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Central Board of Film Certification
Bad news for movie buffs! Censored parts of films to stay out of internet
Film buffs may no longer be able to turn to the Internet for watching portions found objectionable by the censor board.Raghav Ohri | ET Bureau | March 03, 2016, 08:23 IST
Film buffs may no longer be able to turn to the Internet for watching portions found objectionable by the censor board.
This follows the decision of the Central Board of Film Certification to bar film-makers from releasing the excised portions to anybody, including on the Web.
Film-makers will now be required to furnish an undertaking to this effect, Assistant Solicitor General Chetan Mittal told the Punjab & Haryana High Court on Wednesday on behalf of the information & broadcasting ministry and the censor board.
The matter came up during resumed hearing of a public interest litigation filed in January against the release of Mastizaade and Kya Kool Hain Hum 3.
The decision seeks to plug the loophole in the law, which restrains film-makers from releasing censored portions in cinema halls or on television but is silent on the release of the material on the Internet.
As a result, censored portions of quite a few films have found their way to the Internet, especially on YouTube.
The petitioner had annexed a compact disc of scenes from the two films which were downloaded from YouTube and contended that the scenes were highly objectionable and vulgar.
The court had then sought responses from the ministry and the censor board. On perusal of the CD it was discovered that the scenes were excised by the censor board and were no longer part of thefilms.
Mittal had told the court that the board had no powers to certify content on the Internet. The court had, however, asked the ministry to come up with a solution.
The ministry and the censor board, instead of taking the long route of amending the law, arrived at a decision within a fortnight to take an undertaking from film-makers.
The affidavit filed in the court on Wednesday said, “It is submitted that the deponent would ensure that through the undertaking to be submitted by the producers/directors that they would not release the excised portion of the feature/film to anybody.”
The court accepted the affidavit, empowering the board to regulate release of film content on the Web. The affidavit said there are no provisions in the Cinematograph Act to certify content which is posted on the Internet, on YouTube or any other website.
Asper the affidavit, the board certifies films only for public exhibition in theatre or satellite/television channels, promos, trailers, etc, after examining the overall content as per the Cinematograph Act, 1952, Cinematograph (Certification) Rules, 1983, and guidelines, 1991. The content on television channels is governed by the Cable Television Networks Rules, 1994, it said.
Tags : Internet, YouTube, Central Board of Film Certification, censored
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Foreign investors see US$3.32 billion net fund inflow in February
March 4, 2017 taiwanwireservice.com Production
Taipei--Foreign institutional investors in Taiwan registered a net fund inflow of US$3.32 billion in February, an increase from the previous month, according to government statistics.
Data released Friday by the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) showed that the net inflow of US$3.32 billion in February not only beat the January figure of US$2.65 billion but was the highest monthly amount since last June, when it reached US$4.05 billion.
Riding the wave of high liquidity in the first two months of 2017, the weighted index on the Taiwan Stock Exchange rose 496.97 points or 5.37 percent during that period.
At the end of February, the weighted index closed at 9,750.47 points after repeatedly breaching the stiff technical resistance of 9,800 points earlier in the month on a liquidity driven uptrend, analysts said.
They said that many Taiwanese investors operating in China have been moving their funds back home in recent months as Chinese authorities have been stepping up their efforts to avoid tax evasion by foreign investors.
Since the Taiwan government lifted a ban on foreign institutional investments on the local bourse at the end of 1990, the aggregate net fund inflow into the country has been US$205.33 billion, according to according to FSC data valid as of the end of February.
With foreign funds flowing into Taiwan in the first two months of 2017, foreign institutional investors bought a net NT$95.3 billion (US$3.07 billion) worth of shares on the local main board during that period, the FSC statistics indicated.
On Friday, the third trading session of March, the weighted index ended at 9,648.21 points, down about 1.05 percent from the end of February, amid rising concerns over a possible interest rate hike in the United States later this month.
The worry is that a rate hike will push up the U.S. currency, prompting foreign investors move their funds out of the region and into U.S dollar denominated assets.
However, FSC Vice Chairman Cheng Cheng-mount (???) has said that with the Taiwan economy well on its way to recovery, it is unlikely to be affected much by a rate hike in the U.S.
Air quality poor in southern half of western Taiwan Friday
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Stabe Wilson
Drawing inspiration from every musical genre from gospel to jazz to soul and R&B, Stabe’s vast list of musical influences can best be described as eclectic. His unique style and interpretation of song has been influenced by traditional jazz saxophonists such as Hank Crawford and Stanley Turrentine; contemporary saxophonists Kirk Whalum and Everette Harp; blues great B.B. King; the vocal phrasing of jazz greats Nancy Wilson, Al Jarraeu and gospel artist Daryl Coley, just to name a few.
In addition to his solo work with established recording artists, Stabe also serves as the leader of the Stabe Wilson Band. The Stabe Wilson Band has made multiple appearances at Oakland’s Art & Soul Festival, City of Oakland Sunday in the Redwoods Concert Series and the KBLX Stone Soul Concert. The Stabe Wilson Band’s mix of jazz, R&B and blues styles has made the band the “go-to” band for events hosted by the California Association of Black Lawyers, Kaiser Permanente, Oakland Police Department, City of Oakland and City of San Leandro.
Stabe was recently awarded the 2012 Saxophonist of the Year by the West Coast Blues Hall of Fame. He was previously named 1995 Saxophonist of the Year by the National Gospel Academy.
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Posted on October 27, 2014 by Kate Everson
AICPA: Accounting for Diversity
Accountancy firms might be able to balance revenue and taxes, but they’re not as skilled at keeping their own diversity in check.
That’s why the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, or AICPA, announced the release of two diversity and inclusion tools, which are free to CPA firms across the country.
The first is a maturity model that surveys firms about their workplace, workforce, community and supplier diversity, then uses the answers to place them at one of four diversity levels: foundational, enlightened, integrated and optimized. Along with the result comes a guide to how to get to the next ranking.
The second tool is a recruitment and retention tool kit that delineates best practices and helps leaders understand that culture plays a huge role in attracting candidates to apply for a job, let alone take one.
These initiatives are the result of the AICPA’s National Commission of Diversity and Inclusion, a group that formed about two and a half years ago and looks to attract more minorities and women into accounting.
“Our team set out to really source the best practices that are out there,” said Kim Drumgo, AICPA’s director of diversity and inclusion. “We came up with laundry list and tailored that list to meet the needs of the accounting profession because we realized one size does not fit all.”
The tools the group developed are intended for mid-sized and large firms, but Drumgo said organizations of any size can still benefit. Although this first wave is focused on ethnic minorities, it’s just the beginning of a series of initiatives planned by the AICPA to boost diversity in gender, sexuality and veteran status.
“As America continues to brown, the profession is not moving with the demographics,” said Sherry Davis, a director in corporate audit services for Eli Lilly & Co. in Indianapolis. “Part of the challenge we’re running into is as the demographics of the customers change, their demands of wanting someone who understands them from a cultural and business standpoint, who understands their customer base, the accounting industry isn’t keeping up with that.”
Now that there are growing business ramifications for having a predominately white male industry, firms are starting to look more into how they can incorporate minorities. Unfortunately, the problem isn’t caused by just an issue in recruitment or retention.
Julius Green, president-elect of the Pennsylvania Institute of CPAs, said the first is that women join the profession at an equal rate as men but tend to leave before being promoted to higher roles, possibly because they decide to start families and aren’t offered the right work-life balance to be able to hold a position and raise a child at the same time.
The second is that minorities don’t join the industry at all. “Traditionally the accounting profession has not recruited minorities as aggressively in a way to enable the needle to move in ethnic diversity,” Green said.
Minority students also see the field as being lily-white and unaccepting of them — they don’t see any accountants with similar origins and therefore see the position as unattainable. Others see accounting as undesirable. Davis said the right exposure for potential CPAs can introduce them to the lesser-known sides of the business. It’s not just punching numbers into a calculator, and Davis knows this first hand — her job has had an international focus that includes travel.
“This is the first that I’ve seen of this type of sustained and meaningful effort and endorsement and approach by an organization as well-respected as AICPA,” Green said. Firms that are unaware of their diversity problems now have a national leader pointing them in the right direction.
Even though this new initiative set will bring more national awareness to diversity and inclusion, it’s actually behind compared to some of what’s being done at a state level.
Pennsylvania’s institute released similar guides two years ago. A few states over, the Indiana CPA Society runs the five-year-old INCPAS Scholars Program, which introduces minority high school to aspects of the industry. Davis, who serves on the Diversity Task Force of the society, said participants undergo a year-long series of events that teach everything from the environment of an accounting firm to must-know business etiquette.
One of the program’s first participants is about to graduate with his accounting degree, and there are 38 others in college, poised to go into the field. “When we get our first CPA, I might do a backflip,” Davis said.
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Sandin's NHL dream comes true; first 19-year-old D-man for Leafs since Rielly
Updated: October 1, 2019 8:57 AM EDT
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For the first time in six years, the Maple Leafs will employ a 19-year-old defenceman.
And Rasmus Sandin, the teenager in question, on Monday had the kind of reaction one might expect.
“It’s really cool,” Sandin said after the Leafs practised at the Ford Performance Centre.
“It’s a dream come true. That’s what all hockey players are playing for — they want to take a spot in the NHL. It feels really good right now.”
When the Leafs play host to the Ottawa Senators on Wednesday night to begin the 2019-20 regular season, Sandin will be the first 19-year-old blueliner to suit up for the Leafs since Morgan Rielly in 2013.
Coach Mike Babcock hinted at Sandin’s inclusion on the roster on Saturday night, and it was cemented on Monday morning in a meeting between Sandin and general manager Kyle Dubas.
When the dust settled on roster decisions on Monday, defencemen Justin Holl and Timothy Liljegren (the latter more for salary cap reasons than performance) were part of the 23-man group as well, ditto for Nick Shore, who is destined to start as the 13th forward.
Dmytro Timashov shone in camp, earning a spot in the lineup as the left wing on the fourth line with Jason Spezza and Frederik Gauthier.
Rielly didn’t skate for the Leafs right away in 2013-14 — he was scratched for the first two games of the season before replacing Mark Fraser against the Senators on Oct. 5 — but he has been a staple member of the Blue and White since, developing to the point that he should be in the Norris Trophy conversation, if not win it, for the next several years.
With his ability to see the game and his overall skill set, Sandin, the 29th pick by the Leafs in 2018 NHL draft, has similar potential.
But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.
“Played good over time and not just last year, but through the year and through exhibition and every night,” Leafs coach Mike Babcock said. “The more situations we put him in, the more he played well.
“As long as he keeps going in the right direction it can be a real good thing for him, but we have to understand he is a young player and his development is very important for us. Winning is very important for us, but his development is as well.”
The two could go hand in hand. Sandin already is at a level where he can help the Leafs win games.
Rielly and Tyson Barrie are key on the first and second pairs with their ability to skate and find teammates. With Martin Marincin on the right side, Sandin brings a cerebral element and a calibre to the third pair that many NHL clubs can’t boast.
“If you look at any good teams, they have good depth on the back end and players who can move the puck and players who can defend,” Babcock said. “Keeping people away from your net is a huge part of the game and getting to their net. When we look at our defence, we look at it with both things in mind.”
Once Travis Dermott returns from recovering from shoulder surgery, likely in late October, the Leafs could have a nice problem if there are no further injuries. But we shouldn’t assume it automatically will be Sandin being shuttled to the side line, or to the Toronto Marlies.
If there are hiccups for Sandin, and there are bound to be along the way, Rielly will be a good sounding board.
“I talk to him a lot,” Sandin said. “He is a guy who wants to help the younger guys. He is a great guy and a great hockey player, a good guy to look up to for sure.”
Rielly recalled his initial foray into the NHL, saying it was “nerve-wracking” but also that he remembered why he cracked the lineup.
Something similar would apply to Sandin.
“He played really well during the pre-season, he shows a lot of confidence and seems comfortable, just go out there and be yourself,” Rielly said. “He made this team just playing his game.
“You work your whole life to get there and you go out there and it’s hard to be confident and comfortable, but that’s what you have to do. You have to believe in your ability.”
twitter.com/koshtorontosun
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A Father’s Story: An Elegy for Andre Dubus
Nick Ripatrazone January 9, 2014 | 15 books mentioned 6 13 min read
In the 1999 Publishers Weekly review of House of Sand and Fog, Andre Dubus III is compared to Russell Banks, Richard Ford, and “one of our most talented writers:” his father. Although reviews of Dubus III’s earlier books referenced his legendary namesake, the comparisons have begun to fade. At Kirkus, S. Kirk Walsh recently linked the men: both are “expert at exploring the psychological crevices of [their] characters and the gritty realism of their broken lives.” Walsh’s observations might soon become a critical antique. Each year distances father from son. The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe praised Dirty Love, Dubus III’s 2013 collection of fiction, without mentioning his skilled elder. The publication of his 2011 memoir, Townie, has resulted in literary-genealogical displacement for Dubus III: by writing directly about his relationship with his father, he has become his own man on the page. As the son rises, the memory of the father might drift away. That would be a shame. His father’s story has never been given its proper due.
I spent the summers during graduate school working as a groundskeeper for The Seeing Eye in Morristown, NJ, the world’s oldest existing guide dog school. I was a seasonal assistant, charged with helping keep the campus pristine for visits by rich donors. I set post-and-rail fences, pitchforked steaming mulch from the back of a dump truck, and weed-whacked rocky hills. I wore a painter’s suit to power-wash hair, urine, and feces caked into the grout of the kennels. Afterward, I stripped out of the black and gold spattered suit, and kneeled under the Gatorade cooler that sat on the bed of our pickup. I chugged the grainy, poorly mixed drink, kept cold by sloshing ice. I spread out in the grass and watched trainers lead blind students forward, golden retrievers leashed to hopeful hands. This was a place for people to gain independence by placing complete trust in others.
I had been introduced to the elder Dubus’s work as an undergraduate. Tom Bailey, my fiction professor at Susquehanna University, included an essay by Dubus in his book On Writing Short Stories. We read “The Fat Girl” and “The Winter Father” in class. I checked-out his Selected Stories and Meditations from a Movable Chair from the college library. Though it felt like a venial sin, I couldn’t help but underline passages in pencil. But I truly fell in love with Dubus’s writing during those hot afternoons in Morristown, especially when it was my turn to mow the wide fields that stretched to the treeline. I rode a Steiner tractor, one used to trim minor-league ballfields, and listened to Bad Company while cutting rows of light and dark. In the middle of the field, on breaks, I unstrapped my backpack from the seat and read Dubus. I often returned to his essay, “Digging.” At 17, weighing “one hundred and five pounds,” Dubus was sent to work by his “ruddy, broad-chested father.” Dubus didn’t want to go. His father, an ex-Marine who carried a .22 on his belt for cottonmouths encountered during his surveying work, had a message for the foreman: “make a man of him.”
Dubus describes pickaxing a trench in Lafayette., La. heat. Sunburned and weak, his mouth is dry. He swallows salt tablets “and drank and drank,” but later becomes sick and vomits. He does not tell the foreman; he does not want to tell his father. But his father learns, and takes young Dubus to lunch. He buys the boy a pith helmet for the sun. Dubus feels like a fool, but wore it all summer because “I did not want to hurt him.” He ends the essay by thanking his father for making him work “instead of taking me home to my mother and sister,” where it was comfortable, the air cooled by a fan.
Dubus knows his father “may have wanted to take me home. But he knew he must not, and he came tenderly to me.” He made his son a man by letting him know that weakness could be overcome. My own father is similarly muscled from his college football days, but carries a gentler side. He was more pleased about my free lunch at work: chicken stuffed with apples and cheddar cheese, sweet potatoes, and freshly baked cornbread, squared and buttered. I sat at the long cafeteria tables with my boots unlaced, joking with the other summer guys. The outside work was tough, but inside there were strawberry-printed tablecloths and shiny urns of coffee. Reading Dubus was like entering a rougher world of work, and a place where the love between father and son could be expressed in silence.
In contrast, Dubus’s fiction scratches and tears. His stories document the sexual and violent collisions between men and women. Manipulation, jealousy, and revenge: these fictive men are often terrible. They are shadows of the male archetypes chiseled by his similarly Catholic predecessor, Ernest Hemingway. Ray, the occasional first person narrator of “The Pretty Girl,” rapes his ex-wife, Polly. When the narrative leans toward her, Dubus trades first person for third person limited. She realizes that men “need mischief and will even pretend a twelve-ounce can of beer is wicked if that will make them feel collusive while drinking it.” Polly’s Catholic faith is her salve. She attends Mass weekly, but “did not receive communion because she had not been in the state of grace for a long time.” She had slept with another man during the final months of her marriage, and will not even seek the sacrament of confession; the preconciliar world of sexual sin hangs heavy. Dubus’s fiction sounds a warning: sins bring immediate and eternal consequences, especially when the transgressions are sweet.
I devoted a chapter in The Fine Delight, my book on contemporary Catholic literature, to the fiction and non-fiction of Dubus. As novelist and deacon Ron Hansen describes himself, Dubus was a “Vatican-II Catholic;” often critical of the institutional church’s hierarchy, but thoroughly Catholic. To read him otherwise is to ignore his moral and cultural center.
I quickly discovered that scholarship on Dubus is surprisingly scarce. Shorter examinations peaked in the 1980s and ’90s. Revue Delta, a French publication, released a special critical issue on Dubus in 1987. Xavier Review’s Fall 2010 issue is composed of essays on both Dubuses. His interviews have been collected twice; first in Leap of the Heart: Andre Dubus Talking (2003), and more recently in Conversations with Andre Dubus (2013), which spans interviews from 1967 to 1999. In “The Art of Reading Andre Dubus: We Don’t Have to Live Great Lives” from Poets & Writers, Joshua Bodwell documents the accolades collected during Dubus’s lifetime: “fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, as well as the PEN/Malamud Award, the Rea Award for the Short Story, the Jean Stein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and [was a finalist] for a National Book Critics Circle Award and [a runner-up for] a Pulitzer Prize.”
There is no shortage of appreciations from his contemporaries and students: Andre Dubus: Tributes (2001) includes a foreword from his son, and an afterword by Tobias Wolff. The appreciations extend to those who learned from reading his work. Here at The Millions, Sara Krasikov writes about “Reading Andre Dubus in Iowa:” his writing offers “a spiritual inquiry into being human that’s free of sanctimony.” At The Missouri Review blog, Michael Nye reflects on how Dubus is one of his writing “guides,” as well as one of his “foils:” “I now admire Dubus’s work rather than try to emulate it.” Dubus has also reached the screen. In 2009, Edward J. Delaney released a documentary, The Times Were Never So Bad: The Life of Andre Dubus. His story “Killings” was adapted into In the Bedroom (2001), and his novellas We Don’t Live Here Anymore and Adultery became We Don’t Live Here Anymore (2004). The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin acquired Dubus’s collected papers in 2010. Included: 300 letters from Dubus to his mother that span 20 years, other personal and professional correspondence, logs of writing time, character sketches and story fragments and drafts, lecture notes, publication typescripts and galleys, novenas, pocket calendars, divorce papers, and more.
It would be incorrect to say that Dubus has exited the literary conversation, but there is one telling fact: Thomas Kennedy’s excellent book, Andre Dubus: A Study of the Short Fiction, published in 1988, remains the only full-length critical examination of Dubus’s work. He first met Dubus at a Vermont bar in 1984. Kennedy had just been paid $20 for his first published story, and asked Dubus if he wanted to help him drink away the double sawbuck. He soon realized that Dubus was the writer of a story that helped him “understand the difference between love and lust:” “If They Knew Yvonne.” Dubus, who explained in his essay “The Habit of Writing” that he would read story drafts into a tape recorder and then play them back during revision, mailed Kennedy five cassette tapes’ worth of thoughts on fiction and life. Kennedy used those recordings as the basis for his critical study.
To be certain, critical attention toward a writer is not the last word on one’s success or influence, but the dearth of criticism is inversely related to the plethora of appreciations. Dubus was out of place in his literary moment. His only novel, The Lieutenant, was published in 1967, the same year that John Barth read “The Literature of Exhaustion” at the University of Virginia, where he praised the aesthetics of Jorge Luis Borges. In contrast, Dubus “gave up” on reading William Gass, and had this to say about postmodernism: “It’s like raw oysters and fried brains; you can’t call a man an asshole for not liking it.” Kennedy explains the ideological rift: Dubus “thought of his characters as real people in a real world rather than fictional characters in a fictional world,” as in the work of Barth, George Saunders, and Robert Coover. Dubus even differs from John Cheever and Gordon Weaver, whose characters “exist in language.”
The two elements of Dubus’s work and life that stifle most critics are his form and function; short fiction and Catholicism, respectively. The Jesuit literary critic Patrick Samway knows how to deal with those topics, as did Vivian Gornick, whose 1990 essay “Tenderhearted Men: Lonesome, Sad and Blue” remains one of the best treatments of Dubus. When she writes that his “work describes with transparency a condition of life it seems, almost self-consciously, to resist making sense of,” she recognizes the almost rubber tendency of Dubus’s fiction. His characters are trapped in worlds timed by their immediate needs: “they drink, they smoke, they make love: without a stop.” Because “sexual love is entirely instrumental,” relationships fail again and again. Marriage falls into adultery, adultery into loneliness, and then the cycle repeats. His characters “remain devoted to the fantasy.” Gornick’s essay considers Dubus after examining Raymond Carver and Richard Ford, and she concludes that Dubus’s Catholicism helps create the most layered fiction: “damnation mesmerizes him.” For Carver and Ford, there is only the “hard-boiled self-protection” of men. Dubus shares Flannery O’Connor’s fear of God. His characters still sin, but they look over their shoulders, they go to confession, they weep for their souls. Jonathan Mahler’s otherwise sharp essay, “The Transformation of Andre Dubus,” falters on his Catholicism, wondering if his devotional moments in essays “can be alienating” to the “secular reader.” In his introduction to Dubus’s essay collection, Broken Vessels, fellow Catholic Tobias Wolff explains: “[For Dubus], the quotidian and the spiritual don’t exist on different planes, but infuse each other. His is an unapologetically sacramental vision of life in which ordinary things participate in the miraculous, the miraculous in ordinary things. He believes in God, and talks to Him, and doesn’t mince words.” This belief operated in the real, tangible world, where the sacred and profane coexist, as in the story “Sorrowful Mysteries,” where the main character’s girlfriend is introduced in such a manner: “She likes dancing, rhythm and blues, jazz, gin, beer, Pall Malls, peppery food, and passionate kissing, with no fondling. She receives Communion every morning, wears a gold Sacred Heart medal on a gold chain around her neck.” In his essays, Dubus explains that sacraments “soothe our passage” through life. His daily receipt of the Eucharist means “the taste of forgiveness and of love that affirmed, perhaps celebrated, my being alive, my being mortal.” God needed to be brought down to the real, dirty world. Without the “touch” of the Eucharist, “God is a monologue, an idea, a philosophy; he must touch and be touched, the tongue on flesh.”
The critical ink might have dried, but for working writers, Dubus remains a life so full, so large, and yet incomplete. At the 2013 AWP Conference in Boston, “The Literary Legacy of Andre Dubus” drew an appreciative crowd. Matthew Batt, who served on the panel along with Dubus III, Melanie Rae Thon, Bruce Machart, and Nancy Zafris, remembers the room being full of “radiance.” Even the audience “seemed to have been waiting ardently for an occasion to mourn, and testify, and, ultimately to celebrate Dubus and his legacy.” Such a gathering is an act of love, and love is Dubus’s locus. Batt considers that Dubus’s work “is a kind of litany of sorrow and hope, where we all know we don’t stand a chance in the long run, but that’s no reason not to love one another along the way.” Love makes for fiction that is sharp to the touch. We leave Dubus wounded, but fuller.
I recently sat with fiction writer Kevin Grauke in his office at LaSalle University, and looking at well-worn spines of Dubus’s books, we wondered why this master does not receive more critical appreciation. Grauke’s best guess is that Dubus’s fiction is “very exposition-heavy and dialogue-light…they read like core samples pulled from the depths of his protagonists.” “A Father’s Story” (pdf) is his favorite work: “its ending jars me loose from the world around me.” Published in the Spring 1983 issue of Black Warrior Review, collected in The Times Are Never So Bad (1983) and subsequently anthologized to the present, the story of Luke Ripley unfurls in methodical first person. Ripley is divorced, owns and boards horses, and tells the reader about his daily Catholic rituals for the first half of the story. This telling would lumber forward in the hands of lesser writers, but Dubus makes the prose confessional, and we later learn the reason Ripley needs forgiveness. His grown daughter, Jennifer, spent a night drinking with friends. She struck a man while driving home, and weeps to her father in the early morning. He drives his pickup to the scene and voices simultaneous prayers: that the man was alive, and, “if he were dead, they would not get Jennifer.” The man is dead, and Ripley chooses his daughter over morality, over even God. He disposes of the body, and this is what he tells God: “I would do it again. For when she knocked on my door, then called me, she woke what had flowed dormant in my blood since her birth, so that what rose from the bed was not a stable owner or a Catholic or any other Luke Ripley I had lived with for a long time, but the father of a girl.”
Thomas Kennedy notes that the spiritual evolution of Dubus’s characters “might be seen as a growth to this ‘weakness’ [of love], to the openness of heart that, in weighing love against principle, chooses the former, although without releasing the latter.” This is the “moral paradox of the contemporary Catholic portrayed by Dubus, the encompassment into a single tension of the heart of the law of the Old Testament and the love of the New.” “A Father’s Story” is often misread. As the father of twin daughters, I fully understand Luke Ripley’s decision. Dubus recognizes that sometimes we must act poorly, immorally, in order to love. I cannot think of another writer who forces me to question God.
John Irving, Kurt Vonnegut, Ann Beattie, Stephen King, Tim O’Brien, John Updike, Gail Godwin, Richard Yates, Jayne Anne Phillips, and E.L. Doctorow: a dream reading series. It happened on a sequence of Sundays in February and March 1987, at the Charles Hotel in Harvard Square. The readings were followed by dinners: fundraising events for “a little-known writer of short stories who was struck by a car,” as described in AP coverage of the event. That little-known writer was Andre Dubus.
On July 23, 1986, on Route 93 in Massachusetts, a selfless act left Dubus paralyzed. From his essay “Lights of the Long Night:” “I do not remember leaving the ground my two legs stood on for the last instant in my life, then moving through the air, over the car’s hood and windshield and roof, and falling on its trunk.”
I spoke with the final reader in that series, Jayne Anne Phillips. She was my mentor; first from afar in Black Tickets — I would type “Stars” and “Sweethearts” until I understood her forward-leaning structure, how her stories always moved yet swirled — and later in the Rutgers-Newark MFA program. I asked her why she thought Dubus, who is so loved by practitioners of his craft, was not given his critical due: “So many writers are little known, or lost for a time, once they stop publishing. Someone needs to come along and ‘discover’ them, as Dawn Powell and Edith Pearlman were ‘discovered.’ Films help, but [Todd] Field could not have titled In The Bedroom by the title of Andre’s story (the title works so beautifully in the fiction), so only writers of a certain age even know, at this point, that the film is based on Andre’s story. And I do think ‘working class’ fiction is neglected, when there should be courses based on it. Andre’s books are in print. Those who can need to assign them for courses. As for literary radar, some of it is politics and (urban) connections, as in any other realm. But none of this can touch the work itself.”
On the man himself: “I actually can’t remember meeting Andre until after the accident, though I had been reading his stories for years. Andre was a battler, an ex-Marine, a man’s man (with all the good and bad the term implies). It was typical of him to stop on a snowy night in the dark to help, to respond to emergency. A car crash had just happened; Andre was in the road assisting one of the victims, a woman, when another driver, unable to stop, hit him. Andre told me he threw the woman out of the way; he saved her life, basically, and took the brunt of the impact. He never fully recovered, and faced years of medical struggle. At the time, I lived near Boston, and the news of the accident compelled all of us to try to help in the only way we really could. Andre grew up working class Catholic; he’d begun teaching after he started publishing but must have been between jobs, or he wasn’t permanently associated with a university that had decent medical insurance. Andre taught me never to talk to someone in a wheelchair from a standing position; it’s just ‘normal human civility,’ he told me, to kneel and be at their eye level. I knelt. ‘That’s better,’ he said. He was generous, he was a charmer, and he was hard on himself and everyone around him. One of his most beautiful books is Broken Vessels, in which he addresses the sudden transformation from able-bodied, confident, muscular brawler (in his past) to ‘broken’ physicality, in which the soul must shift to compensate for strength that won’t return. Andre was years into that process when he died. No battle is harder won.”
Her words bring me to Thon’s reflection in Boston: Dubus “spent his life as a writer and a man kneeling before the suffering of others, receiving pain as a gift, surrendering to the dark wonder of the imagination, daring to ask the most devastating questions.” Love will bring a man to his knees. What ultimately draws me to Dubus is a fear of myself. It is a fear that has no justification in my history: I have managed to avoid violence, certainly any coming from my own hands. But Dubus’s fiction taps into the preternatural worry that we can turn, in a moment, from a person we have prayed to become to something sharp and wrong. To read Dubus is to be possessed by art.
Early in Townie, Dubus III’s memoir, his father is represented as a legend. When father and son go for a run, Dubus is “waiting for me at the top [of the hill], running in place, his beard glistening in the dappled light.”
I never met Dubus. He died in 1999, when I was a senior in high school, and had not yet read a word of his work. That iconic snapshot of him at the top of the hill encapsulates my view of him, however skewed. We all remake our icons in our own images, and I have done the same to Andre Dubus. I feel younger than my years expressing such affinity, but it is also freeing to admit that he informs nearly each word I type. I return to “The Habit of Writing” often.
“I gestate: for months, often for years,” he begins. He writes ideas in notebooks, and never thinks about them, knowing “I will kill the story by controlling it; I work to surrender.” He waits. The story “is growing in me.” And then the scenes are showed to him, and the “story is ready for me to receive it. Then I must write, with the most intense concentration I can muster.” That is writing. The humility needed to wait, and the confidence required to finally act. The romantic, inspired moments of fiction writing are corralled by the need for communication and control on the page. One cannot live without the other.
While reading Townie, I cringed when Dubus left his wife and four children for the affections of a college student. I had known about the separation, but I had revised Dubus in my mind. Dubus III was not yet a teenager. The fractured family moved often; Dubus III’s prose still rings with the pain from a missing father. The Wall Street Journal’s review of the memoir pulls no punches: “Dubus comes off as a pathological narcissist oblivious to the travails that threatened to devour his children.” Dubus III, in an interview with The New Yorker, responds: “I have to say, I’m a little haunted by how hard on my father some of the Townie reviews have been. Could he have done better? Yeah. But I’ve forgiven him.” Dubus and his characters pulse with the struggle of living in a Catholic worldview that condemns sin but not the sinner. The paradox makes for incredible writing, but in life the sins wound longer than the close of a book. Dubus’s son has forgiven him; my hope is that we will never forget him.
Image Credit: Wikipedia
Nick Ripatrazone is a contributing editor for The Millions. He is the culture editor for Image Journal, and has written for Rolling Stone, GQ, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Esquire, and The Kenyon Review. His newest book is Longing for an Absent God. Follow him at @nickripatrazone and find more of his writing at nickripatrazone.com.
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Of Mondegreens and Eggcorns: Language Keeps Talking About Itself
Kelsey Rexroat April 6, 2017 | 15 books mentioned 1 4 min read
When the writer Sylvia Wright was a child, her mother would read to her from Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, including this stanza:
Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl Amurray,
And Lady Mondegreen.
Writing in 1954 for Harper’s Magazine, the grown-up Wright recalled tears coming to her eyes over the tragic image of the Earl Amurray and Lady Mondegreen clasping hands as they perished together. Though the poem described the Earl at great length, it didn’t mention Lady Mondegreen before or after that moment. But that fact didn’t strike Wright as odd at the time. She knew all she needed to know about Lady Mondegreen’s fatal loyalty to the dashing Earl from one simple line.
It was only later in life that Wright learned what was already clear to anyone who had read the poem in print rather than heard it recited aloud: There is no Lady Mondegreen. The line that begat both her existence and her demise actually reads “And laid him on the green.” In honor of her misinterpretation, Wright coined the term mondegreen for instances of mishearing a word or phrase in a way that gives it a new, unintended meaning.
Language is laced with such legends about itself. If someone falls victim to a mondegreen, is corrected, but stubbornly insists on continuing with the error, we call that a mumpsimus. The term stems from a Catholic priest who flubbed the Latin term sumpsimus during mass and then continued saying mumpsimus thereafter. This story was first relayed by the theologian Erasmus in a letter dated 1516. And here we are 500 years later, with mumpsimus appearing on a Huffington Post listicle of “10 Useful Words for Work.” (The blended word listicle is a portmanteau, a term coined by none other than Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass.) The name of the recalcitrant priest is long since forgotten, but the relic of language he inspired lives on.
If you search for information about mondegreens, you may fall down a linguistic rabbit hole, following mondegreento homophonyto heteronym. The churning sea of language raises its watery head to look around and then dives back into itself, splashing out words like litotes, genericide, and yes, metaphor. I collect these terms like Easter eggs, thrilled to have names for the ways we outfit our messages with color, rhythm, and nuance.
There are those of us who worship language and what it can do, arriving at the altar at a young age. As we learn, we stack up vocabulary into semantic pyramids — to forget is an infinitive is a verb; forgotten is a past participle is an adjective (sometimes) is a modifier (usually). We are the ones who read ahead in our English textbooks and who sign up for high school Spanish and French classes to see if other people in other corners of the world wield language differently from our own clumsy grips. We become readers to consume language and writers to spread it and editors to protect it.
Those early dissections, slicing language into sentences and paragraphs and extracting subjects and predicates, are our first lessons in the vocabulary of language’s favorite subject: itself. Lewis Thomas writes in Et Cetera, Et Cetera, his collection of meandering etymological essays, “The language keeps talking about itself, cannot seem to have enough of itself. At a guess, I’d say there are more roots for the various ways of using language than for all other human activities together, some of them hidden away inside longer words that seem to be designed for other purposes, most of them standing baldly out in full view.”
Mondegreens are particularly prevalent in song lyrics. (Consider all the people who thought Taylor Swift was singing about lonely Starbucks lovers.) When a mondegreen involves song lyrics from another language, it’s called soramimi. When a mondegreen results in a nonsensical phrase, it’s called a malapropism. But if the ersatz word or phrase makes some sort of twisted sense, such as “old-timer’s disease” in place of “Alzheimer’s disease,” it’s an eggcorn (itself an eggcorn for acorn).
Language cares about these subtle distinctions. It digests the complicated things we try to do with it and feeds us back distilled linguistic pearls, from anacoluthon to zeugma. It looks in the mirror and describes its patterns (hypallage, paligogy); it opens its mouth and listens to how it sounds (fricative, glottal). It teases apart its letters only to coax them back together more closely (blend words) or in a different order (metathesis), lop some letters off (haplology), or add new ones (paragoge). It tracks the movement of its words across questions and responses (pied-piping, wh-movement).
For every linguistic guideline, there’s a word coined to denote how to skirt that guideline for rhetorical effect. “I came, saw, and conquered” just doesn’t have the same decisive intonement without the phrase-beginning repetition of anaphora, nor would we still be singing Bob Dylan’s “Just Like a Woman” had he not employed the phrase-ending repetition of epistrophe.
Language flexes and adapts. It knows it will be both mangled and elevated, depending on who wields it — quite often by the same person. The damage of careless or misleading words can be immensely far-reaching, as history has borne again and again. At its worse, language can be used to confuse facts and cloud intention, sowing fear, hostility, and oppression. But at its best, it’s the ultimate form of synecdoche, when a term for part of something refers to the thing in its entirety. Language lets us use things as small as phonemes to represent our entire world.
Image Credit: Flickr/Thomas Quine.
Kelsey Rexroat | 15 books mentioned 1 4 min read
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To summarize the act of writing and releasing the book, Knausgaard said, “I have given away my soul.”
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Andre Dubus III says:
Dear Nick Ripatrazone,
Thank you for this essay on the masterful work of my late father, Andre Dubus. I have to believe that stories as fine as his will outlast us all, for generations, no matter how out of favor the short story or the Catholic short story may become. To give you some hope, though: every time I publish a new book, my father’s publishers see a spike in his sales and readership. Thanks again- Andre III
Jayne Anne Phillips says:
This is a gorgeous essay on Andre, on writing, on fathers and sons and writing. Bravo and thank you. — Jayne Anne
Lucy Ferriss says:
Nick, if you can find them you might be interested in two versions of my take on Andre Dubus II:
“Never Truly Members: Patriarchal Catholicism in the Stories of Andre Dubus,”
South Atlantic Review, Fall 1997
“Andre Dubus,” in The Fourth Quarter: New Writers from the South, ed. Jeffrey
Folks and James Perkins, U. Ky., 1997
If you can’t find them, contact me and I’m happy to send.
Thom Jurek says:
Just fucking great. To quote poetTed Berrigan, your essay was “…marvelous, feminine and tough.”
Eric d'Evegnee says:
A great tribute to a wonderful author.
Eric Hollen says:
Excellent article. I got chills from reading it. Makes me want to pick up a copy of Dubus and start reading him again tonight! You can imagine my surprise when, Googling Andre Dubus on the vast web for some information on the life of my favorite author, I not only came upon an insightful and well-written piece filled with additional resources for me to check out, but a piece written by an SU alum. I now know who is responsible for the scrawls of pencil marking on the library’s copy of Meditations on a Movable Chair.
Small world, huh?
Chasing the Whale: Banksy, Obsession, and the Sea
Buzz Poole April 23, 2010 | 15 books mentioned 6 7 min read
There is nothing positive about the dictionary definition of “obsession” – it haunts, is abnormal and persistent, like a bad rash. Tossing the word into a conversation typically indicates some form of criticism about a person and that person’s particular pursuit. Obsessions can lead to stalkers, delusion and great creations (the last two are not mutually exclusive); they can limit and restrict you to minutia or endow a unique vision that changes how you and others view the world at large. People indulge obsession in different ways – live it like a lifestyle or stir it into a creation like a minor but crucial recipe ingredient where it doesn’t overpower anything and complements everything.
Ideas of obsession had been needling me after reading James Hamilton-Paterson’s Seven Tenths and Peter Handke’s Slow Homecoming. Both books obsess over their loosely shared theme – the natural world’s mystifying grandeur – and after reading them back-to-back it was impossible not to link them. While thinking about these two titles I was lucky enough to attend a screening of Exit Through the Gift Shop, a feature-length film directed by stencil-art maverick Banksy. The film’s real lynchpin is Thierry Guetta a.k.a. Mr. Brainwash, the ultimate knock-off artist. But before he became an overnight art world sensation his obsession was filming everything he did. The cousin of French street artist Space Invader, during a vacation to France Guetta got his first exhilarating taste for joining, and filming, street artists on their illicit missions. Over time, Guetta infiltrated the graffiti and street art scene in Los Angeles, befriending Shepard Fairey and other prominent figures. He and his camera became fixtures and his desire to document the scene, in his own words, became more of an obsession than just filming the boring details of everyday life. He met everyone and went everywhere, but like Captain Ahab chasing his White Whale, Guetta would not be satisfied until he achieved his ultimate goal: filming the notoriously anonymous Banksy.
Of course, no greater tale of obsession exists in American letters than Captain Ahab’s in Moby-Dick. Ahab’s epic ego-driven quest to recover the impossible has inspired and influenced countless artists who tap into as many ideas as the ones explored in the novel: myth, America, commerce, astronomy, conquest, sexuality. As part of a series of multimedia responses to American novels, the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco assembled “Moby-Dick,” a show and accompanying catalogue. Designed as homage to the vaunted 1930 Rockwell Kent illustrated Lakeside Press three-volume deluxe edition (later released as a Modern Library edition), this lovely book glosses Melville’s novel and features the thirty-two artists whose works was on view from September 22, 2009, until last December.
Interestingly, it was Kent’s black ink illustrations, reproduced here in a dark, brooding sea-blue, that helped resurrect the novel from obscurity (the edition did not even include Melville’s name on the cover). In this catalogue, pieces like Richard Serra’s lithograph study for his sculpture “Call Me Ishmael” or Brian Jungen’s iPod scrimshaw, connect directly to the narrative; the inclusion of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s large-scale ocean view photographic prints, which a book of this size cannot do justice, is fitting since they express boundless uncertainty. But many of the pieces strike more abstract poses, like Angela Bulloch’s algorithm-simulated celestial views that use “technology to expand our perception of space and the possibilities of perception.”
At first blush, connecting contemporary art to the heyday of seafaring might seem incongruous, but sailors were the eyes of the world for landlubbers, returning home with tales of what mystical, depraved and wondrous sites and cultures existed just beyond the horizon. Of course, for all of the spoils these men brought back with them, their stories were filled by imagination and hearsay, changing like the seas. “Melville’s book,” writes the catalogue’s editor Jens Hoffman, “is like the living ocean: vast, potent, and hugely indifferent to human troubles and ambitions.”
James Hamilton-Paterson has a very similar view about the ocean, and with good reason. He has lived on desolate islands in the Philippines; accompanied deep-sea salvage missions, scientific expeditions, commercial fishers and sea scavenging locals; encountered murderous pirates; gone for many a solitary midnight swims; and read countless historic oceanic travelogues and scientific treatises. When it comes down to channeling philosophy, economics, politics, history, ecology and art through salt water, Hamilton-Paterson gives Melville a run for his money.
The updated Europa Editions release of Seven Tenths, a collection of Hamilton-Paterson’s writings about the sea, is the passionate result of a poet’s eye making sense of rigorous research and humanity’s impossibility. Running through the essays divided into thematic chapters is the tale of a free diver who has lost his boat, the cord he had tied around his ankle loosed from the tiny vessel’s prow. Resurfacing, the boat is nowhere to be found, and the swimmer considers being stranded in a “conspiracy of waves.” The umbilical connection between salt water and our lives is literal and figurative. But when the ocean claims a ship or a person or even disproves earlier scientific findings it does so by shutting off that object from what Paterson-Hamilton calls the “continuity of vision.” For him this is a sublime quality.
The author’s obsessing over oceans and seas is fueled by the fact that we know so little about them, especially beneath the surface. Of course, throughout time the curious have ventured. Alexander the Great had a special glass cage made so he could be lowered into the Mediterranean; salvage missions attempted to resurrect sunken valuables; and Scandinavians tried to correlate fish supplies with tidal currents. But, according to Hamilton-Paterson, “until the late eighteenth century the average European’s mental image of the sea was literally superficial, of a navigable surface above an abyss.”
Today we have a sense of the depth but very little experience of it. Seven Tenths is not so concerned with reasons and answers, but a greater more profound unity that resides in the unknown depths, and not even sonar, electrically belching through cold, lightless water, can give us a real sense of what is down there, and this has been realized for time immemorial: “The Greeks’ idealisation of a static universe full of fixed entities, faithfully reflected in their mathematics, underpinned all that could be thought. The sea was a positive insult to this metaphysics, a naked opposition to it… How did one represent an absence of topography?”
One solution was to name these places with colonial and imperial pageantry, and familiar names like Mount Mozart and Beethoven Ridge in the Musicians Seamounts north of Hawaii. They exist on a map, and in theories of science, surveyed down to the centimeter. What we know is something we have hardly explored, hardly experienced. This wanting for the impossible is why it compels obsession, at least as Hamilton-Paterson sees it: “[B]ut the seething waters of the middle distance have something wordless and unpitying to say to the dullest minds. It is as if the ocean, in certain lights and weathers, were the lair not of monsters or malevolent downward-dragging spirits, but of the fat blank which squats beneath all happiness, flicking out its tongue.”
Nature’s taunting evasiveness is the conundrum at the heart of Peter Handke’s Slow Homecoming. The novel consists of three parts, a middle section in which Handke interjects a first-person rhapsody about his process bookended by third-person narratives of wandering and wondering. All three parts obsess over what I think of as the intimate pattern, the visual echoes that reverberate and ping between our whorling fingerprints, the way light playfully daubs a riparian setting and the brittle and broken elements of decay.
Here again, the natural world prompts all of the questions and holds all of the answers but reveals nothing, which propels the obsession. Hamilton-Paterson offers a primer for how to look at the ocean, how to appreciate and cherish it for how it resolutely resists humanity. But Handke’s characters are like a collective Captain Ahab afloat in the world, searching. Their focus is singular, all others – wives, lovers, children – seem to exist only by virtue of these men determining how these others exist in proximity to them.
Benjamin Kunkel, in his introduction to Slow Homecoming, informs us that in German the surname of the first part’s subject, Sorger, means “one who takes care or has cares.” In an Alaskan-like wilderness, Sorger, a foreigner and outsider, studies the landscape and its inhabitants at such detail that everything becomes a likeness of his creation. There is not much naming, but that’s because Sorger’s dedication, certainly the book’s dedication, is to the propensity for naming because all such names are a function of these intimate patterns: “They were unmistakable signs implicit in nature itself . . . and had the power, regardless of who the observer might be, to convert themselves into great and diversified happenings in space – delusions only at first glance, then welcome as metamorphoses in the deeper area of vision.”
The novel’s final section reunites an unnamed father with his young daughter, raising her for periods of time in different countries, separated from her at times when the daughter stays with her mother. He sees her as a component, a piece of the puzzle that when completed will symbolize truth, something he chases: “Still the wayfarer makes his way across the high plateau toward the blue-veiled mountain chain, still busy with the thought that can never be carried to a conclusion: I am working on the secret of the world.”
