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now again more than questionable use of language
Interviewed by New York television station WCBS Friday evening, the powerful New York congressman was asked why Democrats appear “afraid” of Palin. “You got to be kind to the disabled,” Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, responded in an answer the reporter interviewing him later called “astonishing.”
Shortly after the interview aired Friday night, Rangel issued a statement say his words were “misinterpreted.”
“Sometimes in the heat of a political campaign you choose words that can be misinterpreted,” he said. “Governor Palin is an obviously healthy person who in no way fits the description of disabled. I meant to say then, and I am saying now, that she entered the campaign with a disadvantage in the area of foreign policy.”
My question: what fits the description of disabled? the deficient unable to be a president….?
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I always treat the audience in two ways: Firstly as if I was just performing to one person - my imagined lover (depending on the intimacy of the moment) - and secondly as if I were in front of friends. I have to appear confident from the moment I step onto that stage, and both these approaches set me at ease. The great thing about Miss Ida Heath is that she is no great beauty, and yet because her expression shows such boundless energy, enthusiasm and confidence her audience couldn't help but be charmed and entertained.
In the lithograph of Yvette Guilbert we see her with her head thrown back as if in ecstacy. Perhaps she's receiving the adulation of her audience, or taking a moment in the full heat of the spotlight to compose herself before singing? I know the feeling so well - the split second in which you have to make the first note of the song count and at the same time capture the heart and attention of the audience. A audience can be a very fickle lover, and if they take no more pleasure from you, it's possible to ‘die’ and wither up there in the blinding spotlight
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Microwave reheating is becoming an important feature in carryoutfood containers, particularly with deli-style meals sold in supermarkets. Source: D&W Fine Pack.
“In California and the Pacific Northwest, foam is being legislated out of cities and is being replaced with paper and polypropylene containers,” says Karen Williams-Roman, director of product management at Fountain Inn, SC-based D&W. But microwave heating is an issue with paper, and polypropylene comes at a premium over foam, she points out. To trim cost, the Cruiser Bowl line reduces resin content by sandwiching a layer of talc or calcium between two sheets of polypropylene. The denser minerals provide greater structural integrity, even at a thinner gauge.
“The downside of calcium or talc is that they are stone, and they tend to be rough on the molds when they get compounded,” Williams-Roman allows. The material lacks the clarity of polypropylene, as well. But for “homey foods like mashed potatoes and macaroni & cheese, the container is perfect,” she adds.
The line also includes an eight-ounce bowl with a tapered base that fits in a car’s cup holder. “We’re seeing a trend to smaller-sized packages,” she says, and bowls as small as five and six ounces are part of the line.
For more information:
Karen Williams-Roman, D&W Fine Pack, 864-409-4448,
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Republican members of Congress are pressing the Department of Health and Human Services to reverse its denial of an anti-trafficking grant to a Catholic organization, claiming the decision represents religious discrimination, writes The Washington Post.
In letters to Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than 30 GOP legislators objected to the agency’s decision in September not to renew a $4.5-million grant to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to aid victims of trafficking. The money was given to three other groups that, unlike the bishops’ conference, sometimes refer clients for contraceptive or abortion services.
Two of the groups were ranked lower than the bishops conference by an independent review board. “We’re talking about a Catholic group with a superior track record that was pushed aside to promote the abortion agenda,” said Rep. Christopher H. Smith of New Jersey.
An HHS spokesman said the department is “fully confident” that the winning groups are best suited to provide services to victims of trafficking and that “the health and ability of these victims to retake control over their own lives is our sole concern” in awarding the grants.
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THE Minister for Research and Innovation, Seán Sherlock, TD, has sent his congratulations to the country’s 55,815 Leaving Certificate students who are receiving their results today.
“As the Minister of State with responsibility for curriculum development in STEM subjects I am particularly pleased with the uptake and attainment levels in Maths and in the science and technology subjects.
The Minister highlighted the increased participation in higher level Maths, which was one of the core aims of Project Maths: “Combined with the award of 25 bonus CAO points, Project Maths has contributed to an increase of 35% in the number of students presenting for higher level Maths this year compared to 2011”.
He also welcomed the fact that the number of students attaining an A rate in higher level maths is similar to that achieved in recent years.
The Department of Education and Skills has implemented a range of measures to support the continued roll-out of Project Maths. These are outlined in the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategy (2011) and include the prioritisation of Continuing Professional Development for all second-level Maths teachers, a greater amount of time for teaching Maths both at primary and post primary levels, and Department funding of over €2 million this year for a post-graduate Diploma in Maths to upskill out-of-field Maths teachers, with some 430 applications already received.
Minister Sherlock said: “I am confident that these measures will help to further embed the core principles of Project Maths into the education system.”
The Minister welcomed the fact that the distribution of grades in Chemistry, Physics and Biology is very much in keeping with recent years, with an increased number of candidates sitting higher level Chemistry in 2012. “I am keen to ensure the upward trend in STEM subjects, and I intend to engage with industry and academia in a focused way in the coming months,” he said.
Minister Sherlock encouraged this year’s Leaving Certificate candidates to consider a future in the STEM area and welcomed the fact that the first CAO applications highlighted such a trend. “We need graduates in these areas to enhance our competitiveness,” he concluded.
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General George Armstrong Custer's personally owned Army-issue Model 1865 Spencer Carbine brought $179,250 to claim top lot honors in Heritage Auctions
' $2.5+ million Political, Western Legends & Americana Signature® Auction, Dec. 11-12.
Items relating to the well-known general led the event, from an important oil painting of the Battle of Washita by Frederic Remington which sold for $179,250 to a trove of letters from an officer among the first on the scene to identify bodies following Gen. George Armstrong Custer's crushing 1876 defeat at Little Big Horn, which sold for $89,625.
Additional top lots include one of the most important, from-life photographs of Custer ever to come to market sold for $83,650 and Custer's personally-owned gun belt with holder and accoutrements sold for $71,700.
"Custer is among a special group of historical figures who simply captivate collectors," said Tom Slater, director of Americana for Heritage Auctions. "We bring important, personally-owned objects to auction all year long but it's always a delight to offer items owned by such an accomplished, yet controversial figure as George Custer."
The auction featured a number of unique historical rarities, including a one-of-a-kind broadside created by Act of Congress to celebrate the July 4,1876 Centennial of American Independence, signed by President Grant and every sitting member of the federal government, which sold for $89,625. An important handwritten letter by James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok signed in four places sold for a strong $71,700 to a phone bidder.
Nearly as significant was an important 1867 letter signed by famed Western scout Christopher "Kit" Carson, congratulating a friend who recently quit drinking and offering to buy him a claim amidst a growing 'gold fever', sold for $47,800. Another gold rush artifact drawing intense bidder interest was a relic brooch containing the first piece of gold flake discovered by James Marshall at Sutter's Mill in 1848, touching off the legendary California Gold Rush. Marshall had the gold specimen set into the brooch as a gift for his newborn niece Abigail, and it remained in the hands of her family until consigned for auction by Heritage.
Among the exemplary American political memorabilia up for bids, the finest known specimen of an 1864 brass jugate badge, featuring tiny tintype photographs of Abraham Lincoln and his running mate Andrew Johnson and considered a 'holy grail' among political pinback collectors, sold for $56,762.50. A racist broadside, designed to railroad Lincoln's 1864 reelection campaign sold for $35,850 and Franklin D. Roosevelt's personally-owned pocket watch, likely a wedding gift holding a photograph of Eleanor Roosevelt, sold for $27,485.
The auction featured over 50 items formerly owned and used by President Gerald Ford and First Lady Betty Ford, consigned by the family to benefit the new Student Learning Center at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation. The consignment raised over $100,000 for this worthy cause. President Ford was among the best-known presidential golfers, so it comes as no surprise that his well-used personal set of clubs drew the most attention, selling for $26,180. Perhaps more surprising was Betty's purse by famed designer Judith Leiber, which fetched $7140 against a pre-sale estimate of $400+.
Additional highlights include but are not limited to:
Edward S. Curtis' vintage goldtone photograph "Before the Storm" sold for $27,485.
A United States flag, with 130 stars and the words July 4th 1865 embroidered on the fifth red stripe sold for $23,900.
An 1880 subpoena signed by W.B. "Bat" Masterson as the Sherriff of Dodge City sold for $21,510.
An impeccably provenance autograph of Geronimo, the notorious Apache leader, sold for $16,730.
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Economy witnessed slower growth output in 3Q – NBS
Abuja – The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Monday said that the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rose by 6.48 per cent in the third quarter of 2012.
A statement issued in Abuja by Dr Yemi Kale, the Statistician-General of the Federation, indicated that the figure was lower than the 7.37 per cent recorded in the corresponding period in 2011.
Kale said that the nominal GDP for the third quarter of 2012 was estimated at N10.9 trillion, compared with the N9.8 trillion of the corresponding quarter of 2011.
“The economy, comprising two broad output groups of oil and non-oil sectors, witnessed slower growth output in the third quarter of 2012 as a result of declines in non-oil sector output.
“While the oil sector witnessed positive growth for the first time in four quarters, the slower non-oil sector growth was driven by growth in activities recorded in the building and construction, cement, hotel and restaurant, as well as the electricity sectors,’’ the statement said.
Quoting NNPC data, the statement said that the country’s average daily crude oil production stood at N2.52 Million Barrels Per Day (MBPD) in the third quarter of 2012, compared with the 2.38 MBPD in the corresponding quarter of 2011.
It said that these figures, with their associated gas components, resulted in a growth rate in real terms of 0.08 per cent in oil GDP in the third quarter of 2012, compared with the -0.26 per cent in the corresponding period in 2011.
“During the period, activities of vandals and oil theft decreased as a result of intensified surveillance instituted by government in the oil producing areas.
“Moreover, re-entry into previously abandoned fields by some oil majors and renewed production there was responsible for the slight improvement in oil GDP during the period under review,’’ the statement said.
It said the oil sector also benefited from the relative stability in international crude oil market price and the exchange rate of the naira to the dollar during the third quarter of 2012.
“While oil sector contribution to real GDP in the third quarter of 2011 was 14.28 per cent, this declined to 13.42 per cent in the third quarter of 2012,’’ the statement said.
It said that the non-oil sector recorded 7.55 per cent growth in real terms in the third quarter of 2012, compared with 8.76 per cent recorded in the corresponding period of 2011.
It pointed out that growth in the non-oil sector decreased in the third quarter of 2012, when compared with the figure in the corresponding quarter of 2011.
“This decline was largely attributed to declines in output in the agriculture, telecommunications, wholesale and retail trade and real estate sectors.
“The performance of the major industries in the non-oil sector in the third quarter of 2012 is further analysed to give a better understanding of their contributions to the Nigerian economy.
“Crops produced in Nigeria are classified broadly as vegetables, root crops, cereals, leguminous and cash crops,’’ the statement said.
It said that in terms of output, the real agricultural GDP growth rate in the third quarter of 2012 stood at 3.89 per cent against 5.76 per cent in the corresponding period of 2011.
“In addition to the prevailing (though gradually improving) security challenges facing most agricultural producing states in Northern Nigeria, growth in the sector was also partially affected by floods.
“This is affecting several states across the country to varying degrees.
“However, due to the fact that the peak of the flooding was toward the end of the third quarter, the impact on agricultural production was less observed during the quarter.
“It is conceivable that the full impact of the floods will be more visible in the fourth quarter of 2012 and the first quarter of 2012.
“NBS’ preliminary analysis suggests that the impact of flooding on agricultural GDP may not be as severe as feared.
“This is because agriculture in Nigeria is such that each crop type has a different gestation period and prevalence in each state, leading to different harvesting periods in different parts of the country,’’ the NBS statement said.
It quoted the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) as indicating that the most affected states were Adamawa, Anambra, Bauchi, Bayelsa, Benue, Cross River, Delta, Edo, Imo, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Kogi, Nasarawa, Niger, Taraba and Plateau.
Others that experienced relatively lower levels of flooding were Abia, Ebonyi and Rivers.
“Although some of the affected states are known for the production of crops with significant contributions to crop production GDP in Nigeria, it should be noted that not all parts of these states were inundated by the floods.’’
The bureau said that some of the crops were also grown in several parts of the country other than the states that experienced floods.
“As can be seen from the Socio Economic Survey conducted by NBS in 2011, such crops include cassava, yam and maize which contribute 36.49 per cent, 27.22 per cent and 6.95 per cent to crop production GDP, respectively.
“Cotton (5.89 per cent), guinea corn (5.74 per cent), millet (4.72 per cent), rice (3.48 per cent) and groundnut (3.08 per cent) are other examples of such crops, though with lesser contributions to crop production GDP,’’ the statement said.
It said further analysis indicated that cassava-producing states, which were affected by the floods, contributed 63.59 per cent to the national cassava production, even though as noted earlier, not all parts of these states were damaged by the floods.
“Similarly, 70.55 per cent of national yam production, 71.72 per cent of maize production, 79.42 per cent of rice production and 67.81 per cent of groundnut production can be accounted for by the affected states.
“These percentages represent the proportion of crop production that would be lost if the entirety of states producing these crops were no longer available for agricultural activity.
“As this was not the case, the observed growth in agricultural GDP in Q3 reflects the moderated effects of the flood on real GDP growth,’’ the statement said.
It said that the NBS was working with partner agencies to determine more precisely the socio-economic impacts of the floods.
The statement said the finance and insurance sectors recorded a growth of 4.08 per cent in the third quarter of 2012, compared with the 4.04 per cent recorded in the same period in 2011.
It said the increase in growth of the sector was traceable to the vibrancy in the financial sector, driven by increased lending activities by banks.
“It is also due to continued favourable investment yields in the bond market, which favoured key players in the industry, especially pension fund managers, banks and insurance firms.’’
The NBS statement said that the wholesale and retail trade sector recorded a real GDP growth of 9.62 per cent and a contribution of 18.81 per cent in the quarter under review as against 11.80 per cent growth and 18.27 per cent contribution to GDP recorded in the corresponding quarter of 2011.
“Thus, the sector recorded a decline in growth of 2.18 percentage points in Q3 2012 when compared with corresponding quarter in 2011.
“The decline is attributable to a number of factors such as the decline witnessed in related sectors like agriculture and other manufacturing.
“Nevertheless, the sector is still a major contributor to the Nigerian economy,’’ it said.
The statement said the telecommunications sector recorded a real GDP growth of 31.57 per cent in the third quarter of 2012 as against 35.00 per cent recorded in the corresponding period of 2011.
It said the decline in growth recorded in the sector was attributable to the poor quality of service experienced during the quarter arising from the adverse weather conditions experienced across the country.
“This sector, which used to suffer from an absence of competition and abuse of monopoly power, is now with alternative options for the consumers.
“This sector is playing pivotal role in the growth of many other sectors through its intensive marketing strategy and value added services.
“The data service is contributing tremendously to the growth of the sector.
“The performance of the telecommunications sector in the third quarter of 2012 compared with previous quarters,’’ the statement said.
It said the real estate sector growth stood at 10.24 per cent in the third quarter of 2012 compared with 10.86 per cent in the corresponding period of 2011.
The statement said that the sector was characterised by two major classes of properties – the low end and the high end.
“The low end comprise of places of low development which are driven by investments from individuals and few corporate bodies mostly in form of residential buildings.
“The high end comprises of those areas where aggressive and high valued investments into real estate properties are made.
According to the statement, the situation at the high end areas is a decreasing demand situation while investments from individuals and some corporate entities still trickle into the low end of the sector.
It said during the third quarter of 2012, manufacturing activities improved for the second consecutive quarter although decreased relative to the same period in 2011.
“It recorded a decrease in growth rate from 7.84 per cent in the third quarter of 2011 to 7.78 per cent in Q3 2012.
“The development is traceable to a number of factors which include: decline in agricultural production which plays important part in producing raw materials to this sector and challenges with the ease of accessing funds.
“Nevertheless, the relatively improving electricity supply situation in the country appears to be boosting the sector,’’ the statement said.
The bureau said business and other services sector recorded a real GDP growth of 9.11 per cent in the third quarter of 2012 compared to 8.52 per cent recorded in the corresponding quarter of 2011.
It said the increase in growth recorded in the third quarter of 2012 relative to its performance in the third quarter of 2011 in business and other services was traceable to the higher consumer demands. (NAN)
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The Route to Family Wisdom
by Joan F. Jenks|
124 Pages, Paperback, 5.5 x 8.5
The Route to Family Wisdom teaches the reader the process of focused meditation as a basis for exploring themes of early, particularly maternal, wisdom. It uses the concept of "genespherics" to enhance the meditation process, and provides examples of the author's transcribed meditations. Several methods for tuning in to aspects of early everyday life, such as cooking in the manner of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, are included.
About The Author
The author's meditations in her 18th century home provided the inspiration for her to write The Route to Family Wisdom, a book that will help readers develop their own ancestral meditative skills. The author has studied both genealogy and meditation for more than twenty years, and has a master's degree in psychology. She enjoys antiques, New England architecture, and historic cooking, and she has included examples of early recipes in her book. The mother of two grown children, she lives with her husband, Frank, and their cat, Peregrine, in coastal Connecticut.
Other Ordering Options
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Francoise Mira of California will never forget the day advanced obedience skills saved the life of her beloved mixed-breed dog Leilah. She had been hiking with Leilah and her Australian Shepherd, Copper, in a canyon near her home. On weekends, the area was closed off to automobile traffic, making it safe for off-leash dogs.
“All of a sudden, I heard a car coming, illegally off-roading,” says Mira. “I called Copper to me but Leilah was on the other side of the road. I told him to sit and at the same time, I gave the down-stay visual signal to Leilah and she dropped [to the ground]. Because I was able to give her that Utility down signal, a hand signal, I was able to have them both stay still and let this car go through.”
In competition, obedience at its best can look like magic. With every nod of the handler’s head or sweep of her arm, the dog responds with an enthusiastic burst of motion or a quick halt or down. Dog and handler glide together in perfect sync as the judge calls out instructions, and the small crowd gathered outside the ring quietly admires their performance. At the conclusion of the class, the judge announces which teams qualified, and to those pairs he hands out the placement ribbons, as the audience applauds and the dogs’ tails wag.
“Obedience builds confidence in the dog,” says Kate Cowles of Iowa, who competes with four shelter dogs in UKC obedience, St. Hubert’s Companion Dog Sports Program and the Association of Pet Dog Trainers’ Rally O. “For me, the point of doing competitive obedience is to build the bond.”
At its worst, competitive obedience can look like torture for both partners. Some handlers constantly jerk at their dog’s leash or practically drag the poor thing around the ring. Other handlers become so nervous about the trial setting that they pass on that stress to their dogs, who constantly lick their lips and look for a chance to bolt.
If this is your idea of obedience, then it certainly does not conjure up images of fun with your dog. But for many people nationwide, it is a favorite pastime, and their dogs enjoy the extra attention, travel and overall excitement. Perhaps if it were called something more flashy, like “precision teamwork” or “synchronized stepping,” more dog-lovers would pursue this challenging sport and discover its many benefits.
At its most basic, obedience comprises a variety of exercises that demonstrate controlled communication between handler and dog. Depending on the level, required skills can include sit, down, stand for exam, recall, heel, retrieve, jump and scent. The degree of difficulty increases as you progress from one class to the next, known as Novice, Open and Utility in most venues.
Modern obedience in North America derives from exercises created by the world’s first Working Trial society, the Associated Sheep, Police and Army Dog Society of England. The society hosted its first Working Trial in 1924 as a practical test of each dog’s knowledge in three areas: control, agility (over varied terrain) and scent work.
Helene Whitehouse Walker is widely regarded as the founder of American obedience. In 1933, she adapted the society’s exercises to hold her own test in New York to prove the intelligence of her Standard Poodles. In 1937, Walker and her assistant, Blanche Saunders, promoted the young sport by taking their dogs on the road for a nationwide traveling obedience exhibition.
Today, the society’s three fundamental applications can still be found at an obedience trial, no matter what the venue. Control is exhibited at all levels of obedience, especially through heeling and the dog’s response to the handler’s verbal commands or, as they progress as a team, silent hand signals. Agility is demonstrated at the Open level by asking the dog to jump over a panel jump, broad jump and bar jump. Lastly, scent work is found at the highest level, Utility, in which the dog must find an object with his handler’s scent among a pile of articles and return with the correct one.
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Pressure : 29.86 in
Dewpoint : 60.1 °
Wind : Southeast
Worker identified in Nebraska Prime accident
For six months, the death of a worker killed at a Hastings meat packing plant was kept pretty quiet. Until now.
His name was Adalid Nava-Arcos. But he has many aliases. Arcos' clothing got caught in a machine. He died a couple of days later.
With several unanswered questions, after nearly six months, we are now uncovering the details.
"The best information that I have is that the employee's clothing or garment got caught in a machine and lifted him up into the machine," said Hastings Police Captain Adam Story.
The Hastings Police Department responded to the accident at the Nebraska Prime group plant in January and did write a report. But the name of the man was not released.
"There were multiple names that were given to us that were possible names. The officer and the detectives went through the information and were in contact with various different entities, even the Mexican consultants and both Nebraska and other states," said Story.
The Hastings Fire Department responded to the accident.
And did write a report but they didn't know the identity of the man at the time, either.
"Even though we all think that we know everybody in a town like Hastings, there are people that are in town that aren't permanently here, may not have identification with them or the nature of the injuries may preclude a judgment that that's the party that was involved," said Hastings Fire Chief Kent Gilbert.
Why was it so hard to trace down the victim's identity?
"The form of identification a person has is important, whether it looks to be legitimate or not. We deal with the entire spectrum of society so we see people on a variety of circumstances and what may appear to be clear and easy isn't," said Gilbert.
We have heard comments from others that the victim may have been an undocumented worker.
As far as the rest of the story, Rural Metro responded to the accident and was in charge of transporting the victim to the Mary Lanning.
The victim was then flown to a hospital in Lincoln where he later died.
Since the accident took place at work, OSHA takes over the investigation.
So, who's responsible for release the victim's name? Typically, the finger is pointed at the county attorney.
But since Arcos died while receiving medical care that's not the case.
"If a person is taken to a medical facility and being treated and under the care of a physician while they're treating them and they pass away, it would be the physician caring for them at the medical facility would do the death certificate," said Story.
We reported earlier this week this plant is being fined almost $200,000 for safety violations that resulted in the death of Arcos.
Nebraska Prime is not talking and neither is OSHA.
We will continue to follow this story and give you updates.
KHASTV on Facebook
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The United States Senate has approved the America Invents Act, a major overhaul to patent law that switches to a "first to file" rule for granting patents, creates two new processes for challenging already-granted patents, and gives the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) power to set patent fees. Because the House of Representatives passed the bill with identical language earlier this year, the legislation will now go directly to President Obama for his signature. He is expected to sign it, and may tout it during tonight's prime-time address on the economy.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) hailed the legislation as the most significant overhaul of the patent system in decades. But Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) blasted the bill. "This is not a patent reform bill. This is a big corporation patent giveaway that tramples on the right of small inventors," she said.
Before approving the bill, the Senate voted down several amendments that would have required sending the bill back to the House for another vote in that chamber. Two amendments came close to passing. One concerned language that retroactively changes a key filing deadline. Critics have dubbed this provision, which is backed by a pharmaceutical company that lost a key patent due to a paperwork mistake, the "Dog Ate My Homework Act." An amendment from Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) to strip out the language failed by a vote of 47-51.
A second amendment, offered by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), would have given the USPTO control over all fees it collects, rather than requiring those fees to be appropriated by Congress. It failed by a vote of 48-50. Other amendments failed by wider margins.
The Senate approved the final bill by a 89-9 margin.
Congress has been wrestling with patent reform legislation since 2005. When we last took an in-depth look at the issue in 2008, we concluded that the legislation then under consideration was not the kind of serious patent reform the nation needs. This year's legislation is weaker still.
For example, the 2008 Patent Reform Act would have reduced the profitability of litigation by reforming how damages for infringement are calculated. These provisions did not make it into the legislation that is now on its way to the Oval Office. Also out are limitations on forum shopping, the practice by which plaintiffs sue in obscure, patent-friendly jurisdictions such as the Eastern District of Texas. No wonder the experts we talked to in last month's Ask Ars story didn't think America Invents would do much good.
What is in the bill? The only significant reform to survive the Congressional meat-grinder is the creation of a "post-grant review" process. That provision creates a new avenue to challenge bad patents by presenting evidence of invalidity to the Patent Office.
Another widely discussed change is the switch from a "first to invent" rule for issuing patents to a "first to file" rule. As the name suggests, this new system would grant a patent to the first person to file an application with the patent office, even if someone else had previously invented the same technology (an original inventor can challenge a grant if he can show that the applicant got the idea from him).
Supporters of this change argue that it will streamline the patent application process and harmonize US patent law with the rest of the world. It's popular with large companies because they can afford to hire full-time patent attorneys to help them file patent applications quickly.
The legislation also overhauls the collection of fees, bringing the USPTO closer to self-sufficiency. Under the current system, both fee levels and the USPTO's budget are set directly by Congress. If the USPTO takes in more in fees than it spends, the difference is used to fund other government programs.
The America Invents Act gives the USPTO the authority to set its own fees. USPTO spending is still controlled by Congressional appropriations, but the fees the USPTO collects are saved in a separate account until Congress appropriates them for use by the USPTO. This will likely allow the hiring of more patent examiners to tackle the huge backlog of patent applications.
Will this change improve the patent system? It's hard to say. On the one hand, a better-funded USPTO may be able to give patent applications greater scrutiny. On the other hand, tying the USPTO's budget to fee revenues gives it an incentive to be more lenient in granting patents, since that may lead to more applications and a larger budget in the future.
Two other provisions limit the reach of recently legalized business method patents. One section creates a special new process for invalidating patents related to a "a financial product or service." That provision comes courtesy of Wall Street and is widely believed to target DataTreasury, a patent troll whose broad patents on check-clearing software has made it a thorn in the side of the banking industry for the last decade.
The other provision precludes software and business method patents from covering tax strategies, though it's careful to stipulate that "nothing in this section shall be construed to imply that other business methods are patentable."
The hypocrisy of these provisions is obvious. There's a growing consensus that the courts' de facto legalization of software and business method patents during the 1990s has done more harm than good. But rather than pursuing broad reforms that would benefit everyone, powerful interest groups have focused on carving out narrow exceptions for themselves while leaving the underlying law unchanged.
In short, the long-running battle over patent reform legislation has ended in a standstill. The only winners are the large companies—which supported the switch to "first to file" and other procedural changes—and the patent office itself, which will enjoy a larger budget and greater autonomy. The rest of us lost, because almost all the serious reform ideas wound up on the cutting room floor.
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The world's favourite baby signing classes from baby sign language experts TinyTalk
Why do YOU love Baby Signing? Click here to vote!
Welcome to TinyTalk, the biggest and the best baby signing classes organisation in the UK and Ireland. As well as being incredibly fun, our baby signing classes use official 'British Sign Language' (unlike many other providers) and are taught by fully-trained signing teachers.
TinyTalk has been going from strength to strength since our baby signing classes began in 2002 - and this year has been amazing! We're now a team of just under 150 teachers, all experienced and passionate about baby sign language - and keen to pass on our top tips to you and your family.
The benefits of signing with your baby are numerous.
Here are just a few:
Knowing what your baby is thinking about, how they are feeling or what they are wanting
Giving your baby a means to express themselves (through baby signing) months (if not a full year) ahead of words being spoken
'Tuning in' to your baby, giving them your time and attention
Allowing your baby to feel very happy, knowing that you've understood them!
Minimising tantrums that come from not understanding each other
Introducing language to your baby (via baby signing), which then gives them the confidence to speak
Giving them a great foundation in speech and language in the pre-school years - so that they start school fully prepared and not playing 'catch up'
Just a couple of examples of how baby sign language helps - from my own 2 children:
When Harry was 7 months old and I was late with his milk one morning, he gave a cry from his room and then made the 'milk' baby sign very clearly to me!
When Lucy was a bit older, at 10 months, she got very excited one day when we were shopping. A flock of birds had flown down, around her pushchair. Lucy was so excited that she made the baby sign for 'bird' all around her, whilst also saying 'b!' 'b!' 'b!'
On both occasions the children baby signed something that was important to them. They were delighted to be able to express themselves. I was equally delighted to have a 'window' to their minds - not just guessing but really knowing what they were thinking about.
We now deliver over 500 baby signing classes a week, teaching baby signs to over 5,000 families. Visit our testimonials page to read lots of lovely stories from happy TinyTalk families, all benefiting from teaching their babies to express themselves, long before they can speak.
And, if you can't make a baby signing class, you can still learn baby sign language at home, using our award-winning baby signing DVD, CDs and Signing Pack! All are available through our shop.
We also offer very comprehensive Baby Signing Training Programmes. These are for nurseries, childminders, health professionals and full-time working parents who maybe aren't able to make the classes.
Our TinyTalk Baby Signing Classes have been such a success that we've just launched TinyTalk Toddlers Classes!
Offering the same top-quality language teaching as the Baby Signing Classes, through themes such as 'meal times' or 'bedtime', we continue to have fun with well-known action songs, sharing great story books, playing with puppets, props and percussion instruments. As the children are older though, and generally standing, the classes are more physical, with greater interaction, parachute fun and lots of language games. Again, through both speech and signs, we give your toddler the encouragement to communicate, whether through signs or speech. (One child recently said 'banana' for the first time at a TinyTalk Toddlers Class!)
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NYC subway replacing station maps with touch screen kiosks
March 21, 2013
If you've ever taken the New York City subway, you know what a mess it can be for an inexperienced rider. Transferring to the right line can be confusing, there's always at least one track closed for maintenance, and the maps at the station aren't much help if you don't know where you are to begin with. Luckily, the MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) plans to replace all station maps and announcements with interactive HD displays that will provide simple directions and real-time service alerts.
The new "On The Go!" touch screens will display all sorts of useful information for commuters, including train arrival countdowns, outage notices, neighborhood maps, and special alerts if needed. When not in use, the kiosks will also act as digital billboards to generate ad revenue.
The one feature that's certain to be used by most riders though is the interactive subway map. Travelers will be able to simply select their destination and the screen will bring up step-by-step instructions with a visual display of what path they need to take. It will even factor in current service outages and give an estimated travel time along with the number of stops before they reach their destination.
To create the kiosks, MTA partnered with Control Group, a local design firm that recently won the Community Impact Award in the NYC Reinvent Payphones competition. The information available will be handled by a content management system designed in-house by Control Group and synchronized through a vast network. Most importantly though, the whole system will be built on a flexible platform that will allow third-party developers to create their own apps, so the software can be easily customized or updated when needed.
Though the touch screen displays would certainly be an improvement, it does raise the question of how to prevent them from being tagged with graffiti or damaged, even with MTA maintaining them. No word on exactly when the new touch screens will be installed, but MTA plans to implement up to 90 of them throughout some of NYC's most popular stations, bringing the service to over 4 million people each day.
Source: Control Group
Just enter your friends and your email address into the form below
For multiple addresses, separate each with a comma
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Have a PB4L (Personal Business for Life)?
(Originally appeared in the Ottawa Business Journal, Oct. 2009)
For the last few years, I have become increasingly certain that people in the 21st Century may need what I can only call a Personal Business. There are so many changes going on in the local, national and global economy and so many things can and do go wrong, that it might not be a bad idea after all to have a fallback position.
Maybe we should each have one micro business that we hang onto for life; that never gets shared with anyone, where we take no partners and never pledge it to a Bank for a loan and, thus, have something that is uniquely ours that we can fall back on in troubled times. As my late father, Professor O. J. Firestone would have said: “You need an iron reserve.”
A PB4L does not include things like the guy who tells you: “I can show you how to make a million dollars! Just send me ONE dollar, and I will tell you how.” And, of course, the answer is: “Get a million fools to each send you a dollar to tell them how to…”
They have to be real businesses. One way to find inspiration I think would be to go get a copy (from your library) of the Encyclopedia Britannica and look for ideas from the 1930s. Say, for example, making high end paper for socialites and demanding persons who want acid-free paper to preserve their writings. Who knows what you might find there.
Let me share with you an example. A few years ago, Ryan North, a former student of mine and an IT professional, started Qwantz.com in the learn-by-doing part of Entrepreneurialist Culture, one of the courses I teach. Qwantz.com is an online dinosaur comic strip.
The only problem Ryan had was that he couldn’t draw. Like most entrepreneurs, he turned a weakness into a strength. His comic strip has six panels with three dino characters—all images are taken from free, publicly available clip art. The key is that the panels and characters NEVER change. They are the same, day-to-day.
What changes is the dialogue between the characters—T-Rex is a large, stumbling, know-nothing and chauvinistic loud mouth. The other two characters are: Dromiceiomimis (the tan coloured dino in the middle panel) and Utahraptor (the orange one), the latter two are loving, warm, smart and wise. From this somewhat inauspicious start, Ryan has become an internationally known writer who creates and self-publishes the only daily comic strip with images that never move or change. It is the subtlety of the dialogue that creates interest and a strangely compelling read that becomes more interesting the more you read it.
It doesn’t hurt that Ryan is brilliant and quirky. Here is T-Rex’s take on entrepreneurship:
Ryan’s daily routine is to get up and answer his fan mail for about an hour. Mixed in are requests for merchandise. That is one of Ryan’s revenue streams. He sells a ton of t-shirts and, wisely, he handles the money while outsourcing fulfillment.
After an hour or so, he turns his mind to the comic of the day. By noon, he’s done and ready for the rest of his day. He travels widely, does appearances at comic conventions where he signs copies of his books (such as Your Whole Family is Made of Meat) and had time to fool around developing an advertising engine (Project Wonderful) that was profitable within ten days of its launch. He makes a ton of money and has a wonderful life.
Ryan in a Tree
Ryan started Qwantz.com with less than $100. His marketing budget was around $20. He bought the domain name poo.ca and put up cardboard cutouts of T-Rex around the University with this domain name on it and nothing else. Students started checking out the mysterious site and got hooked on his comic.
(If you type in poo.ca it still resolves to the Qwantz.com URL. The comic has been continually published since Feb 1, 2003. Revenue streams include: merchandise, appearance fees, book sales, Project Wonderful ads.)
Now a PB4L is not just a fallback position. It can be a contributor to pulling people out of poverty in LDCs around the world. It was not government Five Year Plans that brought India and China out of poverty—it was the unleashing of the entrepreneur class in those countries that did it.
Professor Bruce M. Firestone, Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa; Executive Director, Exploriem.org; Founder, Ottawa Senators; Real Estate Broker and Mortgage Broker Email: firstname.lastname@example.org Blog: http://www.eqjournalblog.com/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/ProfBruce
Postscript: If you would like to read more about the concept of PB4L, you can download a Word Doc on the subject from our server at: http://dramatispersonae.org/PB4LPersonalBusinessForLifeCEEDSpeechOct2009.doc. It is available as a Word Doc so you can quote from the article or use it in a responsible fashion as required. The only thing we would ask is that you quote the source.
Postscript 2: subsequent to writing this I added another example (http://www.eqjournalblog.com/?p=2012) to the PB4L folklore. I repeat it here as well:
I collect stories about Personal Businesses for Life (PB4L) for this blog and also for my students because they can learn a great deal from people who have already bootstrapped an enterprise, made it successful and kept ownership of it—away from Banks, VCs, Angel investors, angry creditors, partners, ex-spouses, what have you.
I have told my students that a good source of ideas for PB4Ls might be to visit their local Libraries and look at old copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica. I would recommend pre-World War II and even pre-World War I vintage encyclopedias—what they are looking for are ‘ancient’ crafts that they can reuse and recycle.
Former snowboarder, Aaron Draplin, created a $1 million per annum business based on an old recipe—authentically crafted, offset printed sets of Field Notes.
Field Notes Nostalgia
I am an inveterate note taker and the nostalgic look and feel of their website and product really appeal to me. See: http://fieldnotesbrand.com/. Their tagline, taken from one of their ancestors, is too precious for words: “I am not writing it down to remember it later, I’m writing it down to remember it now.”
There is a lot of truth in this—I don’t care what anyone says, there is something quite different between writing something down using pen and paper versus recording it on your tablet, say. Many authors over the years have told me that they produce a completely different style of writing if they eschew a computer (or for that matter a typewriter) and write a novel by hand. No one does that anymore and it shows.
When we designed the Palladium (now called Scotiabank Place), you NEVER saw the architects of record (Gino Rossetti and his son, Matt) without their Field Notes and Sketch Pads. I asked Matt why, with all the CAD software he has access to, he still used his sketch pad. He told me: “Here’s why: I can create much more complex, much more graceful architecture, much faster, with my sketch pad than with a computer. It is much too confining.”
