrooms.
"Overlea is an older school; 80 percent of schools in the county are more than 40 years old," Kamenetz said. He explained the school is representative of the "typical challenges" faced by county schools.
Of the state's 180 schools without air conditioning, about 65 are in Baltimore County, according to Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown.
If adopted, O'Malley said that the proposed budget would support 8,199 jobs.
"That's moms and dads swinging hammers, installing air conditioning, and doing roofing," he said.
The Maryland General Assembly begins its 90-day session on Jan. 9.
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The Problem With Thinking Anyone Owns Ideas
from the figure-this-one-out dept
We're always discussing all sorts of intellectual property issues around here -- and one of the key problems comes down to the fundamental problem of trying to somehow shackle "ideas" down -- as if that were possible. Not only do ideas spread and change and grow -- but it's quite likely that multiple people have the same ideas at the same time. Giving the "rights" to any one person is problematic. For a perfect example, look at a new lawsuit that's coming to light today. A video game developer is suing gaming giant Electronic Arts, claiming they stole his idea and put it into their popular Madden football video gaming series. He says he presented the idea to EA in late 2003, and now it's shown up in the latest version -- therefore, they must have "stolen" it from him. Of course, the easy response is that the big "idea" wasn't even that original. It was that, within the game, players could manage a specific athlete, handling all sorts of activities like sports practice, family life and doing home work. Of course, at the same time he was showing of "his" idea to EA, I was actually playing a game that let you do just that -- just in baseball, not football. The creator of a (very cool, and extremely addictive) popular baseball simulation game, Out of the Park Baseball, created a sort of "companion" game in 2003 called Inside the Park Baseball, where the idea was that you took on the role of a player, and managed just that player through his career, including things like working out, going out to the bars, family life, etc. That game never really caught on, but does that mean anyone "owns" that idea and can sue over it?
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CARRABASSETT VALLEY — A chairlift derailed at Sugarloaf Tuesday morning injuring six people when five chairs fell to the ground.
All others on the lift had been evacuated safely the resort was reporting as of 1:30 p.m.
A derailment is when the cable carrying the chairs comes off the tracks or the "sheave train," which carries the cable over the chairlift towers.
The Sugarloaf Ski Patrol responded and the lift was shut down instantly. The chairlift's safety systems will cause it to turn off when a derailment occurs. Those left still suspended on the chairlift were evacuated by the ski patrol using a system of ropes and belaying devices used by mountaineers. The patrol trains regularly for these types of incidents and hosted a statewide training event on a similar scenario in early November.
At Sugarloaf, the ski patrol, usually mans the highest lift running and responds to accidents from there. Tuesday it is likely the initial response would have been staged from the top of Spillway East.
Resort officials predicted the evacuation took between 60 and 90 minutes. Most being evacuated were unhurt and complaining only of being cold — the air temperatures at the mountain, Maine's tallest ski hill, were hovering around 9 degrees.
Press releases issued by Sugarloaf said there were about 220 people on the lift at the time of the accident and that so far six injuries, all non-life-threatening had been reported.
"The Spillway East lift at Sugarloaf derailed from the lift's eighth tower," a release issued from the resort stated. "As a result of this derailment, five chairs fell an estimated 25-30 feet to the ground below."
Resort spokesman Ethan Austin said the resort was fairly busy as it was a holiday vacation week, he told the Associated Press the incident was a "big deal."
The accident occurred shortly after 10:30 a.m.
In a subsequent release the resort stated the cause of the accident was unknown and it remained under investigation.
"The Spillway East chair is a 2-passenger monocable, fixed-grip chair manufactured and installed by Borvig in 1975. This lift was modified in 1983. Spillway East is 4,013 feet long with a vertical of 1,454 feet. This chair moves at a speed of 500 feet per minute and the chairs are 50 feet apart. There are 162 chairs on this lift each weighing 140 pounds," a release describing the lift stated. "Spillway East has a 250-horsepower motor and has a capacity for 1,200 skiers per hour."
The lift receives routine daily inspections for safety and weekly, monthly and yearly maintenance and testing," the release stated. The lift is also inspected annually for safety by the State of Maine's Board of Elevator and Tramway Safety inspectors, the release stated.
The lift is one the resort has slated for replacement as part of a 10-year improvement plan.
"Sugarloaf Mountain and its employees are concerned for the people involved, additionally the resort would like to express gratitude to all the safety personnel that have responded to this incident," the release stated. "Sugarloaf Mountain is absolutely committed to the safety of its guests and employees."
Franklin County's Emergency Management Agency director also responded to the resort with the county's emergency communications vehicle. Several local fire departments were also alerted to the accident and placed on stand-by.
Resort officials had called a 1:15 p.m. press conference and more details on this accident will be updated here as they become available.
If you have photos or information about this accident, please contact the Sun Journal via our submit a news tip section.
Staff Writer Ann Bryant and Regional Editor Scott Thistle contributed to this report.
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Christian Aid warns of trade talks walk-out after leak
International development agency Christian Aid is today urging poor countries to prepare for a walk out of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks in Hong Kong this week unless the European Union (EU) executes a dramatic change in its aggressive liberalising trade policies.
According to leaked documents obtained by Christian Aid, the EU is continuing to push developing nations to privatise sensitive services such as water, healthcare and banking. This runs counter to EU rhetoric that these talks are primarily about pro-poor trade policies.
At the same time, the EU has failed to make significant cuts in agricultural subsidies. As a result poor countries are unlikely to gain anything from the crucial talks that begin on Tuesday (13 December 2005).
The deal that developing countries will be offered in Hong Kong is likely to harm rather than benefit them, according to the majority of African countries. If this deal stays on the table, Christian Aid will urge poor countries to walk out rather than sign up to a damaging agreement.
In an exclusive Christian Aid poll, two-thirds of African trade delegations questioned said that their economies would suffer if they accept what is currently on offer. Ninety per cent reject the EU's claim that this is a pro-poor round of ëdevelopment' talks.
In the first survey of its kind, the Christian Aid poll also reflects a renewed determination by smaller African countries to resist pressure from the EU and US to sign up to an agreement that is not in their interests.
More than half of the respondents said they would be prepared to halt the negotiations if they didn't like what was on offer. This echoes the WTO summit in Cancun two years ago, when the talks crashed after poor country delegations walked out.
'We will wait until the last minute until we finally call on developing countries to walk away from the WTO talks,' said Claire Melamed, Christian Aid's head of trade policy, 'because we want to give the EU every opportunity to match its rhetoric and make an offer that is good for development.'
She continued: 'The last minute is fast approaching and the European Union has to make a dramatic u-turn in the last 48 hours before the ministerial starts. The chances of that happening are very small.'
'It is clear from the documents we have seen and from the poll of African WTO delegates that the EU in particular is proving a massive obstacle to progress', said Ms Melamed.
'It is insisting on cajoling the poorest countries to open up a huge range of services so that big European companies can benefit, while refusing to make any significant moves on cutting its agricultural subsidies.'
'What the EU is offering is a charter of self interest that puts the greed of the rich above the needs of the poor. Trade can and should work for poor people, but not like this,' she concluded.
The EU's intransigence is causing grave disappointment among African delegates heading to Hong Kong. Claire Akamanzi, the Rwandan delegate and the Chair of the African Group on Services, said that very little was on offer and that it was ëunacceptable' to African nations.
'Not much has been offered on agriculture and the EU is aggressively pursuing its own agenda on services which are not appropriate for Africa. As we are not expecting the EU to change its stance on agriculture or to pull back from its demands on services, there is unlikely to be a proper agreement reached at Hong Kong,' she said.
In its pre-WTO report, Serving the Rich: How the EU will wreck the WTO talks (downloadable *.PDF document), Christian Aid has alleged that the EU is trying to shift attention from agriculture to services and to push through an aggressive liberalising agenda that will cause untold damage to the lives of millions of poor people.
If services are liberalised, poor countries fear they will be taken over by large multinational companies who will recoup their costs by charging fees that will be well out of reach of the poorest people.
The report gives two examples of this happening: in Bolivia over water privatisation and in Kenya over health insurance. In both cases, poor people are suffering as a result of unnecessary privatisations and liberalisation.
For the EU, gains in services are the quid pro quo for losses in agricultural subsidies - one will not be acceptable without the other. Christian Aid reveals that the EU has tabled 106 revised ërequests' with other WTO members indicating precisely which service sectors it wishes to see them open up.
Christian Aid has obtained leaked copies of five of the EU's confidential-request documents. They expose its desire to ensure that European services companies gain access to fragile financial and public-utilities markets in some of the world's poorest nations.
The leaked documents show beyond doubt that the EU is determined to thrust aggressively for the liberalisation of vital services such as banking, insurance, mail, water, environmental services and all kinds of retailing.
It is also demanding that poor countries deliver up areas such as legal services, freight transport, architectural services, restaurant services and travel agencies. Many of these intrude into sectors where the state has traditionally played a pivotal role either for free or at reduced fees for the poor.
[Also on Ekklesia: Archbishop and unions back trade justice in Hong Kong; Chancellor tells churches 2005 is 'make or break' for world poverty; Christians push World Trade Organization for justice; Christian Aid laments receding trade talk hopes; Thousands call for just global trade in mass lobby of Parliament; Trade justice event to be biggest lobby this year; Santa tells Tony Blair to Make Poverty History; Christian Aid says European Union is bullying the global poor; Chancellor warns Christians that global justice will take a big haul; UK chancellor to address Christians in run up to WTO talks; G8 outcome disappoints poverty and ecology lobbies]
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Earlier today, literally hours ago -- sweet, glorious hours -- we engaged in our bi-annual exercise of give and take.
Take an hour here. Give it back there.
Twice a year, we perform this shell game with an unsettling casualness. As if an hour is of no consequence, is not unique, has no value.
So, it's light a little earlier in the morning. So, you'll be getting home in the dark.
Who cares as long as SpongeBob SquarePants appears on television at the appointed hour and the Dolphins win on Sunday?
The big switch has been condensed into trite little phrases such as "spring forward, fall back." Phrases that attempt to convince us the hour taken in the fall is the same as the hour given up in the spring.
And, of course, the switch is conveniently made at 2 a.m., when most people are sleeping. So the majority of America doesn't hardly even realize the switch has been made -- until they turn on the TV the next day and realize they're an hour early for SpongeBob.
The people who really keep up with this outrage are wide a-work at 2 a.m. I once worked the graveyard shift. And let me tell you, for folks trying to make it through a long night at work, the "fall back" thing is not nearly so cute and clever.
All these changes, just so the hour that was stolen from us six months ago can be paid back. Actually, six months and three weeks ago. Interest-free, I might add.
Everybody knows a fall hour is brown and orange, and filled with cool, sweet potential.
And a spring hour is green and yellow, pre-steamy.
All time is not created equal.
From 1986 to now, an average hour for Bill Gates is worth $224,726.96. An average hour for a volunteer in the United States is worth $16.05.
One hour in a traffic jam is not the same as one hour playing with the kids. OK. That one could be disputed.
But clearly, as anybody who's ever flown knows, one hour asleep is not the same as one hour awake.
One hour is tolerated by people waiting for a table at a restaurant differently than by the selfish slugs sitting at a table sipping coffee and chatting.
One hour in church is not the same as one hour at a sports bar.
One hour with someone you love is not the same as one hour with someone you despise.
One lawyer-hour does not equal one baby-sitter hour.
Tiger Woods on a golf course for one hour is incomparable.
An hour when you're on your deathbed is not equivalent to an hour in your crib.
For a child, an hour in a department store is not the same as an hour at Chuck E. Cheese.
For a parent, an hour in a store is, thankfully, not the same as an hour at (shudder) Chuck E. Cheese.
An hour in a dentist's chair is not the same as an hour in a theater chair. Usually.
An hour at McDonald's bears absolutely no resemblance to an hour at La Tavernetta. Always.
I'm told that an hour in late December differs substantially between International Falls, Minn., and Key West.
And although I've never been there, I think it'd be safe to presume that an hour in Iraq is quite unlike an hour in the United States.
An hour watching the Marlins can't be compared to an hour watching the Yankees.
In general, a Florida hour is unlike an hour anywhere else.
In the half-year since the last time manipulations, you could have spent that precious hour parked on Alligator Alley during the 18 hours it was shut down so three medical students could be shaken down as terrorists.
Or you could have spent the hour watching police wrestle an obstinate 82-year-old woman off a bus.
You could spend an hour in a Florida voting booth on Nov. 5.
... But that may not be enough.
Ralph De La Cruz can be reached at email@example.com or 954-356-4727.
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Conditions of Use
The Importance of Honor
SERIOUSLY? Noone has an opinion on this? I am ready to start the new year with some good discusion and noone has an opinion. Frustrating.
As I watched this video this morning I couldn't help reflecting on topics, people and events that we discuss on a daily basis.
I am grateful that in the end of this video 3 out of 5 repair shops are honest, but is 2 out of 5 an okay proportion? What are the percentages for these numbers?
This is a repair shop, I am challenged in my thoughts...is this too small of a sample? Would these numbers be the same in any industry? What do you think?
In a comment, leave your thoughts or opinions about the video. If you do some research into honor and honesty in other industries share what you learned and leave the site you found your information.
Visit msnbc.com for
breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Article posted December 30, 2011 at 09:29 AM •
• Reads 6469
Return to Blog List
Add a Comment
As I have done some hunting on the internet, I have found that this type of issue is not just in the mechanics field, which I assumed. It is everywhere, in the medical field, both with doctors and the billing department. It is in the education field. It is in businesses. So what can people your age learn from this? What can I learn from this?
Comment Posted on December 31, 2011 at 01:47 PM by
My Classes & Students
About the Blogger
A Minnesota 5th grade teacher developing a digital classroom for the 21st century
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The Gulf/Franklin Center of Gulf Coast State College joined with FloridaLearns STEM Scholars to sponsor a parent/student night Oct. 29 for STEM scholars and their parents from Franklin and Gulf counties.
The primary focus of this meeting was to share information with students and parents about careers in Healthcare.
Speakers from Sacred Heart Hospital on the Gulf included Kathy Chastain RN, MSM, Director of Patient Care Services, Kim Werner, Physical Therapist, Laney Kennedy RN, Infection Control, Belinda Schmidt, Medical Technologist, Cheryl Traylor RN, Manager of Perioperative Area and Ted Emanuel, Pharmacy Manager. They gave students an overview of the various opportunities in their career area and helpful hints about preparation for a healthcare profession.
The FloridaLearns STEM Scholars initiative was launched in July 2011, with a vision to help Florida address its urgent and important STEM talent development challenge by focusing on some of Florida’s most underserved students, its gifted and talented in the rural regions of the state. The Panhandle Area Educational Consortium (PAEC) located in Chipley, is working with partners in the area to coordinate Parent nights.
Parent/student meetings ensure parents and students receive project, scholarship and post-secondary information, and learn about a variety of STEM careers. The goal is to help students make well-informed career choices and understand the academic preparation the career requires. The parent/student meetings are designed to keep communication open between parents, STEM Scholars and grant personnel.
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My two boys are inveterate readers. Around my house Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Lemony Snicket are consumables for these two boys, ages 10 and 8, to be read, re-read, and often re-read again until they toss the particular tome aside and ask if there isn't something else to read.
On several such occasions I have answered the question by pointing out a frayed copy of a Nancy Drew mystery story -- "The Hidden Window Mystery" by Carolyn Keene, published in 1956 and purchased within the past year at a Methodist Church rummage sale. Why not try Nancy Drew, I suggest. As the eight or nine-year-old brother of two older sisters back in the 1950s, I read dozens of Nancy Drew mysteries that were originally brought into the house for the girls. While my buddies were reading the Hardy Boys I was reading Nancy Drew and I was no worse for it.
But today the Nancy Drew book -- with the neatly coiffed heroine on the cover in her bathrobe training a flashlight on a mysterious peacock while a furtive man dashes away in the background -- lies idly among the household clutter.
What are the boys today missing? I posed that question to a friend of mine who is also a child of the 1950s and who also had read Nancy Drew. She immediately produced a three-inch square book, complete with a tiny magnifying glass on a string to use as a bookmark, entitled "Nancy Drew's Guide to Life."
Lots of women of a certain age, and some men, as well, must have some similarly fond memories of Nancy Drew, the amateur sleuth. As I read the profiles in this annual Women in Business issue of U.S. 1, I couldn't help but be reminded of some of the lessons of life gleaned from the adventures of our all American young heroine from the 1950s.
On survival strategies: "When your ride is mired in mud, placing heavy burlap in front of the rear wheels and rocking the car back and forth can get you back on the road." -- From "The Secret of Red Gate Farm."
"When bound and gagged, you can still tap out HELP in Morse Code to attract attention." -- From "The Clue of the Tapping Heels."
"Don't let a stranger's lame attempt to appear ill lull you into letting down your defenses if you are alone. Keep your car door locked!" -- From "The Mystery of the 99 Steps."
"When pinned down by a large canine, instruct friends, family, and even random passersby to direct a hose on the beast." -- From "The Mysterious Mannequin."
On the delicate art of etiquette: "Even with an active lifestyle, being prompt is important." -- From "The Secret of Red Gate Farm."
"A sincere and straightforward demeanor will get most anyone to open up and volunteer information. It doesn't hurt to be an attractive young woman, either." -- From "The Clue in the Old Album."
"Aggressiveness will not earn you an invitation to sit at the popular table." -- From "The Clue in the Old Stagecoach."
On dating: "A young lady with some judo skills can take care of unwanted advances in short order." -- From "The Whispering Statue."
"When choosing between two men, take into consideration the different paths your life would take should you go with either of them." -- From "The Sky Phantom."
And here is one that I never would have appreciated in 1956 as I do today: "Clumsy, fat men who are looking at middle age through a rear-view mirror should not attempt to keep pace with a lithe young woman." -- From "The Whispering Statue."
Nancy Drew's Guide to Life brought back all those warm feelings toward Nancy, the self reliant but accommodating and uncomplaining young woman with an equal measure of charm and moxie.
In the nearly half century since I read Nancy, the world has been visited by women's liberation, affirmative action, Title IX, women's studies, the pill, child care, flex time for working parents, alimony and equitable distribution awarded to partners in failed marriages, and legions of lawyers specializing in winning all those rights for women. For all of that we now have enough real-life Nancy Drews to fill this issue of U.S. 1 newspaper -- an 80-page .
I can only hope that one or more of them will become the model for my impressionable young sons, who at this point in their lives would sooner go to the dentist than read the original Nancy Drew.
In the meantime I take comfort from Nancy's guide:
"Don't let your troubles get in the way of enjoying a leisurely and delightful lunch." -- From "The Secret of the Old Clock."
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Williamson sees the city as a laboratory of innovation and change.
"I think that this is a moment in time and history where we're right in the middle of a renaissance period, where the next generation of economic and civic leadership is being nurtured and cultivated here in New Orleans," Williamson said.
Entrepreneurs here say the community engagement, spurred by the Katrina and Isaac recovery efforts, is what makes New Orleans different.
It's why Jennifer Medbery chose New Orleans as home to her startup. A Connecticut native and Columbia University graduate, Medbery moved to New Orleans in 2008 and taught at a charter school for one year before launching Kickboard, software that provides a centralized location for teachers to record their students' progress. New Orleans has the largest proportion of students -- almost 80% -- attending charter schools of any city in the nation.
Medbery believes the entrepreneurial spirit in New Orleans is unique.
"The entire entrepreneurial ecosystem in New Orleans understands that when one rises, we all rise. And so as a community, business leaders here are very committed to each other's success, because it's all part of New Orleans redefining itself."
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Most Viewed Stories
Bill offers textbook relief
Donnelly introduces legislation to exempt sales tax on college books
SACRAMENTO • Assemblyman Tim Donnelly introduced a new bill that, if passed, will exempt college textbooks from California sales tax.
Donnelly, R-Twin Peaks, introduced Assembly Bill 479 on Wednesday to remove the tax burden from students purchasing college textbooks.
According to the Board of Equalization, California has a minimum sales tax of 7.5 percent, making it one of the highest taxed states in the country.
A news release from Donnelly’s office states that only three out of 10 students purchase textbooks because rising prices have made them cost-prohibitive, which makes it more difficult for students to follow course-reading schedules and could hinder their education.
“AB 479 recognizes the importance of education in our state and removes an added burden the state currently places on students pursuing higher education,” Donnelly said in the release.
Students from Victor Valley College responded with a variety of opinions.
Shanice Tramble and Keanna Johnson said they would pay for their textbooks; tax or no tax.
“I purchase my books, regardless of what the tax is,” Johnson said. “I need them for my classes so it doesn’t matter to me.”
Tramble shared that sentiment.
“Whatever the price is, the price is,” Tramble said. “No matter what, I’m paying for them.”
Not all VVC students shared that view.
Stay-at-home mom and full-time student Shetera McKinney said every little bit of relief she can get helps her financially, and tax-free textbooks would offer a respite from the high prices on both new and used books.
“My textbooks actually cost more than my classes,” McKinney said. “So I have to borrow my friends’ books, check them out from the library, copy pages and rent them because I can’t afford them.”
Robert Sewell, director of auxiliary services at VVC, said the current tax on textbooks at the college’s bookstore matches the 8 percent sales tax in the High Desert. If the tax were to be eliminated, Sewell said, textbook sales may increase slightly and the college would receive little benefit from the increase, as the mark-up on books is returned to the campus and not considered much of a profit.
Donnelly said eliminating the sales tax will induce talented students from other parts of the country to come to California for college.
“By re-moving the sales tax on textbooks purchased at college bookstores, this measure will help hundreds of thousands of students throughout our state be able to more easily afford the cost of education,” Donnelly stated in the release.
Get complete stories every day with the "exactly as printed" Daily Press E-edition, only $5 per month! Click here to try it free for 7 days. To subscribe to the Daily Press in print or online, call (760) 241-7755, 1-800-553-2006 or click here.
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Government to talk on education reforms bills
Keen to push key educational reforms bills during the ongoing session of parliament, the government will hold informal discussions with the opposition parties Aug 16 to sort out differences over the provisions, officials said here on Monday.
As many as 14 education-related legislations arepending in parliament. Among the educational reform bills that have faced opposition from both Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Left are: the Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operation) Bill, National Commission of Higher Education and Research (NCHER) Bill and Educational Tribunal Bill. Other key bills awaiting passage include the Prohibition of Unfair Practices in Technical Educational Institutions, Medical Educational Institutions and University Bill, 2010 and the National Accreditation Regulatory Authority for Higher Educational Institutions Bill, 2010.
According to an official, while the BJP leaders agreed to the National Accreditation Regulatory Authority for Higher Educational Institutions Bill, 2010, in the Rajya Sabha, they have expressed reservations on the legislation, which was listed for passage in the Lok Sabha Monday.
The bill deals with the mushrooming of private higher educational institutions which are churning out graduates who find it difficult to get suitable employment, the official added. Similarly, the Educational Tribunal Bill has been stuck up since 2010 as some Congress members also are opposed to its provisions.
According to the official, an informal meeting between Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal and leaders of opposition parties has been fixed for Aug 16 to discuss their objections to various provisions of the educational reform bills.
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Pocket doors are a great feature of many older homes, but as homes and door jambs settle over time, the pocket doors can start to show gaps when closed. Additionally, the hardware can start to drag after years of use, making the door difficult to open and close. By replacing the operating hardware on the door, you can revitalize the functionality of the pocket door, and improve the way that it looks.
The heavy duty, commercial grade pocket door hardware used in this project is from Johnson Hardware. Click here for more information.
Begin by removing the door from the opening. Pull it towards you and lift the rollers out of the track. Use stiff putty knives or pry bars to remove the trim, door stops, and any head jamb pieces that will keep you from having access to the track. Be careful as you remove these pieces, especially if you plan to reuse these pieces as you finish the project. You will be able to see the screws that hold the track in place over the door opening. Go ahead and remove these, even though you won't be able to get to the track screws that are hidden inside the wall yet.
In order to remove the remaining screws that hold in the track, and to then install the new one, you will have to make an opening in the wallboard. Use a stud finder to mark the location of the internal framework of the pocket door and mark it with a pencil. You need to make the opening large enough to accommodate your screwdriver or drill, but not any larger than necessary. Once you've outlined the opening, use a wallboard saw to cut a square opening. Take care not to damage the cutout, because you can reuse that piece to repair the hole when you are done. Set it aside to prevent it from breaking.
Now that you have access to the hidden portion of the track, remove the remaining screws and pull the track out through the door opening. If there were gaps in the door's fit, now is the time to take care of that. Ensuring that the new track is level will compensate for most gapping issues. Use shims under the new track to compensate for any settling that the house may have done since the original pocket door was installed. After you are satisfied that the track is level, screw it into place per the manufacturer's instructions. Remember, many new styles of pocket door track require that the rollers be in place when you install the track and cannot be inserted after you have screwed it in. Check this out before you install it to avoid frustration.
The roller hardware that is on the door panel can now be removed. After the new hardware is screwed in to place, re-hang the door. Use a pry bar and shims to help you lift the door into place, and then hold it at the proper height while you secure the hardware at the top of the door.
You may find that the door is not quite level, or isn't positioned properly in the opening. Don't worry. Most new pocket door hardware systems are adjustable and can be easily manipulated so that the door fits perfectly. Follow the instructions that came with your hardware system about raising and lowering the respective corners of the door to eliminate any gaps and to ensure that the door moves smoothly through the opening.
Now you can put the trim pieces back. If you were careful when you removed the old ones, then there is no reason why you can't simply put them right back up. If you want to replace them with new pieces, you certainly can, but reusing the old ones saves time and money. Plus, if you live in an older home, it can be a challenge to find new molding pieces that match the profile of your old moldings.
Now that your door is in place and the new hardware is working properly, you'll need to repair the access hole that you cut in the wallboard. If you were careful with the cut out, then you can re-use that piece. Use drywall screws to install backers into the opening, leaving a lip of about 1 inch exposed into the hole. Not only will this give support to the loose piece, but it will give you something to screw it into. After it is screwed into place, use a quick drying joint compound to fill the screw holes and the seam. After it's dry, sand the area smooth and it will be ready to prime and paint.
For this project, we were unable to find a new pull that exactly matched the profile of the old one. The remedy for this problem is to fill in the old holes and mortises with wood filler and to create a new surface to work with. Fill all of the holes and mortises in the door liberally with filler and then allow it to set up. As the filler begins to get rubbery (but before it hardens completely) use a utility knife to trim away some of the excess. This will save you a lot of sanding later on. After the remaining mixture completely hardens and cures, you can sand it smooth and reveal a virtually new surface to install the hardware of your choice on to.