All of these obsession-driven projects blur fiction and nonfiction. Melville’s pedantic descriptions of whaling can remove readers from the plot, making the novel feel like a manual. Hamilton-Paterson concedes that certain of his details might only be true to him and Handke’s narrative conceit intentionally calls into question where to draw the line between fiction and nonfiction. In a statement, Banksy declared that everything in Exit Through the Gift Shop is true, except that parts that aren’t.
Like Ahab, Thierry Guetta indeed found his White Whale, and while not fatal it was significant. Guetta and Banksy became friends. But the obsessive filming, it turns out, was not part of any great vision. Banksy ends up making the movie everyone had assumed Guetta was working on; Guetta begins to focus on art, churning out painfully derivative work, its boring qualities enhanced by his delusional ego and the fact that he sold a million dollars worth in a few days. In this transition, Guetta’s obsession comes into question – he simply does what people expect him to do, as if by rote. The actual extent of his obsessions is what makes for a biting portrait of the consumer environment that turns Guetta into a hot-shot artist, as opposed to a documentary about street artists and their critical and commercial success. It’s this sly self-awareness – Banksy, Shepard Fairey, et al are in on the joke – that makes Exit Through the Gift Shop brilliant, calling into question what validates certain obsessions. Whether a forever linking double helix of associations and patterns, a tidal ebb and flow or the marketplace, obsessive activities strive to unlock an answer or bring closure to the issue that has caused the obsession, or in the case of Guetta provide an illusion that the activity serves a purpose. This might be the greatest message of them all: obsessions are illusions.
Hamilton-Paterson appreciates the ocean’s indifference as its greatest virtue, the reality check that human ego needs and should pay heed. Handke’s characters want to find a place within the indifference, but only because they think it their duty to do so. The daughter in Slow Homecoming, simply by being in the right place at the right time, at last drives home to her father that the ultimate secret is perhaps one kept forever, that these obsessions make us human and we should be happy to leave it at that. Or as Ishmael says: “It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.”
Buzz Poole | 15 books mentioned 6 7 min read
The Great Escape: Journey from the Center of the Earth
Noah Deutsch May 3, 2007 | 15 books mentioned 4 min read
Bob Seger, rock ‘n roll troubadour, once announced that he’s going to Katmandu – if, that is, he ever gets outta here.I used to listen to that song quite a lot. I liked Seger’s escape fantasy, sung-shouted in a voice like a gravel crusher, the voice of a guy who’d had enough of being a lonely road warrior crisscrossing the U.S.A. Katmandu is about as far from New York, the “friendly old ghost” of a city that Seger seems to “pass right through,” as you can get.America is the Rome of the modern world to which all roads lead, a confluence of cultures. People from all over are drawn to the waters of this glorious riverhead, from which springs a cultural empire unrivaled in history. But the waters here are turbulent, and individuals are so easily swept under. It is a peculiar hallmark of American life that our freedom so often comes at the price of our sanity. Katmandu, by contrast, is a place of satisfying enigma, ineffable and remote – at least in my mind – and this makes it a good place to escape to. The world is shrinking, warming, warring, trading, and in many corners slouching towards cultural homogeneity (witness the E.U., capitalist China, a casino on an Indian Reservation in Connecticut, or the numerous modern resorts in Phuket, Thailand). And so it seems that there are fewer and fewer mysterious places to explore, or disappear into.Getting back to the song, the irony is obvious. Seger knows he will never make it to Katmandu, and it’s just as well: indulging in the fantasy is more sustaining than actually making the trip, which would be costly, time-consuming and impractical. And anyway, what would Bob Seger do in Katmandu? Meditate? Mister “like a rock” would probably do just as well squeezing water from a stone.A piece of rock in the north Atlantic, a stone’s throw from the Arctic Circle, is my personal Katmandu. I don’t know how Iceland came to hold such sway in my imagination, but it did, so much so that a friend gave me a copy of Lonely Planet Iceland, a travel guide by Paul Harding and Joe Bindloss, hoping, I believe, that it would lift some of the mystery off the place and so reduce the amount of time spent listening to me prate about going there. Instead, after some exploration of the book, I now bend ears with arcane facts about the rugged volcanic island.Indulge me.First colonized by Norse settlers in the 9th century A.D., Iceland is home to just 288,000 souls, most of whom live in or around the capitol, Reykjavik. This number does not include the unknown population of elves, gnomes, dwarves, and trolls said by some to inhabit the land. Isolation and a paucity of natural resources, with the notable exception of fish, have engendered in Icelanders a strong spirit of independence. In a world of nations ever more dependent upon trade, especially when it comes to energy, Iceland will probably be the least affected when the last drops of oil have been sucked away, and the last trees felled like fiddlesticks, that child’s game where the only rule is to make sure a mess is made. They never had trees in Iceland anyway. The country is a model for making use of what’s on hand, and so geothermal energy not only heats the pools where people soak away Iceland’s dark, frozen winters, but is harnessed for electricity as well.Icelanders may be independent, but they are by no means backward. They speak English, having learned that welcoming foreign tourists to their strange and striking country is another way to sustain their existence upon it. At the same time, they have guarded their own unique language, said to be the most difficult in the world for a non-native speaker to learn. My little guidebook contains a long, complicated key for parsing out pronunciation of the various Germano-Norse letters and accents that appear in Icelandic. Even with its help, most words are pleasantly impenetrable. However, when spoken correctly Icelandic, like its Scandinavian counterparts, possesses a natural cadence very similar to that of English. Iceland’s linguistic and cultural history is encapsulated in its epic sagas, which date to the 12th and 13th centuries, and celebrate a traditional, if increasingly archaic, way of life.Today, a new generation of Icelanders are driving something of a pop-culture explosion there. Though unabashedly inspired by Hollywood and Rock ‘n Roll, Iceland’s burgeoning film and music scenes remain distinctly Icelandic in tone. For the celluloid savvy, see Children of Nature from director Fridrik Thor Fridriksson, and Robert I Douglas’s Icelandic Dream. For the melody minded, start with the oddly spiritual, pleasingly esoteric band Sigur Ros, and, of course, everyone’s favorite citizen of the world, the incomparable Bjork. As for writers, Nobel Laureate Halldor Laxness, Iceland’s most celebrated author, carries the torch. More recently, the novels 101 Reykjavik, by Hallgrimur Helgason and Angels of the Universe by Einar Mar Gudmundsson have received the most attention.I hope that reading from Lonely Planet and maybe picking up one of the above titles is not the closest I ever get to Iceland. Iceland now rivals more popular destinations such as London when it comes to monetary expense, and that fact alone is prohibitive for me.But like Seger’s Katmandu, Iceland is the nominal destination in my personal escape fantasy, which has perhaps served its purpose even if I never actually get outta here and head north. It would be a strange reverse commute for me, having a bit of ancestral Norwegian blood. Recall that Eric the Red left Iceland for Greenland in 987, from whence his son, Leif, became the first person of European descent to set eyes on mainland North America. Gazing upon such inviting shores must have been a powerful experience for him. Those shores were a far cry from the spartan landscape that Iceland still presents to the world. Isolated, insulated, it is a place possessed of a primordial indifference to the urgency of progress. Though its people have adapted to the demands of the land, and so thrive in a most inhospitable place, Iceland will continue to be a place where progress as it stands is measured not in Gross National Product, Olympic Medals, or 1,776 foot skyscrapers, but in the slow and inexorable march of its volcanic geology, truly growth from within.
Noah Deutsch | 15 books mentioned 4 min read
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As I finalized revisions to my book, I wondered how readers’ perceptions of the place I had spent years writing about were possibly being shaped by the antics of people named Snooki and The Situation.
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Graduating into a mad world
Last week I attended four graduation ceremonies for three kids (two for the highschooler, the baccalaureate and the commencement; one each for the middle schooler and the elementary schooler). I watched 821 kids cross stages to shake with the right and take with the left. I heard something around 30 speakers, and at least a dozen songs. I learned that middle school administrators and counselors should not give speeches, but elementary school kids can be darned eloquent. I loved the influence of the Pacific Islander community; many graduates, Islander or not, marched down the aisles wearing colorful leis—of flowers, candy, or money—from family and friends. And I got a little teary when our former nanny—who I’d lost touch with several years ago so hadn’t been able to send a grad announcement—showed up anyway at all the graduations with leis in hand, but didn’t recognize my eldest, he’d just changed so much.
The speeches, the songs, and the ceremonies kept coming back to the same theme—these kids, these new graduates, are living in a messed up world that somehow they’re going to have to fix. It’s a heavy message for what is normally a jubilant season, but it is unavoidably in the air. Some kids lost friends to recent suicides; some lost college options to the economy. And they’re all watching their older friends and siblings come home from college and find they can’t get a summer job anywhere, not even at McDonald’s.
Kavita Ramdas, head of the Global Fund for Women and speaker at the high school bacc, went right at the bittersweet mood, talking about the mad world these kids have been living in.
Said Kavita, “Most of you graduating seniors were about 10 years old when two planes full of people flew into and destroyed the tallest buildings on the planet. You grew up in a United States that was irreversibly connected to the rest of the globe, whether it liked it or not. You grew up in a nation at war, so you grew familiar with people and places far away from the quiet tree-lined streets of Palo Alto. The radio and TV news dropped names like Osama Bin Laden and Sadaam Hussein, Iraq and Afghanistan, Basra and Baghdad, Kabul and Peshawar. You grew up thinking it was normal to take off your shoes at airport check points and to hear automated voices announce threat levels code orange or red. You grew up in a United States that sent (and still sends) young people your age to risk their lives in places where they neither speak the language or understand the culture, but are nonetheless expected to find and destroy the “bad guys”. Your “mad world” has included Hurricane Katrina, one of the worst natural disasters to ever hit the United States; and the subsequent televised failure of the wealthiest nation on earth to rescue its poorest citizens; it has included learning about torture being inflicted on prisoners in places Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.” She charged the graduates with nothing more than remaking the world, in big and little ways.
It’s a big responsibility. It seems heavier than the one I had when I graduated high school in the midst of the feminist revolution, which was to prove that women could have it all, to have the career and the family, to not just go to college for the M.r.s. degree, and to never to give up, no matter how hard it got, because that would simply prove that women were indeed not meant to be equal. My personal goal was to distance myself as far as possible from my classmate who announced when school started that her goal was to graduate pregnant (she didn’t quite make it, she went into labor during graduation rehearsal).
Hard as having it all turned out to be, it didn’t feel quite so daunting at graduation time; we were entering a world with every path open. At this year’s graduations, there’s a fog in front of the paths, and no one is sure what will remain when it lifts.
But the hats went into the air on cue, and the graduates went off to celebrate. And celebrate they should. They have a few years left before they have to save the world, and maybe the rest of us can fix at least a few of the problems before then.
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Eleanor Hughes Joins Walters as Deputy Director for Art and Program
Baltimore, MD—Julia Marciari-Alexander, the Andrea B. and John H. Laporte Director of the Walters Art Museum, is pleased to announce the appointment of Eleanor Hughes as Deputy Director for Art & Program. In this new position, Hughes will provide strategic direction and leadership for a program of collection installations, special exhibitions, conservation and technical research of objects, and education/public programs that engages diverse audiences and builds support for the Walters. She will oversee a division encompassing the departments of curatorial (which includes exhibition planning/ design and registration), conservation, and education/public programs, and serve as a member of the museum’s senior management team.
“The Walters is leveraging our collections and historically significant buildings to engage audiences in exciting new ways,” said Marciari-Alexander. “Ellie’s dynamic programmatic vision, commitment to excellence, and dedication to collaborative team-based work will enable the Walters to create a more vibrant and meaningful experience for our visitors.”
Hughes comes to Baltimore from the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA), in New Haven, Connecticut, where as Associate Director of Exhibitions and Publications, and Associate Curator, she played a key role in formulating the overall program of exhibitions and publications presented by the Center. Hughes also oversaw an internationally touring program of exhibitions, many of which were co-organized with major national public museums in the UK, including Tate, National Portrait Gallery, V&A, and the Royal Academy of Arts, among others. She has also been involved in the Center’s ongoing planning to conserve, renovate, and reinstall the collections in the iconic Louis Kahn-designed building. Hughes joined the staff of the YCBA in 2005 and began managing the Department of Exhibitions and Publications in 2008.
A scholar of 18th-century British art who has actively engaged with contemporary British art and artists, Hughes has published widely and curated exhibitions at the Yale Center for British Art including: Pearls to Pyramids: British Visual Culture and the Levant, 1600-1830 (2008); Seascapes: Marine Paintings and Watercolors from the U Collection (2009); and Spreading Canvas: Eighteenth-century British Marine Painting (upcoming in Fall 2016). She has also served as co-curator and organizing curator for countless exhibitions and has produced numerous publications during her nearly 10 years at the Center.
“I am thrilled to join a museum with such a spectacular collection, dynamic public role, and commitment to scholarly excellence,” said Hughes. “It’s an honor to be asked to serve the Walters’ mission of engaging and strengthening its communities by collecting, preserving, and interpreting art.”
“In her capacity of associate director and curator, Ellie has shaped dozens of exhibitions and their associated publications with remarkable vision, intellectual acuity, and creativity,” said Amy Meyers, Director, Yale Center for British Art. “She is respected at home and abroad for her collaborative spirit, rigor, integrity, and energy.”
A graduate of Smith College, where she double-majored in History of Art and French Language and Literature, Hughes holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. She will relocate to Baltimore in mid-July with her husband, Rodger Roundy, an artist, author, and teacher, and their two children.
About the Walters Art Museum
The Walters Art Museum offers free admission and is located in downtown Baltimore’s historic Mount Vernon Cultural District at North Charles and Centre Streets. At the time of his death in 1931, museum founder Henry Walters left his entire collection of art to the city of Baltimore. Its collection includes ancient art, medieval art and manuscripts, decorative objects, Asian art, and Old Master and 19th century paintings. The Museum Store, located next to Café Q, offers distinctive gifts, jewelry and books based on the museum’s collections. Wyndham Baltimore Peabody Court is the official hotel of the Walters Art Museum.
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You are here: Home / Blog / Book Review / Book Review-The End of Memory: A Natural History of Aging and Alzheime...
Book Review-The End of Memory: A Natural History of Aging and Alzheimer’s
October 17, 2016 /in Book Review, Personal /by Robert Bogue
It’s a thief. It steals. It steals the things which everyone holds dearest. It deprives us of what we believed we could never be deprived of. It’s a cruel and ruthless villain without remorse, as it takes the best and brightest among us and clouds them in confusion and contradiction, dimming or diminishing their light before the end of life. This villain is Alzheimer’s Disease and one of our dear friends has become its victim. She is an amazing woman who is being robbed of her identity, her memories, and her history.
That’s what caused me to read The End of Memory: A Natural History of Aging and Alzheimer’s, and what has caused me to decide to continue to seek more information. I want our friend Mary back. Not the shell that the disease has left behind, but all of her. Unfortunately, The End of Memory doesn’t answer all the questions but it does clear up some misconceptions about the disease.
Who is going to get Alzheimer’s disease? That’s a terrifying and confusing question. More women seem to have the disease; however, the disease gets progressively more common based on age, and women live longer than men. It’s estimated that it impacts 10% of people over sixty-five and nearly 50% of those over eighty-five. There are numerous other factors that impact whether you’ll get the disease. For instance, a mutation of “presenilin 1” seems to cause early onset Alzheimer’s disease.
In fact, James Watson, the co-discoverer of DNA, had several sections of genes where indicators were for Alzheimer’s, so that no one would know what his genetic risk factors were. The risk factors aren’t isolated to one gene or one chromosome. In fact, chromosome 21 – the one associated with Down’s Syndrome – controls the production of Amyloid Precursor Protein (APP), which as we’ll see plays a major role in Alzheimer’s. Presenilin 2 is another marker for early onset Alzheimer’s disease, but genetically speaking it’s far and away from Presenilin 1 – and chromosome 21.
The last and perhaps most interesting gene is apolipoprotein E or APOE. There are three variants of this gene. The variant APOE2 reduces the risk for Alzheimer’s substantially (but not dramatically) for the roughly 7% of people that have it.
While genetic markers can account for a non-trivial portion of Alzheimer’s cases, it falls way short of a majority vote into whether you’ll develop the disease or not. The way that you know if you have the disease – besides the obvious cognitive impairment – is the presence of plaques and tangles.
Plaques and Tangles
Alzheimer’s Disease is notable because, historically, it’s been diagnosed post-mortem. The victim’s brain was examined posthumously, and the presence of what are called plaques and tangles are supposed to indicate the presence of the disease, as it was with patient zero. However, there’s a problem. These plaques and tangles appear in people without any (even mild) cognitive impairment at the time of their death. Conversely, some patients experiencing dementia have no plaques and no tangles. So it seems that most of the disease’s long history has been focused on the artifacts of the disease, but not necessarily the cause.
Plaques in the Intercellular Space
The first of two diagnostic criteria is the presence of plaques which reside in intercellular space (that is, the space outside the neurons of the brain). Plaques are the clumps of discarded amyloid beta proteins. They come together because their shape makes them sticky. However, what is amyloid beta? Well, it’s a part of the amyloid protein that has a variety of uses in the neurons of the brain. In the brain it is rare in that a protein is created and then sliced up by special enzymes. Some of the frequently unused segments of the amyloid are called amyloid beta. The role of amyloid and the amyloid precursor protein aren’t well understood, but it’s clear that there are many functions.
Plaques have been the target of therapies to improve the results for patients with dementia – and presumably Alzheimer’s disease. Some therapies have demonstrated marked reduction in plaques with no change in the cognitive impairment of the patient. This is bad news for trying to point to the plaques as the cause of Alzheimer’s disease. That means that the cause is elsewhere, perhaps in the tangles.
Tangles: Twisted Girders of the Neuron
Neurons have really interesting shapes. They reach out and touch other neurons via axons. Something has to maintain that shape of the cell. That’s the job of tau. Tau is a protein that allows a neuron to form its shape – and therefore its connection with other neurons. Tau is a normally rigid protein that keeps its shape, thereby maintaining the shape of the neuron. However, tau can also be changed to allow neural plasticity. This plasticity can be accelerated through the introduction of phosphorylate. When in periods of higher learning, the tau experience high levels of phosphorylation, and can therefore change shape.
The problem comes when tau become tangled because of too much flexibility. These tangles are like the twisted girders of buildings torn apart by a tornado or a bomb. The original structure is absent, and all that remains is a mess. In the pathology of Alzheimer’s disease tangles – the mess of tau – are the intracellular indicator of problems.
Interestingly, the rate of tangles nearly directly predicts the level of cognitive impairment for a patient. That is, by looking at the number of tangles, you can reasonably predict the cognitive impairment – except in some outlying cases.
Newness of Alzheimer’s Disease
While digging into the disease, the obvious question might be, when did it start to develop? The answer is a bit trickier to understand, because cognitive impairment was historically seen as a natural consequence of old age. It’s difficult to retrospectively look at the historical records and separate the normal from the abnormal.
The incidence of Alzheimer’s has increased p over the last century; but how much of that is improved understanding of the diagnostics of cognitive impairment, and how much is due to our longer lifespans? In the year 1800, Americans of European descent numbered about five million – fewer than the number of patients with Alzheimer’s disease today. By 1900, it’s estimated that 4% of the population was over sixty-five, and population had grown to seventy-six million.
The key challenge is that cognitive impairment was considered normal. It was what was expected when you became old. Instead of it being recognized as a condition afflicting people, it was the normal. So in trying to look at the records to see if 300,000 or more of people over sixty-five had dementia is like trying to find a polar bear in a snow storm.
Due to improvements in medicine and safety, our life expectancy is increasing by about one year for every four years of time. Notwithstanding some limits to this process, such as the Hayflick limit to the number of times that a cell can divide, it appears that we’re increasing the life expectancy dramatically, and as a result will have a greater number of people who can count themselves lucky to be “old.” While this creates a need for care facilities to care for our elderly, it also creates an interest in preventing the cognitive impairment that used to be “normal” for elderly. (See Being Mortal for more on the care of the elderly.)
Correlations and Questions
Through the study of Alzheimer’s, some very peculiar correlations have appeared. One of the most famous studies of Alzheimer’s was what’s called “The Nun Study.” In this study, many of the members of the Sisters of Notre Dame agreed to be monitored for the development of the disease. From a statistical point of view, this was great because so many of the variables of their lives were similar and therefore could be discounted as contributing factors. One of the predictive factors that emerged was a small bit of writing that the nuns did sixty years before the onset of the disease.
Nuns write a small essay about their desire to enter the sisterhood. The density of ideas in that essay – the natural writing with multiple pieces of information tightly encoded into the few words that they are given – is a significant predictor of whether they’ll get the disease or not. Nuns who wrote dense prose were less likely to get the disease than those whose essays were less tightly packed.
While the prevalence of tangles tightly tracks the progression of the disease, this is an early warning sign that spans decades. It’s been well-studied that Alzheimer’s occurs less frequently in patients that are well-educated.
Interestingly, it seems that it may be the case that education forestalls the progression of the symptoms of the disease. So it appears that education may create a sort of cognitive reserve that can hold back the disease for a while. It’s believed now that if patients with higher education live sufficiently long they’ll encounter the disease and the onset of symptoms will be more rapid for them. In my typical glass half-full mentality, I’ll take the reduction of symptoms and rapid onset as a win.
Unrelated to Alzheimer’s, but complicating the measurement of the progression of the disease, is something called “terminal drop.” This is a precipitous drop in cognitive capacity in the months leading up to death. So is a person suffering from symptoms of the disease, or are they approaching death?
Cynics seem to be more prone to the disease, while those who enjoy regular leisure activities – particularly those which cause a person to be mentally active – seem to build cognitive reserve that helps to protect someone from the symptoms of the disease.
Spread of the Disease
With advances in imaging techniques, we’re able to peer into the heads of patients and see in more detail how the disease is progressing than we’ve ever been able to before; and with this, we’ve discovered some odd “coincidences.”
One of the factors of cognitive processing speed is the myelin sheath. Myelin is a fatty sheath that surrounds neurons and makes them more effective at communication. Myelin is produced by the oligodendrocytes, which are found in highest concentrations in the entorhinal cortex. This is the area most impacted by Alzheimer’s and is the interface between the hippocampus and the neocortex. The entorhinal cortex is one of the last areas developed in the brain, and one of the last areas to receive myelin.
It’s the entorhinal cortex that seems to be ground zero for Alzheimer’s disease. It’s where the disease seems to cause the most damage.
Glucose (Sugar) in the Brain
There are some researchers that are calling for Alzheimer’s disease to be called Diabetes Type III. Diabetes mellitus exists in two forms, both of which impact glucose levels in the blood. Diabetes Type I is associated with the destruction of the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas, such that the body no longer produces insulin. Type II diabetes is associated with increased resistance to the insulin being produced. Insulin is important to the regulation of blood glucose levels, because it allows for the absorption of the glucose in the blood.
Glucose is the necessary energy component for us to function, but elevated levels of unabsorbed glucose in our blood is associated with a large number of comorbidities. In essence, our bodies function with a ratio of glucose in the blood that falls in a relatively narrow range. Glucose levels in the blood are constantly changing, but an adult should on average have a blood glucose of approximately 100mg per deciliter. This is measured through a test called Hemoglobin A1c or HbA1c. This measures the average glucose over a three-month period. The HbA1c lab values are typically converted back into an average blood sugar using a standard formula.
Diabetes has long been known as a factor in the development of dementia; however, what has been less clear is whether that was the result of the comorbidities related to diabetes, or whether it’s related to the diabetes itself. Because Alzheimer’s is sensitive to vascular issues, and diabetes has an impact on vascular malleability as well as a tendency to increase cholesterol, the relationship seemed reasonable and no specific cause was identified. However, research is beginning to indicate that the brain’s processing of glucose is impaired with Alzheimer’s.
The brain is a power-hungry organ. Taking up two percent of our body mass, it consumes roughly 20% of our glucose. As we learned in The Rise of Superman, it has a maximum sustainable energy use, and because of that, various areas of the brain may be switched off to accommodate the power needs of other parts of the brain. It’s not hard to believe that even minute changes in the management of glucose in an electro-chemical system could have dire consequences.
Unfortunately, this is where the trail ends at the moment. There is a belief that the disease may be triggered by changes in insulin resistance. There’s a higher rate of dementia in patients with elevated glucose levels (but not yet meeting the threshold for diabetes), but we don’t understand yet how changes in blood sugar impact the processing of glucose in the brain.
Power Loss
A few years ago my wife and I were showering together when she fainted. It was a terrifying experience for me. I’d never seen someone faint so closely. (It’s a small shower.) More than that, I saw the biological equivalent of what I see in my technology work. When a computer reboots, it goes momentarily silent as all power is lost and the fans stop. After that, the fans are on at 100% for a few seconds, and then things resume their normal median fan speeds. My wife’s breathing eerily took on the same pattern. She stopped breathing for a moment, breathed at a high rate of speed for a few more moments, and then settled into a normal breathing pattern. It was my first experience that technology sometimes follows biology.
When meeting with Mary, I was struck by a similar correlation. When a computer has a power supply problem – when the power supply isn’t able to produce all the power the computer needs – the computer is running along fine until you do something taxing to it. Once you ask it to do something which requires just a bit more power, it will reboot. It momentarily goes blank and starts the process of booting up again. Mary’s responses to me looked like this pattern. She’d get triggered into recalling a memory or making sense of the input she was receiving, and would fall out of that train of thought. Moments later when rediscovering the same novel stimulus, she would return to the train of thought and fall out of it at nearly the same place. Even in technology, there are a lot of variables that change the exact place where things fail, though the failure seems to happen at nearly the same time every time it cycles.
While this is a single observation by a non-clinical observer making a relationship to something man-made that has very little to do with the functioning of the human brain, it’s led me to wonder: what if what we experience as dementia is really just the inability of the brain to make the connections it once used to because of insufficient energy?
I don’t believe we’ll know whether the glucose hypothesis is right in time to help Mary. However, it’s something that I’ll continue to be interested in. I don’t want to accept The End of Memory. I’ll keep Mary’s memories and her memory alive in me as long as I’m able.
https://thorprojects.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/TheEndOfMemory.jpg 500 329 Robert Bogue /wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Thor-Projects-Invert-Transparent-Logo.png Robert Bogue2016-10-17 08:00:062018-04-10 10:35:55Book Review-The End of Memory: A Natural History of Aging and Alzheimer's
Book Review-Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World Article: Ten Development Manager Interview Questions You Should Know
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Vivienne Heckels
Let the Sky Sing for Joy
Picnic in Blue
Red Sky at Sunset
Vivienne Heckels was born in Rockhampton in 1943.
She recalls a teacher telling her that she would become an artist & this comment made a strong impression. An older benefactor, who supplied her with a large box of paints and brushes, also encouraged Vivienne.
When she was 19, Vivienne won the first art competition she entered.
The main influence on her painting career has been the work of the Flying Art School, a group of respected art tutors who travel to rural areas to teach emerging artists. Vivienne is now a co-coordinator of the Flying Art School.
When she was 27, Vivienne married and moved to a farm near Milmerran. During this time her work was influenced by the severe drought affecting the area and reflected the emotional & financial devastation. Some of these heart-rending works were exhibited in Canberra at the Rural Outlook 92 Conference and later at the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery.
Vivienne’s subjects are always evolving. She generally uses acrylics and mixed media to build textures in her work, using gesso, crushed paper and torn fabric before applying her bright colours and forms.
Her current work is highly original and features whimsical scenes of children and animals playing together in interconnected groups.
Vivienne aims to create laughter and a sense of freedom and happiness by portraying the children and the animals without constraints and the power to fly, jump and hop. She aims to take viewers back to a childhood time when everything was good and joyful. Vivienne binds the animals and children together by linking them with touch or by her fine painted lines or fabric threads to imply a mystic happy energy within the group.
John Massey from the Queensland Art Gallery has aptly described her work as having “the capacity to take the viewer on a flight of fantasy”.
Vivienne has exhibited in many solo an group exhibitions in Queensland and the ACT. She has won several art prizes and her paintings have been illustrated in books and media articles. Her paintings can be found in several Shire Council Offices, corporate collections in Queensland and private collections in Australia, New York and London.
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R.I.P. Music
Cranberries Dolores O'Riordan Laid to Rest in Ireland, Fans Pay Respects
Jan 21, 2018 at 12:24 pm UTC / Last Updated at Jun 10, 2019 at 22:59 pm UTC By TheBlast Staff
Thousands of Cranberries fans lined up outside St. Joseph's Church in Dolores O'Riordan's hometown of Limerick, Ireland to pay tribute to the singer.
O'Riordan's open coffin will remain inside the church Sunday for the public's first opportunity to view her body and pay their respects, according to the BBC.
The outlet reports O'Riordan's remains will then be transported to a funeral home on Monday ahead of a public funeral mass that'll be followed by a private, family-only burial on Tuesday.
O'Riordan died last week in London and, and as we previously reported, cops are investigating her “unexplained” passing. Her body was released to her family after the autopsy was completed. Officials are still waiting on results of her toxicology.
Her publicist released a statement that said, “The lead singer with the Irish band The Cranberries was in London for a short recording session. Family members are devastated to hear the breaking news and have requested privacy at this very difficult time.”
O'Riordan is survived by her three children: 20-year-old son Taylor, 16-year-old daughter Molly and 12-year-old daughter Dakota.
The Cranberries Release New Song from Final Album on Anniversary of Dolores O'Riordan's Death
Cranberries Singer Dolores O'Riordan Drowned in the Bathtub After Excessive Drinking
Dolores O'Riordan's Hometown in Ireland Opens Book of Condolence for Singer
Bono Pays Tribute to Cranberries' Dolores O'Riordan During Dublin Show
Book of Condolence for Dolores O'Riordan
Celebs React to the Passing of Cranberries Singer Dolores O’Riordan
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BlacKkKlansman (Review)
⭐⭐⭐⭐ (Excellent)
Director: Spike Lee
Starring: John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, Topher Grace
‘Based on some fo’ real, fo’ real shit’, BlacKkKlansman follows Ron Stallworth, the first black detective in the Colorado Springs Police Department. The film tells his story and how he successfully manages to infiltrate his local Klu Klux Klan by putting on a convincing portrayal of a white supremacist over the phone and then getting his Jewish colleague to assume his identity whenever his physical presence was required. This ‘joint’ is directed by Spike Lee (as he refers to his films), whose entire body of work is thought-provoking and interrogates issues of race and gender. Although his latest crop of films have received rather lukewarm reviews, I really enjoyed his remake of Oldboy (and am still holding hope we will one day get his true 140 minute vision before it was cut down) and Chi-Raq isn’t bad either. BlacKkKlansman premiered earlier this year at the Cannes Film Festival where reviews were almost unanimously positive, many citing this as a return to form and among his best work.
BlacKkKlansman certainly maintains Spike Lee’s passions and although the film stumbles in its first half an hour or so, when we get to the heart of the story, it is a mostly gripping and infectious account of these events. When you’ve got material as fascinating as this, it’s hard not to make a gripping film. But I don’t think BlacKkKlansman ranks as one of Spike Lee’s best. It has the tendency to be rather preachy at times, ham-fistedly spelling out its message. It’s also rather unsubtle in how it’s trying to link to current events, namely the Trump presidency and America’s deeply divided culture and racism.
But if you can get past some of the obvious storytelling, there’s certainly a lot to like here. Lee interrogates many different themes, chiefly duality between the film’s events and characters and he manages to balance some laugh-out-loud humour with its main message. All of the film’s characters are well-developed, even the KKK members have fleshed story arcs and you do begin to sympathise not with their beliefs, but with their personalities a little which is to be commended.
John David Washington is excellent in the lead role of Ron Stallworth giving a nuanced yet sprightly performance. Adam Driver as his Jewish police colleague is also strong, a character who is thrown in the deep end, who has to assume Stallworth’s personality when meeting KKK members in person. The real standout of the film though is Topher Grace as David Duke, ‘Grand Wizard’ of the KKK who is note-perfect and is endlessly charismatic yet sinister.
Stylistically, BlacKkKlansman is great, with excellent costume design and settings that perfectly mirror the 70’s setting. Terence Blanchard’s score, a mainly funk and jazz infused affair, has some memorable motifs and supplements the narrative well. Chayse Irvin’s cinematography is also good, with some interesting camera angles and shots.
When the main narrative takes centre stage, BlacKkKlansman is thoroughly enjoyable film in Spike Lee’s filmography. It spins a gripping yarn out of a fascinating story and is bolstered by being technically proficient and having some great performances. But its beginning is very self-indulgent and if the film was more subtle, it would be outstanding. I think due to the praise this film has received, I was expecting a little more. It’s a low 4-star grade-wise as a 3-star is rather harsh. BlacKkKlansman is definitely worth seeking out and most audiences should have a blast with it, as well as discovering and questioning the ways in which America’s society works, but it’s far from perfect.
October 2, 2018 hucko003 Tagged 2018 Films 2 Comments
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EIs under watch to check abuse of IPO quota
FE Report | Published: May 13, 2019 10:43:41 | Updated: May 20, 2019 11:11:05
Picture used for illustrative purpose only — Collected
The securities regulator is set to redefine the categories of eligible investors (EIs) to check the abuse of IPO (initial public offering) quota system.
To this end, the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC) has now been working to amend the BSEC (Public Issue) Rules, 2015, which deals with EI issues, among others.
Recent years saw an exponential growth of registered pension fund, provident fund and gratuity fund and most of these entities have been participating in the IPOs to take advantage of the quota facility, officials familiar with the matter told the FE.
Besides, many stock dealers are also abusing their licences, as they only participate in the IPOs but do not make other market investment, they said.
Currently, a committee of the BSEC has been working on this issue and it will submit its reports shortly, they added.
"We've noted that the number of registered provident and pension funds is mushrooming in recent times," said an insider.
The regulator may bar such entities from participating in the IPOs, he added.
BSEC Chairman Dr M Khairul Hossain has also raised the issue on many occasions.
According to Public Issue Rules, 2015, eligible investor means the institution who has business operation or investment in Bangladesh and is registered with the electronic subscription system of the stock exchanges.
The EIs are merchant bankers and portfolio managers, asset management companies, mutual funds and collective investment scheme (CIS), stock dealers, banks, financial institutions, insurance companies, alternative investment fund managers, alternative investment funds, foreign investors having account with any securities custodian registered with the Commission, recognised provident funds, approved pension funds and approved gratuity funds, and other institutions as approved by the Commission.
Under the fixed-price method of IPO, some 40 per cent of the total public offering shall be reserved for EIs, excluding Mutual Fund and the CIS; while some 10 per cent for the MF and CIS, 40 per cent for general public and the remaining 10 per cent for the NRBs (non-resident Bangladeshis), according to the rules.
And under the book building method, some 50 per cent of total public offering shall be reserved for EIs, excluding Mutual Fund and the CIS; while some 10 per cent for the MF and the CIS, 30 per cent for general public and the remaining 10 per cent for the NRBs.
A source at the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) told the FE that they found a section of the EIs engaged in other types of wrongdoing. A board member of an EI was found involved in unethical practice of participating in the IPOs bypassing its board, he added.
The DSE came to know about the matter when the board of the EI had applied for enlistment with the bourse, a requirement needed to participate in the IPOs.
Later, the DSE handed over the case to the BSEC for taking action.
jasimharoon@yahoo.com
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Comment - preview
Children's wishes and worries
According to a UNICEF report published this year, British children languish at the bottom of an international league table that ranks the physical and emotional well-being of youngsters in the world's wealthiest nations
Why? What is it that makes our children unhappy? What do they want and what is it that they worry about?
Cantell School, a mixed comprehensive secondary school in Southampton, has provided some insights into these issues
Each child in the school and in all the feeder primary schools was asked to complete the following sentences: 'My wish for today or the future is'; and 'my worry for today or the future is'
Hazel Inskip & David Martin
This is a preview of the full article - to see the whole thing, or to post a comment you need to login, or alternatively you could try a free sample!
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In this week's online edition...
Anti-corruption campaigners speak truth to power and force it to respond
Oliver Robertson
Denise C Gabuzda & Irenée Rajaona-Horne
Supporting Quakers across the Middle East and Europe
To be or not to be – a way of life
Robin Bennett
editorial@thefriend.org
Junior Yearly Meeting
Fiona Foulkes
In Fair Palestine: a story of Romeo and Juliet
Old and new at the same time
John Lampen & David Ford
Defending human rights in Colombia
Ruth Cherrington
q-eye
eye@thefriend.org
Things to do, where to stay, people to see etc...
Letters, Ala
Quaker approach to business under the spotlight, David Hitchin
Tackling the pay gap from both ends, anonymous poster
Some more equal than others?, anonymous poster
Climate Camp experience, Frances Laing
The centrality of worship, Andrew Hatton, Maldon LM, Essex
In the care of the Meeting?, chrissie hinde
Lockerbie grief and justice, Jennifer Barraclough
The centrality of worship, Peter Arnold
The top ten reasons (plus three) why bottled water is a blessing, Fee Berry
Letters, David Hitchin
Marriage and committed relationships, Fee Berry
George Fox and same gender partnership, Chris Bagley
Marriage and committed relationships, Chris Bagley
Meeting for meditation?, Barry
Meeting for ‘weorthscipe’?, Gerard Guiton
Report shows that all is not well in multicultural Britain, chrissie hinde
Johann Sebastian Bach and the Jews, Peter Arnold
Prisons: our growth industry, Peer Arnold
Save on your phone bills with:
britain yearly meeting
quakers worldwide
other quaker periodicals
online faith & practice
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January 20, 2020 Paris Fashion Week: Loewe Fall 2020 Menswear Collection
Home » Television » Mad Style: For Immediate Release
Mad Style: For Immediate Release
It really wasn’t until we looked at the clothes that we realized how much this entire episode was a response to an episode from last season.
Okay, let’s get right to it, because we don’t think we ever received so many messages about a hairstyle before in our lives. Yes, Joannie is wearing her hair down in the office and it wouldn’t be out of line to conclude that it represents a new day dawning in her life and a new acceptance of her role as an executive.
Except she’s worn her hair down before, both times in the first season. First, she wore it down in S1E3’s “The Marriage of Figaro:”
But it’s not uncommon for a character’s “look” to be in flux in the first several episodes of a series. We tend to consider this something of an outlier, because Joan has steadfastly worn her hair up in practically every scene since.
Except this one:
The night Bert Cooper called her into the office (away from her hookup for the night) in order to type up telegrams informing all the clients of Roger’s heart attack. This was a more deliberate costuming choice, because it demonstrated the difference between how Joan presents herself to the office, and how she presents herself when she’s out of it. Because of that, and because this latest scene is set on a Saturday in the office with Bert Cooper (hence the casualness), we tend to think the hair down is something of a light callback to that earlier scene. What a difference 8 years make, from a secretary having an affair with a partner to a financial officer preparing her company to go public.
But we have to admit, we tend to agree with those people who think her hair is just a little anachronistic here. Yes, looser styles and hair worn down was becoming the norm in the late ’60s, but this feathered, curled ‘do just doesn’t look like 1968. More 1978. We did a LOT of research into late ’60s hairstyles in order to find one that resembled this, and we couldn’t do it. There were a few with the parted bangs, like she’s sporting here. In fact, Sharon Tate favored the look at the time. But it was worn straighter and framed the face more instead of being curled away from it. We don’t spend too much time on the historical accuracy of the looks (partly because they’re almost always dead-on), but since we got so many questions about this one, we figured we’d take the time. She looks great, but she doesn’t look 1968 to us.
Her silhouette remains largely the same, although this blouse is new to us. We think this outfit works as a declarative statement regarding Joan’s status, but it’s somewhat illusory. Her hair’s not quite right and the outfit’s not really as different from her previous ones as you might think. It tends to reflect her partnership fairly well; illusory and not as revolutionary as she’d hoped.
The pink in her blouse will be echoed in several other female characters’ costumes this episode. Pete is dressed in drab green and blue, signaling the downward, adultery-fueled spiral of his own life. Bert is, of course, dressed like it’s 1920.
It’s Mother’s Day and she asked him to come, so of course she put on the showiest, most romantic peignor set she owns. Clearly, she’s thawing and ready to accept him back, even as she pretends to be considering the idea, but it’s a tease, like the outfit she’s wearing. You get a peek, Pete, and then it all gets wrapped up and whisked away under a veil of femininity.
We didn’t think the outfits in this scene were all that interesting or notable, except for Arnie, who continues a very long-standing theme of depicting unbalanced power in the Draper apartment by having one person in sleepwear while other people are dressed. Interesting that it’s Arnie who’s put in the powerless position this time, but as we’ll see later, he’s feeling pretty powerless in his job at the moment.
It’s also interesting that he’s framed by figures in blue and green. The B&G combo has recurred so frequently and consistently this season that it’s hard not to look for meaning in it. And after this episode, we’re inclined to swing back toward the idea that the combination signals adultery. Don and Marie aren’t adulterous with each other, but they are the only adulterers in the scene and Arnie’s the only cuckold.
Megan stands apart from the drama, another woman in black, which is also a recurring motif this season and one we tend to think calls back to the funerals of MLK and RFK.
This was an adorable scene and we love Peggy’s latest coat, but we couldn’t help noting the blue and green in the scene. It’s a sickness at this point, you guys. We can’t stop.
But yeah, as sweetly domestic as these apartment scenes were, they were also dealing with Peggy’s growing feelings about Ted, which means maybe we’re not so nuts to notice all the B&G.
Once again, these two are so different in their styles and trajectories that it’s hard to see them working in the long term. He gets more counter-culture every time we see him and she still looks like a good girl.
Dig that Korvette’s shopping bag. She was picking up curtains from her mother, so we suspect that’s where she got it. Korvette’s was not a discount store in the Woolworth’s sense, but it was definitely a department store with a more working-class feel to it.
These men are costumed so distinctly that you really don’t need dialogue to come to conclusions about them. Frank is clearly an artistic type (dig that neck scarf), Jim is clearly a suave, corporate type, and Ted is somewhere in the middle, dressed in a jacket and tie, but rendered in bright, modern colors; a go-getter. You can practically hear the various arguments that played out over the years among the three of them. And it’s notable that Frank is dressed in shades that call back to the other two men; blue and golden brown. And as the only one not dressed in typical executive wear, it’s clear he’s not as entrenched in this world as the other two men anymore.
A thin column of blissfully uncomplicated creamy white, surrounded by flowers on all sides. As bitchy as Marie is to everyone, we tend to think she sees the writing on the wall with the Draper marriage far more clearly than her daughter does. There’s a sense in the blocking of this scene of Megan being surrounded on all sides by people who appreciate her and people who disapprove of her.
Check that Bonwit bag. The Calvets don’t do Korvette’s, darling.
A snapshot, because it’s all such a treat for the eyes.
A woman in black. Two people in the Draper residence; one dressed, the other undressed. Repeating motifs.
Megan’s quite the clotheshorse, isn’t she? Betty had a hell of a wardrobe back in the day, but we don’t think it comes close to Megan’s. And Betty was a model.
We’re not prudish about smoking, but the idea of smoking inside a closet full of expensive clothing makes us want to reach through the screen and pull it out of her hands. “Do you know how much all this stuff is going to be worth in 40 years?”
Once again, metallics on a woman signals wealth, and Megan’s probably the wealthiest woman at the table. Marie is dark and ominous, which reflects her mood, and Peaches is a frilly drink umbrella of a woman; curled, and ruffled and mostly just plain silly-looking.
There were several callbacks, both in story and in costuming, to last season’s “The Other Woman,” which dealt with Joan’s night of prostitution, Peggy flying the SCDP coop, and Megan not being taken seriously by anyone regarding her acting dreams. So Megan’s “Valley of the Dolls”-style dress above reminds us quite a bit of her audition outfit from that episode:
We noted at the time that her audition clothing wasn’t showy enough and that she was too timid in her approach. Now scroll up. Girl definitely learned her lesson in a short amount of time.
Another snapshot of three distinctly different ways of dressing men. Pete dresses old for his age, it has to be said. Ken’s clothes reflect his sunny, care-free personality and stand in opposition to Pete’s buttoned-up, dour, conservative grey. Bob’s just cute.
Okay, no. Bob’s there to model the styles of the younger, college-grad set. He’s almost always depicted in a jacket and pants instead of a suit.
It’s interesting that the men are all wearing yellow ties, except for Pete, but we honestly don’t know if there’s anything to be gleaned from that. The real story in this scene is Joan’s dress, which is another callback to “The Other Woman.” Don unloading Herb and merging with CGC were both his attempts at reversing two things that didn’t sit well with him from that episode; “saving” Joan from prostitution and corralling Peggy back into his sphere.
So it seems to us that Joan’s dress here, where she yells at the partners about how they handled her prostitution and fallout, is a reflection of this dress:
When she stood proudly with the partners the morning after her night with Herb, thinking they would protect her from the fallout.
It also could be said that the green she’s wearing calls back to the green bathrobe she wore when Don tried to talk her out of doing it:
Either way, it’s clear to us that Don never got over his failure to save Joan and the current scene is reflecting that in Joan’s costuming. In fact, if we want to be really poetic about it; Joan sees herself as that executive who earned herself a spot in the partnership (reflecting the dress she wore the next morning); Don sees her as a whore he failed to save (reflecting the bathrobe she wore when he tried).