I still haven’t found any better way to control a business, even large businesses, than through the daily making of lists of things to do. I insist that people around me do that. Folks I know who use their smartphones or PCs to control their calendars and to-do lists are much less accurate and productive, I am sure of it.
This is not to say that I don’t love the tools we have available to us today. I am on record as saying: “I’m like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz: I have half a brain. My computer is the other half.” So this post is not an argument against technology, just its misuse.
To survive today, you need to be innovative as well as productive and I think Field Notes or just a simple pad of paper can still help you with all of that.
Now Draplin and his partner, designer Jim Coudal, sell these 3” x 5” books for $9.95 in sets of three. They have developed numerous sales channels including their website, attendance at agricultural fairs and 250 retailers who have to apply to be accepted into their network. This reverse snobbery works for them—these retailers have to prove that they buy-in to their philosophy which includes: authenticity, “Made in the USA”, use of local materials, a heightened sense of the importance and central mission of design and fashion, transparency, and nostalgia for community values of days gone by. Their clients go out of their way to suggest to them which retailers might qualify…
They bootstrapped the firm—no VC money. Their marketing is based on video documentaries they produced for an online community that focuses on the Founders’ experiences with the development of Field Notes as well as those of their suppliers, retailers and customers—they understand that they work within a business ecosystem that nourishes them and that they, in turn, embrace by involving them in the whole, evolving story of Field Notes. Customers can post examples of how they use Field Notes and learn from each other’s experiences with the notebooks.
Now let me tell you a story about Jeff Cavanagh from Thomas Cavanagh Construction.
A few years ago, I asked him: “Hey, Jeff, do you have a Blackberry?”
“No, Bruce, I got me a Strawberry instead.”
“What’s a Strawberry? I haven’t heard of a smart phone called the ‘Strawberry’.”
“Well, it’s this here little black, pocket-sized notebook of mine where I write down all the things I gotta do with this little pencil.”
“But don’t you miss not having email, your calendar and a bunch of apps on your cell phone?”
“Nope. Look at it this way. Let’s you and me suppose that Sir Alexander Graham Bell had invented email instead of the telephone, that his patent in 1876 was for email not voice communications. OKAY?”
“Let’s further assume that voice did not become possible until Tim Berners-Lee invented the Web in 1991. So we reverse the order of invention, OK?”
“Then imagine the conversation you and I might be having today. It might go something like this: ‘Did you see this new fangled thing that just came out—it’s called a tell-a-phone. You can get someone on the other end and you can actually hear what they are saying. You can pick up nuances in their voices, you can laugh together, you can plan together, you can negotiate and you can do it all in real time. It’s almost as good as being there.
‘No more waiting, sometimes days, for someone to answer your email. No more misunderstanding stuff just because you were trying to be funny or sarcastic and it fell flat in yer email.
‘Or suppose you need something done urgently, you can actually get some action by impressing upon someone the importance of what you are saying by raising or lowering your voice—people are good at picking up tonality on the tell-a-phone…’”
There is a lot of wisdom in this. The best way to do things might just be a bit old fashioned—like having F2F meetings, like writing things down, like making phone calls. Clearly, Draplin and Coudal have found something special that people want and, by combining it with modern marketing and distribution, they have created lasting value for themselves and their families.
It will be hard to knock off Field Notes, not because you can’t create a nice looking notebook too but because you can’t (easily) recreate their dedicated community of suppliers, retailers, customers who have also become friends/fans and followers and who have together formed a bond around the themes that the Founders have woven together into a compelling story.
Postscript: More recently, I have come to realize that another potential source for PB4Ls might be public companies (or, for that matter, any established enterprise) that are discarding under performing assets. A friend of mine (I’ll call him Tony) picked up a 180,000 sq. ft. building in Kanata, ON from a Boston-based firm that was retrenching. It came with six acres of vacant land.
Tony turned the building into a mini-office and mini-storage place and started generating cash within months. The vacant land alone is worth more than the price he got the mini-portfolio for.
The whole deal was accretive to Tony because: a) he got the firm that was essentially dumping these assets to give him a Seller Take Back mortgage for basically the whole of the purchase price and b) they left behind so much office furniture and equipment that he was able to sell it for more than his down payment. Tony has turned this opportunity into a PB4L.
There is another opportunity that I am aware of (as of Dec. 2010): Bombardier is basically dumping part of its real estate portfolio in Milford ON (near Kingston). There is a 160,000 sq. ft. building there that they used to use for (train) engine maintenance and it has a vast hall with 38 foot ceilings. I visited it in October. All it needs is someone with a soupçon of creativity to convert it into a PB4L.
Bombardier is selling it for around $15 per sq ft. It would cost at least $120 per sq. ft. to build today and, in fact, you might pay more in annual rent in a place like Ottawa than you can buy it for. Plus, who knows? Maybe Bombardier would take back some financing on it just to get it off its books.
The practical uses for it? Maybe storage (because of its high ceilings, you can stack a lot of stuff there.) Maybe a film studio. Maybe a recycling centre. Who know? Just add an entrepreneur and stir…
Another possible source for PB4Ls could be people who are about to retire or would like to retire. A good source of opportunities would be to get in touch with folks like Sunbelt Business Brokers. These guys get a ton of action; they pre-qualify firms before they go up for sale. My friend Greg Kells at SBB always seems to have his finger on a huge number of businesses for sale in just about any sector you can think of.
Sources: Financial Post, December 6, 2010 story by Deborah L. Cohen: “Social media gives old medium new life”.
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Jeffrey M. Lacker
Risk Management Association
Thank you very much, BJ. It's a pleasure to be with you again to discuss the economic outlook.1 I'll begin this morning by discussing current conditions, and then go on to discuss the outlook for the coming year. Before we begin though, let me note that the usual disclaimer applies — the views I express are my own and are not necessarily shared by any of my colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee.
Clearly, the severity of the housing market downturn, along with the attendant financial market fallout, has been the dominant macro-economic development of the past year. After a 10-year expansion, residential investment peaked in late 2005. Since then, construction and sales have fallen fairly sharply, first in large metropolitan areas that had seen the strongest booms, and then spreading this year to other markets where housing price increases were less pronounced. Despite the falloff in construction, inventories of unsold homes rose sharply. While inventory levels have actually retreated somewhat in recent months, they have not come down as rapidly as has the pace of sales, and they are currently depressing home prices and new construction.
Home prices increased significantly during the long boom, particularly in local markets with restricted supply. Existing home prices increased about 90 percent between 1995 and 2005 for the nation as a whole. In the Washington, D.C., market, prices increased 148 percent from 1995 to 2005 and rose another 11 percent in 2006. Here in Richmond, prices climbed by 85 percent over the same 10-year period and increased by another 12 percent in 2006. Of course, rapid increases in real quality-adjusted prices are not indefinitely sustainable for any asset, and in the case of housing, potential buyers eventually get priced out of the market. In many markets, prices changed course quickly, but in others, prices have continued to increase. Average prices for the nation as a whole fell in the third quarter of 2007 by 0.4 percent, which is the first national price decline since 1994. And in formerly hot markets, the declines have been larger, with prices falling over 5 percent in San Diego, for example. Prices also have fallen significantly in areas with weak regional economies, like Michigan and northern Ohio. Richmond has avoided an outright decline in prices, although appreciation has slowed significantly, with third-quarter growth of just less than 1 percent.
Developments in housing finance arguably have played a substantial role in the evolving conditions in housing markets. Here the long-term story is the technology-driven wave of innovation in retail credit delivery that dramatically expanded access to mortgage credit over the last decade, just as it expanded access to unsecured consumer credit earlier on. Technology also has contributed to innovation in securitization and other forms of intermediation of credit flows, which also helped lower borrowing costs. As with any new product or service innovation, however, some experimentation and risk was involved, and in this case some of those risks were realized.
Future research may quantify the extent to which credit market innovations contributed to a boom in housing market activity by expanding the pool of potential homeowners. In any event, when the growth in housing demand came to an end, home prices peaked and began falling in many markets. In hindsight, it seems clear that the success of new methods of lending to riskier borrowers was to some extent dependent on sustained home price appreciation, which provided strained borrowers with the ability to refinance, thus masking the effects of more inclusive underwriting. It takes some time, however, for the likely ultimate loss experience of a mortgage portfolio to become evident. While observers were raising concerns early on — the late Federal Reserve Governor Ned Gramlich, for example 2 — it wasn't until last year, after home prices had peaked in some major markets, that more quantitative evidence began to emerge regarding the substantial extent to which mortgage loans made in 2006 would underperform previous vintages. The ensuing adjustment in underwriting standards further contributed to the decline in housing activity.
The story behind last year's unfolding drama in credit markets was the continuing re-assessment of the fundamental value of nonprime mortgages in light of incoming data implying significantly higher ultimate losses on recent vintages of subprime mortgages. Securitization was an important part of the expansion of credit in recent years, and securities backed by pools of sub-prime or other nontraditional mortgages served as the backing for other obligations, usually issued off the balance sheets of the sponsoring institutions. As housing slowed over the summer, it became clear that some mortgage-related securities previously judged as relatively safe would suffer substantial losses. Many of these securities were the liabilities of entities with explicit or implicit bank lending guarantees. Many banks that provided such guarantees have had to either meet large funding demands or bring the impaired assets onto their balance sheets. Uncertainty about the scale of such adjustments has at times meant higher funding and capital costs, although risk premia increased far more for some institutions than for others. Since then, such institutions have taken large write-offs, and many have replenished their capital. Many affected banks have dramatically increased their advances from the Federal Home Loan Banks, where lending increased by 29 percent or about $180 billion in the third quarter.
Credit markets were hit particularly hard in August, as many participants found it difficult to refinance the asset-backed commercial paper they had issued. Banks began holding larger precautionary reserve balances then, putting upward pressure on interbank lending rates. The New York Fed injected significantly more reserves than usual via open market operations in order to relieve the pressure and keep the funds rate near the target. In addition, the Board of Governors accepted Reserve Bank requests to lower the discount rate by a half a percentage point, reducing the spread above the federal funds rate from the traditional 100 basis points down to 50 basis points. With concern mounting that housing investment was declining more rapidly than had been expected and that the growth outlook was deteriorating as a consequence, the FOMC reduced the federal funds target rate in September and October, bringing the rate down 75 basis points to 4.5 percent. Financial market conditions showed some improvement in September and October, but turned problematic again in November, a month that also saw a further deterioration in the real outlook, as measures of housing market activity continued to come in below expectations.
In December, wholesale funding markets increasingly showed the effects of heightened uncertainty surrounding financial institutions' adjustment requirements. Term funding spreads relative to expected overnight rates became quite elevated for some banks, differentiation in rates across institutions became more pronounced, and the volume of term funding contracted. Increases in interbank interest rates associated with year-end, balance-sheet considerations have occurred in the past, but market participants appeared to expect low overnight rates over the year-end this time. Rates at the Federal Home Loan Banks are closer to the expected overnight funds rate than to term LIBOR, which may explain the relatively small amount of discount window borrowing even since the August reduction in the discount rate spread over the target. All this suggests that term funding premia reflected assessments of counterparty risk rather than expectations that the funds rate would spike at year end.
Against this back-drop, the Federal Reserve introduced a new mechanism for providing term funding to financial institutions. The Term Auction Facility, or TAF, makes 28-day loans of a predetermined total amount at a rate set by auction. These loans are otherwise similar to discount window loans made by a bank's regional Reserve Bank against collateral posted with that Reserve Bank. Since these auctions began, near the end of December, spreads on interbank term loans have fallen significantly, although they still remain elevated by historical standards. It will be difficult to determine the extent to which the TAF contributed to this easing of rates in the term funding market, since the counterfactual will never be observed. An earlier instance of elevation in term spreads, peaking in early September, abated without such action by the Fed.
As one would expect, revised assessments of mortgage lending risk have resulted in a tightening of credit standards. Many lenders are requiring larger down payments, and mortgage rate spreads have increased significantly for riskier borrowers and riskier products. Mortgage rates have come down since December the rate on conventional 30-year fixed-rate mortgages has fallen about 50 basis points. And even though the spread between jumbo and conforming mortgages has widened a bit, jumbo rates have also eased in recent weeks, coming down about 30 basis points. Spreads on investment-grade corporate bonds have widened over the last month, but still, the level of yields on such debt has fallen. On the other hand, interest rates on high-yield debt and commercial mortgage-backed securities moved up in the last half of 2007, and have increased further since the beginning of the year. The strong differentiation in the response of lending spreads across borrower classes suggests that increasing spreads have been driven mainly by changing risk assessments rather than bank funding pressures. Higher risk spreads and generally tighter lending terms will tend to restrict spending in the near term. But the fall in short- and long-term Treasury rates over the last few months has offset the upward movement in higher spreads for a wide range of borrowers. The net effect has been lower rates for all but the highest risk borrowers.
The economic outlook for 2008 has worsened in response to the developments of the last six months, and the recent flow of data has heightened the downside risks. The housing sector has been and will continue to be affected by the tightening we've seen in lending standards. Home construction is unlikely to bottom out this year, and I expect housing investment to continue to be a drag on growth through at least year-end. Business investment has contributed positively to growth over the last year, but I expect it to grow less robustly than in 2007, since some firms may see a higher cost of capital and some firms may face a decline in the demand for their products. Exports are likely to remain a source of strength next year, however, as a weaker dollar and relatively healthy economies overseas support demand for U.S. goods and services. Accordingly, I expect the trade deficit to continue to narrow, providing modest support to real GDP growth.
The main story in the forecast, though, remains household spending, which accounts for 70 percent of GDP. Consumer spending held up quite well up until the end of last year, having grown at over 3 percent in real terms during the three months ending in November. Higher energy prices and falling home prices are cited often as factors that could dampen consumer spending, and these are legitimate concerns. In addition, we could see more moderate growth in household income in the year ahead. Job growth slowed somewhat over the course of 2007, and in December employment was reported to have expanded by a meager 18,000 jobs, with the unemployment rate rising by three-tenths of a percentage point to 5 percent. Payroll employment is a fairly choppy series from month to month, however, and over the last three months payrolls grew by 97,000 jobs per month, on average. So while employment has certainly decelerated over the last 12 months, I continue to expect moderate job growth in 2008. With wage gains outpacing inflation now, and thus real incomes continuing to expand, I believe the most likely scenario is for reasonably solid income growth next year that will support some gains in consumer spending.
Putting it all together, I expect growth to be very weak for several more months, but to improve toward the end of this year. Clearly, the most cogent risks to the growth outlook are on the downside. With the strains in housing persisting, a substantial slowdown in business spending could raise the odds of a recession. This risk would be heightened if December's job market weakness proved persistent, pulling down prospects for personal income and household spending. Nevertheless, I believe the most likely outcome is for growth to continue and to improve. I should note that my baseline outlook does not depend on an overly sanguine view of financial market conditions, which are, after all, a significant source of uncertainty right now. Much remains to be learned about the magnitude of ultimate losses in various mortgage market segments and on various related securities. Episodes of turmoil could recur in response to new information. But I believe that financial market participants will find ways to work through problems as the year progresses. Financial intermediaries will re-adjust balance sheets and continue to replenish capital as needed, and investors' desire for transparency will help shape the next generation of financial innovations.
Risks are not limited to the outlook for real economic growth. Inflation has stepped up recently. As measured by the 12-month change in the PCE price index, inflation was 3.5 percent ending in June 2006. That measure of inflation fell to 1.8 percent in August 2007. Similarly, core inflation, which omits volatile food and energy prices, was 2.5 percent in August 2006, and then declined to 1.8 percent in August 2007. Those declines were heartening, and when the financial market turmoil intensified in August the improving inflation picture allowed even an inflation hawk to endorse an easier monetary policy stance. Since then, however, the inflation picture has deteriorated. From August through November, the overall PCE price index rose at a 4.8 percent annual rate, and the core index rose at a 2.9 percent rate. Judging by the closely related consumer price index, the numbers for December will not be any better. Now these numbers do display transitory swings, so I wouldn't extrapolate them forward indefinitely. Still, I have to say that I am uncomfortable with the inflation picture, and disappointed that the improvement we saw earlier this year was not more lasting.
I am also troubled by the lengthy divergence we've seen between overall and core inflation. Some of you may recall that core inflation was devised in the 1970s to filter out some of the more volatile consumer prices to get a better read on inflation trends. For several decades, core inflation seemed to work well due to the fact that food and energy prices had no clear trend relative to the overall price level. In the last few years, though, overall inflation has been persistently above core inflation, and few observers expect oil prices to go back below $20 per barrel. Because the job of a central banker is to protect the purchasing power of currency, it is overall inflation that we need to keep down, not just core inflation. Going forward, markets expect oil prices to back off slightly from their current level, and I hope they are right this time.
The Fed has responded to the slowing economy with a cumulative reduction in the federal funds rate of 100 basis points. A slowing economy requires a lower real interest rate because it means softer relative demand for resources now compared to the future. And the current downside risks mean that further slowing, and thus further easing, is quite possible. But inflation also presents risks. Throughout the period since 2005, when inflation rose, eased off, then rose again, longer-term inflation expectations have remained fairly stable. If energy and food prices continue to push overall inflation above core inflation, then this higher overall trend could work its way into expectations, further complicating monetary policy in 2008.
This is a revised and expanded version of a speech I gave to the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce on December 19, 2007. I am grateful to Roy Webb for help in preparing this speech.
Edward M. Gramlich, "Subprime Mortgages: America’s Latest Boom and Bust" (Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press, 2007).
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In response to my last bit of snark, Professor F. has referred me to Acerone's most recent posting. These interesting street photos (reminiscent of the street photos of Garry Winograd that Unreal Nature takes such delight in), are all taken on basically the same slant except one of a young lady. But she has a coat belt hanging at the same slant as does a building roofline in the background, so the theme is persistent. Here is another of those slanted photos (presented for the purpose of commentary, I hope Acerone does not mind):
Matisse's studio window. Acerone's photographs are done with intent, and they certainly achieve a sense of unsettledness with me (but I am unsure if this his his/her attention.)
The inner ear is a fascinating organ. It is almost as complicated as the eye. The hair cells (in both the cochlea and the semicircular canals) are sensitive to movement down to as low as one Angstrom. Bending the "hair" opens channels for, among other things: SODIUM IONS. You see, you can't get away from it.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
In an interesting post over at Unreal Nature, there are comments about paintings which then, as is usual in art and music, at a later date turn out to be 180 degrees out of sync with what comes to be established opinion (I am certain that there are artists where opinions sway back again to ground zero or, perhaps, 42 degrees, anyway.) What struck me was the comment "lopsided". This referred to Matisse's rather avant garde painting of Notre Dame, but I was struck by its applicability to the photo out of Matisse's studio window, the scenario for the paintings. It drives me wild when people print photos crooked. (I know, I know, I am a Neanderthal). In any case, I took the liberty of photoshopping that particular photo simply by righting it (2) and cropping it (3). To my eye it is much more pleasing and doesn't make me think that I am going to topple off the edge of the planet, thankfully not into the Seine.
Posted by Dr. C at 10:36 PM
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King James Bible
The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD, after that Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard had let him go15 from Ramah, when he had taken2 him being bound7 in chains among all that were carried away captive of Jerusalem and Judah, which were carried away captive94 unto Babylon.
And now, behold, I loose14 thee this day from the chains which [were] upon thine hand. If it seem good 5869 unto thee to come2 with me into Babylon, come;3 and I will look well4 5869 unto thee: but if it seem ill1 5869 unto thee to come2 with me into Babylon, forbear:3 behold,3 all the land [is] before thee: whither it seemeth good and convenient 5869 for thee to go,2 thither go.3
Now while he was not yet gone back,4 [he said], Go back3 also to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan, whom the king of Babylon hath made governor52 over the cities of Judah, and dwell3 with him among the people: or go3 wheresoever it seemeth convenient 5869 unto thee to go.2 So the captain of the guard gave4 him victuals and a reward, and let him go.17
Now when all the captains of the forces which [were] in the fields, [even] they and their men, heard4 that the king of Babylon had made Gedaliah the son of Ahikam governor52 in the land, and had committed52 unto him men, and women, and children, and of the poor of the land, of them that were not carried away captive90 to Babylon;
Then they came4 to Gedaliah to Mizpah, even Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, and Johanan and Jonathan the sons of Kareah, and Seraiah the son of Tanhumeth, and the sons of Ephai the Netophathite, and Jezaniah the son of a Maachathite, they and their men.
And Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan sware11 unto them and to their men, saying,2 Fear4 not to serve2 the Chaldeans: dwell3 in the land, and serve3 the king of Babylon, and it shall be well4 with you.
As for me, behold, I will dwell6 at Mizpah to serve2 6440 the Chaldeans, which will come4 unto us: but ye, gather3 ye wine, and summer fruits, and oil, and put3 [them] in your vessels, and dwell3 in your cities that ye have taken.1
Likewise when all the Jews that [were] in Moab, and among the Ammonites, 5983 and in Edom, and that [were] in all the countries, heard1 that the king of Babylon had left1 a remnant of Judah, and that he had set52 over them Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan;
Then Johanan the son of Kareah spake1 to Gedaliah in Mizpah secretly, saying,2 Let me go,4 I pray thee, and I will slay55 Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, and no man shall know4 [it]: wherefore should he slay55 thee, that all the Jews which are gathered12 unto thee should be scattered,8 and the remnant in Judah perish?1
SpeedBible Software © 2001-2002 by johnhurt.com
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The Purpose and Philosophy of Athletics at OCS
The purpose and philosophy is to use athletics and activities as a means to fulfill the OCS Mission. To this end our athletic program will strive to develop the whole person. Competition and cooperation are excellent ways to teach Christian character, for the athletes, supporters, and adults.
Competition provides an arena to react under pressure. The Christian walk is not just about acting, but about how we react to the adversity of life.
The spiritual goal for the athlete is to conduct himself or herself in such a way that his words and actions emulate those of Jesus Christ. All that is done, emotionally, physically, and mentally, is to be done for the glory of God.
The spiritual goal of the parents and fans is to not let any word or action betray the love of Christ. Competition provides an excellent opportunity to demonstrate principles of the Kingdom. First, that God is sovereign and His children trust Him with the circumstances of life. Secondly, that godliness and love for others will embrace the spirit of competitiveness at OCS.
Biblical Guidelines for Sportsmanship
1. Applaud and respect the efforts of the opposing teams. Remember, their parents are here and proud of their kids too.
"...do not merely look out for your own personal interest, but also for the interest of others." Philippians 2:4
2. Be aware of anger and hateful emotions that surface in the "heat of the battle" -- emotions that are selfish and do not honor God.
"But I say, walk by the Spirit and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh." Galatians 6:16
3. Do not insult the officials (you do not have to agree with every call, but you should never lower yourself to degrading remarks).
"Let no unwholesome word proceed out of your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment that it may give grace to those who hear." Eph. 4:29
Win with humility,
lose with grace
4. Seek to demonstrate the reality of Jesus Christ in your life by your positive spirit. Remember, much of what happens tonight won't matter in eternity, much less in one week.
"For you have been bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body." I Corinthians 6:20
5. Let your team know that you support them; win or lose, we stand behind our kids.
"...encourage one another, and build up one another..." I Thess. 5:11
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This week I’m doing something different, I’m creating ‘The Poetry Corner’, for those of you who love to hear poems read aloud by the poets that wrote them.
I’ll never forget the day in July, 2004 when I had the privilege of sitting down with Anthony Hecht and having him read and discuss four of his poems for my then fledgling show.
We were at Rebel’s Rest at the University of the South, sitting in a beautiful dining room, just the two of us and my equipment. As he began reading his poems I realized I was on to something.
I truly believed that day, with the sun casting enough natural light in the room for Mr. Hecht to read his poems, that part of the mission of my website would be to offer listeners the opportunity to hear poets read their work; to take it from the written page and make it come alive. It was a magical day. Mr. Hecht died four months later, and to the best of my knowledge, ours was his last interview.
So “The Poetry Corner’ is born here on my website and will be dedicated to the memory of Anthony Hecht and Donald Justice, another friend of mine who died before I had the opportunity to interview him.
The first guest in ‘The Poetry Corner’ is David Mason. We discuss LUDLOW, a verse-novel published by Red Hen Press. There is a fine review of the book in the April 29 th edition of The Washington Post written by Ron Charles.
In the review Charles writes, “The publicity director at a major New York publisher once told me that there probably aren’t more than 80,000 regular readers of literary fiction in America.
A well-received book of poetry might sell 2,000 copies.” I know from the hits I receive on this website that the 80,000 number in not accurate, and therein lies part of the problem. There are more of us out there than they think. The comment on poetry, sadly enough, is true. I believe by offering my audience the opportunity to hear poets read their work aloud that we can help rebuild the love of poetry that once existed in this country.
LUDLOW braids fact and fiction to recreate a tragic event in American labor history. In 1914 a massacre took place at Ludlow, Colorado that involved coal miners and their families.
Mr. Mason tells the story in more than 600 eight-line stanzas. You need not be a fan of poetry to appreciate the method he uses to tell the story. It is creative and during our interview we discuss why he chose this method to tell the story.
Mr. Mason also reads poems form his book ARRIVALS, published by Story Line Press. An added bonus is his reading of two new poems that have not been published yet.
I think you’re going to enjoy this interview. It begins with us discussing the style of LUDLOW, and then Mr. Mason reads an excerpt. After that he reads six poems from ARRIVALS, then the two new poems. Enjoy! And welcome to ‘the poetry corner’.
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Cowboy Health Secret
A tough old cowboy once counseled his grandson that if he wanted to live a long life, the secret was to sprinkle a little gunpowder on his oatmeal every morning.
The grandson did this religiously and he lived to the age of 93.
When he died, he left 14 children, 28 grandchildren, 35 great grandchildren and a fifteen foot hole in the wall of the crematorium.
It was spring in the old west. The cowboys rode the still snow-choked trails looking for cattle that survived the winter. As one cowboy's horse went around the narrow trail, it came upon a rattlesnake warming itself in the spring sunshine. The horse reared and the cowboy drew his six-gun to shoot the snake.
"Hold on there, partner," said the snake, "don't shoot - I'm an enchanted rattlesnake, and if you don't shoot me, I'll give you any three wishes you want."
The cowboy decided to take a chance. He knew he was safely out of the snake's striking range. He said, "OK, first, I'd like to have a face like Clark Gable, then, I'd like a body like Arnold Schwarzenagger, and finally, I'd like sexual equipment like this horse I'm, riding."
The rattlesnake said, "All right, when you get back to the bunk house you'll have all three wishes."
The cowboy turned his horse around and galloped at full speed all the way to the bunk house. He dismounted on the run and went straight inside to the mirror. Staring back at him in the mirror was the face of Clark Gable. He ripped the shirt off his back and revealed bulging, rippling muscles, just like Arnold Schwarzenagger's.
Really excited now, he tore down his jeans, looked at his crotch and shouted, "My God, I forgot I was riding the Mare!".
A Dog Named Sarge
A General retired after 35 years and realized a life-long dream of buying a bird-hunting estate in South Dakota. He invited an old friend to visit for a week of pheasant-shooting. The friend was in awe of the General's new bird dog, ''Sarge''.
The dog could point, flush and retrieve with the very best, and the friend offered to buy the dog at any price. The General declined, saying that Sarge was the very best bird dog he had ever owned and that he wouldn't part with him at any price.
A year later the same friend returned for another week of hunting and was surprised to find the General breaking in a new dog. ''What happened to ole ''Sarge?'' he asked.
''Had to shoot him,'' grumbled the General. ''A friend came to hunt with me and couldn't remember the dog's name. He kept calling him Colonel. After that, all that damn dog would do was sit on his ass and bark.
Boarding the Bus
One day, a large group of people were waiting for the bus at a local Greyhound station. At the front of the line was a very attractive woman dressed in a black business vest, white blouse, leather miniskirt, and high heels.
As the bus pulled up and opened the door, she went to board it, but found that her skirt was too tight for her to raise her leg to the required height. Looking around and thinking quickly, she reaches behind her and unzips the zipper on the back of her skirt a little and then tries again. Again, she finds that she cannot maneuver the step, so once more she reaches behind her and unzips her skirt a little more.
With a smile, she looks at the bus driver and tries to board again. With disappointment, she finds that she still can't step that high and so with exasperation and a sigh she unzips her skirt the rest of the way down. To her amazement, her leg still will not reach the bottom step.
Finally, a very large Texan behind her gently grabs her by the waist, lifts her up, and places her on the bus. The woman turns to the Texan furious and says, "Who do you think you are to touch my body in that way? I don't even know you!"
Nonplused, the Texan looks at her and replies, "Well, ma'am, after you unzipped my fly I thought we were pretty good friends."
While cruising at 40,000 feet, the airplane shuddered and Mr. Benson looked out the window.
"Good lord!" he screamed, "one of the engines just blew up!"
Other passengers left their seats and came running over; suddenly the aircraft was rocked by a second blast as yet another engine exploded on the other side.
The passengers were in a panic now, and even the stewardesses couldn't maintain order. Just then, standing tall and smiling confidently, the pilot strode from the cockpit and assured everyone that there was nothing to worry about. His words and his demeanour seemed made most of the passengers feel better, and they sat down as the pilot calmly walked to the door of the aircraft. There, he grabbed several packages from under the seats and began handing them to the flight attendants.
Each crew member attached the package to their backs.
"Say," spoke up an alert passenger, "aren't those parachutes?"
The pilot said they were.
The passenger went on, "But I thought you said there was nothing to worry about?"
"There isn't," replied the pilot as a third engine exploded. "We're going to get help."
Three Kinds of Bras
A man walked into the ladies department of a Macy's, one of the largest department store chains. He shyly walked up to the woman behind the counter and said. 'I'd like to buy a bra for my wife'
'What type of bra?' asked the clerk.
'Type?' inquires the man 'There is more than one type?'
'Look Around,' said the saleslady, as she showed a sea of bras in every shape, size color and material.
'Actually, even with all of this variety, there are really only three types of bras,' replied the salesclerk.
Confused, the man asked what were the types.
The saleslady replied 'The Catholic type, the, Salvation Army type, and the Baptist type. Which one do you need?'
Still confused the man asked 'What is the difference between them?'
The lady responded 'It is all really quite simple. The Catholic type supports the masses, the Salvation Army type lifts up the fallen, and the and the Baptist type makes mountains out of mole hills.
Searching for a Small Bra
A very flat-chested woman finally decided she needed a bra and set out to the mall in search of one in her size. She entered an upscale department store and approached the saleslady in lingerie, "Do you have a size 28AAAA bra?"
The clerk haughtily replied in the negative, so she left the store and proceeded to another department store where she is rebuffed in much the same manner. After a third try at another department store in the mall, she had become disgusted. Leaving the mall, she drove to K-Mart.
Marching up to the sales clerk, she unbuttoned and threw open her blouse, yelling, "Do you have anything for this?"
The lady looked closely at her and replied, "Have you tried Clearasil?"
Mike and Frank driving on a street, in different directions. Out of some unfortunate mishap, the cars slammed into each other, head-on. The two men were able to get out of their cars without any serious injury, but the cars were totaled.
Before Frank could say anything, Mike said, "Instead of fighting over whose fault it was, why don't we just celebrate that we were able to come out alive?"
Frank said, "Yeah, good idea!"
"I have a bottle of whisky in the trunk, why don't I pull that out?" suggested Mike. He went around, and luckily the bottle was not damaged in the accident. He gave it to Frank and said, "Here, drink some!"
Frank took the bottle and chugged half of it down. Then he wiped his mouth and handed the bottle over to Mike. "Here, you have some!"
Mike passed it back and said, "Nah, I think I'll wait until the police get here."
Take a Pill for Speeding
A truck driver was pulled over by a State Trooper. The patrolman told him to get out of the truck, and noticed that the driver appeared to be putting something in his mouth as he stepped out of the cab. Figuring that the driver was putting away his pep pills, the patrolman asked "Did I just see you swallow something?"
"Yep, that was my birth control pill," said the driver.
"Birth control pill?" asked the patrolman.
"Yep, when I saw your light, I knew I was screwed."
Under the Bridge
A truck driver was driving along on the freeway. A sign comes up that reads "Low bridge ahead." Before he knows it the bridge is right ahead of him and he gets stuck under the bridge. Cars are backed up for miles.
Finally, a police car comes up. The cop gets out of his car and walks around to the truck driver, puts his hands on his hips and says, "Got stuck huh?"
The truck driver says, "No, I was delivering this bridge and ran out of gas."
Three Ladies Getting Old
Three older ladies were discussing the travails of getting older. One said, "Sometimes I catch myself with a jar of mayonnaise in my hand in front of the refrigerator and can't remember whether I need to put it away, or start making a sandwich."
The second lady chimed in, "Yes, some times I find myself on the landing of the stairs and can't remember whether I was on my way up or on my way down."
The third one responded, " Well, I'm glad I don't have that problem; knock on wood," as she rapped her knuckles on the table, then told them "That must be the door, I'll get it!"
The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short). In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c". Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard "c" will be replaced with "k." Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced by "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20 per sent shorter.
In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e"s in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go.
By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by "z" and "W" by "V". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou", and similar changes vud of kors; be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters. After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil b no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru.
Flying the Friendly Skies
A mother and her small son were flying Southwest
Airlines from Kansas City to Chicago.
The son (who had been looking out the window) turned
to his mother and asked "If big dogs have baby dogs
and big cats have baby cats, why don't big planes have
The mother (who couldn't think of an answer), told
her son to ask the stewardess.
So the boy asked the stewardess, "If big dogs have
baby dogs and big cats have baby cats, why don't big
planes have baby planes?"
The stewardess responded, "Did your mother tell you
to ask me that question?"
The boy admitted that this was the
"Well, then, tell your mother that there are no baby
planes at Southwest because Southwest always pulls out
-- now let your mother explain that to you."
A woman had a parrot that she took with her everywhere
> >she went. She would even take the parrot to the club
> >with her when she went dancing and
> >drinking on Saturday nights. Whenever the woman went on
> >to the dance floor, the parrot would yell, "The roof,
> >the roof, the roof is on fire, we don't need no
> >water-let the muthafukkah burn! Burn, muthafukkah,
> >The crowd on the dance floor would always cheer and
> >holler in appreciation
> >when the parrot would yell. This would make the parrot
> >yell even more and of
> >course make the crowd go wild. This would go on all
> >night long, every time the parrot went out with her.
> >One Sunday morning the woman took the parrot to church
> >and into the choir
> >stand with her. When the choir started to sing, the
> >parrot yelled, "The roof,
> >the roof, the roof is on fire, we don't need no
> >water-let the muthafukkah burn! Burn, muthafukkah,
> >She embarrassingly corrected the parrot, "No, you
> >don't say that here!" The
> >parrot looked around and asked, "Why not? These the
> >same muthafukkahs that
> >was at the club last night!!
Heavenly Voice Mail
Most of us have now learned to live with voice mail as a necessary part of our lives. Have you ever wondered what it would be like if God decided to install voice mail? Imagine praying and hearing the following:
Thank you for calling heaven.
For English press 1
For Spanish press 2
For all other languages, press 3
Please select one of the following options:
Press 1 for request
Press 2 for thanksgiving
Press 3 for complaints
Press 4 for all others
I am sorry, all our Angels and Saints are busy helping other sinners right now. However, your prayer is important to us and we will answer it in the order it was received. Please stay on the line.
If you would like to speak to:
God, press 1
Jesus, press 2
Holy spirit, press 3
To find a loved one that has been assigned to heaven press 5, then enter his social security # followed by the pound sign.
(If you receive a negative response, please hang up and dial area code 666)
For reservations to heaven, please enter JOHN followed by the numbers, 3 16.
For answers to nagging questions about dinosaurs, life and other planets, please wait until you arrive in heaven for the specifics.
Our computers show that you have already been prayed for today, please hang up and call again tomorrow.
The office is now closed for the weekend to observe a religious holiday.
If you are calling after hours and need emergency assistance, please contact your local pastor.
Thank you and have a heavenly day.
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The BFD In The VP Debate
October 12, 2012 - 3:52pm ET
Man, that felt good. And it was fun, too. Vice President Joe Biden certainly looked like he was having a good time. In fact, Republicans' biggest complain seems to be that Biden was having too much fun. He laughed too much. That Republicans can't find much to attack in what Biden said during the debate — or much to defend about what Paul Ryan said — speaks volumes about the difference between the two major parties.
That difference was reflected in the two men who represented the parties last night, and how they each came to be there.Joe Biden was chosen to be on the Democratic ticket because of what he knows. Paul Ryan was chosen to be on the Republican ticket because of what he believes. That was the "BFD" of the VP debate. And the "D" is for "difference."