Using a Forstner bit, drill a series of overlapping holes to form an opening for the latch mechanism. You can create a hole that is approximately the right size and shape for your latch with the drill, and then come back with a sharp chisel to make any small adjustments to the opening or to remove any small sections of wood that exist between the drilled holes. The latch opeing doesn't need to be perfect because it will be covered by the faceplate, it simply needs to be big enough to allow the latching mechanism to function properly.
Set the latch into place and temporarily screw it into place. You can use a sharp utility knife to score around the outside of the plate. Once you've clearly marked the outer edge of the faceplate with the knife, then you can remove the latch. You will see a perfect outline of the faceplate that you scored with the utility knife. Use your sharp chisel to gently and slowly remove the wood inside the scored area. You will need to remove enough wood to allow the face plate to recess into the edge of the door and create a flush fit. Since you use the faceplate itself as a template, the final fit and appearance should be just about perfect.
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July 18, 2012
Limerick Operators Take Unit 1 Offline
Operators at Limerick Generating Station took Unit 1 offline this morning following an electrical disturbance on the non-nuclear side of the plant.
POTTSTOWN – Operators at Limerick Generating Station took Unit 1 offline this morning following an electrical disturbance on the non-nuclear side of the plant.
Unit 1 will remain offline until repairs, inspections and testing can be completed. Limerick Unit 2 continues to operate at full power.
As a result of the electrical disturbance, an Unusual Event was declared at 8:39 a.m. and terminated at 9:46 a.m. in keeping with NRC procedures. An Unusual Event is the lowest of four Nuclear Regulatory Commission emergency classifications.
Exelon Generation notified all appropriate federal, state and local government officials of the event. There is no threat to the health and safety of the public associated with this event.
Limerick Generating Station is located approximately 21 miles northwest of Philadelphia. With both units at full power, the site can produce enough carbon-free electricity for 2 million homes.
Exelon Corporation (NYSE:EXC) is the nation’s leading competitive energy provider, with approximately $33 billion in annual revenues. Headquartered in Chicago, Exelon has operations and business activities in 47 states, the District of Columbia and Canada. Exelon is the largest competitive U.S. power generator, with approximately 35,000 megawatts of owned capacity comprising one of the nation’s cleanest and lowest-cost power generation fleets. The company’s Constellation business unit provides energy products and services to approximately 100,000 business and public sector customers and approximately 1 million residential customers. Exelon’s utilities deliver electricity and natural gas to more than 6.6 million customers in central Maryland (BGE), northern Illinois (ComEd) and southeastern Pennsylvania (PECO).
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Insight: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac clamping down on banks
08/14/2012| 07:32pm US/Eastern
(Reuters) - Government-owned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are stepping up efforts to find bad home loans that they can force mortgage lenders to buy back from them, providing an increasingly bigger headache to banks.
The government-controlled companies are squabbling with banks over who should bear the burden of losses from the housing crunch, in particular loans made between 2005 and 2008, when the market was at its frothiest.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's efforts will translate to higher mortgage losses for banks in the coming quarters. But the end of the fighting may be in sight. Fannie Mae, the larger of the two finance companies, is more than halfway through its review of loans to try to sell back to banks and is mainly focusing on that four-year period, a source familiar with the matter said.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy mortgages from banks and bundle the loans into bonds that get sold to investors. The loans are supposed to have met guidelines to be eligible for bundling. The two mortgage giants guarantee the packaged bonds.
Historically, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have taken banks at their word when they said loans were eligible. If later there were problems (because the borrower's income was not properly verified, for example), then Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could ask banks to buy back the mortgages at face value and absorb any losses.
Those repurchase requests are increasing as Fannie and Freddie apply more scrutiny. Both companies have hired more staff to comb through loans and determine which can be sold back to banks.
In the second quarter, outstanding repurchase requests at Fannie Mae grew by 20 percent to $14.6 billion from the first quarter, according to a filing last week.
Banks can argue about whether they really did follow guidelines, but the impact of buyback requests on lenders is clear. Bank of America Corp, Wells Fargo & Co, PNC Financial Services Group Inc and others set aside more money in the second quarter to cover repurchase requests.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac say they are trying to recover as much money as possible for taxpayers after receiving more than $188 billion of government support during the housing crunch. They have since repaid about $45 billion.
Banks believe Fannie and Freddie are nailing them on technicalities. If the two companies bear down too hard on lenders, banks could originate fewer mortgages, further pressuring the housing market.
That may already be happening. Bank of America has reduced its mortgage lending and is no longer selling most loans to Fannie Mae. And Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's regulator is concerned enough that it is thinking of changing the repurchase process to press the companies to look at loans before agreeing to guarantee or purchase them.
A suffering housing market hurts Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well.
"It's an interesting legal dance and business relationship dance that Fannie and Freddie are playing," said Joseph Buonanno, a lawyer at Hunton & Williams who specializes in mortgage and capital markets issues.
In addition to repurchase requests from Fannie and Freddie, the banks also face possible losses from loans sold to private investors and those that were insured by bond insurers, who say they shouldn't be on the hook for inappropriately underwritten loans.
Generally, banks' disputes with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have to be worked out loan by loan. The government-owned companies' efforts to craft broad settlements with banks, most notably Freddie Mac's deal with Bank of America announced in January 2011, have come under criticism.
The inspector general at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, said there were questions about how Freddie came up with its settlement figure, which may have cost taxpayers billions of dollars.
Since then, Freddie Mac has not entered into any new agreements. This year it started reviewing more loans for possible defects, which "may result in higher repurchase requests," according to a quarterly securities filing.
Fannie Mae in January 2011 also reached a settlement with Bank of America, but it only covered Countrywide-related repurchase requests that were in the works as of September 2010. Bank of America bought subprime lender Countrywide Financial in 2008.
In recent securities filings and earnings conference calls, Bank of America complained about the repurchase demands: Many requests came for loans that were fine for at least two years before going bad.
The bank said the borrowers' ability to make payments for that length of time shows the loans went bad because the economy went south and not because of the quality of the underwriting.
But Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac say if the banks failed to meet the guidelines, they have no case. Underwriting guidelines are an important protection since banks make loans but Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac take the credit risk.
In its filing, Fannie Mae said more than 2 percent of loans acquired between 2005 and 2008 resulted in bank repurchase requests, compared to less than 0.25 percent of loans acquired after 2008.
Freddie Mac had outstanding repurchase requests of $2.9 billion at the end of June, down from $3.2 billion at the end of March but up from $2.7 billion at the end of December, according to its latest quarterly filing.
Bank of America wasn't the only bank to see an increase in repurchase requests. In a report last week, Bernstein Research analyst John McDonald said unresolved claims with Fannie and Freddie rose to $17.3 billion from $14.3 billion at seven banks he covers, reflecting a rise in demand and slower resolution of existing claims.
Fifth Third Bancorp said last month that Fannie and Freddie have indicated that toward the end of the year they plan to start requesting loan files for any loan that is not performing. Requests for files are a precursor to making a repurchase request.
PNC has also noted requests for more loans that performed for a significant amount of time. US Bancorp has said Fannie and Freddie have increased their loan sampling sizes.
Fannie Mae spokesman Andrew Wilson said the agency is enforcing its contracts and treats all lenders consistently.
"Fannie Mae has not changed its criteria for evaluating loans for potential repurchase. What changed was the volume of loans from 2005-2008 that did not meet our standards and therefore must be repurchased by lenders," he said.
Freddie Mac emphasized that it works with lenders and gives them time, for example, to find missing documents. Lenders are nevertheless required to honor their contracts, said spokesman Michael Cosgrove.
"We have an obligation to taxpayers to be good stewards of their investment," he said.
In his research note, McDonald said he believes the cost of repurchase requests will be manageable for banks but are likely to be a drag on earnings and companies' net worth, or book value, for 2012 and 2013.
Housing Finance Agency is expected to announce new repurchase request standards for new loans by September. In a letter to Congress last month, acting director Ed DeMarco said the agency is developing requirements that would shift the review of loan sales to the time of the sale and give lenders more certainty that they won't have to buy back loans that have performed successfully for a period of time.
"While this will result in greater scrutiny of performing loans near the time of origination, the intent is to reduce the risk for the Enterprises and lenders alike," DeMarco wrote in the July 31 letter.
(Reporting by Rick Rothacker in Charlotte, North Carolina; Editing by Dan Wilchins and Prudence Crowther)
By Rick Rothacker
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But logistically, it’s a different story.
Placing ICF residents into community living situations has lately become a nearly impossible task, according to Coccia, who has been trying to help identify appropriate caregivers. Many providers are demurring because the DPW’s recently restructured payment rates are no longer sufficient, she says: “This is a new problem for us.”
DPW spokeswoman Donna Kirker Morgan denies that DPW has had trouble finding caregivers. She says the delay is due to an “enhanced … person-centered planning process,” designed “to make sure that what the individual needs to be fully included and successful in the community is clearly identified.”
But Kathleen Brown McHale, president and chief executive of Special People in the Northeast (SPIN), says the rates have been a significant barrier in the case of her nonprofit. “We have been asked to take people, and some of them we’ve said ‘no’ to. I don’t think we’ve gotten a referral that we’ve been able to take at all recently from an [ICF],” she says.
Brown McHale says those left in ICFs are the highest-need cases, since many have co-occurring psychiatric conditions or physical disabilities. But the state has reduced its rates the most for these super-high-need “outliers,” making them even harder to serve.
“The people in the Benjamin settlement aren’t getting services because they have a high need for support,” she says, “and that’s just the beginning of people not getting services.”
SPIN, she says, is already reeling from other cuts and growing expenses. It’s losing an unsustainable half-million dollars a year on housing costs alone, even after aggressive refinancing of its mortgages. It doesn’t help, she says, that while residents in similar homes elsewhere in Pennsylvania can obtain food stamps, all but a handful of the residents in SPIN’s Philly houses have been denied. “We have cut every cost we can in every one of our homes. We were asked to provide these services, we were asked to provide them in homes, and now the state doesn’t want to pay what they cost.”
In the meantime, the delay in moving people out of ICFs may come at the expense of the approximately 15,000 people now on Pennsylvania’s infamously long waiting list for intellectual-disability services of all types.
“For every person in a state center, we could serve 20 off of the waiting list,” Coccia notes.
More than that, she says, it shouldn’t take a lawsuit to get the state to make and carry out a plan (as required by the federal government) to give everyone a shot at living in the community.
“Even now, there seems to be no commitment to moving forward,” she says. “To me, this state is long overdue.”
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Be a kid again!
We are looking for Volunteers for Character Camp!
The Learning for Life team welcomes you and your students to Character Camp 2013. The cheers and laughter of all students of the Learning for Life Program will soon fill the air at Indian Mound Scout Reservation. Character Camp is a pivotal point in the character development of our children and is a one-day camp experience your students should not miss. The students will have the opportunity to put into practice the character values they’ve learned in the classroom throughout the school year.
Those values include: Honesty, Respect, Responsibility, Caring/Fairness, Citizenship, Perseverance, Courage, Self Discipline and Life Skills, All the activities selected for Character Camp are designed to build character and to reinforce these values. Daily activities include team-building and are designed specifically for age groups and/ or grades. Character Camp is an opportunity for students to enjoy a fun-filled day of activities at Indian Mound Scout Reservation.
2013 Character Camp runs:
May 6-10, 2013
May 14-17, 2013
May 20-223, 2013
Click Here for Grade Break Out
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Register with us or sign in
in Tools and techniques
The sheep wool pellets don't work. I put them down and then a couple of hours later watched a snail crawling right over them.
I use the old method of crushed egg shells - apparently anything that makes rough going for them deters them a little bit, I keep finding just one bite taken out of a raddish - it would seem they don't like them much!
Sheila, I don't want to be alarmist but my friend decided to try collecting sheeps' wool from fences, got bitten by a tick and ended up in hospital with Lyme disease so please use all possible anti-tick measures.
PS I don't know if the sheeps' wool worked, I was too busy sympathising about the illness.
As a sheep owner I doubt if sheep's wool would work as a deterent for slugs and snails but it is a great mulch, takes ages to rot down and carries it's own fertiliser if you use daggings( the dirty wool trimmed from a sheeps rear end) Also good for lining hanging bakets but birds do like to steal it for their nests
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Posted by Karen R on November 06, 1997 at 15:54:08:
In response to expounding, written by Sherry on November 06, 1997 at 15:25:09
] Well, I guess I shall have to expound here a little.
] Ash as a poet looks for the essence in all things, the heart of it all, seeking to show the truth of any given situation or even a thing, say like a door knob. How many opportunities has this knob opened onto or shut out ? How many people has it seen come and go ? Was it used to create sanctuary or to escape? ect. That is what my limited experience of poets, in my life,has taught me. I know two, one many years ago who I had a fleeting romance with, and the second a friend named Rebecca.
] In both cases they sought to find and describe the truth of everything, clarifying, ad infintitum and ad nauseum. Maybe it was just peculiar to them but Ash it seems to me was looking for this truth and underlying essence with Cristabel too.
] I am not saying there are not other kinds of poets. I just see Ash in the light of my own life experience. I actually like poetry, it's the poets I have trouble with.
Ah, I have no problem with how you characterize poets in general, but as I try to explain--probably badly--in a post below, Ash is a total failure when it comes to understanding love. All his poetry to date has been in the mode of the "great ventriloquist" speaking through the mouths of dead men. It was characteristic of the times, with the major leaps and advances in science, to explore and analyze what constituted life. But isn't it ironic that the one poem he wrote about love "Ask to Embla" is this great mystery to everyone. They can't imagine who he wrote it for. It's just not in him...and he doesn't have the backbone to let it develop.
Posting followups to old messages is disabled; instead go to the main index and post a new message which mentions this one.
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Given an undirected graph $G$ and vertices $s, t$, are there any upper bounds on the number of simple paths from $s$ to $t$?
Can these bounds be improved if you know
1) The distance from $s$ to $t$
2) The graph has max degree $\Delta$
3) No two non-adjacent vertices on the path are allowed to be neighbors. For example if $x, y, z$ is a path, and $x$ is a neighbor of $z$, we would disallow that path
I tried looking on Google but I don't know what the keyword would be. Any pointers to papers or keywords would be great!
Thanks for the help.
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Mitt Romney Tax Return Released: He Pays In A Lower Tax Bracket Than Poor People
GOP Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney released his tax returns following the first of two GOP debates in Florida and as suspected his tax rate is lower than that of many poor and middle class Americans.
In 2011 Mitt Romney collected $20.9 million in income and in 2010 that number was higher at $21.7 million, however because all of those profits were paid in dividends and interest from investments Romney wasn’t charged any wages. That mean his estimated tax payment of $3.2 million in 2011 is just 15.4% while his $3 million payment in 2010 was just 13.9%, that would be a lower tax bracket them a poverty earning American making $15,000 in the same time period.
The Romney family did manage to be slightly more generous with their money when it came to charities, giving away $7 million of which $4.1 million was paid to the Mormon church.
During the Florida debate Romney repeated that his tax bill is “entirely legal and fair” while adding “I’m proud of the fact that I pay a lot of taxes.”
In actuality he paid far less in taxes then even Newt Gingrich who’s recently tax return shows almost $1 million paid on just over $3 million earned (more than 30% paid).
Joking during the debate about Romney’s tax payments Newt Gingrich said he would love to bring Americans’ tax rate “down” to Romney’s level. At the same time Mitt Romney points out that Gingrich supports a 0% tax on capital gains which would have left Romney paying “no taxes”
It should be noted that Mitt Romney only released his 550 pages of tax documents for his three family trusts and his foundation after coming under fire regarding his $250 million fortune.
With such a small percentage of his gross earnings afforded to taxes it’s likely the trouncing he felt in South Carolina will continue if he doesn’t come up with a better stance then being “proud” about his “legal payments” when many American’s and even some of the countries most wealthy citizens are asking for higher taxes on the rich.
In the meantime Romney has attempted to shift the focus away from his low tax bracket by noting that Newt Gingrich’s consulting firm accepted $1.8 million from Freddie Mac ahead of the 2008 housing collapse. Gingrich has repeatedly claims that none of that money was used for lobbying purposes. One thing is for certain, at least Newt paid more than 30% of those earnings into taxes, Romney would have pocketed an extra $200,000 had he been the one consulting the company.
In the meantime I just wish I can one day collect $20 million and claim it as non-wages. Are you appalled with Mitt Romney’s low tax bracket on millions of dollars earned?
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The muddiest animals on the farm!
Manglitza pig at Mary Arden's Farm
Shaggy and Peeps are our rare breed Mangalitza pigs. They have long curly brown hair and sometimes it’s hard to see them in the straw and mud. In spite of this, these extraordinary looking pigs are some of the most popular animals at the Farm.
Native to Hungary, they are similar to the breeds which Mary Arden would have known and which have since died out. Our pigs are hardy, docile and easily managed but expensive to look after as they do not graze. This means that food and bedding has to be provided for them all year round.
Find out more about the other animals you can adopt:
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http://www.shakespeare.org.uk/support-us/ways-of-giving/adopt-the-animals/mangalitza-pigs.html
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The Washington Post today reports that the economic worries of Americans just are not registering with lawmakers on Capitol Hill. While many people spend their days worried about gas prices, rising inflation and a falling stock market, lawmakers are busy interfering with the court system and trying to increase the deficit by privatizing Social Security. Increasingly, Congress and the President are just out of touch with the economic worries of Americans. Now it seems they are out of touch with the economic worries of the Federal Reserve Chairman.
Alan Greenspan testified today before the Senate Budget Committee and had this to say:
Indeed, under existing tax rates and reasonable assumptions about other spending, these projections make clear that the federal budget is on an unsustainable path, in which large deficits result in rising interest rates and ever-growing interest payments that augment deficits in future years. But most important, deficits as a percentage of GDP in these simulations rise without limit. Unless that trend is reversed, at some point these deficits would cause the economy to stagnate or worse.
So the Federal Reserve Chairman is basically saying to President Bush and his allies in Congress, “keep this up and you’ll bankrupt the country.” Future generations will be stuck with the bill.
- Theo LeCompte
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As you like quoting from the Holy Bible here are some texts for you to ponder:
Preparing to ponder.
For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. (1 Corinthians 1:18)
Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. (1 Corinthians 1:25)
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they
are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:14)
Evolution is claimed to be scientific, then why can't science prove it beyond any shadow of a doubt?
Define "beyond a shadow of a doubt". Chihuahuas and Great Pyrenees are the same species. So are wolves. We have both chihuahuas and great Pyrenees because human beings have selectively bred these characteristics from wolves. Their genes are merely being expressed in different ways. Congratulations, evolution is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.
If belief in God is unscientific, then why can't science prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that God does not exist?
Because it is not NECESSARY for science to disprove God. It IS necessary for those who assert that there is a God provide evidence that demonstrates "beyond a shadow of a doubt" that God exists. For a guy who is supposedly everywhere, God leaves NO evidence of his existence. His massive flood, which as I have demonstrated
on this forum is physically impossible, left absolutely no evidence whatsoever. A flood as described in the Bible, killing everything other than the contents of the ark, would have left more than enough evidence to demonstrate that such an event occurred. We have fossil records of much less successful extinction events than this dating back to 250 million years or more. If THAT evidence can be found, the flood evidence should be able to be easily found. You should be able to go out into your backyard, dig down a meter or so, and find a treasure trove of fossils. Yet this just isn't the case. If you are testing a hypothesis, then if it is true, the evidence predicted by the hypothesis should emerge. In the case of God and his flood, this does not happen. When making a positive claim, the hypothesis "There is a God and it is the one in the Bible", then the evidence corresponding to the Bible should be there, and if it is not, then the hypothesis is FALSE. Damn I love science.
As neither the belief in evolution or belief in God can be proven scientifically, both come down to faith.
This is just being silly. No, it is not down to faith, because I have just demonstrated that there is evidence for evolution, and there is not evidence for God. Faith is believing something WITHOUT evidence. Since there IS evidence for evolution, belief in evolution (or as I prefer to call it, "acceptance of the theory of evolution as the best explanation for the diversity of life forms on our planet based upon overwhelming evidence", because it's not really a belief in the same way as religion is a belief), evolution is NOT faith based. Since there is no evidence for God, belief in God IS faith based.
And anyways science doesn't seek to "prove" anything. Science proposes hypotheses to explain some phenomena, and then test that hypothesis to gather evidence, whether that evidence supports the claim or not. If the evidence supports the claim, other scientists test the hypothesis, and gather evidence, and see if it supports the claim. If it the evidence consistently suggests the hypothesis, then the hypothesis is accepted until evidence to the contrary comes along, at which time a better explanation is required and a new hypothesis tested. Science doesn't claim to be able to prove the absolute truth about everything (religion however does make this claim). Science seeks to find explanations for our universe and use that knowledge to improve the human condition. That's why you are emailing us and not sending us a stone tablet on a donkey. Science is USEFUL. Religion is not. It has not provided a satisfactory explanation of ANYTHING. In fact science has repeatedly demonstrated that the hypotheses put forth by religious people were false. To say that both religion and science are faith based is itself a faith based position.
My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly trust in Jesus’ Name.
On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand.
Like the sand that is soaked in the blood in which you willingly bathe for your own salvation? How righteous indeed.
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The Voice: Winter 2002
The professional involvements of Dordt faculty members outside the classroom reveal Dordt's commitment to provide educational leadership in the Christian community as well as among its own students. By sharing these activities, we hope to provide fellow Christians with further resources, ideas, and encouragement as they work to be of service in Christ's kingdom.
Dr. John Zwart, physics professor, and his former student Joel Minderhoud, who now teaches
high school science, had a brief item published in the Idea Bank section of The Science
Teacher magazine. The piece is titled Mirror, Mirror and appeared in the October 2001 issue of
The Science Teacher.
Zwart also gave invited talks at the 2001 Association of Christian Schools International Mid-
America Region conference in St. Paul, Minnesota, on October 18 and 19. His presentations
were titled Light Motif: Demonstrations and Experiments with Light, Zap!: Demonstrations
and Experiments in Electricity and Magnetism, and A Hands-On Exercise in the Scientific
Dr. Del Vander Zee also gave presentations at this summer's ACSI Convention.
The first, titled Fast Plants in the Classroom: The Mustard Seed, was presented in two parts, including an introduction to the lab system and a follow-up hands-on session, to show how the tiny mustard seed enables students of all ages to learn many biological processes within six weeks. Creation Care and Environmental Stewardship discussed the place of humankind within the creation.
Dr. Tom Visker, professor of health, education, and recreation, had an article published in the
Fall 2001 issue of The Christian School Teacher. It is titled Beyond the Locker Room Prayer.
Dave and Jeri Schelhaas each led two sectionals at the Ontario Christian Schools Teachers
Association Convention on October 25. Jeri's sectionals were titled Creative
Dramatics_Another Way to Learn and Developing Presentational Theatre. Dave's were
Teaching Poetry So They Love It, and Writing Poetry: Imaginary Gardens and Real Toads.
Drs. Mike Vanden Bosch and Ken Bussema lectured in China Nov 5-9 as part of ELIC's Visiting
Scholar Lectures Series. Bussema's topics included Recent Research in Higher Education,
Learning Principle and Collaborative Action, The Impact of Higher Education on Moral and
Civil Responsibility, and Assessing Student Learning. Vanden Bosch taught poetry (see
Dr. Charles Adams, dean of the natural science division, spoke at a conference on Christian
Scholarship held at Calvin College at the end of September. His paper, titled The Unity in
Creation and the Bi-Directional Character of Technological Artifacts, is published on Calvin's
website at http://www.calvin.edu/fss/125conf/adamsch.htm .
Dr. Tony Jelsma gave presentations on human genetic engineering and stem cell research at a
two-day conference titled Tinkering with Creation. The event was sponsored by the
Burlington Reformed Study Centre in Burlington, Ontario.
On October 2, Dr. Dennis Vander Plaats participated in a round-table discussion with
approximately twenty educators from various CSI schools and organizations. They met in
Seattle, Washington, at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, with Tom Vander Ark, the chief
educational consultant for the foundation. Vander Ark described the attributes of good schools
as the Gates Foundation sees them. Participants discussed the need for visionary change in
Christian high school education.
Drs. Wayne Kobes and Ron Vos gave a presentation titled Biblical Foundations for Agricultural
Missions at the annual Agricultural Missions Conference at ECHO (Educational Concerns for
Hunger Organization) on November 13-15 in North Fort Myers, Florida. Five students also
attended the conference.
Business Professor Scott Quatro, who recently gained final candidacy status for the Ph.D. in
Organizational Learning and Human Resource Development at Iowa State University, was
recently quoted in an article in the November 5 edition of the Omaha World Herald on
Organizational Spirituality and Performance among Fortune 500 Firms, the subject of his
Dr. John Vander Stelt spent three weeks lecturing in Pusan and Seoul, Korea, and then in Tokyo
and Kobe, Japan, this fall. While many of his lectures were given for students at Kosin
University and Pniel Theological Seminary lecturing on the history of reformational thinking and
Christian philosophy, Vander Stelt also preached in church services and met with Christian
educators and leaders to discuss worldview and educational issues.
Theology Professor Tim McConnel's review of Cornelius Van Til: Readings and Analysis, by
Greg L. Bahnsen appeared in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 44 (2001): 371-
Two papers authored or co-authored by Dr. Ethan Brue from Dordt's engineering department
appeared in the September 2001 issue of Powder Technology. an international journal for
fluidization and particulate related systems. Resolving dynamical features of fluidized beds
from pressure fluctuations and Use of pressure fluctuations to validate hydrodynamic
similitude in fluidized media: bubbling beds were written with Robert C. Brown.
Dr. Joan Ringerwole, professor of music, was organist for the closing service of the 26th Annual
Hymn Society Conference held in Independence, Missouri, this past summer.
Education professor Lloyd Den Boer led (through a translator) nine workshops on educational
leadership in Christian schools to a group of thirty directors (principals) from small, young
Christian schools spread throughout countries that formerly were part of the Soviet Union. The
Conference was organized by ACSI for its member schools in these
countries and held from November 5-9 in Kiev, Ukraine.
Dr. John Van Dyk, director of the Center for Educational Services, led a professional
development day on November 30 for teachers in the Canadian Reformed schools in Langley,
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Only In Washington Does “Raise The Debt Ceiling” Mean “Paying The Bills”
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney thinks Congress ought to “pay it’s bills” by raising the debt ceiling:
“There are only two options to deal with the debt limit: Congress can pay its bills, or it can fail to act and put the nation into default,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement. “Congress needs to do its job.”