By the way, Kenny is not officially privy to the information about Joan sleeping with Herb (although he obviously knew). It’s notable that Joan’s so mad at Don she’s openly referring to it in front of Kenny. To be honest, everyone involved in Joan’s ascent handled it pretty badly, or at the least, very naively. Including Joan.
Blue and Green = Adultery.
We’re done pussyfooting around it.
We think the costuming here is meant to be ironic. Peggy’s indulging in a romantic fantasy while she and her boyfriend pretty much look like shit. The brilliant pink of her housecoat calls back to Trudy’s romantic peignoir – and looks pretty hilariously shabby in comparison. And of course her fantasy is in a brilliant red velvet smoking jacket to make poor Abe look all the worse to her.
We will never stop laughing at “SOMETHING… by Ralph Waldo Emerson.”
Okay, first: That bar is spectacular – and PERFECTLY of its time. This is what a million cheap lounges in the ’70s would try (and fail) to recreate.
Second: yes, they’re both in yellow shirts, signaling the coming together of two people who are otherwise dressed (and thus think) very differently. Don’s jacket also picks up some of the color of Ted’s sweater.
A word about Ted’s style. We’ve joked about his groovy sweaters and turtlenecks, and while it’s true his clothes are more showy and youthful than Don’s, it should be pointed out that he’s essentially working a Perry Como/Andy Williams kind of look. He’s a slightly more stylish middle-aged dad than Don is, but he’s definitely working a middle-aged dad look.
Another callback to Trudy’s pink peignor; this time a somewhat sad one. Ever since she kicked him out, her clothing has become much more subdued. Gone are the wild florals and cupcake skirts.
The final – and strongest – callback to “The Other Woman.” The above is what she wore when she found out Don had once again taken control of her life against her will.
This is what she wore when she tried to break that cycle:
Don is trying to reverse the actions and decisions of the two women he respects the most, against their wishes and without consulting them. As exciting as this merger is for story possibilities, we doubt it’s going to be a good thing in the long run. Like his marriage to Megan, it’s all about Don using people to construct a life around him that makes him feel better about himself, with virtually no thought as to how the people around him feel.
We feel so sorry for her right now. She didn’t even get an entire year away from him before he pulled her back in.
[Stills: tomandlorenzo.com]
Mad Men Season 6
Mad Style
Met Gala: Kristen Stewart in Stella McCartney Next Post:
Met Gala: Nicki Minaj in Tommy Hilfiger
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On this day in 1984 Madonna released her second studio album Like a Virgin on Sire Records. According to author J. Randy Taraborrelli, “Every important artist has at least one album in his or her career whose critical and commercial success becomes the artist’s magic moment; for Madonna, Like a Virgin was just such a defining moment”. Since its release the album has sold more than 21 million copies worldwide and has become one of the best-selling records of all time.
Entry filed under: On this Day. Tags: On This Day In Music.
On this day… Happy Birthday!
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When former CIA agent Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford) hampers an IRA terrorist attack in London, he kills one of the terrorists. The dead man's brother, another member of the group named Sean Miller (Sean Bean), is arrested but quickly escapes. Vowing revenge against Ryan, Miller travels to the United States, where he forces Ryan's wife (Anne Archer) and daughter (Thora Birch) into a car accident that badly injures them. This convinces Ryan to rejoin the CIA in order to track down Miller.
Starring Harrison Ford, Anne Archer, Sean Bean
Director Phillip Noyce
Cathy Muller Ryan
Sally Ryan
Lord Holmes
Lt. Cmdr. Robert Jefferson 'Robby' Jackson
J.E. Freeman
Marty Cantor
Adm. James Greer
Paddy O'Neil
Dennis Cooley
Geoffrey Watkins
Phillip Noyce
Charles H. Maguire
Mace Neufeld
Robert Rehme
W. Peter Iliff
Donald Stewart
Spy thriller mixes nonstop violence with pro-family message.
© 1992 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.
English (United States) (AAC, Dolby 5.1, AD)
Arabic (Subtitles), Bulgarian (Subtitles), Cantonese (Traditional) (Subtitles), Chinese (Simplified) (Subtitles), Chinese (Traditional) (Subtitles), Czech (Czech Republic) (Subtitles), Danish (Denmark) (Subtitles), Dutch (Netherlands) (Subtitles), Finnish (Finland) (Subtitles), French (Subtitles), Hebrew (Subtitles), Hindi (India) (Subtitles), Malay (Malaysia) (Subtitles), Norwegian (Norway) (Subtitles), Polish (Subtitles), Portuguese (Brazil) (Subtitles), Portuguese (Portugal) (Subtitles), Russian (Russia) (Subtitles), Slovak (Subtitles), Slovenian (Subtitles), Spanish (Latin America) (Subtitles), Swedish (Sweden) (Subtitles), Turkish (Turkey) (Subtitles)
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The New Zealand-born, British-educated Bevan broke into film and TV in 1983 when he formed a producing partnership with Sarah Radclyffe that eventually grew into Working Title Films in 1985. That same year, they produced Stephen Frears' "My Beautiful Laundrette" originally for Channel 4, but successful festival screenings led to its international release. The center to the story was the love affair between a young man of Pakistani descent and his long-time British friend also marked the screenwriting debut of Hanif Kureishi and catapulted Daniel Day-Lewis to stardom. Frears and Kureishi later collaborated on the controversial "Sammy and Rosie Get Laid" (1987), also produced under Working Title's auspices.In 1988, Bevan and Radclyffe executive produced "A World Apart," the story of a girl and her relationship with her anti-apartheid activist mother in South Africa which won the Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Award for Barbara Hershey. Working Title had its first flop in 1991 with "Drop Dead Fred" and shortly thereafter, Bevan and Radclyffe parted ways with Eric Fellner joining the company. That same year, the company produced "London Kills Me," the directorial debut of Hanif Kureishi. Into the 90s, Working Title was seen as sponsoring many films with a new energy, but little broad commercial appeal. They had art-house successes of varying degrees with "Bob Roberts" (1992), the directorial debut of Tim Robbins, and "Map of the Human Heart" (1993), directed by Vincent Ward. Bevan and Fellner served as executive producers of Mario Van Peebles' "Posse" (1993), which proved to be their most commercial "Hollywood" film to that date. After the disappointing "The Hudsucker Proxy" (1994) from the Coen brothers came the critical and box-office success of "Four Weddings and a Funeral." (The film earned in excess of $250 million worldwide and until 1997's "The Full Monty," held the record as the top grossing British film.) Budgets for Working Title films improved (up to $50 million) but it remains a British-based company with a Hollywood office and a work ethic very much away from the studio system.Since the mid-90s, Bevan and Fellner have produced or executive produced a number of interesting films. "Panther," made by Mario and Melvin Van Peebles, examined the history of the Black Panther movement in the USA while "French Kiss" teamed Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline in a disappointing romantic comedy "Moonlight and Valentino" (all 1995) showcased several strong females as well as marked the acting debut of rock star Jon Bon Jovi. That same year, Tim Robbins' "Dead Man Walking" proved a critical and commercial winner, earning a Best Actress Oscar for Susan Sarandon and a Best Actor Academy Award nomination for Sean Penn and solidifying Working Title as a quality producer of independent film. The Coen brothers' wildly popular "Fargo" continued the company streak and Bevan and Fellner also executive produced the Coens' less successful "The Big Lebowski" (1998). The company faced an uncertain future, however, when its largest shareholder, PolyGram, announced in early 1998 that it was looking to sell its 75 percent stake.
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More On That King Kerfuffle: “Undocumented Valedictorians”’ Status As Valedictorians Often, Well, Undocumented.
Washington Watcher
In my recent defense of Rep. Steve King for daring to mention the Hate Fact that there are many more illegal alien drug mules than valedictorians, I made two points that could perhaps be challenged:
First, I pointed to the dismal academics at North Miami High School, alma mater of Daniela Palaez, the most celebrated “undocumented valedictorian,” as an example of how being valedictorian at a low quality school may not require that much skill.
I could be accused of cherry-picking one example to be indicative of a larger class—kind of like how the Main Stream Media will cherry pick a few alleged valedictorians to be indicative of illegal aliens.
Second, I also expressed skepticism that some of these “undocumented valedictorians were actually valedictorians, without coming up with a specific example other than a story about honor students from a 1987 novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities.
So now, in the interest of fairness, I have researched as many other “undocumented valedictorians” I could find. I found articles discussing unnamed undocumented valedictorians (I'm an Illegal Immigrant at Harvard, Newsweek, November 27, 2010), and a New York Times article about a named undocumented valedictorian from almost 30 years ago, Harold Fernandez, who apparently has since had a successful career as an MD: An Undocumented Princetonian By Joseph Berger, December 29, 2009.
However, I’ve only found five (5) actual undocumented valedictorians who came out of the shadows to give us their real names.
Of those cases, two involved students who came from schools with dismal academic records. In the three other cases, I found another valedictorian who graduated from the same high school the same year.
In other words, these three “undocumented valedictorians” are, well, undocumented.
Vidal Tapia, International High School, Paterson NJ.
According to the New Jersey Star-Ledger, illegal alien “Vidal Tapia is by all accounts International High School’s brightest prospect… he carries a 4.0 GPA, a National Honor Society membership and a slew of community service hours.” [Paterson high school valedictorian faces 10-year ban from U.S. due to immigration status, March 11, 2011]
But according to US News and World Report, in 2010-11 there were 66 12th graders at International High School, compared to 110 10th graders, suggesting a very high drop-out rate. The graduation rate was only 53%. The school was 66% Hispanic, 29% black, 4% white, and 1% Asian. 72% of the students were “economically disadvantaged”. Only 33% of the students were “Proficient” in Math. US News did not give the reading Proficiency rate
Solanlly Canas: High School in the Community
The New Haven Independent ran a sob story about Solanlly Canas’ failure to get financial aid for college because of her illegal status. [New Haven Rallies For Solanlly & Chastity, by Melissa Bailey, May 3, 2013] The story had a happy ending—taxpayers and fellow students now subsidize her education. (I should also add that Miss Canas, like the Dr. Fernandez mentioned above, is Colombian and appears to be of largely Spanish ancestry and thus not representative of the average illegal immigrant population.)
The Independent says Canas was valedictorian at the “High School in the Community” in New Haven. Though designated as a “magnet school”, its senior class of 55 is just over half the size of its freshman class of 97, suggesting a high drop-out rate. Overall, it’s 43% black, 34% Hispanic, 22% white, and 1% Asian. Some 77% of students are economically disadvantaged. Only 51% are proficient at reading and 32% are proficient at Math.
Henry Mejia, Yorktown High School, Arlington, VA
In an NPR puff piece about a special scholarship fund for illegal aliens, it’s reported that Henry Mejia is “graduating as the valedictorian from Yorktown High School, and is headed off to Bucknell University.” [Scholarships For Undocumented Students, Including One Valedictorian, By Jonathan Wilson, June 10, 2011]
I am familiar with Yorktown High School. It’s located in an affluent suburb of Arlington, VA. Yorktown has a senior class of 547 students, which is actually higher than the younger years. Some 62% of the students are white, 10% are Asian, 18% are Hispanic, and 7% of white. 14% of the students are economically disadvantaged. 98% are proficient in reading 95% are proficient in math. Suffice to say, graduating valedictorian at Yorktown is a bit more impressive than graduating at the top of the International High School.
Nataly Montano, Washington-Lee High School, Arlington, VA.
According to a story in the Arlington Sun Gazette,
President Obama’s controversial decision to stop deportation of many young people brought to the U.S. illegally means Nataly Montano can stop worrying – ‘at least a little’ – and get on with continuing her education in the U.S. Montano, 17, graduated from Washington-Lee High School last month as a valedictorian, sporting a 4.3 grade-point average. [For W-L Valedictorian, Change in Immigration Policy Suggests New Opportunities, By Dave Facinoli, July 11, 2012]
As a Washington Watcher, I am aware of Washington-Lee High school too. It has a decent reputation. The student body is 36% white, 35% Hispanic, 12% Asian, and 12% black. 27% of students are economically disadvantaged. 96% of students are proficient in reading and 90% are proficient in math. Those are pretty good numbers, given the schools demographics.
However, as with Yorktown high school, there appears also to have been a, so to speak, documented valedictorian. Had the Sun Gazette editors bothered to check their own archives, they would have seen that just a month earlier, they reported on Washington-Lee’s graduation and identified the valedictorian as Niti Paudyal. [Washington-Lee High School Graduates Reminded to Live for the Present, By Michael Gregory, June 22, 2012] The Arlington Connection also reported that Miss Paudyal was the valedictorian. [Washington-Lee’s Commencement 2012, June 27, 2012]
After finding two questionably documented cases of undocumented valedictorians in the same county, I did a bit more research, I found that the apparent source of both of the Arlington valedictorian stories was the fund that Jonathan Wilson’s NPR story mentioned: the Virginia DREAM Project,[Email them] which gives scholarships to illegal immigrants.
In addition to identifying Montano and Mejia as valedictorians, the DREAM Project also listed another recent Arlington high school graduate, Froy Melendez, as the 2012 valedictorian at Wakefield High School.
But in fact a legal Chinese immigrant named Yue Ren was Wakefield High’s 2012 valedictorian. Patch.com published his valedictorian speech, in which he mentioned an unheard-of notion:
I was indebted to the fact that the U.S. allowed me through its gates and granted me citizenship and the privileges of being an American.
No doubt these undocumented valedictorians, documented or not, are reasonably bright students and not likely to be a drain on society (unless they become MALDEF lawyers).
However, the fact that, upon closer inspection, the best examples of potential DREAMers that the MSM point us to are less impressive than advertised is a reason to be wary of accepting millions of other illegal aliens on their assurances.
In his much-denounced comment, Steve King said “For every one who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there who [have been drug mules].
Of course, neither the MSM nor the Obama Administration is counting drug mules. But in his defense of King, former Rep. Tom Tancredo was able to show that nearly 400 minors have been arrested as smugglers in just one of eight border sectors in the last 18 months alone.
In my defense of King, I suggested he wasn’t literally citing a statistic, just speaking figuratively. But now it looks like his ratio was right.
"Washington Watcher" [email him] is an anonymous source Inside The Beltway
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Emeritus Professor Trevor Heath
Emeritus Professor
t.heath@uq.edu.au
Atwell, R. and Heath, T. (2006) Some factors affecting diagnostic accuracy. Australian Veterinary Practitioner, 36 1: 23-28.
Heath, Trevor (2006) The more things change, the more they should stay the same. Journal of Veterinary Medical Education, 33 2: 149-154. doi:10.3138/jvme.33.2.149
Heath, T. J. (2004) Australian veterinarians who work with horses: views of the future. Australian Veterinary Journal, 82 8: 474-478. doi:10.1111/j.1751-0813.2004.tb11159.x
Heath, T. J. (2004) Australian veterinarians who work with horses: attitudes to work and career. Australian Veterinary Journal, 82 7: 404-408. doi:10.1111/j.1751-0813.2004.tb11125.x
Heath, T. J. (2004) Cats, Dogs and Veterinarians - Do the numbers stack up?. Australian Vet. Journal, 82 5: 258-258.
Heath, T. J. (2004) Recent Veterinary Graduates - Changes in veterinarians' initial career experiences over the last five decades: an abridged report. Australian Vet. Journal, 82 10: 602-604. doi:10.1111/j.1751-0813.2004.tb12596.x
Heath, T. J. (2002) Longitudinal study of veterinarians from entry to the veterinary course to 10 years after graduation: attitudes to work, career and profession. Australian Veterinary Journal, 80 8: 474-478. doi:10.1111/j.1751-0813.2002.tb12468.x
Heath, T. J. (2002) Longitudinal study of veterinarians from entry to the veterinary course to ten years after graduation: career paths. Australian Veterinary Journal, 80 8: 468-473. doi:10.1111/j.1751-0813.2002.tb12467.x
Heath, T. (2002) Career paths of Australian veterinarians. Australian Veterinary Practitioner, 32 2: 86-86.
Heath, T. (2002) Letters. Australian Veterinary Journal, 80 6: 333-333.
Heath, T. (2002) A quantitative analysis of PhD students' views of supervision. Higher Education Research & Development, 21 1: 41-53.
Heath, T. J. and Niethe, G. E. (2001) Effect of gender on ownership and income in veterinary practice. Australian Veterinary Journal, 79 8: 546-548. doi:10.1111/j.1751-0813.2001.tb10744.x
Heath, T. J. (2001) Veterinary employment patterns. Australian Veterinary Practitioner, 31 1: 12-16.
Heath, T. and Niethe, G. (2001) Veterinary practitioners in rural Australia: A national survey. Australian Veterinary Journal, 79 6: 3-8.
Atwell, R and Heath, T (2001) Some factors affecting diagnostic accuracy. Australian Veterinary Practitioner, 31 1: 18-+.
Heath, T. J. and Niethe, G. (2000) What percentage of their time do private practitioners spend with each species of animal?. Australian Veterinary Practitioner, 30 3: 120-123.
McLennan, M. W. and Heath, T. J. (2000) The role of lectures in veterinary education. Australian Veterinary Journal, 78 10: 702-709. doi:10.1111/j.1751-0813.2000.tb10412.x
Heath, T. J. and Manion, B. J. (1999) The arts in the lives of Australian veterinarians: a preliminary study. Australian Veterinary Journal, 77 6: 380-383. doi:10.1111/j.1751-0813.1999.tb10310.x
Heath, T. J. (1999) Costs of studying veterinary science: A national survey of fourth year veterinary students. Australian veterinary Journal, 77 9: 584-587. doi:10.1111/j.1751-0813.1999.tb13195.x
Heath, T. J. (1999) Starting work in veterinary practice: An employer's viewpoint. Australian Veterinary Practitioner, 29 4: 146-152.
Heath, T. (1999) The mixed bag that is mixed practice. Australian Veterinary Practitioner, 29 2: 86-87.
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Edward Bune
Edward Bune, or Edward Woburn, was rector of Eversholt from 1559 to 1563. He had previously been one of the monks of Woburn Abbey! There is an article about this in
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society for 1933, but Cambridge University wants £20 for a single copy of the article, so I just poked about with Google books snippet view.
The attempt to trace what became of the remaining monks has only been partially successful. The depositions taken by the commissioners indicate that there were at least twelve monks at Woburn at the time of the dissolution, excluding the abbot and the sub-prior. One, the sexton, perished with his two superiors. Of the remaining eleven, the subsequent history of five can so far be traced. Edward Bune, alias Edward Woburn, who had been priested some seven months earlier, on the 22nd September, 1537,. held for a time the rectory of Fortho in Northamptonshire. Subsequently, in 1553, he was instituted rector of Grafton Regis in the same county and on the 26th March, 1560, rector of Eversholt in Bedfordshire. The 1561 Parker certificate in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, speaks of him as unmarried and holding two livings, presumably Grafton Regis and Eversholt. …[some missing]…The lists of rectors in the churches of both Grafton Regis and Eversholt record the institution of Edward Bune, and each gives the date for the next institution as 1563…
It seems that Woburn Abbey was broken up by force in 1537 or 1538. The Abbot, sub-prior and sexton were killed. Edward Bune or Woburn was a relatively young monk. He was flexible enough to go along with the new church and made two good livings for himself!
The national archive listing on the Rectors page says that Bune was appointed because there was a vacancy, meaning that the previous chap just disappeared or was fired or something. Bune’s Patron was Ralph Johnson, citizen and grocer of London. “Citizen” probably means that he was a member of the Worshipful Company of Grocers and had the Freedom of the City of London. It also says that Bune “departed”, so presumably didn’t die in office.
Here’s a snippet from Reports and Papers Read at the Meetings of the Architectural Societies of the Counties of Lincoln and Nottingham, County of York, Archdeaconries of Northampton and Oakham, County of Bedford, Diocese of Worcester, and County of Leicester, Volume 25.
Bune, Edward, cl., adm. 19 Mar., to the ch. of Eversholte alias Eversholde, vac. both of right and in fact, on the pres. of Ralph Johnson, citizen and grocer of London, by virtue of a certain grant of adv.
What I think that means is:
Bune, Edward, clergyman or clerk, admitted 19 March, to the church of Eversholte alias Eversholde, vacated both of right and in fact, on the presentation of Ralph Johnson, citizen and grocer of London, by virtue of a certain grant of advowson.
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Racial Relations and Color Blindness
Every country has some rules and legislation that provides its citizens with certain security and regulations that guarantee a normal life. However, the real situation appears to be quite the opposite from what should the government provide its population with.
In this respect, we can see cases of discrimination though it is claimed to have been fought in the same time when Martin Luther King delivered his speech about the necessity of being more tolerant and patient and not treating people of other races as minorities. The history made the United States of America a multinational state where different languages and religious beliefs are brought from all over the world to contribute to the overall image of the country and enrich its culture.
Time passed and people were still coming to the United States to find some appropriate conditions for their families, education for their children, and more advantageous job opportunities. However, the real situation happened to be not as bright and prosperous as people believed.
Status of Minorities
The Civil Rights Act was aimed at outlawing racial discrimination which still persists in the form of racial inequality.
Many people that live in the United States of America experience racial inequality regardless of the claims that this phenomenon was claimed to have been removed from the theory and practice. However, many people face difficulties related to their housing opportunities and educational problems. This does not mean that children of immigrants do not want to receive education – racial discrimination results in much more complicated issues such as lack of educational institutions on the territory of the neighborhoods inhabited by immigrants. Is not this inequality?
I believe that this can be considered the most vivid example of racial inequality when people are doomed to live in neighborhoods chosen for them on the bases of racial discrimination principles. As reported in the documentary series Unnatural Causes, the rate of uneducated children that experience violence or become witnesses of violence in the street is very high due to the neighborhood and inability of authorities to provide all people with appropriate living conditions making no exceptions.
Children are not educated, they lack self-esteem and self-confidence, and they have no plans for future. As experts explain about such children, they make plans concerning what to wear for their funerals instead of thinking about their graduation and more perspective outcomes (“Unnatural Causes” n.p.).
In other words, there is no chance for these children to become good loving parents for their own children as the rate of violence and other external factors are not encouraging at all; hence, people do not make plans to be ready for losses. The situation in society would not permit them to realize their plans to any degree.
Health is one of the most burning issues of the contemporary society. The global community makes attempts to consolidate people all over the world and fight the danger of fatal illnesses and viruses. However, the cases that take place in the racially marked neighborhoods of the united states of American such as “Richmond, California, a predominantly Black city in the San Francisco Bay Area” (“Unnatural Causes” n.p.) demonstrate lack of attempts to improve the health of the population.
Besides, it is unclear whether the authorities do nothing with the health of the population due to the race inequality or they have simply failed to provide certain areas with adequate health care services. In this respect, health policies and programs aimed at improvement of health care services provided to the population of another race and ethnicity than white non-Hispanics seem to have failed.
As reported in the documentary series Unnatural Causes, “Segregation and lack of access to jobs, nutritious foods, and safe, affordable housing” (n.p.) can be considered the major factor that contribute negatively to the overall situation with the health of people including residents that have been living in inappropriate neighborhoods for years and even decades and new-comers who experience the pressure of this negative environment.
Health of these people reduces their lives. The major reason for shorter life period of people from disadvantaged neighborhoods is the conditions that reduce their lives. People think about the lack of job opportunities, inappropriate health care services, and lack of educational institutions which causes constant stress and worsens their health.
Sociocultural factors
Though sociocultural issues can be considered the main aspect of the cultural diversity that can be used for benefit of the society and organizations, people often fail to understand this concept adequately and treat it in the same way they treat their own cultural cues. In this respect, sometimes people lack tolerance and patience to learn differences and comprehend the relations between cultural cues typical of one ethnic group and their actions in a certain setting.
When we do not understand something, we try either to learn it better to know how to treat it. At the same time, people may fail to express sufficient understanding; they can express animosity instead.
The situation in disadvantaged neighborhoods is difficult to change though people can make efforts such as performed by the people in the High Point in West Seattle where “Community members, local government and developers took a radical approach in rebuilding this neighborhood – using federal funding to create a mixed-income community with health as its focus” (“Unnatural Causes” n.p.).
In this respect, race matters only for those who got used to stereotypes and biases instead of establishment of new unbiased relations with other community members.
So, the definition of racism is instructive because it marks people of other colors of skin than white and other ethnicities than non-Hispanic as those considered victims of this phenomenon in society. However, any expression of preference or discrimination can be considered racism in contemporary society due to multiculturalism spread all over the globe.
Colorblindness in California
Though California can be considered one of the most multicultural areas on the territory of the United States of America, it can also be treated as the place where people suffer from open discrimination regardless of political claims about tolerance and integrity.
People are discriminated due to their racial belonging in all parts of the world. This can be considered one of the burning issues of contemporary society with regard to a number of factors that contribute to the overall situation in every separate state and the global community in general.
The book Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California written by Daniel Martinez HoSang helps people to understand the problem of racial inequality to the extent of its essence because authorities try to make things look better than they appear to be in the real life. In this respect, people in California are treated with regard to their race taking into account numerous acts, policies, and programs aimed at development of clear and unbiased social relations.
All attempts to cover or even reduce the open demonstrations of discrimination were made in order to lull the vigilance of active opponents and make the country more attractive for immigrants who did not even think about possibility of being discriminated in one of the most democratic countries in the world. HoSang in his book about the history of race in California describes speeches and public claims made to reduce the opposition:
Bowron’s pronouncement echoed the calls of dozens of other civic unity, “human relations,” and “fair play” organizations across the state and around the country during this period; Los Angeles alone was home to twelve such organizations or coalitions by 1944. (ch. 1)
Every such pronouncement reduced the efforts of opposition and made people believe that everything would become better than it was and discrimination would not exist anymore. Though Brown has indicated that “we have no master race” (HoSang ch.1), there are still numerous instances of discrimination and racial inequality in California as well as all over the world.
Colorblindness
Such notions as colorblindness were supposed to make people free from discrimination and society free from biases and racial inequality. However, some people consider this to be one of the major obstacles on the way to multicultural society with specific needs and traditions. In this respect, the “…key signifiers [such as] rights, freedom, opportunity, progress, etc….” (HoSang ch.1) can be considered the greatest concepts of liberalism while people failed to implement those theoretical issues into practice.
Often people fail to perform the commitments they have toward their families and communities; the same happens when politicians say certain things and promise to do something whereas the real situation shows their real actions and intentions that stand behind those actions.
Though “Murphy warned of the ‘exaltation of any race, or nationality as superior to all others’,” (HoSang ch.1), people persist to do things claimed to be negative and inappropriate. This means that there is no color blindness in California as well as in every other area of the earth due to certain peculiar features of human being exercised toward each other.
Every person is free to choose what attitude to express toward other people regardless of their being opponents or members of the same community. This can be considered one of the drawbacks of the liberalism and its major keys.
With regard to all facts mentioned above it is necessary to ask if people are ready to enjoy the freedoms of liberalism that is supposed to ensure freedom though should not restrict people in their desires and beliefs. It is natural that some people can experience biases against representatives of other ethnic groups though this should not be the reason to deprive them of their democratic freedom to choose whom to make friends with.
Real motives of political decisions
The racial hierarchy of people in California is the main issue that should be solved. In spite of positive connotations of the language of the latest propositions made concerning the racial inequality policies, these acts are aimed at development and support of already flourishing racial discrimination typical of this area. Racial liberalism can be treated as an attempt to regulate the situation that has become obvious in California.
Though the concept of racial blindness is urgent for the population of California that suffers from disadvantaged position, the policies are aimed at stronger restriction of rights and freedoms of people so that they could not oppose the conditions and limitations imposed o them by authorities.
Thus, white supremacy can be still observed in terms of hierarchy of races in California. Every claim made against the racial inequality that is supposed to defend the rights of discriminated people can be potentially aimed at bringing racially supreme people to the top.
People all over the world suffer from hunger and diseases whereas the problem of discrimination that should have been solved many years ago is still urgent for population of one of the most liberal countries of the globe. In this respect, people claim that the racial inequality should be reduced and eliminated from the community. However, the actual claims made by politicians and other representatives of political and social power prove to be aimed at changing the racial hierarchy in California in negative sense.
Every person can become color blind in terms of racial biases and discrimination though people cannot be deprived of their liberal powers given to them by political regime of democracy that is known for freedoms and rights imposed on population. The categories of people that have to live in disadvantaged neighborhoods suffer from the liberties and freedoms because they do not have sufficient resources and power to fight the situation; so, their children have to breathe toxic air and go to schools full of violence.
Hosang, Daniel. Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010.
“Unnatural Causes.” California Newsreel, 2008. Web. 9 Dec. 2010. http://www.unnaturalcauses.org/episode_descriptions.php?page=5
Anti-Islamic Religious Discrimination in the Workplace
Long the run-down, derelict triple deckers stand as
Difficulties of a Child in a Foreign Linguistic Environment
Ethnicity Problems in United States
History of Single Parenthood and the Economic Implication of Being a Single Parent
Discrimination is the practice of letting a person’s
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Simulating Tuberculosis Epidemics
Ian Geckeler | April 13, 2017
How one USC Viterbi professor uses computer modeling to influence public health policy.
Image provided by Sze-Chuan Suen
USC Viterbi’s Sze-chuan Suen, assistant professor in the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, combats contagion from her laptop.
With a background in biology and economics, combined with a Ph.D. in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford, Suen applies her skills in computer simulation and modeling to influence public health policy and improve medical decision-making.
At USC, Suen aims to leverage her background in modeling tuberculosis (TB) to improve L.A. County Department of Public Health’s tuberculosis treatment protocols. She believes that with her prior expertise she can help model disease rates and the cost impact of new TB treatment programs in the LA area, helping to understand which policies would be most effective. Suen brings her experience modeling TB in India to the table and is excited to work cross-disciplinarily with the USC Schaeffer Center, which focuses on the intersection of economic research and health policy.
“I really like understanding human behavior and how people operate when they make decisions,” she said, “there are a lot of situations in healthcare where people knows they should make certain decisions and but they don’t.”
Prior to becoming a Trojan, Suen took her fight against disease to India, battling multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). In India, TB rates are near epidemic, with the World Health Organization reporting close to two million confirmed cases of tuberculosis annually; 480,000 of those infected die.
Although cases of ordinary TB are on the decline, instances of drug-resistant TB are increasing. Sixteen percent of previously treated TB cases in India are of the drug-resistant variety. MDR-TB can develop in ordinary TB patients who fail to follow through with their drug treatment course, or through direct transmission of existing cases of MDR-TB. The upsurge of MDR-TB cases has doctors wondering how best to stop the spread of the new and deadly disease.
As a developing nation, where cost is often the largest obstacle to effective treatment, India faces tough decisions in determining how to allocate scarce resources to treat and halt the spread of MDR-TB. Should money go into new technologies, government healthcare programs, or both?
In this situation, where spending money on the wrong program can mean lives lost, every dollar counts. This is where Suen’s research plays a valuable role as it helps physicians and leaders to compare treatment options and make informed decisions for the best outcomes.
In one project, Suen and her team designed a computer simulation model to compare two government strategies for intervention: improving non-drug resistant TB treatment versus improving screening methods to catch more cases of MDR-TB. To examine how each strategy affected MDR-TB transmission, the model considered a variety of factors, including age, sex, and patient behavior.
To carefully construct an accurate model, Suen worked closely with TB physicians, gathering information on how the disease is transmitted as well as how patients respond to treatment. Her findings determined that improving diagnostics could reduce instances of MDR-TB by 39 percent. In addition, even though improving diagnostics nationwide could be much more expensive than other interventions, there is evidence that it would be cost-effective for the Indian TB epidemic, she said.
When asked what motivates her, Suen said: “It’s amazing how mathematical tools can give us insight into really difficult, complex problems, even ones that rely on factors like human behavior and health.”
Suen said she’s thrilled to join the USC Viterbi faculty.
“Everybody is so welcoming,” she said. “It’s very exciting here. The CAIS (Center for AI and Social Good) in particular creates some groundbreaking work, and it’s exciting to work in a place where these projects are in the foreground.”
Next semester, Suen will teach a hands-on course: ISE 599 – Modeling for Health Policy and Medical Decision.
“Students will see a survey of the various techniques people use in operations research to model health policy problems,” she said.
“For students interested in applying computer-modeling techniques to solve real world problems, this is the place to be.”
USC Viterbi Announces its 2019 NSF CAREER Award Winners
USC Viterbi Professors Pierluigi Nuzzo, Kelly Sanders and Mahdi Soltanolkotabi receive highly competitive National Science Foundation awards for their leadership and novel research.
National Cancer Institute Award to Support Research on Colorectal Cancer at USC
USC Viterbi’s Stacey Finley and Shannon Mumenthaler from the Keck School of Medicine of USC lead new $3.1 million grant to advance search for new cancer treatments using computer simulations
A New Way to Fight the Spread of Infectious Diseases
An algorithm developed by USC researchers could help public health programs better locate, and treat, people living with undiagnosed infectious diseases, says a new study.
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What You Need to Know About Breast Cancer
by Amber Travis | Oct 1, 2019 | Health | 0 comments
Video Courtesy of MadameNoire
What Black Millennials Need to Know about Breast Cancer
A woman with breast cancer did not ask why me, but why not me.
The Breast Cancer Reality Check
Pink Ribbon Warriors
The fight to bring awareness to the most commonly diagnosed cancer among Black women is highlighted in September, but it’s a year-long battle.
That is why women like Ann-Marie Appiah have made it their mission to promote educate and promote early detection of the disease among women. “You shouldn’t wait until something bad has happened before you’re ready to fight,” Ann-Marie says. The founder of Painted Pink, an organization dedicated to increasing breast cancer awareness among millennials, shares a few tips for our readers below:
The earlier you receive an exam, the better.
Research shows that 25% of new breast cancer cases are among patients under 40, which is why early detection is so critical. In addition to performing monthly self-exams a few days after your menstrual cycle, Ann-Marie recommends that you also request a breast exam during your annual gynecological exam. “Do not leave that table until they have also done a breast exam,” she says.
Then, of course, there is the traditional mammogram, an x-ray exam used to screen for breast cancer. In many cases, medical professionals do not recommend that women begin receiving regular mammograms, until they are at least 40 years of age. However, having a history of breast cancer in your family may warrant the need for earlier testing. “If you do know that someone in your family has had breast cancer, you can call your insurance company to make sure that they code you correctly [in order to receive a referral for a mammogram,]” Ann-Marie says.
And, don’t worry. The Painted Pink founder recognizes that mammograms can be a bit painful for some women, but the pain is so worth it. “Would you rather have five seconds of your life in pain, or would you rather have to fight for your life?” she asks.
Ann-Marie Appiah, founder of Painted Pink
A healthier lifestyle does make a difference.
There are several factors that can contribute to the development of breast cancer, but one factor that many medical professionals agree on is your lifestyle. Certain foods have been linked to the disease, so monitoring your intake of snacks that are loaded with sodium, caffeine, soy, and cholesterol may be your best bet.
You should also make it a priority to remain physically active. Some activities that Ann-Marie suggests is soul-cycling, hiking with girlfriends, or even yoga.
But, regardless of how you choose to maintain a healthier lifestyle, the bottom line is to start today while there’s still time. “A lot of the warriors who are fighting for their lives now talk about how they are cutting out the [unhealthy foods] now,” Ann-Marie says. “They are now saying, ‘Had I known what I know now, I would’ve done this a lot sooner.’”
Being diagnosed doesn’t mean it’s all over for you.
“Having cancer is nothing to be ashamed of, and it doesn’t indicate a death sentence,” Ann-Marie says. As if being diagnosed isn’t stressful enough, deciding on what to do next can be even more overwhelming. “The first thing you should do after being diagnosed, particularly for a woman of color, is to find a doctor that [you love],” Ann-Marie says. “It needs to be someone that you can almost consider as part of your extended family.”
The second step is to find someone to serve as your constant support throughout the entire process. It should be someone that you are able to be completely vulnerable with about what you are going through. “There are so many millennials who are sick, who aren’t letting people know, and aren’t taking the days off,” Ann-Marie says. “They are literally fighting for their lives at their desk or cubicle [for many reasons], and it’s really sad.”
Black women are often taught to be strong for others, but Ann-Marie says being diagnosed with Breast Cancer is one of the few times when you are allowed to get support from someone else for a change. “It’s all about your mindset,” she says.
There’s a seat for all of us at the table.
Perhaps you are someone who would love to participate in the fight against breast cancer but have no idea where to start. Well, Ann-Marie says sometimes it’s as simple as expressing interest and being supportive. “Solange [Knowles] has a new album that is about having ‘A Seat at the Table,’” the Painted Pink founder says. “Invite yourself to have a seat at the table.”
The bottom line is that you don’t have to be directly affected by breast cancer in order to promote awareness. It can be as simple as volunteering at a local clinic or participating in a fundraiser. “It’s all about loving yourself to the tenth degree and doing everything you can to support yourself and the people you love,” Ann Marie says.
For more information about Painted Pink, visit PaintedPink.org.
Meet the ‘Successful Moms of the Bible’
by Amber Travis | May 8, 2019 | Headline News | 1 comment
Good parenting advice is hard to find. In fact, many of us have spent a lot more money than we’d like to admit on self-help books when all of the advice we’ve ever needed on being a great parent could be found right in the Bible. Enter the perfect resource for moms of the 21st Century: Successful Moms of the Bible.
Author Katara Washington Patton, a fellow mom-on-the-go, brings us an in-depth look at the stories of ten, strong women of the Bible who serve as great examples of being a successful mother by any means necessary.
“It’s based on biblical characters but it really is for contemporary moms,” Patton says about the first installment of her new 3-part series. Each chapter begins with an overarching lesson based on the stories of each biblical character.
“I really tried to mix it up,” Patton says. “Of course, I had to include my favorite, Ruth, so she came naturally, and of course, I had to include Mary, the mother of Jesus.”
Patton also included ladies that may be a bit less familiar, including Jochebed, the mother of Moses. Patton’s chapter on Jochebed embodies the concept of protecting your children at all costs. “That woman had guts,” she says. “She saved her son’s life!”
Although her goal was to share the stories of other moms, Successful Moms of the Bible also gives us a glimpse of Patton’s own close-knit relationship with her mother. “My mom died ten years ago in May, so writing about moms is very close and personal to me as we honor the 10-year anniversary of her death,” she says.
Patton says we can expect the other two books in the Successful series within the next several months. Successful Women of the Bible is scheduled for release in August 2016 and Successful Leaders of the Bible, the third and final installment, will be available early 2017.
Single Moms of the Bible is available on Patton’s website.
Who are some of your favorite moms of the Bible? Let’s talk about it below.
Kim Foxx Video Podcast
by Amber Travis | Apr 26, 2017 | Videos | 1 comment
Amber Travis of UrbanFaith sits down with new Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.
Spotlight: Bringing Ministry to the Streets through Spoken Word
by Amber Travis | Oct 27, 2016 | Feature |
Anthony “BreevEazie” Lowery is no stranger to the world of Christian hip-hop. In addition to being a member of a rap group, he is also an advocate for youth and a soldier for Christ. Find out what the husband, father, youth minister and veteran lyricist has to say about some of his past and current projects and even a new style of poetry he’s been working on lately below:
How did you get into spoken word?
I’ve always been into hip-hop, but the thing that made me want to do spoken word specifically was when Deaf Poetry Jam came out on HBO. I was a big fan of that show and that’s when I really ventured off into poetry. Spoken word kind of met hip-hop right there in the middle. I was also a battle rapper, and that’s where I got my roots. A lot of rap battles are done acapella, so [spoken word] rhymes like poetry but you get to slow it down a bit. Once I gave my life to Christ, I sort of got away from battle rap. I saw it as a form of tearing people down, so I kind of got away from it.
Do you have other projects that you’ve worked on in the past?
I do other material, but it’s never anything that would go against my Christianity. I’m in a group called Verbal Kwest. We put out an album awhile ago called Batman and Batman. It did pretty well. But my first album was called Baby Food, and it’s a classic as far as Christian hip-hop now. For a lot of people, it was considered one of the first good gospel rap albums. I was the first one from Chicago with nationwide distribution.
Tell us a bit more about your creative process.
Right now, I’m working with a new style of poetry, and I’m actually happy because I got to flex it on these new videos. I get to put some sort of music track behind the lyrics. The music isn’t complicated. It’s something you can flow to but not have to stay on beat where you’re married to the beat like hip hop. The music allows me to get a better feeling for everything, then I create a track that matches that feel. The less instruments, the better, which allows you to travel around the track. Then I stop and think about what it is that God wants me to say, what needs to be said, and what I’m trying to convey. Then, I just get there with the words and write until I get the product I’m looking for.
What inspired the lyrics for the videos you created for the Back to Church campaign?
I’m actually a “people studier.” I’m kind of the person that everyone talks to, because I know how to shut up. (laughs) I’m a youth minister and I work with a lot of people in social services, so I take the ministry to the streets. Social services has always been my thing. I’ve seen and heard a lot of things, so I wanted to get that out there when it was time for me to talk. For me, it was about “What do the people need to hear?” or “What have I not heard out there?”
Tell us a little more about your life as an advocate for youth.
In the past I was the youth director at my church in Chicago. But I’ve also worked with companies and organizations that are specific to youth ministry, including youth events and youth revivals. I’ve also run mentoring programs and was the director of a recreation center. I’m all for anything involving youth!
What advice do you have for future Christian artists who have something to say but no idea where to start?
I would definitely tell them to listen to God more than you listen to other people. As an artist, you have to be able to tap into God directly. People will push their visions on you and say what they think you should say [in your lyrics]. Let God confirm your words. And also, I would say to just be you. Be yourself, and you’ll be different.
Check out one of BreevEazie’s videos on getting the community back to church below:
Terence Crutcher, Kaepernick, and Social Injustice: Where Do We Go From Here?
by Amber Travis | Sep 21, 2016 | Feature | 1 comment
When will this nightmare end? On Monday, our nation added another hashtag to our timelines and newsfeeds after learning of yet another unarmed Black man being gunned down by police.
But, Terence Crutcher was more than just another hashtag. He was active in the church choir, a father of four, a son, and a twin. In fact, he and his twin sister celebrated their 40th birthday a month ago, but you probably won’t hear about much of this on the news. Instead, for the next several weeks, our lives will be inundated with media coverage of Terence’s final moments at every turn.
History shows that we are only left with two options here. We can either watch the video footage that has already been shared thousands of times on social media or continue scrolling down our feeds, only to find an abundance of statuses and memes addressing the incident.
Although this story is still developing and we do not have all of the details on exactly what happened this week, I think we can all agree that this scenario is becoming all too common.
Recent studies show that although Black Americans make up only 13 percent of the U.S. population, we are 2.5 times more likely to be shot and killed by police officers. But instead, we have turned our attention to burning football jerseys and waiting to see who will be the next athlete to join Colin Kaepernick in his quest to bring awareness to the social injustice that is plaguing our nation.
Acts 17:26 says, “ From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth.” Yes, we are all created equally in God’s eyes, but the above statistics paint a different picture.
Kaepernick addresses his supporters in a recent Instagram post and ends his caption by saying, “I believe in the people, and WE can be the change!” We may agree with his statement, but how many of us are really willing to do something to see that this change is manifested?
Instead, many of us seem to be losing sight of what really matters.
Yes, Kaepernick made the decision to exercise his freedom and leverage his platform by kneeling during the national anthem, and no, some of us may not agree with it. However, I think we can all agree that something must be done to show that enough is enough.
But, the lingering question is, “What?”
When will we, as a nation, get to the point where we say, “Something has to be done,” and work to find a solution that truly does provide liberty and justice for all, regardless of their race?
When will our voices be heard? And, what can we as individuals do in order to help bring justice to Terence Crutcher and so many others whose lives have been reduced to yet another hashtag?
Colin Kaepernick and many others have found peaceful ways to express their frustration with the recent injustices that plague our nation. And, although Kaepernick is one of the more famous figures who have decided to use his platform for social justice, hundreds, and even thousands, of people of all races are working tirelessly to bring awareness to this ever-growing, national problem.
So, instead of only opting to be vocal on social media about the death of Terence Crutcher and so many others, what do you plan to do to ensure that your voice is heard?
Share your thoughts below. We’d love to hear from you!