So, why was Joe Biden smiling? Why was Joe Biden laughing? It could be that so much about the debate was laughable.
There was his opponent, for starters. I'm not saying that Paul Ryan should have spent more time on debate prep and less time pumping iron. But clearly something was lacking in his preparation. How is it that Republicans sent Ryan out to debate Biden without giving him a few crucial bits of advice:
- Do not go out there and compare yourself to Jack Kennedy. It never goes well.
- Don't use a tragic car accident as an example, in a debate with an opponent who lost his wife and daughter in a tragic car accident. People will think that either you don't know enough not to mention it, or that you don't care. Neither is good.
- Don't bad mouth the stimulus, if you sent your opponent two letters requesting stimulus dollars for your district. He might remember how that stimulus you called "wasteful" helped save your hometown. Worse, he could be smart enough to bring those letters with him.
- Don't talk about "privatizing" Social Security. We need Florida to win, dammit. We can't even send you down there now.
Maybe Joe Biden was smiling because he already knew what soon dawned on most of the rest of us: he was winning.
The morning-after consensus is that Biden showed up. He did his job, delivering a much needed shot in the arm to both the Democratic ticket and its base. The BFD between this debate and the first presidential debate is that Biden was the "happy warrior", armed with a winning combination of knowledge, message and passion.
In retrospect, what dispirited an awful lot of Democrats about the first presidential debate was that it emblemized the fear that in an intense, high-stakes battle with an ascendant and radicalized conservative movement, progressive elected officials just didn’t have the willingness or ability to make a full and passionate case for their own cause. That was at the heart of criticisms not only of the president’s demeanor, but also of his many missed opportunities to rebut Romney and expose the rickety substructure of the mendacious self-presentation Moderate Mitt was attempting. And this is obviously a complaint that’s been just under the surface of mixed progressive attitudes towards Obama and many other Democratic leaders for years now.
There was none of that with Biden, although he in no way contradicted a single word Obama uttered last week. Josh Marshall probably best summed up the reaction from Democrats:
Biden made the whole Democratic argument — on policy and values and he hit Romney really everywhere Democrats wanted him to. He left nothing unsaid. You can agree with those points or not. But this was exceedingly important for recovering the damage from last week’s debate when many Obama supporters simply felt that Obama wasn’t willing or able or something to make the case Democrats around the country are hyped up to make. Why didn’t you say this? Why’d you let him get away with that?
Biden said it all. And for Democrats around the country that was extremely important….
I suspect Ryan’s equivocations and unwillingness to give details will be the day 2 and weekend stories. But the most critical point in terms of the trajectory of the debate was that Biden left it all on the field.
If you want to know one reason why Joe Biden was smiling, look at the transcript of the debate, look at some of the fact-checking, and you'll see that the facts were mostly in Biden's favor. Meanwhile, all Ryan had to fall back on was the standard Romney campaign tactic: Tell lies like "Medicare and Social Security going broke," and declare them "indisputable facts." (Lying is something of a habit for Ryan, apparently.)
In some ways, it may have been sweet revenge for Biden. After all, less than two months ago, Republicans were calling for Biden to step down as Vice President, advising the president to drop Biden from the ticket and draft Hillary Clinton, lest Biden's so called "gaffes" sink Obama's candidacy.
Part of me suspects that Joe Biden was perfectly happy to let Republicans think of him as a gaffe-prone clown. It's an old, and effective tactic to allow your opponent to think you weak and inept, just long enough for them to get within striking distance. After last night I think that Biden was merely confident that he had all he needed to defeat Paul Ryan Thursday night: conviction, passion, and the facts to back them up.
In 2008, it was obvious that Barack Obama turned to Joe Biden as a running mate because Biden's knowledge and experience balanced out the ticket, and allayed concerns about Obama's lack of "experience." In 2012, it was obvious that Mitt Romney turned to Paul Ryan as a running mate because Paul Ryan's ideological cred helped allay GOP concerns that Romney was insufficiently conservative.
Conservatives rejoiced over the Ryan choice, because they weren't sure what Mitt Romney really believed, and Ryan signalled a committment to a radical right agenda.
Ryan was the perfect pick for the "culture of belief" that dominates the GOP — a culture in which what you believe is far more important that what you know, and knowledge is informed by belief instead of the other way around.
The US is unique compared to the rest of Western world, which tends to accept evolution, but the comparison is less significant than the inference we can draw about the US and the associated impacts visible in our disdain for not only education, but also the well-educated, the informed: the predominant culture in the US is a belief culture.
By "belief," I do not refer to religious faith per se. This discussion is about a belief culture that is secular, political and, ultimately, ideological, even when belief is connected to religious traditions and stances.
As Einstein offered, both belief and science have value, even as complements to each other: "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind" - especially as faith informs our ethics. But in the US, we are apt to misuse belief and ignore (or misunderstand) science when we need it most.
The US is unique compared to the rest of Western world, which tends to accept evolution, but the comparison is less significant than the inference we can draw about the US and the associated impacts visible in our disdain for not only education, but also the well-educated, the informed: the predominant culture in the US is a belief culture. By "belief," I do not refer to religious faith per se. This discussion is about a belief culture that is secular, political and, ultimately, ideological, even when belief is connected to religious traditions and stances. As Einstein offered, both belief and science have value, even as complements to each other: "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind" - especially as faith informs our ethics. But in the US, we are apt to misuse belief and ignore (or misunderstand) science when we need it most.
As I said in the beginning, Biden is on the Democratic ticket because of what he knows, and Ryan is on the Republican ticket for what he believes. (Which is astonishing, given some of the things Paul Ryan believes.)
Last night, Vice President Biden showed Democrat how to effectively combine passion and truth to craft a winning message. He gave the performance Obama sorely needed to give in his first debate, and should borrow liberally from for his second.
Help us spread the word about these important stories...
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Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future
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(Further) Reform of the renewables obligation
Less than 12 months after the Department of Trade and Industry's (DTI's) consultation on the 2005/6 Renewables Obligation Review closed, another consultation has been launched.
The most recent consultation is, in fact, two reviews in one:
- The first is part of the Government's ongoing Energy Review, and concerns changes to have effect from 1 April 2009 (Part 1).
- The second is billed as a technical review proposing "limited changes" to the Renewables Obligation Order, which are intended to take effect on 1 April 2007 (Part 2). The Part 1 proposals, which are concerned with "banding" and the long-term future of co-firing, have been well publicised, and rightly so. The decisions made on these key issues will have a significant impact on the future development of renewable generation in the UK. We will consider the Part 1 proposals in detail in a subsequent note to be published later this month.
In this note, however, we will concentrate on the Part 2 proposals, which have, for the most part, received much less attention to date. Although less wide-ranging than the Part 1 matters, the Part 2 issues are, nevertheless, significant in terms of:
- the need for electricity to have been supplied by a licensed supplier;
- co-firing during the next two obligation periods; and
- the promotion of micro-renewables.
Removal of sale and buyback requirement
This matter was consulted on previously and the necessary primary legislation was introduced as part of the recent Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Act.
This Act provided that, in addition to allowing the issue of Renewables Obligation Certificates (ROCs) in respect of renewable electricity supplied to customers, the Renewables Obligation Order could allow for the issue of ROCs in respect of renewable electricity used in a "permitted way". A "permitted way" being that the electricity is:
- consumed by the operator of the generating station; and/or
- exported to a distribution or transmission system in circumstances where its supply to customers cannot be demonstrated.
This therefore gave the DTI scope to expand the ambit of the Renewables Obligation Order to cover those two circumstances, and the DTI has put forward proposals to do so.
However, the proposed wording in Article 16 is not as clear as it could be, and we would hope that it is further refined before the amendments come into force.
The proposed changes suggest that a generator would either be required to make the current declaration regarding supply by an electricity supplier, or alternatively to declare that, where the generating station is not connected to a transmission or distribution system, the electricity has been consumed by the generator.
This alternative declaration does not currently appear to accurately reflect the revised wording in the Electricity Act.
Co-firing in the short term
Given that the Part 1 changes regarding co-firing will not have effect before 1 April 2009, the DTI is proposing certain changes under Part 2 in order to ensure "continued impetus" for the development of energy crops in the interim.
The proposal is that the co-firing of energy crops would not (in practice) be treated as co-firing, and would instead be treated in the same manner as pure renewable technologies. Under Article 14, a cap is imposed on the percentage of a supplier's renewables obligation that can be met by presenting ROCs issued in respect of co-firing stations. This cap is currently set at 10 per cent.
The proposal is that ROCs issued in respect of stations that co-fire entirely with energy crops would not count towards this 10 per cent cap.
This will clearly have a beneficial impact for those generators who do (or are able) to co-fire entirely with energy crops. It should also benefit the operators of other co-firing stations, as there will be an increase in potential demand for co-fired ROCs, as headroom in the 10 per cent cap opens up. The change may be seen as less beneficial by those involved in other renewable technologies.
There is also a proposal to classify all miscanthus giganteus, salix and populus as an energy crop, without the need to demonstrate when it was planted and for what purpose. Biomass generators generally will also, no doubt, welcome the proposal that, where more than one fuel is used, the average energy content of the fuels will be considered (rather than each individual fuel having to meet the 90 per cent requirement).
Small generators - creation of ROC agents/aggregators
The intention of these proposals is to remove some of the administrative barriers that hinder small generators. If made, the changes would allow agents to act as ROC aggregators on behalf of a number of small generators.
The appointed agent would act as Ofgem's sole point of contact, and be responsible for all matters from accreditation to taking receipt of the issued ROCs.
An agent would be able to amalgamate the output of all the small generators for whom he was appointed in calculating the number of ROCs to be issued. Such amalgamation would only be possible between generators of the same technology type and within the same geographical region (England & Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland).
By making such a change, the Government clearly hopes that aggregators will seek to tap into the micro-renewables market, and that with the possibility of this additional revenue stream the development of micro-renewables will be further encouraged.
One potential downside is the increased revocation risk that must be inherent in a ROC that relates to more than one generating station.
Consultation on the Part 2 matters closes on 15 December 2006
This alert may contain information of general interest about current legal issues, but does not give legal advice.
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CLOUD 9 at Castleton State College, Dir. by Lisa Kramer
Yesterday I spent an intense, provocative, and stimulating day at a workshop with members of Cornerstone Theater Company. They do work that I dream of, work that shares the stories of people through the power of theater. Work that can truly change lives. Whether serious projects, or simply silly, they introduce the creative, artistic, ensemble power of theater to communities that may not have an interest otherwise. They do Community Based Theater using an amazing process that ends with a truly powerful product. The second half of the workshop is today, and I am excited.
But, this is not a blog post about them. Check them out for yourself.
This is a post about definitions. Throughout the day, I found myself questioning how I think, and how I define terms. How we define terms relates, I believe, to how we define ourselves. But the problem lies in the concept that meaning varies.
For example, what does the word community mean to you? I know that I belong to a number of different communities; where I live, where I work, my friends, my beliefs, where I write , etc. Yet, when we reflected on the community I currently live in, I felt separated and distanced from it somehow. It feels as if I carry an invisible wall that keeps me separate from this community; keeps me unable to fully engage.
Is developing a sense of community something that we need to learn? Am I preventing myself from feeling like I belong?
I think my problem lies in definitions; for me, community equals home. But that does not really have to be the case. I do not have to call Independence home. It does not feel like home, and it may never. I do, however, have to embrace the fact that I am living in this community. As a member of the community, I need to participate fully to help the community thrive. I can do that.
The other term that kept bouncing around my head yesterday, even though it was not raised in the actual workshop, is the term “professional“.
[As a side note, this issue had really nothing to do with the Cornerstone workshop, but more to do with the behavior and attitudes of certain participants]
The meaning of professional has been bothering me for a long time. Why? Because some people in the arts world draw a line – better yet create a chasm -between professionals and educators, insisting that educators are not professionals. That chasm makes me sick.
According to Dictionary.com, the word professional has the following definitions:
1.following an occupation as a means of livelihood or for gain: a professional builder.
2.of, pertaining to, or connected with a profession: professional studies.
3. appropriate to a profession: professional objectivity.
4.engaged in one of the learned professions: A lawyer is a professional person.
5. following as a business an occupation ordinarily engaged in as a pastime: a professional golfer.
6. making a business or constant practice of something not properly to be regarded as a business: “A salesman,” he said,“is a
7. undertaken or engaged in as a means of livelihood or for gain: professional baseball.
8. of or for a professional person or his or her place of business or work: a professional apartment; professional equipment.
9. done by a professional; expert: professional car repairs.
10. a person who belongs to one of the professions, esp. one of the learned professions.
11. a person who earns a living in a sport or other occupation frequently engaged in by amateurs: a golf professional.
12. an expert player, as of golf or tennis, serving as a teacher,
consultant, performer, or contestant; pro.
13. a person who is expert at his or her work: You can tell by her comments that this editor is a real professional.
Unless I am reading this wrong, nowhere in this definition claims that professional equals “better than” or “not an educator”. As a matter of fact, #12 incorporates the idea of professional as teacher. Of course, if someone is getting paid to do something, you would hope that they are better than someone else, but it is not part of the definition. The only criteria, based on this definition, is that the person be an expert in his/her field and be paid for what he/she does.
Now, to be expert at something, I will agree that you need to be out there doing it. But “out there” does not have to mean the big cities, or the world of Broadway or anything else. It simply means you are actually practicing your craft. Those who want to differentiate between educators and professionals seem to think that who you do it for and who you do it with separates the professionals from the mere teachers.
My response to that is a resounding raspberry.
People who have studied theater, trained to do theater, spend most of their time doing theater, and get paid to do theater, are theater professionals! It is as simple as that. It does not matter whether or not your work is seen on Broadway or on the big screen. It does not matter if your casts are made up of students rather than “professional actors”. If you get paid for directing a show, or for acting, or for conducting a workshop, or for designing a set or lights . . . you area theater professional.
There is the other side of this too. People who claim to be professional educators who do not exhibit or teach professionalism. Or those who use their educational positions merely as a regular paycheck to support their art. I don’t think that equals professional behavior in any field, do you?
So to me, a professional is someone who tries to do good work in whatever field, gets paid for it, and truly commits to learning and growing in that field. Professionals can have numerous professions, just as people have numerous goals. I am a teaching artist who directs theater. I am a writer who teaches. I am a professional, in spite of the nay sayers.
Honestly, in some ways, those who create good theater with novice casts seem more remarkable to me than those who work only with other so-called professionals. Cornerstone Theater Company proves that, as they produce quality products with casts that come from the communities whose story they are telling. Casts that include; ex-cons, homeless, kids, public workers, steel workers, and so on. The list goes on and on, but I doubt very many members of these diverse communities include “professional actor” on their resumes.
The experience with Cornerstone has been a revelation for me, in many ways. But perhaps the most important, at this time in my life, is that I can say loudly “I AM A MEMBER OF THE COMMUNITY OF THEATER PROFESSIONAL!” I am also A MEMBER OF THEATER EDUCATION PROFESSIONALS! That’s good too. My work, in schools, in the community, and in “professional” theater companies speaks for itself.
My own definitions of words are what defines me. Nobody else’s.
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In addition (and perhaps more appealing for some), your local library branch probably has a decent selection of DVDs, CDs, books-on-tape-or-cd, and museum passes. Did I mention that this is free? Some branches charge $1 or so for DVD rentals, but that's a bargain compared to your local Blockbuster.
You may scoff, and say "Silly, reading's for kids." You'd be right - after all, a review in the Archives of Disease in Childhood recently concluded: "Reading aloud to young children, particularly in an engaging manner, promotes emerging literacy and language development and supports the relationship between child and parent."
What you might not know is that reading is good for adults, too! It provides the opportunity to escape from everyday stresses, and relax. Reading can be so effective at this that the UK has started a program for mentally distressed patients called "Reading and You." And hey, if you've always wanted to go to Australia but don't [yet] have the funds for it, reading books set in Australia are a good way to at least get to Australia in your brain.
In order to get a library card in Massachusetts, you must fall into one of the following categories:
- a resident of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
- a Massachusetts property owner
- employed in Massachusetts
- attending school in Massachusetts
- a resident of temporary housing in Massachusetts
My local branch (Honan-Allston) is open tonight until 6 PM. Check the BPL's hours online, and sing this song on your way.
"Take a look, it's in a book, a reading rainbow!"
Related Posts: Public libraries are your friend; Reading at Lunch; Staycation in Boston; Turn off your TV week
Photo courtesy of Casey "monkey-lovin" Williams
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View Single Post
04-02-11, 02:50 PM
Join Date: Jul 2009
This month's Black + White Photography Magazine has a supplement entitled Photography Holidays & Courses, the ultimate guide 2011. I haven't bothered to count them but the cover states there are 100+ photo workshops inside. These seem to cover the art from start to finish in places as far apart as the Northern Isles to the Falklands.
Having thumbed through it, I got to wondering just how many sources of help, instruction and advice there are available to the budding wannabee photographer as well as those more practised in the art. When you think about it more closely, when you add them all up it must run into 10's of thousands, and it begs the question, why aren't we all taking, to utilise PRADAR-speak, stunning pictures?
You could fill a library with books, a few yards of shelves with CD's and videos and still not become over proficient. That begs the question is there too much info, does it all become too bewildering to the newcomer. One book on photoshop should, or could, put one off for life!
Still as Robert Doisneau says, " If I knew how to take a good picture, I'd take one every time".
BLACK and WHITE WEB SITE
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Those brown and black LGBTQ people have been bleached from the written history of that night. Many LGBTQ blacks and Latinos argue that one of the reasons for the gulf between whites and themselves is the fact that the dominant queer community rewrote the narrative of Stonewall.
Too often when considering injustice, we want perfect victims -- the victim who did nothing to provoke others, whose moral code remains unblemished. But if justice were the privilege of the perfect, there wouldn't be much need for it.
I worry we are seeing the Tea Party future unfolding in London. It is a future where the wealthiest citizens are not taxed and vital health, educational, and welfare services for everyone else are cut.
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If you’re looking for reliable information about a product or service, you absolutely have to know about reputation management.
Think of reputation management, or “rep management,” as controlling what people read about your company online, and to a certain extent, offline. The goal is to either delete the negative information or push it to the bottom of search engine results on sites like Bing and Google.
The result? You’re far less likely find the bad reviews from disgruntled customers who would warn you about a company – and far more likely to see the glowing write-ups from adoring clients.
For example, here’s what one company, Defend Matrix, promises clients it will do:
• Identify positive web pages, blogs, forums, articles, or pages that it controls, that can be quickly elevated in the search engine rankings using optimization strategies. These pages blanket and replace negative listings.
• Post hundreds of positive articles, blog, journal and forum entries, news items, press releases and other pages on a steady, on-going basis. These postings offer positive reflections on your reputation — but more importantly, they replace negative postings by taking the top positions on the sites in which they appear.
• Create new, positive content on your site and on sites that Defend Matrix controls, then optimizing this content so that it rises quickly to the top search engine rankings. Defend Matrix owns hundreds of sites used for this purpose.
“The goal of reputation management tends to be one of two things,” says Babak Zafarnia, president of Praecere Public Relations. “Either a company wants consumers to know something good about its business, or wants consumers to know that the company actually cares about its perception.”
Businesses have plenty of reason to engage in this kind of activity, says Sharon Geltner, a reputation management expert with Froogle PR.
“These days of unscrupulous content mills, in which unpaid, or grossly underpaid writers hired from across the globe report on anything, pretty much according to whim, make reputation management important,” she says. “You do not want future clients, significant others, college admissions departments, HR types, employers and colleagues getting a bad impression of you — even if you did nothing wrong.”
If the idea of a company trying to manipulate Internet search engines to ensure you don’t see all the bad stuff about it is a little unsettling, don’t worry. There’s more.
If a company is engaged in reputation management – truly effective reputation management – you probably wouldn’t even know it.
Most rep management operations are secretive and can only be detected by an expert eye, according to people with knowledge of the industry.
“The only way would be to see how quickly they respond to a negative attack,” says Gary Bahadur, the chief executive of KRAA Security and the author of an upcoming book called “Securing Social Media.” “A good example of a managed reputation is Network Solutions. When they had a break-in, their team was out responding to blogs and putting out news stories the same day. All very positive responses.”
So what do you need to know about reputation management? Here are 5 facts that will help you become a more savvy consumer:
1. They can’t make anything disappear
Short of legal action, there is no way to completely remove negative content from the Internet, according to Ben Buzbee, who owns the reputation management company Affiliated Marketing Solutions. “There is no real guarantee that can be made in performing online reputation management,” he added. His company does use legal strategies to delete negative content, when necessary. Other times, he will try to boost positive content about a company online.
2. It’s not just about burying bad things
The goal of a good reputation management campaign, says Kimberly Ercius, president of the search-engine consulting firm Sercius, is an accurate image – not an overinflated one. Rep management initiatives focus on the first few search results because that’s where most users go. “If a business has a great product with a lot of fans, that should jump off the page at a glance,” she says. “Genuine reputation management doesn’t mean removing everything negative. If a company’s entire reputation management strategy is solely to remove all negative content, then the consumer is missing out on important information that would drive their purchasing decision.”
3. Besides, some bad things deserve to be buried
Jason Mudd, a principal with Axia Public Relations, insists some information should be pushed to the bottom of the search engine results. “Once you explore the situation by investigating the matter, in a very objective light, typically, one person in the situation – whether it’s a single employee or a single customer – is behind the entire thing,” he says. “Often, the employee messed up and the company took action by firing them. Sometimes, a customer failed to read the contract. Other times, the employee or customer were fired and now they are seeking revenge.” In other words, companies see reputation management as countering the negative publicity generated by a few disgruntled employees or customers, as opposed to controlling their image.
4. Successful reputation management fails (a little)
Because Internet users value authenticity, a rep management campaign that scrubs the web clean of any negative content is almost certain to backfire. Good reputation management doesn’t place a muzzle on customer opinions, says Shannon Wilkinson, who runs the Reputation Communications Corporation. For example, Wilkinson recently went shopping for a lamp at the Pottery Barn website. But a few reviewers panned the unit she liked. “I stayed on the site, purchased another lamp and have enjoyed it since,” she says. “Why? I trusted Pottery Barn because the company allowed those bad reviews to stay online. Many companies would remove them.”
5. Because information is manipulated, you need to do more research
“When researching a company, look beyond the first two pages of the search,” advises Richard Bialek, whose company, the BialekGroup, consults on reputation management issues. “Reputation management can reorder search results but it is difficult to totally remove all negative information,” he says. “Use caution and do your homework.
Work with people you trust and as Ronald Reagan said, ‘Trust, but verify’.”
“Remember,” adds Abraham Shafi, co-founder of Veechi Corp., a social media site. “Not everything written on the Internet is true.”
As consumer, it’s nice to know that a rep management company can be too successful at what it does – thus invalidating all of the information about a company.
And while the reputation management industry’s arguments for what it does may sound reasonable, the net effect for people like you and me is that we often have to work harder to find the information we need if we want to make an informed purchase.
“There will always be those who try to manipulate the system to their benefit,” says Doug Wolfgram, chief executive of IntelliProtect, an online privacy service. “But they will be weeded out when good, solid products and services have good, solid online reputations.”
Until then, read everything online with a critical eye.
Christopher Elliott is a consumer advocate who blogs about getting better customer service at On Your Side. Connect with him on Twitter and Facebook or send him your questions by email.
Mint.com the best FREE way to manage your money. Get started here!
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Sequestration Of Federal Funds Could Affect Central Regional School Budget This Year
Central could lose about $250,000 this year, business administrator says
The Central Regional school district could lose roughly $250,000 in federal funds if Congress fails to halt $85 billion in "sequestration" spending cuts by March 1.
Central Regional received roughly $1 million in federal dollars to use in the general budget, Business Administrator Kevin O'Shea said.
"We are being asked to expect a reduction of 25 percent of these funds, or about $250,000 for next year," he said. 'This is going to have ramifications for our budget for the next school year, when you consider that the two percent cap for us amounts to just over $544,000."
The district currently receives about $500,000 to help offset special education costs and another $500,000 in No Child Left Behind funds, which helps to fund some basic skills positions, professional development, and some after school tutoring for low income students, O'Shea said.
The White House said Sunday that funding for education in New Jersey would be slashed by nearly $30 million and drastic cuts made to health care programs and environmental protection, if Congress fails to stop the cuts.
The sequestration cuts affecting school districts would include:
- Approximately $11.7 million in funding for primary and secondary education.
- About $17 million in funds for about 210 teachers, aides, and staff who help children with disabilities.
- Head Start and Early Head Start services would be eliminated for approximately 1,300 children.
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The inner workings of Boxer Luv Rescue may seem as complicated as a large corporation with various divisions, including an intake team, medical team, adoption team, volunteer team and public relations team, but in actuality the rescue’s mission is a simple one that fulfills the vital need in the Valley of finding safe and happy homes for Boxers down on their luck.
Boxer Luv Rescue has taken in 385 dogs this year, and Jill Bittner, Ahwatukee Foothills resident and coordinator of the public relations team for Boxer Luv Rescue, expects the number to reach 450 by the end of the year.
“It’s overwhelming to take in so many dogs that have been abandoned or neglected by their former owners, but thankfully we have an amazing volunteer network that is able to handle these types of numbers,” Bittner said. “We adopt out anywhere from five to 10 per week and on average have about 110 Boxers in our immediate care at any one time.”
Boxer Luv Rescue has taken in more dogs this year than any other since its inception in 1998.
“You hear about all of the foreclosures and people losing their homes, which obviously affects a large number of dogs,” Bittner said. “This is a record year for us.”
Unless they are staying with one of Boxer Luv’s partnership veterinarians to receive medical attention, the homeless dogs stay in foster homes until a permanent home can be found. Each Boxer is evaluated to make sure it is healthy before it goes to a foster home.
“The foster families help us learn more about the dogs and their personalities, which helps us make good adoption matches,” Bittner said. “We can find out if they get along with other dogs or cats, how they are around children and how they do on leashes.”
If interested in adopting a Boxer, people go through a screening process by Boxer Luv Rescue’s adoption team.
“If you make it past the initial application, a volunteer comes out to look at your house and make sure you meet certain conditions, like having a fence that is tall enough,” Bittner said.
According to Bittner, adopting a dog instead of buying a dog from a breeder is incredibly rewarding and helps solve the Valley’s pet overpopulation program.
“There are huge numbers of dogs being euthanized at Valley shelters because they can’t be adopted out,” she said. “For some people getting a dog that is already trained to go to the bathroom outside and use a doggy door is a huge benefit.”
Bittner encourages those who are interested in getting small puppies to experience the puppy stage to check with local rescue organizations.
“In the spring we had three litters of puppies when a police officer found a Boxer under a tree that was pregnant,” she said. “We had a total of 24 to 30 puppies in the spring, you just have to ask shelters what they have.”
Boxers in particular seem to keep the puppy personality for longer than the normal puppy stage.
“Boxers are puppies their whole lives,” Bittner said. “They are gregarious and have high energy, and their personalities are a riot.”
Looking to the future, Boxer Luv Rescue plans to create and develop an education component to increase knowledge about proper dog care to avoid over population. Bittner plans on going to local elementary schools to speak to children about proper care and adoption.
“We need to help educate children when they are young so that we can teach them the value of rescuing an animal and the value of spaying and neutering,” Bittner said. “We all have to work together to bring down over population.”
To become involved or find out more about Boxer Luv Rescue, visit www.arizonaboxerrescue.org or call (602) 530-5671.
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Bible: Matthew 10:34-39
Not Peace, but a Sword
10:34 “Do not think that I have come to bring 1 peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace but a sword. 10:35 For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, 10:36 and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household. 2
10:37 “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 10:38 And whoever does not take up his cross 3 and follow me is not worthy of me. 10:39 Whoever finds his life 4 will lose it, 5 and whoever loses his life because of me 6 will find it.
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Hardware is back and makers are driving it. Here are some of the signals.
MAKE's Hardware Innovation Workshop is coming May 15-16 at PARC.
Being held May 15-16, MAKE's Hardware Innovation Workshop is an intensive introduction to the business of making and the makers who are creating these businesses.
The Hardware Innovation Workshop will be held May 15-16.
We're announcing the Hardware Innovation Workshop, a new business conference being held during the week of Maker Faire.
Cities should encourage homebrew innovation and inspiration.
Governments, particularly local governments, need to do more to understand and adapt to what might be called DIY citizenship.
How will a "long, slow make" transform our society?
I sat down with Anil Dash to get some long-term thinking on the Maker movement.
Maker Faire Detroit will be held July 30 and 31
In our second Detroit Maker Faire we're able to see all kinds of examples of how makers have become resources for the community, contributing in Detroit and the region.
Teaching to the txt
(Green Onion News Network) The Harper Valley School Board recently adopted a policy that allows students to use their cell phones to search for answers on state-mandated standardized tests.
The Ignite format can connect schools and students to their communities.
As was on display during Ignite Petaluma, the Ignite format offers a great way to bring together students, faculty and members of a community.
The first challenge: create kits that can be built in a classroom and sent on-board suborbital flights.
If you are fascinated by space, it's a great time for you to be able to do something as a maker and make a real contribution. Makers can now participate in a new kind of space program, one that expands beyond NASA to include commercial space collaboration.
DealBook in the New York Times offers a portrait of Gary Gensler who is chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. I was inspired by Gensler's story. He moved from Wall Street to Washington to go into public service while raising three girls as a single father. His quest to "overhaul the murky $600 trillion derivatives market" is meeting with…
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My grandmother, Pearl Doris Reed, was born in Lebanon, Kentucky in 1886. She the youngest of the seven children of Anna Allen Reed. Pearl's father was Buford Averitt, a white physician. By 1888 Pearl's oldest brother, George, had moved to Indianapolis Indiana to work at Van Camps cannery. The rest of the family soon followed.
My grandfather Albert Buford Cleage, Sr was born in Louden, Tennessee in 1883. He was the youngest of the five children of Louis and Celia (Rice) Cleage. The family eventually moved to Athens Tennessee. In 1906 he graduated from Knoxville College and moved to Indianapolis to attend Purdue University College of Medicine. Three of his older siblings were already there. He moved in with his brother Jacob and his wife Gertrude. His brother Henry also lived in the house.
Albert and Pearl met at church. They both signed the petition to organize a United Presbyterian Church on April 30, 1907. Pearl sang in the church choir and also at community and church events. By the time I heard her sing she had a frail, old voice. I wish I could have heard her back in her prime. In 1907 Pearl was 21. Albert was 24.
The courtship lasted for three years. Pearl's mother was against the relationship because she thought Albert was "too dark". Of course this caused problems with them meeting and going anywhere together. Many letters were exchanged and they met at church functions. Their houses were about 2.3 miles apart. It was a straight trolley ride down N. Illinois in those days. Today that would be a 23 minute ride by bus. I imagine it took a bit longer by trolley in the early 1900s.
As Albert neared the end of his course of study, his thoughts turned to where he would practice and to their marriage. They set the date for October, 1910. He graduated in June and as an intern was appointed to the City Hospital. On September 2 he received his Physicians License and on September 29, 1910 Albert and Pearl applied for a marriage license. On October 2, 1910 they were married in a quiet ceremony at Pearl's house. The Indianapolis Star column "News of Colored Folk" contained this item,
"In the presence of relatives and immediate friends of the two families Dr. Albert B. Cleage, Intern at the City Dispensary and Miss Pearl D. Reed, 2730 Kenwood Avenue were married at noon Thursday. The Rev. D.F. White of the Witherspoon United Presbyterian Church officiated. Immediately after the ceremony Dr. and Mrs. Cleage left on their wedding tour, during which they will visit the Appalachian Exposition at Knoxville, Tenn., and points farther south." The points farther south would have been his family's home in Athens, Tennessee.
Another piece News of Colored Folk, dated Oct. 2, 1910 said, "The Witherspoon United Presbyterian Church and Sunday school gave a linen shower Friday evening in honor of Dr. and Mrs. Albert Cleage at the home of Mr. and Mrs. R.A. Kelley 1917 Highland Place. Dr. and Mrs. Cleage have returned recently from their bridal trip to Knoxville, Tenn, and are at home at 913 Fayette street."
The add in the lower corner of the collage above has several pictures of women in traveling suits and big hats. The photograph of my grandmother over it shows her wearing a similar suit and hat, although not quite as flamboyant. Although this photograph was taken later in 1910 at a medical convention, I imagine this is the outfit she wore for her wedding tour. The little blue house is the one they came home to on Fayette street and the photo in the corner shows two women and my grandfather and my very happy looking grandmother at the medical convention later that year.
My grandparents ended up in Detroit where my grandfather practiced medicine and they raised their seven children. They were together 46 years, until my grandfather's death in 1956. There are 9 grandchildren, 21 great grandchildren and 20 great great grandchildren. We've spread out over the United States and Canada.
This is a Sepia Saturday offering and an entry in the Fall Marriages Genealogy Carnival.
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Playing Activision and High Moon's new title Transformers: War for Cybertron on PC made me realize that someone should
catalog how to make a proper PC version of a cross-platform title. Most of this involves taking into consideration the logistical differences
between platforms, and the differing expectations of each group of
gamers. Many of these issues can be easily remedied if the developer is aware of them. So, let me discuss some common issues that plague the PC versions
of many cross platform games.
Field of Vision:
One frustration faced by PC gamers in cross-platform titles is that the
default field of vision (FOV) is often narrowed - sometimes to as low as
60 or 70 degrees, rather than the common 90 degrees to which PC gamers are accustomed. A natural human FOV is very wide, and a narrow FOVs make the gamer feel like they are looking through a tube, with no peripheral vision.
A narrow field of vision can make sense in a console game. When a player is sitting 10 feet away from their television, a narrow FOV feels natural. It is similar to looking out a window from halfway across the room - one don't expect a panoramic view at that range. Also, at that distance a wider FOV
would make in-game objects smaller and harder to distinguish. I have also
heard that the FOV is sometimes reduced to improve framerates, but I am not sure how much stock to
put into that assertion (perhaps it varies by the culling method of the
game engine in question?).
A PC gamer, on the other hand, typically sits very close to their monitor. It feels more natural to have a wide field of vision
at that distance, especially on a widescreen LCD. The size of assets onscreen is less of an issue on PC. In addition to the player's close proximity to the monitor, PC games run at high resolutions, and a mouse's accuracy makes targeting small objects easier.
I would also add that a narrow FOV, at that range, can cause motion
sickness in some players. This may be made worse by how quickly one can look around with a mouse
versus a controller. I was unable to play Borderlands for more than a few minutes without feeling ill until I found a workaround to widen the FOV.
The solution is simple: give the PC version of the game a wider
default fov, and allow the fov to be customized, either in-game or by manually altering the config files.
Sometimes a wider FOV is needed in general,
even on consoles. In War for Cybertron, the game will sometimes point
out to you where Omega Supreme is. He is the size of a building,
but the player's non-existent peripheral vision still makes him easy to miss. Also, when playing in widescreen
the FOV should be even wider; what is the point of a widescreen monitor
if not to enjoy a wide, panoramic view of the action? Widescreen gaming
introduces issues more complicated than just FOV, especially if you are
using multiple monitors; there are entire websites dedicated
to those issues.
Visual Detail & Graphics Resources:
The PC has jumped ahead of the consoles in terms of graphics power,
and that difference will only increase as the 360 and PS3 age. However, cross-platform games are often developed with the lowest
common denominator in mind. One common issue (see Bioshock 2) is
texture quality. Textures that look great at 720p may look mediocre at
1080p or higher. PC graphics cards have enough RAM to handle those higher
quality textures, but often get served the same textures as their console counterparts.
The solution is to start with PC-quality resources to begin with,
then scale those down as needed for consoles and slower PCs.
Console compatibility will still limit complexity in some areas in the
game, but texture quality does not need to be one of them.
Many console titles (Borderlands and War for Cybertron,
for example) have their framerate capped at 30fps. This keeps it from bouncing up and down as much, and makes the console experience feel a bit more even.
It becomes a problem, though, when developers maintain this cap in the PC version of their title. The issue here is less that there is a difference between 30fps and higher framerates - there is - but rather the expectations of the consumers in question. PC gamers buy their hardware with a certain level of performance in mind; to have a game arbitrarily hold back their system's performance feels like a slap in the face. Respect their expectations, and the money they have invested in their hardware (and thus in the industry), and do away with limitations like this.
Dedicated servers are important to PC gaming for several reasons.
For one, they allow clans and groups of friends to have space for
practice, competition, and private games. They also help combat cheating
and griefing, as player admins can kick or ban gamers who try to ruin
the game for others. Dedicated servers are also necessary for
server-side mods, and custom maps and content. Popular servers may have a
lot of regulars, further decreasing issues with cheating and increasing
the social aspect of even straightforward death match games. Dedicated
servers are an important part of building a community around your game,
and can contribute to its long-term success and popularity.
