pred_label
stringclasses 2
values | pred_label_prob
float64 0.5
1
| wiki_prob
float64 0.25
1
| text
stringlengths 134
1.03M
| source
stringlengths 37
43
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
__label__cc
| 0.606149
| 0.393851
|
Shoreham care home staff run Race for Life dressed as pink flamingos
Published: 15:37 Monday 08 July 2019
Staff from a Shoreham care home formed a team for Race for Life and raised more than £1,000 for Cancer Research UK.
There were 13 runners from Cavell House, in Middle Road, taking part in the Brighton 5k race dressed as pink flamingos last Sunday.
There were 13 runners from Cavell House taking part in the Brighton 5k race
Nikki Stevenson, home manager, said: “Nowadays, everybody has been touched by cancer in one way or another.
“The team from Cavell House all wanted to run the race because each one of us has been affected by the horrible disease, whether friends, family, residents in our home, or colleagues.
“I’m really proud of all our ladies who participated. We’re pleased to play an active role in our local community, whether by participating in charity events or welcoming our neighbours into the home.”
Residents said they were proud of the carers, especially as they all turned up for work the next day with a smile on their faces, as usual.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5162
|
__label__wiki
| 0.912518
| 0.912518
|
Marlon Williams: Five Essential John Prine Songs
Marlon Williams (photo by Steve Gullick, PR)
Kara Manning
9.28.18 12:05am
[Ed. Note: John Prine, along with the Lone Bellow and Shannon Shaw, are headed to the Beacon Theatre on December 3 for 2018's Holiday Cheer for FUV. Do you have your tickets yet?]
Over 8,300 miles separate Marlon Williams' hometown of Lyttelton, New Zealand from John Prine's current Nashville digs. But Williams, 27, has found a kindred spirit in the 71-year-old veteran musician despite that distance, geographically and across generations. Both men know exactly how to write a devastating, brokenhearted tune that digs deep into the soul, with poignancy and power.
Williams, who released his second album, Make Way for Love, in the winter of 2018, is having a very good year. He's nominated for New Zealand's APRA Silver Scroll Award in songwriting, and appears in the forthcoming remake of "A Star is Born," starring Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, in theaters on October 5. (Williams sings a duet with his friend Brandi Carlile in the film, a cover of Roy Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman.")
But it's the young songwriter's canny understanding of the legacy of forebears like Prine, Orbison, and Elvis Presley on tracks like "What's Chasing You" or "I Didn't Make a Plan" that gives him an eclectic range that is uplifted by the music he loves. You can hear it in Williams' cover of Prine's "The Speed of the Sound of Loneliness" with Pieta Brown. It's not nostalgia, but an euphoric grasp of what makes an Americana song great.
So when FUV reached out to Williams and asked if he might like to write about the talented Mr. Prine (who happens to be performing in 2018's Holiday Cheer for FUV), he quickly agreed.
Marlon Williams: Five Essential John Prine Songs:
"Sam Stone," John Prine (1971)
“There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes” begins the chorus of this devastating tale of the war vet who serves his country and comes home with "soldiers disease," a term first used when traumatised Civil War soldiers returned home and developed crippling morphine addictions. Prine really pulls no punches on this one, and when Sam Stone “pops his last balloon” alone, we’re left as cold as any folk song could leave us.
"Hello in There," John Prine (1971)
Everyone knows there’s nothing more touching than old people in love. Prine takes a soft narrative approach with this one, conjuring the sense of ennui that assumedly grows with age. The ultimate message of this song is a beseeching call for humanity, summed up in the almost Seussian last verse: “So if you're walking down the street sometime/And spot some hollow ancient eyes/Please don't just pass 'em by and stare/As if you didn't care, say, "Hello in there, hello."
"In Spite of Ourselves," In Spite of Ourselves (1999)
Prine released In Spite of Ourselves in 1999, his first after a won battle with throat cancer. It’s a standout within the course of his career for being only comprised of duets with prominent female folk and country singers — and for Prine only penning one of the songs, the title track. It’s a typical Prine number in its sardonic sweetness, but the chemistry between him and Iris DeMent, the way they work within and reinvent the trope of the country duet, makes this one of the most important moments in Prine's oeuvre.
"Christmas in Prison," Sweet Revenge (1973)
I’m a sucker for Christmas songs. Especially the grim ones. This song has such a simple, joyous melody that's juxtaposed with an awful story of a man trying to find a sense of holiday spirit whilst serving time, away from a loved one. The tagline, “Come to me, run to me, come to me now, I’m rolling my sweetheart, I’m flowing by God,” for me has a dualistic meaning: it’s both a human cry for a missed lover and a declaration of Christian acceptance.
"Angel from Montgomery," John Prine (1971)
The first time I heard this song was in my hometown, and throughout the course of the song, I fell in love with the girl who was singing it. If that’s not music doing its work then I don’t know what is. As usual, Prine looks for transcendence through the mundane and once again, he uses aging and the creeping passage of time as his vehicle. However this time, we’re left with the impression that the protagonist feels older than she really is, caught in a black hole of domestic drudgery. The lines “How the hell can a person/Go to work in the morning/Come home in the evening/And have nothing to say” are classic, brutally direct Prine and makes this, for me, his greatest song.
- Marlon Williams
Read all of FUV's Five Essentials Albums and Songs here.
More FUV Essentials
Beck (photo courtesy of the artist)
Road trip! (Photo by Bruce Mars from Pexels)
Road Trip Songs
NYC Pride 2019
Five Essential Albums Five Essential Songs FUV Essentials FUV Essentials Marlon Williams John Prine
UKNY
with Kara Manning
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5163
|
__label__wiki
| 0.794896
| 0.794896
|
Out-of-Towners Flock to NYC Homeless Shelters
Almost 600 more families seeking shelter since 2008.
The number of out-of-town families entering New York City's homeless shelters has risen 48 percent over the past four years.
The city's Homeless Services records show that 2,053 families sought shelter last year compared to 1,390 in 2008.
Commissioner Seth Diamond tells the Daily News that the city's "right to shelter" law affords housing to everyone. That's helped swell its shelter population to an all-time high of 43,040.
The head of the Bronx shelter intake facility, Vida Chavez-Downes, says she sees more people than ever arriving directly from the airport.
To contain costs, the city tries to get out-of-towners to voluntarily leave or stay with relatives or friends.
Since 2007, it has paid a one-way fare for 2,654 singles and families to 24 states and five continents.
Associated Press // Tue, 31/07/2012 - 9:38am
foreigner homeless population shelter
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5164
|
__label__wiki
| 0.901269
| 0.901269
|
WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center
ADMINISTRATIVE PANEL DECISION
BRITA GmbH v. Wu Jin Xi / BaoHu Yi KaiQi, YinSi BaoHu Yi KaiQi
Case No. D2015-0800
1. The Parties
The Complainant is BRITA GmbH of Buchhaltung, Germany, represented by CSC Digital Brand Services AB, Sweden.
The Respondent is Wu Jin Xi of Qingdao, Shandong, China / BaoHu Yi KaiQi, YinSi BaoHu Yi KaiQi of Beijing, China.
2. The Domain Name and Registrar
The disputed domain name <britachinash.com> is registered with HiChina Zhicheng Technology Ltd. (the "Registrar").
3. Procedural History
The Complaint was filed with the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center (the "Center") on May 6, 2015. On May 7, 2015, the Center transmitted by email to the Registrar a request for registrar verification in connection with the disputed domain name. On May 8, 2015, the Registrar transmitted by email to the Center its verification response disclosing registrant and contact information for the disputed domain name which differed from the named Respondent and contact information in the Complaint. The Center sent an email communication to the Complainant on May 14, 2015 providing the registrant and contact information disclosed by the Registrar, and inviting the Complainant to submit an amendment to the Complaint. The Complainant filed an amended Complaint on May 14, 2015.
On May 11, 2015, the Center transmitted an email to the parties in English and Chinese regarding the language of the proceeding. On May 14, 2015, the Complainant submitted its request that English be the language of the proceeding. The Respondent did not submit any comments within the specified due date.
The Center verified that the Complaint satisfied the formal requirements of the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (the "Policy" or "UDRP"), the Rules for Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (the "Rules"), and the WIPO Supplemental Rules for Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (the "Supplemental Rules").
In accordance with the Rules, paragraphs 2(a) and 4(a), the Center formally notified the Respondent of the Complaint in Chinese and English, and the proceeding commenced on May 18, 2015. In accordance with the Rules, paragraph 5(a), the due date for Response was June 7, 2015. The Respondent did not submit any response. Accordingly, the Center notified the Respondent's default on June 8, 2015.
The Center appointed Jonathan Agmon as the sole panelist in this matter on June 22, 2015. The Panel finds that it was properly constituted. The Panel has submitted the Statement of Acceptance and Declaration of Impartiality and Independence, as required by the Center to ensure compliance with the Rules, paragraph 7.
4. Factual Background
The Complainant, BRITA GmbH, is a German company which specializes in water filtration products. The Complainant, under the BRITA mark markets various water filtration products for domestic and commercial use, which are sold worldwide.
The Complainant was established in 1966 and since then has generated vast goodwill in the water filtration business. The Complainant has 1,182 employees worldwide and had annual revenue of EUR 32.5 million in 2013.
The Complainant is the owner of trademark registrations for the mark BRITA around the world, including in China where the Respondent is located. For example: Chinese Trademark Registration No. 632491 for BRITA which was granted on March 10, 1993.
The Complainant also developed a formidable presence on the Internet and is the owner of the domain names <brita.net> and <brita.cn>.
The disputed domain name was registered on March 10, 2015.
Until recently, the disputed domain name led Internet users to a website that displayed goods bearing the Complainant's BRITA mark and logo.
Currently, the disputed domain name resolves to an inactive website.
5. Parties' Contentions
A. Complainant
The Complainant argues that the disputed domain name is confusingly similar to the Complainant's BRITA trademark. The Complainant further contends that the addition of the geographical location China and the letters "sh" which represent an abbreviation of the city Shanghai do not avoid a finding of confusing similarity.
The Complainant further argues that the BRITA trademark has generated good will through the Complainant's use.
The Complainant further argues it has not licensed or otherwise permitted the Respondent to use its BRITA trademark and is not affiliated or otherwise connected to the Respondent.
The Complainant further argues that the Respondent has no rights or legitimate interests in the disputed domain name.
The Complainant argues that the disputed domain name was registered and is being used in bad faith. The Complainant argues the disputed domain name is being used to confuse consumers into believing that the website which used to operate under the disputed domain name is an official BRITA website.
For all of the above reasons, the Complainant requests the transfer of the disputed domain name.
B. Respondent
The Respondent did not reply to the Complainant's contentions.
6. Discussion and Findings
A. Procedural Issue – Language of the Proceeding
Paragraph 11(a) of the Rules provides that:
"Unless otherwise agreed by the Parties, or specified otherwise in the Registration Agreement, the language of the administrative proceeding shall be the language of the Registration Agreement, subject to the authority of the Panel to determine otherwise, having regard to the circumstances of the administrative proceeding."
The language of the Registration Agreement for the disputed domain name is Chinese.
The Complainant requested that the language of the proceeding be English.
The Panel cites the following with approval:
"Thus, the general rule is that the parties may agree on the language of the administrative proceeding. In the absence of this agreement, the language of the Registration Agreement shall dictate the language of the proceeding. However, the Panel has the discretion to decide otherwise having regard to the circumstances of the case. The Panel's discretion must be exercised judicially in the spirit of fairness and justice to both parties taking into consideration matters such as command of the language, time and costs. It is important that the language finally decided by the Panel for the proceeding is not prejudicial to either one of the parties in his or her abilities to articulate the arguments for the case." (Groupe Auchan v. xmxzl, WIPO Case No. DCC2006-0004).
In deciding the language of the proceeding, the Panel takes the following into consideration:
a) The disputed domain name consists of Latin characters, rather than Chinese characters;
b) According to the evidence provided by the Complainant, the disputed domain name resolved to a website operating and displaying content both in English and in Chinese; and
c) The Respondent did not object to the Complainant's request that English be the language of the proceeding.
Upon considering the above, the Panel concludes, according to the Rules, paragraph 11(a), that there is no prejudice or unfairness to the Respondent for this proceeding to be conducted in English and for its decision to be rendered in English. Accordingly, the Panel determines that the language of this administrative proceeding be English.
B. Identical or Confusingly Similar
Paragraph 4(a)(i) of the Policy requires the Complainant to show that the disputed domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the Complainant has rights.
A registered trademark provides a clear indication that the rights in the mark shown on the trademark certificate belong to its respective owner. The Complainant is the owner of trademark registrations for the mark BRITA. For example: Chinese Trademark Registration No. 632491 for BRITA which was granted on March 10, 1993.
The disputed domain name differs from the registered BRITA trademark by additional geographical location China and the letters "sh" which represent an abbreviation of the city Shanghai.
The disputed domain name integrates the Complainant's trademark BRITA in its entirety, as a dominant element, with additional geographical elements which do not serve sufficiently to distinguish or differentiate the disputed domain name from the Complainant's trademark.
Previous UDRP panels have ruled that the mere addition of a non-significant element does not sufficiently differentiate the domain name from the registered trademark: "[t]he incorporation of a trademark in its entirety is sufficient to establish that a domain name is identical or confusingly similar to the Complainant's registered mark" (Britannia Building Society v. Britannia Fraud Prevention, WIPO Case No. D2001-0505). Also, "the trademark RED BULL is clearly the most prominent element in this combination, and that may cause the public to think that the domain name <redbull-jp.net> is somehow connected with the owner of RED BULL trademark" (Red Bull GmbH v. PREGIO Co., Ltd., WIPO Case No. D2006-0909).
Also, the addition of a generic Top-Level Domain ("gTLD") ".com" to the disputed domain name does not avoid confusing similarity. See, F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG v. Macalve e-dominios S.A., WIPO Case No. D2006-0451 and Telstra Corporation Limited v. Nuclear Marshmallows, WIPO Case No. D2000-0003. Thus, the gTLD ".com" is without legal significance since use of the gTLD is technically required to operate the disputed domain name and it does not serve to identify the source of the goods or services provided by the registrant of the disputed domain name.
Consequently, the Panel finds that the Complainant has shown that the disputed domain name is identical or confusingly similar to the trademarks in which the Complainant has rights.
C. Rights or Legitimate Interests
Once the Complainant establishes a prima facie case that the Respondent lacks rights or legitimate interests in the disputed domain name, the burden of production shifts to the Respondent to show that it has rights or legitimate interests in respect to the disputed domain name. Paragraph 2.1 of WIPO Overview of WIPO Panel Views on Selected UDRP Questions, Second Edition ("WIPO Overview 2.0").
In the present case, the Complainant has demonstrated that the Respondent lacks rights or legitimate interests in respect of the disputed domain name and the Respondent has failed to assert any such rights or legitimate interests.
The Panel finds that the Complainant has established a prima facie case in this regard, inter alia, due to the fact that the Complainant has not licensed or otherwise permitted the Respondent to use the BRITA trademark, or a variation thereof, and the evidence presented indicates that the Respondent is not engaged in a bona fide offering of goods or services, as discussed further below.
The Respondent has not submitted any Response and did not provide any evidence to show any rights or legitimate interests in the disputed domain name that is sufficient to rebut the Complainant's prima facie case.
Accordingly, the Panel finds that the Respondent has no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the disputed domain name.
D. Registered and Used in Bad Faith
The Complainant must show that the Respondent registered and is using the disputed domain name in bad faith (Policy, paragraph 4(a)(iii)). Paragraph 4(b) of the Policy provides circumstances that may evidence bad faith under paragraph 4(a)(iii) of the Policy.
The Complainant submitted evidence, which shows that the Respondent registered the disputed domain name long after the Complainant registered its trademark. According to the evidence filed by the Complainant and the trademark search performed by the Panel, the Complainant owns a registration for the BRITA trademark long before the registration of the disputed domain name. It is suggestive of the Respondent's bad faith in these particular circumstances that the trademark, owned by the Complainant, was registered long before the registration of the disputed domain name (Sanofi-Aventis v. Abigail Wallace, WIPO Case No. D2009-0735).
The Complainant also provided evidence to demonstrate its trademark's vast goodwill. The Panel cites the following with approval: "[t]he Respondent's selection of the disputed domain name, which wholly incorporates the Trade Mark, cannot be a coincidence. […] Given the fame of the Trade Mark, there is no other conceivable interpretation of the Respondent's registration and use of the disputed domain name other than that of bad faith" (Swarovski Aktiengesellschaft v. Zhang Yulin, WIPO Case No. D2009-0947).
Paragraph 4(b)(iv) of the Policy provides that it will be evidence of bad faith registration and use by a respondent, if by using the domain name it had intentionally attempted to attract, for commercial gain, Internet users to the websites or other online locations to which the disputed domain name is resolved to, by creating a likelihood of confusion with the complainant's mark as to the source, sponsorship, affiliation, or endorsement of the websites or locations or of a product or service on the websites or locations to which the domain name resolves to.
Furthermore, the disputed domain name is confusingly similar to the Complainant's trademark. Previous UDRP panels ruled that "a likelihood of confusion is presumed, and such confusion will inevitably result in the diversion of Internet traffic from the Complainant's site to the Respondent's site" (see Edmunds.com, Inc. v. Triple E Holdings Limited, WIPO Case No. D2006-1095). To this end, prior UDRP panels have established that attracting Internet traffic by using a domain name that is identical or confusingly similar to a registered trademark may be evidence of bad faith under paragraph 4(b)(iv) of the UDRP.
As evidenced by screen capture annexed to the Complaint, the Respondent used the disputed domain name for a website displaying the Complainant's logo, marketing material and images of products featuring the BRITA mark without the Complainant's authorization. Such use illustrates the Respondent's intent to disrupt the Complainant's business and confuse the Complainant's customers by imitating the Complainant for the Respondent's own gain.
Based on the evidence presented to the Panel, including the late registration of the disputed domain name, long after the Complainant's trademark registration the use of the Complainant's trademark in the disputed domain name, the similarity between the disputed domain name and the Complainant's mark, and the website which used to operate at the disputed domain name, the Panel draws the inference that the disputed domain name was registered and used in bad faith.
Accordingly, having regard to the circumstances of this particular case, the Panel finds that the Complainant has met its burden under paragraph 4(a)(iii) of the Policy.
7. Decision
For the foregoing reasons, in accordance with paragraphs 4(i) of the Policy and 15 of the Rules, the Panel orders that the disputed domain name<britachinash.com> be transferred to the Complainant.
Jonathan Agmon
Sole Panelist
Date: July 6, 2015.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5167
|
__label__wiki
| 0.959422
| 0.959422
|
U.S. Offers Assad a Compromise, Then Takes It Back
Author: Allen McDuffeeAllen McDuffee
President Barack Obama meets in the Situation Room with his national security advisors to discuss strategy in Syria, Saturday, August 31, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Update below
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could avoid a military strike by immediately handing over all of the country's chemical weapons. But the State Department later clarified that Kerry was making a "rhetorical argument," not a genuine offer.
Asked by a reporter whether there was anything the Assad regime could do to stop an American-led attack, Kerry said, "Sure, he could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week — turn it over, all of it without delay and allow the full and total accounting [of it]. But he isn't about to do it, and it can't be done."
"Secretary Kerry was making a rhetorical argument about the impossibility and unlikelihood of Assad turning over chemical weapons he has denied he used," said a State Department spokesperson in a statement later.
"His point was that this brutal dictator with a history of playing fast and loose with the facts cannot be trusted to turn over chemical weapons, otherwise he would have done so long ago. That's why the world faces this moment."
The mixed message adds to the confusion over whether the Obama administration is seeking a diplomatic or military solution to the crisis in Syria following the August 21 chemical weapons attack the administration concluded was ordered by the Assad regime. What seemed like inevitable strikes against Syria in the days following the chemical weapons attack has become ambiguous following Obama's August 31 remarks where he said the U.S. "should" strike Syria, but that he would also seek congressional approval — something that has been elusive thus far.
However, if there is any ambiguity in avoiding military strikes, Russia appears poised to take that route. Russia's Foreign Ministry posted to its official Twitter account Monday that Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claims multiple states have worked together to make "a political settlement in Syria possible."
#Lavrov: The #humanitarian crisis in #Syria can be overcome only by reaching a political agreement and rejecting violent measures
— MFA Russia (@MFA_Russia) September 9, 2013
#Lavrov: Certain joint steps have been agreed upon with other states to make a political settlement in #Syria possible
Update: Following Kerry's so-called "rhetorical argument," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced a plan for Syria to surrender its chemical weapons to international inspectors. The White House said Monday afternoon that it was open to the possibility of a surrender. A skeptical President Obama said in an interview with NBC that, "I think you have to take it with a grain of salt initially."
Obama noted that the move is "a potentially positive development," but that "we have to be skeptical because this is not how we have seen them operate over the last couple of years."
Syria has embraced the proposal and France said it would draft a U.N. Security Council resolution to move forward with the plan.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5168
|
__label__wiki
| 0.98723
| 0.98723
|
The Latest: Gov. Newsom says Trump wants to help California
U.S. Headlines
Posted: Jul 5, 2019 / 11:43 PM EDT / Updated: Jul 6, 2019 / 07:58 PM EDT
The interior of “My Enchanted Cottage” is seen after an earthquake, Thursday, July 4, 2019, in Ridgecrest, Calif. The earthquake shook a large swath of Southern California and parts of Nevada on Thursday, rattling nerves on the July 4th holiday and causing injuries and damage in the town near the epicenter, followed by a swarm of ongoing aftershocks. (Jessica Weston/The Daily Independent via AP)
RIDGECREST, Calif. (AP) — The Latest on Southern California’s strongest earthquake in 20 years (all times local):
Gov. Gavin Newsom says President Donald Trump has called him and expressed commitment to helping California recover from two earthquakes that hit the state in as many days.
Speaking to reporters after touring the damage zone, Newsom said Saturday that he and Trump talked about the struggles California has been through, including two devastating wildfires that happened just six months ago.
The Democratic governor said “there’s no question we don’t agree on everything, but one area where there’s no politics, where we work extremely well together, is our response to emergencies.”
“He’s committed in the long haul, the long run, to help support the rebuilding efforts,” Newsom said of Trump.
Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake says it authorized evacuations for non-essential employees and their dependents while officials continue to assess earthquake damage to the huge military installation in Southern California.
The epicenters of the 7.1 magnitude quake on Friday and the magnitude 6.4 quake on Thursday were on the base, which is the size of Rhode Island. No injuries were reported.
Access to the base was restricted to mission-essential personnel until Monday morning.
Officials said most employees live off the base, but they authorized the evacuation so those who live on base can be eligible for reimbursements.
The installation in the Mojave Desert is the Navy’s largest single landholding
Fire officials say as many as 50 structures in the small town of Trona were damaged by the magnitude 7.1 earthquake Friday night in Southern California.
In addition, San Bernardino County Supervisor Robert Lovingood said Saturday that damaged water lines prompted FEMA to deliver a tractor-trailer full of bottled water to the town, and firefighters were checking numerous reports of gas leaks.
The town was temporarily cut off after the earthquake, when officials shut down a highway connecting Trona to Ridgecrest because of rockslides and cracks in the roadway.
Julia Doss, who maintains the Trona Neighborhood Watch page on Facebook, said residents reported that chimneys and entire walls collapsed during the quake.
She said the only food store in town has been shuttered.
The hardscrabble town with 1,500 residents on the edge of a dry lake bed is considered the gateway to Death Valley.
A seismologist in California says scientists believe the sequence of earthquakes striking the Mojave Desert will produce more than 30,000 quakes of magnitude 1 or greater over six months.
Dr. Egill Hauksson also said Saturday at Caltech that the probability of a magnitude 7 over the next week has declined to 3 percent.
He says the probability for a magnitude 6 is 27 percent so he would expect one or two of those in the next week.
The epicenter of Friday night’s 7.1 magnitude earthquake was 11 miles (18 kilometers) from Ridgecrest in the same area where a 6.4 magnitude temblor hit just a day earlier.
Hauksson says Ridgecrest used to be known as the earthquake capital of the world because it had so many small quakes.
Eugene Johnson is cleaning up his home after the 7.1 magnitude earthquake brought down his brick chimney and fireplace.
The 61-year-old Trona resident said Saturday that he and his wife were in bed watching TV Friday night when the quake started.
They rushed into their living room to hold onto their fish tank and big-screen TV and watched the fireplace collapse.
Dishes crashed out of cabinets, boxes of macaroni fell to the floor and spilled everywhere, and the refrigerator careened halfway across the kitchen.
Johnson says his wife is ready to move back East but he doesn’t want to return to snow and cold weather.
Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake says it is not fully operational after back-to-back major earthquakes hit Southern California.
The station said Saturday in a Facebook post that its non-essential personnel were evacuated.
The installation in the Mojave Desert covers an area larger than Rhode Island and is the Navy’s largest single landholding.
The Facebook post says normal operations were halted until further notice and it was not clear when they would resume.
Friday’s 7.1 magnitudes quake occurred a day after a magnitude 6.4 quake hit in the same area about 150 miles from Los Angeles.
The mayor of Ridgecrest says there were two reports of burglaries in the Southern California city following the 7.1 earthquake Friday night.
Mayor Peggy Breeden said Saturday that some “bad people” came into the community and tried to steal items from businesses.
Police Chief Jed McLaughlin said one business was burglarized, with an expensive piece of equipment stolen.
A home was also broken into and police are waiting to see what was taken.
Friday’s quake occurred a day after a magnitude 6.4 quake hit in the same area of the Mojave Desert about 150 miles from Los Angeles.
Officials say there were some power outages.
A state official says damage from the 7.1 magnitude earthquake in Southern California was not as bad as authorities expected.
Mark S. Ghilarducci, director of the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, said Saturday that Ridgecrest and Trona suffered structure fires, gas leaks, power outages, road damage and rock slides.
He says the damage was not as extensive as expected despite back-to-back quakes on Thursday and Friday.
He says nearly 200 people were in shelters.
Ghilarducci says cleanup work is underway in San Bernardino and Kern counties, and Caltrans has worked to patch and fix roads, as well as clear rock slides.
A fire official says there were no fatalities or major injuries in Ridgecrest after the 7.1 magnitudes earthquake on Friday night.
Kern County Fire Chief David Witt also said Saturday there were no major building collapses but some structures could be weakened from the back-to-back quakes.
Witt says there were some power outages and minor gas and water leaks in Ridgecrest, but no known damage outside the area.
He urged residents to get supplies ready in case another quake hits.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency for a section of Southern California that saw significant damage after Friday night’s magnitude 7.1 earthquake.
The declaration provides immediate state assistance to San Bernardino County, citing conditions of “extreme peril to the safety of persons and property” in the county due to the earthquake.
State highway officials shut a 30-mile section of State Route 178 between Ridgecrest — the area hit by two major temblors as many days — and the town of Trona southwest of Death Valley.
Photos posted on Twitter by the state highway department shows numerous cracks in the road.
A spokesman for the governor’s Office of Emergency Services says crews were still assessing damages to water lines, gas lines and other infrastructure Saturday.
Small communities in the Mojave Desert are reeling from a magnitude 7.1 earthquake — the second major temblor in as many days to rock Southern California.
Authorities say Friday night’s shaker was centered near the town of Ridgecrest — the same area where a 6.4-magnitude quake hit on Independence Day.
Mark Ghillarducci, director of the California Office of Emergency Services, says there are “significant reports of structure fires, mostly as a result of gas leaks or gas line breaks throughout the city.”
He also says there’s a report of a building collapse in tiny Trona. He says there could be even more serious damage to the region that won’t be known until first light on Saturday.
The quake at 8:19 p.m. was felt as far north as Sacramento and even in Las Vegas. It’s been followed by a series of sizeable aftershocks.
Authorities say a magnitude 7.1 earthquake that jolted California has caused injuries, sparked fires, shut roads and shaken ball games and theme parks.
However, authorities say there are no deaths or major building damage reported from the quake, which struck at 8:19 p.m. Friday.
It was centered about 150 miles from Los Angeles in the Mojave Desert near the town of Ridgecrest, which was still recovering from a 6.4-magnitude preshock that hit the region on Thursday.
There were reports of trailers burning at a mobile home, and State Route 178 in Kern County was closed by a rockslide and roadway damage.
But Kern County Fire Chief David Witt says it appears no buildings collapsed. He also says there have been a lot of ambulance calls but no reported fatalities.
An earthquake rattled Dodger Stadium in the fourth inning of the team’s game against the San Diego Padres.
The quake on Friday night happened when Dodgers second baseman Enriquè Hernàndez was batting. It didn’t appear to affect him or Padres pitcher Eric Lauer.
However, it was obvious to viewers of the SportsNet LA broadcast when the TV picture bounced up and down.
The quake registered an initial magnitude of 6.9 to 7.1, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
There was no announcement by the stadium’s public address announcer.
Some fans in the upper deck appeared to leave their seats and move to a concourse at the top of the stadium.
The press box lurched for about 20 seconds.
The quake occurred a day after a magnitude 6.4 quake hit in the Mojave Desert about 150 miles from Los Angeles.
Authorities are now reporting injuries and damage from a big earthquake that was felt throughout Southern California and into Las Vegas and even Mexico.
The quake that hit at 8:19 p.m. was given a preliminary magnitude of 6.9 to 7.1, but the measurements were being calculated.
It followed Thursday’s 6.4-mangitude quake that at the time was the largest Southern California quake in 20 years. Both were centered near Ridgecrest in the Mojave Desert.
Kern County fire officials reported “multiple injuries and multiple fires” without providing details. San Bernardino County firefighters reported cracked buildings and a minor injury.
An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.9 has jolted Southern California, but there are no immediate reports of damage or injuries.
The U.S. Geological Survey says the quake hit at 8:19 p.m. Friday and was centered 11 miles from Ridgecrest, where a magnitude 6.4 quake struck on Thursday. The agency initially said the earthquake had a magnitude of 7.1.
The quake was felt downtown as a rolling motion that seemed to last at least a half-minute. It was felt as far away as Las Vegas, and the USGS says it also was felt in Mexico.
If the preliminary magnitude is correct, it would be the largest Southern California quake in 20 years.
Seismologists say there have been 1,700 aftershocks in the wake of the strongest earthquake to hit Southern California in 20 years but the chances of another large temblor are diminishing.
A magnitude 5.4 quake at 4:07 a.m. Friday is so far the strongest aftershock of Thursday’s 6.4 quake, which struck in the Mojave Desert near the town of Ridgecrest.
Zachary Ross of the California Institute of Technology says the number of aftershocks might be slightly higher than average. He also says a quake of that size could continue producing aftershocks for years.
The quake caused some damage to buildings and roads in and around Ridgecrest.
However, seismologists say it’s unlikely the quake will affect any fault lines away from the immediate area, such as the mighty San Andreas.
The city of Los Angeles is planning to reduce the threshold for public notifications by its earthquake early warning app, but officials say it was in the works before Southern California’s big earthquake Thursday.
The ShakeAlert LA app was designed to notify users of magnitudes of 5.0 or greater and when a separate intensity scale predicts potentially damaging shaking.
Robert de Groot of the U.S. Geological Survey says lowering the magnitude to 4.5 was already being worked on and had been discussed with LA as recently as a day before Thursday’s magnitude 6.4 quake centered in the Mojave Desert.
The shaking intensity levels predicted for LA were below damaging levels, so an alert was not triggered.
Mayor’s office spokeswoman Andrea Garcia also says the lower magnitude threshold has been in the planning stages and an update to the system is expected this month.
A vigorous aftershock sequence is following the strongest earthquake to hit Southern California in 20 years.
A magnitude 5.4 quake at 4:07 a.m. Friday is so far the strongest aftershock of Thursday’s magnitude 6.4 jolt, and was felt widely.
Seismologists had said there was an 80% probability of an aftershock of that strength.
Thursday’s big quake struck in the Mojave Desert, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) northeast of Los Angeles, near the town of Ridgecrest, which suffered damage to buildings and roads.
The strongest earthquake in 20 years shook a large swath of Southern California and parts of Nevada on the July 4th holiday, rattling nerves and causing injuries and damage in a town near the epicenter, followed by a swarm of ongoing aftershocks.
The 6.4 magnitude quake struck at 10:33 a.m. Thursday in the Mojave Desert, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) northeast of Los Angeles, near the town of Ridgecrest, California.
Kern County Fire Chief David Witt says multiple injuries and two house fires were reported in the town of 28,000. Emergency crews were also dealing with small vegetation fires, gas leaks and reports of cracked roads.
Witt says 15 patients were evacuated from the Ridgecrest Regional Hospital as a precaution and out of concern for aftershocks.
More U.S. Headlines Stories
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5169
|
__label__cc
| 0.71058
| 0.28942
|
Environment New Jersey Advocate
Work for Progress
Target annual compensation for this position is commensurate with the relevant experience.
Advocacy / Lobbying, Human Resources / Recruiting, Marketing / Communications, Program / Project Management
Environment New Jersey Clean Energy Advocate
Environment New Jersey is hiring an experienced advocate to protect public health and the environment by expanding to 100% renewable energy and reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. In the age of Trump, it is more critical than ever for the states to lead on policy. The Advocate will work with Environment New Jersey’s director and our national program team as well as with our organizers, stakeholders and key coalition allies to build momentum and expand support for New Jersey’s clean, renewable energy future.
For the last ten years, Environment New Jersey has played a leading role in building a bridge of New Jersey’s renewable energy future. We have helped achieve victories for the state’s environment to clean up our air and water and transition New Jersey to a clean energy economy – and to defend against the rollbacks and climate inaction at the state and national level. With new state leadership in the New Jersey State House and Gov. Murphy Administration, this is the time for the organization to be charting the path ahead for clean energy.
Historically, our research, grassroots education and mobilization, media outreach, coalition work and decision-maker education have mobilized public support for statewide environmental initiatives. This includes winning increased mandates for clean energy through a strong Renewable Portfolio Standard that requires New Jersey to produce 21% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, increased clean car standards, and a solar power market that is still a regional leader. Each year, we reach hundreds of thousands of New Jerseyans through our online e-activist network (which is 60,000 strong), newsletters, and our door-to-door canvassing campaigns.
New Jersey has faced the direct impacts of extreme weather through increased flooding and nor'easters, extreme weather events like derechos and Hurricane Sandy and extreme heat and sustained high temperatures. But we also continue to have a robust clean energy sector and solar program that has taken off over the course of this decade, with about 2.2 gigawatts of clean energy. But we need to do more.
The clean energy advocate will help us to reach these clean energy campaign goals:
Expand Clean Energy: New Jersey has fallen behind on our clean energy goals compared to the actions of neighboring states. The advocate will work to build public support for clean, renewable energy and the jobs it provides, and to build the political support to achieve a clean, renewable energy future. Policies to support this vision include expanding the renewable portfolio standard to 50% clean energy by 2030 and 80% by 2040, achieving our offshore wind goals and expanding energy efficiency programs, expanding our electric car infrastructure to be able to meet our clean cars goals and expanding solar power and battery storage technology. This will help New Jersey on a pathway to reach 100% clean, renewable energy future, as well as mobilize support from a diverse set of stakeholders, including mayors and city councilors, businesses, and the general public.
To win, we need to get more people engaged to press our decision-makers to outline their agenda for New Jersey’s clean energy agenda. We need to get more people, more opinion leaders, more organizations representing diverse constituencies engaged in this effort, especially in our work through the Jersey Renews coalition.
Responsibilities include, but are not limited to:
Campaign Coordination: Working with our staff and our campaign allies to win ongoing support for local, state and federal policies to support clean energy policies. This will include building partnerships with allies, especially in the clean energy sector, and being responsible for meeting our tactical campaign goals.
Coalition Building: Cultivating relationships with diverse and powerful allies across the state and expanding the constituencies supporting our efforts. This will include building and working with a coalition of more than 50 key allies and getting them actively involved in our campaign including attending events, participating in press conferences, and tapping into their networks to promote our campaign.
Media and Visibility: Getting the word out far and wide, in the media and through other channels is a critical part of our work. By elevating the issue in the public debate, we can better educate and motivate our supporters and hold decision-makers accountable. Opportunities for visibility will include releasing reports, writing and developing materials, including press releases, developing talking points, op-eds, letters to the editor, in addition to social media materials and doing outreach to the media.
Grassroots Mobilization: Working with our staff to mobilize citizens in support of our campaigns both on and offline and develop new leaders. Providing compelling information and opportunities for action to our members and general public will be a critical component of winning our clean energy campaigns.
Recruitment: Help recruit new interns and new volunteers to increase our impact and build more power.
Candidates must have at least 1-3 years of relevant professional experience. Qualified candidates will have a demonstrated commitment to environmental and public interest issues and to citizen-based social change, as well as a track record of leadership. We're looking for goal-driven and results-oriented individuals who have excellent verbal, writing and analytical skills, the ability to speak persuasively in a charged atmosphere, and enthusiasm for the work.
Target annual compensation for this position is commensurate with the relevant professional experience and/or advanced degrees that a candidate has. Environment America offers a competitive benefits package.
Apply online at https://jobs.environmentamerica.org/apply.html?utm_source=work-for-good&utm_medium=web-ad&utm_campaign=AMEspring2019&utm_term=269&utm_content=LAT_P_1-11
Direct your cover letter to Kyle Larson, Hiring Director.
Visit https://jobs.environmentamerica.org/core-values.html to learn what you should know about the us before you apply.
Environment America is an equal opportunity employer and will not discriminate against any employee or applicant on the basis of race, color, national or ethnic origin, religion, age, sex, disability, pregnancy or veteran status.
Advocacy / Lobbying Environment Full Time jobs in New Brunswick
Human Resources / Recruiting Environment Full Time jobs in New Brunswick
Marketing / Communications Environment Full Time jobs in New Brunswick
Program / Project Management Environment Full Time jobs in New Brunswick
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5171
|
__label__cc
| 0.576581
| 0.423419
|
401 Clematis Street, Second Floor, West Palm Beach, FL 33401
Hours (M-F)
City Hall Main Number 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1200
City Administrator 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1400
Administration/Mayor's Office 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1400
401 Clematis Street, Fifth Floor, West Palm Beach, FL 33401
City Attorney's Office 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1350
PO Box 3366, West Palm Beach, FL 33402
Commission Office For Commissioner Inquiries 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1390
District 1 Commissioner Kelly Shoaf 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1390
District 2 Commissioner Cory Neering 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1390
District 3 Commissioner Richard Ryles 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1390
District 4 Commissioner Joseph Peduzzi 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1390
District 5 Commissioner Christina Lambert 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1390
401 Clematis Street, Second Floor, West Palm Beach, FL, 33401
Community Redevelopment Agency 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1550
Northwood Village 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1551
401 Clematis Street, First & Second Floors, West Palm Beach, FL 33401
Inspections 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 805-6700
eGovPlus 24 hours
Permits 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 805-6700
Licenses 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 805-6700
Planning Administration 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1435
Comprehensive Planning 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1435
Historic Preservation 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1435
Code Compliance Division 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1465
Planning & Zoning 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1435
Urban Design 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1435
401 Clematis Street, Fourth Floor, West Palm Beach, FL 33401
Right-of-Way Permit 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 494-1040
Accounting 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1310
Budget Office 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1310
Cash Management 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1310
Procurement Division 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-2100
Small Business Division 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1273
Warehouse 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-2117
500 North Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach, FL 33402
Fire Station One 24 hours (561) 804-4700
Fire Station Two 24 hours (561) 804-4700
Fire Station Three 24 hours (561) 804-4700
Fire Station Four 24 hours (561) 804-4700
Fire Station Five 24 hours (561) 804-4700
Fire Station Six 24 hours (561) 804-4700
Fire Station Seven 24 hours (561) 804-4700
Fire Station Eight 24 hours (561) 804-4700
Emergency Medical Services 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 804-4700
Logistic Services 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 804-4700
Fire Prevention 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 804-4724
Fiscal Services 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 804-4700
Special Operations 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 804-4700
Training and Safety Division 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 804-4700
1045 Charlotte Avenue, West Palm Beach, FL 33401
City Hall Maintenance 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1200
Fleet Management 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1200
401 Clematis Street, Third Floor, West Palm Beach, FL 33401
Housing & Community Development 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1250
Human Resources 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 494-1000
Employee Relations 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 494-1000
Employment 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 494-1001
Benefits 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 494-1000
Information Technology 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1219
Internal Auditor's Office 8:00am - 5:00p (561) 822-1380
411 Clematis Street, West Palm Beach, FL 33401
Hours (M-T)
Hours (F-SA)
Hours (SU)
For questions, renew and reserve books (561) 868-7700
Library 9:30am - 8:30pm 9:30am - 5:00pm 1:00pm - 5:00pm (561) 868-7700
Children's Services (561) 868-7703
Teen Services (561) 868-7705
Technology (561) 868-7760
Adult Services (561) 868-7701
Closed On Major Holidays
Mayor's Office 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1400
Public Information Officer 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1411
City Administrator's Office 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1400
City Clerk 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1210
Neighborhood Services 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1400
West Palm TV18 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1867
Youth & Family Services 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 804-4975
Municipal Golf Course
7001 Parker Avenue, West Palm Beach, FL 33405
West Palm Beach Golf Course Dawn - Dusk (561) 582-2019
500 Banyan Boulevard West Palm Bch., FL 33401
Main Office 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1500
General Information 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 804-4900
Howard Park Community Center (561) 804-4950
South Olive Community Center (561) 804-4945
Grassy Waters Nature Preserve (South) (561) 804-4985
Grassy Waters Nature Preserve (North) (561) 804-4980
Vedado Park Community Center (561) 804-4990
Gaines Park Community Center (561) 804-4960
Coleman Park Community Center (561) 804-4965
Phipps Skate Park (561) 835-7170
Pleasant City Community Center (561) 804-4930
Warren Hawkins Aquatic Center (561) 804-4961
Youth Empowerment Center (561) 804-5000
Waterfront Commons (561) 804-4900
Lake Pavillion (561) 822-1523
Athletics (561) 804-4900
Grounds Maintenance 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-2150
Picnic Shelter Rentals (561) 804-4900
Community Events 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1515
City Calendar 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1515
Clematis by Night 6:00pm - 9:00pm (561) 822-1515
GreenMarket 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1515
Fourth on Flagler 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1515
600 Banyan Boulevard, West Palm Beach, FL 33401
Non-Emergency Line 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1900
TIPS Information 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1701
Burglar Alarms 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1940
Property and Evidence Section 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1875
Traffic Office 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1640
Criminal Investigations 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1700
Special Investigations 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1840
Community Response Division 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1616
Procurement Department
Contracts 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-2103
Purchasing 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1277
Small Business Enterprise Program 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1273
SBE Certification 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-2103
1009 Banyan Boulevard, West Palm Beach, FL 33401
Public Utilities Administration 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 494-1040
Customer Service 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1300
Central Operations (Emergency Repair) 24 hours (561) 822-2210
Backflow CCC Manual
Approved Plumbing Contractors
Geographic Information Systems 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-1226
Office of Sustainability 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 804-4981
Laboratory Services 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-2200
Industrial Pretreatment Program (IPP) 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-2170
Pumping Operations 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-2070
Utilities Laboratory Services 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-2200
SCADA 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 494-1040
Wastewater Collection/Sanitary Sewer 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-2170
Water Treatment Plant 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-2200
Water Shed Management / Grassy Waters 8:00am - 4:00pm (561) 835-7480
Water Distribution 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-2170
Wastewater Treatment Plant 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 835-7400
1045 Charlotte Ave, West Palm Beach, FL 33401
Sanitation 8:00am - 5:00pm (561) 822-2075
Street Maintenance & Lighting 8:00am - 4:00pm (561) 822-2085
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5173
|
__label__wiki
| 0.984196
| 0.984196
|
A heckler chanted 'Larry Nassar' at a Michigan State game. A survivor was there
"Larry Nassar! Larry Nassar! Larry Nassar!" a Texas Tech fan shouted at the Final Four game against Michigan State. Katie Mahon's stomach lurched.
A heckler chanted 'Larry Nassar' at a Michigan State game. A survivor was there "Larry Nassar! Larry Nassar! Larry Nassar!" a Texas Tech fan shouted at the Final Four game against Michigan State. Katie Mahon's stomach lurched. Check out this story on USATODAY.com: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2019/04/17/michigan-state-final-four-larry-nassar-survivor/3498526002/
Kristen Jordan Shamus, Detroit Free Press Published 3:13 p.m. ET April 17, 2019 | Updated 9:18 a.m. ET April 18, 2019
The criminal cases heard around the world are officially over. Michigan Judge Janice Cunningham sentenced Larry Nassar to 40 to 125 years in prison. USA TODAY
"Larry Nassar! Larry Nassar! Larry Nassar!" a Texas Tech University fan shouted in response to Michigan State University students' cheers of "Go, Green! Go, White!"
Katie Mahon's stomach lurched.
She and her sister were in a crowd of people near the concession stand at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis for the NCAA Final Four men's basketball tournament. The Texas Tech fan was walking in one direction; the Mahon sisters walked the opposite way.
"I just put my arm around my sister, and I was like, 'OK. I'm going to keep on walking. That guy is a piece of ...' Well, you can fill in the appropriate word," said Mahon, 28, a Haslett, Michigan, native who now lives in Chicago. "I looked at my sister, and ... she was like, 'I almost just punched him in the face,' and then she started crying.
Kate Mahon (left) and her sister, Tara Mahon, cheered for Michigan State University at the Final Four NCAA basketball game in Minneapolis. (Photo: Mahon family photo)
"She's my younger sister, so I feel horrible because I'm supposed to protect her. And she's been there for me a lot over the past couple years. ... She started crying, and she was like, 'I can't believe he just said that.' "
Hearing Nassar's name used by a heckler like a verbal weapon at a sporting event was difficult for Mahon, who is among the hundreds of girls and young women who were sexually abused for years by the former MSU sports medicine doctor.
"In a competitive environment, essentially, it's a fight," she said. "So ... you bring up things you know are going to hurt ... so you can win, you know? And in this environment, it's wanting to win not only the game, but win any arguments, win with banter, and not knowing when to draw the line.
"There's lines you should know you cannot cross; you cannot go there. Sexual assault and rape should be in that category, and it's upsetting that it's not in that category."
The last two years, which saw Nassar's conviction on child pornography and sexual assault charges as well as the rise of the #MeToo movement, have given Mahon a new voice — one she's not afraid to use to speak out against sexual violence.
Larry Nassar is pictured being escorted into the courtroom in Lansing, Mich. (Photo: Dale G. Young, AP Images)
Who is Larry Nassar? A timeline
Michigan State to pay Larry Nassar victims $500 million in settlements
Did Michigan State's ex-president lie to police?
She wants to be sure people realize how hurtful that kind of heckling at a sporting event can be, and to urge others to speak up when they see or hear someone behaving that way.
"I am sure it's not the first time an opposing team's student has said something like that, nor will it be the last time," Mahon said. "... But how do we bring understanding and empathy to sexual assault survivors so it doesn't happen again?"
She wonders if the student who shouted Nassar's name realizes that 1 in 3 women and 1 in 6 men in the United States will experience some form of sexual violence in their lifetimes, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"Is it just that they feel like they are so removed from the situation, they can't understand how upsetting that would be?" she asked. "Like if his sister was a sexual assault survivor, I don't think he'd be yelling that at the game.
Larry Nassar appears in court on to listen to victim-impact statements prior to being sentenced on January 16, 2018 in Lansing. (Photo: Scott Olson, Getty Images)
"They're just so far removed, they don't think they know anyone who has been through that. There's a 1 in 3 chance that his mom has been assaulted, that his sister has been assaulted. And if he knew that, would he be making jokes about it? Probably not."
Mahon wished that someone in the crowd would have stopped him, not only for her benefit, but to help any other sexual abuse survivors who might have been within earshot, and were similarly hurt.
"We need to give the power to the average person to speak up and stop that from happening," Mahon said.
A public reckoning
When the news broke in 2016 that Nassar had been assaulting athletes through USA Gymnastics, Mahon didn't believe it.
"I was like, 'This is crazy,' " she said. "I thought, 'He wouldn't do that to me.' "
But then came evidence that Nassar had possession of child pornography. Mahon began to realize that she, too, had been manipulated into believing her old pal and doctor was helping her when he actually was molesting her.
In February 2017, Mahon said she got involved in the criminal case against Nassar as well as civil lawsuits that alleged MSU, USA Gymnastics and others failed to protect his victims from abuse.
It was then that Mahon began to come to terms with what really happened.
Nearly a year later, Mahon became the 10th Nassar survivor to tearfully give her account in Ingham County Circuit Court of the impact Nassar's years of assaults had on her life.
Rachael Denhollander, center, stands with others who accused Larry Nassar of abuse during a press conference on Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2018, at the Radisson in downtown Lansing. (Photo: Nick King/Lansing State Journal)
Speaking publicly took its toll.
"I took three months of mental health medical leave after that because it just kind of everything came crashing down at that point," she said.
"I went to therapy twice a week. I am usually someone who is very put together. Nothing can stir me up and so that really hit me hard. It was also trying to figure out what my identity is. I was like, 'I'm tough. I can push through this. Why am I not able to focus on work right now?'
"And my therapist was like, 'Well, it's because of all this stuff you've been compartmentalizing over the past like 10 years.' She's really great. I still see her every week. We don't talk about the Larry stuff every time, but sometimes it comes up."
Mahon also couldn't bring herself to go to any MSU athletic events.
Sisters Kate and Tara Mahon cheer for the Spartans together at a Michigan State University football game. (Photo: Mahon family photo)
"It was hard to go to games and be happy," she said. "It was hard to wear Michigan State gear, even just walking around Chicago because I was so disgusted with how the administration at the university was handling everything.
"I didn't feel like watching football games, basketball games or anything for a good year or more after everything that happened."
A bittersweet MSU homecoming
In March, Mahon finally mustered the courage to buy tickets to a basketball game.
"I felt like I was coming home," she said.
And though it felt good to wear her Sparty gear and cheer with the crowd, Mahon said she was shaken when she saw former MSU Interim President John Engler sitting courtside at the Big 10 Championship game in Chicago.
Former Michigan governor John Engler attends the Michigan State-Bradley NCAA tournament game on Thursday, March 21, 2019 at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines, Iowa. (Photo: Kirthmon F. Dozier, Detroit Free Press)
"I was excited and nervous about coming home after a very toxic situation, and it was like someone put a wrench in that," she said of the moment when she saw Engler, who was appointed in 2018 but was forced to resign earlier this year. He made headlines for trying to avoid an interview with investigators from the state Attorney General's Office about the university's handling of the Nassar investigation. Engler also has been widely criticized for statements he has made about sexual assault survivors.
"Overall, the MSU community is wonderful," Mahon said. "I thought of Larry Nassar as the cancer or virus within MSU. ... Overall, MSU is a loving community that had some very toxic people that allowed a predator to thrive."
On the heels of MSU's Big 10 Championship win, Mahon and her sister drove to Minneapolis to see the Spartans take on Texas Tech in the Final Four.
That's when the heckler threw her off guard once again.
Kate Mahon was among the girls and young women who were sexually assaulted by sports medicine doctor Larry Nassar. Here, she stands on the Michigan State University campus beside a stone that's been painted with the names of his victims. (Photo: Mahon family photo)
"My sister's response was that she was crying about it," Mahon said. "I definitely have been very sad about everything that has happened, by what people have done and not done, but the emotional aspect of it, I feel like I've gone through that.
"Those times I am crying about it are a lot fewer now than they were a year ago or two years ago. Instead of being sad about it — I went though those emotions and it will be a part of my life I can never take back — what I like to do is make an impact."
By speaking out, by being an advocate for children and sexual assault survivors, Mahon is healing.
"It helps to be involved," she said.
Mahon joined the nonprofit Army of Survivors, created by fellow Nassar survivor Grace French, and also was among about 20 other people who have been sexually abused to help develop a curriculum for Courage First, a program aimed at child sexual abuse prevention that was launched by the Foundation for Global Sports Development.
"Last year, we had the ESPY Award, the Glamour Woman of the Year Award," Mahon said of the honors given to women and girls who'd been abused by Nassar.
"That was fun, and I appreciate that, but bigger than any award I could get is preventing this from happening to another child in the future, and thinking about the number of children that will not be sexually abused and will feel comfortable coming forward because of this work. It is so much better than any type of an award."
Contact Kristen Jordan Shamus: 313-222-5997 or kshamus@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @kristenshamus.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5179
|
__label__wiki
| 0.922431
| 0.922431
|
Amazon's second headquarters search hits crunch time; one group warns 'it's a race to the bottom'
The 20 finalist cities in Amazon’s second headquarters search are in the midst of a grueling series of visits by company executives.
Amazon's second headquarters search hits crunch time; one group warns 'it's a race to the bottom' The 20 finalist cities in Amazon’s second headquarters search are in the midst of a grueling series of visits by company executives. Check out this story on USATODAY.com: https://usat.ly/2q1HBWq
Elizabeth Weise, USATODAY Published 7:00 a.m. ET April 2, 2018 | Updated 2:06 p.m. ET April 2, 2018
An artist's rendering of a possible development at the Lincoln Yards in Chicago, which has been proposed as a home for Amazon's second headquarters. Residents will enjoy a sledding hill and community focused events in the winter.(Photo: Sterling Bay)
SAN FRANCISCO — And you thought cleaning up before the in-laws come over is nerve-racking. The 20 finalist cities in Amazon’s second headquarters search are in the midst of a grueling series of visits by company executives as each makes its play for the high-tech jobs bonanza the Seattle company has pledged.
So far, Amazon staff have visited about half, with more trips scheduled for April and beyond. The company plans to make a decision by Dec. 31, barring some huge upset, and once it's made, hiring in the anointed town will begin in 2019.
The continent-wide beauty contest (Toronto’s in the mix) comes even as a group of influential economists and planners have created a petition urging cities to reject the retail behemoth's demands for incentives.
Amazon launched a public search for a second headquarters site on Sept. 7. It asked North American cities to send in proposals, saying it preferred candidates with a business-friendly environment, a highly educated labor pool, strong transportation options, cultural fit and a good quality of life.
It's a potentially rich catch. Amazon plans to spend $5 billion building the new headquarters and says it expects to hire 50,000 well-paid high-tech workers to work there.
The 50,000 jobs are just the beginning, says Enrico Moretti, an economics professor at the University of California-Berkeley. All those highly-paid workers will themselves need doctors, teachers, waiters, carpenters, designers and shop clerks.
“My research suggests the indirect job number could be four to five times larger — on the order to 250,000,” said Moretti.
That wasn't lost on the nation's cities. A stunning 238 locations submitted preliminary bids. Amazon sorted through them and in January announced a short list of 20, 19 in the United States and one in Canada.
But the process since then has been cryptic. Cities have signed non-disclosure agreements and in general fought to keep information about their offerings private, in part because they don't want other cities to know what they're offering.
Amazon also isn't saying much.
“Amazon is working with each HQ2 candidate city to dive deeper on their proposals and share additional information about the company’s plans," said spokesman Adam Sedo.
An artist's rendering of a possible development at the Lincoln Yards in Chicago, which has been proposed as a home for Amazon's second headquarters. Public spaces will include the Lincoln Yards open air market for local farmers and vendors to sell goods. (Photo: Sterling Bay)
The William Shatner welcome mat
Atlanta got its Amazon close-up last week. It has touted its educated workforce, low housing costs and business-friendly government. However, it's also been dinged by one group, No Gay, No Way, for not having legal protections for the LGBT community.
Not everyone in Atlanta is onboard with the possibility of a horde of Amazonians arriving in town. Graffiti by an anonymous group began to appear in early March with messages such as "Destroy Amazon" and "NO HQ2" and fliers that read, "The robots are coming. Stop them before it's too late."
Austin and Dallas got their Amazon visits at the beginning of March. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he believes either city would be a "perfect fit" for Amazon, touting his state's excellent workforce, low cost of living, reasonable regulation, low tax rate and ease of doing business.
Chicago hosted the Amazon team for two days the week of March 19. One blip in the process was a pre-tour graffiti clean-up blitz that mistakenly destroyed a piece of wall art by French street artist Blek le Rat on a building in the Logan Square area. It’s across from Lincoln Yards, a 70-acre riverfront site that’s one of Chicago’s prime contenders for the Amazon placement.
Chicago was not above playing hardball. It hired actor William Shatner, aka Capt. Kirk, to narrate a video suggesting America's Second City for Amazon's Second Headquarters. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is a serious Star Trek fan, so much so that he had a bit part in the movie Star Trek Beyond.
Denver had a 10-person group tour the city the last week of January. Little has been revealed about the visit beyond word that the Amazon team took a ride on the light-rail train from the Denver airport into town, according to the Denver Post.
New York City and Newark are rumored to be gearing up for an Amazon foray in April, according to Bisnow, a local business news site. The Star-Ledger reported the trip was originally slated for the first week of March but weather — in fact, a blizzard — caused it to be rescheduled. Both New York City and Newark, which are just 12 miles apart, are considered to be on the short list of finalists.
Philadelphia got a visit, but it's not exactly clear when Amazon came. Mayor Jim Kenney told the Philadelphia Inquirer only that the Seattle team came for about a day and a half, but wouldn't say when or what they did, beyond that they didn't meet directly with him.
The Washington, D.C., area has three separate areas vying for the Amazon headquarters: Washington, D.C., itself, Montgomery County, Md., and Northern Virginia. All three got visits the first week of March.
Both Virginia and Maryland are offering up cities near to D.C. Virginia suggests Alexandria and Arlington, while Maryland has focused on the White Flint area of North Bethesda, which is near a Metro station with a direct link to Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., has been seen as a front-runner in the fight to get Amazon, for several reasons. One is its proximity to the federal government, which would give the Seattle company more of a hometown advantage as it fends off suggestions that the rapidly growing enterprise be tamed by regulation or taxation.
Another is simply that CEO Jeff Bezos already has a house there — though it’s hardly just a house.
The $23 million, 27,000-square-foot mansion used to be a museum and is the largest private home in the District of Columbia. It is within blocks of the homes of both Barack and Michelle Obama and Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. The historic neighborhood, Kalorama, has long been home to diplomats and the power elite.
As yet, there's no word of when other contenders, including Boston; Columbus, Ohio; Indianapolis; Los Angeles; Miami; Nashville; Pittsburgh; Raleigh, N.C.; and Toronto, will get their visits.
Here are the 20 places Amazon went looking for an HQ2
A clerk reaches to a shelf to pick an item for a customer order at the Amazon Prime warehouse, in New York. Amazon announced on Feb. 14, 2019 that it would no longer pursue a second headquarters in New York City amid local opposition. The year before, in January 2018, the tech giant announced it had narrowed down its potential site for a second headquarters in North America to 20 metropolitan areas. Here were the candidates. Mark Lennihan, AP
Atlanta, Ga. A jogger runs along a path in Piedmont Park as the Midtown skyline stands in the background, June 3, 2015, in Atlanta. David Goldman, AP
Austin, Texas Women walk against the Austin skyline as seen looking northwest from the Lakeshore area showing the Roy and Ann Butler Hike and Bike Trail on Lady Bird Lake, in Austin, Texas on Aug. 31, 2016. Ralph Barrera, Austin American-Statesman via AP
Boston, Mass. A view of the city skyline during the Head of the Charles Regatta on Oct. 21, 2017 in Boston, Mass. Maddie Meyer, Getty Images
Chicago, Ill. Sailboats practice in front of the downtown Chicago skyline during practice for an America's Cup World Series sailing event on June 10, 2016. Kiichiro Sato, AP
Columbus, Ohio Downtown Columbus, Ohio is viewed from across the Scioto River on Dec. 2, 3003. ROBERT DEUTSCH, USA TODAY
Dallas, Texas This Jan. 14, 2011, file photo shows highway IH-30 traffic with the Dallas skyline in the background. Tony Gutierrez, AP
Denver, Colo. A general view of downtown Denver on April 11, 2015. Chris Humphreys, Chris Humphreys-USA TODAY Sports
Indianapolis, Ind. The Circle Centre mall in Indianapolis, Ind, is seen on August 4, 2017. Kelly Wilkinson, Indianapolis Star via USA TODAY Network
Los Angeles, Calif. General overall view of the downtown Los Angeles skyline and the Harbor Freeway (Interstate 110) on Jan 10, 2018. Kirby Lee, USA TODAY Sports
Miami, Fla. The Brickell Key skyline is seen at dusk in downtown , Miami on March 23, 2015. Erik S. Lesser, EPA
Montgomery County, Md. This Monday, July 31, 2017, file photo, shows the Discovery Communications headquarters in Silver Spring, Md. Discovery Communications, the company that operates the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, TLC and other popular cable channels, announced Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2018, that it plans to relocate its global headquarters from Maryland to New York City, in 2019. Manuel Balce Ceneta, AP
Nashville, Tenn, A general view of the downtown Nashville skyline and the Cumberland River on Oct. 16, 2017. Kirby Lee, USA TODAY Sports
Newark, N.J. In this Monday, Oct. 16, 2017, file photo, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, right, speaks while New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie stands behind him during an announcement in Newark, N.J. New Jersey lawmakers have signed off on $5 billion in tax breaks to Amazon in an effort to convince the company that Newark would be the best location for the company's planned second headquarters. Seth Wenig, AP
New York, N.Y. The Manhattan skyline towers over New York harbor on Oct. 16, 2017 in New York City. Spencer Platt, Getty Images
Northern Virginia July 4th Fireworks from the Iwo Jima Memorial in Arlington, Va. on July 4, 2017. Michael Owens, USA TODAY
Philadelphia , Pa. Clouds pass over the Schuylkill River and city skyline on Dec. 3, 2015, in Philadelphia. Matt Rourke, AP
Pittsburgh, Pa. Clouds hang over the skyline of downtown Pittsburgh, the Rachel Carson Bridge, and the Allegheny River on March 18, 2016. Gene J. Puskar, AP
Ralegh, N.C. The North Carolina State Capitol in Raleigh, N.C. is seen on July 24, 2013. Gerry Broome, AP
Toronto, Canada Fireworks explode over the Toronto skyline, during the opening ceremony for the Pan Am Games in Toronto, Canada July 10, 2015. Rebecca Blackwell, AP
Washington, D.C. The Capitol is seen at sunrise, in Washington on Oct. 10, 2017. J. Scott Applewhite, AP
Despite cities falling all over themselves to win Amazon’s affections, a number of economists, policymakers and other experts think municipalities should think hard about the tradeoffs involved.
In January they launched a petition calling for a non-aggression pact for HQ2. Addressed to elected officials, it asked them to pledge to reject tax giveaways and monetary incentives to lure Amazon to their cities. The research shows incentives are often wasteful and counterproductive, diverting money that could more profitably be used for public service that spur broad economic development.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” said William Riggs, a planning strategist and professor at the University of San Francisco. “You don’t want to run your community into the red because you’ve subsidized” Amazon, he said.
Cities seem willing to sell their souls to attract Amazon. But it’s simply creating a long-term relationship fraught with peril.
“When the tax breaks expire, does that mean Amazon is going to just pick up and go to another city?” asked Riggs.
More: Trump may hate Amazon, but there's little he could do to it
More: Amazon's second headquarters: The pros and cons of the finalists
More: Trump blasts Amazon for hurting the postal service. Is that true?
Apple, Amazon, Google build futuristic campuses as business booms
An aerial view of the new Apple headquarters on April 28, 2017, in Cupertino, Calif. Apple's new 175-acre 'spaceship' campus dubbed 'Apple Park', costing roughly $5 billion, will house 13,000 employees in over 2.8 million square feet of office space and will have nearly 80 acres of parking to accommodate 11,000 cars. Justin Sullivan, Getty Images
A digital rendering shows what the Steve Jobs Theater will look like at Apple Park, Apple's new 175-acre campus in Cupertino, Calif. The entrance to the 1,000-seat auditorium is a 20-foot-tall glass cylinder, 165 feet in diameter, supporting a metallic carbon-fiber roof. Apple
The exterior of Apple Park, a new 175-acre campus that employees started to occupy in April. Apple
Amazon employees tend to their dogs in a canine play area adjacent to three large, glass-covered domes, part of an expansion of the Amazon.com campus in downtown Seattle. The tallest of the three interconnected spheres, called Amazon Spheres by the company, will be 90 feet high and 130 feet in diameter, and is planned to include a botanic garden of waterfalls and treehouse-like spaces overlooking tropical gardens. Elaine Thompson, AP
Amazon horticulturalists, from left, Ben Eiben, Ron Gagliardo and Justin Schroder prepare an Australian fern for the ceremonial first planting in The Spheres at Amazon's campus on May 4, 2017, in Seattle. Stephen Brashear, AP Images for Amazon
Students and others from the Environmental and Adventure School in Kirkland, Wash., applaud during a ceremony for the planting of an Australian Tree Fern inside the Amazon Spheres on May 4, 2017, in Seattle. The plant will be the first of thousands that will eventually grow in the unique glass domes, which are scheduled to open in 2018 on Amazon.com's downtown campus and will be used by employees to work and relax in a lush environment with a constant 72-degree temperature. Ted S. Warren, AP
The Googleplex is the corporate headquarters complex of Google, located at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, Santa Clara County, Calif. Marco Della Cava, USA TODAY
A rendering of a proposed Google building in Mountain View, Calif. Google
The San Francisco skyline shows the the under-construction $1 billion Salesforce Tower. When finished, it will be San Francisco's tallest building at 61 stories high, on the corners of 1st, Mission and Fremont Streets. Trevor Hughes, USA TODAY
Facebook's campus in Menlo Park, Calif. was designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry and is housed on the sprawling former campus of Sun Microsystems. Martin E. Klimek, USA TODAY
Facebook campus located at 1 Hacker Way in Menlo Park, Calif. Martin E. Klimek for USA TODAY
Interior of Building 20 on the Facebook campus. Martin E. Klimek, USA TODAY
Yahoo's campus in Sunnyvale, Calif. When it opened in 2001, it was a model for self-contained tech campuses that provided every reason for employees to stay on site. After a bruising several years, Yahoo reached a deal in 2016 to sell its core Web assets to telecom company Verizon. Yahoo
An employee walks in the new innovation center of the German sports goods company Adidas at the company's headquarters in Herzogenaurach, Germany, on June 24, 2014. Christof Stache, AFP/Getty Images
The shipping company CMA CGM's headquarters in Marseille, France is shaped like a fish tale, an example of a head-turning corporate headquarters that reflects executive ambitions and symbolizes the brand. Pool photo by Boris Horvat
Nighttime exterior view of the BMW World hours after the opening ceremony on October 17, 2007, in Munich, Germany. Johannes Simon, Getty Images
Social game maker Zynga sunk millions into a perk-filled, jaw-dropping headquarters building in San Francisco, the former site of Sega's U.S. headquarters. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
A tunnel greets visitors inside Zynga's headquarters in April 2014. Not long after an ambitious renovation, Zynga began to fall on hard times as users moved to mobile games. Martin E. Klimek for USA Today
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2q1HBWq
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5180
|
__label__wiki
| 0.639759
| 0.639759
|
Bipartisan Brownfields Bill Overwhelmingly Passes House by a Vote of 409-8 USCM Recommendations Included in Final Bill
The House of Representatives passed the bipartisan, H.R. 3017, the Brownfields Enhancement, Economic Redevelopment, and Reauthorization Act of 2017, on November 30 by an impressive vote of 409-8.
Brownfields are abandoned or underutilized properties whose redevelopment in hindered by real or perceived contamination. The Conference of Mayors worked with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the mid 1990s to develop the original EPA brownfields program and worked with Congress to pass the Brownfields law in 2002.
Over the past couple of years, the Conference of Mayors, working in conjunction with the National Association of Counties, the National League of Cities, and the National Association of Regional Councils have been working with Congress to reauthorize the bill that would contain improvements to the brownfields program and law based on feedback received from our member cities.
Elizabeth Mayor Chris Bollwage, who has chaired the Conference’s Brownfields Task Force for the past 20+ years, helped shepherd the bill the first time around, and did so again this time. Over the years, he has testified numerous times, including twice this year. Also testifying this year was New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell and Schenectady Mayor Gary McCarthy. Other Mayors made their staff available to work with Conference and Congressional staff to develop language and provide feedback for these bills.
As a result of this good work, three bills had passed out of of their respective committees (two in the House and one in the Senate) that contain many of the Conference’s priority provisions. HR 3017 which is a combination of both House bills includes:
Creation of a multi-purpose grant of up to a $1,000,000 to allow a community to flexibly use money for assessments or cleanups depending on market needs;
Increase of the cleanup grant amounts from $200,000 to $500,000 and potentially $750,000 with a waiver from EPA to allow for more contaminated sites to be cleaned up;
Allowance of five percent to be used for administrative costs for grant recipients;
Expansion of liability protections for innocent municipalities for voluntary and involuntary acquisitions; and
Allowance for nonprofits to apply for cleanup grants.
A statement released by the four organizations said, “We appreciate that members of the House invited local officials to testify and incorporated many of our suggestions to improve the bill. We thank Representatives Frank Pallone, John Shimkus, Paul Tonko, Elizabeth Esty, John Katko, David McKinley and Greg Walden for their steadfast support on this issue. Their sustained efforts will allow us to build upon our past successes as we continue to redevelop the more than 400,000 brownfield sites across the country.”
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee also passed a brownfields reauthorization bill out of committee but is still awaiting action by the full Senate.
By Judy Sheahan|2017-12-01T13:28:25-05:00December 1, 2017|Brownfields, Environment, Updates|
About the Author: Judy Sheahan
Judy Sheahan is the Assistant Executive Director for the Environment for the Conference. She covers issues related to environmental protection, clean air, water, wastewater, and various infrastructure issues.
Resolutions Preview: Mayors Consider Issues Related to Trade and Immigration
Resolutions Preview: Mayors Support a Healthier Future for All Americans
Resolved: Mayors to Speak Out on the Big Issues of the Day
Photo Gallery from our Mission to Poland: May 21 – May 28, 2019
North American Mayors Come Together to Tackle Shared Challenges
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5181
|
__label__wiki
| 0.93858
| 0.93858
|
2019 Scholarship Winners
Vanessa Do
Taylorsville High School
Vanessa Do will attend the University of Utah, majoring in International Studies. She earned a 3.994 GPA while running Cross Country and Track & Field for the past two years, earning Academic All-State, a varsity letter and the captain of the Cross Country team this year. She was a three-year member of the NHS, MESA, Key Club and the FCCLA and Vice-President for FCCLA. She was Student–of-the-Year in Science (MESA). In her community, Vanessa helped feed the homeless at the Salt Lake Rescue Mission her junior year. She assisted packaging food at the Utah Food Bank for three years. USHOFF Scholarship Chair and board member Richard Valdez presented Vanessa her scholarship. She is the daughter of Chau Nguyen & Minh Do.
Paige Aardema
Weber High School
Paige will attend Weber State this fall to earn a Public Relations & Marketing degree in the music industry. She lettered three years in basketball. She was First Team All-Region, a USBCA All-Star and All-State as a senior. She golfed four years, lettering her last three years. She was captain of the golf and basketball teams. Paige was ninth grade Student Body President, Sophomore Vice-President and Student Body Vice-President as a senior. She was in the Hope Squad and was Prom royalty. Paige helped plant flowers and trees, volunteered at a homeless shelter, did a Quarters and Cans fundraiser and she volunteered at the Veteran’s Home. USHOFF board member Lamar Hirschi awarded Paige her scholarship. She’s the daughter of Shane and Melissa Aardema.
Ryan Gunn
Box Elder High School
Ryan Gunn will attend Brigham Young University after a church mission to Peru and plans to be a Preferred Walk-On for the football team. He maintained a 3.989 GPA while taking several AP and Honors classes. Ryan earned 12 letters in football, wrestling and track over four years and played baseball his senior year. He placed second at state in wrestling twice and was All-State in football. Ryan was captain in three sports. A member of the HOPE Squad, he helped raise awareness of suicide prevention. He was a member of the NHS and assisted with service projects each August with football to help give back to his community. USHOFF Board member Dave Nordquist presented Ryan his scholarship. Ryan is the son of Trent and Yvette Gunn.
Cheyenne Naegle
Green Canyon High School
Cheyenne will attend Utah State this fall with plans to take courses for a career as an Occupational Therapist. While taking many concurrent enrollment classes, she maintained a 4.00 GPA. Cheyenne kept busy with volleyball and basketball all four years. She made Academic All-State in both sports and her basketball team was named UIAAA Academic State Champions. Cheyenne earned three letters in volleyball and two with basketball. She was team captain for both sports, and a Senior Class Rep. She was Jr. Prom Queen, FCCLA Historian and went to the Dare 2 Lead Conference and to the ‘Raise the Bar’ Sportsmanship Summit. USHOFF board member Dale Mildenberger presented Cheyenne her scholarship. She is the daughter of Andrea Perkes and Kelly Naegle.
Tomas Yapias
Tomas will attend the University of Utah this fall and study as a business scholar. He plans to work with a corporation or industry and become a CEO. Tomas played football for four years, making second team All-Region, lettering two years and serving as a team captain. Tomas received the ‘Q’ award for his attitude and service in the football program. He also lettered two years in track and field. He was a member of the International Thespian Society and a Concentration Smile performer. He has also been a four-year member of the NAACP and has assisted with the Ron McBride Foundation Legends Golf Tournament for four years. USHOFF board member Debra Bennett, who is a retired coach and athletic director at Skyline and knows the Yapias family, presented Tomas with his award. Tomas is the son of James and Amanda Yapias.
Emma Haddock
Carbon High School
Emma Haddock will attend Snow College this fall and work on her general education classes while taking several science classes. Her goal is to become a recreational therapist. She kept a perfect 4.00 GPA while taking several AP and concurrent enrollment classes. She was very busy on the athletic field with four years of cross country, soccer and track and three years of swimming. She was named Academic All-State in cross country, track and swimming. Emma won the Coach Stu Award in swimming for her leadership and hard work. She had many hours volunteering around her community. She traveled to Belize one summer for a humanitarian project. USHOFF board member Kent Draayer presented Emma her scholarship. Emma is the daughter of Jared and Paige Haddock.
Shawn Anderson
Orem High School
Shawn will attend Brigham Young University after his church mission to Paris, France. He played basketball and football, helping Orem High School win the state football title this year. He was Student Body Vice-President and also earned his Eagle Scout. He did community service projects during high school and was a member of the HOPE Squad. He was selected to attend Camp ‘U’, a leadership program. He maintained a 3.83 GPA and he was a member of the Audition Choir. He sang the National Anthem at a Jazz game. USHOFF past president and board member Joel Gardner (second from right) and board member Terry Shellenberger (right) presented Shawn’s scholarship. Principal Michael Browning was present for the award (far left). Shawn is the son of Clark and Sheri Anderson.
Jace Eyre
Panguitch High School
Jace plans to study Pre-med at Southern Utah University after serving a church mission in Botswana, Africa. At Panguitch High, Jace led his basketball team to two state titles and was named MVP this past year. Jace made All-State in basketball and baseball and competed in track, finishing second in the shot put and 6th in the discuss this year. He also lettered in golf. As a leader, Jace served as Student Body vice-president, class VP in ninth grade and was selected to attend Camp ‘U’. He served as Captain of the baseball and basketball teams and earned his Eagle Scout. Community Service kept him busy and he was involved with FCCLA and FBLA. USHOFF board member and past president Evan Excell presented Jace with his award. Jace is the son of Brady and Wendy Eyre.
Valerie Harker
Syracuse High School
Valerie plans to attend Snow college, studying Graphic Design and working for a career in Advertising and Marketing. She will serve as an Ambassador while at Snow College. Earning a 3.98 GPA, Valerie rece4ived Adademic All-State in volleyball and basketball. She was named All-State in volleyball twice. She also was a four-year starter, letter winner and team captain in both sports. Valerie played in the Jr. Olympics outdoor sand volleyball in California. She was a Student body officer in 9th, 10th and 12th grade. She made a Humanitarian trip to Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina, helping build an elementary school. USHOFF board member and scholarship chair Richard Valdez and board member Lamar Hirschi presented Valerie her scholarship. Valerie is the daughter of Shon and Charlene Harker.
Addison Healy
Emery High School
Addison will be taking general education classes at Snow College and moving on to Utah State University to go into Natural Resources as a career. Playing soccer and softball, Addison was named All-State and Academic All-State in both sports. She was a captain for both teams as well. She was on the yearbook staff and a member of FACS. She maintained a 3.98 GPA for four years. She also passed the certification skills tests for Floriculture and Animal Science I. For community service, Addison helped plant trees in her community and took young kids to dance at a local nursing home at Christmastime. USHOFF board members Kent Draayer presented Addison with her scholarship award. Addison is the daughter of Quinn and Kacie Healy.
Lindsey Middleton
Timpview High School
Lindsey plans to attend Brigham Young University this fall. but is undecided on her major. She earned a 4.0 GPA and a 30 on her ACT. She was a four-year varsity starter and letter winner in track and field. Lindsey placed fifth in state in ninth and tenth grade in the 4 X 100 relay. Last year, she finished second in state in the 100 meter hurdles and was crowned state champion this spring and has the 5A state record at 14.30. She was a team captain this year and was named Academic All-State. Away from track, Lindsey was a peer tutor and a member of the Link Crew. In HOSA, she won a silver and bronze medal at statte competition and became CPR certified this year. USHOFF board member Terry Shellenberger presented Lindsey her award. Lindsey is the daughter of Michael and Laura Middleton.
Hannah Petersen
Juab High School
Hannah will be attending Utah State University in the fall and plans to pursue a career in Elementary Education. She maintained a 4.0 GPA and scored a 26 on the ACT. Hannah was very involved in all types of dance. She was a four-year member of the school’s drill team and was named Academic All-State this year. She was awarded a letter for three years. She was also a member of the Emotion in Motion competition dance team. She was a state winner in 4-H Dance and she played recreational soccer. In leadership, she was drill team president, senior class officer, Winter Ball chairman and Miss Nephi Royalty First and Second Attendant. USHOFF board member Steve Gardner presented Hannah with her certificate. Hannah is the daughter of Doug and Fran Petersen.
Mckenzie Qualls
Clearfield High School
Mckenzie will attend Snow College this fall and plans to go into either Physical Therapy or Nursing. She was involved in cross country and track and field for three years, lettering each year. She served as cross country captain this year. Mckenzie maintained a 3.921 GPA while taking A.P., Honors, CE and IB classes. She earned her Certified Nursing Assistant certificate, was a two-year member of the National Honor Society and was a school ambassador. She worked at the library and did babysitting for free. Because she was good with a camera, she volunteered to take pictures for boys and their Eagle Scout projects. USHOFF board members Kent Draayer and Ken Gardner presented Mckenzie her certificate. Gardner graduated from Clearfield High in 1967. Mckenzie is the daughter of Andrew and Jennifer Qualls.
Koebe Wilson
Sky View High School
Koebe will attend Utah State University after a mission to Scottsdale, Arizone. He is planning for a career in International Business. He maintained a 3.89 GPA and scored a 29 on the ACT. He was a four-year player in football, basketball and baseball, earning eight letters. In football, he was team captain and was named All-Region twice and All-State as a senior. He was Valley Defensive Player of the Year. In basketball, he was All-Valley as a senior. He made All-Region in baseball this year. He coached youth football and taught basketball skills to special needs students. He was a member of the National Honor Society for three years and was a member of ‘Eyes Up, Do the Work’, encouraging students to help stop bullying. USHOFF board member Dave Kragthorpe presented Koebe with his scholarship award. Koebe is the son of Kim Nield and matt Wilson.
Tiffanee Bird
Tooele High School
Tiffanee will attend Utah State in the fall to pursue a career in the medical field. She was a 4-year member of track and soccer and a 3-year member of the drill team. She was named All-State in soccer and qualified for state in track. Tiffanee had a 3.99 GPA, was a class officer for three years and served as Student Body Secretary this year. She was captain of the track and soccer teams and was involved in many clubs and organizations. Presenting her scholarship was USHOFF scholarship chair Richard Valdez, a Tooele High grad. She is the daughter of Keith and Debbie Bird.
Braydon Cuff
Skyridge High School
Braydon plans to attend Utah Valley University after returning from a church mission to England/Manchester. Playing basketball for three years, he was the team captain his senior year. He was involved in school organizations and earned a 3.86 GPA. Braydon was fortunate to travel to Mali, Africa this year. While there, he worked in a dental clinic, an orphanage and helped make bricks for a school expansion in Mali. He also earned his Eagle Scout. USHOFF President Joel Gardner presented Braydon with his scholarship. He is the son of Rob and Sonya Cuff.
Malakai Fakahua
Malakai will attend Brigham Young after his church mission. He will pursue a degree in Sports Psychology or Physical Therapy. He earned a 4.00 GPA and was Valedictorian. He was football team captain for two years. He received 4 varsity letters in football & track, was All-State in football 3 years and was Academic All-
State in football and track. He was named the Male Athlete of the Year for Dixie High. He was Student Body Vice-President this year and earned his Eagle Scout USHOFF board members Evan Excell and Jack Bishop presented him with his scholarship. Malakai is the son of Salesi and Kim Fakahua.
Tyler Gibb
Layton High School
Tyler will attend Brigham Young University after a Washington D.C./South mission, pursuing a broadcasting career. He lettered in golf & tennis as a 4-year varsity team member in both sports. He was captain of both sports his
senior year. He had a 3.99 GPA, earned Academic All-State in golf and was a 2-time All-Region golfer. He was on Layton’s Youth City council, was involved
in school and community volunteer work and earned His Eagle Scout award. USHOFF board member Lamar Hirschi presented Tyler with his scholarship. He is the son of Ron and Heather Gibb.
Ogden High School
Miguel will attend Weber State in two years following a church mission. He is interested in engineering/architecture. He played football and tennis for four years . He was a regional Sterling Scholar in Skills & Technology and earned a Pathway certificate in Engineering Technology. Miguel had a 3.98 GPA. He did a lot of community service with local organizations & he earned his Eagle Scout in 9th grade. USHOFF board members Dave Nordquist and Phil Russell, who were both athletic directors at Ogden High, presented Miguel with his scholarship. He is the son of Miguel and Francisca Gonzalez.
Brooke Ingles
Brooke will be attending Utah State University this fall with plans to earn a degree in Elementary Education. She played varsity basketball for four years, making All-Region and All-State as a senior and served as team captain. Her GPA was 3.97. She was a Student Body officer (artist) and member of HOPE Squad this year. She was also on the Principal’s Council. Brooke was involved in clubs and organizations and was a certified lifeguard. She received her Scholarship by USHOFF president Joel Gardner and board member Terry Shellenberger. She is the daughter of Mark and Jill Ingles.
Mikaylee Morgan
Piute High School
Mikaylee will attend Utah State this fall, studying accounting. She earned a 3.99 GPA. She lettered 4 years in volleyball, basketball & track; served as captain for all three sports. She won the state shot put title last year and placed 2nd this year. She placed twice in the javelin at state, named Academic All-State in track and was Piute’s Female Athlete of the Year twice. Mikaylee was Student Body Secretary and a leader in other organizations & clubs. She attended Girls’ State and the Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership conference. USHOFF board member Evan Excell presented Mikaylee her scholarship.
She is the daughter of McKay and Gwen Morgan.
Tiana Spencer
Springville High School
pursue a career in business management. Her cumulative GPA was 3.92. With sports, Tiana was a member of the cross country team for two years and was
on the swim team and track team her senior year. As a sophomore, she performed with the school’s drill team. This year as Student Body Service Chair, she helped organize various school activities to assist them to be successful. She was a two-year member of the HOPE Squad and also served with the Health Occupations Students of America. USHOFF board member Steve Gardner presented Tiana with her scholarship. She is the daughter of Reyn Spencer.
Samantha Nelson
Samantha will be attending Weber State University and working for a degree in Chemical Engineering. She was involved in basketball and cross country for four years, earning Academic All-State in each. She also ran track. She was very active in community service and was Clearfield’s Dare 2 Lead rep as a sophomore. She also belonged to numerous school clubs. She maintained a 4.00 GPA for four years. Presenting her scholarship was BOD Kenny Gardner, a Clearfield High graduate himself. She is the daughter of Daniel and Dianne Nelson.
Devin Argyle – Spanish Fork High School
Devin will be serving a church mission for the next two years and will return to attend Utah State University. Devin played baseball & foot-ball, earning Academic All-State in each, along with All-Region in both. He was All-State in baseball and helped his team capture the state title in 2015. He maintained a 4.00 GPA during high school. Presenting his scholarship was BOD Steve Gardner. Devin is the son of Brian and Melissa Argyle.
Jennifer Stewart – Snow Canyon High School
Jennifer will attend BYU in the fall, studying for an exercise science career. She played soccer & track, earning Academic All-State & All-State honors in soccer. She was active with many community service activities and attended a Leadership Academy as a senior. She earned a 3.98 GPA during high school. BOD’s Jack Bishop & Evan Excell, (past USHOFF president), awarded Jennifer her scholarship certificate. She is the daughter of Charles and Cynthia Stewart.
Madison Jones – Grand County High School
Madison will serve a church mission in the fall, returning to BYU to pursue a career in nursing. Madison was class VP for 3 years and was Student Body President this year. She played volleyball, basketball & softball
for 4 years. She was busy with community service & clubs during high school. Scholarship chair & BOD member Richard Valdez awarded Madison her scholarship certificate. She maintained a 3.89 GPA in high school. She is the daughter of Ryon and Tracy Jones.
Jordyn Johnson – Weber High School
Jordyn will be heading to Weber State University this fall. She was involved in swimming, basketball, soccer & track & field during high school, lettering in all four sports. She helped lead her soccer team to a second place state finish this year. Like the others, she was very involved in community service and school clubs and activities. She maintained a 3.71 GPA during high school. BOD Kent Draayer enjoyed presenting Jordyn with her scholarship certificate. Jordyn is the daughter of Jeff and Lisa Johnson.
Andrew Lisk – Jordan High School
Andrew will attend the University of Utah this fall. He was busy with sports, playing football, baseball and basketball all four years. He was All-Region & All-State for football & baseball. Andrew represented JHS at the Dare 2 Lead conference. He was kept busy with community service projects. He maintained a 3.99 GPA. BOD Kenny Gardner presented Andrew with his scholarship certificate. He is the son of Andy & Sharon Lisk.
Ciera Wall
Tintic High
Attending Snow College
Kallie Whitby
Springville High
Attending Weber State University
Morgan Breece
Syracuse High
Attending Southern Utah University
Kilee Christiansen
Stansbury High
Ryan Ham
Timpanogos High
Attending Brigham Young University
Trac Torgersen
Escalante High
Attending Utah Valley University
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5183
|
__label__cc
| 0.525281
| 0.474719
|
UV Directory
IDOCAL
Research memories
Specialised business consulting
Home > Research > Laboratory > G2 laboratory for ergonomics and group work > Presentation
G2 laboratory for ergonomics and group work
Laboratory of Social Cognitive Neuroscience (LabNSC)
Laboratory of ergonomics and group work mediated by information and communication technologies
The last decade has seen a technological revolution that has affected almost all aspects of society (e.g. leisure, economics, politics, labour and personal relations, communications). There has been wide access to information due to the use of Information Technologies. In addition, the growth and widespread use of the Internet in the near future will become a resource and a prerequisite for global development.
Due to these changes, infrastructures are required to allow the study of the complex processes that arise when human interactions are brought into the virtual environment. In this context, the "G2 Laboratory of Ergonomics and New Information and Communication Technologies" arises from a need to carry out high-precision and high-quality experimental research to help understand the new paradigm. The laboratory is used for the design and execution of research that analyzes teamwork in different environments and communication conditions, as well as the study of different types of virtual communities.
The laboratory is managed by the GroupNit research group and also has the support of researchers from different universities. It was fully operational in 2007.
Research Institute of Personnel Psychology, Organizational Development and Quality of Working Life [IDOCAL]
© 2019 UV. - Av. Blasco Ibáñez, 21 46010 Valencia (Spain) Phone: +34 963 86 41 00
Legal Disclaimer | Accessibility | Privacy Policy | Cookies | Transparency | Bústia de contacte
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5184
|
__label__cc
| 0.690668
| 0.309332
|
Home | Free Guitar Course
Artists by letter: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 0-9
Yellow Chords (ver 12) - Coldplay
Back | Video and audio performances by our users (0)
Yellow Chords
G Gsus4 G Gsus4
G D C G
Look how they shine for you
Cmaj7
And all the things you do,
Yeah, they were all yellow.
I came along,
I wrote a song for you
And it was called "Yellow".
G D
So then i took my turn,
Oh what a thing to have done,
G Gsus4 G
And it was all yellow.
Em D
Oh yeah, your skin and bones
C Em D
Turn into something beautiful,
C Em D
You know, you know I love you so,
You know i love you so.
I swam across,
I jumped across for you,
Oh, what a thing to do
'Cause you were all yellow.
I drew a line,
I drew a line for you,
G Gsus4 G
And you know,
Em D C
For you I'd bleed myself dry,
For you I'd bleed myself dry.
G D C G
G D
It's true, look how they shine for you,
Look how they shine for,
Look how they shine for you,
Look how they shine.
Look at the stars,
Cadd9
And all the things you do.
Coldplay - Yellow Chords :: indexed at Ultimate Guitar.
Yellow tabs @ 911Tabs
People who played Coldplay - Yellow Chords also played these songs by Coldplay:
Yellow Acoustic Chords, Viva La Vida Chords, The Scientist Acoustic Chords, Clocks Chords, See You Soon Chords, Violet Hill Chords, The Scientist Chords, Fix You Chords
About the artist behind Yellow Chords:
Coldplay are an English alternative rock band formed in London in 1997. The group comprises vocalist/pianist/guitarist Chris Martin, lead guitarist Jonny Buckland, bassist Guy Berryman, and drummer/multi-instrumentalist Will Champion. Coldplay has been one of the most commercially successful bands of the new millennium, selling over 30 million albums. The band is also known for its hit singles, such as "Yellow", "Speed of Sound", the Grammy Award-winning "Clocks" and their latest single, "Viva La Vida".
Coldplay achieved worldwide fame with the release of their single "Yellow", followed by the success of their debut album, Parachutes (2000), which was nominated for the Mercury Prize. Both Parachutes and its follow-up, A Rush of Blood to the Head (2002), were released to commercial success; the latter was named NME's Album of the Year. X&Y (2005) received a generally positive reception. From December 2006, the band worked with producer Brian Eno on their fourth studio album, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, which was released on 12 June 2008.
Coldplay's early material was compared to acts such as Jeff Buckley,[1] U2, and Travis.[2] Since the release of Parachutes, Coldplay have drawn influence from other sources, including Echo and the Bunnymen[1] and George Harrison[3] on A Rush of Blood to the Head and Johnny Cash and Kraftwerk for X&Y.[4] Coldplay have been an active supporter of various social and political causes, such as Oxfam's Make Trade Fair campaign and Amnesty International. The group has also performed at various charity projects such as Band Aid 20, Live 8, and the Teenage Cancer Trust.[5]
Indexed at Wikipedia.
Show us your talent, perform Yellow Chords!
Here you can post a video or audio performance. Tell me more ...
Here you can post a video of you playing the Yellow Chords, so your fellow guitarists will be able to see you and rate you.
You just need to put the link to your video in the upper text field
(example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjA5faZF1A8)
and your optional comment in the lower text field.
Currently we only support YouTube videos, but we will be adding other video (and audio!) services in the near future.
Where can we find your performance? Tell me more ...
Please, log in to post your performance.
AutoScroller Speed: 0
Add this song to your songbook
Rate: 1 2 3 4 5
Transpose song:
Transposition -5 Semitones -4 Semitones -3 Semitones -2 Semitones -1 Semitone Default Chords +1 Semitone +2 Semitones +3 Semitones +4 Semitones +5 Semitones +6 Semitones
The chord pattern is shown here.
copyright © 2019 YourChords.com - Guitar Chords - Popular Chords - in partnership with ToneFuse Music - info
yourchords.com
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5186
|
__label__cc
| 0.582882
| 0.417118
|
Felicity Huffman Pleads Guilty in Admissions Fraud Case
Actress Felicity Huffman appeared in court in Boston on Monday to plead guilty to charges stemming from a massive fraud case involving college admissions and wealthy parents around the country. According to CNN, “prosecutors recommended a sentence of four months prison time along with “$20,000 fine and 12 months of supervised release for the charge, which is a felony.” Huffman, the former star of Desperate Housewives, pled guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud.
In a statement last month, Huffman said “I am in full acceptance of my guilt, and with deep regret and shame over what I have done, I accept full responsibility for my actions and will accept the consequences that stem from those actions.”
Those actions allegedly involved paying $15,000 to a fake charity as part of a scam to help her daughter cheat on the SATs by getting her extra time on the exam, and to take it at a site controlled by another member of the cheating ring. Huffman is one of 13 parents who pled guilty so far; another famous actress snagged in the case, Full House star Lori Loughlin, is one of 17 parents who pled not guilty. (Huffman’s husband, actor William H. Macy, was not charged.) Huffman will be sentenced at a later date.
Gallery — Great Movies That Became Horrible Franchises:
Source: Felicity Huffman Pleads Guilty in Admissions Fraud Case
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5191
|
__label__wiki
| 0.723814
| 0.723814
|
Search only:
Sign In Jobs
Give To CBN
The Christian Broadcasting Network
CBN is a global ministry committed to preparing the nations of the world for the coming of Jesus Christ through mass media. Using television and the Internet, CBN is proclaiming the Good News in 149 countries and territories, with programs and content in 67 languages.
If you have an immediate prayer need, please call our 24-hour prayer line at 800-945-5640. CBN's ministry is made possible by the support of our CBN Partners.
700 ClubCBN Shows
CBNNews
ChristianLiving
CBNRadio
Kids'Superbook
AboutOur Ministries
GiveTo CBN
A7: Inspirational Urban Soul Music
Download Embed Video
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.cbn.com/tv/embedplayer.aspx?bcid=1410339513001" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Heather Salon
CBN.com THEY’RE NOT JUST ABOUT MUSIC
A7 is not just a musical group of five brothers and one godbrother, with an eclectic type of music they call “inspirational urban soul” (a mix of jazz, Motown R&B, classical, blues, rock, hip-hop, gospel and other ethnic sounds). It is a group composed of pastors, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, a lawyer, a social worker, and a mathematician. The group uses all their gifts and talents, concurrently if the areas that they minister to need it. For example, the group will sometimes minister in smaller groups or solo (depending on the need) and do music, outreach in their areas of specialization, or both.
All the brothers have twenty college degrees between them, and value the importance of faith, family, and education. If you ask them specifically important points to them they would be:
1) A strong case against abortion: their mother was told she shouldn’t have more than two children, because her rare blood type would cause birth defects in her children. She didn’t listen and went on to have eight children (five boys and three girls).
2) The group consists of five brothers and a godbrother (Antonio) and they are very much a family.
3) The importance of education: they have 20 college degrees between the six of them.
4) They promote celibacy (Antonio is the only one who is married).
In between their various ministries and schedules, the Harris brothers got together, and made a debut album, A7. Mainly written and composed by the group, the album showcases all their musical training and experiences with what they have learned and developed spiritually.
In 2007, A7 was able to make special appearances and short tours around their regular jobs, developing a strong following. Their music was well-received throughout 2007, even earning them a nomination for Best Song, for Don't Walk Away at the Gospel Choice Awards. When they recently switched record labels, their debut album was re-released in Sept. 2007, with a few bonus tracks; an a capella version of Mary Don't Weep, God Bless America and Father Stay. Their desire is to "whisper peace to the distressed, hope to the despondent and joy to the disheartened,” bringing to light the Lord's good promises and the hope we have in Jesus Christ.
Alexander, the lead singer and driving force of A7, wrote their hit song, Don’t Walk Away. He wrote the song in college during a rough time in his life. Alexander thought it would be better to quit school, but he stuck it out and now has a Bachelor of Arts in human services and psychology; Master in social work; and Master in theology.
THE STORY BEHIND A7
The Harris family is a tight-knit group. Pastor James and Carolyn Harris have been ministers and educators and instilled the importance of faith, family, and education to their children. The Harris children learned to do what is pleasing to God and to trust in Him and had wonderful examples of how to do that by watching their parents. Pastor Harris would love when the five boys (Alonzo, Arcelious, Alexander, Andronicus, and Antipas – Antonio is a godbrother) and three girls (Naomi, Miriam, and Mia) would worship together at church.
After a while, the girls didn’t want to sing anymore. It was then that the boys wanted to form a gospel boy group. This was about the time the boy bands, [like the Backstreet Boys] were popular. “A” is the first letter in all six group members’ names. When they were younger, they called themselves the “A-Boys.” As they matured, their sound matured. They decided to modify the group’s name to reflect their growth as people and musicians. There are six brothers and “7” is the acknowledgement of the presence of God. Also, in the scriptures, the number “7” signifies completion or maturity.
Individually as well as collectively, the Harris brothers learned to develop and use all their gifts, talents and interests, through the leadings and power of the Holy Spirit, as they have grown in their relationship with the Lord. Along with ministering to people through A7, they also reach out to communities in need with their non-profit organization, In Touch with Community, Inc. (ITWC Inc.).
MEET THE MEMBERS OF A7
Antipas - Pianist, songwriter, and co-producer. As a child prodigy, he began playing the piano by ear as a toddler (two-years-old). Also, Antipas has served as associate pastor at A House of the Living God in Manchester, Georgia for more than 10 years. He has served the Covenant Congregational Church in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts as youth pastor, Cornerstone Christian Center in Milford, Connecticut as youth director, Christ Chapel New Testament Church in New Haven, Connecticut as associate pastor, and Abundant Life Church of God in Tyrone, Georgia as music pastor. His sincere love for God leads this dynamic young man to his ministry as a profound teacher, evangelist, mentor, and pastoral care-giver. He offers pastoral care to adults and high school and college students. Antipas presents academic lectures, delivers motivational and inspirational speeches, has ministered and conducted ministry trips in Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Bahamas, Mexico, Canada and Germany. Currently, Antipas serves as Assistant Professor of Practical Ministry (Urban Ministry) at Regent University School of Divinity. He holds a Doctorate in Practical Theology (Church and Society) from Boston University School of Theology, a Master of Sacred Theology from Yale University Divinity School, a Master of Divinity from Candler School of Theology (Emory University), and a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Music Technologies and Religion from LaGrange College. He has won several awards and accolades as a young scholar and has studied at Harvard University, Boston College and the Gordon Conwell School of Theology. Antipas’ interests include theology, science, philosophy, travelling, skating, fishing, sunset walks on the beach and ethnic foods. Antipas’ motto is “Do all you can for God and others while you can and through Christ who is able to strengthen all.”
Arcelious - Drummer, singer, songwriter and lyricist, and also designs clothes. Currently, besides playing music with his brothers, he is a graduate from LaGrange College. He also produces and helps to develop other "aspiring artists." He is currently studying music technology at NYU. He is also an arranger/producer.
Alonzo - Keyboardist, organist, pianist, lyricist and composer for both popular and classic musical compositions. His talents showed themselves early when he was a young child. His educational credits are impressive. Graduated from LaGrange College with a degree in Creative Music Technology. Earned a Masters of Music with a concentration in Contemporary Improvisation at New England Conservatory in Boston, Mass. He currently teaches at Berklee College of Music.
Alexander - Lead singer with two Master degrees. He is a classically trained singer who has toured with the LaGrange College Tour choir. He was a winner of the NATS award for his abilities in singing classical music. Also having a heart for the ministry, Alexander graduated from LaGrange College with a B.A. in Human Services and Psychology. He then earned his Masters of Social Work at Boston University, and went on to earn his Masters of Theology. He uses all his gifts to minister the word of God through music and reaching out to those in need. He has served as a youth pastor and singing evangelist in his churches. His greatest joy: "Reaching out to the community and seeing to the welfare of those in need."
Andronicus - Group's electric guitarist and bassist, songwriter - also a pastor and a lawyer! He first earned a degree at LaGrange College completing a B.A. in English with a minor in Religion. Continuing on, he earned a Masters of Divinity from Candler School of Theology at Emory University. In 2005, He earned the Juris Doctorate at Mercer University School of Law. Being a gifted speaker, Andronicus spreads the gospel message through his preaching as a co-associate pastor at his home church and as a traveling evangelist. He is also a youth mentor, counselor and life coach.
Antonio - Tenor voice to the four part harmonies found in A7's vocals, an educator and a gifted youth minister with a flair for counseling youth. Antonio is a husband to Soraya and father to his children: Alexandria, Damarisse, Giovanna, Jayden and infant son Miguel. He earned his A.S. from Gordon College, his B.A. in Mathematics from LaGrange College and a Masters of Education from Columbus State University. He also earned an ED.S. from Columbus State University. Musical influences: The Jacksons, Al Green, The Temptations, Sam Cook, The Winans, Shirley Caesar and The Beatles.