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Finding religion in the fine print
Here are three of the week’s top pieces of business insight, gathered from around the web: Finding religion in the fine print “How did God make it into millions of consumer contracts?” asked David Lazarus at the Los Angeles Times. Consider the one-year extended warranty offered by the eyewear chain LensCrafters. It excludes “‘damage from abuse’ as well as damage from ‘fire, collision, vandalism, theft, etc.’” But apparently that’s not enough: It also exempts damage resulting from “acts of God.” That would seem to include, “well, everything.” The roots of this clause can be traced as far back as a property-related case decided by an English court in 1581, which… Read More
Microsoft plans to become ‘carbon negative’
Microsoft announced plans to become “carbon negative” by 2030, seeking to erase its entire carbon footprint since the company’s founding in 1975 and begin removing more carbon from the environment than it emits. The company first wants to reduce emissions to zero across its entire supply chain by 2030, and then focus on eliminating all of the carbon dioxide it has ever released by 2050, reports The Verge. Microsoft has been carbon neutral since 2012, and achieves this through purchasing renewable energy and carbon offsets. Going negative will require more technology and investment than going neutral. “Technology does exist that does this, but getting the price and the scalability to… Read More
Disney is getting rid of the Fox in 20th Century Fox
An era in the film industry has officially come to an end. Disney is rebranding the 20th Century Fox film studio it purchased in its acquisition of Fox assets last year, Variety reports. Going forward, 20th Century Fox will instead be known as 20th Century Studios, and Disney will also rebrand Fox Searchlight Pictures as just Searchlight Pictures. Audiences will start seeing these changes fairly soon, as The Call of the Wild will reportedly be released next month under the new 20th Century Studios branding, although the opening logo complete with that iconic fanfare will be kept unchanged other than the altered name being swapped in. This decision, The New… Read More
Sean Hannity, the biggest Trump insider at Fox News, says MSNBC and CNN are ‘state-run TV’
Most people think of “state-run TV” as propagandist television networks that are run by the government to boost the country’s leader and tell his (or her, but usually his) side of any news event. Fox News star Sean Hannity appears to have a different definition. Sean Hannity says MSNBC and CNN are “both are state run TV” pic.twitter.com/miHU9ZmhxN — Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) January 17, 2020 Hannity is one of President Trump’s most loyal and influential television boosters, along with Fox News host Jeannine Pirro and Fox Business host Lou Dobbs. They are all apparently in regular contact with Trump himself, and Trump makes it known publicly that he watches their… Read More
BMO Promises ‘To Do Better’ After Indigenous Man, 12-Year-Old Arrested
VANCOUVER — BMO Financial Group is establishing an advisory council of Indigenous leaders from across the country after an Indigenous man and his 12-year-old granddaughter were handcuffed at one of the bank’s Vancouver branches. CEO Darryl White said Thursday the customer was not treated with respect or trust. “He entered our branch to open an account for his granddaughter and they were escorted out by police,” he said in a statement. “This is unacceptable.” Eight people have been appointed to the advisory council and BMO says it will be expanded from its initial membership to represent more First Nation, Metis and Inuit communities. Earlier this week, the Office of the… Read More
U.S. Senate Passes New NAFTA Ahead Of Trump Impeachment Trial
WASHINGTON — The Republican-led U.S. Senate finally passed North America’s long-delayed new free trade pact Thursday, its final piece of legislative business before it transforms into a high political court of sorts for the impeachment of President Donald Trump. After passing the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives last month, the so-called implementation bill — the nuts and bolts of precisely how the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement will be executed, followed and enforced — cruised through the Senate by a margin of 89-10. Short of the president’s signature, which is expected as early as next week, the focus now shifts back to Canada. Watch: USMCA draws mixed support from Democratic presidential candidates The federal… Read More
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Atlas Forum
Election Archive => 2018 Senatorial Election Polls => Topic started by: TheRocketRaccoon on March 21, 2018, 12:34:05 am
Title: TN-PPP: Bredesen +5
Post by: TheRocketRaccoon on March 21, 2018, 12:34:05 am
https://amp.tennessean.com/amp/443326002
Bredesen 46
Generic D 41
Generic R 51
Trump approval 54/42
Title: Re: TN-PPP: Bredesen +5
Post by: Xing on March 21, 2018, 12:38:43 am
But 46% might be about what Bredesen gets.
Post by: Mondale on March 21, 2018, 12:40:27 am
Post by: Fubart Solman 🥀 on March 21, 2018, 01:27:52 am
I believe in Harvey Dent the Blue Wave. 🌊
Post by: Free Bird on March 21, 2018, 02:52:44 am
Push poll by pro-ACA group
Quote from: Free Bird on March 21, 2018, 02:52:44 am
How can you tell this with no polling script?
Post by: Lean Branson on March 21, 2018, 03:32:34 am
Quote from: PNM on March 21, 2018, 12:50:20 am
Quote from: Mondale on March 21, 2018, 12:40:27 am
Post by: MT Treasurer on March 21, 2018, 05:50:00 am
Lean R. Bayh was up by like 20 points several months before the election and many posters said that it would be best for the NRSC to triage the race. No, I’m not saying that 2018 will be as Republican-friendly a year as 2016 and Bredesen obviously shouldn’t be underestimated, but I do think Blackburn is still the slight favorite here.
Post by: libertpaulian on March 21, 2018, 06:35:06 am
Quote from: MT Treasurer on March 21, 2018, 05:50:00 am
I agree, but I think Bayh is a poor comparison. Bayh had a reputation as a Midwestern Blue Dog due to his tenure as Indiana Governor but had grown more liberal in the Senate over time. Bredesen still has the advantage of keeping his Southern Blue Dog rep intact.
Post by: Skye on March 21, 2018, 06:52:58 am
Their profiles are similar, but I think it depends on the quality of his campaign. Bayh's campaign was a disaster the minute it started and didn't get any better.
Post by: Chief Justice windjammer on March 21, 2018, 07:03:10 am
Post by: Speaker OneJ on March 21, 2018, 07:20:12 am
I don't see crosstabs, but at the very bottom of the page that the OP posted, 83 percent of respondents were white while 14 percent were black. Maybe blacks are slightly overrepresented or something else?
Post by: Brittain33 on March 21, 2018, 07:52:05 am
I seriously think Blackburn’s gender is hurting, potentially fatally. This is helpful for Dems but ultimately terrible for democracy.
Post by: DTC on March 21, 2018, 07:58:09 am
Trump's approval is 54-42 according to this poll.
It was only 50-44 in TN according to gallup, and I've seen a lot of polls where Trump is basically even in TN.
I don't think this is a push poll if Trump's approval is a lot higher than in other polls, lol.
Post by: Jeppe on March 21, 2018, 08:58:45 am
Quote from: Brittain33 on March 21, 2018, 07:52:05 am
Democrat women have been doing pretty well in primaries, but Republican women haven’t had the same luck. I don’t think gender is hurting Blackburn, Deb Fischer easily won a race very similar to this one in 2012, in an even less red state.
Post by: Pollster on March 21, 2018, 02:49:44 pm
Important to note that Blackburn is barely within the MOE here. This is an incredibly tight race.
Post by: President Johnson on March 21, 2018, 02:53:57 pm
Freedom poll. Nevertheless, this is toss-up at very best, more likely "lean Republican".
Post by: RINO Tom on March 21, 2018, 02:57:42 pm
Tennessee being competitive is a mainstay of any GOP doomsday scenario, LOL. The fact that it's remotely close is embarrassing.
Post by: Brittain33 on March 21, 2018, 04:13:57 pm
Quote from: Gauche on March 21, 2018, 08:58:45 am
My thesis is that it’s regional to the southeast, where few women have emerged as conservative leaders (although we can all name those few) and where male conservative politicians are more likely to treat women as followers and second-class elected officials than equals. Bredesen has rare credibility as a Democrat to capitalize on this because of his track record.
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HOME / FAQ /
May Research Records be transferred to a new institution upon the departure of a Principal Investigator?
The Principles and this guidance are not intended to alter Harvard’s longstanding institutional practice of assisting, within reasonable parameters, faculty who wish to move from Harvard and to continue ongoing scholarship and research at another academic institution. However, other institutional values also must be respected, even as Schools and the University seek to facilitate the transition of a departing faculty member’s ongoing research and scholarship. For example, when Principal Investigators who have been or are involved in sponsored research leave Harvard, Schools should have a process that allows the departing PI to take with him or her aliquots of specimens and/or copies of Research Data and Materials that the PI has gathered or produced, as long as: (1) when appropriate, originals of the relevant Research Data and Materials remain at Harvard, (2) the removal of aliquots or copies of Research Data and Materials does not conflict with Harvard’s Intellectual Property Policy, (3) the removal of aliquots or copies does not harm the integrity of an ongoing collaborative research project, or (4) the removal of aliquots or copies does not contravene agreements between Harvard and third parties. In most cases, conflicts can be avoided simply through the renegotiation of agreements transferring institutional responsibilities to the new institution. [1] It is the responsibility of the Schools to develop an exit process through which a School can sort through what research records and materials, if any, must be retained on-campus as originals or copies, taking into account the needs and rights of those researchers who remain at the University, the need to maintain the integrity of any ongoing research, and the need to comply with sponsored research terms and conditions, as well as the needs of the departing Principal Investigator to continue his or her research. This process should be developed by each School , in consultation with faculty members and the Office for Technology Development.
Research Records that are not Research Data and Materials, such as financial, administrative and human resource records, may not be removed from Harvard, either in original form or as copies.
[1] For example, if a PI wishes to take a biological material that had been obtained from a third party under a material transfer agreement (MTA), the Office of Technology Development can assist in terminating the existing MTA and informing the new institution of its need to enter into a new MTA with the provider of the material.
See also: Data Retention
Data Retention (26)
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Export Controls FAQs (8)
Export Controls Glossary (44)
Export Controls Scenarios (8)
Research Checklist (19)
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Sixteen years after U.S. Open glory, Roddick searches for American successor
Amy Tennery
FILE PHOTO: Andy Roddick of the U.S. speaks to reporters before being inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island, U.S., July 22, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
NEW YORK (Reuters) - When Andy Roddick hoisted his first — and last — U.S. Open trophy in 2003, few could have imagined America’s men were in for a more than 15-year Grand Slam title drought.
But with the days of Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi long gone, and the women taking up the mantle of American tennis supremacy, the shift in the balance of power is undeniable, Roddick told Reuters, days ahead of the year’s final tennis major kicked off.
“We can have opinions but that facts are they have – (Amanda) Anisimova who made the semis of the French Open, Coco Gauff who had a nice little run into the second week of Wimbledon, Venus and Serena (Williams) haven’t gone away, we had a Stephens-Keys final here (in New York) a couple years ago,” the former world number one said.
“So there have been moments for optimism – plenty. And on the men’s side, not as much.”
Roddick, who claimed 32 singles titles during his career, was quick to heap praise on “great friend” John Isner, the 6’10” American who reached the quarter-finals at Flushing Meadows last year.
“I think he maximizes what he has. He goes to work every day, he’s diligent, he treats it like a job and I wish more of the younger players kind of followed his lead of doing that,” Roddick said of 34-year-old Isner.
Isner, who has 15 singles career titles under his belt, will enter the U.S. Open as the 14th seed. Fellow American Taylor Fritz, 21, is seeded 26th.
“The women have been doing their job. And it’s an exciting time. We have some of the best players in the world currently and we also have some of the best prospects in the world,” Roddick said. “So things are looking up.”
Reporting By Amy Tennery; Editing by Amlan Chakraborty
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Team Up Trade Post: Superman, Batman, Galactus & Darkseid
Posted on February 24, 2016 September 23, 2019 by TJDietsch
Superman: Dark Knight Over Metropolis (DC)
Written by John Byrne, Dan Jurgens, Roger Stern & Jerry Ordway, drawn by Art Adams, Jurgens, Brett Breeding, Bob McLeod & Ordway
Collects Action Comics Annual #1, Action Comics #653-654, Adventures of Superman #466-467 & Superman #44
While Hal Jordan might not have been my early bread and butter as a comic reader, Superman and Batman definitely were. I love both heroes, so seeing them team-up in this interesting period (1990) where they didn’t really trust each other and definitely weren’t friends was a trip, especially because I came around later and saw them team up in JLA.
The first comic in this series is a classic that brings both heroes together. It’s written by John Byrne with art by the crazy-awesome Art Adams, but I’ve read it a handful of times and the surprise is a bit gone so I skipped it (well, I flipped through it cause, daaaaaag, it’s pretty). The rest of the book builds off of the title three part story, but kicks off two issues before that to add context. Part of that context involves seeing the origin of Hank Hall, the man who would become Cyborg Superman, one of the most important characters of my childhood!
The actual “Dark Knight Over Metropolis” story had been built up to for a while in the Superman comics because a woman who worked for Lex Luthor stole his Kryponite ring and also figured out who Superman truly was (but Lex didn’t believe her and ruined her life). She gets murdered, the ring gets stolen and winds up in Gotham where Batman gets clued into it. The work the case in and out of costume and eventually, Superman entrusts Batman with the Kryptonite ring (another iconic moment that I always heard about when I started reading a few years later, but didn’t actually read until this point).
This book is steeped pretty heavily in the world of Superman books of this era, much of which is covered in the Man Of Steel trades (which I, of course, adore). I don’t know how easy it would be for a new reader to just jump right in and read these issues, BUT I’m guessing that the dynamic between Batman and Superman in this comic is a lot closer to what’s going on in Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice than the Super Friends we later came to know and love.
Darkseid Vs. Galactus: The Hunger (DC & Marvel)
Written & drawn by John Byrne
Of the three books in this post, Darkseid vs Galactus: The Hunger is actually the one I read as a kid. The mid 90s were actually a really great time to see characters from Marvel and DC crossover, first with the DC Vs Marvel series and then the All Access books and one-offs like this one. At the time, I knew the basics of Galactus and the Fantastic Four and probably knew a bit about Darkseid, Apokolips and the New Gods, but zero clue that these were all Jack Kirby creations coming together.
Though over-written in the grand tradition of both Kirby and Byrne, this super-fun book finds the World Devourer trying to turn Apokolips into his latest snack thanks to Silver Surfer discovering the world of awfulness and sorrow.
There’s a twist at the end of this book that blew me away as a kid and stuck with me ever since. In fact, it was the ONLY thing I remembered about this book that I first read 21 years ago. Again, it’s both reflective of Kirby’s work as well as Byrne’s writing of the mid 90s, so I’m not sure how accessible it is, but if you have even the remotest interest in Kirby’s worlds and always wondered what would happen if they collided, track this book down!
Posted in Action, Batman, Comics, DC, Fantastic Four, Fantasy, Green Lantern, Horror, Jack Kirby, Marvel, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Superman, Trade Post, Trade Review, VampiresTagged Action, Aliens, Art Adams, Batman, Comics, Dan Jurgens, DC, DC Comics, Fantastic Four, Fantasy, Galactus, Gerry Ordway, Green Lantern, Horror, Jack Kirby, John Byrne, Marvel, Mystery, New Gods, Robots, Sci-Fi, Sector 2814, Silver Surfer, Superman, Trade Post, Trade Review, VampiresLeave a comment
Superman Trade Post: Action Comics Volume 1 (New 52) & Man Of Steel Volume 7
Posted on June 26, 2013 September 27, 2019 by TJDietsch
Action Comics Volume 1: Superman And The Men Of Steel (DC)
Written by Grant Morrison, drawn by Rags Morales, Andy Kubert, Gene Ha, Brent Anderson & Brad Walker
Collects Action Comics (New 52) #1-8
After enjoying Man of Steel so much, I figured it made sense to read a few Superman comics. As it turned out, I had an interesting sampling in my to-read box including the first volume of Grant Morrison’s New 52 Action Comics as well as the latest collection of post-Crisis Superman comics, Man of Steel Vol. 7.
I actually tried reading the first volume of the New 52 version of Superman and could not get through the book. I actually counted the number of panels that Superman appeared in in the first issue compared to ones he didn’t and the ratio was ridiculous. It’s supposed to introduce the character to the world in a whole new universe and you barely use him? Seemed silly to me. From there things went downhill and I didn’t bother finishing. Still, I had high hopes for Grant Morrison’s Action Comics because I consider him to be a really smart writer who loves this character and, even though he’s written Supes in JLA, All-Star Superman and Final Crisis, he still seems to have a lot to say about one of the world’s most famous fictional characters.
The volume finds a T-shirt and cape wearing Superman who hasn’t been around too long doing his best to mess with the kinds of people who tend to get away with all kinds of crimes thanks to their piles of cash and influence. Meanwhile, Clark Kent works for The Daily Star doing similar work but with his words instead of his fists. Since he’s still pretty new on the scene, the government doesn’t trust Superman and has General Lane working with Lex Luthor to try and figure out a way to stop him. While all this is going on new versions of Brainiac and Metallo get involved. Superman learns about himself, his home planet and even gets the suit he wears in the modern day New 52 U. There’s also a pretty fun story featuring the Legion of Super-Heroes and current Superman traveling to the Action Comics time period to fight the Anti-Superman Army.
Like I said, I like Morrison’s work and have come to expect a kind of slow-burn when it comes to his stories. There’s another 10 issues of this run, so I’m definitely curious to see how he wrapped the story up. But, there were a few things about this volume that got under my skin. First of all, Rags Morales’ art is not so great in the earlier issues. His pencils look too loose and many of his figures look generally un-dynamic, but the weakest part is his eyes. They look googley half the time with one pupil pointing one direction and the other elsewhere. It’s incredibly distracting and really draws you out of the story. Oh, plus, there’s no possible way that Clark Kent and Superman could be the same person the way they’re drawn in this book which is unfortunate.
The other aspect of the book — actually the first story, specifically — is the fact that it feels like many of the plot points feel more akin to another character: the Hulk. You not only have the dynamic of Lois’ dad trying to get rid of our hero (no, they’re not together, but it’s Lois and Superman, we know the potential is there), but also her rebuked lover becoming a villain in his own right. I know these are fairly general plot points, but they came off as a little tired to me. Luckily the story doesn’t dwell on those elements too much, so that’s more of a minor complaint.
As a longtime Superman fan, it was interesting to see how Morrison reshaped concepts and characters like Steel, Brainiac and Metallo. I hate Jimmy Olsen’s haircut, but the portrayal of him and Lois seemed right on. I like seeing a younger, more brash Superman and the same qualities in Clark. Overall, this seemed like a solid Superman comic. I almost wrote that it’s probably not the best comic to give someone who wants to learn about Superman, but then again, this book shares a lot of themes with Zack Snyder’s movie, so maybe it would be a good idea. Someone test the theory!
Superman The Man Of Steel Volume 7 (DC)
Written by John Byrne and Jerry Ordway, drawn by Byrne & Ordway
Collects Action Comics #596-597, Adventures Of Superman #436-438 and Superman #13-15
DC’s Jack Kirby and Man Of Steel books are probably my favorite collection projects around. The former introduced me to The King’s wild DC projects while the latter brings together all of the post-Crisis Superman comics into one place. That’s important to me because these books are filling in all kinds of gaps I had in my Superman reading which started in 1992. My hope is they get up to the Death of Superman story and then I’ve got it from there with the books from my collection.
This particular volume of Man Of Steel is an interesting one. I flipped through it and was surprised to see several issues tied into the mega crossover Millennium. While I don’t remember the details of that story too well aside from the basics — the Manhunters have replaced key people in the lives of superheroes — but I don’t remember Superman playing a huge role which fits with these issues in which Supes deals with the fact that a small army of Smallvillians were actually Manhunters, including Lana Lang. There’s an explanation for everything that works within the story, but it’s a pretty crazy revelation when you think about it. While they were explaining how they kept an eye on the Kryptonian infant, the Manhunters also revealed that they created the huge blizzard that allowed the Kents to tell the townspeople that Martha gave birth to Clark but wasn’t able to get to the hospital. This seemed like a strange piece of information to tack on to an origin story — storms can just happen, they don’t need a reason to happen — but at the time John Byrne was steering the Superman ship and that’s that. By the way co-wrote and drew every issue in this collection!
The weirdest part of this whole thing, though, is a lie that Pa and Ma Kent decide to tell Lois: that they raised Superman alongside Clark. Not only did this lie seem completely unnecessary — sure, Lois asks Superman point blank if he’s really Superman after all the craziness that went down in Smallville, but he’s Superman, he could have come up with a better answer — but I also don’t remember hearing this repeated in any other comic down the line. He doesn’t reveal that he’s Superman to Lois until Action Comics #662, so did she believe Clark and Supes grew up like brothers that whole time? Does she forget? Do they tell her another lie? I’m very curious about this because the whole thing understandably makes Lois furious. She’s mad that they lied to her, but more so, she feels like she was fed stories and pitied by the two of them anytime she got a story. It’ll be interesting to see how that storyline plays out.
The book ends with a pair of standalone issues. The first gives a little bit more background about Maggie Sawyer and introduces us to her daughter who has fallen under the spell of Skyhook, a bat-like creature who can somehow turn others into winged beings like himself. Byrne really gets to have fun in this issue stretching into some horror elements that weren’t overly common in these books at the time. The final issues introduces us to a circus mentalist who calls himself Brainiac and seems to have L.E.G.I.O.N. creator Vril Dox banging around in his head. I think this might be the first mention of Dox in post-Crisis continuity, but he seems different than the one seen in Invasion and then L.E.G.I.O.N. This is a more villainous incarnation along the lines of his pre-Crisis counterpart. For what it’s worth, the character’s Wiki page makes no mention of this appearance, noting that Dox’s first appearance is in Invasion #1. Interesting stuff.
While this collection series if firmly aimed at Superman fans of my ilk, I’m very thankful that they exist. This is the Superman that lead into the version of the character I’m most familiar with. Yes he’s powerful and inspiring, but he’s neither all-powerful nor perfect. Sure, I get a kick out of him moving planets and whatnot, but this is the version of the character I’m most familiar with and have the most affection for. Please keep these books coming DC!
Posted in Action, Comics, DC, Fantasy, New 52, Sci-Fi, Superman, Trade Post, Trade ReviewTagged Action, Action Comics, Andy Kubert, Brad Walker, Brent Anderson, Comics, DC, Fantasy, Gene Ha, Grant Morrison, Jerry Ordway, John Byrne, New 52, Rags Morales, Sci-Fi, Superman, Trade Post, Trade ReviewLeave a comment
Superman Trade Post: Man Of Steel Volume 6 & Eradication!
Posted on April 25, 2011 September 27, 2019 by TJDietsch
SUPERMAN: MAN OF STEEL VOLUME 6 (DC)
Written by John Byrne, Ron Frenz, Jim Starlin & Dan Jurgens
Drawn by Art Adams, Ron Frenz, Dan Jurgens & John Byrne
Collects Action Comics Annual #1, Adventures Of Superman Annual #1, Superman Annual #1, Action Comics #594-595, Booster Gold #23 & Superman #12.
I’ve only blogged about the fourth Man of Steel volume before, but this is a series of collections that I adore, even if I’m not in love with all the of stories therein. I find myself looking back to the 80s and 90s moreso than looking forward to books coming out in the future from Marvel and DC. Part of that is because I’m out of the loop and only really hearing about things after they’re either well liked or panned. Not having all the comic book access I used to is a bummer, partially because I love reading comics, but more prominently because I don’t have the opportunity (or don’t give myself the opportunity) to make up my own opinions unless I find myself lucky enough to get a trade.
Anyway, I appreciate what creators were doing at DC back then. After Crisis everyone was just trying to figure out what was going on and making some really interesting comics that fit in all different corners–some of which we hadn’t seen before–in the DCU. This collection of Superman comics–mostly annuals–does some of that itself. The underutilized but ridiculously amazing Art Adams draws one of the annuals which features Superman, Batman, Robin AND vampires. I had read the issue before, but it was fun reading it again. Then, there’s one of those stories where a monster runs amok, but he’s not really a bad guy. It might have been new then, but I’ve read it enough to know all the beats. Jim Starlin–who I just interviewed actually for CBR–does some really interesting stuff in an annual that thankfully wasn’t paint by numbers and really had be guessing, trying to figure out what was going on. The Booster Gold crossover was fun, followed by the origin of Lori Lemaris which I already knew, so it was kinda boring and finally a Silver Banshee story (possibly her first–at least post-Crisis–appearance?) that does the ol’ “Superman/Martian Manhunter” switcheroo.
In the end, I think the level of enjoyment you get out of these issues will depend heavily on what comics you have already read, how much you already know about Superman and how much you like Superman. I’ve read a ton of comics and know a lot about Superman, but I also love the character and have a great interest in this era because it’s what directly influenced the comics I wound up reading in the early 90s. I’m definitely having holes filled in my mental map of Superman’s history and hope that the Man Of Steel trade series continues on. Has anyone heard anything about that? I don’t think anything past this sixth volume has been announced, right?
SUPERMAN ERADICATION (THE ORIGIN OF THE ERADICATOR) (DC)
Written by Dan Jurgens, Jerry Ordway & Roger Stern
Drawn by Dan Jurgens, Jerry Ordway, George Perez & Kerry Gammill
Collects Action Comics #651-652, Adventures Of Superman #460, 464, 465 & Superman #41, 42
I have a series of 90s era Superman trades I’ve had sitting around for a while. I’ve been holding off on reading them because I was hoping the Man Of Steel volumes would catch up. I still want that to happen because, frankly, some of these books are kind of a mess. The trade paperback market was pretty infantile at the time, which might explain why this book that supposedly tells the origin of The Eradicator (who would play a big role in The Return Of Superman storyline, hence the trade) doesn’t really achieve that goal. From what I can tell, it would be a difficult task because there was a significant amount of time between Superman being given the Eradicator (that thing that looks like his spaceship floating about his hand in the trade) and the story you read in the pages.
Another problem is that this story doesn’t actually feature the character we came to know as Eradicator, but instead a tale of Superman/Clark Kent becoming very distant and more Kryptonian (ie cold and scientific). The problem is that, if you’ve probably seen this story before if you’ve been reading Superman comics before. I’d rather read all the comics that lead up to this, the ones that showed Clark becoming Editor in Chief of Newstime magazine or the troubles that Jimmy Olsen finds himself in or the Draaga story. Instead, we get peeks at those threads but the “Hey Clark and Superman are acting wonky, aren’t they?” takes center stage.
A few fun bits do include the building of the Fortress of Solitude, a fight with Lobo and Maxima explaining her intentions for Superman (she wants to make him her man and take him back to her planet Almerac). These are elements that I am familiar and was happy to learn more about. As it happened those same elements played into some of the other older Superman trades I happened to read and will write about shortly. I was kind of disappointed in the collection as a whole because it wasn’t very interesting or original, but it did offer more pieces to the puzzle that is “my” Superman (basically from the Man Of Steel miniseries til the end of Infinite Crisis). Hopefully, the Man of Steel collection series will continue on so I can have a better idea of everything that was going on around this time.
Posted in Action, Comics, DC, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Superman, Trade Post, Trade ReviewTagged Action, Art Adams, Booster Gold, Comics, Dan Jurgens, DC, Eradicator, Fantasy, George Perez, Jerry Ordway, Jim Starlin, John Byrne, Kerry Gammill, Robin, Roger Stern, Ron Frenz, Sci-Fi, Superman, Trade Post, Trade Review2 Comments
World’s Finest Trade Post: Batman Gothic & Superman The World Of New Krypton
Posted on September 8, 2010 September 27, 2019 by TJDietsch
BATMAN: GOTHIC (DC)
Written by Grant Morrison, drawn by Klaus Janson
Collects Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #6-10.
Legends of the Dark Knight was one of the two Batman books I didn’t read regularly (the other being Shadow of the Bat) unless it was giant Bat-crossover time, but there are some really interesting stories from the lengthy LOTDK run that are slowly being mined for trade consumption, like this Grant Morrison/Klaus Janson jam called “Gothic.”
I’m a pretty big fan of Morrison and dig a good chunk of his work, though definitely not everything (Invisbles befuddles me every time I try to read it), but this book doesn’t really read like what you might expect from the guy who was doing Animal Man and Doom Patrol at the same time in the late 80s/early 90s. Sure, there’s some weirdness with Batman facing off against a seeming immortal who feeds on misery, soul-catching buildings and ghost nuns, but it still feels like a solid Batman book.
I can’t completely speak to that time in comics because I hadn’t gotten into them yet, but I would imagine Batman dealing with these kinds of supernatural elements wasn’t a regular thing, so it might have seemed unique at the time, especially with some flashbacks to Bruce Wayne’s childhood, but to a reader now, the book feels a little been-there done-that. For those who like to trace the Morrison-verse that he’s been creating for years, I didn’t notice any connections here to any of his more current work, but I could be completely wrong on that.
In the end, it’s a nice little story that’s pretty interesting and was probably a big deal at the time, but we’ve seen this kind of a thing a lot since then, both on the “Batman vs. monsters” and “background revealed” ideas. It’s fun to see a younger Morrison playing with the character he would go on to spend years playing with, but I’m not a big fan of Janson’s art, so that’s not a huge draw for me at least.
SUPERMAN: THE WORLD OF KRYPTON (DC)
Written by John Byrne and a bunch of others, drawn by Mike Mignola and more!
Collects Superman: The World of Krypton #1-4, Man of Steel #1 and Superman #233, 236, 238, 240, 248, 257, 266, 367, 375 and Superman Family #182.
With the whole “World of New Krypton” story going on through the different Superman books for a year and the temporary return of thousands of Kryptonians, DC released this collection of books looking at the planet through the eyes of several creators over the years, but focusing on John Byrne and Mike Mignola’s post-Man of Steel miniseries along with a series of back-ups from the silver age about Krypton. Makes sense right? Well, kind of.
As anyone reading “WONK” will know, the writers used a hodge podge of all the versions of Krypton instead of focusing on one particular past version. And, hey, that’s not so bad. I liked seeing how the different guilds represented the various takes on the people. This trade sets up the version of Krypton I became familiar with while reading Superman comics in the post-Man of Steel era, but it doesn’t really matter anymore as far as continuity goes. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad story by any means. In fact, it’s an engaging, century-spanning sci-fi story about how Krypton went from a people whose lives were prolonged by using clone parts to one where exoskeletons did the same thing to the final Krypton-shattering conclusion. I was surprised at how deep the story went and how they explained the destruction of the planet.
I’m going to take a moment here to go off on a bit of a tangent. I’ve been reading Superman comics since 1992. Over those nearly 20 years a lot has changed and even when new stories would come out to contradict the history I knew, I’d be able to easily reconcile or ignore it, but lately I’ve been having a harder time doing that, especially post-Infinite Crisis which now says that Superman got his powers as a boy and went off to hang out with the Legion of Super-Heroes. The change didn’t really seem to mean anything for a while, but now we find ourselves knee deep in Legion comics many of which feature Superman. It was starting to bother me. I like the MOS mindset that says that Superman is the only Kryptonian so any other Super-folks have to have another explanation as to why they’re wearing the S shield. Sure, the Matrix Supergirl might have been confusing, but I liked that there was a certain level of creativity that went into those characters. Anyway, I do like most of Geoff Johns’ run on Action Comics even though the first arc really bugged me when it first kicked off. I’ve kind of come to a mental place where I’m comfortable with it all now because I’ve told myself that MY Superman is over. I’m not quite sure when it ended, maybe Infinite Crisis, but that realization has really helped me enjoy some of the more recent Superman comics, though I still don’t care about Superboy hanging out with the Legion in Adventure Comics. I know it’s the epitome of geekiness, but by not worrying about how “WONK” fits in with MOS, I’m having a much better time with comics.
That’s the mentality I went into World of Krypton with, which really helped me enjoy it, though it helps that this story does explain MY Krypton better. That same outlook might help you too if you’re a fan of another Superman era as it’s a good story (as are the older Superman back-ups reprinted which also don’t hold much sway on current continuity) and how can you go wrong seeing Mike Mignola break downs on a superhero comics?
Posted in Action, Batman, Comics, DC, Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi, Superman, Trade Post, Trade ReviewTagged Action, Batman, Comics, DC, Drama, Fantasy, Grant Morrison, Horror, John Byrne, Klaus Janson, Krypton, Legends of the Dark Knight, Mike Mignola, Sci-Fi, Superman, Trade Post, Trade ReviewLeave a comment
Trade Post: Last Week’s Pile 8-9-09
Posted on August 12, 2009 October 2, 2019 by TJDietsch
It’s been almost a month since I ran down what trades I’ve read recently and I’m sure you’re chomping at the bit for more of my “insight” (ie blathering). To catch up on a few things. I finished Tor and Barry Ween from last time. Barry was awesome from beginning to end, while Tor felt a little long, though it might be solely worth checking out for the art.
MAJOR BUMMER #1-15 (DC) written by John Arcudi, drawn by Doug Mahnke
Okay, obviously this one isn’t a trade, but that’s because it hasn’t been collected yet (not my fault). I remember reading about this book in Wizard all the time back in 1997-1998. It’s about this guy named Lou who gets super powers thanks to a couple of aliens working on a college project, but he wants nothing to do with being a super hero. But that doesn’t stop other similarly afflicted people from trying to get Lou into the super hero game. I love this creative team. Arcudi’s doing rad things with B.P.R.D. and Mahnke’s the sickest artist out there right now. No offense to JG Jones, but I really wish they would have gotten Mahnke to draw all of Final Crisis. And pretty much any other comic ever. Oh, also, one quick thought about this book: I wonder if it would still be going on (or at least gone on for longer) if it had been a creator-owned book from Image, Dark Horse or one of the smaller companies (this book has no connections to the DCU). Ah well, I think it works very well in its 15 issues.
DAREDEVIL: HELL TO PAY 1 & 2, CRUEL AND UNUSUAL (Marvel) written by Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka for CAU, drawn by Michael Lark, Stefano Gaudiano, Lee Weeks, Marko Djurdjevic, John Romita Sr., Al Milgrom, Gene Colan, Bill Sienkiewicz, Alex Maleev, Lee Bermejo & Paul Azaceta
Altogether these three trades cover Daredevil #94-110 which is everything post Brian Michael Bendis’ run minus Bru’s first two trades. I started reading DD with Kevin Smith’s first issue and enjoyed the book (for the most part) up through Bru’s first arc called Devil Inside and Out which had Matt Murdock in jail. I really liked the secret agent-like quality of Murdock at the time and after he broke out of jail, but dropped off somewhere in the second arc when everything revolved around smell. The problem with basing a written story around the idea of smell is that, well, I can’t smell it. So, I lost track of the book, but I still am a huge Ed Brubaker fan and heard his re-team with Rucka was good so I gave these books a shot and I liked them but I won’t be adding them to my shelf. I think I’m all set when it comes to reading about a mentally unstable Daredevil. It was one of the aspects of Bendis’ run that didn’t really work (though, to be fair, I was reading monthly comics about once every five months, so I was cramming a lot in on college breaks). I did like how Bru got rid of Murdock’s wife Milla without killing her and the #100 issue had a lot of cool art sequences, though watching yet another “drugged hero relives his mistakes” comic wasn’t the most exciting thing in the world. All in all, they were solid comics, just not the kind of thing that I was looking for. I’d like to see a drastically new direction for DD. Maybe not something bright and sparkly, but maybe a little less crazy?
SUPERMAN MAN OF STEEL VOL. 4 (DC) written by John Byrne, Marv Wolfman & Paul Levitz, drawn by John Byrne, Jerry Ordway, Greg LaRocque, Erik Larsen
So, the deal with the MOS trades is that they’re (in theory) reprinting every post-Crisis on Infinite Earths Superman in order from John Byrne’s reboot Man of Steel miniseries on. Being a huge Superman fan, these books were on the top of my “must get” list and as of this last Christmas, I acquired all the ones available as of then (and now I think). The thing about these comics (Superman 7-8, Action 590-591, Adventures 460-431, Legion 37-38) is that some of them are kind of hard to slog through. Partly because they still fall into that “I’m describing what I’m doing” writing style and partly because, by the time I started reading Superman in the early 90s I had heard about a lot of these stories already. But, this book does include the first appearance of Rampage, an encounter with the Metal Men, a convoluted origin for Chemo that includes multiple earths and Crisis, an adventure drawn by Erik Larsen and, most interestingly, a crossover between Superman and Legion that explained why Superboy was still appearing in the future even though, post-Crisis, he wasn’t supposed to exist. It’s kind of convoluted, but it also seems like Geoff Johns was very familiar with the story when he wrote the end of Legion of 3 Worlds (a series I REALLY liked). Another interesting thing about these books is that, after Crisis, they were still trying to figure out how Crisis effected everything and they were really focused on nailing down Superman’s abilities. For instance, he’s not as strong or fast as he was pre-Crisis and even has trouble fighting a goon like Mammoth from the Fearsome Five (sporting two new members in the form of Charger and Deuce, characters that I’ve never heard of). And, finally, I know this is just a coincidence, but doesn’t this look kind like one of the new Corps symbols:
My only complaint about these books is that I wish they reprinted the covers between the issues. Kudos for including all relevant issues though and not skipping over tie-ins!
MILLENNIUM (DC) written by Steve Englehard, drawn by Joe Staton & Ian Gibson
I’ve read a lot of crossovers in my days. Some can be easily contained within the miniseries/crossover they were originally sold as (Sinestro Corps War), while some rely heavily on tie-in issues in addition to the main book to tell the full story (Civil War, Secret Invasion). I’m not sure if I prefer one way of telling a story to another, but I definitely prefer a trade that has all of the pieces of the puzzle in one place, which, unfortunately, Millennium doesn’t. Huge story elements take place in the tie-in issues. See, the whole idea (which wasn’t explained very well in the main series) is that the Manhunters from Green Lantern have infiltrated the lives of every hero (or at least every hero with an ongoing book at the time). One of the big ones at the time was Wally West’s dad. I’m not sure if that still holds up, or if his dad was always a Manhunter or was just replaced at some point like a Skrull (for an incredibly in depth comparison of Millennium and Secret Invasion check out J. Caleb Mozzocco’s Every Day Is LIke Wednesday “The Other Secret Invasion” posts). It would have been nice to read a fuller version of the story that might include more (or all) of the tie-ins. I love a good omnibus as long as it’s not too heavy (I’m a contrarian). So, as a solo story, the Millennium trade doesn’t really work, but it is a fun little time capsule that focuses heavily on the Green Lantern Corps (it was a weird time for them) and tries to launch a brand new team that I’ve seen in ads as The Wanderers, but I’ve never read an actual issue.
[Note: I haven’t actually read Justice Society Vol. 1 yet, it must have snuck it’s way into my pile on accident, or thanks to me cleaning up for the in-laws’ visit.]
HOUSE OF MYSTERY VOL. 2 LOVE STORIES FOR DEAD PEOPLE (Vertigo) written by Matthew Sturges, drawn by Luca Rossi (plus guests!)
I am loving this book and with the cancellation of Exterminators, 100 Bullets ending and my inability to keep up with Scalped unless I’m reading trades, I’m still struggling to keep up with my current favorite Vertigo title. I think the “problem” is that there’s so much going on that I can’t really keep track of it from month to month. Anyway, this trade collects issues 6-10 of the Sandman spin-off, which really digs deep into why these people are stuck in the House of Mystery (I love that these old DC houses are still being used, the Secret Six were using the House of Secrets at one time as an HQ). We also get some more history of our heroine Fig. I’ve heard from friends that HOM comes off as kind of hitting all the right notes, but not being exceptional as far as Vertigo titles are concerned. I think this doesn’t bother me because I haven’t read all that many Vertigo titles in this vein. Plus, having just read Sandman in the past couple of years, it’s nice to see some kind of continuation. I’m also, of course, a big fan of the side stories told in every issue drawn by guys like Kyle Baker and Bernie Wrightson. I think these stories are what really put me over the edge into the love column. Hopefully I can get caught up or at the very least, stay caught up on the trades. Oh, plus, Luca Rossi does a pretty great job in my opinion of capturing everything from regular folks to huge monsters and all kinds of fantastical elements in between. Plus, I can’t think of anyone who has turned a house into such a character as him. Well done and hope this book has a long a fruitful life.
EASTMAN & LAIRD’S TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES COLLECTED SERIES VOLUME 1 (Tundra) written by Ryan Brown & Dean Clarrain, drawn by Ken Mitchroney and Jim Lawson
You guys, this was a weird one. I think this is a pre-Archie mini series (three issues, if I’m reading everything right) and boy is it crazy. Not only do you get a non-canon origin of the Turtles and Splinter as told by Splinter to April in the very beginning, but you also get highly complicated origins for Man Ray, Leatherhead and a surprise appearance from one of my favorite secondary characters (at least in toy form) Ace Duck. Voodoo curses, alternate dimensions, Krang in his robot suit, the Turtles in luchador-like costumes and a floating cow head who can traverse time and space. That’s what you get in this volume. I’m not really sure how to explain it any other way than weird. If anyone knows how all this stuff fits in with the rest of the animated TMNT comics, please let me know. Here’s a page scan to give you a taste of the weirdness:
Posted in Action, Comic Review, Comics, DC, Justice Society, Marvel, Sci-Fi, Trade Post, Trade ReviewTagged Action, Al Milgrom, Alex Maleev, Bill Sienkiewicz, Comic Review, Comics, Daredevil, DC, Dean Clarrain, Doug Mahnke, Ed Brubaker, Erik Larsen, Gene Colan, Greg LaRocque, Greg Rucka, House of Mystery, Ian Gibson, Jerry Ordway, Jim Lawson, Joe Staton, John Arcudi, John Byrne, John Romita Sr., Justice Society, Ken Mitchroney, Lee Bermejo, Lee Weeks, Lilah Sturges, Luca Rossi, Major Bummer, Marko Djurdjevic, Marv Wolfman, Marvel, Michael Lark, Millennium, Paul Azaceta, Paul Levitz, Ryan Brown, Sci-Fi, Stefano Gaudiano, Steve Englehard, Superman: The Man Of Steel, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, TMNT, Trade Pile, Trade Post, Trade Review1 Comment
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Marianne Kolbasuk McGee
Successful Innovation Hinges On Understanding Customer Needs And Effective Marketing
R&D teams need to spend time with customers if they really want to build new technology that sells, IBM exec says.
A great technological innovation will only be successful if research and development teams understand the problems of a company's customers and have the right channels in place to get a new product to market quickly, IBM's senior R&D executive said at an MIT technology conference Wednesday.
"Innovation is not the same as invention--there's distinction," said Paul Horn, IBM senior VP of IBM Research at the Emerging Technologies Conference put on by the university's Technology Review magazine.
"Innovation is not just great ideas but channels into the market," he said. "Success in R&D requires rapid flow of innovation into the marketplace. Time to market is critical."
IBM ensures that its R&D efforts fill a market or customer need by having its developers spend time with customers "to understand their problems, he said. As an example, he cited the BlueGene/L supercomputer, which IBM this week said ran a benchmark that makes it the world's fastest. The computer draws 1/28th the power of the previous fastest supercomputer, NEC's Earth Simulator in Japan. "That's a good example of an exploratory project to fundamentally change how we think about computing," Horn said.
"Exploratory work can survive, thrive in a world where there's a balance between short term and long term," he said. He told attendees to "get your researchers out in the real world and talk to customers [about innovations] that can change the world, not just their own little labs."
Standards are vital to innovation as well. "Open standards, open source are critical for speedy innovation at a company, in an ecosystem, in the country," he said. IBM holds more patents than any other company; however, patents that can potentially set standards should be made available at little cost to others, he said.
Working with universities is becoming increasingly difficult for large labs, Horn said. Delays, mainly because of concerns about ownership of intellectual property, hinder development work. Some professors "see the potential to get rich with IP," and that, too, delays R&D projects. Said Horn, "There's nothing worse than being slow."
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/en/n-7-it-has-become-easier-to-order-a-taxi
It has become easier to order a taxi!
Way to Montenegro https://waytomonte.com
08.04.2016 16:26 12685 39 0
You do not need to look for telephone numbers anymore and try to explain details in a different language to an operator and a driver!
You can order a taxi from our new partners - Eco Taxi, Euro Taxi and many others just in some clicks on the website www.waytomonte.com or our application "Guide around Montenegro" , and of course to get precious points One Card Travel !
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Environmental Priorities Coalition
First Forest Project in Washington State To Meet California Carbon Standards
For the first time in the Pacific Northwest, a forest carbon project has been verified under the rigorous carbon offset protocol in California’s cap-and-trade program. The Nisqually Carbon Project will generate 37,000 carbon offset credits after the first verification, with more to come in later years. This first batch is equivalent to taking 6,000 cars off the road. Microsoft, working with Natural Capital Partners, purchased the vast majority of the credits, 35,000, as part of its ongoing voluntary commitment to being carbon neutral, a growing national trend by companies to address climate change.
“Everyone has a role to play if we’re going to tackle climate change,” said Tamara “TJ” DiCaprio, Microsoft’s Senior Director of Environmental Sustainability. “At Microsoft we want to do our part and this project not only offsets carbon emissions, but it also protects forests in the region we call home,” she added.
The project – which is a partnership between Washington Environmental Council and the Nisqually Land Trust – is comprised of 520 acres of forest adjacent to Mount Rainier National Park. The project will restore the forest, creating needed habitat for endangered species, including northern spotted owls and marbled murrelets.
“Old forests hold more carbon than young ones,” said Becky Kelley, President of Washington Environmental Council. “This project focuses on restoring old growth forest to store carbon, which also creates habitat for endangered species and helps provide clean drinking water for local residents.” she added.
After 40 years, the project will double the amount of carbon stored in the forest, increasing it from 223 metric tons of CO2 per acre to 446. Under California’s protocol, the project must retain forest carbon for 100 years after each year that credits are sold, guaranteeing permanent protection of both the land and the atmosphere. Nisqually Land Trust currently owns the forest and will manage it in perpetuity for ecological restoration and carbon storage. The previous owner managed it much more intensively, which lowered the amount of carbon per acre.
“This forest can be seen from the main road into Mount Rainier National Park, so it’s a big part of the local economy,” said Joe Kane, Executive Director of the Nisqually Land Trust. “It’s only natural that Microsoft would invest in protecting this iconic landscape, since it adorns the desktop of millions of Windows PCs,” he added.
Every year, 1.5 million people visit Mount Rainier via the state highway adjacent to the project. The local community of Ashford strongly supports the project because the forest it protects provides a dramatic view that helps draw visitors to Ashford’s lodges and restaurants. The project also protects a key section of a popular cross-country ski trail that is one of the area’s main attractions. Proceeds from the sale of offset credits will be used to steward the land over the long-term.