I do have some sympathy for the player-host model - for
games with a small number of players (ie Borderlands), it seems
reasonable. However, for larger games a dedicated server is appropriate. It doesn't help that many player-host models don't allow the host to be chosen (so it may arbitrarily pick a player with a weak PC or sluggish internet connection), or for host migration (so a host can't end the game by leaving). Even host migration interrupts the game, and is undesirable.
So, even on consoles the use of dedicated servers if preferable for
most games. There are also legal issues related to forcing players to host games. Hosting a "server" is against the user agreements of many ISPs.
While some games have locked out modding for obvious
reasons - usually so they can sell DLC - allowing
modding has long-term benefits for a game. The success of the original Half-Life is
a testament to that, and games like Oblivion have benefited
greatly from their "modability." Like dedicated servers, modding
promotes long-term community interest and involvement among the PC
community. It also serves as a place aspiring game designers can gain
experience and build their portfolios.
Control & Access to the Game Engine:
"Configure-ability" is something expected by players on PC. They expect
games to have a robust graphics options menu, and to have access to a game's configuration files to tweak it further. This is not just a matter of player expectations. Every player on PC has a different gaming setup. Whether it is tweaking a game to run on an older
system, or setting up a 3-monitor view, being able to configure a game
to meet individual circumstances is a practical need when it comes to PC games.
Leaving configuration files open to tinkering also allows players to find work-arounds for bugs and other technical issues unanticipated by developers.
There is also the issue of removing features from the PC
version of a title. Split-screen multiplayer, for example, is often cut out on PC. Other games have removed functionality for 360 controllers. Why
not leave these options in? Players have gone to great lengths to
re-enable split-screen gameplay in the PC versions of UT3 and Left 4 Dead, and to get controllers working in games like Bioshock 2. Let players decide whether these options are valuable to them. Again, remember that every PC player has a different system, and plays under different circumstances. In this case, hooking PCs up to HDTVs has become common enough that both controller and split-screen support are selling points for some players.
To developers' credit, some PC games that have dropped features
(like Ghostbusters' co-op, or Sonic & Sega Racing's online support ), or are clearly just ports of console games (like War for
Cybertron) are discounted to reflect these omissions. Still, even a quick port should have easy-to-fix issues like field of vision addressed.
Don't Let Your Game Be A "Console Port"
There is a reason the expression "console port" evokes such
contempt among PC gamers. It suggests a hasty console to PC conversion done simply as a cash-grab, with no real consideration given to the differing
needs and expectations of PC gamers. While there is room for straight-forward ports to PC - far more than in the past, in fact - when developers fail to make even the most basic concessions to the
platform, consumers will feel neglected.
One reason these issues are so frustrating is that many could be fixed with
little to no effort on the part of developers. In War for Cybertron,
for example, fixing the field of vision and framerate cap would be as easy as
altering two values. In fact, these could be fixed on the
player's end were the configuration files not encrypted. Don't think your players don't know these things. PC gamers are very tech-savvy, and know when a problem is due to neglect, apathy, or ignorance on the part of the developer.
Given how many of these issues are easy
fixes, I suspect some cross-platform developers are
simply unaware what PC gamers need and expect from their titles, or how the PC platform differs from a console environment. Hopefully this article will help developers improve their titles - not mention their sales, and their relationships with customers who play on PC.
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Teens on the toilet taken to task over texting
Teenagers spend much longer on the loo every day than their elders because they’re multi-tasking in the toilet, according to new research from the AA as part of its State of the Nation’s Homes series of reports.
Typically youngsters aged 16 and 17 spend 43 per cent longer in the toilet – but more than half the time they spend there (58%) is wasted on ‘extra-curricular’ activities such as texting, using social networking sites or playing smartphone games.
The average teen toilet time for that age group is 22 mins 29 secs a day on the loo, compared to just 15 mins 46 secs for those aged 18 or over.
Sending or reading texts is the most popular peripheral pursuit, with 55 per cent of teenagers questioned claiming do this on the loo, compared to just 19 per cent of those aged 18 or above.
One third of them uses Facebook in the rest room, 25 per cent use YouTube or other video websites, and 23 per cent play games on their phone. A further one in 10 uses Twitter while in the lavatory.
But the traditional distraction of reading is still a popular toilet-time activity for the younger age group, with 27 per cent claiming to read a book and 18 per cent saying they read a magazine there.
The AA says that over the course of a year, these time-wasting teens lose more than three whole days on superfluous toilet distractions, compared to just 26 hours for those aged 65 and over.
The AA’s Tom Stringer said: “It’s clear that the supplementary pastimes people like to partake in on the loo are changing rapidly as new media and ever-more portable technological devices become more widespread.
“According to our research teenagers spend far more time on the toilet playing games and using social media than they do for their primary purpose.
“The book is far from dead as the traditional toilet pastime, however – a much greater proportion of teenagers tend to read a book on the loo than adults.”
Search for a job
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Weather for Luton
Wednesday 19 June 2013
Temperature: 13 C to 24 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
Wind direction: North
Temperature: 12 C to 18 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
Wind direction: North east
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See current severe weather alerts.
Get commuter and severe weather updates via e-mail or SMS text message
Sunrise & sunset
Moonrise & moonset
- Cold moisture continues to buoy snowpack in mountains near Steamboat
- 11:41 a.m., May 7, 2013 Updated 02:00 p.m.
- Weather observer Art Judson reported Tuesday morning that 0.26 inches of rain had fallen in Steamboat in the preceding 24 hours. A chance of showers is forecast for Steamboat and Craig through Friday.
- Rain, afternoon thunderstorms likely in Craig this week
- May 5, 2013
- The daytime highs will be in the low to mid-60s throughout the week, but perhaps more significant is the persistent chance of rain through Thursday. Craig and Moffat County remain in the grip of severe drought conditions, with local officials already preparing for another wildfire season.
- Winter weather expected this week in Moffat County
- April 28, 2013
- Spring will make an emphatic appearance in Moffat County today, but typical of Northwest Colorado, winter isn’t quite ready to call it quits.
- Woman OK after car breaks through frozen pond
- December 28, 2012
- A woman whose car overturned and slid into the water of an icy pond in Windsor is crediting a passer-by with helping get her to safety. A car driven by 22-year-old Kimberly Garcia of Evans ended up upside-down in the pond off Colorado 257 near the entrance of the Kodak/Carestream campus Thursday evening. The passenger side of her car was submerged.
- Despite snow, Colorado’s drought outlook uncertain
- December 27, 2012
- The outlook for a major change in Colorado’s drought is uncertain even though holiday storms have improved the mountain snowpack, a climate researcher said Thursday. “It’s not quite good enough to pull us out of the ‘drought,’ but at least (it’s) bringing temporary relief and optimism,” State Climatologist Nolan Doesken said. Snow levels were as low as 40 percent of average earlier this month in the state’s eight major river basins. On Thursday, the levels ranged from a low of 63 percent of average in the Arkansas River Basin to 85 percent in the Yampa and White river basins.
- Christmas Day storms blamed for 3 deaths
- December 25, 2012
- Twisters hopscotched across the Deep South, and, along with brutal, straight-line winds, knocked down countless trees, blew the roofs off homes and left many Christmas celebrations in the dark. Holiday travelers in the nation’s much colder midsection battled treacherous driving conditions from freezing rain and blizzard conditions from the same fast-moving storms. As predicted, conditions were volatile throughout the day and into the night with tornado warnings still out for some parts of Alabama, Florida and Georgia. The storms were blamed for three deaths, several injuries, and left homes from Louisiana to Alabama damaged. In Mobile, Ala., a tornado or high winds damaged homes, a high school and church, and knocked down power lines and large tree limbs in an area just west of downtown around nightfall. WALA-TV’s tower camera captured the image of a large funnel cloud headed toward downtown. Rick Cauley, his wife, Ashley, and two children were hosting members of both of their families. When the sirens went off, the family headed down block to take shelter at the athletic field house at Mobile’s Murphy High School.
- Colorado gets up to 8 inches of white Christmas
- December 25, 2012
- Much of Colorado is enjoying a white Christmas after a storm dumped up to 8 inches of snow in the northwest part of the state and up to 7 inches along the Front Range. The National Weather Service reports more than 8.2 inches west of Steamboat Springs and nearly 7 inches near Eldorado Springs outside Boulder. Up to 6 inches was reported in the Grand Valley in west-central Colorado.
- Colorado transportation officials brace for storm
- December 18, 2012
- Colorado transportation of crews were fanning out across the Denver metro area to keep the roads open during a wintry storm. Up to 75 Colorado Department of Transportation snowplows were expected to begin working 12 hours shifts in the metro area late Tuesday as the storm moved into the area.
- Aspen Highlands opening delayed by lack of snow
- December 4, 2012
- Aspen Skiing Co. says Aspen Highlands won’t open for the season Saturday as planned because there’s not enough snow. The resort company said Tuesday that Aspen Highlands needs at least eight more inches of natural snow to open.
- Lack of snow, visitors prompt aid to ski workers
- November 29, 2012
- The lack of snow and visitors to ski resorts this warm early season has left ski resort employees facing hard times. Aspen Skiing Co. is helping by picking up dinner for its workers. The company has revived an effort to help ski workers during dry seasons, The Aspen Times reported Thursday (http://bit.ly/X5aTB1 ).
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Creation, Nature and Hope in 4 Esra
- Jonathan A. Moo
- Oct 23, 2012
- Series: Volume 15 - 2012
Jonathan A. Moo. Creation, Nature and Hope in 4 Ezra. FRLANT 237. Göttingen/Oakville, CT: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011. Pp. 206. ISBN: 978-3-525-53103-7
This book had its origins in a Ph.D. dissertation for the University of Cambridge, England. In it the author, Jonathan Moo, sets out to accomplish two important tasks: 1) he explores the important topic of the role of the created order in 4 Ezra in terms of its origins, its present existence, and most importantly its role in eschatological expectations; 2) he also attempts to make a contribution to discussions surrounding typical conceptions of the “apocalyptic worldview” as it relates to whether apocalyptic is pessimistic about this present world order.
Moo begins by surveying and questioning entrenched conceptions of the “apocalyptic worldview” which stress an eschatological and cosmological dualism. This dualism is pessimistic about the present world and looks for an other-worldly hope. In other words, the present age is so evil that apocalyptic writers despair of any hope for salvation in and of this present world, and they will be destroyed and replaced by a new world that will come about only by divine intervention. Even for those who don’t find this dualism quite so sharp in many apocalypses, they find that 4 Ezra is an exception in that it has lost hope in the present world. This context provides a fitting setting and rationale for exploring the theme of creation in 4 Ezra. Moo deals with three other preliminary matters before launching into a detailed study of 4 Ezra. First, though 4 Ezra evidences a complicated history of textual transmission, Moo chooses to follow closely the Latin translation of 4 Ezra; though at times he interacts with the other versions. In fact, a better title for his work might be Creation, Nature and Hope in the Latin Version of 4 Ezra. Second, Moo accepts 4 Ezra as the work of a single author. Third, since the book consists largely of a dialogue between Ezra and an angel, Moo considers both the voices of Ezra and the angel to communicate the true perspective of the book.
His book divides the issue of 4 Ezra’s view of creation into three parts, which correspond to the major chapters of the rest of Moo’s book: Creation in the Beginning; Creation Now: a World in Peril; The Saeculum [world-age] to Come. Moo (Chap. 3) begins with 4 Ezra’s references to the original creation. Moo finds that 4 Ezra emphasizes the goodness of creation as the result of a sovereign act of God. The original creation, prior to the fall, was meant to be an inheritance for the people. Ultimately, evil is not due to the physical nature of creation itself (contra Gnosticism), but human sinfulness. What is emphasized is God’s sovereignty over creation, despite his apparent inactivity in it (cf. 6:38-54).
In Chap. 4 Moo surveys in detail the present creation in peril. Here he finds that creation is characterized as a place of disorder and corruption in need of a radical transformation, which gives rise to Ezra’s pessimism. Furthermore, in 4 Ezra God has predetermined two “world-ages” -Moo’s preferred translation for the Latin saeculum (pp. 97-99)- contributing to the sharp contrast between the present world-age and the world-age to come (7:50; cf. 8:1). However, Moo also finds in 4 Ezra hints of value for the present creation, despite its corruption and the strong discontinuity between the present world-age and the one to come. First, Moo finds a creational theology in 4 Ezra, where even in the midst of its corruption creation still reveals something of God’s ways (“natural law”) which holds the ungodly accountable: “the created order continues even in this corrupt age to testify to the ways of the Creator” (p. 102). This raises the question for Moo as to whether 4 Ezra, then, includes the present, natural world in some way in his eschatological hope. He concludes that, due to the bond between humanity and creation, if humanity is transformed at the resurrection, might not creation itself be freed from corruption and restored?
The final chapter (Chap. 5) surveys in detail 4 Ezra’s eschatological conception of a coming saeculum (world-age). Here Moo notes the strong discontinuity expressed in the stark division between the two ages (cf. 4:29), which suggests the replacement of the present world- age by a future one. But Moo also cautions against thinking that this is the final word on the matter. For example, in 7:75 creation is to be “renewed.” Furthermore, especially in 7:26-44 Moo finds a blurring or ambiguity between elements of the messianic kingdom of this present world and the future world-age. The hidden city and land (presumably in heaven) seem to be disclosed to those still surviving in this creation; the present world-age seems to awaken after a period of silence; the earth and dust are still able to give up their dead in the new saeculum (7:32). All of this seems to emphasize a continuity between the two world-ages, present and future, creating a “messiness” in the author’s portrayal of the two ages. Moo also draws attention to a strange reference to “another land” (13:40, 45) in this present creation, where the law is being kept and which has apparently escaped corruption. For Moo, this all suggests that there is both discontinuity and continuity between the two world-ages, and the present world will undergo a renewal rather than a complete replacement. The strong dualism between the two ages can be explained as primarily to emphasize “God’s sovereignty and his predetermination of two ages” (p. 158).
Moo has, I think, successfully accomplished his two goals. He has provided a careful survey and exegetical analysis of the theme of Creation and eschatological Hope in 4 Ezra in terms of how that relates to the role this present world plays at the consummation: will it be destroyed and replaced, or renewed? Further, Moo has correctly in my view challenged the traditional conception of apocalyptic as pessimistic toward this world. This view should probably be abandoned as an inherent or characteristic feature of the world view of apocalyptic. It may have been helpful if Moo would have included a discussion of saeculum earlier than he did, since it is so important for much of his argument. It might have also been helpful to reflect hermeneutically on how literally one takes the imagery in 4 Ezra, and how the literary genre influences some of his conclusions. Further, his solution to the ambiguity or inconsistency between strong discontinuity and continuity in 4 Ezra is to privilege the statements of continuity and reassess the discontinuity, when perhaps we should allow the “messiness” to stand in stark contrast. But I found Moo’s work to make an extremely important contribution to a neglected theme in 4 Ezra and eschatology more generally. As he begins to explore in his conclusion, it also has implications for how we think about the eschatology of NT books (e.g. Revelation) and their view of the Christian’s future hope (Is heaven our final destination?).
David Mathewson, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of New Testament
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Bird Control Products
Some people like birds and set out to intentionally attract them to their gardens. The problem is that not all birds are desirable and can scare off other wildlife plus birds that are nesting around your home can become pests.
In the United Kingdom, all wild birds, their nests and their eggs are protected by law which prohibits the killing, injuring, taking, or selling, of any wild bird or their nests or eggs. So prevention is key, for example Bird Spikes, False Predators and Cages for relocation.
4 product(s) - page 1 of 1
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Wideman worked for Celanese Emulsions and Celanese Acetates, two other German companies, before applying at Wacker.
Wideman has associate’s degrees in chemical engineering and technology, engineering graphics technology, and a business degree with emphasis on project management.
She was a trainer in her previous job and is hopeful of transitioning into environmental maintenance and regulations.
The 30-minute graduation ceremony took place at Chattanooga State Community College where Wacker Site Manager Dr. Konrad Bachhuber praised the first American contingent of new employees to complete the 12-month training course.
He said the trainers in Germany were impressed with the local groups’s motivation, curiosity and level of knowledge, and referred to them as the cornerstone of Wacker’s growth.
“It is my understanding you have lots of capability and opportunity in the company,” he said. “This is an exciting time to be a part of Wacker as we approach our centennial anniversary in 2014.”
He wished the graduates much success and for long and fruitful careers.
Erika Burk, director of human resources, described the graduation ceremony as the beginning of a new adventure as staff are integrated into the ultra-modern hyperpure polysilicon manufacturing facility east of Charleston.
“It is the first of its kind for Wacker outside Germany, and Wacker’s single-largest investment ever. We are so proud of you and excited you are back home again ready to hit the ground running,” Burk said.
Forty-three of the graduates are from Tennessee, seven from Georgia and one is from South Carolina. Bradley County was the county with the most graduates.
Bradley County Mayor D. Gary Davis said the graduation of 51 senior lead chemical operators after a year of rigorous training is the culmination of what local leadership has been trying to convince business of for years.
“Early on we had to convince them of our education system in Tennessee and the Cleveland and Chattanooga area,” Davis said. “From what we were told, they we very impressed with the people who trained in Berghausen. It wasn’t a surprise to us because we knew we had a good workforce in the area and people were ready to be trained. I think this is proving we were right and I believe Wacker is very, very happy with the outcome so far.”
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In a series of articles throughout this year, we will talk about the challenges, pitfalls and success factors of logistics projects. In the first part, we take a look at the launch of these projects and the role a consultant should play in it.
Only a few companies put a new distribution centre (or even several) in operation every single year. For most of our customers, setting up and working with a new logistics centre is an extraordinary event, for which the normal processes and structures of the company are not prepared.
Therefore, many deciders in business and logistics resort to hiring a consultant. But this leads directly to the first crucial point: what should be part of the consultant’s responsibilities and what shouldn’t? What are the objectives of the consulting firm? What might seem like a trivial question at first, is certainly worth a thought or two.
Setting your objectives
Every project starts by setting the objectives. This is a task that must not be delegated. Who else but yourself is able to specify what the new facility or centre is supposed to achieve? Go ahead and describe the objectives in your own words, with the requirements of your business in mind. In this initial step, don’t concern yourself with logistics parlance or performance figures. The translation can be done later, possibly with the support of a consultant.
But watch out! Exactly here, where the individual objectives of the project need to be translated into a profile of requirements or a request for proposal, is where the same mistake happens again and again. Instead of a neutral specifications sheet with logistical requirements, they outline a solution and a bid invitation for this particular solution. Without even realising it, you may be depriving yourself of a large potential for optimising and cost-cutting.
A useful as it is for someone without the relevant experience, to get help from outside advisors on how to phrase the specification sheet, it is dangerous to limit the range of possible solutions. Presenting prospective bidders with an almost complete facility layout and only accepting tenders that fit this layout exactly, is highly questionable.
At first sight, it might seem the most logical procedure and promise transparency and comparability. But how can you be sure that the solution outlined by your consultant is a good one, let alone the best one? To make this very clear: in the tender stage you are going to benefit the most from the competition between different concepts, not from the competition in unit costs and hourly rates.
Sure, it is difficult and therefore expansive to evaluate seemingly incomparable concepts and offers from different suppliers. But if you managed to outline your actual objectives in a smart, thorough and comprehensive way at the beginning, this apparently impossible task is not that tough after all. By the way, we are going to talk about identifying the “right” objectives in a separate post in this series.
Who should be responsible?
A cardinal question in defining the structure of the project is the one about responsibility for integration. In principle, there are possibilities:
- The initiator of the project (You), is responsible for integrating the different suppliers and subsections
- A third party without physical contribution takes over this task. This could be the consultant.
- One of the suppliers assumes responsibility for the integration as an integration service.
Integration service providers are usually referred to as general contractors. This brings us to the heart of the matter. Responsibility for integrating the project only makes sense, if it includes entrepreneurial responsibility and the risk of financial losses. For reasons that are fully understandable, consultants are usually neither capable nor willing to take over this financial risk.
Equally important as the question of responsibility for integration, but rather underrated, is the organisation of the launch and the start of the operation. An experienced consultant can save you a lot of trouble here. In the end, almost every new distribution centre comes with changed or new processes.
This leads to numerous consequences, which people fail to consider or prepare for adequately. Employees have to fulfil new tasks or have to work on their present tasks in a different way and with new tools. Some of their new tools might not function, for example because certain processes have been documented inaccurately or not at all, and got implemented that way.
The entire team is going to experience a lot of stress from new, unfamiliar technology, the need to learn new tasks, the mistakes they make along the way and the challenge to manage the start-up of the facility. During this phase, a seasoned logistics advisor, who can guide you through this process, proposing solutions instead of assigning blame, makes all the difference. The right person for this job would be someone with personal experience in launching and operating a distribution centre. Of course, it is important that they are not trying to defend their own contributions or mistakes. This is yet another reason why the supplier of the facility, and not the consultant should be responsible for the logistical solution.
I hope that these remarks help you in setting up a logistics project, decide upon the potential role of a consultant and find the right person for this job. In a later blog post, we are going to talk in more detail about the “right” objectives of a facility project.
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by Jill Pantozzi | 2:45 pm, February 21st, 2013
Because teenagerdom is a mess, but some people handle it better than others.
by Jill Pantozzi | 2:45 pm, February 21st, 2013
by Susana Polo | 9:32 am, February 15th, 2013
Here’s a whole collection of different video recordings of the meteorite that streaked over the Ural Mountains in Russia early this morning (so, in the middle of last night for those of us in American timezones), breaking up in the atmosphere, leaving an impressive contrail, and causing a sonic boom that caused a wide radius of broken windows and damaged buildings. There have been no reported deaths so far, but many folks have sought medical attention for broken glass related injuries.
A meteorite strike as flashy and dramatic as this one would be news on any day, but this isn’t even 2012 DA14, the asteroid scienctists and astronomers were expecting to buzz very close to the Earth’s atmosphere this afternoon. Naturally, this is leading a lot of folks to wonder if the two might be connected.READ MORE
by Jill Pantozzi | 5:44 pm, December 28th, 2012
I’m sort of on the fence about The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. I saw it in 3D and 48 fps and was not a fan of the new technology, so I’m waiting to see it in 2D and 24 fps before I decide whether or not I liked the film. Regardless, here’s an old version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic (entirely unlicensed of course) called “The Fairytale Journey of Mr. Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit.” It was made in 1984 and aired on aired on the Leningrad TV Channel. According to the Tolkien Gateway wiki, “This children’s film featured Zinovy Gerdt as ‘The Professor’ (a narrator stand-in for Tolkien), Mikhail Danilov as Bilbo, Anatoly Ravikovich as Thorin, Ivan Krasko as Gandalf and Igor Dmitriev as Gollum. Smaug and the Spiders were portrayed by puppets. Missing in this version are the Trolls, Elrond, Beorn and the Wood-elves. The Goblins are human-like with little makeup and portrayed by dancers from the Leningrad State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre (as were the inhabitants of Lake Town).”
by Susana Polo | 2:04 pm, November 14th, 2012
At least that’s what thousands of Australian students found out this week while taking a standardized test, all thanks to a little careless Google Image searching.READ MORE
by Kellie Foxx-Gonzalez | 5:41 pm, July 10th, 2012
Remember those awesome Russian grandmothers who qualified to perform at the European pop music contest Eurovision? They placed second, and it turns out their local government was so thrilled with their international success, it decided to build a new water pipeline, install streetlights, lay new gravel on the roads, and install high-speed Internet for the village’s only school. Awesome! Here’s a video of there Eurovision performance — I can only hope to be half as cool as these grannies when I get older.
by Jill Pantozzi | 5:45 pm, March 9th, 2012
We here at The Mary Sue hope you will take this video and make it your weekend anthem. These sx ladies are known as the Buranovskiye Babushki (translation: the Buranovo Grannies). They were the winners of the Russian National final and are on to represent their country in the competition this year in May. According to the BBC, “The lyrics to the song, which feature a mixture of English and Udmurt – a language related to Finnish – were written by the grandmothers.” PARTY FOR EVERYBODY!
(via Neatorama)READ MORE
by Susana Polo | 11:47 am, January 4th, 2012
The Russian winter has been a historical force, a fact of climate that rules from Napoleon to Hitler have underestimated to their great detriment, and undoubtedly a killer of millions.
Oh, but it also might have inspired Catherine the Great to make the roller coaster? Well then all is forgiven.READ MORE
by Jamie Frevele | 11:43 am, November 28th, 2011
Guys, guys: We have news about the ginger seal who was shunned by her pod! And it’s good news! After being captured on heartbreaking film by photographer Anatoly Strakhov, the abandoned baby seal — now named Nafanya, after a Soviet cartoon character, to whom she bears a slight resemblance — now has a comfy, nurturing home at the Akvatoria dolphinarium. And unsurprisingly, she is a big hit with the crowds! Awww, it makes you want to hug the Earth!READ MORE
by Jamie Frevele | 4:14 pm, October 31st, 2011
October 31 was to be the date when the world’s population hit the seven billion mark. So today, several countries are celebrating the births of several “seven billionth babies,” including the Philippines’ Danica Camacho, pictured above. But since it’s impossible to pinpoint exactly which baby is the official seven billionth citizen of the human race, symbolic celebrations are taking place around the globe. Feelings are certainly mixed on how everyone is taking this news. On one hand: the world’s population is so incredibly large, and many experts wonder if this kind of growth, should it continue, can be supported by the planet’s resources and the world economy. On the other hand: babies!READ MORE
by Jamie Frevele | 4:14 pm, September 16th, 2011
Okay, before you reach for the Kleenex because of the thought of that adorable baby seal being abandoned by all those other seals in the background, here is the good news: he has been adopted and is being cared for by a very nice person. There is no bad news, except for the mean seals, who are mean. Now that you have this information, it’s okay to imagine the Hulk theme music while viewing the picture above. (More pics and the whole story after the jump.)READ MORE
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Clarizen’s Avinoam Nowogrodski tells Business Management how real time enterprise can streamline communication and increase efficiency.
Many companies today view themselves as embracing the future by adopting modern business practices and technologies, however their processes and corporate cultures can expose them as seriously in need of a major introduction to the modern world of the real-time enterprise.
It used to be rather easy to pinpoint what defined a company. Companies had tangible products, a clear hierarchy and employees that you could supervise and communicate with in person. A company's intellectual property was the products they produced, and it was less important how they produced them and at what cost.
Globalization has forced companies to think differently and become more agile and dynamic. With the ability to speak the same language and use the same tools (such as Microsoft Word) and with the improved infrastructure of the internet as a solid platform for business execution, the new demands and expectations of global organizations have created new challenges and introduced great opportunities. A company can now differentiate itself by being more agile and responsive to change by being one step ahead of the game. The focus has shifted from what to how.
When companies were centralized and local, management styles tended towards a 'command and control' approach, where all decisions were centralized at the top and dictated down the command chain. There were lower expectations for real time responses and reactions because the infrastructure was simply not there to support it.
For companies to succeed in the new world of globalization and the culture of Web 2.0 immediacy, managers now understand that success can be achieved only through delegation, distribution and communication. Using tools available on the Cloud, access to real time information across the corporate landscape gives managers the ability to sense internal and external challenges and respond accurately, effectively and immediately.
A key factor in successfully managing globally distributed organizations today is the ability to delegate the ability to make decisions. We no longer have the luxury of passing the buck, and we don't have the time to refer decisions up the hierarchy and wait for responses. Truly agile companies have given their managers the authority to sense and respond to their own challenges. But responsible senior managers can only have the confidence to delegate if the right tools and infrastructure are in place to provide a real time, accurate and specific information about their organizational workings.
The next level of work place optimization and modernization is the ability to give a voice to each and every employee and to give them the tools they need to contribute, affect and react to the day to day challenges they encounter on the job. With the socialization of work management, end users now get a voice within the organization, now they become a unique and critical contributor to the work process. For the first time, the human need to communicate is being facilitated in the most relevant forum, in day-to-day work, where good and timely communications are a critical factor for success.
Now, for the first time, management can hear the voice of each and every employee in ways that are relevant and effective for critical business decisions. With the ability to make real-time decisions, workers are more involved, accountable and empowered to perform and deliver, making the whole organization more productive. With the emergence of enterprise ready Software as a Service (SaaS) tools on the Cloud, management now has access to information across the globe, across the hierarchy and across cultures giving them the ability to make the right decisions at the right time.
Avinoam Nowogrodski is a serial entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in founding and managing software companies. Avinoam brings insight and expertise to Clarizen's vision of bringing work management to every business. Avinoam successfully founded and managed several companies, the most recent of which, SmarTeam Corporation.
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OK, so I bought this book from SAM:
Teach yourself game programming in 24 hours.
So, does anyone have this book.
Ok I have some solid knowlegde of C/C++ now. However not of Win32 API that much. And that book just throws all that windows header at you. This code is hard to follow! does anyone else have this feeling ?? or am I the only Dumb one on this forum ?
Anyone knows what a good alternative, or a good internet tutorial, because I just want to learn the basic facts, how to work with simple 2d graphics, how to set screensettings, how to implement music, and such beginner things for games.
Oh yeah, and in which environment is it best to learn it? win32 api, console, MFC, or maybe c# ... what is it ?? uhaaaa.. sooooo confused I am .
HELP ME JODA!
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In 2008 I was ready to graduate as my high school valedictorian. The truth behind my undocumented status made it very difficult to dream about going to college. Catherine Chugranis, a high school teacher from Rockland County, made my dreams of obtaining a bachelor’s degree a reality. I had never met her before the days approaching my graduation. She looked for me in my classroom and asked me if I believed in God. Puzzled as anyone else would have been, I said “yes, I do.” I still remember the astonishment and ambiguity I felt when she said not to worry about paying for my education because God was taking care of it. Without asking for anything in return, she paid for the education I feared I would never afford.
Mrs. Chugranis is an extraordinary good-hearted woman. She has been a God’s blessing to many students in situations like mine. She has never asked for recognition or favors. She is my role model, someone who has taught me that selflessly caring and giving is a great way to change other’s lives and to impact society.
Yelky Perez graduated from Baruch College in 2012. Her activism on behalf of the New York State Dream Act is the subject of a MetroFocus report on undocumented students and college education.
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Expert Q & A Answers About HSV-1
I’ve always gotten cold sores on my lips and I have some now. When I give my boyfriend oral sex, can he get herpes from my cold sores? Is it bad to give him oral sex when I have cold sores, or are oral and genital herpes two different kinds of herpes?
I was exposed to herpes, got tested and found out that I’m negative for the virus. Should I get tested again to be sure I am not infected? In the meantime, can I still have sexual contact?
I’m a man with HSV-1 and HSV-2, and I am beginning relationships with women who also have HSV. Are there any devices for giving oral sex to women? I know condoms protect in the reverse scenario.
My girlfriend and I aren’t going to sleep together until we’re married...but she has had two previous partners, and I haven’t had any. What kinds of STD testing should we have before marriage to make sure we’re both healthy? I’ve heard that HIV might not show any physical effects for a long time, so this worries me.
Are researchers looking for a cure for herpes? If so, how long will people living with herpes need to wait before we see a cure? Do researchers need funds?
I am a male who has never had sex with a female, and about a year ago I had sexual activity with another male. Come to find out, I got genital herpes from it. I have never been tested or taken medication, but I’m pretty sure I’ve had about three herpes outbreaks. I am straight and all of my friends think that there is something wrong with me because I have not had sex yet (with a woman). But now I don’t want to take the risk of having sex with a woman and spreading the disease, especially because everyone knows I’m a virgin. Could I say I got herpes from oral sex? I have no clue what to do!
After performing oral sex on my girlfriend, I break out with cold sores around my mouth. Am I at risk for herpes?
The last time I had sexual contact with anyone was about 7 months ago. I've never had sexual intercourse; however, I have performed oral sex and had it performed on me (without a dental dam). I have developed a mild itch and redness on my labia majora and I noticed one or two hard, painless bumps on my labia minora. Do I have herpes?
My boyfriend and I have been seeing each other for about six months and we both have genital herpes from previous relationships. We're confused about the subject of oral sex and touching each other. We both want to give and receive, but we're worried about moving the virus to different parts of each other's bodies. Of course, there is always protection that can be used with oral sex, but both of us would really prefer just going natural.
I’m in college and I just started having sex with my girlfriend. My girlfriend is clean (and my other partners were either virgins or had STD tests). But after we have sex, I get red dots around the base of my penis. The dots disappear after a few days as long as we don’t have sex. At first I thought they were the result of a tight condom (often after sex I have a red ring around the base of my penis), but then a sore opened up where the red dot was. Could this be a sign of herpes? Is it possible to get herpes without having intercourse?
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I have a patient who I will call Antonia.
Antonia is in her early 70’s. She came to the United States from Guatemala many years ago, but never learned to speak much English. This doesn’t cause her much of a problem; her community is small and tightly-knit, so she doesn’t have much need to speak English in her home or her neighborhood. And she has a large family—children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren—who live close by.
Antonia is one of my favorite patients. We communicate in different languages, and taking care of her is a series of endless frustrations. But I love her contradictions.
She seems so little when she sits in the chair in my exam room, feet up on the bar supporting the chair’s legs, her body folded up around the purse clutched tightly in her lap. But when she talks, she shines; she is larger than life. We enjoy ourselves. I like her, and I like being her doctor.
Here is Antonia’s medication list:
Metformin 1000 mg: 1 tablet 2 times daily
Glyburide 5 mg: 1 tablet 2 times daily
For pain associated with neuropathy (a complication of her diabetes):
Gabapentin 300 mg: 1 tablet 3 times daily
For high blood pressure:
Hydrochlorothiazide 25 mg: 1 tablet 1 time daily
Benazepril 20 mg: 1 tablet 1 time daily
To protect from heart attacks:
Aspirin 81 mg: 1 tablet 1 time daily
For a recent bout of depression:
Escitalopram 10 mg: 1 tablet 1 time daily
Omeprazole 20 mg: 1 tablet daily
Os-cal 500mg: 1 tablet 2 times daily
For cough of unclear etiology (maybe asthma?):
Albuterol Inhaler: 2 puffs four times daily as needed for cough
Despite these ten medicines on her official list, Antonia’s blood pressure is often too high when she comes in to see me. Her blood sugar is way out of control. And she has had a cough now for many months. I don’t know why she has a cough, because she has not completed most of the tests I have ordered for her. All of this troubles me.
Without a doubt Antonia has limited health literacy. As an “expert” in health literacy, I know how to approach Antonia. So here is what I have done:
1. Recruit her family members to help with her care. Check. Her granddaughter now accompanies her to most of her appointments and (at least by report) checks in on her grandmother twice a day to make sure that she has taken her medications. The granddaughter is also my patient, however, so I happen to know that her granddaughter has many of the same challenges as Antonia….
2. Use the “teach back” method. Check, although with only mixed results. I usually get only smiles and expressions of deep appreciation for my care when I ask her to report back to me the changes I have made in her medication regimens. When her granddaughter accompanies her, however, I am a little more confident that she understands my instructions—at least for that moment.
3. Use aids to help her with her medicines. Check. She has a weekly medication box at home, which apparently her granddaughter fills, but they have never been able to bring the box in to show me.
4. Simplify her medication regimen. To some extent, I have done this. Her blood sugar was repeatedly dropping too low while she was on insulin, so I stopped the insulin completely. I also stopped her cholesterol medicine and one of her osteoporosis medicines because I decided they were not essential.
But now I am stuck. I know what I am supposed to do. I am supposed to start peeling off more medicines to find a simple regimen for her (one medicine? two medicines?) that gives her the biggest bang-for-the-buck. I advise the residents in our clinic this way all the time. But what does that mean for Antonia?
I can divide Antonia’s medicine into three categories: those that improve her quality of life (like her pain medicine and her depression medicine), those that may make her live longer (like her blood pressure medicines and her aspirin), and those for her diabetes (which at her age treat mostly symptoms associated with too-high blood sugar—urinary incontinence, poor wound healing, and possibly confusion).
So which medicines should I stop? You be the doctor. Stop the medicines that make her feel better, or the medicines that make her live longer?
Despite my years of studying health literacy, I don’t know the answer to this. I usually lean toward stopping the medicines that make her live longer, but why does Antonia not deserve the same high-quality care all my other patients get? Does she not deserve the mortality benefit of the aspirin because she has limited health literacy? Of course not.
So maybe I should stop the medicines that improve her quality of life instead? But then why am I her doctor if I am not able to make her more comfortable, to treat the aches and pains that she comes to see me for?