It’s nice that the White House seems to be finally acknowledging that they do, in fact, have to work with Congress on this issue (let’s be happy the “trillion dollar coin” idea is finally off the table), but since when is clearing the way for more debt creation “paying the bills”?
Shouldn’t we be honest about what it really is? We’re not paying bills. We’re spending more than we can afford, and delaying the paying of bills so that our children and grandchildren can carry the burden.
If we really wanted to pay the bills, we’d raise taxes on every American enormously to close our $1 trillion+ annual budget deficit. But, you see, we don’t really want to pay for all the government we get. We want to have lots and lots of government, and have someone else pay for it.
Like, you know, our kids and grandkids.
What a shameful era we live in.Tags: Barack Obama, deficits, jay carney, national debt
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During the Christmas season, Piazza Navona is packed with stalls selling toys, sweets and decorations for the nativity scene ... More
During the Christmas season, Piazza Navona is packed with stalls selling toys, sweets and decorations for the nativity scene or Christmas tree, making it a favorite spot for children. Its unusual shape recalls the time of Domitian, who built a stadium for equestrian displays. The Fountain of the Rivers with the obelisk and the Fountain of the Moor with the God of the Sea are located in the center of the square and were both sculpted by Bernini.""
During the Christmas season Piazza Navona is packed with stalls selling toys, sweets and decorations for the Nativity scene or Christmas tree, making it a favorite spot for children. Its unusual shape recalls the time of Domitian, who built a stadium for equestrian displays here. The Fountain of the Rivers, with the obelisk, and the Fountain of the Moor , with the God of the Sea, at the center of the square, are both sculpted by Bernini.
Property Information by Wcities
My first visit to Piazza Navona was quite a moment for me, I realized that it's a crossroads of the world. A guy from Holland was playing a guitar and an international crowd was hanging around singing pop songs in english. Lots of local romans hang around - and Paul Paolicelli points out that Rome may have it over Paris because of this place. But it's part of the whole Rome experience, and not without those pesky foreigners shoving roses or sunglasses in your face. Same goes for the Spanish Steps and Trevi fountain.
TAKE A NAP in the day and stay up for the passegiatta (evening walk - till midnight or so) - also head over to nearby Campo dei Fiori where you'll find a smaller vibrant square with many more locals and a different feel that's not to be missed.
The night scene is astonishing in Rome!
This is a very popular tourist area. Restaurants line the perimeter, and the center of the square houses the famous "4 Rivers" Fountain by Bernini, which everyone must see while in Rome. The atmosphere is so stereotypically Italian, it is a great place to walk around and soak in all the history around you.
My favourite place in Rome, so beautiful, great atmosphere. During the days we had the best gelato in the world, at a little cute place that our guide showed us and in the evenings we had great wine and food at our favourite restaurant in Rome, Navona Notte, the pizza was delicious.....can't wait to go back.
The first and last time I was in the Piazza Navona was,I think, in 1976! My heart will never be the same. I ache to be there. I miss it terribly. I only pray that one day I can return. It is my heart's desire!!!
Piazza Navona, is the pulse of Roma. The food the outdoor cafe's, the wonderful musicians, the romance. It is a place to party and it is a place to sit and watch the world go bye. After a long flight across the pond it is a place to adjust to a less complexed lifestyle. The world of art and leisure unfolds before your eyes.
You must have the Tartuffo at Tre Scalini!! Unbelieveable treat. We were at Piazza Navona in the morning, walking on our way from Campo di Fiori to Trevi Fountain, so we missed the the evening excitement.
We just returned from Rome 3 weeks agao. Unfortunately our visit to Piazza Navone was disappointing since the fountain was boarede up under construction. We went in late afternoon and sodas in the square at a hefty price. Perhaps if we had come back at night, it would have been better.
Hosting Culture Hotel Astoria Garden is an Old English style house situated within walking distance of Termini Station and approximately
15 miles from Rome's Fiumicino Airport. This location is also four blocks from Castro Pretorio's ancient walls and the ...
We\'re new, we\'ve moved and we\'ve improved!!! Don\'t mind the old rating, now we\'re a 100%!!!Alice in Wonderland is the
perfect spot for those who prefer comfortable, clean accomodation, surprisingly affordable rates and a GREAT location.Alice in Wonderland is ...
THE RELAIS PIAZZA DI SPAGNA LUXURY ROOMS AND SUITES IS SITUATED IN THE HEART OF ROME ON ONE OF THE
CITYS MOST PRESTIGIOUS STREET VIA DEL BABUINO THAT CONNECTS THE MOST FAMOUS SPANISH STEPS WITH PIAZZA DEL POPOLO. THE ...
*Terms & Conditions: Savings calculation is based on Flight + Hotel vacation package bookings for a 3 month period for 2 adults with a 2+ night length of stay compared to price of the same components if booked separately during same period. Savings will vary based on origin/destination, length of trip, travel dates and selected travel supplier(s). Savings not available on all packages.
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Q1: When I use function in Windows Media Player version 9 to download CD details from the internet I get an error message telling me that the site is unavailable or does not exist.
A: Perhaps Media Player doesn't realise you are connected to the internet, or can't detect a connection. This may be due to your firewall settings (whether your program allows Media Player access to the internet) or if Internet Explorer is set to work offline. Microsoft Support article 838101 says using the setting "Connect to the Internet", found by going to Tools, Options and the Player tab, is a possible solution.
Media Player has similar error messages for a variety of problems, so it may help to check the exact error code ID number and look it up on the Media Player Trouble Shooter to get a better idea of what's really going on. If the official information doesn't shed any light on this or other Media Player problems, dedicated users can provide useful suggestions, such as those at the WMP Mini-FAQ for help with tricky problems.
Q2: When an email is blocked, does the sender receive notification? That would be the ideal way to dissuade spammers et al from bothering you. Ideally wouldn't they eventually just give up?
A: The sender is not notified when you block messages in ordinary email programs such as Outlook Express. However, special spam-busting programs such as Mailwasher can send bounce messages so it looks like your ISP has returned incorrectly addressed mail. Sadly, much spam is sent sneakily, via forged addresses. So, don't hold your breath waiting for spammers to go away just yet.
Q3: I started using Outlook back in July and since then my emails are received in duplicate. I never experienced this problem when I was using Outlook Express.
A: There are a couple of reasons for this. There's an Outlook 2002 glitch, relating to when a dial-up connection is established and terminated that could be the cause. And Microsoft says there's a fix in Office XP service pack three. However, another possibility is a confirmed background synchronisation problem and there's not much in the way of workarounds, other than (if you keep Outlook) deleting the duplicated messages.
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5 Surprising Divinity School Dropouts
From Hollywood superstars to adulterous dilettantes, several seminary dropouts have managed to find success in the secular world. Here's a sampling of the finest in almost-clergy.
1. Tom Cruise (1962"“ )
In 1976, a deeply religious child named Thomas Cruise Mapother IV enrolled in a Franciscan seminary in New Jersey. Within five years, he'd ditched the church, dropped the Mapother, and landed a part in Endless Love. And in spite of his diminutive height (5 feet 7 inches) the man who might have been a priest became one of Hollywood's top leading men. Around 1986, though, he abandoned Catholicism altogether, embracing the Church of Scientology, which he once credited with helping him overcome dyslexia. Wildly popular with celebrities, Scientology has been the chosen path for everyone from John Travolta to the guy who played Parker Lewis in Parker Lewis Can't Lose. Incidentally, while Scientology does have ministers, Cruise has yet to seek ordination.
2. Casanova (1725"“1798)
Everyone's favorite 18th-century libertine began his scandalous escapades at the seminary of St. Cyprion, from which he was expelled under cloudy circumstances (we're guessing he slept with someone). And as you well know, his postseminary life was as ungodly as it gets. By the age of 30 he was sentenced to prison for engaging in "magic," but he escaped after only a year to Paris. There, he made a fortune by introducing the lottery to France. But before settling down to write his ribald, self-aggrandizing autobiography, Casanova was expelled from more European countries than most of us ever visit. Along the way, he slept with tons of women, dueled with many of their husbands, and generally sinned his way to the top of European culture, befriending such figures as Madame du Pompadour and Jean-Jacques Rousseau along the way.
3. Joseph Stalin (1879"“1953)
Lasting longer than the vast majority of divinity school dropouts, noted mass murderer Joseph Stalin studied at a Georgian Orthodox seminary in Tiflis (now Tbilisi) for five years, between 1894 and 1899.
He left the seminary either because of poor health (his mom's story) or revolutionary activity (Stalin's story).
Either way, Stalin clearly didn't take much of what he learned to heart. After he became the Soviet leader in 1922, he was responsible for the deaths of thousands of religious leaders, and Stalin did more than any other premier to eliminate the role of Christianity in Soviet life. But his seminary wasn't exactly a study in Christian love, either. Prior to Stalin's arrival, a rector was murdered there—possibly by unruly seminarians.
4. Michael Moore (1954"“ )
Controversial documentary filmmaker Michael Moore began studying at a seminary in his hometown of Flint, Michigan, as an eighth grader in 1967. Brought up a devout Catholic, Moore aspired to a career as a priest, but he left the seminary the next year for thoroughly secular reasons. When the Detroit Tigers made it to the World Series in 1968, the seminary refused to let him watch the games—so he quit. Before his successful filmmaking career, in fact, Moore was something of a serial dropout. He dropped out of the University of Michigan because he arrived at school one morning and couldn't find a parking place, and he once got a job at an automobile factory in Flint—but called in sick on his first day and never returned.
5. Al Gore (1948"“ )
Al Gore graduated from Harvard in 1969, but he'd always been interested in theology, so he decided to continue his studies. He didn't exactly live up to his potential though. After enrolling in Vanderbilt's prestigious divinity school, over the course of three semesters, he failed five of his eight classes. Gore's allies claim that the birth of his first child and his duties as a reporter at the Tennessean newspaper kept him from his studies. For the record, though, Gore also later dropped out of Vanderbilt's law school (in 1976), but this time for a truly higher purpose—to run for Congress.Ed. note: This list was pulled from Forbidden Knowledge.
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Crisis Management Team
First convened in 2000 to plan how Ball State would respond to a weather emergency, the crisis management team works to prepare the university for a variety of crisis situations
. The team
is composed of staff from departments
across campus and meets regularly to discuss ongoing and timely issues, focusing on planning, preparation, and procedures that are models of good practice. In addition, the team takes part in training and tabletop exercises throughout the year to test and enhance the university’s procedures for and response to an emergency on campus.
A primary responsibility of the team is to make recommendations for the president and senior staff so that they may successfully lead the university through the crisis. The crisis management team will manage the crisis from beginning to end, making determinations about the scope and nature of the response, as well as coordinating communication of information about the crisis to all internal and external audiences.
Ball State’s crisis management team is committed to building effective partnership and collaborating with local, county, and state officials whenever a crisis situation involves such agencies.
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Further to my interview with Bishop Geoffrey Robinson on Sunday night, it is after a protracted dispute that Pope Benedict XVI has forced Catholic Bishop Bill Morris of Toowoomba out of office.
Bishop Morris has written a letter of resignation to his diocese giving his account of the facts surrounding his removal. The bishop's departure is being officially referred to as "retirement" and "resignation" (by the bishop himself), but also as removal from office (by the Vatican press office).
The short version of the story goes like this. The tension between Bishop Morris and the Vatican has been escalating since the time of John Paul II in the 1990s. Complaints were made about him by conservative elements in his diocese.
One hot issue which raised particular concerns was the alleged breach of Canon Law by frequent use of the Third Rite of Reconciliation (with no private confession and a general absolution given). Another issue was the reference to married priests and the ordination of women in his 2006 Advent pastoral letter (now removed from the diocesan website). Pope John Paul II had said that the ordination of women was "no longer discussable," and Bishop Morris was put on notice by the Vatican.
American Archbishop Charles Chaput was subsequently sent to visit the diocese and make a report on what was going on in Toowoomba. The Archbishop's report can't have been too positive, because Bishop Morris was eventually removed. Unsurprisingly, Bishop Morris is unhappy that he has yet to see Archbishop Chaput's report (another take on how these events transpired can be found in "The Swag").
The specific Catholic context of all this needs to be kept in mind. The Catholic Church is not a parliamentary democracy. Bishops, priests and deacons freely promise obedience at their ordination. The Roman Pontiff has extraordinary reach and authority over those who claim to be Catholics, and who therefore - nominally, at least - agree with church teaching.
In this particular matter, the Bishop of Rome has deposed the Bishop of Toowoomba, and there is a clearly traceable and explainable history to this tragedy, one that reaches back before the 1990s.
But there is also a peculiarly Australian background to this story. It has to do with the perceived characteristics of Australian Catholics that became crystalised, as it were, in the minds of key Vatican figures more than a decade ago.
At a meeting between the Roman Curia and some of the senior Bishops of Australia in December 1998, a document known as the Statement of Conclusions was presented. The document was aimed at all of the Bishops of Australia and their dioceses - and was quite confronting, to say the least.
The (then) Cardinal Ratzinger had been influential in the preparation of the document, as were Sydney's Cardinal Edward Clancy and Brisbane's Bishop Michael Putney, both of whom were on the committee that produced the Statement.
The presentation of the Statement made it clear that its conclusions had been reached long before their own particular Ad Limina ("to the threshold") dialogues had begun in Rome. It also became clear that the views of only some bishops and other voices had influenced the Pope's advisers in the lead up to the bishops' dialogue.
Bill Morris had become Bishop of Toowoomba in 1993, six years before the crisis brought about by the Statement of Conclusions. He had been present at the 1998 curial meeting at which the Statement was presented, though he was not a signatory.
Of Australians, the Statement said things like:
"The tolerance characteristic of Australian society naturally affects the Church also. While it has many positive elements, tolerance of and openness to all opinions and perspectives on the truth can lead to indifference ..."
The Statement likewise expressed grave concerns about:
"indifference to the poor, racial prejudice and violence, abortion, euthanasia, the legitimation of homosexual relationships and other immoral forms of sexual activity."
Of Australian bishops, the Statement said things like:
"It is their grave responsibility, clearly and unambiguously, to proclaim the Church's teaching and to do all that they can to preserve the faithful from error ..."
"The bishop may not tolerate error in matters of doctrine and morals or Church discipline, and true unity must never be at the expense of truth."
"The bishop, in his pastoral governance, is entrusted with the important task of cultivating deep communion within the particular Church which, in turn, contributes to communion in the universal Church."
Of the Sacrament of Penance in Australia, the Statement said things like:
"communal celebrations have not infrequently occasioned an illegitimate use of general absolution. This illegitimate use, like other abuses in the administration of the sacrament of Penance, is to be eliminated. The teaching of the Church is reflected in precise terms in the requirements of the Code of Canon Law (cf. esp. canons 959-964)."
Of Liturgy in Australia, the Statement said things like:
"It is all the more necessary to return constantly to the authentic teaching of the Church on the Liturgy, as found in the liturgical texts themselves."
The Statement also objected to:
"The tendency on the part of some priests and parishes to make their own changes to liturgical texts and structures, whether by omissions, by additions, or by substitutions, occasionally even in central texts such as the Eucharistic Prayer."
The bishops of Australia were mixed in their reaction to the Statement. In private (and in my own hearing) some were very unhappy at their treatment - one bishop remarking to me "we were treated like naughty schoolkids." Others were relieved and delighted that Rome had finally acted to intervene in a Church that they regarded as going off the rails in some quarters.
Cardinal Pell said the Statement was "a fair and accurate description of what's going on in Australia - but a bit understated." Then again, Bishop Brian Heenan of Rockhampton thought the Statement didn't represent "the overall picture of the strength of the Australian Church." (It is probably worth noting, in hindsight, that there has been a 13% decline in Australian Catholic Church attendance between 1995 and 2011. But back to the main story.)
In 1999, following their return from the Ad Limina dialogues in Rome in 1999, those same Australian Bishops had a frequently tense meeting in Kensington. There they discussed the Statement of Conclusions that Pope John Paul II had so strongly endorsed. The Australian Bishops Conference gave its assent to the Statement in that meeting.
In their subsequent letter to Australian Catholics, the bishops said they would be following the Pope's request that the use of the Third Rite of Reconciliation "be kept strictly within the conditions laid down by Canon Law." In Australia, that meant, in effect, that it could not be celebrated at all. But even back then, Bishop Brian Heenan of Rockhampton had already indicated that he would leave it to his priests to decide on use of the Third Rite.
And so now, after more than a decade since the Statement, one of its prime movers, Pope Benedict XVI, has forced the bishop of Toowoomba out of office. By joining the dots of the broader history, it is clear that Bill Morris - by all accounts a very good man and a kind pastor - has breached some of the principles laid out in the Statement of Conclusions, and so exposed himself to severe sanction.
A further ironic element of the history, quite germane to this Australian tragedy, is the curious heresy of Americanism. Back in the 19th century, the American bishops living in that large democracy were condemned by the Vatican for accepting the "separation of Church and State." The way the Church operates within particular cultures may well be worth contemplating as Bill Morris packs up his Toowoomba desk amid relief from those who wished him gone, sadness from many in his diocese, and protest from priests in Australia.
Bishop Morris, Aussie to his bootstraps, has openly insisted that he has been denied natural justice by the Vatican. He has asked for a fair go. He has not seen the report lodged about him by Archbishop Charles Chaput, and he has not been given the chance to defend himself, as we might be expect to in any Australian court of law.
Nonetheless, the Catholic Church is regulated internally by Canon Law (related to European law). Hence, it may be "the Catholic Church in Australia," but its hierarchy does not operate in the same manner as Australian justice operates, and never has.
Instead, Canon Law incorporates the basics of ancient Roman Law - including a prosecutorial/inquisitorial approach. This is also the case in the Italian, French and most European legal systems, but not the British, American or Australian legal systems.
* * *
UPDATE: Besides the lack of due process, Bishop Morris says he is concerned about what he calls "creeping infallibility." In a telephone interview on 5 May, Bishop Morris read to me from the final letter that Pope Benedict XVI had sent to him.
Bishop Morris said that the letter indicated he would be removed from office on 2 May, and that there would be no further negotiation. Even more significantly, Bishop Morris said that, in the letter, Pope Benedict asserted "that Pope John Paul II had said irrevocably and infallibly that women cannot be ordained."
This is the first time the word "infallible" has been used formally by a pope in regard to the ordination of women. This may now mean there is a fourth infallible definition from the pope on record - namely, that women cannot be ordained. The other three infallible definitions were:
1) The Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary defined by Pope Pius IX in 1854;
2) Papal infallibility (itself) defined formally by the bishops in the first Vatican council of 1870; and
3) The Assumption of the Virgin Mary, defined formally by Pope Pius XII in 1950.
Quite apart from the Pope's removal of an Australian bishop with no legal process or form of appeal (as well as papal confirmation that there exists no such process for bishops), the further revelation of the new statement of infallibility from Pope Benedict's letter will have Church-wide significance.
Noel Debien is the producer of ABC's Sunday Nights radio program.
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Hey Im making an interactive map. I am also very new to this stuff
I am using South America. 12 countries. I have used html image maps to make the different countries links. So when I click on where Argentina is it takes me to the relevant page.
There are 2 more things I am after with this map.
1) I would like to make it so that when you move your mouse over a paticular country it changes in someway. Whether that be by lighting up or down or the border lighting up or the area changing colour.
how would I incorporate that into the map? Would I incorporate it into the html map code?
EDIT: I can make the whole map do this hover transparent thing but not the sections
2) I would also like small popup boxes to appear with the countries name in them. So when you put your mouse over Argentina a small box or label appears saying "Argentina". When your mouse is not over argentina the label is hidden. The label can be on the map, as a label, underneath the map. It doesnt matter too much.
if you need help coding the image changing then give me the thirteen images,
I hugely appreciate that you would do something so kind for me however I believe I need to do this myself. I am trying my best to learn as much as possible and in my opinion the best way to learn is by doing it. It might take me ages to do and Ill probably make a lot of mistakes but I will learn along the way.
I just wanted to know if it was possible to do and a general idea of what I have to do. You have given me a little bit of direction so I will try myself.
If you have the image in JPG / PNG format, then you can use iMapBuilder to convert it into an interactive flash map. This custom mapping software has a windows version (which you can download for using on your own PC) as well as an online version which runs in browser.
The map can then be embed to your own website, or share via email.
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Being the sustainability director of Portland is a bit like being the oil minister of Saudi Arabia. You don’t exactly run the place, but you do have the region’s chief export on tap. Portland’s public transit system is held up as a model for the country. Per capita carbon emissions are down 26 percent since 1990. Portland consistently tops lists for most bike-friendly city. The city even has an eco-pub.
Of course, you already knew this, thanks to Portlandia. But show creators Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein should thank sustainability chief Susan Anderson: She’s been pushing the city in this direction since the early ’90s. Anderson started off at the energy office and was a key figure in its first climate action plan in 1993. She’s headed the sustainability department since 2000, and now runs the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, the result of the Bureau of Planning merging with the Office of Sustainability in 2009.
“[Sustainability] doesn’t happen by chance,” she says. “There’s all the stuff that some people think of as the mundane side of city planning. But it’s the bones, the framework for allowing so much of this stuff to happen,” she says.
And just like Saudi Arabia’s future oil woes, Portland’s resources can dry up: The public transportation agency, TriMet, is facing up to $17 million in budget shortfalls next year. Even a place with designated ecodistricts has its challenges.
I talked to Anderson for the latest episode of Knope and change, our series about the women who are leading the charge to green our cities. Here’s our edited conversation about how Portland got to where it is today, some of the challenges it faces, and how it really stacks up against the caricature we see on TV.
Q. Your city will now forever be thought of as Portlandia. What’s the biggest mischaracterization in the show?
A. I always say it’s less of a parody and more of a biography. Our mayor is the mayor’s assistant [on the show]. What’s interesting are the parts that [make] people in other cities think, “Aw, I wish we were that place.” It’s not the over-the-top, goofy parts, but the human-scale part of Portland. It’s really walkable and there are restaurants on the corners and there are food carts everywhere. The air and water are generally very clean. You can recycle everything. Portlandia is a parody but a lot of those things are actually normal here.
Q. I think Portlandia sometimes paints sustainability as just a hipster thing. How have you been able to make sustainability relevant to low-income folks and the unemployed?
A. One: not talking about sustainability but talking about affordability. How do you make places where people can afford to get around without a car? You don’t need to own a car here. [Programs that increase] energy efficiency and water efficiency in households; putting affordable housing on transit lines; integrating sustainable building practices into public housing.
Q. Portland has had some pretty major struggles with unemployment.
A. It’s lower than the national average now. It’s been dropping in the past few months. I think when it was above the national average, people wanted to make it seem like, “Oh, Portland. You’re just like Portlandia. You’re all selling each other coffee and giving each other tattoos.” There’s probably some truth to that, but …
Q. How did Portland become such a leader in sustainability?
A. Part of it — you open your eyes and look outside and there’s Mt. Hood right there, and amazing mountains and rivers and fish. You want to protect all that. And part of it — we started really early. We had state-wide land-use planning starting in the ’70s, which no other state had. That required every city to do comprehensive plans to look at how jobs and the environment interact. How do you have good housing and healthier people and safer cities?
But we’re not doing [sustainability] just to be altruistic. Part of the reason we’re doing a lot of this: There’s money to be made, to be crass. There are hundreds and hundreds of companies in Portland that are manufacturing or offering services that are sustainable technologies or products or services. They are selling them to the rest of the world now. And most of these things are things we want to do to create better, healthier places anyway — but by doing that, you create a place where people want to live and have businesses. Seattle and Portland have had that as their economic development focus.
Q. Seattle and San Francisco have mandatory composting. It’s interesting that some of your programs, like composting, are optional but successful.
A. They are and they aren’t. For [residential composting], it’s been a year as of [Wednesday]. The impact is a 40 percent reduction in garbage. People are composting. You don’t have to, but we’re only picking garbage up every other week. There are still people complaining, but people adapt and have learned that they can compost or recycle most of their stuff. I’m not against mandates, I just think there’s a lot of opportunity to build partnerships and to work on behavior change.
Q. What are the biggest issues facing Portland?
A. Health and education. We have a very highly educated, college-educated population but most of those people have come from somewhere else. I want to get kids through high school and I want them to go on to college. You don’t think about that as a sustainable issue but everything flows from there. …
How do we get all of the people who care about health to see the connections between healthy people and a healthy environment? Making sustainability about people’s personal health will be an excellent tool. Sometimes talking about climate change and air pollution — it’s scary. It’s the why for why we do these things, but focusing on how those same actions you would take — walking or riding a bike or taking public transit or green building for your home — all those things are about the health of you and your kids. That’s a motivator for more people.
Q. What have you learned from doing city sustainability for so long?
A. What I’ve learned over the past 20 years is America, and the world, is becoming a place where cities are going to make the difference. We can’t wait for national governments and even state governments necessarily to make large legislative changes. Those things take so long. Or they don’t ever happen, as we know with climate change. Because of gridlock and everything else in Congress, if we want stuff to happen, it’s going to be New York and Portland and San Francisco and even some other cities in the Midwest eventually that just jump in.
Q. When Minneapolis stole the title of “most bike-friendly city in America” in 2010, the mayor there was quoted as saying, “Portland is just an avenue in Minneapolis.”
A. Just an avenue in Minneapolis? Bah!
Healthy competition is great. The more Minneapolis bikes, the more we will too. The same with Seattle and San Francisco on any of these issues. I love when Vancouver says they’re the most sustainable city on the planet. Then I can go to my city and my councilmembers and say, “Oh yeah?”
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The most successful cities achieve a kind of organised chaos - a rich, dense and varied mix of different kinds of people, ideas and businesses, constantly colliding in new and interesting ways.
Jane Jacobs, an urban activist, made that observation in 1961 in her book, "The Death and
Life of Great American Cities".
Although she was describing cities built of bricks and mortar, her ideas about cultivating vibrancy feel relevant today, as most metropolises of the 21st century are being constructed online, where chaos is in no short supply.
The latest controversy surrounds Reddit, a community and social news site that lets members create and run their own forums on any topic, from movie news to politics to sharing nature photographs.
Reddit has come under fire for harbouring a forum that encourages people to covertly photograph women on the street and upload the images for others to ogle and comment. The pictures, nicknamed "creepshots", incited public outrage.
The skirmish has set off a debate about privacy and free speech, ownership and community, digital rights and accountability, touching upon issues of privilege and the undercurrents of power that course through the web.