Christian Broadcasting Network
Get Prayer
ShopCBN
myCBN
Superbook/Kids
700 Club Interactive
All News Shows
Email and Devotions Sign-Ups
Follow Us/Social
Find A Local Church
Become a CBN Partner
Pledge Express
Planned Giving & Your Legacy
Employer Matching Gifts
Shop CBN
I will sing to the LORD because he is good to me.
Today's Devotion
Uninhibited Praise
CBN Cookie Policy
700 Club CBN Shows
As Seen On The Club
About The 700 Club
Ask Pat a Question
My CBN Discussion
Visit CBN
CBN News Shows
CBN Bible
Questions Search
Know God?
Bible Apps
Biblical Archeology
Overcoming Addictions
Grin and Grow with Kathy
Marriage 911
Mommy and the Joyful Three
Hollywood Insight
Ask Dave Ramsey
Pastoral Compensation
Resources & Courses
The Global Lane
The 700 Club Canada
CBN News Showcase
Faithwire - Faith vs Culture
Prayer Link
CBN Live
News - CBN News
Kids' Superbook
About Our Ministries
Children's Outreach
News Outreach
Digital Outreach
CBN Staff & Board Bios
Stories & Testimonies
Support CBN
Menu Christian Broadcasting Network Menu
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5195
|
__label__cc
| 0.635764
| 0.364236
|
Related Conditions (186)
Taking your medication matters
Featuring content from MediResource Inc.
Many of us don't use our medication properly. This can lead to serious consequences. Here's what could happen to you if you don't take your medication as directed by your doctor:
You could end up in the emergency room or the hospital. Around 30% of emergency room visits related to medication use are due to improper use of medications, and some of these visits lead to hospitalization.
Your symptoms could get worse. If you're taking a medication to control your symptoms, your symptoms may worsen if you're not using it properly. For example, antibiotics need to be finished even if you are feeling better. If you stop treatment early, the infection may come back and you could be left feeling worse than before. Similarly, if you are combining certain medications, interactions between them can cause unwanted side effects, or the effectiveness of one medication may be altered. For example, certain antibiotics should not be combined with multivitamins or antacids.
You could suffer long-term complications if your condition is not properly treated. People with long-term health problems like diabetes, high blood pressure, or high cholesterol can end up with complications such as heart attacks or strokes if their condition is not kept under control with medication.
Your medication could stop working. Some medications, such as oral contraceptives and HIV medications, need to be taken on a strict schedule. If you miss doses or take them late, your medication could become less effective or even stop working for you altogether. In the case of HIV medications, you may then need to be switched to another medication. This cuts into the number of options that you have left to treat your condition. Studies show that you need to take at least 95% of your doses properly in order to keep your HIV medications working.
You could experience more side effects. If you are not taking the medication properly, or taking too much, you are at a higher risk of side effects.
You could become dependent on your medication. Some medications, such as sedatives, can cause dependence if they are not used properly.
You could go into withdrawal. For some medications, such as hormone therapy, medications for mental health disorders, or thyroid medications, it may not be safe to suddenly stop taking them. Instead, your doctor or pharmacist can suggest ways to gradually reduce your dose so that you can avoid withdrawal symptoms.
All material copyright MediResource Inc. 1996 – 2019. Terms and conditions of use. The contents herein are for informational purposes only. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Source: www.medbroadcast.com/healthfeature/gethealthfeature/Staying-Healthy-on-Medication
March 09, 2017 Diseases of the nervous system
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) – commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease – is a motor neuron disease. It's caused when the motor neurons that send electric "messages" from the brain to the spinal cord (upper motor neurons) or from the spinal cord (lower motor neurons) to the muscles are slowly being destroyed. These neurons are responsible for muscle movement. When the messages don't get through from the spinal cord, the muscles eventually lose strength and waste away. This process is called atrophy or amyotrophy. When signals from the brain to the spinal cord are blocked, the muscles become stiff and slow. This is called spasticity. Approximately 1 out of 100,000 people each year are newly diagnosed with ALS. It's more common in men than women, with symptoms usually appearing between the ages of 50 and 75. About 10% of people with ALS have a family history of the disease. The average life expectancy is 2 to 5 years after diagnosis.
May 03, 2017 Factors influencing health status and contact with health services
Angioplasty is a technique for reopening narrowed or blocked arteries in the heart (coronary arteries) without major surgery. First used in 1977, it's now as common as heart bypass surgery. It's sometimes called percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA) or percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). "Angio" means relating to a blood vessel and "plasty" means repair. Angioplasty is also used in other parts of the body, usually to treat peripheral artery disease. Before the operation You must tell your doctor if you are allergic to iodine or shellfish, since angioplasty involves injecting you with an iodine-based dye. You may have to go for some preliminary blood tests. Your doctor may tell you to not smoke for a period of time before or after angioplasty. For best results, you should quit smoking permanently. You shouldn't eat after midnight on the night before your angioplasty. Ask your doctor if you can drink clear liquids after midnight. You can usually continue to take your medications, but you should confirm this with your doctor. Check with your doctor if you take blood thinners such as warfarin, as you may need to stop them 5 days before the procedure. If you take insulin, you may have to adjust the dose. The procedure Angioplasty is performed while you are awake, under local anesthetic. It's sometimes uncomfortable, but not usually painful. The surgeon makes a small incision in the groin or arm and inserts a thin tube, called a catheter, into the artery. The catheter includes a small balloon and a small wire tube, called a stent. Once the catheter is in place, a dye is injected and X-rays are taken, which tell the physician exactly where the blockages are and how narrow the artery is. This is also known as an angiogram and functions as a map for the doctor. The doctor will then inflate the balloon, opening the stent and pushing it against the artery wall. After the procedure is complete, the cells that line the blood vessel will grow around the stent, holding it in place. The whole procedure usually lasts 30 minutes but may last as long as several hours. Sometimes, people will have to return to get their arteries redone because of renarrowing (restenosis) at the site of the balloon inflation. There are other types of angioplasty sometimes used in combination with the balloon: Drug-eluting stents are specially-treated stents that gradually release a special medication into the wall of the artery after they have been put into place and inflated. They reduce the risk of needing another procedure and are used for people who have a high risk of developing renarrowing of the artery after the initial procedure. These stents may increase the rare risk of clotting. Studies show that newer available drug-eluting stents are at least as safe as the bare-metal stents. Directional atherectomy involves using a miniature rotating blade to cut out the fatty deposit and remove it from the body. Excimer laser angioplasty uses a laser to remove the blockage in the artery. Usually, the balloon is used to help make the space through the blockage larger. In rotational atherectomy, a diamond-studded drill bit is used to pulverize tough blockages. Intracoronary radiation involves irradiation of the section of artery after balloon angioplasty to help prevent in-stent restenosis. After the operation Most people are admitted to hospital and monitored overnight after angioplasty. They are usually sent home early the next day. Once home, you can starting doing routine activities after a few days, but should avoid any type of lifting or other strenuous physical activity for about 5 days or as long as your doctor advises. Your doctor will advise you when you will be able to return to work and resume driving and other physical activity. If you have a stent, you will usually have to take an extra blood thinner medication such as clopidogrel* in addition to acetylsalicylic acid for at least the first few months in order to prevent blood from clotting on the metal stent. This treatment may continue for one year. You may also have to put off dental work for several months due to the risk of endocarditis (an infection of the heart). Call your doctor or hospital if you: experience swelling, bleeding, or pain at the insertion site develop a fever notice a change in temperature or colour in the arm or leg that was used feel faint or weak have shortness of breath or chest pain Angioplasty or coronary artery bypass surgery? Coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) is a successful but more invasive technique for restoring blood flow to the heart. The heart is usually stopped and chilled, and the patient is kept alive by a heart-and-lung machine. Usually strips of vein are removed from one or both of the patient's own legs to be used as bypass grafts. The great advantage of angioplasty is that the artery is returned to normal size without resorting to major surgery. The drawback to angioplasty is restenosis. This is when the artery renarrows due to scar formation and possibly further plaque formation. If the angioplasty lasts six months, there's a good chance it's permanent, but restenosis is far more likely after angioplasty than after a CABG. On the other hand, angioplasty allows people to come back for more treatment. If an artery re-narrows after CABG, there may not be enough vein or artery segments elsewhere in the body to perform a second graft. Moreover, a second angioplasty is far less traumatic to the body than a second open heart procedure. Sometimes, circumstances will make the choice for you. People with many severe blockages, multiple coronary blockages, or those who have diabetes may be better off with CABG. Also, most hospitals don't perform angioplasty if there are several major arteries blocked. This is because angioplasty temporarily blocks the artery completely when the balloon is inflated. If the other arteries are also blocked, this could trigger a heart attack. However, if you're over 80 years of age or have other serious medical problems, you may be considered too vulnerable for the trauma of open-heart surgery. In that case, angioplasty may be a more attractive option, no matter how many arteries are blocked. Possible complications Angioplasty is safer than bypass surgery. Less than 1% of people die from complications of angioplasty. Non-fatal serious complications occur in 1% to 5% of people who undergo this procedure. These complications include: tearing of the lining of the artery resulting in total blockage and possible heart attack - this can usually be repaired with a stent stroke from a clot that is dislodged while the catheter is inside the body bleeding or bruising kidney problems, especially in people with underlying kidney disease and diabetes – this is caused by the iodine contrast dye used for the X-ray; intravenous fluids and medications can be given before and after the procedure to try to reduce this risk *All medications have both common (generic) and brand names. The brand name is what a specific manufacturer calls the product (e.g., Tylenol®). The common name is the medical name for the medication (e.g., acetaminophen). A medication may have many brand names, but only one common name. This article lists medications by their common names. For information on a given medication, check our Drug Information database. For more information on brand names, speak with your doctor or pharmacist.
March 17, 2018 Mental and behavioural disorders
Everyone experiences anxiety from time to time as a result of a situation that we perceive as threatening or stressful, such as having to do an oral presentation, having a near-miss with a car, or waiting for the results of a lab test. Anxiety is normal in many situations, and some level of anxiety can even be helpful. Anxiety can help people deal with a threatening situation, study harder for an exam, and perform better in sports. Anxiety is not necessarily harmful and usually only lasts a short period of time. But when anxiety becomes persistent and interferes with the ability to cope and disrupts daily life, the person may have an anxiety disorder. There are several types of anxiety disorders. They include: panic disorder (sudden anxiety that occurs without warning) agoraphobia (avoiding specific situations, such as public places or places where crowds gather, from which they can't easily escape) specific phobias (many types of intense fear reactions of specific objects or situations, such as fear of spiders, flying, or heights) social anxiety disorder or social phobia (fear of being judged or embarrassed in social situations) generalized anxiety disorder (general feeling of anxiety most of the time) Anxiety disorders often occur together with other medical conditions, such as depression, eating disorders, or substance use problems. Anxiety disorders are the most common of all mental disorders. About 1 out of every 4 adults has an anxiety disorder sometime in their life and about 1 out of every 10 people currently has an anxiety disorder. They are more common in women and can affect both children and adults. Many people misunderstand these disorders and think they can get over them on their own (i.e., without treatment). This is usually not the case. Fortunately, there are many treatments available today to help.
November 19, 2016 Diseases of the circulatory system
An arrhythmia occurs when the heart's regular rhythm changes, such as speeding up or slowing down, or when it beats irregularly. In North America, about 5 million people get arrhythmias, most over the age of 50. Some also have heart disease, but many don't. In the vast majority of cases, the arrhythmia by itself isn't life-threatening, but it may predispose someone to a number of problems, such as a stroke. There are many different types of arrhythmias and their significance and consequences are varied. The normal beating of the heart is controlled by electrical signals sent from a particular segment of heart muscle tissue called the sinus node. This natural pacemaker is located near the top of the right atrium. The heart is divided into four chambers: two atria on top, and two ventricles underneath. The job of the atria is to fill the ventricles with blood, which then do the heavy work of pumping it through the rest of the body. In a normal heartbeat, an electrical pulse travels down the muscle tissue, activating the ventricles a split second after the atria. In arrhythmias, there's a problem with this signal. There are many different kinds of arrhythmias, but those that affect the ventricles are generally more serious than arrhythmias of the atria. Arrhythmias are can be caused by either slow heartbeats (bradycardia) or fast heartbeats (tachycardia). A slow heart rate may occur due to: Sick sinus syndrome: This occurs when the heart’s natural pacemaker breaks down, causing slower transmission of the electrical signals that contract the heart. It occurs more frequently in the elderly and may worsen with certain medications (e.g., beta blockers) that also slow down the heart rate. Heart block: This occurs when the electrical signal sent from the upper heart chambers (atria) to the lower heart chambers (ventricles) is interrupted. Without this signal transmission, the heart cannot contract efficiently to pump blood out into the body. A fast heart rate can be the result of: atrial fibrillation (AF): This involves disordered signals that are fired off in rapid succession, causing fibrillation, which is an uncoordinated quivering of the muscle wall of the atria. This has often been described as looking like a "bag of worms." The atria stop pumping blood effectively, yet enough blood still reaches the ventricles to allow the heart to function. AF is potentially dangerous, however, because blood can pool in the atrium and lead to clot formation. If one of these clots travels to the brain, it causes a stroke. AF is the most common form of harmful arrhythmia, affecting almost 1% of the population. It is more common in seniors, affecting about 5% of people over age 69. One study showed that 1 in 4 people over the age of 40 will develop AF. ventricular fibrillation (V-fib or VF): This is the most dangerous form of arrhythmia. The ventricles twitch but don't pump blood. If the twitching does not stop on its own or by a shock from a defibrillator, it is always fatal.
February 14, 2015 Diseases of the respiratory system
Asbestosis is a harmful lung condition that develops in people who have inhaled asbestos dust. When someone inhales the dust, the microscopic asbestos fibres settle in the lungs, where they may cause permanent lung damage as well as chronic breathing symptoms. One of the unusual things about asbestosis is the long "lag-time" between asbestos exposure and the resulting illness. For example, a year of exposure in youth may not cause symptoms until 30 years later. Once someone develops asbestosis, there is no cure. Breathing problems will get steadily worse, and in about 15% of people, severe shortness of breath and respiratory failure develop. For someone who smokes and has had asbestos exposure, there is a greatly increased chance of developing lung cancer. Symptoms may appear within 10 years of the initial exposure. Lung transplantation is the only way to manage end-stage asbestos lung disease, and most people who need it are not eligible candidates because of their advanced age or due to other medical problems.
Athlete's foot, known as dermatophytosis of the foot or tinea pedis ("foot fungus"), is a common skin infection that affects the feet. You don't have to be an "athlete" to get it. In North America, 1 in 10 people have athlete's foot. Men tend to be affected more than women, adults more than children. In about 50% of people with athlete's foot, the condition recurs because the fungus spores survive in skin cracks between the toes. There are 4 types of athlete's foot: moccasin-type, vesicular or blistered, interdigital, and ulcerative.
July 05, 2018 Mental and behavioural disorders
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a disorder that is characterized by a pattern of inattention (inability to concentrate), and hyperactivity-impulsivity, that is persistent and developmentally inappropriate. ADHD affects 4% to 12% of school-aged children, occurring more frequently in boys than girls. ADHD may persist into adulthood in many cases and is estimated to affect 3% to 4% of adults. An inability to integrate in social, academic, or work-related settings is a pattern seen in people with a history of ADHD. In childhood, a person with ADHD may have academic and social problems as the condition affects a person's ability to concentrate and focus on tasks. Because they are unable to organize their work or pay attention to their studies, children with ADHD may try to distract other children in class. People with ADHD are especially sensitive to sensory stimuli such as noise, touch, and visual cues. They can easily be overstimulated, leading to changes in behaviour that may include aggressiveness. Many people think ADHD and ADD (attention deficit disorder) are two different conditions, but they are in fact two names for the same condition. Other names no longer in use are minimal brain dysfunction (MBD) and hyperactivity.
May 03, 2017 Mental and behavioural disorders
Imagine living in a world that doesn't completely reach you, and to which you can't always respond. For many people who have autism, this great divide exists between their world and the reality outside of them. Autism is one of a group of developmental disorders called autism spectrum disorders. Autism affects about 1 in 68 children. Children with autism usually display signs before the age of 2. Autism is part of a group of diseases called autistic spectrum disorder (ASD), which includes 4 other disorders: Asperger’s syndrome, which, unlike autism, dose not have delayed development of language and congnition childhood disintegrative disorder, which is characterized by 2 to 4 years of normal development followed by the onset of autistic symptoms Rett syndrome, which is a genetic disease that affects only girls pervasive developmental disorder Autism is 4 to 5 times as common in boys as in girls, and people with autism may be developmentally impaired to some degree.
Back Disorders
April 21, 2017 Diseases of the nervous system
The spine is made up of bone segments called vertebrae. Vertebrae have two parts: 1) the cylinder-shaped vertebral bodies to the front; and 2) the boney bridges making up the facet joints at the back. Most of the spine is flexible enough to let people bend, stretch, and lift. Between the bones of the spine are small discs that are hard on the outside and soft and jelly-like on the inside. The spinal bones are connected by the facet joints at the back and by the discs at the front. The nerves of the spinal cord run through the spinal canal, which is just behind the vertebral bodies, and separate into roots along the length of the spinal cord and at the tail end of the spine. Some of them pass through the pelvis to become the sciatic nerves, which pass down each leg. Problems with the vertebrae, joints, or discs can all cause back disorders. Back disorders can cause mild to very severe backache. Many Canadians between the ages of 20 to 65 will develop back pain. Though it hurts, back pain is rarely caused by a serious disease and usually disappears on its own. It often comes back, however, making it one of the most common reason people see doctors.
January 19, 2017 Mental and behavioural disorders
Bedwetting is common for children, affecting more boys than girls. The condition occurs in 10% to 15% of children at the age of 5 years, 6% to 8% of children at the age of 8, and declines to 1% to 2% of children by the age of 15 years. Although children develop bladder control at different rates, most boys can control their bladder during the day and night by the age of 6, and most girls by the age of 5. When a child who is old enough to have bladder control urinates accidentally while sleeping, it's called nocturnal enuresis.
May 03, 2017 Diseases of the nervous system
Bell's palsy is a sudden facial paralysis that usually strikes all or part of one side of the face. Men or women of any age can suffer Bell's palsy, but statistics suggest that people aged 20 to 40 are at higher-than-average risk. Your risk of experiencing Bell's palsy in our lifetime is about 1 in 60. Few people are struck by Bell's palsy more than once in their lives. Bell's palsy can be a frightening experience, appearing suddenly with symptoms that cause many people to think they're having a stroke. In reality, stroke symptoms are quite different, and Bell's palsy is a comparatively harmless condition that usually clears up without treatment.
May 03, 2017 Diseases of the genitourinary system
The prostate gland is a small, round lump of tissue located between the penis and the bladder. Its function is to add fluid to the semen, the liquid that carries the sperm. It tends to grow bigger as men enter middle age, and continues to grow with age. In some men the prostate gland can grow to be more than seven times its original size. This runaway growth is called hyperplasia and results in the condition benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). BPH causes no symptoms or problems in two-thirds of men over the age of 50 years, but the chance of developing symptoms increases with each additional year. The prostate surrounds the top of the urethra, the tube through which we urinate, just where it meets the bladder. If the prostate gets too big, it can squeeze the urethra, partly closing it. This can lead to various urinary tract problems. Having BPH doesn't increase your chances of getting prostate cancer. The two diseases can have similar symptoms, although prostate cancer often has no symptoms. It's also possible to have BPH and prostate cancer at the same time.
Most people know that botulism is dangerous, but many are confused about whether it's an infection or a case of poisoning. In fact, it can be both. Clostridium botulinum is a worldwide bacterium that inhabits rivers, soil, and the guts of mammals, fish, and shellfish. It's not an organism that normally makes its living by attacking humans. We most often encounter C. botulinum by accident. C. botulinum secretes a neurotoxin (nerve poison) that can weaken or paralyze muscles and can even cause death. This is botulin toxin, one of the most dangerous substances known. Botulism is the condition of having been poisoned with C. botulinum toxin.
Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as "mad cow disease," is a fatal disease that strikes the nervous system of cattle. BSE is part of a group of diseases called prion diseases that occur in both animals and humans. The main animal forms are chronic wasting disease in deer, scrapie in sheep, and mad cow disease. In humans, there are three different prion diseases: Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD), also named sporadic CJD (sCJD), Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker disease, and fatal familial insomnia. In 1996, another form of CJD was identified; it has since been named "variant CJD" (vCJD). This variant form of CJD has been linked to the consumption of meat products infected with BSE. Currently, no vaccine or treatment exists to treat BSE, and affected animals display a variety of neurological symptoms before they die (think of television reports showing cows having trouble standing up). An animal with outward symptoms of BSE may survive for 2 weeks to 6 months, though it may have carried the disease for up to 8 years. BSE has an incubation period (the time between infection and development of symptoms) ranging from 30 months to 8 years, which is a long time for a disease to remain undetected.
Candidiasis, also called thrush or moniliasis, is a yeast infection. Candida albicans is an organism that normally makes a quiet home for itself on your skin and doesn't bother anyone. We all carry this organism on our skin, in our mouth, in our gastrointestinal tract (gut), and, in the case of women, in the vagina. Occasionally the yeast multiplies uncontrollably, causing pain and inflammation. Candidiasis may affect the skin. This includes the external surface skin and the skin of the vagina, the penis, and the mouth. Candidiasis may also infect the blood stream or internal organs such as the liver or spleen. By far the most common problems are skin, mouth and vaginal infections. It also is a common cause of diaper rash. These can be bothersome infections, but are not life threatening. Candidiasis can kill if it reaches the bloodstream or vital organs such as the heart, but this is rare even in people with damaged immune systems and is almost unheard of in healthy people. Nevertheless, candidiasis is a constant nuisance, and sometimes a serious threat to people with AIDS and some cancer patients who lack the immune resources to fight it.
Carpal tunnel syndrome is due to squeezing of the median nerve as it passes through the wrist to the hand. This nerve is contained in the carpal tunnel, a narrow channel just above the wrist. In carpal tunnel syndrome, the channel starts to shrink, compressing the nerve and causing inflammation. The result is hand pain, numbness, tingling, and sometimes, hand weakness or restricted movement. The little finger is not affected. Carpal tunnel syndrome is one of the most common causes of claims for workers' injury compensation, second only to lower back pain. Women are at three times greater risk of developing carpal tunnel syndrome compared to men. It occurs at any age, but is more common in people over 50 years old.
Chickenpox is a preventable illness caused by the varicella-zoster virus. It was very common before the varicella (chicken pox) vaccine was introducted. It is extremely contagious, but the rash that it produces is usually harmless and disappears on its own. While you can get chickenpox at any age, most cases occur before the age of 14. Anyone who's had the disease once is usually immune for life, although they can still get shingles, a painful skin rash caused when the varicella-zoster virus becomes active again, even many years after they've had chickenpox. Chickenpox usually occurs during the school year; it is less common during the summer months. Since the introduction of the chickenpox vaccine, many children never get chickenpox.
Chlamydia is the most commonly reported bacterial sexually transmitted infection (STI) in Canada, affecting youths and young adults most often, with young women (15 to 24 years) having the most reported cases. The infection is named after the bacterium that causes it, Chlamydia trachomatis. Most women and many men who are infected with the bacteria have no symptoms and therefore don't know they have chlamydia. Chlamydia is easily treated, but it can sometimes lead to serious complications if it isn't caught early enough. It is estimated that up to 40% of untreated women will develop pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), which can be very painful. The risk of preterm delivery, ectopic pregnancy, or infertility also increases with an untreated chlamydia infection.
Cholera is a bacterial infection of the small bowel that can cause severe diarrhea and dehydration. There have been seven great pandemics (worldwide epidemics) of cholera in history. The seventh began in 1961, when cholera re-emerged in Indonesia and swept across most of the world, and it still lingers today. At the beginning of the 21st century, cholera infected around 3 million to 5 million people per year worldwide; of these, about 100,000 died. Cholera settles wherever poor hygiene permits it to infect humans, who appear to be cholera's only hosts. The bacterium that causes cholera is most productive in times of flood and war, since these events can reduce the availability of clean water. Cholera continues to occur in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and South and Central America. The latest outbreak occurred in Haiti. Worldwide, cholera kills about 4% of the people who develop severe symptoms. That includes people who are treated too late or inappropriately and those who never reach a doctor. Fewer than 1% of people with severe cholera die if they're quickly and properly treated.
Cold sores, also known as fever blisters, are caused by a virus. They usually appear around the mouth and on the lips. They are highly contagious but not dangerous. About 60% of the population have suffered cold sores at some point in their lives. On average, people who get cold sores have 2 or 3 episodes a year, but this figure can vary significantly from person to person.
October 20, 2015 Factors influencing health status and contact with health services
It's important for sexually active people to be aware of the different types of contraception available. Contraception has two primary roles. It prevents unwanted pregnancies as well as the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Some people – for instance, those in monogamous (one partner) relationships – might use contraception simply as a means of birth control, while individuals who have more than one sexual partner will also be concerned about getting an STI. Since not all types of contraception prevent STIs, and some forms of birth control are more reliable than others, you need to evaluate which method is best for you and your partner. Different Types of Contraception Contraception falls into four main categories, each with its own advantages: barrier methods hormonal methods natural birth control sterilization The different types of barrier methods include male condoms, female condoms, diaphragms, and cervical caps. Male condoms are made from latex rubber, vinyl, or natural products, and are unrolled onto an erect penis before having sex. This prevents sperm from reaching the female reproductive tract, and also stops microorganisms from passing from one person to the other (this is true only of latex and vinyl condoms). It goes without saying that if you are allergic to latex, your choice of products is limited. Female condoms line the vagina and are inserted before intercourse. They are thin, soft pouches made of polyurethane plastic (they can be used by people allergic to latex) with flexible rings at either end. One ring is used to insert the condom, and the other remains outside, covering external genitalia. Female condoms offer greater protection, put control of contraception into women's hands, and avoid the loss of sensation many men feel when wearing male condoms. It takes a bit of practice, however, to learn how to insert the female condom comfortably and correctly. Female condoms are larger than male condoms and are more expensive, costing as much as $3 to $4 each. Diaphragms and cervical caps do not protect against STIs, including HIV. The diaphragm is a shallow, dome-shaped latex cup, while cervical caps are smaller and thimble-shaped. They fit over the cervix in the vagina, blocking the opening to the uterus. These methods should always be used along with a spermicide (see below). Diaphragms need to be individually fitted, and cervical caps come in four different sizes. In either case, you will need a pelvic exam annually to make sure the fit is still right. Pregnancy, change in weight, and abdominal surgery can all require you to need a different size in diaphragm or cervical cap. Contraceptive sponges contain spermicide. A sponge is placed at the cervix where the spermicide kills any sperm attempting to enter. The sponge provides 12-hour protection. Some women find it difficult to remove the sponge and some may be allergic to the spermicide. Some women complain of recurrent yeast infections when using the contraceptive sponge. When used in combination with a male condom (it should always be used this way), about 1 in 50 women will become pregnant over the course of one year. Spermicides are chemicals that inactivate or kill sperm. They're available as creams, gels, aerosols, dissolvable films, and vaginal suppositories or tablets. Some condoms are spermicide-coated for extra protection. Hormonal methods of contraception rely on the use of progestin, most often in combination with estrogen. These female hormones regulate the reproductive cycle, including menstrual periods and ovulation. Combined estrogen-progestin* contraceptives are available as oral pills. The packages are designed so that you take your pill once a day, or on a monthly basis for 21 out of 28 days according to directions. After taking the pills for 21 days, you will get your period during the 4th week. After that, a new pack of pills is started to begin a new cycle. There are also some formulations (called "continuous pills") designed to be taken daily for 3 months before missing a week. These give you a period 4 times a year rather than every month. Oral contraceptive pills work by: suppressing ovulation thickening the cervical mucus, preventing sperm from getting through changing the lining of the uterus, making implantation of a fertilized egg less likely reducing sperm access to the fallopian tubes, where eggs are fertilized It's important that the pills be taken daily, in the correct order, and on time. The chances of pregnancy increase if one or more pills are missed. In these situations, using additional, back-up contraception such as a barrier method is a good idea. Combined hormone contraceptives are also available as a patch and as a ring inserted into the vagina. For the patch, one patch is worn on the skin each week for 3 weeks. The fourth week is when you will get your period. Then, the cycle starts again. The vaginal ring is worn inside the vagina for 3 weeks, then removed to allow for a 1-week ring-free interval, during which you will get your period. After this, a new ring is inserted into the vagina. Progestin-only contraceptives are better suited to some women who shouldn't be taking estrogens, including breast-feeding mothers, women over the age of 35, women who smoke, and women with uncontrolled high blood pressure. If women get migraine headaches (with neurological changes) or have diabetes, sickle cell anemia, or cardiovascular diseases, progestin-only contraceptives are preferred over the combined hormones. The progestin-only contraceptives work in a similar manner to estrogen-progestin combinations. They can also be taken as daily pills, injections (every 3 months), or as a progestin-releasing intrauterine device (IUD). The intrauterine device (IUD) is a small, T-shaped device that can be fitted into a woman's uterus by her doctor. IUDs release either progestin or copper. Progestin-releasing IUDs work in the same way as other progestin-only contraceptives, and are effective for up to 5 years after which time they must be replaced. These IUDs are the most effective form of reversible contraception and have the added benefit of reduced menstrual flow. The copper-releasing IUD is effective for up to 10 years. Copper affects the lining of the uterus so as to prevent implantation; it also changes the chemistry in the uterus and kills sperm. Natural birth control methods don't use any spermicides, pills, injections, or other devices. One technique – known as coitus interruptus – requires a man to withdraw his penis completely from the vagina before ejaculation. This is an unreliable method of birth control, since some sperm can be released before ejaculation, and a man must have very good self-control and timing. Approximately 1 out of 5 couples using only this method have an unplanned pregnancy. Rhythm methods require a woman to abstain from having sex during the most fertile part of the menstrual cycle. A woman can identify when she's ovulating using 1 of 4 techniques: the calendar rhythm, temperature, mucus, and symptothermal methods. The calendar rhythm method is the least accurate of the four. The other methods depend on measurements of body temperature (which slightly falls before and rises after an egg is released) and larger amounts of watery mucus observed before ovulation. Approximately 1 out of 5 women using only the rhythm method of birth control will have an unplanned pregnancy within the first year. Pregnancy risk is further diminished when other monitoring signs are added to the rhythm method. Sterilization is an option for women and men. For women, this involves tubal ligation, a procedure in which a woman's fallopian tubes are cut and tied, or blocked. This cuts off the sperm's access to the egg, preventing fertilization. For a man, a vasectomy involves cutting the tubes that carry sperm from the testes to the penis. Both methods of sterilization are considered permanent and irreversible, although a very small percentage of men who have had vasectomy reversal may become fertile again. Side Effects and Complications There's a 2% to 5% chance that male condoms will tear or slip off, but this is usually associated with inexperience in using them. Handling condoms properly lowers the chances of their tearing or slipping off, and removing a full condom before the penis is soft again helps ensure that sperm won't spill out. On average, approximately 12% of couples using only this method of birth control have an accidental pregnancy. Women who use diaphragms may be prone to getting bladder infections; this might suggest a poor fit. To lower the chances of infection, urinating before inserting the diaphragm and after intercourse is recommended. Toxic shock syndrome, though very rare, can also occur in diaphragm users. If you experience sudden high fever, diarrhea, vomiting, sore throat, aching joints and muscles, or dizziness, immediately remove the diaphragm and see a doctor. Women who use spermicides have a higher risk of recurrent urinary tract infections (i.e., 2 or more bladder infections in 6 months). When this happens, switching to a different birth control method can help. Oral contraceptives are available in many different dosages. Any side effects experienced depend on the individual, and can usually be managed by simply switching to another type of pill. You need to work with your doctor to find the right oral contraceptive for you. In the past, "the pill" has been associated with a higher risk of breast and cervical cancers. Today, however, the dosages of the hormones have been dramatically cut. Talk to your doctor about the risks and benefits of oral contraceptives for you. On the plus side, we do know that oral contraceptives protect women from ovarian and endometrial cancers. Oral contraceptives are considered safe for non-smoking women right up until menopause. Studies suggest that women who smoke should stop using oral contraceptives by age 35 as their risk for heart disease outweighs the benefits of using this method of birth control. Estrogen in the combination contraceptives can cause side effects such as nausea, headaches, breast tenderness, bloating, and increased blood pressure. There are fewer side effects with progestin-only pills, though progestin can sometimes cause weight gain, acne, and nervousness. Since some medications interfere with the efficiency of oral contraception, women who are taking other medications or who have other medical conditions should consult their doctors. The reliability of contraception varies greatly among methods. Approximate percentages of women who get pregnant during the first year of using a particular form of contraception alone are as follows (where a range of percentages exist, the lower number refers to "perfect" use of the method and the higher number refers to "real world" scenarios): male condoms: 3% to 12% female condoms: 5% to 21% male condom plus contraceptive sponge: 2% diaphragm with spermicide: 6% to 18% cervical caps with spermicide: 11.5% to 18% oral estrogen-progestin pills: 0.3% to 3% oral progestin-only pills: 0.5% to 3% estrogen-progestin patch: 0.3% to 3% estrogen-progestin ring: 0.3% to 3% injectable progestin: 0.3% progestin implants: less than 0.1% intrauterine devices: 0.6% to 2% rhythm method (natural contraception): 20% tubal ligation: 2% (in a 10-year period) withdrawal: 20% vasectomy: less than 1% Emergency contraception – sometimes called the "morning-after pill" – is used in some cases to prevent pregnancy after unprotected sex. These are available from your doctor or from women's health clinics or, in many provinces, from pharmacies. They should be taken within 72 hours of unprotected intercourse. Approximately 99% of unplanned pregnancies can be avoided using this method. Inserting an IUD is sometimes used as an alternative form of emergency contraception, especially if more than 72 hours has elapsed since unprotected sex. *All medications have both common (generic) and brand names. The brand name is what a specific manufacturer calls the product (e.g., Tylenol®). The common name is the medical name for the medication (e.g., acetaminophen). A medication may have many brand names, but only one common name. This article lists medications by their common names. For information on a given medication, check our Drug Information database. For more information on brand names, speak with your doctor or pharmacist.
Coronary artery disease (CAD), the most common type of heart disease, refers to the narrowing of arteries that supply blood to the heart due to a build-up of a sticky substance called plaque. The heart muscle does not get enough oxygen when heart arteries are narrowed. If the heart is starved of oxygen, chest pain (angina) occurs. A piece of the plaque may break off and cause the body to form a clot on the damaged artery, cutting off oxygen to the heart and leading to a heart attack. A heart attack is medically referred to as a myocardial infarction (MI) and is one of the leading killer of both men and women. Many of these deaths can be prevented because some risk factors for CAD are controllable. These controllable risk factors include high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, and diabetes. There are other controllable risk factors related to lifestyle, such as not smoking, maintaining a healthy weight, eating a healthy diet, reducing alcohol consumption, and being physically active. Although medical treatments for heart disease have come a long way, controlling risk factors remains the key to preventing illness and death from CAD.
March 17, 2018 Endocrine, nutritional and metabolic diseases
Cystic fibrosis (CF) is an inherited (genetic) disease in which excess mucus clogs the lungs, prevents food from being digested, and damages the reproductive system. It is the most common life-threatening genetically inherited disease affecting children and young adults. The incidence of CF occurs in about 1 in 3,600 live births in Canada. In CF, an abnormal protein called CFTR is produced. This protein changes the way chloride (a component of salt, which is also called sodium chloride) moves in and out of cells. This affects the balance between salt and water in the body, making the mucus that lines the lungs, pancreas, and other organs thicker and stickier. CF affects all the body's exocrine glands. These glands create and secrete chemicals necessary for proper functioning of the body. The pancreas, for example, is an exocrine gland that provides digestive enzymes for the stomach. The sweat glands provide liquid to cool the skin. In CF, some glands produce abnormal substances. The sweat glands, for example, release high levels of salt. Other glands, like the pancreas, become plugged with mucus. Because of the many organs affected and thanks to newborn genetic screening, CF is usually diagnosed early in childhood, with over half of children being diagnosed before the age of 1.Thanks to good research, more and better medications, and early diagnosis, people with CF are living longer, fuller lives.
November 20, 2018 Mental and behavioural disorders
Dementia is not a specific disease, but a general term that describes a gradual decline of mental ability that affects your intellectual and social skills to the point where daily life becomes difficult. Dementia can affect your memory, language skills and decision-making ability; impair your judgment and make you feel disoriented; and it may also affect your personality. Dementia can be caused by many diseases that affect the brain. The most common cause of dementia is Alzheimer's disease. Others include vascular, Lewy body, frontotemporal and mixed dementia. Types of dementia differ based on underlying causes and can affect specific symptoms and how it progresses.
October 28, 2016 Mental and behavioural disorders
Everyone feels sad or down at times, especially after experiencing a disappointment such as not getting the job you interviewed for. However, these feelings of sadness are usually short-lived. Depression, on the other hand, is a medical condition characterized by long-lasting feelings of intense sadness and hopelessness associated with additional mental and physical changes. Depression can affect someone's personal, social, and professional life. About 1 in 5 women and 1 in 10 men will suffer from depression at some point in life. Depression in children and adolescents occurs less commonly than in adults. Almost 3 million Canadians have serious depression at any given time, but less than one-third of these people seek medical help. Types of Depression There are several different types of depression, and the diagnosis is mostly determined by the nature and intensity of the mental and physical symptoms, the duration of the symptoms, and the specific cause of the symptoms, if that is known. Clinical depression (or major depressive disorder, MDD) is the most serious type of depression in terms of the number and severity of symptoms, but there are significant individual differences in the symptoms and severity. People affected with major depression may not have suicidal tendencies and may never have received medical treatment. The person's interest and pleasure in many activities, energy levels, and eating and sleeping patterns are usually altered. Dysthymia refers to a low-to-moderate level of depression that persists for at least 2 years, and often longer. While the symptoms are not as severe as in major depression, dysthymia can still have a major impact on a person's quality of life. It is often not recognized that dysthymia is a medical condition that responds equally effectively to the same treatments as major depression. Some people with dysthymia develop major depression at some time during the course of their depression. Bipolar disorder (or manic depression) includes both high and low mood swings and a variety of other significant symptoms not present in other types of depression. Other types of depression include seasonal affective disorder (SAD), depression with psychosis, and postpartum depression. SAD is a subtype of depression that regularly occurs at the same time of year (most often in the fall or winter months in North America). Depression with psychosis occurs when depression is severe and is associated with hallucinations (hearing or seeing things that are not there) or delusions (thoughts that are not based in reality). Postpartum depression often begins a few weeks after giving birth and is a subtype of depression. Postpartum depression is different from the temporary state known as the "baby blues" that often happens 24 to 72 hours after a woman gives birth. This temporary state is caused by the hormonal changes that occur during pregnancy and after giving birth and typically resolves in a week or so. Postpartum depression lasts longer than the "baby blues" and interferes with the woman's emotional and social functioning. In some cases, depression is associated with other chronic medical conditions, which negatively impact the person's quality of life and well-being.
Substance Use Problems
A substance use problem is a medical condition. It is substance use that: interferes with a person's relationships with family and friends, interferes with a person's ability to fulfill work, school, or family obligations, or results in legal problems and dangerous behaviour It can also involve using or taking a substance in increasing amounts, going to great lengths to obtain the substance, experiencing withdrawal symptoms when the substance is stopped, or being unable to stop or reduce the use of the substance. Depressants (e.g., alcohol, barbiturates, benzodiazepines), stimulants (e.g., amphetamines, cocaine, MDMA, or ecstasy), hallucinogenics (e.g., LSD), and opioids (e.g., codeine, heroin, and morphine) are the most commonly abused substances. Anabolic steroids are sometimes abused in order to improve athletic performance. Substance use problems are very complex medical problems. Because they affect the brain, they are not just about willpower. Since there is a lot of stigma (shameful feelings) associated with substance abuse problems, health care professionals are not using terms such as "addiction," "addict," and "drug abuse" as much. Instead, they are using "substance use problems" and "people with substance use problems."
Dry mouth is usually a temporary condition caused when the salivary glands don't produce enough saliva. It's a common side effect of many prescription medications and a symptom of certain diseases. Though it can occur at any age, it is more common in older people, affecting 30% of those 65 and older. Dry mouth isn't life-threatening, but it can be extremely bothersome and can have negative effects on dental health. The medical term for dry mouth is xerostomia.
More people are being diagnosed with eating disorders, possibly as a consequence of society's emphasis on and preoccupation with thinness. Eating disorders are conditions that involve genetic, biological, psychosocial, and environmental factors. In North America, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder are the most common eating disorders. More women than men are affected by eating disorders. Anorexia nervosa is a psychiatric condition in which people restrict their food intake or use behaviours to prevent weight gain, because of an intense fear of becoming fat or obese. In reality, people affected by this condition are almost always underweight or of normal weight when the condition starts. This disorder usually starts in the years between adolescence and young adulthood, with the average age of onset at 18 years. Women are more affected by anorexia than men. Current statistics say that in their lifetimes, 9 in 1000 females and 3 in 1000 males will be diagnosed with anorexia. However, in 2013 the diagnostic criteria were modified to be less restrictive, and by this newer understanding, these numbers are an underestimation. Bulimia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by repeated and uncontrolled or compulsive binge eating, followed by inappropriate ways of trying to get rid of the food eaten. Most often, this involves purging by self-induced vomiting or abuse of laxatives, enemas, or diuretics. It's also sometimes called the "binge-purge syndrome." Some people with bulimia don't purge, but will binge-eat (consuming as many as 20,000 calories at one time) and then compensate for binge eating sessions with other behaviours such as fasting or over-exercising. A person with bulimia may secretly binge anywhere from once a week to several times a day. Bulimia commonly appears in the latter part of adolescence or early adulthood, but it can develop at an earlier or later age. Like anorexia, the median age of onset for bulimia is 18 years. Bulimia also affects women more than men: about 3 times as many women as men will have it in their lifetimes. Binge eating disorder is characterized by the same uncontrollable binge eating that is seen in bulimia nervosa, but without any purging behaviours after binge eating episodes. This condition is distinct from overeating or obesity. Previously, clinicians used the category “eating disorders not otherwise specified” to capture all eating disorders not meeting the criteria for anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa, but in 2013 binge eating disorder was recognized as a unique diagnosis.
Embolism
October 20, 2015 Diseases of the circulatory system
An embolus is a particle that moves about in our blood vessels, either in the veins or arteries. Most emboli are composed of clotted blood cells. A blood clot is called a thrombus and a moving blood clot is called a thromboembolus. As an embolus moves through the body's blood vessels, it's likely to come to a passage it can't fit through. It lodges there, backing up blood behind it. The cells that normally get their blood supply via this passage are starved of oxygen (ischemia) and die. This condition is called an embolism. Types of embolism There are several types of embolism: pulmonary embolism: An embolus, usually formed in the leg (sometimes known as a deep vein thrombosis or DVT), lodges in one of the arteries of the lungs. Many emboli are broken down by the body and go away by themselves; however, serious pulmonary embolism may cause death. brain embolism: If a blood clot travels to the brain, this causes an ischemic stroke or TIA (transient ischemic attack). retinal embolism: Small clots that wouldn't block a major artery can block the smaller blood vessels feeding the retina at the back of the eye. The result is usually sudden blindness in one eye. septic embolism: This occurs when particles created by infection in the body reach the bloodstream and block blood vessels. amniotic embolism: Not all emboli are made of clotted blood. In pregnancy, the womb is filled with amniotic fluid, which protects the fetus. Amniotic fluid can embolize and reach the mother's lungs, causing pulmonary amniotic embolism. air embolism: Scuba divers who rise to the surface too rapidly can generate air embolism, bubbles in the blood that can block arterial blood flow. fat embolism: If fat or bone marrow particles are introduced into the blood circulation, they may block blood vessels the way a blood clot or air bubble can.
March 17, 2018 Diseases of the respiratory system
Emphysema is a chronic lung condition in which the lungs' natural airspaces, called alveoli, become larger but decrease in number. The tissue surrounding the alveoli loses elasticity so that the airspaces can no longer expand and shrink as usual. This reduces the amount of oxygen transferred by the lungs to the bloodstream. Air gets trapped in these spaces rather than exhaled, making it more difficult for you to breathe. Emphysema can be part of a lung disease called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD. Emphysema usually results from exposure to toxins like cigarettes as well as air pollution, dust, chemical fumes, and irritants. Older adults are more likely to be affected and many people who have emphysema are not aware that they have it. The damage of emphysema cannot be reversed, but treatment may help slow the progression of the disease.
April 10, 2015 Diseases of the circulatory system
Endocarditis is an inflammation of the lining of the heart valves that is most often caused by infection. Most people who develop this condition already have heart problems and are over 50 years old, but it can occur at any age, including in children. While not very common, this can be a very serious disease. Men are twice as likely to be affected as women. There are two types of endocarditis: infective and non-infective. With prompt treatment, the majority of people with infective endocarditis will survive. Non-infective endocarditis is more difficult to treat.
March 17, 2018 Diseases of the genitourinary system
The endometrium is the tissue that lines the inside of the uterus (the womb). It is the tissue that is shed each month when women menstruate. Every month, it builds up rapidly in preparation for pregnancy, and if pregnancy does not occur, the excess endometrial tissue is sloughed off during menstruation. In endometriosis, endometrial cells are found outside the uterus, usually in other parts of the abdomen. These cells respond to female hormones in the same way as the lining of the uterus does. Each month, tissue builds up, breaks down, and sheds. Unlike the cells inside the uterus, the blood and tissue that are shed in the abdomen have no way of leaving the body. They stick to other tissue and sometimes start to divide and multiply. They may grow into other tissue, or form strands that bind organs together. They may create scar tissue, which can be painful. Sometimes the endometrial cells create cysts that can rupture and bleed. The process sounds a bit like cancer, but endometriosis isn't cancer. However, it may increase the risk of getting ovarian cancer. Endometriosis isn't a fatal disease. About 5% to 10% of women of reproductive age have endometriosis. About one-quarter to one-half of infertile women have the disease.
July 14, 2017 Diseases of the nervous system
The name epilepsy comes from the Greek for "to be seized." Sudden, spontaneous seizure is the hallmark of this illness. It may involve falling to the ground and twitching spasmodically, but not always. As the brain goes about its daily functions, millions of electrical and chemical signals pass from its nerve cells out to the body. These electrochemical messages are necessary for almost everything we do and feel. Seizures are a sudden and abnormally high discharge of electrical activity among large numbers of nerve cells in the brain. This can result in involuntary and unusually large signals being sent to the muscles. Epilepsy is one of the most common disorders of the central nervous system, affecting about 1 in every 250 people in Canada. About a quarter of people with epilepsy in Canada will be diagnosed before the age of 10, and another third by the age of 19. The diagnosis of epilepsy is only made if there have been at least 2 episodes of unprovoked seizures on different days, or 1 episode of unprovoked seizure with a high chance of having another in the next 10 years. Having an "unprovoked" seizure means that there is no apparent trigger.
Erectile dysfunction is the frequent or consistent inability to get or sustain an erection of the penis that is satisfactory for engaging in sexual intercourse. While most men occasionally fail to get an erection, or lose one prematurely during sexual activity, some men suffer from these problems regularly. Accurate statistics are lacking on how many men are affected by the condition because it is often underreported, but it is estimated that about half of men over 40 in Canada have frequent problems achieving or maintaining an erection. The number of men suffering from erectile dysfunction increases with age, but it is not considered a normal part of aging. The majority of cases can be successfully treated.
Many of the viruses, bacteria, parasites, and fungi that can invade the human body are also capable of attacking the surface or interior of the eye. Infectious eye diseases can be categorized in two ways. Firstly, doctors normally talk about the part of the eye that's infected or inflamed. Conjunctivitis, for example, is an inflammation of the conjunctiva, the membrane of the inner eyelid and the inner corner of the eye's surface. Other possible locations of inflammation include the eyelid (blepharitis), the cornea (keratitis), the liquid inside the eye (vitritis), the retina and the blood vessels that feed it (chorioretinitis), or the optic nerve (neuroretinitis). These are just a few examples - the eye is a complex organ of many parts. Secondly, eye infections are also classified according to what's causing them. Ocular histoplasmosis syndrome (OHS), for example, is caused by a fungus (the condition is also called chorioretinitis). It generally attacks the blood supply of the retina, on the inner rear surface of the eye. The most common eye infection is conjunctivitis caused by an adenovirus (a type of common cold virus). This type of infectious conjunctivitis is sometimes called pinkeye and is most common in children. Viral conjunctivitis is contagious because the virus can be spread from the eye to hands that then touch doorknobs and other surfaces that other people use. There are other causes of infectious conjunctivitis, such as bacteria like Staphylococcus aureus. Bacterial infections occur most commonly in children and tend to result in longer-lasting cases of pinkeye.
Female sexual dysfunction occurs when a woman is not able to fully, healthily, and pleasurably experience some or all of the various physical stages the body normally experiences during sexual activity. These stages can be broadly thought of as the desire phase, the arousal phase, and the orgasm phase. Sexual dysfunction also includes painful intercourse. In women, sexual dysfunction takes many forms and has numerous causes. It is important to address all the aspects of a woman's sexuality – whether physical, psychological, physiological (mechanical), or interpersonal – in order to resolve the problems. Female sexual dysfunction is actually quite common. It has been estimated that about 40% of sexually active women are affected by sexual dysfunction to some degree, and approximately 5% of women are unable to achieve orgasm.
Food poisoning is a very common illness. For most people it is usually mild, but food poisoning can be severe and even deadly for some individuals. Most cases of food poisoning occur when people eat food or drink water containing bacteria, bacterial toxins (substances produced by bacteria), parasites, or viruses. Food poisoning can also occur when non-infectious poisons (such as poisonous mushrooms) or heavy metals (such as lead or mercury) find their way into people's stomachs. It is estimated that about 11 million Canadians experience food poisoning each year. People at greatest risk for food poisoning are seniors, pregnant women, young children and babies, and people with chronic medical conditions (e.g., diabetes, AIDS, liver disease).
Gastroenteritis literally means inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract. Viral gastroenteritis is also called "stomach flu." It is extremely common, especially in children, and is highly contagious. Bacterial gastroenteritis is also known as "food poisoning" and is caused by food that has been prepared or stored improperly.
Gonorrhea is one of the most common sexually transmitted infections in North America. Gonorrhea is caused by the bacterium Neisseria gonorrhoeae. The infection can affect mucous linings in the vagina, cervix, penis, rectum, throat, and eyes. In rare cases, it can affect other parts of the body. Annually, approximately 13,000 cases of gonorrhea are reported in Canada, with the number growing. People having sex without the use of condoms are more likely to acquire this infection, as are people who have multiple sexual partners.
Headaches are extremely common – most people have a headache at some time in their life. Most headaches disappear on their own (with a little time) or with the help of mild pain relievers. Although most headaches are mild and temporary annoyances, some people have headaches that are so severe they need to consult a doctor for pain relief. Children can also have headaches, some well before they reach the age of 10. Research shows that before puberty, headaches are more common in boys, but that trend is reversed after puberty. Adult women experience more headaches than adult men, and they're often linked to a woman's menstrual cycle. With advancing age, both women and men tend to have fewer, less severe headaches. Headaches come in various forms: tension, migraine, sinus, and cluster headaches. In a small number of cases, headaches may signal a more serious condition that requires immediate medical attention.
Hepatitis A and B
Hepatitis is the medical term for inflammation of the liver. Hepatitis may be acute (lasting only for the short term, after which a person recovers) or chronic (lasting for the long term, usually more than 6 months). There are many causes of hepatitis, including viruses, alcoholism, and medications. Viral hepatitis is a major cause of chronic hepatitis in North America. There are many hepatitis viruses, including A, B, C, D, and E. The most common types in Canada are A, B, and C. There are also other viruses that can cause liver inflammation, like Epstein-Barr virus and cytomegalovirus, but these viruses are not called hepatitis viruses. Hepatitis A and B infections are much more common in developing parts of the world. In Canada, hepatitis A and B are reported to infect about 300 and 150 people, respectively, per year. Since many infected people have no symptoms, however, we can assume the true rate of infection is higher than this. Hepatitis A infection is most common in children and young adults, while hepatitis B infection is most common in adults between the ages of 30 and 60 years.
Huntington's disease, also called Huntington's chorea, is a hereditary condition that affects the brain, specifically an area called the basal ganglia (located deep in the brain). The disease follows an autosomal dominant pattern of inheritance, meaning that if one parent has the disease, each child has a 50% chance of inheriting it. Huntington's disease is quite rare, occurring in about 2.7 in 100,000 people worldwide; 5.7 per 100,000 in Europe, North America, and Australia; and 0.4 per 100,000 in Asia. The disease destroys nerve cells (neurons) in parts of the brain resulting in lower levels of chemicals called neurotransmitters that carry signals in the brain. People with this disease experience uncontrolled movements, loss of mental abilities, and changes in personality or behaviour.
April 10, 2015 Endocrine, nutritional and metabolic diseases
Hypoglycemia occurs when the level of glucose (sugar) in the blood is too low. Normally, your body keeps your blood glucose within a concentration range of 4.0 mmol/L to 8.0 mmol/L (about 70 mg/dL to 140 mg/dL). In order to do this, the body has mechanisms that involve the hormone insulin, which is made by the pancreas, as well as several other hormones. When blood sugar levels rise, the pancreas responds by releasing insulin to encourage the movement of glucose from the bloodstream to the cells. Insulin lowers the amount of glucose in your blood by signalling the cells in the body to use the glucose as fuel. Your body uses glucose as its main fuel. The brain requires a constant supply of blood glucose and will signal the adrenal glands to release two hormones called adrenaline and cortisol whenever blood glucose levels are low. The adrenaline and cortisol then signal the liver to convert the carbohydrates it stores (from the foods we eat) into glucose and release it into the bloodstream. The pancreas is also involved in raising blood glucose levels if they fall too low. When blood sugar is low, the pancreas releases the hormone glucagon, which increases blood sugar by signalling the liver to convert stored carbohydrates into glucose and to create new glucose molecules from other substances (such as amino acids) in the liver. If these mechanisms don't work properly, the blood glucose remains too low and the brain won't be able to function normally.
November 21, 2018 Diseases of the genitourinary system
When someone is unable to control the ability to urinate and there's an involuntary loss of urine, this person is said to have urinary incontinence. This condition is also called "leaky bladder." It's a very common problem, especially among older adults. As many as 30% of seniors living in the community and up to 50% of seniors living in nursing homes experience this condition. It generally affects more women than men until the age of 80. Many people believe that urinary incontinence is a normal part of aging when in fact it's not. Others may be embarrassed to talk about incontinence with a health care professional. For these reasons, many people don't seek medical help and never get properly diagnosed or treated. In many cases, urinary incontinence can be cured, or at least significantly relieved.
Infectious mononucleosis (called "mono" for short) is caused by the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), a virus that affects nearly everybody at some point. The disease is sometimes known as glandular fever, because it causes lymph glands to swell up. It's also called the "kissing disease" because kissing is a common method of transmission. Before 5 years of age, 50% of individuals are infected by EBV. By 40 years of age, 90% of individuals are infected. Once you've caught the virus, it never really goes away. However, it can only cause symptoms in healthy people when it's still new in the body. After that it's kept in check by the immune system, though never completely eradicated. Of course, nowhere near 90% of the population has suffered from mononucleosis. Half of all people are infected with EBV before age 5, and this age group hardly ever has symptoms beyond occasional mild tonsillitis. Unless their immune system collapses, they will never have mononucleosis. In the 5 to 30 years of age group, most studies have found that about 10% of people with EBV get the symptoms of mononucleosis. The exception is college students, who have rates of around 1 in every 2 cases of infection, which is several times higher than non-college students of the same age. There are rare cases of mononucleosis occurring in older people, but usually the ones affected have weakened immune systems. Older people will usually have been infected much earlier in their lives. Such cases tend to be severe but not deadly. A link was previously postulated between EBV and chronic fatigue syndrome, but the latest studies seem to refute that. There is, however, a longstanding link with Burkitt's lymphoma, a cancer that occurs mostly in central Africa. EBV is also linked to other cancers such as Hodgkin's disease. EBV is one of very few viruses known to be capable of causing cancer. There's also a weak link with nose and throat cancer. The small minority of people who don't carry EBV have a lower-than-average chance of developing this cancer.
The flu is a respiratory (i.e., nose, throat, and lung) infection that can be caused by a variety of influenza viruses. Many people use the word "flu" when they actually have a cold. Although the common cold is also caused by viruses, the flu and common cold differ in several ways. In North America, the flu almost always strikes between November and April. Up to 25% of the population may be infected in an average year. Stronger epidemics (i.e., when the flu occurs in more people than expected in a given area or season) come every 2 or 3 years, infecting twice as many people as during an "off" year. Most people who get the flu will recover within 1 to 2 weeks, but some people are at risk of developing complications such as pneumonia. On average, about 3,500 Canadians die each year from complications of influenza, and over 12,000 are hospitalized. Most of these people have other medical conditions, are seniors, or are very young children.
Insomnia can refer to difficulty getting to sleep, difficulty staying asleep, waking up early without being able to return to sleep, or a combination of the three. In order to be diagnosed with insomnia, sleep difficulty must occur at least 3 nights per week even though the opportunity for adequate sleep is available. It must also interfere with your life and functioning – for example, if you wake feeling unrefreshed or find yourself dozing during the day. Insomnia is not defined based on how many hours you've slept, since the amount people need can vary from person to person. It is also normal to sleep less as you age. If you're sleeping less than you did when you were younger, it doesn't necessarily mean you have insomnia. Insomnia is a very common medical complaint. About 10% of adults in Canada experience persistent insomnia, and an additional 20% to 25% report occasional insomnia. It is more common among women, older adults, shift workers, and people with medical conditions and mental health issues.
Laryngitis occurs when the part of the throat called the larynx becomes inflamed. When this happens, it causes a severe hoarseness that can make your voice "croak" or have to whisper when you talk. It can even lead to temporary loss of your voice. The inflammation is quite common and is really a symptom that's been caused by some other factor or condition. Yelling too enthusiastically at a hockey game can cause it, but so can viral and bacterial infections or other illnesses. Finding out the real cause of laryngitis is an important part of getting your voice back. There are two types of laryngitis: acute and chronic.
Legionnaires' disease, or legionellosis, is a lung infection (pneumonia) caused by bacteria of the species Legionella. This organism was first discovered in 1976, when 221 delegates at an American Legion conference in Philadelphia fell mysteriously ill. Of the 221 delegates, 34 died. After the possibility of food poisoning had been ruled out, it became apparent that they had inhaled a bacterium that was later named after these first known victims. This bacterium had caused a similar outbreak 2 years earlier in 1974 at the same hotel, when 11 delegates became ill, although this outbreak went unnoticed. Other studies that looked at samples from 81 patients who became ill with an unknown respiratory infection at a Washington, DC, psychiatric hospital in 1965 confirmed that Legionella was the culprit. It appears that Legionella had been causing disease for many years before it was discovered, and it only became a serious threat with the arrival of modern, mechanically ventilated buildings. Most cases of Legionnaires' disease are isolated and sporadic. Although it occurs most commonly in the late summer and early fall, it can occur at any time of the year.
Malaria is a mosquito-borne parasitic infection spread by Anopheles mosquitoes. The Plasmodium parasite that causes malaria is neither a virus nor a bacterium – it is a single-celled parasite that multiplies in red blood cells of humans as well as in the mosquito intestine. When the female mosquito feeds on an infected person, male and female forms of the parasite are ingested along with human blood. The male and female forms of the parasite meet and mate in the mosquito's gut, and the infective forms are passed onto another human when the mosquito feeds again. Malaria is a significant global problem. In 2015, there were 214 million cases of the disease worldwide, killing about 438,000 people. Malaria is prevalent in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Central South America, Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and Oceania (Papua New Guinea, Irian Jaya, and the Solomon Islands). In Canada, malaria is most often caused by travel to and from endemic areas. Each year, up to 1 million Canadians travel to malaria-endemic areas. This results in 350 to 1,000 annual cases of malaria in Canada and 1 to 2 deaths per year. The parasite has progressively developed resistance to many anti-malarial medications, and in several areas of the world, especially southeast Asia, resistance to all anti-malarial drugs has been reported. There are 4 species of the Plasmodium parasite that can cause malaria in humans: P. falciparum, P. vivax, P. ovale, and P. malariae. The first 2 types are the most common. Plasmodium falciparum is the most dangerous of these parasites; infection with it can kill rapidly (within several days), whereas the other species cause illness but usually not death. Falciparum malaria is particularly frequent in sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania.
Meningitis means "inflammation of the meninges." The meninges (plural of meninx) are membranes that cover the brain and spinal cord. They can become inflamed when an infection occurs in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) surrounding these membranes. Other things such as medications, tumours, and chemical exposure can also cause meningitis. The majority of people with meningitis that is not caused by bacteria (e.g., meningitis caused by a virus) recover quickly and completely. However, bacterial meningitis is fatal for 1 in 10 people who get it, even with treatment. Up to 1 in 5 people will be left with problems such as deafness or brain injury. Quick diagnosis and treatment are vital to reduce the risk of death or complications from bacterial meningitis.
October 20, 2015 Diseases of the nervous system
In North America, more than 1 in 10 people have migraine headaches. Most migraine sufferers are women. Migraines usually appear between the ages of 10 and 40. After the age of 50, they tend to disappear, especially among women after menopause.
February 20, 2015 Diseases of the circulatory system
Mitral valve prolapse (MVP) is a common condition that affects one of the heart's valves. It occurs in about 1 out of every 50 people and is seen twice as often in women than in men. This condition can be undetected for years and doesn't usually cause serious heart problems. Most people with MVP require no treatment.
Mumps is a viral infection of the salivary glands, especially the parotid glands that run along the angle of the jaw in front of and below each ear. Children between the ages of 5 and 10 are most likely to contract mumps. Being infected once gives you lifelong immunity. Mumps is most common around the month of March. It usually appears in scattered individual cases, though there are occasional local epidemics among unvaccinated children. It's less infectious than chickenpox or measles. Unvaccinated adults who never had the disease are at much higher risk of complications than are children, but mumps rarely causes serious problems. A vaccine for mumps dramatically reduced the incidence of the disease since its introduction in 1967. In the 1950s, Canada had about 30,000 cases a year. The advent of the vaccine cut that number in half. Today, there are under 100 cases per year.
Muscular dystrophy is a term that refers to a group of muscle disorders in which the face, arm, leg, spine, or heart muscles gradually shrink and weaken over time. This can lead to many physical limitations, and in some forms of muscular dystrophy, shortened life spans. Muscle disorders run in families, and most forms start in childhood. There are a variety of types of muscular dystrophy, including: Duchenne muscular dystrophy myotonic dystrophy Becker's muscular dystrophy facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy the limb-girdle muscular dystrophies Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy oculopharyngeal dystrophy distal muscular dystrophy mitochondrial myopathies The different types are distinguished by factors such as the: age at which symptoms usually start pattern of muscle weakness speed at which the disease progresses involvement of other tissues besides muscle pattern of inheritance Muscular dystrophy is rare. For example, although Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy is one of the more common types, it occurs in only 1 out of every 50,000 people. The other types of muscular dystrophy are even rarer.
Myasthenia gravis is an autoimmune disease of the neuromuscular junction, the contact point between nerves and muscles. For some unknown reason, the body's immune system, which normally helps fight infections, attacks the acetylcholine receptors found on muscles. These receptors normally receive a chemical called acetylcholine, which is released by the nerves at the neuromuscular junction (the point of contact between nerve and muscle) and signals the muscles to contract. Once these receptors are damaged or processes involved with the receptors are altered, the muscles cannot respond to the nerve signals and the muscles become weak. Myasthenia gravis is almost twice as common in women as in men. It is most commonly diagnosed in women under 40 and men over 60 but it can occur at any age. Children are very unlikely to suffer from this disease. People from all continents are equally susceptible. A closely related disease called congenital myasthenic syndrome is genetically inherited. Myasthenia gravis itself probably has a genetic component, but the children of people with this condition are only slightly more likely than average to suffer from autoimmune disease. Myasthenia gravis is a serious condition, but not usually life-threatening. Most people with myasthenia gravis have a life expectancy that is the same as for someone without it. People affected with myasthenia gravis have reduced physical activities, reduced quality of life, and spend more days being sick. In severe cases, the chest muscles can become so weak that patients have trouble breathing on their own and may require a ventilator for a few days to a few weeks.
July 29, 2016 Endocrine, nutritional and metabolic diseases
Obesity is a leading cause of preventable illness and death in North America. In recent years, the number of overweight people in industrialized countries has increased significantly, so much so that the World Health Organization (WHO) has called obesity an epidemic. In the United States, 69% of the adult population are overweight or obese. In Canada, the self-reported data shows that 40% of men and 27% of women are overweight, and 20% of men and 17% of women are obese. People who are obese are at a much higher risk for serious medical conditions such as high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, diabetes, gallbladder disease, and different cancers than people who have a healthy weight.
Panic disorder is a type of anxiety disorder. People with this condition may become anxious to the extent that their feelings interfere with daily life. While most people have experienced a panic attack brought on by particular events or situations, the attacks in panic disorder often develop suddenly and for no apparent reason. Panic disorder affects about 4% of Canadians, and is twice as likely in women as in men. The disorder can appear at any age, but it most commonly appears in young adults. The risk of developing a panic disorder is increased if there is a family history of panic attacks or disorders, a history of abuse, the experience of a traumatic event, the experience of high levels of stress, and the need to adapt to significant changes in your life.
Parkinson's disease is a slowly progressing disease of the nervous system that causes people to lose control over their muscles. About 1 in 250 people over the age of 40, and about 1 in 100 people aged 65 or older, are affected by Parkinson's disease. Although the average age of onset is 57, Parkinson's occasionally appears in childhood. Men are more likely to develop Parkinson's than women. Parkinson's is not a fatal condition. However, the end stage of the disease can lead to pneumonia, choking, severe depression, and death.
February 14, 2015 Diseases of the genitourinary system
Pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) is the most serious complication of sexually transmitted infections (STIs, also known by the older name of sexually transmitted diseases or STDs) such as chlamydia and gonorrhea. PID affects the upper genital tract including the uterus, ovaries, and fallopian tubes. Well over a million women get PID each year in North America. It's the leading cause of tubal infertility in young women, but it can usually be prevented if STIs are detected and treated early. One of the long-term consequences of PID is chronic pelvic pain.
February 20, 2015 Mental and behavioural disorders
Having a baby is one of life's most wonderful experiences. It's exciting and joyous, but it can also be exhausting and frightening. After a woman has had a baby, she may find that she is confused and overwhelmed about the various emotions that she feels. She may worry that she's unable to deal with the responsibility of being a full-time parent. After childbirth, many women experience symptoms of depression that can range from a brief attack of the "baby blues" to a serious and major clinical depression known as postpartum depression. A great majority of new mothers, about 80%, will experience a mild form of "baby blues," usually within a few days after giving birth. These feelings will usually resolve on their own and often go away within 7 to 10 days. Postpartum depression affects about 10% to 20% of new mothers. This type of depression can affect women who have never been depressed before. Approximately 50% of women who were depressed during or after their pregnancy will also experience depression during future pregnancies. Postpartum depression may begin anytime in the first 6 months after delivery. Postpartum psychosis is the most severe form of postpartum depression. It is relatively rare, and requires immediate discussion and treatment with a qualified health care provider.
Fibrosis refers to scar tissue that has replaced healthy tissue. This is what happens in the lungs of people with pulmonary fibrosis. Inflammation (swelling) in the lungs usually happens before or at the same time as the formation of scar tissues. There are several substances known to cause lung fibrosis, but people often develop lung fibrosis even when there is no apparent cause. When the cause is unknown, it's called idiopathic. Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is a serious condition whose cause is not well understood. Another condition very similar to idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis can happen in some people with certain diseases, especially autoimmune diseases like systemic lupus erythematosis or scleroderma. Whether this other condition is the same thing as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis or slightly different is unknown. When pulmonary fibrosis is idiopathic, it most often occurs in people 50 years of age and older, but people of any age can develop it. Pulmonary fibrosis can be detected at an early stage or late stage but usually gets worse with time. Sometimes it progresses slowly but it can also progress quickly over just a few years or even months.
Raynaud's disease occurs when the small arteries (arterioles) that serve the fingers, toes, ears, or nose go into spasm. When arterioles go into spasm, they cut off blood supply and cause digits (fingers and toes) or the tips of the ears or nose to turn white or blue and lose feeling. Sometimes this can happen as part of a pattern seen with other diseases, in which case it is called Raynaud's phenomenon or secondary Raynaud's. When this happens alone, without signs of any other underlying disease, it is called Raynaud's disease or primary Raynaud's. People with Raynaud's phenomenon tend to get it either in both hands or in both feet. Raynaud's disease tends to appear in all of the hands and feet. About 3 out of 4 sufferers of primary Raynaud's disease are women aged between 15 and 40.
November 01, 2016 Diseases of the nervous system
Reye's syndrome is an extremely serious acute condition that may attack all major organs of the body, but particularly the brain and liver. Rapid buildup of fatty deposits in the liver can cause liver failure, but what makes Reye's so dangerous is inflammation of the brain. Reye's syndrome usually affects children between 4 and 12 years of age, although it has also been observed in adults. Fortunately, Reye's syndrome is very rare and becoming rarer. Most cases involve children who have taken acetylsalicylic acid* (ASA, e.g., Aspirin®) for the flu, another respiratory infection, or chickenpox. The number of cases each year has dropped dramatically since its peak at 555 cases in 1980 and is directly due to an increase in awareness to not give ASA or other products containing salicylates to children and adolescents.
March 09, 2017 Diseases of the circulatory system
Rheumatic fever is an inflammatory disease that can happen after a person becomes infected with the Streptococcus bacteria. Rheumatic fever was once a common cause of heart problems in childhood. It remains a serious childhood health problem in many developing countries. In North America, it's become much less common due to improved hygiene and routine use of antibiotics for infections. When it does strike, however, it can still have serious consequences for heart health. Rheumatic fever is most frequent in children aged 5 to 15 years old, but can also affect adults and children younger than 5 years of age. However, there are no reliable figures on adults.
Scabies is caused by a mite (a tiny insect-like organism) that's hardly visible without a microscope. The mite is disc-shaped, pearly-white in colour, with 4 pairs of brown legs, and reaches an adult size that is less then 0.5 mm. Scabies mites can infest warm and moist folds of skin, such as armpits, buttocks, or groin. They can be found behind the knees, on the inside of elbows and wrists, or between fingers. Scabies usually isn't seen on the scalp or on the palms of hands or the soles of feet. It is possible, however, for young children or people who harbour very large numbers of mites to be susceptible in those areas. Seniors might also find mites at the hairline, neck, temple, and forehead regions. Scabies is quite a common condition, affecting 300 million people worldwide.
December 03, 2014 Mental and behavioural disorders
Schizophrenia is a serious and chronic medical condition. It is a disorder of the message system in the brain. Someone with schizophrenia loses the ability to act properly or to think clearly - his or her mind is "split from reality" (hence schizo "split" and phrenia "mind" from ancient Greek). The term schizophrenia does not refer to multiple personality disorder. Schizophrenia affects about 1% of people throughout the world. It sometimes starts during childhood, but most often shows up in the late teens or 20s. It can develop gradually, over the course of weeks or months, or it can seem to come on very suddenly. The signs of schizophrenia are easy to misunderstand, and can sometimes be frightening to other people. While this disorder never goes away, it can often be managed with proper medical care and family support.
July 29, 2016 Diseases of the respiratory system
The sinuses are hollow spaces in the bones behind the face. Directly behind the nose is the nasal cavity. On either side of the nasal cavity are large sinuses. A row of very small sinuses runs behind the bridge of the nose, and two more large sinuses are located above and behind the inner part of the eyebrows. Sinusitis is inflammation of the sinuses. It may be associated with both bacterial and viral infections, but it may be due to non-infectious inflammation (e.g., allergies) in the sinuses as well. Sinusitis can be acute, lasting less than 4 weeks, or chronic, lasting 8 to 12 weeks or more. Acute sinusitis is very common, affecting about 1 in 10 people each year. People with asthma, cystic fibrosis, and allergies are more likely to get sinusitis, as are those who have had their nose broken previously and those who were born with a malformed septum (the dividing wall between the nostrils). People with diabetes or those who are immunocompromised are at increased risk for complications of sinusitis.
Sexually Transmitted Infection
Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are a group of infections similar to one another only in that they can be acquired through sexual contact. STIs is a term now used in place of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). You don't necessarily have to have sex to get sexually transmitted infections (STIs), but sexual activity is the most common way for them to be spread. The infections are caused by different organisms and have a wide variety of symptoms. Here are some of the most common STIs: Chlamydia occurs most often in teens and young adults, with females much more likely to get it than males. It is caused by the bacteria Chlamydia trachomatis. In Canada, chlamydia is the most common STI. Gonorrhea is an infection by the bacteria Neisseria gonorrhea. It is the second-most common STI, and teens and young adults represent almost half of all cases that are reported. If this condition is not treated, it may lead to infertility in both men and women. Human papillomavirus (HPV) causes genital warts. It is also a very common STI in Canada, especially among teens and young adults. Research shows that the virus that causes genital warts is also linked to cervical cancer. Syphilis is a bacterial infection that is less common but still remains a cause for concern. Its frequency has dropped significantly over several few decades until the late 1990s, after which the rate has been steadily increasing in Canada. Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is the viral infection that can cause AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome). This virus attacks cells of the immune system, leaving a person defenceless against many other infections and their complications. Hepatitis B is caused by a virus that infects the liver. There is no cure for this condition, but a vaccine is available to protect you against the virus. Genital herpes, which produces cold-sore-type lesions, is also caused by a virus. Once the herpes virus enters your body it is there for the rest of your life. Symptoms of the infection may occur without warning. Chancroid, a bacterial infection of the genitals, was once rare in North America, but has become more frequent in recent years. It can cause genital ulcers. Pubic lice, also known as "crabs," is an infestation of the genital area by lice (tiny wingless insects).
November 21, 2018 Diseases of the respiratory system
Strep throat is the most common of bacterial infections that cause sore throat. It accounts for about 5% to 15% of all sore throats in adults and 20% to 30% in children. It's called "strep" throat because the bacterium that causes it belongs to the class known as group A streptococcus (GAS). The initials GAS are sometimes used, and doctors may talk about a GAS throat infection. Although strep throat can occur any time during the year, late winter and early spring are considered to be peak seasons for strep throat infections. Sore throat is one of the leading complaints that bring people to the doctor's office, and about 40% to 50% of sore throats are treated with antibiotics. However, fewer than half of the people given antibiotics actually have bacterial infections. Most of the rest have viral infections that are not affected by antibiotics. When used appropriately, antibiotics are very helpful in fighting infection. However, antibiotics used inappropriately can be bad for you, killing harmless bacteria that may be keeping dangerous bacteria out of your intestines. It is important to learn about appropriate (and unnecessary) antibiotic use, which includes not pressing a doctor for antibiotics when the doctor says they aren't needed.
Tetanus is a condition caused by a nerve toxin that is produced by the bacterium Clostridium tetani, a cousin of the bacteria that cause gangrene and botulism. It remains a serious worldwide public health problem, killing over 500,000 people each year. In developed countries, however, the introduction of a vaccine in the 1950s has all but eradicated this disease. The cases of tetanus that do occur are often seen in those who either have not been vaccinated or have failed to keep their immunizations up to date, as protection from the vaccine declines over time. Canada now averages about 4 cases a year. Only 5 people have died of tetanus in this country since 1980.
December 03, 2014 Diseases of the circulatory system
Thrombophlebitis is an inflammation of a vein due to a blood clot. The term comes from a combination of thrombus, meaning blood clot, and phlebitis, meaning inflammation or infection of a vein. When blood clots form, they release a number of toxic chemicals that cause inflammation of the vein. Thrombophlebitis is classified as either superficial or deep. Deep thrombophlebitis is often called deep vein thrombosis (DVT). This condition is less common but more worrisome than superficial thrombophlebitis. Superficial thrombophlebitis is commonly seen in varicose veins and after insertion of intravenous (IV) tubes in the veins of the arms. Most cases of superficial thrombophlebitis resolve without any medical treatment.
November 21, 2018 Endocrine, nutritional and metabolic diseases
The thyroid is a gland located in your neck, just beneath the Adam's apple. It releases hormones – thyroxine (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3) – that increase the body's metabolic rate. A metabolic rate is the rate of chemical processes occurring within the body that are necessary to maintain life. In metabolism, some substances are broken down to provide energy for vital processes while other substances are made. The thyroid gland is self-regulated by thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), made by the pituitary gland (sometimes called the master gland) in the brain. TSH stimulates the thyroid gland to produce thyroid hormones (T4 and T3). When thyroid hormone levels in the body are high, TSH production will "switch off," stopping the thyroid from making more T4 and T3. Hyperthyroidism occurs when the thyroid gland becomes overactive, making an excessive amount of thyroid hormones. It is much less common than hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid gland) and has a variety of causes. Hyperthyroidism is 5 to 10 times more likely to occur in women than men. Risk factors for developing hyperthyroidism include having another autoimmune disease (e.g., type 1 diabetes, pernicious anemia), a family history, eating large amounts of iodine, being a woman, and previous goiter.
In order for your neck to move the way it should, all the neck muscles, tendons, and bones must be healthy and functioning properly. Your neck muscles contract to produce movement and are connected to your bones by tendons. If you injure or overexert your neck, you can temporarily or permanently damage muscles, causing pain and a reduction in your normal range of motion. Torticollis, also known as "wry neck," is a painful disorder of the muscles in the neck. It occurs more often between the ages of 30 and 60, and is twice as common in women as in men. The condition involves an occasional or constant painful spasm of the large muscles of the neck and usually affects one side more than the other. When a person's neck is in spasm due to torticollis, they may be forced to rotate and tilt their head forward, backward, or sideways. Some people find that the pain becomes worse when they sit, stand, or walk. Torticollis is quite rare, affecting only 1 in every 10,000 people. It's extremely painful and can be very debilitating.
Toxic shock syndrome (TSS) is caused by toxins released by certain strains of common bacteria. Although anyone can experience TSS, it occurs most often in healthy adults. The wound through which the bacteria gain entry is often minor or unnoticeable. Toxic shock syndrome has become linked with the use of tampons. TSS develops quickly and may be fatal. Still, this disease is fairly rare.
Toxoplasmosis is an infection caused by the parasite Toxoplasma gondii. On average, it is estimated that 20% to 40% of the population in North America is infected – that infection rate is even higher in other parts of the world. This single-celled parasite is capable of living in a wide range of birds and mammals, but only produces eggs in the lining of the intestines of cats. In humans it usually causes no symptoms. However, once infected, the infection remains for life. Toxoplasmosis usually lies dormant, but occasionally it reactivates to cause disease. Usually this happens when some other disease weakens the immune system. Toxoplasmosis is considered an opportunistic infection, one that shouldn't harm healthy people but can be very serious if your immune defenses are down (e.g., people with AIDS or cancer, or who are taking medications that suppress the immune system). It also threatens the fetus if an expectant mother is infected during pregnancy.
Transient Ischemic Attack
December 03, 2014 Diseases of the nervous system
A transient ischemic attack (TIA) is an ischemic stroke in which the blood flow is restored quickly and the symptoms disappear within 24 hours. In other words, it's a mini-stroke that you recover from quickly. For most patients with a TIA, the symptoms last less than one hour. The longer the symptoms last, the more likely that there will be permanent brain tissue injury. TIAs affect 1 in 15 persons over age 65 years, but often go undiagnosed if the symptoms are not recognized. Approximately 15% of strokes are preceded by a warning TIA. Therefore, recognition of TIA symptoms is important because preventative treatment may help to reduce the chance of an impending stroke. The risk of stroke is highest within the first 3 months following a TIA, especially within the first few days. Within the first month, the average risk of stroke after a TIA ranges from 1 in 20 to 1 in 10. TIAs and strokes generally occur in people with atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) or coronary artery disease. In fact, people who have suffered TIAs are even more likely to die of heart attack than of stroke.
Trigeminal neuralgia is a condition of recurring pain on one side of the face due to a malfunction of one or more of the three branches of the trigeminal nerve. This nerve is responsible for carrying sensation from the face to the brain. Trigeminal neuralgia is also known as tic douloureux, which means "painful tic." The term tic is used because people with trigeminal neuralgia often contract their facial muscles, or wince when in pain, because the pain is so severe. Adults of any age can be affected; however, the disorder occurs more frequently as people age, and is more common in people over 50. Women are more likely than men to experience trigeminal neuralgia.
Vertigo is a condition in which you feel off-balance and dizzy, as if you or your surroundings are moving, spinning, or swaying. It can lead to nausea and disability. Vertigo is most common in elderly people, but it can affect both sexes at any age. It may be a temporary or permanent condition.
Warts are small growths on the skin caused by a virus known as human papillomavirus (HPV). Warts are extremely common: it is estimated that about 25% of the population have a wart at any one time. Luckily, most warts are harmless. However, since they're caused by a virus, warts are very contagious. Warts can grow anywhere on the skin. There are 6 clinically different types: Common warts have a rather bumpy surface and appear most often on the hands and fingers (of children, in particular). Flat or plane warts are small, smooth warts appearing in clusters on the back of the hands, face, or legs. Plantar warts are those appearing on the soles of the feet. Filiform warts form long, thin projections around the eyes, face, and neck. Periungual warts (common in people who bite their nails) occur under and around the fingernails. Genital (venereal) warts are those appearing on the genitalia. Keep in mind that some warts can become cancerous, and some skin cancers can look like warts, so always get them checked by your doctor. Also remember, the sooner a wart is treated, the easier it will be to destroy - so don't procrastinate.
Angina (also called angina pectoris) is chest pain that appears when the muscle cells of the heart don't get enough blood to properly carry out their pumping function. The lack of blood supply is most likely to cause pain during physical activity, when the heart pumps fastest and needs the most oxygen. Stopping the activity normally relieves the pain. This may help to distinguish angina from other types of chest pain.
May 03, 2017 Diseases of the respiratory system
Asthma is a chronic lung condition. Inflammation, increased mucus, and muscle tightening cause the airways to narrow, and as a result, air can't move through the lungs as well as it should, which makes it difficult to breathe. For reasons we do not completely understand, asthma is becoming more common each year, especially in children. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Global Asthma Network, as many as 334 million people in the world may have asthma. Over 3 million Canadians suffer from this condition.
Blood clots are a collection of sticky blood cells that form when a blood vessel is damaged. The body creates blood clots as a normal response to blood vessel damage. The main job of a blood clot is to seal the leak in a damaged blood vessel. This prevents the blood from leaking out and protects the person from bleeding. Clots (or thrombi) that block the arteries and prevent flow of blood and oxygen to an organ can lead to areas of tissue damage (infarcts). When blood clots break (called an embolism) away from the area they're meant to protect, they can endanger other organs. Clots that block blood flow are the main culprits in most heart attacks and strokes. They can also damage other organs: When a blood clot (thrombus) forms in one or more arteries that supply blood to the heart, it blocks the blood flow to a part of the heart muscle, reducing or completely cutting off the oxygen supply to the cells in that area. As a result, the part of the heart muscle that is deprived of oxygen dies, and a heart attack occurs. Clots that block the flow of oxygen to the brain are the primary cause of strokes. Clots that form in the eye may cause sudden blindness. Presence of an obstructing blood clot (thrombus) is referred to as thrombosis. Thrombosis in a vein is almost always associated with phlebitis (inflammation of a vein). Thrombophlebitis is an inflammation of a vein in the area where a blood clot has formed. Thrombophlebitis is classified as either superficial or deep. In other words, thrombosis can affect either superficial (surface) or deep (below the surface) veins, causing thrombophlebitis. Superficial thrombophlebitis occurs when a blood clot affects veins near the skin surface, or superficial veins. Deep venous thrombosis (DVT) occurs when a blood clot affects deeper, larger veins, such as those in the lower legs and thighs. DVT is more worrisome than superficial thrombophlebitis. These clots can break away (called emboli) from a blood vessel and cause a pulmonary embolism if they travel to the lung. (For more information on pulmonary embolism, see the section "Symptoms and Complications.") DVT is more common for people over 40 years of age.
Bronchiectasis isn't one single disease. Rather, it is a condition that results from injury to the bronchi and bronchial tubes. These are the networks of airways in the upper chest that deliver air into the lungs after it passes down the throat through the windpipe. Bronchiectasis refers to damage to the bronchi that prevents them from delivering air properly. The walls of the bronchi become permanently widened (dilated), scarred, or inflamed. Some bronchi may even collapse. It is characterized by production of large amounts of sputum (e.g., mucus, phlegm). The condition may spread or only affect a small area. Usually bronchiectasis causes widening in medium-sized bronchi, but smaller bronchi can be scarred or destroyed as well.
Cerebral palsy is a name given to a group of different nervous system disorders that are present at birth or appear in the first 3 years of life. What these disorders have in common is that the underlying brain damage doesn't get worse over the years. They also all cause some degree of damage in the motor neurons of the brain, affecting coordination and muscle strength. Overall, cerebral palsy affects somewhere between 1 in 500 and 1 in 1,000 newborns, though some of these are only mildly affected. The risk is highest in premature and underweight babies. The number of new cases of cerebral palsy has actually risen slightly in recent years, partly because better intensive care is keeping more premature babies alive but also because fertility treatments have led to a rise in twin and multiple births, which are more likely to result in a baby with cerebral palsy. Other risk factors for the development of cerebral palsy include: Having a mother who has an infection (e.g., rubella [German measles], toxoplasmosis, herpes, cytomegalovirus) while pregnant. Having a mother with an incompatible blood type (Rh incompatibility is an immune problem in which the mother generates antibodies that attack and destroy red blood cells in the fetus, interfering with oxygen supply to the child's organs - it rarely happens in first pregnancies). Being exposed to toxic substances in the womb. Having a mother with mental retardation, or with a history of thyroid problems or seizure disorders. Having a complicated delivery (e.g., breech birth). Having a low apgar score (a test carried out several times in the hours after delivery that assigns a score based on heart rate, reflexes, skin colour, and muscle tone). Having severe jaundice after birth, especially if left untreated. Having seizures as an infant.
Childhood Vaccination
Children are born with a natural immunity to certain infections. Antibodies pass through the mother's placenta to the fetus before birth, protecting the baby from infection. Breast-fed babies continue to receive antibodies from their mothers' breast milk. However, this natural immunity eventually wears off, usually within the first year of life. In the past, a number of serious childhood diseases reached epidemic proportions, claiming thousands of lives and often leaving children with lasting mental or physical problems. Vaccines can now prevent many of these diseases. Vaccines work by introducing modified versions of viruses and bacteria into the body. They don't cause disease but the body still produces antibodies to fight it. These antibodies remain in the body to identify and fight the virus or bacteria in the future. Immunization often provides people with lifetime protection against once-common diseases. Vaccinations for Particular Diseases Vaccinations are available for a number of diseases, including: chickenpox diphtheria Haemophilus influenzae type b hepatitis B measles meningitis mumps pneumonia polio rubella tetanus whooping cough (pertussis) diarrhea caused by rotavirus influenza virus types A and B Many other vaccines exist for other, less common diseases. They are typically given to adults rather than children and are mostly related to travelling to less developed areas of the world. Chickenpox is a very common childhood illness caused by a virus called varicella-zoster. It's highly contagious and is spread through the air or by physical contact with someone's open blisters. It rarely causes a serious illness, but a child with chickenpox can be sick for 7 to 10 days, and at least one adult will need to miss work to care for the child. Diphtheria is caused by a strain of bacteria (Corynebacterium diphtheriae) that infects the throat, mouth, and nose. It's quite contagious. Sore throat, slight fever, and chills may be followed by a greyish membrane growing across the throat, making swallowing and breathing difficult. If the membrane covers the windpipe, air is blocked and a person is in danger of suffocating. If not treated fast enough, diphtheria causes a toxin that spreads and poisons the heart muscle and sometimes the nerves. This can result in short-term paralysis or heart failure. Diphtheria is fatal for about 10% of those who get it. Occasional cases of diphtheria are reported in Canada every year. Hemophilus influenzae type b bacteria can cause serious illness, especially in young children under the age of 5 years. This infection commonly leads to pneumonia, as well as infections of the blood, joints, soft tissues, throat, and less commonly bones and the covering of the heart. This organism was once the most common cause of bacterial meningitis (inflammation of the lining of the brain and spinal cord). Children who get meningitis are at risk of death (3% to 6%) or permanent hearing impairment or brain damage (15% to 30% of survivors). Hepatitis B virus is transmitted through exposure to contaminated blood (most commonly intravenous drug use) or through sexual contact, and can also pass from a mother to her baby during birth. It can cause inflammation of the liver (hepatitis), which can lead to destruction of normal liver tissue (cirrhosis), or liver cancer. Hepatitis A virus causes liver inflammation and jaundice (yellow skin and eyes) and though most victims are ill for 10 days to 2 weeks, the infection rarely causes serious liver damage. It is spread primarily through ingestion of contaminated food or water. Measles, mumps, and rubella are all caused by viruses and are highly contagious. Measles lasts for 1 to 2 weeks, causing a high fever, rash, cough, runny nose, and watery eyes. About 8% of children will also get an earache, and about 6% will get pneumonia. 1 in every 1,000 children with the measles can develop brain inflammation (encephalitis), causing convulsions, deafness, or brain damage. About 2 in every 1,000 cases are fatal. Pregnant women who catch the measles can have a preterm birth, or even lose the fetus (miscarriage). Meningitis caused by the meningococus bacteria (Neisseria meningitides) is a rare but serious disease associated with inflammation of the membrane covering of the brain and spinal cord. Symptoms include sudden onset of fever, intense headache, stiff neck, nausea and vomiting, and sensitivity to light. About 10% to 15% of everyone who gets bacterial meningitis dies from it, but if the bacteria enters the blood, the death rate is up to 40%. About 20% of the survivors are left with permanent damage (loss of hearing, brain damage, or loss of limb). Mumps causes fever, headache, and salivary gland inflammation. About 1 in 10 children with mumps have meningitis (inflammation of the covering of the brain and spinal cord) or, sometimes, encephalitis (inflammation of the brain itself). This can cause deafness, but permanent damage is rare. 1 in 4 men who get the mumps will have their testicles swell and become painfully inflamed, which may lead to infertility. Pneumonia is a lung infection that may be caused by bacteria, viruses, or fungi. It occurs in both children and adults. Pneumonia may develop at the same time as another infection, such as the flu, whooping cough, measles, or chickenpox. Symptoms include coughing up mucus, difficulty breathing, chest pain, fever, and chills. Serious cases of pneumonia may lead to hospitalization. Pneumonia caused by bacteria may be treated with antibiotics. Some cases of pneumonia may be prevented by vaccines, such as the pneumococcal vaccine, the Hemophilus influenzae type B (HiB) vaccine or the influenza vaccine. Polio (poliomyelitis) is caused by a virus that lives in the nose, throat, and intestines of infected people. The virus is contagious even when a person doesn't have any symptoms. Milder forms usually last a few days, causing fever, nausea, headache, sore throat, stomach ache, and sometimes pain or stiffness in the neck, back, and legs. A more serious form, paralytic polio, also causes severe muscle pain. About half of people with paralytic polio are permanently paralyzed within a week of the start of symptoms. Others may recover completely or have mild physical disabilities. Rubella – also called "German measles" – is usually a mild disease, causing slight fever and a rash for 2 or 3 days. Adults can also experience temporary arthritis and swollen glands at the back of the neck. Women who get rubella early in pregnancy have a 20% to 25% chance of having babies with severe birth defects, including blindness, heart and major artery damage, deafness, brain damage, and brains that are smaller than normal. Rubella during pregnancy may also lead to miscarriage. Tetanus – also known as "lockjaw" – is caused by a bacterium commonly found in soil, manure, and the digestive tracts of people and animals. When the bacteria enter deep cuts or wounds that are difficult to clean, they can multiply and produce a toxin. The toxin acts as a poison for the nervous system, causing headache and muscular stiffness in the neck and jaw. As the toxin accumulates, it causes spasms in the jaw, neck, and limbs, rigidity in the abdominal muscles, and convulsions. Symptoms are painful and last for weeks. This condition often requires hospitalization and carries a high fatality rate. Whooping cough (pertussis) is caused by a bacterium that infects the mouth, nose, and throat. It's highly contagious. It causes severe coughing that can make it difficult to eat, drink, and breathe. Young children, especially infants under one year of age, are most susceptible to getting pertussis. The infection is often serious, leading to hospitalization. Complications may include pneumonia, convulsions, and, rarely, inflammation of the brain (encephalitis) or death. Rotavirus is a common cause of gastroenteritis in children accounting overall for 10 to 40% of all childhood gastroenteritis. Unlike other vaccines that are given as injections, the vaccine against the rotavirus is given by mouth. The vaccine is not always completely protective, but vaccinated children have much milder cases if they do get the infection. Influenza virus causes severe illness and pneumonia in all ages, but children and seniors are most at risk for serious complications. Vaccination is recommended annually for everyone over 6 months of age. Annual revaccination is required because the type A flu virus changes its characteristics (mutates) yearly. Scheduling Immunization Vaccinations are generally available as a series of injections, sometimes combining several vaccinations. They're given at different times during infancy and childhood, usually during routine visits to a doctor's or pediatrician's office. Records of childhood vaccinations are often mandatory for children when they begin school. Side effects of vaccination are usually mild, but may include fever, soreness at the site of injection, tiredness, and a rash. These pass within a couple of days and serious complications are very rare. Under certain conditions, vaccinations should be delayed or stopped. If your child has severe allergic reactions to a particular vaccine, remaining injections may have to be discontinued. If your child has other allergies – to antibiotics or eggs, for instance – talk to your doctor about whether this affects vaccination. A child who's sick or whose immune system is compromised might have to postpone getting a regularly scheduled shot. Missing an injection doesn't require you to start most vaccination series from scratch. Hepatitis B (HepB or HBV) vaccine is recommended for all children and is increasingly being given shortly after birth. However, in some areas, it is not given until children reach grade 7. For newborns, the first shot is given during a visit to a doctor or pediatrician after the baby has left the hospital, usually before the baby is 2 months old. The second shot is given at least 4 weeks after the first. The third shot is usually given 2 months after the second shot and at least 4 months between the first and third. Mothers should always be routinely tested for hepatitis B in pregnancy and, if positive, the newborn should receive the hepatitis B immune globulin. This helps protect the infant from hepatitis B until the immunizations start working. The infant should then receive three shots of hepatitis B vaccine on the regular schedule. A diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough vaccine is usually administered at the age of 2, 4, 6, and 18 months. A booster shot is given at the age of 4 to 6 years. Another booster shot against tetanus and diphtheria is then given around the 15th birthday. After this, booster shots for tetanus and diphtheria are required every 10 years for continued protection. Hemophilus influenza type b (Hib) vaccine is usually administered at 2, 4, and 6 months of age, and then another booster shot is given around the age of 18 months. Immunization against polio alone is given in the form of an inactivated poliovirus vaccine at the age of 2, 4, and 6 months, and then again at 18 months or between 4 and 6 years. This vaccine is combined with the diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough vaccine. Oral polio vaccines used to be common but they carried a very small risk of causing paralytic polio. Measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine is given between 12 and 15 months. A second injection is given either with the next set of vaccinations due at 18 months, or between 4 and 6 years old, before a child begins school. Chickenpox immunization, or varicella vaccine, is recommended for anyone over 12 months of age who has never had chickenpox. 2 doses of vaccine are given. For children, the first dose is given at 12 to 18 months of age and the second dose at 4 to 6 years of age. For people 13 years of age and over, the 2 doses are given at least 4 to 6 weeks apart. Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine is recommended to help protect against pneumococcal infections, which may include a variety of diseases such as pneumonia or ear infections. The recommended schedule for infants is 4 doses of the conjugate vaccine administered at 2, 4, and 6 months old and again between 12 and 15 months old. Rotavirus is a vaccine given as 2 separate oral doses. The first dose should be given between 6 and 15 weeks with the second dose completed by the age of 32 weeks. Routine immunization against meningitis caused by Meningococcus type C is also recommended for all children. The timing of vaccination varies depending on age, risk, and geographic region. The influenza vaccine, available in the early fall each year, is recommended for children between the ages of 6 and 9 2 doses, given 4 weeks apart, are required unless the child was immunized the previous year. There are 2 types of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines approved in Canada. One is approved for girls and young women aged 9 to 45 and boys and young men aged 9 to 26. This vaccine protects against the 2 types of HPV that cause approximately 70% of all cervical cancers and the 2 types of HPV that cause about 90% of all genital warts. The other vaccine is approved for girls and young women aged 10 to 25. This vaccine protects against the 2 types of HPV that cause approximately 70% of all cervical cancers. Both vaccines are given in 3 doses over 6 months. Concerns about Childhood Vaccinations Health Canada states that vaccinations are one of the most cost-effective interventions available. However, some people are concerned about the side effects of immunization and are questioning the necessity of vaccinating their children. Others also question the need to continue to vaccinate children against diseases that are rare in Canada. It is important to understand the risks and benefits of immunization. To make an informed decision, speak with your doctor or pharmacist about your concerns. Some of the concerns people have about immunization include: Safety and long-term effects: There have been concerns that vaccines may increase the risk of SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome), asthma, and autism. When a child develops a health problem after receiving a vaccine, it is natural to wonder if there may be a link between the two. There are two kinds of links: either the vaccine did make the child more likely to develop the condition, or it was just a coincidence that both happened around the same time. Currently, the evidence shows that it is likely to be a coincidence &nd vaccines have not been shown to cause any of these conditions. Studies of large populations of children have failed to show an association between MMR vaccine and autism, and have concluded that the rate of autism in children has not increased since introduction of the vaccine. "Overloading" the immune system: Some people feel that giving a child multiple vaccines at the same time can overload the immune system. Vaccines contain viruses or bacteria (whole or in parts) that have been altered so they cannot cause disease. Children are actually exposed to many viruses and bacteria each day through normal activities such as eating and playing. The number of viruses or bacteria a child is exposed to in a vaccine does not significantly add to the ones they are exposed to in everyday activities. Effectiveness: People opposed to vaccines often claim that better hygiene and diets, not vaccines, are responsible for reducing the levels of childhood diseases. While better hygiene and nutrition can improve overall health and reduce the risk of some diseases, the decreases in rates of vaccine-preventable childhood diseases are mostly due to vaccination. For example, Hemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) disease was common until the vaccine was introduced in the 1990s. After that, the number of cases dropped dramatically. Since sanitation and nutrition are no better now than they were in the 1990s, it is unlikely that they are responsible for this large decrease in the rate of infection. In Canada, the annual occurrence of vaccine-preventable diseases has fallen to a few dozen or none at all, depending on the disease. Canada has continual surveillance of vaccines marketed in this country. The safety of each production lot is closely monitored. Collaboration with provincial public-health networks has resulted in very high reporting rates when vaccine-related illnesses or complications occur. The World Health Organization (WHO) also has an advisory body to monitor and evaluate global vaccine safety. Working with governments and international organizations, the WHO makes scientific recommendations concerning vaccination, based on international information and assessments. Given the potential severity of many of the vaccine-preventable childhood diseases, immunization is considered by the medical community to be the safer decision. Though vaccination side effects do exist, they are minimal compared to the devastating toll widespread epidemics have had on populations, even in the 20th century.
Cholesterol is a fatty substance your body needs to rebuild its cells and to make certain hormones. It's carried throughout your body in your bloodstream. Your body only requires a small amount of cholesterol. When there's too much cholesterol in your bloodstream, you have high cholesterol. This is a very common condition. Cholesterol levels generally rise with age. Unfortunately, high cholesterol can significantly increase your risk of heart disease, stroke, and peripheral vascular disease. Most of your body's cholesterol (about 80%) is made in your liver. The rest comes from your diet. Dietary cholesterol is found in foods from animal sources, such as eggs, meats, and dairy products. There are two important types of cholesterol you should know about: low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or "bad" cholesterol high-density lipoprotein (HDL), or "good" cholesterol Most of the LDL, or "bad," cholesterol circulates in the blood and remains unused. Normally, the liver removes this "extra" cholesterol, but many people have more LDL cholesterol than the liver can handle. LDL cholesterol promotes buildup of harmful plaque (fatty deposits) in the walls of the arteries. The term high cholesterol refers to having high levels of LDL cholesterol. HDL gets its "good" name by picking up LDL cholesterol from the arteries and tissues and carrying it back to the liver, where it can be broken down.