I know the answer, but it is not an easy one. The answer is neither of these options.
You see, like most patients in my clinic with limited health literacy, Antonia doesn’t only have limited health literacy. She also probably has some mild dementia; and some mild depression; and we do not speak the same language (Spanish, of course, but also the language in which she frames her health issues); and she only shows up for about one out of every four appointments I make for her. And even when she does show up for her appointments, I still only have 20 or 30 minutes to spend with her at best (and that’s if I resolve to skip lunch and make all my other patients wait). But even then she leaves my exam room, she goes home, and I don’t see her again for weeks or even months. And it is during those in-between times I need help.
So what is the answer? The answer is that I need solutions to Antonia’s problem that are bigger than me and my response to her limited health literacy. I need a nurse to go out to her house once a week to fill her medication box and spend the time to communicate with her in a way she understands. I need someone to call Antonia and her granddaughter the day before every appointment to remind them to come in—and to send a few bus tokens if they have run out of money. I need nutritious meals delivered warm to her apartment every day. I need someone to take a walk with her every afternoon because she is afraid of falling if she goes out alone. I need a mental health counselor to talk to her about her depression.
And yet, in Antonia’s case, I do not have these tools at my disposal.
We have to start thinking about health literacy in a broader framework. We cannot approach health literacy in isolation, because rarely do we encounter limited health literacy in isolation. We see limited health literacy in the context of poverty, or dementia, or limited English proficiency, or depression. So our clinical responses to health literacy must be similarly broad. I cannot solve Antonia’s problem on my own, plugging away in the exam room with her month after month and year after year.
So Antonia remains on her ten medicines. I cringe every time I see her medication list and berate myself for being a poor doctor. But really I have Antonia on these medicines because I think it is good medical care, and, if nothing else, this is what Antonia deserves.
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Instructables user cold_steel writes: [via]
This is probably one of the most used tools in my workshop, the “extra hands”. It is the ultimate tool for soldering and prying in the very small range. But over time I found that I do not have enough light on my work when using this tool. Actually all the benefits you would expect from having a magnifying glass for easy reach are over shadowed by the shadow cast by the rim. And honestly I haven’t managed to position my desk lamp in such a way that I was able to conveniently light my tiny work. So I decided it is time for some upgrades.
As usual you will find all G-code and other files included so you can reproduce this easy on your own CNC machine.
Ring Light for Helping Hands - [Link]
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Author Chintan Bharwada talks to us on how we can work with the data we receive from our customers to give them more of what they want and expect from you as a business.
The significance of data is that you can see behaviour change daily. If a trend emerges from analysis of your data, it is appropriate to review marketing strategy and assess the success or relevance of the plan under way. The data and the insight they provide become an extremely precious indicator of customer satisfaction. Data linked to loyalty programs becomes a rich source of market research. It is not what people say they do but what they actually do.
Naturally, market research still has a valuable role, it is still required to determine why customers have changed but its use has become even more focused. By analysing your loyalty program data, you can recognize which of your customers visit frequently (and spend a lot) which ones visit infrequently (but still spend a lot) and which are more erratic but still “profitable”. The loyalty program and market research data will allow you to look at the impact of competitors on customer behaviour. You know all the locations of your competitors and so are able to assess visit and spend behaviour in the light of proximity to named competitors.
As part of the customer analysis assignment, you should explore whether or not your loyalty program has any impact on repeat purchase or loyalty. By doing this you are hoping to see a relationship between loyalty card usage among those customers spending and visiting stores the most. In other words, you want to be convinced that your loyalty program is being used by, and rewarding, your best customers. In theory this analysis should demonstrate that your loyalty program customers tend to visit more and spend more than average customers. You can create these as your key segments. You should also analyse if your customers are most likely to be loyal when they are offered on specific campaigns.
With this new information, you can begin to tailor your approach to each of these customer segments. It is clear that simply the differences in their visit cycle have important implications for the business. If some customers only visit once or twice a year, you need to present your offering in a clear and attractive manner. Essentially you now have to be sure that defined groups of customers are attracted to and persuaded by the offers and propositions your sales and marketing team makes to them.
This requires continual development, and testing-customer profitability is the key. However, a greater depth of understanding is needed in reviewing seasonal trends, customer characteristics by offer type, the influence of catchment area composition and competitive markets.
Additionally you should undertake the challenge in establishing not only the demographic profiles of your customers, but also to achieve a precise measure of their attitudinal and motivational approach to your product and services. As you start developing this, the potential value of the database grows substantially and allows a further dimension to be added in seeking to understand and profitably satisfy our customer needs – and importantly your competitors’ customer needs.
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I think there's a lot of truth to that. Ayn Rand summarized the ideal of capitalism as "trading your best effort for the best effort of others." Too often, companies turn it into trading their most lucrative or expedient efforts rather than their best, which is not the same thing. I've seen a number of instances of it.
On 2002-10-08 16:28, Irishman wrote:
I'm reminded of an interesting observation I have discussed with others in the past, I think perhaps from Scott Adams (aka Dilbert's creator).
In engineering, first comes the idea man. He has an idea for widgets, and he's technically competent in designing the widgets, and he makes a company to make widgets. And he hires some good technical people to help make widgets. And they make good widgets, and the widgets sell, because they're good. Then after a while, the business is growing and competition in the widget business grows. Then the company gets accountants in to help make things efficient and keep the business healthy. And slowly the accountant types (and marketing types) take over, and become more interested in making money than making widgets. Till the company becomes a big bloated monster that doesn't care about the innovations from the technical folks because they interfere with the "way things are done" and the current widgets and marketing.
Is this off-topic enough? Surely we can provide an example, say, from the consumer telescope industry.
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.
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“It was so heavy, I thought it was a turtle, but it was swimming really fast,” she said. After a fight that left her sore, she landed the fish on the shore, where her grandfather, Robert Crabbe, was standing by.
“She thought she had a giant sunfish on the line,” he recalled on Wednesday. “I said, ‘Don’t touch it, honey.’ I got the pliers out and got the hook out. The kid’s finger could have been taken off.”
Kaitlyn, who had been using grubs for bait, said: “It was just flopping on the ground and everyone just stepped away from it. When it opened its mouth, you could see that it had a lot of sharp teeth, and could have easily bitten off a finger. I never saw a fish like that, so I had no clue what it was.”
Her catch, it turned out, was a 10-inch-long red-belly piranha, a species native to the Amazon and widely available in pet stores that Mr. Crabbe, 63, figured was dumped into the pond by a local pet owner. He kept Kaitlyn away from the fish as he removed the hook.
Mr. Crabbe, a retired systems analyst, told his granddaughter that even though they were catching and releasing other fish, hers was not a fish to return to the pond.
“My grandpa waited till it died and put it in a bag that we kept in the fridge and then took to the zoo,” Kaitlyn said. “You have dogs running into the pond and people canoeing in there, and if they put their hand in, they might take it out and not have a finger.”
Mr. Crabbe said he called 311 to try to reach a parks department official, but the operator forwarded the news to 911 and soon a police car pulled up.
The piranha weighed 2 pounds 3 ounces, said Mr. Crabbe, who suspected that piranhas might have something to do with a recent drop in the pond’s catfish population. The last time Kaitlyn fished the pond, she caught seven catfish in a row. Last week, she caught only one.
The Crabbes took the piranha to the Staten Island Zoo, where an official confirmed its identity and reported it to state conservation authorities.
“It was a big, fat, sassy fish,” Mr. Crabbe said. “My concern was that a lot of children go there to fish on their own without an adult and they wouldn’t recognize the species if they caught it, and when they were taking the hook out of its mouth, they’d get severely bitten.”
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Welcome to this week's installment of From Our Friends, our weekly roundup where we highlight some of our favorite posts from the past week and more from our friends and partners around the web. This week's edition includes articles on the super seed quinoa, making art with natural supplies, why walking is good exercise for women, tips for going green without breaking the bank, at-home kettlebell exercises and a vegan twist on classic brownies. Enjoy these, and have a wonderful weekend!
1. Quinoa, pronounced (KEEN-wah), is actually a seed that can be eaten like a grain. Although quinoa gained much popularity during recent years, it can still be a tricky food to try. Check out cooking tricks, recipes and more about the different types of quinoa from Experience Life!
2. Do you enjoy making art with your kids but dislike the heavy chemical scents from traiditonal art supplies? You're definitely not alone. Using supplies made from natural ingredients eliminates these ugly odors. Read more about paints and other supplies made from fruits, flowes and spices on MightyNest.
3. Results of a recent study show that just 35 minutes of walking each day can reduce the risks of some serious health problems for women. Lace up those walking shoes and read more about walking's benefits from Blisstree.
4. Going green doesn't have to mean spending a lot of green. Check out YogiTimes' simple and effective green tips that don't require spening much cash.
5. Making fitness part of your 2013 goals but don't have a gym membership? Try these 6 kettlebell exercises from The Organic Whey to help maximine your at-home routine!
6. Gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, vegan brownies? Is that even possible? You bet! EcoSalon's vegan brownie recipe is sure to yield tasty treats. Try these guilt-free brownies today!
You can follow Spencer on Twitter @SpencerKent
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Architect Jeanne Gang's new tower, Aqua, stands in the center of Chicago with an attention-grabbing facade that appears to undulate like a wave reaching for the sky rather than the shore. It's a nice surprise to find that the critics have largely avoided drawing overly simplified parallels between the curvy construction and 44-year-old Gang's gender, conspicuous in a field where women are few and far between. Aqua, in fact, is the tallest skyscraper designed by a woman -- and a fairly young one at that.
MSNBC host Chris Matthews stands on the National Mall the day before Barack Obama's presidential inauguration, Jan. 19, 2009.(Flickr/Adam Fagen)
After President Barack Obama's State of the Union address last week, Chris Matthews had an epiphany about the president: "I was trying to think about who he was tonight. It's interesting; he is post-racial, by all appearances. I forgot he was black tonight for an hour."
As soon as word began to spread last week that a vicious earthquake had destroyed much of Haiti, Facebook and Twitter lit up with altruistic updates. People encouraged those in their networks to leave clothing donations at local drop-spots, donate $10 with a simple text message, and make sure that Haiti did not "become another Katrina."
As the new decade dawns, plenty of institutions -- from gyms to retailers to churches -- will be trying to capitalize on the resolution spirit. The advertising copy promises: Now's the time to join, to run, to buy. Our usually frenetic pace slows, and we're all but bullied into reflection. We take a look at our waistlines and credit-card debt, and promise ourselves that this year, no seriously, this year will be different.
The United for Peace and Justice Anti-War protest in Washington, D.C., Sept. 24, 2005. (Flickr/Danny Hammontree)
As this decade comes to an end, so do my 20s. For me and many of my generation, the past ten years have marked a series of experiments -- sometimes misguided -- in living ethically. The question was (and is): What does an ethical life look like in an era of terrorism, reality television, vast wealth disparity, and the Internet?
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Build Your Business Drop to LL.com Full View
Worker's Comp Resources
- Find Workers Compensation Lawyers, Worker Comp Attorney Finder
- How To Preserve Evidence In A Workers Compensation Case
- Will A Workers Compensation Case Affect My Future Employment
- Workers Compensation - The Basics
- What Should I Bring To A First Meeting With A Workers Compensation Attorney
- What Should I Do, If I Suspect My Employee Of Workers Compensation Fraud
- More Worker's Comp Articles
The Legal Recourses For Being Discriminated Against Because You Reported a Workplace Injury
You reported a workplace injury and now, you feel like you are being discriminated against at work because of your report; this is an example of workplace harassment, and workplace harassment is a form of discrimination, which violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and several other workplace discrimination laws.
Elements of Harassment
According to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a claim of harassment must meet the following cited conditions:
- The complaining party must be a member of a statutorily protected class;
- S/he was subjected to unwelcome verbal or physical conduct related to his or her membership in that protected class;
- The unwelcome conduct complained of was based on his or her membership in that protected class; The unwelcome conduct affected a term or condition of employment and/or had the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with his or her work performance and/or creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment.
Statutorily protected classes include race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, or retaliation. If you feel that your situation meets the above guidelines, you could have legal recourse.
What are My Options?
There are options to recourse that depend upon the specifics of your situation. For extensive legal counsel, please contact a labor lawyer in your local area.
- One of your options may be filing a civil lawsuit. In this situation, you would be suing the company for retaliation.
- Depending on your situation, you might sue for wrongful dismissal if you were fired.
- You may file for "breach of fiduciary obligation" if they pressured you or otherwise took advantage of your trust.
- Then, there is a possibility of "vicarious liability," which is where discrimination occurred from a co-worker or manager; your employer might still be liable in this case.
A civil suit is one that has no legal ramifications, and it is usually done for financial reasons and seeks financial damages.
If you were hurt at work and reported it, but you now feel you are being discriminated against because of your report, it is advisable that you consult with an attorney immediately to discuss your options. Such cases can become complicated and should be handled by an experienced professional.
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The Rings of Orbis is a FREE online Science Fiction Game created by Author Philip-Jon Haarsma – now known as PJ Haarsma - and his team to accompany his best selling series of books The Softwire series. Books and gaming together are a fabulous formula to encourage and children to read! How better to spark an interest in reading, that when you play game that is so interesting you have to find out more.
I’ve been looking The Rings of Orbis and now even I want to read the books so I can get a full background to the game, and to find out more clues to help with the game – but I am a big kid!
I am a super fan of this idea, probably as reading is so important and as a gamer but also because my own son, had a similar idea, he has written a book and planned a series, got some designs for a game, drawings and ideas and he started all this when he was around 12 years old when he was inspired by another series of books – he has always loved to read and has a wild imagination. He is now at university studying computer games development.
Not only is PJ trying to reward children for reading by way of the game, In 2007 PJ founded the non profit organisation Kids Need to Read along with his mate and fellow Canadian Nathan Fillion (big fan) from the TV series Castle to help all children to be able to have access to the books they need, through funding schools, library’s and other institutions that often supply free books to children.
”It is our dream to fill library shelves with great books so that no child lacks for amazing stories to inspire their imaginations.” PJ Haarsma.
Just to get a taster you can actually listen to Nathan Fillion read the first three chapters of The Softwire – what a treat!! I heard a rumor that Nathan might be making a set of audio books for the series, I really hope so.
Is a free online web browser game developed and published by Automatic Games with some amazing artwork. You don’t need anything special to be able to play the game and there are no hidden charges at all. You can buy certain things for upgrades and to speed things on but you do not need to.
This Virtual adventure takes place with many aliens in an area of space with four planet-like rings that stabilise a busy wormhole.
How to play the Rings of Orbis
You beginm the game by becoming a Citizen of the virtual Alien Society and then you start then to build your empire.
Choose which Alien Race to be from these five exciting playable races…
- THE BELARANS: An unyielding race who believe that the universe, and everything in it, is theirs for the taking.
- THE TREFALDOORS: A race known for their bizarre appearance and undying commitment to the truth.
- THE CHOI: Blessed with the innate ability to navigate the cosmos, this race also boasts powerhouse negotiation skills.
- THE SOLINN: A race marked by empath-level intuition and an unparalleled ability to fight to death.
- THE SESSII: Although cultured and elegant, this race is second to none in ruthlessness.
- THE ENTHANS: Hard workers that are quick to anger if they see behavior they consider unfair or dishonorable.
The purpose of the game is to be the most powerful Citizen in The Rings of Orbis, to do this you need to earn “Chits” which is the currency of the game – and by leveling up all of your abilities.
See more on the website – Gameplay
What are Knudniks
There are Aliens called Knudniks not your virtual pet but your virtual alien, you get given one and then you can buy more by bidding on them in the game. These creatures are your irresponsibility, you have to feed them, rest them, and work them, when they work they earn you money – Chits – but you also have to raise their abilities to do better jobs.
You get to build your own spaceship, (even fleet) which when you customise allows enhanced abilities and also this means that you can leave “the rings” and venture out to the outer planets for adventures and quests. Not only that you can post your spaceship creation into the gallery to win weekly prizes.
On The Rings of Orbis game, is HUGE, there are missions full of danger and enemies to defeat, quests to conquer, there is so much to do, if you are a gamer and/or like sci fi – you will have to just go and look for yourself, you won’t be disappointed you did.
Join me here - Shundrie
Find out what your Alien race is here – Which Alien Are You
Hope this helps
Must go and feed my Knudniks
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What Is StoryADay?
A month-long short-story challenge in which writers write (finish) a short story every day In May.
StoryADay.org is the online hub for writers taking part in the challenge: part blog, part writers’ community, all designed to help you write everyday, not “some day”.
- What Are The Rules? | Do I Have To Create A Username Here? | Do I Have To Post My Stories Online? | Do I Have To Write 31 Stories? | Does It Have To Be Fiction? | Do I Have To Finish What I Start? | If I Miss A Day, Have I Failed?
How Do I Sign Up?
Just make the commitment and start writing on May 1.
To hear all the news as we gear up for the next challenge, add yourself to the Advance Notice List and be one of the first people to hear when the site is open for sign-ups each year (you’ll also get a free copy of the exclusive Creativity Challenge Workbook when you do).
Story A Day May
- Write (finish) a story every day in May.
- Stories may be any length (50 words? 5,000?) but they must be stories (they must take us or the characters somewhere).
- Stories may be fiction or non-fiction (but if you’re already blogging in non-fiction or keeping a journal, consider trying fiction)
- You get to decide what “every day” means. If you need to take Sundays off, go for it. You make your own rules, but you are encouraged to set them up early, and stick to them!
- Sign up as part of the community here. Or don’t. But please do get a username and join in the groups and comments.
- You can post your story at your site or here or you can simply post an update in the Victory Dance Group saying that you completed that day’s story.
No, you can participate in Story A Day on your own terms. You don’t have to ‘join’ as such. If you want to hang out with the community here, and post messages, then you’ll need a username. If you don’t, just write and be free! You can always come and post comments on the main StoryADay blog post to let us know how you’re getting on, and link to your stories.
Absolutely not. One of the motivations behind StoryADayMay was to take the emphasis off writing-for-publication and encourage people to pursue quantity, not quality. Too often we get caught up in whether what we are writing is any good, and it gets us stuck. StoryADayMay gives you permission to write quick and dirty prose, to get out a bunch of first drafts.
[NOTE: some publications consider a story 'published' even if it has appeared in a different form on a blog. If you think you might want to submit your stories to publications, you may wish to keep them under wraps for now. Password protect your blog entries, post excerpts or summaries, keep silent, whatever you need to do.]
If you’re happy enough with what you’ve written to post it online, go ahead. If the thought of an audience is slowing you down, then by all means keep your stories private. You can polish them up, rewrite them, laugh at them or abandon them just as you please, next month.
You can still use your StoryADay blog/status updates/comments to chart you progress, moan, celebrate, or procrastinate. Up to you.
No. You should decide before you start if your StoryADay rules include weekends, or if you’re going to need Wednesdays off. Me? I’m going to try to write 31 stories, because I think that’s the challenge I need. But I encourage you to make your own rules and then try really hard to stick to them.
A story is a story. If you want to write autobiographical stories, or stories from your grandparents or creative non-fiction, go ahead. If you’re already posting non-fiction pieces on your own blog, or if you write a personal journal, I’d encourage you to break out and try a few fiction pieces this month. Take a story that could be autobiographical and turn it into fiction. Just for fun. Just to try something different. But no, you don’t have to.
Yes. Sorry, this is where I get strict. Yes, you should finish your stories and you should finish a story every day.
I’ve read a lot of interviews with and books by successful writers (I’ve even interviewed a few myself). You would be amazed at how many of them say “Finish what you start”. It is really easy to get bogged down or lose the plot around the midpoint of a story. By forcing yourself to carry on and find the end, you are learning to craft a story. If you don’t finish the story, you’re just writing fragments, not stories. You’re capturing ideas, you’re not crafting a tale.
Finish your stories.
If you miss a day or don’t finish a story, move on. You still have every other day of the month (of your life) which is a new day, on which a new story can be told.
Don’t go back and try to finish yesterday’s story. Leave it. Wash your hands of it. Move on.
As long as you keep writing, you’re not failing.
How Do I Sign Up?
Once you are on the Advance Notice List, you will receive an email telling you when sign-ups open. Follow that link to set up a username. You’ll get an account at StoryADay.org that will allow you to join groups and post in their forums, befriend other people and leave comments on blogs and different areas of the site.
You don’t have to use the StoryADay.org site to write a story a day, of course. Feel free to do your individual challenge at your own site.
I’ve Signed Up, Now What?
If you have a username, and are logged in, the black bar at the top of your browser is really helpful for taking you around the site. In the “My Account” drop-down menu you can view activity around the site, filtered various ways (by friends, by groups, by favorite).
You will also find tabs under the Story A Day banner, that take you to various areas of the site.
Good places to start are “About“, which tells you about the project, “Activity, which shows you what everyone else has been up to. You might also want to check out “Groups” to find like-minded writers, and the “Resources” page, for inspiration and tools.
When the challenge starts, you’ll probably want to go straight to the “Groups” area to hang out with people you’ve met.
You will be able to send private messages to other people, by clicking on their picture and going to their profile.
Everyone should join the Victory Dance group and post there when you finish your story for the day. If you do not have a username, you can post your “Woo-hoo!” in the comments of today’s blog post.
To show off your bold participation in StoryADay May, grab a participant badge for your blog (other online home). Post it with pride.
If you would like
It’s where you can post a message that will appear on the main Activity page. It’s a way you can tell everyone what you’re thinking, or ask everyone a question. You can link to things by simply pasting a URL in there, or you can use HTML ‘a’ tags if you like.
If you have a StoryADay.org blog, you can log in and then use the black navigation bar at the top of the screen. Click “My Blogs > Blog Name > New Post”.
Some People Seem To Have StoryADay.org/username Blogs. Can I Get A Blog?
It was a perk for people who took part in the first three challenges. On hiatus now. May become available again some day.
StoryFest is a chance for us to promote each other’s stories to the wider world by linking to them from Twitter, Facebook, blogs and anywhere else we can post. It takes place over one weekend only, in order to create some urgency, for people to come by and visit now, and not put it off. (The blogs, however, will be on StoryADay forever, as much as ‘forever’ exists)
Social Media Starters
Whether you’re posting in a blog, on Twitter, on Facebook or any of those other sharing sites out there, feel free to take any of these starter suggestions or make up your own. Customize them to link to your stories, other people’s stories or just the front of the storyaday.org site. Go wild!
#StoryFest: a celebration of the short story. This weekend, [DATES]. No admission fee: http://storyaday.org
[customize this next one for the genre and link to a specific story]
Need a little romance/mystery/time-travel/humor/suspense/sci-fi in your life? Try a short story today: [URL] #StoryFest
Short Stories: bit-sized brain food. Fine one that’s to your taste during #StoryFest: http://storyaday.org
Broaden your horizons with a day trip into someone-else’s world. Read a start story during #StoryFest: http://storyaday.org
Travel the world for free: Read a short story set in [insert location]: [link to specific story] #StoryFest
Ever wanted to time travel? Read a short story [link to a story set not in present day] #StoryFest
I had what I hope is a cute idea: how about posting links to your story as if it were a Personals Ad?
For my story “Broken Toys”, about an adulterous husband, I could use:
“Married man seeks discreet female friends for casual fun” Will he get away with it? http://bit.ly/a4qdGs #storyfest #PlotAsPersonalAd
Other stories might read like this:
“Warrior Princess seeks fortune and glory.” Will she find them? http://bit.ly/a8KI3x #storyfest #PlotAsPersonalAd
What could you come up with for your stories?
If you have provided personal details such as your name and email, admins of StoryADay may use them to contact you. They will not be shared with anyone else (unless there is a legal imperative).
Site-wide notices will reach you when you log in to StoryADay.org, and are routed through your StoryADay username and account.
You may unsubscribe from the mailing list (powered by Mailchimp) by clicking on the unsubscribe links at the bottom of every mailing.
If you have subscribed to feeds (such as the Daily Prompt) you will find unsubscribe links in those mailings.
If you wish to password protect your entries, the site admins (currently just me) may still be able to access them. It is StoryADay.org policy to access your site only to help you with a technical issue, if requested to do so. I will NOT be poking around on the back end of your site uninvited.
StoryADay.org will never sell, rent or give your personal details to any organization — beyond storing them on a third-party database such as that of the webhost (Bluehost), mailing list company (Mailchimp), and Feedburner (e.g. if you sign up for prompts by email).
If you think this policy is missing something or if you are worried, please contact editor at storyaday dot org.
You retain all rights to your work.
What happens at StoryADay.org, stays at StoryADay.org.
If you are a nasty spambot, using your StoryADay username and/or site for anything other than writing-related goodness, your site may be deleted without notice. Sorry. This judgement is made by the admins of StoryADay.
If you are a real person who is concerned that you’re writing something that might get you deleted: you’re not. Any hint of humanity/that you’re using your site properly most of the time, and I’ll contact you before taking any action.
The Last Word
Please, please, please, back up your work. I do attempt to back up the StoryADay site, but you should keep copies of all your work somewhere else. Do not rely on me. (I’m serious about this.)
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I became interested in the ‘Peter Pan Syndrome’ many years ago and was prompted to rediscover my fascination with it somewhat recently.
In short, it says this:
“The psychological phenomenon of immaturity among men and women, who, like the fictional character, remain childish and fail to assume appropriate adult social roles and responsibilities”
While I both appreciate and understand that there exist extreme cases within which this pattern of cognition and applied behavior is damaging and prohibitive to the pursuit of a successful life, I can’t help but ask the question…
If the diagnosis for such a disorder is based on comparative societal norms, who exactly is claiming the omniscient capacity to determine that the communal standard of ‘appropriate adult responsibility’ as we’ve come to accept it, is actually right?
I could take the argument that with his panache for child-like play and irregularly designed sleeping habits, Albert Einstein very much fits into this definition and could certain run the risk of being diagnosed as such in our current culture with its seemingly urgent need to classify and medicate those who present as ‘atypical’.
So to could Walt Disney with his immense, unnatural imagination.
Arnold Schwarzenegger with his robust, yet irrational declarations of greatness.
Or Maya Angelou with her stalwart viewpoint on maturity versus aging.
But my objective is not to dip into that particular slant of this discussion; rather, I intend to simply say this…
Guard well against those biased and discriminatory opinions that stem from the narrow-scoped sightline of what you are ‘supposed’ to be.
What you are supposed to do.
How you are supposed to behave.
When you are supposed to achieve or obtain certain things.
The standards or norm need not apply to you if you opt not to adhere by the principle of conformity.
Freethinking Renegade = Be You.
The Secret of Me Being Me >>> www.TheAudacityofSuccess.com
As always, I would love to engage in conversation. Please scroll down and leave your comments below…
Ignore the Rules; Inspire the Extraordinary Within
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Reply to Message
I load MBAM on all my clients' computers, too, and it is the first thing I run when they report "weird things" happening. I haven't had it loaded at startup, however, believing that multiple anti-malware programs would be likely to be in conflict. That brings me to MY conflict: Matthew seems to be distinguishing "virus" from "malware," and several of the comments seem to indicate that others are confused as well. Ever since the term "malware" came into use, I have thought of it as a handy generic term that included viruses, trojans, key-stroke loggers, phishing, drive-by insertions, and any other generally malicious 'ware, whatever the source. Actually, I've found it very handy because I can use the one collective term to explain the need for Anti-Malware programs to my customers. Meanwhile, back in the commercial world, programs like Norton lump viruses, trojans, spyware, adware, rootkits, etc. (all of which are malicious, in my book) into the definition of "anti-virus." So, while it is nice to know that MBAM can coexist with some of the other anti-virus programs, I use it to find viruses, trojans, and any other malware that the other programs miss, which it does do. So, to have what MBAM does distinguished from what anti-virus programs do is a bit confusing. Am I missing something?
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The one who changes everything (John 4:19-42)
19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
27 Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” 28 So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” 30 They went out of the town and were coming to him.
31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. 36 Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
39 Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.” (ESV)
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“They just think that you might have a problem with drugs or alcohol,” a friend explained, “They don’t want to hire someone with that sort of problem.” So, employment gaps carry a negative stigma even though people have a wide variety of reasons for taking a few years off here and there. Due to the recession, potential employers have become more understanding as more people have them now, so I hear. However, well-meaning friends and relatives will urge you to cover them up with some story if you don’t already have a conventionally acceptable excuse to take a break. You can also gauge how much of a concern employment gaps are to those that have them by conducting an Internet search on how to explain them.
One thing I’ve noticed about myself is that the older I become, the harder it is for others to (1) scare me about the consequences of diverging from the conventional life-path and (2) convince me that so-called “mistakes” are embarrassing. Yep, I’m not embarrassed about my own employment gaps and I’m going to explain why as well as make a case for changing how we think about this issue. Must the acquisition of skills and experience be observed by an employer in order to count?
Rethinking the View on Employment Gaps
Odds are, during an employment gap, you were doing more than just eating, sleeping, and eliminating. Why shouldn’t the experiences and skills acquired informally from classes, other people, self-employment, or learning on your own count? If you enjoy learning on your own as much as I do, you’ll find that it’s even pretty easy to learn the basics of using new software programs by tapping into the various tutorials available on the Internet. Search engines are your friends. Search, “how to use [name of program]” or “tutorials for [name of program]” and you’ll see.
Also, let’s face it. There are times when you learn more during an employment gap than you learn performing the same tasks and fulfilling the same duties over and over again in an employment situation (until someone finally notices and grants you additional responsibilities). That’s why some of us experience workplace boredom.
Furthermore, at least in my geographic region specifically (California), previous employers don’t give a lot of information about you in order to guard against lawsuits. I’ve received this human resources policy memo within organizations as an employee and as someone who has called employers for reference checks on job applicants. The prevailing policy is that employers stick to confirming (1) that you were an employee and (2) the dates and time you were employed there. So, at least over here, accessible information has become more superficial.
Rethinking the View on Choices and Responsibility
The adage, “With freedom comes great responsibility” is so true! Living without a steady paycheck greatly tests your ability to be financially responsible, and some people do just fine. When I look back on my life-path, I can see why it’s diverged with respect to those who either like or are compelled by circumstance (e.g., having dependents, a mortgage, or student loan, etc.) to buy things all the time. Our priorities are different. I have loved ones who love shopping, and I’m not passing judgment on them. We’re just “wired” differently and this extends to the differing need and value we place on continuous employment.
I’ve met women who’ve bought several hundred pairs of expensive shoes. When I see something like this, I always try to calculate how much free time this can buy. This has been my mentality ever since I was a young girl, and the reason why I almost always came home from the mall empty-handed. My iron-fisted saving habit carried over into adulthood and eventually earned some good-natured ribbing from peers during college for being so against carrying a credit card balance! I was no fun to shop with as I was always thinking about the free time that the money could buy.
However, the unspoken rule seems to be that you can spend your hard earned money on anything you want but funding your own “sabbaticals” will raise eyebrows (even if you spent that time developing yourself). By the way, I’m definitely not rich. I’m just a severe penny-pincher. Ultimately, when friends or family express concern with my choice, a couple of questions come to mind: Isn’t buying my own free time a legitimate purchase? Why do I have to make excuses for this?
A Call for Objectivity
In Why Managing Sucks and How to Fix It, Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson made a case for competency-based education. This would allow students to earn credits by demonstrating mastery of skills and knowledge rather than forcing students to “do time” in a uniform manner. People vary according to the amount of time and repetition they need to master various skills. By focusing on results, students can learn at their own pace while not compelling other students to take the same amount of time. This takes the focus off how, when (including time duration), and where students acquired skills and knowledge.
This competency-based system can be extended to hiring for jobs where skills can similarly be demonstrated. Emphasis on testing for skills, abilities, and knowledge or requiring presentation of a portfolio would lend objectivity to assessing whether or not someone who appears short on number of years of work experience can perform the work or not. My call for objectivity isn’t intended to “ding” the people who have been continuously employed without a break. However, it makes sense to put some emphasis on comparing people’s performance regardless of differences in employment history timelines.
Thankfully, there are employers who will check out job applicants with employment gaps if everything else looks good. Ok, so they’ll want to confirm that I don’t have a drug or alcohol problem. There are others out there who still avoid candidates with gaps altogether however. I just tell myself that it would be hard to work for someone who’s not going to be open-minded anyway.
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|Advertising|Jobs 転職|Shukan ST|JT Weekly|Book Club|JT Women|Study in Japan|Times Coupon|Subscribe 新聞購読申込|
|Home > News|
Monday, Feb. 3, 2003
Beware of the risks of inflation targeting
By NORIKO HAMA
America borrows to keep growing. China grows to keep standing still. And Japan stands still to keep from falling apart.
America needs to import goods from abroad to satisfy the ever insatiable appetite of its consumers, its companies, and increasingly, its military. To pay for those imports, it needs to keep borrowing from abroad.
At 7 percent or more, Chinese economic growth is the envy of the world. Yet that growth is a necessary prerequisite for absorbing all the disparities and the divides that exist within that very large economy.
We each have our own problems of survival. But Japan's is the trickiest of all.
For we have driven ourselves into a corner where each move in whatever direction causes the cracks in the system to deepen and to widen. Go for structural reform, and a lot of people become unemployed. Resort to monetary easing, and pensioners' incomes suffer. Attempt more fiscal stimulus and what suffers is the value of Japanese yen-denominated assets.
One of the would-be solutions that is getting a lot of attention in this paralytic situation is inflation targeting. This device, designed to get inflation under control, is being advocated as a means of resolving deflation.
It has to be said that under the current circumstances, really anything might be worth a try. Yet there is such a thing as asymmetry in economic cause and effect. What works one way is not guaranteed to work in the other direction.
Even in the unlikely event that the targeted rate of inflation does indeed materialize, or more precisely, even if such inflationary expectations actually take hold of people under inflation targeting, it is difficult to see this stimulating consumers into spending and companies into investing in Japan's current environment.
Inflation over and on top of all the uncertainties and financial complications that people face currently is, if anything, likely to frighten the public into an even tighter hold on their purse strings.
It might be another matter if the Japanese economy was not such a mature and saturated one. Two percent inflation tomorrow is not going to make households that already have a car and a mobile phone for every one in the family to rush to buy yet another one of those pieces of machinery today.
Moreover, pumping money into the economy in order to nudge spending out of deep-freeze is an attempt that has been going on for ages here.
Targeting a specific rate of inflation makes no difference in this respect. For it to make a difference, a change has to occur in the way that money is pumped into the economy. In other words, the Bank of Japan will not only have to force more cash on private-sector banks and buy more Japanese government bonds, but it will have to invest in other riskier assets as well.
In the end, it is not likely to be the targeted rate of inflation that matters, but the amount of money that goes into the direct buying of risk assets by the BOJ. If that be the case, what all of this amounts to is a massive spending operation by the BOJ to do what the government is unable to do because of its outstanding debt obligations.
The Bank of Japan in this context begins to look increasingly like Antonio of Merchant of Venice fame, who undertakes to risk his fortunes for the adventurism of his amorous friend.
For a central bank to stick its neck out thus far runs totally counter to its obligation to uphold the value of the money that it prints. This is not the kind of self-sacrifice we expect of central banks if they mean to be true friends of the public.
Noriko Hama is an economist and a professor at Doshisha University School of Management.
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While SilverStone has long been revered for their range of uniquely high-end computer enclosures like the Fortress FT02, Temjin TJ10, and Sugo SG04 all with original designs, occasionally they have dabbled with other products outside of their computer enclosure and power supply expertise. We previously have reviewed such products like the SilverStone Raven mouse and an RFID-secured SSD/HDD enclosure, but their newest peripheral in this area is by far the most unique product that we have encountered from SilverStone. The SST-HDDBOOST product allows you to connect a solid-state drive and a traditional hard-drive via their custom PCB to experience the benefits of both types of storage.
I will not go into many details, since the FAQ on silverstone site has most explanations.
Baseline is that the HDDBoost serve to speed-up a rather slow, high capacity hard disk, with the help of a cheap and small SSD.
To achieve the speedup the SSD is used as a cache for the HDD and the HDD itself is used for writing and for fetching cache misses.
Caching is done in a rather dumb way. The device barely mirrors the first part of the HDD onto the SDD.
Consequently all of the burden is laid onto the user who is responsible for maintaining the disk layout appropriately.
It is indeed a cheap hack meant to breathe a bit more livelihood into an otherwise not-so-snappy hard disk.
It is not a booster for already fast devices as the Phoronix review implied. In fact the device can (and will) act as a bottleneck in such environments.