Reddit is just one website but it wields a sizable chunk of influence online, playing an instrumental role in rallying the web to halt the progression of anti-piracy bills proposed by US Congress earlier this year. Zeynep Tufekci, a professor at the University of North Carolina, described the site as "the secret backbone of the Internet," which is why it is even more crucial that it be accountable for the environment it is fostering, she said.
"Reddit may not be the most visible site, but is a powerful platform," she said.
Such creepshots also appear on other places around the web, including Twitter.
And sites from YouTube to Instagram, the photo-sharing app, are grappling with how to address provocative content. As more of our life migrates online, the gap between who we are online and who we are offline is closing, said Katie Baker, a writer for Jezebel.
© Copyright © 2013 HT Media Limited. All Rights Reserved.
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BENNINGTON -- Officially designated scenic routes, downtowns and business districts -- there's signage strewn all along America's major roadways pointing motorists toward town centers and local points of interest. But do they have an impact, or are today's travelers affected by "sign fatigue"?
Local business people and state Agency of Transportation officials said there is some indication such signage matters; or at least they hope.
"They can't hurt," said Connie Brooks, owner of Battenkill Books in Cambridge, N.Y., where the New York State Department of Transportation recently gave the green light for new "business district" signs at the village's
"I know personally I look for those signs" when traveling, Brooks said. The bookstore owner wrote a letter of support to the state DOT requesting the signs as part of a multi-year effort by village officials to install markers for the business center of Cambridge -- which Brooks said many out-of-town customers remarked they never knew existed.
"If you don't know the area at all ... (then) you wouldn't realize there's anything else" while driving north or south along 22, she said. (Some business district signs do currently exist, but they're small and difficult to spy, according to Brooks.)
In Bennington, objections arose on both ends of the region's "bypass," which allows through traffic to avoid the downtown. Across the state border where New York Route 7 diverges with the western leg of the bypass, formally known as Vermont Route 279, complaints were voiced about inadequate signs pointing to Bennington.
Meanwhile, on the recently opened "northern" leg, a lack of any mention of Manchester had officials in the Northshire roiled. Amy Gamble, a traffic operations engineer for VTrans, said Friday that a Manchester sign was in the process of being added.
In terms of business district signage, Gamble said VTrans worked with local planners around their needs. "Generally, when we have directional signs (for) towns ... they point to the downtown center," she said. As requested, Vermont will also mark districts that are off of state highways. (Bennington planners have asked for such added pointers.) Gamble said business signs were implemented on a case-by-case basis, and Vermont also has a business sign program in which individual businesses can lease signs.
Quantifying the impact is difficult, but there is evidence that motorists pay heed.
Vermont Scenic Byways Coordinator John LaBarge said while he had "no hard figures," his office has seen "a lot of growth and interest" in the scenic byways program from outside "drive market areas" -- out-of-staters within a day's drive.
Travel and tourism comprise a large percentage of the state's economy and employ one in nine Vermonters, according to the state Department of Tourism & Marketing. LaBarge said he could monitor interest in byways through website hits and visitor centers. (A production of 60,000 byway pamphlets, expected to last at least a year and a half, is nearly gone after one year.)
"A lot of people are asking, ‘What are the byways?'" A national program to promote local items of scenic, historic, and cultural interest, Vermont now has nine (soon 10) of the officially designated scenic routes, including two locally: The Shires of Vermont and Molly Stark.
In New York, Cambridge's new business signs received state approval after a DOT tally. Village trustees approved a resolution of support Wednesday. In a Dec. 12, 2012, letter to village Trustee Sara Kelly, Region Traffic Engineer Mark Kennedy wrote that "business district signs are usually provided for areas where motorists must leave the state highway system to reach the business district."
That rule of thumb did not apply in Cambridge, where both routes are state-maintained, although Kennedy continues in the letter to say that a field review found three times as many businesses on Route 372 as on Route 22. He adds a caveat, however: "(Understand) that identifying Route 372 as the business district could be opposed by the businesses on Route 22."
By pointing visitors one way, business district signs may wash over the other direction.
Follow @Zeke_Wright on Twitter or email firstname.lastname@example.org
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Object Class: Safe
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-458 is considered safe and therefore is to be stored in the staff canteen at Site 17, with no access restrictions required.
Description: SCP-458 is a large-sized pizza box from the pizza chain Little Caesar's, of their Hot-n-Ready variety. It is made of simple cardboard, measures 25.4cmx25.4cmx2.54cm (10inx10inx1in), and weighs about 20 to 20.49 grams depending on toppings. As a result of the unusual nature of SCP-458, measurement of weight is inconsistent.
What makes SCP-458 an oddity is that, while appearing to be an ordinary pizza box, when it comes into contact with human hands, it instantaneously replicates within it the holder's subconsciously preferred choice of pizza, down to favorite sauce, cheese, crust, and topping. It is not limited to the Little Caesars brand, as pizza from all major pizza chains, as well as local and even handmade pizzas have been produced. There seems to be no limit to its ability, except that it cannot make anything but pizza, and its toppings must be edible by normal human standards (see Addendum 1a). The box is also rather indestructible, as all tests to destroy or dismantle the box have proven fruitless.
It is assumed the box is semi-sentient, having at least enough telepathic or empathetic ability to sense what the holder's personal choices regarding pizza are.
After constant testing showed SCP-458's seemingly infinite power to generate pizza (but with little other use), it has henceforth been placed inside the canteen at Site-17 for free use by personnel. After its open usage has been allowed, personnel morale has shown to have sharply increased.
Addendum 1a: Upon testing SCP-458 with SCP-███, the subject took a bite of the slice, which appeared to be a garlic-free slice of sausage and olive pizza on wheat crust. This was met with the response "It's a fine slice, but I would have preferred a rather different sauce." It was inferred that the box cannot use substances that are indigestible by regular human bodies. Further testing confirmed this.
Addendum 1b: Please see Document #458-1a
Document #458-1a: I would just like to remind all staff that just because we have a pizza box that can constantly create pizzas for you does not mean that you can just sit around and eat pizza all afternoon. If continued abuse of the box continues, coupled with reports of personnel gaining unhealthy amounts of weight, I may be forced to implement a mandatory physical training regimen following lunch hours.
-Dr. del Morrino
Document #458-1b: For simple curiosity's sake, and to, perhaps, get a better idea of the mindset of certain SCP's, I have compiled a list of sentient SCP's reactions when holding the box.
|SCP-040||Small, extra cheese, cheese stuffed crust.|
|SCP-056||Medium, sliced bell peppers, thin crust, alfredo sauce.|
|SCP-073||Medium, feta and jack cheese, no sauce, thin crust.1|
|SCP-076-02||Large, meatballs, pepperoni, bacon, Canadian bacon, sausage, hamburger, thick crust.|
|SCP-105||Small, olives, wheat crust, thin.|
|SCP-108||Large, pepperoni, thick crust.|
|SCP-134||Small, onions, anchovies, olives, thin crust.|
|SCP-181||Large, pepperoni, sausage, marinara-stuffed crust.2|
|SCP-182||Medium, olives, mushrooms, pretzel dough crust.|
Further testing on SCPs may reveal some odd characteristics about the SCP's themselves, and is suggested.
- Dr. Kreign
Further cross-testing is permitted but requires approval and supervision due to safety concerns.
- Dr. ███████
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Kim Elliott: As you outline so well in your book and in various interviews in the U.S. media, the current financial crisis holds the possibility of being one of those moments when the shock doctrine can best be applied. Can you comment on both the Harper government's economic and fiscal statement introduced last week, and on the Opposition's response to that - that is, the formation of a coalition - in the context of the shock doctrine?
Naomi Klein: Yes, absolutely. What I think we are seeing is a clear example of the shock doctrine in the way the Harper government has used the economic crisis to push through a much more radical agenda than they won a mandate to do.
At the same time we are seeing an example of what I call in the book a "shock resistance," where this tactic has been so overused around the world and also in Canada that we are becoming more resistant to the tactic - we are on to them - and Harper is not getting away with it.
What I think is really amazing about this moment is whatever happens next - whether we end up with this coalition or not, we will have an extremely chastened Harper. So the attempted shock doctrine has failed. I think we can say that decisively.
Just to be clear, what I mean by the shock doctrine, as you know, is the use of crisis to push through unpopular pro-corporate policies. This bundling of a whole package of policies: denying the right of public sector workers to strike, the attack on public financing of political parties, with the economic program - that is what failed, and people were offended by the opportunism of it.
This is what so many of us were worried about during the election - the context of a Tory victory in an economic crisis, because we know that there is this pattern of using an economic crisis to push through policies that were nowhere during the campaign.
KE: This coalition gives us lots of opportunities, but it also poses some risks if it is successful. I'd like to ask you about that. In an interview you had on Democracy Now!, you said that part of the reason that Obama was appointing a host of neo-liberal economists was because there was a lack of "intellectual honesty" among progressives about the real legacy of the Clinton years. Does the Canadian left, in a Liberal-led coalition, risk losing our understanding of the neo-liberal legacy of the Liberals, who during those same Clinton years were ripping up Canada's welfare state, cutting social spending etc?
NK: I think it is really important to remember, and I've written about this in the book, and Linda McQuaig has written about it extensively, that it is the Liberals who actually implemented what I'm describing in Canada.
They were elected on an economic stimulus platform in 1993, with a huge mandate. The Tories were wiped out in those historic elections. And then they caved to pressure from Bay Street, from the corporate media and from the right-wing think tanks in the face of the debt crisis. They turned around and broke their election promises when it came to NAFTA, when it came to job creation, and the famous 1995 Paul Martin budget came down which did so much damage to unemployment insurances (which makes it particularly interesting that a key piece of the agreement for the coalition is about strengthening unemployment insurance). So we need to have long memories about the Liberals, because they have done exactly what Harper has just done, in terms of using an economic crisis for a neo-liberal about turn.
That said, what I find most exciting about what is going on right now - beyond just getting rid of Harper, which is exciting in and of itself - is that we have this opportunity to show what proportional representation (PR) would look like, because all of this talk that this is a coup is a joke.
What is being proposed by this coalition is much closer to representative democracy than what we have right now, which is a government that has [slightly more than] 35 per cent of the popular vote in a turnout that was historically low, of 59 per cent of Canadian voters, which means that even though the Tories won more seats they had fewer actual votes than in the last election.
I think it is really important to talk about democracy, about what it actually means in this period. In some ways I think it is even more important than talking about the policies, because our electoral system is broken. Because of the Tories' extraordinary opportunism and terrible calculation we now have an opportunity to see a better version of democracy and see more people represented in government.
To me the best case scenario that could come out of this is, one, you get the coalition, and, two, the NDP uses this moment to really launch a national discussion about why we need PR and that that becomes one of the things that comes out of this crisis.
Now, they don't have the mandate for that right now, but we could come out of this with a national referendum on proportional representation. People might actually like it, which would be really, really exciting.
KE: That is a very exciting possibility, and I wanted to ask you, if this coalition is successful, what are the two or three key issues that the NDP should focus on, the kinds of issues that were not covered in the agreement?
NK: They've put in writing what they've agreed to. I think it is going to maybe be up to the NDP to make sure that the EI improvements are protected.
KE: I'm thinking of those issues that were not in the agreement like PR, or like withdrawal from Afghanistan - those issues that were not nailed down in the agreement.
NK: Those issues weren't nailed down because there isn't agreement on them, and that I think it is not really about whether the NDP holds the line on these issues, but about how the NDP uses this platform. It is a historic opportunity, I think, to be very bold, not just because of what is happening in this country, but because of what is happening globally.
Another important role for the NDP, beyond putting proportional representation on the agenda, withdrawal from Afghanistan, is also the terms of the bailout. The bailout for the auto industry is part of their agreement, but we don't know what the terms of that agreement are going to be, and that is going to be really important in terms of negotiating a progressive automobile industry bailout - a green auto industry bailout, if such a thing is possible. So that is a very important role that the NDP could play.
I think the best analogy, in terms of the kinds of concerns you are raising in regards to the Liberals and neo-liberalism, of being the party that continued and deepened Mulroney's neo-liberal economic program, is to look at Gordon Brown. He was finance minister for Tony Blair, really the face of neo-liberalism in Britain. He is now overseeing what many are calling the death of New Labour, and the return to Keynesian economics in Britain. That is because he is fighting for his political life. That is because he was going down, until he started talking this way. That is really what is at stake for the Liberals, I think.
This is also why I think the issue of political financing for political parties is so key. The reason there is a little more latitude in Canada on these issues is because our political process is not massively owned by corporations as it is in the United States.
The way in which public financing for political parties has been presented in the press is "oh the politicians, they just got mad when they went after their money," right? This is another key point that I think is somewhat related to the issue of proportional representation. We need to be talking about our political process here, and the issue of public financing for political parties in elections is key to protecting and deepening democracy in Canada, and for keeping it out of corporate control. It is not for nothing that the Tories are attacking that. They see attacking public financing of political parties as a way to entrench their power.
KE: Should this coalition become government, what should we as progressive movements be doing in terms of using this as an opportunity to promote these kinds of progressive agendas, to support the NDP in a predominantly Liberal caucus?
NK: I think it is PR, I really think that is the way in. By pushing PR then it is not just about this one crisis. It is about leveraging this situation to have a more democratic system. It means that if the NDP does deeply disappoint us in this moment we could still end up with a better political system.
KE: Should the coalition happen what do you see as the long-term fall-out in terms of western voters in Canada?
NK: I really think that we need to fight back this strategy. We know what the talking points are from the right and from the West, and it is about playing up this idea of making a coalition with the Bloc, "with the separatists."
What to me is so extraordinary is the temper tantrum being thrown in Alberta right now at the prospect of having to be ruled by a majority - by a coalition of parties representing the majority of the people in this country. I really do think it is worth asking who the real separatists are, because of course the undercurrent of everything they are saying is that they will take our oil. So who are the real separatists?
KE: Do you agree then that we should be out there supporting the coalition? Attending rallies, mobilizing letter-writing campaigns?
NK: Absolutely. Listen, we've been given a second chance, after these elections. What is exciting about it is that a lot of people did get involved in the election to try to beat the Tories. Maybe it started a little bit too late. We were surprised a bit by how quickly the election happened, but you saw a lot of people getting involved in things like voteforenviroment.ca and the Department of Culture.
That was very much the spirit of it, it was anything but the Tories and it was kind of building a PR system without the cooperation of the political parties that got a lot of people excited during this election. It was about just doing an end-run around the political parties who were not cooperating to try to keep out the Tories.
So, what is exciting about this political moment, and how people can get involved, is that this is building on that. The political parties caught up with the grassroots movement that was happening anyway with those initiatives like voteforenvironment.ca, Department of Culture, and people like Murray Dobbin who have been making these arguments pretty steadily outside of the political parties. Now it is happening, and it is happening thanks to Stephen Harper and his extraordinary arrogance and over-reaching. We can't lose this moment.
I just want to emphasize this point: If even through smart tactics, Harper pulls this off, if he prorogues Parliament; if the Governor General lets him get away with it; if the Liberals lose their nerve over Xmas, then the Harper we will have in January will be a deeply chastened Harper.
What everybody agrees with is that he made a massive error, that he massively overreached, and his own party, his own base agrees with that. Worst case scenario we dodged a bullet here. Best case scenario, we leverage his overreach, his attempt to use a crisis to push through his ideological pro-corporate agenda to have a deeper democracy in our country, and to prevent forevermore a situation where a party with 35 per cent of the vote is government.
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Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you simply cannot get toddlers to interact with one another without a little bit of coaxing. Even if one child is willing to play and socialize with others, there may always be one or two in a group that just want to sit on the sidelines for a while. When you have a first play date planned for your child along with one or more children, you might want to think of having a couple of toys handy that will promote interaction as well as socialization.
While crayons and crafts are wonderful, sometimes it takes a little more to get kids on the path to making friends and playmates. At toddler age, it can also be a bit difficult to find a way to get children to share with one another, since this is a trait that they really have not had too much experience with as of yet. Having a toy or collection of toys that can be used by multiple children at once could be the best move you ever make with a first play date.
The Brick Me Building Set is a great choice for toddlers, especially when they like to put together colorful pieces in stacks and patterns. This is a nice set of large blocks made from plastic, which makes for easy handling and plenty of ways to build, share and interact with one another. Having such a set of blocks on hand could make life easier for any parent that would like to enjoy a memorable play date with their children.
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Animals in need and endangered species around the world will benefit from more than $1 million in grants awarded this year by the non-profit SeaWorld & Busch Gardens Conservation Fund. The Fund approved grants to more than 100 wildlife protection projects. Here are a few of the efforts.
Chris’ Field Notes
This past August, my 14-year-old daughter Claire asked if we could enter an essay contest that Quark Expeditions and SeaWorld were sponsoring.
The grand prize?
And Then There Were Three . . . . More!
SeaWorld San Diego, already home to more than 250 amazing penguins, has three more birds in its family. These Magellanic penguins hatched a little more than a month ago and are doing great in the Penguin Encounter's behind-the-scenes nursery.
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Princes of the Road
Click to order via Amazon
by David Covin
Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: Blue Nile Press; first edition (May 31, 2012)
Reviewed by Emanuel Carpenter
In David Covin's Princes of the Road, the author transports readers to the 1930s of America, where Jim Crow and racism ruled. The central characters are the black porters who worked for the Pullman Company, primarily the soon-to-retire Deacon Judge and the smarter-than-he-seems Ezekiel James Jones. The story gets going when Deacon is propositioned by a woman at church he's never met:
She reached into the small purse that hung from her neck on a chain. She fished out paper money and mashed it into his hand, pushing his fingers closed over it.
"I'm payin' you this money. I hope it's enough. I ain't got no more." She spoke rapidly, "but if it's not enough, jest look me up-here at the church- the next time you's in Atlanta and, I swear, I'll pay you the rest. Annie, Annie Flager's my name.
The payment was for Deacon to help her son escape the treacherous South.
Deacon would have to hide the teenager as a stowaway on the trains. But with police everywhere, the task is not an easy one.
A turning point in the novel is when readers get to know Ezekiel. The man was smart enough to use his money to put his children through medical school even though he speaks more like a slave. When he is propositioned by a vice president at the railroad company, he gladly accepts. The VP says:
"The truth is---and this is what you must not let anyone know---we haven't been able to penetrate their security at all. We don't know a damn thing about what their goals are for the contract talks, or what their strategy will be. We don't even know who will be the working men on their negotiating team.
Bottom line, the union can cost the railroad company a lot of money. So
much so that union men's lives are destroyed once they've been discovered.
The VP lines Ezekiel's pockets, and he sets off on a two-year expedition to
infiltrate the union and weed out the worst of them, especially since he
believes they are nothing but troublemakers anyway.
Princes of the Road is a good read. It takes you back to an uncomfortable time when lynching was common, the South was considered evil and dangerous for blacks, and African-Americans were second class citizens, if that. The book also reminds of us of a time when porters were well-respected in the black community for the decent wages they earned and the opportunity to see most of the country on the company's dime. We also learn of their private lives (such as how many of them had women outside of their marriages in different cities), ambitions (such as owning their own businesses), and even superstitions.
The only downside to the book is that it sometimes gets mired in smaller details that don't necessarily advance the plot, which may leave readers hoping at times that the pace picks up. It doesn't take way from the overall merit of the book since Covin's prose is wonderful and his knowledge of history is to be commended. Though this one is not quite the page turner as his other work, Wimbey's Corner, it's still worth picking up and checking out.
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New York (CNN) - As businessman Donald Trump continues to mull over a possible run for the presidency in 2012, one thing he made clear Thursday is that he is unhappy with the current leadership in the country.
"You see what can be done with proper leadership. We in this country, we don't have unfortunately that leadership," said Trump when specifically asked about President Obama and what he would do differently. Trump was speaking at a press conference in New York City.
"Were being very, very badly decimated by other countries taking advantage of us and we're like a whipping post and we could be great and we could be great again, but right now this country is doing very, very poorly."
Trump cited China, oil prices, OPEC, the U.S. dollar and food prices as some of the problems the U.S. is currently facing.
Trump was joined by President of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, in a joint press conference to announce an agreement to build two new luxury properties in Georgia – a tower hotel in the capital of Tbilisi and a residential tower in the Black Sea Resort of Batumi.
"In terms of foreign relations I think this is really a great start," Trump said.
Trump contends that these types of international business deals should count towards his foreign policy credentials if he were a presidential candidate.
"I understand how the world works I deal with the world."
Official word on whether "the Donald" will run for office will be announced by June.
Trump said he's been asked for years to run but today feels "more serious than ever" about the idea.
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Algorhythmic from Aon² has been working on speech recognition with his Raspberry Pi, and has a very nice video demo of a voice-controlled robot he’s been building, with full instructions on how to get something similar working yourself. (Edit to add, 12 Jul: the arm itself is available in the UK from Maplin – it’s currently in the sale at £29.99.)
We thought this was fantastic. If this is a project you’re going to try to replicate at home, it’s worth noting that for some arcane reason, a USB webcam like the one Algorhythmic is using in the video (which, of course, contains a microphone) is often cheaper than a dedicated USB microphone on its own. Let us know how you get on!
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Others, of more admisitrative nature, are not affected by that and can be acquired unlimited. In some occasions it is even required to hold a feudal title before being granted one of the more important administrative title.
There also will be again clerical titles for generals. These will now also be open to family members (with some restrictions). This is because the much enlarged family trees now also hold the middle and lesser nobility that often held the local bishops titles.
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http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?580457-DHRR-v0-9-Previews-and-Features/page3
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AfriGeneas States Research Forum
Re: [IL] Slave Trial
In Response To: [IL] Slave Trial ()
Plantations and slaves were not just in the South. I have been researching slavery in Illinois for quite a few years now. It amazes me that our federal government entered agreements with slaveholders to allow them to bring their slaves into Illinois and work as long as the slaves did not stay in the State of Illinois for the whole year. They were not residents of Illinois and thereby not considered free in the free State of Illinois.
I received a brochure in today’s mail. Here is some of the information it should someone wish to attend. I can direct you to the proper person should you need more details.
Trial & Tribulations
This living history/theatrical program will present all sides of the Matson Slave Trial story:
The Trial and Tribulations Program
Sat., Sep 19 10:30a.m.-3:00p.m.
Sat., Sep 19 4-8:30p.m.
Program participants will begin by interacting with seven of the main characters in the story at two historic sites; enjoy an 1847 meal; and conclude with a theatrical presentation about the trial.
Price: $25/person includes meal. Group discounts available. Affordable special programs offered for schools on Friday morning and afternoon. Advance ticket purchase is encouraged by calling, e-mailing or returning the attached form to the project.
Messages In This Thread
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In response to President Barack Obama's announcement Wednesday that he would push Congress to approve sweeping new gun control legislation — including the renewal of a ban on assault rifles like the one used in the Newtown school shooting — advocacy group Sandy Hook Promise issued a statement applauding the president's approach.
As it has said before, though, including at its press conference on Monday, change can't stop at new legislation.
The statement came from one of the group's co-founder, Tim Makris, a Sandy Hook Elementary School parent.
"Sandy Hook Promise welcomes the broad focus of the President's proposals," Makris wrote to Patch. "We appreciate his decisive action to help address through Executive Order immediate opportunities for reform, and we applaud his broader commitment to finding meaningful common sense solutions to help prevent similar acts of violence in other communities in America. Hopefully this will begin a thoughtful debate in Congress on how best to prevent future incidents of gun violence."
The statement asks both citizens and politicians to which reads, in part:
"I promise to do everything I can to encourage and support common sense solutions that make my community and my country safer from similar acts of violence."
The organization, which launched the promise Monday as a way for citizens to react to — and, it hopes, prevent — mass shootings like the one that took the lives of 20 children and six adults in December.
Since then, the group has gained support from Sen. Chris Murphy, who said he supports the type of sweeping legal changes proposed by Obama, and more than 24,000 fans on their Facebook page.
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Has Mitt Romney, the U.S. Republican Party’s candidate for November’s presidential elections, given up hope of boosting his dismal standing among U.S. citizens of Latin American extraction? The question arises after Romney’s pick of a running mate of no apparent appeal to Latinos.
Romney’s choice as candidate for Vice President, the ultra-conservative congressman Paul Ryan, is a darling of the Republican Party’s rigidly ideological base but has done nothing that could endear him to the fastest growing segment of the American electorate. On average, around 1,600 Latinos turn 18, voting age, every day and by November 6, some 22 million will be eligible to vote.
Romney is aware of how important their vote will be – in April, two reporters overheard him talk about the subject in a closed-door meeting with donors in Palm Beach. His message then, according to the eavesdropping journalists, was blunt: failure to win over more Latinos “spells doom for us.” Since then, the Romney campaign stepped up efforts to court Latinos with television ads and a Spanish-language website.
That failed to narrow the wide gap in Latino support between President Barack Obama and his rival. In July, the latest in a string of public opinion polls with similar results showed 23 percent would vote for Romney and 67 percent for Obama. While support for Romney has been going down, Obama held steady. The President won 67 percent of the Latino vote in 2008.
Romney’s standing among Latinos is the worst for a Republican presidential candidate since 1996 and number-crunching pundits from both ends of the political spectrum have estimated that he would need more than 30 percent of the Latino vote to win. Which makes his choice of Ryan baffling. Of all the potential running mates Romney could have picked from, Ryan is probably the one least likely to draw in Latino support.
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http://blogs.reuters.com/bernddebusmann/tag/paul-ryran/
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Tuesday, March 01, 2011
In most Indian kitchens, cooks, in an effort to get their families to eat this vegetable prized for its blood-sugar-fighting, cholesterol-lowering properties, add to it tons of sweeteners like jaggery or stuff it with all kinds of goodies and then deep-fry it. The idea is to mask its magnificent bitterness which some people, and especially kids, abhor. But all that work pretty much ends up working at odds with the natural healthfulness of the karela.
My recipe finds a way out of that dilemma by using a stuffing that's as healthy as it is delicious: tomatoes, onions, and peanuts, along with the fire of some simple spices and the rich sweetness of a smidgen of jaggery. I then pan-fry the karelas in a tiny bit of oil (you could even use a spray), like I would my eggplant in Bharli Vangi. This makes the karela tender and perfectly wonderful.
One word of advise: lots of people are tempted to peel the karela to reduce its bitterness, but I strongly advise against that because why waste a good thing? And if you find that you cannot have enough of the karela after trying this recipe, here are some other great and healthy ways too cook it.
Gotta run, but here's the recipe. Enjoy, all!