June 27, 2018 Mental and behavioural disorders
Everyone has experienced pain at some time or other. A cut, a sports injury, childbirth, surgery, or kidney stones all can produce varying degrees of pain. In these cases, the pain has a known cause and resolves when the cause is no longer there. This type of pain is acute pain. Acute pain performs a function – it warns the body of a problem or injury. Chronic pain, which is pain lasting months or years, is much different. The pain itself rarely continues to perform any useful function. Chronic pain can be quite disabling, often preventing people from working and enjoying life. It can lead to people feeling isolated, angry, frustrated, and guilty.
Conjunctivitis, also known as "pink-eye," is a common eye condition. It's an inflammation of the conjunctiva, the membrane that covers the white of the eye and the inside of the eyelids. Within this membrane, there are tiny blood vessels that get enlarged when the conjunctiva become irritated. The enlarged blood vessels make the eye look red.
Two-thirds of the human body is made up of water. That means that if a person weighs about 70 kilograms (154 pounds), their body contains about 47 litres of water. Almost 70% of this water is inside the body's cells, 20% is in the space surrounding cells, and slightly less than 10% is in the bloodstream. The water in the human body is essential to keeping it healthy. When the amount of water you intake matches the water you excrete, the body's water supply will be balanced. If you are healthy and do not sweat excessively, you should consume at least 2 to 3 litres of fluid a day (about 8 glasses of water) to maintain your water balance and protect against complications, like the development of kidney stones. Dehydration results when there is a deficiency in the body's water supply. If the brain and kidneys are functioning properly, the body will be able to manage minor changes in water intake. It's usually possible to drink enough water to make up for a regular day's water loss. However, it may be difficult to drink enough water if you are vomiting, have severe diarrhea, are exposed to excessive heat, or have a fever. Dehydration is common among seniors, infants, and children. Seniors sense thirst more slowly so they may not recognize that they are becoming dehydrated and in turn may not drink enough fluids. Infants and young children lose proportionately more fluid from diarrhea or vomiting than older children and adults. Some dehydration is relatively mild; however, severe loss of the body's supply of fluids can be potentially life-threatening. When the body's supply of fluids falls below a certain amount, a condition called hypovolemic shock may result.
Diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) is a potentially lifethreatening complication that may occur in people who have diabetes, most often in those who have type 1 (insulin-dependent) diabetes. It involves the buildup of toxic substances called ketones that make the blood too acidic. High ketone levels can be readily managed, but if they aren't detected and treated in time, a person can eventually slip into a fatal coma. DKA often leads to people being newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. It can also occur in people already diagnosed with type 1 diabetes who have missed an insulin dose, have an infection, or have suffered a traumatic event or injury. Although much less common, DKA can occasionally occur in people with type 2 diabetes under extreme physiologic stress.
Many people have spent a tropical vacation with a bad stomach bug. They might have had dysentery, a painful intestinal infection that is usually caused by bacteria or parasites. Dysentery is defined as diarrhea in which there is blood, pus, and mucous, usually accompanied by abdominal pain. There are two main types of dysentery. The first type, amoebic dysentery or intestinal amoebiasis, is caused by a single-celled, microscopic parasite living in the large bowel. The second type, bacillary dysentery, is caused by invasive bacteria. Both kinds of dysentery occur mostly in hot countries. Poor hygiene and sanitation increase the risk of dysentery by spreading the parasite or bacteria that cause it through food or water contaminated from infected human feces.
Eczema, also known as dermatitis, refers to a group of skin conditions that cause inflammation of the skin. Eczema is not caused by an infection. The condition may be temporary or chronic, mild or, in rare instances, very serious. Serious cases usually occur when: it is severe enough to cause complications, such as skin infections an affected person also contracts the herpes simplex virus an affected person has a violent allergic reaction caused by contact dermatitis Atopic dermatitis is the prevalent form of chronic eczema. It is a genetically inherited condition that tends to run in families who also suffer from hay fever and asthma. Atopic dermatitis will affect about 17% of Canadians at some point in their lives. Contact dermatitis is a skin reaction caused by exposure to an allergen or irritant. Dyshidrotic eczema occurs on the palms of the hands, sides of the fingers, and the soles of the feet, and it is associated with itching and blisters. Nummular dermatitis is a type of eczema that normally affects older adults. Round patches of scaly, inflamed skin may appear anywhere on the body, most commonly on the legs. Winter is the peak period for this condition. It tends to strike dry skin. Stasis dermatitis (or gravitational eczema) affects the lower legs of older adults. It is basically a poor circulation problem, usually due to blood not being able to get out of the legs well.
Gangrene is the death of tissue in your body. It develops when the blood supply to an affected body part is cut off because of various factors such as infection, vascular disease, or trauma. Gangrene can involve any body part, but the most commonly affected areas are the extremities (feet, arms, legs, hands).
July 29, 2016 Diseases of the circulatory system
The heart is one of the largest muscles in the body. The wall of the heart is the muscle that does the pumping, and it is called the myocardium. In a heart attack, this muscle tissue is denied oxygen-carrying blood due to a blocked artery. When the shortage of oxygen gets so bad that many cells die, it's called infarction. The medical name for a heart attack is an acute myocardial infarction (MI). Heart attack is directly responsible for about 10% of all deaths in Canada every year. This represents half of all deaths due to coronary artery disease. Although having a heart attack is very serious, the chances of survival are greatly increased if you are able to get to a hospital right away.
January 14, 2017 Diseases of the circulatory system
Heart disease is one of the leading causes of death worldwide, and people who have abnormally high pressure in their arteries are far more likely than others to die prematurely of heart disease. Your arteries carry the blood from your heart throughout your body. Blood pressure is the measure of how hard your blood is pushing against the inside of your arteries. Although a certain amount of pressure is needed to carry blood through your body, if that pressure is too great, you have high blood pressure, or hypertension. When blood pressure is measured, there are two numbers for each reading: for example, "120 over 80" is written as 120/80. This is because each heartbeat sends a pressure wave through the bloodstream. The higher number (systolic blood pressure) is the peak of the wave, when your heart contracts (the loud "thump" when you listen to your heartbeat). The lower number (diastolic blood pressure) is the lower "dip" or trough of the wave, when your heart relaxes. Blood pressure is always recorded as the systolic number over the diastolic number, and the numbers indicate pressure as measured in millimetres of mercury on the gauge (mm Hg). In general, someone has high blood pressure if several measurements of blood pressure at the doctor's office show readings of 140 systolic or 90 diastolic or higher. Hypertension is one of the main risk factors for heart disease, stroke, and kidney failure. In Canada, it has been estimated that 6 million adults have high blood pressure. Many are not aware of the problem. Approximately one-third of people with hypertension do not receive adequate treatment to control their blood pressure.
February 04, 2015 Endocrine, nutritional and metabolic diseases
The thyroid is a gland located in the neck below the Adam's apple. It helps control the body's metabolic rate by producing the hormones thyroxine (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3). A metabolic rate is the rate of chemical processes occurring within the body that are necessary to maintain life. Hypothyroidism is the most common of the thyroid disorders. It occurs when the thyroid gland becomes underactive and does not produce enough thyroid hormones. The metabolic rate falls and normal bodily functions slow down. Hypothyroidism occurs in 1.5% to 2% of women and in 0.2% of men, and it is more common with increasing age. Up to 10% of women over the age of 65 show some signs of hypothyroidism. Although less common, hypothyroidism does occur among the young. Neonatal hypothyroidism, called cretinism, is associated with mental retardation, jaundice (yellowing of skin), poor feeding, breathing difficulties, and growth problems. Childhood (juvenile) hypothyroidism is characterized by delayed growth and problems with mental development; however, with prompt treatment, problems can be minimized.
Peripheral Arterial Disease
Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) is a condition involving clogging of the arteries around the body, most commonly in the legs. PAD occurs more frequently as people get older and often goes hand-in-hand with coronary artery disease (CAD). PAD does most of its damage before any symptoms are seen.
Tinea Cruris (Jock Itch)
Tinea cruris, commonly referred to as jock itch, is a fungal infection in the groin area. It affects mostly adult men. It's caused by a type of fungus called dermatophytes. It grows in a circle on your skin and often looks like a ring. Due to irritation, the skin becomes red. Some people think the infection looks like there is a worm under the skin. Because of this, this infection is often referred to as "ringworm," although no worm is actually involved. The fungi are commonly found on the skin surface and nails and are usually quite harmless. Under certain conditions, however, they can multiply dramatically, causing irritation and surface tissue damage. You don't have to be athletic to get jock itch. Infections caused by these organisms go by the medical name tinea. Tinea pedis is athlete's foot; tinea capitis is ringworm of the scalp. Jock itch is tinea cruris, from the Latin word for leg. They are all caused by dermatophytes - only the infected area differs. Classic jock itch affects the inner thighs, groin, and lower buttocks, not the genitalia themselves. If the scrotum is inflamed, it's probably due to a different yeast condition called candidiasis, and a physician should be consulted.
October 20, 2015 Diseases of the genitourinary system
A kidney stone is formed when a small speck of mineral settles out of the urine into the kidney or the ureter, a tube that links the kidney to the bladder. Additional minerals will stick to the small speck, which develops into stones over time. There are four main types of kidney stones, classified depending on the chemicals that make up the stones: calcium salts (calcium oxalate, calcium phosphate, mixed calcium oxalate/phosphate), magnesium ammonium phosphate (struvite), uric acid, or cystine. Though rare, certain medications can sometimes form stones after crystallization in the urine. The most common kidney stones are composed of calcium oxalate, which is naturally present in the urine. Kidney stones are a common cause for hospital visits in North America. It's estimated that about 10% of North Americans will have a kidney stone at least once during their lifetime, most commonly seen in people aged 20 to 50 years old. The stones are often small and can pass through the urinary system on their own. Kidney stones are more likely to form in hot climates or in the summertime. When people become dehydrated, the minerals in their urine become more concentrated. It then becomes easier for small mineral particles to settle out of the urine and start a kidney stone. Kidney stones are three times more common in men than in women. They also seem to run in families. People who have already had one kidney stone also have a higher than average risk of getting another.
Lice are tiny parasitic insects that can take up residence in a number of different places on our body. They are not a serious medical problem, but they can be annoying and can easily spread and infect others. Lice have been around for centuries. They were widespread in Europe up until the last century, and anthropologists report signs of these annoying intruders among Egyptian mummies and during the period of the ancient Greeks. Life for a louse begins as a nit (egg). Nits are commonly found glued to the base of the hair shaft, frequently behind the ears or on the nape of the neck. It takes about 5 to 10 days for nits to hatch and for the light-coloured nymphs to begin feeding immediately. It takes about 7 or more days for the nymphs to mature. Head lice (Pediculus humanus capitis) are found in the hair on the head. They are often spread among school children by close contact, clothing, or hairbrushes. Head lice can infest clothing and other items that come in contact with the head (e.g., hats, shirt collars, brushes, combs, etc.). Unfed adult lice may survive up to 3 days away from the host. In general, the eggs hatch within a week and adult head lice have a lifespan of 1 to 2 days away from the host. Body lice (Pediculus humanus corporis) are found on various parts of the body and are passed on through shared clothing or bedding. Unlike head lice, body lice attach their eggs to clothes fibres, particularly along inside seams and other areas of close body contact. A female body louse usually deposits 9 to 10 eggs per day, and a total of 270 to 300 eggs over her lifetime. The eggs are incubated by the person's body heat and hatch in about one week. Development time (egg to adult) takes about 3 to 5 weeks. Body lice may carry serious diseases such as epidemic typhus and trench fever. Pubic lice (Phthirus pubis), commonly referred to as crabs, live on the skin and hair of the pubic area and are spread by sexual contact, shared clothing, and bedding. Pubic lice can also attach themselves to the eyelashes. Head lice are found in most urban schools, where a few cases are reported every year, usually early in the fall when children return to school. Contrary to popular opinion, head lice can infect clean heads as often as dirty ones. They are more common in girls than in boys, although not necessarily more common in girls with long hair. Head lice do not carry disease.
Lyme disease is an illness caused by a bacterium called Borrelia burgdorferi, which is transmitted by the bite of an infected tick. The bacterium is usually carried by birds, mice, squirrels, and other small animals. Ticks become infected by the bacterium when they feed on infected animals. The bacterium can be passed to humans when they get bitten by an infected tick. Under normal circumstances, Lyme disease cannot be passed from human to human, by other animals, or through food. Pets (cats and dogs) can get Lyme disease, but they don't appear to pass it onto humans. However, they can bring infected ticks into the home. You may come into contact with a tick simply by brushing against vegetation. The risk of contact increases between early spring and late fall. The winter months don't always offer protection from ticks if the temperature is 4°C (39°F) or more and there is no snow. The tick bite does not hurt or sting; you probably won’t notice it. Not all ticks carry Lyme disease, and the chance of getting Lyme disease from an infected tick is greatly reduced by removing ticks within 24 to 36 hours of attachment.
Measles (also called rubeola or morbilli) was once one of the most common childhood infections in North America. In the early 1960s, over half a million children were infected every year. In 1963, the creation of a measles vaccine changed everything. Today, while very few new cases of measles occur each year in developed countries, it still occurs in epidemic proportions in developing regions. Even though a majority of patients recover from infection, measles can have serious complications. Early in infection, the brain tissue can become inflamed (encephalitis). A later complication can occur several years later, causing brain damage. Measles is one of the most contagious vaccine-preventable infections in humans. The one antigenic type of the measles virus is only found in humans. This means that if high immunization rates are maintained, it may be possible to eradicate this virus, just like smallpox and polio.
June 02, 2012 Diseases of the genitourinary system
Menopause is the time when a woman's menstrual periods stop and her ovaries stop releasing eggs. A woman is considered menopausal once she has gone a year without having a menstrual period. Therefore, the exact time of a woman's final menstrual period can only be pinpointed by counting backwards after the fact. Although most women go through menopause around age 50, normal menopause can happen any time between the age of 40 and 60. The last periods are usually more irregular and have less blood flow. However, some women's periods don't change at all. Along with normal or natural menopause, there is also premature menopause. Premature menopause occurs before the age of 40 and can be caused by a variety of things, such as removal of the ovaries, autoimmune disorders, endocrinological reasons, or cancer therapy. Medical interventions, such as a hysterectomy (when the uterus is removed), may also prevent menstruation. If the ovaries are removed as well, production of the hormones estrogen and progesterone are stopped, causing the symptoms of menopause.
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic condition that affects the central nervous system. This system includes the brain and spinal cord. It contains the nerves that control everything your body does, such as thinking, feeling, seeing, smelling, tasting, and moving. MS affects about 1 in 1,000 people and usually appears between the ages of 20 and 40, although it may occur at any age. Your nerves are covered by an intact protective layer known as the myelin sheath. This covering helps to speed electrical signals in the brain. With MS, researchers think that the myelin sheath somehow becomes inflamed and damaged in small patches. It is not known what chain of events starts this damage, but once the injury occurs, electrical signals in the brain are slowed down. It is believed that MS is an autoimmune disease (a condition in which an individual's immune system starts reacting against his or her own tissues) and cannot be spread from person to person. For unknown reasons, the immune system sees the myelin sheath as foreign and attacks it. There are three types of MS: Relapsing-remitting MS is the most common form of MS, affecting 85%-90% of people with the condition at onset. This type of MS is associated with "flare-ups" where symptoms worsen for weeks or months, and with remissions where symptoms completely or partially improve. Primary-progressive MS affects 10% of people with MS and is associated with slow, but mostly continuous, worsening of the disease from the time of onset. Secondary-progressive MS is associated with an initial period of relapsing-remitting disease followed by steady worsening and minor remissions. Approximately 50% of people with relapsing-remitting MS will develop this form of MS within 10 years.
Narcolepsy is a sleep disorder that is often under-recognized and underdiagnosed. About 1 in every 2,000 people in North America and Europe suffer from this syndrome, which tends to be a lifelong phenomenon. The symptoms of narcolepsy can be terrifying at first and frustrating even after someone becomes used to them, but they never produce any serious illness. People with narcolepsy are usually healthy in all other respects. They have exactly the same natural life expectancy as those without it. No physical abnormality or tissue damage has ever been linked to this condition, either as a cause or as a consequence. Men and women are equally likely to suffer from narcolepsy. It usually first appears in the teenage years, but it can come on at almost any age. Often the symptoms appear one by one, but in people aged over 20 it's more likely that several symptoms will appear at once. Symptoms may change over time in an individual, but there's no general tendency for them to get worse or better with age.
Peripheral neuropathy refers to damage to the peripheral nerves – nerves that carry information between the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord) and the rest of the body. Peripheral neuropathy occurs in about 2% to 8% of people and is more common as we age. Peripheral neuropathy may be caused by a number of different medical conditions, such as diabetes, cancer, and nutritional deficiencies. Peripheral neuropathy can also be caused by medications and chemicals. It can interfere with the senses, with movement, or with the function of internal organs. Damage to one nerve is called mononeuropathy, while damage to many nerves all at once is called polyneuropathy.
Phlebitis
Phlebitis means inflammation of a vein. Superficial phlebitis (also called superficial thrombophlebitis), is a condition where the veins close to the surface of the body (superficial veins) become swollen, tender, and red and develop blood clots. When deeper veins (e.g., in a muscle) develop blood clots, it's called deep vein thrombosis (DVT).
The pinworm, or Enterobius vermicularis, is a small parasitic worm that can live inside the human lower intestine. Only 3 mm to 10 mm long, it causes an intense itching in the area of an infected person's anus, especially at night. Pinworms usually infect people as a result of overcrowding in schools and family groupings or due to unsanitary living conditions and poor food preparation. However, they usually don't indicate poor personal hygiene. They can be commonly found in institutional settings such as dormitories and mental health hospitals or homes. They're the most common parasite to affect North American children, with estimates that one-third of Canadian children will have pinworms at some time in their life.
Pneumonia is an inflammation of the lungs that is usually caused by infection. Pneumonia can also be caused by inhaling irritants such as vomit, liquids, or chemicals. With pneumonia, the air sacs in the lungs fill with liquid or pus, which interferes with the lungs' ability to transfer oxygen to the blood. Before the invention of antibiotics in the 1930s, pneumonia was a leading cause of death. Though it has since become very treatable, pneumonia remains a public health problem. There are many different kinds of pneumonia, ranging from mild to severe. There are 4 basic types: Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP), the most common type of pneumonia, is caused by bacteria, viruses, and other organisms that are acquired outside of the hospital or other health care settings. Hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP) occurs at least 48 hours after someone has been admitted to the hospital. It can be caused by bacteria and other organisms that are usually different from CAP. HAP is usually more serious than CAP because the bacteria and organisms can be harder to treat, and because people who get HAP are already sick. Aspiration pneumonia occurs when liquids or other irritants are inhaled into the lungs. The most common type of aspiration pneumonia is caused by inhaling stomach contents after vomiting. People with medical problems (e.g., stroke, ALS) that affect swallowing are at an increased risk of this type of pneumonia. Opportunistic pneumonia occurs in people with weakened immune system (e.g., people with AIDS, cancer, organ transplant). Organisms that are not usually harmful to people with healthy immune systems cause these types of infections. Pneumonia rarely causes serious complications for healthy people under 65 years of age. People who suffer from chronic respiratory diseases or who have compromised immune systems are generally at greater risk for developing pneumonia.
Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is a new name for a very old condition. In the earlier 1900s, it was known as "shell shock" or "battle fatigue." Before then, it had no name. In PTSD, a witness or victim of a terrible event or tragedy is so haunted by memories of the event that personal health and personality is affected. These symptoms persist for more than one month after the traumatic event, and occur together with other conditions such as depression, anxiety, or substance abuse. Research suggests that 9.2% of the Canadian population will be affected at one time in their life with PTSD. Women are twice as likely to be affected as men. The specific type of trauma is important in the gender distribution. For example, women exposed to a physical attack or threatened with a weapon are more likely to develop PTSD than men who are exposed to the same trauma. But women who are sexually assaulted are less likely to develop PTSD than men who are sexually assaulted. About 76% of Canadians have been exposed to at least one traumatic event in their lifetime and about 43% of those individuals can present with PTSD.
Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a type of depression that seems to be related to the amount of daylight to which people are exposed. For most people it tends to be worse in the fall or winter, making it an extreme form of the "winter blahs." Some people, however, experience symptoms in the late spring or early summer. Every year, as the days get shorter and the weather gets colder, it is estimated that about 2 or 3 out or every 100 people are affected by SAD. About 15 out of every 100 people have less severe symptoms of SAD called the "winter blues." It is more common in women than in men and it usually begins when people are in their 20s. Older people are at lower risk. Children can also experience SAD, although it is far less common.
February 14, 2015 Diseases of the nervous system
Sleep apnea is a condition in which disturbed breathing interrupts sleep. Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), the most common type of sleep apnea, affects approximately 24% of middle-aged men and 9% of middle-aged women in Canada. Most people suffering from sleep apnea also snore, but there's a big difference between the two conditions. While snoring can be annoying, sleep apnea can be life-threatening. During an apnea episode, the body's oxygen levels can drop noticeably, carbon dioxide builds up, and the heart has to work harder to cope. Each time it happens, the brain sends a wake up signal so that the person can breathe, and this means never getting a good night's sleep.
Stroke is a sudden loss of brain function caused by the interruption of blood flow to the brain, as a result of either an ischemic stroke (a blood clot) or a hemorrhagic stroke (the rupture of a blood vessel and bleeding into or around the brain). The interruption of blood flow to the brain causes brain cells (neurons) in the affected area to die. The effects of a stroke depend upon which part of the brain was injured and how much damage has occurred. About 80% of strokes are ischemic and 20% are hemorrhagic. Stroke is a leading cause of disability worldwide, and approximately 315,000 Canadians are living with the effects of a stroke. It is also the third leading cause of death in Canada. About 60% of people who have had a stroke are left with some form of disability such as paralysis, sensory loss, memory loss, language problems, and vision problems. Some people may also suffer from depression or other emotional conditions after a stroke. Risk factor modification, medications and, in some cases, surgery can help to minimize the risk of having a stroke.
Syphilis is primarily a sexually transmitted infection (STI) caused by Treponema pallidum bacteria. The disease has many clinical appearances that are often grouped into stages, depending on when they occur. There are 3 stages of syphilis during which symptoms appear; however, not everyone will go through all 3 stages. Between these stages are latent periods: periods that are symptom-free. Syphilis first appears as an acute infectious disease that then appears to go away on its own. It may reemerge a short while later, only to appear to go away again. It may also come back as a chronic, non-contagious medical condition. This means there are two distinct groups of people with syphilis - those who are infectious but may recover spontaneously, and those who aren't infectious but won't get better without treatment. Blood tests for syphilis in either group of people will be positive. Syphilis used to be a leading cause of death and disability. It is believed that it was introduced into Europe from the Americas by the early Spanish explorers. It spread throughout Europe and became a condition associated with sex, and since Venus was considered the "goddess of love," it became known as venereal disease (VD - venereal is an adjective formed from Venus). There was no treatment for syphilis until 1945, when penicillin was developed. This medical condition is much rarer today due to the widespread use of antibiotics. As of 2009 (the latest statistics available), Canada has an infectious syphilis rate of 5 per 100,000 people. In Canada, the number of syphilis cases is increasing among both men and women, but moreso among males.
October 20, 2015 Diseases of the respiratory system
Tonsillitis is an infection of the tonsils that causes inflammation. It's most common in children aged 3 to 7, who have larger tonsils than adults and older children. The tonsils are made of lymphatic tissue. Their job is to produce antibodies that fight infection. Ironically, such tissue is quite prone to becoming infected itself. Tonsillitis can be caused by viral or bacterial infections. Many cases of tonsillitis never reach the doctor's office. However, it is estimated that 15% of all visits to family doctors are because of tonsillitis. Tonsillectomy (tonsil removal) has always been the most common childhood operation, but it is considered a last resort for tonsillitis these days.
Travel Immunization
Immunizations are among the most important and effective ways to prevent travel-related infections. Immunizations for travel include: the routine childhood or adult immunizations that you would receive in Canada those that are required to cross certain international borders (e.g., yellow fever) recommended immunizations according to risk of infection The Canadian government maintains a website with current information for travellers at www.travelhealth.gc.ca, and the US government has an excellent travel health site at www.cdc.gov/travel. For Canadians who travel abroad, there is a small but very real risk of requiring emergency medical treatment in a foreign country. Very few travellers die of serious illness. The most common illness to strike Canadian tourists in developing countries is travellers' diarrhea (TD). This is also known as Montezuma's revenge, turista (in Mexico), or Delhi belly (in India). It is an acute diarrheal illness that usually lasts two or three days. It can be caused by any of a number of bacteria (and, less often, parasites), which are usually different from home-based varieties and therefore pose a temporary challenge to the immune system. There is no vaccination against all organisms that can cause travellers' diarrhea. There is an oral vaccine against cholera and a specific strain of E. coli bacteria that is sometimes recommended. TD can often be prevented or self-treated with medications. It is very important to check with a health care professional or travel clinic before travelling in order to obtain advice and medication for self-treatment. Tourists may be at risk for the following serious infectious diseases, all of which are preventable by vaccine: cholera European tick-borne encephalitis hepatitis A and B influenza Japanese encephalitis meningitis rabies typhoid yellow fever Diseases like measles, mumps, German measles (rubella), tetanus, polio, pertussis (whooping cough), diphtheria, Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), and chickenpox can occur in developing countries as well as in Canada. However, while abroad, Canadians rarely acquire these diseases because we are immunized against them by routine childhood vaccinations (or, in the case of chickenpox, some have had the disease already, which provides immunity against future infection). The chance of being exposed to infections abroad depends entirely on the style, location, and duration of travel. A 2-week stay in a downtown 5-star hotel is much less likely to result in disease than a 6-month backpacking trip through the countryside. The one activity that will enormously increase the risk of acquiring a serious disease is unprotected sexual contact with a new partner, which brings a high risk of hepatitis B and HIV (AIDS), as well as other sexually transmitted infections (e.g., chlamydia, gonorrhea, genital herpes). Globally, the infectious diseases that kill the most people, particularly those living in developing countries, are respiratory diseases (including influenza and pneumonia), AIDS, infections causing diarrhea, tuberculosis, malaria, and measles. Hepatitis infrequently kills during its acute phase, but chronic liver problems caused by this disease are another major cause of death worldwide. Travel vaccines to consider Vaccinations are available against hepatitis A and B. Hepatitis A and B are viral infections that attack the liver. The vaccines can be given separately or as one combined vaccine. Depending on the vaccine given, the vaccine may last a lifetime or may need a booster shot in 10 to 15 years. Canadians should have already been vaccinated against measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), pertussis, and polio as part of their routine immunization schedule. A booster shot may be required for some of these, especially the diphtheria-tetanus (DT) shot (one DT shot covers both diseases), since it provides protection for 10 years. Talk to your doctor or travel clinic to see if you'll need a booster shot. Flu viruses and flu vaccines vary in different parts of the world, and change every year, but the Canadian vaccine is usually a fairly typical one, and will offer a lot of protection against catching flu on most airline routes. Airplanes are extremely infectious places for respiratory diseases because, to a variable extent, the same air is continually recirculated. The flu vaccine needs to be injected every year, in the late autumn, to get full protection. Influenza is transmitted during the cold seasons in both the northern and southern hemispheres, and year-round at the equator. Typhoid vaccine is likely to be needed by travellers to any country with under-developed water treatment systems and sanitation, particularly when travel is off tourist routes or involves budget accommodations. Those at highest risk are new Canadians returning to their homeland to visit friends and relatives. Typhoid vaccine lasts about 7 years. Yellow fever vaccine, which lasts about 10 years, is recommended when travelling to large areas of Africa and South America. In addition, according to the World Health Organization, it is one of the only vaccines required by health officials to cross international borders of certain countries. Many countries in Central Africa and South America require yellow fever vaccination certificates for any entry, and other countries demand them from people who have been in yellow fever zones. Yellow fever has a high mortality rate among those who acquire the infection. Meningococcal (bacterial) meningitis vaccine is recommended for sub-Saharan Africa. This very dangerous disease is contagious (it is passed between people by cough or sneeze). Normally, one doesn't need to be vaccinated if staying in a good hotel, but one might consider it if planning on living more closely among the local population in sub-Saharan Africa (especially during the dry season [winter]). Those going to Mecca in Saudia Arabia require the vaccine for entry. Travellers should talk with a travel health professional to determine their individual risk. Japanese encephalitis, like malaria and yellow fever, is transmitted by a mosquito bite - in this case, by an evening-biting mosquito found only in rural areas of South and Southeast Asia. This virus causes symptoms similar to meningitis and is sometimes fatal or leaves victims with severe neurological effects. It is widespread in East Asia, especially around late summer, and vaccination against it is recommended for anyone planning to spend more than a month in affected areas. Contact a travel health clinic to determine your specific needs. The vaccine is protective for about 3 years. European tick-borne encephalitis is caused by a virus carried by ticks and has symptoms that are similar to the Japanese version, but often more severe. Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union is the homeland of this disease, but it can be found in other parts of Europe in the summer months. One should be vaccinated if planning a long stay during summer months. Measures to prevent tick bites will also help to reduce the risk of this serious viral disease. Contact a travel health clinic to determine your specific needs. Rabies is a uniformly fatal disease of the brain and central nervous system transmitted mostly by animal bites (particularly dog bites) throughout the world, including North America. There is a safe and very effective rabies vaccine that can be used to prevent rabies. Even with the vaccine, 2 additional doses are required in the event of an animal bite, whether provoked or not. Without the preventative vaccine, in the event of a potential exposure, 5 doses of vaccine and one of rabies immune globulin will be required. Unfortunately, rabies immune globulin is often not available in the developing world, putting the exposed person at serious risk. The vaccine is recommended for long-stay travellers, especially children who often relate to small animals with affection and engage them in activity. E. coli vaccine, an oral (taken by mouth) immunization that is also effective against cholera, provides protection for three months against the ETEC strain of E. coli, the most frequent cause of travellers' diarrhea. However, since E. coli is responsible for less than half of the cases of travellers' diarrhea, carrying an antibiotic regimen for self-treatment of travellers' diarrhea and observing preventative measures against travellers' diarrhea is still important. Malaria prevention requires a combination of antimalarial pills and personal protection measures against insect bites. Unfortunately, we do not yet have a malaria vaccine, but there are several antimalarial medications recommended for the prevention of malaria. Depending on the medication, malaria prophylactic medications should be taken for several weeks or even the day before exposure, during the travel period, and for 1 to 4 weeks after returning home. Since no antimalarial pill is 100% effective, measures must be taken to prevent infection from the night-biting mosquito that transmits malaria. Using DEET-containing insect repellents, permethrin-impregnated bed nets, and air-conditioned or screened accommodation, and wearing trousers and long-sleeved shirts after dark will reduce the risk of this potentially fatal infection. Before you go Travellers should visit their doctor or a travel clinic at least 2 months before departure. This will give time for the vaccines to take effect. All travel clinics have up-to-date information on which shots are required and recommended for various destinations as well as information on the most up-to-date medications used to prevent malaria. Make sure to tell your health care professional about any pre-existing medical conditions or the possibility of pregnancy at the time of the visit or during travel. After you return If you fall ill in the year after returning home from travels, particularly within the first 2 months, it is important that you tell your doctor that you have been abroad. Canadian family doctors are accustomed to looking for diseases common in Canada. They are very unlikely to test you for malaria, for example, unless they know that you have been in a malarial zone. If you have been in very underdeveloped areas for a long time, you should also consider getting screened for tuberculosis even if you have no symptoms. If this disease is caught early during the latent phase, treatment is likely to be easier.
Diabetes is a condition of elevated blood sugars in which the body does not make enough insulin and/or the insulin being made cannot be used properly by the body. The body's main fuel is a form of sugar called glucose, which comes from food (after it's been broken down). Glucose enters the blood and is used by cells for energy. To use glucose, the body needs a hormone called insulin, which is made by the pancreas. Insulin is important because it allows glucose to leave the blood and enter the body's cells. Diabetes develops when your body can't make any or enough insulin, or when it can't properly use the insulin it makes. There are two main types of diabetes: type 1 and type 2. Type 1 diabetes develops when your body makes little or no insulin. When this happens, glucose can't get into the cells for energy and remains in the blood, causing hyperglycemia (high blood sugar). Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune condition. Most people develop type 1 diabetes before the age of 30, but it can also occur in older adults. In North America, 5% to 10% of people with diabetes have type 1 diabetes. It occurs equally among women and men.
January 30, 2015 Endocrine, nutritional and metabolic diseases
Diabetes is a condition in which the body cannot properly store and use fuel for energy. The body's main fuel is a form of sugar called glucose, which comes from food (after it has been broken down). Glucose enters the blood and is used by cells for energy. To use glucose, the body needs a hormone called insulin that's made by the pancreas. Insulin is important because it allows glucose to leave the blood and enter the body's cells. Diabetes develops when the body can't make any or enough insulin, and/or when it can't properly use the insulin it makes. For some people with diabetes, the body becomes resistant to insulin. In these cases, insulin is still produced, but the body does not respond to the effects of insulin as it should. This is called insulin resistance. Whether from not enough insulin or the inability to use insulin properly, the result is high levels of glucose in the blood, or hyperglycemia. There are two main types of diabetes: type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes. About 90% of people with diabetes have type 2 diabetes, which used to be called adult onset diabetes. However, more and more children are being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes due to the rise in obesity. Some people do not have diabetes but also do not handle glucose as well as normal. This is called impaired glucose tolerance (IGT). Up to 40% of people with IGT will eventually develop type 2 diabetes.
May 03, 2017 Diseases of the circulatory system
Varicose veins are visible, protruding veins that appear just under the skin. The word "varicose" comes from the Latin root varix for "twisted." The veins may occur in clusters that look like spider webs. They may also be large, single veins that are easily visible. They're most often seen on people's legs, especially their calves, and are made up of stretched, expanded, or twisted veins. The blood flow in these veins has been slowed down or reversed. Between 10% and 20% of the population has some form of varicose veins. They appear between the ages of 30 and 70, and they usually get worse with age. Varicose veins occur 2 to 3 times more often in women than in men. It is estimated that 50% of people with varicose veins have a family history of the condition.
Although it's considered a vaccine-preventable disease, whooping cough (pertussis) certainly hasn't been eliminated as a public health problem. The incidence of whooping cough has decreased by more than 90% over the last 50 years, but there are still outbreaks. While most other diseases that are vaccinated against in childhood are decreasing in frequency, cases of whooping cough have actually increased since 1990. This is likely due to the lower effectiveness of older vaccines (due to the emergence of new strains of the bacteria that causes the disease), decreased protection from the disease (immunity) in adults and adolescents as the effect of the vaccine wears off, and increased reporting of whooping cough by doctors. Between 1,000 and 3,000 people each year get sick from pertussis. In Canada, 1 to 4 Canadians die each year from whooping cough. In unvaccinated populations, most cases occur in children under 5, especially in babies less than 6 months old. Because the effects of the vaccination wear off, adults are also susceptible to the disease.
Alzheimer's disease has a major impact on the health of Canadians. About 560,000 Canadians suffer from some type of dementia (mental deterioration), and more than 60% of these have Alzheimer's disease. The Alzheimer's Society of Canada estimates that the annual cost to Canadians to care for those living with dementia is over $10 billion. There will be over 1 million Canadians living with dementia by the year 2038, largely because the "baby boom" generation (people born between 1946 and 1960) will have reached old age. The risk of developing Alzheimer's disease doubles every 5 years after the age of 65. Exactly how and why Alzheimer's disease develops is still not understood. Somehow, cells are damaged and eventually die in different areas of the brain. The damaged areas of the brain contain abnormalities called beta amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary (or tau) tangles. The death of brain cells leads to dementia, characterized by memory loss, impaired judgment, and behavioural changes. Eventually, the person loses their speech as well as their bladder and bowel control. People with Alzheimer's typically die of infections such as pneumonia or other medical problems. Most people live for about 8 to 10 years after diagnosis, but some have lived for up to 20 years. Each case of Alzheimer's usually affects at least two lives: the person with the condition, and the patient's spouse or child who gradually becomes a full-time caregiver as the disease progresses. Caring for an individual with Alzheimer's can be demanding and stressful. Many caregivers must eventually face the difficult decision of placing their loved one in institutional care.
Chronic bronchitis and emphysema are together called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. This is a chronic condition, usually attributed to tobacco smoking, causing shortness of breath and cough, leading to limitation of everyday activities like walking. In chronic bronchitis, the airways (or bronchi) that connect the windpipe and the lungs become inflamed and swollen. The airways become narrow and are clogged up with thick mucus, called phlegm. Chronic bronchitis may be found together with emphysema, in which the air sacs in the lung become damaged, reducing the surface area where oxygen exchange takes place. Both diseases make it difficult to breathe. COPD is a very common condition, especially among people who smoke tobacco. It is estimated 2.6 million Canadians have COPD, although many are undiagnosed. COPD is the fourth leading cause of death in Canada.
It is estimated that about three-quarters of the population drink alcohol. Of this number, about 4 to 5 million Canadians will find that their alcohol consumption leads to serious problems involving their health, work, finances, and relationships with family and friends. When a person uses alcohol despite apparent harm to their health and well-being, it is called alcohol abuse (or dependence), or alcoholism. In general, men are more likely than women to develop alcoholism. However, the incidence of alcoholism among women has increased in the past 30 years.
Allergic rhinitis, also called hay fever or pollinosis, literally means "allergic nose inflammation," where rhino means "to do with the nose" and the ending -itis simply refers to inflammation. Allergic rhinitis can either be intermittent or persistent. In many people with intermittent allergic rhinitis, an allergen – something that triggers an allergy – sets their symptoms off at about the same time each year. Spring attacks are usually due to tree pollen, while grass pollens dominate in the summer and weed pollens in the autumn. Most people with allergic rhinitis are sensitive to more than one allergen. Persistent allergic rhinitis is defined as having symptoms more than 4 days a week or for more than 4 weeks a year. This condition is most common in people with allergies to allergens that are present all year. Naturally, people who are allergic to house dust mites or to their own pets tend to suffer year-round. Allergic rhinitis affects about 20% of Canadians.
December 03, 2014 Diseases of the respiratory system
Bronchitis is an inflammation of the airways between the windpipe and the lungs (bronchial tubes). The lining of these tubes produces large amounts of mucus, triggering a lingering cough. About 1 in 20 people in North America suffers from chronic bronchitis. Women are more at risk than men.
Congestive heart failure (CHF) occurs when the heart isn't able to pump blood normally. As a result, there is not enough blood flow to provide the body's organs with oxygen and nutrients. The term "heart failure" does not mean that the heart stops beating completely, but that the heart is not working as efficiently. CHF affects over 6 million people in North America and is one of the most common causes of hospitalization for people over 65 years of age. Approximately half a million Canadians are living with congestive heart failure. Men are slightly more at risk than women. People of African descent are considerably more at risk than those of European descent and also have a higher risk of death. There are two basic problems in congestive heart failure: systolic dysfunction occurs when the heart can't pump enough blood to supply all the body's needs diastolic dysfunction occurs when the heart cannot accept all the blood being sent to it Many people have both systolic and diastolic heart failure.
Dysmenorrhea can be literally translated as "difficult monthly flow." Although it's normal for most women to have mild abdominal cramps on the first day or two of their period, about 10% of women experience severe pain. There are two types of dysmenorrhea: Primary dysmenorrhea is menstrual pain that's not a symptom of an underlying gynecologic disorder but is related to the normal process of menstruation. Primary dysmenorrhea is the most common type of dysmenorrhea, affecting more than 50% of women, and quite severe in about 10%. Primary dysmenorrhea is most common in late adolescence and the early 20s. Fortunately for many women, the problem eases as they mature, particularly after a pregnancy. Although it may be painful and sometimes debilitating for brief periods of time, it is not harmful. Secondary dysmenorrhea is menstrual pain that is generally related to some kind of gynecologic disorder. Most of these disorders can be easily treated with medications or surgery. Secondary dysmenorrhea is more likely to affect women during adulthood.
January 13, 2015 Diseases of the genitourinary system
Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) is a condition familiar to many women. Also known as ovarian cycle syndrome or premenstrual tension, it's defined as a set of symptoms (e.g., moodiness, bloating, breast tenderness) that comes on a few days before the start of a menstrual period. Unfortunately, PMS is poorly understood. Different women will experience different PMS symptoms, and not every woman experiences PMS. For some women, PMS may cause major discomfort and even disrupt normal activities. Some are totally unaffected and feel perfectly fine during the days leading up to menstruation. Other women may have a more severe form of PMS called premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). Women with this form of PMS may suffer severe depression, anger, or low self-esteem along with other symptoms.
Shingles are caused by varicella-zoster, the same virus that causes chickenpox. If you've ever had chickenpox (typically during childhood), this virus is quietly hiding out in the roots of your nerves. It can reactivate and cause a painful skin rash. This is known as shingles or herpes zoster. Not everyone who has had chickenpox will develop a case of shingles. Approximately 1 in 3 North Americans develop shingles at some point in their life. Most people who get shingles are 50 years of age or older, but it can happen at any age.
Tourette syndrome (TS), named after the French neurologist who first described it, is a neurological disorder characterized by motor tics (brief, non-rhythmic, stereotyped movements) and vocal tics. TS is usually first noticed in childhood between 2 and 15 years of age, although there have been cases of delayed onset (starting around 21 years of age). Depending on how strictly it's defined, experts estimate that TS affects 1 in 100 people. Boys are 4 times more likely to be diagnosed with this condition than girls. Although there is no cure for TS, most people do not need medical treatment if symptoms aren't bothersome. Severe cases of TS can cause behaviour that many people find bizarre, rude, or alarming. Many people who have heard of this condition associate it with loud and uncontrollable swearing. This is one possible symptom of TS, but it's a fairly rare one. Most people with TS have much less severe tics. People with TS may also have other associated behaviours or symptoms, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). About half of the people who have TS also have OCD or ADHD. Women are more likely to have OCD together with TS, and men are more likely to have ADHD together with TS. ADHD tends to appear 2 to 3 years before TS, but OCD tends to appear 5 to 6 years after a diagnosis of TS. Not everyone with TS has these conditions and the link between TS and these conditions is unclear. The severity of tics often diminishes with age and resolves by age 18 for about half of the people with this condition. Though symptoms of TS usually improve during late teenage years, other medical conditions associated with TS, such as depression and anxiety, may continue into adulthood. People with TS have a normal life expectancy and intelligence.
Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the most common infections in the world. About 2 billion people are infected with TB and nearly 3 million people are killed by it each year. In Canada, there are about 1,600 new cases of TB every year. The bacterium that causes TB is called Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Someone can become infected and yet not have any symptoms of the active disease – this is called inactive TB. For someone with a healthy immune system, there's only a 10% lifetime chance of the TB bacteria reactivating and causing the active symptoms of TB. If the immune system has been weakened because of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) or other illnesses, the risk of moving from an inactive infection to an active symptomatic disease increases to 10% per year. Babies, preschool children, and seniors are also at greater risk of reactivation due to weaker immune systems.
Typhoid, also known as typhoid fever or enteric fever, is an infection caused by the bacteria Salmonella typhi. Across the world, millions of people are infected annually by typhoid, and about 200,000 of them die. The number of people infected with typhoid each year is very low in North America and the industrialized world, but typhoid is common in developing countries. Typhoid is usually curable, but some bacterial strains are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics. Most people with typhoid in North America acquire it while travelling to developing areas of the world. If untreated, about 10% to 16% of people with typhoid will die. This drops to less than 1% when people are treated promptly.
July 04, 2015 Diseases of the genitourinary system
The urinary tract includes the kidneys, bladder, ureters, and urethra. Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are far more common in women than men. Urinary tract infections have different names depending on which part of the urinary tract is infected. infection of the bladder is cystitis infection of the urethra is urethritis infection of the kidney is pyelonephritis Among newborns, UTIs are more common in boys, but by one year of age, they are ten times more likely to occur in girls. The rate of infection is higher for sexually active women – between 16 and 35 years old – than for men. As many as 50% to 60% of North American women have had at least one UTI in their lifetime. Among seniors, the gender difference in infection rates diminishes, but rates of infection in seniors living at home or in care facilities or hospitals remains high.
The vagina has its own chemical balance, which can be easily disturbed. If the lining of the vagina becomes inflamed, a condition known as vaginitis may develop. This can occur in girls and women of all ages.
Agoraphobia, meaning "fear of the marketplace" in Greek, is a type of anxiety disorder. It's a condition where a person feels intensely anxious about being trapped in certain situations (i.e., public places or places where crowds gather) from which they can't easily escape or get help if they were to panic. Movie theatres, long lineups in banks or stores, and buses or subways are examples of problem places for people with agoraphobia. They often end up avoiding these situations or only go with someone they feel "safe" with. In extreme cases, they may end up housebound, terrified to go anywhere in public. Agoraphobia affects more women than men and is more common in those who are middle aged, widowed or divorced and economically disadvantaged. It affects 7% of women and 4% of men. It disproportionally affects people with panic disorder – half of people with panic disorder also have agoraphobia.
An aneurysm is a weak point in a blood vessel wall, most commonly in an artery. Blood pressure tends to push the weakened section of an arterial wall outward, forming a balloon-like projection. This condition by itself isn't especially harmful, but the artery is prone to rupture. A ruptured aneurysm breaks the artery and allows uncontrolled bleeding to occur, which can be fatal. Aneurysms can form in different places. The most common type of aneurysm is an abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA). The aorta is the body's largest artery, carrying blood from the heart to every organ except the lungs. It leaves the heart flowing upwards in the chest, makes a U-bend, and flows down the spine from the chest to the abdomen. Several branches leave the aorta in the abdomen, going to the kidneys, liver, and intestines. These branch points are prime sites for aneurysms. Other locations for aneurysms are: the bottom of the brain – the most common type of cerebral (brain) aneurysm is called a berry aneurysm the chest – a thoracic aortic aneurysm the most common type of thoracic aneurysm is the aneurysm of the ascending aorta (between the heart and the U-bend) Aneurysms tend to occur in older Caucasian men; women are less at risk. By age 80, over 5% of Caucasian men have developed an aneurysm. People of African descent rarely develop aneurysms. Abdominal aortic aneurysms occur in 2% to 13% of men 65 and older and in approximately 6% of women 65 and older. These numbers gradually increase with age. They rarely occur in people under age 60. As many as 80% of people who experience a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm die from it before reaching the hospital.
We all experience a variety of moods such as happiness, sadness, and anger. Unpleasant moods and changes in mood are normal reactions in everyday life, and we can often identify the events that caused our mood to change. However, when we experience extreme mood changes that affect how we behave and function, these changes are often the result of a mood disorder. Bipolar disorder (formerly known as manic-depressive disorder) is a mood disorder that consists of periods of extremely elevated mood (mania), extremely low mood (depression), and normal mood. Bipolar disorder typically begins for people during adolescence and early adulthood. It is unusual for bipolar disorder to begin in childhood without strong familial risk factors, and it is rare for its onset to occur after the age of 60 (unless it is associated with another medical condition). Bipolar disorder occurs in about 1% of the adult population, and men and women are affected equally.
A cold – also called infectious rhinitis – is a very common viral infection of the nose and throat. Doctors call it a "self-limiting" condition, which means that it only lasts so long and goes away on its own. In most people, colds are relatively harmless, but they have important social and economic impact. It is estimated that 40% of time lost from work and 30% of school absences are due to the common cold. Cold symptoms normally improve within 1 week, although some may last longer, especially in children. There are over 200 different viruses responsible for causing colds. The most common type are the rhinoviruses, which cause about 40% of colds in adults. Colds occur most often from fall to early spring, when people tend to stay indoors – facilitating easy spread of these viruses.
Diabetes is a condition where people don't produce enough insulin to meet their body's needs and/or their cells don't respond properly to insulin. Insulin is important because it moves glucose, a simple sugar, into the body's cells from the blood. It also has a number of other effects on metabolism. The food that people eat provides the body with glucose, which is used by the cells as a source of energy. If insulin isn't available or doesn't work correctly to move glucose from the blood into cells, glucose will stay in the blood. High blood glucose levels are toxic, and cells that don't get glucose are lacking the fuel they need to function properly. There are two main kinds of diabetes: type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes. More than 90% of all people with diabetes have type 2. Overall, more than 3 million Canadians have diabetes, and the number is rapidly rising. Over a third of people with type 2 diabetes are unaware they have the disease and are not receiving the required treatment because, for many people, early symptoms are not noticeable without testing. Type 1 diabetes occurs when the pancreas cannot make insulin. Everyone with type 1 diabetes requires insulin injections. Most people are diagnosed with type 1 diabetes during their childhood or adolescent years. Type 1 diabetes occurs most commonly in people of northern European ancestry. Type 2 diabetes occurs when the pancreas does not make enough insulin or the body does not use insulin properly. It usually occurs in adults, although in some cases children may be affected. People with type 2 diabetes usually have a family history of this condition and 90% are overweight or obese. People with type 2 diabetes may eventually need insulin injections. This condition occurs most commonly in people of Indigenous and African descent, Hispanics, and Asians. Another less common form is gestational diabetes, a temporary condition that occurs during pregnancy. Depending on risk factors, between 3% to 13% of Canadian women will develop gestational diabetes which can be harmful for the baby if not controlled. The problem usually clears up after delivery, but women who have had gestational diabetes have a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes later in life. Prediabetes is a term used to describe blood sugar levels that are higher than normal, but not high enough to be classified as diabetes. Many people with prediabetes go on to develop diabetes.
Genital herpes is one of the most common sexually transmitted infections (STIs; these are also known by the older term sexually transmitted diseases or STDs) in North America and Europe, and the percentage of the population with this condition is growing around the world. It is a viral infection of the genitals that can also affect other parts of the body. There's no reporting system for herpes in Canada, but figures from the US suggest that genital herpes affects approximately 1 out of every 6 people. About 8 out of 10 infected people aren't even aware of their condition.
Hemorrhoids, also called "piles," are swollen tissues that contain veins. They are located in the wall of the rectum and anus and may cause minor bleeding or develop small blood clots. Hemorrhoids occur when the tissues enlarge, weaken, and come free of their supporting structure. This results in a sac-like bulge that extends into the anal area. Hemorrhoids are unique to humans – no other animal develops them. They are very common – up to 86% of people will report they have had hemorrhoids at some time in their life, though people often use this as a catch-all label for any ano-rectal problem including itching. They can occur at any age but are more common between the ages of 45 and 65. Among younger people, they are most common in women who are pregnant. Although they can be embarrassing to talk about, anyone can get hemorrhoids, even healthy young people in good shape. They can be painful and annoying but aren't usually serious. Hemorrhoids differ depending on their location and the amount of pain, discomfort, or aggravation they cause. Internal hemorrhoids are located up inside the rectum. They rarely cause any pain, as this tissue doesn't have any sensory nerves. These hemorrhoids are graded for severity according to how far and how often they protrude into the anal passage or protrude out of the anus (prolapse): Grade I is small without protrusion. Painless, minor bleeding occurs from time to time after a bowel movement. A grade II hemorrhoid may protrude during a bowel movement but returns spontaneously to its place afterwards. In grade III, the hemorrhoid must be put back in place manually. A grade IV hemorrhoid has prolapsed – it protrudes constantly and will fall out again if pushed back into the rectum. There may or may not be bleeding. Prolapsed hemorrhoids can be painful. External hemorrhoids develop under the skin just inside the opening of the anus. The hemorrhoids may swell and the area around it may become firm and sore, turning blue or purple in colour when they get thrombosed. A thrombosed hemorrhoid is one that has formed a clot inside. This clot is not dangerous and will not spread through the body, but does cause pain and should be drained. External hemorrhoids may itch and can be very painful, especially during a bowel movement. They can also prolapse.
Infertility is usually defined as the inability to become pregnant after one year of vaginal intercourse without birth control. Infertility affects about 10% of couples in their reproductive age. Approximately one-third of infertility cases can be attributed to a fertility issue with the woman; one-third with the man; and one-third with either both partners or the cause of the infertility is never found. People shouldn't assume that they or their partners are infertile until they've tried and failed to conceive for at least 6 months if the female partner is 35 years or older, or for at least one year if the female partner is less than 35 years of age. If you are still unable to get pregnant after this time, check with your doctor. Fortunately, it's not uncommon for couples to suddenly conceive a child after years of trying unsuccessfully without treatment.
The kidneys, each about the size of a fist, play three major roles: removing waste products from the body, keeping toxins from building up in the bloodstream producing hormones that control other body functions, such as regulating blood pressure and producing red blood cells regulating the levels of minerals or electrolytes (e.g., sodium, calcium, and potassium) and fluid in the body After the blood has circulated through the body, it passes into the kidneys. The kidneys filter waste products and excess salt and water out of the blood, and pass these out of the body as urine. The kidneys also make hormones that control blood pressure, as well as maintain bone metabolism and the production of red blood cells. It's a serious problem when the kidneys stop working. Waste products that build up in the body cause imbalances in chemicals needed to keep the body functioning smoothly. There are many different types of kidney diseases. Kidney diseases can lead to end-stage renal disease (ESRD), a condition in which the kidneys fail to work normally. People with kidney failure need to receive dialysis or a kidney transplant.
Rubella, also known as German measles or "three-day measles," is a contagious viral infection that brings on a rash as well as other symptoms. But many children have such mild symptoms that they're unaware of being infected. It's milder than measles and doesn't last as long. Rubella is a significant health risk for pregnant women. If a pregnant woman is infected with rubella, especially in the first trimester (1 to 3 months), she may miscarry or the fetus may suffer severe birth defects. After a bout with rubella, a person has lifelong immunity. The disease used to be common, with epidemics sweeping across North America every 6 to 9 years. Major epidemics occurred at a frequency of every 30 years, with the last one recorded in 1964, affecting over 12 million people in the US. The virus was first isolated in the laboratory in 1962 and a vaccine was made available in 1969. Since then, the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine has cut the frequency of the disease dramatically in countries that include the vaccine in their immunization programs.
Thyroid Diseases
October 07, 2014 Endocrine, nutritional and metabolic diseases
The thyroid is a small gland located below the Adam's apple in your neck. It releases hormones, thyroxine (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3), which increase the amount of oxygen your body uses and stimulate your cells to produce new proteins. By controlling the release of these hormones, the thyroid determines the metabolic rate of most of your body's organs. The thyroid gland is regulated by thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), which is made by the pituitary gland in the brain. Normally, when thyroid hormone levels in the body are high, they will "switch off" the production of TSH, which in turn stops the thyroid from making more T4 and T3. Problems occur when the thyroid gland becomes either underactive (hypothyroidism) or overactive (hyperthyroidism). Thyroid problems are more common in women than men. Cancer may also develop in the thyroid gland.
Bones need calcium and phosphorus to remain healthy and strong, but the body also needs vitamin D to be able to absorb these two minerals. Without this necessary vitamin, bones can become soft and flexible. This softening is called osteomalacia, or rickets when diagnosed in children. The condition is called osteomalacia when the bone softening occurs after the growth plates have closed. Rickets was a common childhood illness in North America until the 1940s, when it was discovered that vitamin D, readily available from sunlight (which produces vitamin D in the body) and vitamin D-enriched milk, prevented this condition. Although we haven't seen many cases of rickets in North America over the past 60 years, this condition is beginning to reappear, particularly among exclusively breast-fed babies. Rickets is still a major childhood problem in poorer, colder countries where babies are kept mainly inside the home and foods rich in vitamin D are not readily available. Osteomalacia is a disease of bone formation. It is important to differentiate it from osteoporosis, which is a disease of bone that is already formed.
Chronic renal failure, or chronic kidney disease (CKD), is a slow and progressive decline of kidney function. It’s usually a result of a complication from another serious medical condition. Unlike acute renal failure, which happens quickly and suddenly, chronic renal failure happens gradually – over a period of weeks, months, or years – as the kidneys slowly stop working, leading to end-stage renal disease (ESRD). The progression is so slow that symptoms usually don't appear until major damage is done. In the United States, approximately 1 in 1,000 people are getting treated for ESRD, and greater than 19 million adults are living with some type of CKD. In Canada, approximately 1.3 to 2.9 million people suffer from CKD. The kidneys play three major roles: removing waste products from the body, keeping toxins from building up in the bloodstream producing hormones that control other body functions, such as regulating blood pressure and producing red blood cells regulating the levels of minerals or electrolytes (e.g., sodium, calcium, and potassium) and fluid in the body The two kidneys in our body possess tiny filtering units, called nephrons, each of which is made up of a glomerulus (which acts as a kind of sieve to prevent important components such as red blood cells from being removed), and a tubule (a tube through which fluid passes). It's entirely possible to live a full, healthy life with only one kidney – one fully functioning kidney can do the work of two – but it's essential to watch for signs of any problems with the remaining kidney. When kidneys get to the point where they can't function at all, kidney dialysis or a transplant is the only way to remove the body's waste products.
Glomerulonephritis is a progressive kidney disease that involves the glomeruli, the individual filtering units of the kidney that produce urine. When the glomeruli become inflamed, the kidneys can't filter urine properly. This results in a buildup of excess fluid and toxins in the body. Glomerulonephritis can lead to chronic renal (kidney) failure. There are two main types of glomerulonephritis: primary and secondary. Primary glomerulonephritis affects the kidneys directly, while in secondary glomerulonephritis the kidneys are damaged as a result of another illness. Glomerulonephritis seems to happen twice as often in males as in females.
IgA Nephropathy
April 10, 2015 Diseases of the genitourinary system
IgA nephropathy, also called Berger's disease, is a kidney disorder that causes inflammation of the glomeruli, the individual filtering units of the kidney that produce urine. The inflammation is produced by a buildup of a substance called immunoglobulin A (IgA) in the kidneys. IgA is a type of antibody manufactured by the immune system. When the body is unable to filter the urine, it can't excrete body wastes or eliminate excess fluid from the bloodstream. IgA nephropathy leads to renal (kidney) failure and other related complications. It may be acute (attacking quickly and suddenly) or chronic. IgA nephropathy often strikes in the teen or early adult years. It affects more males than females.
Renovascular Disease
Renovascular disease is a progressive condition that causes narrowing or blockage of the renal arteries or veins. These are the blood vessels that take blood to and from the kidneys. It's the general term used for three disorders: renal artery occlusion, renal vein thrombosis, and renal atheroembolism. The term is most often used to describe diseases affecting the renal arteries since blockage of the renal vein is not very common. Renovascular disease usually affects the elderly. However, young women in their teens to late 30s are at risk of a certain type of renovascular disease called fibromuscular dysplasia, a disorder of the muscular lining of the renal arteries that can cause severe high blood pressure. Renal artery occlusion happens when one or both of the renal arteries are blocked. The arteries carry blood to the kidneys, where waste material is filtered out of the blood. Renal vein thrombosis occurs when the veins leaving the kidneys (the renal veins) become blocked. The renal veins carry the filtered blood away from the kidneys to the rest of the body. Renal atheroembolism results from a buildup of fatty material that blocks the renal arterioles (the smallest section of blood vessels leading to the capillaries). Cholesterol and lipids (fats) may also build up on the lining of the blood vessels, causing them to narrow.
May 03, 2017 Endocrine, nutritional and metabolic diseases
Carcinoid syndrome is a pattern of symptoms that occurs in people who have carcinoid tumours. The symptoms are caused by hormones and chemicals produced by the carcinoid tumour and, in many cases, these symptoms are actually worse than the effects of the growth of the tumour itself. Carcinoid tumours were first identified in Europe in the mid-1800s as a specific, distinct type of growth. The name carcinoid was first used in 1907 to classify them as a type of tumour that fit midway between malignant (cancerous) tumours and ones that were benign (non-malignant). Carcinoid tumours can be widely distributed throughout the body, but are usually found in the digestive system (50% of cases) or lung (30% of cases). In children, carcinoid tumours are usually found in the appendix. Once the appendix is removed, the cancer is usually cured. Carcinoid tumours produce too much of certain chemicals and hormones and this can cause reactions in the body. One common chemical produced by carcinoid tumours is a hormone called serotonin. This hormone makes the blood vessels dilate (widen) and causes increased blood clotting, intestinal secretions, and motility (causing diarrhea). Carcinoid tumours are rare, with 1 to 2 cases in every 100,000 people. It makes up less than 1% of all cancers.
Hemochromatosis is primarily an inherited (genetic) condition that allows too much iron to be absorbed and stored throughout the body. It's one of the most common genetic disorders in Canada. 1 in 9 Canadians carries the defective gene for this condition, and 1 in 300 Canadians is affected with the condition. Men and women are equally affected, although signs appear later in women. Most people absorb only enough iron to meet their body's daily requirements, and the excess is excreted. In hemochromatosis, however, iron continues to be absorbed and stored in different organs and tissues long after the body's needs are met. The liver is the first organ to store excess iron, after which it accumulates in the heart, pituitary gland, and elsewhere in the body. Left untreated, the resulting damage to the liver, heart, and pancreas may eventually lead to death. In hemochromatosis, the total iron content in the body can reach as high as 50 g, compared with the normal levels of about 2.5 g in women and 3.5 g in men. It's been nicknamed "bronze diabetes" because it may be accompanied by diabetes mellitus and increased skin pigmentation (darkening of the skin). Because women lose iron in their menstrual flow, they tend to be protected from getting hemochromatosis as long as they are having menstrual cycles. Thus it affects men earlier than women, usually when men are between 40 and 60 years of age. Rare cases have occurred in children.
Cyclothymic disorder, also called cyclothymia, is a type of mood disorder where people experience numerous periods of mood "highs" and "lows" that are unrelated to life circumstances. The mood instability - mild elation or mild depression - is related to bipolar disorder (which was formerly known as manic depression) and is in fact considered to be a milder form of bipolar disorder. Though less severe, cyclothymia can have great impact on a person's life, where unexpected and extreme mood changes disrupt the ability to function normally. Both men and women are equally likely to suffer from cyclothymia, affecting up to 1% of the population. Cyclothymic disorder generally starts appearing during young adulthood, though it may also first occur at a later age.
Dysthymia is a mood or affective disorder. It is a chronic, mild depression that lasts for a long period of time. The word dysthymia comes from Greek roots meaning "ill-humour." Dysthymic disorder has less of the mental and physical symptoms that a person with major depressive disorder experiences. The condition usually starts in early adulthood, and the disorder can last for years or even decades. Later onset is usually associated with bereavement or obvious stress, and often follows on the heels of a more extreme depressive episode. Women are twice as likely as men to suffer from dysthymia, in a similar ratio to that seen with major depression. In the past, dysthymia had several other names: depressive neurosis, neurotic depression, depressive personality disorder, and persistent anxiety depression.
Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) is a cancer caused by infection with human herpesvirus 8 (HHV8). It causes purple, brown, or bluish-red tumours that look like sores on the skin. It may also affect the internal organs and the mucous membranes lining the mouth, nose, and anus. Before AIDS became widespread, Kaposi's sarcoma was uncommon and usually only found in elderly men, usually of Italian, Jewish, or African descent. It was also infrequently found in people who had received organ transplants and were taking immunotherapy to avoid organ rejection. As AIDS became more widespread, KS became the most common cancer found in people with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), occurring as a complication of late AIDS. In people with AIDS, the tumour grows and spreads more quickly than in elderly men without AIDS. As HIV infection has now become better controlled, KS is once again becoming an infrequent condition.
Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is a chronic, potentially disabling anxiety disorder. This condition is characterized by persistent, unwanted thoughts (obsessions) or certain behaviours that are repetitive and unnecessary but are extremely difficult to overcome (compulsions). People with OCD often feel powerless, distressed, and anxious because of the condition. Generally, the obsessive rituals are performed privately because affected people believe others may not understand their feelings and behaviour. People with OCD also realize that their actions have no real purpose but still feel unable to stop. OCD affects up to 3% of the population and occurs in all ethnic groups. It affects men and women equally. It is sometimes confused with other anxiety disorders but, in reality, the condition is an illness that requires treatment.
Phobias are fears sparked by certain situations that can interfere with a person's coping abilities or lead them to stay away altogether. These situations are not normally dangerous or frightening, but people with phobias experience strong feelings of anxiety when they find themselves in these environments. 1 in 10 people will experience phobias at some point in their lives. These individuals can be calm and rational most of the time, yet find themselves paralyzed with fear when they are faced with a particular situation. Phobias can be categorized into a number of different types: Social phobia is an avoidance of social situations, resulting from extreme shyness or fear of being embarrassed in public. Social phobia affects men and women equally. It often starts in childhood or adolescence and may be accompanied by other anxiety disorders or depression. Agoraphobia is the fear of going into public places, including fear of open spaces and of crowds. Agoraphobia affects mostly women, who tend to develop the condition early in adult life. Specific (isolated) phobias include many types of intense fear reactions. These include: fear of animals (e.g., spiders [arachnophobia] or snakes [ophidiophobia]) environmental fears (e.g., of heights [acrophobia], or water [aquaphobia ]) situational fear (e.g., of enclosed spaces or elevators [claustrophobia]) fear of injury (of potentially dangerous situations - real or imagined, such as fear of flying [aviophobia]) other phobias (e.g., fear of loud noises) Twice as many women are affected as men, and tend to develop their fears in childhood or early adolescence, with the phobias persisting into adulthood.
Anthrax is an infection that is caused by the bacteria Bacillus anthracis. These bacteria form spores that are hard-shelled, dormant versions of the bacteria. Spores are the form of the bacteria that cause infection. They can survive in the soil for many decades. Anthrax most commonly occurs in animals such as pigs, cattle, horses, and goats, but it can also infect people. Infections in people are caused by contact with the spores through a cut or scratch in the skin (known as cutaneous anthrax), by inhaling the spores (known as inhaled or pulmonary anthrax), or by eating meat that contains the spores (known as intestinal anthrax). In biological warfare, anthrax can be transmitted intentionally through the air or by contact with an object that has the bacteria on it. Anthrax cannot be passed from one person to another (i.e., it is not contagious). Symptoms of cutaneous anthrax appear almost immediately, up to one day after infection, whereas pulmonary anthrax symptoms usually appear 2 to 6 days after infection, but may take 6 weeks or longer to show up. Symptoms of intestinal anthrax appear in about 1 to 7 days.
Acute Exacerbations of Chronic Bronchitis
Chronic bronchitis belongs to a larger family of medical conditions known as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The term COPD is given to any condition that causes difficulty in breathing as a result of constant blocking of the airways. Bronchitis is identified by a cough, usually with some sputum production.The cough happens because the air tubes are permanently inflamed and secrete mucus. When cough and sputum have been present for more than 3 months in each of 2 consecutive years, the condition is called chronic bronchitis. In North America, about 1 person in 20 suffers from chronic bronchitis. Smoking for many years causes about 90% of chronic bronchitis cases, and the great majority of people with chronic bronchitis are over 45 years of age. The risk of chronic bronchitis is also increased in workers employed in certain occupations such as coal mining, welding, asbestos work, or grain handling. When breathing becomes more difficult for a person with chronic bronchitis, they may be experiencing an acute exacerbation of chronic bronchitis (AECB). During an acute exacerbation, breathing becomes more difficult because of further narrowing of the airways and secretion of large amounts of mucus that is often thicker than usual.
Smallpox was an infection that was caused by the virus called variola virus. For thousands of years, smallpox created severe illness and caused the death of hundreds of thousands of people. When it was introduced into the Americas from Europe in the 1500s, it killed many of the native populations. As late as the 1800s it was still causing the deaths of thousands when introduced into susceptible populations, such as in Hawaii, by European explorers. Fortunately, this virus was eliminated as a natural cause of disease in 1977 through effective use of vaccination programs. It is the only disease ever to be deliberately removed from the human population. It is thought, however, that this virus could be reintroduced as an agent of biological warfare. This is because the virus is very contagious (can be spread from person to person) and can cause serious illness, even death, if an individual is not vaccinated within four days of being exposed to the virus. Since antibiotics only work against bacteria, not viruses, they are ineffective against the smallpox virus. There is no known cure. Prior to 1972, vaccination against smallpox was standard procedure. Since that time, general vaccination against smallpox has not been recommended and therefore has been unavailable to the general population. It is thought that protection gained from the vaccination against smallpox lasts a maximum of 10 years. It is believed that few people in North America currently have protection against this disease. In light of current terrorist activity, the American and Canadian governments have acquired their own emergency supply of smallpox vaccine. These vaccinations would be used to vaccinate any people exposed to the smallpox virus should this become necessary.
West Nile virus is an illness that spreads from mosquitoes to humans. A mosquito becomes infected when it feeds on the blood of a bird that is carrying West Nile virus. About 2 weeks later, the mosquito is capable of spreading the virus to people and animals while biting for a blood meal. The virus is not spread from person to person, and cannot be spread directly from infected animals, such as birds, horses, or pets to people. West Nile virus originated in the West Nile region of Uganda in 1937, and for decades it was confined to Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and parts of the Middle East and Europe. In 1999, it was detected in New York City, where 7 people died from it. Canada had its first confirmed infection in a bird in 2001. In September 2002, the first confirmed human cases of West Nile virus were reported in parts of Quebec and Ontario. By 2003, West Nile virus had spread to 8 Canadian provinces and 1 territory: Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, and the Yukon Territory. More than 1,400 Canadians became ill after being infected that year. Since then, there have been West Nile cases every year - the virus's continuing spread indicates that it is probably here to stay. Every year, the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) publishes weekly reports during West Nile virus season on West Nile virus activity in Canada. West Nile virus affects the central nervous system, and infection usually results in mild flu-like symptoms or no symptoms at all. However, in severe cases, infection with West Nile virus can be fatal. Affected provinces have developed aggressive strategies to tackle the problem, including surveillance programs to track the location and numbers of infected mosquitoes and birds.
Hepatitis is the medical term for inflammation of the liver. The hepatitis C virus is one of the many causes of inflammation of the liver. Liver inflammation can also be caused by other types of hepatitis viruses, as well as by alcohol, medications, and some other less common problems. Hepatitis C is a common cause of liver inflammation, liver disease, and liver cancer in North America. Almost 250,000 Canadians have hepatitis C, but many are not aware that they carry the virus. This is because many people who are infected with the hepatitis C virus do not have symptoms. Hepatitis C is transmitted from one person to another through blood or blood products that are infected with the virus. Modern screening tests have almost eliminated the transmission of hepatitis C through blood products (e.g., transfusions). Today the main way hepatitis C is spread in Canada is through contaminated drug needles.
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is a very rare, fatal disease that attacks the nervous system. There are two types of CJD: classical CJD and variant CJD. Unlike other diseases that are caused by bacteria or viruses, this disease is caused by abnormal pieces of protein called prions. These abnormal prions damage cells of the nervous system, forming holes in the tissue and eventually leading to severe brain damage and death. Classical CJD is very rare, affecting about 1 person in 1 million each year. About 30 people are diagnosed each year in Canada, most of them are between the ages of 45 and 75 years. The three types of classical CJD include: sporadic: this form of the condition occurs with no known cause and affects 85% to 90% of people with classical CJD familial: this form appears in families that seem to have a greater likelihood of developing this disease due to their genetics iatrogenic: affecting less than 1% of classical CJD cases, people with this form of the condition develop classical CJD from accidental contamination by the abnormal prions, often through contaminated medical equipment Variant CJD (vCJD) typically affects younger people less than 30 years of age and is associated with eating meat from cows infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), popularly known as "mad cow disease."
Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is not a disease in the usual sense; rather, it is a collection of symptoms that can affect a woman's reproductive health and heart health, and it can have other significant effects on health and lifestyle. It affects 5% to 10% of women in their reproductive years. Its risk factors are not well known, but heredity does play a role.
The heart is divided into four chambers: two atria on top and two ventricles underneath. The role of the atria is to fill the ventricles with blood, which is then pumped to the lungs or to the rest of the body. The normal beating of the heart is controlled by electrical signals sent from a particular segment of heart tissue called the sinus node. The sinus node acts as the heart's natural pacemaker. It is found near the top of the right atrium. Normally, the sinus node sends an electrical pulse that travels down the muscle tissue to the atrioventricular (AV) node (acting like a "toll booth"), which determines how many impulses are allowed to then pass to the ventricles. An arrhythmia occurs when the heart's regular rhythm becomes irregular – it may speed up or slow down. Many arrhythmias exist, but those originating from the ventricles are generally more serious than from the atria. Atrial fibrillation (AF) is one type of arrhythmia. Instead of the sinus node controlling the heart rate, different parts of the atria fire at the same time. This causes the atria to fibrillate, which is an uncoordinated quivering of the muscle. The atria pump blood less effectively but well enough to allow the ventricles to function. The irregular heartbeat is due to rapid beating of the atria (usually more than 350 beats per minute), and the irregular movement of the electrical signals through the AV node. Instead of every electrical signal being allowed through to the ventricles only certain electrical signals are allowed to pass. AF is potentially dangerous because blood can pool in the atrium, which increases the risk that a blood clot will form. If this clot travels to the brain, it will cause a stroke. AF is the most common form of all harmful arrhythmias, affecting approximately 350,000 Canadians. The risk of developing atrial fibrillation increases with age. AF may be present in a number of different forms: paroxysmal AF: recurrent temporary condition that starts suddenly and then after a period of time (usually less than 7 days), the heart returns to a normal heartbeat without medical assistance persistent AF: the heart beats irregularly and requires medical assistance to return to a normal rhythm. This type of AF tends to last more than 7 days. permanent AF: the heart has an irregular rhythm that cannot return to normal with medication or other treatments All three situations carry equal risk of blood clot formation.
Testosterone is the hormone responsible for deep voices, muscle mass, and facial and body hair patterns found in males. As men get older, the level of testosterone in the body and production of sperm gradually becomes lower, and they experience physical and psychological symptoms as a result of these low levels. This is part of the natural aging process and it is estimated that testosterone decreases about 10% every decade after men reach the age of 30. Andropause is a condition that is associated with the decrease in the male hormone testosterone. It is unlike menopause in that the decrease in testosterone and the development of symptoms is more gradual than what occurs in women. Approximately 30% of men in their 50s will experience symptoms of andropause caused by low testosterone levels. A person experiencing andropause may have a number of symptoms related to the condition and could be at risk of other serious health conditions such as osteoporosis without proper treatment.
January 14, 2017 Diseases of the respiratory system
Avian influenza, more commonly called "bird flu," is a type of influenza or "flu" that occurs in all species of birds. The virus that causes avian influenza exists naturally in many wild birds, including wild waterfowl, without causing the condition in them (these birds are called carriers). The virus is usually associated with birds raised on poultry farms. Most people may not immediately make the connection between avian influenza and humans. Avian influenza is rare in humans. When it does infect a human, the virus often causes serious illness or death. Avian influenza has been getting increasing worldwide attention from medical authorities. A new subtype of the virus called H5N1, which first infected chickens and then humans in Hong Kong in 1997, can cause disease with a high rate of mortality (death) in humans. As of 2016, the latest form of an avian influenza virus was reported in Egypt.
Rabies is a viral disease that is spread most often from the bite of a rabid animal to another animal or to a human. The rabies virus affects the central nervous system including the brain and spinal cord of humans and animals. During the incubation period, which is the time between exposure to the virus and the appearance of symptoms, the virus travels along nerves towards the brain. This process takes at least 10 days, but may (uncommonly) take as long as 1 year. The infection causes inflammation of the brain and spinal cord that can lead to encephalopathy and, later, death. Encephalopathy is any type of disease that changes the brain's function or structure.
Fifth Disease
Fifth disease, also called erythema infectiosum, is a viral infection caused by human parvovirus B19. It occurs most commonly in children with up to 70% of all cases occurring in children 5 to 15 years old. Called fifth disease because it was historically the fifth childhood infectious rash to be named, this viral infection occurs worldwide but is more common in temperate climates. Epidemics are seasonal with most outbreaks occurring in the winter and spring. The infection seems to be more common in girls than boys. There is no vaccine for fifth disease. However, once you're infected with the virus, you're immune for life against future infections.
Giardiasis is an intestinal infection caused by a microscopic, single-celled parasite known as Giardia lamblia. A parasite is an organism that lives on or inside another organism called the host. Typically found in lakes, streams, or ponds that have been contaminated by human, muskrat, dog, or beaver feces, giardiasis is also known as "beaver fever." Giardia lamblia is one of the most common human parasitic infections in Canada. Higher numbers of infections are seen in the late summer months and even a few deaths have been reported. Travellers to regions of Africa, Asia, and Latin America where clean water supplies are low are at increased risk of contracting the infection. Some healthy people do not get sick from Giardia lamblia; however, they can still pass the infection on to others. Children, the elderly, and people with long-term illnesses may be especially prone to contracting the illness, as the risk of transmission is higher in daycare centres, chronic care facilities, and seniors' residences.
Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease
Hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD) is a viral infection that usually affects babies and children. HFMD can lead to fever, a blistering rash on the hands and feet, mouth sores, sore throat, and a poor appetite. HFMD is contagious and often causes illness within 3 to 7 days after exposure to an infected person. Proper hand-washing, avoiding close contact, and cleaning contaminated surfaces and items can help reduce the spread of the disease.
Oral thrush is a yeast infection of the mouth caused by uncontrolled growth of an organism called Candida albicans. Candida albicans is an organism that normally makes a quiet home for itself on your skin and doesn't bother anyone. We all carry this organism on our skin, in our mouth, in our gastrointestinal tract (gut) and, for women, in the vagina. Occasionally the yeast multiplies uncontrollably, causing pain and inflammation. When this occurs, it is called candidiasis. It is also known as moniliasis or a yeast infection.
Polio, also known as poliomyelitis, is a highly infectious viral disease that can cause paralysis. Most of the world's countries are free from polio, although small numbers of cases are still reported in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In particular, it is found in areas where water treatment and sanitation facilities are not properly maintained or are nonexistent. Although children under 3 years of age represent more than half of all cases, polio can affect people of any age. The World Health Organization is at the heart of a plan to help make the world free from the disease. Since there is no animal infection or reservoir of the virus, the complete removal of the disease from the human population through vaccination is possible. The number of polio-endemic countries in 1988 was over 125; in early 2015, this number had been reduced to just 2, and the number of reported cases decreased from an estimated 350,000 in 1988 to 416 in 2013.
Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS) is a neurological (nervous system) disorder. It is characterized by an urge to move the legs in order to relieve abnormal sensations such as pain, creeping, or burning. In fact, some people say it feels like insects are crawling around inside their legs. The urge to move the legs occurs during periods of rest, such as before falling asleep, and generally tends to be worse in the evenings and at night. Although movement relieves the symptoms, the sensations often return. Although this condition is known as Restless Leg Syndrome, the abnormal sensations can occur in the arms as well. RLS occurs in both men and women, although the incidence is slightly higher in women. This condition also becomes more frequent and severe with age. Sometimes, people with RLS also experience sudden jerking of the arms and legs known as periodic limb movements. People don't have control over this movement, which generally occurs every 20 to 60 seconds and may continue throughout the night. From 2% to 15% of people around the world may have RLS.
Respiratory Syncytial Virus
Most infants are exposed to the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) by their second birthday. RSV can cause a serious lung infection in infants and younger children and is more common in premature babies and infants or younger children with health problems, such as heart or lung disease. Seniors and adults with heart or lung problems may also experience a severe infection. People with a weakened immune system are also at risk. RSV does not cause such a serious infection for healthy children and adults, who may experience symptoms similar to the common cold. Even though people, including infants, develop antibodies (immune defenses) against the virus after an infection, it appears the virus is able to reinfect individuals throughout their lifetime. In cases of reinfection, symptoms are usually less severe than the first infection.
Just as our skin is a barrier that protects our inner organs from the outside world, the lungs are protected by a special lining called the pleura. This lining includes the tissue inside the chest wall and tissue that surrounds the lungs. It protects the lungs from the chest wall and allows them to easily slide against each other. Although it is normally smooth, if this lining becomes inflamed, the surface of the pleura becomes rough and irritated, causing the condition known as pleurisy. Sometimes, a collection of fluid around the lungs may occur - this is called wet pleurisy. Without the buildup of fluid between the lungs and the lining, the condition is known as dry pleurisy.
Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) is a rare neurological disorder which causes progressive paralysis, starting from the feet and progressing up throughout the rest of the affected person’s body (ascending paraplegia). It occurs when the body's immune system attacks the peripheral nerves in the body. This is known as an autoimmune disease and can be triggered following a surgical infection, or by a flu-like illness or stomach infection. As the immune system fights off the infection, it mistakenly attacks the peripheral nerves. GBS affects men and women of all ethnicities and ages. Treatment is available for the condition and 80% of those affected recover with minor or no neurologic deficits (lasting damage to the nervous system). More severe cases of the condition require emergency medical treatment, admission to hospital, and longer rehabilitation periods. About 10 to 15% of affected people will have major damage to the nervous system. The neurologic damage can range from having difficulty running or walking, to difficulty breathing – some patients may need permanent use of a respirator. About 5% of affected individuals will die.
Mastitis, also known as breast infection, is an infection of the breast tissue. It is caused by bacteria that usually enter the breast through small cracks in the nipple, then multiply within the fatty tissue of the breast.
Fungal Skin or Nail Infections
There are two major causes of fungal infections of the skin and nails: yeast and dermatophytes. Yeast infections of the skin and nails are generally caused by an organism called Candida albicans. This organism normally makes a quiet home for itself on your skin and doesn't bother anyone. We all carry this organism on our skin (and in other places such as our mouth, our gastrointestinal tract (gut), and the vagina). Occasionally Candida albicans multiplies uncontrollably, causing a yeast infection (also known as candidiasis). Yeast infections of the skin can cause a red, itchy rash that may leak fluid. Yeast nail infections can lead to pain and swelling, and may cause the nail to separate from the finger or toe. Dermatophytes are fungi that only live in dead tissue, such as your nails and dead skin cells. Dematophyte infections can also be called tinea. Dermatophyte infections of the skin can cause a round, scaly rash that may also have blisters. When dermatophytes infect the nails, the nails become thick, split, become dull, and may fall off. Fungal skin infections may also be caused by a fungus called Pityrosporum orbiculare. These infections, also called tinea versicolor, lead to scaly patches that vary in colour from white to brown. Fungal infections may also affect the skin of the feet. This is also known as athlete's foot. For detailed information this condition, see the article on athlete's foot on this website. Fungal infections may also affect the vagina. This is also known as vaginitis or female yeast infection. For detailed information this condition, see the article on vaginitis on this website.
Addison's disease, also known as primary adrenal insufficiency, is a rare condition that affects the body's hormonal activity. It is estimated that Addison's disease affects 1 to 2 out of every 100,000 individuals. This disease is named after Dr. Thomas Addison, who discovered it in 1849. Addison's disease occurs when the body's adrenal glands are not able to make enough of the hormones cortisol or aldosterone. Each hormone works differently and plays important roles in the human body. Cortisol helps the body respond to stress. It also helps maintain blood pressure and blood sugar; slow the immune system's inflammatory response; and regulate the metabolism of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. Aldosterone is involved in keeping adequate blood pressure and water and salt balance in the body.
If your child has a harsh and barking cough (which sounds a bit like a seal), hoarseness, runny nose, and a mild fever, he or she may have a condition called croup. Croup is a problem that affects most children during early childhood. It is caused by a viral infection that causes swelling in the trachea (windpipe) and larynx (voice box). Croup is most common in children under the age of 5 years, and especially those under 3 years old. More boys than girls are affected by croup. Croup can be scary for children and parents, but it's not usually serious.
A person who has been diagnosed with the medical condition known as overactive bladder, or OAB, has sudden urges to empty their bladder. In fact, most people with OAB visit the bathroom eight or more times a day. This medical condition is very common, affecting approximately 1 in 5 Canadians over the age of 35 years. When OAB is accompanied by an involuntary loss of moderate-to-large amounts of urine, the condition is called urge incontinence. OAB is caused by sudden involuntary contractions of the detrusor muscle, which is in the wall of the bladder. Although OAB can occur at any age, it is more likely to occur as a person ages. However, it shouldn't be passed off as a normal part of growing older.
The human papillomavirus (HPV) is a virus that causes skin and mucous membrane (the moist lining of body cavities such as the mouth and nose that connect with the outside of the body) infections. It is usually passed from one person to another by skin-to-skin contact, including sexual contact. There are more than 100 types of HPV that can affect different parts of the body, about 40 of which are transmitted through sexual contact. Some types of HPV can cause warts (such as genital or plantar warts) and others can lead to cancer (such as cervical or anal cancer). HPV infection is one of the most common sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in Canada and around the world. At least 70% of sexually active men and women will have at least one HPV infection in their lifetime. The different HPV types are classified into low and high risk based on their association with cancer. "Low risk" types rarely cause cancer. "High risk" types have a greater likelihood of causing cancer but they do not necessarily lead to cancer. These various types can cause different conditions, including: skin warts: These infections are also known as common, plantar, or flat warts and are caused by low-risk types. The warts can appear on your arms, face, feet, hands, and legs. They can develop at any age but are most common in children. genital warts: HPV types 6 and 11 cause about 90% of genital warts and are low-risk types. cervical dysplasia: HPV can cause lesions of abnormal cells called cervical dysplasia in a woman's cervix. These lesions are considered to be precancerous (they are not cancerous cells, but they may develop into cancer cells later). The HPV infection often resolves and clears on its own, but cervical dysplasia should be treated because it can lead to cervical cancer. cervical cancer: The high-risk HPV types 16 and 18 cause about 70% of all cervical cancers. Other high risk types are 31, 33, 45, 52 and 58, which causes about 20% of cervical cancers. These high risk types have also been linked to penile and anal cancers. HPV can cause infections and lesions in other areas of the body, such as in the upper respiratory tract. The majority of HPV infections are generally harmless, though they can be embarrassing. However, the HPV infections that can lead to cervical cancer and other types of cancers are a concern.
Listeriosis is a foodborne illness. It most commonly affects newborns, people with weakened immune systems, seniors, and pregnant women. Pregnant women are at particular risk of having listeriosis, as they are 20 times more likely to acquire the disease than other healthy adults. Cases of listeriosis are usually infrequent, although there have been several known outbreaks in the past. Listeriosis is a rare disease but it is very serious since it is more likely to be fatal in severe cases, compared to other bacteria that cause food poisoning.
H1N1 Influenza
H1N1 influenza is a contagious respiratory disease that causes symptoms of seasonal influenza in people. The name "swine flu" was initially used to describe this type of influenza because laboratory tests showed that this strain of flu virus was made up of genes that were very similar to the ones that caused influenza among pigs (swine). Just like humans, pigs can get the flu. However, we now know that the H1N1 flu virus is made up of genes from several different flu viruses that normally circulate among pigs, birds, and humans. This strain was the most common cause of influenza in 2009, when it caused disease worldwide (“pandemic”).
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5196
|
__label__wiki
| 0.828901
| 0.828901
|
East Los High
East Los High is not your typical high school. Dance, sex, romance, and mystery are at the heart of this inner city school in East LA where two teenage cousins—Jessie,…
Cold Justice
“Cold Justice” follows Texas prosecutor Kelly Siegler and Yolanda McClary, a crime-scene investigator for the Las Vegas Police Department, as they help local law-enforcement agencies in small towns across the…
Genre: Crime, Documentary
Meet The Thundermans, a typical suburban family that happens to have astounding superpowers. At the center of the action are the 14-year-old Thunderman twins, who share the same bathroom, the…
Genre: Action & Adventure, Comedy, Family, Sci-Fi & Fantasy
A mysterious woman is perched between the harsh legacy of World War II and the hope of a new life in Australia. A sweeping romantic drama set in 1950s rural…
Marvel’s Avengers Assemble
The further adventures of the Marvel Universe’s mightiest general membership superhero team. With an all-star roster consisting of Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye, Falcon and, occasionally–when she feels…
Genre: Action & Adventure, Animation
The exploits of identical twins Liv, a former television star back home in Wisconsin and in the process of adding movie star to her credits, as well as beginning to…
The murder of a young boy in a small coastal town brings a media frenzy, which threatens to tear the community apart.
An explosive 1930s drama following a jazz band in London at a time of huge change.
Self-proclaimed business expert, writer, director and comedian Nathan Fielder helps real small businesses turn a profit with marketing tactics that no ordinary consultant would dare to attempt. From driving foot…
Bea Smith is locked up while awaiting trial for the attempted murder of her husband and must learn how life works in prison. A modern adaptation and sequel of the…
Before there were parenting blogs, trophies for showing up, and peanut allergies, there was a simpler time called the ’80s. For geeky 11-year old Adam these were his wonder years…
A “contemporary prequel” to the 1960 film Psycho, depicting the life of Norman Bates and his mother Norma prior to the events portrayed in Hitchcock’s film, albeit in a different…
Mr. Selfridge recounts the real life story of the flamboyant and visionary American founder of Selfridge’s, London’s lavish department store. Set in 1909 London, when women were reveling in a…
The plot follows detectives Karl Roebuck and Elise Wasserman working together to find a serial killer who left the upper-half body of a French politician and the lower-half of a…
Genre: Action & Adventure, Crime, Drama, Mystery
Several hundred years ago, humans were nearly exterminated by Titans. Titans are typically several stories tall, seem to have no intelligence, devour human beings and, worst of all, seem to…
Genre: Action & Adventure, Animation, Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Aan irreverent and outrageous take on true family love‐and dysfunction. Newly sober single mom Christy struggles to raise two children in a world full of temptations and pitfalls. Testing her…
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Family
Defiance is an American science fiction television show that takes place in the future on a radically transformed Earth containing new species arriving from space. In the show, Joshua Nolan…
Mary, Queen of Scots, faces political and sexual intrigue in the treacherous world of the French court.
The Utopia Experiments is a legendary graphic novel shrouded in mystery. When a group of strangers find themselves in possession of an original manuscript, their lives suddenly and brutally implode.
A documentary news series with a taboo-breaking team who deliver incredible news stories from around the world.
Genre: News, War & Politics
Set against the backdrop of the Wars of the Roses, the series is the story of the women caught up in the protracted conflict for the throne of England.
A streetwise hustler is pulled into a compelling conspiracy after witnessing the suicide of a girl who looks just like her.
Set during the Cold War period in the 1980s, The Americans is the story of Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, two Soviet KGB officers posing as an American married couple in…
Ichabod Crane is resurrected and pulled two and a half centuries through time to unravel a mystery that dates all the way back to the founding fathers.
Stef Foster, a dedicated police officer, and her partner Lena Adams, a school vice principal, have built a close-knit, loving family with Stef’s biological son from a previous marriage, Brandon,…
Set in the sprawling mecca of the rich and famous, Ray Donovan does the dirty work for LA’s top power players, and makes their problems disappear. His father’s unexpected release…
Almost Human is an American science fiction/crime drama on Fox. In 2048, the uncontrollable evolution of science and technology has caused crime rates to rise an astounding 400%. To combat…
Genre: Action, Crime, Drama, Fantasy, Science Fiction
Through globalization, many countries have been opened and barriers removed to ensure easy trade, travel and cultural diversity. However, this openness has given opportunities to criminals looking to exploit the…
A woman haunted by her past, Detective Robin Griffin, investigates complex and unsettling cases.
The series centers on four Latina maids working in the homes of Beverly Hills’ wealthiest and most powerful families, and a newcomer who made it personal after a maid was…
Both a gift and a curse, Graham has the extraordinary ability to think like his prey—he sees what they see, feels what they feel. But while Graham is pursuing an…
A gangster family epic set in 1919 Birmingham, England and centered on a gang who sew razor blades in the peaks of their caps, and their fierce boss Tommy Shelby,…
Rick is a mentally-unbalanced but scientifically-gifted old man who has recently reconnected with his family. He spends most of his time involving his young grandson Morty in dangerous, outlandish adventures…
Genre: Action & Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Raymond “Red” Reddington, one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives, surrenders in person at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. He claims that he and the FBI have the same interests:…
A single-camera ensemble comedy following the lives of an eclectic group of detectives in a New York precinct, including one slacker who is forced to shape up when he gets…
Vikings follows the adventures of Ragnar Lothbrok, the greatest hero of his age. The series tells the sagas of Ragnar’s band of Viking brothers and his family, as he rises…
The Ouija Experiment
Based on true events, five friends who fall prey to the evil entities of the Ouija board. As they set about filming their experimental session, what starts out as bit…
Bloody Homecoming
Three years after a tragic accident leaves a student dead at the annual Homecoming dance, a group of senior friends anxious about the return of Homecoming Night to their sleepy…
Cross Bearer
Heather is broke. She has a soul sucking job as a stripper. Her live-in girlfriend Victoria has a baby and a coke problem. Her boss Harry is an abusive maniac….
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5197
|
__label__cc
| 0.694251
| 0.305749
|
"Coaching has evolved into the mainstream fast," says Michael Goldberg, president of Building Blocks Consulting (Manalapan, New Jersey), whose clients include New York Life and MetLife. "This is because there is a great demand in the workplace for immediate results, and coaching can help provide that." How? By providing feedback and guidance in real time, says Brian Underhill, a senior consultant at the Alliance for Strategic Leadership (Morgan Hill, California). "Coaching develops leaders in the context of their current jobs, without removing them from their day-to-day responsibilities."
While there is a multitude of different tangible benefits associated with executive coaching, many benefits don't appear as line items on financial statements. Executive coaching often focuses on leadership skills and relationships with managers, direct reports, co-workers, and other stakeholders. In these cases, executive coaches focus on teamwork, problem solving, decision making, and conflict resolution skills. The results can be transformative. A survey reported by Clear Coaching Limited found that executive coaching resulted in improvements in work relationships within a team (50 percent frequency), employees' abilities to see others' perspectives (47 percent), and improved atmosphere (40 percent). In a world where the strength of an organization's culture is increasingly trumping salary levels in terms of importance to employees, these intangible benefits are more relevant than ever.
Mansfield could neither comprehend nor cope with the attention she received once promoted to the role of boss. While most managers would view the schmoozing and lobbying for attention that her reports engaged in as office politics, Mansfield saw these attempts at currying favor as trial balloons that might lead to dating. She was not being sexually harassed; Mansfield was merely experiencing interpersonal advances that threatened the protective fortress she had erected against feelings of intimacy. The better Mansfield managed the men in her division—and the more her constructive feedback improved their work—the more intimate they appeared to become as a natural outcome of their appreciation.
Some sport psychologists might also work closely with once enthusiastic athletes that have suffered injuries as well. Depending on the severity of the injury, a sport psychologist may attempt to help a recovering athlete segue back into his career with as little stress as possible. Some athletes don't have this choice, however, and they may need the help of a sport psychologist to help them deal with the fact that they may not be able to play their sport with as much talent and drive as they had at one time.
In a previous role; Director of Global Leadership Programs at General Electric’s Healthcare (GEHC) business, Mary Ellen led the partnership with Lee Hecht Harrison to execute the Global Manager Coaching Program for 7,200 global GEHC managers over two-years demonstrating success in achieving goals and creating strong ties to business performance metrics.
Abnormal results can occur in instances where amateurs, who know the fundamentals of hypnosis, entice friends to become their experimental subjects. Their lack of full understanding can lead to immediate consequences, which can linger for some time after the event. If, for example, the amateur plants the suggestion that the subject is being bitten by mosquitoes, the subject would naturally scratch where the bites were perceived. When awakened from the trance, if the amateur forgets to remove the suggestion, the subject will continue the behavior. Left unchecked, the behavior could land the subject in a physician's office in an attempt to stop the itching and scratching cycle. If the physician is astute enough to question the genesis of the behavior and hypnosis is used to remove the suggestion, the subject may experience long-term negative emotional distress and anger upon understanding exactly what happened. The lack of full understanding, complete training, and supervised experience on the part of the amateur places the subject at risk.
What will set successful executive coaches apart from others in the coming years is their ability to demonstrate measurable results. Savvy clients will only choose executive coaching organizations that can clearly demonstrate how they helped their coachees move the needle. Pre- and post-360 interviews, structured feedback and other tools will be used to quantify and qualify results. - Loren Margolis, Training & Leadership Success LLC
It’s important to remember that depression, along with severe and chronic mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, also affect a person’s physical health. Depression is more than just feeling sad or having negative thoughts. It’s a condition where the chemicals in your brain are imbalanced. Hypnotherapy is a complementary therapy, and it shouldn’t be the only therapy a person uses to enhance their mental health.
Some therapists use hypnosis to recover possibly repressed memories they believe are linked to the person's mental disorder. However, the quality and reliability of information recalled by the patient under hypnosis is not always reliable. Additionally, hypnosis can pose a risk of creating false memories -- usually as a result of unintended suggestions or the asking of leading questions by the therapist. For these reasons, hypnosis is no longer considered a common or mainstream part of most forms of psychotherapy. Also, the use of hypnosis for certain mental disorders in which patients may be highly susceptible to suggestion, such as dissociative disorders, remains especially controversial.
Hypnosis is the process of putting people into a highly suggestive trance like state by using various verbal commands and thought processes. There is a huge amount of debate about the amount of influence a hypnotist can have on someone and on exactly what happens to the brain when someone is hypnotized However it is widely accepted that hypnosis cannot make people perform actions that they would not be consciously willing to do. (So all those stage performer hypnotists you may have seen have some serious questions to answer).
Life skills refer to the mental, emotional, behavioral, and social skills and resources developed through sport participation.[34] Research in this area focuses on how life skills are developed and transferred from sports to other areas in life (e.g., from tennis to school) and on program development and implementation.[35] Burnout in sport is typically characterized as having three dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a reduced sense of accomplishment.[36] Athletes who experience burnout may have different contributing factors, but the more frequent reasons include perfectionism, boredom, injuries, excessive pressure, and overtraining.[37] Burnout is studied in many different athletic populations (e.g., coaches), but it is a major problem in youth sports and contributes to withdrawal from sport. Parenting in youth sport is necessary and critical for young athletes. Research on parenting explores behaviors that contribute to or hinder children’s participation. For example, research suggests children want their parents to provide support and become involved, but not give technical advice unless they are well-versed in the sport.[38] Excessive demands from parents may also contribute to burnout.
As a certified consulting hypnotist, I have helped Houstonians for more than 30 years successfully overcome an addiction to cigarette smoking. Through hypnosis, the client is able to visualize their life without smoking, and find desirable fulfillment and satisfaction in quitting. I personalize a program for each client, providing a customized approach to help him or her stop smoking.
Second, students can pursue a doctorate within the Psychology Department’s APA-accredited counseling psychology program and then select sport psychology as their specialization. Students who graduate from the doctoral program will be eligible for licensure as a psychologist and certification as a sport consultant through the Association for Applied Sport Psychology. To learn more about this degree option, click here.
A commonly overlooked obstacle to eating better (and losing weight) is sleep. While sleep needs vary, according to the National Sleep Foundation, adults require seven to nine hours a night. Unfortunately, two-thirds of people report experiencing sleep problems at least a few nights a week, with women more prone to sleep problems than men. A review study that looked at 36 studies on sleep and weight gain found short sleep duration was independently linked to weight gain. Studies show the fewer minutes you spend asleep, the more likely you are to feel hungrier and make poor food choices the next day. Make sure you’re getting enough Zzzzs to reap the rewards of your weight loss efforts.
This might be a pretty good time to pause and call bullshit, particularly since, during the demonstration in the library, that's exactly what I was thinking myself. Hall himself tried a little of both techniques, telling us that we were ready to stop smoking, that this was something we wanted, but also told us horror stories about smoking. Not of cancer, which can be easy to ignore until it's too late, but of his trips to tobacco farms, where he'd seen all manner of disgusting things—rats and tree frogs and pesticides and pigeon shit falling into a tobacco shredder and so on. You're smoking tree frogs and pesticide, he said. To be honest, that didn't sound much worse than what I always sort of assumed I was smoking.
"Sometimes life becomes too difficult to battle on our own. Together, we can explore what events or relationships may be causing distress in your life and develop tools and skills to overcome these hardships. I strive to provide a warm and comforting therapeutic environment and convey empathy and understanding to allow my clients to feel safe and validated during our sessions. You are here, which means you've taken that first big step and I am here to help you through the rest of the therapeutic journey."
Globally recognized as a center of excellence in the field of executive coaching, our coaching services support your organization reaching its strategic and operational goals. Applying a combination of robust psychological theories and business insight, we work to avoid the costly consequences of conflict, poor morale, and underperformance within your teams.
Modern hypnotherapy is widely accepted for the treatment of certain habit disorders, to control irrational fears,[35][36] as well as in the treatment of conditions such as insomnia[37] and addiction.[38] Hypnosis has also been used to enhance recovery from non-psychological conditions such as after surgical procedures,[39] in breast cancer care[40] and even with gastro-intestinal problems,[41] including IBS.[42][43]
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5200
|
__label__wiki
| 0.922051
| 0.922051
|
Why Not Let Children Choose Their Own Names?