But let me tell you that under ideal conditions it may indeed give some much needed speed-up and by that I mean that it can improve reads over the HDD alone, by reading cached data from the SSD (which is usually faster than the hdd), and it can also "improve" on the "quality of writes" by writing data to the HDD alone vs also to the SSD, which is deemed to potentially be faster and should also save the user from the limits and hassles of the el'cheapo SSD.
For windows this may indeed provide perceptible improvements, but for linux it can't work well.
They provide no utilities for linux and Linux has no "defrag" Tools, so say hallo to moving data to the cached zone (aka the front of the disk).
Ultimately Phoronix is right. This device is mostly useless on linux. But for completely different reasons.
blaming Phoronix to not get the idea of this device is stupid, because itīs a shit idea. It mainly combinies the disadvantages of both world. you have to pay much money for a ssd (even if its a cheap ssd you have to buy harddisk, this device and a ssd) you gain no more file-safety, maybe it gets even worse.
It is maybe an small performance advantage in some rare cases with one of the many filesystems on one operating system with 1 of 100 harddrives which is really slow, but so itīs a very special device who is not for normal consumers because they cannot check if the hardware they use will gain some speed from it.
My advice buy a Harddisk and a SSD invest the 50 bucks for this device in a bigger ssd, install the operating system(s) and the programm on the ssd the big stuff (games, mp3s, movies...) on the hd and use the advantages of both worlds and use the devices where they are best at.
I think Michael did a good review this time. The performance penalties are real and they must be pointed out. This is a piece of hardware where PTS works well, although some added real-life measures (boot time, open office startup time etc) wouldn't hurt.
If the device has to be used in very specific ways to gain performance, and if michael (with above average technical knowledge) cannot figure it out, how is the average end-user expected to profit from this thing?
I agree that the product might not be that interesting for Linux (see end of my post), but...
I think the test is basically unfair, what's the point of using such a device for postgresSQL or AIO Write. The main advantage of the product seems to be reduced boot times (as your system filesystem will be on the SSD).
anyway, one could install / on the ssd have /var on the hard disk /tmp as tmpfs.
I WOULD NEVER-EVER BUY THIS DEVICE FOR MYSELF
TO ME IT IS WORTHLESS, IN FACT I EVEN CONSIDER
IT A DUMB IMPLEMENTATION OF A DUBIOUS IDEA
STILL I THINK IT DESERVES TU BE JUDGED FOR WHAT IT IS
***NOT*** FOR SOMETHING ELSE
you are completely RIGHT!
No one is blaming phoronics. Still the review was tainted by misunderstandings.
The device may indeed be crap, but this assumption does not necessarily call for a wrong review.
PLUS, this device **CAN** be useful to someone and if tested right, it may show! Thus helping those few (windows users) in their choices.
@rohcQaH and the others.
The reviewer did not get it right because he did not RTFM.
The device does what its documentation says, not what you wish in your wildest dreams.
You just read the website and you'll see that the scope of the device is LIMITED, MODEST:
1) make a ***slow*** HDD "faster" by caching part of
it on a ***CHEAP*** or old model ssd.
BUT IT MUST BE A SLOW HDD TO START WITH.
Do NOT even bother with fast HDDs or high quality fast SSDs
IT IS NOT ITS PURPOSE AND IT WILL ***SLOW*** THEM DOWN
2) It tries to "protect" the CHEAP SSD from write wear.
So writes go only to the HDD
(THIS IS USEFUL ONLY IF THE SSD IS *EXTREMELY* *CHEAP* or *OLD*.
Good modern SSDs can withstand enough write cycles to last as
much as hard disks and they are FAST even in writing)
3) IT NEEDS TO MAKE A MIRROR BEFORE IT ACTUALLY DOES ANYTHING.
THE *FIRST* SYNC STARTS AT BOOT AND IT MAY TAKE **HOURS**.
YOU NEED TO ALLOW IT TO COMPLETE ***BEFORE*** YOU CAN GET
ANY ADVANTAGE AT ALL - ACTUALLY YOU HAVE A MUCH SLOWER
SYSTEM IN THE MEANTIME
YOU CAN CONTROL AND FORCE MIRRORING ONLY UNDER WINDOWS
NO TOOLS FOR LINUX
4) AS I SAID, IT MAY **WORK** WITH LINUX, BUT THERE, IT IS
MOSTLY USELESS, BECAUSE OF HOW EXT2/3/4 WORK.
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http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?23351-SilverStone-HDDBOOST&p=123841
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@11 months ago with 10 notes
#eric owen moss #architecture #drawings
Fun House - Eric Owen Moss
An existing house sits in the midst of a 27 acre site in an affluent section of the San Fernando Valley, 60 miles north-west of Los Angeles, this 6,000 square foot house, servants quarters, and pool could be described as a Southern California developer rendition of French Regency/French Provincial.
The owner, a somewhat eccentric Los Angeles plastic surgeon, had several specific requirements for a second “house” on the site.
He wanted to build a “fun House” (his term), an “object” as he put it, for his two teenage children, a boy of 16 and a girl of 14. The site is to be the “sawed-off” top of a nearby hill with access from an existing dirt road.
The program for the fun house was both precise and amorphous. The doctor wanted a “thing,” he wanted humor, he wanted a space where his daughter could paint and hang her paintings, places for the children (and adults on occasion) to gather informally and formally, places for the children and a few friends to sleep, a small kitchen, small banquet and assembly facilities (music recitals, poetry readings in which the doctor would also participate). The doctor wanted to exploit the views from the hill to the surrounding hills, grasslands, and horse ranches. He also wanted some imageable reference in the building to the fact that he is the collector of approximately 80 (that’s right) dogs that walk the site with him each day.
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I have always been fascinated by "animation hair". (meaning hair styles in animated cartoons from 1980 and likely into the next couple centuries) You probably have too. If you ever met anyone in real life who had animation hair, your first instinct would be to beat the crap out of him.
Characters in these modern animations do not have natural instincts though. They just magically accept the galling hairstyles - and sideways nipples.For a few years in the 1980s teenage suburban boys who hung out at the Galleria actually had a form of animation hair - hair that was half shaved and half long. I used to call it the "2 Barber Style" - as if 2 barbers had fought over what kind of hair style would look best on you and ended up compromising.
The style didn't last long in the real world (probably because of the instinct mentioned above) but it has been reverently preserved in animated features (animated features are a veritable museum of archaic and mummified atrocities). Someone in charge of how to raise your kids believes that regular folks would want to hang out with people who have this hair.
Girls have their own forms of animation hair too. This one above has "Furry Hair" - which is actually not hair at all, but a character from Disney's Robin Hood curled up asleep on top of her head.
Here's a fine example of animation hair below. It's so wacky I can't even find words to describe it.What if your Dad came home one night with this hair style?
As everyone knows, Shemp was the pillar of hipness and animation executives have always liked his hair sense. A lot of them even wore the Shemp cut themselves. Shemp lives on to this day in animated features.To offset the Shemp hair style, some animation executives have devised the "Too far away nose".I had dinner one night with a Disney TV executive to discuss some show ideas. I had trouble concentrating because he had Shemp hair, and it was flopping around in front of his face and flinging his soup at me. One thing he said did sink in though. We were talking about how we got into animation. He said: "You're lucky John. You've always known what you wanted to do and you have the talent for it. Me, I have no talent and I wandered around aimlessly from job to job for years until, by accident I just sort of fell into a job as assistant to a rich guy who had just bought Harvey Comics. He made a deal later to make some cartoons and lo and behold, we were in the cartoon business! So I just fell into it and here we are! But I don't really know anything about cartoons, myself."
Paper fold out hair was big for a while too.
This animation hair style is the natural habitat of the Cardboard crunching Bug.Under those luscious blonde flaps lives a horde of these dung rolling creatures.
Here's another indescribable animation hair style. Even Shemp wouldn't try this.
The low forehead goes well with animation hair and too far away noses.
Animation hair is so hard to keep in order that even the tiniest movement could get it out of place, so animation characters are careful to keep their facial muscles under strict control; any sudden expression might mess up their flaps or even worse - reveal their emotions.
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Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
From the L&M CompanionJane is the sister of Sam's dad, John. She married John Perkin. "They had a son Frank, a miller (who after 1661 took up the fiddle for a livelihood)....There were also three daughters --Jane (who was brought up by her uncle Robert Pepys of Brampton), Mary and Elizabeth....The mother and children received small legacies from Robert Pepys...."
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If you don't have an account, then register here.
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EUGENE, Ore. -- A red flag warning is in effect through Sunday as dry east winds are bringing a higher risk of wildfires in western Oregon and parts of Washington.
Forecasters predict that the winds of nearly 20 miles an hour, combined with low humidity, could cause any fire started in the area to rapidly spread out of control. The Oregon Department of Forestry issued a stop to all outdoor burning because of the high risk of wildfires in the area.
The Office of the State Fire Marshall released some reminders for people getting out to enjoy the last of the good weather before Fall.
The ODF fire stop also includes all campfires and debris burning for most of the state. Campfires are only permitted in certain campgrounds staffed by an ODF official. Anyone starting a prohibited fire could face a significant fine.
All off-road motor vehicles (dirt bikes, quads, etc.) are only cleared to be driven in areas without flammable, dry vegetation.
- Visit the ODF website for a complete list of restrictions
The east winds are expected to ease by the end of the weekend, but the dry spell is predicted to continue for a couple weeks. The ODF said that the fire season will continue until rain starts making its way back into the forecast.
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As President Obama got ready for Monday's public swearing-in ceremony, conversation online had already started around his speech, the inaugural balls and even who wore what to which event.
We asked our friends at Facebook/HLN to think about the future. In four years, where do you want this country to be?
While many people expressed their excitement over having a new president in four years, others said they wanted Obama to serve a third term. Some people’s hopes for their families were a reflection of what they wanted for the nation: More jobs, no debt and a balanced budget.
"I want this country to be on the mend from this drunken spending we have been doing and truly make change happen by paying our bills and getting our stellar credit rating back. Come on Congress! We can do better! We have to for the sake of our children and all future generations," John H. wrote.
Above all, many people said they wanted our leaders to work together.
"Enough bickering back and forth between parties. Just respect each other and get to work getting people back to work," Darla D. wrote.
"In four years I want this country to be stronger, safer and not divided... and for the better of its people and not just government,” Kelly O. commented.
Bringing the troops home was another consistent theme in the comments. “Use the military to rebuild the infrastructure of our nation to be what was the best country in the world,” said Sherry P.
Free health care and education and marriage equality for all Americans were other specific requests from our commenters to our country’s leaders.
“Bring back our factories and make our own products in the USA!! And lower gas prices so that people can actually afford to go to work,” Melissa T. added.
Ann Marie D. left us with words from Abe Lincoln’s second inaugural speech: "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.hlntv.com/article/2013/01/21/next-four-years-president-obama?hpt=hln10_1
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2000 OPEN FORUM Abstracts
PEEP ENHANCED UTILIZATION OF THE PASSY-MUIR SPEAKING VALVE
Susan Regg, RRT, RCP, Drake Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, Brad Carr, MA, CCC-SLP, Drake Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, Mark Rinaldi, RRT, RCP, Drake Center Cincinnati, Ohio, Melanie Bradle, MA, CCC-SLP, Drake Center Cincinnati, Ohio
BACKGROUND: There has been limited use of the Passy-Muir Speaking Valve (PMV) by patients with ventilator dependence. This study was performed to determine if utilization of Positive End Expiratory Pressure (PEEP) with cuff deflation increased airflow through the glottis sufficiently to enhance phonation with the PMV.
METHOD: The data for this study was collected from a group of patients that were evaluated by a Respiratory and Speech Therapist to determine qualifications. The study requirements included: Patient must be awake and alert with stable vital signs, have functional oropharyngeal muscles, have a tracheostomy tube with an outer diameter not greater than 11.3 mm, have a respiratory rate less than 32 breaths per minute, an FIO2 not exceeding 50% with associated oxygen saturation not less than 90%, a PEEP of 0, Peak Inspiratory Pressures (PIP) less than 40 cmH20 pressure, and patient must be free of excessive secretions, wheezing, or stridor. Patients were then placed on the following standardized ventilator settings using the Siemens Servo 300: Volume Control mode with tidal volume adjusted to 10cc per kilogram Ideal Body Weight (if the patient was previously in a "weaning mode", the adjusted respiratory rate was determined by taking the patient's minute volume ventilation and dividing it by the adjusted tidal volume) and I:E ratio not less than 1:2. Once the patient was placed on these standardized ventilator settings, they were monitored for changes in oxygen saturation and PIPs. The patients were then asked to perform speech tasks, which included sustained phonation, loudness in decibels during sustained phonation and syllables per breath during a standardized reading (The Grandfather Passage). For the decibel reading, a baseline level near the patient's mouth was recorded, then factored into loudness level during phonation. During the same session the above protocol was repeated with incremental adjustments of PEEP levels at 5 cm H20 and 10 cm H20 pressure.
Results: The information gathered in this study revealed that standardization of ventilator settings optimized use of the Passy-Muir Valve, especially with patients utilizing weaning modes of ventilation. There were minimal changes in oxygen saturation with cuff deflation, PMV placement and with the addition of incremental levels of PEEP using both 5 cmH20 and 10 cm H20 pressure. The results indicate that there is minimal enhancement with the use of 5 cmH20 PEEP. However, phonation was significantly enhanced by the use of 10 cmH20 PEEP by an average of more than 100%, often from less than 2 seconds to over 10 seconds. Decibel levels on sustained phonation also increased significantly, often from an inaudible to an audible level, and this increased intelligibility. Syllables per breath measurements increased an average of 50%, often from a nonfunctional to a functional level. The increased syllables per breath enabled patients to participate in conversation and express wants and needs without difficulty.
CONCLUSION: The standardization of clinical pathways and utilization of 10 cmH20 PEEP appears to enhance patient tolerance and efficacy. While this study indicates that the use of PEEP may enhance, or in some cases enable, phonation and functional communication, there is a need for further investigation into methods to improve tolerance and usage of the Passy-Muir Speaking Valve.
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http://www.rcjournal.com/abstracts/2000/index.cfm?id=A00000273
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OP-ED | Black Friday Creep Illustrates Workers’ Vulnerability
The newspaper arrived with a heavy thunk on Thanksgiving, packed like an overstuffed turkey with flyers and ads for Black Friday sales. We sorted through them at our leisure, keeping ones that seemed interesting and recycling the rest. It’s another piece of a middle class tradition; the flyers and ads are reminders of the shopping frenzy that follows the sleepy calm of Thanksgiving. But for far too many retail workers this year, that newspaper was a prelude to another day at work.
By now you’ve heard about Black Friday’s creep into Thanksgiving, what some people are apparently calling “Gray Thursday.” Retailers are opening Thursday evening, now, instead of early Friday morning. You may also have heard that there are retail workers and their families who tried to fight back against yet another intrusion of work into family life, but their petitions and complaints have largely gone unnoticed by retailers desperate to squeeze as much money out of a busy shopping day as possible. Workers, many of whom are part-time and therefore don’t receive much in the way of benefits, need the hours and the overtime too much not to show up. And so another holiday slowly erodes. Retail workers will now be able to give thanks by working a cash register and earning overtime instead of spending time with their family and friends.
Every year there’s a lot of hand-wringing about capitalism’s intrusion into what we’d thought was a safe space, a day when the usual rules were suspended and we could have a guilt-free meal at home with our families, but every year the stores seem to open earlier. And the thing is, despite all the head-shaking, people go shop. When we put on our consumer hat, we always want cheap goods and we want them right now. Retailers are desperate to oblige us. I’ve stood in lines outside department stores in the early hours on previous Black Fridays with hundreds of people itching to spend hundreds of dollars. Is it any wonder that the stores, many of whom hover on the brink of insolvency all year long, want to grow those lines, to start the engines of commerce a little earlier?
Our overwhelming need to buy cheap stuff and retailers’ quest to sell it to us is one of those vast, nearly uncontrollable forces that define not just our own lives, but the lives of billions across the globe. In order to provide those goods at ever-cheaper prices, companies cut costs by outsourcing production to countries where they can pay factory workers a pittance, and by underpaying their increasingly part-time retail force here at home. It’s profit-driven, to be sure: Walmart and stores like it rake in enormous profits every year. But this force is consumer driven, too; the stores always have lots of customers. It’s a vicious, destructive cycle, bad for small business, American manufacturing and both the working and middle class.
Efforts to change pieces of this picture haven’t had a lot of success. Retail workers need their jobs too badly to go on strike, and there are always plenty of unemployed workers ready to take their place. Groups like OUR Walmart tried organizing walkouts and demonstrations on Black Friday, but many employees were too fearful of losing their jobs to take part. The anti-union climate in this country, as well as the general weakness of organized labor, means that they’d be pretty much on their own if they did try to strike, so they stay at work. It’s no wonder, given all of this, that the gap between rich and poor is wide and growing.
At first glance, it seems like there’s not much the state can do to help. But of course there is, if we allow ourselves to have a little vision. We could make higher education and job training programs cheaper and more accessible, which might give workers a way out of low-wage jobs and fill the constant need for workers with specialized skills. We could bolster public transit, allowing workers to travel farther to find work. We could raise the minimum wage, and we could find ways to uncouple a basic benefit, health care, from employment. We could reinforce the social safety net, so that there’s help for workers who need it.
And for crying out loud, maybe we could pass something like the old Blue Law they have in Massachusetts, barring any work until Friday proper. We ought to have one day, just for ourselves.
Susan Bigelow is an award-winning columnist and the founder of CTLocalPolitics. She lives in Enfield with her wife and their cats.
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Kenya Renews Accord to Buy Iranian Crude, Plans No Shipments
Kenya renewed a memorandum of understanding to buy crude oil from Iran, though the East African nation hasn’t committed to receive any shipments, Energy Ministry Permanent Secretary Patrick Nyoike said.
Kenya signed its latest agreement with the Persian Gulf supplier in June, Nyoike said in a telephone interview today from the capital, Nairobi.
“We signed MOUs in 2009 and 2010 and nothing happened,” he said. “We signed another one last month with Iran, but it has no legal substance and we can decide to do it or not,” Nyoike said. He declined to provide further details.
Iran, the second-biggest OPEC producer after Saudi Arabia, is looking for new markets after the European Union embargoed purchases of crude from the Islamic Republic starting July 1. The ban is the latest in a series of trade and financial sanctions that the U.S., European Union and United Nations have imposed on Iran over its nuclear program.
The U.S. is urging other countries to reduce their trade with Iran in order to cut revenues that could further the country’s nuclear plan, the State Department said in a statement e-mailed by the U.S. embassy in Kenya.
“In our discussions with all of our international partners we have made it clear the importance of reducing both ties with the Central Bank of Iran and revenue to Iran in order to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon,” it said.
Kenya Petroleum Refineries Ltd., owned by Essar Energy Plc (ESSR) and government, may begin this month buying its own crude and selling products directly to fuel marketers.
Kenya announced plans last year to end the Mombasa-based refinery’s tolling arrangements, under which fuel retailers were required to supply a specific amount of crude each year for the refiner to process at a fee. The changes will enable KPRL to continue processing Murban crude and also start handling oil from “cheaper sources,” the company said last month.
Of the 1.7 million metric tons of oil that KPRL refined in 2011, 99.7 percent was Murban crude, according to data compiled by the Nairobi-based Petroleum Institute of East Africa.
To contact the reporter on this story: Sarah McGregor in Nairobi at firstname.lastname@example.org
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at email@example.com.
Bloomberg moderates all comments. Comments that are abusive or off-topic will not be posted to the site. Excessively long comments may be moderated as well. Bloomberg cannot facilitate requests to remove comments or explain individual moderation decisions.
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Purina, Milo's Kitchen pulling some dog treats
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
NEW YORK (AP) — Two makers of pet treats are pulling products from the market because they may contain traces of poultry antibiotics that aren't approved in the U.S.
Nestle Purina PetCare is taking Waggin' Train and Canyon Creek Ranch brand dog treats off the market, while Milo's Kitchen is recalling its Chicken Jerky and Chicken Grillers home-style dog treats.
The chicken jerky products, which are made in China, may contain minute amounts of antibiotic residue, the companies said Wednesday. The antibiotics have been approved by Chinese and European Union regulators, but they are not approved in the U.S.
The companies said the treats don't pose a safety risk to pets, but they are still pulling them off the market. The recall doesn't cover other products the companies sell.
Milo's Kitchen said there is no known health risk associated with the antibiotics, but their presence means the products don't meet its standards. It said the chemicals "should not be present in the final food product."
The recalls come after the New York State Department of Agriculture detected the antibiotics in samples of the companies' products. Purina said that the regulator asked that its affected products be pulled from stores in New York.
U.S. federal regulators have also been looking into reports of pet illnesses stemming from their snacks.
The Food and Drug Administration says reports of sick pets connected to jerky treats, particularly chicken jerky made in China, have been increasing for years. The agency said in September that it had been notified of 360 dogs that died after eating jerky treats over the last 18 months and is conducting a broad investigation. No definitive cause for the dogs' sicknesses has yet been identified.
Waggin' Train and Milo's Kitchen are mentioned often in consumer complaints made to the agency, and Canyon Creek is also named in a few complaints. Purina said Wednesday that there is no indication the recall is linked to the problems the FDA is investigating.
Symptoms reported to the FDA include gastrointestinal problems like vomiting and diarrhea, as well as kidney problems, which can cause dogs to drink and urinate more than usual.
The FDA says that commercially produced pet foods contain all the nutrients that pets need, so treats are not necessary for nutrition, and commercial pet food "is very safe."
Purina is a U.S. division of Swiss consumer products giant Nestle that is based in St. Louis. Milo's is owned by Del Monte Foods and is based in San Francisco.
More like this story
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- Complaints Mount About Pet Treats From China
- FDA Finds Salmonella in Nature's Deli Chicken Jerky Dog Treats
- Another Recall of Kasel Industries Dog Treats Because of Salmonella Fears
- Sick As a Dog -- It's Not Just Cantaloupes, Dog Food Is Blamed for Many Illnesses
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Robert Frank. Elevator - Miami Beach, 1955.
Before Robert Frank's “The Americans” show opens at the Met on September 22nd and Frank fever hits New York, this uncredited story from NPR’s website (which I've taken the liberty of editing) shines some fresh light on one of Frank’s lesser known images from the series:
One of photographer Robert Frank's most famous images aroused a particular interest from his friend, beat writer Jack Kerouac. In his introduction to Frank's book of photos The Americans, Kerouac writes, "That little ole lonely elevator girl looking up sighing in an elevator full of blurred demons, what's her name & address?"
Now we know.
Today, Sharon Collins lives in San Francisco. About 10 years ago she visited the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and found herself drawn to a particular photo — the same photo Jack Kerouac wrote about.
"I stood in front of this particular photograph for probably a full five minutes," she says. "And then it dawned on me that the girl in the picture was me."
The iconic shot shows a young girl, pressing an elevator button, looking up with an enigmatic expression. At the time, her name was Sharon Goldstein, and she lived in Miami Beach. At fifteen, she got a summer job as an elevator girl at the Sherry Frontenac Hotel. She says the hotel was always full of tourists, and many of them had cameras. Although she wishes she remembers this particular tourist, she doesn't. But she pieced together what happened by looking at Frank's contact sheet.
"Robert Frank took about four photos of me without a flash in the elevator. I didn't know he was taking them. And then when the elevator emptied he asked me to turn around and smile at the camera. So I flashed a smile, put my hands on my hips, and hammed it up for about eight or ten frames."
From the single image that was chosen for The Americans, Kerouac guessed she was lonely. But Collins thinks otherwise.
"It's not necessarily loneliness, it's ... dreaminess."
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May 28, 2008
U.S., Iran are obstacles in new Israel-Syria talks
In their sixth major peacemaking effort since the unsuccessful 1991 Madrid peace conference, Israeli and Syrian negotiators face even tougher challenges than their failed predecessors. |
All the old questions -- borders, security arrangements, the nature of the peace, water, the timetable for implementation -- are back on the table.
And two major obstacles have been added: the United States and Iran.
The United States, which would have to underwrite any agreement for Israel-Syria peace to be viable, for the first time is absent from the negotiating mix. Also, Syria's ties with Iran, which would have to be downgraded significantly for Israel to sign an agreement, are much deeper than when the last Israel-Syria peace effort collapsed in March 2000.
Meanwhile, Israeli domestic opposition to a deal that entails withdrawal from the strategic Golan Heights remains as strong as ever.
So why should the parties succeed this time when past negotiations with ostensibly better opening conditions failed?
Obviously, given the obstacles, success is not guaranteed. But if there is a chance, it is because both sides now know exactly what the other's needs are and can rely on the work done in previous rounds on the core issues.
Furthermore, because the geopolitical stakes are now much higher, each side has more to gain from a peace deal.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert insists he gave the Syrians nothing to get them to agree to reopen the dialogue. That was one of Israel's great achievements in the current process, he told the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Security Committee Monday.
But both the Turkish mediators and the Syrians suggest the prime minister reaffirmed the so-called Rabin "pocket," or "deposit." That was a promise that if Israel's needs on security and the nature of peaceful ties are met, the Jewish state will withdraw to the pre-Six-Day War borders of June 4, 1967 -- in other words, hand back the entire Golan Heights.
The border issue in fact was the main focus of the recent indirect Turkish-mediated talks between Israeli and Syrian representatives in Ankara. The Syrians described those exchanges as very encouraging and said they laid the basis for substantial progress.
But even if Olmert has reaffirmed the Rabin "pocket," that does not mean the border issue has been settled -- far from it.
One problem is it's not clear where the 1967 border was, because no such line was ever demarcated. After the 1949 armistice that ended the 1948 Israeli War of Independence, which itself was based on an earlier 1923 border between Syria and Palestine, the Syrians persistently encroached on no-man's land, moving the border by their physical presence closer to Lake Kinneret.
In the last round of negotiations, in Shepherdstown, W. Va., and Geneva in January 2000 and March of that year, the Israelis suggested drawing a line to reflect where the Syrian armed forces were situated on June 4, 1967. The Syrians claimed that at some points they were just 33 feet from the water; Israel insisted on a line at least 1,300 feet from the lake.
The Israelis wanted to make clear that they had full sovereignty over the Kinneret, Israel's main source of water. Ultimately the talks collapsed over these differences, as Syria's then-president, Hafez Assad, insisted in Geneva that the Kinneret was at least half-Syrian.
The late Assad raised this claim out of the blue to scuttle a process in which he was no longer interested. It is unlikely that his son Bashar, the current Syrian leader, will repeat that tactic.
More likely, the parties will set up a joint border demarcation team, as they had planned to do at Shepherdstown. Indeed, the parties in West Virginia seemed very close to a deal on all the core issues.
On security, the outstanding difference was over an Israeli presence in a monitoring station on Mount Hermon. On normalization, the Israelis wanted ambassadors exchanged in the middle of the process, whereas the Syrians wanted it only at the end. On timetables, the Israelis wanted three years for implementation; the Syrians no more than 18 months.
It all seemed doable until Ehud Barak, Israel's prime minister at the time, got cold feet. After a poll showing strong public opposition to returning the Golan, Barak slowed things down to give the impression that he was not giving away major assets easily. The Syrians felt he was backtracking and the talks collapsed.
Although Olmert and Bashar Assad seem ready to pick up the pieces, they find themselves facing very different regional realities.
Whereas Barak merely wanted Syrian help in establishing parallel peace talks with Lebanon, Olmert is insisting that Syria sever its ties with Iran. The Syrians reject this condition, even if the United States steps in to make good on any material and diplomatic losses Damascus might incur.
"Our ties with Iran are strategic and historic and can't be sold in a bazaar," Syria Information Minister Mohsen Bilal declared Sunday.
Israeli experts are divided over whether Syria is ready for a major reorientation -- dropping ties with Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas -- and in the context of a peace deal with Israel, coming over to the moderate pro-Western camp.
"Syria is ready to pay a huge price for its radical ideology and will never detach itself from Iran -- certainly not now that the radicals seem to be getting stronger," said Dan Shueftan, the head of Haifa University's National Security Studies Center.
Shueftan says the Syrians simply are using Israel to ease international pressure on Damascus.
But Syria expert Moshe Maoz of Hebrew University argues that Assad sees two clear policy options, American and Iranian. He says Assad can be won over if the Americans offer a package that's attractive enough.
The Americans, however, are not enthusiastic.
President Bush does not trust Assad nor, according to Israeli officials, does he believe there is much chance of the Syrian leader breaking with Iran. Yet during his recent visit to Israel, Bush agreed to lift his long-standing opposition to any Israeli engagement with Assad's Syria. Presumably, if the negotiations make progress and the United States needs to play a role, Bush or his successor in the Oval Office will be ready to make the necessary moves, given the huge geopolitical benefit of a pro-Western Syria.
For the embattled Olmert or his successor, getting the Syrians and the Americans on board for the type of region-changing agreement Israeli leaders envision will not be easy.
Achieving the domestic support they need might be even more difficult. Most of the Cabinet ministers in Olmert's Kadima Party oppose a deal with Syria that entails withdrawing from the Golan, making a Cabinet majority for a deal nearly impossible.
Moreover, in the Knesset, Likud hawks are moving to enact a law requiring a special two-thirds majority for ceding land. Polls show that most of the Israeli public remains opposed to a withdrawal from the Golan, which Israel annexed in 1981.
The hope of Israel's doves is that all this will change if and when Assad breaks with Iran and the United States comes through with strong backing for the new order. In other words, when Israelis see the results of peace with Syria, the Golan will seem a price worth paying.
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RALEIGH, NC (AP) -- Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue wants legislators to adopt much-discussed changes that would limit their power now that Republicans are about to take control of the General Assembly for the first time in more than a century.
Perdue spoke Wednesday to a meeting of legislators getting an update on the state's economy and finances as they prepare for an expected budget gap of more than $3 billion.
Perdue proposed lawmakers limit the length of their annual legislative sessions, open their correspondence and files to more public scrutiny, and create an independent panel to handle the job of rewriting the borders of legislative and congressional districts.
The districts are redrawn every decade once results of the US Census show what areas have grown and declined.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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Great stories tend to involve either nail biting tension, beautiful language or a plot so profound it moves the reader to tears.
Rarely do you find a novel that delivers all three, but Emma Donoghue’s Room manages to do so – and with surprising originality.
The story is told through the eyes of five-year-old Jack, who lives with Ma in a place with a locked door and a skylight, which he knows only as Room. For Jack, Room (and everything in it) is his entire universe. He has no understanding there is a reality outside of what he has experienced – or of a world outside Room.
Room is similar to John Boyne’s The Boy In The Striped Pajamas in that readers understand far more about what’s going on than the narrative character.
We know very early on that Ma has been held prisoner by a man we know only as Old Nick, and Jack is the product of her imprisonment. And she has protected her son by reinventing their existence so it seems perfectly safe and normal to Jack.
But when circumstances force Ma to reveal the truth, she can’t help but turn that world upside down if they are to have any chance of a different future.
It’s not giving too much away to say that Ma and Jack must come up with a plan to escape. And the planning and execution of their plot make for the most intense and stressful 100 pages of a novel I’ve ever read.
Seriously. I was reading this section of the book during my lunch break on a particularly stressful day at work and went back to the office more wound up than before I left! It’s unbearably tense, mostly because of Jack’s innocence and courage, and what’s at stake for both he and Ma.
It’s the deep love between Jack and Ma that drives this story (much the same way Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is driven by the relationship between the Man and the Boy).
The idea of a woman and child being kept prisoner in a suburban fortress is not original – an alarming number of these sorts of unspeakable stories seem to feature in the news each year. Yet Donoghue has found an original perspective from which to tell it: that of a five-year-old.
Through Jack’s eyes, Room is not a place of horror. It’s his world and he’s comfortable in it. He is a true innocent. So when Ma must finally risk telling him about the real world, she has to do so using the language and world view Jack is familiar with.
Jack is a sweet and intelligent boy. He’s also completely – and unknowingly – institutionalised. So when change comes he faces his own existential crises. As does Ma, who learns freedom is never simple.
Although Room is somewhat of a tense journey, it is a surprisingly gentle story with a truly beautiful message. It asks questions about truth and reality, and the nature of sacrificial love, and does so without sentimentality.
My tears at the end of this book were not because it broke my heart, but because it moved me as only great stories can. Room is a profound novel, and I know it’s another of those stories that’s going to stay with me for a very long time.
(As an aside: Ma and Jack live in a truly sustainable way inside Room. They only receive deliveries from Old Nick once a week, so must re-use and recycle virtually every single item that comes into Room. It’s quite fascinating to see how much can be done with so little when there's no other choice…)
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Many of you my already know I was the recipient of an amazing award on International Women’s Day – ‘Outstanding Inspirational Role Model Award’. Without the testimonials and references from friends, and those in the community I come in contact with on a regular basis, this award would not have happened. I am most grateful to those who have touched my heart in such a positive way.
I decided to place a few words today written by my friend Dr Carlos Orozco when writing a testimonial for me to submit prior to the judging. It is my hope that his words about the importance of nutrition (and more) will also touch your heart so we who live in this time can be in control of cancer, both with prevention and cure.
Dealing with the shock of being diagnosed with any type of cancer is devastating; in most cases, it brings thoughts of death and in all cases makes people aware of how precious time is, as people want to know how much time they have got left.
Cancer is not a death sentence. It perhaps one of the greatest opportunities for people to change the way they have been living. Cancer can be viewed from many different angles. For example, for the pharmaceutical industry cancer is a business based on market share. For medical oncologist is an opportunity to make a name for themselves in the pharmaceutical world by entering patients into clinical trials and using a variety of chemotherapeutic agents based on the “latest research”. This research is sponsored and closely monitored by the pharmaceutical companies themselves. In this scenario, the companies write their conclusion first and then proceed to do the trial by designing Clinical Research Files (CRF’s) with a very narrow and thus highly selective patient inclusion and exclusion criteria. This methodology will aim to give a 5 year survival. For the cancer industry this length of time represents a cure for any patient that survives beyond 5 years. When the cancer returns it is labelled advanced cancer and in most cases is metastatic, meaning it is spread to other organs and tissues in the body. For the government is a way to generate employment to people by making them bureaucrats of the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), an organization that gives authority to use pharmaceutical products by providing a license to market pharmaceutical and nutritional products. The cancer industry or cancer market is one of the two pillars that guarantee the greatest returns to share holders, the other one being the cardiovascular business. So cancer is a very lucrative business. What does this has to do with finding and treating the cause of cancer? Absolutely nothing! What does this has to do with the prevention of cancer? Absolutely nothing!
The answer to conquer and prevent cancer is in nutrition. Very few people are aware of this. Nutrition needs to be at provided at the soul, spirit, emotional and physical level. This means we need to nourish our souls, mind, spirit and body with quality daily nutrition.
Kristine Matheson has made a very significant contribution to preventing and conquering cancer by spreading the word through her book about the importance of nutrition in keeping a healthy body and in most cases restoring harmony into people’s lives by means of daily nutrition. To do so, she shares her experience in her book entitled From Cancer to Wellness the forgotten secrets: A 28 day step by step handbook for beating cancer, all based in daily nutrition for the body.
Cancer changed Kristine’s life for the best. She has become a well known author and a public speaker voicing out the importance that the role that the environment, stress, life style, lack of physical activity, repressed and suppressed emotions resulting in destructive thoughts and lack of physical nutrition play in the development of cancer.
In her book she tells us what we need to do to eat healthy and in the process become wise by making the right choices.
Kristine has gone beyond writing and publishing her book. She is now living on a mission with a vision. She has teamed up with others to spread her wings and touch many lives by sharing her wisdom and understanding about the importance of restoring harmony through nutrition. The recognition through the nomination for this award does not only includes her but all the people whose lives have changed thanks to what she shares in her conversations, presentations and of course her book. Dr Carlos Orozco BSc, MSc, ND, PhD, Adv Dip Nutr
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St. Jude “Give Thanks. Walk.” serves as the official kick-off event for the St. Jude Thanks and Giving® fundraising and awareness campaign. The St. Jude Thanks and Giving campaign is an unprecedented union of celebrities, media, retail and corporate partners that ask consumers to give thanks for the healthy kids in their lives, and give thanks for those who are not.
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, founded by the late entertainer Danny Thomas in 1962, is one of the world’s premier centers for the research and treatment of pediatric cancer and other deadly childhood diseases. St. Jude is changing the way the world treats childhood cancer. For example, in 1962, the survival rate for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common form of childhood cancer, was 4 percent. Today, the survival rate for this once deadly disease is 94 percent, thanks to research and treatment protocols developed at St. Jude.
Children from our DFW community, all 50 states, and from around the world have come through the doors of St. Jude for treatment, and thousands more around the world have benefited from the research conducted at St. Jude -- research that is shared freely with the global medical community. No family ever pays St. Jude for anything. Treatment is always provided at no cost to the family.