Karela Stuffed With Tomatoes, Onions and Peanuts
6 karelas (also called bitter gourds or bitter melons, and usually available in Indian and Asian grocery stores in the United States)
2 medium-large tomatoes, diced
1 large onion, minced
1 tbsp grated ginger
1 tsp garlic paste
1/2 tsp red chilli powder
1/4 tsp turmeric
1/3 cup peanuts, coarsely ground
1 tbsp grated jaggery (use sugar if you don't have this)
1 tbsp coriander powder
Salt to taste
1 tbsp + 1 tsp vegetable oil like canola
1/4 cup chopped coriander leaves
Heat 1 tsp of oil in a skillet. Add the onions and fry until brown spots appear. Add the tomatoes, chilli, turmeric and coriander powders. Fry until the oil starts to separate.
Add the peanuts and jaggery and stir-fry until the jaggery's melted.
Add salt to taste, coriander leaves, then turn off the heat and set aside.
Prepare the karelas by lopping off the ends and making a vertical slit all the way down one side, taking care not to cut through. With your fingers or a melon baller, remove all of the thick, white seeds that run through the length of the vegetable. Discard the seeds.
Spray the karelas with some oil and place in a preheated 350-degree oven for 20 minutes or until they become a little tender but not cooked through.
When they are cool enough to handle, stuff each karela with the tomato-onion-peanut filling. (My mom, when she stuffed karelas, would tie a string around them to keep the filling from coming out, but I skip this step.)
Heat 1 tbsp of oil in a cast-iron or non-stick skillet. Place the karelas, without overlapping, in the skillet and cook over medium-high heat, turning after each side becomes lightly golden-brown and is tender. To ensure the karela is well-cooked, pierce it with a knife. If the knife goes in without any resistance, it's pretty much ready to eat.
Enjoy hot with some plain old dal and rice.
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Meeks: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop
Posted Sep 13, 2012 0:23 UTC (Thu) by khim
In reply to: Meeks: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop
Parent article: Meeks: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop
I find that untrue. Red Hat being the prime example.
Indeed. Just not the example of openness you expect. Message from Matt just a few days ago: what happens October 26th, why it's so important for RedHat to do? Who knows…
Or another older, but significantly more famous example.
Sure, RedHat is quite open about their contribution to upstream, but when their real bread and butter is concerned… they are doing what other “serious players” are doing.
This means that if “community” wants to have any influence it must exercise said before code goes to serious player.
to post comments)
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Skip to content
Skip to navigation menu
02 March 2009
Cardiff and its colleagues among Wales’ five major universities have announced their intention to act together, combining their strengths and talents to drive forward the knowledge economy in Wales.
Together, Aberystwyth, Bangor, Cardiff, Glamorgan and Swansea Universities represent over 70% of all students in Wales and more than 95% of the nation’s research activity. With a combined annual turnover of approaching £1 billion, with a significant contribution from international sources, the big five are a substantial economic generator for Wales.
Working together, Wales’ five big research & innovation Universities declared:
"Wales’ development needs to be driven by real innovation. Such innovation will come from the depth and breadth of knowledge that our universities represent. We are already collaborating in fields including sustainable development, primary healthcare services, social recovery policies. We know that, collectively, our staff and our students can offer real help to business, the public sector and to individuals. Our first priority will be to help Wales work its way out of the current recession and, beyond that, to create a vibrant knowledge-led society and economy that puts Wales ahead of the game.
"Our five commitments are:
1 Creativity: We will find solutions to business and individual needs which work and can take effect quickly.2 Consultation: We will work with business, the voluntary sector and government to determine what are the real priorities for Wales.3 Capital Investment: We will continue our ambitious capital investment programmes, securing construction jobs and supporting Welsh business by local sourcing of suppliers wherever possible4 Collaboration: We will work with our international business and education partners to build our vision for Wales. Our extensive contacts, from New York to New South Wales, offer expertise in everything from Architecture to Zoology and will be made available to all in Wales for the benefit of Wales.
5 Consensus: We will be part of a One Wales solution, working with government and other partners to inform and develop economic and social policy"We firmly believe that by building on the intellectual capital and academic excellence of our universities, we can help Wales create an innovative and dynamic economy and a just society for the 21st Century."
Welsh Assembly Government Education Minister Jane Hutt said: "The Welsh Assembly Government is committed to partnership working and collaboration across the public sector in Wales. It therefore very much welcomes the Welsh Universities announcement as sees it as a clear sign of the determination of those universities to work in partnership in order to ensure that Wales develops its reputation as world class in research, innovation and development."
The five Vice-Chancellors and their staff are now working together to identify areas where their collective strengths can have an effect. These include:
Research. The universities account for 96% of quality research funding from the Higher Education Council for Wales. Existing partnerships between the five include the new Wales Institute for Social and Economic Research Data and Methods, which is addressing de-industrialisation in Welsh communities. Future partnerships will build on the major strengths of the five, revealed in the independent 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, where more than half of the five’s 2,325 academics were assessed as conducting world-leading or internationally significant work.
Business Services. The five universities account for 70% of Wales’ Knowledge Transfer Partnerships, which make academic knowledge and skills available to improve the competitiveness of local business. The universities plan to accelerate growth in the number of partnerships, along with further development of business training, professional development and consultancy services.
Students. The universities are a significant provider of skills, with the equivalent of more than 50,000 full-time undergraduates and around 13,000 postgraduate students. There is already co-operation between the five on widening access programmes, to encourage undergraduate applications from families where no-one has been to university before. This will be built on, along with programmes of scholarships and bursaries, to deliver a workforce which maximises the talent and potential of the Welsh people.
International. With a combined total of around 7,000 international students, the five universities offer an important "shop window" on Wales for the world. The universities’ overseas profiles will be vital in convincing global companies that Wales is a place they can do business with.
Shaping Public Policy
Innovation and Impact Awards
Reshaping the BBC’s news agenda
Improving community policing
This is an externally hosted beta service offered by Google.
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London is Home of High Finance
Economic crisis sees addiction snowball in London's Square Mile, where you can order cocaine at a pub before trading.
As crisis continues to batter the world economy, finance workers from New York to Tokyo are personally feeling the strain. One place where this is particularly pronounced is the City of London, the financial district of the UK's capital, which is home to the world's largest foreign exchange market and around 500 banks. Increasing numbers of finance workers there are using a variety of substances in reaction to the stress of their jobs. Yet there's just one specialist addiction counseling service based in the Square Mile, as the area is known. Richard Kingdon, a 42-year-old former soccer hooligan who founded City Beacon, told The Guardian, “Record numbers of City workers [now] seek treatment for addiction,” adding that the problem is still growing. A recovering drug addict and alcoholic, Kingdon has personally worked with nearly a hundred clients over the past two years and has witnessed this alarming rise in drug and alcohol problems first-hand: “The current market turmoil isn’t helping.” Despite the volatile economy, one business has boomed spectacularly, adding to the problems for Kingdon’s clients and many others. “[Cocaine] is absolutely rife in the City,” said "Daniel," a two-years-clean City worker who once couldn't stop "shoving my six figure bonuses up my nose." He referenced some 15 or 20 bars across the Square Mile where regulars can order certain bottles of vintage wine—and the names they give are a code for cocaine. “These bars are run by criminal syndicates where the food and drink is incidental,” Daniel explained. “They are fronts for drugs.” Kingdon said that City Beacon clients have also confessed to trading on the market under the influence of cocaine and alcohol, creating the potential for for further ruin. One case in point was that of oil futures broker Stephen Perkins, who went on a drinking binge last year before trading more than seven million barrels of oil, causing potential losses of $8 million. The UK's Financial Services Authority banned Perkins from working in the City for a minimum of five years. Last year the UK topped the European “league table” for cocaine use—even outstripping the levels seen in the US.
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In your experience, is weight gain/loss a simple ratio of calories in to calories out?
I had an interesting conversation with a scientist recently who told me about research showing that obesity increases when certain kinds of bacteria in the gut are eliminated. (She didn’t give me a citation, but here is an article for those interested.)
I think this is interesting because it really challenges the idea that weight change is simply a matter of how many calories you eat and burn. And could perhaps account for at least part of the rapid rate of increasing obesity.
What do you think? In your experience with weight gain/loss, has it been simply a matter of how much eat or don’t eat, and work out or don’t work out? Do you think research like this distracts from the real issue (eat less, exercise more) or could it be an important consideration in solving the obesity crisis?
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I need to clone my 300GB disk to 500GB disk with dd, but the old disk (300GB) has too *big block size.
Will this change the block size of output partition too? I understod that
obs only meant to be used during copying, and would not change the partition block size?
dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb obs=4096
Note that this hda contains only one NTFS partition with Windows 7 installed which I try to clone to the new disk.
*I chose too big block size when I thought I can put only vmware images on the drive. But that did not happen since main OS disk failed sometime ago and now my OS is on disk that has a huge block size.
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Posted: Dec 15, 2012 12:58 PM by Q2 News
Updated: Dec 15, 2012 9:28 PM
BILLINGS - Late Saturday morning, one boy, 13-year-old Konnar Soft, had to be rescued by Billings emergency services after his left knee was lodged in a crevice on the Rims.
He and two other young boys climbed the Rims but Soft lost footing, leaving him stuck, yelling for help.
Soft's friend climbed down from the Rims and found a spot to stand while Soft rested his weight on his friend's shoulders.
Soft waited 45 minutes with his knee stuck and his hand resting on top of the sandstone until help arrived.
It took an additional 30 minutes to harness help to scale the Rims and dislodge the boy's knee.
After emergency services were secure Soft safely on top of the Rims again, he limped to hug those who assisted him.
Soft was able to leave the scene with only contusions and minor scrapes to his knee.
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Washington, DC – People For the American Way Executive Vice President Marge Baker released the following comments on what President Obama’s reelection means for the Supreme Court:
“The future of the Supreme Court is one of the most important consequences of any presidential election, but this time the choice was especially momentous. With the right wing maintaining a narrow majority on the Court, a Romney victory could have meant an entrenched bias on the Court for decades to come.
“Voters were aware of this possibility, and in large numbers rejected it. A Hart Research poll commissioned by People For the American Way and allies in October found that 63 percent of voters saw the Supreme Court as an important issue in determining their vote, and swing voters, by an eleven-point margin, trusted President Obama over Mitt Romney to pick the next Supreme Court justice. In particular, voters were concerned that Romney would choose justices who would side unfairly with corporations over ordinary Americans. That is why both President Obama and Vice President Biden repeatedly emphasized the Court: they recognized it as a winning issue for them.
“This decisive victory gives President Obama a mandate to pick talented, fair-minded jurists on the federal bench and on the Supreme Court. He should use that leverage to fill judicial vacancies with strong candidates and leave a lasting legacy on our courts.”
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Monday, January 31, 2011
In the past, I’ve argued for a connection between religious beliefs and other paranormal, supernatural and superstitious views. The connection is important for several reasons.
First, it is not an accident that as superstitiousness, supernaturalism, and paranormalism go up, education level goes down. When people are ignorant, silly spiritual view proliferate. As they get more education and understand more science, they abandon the primitive views that haunted them before. One implication is that the overall credibility of religious people, particularly the ancient founders of the major religious movements is significantly undermined. The fact that a religion arose from Iron Age peasants, by itself, does not refute it. But it castes doubts and raises the burden of proof if we are to take them seriously.
Secondly, folks within religious communities tend not to see their own views as on a continuum with other “strange” views. To believe in God, or the return of Jesus from the dead, or in the conversion of juice and crackers into flesh and blood, is one thing, they insist. But believing in hauntings, voodoo, or other paranormal phenomena is quite distinct. For those of us on the outside, however, the distinction is usually lost. It would appear that the only real difference between authentic supernatural claims and the silly unfounded superstitions of the natives is a matter of familiarity. It never seems weird when it’s what you’ve know your whole life.
Third, if a significant proportion of the population is more susceptible to anomalous experiences as the result of abnormal brain function, and I have argued that they are, then we’d expect those people, all other things being equal, to be more prone in general to supernatural beliefs. If you are experiencing strange visions, hearing voices, having fugue states, hallucinations, or other strange moments as a result of brain function, and if you lack the education and science background to know any better, then of course you are going to conclude that there are ghosts, spirits are visiting you, God is communicating with you, or that you’ve got psychic powers. What else could it be? Furthermore, if you don’t understand basic statistical reasoning, confirmation bias, hedging, wishful thinking, ignoring base rates, or a host of other fallacies, and if you are surrounded by religious believers who are applying heavy pressure for a particular religious explanation, then it will be very hard to you to reason your way clear. And if humans are biological predisposed towards religious belief by a Hyperactive Agency Detector Device, or some other means, then escaping the clutches of religious delusions will be that much harder. (It is not a surprise that it has taken so many centuries for even a small percentage of the population to escape.)
A new study in Psychopathology gives us more support for the connection:
The prevalence of delusion-like beliefs relative to sociocultural beliefs in the general population.
School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK.
Background: Delusions are defined as false beliefs different from those that almost everyone else believes. The aim was to develop a new measure (the Cardiff Beliefs Questionnaire, CBQ) to establish the range and prevalence of delusion-like beliefs (DLB) and compare these to other types of beliefs in the general population. Sampling and Methods: A total of 1,000 participants completed the CBQ, which uniquely assesses a broader range of currently held beliefs [delusion-like (bizarre and non-bizarre), paranormal and religious and general political/social beliefs) using this large stratified sample. Results: Strong belief in 1 or more DLB was reported by 39% of the participants (91% reporting 'weak', 'moderate' or 'strong' belief in at least 1 DLB). Moreover, 25% endorsed at least 1 bizarre DLB (76% one or more at any strength). Endorsements of DLB were strongly correlated with paranormal and religious beliefs but not general political/social beliefs. Conclusions: Both bizarre and non-bizarre DLB are frequently found in the general population, lending support to the psychosis continuum account and need to revise key clinical criteria used to diagnose delusions. The good psychometric properties demonstrated by the CBQ indicate that this measure is a useful tool to investigate the wider continuum of beliefs held in the general population.
In less science speak, what Pechey and Halligan found, among other things, is that there is a strong correlation between being religious and other strange, delusional, bizarre, and paranormal beliefs. Never mind how they reconcile the combinations, the views that God is real, along with reincarnation, astrology, communications with the dead, evil demon possession, and black magic are rampant. That is, religious folks are more likely to have these other strange beliefs than non-religious folks. And people with bizarre paranormal beliefs are more likely to be religious.
Identifying the causal arrow here is tricky. It’s hard to know whether being religious makes one more favorable to strange paranormal beliefs, or the other way around, or if some third cause like our neural constitution is responsible for both propensities. I’d hesitate to sign on for any particular hypothesis at this stage, especially if it is a simple one. What is clear is that there are a lot of crazies out there, and they are crazier than you might have thought.
On a side note, if you were listening closely, you may have noticed a surprising revelation in my recent debates with Prof. Russell DiSilvestro. I have been pressing a more complicated version of this argument:
1. If you accept the resurrection of Jesus on historical grounds, then you must also accept a large number of other stories from history about paranormal events like real witchcraft at Salem and real black magic during the European Inquisitions.
2. But it isn’t reasonable to believe that there were real witches at Salem or real black magic during the Inquisitions.
3. Therefore, you should not accept the resurrection of Jesus on historical grounds.
There are a number of responses that believers have made to this argument, but much to my surprise, Prof. DiSilvestro bit the bullet and has conceded that there must have been real witches at Salem. And in the course of the debates he told many anecdotal accounts of strange, “unexplained,” and extraordinary things that Christians have seen such as word floating in the air, premonitions, spectral voices, and so on. For some people, the world is indeed a spooky place, teeming with supernatural forces and events.
Epiphenom, who brought this study to our attention, has done his usual excellent job of teasing out some interesting implications of the study: Most People are a Bit Crazy, and Believers are a Bit Crazier Than Most.
Posted by Matt McCormick at 10:39 PM
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N.D.C.C. Chapter 34-12: North Dakota Labor-Management Relations Act
- 34-12-01. Definitions.
- In this chapter, unless the context or subject matter otherwise
- "Commissioner" means the North Dakota labor commissioner, the labor commissioner's successor, or the labor commissioner's duly authorized deputy.
- "Employee" includes any employee, and is not limited to the employees of a particular employer, unless the chapter explicitly states otherwise, and includes any individual whose work has ceased as a consequence of, or in connection with, any current labor dispute or because of any unfair labor practice, and who has not obtained any other regular and substantially equivalent employment, but does not include any individual employed as an agricultural laborer, or in the domestic service of any family or person at that family's or person's home, or any individual employed by that individual's parent or spouse, or any individual having the status of an independent contractor, or any individual employed as a supervisor or guard, or any individual employed by an employer subject to the Railway Labor Act [Pub. L. 69-257; 44 Stat. 577; 45 U.S.C. 151 et seq.], as amended from time to time, or by any other person who is not an employer as herein defined.
- "Employer" includes any person acting as an agent of an employer, directly or indirectly, but does not include the United States or any wholly owned government corporation, or any federal reserve bank, or any state or political subdivision thereof, or any corporation or association operating a hospital, if no part of the net earnings inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual, or any person subject to the Railway Labor Act [Pub. L. 69-257; 44 Stat. 577; 45 U.S.C. 151 et seq.], as amended from time to time, or any labor organization (other than when acting as an employer), or anyone acting in the capacity of officer or agent of such labor organization, or any farmer.
- "Labor organization" means any organization of any kind, or any agency or employee representation committee or plan, in which employees participate and which exists for the purpose, in whole or in part, of dealing with employers concerning grievances, labor disputes, wages, rates of pay, hours of employment, or conditions of work.
- "Person" includes one or more individuals, labor organizations, partnerships, associations, corporations, limited liability companies, legal representatives, trustees, trustees in bankruptcy, or receivers.
- "Representatives" includes any individual or labor organization.
- "Unfair labor practice" means any unfair labor practice as provided in section 34-12-03.
- 34-12-02. Right of employees as to organization, collective bargaining.
- Employees have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other lawful concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, and also have the right to refrain from any or all of such activities and are free to decline to associate with their fellows and are free to obtain employment wherever possible without interference or being hindered in any way.
- 34-12-03. Unfair labor practices.
- It is an unfair labor practice for any employer:
- To interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in section 34-12-02.
- To dominate or interfere with the formation or administration of any labor organization or contribute financial or other support to it. This may not be construed to prohibit an employer from conferring with employees or their bona fide representatives and including, but not by way of limitation, explaining the position of management in connection with the problems of the employer during working hours without the loss of pay.
- By discrimination in regard to hire or tenure of employment or any term or condition of employment to encourage or discourage membership in any labor organization.
- To discharge or otherwise discriminate against an employee because the employee has filed charges or given testimony under this chapter.
- To refuse to bargain collectively with the representatives of the employer's employees, subject to section 34-12-02.
- It is an unfair labor practice for a labor organization or its agents:
- To restrain or coerce employees in the exercise of rights guaranteed in section 34-12-02, provided that a labor organization may prescribe its own rules for the acquisition and maintenance of membership in said labor organization.
- To cause or attempt to cause an employer to discriminate or restrain or coerce employees in the exercise of rights set forth in section 34-12-02.
- To restrain or coerce an employer in the selection of the employer's representatives or to refuse to bargain with an employer if the labor organization or its agent is the representative of the employer's employees.
- To force or attempt to force an employer or self-employed person to join any organization.
- To engage in, or to induce or encourage any employee to engage in, a strike or a refusal in the course of the employee's employment to use or work on any goods, articles, materials or commodities, or to perform any services, or to threaten, coerce, or restrain any person for the purpose of forcing or requiring any person to cease using, selling, handling, transporting, or otherwise dealing in the products of any other producer, processor, or manufacturer, or to cease doing business with any other person, or forcing or requiring any employer to recognize or bargain with a labor organization as the representative of the employer's employees unless the labor organization has been certified as the representative of the employer's employees under the provisions of section 34-12-05; but nothing in this subsection may be construed to make unlawful, where not otherwise unlawful, any primary strike or primary picketing, and nothing contained in this subsection may be construed to make unlawful a refusal by any person to enter upon the premises of any employer, other than the person's own employer, if the employees of the other employer are engaged in a lawful strike.
- To require of employees as a condition for membership the payment of fees found by the commissioner to be excessive or discriminatory.
- To cause or attempt to cause an employer to pay or deliver or agree to pay or deliver any money or other thing of value, in the nature of an exaction, for services which are not performed or not to be performed.
- To make, circulate, or cause to be circulated a black list.
- To coerce or intimidate an employee in the enjoyment of the employee's legal rights, or to intimidate the employee's family or any member thereof, picket the employee's domicile, or injure the person or property of the employee or the employee's family or of any member thereof.
- To hinder or prevent by unlawful picketing, threats, intimidation, force, or coercion of any kind the pursuit of any lawful work or employment, or to obstruct or interfere with entrance to or egress from any place of employment, or to obstruct or interfere with free and uninterrupted use of public roads, streets, highways, railways, airports, or other ways of travel or conveyance.
- It is unfair labor practice for a person:
- To interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in section 34-12-02.
- To coerce or intimidate an employee in the enjoyment of the employee's legal rights, or to intimidate the employee's family or any member thereof, picket the employee's domicile, or injure the person or property of the employee, the employee's family, or any member thereof.
- To hinder or prevent by unlawful picketing, threats, intimidation, force, or coercion of any kind, the pursuit of any lawful work or employment, or to obstruct or interfere with entrance to or exit from any place of employment, or to obstruct or interfere with free and uninterrupted use of entrances, public roads, streets, highways, railways, airports, or other ways of travel or conveyance.
- The expressing of any views, argument, or opinion, or the dissemination thereof, whether in written, printed, graphic, or visual form, is not evidence of an unfair labor practice under this chapter if the expression contains no threat of reprisal or force or promise of benefit.
- It is an unfair labor practice for any employer:
- 34-12-04. Collective bargaining.
- For the purposes of this chapter, to bargain collectively means the performance of the mutual obligations of the employer and the representative of the employees to meet at reasonable times and confer in good faith with respect to wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment, or the negotiation or renegotiation of an agreement, or any question thereunder, and the execution of a written contract incorporating any agreement reached if requested by either party, but such obligation does not compel either party to agree to a proposal or require the making of a concession.
- When there is in effect a collective bargaining contract, the duty to bargain also means that no party to such contract may terminate or modify such contract at the conclusion of its term until sixty days after either party mails notice of a desire to terminate or to modify. A strike or lockout for economic purposes is unlawful until the end of the sixty-day period. The duty to bargain collectively continues despite termination of a collective bargaining contract unless the employee bargaining representative has lost its majority status.
- 34-12-05. Exclusive representation - Employees' adjustment of grievances directly with employer.
- 1. Representatives designated or selected for the purpose of collective bargaining of the employees in a unit appropriate for such purposes are exclusive representatives of all the employees in such unit for the purposes of collective bargaining in respect to rates of pay, wages, hours of employment, or other conditions of employment.
- Any individual employee or group of employees has the right at any time to present grievances to the individual's or group's employer and to have such grievances adjusted, without the intervention of the bargaining representative, as long as the adjustment is not inconsistent with the terms of a collective bargaining contract or agreement then in effect. The bargaining representative must be given an opportunity to be present at such adjustment.
- 34-12-06. Determination of bargaining unit by commissioner.
- The commissioner
shall decide in each case whether in order to assure to employees the fullest freedom in
exercising rights guaranteed by this chapter, the unit appropriate for the purposes of collective
bargaining is the employer unit, craft unit, plant unit, or subdivision thereof. The commissioner
- Decide that any unit is appropriate for such purposes if such unit includes both professional employees and employees who are not professional employees unless a majority of such professional employees vote for inclusion in such unit.
- Decide that any craft unit is inappropriate for such purposes on the ground that a different unit has been established by a prior commissioner determination, unless a majority of the employees in the proposed craft unit vote against separate representation.
- Decide that any unit is appropriate for such purposes if it includes, together with other employees, any individual employed as a guard to enforce against employees and other persons rules to protect property of the employer or to protect the safety of persons on the employer's premises; but no labor organization may be certified as the representative of employees in a bargaining unit of guards if such organization admits to membership, or is affiliated directly or indirectly with an organization which admits to membership, employees other than guards.
In determining whether a unit is appropriate, the extent to which the employees have organized is not controlling.
- 34-12-07. Informal conference - Hearing on representation questions - Election requirements.
- The commissioner shall promptly fix a date for an informal conference upon due
notice to all parties whenever a petition has been filed, in accordance with this
- By an employee or group of employees or any individual or labor organization acting in the employee's or group's behalf alleging that at least thirty percent of employees wish to be represented for collective bargaining and that their employer declines to recognize their representative as the representative defined in section 34-12-05, or assert that the individual or labor organization, which has been certified or is being currently recognized by their employer as the bargaining representative, is no longer a representative as defined in section 34-12-05; or
- By an employer, alleging that one or more individuals or labor organizations have presented to the employer a claim to be recognized as the representative defined in section 34-12-05.
- If upon the informal conference:
- All parties agree that a question of representation exists and consent to an election, the commissioner shall conduct an election upon secret ballot forthwith.
- The parties cannot agree that a question of representation exists, the
commissioner shall hold a hearing and if upon such hearing the commissioner
finds a question of representation exists, the commissioner shall conduct an
election by secret ballot and shall certify the results thereof.
No election may be directed in any bargaining unit or any subdivision within which in the preceding twelve-month period a valid election has been held. Employees on strike who are not entitled to reinstatement are not eligible to vote. In any election in which none of the choices on the ballot receives a majority, a runoff must be conducted, the ballot providing for a selection between the two choices receiving the largest and second largest number of valid votes cast in the election.
- When a petition is filed as above provided, or the bargaining representative has been questioned, or a strike is to be called by the bargaining representative certified to represent employees, and the issue cannot be determined informally, the commissioner shall notify the employees, the employer, and such other persons as the commissioner deems necessary, requiring employees and the employer to each appoint a representative to act with the commissioner in the conduct of an impartial and secret ballot election to determine a bargaining agent, or whether a strike shall be had, or determine whether the present bargaining agent is no longer the representative bargaining agent. If any party shall decline or neglect to appoint a representative, the commissioner shall appoint some fair and impartial person to act as such party's representative. Such election board, consisting of a representative of the employees, a representative of the employer, and the commissioner shall thereupon designate a reasonable time within ten days after such board is constituted when such vote must be held, which election must be upon the premises of the employer during working hours. The board shall conduct an impartial secret ballot in which all employees of the appropriate bargaining unit involved have the right to cast a vote. Within twenty-four hours immediately after the completion of the election, such election board shall make an accurate and complete tabulation of the votes cast in such election and shall prepare a written certificate, which must bear the signature of the commissioner, and a copy of such certificate must be delivered to the employer and to the employees or their bargaining agent.