Arts & Entertainment May 15, 2019 hailong01 0
When she was pregnant, Satya Twena, a 36-year-old hat maker and fashion designer in Ojai, Calif., was in a yoga class when her daughter’s name came to her in a meditation. The name was Wish.
“Wish named herself because she was already active and alive in my wife,” said Jeffrey Zurofsky, 45, who founded ’Wichcraft with Tom Colicchio before moving to California to work as an adviser and consultant.
To the dismay of Ms. Twena and Mr. Zurofsky, their second child didn’t appear to choose his own name … initially. So he was without a name after being born at home in January. It didn’t take long, though, for the infant to offer his own signs, Mr. Zurofsky said.
The little one opened his eyes when his father placed sage under his nose; the family remembered that the song playing during the birth was all about wisdom and elders; and a post-birth visitor had a 28-year-old son named Sage. So Sage it was.
“If I could, I would let them go their entire lives and they could name themselves, but I feel strongly that their names came from them, so I think we did pretty good,” Mr. Zurofsky said about Wish and Sage. “But if Wish changes her mind and wants to be called Jill or Jim, absolutely. If she wants to be called 8,600, that’s fine, too. They are smarter and wiser than we are on their own behalfs.”
Many parents have begun to follow their children’s lead when it comes to gender and identity. Now some are allowing their children to choose their own name, or to change their name as soon as they have a real preference.
[The topics new parents are talking about. Evidence-based guidance. Personal stories that matter. Visit NYT Parenting for everything you need to raise thriving babies and kids.]
While some children enjoy having the freedom to choose their own name, it may not be the best way to offer them this independence, said Carole Lieberman, a child psychiatrist in Beverly Hills, Calif.
“These parents are rebelling against tradition just for the thrill of it without realizing how much they are harming their kids,” said Dr. Lieberman, who is a parenting expert and the author of “Lions, Tigers and Terrorists, Oh My!” “Children who have a place holder name or no name would feel like they have no identity and would surely suffer psychological problems.”
A better option: They could legally change their name when they’re older and more mature, Dr. Lieberman said.
J. Martin Griffith, 36, who works for a clean energy company in Philadelphia, had the option to choose his own name from birth and beyond, but he still can’t make that big decision.
Mr. Griffith’s mother named him J, which doesn’t officially stand for anything.
“My mother always told me growing up that I could choose a new name,” he said. “I batted around 1,000 names but could never settle on any one name.”
He tried lots of J names and also considered non-J names, but nothing stuck. When he was growing up, some people called him Martin, while a few called him J or “J-the-letter.” Today, the vast majority call him Marty or Martin, as he still hasn’t settled. Mr. Griffith isn’t the biggest fan of letting children choose their names.
“It is hard enough naming someone else, let alone naming yourself, and a name has surprising weight out in the world, I think,” he said.
Still, living with a name that you hate until adulthood is tough, said Embe Guadagno, 29, of Downey, Calif., whose original name was Zierah.
“I had expressed to my mother my entire life that I hated that no one was able to pronounce it,” Ms. Guadagno said. She gave herself the name Embe in high school, and legally changed it when she was 19 or 20.
Today, she has let her 3-year-old daughter, Laila, know that if there’s a name she likes better than her own, she can change it immediately. So far, she has considered her middle name, Jude, along with Daisy.
George Vuckovic, 43, a preschool administrator in River Forest, Ill., also doesn’t see the harm in letting children choose their names. He and his partner, Esther Hunt, a massage therapist, 34, nearly named their daughter Athena but switched to Isabelle in the hospital. A month later, they changed their minds again and renamed her Elena.
Now Elena, who is 8, has tinkered with changing her name back to Athena or to Iris.
“It’s her life, and if she finds meaning in a different name, why not?” Mr. Vuckovic said. “Other than the potential hassles of multiple identity profiles and red flags that could raise.”
Tiffany Towers, a clinical psychologist with a private practice in Beverly Hills, said she understands why parents may be agreeable to allowing their children to choose or change their names so readily.
It can be either an attempt to empower their children or to avoid the pressure of assigning a name to their offspring, Dr. Towers said. Perhaps the parents don’t want to feel responsible for their child being bullied for having a weird or old-fashioned name. Or maybe they believe that their child’s future will be shaped by this initial identity of a name (a name that the child didn’t request), and they fear that their child will resent them or feel oppressed by their name.
But, she said, giving children permission to change or choose a name could be very confusing for the child.
“It would cause them to question not only their own identity, but whether they can trust their parents to make other decisions that affect them,” Dr. Towers said.
This process is not always so consequential, however.
John Duffy, a psychologist and the author of “The Available Parent,” who lives in Chicago, said he noticed a rise in children with “place holder” names. He has worked with children who have been allowed and encouraged to change their names to ones that they feel represent them better.
“I think it is an artifact of parents, very consciously, allowing their kids as much control over their identity as possible,” Dr. Duffy said in an email. “Parents have told me that they feel presumptuous naming their child, not knowing for certain what he or she may want; I think it’s a counterreaction to accusations of overparenting or helicopter parenting.”
From the children’s perspectives, Dr. Duffy said he has noticed that they feel empowered through choosing or changing their name.
Even choosing a middle name is a start.
Daniel Block, 51, a geography professor in Oak Park, Ill., said his parents believed that children should be allowed to choose their middle names. He tried several before settling on his current one.
First, there was Ernie, when he was in his “Sesame Street” stage. Then, when he was 7, he wanted to be Daniel Kennedy because he thought John F. Kennedy was cool. But Kennedy was a little formal, so he soon switched to Kenneth. From ages 11 to 17, Mr. Block went without a middle name.
“Finally, I decided I wanted a middle name to graduate high school with,” Mr. Block said. He was interested in genealogy and history, so he looked at his family tree for inspiration.
“I finally chose Ralston,” Mr. Block said of his middle name, which is also his uncle’s middle name. “I think it’s a pretty conservative name choice for someone who was able to choose their own name, but I think it goes back to liking my uncle and being close to that side of the family and connecting with history.”
Though he said he feels pretty good about his choice today, Mr. Block said he wishes he was the kind of person who would have chosen something a little more unusual.
“But that is not me,” he said.
Polishing the Silver
St. Barth’s – Back and Better Than Ever
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5205
|
__label__wiki
| 0.653247
| 0.653247
|
Letter of Gratitude to the Rector of Azerbaijan University of Languages from theTeaching Staff and Pupils of the High School of Internally Displaced Persons
Nazim Qafarov, principal of High School 1, and Şaiq Əhmədov, teacher of initial military training have sent a letter of gratitude to the academician Kamal Abdulla, rector of Azerbaijan University of Languages for the cooperation between the School and the University.The school bears the name of Bəhmən Cəfərov, National Hero of Azerbaijan, and it has been organized for the internally displaced persons of Kəlbəcər District. The letter notes that the attention paid by the rector of the University to the school for internally displaced persons is warmly welcomed by the teaching staff and pupils and inspires themş
“We express our gratitude and wish that such kind of meetings between Azerbaijan University of Languages and our school were held in Kəlbəcər with your participation.”
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5206
|
__label__cc
| 0.549823
| 0.450177
|
The Portrait of
Agrippa Hull
Laura Richards, Honors History 9, Reading memorial High School, May 2014
"It is not the cover of the book, but what the book contains that is the question. Many a good book has dark covers."[6]
The Sentimental Patriot
Being fatherless at a young age, Agrippa Hull continuously claimed to be the son of an African prince, but that was just a small part of his outstanding legacy. This charismatic storyteller served in the Rebels' American Revolution as Tadeusz Kościuszko’s orderly, and they formed a life-long friendship. Now, Hull’s portrait, created from a daguerreotype, hangs in the library of his home town, the Stockbridge Library, located in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Outside of Massachusetts, the memory of Hull’s existence seems to have faded away almost completely, but in his long life of eighty-nine years, “Grippy," as he came to be known, was a modestly well-connected man, his story intertwining with George Washington’s, the signer of his discharge papers, General Paterson’s, General Kościuszko’s, Mumbet’s, and Stockbridge native Theodore Sedgwick’s, his employer for several years. These connections and his confident personality helped Hull avoid the scoffing of his white neighbors. Through careful economic saving, Hull managed to become the wealthiest African American in his town, pretty good for the son of an African Prince.[1] Being the sparse spender he was, it’s a miracle Grippy’s likeness was ever captured, with daguerreotype “prices, from $2 to $3, including cases or frames,"[2] in 1844. The Portrait of Agrippa Hull, done anonymously in 1848, captures the incredible individuality of Agrippa Hull, sentimental soldier, loving husband and father, and clever minded man.
Agrippa Hull’s portrait is unique, just like he is. It is rare to see portraits of African Americans from the time of the American Revolution; two others include Elizabeth Freeman's (otherwise known as Mumbet) and Phillis Wheatley's. Both of them were women, who at one point or another were enslaved, Agrippa, on the other hand, was a free man all his life.[3] Grippy’s portrait stands out from the crowd with its sharp, contrasting colors. Sitting in the center of the canvas, Hull is wearing a regal white shirt with a white cravat tied around his neck. Over the white shirt is a black vest and black jacket, fancy clothes for the simple man he was. Clutched in his left hand is his walking stick, appropriate because Hull was eighty-five when the daguerreotype was taken.[4] The visual aspect of the cane is quite pleasing, the tip white to match the shirt while contrasting with the suit and the rest black, blending in with his suit. Hull’s face does not lack wrinkles, but still manages to seem youthful and optimistic, a smile visible in his eyes.[5]
[1] Gary B. Nash and Graham Russell Goa Hodges, Friends of Liberty: A Tale of Three Patriots, Two Revolutionaries, and the Betrayal that Divided a Nation: Thomas Jefferson, Tadeusz Kosciuszko and Agrippa Hull (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2008), 11.
[2] Richard Bolt, "Anson Clark Ad", Courtesy of the Berkshire County Library Anson Clark Collection.
[3] Nash and Hodges, 84, 203, 260.
[4] Richard Bolt, "Anson and Edwin H. Clark: Pioneering Daguerreotypists of Western Massachusetts", The
Daguerreian Annual 1991 (The Daguerreian Society, 1991) 84.
[5] Nash and Hodges, 262.
[6] Ibid, 261.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5207
|
__label__wiki
| 0.847671
| 0.847671
|
Follow @karaswisher
Recent Posts by Kara Swisher
Updated S-1: Facebook’s Yearly Revenue Growth Up 45 Percent, But Down Six Percent From Last Quarter
April 23, 2012 at 12:13 pm PT
Facebook filed an updated version of its S-1 public offering document today, which included somewhat disappointing first-quarter financials.
In the new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, its fourth update for its upcoming public offering, the social networking giant’s revenue was $1.058 billion, up 46 percent for the year, but down six percent from the previous quarter.
In the first quarter of 2012, Facebook’s net income was $205 million, which was down from $233 million a year ago. The company attributed the decline to rising costs, including in marketing and in research.
Facebook also said its current share price was $30.89 each, which values the entire company at about $77 billion.
Some investors might worry about the latest results, which show a slowing in Facebook’s torrid growth. But Facebook said the quarterly decline was due to seasonality — it was flat in the same period a year ago.
As it noted in the document:
“We believe that our rates of user and revenue growth will decline over time. For example, our revenue grew 154% from 2009 to 2010, 88% from 2010 to 2011, and 45% from the first quarter of 2011 to the same period in 2012. Historically, our user growth has been a primary driver of growth in our revenue. We expect that our user growth and revenue growth rates will decline as the size of our active user base increases and as we achieve higher market penetration rates.”
Its audience, though, was still growing strongly: Facebook also said it had 532 million daily active users, up from 372 million a year ago and 483 million in December. Its monthly active users were up from 680 million last year to just over 900 million and up from 845 million from December.
Facebook also added an explicit figure for average revenue per user, which was $1.21, up six percent year over year. It also said the number of full-time employees grew 46 percent from last year to 3,539 at the end of March.
The last update to Facebook’s regulatory filing for its mid-May IPO was in late March. That one gave investors more information about a patent infringement lawsuit waged by Yahoo — Facebook noted its counter claim in the newest filing — and also its motion to dismiss Paul Ceglia’s legal attempt to garner half of the company. It then included more information about growing engagement by users of the social networking site.
Along with some other minor changes in the new document, Facebook noted, in news that was already known, that it would trade its stock on the Nasdaq market under the ticker symbol “FB.” It also said it had bought photo-sharing start-up Instagram, another piece of old news, and noted its just-struck patent deal with Microsoft.
One new detail about Instagram: Facebook forked over “approximately 23 million shares of our common stock and $300 million in cash” to buy it.
Also, said Facebook, in an interesting new section on its global business:
“In the first quarter of 2012, 50% of our revenue was generated by users in the United States and Canada, a decrease from 54% of our revenue for the first quarter of 2011, and in 2011, 52% of our revenue was generated by users in the United States and Canada, as compared to 58% in 2010, as we experienced more rapid revenue growth in markets such as Germany, Brazil, Australia, and India.”
Here is the whole updated file, if you want to peruse yourself:
4thfbs1update
Tagged with: audience, Australia, Brazil, Canada, common, costs, counter-claim, deal, document, employee, engagement, Facebook, Fb, filing, first quarter, Germany, global, growth, India, infringement, Instagram, investor, IP Australia, IPO, lawsuit, legal, market, marketing, Microsoft, motion, Nasdaq, net income, news, patent, Paul Ceglia, photo-sharing, public offering, regulatory, research, revenue, S-1, Securities and Exchange Commission, share, social networking, Start-up, stock, symbol, ticker, update, user
Some of Our Fave D Conference Videos Before AllThingsD Signs Off in 3 … 2 … 1 …
How Can You Miss Us if We Won’t Go Away? Paczkowski and Swisher Highlights From AllThingsD.
Viral Video: Even Jerry Seinfeld Has a Drone. What’s With That?
The Longish Goodbye: Highlights From AllThingsD Staffers Johnson, Del Rey and Cha
api-video/find_all_videos.asp&fields=id,videoStillURL,thumbnailURL,guid,video320kMP4Url,name,duration&count=4&doctype=128&type=allthingsd-section&query=BoomTown
The problem with the Billionaire Savior phase of the newspaper collapse has always been that billionaires don’t tend to like the kind of authority-questioning journalism that upsets the status quo.
— Ryan Chittum, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review about the promise of Pierre Omidyar’s new media venture with Glenn Greenwald
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5210
|
__label__wiki
| 0.720456
| 0.720456
|
You are at:Home»Category: "Battle Rattle"
Browsing: Battle Rattle
By Gina Harkins on October 18, 2014 Battle Rattle
Gen. Joe Dunford, the new commandant of the Marine Corps, is featured in a video message celebrating the service’s 239th birthday. Dunford issued the message celebrating Marines’ Nov. 10 birthday the day after a passage of command ceremony during which he became the Corps’ 36th commandant. This year’s message includes interviews with Marines from some of the Corps’ most brutal battles, from Pfc. John Lahm, who fought in the Battle of Peleliu during World War II, to Sgt. Maj. Bradley Kasal, who earned a Navy Cross for his role in the Battle of Fallujah in Iraq. The Corps’ newest Medal of…
By Joshua Stewart on October 8, 2014 Battle Rattle, Iraq, Marines, Veterans
Update: This event is open to all Marines, not just ones who fought in the Battle of Fallujah. A decade after the Battle of Fallujah, California-based Marines are holding a reunion and ceremony to honor those who were a part of one of the most significant fights in Iraq and some of the heaviest urban warfare in the Corps’ history. Members of 1st Marine Division is will host the Nov. 7 event for veterans ranging from privates to general officers at Camp Pendleton, California. Now-retired Lt. Gen. Richard Natonski, the commander of 1st MARDIV during the battle, is attending. By…
By Meghann Myers on October 3, 2014 Battle Rattle
[HTML1] If you’re looking for some cinematic firefights after Christmas Day presents and brunch, you’re in luck. The film version of former Navy SEAL Chief Special Operator Chris Kyle’s best-selling American Sniper memoir is coming to theaters Christmas Day, the tale of his path toward 160 confirmed kills, the most of any shooter in American history. Actor Bradley Cooper was able to meet with Kyle once before the SEAL was murdered in 2013. “Thank God I got to talk to him once on the phone. It was a very quick conversation. But I did tell him how serious I was…
By James Sanborn on October 2, 2014 Battle Rattle
Bonnie Amos and her husband, Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Jim Amos, are busy packing up for what she says is their 30th move in not quite 44 years. It will be the last move of her husband’s military career, however, as the Marine Corps’ “first couple” readies for retirement and begins vacating the Home of the Commandants at 8th & I, in Washington, D.C. The passage of command, when Gen. Joseph Dunford will officially take charge as the 36th commandant of the Marine Corps, is set to take place Oct. 17. The Amoses won’t be taking everything though.…
By gpingersoll on September 26, 2014 Battle Rattle
We just finished our cover story on changes coming to Marine Corps marksmanship qualifications. Naturally, we know that any changes to marksmanship are a huge deal (I can remember when ACOG rifle sights were incorporated, I thought my fellow Marines were going to lose their minds). Now, I’m not going to give you all the details, because I want you to buy the paper, but there is one little tidbit I’ve decided to share. The idea of shoot/no-shoot scenarios are almost certainly some changes coming to Table 2. More importantly, shooting a no-shoot target will result in penalty, and an…
By Joshua Stewart on September 25, 2014 Battle Rattle, Marines
Obama’s controversial latte salute has entered the world of self-parody — and it’s hilarious. Maximilian Uriarte, the grunt-turned satirist who created the “Terminal Lance” comic strip, posted a slew of pictures on Facebook of people doing their own salute with a beverage in hand. We can’t guarantee they are all Marines, but the vast majority of Uriarte’s audience is comprised of active and discharged Marines. Some substituted the latte for a beer, a glass of scotch, a giant bottle of vodka or put on a horse mask and saluted with a half-filled bottle soy sauce (that contributor wrote “Of course…
On his way to participate in a United Nations talk on Climate Change, and coming from his national address on airstrikes in Syria, President Barack Obama stepped off Marine One and proceeded to salute Marines with a coffee cup in his hand. White House aides later posted that video to Instagram, and that’s when things went downhill. The White House press department didn’t immediately respond to queries about the salute. ABC published a story dubbing it the “Latte Salute.” Washington Times ran a headline that incorporated the words “Semper Latte.” Finally, a Daily Caller story cited the manual for Marine…
By Joshua Stewart on September 11, 2014 Battle Rattle, Marines, Recruiting
Update: This post originally identified the male as a Marine. Upon further inspection, the uniform is not consistent with Corps regulations, but those of the Marine JROTC program. The girl in the video, Kaylyn Mintz, is headed to tryouts for the Junior Olympics team. That, at least, would explain how she cranked out so many push-ups. Losing can be tough on the psyche, but losing in front of a crowd in a shopping mall must be brutal. One JROTC cadet is likely licking his wounds after getting trounced by a sandal-wearing opponent in a push-up contest at a mall. “She…
Video: Kyle Carpenter leads South Carolina fans in pregame cheer
By on August 29, 2014 Battle Rattle
Medal of Honor recipient and current University of South Carolina sophomore Kyle Carpenter led the traditional “Game! … Cocks!” cheer prior to last night’s season opener against Texas A&M. The Afghanistan vet had said prior to the game that he was nervous to get in front of the crowd of 80,000, but as you can see below, his execution and showmanship were on point. Carpenter’s performance might have been the highlight of the evening for Gamecock fans, as their 9th-ranked squad was beaten 52-28 by the 21st-ranked Aggies.
Journalist wear-tests "combat diaper" with Marines
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5218
|
__label__wiki
| 0.718798
| 0.718798
|
Category: The Reading World
Media traction
By Mitch Ratcliffe January 9, 2010 January 9, 2010 The Reading World
It is very gratifying to have Bob Stein repost my recent posting on the Institute for the Book’s blog. I also did an interview yesterday which will be on IT Conversations next week. Will post a link when it is available. The show is posted here. Great job, Phil and Scott!
After three days of CES, I have some thoughts on the e-reader market that need to gel a bit. However, I did talk with a number of guests on the Lenovo Live Webcast about e-readers, tablet computers and the transmission of culture. The archive is here, if you’d like to take a look.
How to create new reading experiences profitably
By Mitch Ratcliffe January 5, 2010 January 5, 2010 Author & Publisher Strategies, The Reading World
Concluding my summary of my recent presentation to a publishing industry group, begun here and continued here, we turn to the question of what to do to revitalize the publishing opportunity.
I wrote a lot about the idea of exploding the limitations of the book in the last installment. Getting beyond the covers. Turning from a distribution model to a reader-centric model. It’s simple to argue that change is needed and to say what needs changing. Here, I offer a few specific ideas about lines of research and development that I would like to see begun by publishers, who, if they wish to remain viable—let alone profitable—must undertake immediately. The change in book publishing will happen at a faster pace than the collapse of newspaper and music publishing did, making a collective effort at research and publication of the results for all to discuss and use, critical during the next 18 months. Think open sourcing the strategy, so that a thousand innovations can bloom.
Making books into e-books is not the challenge facing publishers and authors today. In fact, thinking in terms of merely translating text to a different display interface completely misses the problem of creating a new reading experience. Books have served well as, and will continue to be, containers for moving textual and visual information between places and across generations. They work. They won’t stop working. But when moving to a digital environment, books need to be conceived with an eye firmly set on the interactions that the text/content will inspire. Those interactions happen between the author and work, the reader and the work, the author and reader, among readers and between the work and various services, none of which exist today in e-books, that connect works to one another and readers in the community of one book with those in other book-worlds.
Just as with the Web, where value has emerged out of the connection of documents by publishers and readers—the Web is egalitarian in its connectivity, but still has some hierarchical features in its publishing technologies—books must be conceived of not just as a single work, but a collection of work (chapters, notes, illustrations, even video, if you’re thinking of a “vook“) that must be able to interact internally and with other works with which it can communicate over an IP network. This is not simply the use of social media within the book, though that’s a definite benefit, but making the book accessible for use as a medium of communication. Most communities emerge long after the initial idea that catalyzes them is first published.
These communications “hooks” revolve around traditional bibliographic practices, such as indexing and pagination for making references to a particular location in a book useful, as well as new functionality, such as building meta-books that combine the original text with readers’ notes and annotations, providing verification of texts’ authenticity and completeness, curation (in the sense that, if I buy a book today and invest of myself in it the resulting “version” of the book will be available to others as a public or private publication so that, for instance, I can leave a library to my kids and they can pass it along to their children) and preservation.
Think about how many versions of previously published books, going all the way back to Greek times, when books were sold on scrolls in stalls at Athens, have been lost. We treasure new discoveries of an author’s work. In a time of information abundance, however, we still dismiss all the other contributions that make a book a vital cultural artifact. Instead, we need to recognize that capturing the discussions around a book, providing access (with privacy intact) to the trails that readers have followed on their own or in discussions with others to new interpretations and uses for a text, and the myriad commentaries and marginalia that have made a book important to its readers is the new source of infinite value that can be provided as the experience we call “reading.” Tomorrow’s great literary discovery may not be an original work by a famous author, but a commentary or satire Continue reading
Challenging publishers to change isn’t the safe path
By Mitch Ratcliffe December 27, 2009 December 27, 2009 Author & Publisher Strategies, The Reading World
Continuing my tale of the publishing industry presentation I made last month, begun here, let’s turn to the changes in the book and book supply chain that are necessary to resurrect publishing as a pivotal source of creative value in a time when gatekeepers are despised and largely redundant.
The electronic publishing supply chain is dominated by distributors, particularly those that wield a popular format as leverage to gain a larger share of revenue from publishers, who are still trying to determine how to change their product to address opportunities when books are not trapped in paper. Just as the music industry in the late 90s was led by the nose by encoding companies that charged a million or more dollars to “rip” a new version of a record label’s catalog to address a new format, today’s e-book industry is being hauled along by distributors who trade “free” encoding and distribution of e-books to publishers in exchange for rights to do so. The only major difference between the e-book industry today and music industry of 1999 is that more rights are being exchanged for encoding, where music remained a cash business that sapped the labels of massive amounts of money to keep up with new formats and channels for music. There are, however, plenty of e-book services companies trying to reproduce the music encoding phenomenon with publishers who, thinking that they can pay for a format will then be able to distribute the resulting files directly.
Unfortunately for publishers, the channel is controlled by application and hardware developers who have the actual customer relationships. Amazon, which has been toying with the question of whether to compete directly with publishers for more than a year, finally did so last week by signing Seven Habits author Stephen Covey to an e-book deal that completely circumvents the publisher of the books, Simon & Schuster. When I made my presentation in November, this suggestion was greeted with horror and a reflexive dismissiveness that has been beaten into sensibility by the hard reality that publishers have never mastered the customer relationship.
Publishers have excelled at the paper distribution process, actually managing to earn profits despite the vast return rates that paper books produce by the nature of mismatched supply and demand. With electronic publishing and the Web, publishers can certainly reduce returns—indeed, that is what most publishers I talk to are banking on in order to survive the transition to mixed paper and digital publishing—but no one establishes a branded relationship with a publisher, simply because books are aimed at readers’ attention, which is completely fungible, shifting from one publishers’ products to another’s from day to day and read to read.
Competing for attention and building brand reputation for reliable, enjoyable or authoritative writing (though books will be much more than writing in the near future, as Fast Company‘s Adam Penenberg pointed out on Wednesday), requires that publishers reject Continue reading
When customers love the product, but hate your mission, it’s time to change publishing
By Mitch Ratcliffe December 8, 2009 December 8, 2009 Author & Publisher Strategies, The Reading World
I recently had the pleasure of presenting a vision for the future of publishing to a group of publishing professionals in New York. Can’t say where it was, yet, but suffice to say it was worth saying and that the message was well received by the thoughtful, albeit skeptical, audience.
Despite the increasingly rapid changes in reading due to technological evolution, the folks with whom I was talking rightly believe that they should not revolutionize their business simply for the sake of revolution, and I was perceived, unfortunately, as a revolutionary. They represented publishers, distributors, supply-chain enablers and book retailers, all of whom need to embrace changing roles as they constantly refine those roles in response to greater information about what is in a book, how books are used and what readers think about the books they purchase, borrow or steal. Having worked in publishing—in many forms and markets—for 25 years, and for several huge publishing companies destroyed by the failure to change, I think my perspective is one of pragmatic realism. Certainly, the publishing industry I arrived in as a newspaper/magazine reporter is largely gone, victim of its failure to evolve with the times, with the reader’s habits.
So, it was ironic, I thought, that my opening remark, that the future has never been brighter for publishing (in this, I completely agree with Seth Godin’s remarks about the future of publishing here—I only wish I was a good a presenter at Seth), was greeted with a sense that I was trying to paint my revolution the color of the audience’s fears about the future of their individual business models. Sure, they were thinking, it’s bright if you don’t have to fire people, change the workflows at publishing houses, in composition and printing shops, and so forth.
Books are healthier than ever, really. According to Bowker, publisher of Books In Print, more than 900,000 books will be published worldwide this year. The United States produces more than five times as many titles as only a decade ago. Moreover, the breadth of the titles has never been greater, with genres and subjects exploding in their complexity. Just as the desktop publishing revolution produced an explosion of magazines and newsletters that transformed the periodical business in the late 1980s, print-on-demand and Web technology, including e-books, have multiplied the number of books, about every conceivable topic. Worldwide, the growth of titles published is growing faster than in the U.S., as it becomes infinitely more efficient to address language and geographically specific marketplaces with printed or electronic books.
Moreover, with more than $100 billion in local U.S. media spending in play because of the fall of the local newspaper, the opportunity to connect revenue with books that engage and sustain hyper-local communities, has never been greater. Succeeding in this market, however, means changing the entire book value chain, eliminating the value chain’s focus on distributors and retailers, turning it instead to models predicated on what the reader wants and values. Reader-centrism is the only viable basis for revivifying existing publishing companies, because every new player in the publishing market is starting their business based on close identification with their customer, the reader.
Now, I want to keep this short, and go on in future postings with more detail. But let’s look at the most recent description of what a publisher does that I was able to find, in Robert Darnton’s new book, The Case for Books. Darnton, the chief librarian at Harvard and an accomplished author captures what the publisher does as completely as possible:
“Publishers are gatekeepers, who control the flow of knowledge. From the boundless variety of matter susceptible to being made public, they select what they think will sell or should be sold, according to their professional expertise and their personal convictions. Publishers’ judgments, informed by long experience in the marketplace of ideas, determines what reaches readers, and readers need to rely on it more than ever in an age of information overload.”
This is the mission of publishing from the time of the scriptoria until the turn of the 21st century, a risk-defined mission based on the high cost of making information available. It is not what readers want today, even though they do still count on many filters to help them choose what to read. The financial risk of publishing today is perceived as minimal, even though it is still quite risky because publishers are clinging to the hit-driven model that requires a book to sell tens of thousands of copies to be a “success.” Let’s consider Darnton’s definition of publishing through the eyes of a reader who can browse the Web, Google Books and myriad other sources of textual, audio and visual information. These people still love books, but they no longer honor the mission that produces many books, as evidenced by widespread dislike of the ideas highlighted in the following version of the quote:
Let’s break that down in terms of the networked marketplace.
Gatekeepers are no longer valued, they are despised by people who feel they have the ability to judge information and ideas for themselves. As Jacques Rancière puts it in his latest book, The Emancipated Spectator, “There are not two sorts of intelligence separated by a gulf” in a truly democratic marketplace of ideas, there are different perspectives that demand free rein and resent gatekeepers.
No one entity or person can/needs to control the flow of knowledge when everyone can do their little part by tagging, rating, reviewing and commenting on parts of the data flow; this is “crowdsourcing” in the fully positive sense, free from the stain of mob mentality, which can play an important role in an unbridled cataract of information.
Customers, not sellers, decide what will sell—they always have, but industrial production tended to limit the choices and create the appearance of successful planning, which in many cases is exactly what produced bestsellers, though at the cost of diversity, which people value, too.
Professional expertise is, unfortunately, despised because of knavery on the part of pundits, who claim expertise without the hard self-criticism that is applied by professionals. We do need people to help us select what to pay attention to, just as we have always relied on guidance from others when coming into a new environment. That advice can come from friends. However, it often comes from the loudest knaves in the mediasphere.
What reaches readers in a connected networked world is everything and anything that can be transmitted, but few would surrender their opportunity to think for themselves in exchange for a truncated view of reality—let us remain optimistic about people’s judgment and intentions here—but readers don’t want to admit they rely more on experts today than ever before, because they don’t see the world as information overload, rather they perceive they are seeing it all for the first time without restrictions, which is exhilarating, the very source of growth, egalitarian opportunity and the unexpected. That sudden sense of having options is why more books than ever are being produced and sold.
Given that readers today still love books, in more forms than ever, what is a publisher to do? That’s the subject of the next couple postings in this series.
Cross-posted to ZD Net.
Tagged books, books-as-a-service, bookselling, publishing
CrunchPad illusion after all
By Mitch Ratcliffe November 30, 2009 November 30, 2009 The Reading World
CLICK NOW FOR JUICY UPDATES.
Mike Arrington has announced his CrunchPad web tablet, covered here, is “dead”, blaming his manufacturing partner for cutting him out of the deal. In the frothy market that is media tablets, just as in other frothy markets Arrington has stirred up, this is a story suspiciously full of holes that make CrunchPad sound like a stunt all along rather than a real project.
Bizarrely, we were being notified that we were no longer involved with the project. Our project. Chandra said that based on pressure from his shareholders he had decided to move forward and sell the device directly through Fusion Garage, without our involvement.
Later, Arrington insists other manufacturers have offered easy terms to him for the rights to manufacture the device and that he had “blue chip angel and venture capitalist investors in Silicon Valley waiting to invest in the company since late Spring. We were simply holding them off until we launched, to eliminate some of the risk.” If he’d said they were holding off for better terms from VCs because the device had launched, I’d have found this plausible. The whole story is too nice to be taken at face value.
Because Arrington, a lawyer, discloses that he never controlled the intellectual property rights to the CrunchPad, other than the trademark, and apparently had very poorly formed business agreements around the project with Fusion Garage, his manufacturing partner, this has the look of a great deal of smoke around something he’d agreed he could market without understanding the business, design and development challenges. At one point, he suggests most of the project was “pushed to open source,” but then why is it impossible to build it with another manufacturer?
Arrington claims that “prototype b” of the CrunchPad was completed by his in-house team. Certainly, it would have represented the major functional features of the design, which, if open sourced, should be available for his use in providing a functional spec to other manufacturers who could have come up with their own solutions with different components. Since he writes that his team had the release candidate device running Win7 and a version of Chrome OS, the components involved surely are commodities supported with well-documented drivers and toolsets.
Why take apart the death notice like this? Tablets and e-readers are the hottest “category” in consumer electronics, with a glut in e-readers and many media tablets on tap for 2010, customers need to read between the lines of announcements that promise revolutions but may represent black holes for their money and time. In this case, Arrington has created expectations that a $250 touch-screen device can be expected to do what consumers want, to “surf on the couch.” He created a baseline expectation that has proven to be out of line with what is possible today. It is certainly possible in six months or a year, yet customers don’t need the noise of empty promises to add to the complexity of making buying decisions.
It sounded too good to be true and it was, yet there are plenty of people who want to buy the idea and will now say it could have been done if not for a legal showdown. Customers need real world class champions of products, not contenders who tell us they could have or should have won if only the breaks had gone their way. Customers’ time and money is too hard won to expect less.
The Bookends, pt. II
Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia, which can be translated as “Poliphilio’s Strife of Love in a Dream,” tells the author’s tale of love for a girl, Polia. It takes place in two dreams amidst pagan bacchanalia that celebrate Greek and Roman antiquity, especially the architecture, gardens and costuming that the lustful Dominican monk imagined as he wrote in his cell at a Treviso monastery between 1465 and 1467. Based on hints left in the text and what little is known about Colonna during those years, Polia was the daughter of a nobleman, dead in her teens, whom he had loved apparently unrequitedly. The protagonist, Poliphilio (literally “the lover of Polia,” for Colonna was obsessively loving of every detail of the world that revolved around his ingénue) provides exacting descriptions of every lawn, statue, temple, garment and shoe worn by the object of his love and the many sprites, gods and goddesses that surround her. “Although these scenes were small, there was not the least defect in them, not even the smallest detail: everything was perfect and clearly discernible,” Colonna writes, via Joscelyn Godwin’s translation, approximately halfway through a 40-page description of a triumphant parade, not so much as a justification for his exhaustive cataloging of friezes, vases and garlands in the procession of lithe, voluptuous, nubile and hirsute pagan spirits, but simply as a transition to some 15 additional pages on the virtues of details that perpetually “stupefy” Poliphilio as he is led through his dream pursuit of Polia.
“How many bibliophiles have actually read it is another question, for its textual excesses are enough to deter most readers,” wrote Joscelyn Godwin in her introduction to the book. She was the first translator to succeed in making an English version of the book in 1999, on its 500th anniversary. The Hypnerotomachia, which is vaguely familiar to modern readers as the source of The Rule of Four, a mystical thriller written in the wake of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, is often celebrated as a farsighted precursor of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, a complex modernist linguistic tour de force published in 1939 that combined many languages in a dream discourse. Colonna’s use of languages, in contrast to Joyce’s, is rather limited, with only a few words of Greek and Hebrew appearing as inscriptions on statuary[i]. His real talent, in addition to that friar’s eye for arcane detail, was in his ability to forge new words from Latin and Italian to create his own vernacular, a lovelorn torrent that, as Godwin points out, if translated literally would include sentences such as “In this horrid and cuspidinous littoral and most miserable site of the algent and fetorific lake stood saevious Tisiphone, efferal and cruel with her viperine capillament, her meschine and miserable soul, implacably furibund.”[ii] Nine of those overripe words were neologisms concocted by the writer, none of them has found acceptance in the half millennia since Colonna invented them. His wordplay anticipates the inventive texting of today’s teens and young adults, some of whom have begun writing novels and serial dramas in truncated English, Japanese and Chinese that are delivered to their audiences, mostly friends, by mobile handset. “Viperine,” to be snakelike, doesn’t have the same tone as “LOPSOD,” the texting code for “long on promises, short on delivery,” but both describe a certain danger and untrustworthiness when applied in a narrative.
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili was definitely not a book for everyone, as few spoke or read Latin in Europe during the 15th century and Italian vernacular was seldom published. The sensuous subject matter could get its Catholic author into trouble with the Holy See due to its graphic content—indeed the Vatican’s copies are reportedly obscured to hide phalluses, pudenda and breasts in the illustrations—and the pagan religion it celebrates. Colonna is only identifiable as the author because he hid his name and a declaration of love to Polia in an acrostic puzzle made up of the first letters of 38 chapters of the book: “POLIAM FRATER FRANCISVS COLVMNA PERAMIVIT (‘Brother Francesco Colonna greatly loved Polia’)” according to Godwin.[iii]
By any measure, Colonna was typical of an author in any era, sitting alone in his monastic cell, he wrote primarily for his own enjoyment and hoped the work would be read by a few appreciative readers. Perhaps, he may have thought, it might be copied or quoted by others in the future. Fortunately for Colonna, if he had a thin skin, he lived before the time when an author’s hopes would be dashed by rejection letter from publishers.
The testament of love to Polia circulated in a few un-illustrated copies for the next 30 years before it found its way into print in 1499. Colonna would go on to write an epic poem Delfili Somnium, which did not reach print until 1959, under his own name in the early 16th century before dying at the age of 94 in 1527 while living on a church allowance of food and firewood. He never profited from the Hypnerotomachia.[iv] The book would be reprinted in Venice in 1545, in Paris in 1546, 1554, 1561, 1600,1804, 1880, 1883, 1926 and 2000, in London in 1592, 1888, 1890, 1893, 1901, 1904 and 1973, and in New York in 1976 and 1999, among other editions.[v]
Why then are early copies of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili selling at auction for tens of thousands of dollars as one of the most collectible books in history and the volume that definitively closed the era of the incunabula, the books printed during the first 50 years of the era of the printing press? It attracted the attention of a team of creative people who turned it into a classic publication. They did more than polish the text, they added substantially to the experience of reading Colonna’s book with a fine layout, clever typesetting and illustrations.
Ornate to the point of tedium, the Hypnerotomachia nevertheless happened to find a sponsor in Leonardo Grassi, a Veronese nobleman, some thirty years after it was supposedly finished on May 1, 1467. But no manuscript is finished, nor is it immune to the feedback of readers or publishers shopping for a risqué classical tale. Despite having dated the completion of the book, it has been shown Colonna wrote much of it later and, possibly, he rewrote some of the book at the suggestion of his editor to make its social and cultural references current to 1499.[vi]
Grassi wanted to impress the Duke of Urbino, whom he addresses in his dedication as “illustrious,” “unconquered” and virtuous, in addition to other superlatives deployed to flatter the Duke in order to gain business and social opportunities for the Grassi family. Grassi did not want his praise to adorn one of the few hundred titles already available, he wanted to present something new, a fashionable work that would stimulate talk at the sophisticated Court of Urbino. Another edition of Virgil, whose work was already available in as many as a hundred editions by the end of the 1400s, would not impress. He turned to Colonna’s odd dream record to surprise the Duke. Grassi also made the extravagant investment in an innovative printer, Aldus Manutius, to create the book known today, which is known for Continue reading
The Bookends
By Mitch Ratcliffe September 21, 2009 September 21, 2009 The Reading World
IN WHICH WE FIND PUBLISHING AS AN INDUSTRY WAS ALWAYS ONE BIG CRISIS, NOT A GOLDEN ERA ENDED BY THE RISE OF THE INTERNET, AND THAT THE AUTHOR’S ASPIRATIONS, LIKE HUMAN NATURE, HAVEN’T CHANGED. PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION PROCESSES AND TECHNOLOGIES HAVE CHANGED. THE RESULT IS NOT A CRISIS OF PUBLISHING, BUT THE CRISIS OF AN ORDER ESTABLISHED OVER THE LAST 500 YEARS, AS PUBLISHING ROLLS FORWARD, REACHING NEW HEIGHTS.
Inexpensive, well-made and authoritative books let readers “converse freely with the glorious dead.”—Aldus Manutius[i]
“At the new user-driven fundraising site KickStarter, a group of 100 strangers chipped in $30 apiece to self-publish a 100 page book–one page for each contributor.”—Galley Cat Blog, MediaBistro.com, June 2, 2009
Writing is solitary business. Publishing has always been a collective effort that blends authorship, financing, design, printing, packaging, marketing and sales to produce the rare breakout hit, it’s a process that has been simplified by technology without conceding simple answers to the question of how to achieve a profit. The evolution of publishing is laid clear in the story of two books, one that ended the era of incunabula, the first 50 years of print, and another that fulfilled the self-publishing dream in the first decade of the 21st Century.They are the bookends of the paper-publishing era. Neither is a great work that will be assigned in literature or theology classes for centuries after its publication, nor are they particularly well written, but their successes mirror one another and tell a great deal about how publishing has changed and will change, as well as what publishing skills will remain vibrant with the rise of new technology and the reinvention of publishing society beginning in our time.
Fra Francesco Colonna was a Dominican friar, the anonymous author of the bizarre and erotic antiquarian romantic fantasy Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. Published on the eve of the 15th century in Republic of Venice, the book has become one of the most valuable printed works in the world. Five hundred and six years later, William P. Young, a church-going salesman and motel night clerk from Boring, Oregon, penned a Christian psychodrama, The Shack, that started out as a photocopied work shared by his friends but found a market online, selling 3.8 million print and e-book copies by January 2009[ii], climbing to the top of The New York Times bestseller list for dozens of weeks[iii] on the strength of Internet “word-of-mouth” endorsements by thousands of readers.
A monk writing in Treviso, Italy, in the 1460s didn’t dream of being published, because there were no publishers. The process and business norms authors and readers take for granted today would take hundreds of years to mature. As Francesco Colonna took up his quill, there were perhaps 50 to 70 printing presses in the world. He could not have dreamed that his allegorical love story would reach print and become “the most famous published work or all time.”[iv] Hynerotomachia Poliphili, as it came to be printed, included erotic images strikingly out of the 15th century mainstream. Colonna must have feared its publication would cost him his place in the church, should he be discovered its author. He would never make any money from the work. His publisher would lose money. Yet, the product of those labors made a work of real art. An early edition Hypnerotomachia recently sold at auction, in a depressed market, for $22,543.[v]
Half a millennium later, a salesman and part-time Web developer living in suburban Portland, Oregon, in 2005 would have little hope of being published by a major publishing house, because the process of getting a book into print had become so hardened, involving byzantine networks of author’s agents, editorial relationships, publisher projections that rule the risks taken each season. The sheer distance a Christian title must traverse to make The New York Times’ paperback fiction bestseller list, a general book category, is as daunting as the chances of publication of the Hypnerotomachia when it was written. Once he started thinking of publishing his photocopied book, what William P. Young found was that he didn’t need, but could leverage, the publishing industry to get his book to sell a million more copies than Continue reading
Tagged e-books, publishing, self-publishing
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5222
|
__label__cc
| 0.580241
| 0.419759
|
China’s aircraft carrier. Danger Room mocks it
I’ve written about this in the past as the notion that China wants to beef up its navy is a big deal in the sense that they are trying to become a regional and possible world power on the High Seas. That has certain implications for the United States but apparently, the new Aircraft Carrier, says the experts of national security […]
I’ve written about this in the past as the notion that China wants to beef up its navy is a big deal in the sense that they are trying to become a regional and possible world power on the High Seas. That has certain implications for the United States but apparently, the new Aircraft Carrier, says the experts of national security at Wired Magazine isn’t something to lose sleep over.
Rather, the guys there point out the problems with the carrier, which is actually a ski-jump-type carrier bought the Russians years ago and only recently converted into a usable vessel.
But the Shi Lang isn’t exactly state of the art. It carries mediocre aircraft and accompanies unimpressive ships. And DigitalGlobe’s satellites find that Shi Lang also “appears to lack the P-700 Granit surface-to-surface missiles that were part of the original Kuznetzov designs,” as Stratfor analyst Rodger Baker puts it.
Translation: sure, the Shi Lang is merely supposed to be a training ship, but it’s conspicuous that the first Chinese aircraft carrier can’t defend itself from seaborne threats.
The other carrier the Chinese bought, incidentally, is being used as a luxury casino and hotel. Personally, I dig the use of the second boat more than the first one. But either way, we don’t need to lose sleep just yet. Sure, that day might come but right now, the Pacific is largely the domain of the US Navy….
Similarly, while China is newly aggro in the western Pacific, it’s no naval heavyweight. Its submarines are way too loud to threaten the U.S. Navy. On the other hand, its investment in tons and tons of missilescertainly do.
But that won’t be an issue for the Kiev luxury hotel. Guests will relax with Western-style cuisine in ornate luxury suites, dreaming of Chinese seapower.
Author Andy KravetzPosted on December 30, 2011 March 13, 2012 Categories UncategorizedLeave a comment on China’s aircraft carrier. Danger Room mocks it
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5230
|
__label__wiki
| 0.954937
| 0.954937
|
Olympic and Paralympic Dreams Come True Sunday in Sarasota
by Story and Photos by Ed Moran, ed@usrowing.org | Apr 24, 2016
The dream to represent the United States on the world’s biggest stage comes at different times for every athlete. Some remember having the thought of being an Olympian or Paralympian as their rowing careers progressed from one level to the next.
Results | Flickr Gallery
SARASOTA, Fla. – The dream to represent the United States on the world’s biggest stage comes at different times for every athlete. Some remember having the thought of being an Olympian or Paralympian as their rowing careers progressed from one level to the next.
“I remember making my first junior team,” said Andrew Campbell, Jr. (New Canaan, Conn.). “I thought, 'I just did this. Why stop here?'”
For others, it came when adversity knocked them down. Devery Karz (Park City, Utah) knew she wanted it after falling and breaking her arm in 2011.
“I thought, ‘that’s it. My rowing career is over,’" Karz said. “But then I moved to China, and I watched the 2012 Olympics and said to myself, ‘this is not over.' I got right back into the boat and had a bunch of days of just getting my butt handed to me over and over again. Now, the dream is back.”
Arms and shoulders men’s single sculler Blake Haxton (Columbus, Ohio) needed three full years to think about rowing again after losing both legs to an infection commonly know as the flesh-eating disease when he was a teenager. “I didn’t even want to think about rowing,” Haxton said. “I was thinking more about just trying to get on with my life in whatever way I could.”
And then he was lured back to help coach his high school team, started erging on an adaptive seat, made the 2014 U.S. national team and set his next goal on Rio. But still, he said he “refused to think about it.”
Sunday morning at Nathan Benderson Park, under a blazing blue Florida sky and on flat, still water, all of those dreams came true.
Campbell, Karz and Haxton won their trials events at the 2016 U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Team Trials – Rowing and earned a place on the team that will represent the U.S. in Rio, pending United States Olympic Committee approval.
Earning a Paralympic bid, in addition to Haxton, was arms and shoulders women’s single sculler Jacqui Kapinowski (Tequesta, Fla.).
Karz and her teammate Kate Bertko (Oakland, Calif.) won the lightweight women’s double sculls. London Olympian Gevvie Stone (Newton, Mass.) won in the women’s single sculls and Beijing Olympian Ellen Tomek (Flushing, Mich.) and Meghan O’Leary (Baton Rouge, La.) earned their Rio Olympic berth in the women’s double sculls.
Campbell and Joshua Konieczny (Millbury, Ohio) won in the lightweight men’s double sculls.
In events not yet qualified for Rio, two-time Olympian Ken Jurkowski (New Fairfield, Conn.) won the men’s single sculls and Craftsbury Sculling Center’s Willy Cowles (Farmington, Conn.) and Stephen Whelpley (Mequon, Wis.) won the men’s double sculls.
Both crews, along with the men’s quadruple sculls from Craftsbury Sculling Center - Ben Davison (Inverness, Fla.), Ben Dann (Pound Ridge, N.Y.), John Graves (Cincinnati, Ohio) and 2012 Olympian Peter Graves (Cincinnati, Ohio.) - that won their event Tuesday, will race next month at the Final Olympic Qualification Regatta in Lucerne, Switzerland to earn a place at the Olympic Games.
In addition to winning here, all of the top-placing crews took home cash awards donated by private sponsors in partnership with USRowing.
Qualified Paralympic and Olympic Events
Men’s and Women’s Arms and Shoulders Single Sculls
Sponsored by Resolute Racing & Michael Joukowski
Both competitors entered in the event went to the start line together, but were separated quickly when Haxton, who has been the U.S. national team athlete for the past two years, rowed away from Robbie Blevins (Oklahoma City, Okla.). Haxton built on his lead across the 1,000-meter course, finishing in 4:57.56 over Blevins, who crossed in 5:42.15.
“I never thought I would be here,” Haxton said. “I dismissed those who said I could do it. I refused to think about it. That’s where trust comes in. That’s where the faith comes in.”
In the women’s arms and shoulders single sculls, Kapinowski also built an early lead over Community Rowing, Inc.’s Katelynne Steinke (East Falmouth, Mass.) and won in 6:15.91. Steinke finished in 6:31.52.
“When I heard that buzzer, I immediately thought, ‘oh my gosh. It's over. I won, and I get to represent the United States of America.' It does not get better than that.”
Women’s Single Sculls
Sponsored by Wyc Grousbeck
Throughout the week, the four finalists in the women’s single rowed fast times and competed to fill the spot Stone qualified at the 2015 World Rowing Championships. Stone entered the regatta as the perceived favorite after finishing fourth at worlds, and in the first quarter of the race, she answered, taking the lead and holding to finish first in 7:51.57.
Seven-time national team member Stesha Carle (Long Beach, Calif.) finished second in 7:58.59, and Vesper Boat Club’s Beijing Olympian Lindsay Meyer (Seattle, Wash.) was third in 8:06.71.
Stone, whose first Olympic dream was achieved in 2012 when she won trials over Meyer and then qualified the boat in Lucerne, said this regatta felt very different than her first trials.
“Four years ago, I didn’t have as much of a target on my back,” she said. “Lindsay and I were on pretty even terms. This was definitely a thrill winning. When you’re the favorite, it’s definitely a thrill, but there is also a sigh of relief. You got the job done. If I hadn’t, it would have been a real disappointment to myself.”
Women’s Double Sculls
Sponsored by Benderson Development Corp
Like Stone in the single, the composite women’s double sculls from New York Athletic Club and USRowing Olympic Training Center – Oklahoma City of Tomek and O’Leary were favored after representing the U.S. in the event at world championships for the past three years.
They did not disappoint, winning in 7:09.11. Vesper’s Mary Jones (Huntsville, Ala.) and Nicole Ritchie (Dummerston, Vt.) were second in 7:21.27, and Riverside Boat Club’s Molly Hamrick (Tampa, Fla.) and Keziah Beall (Bainbridge Island, Wash.) were third in 7:30.36.
“This is all high risk, high reward,” O’Leary said. “It is risky to put all the chips in, but the outcome can be all the greater. I think that is what we did well here today. We made the gamble. We thought we had something good and decided to stick together and build the boat and make the adjustments we needed to make over the past few years.”
Lightweight Men’s Double Sculls
Sponsored by Wyc Grousebeck
Campbell knows the heartbreak of coming close to fulfilling an Olympic dream and then losing it. He won Olympic trials in the event four years ago, but the boat class was not yet qualified. His dreams were squashed at the final qualification regatta.
He did not let that happen again. With the boat qualified, the final task was completed Sunday.
"It feels so good to put a seal on it," said Campbell. "We've been rowing well together for the last year and a half and to finally see all that work come to a conclusion in this chapter is very rewarding."
Campbell and Konieczny, his Cambridge Boat Club partner, won in 6:32.86. Austin Meyer (Cohoes, N.Y.) and Nick Trojan (Los Alamitos, Calif.) were second in 6:37.14. Malta Boat Club’s Colin Ethridge (Laytonsville, Md.) and Matt O'Leary (Westwood, Mass.) finished third in 6:52.61.
Lightweight Women’s Double Sculls
Bertko and Karz took control of their race in the first 500 meters and finished first in 7:18.50. Riverside’s Erin Roberts (Fogelsville, Pa.) and Hillary Saeger (Dedham, Mass.) crossed second in 7:30.42, and local Sarasota favorites Monica Whitehouse (Big Bend, Wis.) and Rosa Kemp (Putnam Valley, N.Y.) were third in 7:31.61.
"We are just pushing each other to the max, every day was a seat race for someone’s throat," Karz said. "Without all five us, we would have never had this happen. It takes a team to make a good boat."
Non-Qualified Olympic Events
Men’s Single Sculls
Sponsored by the Taaffe Family
Two-time Olympian Jurkowski was in a tight crowd through most of the first half of the race, but pushed into first and won in 7:20.31. Jurkowski appeared to be sitting comfortably until Craftsbury’s Tom Graves (Cincinnati, Ohio) made a sprint through the closing buoys.
Jurkowski answered and held on. Graves was second in 7:21.62. Greg Ansolabehere (Bakersfield, Calif.) was third in 7:30.31.
“The competition has been good. My competitors were great racers, and it is always a blessing to have the opportunity to represent the United States on this level,” Jurkowski said.
“This is a multi-step process. It is a matter of being well prepared. Everybody talks about (the Lucerne regatta) in fear with this term, ‘regatta of death.’ I think that is silly. I look at it as an opportunity to make the team. I prefer to look at it as 'the regatta of opportunity.'”
Men’s Double Sculls
Sponsored by John Chatzky
Craftsbury’s men’s double of Cowles and Whelpley rowed into the lead in the first 500 meters and won its event in 6:38.83.
Vesper Boat Club’s Lenny Futterman (New York, N.Y.) and Jonathan Kirkegaard (Philadelphia, Pa.) were second in 6:56.41. Los Angeles Rowing Club’s Nick Babikian (Brighton, Mass.) and Matt Schaeffer crossed in 7:04.04.
“Our game plan coming into the race was never to make one giant move, but to move through the race, bit by bit, and to just keep ourselves ahead,” Cowles said.
“To represent our club here is the greatest honor. The fact that we are here today is through the support that we have at Craftsbury, the community, Concept2 and all the people who support us and allow us to make training our first priority. They are a huge part of our success.”
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5233
|
__label__cc
| 0.639915
| 0.360085
|
Some pointers to additional information about the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project dataset.
Hirai, M. et al., 1975. "Development of Geostationary Meteorological Satellite (GMS) of Japan." Proc. of the Eleventh International Symposium of Space Technology and Science, Tokyo, Japan, 461-465.
Matthews, E., and W.B. Rossow, 1987. "Regional and Seasonal Variations of Surface Reflectance from Satellites Observations at 0.6 um. J. Climate Appl. Meteor., 26: 170-202.
Minnis, P., and E.F. Harrison, 1984. "Diurnal Variability of Regional Cloud and Clear Sky Radiative Parameters Derived from GOES Data. Part I: Analysis Method." J. Climate Appl. Meteor., 23: 993-1011.
Olsen, L.M, J.W. Closs, and F.E. Corprew, November 1991. "NASA's Climate Data System Primer: Version 4.0." EOS DAAC, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.
Raschke, E., W. Rossow and R. Schiffer, 1987. "The International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project - Preliminary Results and its Potential Aspects." Advanced Space Research, 7: (3)137-(3)145.
Rossow, W.B., and L. Garder, 1984. "Selection of Map Grid for Data Analysis and Archival." J.Climate Appl. Meteor., 23: 1253-1257.
Rossow, W.B., L.C. Garder, P-J. Lu and A.W. Walker, 1991. "International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) Documentation of Cloud Data."WMO/TD No. 266 (revised). World Meteorological Organization, Geneva, 76 pp. plus three appendices.
Rossow, W.B., E. Kinsella, A. Wolf, L. Garder, July 1985, revised August 1987. "International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project Description of Reduced Resolution Radiance Data." WMO TD-No. 58, World Meteorological Organization/ International Council of Scientific Unions.
Rossow, W.B., F. Mosher, E. Kinsella, A. Arking, M. Desbois, E. Harrison, P. Minnis, E. Ruprecht, G. Seze, C. Simmer and E. Smith, 1985. "ISCCP Cloud Algorithm Intercomparison." J. Climate Appl. Meteor., 24: 877-903.
Rossow, W.B., 1989. "Measuring Cloud Properties from Space: A Review." J. of Climate, 2: 201-213.
Rossow, W.B., L.C. Garder, and L.C. Lacis, 1989. "Global, Seasonal Cloud Variations from Satellite Radiance Measurements, Part I: Sensitivity of Analysis." J. of Climate, 2: 419-458.
Rossow, W.B., C.L. Brest, and L.C. Garder, 1989. "Global, Seasonal Surface Variations from Satellite Radiance Measurements." J. of Climate, 2: 214-247.
Rossow, W.B., and R.A. Schiffer, 1991. "ISCCP Cloud Data Products." Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 72: 2-20.
Schiffer, R.A., and W.B. Rossow, 1983. "The International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) -- The First Project of the World Climate Research Program." Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 64: 779-784.
Schiffer, R.A., and W.B. Rossow, 1985. "ISCCP Global Radiance Data Set. A New Resource for Climate Research." Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 66: 1498-1505.
Seze, G., and M. Desbois, 1987. "Cloud Cover Analysis from Satellite Imagery using Spatial and Temporal Characteristics of the Data." J. Climate Appl. Meteor., 26: 287-303.
Seze, G., and W.B. Rossow, 1987. "Time-cumulated Visible and Infrared Histograms used as Descriptor of Cloud Cover." Advanced Space Research, 7: (3)155-(3)158.
Seze, G., and W.B. Rossow, 1991. "Time-cumulated Visible and Infrared Radiance Histograms Used as Descriptors of Surface and Cloud Variations." Int. J. Remote Sensing, 12: 877-920.
Seze, G., and W.B. Rossow, 1991. "Effects of Satellite Data Resolution on Measuring the Space/Time Variations of Surfaces and Clouds." Int. J. Remote Sensing, 12: 921-952.
World Climate Research Programme, November, 1982. "The International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project Preliminary Implementation Plan." World Meteorological Organization. WCP-35.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5234
|
__label__wiki
| 0.74986
| 0.74986
|
Sweeney Scissorhands
More often than not, I await a particular movie, play, art exhibition, book etc. with great anticipation only to find myself disappointed by the experience. I wish I could distance myself from the hype, but it's difficult to do this when the media is constantly bombarding you with stuff about how great a work of art is going to be.
In an effort to maintain a bit of distance between myself and the spin-machine, I purposefully decided to ignore all reviews and other buzz surrounding Tim Burton's new film adaptation of Sweeney Todd starring Johnny Depp as the fabled "Demon Barber of Fleet Street." I love Sondheim's musical. I also hold Depp in high regard as an actor. I wanted to make sure that I didn't have the same experience as I did with the Burton/Depp Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Sleepy Hollow, which both turned out to be less enjoyable than I'd hoped.
I think my decision was a good one, because I had a great time at Sweeney Todd. Once I'd gotten over the initial shock that comes with watching a musical (why are they singing? that's weird) and the auxilliary shock of hearing Deppn singing (he has quite a decent tenor) I got thoroughly stuck in. I dug the custard-like blood, Helena Bonham-Carter's perfunctory yet romantic Mrs. Lovett and Sondheim's ever prescient message about the desperate measures people resort to in desperate times. Funny how this theme never goes out of style.
The funny thing about Burton's movies is that once you've seen one of them, you've seen them all. From the brooding, fairytale landscapes to the birds nest hairdos (which make all of his actors look like Robert Smith, lead singer of The Cure) Burton's movies are deeply embossed with the director's aesthetic.
What struck me particularly strongly about Sweeney Todd is its close resemblance in particular to Burton's 1990 film, Edward Scissorhands. The new movie seems to be constantly quoting the old one. I wonder if that was deliberate? Sweeney has razors in his hands, while Edward has scissors. At one point, Depp (who has the same hairdo, darkened eye sockets and white face as he did in the earlier film) even brandishes the open razors like they're extensions of his hands (and says as much). As in Edward Scissorhands, the ingenue in Sweeney Todd is a sweet, blond-haired girl, who's cornered by a bullying, lascivious man. And the set for Edward Scissorhands -- at least the old house in which Edward lives -- is a dead ringer for Burton's reconstruction of Victorian London with its soot-stained chimneys and crumbling Gothic splendor. Both films end with showers, though of a slightly different nature: Instead of spraying snowflakes at the end of the film as a result of his handiwork, Depp as Sweeney sprays blood.
I think the similarities between these two films are worth pointing out because I don't think Burton had made a film as good as Edward Scissorhands until Sweeney Todd came out. It's as if the director has come full circle. Then again, it might be best to ignore me. It's never a good idea to listen to the hype.
posted by Chloe Veltman at 3:32 PM
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5238
|
__label__wiki
| 0.761538
| 0.761538
|
NKY Magazine Summer 2018
Fast Track to Success
Beckfield College now offering an accelerated program for nursing
Eric Spangler
As the nation’s baby-boom generation continues to age and its needs for health care increase, the demand for qualified nurses also continues to increase.
One local college now has a program to train skilled and educated nurses for the workforce in three years, instead of the typical four years. Beckfield College offers an accelerated bachelor of science degree in nursing at its Florence campus at 16 Spiral Drive.
“The bachelor of science in nursing program at Beckfield College is an accelerated three-year program that enables our students to get out of the classroom and into a nursing career a full year earlier,” says Diane Wolfer, Beckfield College CEO, CFO and president.
Highlights of the program, which started in 2017, include no pre-nursing classes requirements and no wait lists for nursing classes or clinicals. And that sets Beckfield apart from many local nursing programs, Wolfer says.
“Students are able to complete this accelerated course of study in a shorter time frame because Beckfield’s classes are focused on teaching students exactly what they need to know to become quality nurses, without excess general education courses,” says Wolfer.
And that makes Beckfield College’s accelerated bachelor of science degree in nursing program even better than most public or private universities because they are career focused, Wolfer says. “Our students can concentrate on the course of study necessary to begin their careers without having to take excess general education classes,” Wolfer says.
School officials plan to seek accreditation for the accelerated bachelor of science degree in nursing program later this year by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, an autonomous accrediting agency contributing to the improvement of the public’s health. The Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education ensures the quality and integrity of baccalaureate, graduate and residency programs in nursing.
Although Beckfield College’s accelerated bachelor of science degree in nursing program can get a student from the classroom to the workplace in three years, the college offers another program for those students who are already registered nurses.
Beckfield College offers a registered nurse to bachelor of science degree in nursing at a reduced tuition. And registered nurses can complete that program in just 18 months, Wolfer says.
“Beckfield College is committed to making our programs accessible to all students,” says Wolfer. “This online RN to BSN program can be completed in only 18 months for tuition at just $2,000 per term.”
The job outlook for nurses is positive, especially nurses with a bachelor’s degree. According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment of registered nurses is projected to grow 15 percent from 2016 to 2026, a rate much faster than the average for all occupations. That job growth is driven by an increased emphasis on preventive care; growing rates of chronic conditions, such as diabetes and obesity; and demand for health care services from the baby-boom population as they live longer and more active lives, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Not only is the job market for nurses booming, but the pay a nurse with a bachelor’s degree in nursing can expect is equally impressive. The median annual wage for registered nurses was $68,450 in May 2016, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Wolfer says the Bureau of Labor Statistics lists the median salary for a registered nurse in Kentucky at $57,000, while the median salary for a registered nurse in Ohio is $61,000. By earning a bachelor of science in nursing degree students are able to unlock additional job opportunities.
“Having a [bachelor of science in nursing] degree opens other career opportunities, including nursing management,” says Wolfer. In addition, the nation’s Magnet hospitals, which are recognized for nursing excellence and superior patient outcomes, have moved to require all nurse managers and nurse leaders to hold a baccalaureate or graduate degree in nursing, Wolfer says.
Those institutions applying for Magnet designation must show what plans are in place to achieve the Institute of Medicine’s recommendation of having an 80 percent baccalaureate prepared workforce by 2020, says Wolfer.
A bachelor of science degree in nursing is not only important for graduates to achieve greater success in life, it’s also important for the patients under their care. “Nurses with advanced nursing degrees have been shown to help patients have better outcomes,” says Wolfer. “This advanced training helps them become better prepared in an increasingly complex health care system.”
Once a student graduates, Beckfield College helps them find a job. “Beckfield College provides help on the job search with resume development and critiquing, professional development training, interview coaching, personalized career planning sessions and on-campus hiring fairs and career days,” says Wolfer.
Dr. Harry L. Beck started Beckfield College in 1984 under the name Educational Services Center. The school started with two students, two programs and one location, according to the college’s website.
Beckfield College now has more than 1,000 graduates, educational offerings at two on-campus locations, online delivery and several different programs with various levels that meet today’s professional needs, according to the school’s website.
For more information about Beckfield College go to beckfield.edu.
To receive more articles from NKY Magazine sign-up for a complimentary subscription here: http://bit.ly/SwEQdC
- A Powerful Partnership
- A Tree Grows in Boone County
- Banking Made Simple
- Easy Living
- Editor's View
- End of an Era?
- Forcht Bank: Exceeding Expectations
- Fun is Contagious at Taste of the Levee
- Go Beyond the Curb
- Got Your Goat
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5240
|
__label__cc
| 0.5927
| 0.4073
|
Support And Respecting Women Inside And Outside The Home
Dr Urvashi Sahni, Founder of Study Educational Foundation, Lucknow speaks to BW Education through an online interview
Q: India has made strides in terms of access to schooling and enrollment rates, yet faces a huge dropout rate when it comes to the education of the girl child. How can this scenario be transformed into a favorable situation?
This scenario can only change if educators and policymakers look carefully at the gendered causes why girls’ drop out and include this in the education agenda for girls. There are many societal factors at work in a patriarchal society like India, which keeps girls out of schools. In a society where girls are valued primarily for their reproductive, sexual and domestic labour, they are pulled out of school when they are needed to work at home, to help with sibling care, to stand in for their mothers when they are sick or die, When they are married as soon as they are sexually viable. So, it is no wonder that girls dropout rate is so high. Girls do not drop out of their own volition, they are either pulled out by their parents or pushed out by insensitive schools, who accept the gendered ‘lot of girls lives’ and do very little to counter the societal pressures on girls. On the contrary, schools often mirror societal gender norms and in so doing reinforce them. In our work in Lucknow, we contextualize our curriculum, our pedagogy and school organization in girls lives. We help girls learn that they are equal and deserve every opportunity to enhance their lives, that they have a right to exercise choice and to give voice to their feelings. We not only teach girls their rights to equality, but we also help them resist discrimination, advocate for themselves. Teachers are expected to fight alongside them and for them as they struggle to remain in school. The school works hard with the parent community to help them perceive their daughters as equal persons deserving respect and equal opportunities to flourish.
Girls need much more than access to school. They need to gain important knowledge that is denied them by a discriminatory patriarchal social structure – that they are equal; they need to develop strong voices and agency – and understand that a society that denies them these rights is cruel and unjust. Once girls become aware that they are being wronged, once social norms are de-naturalized, ( i.e., they are not God Given or part of a natural system, but are historical social constructions), they learn to resist discrimination and fight it. Schools should fight alongside them. They should provide the necessary supports and make it their educational goal to help their students develop more egalitarian mind-sets.
Q: The Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India has enshrined certain objectives that it has termed sacrosanct under the “Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao Yojana”. Do you think these initiatives will help ensure the welfare and the ultimate amelioration of the girl child?
The initiative is to be commended because it brings the problem faced by girls to the forefront and makes girls’ education an imperative. However, if people only follow the letter of the slogan without going into the spirit of it – all programs will have limited effect. Strong teacher training, revised curricula and a very strong effort to help government officials develop a gender lens is necessary if the initiatives are to have the desired effect to ameliorate the lives of girls. We should aim at the building in a component of education for gender justice in our official curriculum right from the early grades all the way to the high school level so that the habit of equality is ingrained in both boys and girls. This is how discriminatory patriarchal mindsets and social norms will change, and that is the only way in which girls will be able to live fully human lives of dignity, respect, and choice.
Q: Do you think there is a requirement of more research and individual contribution for girl child’s education and empowerment – to support the government’s various initiatives and if a parallel can be drawn of similar success stories anywhere in South Asia?
I think it is important for the Government to recognize the numerous very innovative efforts being made by NGOs all over India in this field and to use their contributions to inform Government policy and programmes. They should provide a national platform for all the NGOs to pool in their knowledge and resources and should institutionalize their combined offering. The government should think of NGOs like SHEF and others, as partners and allies in a common goal and should use them as important resources. I think NGOs like BRAC in Bangladesh are a good example of an NGO becoming a key Govt partner.
Q: Can you outline the journey of Study Hall Education Foundation and various facets that are empowering women and promoting gender equality?
We take a holistic life outcome and a lifecycle approach to education. Our goal is that girls should have better lives – they have a constitutional and human right to full equality. Our Foundation helps girls and boys in rural and urban regions of UP, learn this important lesson in a deep, intellectual way. Our goal is to help boys and girls critique patriarchal social and political structures, norms and mindsets, realize how unfair and cruel they are and learn to imagine an alternative – egalitarian truly democratic social structure. We include lessons of equality in the official curriculum along with lessons in literacy, math, and science because we think it is equally important for students to develop a social and political consciousness as it is for them to gain knowledge of math and science. Gender equality permeates our organizational structure and culture and is a priority for us. We have developed a critical feminist pedagogy for both boys and girls, a teacher training module, a curriculum for gender justice and have taken it to over 1000 government schools in UP and Rajasthan.
We believe that boys must join the effort towards gender equality – through patriarchy is not their fault, they must recognize how cruel it is to their sisters, mothers and daughters. Though it gives them more power and privilege, it also saddles them with greater stress and responsibility, which can be reduced if they give girls space and opportunity to share their responsibilities. Being equal means granting equality to girls. It also means re-constructing patriarchal notions of masculinity and re-imagining “manhood” as a more gentle, caring, sharing and nurturing person – helping at household chores and child care; supporting and respecting women inside and outside the home.
SHEF works at redefining the scope of Education to include critical thinking about urgent social issues like gender, caste, poverty and communalism in the official curriculum. If we hope to have a well-functioning democracy then we should teach children how to be truly democratic citizens, how to create democratic homes, families, communities, and workplaces. These are important lessons and schools are the best places to learn them.
SHEF has reached out to over 500,000 students, teachers and families over the last 3 decades and our goal are to reach out to at least 5 million more in the next 10 years.
Q: You were adjudicated as the prestigious Social Entrepreneur of the Year India, 2017 by the Schwab-Jubilant Bhartia Foundation. How do you think such platforms help Social Entrepreneurs in India?
It has given me and my organization a great deal of credibility and visibility nationally and internationally. I am most delighted that it has demonstrated that our work at social change through education has been validated. It has given us a platform to take our message far are and wide and because of the credible platform Schwab provides, I find that people are listening more attentively. The cause we are fighting for is receiving more attention and we are finding more fellow travelers.
Q: As an advocate, who has been in the business of good, how can technology be a game changer in revolutionizing and improving the quality of learning and imparting knowledge?
I think technology can be leveraged to take our work to scale more rapidly and more effectively and we are using it to our best advantage.
Beti Bachao Beti Padhao education
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5244
|
__label__wiki
| 0.63567
| 0.63567
|
The Power of Faith: Bishop J.L. Jones, Sr.
mdatcher
The power of faith is interwoven in our community through the foundation of churches, mosques and temples. Throughout the last century, the diversity of religion has grown beyond the traditional Christian base presenting fractions of African American congregations resulting in international alliances among religious leaders.
Bishop J. L. Jones, Sr. is an influential voice of the Apostolic faith, in 2014 he was selected as the Diocesan Bishop of the Illinois State Council of the PCAF (Pentecostal Churches of the Apostolic Faith Association, Inc.) International Organization as well as serving as State Bishop for 40 churches. His journey is a long and interesting one as former firefighter who started serving with the City of Chicago Fire Department in 1977. Working his way up the ladder over the years, he eventually became Exempt Rank and retired from his dual role as Assistant Fire Commissioner and Chief Officer of Diversity in 2005.
His time as a firefighter allowed him to connect with various groups of people in the community outside his church and missions. Connecting with people started long before as his family relocated from Natchez, Mississippi following the trail that so many Black Southerners searching for a better quality of life. At the age of 11,his family moved to Chicago where he found his church family at Victory Apostolic Faith Church.
Throughout the years, Jones was never far from his childhood church returning from duty after serving in the U.S. Army teaching Sunday school there and being called to the ministry in 1980.
Jone’s rise in the Apostolic faith community has been a gradual dedication attending the Moody Bible Institute, Midwest Apostolic Bible College and Trinity Bible College. In 1997, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Pentecostal Bible College. Throughout the years, Bishop Jones has earned his place as one of the leading faith leaders. Aside from his international leadership role for PCAF, he is the pastor of the Apostolic Assembly of the Lord Jesus Christ located on the far South Side of Chicago. The role in the council has resulted in some gradual changes.
“Let me go back a little ways and say that when our Bishop died. He died in the pulpit. The mantle kind of fell on me after the convention. I was selected as the chosen one for it. One of the things that I wanted to believe immediately is to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the council to find out what was really needed. What do we need to do as pastors, what needed to change, what needed to stay the same. That took about 7 months. Once that was done, it gave me an open book or understanding of what I was dealing with. I knew the pastor’s needs, I knew the needs of the local congregation as a whole.”
Jones works closely with young adults in the community and just recently founded “Ministers for Peace”, an organization that will be inviting a collective of leaders from various faiths to open up resources for the entire community. He believes it’s important to take time to invest in communities lacking proper role models.
“I was with a student who was late applying for college and went with him to the university to meet with the admissions director. We have to keep them encouraged, it just so happens that the student has some home issues and life challenges. It’s important that we mentor our young people because there are some things that they struggle with.” he said. “I deal with group mentoring – there’s a big need for that. Also, sharing with young people the global landscape on the importance to discover the whole world. Not just your neighborhood and family but if you can become conscious—you can become aware.”
Over the years, Jones and his mission have traveled the world . He is a constant fixture in Liberia, Nigeria, Uganda, Dominican Republic, and Haiti helping to build schools and provide clean water and better living conditions.
Jones is the President of the Brownlow, Belton, Sullivan & Arms, a non-for-profit organization. He was instrumental in the development of the seven-story Hancock House, an 89-unit low income housing complex for senior citizens located in the West Pullman community. The housing project started out as an idea among three missionaries; Hattie C. Brownlow, Mother Essie Belton and Dr. Lula Mae Sullivan.
Jones explains. “We’re looking at building another senior building. It would be a blessing to the seniors once we get the building up. We’re hoping to have an After School program for young people so they can come into the church year-around. Mentorship is very important to me and to be there for them.”
In his determination to connect faith leaders in his council with the community, Jones takes his role seriously especially in the wake of the long electoral process that included both state and citywide public officials in office. He believes a pastor’s trust with his congregation should not be compromised for personal benefits.
“As a pastor, we can’t afford to sell each other out, that is the thing that I’m looking at. If we sell each other out, after awhile we won’t be able to trust any of our own to move this thing out of its murky waters. We do look for each other on this level especially pastors like myself.” said Jones.
Bishop J.L. Jones and his wife, LaVerne have been married for almost 46 years raising six children and the proud grandparents of seven grandchildren – he feels his work is not done.
“We have to be very careful what we say across that pulpit and who we support. To rehearse it over and over on how this is going to effect the congregation and how is it going to effect the community? It’s important to think about that and if it’s not going to bless our community then we have to come up with something that will.”
Tags: Apostolic Assembly of the Lord Jesus Christ, Belton, Bishop J.L. Jones, Brown, Chicago Defender, Inc., Mary L Datcher, Ministers for Peace, PCAF, Pentecostal Churches of the Apostolic Faith Association, Sullivan and Arms, West Pullman
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5247
|
__label__cc
| 0.740364
| 0.259636
|
This guide includes a list of manuscript collections that include diaries and memoirs. Manuscripts must be used in the Dougherty Reading Room. To schedule an appointment or for more information, email spcoll@appstate.edu.
Andrew Jackson Greene Collection, 1906 - 1942
The Andrew Jackson Greene Collection consists of 163 diaries written by Greene and describing Watauga County's education system, cultural and religious life, and agriculture from 1906 to 1942.
Bingham Dai Papers, 1899 - 2006, undated (bulk 1950 - 1996)
The Bingham Dai Papers include the professional and personal papers of Dr. Bingham Dai (1899-1996), a psychotherapist. Dai was one of the first native-born Chinese to be trained in new theories of psychiatry and psychology in the 1930s. He taught at Peking Union Medical College in China, Duke University, and finished his career lecturing at Appalachian State University.
19.5 linear feet (40 boxes)
C.M. Campbell Diary and Papers, 1861-1980
This collection contains the diary of C.M. Campbell for 1861, a memorial brochure for Mrs. Mary A. Campbell, 1876. and a photocopied page from the Huntington, West Virginia newspaper dated July 13, 1980 about back pain.
0.01 linear feet (1 envelope)
Civil War Journal and Account Book, circa 1861-1887
The Civil War Journal and Account Book includes a journal documenting an unidentified soldier's war experiences from South Carolina to Bull Run to the Hazel River in Virginia. The diary starts with the regiment's muster in date, April 13, 1861 and continues until February 1862.
0.01 linear feet (1 folder)
Cratis D. Williams Papers, 1783 - 1986
Materials in the Cratis D. Williams Papers cover the professional and private life of scholar and professor Cratis Williams, his studies in Appalachian literature, folklore and ballads, and the Appalachian Consoritum. The collection consists of materials related to Williams' work at Appalachian State University, academic and genealogical research, correspondence, photographs, audio recordings of folksongs and lectures, one VHS tape, two reels of microfilm, slides, and family memorabilia.
70 linear feet (140 boxes)
Daniel M. Carlton Diary, 1864-1984
This collection consists of two photocopies of a Civil War soldier's tour of duty in the war. Daniel M. Carlton was from Stony Fork, Watauga County, North Carolina, and was killed in May 1864.
David Reid Hodgin Papers, 1916 - 1984, undated
The David Reid Hodgin Papers consists of the the faculty papers of David Hodgin, an Appalachian State Teachers College English professor from 1946 to 1965, along with copious notes and clippings associated with his areas of interest, essays, and teaching. There are also lots of audio materials, of which selected cassettes are digitized.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5249
|
__label__cc
| 0.666571
| 0.333429
|
D.A.V. Centenary Public School, Tohana was established in the year 1987. It is situated at Dangra Road, 1 Km away from the Bus stand. The school has been affiliated to the CBSE upto +2 level since April 1991. It has two streams (Science & Commerce). Its present strength is 1500 and 69 staff members are working at present. It has its own seven school buses. It is run by D.A.V. College Managing Committee, New Delhi.
It has got a building of its own since 1992. It is spread over an area of 3.5 acres. The school has well-equipped Science Laboratories, Computer Lab. and Library. The School Library is well-stocked comprising of approximately 7000 books and more than 21 journals. Magazines and newspapers are also subscribed. It has got a separate beautiful Nursery Block with all modern facilities catering to the Psychological needs of the students. It has a spacious playground with all facilities.
Our school has always shown a laudable performance in academics, sports and co-curricular activities. It has always maintained a track record of excellent results in the CBSE Exams. The students have joined professional courses like MBBS, IIT, B.Tech., B.E., MBA, CA, CS etc. We have a qualified and dedicated staff that leaves no stone unturned for the welfare of the students. Quality education is provided to the children. In this modern age of science and technology, we too are trying to equip our school with the latest technological advancements. We provide all facilities required in the teaching learning process. Teaching and learning is computer-aided.
Our students are quite disciplined. We have had no indisciplinary case since the inception of the school. The parents of our students are very co-operative and supportive and they always extend their co-operation in the smooth functioning of the school. The Alumni of the school has joined top establishments, industries and is faring very well.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5252
|
__label__cc
| 0.5307
| 0.4693
|
Clear Lines 2017 is being held at Rich Mix in London.
Find Us, via RichMix.org.uk:
35 – 47 Bethnal Green Road
E1 6LA
Rich Mix is located in the heart of Shoreditch with great transport links to the rest of the city.
There is a Santander Cycle hire point at Shoreditch High Street station.
By Overground
We are right around the corner from Shoreditch High Street station.
Turn left as you exit, then right. You can’t miss us!
By Tube
The nearest tube stations are Liverpool Street (Central, Hammersmith & City, District and Metropolitan lines), Old Street (Northern line), Bethnal Green (Central line) and Aldgate East (Hammersmith & City, District lines).
Rich Mix is a 13 minute walk from Liverpool Street station (via Bishopsgate), 14 minutes from Old Street station (via Great Eastern Street), 15 minutes from Algate East (down Commercial Street), and 16 minutes from Bethnal Green station (straight down Bethnal Green Road!).
The numbers 8 and 388 stop near building and can take you to the West End or towards Bow, Hackney and Cambridge Heath.
From Shoreditch High Street and Liverpool Street you can catch buses numbers 26, 35, 47, 48, 67, 78, 135, 149, 242 and 243.
Our nearest mainline station is Liverpool Street. It has frequent suburban and national services, as well as the Stansted Express for Stansted Airport.
Rich Mix does not have a car park, but there is limited pay and display parking available on Bethnal Green Road and street-metered parking on Club Row and at Arnold Circus.
Euro Car Parks can be found on Shoreditch High Street, and there is an NCP on Great Eastern Street. Both are closed in the late evening.
Disabled parking bays for Blue Badge Holders may be found on Club Row and at Arnold Circus.
Content owned by Rich Mix, from: https://www.richmix.org.uk/plan-your-visit/find-us
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5253
|
__label__wiki
| 0.616596
| 0.616596
|
DeWalt, Empire Level to end private label deal
Companies will end their partnership on the private label line of professional box levels.
Empire Level licensed, designed and manufactured the levels under the DeWalt brand in 2010.
The companies launched the DeWalt levels in retailers nationwide in Feb. 2010 after many months of development, and the products enjoyed strong sales success, according to a press statement. However, the acquisition of DeWalt by Stanley Works in 2010, created an "undesirable competitive situation, and both parties felt the best action moving forward was to end the partnership."
"We're disappointed that this agreement didn't work out as planned, but we certainly understand that a partner who becomes a direct competitor through acquisition is an untenable situation, and we're pleased that an amicable resolution has been reached," said Jenni Becker, president of Empire Level Mfg. Corp.
"Though we enjoyed working with Empire Level, we're pleased that we were able to come to an agreement to exit our partnership, which pre-existed the acquisition and was no longer appropriate for either brand," said Jennifer Ervin, director of New Business Development, DeWalt. "Empire Level has been a great partner and we wish them well."
The Stanley Black & Decker merger was completed in March 2010.
www.dewalt.com
www.empirelevel.com
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5257
|
__label__cc
| 0.664821
| 0.335179
|
Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood
Florida’s Only Real Casino
The Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood, Florida has added Las Vegas-style slot machines. In addition to this debut, the Casino is now Florida’s only REAL casino offering Blackjack, Pai Gow Poker, Let it Ride, Baccarat, Mini-Baccarat, and Three Card Poker. Carmen Electra and Rob Patterson of Korn hosted the first official Blackjack deal! Additional Celebrities on hand to celebrate this long awaited event happen to included Heather Graham, Joey Fatone, Alonzo Mourning, Lorraine Bracco, Chris Kirkpatrick, Bernie Kosar, Nat Moore, Dywane Wade, Bob Kuechenberg, Howard Schnellenberger, Gino Torretta, Zach Crockett, Eddie Jones, O.J. McDuffie, Cornelius Bennett, Henri Crockett, Kimbo Slice, and Frank Vincent. Let us know how many celebrities YOU can count in the video. The first person to get the right amount will have their photo on the home page of all 5 of our web sites.
A Special Thanks to theFlorida Gov. Charlie Crist, Seminole Chairman Mitchell Cypress, U.S. Department of the Interior, James Allen CEO of Seminole Gaming.
The new gambling equipment is made from environmentally-friendly, these products are Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System certified materials and manufacturing processes to improve indoor air quality. All of the wood products, adhesives, and finishing materials used in the manufacturing process are free from added urea formaldehydes. Twenty percent of all the wood products used happen to be made out of recycled. Remaining wood products used in the trellises are Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified and part of the well-managed forest project: when one tree is cut down, a new one is planted. To be more energy efficient Low-energy lighting is also utilized.
LEED encourages and accelerates global adoption of sustainable green development and building practices through the implementation and creation of universally understood and accepted tools and performance criteria. BocaRaton.com and The Bites! Network is launching the ‘Laugh Yourself Green’ Campaign in order to make people more aware of how to be environmentally friendly. Stay turned!
Anyone in the mood for 'Blackjack, Three Card Poker, Baccarat, Mini-Baccarat, Pai Gow Poker, or Let it Ride'?
If you were not seen at the SEMINOLE HARD ROCK HOTEL & CASINO in HOLLYWOOD on Sunday, June 22, 2008 then that means you missed the spectacular 'Grand Opening' of the BLACKJACK tables at this Florida Casino. Celeb sightings galore highlighted this exciting evening as Carmen Electra and her Fiancé, Rob Patterson (of Korn) hosted THE FIRST BIG DEAL!!. Michael “Let’s Get Ready to Rumble” Buffer announced for this amazing event that was exclusive at Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood.
Go down to the Hollywood Hard Rock Casino and experience the first legal games of Blackjack, Baccarat, Mini-Baccarat, Three Card Poker, Let it Ride, and Pai Gow Poker. Former Prince protégé, Baywatch babe, and actress, Carmen Electra was there to hot the event as well as her fiancé, Rob Patterson of Korn as they hosted the first official Blackjack deal.
Talk about a red carpet star studded affair! Celebrities that were on hand to help celebrate this event were: Heather Graham, Alonzo Mourning, Bernie Kosar, Lorraine Bracco, Nat Moore, Dywane Wade, Howard Schnellenberger, Gino Torretta, Zach Crockett, Bob Kuechenberg, Eddie Jones, Kimbo Slice, O.J. McDuffie, Cornelius Bennett, Henri Crockett...and the list goes on.
There are 71 new tables all together; 55 are dedicated to Blackjack, six to Three Card Poker, three to Pai Gow Poker, three to Let it Ride, two to Baccarat and two to Mini- Baccarat. The addition of blackjack, baccarat and other table games catapults the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood into the ranks of the world’s top casinos. With slots, poker, blackjack and baccarat, the Hard Rock now offers the most popular casino games, favored by more than 90 percent of casino players.
More than 800 Blackjack dealers, supervisors and others were hired for the launch of Blackjack and other card games at the Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood. Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Tampa will debut the games in late fall of 2008. No dates have been announced for the launch of Blackjack at the other Seminole Casinos.
This Event began with Seminole Gaming CEO Jim Allen, Carmen Electra and Rob Patterson who were joined by members of the Seminole Tribal Council.
Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino is South Florida's only real casino and leading entertainment destination featuring 71 tables offering Blackjack, Baccarat, Mini-Baccarat, Pai Gow Poker, Three Card Poker, and Let it Ride. More than 2,500 of the most popular Vegas-style slots and games are available to play on its 145,000-square-foot casino floor, including Multi-Area Progressive Jackpots and Mega Jackpots.
The Poker Room at Seminole Paradise is a 12,000-square-foot private room offering no-limit Texas Hold ‘em, limit Texas Hold ’em, Seven Card Stud and two dollar and four dollar limit Omaha Hi Lo games. This casino also offers a non-smoking room and a high-limit gaming room with a cashier booth, check cashing services, and safe deposit boxes. The high-limit room also includes a VIP Plum Lounge exclusive area for loyal Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Players Club members and a celebrity show kitchen. This Four Diamond, AAA-rated, 500-room hotel offers 16 restaurants and lounges, 40,000 square feet of meeting room space, a full-service, European-style spa, and 23 retail shops, 11 nightclubs, and Paradise Live—a 600 seat venue with classic music album performances in Seminole Paradise.
Table Games • Press Release
Table Games Fact Sheet • Press Release
Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino
1 Seminole Way
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5259
|
__label__wiki
| 0.948106
| 0.948106
|
Watch Here: Josh Abbott Band’s New “Girl Down In Texas” Video
By Mandy Slegers on April 2, 2018 in Artists, Music, New Single, News, Videos
Josh Abbott Band’s New “Girl Down In Texas” Video can be watched HERE now!
Everything’s better in Texas, including the girls. Starring Texas native and instagram star Emily Herren, Josh Abbott Band’s new music video for “Girl Down In Texas” gives you a little slice of what makes Texas special. Preferring 6th Street in Austin and the River Walk in San Antonio to the big city rush of New York and L.A., it’s pretty clear that a girl down in Texas beats a girl anywhere else… especially when she’s waiting on you.”- The Whiskey Riff.
The song is from country favorites Josh Abbott Band’s 2017 album “Until My Voice Goes Out”. The critically acclaimed album is a hopeful look into the future and an embrace of life and its potential. The seven piece band also incorporates strings and a horn section for the first time on the album and has been touring in support since release. Hailed as one of the top Texas country acts, Josh Abbott Band is renowned for heartfelt songwriting and traditional instrumentation.
The independent band has accumulated over 80 million total streams, 18 million YouTube/VEVO views has over 1.5 million single sales and 230,000 album sales.
For a complete list of tour dates & more info on the Josh Abbott Band visit their website & follow them on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Josh Abbott Band, Whiskey Riff
Tune In: Shania Twain Discusses Her Passion For Songwriting On ‘THE BIG INTERVIEW’
Check It Out: What Brothers Osborne, Lambert, Worsham, Baxter & Duhon Have In Common
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5260
|
__label__cc
| 0.595769
| 0.404231
|
August Festivals Give Delirious? A Busy Summer
Delirious? continued their summer of festival appearances this week, with three UK festivals in three days. On Tuesday (3rd August) they performed at the 'New Wine' event in Shepton Mallet, Somerset. Their appearance marked the 10th anniversary of the first time the band played at the event back in 1994.
It is also an event that holds special memories for Martin Smith, as he explained on the band's website: "I wrote my first ever worship song 'Lord you have my heart' at New Wine '89 after being in one of the meetings". Delirious? then travelled North to perform at the 'Audacious' event held at Keele University. Rounding off the first leg of their summer gigs, Delirious? performed at the Alexandra Palace in London last night (5th August) as part of the 'Soul In The City' event.
The band will now go on holiday for a week, breaking off for a brief trip to Athens on 14th August to perform at a gig entertaining people who are visiting the city for the Olympic Games. On their return they resume their summer holidays before making further festival appearances in the UK at Greenbelt (28th August) and Grapevine (29th August).
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5262
|
__label__wiki
| 0.76875
| 0.76875
|
Emily S. Mendel Jul 7, 2012
Also in Film
Silver City Arthur Lazere
L’Enfant (The Child) George Wu
Volver Archive
The sexagenarian singer/songwriter Neil Young
Neil Young Journeys (2011)
Directed by: Jonathan Demme
Starring: Neil Young
MPAA Rating: Rated PG
Neil Young Journeys movie website
“Neil Young Journeys” is an interesting documentary film about the music and life of Neil Young. It’s a treat for those who have followed Young’s music career since the Buffalo Springfield (1966), Crosby Stills Nash and Young (1969), Crazy Horse (1968) and all the iterations that followed. When one thinks of all the troubles and early deaths of music stars, Neil Young’s strength and durability is remarkable.
His singer/songwriter/musician career has spanned over 40 years and produced 34 studio albums. For those who are new to Young’s clear high tenor singing voice and his meaningful, sometimes personal lyrics, this film is a great introduction.
Director Jonathan Demme, renowned producer and director of 27 feature films such as “Rachel Getting Married,” “Philadelphia” and “The Silence of the Lambs (Oscar for Best Direction), has made two prior films with Young, “Neil Young: Heart of Gold” (2006) and “Trunk Show” (2009).
All three documentaries revolve around Young’s live shows. And “Neil Young Journeys” captures a great concert at Massey Hall in Toronto, where Young had last appeared 40 years prior. Clearly, his enthusiastic hometown audience was filled with avid fans. But Young deserved their applause.
His set was comprised of old favorites, such as “Ohio,” recalling the 1970 massacre at Kent State, “Down by the River” (“…I shot my baby…”) and “After the Gold Rush” (“Well I dreamed I saw the knights in armor…”).
Interspersed were excellent songs from 2010’s “Le Noise,” such as the slashing “Love And War,” the ragged “Hitchhiker,” and the tender “Sign of Love.” Young played various instruments, including piano, harmonica, claw hammer acoustic guitar and electric guitar. At times, his voice sounded raw and he reached to hit the highest notes. Largely though, his voice was pure and his music heartfelt.
As to the filming of the concert, I guess that Demme wanted Declan Quinn, director of photography, to shoot as close to Young’s face as possible, and keep the camera there. So the audience saw interminable shots of Young’s dental work, his grizzly and graying facial hair, and his wobbly chin. Not his best look.
In juxtaposition to the concert, Young and Demme took a nostalgic drive in a 1956 Crown Victoria around Toronto, which included Young’s return to his childhood home of Omemee, Ontario, a small town near Toronto. Young’s joyful revisit to Omemee contains some of the best scenes in the documentary, as we get a glimpse of a happier, freer Young. These scenes are in stark contrast to his contemplative and pensive performance.
Unfortunately, the town was almost unrecognizable to Young because of its development with condominiums and golf courses. Yet we watch Young drive around Omemee and reminisce about his happy childhood of fishing, camping and petting chickens. Young’s lyrics to “Helpless” come to mind:
There is a town in North Ontario
Dream comfort memory to spare
And in my mind I still need a place to go
All my changes were there
Emily Mendel
emilymendel@gmail.com
(c) Emily S. Mendel 2012 All Rights Reserved
Emily S. Mendel San Francisco ,
Emily S. Mendel, a writer and photographer, has been a regular contributor to culturevulture.net since 2006, where she reviews theater, art, film, television and destinations. Ending her 30-year law practice has given Ms. Mendel the time to indulge in her love of travel and the arts, and to serve as the theater reviewer for berkeleyside.com.
Chunhyang Arthur Lazere
Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash Chicago,
Buena Vista Social Club Arthur Lazere
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5265
|
__label__cc
| 0.718693
| 0.281307
|
He·brew /ˈhi(ˌ)bru/ 形容詞
希伯來人的, 希伯來語的。
He·brew /ˈhi(ˌ)bru/ 名詞
希伯來人, 希伯來語, 猶太人。
He·brew n.
1. An appellative of Abraham or of one of his descendants, esp. in the line of Jacob; an Israelite; a Jew.
There came one that had escaped and told Abram the Hebrew. --Gen. xiv. 13.
2. The language of the Hebrews; -- one of the Semitic family of languages.
He·brew, a. Of or pertaining to the Hebrews; as, the Hebrew language or rites.
adj 1: of or relating to or characteristic of the Hebrews; "the old
Hebrew prophets" [syn: Hebraic, Hebraical]
2: of or relating to the language of the Hebrews; "Hebrew
vowels" [syn: Hebraic, Hebraical]
n 1: the ancient Canaanitic language of the Hebrews that has been
revived as the official language of Israel
2: a person belonging to the worldwide group claiming descent
from Jacob (or converted to it) and connected by cultural
or religious ties [syn: Jew, Israelite]
From: Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary
a name applied to the Israelites in Scripture only by one who is
a foreigner (Gen. 39:14, 17; 41:12, etc.), or by the Israelites
when they speak of themselves to foreigners (40:15; Ex. 1:19),
or when spoken of an contrasted with other peoples (Gen. 43:32;
Ex. 1:3, 7, 15; Deut. 15:12). In the New Testament there is the
same contrast between Hebrews and foreigners (Acts 6:1; Phil.
3:5).
Derivation. (1.) The name is derived, according to some, from
Eber (Gen. 10:24), the ancestor of Abraham. The Hebrews are
"sons of Eber" (10:21).
(2.) Others trace the name of a Hebrew root-word signifying
"to pass over," and hence regard it as meaning "the man who
passed over," viz., the Euphrates; or to the Hebrew word meaning
"the region" or "country beyond," viz., the land of Chaldea.
This latter view is preferred. It is the more probable origin of
the designation given to Abraham coming among the Canaanites as
a man from beyond the Euphrates (Gen. 14:13).
(3.) A third derivation of the word has been suggested, viz.,
that it is from the Hebrew word _'abhar_, "to pass over," whence
_'ebher_, in the sense of a "sojourner" or "passer through" as
distinct from a "settler" in the land, and thus applies to the
condition of Abraham (Heb. 11:13).
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5267
|
__label__wiki
| 0.729695
| 0.729695
|
Concert Review | Madonna @ Air Canada Centre
On 09.18.12 , In Arts, Music, Entertainment, Events , by Richard - Guest Blogger
Last week, Toronto was treated to back-to-back sold out shows from the Queen of Pop - Madonna! Running around the world representing the MDNA Tour, she delivered a top notch, production heavy spectacle. Given the dancey (DJ produced) latest album vibe, she brought along Paul Oakenfold to open for the Toronto crowd at the Air Canada Centre.
The interesting thing about a Madonna concert is that most people in attendance usually go just because she is ‘Madonna’ – although she is touring on new material, most seem to not care. This was the same situation for this tour too, the MDNA album hasn’t done much in terms of movement or radio hit singles, however, the fans who were familiar with the material liked it best. She seemed to be enjoying herself in Toronto as she performed Holiday for the second time this whole tour (the only other city to get the song thus far – NYC).
This was my fourth time seeing her, and although I enjoyed myself a lot, it wasn’t her best tour. It was definitely a lot darker in terms of imagery, and some would say it’s typical Madonna trying too hard. She had a lot of guns, blood, and even a Tarintino style death scene where she killed a man on stage for her song ‘Gang Bang’. Since the show, I’ve been talking to others who attended, and I’m getting a lot of different reactions. It seems to be a love or hate. I actually saw a few people leave the concert. People were upset with her late arrival at 10:30pm, but I knew in advance this is the time she’s been going on stage, so it wasn’t a surprise to me. The DJ played from 8:45 – 9:45pm, so what do people expect?
Regardless, as long as she keeps touring, I’ll keep attending. Her concerts are always a huge show, and I always feel like I’m getting my monies worth. It’s about entertainment value with her, and she always delivers.
Download: Madonna on iTunes
Follow us on Twitter and ‘Like’ us on Facebook to stay informed about events such as this.
Photo credit: allaboutmadonna.com
Richard - Guest Blogger
Richard is an avid lover of all things music. Follow him on Twitter: @richarddoria
I love Madonna!! Looks like it was an awesome concert!!
Looks like it was awesome concert!!
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5269
|
__label__wiki
| 0.666079
| 0.666079
|
Monterey Accelerated Research System (MARS) observatory
Oceanographers have completed an important step in constructing the first deep-sea observatory off the continental United States. Workers in the multi-institution effort laid 32 miles (52 kilometers) of cable along the Monterey Bay sea floor that will provide electrical power to scientific instruments, video cameras, and robots 3,000 feet (900 meters) below the ocean surface. The link will also carry data from the instruments back to shore, for use by scientists and engineers from around the world.
The Monterey Accelerated Research System (MARS) observatory, due to be completed later this year, will provide ocean scientists with 24-hour-a-day access to instruments and experiments in the deep sea. The project is managed by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Currently, almost all oceanographic instruments in the deep sea rely on batteries for power and store their data on hard disks or memory chips until they are brought back to the surface. With a continuous and uninterrupted power supply, instruments attached to the MARS observatory could remain on the sea floor for months or years.
"MARS represents the first step in a long-planned process to transform the way the oceans are studied," said Julie Morris, director of NSF's Division of Ocean Sciences. "Marine scientists will no longer be required to go out to the ocean for their studies. The ocean is about to come into their offices."
If something goes wrong with the instruments, scientists will know immediately, and will be able to recover or reprogram them as necessary.
Slightly thicker than a garden hose, the MARS cable is buried about 3 feet below the sea floor along most of its route, so it will not be disturbed by boat anchors or fishing gear.
The cable itself contains a copper electrical conductor and strands of optical fiber. The copper conductor will transmit up to 10 kilowatts of power from a shore station at Moss Landing, Calif., to instruments on the sea floor. The optical fiber will carry up to 2 gigabits per second of data from these instruments back to researchers on shore, allowing scientists to monitor and control instruments 24 hours a day, and to have an unprecedented view of how environmental conditions in the deep sea change over time.
"After 5 years of hard work, we are thrilled to bring the age of the Internet to the deep ocean, so we can understand, appreciate and protect the two-thirds of our planet that lies under the sea," said MBARI director Marcia McNutt. "We are grateful for the help of our talented partners and visionary sponsors. MARS has truly been a team effort."