“The Nisqually Land Trust project is a perfect complement to the other international projects in Microsoft’s portfolio of carbon offsets, demonstrating both a global and local commitment,” said Zubair Zakir, Director of Carbon Sourcing at Natural Capital Partners. “Increasingly our clients are looking for this sort of high quality project which helps maintain ecosystem services in regions important to them,” he added.
Globally, the Information Technology sector is responsible for approximately 2 percent of the world’s carbon emissions, which is similar to aviation. Recognizing this, in May 2012 Microsoft made a commitment to become carbon neutral, and introduced an innovative carbon fee model into the business in order to encourage behavior change from teams and to create a fund for investment into both internal and external carbon reduction activities. The Nisqually Forest Carbon Project is one of the projects in Microsoft’s carbon offset portfolio.
Across the Pacific Northwest there are millions of acres of privately owned forest, particularly lands that are under intensive industrial management, which could be eligible for similar forest carbon projects.
Categories : Evergreen Forests Type : Press Release
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The Chainsmokers Want To See You Shake Your Ass To Waterbed
By John Cameron @johnfingcameron 5 years ago
New York City-based DJ/producers The Chainsmokers have been on a roll so far this summer, and they show no signs of slowing down. Following major support from the likes of Tiësto, the duo have sought to make further waves with their latest release, “Waterbed.”
For this track, they teamed up with indie duo Waterbed on “Waterbed” (sound familiar?), yielding a chill trap anthem replete with 808 drum rolls and sparkly future bass synth work characteristic of their recent sound. A bouncy drop is accompanied by the lyric “Make your ass shake like a waterbed” in a synthesis that injects some serious danceability into the track while somehow not making us roll our eyes.
“Why is the name the same as the featured artists?” the boys echoed of the question they’ve undoubtedly been asked countless times. “Well, Waterbed wrote the top line for this and well given the hook it really didn’t make any sense to call it anything else – and its a cool name!”
The Chainsmokers have also announced a contest to accompany the release: Whoever uploads the best video of themselves shaking their ass to “Waterbed” will be responsible for the official dance of the track (a la “The Harlem Shake”), and will receive an as-yet-unannounced prize.
Whether it includes a link to a video of you shaking your ass or not, we’d like to know what you think of “Waterbed” by The Chainsmokers, so be sure to sound off below!
Tags: The Chainsmokers, Waterbed
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T&T Health authorities investigating latest case of microcephaly
Written by CMC
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Sept 27, CMC – The Ministry of Health says it is seeking assistance from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to determine whether a baby born with microcephaly is as a result of the mosquito-borne Zika virus.
Microcephaly is a birth defect where a baby’s head is smaller than expected when compared to babies of the same sex and age. Babies with microcephaly often have smaller brains that might not have developed properly.
In a brief statement, the Ministry of Health said that the mother of the unidentified baby was attended to privately and was not a patient of the Mt Hope Maternity Hospital where the national screening effort is located.
“It is to be noted that Trinidad and Tobago registers approximately 12 cases of microcephaly yearly due to a variety of genetic causes.
“To date, this case cannot be directly attributed to the Zika virus and the assistance of PAHO/WHO has been sought to make a clinical determination,” the statement noted.
The Ministry of Health said that it was asking that the family’s privacy be respected and that it “will keep the public updated as new facts become available”.
Last month, Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh said the number of Zika cases recorded were inaccurate and there were more than the 247 confirmed cases, with the likelihood that the figure was in the thousands.
At least 60 pregnant women have been diagnosed with the virus.
Countries: Trinidad_Tobago
Trinidad | Shootings and Murders in TT designed to destabilize Gov't says Young
TRINIDAD | Sections of TT Sedition Act Unconstitutional says High Court
TT | Trinidad moves to decriminalize ganja, promote medicinal cannabis
Drug experts on the new guidance for medicinal cannabis
More in this category: « UNICEF says sanitation initiative in Haiti shows promising results Jamaica's health ministry to gather data on all types of cancer »
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Tentative Agreements Reached on Governance Articles
Posted on July 29, 2014 by lcm
Negotiation Update for July 29:
Tentative Agreements Reached on Governance and Due Process Articles
We are pleased to announce that on July 29, the WMU-AAUP and administration bargaining teams reached the first tentative agreements of the 2014 negotiations, on several contractual articles covering shared governance and faculty rights to due process.
Article 37: Long-Range Planning. As we reported in the July 1 negotiation update, the existing language in Article 37 articulates the faculty’s right to participate in long-range and strategic planning. Our team has made a strong case at the table this summer for strengthening the language that codifies the chapter’s right to representation. This right to representation is critical to shared governance because WMU-AAUP appointees on university committees consult regularly with the chapter’s Executive Committee (an elected body of faculty representatives from each college) to ensure that the activities and recommendations of the committee comport with the Agreement. Upon ratification by the faculty and the Board of Trustees, the revisions to Article 37 will also help to resolve ambiguities that in the past have made it more difficulty for the faculty, and the WMU-AAUP on its behalf, from exercising its full rights to shared governance.
Article 12: Grievance Procedure. The two teams have reached tentative agreement on revisions to Article 12 that will enhance faculty rights to grieve administrative actions and expand the right to pursue arbitration, an avenue that has up to now not been available for all categories of grievances. Our WMU-AAUP team made a compelling and ultimately successful case at the table for extending the right to arbitrate to all grievance types.
Article 25: Layoff and Recall. The tentative agreement on Article 25 is related to the changes to Article 12 outlined above. The new language provides a framework for grieving layoff decisions, which had previously been exempted from grievance challenges. In light of concerns expressed by a number of colleagues over the possibility of a reduction in force resulting from the academic program review, our WMU-AAUP team worked hard to make the case that the right to grieve layoff decisions was essential and that codifying it in the contract was the right thing to do, and they were able to convince the administration’s team to agree to the changes.
Preamble. After extensive discussion at the table, the two sides have now reached a tentative agreement on a new preamble. Our team brought the first draft to the table back in May with the goal of setting out the core values of the university’s academic mission, including academic freedom, shared governance, and collaboration, as a way the faculty and administration could affirm our mutual commitment to these values, use them as guiding principles, and model them for our students and for the benefit of the institution. After months of discussion and deliberation, the two teams have reached tentative agreement on a version that clearly articulates these values.
Please join the chapter officers and Executive Committee in congratulating our team for achieving consensus on these critical articles in ways that will expand and strengthen our rights as faculty members. Cynthia, Bilinda, Onaiwu, and Tom have made a point of honoring the values of the board-appointed faculty as you all have articulated them to us: free inquiry, academic excellence, shared governance, collaboration, and transparency. Looking to these values as their guiding principles, they have not wavered in asserting them on our behalf. While compromise is of course a key element of bargaining, the team has made clear from the beginning that our core values are non-negotiable. This commitment not only serves the faculty, but as our team continues to demonstrate at the table, it also serves our students and the institution.
We also appreciate the administration team’s willingness to hear us out and take seriously these governance and due-process issues. Their tentative agreement to the revisions discussed herein is an encouraging sign that we can work together successfully in the service of our mutual charge: to promote the conditions of free inquiry, to advance the sum of human knowledge and understanding, to promote these values within and beyond the institution, and to serve the public interest.
As always, you can get negotiation news here on the blog, by “liking” the WMU-AAUP on Facebook, and by following us on Twitter. And on behalf of the team, the chapter officers, and the Executive Committee, many thanks once again to all of you who have generously offered your wise counsel and messages of support.
#GoWMUAAUP #StrongerTogether
This entry was posted in Defending the Contract, Faculty Rights, Negotiations, News and Updates, Our Values, Shared Governance by lcm. Bookmark the permalink.
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Minnesota football team will play in Holiday Bowl
Posted: 9:56 AM, Dec 17, 2016
The University of Minnesota football team will play in the Holiday Bowl, reversing a threat to boycott the game because of the suspension of 10 players accused of participating in a sexual assault.
Arizona State University was one of just a few teams that were expected to be in the running to replace Minnesota in the game, had the players followed through with the boycott.
The players announced Saturday they will play Washington State on Dec. 27 in the game in San Diego.
No criminal charges were filed against the players, but a school investigation concluded this week the athletes violated university policy. On Thursday, players said they wouldn't practice or play unless their teammates' suspensions were revoked.
A group of seniors from the team met with the board of regents, university President Eric Kaler and athletic director Mark Coyle on Friday night.
The school declined the players' request to reinstate the suspended players.
Copyright 2016 Scripps Media, Inc. The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Australian Deserts, Introduction (Feature Article)
Australian Deserts, Climatic aspects of Australia's deserts (Feature Article)
Australian Deserts, Deserts past - the archaeology and environmental history of the Australian deserts (Feature Article)
Australian Deserts, Desert wildlife of Australia (Feature Article)
Assisting countries combat desertification - Australia's role (Feature Article)
Ageing Australians (Feature Article)
Urban and non-urban population (Feature Article)
Recent fertility trends (Feature Article)
Future living arrangements (Feature Article)
People who work few hours (Feature Article)
Casual employees (Feature Article)
Labour force status of migrants (Feature Article)
Older people with disabilities (Feature Article)
Labour force characteristics of people with a disability (Feature Article)
Children's injuries (Feature Article)
School students' mathematics and science literacy (Feature Article)
Likelihood of victims reporting crime to police (Feature Article)
The Australian wheat industry (Feature Article)
Kangaroo bonds (Feature Article)
2006 Year Book Australia released today (Media Release)
Contents >> Chapter 3 - International relations >> The role of DFAT in Australia's international relations
THE ROLE OF DFAT IN AUSTRALIA'S INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) is the principal source of advice to the Australian Government on foreign and trade policy issues, and is responsible for implementing the Government’s foreign and trade policies. The aim of the Department is to advance the interests of Australia and Australians internationally. To this end, the Department works to achieve four primary outcomes:
Australia’s national interests protected and advanced through contributions to international security, national economic and trade performance, and global cooperation
Australians informed about and provided access to consular and passport services in Australia and overseas
public understanding in Australia and overseas of Australia’s foreign and trade policy and a positive image of Australia internationally
efficient management of the Australian Government overseas owned estate.
SERVICES TO THE AUSTRALIAN COMMUNITY
DFAT provides consular services to Australians travelling overseas, and their families in Australia, through its network of overseas missions and honorary consulates (consisting of over 170 points of consular service worldwide), the 24-hour Consular Emergency Centre in Canberra and consular cooperation arrangements with other countries.
Consular services include: assisting Australians who are hospitalised, imprisoned or require welfare assistance overseas; helping family members when Australian travellers go missing or die overseas; and coordinating responses to overseas emergencies affecting Australian nationals. Of the 4.1 million Australians who travelled overseas in 2004-05, the Department provided significant consular assistance to over 25,000 of them. In addition, the Department’s Smartraveller campaign promotes safe overseas travel by Australians, including by providing comprehensive travel advice on 152 countries to help Australians avoid dangers and difficulties.
DFAT provides secure travel documents to eligible Australians in accordance with the Australian Passports Act 2005 (Cwlth), which entered into force on 1 July 2005. The Department issued 1,260,831 travel documents in 2004-05 - an increase of more than 15% over the previous year. For international security reasons, emphasis is increasingly placed on identity verification and fraud prevention in passport issuing processes. A new and more secure passport was introduced in December 2003 and work is continuing to make the passport even more secure through new technology applications.
DFAT provides a range of information services on foreign and trade policy to the Australian public and media, including through briefings and public presentations and the production of public affairs material such as brochures, reports and publications. The Department promotes an accurate and contemporary image of Australia internationally, and also provides regular briefings to the media on current international issues. Detailed information about Australia’s foreign and trade policy can be obtained from the Department's web site at <www.dfat.gov.au>. Further information and links are listed in the bibliography.
THE NETWORK OF AUSTRALIAN DIPLOMATIC AND CONSULAR MISSIONS OVERSEAS
DFAT manages an extensive network of Australian diplomatic and consular missions abroad, supporting Australia's international interests and providing consular and passport services. The Department's central office is in Canberra. It maintains offices in all other state and territory capitals, as well as Newcastle and Thursday Island. Information on the location of overseas embassies, high commissions, consulates and multilateral missions managed by DFAT can be found in the online version of the Department's annual report at <http://www.dfat.gov.au/dept/annual_reports/>.
The Department currently employs just under 2,000 Australia-based staff, of whom around 25% are posted overseas. In addition, just over 1,400 locally engaged staff are employed by the Department’s overseas missions (graphs 31. and 3.2).
This page last updated 24 January 2007
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ACE-Hellas will participate to The Big 5 Exhibition in Saudi Arabia
Register for Free Entry
Athens, March 2017 – ACE-Hellas® will participate to The Big 5 International Building and Construction Show, which will take place in Jeddah Centre in Saudi Arabia from March 27-30, 2017. The Big 5 Saudi has become one of the most important construction events for the region and the industry as a whole; a crossroads for construction professionals from across the GCC. ACE-Hellas will present its products at Hall 2, Stand E13.
For more than three decades, The Big 5 has gone from strength to strength, to evolve into the largest, most influential and renowned portfolio of construction industry events spanning the Middle East, India and South East Asia. The Big 5 network now includes more than 300,000 suppliers and buyers of construction products from 120 countries worldwide. The Big 5 is now a global name with editions in the UAE, Kuwait, India, Indonesia, Kuwait, East Africa as well as Saudi Arabia. The list of exhibitors includes companies with software engineering products, MEP services, building interiors and finishes, building and special construction, construction tools and building materials, and smart building and design technologies.
ACE-Hellas will introduce the biggest update ever of its leading structural analysis and design software, SCADA Pro 16™, featuring the most powerful engine to date, ACESFS™, and full support for Saudi Building Code (SBC). Incredible new features, such as integrated advanced flat slab support and bi‑directional communication with SAP2000® and ETABS®, help professional engineers deliver extraordinary projects optimized for speed and accuracy. The new version extends SCADA Pro’s advanced redesign capabilities of existing structures and ads remarkable building rehabilitation and restore options with Sika’s most advanced systems, seamlessly, incorporated in the new interface. Built-in smart automation tools ensure speed in the design and execution of even the most complex projects. Polish language has been added in the multilingual interface bringing the supported languages to five (English, Italian, German, Polish, Greek), including their respective national annexes.
ACE-Hellas will also unveil the first commercial Optimization Computing Platform in the world, ACE OCP™, for cost reduction in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) market. This innovative tool, representing the future of Value Engineering, goes far beyond what was possible with traditional optimization techniques and encompasses state-of-the-art algorithms to automatically optimize any structure in order to reduce construction and/or material cost, by at least 10%, consistent with the required performance, reliability, quality and safety. ACE OCP is available either as a module for SCADA Pro 16 or as a plugin to SAP2000/ETABS.
“Our participation in this year’s The Big 5 Saudi exhibition in Jeddah, strengthens our international growth and increases the market for our powerful products. We believe that the GCC and Saudi Arabia, in particular, represent an important opportunity for innovating companies in the construction industry, not only because of the huge investment in infrastructure and buildings that is taking place there, but also because of the country’s immense influence in the region,” said Dr. Dennis Ioakim, ACE-Hellas founder and chairman.
More information about ACE-Hellas and its products can be found online at the company website: www.ace-hellas.com.
ACE-Hellas short profile:
ACE-Hellas SA (www.ace-hellas.com) was founded in 1979 and since 1999 is a member of the Quest group. Today, it has grown into one of the most innovative providers of integrated ICT solutions and a leader in structural design, engineering and sustainability software. ACE-Hellas is a strategic partner of the largest technology companies (HP, Contex, CSI, Autodesk, Microsoft etc.) and has a customer base that includes more than 7,000 companies in Greece and Cyprus. The ACE-Hellas operates four business units: CAD Solutions (development, distribution and support of innovative technical software), Mobile Solutions (development, distribution and support of mobile applications), Solutions Hardware (supply and support of office equipment), and ERP Solutions (development and support of custom ERP/CRM applications).
Contact person of ACE-Hellas:
Penny Ioakim
Tel: +302106068636 Fax: +302106068699
Mob: +306946907908 E-mail: pioakim@ace-hellas.com
SCADA Pro, SFS, and ACE OCP are trademarks of ACE-HELLAS. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners. ETABS, SAP2000 are trademarks of COMPUTERS AND STRUCTURES, INC.
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(611f) Comparison of Cobalt Fischer-Tropsch Catalysts on Robust Silica-Alumina Supports
Group: Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division
Syngas Production and Gas-to-Liquids Technology
Wednesday, November 16, 2016 - 4:45pm-5:03pm
Rahmati, M., Brigham young university
Argyle, M. D., Brigham Young University
Hecker, W. C., Brigham Young University
Lindsay, M. J.,
Safdari, M. S., Chemical Engineering Department, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, USA
Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis (FTS) is a key step in gas-to-liquid processes to produce clean and environmentally friendly fuels. The Fischer-Tropsch (FT) reaction is catalyzed, typically by supported cobalt catalysts. The supportâ??s physical properties, including pore size and thermal stability, and chemical characteristics, like surface acidity, can greatly affect the catalystâ??s performance [1, 2]. Recently, we have developed a new support which is simple to prepare and has unique characteristics, including high surface area and pore volume, very high thermal stability, and low surface acidity [3]. This bicomponent support, AlSi, containing 95 wt% alumina and 5 wt% silica, has previously been incorporated into successful supported iron FT catalysts [4]. The goal of this research is to compare the performance of cobalt FT catalysts using AlSi versus other commonly used alumina supports, including those available commercially from Sasol and St. Gobein. To focus only on the support effects, all of the catalysts were synthesized using the same incipient wetness impregnation method, with 20 wt% cobalt and 0.15 wt% ruthenium as a reduction promoter. Each catalyst was characterized by TPO, TPR, XRD, TEM, BET, EOR, and CO and H2 uptake experiments to compare the nanostructure and other physical and chemical features of the catalysts. Catalytic activity, selectivity, and stability were investigated in a packed bed reactor operated at industrial FTS conditions (220°C and 20 atm at a 2.1:1 H2/CO ratio) during 240 h runs. XRD data show that with calcination to temperatures even higher than 1100°C, the AlSi support still consists of predominantly the gamma phase, which allows the support to maintain high surface area (>95 m2/g). Further, this thermal stability allows high temperature oxidative treatments to remove surface acid sites, which appears to produce supports that favor increased FT reaction rates and improved C2+ selectivity. Nitrogen physisorption data also indicate that the AlSi surface area and pore volume are relatively high, about 3 times more than commercially available Sasol alumina-silica supports, which provide better selectivity and activity.
1. Khodakov, A.Y., Fischer-Tropsch synthesis: Relations between structure of cobalt catalysts and their catalytic performance. Catalysis Today, 2009. 144(3â??4): 251-257.
2. Soled, S.L., et al., Control of Metal Dispersion and Structure by Changes in the Solid-State Chemistry of Supported Cobalt Fischerâ??Tropsch Catalysts. Topics in Catalysis. 26(1): 101-109.
3. Mardkhe, M.K., et al., Acid site properties of thermally stable, silica-doped alumina as a function of silica/alumina ratio and calcination temperature. Applied Catalysis A: General, 2014. 482: 16-23.
4. Keyvanloo, K., et al., Supported Iron Fischerâ??Tropsch Catalyst: Superior Activity and Stability Using a Thermally Stable Silica-Doped Alumina Support. ACS Catalysis, 2014. 4(4): 1071-1077.
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Home » Spirituality » Prayer
Marilyn Monroe's Siddur
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
Reading from a Hebrew prayer book and writing comments in its margins isn't the typical image one has of the actress.
Marilyn Monroe isn’t usually held up as a Jewish role model. While the actress underwent a non-Orthodox conversion to Judaism before marrying her third husband, playwright Arthur Miller, when she died she was buried in a Lutheran ceremony. Yet Monroe’s Jewish links have been back in the news recently as a New York auction house prepares to put her siddur, her Jewish prayer book, up for sale.
Estimates are that the siddur will fetch thousands of dollars. Ms. Monroe apparently annotated it, adding her own comments and thoughts to the Jewish text. “It’s worn, there is no question about it. It has been clearly used,” explained Jonathan Greenstein, a Judaica expert who examined the volume before it goes under the hammer in November 2018.
Marilyn Monroe reading from a Hebrew prayer book, writing comments in its margins and giving voice to her deepest hopes and feelings? It’s not the typical image of the actress. How many of us take the same time to read and explore and think about Jewish prayers? How many of us own a siddur, and if we do, when was the last time you added your own thoughts and annotations?
When I first read about Marilyn Monroe’s siddur, my mind went back to my first Jewish prayer book. Growing up, I never owned one. Siddurs were for synagogue, not the home.
That changed when, as an adult, I began to learn more about Judaism and discovered the centrality of prayer in a Jew's life. My first siddur helped me channel my desire to connect to God in a concrete, tangible way.
I was amazed to discover that there are beautiful Jewish prayers for every occasion, from the first moment one wakes up in the morning to the last words one says at night. Thanking God for the miracle of being alive for another day helped me to appreciate life as a gift, not something to merely take for granted.
In fact, the very act of reading timeless Jewish prayers changed the way I looked at and related to the world - and to being Jewish. Knowing that I was reciting the same prayers, penned by luminaries such as King David, that Jews have said for thousands of years gave me a feeling of connection to the Jewish people I’d never had before.
Perhaps this feeling of being part of a timeless, spiritual tradition is what moved Ms. Monroe to thumb through her siddur. Her example can inspire us to acquire our own and to spend time getting to know the prayers.
Most American Jews, a 2017 survey found, belong to a house of worship. But while only about 19% of Jews reported attending services at least once a week, a whopping 29% said that they pray at least once a day. That is up from 26% in 2007. Jewish women in particular are more likely to pray: 31% of American Jewish women reported finding the time to pray each day.
Praying is always important in any form it takes. In fact, it’s a Jewish tradition to pour our hearts out to God using our own unique words to connect. Formal prayer has an important role too, allowing us to access the words and thoughts of people who came before us to give voice to our deepest emotions and hopes.
There are many excellent siddurs on the market. The Artscroll Siddur is a classic, used in homes and synagogues the world over. It is a comprehensive siddur, with prayers for weekdays, Shabbat and some holidays. It contains commentaries and explanations and facts about Jewish prayers. http://www.artscroll.com/linker/aish/link/Books/9780899066509.html
The Koren NCSY Siddur contains commentary, essays and diagrams to explain and enhance Jewish prayers. This siddur contains prayers for weekdays and Shabbat and some holidays. Designed for youth, its clear descriptions are useful for teens and adults alike.https://www.korenpub.com/koren_en_usd/koren/tefilla/siddur-prayer-book/the-ncsy-siddur.html
As Marilyn Monroe’s annotated siddur goes to auction, it’s changing many people’s thoughts about the actress. It would be nice if it could change our perceptions of Jewish prayer books too, inspiring us to take time to read and think about the meaning of the timeless words of Jewish prayers.
Dear Siddur
Podcast: Praying in My Own Words vs. the Prayer Book
Writing a Letter to God
Heavenly Prayer
Prayer #5 - Prayer Role Models
(8) Ron, October 26, 2018 9:18 PM
I learned to write in my siddur in yeshiva. I love the familiarity and sense of ownership yeshiva guys have with their prayers and their siddurs. Of course you would not scribble notes (or place post-its) in a sacred sefer torah, but in your siddur... use it like the tool that it is, a tool for connecting with Hashem.
(7) Rachel, October 25, 2018 12:02 AM
Is it acceptable to write in the margins?
I was concerned that writing in a sacred book could be considered a desecration. If I have a question, I make note of it on a separate piece of paper and then ask my rabbi.
Nancy, October 25, 2018 11:39 AM
To commenter #7 Rachel
Re: Writing in the margins. I have actually been afraid to do that, which is why I use small post-it notes. It helps me to write a short note on the post-it itself.
(6) uri, October 23, 2018 6:34 PM
...she was not a role model for anything...so glad she was not jewish.!
Anonymous, October 25, 2018 11:41 AM
To commenter #6 Uri
Marilyn Monroe had a HORRIBLE childhood and was exploited in adulthood. From what I have read about her, I got the impression that her acting talents were never fully realized. Perhaps we can all have rachmones for the terrible life experiences she had.
(5) Anonymous, October 23, 2018 2:00 PM
Use of Statistics
"...a whopping 29% said that they pray at least once a day. " I believe that this statistic comes from the Pew Research Center. Pew reports in the same study that 55% of Americans pray at least once a day. Based on that comparison, the number of Jews who pray each day hardly looks whopping. Was the author being sarcastic? Glass half empty or half full?
For siddurim, Hertz is a golden oldie
The Authorized Daily Prayer Book compiled by Rabbi Joseph H. Hertz z"l, chief rabbi of the British Empire in the early 20th century, remains for me as comprehensive and serviceable as any siddur to date. It includes the daily, Shabbos and full holiday liturgy in Hebrew and English translation with extensive commentary. It may be less elegant that some more recent versions such as the ArtScroll, but in seeking a specific bracha/blessing for some special need, such as entering the hospital for surgery, it has never failed me.
(3) Shelley Rothman=Benhaim, October 21, 2018 5:44 PM
Get the RCA edition of the Artscroll Siddur
Dear Yvette, thank you for a beautiful article, both about Marilyn Monroe, and Jewish prayer in general. If one of your readers is considering buying the Artscroll Siddur, I highly recommend the Rabbinical Council of America edition (RCA), as it includes the prayer for the Welfare of the State of Israel, as well as for the soldiers in the Israeli Defense Forces (Tsahal), two prayers that are missing in the regular edition of the Artscroll Siddur.
Thoughtful comments. Well written.
(1) Nancy, October 21, 2018 12:34 PM
Re: Making notes in a Siddur
I like to take small post-its and place them near a specific passage which resonates with me. My Chumash contains MANY such post-its. :-) One particular prayer that gets to me is Asher Yozar. I am humbled as I read it in my Siddur each morning. I have a post-it there so I can turn to it immediately.
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A short text that discusses the various facets of "Jihãd" according to the Qur'an, and addresses the issues raised by critics who quote Qur'anic verses to argue that Islam is intrinsically non-peaceful.
(This book is an expanded version of the talk given on the “Islam in Focus” TV program of October 2001)
On September 11, 2001, a few individuals hijacked four civilian airplanes and used them as weapons to create terror in United States, especially on the two World Trade Center buildings. All the crew and passengers in the four planes as well as about three thousand civilians lost their lives in those attacks.
The foreign policies of the United States of America vis-à-vis the Muslim countries do not justify that American civilians in the planes and the World Trade Center buildings be killed. This is not what Islam teaches. Look at the instructions of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) during war-time: he clearly forbade the killing of the old, the children, and the women.1 Those who lost their lives in the World Trade Center towers and in the planes were all civilians, and quite a few of them were Muslims.
All Muslim leaders in the United States of America, Canada, and the entire world clearly condemned the hijacking that was committed in the United States as act of terrorism which is not acceptable by Islam.
This condemnation is based on the universal value of sanctity for human life. The holy Qur’an relates the story of the first murder in human history, that of the two sons of Adam in which Cain (Qabīl) murdered his brother Abel (Habīl). This is in Chapter 5 of the Qur’an, verses 27 to 31.
At the conclusion of this story, Almighty God says:
“Whosoever kills a person without any reason (of murder or mischief in the earth), it is as though he has killed all the people. And whosoever saves a single life, it is as though he has saved all the people.” (Surah al-Maaida, 5:32)
It is clear from this verse that unless a person is put on trial and proven to have murdered someone, he or she cannot be killed — and that killing an innocent person is tantamount to killing all humans.
So What About Jihad?
One of the ironies of this era is that although the means of communication have greatly advanced, people still have difficulty in a meaningful communication and dialogue with other cultures and religions. There is a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding of the Islamic faith.
Many individuals, laymen as well as experts, have tried to link 9/11 to the concept of jihad in Islam. In one of the famous radio talk shows of Toronto, soon after 9-11, I heard one caller saying that what happened on that day was 10% terrorism and 90% Islam. A fundamentalist Christian leader in the US said on his TV show that “Probably Muhammad was a terrorist.” So it is important to talk about jihad in Islam.
Islam is the Religion of Peace
Islam is primarily a religion of peace. Its name “Islam” comes from “silm” which means two things: one is “submitting to God” and the second is “peace”. Both meanings are inter-twinned.
Whenever Muslims meet one another, they use the greeting of peace: “as-salamu ‘alaykum — peace be upon you”, and the other person responds by saying “‘alaykumus salam — upon you be peace.”
The daily prayers begin with praising God as “Mercy and Beneficent” and ends with the greeting of peace for all.
The Concept of Jihad
The concept of “jihad” needs to be understood clearly. Many people in the media take Qur’anic text out of context. And so let us see: what is the meaning of jihad?
The word “jihad” does not mean “holy war”. This is a Western rending of a broader concept in Islamic teaching. Ask any expert of Arabic language and he will tell you that “jihad” does not mean “holy war”. The term “holy war” has come from the Christian concept of “just war,” and has been used loosely as an Islamic term since the days of the Crusades.
So what does “jihad” mean?
In Arabic language, the word jihad literally means striving and working hard for something. In Islamic terminology, it retains the literal meaning in two different dimensions, which are expressed by “major jihad” and “minor jihad”.
The major jihad is known as the spiritual struggle, a struggle between two powers within ourselves: the soul and the body. The conscience is in conflict with the bodily desires. This spiritual conflict is an ongoing jihad within each one of us. Islam expects its followers to give preference to the soul and the conscience over the body and its desires.
The fasting in the month of Ramadhan is an example of the annual training for this major jihad.
The minor jihad is the armed struggle. However, that does not automatically mean unjustified use of violence. The minor jihad may be divided into two: aggression and defense. Aggression against any people is not permitted in Islam; however, defense is an absolute right of every individual and nation.
Islam has allowed the minor jihad only to defend the Muslim people and their land, and to maintain peace in Muslim societies.
Jihad in the Qur’an
The Initial Verses
Let us now go to some verses from the Qur’an.
The first battle fought by the Prophet and his followers was a war of defense. It is known as the Battle of Badr, a place that is near the city of Medina (the Prophet’s city in Arabia). This was a battle in which the Prophet came with his followers to face the enemy force that had come all the way from Mecca that was still controlled by the infidels.
The first verse of the minor jihad, the armed struggle, revealed at that time is in Chapter 22, Surah Al-Hajj, of the Qur’an, verses 39-40. It clearly explains the purpose of the minor jihad:
“Permission is granted to those who are fighting because they have been oppressed…those who have been expelled from their homes without any just cause…” (Surah al-Hajj, 22:39-40)
Again, referring to the non-believers of Mecca who waged war after war against the Prophet and his followers in Medina, the Qur’an in Chapter 2, Surah al-Baqara, verse 190, says:
“Fight in the way of God those who are fighting against you; and do not exceed (the limits). Verily Allah does not love those who exceed (the limits).” (Surah al-Baqara, 2:190)
In this verse, the talk is about responding to a war by defending yourself; there is no talk of initiating aggression at all. Even in the defensive mode of struggle, Almighty God warns the Muslims that they should not “exceed” beyond the proper limits.
Islam teaches that Muslims should be strong in order to defend themselves, but that does not mean they have to become aggressive and unjust. In Chapter 8, Surah al-Anfal, verses 60-61 of the Qur’an, God has provided this general guidance very clearly when He addresses Muslims in the following way:
“Prepare against them (i.e., the enemy) with whatever force and trained horses you can in order to frighten thereby Allah’s enemy, your enemy, and others besides them who you do not know but Allah knows them.” (Surah al-Anfal, 8:60)
After giving this general guidance of being strong and prepared to defend ourselves, the verse goes on:
“But if they (the enemies) incline to peace, then you (also) incline to it, and put your trust in Allah…” (Surah al-Anfal, 8:61)
In short, Islam wants Muslims to be strong so that others would not bully them; but then they have to extend the hand of peace even towards their enemies if there is an inclination of peace on the enemy’s part.
The Problem of Text & Context
Some writers and speakers quote the Qur’anic verses out of context and try to blame Islam for promoting violence and terrorism. They take a “text” and use it outside its “context”.
It is just like someone searches through the Bible and picks the following words or sentences to prove that the Bible promotes violence:
“Take all the leader of these people, kill them.” (Numbers 25:7)
“Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.” (Numbers 31:17-18)
“Kill every male and every woman who is not a virgin.” (Judges 21:11)
No fair-minded person will accept such “out of context” presentation of the Biblical verses. Yet we see many Christian evangelists and missionaries do exactly the same to the Qur’an without any hesitation.
So let us look at some examples of taking the Qur’anic “text” outside its “context”.
First Example
Chapter 2 (Surah al-Baqara), verse 191 is quoted as follows:
“Kill them wherever you find them.”
To understand the full context of this verse, read verses 190 to 193 together:
“And fight in the way of God those who are fighting against you, and do not exceed the limits, surely God does not love those who exceed the limits. And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from whence they drove you out–persecution is severer than slaughter.
And do not fight them at the Sacred Mosque [in Mecca] until they fight with you in it; but if they do fight you, then slay them; such is the recompense of the unbelievers. But if they desist, then surely God is Forgiving, Merciful. And fight them until there is no persecution and religion should be only for God; but if they desist, then there should be no hostility except against the oppressors.”
The context clarifies that the verse 191 is allowing Muslims of Medina to defend themselves against the aggression of the unbelievers of Mecca. It surely does not say that Muslims should go around the world killing any infidel that they find!
Second Example
Chapter 4 (Surah an-Nisaa), verse 74 which supposedly encourages blood shedding:
“So let those fight in the way of God who are willing to sell this world’s life for the hereafter; and whoever fights in the way of God, then be he slain or be he victorious, We shall grant him a mighty reward.” (Surah an-Nisaa, 4:74)
Those who quote this verse, conveniently leave out the next verse no. 75 which explains the purpose and justification for the minor jihad:
“And what is the matter with you that you do not fight in the way of God for [the sake of] the oppressed men, women, and children who pray: ‘Our Lord, take us out of this town whose people are oppressors, and appoint for us from Thee a guardian and give us from Thee a helper…” (Surah an-Nisaa, 4:75)
This verse is clearly urging the Muslim to stand up for the oppressed men, women and children. Should not divine religions defend the oppressed men, women and children?
Third Example
Chapter 9 (Surah at-Tawba), verse 12:
“Fight the leaders of unbelief.”
This is just part of the whole passage where God talks about the Muslims in Medina and their truce agreement with the unbelievers of Mecca. See verses 12 to 14:
“And if they break their oaths after their agreement and revile your religion, then fight the leaders of unbelief –surely their oaths are of no value– so that they may desist.
“What is the matter with you that you do not fight a people who broke their oaths and aimed at the expulsion of the Prophet [from Mecca], and they attacked you first? Do you fear them? But God is most deserving that you should fear Him, if you are believers.
“Fight them; God will punish them by your hands and bring them to disgrace, and assist you against them, heal the hearts of a believing people, remove the rage of their hearts, and God turns (mercifully) to whom He pleases, and Allah is Knowing, Wise.”
The context clearly gives the right of defence to the Muslim but, in no way, does it promote aggression.
Fourth Example
“Fight the polytheists all together.”
In reality, this sentence is part of an entire verse in which God talks about the sacredness of four of the twelve months in which fighting is forbidden. Then it says:
“And fight the polytheists all together as they fight you all together; and know that God is with those who guard (evil).”
Those who like to take this Qur’anic verse out of its context conveniently miss out the part “as they fight you all together”. As you see, this verse is also responding to the aggression started by the polytheists against the Muslims; it does not talk about initiating a war.
From these examples, it is quite clear that Islam is not talking about the minor jihad for the sake of aggression; rather it is allowing the Muslims to physically defend their lives, properties, and lands against any aggression, and also to fight for ending tyranny against the oppressed men, women and children.
The verses regarding the idol-worshippers of Mecca are very specific and related to that time period. Let us again look at Chapter 22, verses 39-40:
“Permission (to fight) is granted to those who are fighting because they have been oppressed, and most surely God is well able to assist them. Those who have been expelled from their homes without a just cause except that they say, ‘Our Lord is Allah.’ (Surah al-Hajj, 22:39)
“Had there not been God’s repelling some people by others, certainly the monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques in which God’s name is mentioned would have been demolished. And surely God will help him who helps His cause; most surely Allah is Strong, Mighty.” (Surah al-Hajj, 22:40)
Islam deals with the realistic human society and not with the idealistic society. In the words of Dr. Sayyid Hussain Nasr, “Muslims view the Christian ethics as being too sublime for ordinary human beings to follow; it seems that the injunction to turn the other cheek was being meant only for saints. Christian people over the centuries have not shown any more restraint in war than have non-Christians. The ideal preached and the practice followed have often little to do with each other.”2
Let us conclude with the chapter 109 of the Qur’an:
“Say: O those who do not believe! I do not worship what you worship. Nor do you worship what I worship. Nor am I going to worship what you worship. Nor are you going to worship what I worship. You shall have your religion, and I shall have my religion.” (Surah al-Kafiroon, 109:1-6)
Misuse of “Jihad”
Just because the term “jihad” is misused by some Muslims for their political agenda, Muslims don’t have to abandon this noble concept of their faith. While talking about jihad, I have heard many Muslims describing only the major (spiritual) jihad and shying away from the minor jihad in the sense of armed struggle for defense. As Muslims, we stand by our teachings and don’t need to apologize for it even if some misguided souls hijack the terms of our faith for their own political ends.
It is not only the likes of Bin Laden who hijack and misuse the noble terms of Islam; we have even seen the government of the United States of America promoting the concept of minor jihad when it suited its own geopolitical interests.
During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 80’s, the U.S. Agency for International Development spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan school children with textbooks filled with violent images and “militant Islamic” teachings. Published in the dominant Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtu, these textbooks were developed in the early 1980s under an AID grant to the University of Nebraska-Omaha and its Centre for Afghanistan Studies. The agency spent $51 million on the university’s education programs in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994.
The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Unlike the children in the rest of the world whose math textbooks have pictures of apples and oranges, the Afghan children were taught to count with illustrations showing tanks, missiles and land mines.3
And so when it suited its strategic interests, the United States of America promoted the culture of jihad among the Afghan children in the 80’s and President Reagan even welcomed the Afghan “mujahideen” in the While House. (Even the Taliban used the American-produced books, though the radical movement scratched out human faces in keeping with its strict fundamental code.) Now that that culture of violence has come to haunt it, the US administration is absolutely against the idea of jihad and expects Muslims to abandon that concept in totality.
Muslims cannot be expected to change their views on the noble concept of jihad just because of some misguided Muslims or some world powers’ misuse of that term. Muslims should strongly condemn the misuse of jihad and confidently affirm the concept of jihad as explained in the Qur’an and the noble examples of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).
Media & Stereotyping the Muslims
In light of what we have said above, there is no justification in linking 9/11 to the concept of the minor jihad in Islam.
However, we are deeply saddened to see that certain segments of the media, especially the radio talk shows, are still fuelling the hatred against the Muslims, the Arabs, and the great monotheistic faith of Islam. This is in spite of the fact that Muslims have universally condemned the act of terror of September 11th in which innocent lives were lost.
Targeting the Muslims or the Arabs based on guilt-by-association is absolutely wrong. The double standard in the media is really appalling. Just think for a moment:
When a bomb exploded in early days of September 2001 in Northern Ireland near a Catholic school in a Protestant neighbourhood, no one in the media blamed the entire Protestant community as “terrorists and murderers”. When the IRA committed acts of terror in Northern Ireland or United Kingdom, no one in the western media labeled the Catholic faith “as the religion of terrorism”.
When Dr. Goldstein, a Jewish settler in Israel, entered the mosque in Hebron few years ago and gunned down Palestinian worshippers, no one said that all Jewish people are “terrorists”. When Serbians brutally massacred Muslims in Bosnia, the media never blamed the Serbian Orthodox Church for it even though some priests of that church used to bless the Serbian militia before they embarked on executing the Muslim prisoners. YET we see that when a few Arabs or Muslims commit acts of terror, all the Muslims and all the Arabs are automatically branded as “terrorists and murderers.” As Muslims, we ask the media for fairness, and nothing more.
The media should realize that the hijackers who used those planes as weapons did not only hijack the planes and kill thousands of innocent people in United of States of America; they also victimized a billion Muslims who are now being labeled as “murderers and terrorists”.
1. Hurr al-‘Ãmili, Wasã’ilu ’sh-Sh¢‘a, vol. 11, p. 43.
2. See in Hans Kung & Jurgen Moltmann, eds., Christianity Among World Religions (Edinburgh: Clark, 1986) p. 7.
3. Information on US financed “jihãdi culture” is based on the article of Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway, “From U.S., the ABC’s of Jihad” in Washington Post, March 23, 2002, page A01.
The so-called “jihãdi culture” (which should be rightly named as “kalashnikov culture” of Afghanistan) not only came to haunt US itself; it also breed militancy in the sectarian Sunni group of Pakistan like Sipah-e Sahaba and now shows its ugly face, through the vehicle of al-Qaeda, in Iraq also.
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Sayyid Muhammad Rizvi
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Albany County Convention and Visitors Bureau Foundation Announced Grant Recipients
Monday, December 1, 2014 12:00 AM
ALBANY, N.Y. - The Albany County Convention & Visitors Bureau (ACCVB) Foundation announced today the recipients of the Hospitality Grants, designed to support not-for-profit organizations located in Albany County.
The fund, which is managed by the Community Foundation for the Greater Capital Region (CFGCR), supports programs that aid in building and sustaining Albany County tourism destinations, attractions, events, and other tourism-related activities. The grants encourage collaboration between nonprofit organizations, community groups, and hospitality businesses to further extend the economic impact of tourism and business.
"Tourism, including meetings and conventions, in our region ensures economic success, and these organizations understand what it takes to keep people coming back." said Michele Vennard, President/CEO of the ACCVB, "It's important to recognize these recipients who have all shown dedication to improving our hospitality culture and community."
"The Community Foundation strengthens our region through philanthropy. We do this in collaboration with donors and partners like the Albany County Convention and Visitors Bureau who share our vision for community transformation. ACCVB's Hospitality Fund grants are more than a source of funding for local nonprofit organizations-they are a perfect example of how generosity can be combined with ingenuity to produce real, measurable impact that benefits us all," said Karen Bilowith, President and CEO, the Community Foundation for the Greater Capital Region. "Though this investment is targeted toward Albany County, the entire Capital Region will benefit from ACCVB's generosity and leadership."
The grants, ranging from $1,000 - $5,000, were approved by the ACCVB's Board of Directors and were funded through the earned income of the Bureau. This is the third time in two years that non-profit organizations within Albany County have been awarded grants from the Foundation.
The 2014 Grant Recipients Are:
Camp Mujigae $1,200
Camp Mujigae 2015
The purpose of Camp Mujigae is to bring Korean-born adopted children and their families together through an annual three day overnight summer camp to experience Korean culture. Grant funds will allow the Camp to provide small additions to Camp to enrich the experience for campers and their families. This past year, Camp families with children attending Camp stayed at the Holiday Inn Express on Western Avenue. In addition, Camp arranges overnight stays at the Hilton Garden Inn for the SIWA university students upon immediate arrival from Korea.
National Alliance on Mental Illness - New York State $5,000
NAMI-NYS Education and Legislative Conference and What's Great in Our State
Grant funds will be used to support the three conferences NMI-NYS organizes annually in Albany. These events bring more than 750 people to Albany and contribute more than $100,000 to Albany's economy. The three conferences generate more than 600 overnight stays at the Desmond Hotel and the Holiday Inn Express in downtown Albany.
New England Law Library Consortium, Inc. $5,000
Annual Meeting of the International Coalition of Library Consortia
Grant funds will be used to fund transportation for the attendees of the 2015 Annual U.S. Meeting of the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) April 26, 2015 through April 29, 2015. The ICOLC meeting will draw an audience of 120-150 consortium leaders from around the world to the Desmond Hotel and Conference Center. The grant will enhance transportation bringing attendees to and from the Desmond Hotel and all that Albany has to offer including Wolf Road, downtown, and outlying locations, thereby enhancing the conference experience.
Albany Institute of History & Art $5,000
"Triple Play: Baseball in the Capital Region"
From April to July 2015 AIHA will present "Triple Play," and grant funds will be used to supplement the marketing program associated with the exhibitions. The major exhibition, Baseball in America (sponsored by Bank of America) is a nationally important collection of baseball memorabilia and material. AIHA will curate two exhibitions to complement the nationally based exhibition, "The History of Baseball in the Capital Region" and "Club House." AIHA will work with ACCVB on a direct mailings. It is anticipated that over 100 hotel stays will be generated by this exhibition.
Cohoes Local Development Corporation $5,000
Cohoes Visitors and Information Center
Grant funds will be used to revitalize the Cohoes Visitors and Information Center at the beginning of the historic Erie Canal to attract national and international visitors, to provide a venue of activities for Capital District visitors, to provide informational resources to residents, and to provide a showcase for business opportunities in Cohoes.
Shaker Heritage Society $5,000
The Shakers: America's Quiet Revolutionaries
Quiet Revolutionaries opened November 15, 2014 at the New York State Museum and will remain on view until March 6, 2016. The exhibition focuses on the Capital Region as the birthplace of the Shaker movement in America, and the 700,000 square foot exhibition will feature hundreds of objects, documents and multimedia elements that illuminate the lives of Shakers in their three earliest villages--Albany, Mount Lebanon and Hancock. Grant funds will be used to continue to market this first collaborative exhibition ever mounted at the New York State Museum. Funds will be used specifically to purchase advertising space.