- No election is valid unless at least fifty-one percent of the employees in the appropriate bargaining unit cast valid ballots. If fifty-one percent of the employees in the appropriate bargaining unit fail to cast valid ballots at such election, a second election must be held forthwith. If on such second election fifty-one percent participation is not obtained, no further elections may be held for a period of one year.
- The commissioner shall promptly fix a date for an informal conference upon due notice to all parties whenever a petition has been filed, in accordance with this chapter:
- 34-12-08. Authority of commissioner.
- Whenever it is charged that any person is engaged in or has engaged in any unfair labor practice, the commissioner shall investigate the charges informally and if it appears that an unfair labor practice is occurring or has occurred, the commissioner has power to issue and cause to be served upon such person a written specification of the issues which are to be considered and determined. If, upon the evidence, the commissioner is of the opinion that any person named in the written specifications has engaged in or is engaging in any such unfair labor practice, the commissioner shall issue and cause to be served upon such person an order requiring such person to cease and desist from such unfair labor practice, and to take such affirmative action, including reinstatement of employees with or without backpay, as will effectuate the policies of this chapter. When an order requires reinstatement of an employee, backpay may be required of the employer or employee organization, as the case may be, responsible for the discrimination suffered by the employee. No order of the commissioner may require the reinstatement of any individual as an employee who has been suspended or discharged, or the payment to the individual of any backpay, if such individual was suspended or discharged for cause. If the order is not obeyed, the commissioner has the authority to apply to the appropriate district court for such action as is necessary to enforce the commissioner's order, including injunction and mandamus proceedings. The commissioner may act as a conciliator in any labor dispute.
- 34-12-09. Power to promulgate regulations.
- The commissioner has the authority to promulgate reasonable regulations to effectuate the purposes of this chapter.
- 34-12-10. Applicability of Chapter 28-32.
- All proceedings hereunder and all appeals to the courts are governed by the provisions of Chapter 28-32.
- 34-12-11. Right of suit for damages preserved.
- Any person injured in person or property by reason of the commission of an unfair labor practice as defined in this chapter may sue therefor in the district court and shall recover the damages sustained by that person and the cost of the suit.
- 34-12-12. Reporting by labor organization.
- The commissioner is hereby designated as the official of the state of North Dakota authorized to receive copies of reports made to the secretary of labor of the United States by virtue of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 [Pub. L. 86-257; 73 Stat. 525; 29 U.S.C. 432], as amended from time to time. In the event such reports have not been made to the secretary of labor of the United States by a labor organization, such labor organization shall file with the commissioner, within ninety days after the close of its fiscal year, a report giving the name of the labor organization, its mailing address, and the name, title, and address of each of its officers. The governor shall request copies of all reports filed by labor organizations subject to the jurisdiction of the state of North Dakota from the United States secretary of labor.
- 34-12-13. Severability clause.
- Repealed by S.L. 1983, ch. 82, § 154.
- 34-12-14. Short title.
- This chapter may be cited as the North Dakota Labor-Management Relations Act.
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Virtual Office Featured Article
February 25, 2013Phablet: The Fusion of Phone and Tablet
By Robbie Pleasant, TMCnet Contributor
There’s an interesting pattern with technology. First, we try to make it as small as possible. Then, we make it larger again. This is the case with smartphones now, which have been sufficiently compressed to pocket size, and are now getting larger screens.
Larger screens are, naturally, easier to work on than smaller ones. You can see everything more clearly and in better detail without having to constantly zoom, and users are more likely to not constantly hit the wrong key by mistake on the touchscreen. This is part of the reason why tablets are so popular in businesses of all sizes, especially in a virtual office setting. They provide all the functionality of a smartphone (except for making calls in some occasions, but just some) with a large enough screen to comfortably control everything.
So, then we see the tablets still in the state of shrinking. While phone screens grow, tablets get smaller to become more transportable. Eventually, the two meet in the middle to become something referred to as a “phablet.” And no, I’m not making that up.
Phablets are basically smart phones with screen sizes around five to seven inches. That’s a size still small enough to be a phone, but large enough to be a tablet, combining the best of both worlds. It may not fit easily into one’s pocket, but it allows for easy transportation and large screens, combining everything that makes tablets and smartphones great for business.
Are phablets the next big thing? Technically, they’re a combination of two big things, so they already are. Those who use phablets, though, tend to rave about how convenient and useful they are. If you need to make calls, it can do that. Want to use an eReader? It’s all there in clear print. Surfing the Internet? No problem, it’s in crystal clear display. While some may still prefer the larger tablets or the pocket-sized phones, phablets are undeniably taking off for many businesses and users.
Edited by Amanda Ciccatelli
Phone.com Transforms Small Businesses Using VoIP and the Cloud : TMC podcast with Joel Maloff, vice president of Channel Development at Phone.com, about how to transform SMBs using VoIP and the cloud.
Changing the User Experience with HD Voice: There's lots of buzz about high definition voice, but what does it all really mean? TMCnet spoke with Alon Cohen, chief technology officer for Phone.com, a hosted IP-PBX and virtual office provider, about HD Voice and how and why it enhances the user experience. The podcast also features two examples showcasing the audio quality difference when using HD voice.
Related content you may also be interested in…
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Talk to TSA" I think the best one to start off with is a commonly asked one: are liquids still a threat? The short answer is yes. I can appreciate how someone might wonder why their bottle of water is considered a threat. Having worked at the FBI back in 2006 when the UK liquids plot was disrupted, I understand why TSA’s procedures are in place. To answer your question, I’m going to tell you as much as I can about why the 3-1-1 liquids rule is necessary without getting into classified information.After reading many of the great questions that have come in to "
On August, 10 2006, I was serving as the Deputy Director at the FBI. The FBI worked closely with other US Intelligence Community agencies and our close partners in the UK to disrupt the plot to blow up several airliners flying from the UK to the US. I know of the real and present threat those terrorists posed using chemicals disguised as everyday consumer items such as sodas and water. If undetected, I believe there is a high likelihood the terrorists would have killed hundreds of people that day. That's why we limit the amount of liquids you can bring on a plane.
The challenge with liquids and the vulnerability that terrorists tried to exploit in August 2006 is that liquid explosives don't look any different than regular liquids on the X-ray monitor. There is no way to tell one from the other without removing every liquid from every passenger's bag and testing it. I'm sure you could imagine the gridlock that would ensue if our officers had to test every liquid that came through the checkpoint. This led to an immediate ban on all liquids on August 10, 2006 because of the threat that was uncovered. Extensive testing started immediately to determine if there was a way liquids could be brought on board without posing a risk, because the total ban wasn't sustainable in the long term. These tests were conducted by multiple government agencies, national laboratories and other nations, and the end result was the 3-1-1 formulation: 3.4 ounce (100ml) containers, inside a 1-quart clear, plastic zip-top bag, 1 bag per passenger.
The sealed baggie limits the total volume of liquid per passenger and keeps all the liquids in one place so officers can get a good look at them.
Some have speculated on the possibility that several passengers each carrying a baggie full of 3.4 oz. bottles full of liquid explosives could all go through the checkpoint and combine their liquids in a larger bottle. That's a reasonable question. It's easy to dismiss 3-1-1 if you don't understand why this scenario is highly unlikely. Liquid explosives are extremely volatile and it was the general consensus of top explosives experts that it would be nearly impossible to create a successful explosive combining a small amount of liquids in a larger container on an airplane.
We understand that 3-1-1 is an inconvenience. But it's also an inconvenience to terrorists and significantly drops their chances of getting a liquid explosive on an airplane. The liquids rule continues to be a necessary step because current intelligence shows that liquids are still a threat, and until TSA has the technology to screen liquids at checkpoints, the only other alternative is to ban all liquids. We're not going to do that. TSA is getting closer to finalizing upgraded software for X-rays that will allow liquids to be screened. Until this happens, we will continue with 3-1-1 to keep you safe when you fly.
In the meantime, please continue using the 3-1-1 liquids rule, or put your liquids in your checked baggage.
I hope this has answered your questions on whether or not liquids are a threat and why we require the baggie.
John S. Pistole
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So, how many members of Congress does it take to screw up a light bulb?
It only sounds like a joke. The fate of the incandescent bulb, the oldest and most common of household electrical devices, has morphed into a political litmus test, one championed by conservative leaders from Rush Limbaugh to Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann.
In a vote along party lines, the House last week blocked a GOP effort to repeal efficiency standards that will begin phasing out the worst watt-wasters next year. But backers like Florida Rep. Bill Posey who sees the notion of regulating bulbs as evidence of a nanny state run amok, havent abandoned the right to light fight.
This is a sore spot with people, said the Rockledge Republican. My constituents overwhelmingly dont want the government to decide what kind of light bulb they want.
Whichever way the Washington debate goes, the future is dimming for cheap, old-school filament bulbs, which havent changed much since Thomas Edison patented his design more than 130 years ago.
Along with now-common compact florescent bulbs, a new generation of light emitting diode (LED) bulbs claiming up to 23 years of life has begun showing up on store shelves and their eye-popping initial prices of $50-plus have started to drop. Both kinds last years longer and sip roughly a quarter of the juice of their predecessors.
David Schuellerman, a manager for General Electric Lighting, said demand for standard bulbs has dropped by half over the last five years, a trend he expects to continue as homeowners begin following the LED lead of business, which has already put the technology in everything from refrigerator cases to traffic signals.
Maintenance and energy saving easily justify higher initial costs, he said. Its compelling when you think that these large companies that have the capacity to crunch the numbers Starbucks, Walmart, Target like LED for their stores,
At Light Bulbs Unlimited in Fort Lauderdale, purchasing agent Marek Luce has seen increasing interest in LEDs, which are fully dimmable, burn much cooler and are so versatile they come in rope or tape strips now popular under kitchen cabinets. But hes also noted some runs on incandescents by customers worried about bulb ban rumors.
To read the complete article, visit www.miamiherald.com.
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The Environmental Ministry, the Dominican Surfing Federation (FEDOSURF), the Dominican Olympic Committee (COD), the Ministry of Sports (MIDERIC) and the City of Santo Domingo join together for a series of events to celebrate “World Ocean Day” and “International Surfing Day” in June 2011 on the island of the Dominican Republic.
On June 7, 2011, the sun welcomed a daylong activity at Manresa Beach, Haina, near Santo Domingo. FEDOSURF athletes from different parts of the island gathered to perform an exhibition of the sport of surfing for all the guests. The event featured beach volleyball, award-winning sand castle sculptors, festive music and food, and was attended by local students, community residents and leaders.
In this celebration, the Ministery of Environment, led by Dr. Jaime David Fernandez Mirabal chaired the activity, urging attendees to observe their duty as Dominicans and citizens of the world to protect the vast wealth of oceans on our planet. Mrs. Ydalia Acevedo, Deputy Minister of Marine and Coastal Resources of the Ministry, addressed the large crowd about the great threat of discarded plastic products, which severely affect the health of the oceans. Also present at the activity was Mr. Nestor Puente, FEDOSURF president and member of the Committee on Sport and Environment of the Dominican Olympic Committee (COD) who helped organize the event.
“OCEAN GREEN CUP”, the iV National Surfing Championship, organized by FEDOSURF, with the collaboration and sponsorship of the Ministry of the Environment, the Dominican Olympic Committee (COD), the Ministry of Sports (MIDERIC), and the City of Santo Domingo, will be held on Sunday June 12 at Manresa Beach, El Chinchorro, in Haina. ‘International Surfing Day” will be further celebrated throughout the island with surfing warm-ups, beach clean-ups and other activities, more details will be announced. These events are part of an ongoing mission to promote environmental and sustainability awareness for greening our future and the oceans.
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The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) operates the
largest prison system in the U.S. Its mission is to provide public
safety, promote positive change in offender behavior, reintegrate
offenders into society and assist victims of crime. It manages
offenders in state prisons, state jails and private correctional
facilities that contract with TDCJ. The agency also provides
funding and oversight for community supervision and is responsible
for the supervision of offenders released from prison on parole or
TDCJ's Terrell Unit Cannery in Rosharon, Texas, is part of the
prison's agricultural operations, which includes field crops and a
fresh vegetable cannery to help make the prison self-sufficient.
When the facility's roof system began to fail, Supreme Roofing
Systems, Dallas, was selected by the roof consultant, Amtech
Building Sciences, Houston, to perform repairs and reroof the
Reroofing a prison facility presents many unique security
challenges. Supreme Roofing Systems employees were escorted from
the guard shack to the roof each day and during every trip...
Log in or register for FREE access to this article and other Professional Roofing online content.
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One way you can approach this is to use an
RS-NOR Latch Array. This is essentially many RS-NOR latches next to each other. RS-NOR latches are circuits that can store a
0 or a
1 (represented in Minecraft as an off or on current). When the button to activate the staircase is pressed, you want all the RS-NOR latches to set themselves, to open the stairs. When the button to close the stairs is pressed, you want to reset the RS-NOR latches to close the stairs.
The good thing about RS-NOR latches is that you can adjust the delay of the signals going to the S (set) and R (reset) lines of the circuit. Essentially, you want to make the lines setting the RS-NOR latches to set them in one order, and the ones reseting the latches to do so in the opposite order.
Unfortunately, it's a little difficult to explain this in text, so I'll point you to this video by Minecraftaddict.
The video isn't about your specific scenario, but to build the station, he uses an RS-NOR latch array. Note how the lines are set through the signal running under the delay, and are reset through the signals that are set to different delays, allowing the pistons to reset correctly.
As promised, here is a little RS-NOR Latch Array tutorial.
This is the RS-NOR Latch Array. It is a series of RS-NOR latches. The nice thing about this design is that the latches are vertical, allowing them to be put next to each other with one block of space in between. Additionally, the reset lines for the latches are underneath, meaning all the latches can easily be reset with one input. The lines running towards the left of the screenshot are the outputs of the latches.
The reset line (or what you'll probably use as the set line) is located under the latches. The signal must be inverted to keep the torches off, so that when an input is given, the line turns off and the torches turn on. I removed part of the right-most latch so the reset could be seen more clearly. Notice the repeaters. Repeaters can pass a signal through blocks, so the reset line signal is sent to a repeater leading into a block, turning the torch on top of the block off, and then sent to a repeater right after the block, which continues until the last latch. This allows one signal to be sent through all the latches to (re)set them from first to last.
This is technically the set line of the latches, but it's better for the reset line when you need the reset to happen in a specific order. This is where you would make adjustments via repeaters make sure the pistons reset in the right order. Note that the final block leading into the latches should always be a repeater, or else the
!output signal will contaminate the rest of the line.
That structure in the distance is a piston-powered vertical item transportation system - just ignore it.
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The 10 GigE train is on its way. Simplicity and low cost have left the station.
I have been reading about 10 GigE (10 Gigabit Ethernet) lately. It seems 10 GigE is starting to enter the cluster picture. There are some things to consider, but in general, “Good Old Ethernet” is taking its next big jump. I am convinced that over the next year there will be a significant up-tick in 10 GigE HPC clusters.
Why am I certain about this prediction (vague as it may be)? It is quite simple, if history is any guide, Ethernet is going to keep on rolling. Before I begin my nostalgia laced discussion of Ethernet, let me be the first to say, I do not believe in all-or-nothing scenarios (at least in HPC). InfiniBand (IB) is not going anywhere. There is room for IB and 10 GigE, just like there are different types of cars. They both get you where you want to go, but depending on your needs and budget, the one that is right for you may not be the best choice for the next guy. Therefore, because I’m talking about 10 GigE does not mean I am prediction the demise of IB. More like I am predicting the demise of GigE use in clusters. You know the interconnect used in 56% of the recent Top500 list. Okay, you in the back there you can sit down now.
My 10 GigE prediction is based on the following rule of thumb, Speed, Simplicity, Cost, pick an two. I believe 10 GigE will win because of simplicity and cost. IB is already faster and has better latency and if you need this level of performance you are not even looking at Ethernet direction. The joy of clustering is that one size does not fit all and you can build your cluster around your needs.
Looking at cost, you might conclude that 10 GigE is expensive right now, and you would be right. Let’s jump in the WABAC machine and look at what a Fast Ethernet switch costs in the late 1990′s. I can see a 2U Foundry Networks Fast Iron Workgroup switch with lots of lights and 16 ports for $4995. That is Fast Ethernet. Jumping ahead, I see similarly priced GigE switches in the not to distant past. In each case they were big, hot, and built to last. Now it is possible to buy an 16 port GigE switch for less than $200. Smaller versions, encased in plastic no less, are available at a lower price. The same can be said for network interface cards (NICs). Very often the NIC ends up on the motherboard as well. Thus, the commodity pressure guarantees low cost.
The good news about the commoditization of technology is cost and availability. The bad news is it can also produce a lot of junk. Some of the plastic GigE switches I mentioned just don’t work. They may work for Joe or Jane SixPack, but when pushed they fall down. For this reason, swimming in the commodity stream requires testing some assumptions and/or paying for higher quality parts — again your choice. I have seen benchmarks improve by 25% just by swapping one inexpensive GigE switch for another. The lesson here, the gems are out there, test before you buy.
Let’s move on to the simplicity factor. For the most part, Ethernet is a plug-and-play technology. It just works. When you are tying to get a cluster up and running, having dependable networking makes life much easier. All the services you know an love, NFS, schedulers, MPI, run over Ethernet. The other nice thing about Ethernet are the simple inexpensive cables. Click the cable in and presto, the link light goes on (unless something is broken). Just like there is a down side to low cost, there are some things to consider with the whole “plug-and-play” approach. Because you can ping between nodes, does not mean things are optimized. Indeed, many people are not aware that Ethernet connections can be tuned with either kernel module arguments or with ethtool. On almost all NICs you can also set the MTU size (the size of the Ethernet data packet). This feature becomes more important as the bandwidth increases because the standard 1500 byte Ethernet MTU creates a lot of overhead with GigE and 10 GigE. Tuning these settings can help (or sometimes hurt) performance. The good news is you can always fall back to the default mode if you goof up your settings.
The other nice thing about Ethernet is it has the ability to do User Space communications. Once the providence of the high end interconnects, Ethernet can now send messages without kernel overhead (copying and TCP/IP processing). A few projects that are worth looking at in this regard are: Genoa Active Message MAchine or GAMMA which is famous for achieving less than 10 µsecond latencies over GigE. It does require a patch to the Ethernet driver and only supports certain Intel Ethernet chip-sets. Another optimized communication protocol is Intel® Direct Ethernet Transport (DET) which works by providing a uDAPL like InfiniBand interface over GigE. uDAPL is the User Direct Access Programming Library that defines a single set of user APIs for all RDMA-capable transports. DET includes a kernel module and a uDAPL library for Ethernet and will work on almost any Ethernet NIC. It can linked with any software requiring uDAPL library. Finally, there is the Open-MX project. Open-MX is based on the Myrinet MX protocol and can run over any Ethernet connection. Essentially, any software that links to the Myricom MX library should be able to link with Open-MX. Depending on the chip-set Open-MX latencies as low as 10 µseconds for GigE have been reported.
With each iteration of Ethernet there are always some changes. Perhaps the biggest difference between 10 GigE and older Ethernet standards is the abandonment of half-duplex operation in favor of full-duplex. Therefore, backward compatibility should be considered before mixing Ethernet standards. In terms of cabling there are now 10GBASE-T cards and switches that use Cat 6 cables and the familiar RG-45 connectors for distances up to to 55 meters (Cat 6a can be used for 100 meters, Cat 5e is not part of the specification, but should work similar to Cat 6 cable).
How long before 10 GigE becomes a total commodity and hits the desktop? I’m not sure. As in the past, it starts out as backbone network connecting switches, then shows up on server motherboards, and then in the desktop environment. Of course, there will the those who say the desktop will never need 10 GigE. Just like they said about Fast Ethernet, and GigE. To those network-neigh-sayers, how is that coax 10Base-T hub working out for you these days? You did use Cat 6 cable for everything right?
In case you missed it, I had a big announcement on twitter. Something about an HPC for Dummies free ebook that is not a real book, but good enough. Check it out.
Douglas Eadline is the Senior HPC Editor for Linux Magazine.
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While I was at NGS last week I learned about a feature in RootsMagic that was new to me. It is the ability to share a fact among several people. I have long known how the share events like the census or a residence with a married couple. However, I did not know how to like events like this with other household members.
In the family unit at below, the father, mother and infant son were enumerated in the 1910 census. To link this event to the infant, Robert, one needed to click on the "SHARE" button in the lower right corner of the screen.
A box then opens so you can choose the individuals with whom the fact is to be shared. Then you can click on "Add a person" or "Add multiple people". In this case I want to add only one individual. Because only my Uncle Robert had been born at that time.
When I click on the button, the list of persons in my database opens and I just have to place a check mark by Robert's name and click "OK", to attach this census information to his individual record. Now that information will be included in reports I print that include Robert whether or not I include his parents in that report.
If you use a genealogy program other than RootsMagic, root around in it and see if your program has a similar feature.
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GEN 1:29 (Pre-Flood)Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.
Genesis 9 (Post Flood)
Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.
Here is another one of those “just so” stories that vex even the minds of some evolutionists. In this article, scientists discover that many of the fearsome “meat-eating” dinosaurs had a diet consisting mainly of vegetation. The surprising findings came from the study of such items as fossilized stomach contents and dinosaur droppings.
After the research findings were known, science needed an explanation that fit in with other preconcieved Darwinian stories (like dinosaurs to birds) so the notion is advanced that dinosaurs evolved on purpose as it were into birds because of the sudden lack of meat in their environments. This is dumb for many reasons but chief among them is te idea that birds are vegetarians. Birds are certainly at the least omnivores and some are most decidedly carnivorous,
It’s interesting isn’t it that both Genesis and now science believe that meat-eating dinosaurs were at one time; plant eaters. Genesis and science simply disagree on which came first……s8int.com
The Most Terrifying Meat-eating Dinosaurs Suddenly Went Vegetarian
The theropod dinosaurs, like Tyrannosaurus rex and Velociraptor, were some of the most fearsome carnivores ever. Yet most of these perfect hunters abandoned live prey in favor of a more peaceful, vegetarian existence…which started their evolution into birds.
Researchers recently set out to determine the diet of 90 different theropod species. They were expecting to find a lot of meat-eating – after all, theropods are known informally as the predatory dinosaurs. But even confirming that hypothesis would be tricky because so little evidence of dinosaur diet remains.
Teeth do often pass into the fossil record, but it’s not always easy to figure out diet based on just teeth. While the sharp teeth and jaw of a T. rex is obviously that of a fearsome superpredator and the blunt teeth of a Triceratops obviously belong to a plant eater, a lot of dinosaur teeth fall somewhere in the middle. A lot of therapod dinosaurs have strange, peg-like teeth which seem less than ideal for either a carnivorous or herbivorous existence, so figuring out what they ate becomes a real challenge.
The good news is that there are lots of other types of evidence: fossilized poop, preserved stomach contents, marks on the teeth, and even stones inside the stomach that would have been used to digest vegetation all provide clues to dinosaur diet. The researchers used statistical analysis to figure out which of these bits of evidence were most strongly correlated with eating meat or eating plants, and then look for other dinosaurs that also possessed those features.
The results were shocking. Many of the supposedly carnivorous therapod dinosaurs were actually eating plants. The highly carnivorous diets of T. rex and the Velociraptor actually made them the unusual ones among their dinosaur peers. Researcher Lindsay Zanno explains in words that will surely come back to haunt her if ever a Jurassic Park scenario breaks out:
“Most theropods are clearly adapted to a predatory lifestyle, but somewhere on the line to birds, predatory dinosaurs went soft.
Indeed, a lot of the adaptations these dinosaurs underwent as they ate more and more plants brought them closer to modern birds. Along multiple evolutionary lines, once carnivorous dinosaurs lost their flesh-ripping teeth in favor of weird new teeth in the shapes of pegs, wedges, or even leaves. They then lost their teeth completely, as they evolved a bird-like beak. Zanno explains:
“This is a clear-cut indication that the repeated evolution of a toothless beak in theropod dinosaurs is linked to plant eating. Once a beak appeared on the scene, it continued to evolve. Theropods would have used their beaks in a myriad of ways; they still do.”
So why did the perfect hunters of the dinosaur world switch to vegetarianism? It might have been caused by the breakup of continents, which opened up new and unusual habitats for these dinosaurs to explore. However it happened, the theropods – particularly the coelurosaur subgroup, which included T. rex and Velociraptor – became one of the most diverse and successful dinosaur groups of the Cretaceous Period. Maybe it really is worth eating your vegetables after all.
Thanks Scott S.
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Skeeter Davis - Biography
Skeeter Davis was an American country music singer and sometime songwriter best known for her string of crossover hits in the early 1960s. After starting out as one half of The Davis Sisters in the early 1950s, she continued as a solo artist and scored a series of hits with her teen angst-ridden country-pop ballads. As a result she became the first female superstar of country.
Mary Frances Penick, born December 30, 1931, was the first of seven children born to William and Sarah “Punzie” Penick. The Penicks lived in a two room cabin on the banks of Eagle Creek in Glencoe but Mary was primarily raised by her grandparents in rural Dry Ridge, Kentucky. Her grandfather nicknamed her Skeeter, slang for a mosquito. In 1947, the Penick clan moved north to the Kentucky-side suburbs of Cincinnati. At Dixie Heights High, Skeeter met Betty Jack Davis and the two became friends and musical partners, forming The Davis Sisters in order to enter the Dixie Follies Talent Show. They were regionally popular, appearing on the radio in Lexington in 1949, Detroit’s WJR radio program Barnyard Frolics in 1951, and WWVA’s Wheeling Jamboree in West Virginia. Their big break, however, came from an appearance on the Cincinnati television program, Midwestern Hayride. They recorded a single, “Jealous Love,” for Detroit’s Fortune Record in 1952. Afterward they gained the attention of RCA producer Steve Sholes who signed the duo in 1953 and brought them to Nashville. Their first single, “I Forgot More Than You’ll Ever Know,” spent eight weeks in the number one spot on the country charts and even made the Top 20 pop charts. Tragically, just as they were experiencing their first taste of success, the two were involved in a serious car accident on August 2, 1953. In the accident, Skeeter’s arms and legs were broken and Betty Jack Davis was killed. Betty Jack’s domineering mother coldly insisted that The Davis Sisters continue with Betty’s sister Georgia in her place, virtually imprisoning Skeeter.