At the seaward end of the MARS cable is a large steel frame about 4 feet (1.2 meters) tall and 15 feet (4.6 meters) on each side. This "trawl-resistant frame" will protect the electronic "guts" of the MARS observatory, which will serve as a computer network hub and electrical substation in the deep sea. The researchers hope to install these electronic components into the trawl-resistant frame in the fall of 2007.
After the electronics package is installed and tested, scientists from around the world will be able to attach their instruments to the observatory using underwater extension cords. These instruments will be carried down from the surface and plugged into the science node using MBARI's remotely operated vehicles.
MARS also will serve as a testing ground for technology that will be used on more ambitious deep-sea observatories. As planned, such observatories will use thousands of kilometers of undersea cables to hook up dozens of seismographs and oceanographic monitoring stations. They will provide scientists with new views of sea floor life, and a new understanding of the global tectonic processes that spawn earthquakes and tsunamis.
"MARS is the harbinger of an international ocean observatory network that will enable scientists to study ocean features and changing conditions," said Morris. "New ocean observing capabilities will provide knowledge about the ocean, and information to better manage and preserve ocean resources."
The MARS project was initiated in 2002 with $8 million in grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and $1.75 million from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation. NSF also contributed an additional $2 million to meet permitting and homeland security requirements. Components for the observatory are being designed and built by MBARI, the University of Washington, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Nautronics Maripro, and Alcatel.
-NSF-
Cheryl Dybas, NSF (703) 292-7734 cdybas@nsf.gov
Kim Fulton-Bennett, MBARI (831) 775-1835 kfb@mbari.org
MARS Observatory: http://www.mbari.org/mars/
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering, with an annual budget of $5.91 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 1,700 universities and institutions. Each year, NSF receives about 40,000 competitive requests for funding, and makes nearly 10,000 new funding awards. The NSF also awards over $400 million in professional and service contracts yearly.
Receive official NSF news electronically through the e-mail delivery and notification system, MyNSF (formerly the Custom News Service). To subscribe, visit www.nsf.gov/mynsf/ and fill in the information under "new users".
Useful NSF Web Sites:
NSF Home Page: http://www.nsf.gov
NSF News: http://www.nsf.gov/news/
For the News Media: http://www.nsf.gov/news/newsroom.jsp
Science and Engineering Statistics: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/
Awards Searches: http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/
Posted by stuartinfiji
Tags: MARS, NSF
Diveaway Fiji
A blog by Diveaway Fiji : a PADI dive centre based on the Coral Coast of the Fiji Islands.
Help out with a little crypto-coin plz ;)
Fiji Diving Links
Diveaway Fiji Dive Centre
Fiji Dive Sites
Fiji Diving
Fiji Diving Photos
Fiji Scuba
Hideaway Diving
Openwater Course
Discuss and bookmark
Diving in your later years……
Whales & Dolphins (Smithsonian Handbooks)
Ten Delicious Ways to Dip into Diving
Monterey Accelerated Research System (MARS) observ...
Wind shifts devastate ocean life
Global Warming Fast Facts
Beer Crisis!
Stop Distribution of Shark Fins
Tags follow 'Nemo' fish to home
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Wind shifts devastate ...
Scarborough Today News - Lake fish killed by amoro...
IYOR 08 Logo contest
JOHNSON OUTDOORS ACQUIRES SEEMANN SUB
Wetsuit Warehouse
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5270
|
__label__wiki
| 0.689788
| 0.689788
|
Baseball's March Madness
Watching the USA-Canada tussle in the World Baseball Classic on Saturday, it felt great to enjoy a gut-wrenching 9th inning in early March. What better way to dive head-first into a new baseball season than to pace the floor as closer J. J. Putz struggled (and I do mean struggled) to preserve a two-run lead against the Canadians in front of a nearly full stadium in Toronto. Putz surrendered one run but held on to retire Jason Bay and nail down a 6-5 victory that prevented the American team from reliving the shocking comeuppance they got from the Canadian team in the inaugural WBC in 2006.
Nor was that the only exciting moment of the tournament's first round. Far from it. Earlier that day came a jolting upset by the Netherlands over a star-studded Dominican Republic squad that put a ton of runners on base but couldn't get them across the plate. Mets fans can tell you why the Dominicans lost: they benched Jose Reyes in favor of Hanley Ramirez at shortstop, and Ramirez's ghastly throwing error in the top of the 1st inning helped the Netherlands take a 3-0 lead which they never relinquished. DR manager Felipe Alou nearly had a stroke in the bottom of the 9th when, trailing 3-2, speedster Willy Taveras tried to steal third base with one out and got nailed, effectively killing their only chance to tie the game. Earlier, the Netherlands had brought in a relief pitcher nobody in this country will ever likely hear of again, with the bases loaded, and he promptly threw a double-play ball to kill a DR rally. But maybe the Dutch team is for real. Yesterday they held Puerto Rico scoreless for seven innings and were poised for another upset, leading 1-0 until Puerto Rico scored three runs in the 8th inning to win. Now the Dutch will have to beat the Dominican Republic again to advance. Don't tell them they can't do it.
In the USA's second game of the tournament, they faced a Venezuela team that also has its share of major leaguers and had trounced Italy 7-0 in its opening game. No problem. Again, Mets fans can tell you what happened here. Trailing 3-2 heading into the 5th inning, the Americans looked up to the sight of Victor Zambrano toeing the rubber for the Venezuelans. Although Mets fans cringe at the very thought of Victor "The Wrong" Zambrano, the wild-armed bustout for whom a general manager whose name I can't even bring myself to type traded prized prospect Scott Kazmir, at least this time he had a chance to help the team we were rooting for. Zambrano got through the 5th inning unscathed, but fell apart in the 6th. Two hits, two walks and a wild pitch later, he gave us that familiar head-down trudge to the dugout, and the USA team was in business. Before the inning ended, it was an 8-run rally and a 10-3 lead that opened the door to a 15-6 rout. Thank you, finally, Victor, for giving me a performance I could cheer.
As its reward, Venezuela will get to play Italy again, thanks to the Italians' stirring 6-2 win over the Canadians yesterday. The "crowd" in Toronto looked meager (the official attendance was 12,411), and maybe the fans took the Italians lightly and were waiting to show up for a game against Venezuela, much like Atlanta Braves fans of the perennial division champs stayed away in droves from first-round playoff games, figuring the games weren't worth watching until the World Series, only to see the Braves flounder over and over again in the first round. All those fans who stayed away in droves deserved what they got, in this case a high-energy effort from the underdog Italians, who simply outplayed their hosts. Maybe batting coach Mike Piazza was masquerading for some of the unknowns in the Italian lineup, but they also played great defense and thoroughly earned their rematch with Venezuela.
With the USA team packed with power--you know it's a scary lineup when the last three guys in the batting order are Ryan Braun, Brian McCann, and Curtis Granderson, and you have to platoon Jimmy Rollins and Derek Jeter at shortstop--and Japan, Korea, and Cuba looking strong, this could be quite a tournament. There are more great games ahead, and the teams seem to be taking this competition more seriously than they did in 2006 (that is, the Americans are). That first time around, some people thought of the games as exhibitions. It was March, after all, a time for leisurely preparation for the long season ahead. This time, it is definitely a competition, and for fans like me who have endured a long, harsh winter, it is never too early to see teams battling for every base and every out, and never too early to feel the anxiety of every pitch as my team tries to grab that next vital victory. So bring on the Cubans and the Japanese!
Labels: Current Events
David Kalen said...
I can not believe that I came across your blog by accident.
Paying To Watch Out-Takes
A Fantasy League Draft Day Prayer
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5271
|
__label__cc
| 0.619236
| 0.380764
|
A ‘gem’ of a partnership
by Kelsey Kaustinen | Email the author
Genoptix Inc.
Bionano Genomics Inc.
SAN DIEGO & CARLSBAD, Calif.—Diagnostics are the name of the game for a recently announced exclusive agreement between oncology diagnostics and informatics company Genoptix Inc. and Bionano Genomics Inc. The two companies shared news that they plan to co-develop “information-rich diagnostics” for certain hematologic oncology indications in the United States by leveraging Bionano’s Saphyr System.
The Saphyr System offers the ability to accurately visualize a genome’s structure with a DNA sample isolated directly from cancer cells, thereby eliminating the need for cell culture. It enables the detection of all major types of structural variants with greater sensitivity than sequencing-based methods, according to Bionano, and with much higher resolution than karyotyping or fluorescence in-situ hybridization.
Though no specific financial details were disclosed, Dr. Erik Holmlin, CEO of Bionano, tells DDNews that the company will support Genoptix in the development of novel tests, noting that “Bionano will supply Genoptix with the necessary instrumentation and consumables to support a commercial offering of these tests subject to all relevant regulatory factors.”
“We are excited about working with the leader in hematologic cancers. This alliance is a major milestone for Bionano, showing the potential of the Saphyr system for clinical analysis of cancer genomes. Bionano’s approach allows for the entire genome to be analyzed without the use of specific probes to detect variants of interest. Variants of clinical significance discovered in the future can easily be added to an assay without the need to develop additional detection tools,” he said in a press release.
Genoptix and Bionano will focus on cancer subtypes in hematology-oncology in which accurate diagnosis is dependent on detecting large structural variations in the genome. Cancer cells are known to present with an abundance of major rearrangements of the genome, and the presence or absence of these rearrangements can impact a tumor’s characteristics and response to treatment.
“There is an increased interest from different companies to offer specialized cancer panels that have been designed to detect single nucleotide variants responsible for cancer. Besides single nucleotide variants, structural variants—which are variations across large regions of DNA, that can include copy number variations, balanced translocations or inversions—play a significant role in the development of cancers,” Holmlin explains. “Bionano is the structural variation company and provides the technological advance to comprehensively and accurately detect this important class of variants. With Genoptix, we are focusing on improving the diagnosis for selected indications of hematologic cancers by detecting structural variations in cancer.”
He adds that while the companies have worked together informally for a while, “This announcement reflects the formalization of our relationship around a detail co-development plan,” noting that “Genoptix is one of the leading clinical labs providing testing for hematologic cancers. Their expertise in commercializing clinical tests in this space makes them an ideal partner.”
Genoptix offers comprehensive testing solutions in hematology, with a focus on cancers and diseases of the blood, bone marrow and lymph nodes, as well as solid tumor molecular profiling.
“We are pleased to be collaborating with Bionano to develop and validate robust clinical diagnostics for oncology applications utilizing Bionano’s promising technology. We look forward to commercializing these exciting technologies to empower physicians to more effectively diagnose and treat cancer,” commented Joseph M. Limber, CEO of Genoptix.
Back in March, Bionano shared news regarding the results its next-generation mapping (NGM) systems—Saphyr and Irys—generated in a first-of-its-kind study. NGM was found to accurately identify potentially clinically relevant oncogenes and pathogenic driver mutations that had not before been detected by next-generation sequencing. Specifically, in terms of large structural variations that play a role in the progression of prostate cancer, NGM with the Irys system at 35x genome coverage was capable of identifying 10 times more structural variations that were larger than 1,000 base pairs than the Illumina X10 platform at 60x genome coverage. As noted in the press release, “Importantly, of the large SVs detected on the Bionano system, half were in or near genes with oncogenic potential. Of the sequence variants detected with NGS, only 0.5 percent were in or near such genes.”
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5272
|
__label__wiki
| 0.985301
| 0.985301
|
May 14, 2018—Endemol Shine Boomdog, the newly launched division of Endemol Shine North America, is bringing its first slate of new programming to LA Screenings, including recently renewed hit series “MasterChef Latino” and “Mira Quién Baila,” as well as, the highly-anticipated drama series “Nicky Jam: El Ganador,” it was announced today by Endemol Shine Boomdog CEO Alejandro Rincon.
In addition to “MasterChef Latino,” which was renewed this week by Telemundo for a second season and “Mira Quién Baila,” which was renewed for a sixth season by Univision, Endemol Shine Boomdog has a full slate of both unscripted and scripted content available at LA Screenings.
Endemol Shine Boomdog officially launched in January, bringing together Endemol Shine’s U.S. Hispanic and Mexican development and production team with that of Mexico City-based production company Boomdog. The newly combined studio has offices and production facilities in Mexico City and Miami and is focused on developing/producing original content for the U.S. Hispanic and Mexican TV markets.
“It has been an amazing year for our entire team at Endemol Shine Boomdog,” says Rincon. “We have a lot of momentum across both our unscripted and scripted programming teams and we come to LA Screenings with high quality, hit series from both the U.S. Hispanic and Mexican markets, as well as, exciting new formats from our colleagues across the globe.”
In addition to “MasterChef Latino,” the studio is also bringing hit series “MasterChef Mexico,” which is heading into its sixth season with Azteca later this year. And one of the region’s most popular news shows in “Chumel with Chumel Torres,” the original Endemol Shine Boomdog series that airs on HBO in Latin America.
Endemol Shine Boomdog is also offering a bevy of exciting new Endemol Shine formats from all parts of the globe, including “All Together Now,” “Big Bounce Battle,” “LEGO MASTERS” and “Family Food Fight.”
“All Together Now” is a brand-new talent competition from Remarkable Television, part of Endemol Shine UK, that has recently been commissioned for a second series for BBC One in the UK and for a first series in Australia by Seven Network, following its hugely successful first UK run.
“Big Bounce Battle” is a new entertainment format, originally created by Endemol Shine Netherlands, that has been commissioned for a second series by RTL in Germany, following its successful first series launch. Produced by Endemol Shine Germany, the series sees contestants race the clock and gravity as they try to conquer spectacular obstacle courses of trampolines as fast as they can.
“LEGO MASTERS” features eight pairs of amateur fans competing against each other, building ambitious brick creations in the brand-new competition series, LEGO MASTERS. The all-new competitive format, challenges the biggest LEGO fans to build incredible creations with the famous bricks. “LEGO MASTERS” is from Endemol Shine studio Tuesday’s Child and LEGO and its set to air on Channel 4 in the UK.
“Family Food Fight” is a new competitive cookery series from Endemol Shine Australia that ranked as a top 5 show across all key demographics on its launch in Australia. Diverse, multi-generational families go head-to-head in high-pressure cooking challenges to win the experience of a life time and the coveted title of the “Greatest Food Family.”
On the scripted front, Endemol Shine Boomdog is set to launch “Nicky Jam: El Ganador” later this year on both Telemundo and Netflix. The series stars the reggaetón star as himself and is executive produced by acclaimed director/producer Jessy Terrero.
The studio also has the second season of breakout drama series “El Vato,” which recently debuted on Universo and Netflix, as well as, the upcoming drama series “To Selena With Love,” which is based on the best-selling book by Chris Perez, the husband of the late Latin music superstar.
And Endemol Shine Boomdog is currently developing “El Clan,” a scripted series based on Maria Raquenel Portillo’s autobiography and “Subete a Mi Moto—The History of Menudo,” a drama with Somos Productions and Piñolywood Studios.
Its Endemol Shine Latino division oversees all Spanish and Portuguese-language operations across Latin America, including newly launched studio Endemol Shine Boomdog, which produces original content for both the U.S. Hispanic and Mexican markets. Subsidiary production companies include Authentic Entertainment, Truly Original, and 51 Minds Entertainment.
Endemol Shine Group’s companies in North America are behind such hit series as Big Brother (CBS), Ink Master (Paramount Network), MasterChef (FOX), MasterChef Junior (FOX), Swamp People (History), The Real Housewives of Atlanta (Bravo), T.I. & Tiny: The Family Hustle (VH1), Page Six TV (Syndicated), Fear Factor (MTV), Best.Cover.Ever. (YouTube), I'm Dying Up Here (Showtime), Staten Island Hustle (CNBC), Trading Spaces (TLC) and upcoming Deal or No Deal (CNBC) and Utopia (Amazon).
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5273
|
__label__cc
| 0.718202
| 0.281798
|
A group of Romani prisoners, awaiting instructions from their German captors, sit in an open area near the fence in the Belzec concentration camp.
Photo credit: Archives of Mechanical Documentation, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives
Romani (commonly but incorrectly called Gypsies) were considered by the Nazis to be social outcasts. Under the Weimar Republic--the German government from 1918 to 1933--anti-Romani laws became widespread. These laws required them to register with officials, prohibited them from traveling freely, and sent them to forced-labor camps. When the Nazis came to power, those laws remained in effect--and were expanded. Under the July 1933 sterilization law, many Romani were sterilized against their will.
In November 1933, the "Law Against Dangerous Habitual Criminals" was passed. Under this law, the police began arresting Romani along with others labeled "asocial." Beggars, vagrants, the homeless, and alcoholics were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
The Nuremberg racial laws of September 15, 1935, did not specifically mention Romani, but they were included along with Jews and "Negroes" as "racially distinctive" minorities with "alien blood." As such, their marriage to "Aryans" was prohibited. They were also deprived of their civil rights.
By the summer of 1938, large numbers of German and Austrian Romani were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. There they wore black triangular patches (the symbol for "asocials") or green patches (the symbol for professional criminals) and sometimes the letter "Z."
As was the case for the Jews, the outbreak of war in September 1939 radicalized the Nazi regime's policies towards the Romani. Their "resettlement to the East" and their mass murder closely parallel the systematic deportations and killings of the Jews. It is difficult to determine exactly how many Romani were murdered. The estimates range from 220,000 to 500,000.
Source: Dr. William L. Shulman, A State of Terror: Germany 1933-1939. Bayside, New York: Holocaust Resource Center and Archives.
Sinti and Roma: Victims of the Nazi Era provides additional information about this victim group, including an historical background and information on Robert Ritter, a Nazi racial scientist.
Bibliography of sources related to the Sinti and Roma in the Holocaust.
Extensive article about the fate of the Romani peoples in Germany and German-occupied countries.
An article about genocide of the Roma in the Holocaust.
A history of Roma persecution in Europe from 1589 to the present by Harold Tanner.
An article about the Romani victims of Nazi terror by Myriam Novitch.
Photographs of Roma during the Third Reich.
A short history of the Roma and their fate under the Third Reich from the Mining Company.
News release by Richard Murphy about the commemoration of Romani victims at Buchenwald.
A glossary of Roma terms.
Information on the evolution of Nazi policy toward the Roma by Ben Austin.
More information on the treatment and murder of the Roma.
Notes on the Nazi extermination of the Roma.
Notes on the legal status of the Roma in the Third Reich.
Sinti and Roma bibliography from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5274
|
__label__wiki
| 0.816121
| 0.816121
|
The Broncos Went At Cam Newton's Head All Night
Patrick Redford
http://deadspin.com/
Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton is hit high to the helmet by Denver Broncos linebacker Brandon Marshall during third quarter action against at Sports Authority Field at Mile High in Denver, CO on Thursday, September 8, 2016. The Broncos defeated the Panthers 21-20. (Jeff Siner/jsiner@charlotteobserver.com)
Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/nfl/carolina-panthers/article100813357.html#storylink=cpy
The Denver Broncos beat the Carolina Panthers tonight, 21-20, in a thrilling game that was marred by serial headhunting from the fearsome Broncos defense. Cam Newton led the Panthers to a 17-7 halftime lead with 111 passing yards, a rushing touchdown, and a passing touchdown. After the break, he only went 7-for-16 with a pick and 83 yards. This is because the Broncos got to him and mashed his face in every chance they got.
Newton looked good until early in the third quarter, when DeMarcus Waregot around the edge and sacked him straight into Von Miller. Newton hobbled to the sideline with an apparent right ankle injury, and he was a step slower after returning to the game. The replay also shows that Miller smashed his face into Newton’s and clearly jarred him with the hit. Later in the game, Brandon Marshall flew in on a defenseless Newton and went straight at his mouth. No penalty was called.
The most brutal hit, however, came courtesy of Darian Stewart, who flew into Cam’s brain as Shaq Barrett took him down by the ankles. Since Cam’s feeble throw didn’t clear the line of scrimmage, Stewart’s personal foul was offset and the hit was essentially free.
Newton stayed in the game despite the knock he’d just taken (there was never any real question that he wouldn’t) and guided the Panthers to within field goal range. After hitting the 50-yarder as Gary Kubiak iced him, Graham Gano then missed the follow-up shot wide left, allowing Trevor Siemian to escape with the win under rather dubious circumstances.
When officials let the Broncos get away with that first hit, they set the game on slippery ground, as the Broncos were then incentivized to continue going at Newton’s dome. Newton managed to make all manner of plays when his offensive line afforded him sufficient time, so the Broncos set out to make the most of any chance they got. Unfortunately, this turned into repeat attempts to turn Cam Newton’s brain into jelly. If they were trying to knock him out of the game, they almost succeeded.
The stiffest test of the NFL’s concussion protocol will face is when a superstar takes a clear head injury late in a close game. Nobody wants to be responsible for costing the team a win by holding out a star, especially if that star is the most visible player in the league and he’s leading a late drive in a one-point game. The NFL’s new concussion policy (where teams improperly clearing players receive fines) is a better system in theory, but future-tense penalties don’t seem to have much of an effect. As long as any neutral arbiter is hamstrung by team doctors and players themselves, there won’t be any easy fix to scenarios such as Newton’s tonight. Everyone involved fucked up here, the Broncos most of all.
The Chinese, expert diplomats for thousands of years, snubbed Obama in public. Other world leaders are showing him equal disdain.
By Charles Krauthammer — September 9, 2016
U.S. President Barack Obama disembarks from Air Force One at Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport in Hangzhou, China, on Saturday. | REUTERS
The president of the United States lands with all the majesty of Air Force One, waiting to exit the front door and stride down the rolling staircase to the red-carpeted tarmac. Except that there is no rolling staircase. He is forced to exit — as one China expert put it rather undiplomatically — through “the ass” of the plane.
This happened Saturday at Hangzhou airport. Yes, in China. If the Chinese didn’t invent diplomatic protocol, they surely are its most venerable and experienced practitioners. They’ve been at it for 4,000 years. They are the masters of every tributary gesture, every nuance of hierarchical ritual. In a land so exquisitely sensitive to protocol, rolling staircases don’t just disappear at arrival ceremonies. Indeed, not one of the other G-20 world leaders was left stranded on his plane upon arrival.
Did President Xi Jinping directly order airport personnel and diplomatic functionaries to deny Barack Obama a proper welcome? Who knows? But the message, whether intentional or not, wasn’t very subtle. The authorities expressed no regret, no remorse, and certainly no apology. On the contrary, they scolded the press for even reporting the snub.
No surprise. China’s ostentatious rudeness was perfectly reflective of the world’s general disdain for President Obama. His high-minded lectures about global norms and demands that others live up to their “international obligations” are no longer amusing. They’re irritating.
Foreign leaders have reciprocated by taking this administration down a notch knowing they pay no price. In May 2013, Vladimir Putin reportedly kept the U.S. secretary of state cooling his heels for three hours outside his office before deigning to receive him. Even as Obama was hailing the nuclear deal with Iran as a great breakthrough, the ayatollah vowed “no change” in his policy, which remained diametrically opposed to the “U.S. arrogant system.” The mullahs followed by openly conducting illegal ballistic-missile tests — calculating, correctly, that Obama would do nothing. And when Iran took prisoner ten American sailors in the Persian Gulf, made them kneel, and broadcast the video, what was the U.S. response? Upon their release, John Kerry publicly thanked Iran for its good conduct.
Why should Xi treat Obama with any greater deference? Beijing illegally expands into the South China Sea, meeting only the most perfunctory pushback from the United States. Obama told CNN that he warned Xi to desist or “there will be consequences.” Is there a threat less credible?
Putin annexes Crimea and Obama crows about the isolation he has imposed on Russia. Look around. Moscow has become Grand Central Station for Middle East leaders seeking outside help in their various conflicts. As for Ukraine, both the French president and the German chancellor have hastened to Moscow to plead with Putin to make peace. Some isolation.
Iran regularly harasses our vessels in the Persian Gulf. Russian fighters buzzed a U.S. destroyer in the Baltic Sea. And just Wednesday, a Russian fighter flew within ten feet of an American military jet. The price they paid? Being admonished that such provocations are unsafe and unprofessional. An OSHA citation is more ominous.
Add to that American acquiescence not only to ransoming hostages held by Iran but also to delivering the loot by unmarked plane filled with stacks of cold (untraceable) cash, like a desert drug deal. Why the stealth? Obviously to conceal the manner of the transaction from Congress and the American public. Some humiliations are so grotesque that even the Obama team can’t miss it.
Now the latest. At the G-20, Obama said he spoke to Putin about cyberwarfare, amid revelations that Russian hackers have been interfering in our political campaigns. We are more technologically advanced, both offensively and defensively, in this arena than any of our adversaries, said Obama, but we really don’t want another Cold War–style arms race.
Instead, we must all adhere to norms of international behavior.
It makes you want to weep. This KGB thug adhering to norms? He invades Ukraine, annexes Crimea, bombs hospitals in Aleppo — and we expect him to observe cyber-code etiquette? Rather than exploit our technological lead — with countermeasures and deterrent threats — to ensure our own cyber safety?
We’re back to 1929 when Secretary of State Henry Stimson shut down a U.S. code-breaking operation after it gave him decoded Japanese telegrams. He famously explained that “gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.”
Well, comrade, Putin is no gentleman. And he’s reading our mail.
— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2016 The Washington Post Writers Group
Labels: Barack Obama, Charles Krauthammer, Far East
FIFTEEN YEARS AFTER 9/11, AND AMERICA STILL SLEEPS
How much worse will the destruction and death have to be to wake us up?
A fiery blasts rocks the World Trade Center after being hit by two planes September 11, 2001 in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Fifteen years after the carnage of 9/11, American foreign policy is still mired in its fossilized dogmas and dangerous delusions. The consequences are obvious. Iran, the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism and long an avowed enemy of the United States, has filled the vacuum of our ignominious retreat from the Middle East, even as the mullahs move ever closer to possessing nuclear weapons. Russia, Iran’s improbable ally, bombs civilians in Syria, kills the Syrian fighters we have trained, bullies its neighbor Ukraine, consolidates its take-over of the Crimea, and relentlessly pursues its interests with disregard for international law and contempt for our feeble protests. Iraq, for which thousands of Americans bled and died, is now a puppet state of Iran. Afghanistan is poised to be overrun by the Taliban in a few years, and ISIS, al Qaeda 2.0, continues to inspire franchises throughout the world and to murder European and American citizens.
So much for the belief, frequently heard in the months after the attacks of 9/11, that “this changes everything.” The smoking ruins and 3000 dead surely had awoken us from our delusions that the “end of history” and a “new world order” had followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, “a world in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice. A world where the strong respect the rights of the weak,” as George H.W. Bush said in 1990. The following decade seemed to confirm this optimism. Didn’t we quickly slap down the brutal Saddam Hussein and stop his aggression against his neighbors? Didn’t we punish the Serbs for their revanchist depredations in the Balkans? With American military power providing the muscle, the institutions of international cooperation like NATO, the International Court of Justice, and the U.N. Security Council would patrol and protect the network of new democracies that were set to evolve into versions of Western nations and enjoy such boons as individual rights, political freedom, leisure and prosperity, tolerance for minorities, equality for women, and a benign secularism.
The gruesome mayhem of 9/11 should have alerted us to the fact many Muslims didn’t get the memo about history’s demise. Indeed, long before that tragic day in September, we had been serially warned that history still had some unpleasant surprises. Theorists of neo-jihadism like Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb for decades had laid out the case for war against the infidel West and its aggression against Islam. “It is the nature of Islam,” al-Banna wrote, “to dominate not to be dominated, to impose its laws on all nations and extend its power to the entire planet.” So too the leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the Ayatollah Khomeini: “Those who study jihad will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world,” which is why “Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers.” The kidnapping of U.S. diplomatic personnel in Tehran by a group called “Muslim Students Following the Line of the Imam [Khomeini]” sent us a message that we were engaged in the religious war the jihadists warned would come. But few of those responsible for our security and interests had ears to hear or eyes to see.
Not even when the words became bloody deeds did we listen. The bombing of the Beirut Marine barracks in 1983, which killed 241 servicemen, was supported by Iran and executed by its proxy terrorist group Hezbollah. Our refusal to respond reflected our failure to take seriously Khomeini’s vow to spread his revolution to the whole world. The humiliating televised abuse of our dead soldiers in Mogadishu in 1993, followed by our withdrawal, was exploited by Osama bin Laden in his sermons as signs that America had “foundations of straw.” That same year came the first World Trade Center attack, which killed six and wounded 1,042, an operation inspired by al Qaeda and traditional jihadist doctrine. In 1995 five Americans were killed by al Qaeda operatives at a training facility in Riyadh. In 1996 a truck bomb exploded in front of a residential complex housing Air Force personnel near Dhahran, killing 19 Americans. In 1998 al Qaeda bombed our embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Twelve Americans died in Nairobi. And the last warning came in October of 2000, when the destroyer Cole was attacked by a fishing boat loaded with explosive. Seventeen sailors died and 39 were wounded.
Yet during these two decades of attacks that proved the jihadists’ words were not just bluster, we did little in response. We interpreted the attacks as crimes, not battles in a war, and reflections of poverty, autocracy, or vague “evil,” rather than as the fulfillment of Allah’s divine commands. Instead, Clinton launched cruise missiles that made a lot of noise but accomplished nothing, limited as those attacks were by timid rules of engagement. His foreign policy was internationalist and idealist, seeing the spread of democracy and the promotion of human rights as paramount in foreign affairs. America’s presence needed to be reduced in the world, and the use of force should be a last resort, and even then carefully calibrated to avoid international condemnation and American casualties. “Dialogue” and “outreach” were preferable, for the jihadists were just defending “traditional values,” as one State Department official said. The wages of that delusion were the burned and dismembered bodies in Manhattan, the Pentagon, and a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
This history is worth reviewing, for all these mistakes, these failures of imagination, these indulgences of naïve idealism, these sacrifices of our security and interests to political advantage, all comprise the “everything” that 9/11 was supposed to “change.” But here we are, fifteen years later, with a similar history of folly. George W. Bush pursued a delusional program of democracy promotion in Iraq and Afghanistan, with scant appreciation for the profound cultural differences between Islam and the West. But he at least left his successor a stabilized Iraq, which Obama quickly abandoned just to fulfill a campaign promise and assert his progressive bona fides. Then Obama blustered that Syria’s “Assad has to go” and laid down “red lines” that were not to be crossed, only to do nothing when they were serially crossed, and to sacrifice this country’s credibility in his pursuit of the disastrous deal with Iran, our inveterate enemy stained with four decades’ worth of American blood. ISIS was allowed to flourish in the vacuum created by our withdrawal, creating a Hobbesian war of all against all, whose beneficiaries so far have been our rival Russia and our sworn enemy Iran.
Perhaps worst of all, Obama has turned jihad denial into a fatal disease. He is not alone in this delusion, for “religion of peace” and “nothing to do with Islam” have been mantras chanted by our foreign policy savants going back to the Iranian Revolution. No matter that al-Banna, Qutb, Khomeini, bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahiri, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and the mullahs in Iran all have grounded their violence and aggression in Islamic scripture and tradition. Our smug Western analysts and apologists dismiss the jihadists’ exegesis as a “hijacking” or “distortion” of the “true” Islam, presuming to understand the Islamic faith better than pious Muslims do. So we half-heartedly fight an enemy whose name we cannot even say, and whose religion of violence we desperately distort into a religion of peace and tolerance. Meanwhile, like Bill Clinton and now Obama, we use bombs and drones as telegenic marketing tools to hide our failure of nerve and short-sighted political calculations.
So fifteen years later, we still sleep. And don’t expect things to change after November. Neither candidate has shown any indication he or she is willing to make the hard decisions required to destroy ISIS and reaffirm American prestige. Trump issues vague threats about “bombing the shit” out of ISIS, while Hillary chatters about “smart power” and “coalitions,” doubling down on Obama’s failing policy. But no one proposes using the mind-concentrating levels of force, including troops as well as bombs, necessary to repair our broken foreign policy in the Middle East. Too many voters are in an isolationist mood, sick of wars and casualties, and concerned more about jobs and the economy.
The attacks on 9/11 supposedly “changed everything.” When it comes to foreign policy, they didn’t. One shudders to think how much worse the destruction and death will have to be to wake us up.
Tags: 9/11, American Foreign Policy, Jihad, Terrorism
Labels: 9/11/01, Islam and Terrorism
Overselling A.D.H.D.: A New Book Exposes Big Pharma’s Role
By STEVE SILBERMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/
ADHD NATION
Children, Doctors, Big Pharma, and the Making of an American Epidemic
By Alan Schwarz
Illustrated. 338 pp. Scribner. $28.
In the late 1930s, Charles Bradley, the director of a home for “troublesome” children in Rhode Island, had a problem. The field of neuroscience was still in its infancy, and one of the few techniques available to allow psychiatrists like Bradley to ponder the role of the brain in emotional disorders was a procedure that required replacing a volume of cerebrospinal fluid in the patient’s skull with air. This painstaking process allowed any irregularities to stand out clearly in X-ray images, but many patients suffered excruciating headaches that lasted for weeks afterward.
Meanwhile, a pharmaceutical company called Smith, Kline & French was facing a different sort of problem. The firm had recently acquired the rights to sell a powerful stimulant then called “benzedrine sulfate” and was trying to create a market for it. Toward that end, the company made quantities of the drug available at no cost to doctors who volunteered to run studies on it. Bradley was a firm believer that struggling children needed more than a handful of pills to get better; they also needed psychosocial therapy and the calming and supportive environment that he provided at the home. But he took up the company’s offer, hoping that the drug might eliminate his patients’ headaches.
It did not. But the Benzedrine did have an effect that was right in line with Smith, Kline & French’s aspirations for its new product: The drug seemed to boost the children’s eagerness to learn in the classroom while making them more amenable to following the rules. The drug seemed to calm the children’s mood swings, allowing them to become, in the words of their therapists, more “attentive” and “serious,” able to complete their schoolwork and behave. Bradley was amazed that Benzedrine, a forerunner of Ritalin and Adderall, was such a great normalizer, turning typically hard-to-manage kids into models of complicity and decorum. But even after marveling at the effects of the drug, he maintained that medication should be considered for children only in addition to other forms of therapy.
Bradley’s research was ignored for a couple of decades as psychoanalysis became dominant in the United States. But his discoveries laid the foundation for one of the most aggressive marketing campaigns in history, which succeeded not only in helping to transform the nascent drug industry into the multinational juggernaut known as Big Pharma, but in convincing parents, physicians and public health officials that 15 percent of American schoolchildren are sick enough that they would require powerful medication just to get through the day.
This campaign (which would have horrified Bradley and his peers) is the subject of an important, humane and compellingly written new book called “ADHD Nation,” by Alan Schwarz, a reporter for The New York Times. The title of the book, of course, refers to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: a constellation of behaviors and traits codified as a neurobiological illness in the bible of psychiatry, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
The boundaries of the A.D.H.D. diagnosis have been fluid and fraught since its inception, in part because its allegedly telltale signs (including “has trouble organizing tasks and activities,” “runs about or climbs in situations where it is not appropriate” and “fidgets with or taps hands or feet,” according to the current edition of the DSM) are exhibited by nearly every human being on earth at various points in their development. No blood test or CT scan can tell you if you have the condition — the diagnosis is made by subjective clinical evaluation and screening questionnaires. This lack of any bright line between pathology and eccentricity, Schwarz argues, has allowed Big Pharma to get away with relentless expansion of the franchise.
Numerous studies have shown, for example, that the youngest children in a classroom are more likely to be diagnosed with A.D.H.D. Children of color are also at higher risk of being misdiagnosed than their white peers. One clinician quoted in the book more or less admits defeat: “We’ve decided as a society that it’s too expensive to modify the kid’s environment. So we have to modify the kid.”
Schwarz has no doubt that A.D.H.D. is a valid clinical entity that causes real suffering and deserves real treatment, as he makes clear in the first two sentences of the book: “Attention deficit hyperactivity is real. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” But he believes that those who are disabled by the condition deserve a wider range of treatment options than an endless litany of stimulants with chirpy names like Vyvanse and Concerta.
Disorders of attention were once thought to be relatively rare by experts, affecting only an estimated 3 percent of preadolescent children. But kids and teenagers are now diagnosed so routinely that getting a prescription for Ritalin or Adderall has practically become a standard rite of passage, particularly in the United States. And the diagnosis isn’t just for children anymore: Its ever-expanding boundaries now encompass allegedly hyperkinetic infants and the distractible elderly. What’s really going on?
Influential patient-advocacy groups insist that only now is the true prevalence of A.D.H.D. finally being recognized after being drastically underestimated — akin to the spike in autism diagnoses once the narrowly defined condition was broadened into a spectrum in the 1990s. But Schwarz makes a convincing case that the radical expansion and promotion of A.D.H.D. has resulted in the label being applied in ways that are far beyond the needs of a historically underserved community, while nonpharmaceutical methods of treatment like cognitive behavioral therapy (which have been proved to complement the effectiveness of medication) are overlooked.
While other books have probed the historical roots of America’s love affair with amphetamines — notably Nicolas Rasmussen’s “On Speed,” published in 2008 — “ADHD Nation” focuses on an unholy alliance between drugmakers, academic psychiatrists, policy makers and celebrity shills like Glenn Beck that Schwarz brands the “A.D.H.D. industrial complex.” The insidious genius of this alliance, he points out, was selling the disorder rather than the drugs, in the guise of promoting A.D.H.D. “awareness.” By bankrolling studies, cultivating mutually beneficial relationships with psychopharmacologists at prestigious universities like Harvard and laundering its marketing messages through trusted agencies like the World Health Organization, the pharmaceutical industry created what Schwarz aptly terms “a self-affirming circle of science, one that quashed all dissent.”
In a narrative that unfolds with the momentum of a thriller, he depicts pediatricians’ waiting rooms snowed under with pharma-funded brochures, parents clamoring to turn their allegedly underachieving children into academic superstars and kids showered with pills whose long-term effects on the developing brain (particularly when taken in combination) are still barely understood. In one especially harrowing section of the book, Schwarz traces the Icarus-like trajectory of Richard Fee, an aspiring medical student who fakes the symptoms of A.D.H.D. to get access to drugs that will help him cope with academic pressure. When he eventually descends into amphetamine psychosis, his father tells his doctor that if he doesn’t stop furnishing his son with Adderall, he’ll die. Two weeks after burning through his supply, Fee hanged himself in a closet.
“ADHD Nation” should be required reading for those who seek to understand how a field that once aimed to ameliorate the behavioral problems of children in a broad therapeutic context abdicated its mission to the stockholders of corporations like Shire and Lilly. Schwarz is sounding an alarm for a fire that looks nowhere near abating.
Steve Silberman is the author of “NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity.”
Labels: Books and Things, Health
Today's Tune: Leonard Cohen - Come Healing
Labels: Today's Tune
Dems Fume at Trump’s Outreach to Blacks
Unable to defend their own dismal record at bettering black lives, liberals lash out at the GOP candidate.
By Jason L. Riley
http://www.wsj.com/
Donald Trump meets with African-American business and civic leaders in Philadelphia, Sept. 2. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Donald Trump visited a black neighborhood in Philadelphia on Friday and a black church in Detroit on Saturday. And liberals went berserk. If he’d known Democrats were so fearful of GOP black outreach, perhaps Mr. Trump wouldn’t have waited until two months before Election Day to start campaigning in inner cities.
During a roundtable discussion with businessmen, elected officials and clergy in North Philadelphia, Mr. Trump listened to stories about violent crime and bad schools. Speaking before a congregation at the Great Faith Ministries church in Detroit, he referenced “all those closed stores” he saw while riding through the neighborhood “and people sitting down on the sidewalk, and no jobs, and no activity. We’ll get it turned around.” Mr. Trump said “nothing is more sad than when we sideline young black men with unfulfilled potential, tremendous potential,” and he added that safe communities and good schools would be a priority of his administration. He called for a new civil rights agenda that includes school choice.
For weeks, Mr. Trump has been criticized by Team Clinton and the political left for courting black voters while standing in front of white audiences. Now we know such criticism was disingenuous at best. A Clinton campaign official called Mr. Trump’s Philadelphia visit “an offensive gimmick.” At a weekend press conference organized by the Clinton campaign, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan referred to the Republican presidential candidate as “the most phony major party nominee that I have seen in my lifetime” and wondered aloud what Mr. Trump was even doing in his city. “Are you here just to use Detroiters as props in a re-imaging campaign?”
In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, who heads the Congressional Black Caucus political-action committee, was asked whether Mr. Trump deserved “any credit at all” for campaigning in the inner city. “It’s not real,” said Mr. Meeks, adding that the GOP nominee has “racist tendencies” and is trying to “con African-Americans.” The congressman called for “the types of policies that are being talked about by Hillary Clinton” and cited “raising the minimum wage” and “investing in historically black colleges.” Alas, it’s Mr. Meeks and his fellow Democrats who should get real.
Unions support minimum-wage hikes because they help limit competition from workers who might accept lower wages and threaten union jobs. And Congressional Black Caucus members support them in return for handsome campaign contributions from Big Labor. However, economists generally agree that minimum-wage mandates disproportionately harm the employment prospects of younger and less-skilled workers, many of whom are black. A 2011 study for the Employment Policies Institute by William Even and David Macpherson found that minimum wage hikes implemented between 2007 and 2010 cost young black men more jobs than the Great Recession did.
If Mr. Meeks is serious about addressing the immediate education needs of black families, calling for additional funding for historically black colleges is an odd place to start. Some of these colleges do a fine job of educating blacks, particularly in the fields of math and science, but the reality is that some 90% of black students don’t attend them. And given that the typical black 12th-grader is several grade levels behind his white counterpart in reading and math, is the bigger problem the underfinancing of black colleges or a K-12 public education system that is producing so few college-ready blacks?
Hillary Clinton and her campaign surrogates can brag about giving black communities far more face-time than the GOP, but they can’t brag about the results of liberal policies. Democrats are calling Mr. Trump names because they can’t defend their track record. Homicides in Philadelphia rose last year and are up 6% this year. In 2015, Detroit students scored the lowest among big-city school districts on national math and reading tests.
Minority children with access to school vouchers and charter schools are narrowing the achievement gap, while Democrats and teachers unions are working hand in glove to limit school choice. Mrs. Clinton has adopted the provably false union line that charters get better academic outcomes by accepting only the most motivated students. And the new Democratic platform drafted in July proclaims support for “high-quality public charter schools,” so long as they don’t “replace or destabilize” traditional public schools. In other words, the party supports charter schools so long as no one attends them.
Mr. Trump has been polling in the low single digits among blacks, and his current black outreach is probably too little, too late if the goal is to win significant black support. But Democrats aren’t very concerned about the percentage of blacks who support the Republican. Their bigger worry is the level of overall black turnout. The political left is furious at Mr. Trump for campaigning on their turf because he could soften support for Mrs. Clinton. They are terrified that too many of the black voters who turned out forBarack Obama in 2008 and 2012 may decide to stay home.
-- Mr. Riley, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow and Journal contributor, is the author of “Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed” (Encounter Books, 2014).
Labels: Donald Trump, Race
A Champion for the Cause
RIP Phyllis Schlafly
Ann Coulter, Phyllis Schlafly and David Horowitz
This week we lost a great lady of the right. For seventy years Phyllis Schlafly was a warrior on the frontlines of the battles to defend the Republic against its enemies on the left both domestic and foreign. On Monday she passed at the age of 92, on the eve of the publication of her 27th book, The Conservative Case For Trump. For seventy years Phyllis fought in the culture wars that have been mostly lost by the right, in no small part because Phyllis was virtually unique both in the intelligence she brought to the battle and the energy and personal courage she carried into the fight.
Phyllis and I were from very different ends of the political spectrum, so that even when I became a conservative we didn’t see eye to eye on some of the issues that were at the center of her concerns. But despite this it was she who reached out to me, rather than I to her. I took this as a testament to the fact that she understood the big issue - the nature of the war that the political left had declared on our country, and that made us allies. The other issues were details that could be argued over once the war was won.
The first time she invited me to speak at one of her events I launched into a criticism of Senator Joseph McCarthy, whom Phyllis admired. McCarthy was of course right that there was a sinister Communist conspiracy to undermine America and help our Soviet enemy to win the Cold War. My quarrel with the Senator was that his recklessness and overreach damaged the anti-Communist cause. When I was done Phyllis came over to scowl and wag her finger at me and let me know she disapproved of these remarks. But she did it very briefly – almost as just those gestures – and with the kind of warmth one would use with a wayward son. I knew then and there that we were still friends and were going to be in the same foxhole, in the same army for years to come. I knew that she understood the nature of the big war, and in that war she and I were destined to be on the same side and have each other’s back.
That was 25 years ago. I spoke at other events for her, and she for me, and in 2009 the Horowitz Freedom Center gave Phyllis its Annie Taylor Award, named after the first woman to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel and survive. We had created this as the perfect award for conservatives who unlike the left are the generally outnumbered actors speaking truth to power – vicious and unscrupulous and overwhelming power – and who often must do so without the support of other conservatives who know better but are too busy worrying over their shoulders at what the New York Times and the Washington Post and the network media think to have the courage of their own convictions.
Courage was something that Phyllis had in abundance. I remember as a newly minted conservative watching a video of her appearance before a university audience and being utterly appalled at the vulgarity of the attacks they mounted against her. The left hated her because she had led the successful fight against the Equal Rights Amendment, a change to the Constitution presented as progressive, which would have deprived women of the protections that which years of experience had inspired, and democratic legislatures had put in place. While I understood the left’s motivations I was still shocked by the savagery with which they taunted her in attacks that were very personal and very ugly. They were especially unnerving because they were directed against an accomplished woman, in her sixties or so at the time, who presented herself very traditionally. It was that image, which they saw through their ideological lenses as weakness, that they were maliciously seeking to exploit. But instead of fleeing from the stage as they fully expected she would, she faced them down with all the intellectual and moral confidence familiar to those who know and love her.
In her own way Phyllis is an emblem of the fractures on the political right that have surfaced in this election season. There has been a lot of talk about “Constitutional Conservatives,” as though these were an endangered species. In fact, judging from the lip service given to foundational principles by conservatives and Republicans alike, far from being a threatened breed, “Constitutional Conservatives” are more like a ubiquitous one. What elected Republican official doesn’t campaign on core principles like limited government, religious freedom, individual rights, and separation of powers? It’s not constitutionalists who are rare in the legions of the right. It’s activists and leaders like Phyllis who are willing to fight – and to fight against great odds and at great personal cost - for what they believe. That’s the rarity. That is the example Phyllis set for the rest of us. And it cost her dearly right to the end.
Phyllis threw her weight behind the Republican nominee in this year’s critical presidential election because she felt Trump got the big issues – the big war – right. Her very last article compared Trump to Reagan because, “Trump is the first candidate since Reagan who is comfortable using Reagan’s vocabulary of winning. Trump has pledged to make America ‘win’ again, instead of being cheated and outmaneuvered by our adversaries and even our so-called allies.” For this endorsement Phyllis became the target of an effort by anti-Trump board members of her Eagle Forum Foundation to remove her from an organization she had created nearly fifty years before and is her legacy. This attack – now in the courts - from people she had trusted as her friends and supporters came in her 91st year, when she was struggling with illness and mortality, something that would have broken a lesser person. But Phyllis was born to fight, and fight she did in a battle that her true supporters will have to carry on posthumously.
Not long ago Phyllis invited me to come to St. Louis to speak at her annual Eagle Forum event scheduled to take place a week from now. I was very much looking forward to seeing her, and joining her in the trenches as always. I will miss her terribly. We all will.
David’s new book The Left In Power: Clinton To Obama will be published next month.
Tags: Conservatism, Left
Labels: Obituaries, Politics
Phyllis Stewart Schlafly, 1924-2016
ANN COULTER FOR HUMAN EVENTS
http://humanevents.com/
Activist Phyllis Schlafly campaigns against the Equal Rights Amendment in 1978. (Bettmann/Corbis)
Phyllis Schlafly, the St. Louis-born American intellectual who grew from a shy and beautiful girl to become one of the most influential political activists of the 20th and 21st century, died today, Monday, September 5, 2016 according to Eagle Forum.
Schlafly has written or co-written more than 20 books, on military policy, education, legal and social issues. Her first book, “A Choice, Not an Echo,” is credited with winning Barry Goldwater the Republican nomination for president and inspiring the conservative movement that eventually led to Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Her military work was a major factor in Reagan's’ decision to proceed with High Frontier technology.
Since 1967, Schlafly has published the Phyllis Schlafly Report and in 1972, Schlafly founded The Eagle Forum, which grew to nearly 100,000 members. Her syndicated column appeared in 100 newspapers, her radio commentaries were broadcast on more than 400 stations, and her radio talk show, "Eagle Forum Live," was broadcast on 45 stations and the Internet. Throughout her career, Schlafly gave college speeches – including in January 2009, in her still-spry 80’s, when, at a Berkeley speech, she fell and broke a hip.
She was appointed by President Reagan to serve on the Commission on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution from 1985-1991. For years, Schlafly was the National Defense Chairman of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
Over the years, Schlafly testified before more than 50 congressional and state legislative committees on constitutional, national defense, and family issues. She has been a delegate at every Republican National Convention since 1956. The Ladies' Home Journal named Schlafly one of the 100 most important women of the 20th century.
Phyllis McAlpin Stewart was born in 1924 in St. Louis to John Bruce Stewart and Odile Dodge.
She was raised Republican and Catholic – though one great grandfather was a Presbyterian. Her father lost his job as a salesman of industrial equipment during the Depression and was unable to find work again for years, during which time he invented and patented the rotary engine. Schlafly’s mother went to work as a schoolteacher and librarian, allowing Schlafly and her younger sister, Odile, to attend a Catholic girls school.
She was valedictorian of her high school class and won a full scholarship to a Catholic women’s college, but decided it was not challenging enough, so she worked her way through Washington University. With no scholarship money, Schlafly earned spare money as a model and also as a machine-gunner at a St. Louis ordnance plant -- at that time the world’s largest.
She earned straight A’s from Washington University and graduated a year early, Phi Beta Kappa and Pi Sigma Alpha (the National Political Science Honor Society). Her undergraduate political science professor wrote that her “intellectual capacity is extraordinary and her analytical ability is distinctly remarkable . . . I have no hesitation whatsoever in saying that [Schlafly] is the most capable woman student we have had in this department in ten years.”
Schlafly then attended Harvard graduate school on a scholarship, earning a Masters degree in political science in seven months. She received A’s in constitutional law, international law, and public administration, and an A- in modern political theory. (And this was long before “Everyone-Gets-An-A” grade inflation.)
Though Harvard Law School did not admit women, Schlafly’s professors urged her to stay and attend law school. Alternatively, they proposed that she earn her doctorate. (Imagine the Harvard faculty meetings if she had stayed on and become a professor there!)
Her constitutional law professor at Harvard called her “brilliant” -- and consider that this was back when Harvard was a serious place, so it meant something. The professor who intervened on her behalf, Benjamin Wright, was a distinguished constitutional historian -- the sort of legitimate scholar who probably wouldn't have a chance of being hired by today's Harvard.
Schlafly said “no thanks” to Harvard Law and instead went to Washington, D.C. for a year, where she worked at the precursor institution to the American Enterprise Institute. It was the only time this monumental American political figure lived in the nation’s capitol.
After D.C, she returned to Missouri in 1949, married Republican lawyer Fred Schlafly, and raised six amazingly accomplished children in Alton, Illinois, where she lived until Fred's death in 1994.
In 1977, when being harangued by Dr. Joyce Brothers on the Merv Griffin Show, Schlafly mistakenly claimed Harvard Law School had been admitting women since at least 1945 and said she knew that because she almost went there. In fact, Harvard Law School did not begin admitting women for another several years. But in 1945, Harvard was prepared to make an exception for Phyllis Schlafly.
Years later, when Schlafly was testifying against the Equal Rights Amendment, the woman who almost became the first woman ever to graduate from Harvard Law School was ridiculed by potty little state legislators for not having a law degree. Senator Birch Bayh (D-IN), for example, called her one of those “women with absolutely no legal training stand there brandishing law books, telling people what ERA 'really' means.”
So in 1976, at age 51, while writing her syndicated column, raising six children, defeating the E.R.A. -- and in the middle of writing an 800-page book assailing Henry Kissinger -- Schlafly went to Washington University Law School in St. Louis. She graduated near the top of her class and won the award in Administrative Law.
Though Schlafly is most famously associated with her stunning, nearly miraculous, defeat of the E.R.A., she has played a pivotal role in a broad range of political controversies for more than half a century.
Schlafly managed her first congressional campaign in 1946, at age 22. The year after she married, she ran for Congress herself, losing to a popular Democratic incumbent. She ran and lost again against another popular Democratic incumbent in 1970. These may be the only quixotic battles she failed to win.
During 1970 congressional race, her opponent ceaselessly sneered that Schlafly should be home raising her children. Schlafly responded: “My opponent says a woman’s place is in the home. But my husband replies, a woman’s place is in the House -- the U.S. House of Representatives.” Today, feminists think they invented that line.
In 1964, she wrote “A Choice, Not An Echo,” which sold an astounding three million copies. (The average nonfiction book sells 5,000 copies; the average New York Times bestseller sells 30,000 copies.) This book would change the Republican Party forever. In this respect, it was not unlike many battles Schlafly would wage: First, she would conquer the Republican Party, then she could conquer the nation.
“A Choice, Not An Echo,” is widely credited with handing Barry Goldwater the Republican nomination for president. Goldwater lost badly in the general election -- but the Republican Party would never be the same. Goldwater’s nomination began the retreat of sell-out, Northeastern “Rockefeller Republicans” -- who wanted to wreck the country with slightly less alacrity than the Democrats.
Without Schlafly, without that book and that candidacy, it is unlikely that Ronald Reagan would ever have been elected president.
Phyllis Schlafly and Ronald Reagan
Later in 1964, she collaborated with Admiral Chester Ward on another book, “The Gravediggers.” This book accused the elite foreign policy establishment of cheerfully selling out the nation’s military superiority to the Soviet Union. It sold an astounding 2 million copies.
Also with Ward, Schlafly co-authored the extremely influential (and extremely long, at over 800 pages) “Kissinger on the Couch” methodically assailing Kissinger’s foreign policy. As with her crusade against the E.R.A. -- being waged simultaneously -- “Kissinger on the Couch” would turn conventional wisdom upside down.
Until then, attacking Kissinger’s beloved Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty (SALT) was the secular version of challenging the Pope on infallibility -- or, I suppose, challenging a proposed constitutional amendment that purported to give women “equal rights.” But she was right, she was persuasive, and she overturned popular opinion.
Indeed, Schlafly has written prolifically about American foreign policy and military affairs, writing extensively about ICBMs and defense treaties. She was an early and vigorous proponent of a missile defense shield.
Meanwhile, feminists engaged in cliffhanger debates about whether it was appropriate for feminists to wear lipstick.
That Phyllis Schlafly is the mortal enemy of a movement that claims to promote women tells you all you need to know about the feminists. That many people alive today are unaware of Schlafly’s achievements tells you all you need to know about the American media.
Almost no one remembers this now, but when Schlafly turned her attention to the E.R.A., no reasonable person would have supposed that the amendment could have been stopped. In 1971, the House passed it by 354 to 24. The next year, the Senate had passed it by a vote of 84 to 8. Thirty states had approved it in the first year after it was sent to the states for ratification. Only eight more states were needed, within the next seven years. There was little question that the E.R.A. was about to become our next constitutional amendment.
But the E.R.A. had not yet faced Phyllis Schlafly. Beginning in 1972 and over the next eight years, thanks to Schlafly and her magnificently patriotic organization, the Eagle Forum, only five more states ratified it. In the same time period, five states rescinded their earlier ratifications, for a net total of zero ratifications.
Not surprisingly given her background, one of Schlafly’s most devastating arguments against the E.R.A. was that it would end the female exemption from the draft. Though the amendment’s proponents sneered that this was preposterous, she was right. Law professors would soon be making the exact same point in the likes of the Yale Law Journal.
She unflinchingly pressed points that polite people thought it bad taste to talk about. Academics prefer to approve the general sentiment and not think about any messy details or facts. Thus, for example, Schlafly questioned how ERA would affect gays, abortion, adoption, widow’s benefits, divorce law, and the military. She had an instinctive knack for pulling at the string that quickly unravels liberal nonsense.
Schlafly was composed, brilliant and relentless. Among her campaign initiatives against the ERA, Schlafly sent quiches to all the U.S. Senators who voted for the ERA with a friendly note saying, “Real men don't draft women.” A subscriber to the Phyllis Schlafly Report wrote to her in 1972: "We beat ERA in Oklahoma today and all we had was your report. I just went to the Capitol and passed it around and we beat it."
Schlafly’s arguments trumped the political platforms of both parties, both Republican and Democratic presidents and their wives, and a slew of Hollywood celebrities including Carol Burnett, Marlo Thomas, Phil Donahue, Alan Alda, and Jean Stapleton. As Schlafly said, “they have the movie star money and we have the voters.”
Or, as George Gilder said, the only person on the other side was Phyllis Schlafly, but that was enough.
Reviewing a history of the sexual revolution in the New Yorker, John Updike wrote: “If the court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, legalizing abortion, was . . . ‘the crowning achievement of the sexual revolution,’ the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment, which ran out of time in 1982, with only three more states needed for ratification, was the legal triumph of the counter-revolution, led in this instance by Phyllis Schlafly . . ."
It was almost unfair for Schlafly to train her analytical mind on the feminists. But what the feminists lacked in linear thinking, they made up for in their hegemonic control of the mainstream media.
No matter. Throughout her career, Schlafly refused to be intimidated by mediocre opinion makers decreeing what the bien pensant were supposed to think. She would take positions that almost no academic would defend, not because it was wrong, but simply because it was so contrary to acceptable opinion.
The most unfathomable aspect of Schlafly’s success to today’s political activists is that she mobilized a vast army of women -- and she did it without the Internet. Not without reason, she has been called the greatest pamphleteer since Thomas Paine. (But unlike Paine, she never went bad.)
The story behind Phyllis Schlafly’s biography provides a good snapshot of Schlafly’s power to inspire. The book’s author, Carol Felsenthal, had written a book review for the Chicago Tribune in 1977 ridiculing Schlafly’s ninth book, “The Power of the Positive Woman” as “irrational, contradictory, and simple-minded.”
And then something extraordinary happened. Felsenthal says: “Two days later, the letters of protest started coming, and they kept coming -- from people who were enraged that I had insulted ‘Our Savior,’ as one letter writer called Schlafly, or ‘Our Wonder Woman,’ as another called her.”
Felsenthal noted that her newspaper, The Chicago Tribune did not even run a ‘letters’ column for book reviews, so these weren’t for publication. Though Felsenthal had written hundreds of columns before this, she said she could “count on one hand the number of letters they provoked.” These women, she said, “were writing for one reason only -- to convert me, to make me see the light.”
Naturally, Felsenthal became fascinated with the woman who could arouse such passionate support. The end result was Felsenthal’s meticulously researched, definitive biography of Phyllis Schlafly, titled: “Phyllis Schlafly: The Sweetheart of the Silent Majority.” Charmingly, the toughest part of Felsenthal’s project was overcoming Schlafly’s resistance to the very idea of a biography.
There is no major national debate in the past half-century in which Schlafly’s powerful, salubrious influence is not manifest.
She staunchly opposed abortion, gambling and gay marriage and equally strongly supported Ronald Reagan and the strategic defense initiative. One of the rare times she disagreed with Reagan was over the idea of having another Constitutional Convention. She was right and she won. In 1996, Schlafly supported Pat Buchanan for president and in 2008 she supported Duncan Hunter, specifically opposing Mike Huckabee.
On March 11, 2016, Schlafly officially endorsed Donald Trump for president.
Schlafly wrote about a complicated issues with insight and clarity. Time and again she would disembowel a 500-page legalistic monstrosity with a short syndicated column. Like an Olympic athlete, her talent was to make it seem easy.
She was as proficient as any law professor in the seriousness of her arguments. This is all the more impressive because she is writing for busy people -- housewives and politicians -- people who probably wouldn't mind a more purely rhetorical effort. But she never condescended to her audience. People who dismiss her as a mere rabble-rouser either haven’t read her work or have no idea what actual "scholarship" would be.
The sheer breadth of the issues Schlafly took on is astonishing. It is impossible to think of anyone alive today who addresses such a range of topics in any depth. Most public figures focus on one or two issues and stick with those. Not Schlafly -- and with no detriment to her analysis. (If anyone on the left did this with Schlafly’s skill, there would be monuments, Time magazine “Person of the Year” awards, and hagiographic Hollywood movies.)
Schlafly commented on her boundless energy, saying, "It solves a lot of problems if you're busy."
For someone who spent so much time attacking liberal policies – and received so much abuse in return -- Schlafly was remarkably free from ad hominem (or ad feminem) rhetoric. She was spat upon, burned in effigy and had a pie thrown in her face. Bomb threats were called in to her speeches. Feminist Betty Friedan once told her, "I'd like to burn you at the stake." Feminist Midge Costanza said Schlafly and Anita Bryant would make "a fine set of bookends" for Hitler's "Mein Kampf."
But Karen DeCrow, who debated Schlafly more than 50 times as president of the National Organization for Women from 1974-77, said she enjoyed those debates. "Phyllis is smart, so it was fun,” DeCrow said. “I never found Phyllis to be unpleasant, unfriendly or uncooperative." Felsenthal reports that during an interview, feminists surrounded Schlafly, spat at her and shoved middle fingers in her face. She says Schlafly "didn't pause, she didn't even blink."
Schlafly’s retorts were more subtle, once noting during a debate on the ERA before jeering Brown University coeds that "another sexist difference between men and women, is that women hiss." But she never got personal or vicious -- as they did with her. She was a true lady.
Though conservative women in later generations are often compared to Schlafly, all of us combined could never match the titanic accomplishments of this remarkable woman. Schlafly is unquestionably one of the most important people of in the twentieth century – and a good part of the twenty-first. Among her sex, she is rivaled only by Margaret Thatcher.
Schlafly once said that what she’d most like to be remembered for is “converting this nation to where it's as normal for parents to teach their kids to read before they get to school as it is to teach them to ride bikes." Based on her own successful home-schooling of her children, she has written wildly popular phonics instruction guides with tapes and a workbook.
The most fitting epitaph to Phyllis Schlafly is the last line of her profile at the Eagle Forum website, which concludes: “The mother of six children, she was named 1992 Illinois Mother of the Year.” You know she means it, and yet you also suspect she takes devilish pleasure knowing that the prominence given the award must drive feminists crazy.
Schlafly could have rested on her laurels after writing “A Choice, Not an Echo.” She could have rested on her laurels after defeating the E.R.A. Indeed, she could have rested on her laurels on any number of occasions over the past half century. America can be thankful that she did not.
Upon Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, Senator Jesse Helms said, “God has given America one more chance.” With Schlafly and her long career, God gave America dozens of chances.
Schlafly is survived by her six children, sons John, Bruce, Roger, and Andrew, daughters Liza Foreshaw and Anne Cori, 16 grandchildren and three great grandchildren.
Labels: Ann Coulter, Obituaries
Baseball’s storyteller, our friend
By George F. Will
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/
The Dodgers honor Hall of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully prior to their Opening Day game against the Arizona Diamondbacks (mlb.com)
Irish poets learn your trade
Sing whatever is well made. . . .
— William Butler Yeats,
“Under Ben Bulben”
For 67 years, the son of Vincent and Bridget Scully, immigrants who came to New York City from County Cavan, Ireland, has been plying his trade. For eight years on the East Coast and 59 on the West Coast, on radio and television, he has strolled with Brooklyn Dodgers fans and then Los Angeles Dodgers fans down the long, winding road of baseball’s seasons. In an era with a surfeit of shoddiness, two things are well-made — major league baseball and Vin Scully’s broadcasts of it.
Although he uses language fluently and precisely, he is not a poet. He is something equally dignified and exemplary but less celebrated: He is a craftsman. Scully, the most famous and beloved person in Southern California, is not a movie star but has the at-ease, old-shoe persona of Jimmy Stewart. With his shock of red hair and maple syrup voice, Scully seems half his 88 years.
America’s “most widespread age-related disease,” Tom Wolfe has written, “was not senility but juvenility. The social ideal was to look 23 and dress 13.” It is not Scully’s fault that he looks unreasonably young. It is to his credit that he comes to work in a coat and tie, and prepared — stocked with information.
Aristotle defined human beings as language-using creatures. They are not always as well-behaved as wolves, but everything humane depends on words — love, promise-keeping, story-telling, democracy. And baseball.
A game of episodes, not of flow, it leaves time for, and invites, conversation, rumination and speculation. And storytelling, by which Scully immerses his audience in baseball’s rich history, and stories that remind fans that players “are not wind-up dolls.”
In recent years, Scully has not accompanied the Dodgers on the road. Hence this recent tweet quoting an 8-year-old Dodgers fan, Zoe: “I hate when the Dodgers have away games. They don’t tell stories.”
When the Baltimore Orioles visited Dodger Stadium in July, Scully’s listeners learned that the father of Orioles manager Buck Showalter fought from North Africa to Italy to Normandy to the Battle of the Bulge. Whenever the Orioles come to town, Scully dispenses nuggets about the War of 1812. On June 6 broadcasts, they learned something about D-Day. His neighbor once was Ronald Reagan.
This is how Franklin Roosevelt began his first Fireside Chat (March 12, 1933): “I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking. . . .” For many years now, Scully has worked alone because he wants to talk not to someone seated next to him but to each listener, which was FDR’s talent. A free society — a society of persuasion, exhortation and neighborliness — resonates with familiar voices, such as FDR’s and Reagan’s. And Scully’s.
On Opening Day this year, before the season’s first pitch, Scully was the center of attention on the center of Dodger Stadium’s diamond, standing on the pitcher’s mound with various retired Dodger stars, including pitcher Don Newcombe. Newcombe, now 90, was the starter in the first game Scully participated in broadcasting — Opening Day, 1950, in Philadelphia. Scully knew players who knew Ty Cobb. Scully’s listeners today include the great-great-grandchildren of earlier listeners. Baseball, more than any other American institution, and Scully, more than any other baseball person, braid America’s generations.
In this year of few blessings, one is the fact that Scully’s final season coincides with a presidential campaign of unprecedented coarseness. The nation winces daily from fresh exposure to sullied politics, which surely is one reason so many people are paying such fond attention to Scully’s sunset. It is easy to disregard or even disparage gentility — until confronted, as Americans now are, with its utter absence.
In late September, Scully will drive up Vin Scully Avenue to Dodger Stadium, settle himself in front of a mic in the Vin Scully Press Box, and speak five familiar words: “It’s time for Dodger baseball.” Later, as the sun sets on the San Gabriel Mountains, he will accompany the Dodgers for their final regular-season series, with the San Francisco Giants, who came west when Scully and the Dodgers did in 1957.
Then, or perhaps after a postseason game, he will stride away, toward his 10th decade. In this era of fungible and forgettable celebrities, he is a rarity: For millions of friends he never met, his very absence will be a mellow presence.
Read more from George F. Will’s archive or follow him on Facebook.
Read more about this topic:
Charles Krauthammer: Our own Mickey Mantle
George Will’s 2016 Opening Day Quiz
Labels: Baseball, George Will
The Chinese, expert diplomats for thousands of ye...
FIFTEEN YEARS AFTER 9/11, AND AMERICA STILL SLEEPS...
Overselling A.D.H.D.: A New Book Exposes Big Pharm...
Jason Matthews To Release The Third And Final Book...
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5277
|
__label__wiki
| 0.716743
| 0.716743
|
The Banality of Barack
By Julie Kelly
https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/07/the-banality-of-barack/
Former President Barack Obama speaks at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
(John Gross/Reuters)
Capping off a week where Senate Democrats embarrassed themselves at what should have been the semi-serious vetting of a Supreme Court justice, along comes our foot-stomping former president to remind Americans of who, ultimately, is responsible for infantilizing national politics.
While lecturing college students assembled in an auditorium in central Illinois—the adopted home state he rarely visits—Barack Obama engaged in the type of vacuous, preening, pretentious, and meaningless soliloquy that once upon a time was accepted as thoughtful political discourse. But it was a temper tantrum disguised as a sermon. He might as well as gone on stage in Champaign and said, “Trump is a big fat meanie!”
Listening to Obama speak is the auditory equivalent of eating cotton candy. It looks sweet and pretty at first, and momentarily it tickles your tongue with the first taste. But it quickly dissolves in your mouth, leaving behind an odd aftertaste. Your hunger isn’t satisfied; you kick yourself for wasting the calories, and you move on to the carnival hot dog. (Yes, these metaphors are intentional.)
Friday’s speech was yet another reminder of why Donald Trump won in 2016: Voters rejected Barack Obama as much as they rejected Hillary Clinton. After a decade of binging on this skilled politician’s oratory cocktail of empty platitudes, self-puffery, and finger-wagging scoldings, we were burned out. Americans started to notice that the soaring rhetoric did not match the accomplishments. There was a creeping sense the same man who once promised his vision was “not red states or blue states, just the United States” had done more damage to the body politic than any other president in recent memory.
And he wasn’t even a good tactician for his own side. In fact, while this political mastermind was in the Oval Office, his party lost more than 1,000 seats to Republicans across the country.
Not an Ounce of Self-Awareness
One might imagine that suffering one political humiliation after another would humble this former community organizer. That handing over the keys to the most powerful office in the world to someone with zero political experience—who questioned your birth certificate and publicly mocked your presumed successor—then systematically disassembled every key achievement of your administration while the economy responded in delight would make you reconsider your approach. Maybe a true statesman would spend two years in exile reexamining what went wrong on his watch and offer a few mea culpas to the political party—and to the country—he helped diminish.
But there is no indication Barack Obama has learned any lessons from 2016. His speech (while he was accepting an ethics award, no less) was a weary remix of Obama’s Greatest Hits. It’s not just that Obama is petulant and demeaning. It’s not that he gets away with the very name-calling and ridicule that Trump gets blasted for.
The bottom line is Obama is a bore. His banality is reflective of the wider Democratic Party malaise. There is no inspiring message or even policy prescription. It’s wholly reliant on tropes about race and class and fear. It’s filled with potshots at the other side while pretending to be above-it-all and morally superior. The chin held high in the air as he speaks is not accidental: Obama is pretending to be just like you, but believes deep down he is far better.
Well-Worn Complaints
Far from the speech being the “greatest, most timely, and most important in the history of this country” as one Democratic activist described it, Obama’s speech sounded like an updated version of every speech he’s given in the past few years. It was filled with whiny platitudes about moments in time and stark choices and inequality and demagogues. He veered between warnings about fake patriotism while insisting it’s our civic duty to vote the way he wants. He pouted about not getting credit for the country’s booming economy. Both sides are culpable for the current political divide, Obama admitted, but Republicans are much more to blame. (Perhaps he missed this week’s spectacle at the Kavanaugh hearings.)
He trotted out the same well-worn complaints about voting rights and climate change. Solutions always come with a price, such as a carbon tax and higher minimum wage. After eight years of trying, he still can’t come up with a convincing sell on how to fix the nation’s failing immigration system: “Democrats talk about reforming our immigration system so, yes, it is orderly and it is fair and it is legal but it continues to welcome strivers and dreamers from all around the world.” Huh?
There were more nuggets of nothingness: A vacuum in democracy. The politics of fear. Stand up to bullies not follow them. We need more women in charge. The best way to protest is to vote. Walls don’t keep out threats like terrorism or disease.
Pretty boring stuff from a guy who is widely considered by the media as one of the greatest presidential orators of all time. It’s doubtful that Chris Matthews felt a thrill up his leg as he listened to this snoozer.
He Goes Low
It wouldn’t be Obama if he didn’t land some low punches at his political foes. This is one of the most overlooked characteristics of the former president: He is as petty and petulant as the current one.
Capitalizing on one of the big news stories of the week, Obama brought up the anonymous op-ed in theNew York Times allegedly authored by a senior official in the Trump administration: “The claim that everything will turn out OK because there are people inside the White House who secretly aren’t following the president’s orders, that is not a check. That’s not how our democracy is supposed to work,” Obama said. “They’re not doing us a service by actively promoting ninety percent of the crazy stuff that’s coming out of this White House, and then saying, ‘Don’t worry, we’re preventing the other 10 percent.’”
So much for civil norms about a previous president not criticizing a sitting president.
Obama now is threatening to campaign for Democratic candidates nationwide, an effort that has been snubbed by some incumbents fighting for reelection in states won by Donald Trump. Perhaps those Democrats know something Obama does not. His powers of political persuasion are gone, torched by a Manhattan business man and reality TV star he once publicly taunted never would be president. It looks like Obama, now as always, is the last to know.
Labels: Barack Obama
The Friendly, Sexy Stardom of Burt Reynolds
By Sarah Larson
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/the-friendly-sexy-stardom-of-burt-reynolds
For pop-culture enthusiasts of the seventies and eighties, reports of the death of Burt Reynolds, at age eighty-two, of a heart attack, in Jupiter, Florida, may have come as an unexpected shock. Some of us imagined him as eternally youthful, wisecracking, knowingly amused. Reynolds was a genial presence who seemed to have it all—in his heyday, he was the country’s top box-office star for five years; later, he lived in a sprawling estate called Valhalla—and remain a good sport. (His memoir, from 2015, is called “But Enough About Me.”) He was an amiable king of machismo, hairy chests, and highway-focussed buddy comedies, and his friendly sexiness—onscreen and on the covers of tabloids and glossy magazines—was for many years a constant. His groundbreaking centerfold in Cosmopolitan, from 1972, in which he stretched out, naked, on a bearskin rug, embodied his affable sensuality. “He was handsome, humorous, wonderful body, frisky,” Helen Gurley Brown later said, of choosing him for the shoot.
Reynolds was born in Michigan in 1936. He was a star football player at Florida State University; after an injury, he dropped out and moved to New York to become an actor. (Late in life, he went back to school.) After performing in a New York production of “Mister Roberts,” he got a TV contract, and in the next three decades appeared in dozens of rugged roles in Westerns, adventure movies, cop shows, and other brawny fare, including “Gunsmoke,” “Riverboat,” and “Hawk,” in which he starred as an Iroquois New York City detective. He hit his stride in the seventies, beginning with his breakout role as Lewis in “Deliverance,” in 1972. In 1977, “Smokey and the Bandit” made him an icon to kids, too. He played the Bandit, half of a duo that scrambles to bring a truckload of bootlegged beer from Texas to Georgia, joined by a runaway bride and pursued by a sheriff named Buford T. Justice. (In a famous scene, set to fiddle music, Reynolds, driving a black Trans Am, casually jumps a bridge with Sally Field squealing in his passenger seat. They subsequently dated for several years.) There were two sequels, just as Southern-fried, one involving a song recorded by Reynolds, “Let’s Do Something Cheap and Superficial,” that became a modest hit. And in “The Cannonball Run,” a bonkers, all-star affair, Reynolds chews gum while speeding an ambulance containing Farrah Fawcett from New York to California. (The gum-chewing, and the rascally insouciance, dominated Norm MacDonald’s “S.N.L.” impressions of him.)
Reynolds remained lovably roguish throughout that tire-screeching era; I was startled to rewatch “The Cannonball Run” years later and remember how much time he spends slapping Dom DeLuise and calling him a blimp. There and beyond, it was a hearty decade-plus of wailing sirens, flying V-8s, and cars getting sheared in two while somebody yells “dangnabbit.” And all along, Reynolds did his own stunts. In “Stroker Ace,” from 1983, he played a nascar driver who clashes with a fried-chicken magnate. The film was a flop, but he co-starred with Loni Anderson, whom he married. (If you were a fan of “WKRP in Cincinnati,” you were likely also fond of Anderson, who seemed like an apt match for Reynolds—they both radiated a warm and earthy stardom. The marriage, which ended in divorce, seems to have been less fun than I imagined; Reynolds later lamented not marrying Sally Field.) In the eighties and nineties, Reynolds’s career downshifted in influence but chugged along in productivity; he worked steadily throughout his life.
In 1997, Paul Thomas Anderson’s poignant, improbably sweet seventies-porn opus “Boogie Nights” returned Reynolds to us, older and wizened and handsome as ever, in the role of a director who brings Mark Wahlberg’s well-endowed innocent into a celluloid world where he rises, falls, and finds a ragtag, triple-X family, of which Reynolds is the patriarch. (“I make … exotic pictures,” he says to Wahlberg, with a smirk.) Reynolds looked right at home; there was something touching about seeing him, polyester-clad and sympathetic—if exuding a hint of manipulative, amoral sleaze—comfortably owning the era whence he came. He was nominated for an Oscar for the role, and that felt right, too.
And still he chugged on. This year, in a move that now feels, uncannily, like foresight, Reynolds featured in Adam Rifkin’s “The Last Movie Star,” which was written for him. He plays an aging, cane-wielding film icon receiving a somewhat humble lifetime-achievement award. “An audience will forgive a shitty act II if you can wow ’em in act III,” he says at one point. In a charming conversation with Kathryn Shattuck in the Times earlier this year, Reynolds says of the film, “I liked it. It was very different than anything I’d done. There weren’t any cars or things jumping other cars or girls and stuff.” He also recounts a lovely memory of an evening with Elaine Stritch, and the greatness of her renditions of Sondheim’s “I’m Still Here,” from “Follies,” the ultimate lifetime-in-showbiz anthem. (“Black sable one day, next day it goes into hock, but I'm here / Top billing Monday, Tuesday you’re touring in stock, but I'm here.”)
“Elaine Stritch, boy, could she sing that song,” he says. “I went out with her one night. It was just for fun, but we had the best time, laughing and giggling. And I’m saying good night to her, and I said, ‘Elaine?’ And she said, ‘Yes?’ as she waswalking away. And I said, ‘I’m still here.’ And she said, “So am I, hon.”
Labels: Film Reviews and Features, Obituaries
The Threat of ‘Genius’ to Truly Successful Architecture
By ROGER SCRUTON
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/the-threat-of-genius-to-truly-successful-architecture/
Cooper Union New Academic Building at 41 Cooper Square near Astor Place in the East Village of Manhattan, New York City. Designed by Thom Mayne of Morphosis Architecture, opened in 2009.
For the truly great projects, architects are necessary, and can take credit for magnificent structures like London’s St Paul’s Cathedral and Istanbul’s Suleymanyie Mosque. Nevertheless, most architects of the buildings we love remain anonymous, and those who designed the great Gothic cathedrals owe their achievements as much to the guilds of stonemasons as to their own astonishing plans. Moreover, by far the greatest number of buildings that we admire had no architect at all. Think of the medieval houses that compose the hilltop towns of Italy, the great stone tenements of Edinburgh, the backwaters of Venice, the thousands of village churches scattered over Europe, and just about every other building stitched into the fabric of those places that we visit because they provide the soothing experience of a deep settlement and a shared home.
Reflecting on these matters I long ago drew the conclusion that the first principle of architecture is that most of us can do it. You can teach music, poetry, and painting. But what you learn will never suffice to make you into a composer, a poet, or a painter. There is that extra thing, which the romantics called “genius”, without which technique will never lead to real works of art. In the case of architecture not only is the part that can be taught sufficient in itself, but also the belief that you need something else—genius, originality, creativity, etc.—is the principal threat to real success.
The pursuit of genius in architecture is what has most contributed to the unstitching of our urban fabric, giving us those buildings in outlandish shapes and unsightly materials that take a chunk of the city and make it into somewhere else, as Morphosis did with New York’s Cooper Square, or Zaha Hadid with the Port Authority Building in Antwerp.
These buildings that stand out when they should be fitting in declare the genius of their creators, with no consideration paid to the offense suffered by the rest of us. China is now littered with this stuff, and as a result there is no city in that country that has the remotest resemblance to a settlement.
In response it will be said that we need to accommodate our growing populations, and to make efficient use of the land available for building, and how can we do this without architects? The refutation of this lies in the garden shed and the trailer. Almost all of us are capable of designing such a thing, and placing it in agreeable surroundings and conciliatory relation to its neighbors. The trailer park usually achieves a density of population far greater than the estate of tower-block apartments, and leaves the residents free to embellish their individual holdings with agreeable details, flower pots, even classical windows and doorways, along the edges of incipient streets.
In my experience the most poignant illustration of these truths is provided by the gecekondu (= built in one night) around Ankara. An old Ottoman law, inherited from the Byzantine Empire and therefore from Rome, tells us that, if you have acquired a piece of land to which no one has a proven right of ownership and if you build a dwelling there in one night, you can assume a permanent right of residence. When Atatürk declared the ancient city of Ankara to be the capital of the new Turkey he set the architects to work, building tower blocks and modern highways in regimented patterns that chill the heart and repel everyone who is not obliged by his work to reside there. Meanwhile all around the capital, on the bare hills to which no one had a claim of ownership, there arose by an invisible hand some of the most harmonious settlements created in modern times: houses of one or two stories, in easily handled materials such as brick, wood, corrugated iron, and tiles, nestling close together since none can lay claim to any more garden than the corners left over from building, each fitted neatly into the hillside and with tracks running among them along which no car can pass.
In time the residents cover them with stucco and paint them in those lovely Turkish blues and ochres; they bring electricity and water and light their paths not with glaring sodium lights but with intermittent bulbs, twinkling from afar like grounded galaxies. They join together to form charitable associations, so as to build mosques in the ancient style and neighborhood schools beside them.
These suburbs are the most unpolluted (in every respect) that the modern world has produced, and contain more residents per square mile than any of the architect-designed banlieux around Paris. And they are produced in just the way that sheds are produced, by people using their God-given ability to knock things together so as to put a roof over their head.
Roger Scruton is The American Conservative’s New Urbanism Fellow.
Labels: Art, Roger Scruton
Today's Tune: Bruce Springsteen - Springsteen on Broadway Performance from 2018 Tony Awards
Labels: Bruce Springsteen, Today's Tune
Perspective: Bruce Springsteen is aging just fine on Broadway
By Randy Lewis
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-bruce-springsteen-broadway-notebook-20180904-story.html#
Marrying rock ’n’ roll and Broadway has long been a challenge.
Jukebox musicals, for instance, tend to incorporate some of the most beloved and influential songs of the rock era in theatrical productions aimed at audiences more interested in dressing up for a toe-tapping evening of polite theater rather than a hot and sweaty, roof-rattling, decibel-cranking night in a smoky nightclub.
As far back as 1989 with “Buddy — The Buddy Holly Story,” on through shows built on music of the Beatles, Elvis Presley, Motown, Sun Records and others, there’s always been a certain something missing, at least for this viewer and lifelong rock fan.
For my money, the element that few, if any, theater producers and directors have successfully harnessed has been the authentic, liberated and liberating in-and-of-the-moment spirit of rock ’n’ roll.
That’s a key part of what makes Bruce Springsteen’s current one-man show, “Springsteen on Broadway,” such a wondrous anomaly, despite at least three decades of efforts by various parties to bring some of the spirit of rock to the Great White Way.
As smartly scripted as Springsteen’s show is, skillfully touching on different phases of his life in parallel with his recent autobiography “Born to Run,” my conclusion after belatedly catching up with “Springsteen on Broadway” last week on a trip to New York is that it’s not fundamentally different than the countless Springsteen concert performances I’ve attended over the last 40 years, starting in 1978 when I first saw him live at the Forum in Inglewood on his “Darkness On the Edge of Town” tour.
In a nutshell, a Springsteen concert is a lot of music with some illuminating monologues between inspiring songs. “Springsteen on Broadway” is a lot of illuminating monologues separated by inspiring songs. Among the cornerstone Springsteen hits and deeper cuts in the show are “Born to Run,” “Thunder Road,” “Dancing in the Dark,” “My Hometown,” “Growin’ Up,” “Brilliant Disguise,” “Tougher Than the Rest” and “The Ghost of Tom Joad.”
It’s Springsteen on the same pulpit he’s always taken, whether backed by the venerable E Street Band, in solo shows or during the great string of performances he did a decade or so back with the expanded forces of the folk-country-gospel minded Sessions Band.
As my colleague, theater critic Charles McNulty, so succinctly noted in reviewing the show when it opened nearly a year ago: “Toward the end of the two-hour intermission-less show, he intones The Lord’s Prayer, but by then it’s clear that ‘Springsteen on Broadway’ is for him a kind of sacrament.”
My only update to that assessment is that 10 months down the road, the show now stretches closer to two hours and 45 minutes, nearing the epic nature of typical Springsteen/E Street Band marathons that run three or often even four hours.
For Springsteen, playing music was never simply a quest for fame or fortune; it’s always been a vehicle for experiencing life to its fullest, for fomenting genuine connection with like-mind human beings and for tapping the power of music to align with something greater than oneself.
“The way I see it,” he writes in his book, “we ate the apple and Adam, Eve, the rebel Jesus in all his glory and Satan are all part of God’s plan to make men and women out of us, to give us the precious gifts of earth, dirt, sweat, blood, sex, sin, goodness, freedom, captivity, love, fear, life and death … our humanity and a world of our own.”
The only thing missing was Springsteen following that with “Can I get an amen!”
In a passage of the show lifted almost verbatim from the book, Springsteen explained to the Walter Kerr Theatre audience last week the special thing that a rock band is: “A real rock ’n’ roll band evolves out of a common place and time. It’s all about what occurs when musicians of similar background come together in a local gumbo that mixes into something greater than the sum of the parts: 1+1=3.
“The primary math of the real world is one and one equals two,” he continues, with the fervor of a preacher on a roll.
“But artists, musicians, con men, poets, mystics and such are paid to turn that math on its head, to rub two sticks together and bring forth fire. Everybody performs this alchemy somewhere in their life, but it’s hard to hold onto and easy to forget.
“People don’t come to rock shows to learn something,” he suggests. “They come to be reminded of something they already know and feel deep down in their gut.”
As I took it all in — including his honest confessions of times in his life when his execution fell short of his ambition — I was reminded of Ray Davies, Garth Brooks, Loudon Wainwright III and Randy Newman.
They are among the small handful of pop figures who have channeled the kind of emotional immediacy and disarming honesty into theatrically minded shows in the manner that distinguishes “Springsteen on Broadway” from so many other pop music-adjacent efforts.
Springsteen’s show has been extended several times from its originally planned engagement of a few weeks, but is now set to close for good on Dec. 15.
The good news, at least for those without the geographical or financial wherewithal to catch the stage production, is that Springsteen and his longtime collaborator, director Thom Zimny, are putting together a film version that is scheduled to premiere on Netflix the same night the live-action version closes.
Review: ‘Springsteen on Broadway’ Reveals the Artist, Real and Intense-
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/12/theater/bruce-springsteen-on-broadway-review.html
Labels: Bruce Springsteen
The Church That De-Christianizes The World
By ROD DREHER
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/catholic-church-dechristianizes-world-homosexuality-gay/
1st century Pompeii
Catholic academic Benjamin Wiker offers a red-hot take on the deep historical and moral meaning of the Church’s abuse scandal. He points out that Christianity appeared in a Greco-Roman culture where men having sex with boys was a common cultural practice (which, he points out, means that sexual desire is a lot more fluid and socially determined than we have been inclined to think):
Christianity made pedophilia a moral issue. As Christianity slowly evangelized the pagan Roman Empire, the widespread acceptance of men having sex with boys was replaced by widespread moral revulsion (and the appearance of anti-pedophilia laws that followed upon it). The same is true as well for homosexuality, sexual slavery, abortion, infanticide and euthanasia. They became moral issues, rather than accepted pagan social practices, only because of Christian evangelization.
Here are the lessons we must learn from this history.
The sole reason that there are still secular laws on the books that prohibit and punish pedophilia is that Christianity came to dominate culture in the West through evangelization. The only reason that we have accepted homosexuality in culture and in law is the increasing de-Christianization of the culture in the West. As we become even more secularized (i.e., repaganized), pedophilia will soon be accepted, just as homosexuality, abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia have already been embraced.
This is a massive, massive crisis in and for the Church because a deeply-embedded worldwide homosexual network among our priests, bishops, and cardinals is actively engaged in bringing about the full de-Christianization of the world by preying on boys between 12-18, literally recreating Greco-Roman sexual culture in our seminaries and dioceses. If you want to know what it was like in the sordid sexual days of ancient Greece and Rome, just read the Pennsylvania Report.
That’s a rather horrible irony, isn’t it? The very men most authoritatively charged with the evangelization of all the nations are full-steam ahead bringing about the devangelization of the nations. In doing so, these priests, bishops, and cardinals at the very heart of the Catholic Church are acting as willing agents of repaganization, undoing 2,000 years of Church History.
Read the whole thing.
If you haven’t yet seen it, read my TAC essay from five years ago, “Sex After Christianity”. It is one of the most widely-read pieces I’ve ever done for the magazine. In it, I discuss why the acceptance of same-sex marriage really is a death blow for the Christian order. Excerpt:
Though he might not have put it quite that way, the eminent sociologist Philip Rieff would probably have said yes. Rieff’s landmark 1966 book The Triumph Of the Therapeutic analyzes what he calls the “deconversion” of the West from Christianity. Nearly everyone recognizes that this process has been underway since the Enlightenment, but Rieff showed that it had reached a more advanced stage than most people—least of all Christians—recognized.
Rieff, who died in 2006, was an unbeliever, but he understood that religion is the key to understanding any culture. For Rieff, the essence of any and every culture can be identified by what it forbids. Each imposes a series of moral demands on its members, for the sake of serving communal purposes, and helps them cope with these demands. A culture requires a cultus—a sense of sacred order, a cosmology that roots these moral demands within a metaphysical framework.
You don’t behave this way and not that way because it’s good for you; you do so because this moral vision is encoded in the nature of reality. This is the basis of natural-law theory, which has been at the heart of contemporary secular arguments against same-sex marriage (and which have persuaded no one).
Rieff, writing in the 1960s, identified the sexual revolution—though he did not use that term—as a leading indicator of Christianity’s death as a culturally determinative force. In classical Christian culture, he wrote, “the rejection of sexual individualism” was “very near the center of the symbolic that has not held.” He meant that renouncing the sexual autonomy and sensuality of pagan culture was at the core of Christian culture—a culture that, crucially, did not merely renounce but redirected the erotic instinct. That the West was rapidly re-paganizing around sensuality and sexual liberation was a powerful sign of Christianity’s demise.
It is nearly impossible for contemporary Americans to grasp why sex was a central concern of early Christianity. Sarah Ruden, the Yale-trained classics translator, explains the culture into which Christianity appeared in her 2010 book Paul Among The People. Ruden contends that it’s profoundly ignorant to think of the Apostle Paul as a dour proto-Puritan descending upon happy-go-lucky pagan hippies, ordering them to stop having fun.
In fact, Paul’s teachings on sexual purity and marriage were adopted as liberating in the pornographic, sexually exploitive Greco-Roman culture of the time—exploitive especially of slaves and women, whose value to pagan males lay chiefly in their ability to produce children and provide sexual pleasure. Christianity, as articulated by Paul, worked a cultural revolution, restraining and channeling male eros, elevating the status of both women and of the human body, and infusing marriage—and marital sexuality—with love.
Christian marriage, Ruden writes, was “as different from anything before or since as the command to turn the other cheek.” The point is not that Christianity was only, or primarily, about redefining and revaluing sexuality, but that within a Christian anthropology sex takes on a new and different meaning, one that mandated a radical change of behavior and cultural norms. In Christianity, what people do with their sexuality cannot be separated from what the human person is.
It would be absurd to claim that Christian civilization ever achieved a golden age of social harmony and sexual bliss. It is easy to find eras in Christian history when church authorities were obsessed with sexual purity. But as Rieff recognizes, Christianity did establish a way to harness the sexual instinct, embed it within a community, and direct it in positive ways.
What makes our own era different from the past, says Rieff, is that we have ceased to believe in the Christian cultural framework, yet we have made it impossible to believe in any other that does what culture must do: restrain individual passions and channel them creatively toward communal purposes.
Rather, in the modern era, we have inverted the role of culture. Instead of teaching us what we must deprive ourselves of to be civilized, we have a society that tells us we find meaning and purpose in releasing ourselves from the old prohibitions.
How this came to be is a complicated story involving the rise of humanism, the advent of the Enlightenment, and the coming of modernity. As philosopher Charles Taylor writes in his magisterial religious and cultural history A Secular Age, “The entire ethical stance of moderns supposes and follows on from the death of God (and of course, of the meaningful cosmos).” To be modern is to believe in one’s individual desires as the locus of authority and self-definition.
Gradually the West lost the sense that Christianity had much to do with civilizational order, Taylor writes. In the 20th century, casting off restrictive Christian ideals about sexuality became increasingly identified with health. By the 1960s, the conviction that sexual expression was healthy and good—the more of it, the better—and that sexual desire was intrinsic to one’s personal identity culminated in the sexual revolution, the animating spirit of which held that freedom and authenticity were to be found not in sexual withholding (the Christian view) but in sexual expression and assertion. That is how the modern American claims his freedom.
To Rieff, ours is a particular kind of “revolutionary epoch” because the revolution cannot by its nature be institutionalized. Because it denies the possibility of communal knowledge of binding truths transcending the individual, the revolution cannot establish a stable social order. As Rieff characterizes it, “The answer to all questions of ‘what for’ is ‘more’.”
Our post-Christian culture, then, is an “anti-culture.” We are compelled by the logic of modernity and the myth of individual freedom to continue tearing away the last vestiges of the old order, convinced that true happiness and harmony will be ours once all limits have been nullified.
Gay marriage signifies the final triumph of the Sexual Revolution and the dethroning of Christianity because it denies the core concept of Christian anthropology. In classical Christian teaching, the divinely sanctioned union of male and female is an icon of the relationship of Christ to His church and ultimately of God to His creation. This is why gay marriage negates Christian cosmology, from which we derive our modern concept of human rights and other fundamental goods of modernity. Whether we can keep them in the post-Christian epoch remains to be seen.
Read the whole thing. This essay became the basis for the Sex chapter in The Benedict Option.
Wiker has identified something truly tragic, and truly outrageous: the sexual corruption of the Catholic clergy has contributed mightily to the de-Christianization of the world. Something of world-historical importance is going on here, and it has reached the summit of the Roman Catholic Church.
Labels: Catholic Sex Abuse Scandal
New York Times' 'Inside' Attack on Trump Unbelievably Cowardly
BY ROGER L SIMON
https://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/nyts-inside-attack-on-trump-unbelievably-cowardly/
The New York "Walter Duranty" Times is up to its old tricks again:
The Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers.
How many minutes (or seconds) of arm-twisting did it take the Times to publish this anonymous op-ed weeks before the midterms in the midst of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings?
Whatever the case, the political views of this "courageous" official, who insists insiders like him or her are saving us from the dreaded Trump, can be found in the penultimate paragraphs of his article.
Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.
We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue.
John McCain? A lodestar? For the last dozen years or so John McCain had been the bête noire of virtually all conservatives and libertarians, betraying them on multiple occasions, most recently on the Obamacare vote, which he held to the last second to apply maximum torture to Donald Trump. Whatever McCain thought about the policy seemed immaterial.
Yes, McCain had reason to be angry with Trump, who said nasty things about his military service, but then McCain had previously said nasty things about the idea of Trump running in the first place. If McCain's a lodestar for anything it's expediency and slavish playing up to the media.
But it's ironic to see him lauded in the pages of the New York Times, the very paper that falsely accused the senator of having an affair roughly a month before his 2008 presidential election, not owning up to its lie for months.
Nevertheless let's give Mr. Anonymous his due and address his arguments. They seem to center on foreign policy because he does deign to admit the new tax law and deregulation are a good thing, though, in his eyes, Trump had little to do with it.
His big complaint, once again, is that the president is soft on Putin and Kim Jong-un. He discounts, actually doesn't mention, the obvious possibility that Trump has been playing good cop/bad cop, complimenting the despots personally while sticking it to them on policy (sanctions, etc.). Instead, he insists that the president is being saved from his affinity for dictators by his hard-nosed staff, not bothering to note that such hawks as Mike Pompeo and John Bolton were originally chosen by Trump and seem to be working quite well with him.
Whether the god cop/bad cop approach will ultimately work is clearly an open question, but that previous approaches have failed is not. Curiously missing from the op-ed is any mention of Trump's Middle East policy, which has been tremendously advantageous to Israel and disadvantageous to Iran. Is our anonymous correspondent for this or not?
Maybe it doesn't matter in his/her weltanschauung. He/she calls the president immoral, but what's moral about an anonymous attack? It's certainly not a profile in courage.
What the Times is publishing here for its own very temporary convenience is inside propaganda from the hoary ultra-establishment wing of the Republican Party. It is the Deep State in action, though the author claims to represent the "steady state."
The man or woman who wrote this article is in actuality an abject coward, the kind of tattletale who is afraid to identify himself or herself for fear of losing a government job. How pathetic is that? Why would anyone trust such a person?
Oh, yes, I bet somebody did -- Bob Woodward. We should ask him who it is.
Roger L. Simon - co-founder and CEO Emeritus of PJ Media - is an author and an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter.
Labels: Donald Trump, Media and Culture
The Spy in the White House, the Dogs in the Manger
By Michael Walsh
https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/05/the-spy-in-the-white-house-the-dogs-in-the-manger/
The New York Times hit a new journalistic low on Wednesday with the publication of an anonymous op-ed, purportedly by a senior member of the Trump Administration, that reveals the existence of a sapper within the president’s circle. No doubt commissioned to coincide with the release of Bob Woodward’s latest exercise in Washington fiction, Fear, as well the orgy of crocodile tears occasioned by the passing of John McCain, it portrays an erratic, amoral president entirely unmoored from previous notions of ideological or party fidelity, whose impulsive behavior his aides are trying, with only some success, to contain and correct.
“This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state,” writes the author. “It’s the work of the steady state.”
The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful. It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.
Not for the first time, what’s going on in Washington brings to mind not the late Roman Empire, but the early one—the Julian line that began with Caesar, passed through Augustus and Tiberius, and then degenerated into the reigns of Caligula, Claudius, and ended with Nero. As the Republic morphed into the Empire, the Senate receded in importance, as did the twin consuls, annually elected. Powerful women—the mothers, wives, and mistresses of the emperors—wielded great power. And yet, in the end, nearly all died unnatural deaths, assassinated (all but Augustus, in fact), murdered, executed, or forced to suicide. To spare you reading Gibbon in his magnificent entirety: the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was written in the stars, right from the start, just as Shakespeare said.
The Left and its allies in the media would have us think—as this op-ed is clearly meant to do—that Trump is some combination of Claudius and Nero, a mad king barely restrained by his courtiers. “Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back,” the unknown author writes. “Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis.”
I have no idea whether any of this is true. It is possible that Trump is as changeable as they say, and that his worst impulses are held in check by the wise men around him. More likely, however, is that Trump remains surrounded by those who want to see him fail, out of pique; if he’s an emperor, he’s beleaguered rather than omnipotent, with spies lurking behind every arras, shivs at the ready.
Certainly, the success of the administration’s initiatives, from the booming economy to the moments of clarity it has brought to rogue enemies and feckless allies from North Korea to Germany, is indisputable, no matter what you think of Trump. I would further venture to say that those who support the president do not do so because they are enamored of him, or think of him as a god-king, or Cheeto Jesus, but rather because they agree with his policies and like their results.
But to a wide swath of #TheResistance, this is both incredible and unacceptable. Trump offends them so personally and so deeply that they cannot constrain their bitterness, their jealousy, and their anger. The old guard, Baby Boomer media, almost to a man, despises him for his insouciant rejection of the “norms” with which they grew up. Indeed, one of the things that most infuriates them is his resolute refusal to play the part of Richard Nixon, which is why they have recently deployed the ghosts of Watergate Past, including not only “Woodstein” but even superannuated bit players like John Dean, as repellant a weasel today as he was in the 1970s.
And so organizations like the Times now feel free to violate every canon in the reporter’s handbook, and turn to legions of Deep Throat wannabees—whose identities are protected not because their lives are in danger but because they might lose their jobs and thus be of no further use to #TheResistance. That this puts the Times’s reporters into direct conflict with its editors has not gone unnoticed; as Jodi Kantor tweeted:
jodikantor
✔@jodikantor
So basically: Times reporters now must try to unearth the identity of an author that our colleagues in Opinion have sworn to protect with anonymity? https://nyti.ms/2CyF3Jh?smid=nytcore-ios-share …
3:58 PM - Sep 5, 2018
Opinion | I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration
I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.
Still, it’s a little late for Kantor and her colleagues to find that old-time religion. No reportorial cats patrol the anonymice/rat precincts any more, and so journalism is overrun by self-serving vermin, men without chests who prize their jobs more than their honor—Brave Sir Robins all, who fire their slings and arrows behind the newsprint equivalent of an Antifa mask and then run away. Or, even worse, we have a group of unprincipled, fabulist reporters who invent from whole cloth a shadow army of “resistance” fighters, the better to give imaginary voice to the reporters’ own political proclivities.