For more information and to register visit www.givethankswalk.org.
Give Thanks. Walk - Frisco and Fort Worth
Saturday, November 17
Registration Starts at 7:00 am
Walk begins at 8:00 am
Frisco- Frisco Square
Fort Worth- Trinity Park
Register at www.givethankswalk.org
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An appropriate age to date is 16 or 17 years old. If you are any younger than that it means nothing except that you should only be movie friends or skating friends. You have to be mature enough to make good choices for yourself.
Well once your mature and know how to make wise decisions ... Maturity comes with age... I didn't have a serious "boyfriend" until 18 (I wasn't fully mature but sure bets the maturity I had at 16)... And we ended up getting married eventually.. All the other guys I hanged with were just friends, no romantic connections
14,15,16 and above because at the age of 12 and 13 you need to focus on your studies I'm not trying to say that 141516 your not suppost to study it's just that at 12 and13 your suppost to focus on when you get older or when you get to high school or college
i would say 13-18 its better to explore a bit to find out how to work stuff and if your grades go down it just means your not ready/mature enough for example i had my first boyfriend when i was 14 and i guess i learned more on relationships but it also depends what type of person u are
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Supporters of the great crusade to build a nationwide, smutless, free broadband service may be a bit confused after last weeks's contradictory press statements and actions by Federal Communications Commission chair Kevin Martin. Martin told CNBC Thursday that he still thinks a free service is a fine idea.
"We've certainly had a couple of companies come and offer and tell us that they would be willing to come and purchase spectrum and offer a kind of lifeline basic lower speed service for free," Martin said. "And I think that's very important."
But at the same time, the Federal Communications Commission took a whole bunch of Advanced Wireless Service (AWS) spectrum dockets off the agenda for its June 12th meeting that would have prompted some action on the free broadband proposal. Martin told Reuters news service that some wireless carriers have raised concerns about the concept, and he wanted to give the agency's other Commissioners a little more time to digest the idea—not something the Chairman always does when he's certain about an issue.
As Ars has reported, the Commission says that it is in the market for a bidder to provide free broadband service in the 1.9GHz-2.1GHz bands. The data will have to download at a minimum of 768Kbps. Half the United States population must be able to access it after four years, and 95 percent by the time the license comes up for renewal. Plus the FCC wants the auction winner to provide some kind of "content filtering" system that will "protect children," as an agency spokesperson told us. We're assuming that the government means from porn, not mosquitoes.
The most aggressive candidate for this job remains M2Z Networks, which for a long time asked the agency just to grant them this spectrum, rather than make M2Z bid on it. In exchange M2Z would annually pay the US Treasury five percent of its gross revenues.
But CTIA - The Wireless Association, remains a staunch enemy of this concept, and it is doubtless that Martin was talking about that trade group when he mentioned those wireless companies and their concerns. On Tuesday, CTIA top brass had a chat with FCC Commissioner Michael Copps and his trusty legal beagle Bruce Gottlieb. There, sure-handed CTIA CEO Steve Largent and two of the group's veeps warned that "certain proposals" might "skew an auction to the benefit of one entity or business model. CTIA stressed the need for continued fair, open auctions with flexible service rules, rather than tailored conditions that may favor certain parties over others." Motorola and Ericcson have also taken this position in recent meetings with the FCC.
On Wednesday, Verizon Wireless chimed in as well. Verizon's director of Wireless and Spectrum Policy Donald C. Brittingham met with reps for Adelstein and Copps and warned that "mobile transmissions in some segments of the 2155-2180 MHz band [where the FCC wants to park its free broadband service] had the potential to cause significant harmful interference to operations in the 2110-2155 MHz AWS-1 band." He urged the Commission to set up rules "that will prevent harmful interference to AWS-1 licensees."
Undaunted, M2Z keeps pressing its case with the FCC. The group met or filed repeatedly with the agency over the last five days—eight times in fact. M2Z hit on the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, and the Office of Engineering and Technology (OET). At a meeting with the OET held on Thursday, June 5th, an M2Z spokesperson charged that Verizon's concerns "appear to be an effort to correct an unreasonable business decision to deploy foreign filters that are not optimized for their FCC license assignments."
- M2Z's June 5th meeting with the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology (includes copy of Verizon's June 4th conference with the FCC)
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07.29.2008 Protest: China's Olympic Syndrome
Some years ago in Manhattan while I was riding the subway uptown, a young woman entered the train and began to proselytize to the crowd, which, as usual, paid her no attention. She went on about religion, God, and so forth, and when she was done, I expected a call for donations. Instead, she contributed a bit of worldly wisdom that has stayed with me ever since: “I know we all look good,” she said. “But we’re not all being good.” And she exited the train.
Years later, those words capture the spirit for me of the Beijing Olympics. As a recent transplant to China (I’ve lived in Shanghai for the last year and a half), the build-up to the Olympics is hugely visible not just in Beijing, but all over the country. From the large banners on the highways in Shanghai to the lampposts that declare simply “Beijing 2008” along the streets, the feeling is in the air. For China, the Olympics has been both a galvanizing force and an exercise in pride, partly deserved, partly not.
Recently, however, the exercise has not gone entirely according to plan. In spite of their inevitability, the mass protests in Tibet, Xinjiang (the Muslim part of Western China), and Mongolia still caught the government off their usually rigid guard. Even more unpredictable has been the tumultuous time the government has had trying to control the coverage of these events. And when widespread public sympathy during the Sichuan Earthquake led to a huge demand for news, the state could no longer reasonably control the local and foreign media.
All these occurrences—and its inability to master them leading up to its pride and joy, the Olympics—has made the Chinese government completely paranoid about who it is and is not letting into the country. The result is that the Really Big Show might just be a fizzle. Friends in the hotel, restaurant, and convention business now report things are generally slow in Shanghai. A quick search on the web and a few calls to Beijing hotels reveal there are still plenty of rooms available from August 8 through 24, the dates of the Olympic Games.
Along with everyone else, whenever something goes awry in Shanghai, I just blame it on the Olympics. When I recently organized a design exhibition in Shanghai, my star speaker, a British citizen flying in from Hong Kong, was denied entry because his valid Chinese visa was going to expire one day after he was supposed to return to Hong Kong—and not in a week as the border patrol had wanted. I blamed that on the Olympics. When the manager of my favorite Italian restaurant comes up to me and tells me that things are really slow in his restaurant and that the big-spending foreign crowd is not showing up, I also blame that on the Olympics.
The Olympics have laid bare the illogic behind the government’s approach. It invites the world in, but then restricts entry for fear that a bunch of Teva-wearing hippies might show up and disrupt the games. Of course there will be controversy—China is a totalitarian state, after all—but in courting the public stage, China is also courting widespread scrutiny of its atrocious human rights record. More than just Italian restaurants and visa issues, this vast Olympic effort, I fear, is just one huge act of self-deception, where the government’s attempts at damage control are triggering even more damage. In China, the Olympics is all about what China wants the world to perceive about itself, while keeping its true self hidden away.
Above all, what I blame most on the Olympics is how it implicates architecture in the fabrication of this whole spectacle, and even uses it to mask real urban problems confronting Beijing. Without a doubt, OMA’s CCTV and Herzog and de Meuron’s Olympic Stadium will remain masterpieces in the landscape of the city. But within its Soviet-inspired planning fabric, with its concentric highways lapping outward from the hub of the Forbidden City, huge monolithic-style building threatens to add to the isolation of Beijing’s vast alienating stretches. Anyone who has traveled through rush hour there, where it routinely takes 60 minutes to budge five miles, will have contemplated the poor planning implicated by this level of congestion.
Architects are well aware of the potential for their spectacles to turn out badly. After designing the building for China’s main propaganda machine—its TV station—Koolhaas has been fighting for more public access to the CCTV tower once it is completed some time next year, and Jacques Herzog is hoping his Olympic Stadium will remain at least in part a public space once sporting events are over. The Watercube National Acquatic Center by PTW Architects, in spite of its wall-to-wall swimming pools, is reportedly going to be turned into a mall after the games. As these architecturally compelling works are reduced to impractical relics, leaving the city as isolating as before or even more so, I will definitely blame that on the Olympics.
Will the city of Beijing be capable of looking good and being good at the same time? We’ll see. Right now, Beijing is a massive architectural and urban spectacle, but when you turn on your TV sets on August 8, all the fireworks and joyous celebrations should signal one thing: This is not resolved, and all that you see could be silenced in two weeks.
<i>Andrew Yang is a Shanghai-based freelance journalist, and a former editor of AN.
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SAN DIEGO — Operation Student Achievement has been launched in San Diego.
Thousands of students in San Diego schools with military parents will be eligible for an academic boost next year under a $2.5 million grant from the Department of Defense.
The Activity Educational Partnership award aims to improve student achievement and teacher effectiveness in math, science and technology at nine campuses in the San Diego Unified School District.
“Our grant program privies needed funding for schools serving the children of our military service members,” said Shirely Miles, who oversees the federal grant program. “These students face unique challenges being in a military family, and we are proud to be able to help the school districts that support them.”
The program will include tutoring, parent engagement and specialized training for teachers.
City College awarded grant for training in info industry
SAN DIEGO — A local community college will begin training students for the information industry starting in July after receiving a grant from the American Recovery and Reimbursement Act/Workforce Investment Act.
San Diego City College’s $851,216 grant will provide training for 75 participants from a wide range of target groups, including the working poor, under-skilled adults and the unemployed.
Training will last approximately 27 weeks, with participants being placed in computer, network support and administration positions at the conclusion of the program.
Funding for this program comes specifically from the $4,032,000 Recovery Act Training Grant. San Diego City College was selected as one of five California agencies to receive funding.
Marissa A. Evans
Six owners to share traits of energy-efficiency homes
SAN DIEGO — Green-savvy homeowners will open their doors to the public today to showcase their energy-efficient quarters.
The Kensington Clean Energy Festival is aimed at providing information on how others can use modern technology to make their homes more green-friendly. Walking tours of six energy-efficient homes will occur during the event and will highlight buildings that use solar water-heating systems and different forms of water conservation. Informational workshops at the event will discuss solar electricity and water efficiency.
“We wanted to do something community-based,” said Drew Henley, event coordinator for the California Center for Sustainable Energy. “We wanted to put a different spin on things, give them a grass-roots, organic feel.”
Tom Evons, a Kensington resident and the person who presented the event idea, is in the process of outfitting his home with solar energy and harvesting rainwater. With the renovation of many older homes in the area taking place, Evons said many fellow residents love the community so much they are preparing their homes for the long haul.
“We’re just a sharing community,” Evons said. “People have done things to improve their homes and are proud of what they’ve done and would like to see others make their homes just like theirs.”
The festival takes place from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Workshops will be held at Kensington Community Church, 4773 Marlborough Drive, beginning at 11 a.m. Information: (858) 244-1177 or www.energycenter.org/ken.
Marissa A. Evans
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Rebels in Libya fighting against Moammar Gadhafi say they need the international community to give them $1.5 billion — for medicine, salaries and the like. Senior officials from a number of countries and international organizations are meeting in Rome today (May 5) to try to drum up money for the rebels.
Some people say Gadhafi cannot be removed by air power alone, and Libyan civilians will not be safe as long as he remains. Others say the international community should not be taking sides in an internal conflict, and they fear the money could be used to buy arms, despite a U.N. arms embargo on the country as a whole.
What ‘s your view?
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Entries Tagged 'Google search' ↓
December 19th, 2012 — Google, Google search, seo
Online marketing is a very competitive world.
Everyone wants to be on the front page of the search results, but rather than working hard and building a solid base of informative, relevant content and good links, some marketers still try to find short cuts.
However tempting it may be, there is no substitute for hard work because if you do try to cut corners you will incur the wrath of Google.
So what sort of activities are we talking about?
There are quite a few, but for this particular post we shall concentrate on 7.
Nope, it’s not something out of Star Trek.
Cloaking means you’re showing the search engines one thing and your visitors something else. So you could be promoting a site for an activity such as fell walking in the search results, but when someone clicks on the link, they’re taken to a pornographic site.
A very deceptive practice, which is completely forbidden by Google.
2. Duplicate content
Yes, unbelievably this still happens. People attempt to boost their page views by creating many pages with the same content.
If you inadvertently duplicate content on your own site through the use of categories, tags or archived pages, you’ll be OK although it could still get you penalised.
3. Scraping content
Everyone knows that good rankings come from the creation of great content. But for those who really can’t be bothered and think it’s OK to scrape content from other sites, tweak it a bit and then publish it, Google is watching you and will come down on you like a tonne of bricks.
4. Unrelated keywords
The only keywords that should be used for your site are those that are actually related to the content in your site. It really isn’t rocket science.
Of course, stuffing your keywords (related or otherwise) is also a huge no-no, but you knew that, right?
5. Link exchanges
The best way to develop your links is to do it carefully, manually and with integrity. If you pay for links you’ll get banned; if you link back to everyone who links to you, you could damage your reputation.
Basically, Google will check out your external links and incoming links for the quality of the linking sites. If they have a low reputation it will have an effect on you – so be careful.
6. Hidden keywords
The below will get you de-indexed or penalised:
- Plastering your site with keywords in the same colour as your background
- Keywords in really, really tiny font size at the end of your site
Guess what? They show up in your code so it really doesn’t take much for Google to spot it.
7. Stacking your titles
There’s a simple rule to follow: one headline per page.
Writing more than one and stuffing them with your keywords will hack Google off. Do it properly and make the most of your heading my placing your important keywords at the start of headline, making the most of the 70 characters available to create one that is meaningful.
Over to you
The 7 scenarios above are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to getting yourself de-indexed by Google.
Can you think of any more?
If so, write a comment below and let’s see how many we can find.
Sally Ormond – professional copywriter, founder and MD of Briar Copywriting Ltd
December 10th, 2012 — Google search, search engine optimisation, seo, SEO copywriter, seo website copywriter
Everyone understands the importance of search engine optimisation.
But not everyone seems to grasp the fact that it’s an ever-changing field of marketing. As search evolves so do the complex algorithms the search engines use to determine which sites are relevant to which search terms.
Why the constant changes?
That’s mainly down to the less than white SEO ‘experts’ out there who find a technique to boost their website’s rankings and exploit it.
For example, as a result of websites with poor content that wasn’t relevant, Google’s Panda came along. Hot on its heels was the mighty Penguin to battle against keyword stuffers, cloaking, duplicate content and those participating in link schemes.
In the world of SEO you have two choices: keep doing what you’ve been doing for years and watch your website disappear from view; or move with the times and adopt new techniques.
SEO Techniques to steer clear from
To get you on the right path, here are just a few old SEO techniques that should be consigned to the rubbish bin.
1. Keyword density
This is a phrase that should never be mentioned again.
If you’re not sure what it is, it’s a dreadful practice old SEOers once employed, claiming you have to have a certain percentage of keywords in your website copy in order get ranked for that particular search term.
If it were that simple, the world would be full of websites that were complete gibberish and only contained one or two phrases repeated again and again.
The right way to create effect SEO copywriting is by writing high quality content that is written naturally.
2. Numerous press releases
Online press release outlets were seen as a God send to many.
The result was numerous press releases that had absolutely no substance to them whatsoever being blasted across the web in the hope of attracting a back link or two.
The main problem with this is that you’re putting out substandard releases for the general public to see, which is hardly going to put your company in a good light.
There’s nothing wrong with issuing press releases, but only when you actually have some news to tell.
3. Content spinning
Once upon a time, marketers would write an article, spin it using some software and post it out to numerous websites. Worse still, they would send out the same article to hundreds of websites creating vast swathes of duplicate content.
That is such a bad idea.
If you want to put content out there make sure it’s original, of high quality and offers the reader something. After all, if you want to generate links, it has to be some pretty awesome content.
4. Meta tags
Once upon a time (there’s a pattern forming here) SEO was linked to your meta tags because they helped the search engines determine the relevance of your website. Surprise, surprise, this resulted in numerous SEOers stuffing their meta tags (they appear in the <head> section of your website’s code) with keywords.
The search engines are far cannier these days, and use other tags (e.g. title tags and alt tags) and the actual content of your website to determine what your web page is about.
As you can see, throughout the history of SEO someone finds a loophole and exploits it. That’s why it’s important you keep updated with the latest SEO techniques and news to make sure your efforts continue to bring you the results you want.
February 1st, 2012 — Google, Google +, Google algorithms, Google search
Google’s constantly changing its algorithms to keep us on our toes. But the latest change to its search results is probably the most drastic yet.
“Search Plus Your World” will find content that has been shared with you privately along with matches from the public web, all mixed into a single set of listings, according to a recent post that appeared on Searchengineland.com.
At the moment it will only happen for those signed-in to Google.com and searching in English. For some it will make life a lot easier; however for others, it raises concerns about privacy. Although the private content remains just that, private, it may make the content more visible to friends and family.
Of course, Google’s search has been personalised for some time now, in fact since 2005, and has evolved constantly since then:
What will the new search method mean?
Your new personalised results will include:
- Listings from the web (general)
- Listings from the web (in relation to your personal behaviour)
- Listings from the web (in relation to your social connections)
- Public Google+ posts, photos or Google Picasa photos
- Private or limited Google+ posts, photos or Google Picasa photos shared with you
You search results will show you the number of personal results and the number of other results. Plus, a new button will appear on the right of your results that will enable you to toggle between your personalised and non-personalised results.
For more information about these changes, take a look at the full article and find out why Google’s results will get more personal with “Search Plus Your World.”
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Senator Warner does not trust most cost-benefit analysis of federal regulations currently being done by either the federal agencies or the industry. Further, he noted that there is currently no independent retrospective review of the federal regulatory structure. There should be a look-back mechanism of three-five years to ascertain if the regulation is accomplishing its goal. The Senator wants regulatory effectiveness, not a regulatory moratorium.
He also said that the idea that there should be a cost-benefit analysis of a regulation at a threshold of $100 million is supported by heads of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in both Democratic and Republican Administrations. The Senator acknowledged that the politicization of OIRA, which is housed in the executive branch, could interfere with the independent actions of independent federal agencies. He wants to explore the idea of having an independent entity, like OMB, conduct an independent analysis of the cost-benefit analysis of regulations. There is currently no independent validation of the cost of regulations, he noted.
Recently, a bi-partisan group of former OIRA Administrators from the Clinton, Reagan and Bush 41 and 43 Administrations sent a letter to Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), Chair of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, expressing their strong support for S 3468. The former OIRA chiefs noted that for 30 years Presidents of both parties have required executive agencies to consider regulatory impact, including a cost-benefit analysis, when crafting new regulations, with review by OIRA. These requirements have not been imposed on independent federal agencies, and the OIRA heads fear that independent agencies have typically not engaged in the economic analysis that has come to be expected from executive agencies. These agencies are not independent not because their method of regulation differs from executive agencies, noted the former OIRA Administrators, but rather because Congress has limited the power of the President to remove their top officials, either by statute or tradition.
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Archduke Karl and Grand Duchess Catherina as King & Queen?
I am reading Adam Zamoyski's excellent 'Rites of Peace' at the moment and it is stated that Lord Aberdeen received intelligence that Tsar Alexander I of Russia and Emperor Franz I of Austria were planning a marriage of Franz' son, the Duke of Teschen to Grand Duchess Catherine Pavlovna, Alexanders sister 9later mother of our Queen Sophie). The couple would become King and Queen of The Netherlands...
I was wondering in what advanced state this plan was? As Alexander I actually offered part of The Netherlands to Denmark at one point I am not so surprised. Luckily there was England who wanted a strong Northern neigbour for France.
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Location September 1928:
A.I. Magid Co., Inc.
A.I Magid exhibited at the Second National Merchandise Fair, held July 23- August 3, 1923 at the Grand Central Palace, New York City. (New York Times May 3, 1923, page 9)
Display ad, page 70, Trunks and Leather Goods September 1928.
Paris was the center of fashion in the early decades of the 20th century. American manufacturers traveled regularly to Europe for inspiration. This story in the July 1935 issue of Luggage and Leather Goods details the results of one trip, especially the exhibit of Italian Renaissance art. Emily Braun, Professor of Art History, Hunter College, said of this exhibit, "In 1935, an extraordinary exhibition of Italian Renaissance and Baroque masterpieces opened at the Petit Palais in Paris. Organized jointly by the Italian fascist regime and the French Republic, this cultural spectacle blatantly promoted "humanist values" to the ends of diplomatic brinkmanship and colonial conquest."
Paris was the style center for fashion between the wars and current French innovations were perceived by Americans as superior to home grown concepts, as seen in this half page ad from March 1930 Hand Bag Modes, page 66.
March 1930 "Hand Bag Modes" page 70
In October 2005, I was delighted to find a web site by Walter Grutchfield 14TH TO 42ND STREET that documents painted signs on building exteriors from 14th to 42nd street in New York City. Since the handbags industry was grounded here in early to mid-20th Century, I hoped the site would provided a glimpse of the real places and Walter exceeded my wildest hopes!
This document of Industrial Americana can be found on the side of 30 E. 33rd St., the Crystal Building near Madison Ave. This picture was taken by Walter in 2002.
Walter Grutchfield's site includes the following details about Magid Handbags and A.I Magid, it's predecessor. Please visit the site at 14TH TO 42ND STREET
The March 1930 issue of "Hand Bag Modes" includes this glimps into the newly redecorated showroom of A.I. Magid at 14 East 33rd St.
The text reads "The A, I. Magid showroom and buying booths have recently been redecorated in a green antique finish, uniform on the walls and the showcases and the booths. Antique type chairs and cabinets are used, and full length mirrors are available for women buyers to study the effects of hand-bags with their costumes. At the same time the showroom was redecorated, the factory space was materially enlarged to take care of increasing business."
Walter Grutchfield shared his communications with Maggid family members and his own research into the business' history. "Magid Handbags developed from the millinery business of Mrs. Anna I. Magid (born Poland/Russia 1870, died Brooklyn 1934) at 38 W. 116th St. in 1901. Her husband, Isaac Magid (born Poland/Russia 1866, immigrated 1892, naturalized 1903) was the foreman in a rag factory on Renwick St. and not involved in the millinery business. At the time of the 1910 U S Census the Magids lived in the Bronx with their 5 children ranging in age from 9 to 18 and Isaac Magid's mother, Paula, age 60. Anna lists her occupation as "Millinery, Own Shop." By 1912 Anna was involved with the Hygrade Ornament Co. at 640 Broadway, a business run by Samuel Blaufeld, Michael Shirk and, somewhat later, Max Posner. Blaufeld and Shirk were in business as "Blaufeld & Shirk, Hats" at the same address. By 1915 Anna Magid was president of the Hygrade Ornament Co. and her daughter, Augusta, was a manager. (Samuel Blaufeld remained as treasurer.) A year later she branched out on her own as "A. I. Magid Co., Millinery Ornaments" at 4 W. 37th St. This business became A. I. Magid, Co. "novelties", "leather goods", and "handbags" at several locations around the East 30s from 1918 to 1936. By 1922 Anna had brought in her son, Morris (who later re-named himself Maurice Magid) and her son-in-law, Leopold Sneider (1896-1971) who had married Anna's daughter Frances. A second son, Leon Magid (1901-1973) joined the business a little later. By the time of the U S Census in 1930, Anna Magid (with husband Isaac) had retired to Miami, Florida, and A. I. Magid Co. was run by the two brothers, Leon and Maurice, along with their brother-in-law, Leopold Sneider. (The brothers Maurice and Leon Magid appear in the 1930 U S Census as ages 31 and 29, Manufacturers of Ladies Hand Bags, living at 687 Lexington Ave.) Maurice Magid was the ultimate survivor, living in 3 centuries (born 1897, died 2001).
Paul Magid, Maurice's son, writes regarding the Magid family: "Anna ... must have been quite a lady. In the 1920's she used to drive by herself with her little chihuahua, Izzy, down to Florida once a year. Quite a trek in those days. Her husband Isaac never had anything to do with the business. He worked as a foreman in a factory that reprocessed rags into cloth (shoddy). His wife seemed to be the dominant one in the family... Snieder's wife Francis and my brother's other sister, Augusta (Gus) also worked in the business. They were both very bright and went to Barnard College. My father quit school in the twenties to go to work for his mother in the business, but in the thirties, returned to college (NYU), got his degree and went into business as a real estate developer, doing mostly commercial property work. He recalled his days with the company fondly as it gave him an opportunity to make over twenty trips to Europe by ship as a buyer for [his] mother. He even went to Russia during one of the trips."
A. I. Magid Co. moved to 30 E. 33 St. in 1937 and became Magid Handbags around 1938/39. The sign says, Over 50 Years of Continuous Service, which should mean that it was painted in the 1950s. Some time in the 1980s the business was sold to outside interests. As of 2003 Magid Handbags still survived as a trade name (registered by Y & S Handbags, 320 5th Ave.) but had no connection with the Magid family."
Many thanks to Walter Grutchfield for sharing his findings with Handbag mavens!
Anna's Magid's great-grandaughter, Bette Levy, is an artist in touch with her roots. "At the turn of the century, my great-grandmother, Anna Magid started a beaded handbag company in New York City, and her daughter, my grandmother, was the designer. Two of my earliest memories relate to Magid Handbags. In one memory, I am sitting on the floor in one of the workrooms, playing with thousands of seed beads... in another memory, I am lying at the foot of my grandmother's bed while she designs and pricks out bead patterns on tissue paper attached to a wooden board." See Bette's work at Pyrogallery: Bette Levy
Handbag News August 1942 issue of "Luggage & Leather Goods," page 57
School Styles At Magid
For Back-To-School promotion Magid is showing new fabric bags in a novelty rayon twill material that has the appearance of flannel. To retail at $2.95 there are various styles including one with a polished wood frame, a top zipper and several envelopes. Fringed yarn trim in contrasting colors is eye-catching.
Bags for Spring 1956 were presented on January 3, 1956 by agreement as a member of the National Authority for the Ladies Handbag Industry. 1956NationalAuthorityMembers
AFLOATóJerry Lederer of Magid Handbags, left a few weeks back on a world cruise. (December 1959 Handbags & Accessories, page 51)
The 1960s, 1970s & 1980s
Simple white lucite box bag, made in Hong Kong and marked Magid, ca 1965. A similar caramel Magid Lucite Hong Kong example sold online for $60 in 2006.
This lucite and metal shoulder bag features an extremely long shoulder bag chaing handle, popular in the late 70s and 80s.
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The bustle skirt was my favorite part of my Steampunk Batgirl costume. I wanted to create an item that was a steampunk staple, but still hint at the traditional cape that Batgirl is famous for wearing. The skirt is a simple six-panel skirt that is just missing the front three panels. Don’t know what that means? That’s ok, keep reading and I will do my best to explain. (I simplified some steps in this process, but it will end up looking just like my skirt.)
The first thing you need to figure out is the length of your waistband. Measure your TRUE waist, which should be the narrowest part of your torso, a little above your belly button. If you are going to wear the skirt under a corset subtract one inch from that measurement, otherwise add one inch to the measurement.
Example: Waist measurement: 28 inches
Under Corset: 27 inches
Not under corset: 29 inches
This will end up being the length of your waistband, including seam allowances. The under corset length is smaller to accommodate the smaller waist size and avoid uncomfortable bunching under the corset. Measure and cut a rectangular strip if your fabric, using your adjusted waist measurement as the length and a width of 4 inches.
Take your waistband strip and iron some interfacing on the underside of it. You don’t need heavy duty interfacing, just some regular weight stuff to give the waistband some structural strength. MAKE SURE THAT YOU BUY IRON-ON INTERFACING. It will make your life a LOT easier, so ask the store personnel if you are unsure. It’s really easy to buy the wrong stuff, and we all hate the walk of shame back through the fabric store that you left 20 minutes ago.
Before you start sewing, you will want to iron creases into your waistband because it will make things much faster. Fold it over length-wise and iron it until it holds the crease down the center, then fold half inch folds along each edge of the waistband and iron until they hold creases as well. These mark your seam allowances and the creases will make the sewing easier.
Fold the waistband lengthwise, with the interfacing on the outside. This should be folded opposite of the ironed seam that you ironed earlier. You will then sew the ends closed on the half inch creases that you ironed earlier, but make sure that the lengthwise half inch seams are sewn in the folded position.
Now you are done prepping your waistband! You will turn it right-side out later, but for now we will move on to the panels!
I traced my panels from a floor-length skirt onto large pieces of butcher paper (ok, so they were old DnD maps, sue me). Those panels are about 13 inches wide across the top, 34 inches wide across the bottom, and 42 inches long, but I added about 5 more inches on both sides and an extra foot to the length of my panel outline. The fuller you want your bustle, the more fabric you need to add to each panel. I used three enlarged panels to create my steampunk skirt. Remember, always trace an cut patterns length-wise according to the weave of the fabric, just like the picture to the right.
PLEASE NOTE: Only add extra inches of fabric to the panels that you are going to use for the bustle. You won’t want to add as much/any extra fabric to the panel pattern for the front of the skirt or you will trip all over it.
Then sew the panels together by matching the edges and stitching them together to form a circle or semi-circle, like the picture to the left. My skirt only used three panels since it only went half way around my body. Full skirts will usually use five or more panels. Make sure your seams are all facing the same direction on your skirt as you sew. After you sew your panels together, you will want to finish your edges on the underside of the skirt and hem the outer edges. This video shows you ways to do that.
Put it all Together
Now you will pin the panels to the waistband before you sew them. You will choose one of the lengthwise half-inch seam allowances and pin the panels to, and start by pinning the front edges of the skirt to the appropriate place on the waistband. For my skirt, I wanted the skirt to open right in front of my hip bones so that my bloomers and garters would show. The easiest way to do this is to safety pin the waistband on yourself, then pin the front edges of the skirt to where you want them on the waistband.
Once the front pins are in place, you will need to make pleats to gather the rest of the skirt fabric to the waistband. You will basically fold the fabric over itself, then pin it into place. This it the most tedious part of making the skirt, but remember that the pleats do not have to be perfect.
Once you are done pinning the skirt, carefully sew the pleats in place on the side that you pinned. Iron the pleats flat after you sew them, then close the waistband (be careful that the other seam allowance is folded up inside), and then sew it shut across the bottom.
Bustling the Bustle
Now your basic skirt is finished, it’s time to add the bustle. The easiest way is to put your skirt on the dress form and start pinning. There isn’t really a magic formula, just start pulling spots and pinning them to higher places to give it the tiered appearance. Once you have everything looking good, hand stitch each spot where you pinned. Don’t start sewing until your whole bustle is pinned, because you will probably change your mind… a few times.
The “bat” part of the skirt was actually designed to be a completely separate piece. It was made just like a cape, and is hand stitched into the waistband so that it can be detached and reattached very easily. I did that to give the skirt more versatility as a costume piece. I can now wear it with my steampunk batgirl, or remove it to be just steampunk!
I measured and drew the desired shape on butcher paper (another old DnD map) and traced one on the black and one on the yellow fabrics. I then carefully cut them out and pinned them together, starting with the point of each bat wing shape to be sure they lined up correctly. I then stitched them together and turned it inside out to hide the edges, just like a simple cape design. Originally, I had planned to add interfacing to give the wings some stiffness and shape, but I really liked how the material flowed without it. Then I simply closed up the top of the “wings” and hand stitched it into the waistband of the skirt, underneath the already finished bustle.
Have questions? Need clarification? Post a reply or email me at Kimi@goldenlasso.netRelated Posts:
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Hatot worked at the Hippodrome Theatre, Paris, where he directed crowd scenes. In 1896 he directed the first of several comic and dramatic films he would make for the Lumière firm until 1901, including the thirteen scene Passion Play La Vie et la Passion de Jésus-Christ (1897), with the pantomime actor Bretteau playing Christ. His dramas included a succession of famous deaths: Execution de Jeanne d'Arc, Assassinat du Duc de Guise, Mort de Marat and Mort de Robespierre (all 1897); his comedies, or records of various comic stage acts, included the celebrated Footit and Chocolat. Hatot's early film output is a useful reminder that Lumière did not only produce actuality film. He subsequently directed dramas for Pathé before in 1906 joining the new company Eclipse, a French off-shoot of the Charles Urban Trading Company, where he formed a team with former Gaumont designer and director Victorin Jasset. The pair moved to Eclair in 1908 where they specialised in film series with regular characters (for example, Nick Carter) and produced some films in North Africa.
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Website Business Development is a complex concept to understand fully in order to develop your website and online part of your business to its’ fullest capacity and optimization. We will try to explain only one way and how to effectively earn money with your website(s).
Very important to understand is e-business and how you can control your online business right from the beginning. Every businessperson needs to know what approach to e-business is most effective based upon their business models and should be more comprehensive than any other type of business – website business model strategies.
Without knowing what what is essential website elements there is no point to take further steps. With essential elements of website strategies and development in place, each website designer will know what needs to happen to grow and get that business to higher levels of income and online viewership.
To know what website issues and problems can be expected during the initial phase of their existence and development, each designer must know how to to most accurately correct those potential website problems.
Web Marketing is one of the most important part of web business because it shows how each website can make profits in different ways.
Search Engines and high-rankings are important factors because your visitors find your website either valuable to them or not within a few seconds. If we don’t choose the right keywords with low competition and high commercial value and add our sitemaps to the major search engines and do not optimize them properly, all your work will be more or less of a waste of time. That’s why choosing the right keywords in the beginning is the most effective first step to getting the ranking you need on Google, Bing and Yahoo!
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Thursday, April 14, 2011
The Wilkinsons present Uncle Tom's Cabin
"THE WILKINSON COMBINATION is reported as doing finely in New England with "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and Miss Lillie Wilkinson as Topsy. The play reaches its one hundredth consecutive performance this season by this company at Nashua, N. H., APril 14. The veteran Charley Wilkinson is the manager."
Charles DeWitt Clinton Wilkinson began his theatrical career as a comedian, with his first appearance in Worcester, Massachusetts on 10 December 1850. There is a complete biography of his life at FindAGrave http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=39609203 even though there is no grave indentified in this sketch. The biography was taken from Memoirs of the Wilkinson Family in America, by Reverend Israel Wilkinson, 1869, Biography No. XXIV, on page 268. This book is available fully transcribed at Rootsweb.ancestry.com and also at Archive.org
The Worcester Music Hall took over the Worcester Fruit Preserving Company building in 1868, and became known as the Worcester Theater. In 1883 Charles DeWitt Clinton Wilkinson took out a six year’s lease on the building for $3,750 yearly rent, which sounds like it must have been a lot of money in those days! His widow, Leila (Layton) Wilkinson, retained the rental until the building was destroyed by a fire in 1889.
The “Lillie” in the poster is actually Leila, who was born in England, and was a renowned actress in her own right. A collection of broadside posters and playbills for "Wilkinson's Dramatic Company" can be seen at the Antiquarian Society in Worcester, at North Carolina State University library and also at the Boston Public Library. Charles DeWitt Clinton Wilkinson participated in the presentation of the play "Uncle Tom's Cabin" more than six hundred times!
Generation 1: Lawrence Wilkinson, born about 1620 in Durham, England, died 9 August 1692 in Providence, Rhode Island; married to Susanna Smith, daughter of Christopher Smith and Alice Unknown.
Generation 2: Samuel Wilkinson, born about 1650 in Durham, England, died 27 August 1727 in Rhode Island; married on 18 September 1674 in Providence, Rhode Island to Plain Wickenden, daughter of William Wickenden, born about 1650 in Newport, Rhode Island, died about 1695.
Generation 3: Joseph Wilkinson, born 22 January 1683 in Smithfield, Rhode Island, died 24 April 1740 in Scituate, Rhode Island; married Martha Pray, daughter of John Pray and Sarah Brown, born 1689 in Providence Rhode Island, died 22 May 1784.
Generation 4: Joseph Wilkinson, born 1721, died 20 September 1755 in Scituate, Rhode Island; married on 6 December 1741 to Alice Jenckes, born 1724, died 1790, daughter of Obadiah Jenks and Alice Eddy.
Generation 5: Joseph Wilkinson, born 11 March 1751 in Scituate, Rhode Island, died about 1814; married on 25 October 1797 in Scituate to Elizabeth Brownell, born 13 October 1749 in Little Compton, Rhode Island, died 30 October 1841, daughter of Thomas Brownell and Hannah Potter.
Generation 6: Brownell Wilkinson, born 20 May 1785 in Scituate, Rhode Island, died 15 February 1861 in Worcester, married first to Tabitha Thomas about 1803, and had six children. He married second to Maria Spalding about 1814, no children. He married third to Sally Ann Phillips, daughter of Simon Phillips and Sarah Bailey, born 25 October 1810 in Worcester, died 25 May 1879. Five children, including Charles D. C. Wilkinson below.