In 1955, Skeeter toured with RCA's Caravan of Stars as a solo performer alongside Eddy Arnold and Elvis Presley. The Davis Sisters continued until 1956, when Skeeter married Kenneth Depew who helped free her from the clutches of her singing partner’s mother (although, the marriage did not last long). At RCA, Skeeter Davis (she kept the last name) was taken under the wing of Chet Atkins. “Lost to a Geisha Girl,” an answer song to Hank Lockin’s “Geisha Girl,” became her first solo hit and featured Davis’s multi-tracked voice singing parts in what was essentially a solo duo. Late in the year she again toured with Elvis. 1959’s “Set Him Free” was an even bigger hit and that year she joined the Grand Ole Opry. I'll Sing You a Song & Harmonize Too, released on RCA in 1960, followed. “(I Can't Help You) I'm Falling Too” was her first crossover hit, charting in the Top 40 — a relatively unheard of feat at the time. However, for Davis it was the beginning of what would become a regular occurrence over the next four years. In addition to her continued appearances on Grand Ol Opry and after establishing herself as a pop singer equipollent with Lesley Gore, Little Eva, or Diane Renay, Davis began appearing on American Bandstand as well. The year also marked the beginning of her tumultuous marriage to WSM DJ Ralph Emery.
The following year, Davis added her own lyrics to Floyd Cramer’s instrumental “Last Date” and released it as the answer song “My Last Date (With You),” which was another hit. An album of answer songs followed, Here’s the Answer (1960 RCA), which includes the originals (by the likes of Jim Reeves, Hank Locklin, Eddy Arnold, and Ray Peterson) interspersed with Davis’s answers. In 1962, she released an album of duets with the Thin Man from West Plains, Porter Wagoner, called Porter Wagoner & Skeeter Davis Sing Duets (1962 RCA). In 1963, she scored her biggest hit with "The End of the World,” with which she became the only woman to ever reach the top five on the R&B, Country, Hot 100, and Adult Contemporary/Easy Listening charts simultaneously. It was taken from the album The End of the World (1963 RCA), which was followed by Cloudy, With Occasional Tears (1963 RCA). In 1964, she opened for The Rolling Stones for their first US tour. However, by that time Skeeter Davis’s relationship with the Top 40 had ended. 1964’s Let Me Get Close to You (RCA) included 1963’s "I Can't Stay Mad at You," her final crossover hit. It was also the year she ended her relationship with her second husband. Following her divorce, she released an album of duets with Bobby Bare, Tunes for Two (1965 RCA). 1965’s Written by the Stars (RCA) and Skeeter Davis Sings Standards (RCA) followed and marked the end of another relationship — this time with her producer and mentor Chet Akins.
Singin' in the Summer Sun (RCA) and My Heart's in the Country (RCA) were produced by new producer, Felton Jarvis, in 1966. Gone were Chet Akins’s countrypolitan string backdrops and in their place was a more traditional sound. The Felton Jarvis years were among Davis’s least commercially successful. The Jarvis-produced country gospel Hand in Hand with Jesus (RCA), Skeeter Davis Sings Buddy Holly (RCA) [featuring former Buddy Holly sideman/future outlaw Waylon Jennings], and What Does It Take [To Keep a Man like You Satisfied] (RCA) all appeared in 1967 although only the latter charted. Why So Lonely (1968 RCA), I Love Flatt & Scruggs (1968 RCA), The Closest Thing to Love (1969 RCA), and Mary Frances (1969 RCA) slunk successively further down the charts.
The 1969 release of “I'm a Lover (Not a Fighter)” was Davis’s biggest hit in several years and preceded the release of the 1970 album A Place in the Country (RCA), produced by her guitarist, Ronny Light. Light also produced the follow-up, Your Husband, My Wife (1970 RCA), another album of duets with Bobby Bare. That same year’s It's Hard to Be a Woman (1970 RCA) was less successful. Skeeter, Skeeter, Skeeter (1971 RCA), Love Takes a Lot of My Time (1971 RCA), Skeeter Sings Dolly (1972 RCA), and Bring It On Home (1972 RCA), all followed within the next two years, but didn’t chart highly.
During a performance in 1972 at the Grand Ole Opry, Davis dedicated “Amazing Grace” to a group of street evangelists who’d been arrested by the Nashville Police. The Opry responded with this supposedly controversial political outspokenness with banishment, which led to other scheduled performances falling through. It was largely through the efforts of her friend and fellow country singer Jean Shepard that after fifteen months Davis was allowed to return. In 1973, she released The Hillbilly Singer (RCA) and I Can't Believe That It's All Over (RCA). The latter was her first hit since 1968. It was also her last album to provide her with a Top 40 hit and was her last release on RCA.
In 1976, during a brief stint with Mercury, Davis released her last charting single, "I Love Us," although it only rose to number 60 on the Country chart. In 1977, "It's Love That I Feel" followed. After five years, she returned to recording with a series of different labels, first with 1982’s Live Wire (51 West), followed by 1983’s Heart Strings (Tudor) and 1985’s She Sings, They Play (Roadhouse), on which she was backed by NRBQ. Two years later, Davis married NRBQ's bassist, Joey Spampinato. One year into marriage, Davis was diagnosed with breast cancer. She released her final album in 1989, a duet with Teddy Wilson called You Were Made for Me (Atlantic).
In 1993, Davis released the autobiography Bus Fare to Kentucky, which detailed her parents’ alcoholism, the murder of her grandfather at the hands of an uncle, her mother’s suicide attempt, and other sordid details typical of life in the Southern Appalachians as well as the ups and downs of life post-fame. In 1996, Davis and Spampinato were divorced. In 1998, Davis co-wrote a less controversial book, The Christmas Note. Two years later, Skeeter Davis officially announced the end of her performing career. By 2001, the cancer had advanced considerably and she gave one last performance at the Opry. She died in Brentwood on September 19, 2004 at the age of 72. Three days later Amy Grant, Ricky Skaggs, and Vince Gill performed a tribute to the first female country singer to achieve great stardom.
Although not generally afforded the serious critical attention lavished on her followers like Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, and Tammy Wynette, Davis remains an influential female country vocalist, especially for musicians. Both her own work and the songs written for her have subsequently been covered by Agnetha Fältskog, Ann-Margaret, Anne Murray, Bobby Vinton, Brenda Lee, The Carpenters, Claudine Longet, Conway Twitty, Deborah Harry, Dottie West, Eddy Arnold, Exposé, Herman's Hermits, John Cougar Mellencamp, Johnny Mathis, Joni James, Julie London, Kay Starr, Leigh Nash, Lobo, Loretta Lynn, Michael Stipe, Nancy Sinatra, Nina Gordon, Pat Boone, Patti Page, Rosie Flores, Sonia Evans, Twiggy, The Vanguards, and Vonda Shepard among others.
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Two days ago my thirteen year old niece told me she was writing a book. She asked me to take a look at it, and of course I agreed. She’s writing it on one of those websites geared toward young writers like her. Miss Literati is a fun place for teens who love to read and want to write. So I went to read her story. I somehow skipped her profile, but today I read it and she mentioned me as one of her inspirations. I was touched, and so proud of her. She’s written five chapters of her vampire teenager story. Ahem, Stephanie Meyer is actually her biggest inspiration. I know this because a few weeks ago she held her breath after asking me, “Have you met Stephanie Meyer?” Sadly of course I to tell her that I hadn’t. She accepted the disappointment that I couldn’t provide an intro with grace.
I like to think I played a small part in her wonderful creativity and inspiration first; even though Stephanie Meyer has eclipsed Aunt Lynn. I bought her a beautiful poetry book when she was three. By age four her parents thought she could read. You see they read it to her at bedtime every night for months (she insisted because she loved it so). Then she began reading along, or so they thought. Actually she had memorized the poems, all of them. As they turned each page she recognize the pictures and recited the appropriate poem. I called her Baby Einstein from then on. Now she wants to be a writer, lawyer and chef (she cooks very well). My books have adult content, so Jasmine is still too young to read any of them. Yet she told me at age eight, “I hope to follow in your footsteps”.
Reading and books changes lives. What we do as authors matters more than we know. So if you have the chance to talk to kids about books and writing, take it. You may plant seeds that give them big dreams. If you give to charities, choose a literacy program for adults and one that puts books into the hands of kids. I’ll bet each of us can cite at least one instance in which someone said, “You inspired me!” If you haven’t, don’t assume you haven’t because sometimes we plant seeds but never see the mighty oaks that result.
Here is one wonderful effort to put books in the hands of African children: Worldreader
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You can now relax.
We have some mildly amusing, and wholly bemusing evidence today that there's nothing all that urgent, and the world has such an incredible abundance of resources we can, and should, just fritter them. I'll present two examples.
In Japan, which, as we know has a problem or two, really on the serious side; one of their most prominent corporations, Panasonic, announced today that it is in the final stages of commercializing a new robot, and is going to start selling it. Since this is NKH feed, I'll include some of the text:
"Japanese electronics maker Panasonic will start testing a shampooing robot with the aim of putting it on the market within a year. Panasonic announced on Monday that it will start the tests this week at a barber shop in Nishinomiya, western Japan.
"Sensors in the robot's hands scan the shape of a customer's head. The robot then wets and washes the hair with 24 'robo-fingers,' which Panasonic says recreates the feel of human fingers.
"Panasonic official Yukio Honda says the robot will help improve the quality of life for people receiving nursing care or those with disabilities. He adds that the company intends to install the robot in hair salons across Japan and put it on the nursing care market as soon as possible."
I confess, my mind boggles a bit. Japan is struggling with huge youth unemployment, is trying to import health care workers from the Philippines and Malaysia- so... yeah, this seems like a great idea. Chop human contact further for the aging and disabled, and just run them through the new car-wash machine. I suppose it's possibly that it could actually take 3 people to run and maintain the machine now; instead of the one shampoo-girl it used to... that would improve the jobs situation, right?
The second example is from the good ol' USA college community.
"A team of engineers at Purdue University has set the world record for "Largest functional Rube Goldberg machine" with a mind-boggling contraption that takes 300 steps to inflate and pop a balloon. In doing so, they bested themselves, as they had the previous record, with 244 steps. "
But wait; it gets better. "14 members worked on this project over a span of six months -- for a total of 5,000 hours."
Ok, so call me a cranky-pants. I realize, engineers just want to have fun; but really- couldn't they have had 5,000 hours worth of creative fun working on something that actually had a chance of being useful, somewhere, somehow? It seems a bit excessive to work so hard on something where the entire point of the work- is that it is useless.
Or, go to YouTube if Blogger is cranky.
Grump grump. Oh, look; I like Rube-Goldberg gimmicks too. Yes, their uselessness and pointlessness is useful and educational. But. Maybe it can be overdone? I mean- they could have built a robot that can trim toenails in assisted living homes. The Japanese are way, way, ahead of us.
And, they might have asked for a little help from some student with experience in video making...
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After a year of struggling, the Jamaica AIDS Support for Life (JASL) and the Jamaican Forum for Lesbians, All-sexuals and Gays (J-FLAG) agreed to close the country’s only LGBT drop-in shelter.
In August 2011, JASL director Ian McKnight proposed the creation of a shelter for young gay people who, struggling with their sexuality and rejection from their communities, were engaging in high-risk behaviors on the streets of Kingston.
But last Thursday, at a meeting with unsympathetic city officials, organizers announced they’d be shuttering the shelter: “We have tried to conduct a drop-in center on a number of occasions, but we don’t have the skills set and resources to deal with it,” J-FLAG’s Dane Lewis said. “What we have decided is that we have to stop it, because we don’t have the staff capacity to manage it.’
LGBT activists and the center’s young visitors were despondent at the news: “The schooling is not going to be enough [for us],” said one member. “We need meals and a drop-in centre. Some of them don’t have clothes. Where are they gonna sleep and get food?”
“We are on our knees,” said one of the young people served by the drop-in shelter.
Community leaders and politicians, who have complained about the antisocial behavior of LGBT youth, are unfazed by their plight: “‘[The] raucous behavior of the homosexuals, which includes fighting and flamboyance, in the neighborhood had to be addressed,” said MP Julian Robinson. “Many people in Jamaica face similar challenges and don’t behave in the same disruptive manner.” City council member Kari Douglas told the young men “to take responsibility for themselves.”
Even Kingston Angela Brown-Burke chastised the boys as “lacking a sense of responsibility.”
Tomilson doesn’t deny there are behavioral problems, but says that was the point of the center. “J-FLAG and JAS have been struggling for years to develop an appropriate protocol to deal with the steady stream of homeless LGBT youth living on the streets of the nation’s capital. Many them come from very challenging areas and have poor conflict resolution skills,” he told Gay Star News. “Expecting these homeless youth to rehabilitate themselves is ridiculous.”
Newly elected Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller advocated equality for Jamaica’s gays and lesbians during her campaign, and is considering reviewing the country’s antiquated anti-sodomy laws, but until the government takes solid action Tomilson and his colleagues believe the crisis in HIV/AIDS, homelessness and anti-gay violence will only get worse: “Simply put, while the Jamaican government dithers on the issue of human rights for LGBT [people], they are presiding over a public health tragedy. Truly, we sow to the wind and we reap the whirlwind.”
Below is J-FLAG’s pro-tolerance PSA featuring former Miss Jamaica World and Miss Jamaica Universe Christine Straw and her brother, Matthew. It was rejected by Jamaican television stations, for fear it would encourage homosexuality.
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This article or section needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of article quality.
This article or section needs more/new/more-detailed sources to conform to a higher standard and to provide proof for claims made.
The half-elven were given a choice to be counted as one of the Eldar (Elves), thus being immortal, or one of the Edain (Men), thus being mortal. In the list below, those who were counted as Eldar are italicized; those who were counted as Edain are not. Their actual mathematical descent from elves is in a fraction in parentheses.
The important half-elven were:
- Dior, son of Man Beren and Elf Lúthien, grandson of the Maia Melian. (1/4)
- Eärendil, son of the Man Tuor and Elf Idril (1/2)
- Elwing, daughter of Dior and Elf Nimloth. (5/8)
- Eluréd and Elurín, sons of Dior and Nimloth. (5/8)
- Elrond, son of Eärendil and Elwing. (9/16)
- Elros, also son of Eärendil and Elwing. (9/16)
- Arwen, daughter of Elrond and Elf Celebrían. (25/32)
- Elladan and Elrohir, sons of Elrond and Celebrían. (25/32)
- Galador, son of Imrazôr and Mithrellas (1/2)
- Gilmith, daughter of Imrazôr and Mithrellas. (1/2)
Eärendil would rather have chosen the kindred of Men, but he chose the Elves for his wife Elwing's sake, who chose the Elves. Eärendil's fate was special however: he was not allowed to stay in Valinor, but had to sail the heavens in his ship Vingilótë, the Silmaril of Beren and Lúthien on the prow, as a sign of hope for Middle-earth. Elwing built a tower in the Shadowy Seas and often met him on his return.
The heirs of Elrond, including Arwen Undómiel, also had the free choice of kindred, therefore Arwen could choose to be counted amongst the Edain even though her father had chosen to be counted as Elven. The heirs of Elros were not given this choice, but their lifespan was enhanced many times that of normal Men. In later times the Númenórean Kings, descendants of Elros, regretted their forefather's choice, and this helped lead to the Downfall of Númenor.
Dior was the son of Beren and Lúthien, and he was therefore also counted as Half-elven, as were his children with the Elf Nimloth of Doriath, Eluréd, Elurín, and Elwing. Eluréd and Elurín were killed, but Elwing was given her choice of kindred. Dior and his descendants also descend from the angelic beings the Maiar, through Dior's grandmother, and Luthien's mother, Melian.
Arwen, daughter of Elrond, married Aragorn, heir of Elros, and thus the two Half-elven lines were merged in the Fourth Age. Their son Eldarion and their daughters were not counted as Half-elven, but rather as Dúnedain restored.
- ↑ Lúthien was considered to be of the Eldar, not the half-elven; however, she was technically half-elven since only her father was an Elf. Her mother, Melian, was one of the Maiar, an angelic holy being. Though she did actually give up her mortality so her husband would be brought back to life, she was still considered one of the Eldar and never of the half-elven or Edain.
- ↑ Among all the Half-elven whose Elvish ancestry is documented, Eärendil is the most Vanyarin of them, being five-sixteenths Vanyarin through his five-eighths Vanyarin mother Idril.
- ↑ Eluréd and Elurín were captured by the servants of Celegorm and abandoned in the forest, thus dying before their decision as to their kindred could be made.
- ↑ It is uncertain whether Elladan and Elrohir chose to be of the Edain or the Eldar; this information is not given in the books. However, since their choice was expressed by whether they would follow their father to Valinor at the time of his own departure, and they were described as remaining in Rivendell, they are often said to have chosen the Edain.
- ↑ This is a less known legend, which explains why the Princes of Dol Amroth were of Elven descent, but this (and perhaps other unaccounted instances) are less famous and are not usually mentioned among the half-elven.
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In a move to realign company interests and focus on enterprise customers in the wake of recent losses, Cisco is shutting down its Flip Video production division.
A Brief History of Flip Video
Pure Digital Technologies started the line way back in 2006. Originally manufacturing disposable camcorders, Pure Digital improved the quality and design of its product enough for the device to become reusable. And the pocket camcorder was born, with the Pure Digital Point & Shoot.
A year later the Point & Shoot was rebranded as the Flip Video, and Pure Digital began a successful run as purveyors of low-end, easy to use camcorders. Pure Digital and Flip Video were, in fact, successful enough that the company and its flagship line piqued the interest of Cisco.
Cisco acquired Pure Digital for $590 million in 2009, and released several additions to the Flip line, such as the Flip SlideHD and Flip UltraHD. However Cisco's run with the company did not last long, and two short years after Cisco's acquisition, the history of Flip Video comes to a close.
Reasons for Cisco's Decision
There seems to be a two pronged cause/rationale to the closure of the Flip Video line. The first is Cisco's aforementioned decision to buckle down and set its sights forward on enterprise products and a more selective offering of consumer devices (routers and whatnot). Cisco has struggled financially recently, and it makes sense for the large, sprawling company to regroup.
The second cause is competition. In 2006, Flip Video camcorders were novel devices. However, since Cisco's acquisition, everyone has gotten into the pocket camcorder industry. Kodak brought competition shortly after Cisco first acquired Pure Digital with the Kodak Zi8. It continued producing challengers for Flip, such as the Kodak PlaySport and PlayTouch models.
Sony also offered competition with the Sony Bloggie Touch.
Possibly most damning of all was the dramatic improvement and proliferation of cell phone cameras. The rise of smartphones featuring quality cameras that offer HD recording could drain the pocket camcorder industry of most of its business.
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When Universal announced last year that an epic adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower was in the works, which would include a trilogy of feature films directed by Ron Howard and a two-season television series, it sounded like a massive undertaking — from both a creative and financial perspective. This week, the studio decided it was too massive and pulled the plug on the project, breaking the hearts of fanboys and King readers the world over.
From the beginning, some had wondered if Howard was the right director for the project — now, unless the filmmaker attempts to set the project up elsewhere (unlikely, as both Howard and his Imagine production company have a long history with Uni), we’ll never know. It seems that we can add The Dark Tower to the long list of proposed book-to-film adaptations by famed directors that never saw the light of day. We’ve assembled ten of them after the jump; add yours in the comments.
Heart of Darkness, directed by Orson Welles
When Orson Welles went to Hollywood in 1939 and made a heretofore-unseen dream deal with RKO Pictures (which gave him complete creative control over the films of his new Mercury film unit), he proposed, as his first film, an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, which his Mercury Theater on the Air radio program had adapted the previous year (above). Welles, already tinkering with ways to shake up the film form, didn’t want to just to a straight adaptation though: his concept for Heart of Darkness was a film done entirely in the subjective point of view — primarily from that of Captain Marlow, whom Welles planned to play himself (he may have also played Kurtz, since his Marlow would mostly be voice only). The project sounds fascinating, but the innovative shooting technique also pushed the picture’s budget estimates over the cap allowed by his RKO contract; though some make-up tests and other pre-production steps were taken, the picture was ultimately shelved. Welles ended up choosing another project as his film debut: Citizen Kane. (Read more about his Darkness, and read his script, here.)
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U.S. employers expand health benefits coverage under reform
Nearly 18 months after passage of the national healthcare overhaul, American employers say they are providing health benefits for growing numbers of people as they extend coverage to their workers’ adult children, a new survey finds.
The federal healthcare law allows young adults up to age 26 to stay on their parents' health plans.
As a result, employers say they have seen an average 2% increase in insurance enrollments, with some saying the figure has jumped by 5% or more, according to the survey by the benefits consulting firm Mercer.
Many employers expect the ranks of their covered employees to grown an additional 2% on average in 2014 as other provisions of the law take effect that require companies automatically to enroll full-time workers, the report found.
The survey of nearly 900 U.S. employers did not put a dollar figure to the cost of the growing enrollments, but Mercer said the expanding levels of coverage are saddling employers with new financial pressures.
“Employers have already been facing average increases in per-employee health benefit costs of about 6% annually for the past six years,” Mercer consultant Tracy Watts said in a statement accompanying the survey. “Adding enrollment growth on top of that puts a real strain on their budgets.”
To read the survey, go to www.mercer.com/press-releases/1421820
-- Duke Helfand
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After 20 months of relentless turmoil, rebel forces had not had a unified vision for the country or single military plan to oust al-Assad, whose family has ruled Syria for more than four decades. The United States and Arab nations pressured the groups to get on the same page.
Despite the opposition's unification efforts -- and in light of the government's defiance -- the bloody civil war rages on.
The opposition Local Coordination Committees of Syria reported that 136 people were killed Saturday. Another 122 were killed Friday.
CNN cannot independently verify these figures.
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|Updated: 2/28 10:19 am
||Published: 2/26 8:57 pm
Over the last two days in Tulsa, 1.35 inches of precipitation have fallen.
Added to the 1.44 inches that fell in the five days before that, climatologists are finally seeing a difference in drought conditions in our area.
Currently, the entire state is in a severe drought and forty-one percent, including a large chunk of Green Country, is in exceptional drought.
“We rolled through most of the winter really dry, and in February, we've just turned the corner. We've had a very active weather pattern,” Gary McManus, Associate State Climatologist with the Oklahoma Climatological Survey, said Tuesday.
FOX23 Chief Meteorologist James Adyelott is smiling.
“(I’m) very happy with the rain. It's come fairly gently, these all day rains have soaked in, not much has run off. It’s just what we needed,” Adyelott said.
McManus says two weeks of moisture have made a difference.
“It was very welcome surprise, and we'd like this to continue over the next several months.”
He says that because a rainy month, no matter how much falls, won't solve our state’s drought dilemma.
“February is probably going to end up being one of our 12 wettest February's on record,” McManus said.
He encourages people to keep hoping for precipitation like what we've seen recently.
“That is a big drought denter, but we still have a ways to go to get completely out of the drought.”
Aydelott is optimistic.
“Short term, over next couple of weeks I think we have more chances for rain back in our area, and we need that.”
Aydelott knows the reward after the rain isn't just a rainbow.
“If we hold out this weather pattern, we might be out of this drought before the Spring is over.”
There should be a much clearer picture of how much this rainy month helped the overall drought picture in the state when new drought maps are released on Thursday.
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(CNN) -- Amid all the furor about the seemingly omnipotent military in Egypt, the disbanded Islamist-dominated parliament and the debate over whether the Muslim Brotherhood will ban beer and bikinis, it's tempting to mutter, "It's the economy, stupid."
In 18 months of upheaval, all Egypt's economic indicators have headed south.
Growth is a projected 1.5% this fiscal year, far too feeble to provide a young and rapidly growing population with jobs (80% of Egypt's population is under age 30). Unemployment, one of the engines of the revolution, is estimated to be as high as 25% among the young. Tourism revenues have fallen sharply, and foreign reserves have dwindled to $15 billion. According to the United Nations, some 40% of Egyptians live below the poverty line; 14 million people subsist on less than $1 a day. Institutions are chronically weak and corruption is endemic.
President-elect Mohamed Morsi has his hands full.
Many critics say the military has handed Morsi a neutered presidency doomed to fail. But economists who have dealt with the Muslim Brotherhood's economic team describe the team as pragmatic, well-prepared and favorable to the free market.
Hernando de Soto, a noted economist who has helped his native Peru empower millions, has consulted with the Muslim Brotherhood. He says that when he met millionaire Khairat el-Shater, the Brotherhood's first presidential candidate who was disqualified for legal matters, el-Shater described himself as "businessman" on his card.
"They want to create a market economy for the poor, to bring them into the mainstream," de Soto says.
The Muslim Brotherhood has pledged to reach a rapid accord with the International Monetary Fund to cool Egypt's borrowing costs and protect the value of its pound. The interim military government raised money by selling bonds to Egyptian investors -- but at rising interest rates, with the yield on the one-year bill reaching a dizzying 16%. The new government will have to repay or roll over some $4 billion in short-term borrowing over the next six months.
There have been several rounds of negotiations between the Finance Ministry and the IMF for a $3.2 billion loan, but they have yet to yield an agreement. That amount may now be inadequate. Masood Ahmed, one of the IMF's senior officials for the Middle East, summed up the challenge last month: "How can we help Egypt now come up with an economic program that would restore confidence, protect poor people and vulnerable households -- and do so in a way that restores confidence during uncertainty?"
Hafez Ghanem, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who was recently in Egypt, says the immediate priority is to devise a "bold, credible program to reduce the outflow of reserves, encourage investment and bring in other donors" through an agreement with the IMF.
He advises the new government to focus on two or three priorities. The first is tackling corruption, which resonates with every Egyptian. "Real progress on corruption will have to involve a partnership between the government, the private sector and NGOs," he says.
He looks at the example of Indonesia. After the fall of President Suharto, the new government embarked on decentralization, partnering with nongovernmental organizations and civil society. Results were not immediate, but the perception of change was.
The second priority, Ghanem says, must be the subsidies that consume such a large part of the national budget.
The country's growing deficit could be cut significantly if fuel subsidies were removed. But that's not going to happen. The Brotherhood is anxious to protect the poor Egyptians who propelled it to power, even though 90% of the subsidy benefits the wealthiest 20% of Egyptians.
Fuel and bread subsidies have long been an essential insurance against civil unrest in Egypt. The challenge for Morsi and his government is to better direct them at those most in need. Ghanem says that over two or three years, the subsidy program can be refashioned as income support for the poorest, similar to the "bolsa familia" in Brazil that has lifted millions into the middle class. Gasoline stamps, graduated electricity tariffs and a shift in subsidies toward healthier foods -- away from bread and sugar -- all have a role to play, he says.