Sarah Sanders responded quickly to Mr. Anonymous: “The individual behind this piece has chosen to deceive, rather than support, the duly elected President of the United States. He is not putting country first, but putting himself and his ego ahead of the will of the American people. This coward should do the right thing, and resign.”
Fat chance. For the dirty little secret of official Washington is that every single civil servant and Washington bureau reporter has more job security than the president; voter-and-term-limited chief executives may come and go, but Congress, the agencies, and the parasites who feed off of them are nearly forever, long after the current occupant of the White House is gone.
Consumed with resentment toward a man they loathe and, worse, for whom not a single person they collectively know voted, today’s journalists jealously guard what’s left of their dignity, their ethics, and their honor, even as they gnaw at their own entrails, and wonder why they’re dying.
Michael Walsh is a journalist, author, and screenwriter. He was for 16 years the music critic and foreign correspondent for Time Magazine, for which he covered the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. His works include the novels As Time Goes By, And All the Saints (winner, 2004 American Book Award for fiction), and the bestselling “Devlin” series of NSA thrillers; as well as the recent nonfiction bestseller, The Devil’s Pleasure Palace. A sequel, The Fiery Angel, was published by Encounter in May 2018. Follow him on Twitter at @dkahanerules
Labels: Donald Trump, Michael Walsh
The Threat of ‘Genius’ to Truly Successful Archite...
Today's Tune: Bruce Springsteen - Springsteen on B...
Perspective: Bruce Springsteen is aging just fine ...
New York Times' 'Inside' Attack on Trump Unbelieva...
The Spy in the White House, the Dogs in the Manger...
Burying the Dead With Bile-Filled Histrionics
From funerals to talk shows, the Washington gutter...
MASSIVE MS-13 BUST IN CALIFORNIA
Players reveal the 40-year secret to Russ Rose's u...
Trump on the Ground
Bob Dylan - The 1966 Live Recordings: The Untold S...
Today's Tune: Bob Dylan - Like a Rolling Stone (li...
Review: Bob Dylan’s ‘Live 1962-1966’ collects powe...
Bob Dylan proves he's still got it in Christchurch...
Prelates and Pederasts
WHY IN THE NAME OF GOD IS THE MEDIA PROTECTING POP...
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5278
|
__label__cc
| 0.641711
| 0.358289
|
Charles Donald Graham
Lieutenant Charles Donald Graham, R.N. (25 November, 1874 – ) served in the Royal Navy.
Life & Career
Graham spent his first three years in the Navy in the second class battleship Trafalgar in the Mediterranean, ending in May 1893.
Graham was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant on 30 June, 1896.
He was found partly at fault for a collision between Phaeton, in which he was officer of the watch, and the destroyer Thrasher as the two were at sea in a rainy night and a signalled change of course was wrongly taken.
He resigned from the service on 7 May, 1898 to avoid a second Court Martial. I am unable to find details of this proposed proceeding.
Service Records
Retrieved from "http://dreadnoughtproject.org/tfs/index.php?title=Charles_Donald_Graham&oldid=282265"
People (UK)
Lieutenants
Lieutenants (UK)
H.M.S. Britannia (Training Ship) Entrants of January, 1888
Content is available under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 unless otherwise noted.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5288
|
__label__cc
| 0.54843
| 0.45157
|
Emergency Room Monitoring Shows Traumatic-Injury Hazards
CPWR - The Center for Construction Research and Training
Information on common emergency room visits from construction workers, including plumbers with eye injuries and sheetmetal workers with cuts, as well as other details.
Plumbers: The Eyes Have It
Eye injuries are more common for plumbers (and pipefitters and steamfitters) than for any other trade - 19% of plumbers' emergency-room cases. Plumbers had 5% of the emergency injury cases in the GWU survey, but 10% of the eye injuries (29 cases).
Most of the plumbers' eye injuries were from a foreign object entering the eye, which can lead to permanent damage. Injuries occurred while working overhead, soldering or welding, grinding metal, painting, or working with pressurized pipes.
These are some ways to reduce eye injuries:
Wear eye protection
Use barriers or different materials to reduce dust, metal fragments, and other particles
Use water to reduce dust on the job.
Sheetmetal Workers Get Cuts
Sheetmetal workers suffer a lot of cuts on the job, mainly to the hands and fingers, but also to the arm and head. Serious cuts were 46% of the injuries treated for this trade in the GWU survey. (Ninety-three sheetmetal workers were treated for 100 injuries; 7 workers had 2 diagnoses.)
Sprains and strains were the second-most-common injury for sheetmetal workers - 21 injuries. Most often, the pain was in the low back or shoulder, but also the foot, hand, and upper back.
The third-most-common injuries were to the eyes. (Sheetmetal workers, like plumbers, do a lot of their work while reaching overhead.)
The leading cause of the injuries was contact with a sharp object, usually sheet metal. The other most common causes were falls (16%), overexertion (16%), or being struck by a falling object (9%).
Emergency-Room Monitoring Shows Traumatic-Injury Hazards
Researchers at George Washington University (GWU) have been monitoring construction-worker treatment at the Emergency Department of the GWU Medical Center in Washington, D.C., since November 1990, in cooperation with CPWR – Center for Construction Research and Training. After collecting information on 3,003 construction workers treated for work-related injuries in the first 7 years of the study, the researchers are summarizing their findings.
Workers don't usually go to emergency rooms for work-related sprains and strains or work-related illnesses, such as lung disease. Also, the numbers are small and the mix of work being done around the big-city hospital may not reflect all construction or all types of injuries. But the GWU research does show where efforts can be focused effectively to improve safety on the job. More than 700 construction workers are injured each workday in the United States, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Below are some facts from reports, by trade, being prepared by the researchers, Katherine Hunting and Judith Anderson of the GWU Department of Environmental and Occupational Health and Laura Welch of the Washington Hospital Center.
Occupational Injuries among US Construction Workers Treated at the George Washington University Emergency Department, 1990-97
Follow-Up Study of Muskuloskeletal Injuries among Construction Workers
Canary used for testing for carbon monoxide
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5289
|
__label__cc
| 0.54728
| 0.45272
|
Jeff Beattie, Candidate for Ward 10 in Hamilton Municipal Election 2018
Beattie, Jeff
jeff@jeffbeattie.ca
https://www.jeffbeattie.ca/
Jeff Beattie is a life-long resident of Winona/Stoney Creek. He is a parent of four children, a business owner, a community volunteer and a community leader.
After graduating from Orchard Park Secondary School, Jeff successfully completed Niagara College’s Business Administration program specializing in Operations Jeff and Tina Beattie Management. After graduating, he spent nearly ten years in front-line management in the agricultural services sector before taking over his family’s business in 2008. He and his wife, Tina, now own and operate Winona Gardens, the greenhouse, farm and garden centre which was started by his grandfather in 1953.
Jeff is proud of his farming roots and maintains membership with both the Hamilton-Wentworth Federation of Agriculture, and Ontario Federation of Agriculture.
This Spring, the Stoney Creek Chamber of Commerce presented Winona Gardens with a prestigious Legacy Award for over 65 years of service to the community! Under Jeff’s ownership, the business has also been awarded the City of Hamilton’s Business Achievement Award, consecutive Reader’s Choice Awards, and were nominated in 2017 for the Ontario Ploughmans’ Farm Family Award.
In 2014, Jeff was elected to serve as the Trustee for Stoney Creek (Wards 9 & 10), for the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board. At the Board, Jeff is a leading advocate of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math Education (STEAM) as taught through innovative robotics programs in our schools, as well as Active & Sustainable School Transportation initiatives to encourage cycling and walking to and from school.
From December 2015 to December 2017, Jeff proudly served as the Vice-Chair of the School Board and is currently Chair of the Board’s Audit Committee. Since elected, Jeff has served as member of the Finance & Facilities Committee, the Policy Committee, Human Resources Committee, Governance Committee and joint City-Board Liaison Committee, as well as serving as a representative on the Faith Community Advisory Committee.
Jeff has been a volunteer with the Winona Peach Festival, Winona Halloween Parade, Fifty United Church, the Winona Easter Egg Hunt, 1st Winona Scouting and a member of the Winona Men’s Club. Jeff’s involvement with the Peach Festival includes serving as a volunteer, Committee Chair and Director. Jeff has served as Co-Chair of the Winona Halloween Parade & Pumpkin Patch since 2011.
Brimming with new ideas, Jeff looks forward to serving the new Ward 10 with a commitment to represent all the residents of Stoney Creek, Fruitland and Winona.
Since the 1950s, most new residential and commercial development in Hamilton has been single-use suburban sprawl. Do you believe Hamilton needs to concentrate new development within the already-built area? Why or why not? Yes Hamilton needs a a better mix of development, including both brownfield and greenfield builds. I'm in favour of rebuilding older parts of Hamilton's core with higher density development, while allowing lower density in our outlying areas. At the end of the day whether in the City's core or in the suburbs, development and redevelopment needs to 'fit' and reflect the community in which it is occurring.
Should Hamilton be trying to attract more young people to live, work and start businesses here, including the 60,000 students studying at Mohawk College, McMaster University and Redeemer University? If so, what should we be doing? If not, why not? Yes Attracting youth is one thing - retaining them is another. We need a better city-wide focus on youth issues and engagement. We need to understand what the obstacles are to keeping young people in Hamilton. I believe that a lack of jobs, affordable housing, transit, and barriers to small business creation, are among them. We need a better plan to address these issues and keep young people here.
Hamilton has been experiencing a slow-motion crisis in housing affordability. Do you support an expanded role for the City to provide more affordable housing? If so, what should Hamilton do? If not, why not? Yes In my community, the affordable housing issue is happening behind closed doors. Young families are quietly living in their parent's basements because they can't afford to enter the property market. The City plays a role, but should act as an 'enabler' for other groups who's primary focus is affordable housing. This is entirely about partnerships and working together to find solutions. Ensuring that a larger percentage of new builds include an affordable housing component is a start.
The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act mandates that cities must be completely accessible by 2025. What changes would you make to ensure Hamilton complies with this mandate? Yes With the private sector being forced to invest heavily in AODA compliance, the City needs to take a leadership role and ensure that compliance plans are being targeted effectively, and funded properly.
Global warming is an existential challenge facing humanity. Do you think Hamilton should play a role in addressing climate change? If so, what should the city be doing? If not, why not? Yes Again, the City should be play a leadership role - but budget needs to be part of a balanced conversation. Green initiatives on new buildings, efficiency retrofits on existing facilities, and making low- or no emission vehicles part of the City's fleet should all be considered.
Do you support the "Vision Zero" goal of eliminating traffic fatalities and serious injuries in Hamilton? If so, what specific actions would you take to implement this policy? If not, why not? Yes Traffic and Traffic calming issues are as much of a concern here in Stoney Creek as in any other part of the City, so yes, we need to reduce and eliminate pedestrian and vehicular injuries and fatalities in all parts of Hamilton. The tools to achieve this vary depending on the need of the community. Being open to all options would be an important first step. We can't have any more 'that doesn't apply here'
Hamilton has a legacy of multi-lane, one-way arterial streets dating back to the 1950s. Do you support accelerating the conversion of these streets to two-way? Why or why not? Maybe This is tough one. In the suburbs, people want efficient access to the City's core if they are going to come and visit and spend money. And currently, transit isn't a viable option for someone from Ancaster, Stoney Creek or Waterdown coming downtown.
I visit James St. North, Locke Street, and Ottawa Street all the time, so being able to get to those places in a reasonable amount of time is an important consideration for me deciding where I will be headed for dinner/shopping or entertainment.
That said - I completely understand the view of those who live in those areas, who don't feel safe around 5 lanes of traffic racing through their neighbourhood. So what is the balance? How to keep traffic moving while allowing ease of access to and from other parts of the City? Some one-way streets are natural candidates for conversion, others are trickier. I look forward to being part of that conversation.
Do you support improved public transit in Hamilton? If so, what changes do you propose? If not, why not? Yes I absolutely do. I don't use transit. Not because I don't like it, but because where I live doesn't have any kind of reliable/predictable/reasonable service (Eastern Stoney Creek is serviced by an outdated Trans-Cab system) I don't want my kids to grow up car-dependent. I want to invest in making transit reliable/predictable and reasonable.
I want to use outside the box thinking from other jurisdictions. An innovative partnership in Kingston between the City and School Board has led to Kingston's Transit System being one of the fastest growing in the country. They started showing high school students 'how' to use transit, and offered incentives to encourage young people to use transit. The result? When these young people become adults, they take these new habits of transit use with them and become more likely to transit users in the future. We need to more users, and a system that will build confidence in itself.
Do you support phasing out area rating for transit? Why or why not? Yes I think that our hodge-podge taxation system goes beyond just phasing out area rating. A comprehensive overhaul of the city's taxation system is needed.
Council has voted dozens of times since 2008 to advance Hamilton's light rail transit (LRT) project, including voting to submit the plan with a full funding request to the Province in 2013, and voting to accept full funding and implementation from the Province in 2015. Do you support completing the LRT plan? Why or why not? Yes I support transit expansion and infrastructure renewal. I support balancing the Urban/Suburban tax levy imbalance. I support focusing high density, high rise development into the downtown corridor and not in the suburbs (where nobody wants it). The LRT project as I understand it does all of this. I support continuing to work with the Province and Metrolinx (who are providing funding for the project) to complete the project, so long as these benefits remain.
Bonus question: If LRT goes ahead, what will you do to ensure Hamilton receives the maximum benefit? Yes Infrastructure renewal, transit expansion, redevelopment of areas with a lower tax base into areas with a higher tax base, opportunities for new affordable housing options, focusing high rise/high density development into the downtown corridor (away from the suburbs) are all benefits of the project. These benefits need to be better communicated to residents - not just in the 'old' City of the Hamilton, but particularly in the outlying areas. There is a LOT of misinformation out there that needs to be challenged.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5290
|
__label__cc
| 0.51407
| 0.48593
|
First 123456...1112 Last
Sketchbook and Five Assorted Loose Drawings on Cardstock
Artist: Stephen W. Harley (1863-1947)
Origin: America, Michigan, Mason County
Booklet (closed) overall: 4 9/16" x 5 7/8" x 1/8" thick. See "Description" for dimensions of individual loose drawings.
Graphite and colored pencils on wove paper, bound in a small sketchbook, along with loose drawings rendered on cardstock.
Museum Purchase, Dr. and Mrs. T. Marshall Hahn, Jr. Fund
Acc. No. 2003.301.1,1-6
The sketchbook per se is a small, horizontal format booklet whose cardboard covers are overlaid with pale green cloth; two staples hold the pages within the covers. It now contains 34 pages (counting fronts and backsides of sheets as two pages), most of which are blank, and some of which are detached. The first, last, and next-to-last pages of the sketchbook was cut out prior to receipt and are missing.
The first attached page shows a robin perched on a branch, the image set within three concentric circles drawn in black ink. The pictorial image is rendered in graphite except for reddish-brown penciling that colors the bird's breast. Below the circle in graphite is written, "Where is that worm". In the lower right corner of the page is written in graphite, "S. W. Harley". The backside of this page is bare, except that the number "8" within a small circle appears in ballpoint pen in the upper left corner.
The next page has been torn from its binding, but corresponding tear lines (along the left side of the drawing and the right side of the still-bound fragment) clearly indicate where this page originally fell within the overall sequence. The drawing on the page, done entirely in graphite, shows two birds of prey (hawks?) perched on a branch, with one or two small buildings in the distance and visible beneath the branch. The pictorial image is set within two concentric circles drawn in black ink. Beneath the circle in graphite are the words, "Methodist Birds who prey on [blank]". In the lower right corner in graphite is "By S. W. Harley". The backside of the page is blank except for the number "7" within a small circle in ballpoint pen in the upper left corner.
The next page "reads" with the sketchbook held vertically, rather than horizontally. The pictorial image, done entirely in graphite, shows a deer sniffing a gun that is leaning against a tree, the whole set within two concentric circles drawn in black ink. Beneath the circles in graphite is written in graphite "Suspicion" and in the lower right corner of the page (when held vertically) is "S. W. Harley." The backside of the page is blank except for the number "9" within a small circle in ballpoint pen in the upper left corner.
The next page also "reads" with the sketchbook held vertically, rather than horizontally. The pictorial image, done entirely in graphite, shows two raccoons turned toward one another, one on a flat rock, the other on ground foliage. The image is set within two concentric circles drawn in black ink, beneath which is lettered in graphite "When do We Eat?" In the lower right corner of the page (when held vertically) in graphite is "S. W. Harley". The backside of the page is blank except for the number "10" within a small circle in ballpoint pen in the upper left corner.
The next four pages have circles drawn in ink on them, apparently in expectation of pictures being rendered within them. However, all these circles are blank. The first three have two concentric circles, the fourth has three.
A doublefold sheet (4 pages) is completely detached from the stapled binding and simply stuck loose among the pages. On the front (first) page of this doublefold, concentric lines drawn in black ink in a diamond shape enclose a woodpecker sitting on a branch. The pictorial image is rendered in graphite with bright red pencil coloring the bird's head and a bit of blue on the upper wing and tail. Along the lower right outside of the diamond is written in graphite "Redy Maid". In the lower right corner of the page is written in graphite "S. W. Harley". The backside of the page is blank except for the number "6" within a small circle in ballpoint pen in the upper left corner.
Acquired along with the sketchbook per se are five loose graphite drawings, all rendered on cardstock. They are as follows:
(1, acc. no. 2003.301.1, 2): Two deer pausing beside a lake or stream, with tall trees in the background, the whole rendered in graphite. In graphite is written in the lower left corner, "Compliments" and, in the lower right corner, "S. W. Harley". On the backside in the upper left corner, the number "1" is written in ballpoint pen within a circle. The cardstock support measures 3 11/16" x 5 9/16".
(2, acc. no. 2003.301.1, 3): A log cabin looking upon a meadow, with two rabbits investigating a turned over bucket at front center and two mules at front right, with a mountain view in the background, the whole rendered in graphite. In graphite is written in the lower left corner within a banner, "My Blue Ridge Mountain/Home"; in the center lower margin within parentheses is, "Compliments of S. W. Harley"; and in the lower right corner within a banner is, "CUMBERLAND MNT,'S." On the backside in the upper left corner, the number "2" is written in ballpoint pen within a circle. The cardstock support measures 3 11/16" x 5 9/16".
(3, acc. no. 2003.301.1, 4): Three wolves occupy the foreground and all stare (apparently hungrily; two have their tongues hanging out) at a cabin in the left background. The whole is rendered in graphite. In the lower margin to left of center is written in graphite, "Compliments of S. W. Harley". On the backside in the upper left corner, the number "3" is written in ballpoint pen within a circle. The cardstock support measures 3 5/8" x 5 1/2".
(4, acc. no. 2003.301.1, 5): A group of white birds flying over a body of water, with a leaping fish (trout) at front center and trees covering the banks and hillside in the distance, the whole rendered in graphite. This image is rendered in a vertical oval. Written in graphite in the lower left corner of the page not covered by drawing is "Fishing" and, in the lower right corner, "Compliments/of/S. W. H." On the backside in the upper left corner, the number "4" is written in ballpoint pen within a circle. The cardstock support measures 5" x 3 1/16".
(5, 2003.301.1, 6): A waterfall with trees beyond it and birds flying overhead, the whole rendered in graphite. Written in graphite in the lower margin is "Compliments of S. W. Harley". On the backside in the upper left corner, the number "5" is written in ballpoint pen within a circle. The cardstock support measures 2 5/8" x 3 5/8".
Label:Harley's sense of humor and his affinity for the natural world are evident in several inscriptions in this partially-filled sketchbook, some of them plays on words, some of them ascribing humorous human qualities to his animal subjects, such as an image of two forlorn-looking racoons titled, "When do we eat?" A drawing of a red-headed woodpecker is titled "Redy Maid" (a play on the name of a commercially available substitute for whipped cream).
With slight variations, all five loose drawings acquired with the sketchbook are inscribed, "Compliments of S. W. Harley," suggesting that the artist intended passing them out as tokens of friendship or appreciation.
Provenance:CWF's source, Martha Tonn, is the widow of Donald C. Tonn (1918-1982), from whom she inherited the book and loose sketches. Donald Tonn's parents, Albert Tonn (1890-1971) and Ida J. Tonn (nee Wagner)(1889-1977), once owned Steve Harley's farm in Mason County, Michigan. The Tonns befriended Harley and saw a good deal of him, even after the Tonns moved off the farm and into Scottville, Michigan. See B. Luck notes from trip of September 2002 to Mason Co., Mich.
Inscription(s):Inside the front cover in script in graphite is "Notice/This is Drawing/Tablet/and not to figure on See?/S. W. H." In the lower left corner, in block letters in ballpoint pen, is "Property/of/Donald C. Tonn". Inside the back cover in script in graphite is "No. 43/Cough Medicine" and, in one corner, "FA/25".
N. B. Inscriptions appearing on various pages within the book pages or on the loose drawings are noted in their descriptions.
Mt. Hood and Mirror Lake
South End of Hood River Valley
The Harley Farm
Two-Sided Sketch of Deer (one on each side)
Upper Reach of the Wind River
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5291
|
__label__wiki
| 0.583264
| 0.583264
|
COLLECTION: Decorative Sculpture
First 12...252627 Last
Artist: Michael Cribbins (1839-1917)
Origin: America, Michigan, Orion
OL: 34 7/8"
Wood (est. by eye as willow), paint, and metal (est. by eye as lead)
Acc. No. 2010.708.1
A carved, painted, and stained (or varnished) walking stick incorporating naturally occurring deformations of the wood. Some raised, block-style lettering appears on the stick, along with both abstract and naturalistic motifs, the latter including two 3-leafed clovers, two types of small stars, a snake (possibly two), an ax, a flag, and a fish. The star motifs were punched or stamped into the wood, not carved. Abstract decorations include dots, dashes, chevrons, notching, and stippling, some of it painted and some of it carved or incised. Paint colors include black, silver, and green. Some areas of the cane were simply stained (or varnished) and not painted.
Label:Michael “Mike” Cribbins was born in Ireland, immigrating to America via the port of Boston at age thirteen. By 1860, he was living in Kenockee, Michigan, with his family of origin, but soon thereafter he enlisted in the 7th Michigan Infantry, which saw considerable action during the Civil War. Later, he moved to Orion, Michigan, the town most closely associated with him today, thanks to his inclusion of the place name on many of his carved canes, axes and other wooden objects.
Like many men of his generation, Michael Cribbins began carving during his service in the American Civil War. Cribbins was wounded at Fredericksburg in May of 1863 and hospitalized at Point Lookout, Maryland where he began his creative production. Later in life, he was described as still having “a number of the trinkets he whittled during that time, which he cherishes as reminders of the old days.” Most of his post war carvings contain symbolic or text references to his regiment, and several were presented to his fellow veterans. Cribbins attended regimental reunions for the rest of his life, even serving as a representative of his company.
Cribbins whittled many of his canes from diamond willow wood. The term does not refer to a particular species of willow but, rather, to the diamond-shaped cankers, or cavities, that were formed by the growing tree in reaction to an attack by --- it is thought --- a fungus. Such deformations are commonly found in several species of willow, particularly Salix bebbiana (but similar reactions have also been noted in Quaking Aspens). Several diamonds appear in this cane, each artfully incorporated into the overall design. For instance, a large one near the top is encircled by a black snake.
It appears that Cribbins sold some of his canes but made others as gifts for friends. The wording "7th. MICH/ INFT" and "W.M." on this one suggests that it was made for a fellow soldier in his regiment. The text "X. Mayor" may indicate the political activity of the yet unidentified "W.M." as Cribbins frequently incorporated references to the recipient’s occupation into his carvings.
Provenance:Unidentified dealer (see Notes) at the Saline Market, Oakland Co., Mich.; bought by James H. Rutkowski of Beverly Hills, Mich.; bought by Donald R. Walters of Northampton, Mass., who was CWF's source.
Inscription(s):In a rectangular reserve about half-way down the stick, carved in raised block letters covered with silver paint, is: "MIKE". Carved in four separate oval reserves near the ferrule are the lines: "W. . M/ X. MAYOR/ 7th. MICH/ INFT". N. B. Originally an unidentified middle initial was carved between the "W" and the "M" in the first of the lines near the bottom, but at some point the initial was cut out; patination of the wood suggests that the removal was done fairly early in the stick's existence. The clover leaf near the top of the cane seems to have had a small symbol or letter painted or carved into each of its three leaves, but if the markings were intentional, they are no longer legible.
Ceremonial Axe
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5292
|
__label__cc
| 0.563943
| 0.436057
|
Change Location × Dover, DE
Venues /
Schwartz Center for the Arts Schedule
Schwartz Center for the Arts Dover
Neighborhood: Downtown Dover
The Schwartz Center for the Arts was originally constructed in 1904 and known as The Dover Opera House. George M. Schwartz expanded it into a movie thea... read more
MORE INFO ABOUT Schwartz Center for the Arts
The Schwartz Center for the Arts was originally constructed in 1904 and known as The Dover Opera House. George M. Schwartz expanded it into a movie theater in 1923 and tabbed it The Capital Theater. For years the Theater flourished but in the 1970s fell into a state of disrepair and in 1982 the doors were closed. After an extensive statewide fundraising campaign spearheaded by Board Chair Frank Fantini then Vice President of Independent Newspapers led to extensive modernization and expansion, the beautiful 8.5 million facility reopened in October, 2001 as the Schwartz Center for the Arts. In 2004, under the leadership of Board Chair Dr. Scott D. Miller President of Wesley College , a strategic alliance was formed to partner the resources of Wesley College, Delaware State University, and The Friends of the Capital Theater, to maximize usage and position the historic treasure as the premiere performing arts center south of Wilmington. In January, 2007, the relationship was formalized with the three becoming equal partners in the operation, management and programming of the Center.
Official Website | http://twitter.com/SchwartzArtsDE | Facebook Page
at Cape Henlopen High School
2019 Tunnel to Towers 5K Ru...
Aug 10 – 7:00 AM
at Killens Pond State Park
Piggy Run 5K Run/Walk
More Venues in Dover
Dover Downs Hotel & Casino
95 people's favorite
Avalon Theatre
Venues Concerts & Tour Dates
Venues Festivals
Venues Kids & Family Events
Venues Events This Weekend
Venues Events This Month
Venues Events in August
Venue setup: Schwartz Center for the Arts
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5294
|
__label__wiki
| 0.855323
| 0.855323
|
Events DC Announces First-Ever Sponsorship of ESports Team Ahead of SXSW WeDC Showcase
WASHINGTON, DC – March 10, 2017 – Events DC, the official convention and sports authority for the District of Columbia, today announced an exclusive sponsorship of an esports team, NRG Esports with notable investors such as Shaquille O'Neal, Alex Rodriguez and Jimmy Rollins, as well as gamer rosters in popular video games such as Overwatch. This first-of-its-kind sponsorship will be highlighted as part of the WeDC House innovative programming on Sunday, March 12 with special presentations and announcements highlighting the esports industry, which is currently growing 12 times as fast as professional American football (NFL).
“DC is no longer your grandparent’s capital. Each month there are 1,000 new residents in Washington, DC who are accelerating and becoming part of DC’s ongoing transformation by attracting new and exciting events that further position the city on a global stage,” said Max Brown, Chairman of the Board of Directors for Events DC. “Through collaborations with organizations like NRG, we are actively working to position ourselves for the future and in the next five to eight years, DC will be positioned to be the capital of esports.”
Through organizations like Events DC, WeDC and city-funded programing that create pathways to true inclusive innovation in the tech sector, Washington, DC is attracting future industries and new revenue to the District ranging from startups to virtual reality. As part of this movement to make DC the “Capital of Inclusive Innovation,” Events DC recognized an opportunity in esports, the recent evolution of competitive gaming that transforms video games into a spectator sport with a strong following of enthusiasts that enjoy traveling to attend live and unique events. Despite the large number of enthusiasts, most tournaments and teams have no strong geographic association. Through this innovative sponsorship with NRG, Events DC is working to change that and make DC an esports destination. NRG is at the helm of this industry that attracts twelve percent of Americans and who saw 42 million unique viewers from around the world tune in to watch the 2016 League of Legends World [esports] Championship, resulting in a larger viewership than the NBA Finals.
"It’s exciting to be on the forefront of an emerging industry and to be able to expand our scope at Events DC to include esports. Our esports initiative will play a key role in helping to fuel our growth – not only within the District but with an international reach as well,” said Gregory A. O’Dell, president and chief executive officer of Events DC. “As an innovative city, esports will continue to position ourselves as a thought-leader that attracts future industries, new revenue and visitors from around the globe.”
As U.S. cities compete to get tourist and visitors, this sponsorship with NRG is an avenue that strongly aligns with the long-term mission and vision of Events DC to further attract existing events and generate heightened tourism and economic activity. As a part of this partnership NRG will promote Events DC across their streaming channels on Twitch and across social media. NRG players will also participate in promotional appearances in conjunction with Events DC. The NRG sponsorship will also be key to increase the profile of Events DC’s efforts both internationally and domestically in the tech and videogame landscape, and the visibility of its logo in the esports community will underscore the importance of bringing tournaments to the District.
“NRG esports is honored to help introduce esports to the city of Washington, DC,” said Andy Miller, chairman and co-founder of NRG esports. “By partnering with such a forward-thinking group as Events DC, NRG will have an even bigger platform to display the excitement and community of our 24/7 sport.”
“It’s great to work with an organization like Events DC, their support for NRG and our Overwatch roster is incredible. I really look forward to being able to bootcamp with our roster in a city as historically important as Washington, DC,” said NRG professional player Brandon “Seagull” Larned. “Getting to take in all DC has to offer after a long day of practice will be an amazing opportunity.”
As part of the WeDC House programming, Events DC along with NRG will host a unique esports panel, and an exciting event surrounding esports on Sunday, March 12 at the WeDC House starting at 5:00 p.m. (CST). The panel will discuss the new ecosystem of esports and how it works to advance localized economic development and innovation across Washington, DC as well as examining the various contributions that esports can bring to DC, similarly to traditional professional sports:
Esports tourism – generating direct spending by visitors and locals;
Industry infrastructure – development of new jobs and facilities to support various elements, from hosting mega events, to emerging tech to education and training;
Esports relevance – strategically aligning cities with a cutting-edge industry that is growing rapidly, attracting mainstream media, sponsors and other partners.
Following the esports panel, Events DC will host its first-ever Rocket League Community Showcase on the Events DC Soundstage, located at the outside patio of the WeDC House on Sunday, March 12 at 8:00 p.m. (CST). Gaming sparks will be flying high at this live esports tournament, featuring two of the top professional esports teams, NRG and Team Liquid, along with live commentary.
The WeDC House at SXSW and the WeDC Initiative, serves as a platform to elevate DC and DC businesses at the world's foremost gathering of innovators, artists and technology leaders. The WeDC House provides the city with a unique opportunity to demonstrate why it has earned a track record for being a cultural hub and the premiere spot in the country for tech and social entrepreneurial ventures. The House will be open from March 11 to March 13, 2017, located at 340 East 2nd Street, Austin, TX.
For more information on the esports programming and overall WeDC House activation, visit www.wedchouse.com.
Events DC, the official convention and sports authority for the District of Columbia, delivers premier event services and flexible venues across the nation’s capital. Leveraging the power of a world-class destination and creating amazing attendee experiences, Events DC generates economic and community benefits through the attraction and promotion of business, athletic, entertainment and cultural activities. Events DC oversees the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, an anchor of the District’s hospitality and tourism economy that generates over $400 million annually in total economic impact, and the historic Carnegie Library at Mt. Vernon Square. Events DC manages the Stadium-Armory campus, which includes Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium and surrounding Festival Grounds, the non-military functions of the DC Armory and Maloof Skate Park at RFK Stadium. Events DC also built and now serves as landlord for Nationals Park, the first LEED-certified major professional sports stadium in the United States. The most recent addition is Gateway DC, an innovative and versatile space featuring a covered and open-air pavilion in the center of a 1-acre park, conveniently located in the Congress Heights neighborhood of Washington, DC. For more information, please visit www.eventsdc.com.
About NRG Esports
NRG Esports was founded by Andy Miller and Mark Mastrov, co-owners of the Sacramento Kings in 2015. NRG counts advisors Shaquille O’Neal, Alex Rodriguez, and Jimmy Rollins among its investors. NRG have quickly become one of the most-loved teams in North America, with an exciting blend of young, upcoming talent and established veterans. NRG fields teams across Vain Glory, Overwatch, CSGO, Smite, and Rocket League, as well as Smash and Hearthstone players and is home to the back to back SMITE World Champions. NRG Esports is the current reigning world champions in SMITE and the current North American champions in Rocket League.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5295
|
__label__wiki
| 0.962929
| 0.962929
|
Seamus Heaney was born in April 1939, the eldest member of a family which would eventually contain nine children. His father owned and worked a small farm of some fifty acres in County Derry in Northern Ireland, but the father’s real commitment was to cattle-dealing. There was something very congenial to Patrick Heaney about the cattle-dealer’s way of life to which he was introduced by the uncles who had cared for him after the early death of his own parents. The poet’s mother came from a family called McCann whose connections were more with the modern world than with the traditional rural economy; her uncles and relations were employed in the local linen mill and an aunt had worked “in service” to the mill owners’ family. The poet has commented on the fact that his parentage thus contains both the Ireland of the cattle-herding Gaelic past and the Ulster of the Industrial Revolution; indeed, he considers this to have been a significant tension in his background, something which corresponds to another inner tension also inherited from his parents, namely that between speech and silence. His father was notably sparing of talk and his mother notably ready to speak out, a circumstance which Seamus Heaney believes to have been fundamental to the “quarrel with himself” out of which his poetry arises.
Heaney grew up as a country boy and attended the local primary school. As a very young child, he watched American soldiers on manoeuvres in the local fields, in preparation for the Normandy invasion of 1944. They were stationed at an aerodrome which had been built a mile or so from his home and once again Heaney has taken this image of himself as a consciousness poised between “history and ignorance” as representative of the nature of his poetic life and development. Even though his family left the farm where he was reared (it was called Mossbawn) in 1953, and even though his life since then has been a series of moves farther and farther away from his birthplace, the departures have been more geographical than psychological: rural County Derry is the “country of the mind” where much of Heaney’s poetry is still grounded.
When he was twelve years of age, Seamus Heaney won a scholarship to St. Columb’s College, a Catholic boarding school situated in the city of Derry, forty miles away from the home farm, and this first departure from Mossbawn was the decisive one. It would be followed in years to come by a transfer to Belfast where he lived between 1957 and 1972, and by another move from Belfast to the Irish Republic where Heaney has made his home, and then, since 1982, by regular, annual periods of teaching in America. All of these subsequent shifts and developments were dependent, however, upon that original journey from Mossbawn which the poet has described as a removal from “the earth of farm labour to the heaven of education.” It is not surprising, then, that this move has turned out to be a recurrent theme in his work, from “Digging”, the first poem in his first book, through the much more orchestrated treatment of it in “Alphabets”(The Haw Lantern, 1987), to its most recent appearance in “A Sofa in the Forties” which was published this year in The Spirit Level.
At St. Columb’s College, Heaney was taught Latin and Irish, and these languages, together with the Anglo-Saxon which he would study while a student of Queen’s University, Belfast, were determining factors in many of the developments and retrenchments which have marked his progress as a poet. The first verses he wrote when he was a young teacher in Belfast in the early 1960s and many of the best known poems in North, his important volume published in 1975, are linguistically tuned to the Anglo-Saxon note in English. His poetic line was much more resolutely stressed and packed during this period than it would be in the eighties and nineties when the “Mediterranean” elements in the literary and linguistic heritage of English became more pronounced. Station Island (1984) reveals Dante, for example, as a crucial influence, and echoes of Virgil – as well as a translation from Book VI of The Aeneid – are to be found in Seeing Things (1991). Heaney’s early study of Irish bore fruit in the translation of the Middle Irish story of Suibhne Gealt in Sweeney Astray (1982) and in several other translations and echoes and allusions: the Gaelic heritage has always has been part of his larger keyboard of reference and remains culturally and politically central to the poet and his work.
Heaney’s poems first came to public attention in the mid-1960s when he was active as one of a group of poets who were subsequently recognized as constituting something of a “Northern School” within Irish writing. Although Heaney is stylistically and temperamentally different from such writers as Michael Longley and Derek Mahon (his contemporaries), and Paul Muldoon, Medbh McGuckian and Ciaran Carson (members of a younger Northern Irish generation), he does share with all of them the fate of having be en born into a society deeply divided along religious and political lines, one which was doomed moreover to suffer a quarter-century of violence, polarization and inner distrust. This had the effect not only of darkening the mood of Heaney’s work in the 1970s, but also of giving him a deep preoccupation with the question of poetry’s responsibilities and prerogatives in the world, since poetry is poised between a need for creative freedom within itself and a pressure to express the sense of social obligation felt by the poet as citizen. The essays in Heaney’s three main prose collections, but especially those in The Government of the Tongue (1988) and The Redress of Poetry (1995), bear witness to the seriousness which this question assumed for him as he was coming into his own as a writer.
These concerns also lie behind Heaney’s involvement for a decade and a half with Field Day, a theatre company founded in 1980 by the playwright Brian Friel and the actor Stephen Real. Here, he was also associated with the poets Seamus Deane and Tom Paul in, and the singer David Hammond in a project which sought to bring the artistic and intellectual focus of its members into productive relation with the crisis that was ongoing in Irish political life. Through a series of plays and pamphlets (culminating in Heaney’s case in his version of Sophocles’ Philoctetes which the company produced and toured in 1990 under the title, The Cure at Troy), Field Day contributed greatly to the vigour of the cultural debate which flourished throughout the 1980s and 1990s in Ireland.
Heaney’s beginnings as a poet coincided with his meeting the woman whom he was to marry and who was to be the mother of his three children. Marie Devlin, like her husband, came from a large family, several of whom are themselves writers and artists, including the poet’s wife who has recently published an important collection of retellings of the classic Irish myths and legends (Over Nine Waves, 1994). Marie Heaney has been central to the poet’s life, both professionally and imaginatively, appearing directly and indirectly in individual poems from all periods of his oeuvre right down to the most recent, and making it possible for him to travel annually to Harvard by staying on in Dublin as custodian of the growing family and the family home.
The Heaneys had spent a very liberating year abroad in 1970/71 when Seamus was a visiting lecturer at the Berkeley campus of the University of California. It was the sense of self-challenge and new scope which he experienced in the American context that encouraged him to resign his lectureship at Queen’s University (1966-72) not long after he returned to Ireland, and to move to a cottage in County Wicklow in order to work full time as a poet and free-lance writer. A few years later, the family moved to Dublin and Seamus worked as a lecturer in Carysfort College, a teacher training college, where he functioned as Head of the English Department until 1982, when his present arrangement with Harvard University came into existence. This allows the poet to spend eight months at home without teaching in exchange for one semester’s work at Harvard. In 1984, Heaney was named Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, one of the university’s most prestigious offices. In 1989, he was elected for a five-year period to be Professor of Poetry at Oxford University, a post which requires the incumbent to deliver three public lectures every year but which does not require him to reside in Oxford.
In the course of his career, Seamus Heaney has always contributed to the promotion of artistic and educational causes, both in Ireland and abroad. While a young lecturer at Queen’s University, he was active in the publication of pamphlets of poetry by the rising generation and took over the running of an influential poetry workshop which had been established there by the English poet, Philip Hobsbaum, when Hobsbaum left Belfast in 1966. He also served for five years on The Arts Council in the Republic of Ireland (1973-1978) and over the years has acted as judge and lecturer for countless poetry competitions and literary conferences, establishing a special relationship with the annual W.B. Yeats International Summer School in Sligo. In recent years, he has been the recipient of several honorary degrees; he is a member of Aosdana, the Irish academy of artists and writers, and a Foreign Member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1996, subsequent to his winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995, he was made a Commandeur de L’Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5299
|
__label__wiki
| 0.827362
| 0.827362
|
Birnbaum, Okay.M. et al. Blockade of photons in an optical cavity with a trapped atom. Nature 436, 87-90 (2005).
Chang, D.E., Vuletić, V. & Lukin, M. D. Quantum nonlinear optics – photon by photon. Nat. Photon. eight, 685-694 (2014).
Carusotto, I. & Ciuti, C. Quantum mild fluids. Rev. Mod. Phys. 85, 299-366 (2013).
Raimond, J.M., Brown, M. and Haroche, S. Manipulating quantum entanglement with atoms and photons in a cavity. Rev. Mod. Phys. 73, 565-582 (2001).
Duan, L.-M., Lukin, M., Cirac, J.I. and Zoller, P. Lengthy-distance quantum communication with atomic complexes and linear optics. Nature 414, 413-418 (2001).
Kimble, H. J. Quantum Web. Nature 453, 1023-1030 (2008).
Saffman, M., Walker, T. G. and Mølmer, Okay. Quantum info on Rydberg atoms. Rev. Mod. Phys. 82, 2313-2363 (2010).
Peyronel, T. et al. Single-photon nonlinear quantum optics activated by strongly interacting atoms. Nature 488, 57-60 (2012).
Dudin, Y., Li, L., Bariani, F. and Kuzmich, A. Statement of coherent oscillations of Rabi with a number of our bodies. Nat. Phys. eight, 790-794 (2012).
Tiarks, D., Baur, S., Schneider, Okay., S. Dürr and S. Rempe, G. Single-photon transistor utilizing Förster resonance. Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 053602 (2014).
Gorniaczyk, H., Tresp, C., Schmidt, J., Fedder, H. and Hofferberth, S. Single photon transistor mediated by interactions between Rydberg states. Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 053601 (2014).
Thompson, J. D. et al. Collisions protected by symmetry between strongly interacting photons. Nature 542, 206-209 (2017).
Guerlin, C., E. Brion, E. Esslinger, T. and Mølmer, Okay. Cavity-based quantum electrodynamics with a Rydberg-blocked atomic ensemble. Phys. Rev. A 82, 053832 (2010).
Jia, N. et al. A polaritic quantum level in robust interplay. Nat. Phys. 14, 550-554 (2018).
Georgakopoulos, A., Sommer, A. and Simon, J. Interplay principle of Rydberg polaritons. Quantum Sci. Technol. four, 014005 (2018).
Silveri, M.P., Tuorila, J.A., Thuneberg, E.V. & Paraoanu, G.S. Quantum Techniques below Frequency Modulation. Rep. Prog. Phys. 80, 056002 (2017).
Eckardt, A. Atomic Quantum Gases in Periodically Managed Optical Networks. Rev. Mod. Phys. 89, 011004 (2017).
Fleischhauer, M., Imamoglu, A. and Marangos, J. Transparency induced by electromagnetism: optics in a coherent medium. Rev. Mod. Phys. 77, 633-673 (2005).
Douglas, J. S. et al. Multibody quantum fashions with chilly atoms coupled to photonic crystals. Nat. Photon. 9, 326-331 (2015).
Schine, N., A. Ryou, A. Gromov, A. Sommer and Simon, J. Landau artificial ranges for photons. Nature 534, 671-675 (2016).
Lim, H.-T., Togan, E., Kroner, M., Miguel-Sanchez, J. and Imamoğlu, A. Electrically tunable gauge potential for electrons for polaritons. Nat. Widespread. eight, 14540 (2017).
Schine, N., Chalupnik, M., Can, T., Gromov, A. and Simon, J. Electromagnetic and gravitational responses of the photonic ranges of Landau. Nature 565, 173-179 (2019).
Strand, J.D. et al. First-order sideband transitions with qubits of uneven flux-driven transmons. Phys. Rev. B 87, 220505 (2013).
Naik, R. et al. Random entry quantum info processors utilizing quantum electrodynamics of multimode circuits. Nat. Widespread. eight, 1904 (2017).
Beaudoin, F., da Silva, MP, Dutton, Z. and Blais, A. First-order sidebands within the QED circuit utilizing a qubit frequency modulation. Phys. Rev. A 86, 022305 (2012).
Beaufils, Q. et al. Affiliation of radio-frequency molecules: a Feshbach resonance assisted. EUR. Phys. J. D 56, 99-104 (2010).
Ningyuan, J. et al. Statement and characterization of Rydberg polaritons within the cavity. Phys. Rev. A 93, 041802 (2016).
Zeuthen, E., Gullans, M.J., Maghrebi, M.F. and Gorshkov, A. V. Correlated photon dynamics within the dissipative medium of Rydberg. Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 043602 (2017).
Ivanov, P.A., Letscher, F., Simon, J. & Fleischhauer, M.Adisabatic flux insertion and Laughlin states development of Rydberg polaritons within the cavity. Phys. Rev. A 98, 013847 (2018).
Dutta, S. & Mueller, E. Constant technology of photonic fractional quantum Corridor states in a cavity and seek for anyonic quasiparticles. Phys. Rev. A 97, 033825 (2018).
Sommer, A., Buchler, H.P. and Simon, J. Quantum crystals and Laughlin droplets of Rydberg polaritons within the cavity. Preprint on https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.00341 (2015).
Ozawa, T. et al. Topological photonics. Rev. Mod. Phys. 91, 015006 (2019).
Norcia, M.A., Cline, J.R. Okay., Bartolotta, J.P., Holland, M.J. and Thompson, J. Okay. Slim-band laser cooling by adiabatic switch. New J. Phys. 20, 023021 (2018).
Ma, R. et al. Photon assisted tunneling in a strongly correlated polarized Bose gasoline. Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 095301 (2011).
Parker, C.V., Ha, L.-C. & Chin, C. Direct remark of efficient ferromagnetic domains of chilly atoms in a shaken optical community. Nat. Phys. 9, 769-774 (2013).
Clark, L.W., Feng, L. & Chin, C. Common spatio-temporal scale symmetry within the dynamics of bosons by a quantum section transition. Science 354, 606-610 (2016).
Daley, A.J. and Simon, J. Three-body environment friendly photon tunneling interactions in an optical community. Phys. Rev. A 89, 053619 (2014).
Meinert, F., Mark, M.J., Lauber, Okay., Daley, A.J. and Nägerl, H.-C. Tunnel engineering of tunnel impact correlated within the Bose – Hubbard mannequin with ultra-cold atoms. Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 205301 (2016).
Clark, L.W., Gaj, A., Feng, L. and Chin, C. Collective emission of fabric jets from entrained Bose-Einstein condensates. Nature 551, 356-359 (2017).
Lignier, H. et al. Dynamic management of fabric wave tunneling in periodic potentials. Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 220403 (2007).
Struck, J. et al. Adjustable potential gauge for impartial and spinless particles in pushed optical networks. Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 225304 (2012).
Aidelsburger, M. et al. Realization of the Hofstadter Hamiltonian with ultra-cold atoms in optical networks. Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 185301 (2013).
Miyake, H., Siviloglou, G.A., Kennedy, C.J., Burton, W.C. and Ketterle, W. Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 185302 (2013).
Tai, M.E. et al. Microscopy of the Harper-Hofstadter mannequin interacting within the boundary of the 2 our bodies. Nature 546, 519-523 (2017).
Clark, L. W. et al. Of density – dependent gauge fields in a Bose – Einstein condensate on the premise of micromotion management in a shaded two – dimensional community brand CNRS brand INIST Accueil / House Imprimer / Print Contact / Contact Bookmark and Share Mendeley. Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 030402 (2018).
Jotzu, G. et al. Experimental realization of the topological mannequin of Haldane with ultra-cold fermions. Nature 515, 237-240 (2014).
Aidelsburger, M. et al. Measure the variety of Hofstadter band Chern with ultra-cold bosonic atoms. Nat. Phys. 11, 162-166 (2015).
Tarnowski, M. et al. Measure the topology from the dynamics by getting the variety of Chern from a binding quantity. Nat. Widespread. 10, 1728 (2019).
Fläschner, N. et al. Statement of dynamic vortices after quenches in a topology system. Nat. Phys. 14, 265-268 (2018).
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5301
|
__label__wiki
| 0.997072
| 0.997072
|
Before they call
[Toronto] : Board of Home Missions, United Church of Canada, 1937.; 38 pages with full-text search [?]
cover title page p. 2 p. 3 p. 4 (illustration) p. 5 (illustration) p. 6 p. 7 (illustration) p. 8 (illustration) p. 9 (illustration) p. 10 (illustration) p. 11 p. 12 (illustration) p. 13 (illustration) p. 14 (illustration) p. 15 (illustration) p. 16 p. 17 (illustration) p. 18 p. 19 p. 20 (illustration) p. 21 p. 22 (illustration) p. 23 (illustration) p. 24 (illustration) p. 25 p. 26 p. 27 (illustration) p. 28 p. 29 (illustration) p. 30 p. 31 (illustration) p. 32 p. 33 p. 34 (illustration) p. 35 unnumbered illustration
McClung, Nellie L., 1873-1951.
United Church of Canada. Board of Home Missions.
[Toronto] : Board of Home Missions, United Church of Canada, 1937.
United Church of Canada -- Missions.
Home missions -- Canada.
Missions intérieures -- Canada.
Scanned from the original publication held by Library and Archives Canada.
Title from title screen.
Includes a list of Board of Home Missions members, 1936-1938.
35 p. : ill., ports. ; 23 cm.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5302
|
__label__cc
| 0.69597
| 0.30403
|
The validity of each cryptocurrency's coins is provided by a blockchain. A blockchain is a continuously growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked and secured using cryptography.[28][31] Each block typically contains a hash pointer as a link to a previous block,[31] a timestamp and transaction data.[32] By design, blockchains are inherently resistant to modification of the data. It is "an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way".[33] For use as a distributed ledger, a blockchain is typically managed by a peer-to-peer network collectively adhering to a protocol for validating new blocks. Once recorded, the data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without the alteration of all subsequent blocks, which requires collusion of the network majority.
Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Investment Company Act of 1940, the Registrant has duly caused this post-effective amendment (the “Amendment”) to its Registration Statement to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned, thereto duly authorized, in the City of Bethesda and the State of Maryland on December 19, 2017.
You could imagine the spread going the other way, though. If everyone really was clamoring to short bitcoin, and if the futures offered a more convenient way to do it than the bitcoin exchanges, then you'd expect the short sellers to pay a premium to short via futures. Instead of selling a bitcoin at $18,000 today, they'd be willing to sell a synthetic bitcoin for $17,500, paying the spread to an arbitrageur who was willing to do the actual shorting for them. But the fact that the spread is mostly positive, and that bitcoin's price has been mostly going up, suggests that the demand has mostly been for synthetic long positions, not short.
Currently there are a several digital asset trading platforms that provide investors with forms of derivative products such as futures, so one could estimate and synthesize the discrete futures curve from the averages of various curves. MVIS research used BitMEX, OKCoin, CryptoFacilities, and BTCC as sources, to construct and approximate bitcoin futures curve based on non-U.S. bitcoin futures trading on these exchanges.
In contrast, if you are “going short” on Bitcoin, you assume that Bitcoin prices will fall. Buying put options will enable you to sell Bitcoin at some point in the future at a price that is higher than the future price you expect. In analogy to the example above, if the current Bitcoin price is 5,000 USD and you expect it to fall to 2,000 USD in 6 months, then put options allowing you to sell Bitcoin for 5,000 USD in 5 months (when everyone else is selling for 2000 USD) are very valuable.
The CFTC, in conjunction with other federal regulators, also recently proposed stricter margin requirements for certain swap transactions. If adopted, the proposed requirements could increase the amount of margin necessary to conduct many swap transactions, limit the types of assets that can be used as collateral for such transactions, and impose other restrictions. The rule proposal may affect the ability of the Funds to use swap agreements (as well as futures contracts and options on futures contracts or commodities) and may substantially increase regulatory compliance costs for the Advisor and the Funds. As of the date of this SAI, the ultimate impact of the rule proposal on the Funds is uncertain. It is possible, however, that any adopted rule may adversely affect the Advisor’s ability to manage the Funds, may impair a Funds’ ability to achieve its investment objective and/or may result in reduced returns to Fund investors.
When you display any broker’s profile page on the CME list above, you will see on the right hand side this broker’s specialties (a list of industries and/or financial products). As of this articles publication (Nov. 24, 2017), only one broker has added Bitcoin to his list of specialties: Level Trading Field LLC. However, this does not mean that the other brokers won’t handle Bitcoin futures. We expect that more of them will adopt this specialty as soon as Bitcoin futures are on the market.
The Custodian is responsible for safeguarding the Funds’ cash and securities, receiving and delivering securities, collecting the Funds’ interest and dividends, and performing certain administrative duties, all as directed by authorized persons. The Custodian is also responsible for the appointment and oversight of any sub-custodian banks and for providing reports regarding such sub-custodian banks and clearing agencies.
However, many of these investors are still waiting to be convinced to take the leap into crypto. One thing that is still giving many institutional investors pause is the fact that trade management systems in the crypto world simply do not offer the sophistication they are used to in conventional trading. They’ve become accustomed to the support of reliable automated tools, and the prospect of working without those can be a serious roadblock.
These big coin strategies can also be used for trading bitcoin cash as well as other cryptocurrencies, in fact, you can use this as a trade guide for any type of trading instrument. The blockchain technology is a big step forward for how to access information and many companies are starting to develop applications to use it in their favor. Remember that when trading digital currency it may seem like it is not a real currency but it actually is real, this is not some Ponzi scheme. Before you buy bitcoins have a solid plan in place and don’t underestimate the cryptocurrency markets, you must do your technical analysis just as if you were going to day trade any other instruments. You can also read our best Gann Fan trading strategy.
Interest Rate Swaps. Interest rate swaps, in their most basic form, involve the exchange by a Fund with another party of their respective commitments to pay or receive interest. For example, a Fund might exchange its right to receive certain floating rate payments in exchange for another party’s right to receive fixed rate payments. Interest rate swaps can take a variety of other forms, such as agreements to pay the net differences between two different interest indexes or rates, even if the parties do not own the underlying instruments. Despite their differences in form, the function of interest rate swaps is generally the same: to increase or decrease a Fund’s exposure to long- or short-term interest rates. For example, a Fund may enter into a swap transaction to preserve a return or spread on a particular investment or a portion of its portfolio or to protect against any increase in the price of securities the Fund anticipates purchasing at a later date.
Each Fund intends to invest to a significant extent in bitcoin futures contracts. Each Fund expects to gain exposure to bitcoin futures contracts by investing a portion of its assets in a wholly-owned subsidiary of such Fund organized under the laws of the Cayman Islands (each, a “Subsidiary”). Each Subsidiary is advised by ProShare Advisors, the Fund’s investment advisor. Unlike the Fund, a Subsidiary is not an investment company registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended (the “1940 Act”). Each Fund’s investment in the Subsidiary is intended to provide the Fund with exposure to bitcoin futures contracts in accordance with applicable rules and regulations. Each Fund will invest up to 25% of its total assets in its corresponding Subsidiary. Except as otherwise noted, references to a Fund’s investment strategies and risks include the investment strategies and risks of its underlying Subsidiary.
• Counterparty Risk —The Fund bears the risk that the counterparty to derivative transaction, such as a futures contract, defaults or otherwise fails to honor its obligations. If a counterparty defaults, the Fund will lose money and the value of an investment in the Fund may decrease. The Fund may engage in futures transactions with a limited number of counterparties, which may increase the Fund’s exposure to counterparty risk. The effect of the volatility of bitcoin pricing or other aspects of trading in bitcoin futures on futures clearinghouses for bitcoin futures is currently unknown, and may result in increased counterparty risk.
• Active Management Risk — The performance of actively managed funds reflects, in part, the ability of ProShare Advisors to select investments and make investment decisions that are suited to achieving the Fund’s investment objective. ProShare Advisors’ judgments about the Fund’s investments may prove to be incorrect. If the investments selected and strategies employed by ProShares Advisors fail to produce the intended results, the Fund may not achieve its investment objective and could underperform other funds with a similar investment objective and/or strategies.
A Fund may invest in one or more exchange-traded funds that invest in commodities or options, futures, or forwards with respect to commodities, and are treated as QPTPs for federal income tax purposes. As noted above, a Fund is limited to investing no more than 25% of the value of its total assets in the securities of one or more QPTPs. Although income from QPTPs is generally qualifying income, if an ETF intending to qualify as a QPTP fails to so qualify and is treated as a partnership for U.S. federal income tax purposes, a portion of its income may not be qualifying income. It is also possible that an ETF intending to qualify as a QPTP will be treated as a corporation for federal income tax purposes. In such a case, it will be potentially liable for an entity-level corporate income tax, which will adversely affect the return thereon. There can be no guarantee that any ETF will be successful in qualifying as a QPTP. In addition, there is little regulatory guidance concerning the application of the rules governing qualification as a QPTP, and it is possible that future guidance may adversely affect the qualification of ETFs as QPTPs. A Fund’s ability to pursue an investment strategy that involves investments in QPTPs may be limited by that Fund’s intention to qualify as a RIC, and may bear adversely on that Fund’s ability to so qualify.
It is important to note, however, that leverage means that your potential losses may also be much higher. If pork belly prices fall, call options lose value in a much higher proportion than the pork bellies themselves. In the above example, if the price of pork bellies falls from 1,000 to 900 USD (by 10%), the price of call options may fall from 10.5 USD to almost zero, resulting in a near-total loss of your funds instead of a small loss of just 10%.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5307
|
__label__cc
| 0.515202
| 0.484798
|
Homo sapiens the smithsonian institution’s human origins program z gas tecate
08.12.2018 Electricity bill
#Homo sapiens
The species that you and all other living human beings on this planet belong to is Homo sapiens. During a time of dramatic climate change 200,000 years ago, Homo sapiens evolved in Africa. Like other early humans that were living at this time, they gathered and hunted food, and evolved behaviors that helped them respond to the challenges of survival in unstable environments.
Anatomically, modern humans can generally be characterized by the lighter build of their skeletons compared to earlier humans. Modern humans have very large brains, which vary in size from population to population and between males and females, but the average size is approximately 1300 cubic centimeters. Housing this big brain involved the reorganization of the skull into what is thought of as "modern" — a thin-walled, high vaulted skull with a flat and near vertical forehead. Modern human faces also show much less (if any) of the heavy brow ridges and prognathism of other early humans. Our jaws are also less heavily developed, with smaller teeth.
Prehistoric Homo sapiens not only made and used stone tools, they also specialized them and made a variety of smaller, more complex, refined and specialized tools including composite stone tools, fishhooks and harpoons, bows and arrows, spear throwers and sewing needles.
For millions of years all humans, early and modern alike, had to find their own food. They spent a large part of each day gathering plants and hunting or scavenging animals. By 164,000 years ago modern humans were collecting and cooking shellfish and by 90,000 years ago modern humans had begun making special fishing tools. Then, within just the past 12,000 years, our species, Homo sapiens, made the transition to producing food and changing our surroundings. Humans found they could control the growth and breeding of certain plants and animals. This discovery led to farming and herding animals, activities that transformed Earth’s natural landscapes—first locally, then globally. As humans invested more time in producing food, they settled down. Villages became towns, and towns became cities. With more food available, the human population began to increase dramatically. Our species had been so successful that it has inadvertently created a turning point in the history of life on Earth.
Modern humans evolved a unique combination of physical and behavioral characteristics, many of which other early human species also possessed, though not to the same degree. The complex brains of modern humans enabled them to interact with each other and with their surroundings in new and different ways. As the environment became more unpredictable, bigger brains helped our ancestors survive. They made specialized tools, and use tools to make other tools, as described above; they ate a variety of animal and plant foods; they had control over fire; they lived in shelters; they built broad social networks, sometimes including people they have never even met; they exchanged resources over wide areas; and they created art, music, personal adornment, rituals, and a complex symbolic world. Modern humans have spread to every continent and vastly expanded their numbers. They have altered the world in ways that benefit them greatly. But this transformation has unintended consequences for other species as well as for ourselves, creating new survival challenges.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5308
|
__label__wiki
| 0.55339
| 0.55339
|
Home Your Family Children's Health
Cellphone Use Puts Pedestrians Off-Balance
TUESDAY, Aug. 14, 2018 (HealthDay News) -- Cellphone users blundering into signs, lampposts, other people and traffic have become a recurring sidewalk sight in many places.
And now, new video analysis reveals the extent to which cellphones interfere with a person's ability to hoof it from here to there.
Cellphone use drastically alters a pedestrian's balance, coordination and movement, said senior researcher Mohamed Zaki. He is a research associate in the University of British Columbia's department of civil engineering in Vancouver.
"Pedestrians who look at their phone have more issues controlling their stability and their walking pattern," Zaki said.
As a result, pedestrians are more likely to bumble into objects or trip over hazards like sidewalk cracks or potholes. The phones also distract people from potential hazards, he added.
"They cannot take the precautionary action that is necessary if there's a vehicle approaching or someone is approaching in the other direction," Zaki said.
For the study, Zaki and his colleagues mounted three cameras at a busy four-way intersection located near Thompson Rivers University in the city of Kamloops, B.C. Over a two-day period, they captured the movements of 357 pedestrians.
More than one-third of the pedestrians were distracted by their cellphones, either by texting or talking, the researchers found.
Pedestrians distracted by their phones had trouble maintaining their walking speed and their gait, the study authors noted.
People texting tended to take shorter steps without slowing the frequency of their steps. On the other hand, those talking on the phone took slower steps without changing the length of their stride.
Overall, cellphone-distracted pedestrians tended to have less stability, and were more likely to weave and stumble, the findings showed.
Dr. Robert Glatter is an emergency medicine physician with Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. He said, "Simply put, your brain can't do two things well at once -- so one task suffers, which means you may stumble or suffer a collision due to the compromised way in which you take your steps."
People using their phones also took longer to cross the road, increasing the risk that they'd be caught out in an intersection or have a run-in with a car, the investigators added.
Data like this could be valuable in the development of safe driverless cars, the researchers suggested. Cars taught to recognize distracted pedestrians might be better able to avoid them.
Zaki said this info also provides a strong argument for pedestrian-friendly street features like raised crosswalks -- essentially a speed bump that runs across the street from sidewalk to sidewalk.
Raised crosswalks allow pedestrians to safely walk on a level surface, instead of leaving the sidewalk for the lower-slung street surface, he said. They also force oncoming vehicles to reduce their speed.
But, according to Glatter, people would be better off just putting their phones away while they walk, particularly approaching an intersection.
"It's important to look in front of you when crossing the street, so make it a point to put your phone away so that it won't be a distraction. Whatever it is, it can wait 10 seconds," Glatter said. "It's just not worth either causing an accident or being a part of one."
The study was published online recently in the journal Transportation Research Record.
The National Safety Council has more about pedestrian safety.
SOURCES: Mohamed Zaki, Ph.D., research associate, department of civil engineering, University of British Columbia, Vancouver; Robert Glatter, M.D., emergency medicine physician, Lenox Hill Hospital, New York City; June 13, 2018, Transportation Research Record, online
Medicine, Geriatric Medicine
Psychology, Adult Development And Aging
Pathology, Neuropathology
Neurology, Neurodevelopmental Disabilities
Adult and Geriatric Medicine
Wilshire Office
Pacific Palisades Office
Addiction in the Elderly
Older Adults: Preventing Falls
Normal Newborn Behaviors and Activities
1 in 4 U.S. Adults Sits More Than 8 Hours a Day
1 in 5 Kids Don't Strap on Helmets Before Biking
Balance Disorders Quiz
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5311
|
__label__cc
| 0.587222
| 0.412778
|
Jack Valenti
business, writer, hall of fame
Jack Joseph Valenti
Virgo ♍ - the Virgin - people born August 22 through September 23
Houston, Texas, USA
Movie business lobbyist, invented the MPAA rating system used in the US. Texas Film Hall of Fame 2002.
Hollywood Walk of Fame:
A star at 7000 Hollywood Boulevard for contributions to the motion picture industry; ceremony: 1 November 1988.
See the page at Hollywood Walk of Fame for more information.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5315
|
__label__wiki
| 0.830533
| 0.830533
|
2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2004 | Metrics
M.A.F. Afzal, A. Sonpal, M. Haghighatlari, A.J. Schultz, J. Hachmann, A Deep Neural Network Model for Packing Density Predictions and its Application in the Study of 1.5 Million Organic Molecules, ChemRxiv (2019), 8217758.
DOI: 10.26434/chemrxiv.8217758.v1
K. Mukherjee, J. Hachmann, Computational Modeling of Carboxylic-Based Organic Molecules for Li-Ion Battery Anode Materials, MSc Thesis, University at Buffalo – SUNY (2019).
HDL: TBD
M.A.F. Afzal, M. Haghighatlari, S.P. Ganesh, C. Cheng, J. Hachmann, Accelerated Discovery of High-Refractive-Index Polyimides via First-Principles Molecular Modeling, Virtual High-Throughput Screening, and Data Mining, J. Phys. Chem. C 123 (2019), 14610-14618. (invited)
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.9b01147
M.A.F. Afzal, J. Hachmann, High-Throughput Computational Studies in Catalysis and Materials Research, and Their Impact on Rational Design, in Handbook on Big Data and Machine Learning in the Physical Sciences, Vol 1: Big Data Methods in Experimental Materials Discovery, S. Kalidindi, S.V. Kalinin, T. Lookman, I. Foster (Eds.), World Scientific, Singapore (2019), accepted. (invited)
ISBN: 978-981-120-444-9; DOI: arXiv:1902.03721
M. Haghighatlari, J. Hachmann, Advances of Machine Learning in Molecular Modeling and Simulation, Curr. Opin. Chem. Eng. 23 (2019), 51-57. (invited)
DOI: 10.1016/j.coche.2019.02.009
M.A.F. Afzal, J. Hachmann, Benchmarking DFT Approaches for the Calculation of Polarizability Inputs for Refractive Index Predictions in Organic Polymers, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 21 (2019), 4452-4460.
DOI: 10.1039/C8CP05492D
R. Asatryan, Y. Pal, J. Hachmann, E. Ruckenstein, Roaming-Like Mechanism for the Dehydration of Diol Radicals, J. Phys. Chem. A 122 (2018), 9738-9754.
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpca.8b08690
A. Sonpal, J. Hachmann, Predicting Melting Points of Deep Eutectic Solvents, MSc Thesis, University at Buffalo – SUNY (2018).
HDL: 10477/78667
G. Vishwakama, J. Hachmann, Machine Learning Model Selection for Predicting Properties of High-Refractive-Index Polymers, MSc Thesis, University at Buffalo – SUNY (2018).
M.A.F. Afzal, J. Hachmann, From Virtual High-Throughput Screening and Machine Learning to the Discovery and Rational Design of Polymers for Optical Applications, PhD Dissertation, University at Buffalo – SUNY (2018).
A.L. Ferguson, J. Hachmann, Machine Learning and Data Science in Materials Design: A Themed Collection (Editorial), Mol. Syst. Des. Eng. 3 (2018), 429-430.
DOI: 10.1039/C8ME90007H
J. Hachmann, T. Windus, J. McLean, V. Allwardt, A. Schrimpe-Rutledge, M.A.F. Afzal, M. Haghighatlari, Framing the Role of Big Data and Modern Data Science in Chemistry, NSF CHE Workshop Report (2018).
DOI: TBD
J. Hachmann, M.A.F. Afzal, M. Haghighatlari, Y. Pal, Building and Deploying a Cyberinfrastructure for the Data-Driven Design of Chemical Systems and the Exploration of Chemical Space, Mol. Simul. 44 (2018), 921-929. (invited)
V. Kumaran Sudalayandi Rajeswari, J. Hachmann, First-Principles Modeling of Polymer Degradation Kinetics and Virtual High-Throughput Screening of Candidates for Biodegradable Polymers, MSc Thesis, University at Buffalo – SUNY (2018).
M.A.F. Afzal, C. Cheng, J. Hachmann, Combining First-Principles and Data Modeling for the Accurate Prediction of the Refractive Index of Organic Polymers, J. Chem. Phys. 148 (2018), 241712. (invited)
R. Asatryan, E. Ruckenstein, J. Hachmann, Revisiting the Polytopal Rearrangements in Penta-Coordinate d7-Metallocomplexes: Modified Berry Pseudorotation, Octahedral Switch, and Butterfly Isomerization, Chem. Sci. 8 (2017), 5512-5525.
DOI: 10.1039/c7sc00703e
Y. Tian, J. Hachmann, Inheritance of Molecular Orbital Energies from Monomer Building Blocks to Larger Copolymers in Organic Semiconductors, MSc Thesis, University at Buffalo – SUNY (2016).
E.O. Pyzer-Knapp, G. Simm, T. Lutzow, K. Li, L.R. Seress, J. Hachmann, A. Aspuru-Guzik, The Harvard Organic Photovoltaic Dataset, Sci. Data 3 (2016), 160086.
DOI: 10.1038/sdata.2016.86
C.-Y. Shih, J. Hachmann, Systematic Trends in Results from Different Density Functional Theory Models, MSc Thesis, University at Buffalo – SUNY (2015).
J. Hachmann, R. Olivares-Amaya, A. Jinich, A.L. Appleton, M.A. Blood-Forsythe, L.R. Seress, C. Román-Salgado, K. Trepte, S. Atahan-Evrenk, S. Er, S. Shrestha, R. Mondal, A. Sokolov, Z. Bao, A. Aspuru-Guzik, Lead Candidates for High-Performance Organic Photovoltaics from High-Throughput Quantum Chemistry – the Harvard Clean Energy Project, Energy Environ. Sci. 7 (2014), 698-704.
DOI: 10.1039/c3ee42756k
C. Amador-Bedolla, R. Olivares-Amaya, J. Hachmann, A. Aspuru-Guzik, Organic Photovoltaics, in Informatics for Materials Science and Engineering – Data-driven Discovery for Accelerated Experimentation and Application, K. Rajan (Ed.), Elsevier, Amsterdam (2013), 423-442. (invited)
DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-12-394399-6.00017-5
R. Olivares-Amaya, C. Amador-Bedolla, J. Hachmann, S. Atahan-Evrenk, R.S. Sánchez-Carrera, L. Vogt, A. Aspuru-Guzik, Accelerated Computational Discovery of High-Performance Materials for Organic Photovoltaics by Means of Cheminformatics, Energy Environ. Sci. 4 (2011), 4849-4861.
J. Hachmann, R. Olivares-Amaya, S. Atahan-Evrenk, C. Amador-Bedolla, R.S. Sánchez-Carrera, A. Gold-Parker, L. Vogt, A.M. Brockway, A. Aspuru-Guzik, The Harvard Clean Energy Project: Large-Scale Computational Screening and Design of Organic Photovoltaics on the World Community Grid, J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2 (2011), 2241-2251. (invited)
DOI: 10.1021/jz200866s
J. Hachmann, B.A. Frazier, P.T. Wolczanski, G.K.-L. Chan, A Theoretical Study of the 3d-M(smif)2 Complexes: Structure, Magnetism, and Oxidation States, ChemPhysChem 12 (2011), 3236-3244.
DOI: 10.1002/cphc.201100286
J. Hachmann, G.K.-L. Chan, Ab Initio Density Matrix Renormalization Group Methodology and Computational Transition Metal Chemistry, PhD Dissertation, Cornell University (2010).
HDL: 1813/14774
J.J. Dorando, J. Hachmann, G.K.-L. Chan, Analytic Response Theory for the Density Matrix Renormalization Group, J. Chem. Phys. 130 (2009), 184111.
D. Ghosh, J. Hachmann, T. Yanai, G.K.-L. Chan, Orbital Optimization in the Density Matrix Renormalization Group, with Application to Polyenes and β-Carotene, J. Chem. Phys. 128 (2008), 144117.
G.K.-L. Chan, J.J. Dorando, D. Ghosh, J. Hachmann, E. Neuscamman, H. Wang, T. Yanai, An Introduction to the Density Matrix Renormalization Group Ansatz in Quantum Chemistry, Prog. Theor. Chem. Phys. 18 (2008), 49-65.
DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4020-8707-3_4
J. Hachmann, J.J. Dorando, M. Avilés, G.K.-L. Chan, The Radical Character of the Acenes: A Density Matrix Renormalization Group Study, J. Chem. Phys. 127 (2007), 134309.
J.J. Dorando, J. Hachmann, G.K.-L. Chan, Targeted Excited State Algorithms, J. Chem. Phys. 127 (2007), 084109.
J. Hachmann, W. Cardoen, G.K.-L. Chan, Multireference Correlation in Long Molecules with the Quadratic Scaling Density Matrix Renormalization Group, J. Chem. Phys. 125 (2006), 144101.
J. Hachmann, N.C. Handy, Nodal Hypersurfaces and Sign Domains in Many-Electron Wavefunctions, DiplChem Thesis, University of Jena (2004).
HDL: N/A
J. Hachmann, P.T.A. Galek, T. Yanai, G.K.-L. Chan, N.C. Handy, The Nodes of Hartree-Fock Wavefunctions and their Orbitals, Chem. Phys. Lett. 392 (2004), 55-61.
DOI: 10.1016/j.cplett.2004.04.070
Publication Metrics
Summary: 1579 citations; h-index: 13; i10-index: 13; more details on Google Scholar
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5316
|
__label__cc
| 0.66327
| 0.33673
|
Matomani, masonja, mashonzha, amasonja or mopane worms – a staple source of protein and nutrients for many rural communities in Southern Africa, a delicacy in Limpopo, and a scary thought for many European taste buds. The principal producers of mopane worms are Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe and the South African provinces of Limpopo and Mpumalanga.
Even though the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations published an Edible Insects: Future Prospects for Food and Feed Security report in 2013, mopane worms have been a source of nutrition for as long as people can remember. South Africa trades 1,6 million kilograms of mopane worms annually, and dried mopane worms have become a multi-million rand industry.
This hawker in Tzaneen sells her biggest bucket of mopane worms for R100.
The mopane worm is a pretty, brightly coloured caterpillar with little spikes on its back that feeds mainly on the leaves of the mopane tree, hence its English name. It is harvested some weeks into the rainy season, just before it goes into pupation and ultimately turns into the large Emperor moth.
The caterpillars are hand-picked by mostly women and children straight from the trees in the Mopane woodlands. Once collected, somebody gets the “wonderful” job of squeezing the gut out of the caterpillars before they are sundried, which preserves them until the next harvest. Although traditionally the mopane worms are harvested for personal use only, it has now grown into a thriving industry providing an income for many rural communities.
History of the dish
There is no documented history of the mopane worm dish in Zimbabwe. However, a stone-age pit discovered at Pomongwe Cave in Zimbabwe showed a deposit of dried mopane worms that are believed to be almost 6,000 years old.
European explorers and early settlers to southern Africa in the 19th century documented the collection and consumption of the caterpillars, many adding that they found it a “filthy” practice.
According to Food and Agriculture Association (FAO) the mopane caterpillar is one of the best-known and most economically-important forestry resource products of the mopane woodlands in southern Zimbabwe, Botswana and northern South Africa.
It has been estimated that annually 9.5 billion mopane larvae are harvested in Southern Africa’s 20,000km2 of mopane forest worth US$85 million, of which approximately 40 per cent goes to producers who are primarily women from poorer, rural areas.
Research has found that mopane worms are not only good for eating from a nutritional standpoint, but they also may be key to maintaining the ecological balance of the dry bush they inhabit.
The mopane worm is so-called in English because it is usually found on the mopane tree, Colophospermum mopane. Other vernacular names for the caterpillars include:
Year of Return, Ghana 2019
Kalanga: mashonja
Tswana: phane
Northern Sotho: mašotša (colloq)
Venda: mashonzha
Tsonga: matamani or masonja
Southern Ndebele: iinnondo
muyaya (believed to be the mopane worm)
finkubala
Northern Ndebele: macimbi
Shona: madora, masodya or mashonja
Kalanga: mahonja
Ovambo: omagungu
Kongo: mingolo
The Latin name is sometimes given as Imbrasia belina, rather than Gonimbrasia belina
How to cook mopane worms
The worms are harvested during the rainy season, after which they are cleaned, sun-dried for preservation, and made available for consumption throughout the year.
The tasty worms can be eaten dry and crispy as a snack, or can be drenched in sauce, or added to porridge made from maize – a staple food in Zimbabwe. Most people prefer to fry the worms with a combination of tomatoes, garlic, peanuts, chillies, and onions. Some of the recipes to cook the caterpillar can be found online.
Mopane worms can also be added to a stew, boiled to soften them up, or simply eaten raw and fresh off a tree. When they are fresh, they are less chewy and their distinctive and unique flavour is undiluted by other ingredients.
botswanaNamibiaSouth Africazimbabwe
Previous 10 things you probably didn’t know about South Africa
Next 8 things South Africa has in common with Brazil
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5317
|
__label__cc
| 0.504375
| 0.495625
|
Dykstra, Wilfred Henry (1928-2000)
DYKSTRA, HOOKMAN, HARTWICK, WILSON, MICKELSON, MCKINNEY
Posted By: Debbie Greenfield (email
Date: 4/25/2019 at 16:23:07
Daily Freeman Journal, Webster City, Iowa, Friday, July 28, 2000
Wilfred (Bill) Dykstra, 71, Webster City, died Thursday, July 27, 2000 at the Hamilton Hospital. A Mass of Christian Burial will be held Saturday at 10:30 a.m. with Rev. John R. Flaherty, celebrant. Burial will be in the Calvary Cemetery. A scripture service will be held at 7 p.m. Friday at the Foster Funeral Home. Visitation will be at the funeral home from 5-9 p.m. Friday.
Wilfred Henry Dykstra, son of William and Hattie Hookman Dykstra, was born Nov. 9, 1928 at Armour, S.D. He received his education in Corsica, S.D. He worked from the Brink Electric Company of Corsica and traveled to numerous states for them. On Sept. 24, 1951 he married Betty Hartwick at Mitchell, S.D. The couple resided in several states continuing with Brink Electric. In 1956, they moved to Iowa Falls where he was employed with the Fareway store for three years. He owned and operated the Short Stop and Scenic City Restaurants at Iowa Falls. They moved to Marshalltown and he was executive chef at the Tall Corn Hotel. In 1967, the family moved to Webster City and he worked in sales at Gus Glasers in Fort Dodge. He also worked in sales with the Nissen Company. He managed the Webster City Country Club, the I-35 Truck Stop Restaurant at Blairsburg and the Touchdown Restaurant in Webster City. He retired in 1992.
Survivors are his wife, Betty, sons and daughters-in-law, William and Patty Dykstra, Williams, James and Lynn Dykstra, Denver, Iowa, Wayne and Mary Dykstra of Stafford, VA., Thomas and Wendy Dykstra, Perrysburg, OH., daughters and sons-in-law, Janet and Bruce Wilson of Webster City, Nancy and Dan Mickelson, Woolstock; grandchildren, Jamie, Jay, Amy-Marie, Cory, Laura and Mark Dykstra, Lynn McKinney, Scott Wilson, Bradley and Ryan Mickelson; his mother, Hattie Dykstra, Corsica, brother, George Dykstra, Platte, S.D.; several nieces and nephews.
He was preceded in death by his father, grandson, Joshua Dykstra, brothers, Ernie and Marvin Dykstra.
He was a member of St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church and was a 3rd Degree member of the Knights of Columbus.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorials be given to the Parish Center Project.
Hamilton Obituaries maintained by Janelle Graham Martin
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5321
|
__label__cc
| 0.699183
| 0.300817
|
Rеsources & Information
Early concerns
Realising there is a problem with fertility
Going to the GP about fertility concerns
Causes of infertility
Funding fertility treatment and choosing a clinic
What happens at the fertility clinic
Difficult parts of IVF/ICSI treatment
When fertility treatment fails
Fertility treatment using donor eggs, sperm or embryos
Travelling abroad for fertility treatment
Decisions and choices about fertility treatment
Men's experiences of fertility treatment
Being pregnant after fertility treatment
Living without children
Social life & work
To tell or not to tell
Relationships with family and friends
Balancing work and fertility treatment
Coping with infertility
Information and support groups
Counselling for fertility issues
Men and coping with infertility
Fertility treatment - impact on relationships
Making lifestyle changes and using complementary approaches
Impact on parenting & talking to children
Messages to others having infertility issues
Previous Topic | Living without children To tell or not to tell | Next Topic
If treatment was unsuccessful, one of the options couples sometimes considered was adopting a child, either from the UK or abroad. Here we discuss people’s attitudes towards adoption, including those who felt that adoption was not for them, the experiences of couples who started exploring the adoption process and those who went on to adopt.
Marine describes how she was always keen to go straight for adoption, but her husband had wanted to exhaust the fertility treatment route first.
Marine is a researcher, married to Oliver (Interview 40) with one daughter. Ethnic background' Norwegian.
I had always thought that if I couldn’t have babies, kids, I wouldn’t even try IVF I would just try straight to adoption. I had a lot of prejudices against IVF. I didn’t think it was right in a way. I don’t know, I didn’t know what it was and I just thought that it wasn’t for me to do that. Okay. I just thought it wasn’t for me basically. And I just always thought that there was enough children to kind of… you know, I suppose I was a bit naïve about the whole thing actually. Not realising how important it is, for many people, to have your own, as such, although obviously adopted children become your own once you have done that.
And also for me there was a certainty in the adoption that I would get a child in the end, and for me I didn’t care what child, as long as there was a baby. And I think I still feel like that actually, although I’m really happy that I had her. I still think that if we hadn’t gone through the IVF I would have had another baby that would have been fantastic and lovely, that I would have loved, so, whereas for my husband it was more important to do the IVF thing. He wanted to try and exhaust that route completely and he would even consider donations, whereas that was, that was my line. I would not do that. Yes, I thought IVF was really hard work, really tough, and I know adoption processes are hard too, but at least there’s no way they would have rejected our application. I just know it, because we both have stable jobs and blah blah blah, so… yes. There was that certainty I think.
Some of the people we talked to made it clear that they would not consider adoption; there were various reasons for this including a very strong desire to give birth to their own baby. Brian said that he felt annoyed when people said, “You can always adopt” because this meant they didn’t understand that “I want my own children or I don’t want children”. Couples did not always agree – sometimes one was willing to adopt but the other was not. Joanna said that her husband would have been content to go for adoption rather than fertility treatment but she felt she “needed to do it”. Looking back, she could see how relationships break up in the process.
Mary was eventually successful in having her own child with IVF, but during her treatment she had been very open to the idea of adopting from abroad. However her husband had not been keen on the idea, worried that he would not be able to love the child as much as his own. Carol and her husband Tim were still in treatment and considering their options. They felt they would prefer to use donor eggs rather than adopting.
Couples sometimes started to research the possibility of adoption even while they were still having fertility treatment. They found it helpful to have another plan up their sleeves if treatment failed. Naomi and Martin stopped treatment for a while and started adoption proceedings. They found it gave them some breathing space, and in the end they went back for one last try at fertility treatment and conceived twins with donor sperm and eggs.
Couples who went on to adopt described the relief they felt at being able to do something positive after unsuccessful fertility treatment. Fiona, who now helps counsel prospective adoptive parents, said it was a massive relief to be moving on, closing the door on IVF and focusing as a couple on what was important to them, “With adoption you are working together, with IVF you are not”.
Fiona described how she needed to wait a year after stopping treatment before she could start of the adoption. It was important to have time to be able to re-focus.
Fiona is a part-time teacher. She lives with her husband and three adopted daughters. Ethnic background' White British.
The adoption agencies themselves. My Mum had already told me that because she knew through these friends who had had a very similar experience. And then they put it out in their, if you, if you do phone them, they always ask you when your last fertility treatment was if you have had it, and if you are not within a year then they say come back when. Because I think there again they just know that you are not ready. You know, you could easily just be jumping from one thing into another, which you could be forgiven for doing at the time. But not be ready, that is one thing we look out for on the courses we do now, the preparation. I can spot somebody who isn’t ready. Because they cry very easy and they get very... you think actually they are still too immersed in, so it is quite interesting. So yes, I am glad they did, I mean with hindsight again, you don’t want to have to wait, but you do need that time. You really need to get your head sorted out, because then, adopting children is a whole new kind of board game and you are re-focussing, you are not going to get a baby, you’re not going to get, you know, your own child. You’re not going to get anything, you know, your own child, you’re going to get anything that you were originally intending. So you have to really think and re-focus on what you are going to get.
After her fertility treatment failed Sarah had some cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). She was told that she had to wait a year after her last fertility treatment before she could be considered for adoption.
Sarah was excited to be starting classes towards her adoption from Guatemala, but was told she had to wait longer until she had reached 'psychologial closure' on her fertility treatment.
Sarah is a hospital consultant and lives with her husband. Ethnic background' White British.
So they let us get started and we went to class preparation classes, and we got us references from the medicals and all that and we felt like really quite positive, because we thought at last something is moving in the right direction. This is something we can actually control. We can work on this. And we can make it work.
And then when the medicals were forward to the adoption medical adviser I just got this call that I had been turned down for mental health reasons. And basically it took out a lot of probing to find out exactly what they had decided. But their medical advisor who had never met me, never spoken to me, never spoken to the referees, never spoken to the therapist, never spoken to my GP had just made this decision that because I had had cognitive behavioural therapy that must indicate that I have got a mental health problem. So therefore I couldn’t carry on with the home study until a year had passed from the date of the last session because that is the date at which I achieved psychological closure.
So I mean I spoke to him on the phone and it just sounded like a nonsense to me. And I said to him, “Well what would you do if people had not seen a therapist? How would you assess a date of psychological closure?” Not like it arrives in an envelope like, like a Premium Bond, you know. And this has made me so mad, because it is just such poor quality medicine and I think it has got no evidence basis at all. And he didn’t even, even if he had made that decision after he had collected enough information, I still would have been mad, but the fact of the matter is, it just seems like he had made it on a whim and he didn’t have enough information to decide about that. And also it is quite, you feel quite stigmatised. I mean somebody implying that you are not mentally fit to be a parent, you know, and I think really I deserved a bloody medal for what I have been through. I don’t deserve to be being criticised for being in some way inadequate. So this has made me so cross. I can’t get this… that basically you take pro-active steps to try and safeguard your mental well being after you have been through the most stressful thing that has ever happened to you and then you are kind of… so the… basically the thing what is it, is part of the adoption people is, you are better off not kind of owning up to any kind of mental health problems, and you are better off probably not getting help and not seeing people because then you are rubber stamped as being somebody who has had mental health problems and then you run into problems with the adoption.
But then as it has turned out we wanted to adopt from Guatemala and then this December basically the government has issued a statement that all adoptions from Guatemala have been suspended indefinitely for some concerns about financial irregularities and stuff. So, in some ways, it is good that we didn’t get on sooner or else we would have done even more work and it would have all have been in vain. So it really does just feel like it is one thing after another. Like you feel you are making some positive progress towards your goal and you just kind of again are disappointed in new and, you know, different ways.
The adoption process involves several stages; home study, social worker assessments, training in the legal issues and checks including medicals and criminal records (CRB) (see www.adoptionuk.org) Those who want to adopt a baby born in the UK often have to wait for a long time, even once they have been approved. A couple is unlikely to be able to adopt a UK baby (but can adopt an older child) if one of them is over 45 years of age.
Fiona and her husband found that the adoption process did them the world of good, helping them focus on themselves as a couple again.
Fiona reflects on how different the adoption process is from IVF ' you are no longer a number but two people with a name.
It was, well the point when we really started to feel that we were focussed again was actually when we went for adoption and that is partly because the course makes you focus on you as a couple and then you have lots of what they call home study, the social worker comes to the house and makes you look at your relationship and takes you back through everything you have been through from childhood and everything.
So it makes you start to re-evaluate what you have got and that did us a world of good. I mean even if we hadn’t gone on to adopt, I would have said that was a really useful experience. Because you had to then write about it, and me being a reader and a writer I loved doing that and it made us look at each other again really, and re kind of like say re-focus on where we were going and what we both wanted out of life, and we often, I mean with adoption what they are saying to you is once you have started on the home study it is not a clear and cut thing, but it is actually to make you look at and see whether you are suitable and whether you are right place for adopting. And often couples find that they are not when they starting go through the process which is why they put you through it.
And yes, we found that actually, that, I remember the social worker saying as a couple, he said, “The eye contact between you,” he said, “You constantly look at each other.” He said, “There is something very strong there”. Which we had probably forgotten about and he said, but so you know, so it is quite refreshing to see a couple who are so close. And we were like oh oh that is really nice, you know, and it kind of re-awakened a lot of things for us that I think also obviously, because one of our kind of like goals in life as a couple was to have a family, and we wouldn’t have felt complete if we hadn’t have managed that. So we were putting our energies into the new ways that we could have a family. Working together again.
And I think [with] adoption you are working together, with IVF you are not, it is kind of the female having all the attention and the drugs and everything and the male just doing a bit. And adopting is much more balanced. You have to look at both of you, you’re both parents you’re both coming into it, much, much more level and so again you are given plenty of time to come to terms with things, to look at things. They make you go through your loss. They make you go through your experiences. They did have concerns about me because I was not the healthiest at the time. But also then they said, you know, you are working through it, you have got the support. We will support you as well. Which I am eternally grateful to them for, because they could have turned round and said, “We don’t think you are fit at the minute,” and you know. So that for me I was lucky really that they were willing to support us so well.
So I think that is what brought us back together.
Just think that you are much more, when you are going through IVF you are much more, almost like a number on the page, kind of right, so it is number one first this morning, then its number two, then its number three, whereas when you go for adoption, you are two people with a name. You are [name] and [husband] and, you know, whatever. And the relationship which you build with the person who is dealing with you is much more personal, therefore, I think I just felt so much more valued.
Whereas with IVF they are giving you a service and they are with adoption in a way but it is a much more personable service. And I think, I don’t know how this sounds, but again at the end of the adoption process there is a much more tangible outcome. So, you are aiming for something that is very different and that for most couples is going to be a definite outcome. It might take a long time and it might again be a bumpy ride but you are going to have children at the end of it.
Whereas with your IVF the uncertainty. And the doctors and nurses, you know, I have to say, they were very pleasant, but it is a case of you sit there, your name is called, you go in a room, you lie on a sofa, you open your legs. It is all horrible stuff, you know, with people that you don’t particularly know. And it’s all very invasive in a physical sense.
An adoption process is invasive obviously in a kind of you know, the emotional into your lives and everything, but you see again I don’t think. People say, oh is it incredibly invasive. They ask questions about your sex life and this that and the other, but that doesn’t bother me. I don’t think that is invasive. I just think, well that is what they need to know. I don’t find that overly intrusive.
And yes, they are coming to your house, but, you know, so do lots of other people. It doesn’t really, it never bothered me like that. But I always felt that the whole process of IVF was very clinical and didn’t like the clinical, you know, side of things. And physically it really, really takes it out with you, whereas again adoption wise, it is nothing to do with your physical make up.
So, it is like, IVF is people doing things to you. Whereas adoption is people doing things with you. That is how I always found.
And yes, the IVF people want you to have a baby and they want the best outcome, but it has to be a clinical procedure and you have to be dealt with as one of a long line.
The approval process was sometimes nerve-wracking, although adoption agencies stress that they are looking for ‘good enough’ not ‘perfect’ parents. Joanna and her husband adopted two girls but found the adoption process very difficult.
Rachel describes the day of the adoption panel as very traumatic. Once they were approved she knew the wait for the children might be a long one.
Rachel is a pre-school special needs teacher. She lives with her husband (John ' 26) and two adopted daughters. Ethnic background' White British.
But going through panel, it is very traumatic in the sense that you go into a room and there is all these people sat round and they ask you questions about why you want to adopt and why did we want to adopt a sibling group? Because we always said that, because I would have quite liked three but we said, two or three, we were assessed for two or three.
And so they ask you why you want a sibling group, you know, why do you want to adopt?
“Why at your stage of life, when you could be out, you know, enjoying yourselves?” And I said, “Well we have done all that.” And really things like, you know, going off on exotic holidays and all that sort of stuff, it’s not compensation for not having a family. And, you know, I felt and I think that [husband] did, that something was missing in our lives. You know, there is this child centred space that we just didn’t have, and for someone who has worked with children for over twenty years, you know, that was, I found very difficult was going to work and being with, being with children, and it actually had a tremendous strain on me to the point where I decided to leave, and I left before… we had gone to panel, and I left following that. Once we had been approved at panel, even though I knew that we might have quite a wait for the children, because I knew that I couldn’t keep going back into work every day, it was tearing me apart seeing all these children. And specifically with the kind of job that I had got, where there were children, who were, you know, coming from very difficult family backgrounds and things, and you know, knowing that I couldn’t do anything other than put support in for that, and it was really, really difficult.
So that was why I gave up work, because I just felt I just couldn’t do it, because emotionally it was just tearing me apart. And after I had done that I actually felt a lot better about things. And my energy started to come back as well, because I was feeling very tired and that sort of thing, because the whole thing makes you tired, both mentally and physically. And it does put a tremendous strain on a relationship. It really does.
Not everyone who wants to adopt is able to, and the assessments can be difficult even for couples united that this is what they really want to do. Fiona and Janine said that they felt they were lucky to have been able to adopt and hoped that they loved their children as much as if they had given birth to them.
Janine no longer wishes she had been pregnant or had children genetically hers.
Janine was a student, married to Steve (Interview 34) with two adopted sons. Ethnic background' White British.
Well actually I don’t have any sadness at all about never having been pregnant. And that went away a long time ago, and I don’t have any sadness at all about not having children that are genetically ours. Because again that went away ages ago, and we decided to go down the route of donor eggs, and actually we talked about donor insemination at one point. So it was never… it was once about being pregnant and giving birth and that, that’s gone away. It was never having little [own name] and [husband’s name] running around. But there’s something about the feel of a baby in your arms, and actually I’ve been doing interviews with adoptive parents and one of the women that I interviewed who adopted, her children are grown up now, in their twenties and she adopted them when they were tiny babies, and her son has just had a child of his own, so it’s her first grandchild and she was talking about being in the hospital and this tiny baby being presented to her and having it her arms and bursting into tears, and she said I don’t know what’s wrong with me, you know, and she said you know, I’ve never held a baby this small. And so for her, it’s a similar thing, you know, sort of there’s something very emotionally powerful about holding a tiny baby in your arms and, or not, not being able to, not be able to have that experience. So I don’t know why it comes back or why that’s the powerful thing that feels like its missing but it is.
Fiona has often wondered if she loves her daughters as much as if she had had her own, but she’ll never know. She feels that she has had to work extra hard at being a parent to her three adopted daughters, but they have surpassed all she could ever have hoped for.
Fiona rarely feels upset by her infertility now, her three adopted daughters are more than she could have hoped for.
Has your previous experience with all your IVF affected your parenting?
That is an interesting question. I have no idea. Possibly. I have had to think about parenting and being a mother and everything, a lot more, perhaps than your average person. It has made me question how I was parented. Which is a really interesting issue as well. I don’t know actually.
I feel that I’ve become through having adopted children I feel like I’ve had to work extra hard at being a parent, but I feel I’ve had the chance to really try out lots of different things. I have had to do all kind of things to support them. I have had to go into school with them every day sometimes, and sit with them, you know, whereas another parent might just drop their child off. Because my children are so scared about who’s going to come and pick them up at the end of the day, that you know.
All those kind of things you have to kind of work extra hard at. But I think perhaps then, this is occurring to me as I am saying it to you, you have wanted to be that mother so much that you will go to those lengths to do it, because you really want to be the absolute perfect… I wanted to a perfect mother.
So I think it probably has actually. Because you are so grateful in the end that you got the chance to be a mother that you will do an awful lot.
I did beat myself up a lot about being a perfect mother, because I couldn’t handle the girls at first how I thought I would be handle them. And you realise that you are not as patient as you thought you were or that you want. And I used to think at school I can be infinitely patient in a classroom, but here with the children I can lose my temper really quickly and it comes as quite a shock to you, because you want to be, and especially to these children that have had a rough time of it, but I have learnt, you know, that is not what it is about. And I have learnt to say to the girls, you know, nobody is perfect. I make my mistakes I am sorry I did that wrong or whatever.
So I am much more settled with that now, but again I think it. I suppose anybody has their ideas about being a parent don’t they, how they want to be, and the thing I kind of…I don’t know whether I comfort myself with it now, or whether it is a realistic thing, but I say basically, if I had had my own birth children, who knows what they might have turned out like. We may have had health issues, we may have emotional issues, just because they are not mine from birth doesn’t mean to say that I might not have had, you know, a bumpy ride. So it is true really isn’t it?
And have they allowed you to move on from the infertility?
Yes definitely. The only time the infertility upsets me now are well times like this when I have to talk about it. Not that I have to talk about it, but I think when you do start talking about it, you realise it is still in there, but for the most part I don’t give it a second thought and I can make a joke out of it now. I can laugh about it, I can, you know, I can deal with babies quite happily. All of that definitely, because I have got my own babies now.
I have fulfilled that need I had. Which I was worried about when we adopted, because three for me was a bit old, I wanted younger, but actually they were such big babies that I didn’t miss out on any of their, and they still are, you know, everybody still needs the love and the mothering kind of thing, don’t they, whatever age they are. So I don’t, you know, I feel that they have more than kind of surpassed what I was hoping for. And they are just beautiful.
Last reviewed July 2017.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5325
|
__label__wiki
| 0.55277
| 0.55277
|
nashville moms
Home > News > Over 56,000 Tennessee Promise Applicants...
Over 56,000 Tennessee Promise Applicants Submit FAFSA
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The Tennessee Higher Education Commission announced today that over 56,000 Tennessee Promise applicants submitted a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) by the Feb. 1 deadline.
“We are proud to report that more students have taken their first step toward college with the Tennessee Promise program than at any point since its inception,” said THEC/TSAC Executive Director Mike Krause. “This success represents opportunity not only for the student, but also for our state’s future economic development by providing a trained and educated workforce.”
Tennessee Promise is a last-dollar scholarship started in 2015 that allows recent high school graduates to complete an associate degree or technical certificate program free of tuition and mandatory fees at a community college or College of Applied Technology (TCAT).
The FAFSA is the form used to apply for federal student aid, such as federal grants, work-study and loans. Completing the FAFSA application is the first step for students pursuing federal financial aid assistance for college and is a mandatory component for Tennessee Promise eligibility. According to Krause, due to the lengthy and detailed information required for completion, the submission process can be a hurdle for many students.
“Tennessee recognized early on that getting students through the FAFSA process was instrumental for progress forward to college enrollment,” Krause said. “Unfortunately, the FAFSA is seen as an obstacle. What our agency and partner organizations have done is make completing this step a priority in our student outreach. This increase indicates these efforts are making a difference.”
Since the beginning of Tennessee Promise, the state has continued to grow its FAFSA submission rate and has become a national leader in FAFSA filing. The increase from last year of 1,200 students reflects the largest number of completed FAFSAs by program deadline in Tennessee history.
“When we say we are relentlessly focused on students, these are the kind of results that occur. I am so proud to be part of this team,” said THEC/TSAC Executive Director Mike Krause.
Students who still need assistance with their FAFSA may call 1-800-342-1663. The FAFSA application is available online at https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/fafsa
The Tennessee Higher Education Commission was created in 1967 by the Tennessee General Assembly. The Commission develops, implements, and evaluates postsecondary education policies and programs in Tennessee while coordinating the state’s systems of higher education. There are nine public universities, two special purpose institutes, 13 community colleges, and 27 colleges of applied technology in Tennessee that educate nearly 250,000 students annually.
Grilled Chicken Tenders with Cilantro Pesto
Stir-Fried Spicy Chicken Tenders
Ranch Dip & Crunchy Vegetables
© 2013 HobNob Local Inc | Privacy Policy
HobNobNashville™
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5327
|
__label__cc
| 0.628837
| 0.371163
|
"Visit Florence as a Florentine", let yourself be guided by those who live the city every day, marrying the marriage of art, culture and good food, avoiding the most chaotic and confusing part of the city.
The best points of interest
Uffizi Gallery
Uffizi Gallery, one of the oldest and most important museums where the most important existing collection of Raffaello and Botticelli are located, as well as fundamental groups of works by Giotto, Tiziano and Caravaggio.
Galleria dell'Accademia
Galleria dell'Accademia, the sculpture’s paradise, where you can visit Michelangelo's David, here are exhibited the largest number of sculptures by the artist, seven.
Bargello Museum
Bargello Museum, where you can see the collection of Renaissance statues among the largest and most notable in the world and which includes the masterpieces of Michelangelo, Ghiberti and Cellini, as well as the fantastic David di Donatello.
Santa Maria del Fiore, commonly known as the Duomo of Florence, is the symbol of the city as well as one of the greatest masterpieces that man has ever conceived. Symbol of the splendor and power that was of the Medici family today is known worldwide for the splendor of its dome, Brunelleschi's dome.
Palazzo Vecchio, is the symbol of the city of Florence, was the home of the Medici family and represents the best synthesis of the fourteenth-century architecture, which houses the spectacular hall of the 500 decorated with frescoes by Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci
Ponte Vecchio, one of the major symbols of Italian genius in the world, dates back to 1300 and is the only bridge that was not demolished by the Nazis during the invasion, now home to goldsmiths, craftsmen and watchmakers. Which makes it without doubt the most impressive bridge in the world, as well as the most beautiful.