Generation 7: Charles DeWitt Clinton Wilkinson, born 21 April 1830 in Plainfield, Connecticut, died on 2 March 1888 in Worcester, Massachusetts; married first to Sarah E. Fogal (age 15!) in July 1853 at Bridgeport, Connecticut; married second to Leila Lawton on 22 October 1866 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, daughter of Sidney Lawton and Rachel Carter of England.
One child, by wife Sarah Fogal, a son Frank Marshall Wilkinson, born 22 January 1858 in Worcester, died 20 February 1892 in Worcester.
For more information:
Memoirs of the Wilkinson Family in America, by Reverend Israel Wilkinson, 1869, Biography No. XXIV, page 268.
Records of the Bailey Family, compiled by “a descendant”, Providence, RI, 1895, see pages 106 and 107.
History of the American Stage: Containing Biographical Sketches of nearly every member of the Profession that has appeared on the American Stage from 1733 to 1870, by Thomas Alston Brown, 1870.
Dictionary of Worcester and its Vicinity, Second Issue, by Franklin Pierce Rice, Worcester: Blanchard & Co, Publishers, 1893, pages 71 and 119.
Copyright 2011, Heather Wilkinson Rojo
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So many considerations go into choosing an offshore manufacturing location that it's easy to get overwhelmed, particularly for small and midsized manufacturers. Set aside the noise and controversy over China, Mexico, or any other popular location, and start with areas that smooth the way for business setups.
This is particularly important for small to midsized manufacturers that don't have the resources available to what's popularly called the "Goliath fringe" in electronics manufacturing.
"Globalization means different things to midmarket OEMs and EMS companies than to goliath multinational enterprises (MNEs)," according to consultancy Charlie Barnhart & Associates in its latest report. "Opportunities must be carefully assessed and each company must exercise due diligence to determine if, when and how it should attempt to do business in emerging markets. OEMs should start with a clean slate in setting up a manufacturing solution."
In addition to location, labor, and logistics, companies must consider how easy it is to conduct business within a global region. This has been a major sticking point for companies manufacturing in China. Today's New York Times reports that access to China's domestic market will be a leading topic of conversation at a series of high-level meetings this week between President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao.
Ease-of-business considerations include starting a business, obtaining construction permits, protection of shareholders, securing credit, property registration, and ease of cross-border trade. CBA used rankings compiled by the World Bank Group for 18 offshore regions. Two of the basics -- securing credit and registering property -- are rated here:
Securing credit, a major consideration for midmarket companies, is easiest in Malaysia, South Africa, Singapore, the US, Australia, Romania, Vietnam, India, and Ukraine. Some of the toughest areas: Indonesia, Brazil, the Russian Federation, and Morocco.
Registering property, both physical and intellectual, is another major consideration. Regions that make this easy are: Belarus, US, Singapore, Thailand, Australia, Turkey, Vietnam, and Chile. The toughest areas include: Ukraine, Morocco, Brazil, and Argentina.
Ease of doing business is not just a regional consideration: OEMs and EMS companies have to see eye to eye on everything -- including the value of offshore manufacturing.
"The less adversarial the relationship the easier it will be to avoid gamesmanship and subterfuge," according to CBA. "The EMS industry is still a very low margin business, where the investment community has little faith in reasonable returns, meaning the cost of money is probably higher than what the OEM experiences. OEMs can’t expect quarterly cost reductions indefinitely, or the EMS will go out of business or relegate the account."
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david jameson architect
This elegant pavilion takes the tea ceremony to a new level—literally. The bronze and glass structure, hanging from steel beams like a Japanese lantern, is a metaphor for the mental attitude of mindfulness, and the meditative detachment from thought and time. David Jameson, FAIA, likes playing with the notion of in-between physical space, too. The path from main house to teahouse moves from rectangular stepping stones in the lawn to crushed gravel, where the stepping stones become irregular and wind between the pavilion and its steel superstructure. “Your mind begins to cleanse itself as you weave through the bamboo. The path is irregular, the gravel is crunchy, and the between space is activated,” Jameson says.
Designed for use as a teahouse, meditation space, and family music stage, most of the building was shop-fabricated. Its details demonstrate Jameson’s belief that the outside of a building should hint at what’s inside. The superstructure’s steel cross-bracing alludes to the dreidel-like quality of the roof and ceiling—thin at the edges and folding up on the outside, down on the inside. “Increasing the ceiling depth toward the center makes the space more intimate,” he says, and enhances the acoustics.
The jury praised the teahouse’s modern translation and it’s smart, rich detailing. “The Miesian connection is very strong,” one judge said.
Click here to see all 2011 rada winners.
doors, exterior siding, lighting fixtures, windows (custom): RKI Inc., www.rkiinc.net; hvac equipment: Daikin, www.daikin.com; insulation: Dow Building Solutions, www.building.dow.com
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August 22, 2009 |
WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama is challenging his critics on a national health care overhaul, accusing them of making "phony claims" about the legislation. "This is an issue of vital concern to every American, and I'm glad that so many are engaged," Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address. "But it also should be an honest debate, not one dominated by willful misrepresentations and outright distortions, spread by the very folks who would benefit the most by keeping things exactly as they are. " Obama said illegal immigrants would not be part of the health care overhaul, taxpayers would not be mandated to fund abortions and he does not intend a government takeover of health care- all claims that critics have made at contentious town hall-style public meetings with members of Congress.
July 31, 2007 |
MANILA: Education and health care are lagging seriously behind as India and other South Asian economies take off, the Asian Development Bank said in a report released here Tuesday. It warned that the region's competitiveness could be undermined unless governments address the growing mismatches. The region remains on a solid track of high economic expansion led by India, but changing educational and health needs must be meet if it is to remain an engine of economic growth, the South Asia Economic Report said.
November 22, 2009 |
WASHINGTON: Invoking the memory of Edward M. Kennedy, Democrats united Saturday night to push historic health care legislation past a key Senate hurdle over the opposition of Republicans eager to inflict a punishing defeat on President Barack Obama. There was not a vote to spare. The 60-39 vote cleared the way for a bruising, full-scale debate beginning after Thanksgiving on the legislation, which is designed to extend coverage to roughly 31 million who lack it, crack down on insurance company practices that deny or dilute benefits and curtail the growth of spending on medical care nationally.
March 22, 2010 |
WASHINGTON: The Democratic-controlled Congress handed President Barack Obama a huge victory on Sunday night extending health care to tens of millions of uninsured Americans and cracking down on insurance company abuses, a climactic chapter in the century-long quest for near universal coverage. ( Watch ) Widely viewed as dead two months ago, the Senate-passed bill cleared the House on a 219-212 vote, with Republicans unanimous in opposition. Congressional officials said they expected Obama to sign the bill as early as Tuesday.
October 11, 2007 |
SHILLONG: In conformity with the Centre's policy, Meghalaya government was giving priority on improvement of the healthcare services and rural development, Chief Minister D D Lapang said on Thursday. Addressing a function of the 8th World Sight Day organised by state Health and Family Welfare department here, Lapang said the Centre was implementing various schemes for rural development including the National Rural Health Mission and National Employment Guarantee Scheme.
August 16, 2009 |
GRAND JUNCTION(COLORADO): President Barack Obama stepped up his defense of his controversial health care plan on Saturday on a tour mixing hardball politics with the natural majesty of America's national parks. Obama woke beneath towering snow-topped peaks at a Montana ski resort, then helicoptered into the wilderness of Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, to watch the "Old Faithful" geyser spew water and boiling steam into the sky. But then, it was back to business, and another town hall meeting, in Colorado, designed to turn back a torrent of Republican attacks on his top domestic priority during Congress's unusually incendiary August summer break.
November 23, 2009 |
WASHINGTON: Moderate Senate Democrats threatened Sunday to scuttle health-care legislation if their demands aren't met, while more liberal members warned their party leaders not to bend. The dispute among Democrats foretells of a rowdy floor debate next month on legislation that would extend health care coverage to roughly 31 million Americans. Republicans have already made clear they aren't supporting the bill. Final passage is in jeopardy, even after the chamber's historic 60-39 vote Saturday night to begin debate.
February 26, 2010 |
WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama alternately courted and blasted Republicans who have impeded his health care plan on Thursday, in an extraordinary live-on-TV summit aimed at breaking a partisan deadlock over his top domestic priority. With the unprecedented, daylong policy debate available from start to finish to a divided public, Obama and Democratic leaders cast the reform they want as critical to tackling an issue that is even more pressing to many Americans _ the struggling economy.
March 8, 2013 |
KOCHI: The Medicine Shoppe Pharmacy, Cardinal Health Care, VPS Health Care Pvt . Ltd., a Kerala based company, has announced their foray into the healthcare services sector by taking up the master franchise for US-based retail pharmacy chain - The Medicine Shoppe Pharmacy. The first outlet is being opened in Kochi, Kerala. Following the Group's success with The Medicine Shoppe Pharmacy brand in the Middle East, VPS Health Care Pvt. Ltd. is now poised to enter the Indian retail pharmacy sector.
February 6, 2008 |
NEW DELHI: India must improve the health care system to realise its economic potential and the country is well positioned to tackle challenges in the sector, says a report. Further, public-private collaboration for better insurance coverage, widespread health education and better disease prevention could improve the health care system. "The problems facing the system are large -- but not intractable if business, government and civil society work together to solve them," said the report published by McKinsey Quarterly.
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Molyneux's Curiosity App Gets Renamed
NASA beat him to the punch.
Yesterday, Peter Molyneux revealed that the name of his new project was in direct conflict with the NASA Mars Rover, Curiosity. His new studio, 22 Cans, has been working on this project for only a brief period of time, but came out with an official announcement trailer just a few days ago.
Molyneux explained through his Twitter account that Curiosity would have to be summed up in another word "because of NASA" and opened up suggestions to the Twitterverse. As new names were collected, he suggested that those interested in his new project follow the 22 Cans Twitter account as Curiosity was in its "final days of design."
After an office poll, the chosen name was "Curiosity: What's Inside the Cube." After hearing the title, I can't help but imagine Brad Pitt shouting, "What's in the box? What's in the box?!" Molyneux then expressed his hilarious interest in calling the project "Cube of Duty." If you can come up with a better name, feel free to post it here. Maybe Peter will see it and be inspired in the final hours of the design phase.
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By Sibyl West | by Richard Vedder, Christopher Matgouranis, Jonathan Robe
If bottom 80 percent were half as productive as top 20 percent, tuition could be cut in half
AUSTIN – At a time of alarming tuition costs and economic uncertainties, an analysis of the preliminary data released earlier this month by the University of Texas System shows one of the state’s flagship universities could make tuition vastly more affordable by moderately increasing faculty emphasis on teaching.
The Center for College Affordability and Productivity conducted the study titled “Faculty Productivity and Costs at The University of Texas at Austin.” The study assesses faculty productivity at UT-Austin in terms of both research and teaching by delving into the data on faculty compensation, teaching loads and external research grant awards released by the University of Texas system.
“Our analysis shows that there is clearly room for improvement in terms of faculty productivity at UT Austin,” said Dr. Richard Vedder, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity and a co-author of the study. “Simply by having faculty teach more students or courses, students and taxpayers will benefit significantly by reduced university costs.”
The study reveals substantial disparities in the work professors actually perform and the compensation they receive for their services. The data show a relatively small portion of faculty carry the majority of the teaching load, teaching a sizable majority of students and while maintaining their research nearly at the same level as their peers. A significant proportion of the faculty is far less productive, with small teaching loads and little external research dollars generated. The data suggests that increasing teaching responsibilities for the majority of faculty would only marginally impact external research funding or productivity, while significantly reducing the cost of a degree at UT-Austin.
“Given the rising tuition costs at UT Austin and other public universities in Texas, this report clearly demonstrates how increases in faculty teaching can result in significant cost savings to students, parents and taxpayers,” said Senator Dan Patrick (R-Houston), former Vice Chair of the Higher Education committee. “All Texans, students and taxpayers deserve the best value for their investment in higher education – a system where professors are engaged and held accountable for their teaching productivity and performance.”
The study’s analysis comes in the wake of often heated debate on the value of looking closely at teaching and research productivity at Texas’ public colleges and universities.
“Our goal in conducting this analysis was to provide a resource for university leaders and policy makers as they make decisions on enhancing university systems to provide the highest-quality education at an affordable price for students,” said Vedder. “The findings at UT-Austin are not unique as tuition and fees skyrocket at public universities across the nation, raising the question of who is really working to control costs for parents and taxpayers during the worst economic recession in 70 years.”
Additional highlights of the study include:
- 20 percent of UT Austin faculty are teaching 57 percent of student credit hours. They also generate 18 percent of the campus’s research funding. This suggests that these faculty are not jeopardizing their status as researchers by assuming such a high level of teaching responsibility.
- Conversely, the least productive 20 percent of faculty teach only 2 percent of all student credit hours and generate a disproportionately smaller percentage of external research funding than do other segments of the faculty.
- Research grant funds go almost entirely (99.8 percent) to a small minority (20 percent) of the faculty; only 2 percent of the faculty conduct 57 percent of funded research.
- Non-tenured track faculty teach a majority of undergraduate enrollments and a surprising 31 percent of graduate enrollments.
- The most active researchers teach nearly the average of all faculty; increasing teaching loads of others would trivially impact outside research support.
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Q - Do we really believe we won’t go to Hell if we wear a scapular and pray every day? More generally, there are things not in the bible, like the rosary, etc. that many people say are unnecessary. Why do we have extra things? Isn’t being good and following God’s Word good enough?
A - Thanks for the question. I will get to the scapular issue toward the end of this post.
While there are Catholic "extras" that aren't necessary for salvation, they can help us grow in holiness - these are not part of the deposit of revelation we call Sacred Tradition, but traditions (with a lower-case"t"). An analogy might help. You could get a hot dog with just a bun and the hot dog. But, every person likes to dress them up differently. I personally like them loaded with ketchup, mustard, onions, etc. This is the same with all the Catholic extras, such as the different forms of prayer (rosary, praise and worship music, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, etc.) and different devotions (Marian, saints, different sacramentals, etc.). We don't all have to do the same things, because we are all different and have different spiritual tastes. Just because a devotion isn't found in the Bible doesn't mean it isn't helpful to us spiritually.
Now, back to the scapular. There are several different kinds of scapulars and each has a particular focus, but this is a particular kind of spirituality that comes from wearing a cloth pendant. The origin of the scapular is found in the religious communities and their clothing, called a habit. The cloth pendant identifies the wearer with the spirituality of a particular religious community, for instance the brown scapular is connected with our Lady of Mount Carmel and the Carmelite communities. Thus, a wearer of a scapular that is associated with a particular order is to be inducted (called invested) into a community by a priest.
Regardless of what community a scapular is associated with, each is an outward sign of their devotion to Mary. There are particular promises that are associated with some scapulars. The most common is the brown scapular which is said to free one from the fire of hell if worn at all times. This isn't a magic charm that keeps you out of hell. Rather, it is a promise that if you maintain your relationship with Christ and His mother that your are assured of heaven through His grace and your faith.
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One of Pasolini's trilogy of explorations of the medium of storytelling and spoken narrative ("Canterbury Tales" and "Decameron" are the other pair), "Arabian Nights" is the most integrated and coherent of the three. It follows a theme of lust, love, and loss. A slave girl, Zumarud, is empowered to choose her own master - she chooses a youth, gives him the money to buy her, and the pair of them set up home together.
Only he loses her through greed and naivety. He sets out to find her, and the film follows their many adventures and the adventures of those people whose lives they touch. The film is presented in a series of vignettes rather than as a single storyline. In Burton's translation of the 1001 Arabian Nights, King Shahryar believes that all women are inherently unfaithful, and murders each new wife after the wedding night until Scheherazade enters his life. Each night she buys her life by recounting another story, enrapturing the king.
There is no Scheherazade here, but themes of betrayal and greed run through the film. In the main, the setting is in the desert or Arab villages rather than a king's palace. It is a celebration of the beauty of youth and their innocent sexual energy. In one vignette, an old man seduces three youths, in another, a caravan train picks up a young man and young woman and introduces them to one another.
The acting is amateurish and clumsy, but that enhances the eroticism in places - there is none of the confident, rehearsed choreography of the professional here. And yet the sex is passionless, static, unreal. This is a manipulative world where the weak and the naïve are exposed to others who will routinely lie, cheat, steal, and use one another. This is a world in which men have to have love explained to them by women. This is a world of animal instincts mediated and civilised by the use of language.
The visual imagery is stunning, though much of the setting is either desert or bleached out, white or sandy buildings. Only an occasional splash of colour is permitted. The imagery, then, is of an architectural quality, the settings framing the litheness and suppleness of the youthful human body. Again, the eroticism is understated but implicit.
And the characters who pass across the screen tell tales or recite poetry. The tales flow into vignettes or little sub-plots, then drift back to the main theme again. This is the story-telling tradition as popular communication and as explanation. The story is told that ... and people live awaiting the story to unfold, waiting for the moment when the story comes true. The story is told that a man shall cross the desert and become king of the walled city ... .
The beautiful Zumarud finally finds herself mistaken for a man and is made king of the desert city. Men are now her slaves and she has absolute power. This is the absolute power which Scheherazade strove to wield, the power to enrapture, to capture the minds and imaginations of men. Only Scheherazade slaved to capture the king's attention and love by telling fantasies - Zumarud enslaves men by fulfilling their own fantasies. Women, it seems, are not unfaithful - men are deceived by their own thoughts and expectations.
Pasolini creates a story within a story within a story. Each person has a story to tell, but how many others will listen? Are the stories we tell truth or fiction? Can we recognise our own truths? Are the stories meant to inform, to entrance, to entertain, or to deceive. For ultimately, of course, Scheherazade deceives and manipulates her husband as she instrumentally sets out to save her own life by telling him stories. Who can blame her?
Pasolini's "Arabian Nights" is a sumptuous, meandering narrative which will entertain and amuse.
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What constitutes a healthy housing market? 7 charts Examining where we are today in the housing market. Will the current housing rebound continue into 2013?
Perceptions are guided by recent events. History is easily forgotten and our hardwiring makes us prone to trend following. The housing boom that started in 2012 is still the story today. In 2012 I noticed on various forums that new housing related shows were on the uptick. The headlines were largely positive. It is hard to see how the pace of appreciation can continue without a similar underlying real growth in household wages or a continued flood of investor money. Yet in markets were investors dominate, local families are outbid by global money and big funds. What makes up a healthy housing market? Today we’ll examine seven charts and try to put this current housing market into a longer-term perspective.
Normal housing market
There are many factors to examine when it comes to a normal housing market. I would argue that it is more important to focus on having a healthy economy and allowing housing to follow instead of focusing on housing and expecting the economy to follow. For over a decade the focus has been on housing and the Fed with QE3 is not disrupting that trend. Trulia has an interesting barometer on a few key housing metrics:
According to the above barometer, a normal market would have 1.5 million construction starts. We are at 861k. We’re making progress here but still a good distance from 1.5 million. The next item is existing home sales. We’re at 5.04 million whereas a more normal market would be at 5.5 million. On this metric we are inching closer to a more normal market. The number of mortgages in some sort of distress is up to 10.63 percent. This is still very high compared to the normal rate of 5.25 percent.
The number of homes for sales is extremely low:
While existing home sales are still short from a more normal level (not by much) housing inventory on the other hand is down by record levels. At a certain point you would expect this to carry over into housing starts and we are seeing this occur.
Housing starts are definitely on their way up. This should be expected given the very low inventory. Yet as we have discussed in previous articles, many younger Americans are saddled with high levels of college debt and are looking for lower priced housing options. In 2012 31 percent of housing starts were for multi-unit properties. Stronger rental demand but also, the new clientele base is likely pushing this trend.
30 year fixed rate mortgage
The drop in interest rates is truly historical:
People calmly talk about this as if we have a historical reference point for this. We do not. The Fed now has a balance sheet that is well over $3 trillion. This is not normal either:
Fed’s balance sheet as of 1/16/13 (source: FRB)
Prior to the recession, the Fed balance sheet was well under $1 trillion. We are a very long way from that and the Fed with QE3 is basically eating up MBS from the market. It is interesting that some would like to discount this activity yet the Fed is dictating interest rates and is the major player in the mortgage market. In other words, the Fed is the housing market.
Now this is a trend that I found interesting. While housing starts are up, construction jobs are still lagging:
What is going on here? Is it because multi-unit properties require less labor? I doubt it. Are construction crews making due with less? That could be one reason. This is probably one of the more interesting trends here. In this category we are also very far away from a normal market.
In a global system inflation can be exported. While US wage growth is anemic and inflation adjusted household income is now back to levels last seen in the 1990s, wage growth in China is definitely occurring:
It should come as no surprise then that money is rushing back into places like California and Canada propping up prices in select areas. Foreign demand is incredibly strong as the wealthy class rises abroad. In an open market, money can travel as it sees fit. Inflationary pressure is charging back in.
Another trend we are facing is the growth of a permanent part-time workforce. Many workers now work under contracts or projects. This is another reason why we have seen the U6 unemployment figure remain high:
This is unlikely to be positive for wage growth but does help companies earn more as they slash costs. It also makes a tougher case for sustained home value growth. The last few years have seen a large amount of buying come from investors. Nearly one third of all sales were investor based. This is incredibly high. It is hard to find historical data on a normal figure here but I would venture to guess that it is around the 10 percent range for the nation. In California, foreign demand makes up this portion alone:
“(OC Register) The National Association of Realtors estimated that foreign buyers accounted for 11 percent of California home sales.
The California Association of Realtors, however, pegged foreign sales at 5.8 percent of the state’s transactions. Of those, 39 percent of the buyers come from China, followed by buyers from Canada (13 percent), and from India and Mexico (8.7 percent each), CAR reported.”
Last month over 33 percent of buyers in Southern California paid all cash for their purchases, tying a previous historical record set a few months ago. The monthly average since 2000 is closer to 17 percent so we are nearly double that.
The above trends show that we really are in a different housing market today. Will these trends continue into 2013?
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Bougon means "grumpy" in French
A French court has rejected an attempt by a group of people with the surname, Bougon, which means "grumpy", to change the title of a new TV comedy series.
The 60 claimants were upset at the way their name was being associated with a family of scroungers, fraudsters and alcoholics in the series, Les Bougon.
A lawyer for the real-life Bougons said they would appeal against the ruling.
Andre Meillassoux said if the title was not changed, "little Bougons will go through hell in their... playgrounds".
Les Bougon, adapted from a hugely popular French-Canadian series for the channel M6, portrays a dysfunctional family living on the margins of society, committing benefit fraud and shop lifting.
The French newspaper, Le Monde, hailed it as a breath of fresh air.
However, Catherine Bougon who helped form the association of around 60 namesakes seeking to get M6 to change the title of the programme, said she disagreed.
She said that it had made life unbearable for people called Bougon in Quebec.
"It's come to mean a tax cheat because of the programme. In fact, they don't call them cheats any more, they call them 'bougons'," she added.
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Kamal Haasan [ Images ] and his artistic freedom is the smaller issue. How will the world view us when a handful of demonstrators terrorise our governments to ban a movie? Who will invest in India [ Images ] when a few truckloads of fanatics can cause the closure of the highly protected and centrally located US embassy in a prominent city of the country, asks M R Venkatesh.
Post-Independence, the 21-month Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi [ Images ] between June 1975 and March 1977 was the darkest period for India. Civil liberties were drastically curtailed. Leaders were summarily incarcerated. Many innocent people were detained under Maintenence of Internal Security Act. Press censorship was introduced overnight.
The indomitable and noted political satirist Cho Ramaswamy, editor of the weekly Thuglaq, refused to yield to this censorship. Instead, he simply stopped publishing his magazine for two weeks after the imposition of Emergency. When the publication resumed, the issue was published with a black front cover.
Thuglaq was probably the only magazine in India whose advertisements were censored during those times. While most in the media caved to the excesses of the government, a few like Cho refused to budge.
Approximately four decades later, the ghosts of the Emergency simply refuse to be exorcised. And it reappeared in Tamil Nadu last week in connection with a movie produced by noted thespian Kamal Haasan titled Vishwaroopam.
Based on representations from nearly two dozen fringe groups, 31 district collectors in Tamil Nadu passed identical prohibitory orders across the state under Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code ostensibly aimed at maintaining law and order.
Section 144 of the CrPC, it must be understood, is of British vintage. Accordingly, wide powers have been conferred by the statute on the administration to deal with emergency situations by imposing restrictions on the personal liberties of individuals, where the situation has the "potential" to cause unrest or danger to social peace and tranquility.
A powerful tool for the British masters to restrict protesting Indians prior to our independence, of course in my opinion, Section 144 is an anachronism and hence has no role in Independent India.
Hang on. Have I jumped the gun? Am I guilty of over-simplification?
It may be recalled that the state capital Chennai was witness to the fury of some fanatics in September 2012. This was in connection with the release of a controversial movie titled The Innocence of Muslims in the US.
As the administration watched helplessly, the mob went on a rampage, vented their anger on the US embassy and stalled traffic on the arterial Anna Salai. Crucially, business and business sentiments were affected. But who cared?
While this was a perfect case for the imposition of Section 144 of the CrPC, the administration dithered. Did it chicken out for obvious reasons?
There is an important message for all of us here. First, a motley group of people arranging themselves at the street level can decide what is correct or incorrect for a country of a billion plus, let the law be damned. Second, the administration, state or Centre, have a wonderful tradition of willingly buckling to such fringe elements. Third, whatever be the provision of law, administration will use draconian provisions of law only against soft targets.
In short, let us not at least proclaim that in India the rule of law prevails.
Karma theory? Or is it chaos theory?
Kamal, as is well-known, is a multi-faceted personality. Being an actor is one, social reformer is another. A self-proclaimed rationalist, Kamal has more often than not been needling others' sensibilities, notably that of the majority community. It is quite possible that the continued silence of this community emboldened the artist in Kamal to experiment more. In Vishwaroopam, possibly, he bit off more than what he could chew.
Surely, the licence of an artist ends where it begins to hurt the collective sentiments of a good number of people.
But questions arise. How could the portrayal of some fictional event in distant US and Afghanistan hurt the sensibilities of some religious groups in India? Is their faith so brittle that a movie can cause incalculable harm to them or their faith?
Let me turn the question around. How could a mere screening of a movie endanger peace and tranquility in the state? If the administration had information that some groups were planning on some violence, what action was taken?
What is galling is the collective silence of the Tamil movie industry, not now, but when fanatics lay siege to the US embassy in Chennai last September. Their track record in similar circumstances when it involved attacks on various artists and their works of art is nothing to crow about.
And that includes Kamal himself. Probably, the actor rationalised that such random events would never be aimed at rationalists themselves, little realising that when it involves fanatics there is no rationale.
Now all this takes me to the actor's earlier flick -- Dasavatharam. Intriguingly, that movie questioned some age-old beliefs of Hindus. Crucially, it sought to dismiss the traditional Hindu idea of correlating the present to the past through the "Karma theory." Instead, the main protagonist there seemed to suggest random happenings should be attributed to the more logical, scientific and rationally appealing "chaos theory."
Is it bad karma -- of needlessly needling the sentiments of the majority -- that has brought Kamal to this state of despair? Has the law of karma finally caught up with him? Or is it simple "chaos" theory? Is all this merely a coincidence? What explains the desertion of his "secular" brothers at his hour of need? Karma or chaos? Whatever be it, the choice is entirely on the readers.
But what about the idea of India?
Kamal, his artistic freedom and his alleged idiosyncrasies are the smaller order of things.
The larger question is the idea of India, its government and governance. How will the world view us when a handful of demonstrators terrorise our governments to ban a movie? Who will invest in India when a few truckloads of fanatics can cause the closure of the highly protected and centrally located US embassy in a prominent city? How does all this impact the business sentiments of India?
This is where upholding the law, especially by the government, becomes crucial. It may be understood that the basic function of any government is to strengthen rule of law by simply upholding it in totality. While strong governments uphold the law of the land, weak governments abdicate their responsibility.
It is in this connection the Rule of Law Index contained in the World Justice Project focuses on how countries uphold law using quantitative assessment tools. The index assesses a nation’s adherence to the rule of law and how “law deficit” could impact the lives of its citizens.
The nine different dimensions used by the index include powers of government, absence of corruption, order and security, fundamental rights, open government, regulatory enforcement, civil justice, criminal justice and informal justice. The outcome of this novel yet important exercise at a global level measures the extent to which countries adhere to the rule of law -- not in theory but in practice.
Expectedly, India is ranked a poor 83 [out of 97 countries] when it comes to the absence of corruption. Interestingly, we are ranked a poorer 96 when it comes to order and security, 79 on regulatory enforcement, 78 on civil justice, 64 on criminal justice and 64 on fundamental rights. So much for the proclaimed adherence to the rule of law by our government!
All these have a profound impact on the working of the Indian economy. Economists (and that includes the prime minister too) have failed to factor this crucial aspect in their reforms calculus. And this is where India has been a spectacular failure in the past decade or so -- where government has failed to uphold the rule of law.
There is another darker dimension to this debate. As governments abdicate their responsibilities, the courts in India fare far worse. The Ease of Doing Business 2013, a co-publication of the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation sheds light on how easy or difficult it is for a local entrepreneur to open and run a small to medium-size business when complying with relevant regulations.
It measures and tracks changes in regulations affecting 11 areas in the lifecycle of a business: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, resolving insolvency and employing workers.
The 2013 report ranks India at 132 among 185 countries on an overall basis. But when it comes to enforcing a contract through courts India is ranked 184 -- yes 184 -- out of 185 countries. On dealing with construction contracts we are ranked 182 and 173, on starting businesses.
Needless to emphasise, from war-torn Afghanistan to a civil strife-plagued Zimbabwe, most countries are ranked above India. Remember, most of them are not governed by an economist prime minister, do not have a sublime Constitution, trained administration, modern legislations and independent judiciary. Yet, all these have individually and collectively contributed to this mess in India.
If only Kamal the entrepreneur had known all this, in all probability, he would not have ventured to make Vishwaroopam in the first place. And that is the lesson of this imbroglio.
M R Venkatesh is a Chennai-based chartered accountant. He can be contacted at firstname.lastname@example.org
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The Silicon Valley Welcomes First of its Kind Minority Accelerator was originally posted on BlackWeb20.com
Silicon Valley welcomed the first ever technology accelerator for minority-led start-ups, NewME Accelerator. NewME’s select participants commenced their first class on June 16 and will participate in this program throughout the summer. The start-up founders are based in a shared house in Mountain View, Calif. and are utilizing co-working space at Citizen Space in San Francisco.
This program gives the founders a unique opportunity to learn from key industry leaders during private group dinners and one-on-one mentorship. The founders will leverage this once-in-a-lifetime access, and being in the epicenter of Silicon Valley’s culture, for nine weeks to take their ventures to the next level. Speakers and mentors will include representatives from successful start-ups such as Tagged, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Zynga Games. The accelerator concludes with a demo day at Kapor Capital August 4th where founders will pitch their products to various investors and members of the start-up community.
“The amount of support and interest from the Silicon Valley community in the NewME Accelerator is overwhelming,” shared Founder & co-Producer Angela Benton. “It serves as a testament to not only the need for a program like this, but also to the excitement and stewardship of the mentors and companies who are participating. We are thrilled about this summer and the companies and individuals who’ve agreed to be involved.”
The accelerator provides housing, transportation and other basic living needs in addition to the mentorship and access to some of the industry’s elite minds. The intent of the program is to remove some of the barriers involved with being an entrepreneur and help pave the way for even greater success. The program is supported by various sponsors who support not only the program’s mission but entrepreneurship in general. Many of the program’s supporters view their participation in the 9 week long program as an opportunity to connect with budding entrepreneurs and expand their own businesses.
“Whether it is with our 100 million registered users or our own employees, everyday Tagged celebrates diversity and the entrepreneurial spirit. The opportunity to partner with the Accelerator is a natural fit for us,” said Greg Tseng co-founder and CEO of Tagged. “In addition to helping racially diverse entrepreneurs get their start, as my co-founder and I once did, our involvement also helps us connect with and ultimately attract the best talent to Tagged. The NewME Accelerator is providing both the entrepreneurs and us with a great opportunity to connect, learn and teach.”
NewME has a total of thirteen start-ups participating in its first cycle. Five were pre-selected while the other eight were selected from a large pool of applicants. Eight of the participating companies will travel to Silicon Valley to be housed this summer while the other 5 are Bay area locals. Applications were evaluated by the producers of the accelerator and selected based on concept, quality of pitch, and the problem the product solves in addition to several other criteria.
Yesterday the group gathered at Zibbibo in Palo Alto to commence the programs curriculum with it’s first speaker out of a series of others with Interactive One CTO Navarrow Wright. The discussion included practical information on how each participants pitch could be modified along with candid stories of Wright’s experiences leading technology teams and raising money in Silicon Valley.
The start-ups include: goKit, kloud.co, Pencil You In, Cued, TriOut , BeCouply, Playd, FetchMob, Aislefinder, Central.ly, Mosion, Qykno, +1 stealth start-up.
The NewME Accelerator is supported by generous sponsors, speakers, and mentors. Sponsors include: Interactive One, Google, Tagged, Gunderson Dettmer, Syncom Ventures, PepsiCo, Kapor Capital, Bronze Investments, Justin.tv, and e3 Innovation Fund.
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The International Dialects of English Archive was created in 1997 as the first online archive of primary-source recordings of English dialects and accents as heard around the world. Welcome to the redesigned 2012 Website. Please bookmark us at this, our new Web address.
IDEA’s founder, director, and principal contributor is Professor Paul Meier. He established the archive in 1997 to enable actors to hear real-life models for their characters’ accents and dialects. But IDEA has since proved invaluable in many other research fields too. For example, it has become a principal tool of international business, enabling customer-service personnel to become familiar with the many accents and dialects of English spoken by their customers. Paul Meier Dialect Services was established to make Meier’s work more widely available, and his book,
Accents & Dialects for Stage and Screen, a leading publication in the field, is available there.
Dylan Paul serves IDEA as an associate editor-at-large, is the principal architect in IDEA’s redesign and standardization, and continues to play an active role in IDEA as the archive’s webmaster and special consultant.
Cameron Meier is the senior editor for IDEA and vice president of Paul Meier Dialect Services.
The redesigned archive is the result of hundreds of volunteer hours of work performed chiefly by Dylan Paul and Cameron Meier. We are also grateful to the following associate editors who also contributed many hours reformatting files: Lynn Baker, Cynthia Blaise, John Fleming, John Graham, Jim Johnson, Julia Lenardon, Bill McCann, and David Nevell.
The new site is now fully searchable, not just by country, state, and province, but also by characteristics of each speaker, such as ethnicity, age, and occupation. Even single phrases from transcriptions and phonetics can be searched online. The text and audio files for each sample have been standardized and combined on a single page, allowing users to easily listen to the streaming audio while they read the accompanying transcription and commentary. Information from the old site has been thoroughly checked and rechecked to assure greater accuracy, and each one-line description (gender, age, year of birth, ethnicity, location) is currently being rewritten to better reflect the sample it describes. In addition, Submission of new samples by the editors and other contributors has been greatly simplified and, from now on, will be accomplished entirely online.
The Founding Webmaster Emeritus for the archive is Shawn Muller, who designed the first Website for IDEA in 1997. His robust, simple design served the project well for more than fourteen years. Thank you, Shawn!
At the heart of IDEA are its Associate Editors, forming a global network of contributors. It is they who record the subjects, transcribe the recordings, and, in many cases, write scholarly commentary, and publish their work here. Many of them are professors of theatre and linguistics at major universities around the world, and are members of The Voice and Speech Trainers Association, known as VASTA.
All IDEA’s recordings are in English, are of native speakers, and include both English-language dialects and English spoken in the accents of other languages. (Many include brief demonstrations of the speaker’s native language, too.) The archive also includes extensive Special Collections.
New recordings and their accompanying transcriptions and scholarly commentary are added frequently (see What’s New), and the archive currently houses more than 1,000 separate files. The samples demonstrate how English is spoken by natives of 90 different countries. Each recording consists of a standard reading passage (Comma Gets a Cure, or, on our earliest recordings, The Rainbow Passage) and some unscripted speech – about four minutes in all.
A glance at our Global Map (an exciting feature new to the redesigned site) quickly reveals which of the world’s countries/states/provinces are represented in the archive, and those still lacking a representative sample. (Please bear with us as the “geo-tagging” of samples is ongoing.) As you will see, IDEA is still growing, attempting to catalogue a representative sample from every corner of the world. Please join us in this ambitious project by becoming an associate editor, or by simply contributing your own voice to the archive.
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