Ghanem says the issue of youth unemployment can only be addressed if the public debt is tackled, something that could have been done already with support from the IMF. But the interim government's refusal to consider foreign financing squeezed liquidity out of the domestic credit market.
Gehad el-Haddad, a senior member of the executive committee of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, says he knows it faces a tall order.
"We are warding off the immediate devaluation of the pound and working to regain the trust of investors in the market, to assure them that stability will come under this presidency," he says.
One of their primary challenges, he stressed, is wiping away remnants of the Mubarak regime's hallmark bureaucracy and patronage networks: "The economy is our first, second and third priority."
Some still aren't convinced.
"I'm not sure I want to be investing my money when I know the Brotherhood, with little experience in this realm, is at the helm," says a senior member of losing presidential candidate Ahmed Shafiq's campaign. "It doesn't give me and many other liberals much incentive to invest in a civil state that might be compromised by Islamists with unclear motives."
Ahmed El Alfi, chairman of Flat6Labs, a start-up incubator based in Cairo that provides money and support to young entrepreneurs, says fostering entrepreneurship in Egypt is an oft-forgotten component of getting the economy on track.
"Really, this government should just get out of the way and let people work," he says. "The revolution gave people a sense of empowerment. Instead of calling up your dad to call up his friends to get you a government job, now Egyptians are thinking outside of the box, they want to make a difference. We have to nurture this talent, support creativity and harness the power as an economic solution."
But El Alfi worries that continued instability may prompt a brain drain among Egypt's brightest prospects. He notes that most of the budding entrepreneurs that seek Flat6Labs' mentoring are public school educated and from a lower economic bracket.
"These are the people who can't just pack up and move to the West if things get bad," he says. "And they can't be neglected."
Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center, says the Brotherhood knows this.
"Put simply, if they can't deliver on the economy, then they'll hemorrhage popularity," Hamid says. "They know they can't fail, and they're committed to delivering with a detailed free-market economic program that also focuses on social welfare."
De Soto says the key to Egypt's long-term prosperity is to find a way to liberate its anarchic "extra-legal" economy: the shopkeepers, craftsmen and traders who work below the radar to avoid corruption, taxes and the inertia of the bureaucracy.
That would require the streamlining of some 300 laws, he says, and the creation of one organization that could bestow property rights and provide the "extra-legal" with a path to a more productive role -- unlocking the vast sums sloshing about in the informal economy.
It would be a huge transformation, de Soto says, and it will require promotion and smart messaging.
"But there is a window of opportunity," he says. "That's what revolutions provide." The same happened in Japan immediately after World War II, unleashing an economy that had been in many ways feudal until then.
De Soto's consultancy, the Institute for Liberty and Democracy, was commissioned by the Mubarak government eight years ago to study Egypt's informal economy and concluded it was worth 55 times all the foreign direct investment Egypt had received since the Napoleonic era. But none of his recommendations was implemented.
De Soto reflects: "If you're going to change things, your enemy is the status quo."
Marwa Metwally, 23, is the sort of young talent that de Soto wants to see empowered. She's a razor-sharp unemployed college graduate who makes a four-hour commute every day from the Nile Delta governorate of Sharqiya to a nonprofit organization called Education for Employment in Cairo. She says the status quo simply can't continue.
"Though I didn't vote for Morsi in the first round, he can bring the change we need," she says. "The Brotherhood is from the poor, they understand. ... They were oppressed along with all us Egyptians the past 80 years, they have a plan and they know that we can't go on like this. We're dying. It's the breaking point."
But the short-term political uncertainties -- no parliament, a military perhaps committed to that very status quo and a ministerial team yet to gel -- will complicate decision-making. And given the speed with which Egypt's economy has deteriorated, time is a luxury the new government doesn't have.
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While some might say that Facebook is the most influential social media platform available, I beg to differ. Facebook definitely revolutionized the way we communicate, and it certainly has great business purposes that can only be found on Facebook, but listen yo, Twitter is where it’s at.
What I find most appealing about Twitter is the ability for individuals to break down bureaucratic barriers and tear apart the red tape to directly communicate with people of incredibly influence. I could send President Obama a message via Twitter, and within minutes (if not seconds) he could directly reply back to me. That is powerful. You could cheer or jeer Pope Benedict XVI with just a few tip-taps of your keyboard. I think it is safe to say the democratic revolution happening in the Middle East could also be considered the Twitter revolution. Twitter bolsters the democratic process and offers a voice to dissenters (except in the case of nasty megalomaniacs, but don’t get me started on that one).
So how does this affect your business? For starts, it allows customers to directly interact with a company and share thoughts. It can help a business turn around a bad situation more quickly increase customer satisfaction rates. Basically, Twitter allows customers to bypass traditional Customer Service channels.
Twitter also holds individuals within the company accountable. For example, if “Company A” has a Twitter account for its CEO as well a general Twitter account, customers will doubt the involvement or concern of the CEO if tweets intended for the head-honcho are replied to by the general Company A account.
Twitter allows for better conversation tracking than other social media platforms, as well. Even if a company’s Twitter handle is not directly used, one could still find tweets that refer to said company.
So, does Twitter make corporations more democratic? That is an interested debate that I don’t think has really been discussed before. What are your thoughts? How do you feel about people of influence (like the Pope and President) using Twitter to connect with the masses? Tell me about it in the comments below or on Twitter (don’t forget the hashtag #Hey518).
PS – I saw Pope John Paul II at the Vatican (on accident) just before he died. It was pretty amazing and I’m not even Catholic!
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This a poet who has not emerged from his ivory tower and who has, by choice, no published book of verse to his credit; whose poetry is relatively unknown in popular poetic forums and Mushairas.
Yet, at private gatherings, whenever he has occasionally shared his ghazals, he has been well appreciated. Discerning academics and poets have responded very positively to his shairi. So have well known ghazal singers.
Steeped in the tradition of Urdu Poetry by virtue of background, enriched by an academic grounding in English Literature, and labouring under an inborn talent and sensibility that was swelling within, his talent was craving for release. It was time to share his poetic treasure trove but in a manner that would be novel and would have the widest possible range and reach. It was important to touch the minds and the hearts of all those who would understand and appreciate. He knew his worth. He recognized his talent. He had coined his first couplet at the age of three.
His poetic name or pseudonym, FARAZ, is the same as his first name, and is reminiscent of the famed Pakistani poet Ahmed Faraz. His desire? To be known and remembered as the Faraz of India.
The present bouquet of voices, influences, styles and gharanas includes:
- Devi Murthy of Hyderabad [Honored with several Awards including Malika-e Ghazal, Ghazal dar Ghazal]
- Zameer Ahmed [A scion of the Delhi Gharana and Disciple of Ustad Wazir Hussain Khan and Ustad Zaheer Khan Sahib]
Devi Murthy hails from a reputed family of Vainikas and carnatac classical singers of Andhra Pradesh. The youngest daughter of famous veena Maestro Late Shri Emana Sankara Sastry, former Producer Emeritus of AIR & Doordarshan, branched off into Ghazal singing during her formative years, and this is where she created a niche for herself. Devi has been bestowed with various honours and titles such as Ghazal Sougandhika, Ghazal dar Ghazal, Maleka e Ghazal, and Pearl of Hyderabad, for her delectable and mellifluous rendering of the Urdu poetic verse. Devi enthralls her audience with her depth, her range, and complete command over form and content. The Ragas are like putty in her hands, to be moulded according to the manifold dimensions and demands of Shairi.
Devi has couched the verses in a musical framework which is revealing and luminous of specific undercurrents of meaning, She has, through her instinctive and knowledge based comprehension of poetry, created a musical interpretation of the poet's Ghazals which is a feat by any standards. Devi is also a leading light of Ghazals India, and the reason why we are here today.
Zameer Ahmed is a highly versatile though sometimes erratic performer, who hails from the well known Dilli gharana .Zameer, received his early training in Classical and semi-classical music from Ustad Wazir Hussein Khan. Other notable mentors include, Ustaad Zahoor k
Khan Sahib, and Ustad Mohammed Ali Sahib. Zameer possesses an exceptionally gifted voice, which on account of sheer range and remarkable sensitivity, can be compared with the best in the field. On his day Zameer can be superlative. In this Collective Album, entitled Jaam-e jam, his performance has touched rare levels of excellence.
This talented sister of popular singer, Bhupender Singh, received her initial training in classical vocal from Pandit Buadullji Lahore Waley and Shri Suraj Prakash.Thereafter she came under the tutelage of the famous disciple of Begum Akhtar, Shanti Hiranand. Charanjit effortlessly scales notes, both high and low to produce in her deep resonant voice; the Begum’s unique artistic ethos. Her rendering is unique and inimitable and flawless.
The most well known disciple of Begum Akhtar has endeavoured to maintain the Begum’s heritage of true Ghazal gayaki, Thumri and Dadra. Honoured with numerous awards such as the Padmashree, the Urdu and the Hindi Awards, the Sahitya Kala Parishad Award, Shanti ji has kept alive the glorious tradition of the classical Indian Ghazal. She has never compromised with the pristine purity of the original. Her selection of poetry has been tasteful and immaculate befitting her Mentor.
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Farm Museum celebrates book release with world’s longest sled in Milton
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Children and their parents flooded the museum in order to celebrate the release of the picture book that follows seven children on a blustery winter day when “the world was ice and we were skaters without skates.”
The story begins when Lizzie and her friends coax Grampa Bud into letting them use his runner sled, a long sled built for speed.
The children slip and scramble their way up an icy slope to finally whiz down the tallest hill on Old Mountain Rd.
Rebecca Rule, author and New Hampshire native, and artist Jennifer Thermes gave dramatic readings of the tale throughout the afternoon to roomfuls of children and their parents.
At the end of the first reading one child yelled out “I loved it!” in approval that promoted a burst of laughter throughout the room.
“This was a logical place for the book launch because we have Uncle Sam’s sled- the longest sled in the world. The author got her inspiration for the book, at least partly, from this very sled,” Kathleen Shea, director of the New Hampshire Farm Museum, said.
The museum acquired the world’s longest sled from the Cameron family in Farmington.
The red, white and blue sled was built in 1894 and was once used to cart local children up a mile and a half hill by horse to slide down the entire hill. According to Shea the sled would gain so much speed that sparks flew from its runners.
Today the sled sits in a large barn with a wide array of other antique items.
“We lugged the sled onto the lawn today for this event, it was very heavy but it is perfect for the reading,” Shea said.
After Rule was finished with the first reading, the room full of children filtered onto the lawn, joining with others milling around the property. Shea directed everyone milling around the area to sit on the sled for a group picture.
According to legend the 77-foot-long sled could seat over 100 children, and although the museum did not tally how many sat along the long wooden sled the entire surface was packed tight with people.
Andrew and Jamie Miller, of Milton, were among the children that sat on the world’s longest sled. Both enjoyed warm hot chocolate and cookies while on sitting on Uncle Sam.
“We had no idea what to expect or how many people were going to show up, but we are absolutely thrilled with the turnout,” an employee at the museum said.
According to the same employee the museum had sold two heaping cardboard boxes full of the picture books to children and their families.
Later in the afternoon Rule and Thermes personally signed each of the children’s brad new books.
The book release was a cheerful reminder of the colder winter days to come, as trees shed their leaves and temperatures begin to drop.
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Federations and Jewish Agency to Provide Financial Assistance to Bulgaria Terror Victims July 19, 2012
The Fund for the Victims of Terror, operated by The Jewish Agency for Israel and made possible by contributions from Jewish Federations across North America, will provide financial assistance to Israelis wounded in the attack in Bulgaria and to the families of those killed.
Bulgarian authorities have now established that a suicide bomber, carrying an apparently fake U.S. passport, blew up a bus carrying newly arrived Israeli tourists, outside the airport of the resort city of Burgas. Shortly before the attack, security cameras caught the terrorist on tape that can be seen here.
Six Israeli tourists and the Bulgarian bus driver were killed in the attack, as was the suicide bomber.
A team of Israeli doctors and first responders, led by Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center Dir.-Gen. Prof. Gabriel Barbash, along with Foreign Affairs Ministry professionals and security personnel flew directly to Burgas last night, and an extended team from Israel arrived this morning. Shortly afterwards, Israel Air Force Hercules transport planes airlifted 32 of the wounded Israelis back to Israel. Another plane load of the injured will be flown back to Israel later today. An additional three Israeli victims in critical condition will remain hospitalized in Bulgaria. Footage of the Israeli team’s arrival can be seen here, and footage of the Israeli Zaka team can be seen here.
The Victims of Terror fund will help those affected by the attack address supplemental needs not covered by Israeli government bodies. Any family that experienced the loss or injury of a loved one in the attack may request assistance from the fund. (See below for information on giving to the Victims of Terror fund online or by mail.)
“Our hearts and prayers go out to the victims of this terrible attack,” said Kathy Manning, chair of JFNA's Board of Trustees. “We hope the support we are able to offer through the Victims of Terror Fund will provide those whose lives have been devastated with assistance and comfort in their time of need.”
The Fund, established in 2002, provides financial assistance to victims of terror in Israel. Since its establishment, the fund — which is sustained by contributions from Jewish Federations, philanthropic foundations and donors around the world — has enabled The Jewish Agency to provide thousands of terror victims and their families with assistance at a scope of more than NIS 100 million.
In relation to the attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated: “All signs point towards Iran. Over the last few months we have seen Iran’s attempts to attack Israelis in Thailand, India, Georgia, Kenya, Cyprus and other countries. Exactly 18 years to the day after the horrendous attack on the Jewish Community Center in Argentina, deadly Iranian terrorism continues to strike at innocent people. This is a global Iranian terror onslaught and Israel will react firmly to it.”
President Barack Obama called Netanyahu last night to express his condolences over the "barbaric" attack, which he called "outrageous."
Contributions to the Victims of Terror Fund
Donations can be mailed to: The Jewish Federations of North America Wall Street Station PO Box 157 New York, NY 10268 Attn: Victims of Terror Fund
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April 27, 1983: Nolan Ryan eclipses Walter Johnson’s strikeout record
By KEVIN STINER
April 25, 2011
COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. – When you think of career records being broken or milestones being achieved, many come from players at the end of their careers.
However, this week 28 years ago on April 27, 36-year-old Nolan Ryan – who still had 10 seasons left in his big league career – passed Walter Johnson on the all-time strikeout list, getting his 3,509th of his career.
|Nolan Ryan was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1999. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)
What many believed would only take a couple of games into the 1983 season to do took a little longer due to injury. Ryan began the year on the disabled list for the first 21 days of the season and would need three outings to tally up the 14 overall strikeouts he needed to eclipse Johnson’s 55-year-old record.
And even the third outing was almost not meant to be. Ryan developed a blister in the game and had it drained in the seventh inning, still in need of two strikeouts from claiming the record as his own.
“I had to have the blister drained after the seventh inning,” said Ryan, “And I knew there was a good chance that I might not get a chance to pitch the ninth.”
Ten years prior, a Ryan fastball was clocked at 101 miles per hour, but time didn’t take too much of a toll on the Ryan Express: His fastball was still clocked at 98 mph.
He relied on that fastball in the eighth inning. Montreal Expos catcher Tim Blackwell swung and missed a 3-2 fastball delivered by Ryan to tie the record with the first out of the eighth.
“Everybody went nuts when he struck out Blackwell,” said Expo’s pinch hitter Brad Mills. “But I had been in the tunnel for three innings, so I didn’t know where he was.”
Mills would soon find out as he pinch hit for second baseman Doug Flynn. Ryan took a commanding 1-2 lead in the count. Just as he had done all game, Ryan threw yet again another strike, except this time he froze the batter with a record breaking curveball for his 3,509th strikeout.
Ryan believed correctly that future Hall of Famer Steve Carlton would pass him that season in career strikeouts due to Carlton pitching every fourth day compared to Ryan’s every fifth day; but Ryan was the first to the summit and eventual champion.
Ryan played another great 10 years in the majors that saw him win four consecutive strikeout titles from 1987-90. In a career that spanned four decades, Ryan punched out 5,714 batters on strikes. That’s nearly a thousand more than runner up Randy Johnson and more than 1,500 more than Carlton, the only other man to hold the career title besides Walter Johnson and Ryan in the past 90 years.
Although it was later discovered that Johnson’s strikeout total was one off, giving him indeed 3,509, at this time 28 years ago Ryan was crowned the strikeout king.
Kevin Stiner was the spring 2011 Public Relations intern for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
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In a filing made on Friday, the Obama Administration urged the Supreme Court to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act, saying courts considering laws targeting gay people should do so with extra scrutiny, and calling it unconstitutional.
Solicitor General Donald Verrilli argued that Section 3 of DOMA, which defines “spouse” and “marriage” under federal law as exclusively between one man and one woman, is unconstitutional.
Obama’s Administration wrote: ”Section 3 of DOMA violates the fundamental constitutional guarantee of equal protection. The law denies to tens of thousands of same-sex couples who are legally married under state law an array of important federal benefits that are available to legally married opposite-sex couples. Because this discrimination cannot be justified as substantially furthering any important governmental interest, Section 3 is unconstitutional.”
The filing goes on to address the question of what would be to become of DOMA if the court does not agree that a heightened level of scrutiny applies. It reads: ”If the Court … applies rational-basis review, the government has previously defended Section 3 under rational-basis review, and does not challenge the constitutionality of Section 3 under that highly deferential standard.”
The administration adds that the Supreme Court could consider what has been referred to as a “more searching form” of the rational-basis review.
“To the extent sexual orientation may be considered to fall short in some dimension [to have heightened scrutiny applied], the history of discrimination and the absence of relation to one’s capabilities associated with this particular classification would uniquely qualify it for scrutiny under an approach that calls for a measure of added focus to guard against giving effect to a desire to harm an ‘unpopular group.’
“[G]ay and lesbian people are a minority group with limited political power. Although some of the harshest and most overt forms of discrimination against gay and lesbian people have receded, that progress has hardly been uniform (either temporally or geographically), and has in significant respects been the result of judicial enforcement of the Constitution, not political action.”
The administration also addresses the argument put forward by House Republicans through the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG), that this is not an issue for the courts to decide, saying that, given the discrimination which results from the law, and the clash with the US Constitution, it should be invalidated.
“BLAG makes an appeal to this Court to allow the democratic process to run its course. That approach would be very well taken in most circumstances. This is, however, the rare case in which deference to the democratic process must give way to the fundamental constitutional command of equal treatment under law. Section 3 of DOMA targets the many gay and lesbian people legally married under state law for a harsh form of discrimination that bears no relation to their ability to contribute to society. It is abundantly clear that this discrimination does not substantially advance an interest in protecting marriage, or any other important interest. The statute simply cannot be reconciled with the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection. The Constitution therefore requires that Section 3 be invalidated.”
The other case addressing equal marriage at the Supreme Court could also be addressed by the administration. The deadline is 28 February for it to file an amicus curiae brief, to announce its views on the challenge to California’s Proposition 8.
The Supreme Court is due on 26 March to take up the case of whether to overturn Proposition 8, which in 2008 added a clause to the Californian constitution stating that marriage could only be recognised by the state if it were between a man and a woman, causing widespread controversy.
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The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZby Anand Lal Shimpi on March 18, 2009 12:00 AM EST
- Posted in
Sequential Read/Write Performance
To measure sequential read and write performance I created an iometer test script to read and write 2MB files to the drives. The writes are 100% sequential and are performed on an unpartitioned drive for 3 minutes.
Performance is reported in MB/s, higher numbers are better.
The sequential read performance of the latest generation of SSDs is nothing short of amazing. The OCZ Vertex pulls through with 250MB/s, over twice the speed of the VelociRaptor and 2.5x the speed of the Samsung SLC drive that OCZ used to sell for $1000.
Looking at write performance we see things change a bit. The OCZ Summit and Intel X25-E are the only two drives that can outperform the VelociRaptor, and they do so handsomely. The rest of the drives fall below even the 7200 RPM Caviar SE16. They are by no means slow, they just don't destroy the fastest hard drives as they do in other tests.
While the X25-E should perform the way it does, the OCZ Summit uses MLC flash yet it performs like an SLC drive. This is a very important benchmark as it shows the sort of performance Samsung has optimized for with its controller. This drive is designed to shatter bandwidth barriers, but what about latency?
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Tobias Buche is an up and coming young German sculpture, Lehmann Maupin, a respected Chelsea Gallery so why is Buche showing work that looks like an oversize low tech science fair project? The answer has a lot to do with the current fashion for art that tries hard not to look too good. No one is going to look at this show and call Buche a sell out to market driven art. It is like he is taking paints to make his art look underwhelming.
He takes his own snap shots along with pictures from the internet, newspapers, dust covers and albums covers and puts them on this flimsy looking supports. Any of these tape marks, pin holes and rips on the pictures as if to suggest that these are not precious art objects at all. Buche is not the only artist making this kind of deliberately low grade art. You can also see his work at the recently reopened new Museum of Contemporary Art. Where he is showing work along side Tom Burr who takes text and image and puts them on folding screens and Kelly Walker who radically degrades his images.
The creators of that show argue that the sense of permanence and solidity associated say with stone and bronze sculpture has now completely disappeared after events like the destruction of the Twin Towers and the infamous top link of Saddam Statue in Baghdad. In its spirit and its crappies esthetic, Buche sculpture also recalls Mark Wallinger’s replica of a protestor’s camp which just won him the 2007 Turner Price.
Looking like an information board at a peace camp may make this sculpture the perfect foil to slickly produced artwork. But it is so blend and low key that is this is a protest it is a pretty reluctant one. The pieces do not take a position on anything. There is more than a tinge of interested adolescent male subjects like deformity, violence, anti-social behavior and rebellion. That in the obscurity of some of these references could make this work a little self-indulgent.
But interpreted as an endlessly changeable portrait, maybe a self portrait drawn from images Buche has saved over the years. This sculpture finds it niche. It suggests that each of us carries around a pretty unglamorous collection of images, remember that Anne forgotten from which we make up our versions of reality.
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The Kia Spectra 5 is a small family car manufactured by Kia Motors, a Korean company. It was first put on the market in the year 2000, and at that point a hatchback was the only style available.
The 2000 models were available to car buyers in the United States and Korea as the Kia Shuma and the Kia Sepia. The Shuma was available in both a 1.5 and 1.8 L , four cylinder engines. The Sepia and the Shuma were offered at a better price than the Ford Focus, and consumers responded accordingly.
Kia made some minor upgrades in 2002 and called the new model the Shuma II. This new Shuma was eventually replaced by the Kia Cerato. The second generation of Kia cars was launched in 2005. The Spectra 5 model refers to the hatchback version; a four-door sedan is also available. Kia vehicles are available to consumers in North America, Europe, Brazil, Chile, and China. Spectra 5 buyers can expect to get approximately 25 mpg while driving in the city and 32 mpg while driving on the highway.
Different engine sizes and specifications are offered, depending on the market. For the 2004-2006 model years, the Kia Cerato is available in a 1.6 L, 105 hp engine, a 1.8 L, 125 hp engine, and a 2.0 L, 138 hp version. For the 2007 model year, a 1.6 L, 122 hp engine in a choice of manual or automatic transmissions is available. Car buyers in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates had the option of buying a 1.6 L, 123 hp engine or a 2.0 L, 143 hp engine, in either a manual or automatic transmission version.
2007 was the year that the Kia Spectra 5 was given a facelift, to compete with the Honda Fit, that included correcting the space between the grille and the front headlights. This version has a more flushed out appearance when looking at it head-on, which gives the model a smoother look that is more pleasing to the eye. The changes weren't confined to the front of the vehicle, though. The trunk lid was updated from a creased version to one with a more rounded appearance. This wasn't the only change made to the back of the vehicle, though: the tail lamps were moved toward the top of the assembly to bring their appearance in line with the style of other vehicles in its class.
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Law could allow for backyard chickens in Burr Ridge
Updated: December 3, 2012 1:34AM
BURR RIDGE — The Plan Commission has agreed to consider an ordinance that would allow residents to raise chickens on properties of 1 acre or more.
Chris Herringshaw raised the issue of allowing chickens on properties smaller than 5 acres so he can raise hens in his Steepleside Drive yard.
“I grew up on a farm in rural Michigan,” said Herringshaw, who wishes to raise three or four chickens for their organic eggs.
“I thought it would be a great way to expose my girls to that,” he said.
Burr Ridge allows livestock, including chickens, only on properties 5 acres or larger. Plan Commission members directed village staff to draft an amended law that would allow four chickens to be raised in the back yards of properties 1 acre or larger. The chickens must be for personal use only and housed in a fully enclosed, predator-resistant coop.
“This is a common allowance in zoning ordinances in other suburbs,” said Doug Pollock, community development director.
Western Springs, Winnetka and Evanston are among the suburbs where chickens are allowed.
The commission discussed whether neighbors would be bothered by noise or smell from nearby coops. Chris Cronin said he lives within a few hundred feet of Hanson Center and he is not bothered by their chickens.
To protect neighbors, the proposed ordinance will include rear- and side-yard setbacks.
The proposed ordinance will come back to the Plan Commission on Oct. 15. Its recommendation would then go to the Village Board for final approval.
If approved, Pollock said he doesn’t expect to see a lot of residents interested in raising chickens.
“I don’t think we’re going to see an onslaught of people,” said Pollock, who knows of no chickens in Burr Ridge other than those at Hanson Center. ~.
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Via Prague Monitor:
About ten couples have a Muslim wedding in the Czech Republic every year, Vladimir Sanka, director of the Islamic Centre in Prague, has told CTK, adding that most of the couples are foreigners but there are also Czechs who have adopted the Islamic faith.
For a Muslim marriage to be legal, the couple must have a civilian wedding first, Sanka said.
This article was prepared by the Islam in Europe blog - islamineurope.blogspot.com
Muslims were registered as a religious group in the Czech Republic only in 2004, but the state has not yet granted special rights to them, that Christians and Jews, for example, enjoy.
The special rights include the right to establish schools, assist in prisons, military and hospitals, and conclude legal marriages.
Religious groups can apply for granting the special rights ten years after their official registration. They have to submit 10,000 signatures of adult supporters of the group who have permanent residence in the Czech Republic.
"The gaining of 10,000 signatures is unfeasible for us. We can hardly achieve this in the next decades either," Sanka told CTK.
If Muslims managed to meet the conditions, they would use the chance of concluding legal religious marriages, establishing schools and offer lessons of Islam at schools that would be interested in it, Sanka said.
Sanka said that some 12,000 Muslims live in the 10-million Czech Republic, but only one-third of them regularly visit the country's two mosques, situated in Prague and Brno, and smaller houses of prayer.
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