Albany Barn, Inc. $1,500
2014-2015 Concert Series
Grant funds will be used to offset the expenses of marketing the first season of the 2014-2015 concert series from December 2014 to March 2015. The concert series features regional artists that may not typically frequent the Albany market--attracting a broader regional fan base.
Albany Symphony Orchestra $3,000
Albany Symphony Subscription Concert Series
Grant funds will be used to support the ASO subscription concerts taking place in Albany during the 2014-2015 Season. The Symphony will perform four subscription concerts, three additional family concerts and a Christmas concert this season at the historic Palace Theatre in downtown Albany. The subscription series in particular attracts a significant audience from across the Capital Region, surrounding counties and the wider tri-state area. Requested funds will be used to support the Symphony's marketing efforts to promote its Albany concerts to areas outside of the Capital Region.
Friends of Schuyler Mansion $2,700
Schuyler Splendor: The Making of an 18th Century Home of Good Taste
Grant funds will be used to support our program, Schuyler Splendor: The Making of an 18th Century Home of Good Taste. The program will consist of five illustrated talks to be presented from February - June 2015. Following the scholars sharing their expertise, the participants will travel to the Albany Institute of History and Art and/or Historic Cherry Hill in order to examine local examples of the material culture discussed in the talk. This educational program will raise awareness of the Schuyler Mansion projects, interest and knowledge in the material culture of the 18th century and give participants a rare peek into the collections of Historic Cherry Hill and the Albany Institute of History and Art.
Historic Albany Foundation $5,000
Historic Walking Tour Mobile App
Historic Albany was recently awarded a grant through the Hudson River Valley Greenway to develop and launch a mobile phone app of historic walking tours throughout Albany's historic neighborhoods, streetscapes and sites. Foundation funds will be used to help implement this app. The app will begin with one tour for the 2015 tour season and increase yearly to have a library of 30+ tours. With the inauguration of a new mayor, HAF has been tasked with developing a plan to promote and increase Albany's heritage tourism visibility and programming.
Palace Performing Arts Center $5,000
Keep the Palace Lit!
In 2014, the Palace engaged a team of consultants to help with the preliminary steps in revising a strategic plan for the theatre. One theme that continuously came out in each focus group that was held was "the Palace Theatre should have fewer dark nights." Grant funds will be used to help to offer more community events in the 2014-2015 season, to engage more companies to hold retreats and expos at the venue and to add additional programming. Last year, hotel partners recorded over 1,250 total overnight stays that could be directly attributed to events at the Palace Theatre. This year is already on track to dramatically increase that figure.
Steamer No. 10 Theatre, Inc. $1,000
Shakespeare in Lincoln Park - Wireless Mics
Steamer 10 is initiating a Shakespeare program in Lincoln Park in 2015. Grant funds will be used to supplement technology needs.
In addition, the Albany Police Athletic League was awarded with a donation to further promote Capital Holiday Lights in the Park on the Albany.org website, assuring approximately 10,000 views during the run of the program.
ABOUT ACCVB
The Albany County Convention & Visitors Bureau, Inc. was established in 1976 to promote the civic and commercial progress of the community through increased development of conventions and tourism. ACCVB currently represents more than 300 member businesses and assists each year in hundreds of regional meetings. ACCVB also operates the Albany Heritage Area Visitors Center, Henry Hudson Planetarium, and the Albany International Airport Information Center. The ACCVB Foundation was established in 1993 to provide educational opportunities and work with other organizations to secure grants and funding to advance regional travel and tourism projects. For more information, call 518-434-1217 or 800-258-3582 or visit www.albany.org.
ABOUT THE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF THE GREATER CAPITAL REGION
Since 1968, The Community Foundation for the Greater Capital Region has provided an effective means for people who care about this community to be part of shaping its future. The Community Foundation offers donors a complete toolkit for charitable giving, expert assistance in learning more about the causes they care about, and the opportunity to join others with similar interests to learn and give together.
2013 Spirit of Albany Recipes (8)
2014 Spirit of Albany Recipes (14)
Albany CVB Itineraries (6)
Famous Faces Itineraries (6)
Group Tour Itineraries & Articles (7)
Places & Spaces Partner Spotlight (11)
Spirit of Albany Recipes (11)
Travel Articles (41)
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ART iT Relaunches
ART iT
The online art publication ART iT is pleased to announce its relaunch with a new design and format.
ART iT was founded as Japan’s only bilingual contemporary art periodical in 2003, and moved to an exclusively online platform in 2009. The relaunched ART iT website will take this evolution further to rethink the nature of online media. Rather than focusing on constantly updated information, ART iT will feature in-depth, articulated ideas about contemporary art and culture.
Unfolding over the course of a month, each themed issue will include long-form artist interviews and essays by leading Japanese and international artists, curators and cultural critics. Additionally, the website will continue to host a social networking community of art professionals and enthusiasts. No subscription fees required to access online content or for community membership.
Access: www.art-it.asia
Updates: info [at] art-it.jp
Twitter: @Artit_Asia
August 2010: CINEMA
If not exactly dead, cinema is certainly not what it once was. Images move differently now – primarily through digital media – and as Hollywood producers and distributors are all too aware, the habitus of cinema increasingly resembles an artifact from a past age. Or rather, it suggests a way of relating to ideas in time and space that is still inscribed in the medium of film, but no longer an essential part of its reception. While the industry itself will undoubtedly continue into the foreseeable future, to look at cinema today is to confront a reflection of how the dimensions of social engagement have changed over the past century.
Over the next month, the August 2010 issue of ART iT further develops this train of thought by addressing the theme CINEMA. Featuring artists including Ming Wong, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Shinro Ohtake and Sean Snyder, and essays by Kyoichi Tsuzuki, Olga Bryukovetska, Hu Fang, Trond Lundemo, Aveek Sen and Adele Tan.
more from ART iT
September issue online now
artagenda
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Quentin Brackenridge
Ashford has allowed me to express myself to the fullest.
BA in Social Science, 2011
Of all the many types of people who make up the Ashford Clinton campus community, you would be hard-pressed to find a more inspirational leader than alumnus Quentin Brackenridge has been.
"When I first came to Ashford, I knew this was the place for me. I saw a lot of opportunity for myself, and I was going to make a difference."
Quentin is the kind of person who creates new opportunities for others that impact people's lives. "I love to sing and play the piano," he says. "My family and I are musically inclined and we sing at every family gathering." So, on arriving at Ashford, he took his love for music and found a way to share it with others. Within his first year at Ashford, he founded the AU Inspirational Choir and created the Mu Omega Sigma fraternity (not an official Ashford student organization).
In his subsequent years at Ashford, Quentin became involved with more and more groups both on and off the Clinton campus. He served as president of the Student Ambassadors, held officer roles in the Student Government Association and served on their Diversity Committee, was a lead mentor for Campus Pals and Clinton Community School districts mentoring groups, founded the AU Jams group to coordinate an annual “Peace Jam” concert, organized the University’s music showcase event, helped with Clinton’s Peace Walk, served as a Senior Resident Assistant, was on the board of directors for Clinton Big Brothers Big Sisters and the committee for Ashford’s Access and Wellness Diversity Week, and frequently sang the Star Spangled Banner at events. In addition, he participated in the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) Foundation’s Undergraduate Fellows Program under the mentorship of Ashford University Clinton Campus Associate Director of Student Affairs Waunita Sullivan, helped with Barack Obama’s two presidential campaigns, and traveled to Washington, D.C. to speak with legislators about his experience at Ashford. Fittingly, he was featured on the cover of the very first Ashford Connections alumni magazine.
Through his involvement in these various organizations, Quentin discovered his passion and his career path. “Originally I was going to major in Biology, but I changed my major to Social Science with a concentration in Human Services to fulfill my true passion of helping others.” After graduating with that degree, he was hired by his alma mater as a graduate assistant and then a residence hall coordinator, during which time he earned his Master of Arts in Organizational Management by age 23 through Ashford’s online program.
Quentin is now a resident manager at Benedictine University in Springfield, IL, and wants to eventually become a senior officer in student affairs. He plans to pursue a doctoral degree in organizational development and is recording his first album, “Journey of a Worshipper.”
When reflecting on his years at Ashford, Quentin expresses gratitude. “Ashford has allowed me to express myself to the fullest and has assisted me in acknowledging my true passion. I have learned how to manage my time and have become a well-rounded, mature leader because of my experiences here.”
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Home Entertainment Rishi Kapoor releases Anupam Kher’s autobiography in New York
Rishi Kapoor releases Anupam Kher’s autobiography in New York
Monday 12 August 2019 11:59 am IST
Padma Bhushan awardee Anupam Kher’s autobiography, which chronicles his failures, rejections and lessons learnt in his life and in a career spanning 500 films, was released here by his friend and eminent actor Rishi Kapoor, his wife Neetu Kapoor and the fellow cast of the NBC show New Amsterdam.
Kher’s autobiography “Lessons Life Taught Me, Unknowingly” was released Friday at a special event organised at the Consulate General of India in New York and was attended by the veteran actor’s close friends and associates.
“My life is a sum total of what went wrong and because things went wrong in my life, everything went right,” Kher said as he addressed the gathering at the book release.
Sharing incidents from his life that shaped his career, Kher said the autobiography is an exciting account as it does not talk about his successes.
“Success to me is very boring, it’s very one-dimensional. Failure is multi-dimensional, it’s so amazing. What I’m today is because of my failures,” he added.
Kapoor, who had been undergoing treatment for cancer in New York for almost a year, made his first public appearance following his diagnosis and treatment to release Kher’s book.
Looking well and in fine spirits, Kapoor told the audience he had been discharged from the hospital Friday.
Accompanied by his wife, veteran actor Neetu Kapoor, Kapoor recalled that though he is a couple of years elder to Kher, the first movie they worked together in was the 1988 Yash Chopra-directed Vijay in which Kher had played the role of Kapoor’s grandfather.
Describing Kher as a “great actor” in films and on stage, Kapoor said people will look forward to reading the autobiography and imbibing lessons from his life.
“It would be a good textbook exercise for youngsters who aspire to become actors tomorrow,” Kapoor added.
Kher expressed gratitude to the Kapoor couple for releasing the book.
“For him to be here today is the most glorious thing about my autobiography. We have known him as a film hero, but today he is a real-life hero. He has been here for the last one year battling cancer and he has come out of it,” he said.
The cast of New Amsterdam including Ryan Eggold, Janet Montgomery and Dierdre Friel and Michelin-star chef Vikas Khanna also joined the Kapoors on stage for the release.
Addressing the guests on the occasion, Eggold said the quality he admires most about Kher is that he has managed to remain a child at heart.
“He also has the wisdom of a sage mixed with rugged good looks,” he said amid laughter.
Lauding Kher’s nature, Eggold said, “You have everything because you share everything with so many people.”
Kher also expressed gratitude to the cast of the TV series for their “love and togetherness”.
Montgomery and Friel read excerpts from the book, which narrated his experience of the multiple mistakes he made while acting in a school play and when he did not get the role of Jawahar Lal Nehru in Richard Attenborough’s masterpiece “Gandhi”, a rejection which Kher said in the book “hurt deep”.
Kher’s book has been released in India on August 5 and will release in the US on October 15.
India’s Consul General Sandeep Chakravorty said through his life and career, Kher has touched people’s hearts in particular ways.
“He has had very humble beginnings and fought his way through life, inspiring many to be proud of their struggles and shortcomings,” Chakravorty said.
Anupam Kher Shares His Autobiography With PM Modi
Anupam Kher wishes luck to Rishi Kapoor for hospital visit
Anupam Kher's Autobiography To Be Out In August
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Program launched to promote Saudi fishing sector in Yanbu
Program launched to promote Saudi fishing sector in Yanbu /node/1478306/saudi-arabia
Expert trainers have been hired to teach the program. (SPA)
The initiative has been developed to match international standards
YANBU: The Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture, in partnership with the Cooperative Societies Council, has launched a training program for navigation and fishing, which aims to train 1,000 young Saudis in the latest fishing techniques.
The initiative has been developed to match international standards, in line with the objectives of Vision 2030. The training is currently taking place in centers in the city of Yanbu on the west coast.
Expert trainers have been hired to teach the program, which covers marine safety, radio communication, fishing methods, the use of electronic locators, marine mechanization, quality control, simulations, and more.
Topics: Saudi Arabia Saudi fishing
Environment ministry launches fishing training program for young Saudis
How to tackle overfishing in the world’s oceans
Quality of Life program plans annual conference to develop strategic index /node/1616421/saudi-arabia
There are 13 programs aiming to change and develop the lifestyles of citizens and residents
JEDDAH: The Saudi Arabian Quality of Life Program will organize an annual conference to develop a strategic index accredited by the UN, according to its spokesman Mazrou Al-Mazrou.
This news came in a meeting held at the King Abdul Aziz Public Library in Riyadh on Monday, during which Al-Mazrou presented insights about the program, and how it related to the National Transformation Program 2020 (NTP) and Saudi Vision 2030.
The program supervises 119 initiatives in the entertainment and recreational sectors, including in culture, sport, recreation and touristism, he added.
“There are 13 programs aiming to change and develop the lifestyles of citizens and residents,” Al-Mazrou said.
“The programs rely on the financing method and intersect with other authorities. A range of events and programs have been achieved, such as diversifying entertainment activities with more than 377 events so far, as well as increasing the index of families’ expenditure rate on entertainment activities."
He said the program had several other objectives, including enriching the local entertainment scene in the Kingdom, contributing to the construction media cities, and supporting the development of the Saudi film industry.
Topics: Saudi Arabia
Saudi T20 chair unveils priorities at conference
Saudi entrepreneurs aim to boost quality of life
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5 Charles Rennie Mackintosh Designs With Particularly Interesting Backstories
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Art historical nods, prescient color palettes—it’s all represented in a new American exhibition on the Scottish talent
By Julekha Dash
Best known for designing the Glasgow School of Art, Charles Rennie Mackintosh produced interiors, furniture, and posters with visionary style during the Scottish city’s Arts and Crafts heyday of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
A new exhibition, titled "Designing the New: Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Glasgow Style," kicks off its U.S. tour this week at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. The show, which displays pieces from both Mackintosh and his contemporaries, will run through January 5, when it will move on to Nashville, St. Petersburg, Florida, and Chicago.
Co-organized by the Glasgow Museums and the American Federation of Arts, the show features nearly 200 works of art—including watercolors, book covers, sketches, and textile designs—that make it the most comprehensive Scottish Art Nouveau exhibit in North America to date. AD PRO got a preview of the exhibition and chatted with Alison Brown, the Glasgow Museums’ curator for European decorative art and design from 1800 to the present, to hear all about the pieces included. Below, Brown selects five works by Mackintosh (or his wife, Margaret Macdonald) that are especially worth highlighting.
Poster for the Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts, 1894–1896. Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Lithograph, paper.
Photo: © The Hunterian, University of Glasgow
Poster for the Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts by Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1894–1896)
Aubrey Beardsley’s Salome illustrations, initially created for a play program, are some of the most enduringly influential works from the late 19th century. In one image, Salome, a New Testament figure and the daughter of Herod II and Herodias, is depicted holding John the Baptist’s bloody head. In this work, Mackintosh contributed his own homage to Beardsley's famous series—replacing the severed head with a towering plant of flowers and seeds. “The idea of plant growth is hinted at throughout all of his work,” Brown explains. The thin, androgynous woman holding the plant is also characteristic of Macintosh’s early figural works, according to Brown.
Music Cabinet, 1898. Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Mahogany, ebony, stained and leaded glass.
Photo: Enzo Di Cosmo / Courtesy of CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection; Reproduced courtesy of a private collection care of The Glasgow Guild
Music Cabinet by Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1898)
Designed for Mrs. Ruby Pickering, the daughter of the owner of a department store, the cabinet seen here incorporates the visual trick of entasis. Entasis, first developed for and still widely associated with Greek columns, adds a bulging curve to a seemingly straight structure in order to counterbalance how it is visually distorted by perspective. The fact that Mackintosh used the technique here reveals his classical architectural training in a fascinating—and easily overlooked—way. A stylized flower growing from the seed of the arched base adds charm to the design.
The May Queen: Panel From the Ladies' Luncheon Room, Ingram Street Tea Rooms, 1900. Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh. Gesso, hessian, scrim, twine, glass beads, thread, mother-of-pearl, tin leaf.
Photo: Courtesy of CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection
The May Queen: Panel from the Ladies' Luncheon Room by Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh (1900)
Mackintosh and his wife, Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, collaborated on a pair of gesso panels that faced one another inside the Ladies’ Luncheon Room of the Ingram Street Tea Rooms. Painted white and decorated with metallic leaf, the room provided a tranquil respite from the busy industrial Glasgow streets. Interestingly, the couple exhibited these panels at the eighth Secession Exhibition in Vienna, where they would have met Gustav Klimt, Josef Hoffmann, and other leading artists of the day.
More interesting still is that according to Brown, the panels are the figurative culmination of the Glasgow Style—which evolved from depicting gaunt figures to rendering more rounded, feminine ones in billowing gowns. The panel contains molded plaster reliefs, some of which may have been cast from mussel shells. “They were always experimenting," Brown explains of the couple. "So probably after a dinner they said, ‘Hey, we’ll just put on some plaster and see how it looks.’”
Wall panel with fittings for the Cloister Room, Ingram Street Tea Rooms, 1911. Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Paneled wood and paint.
Wall panel with fittings for the Cloister Room by Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1911)
This was one of six featured panels included in the Men’s Smoking Room of the Ingram Street Tea Rooms. In the architectural setting, walls, ceiling, and metalwork all made use of undulating wavy lines, which can be understood as a reference to the hanging leaves of a weeping willow tree. Perhaps most significant of all, however, is the fact that the bold colors and geometric patterns foreshadow the Art Deco movement—14 years before the term was coined.
Chair for a Writing Desk for The Hill House, 1904–05. Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Wood.
Photo: Alan Broadfoot / Courtesy of CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection
Chair for a Writing Desk for The Hill House by Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1904–05)
This chair was made for Mackintosh’s most important residential commission, Hill House, located in Helensburgh, Scotland. Mackintosh designed the house, as well as its interior and the pieces of furniture included, for publisher Walter Blackie. The chair shows how squares and other geometric elements became more prominent in Mackintosh's designs during the early 1900s. While the chair looks rigidly geometric, the back is actually curved—underscoring the juxtaposition between the severe and soft lines in the then-burgeoning art form of Art Nouveau.
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Sybil Ludington
Colonial women didn’t usually fight in the Revolutionary War, but many of them tried to do their part. Sybil Ludington was only sixteen years old when her turn came. Fun Facts A messenger arrived on horseback at the home of Colonel Henry Ludington on the night of April 26, 1777.…
Taxes, Taxes, Taxes!
The French and English both wanted to stake a claim in North America. French soldiers aided native people in a war against the colonists; the English sent soldiers to protect them. This war, The French and Indian War, lasted for almost 10 years. Although the English and the colonists ultimately won…
Winning the Revolutionary War was a longshot for the Continental Army. They needed all the help they could get. The French helped. George Washington believed that God supported their cause. But help also came from spies. These brave men and women risked their lives to gather information for George Washington…
After the Revolutionary War: Becoming a Nation
Americans had longed for independence from Britain. After eight long years of war, they had finally achieved it. But what happened after the peace treaty was signed in 1783? Tough times weren’t over for the American people. They still had to figure out what democracy would look like. Many people…
Revolutionary War Facts and Figures
The American Revolutionary War lasted eight years. The British were definitely favored to win. They had one of the most powerful militaries and naval forces in the world. They had invaded and colonized many parts of the world, including parts of Africa and Asia. They had never experienced defeat. Yet,…
Britain’s Allies
Not everyone was happy when America won its independence from Great Britain. Many people, particularly wealthy slave-owners in the southern states, remained sympathetic to Great Britain. These people were known as Loyalists or Tories. Many black slaves and Native Americans fought for the British, as well. [caption id="attachment_334" align="aligncenter" width="300"]…
The Revolutionary War began on April 19, 1775 at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts. It would last six years, ending with General Cornwallis’s surrender in Yorktown, Virginia on October 19, 1781. More than 25,000 Americans died during this war. Considering that Great Britain was one of the most powerful countries in…
“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” The colonists’ original goal in fighting the British was to gain more freedom, while still…
You’ve probably heard of Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, John Hanco-ck, and George Washington – all men who played a vital role in the Revolutionary War, but what about Thomas Paine? Most of the Founding Fathers were highly educated, wealthy men who held prominent positions. Thomas Paine was a man of…
The First Day of the Revolutionary War: Lexington and Concord
Although the colonists were angry with the British for increased taxes and interference, most still felt some loyalty to the Crown. Originally, many Americans wanted to remain part of the British Empire, with more freedom. That view changed quickly when they realized King George wasn’t interested in compromise. [caption id="attachment_351"…
The First Day of the Revolutionary War:...
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Belfast and Beyond
Staff blogRSS feed
The shocking future of UK policing?
Posted 18 Nov 2008, 9:31pm By Patrick Corrigan
Where was your Chief Constable last week? If they were among the 15,000 top cops from around the world attending the International Association of the Chiefs of Police conference in San Diego, maybe it’s time to start worrying. Especially if you’ve ever been on a march or public protest, whether it was in support of field sports or against the war in Iraq, or if you just think others should be able to do so.
San Diego was where Taser International was showcasing their latest weapon – Taser Shockwave. This is a large-scale, mass-firing Taser weapon which, via a broad arc of simultaneous fire, can cast an electro-shock net over a 100-metre area. Taser International reckons it’s the perfect tool to “instantaneously incapacitate multiple personnel” and they have just started marketing it to the world’s police.
Remember all those kids and old folk out on the big anti-war and country sports marches? Now, imagine a bit of crowd disorder and the indiscriminate electro-shocking of everyone within firing range. It’s a frightening prospect.
I don’t want to scaremonger – I’m not suggesting that the Taser Shockwave is going to be a part of day-to-day policing in the UK anytime soon, if at all. But not so long ago, we thought that a similarly muscular approach to law enforcement had no part in the long and much-admired tradition of unarmed British policing.
Yet the last couple of years have seen the start of a drift towards an increasing use of the conventional, hand-held Tasers. What started as controlled usage by specialist firearms officers has, since 2007, become wider deployment to more officers, permitted to ‘Taser’ people in a much wider set of circumstances.
There are very real concerns that this potentially lethal electro-shock device, which fires a 50,000-volt charge in five-second bursts into the target, could be made available to every officer in the country. That’s the case in England and Wales, at any rate. In Scotland, any wider roll-out is opposed by ruling party, the SNP, while in Northern Ireland a Belfast child is currently taking Sir Hugh Orde, the PSNI Chief Constable, to court to judicially challenge the current limited deployment.
Since 2001, Amnesty has been studying the use of Tasers and their effects in the United States, where Tasers are widely used. It’s not encouraging reading, to say the least. To date, 320 people have died after being shocked by Tasers. And they are used way down the ‘force scale’ – only around thirty of those 320 were armed when they were Tasered. Some people have even been shocked while they were already handcuffed.
Amnesty recognises that police in the UK have an increasingly-difficult job to do, and that they have a duty to protect both the public and themselves from violent attack. International law allows the police to use ‘lethal force’ in certain circumstances – to protect their own lives or those of others – and hence there may be a place for devices like the Taser as an alternative to shooting someone who poses a direct threat to the public.
But the deployment of potentially-lethal weapons to officers that have not been appropriately trained would be a step in the wrong direction. UK firearms officers receive extensive, ongoing training: this helps ensure that they know not only how to fire their weapon but also when to fire it and when not to. These are split-second calls, made in incredibly stressful situations. They can be life or death decisions. Any police officers using Tasers should be trained to this high standard. And they should only ever be used in the most limited circumstances, where lives are in danger.
When Tasers were first given to UK firearms officers, Amnesty International warned that this could be the start of a slippery slope towards more and more officers being armed with Tasers and using them in an increasing number of situations. This now seems to be happening.
I would never want to find myself blogging about a situation where hundreds of people were indiscriminately electrocuted with a Shockwave, and I hope I never will. But equally I never want to be writing about how many people in the UK have died after being Tasered – and if we are not careful, that prospect could get much closer.
via Human Rights Now
Posted 18 Nov 2008, 9:31pm
By Patrick Corrigan
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Jamtrack Central
Guitar Techniques Mag
Guitar Review Videos
SKYPE LESSONS AVAILABLE!
Andy has taught guitarists based in Australia, USA, India and Europe, as well as the UK online!
A great alternative to face to face lessons when distance is an issue!
Andy is proud to be an established contributor to the awesome Guitar Techniques magazine, with his monthly columns, 'Hot Country Guitarists', 'Hot Country Lead', 'Modern Country', 'Session Soloing', and most recent series, 'Chops Shop'.
Andy is a member of the guitar teaching faculty at top London based school of modern music, The Institute Of Contemporary Music Performance (ICMP), where he has taught on Bmus and BA degree courses, BTech Diploma courses and HNC courses, instructing on numerous modules such as styles, performance, harmony & theory and reading. He has taught hundreds of guitarists here over the years, some of whom have gone on to have successful professional careers of their own.
BOOK ANDY TO PLAY WITH YOUR BAND OR ON YOUR SONG/ALBUM
Andy is available to be booked for live work and studio sessions. Although specialising in country guitar, Andy is a pro player of all popular styles, like Rock, Pop, Blues, Jazz etc. He uses top line live gear, like Fender/Gibson/Gretsch guitars, Fender and Tech21 amps and numerous pedals/effects. He uses Logic Pro X in his own studio. Please do get in contact to discuss your requirements.
LISTEN TO one of ANDY'S INSTRUMENTAL TRACKs!
"THE COWPOKE SHUFFLE"
The Cowpoke Shuffle.mp3
MP3 audio file [2.9 MB]
Voted 'official No 1' Elvis show at the national tribute awards 2016!!
Andy Saphir Guitarist
Specialising in country guitar, Andy Saphir has been gigging and teaching as a professional guitarist for over 20 years.
Having graduated from The Guitar Institute with a distinction in 1995, he has studied further with renowned guitarist and educator, Lee Hodgson, who in his book, ‘Hot Country’, describes Andy as being one in a group of “fine British country guitar players”.
A pro player of all popular styles, (Country, Blues, Rock, Pop, Funk, Jazz), Andy has established himself as one of the UK country music scene’s top players and enjoyed a busy touring schedule for many years on that circuit, gaining huge experience in many different live situations from small club gigs to festivals and theatres, both in the UK and Europe, having backed USA singer, Michael Twitty (son of country legend, Conway), and toured with USA fiddle player/ singer John Permenter (Clint Black). He has also played guitar on studio albums by various artists including X Factor finalist and ‘2 Shoes’ singer, Charley Bird, renowned Irish band, Celtic Thunder’s George Donaldson and Ryan Kelly (who’s 2013 album, ‘Life’, on which Andy played the guitar parts, debuted at #1 on iTunes USA, Canada, and Australia world music chart, and number 2 on the Billboard world music chart).
As well as teaching privately in Cambridgeshire, UK, Andy has been a member of the guitar faculty at top London music college, ICMP (‘The Institute of Contemporary Music Performance’, originally ‘The Guitar Institute’) for many years, where he teaches guitar across a range of courses such as Higher National Certificate (HNC), BTec Music Performance, BA (Bachelor of Arts), and BMus (Bachelor Of Music), teaching a variety of different subjects including live performance, guitar styles, techniques, and music theory.
Originally contributing to Guitarist and Guitar Techniques magazines as far back as the late ‘90’s featuring his transcriptions and recordings of solos by master guitarists, Jerry Donahue and Brent Mason, Andy is now a firmly established contributor to top guitar tuition publication, Guitar Techniques. His columns have focused on country guitar in the three series, ‘Hot Country Guitarists’, ‘Country Guitar Techniques’, and ‘Modern Country’, explored a range of different styles in the series, ‘Session Styles’, and concentrated on fundamentals in the series, ‘Chops Shop’. He has also regularly contributed to Total Guitar magazine, for whom he has also interviewed the legendary Stanley Jordan.
Andy is proud to have become an official artist of 'Jamtack Central', one of the largest online guitar tuition websites, with the 2016 release of his '20 Classic Country Licks' video tuition package, and his latest release, 'Modern Country Masterclass'. He has more products/releases in the pipeline.
Currently, Andy is enjoying an international performing career and is touring regularly with theatre shows, ‘A Vision Of Elvis’ (award winning Elvis Presley tribute show’) and ‘The Blues Brothers Approved’ (the approved Ackroyd/Belushi licensed Blues Brothers stage show). For many years, Andy was also the guitarist for ‘Voice of The Heart, Karen Carpenter’ (premier ‘Carpenters’ tribute show), ‘Forever in Blue Jeans’ (a fast paced rock n roll/country ‘hits through the years’ show), and top Eagles tribute band, ‘Desperado’. Additionally, Andy also enjoys playing classic pop and rock tunes in various function/party bands.
© Andy Saphir
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The primary role of the Attorney General's Office is to provide legal representation to the State of Washington, its agencies, and state officials acting in their official capacities. The office is not authorized to advise or represent private citizens on personal legal matters. If you need help with a personal legal matter-such as filing a lawsuit, creating a will, or defending against a criminal charge-you may want to contact a private attorney. If you do not know an attorney in your area, the Washington State Bar Association's website provides information on attorney referral services for persons of varying income levels. You may also contact the Bar by calling 1-800-945-WSBA (9722).
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Copies of birth, death, marriage, and divorce certificates may be available through the county health office where the event occurred, or through the state Department of Health.
For copies of federal documents, you will need to contact the federal agency that issued the document. To replace a lost Social Security card, for example, you should contact the Social Security Administration by visiting one of their local offices or their website. For a lost passport, contact the United States Department of State Passport Services Division at travel.state.gov/passport/lost/us/us_848.html.
You may wish to contact the state Auditor’s Office, which reviews operations of state and local agencies to ensure that public funds are spent and accounted for in accordance with the law. If you are a state employee, you may wish to report suspected improper governmental activity under the state Auditor’s Whistleblower Program.
Grievances against lawyers who are licensed to practice law in Washington should be filed with the Washington State Bar Association. For information on whether a grievance might be appropriate in your situation, visit http://www.wsba.org/Licensing-and-Lawyer-Conduct/Discipline/File-a-Complaint-Against-a-Lawyer. To discuss filing a grievance, call 1-800-945-9722 or write to this address:
Washington State Bar Association
1325 Fourth Avenue Ste 600
The state Commission on Judicial Conduct considers complaints against judges and court commissioners in Washington. For additional information on filing a complaint, visit the commission’s website. You may also call the Commission at (360) 753-4585 or write to:
The Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division enforces the state’s Consumer Protection Act and may take legal action against businesses that engage in unfair or deceptive practices. Remedies sought may include consumer refunds and civil penalties. The division also assists consumers and businesses in resolving disputes by notifying businesses of written consumer complaints and mediating complaints.
For additional information on filing a complaint, and for tips on how to avoid consumer ripoffs, visit the Consumer Protection Division website at www.atg.wa.gov/file-complaint. You may also call the Consumer Hotline at 1-800-551-4636 (1-800-833-6384 TTD). Include your U.S. mail address with any complaint.
You may also want to register a consumer complaint with the Better Business Bureau. For information on filing a complaint or on contacting a Better Business Bureau office near you, visit www.bbb.org.
You may contact any of the following:
DSHS’s ENDHARM hotline Report your concerns about an elderly or disabled person to the Department of Social and Health Services by calling 1-866-ENDHARM (1-866-363-4276); or
Adult Protective Services Contact Adult Protective Services by calling a toll-free number you will find on the following website: https://www.dshs.wa.gov/altsa/home-and-community-services/reporting-abuse; or
Complaint Resolution Unit If the person is living in a long-term care facility, call the Department of Social and Health Services at 1-800-562-6078. (Long-term care facilities and programs include nursing homes, assisted living facilities, adult family homes, residential habilitation centers (Fircrest, Lakeland Village, Rainier, and Yakima Valley) and community residential services and support (“supported living”) programs; or
If you suspect that an individual may be the victim of a crime, contact the local police or sheriff. In case of an emergency, call 911.
The Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) receives and investigates reports of suspected child abuse and neglect. There are several ways to report abuse:
DSHS’s ENDHARM hotline Washington State has a toll-free, 24 hour, 7 day-a-week hotline that will connect you directly to the appropriate local office to report suspected child abuse or neglect. Call 1-866-ENDHARM (1-866-363-4276),
During the Day - Contact your local CPS office. You can find the “local office number” on the CPS website.
Nights & Weekends - call 1-800-562-5624
TTY Callers - call 1-800-624-6186 to place a direct TTY call.
The Washington Connection website has links to a wide variety of services, including medical services, domestic violence, legal assistance, transportation, emergency shelters,and food programs.
The following links may help you find programs that could help children or their parents:
https://www.dshs.wa.gov/ca/advancing-child-welfare/getting-help
https://www.dshs.wa.gov/ca/child-safety-and-protection
The following links may help you find programs that could help teenagers or parents of teenagers.
https://www.dshs.wa.gov/youth-services
Where do I find information about child support?
The Department of Social Services, Division of Child Support has general information and answers for FAQ on their website at: https://www.dshs.wa.gov/esa/division-child-support
Additional information about child support can be found at Washington Law Help: http://www.washingtonlawhelp.org/issues/family-law/child-support
For questions about collecting child support, you should call your support enforcement officer or find information at https://www.dshs.wa.gov/esa/division-child-support/apply-child-support-services
If you are upset about what is happening on your case, you can contact the DSHS Community Relations Unit by calling 1-800-457-6202, or you can ask for a “conference board” so your case can be reviewed by a lawyer who works in the Division of Child Support.
If your case is in court, and a government attorney is participating, you can contact that attorney for information. If you want an attorney to represent you, you will need to find an attorney. When looking for a private attorney, a lawyer who is skilled in family law may be best able to help you. If you cannot afford a private attorney, you may be able to make an appointment with the county courthouse facilitator who can help you navigate through the court process. You may also search for free or reduced cost attorneys by contacting the CLEAR toll-free hotline at 1-888-201-1014. https://nwjustice.org/clear-hotline
The legal forms you need for child support court cases can be found at: https://www.courts.wa.gov/forms/
https://www.dshs.wa.gov/adult-care
https://www.dshs.wa.gov/disability-support
Depending on the nature of your business and profession, licenses issued by a variety of state, county or city agencies may be required. The state Department of Licensing website, www.dol.wa.gov/business/ provides extensive information on business and professional licensing requirements. You may also contact the Department by phone at (360) 664-1400.
From your county Auditor’s office.
From the local police or sheriff’s department that has jurisdiction over the area in which you live.
Federal law says that a copy of each informational tax return, form 990, 990-PF, 990-EZ, is to be sent to the Attorney General of the home state of the trust. These can be mailed to the Office of the Attorney General, PO Box 40100, Olympia, WA 98504-0100. State law also requires that many trusts register with the Secretary of State. Information concerning this process is available at www.sos.wa.gov/charities.
If the corporation holds assets that are limited to a charitable use, state law requires that after certain debts and liabilities of the corporation are paid, the remaining charitable assets be transferred to another charitable organization with a similar purpose. It also requires that a plan for the distribution of assets, identifying the charity that will receive them, be sent to the Attorney General before the assets are transferred or the corporation is dissolved. There is no required form for this plan, and it can be as simple as a letter, provided that it identifies both the dissolving nonprofit and the charity that will receive the assets. It can be mailed to the Office of the Attorney General, PO Box 40100, Olympia, WA 98504-0100.
The following links may help you find information about services related to mental health:
https://www.dshs.wa.gov/mental-health-and-addiction-services
https://www.dshs.wa.gov/bhsia/faq?field_bhsia_topics_value=Substance%20Abuse%20Treatment%20Services
The following links may help you find information about substance abuse issues and services:
The following links may help you find information about services for individuals who are deaf and hard of hearing.
https://www.dshs.wa.gov/altsa/office-deaf-and-hard-hearing
How do I find servies for the blind?
The following links may help you find information about services for individuals who are blind
http://www.dsb.wa.gov/services/index.shtml
http://www.dva.wa.gov/
https://www.dshs.wa.gov/food-cash-medical
https://www.dshs.wa.gov/housing-assistance
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Jonnie Peacock: Relive the Paralympic GB sprinter's Attitude cover shoot
British sporting hero Jonnie Peacock is set to become the first ever disable contestant to appear on Strictly Come Dancing, and we can't wait to see what the two-time Paralympic gold medal winner brings to the dance floor on Saturday nights this autumn. 24-year-old Jonnie, who took home the gold in the T44 men's 100 metres event at the 2012 London Paralympics and 2016 Rio Paralympics, had his right leg amputated below the knee as a child after contracting meningitis, but that hasn't prevented him becoming one of the fastest men on the planet - and now, perhaps, one of its best movers. The former Attitude cover star said: "The opportunity to be the first contestant with a disability to take part in Strictly’s main show was too good to turn down. "I’ve got no previous dance history outside of the occasional ‘worm’ at a mate’s party and I know this will be a challenge and a new experience. I can’t wait to see what I can achieve and how far I can push myself."
To celebrate Jonnie's history-making turn on Strictly, we thought we'd revisit his really rather lovely Attitude cover shoot from January 2013. Don't say we never treat you...
Jonnie joins a star-studded Strictly line-up that includes Holby City stars Chizzy Akudolu and Joe McFadden, Rev Richard Coles, Emmerdale's Gemma Atkinson, This Morning presenter Ruth Langsford, actor and comedian Davood Ghadami and Mollie King from The Saturdays.
JLS singer Aston Merrygold, comedian Brian Conley and Good Morning Britain host Charlotte Hawkins will also take part, along with Sunday Brunch chef Simon Rimmer and comedian Susan Calman. Strictly Come Dancing is expected to air on BBC One in late September.
Attitude's September issue is out now. Buy in print, subscribe or download. More stories: Nyle DiMarco discusses sexuality and changing deaf lives in Attitude's October issue Katy Perry breaks down as she meets Pulse survivor, makes him a life-changing offer
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Shock 70% rise in calls to Northern Ireland child helpline
Reports of child neglect to Northern Ireland's NSPCC helpline have increased by a staggering 70% in five years, new figures from the charity reveal. File image posed by model
By Mark Edwards Twitter Email
August 23 2017 7:30 AM
Reports of child neglect to Northern Ireland's NSPCC helpline have increased by a staggering 70% in five years, new figures from the charity reveal.
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/shock-70-rise-in-calls-to-northern-ireland-child-helpline-36059584.html
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/7d0f8/36059583.ece/AUTOCROP/h342/2017-08-23_new_33963372_I1.JPG
In 2016/17 the NSPCC made 247 referrals to police or social services in Northern Ireland for further investigation following calls from adults who were concerned about child neglect. That compares to 144 in 2011/12.
NSPCC Northern Ireland head Neil Anderson said: "Neglect can have severe and long-lasting consequences for children and can also be an indicator of other forms of abuse. This is why it is so important for anyone suspecting a child of being neglected to contact the NSPCC helpline so we can alert the authorities to quickly step in and help those in need in Northern Ireland."
These latest figures have been revealed in the NSPCC's state of the nation report called How Safe Are Our Children?
Currently in the province, neglect makes up nearly a third of cases on the child protection register, a confidential list of all children in an area who have been identified by authorities as being at significant risk of harm.
The NSPCC has called for the Stormont Executive to prioritise the provision of further investment in health and social care to tackle child neglect.
Bernie McNally, independent chair of The Safeguarding Board for Northern Ireland (SBNI), which co-ordinates 27 member agencies to protect the welfare of children here, welcomed the NSPCC report.
She said: "It is good that more people are contacting the NSPCC helpline and drawing attention to child neglect issues but it is also concerning that many children are still suffering from neglect in this modern era, it is a big concern for us.
"The SBNI welcome the report from the NSPCC and we will use that to inform our member agencies on the issues raised."
The SBNI includes representatives from health, social care, the police, the probation board, youth justice, education, councils and the NSPCC.
Across the UK, the NSPCC is contacted on average 53 times a day by people concerned about child neglect.
Last year the NSPCC dealt with 19,448 calls and emails about child neglect - the highest number the charity has ever had to handle - and an increase of 61% over five years.
Around 87% of those contacts, 16,882, were serious enough to be referred to social services or the police for further investigation, with many cases involving children under five.
Child neglect was mentioned in more than a quarter of all calls to the helpline in 2016/17.
Neglect happens when a child's needs aren't met and can be down to several reasons ranging from parents not having the appropriate skills, support or funds, to having mental health issues.
Common signs of child neglect can be poor appearance and hygiene, being left alone for a long time, untreated injuries, being hungry when arriving at school and poor language and communication skills.
The charity said a growing number of people contacting the helpline also described parents as having a problem with alcohol and drugs, with some of them regularly leaving their children unsupervised so they could go drinking with friends.
One neighbour calling NSPCC staff said: "The children are home alone again. I saw the mother leave the house earlier this morning and its past midnight now. I've seen the children peer through the curtains a few times as if they're waiting for her.
"She does this every Friday night to go out drinking with her mates. I'm really confused about what to do as I don't want to ruin the relationship with the mother as we are neighbours, but at the same time I am really worried about the children. What should I do?"
Anyone concerned about the welfare of a child can contact the NSPCC helpline 24 hours a day, 365 days a year on 0808 800 5000, or email help@nspcc.org.uk
A clean bill of health for Runwood's other 11 care homes in NI
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Making electricity bills transparent
Author: Andy Glenie
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This article first appeared in Law News Issue 19 (20 June 2014), published by Auckland District Law Society Inc.
There has been some heated debate this year about electricity prices. One aspect of that debate has focused on billing – whether consumers get enough information about what they are paying for energy, as opposed to lines services. The Electricity Authority is currently considering what, if anything, should be done.
In simple terms, electricity in New Zealand is produced at a generator’s power station, transmitted long distances over Transpower’s national grid, then transported further over a distributor’s local network, before being sold by a retailer to a consumer.
In some cases, a consumer has a direct contractual relationship with both the distributor and the retailer (and receives separate bills from both). Often, however, the consumer deals only with the retailer. The retailer charges the consumer for both energy and lines services, then pays both Transpower and the distributor. In that situation, it is not always easy for the consumer to understand what is driving the overall price. Especially when the overall price is rising, that arrangement can lead to tension. The consumer may blame the retailer; the retailer may point the finger at the lines companies.
Recognising that issue, successive Government Policy Statements issued during the early 2000s emphasised the importance of pursuing “transparency of charge components”. Little practical progress was made towards achieving clarity, however.
The “Improving Transparency” project
Responsibility for overseeing the broader electricity market has now shifted to the Electricity Authority (Authority). Since the passage of the Electricity Industry Act 2010 (Act), the Authority has been charged with overseeing the Electricity Industry Participation Code (Code) which governs the electricity industry.
With respect to the retail electricity market, the Authority takes advice from a Retail Advisory Group (RAG) consisting of stakeholders from across the industry. In 2013, the Authority asked the RAG to consider the question of transparency of consumers’ electricity charges and recommend alternative approaches that would promote competition by allowing consumers to better understand what is driving price changes.
At an early stage in its work, the RAG identified several options for the Authority:
do nothing (i.e. leave retailers to consider whether to provide better information to consumers);
take a more active role in educating consumers;
require retailers to provide greater information to consumers at an aggregate level;
require retailers to disclose the component charges on consumers’ bills (a less disruptive alternative than requiring lines companies to invoice consumers for their services separately, as suggested by some participants in the market).
The RAG carried out extensive consultation, and reported to the Authority in April 2014. The details of the RAG’s recommendations are not currently public, but it appears that the RAG’s preference was for the Authority to consider the issue as part of an existing wider project to improve the quality of retail data available to all stakeholders. Whether that workstream will mandate some form of ‘unbundling’ of component charges on consumers’ bills remains to be seen.
Currently, the Code does not require that consumer bills be broken down. If the Authority concludes that there should be greater disclosure of component charges, it may need to consider amending the Code under section 38 of the Act. In that case, careful analysis of the feasibility and net cost of such an amendment would be needed under section 39 (even greater complexity would arise if the preference were to instead require lines companies and retailers to invoice consumers separately).
Other perspectives
There are, of course, other ways in which this issue could be addressed. One is by way of legislative reform. Labour’s David Shearer MP has drafted an Electricity Transparency Bill, which would insert a new section into the Act requiring each consumer’s bill to itemise the components arising from generation, transmission, distribution, retail and taxes and levies (it is not entirely clear how that change would fit with the NZPower initiative, if Labour are successful in the election later this year).
Another option would be to look at the issue through the lens of the Fair Trading Act 1986. Section 9 generally prohibits engaging in conduct that is misleading or deceptive, or likely to mislead or deceive; more specifically, section 13(g) prohibits making a false or misleading representation with respect to the price of any goods (which includes electricity). In 2003 and 2004, the Commerce Commission negotiated settlements with several retailers in respect of statements wrongly blaming lines companies for price rises. Whether particular conduct or representations fall foul of these prohibitions can only be determined in the particular circumstances, but it is obviously possible that a regulator or disaffected commercial partner will take action if there is a risk of consumers being misled.