Palazzo Pitti and the Boboli Gardens, one of the most prestigious palaces in Florence, built by the Medici family and which was the residence of the Reale family, I Savoia, during the brief period in which Florence was the capital of Italy. Today it houses a complex museum complex, whose flagship is undoubtedly the Galleria Palatina.
The best exhibitions
During your stay in Florence you will not miss the opportunity to visit two exhibitions of the highest level, which go beyond the typically Florentine classic-Renaissance routes:
Verrocchio, master of Leonardo
From 8 March to 14 July 2019 Palazzo Strozzi celebrates Andrea del Verrocchio, an emblematic artist of the Florentine Renaissance, in a major exhibition showcasing over 120 paintings, sculptures and drawings from the world’s leading museums and collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of New York, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Gallerie degli Uffizi in Florence.
The exhibition, brings together for the first time Verrocchio’s celebrated masterpieces and capital works by the best-known artists associated with his workshop in the second half of the 15th century, such as Domenico Ghirlandaio, Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino and Leonardo da Vinci, his most famous pupil, also reconstructing Leonardo’s early artistic career and interaction with his master thanks to outstanding loans and unprecedented juxtapositions.
THIS IS NOT A PHOTO OPPORTUNITY, BANKSY
Palazzo Medici Riccardi, No one has ever seen him, nobody knows his face, there are no photos that show him: yet BANKSY exists in a disruptive way through his works of unprecedented ethical power, evocative and media. Originally from Bristol, generically framed in the confines of Street Art, Banksy represents the greatest case of popularity for a living artist since the days of Andy Warhol
The best fiorentine artisans
AQUA FLOR- FRAMES YOUR HOLIDAY BETWEEN THE NOTES OF A PERFUME
The sense of smell is one of the senses that most closely linked to memories and emotions. How many times you have smelled a fragrance and be transported in a past experience, relive the feelings and feel the emotions on your skin.
Aqua Flor wants to turn your experience in Florence into a perfume that awakens in you the vivid memory of the holiday through the creation of a personalized perfume from the “nose” Sileno Cheloni.
A unique and personal scent.
Book your olfactory experience at a special price.
SARTORIA VANNI - MAKE YOUR HOLIDAY “MADE TO MESURE”
The history of Sartoria Vanni dates back to 1818 with the opening of a small sartorial workshop in the heart of Florence. Sartoria vanni soon became a name known to all local fans, ready to order custom-made clothes, handmade.
From 2014 Sartoria Vanni offers a new online service to offer its "tailor-made", allowing its international customers to explore and experience the best of Italian tailoring when and where they prefer it.
The expertise, craftsmanship and dedication to the arts of Italian tailoring are the cornerstones on which Sartoria Vanni is founded, an activity that boasts two centuries of successes and an even brighter future.
Your culinary experience
BUCA LAPI
The oldest restaurant in the city. Born in 1880 in the cellars of Palazzo Antinori, it still retains traces of over a century of history thanks to a meticulous restoration. Precious frescoes decorate the first room overlooking the kitchen, the dishes recall the authentic flavors of ancient Tuscan cuisine, such as hot crostini and ribollita, homemade pasta and wild boar with polenta.
And then the steak, the best in town, cooked on charcoal and sprinkled with extra virgin Tuscan oil.
LA MENAGERE
A new reality, a concept restaurant that is also a flower shop and bookstore, able to offer seasonal products in an unsanctioned location. A popular cuisine, where tradition and innovation meet and experimentation for unusual combinations ranges in respect of what nature has to offer.
Lovely place, which transmits peace and relax, not secondary aspects during a dinner on holiday.
CUCINA TORCICODA
Located a few steps from Piazza Santa Croce and Piazza Signoria, offers a typically Florentine cuisine in a classic and welcoming atmosphere.
Two unique experiences are offered, one linked to the Tuscan and Florentine culinary tradition and another "gourmet", where the high quality of the raw material and the research make it possible to taste an "unconventional" Tuscan cuisine that starts from tradition and it comes where the mind can not imagine.These two menus are made even more suggestive by the restaurant, dedicated to the culinary path chosen, each of which has its own atmosphere and its charm that helps make the experience unforgettable.
A unique place on the roofs of Florence, in a futuristic structure made with windows on each side, so as to let in natural light and emphasize the enviable position that offers a breathtaking view over the city of Florence, the Arno and the hills as a frame. Inside a bar, a restaurant and a lounge area, new spaces that will allow you to relax in the heart of Florence, while outside you can find two terraces that offer a magical atmosphere overlooking Florence
TRATTORIA GARGANI
Historic trattoria in the heart of the historic center of Florence, known for its artistic essence, as well as for its cuisine, based on express dishes and Tuscan dishes from a personal touch who know how to impress.
A reference point for lovers of good food and for the artists of the Santa Maria Novella district, it has preserved its imprint for many years, such as the frescoes, paintings and sculptures by the Florentine artist Alfio Rapisardi.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5330
|
__label__wiki
| 0.872955
| 0.872955
|
CRN00808
sst5 Agonist
ACTH Antagonist
©2019 Crinetics Pharmaceuticals | Privacy Policy
Sign up for press releases and updates Sign Up
Crinetics Pharmaceuticals Completes $63.5 Million Series B Financing
March 13, 2018 at 12:00 AM EDT
SAN DIEGO – March 13, 2018 – Crinetics Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a rare disease therapeutics company focused on endocrine disorders and endocrine-related cancers, today announced it has completed a Series B financing which raised $63.5 million in new funds. The investment was led by Perceptive Advisors and includes new investors RA Capital and OrbiMed. Existing investors 5AM Ventures, Versant Ventures and Vivo Capital participated in the financing as well. Crinetics Pharmaceuticals plans to use the proceeds to fund the continuing development of CRN00808, an oral nonpeptide somatostatin agonist for the potential treatment of acromegaly, to develop additional new targeted therapeutics for endocrine disorders and endocrine related cancers, and for general corporate purposes.
“I am delighted to have some of the world’s most prominent healthcare investors join us for this important next phase of the company’s growth,” said Scott Struthers, Ph.D., Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Crinetics. “This fundraising puts us on a strong financial footing that allows us to further the development of CRN00808 and advance our pipeline of additional internally-discovered drug programs. We believe Crinetics is poised to make a meaningful contribution to the treatment of rare endocrine disorders and today’s successful fundraising validates that promise and our strategy to date.”
“Crinetics scientists are expanding the boundaries of our existing knowledge of GPCRs and how to target them with drugs,” said Joseph Edelman, Founder and CEO of Perceptive Advisors. “Crinetics’ current programs, all discovered in-house, have the potential to treat patients with conditions such as acromegaly, neuroendocrine tumors, hyperinsulinism and Cushing’s disease. There is considerable unmet need in rare endocrine disorders, and we are excited to be a part of this effort to bring new options to patients and their physicians.”
In conjunction with this financing, the company also announced that, Weston Nichols, Ph.D., and Matthew K. Fust have joined Crinetics’ board of directors. Dr. Nichols is an analyst at Perceptive, while Mr. Fust has acted as Senior Advisor, Finance to the company since 2015. Additionally, Mahendra G. Shah, Ph.D., is stepping down from the board and will be replaced by Jack B. Nielsen. Mr. Nielsen is a Managing Director at Vivo Capital.
About Crinetics Pharmaceuticals
Crinetics Pharmaceuticals is a clinical-stage biotechnology company focusing on treatments for rare endocrine disorders and endocrine-related cancers. The company is currently conducting a Phase 1 trial with its oral nonpeptide somatostatin agonist, CRN00808, for the treatment of acromegaly, an orphan disease affecting more than 24,000 people in the United States. The company is also developing other oral nonpeptide somatostatin agonists for hyperinsulinism and neuroendocrine tumors, as well as an oral small molecule for Cushing’s disease. Crinetics was founded by a team of scientists with a proven track record of endocrine drug discovery and development. The company is backed by top life sciences investors and is headquartered in San Diego.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5331
|
__label__wiki
| 0.56278
| 0.56278
|
A People's History of the Vampire Uprising by Raymond A. Villareal
See 1 Critic Review
“A People’s History of the Vampire Uprising” is undeniably aptly titled. It’s smart and smartly-constructed, an absolute blast to read. It is, to put it bluntly, entertaining as hell. All in all – and I apologize for this – this book does not suck.
-The Maine Edge
In this ambitious and wildly original debut--part social-political satire, part international mystery--a new virus turns people into something a bit more than human, upending society as we know it.
This panoramic fictional oral history begins with one small mystery: the body of a young woman found in an Arizona border town, presumed to be an illegal immigrant, disappears from the town morgue. To the young CDC investigator called in to consult with the local police, it's an impossibility that threatens her understanding of medicine.
Then, more bodies, dead from an inexplicable disease that solidified their blood, are brought to the morgue, only to also vanish. Soon, the U.S. government--and eventually biomedical researchers, disgruntled lawmakers, and even an insurgent faction of the Catholic Church--must come to terms with what they're too late to stop: an epidemic of vampirism that will sweep first the United States, and then the world.
With heightened strength and beauty and a stead diet of fresh blood, these changed people, or "Gloamings," rapidly rise to prominence in all aspects of modern society. Soon people are beginning to be "re-created," willingly accepting the risk of death if their bodies can't handle the transformation. As new communities of Gloamings arise, society is divided, and popular Gloaming sites come under threat from a secret terrorist organization. But when a charismatic and wealthy businessman, recently turned, runs for political office--well, all hell breaks loose.
Told from the perspective of key players, including a cynical FBI agent, an audacious campaign manager, and a war veteran turned nurse turned secret operative, A People's History of the Vampire Uprising is an exhilarating, genre-bending debut that is as addictive as the power it describes.
About Raymond A. Villareal
Published June 5, 2018 by Mulholland Books. 432 pages
Genres: History, Political & Social Sciences, Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Horror, Literature & Fiction, Humor & Entertainment, Science Fiction & Fantasy. Fiction
Critic reviews for A People's History of the Vampire Uprising
The Maine Edge
Reviewed by Allen Adams on Jun 06 2018
Read Full Review of A People's History of the Vam...
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5336
|
__label__cc
| 0.729217
| 0.270783
|
French Islands dark past: illegal homebrew during prohibition
September 4, 2014 EducationFrench Island, Homebrew, Maine, Prohibition, Treat Webster Island
Maine’s prohibition history dates between 1851 and 1934 , considerably longer than Federal Prohibition that lasted from 1920-1933. It appears that some ambitious homebrewers played an unsavory role during Maine’s dry years. While browsing through Penobscot Times archives online I found an article written nearly 74 years ago by Stan Eames, published October 17, 1940, six years after alcohol became legal in Maine. The article is about two men, Peter Russell and Alex Taylor who were arraigned on charges of illegal possession of “Domestic Beer” or homebrew; both men pleaded guilty, received their sentence and then appealed the fines which were moved to superior court.
What caught my attention more than anything was the picture that this article paints of Treat-Webster Island, more commonly known as French Island in Old Town, Maine. The Island is described as “rough and tough, with homebrew flowing freely, gutters acting as featherbeds occasionally, and more often than not acts of violence happening so that respectable women stayed at home nights” The two men arraigned on charges of possessing the homebrew must have been well known at the time as they were arrested after a “Complaint” for their arrest was “Signed by residents“. The article continues “Local people will tell you, if you know them well enough, of dark deeds which have been done and never solved on the Island. Murder is included in the lexicon of crimes allegedly committed there years ago, when every home brew joint was a ‘bucket of blood’, when theft and assault were common, and when the Island late at night was probably the most sinful and wicked seat of iniquity this side of the bowery”.
The “dark deeds” committed on the Island were a result of homebrew and the two men at the center of the ordeal received their sentence “$100, cost of court and two months in jail” a seemingly light sentence considering how bad things were. The sentence was drawn from Prohibition days because at the time of the trial alcohol had already become legal.
Prohibition created a situation where alcohol was in demand; homebrewers had the skills to supply and profit from it, turning people’s homes into crime dens and creating hostile neighborhoods. It isn’t surprising to hear that where alcohol was supplied other crimes occurred, that drunks ended up in the streets, being a small area with a visible problem the question of police corruption comes to mind, or else the area was so dangerous they just stayed away. It is also not surprising to read at the end of the article that things had already changed, after prohibition ended things were better even though homebrew was still available in the area “An era has passed, a new one has come.”
← Vacationland Distributors bringing Newport Storm to Maine What is a Growler? and other growler questions answered →
What is the capital of France?
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5337
|
__label__cc
| 0.564599
| 0.435401
|
Centre for the Study of Medieval Art | KU Leuven
Portfolio Archives: Publication
Illuminare – Centre for the Study of Medieval Art has organized various exhibitions both in Belgium and abroad. Amongst the most recent are In Search of Utopia (2016, M – Museum Leuven), Hieronymus Cock – The Renaissance in Print (2013, M – Museum Leuven / Fondation Custodia, Paris), The Magnificent Middle…
PublicationBy user March 17, 2018
Corpus of Illuminated Manuscripts
The peer-reviewed series Corpus of Illuminated Manuscripts, published by Peeters, was founded by Illuminare in 1984. It welcomes monographs, edited volumes, proceedings and collection catalogues that deal with the history of medieval illuminated manuscripts in all its different facets. 1: B. Cardon, R. Lievens and M. Smeyers, Typological Scenes from the Life of Jesus. A Manuscript…
Art & Religion
The series Art & Religion was founded in 2011 by the Iconology Research Group. Editor in chief is Barbara Baert (Leuven). The series welcomes monographs and themes in the interdisciplinary field between Christian iconography and religion of the Middle Ages and Early Modernity. Art & Religion focuses on how iconology as a field and method relates to…
Studies in Iconology
Studies in Iconology accepts original and interdisciplinary contributions in the broader field of art theory and art history. The series addresses an audience that seeks to understand any aspect and any deeper meaning of the visual medium along the history of mankind in the fields of philosophy, art history, theology and cultural anthropology. Studies in…
Iconologies
Iconology is a two-faced beast. To students, it is often presented as a functional subordinate to art history. In the practice of research, it transgresses the borders of its discipline and can devour whole universes of images. Indeed, iconology, as envisioned by Aby Warburg, is supposed to study images produced inside and outside the realm of…
Underdrawing and Technology in Painting
The international and interdisciplinary symposium Underdrawing and Technology in Painting (formerly Le dessin sous-jacent dans la peinture) is organized biennially by Illuminare – Centre for the Study of Medieval Art (KU Leuven), the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA, Brussels), the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) and Musea Brugge (Flemish Research Centre for the Arts in the Burgundian Netherlands). The peer-reviewed…
Lieve Watteeuw and Hannah Iterbeke (eds.), Enclosed Gardens of Mechelen. Late Medieval Paradise Gardens Revealed (Amsterdam/Veurne: Amsterdam University Press/Hannibal, 2018). Lieve Watteeuw and Hannah Iterbeke (eds.), De Besloten Hofjes van Mechelen – laatmiddeleeuwse paradijstuinen ontrafeld (Veurne/Amsterdam: Hannibal/Amsterdam University Press, 2018). Daan van Heesch, Robrecht Janssen and Jan Van der Stock (eds.), Netherlandish Art and Luxury Goods in…
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5340
|
__label__wiki
| 0.797658
| 0.797658
|
Staff Profile: Heerabai
Heerabai is one of the women who made her way to CRHP as a patient but has now become a member of the CRHP community as a staff member at the Mabelle Arole Rehabilitation Center. Heerabai was born in nearby village, Rajuri, but she received no education growing up. Heerabai became part of our community eleven years ago after receiving a diagnosis of HIV and suffering from the social and personal complications that followed.
Heerabai Kaldate
Heerabai’s husband became ill first and was eventually diagnosed with HIV, but he delayed telling his wife. Heerabai’s husband did not reveal his HIV status to her until he had no choice but to go to the government hospital to receive treatment. However, as the community became aware that he was seeking treatment for HIV, Heerabai was also subjected to the social stigmas and misconceptions surrounding the disease. Soon after her husband began seeking treatment, Heerabai too began developing the symptoms of HIV. Despite suffering from a stigmatized illness, Heerabai’s husband was still considered a valuable member of the community. Heerabai, on the other hand, was poorly treated, received little treatment, and was often not allowed to interact with her children. When Heerabai was allowed to interact with her children, she was forced to always maintain a separation, sleeping head to toe because her family believed that HIV could be airborne.
Isolated from her family and bared from work opportunities, Heerabai was dejected and unsure how to move forward. Fortunately, Heerabai’s story became known to a Village Health Worker who began encouraging her to explore the opportunities available at CRHP. Dr. Raj Arole offered Heerabai a job in the mess hall. Her position in the mess hall was not only an opportunity for work but was also a means of demonstrating to her community that a doctor trusted her to prepare food, something that her family thought she was unfit to do because of her HIV status. After a few months with CRHP, Heerabai’s father-in law came to take her back to their village because he was concerned the wider community would become aware of her HIV status, and the family would be shamed. Back in her village, Heerabai became depressed and soon after her return, her husband passed away. Her family-in-law began once again to treat her poorly, insisting she be separated from her children. She suffered from violence at the hands of her in-laws, so she took her children and returned to her mother’s village.
Within her mother’s village, misconceptions and stigmas surrounding HIV lead her to continue to avoid seeking treatment. At that time, doctors were often afraid to treat people with HIV. Heerabai became even more isolated as she avoided talking to people, going to family functions, or even visiting her temple, fearing the responses of people who misunderstood her illness. Without treatment, Heerabai began developing lesions and infections, and she finally came to CRHP for treatment. After having been sent to a private hospital where treatment was infective, Dr. Raj decided to send Heerabai to Mumbai every 15 days to receive a new method of treatment. She continued to receive treatment in this way for five years, completely supported by CRHP.
Dr. Raj told Heerabai that she could kiss her children without fear of spreading HIV. He also told her to take a CRHP car, get dressed up, and to get groceries as a way of showing people that she was healthy and trusted with responsibilities, despite her HIV status. Heerabai’s stigmatized status made it difficult to find a husband for her daughter, and her daughter married a man who had previously been married. Heerabai felt guilty that her disease was affecting her children. However, as part of the CRHP community Heerabai’s children were celebrated throughout the Jamkhed community during their marriages. Heerabai’s son’s wedding was a grand affair, with politicians, Village Health Workers, CRHP staff, foreigners, and many family members and neighbors in attendance. Heerabai was very happy that her disease was no longer a factor that negatively impacted her family and that her son’s marriage had been celebrated by all.
Heerabai has now moved to the Rehabilitation Center, where she has found a second life. She has learned skills such as gardening, managing a plant nursery, and organic farming techniques. Heerabai has gained not only economic stability but also the peace of mind that comes with being part of a community that treats her kindly. Heerabai said she feels normal at the Rehabilitation Center because the other people there allowed her to meet their children and encouraged her to show people that she was healthy. The confidence and health that she has developed has encouraged her family to begin treating her with more respect. She is no longer discriminated against, and she regularly attends family functions. Heerabai never hesitates to discuss HIV with other community members and will always share her advice. Even Heerabai’s family sometimes comes to her for advice. Heerabai receives regular treatment and has gained the confidence that she is competent to do productive, meaningful work. She now shares her story to help others and fight the stigma surrounding misunderstood diseases such as HIV.
3 Comments, RSS
Joseph Sprunger
says on:
Great Story! It Brings back fond memories of my visits to Jamkhed and all the great people there, both then and apparently now as well.
Nicholas Cunningham MD Dr P.H.
I am a long time disciple of Carl Taylor and David Morley. Mabelle & Raj Arole were my friends and I’m an enthusiastic advocate for the CRHP. I would like to mention the project in an abstract on primary care that I’m submitting to the American Academy of Pediatrics. It would help me to know roughly the annual primary care costs per mother or per family. Also, I’d appreciate your best estimate of the maternal and 0-5 mortality rates in 1970 before the CRHP and recently for the villages served. In case Alex Kaysin has this data, I’ve called him; my telephone number here in the US is 325 858 7070.
My best regards to Shobha and for all those who have kept this estimable work going forward for almost 50 years! And may the Lord bless you all!
N. Cunningham MD, Emeritus Professor of Clinical Pediatrics and Public Health, Columbia University
Hi Mr. Cunningham,
If you are still interested in gathering information to add to your abstract, please email us at info@jamkhed.org.
CRHP
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5343
|
__label__wiki
| 0.838412
| 0.838412
|
Encyclopedia of Aviation
TYPE: Medium-range antisubmarine warfare aircraft
POWERPLANTS: The IL-38 powered by four AI-20M 4,250-hp turboprop engines
DESCRIPTION: The Il-38 is a medium-range antisubmarine warfare aircraft fitted with the Berkut ASW system and powered by four AI-20M 4,250-hp turboprop engines. The aircraft was derived from the Il-18D airliner, with its maiden flight made on 27 September, 1961. It was in production between 1965 and 1972 at the Moscow-based Znamya Truda Machine-building Plant (nowadays MiG Aircraft Corporation’s Voronin Production Centre). A total of about 60 aircraft were built, of which five were exported to India for the Indian Navy. Since 1968, the Il-38 has been in service with the Soviet (now Russian) Navy. 2001 saw the manufacture of the first upgraded Il-38N patrol aircraft boasting a novel avionics suite for Naval aviation of the Russian Federation. In 2002 Ilyushin started modernisation of Il-38 aircraft for the Indian Navy. The first flight of upgraded aircraft took place in Moscow on 3 July, 2003.
© 2019 Encyclopedia of Aviation
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5344
|
__label__wiki
| 0.592674
| 0.592674
|
Home » Opinion » Project Syndicate » The Democratic nominee America needs
The Democratic nominee America needs
Jul 08,2019 - Last updated at Jul 08,2019
By Alexander Friedman and Jerry Grinstein
SEATTLE – The contenders for the US Democratic Party’s presidential nomination have held their first debates, and the main questions reverberating in political and media circles seem to be either who will be tough enough to take on President Donald Trump, or who has the headline-grabbing ideas.
But there is a better way to think about who the Democratic nominee should be. While the Democrats search for a liberal saviour, they run the risk of making a fundamental mistake. The answer to the party’s problems lies not in its own version of an extreme disruptor, but rather in empowering moderate local leaders throughout America, not just the coastal states.
The Democrats must pick a candidate who not only wins the White House, but, just as critically, also gives swing-state House and Senate candidates policies that are wide enough for them to run and win on, thereby enabling change in Senate leadership. The Democrats must nominate a candidate who understands that voters in many of the states that will actually decide the election are largely more fiscally conservative and less interested in the politics of division.
Forget the west coast and the northeast: these states will largely get behind whoever the Democrats nominate. But there is real concern among local leaders in states like Arizona, Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio, the places that will determine the election’s outcome, that the country cannot afford the headline policy proposals for healthcare, education and the environment that are becoming litmus tests for many Democratic candidates.
These fiscal concerns have merit. The United States is running an enormous deficit, exacerbated by the Trump administration’s recent tax bill. Historically, the US has been able to carry more debt than other countries because it enjoys the unique privilege of printing the world’s reserve currency. Thoughtful political leaders on both sides of the aisle have known for years that the US needed to address the deficit to avoid imperiling the dollar’s exalted status at some point decades from now. But under Trump, with his unilateral and erratic trade wars, America’s competitors and even its allies are now stepping up efforts to knock the dollar off its pedestal and develop an alternative reserve currency.
Moderate state leaders are highly attuned to fiscal soundness, because, unlike the federal government, they cannot print currency to finance debts. Such leaders will have a hard time supporting programmes that imply rapid deficit growth, like the Green New Deal or a single-payer healthcare plan, or forgiveness of all student debt. It is unclear, at best, how the country would pay for such programmes, and their constituents will largely find them threatening as a result.
The bold ideas now coming to the fore among some Democratic candidates may sound appealing, especially to a party searching for ways to galvanise young voters, and they surely contain elements that address important issues facing the US. But policy ideas are not campaign soundbites. Each must be weighed in terms of what it would cost, what would have to be sacrificed to pay for it, the net impact on the deficit, and critically, whether it empowers or alienates swing-state leaders.
Over the last two generations, the US presidency has become more powerful than ever, dominating the political system in a way never intended in the constitution. Historically, presidents have nonetheless been constrained by a combination of respect for the rule of law, a default to truthful and ethical behaviour, a willingness and ability to act strategically to strengthen the US in the long run, and, critically, the Senate’s constitutional duty to act as an independent limiter to a president’s power.
Today, all four of these constraints are gone. Trump has no interest in the constitution, honesty or best positioning the US for the long term. And under Mitch McConnell’s leadership, the Senate has abandoned the US founders’ vision that it be, in James Madison’s words, “a necessary fence” to protect “the people against their rulers” and from “the transient impressions into which they themselves might be led”.
In these circumstances, the Democrats must turn to voters throughout the US to find their way to a functioning government that acts in accord with the constitution. This starts with recognising that winning in 2020 means taking back the White House with a candidate who helps the party regain control of the Senate as well. Only then can the US begin to repair the damage caused by the Trump administration, restore the checks and balances on which American government depends, and right the country’s fiscal trajectory. What is at stake may be nothing less than the fate of the American experiment.
Alexander Friedman is a former CEO of GAM Investments, a former CFO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and was a White House fellow during the Clinton administration. Jerry Grinstein is a former CEO of Delta Air Lines and Burlington Northern Railroad, and previously served as chief counsel to the United States Senate Commerce Committee. Project Syndicate, 2019. www.project-syndicate.org
What America needs to understand about capitalism
No excuse for violence against children
Is plutocracy really the problem?
Could the Democrats blow it?
How to address Venezuela’s crushing debt burden
Towards a Euro-Pacific partnership
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5346
|
__label__wiki
| 0.87051
| 0.87051
|
Danish Farooq
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content.
Additional information may please be sent as messages to the Facebook
community, Indpaedia.com. All information used will be gratefully
acknowledged in your name.
As in 2018, Sept
Hindol Basu, This ‘Kashmiri Ronaldo’ trains under shadow of guns, curfew, October 12, 2018: The Times of India
Striker Danish Farooq Has Been Instrumental In Real Kashmir FC’s Rise To I-League, October 12, 2018: The Times of India
Logon ko batana chahte hai ki hum bhi acche insaan hai (We want to tell the country that we are also good human beings). We have been portrayed wrongly over the years and that needs to change. Playing for Real Kashmir in the I-League is a massive opportunity for us,” says Danish.
His father, Farooq Ahmad Bhat, also used to play football, for Mohammedan Sporting in Kolkata. Talking about his sporting lineage and progress, Danish says, “Football is in my blood. We have had a good footballing culture in our family. I imitated my father and started playing from my childhood. I was selected in J&K Bank football academy at the age of 13. Then I played for the bank team and became their captain. After that I played for Lonestar Kashmir FC and from late 2016 I started playing for Real Kashmir.”
Danish feels football, which is a hugely popular sport in Kashmir, is helping youngsters join the mainstream. “Young players are being given a platform. Parents are also told that football is a viable career option and that has helped getting the youth into the mainstream.”
Danish Farooq will never forget the day he was detained by Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) commandos while on his way to the TRC Turf Ground in Srinagar for a practice session. His pleas fell on deaf ears. He tried to reason, but to no avail. It was only when a senior officer — who knew Danish had been a member of the Jammu and Kashmir Santosh Trophy team — intervened that the footballer was released. “That day is still etched in my mind. Thankfully, the senior officer knew about Santosh Trophy and that I had represented J&K in it,” says the 22-year-old, a resident of Eidgah in downtown Srinagar.
Danish, incidentally, has been given the moniker ‘Kashmiri Ronaldo’ by fellow footballers and fans. It’s not just his looks or hairstyle, but his dribbling skills and goal-scoring abilities that have earned him the sobriquet. Danish, an attacking midfielder, stands 6-feet-1-inch tall; and whenever he has a ball at his feet, he shows his ‘Cristiano skills’. “My teammates love my dribbling abilities. They call them Cristiano skills,” quips Danish with a glint in his eye.
With four strikes, Danish was the joint-highest goal-scorer for Real Kashmir FC in the I-League second division. Real Kashmir will be making their debut in the I-League top division in the forthcoming season. Besides the goals, he had the most number of assists to his name. Danish is more or less the engine which keeps Real Kashmir functioning.
In a place where curfews are a common ocurrence, Danish and his teammates have to struggle to get quality practicesessions. “ Aapke Delhi mein jaise jam hota hai, waise hi humare yahan curfew hota hai (The way Delhi has traffic jams; Srinagar has curfews),” says Danish, bursting into laughter.
In Srinagar, gun-totting commandos can be seen all over the city — unbelievably, there is a commnado in place for every fourth civilian. “It is not only difficult for footballers here, but for every person – any profession. We take different routes whenever there is a curfew in place. By now, we know which routes to take to reach the ground during a curfew. We reach the ground some way or the other, but we don’t miss a practice session. It’s only few and far between that we get to practice; therefore, we make sure that we don’t miss a session,” says Danish, himself a massive Cristiano Ronaldo fan.
Danish hopes to show the world there is more to Kashmir than guns and violence. “We want to leave a big impression (in the I-League) through the brand of football that we play. We want to show that there is more to Kashmir than guns and bombs. Lo-
Retrieved from ‘http://indpaedia.com/ind/index.php?title=Danish_Farooq&oldid=95668’
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5350
|
__label__wiki
| 0.507739
| 0.507739
|
1. Do hike and bike trails attract crime and vandalism to neighborhoods?
No. There is no evidence that trails cause an increase in crime. In fact, trail development may actually decrease the risk of crime in comparison to an undeveloped road corridor. And, several studies show that people prefer living along a trail. Typically, lawful trail users serve as eyes and ears for the community.
2. How can trails be made as safe as possible?
Security concerns are the forefront in the planning stages and will continue through the development of the trail management plan. The design of trail segments will include safety enhancements such as landscaping that limits deep shadows and hiding areas. Various safety programs may be used once a trail opens.
3. How do trails affect property values?
Proximity to a network of hike and bike trails can provide a significant boost in property values of residential developments. Loveland and Symmes Township are good examples of areas where homes with easy access to the Little Miami bike trail are more desirable to many homebuyers.
4. What about public and private liability?
Public liability risks from trails are small relative to other public services like roads, playgrounds, and swimming pools. By taking safety concerns into account when designing and maintaining the trail, risks can be lowered. With respect to liability risks to trail neighbors, private landowners are protected by recreational-use statutes in Ohio. Under these statutes, a landowner who does not charge a trail access fee will not be held liable for injuries sustained on his/her property unless an injured person can prove "willful and wanton misconduct on the part of the landowner."
5. Who will pick up the litter?
Trash has not presented a problem on most trails. Some parts of the trails will have "pack out what you pack in" trash control, while others will have regular maintenance schedules to empty well placed waste and recycling receptacles. Signs along the trail and in trail brochures will help educate trial users.
6. Where will the money come from?
Many sources of federal, state, county, township, and private funding are available for trail construction and maintenance. Although some may say a trail is a waste of money, trails are remarkably inexpensive public facilities for the number of people they serve.
The average multi-use trail costs $50,000 to $200,000 per mile to acquire and build, compared to the $10 million per mile for a suburban street and $100 million per mile for some highways. In addition, the economic benefits often outweigh the costs. For example, an analysis of economic impacts of the North Central Rail-Trail in Maryland showed that in 1993, the revenue on user purchases alone ($303,750) surpassed operating costs ($191, 893).
7. What about parking?
As trails become more popular, parking can be a problem. Parking areas already exist at township parks that will be integral to the network. Ideally the network of bike lanes and routes will allow people to walk or bike instead of driving.
8. Will a trail cause damage to local wildlife?
Except possibly for a brief time during trail construction, most trails have a positive effect on wildlife. In fact, some rail-trails have preserved a number of endangered and threatened wildlife species. Minnesota’s Cannon Valley Trail, for example, shelters three endangered wildlife species and provides habitat for the threatened Wood Turtle. Generally, trails provide conservation areas and promote environmental education.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5355
|
__label__wiki
| 0.839239
| 0.839239
|
The-Drifters
Fri 12 Jul, Main Auditorium
The Drifters are back on tour in the UK with a brand-new show performing their classic hits from the last six decades. The legendary group have been inducted into the Rock & Rock Hall of Fame, performed for the President and named in Rolling Stone Magazine's 100 Greatest Artists Of All Time.
Share The Drifters with Friends...
The Lichfield Garrick Theatre is beyond excited to announce its fourth Community Musical Production; The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Based on C.S Lewis’s timeless c...
The Lion, The Witch & the Wardrobe
Tue 23 - Sat 27 Jul
More Book
The SOUND OF SPRINGSTEEN take to the stage this year after 2 years of getting the show together for this tour. With a passion for the work of "The Boss", the 8-piece tribute, The Sound Of Springsteen...
The Sound of Springsteen
EXTRA SHOW NOW ADDED! Bye Bye Baby takes you back in time on a musical journey through the career of Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons, whose songs graced such films as The Deer Hunter, Dirty Dancing...
Wed 4 - Thu 5 Sep
Talon have risen from humble beginnings to become one of the most successful theatre touring shows in the UK and the ‘Greatest Hits Tour 2019’ will once again feature the...
Talon - Best of the Eagles
Fri 6 - Sat 7 Sep
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5357
|
__label__cc
| 0.741296
| 0.258704
|
Ask the Safety/Security Expert - Sponsored Content
Q: How can we prevent vaping in our schools?
Sponsored by True Security Design
Posted Wednesday, January 30, 2019 5:34 pm
Lt. Joseph Pangaro, CPM
A: Teachers and district administrators all over the United States are scrambling to deal with the student vaping epidemic. For people who are not familiar or sure exactly what vaping is https://www.centeronaddiction.org defines “Vaping is the act of inhaling and exhaling the aerosol, often referred to as vapor, which is produced by an e-cigarette or similar device. The term is used because e-cigarettes do not produce tobacco smoke, but rather an aerosol, often mistaken for water vapor, that actually consists of fine particles.”
Vaping was introduced in the late 2000’s and has generated a lot of buzz. E-cigarette marketing is aimed at our youth by being packaged in bright colors and promotes flavors like fruit, candy, alcohol or other flavors. Youth and young adults are using e-cigarettes because they are curious, like the taste and believe that e-cigarettes are less harmful than other tobacco products. Vaping is also increasing in popularity with marijuana users as it disguises the smell and makes it easier to hide.
According to The Surgeon General “E-cigarettes are now the most common used tobacco product among youth, surpassing conventional cigarettes in 2014.” The F.D.A. has declared youth vaping as an epidemic. F.D.A Statistics about E-cigarette Use among U.S. Youth:
Statistics about E-cigarette Use among U.S. Youth
• Among middle and high school students, 3.62 million were current users of e-cigarettes in 2018.1
• E-cigarette use, from 2017 to 2018, increased 78 percent among high school students (11.7% to 20.8%) and 48 percent among middle school students (3.3% to 4.9%) from 2017 to 2018.1
• According to a 2013-2014 survey, 81 percent of current youth e-cigarette users cited the availability of appealing flavors as the primary reason for use.2
How do we take action?
• Educate ourselves about the harms of vaping and nicotine in any form can do.
• Talk with young people about the dangers of e-cigarettes. Tell them you have a strong stance against them using any tobacco product, including e-cigarettes.
• Talk to our school principals and administrators about concerns with youth vaping. Attend PTA, Board of Education meetings and Town meetings to see what their plans are.
• Request that schools invest in sensors to detect vaping and other chemicals.
Vaping is a problem that’s not going away, and every concerned parent or guardian should get themselves up to speed on this situation and ask their schools if they have vape sensors.
IPVideo Corporation offers a vape sensor that aligns themselves to help schools address this problem. This sensor also detects air quality, room occupancy, aggression, and other chemicals. They are mounted into ceilings in bathrooms, athletic facilities, hallways, and classrooms. School officials will get email and text alerts, as well as digital alerts in video management systems. See if your school has looked into this technology.
Email me at: Consultant@TrueSecurityDesign.com
www.truesecuritydesign.com
Q: What can schools do to prevent school shootings before they happen?
Q. When we do lock down drills, I have to use a key to lock my classroom door. I have found it to be difficult to do when I’m nervous.Is there a way we can do this faster and without going into the hallway?
Reacting to Green Light Bill
Adam Pascal revisits his career 'So Far'
Annual West Hempstead’s Got Talent to return in July
Our Lady of Lourdes School says farewell to Mrs. Murphy
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5360
|
__label__wiki
| 0.770188
| 0.770188
|
La vie en albums
My 9th birthday present was a copy of The Beatles' 'Please Please Me'. That Christmas, my parents bought me 'With The Beatles', a month after its release. I played them both to death on my dad's Ekco gramophone. I have measured out my life on earth with albums such as these, so I'm going to spotlight one each week. What about you? Would you like to (re-)appraise something dear to your heart?
Wayne Shorter: Native Dancer
Here's one that they don't particularly like in my monumental Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, LP & Cassette. Two measly stars they give it. But then they're not that keen on Weather Report either, partly because Wayne Shorter didn't play enough sax with them. I was slightly disappointed myself when I saw Shorter playing with an electric quartet at the North Sea Jazz Festival back in the late '80s, but it wasn't long before he was appearing again in the acoustic settings of what one might uncharitably call his 'dotage'.
The thing about Mr. Weird, as he was dubbed, was that he was never afraid to experiment. Like Herbie Hancock in that respect, who also broke purists' hearts when he went all Future Shock. But I suppose the greatest and most influential jazz musicians, like Duke Ellington and Miles Davis, were not only not afraid to experiment, but also felt that it was their appointed duty to do so.
And what lovelier music with which to experiment than Brazilian? Richard Cook and Brian Morton, the compilers of the mighty reference tome, found 1974's Native Dancer 'a bland samba setting which does more to highlight Nascimento's vague and uncommitted vocal delivery than the leader's saxophone playing'. I have to stamp my feet and take issue with that on several counts: Milton Nascimento is one of Brazil's most original talents, with an extraordinary ethereal falsetto, and if he sings wordlessly at times, it is far from vague or uncommitted; the music that he and Shorter concocted (roughly sharing the writing credits, with one track by Herbie Hancock, who features on piano) has little to do with samba, nor bossa nova for that matter; and the leader's saxophone – both tenor and soprano – is integral to the successful fusion of genres. So there, Messrs. Cook and Morton!
The gorgeous Nascimento staple, 'Ponta de Areia', is I guess a case in point, with Nascimento's wordless vocal giving way to Shorter's soprano that slows things right down in a delicate mid-section before the group comes back to lead us out. 'Beauty And The Beast' is a stop-go Shorter composition in which the Brazilian sits out. Shorter's soprano sax soars high above an earthy theme prodded by Hancock's funky piano refrain. Nascimento returns to sing 'Tarde' in the more traditional vocal vein of someone like Caetano Veloso, before ceding to a beautiful Shorter tenor solo that's just long enough to satisfy any purist. Neither Nascimento's singing nor Shorter's tenor and soprano playing are in any way uncommitted in the dramatic 'Miracle of The Fishes', which ends the first side in rousing fashion.
Shorter's 'Diana' opens Side 2, a brief vehicle for his soprano sax and Herbie Hancock's elegant piano. It ushers in 'From The Lonely Afternoons', possibly the most seamless combination of wordless falsetto and (tenor) sax on the album. Shorter switches back to soprano sax for 'Ana Maria' to slow down the pace, before Nascimento comes back into the mix for a simmering 'Lilia' propelled by Roberto Silva's superb drumming, Airto Moreira's percussive armoury and the insistent organ of the splendidly-named Wagner Tiso. Hancock's 'Joanna's Theme' wraps up the proceedings with a typically Herbacious piece that offers Shorter space to illustrate that 'less is more'.
I brought this one back from New York many moons ago, along with Miles Davis' In A Silent Way. I must have been fusion-mad at the time. Native Dancer is arguably Shorter's most successful attempt to fuse jazz with any other kind of genre, be it funk or, as in this case, Brazilian music – or a bit of both, as on Weather Report's Tale Spinnin' the following year. He had been an established star since his tenure with Art Blakey, but the album opened the ears of the world outside of Brazil to the extraordinary voice of Milton Nascimento. Search as hard as I might, I have still not found a more satisfying showcase for his talents than this lovely lyrical precursor of what we now call 'world jazz'.
Posted by Mark Sampson: Man of Straw at 06:06 No comments:
The Gladiators: Naturality
A delivery man arrived the other afternoon with a box full of whole-foods from the UK. I congratulated him on finding us. He said that he'd had to ask around, but I was known around these parts – a creator of BDs, wasn't I? Bandes dessinées, or strip cartoons. I laughed and told him 'nothing so glamorous; just a plain-old writer'. Chinese whispers at work even in the heart of the countryside.
If I were a creator of BDs, and weirdly it was my first creative flowering (as a very young child, I used to draw strip cartoons of Western characters I dreamt up), The Gladiators would make rather a good subject for a cartoon book for adults. This strange genre is popular in France and Belgium), and The Glads were popular in France well into this century.
Apparently, the future reggae vocal trio met up as masons on a building site – perhaps even a government yard in Trenchtown – and they would harmonise songs over their sandwiches. What a lovely place to start that would be: lead singer, Albert Griffiths, trying out his self-penned songs on acoustic guitars with future bass player, Clinton Fearon, and future rhythm guitarist, Gallimore Sutherland. Later, Griffiths takes his songs to the legendary Studio One and records them with an early version of The Gladiators. When one of the original members leaves soon after 'Hello Carol' tops the Jamaican charts, Griffiths remembers the singing masons and recruits Clinton Fearon. Then, when the other original member also leaves, along comes Mr. Sutherland, sans hard hat and sandwiches.
Soon after, the new Gladiators are discovered by Virgin, as reggae fever breaks out in the British Isles. Which is where I, the author, come into it. I'd caricature myself, R. Crumb style, drooling over a copy of the Virgin Front Line sampler, with a thought bubble from my head as I greedily read the sticker, An album for the price of a single. (This'll be the best 69p I've spent in ages!). I fall in love with the two tracks from Trenchtown Mix Up, 'Looks Is Deceiving' and 'Know Yourself Mankind', and go to see them twice in quick succession in different venues in Brighton, each time dancing holes in my shoes to the stream of simple, irresistibly catchy reggae. Along with the Bhundu Boys from Zimbabwe, a decade or so later, the two concerts will prove possibly the most joyful, infectious music ever witnessed on stage.
After four great albums for Virgin, the boys make the mistake of recording a fifth with Eddie Grant and Aswad in London. The label decides that the magic has gone and cuts them from their roster. But does that stop them? No, it does not. They find another label and cut Back To Roots. My first wife and I change the song 'We are the warriors' to 'We are the worriers' and adopt it as our theme song. They go on producing easy-skanking 'reggaemusic' all through the '80s and '90s, but while my first marriage goes down the pan, I have weightier concerns than the steadily waning career of The Gladiators.
I catch up with them again in Cash Express, Brive, around 25 years later – in the form of a defective boxed set of three-rather-than-four of their 21st century releases, plus a DVD of a live set in Montmartre, Paris. It's good solid stuff that lacks the memorable quality of the Virgin albums. And the live concert has rather too much audience participation. Clinton Fearon has left, never to return, in the mid '90s to record a succession of fine solo albums, but Griffiths, Sutherland and a core of brilliant reggae musicians – including Ansel Collins and 'Wire' Lindo – have continued to tour in Europe ever since. When Griffiths' health packs up, along with his distinctive lead voice, he hands the baton on to two sons, Al and Anthony. Gallimore's son Vernon joins sometime later and, in 2013, this almost unrecognisable gladiatorial group records an album featuring Droop Lion, whose uncle is... David Webber, the first of the original, original Gladiators to leave back in their Studio One days. Whereupon, I could wind things up in a final drawing – with old man Sutherland looking like the wreck of the Hesperus – headlined by the Jamaica Observer, 'The Gladiators back in arena'.
Naturality has only just entered the family fold, courtesy of the local junk shop. But I've been dancing with a wide grin on my face for longer than I care to remember to the title track on an indispensable compilation CD, Dreadlocks The Time Is Now. Ever since consulting my friend and junkiest vinyl junkie, a leading expert on Jamaican phonetics, I've heard 'Naturality' as 'Naturally tea' (slightly elided to 'Nat'r'lly tea') – which probably explains why Griffiths sings 'Nat'r'lly tea makes me the man that I am'. Certainly something there for the Tea Marketing Board to consider using as a strap line.
It's already fast becoming a reggae favourite high up on Mount Zion with the likes of the Mighty Diamonds' Right Time, Burning Spear's Man In The Hills and Culture's Two Sevens Clash. Powered by a band that includes one of the greatest drummers on the planet, Sly Dunbar, the first side is concentrated riddimical nourishment, while the second side is only slightly diluted by comparison. Clinton Fearon contributes 'Get Ready', which featured on the third Virgin Front Line sampler, an evident victim of '70s inflation as 69p rocketed to £2.15. The final track of the album continues the gladiatorial tradition of covering Bob Marley songs: a lolloping six-minute version of 'Exodus' gets a slight lyrical make-over as 'Africa, the country of Jah people'. Otherwise, the songs are all Albert Griffiths'. This was the man who once wrote a song called 'Mr. Baldwin'. I've never heard it, but love to think of it as a reggae homage to that most inert of British prime ministers, Stanley Baldwin. Well, his 'Counting My Blessing' contains the wonderful quirky couplet, 'I'm counting my blessing/I'm counting it one by one'. Figure that.
Griffiths also takes the lion's share of the vocals, his slightly pinched timbre a little akin to that of Lee 'Scratch' Perry. Fearon and Sutherland contribute what the former described as 'an answering kind of choir harmony'. Their falsetto answers to the musical questions posed by Griffiths is indeed 'a sort of trademark there' – as are the relentless rhythmical drive, the heart-stopping key changes and the catchy melodies. They add up to something musically very special.
The dedication in my BD of the mighty Gladiators might be Griffiths' delicious words of admonishment from Trenchtown Mix Up, 'Chatty chatty mouth, be wise and know your culture'.
Donald Byrd: Black Byrd
The inner sleeve boasts, 'Blue Note hits a new note'. Pictured are artists new to the great jazz label's catalogue – like the Texan saxophonist, Ronnie Laws, and the borderline muzak-al guitarist, Earl Klugh – and artists old, like singer Carmen McRae, vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, pianist Gene Harris and trumpeter Donald Byrd, all trying to re-invent themselves for a new era of 'mini-skirts, maxi-skirts and Afro hair-dos'.
Gone now is the label's trademark blue and white motif at the centre of the record – to be replaced by an uninspired solid dark blue with black lettering – and gone, too, are all those marvellous, strikingly simple but graphically bold covers by Reid Miles and others (even Andy Warhol contributed some distinctive etchings, if that's what they were). By contrast, this photograph of what looks like an old-style church meeting framed in a clunky green and red design seems heavy-handed and inelegant. What's more, there are no personnel details to be found, the sine qua non of jazz albums. Francis Wolff and Alfred Lion, the label's founding fathers, would have turned in their retirement homes – and not in a euphoric way.
But let not that take anything away from the music. Throughout a long and varied career, Donald Toussaint L'Ouverture Byrd II was, as his name suggests, a class act. The year was 1973 and it was his first album of a few more with the Mizell brothers' production team, who were at one point everywhere in the Blue Note stable buildings. It's Larry and not brother Fonce who wrote each of the seven tracks on the album. The tunes and the hooks stay in your head, but the lyrics are not complicated. 'Get in the groove and move,' is a representative sample.
Coming two years after Ethiopian Knights, which did the rounds while I was at Exeter University, it's a more obviously funky affair than its serpentine, exploratory predecessor and the influence of Sly Stone, James Brown, Curtis Mayfield et al is there for all to spot. It gave me, for one, the more instant kind of gratification that I needed at that time. Unsurprisingly, it was at one point – maybe still is – the biggest selling album in Blue Note's distinguished history.
As a trumpeter, Byrd was less of an individual stylist than the likes of Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown and Lee Morgan, but unlike them he wasn't cut off in his prime. Less individual perhaps, but longer lived and more ubiquitous. There was a time in the mid 1950s when he seemed to be on just every record released. If you're looking for some great straight-up-and-down small-group hard bop, the sides he made with alto saxophonist Gigi Gryce and a little later with baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams are as good as it gets.
For all his ubiquity, he was often somewhere near the cutting edge of what was happening in the wonderful world of jazz. Not as close as, say, Miles Davis or Herbie Hancock, but always thereabouts and always ready to try things. A New Perspective in 1963 was one of the first jazz albums to use a gospel choir and the point when Byrd's trumpet cuts through the voices on 'Christo Redentor' has to be one of the most spine-tingling moments in modern music of any denomination.
The use of voices on Black Byrd (the Mizells again) makes the record even closer to the mainstream and helps to account for its commercial success. 'Flight Time', the opening track, starts with the sound of a 707 jet (courtesy of Elektra Records, apparently) before segueing into an insistent single note picked out on a keyboard and the kind of pulsing rhythmical refrain that lodges somewhere deep in your nether regions. Byrd's trumpet states the hook on the title track that follows and feeds it through a wah-wah when 'we listen to the horn, carrying on'. This was the age of the wah-wah pedal and Byrd vies with the guitarist to get the most mileage out of the device. It probably dates it as much as anything on the album, but the funk is pure and irresistible.
'Love's So Far Away' is taken at a lick that prefigures the Places and Spaces album a few years later. It was the album when jazz-funk tipped into disco and I still play the compelling 'Change (Makes You Want To Hustle)' at parties. It's also very reminiscent of flautist Bobbi Humphrey's Harlem River Drive, another artist in the stable who was 'steered' down the same path by the Mizell Brothers.
There's more hard-driving motorway funk on the second side. As someone on YouTube commented, Donald Byrd's 'always giving eargasms' and he's at his most eargasmic on the opener, 'Mr. Thomas'. His trumpet is crisp, bright and clean. He plays in unison with whoever's on flute for 'Sky High', which is as pretty a melody as the final 'Where Are We Going?' – which was covered, seductively and gorgeously of course, by Marvin Gaye. In between is another funkin'-for-fun track, 'Slop Jar Blues', which has always alarmed me a little. 'Sitting on a slop jar...' What is a slop jar? Does it have anything to do with water closets? As Marvin might say, 'What's going on?'
Donald Byrd not only appeared as a leader or a sideman on too many albums to list, but he also taught at Howard University and around the time of Black Byrd, he would nurture the brief but successful career of his student protégés, The Blackbyrds. I picked up three of their albums at the time, including City Life with its classic 'Rock Creek Park' ('Doin' it in the park/Doin' it after dark/In Rock Creek Park...'), but abandoned them around the same time as I abandoned Donald Byrd, after Places And Spaces.
But in The Donald's case, abandonment was only ever going to be temporary. I went back in time and discovered those wonderful small-group recordings with Gigi Gryce and with Pepper Adams. And every now and then, I spin Black Byrd and its successors to remind myself of just what a funky dude Donald Toussaint L'Ouverture Byrd could be. As someone else on YouTube commented, 'Byrd just knew how to make great music'.
The Lester Young Story vol 3
Many, many moons ago I spent nine months or so in the 6th Earl of Harrowby's minor stately home: a big crenellated Victorian barn of a place where I would smoke my daily menthol cigarette as I lay between a pair of Wharfedale speakers listening to one of my few records at the end of another unreal working day.
From time to time, the Earl's granddaughter would come to stay. Her name was either Suzan or Suzanne. I can't be sure now because his lordship pronounced it Suzarne – which could have served for either variation. She must have been in her early twenties: a nice jolly-hockey-sticks type with no airs and graces but gracious enough to befriend a youth from Belfast who was working as her grandfather's assistant archivist. I reckon she would have married simply but happily and would have been a good mother to three or four children. She probably took them on picnics when they were young and encouraged them to learn some obscure musical instrument like an oboe or a bassoon.
If I remember correctly, she drove a black Morris Minor – or something very similar. One dark winter's evening, she proposed driving us both to the little nearby town of Stone, Staffs., where there was a tiny cinema that was showing Lady Sings The Blues. I knew nothing at the time about Billie Holiday, but realised that Diana Ross was once the lead singer of The Supremes. I believe Richard Pryor played 'Piano Man', probably as a comic and genial guy who bore no relation to the misogynistic brute that Billie seemed to attract. I can't remember; I've never again seen the film – partly, I suspect, because I know enough now to recognise that Diana Ross could neither act nor sing like Lady Day. Besides, I can never forgive her for turning Berry Gordy commercially against the more gifted Mary Wells.
I'm pretty sure, too, that the film was tinted with enough Hollywood gloss to conceal the reality of Billie Holiday's truly wretched abused and drug-addicted life. Did it, I wonder now, cast someone to wear a pork-pie hat and play his tenor sax at a jaunty angle? If it did, I wouldn't have appreciated who Lester Young was and why the man whom Billie dubbed 'Prez' was almost as mythical as Bird. It was the diminutive boyfriend of a truly elfin friend who later introduced me to another of life's abused and drug-addicted stars.
A little further down the Sampson timeline, when I was still getting used to the millstone around my neck of full-time work, an unassuming man with a florid complexion and a fragile constitution, who hid away from the general public in the finance back-room of Brighton Unemployment Benefit Office, established that I was serious about my music. Generously and trustingly he lent me his entire collection of the Columbia recordings that Billie and Lester made together, often in the context of Teddy Wilson's 'orchestra'.
Some years later, I watched and recorded onto video the famous American TV special, The Sound of Jazz, which caught the pair of platonic friends together at the weary end of both their careers. The way in which Billie Holiday watched the man who had dubbed her 'Lady Day' touches me every time I re-watch it. As if she and she alone understood her friend the President, while he understood her as no other man had ever done before or since. In another two years, they were both dead. First Prez and then Lady Day.
For a while at 18 or however old I was, I was a little bit in love with Diana Ross as Billie Holiday. These days I'm still in love, but with the real Billie Holiday. Not in a physical way, you understand, but in a strictly artistic way. The same way that I'm still in love with Scott Fitzgerald. Reading his collected short stories now, after a gap of many years, I still marvel at the coolness of his vision and the elegance of his prose. Anyway, it sent me looking for a Billie Holiday record, because she had that unique gift as a jazz singer to transform into genuine art some of the frivolous pop songs one associates with the era of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.
In fact, she sings on but the first three tracks of Volume 3 of The Lester Young Story. All my other classic Billie Holiday is either on cassette tape or courtesy of a 10-CD boxed set of her complete Columbia recordings that was cheaper than it had any right to be. So they can't count unless I subsequently change my editorial policy.
'Everybody's Laughing' (not to be confused with the infectious confection cooked up by Phil Fearon & Galaxy), 'Here It Is Tomorrow Again' and 'Say It With a Kiss' all date from 1938, and all were recorded with the Teddy Wilson Orchestra, which contained much of the personnel featured in the 3½ Count Basie sides that complete Volume 3. Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer's 'Say It With a Kiss' is probably the best of the bunch, but it's hardly in the same class as 'Pennies From Heaven', 'These Foolish Things', 'Gloomy Sunday' or 'Back In Your Own Backyard'.
Nevertheless, it's still instructive to compare them with the other two featured vocalists on Volume 3: 'Mr. Five by Five', the improbably overweight Jimmy Rushing, a fine but unsubtle 'blues shouter', and Helen Humes, a Basie hardy perennial, who does her stuff with minimal fuss. As Michael Brooks writes in his excellent liner notes, she 'comes in for her 32 bars then exits gracefully without disturbing the mood of the record'. Neither of them have that ability to transform a melody by inflecting the lyrics or disjointing the rhythm. Nor, of course, do either of them have that extraordinary timbre that can suggest both joy and suffering simultaneously. Only maybe Madeleine Peyroux of modern jazz singers comes close to approximating it – without necessarily convincing you that it might be anything more than a vocal affectation.
So the focus on this record is mainly on Lester Young and his deceptively light and breezy tenor saxophone. Given the constraints of the old 78rpm records, there's sometimes no room for anything more than a brief interjection. Eight bars or less. But sometimes, the orchestra takes a back seat while he is allowed to stretch out in 24, 32 or even – on '12th Street Rag' – 64 bars. Not that I'm counting, you realise. Whatever the duration, though, it's always uniquely and recognisably Lester Young.
It's that lightness of touch. Michael Brooks, again, makes a very perceptive comparison with the cricketer, Frank Woolley. My dad remembers big Frank and, having seen the infuriatingly talented David Gower, who could make batting look so easy on some days and so difficult on others (mainly by giving away his wicket in a way that any self-respecting batsman shouldna oughta), I understand the analogy: 'While other players used brute strength to thrash the ball, Woolley was all delicacy, timing and wrist-work. A relaxed motion towards the ball, bat flowing as gracefully as a ballet dancer's arm movement and the ball would be over the boundary... before the opposing players' reflexes could even respond. And Lester generates as much beauty and excitement without even seeming to perspire'.
Enter The Count, the album is sub-titled. So the listener can revel in the famous Count Basie rhythm section that powered a band including Young, Buck Clayton, Harry 'Sweets' Edison and Dickie Wells. However, if I hadn't been the kind of cheapskate to opt for a bargain in the sales, I would have picked Volumes 1 and 2, where the real gems of the Holiday/Young partnership are to be found. Thank heavens for CDs!
Mark Sampson: Man of Straw
Born in London, raised in Belfast, further-educated at Exeter and Sussex universities, I'm a professional dilettante, a family man and tireless dog-walker. You can listen to Lost & Found, my monthly radio show on www.expatsradio.com and check out my author page on Amazon.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5364
|
__label__wiki
| 0.73812
| 0.73812
|
Aug 20, 2014 | Memories
Long before Concorde went into service and as long ago as 1943, the Coventry firm of Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth developed an experimental, tail-less jet aircraft, the AW52 which became known as the Flying Wing. This aircraft had no fuselage or tail section and was essentially a large fixed wing powered by two Rolls Royce Nene jet turbines. It was the first of its kind in the world and was developed as a prototype
for a planned six-engined passenger version. Whilst on a test flight East of Leamington on Monday May 30th 1949, the prototype aircraft was at 3,000 feet when it began to oscillate violently and pilot J O (Jo) Lancaster, fearing the plane was about to break up, bailed out. The plane which was on the secret list crashed in open country near Leamington Hastings. Jo Lancaster parachuted to safety and landed in a field at the rear of The Cuttle inn at Long Itchington narrowly avoiding ‘touch down’ in the adjacent canal.
It was the first ever deployment of the Martin-Baker ejection seat in an in-flight accident. Many people can recall seeing the Flying Wing. The sound of jet engines was fairly uncommon back in the late nineteen forties and given the low altitude that the plane frequently flew at, its appearance seldom went unremarked. Colin Jennings recalled one such occasion ‘As a fourteen year old boy I was in the Pump Room Gardens when I saw this extraordinary sight in the sky, a plane without a fuselage or tailplane flying very low from West to East. It was quite unlike anything I had ever seen in a book or film. When I got home and told my family about this strange aircraft we discovered that it was called the Flying Wing. I am sure some friends who I told about it thought it was all the product of an overwrought imagination’ Alan Griffin remember seeing it fly over his home in Southam and his parents stood in the back garden and witnessed the accident that befell it on that May afternoon in 1949. A second prototype continued to fly with the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough until 1954 when development ceased. Sixty years on, the American aviation company Northrop is engaged in research for a large multi-engined plane based on the ‘Flying Wing’ principle which Armstrong Whitworth had successfully demonstrated in the AW52.
J O (Jo) Lancaster was born in 1919 and flew heavy bombers during the Second World War. He completed 54 operations including participation in the 1000 bomber raids. After the war he became a test pilot for Saunders-Roe and Armstrong Whitworth and clocked up over thirteen thousand hours on a wide variety of aircraft of all types. The Martin Baker company is still in existence manufacturing ejection seats. The lives of 7,300 pilots have been saved thanks to their seats
Alan Griffin
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5365
|
__label__wiki
| 0.553519
| 0.553519
|
Pound and Frank, Part 3
Frank Sworn in as SEC Chairman Douglas Looks On (LC)
[This post concludes a series on my book Tocqueville’s Nightmare. The series starts here.]
The font of the “about-face narrative” is Jerome Frank’s remark, in If Men Were Angels (1943), “The reader of Pound’s earlier writings, indeed, rubs his eyes when he peruses Pound's 1940 volume [Contemporary Juristic Theory] ‘Can this be the same man?’ he asks.” Rarely does whoever cites the passage acknowledge that Frank’s book, dedicated “to Mr. Justice William O. Douglas who, while Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, superlatively demonstrated that effective administration can be made an important instrument of true democracy,” was anything but a dispassionate review of Pound’s writings on administrative law. It was, rather, a shot in a running gun battle between the former dean and his New Deal critics.
Jerome Frank’s career and the origins of his jurisprudential quarrel with Roscoe Pound are well known–or easily knowable from the works of Neil Duxbury, Robert Jerome Glennon, N.E.H. Hull, and Laura Kalman. Even before publishing his sensational Law and the Modern Mind (1930), Yale law professors referred to him as “our sort of practitioner,” one who had “become adept at the art of advocacy without ceasing to be the intellectual adventurer.” In particular, Frank had both an insider’s understanding of the corporate reorganization practice and a revulsion against the wealth it brought its most forceful practitioners, such as Robert T. Swaine of the Cravath firm. In this, he was much like Yale’s William O. Douglas, who had experienced the corporate reorganization practice at Cravath. The two collaborated on law review articles that drew Swaine’s fire.
As Hull in particular relates, in the early 1930s, Frank’s jurisprudential sallies, in which Karl Llewellyn sometimes joined, provoked Pound’s ire. While still dean of the Harvard Law School, he usually regained his composure and believed his capacious jurisprudence would contain the radical implications of the legal realists’ work. His equanimity survived the U.S. Supreme Court’s revamping of the Contract and Due Process Clause in the Blaisdell and Nebbia decisions of 1934. 1937 changed all that. Pound did not join in the fight over the Court-packing plan, announced the day he left San Francisco on an around-the-world trip, but it and the presence of Frank, Douglas and other legal realists in the Roosevelt administration made him fear that the “give-it-up” philosophies of his jurisprudential rivals might prevail. (That James Landis, his successor as HLS dean, had supported FDR’s plan, was particularly galling.) When incoming ABA president Arthur T. Vanderbilt offered Pound the chairmanship of the Special Committee on Administrative Law, the former dean hesitated only briefly before accepting. (The encouragement of Joseph N. Welch, better known for his magnificent role in the Army-McCarthy hearings, proved decisive.)
In the quarrel following the circulation of Pound’s report in the summer of 1938, heat predominated over light. Pound repeatedly displayed the willful solipsism indistinguishable from dishonesty that had infuriated the HLS faculty in his final years as dean. He pretended that Vanderbilt did not expect him to draft a statute as well as a statement of first principles, even though any reader of their correspondence could see that Vanderbilt did. In his report, Pound cited Swaine as an objective commentator on the dangers of “politically constituted administrative bureau” without acknowledging that the Cravath lawyer, Douglas (then serving as SEC chairman), and Frank (an SEC member) had a history. With Stalin’s show trials just concluded and the House Un-American Committee just beginning its investigations, he professed amazement that anyone would see his characterization of his rivals as Marxists as dangerous Red-baiting when the legal philosopher Morris R. Cohen politely pointed out that it was just that. After the report came out, he told Frank he did not mean to single out the SEC even though he had just brought an audience of investment bankers to its feet by blasting Frank and his agency.
In his replies, Frank was far from a model of scholarly detachment. If Pound accused administration of sheltering dangerous official discretion, Frank returned fire with the tu quoque argument that at least the SEC’s staff did not use the rubber hose on its adversaries as did police under the judiciary’s negligent oversight. Even the SEC’s general counsel thought another, similar riposte to be “hitting below the belt.” And, as the dedication of If Men Were Angels suggests, Frank could be excessive in heroizing Douglas. At the ABA meeting that received Pound’s report, Frank declared that “patient justice is a quiet virtue with” Douglas. (“Of course it is,” I can’t help saying to myself. “Just ask any of his wives.”)
Of the two, Frank had the better understanding of the stakes. American lawyers were going to reach an accommodation with the administrative state regardless of what an ex-law dean said or did. Yet when the ABA’s proposal was introduced in Congress as the Walter-Logan bill in early 1939, the recent history of the antibureaucracy clause threatened to repeat itself, only to devastating effect. Congress had largely ignored the ABA’s proposals to reform administrative procedure for years, but after FDR’s attempted purge of party rivals in the 1938 primaries, congressional leaders saw it, the Hatch Act and an investigations of the NLRB as ways to reduce the power of “third termites” in the executive departments and administrative agencies. The Walter-Logan bill need not enact Dicey’s rule of law; it would suffice if it tied up the NLRB, the SEC, and the Wage and Hour Division while courts worked out sensible interpretations of its ambiguous provisions. (In this sense it was “a ripper bill,” as an early student of the measure once characterized it to me.) The politicians, prompted by one of Pound’s acolytes, Judge Harold Stephens of the DC Circuit, were also shrewd enough to realize that Pound’s imprimatur could cloak their partisan calculations. No one “stands out more indisputably above the clamors and passions of the day,” one declaimed. “When he speaks in terms of our national future, all of us, Republican, Democrat or dissenter, must pay heed.”
If Pound in his “anecdotage” (Jerome Frank) was thus willing to lend his “great name to one side of an important controversy” (Kenneth C. Davis), then he “had it coming to him” (James Landis). A generation of liberal legal academics proved more than happy to do the honors. Lost in the sound and fury, though, was the incident’s implications for the federal administrative state. As G. Edward White has noted, the Walter-Logan bill was, for its time, a moderate measure. It stopped well-short of Dicey’s ideal. Even its ambiguous language raising the specter of heightened judicial review was dropped before passage. Long before the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 a procedural notion of the rule of law had won broad support.
I’ll conclude this series of posts with the summary of its conclusion I wrote for OUP:
Corrupt Legislation (LC)
Good Administration (LC)
Elihu Vedder's two murals in the Library of Congress, Corrupt Legislation and Good Administration, are arresting depictions of the plight the creators of the American administrative state hoped to escape and the sound and just government they hoped to attain. But if they expected to avoid Tocqueville's nightmare, they also knew that administrators would not stay good on their own, and they designed the administrative state accordingly. Much has changed since 1940, including the rise of rulemaking as the most controversial form of administrative action. Still, the emergence of a procedural rule of law during the heyday administrative adjudication remains relevant. First, the various methods of holding administrators accountable tried out before 1940 are part of a repertoire that we still turn to today. Second, this history shows that we can have an administrative state without transgressing fundamental principles of American governance.
Labels: Administrative law, Politics, Scholarship -- Articles and essays, Securities and Finance
Tsai on Declaring Independence
Robert Tsai, American University Washington College of Law, has a nice op-ed in the Boston Globe inspired by his recently published book, America’s Forgotten Constitutions. It begins:
On the Fourth of July, Americans celebrate the moment when our forefathers “dissolved the political bonds” between the 13 Colonies and Great Britain—cutting themselves free of a ruler thousands of miles away, and asserting their right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness under a new form of government.
Today, we see this as a watershed in our grand civic narrative: a break in historical time that ended one chapter of the story and began another. But to see their claim to liberty as a unique moment in our history would be an error. In fact, once Americans declared independence, they never really stopped. Since the founding era, dozens of groups have taken the message to heart and asserted the right to self-rule, again and again.
Labels: Historians, Originalism and the Founding Period
A Sunday Book List: Civil Rights
[This is the second in a series of special book roundups reflecting on Ph.D. reading lists and general exams. The first in the series can be found here.]
Although few books on my exam reading lists were categorized specifically as "civil rights," many on the topic found their way into sections on constitutional law, urban change, 20th century politics, and the American West. Here in this post, I’ve gathered together the books on civil rights that populated my three exam fields--“U.S. History from 1865 to Present,” “Anglo-American Legal History,” and “Race, Gender & Place”--plus a few more that deserve to be on any list but didn't quite make my own.
C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (1st ed., 1955).
Steven Lawson and Charles Payne, Debating the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1968 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006)
Courts and Lawyers
Kenneth Mack, Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer (Harvard University Press, 2012)
Risa Goluboff, The Lost Promise of Civil Rights (Harvard University Press, 2007)
Gerald Rosenberg, The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change (University of Chicago Press, 1991)
Michael Klarman, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality (Oxford University Press, 2004)
Charles Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (University of California Press, 1995)
Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Harvard, 1981)
John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (University of Illinois Press, 1994)
Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement (Oxford University Press, 2011)
Lance Hill, The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement (University of North Carolina Press, 2006)
The Long Civil Rights Movement and Economic Rights
Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” Journal of American History 91 (2005): 1233-1263.
Eric Arnesen, “Reconsidering the ‘Long Civil Rights Movement',” Historically Speaking (April 2009): 31-34.
Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950 (Norton & Co., 2008)
Nancy MacLean, Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace (Harvard University Press, 2008)
Civil Rights in the North and West
Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton University Press, 1996)
Thomas Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (Random House, 2008)
Mark Brilliant, The Color of America Has Changed: How Racial Diversity Shaped Civil Rights Reform in California, 1941-1978 (Oxford University Press, 2012)
Civil Rights and Suburbanization
Andrew Wiese, Places of Their Own: African-American Suburbanization in Twentieth-Century America (University of Chicago Press, 2005)
Becky Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920–1965 (University of Chicago Press, 2002)
Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton University Press, 2005)
Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton University Press, 2007)
Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton University Press, 2005)
Civil Rights and National Politics
Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2000)
And there are, of course, all the books we’ve highlighted through Sunday Book Roundups and new release posts. You can sift through many of them by checking out those tagged under “civil rights.”
For more thoughts on civil rights historiography take a look at these posts: one by guest blogger Christopher Capozzola here, and a second by guest blogger Susan D. Carle here.
What else is essential on a "Civil Rights Movement" reading list?
Posted by Anonymous at 4:00 AM 1 comment: Links to this post
Labels: Civil Rights, Graduate education, Historiography, Scholarship -- Books
Sunday Book Roundup
First up this week is an interview with Doron S. Ben-Atar and Richard D. Brown about their book, Taming Lust: Crimes Against Nature in the Early Republic (University of Pennsylvania Press) on New Books in Law.
New Books in History interviews Luke Harlow about his new book, Religion, Race and the Making of Confederate Kentucky: 1830-1880 (Cambridge).
The Guardian has a review of Penny Loaves and Butter Cheap: Britain in 1846 by Stephen Bates (Head of Zeus).
"Eschewing any great ambition to shake the standard accounts of one of the great set pieces of British constitutional history, Bates does a sturdy job of providing an introduction to the key personalities and positions of the day."
The Washington Post has a list of the "Five best books by American presidents", including Theodore Roosevelt's history, The Naval War of 1812.
H-Net has posted a review of Hilary McD. Beckles's Britain's Black Debt: Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Native Genocide (University of West Indies Press).
"This book will appeal to political leaders, legal scholars, academics, and activists engaged in the reparatory justice movement through its insightful observation that the legacies of the colonial paradigm do not lie quiescent in the past, but are galvanized in current discursive and institutional practices of racism, destitution, and exploitation."
H-Net also has a review of Mary Jane Warde's When the Wolf Came: The Civil War and the Indian Territory (University of Arkansas Press), "a complete study of the Civil War in the Indian Territory that should have a place on your bookshelf."
For those looking for some poetry to read this summer, the recent SCOTUS cell phone decision has inspired NPR to make Tape for the Turn of the Year: A Poem (Norton & Co.) by A.R. Ammons "this week's must read."
"Privacy advocates cheered the unanimous ruling. The police weren't so psyched, fearing it would make their work harder. Basically, the Court decided that the Founding Fathers had never anticipated carrying one's whole life in a handheld device, and so that device deserved the same privacy protection the Founders had fought so hard for.
But literature has another answer, an odd one I'll admit, that also involves a handheld device called a book. Some writers protect their privacy by hiding in plain sight."
Salon has an excerpt from America and Britain: Was There Ever a Special Relationship? by Guy Arnold (Oxford University Press).
Posted by Anonymous at 3:30 AM No comments: Links to this post
Labels: Civil War, Crime and Criminal Law, English legal history, Indian Law, Religion, Scholarship -- Books, Slavery
We're grateful to Josiah Daniel for his comment on the post on Klinefelter and Laredo's paper on the attorney-client privilege and reproduce it here: "It is absurd that the A-C privilege should be considered eternal. Lawyers' files are great troves of primary source materials for historians. Interested readers should consult the Organization of American Historians report: Historians and Access to the Files of Lawyers prepared by the Ad Hoc Committee on Access to Lawyers’ Files [Kermit L. Hall (chair), Paul Finkelman, N. E. H. Hull, Stanley N. Katz] available on the ASLH website."
From the Junto: "Of Class and Courts-Martial: The Case of Ensign McVicar," a guest post by Emily Merrill (Ph.D. candidate, University of Pennsylvania).
And more the Junto: Episode 11 of the Junto's regular podcast is out, and it's on the Declaration of Independence.
Thanks to @LHR_editor, we've learned of the Maryland State Archives website, Legacy of Slavery in Maryland, which has searchable databases containing the entries for "over 300,000 individuals including, white and black, slave owners, enslaved and free individuals from primarily the years of 1830 through 1880."
Summer housecleaning. An inquiry from our library director leads us to ask: If you teach at a law school, does your library systematically collect official committee documents, such as reports, minutes, or research), beyond what finds its way into a chronological series in the dean's office?
From the Canadian Legal History Blog: A recap of the awards given at the annual meeting of the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History. Congratulations to graduate students Peter Price (Queen's University) and Mary Stokes (York University) for taking away honors!
Weekend Roundup is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers.
Labels: Archives and Web Resources, Canada, Courts and judges, Fellowships Grants Honors and Awards, Legal education, military, Originalism and the Founding Period, podcasts, Research tips
An Interview with Chris Tomlins
Up on the website of the Queen Mary School of Law is The Study of Legal History and Its Place in Academia–An Interview with Professor Chris Tomlins. Although it will come as no surprise to the legions of us whom Chris has edited, here’s my favorite bit:
I am a believer in a plurality of perspectives. I want to fight intellectually to obtain a hearing for the way I think things can be done and can be done productively. I don’t want to fight to exclude other ways of doing things. One is constantly influenced by other people’s work and one wants to see that work flourish, no matter the perspective it might be advancing.
Labels: Historians
The Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse
A hearty welcome to the Blogosphere to the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse, directed by Michigan Law professor Margo Schlanger. Originating in Professor Schlanger's research files, the Clearinghouse is, as of today, "posting at least partial information on 5,947 cases, including a litigation summary for each as well as: 42,541 dockets, complaints, filings, opinions, settlements, court orders, and other documents; and citations and links to an additional 1,199 opinions. Some of these cases are historical, but many more are current; the site is strongest for cases from the 1990s to present." For example, the collection of cases on conditions in jails and prisons "span the time period from 1956 to the present." (Information on the categories collected by the Clearinghouse is here.)
Professor Schlanger's Clearinghouse and my Georgetown Law colleague Laura Donohue's State Secrets Archives are models of how legal academics can make their research available to other scholars.
Hat tip: @LHR_editor
Posted by Dan Ernst at 11:00 AM 1 comment: Links to this post
Labels: Archives and Web Resources, Civil Rights
Roscoe Pound, circa 1916
[This post continues a series on my book Tocqueville’s Nightmare. The series starts here.]
The centerpiece of Roscoe Pound’s report for the ABA’s Special Committee on Administrative Law was the phrase “administrative absolutism.” Pound defined it as “a highly centralized administration set up under complete control of the executive for the time being, relieved of judicial review and making its own regime.” The term invoked a set piece in the lore of the common law, the attempt by Stuart kings to fasten absolute monarchy upon England and the successful defense of the ancient constitution by Sir Edward Coke. It “at once conjures up visions of Tudor and Stuart excess and calls into play prejudices born of emotion and tradition,” a law professor observed. As Pound boasted, it also infuriated New Dealers “very much as a red rag does a bull,” because it cast them as latter-day subverters of a cherished legal order.
To this polemical intent, Pound added a maddening refusal to say publicly whether he actually endorsed the ABA’s bill, later introduced into Congress as the Walter-Logan bill. To an eminent tax lawyer, he protested that his committee “had nothing to with that bill” and ventured that the Board of Governors arranged for it to be after his report in ABA Reports. “I certainly should not have thought of recommending the bill in the form in which it was appended to the report.” Yet when Jerome Frank demanded that Pound say whether he supported the bill, the former dean obfuscated. “Probably I do not need to repeat,” Pound declared in an open letter to his successor as chair of the ABA committee, “but out of abundance of caution, I am saying once more as emphatically as I know how that my statement that I was not the author of the bar association bill did not mean, and in my judgment cannot be taken to mean, that I am out of accord with the Committee or the Association on the subject.”
When Pound felt free to say what he actually thought should be done to reform administrative law and procedure, he stopped well short of Dicey’s insistence on de novo review by “the ordinary courts of the land.” As he did in his St. Paul address of 1906, he opposed the granting of injunctions against administrators, because it would result in “a paralysis of administration.” De novo review, whether in an equitable action or a statutory appeal, meant “you have to take the testimony all over again, and do over again what has already been done administratively.” In his St. Paul address, Pound identified appellate courts’ excessive granting of new trials as one of “the causes of popular dissatisfaction with the administrative justice” in the United States. In 1938 he objected to the rehearing of administrative disputes. “There comes a time when we should stop reviewing facts,” Pound told a congressional committee. “So much delay is involved by multiplied appeals that, if we are assured there really has been a determination of the facts,” we did not need to substitute “the judicial tribunal for the administrative tribunal.”
Further, Pound thought that review boards created within an agency, as proposed in the ABA bill, could correct “obvious abuses now existing perhaps as well as any plan which may be devised.” When a member of his committee objected that the reviewing officials would “be influenced by, if not controlled by, the opinion of the Executive heads of the Department or Commission appointing them,” Pound was not dissuaded. The risk of bias was offset by the likelihood that the review boards’ findings would give agency chiefs and reviewing courts a better view of the basis for the disputed orders than did the “heterogeneous combination of reports and papers” that passed as a record in many administrative proceedings.
The change Pound most unequivocally sought was quite modest and in line with his longstanding approach to law reform. In his St. Paul address, he claimed that the procedural shortcomings of the common-law courts had driven Americans to seek “justice without law.” In 1938 he thought that procedure also explained the rise of administrative absolutism. Too often, he maintained, those who would overturn an administrator's ruling had to negotiate a bewildering maze of common law writs, costly injunction suits, and statutory appeals. The chances of prevailing were so uncertain, thanks to the “technicality, confusion, delay and expense in review procedure,” that clients looked not to the law but “political influence” for relief. Adopt simple statutory appeals from the agencies, Pound argued, and lawyers could go to the courts. The courts would insist on procedural fair play within the agency. Procedural fair play within the agency would make frequent judicial review unnecessary.
Thus, even Pound fell in line with the procedural notion of the rule of law. Although this discovery dispatches the “about-face” narrative, it raises a new question. If Pound and the New Dealers agreed on a procedural notion of the rule of law, what were they fighting about? The answer lies in the politics of administrative law in the late 1930s.
[The series concludes here.]
Labels: Administrative law, Scholarship -- Books
New Release: Williams, Jr., on "Prudence Crandall's Legacy"
New from Wesleyan University Press: Prudence Crandall’s Legacy: The Fight for Equality in the 1830s, Dred Scott, and Brown v. Board of Education (June 2014), by Donald E. Williams, Jr. (president pro tempore of the Connecticut State Senate). The publisher explains:
Image Credit: Connecticuthistory.org
Prudence Crandall was a schoolteacher who fought to integrate her school in Canterbury, Connecticut, and educate black women in the early nineteenth century. When Crandall accepted a black woman as a student, she unleashed a storm of controversy that catapulted her to national notoriety, and drew the attention of the most significant pro- and anti-slavery activists of the day. The Connecticut state legislature passed its infamous Black Law in an attempt to close down her school. Arrested and jailed, Crandall’s legal legacy had a lasting impact—Crandall v. State was the first full-throated civil rights case in U.S. history. The arguments by attorneys in Crandall played a role in two of the most fateful Supreme Court decisions, Dred Scott v. Sandford, and the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education. In Prudence Crandall’s Legacy, author and lawyer Donald E. Williams Jr. marshals a wealth of detail concerning the life and work of Prudence Crandall, her unique role in the fight for civil rights, and her influence on legal arguments for equality in America.
More information is available here.
Labels: Civil Rights, Education, Scholarship -- Books, Women
Tsai on War Constitutionalism
Robert L. Tsai, American University Washington College of Law, has posted Three Arguments About War, which appears in Constitutional Commentary 30 (2014) . Here is the abstract:
The rise of the United States as a military power capable of mounting global warfare and subduing domestic rebellions has helped produce a corresponding shift in the language of liberal constitutionalism. Arguments invoking war have become prevalent, increasingly creative and far-reaching, and therefore an emerging threat to rule of law values. It is not only legal limits on the capacity to wage war that have been influenced by the ascendance of war-inspired discourse; seemingly unrelated areas of law have also been reshaped by talk of war, from the constitutional rules of criminal procedure to the promise of racial and sexual equality to First Amendment freedoms.
This article starts to fill gaps in our understanding of America’s war saturated legal culture. It does so by defining the practice of war constitutionalism, drawing on rich examples from our past, identifying some of the most frequently occurring forms, and evaluating the rule of law concerns posed by each mode of war-dependent argumentation. Three major arguments are scrutinized systematically: the war justification, which relies on a claim about a live conflict; the war legacy, a historical-ethical argument drawing legal lessons from a nation’s war experience; and the war metaphor, which figuratively describes a public policy issue in war-like terminology.
Labels: Constitutional studies, Scholarship -- Articles and essays, War
Legal History on the Web: A Plea for Help
[We have the following "plea for help from the legal history community," from Edward J. Balleisen, Duke University, about his invaluable website.]
Some of you may have had occasion to make use of “Legal History on the Web,” a gateway to online resources related to legal history. Several years ago, Mitch Fraas (then a Duke History doctoral student, now Curator of Digital Research Services and Co-Director of the Digital Humanities Forum at the University of Pennsylvania) and I put this website together, which includes annotated links to
Other Web Gateways to Legal History
Library Research Guides
Primary Source Databases/Web Archives
Publishers with Legal History Lists
Workshops, Seminars, and Working Groups
Scholarly Associations and Networks
Doctoral Programs in Legal History/Law and Society
Job Market for Legal History Positions
Since the initial construction of the site, the links and descriptions have predictably crept more and more into the mists of the online past. Some content has migrated or become unavailable; still extant sites have morphed in new directions. This summer, Duke History doctoral student Ashton Merck is taking on the task of bringing the site up to date.
If you are responsible for (or even just know about) sites/webpages that require updates or that you think merit inclusion on “Legal History on the Web,” please send along the relevant information to: Ashton Merck at ashton.merck@duke.edu. It would be helpful if you could also send along suggested text for the annotation to the link, which needs to be short – just a few lines that convey what the site has to offer (see current annotations for examples).
We especially would like current links to LEGAL HISTORY SYLLABI, as these are especially prone to disappear with time.
Thanks in advance for your help in improving a community resource for scholars/students/aficionados of legal history.
Ed Balleisen, Duke University
Posted by Dan Ernst at 12:00 PM 1 comment: Links to this post
Labels: Archives and Web Resources
New Release: Bednarski on "The Life and Times of Margarida de Portu, a Fourteenth-Century Accused Poisoner"
New from the University of Toronto Press: A Poisoned Past: The Life and Times of Margarida de Portu, a Fourteenth-Century Accused Poisoner (May 2014), by Steven Bednarski (St. Jerome's University, University of Waterloo). The Press explains:
This is the story of Margarida de Portu, a fourteenth-century French medieval woman accused of poisoning her husband to death. As Bednarski points out, the story is important not so much for what it tells us about Margarida but for how it illuminates a past world. Through the depositions and accusations made in court, the reader learns much about medieval women, female agency, kin networks, solidarity, sex, sickness, medicine, and law.
Unlike most histories, this book does not remove the author from the analysis. Rather, it lays bare the working methods of the historian. Throughout his tale, Bednarski skillfully weaves a second narrative about how historians "do" history, highlighting the rewards and pitfalls of working with primary sources.
The book opens with a chapter on microhistory as a genre and explains its strengths, weaknesses, and inherent risks. Next is a narrative of Margarida's criminal trial, followed by chapters on the civil suits and appeal and Margarida's eventual fate. The book features a rough copy of a court notary, a notorial act, and a sample of a criminal inquest record in the original Latin. A timeline of Margarida's life, list of characters, and two family trees provide useful information on key people in the story. A map of late medieval Manosque is also provided.
Reviewers say:
"Nothing better stirs the hearts and minds of modern students than a lively small story abrim with the strange stuff of life long gone. Steven Bednarski knows that well; he employs microhistory's wiles to catch his readers' imaginations and sharpen their scholarly wits. This is a charming way to teach good historical method." -- Thomas V. Cohen
"Steven Bednarski has crafted an exceptionally thoughtful volume. Blending vibrant storytelling with methodological rigor, he guides readers through the personal experience of historical analysis in all of its various demands, occasional frustrations, and exhilarating discoveries. He simultaneously brings to life the detailed and intricate world of a late-fourteenth-century woman, and prompts vital questions about the very nature and limit of the historical enterprise." -- Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane
Labels: Courts and judges, Crime and Criminal Law, Medieval law, Scholarship -- Books, Women
[This post continues my guided tour through my recently published book, Tocqueville’s Nightmare: The Administrative State Emerges in America, 1900-1940. The series starts here.]
I’ll begin this post with the summary I prepared for my publisher of the last chapter of Tocqueville’s Nightmare, “Pound and Frank.” (You’ll recall that the chapter follows one on the battle over administrative law and procedure in New York in 1938.) Then I’ll go back to the historical controversy that prompted me to write about Roscoe Pound in the first place. In later posts, I’ll explain how the chapter completes the arc of the book.
Here’s that summary:
Events in New York proved to be a dress rehearsal for the Walter-Logan bill, introduced in Congress in 1939 and vetoed by FDR late the following year. The American Bar Association had developed the bill to meet the concerns of lawyers who practiced before the federal government, but it attracted the support of others for diverse reasons. Roscoe Pound, forced from Harvard Law School's deanship in 1936, accused Jerome Frank, James Landis, and other legal realists of advocating "administrative absolutism." In fact, Pound and his opponents agreed more about the administrative state than they let on; leadership of legal education was the real gravamen. In Congress, a conservative coalition of Democrats and Republicans seized upon the bill to punish the National Labor Relations Board, the Securities and Exchange Commission at the behest of corporate contributors and from their own desire to harry the New Deal's “janizaries.”
“Pound and Frank” originated as a series of posts on this blog that grew into a conference paper. The paper commenced: “Many legal scholars find themselves face to face with Roscoe Pound at some point in their careers. For historians of law and politics in the twentieth-century United States, an encounter is inescapable, because of Pound’s report for the American Bar Association’s Special Committee on Administrative Law. Published in 1938, it was, apparently, the greatest apostasy by any lawyer in the American reform tradition.”
I then quote from a marvelous statement of the prevailing view of Pound from Michael Willrich’s first book, City of Courts: Socializing Justice in Progressive Era Chicago (Cambridge University Press, 2003), 315:
The familiar storyline is a narrative of betrayal, of one's own life's work and the people it inspired: Brilliant young iconoclast, the best legal mind of his progressive generation, stuns the legal world in 1906 by announcing–in a speech to the ossified American Bar Association, no less–that the individualistic justice of the common law has proved unsuited to urban-industrial society, creating widespread “popular dissatisfaction with the administration of justice.” In the 1910s he launches a broad movement for sociological jurisprudence that transforms legal education, helps to elevate the weight of social interests in judicial decision making, and lays the intellectual foundation for legal realism and the administrative state. But just when those years of collective work were finally bearing fruit, in the New Deal and the Supreme Court’s “Constitutional Revolution of 1937,” the former progressive makes a stunning reversal and denounces the whole enterprise–his whole enterprise–as a dangerously relativistic, absolutist, un-American nightmare. The denouement of this narrative echoes the legal realists’ own professed shock at Pound's so-called about-face. “The reader of Pound's earlier writings,” wrote Judge Jerome Frank, “rubs his eyes” and wonders, “Can this be the same man?”
The “narrative of Pound's ‘about-face’” (to borrow Willrich's phrase) is a commonplace among legal historians. Morton Horwitz, for example, maintained that in 1924 Pound “spoke enthusiastically" of the emergence of administration. “Administrative regulation was not bureaucratic or standardized justice but a superior form of justice in the individual case. What a far cry from Pound's later invocation of the judicial model as the only legitimate expression of the rule of law!” David Wigdor wrote that "in the early years of his academic career," Pound “had advocated a large role for administrative agencies and had criticized legal traditionalists for treating them with hostility.” By the end of the 1930s, however, “his attitudes had hardened, and he exclaimed that administrative law ‘will involve the common-law judges in a conflict analogous to that which they waged with the Stuart kings in the seventeenth century.’” Neil Duxbury argued that Pound, "once keen for the expansion of administrative powers," was by the end of the 1930s “rallying against what he termed the recrudescence of administrative absolutism.”
Despite the dominance of the about-face narrative, historians have occasionally noted that the early Pound was a more conservative legal thinker than one would infer from Horwitz, Wigdor, Duxbury et al. They saw continuities that made his later views appear not so much a volte-face as a shifting of weight from one foot to another. Willrich saw that Pound called for the reform of civil procedure “to save the courts and the common law from the jurisdictional imperialism of the administrative state.” Lewis Grossman also saw continuity, this time in Pound’s jurisprudence. “It is often falsely assumed that Pound embraced elements of formalism only at a later stage of his career, when he was crankily resisting the Realists’ more daring modernism,” Grossman wrote in an unpublished paper. “As Pound’s statements quoted here demonstrate, however, he started emphasizing the need for rule and form in his earliest writings.” Although John Fabian Witt wrote that the early Pound approved of “administrative commissions on the Western European model,” Witt also saw that “there had always been a conservative streak running through Pound’s thinking on administration and the common law,” a fear that the state might extinguish “the individual” altogether. Finally, and, most recently, Joseph Postell has squarely attacked the notion Pound ever enthusiastically championed the administrative state in an article published in The Review of Politics in 2012.
“Pound and Frank” provides a compressed survey of Pound’s early writings, manuscript and published, which show that he considered commission government at best a necessary evil. For a somewhat fuller view, you may consult my blog posts from 2008. To this revision of Pound’s early view of the administrative state, Tocqueville’s Nightmare adds a revision of the dean’s later view. Just as the about-face narrative exaggerates Pound’s enthusiasm for administrative before the alleged volte-face, so does it exaggerate Pound’s hostility after the reversal was supposed to have occurred. Pound squarely rejected Dicey’s notion of the rule of law, which New York’s trial lawyers and anti-New Deal politicians had tried to write into their state constitution. He did not even insist on a less extreme position that Learned Hand and other liberal Republicans preferred–review of an agency’s orders by an independent “administrative court.” Notwithstanding his bluster about “administrative absolutism”– a phrase I expect Jonathan Turley to exhume any day now–even Pound joined an emerging consensus that court-like administrative procedures would let Americans have bureaucracy and their freedom too.
[The series continues here.]
Labels: Administrative law, Legal education, Scholarship -- Articles and essays
LSA Law & History Collaborative Research Network
Via H-Law, we have the following exciting announcement:
Greetings from the Law & History Collaborative Research Network, part of the Law & Society Association (www.lawandsociety.org/crn.html).
We have just come from the Law and Society Association annual meeting in Minneapolis, where we were thrilled with the success of our first year as a Collaborative Research Network. Creating a CRN, we think, significantly improved the discussion of legal history at LSA. We were able to better coordinate and publicize legal history panels and create new opportunities to interact scholars from other fields. But we hope that this is just the beginning. With more participation, we believe next year will be even better, and we invite you to join us.
What is the Law & History CRN?
The Law & History CRN brings together scholars interested in legal history, both American and non-American, of any time period from contemporary to ancient. We welcome a broad array of scholarly interests and methodological approaches. The Law and Society Movement has long welcomed legal historians and encouraged legal history, and our CRN intends to further foster this relationship. We seek to encourage presentation of historical legal work at the Law and Society’s Association’s annual meeting, and to create opportunities for interdisciplinary and cross-generational conversations.
What does it mean to join the Law & History CRN?
It means you will be welcomed into a network of scholars interested in participating in the historical examination of the law at the Law and Society Association annual meeting and beyond. In practical terms, joining the CRN means joining a listserv (administered via Google Groups) that we use to alert members of the LSA’s call for papers, organize panels, and communicate about panels of interest for scholars interested in law and history at LSA. We will also on rare occasions send out other announcements relevant to legal history.
The next Law & Society Association meeting will be held May 28-31 in Seattle, Washington. The call for papers should be out soon, and the deadline for submitting papers and panels will be in the fall of 2014, so it's not to early to start thinking about proposals.
What are the advantages of joining the Law & History CRN?
We see our main contribution as encouraging connections among a broad range of scholars and drawing attention to the historical legal research presented at the annual conference. More specifically, we’re interested in putting together and publicizing legal history panels at the LSA annual meeting. If you have a paper you’d like to present, you can use the listserv to find other potential panelists; we can also use our access to the LSA website to help connect you with other relevant paper submissions. And if you’re planning a panel that seems relevant to legal historians, please let us know so that we can list it as a CRN panel (if you’re interested) and publicize it among our members. Further, we can make connections with other CRNs, further increasing the potential audience for each panel. This year (our first year as a CRN) we had five panels designated as CRN panels, two of which were co-listed with other CRNs. Finally, the administrative advantage of affiliating your paper/panel with a CRN is that the CRN can request that up to four of CRN-affiliated panels be scheduled at different times to avoid conflicts.
Do I need to be a member of LSA to join the Law & History CRN?
No. We strongly encourage everyone who is presenting at LSA to also become a member, but all we’re asking you to do right now is sign up for the email announcements.
I’m not a legal historian/I’m not a historian – can I join?
Absolutely. LSA is about drawing connections across fields and methods. If you’re interested in legal history, or you’re using historical materials, or you’re looking to the past, and you’d like to present on a panel with other people interested in historical sources/methods/questions, we’d love to have you.
I’m already a member of the American Society for Legal History – why should I also attend LSA?
We are all enthusiastic ASLH participants, but the LSA annual meeting differs in a few important ways. First, it’s a large interdisciplinary meeting with substantial representation from sociology, political science, anthropology, economics, and other fields. It can thus be a great place to make connections, put together panels across disciplinary lines, and participate in interdisciplinary conversations. Second, since LSA traditionally accepts all paper and panel submissions, it provides a welcoming place for all scholars, especially graduate students who may find it difficult to get on the program at smaller conferences. And third, we want to exchange ideas with scholars interested in legal history more than once a year.
Send an email with your contact information to any or all of us and we will make sure you are included.
Joanna Grisinger, Center for Legal Studies, Northwestern University
joanna.grisinger@northwestern.edu
Kimberly Welch, Department of History, University of West Virginia
Kimberly.Welch@mail.wvu.edu
Logan Sawyer, University of Georgia Law School
lesawyer@uga.edu
Kathryn Schumaker, Institute for the American Constitutional Heritage, University of Oklahoma
kathryn.schumaker@gmail.com
Labels: Conferences and Calls for Papers, Law and Society
Robilant on Property Theory in the US and Europe
Anna di Robilant, Boston University School of Law, has posted Property: A Bundle of Sticks or a Tree? which appeared in the Vanderbilt Law Review 66 (2013): 869. Here is the abstract:
In the United States, property debates revolve around two conceptual models of property: the ownership model, originally developed in Europe and now revisited by information theorists and classical liberal theorists of property, and the bundle of rights model, invented in the United States by Hohfeld and the Realists. This article retrieves an alternative concept of property, the tree concept of property. The tree concept of property was developed by European property scholars between 1900 and the 1950s, as part of Europe’s own “realist” moment. It envisions property as a tree: the trunk representing the owner’s right to govern the use of a resource, and the branches representing the many resource-specific property regimes present in modern legal systems (family property, agricultural property, affordable housing property, intellectual property etc.). This article argues that the tree concept of property provides a descriptively more accurate and normatively richer account of property than the two currently dominant models.
Labels: Comparative Legal History, Europe, Property, Scholarship -- Articles and essays
New Release: Langum on "The Litigious Life of Mary Bennett Love," "California's First Liberated Lady"
New from Texas Tech University Press: Quite Contrary: The Litigious Life of Mary Bennett Love (2014), by David J. Langum, Sr. (Cumberland School of Law). The Press explains:
Mary Bennett Love had a physicality exceeded only by her personality. Six feet tall and over 300 pounds, Love was anything but shackled by the mores of her day. In the 1840s, she moved west from Arkansas via the Oregon Trail. A few years later, she separated from her husband and took her six minor children to Santa Clara, where she acquired a Mexican land grant by forging an adult son’s signature.
Though illiterate, she knew the law thoroughly and used it to her advantage. No sooner had the American military invaded California than Mary squatted on public lands and engaged in dozens of lawsuits to advance her interests. Her love life was no less tumultuous. Harry Love, her second husband and slayer of Mexican bandit Joaquin Murrieta, died at her bodyguard’s hands.
Quite Contrary is the first book to focus on Mary Bennett Love. Aside from making for an entertaining story, she is representative of the relationship people had with the law in pre-Gold Rush California. Furthermore, her economic success demonstrates the often self-imposed notions of true womanhood—which Mary ignored, paving the way for future female entrepreneurs.
A few blurbs:
"Early California’s socio-legal history has been told in general terms, but here we have an individual story of Mary Bennett Love, a working class nineteenth-century woman, battling to protect her property. This is good stuff, and readers interested in early California or frontier history, women’s history, or legal history deserve to read about Mary Bennett Love’s amazing life." —Mark R. Ellis
"David Langum has written a fascinating account of Mary Bennett Love, a woman large in both size and ambition. Her schemes and ambitions, her lawsuits and her land-hunger, are played out against the backdrop of old California, as it made the transition from a small Mexican outpost to a booming American state. This well-written and deeply researched book is a genuine contribution to Western history." --Lawrence Friedman
Labels: Gender, Property, Scholarship -- Books, Women
New Release: Clément on "Sex Discrimination and British Columbia's Human Rights State, 1953-84"
Via the Canadian Legal History Blog, we have word of a new release from the University of British Columbia Press (co-published with the Osgoode Society): Equality Deferred: Sex Discrimination and British Columbia's Human Rights State, 1953-84 (May 2014), by Dominique Clément (University of Alberta). Here's a description from the Press:
In Equality Deferred, Dominique Clément traces the history of sex discrimination in Canadian law and the origins of human rights legislation, demonstrating how governments inhibit the application of their own laws, and how it falls to social movements to create, promote, and enforce these laws.
Focusing on British Columbia -- the first jurisdiction to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex -- Clément documents a variety of absurd, almost unbelievable, acts of discrimination. The province was at the forefront of the women's movement, which produced the country's first rape crisis centres, first feminist newspaper, and first battered women's shelters. And yet nowhere else in the country was human rights law more contested. For an entire generation, the province's two dominant political parties fought to impose their respective vision of the human rights state. This history of human rights law, based on previously undisclosed records of British Columbia's human rights commission, begins with the province’s first equal pay legislation in 1953 and ends with the collapse of the country's most progressive human rights legal regime in 1984.
This book is not only a testament to the revolutionary impact of human rights on Canadian law but also a reminder that it takes more than laws to effect transformative social change.
"Curious about the origins of our human rights protections? This marvellous book presents fascinating insights. It romps through stories of the courageous individuals who claimed those human rights. It profiles the discriminators in all their egregious glory. And it probes the underbelly of the Canadian state that mediated between the two. Dominique Clément is by turns brilliant, challenging, and inspiring. Read this and ponder our history ... and our future." -- Constance Backhouse
"Dominique Clément's book is timely. The purpose and value of human rights are being challenged in the press and even in parliament. If we are to avoid an extended era of human rights retrenchment, it is important to learn what has been accomplished and how human rights codes and commissions have affected our lives." -- James W. St. G. Walker
Labels: Canada, Civil Rights, Gender, Scholarship -- Books, Women
Call for Applications: The Berlin Prize
The American Academy in Berlin invites applications for its residential fellowships for 2015/2016, as well as early applications for the academic years 2016/2017 and 2017/2018. The deadline is Monday, September 29, 2014 (12 pm EST or 6 pm CET). Applications may be submitted online or mailed to the Berlin office.