The electricity market is notoriously complex, and so often misunderstood. It has also become a politically sensitive topic in this election year, making the Authority’s task just that much harder. As is so often the case when dealing with such delicate regulatory balances, it will be challenging to chart a successful course between the competing interests of diverse stakeholders and achieve a sustainable solution.
This publication is necessarily brief and general in nature. You should seek professional advice before taking any action in relation to the matters dealt with in this publication.
Level 21 48 Shortland St +64 9 916 8800
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Recycling of the future – marked plastic as a circular product
Plastics are harmful to the climate and human health both during manufacture and combustion and they also clutter our planet with garbage. Recycling is therefore a key issue, but it is not efficient. Polysecure has developed a process for permanently marking individual plastics that enables them to be separated efficiently and returned to a circular economy. This would counteract the vast amount of (micro) plastics and reduce CO₂ emissions.
https://www.biooekonomie-bw.de/en/articles/recycling-of-the-future-marked-plastic-as-a-circular-product
A vision: insect biorefineries as components of a sustainable bioeconomy
Eco-friendly and responsibly manufactured products are more in demand than ever before. Specific research is being carried out into materials and applications for a wide variety of uses. The Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB is working with Hermetia Baruth GmbH on the vision of an insect biofactory that uses waste materials to produce a wide range of products such as biosurfactants, animal feed or foils.
https://www.biooekonomie-bw.de/en/articles/news/A-vision-insect-biorefineries-as-components-of-a-sustainable-bioeconomy
Plant pots made of natural fibres – "bio", no ifs or buts
Plastic plant pots are not good for the environment; strictly speaking, they should not even be disposed of in recycling bins. Alternatives such as coconut fibre pots are compostable, but not pollutant-free and not "bio" at all. The Karlsruhe-based company Fiber Engineering has developed a truly ecofriendly way to grow plants: pots made of hemp or grass, which are preserved with biological components and decompose completely within a…
https://www.biooekonomie-bw.de/en/articles/news/pflanztoepfe-aus-naturfasern-bio-ohne-wenn-und-aber
Magnetised algae as microrobots for medical and environmental purposes
Algae, for most of us, is something that lives in water courses that we occasionally find unpleasant. However, that is to do them a wrong. These extremely versatile and frugal organisms might in future prove to be extremely important. Scientists at the University of Stuttgart are investigating how algae can be used as microrobots in biomedicine and environmental remediation.
https://www.biooekonomie-bw.de/en/articles/news/magnetisierte-algen-als-mikroroboter-fuer-medizin-und-umwelt
The alternative: “bioplastics”
Plastic waste takes years to decompose and pollutes the environment. Nevertheless, plastics are an indispensable part of everyday life. It is therefore all the more important to find a meaningful alternative that is sustainable, environmentally friendly and has better properties and more functionality than conventional plastics. In addition, such an alternative should not be dependent in any way on fossil resources.
https://www.biooekonomie-bw.de/en/articles/dossiers/the-alternative-bioplastics
Residues from biogas plants as feed for algae
Algae are frugal organisms. They require only light, water, minerals and carbon dioxide to be able to produce biomass. These properties will now be exploited economically in a two-year research project. Dr. Stefan Sebök from the University of Hamburg plans to study the holistic utilisation of degradation products of a biogas plant in Wallerstädten by linking them to land-based algae cultivation.
https://www.biooekonomie-bw.de/en/articles/news/residues-from-biogas-plants-as-feed-for-algae
Baden-Württemberg is known for innovation in textiles and for playing a decisive role in the development of sustainable textiles for the future both in the clothing and the booming technical textile sectors. Companies and research institutes are focused on making the entire textile value chain from raw materials, production and useful life to disposal more sustainable than ever before.
https://www.biooekonomie-bw.de/en/articles/dossiers/sustainable-textiles
Natural biopolymers - the sustainable almost-all-rounders
Wood pulp as well as hemp and flax are renewable raw materials that can be processed into fibres of a new performance class using innovative technologies. They are environmentally friendly and help to solve waste problems. Products and processes for these fibres of the future are being developed at the DITF Denkendorf. They are suitable for textile and technical applications.
https://www.biooekonomie-bw.de/en/articles/news/natural-biopolymers-the-sustainable-almost-all-rounders
The Alliance Launches Today
An alliance of global companies from the plastics and consumer goods value chain today launched a new organization to advance solutions to eliminate plastic waste in the environment, especially in the ocean.
https://www.biooekonomie-bw.de/en/articles/pm/the-alliance-launches-today
Plastic Oceans: MEPs back EU ban on throwaway plastics by 2021
Single-use plastic items such as plates, cutlery, straws, balloon sticks or cotton buds, will be banned in the EU under plans adopted on Wednesday.
https://www.biooekonomie-bw.de/en/articles/pm/wegwerfprodukte-aus-plastik-parlament-stimmt-fuer-verbot-ab-2021
Bioplastic materials’ value propositions well reflected in European Parliament’s report on Plastics Strategy
The European Parliament’s report on the European Strategy for Plastics adopted today by the plenary testifies to the increasing acknowledgement and endorsement of the value propositions of bioplastics. Rapporteur Mark Demesmaeker highlights the potential role of bio-based plastics and of biodegradable plastics in establishing a strong circular EU bioeconomy.
https://www.biooekonomie-bw.de/en/articles/pm/bioplastic-materials-value-propositions-well-reflected-in-european-parliaments-report-on-plastics-strategy
The sustainable economic system known as the bioeconomy is based on two main pillars: the use of renewable raw materials rather than fossil raw materials, and biobased innovations. The aim of the bioeconomy is therefore not only to replace fossil raw materials, but also to develop completely new products and processes. In so doing, it contributes to and creates the conditions for a closed circular economy. Baden-Württemberg has the skills…
https://www.biooekonomie-bw.de/en/bw/definition/perspectives-on-the-bioeconomy
Ö-Klo: recovering valuable materials by composting toilets
The Freiburg-based start-up company Ö-Klo leases composting toilets and is committed to the recovery of human urine and faeces. The young Ö-Klo entrepreneurs believe that reviving natural material cycles of soil, plants, food and excreta is crucial in times when natural resources such as phosphorus are dwindling.
https://www.biooekonomie-bw.de/en/articles/news/oe-klo-recovering-valuable-materials-by-composting-toilets
Wood for clothing, reducing microplastics in our seas: VAUDE participates in the TextileMission research project
Together with various partners from environmental associations, the scientific community and the textile industry, VAUDE has launched the TextileMission research project. The goal is to find solutions that will reduce the environmental impact of microplastics released when synthetic apparel is washed. VAUDE is excited about the initial successful developments.
https://www.biooekonomie-bw.de/en/articles/pm/wood-for-clothing-reducing-microplastics-in-our-seas-vaude-participates-in-the-textilemission-research-project
PULaCell: inspiring wood construction with biobased polyurethane
The aim of the joint three-year "PULaCell" project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) is to develop biobased reinforcing profiles for solid wood construction materials. As part of the project, several research institutes and industrial companies are developing biobased, cellulose fibre-reinforced polyurethane profiles that will make future wood-based materials stronger.
https://www.biooekonomie-bw.de/en/articles/news/pulacell-inspiring-wood-construction-with-biobased-polyurethane
PURCELL – cellulose to replace plastics
Glass fibre-reinforced plastics have become an integral part of our everyday life: in cars, playground slides, swimming pools or on facades, such composites are used wherever stability is required. Unfortunately, both production and disposal are far from sustainable. Scientists from the German Institutes for Textile and Fiber Research Denkendorf have now developed an innovative material made from pure cellulose, which has practically the same…
https://www.biooekonomie-bw.de/en/articles/news/purcell-cellulose-ersetzt-kunststoff
Biological waste: biomass with huge potential
The efficient recycling of biowaste makes an enormous contribution to the bioeconomy and climate protection. Researchers in the Department of Waste Management and Emissions headed up by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Martin Kranert at the Institute for Sanitary Engineering, Water Quality and Solid Waste Management (ISWA) at the University of Stuttgart, are exploring the optimisation potential of biowaste recovery.
https://www.biooekonomie-bw.de/en/articles/news/biological-waste-biomass-with-huge-potential
Biobased materials used in the field of architecture - 05/12/2016
Straw replaces plastics – a material revolution
Junior professor Dr.-Ing. Hanaa Dahy and her team from the ITKE in Stuttgart are developing everyday biobased materials that have a wide range of possible applications. The materials can be used for thermal insulation, designer furniture, yoga mats or resilient flooring in sports halls. The researchers use techniques from the plastics industry to process recyclable and compostable materials.
https://www.biooekonomie-bw.de/en/articles/news/straw-replaces-plastics-a-material-revolution
Valuable new biopolymers from crustacean shells
In the EU alone, more than 250,000 tons of seashell waste are discarded every year. The exoskeleton of crustaceans consists of proteins, calcium carbonate and chitin, a long-chain sugar molecule which could be used to produce valuable building blocks for the polymer industry. Scientists from the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology (IGB) in Stuttgart have developed a biotechnological process aimed at a sustainable…
https://www.biooekonomie-bw.de/en/articles/news/valuable-new-biopolymers-from-crustacean-shells
The worm is the essence
Nadine Antic is a waste recycling specialist who set up a company called GlobalFlow when she was still a student. She recently joined forces with two other people to create a new company called albfertil GmbH, which has invented a natural fertilizer called WORMANIZER. The fertilizer is produced from biogenic food industry waste that normally ends up in the garbage. The unusual worm humus product has now been placed on the market.
https://www.biooekonomie-bw.de/en/articles/news/the-worm-is-the-essence
Bioenergy from meadow orchards
A project called ”Energiebündel & Flowerpower" run by the “Netzwerk Streuobst Mössingen" has established a complex local recycling network for biomass from meadow orchards. The network involves the city of Mössingen, the neighbouring municipality of Nehren, the KFB institution for the physically disabled and their self-help work group called “Streuobst und Naturschutz”, a biogas operator from Nehren, a start-up company called Vital…
https://www.biooekonomie-bw.de/en/articles/news/bioenergy-from-meadow-orchards
Retrospective - 24/05/2016
Kick-off meeting of the Special Interest Group (SIG) for Biopolymers/Bioplastics
About 20 participants from industry and politics attended the first kick-off meeting of the Special Interest Group (SIG) for Biopolymers/Bioplastics which was recently held in Stuttgart. Also present were representatives from research institutes that are focused on biopolymers and could thus make an important contribution to the discussions.
https://www.biooekonomie-bw.de/en/articles/pm/rueckblick-auftakttreffen-der-special-interest-group-biopolymerebiokunststoffe
Follow-up: Interview with Thomas Helle on new developments in bioleaching
Some time ago, thanks to BIOPRO Baden-Württemberg, the biotechnology company Novis GmbH met Prof. Dr. Andreas Kappler, a renowned geomicrobiologist at the University of Tübingen.The two partners went on to test bioleaching methods for their ability to recover metals from slag using bacteria. In an interview with Dr. Thomas Helle, CEO of Novis GmbH, Dr. Ursula Göttert, on behalf of BIOPRO, asked what has become of the project.
https://www.biooekonomie-bw.de/en/articles/news/follow-up-interview-with-thomas-helle-on-new-developments-in-bioleaching
Chicory root and its potential in bioplastics production
Researchers from the University of Hohenheim use waste in the form of chicory roots to extract basic chemical building blocks for producing nylon and plastics. Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) is one of 12 platform chemicals used to produce plastics. The raw material obtained from the chicory root improves the plastics’ environmental performance, notably because it is an oil substitute and does not compete in any way with food production.
https://www.biooekonomie-bw.de/en/articles/news/chicory-root-and-its-potential-in-bioplastics-production
Search terms recycling
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Conveyancing solicitors in Dover
If you are looking for a conveyancing solicitor in Dover we can help you. Our conveyancing solicitors offer a convenient, efficient, and friendly conveyancing service to clients in Dover, throughout Kent and all over England, Wales and beyond.
If you are buying a detached house in Dover, selling a terraced house in Tower Hamlets, downsizing to a bungalow in Maxton, or buying to let in Aycliffe , we can help you with your conveyancing.
Why should you use Bird and Co Solicitors for your conveyancing in Dover?
We offer a friendly, modern and efficient service. If you want to deal with proper lawyers who are friendly and approachable, our team can help you.
You will have a direct line straight through to your legal team, and direct email addresses. You can guarantee that your query will reach the right people, whether you want to ask about search fees in Dover, drainage and water fees in Kent or something else.
"The team always provided me with clear, pragmatic and commercially viable advice with efficient and focused communication."
We're a Conveyancing Quality Scheme accredited firm providing conveyancing to clients in Dover. This is a guarantee that our processes and procedures have been approved, that we operate to a certain standard, and is a mark of the excellence of our service approved by the Law Society, the body which represents solicitors throughout England and Wales.
We are on the panel for most major lenders, and many smaller ones too. Whether you want to use your local Building Society in Kent or one of the larger corporates, chances are we have you covered.
In short, you get an excellent conveyancing service at an affordable price. You don't have the risk of going to the cheapest providers, most of whom aren't solicitors; instead you get a great service from proper lawyers.
Why don't you need a conveyancer based in Dover?
In the old days you used your local solicitor. You would visit their office in the centre of Dover, and all documents would be hand-produced and posted or delivered by hand.
That service came at a price, but the truth is that it is no longer needed. With modern technology such as scanning, emailing and even Skype or Facetime video calls there is no need to use your local solicitor. Your conveyancer can be based anywhere and still provide a great service - even if he or she is in an office many miles away from Dover or perhaps not even in Kent .
We have successfully dealt with thousands of conveyancing transactions all over the country, even with clients from the other side of the world. It is not unknown for us to talk to clients outside the UK using Skype, and once we had clients in Thailand talking to us through an interpreter in New Zealand!
There will be no need for you to visit our offices or hand deliver documents. You need never leave Dover - our conveyancers will talk you through the process via phone and email, and everything works just as smoothly as it would if we were just down the road.
Home values in Dover
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Dover house prices
Online Conveyancing in Dover
There isn't really any such thing as online conveyancing. Clients come to us for conveyancing in Dover, Tower Hamlets, Aycliffe and all sorts of other places, having first found us via our website.
After that, the relationship between you and your conveyancer is the same as any other. We have the same professional obligations towards you, and deal with your conveyancing file in the same way.
It might feel like online conveyancing because you can talk to us through email on your computer, but really it is proper conveyancing.
Search Fees in Dover
Every local authority is different. We use an excellent, trusted national search provider, which means we can provide searches to clients in Doverand all over the country, knowing that we will get a product we're happy with and which we know is properly insured and protects your interests.
What is the process to instruct us for your conveyancing?
First, fill in our conveyancing quote form for conveyancing in Dover. You can find the links at the top of this page.
Our helpful conveyancing support team will then guide you through the initial stages, and once your conveyancing file is opened your Dover conveyancing solicitor and their small team will deal with the legal side of the conveyancing transaction. You'll be given direct contact details for your conveyancing lawyers and they'll keep in touch with you every step of the way.
Whether you're moving to Dover or away from Dover to somewhere else, our conveyancing team can help you do so with the minimum of fuss and inconvenience.
Fees for conveyancing in Dover
Our fees are transparent and, so long as the situation does not change (for example so long as your property doesn't turn out to be leasehold when we thought it was freehold) the fee we quote is the fee you will be charged.
We don't add extras on for things like photocopying, postage, or the like. Those are our overheads and we don't pass them on to you.
All our conveyancing fees are dependent on the nature and value of the transaction, so we naturally charge a bit more for more complicated and high value work. However, the fee charged will be the same for a customer in Newcastle as it would be for someone in London, or indeed in Dover.
There are some aspects of our conveyancing fees which we can't change. Fees charged by other bodies such as HM Land Registry, or by HMRC for Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) are out of our control.
Introduction to Dover
Dover is a town and extremely significant ferry port in Kent, South East England. According to the 2011 census, the town has a population of 31,022. The town and it's surrounding area have always shown significant importance, and that importance is now the main base for the town's economy.
The Port of Dover is one of the main ports in the United Kingdom, with passenger traffic totaling to 16,000,000 per year.
There are frequent ferry services to France, with 25 daily services to Calais operated by P&O Ferries, 10 by DFDS and 8 by MyFerryLink. DFDS also operate 11 daily services to Dunkirk. In 2009, revenue generated from the port reached £60.8 million.
Dover also brings in a large amount of tourists each year. This is due to a number of reasons: The ferry services bring in many French tourists who may stop off in the town before travelling elsewhere, but also many come from far and wide to observe the White Cliffs of Dover, a striking chalk cliff face, which can reach heights of up to 110m. Subsequently, Dover has developed a strong base for retail to serve both the residents as well as the increasing number of tourists. The town's main shopping streets are the High Street and Biggin Street, and the Castleton Retail Park also provides services to the north west of the town centre.
There are also plans to develop a 6 screen Cineworld Cinema and leisure element, including restaurants, at St James, with a completion date set at 2017.
The town of Dover also has a variety of sport clubs and sport facilities. The most notable sports club is probably Dover Athletic Football Club, who currently play in the National League, the highest tier of football outside the Football League. They play at the Crabble Athletic Ground, which has a full capacity of 5,745. There are also rugby, rowing, swimming and netball clubs, as well as the Dover Leisure Centre, which caters for a wide range of sports and activities.
In terms of transport, Dover is connected to Canterbury via the A2, which acts as the town's main communications artery. The A20 also connects the town to Folkestone, and consequently London.
Dover Priory railway station is the principal station in the town, and there is one train per hour to stations such as London St Pancras, via Ashford, London Charing Cross via Sevenoaks and St Pancras International via Chatham, and two trains per hour to London Victoria via Canterbury East and Chatham.
On top of this, there are also Stagecoach services to areas such as Folkestone and Canterbury, as well as National Express services to Canterbury, Folkestone, Maidstone as well as areas in London such as Canary Wharf, The City of London and Victoria Coach Station.
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Home > Schools and Departments > School of English, Drama and Creative Studies > Departments > English Literature > News > Dr Alys Moody, The Literature of World Hunger: Dambudzo Marechera's Anti-Colonial Starving Artist
Dr Alys Moody, The Literature of World Hunger: Dambudzo Marechera's Anti-Colonial Starving Artist
Posted on 21 Jun 2019
Report on a research talk co-hosted by the Centre for Contemporary Literature & Cultures and the Centre for Modernist Cultures which took place on 19 June in the Department of English Literature.
On 19 June, Dr Alys Moody (Macquarie University, Australia) gave a lecture entitled "The Literature of World Hunger: Dambudzo Marechera's Anti-Colonial Starving Artist." In her talk, Alys outlined the conceptual stakes of her new book project, which examines the co-evolution of the concepts of world literature and world hunger since the Second World War.
Setting out how global modernist literature after mid-century intersected with an emerging understanding of the ‘world’ as a site of ethical, political and aesthetic potential, Alys then turned to a case study. She discussed Dambudzo Marechera’s The House of Hunger (1978) and argued that the concept of the ‘world’ mobilised by his novella demonstrate it to be less a site of utopian possibility than one of struggle.
Dr. Alys Moody is Senior Lecturer in English at Macquarie University in Sydney, in the fall she will move to the US to take up the position of Assistant Professor of English at Bard College. Last year she was the Early Career Fellow in the Humanities Center at the University of Pittsburg. Alys specialises in twentieth and twenty-first century European, American and world literature, with an emphasis on modernism and its contemporary and global heirs. She is the author of The Modernist Art of Hunger: Aesthetic Autonomy in Crisis (OUP, 2018) and, with Stephen J, Ross, the editor of the monumental Global Modernists on Modernism, an anthology of source texts for global modernism which is forthcoming with Bloomsbury Academic in 2019.
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BI-Hub
The Trademark Appeal Court of the Federal Patent Court rejected the complaint 25 W (pat) 528/18 of the applicant for the trademark application "BI-Hub" on October 14, 2019. The trademark office of the GPTO rejected the trademark application "BI-Hub" due to its lack of distinctive character and an existing need to be kept free, which is why the applicant filed a complaint.
In support of the rejection, the GPTO stated that the trademark application is composed of the letter combination "BI" and the English word "hub". The letter combination "BI" abbreviates the term "Business Intelligence", which has been used since the 1990s and refers to electronic methods and processes for the systematic analysis of data. The word "hub" in the English language originally meant a (wheel) hub or a node. In electronics or in network technology, the term "hub" also denotes a switching system between LAN segments and terminals. A "hub" in this context is a concentration point or a network node for a star-shaped wiring to form logical LANs.
The Federal Patent Court agreed with the GPTO to the extent that the trademark application with said combination of words represents a technical term in business informatics and designates different methods of data analysis. In that regard, the combination of words will not cause any difficulties in understanding for the skilled person in the field of business informatics in conjunction with the goods and services claimed.
Thus, the trademark application “BI-Hub” represents the description of the nature and destination of goods and services as such, i.e. in relation to goods in Class 9 (software) and IT services in Classes 38 and 42 and is consequently not eligible for protection.
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Workers at California Restaurant Collect Lost Wages in Class-Action Lawsuit
blog home Class Action Workers at California Restaurant Collect Lost Wages in Class-Action Lawsuit
By Brian Chase on February 19, 2019 - No comments
Gordo Taqueria, which has five popular locations around the San Francisco Bay Area, has agreed to pay its workers $690,000 in a class-action lawsuit over allegations of wage violations. According to a news report in the San Francisco Chronicle, the case is the latest in a string of similar labor cases involving high-profile Bay Area restaurants, the result of a long-term effort by the California Labor Commissioner’s Office to strengthen protections for workers and collect lost wages.
Unpaid Overtime and Mishandling Tips
In January, Rangoon Ruby’s owners agreed to a settlement that would pay more than 300 workers $4 million in wages and penalties. Last year, La Taqueria paid its workers $500,000 in a similar settlement. A former dishwasher, Jose Martinez, who worked at a Berkeley restaurant from 2013 to 2015, filed the class-action lawsuit against Gordo.
Martinez filed complaints with San Francisco’s Legal Aid at Work and later filed a class-action lawsuit. The lawsuit represented a class of 240 workers who alleged they were receiving their tips only as a lump sum once a year rather than at the end of the day or pay period, as required under California law. The workers also alleged that the restaurant did not pay them all the overtime they were due.
The claims made by the workers at Gordo are similar to many in the restaurant industry. Most complaints alleged unpaid overtime, improper distribution of tips, minimum wage violations, inadequate rest breaks and retaliation against workers who speak up against these illegal activities. In 2014, the Department of Labor estimated that wage theft violations caused California workers to lose $22.5 million in income each week.
If you are a worker in the restaurant industry or any industry who is being exploited by your employer, it is important to understand that you have legal rights. The good news is you won’t have to do this alone. An experienced California employment lawyer can help you through the process, whether it’s filing a complaint against your employer with the Department of Labor or helping you and your co-workers file a class-action lawsuit.
While it might be difficult for one person or one worker to hold a corporation’s feet to the fire, when you band together with your co-workers and form a “class,” it becomes possible. Contact an experienced class-action attorney to obtain more information about pursuing your legal rights.
Source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/restaurants/article/Bay-Area-restaurant-workers-collect-lost-wages-as-13585420.php
Posted in: Class Action
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Issue Identification
Wallace Warfield
Former CRS Mediator, New York and Washington, D.C. Offices; Associate Professor at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University
[Full Interview]
Q: Okay. How much direction do you give to minority communities, or how much assistance would you give them in terms of identifying their issues, or prioritizing their issues for them?
A: In caucus, the risk is you get into more of an evaluative procedure with the minority side, comparatively less so with the white side. The risk is that the evaluation will become known in the joint sessions and then there you are, blown out of the water. Again, my experience -- I don't know what other CRS people have done -- but my own experience then, and still is, is to be very transparent about this and say, in effect, to both sides, "Now I sense that there's a need..." Particularly what happens is that there's a frustration on the part of the establishment's side in the process, and it allows you to say, "What I think is happening here is that the minority side doesn't really have a good sense as to how to organize the issues. I think I need to spend some time with them to be able to do that. Would you let me do that?" So when you're meeting with the minority side in caucuses, it's much more than an evaluative procedure. I mean, think about this: "What are the consequences of taking this action now?" Now eventually, that gets evened-out, my sense is, by doing it jointly so as you get closer to the actual agreement. Then you're sitting there with both sides and you're doing much more of an evaluative procedure toward the end than you were in the beginning, because people trust you. I think that I have much more comfort -- by the way, it doesn't matter if it's mediation; I could be doing a problem-solving workshop -- as a facilitator starting out in a much more clearly-defined position of neutrality -- neutral in the sense of being neutral and non-evaluative, and then becoming increasingly so as trust is built up between the parties and as trust is built up with me. So by the time we get to the point of people getting ready to sign off on an agreement of some sort, you're fully-prepared then to say, "Well first of all, let me tell you my own experience," and I'll go into some experience, and I'll say, "Let me give you a perspective about this from another point of view...you can do this, but here's another possibility...here are some resources you can look at if you want to go beyond me, in a sense..."
Q: But you wouldn't do that up-front in caucus?
A: I wouldn't in the very beginning, because I think that the danger is, you're taking over the negotiation for one side, and then when you come back into the joint session, that side is looking at you saying, "Well, your turn!" (Laughter)
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In the past 30 years, Broadgate has grown into a diverse community where world-class dining meets excellent everyday staples, from public sculpture to the latest in sports and wellness facilities.
With Broadgate’s collection of shops, bars and restaurants soon set to triple, this is the history that’s defined one of London’s most dynamic neighbourhoods.
1985: Prime Minister, The Rt Hon Margaret Thatcher launched the construction work of Broadgate.
1986: Broadgate’s first set of buildings, 1, 2, and 3 Finsbury Avenue Square designed by Arup Associates are complete.
1987: Completion of 1&2 Broadgate designed by Arup Associates.
1987: His Royal Highness Prince Charles opened the Broadgate Arena, designed by Arup Associates, in December.
1987: Torvill and Dean performed at Broadgate Ice Rink, the only open-air ice rink in Britain at this time.
1998: Originally conceived as two separate buildings when completed in 1988, 100 Liverpool Street and 8-12 Broadgate are now a single structure.
1988: 135, 155 & 175 Bishopsgate, Broadgate’s largest structure designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill is complete.
1988: 1 Appold Street complete.
1989: Completion of Broadwalk House, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
1990: The innovative Exchange House, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill is complete. The parabolic steel arches support most of the structure’s weight.
1991: The completion of Broadgate and opening of Liverpool Street Station was marked by a visit on 5 December by Her Majesty The Queen.
1991: Completion of 199 Bishopsgate, designed by Skidmore Owings & Merrill.
2004: Skidmore Owings & Merrill's 10 Exchange Square completes the western entrance to Exchange Square.
2005: A range of public realm improvements were undertaken, introducing Gaucho Grill and the Lit Floor to Finsbury Avenue Square, as well as landscaping across Broadgate.
2008: The Broadgate Tower and 201 Bishopsgate, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, completed. The Broadgate Tower was the fourth highest tower in the City.
2012: John Robertson Architects refurbish 199 Bishopsgate with high standards of energy efficiency, a green roof and parking for bicycles and electric cars.
2012: Started work on 5 Broadgate, a 700,000 sq ft pre-let scheme for UBS – the largest of its kind in the City of London.
2015: 5 Broadgate, the new HQ for UBS, completed in June.
2015: Broadgate Circle, home to 11 restaurants and a boutique gym, opened on 15 April.
2019: Crossrail with links to Heathrow and beyond will be complete.
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We Banjo 3 at Mineral Point Opera House March 11th
Mineral Point Opera House
Miineral Point, WI
Balcony General Admission $25.00 ($27.24 w/service fee) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
Balcony GA
Main Floor General Admission $25.00 ($27.24 w/service fee) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
Main Floor GA
Box Seats $35.00 ($37.74 w/service fee) Sold Out
Box Seats
Front Row $35.00 ($37.74 w/service fee) Sold Out
Will-Call (no delivery fee) Print-At-Home (no delivery fee) Mobile Delivery (no delivery fee) Physical Tickets - USPS 1st Class (no delivery fee) Physical Tickets - USPS Priority Mail ($7.35 delivery fee) Physical Tickets - USPS Express Mail ($25.50 delivery fee)
We Banjo 3 will play at the Mineral Point Opera House on Wednesday, March 11 at 7:30 p.m. Doors open at 6:30 pm.
Grassroots, crossover sensation We Banjo 3 is one of the most prolific and exciting bands to emerge from Ireland in recent years. Contrary to the bands name, this Galway/Nashville-based quartet comprises two sets of brothers, Enda & Fergal Scahill and Martin & David Howley, on banjo, fiddle, mandolin, guitar, bodhran, and percussion. Their music is a passionate blend of Americana, bluegrass, Celtic, world music and pop propelled by lead singer David Howleys emotive voice and pitch perfect harmonies from this band of brothers. Their high-energy, audience-engaging live show brings audiences to their feet!
The bands last studio recording, Haven, was released in July of 2018 and spent 3 weeks at # 1 on Billboard's Bluegrass chart and received rave reviews from the press, with Glide Magazine saying, Theres a lesson to be learned here as well. Its one thing to be astute musicians which this band assuredly is but its quite another thing to be able to craft melodies that are worthy of that articulate approach. Suffice it to say that We Banjo 3 are adept at doing both. An exceptional album, Haven ought to ensure that We Banjo 3 reach the sanctified status of they deserve. RTE Radio 1 (the Irish equivalent to the BBC) named Haven Folk Album of 2018 at their annual awards show.
On July 19, 2019, We Banjo 3 released a live recording, Roots To Rise Live, on CD and vinyl. Recorded in February of 2019 at The Ark in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Roots To Rise Live features 14 songs and is a mix of original material, traditional compositions, and select cover songs, including a surprise in the middle of Prettiest Little Girl. It also includes two previously unreleased tunes, Shine On, which is a fan favorite at their live shows, and John Browns. Roots To Rise Live debuted at # 1 on Billboards Bluegrass Albums Chart week of August 3rd. Haven also reentered the chart the same week in the # 5 position.
We Banjo 3 continues to partner with Mental Health America on their Rise and Shine tour to raise funds and awareness for the organization with a donation of $2.00 from the sale of every t-shirt and CD to MHA.
www.webanjo3.com
Mineral Point Opera House (View)
Miineral Point, WI 53565
Music > All Ages
Music > Bluegrass
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Posterity (December 13)
“Since it is not granted to us to live long, let us transmit to posterity some memorial that we have at least lived” (Pliny the Younger).
SEEN AGAINST THE BACKDROP OF THIS WORLD’S WHOLE HISTORY, A HUMAN LIFETIME IS A VERY BRIEF AFFAIR. Pliny was right: “it is not granted to us to live long.” But we can, as he suggested, leave some memorial that we have lived. We can make some contribution to the world in which we’ve been privileged to live. As we pass through the world, we can make some improvement, however slight, in the world’s condition. Surely, that should be our desire.
To be sure, not many of us will make any mark that will be remembered after we’re gone. A very wise man wrote long ago, “There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come by those who will come after” (Book of Ecclesiastes). There is a sense in which we should forget the future and be content simply to serve our own generation. Serving our own generation, humbly and faithfully, is no small legacy to leave to future generations. In itself, that’s a wonderful contribution.
But the fact is, none of us live entirely to ourselves. Each one of us is a link in the chain of generations, and what we do is more than just our own business. We’re linked to our ancestors in the past, and we’re linked to our descendants in the future. We ought to want to be worthy links and faithful stewards of what’s been handed down. “Let us contemplate our forefathers, and posterity,” said Samuel Adams, “and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter.” There ought to be in our hearts this wholesome two-fold desire: (1) to be a posterity our ancestors would be proud of, and (2) to leave a legacy our descendants will be thankful for.
Not all of us are guilty of this, but I would say that, as a people, we are in danger of losing touch with our ancestors. Nowadays, we live with such a concentration on the ever-insistent “now,” many forget the names of their great-grandparents, not to mention their more distant ancestors. If so, this is a tragic loss. We can’t disconnect from the past and still have any proper regard for what will come after us.
“People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors” (Edmund Burke).
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Lil Bub, one of the internet's favorite cats, has died
Abigail Rosenthal, USA TODAY NETWORK
Lil Bub, one of the internet's favorite, most beloved cats, died on Dec. 1. She was 8 years old.
Her owner Mike Bridavsky shared the news on Monday. Lil Bub had been battling a bone infection at the time of her death.
"On the morning of Sunday, December 1st 2019, we lost the purest, kindest and most magical living force on our planet," he wrote. "Bub was cheerful and full of love laying in our bed with us Saturday night, but unexpectedly passed away peacefully in her sleep."
This is my first photo with BUB next our last photo together. On the morning of Sunday, December 1st 2019 we lost the purest, kindest and most magical living force on our planet. BUB was cheerful and full of love laying in our bed with us Saturday night, but unexpectedly passed away peacefully in her sleep.. I have always been fully transparent about BUB's health, and it was no secret that she was battling a persistent and aggressive bone infection. Even knowing this, we weren't expecting her to pass so soon or so abruptly without warning. I truly believe that she willingly made the decision to leave her failing body so that our family would not have to make that difficult decision ourselves. It is impossible to put into words the profound effect that BUB has had on my life, on the lives of thousands of homeless pets, and on the lives of those of you that have cared for her as if she were your own family. She taught me everything that I know about unconditional love, she brought my wife Stacy and I together, she's the reason we have our beautiful children Rosco and Lula, and she has been a constant source of warmth and love in our lives for the past 8 years. To say that our family is devastated would be an understatement. But most importantly, BUB has made a huge difference in the world of animal welfare, and in the lives of millions of people worldwide. She has literally saved thousands of lives (both pets and humans), she started the first national fund for special needs pets, she was the subject of groundbreaking genetic and biological research, she's helped raise over $700,000 for animals in need, and has spread a message of determination, positivity, and perseverance to people all over the world. And even though my heart is absolutely crushed by her graceful departure from planet Earth, I know that her sprit, magic, and overwhelming energy are still with us, reminding us every day to be better. Dearest BUB, I will never forget your generosity, your limitless supply of love, or your uncanny ability to bring so much magic and joy to the world. I am forever honored and humbled that you chose me as your caretaker. Please visit all of us in our dreams o
A post shared by Lil BUB (@iamlilbub) onDec 2, 2019 at 9:25am PST
Lil Bub's famous smooshed face, tongue, big eyes and tiny stature were the result of several genetic conditions, include feline dwarfism. Over the years, she gained over 2.3 million Instagram followers and nearly 3 million Facebook subscribers.
Lil Bub wasn't just cute — she did a lot to help those in need, which Bridavsky made sure to highlight.
“BUB has made a huge difference in the world of animal welfare, and in the lives of millions of people worldwide," he wrote. "She has literally saved thousands of lives (both pets and humans), she started the first national fund for special needs pets, she was the subject of groundbreaking genetic and biological research, she’s helped raise over $700,000 for animals in need, and has spread a message of determination, positivity, and perseverance to people all over the world.”
In her life, Lil Bub also interviewed Whoopi Goldberg, was the subject of a documentary called "Lil BUB & Friends," and collaborated with rap duo Run The Jewels.
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Yahoo Bans Anti-Obama Flickr Commenter
About a week after China blocked Flickr during the 20th anniversary of the Tienanmen Square massacre, Yahoo (YHOO) has banned a paying Flickr Pro account holder named Shepherd Johnson after he left comments on photos uploaded by the White House's official Flickr account. The comments protested the Obama administration's policy on torture photos. Here's one of them, found by Valleywag:
“The Obama White House is supporting a new bill (sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman) whose sole purpose is allowing the government to suppress any ‘photograph taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009′ relating to the treatment of detainees in the ‘War on Terror.’ In other words, Obama wants Congress to change the FOIA so that the courts can’t compel release of any more torture photos.”
This comment also linked to one of the torture photos, previously uploaded to Flickr by a different account holder. See the photo by clicking here. A warning: It's NSFW and disturbing.
Shepherd discovered his account was banned as he began a second round of commenting. Then he contacted Yahoo to ask why it happened. He never got an answer, even after leaving a message on Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz's home answering machine. Losing his account, Shephard also lost some 1,200 pictures he'd uploaded to Flickr.
Yahoo gave Valleywag the following statement about the banning:
In accordance with Flickr's policy, we cannot disclose information to third parties concerning a member's account. However, in joining Flickr, all of our members agree to abide by our Community Guidelines. These guidelines require that all of our members be respectful of the community and flag content that may not be suitable for "safe" viewing. Our members have always done a great job of identifying inappropriate and offensive content on Flickr and bringing it to our attention. We encourage all members to continue to make Flickr a safe place to share photos and videos.
Flickr is a very large community made up of many types of members from all over the world, and we respect the viewpoints and expressions of all of our members. In crafting the Community Guidelines, Flickr weighed the rights of the individual vs. the rights of the overall community, and built a system that would enable members to choose what they want to view. As with any community, online or off, there are members who may disregard the Community Guidelines. When this happens, Flickr may have to take action accordingly towards building a respectful community. For more information: http://www.flickr.com/guidelines.gne
A conspiracy theorist would want to point out that that 93.9% of political donations Yahoo employees made last year went to candidates who were, like President Obama, Democrats. But its most likely Yahoo banned Shepherd as much for posting so many comments as for what those comments said. Posting several comments to one account could seem like harrassment. That will get a user banned from most social media sites.
Still, given the subject of Shepherd's comments -- and their reasonable tone -- we don't expect Flickr's notriously sensitive-to-censorship users to stay quiet about the issue, and that could pose a problem for Yahoo, which makes money from Flickr's on paying subscribers.
Illustration: Tomas Caspers
More: Online Politics Yahoo! Big Tech
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11 Signs You Spend Too Much Time At Home
By Gina M. Florio
If you've nested correctly, your home should feel like a sanctuary — a cozy, clean space you can't wait to arrive to after a long day, and the place where you feel most like yourself. But as valuable as at-home alone time is in our busy lives, it's easy to cross the line and step into Hermit Territory. It all starts when you're so comfortable on that plush couch of yours that you start to wonder what the point of going out is at all (especially after ordering that frozen yogurt maker). Before you know it, it's been seven weekends in a row, and the only living person you've seen outside of work is the pizza delivery guy.
Sixty million Americans struggle with loneliness on a regular basis, and it's a feeling that has some serious physical consequences. Being alone for too long could potentially affect the levels of dopamine in your brain, which can encourage you to make more impulsive decisions and increase your stress levels. Some studies have even shown that being chronically lonely can increase your risk for an early death by 45 percent. Research done at Harvard Medical School also suggests that people who are lonely experience a 20 percent faster rate of cognitive decline than those who are happily surrounded by friends and family.
Of course, if the reason you're always home is that you're suffering from chronic depression or an anxiety disorder, it's going to take getting some help to get you out of a rut. But for others, it might just be a matter of acknowledging that they're spending too much time at home to begin with. Here are 11 signs you're spending way too much time at home.
1. Your House Slippers Get More Use Than Your Actual Shoes
If your closet hasn't seen the light of day, you might want to consider taking yourself out. Those gorgeous boots you got on super-sale deserve a chance to strut about town, and that's a good enough reason to let your inner social butterfly shine (don't worry, she's still in there somewhere).
2. You're Pretty Much Always Wearing Sweatpants
Sweatpants can be dressy. Sweatpants can be cool. But let's get real. If you're rocking them every single second you're not at work, you've reached hermit status and it's probably time for you to do a big load of laundry.
3. You Haven't Eaten Out In Ages
A home that's scattered with takeout containers is a home to a person who needs to get out more. Unfortunately, technology is so advanced now that all it takes is the click of a button on your phone to have a hot meal delivered to you in minutes. Resist the urge to take the easy way out, though. Call up your friends and have a meal at a nice restaurant for once.
4. You Feel Like There Isn't Anything Exciting Left For You To Watch
Everyone deserves to have a TV show (or two) they're currently obsessed with. But in order to maintain a certain level of excitement around your program of choice, you have to give yourself some time between episode binges. If you find yourself gorging so much on TV that you can't even think of what show to watch next, you should take a break from the screen and maybe join a book club instead.
5. You Spend More Time Talking To People Online Than In Person
As soon as social media becomes your main way to keep up with your friends' comings and goings, you've got a problem on your hands. There's nothing more lonely than being physically isolated from the people you love, so don't think browsing through your bestie's newsfeed counts as a real connection to their life.
6. Your Friends Don't Bother Inviting You Out Anymore
Your friends are smart, so when you say no over and over again to their requests to take you out, they eventually stop inviting you altogether. They can only handle being rejected so many times, after all. It's your turn to step up and take them out for a glass of wine.
7. You Don't Have Any Hobbies Or Activities That Happen Outside Of Your Home
Sure, things like knitting or online gaming can count as interests, but all of your hobbies can't be ones that happen within the four walls of your apartment. Consider picking up some new hobbies that require you to get out there and socialize, like a new dance class or volunteering at an animal shelter.
8. The Only Time You See Your Friends Is When They Come Over
Because your friends have come to terms with the fact that you're not dragging your ass out for cocktail hour, the only time you can manage some face time is if you play hostess. Although having people over can be just as much fun as going out for dinner (or even more fun, especially for introverts), make sure you don't fall into a habit of only seeing your friends in this way. It's still hermit behavior if it's the only way you're comfortable chilling.
9. You Talk To Your Pet More Than You Talk To Any Human
Nothing's wrong with being a cat lady, so that stereotype needs to die immediately. Nevertheless, you don't want to turn into the kind of person who spends so little time with human beings that your pet is the only person you communicate with in person, because that can get mighty lonely.
10. You Get All Your Household Items Delivered
Online shopping is a gift from the heavens, but it can be just as much of a blessing as a curse that you can order toothpaste, toilet paper, and shampoo in the blink of an eye and have them arrive at your door in two days. When you've replaced all your outdoor shopping trips with hours of virtual browsing, buck up, wash your hair, and leave the house to buy all the things you need. It may be less convenient, but the fresh air will do you good.
11. You Feel Nervous When You Think About Going Out For An Event
Anxiety tends to creep in when you've fallen out of the habit of being social. Your mind plays tricks on you, convincing you that you've lost all ability to be funny and relatable. This fear can also be a sign of social anxiety, so if this or any of the other signs on this list sound familiar in a way that's less-than-funny, you might want to consider addressing it with a professional. There's no shame in reaching out for some help — even if you do have to leave the house for it.
Images: Fotolia; Giphy
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Nick & Raven Talking About Sex Before 'The Bachelor' Fantasy Suites Is A Smart Move
Drew Cason/ABC
It feels like this season of The Bachelor has really flown by, and I can't believe it, but it's already time for Fantasy Suite dates for Nick Viall and his remaining three women. First up? Raven, who I have fallen more and more in love with every week. On Monday night's ep, she and Nick had a cozy date in snowy Finland, and when the time came, she didn't hesitate to accept his invitation to spend the night in his room with him. But surprisingly enough, Nick and Raven talked about sex before their Bachelor Fantasy Suite date officially kicked off, and it's an awesome break in tradition for the show.
After they finished dinner, there was the traditional overnight invite, and, at that point, Raven chose to put it all out there on the table. Before there was any chance they could get intimate, Raven told Nick that she's only ever had sex with one person and she's never had an orgasm before — two really personal things to share with someone. But it was obviously important for her to let Nick know going into their night together, and while he seemed pretty surprised at first, he was also really cool about the whole thing.
From the start, he was accepting of Raven bravely sharing this part of her life with him, and it looks like her honesty set a good tone for the rest of their evening together, even though we won't find out how it really went until next week's episode. I may not have been a fan of the turtleneck Nick was wearing at the time, but I do think he handled this conversation the right way.
Even on a show like The Bachelor, sex still manages to be a pretty taboo topic, so I love that Raven didn't hesitate in speaking her mind on the subject. I'd love for this to be something we see more of on this show in the future, because it's so real. The idea of a Fantasy Suite date (on national television, no less) is a bit awkward, so why not talk about it and lay the groundwork ahead of time?
It's hard to say whether Nick will choose Raven in the end, but if he doesn't, I have a feeling she's going to be OK. Raven, if you're reading this, hit me up on Twitter. I'm ready to be best friends now!
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'I have yet to meet a person who's under 20 who would not give up email first' [before texting or IM]
So said eHarmony CEO Greg Waldorf to Emily Parker in an interview which appeared in yesterday's (February 10, 2007) Wall Street Journal, and follows.
The Matchmaker
Roughly ten days before Valentine's Day, I find myself at the headquarters of the Internet matchmakers eHarmony.com, peering into labs "dedicated to the study of human relationships." The brand-new labs, which look more like miniature living rooms, are equipped with couches, stylish armchairs and video cameras. This is all part of the company's greater mission to understand what makes two people "click," and thus forge more compatible matches among their subscribers. (eHarmony's R&D team jokingly refer to meeting offline as meeting "in the wild.")
"I believe in measuring things," eHarmony CEO Greg Waldorf says cheerfully when I meet him in his office. In a room nearby, academics with expertise ranging from marriage to "loneliness" attend an advisory board meeting. "I love the challenge, that people think: How could you possibly measure interpersonal chemistry? I like the idea of research and measurement around these things that seem so impossible to quantify."
Of course, this only leads one to wonder, how does one measure interpersonal chemistry? While eHarmony is launching an ambitious research project to do just that, Mr. Waldorf admits that they still haven't solved the puzzle.