The Academy welcomes applications from emerging and established scholars and from writers and professionals who wish to engage in independent study in Berlin. Approximately 25 Berlin Prizes are conferred annually. Past recipients have included historians, economists, poets and novelists, journalists, legal scholars, anthropologists, musicologists, and public policy experts, among others. The Academy does not award fellowships in the natural sciences.
Fellowships are typically awarded for an academic semester or, on occasion, for an entire academic year. Bosch Fellowships in Public Policy may be awarded for shorter stays of six to eight weeks. Fellowship benefits include round-trip airfare, partial board, a $5,000 monthly stipend, and accommodations at the Academy's lakeside Hans Arnhold Center in the Berlin-Wannsee district.
Fellowships are restricted to individuals based permanently in the United States. US citizenship is not required; American expatriates are not eligible. Candidates in academic disciplines must have completed a PhD at the time of application. Applicants working in most other fields - such as journalism, filmmaking, law, or public policy - must have equivalent professional degrees. Writers should have published at least one book at the time of application. The Academy gives priority to a proposal’s scholarly merit rather than any specific relevance to Germany.
Following a peer-reviewed evaluation process, an independent Selection Committee reviews finalist applications. The 2015/16 Berlin Prizes will be announced in late February 2015.
For further information and to apply online, please see [here] or contact:
The American Academy in Berlin
Fellows Selection
Am Sandwerder 17–19
Telephone +49-30-804-83-0
Fax +49-30-804-83-111
cs@americanacademy.de
Labels: Europe, Fellowships Grants Honors and Awards
New Release: Williams, Jr., on "Prudence Crandall'...
New Release: Bednarski on "The Life and Times of M...
New Release: Langum on "The Litigious Life of Mary...
New Release: Clément on "Sex Discrimination and Br...
Fleming on Unconscionability as the "Law of the Po...
Kimball on HLS's Fundraising Disaster
ASLH Workshop on Medieval Legal History
CFP: “The Postcolonial Lives of Colonial Law in So...
Yale Law Journal Symposium: The Meaning of the Civ...
Book Roundup: Special Edition
New Issue of Comparative Legal History
Riley on Native American Lands and the Supreme Cou...
Sawyer on Judicial Corruption and Reform in Early ...
Klinefelter and Laredo on the Eternal Attorney-Cli...
Legal Histories of the British Empire
New Release: Rogers, "The Child Cases"
Alexander on the Scottish Right to Roam
McMurtry-Chubb on Overseer Contracts in the Antebe...
A Symposium on Mehrotra's "Making the Modern Ameri...
Morin on "Indigenous Property and Territories in N...
Public Education and the D.C. Federal Courts Since...
Cushman's Review Essay on the Hughes Court
Mossoff on O'Reilly v. Morse
Davies on a Christmas Party That Mattered
Williams on the Paths to Griswold
Bernstein on Brandeis between Progressivism and Li...
"Jews and the Law": An Essay Collection
Roundup of Online Symposium on Parrillo, "Against ...
An Annotated Digital Catalogue to Appeals to the P...
Deadline Approaching: Cromwell Dissertation Prize ...
Leslie on the Standard Oil Case
White on the Little Steel Strike, 1937
Welke on "The Cowboy Suit Tragedy," and more in th...
Calhoun on Powell's Vote in Roe
Fyson on "Law, Justice and State Formation in colo...
Tsai's Prologue to "America's Forgotten Constituti...
Two by Geary on the SD Constitution of 1889
Selecting Supreme Court Justices during the Clinto...
Snyder on the Clerks Who Killed Judicial Restraint...
A Studentship in Law and Society in a Global Conte...
Harriet S. Shapiro, Harold M. Stephens and the DC ...
Brazilian Congress of Legal History
Litman on Copyright Goes to the (Silent) Movies
New Release: Poucher, "State of Defiance: Challeng...
Sawyer on Benefit of Clergy and Anti-Lawyer Sentim...
New Release: Fried, "Ezra and the Law in History a...
HLS Berger-Howe Fellowship to Glass
Chief Justice Hughes
Helmholz on "Magna Carta: A European Perspective"
New Release: White, "Emancipation, the Union Army,...
An On-Line Clearinghouse for Oral Histories on the...
Andrews on Robeson and South African Apartheid
The Arts in Legal History: A TAU Conference
Morey on Philanthropy in America
Cushman on Intestate Succession and Polygamous Mor...
“Sovereignty as Trusteeship for Humanity: A TAU Co...
Hasday's "Family Law Reimagined"
Symposium on Parrillo's "Against the Profit Motive...
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5368
|
__label__cc
| 0.52647
| 0.47353
|
PDF2 PDF |Add To My Favorites | Version: 08/29/14 - Enrolled 08/21/14 - Amended Senate 07/03/14 - Amended Senate 06/23/14 - Amended Senate 05/01/14 - Amended Assembly 04/10/14 - Amended Assembly 02/20/14 - Introduced
AB-2062 Health facilities: surgical technologists.(2013-2014)
AB2062:v93#DOCUMENT
Enrolled August 29, 2014
Passed IN Senate August 25, 2014
Passed IN Assembly August 26, 2014
Amended IN Senate August 21, 2014
Amended IN Senate July 03, 2014
Amended IN Senate June 23, 2014
Amended IN Assembly May 01, 2014
Amended IN Assembly April 10, 2014
CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE— 2013–2014 REGULAR SESSION
Assembly Bill
Introduced by Assembly Member Roger Hernández
An act to add Section 1316.1 to the Health and Safety Code, relating to health facilities.
AB 2062, Roger Hernández. Health facilities: surgical technologists.
Existing law provides for the licensure and regulation of health facilities by the State Department of Public Health. A violation of the provisions governing health facilities constitutes a misdemeanor. Existing law requires specified health facilities to employ a dietitian and requires health facilities owned and operated by the state offering care within the scope of practice of a psychologist to establish rules and medical staff bylaws that include provisions for medical staff membership and clinical privileges for clinical psychologists, as specified.
This bill would prohibit a health facility, as defined, from employing a surgical technologist or contracting with an individual to practice surgical technology at the facility, unless the individual possesses specified training and certification or was practicing surgical technology at a health facility at any time prior to January 1, 2015. The bill would exempt a facility from this requirement if the facility documents its inability to recruit a sufficient number of individuals that meet the requirements regarding training and certification or prior practice, as specified, and would require that certain individuals complete specified continuing education or skills training in surgical technology. The bill would provide that a violation of these requirements is not a crime.
Vote: MAJORITY Appropriation: NO Fiscal Committee: YES Local Program: NO
The Legislature finds and declares the following:
(a) Surgical technologists are coresponsible for the environmental disinfection, safety, and efficiency of the operating room, and their knowledge and experience with aseptic surgical techniques qualifies them for a role of importance in the surgical suite.
(b) The surgical technology profession has grown to meet the continuing demand for well-educated, highly skilled, and versatile individuals to work with physicians and surgeons and other skilled professionals to deliver the highest possible level of patient care.
(c) A key purpose of this act is to encourage the education, training, and utilization of surgical technologists in California, given their vital role in the surgical setting.
Section 1316.1 is added to the Health and Safety Code, to read:
(a) A health facility shall not employ a surgical technologist or otherwise contract with an individual to practice surgical technology at the facility, unless the individual meets either of the following requirements:
(1) Meets both of the following requirements:
(A) Has successfully completed either of the following:
(i) A surgical technology educational program accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs or by an organization recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation or the United States Department of Education.
(ii) A training program for surgical technology provided by the United States Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, or Public Health Service.
(B) Holds and maintains certification as a surgical technologist by a credentialing organization with a surgical technologist certification program that is accredited by either the National Commission for Certifying Agencies or the American National Standards Institute.
(2) Provides evidence that the individual was employed to practice surgical technology in a health facility at any time prior to January 1, 2015. An individual employed or under contract pursuant to this paragraph shall complete continuing education or skills training equivalent to the continuing education or skills training necessary to maintain a certification described in subparagraph (B) of paragraph (1).
(b) For purposes of paragraph (2) of subdivision (a), a health facility that employs or contracts with surgical technologists shall, upon request of another health facility pursuant to this section, or upon request of a surgical technologist who is employed by, or has contracted with, or who was formerly employed by or had contracted with, the health facility to perform surgical technology tasks, verify the dates of employment of, or a contract with, the surgical technologist.
(c) Notwithstanding subdivision (a), both of the following shall apply:
(1) A health facility may employ a surgical technologist or contract with an individual to practice surgical technology at the facility during the 12-month period immediately following the individual’s successful completion of an educational or training program for surgical technology described in subparagraph (A) of paragraph (1) of subdivision (a). The employment or contract shall cease at the end of that 12-month period unless the individual satisfies subparagraph (B) of paragraph (1) of subdivision (a).
(2) A health facility may employ a surgical technologist or otherwise contract with an individual to practice surgical technology at the facility who does not meet the requirements of subdivision (a) or paragraph (1) if all of the following requirements are satisfied:
(A) After a diligent and thorough effort has been made, the health facility is unable to employ or contract with a sufficient number of surgical technologists who meet the requirements of subdivision (a) or paragraph (1).
(B) The health facility makes a written record of the efforts described in subparagraph (A) and retains that record at the facility.
(C) Any individual employed or under contract pursuant to this paragraph completes continuing education or skills training equivalent to the continuing education or skills training necessary to maintain a certification described in subparagraph (B) of paragraph (1) of subdivision (a).
(d) This section does not apply to a health care practitioner licensed or certified pursuant to Division 2 (commencing with Section 500) of the Business and Professions Code, or under an initiative act referred to in that division, who is performing tasks that fall within the practice of surgical technology if the practitioner is acting within the scope of practice of his or her license or certification.
(e) A violation of this section shall not be subject to Section 1290.
(f) For purposes of this section, the following definitions shall apply:
(1) “Health facility” means any health facility that is defined pursuant to Section 1204 or 1250, and includes any outpatient setting described in Section 1248.
(2) “Surgical technologist” means an individual who practices surgical technology.
(3) “Surgical technology” means intraoperative surgical patient care as follows:
(A) At the direction of, or subject to supervision by, a physician and surgeon, or registered nurse, preparing the operating room for surgical procedures by ensuring that surgical equipment is functioning properly and safely.
(B) At the direction of, or subject to supervision by, a physician and surgeon, or registered nurse, preparing the operating room and the sterile field for surgical procedures by preparing sterile supplies, instruments, and equipment using sterile technique.
(C) Anticipating the needs of the surgical team based on knowledge of human anatomy and pathophysiology and how they relate to the surgical patient and the patient’s surgical procedure.
(D) As directed in an operating room setting, performing the following tasks at the sterile field:
(i) Passing supplies, equipment, or instruments.
(ii) Sponging or suctioning an operative site.
(iii) Preparing and cutting suture material.
(iv) Transferring and pouring irrigation fluids.
(v) Transferring but not administering drugs within the sterile field.
(vi) Handling specimens.
(vii) Holding retractors and other instruments.
(viii) Connecting drains to suction apparatus.
(ix) Applying dressings to closed wounds.
(x) Assisting in counting sponges, needles, supplies, and instruments with the registered nurse circulator.
(xi) Cleaning and preparing instruments for sterilization on completion of the surgery.
(xii) Assisting the surgical team with cleaning of the operating room on completion of the surgery.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5369
|
__label__cc
| 0.53217
| 0.46783
|
[K:NWTS 9/1 (May 1994) 3-15]
Vision four took us into the holy of holies to witness the critical encounter between the messianic Servant and Satan at the throne of God. Christ was typified there by the priestly figure of Joshua, invested with his holy robes, crowned with the golden diadem—seal of the Spirit, granted access among the angels in heaven, and entrusted with the rule over God's courts. Vision five reveals the sequel to Christ's victory over the dragon. We behold him, typified by the royal figure of Zerubbabel, building the house of God in the power of the Spirit, here symbolized by the golden oil flowing into the golden lampstand.
Christ and the Spirit is the theme of both these visions, with Christ the focus in Zechariah 3 and the Spirit central in Zechariah 4. The fifth vision also sustains a close relationship to vision three, its counterpart in the chiastic structure of the seven visions, and to vision one, with which it is paired when the opening and closing triads of visions are construed as in linear parallelism.
Zechariah 4 presents the symbolism of the lampstand and the two olive trees in verses 1-3, with their interpretation in verses 4-10, and then the symbolism of the two olive-branches in verses 11 and 12, with their interpretation in verse 13. Our comments will diverge somewhat from the verse sequence as we develop the themes: I. The Spirit and the Menorah, and II. The Spirit and the Messiah.
I. The Spirit and the Menorah
A. The Spirit as Pattern for the Menorah. 1. Mosaic and Zecharian Menorahs: Menorah is the Hebrew word for the lampstand in the tabernacle.1 The menorah was a stylized tree with central trunk and three branches on either side, all with floral detailing.2 Its material was gold, described as pure, whether in the sense of technical quality or cultic cleanness. Apparently it was constructed by molding a sheet of gold foil over a wooden form (which was necessarily retained and provided stability). The menorah held seven lamps, either one on each of the seven arms or all seven made from the receptacle atop the central shaft by pinching its rim into wick-holders at seven places (a well attested ancient lamp design). The people brought the oil for the lamps, which were trimmed each morning and lit each evening by the priests.
Like the tabernacle menorah, the one in Zechariah's fifth vision has seven lamps (Zech. 4:2). However, nothing is said of side branches.3 If this menorah consisted of only a single pedestal, the seven lamps would be arranged around the bowl on top of it. Each of the seven lamps is itself of the seven-wick design mentioned above, giving a total of forty-nine lamp-lights. But the most remarkable new feature in Zechariah 4 is the two flanking olive trees and the connecting apparatus by which a continuous supply of oil flows from these trees to the menorah lamps, fueling their perpetual flames.
2. Arboreal Theophany and Menorah-Church: In Zechariah 4 it is not the lamps aflame but the two olive trees that represent the divine Presence. Specifically, the trees are a symbolic depiction of the theophanic Glory, associated with the menorah in the tabernacle. The way the olive trees overarch the lampstand from both sides reflects the scene in the holy of holies where the two cherubim of the Glory-Presence spread their wings over the ark of the covenant. The duality of the cherubim and of the olive trees corresponds to the two-pillar formation of the Glory-cloud, itself a representation of the two legs of God as he would take his stand, particularly in judicial actions.4
The presence of the divine Glory among the covenant people was portrayed in Zechariah's opening vision (1:7-17) by the figure of the Lord of Glory with angelic retinue stationed in the midst of the myrtles.5 As seen in the fifth vision under the symbolism of the golden oil of the olive trees flowing into the menorah, the Glory-Spirit is again a divine presence in the midst of, indeed within, God's people. And as in the first vision with its myrtle trees, so here it is a tree, the menorah-tree into which the divine oil flows, that represents the covenant people.
Though fueled by the Spirit-oil, the flames of the menorah lamps are the shining of the covenant community. This is corroborated by the hierophant angel's interpretation of the menorah in terms of the temple, which housed the menorah and performed on a larger scale and more publicly the menorah's function as an illuminating witness to the world (vv. 4-10). Now the temple, though the residence of the divine Glory within, is to be identified with God's people. At the New Testament level the church is the temple, the holy structure of living stones built on the foundation of Christ Jesus to be the habitation of God in the Spirit (Eph. 2:20-22; Heb. 3:6). The menorah is quite directly interpreted as the church when the seven lampstands of John's vision in Revelation 1 are identified as seven churches (Rev. 1:20), and when, conversely, the two prophets representing the witnessing church in the symbolism of Revelation 11 are explained as equivalents of the lampstand of Zechariah 4 (Rev. 11:4). Enhancing the menorah's prefiguration of the new covenant church is its assemblage of forty-nine lights, suggestive of the Jubilee and so pointing to the new covenant (cf. Luke 4:18-21).
3. Menorah, Replica of the Theophanic Glory: Israel's tabernacle-temple (the conceptual equivalent of the menorah in Zechariah 4) and the church temple are distinguishable from their divine Resident. But antecedent to them is the archetypal heavenly temple, which is not distinguishable from God but is God manifested, the effulgence of his Glory. Filling the cosmos, the epiphanic Glory constitutes the architectural space and structure of this divine temple.
Invisible to earthlings now, this Glory-Spirit temple will be unveiled to us in the revelation of the new heavens and earth at the Consummation. At that time the cosmos as a place where the present distinction between dimensions visible and invisible to us will cease to exist as a result of the heightening of our perceptive capabilities through glorification. Then will be realized the beatitude, "they shall see God," the archetypal Glory-temple (cf. Rev. 22:4).
According to Revelation 21:22 there will be no further need of temples in the world of New Jerusalem since God himself is the temple there, his own Glory his holy house (cf. Isa. 66:1; Acts 7:48ff.; 17:24). But while there will no longer be local, symbolic, man-made sanctuaries like Solomon's temple in the consummated cosmos (and such are in fact already obsolete in the present church age), Revelation 21:22 does not mean to deny the perpetuity of the church-temple. Not a temple made by human hands, the church is God-built, a temple created by the Spirit, and God, even though he is his own temple-dwelling, will yet condescend to tabernacle forever in the church-temple. Wondrous this union: we dwell in him, the divine temple, and he dwells in us, the temple he has made (cf. Isa.57:15; 66:2). It is in Christ that we are that temple; indeed, Christ is that temple (cf. Mark 14:58; John 2:19ff.). And Christ, "the Lamb," is mentioned along with the Lord God as the temple in the New Jerusalem. Church-temple and Glory-temple coalesce there.
Like the old tabernacle and temple, which were constructed after the heavenly archetypal pattern revealed to their human builders, so the church-temple is made according to the paradigm of the Glory-temple. This is brought out in Zechariah 4 by the way various features of the olive trees and oil, symbol of the Glory-Spirit, are replicated in the menorah, symbol of the church-temple. The menorah turns out to be another of the Bible's numerous parables of the (re-)creation of man in the image of God. Just within Zechariah's visions we have already found this motif in the imagery of the tabernacle-like myrtles of the first vision and in the symbolism of the tabernacle-like high priestly vestments in the fourth vision.6
Most closely related are the treatments of this image-renewal theme in Zechariah 3 and 4. The Spirit and the symbol of oil play a part in both visions. In Zechariah 3, Joshua's holy vestments, themselves replicas of the Glory-Spirit, are crowned by the diadem-stone on the mitre, a seal of the Spirit, a sign of Spirit anointing. Also, by virtue of the anointing during the investiture ritual the high priest was saturated with oil, symbol of the Spirit. Together the anointing and the enrobing in the glory garments was a double portrayal of creation in the image of the Glory-Spirit. Zechariah 4 similarly symbolizes the same concept. Here, the Spirit, by filling the lampstand-community, creates his likeness in it.7
By reason of the gold and gems worked into the high priest's vestments they shone like the theophanic Glory in whose likeness they were fashioned. Of similar but even more radiant appearance is the menorah of Zechariah 4. Again gold is the material but now it is aglow with reflections of the jubilee of flames, themselves an even brighter and more literal copy of the theophanic fire. The likeness of the golden menorah to the Glory-Spirit is highlighted by denoting the oil, symbol of the Spirit, as "the gold" (v. 12). Flowing into the lampstand, the golden oil reproduced its shining golden lustre there.
Replication of the Spirit-likeness in the menorah is also expressed in a sharing of arboreal imagery. Though the tree features of the tabernacle menorah are not explicitly mentioned in the description of the lampstand in Zechariah 4, it is possible that the seven-branched structure and other floral detailing of the familiar Mosaic menorah are simply taken for granted. If not, the arboreal form of Zechariah's lampstand may still be maintained, for the sevenfold cluster of seven-lamp receptacles on top of it may then be seen as modified equivalents of the seven branches of the tabernacle menorah.
As a stylized tree the Zecharian menorah, symbol of the community, matches the two olive trees, symbol of the Glory-theophany. This correspondence is enhanced by the linkage of each of these arboreal symbols with the two golden cherubim. When observing above that it is particularly the manifestation of the Glory in the two-cherubim formation above the ark that is reflected in the two olive trees, we cited their common feature of duality. A further point of connection is that the cherubim in Solomon's temple were carved out of olive wood (1 Kgs. 6:23). The menorah is linked to the same cherubim structure not only by the gold material used in both cases but by a shared mode of fabrication. Within the Exodus legislation the miqshah technique (the molding of metal foil) is mentioned only in the making of the cherubim (25:18; 37:7) end the menorah (25:31, 36; 37:17, 22).8 Revelation 11, appropriating the symbolism of Zechariah 4, carries the correspondence of the menorah to the olive trees a step further. The single menorah there becomes two lampstands (v. 4) and thus a numerical likeness to the two olive trees is added to the other points of correspondence between them.
The Book of Revelation provides another intimation that the menorah-church bears the divine Glory-image when it depicts the Glory-Spirit by symbolism similar to menorah flames. Thus, the seven torches of fire burning before the throne are identified as the seven Spirits (Rev. 4:5).9 The biblical roots of this symbolism can be traced to God's covenant-ratifying appearance to Abraham in the menorah-like form of fire-pan and torch with their ascending columns of flame and smoke (Gen. 15:17). This anticipated the two fiery columns of the Glory-cloud theophany at the exodus, of which the dual cherubim structure, insignia of the Glory-Spirit, was an adaptation, and of which, in turn, the two olive trees of Zechariah 4 were a further adaptation.
Re-creation in the divine likeness is treated in Zechariah's fourth vision from the perspective of its significance for personal deliverance from sin and judgment. What is in view in the fifth vision is the meaning of the church's acquisition of the image of the Glory-Archetype for the performance of its historical menorah-mission of prophetic witness. As we shall see, displaying the divine likeness is a major element in that witness of the church; its form serves its function. This was illustrated in the experience of the Israelite prophets, for whom acquisition of the Glory-Spirit image was an essential part of their formation for office, a concomitant of the Spirit-anointing prerequisite to their witness function.10
B. The Spirit as Power for the Menorah Mission. 1. Menorah: Witness Light: God is light (I John 1:5) and God is truth (I John 1:6; 2:21-23; 5:7, 20),11 the true and living God of Glory, the One (Zech. 14:9). And it pleased him to glorify himself by calling into being a creation to serve as a medium of his luminous self-manifestation, a vehicle of theophanic revelation to creatures, themselves displaying ectypally the likeness of his Glory. The seven eyes of the sevenfold Spirit would take delight in seeing his own archetypal Glory-likeness shining back from the temple of his human images on earth (as well as from his angel-sons in heaven). For mankind this reflective radiating of the light of God would be an exhibiting on a creaturely level of the glory of divine dominion and divine holiness, righteousness and truth. Further, at the promised consummation of this created order the human temple-community was to assume an outward luminosity that reflected the light of the heavenly Spirit-temple. With mankind's eschatological glorification the natural darkness they had experienced in the original cycle of night and day would become a thing of the past. For then the hitherto invisible Glory-light of heaven would become visible, illuminating all the cosmos in perpetual day (cf. Isa. 60:19, 20; Zech. 14:7; Rev. 21:25; 22:5)the perfected revelation-replication of the God who is light.
Glorifying God by reflecting the light of his Glory back to him remains after the Fall the chief purpose of man's light-bearing. Moreover, the full realization of that highest goal through the ultimate glorification of the saints is still the predestined omega-point of human history. But in the interim between the Fall and the Consummation the diffusing of light by God's people serves some partly or totally new purposes as this function is carried out in the spiritual darkness of a fallen world.
One of these partly new objectives was the confrontation of evil. Before the Fall of man on earth a fall had transpired in heaven, so that even in Eden man's displaying of the light of God's image would have been an exercising of God-like dominion and righteousness and a confessing of the Truth over against the dark presence of the devil. Donning the divine image was already a putting on of the armor of light to do battle with the prince of darkness and to overcome him. Radiating light was even then the bearing of a legal witness to the true God in dispute against the tempter, the liar from the beginning. However, though this confrontational aspect of covenant witness is not something altogether new after the Fall, there is this difference, that now the darkness is entrenched and pervasive within mankind. The witness-light must be presented not just in defiance of a would-be usurper and his minions but in the face of conflict with satanic powers that are currently "the rulers of the darkness of this world."
There is also a totally new purpose involved in the luminary function of the righteous in the post-Fall world—it henceforth serves the redemptive objectives of the Covenant of Grace.
The Mosaic-Zecharian menorah symbolizes the diffusing of the light and truth of God by his people, not in the daylight of the original pristine order of creation but in the postlapsarian night. Lit each evening to burn through the night, the menorah in the holy place of the tabernacle was a light shining in the darkness. The Israel of God performs its menorah mission in the darkness of a world blinded by Satan's anti-theology, worshiping in the cult of no-gods. The shining of the menorah-church is a witnessing to the true God of heavenly Glory that has the effect of condemning the counter-claims of the satanic idol, which is a lie and pitch darkness.
This confrontational, anathematizing aspect of the church's witness is brought out in Zechariah 4 when it interprets the menorah mission in terms of the role of the temple, standing on Zion and magnifying the name of Yahweh, the God of heaven and earth, in the face of the great mountain (v. 7). For the great mountain is the hostile imperial power and its idol-cult, lifting itself up as a rival to the mountain of God's temple, as a pseudo-Zion, an antichrist Har-Magedon.
The condemnatory aspect of the menorah mission is again prominent in Revelation 11:1-13. In this adaptation of the Zechariah 4 lampstand imagery, the symbolism of the menorah light is clearly interpreted as the light of truth. For the menorah is identified with God's two prophetic witnesses (vv. 3, 4).12 And the purpose of the menorah mission as seen here in the career of these witnesses is emphatically the bringing of judgment on their enemies. The picture is one of radical opposition. So intense, so demonic is the world's hatred of the exposing, condemning light of the truth (cf. John 3:19, 20), that when the two witnesses have finished their testimony the beast from the abyss kills them and peoples from all the nations celebrate this pseudo-triumph with hellish glee (vv. 7-11).
Maintaining a judicial-apologetic witness against the deceived, unbelieving world is then one dimension of the menorah program. The field of history is a courtroom in which God's people give testimony to his name over against the blasphemies of the idol-worshipers.13 This piercing of the darkness with light, exposing falsehood, anticipates the day of the Lord, when by the brightness of his coming he shall bring to light for judgment all the hidden things of darkness (l Cor. 4:5; cf. Gen. 3:8; John 3:19, 20).
But the menorah mission is also a summoning of the lost to salvation in Jesus Christ. Indeed, it is the primary and proper function of the menorah to serve God's purpose of redemptive grace, that totally new aspect of light-radiating not present before the entrance of sin and death at the Fall. The menorah community is commissioned to proclaim the gospel of him who says: "I am the way and the truth and the life" (John 14:6). "I am the light of the world; he that follows me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life" (John 8:12; cf. 12:46). The true heavenly Light declares to his disciples, renewed after his image, "You are the light of the world" (Matt. 5:14), and he bids them, "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations" (Matt. 28:19).
This gospel-witnessing function of the menorah-people is readily discernible in the situation of the menorah in the tabernacle. It was located between the altar of sacrifice and the mercy seat, a place redolent of atonement and gospel pardon.
The menorah flames illuminated the way to the throne of grace in the holy of holies. In the setting of the Solomonic temple, where there were ten lampstands arranged in two rows on the north and south sides of the holy place (I Kgs. 7:49), the menorah lights themselves actually formed a passageway—from the site of judgment in the court to the Glory-throne beyond the second veil (cf. Heb. 9:2-5), the way from Golgotha to God's holy heaven.
As we have observed, Zechariah 4:4-10 interprets the menorah mission in terms of Zerubbabel's temple building project. The counterpart to that enterprise in the new covenant is the program of building the church, the assignment to disciple those God calls to be living stones in the temple founded on Christ. The menorah mission is mandated by the Lord in the Great Commission.
Both old and new covenant temples are lights of the world set on hills (the old temple quite literally so); they are both lamps put on a stand to shine before men that they might glorify the Father in heaven (Matt. 5:14-16). The mission of the old menorah-temple and that of the new menorah-church alike is to summon men out of all nations to the holy city on Har-Magedon (whether the old earthly, typological Jerusalem or the new heavenly, true Jerusalem), to call them on a faith pilgrimage to the altar of atonement and the throne of grace.14 The mission of the menorah community, old and new, is to light the way to the Father's house.
2. The Spirit and the Menorah Light: Some have speculated that the middle section of Zechariah 4 (vv. 6b-10a) is misplaced because, allegedly, it is not connected with what precedes. Actually, this word of the Lord addresses itself to the very heart of the preceding symbolism. It interprets the oil, which is obviously, if implicitly, included in the imagery of the menorah and olive trees as described in vv. 1-3, and is explicitly mentioned in the supplementary details of vv. 11, 12 (all already seen by the prophet Zechariah at the outset). It was this golden oil that would have riveted Zechariah's attention, this supernatural provision pouring endlessly from the olive trees in a miraculous mechanism that dispensed with the ordinary human participation, whether by way of contributing the oil for the menorah or tending its flames. This wonder oil, the secret of the perpetual flame, was the spectacular feature of the vision that demanded an immediate explanation (cf. vv. 4, 5). And the Lord's reply to the prophet's query was right to the point: "Not by might nor by power but by my Spirit" (v. 6b). God's Spirit, the Light of life, is the oil, the inexhaustible fuel of the true menorah, the limitless energy source of the ever burning church-lamp (cf. I Kgs. 17:14-16). As source of that Spirit-oil, the olive trees on either side were trees of everlasting life for the people of the menorah (cf. Rev. 22:1, 2).
The Lord's reply went on to apply this truth to the program of building the temple. Here was a current instance demonstrating that Spirit-power is the secret of success in the menorah mission. Despite every adverse circumstance, the project would surely be finished. The day of outwardly unpromising beginnings would be succeeded by a time that witnessed the leveling of the hostile world mountain and the celebration of the elevating of the temple. And it would not in the last analysis be due to the efforts of Zerubbabel and the covenant people that the temple would be completed; the ultimate accomplishing of the mission must rather be attributed to the Spirit. For we are told that "these seven, namely, the eyes of the Lord that run to and fro through the whole earth" (which, according to Revelation 5:6, represent the Spirit) are fixed with joy upon Zerubbabel (v. 10). This signifies that the Lord has authorized the enterprise, that he takes special interest and pleasure in it, and by his Spirit is sovereignly supervising it—the guarantee of sabbatical success.
Those who allege that this section of Zechariah 4 is discontinuous with the opening description of the menorah assert that not until the phrase "these seven" in v. 10b is the subject of the menorah resumed. "These seven" refers then not to the Spirit-oil but to the seven lamps, identifying them as the eyes of the Lord. One objection to this is that something other than the seven eyes must be construed as the subject of the seeing spoken of in v. 10a. But the natural connection between eyes and seeing is obvious. Furthermore, the lamps represent the covenant community, the recipients of the Spirit-oil, and therefore cannot be identified as the seven eyes of the Lord, which represent the Spirit. "These seven" does not refer to the seven lamps in Zechariah 4:2 but to the "seven eyes" in Zechariah 3:9, as Zechariah 4:10c indicates.
Closing (v. 10) on the note it began (v. 6), this section of the vision points again to the Spirit and his universal sovereignty (the seven eyes engaged in judicial surveillance of "the whole earth") as the explanation and guarantee of the final accomplishment of the menorah mission. What must be done to fulfill that mission in the future had been done by the Spirit in the past. Was the creation of a people in the luminous image of God central to that mission? Then remember how the Glory-Spirit in the beginning was the power of the Most High overshadowing the lifeless dust of the earth to quicken the man-creature, so bringing forth a son of God, a replica of the Creator's glory (cf. Gen. 1:2, 26, 27; Luke 3:38). Did the menorah mission entail the bringing low of the high world mountain? Did it require victorious battle against the armies of the satanic beast-power? Then recall how, in the hour when the dragon-power of Egypt threatened to overwhelm the Israelites, the Glory-Spirit vanquished lofty pharaoh and all his military might (Exod. 14:4; Ps. 136:15). It was "from the pillar of cloud and fire" (i.e., the Glory-Spirit theophany) that God looked down upon the Egyptians (Exod. 14:24) and cast chariots, horses, and riders into the depths of the sea, triumphing gloriously (Exod. 14:28; 15:1, 4). That was the "power" by which he brought forth his people out of Egypt (Exod. 32:11). Singing, "Yahweh is my strength and my song" (Exod. 15:2), the Israelites confessed the truth of Zechariah 4:6—salvation is not by human might or power but by God's Spirit. Psalm 33 makes the same confession: "No king secures victory by his massive army, no warrior is delivered by his great strength" (v. 16) . . . "The eye of Yahweh is on those who fear him" (v. 18a) . . . "Our soul waits for Yahweh, our help [or warrior] and our shield is he" (v.20).
"By my Spirit," the power of God in creation and redemption hitherto—that is the word of exhortation and promise to Zerubbabel and all henceforth who are called to the menorah mission.
*This study of Zechariah 4 continues the series on Zechariah's night visions begun in Kerux 5:2 (September, 1990).
1. Cf. Exodus 25:6, 31-40; 27:20, 21; 30:7, 8; 35:8; 37:17-24; 40:4, 24, 25; Leviticus 24:2-4; Numbers 8:2-4. On the construction of the menorah see Carol L. Myers, The Tabernacle Menorah (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1976).
2. The chiastically arranged night visions of Zechariah, a triad of visions on either side of the central hinge, might be seen as a literary translation of the menorah structure.
3. In this respect Zechariah's menorah would be more like the ten separate lampstands in Solomon's temple (cf.1 Kgs. 7:49) or the seven individual lampstands of the vision in Revelation 1:12.
4. See further Images of the Spirit, p. 86.
5. See Kerux 5:3 (December, 1990), pp. 1lff.
6. See Kerux 5:3 (December, 1990), pp. 17ff. and 8:2 (September, 1993),pp. 15ff.
7. See further Images of the Spirit, p. 86. A difference in the two treatments of the theme is that Zechariah 3 presents a priestly model of the imago Dei, while the model in Zechariah 4 is prophetic.
8. Cf. also Numbers 10:2.
9. In relation to the identification of the seven Spirits as seven eyes (Rev. 5:6; cf. Zech. 3:9; 4:10) note Jesus' comparison of eyes and lamps (Matt. 6:22; Luke 11:34).
10. Cf. Images of the Spirit, pp. 57-64.
11. Psalm 43:3 (cf. 119:105) brings out the conceptual bond of light and truth: "Send forth your light and your truth, let them lead me; let them bring me to your temple mount, unto your dwelling place."
12. Cf. Images of the Spirit, p. 91.
13. Cf. Isaiah 43:10, 12; 44:8, 9.
14. Cf. Kerux 7:3 (December, 1992), p. 56 for a discussion of the same theme in Zechariah's third vision.
Westminster Theological Seminary in California, Escondido
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5372
|
__label__wiki
| 0.981771
| 0.981771
|
American Jews Who Reject Zionism Say Events Aid Cause
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
New York Times Friday, June 25, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/us/26religion.html?ref=middleeast
One day nearly 20 years ago, Stephen Naman was preparing to help the rabbi of his Reform Jewish temple in South Carolina move the congregation into a new building. Mr. Naman had just one request: Could the rabbi stop placing the flag of Israel on the altar?
“We don’t go to synagogue to pray to a flag,” Mr. Naman, 63, recalled having said in a recent telephone interview.
That rabbi acceded to the request. So, after being transferred to North Carolina and joining a temple there six or seven years later, Mr. Naman asked its rabbi to remove the Israeli flag. This time, the reaction was more predictable.
“The rabbi said that would be terrible,” recounted Mr. Naman, a retired paper company executive who now lives outside Jacksonville, Fla., “and that he’d be embarrassed to be rabbi of such a congregation.”
As shocking as Mr. Naman’s insistence on taking Israel out of Judaism may seem, it actually adheres to a consistent strain within Jewish debate. Whether one calls it anti-Zionism or non-Zionism — and all these terms are contested and loaded — the effort to separate the Jewish state from Jewish identity has centuries-old roots.
For the past 68 years, that stance has been the official platform of the group Mr. Naman serves as president of, the American Council for Judaism. And while the establishment of Israel and its centrality to American Jews consigned the council to irrelevancy for decades, the intense criticism of Israel now growing among a number of American Jews has made Mr. Naman’s group look significant, or even prophetic.
It is not that members are flocking to the council. The group’s mailing list is only in the low thousands, and its Web site received a modest 10,000 unique visitors in the last year. Its budget is a mere $55,000. As Mr. Naman acknowledges, the council’s history of opposition to Zionism renders it “radioactive” for even liberal American Jewish groups, like J Street and Peace Now.
Yet the arguments that the council has consistently levied against Zionism and Israel have shot back into prominence over the last decade, with the collapse of the Oslo peace process, Israel’s wars in Lebanon and Gaza, and most recently the fatal attack on a flotilla seeking to breach the naval blockade of the Hamas regime. One need not agree with any of the council’s positions to admit that, for a certain faction of American Jews, they have come back into style.
“My sense is that they believe that events are proving they were right all along,” Jonathan D. Sarna, a historian at Brandeis University and author of the seminal book “American Judaism,” said in a telephone interview. “Everything they prophesied — dual loyalty, nationalism being evil — has come to pass.”
“I would be surprised if vast numbers of people moved over to the A.C.J. as an organization because of its reputation,” he continued. “But it’s certainly the case that if the Holocaust underscored the problems of Jewish life in the diaspora, recent years have highlighted the point that Zionism is no panacea.”
Mr. Naman grew up in a Texas family deeply involved in the council, and as a result he has lived through the swings of the political pendulum.
“We were ostracized and maligned,” he said. “But we felt back then, and we feel now, that our positions are credible. They’ve been justified and substantiated by what has occurred.”
On that matter, to put it mildly, there is disagreement. If American Zionists who oppose the West Bank occupation face withering criticism from the conservative part of American Jewry, which has tended to dominate the major communal and lobbying groups, then the unapologetic foes of Zionism in the council are met with apoplexy and indignation.
The rejection of Zion, though, goes back to the Torah itself, with its accounts of the Hebrews’ rebelling against Moses on the journey toward the Promised Land and pleading to return to Egypt. Until Theodore Herzl created the modern Zionist movement early in the 20th century, the biblical injunction to return to Israel was widely understood as a theological construct rather than a pragmatic instruction.
Most Orthodox Jewish leaders before the Holocaust rejected Zionism, saying the exile was a divine punishment and Israel could be restored only in the messianic age. The Reform movement maintained that Judaism is a religion, not a nationality.
“This country is our Palestine,” a Reform rabbi in Charleston, S.C., put it in 1841, “this city our Jerusalem, this house of God our temple.” The Reform movement’s 1885 platform dismissed a “return to Palestine” as a relic akin to animal sacrifice.
Only when the Reform leadership, on the eve of World War II, reversed course did its anti-Zionist faction break away, ultimately forming the council in 1942. Its discourse was simultaneously idealistic and contemptuous — a proposed curriculum in 1952 described Zionism as racist, self-segregated and non-American — and for a time it boasted leaders like Lessing J. Rosenwald, heir to the Sears fortune, and a membership of 14,000.
If the 1967 and 1973 wars shoved the council toward obsolescence, then Israel’s controversial wars since 2000 have brought it back from the grave. One hears echoes of its positions in Tony Judt, the historian who has called for a binational state in Palestine; in Tony Kushner, whose screenplay for the film “Munich” portrayed an Israeli’s true home as America; in Michael Chabon, whose novel “The Yiddish Policeman’s Union” parodied Zionism; and in the emerging disengagement from Israel on the part of young, non-Orthodox Jews, as Peter Beinart noted recently in an essay in The New York Review of Books.
What is numerically true, thus not open to debate, is that only a tiny proportion of American Jews have ever rejected exile here to emigrate to Israel.
“I think we represent a silent majority,” said Allan C. Brownfeld, a longtime member of the council and editor of its magazines, Issues and Special Interest Report. “We are Americans by nationality and Jews by religion. And while we wish Israel well, we don’t view it as our homeland.”
E-mail: sgf1@columbia.edu
[DN]
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5374
|
__label__cc
| 0.560695
| 0.439305
|
Tony Blair Quits As Middle East Peace Envoy – Only Israel Will Miss Him
For Arabs – and for Britons who lost their loved ones in his shambolic war in Iraq – Blair’s appointment was an insult
Tony Blair’s time as Middle East envoy representing the US, Russia, the UN and the EU has finally come to an end. Eight years after he took up the role, Blair tendered his resignation and left one question: how come a war criminal ever became a “peace envoy” in the first place?
The people of the Middle East – and much of the world – have been asking this question ever since Blair was appointed the Quartet’s man in Jerusalem, solemnly and hopelessly tasked to bring “peace” between Israelis and Palestinians. Was his new mission supposed to wash the blood from his hands after the catastrophe of the Bush-Blair invasion of Iraq and the hundreds of thousands of innocents who died as a result?
For Arabs – and for Britons who lost their loved ones in his shambolic war in Iraq – Blair’s appointment was an insult. The man who never said he was sorry for his political disaster simply turned up in Jerusalem four years later and, with a team which spent millions in accommodation and air fares, managed to accomplish absolutely nothing in the near-decade that followed.
Blair appeared indifferent to the massive suffering of the Palestinians – he was clearly impotent in preventing it – and spent much of his time away from the tragedy of the Middle East, advising the great and the good and a clutch of Muslim dictators, and telling the world – to Israel’s satisfaction – of the dangers represented by Iran.
The more prescient he thought he was, the more irrelevant he became in the eyes of the region he was sent to protect. A Blair supporter once defended him on Channel 4 by recalling how he had travelled to the Middle East almost 100 times – without realising the essential irony: that Blair abandoned the region almost 100 times for more rewarding destinations.
Blair was supposed to produce more than the easy panaceas that slipped from his lips, the most outrageous of which was his contention that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be easier than ending the Northern Ireland crisis. But the Palestinians have much more in common with the Irish Catholics cleansed from their lands by the Protestant planters of the 17th century than with the pitiful historical battle in the province, whose resolution proved to be Blair’s only lasting accomplishment.
If only he had resigned more than two years ago, after Palestinian leaders had themselves characterised his job as “useless, useless, useless”. Israel, of course, would never have described him as this. Stoutly condemning the campaign for Israel’s “delegitimisation”, Blair talked about this as a form of bias which was “an affront to humanity” – a choice of words he never used about the massive civilian casualties inflicted by Israel on the Palestinians of Gaza.
The Arabs will now wait to see if the Quartet will repeat its folly by appointing an even more unsuitable candidate – a truly difficult task – although many in the region think the whole panjandrum must be abandoned. Eight years ago, there just might have been the slimmest chance of bringing a Palestinian state into being. Today there is none.
© independent.co.uk
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5375
|
__label__wiki
| 0.843578
| 0.843578
|
Home NBA Gilbert Arenas: "It's home."
NBANBA: Eastern ConferenceNBA: Southwest DivisionOrlando MagicWashington Wizards
Gilbert Arenas: "It's home."
Gilbert Arenas/Google Images
The last time Orlando Magic’s guard Gilbert Arenas came to Washington to play against the Wizards was in the 2002-03 season when he was a member of the Golden State Warriors.
Well, that feels like ancient history due to his seven-year stint with the Wizards, being a three-time All Star and as a public servant. He was a giver, involved himself with numerous charity events and made his seasonal appearance at Barry Farms so the Wizards fans who could not afford tickets to games could see him up close and personal.
But Arenas won’t be remembered for the things mentioned, only for the controversies that surrounded him. The six-year, $111 million deal he signed two seasons ago, infamous gun incident last season in which he brought unloaded firearms to the locker room and of course, the injuries. For the most part, the fans at the Verizon Center Friday night cheered for Arenas when he stepped on the court to compete against his old mates (well, some) as the Wizards faithful chanted: “Agent Zero! Agent Zero!”
For what it’s worth, despite the many that are glad he’s no longer representing the Wizards, Arenas will always concern Washington home.
“It’s home. I mean this technically is the longest place I’ve ever lived,” said Arenas after the Magic defeated the Wizards Friday night, 110-92. “When I moved to California at ten, I moved back and forth. This is the longest place I’ve ever lived. I consider this home.”
Despite the outward showing of a lack of care about the letdown of not making the Wizards a contender in the Eastern Conference, Arenas truly wanted to display his worth and prove his critics wrong. But fortunately for him and the Wizards, he was traded to the Magic, a true contender in the East, and now Arenas is getting settled – in a familiar position he was in a Wizard during his post-injury return – to help get the Magic over the hump to win a NBA title.
“It’s going good (his transition with the Magic). We are just trying to gel and get ourselves ready for playoff season,” said Arenas. “That’s about it. It feels great being on a team that is considered a contender. Every game counts right now when you are trying to position yourself against the rest of the top teams.
“I was playing the same role here. I was coming off the bench and energizing the team. I knew coming in here it was going to be easy.”
The Wizards had to trade their former All-Star because it was a time for a change. When center Brendan Haywood, guard/forward Caron Butler and forward Antawn Jamison were traded last season, the writing on the wall for Arenas’ departure was clearer than ever before. With new ownership under the Capitals owner, Ted Leonsis, and an emerging superstar in rookie guard John Wall, the Wizards are starting fresh as they attempt to change their losing image into an attractive franchise to play for. The Wizards are 13-29 and rightfully so, as they are finding themselves as a team due to their youth and inexperience as a squad.
Both the Wizards’ organization and Arenas get what they wanted, the team can truly rebuild with no distractions and Mr. Hibachi himself can finally play for a team that has a chance to win. But other than his mishaps and injuries, Arenas accomplished more as a player and as a person in the community and he will always be remembered as a Wizard, no matter who likes it or not.
“He’s been here for a while. When his career is all said and done, this is where people will remember him at,” said Magic’s guard Jason Richardson. “This is where he had his glory days, his All-Star years. Some of the thing he did on the court, I mean not many people could do.
“Of course, pretty much people will remember him for that. He’ll definitely go out there and do his thing and play hard — but he’s going to be remembered for Washington. This is where he made his bread and butter, where he got paid the most at.”
Gilbert Arenas trade to Magic
NFL: Redskins Season Wrap Up, Sideline Report Previous post
Redskins' Kick/Punt Returner Brandon Banks Slightly Stabbed, Aiding A Friend (via Examiner.com) Next post
Russell Betrayed The Brotherhood, Now He Has To Go
Jeremiah Short April 3, 2016
LeBron James: Stop Crying Bro!
The Pressure Of Being Black
Jeremiah Short December 1, 2015
NBA: Hawks Fall To Pistons In Season Opener, 106-94
Barry Barnes October 28, 2015
DeAndre Jordan: Yes, He's Worth The Drama
Jeremiah Short July 13, 2015
The Myth Of D.Wade's Greatness
Jeremiah Short July 7, 2015
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5379
|
__label__wiki
| 0.832162
| 0.832162
|
HomeNAFSA Blog
NAFSA Blog
Engage with Voices of an Interconnected World
As Enrollment Declines, Members of Congress Speak Out for International Students
By Katie O’Connell
‘Tis the season for fall enrollment deadlines for U.S. colleges and universities. This is the time of year when many accepted students must choose which U.S. college or university to commit to for the fall. For international students, they are deciding whether to come to a school in the United States or study in a country with more welcoming policies and rhetoric. More and more data are rolling out that show how the negative rhetoric and policies from the White House are putting the United States at risk of losing its status as a premier destination for international students and scholars.
The trend over the past decade has been that while the number of international students studying in the United States continues to grow, the U.S. market share of international students has declined. But now, the overall numbers of students are starting to decline as well. As Politico and other news sources have recently reported, new international student enrollment in the United States declined by 3 percent in the 2016-17 academic year, and that decline is expected to double in the upcoming academic year. Meanwhile, countries including Canada, China, Australia, Japan, Spain, and New Zealand are seeing double-digit increases in international enrollment—no doubt due to their welcoming policies.
Countering the harsh narrative and the policies from the Trump Administration can help prospective students and scholars feel welcomed and wanted as international visitors and can make the United States a more desirable option again. During NAFSA’s Advocacy Day in March, international educators met with their members of Congress, asking them to speak out for international students and show their support for a more welcoming and globally engaged United States.
Some of those advocates kept the conversation going with their senators and representatives, making repeated requests and sharing stories demonstrating the importance of international students and scholars to their campuses and their communities. This resulted in a series of tweets and floor statements from both sides of the aisle that can help reassure our students, scholars, and colleagues that the United States still values them.
Our thanks go out to these members of Congress who tweeted about the value of international students:
Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL-05)
Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR-1)
Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-IL-17)
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM-01)
Rep. Scott Peters (D-CA-52)
Our thanks also go out to this bipartisan group of members of Congress that submitted official statements for the record that reflect their commitment to making international students and scholars feel welcome:
Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
Representative Steve Stivers (R-OH-15)
Representative David Cicilline (D-RI-01)
Representative Rodney Davis (R-IL-13)
As these tweets and statements note, international students and scholars contributed $36.9 billion to the U.S. economy in the 2016-2017 academic year, supporting 450,331 jobs across the county despite making up only 5.3 percent of overall enrollment in U.S. higher education. These students bring countless academic and cultural benefits to U.S. communities as well, and efforts to discourage international visitors from coming to the United States will only hinder U.S. growth, innovation, and security.
We invite all members of Congress to share their support for international students and scholars and to support immigration policies that will allow the United States to once again be a welcoming option for international students. International educators can use this advocacy toolkit on Connecting Our World to request floor statements from their senators and representatives. By working together and continuing our advocacy, we can create a more welcoming, globally engaged and informed United States.
Katie O’Connell is director of advocacy and media outreach at NAFSA: Association of International Educators.
Advocacy and Public Policy
Take Action for Dreamers
As Enrollment Continues to Decline, Members of Congress Speak Out for International Students
A Journey in Advocacy: From Newcomer to Advocate of the Year
Why the United States Needs a National Strategy to Promote Study Abroad
Uniting Voices: International Educators Advocate on the Hill
Enter your e-mail address to receive notifications when new posts are published.
Join 1299 other followers
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5390
|
__label__wiki
| 0.962606
| 0.962606
|
Max Kowalski: Piano Works, Opu...
Max Kowalski: Piano Works, Opus 6 and More
by Victoria Griswold
Four Piano Works of Max Kowalski, 1882-1956, Holocaust Composer.
Opus 6 are two works, Andante and Minuet. Originally published but now in public domain (reprinted by Recital Publications, Huntsville Texas. Fox Trot & Slow Tango are still in manuscript.
Opus 6. Piano Works I. Andante in D Flat Major
Opus 6. Piano Works Il.. Minuet in D Major
Opus 36. Piano Works I.. Slow Fox in G Major
Opus 36. Piano Works Il. Tango in C Minor
Max Kowalski(1882-1956) was born in Kowal, Poland. His family moved the next year to Frankfort, Germany, where he grew up, studied and earned Doctorates in both Music and Law (his specialty was Copyrights). His teacher of compostition was Bernhard Sekles and voice, Alexander Heineman. In Germany from 1913 till 1931, Max Kowalski was a prolific composer of beautiful lieder in the Romantic style. Although he was Jewish, Max Kowalski wrote music of all styles and genres, from Japanese, Chinese, Danish, Arabic, French and that of many great German authors, he even wrote a Marienlieder in his Opus 12. He was friend to many other composers, artists and performers and every song cycle he wrote was quickly published until Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich took over the country. In the late 30's Kowalski was very involved with the "Kulterbund" in Frankfort, Germany and his music continued to have popularity in their orchestral concerts. He is mentioned and highlighted by his presence at the last Kulturbund concert(1938) in Martin Goldsmith's book entitled "The Inextinguishable Symphony". By the end of 1938, Kowalski was arrested and spent time in Buchenwald but within a month he was released and he fled to England where he spent the rest of his life teaching voice, singing in a Synagogue and making a humble living. Although no music of his was ever published again, he kept writing new works, 18 new song cycles in manuscripts which singers performed in concerts and on radio. Opus 1 is his first composition dated 1913 and first published by Leukart in Germany. It had been out-of-print many years until Dr. Walter Foster of Recital Publications in Huntsville, Texas took up the challenge to bring as many of Max Kowalski's song cycles to the public as possible. So far, 13 of his 17 previously published cycles have been reprinted and a few of the manuscripts are now first editions which can be gotten through Recital Publications.
Victoria Griswold performs the four piano pieces of Holocaust composer, Max Kowalski, 1882-1956. The first two songs of Opus 6, Andante and Minuet were written for a famous pianist named Alfred Hoehn. The second two pieces were originally written for Max's daughter, Vera, to dance to in recital.
Victoria Griswold is a classical pianist who has concertized in Europe and Brazil. At her debut recital in New York City, one reviewer characterized her as "an elegant pianist." She received her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from Manhattan School of Music, and her principal teachers include the late William Nelson of Carleton College, Zenon Fishbein at the Manhattan School of Music, and Jeaneane Dowis in New York City and the Aspen Music Festival. She has recorded on the MMC label several new works by the American composer William Thomas McKinley with European orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra. Her musical background includes appearances as solo recitalist; soloist with orchestra; chamber pianist; pianist and Music Director for professional Musical Theatre productions; Music Director and harpsichordist for Ars Musica Antiqua, an Early Music ensemble; and as church organist. She also served as staff accompanist at Jersey City State College for six years. Ms. Griswold taught piano for 30 years in her private studio, and has adjudicated for many young people's competitions and auditions sponsored by such organizations as the New Jersey Symphony, the Summit Symphony, the Livingston Symphony, the Music Educators Association of New Jersey, the Andrew DeGrado Foundation; and the New Jersey Music Teachers Association.Victoria Griswold is also the owner of the Plainfield (NJ) Music store, a retail establishment specializing in printed music.
The songs of Opus 6 (Andante and Minuet) were both written for a well known pianist and music educator, Alfred Hoehn (October 20th in 1887- August 2nd, 1945) who was also an editor of much of the piano sonatas and individual piano pieces by Ludwig van Beethoven for the Edition Schott .
The Fox Trot and Slow Tango were both written when Max Kowalski had emigrated to London, England in 1939. He wrote them for his daughter, Vera, to perform to in her dance recitals there. They remain in manuscript.
All pieces were recorded on site and then mastered by Max Caselnova, at Fox Recording, Rutherford, NJ.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5394
|
__label__cc
| 0.596909
| 0.403091
|
You will find below the answers to the most frequently asked questions:
Since when is Québec active on the international stage?
How is the Ministry organized?
What are the Ministry’s current priorities?
What specific services does the Ministry provide and for whom are they intended?
Which international agreements have been concluded by Québec?
What language does the Ministry and Québec’s representative offices abroad use in their communications?
Québec’s representative offices abroad
Why does Québec have a network of representative offices abroad?
What types of activities do Québec’s representative offices abroad perform on a daily basis?
Can I work at one of Québec's representative offices abroad?
Studying and immigrating
How do I apply for financial aid to study outside Québec?
How can I find out which scholarships and bursaries are available to foreign students?
How do I immigrate to Québec?
The Ministère des Relations internationales et de la Francophonie just celebrated its 50th anniversary, but Québec has been active on the international stage for over one hundred years.
Here are some noteworthy events in its history:
1882 - Appointment of Québec’s first foreign representative, in Paris
1940 - Opening of the Québec Government Office in New York City
1961 - Opening of the Québec Government Office in Paris
1961 - Creation of the Agence universitaire de la Francophonie (Francophone University Association)
1962 - Opening of the Québec Government Office in London
1967- Creation of the Ministère des Affaires intergouvernmentales, predecessor of the Ministère des Relations internationales et de la Francophonie
From this point onward, the Québec government began not only creating a structure for itself that would ensure more consistent and coordinated international action, but also defined and broadened a role that had up until then been assumed by the Ministère des Affaires fédérales-provinciales.
« Québec now intends to play a direct role, which reflects its personality and its rights in all areas that are fully or partially within its jurisdiction. » – Excerpt from the Gérin-Lajoie Doctrine, the founding principle of Québec’s International Policy
For more information, see the History page.
The Ministry is composed of five main sectors that encompass all the directorates as well as the teams that report to the Deputy Minister:
Francophone and multilateral policies and affairs
Bilateral affairs
Coordination of international action
Protocol, governance and administration
For more information, see the organization chart (in French only).
The Ministry’s priorities are in keeping with the three main thrusts of Québec's new International Policy, launched on April 11, 2017:
Make Quebecers more prosperous
Contribute to a more sustainable, just and secure world
Promote creativity, culture, knowledge and Québec's specificity
This policy will guide the Québec government’s international action in the years to come.
For more information, see the Québec’s International Policy page.
Services provided to the Québec population
Young Quebecers between 18 and 35 years of ages
The Ministry provides logistical and financial support to Quebecers aged 18 to 35, whether they are students or young professionals, so that they may enjoy unforgettable international internships and work experiences through the following programs:
Québec sans frontières (in French only)
Internships at international government organizations (in French only)
Internships in Washington D.C. (in French only)
To carry out its mandate, the Ministry is supported in its international activities by a network of partner organizations. Job or internship opportunities are also offered by these organizations, (International Youth Offices of Québec) (in French only), and the International Organisation of the Francophonie. (in French only).
Québec’s international cooperation organizations
The Ministry participates in international solidarity efforts by supporting the activities of Québec’s international cooperation organizations and their partners in southern countries. It has created three programs intended for these organizations:
Québec International Development Program
World Citizenship Education Program (in French only)
Eligible Québec companies
The Ministry provides eligible Québec companies with customized assistance for their market expansion projects in the United States through the following program:
Accelerated Growth Center
Québec business professionals, creators, academics, researchers and institutions
Over the years, Québec has built networks of foreign contacts composed of thousands of leaders and decision-makers in all fields (culture, economy, policy, media, etc.). Québec’s network of representative offices abroad is an invaluable tool that Quebecers can use, whether they are business professionals, creators, academics or researchers.
Through its representative offices, the Ministry provides services, advice and activities adapted to the characteristics of the various countries in its network. The services offered by these offices may vary depending on the importance of the posts (general delegation, delegation, bureau or trade office).
To find out which services are offered by a particular representative office, go to international.gouv.qc.ca, select the country where the office is located and consult the Services section.
Services offered to foreign clients
The international.gouv.qc.ca Web site contains a body of information intended for foreign clients who want to immigrate to, study or invest in, or do business with Québec.
Certain representative offices also provide services to local clients (individuals and companies located in their territory), in various sectors, in order to strengthen relations with Québec. To find out which services are offered by a particular office, go to international.gouv.qc.ca, select the country where the office is located and consult the Services section.
To date, Québec has concluded more than 700 agreements with nearly 80 countries and federated states.
To find out which agreements have been concluded by country or by sector, consult the International agreements page.
In accordance with the government’s policy on the use and quality of French within the government, the Ministry and its representative offices use French in their texts, documents and communications of all kinds, including their digital communications, when they are produced for the Québec population.
Needless to say, the reality is different abroad. Public communications may be produced in French and in the language of the territory concerned, since they are meant to help defend Québec's interests and establish agreements or partnerships.
As for digital communications, particularly those published in social media, they may be written exclusively in the language(s) of the territory where the representative office is located.
Québec defends its interests and engages constructively with its foreign partners through its network of representative offices, which are located in the world’s major economic and political decision-making centres.
Depending on the importance of the posts (general delegation, delegation, bureau or trade office) and the relations maintained with the host countries, representative offices provide services in the sectors of activity that fall within the constitutional jurisdiction of Québec, which are:
Québec’s network of representative offices abroad is constantly changing. It adapts to the global situation and the needs of Québec society. It enables Québec to be present at the right places at the right times.
For more information, see the Offices abroad page.
The staff members of Québec’s representative offices woEst-ce que je peux travailler dans une représentation? rk toward achieving tangible results for Québec society. They contribute to Québec’s development by helping:
Québec companies with the processes and efforts involved in breaking into new markets;
promote Québec's expertise in innovation, science and technology;
attract foreign investments;
promote Québec, recruit and select potential immigrants;
market Québec’s events and cultural products abroad;
attract foreign students to Québec's educational institutions;
organize political meetings with foreign decision-makers;
conduct Québec visibility activities with political and economic decision-makers, opinion leaders and civil society.
The services offered may vary from one office to another, depending on the importance of the posts (general delegation, delegation, bureau or trade office) and the relations maintained with the host countries.
To find out which services are offered by a particular office, go to international.gouv.qc.ca, select the country where the office is located and consult the Services section.
Québec’s representative offices abroad staff internships and jobs that fall within their area of responsibility in accordance with local practices and laws. To obtain information on their internship and job offers, please e-mail them your request.
To apply for a financial aid program for studies outside Québec, you must contact the ministère de l’Éducation et de l’Enseignement supérieur. You can also consult the youth programs (in French only) of the Secrétariat à la jeunesse.
To find out which scholarships and bursaries are available to foreign students, visit the Web site of the ministère de l’Éducation et de l’Enseignement supérieur.
For all information about immigrating to Québec, consult the Web site of the ministère de l’Immigration, de la Diversité et de l’Inclusion.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5396
|
__label__cc
| 0.646879
| 0.353121
|
Québec shines at Shanghai Fashion Week
Québec fashion was showcased yesterday in Shanghai on the last day of Minister Jean-François Lisée’s mission to China. The Minister attended the Montréal CollectionS collective fashion show during Shanghai Fashion Week, an internationally renowned annual event.
Québec participates in forestry trade fair in Sweden
Representatives from Québec companies PEDNO and Taimi participated in a forestry equipment trade fair in Sweden from June 4 to 8.
Companies reconnoitre the medical sector in China
Export Québec, in collaboration with the Québec Government Office in Shanghai, organized a trade mission in April that enabled six Québec companies to participate in the China International Medical Equipment Fair 2013 (CMEF), the largest such event in the Asia-Pacific region. CMEF was held in Shenzhen, a city in the Hong Kong suburbs with over 10 million inhabitants.
Shenzhen Design Awards: Montréal singled out as a world leader
Montréal was in the limelight recently in Shenzhen, China, where it was celebrated as one of the world’s top design cities, along with Berlin, Germany, and Saint-Étienne, France.
Québec strengthens its relations with Missouri
On March 3 and 4, 2014, Jeremiah (Jay) Nixon, Governor of Missouri, conducted a successful first mission in Québec. During the visit, Élaine Zakaïb, Minister for Industrial Policy and the Banque de développement économique du Québec, and Mike Downing, Director of the Department of Economic Development, signed a Joint Declaration to strengthen economic and scientific relations between Québec and Missouri.
10 years of UQAM in China
The Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and the China University of Mining and Technology (CUMT) are celebrating 10 years of partnership.
Trade mission to China
Export Québec, in collaboration with HKTDC, invites you to take part in an information and communications technology (ICT) trade mission to Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing from April 12 to 19, 2014.
Québec steps up its relations with Shanghai
Minister Jean-François Lisée ended a productive mission to China Saturday by reaching an agreement with Shanghai authorities to increase relations between Québec and the city of Shanghai.
China interested in Québec’s green building expertise
Jean-François Lisée, Minister of International Relations, La Francophonie and Export Trade, wrapped his recent mission to China by opening a Québec green building showcase in the Expansion Québec office in Shanghai.
Three agreements between Québec and Chinese partners signed in Beijing
Minister Jean-François Lisée, who is continuing his mission to China, marked the 15th anniversary of the Québec Government Office in Beijing by attending the signing of three agreements between Québec and Chinese partners:
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5397
|
__label__cc
| 0.701221
| 0.298779
|
Windermere Blog | Category: Community
Posted September 13 2017, 1:00 PM PDT by Guest Author
Angels In The Cockpit
Posted in Community by Guest Author
The following article appears in the August issue of Alaska Airline’s inflight magazine, Alaska Beyond, and features Windermere CEO, Geoff Wood, who currently serves as the Chairman of the Board of Angel Flight West, an organization whose volunteer pilots fly families in need of vital medical treatment.
Volunteer effort flies thousands of patients in need—for free
As Geoff Wood recalls his most memorable mission with Angel Flight West, he thinks back 10 years, to one of his first flights for the nonprofit that coordinates private pilots, in their own aircraft, to transport people in need. Wood, CEO of Windermere Services Company, volunteered to fly a Spokane man home from Seattle, where his daughter had undergone a bone-marrow transplant. The father was obviously upset about leaving his daughter behind. When their flight arrived in Spokane, Wood was scheduled to return to Seattle with a grandmother and her granddaughter, who was in need of medical treatment. Wood dropped off the father, picked up his new passengers and was taxiing his Cessna back to the runway when the tower asked him to return to the terminal. The father had received a call: His daughter had taken a turn for the worse, and he needed to get back to Seattle.
“Fortunately, I was able to get all three passengers back to Seattle, where they needed to be,” Wood says.
He recalls an old slang term among pilots called the $100 hamburger. Private pilots often look for an excuse to get out and fly, even if it means just flying to another airport, having something to eat, and flying home. In 1983, a small group of pilots in Santa Monica, California, figured there ought to be more to those excursions, some way to make good use of their airplanes and their expertise—like helping families in need. Thus began Angel Flight West.
The fledgling organization—initially known as the American Medical Support Flight Team—flew 15 missions that first year. Today Wood is board chair of an organization that oversees a network of more than 1,400 pilots across 13 western states. These pilots donate their aircraft, piloting skills and all flying costs to help families receive vital treatment that might otherwise be inaccessible because of financial, medical or geographic limitations. Last year, AFW flew 4,113 missions: flying passengers to specialty medical centers; transporting blood to critically ill patients; flying special-needs kids to summer camps; and many more humanitarian missions. The effort involves more than 2,500 volunteers—not only the pilots, but people who work with hospitals and treatment centers, and who coordinate flights, provide ground transportation and assist pilots on missions—they’re called “Earth Angels.”
Among AFW’s largest supporting partners is Alaska Airlines, which handles most of the Alaska in-state transportation needs, as well as flights for AFW recipients who need to travel to the Lower 48. Alaska donates $500,000 each year in travel credit to AFW. In-kind contributions have totaled more than $8 million since the relationship began in 2003, and AFW is the airline’s single-largest corporate gift recipient.
“Alaska’s values of being caring and kindhearted really come to life when our airplanes and talented professionals are put into service in support of those who need a helping hand,” says Joe Sprague, senior vice president of external relations at Alaska, and a former AFW board member. “Our founders in Alaska used to do mercy flights to remote villages. Alaska’s involvement with Angel Flight West keeps that tradition alive in the 21st century.”
The process starts when a patient in need reaches out to AFW at angelflightwest.org. Once a request is validated, the mission is posted to the pilot base through emails, texts and AFW’s online portal. Pilots accept the routes they’d like to fly and then coordinate the logistics. There is never a charge for passengers. Pilots can fly as many missions as they want: AFW recently honored Seattle area pilot Bob Schaper for his 1,000th mission.
And there is no shortage of pilots. Wood notes a recent listing for a boy who needed to fly from San Juan Island in Washington to Seattle several times a week following brain surgery. Every flight leg was filled the first day of the posting.
By Paul Frichtl, Alaska Beyond
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5399
|
__label__cc
| 0.741179
| 0.258821
|
Home > News > August 2014 > Delicate Yet Powerful Children’s Book Helps Youngsters Prepare for & Cope with Grief
Delicate Yet Powerful Children’s Book Helps Youngsters Prepare for & Cope with Grief
Written by Lynne Burton, ‘Little Ladybird Lost’ isn’t the market’s average children’s book, but one desperately needed for the thousands of young people who struggle to both accept and cope with the loss of a loved one.
It’s a fact of life, but most children face a loss at some point during their early years. It’s often a confusing and highly-stressful time for the undeveloped mind, having to both prepare for the death of an ill relative and cope with the aftermath. However, a compelling new book by Lynne Burton serves as literary solace during this desperate time of need.
‘Little Ladybird Lost’ doesn’t shy away from the realities of grief, but it does approach the topic in a compassionate and accessible way that can dramatically change any child’s outlook.
When mummy ladybird finds out she is dying she has to tell her special little girl that she won't be with her for much longer as she is going to die. The story delicately explains how the distraught family have to deal with the death and how their life changes dramatically. It is to help families and professionals who can use this book with their children to explain death in their own way. It has been written delicately where the family or professional can put their own religious spin in to the book, should they wish to do so.
“My main goal with the book wasn’t to just write something that can be fed to a child, but something that can be adapted to each family’s situation and needs,” explains Burton. “From different types of religion to the child’s relationship to the deceased and even the manner of their death – the ladybirds are merely a vehicle for the sharing of a message that each family can make their own.”
Continuing, “Naturally, this isn’t a book that is applicable to every child, but those in need of it will find it is literally life-changing”.”
‘Little Ladybird Lost’ sits alongside two other children’s books by the author; ‘The Adventures on Ken’s Canal’ about the life of canal barges and their friends, and ‘Charlotte’s Crocodile’ which tells the whimsical tale of a young girl given a pet crocodile for her birthday by a rather eccentric uncle.
“Each story is very different, but this kind of variety keeps things interesting. My books stem from the serious arenas of tragedy and loss right through to a little girl who comes to grips with the most fun and unique present she’ll ever be given. Buy the entire range…there’s literally something here for everyone,” Burton adds. BUY IT ON AMAZON
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5409
|
__label__wiki
| 0.692058
| 0.692058
|
The Origins of American Slavery: Freedom and Bondage in the English Colonies. By Betty Wood. (New York: Hill and Wang, c. 1997. Pp. 132).
The growth and impact of slavery peppers the history of English colonization in the Americas. Written for Hill and Wang’s Critical Issues series, Betty Wood’s The Origins of American Slavery examines the institution’s establishment. She uses a mixture of published sources, both primary and secondary, to demonstrate the racism inherent in English slavery. From the very beginning, English settlers differentiated amongst races to determine worthiness and utility for bondage labor. While not necessarily alone amongst Europeans in using race to define freedom, Wood’s synthesis posits that English slavery relied on racism, and this societal structure formed an important aspect of life in all of England’s North American colonies.
Though England’s acceptance of slavery did not differentiate them from other European colonial powers, the precedent is more difficult to discover. Medieval serfdom had died out, though other forms of forced labor such as indentured servitude were quite common. When colonists moved to the New World, they brought these labor systems with them. The importation of indentured servants became an important avenue for population growth in addition to preserving a familiar societal structure and providing necessary labor. Wood then looks at English images of non-whites, particularly black Africans, but also the Indian natives they encountered. Africans were believed to be descended from Noah’s son Ham, and therefore uncivilized. In contrast, the Indians were more likely a lost tribe of Israel, and thus would welcome England’s Protestant proselytizing. Initially, Wood suggests, the English even saw both groups as potential allies against Spain. Still, their heathen status and the need for labor made them attractive targets for forced integration to England’s labor needs.
Wood then proceeds to examine the growth of slavery in particular American regions, focusing on the Carolinas, the Chesapeake, and New England. English colonists fully introduced African slavery to the colonies in the sugar plantations of the Caribbean, particularly in Barbados. Initially attempting tobacco farming, the Barbadian settlers shifted to the profitable and more adapted sugarcane. Using the example of Latin American sugar plantations, and the eagerness of Dutch traders to sell slaves to the English, these colonists imported African slavery heavily to grow and maintain their economic strength. The repression of several revolts helped to solidify the planters’ control, and following the 1660 Restoration these Barbadians began transplanting their industries to newly available land in the Carolinas, particularly South Carolina. In the Chesapeake colonies, particularly Virginia, the old indenture system received greater allegiance. This influx of labor suffered during the disruption of the English Civil War, necessitating the importation of new sources, which naturally meant African slaves. In New England, Puritan settlers used slavery to reinforce their image of themselves as religious refugees. Those that could not enter into the covenant and be saved were subject to servitude as approved by Scripture. New England planters, with a less favorable climate for agriculture, had fewer slaves and tended to treat them better, though it seems only in a relative sense. Though they themselves did not need slavery, New England merchants were only too eager to get their piece of the lucrative slave trade market, perpetuating the image of black inferiority and slavery even without using the practice themselves.
Owing in part to its small size, the impact of Wood’s work is limited. She sees race and racism in English though regardless of region or time, uniting the disparate colonies with a useful thread. By themselves, the individual chapters do not offer new interpretations, generally restating past work on particular regions. There are no footnotes or endnotes, only a series of bibliographic essays at the end. This makes it difficult to trace down Wood’s assertions, though she does her best to highlight particular authors, especially when referring to primary sources. Still, the whole of the book presents a wide-scale view of slavery throughout the English colonies rather than bogging down in regional peculiarities. Wood’s book offers a short, yet comprehensive narrative regarding the growth of slavery in North America, useful to young students and scholars looking for an introduction to the topic.
Texas Christian University Keith Altavilla
The Origins of American Slavery: Freedom and Bondage in the English Colonies. By Betty Wood. (New York, Hill and Wang, 1997).
Although slavery eventually spread throughout the English New World colonies, English settlers’ vision of a New World initially did not include an economic system reliant on forced labor. In The Origins of American Slavery: Freedom and Bondage in the English Colonies, a critical issue publication, historian Betty Wood examines the societal and intellectual changes that allowed England to change from a nation largely immune to the temptations of enslaved labor to one that not only tolerated but depended upon the use of slavery. Wood authored Gender, Race, and Rank in a Revolutionary Age: The Georgia Lowcountry, 1750-1820, Women's Work, Men's Work: The Informal Slave Economies of Lowcountry Georgia, co-authored Come Shouting to Zion: African American Protestantism in the American South and British Caribbean to 1830 and edited Travel, Trade and Power in the Atlantic, 1765-1884. The Origins of American Slavery functions as a historiographical synthesis attempting to address how England, boasting of its unsurpassed status as a free nation, created a society dependent on slave labor.
Wood intends her work to challenge the dualistic debate of England’s slavery use; one side argued that economics preceded the need for forced labor and the other camp believed that racial prejudice drove the desire for West Africans’ enslavement. The Origins of American Slavery asserts that both racism and economic need resulted in the use of slavery and that neither thought rationale existed without the other. English settlers’ justification for slave use rested on aspects of contemporary ideology: a combatant’s loss of personal rights when captured and ensuing enslavement, the widespread use of indentured servants, and a view of non-Christians as strangers or outsiders.
English settlers employed servants for a five year contract term in which they exchanged passage to the New World for labor. While indentured servitude provided popular, many feared the potential for social disorder created by a lower class released from indentured servitude and refusing to work as a hired hand. The loss of obligatory labor and challenges to established class hierarchy influenced many settlers’ decision to buy a person rather than buy just their labor.
Wood asks why settlers generally overlooked Indians as a subjugated labor force in favor of buying West African slaves. Settler preference for African slaves included: Indians avoidance of dense settlement patterns, colonists’ need to trade with Indians and maintain workable relationships, and their perceptions of American Indians as “noble savage,” Wood believes, on the other hand, West Africans simultaneously appeared as living metaphors for “blackness,” which many members of European society equated with sin, and as the personification of the Hamitic myth, which argued that Africans descended from Noah’s cursed son, Ham, a man destined to sire a group of servants presumably marked by their dark coloration. English traders visiting the African coast commented on their difficulty identifying the social structure that governed that area’s peoples as well as their diverse religious practices.
Wood believes that religious dissimilarities influenced English validation of slavery more than racial distinctions did. She compares Barbados sugar planters’ exploitation of slaves with that of New England Quakers and Puritans’ slaveholding. In St. Kitts and Barbados, planters originally relied on indentured servants or Irish workers to work the fields until the English Civil War depleted the indentured servitude workforce and possible laborers declined to hire out to Barbados plantation owners. The planters turned to West African slaves provided by Dutch traders to enhance their already ostentatious wealth.
Wood states that New Englanders apparently justified their use of slavery through their treatment of the slaves. The Puritans and Quakers exposed West Africans to Christianity and heralded themselves as benevolent masters, many believing that by following these practices the peculiar institution paralleled their religious beliefs.
Wood’s examination shines in her portrayal of Barbados plantation owners’ engagement of slavery. She presents their thought process as evolutionary rather than instantaneously born from an especially heartless group of men. However, her analysis of religious justification for Puritan and Quaker use of African slaves fails to convince a reader; she glosses over the obvious paradox of, once African slaves converted to Christianity and no longer existed as an outsider, how a Christian could enslave another Christian?
The Origins of American Slavery functions as a succinct overview of changing English justification of slavery. Wood’s book contains an annotated bibliography that provides a list of monographs specifically addressing the issues broached in The Origins of American Slavery. Her familiarity with the Caribbean and the American colonies allows for a simple but convincing comparison between the two regions. Despite some oversights and unanswered questions, The Origins of American Slavery exists as a classroom reader and a springboard to deeper analysis of literature examining English slaveholding.
Tina Cannon
The Origins of American Slavery: Freedom and Bondage in the English Colonies. By Betty Wood.
Written in 1997, Betty Wood’s work The Origins of American Slavery is an insightful, succinct analysis of the conditions that led the adoption of the “peculiar institution” in the United States. Wood contends that the English did not begin their colonization of North America with the overt intention of enslaving anyone in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, but, rather, the institution of American slavery was the result of a highly complicated set of circumstances involving economics, religion, and social and ethnic imperatives. In order to support her thesis, Wood traces slaves in America through three phases including slavery in the Caribbean, slavery in the Chesapeake colonies, and slavery in the Puritan and Quaker colonies.
Before she goes into these stages, Wood offers an examination of English notions of slaves and ethnicity in the sixteenth century. According to Wood, the English did not have explicit models of slavery like the Spanish and Portuguese, but they did possess knowledge of practice from the biblical accounts of the ancient world and the custom of serfdom in medieval Europe. Additionally, they understood the relationship between slaves and captives, especially as it pertained to the Crusades and the capture of non-Christian “heathens”. Wood also asserts that difference in ethnicity was not a primary concern for the English, especially compared to disparity in religion. Although race issues grew through the practice of slavery and became codified in the eighteenth century, race was not a sufficient justification for slavery at that point in time. Fundamental to understanding the development of slavery in the English colonies is the need for labor in growing cash crops. In the early seventeenth century, colonists had three groups of people to choose from for their labor force: Europeans as indentured servants, Native Americans, and West Africans.
The first slaves in the Americas were those in the Caribbean. As the seventeenth century progressed, more and more Englishman moved to the Caribbean islands of Barbados and Jamaica in hopes of accumulating their fortunes. Learning from the Brazilian success with cultivating sugarcane, English entrepreneurs turned to starting their own sugar plantations. They initially relied on European indentured servants for their labor force. However, the stories of hardships in the Caribbean and the English Civil War slowed the flow of servants to the islands. Planters then turned to the readily available supply of West African workers provided by the Dutch presence in the Caribbean and their extensive slave trade. They not only found a cheaper labor force, but also a group who could not demand rights or freedom as the Europeans had.
Although they too needed a large workforce in order to produce their staple cash crop, this time tobacco, Chesapeake colonists were slower to participate in the enslavement of West Africans. Wood asserts that the Chesapeake area lacked the necessary connection to the Dutch slave trade that would have made West African slavery more economical than the European and native workers. However, the decrease in European servants and the difficulty in holding native peoples captive in territory familiar to them eventually led the Virginia planters to seek other options. As the colony’s population finally stabilized, Dutch traders recognized the potential Chesapeake markets for their slaves and sought to create a connection to the area. In 1705 Virginia legitimize the practice of slavery in its first slave laws.
In the northern colonies, Puritans and Quakers also owned slaves, but because of religious and economical reasons, held difference views of those they enslaved. They did not have the expectations of amassing great wealth in the colonies or the agricultural focus on cash crops so their need for labor was much less than the more southern areas. They too codified slave laws in the Body of Liberties but maintained two fundamental differences from other American slave owners. First, though slaves were to be considered property, they would keep their legal status as persons, and second, slaveholders would be held responsible for the physical as well as the spiritual well-being of their slaves. Consequently, West Africans in these areas were not denied their very humanity like their counterparts of the plantation colonies.
In her work, Wood takes the two most prominent origins of slavery—racial ideology or economics—and blends them together for a more comprehensive look at the issue. She succeeds in skillfully conveying the complexity of the origins of American slavery. Wood wisely says no one aspect of English culture or society could be responsible for the acceptance and spread of slavery as an institution, but that it was far more likely the result of a combination of many causes related to these and other areas.
Colby Bosher
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5413
|
__label__wiki
| 0.720477
| 0.720477
|
History of medical genetics
McKusick, Victor A. and Harper, Peter Stanley 2013. History of medical genetics. In: Rimoin, David L., Pyeritz, Reed E. and Korf, Bruce eds. Emery and Rimoin's Principles and Practice of Medical Genetics, Elsevier, pp. 1-39. (10.1016/B978-0-12-383834-6.00001-X)
This article is a revision of the previous edition article by Victor A McKusick, volume 1, pp 3–32, © 2007, Elsevier Ltd. During the past 60 years, since Medical Genetics first became a defined field of genetics, and a medical specialty in its own right, it has changed and developed at a remarkable pace. It is thus important to record its history, both its clinical and its laboratory aspects, while most of the original founders are still living, since those entering the field and those increasingly using it in wider medical research and practice, may have little knowledge of how Medical Genetics began. This chapter, largely written by Dr Victor McKusick, now deceased and himself a central figure in the history of Medical Genetics, has been extended by Peter Harper. It first outlines the foundations of Medical Genetics in more general genetics in the first half of the twentieth century, before examining the key later scientific discoveries of the last 60 years, including the human gene map and the Human Genome Project; the clinical advances that have increasingly followed from these advances; and the growth of Medical Genetics as a specialty in both clinical and laboratory medicine. Finally, the chapter emphasizes the importance and urgency of preserving the written records and other historical material underlying these discoveries, as well as the memories and correspondence of the many scientists and clinical workers worldwide who have been responsible for the development of this remarkable field of science and medicine.
Q Science > QH Natural history > QH426 Genetics
Cited 3 times in Scopus. View in Scopus. Powered By Scopus® Data
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5414
|
__label__cc
| 0.557084
| 0.442916
|
Theology|
Orthodoxy Today|
Homilies and Spiritual Instruction|
Saints. Asceties of Piety. Church Holy Days|
Churches and Monasteries|
Church History|
Coming to Orthodoxy|
Sretensky Monastery|
Orthodoxy Around the World|
Suffering Church|
Church and State|
Polish woman arrested for blaspheming famous “Black Madonna” icon
Poland, May 10, 2019
Photo: wikimedia.org Polish police briefly detained 51-year-old Elzbieta Podlesna on Monday for profaning the internationally-venerated Mother of God of Częstochowa Icon, commonly known as the “Black Madonna.” The icon is considered a sacred object of the Catholic church, housed at the Jasna Góra Monastery in Częstochowa, though it is of the Byzantine “Hodegetria” (“One Who Shows the Way”) type and is also venerated by Orthodox Christians.
Police believe she is responsible for creating and displaying a blasphemous image of the Mother of God with the Christ Child with the rainbow colors of the LGBT movement in place of their halos, reports Sputnik. They discovered dozens of copies of such posters during a search of her apartment, according to Breitbart.
No charges were filed, but police are continuing the investigation, an Amnesty International representative said on Tuesday. Podlesna had just returned from a trip to Belgium and the Netherlands with the human rights organization, reports Human Rights Watch.
In iconography, the gold of halos represents the Uncreated Light of God that shines from Christ as His own and from the saints by virtue of the grace within them. The woman, seemingly oblivious to the importance of iconography, responded, “This was not an attack on religion or faith. This was not a form of attack at all. How can someone attack anyone with a picture?”
It is particularly offensive to replace an image of purity and holiness with the symbol of a movement that supports and fights for sinful lifestyles. It is also illegal according to Polish law to offend the religious sentiments of others, punishable by up to two years in prison.
“Telling stories about freedom and ‘tolerance’ doesn’t give anyone the right to offend the feelings of believers,” Joachim Brudziński, Poland’s Interior Minister, wrote on Twitter. He also described the posters as “cultural barbarism.”
The profanation-provocation comes against the background of tension in Poland lately over attempts to import Western sexual values that are incongruent with the nation’s deep cultural and religious tradition. “We are dealing with a direct attack on the family and children – the sexualization of children, that entire LBGT movement, gender. This is imported, but they today actually threaten our identity, our nation, its continuation and therefore the Polish state,” said Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party.
On the other hand, so-called human rights activists are not pleased with the arrest and investigation. “Targeting an activist over an artwork is one more ruthless tactic by the Law and Justice party to demonize LGBT rights and gender equality,” said Hillary Margolis, a women’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch.
“The government claims to be protecting religion and Polish values, but in reality, it is targeting its own citizens and denying their basic rights,” Margolis said. “Perpetuating the notion that gender equality and LGBT rights threaten Polish society doesn’t protect anyone – it only feeds dangerous intolerance, homophobia, and misogyny.”
"[She] has not admitted to committing the crime,” Podlesna’s lawyer, Radoslaw Baszuk, told CNN. “That does not mean that she did not deny participation in this event.”
In 2012, monastery guards detained a man who was attempting to deface the icon by throwing black paint on it, though, fortunately, it was protected by a pane of glass.
Icon of the Mother of God “Czestochowa” Icon of the Mother of God “Czestochowa”
Commemorated on March 6
The wonderworking Czestochowa Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos is to be found in a Roman Catholic monastery at Yasna Gora near the city of Czestochowa, Petrov Province. Vandalism attempt made against the Czestochowa icon Vandalism attempt made against the Czestochowa icon
A fifty-eight-year-old man threw vials of black paint at the Czestochowa icon in the Jasna Góra Monastery in southern Poland on Sunday, reports ITAR-TACC. The icon is held in great veneration by both Catholic and Orthodox Christians as miracle-working. The auto procession with the Czestochowa icon has passed through 20 countries The auto procession with the Czestochowa icon has passed through 20 countries
Since the beginning of World pro-life campaign "From coast to coast" the Mother of God of Czestochowa icon has travelled over 30,000 miles, visited 20 countries and more than 90 cities.
Homilies and Spiritual Instruction
Saints. Asceties of Piety. Church Holy Days
Coming to Orthodoxy
Sretensky Monastery
Orthodoxy Around the World
Suffering Church
© 1999-2018 OrthoChristian.com
When reposting our material a link to OrthoChristian.com is required.
editor@orthochristian.com
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5415
|
__label__wiki
| 0.922904
| 0.922904
|
Cristiano Ronaldo assure fans of a comeback in UEFA Champions League clash against Atletico Madrid
By Precious Kashmir on 11/03/2019 Comments Off on Cristiano Ronaldo assure fans of a comeback in UEFA Champions League clash against Atletico Madrid
Juventus’ Champions League aspirations hang low after Atletico Madrid defeated the Turin club 2-0 in the Round of 16 first leg last month on February 20. Cristiano Ronaldo seems like the only ray of hope for the Bianconeri and the Portuguese has asked the fans to sit tight for a comeback. The Italian Champions have come back from behind on eight previous occasions including the famous comeback in 1996 against Real Madrid in the quarter-finals.
Ronaldo in an interview to Juventus TV ahead of the game against Atletico Madrid said, “We didn’t expect to lose the first leg 2-0, but anything can happen, and we want to give a great response in our home, in front of our fans, These are the great nights, the fantastic ones: the Champions League nights.”
“The team is confident of playing a great game and I am too. To the fans, I say: think positive, let’s believe. Get ready to come back!” he further continued.
The 34-year-old has achieved something similar of the sorts back in the day with Real Madrid back in 2016. Los Blancos lost the first leg 2-0 in Germany at the hands of Wolfsburg but Ronaldo orchestrated a magnificent comeback scoring a hat-trick in the second leg leading the Galacticos to qualify for the next round. A somewhat similar occasion has once again presided in front of the Portuguese who can send the fans in for a deja vu if Juventus can conjure a comeback against Diego Simeone’s men.
Italian sports daily Corriere dello Sport, wrote, “CR7 is here for that, a game Cristiano cannot get wrong. He wasn’t signed to win the Scudetto or to boost merchandising, Juve are waiting to end years of disappointments.”
The seven-time Scudetto winner made a move for Ronaldo back in the summer from Real Madrid for a whopping 100 million euros to end their 23-year Champions League drought. The Juventus forward has not scored for the Turin club in the league since the loss in Madrid which has seen Sampdoria’s Fabio Quagliarella(20) overtook Ronaldo(19) as the leading goalscorer.
Juventus last won the UCL title back in 1996 and have finished as the runner up for five times since then including twice in the last four years. A bigger challenge for Massimiliano Allegri’s men will be to score at least twice against a team which has not conceded a single goal in the last five games. A bigger challenge will be to stop Atletico from scoring seeing Juventus didn’t score a single goal at Wanda Metropolitano.
Ronaldo also mentioned about the tactics of Diego Simeone’s side, saying, “Everyone knows that they are a strong team, they defend very well, they don’t take a lot of risks and they play on the counter-attack, but we are ready, and we will do everything we can to beat them. The fine details will make the difference, and we want to win and qualify for the quarter-finals.”
The Portuguese is well versed with the Argentine’s tactics having played against his side on numerous occasions during his time with Real Madrid. Ronaldo has scored 22 goals against Atletico Madrid and three more on Tuesday night could see his team come back from the dead.
Cristiano Ronaldo assure fans of a comeback in UEFA Champions League clash against Atletico Madrid added by Precious Kashmir on 11/03/2019
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5419
|
__label__wiki
| 0.77566
| 0.77566
|
Select other Maple Leafs Agostino, Kenny Andersen, Frederik Barrie, Tyson Ceci, Cody Dermott, Travis Gauthier, Frederik Gravel, Kevin Harpur, Ben Holl, Justin Hyman, Zach Johnsson, Andreas Kapanen, Kasperi Kerfoot, Alexander Marincin, Martin Marner, Mitchell Matthews, Auston Muzzin, Jake Nylander, William Petan, Nic Rielly, Morgan Sparks, Garret Spezza, Jason Tavares, John Maple Leafs Roster
Team: Toronto Maple Leafs Height: 6-1 Born: 9/20/1990
Position: C Weight: 209 Birthplace: Mississauga, Ontario
Game Logs 2018-2019
Date Opp Result G A Pts +/- PIM SOG SPct. PP PPA SHG SHA GWG TOI
10/03 Mon W 3-2 1 0 1 1 0 5 20.0% 0 0 0 0 0 18:04
10/06 Ott L 3-5 0 0 0 1 0 3 - 0 0 0 0 0 19:37
10/07 @ Chi W 7-6 3 0 3 1 2 7 42.9% 1 0 0 0 0 21:12
10/09 @ Dal W 7-4 2 0 2 0 0 3 66.7% 1 0 0 0 1 18:45
10/11 @ Det W 5-3 0 4 4 2 0 3 - 0 1 0 0 0 18:35
10/13 @ Was W 4-2 0 0 0 0 2 2 - 0 0 0 0 0 19:07
10/15 LA W 4-1 0 1 1 1 0 5 - 0 0 0 0 0 17:09
10/18 Pit L 0-3 0 0 0 -2 0 4 - 0 0 0 0 0 18:26
10/20 StL L 1-4 0 0 0 -1 0 1 - 0 0 0 0 0 16:58
10/24 @ Wpg W 4-2 1 0 1 0 0 5 20.0% 0 0 0 0 0 17:39
10/27 Wpg W 3-2 0 1 1 0 2 3 - 0 0 0 0 0 20:56
10/29 Cgy L 1-3 0 0 0 -1 0 2 - 0 0 0 0 0 21:26
11/01 Dal L 1-2 0 1 1 -1 0 5 - 0 1 0 0 0 20:26
11/03 @ Pit W 5-0 1 1 2 2 0 6 16.7% 0 0 0 0 1 20:26
11/06 VGK W 3-1 0 1 1 1 0 3 - 0 0 0 0 0 19:11
11/09 NJ W 6-1 1 0 1 0 0 2 50.0% 0 0 0 0 0 18:59
11/10 @ Bos L 1-5 1 0 1 0 0 7 14.3% 0 0 0 0 0 18:08
11/13 @ LA W 5-1 1 2 3 1 0 4 25.0% 1 1 0 0 1 19:50
11/15 @ SJ W 5-3 1 0 1 1 0 1 100.0% 0 0 0 0 0 19:11
11/16 @ Anh W 2-1 0 0 0 1 0 2 - 0 0 0 0 0 20:01
11/19 Cls W 4-2 1 1 2 2 0 3 33.3% 0 0 0 0 0 17:43
11/21 @ Car L 2-5 1 0 1 -2 0 3 33.3% 0 0 0 0 0 19:37
11/23 @ Cls L 2-4 0 0 0 -2 4 3 - 0 0 0 0 0 21:44
11/24 Phi W 6-0 1 0 1 1 0 3 33.3% 0 0 0 0 0 17:00
11/26 Bos W 4-2 0 1 1 1 0 2 - 0 0 0 0 0 21:02
11/28 SJ W 5-3 2 0 2 0 0 6 33.3% 1 0 0 0 0 18:40
12/01 @ Min W 5-3 0 0 0 0 0 4 - 0 0 0 0 0 17:53
12/04 @ Buf W 4-3 0 1 1 1 0 5 - 0 0 0 0 0 22:00
12/06 Det OTL 4-5 1 0 1 0 0 3 33.3% 0 0 0 0 0 20:52
12/08 @ Bos L 3-6 0 0 0 -3 2 5 - 0 0 0 0 0 17:32
12/11 @ Car W 4-1 1 0 1 1 0 1 100.0% 0 0 0 0 0 15:43
12/13 @ TB L 1-4 0 0 0 0 0 6 - 0 0 0 0 0 19:10
12/15 @ Fla OTL 3-4 1 0 1 0 0 3 33.3% 0 0 0 0 0 21:03
12/18 @ NJ W 7-2 1 1 2 1 0 2 50.0% 0 0 0 0 0 17:47
12/20 Fla W 6-1 2 0 2 1 0 4 50.0% 1 0 0 0 0 16:40
12/22 NYR W 5-3 0 2 2 2 2 6 - 0 0 0 0 0 18:26
12/23 Det W 5-4 1 1 2 2 0 4 25.0% 0 0 0 0 0 20:20
12/28 @ Cls W 4-2 2 0 2 1 0 5 40.0% 1 0 0 0 0 19:35
12/29 NYI L 0-4 0 0 0 -1 0 5 - 0 0 0 0 0 17:17
01/03 Min L 3-4 0 2 2 2 2 6 - 0 0 0 0 0 22:07
01/05 Van W 5-0 1 0 1 1 0 2 50.0% 0 0 0 0 1 16:04
01/07 Nsh L 0-4 0 0 0 -1 0 3 - 0 0 0 0 0 19:44
01/12 Bos L 2-3 0 0 0 0 2 3 - 0 0 0 0 0 19:14
01/14 Col L 3-6 0 0 0 -4 2 0 - 0 0 0 0 0 19:26
01/17 @ TB W 4-2 0 2 2 2 0 2 - 0 0 0 0 0 18:41
01/18 @ Fla L 1-3 0 0 0 0 0 2 - 0 0 0 0 0 21:12
01/20 Ari L 2-4 1 0 1 -1 0 2 50.0% 0 0 0 0 0 18:03
01/23 Was W 6-3 0 1 1 -1 0 6 - 0 1 0 0 0 18:48
02/01 @ Det OTL 2-3 0 0 0 -1 0 4 - 0 0 0 0 0 19:37
02/02 Pit W 3-2 0 0 0 1 0 1 - 0 0 0 0 0 19:52
02/04 Anh W 6-1 1 1 2 1 0 3 33.3% 0 0 0 0 0 16:33
02/06 Ott W 5-4 1 1 2 2 0 4 25.0% 0 0 0 0 0 20:22
02/09 @ Mon W 4-3 1 1 2 2 4 1 100.0% 0 0 0 0 1 19:48
02/10 @ NYR L 1-4 0 0 0 -3 0 8 - 0 0 0 0 0 19:39
02/12 @ Col W 5-2 0 2 2 0 0 2 - 0 2 0 0 0 18:19
02/14 @ VGK W 6-3 0 1 1 0 0 3 - 0 0 0 0 0 19:49
02/16 @ Ari L 0-2 0 0 0 -1 0 1 - 0 0 0 0 0 20:31
02/19 @ StL OTL 2-3 0 0 0 0 0 3 - 0 0 0 0 0 18:49
02/21 Was L 2-3 1 0 1 -1 0 2 50.0% 0 0 0 0 0 21:21
02/23 Mon W 6-3 0 1 1 1 0 3 - 0 1 0 0 0 17:16
02/25 Buf W 5-3 1 0 1 0 2 3 33.3% 0 0 0 0 0 19:01
02/27 Edm W 6-2 1 1 2 0 0 7 14.3% 1 1 0 0 0 17:40
02/28 @ NYI L 1-6 0 0 0 0 0 5 - 0 0 0 0 0 17:00
03/04 @ Cgy W 6-2 0 1 1 3 0 1 - 0 0 0 0 0 18:23
03/06 @ Van OTL 2-3 0 1 1 0 0 1 - 0 0 0 0 0 20:37
03/09 @ Edm W 3-2 1 2 3 1 0 5 20.0% 0 1 0 0 0 18:29
03/11 TB L 2-6 0 0 0 -1 0 1 - 0 0 0 0 0 15:47
03/13 Chi L 4-5 1 0 1 0 0 5 20.0% 0 0 0 0 0 21:58
03/15 Phi W 7-6 0 0 0 -1 0 3 - 0 0 0 0 0 21:43
03/16 @ Ott L 2-6 1 1 2 -1 0 4 25.0% 1 0 0 0 0 15:17
03/19 @ Nsh L 0-3 0 0 0 -1 0 2 - 0 0 0 0 0 19:29
03/20 @ Buf W 4-2 1 1 2 2 0 6 16.7% 0 0 0 0 0 19:57
03/23 NYR OTL 1-2 0 1 1 0 0 3 - 0 0 0 0 0 19:25
03/27 @ Phi L-SO 4-5 0 0 0 -1 0 1 - 0 0 0 0 0 20:48
03/30 @ Ott L 2-4 0 0 0 0 0 3 - 0 0 0 0 0 20:33
04/01 @ NYI W 2-1 1 0 1 1 2 2 50.0% 0 0 0 0 1 18:47
04/02 Car L 1-4 1 0 1 -2 2 3 33.3% 1 0 0 0 0 19:32
04/06 @ Mon L-SO 5-6 0 0 0 2 0 8 - 0 0 0 0 0 18:22
04/11 @ Bos W 4-1 1 1 2 2 0 6 16.7% 0 0 0 0 0 17:48
04/17 Bos L 4-6 0 1 1 -3 0 2 - 0 0 0 0 0 19:47
04/19 @ Bos W 2-1 0 0 0 -1 0 3 - 0 0 0 0 0 17:59
04/23 @ Bos L 1-5 1 0 1 -1 0 4 25.0% 0 0 0 0 0 21:19
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5422
|
__label__wiki
| 0.943872
| 0.943872
|
All years 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
Sean Scully. Estampes 1983-1999, Musee des Beaux-Arts de Caen, Caen, France, June 30 – Sept 11, 2000 (c)
Sean Scully. Photographies, Galerie de l’ancien college, Ecole municipale d’Arts plastiques, Chatellerault, France, May 20 – June 29, 2000
Sean Scully, Galeria Carles Taché, Barcelona, Spain, Mar 16 , 2000 (c)
Sean Scully. Graphics, A+A Galleria D’Arte, Venice, Italy, Feb 26,2000
Sean Scully. Prints 1994 – 1998, Alan Cristea Gallery, London, UK, Feb 8 – Mar 11,2000
Sean Scully on Paper, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, Jan 11 – Mar 12, 2000
Sean Scully. Ten Barcelona Paintings, Galerie Bernd Klüser, Munich, Germany, Dec 14, 1999 – Feb 14, 2000 (c)
Sean Scully, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, Ireland, Oct 15 – Nov 15, 1999 (c)
Sean Scully. New Paintings, South London Gallery, London, UK, June 16 – Aug 1, 1999 (c)
Sean Scully New Paintings and Works on Paper, Danese Gallery and Galerie Lelong, New York, NY, Apr 29 – June 11, 1999 (c)
Sean Scully. Prints 1968 – 1999, Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna, Austria, Apr 16 – May 30, 1999; Musee du Dessin et de l’Estampe Originale, Gravelines, Gravelines, France, July 4 – Oct 3, 1999 (catalogue raisonne)
Sean Scully. Monotypes and Color Woodcuts 1987 – 1993 from the Garner Tullis Workshop, New York, Galerie Kornfeld, Zürich, Switzerland, Mar 14 – Apr 24, 1999
Sean Scully, Galerie Lelong Paris, Paris, France, Mar 4 - Apr 17, 1999 (c)
Sean Scully. Pastels, Watercolors, Prints and Photos, Galerie Le Triangle Blue Art Contemporain, Stavelot, Belgium, Dec 13, 1998 – Jan 31, 1999
Sean Scully, Galeria Antonia Puyo, Zaragoza, Spain, Nov 1998 (c)
Sean Scully. New Paintings and Works on Paper, Galleri Weinberger, Copenhagen, Denmark, Oct 9 – Nov 14, 1998
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line5423
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.