"We can help them figure out their compatibility, but individuals have to figure out their chemistry. The nice thing is that on eHarmony, you're starting out with a pool of matches with whom you at least have compatibility." (The site "matches" individuals based on their answers to a lengthy personality questionnaire.) What about "opposites attract"? "In general," Mr. Waldorf says, "It's a really bad idea."
Upstairs, walking through the sun-filled office and looking at the pictures on the walls of beaming couples — eHarmony success stories — it's hard not to feel charmed by this mission to create happy, lasting unions. But really, finding your soulmate with... the Internet? Relationship-research labs? Whatever happened to traditional courtship, spontaneity — their eyes met across a crowded room?
When I ask these questions, it's clear that Mr. Waldorf doesn't see anything inherently "unromantic" about meeting online. "I don't mean to be argumentative," he says, "but talk to the couple who talk about their first date through eHarmony... and the first time they walked in and they saw each other." After all, eHarmony is just keeping up with the times.
Noting that I'm a 20-something journalist, Mr. Waldorf draws an analogy to online news sites. "How many of your friends read the print paper?" he asks me. "But do they not get the benefit of news?" His larger point is that maybe it's about time we stopped mourning lost conventions and just went with the technological flow.
Mr. Waldorf, now 38, has been an entrepreneur since the age of 13, when he started his own software and consulting company in L.A.: "Families would get a computer and they'd say, 'Oh, I think Greg Waldorf knows a lot about how to set up a computer,' and so I was that kid in the neighborhood who knew that." His mom signed him up to take a programming class, but he was so advanced he ended up teaching it.
One of his "students" was in the real-estate industry and asked Mr. Waldorf to do some work for him. Soon enough, Mr. Waldorf was doing work for the whole firm, and by the time he was in college he had clients in New York and Honolulu. "I have a business card that just says, 'Greg Waldorf, computer consultant' — and it's my parents' phone number," he says, laughing.
In 2000, Mr. Waldorf became a founding investor of eHarmony, joining forces with founders Greg Forgatch and Neil Clark Warren, a clinical psychologist with three decades of experience counseling married couples. Dr. Warren's research shaped the company's scientific approach: Compatible singles are matched based on their answers to an elaborate questionnaire. The site, with its relatively lengthy process and subscription rates of around $60 a month (almost twice the price of other dating sites) reaches out to users who are clearly looking for much more than just a date. It seemed like a good business idea," Mr. Waldorf explained. And also, "it seemed meaningful."
It was certainly a daring investment. Even now, when you can find just about anything on the Internet, many remain skeptical that they will meet their true love online. So just imagine how much more outlandish this seemed seven years ago, when the company first got started.
"At that time the people who were online were somewhere between . . ." Mr. Waldorf checks himself, "at least the perception was, they were somewhere between the undatable to the interested-in-the-one-night kind of affair." Then along comes Dr. Warren, a 65-year-old entrepreneur with a business idea that challenged the conventional wisdom of the industry, which was: Do not talk about marriage. "And, the worst thing you could possibly do would be to have a 436-question questionnaire that would take an hour and a half to finish," he adds.
And indeed, the early years were rough. The company almost ran out of money in 2001, and even then took a few years to get off the ground. "Between 2002 and 2004, no one took us seriously... people used to describe eHarmony to me as the 'niche' player. Like serious relationships were the niche. And I would just chuckle."
He now estimates revenue to approach $200 million for 2007, with business to be "gangbusters" through Valentine's Day. The company boasts 14 million registrants since its founding. Perhaps most important, at a time when there seems to be great cynicism about marriage, Mr. Waldorf is confident that Americans still place a high premium on lasting commitment. Just look at the economics.
"I'm very respectful of people who pull out their credit card to pay for our service," he says. "I think they're getting a good opportunity to meet the right person, but this is real money. This could be the same cost as your cellphone plan, and I'm not trying to equate cellphone plans with finding a soulmate, but it's real money to people." Why are they willing to pay so much? Because "people associate the highest value with long-term relationships."
Mr. Waldorf, an investor/entrepreneur with a Stanford MBA, doesn't strike me as the type who lived for elaborate "how we met" stories or relationship details. And he's the first to admit it. "I didn't normally go there," he describes himself. "I wasn't the guy a friend calls up and says: Let me tell you the really long version of my weekend."
Yet now, Mr. Waldorf may have unexpectedly fallen into his own niche. "If you want to call it the dinner party test, people are fascinated by talking about relationships. It's an addictive business. Think about it from my point of view, I've been involved in a lot of companies, enterprise software, mobile application deployment... then all of a sudden you're involved in a business like this... How do you get involved with another business after this? What's the next thing to relationships in terms of involvement with the customer?"
Mr. Waldorf, who often mentions a friend who met his wife on eHarmony, claims to have surprised himself by how meaningful he finds his work: "We're not just selling phone systems or Internet advertising. Everyday we spend in the office actually makes a big difference to a lot of people." There is some evidence of this: An independent poll found that in the 12-month period ending Aug. 31, 2005, some 33,000 eHarmony members tied the knot (averaging around 90 per day).
The vision behind the company is not simply to create marriages, but to create happy marriages by using scientific research to unite compatible individuals. "I know it sounds corny when I'm talking about this," Mr. Waldorf says, but, "if you can lower the divorce rate by 1%, it could affect a million people in a generation. I don't know if that's an exact number, but it gives you a sense of how many people's lives are impacted."
The popularity and financial success of sites like eHarmony underscores what perhaps should have been obvious: People care about relationships. "I can not tell you how many businesspeople I meet who tell me that the first thing they read in the Sunday Times is the vows column," he says. And the evidence hardly ends there: "I used to spend a lot of time in Manhattan. Years ago, way before I ever even thought about eHarmony, whenever you'd pass people on a run, particularly women, what were they talking about? Relationships!"
People's willingness to pay for eHarmony would seem to support his point. Consumers, Mr. Waldorf explains, are far more disposed to pay for goods rather than services on the Internet. "People expect things on the Internet to be free," he says. "So how have we built a business that will have nearly $200 million in revenue this year? We grew our subscriber base by about a third from 2005 to 2006. How? Because this is something that people care a lot about."
It's also something people care about across the age spectrum. While never-married 20-somethings do form a huge part of eHarmony's business, about 25% of users have a child at home and many are divorced. In 2006, the fastest growing segment was the 50-and-over set.
"There's wisdom you get from going through adversity in life," Mr. Waldorf explains. "So I think the appeal of a compatible mate really resonates to people who have not had that."
Mr. Waldorf explains that unlike some other dating sites, eHarmony emphasizes quality over quantity, so potential subscribers can be turned away for reasons ranging from marital status (you can't be married more than three times) to lack of thought in filling out the questionnaire (someone who rates themselves as a "4" in every category). In total, the company has rejected more than a million potential users.
"From our business point of view, we've given away tons of revenue," Mr. Waldorf says. "We've left a lot on the table, but the idea is to keep the quality of our pool really healthy." (This screening process has led to a lawsuit, pending in a California court, filed by a man indignant about rejection by eHarmony on account of the fact that he was still married when he tried to sign up.)
Of course, while inconsistency on the questionnaire can sometimes reveal dishonesty, Mr. Waldorf admits that he has no surefire way to detect when people are misrepresenting themselves online. "I can't tell if someone is lying about whether or not they're outgoing," he admits. "I mean, what am I going to do? Say 'Hey, let's go to lunch?'"
The popularity of Internet dating is just one more sign that we're witnessing a fundamental change in the way people interact, a difference that can be particularly pronounced across generations. "I'm 38," Mr. Waldorf says. "I ask my friends' kids this: "If you had to give up email, text messaging or IM, which would you give up?' And I have yet to meet a person who's under 20 who would not give up email first. I find this fascinating. I find this unbelievable....
"Do I think that means young people will not be able to communicate and obtain relationships?" he continues. "No, not at all... but this is where innovation comes in. Additional waves of people will come up, they may want different ways to interact, but they will want compatible relationships. That will be the constant part. I might have to change the way you have your first open communication, to figure out something to do on a cell phone. But I don't think it's possible that 20 years after me, when people are 38, they'll be saying, 'I don't want a serious relationship.'"
Perhaps you don't have to meet "in the wild" to feel that certain spark. Mr. Waldorf describes the besotted who were introduced on his site: "When they talk about the first kiss or the first anything, it was just as exciting when they got in their cars and drove 300 miles from wherever to wherever for their first date. But people don't make movies about it the same way."
Will they eventually? "Yeah," he says. "Because it will be a movie that mirrors what's going on in real life."
February 11, 2007 at 04:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Sunday in the park with Philip — Glass
"Deep navigation of the music of Philip Glass [above]."
More: "Personal interests, associations, and impulses guide the listener through an expanding selection of over sixty Glass works."
Free — the way it should be.
How to bag those "Snap" pop-up previews
You may have noticed something new lately on various websites: little preview windows that magically appear and disappear as you move your computer's cursor over them.
Turns out you can disappear them permanently.
Rob Pegoraro, in his "Fast Forward Help File" feature in today's Washington Post, tells how.
Q. Those "Snap" pop-up previews of Web links I see on some sites are too distracting. Can I turn them off?
A. Some people find these previews — the thumbnail-sized views some sites offer of the page that a link will send you to — helpful, and some find them annoying. You can banish them from your browser by going to the Web site of the company that serves them up, Snap, of Pasadena, Calif.
At this site (www.snap.com/about/spa_faq.php#), you can click a link that will tell Snap not to send these previews to your browser. Your browser must be set to accept cookies for this to work.
Answer here this time tomorrow.
'War and Peace' — 560,000 words in 70 hours on 51 CDs for $280
How about a bedtime story — for the rest of the year?
David Segal, in today's Washington Post Style section front-page story, reported on how Tolstoy's epic novel came to be read by 72-year-old Neville Jason over a 23-day-period.
Can You Say 'War and Peace'? Great! It'll Only Take 23 Days.
Neville Jason can claim he's read every word, pondered every pause and mulled the inflection of every line of "War and Peace" and it would be unwise to call him a liar.
That's him, carefully enunciating each syllable of Leo Tolstoy's 560,000-word epic in an audiobook recently released by Naxos, an English publisher. Fifty-one CDs, roughly 70 hours of death, drama, history and philosophy. It took 23 days in the studio to record.
"As with so many jobs as an actor, when they asked if I was interested in doing it, I thought, 'How wonderful,' " says Jason, a remarkably young-looking 72-year old who speaks with the sort of British accent that makes you want to put on a tie. "Then you get into it and you think, 'What have I let myself in for' ?"
Jason could not have been that surprised. He is the audiobook world's unofficial marathon man, the guy who handles the long-slog classics. Before "War and Peace," he did a whittled down "Remembrance of Things Past" that filled 39 CDs, and he split narrator duties on "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" (about 15 hours, in total). His abridged readings of "Lives of the Artists" (seven hours long) and "Gulliver's Travels" (a mere four) seem like sprints by comparison.
Given that pop culture is forever trending toward the condensed and the vapid, a 70-hour audiobook might sound like commercial folly — a Mensa product for an Us Weekly world. And maybe it is. Naxos won't say how many copies have been downloaded directly from its site or sold in stores, where it retails for about $280.
But if the world has ever been ready for nearly three straight days of recorded Tolstoy it's ready now. A few years ago, publishers had to beg retailers to stock audiobooks longer than three CDs. Now, that's considered an ear snack. Unabridged is king. And abridged isn't just on the wane. It's basically stigmatized.
"We have readers who will get in touch with an author and express outrage if they see an abridged audio version of their book," says Ana Maria Allessi, who heads Harper Collins's audiobook division. "That drives authors insane."
Downloadable books make it possible to store a spoken-word rendering of a big fat tome on an iPod, eliminating the need to stuff 25 CDs in a glove compartment. Plus, publishers and retailers figured out that audiobook fans aren't semi-literates taking a break from "Two and a Half Men"; they are hard-core readers who consider abridgment a kind of cheating.
It was a revelation, too, how much these listeners were willing to spend. For a long time, it was assumed that $30 or so was the ceiling for an audiobook. But if an author is popular enough, and the book long enough, you can move a lot of product with far higher price tags.
Naxos caters to the Rolls-Royce end of the audiobook market, specializing in giants of the Western canon. Because works like "War and Peace" are in the public domain, the company doesn't have to pay for rights. The tricky part is finding someone who can tell a story as rich and densely populated as, for instance, "War and Peace," and narrate it in a way that isn't distracting.
"Audiobooks are a peculiar beast," says Nicolas Soames, Naxos's publisher. "You've got narration and you've got dialogue, and some readers are good at one and not good at the other. Only the best, like Neville, are wonderful at both."
Jason, who lives in London, recently visited New York, and one Friday afternoon, he sat in a cousin's law offices and explained the art of endurance reading. The hard part, he says, isn't keeping your voice in good shape — it's keeping focused.
"People call these readings. They're not readings. They're performances. You're acting and you're not just doing one part, you're doing dozens of parts. And you have to know what is coming up. If the sentence reads, 'Get out of here, he said angrily,' you need to know that, or you won't sound angry."
To prepare for "War and Peace," he read the text for weeks. To keep his throat clear on days he recorded, he'd avoid dairy products and, for reasons that he can't fully explain, anything containing wheat. He'd start at 10 a.m. and knock off at 6, with plenty of breaks.
Did he ever get bored? Did he ever think, "Hey Leo, pick up the pace"?
"Not really. Sometimes he'll get on a hobbyhorse, as he does when he discusses the reasons that men go to war, but for the most part I was bowled over by the wisdom of Tolstoy. He's such a huge genius, such a great understander of human beings and the human condition. And he writes about universal things. Birth, marriage, sex, death. And whatever he writes on those subjects is a revelation. When one of my children was having a hard time a while back, I read her some passages of Tolstoy. I thought, there is nothing I can say that is as wise as the things I've read."
Jason, who is a married father of two, started out as a theater actor, though his first job was in an American movie called "Flesh and Fantasy," released in 1943 and starring Edward G. Robinson. Jason was 9 years old and living with his mother in Beverly Hills, where the family had moved to avoid the German bombing of London.
"My best friend's father was a British actor who was working in the movies, so I used to go to the studio all the time," he says. "One day they needed an English boy's voice for a scene they were overdubbing. So I did it."
His line, "Why doesn't he jump? Is he afraid?" was the first of a million, give or take a few. Jason studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and early in his career won a part in "Titus Andronicus" starring Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. He turned up in a James Bond film, "From Russia With Love," playing the son of a Turkish official.
"Spent a whole month in Istanbul," Jason recalls. "Luxurious circumstances."
Most of his subsequent work was in TV and radio. Soames heard about Jason through a friend and recruited him for "The Life and Works of Beethoven." The Proust books, which he began recording in 1996, turned him into a bit of a cult figure in England. "[I] have been recommending you to everyone," gushed one fan in a letter, "but every middle-aged woman I know seems to be listening to you anyway."
Exactly how many people have made it all the way through Jason's "War and Peace" is unknown. No one has contacted Naxos and claimed to have scaled the whole mountain, and the Sunday Times critic said in her (favorable) review that she had merely sampled five hours of the performance. Even Soames has yet to finish the entire production, though he says he's working on it.
"I went on holiday to Australia recently and I spent a lot of time with Tolstoy clamped on my ears," he says. "My wife said, 'Damn "War and Peace," come and talk to me.'"
The first 25 CDs comprise Volume 1: £31.88.
Volume 2 has 26 CDs: £31.88.
Or you can download the whole thing to your iPod.
Downloading Volume 1 runs £52.50.
The Volume 2 download is likewise £52.50.
O-Ring Digi Watch
By Phillippe Starck for Fossil.
White (above), Black or Grey: $110.
[via Suzanne D'Amato and the Washington Post]
February 11, 2007 at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
'Coolest movie poster ever'
[via Mister Ian's Weblog from Kuwait and Mental Floss]
Angle-Izer Instant Template
The Easiest Way to Transfer and Measure Angles
Finally, a quick, precise way to measure angles without having to construct a special template.
Just set the Angle-izer Instant Template in place, slide its four arms to conform to your project’s angles, then tighten the thumbscrews.
Perfect for laying tile or flooring, or fitting countertops to corners.
Includes CD-ROM for your Windows computer with project calculator for cutting parts to fit arches or circular patterns (perfect for cutting pavers to fit curving walkways, etc.).
Constructed of rugged glass-filled nylon plastic.
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It was a coincidence that Mayor Martin J. Walsh picked Friday to fulfill a promise to attend a prayer service at New England’s largest mosque, but the symbolism of the timing was not lost on the mayor or the thousand worshipers seated elbow-to-elbow on the carpeting.
With coordinated anti-Islam rallies planned elsewhere this weekend, Walsh joined leaders of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center in distancing Boston from the so-called Global Rally for Humanity.
“There’s a lot of demonstrations going on around the world and in the United States, but it is important for all of you to understand that your city supports you,” Walsh said, as applause filled the sunlit sanctuary.
A call came up in Arabic from a corner of the room: “Takbir!” — Arabic for “praise God.”
“Allahu Akbar!” the crowd replied. “God is greatest.”
“We in Boston stand together,” said Walsh, clad in a suit, tie, and navy-and-turquoise dress socks, his cap-toe dress shoes respectfully stashed in the corner.
He had visited as a candidate in 2013, participating in a forum organized by the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, and met the new imam, Shaykh Yasir F. Fahmy , at a recent at a recent school opening. When Walsh’s senior public safety adviser, Daniel Mulhern, addressed the congregation a few months ago, he promised he would return with the mayor soon.
They had picked this particular Friday — the Muslim sabbath, when the midday prayer and sermon at the mosque can draw 1,400 people — long before they knew about the rallies planned for the weekend.
“It’s pretty impressive and speaks to the values of Boston that on a day when there are anti-Muslim rallies happening across America, that today we have our mayor coming to us,” said Yusufi Vali the center’s executive director, introducing Walsh.
The mayor met privately with leaders of the mosque and community center, then slipped into a corner of the sanctuary behind most of the worshipers, listening to the prayers and Fahmy's 20-minute sermon.
The imam spoke about the importance of serving others — shoveling neighbors’ driveways, giving to charity, helping those in need stand on their own two feet — in “what it means to be a good Muslim,” in addition to praying, fasting, and making a pilgrimage to Mecca.
He also addressed the Islamophobic rallies. “I look at these people and I feel bad for them, because they’re ignorant. They have an idea of Islam that is misinformed,” he said. “The duty of the Muslim community is to really become the prophetic, merciful presence in society.”
When Walsh stepped forward, he greeted the congregants with “As-salaam Alaikim” — “peace to you” — and said he was proud of their new young leadership. Vali, a Princeton-educated former political and community organizer, and Fahmy, a New Jersey native who worked in finance before studying Islam at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, are both in their early 30s.
Mayor Walsh spoke to worshipers at the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center.John Tlumacki/Globe Staff
Walsh said it was his first Islamic prayer service but that it reminded him of the Catholic Mass he attended regularly with his mother as a child, and he spoke of the importance of interfaith understanding. “Boston is really a city that’s been built on diversity,” he said.
After listening for 40 minutes and speaking for three, it took Walsh 27 minutes to make his way through the crowd, with corner-store clerks and crisply dressed consultants, wide-eyed children and beaming grandmothers pressing in close for handshakes, hugs, and selfies.
“Thank you, Mr. Mayor!” they called. “Mayor Walsh, here! . . . Once more if you don’t mind!”
Abdulai Wanu, a 26-year-old security guard with dreams of becoming a pilot, stood in front of the pack, raising his phone to capture not just the mayor and himself but the entire fulsome scene.
“It’s really meaningful,” said Wanu, who moved to Boston nine years ago from Sierra Leone, and never expected to meet his mayor at the mosque. “I appreciate the fact that he came and was going to be a part of us, and see what we do. He’s always welcome.”
A woman in a pink head scarf told the mayor she had just moved from New York and enjoyed hearing him on the radio. “Welcome to Boston,” he said, extending a hand.
Eventually, Walsh reached the wall of shoes, then banked toward the door. As the mayor’s retinue tried to usher him to his SUV, he paused for one more selfie with curly haired Rayan Haoud, a 7-year-old student at the center’s Islamic elementary school, and then another with Rayan's mother, Laila Alaoui.
“It’s a big thing that he’s here,” said Alaoui, a Morocco native who lives in Watertown, as Walsh headed out. “It’s a really powerful statement for Boston.”
Eric Moskowitz can be reached at eric.moskowitz@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeMoskowitz.
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Shakib Khan Net Worth
How much is Shakib Khan Worth?
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Shakib Khan net worth:
Shakib Khan net worth: Shakib Khan is a Bangladeshi actor who has a net worth of $20 million. Shakib Khan was born in Narayanganj, Dhaka, Bangladesh. He has become one of the most successful Bangladeshi actors of all time after making his debut in 1999. Khan has won eight Meril Prothom Alo Awards and has won National Film Awards for Best Actor for the movies Bhalobaslei Ghor Bandha Jay Na in 2010, Khodar Pore Ma in 2012, and Aro Bhalobashbo Tomay in 2015. Khan is also a producer who worked on the movie Hero: The Superstar with his own company SK films which was launched in 2014. He became the president of the Film Artist Association in 2011 and served until 2015. Shakib Khan married actress Apu Biswas in 2008 although their marriage was kept a secret until 2017 after having a son in 2016. He has been a brand ambassador for Asian Duplex Town and Pran Power Energy drink.
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Shakib Khan
Net Worth: $20 Million
Date of Birth: Mar 28, 1983 (36 years old)
Height: 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m)
Nationality: Bangladesh
All net worths are calculated through the combination of a robust methodology and a proprietary algorithm. The results are fact checked and confirmed by a team of editors and industry insiders. We work diligently to ensure that our numbers are the most accurate celebrity net worth data you will find anywhere on the internet.
Want To Become A Billionaire? All You Need To Do Is Create An Energy Drink.
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Ky Mani Marley Net Worth 2020, Bio, Age, Height
Ky-Mani Marley is the son of a famous reggae artist Bob Marley and is a skilled musician and a singer just like his father.
Other than music Ky-Mani found his other huge love in acting so he starred in several Jamaican movies, often in lead roles.
He was born as Ky-Mani Marley on February 26, 1976, in the capital of Trelawny parish called Falmouth, located in the country of Jamaica.
The town lays on the north coast of Montego Bay and is still very popular for his look at the Georgian town.
Although his father was a legendary Bob Marley, Ky-Mani (whose name is translated to Adventurous Traveler) didn’t grow up in such good conditions like most of his siblings did.
He grew up in a poor environment, in a house with no bathroom. His mum is Anita Belnavis, a female table tennis champ who had a short romance with Bob Marley.
When his mother realized that there is no future for her and her son in Jamaica, she decided to relocate to the US, to the city of Miami.
She was hoping that she could start living her American dream there but the family ended up living in a ghetto, struggling to provide necessary stuff like food.
The ghetto was known for its drug-related crimes and Ky-Mani learned all about violence from his early teen years.
He started selling drugs to provide for the family while he was still in school because he was never accepted by his other family and couldn’t get any heritage from his father.
It was because he was born to Bob Marley as an illegitimate son, outside of marriage with Rita. That is why he couldn’t get a part of the Marley estate.
While he was a teenager he was mainly focused on sports since his mother was a table tennis champion but afterward he discovered that he also has music talent and his mother encouraged him in his dreams of becoming a musician.
He started playing the guitar and his mother began playing music lessons for him. When he was in high school he played the trumpet as a member of the school’s band.
He juggled football and soccer together with music but the music was too important for him. He also tried himself as a DJ.
He started spending time in music studios and started experimenting with making tracks. He started spending more time with his three brothers: Julian, Stephen, and Damian.
They all have Bob Marley as a father but their mothers were different.
In 1995 Ky-Mani signed to Shang Records label who recognized his talent. This record label liked his vibe and decided to invest their time and money.
He released his debut album in the summer of 1996 and it was named Like Father Like Son. It was completely produced by David Lee.
On this album, he even made some cover versions of his father’s songs. It was recorded in the UK and contained 22 singles.
The album gained positive reviews and in 1997 he joined Eddy Grant on his hit “Electric Avenue”.
When the Midem trade show came to Miami for the first time he was one of the performers there.
After his reputation grew a lot of record houses got interested in signing him to their label.
Ultimately, he decided to sign with Gee Street & V2 Records.
He became good friends with the group P.M.Dawn and collaborated with them on a song named “Gotta Be Mobin’ On Up”.
In 2000, after three years of hiatus, he released his 2nd studio album named “The Journey”. It was co-produced by Ky-Mani himself.
This album received very nice critics, especially since he had a lot of his own songs on this album.
His song “Dear Dad” was one of the most listened songs from the album because its lyrics were taken from Ky-mani’s letter which he had written as a child when his father Bob Marley died.
His new album, the 3rd studio album, was named Many More Roads and it was released in 2001. This album was extremely popular and praised by the fans.
It was released in 2001 by Artists Only record label and was nominated for the Grammy Award in the category of the Best Reggae Album.
The winner of this category was his brother Damian.
This album was followed by a very successful tour.
2004 brought his new studio album called “Milestone”. It was released by Big Cat record label “Radio” was his fifth studio album which came out in 2007 and it went straight up to the top of Billboard Reggae Chart. The album was made under a strong influence of hip hop.
It was produced by several producers and his brother Stephen Marley was one of them. It was released by Vox Music Group.
His album in 2015 was named Maestro and it was released through Konfrontation Muzik.
His album from 2016 was released by Kingstone Record and was named Conversations. It was made in collaboration with a German-born musician gentleman.
As for his guest appearances he made many of them with a lot of known artists. For example, he appeared on Shaggy’s single “Thank You Lord” from 1997.
He also worked with Young Buck, Protoje, XXXTentacion and the latest one was with Papayo and Pitbull on the single “Yayo”.
He also had several movie roles. His first one was in a Jamaican crime movie called Shottas. He starred in it alongside Paul Campbell, Spragga Benz, and Loui Rankin.
The movie was directed by Cess Silvera. Music for the movie was made by his brother Stephen Marley and was distributed by Triumph Films.
In 2003 he had a lead role in a romantic drama movie called One Love. Catherine Anderson holds the lead female role. It debuted at Toronto Film Festival on September 2003.
In 2004 he was hired for a role in a movie named “Haven”. The film was premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and was both written and produced by Frank E. Flowers.
He appeared in the role of Mr. Cassanove, a jungle owner in an American drama movie directed by the popular Nick Cannon.
The movie is named “King of the Dancehall”, and Nick Cannon and Whoopi Goldberg have the lead roles in it.
He has a son named KJ Marley with whom he is very close. He takes him touring with him and he was even on the stage with him.
Ky-Mani never revealed the name of his ex-girlfriend and his son’s mother but he takes good care of both of them.
He grew up without his father and it was very hard for him so he doesn’t want his son to experience the same shame and grief.
Although a lot of people think that they are in some kind of fight, especially after he released his book, they are all communicating with each other, some less, some more.
As for his looks, he is loyal to the Rastafarian look which includes dreadlocks and a beard.
He is close to his half-brothers and half-sisters and often collaborates with them musically
As for his personal life, it was always complicated.
Bob Marley has 10 children and five of them are born illegitimately.
Since his father Bob Marley died from cancer in 1981 and was only 36 years old at that time, most of his children didn’t know him.
Bob had a wife Rita with whom he had three children and adopted two more but Rita never admitted them and when Bob died she completely ignored all of his illegitimate children.
Ky-Mani released his autobiographic book in 2010 titled “Dear Dad” and he also has a song with the same name.
He speaks about his struggling in childhood when his mother smuggled marijuana across the states and Ky-Mani and his uncle sold it to have money for everyday life.
It was hard for him to see how his brothers spend a lot of money on clothes and cars and led a lavish lifestyle while he struggled to have the basic stuff.
He stated in the book that he received a certain sum of money from his father’s family when he turned 18 but he was dissatisfied with the amount.
The book brought controversy on Rita, Bob Marley’s wife, who tried to deny financial support to all of Marley’s illegitimate children.
He is involved in a lot of youth programs in Jamaica in which he learns kids about computers and other hobbies that can keep them away from crime.
He has created his own foundation called Love Over All, a non-profit organization focused on helping the community, especially children.
His organization started its collaboration with another organization Children For Change and is focused on building a community center in his hometown Falmouth.
His estimated net worth is $6 million and a part of it was earned through his bestselling book.
Full name: Ky-Mani Marley
Date of birth: February 26, 1976
Birthplace: Falmouth, Trelawny, Jamaica
Profession: singer, songwriter, musician, author
Height: 1,78 m
Net Worth: $6 million
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College of Forest Resources Directory
Heather Alexander
Phone: 662-325-5809 Email: heather.alexander@msstate.edu
Kropp, H., M. Loranty, S. Natali, A. Kholodov, H. D. Alexander, N. Zimov, M. Mack, S. Spawn. 2019. Tree density influences ecohydrological drivers of plant-water relations in a larch boreal forest in Siberia. Ecohydrology 12(7):e2132. Download
Siegert, C. M., N. Drotar, H. D. Alexander. 2019. Spatial and temporal variability of throughfall among oak and co-occurring non-oak tree species in an upland hardwood forest. Geoscience 9(10):405. Download
Watson, P., H. D. Alexander. 2019. Effects of shrub encroachment and removal on grassland recovery in South Texas Coastal Prairies. Rangeland Ecology and Management 72:275-282. Download
Bjorkman, A. D., I. H. Myers-Smith, S. C. Elmendorf, S. Normand, N. Rüger, P. S. A. Beck, A. Blach-Overgaard, D. Blok, J. H. C. Cornelissen, B. C. Forbes, D. Georges, S. J. Goetz, K. C. Guay, G. H. R. Henry, J. HilleRisLambers, R. D. Hollister, D. N. Karger, J. Kattge, P. Manning, J. S. Prevéy, C. Rixen, G. Schaepman-Strub, H. J. D. Thomas, M. Vellend, M. Wilmking, S. Wipf, M. Carbognani, L. Hermanutz, E. Lévesque, U. Molau, A. Petraglia, N. A. Soudzilovskaia, M. J. Spasojevic, M. Tomaselli, T. Vowles, J. M. Alatalo, H. D. Alexander, A. Anadon-Rosell, S. Angers-Blondin, M. te Beest, L. Berner, R. G. Björk, A. Buchwal, A. Buras, K. Christie, E. J. Cooper, S. Dullinger, B. Elberling, A. Eskelinen, E. R. Frei, O. Grau, P. Grogan, M. Hallinger, K. A. Harper, M. M. P. D. Heijmans, J. Hudson, K. Hülber, M. Iturrate-Garcia, C. M. Iversen, F. Jaroszynska, J. F. Johnstone, R. H. Jørgensen, E. Kaarlejärvi, R. Klady, S. Kuleza, A. Kulonen, L. J. Lamarque, T. Lantz, C. J. Little, J. D. M. Speed, A. Michelsen, A. Milbau, J. Nabe-Nielsen, S. S. Nielsen, J. M. Ninot, S. F. Oberbauer, J. Olofsson, V. G. Onipchenko, S. B. Rumpf, P. Semenchuk, R. Shetti, L. S. Collier, L. E. Street, K. N. Suding, K. D. Tape, A. Trant, U. A. Treier, J. Tremblay, M. Tremblay, S. Venn, S. Weijers, T. Zamin, N. Boulanger-Lapointe, W. A. Gould, D. S. Hik, A. Hofgaard, I. S. Jónsdóttir, J. Jorgenson, J. Klein, B. Magnusson, C. Tweedie, P. A. Wookey, M. Bahn, B. Blonder, P. M. van Bodegom, B. Bond-Lamberty, G. Campetella, B. E. L. Cerabolini, F. S. Chapin III, W. K. Cornwell, J. Craine, M. Dainese, F. T. de Vries, S. Díaz, B. J. Enquist, W. Green, R. Milla, Ü. Niinemets, Y. Onoda, J. C. Ordoñez, W. A. Ozinga, J. Penuelas, H. Poorter, P. Poschlod, P. B. Reich, B. Sandel, B. Schamp, S. Sheremetev, E. Weiher. 2018. Plant functional trait change across a warming tundra biome. Nature 562:57-62. Download
Alexander, H. D., S. Natali, M. Loranty, M. C. Mack, S. Ludwig, S. Davydov, N. Zimov. 2018. Soil burn severity impacts on larch recruitment on permafrost soils of far northeastern Siberia. Forest Ecology and Management 417-144-153. Download
Bjorkman, A. D., I. H. Myers-Smith, S. C. Elmendorf, S. Normand, H. J. D. Thomas, J. M. Alatalo, H. Alexander, A. Anadon-Rosell, S. Angers-Blondin, Y. Bai, G. Baruah, M. te Beest, L. Berner, R. G. Björk, D. Blok, H. Bruelheide, A. Buchwal, A. Buras, M. Carbognani, K. Christie, L. S. Collier, E. J. Cooper, J. H. C. Cornelissen, K. J. M. Dickinson, S. Dullinger, B. Elberling, A. Eskelinen, B. C. Forbes, E. R. Frei, M. Iturrate-Garcia, M. K. Good, O. Grau, P. Green, M. Greve, P. Grogan, S. Haider, T. Hájek, M. Hallinger, K. Happonen, K. A. Harper, M. M. P. D. Heijmans, G. H. R. Henry, L. Hermanutz, R. E. Hewitt, R. D. Hollister, J. Hudson, K. Hülber, C. M. Iversen, F. Jaroszynska, B. Jiménez-Alfaro, J. Johnstone, R. H. Jorgensen, E. Kaarlejärvi, R. Klady, J. Klimešová, A. Korsten, S. Kuleza, A. Kulonen, L. J. Lamarque, T. Lantz, A. Lavalle, J. J. Lembrechts, E. Lévesque, C. J. Little, M. Luoto, P. Macek, M. C. Mack, R. Mathakutha, A. Michelsen, A. Milbau, U. Molau, J. W. Morgan, M. A. Mörsdorf, J. Nabe-Nielsen, S. S. Nielsen, J. M. Ninot, S. F. Oberbauer, J. Olofsson, V. G. Onipchenko, A. Petraglia, C. Pickering, J. S. Prevéy, C. Rixen, S. B. Rumpf, G. Schaepman-Strub, P. Semenchuk, R. Shetti, N. A. Soudzilovskaia, M. J. Spasojevic, J. D. M. Speed, L. E. Street, K. Suding, K. D. Tape, M. Tomaselli, A. Trant, U. A. Treier, J. Tremblay, M. Tremblay, S. Venn, A. Virkkala, T. Vowles, S. Weijers, M. Wilmking, S. Wipf, T. Zamin. 2018. Tundra Trait Team: A database of plant traits spanning the tundra biome. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Download
Djukic, I., S. Kepfer-Rojas, I. K. Schmidt, K. S. Larsen, C. Beier, B. Berg, K. Verheyen, Tea Composition Team. 2018. Early stage litter decomposition across biomes. Science of the Total Environment 628-629:1369-1394. Download
Loranty, M. M., H. Kropp, S. M. Natali, H. D. Alexander, M. C. Mack, N. Zimov, S. P. Davydov. 2018. Vegetation indices do not capture forest cover variation in upland Siberian larch forests. Remote Sensing 10:1686. Download
Loranty, M. M., L. T. Berner, E. Taber, H. Kropp, S. M. Natali, H. D. Alexander, S. P. Davydov. 2018. Understory vegetation controls on active layer dynamics and carbon dioxide fluxes in open-canopy Siberian larch forests. PLoS ONE 13(3):e0194014. Download
Ludwig, S., H. D. Alexander, K. Kielland, P. Mann, S. M. Natali, R. Ruess. 2018. Fire severity effects on soil carbon and nutrients and microbial activities in a Siberian larch forest. Global Change Biology. Download
Alexander, H. D., M. C. Mack. 2017. Gap regeneration within mature deciduous forests of Interior Alaska: implications for future forest successional dynamics. Forest Ecology and Management 396(2017): 35-43. Download
Arthur, M. A., B. A. Blankenship, A. Schörgendorfer, H. D. Alexander. 2017. Alterations to the fuel bed after single and repeated prescribed fires in an Appalachian hardwood forest. Forest Ecology and Management 403:126-136. Download
Jean, M., J. Johnstone, M. Mack, H.D. Alexander. 2017. Patterns of bryophyte succession in a 160 year chronosequence in deciduous and coniferous forests of boreal Alaska. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 47(8):1021-1032. Download
Kropp, H., M. Loranty, H. D. Alexander, L. Berner, S. Natali, S. Spawn. 2017. Hydrologic suppression of transpiration and stomatal conductance in a Siberian Arctic boreal forest. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences 122: 487-497. Download
Webb, E. E., K. Heard, S. Natali, A. Bunn, H. D. Alexander, L. Berner, A. Kholodov, M. Loranty, J. Schade, V. Spektor, N. Zimov. 2017. Variability in above and belowground carbon stocks in a Siberian larch watershed. Biogeosciences 14:4270-4294. Download
Abbott, B.W., J. B. Jones, E. A. G. Schuur, F. S. Chapin III, W. B. Bowden, M. S. Bret-Harte, H. E. Epstein, M. D. Flannigan, T. K. Harms, T. N. Hollingsworth, M. C. Mack, A. D. McGuire, S. M. Natali, A. V. Rocha, S. E. Tank, M. R. Turetsky, J. E. Vonk, K. P. Wickland, G. R. Aiken, H. D. Alexander, etal. 2016. Biomass offsets little or none of permafrost carbon release from soils, streams, and wildfire: an expert assessment. Environmental Research Letters 11(3): 1-13. Download
Alexander, H. D. and Mack, M. C. 2016. A canopy shift in interior Alaskan boreal forests: consequences for above and belowground carbon and nitrogen pools during post fire succession. Ecosystems 19(1):98-114. Download
Alexander, H. D., Moczygemba, J., and Dick, K. 2016. Growth and survival of thornscrub forest seedlings in response to restoration strategies aimed at alleviating abiotic and biotic stressors. Journal of Arid Environments 124: 180-188. Download
Dick, K., H. D. Alexander, J. D. Moczygemba. 2016. Use of shelter tubes, grass-specific herbicide, and herbivore exclosures to reduce stressors and improve restoration of semi-arid thornscrub forests. Restoration Ecology 24(6):785-793. Download
Loranty, M., W. Liberman-Cribbin, L. T. Berner, H. D. Alexander, S. J. Goetz, A. L. Kholodov, S. N. Natali. 2016. Spatial variation in vegetation productivity trends, fire distrubance, and soil carbon acros arctic-boreal permafrost ecosystems. Environmental Research Letters 11(9):1-14. Download
Arthur, M. A., Blankenship, B.A., Schorgendorfer, A., Carmean, G., Loftis, D. L., and Alexander, H. D., 2015. Stand structure and tree health following repeated prescribed fire in an Appalachian hardwood forest. Forest Ecology and Management 340: 46-61. Download
Berner, L. T., H.D. Alexander, M.M. Loranty, P. Ganzlin, M.C. Mack, S.J. Goetz. 2015. Biomass allometry for alder, dwarf birch, and willow in boreal forest and tundra ecosystems of northeastern Siberia and northern Alaska. Forest Ecology and Management 337:110-118. Download
Broderick, D.E., K.E. Frey, J. Rogan, H.D. Alexander. 2015. Estimating belowground carbon stocks in a permafrost watershed in Northeast Siberia by linking field measurements to Landsat – 5 TM and Worldview – 2 data. GIS and Remote Sensing 52(2):1-25.
Lei, J., B.K. Wylie, D.R. Nossov, B. Peterson, H.D. Alexander, M.C. Mack, J. Rover, M.P. Waldrop, J.W. McFarland, X. Chen, N.J. Pastick. 2015. Spatially explicit estimation of aboveground boreal forest biomass in the Yukon River Basin, Alaska. International Journal of Remote Sensing 36(4):939-953. Download
Alexander, H. D., M. A. Arthur. 2014. Increasing red maple leaf litter alters decomposition rates and nitrogen cycling in historically oak – dominated forests of the eastern U.S. Ecosystems 17:1371-1383. Download
McLauchlan, K.K., P.E. Higuera, D.G. Gavin, S.P. Perakis, M.M. Mack, H.D. Alexander, J. Battles, F. Biondi, B. Buma, D. Colombaroli, S. Enders, D.R. Engstrom, F.S. Hu, J. Marlon, J. Marshall, M. McGlone, J. Morris, L. Nave, B. Shuman, E. Smithwick, D. Urrego, D. Wardle, C. Williams, J.J. Williams. 2014. Reconstructing disturbances and their biogeochemical consequences over multiple timescales. Bioscience 64(2):105-116.
Alexander, H. D., M.C. Mack, S. Goetz, P.S.A. Beck, F. Belshe. 2012. Implications of increased deciduous cover on stand structure and aboveground carbon pools of Alaskan boreal forests. Ecosphere 3(5):45.
Alexander, H. D., M.C. Mack, S. Goetz, P.S.A. Beck, M. Loranty, K. Earl, S. Zimov, S. Davydov, C.C. Thompson. 2012. Carbon accumulation patterns during post– fire succession in Cajander larch (Larix cajanderi) forests of Siberia. Ecosystems 15(7): 1065-1082. Download
Arthur, M. A., H.D. Alexander, D. Dey, C.J. Schweitzer, D.L. Loftis. 2012. Refining the oak – fire hypothesis for management of oak – dominated forests of the eastern United States. Journal of Forestry 110(5): 257-266.
Berner, L. T., P.S.A. Beck, M.M. Loranty, H.D. Alexander, M.C. Mack, S.J. Goetz. 2012. Cajander larch (Larix cajanderi) biomass distribution, fire regime and post – fire recovery in northeastern Siberia. Biogeosciences 9: 3943-3959.
Beck, P. S. A.,S. Goetz, M.C. Mack, H.D. Alexander, J. Yufang, J.T. Randerson, M. Loranty. 2011. The impacts and implications of an intensifying fire regime on boreal forest composition and albedo. Global Change Biology 17: 285-2866.
Alexander, H. D., M. A. Arthur. 2010. Implications of a predicted shift from upland oaks to red maple on forest hydrology and nutrient availability. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 40(4): 716-726.
Alexander, H. D., M. A. Arthur. 2009. Foliar morphology and chemistry of upland oaks, red maple, and sassafras seedlings in response to single and repeated prescribed fires. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 39: 740-754.
Alexander, H. D., M. A. Arthur, D. L. Loftis, S. R. Green. 2008. Survival and growth of upland oak and co – occurring competitor seedlings following single and repeated prescribed fires. Forest Ecology and Management 256: 1021-1030.
Forbes, M., H. D. Alexander, K. H. Dunton. 2008. The effects of pulsed riverine versus non – pulsed wastewater inputs of freshwater on plant community structure in a semi – arid salt marsh. Wetlands 28(4): 984-994.
Alexander, H. D., K. H. Dunton. 2006. Wastewater effluent as an alternative freshwater source in a hypersaline salt marsh: Impacts on salinity, inorganic nitrogen, and emergent vegetation. Journal of Coastal Research 22(2): 377-392.
Alexander, H. D., K. H. Dunton. 2002. Freshwater inundation effects on emergent vegetation of a hypersaline salt marsh. Estuaries 25(6B): 1426-1435.
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Ctrl-Alt-Stall: India's engineers struggle for work as jobs crisis worsens
Job seekers line up for interviews at a job fair in Chinchwad, India. (Photo: REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui)
12 Mar 2019 03:43PM (Updated: 12 Mar 2019 03:43PM )
CHINCHWAD, India: Santosh Gurav gained a bachelor's degree in technology from a mid-tier college in western India last year, specialising in electrical engineering and hoping to land a job in industrial automation.
Six months on, the 27-year-old repairs mixer-grinders, table fans and other household appliances at a cramped shop in the western city of Pune. On better days, he picks up broken LED lights from scrap dealers, fixes them, then sells them. He earns about US$50 a month, just enough to cover the rent for the room he shares with two others as his home.
"I haven't even started repaying my education loan," said Gurav, referring to the nearly US$4,000 he'd borrowed for his undergraduate study.
Santosh Gurav, a 27-year-old Bachelor of Technology who has been unemployed for six months poses during a job fair in Chinchwad
He is one of hundreds of thousands of engineers - studying everything from computer code to civil engineering - that India's education system churns out each year, many with large loans and little prospect of finding a job in their field.
They highlight Prime Minister Narendra Modi's difficulty in fulfilling a promise he made weeks after coming to power in 2014: creating millions of jobs by boosting manufacturing under a flagship 'Make in India' project launched with much fanfare.
"Come, Make in India, we will say to the world, from electrical to electronics," Modi said in his maiden Independence Day speech as prime minister, pledging to create up to 100 million new jobs by 2022.
NO ECHOES OF CHINA BOOM
Four years on, the programme's impact on job creation is unclear and growth in the manufacturing sector has been sluggish, partly due to a lack of land and labour reform.
India's unemployment rate rose to 7.2 per cent last month, up from 5.9 per cent in February 2018, according to data compiled by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) think tank. The figures are more recent than government data and many economists regard them as more credible.
The data, which is an estimate based on household surveys, shows 31.2 million people were actively looking for jobs in February this year, said Mahesh Vyas, the CMIE managing director. It did not have a breakup for engineering or technology graduates.
With more than half of India's population under 25 years of age, critics say the votes of jobless youth could hurt Modi's chances of securing a second term in the upcoming general election to be held in April-May.
The increasing use of automation in industry, the massive number of young Indians coming onto the job market, and the regulatory hurdles that companies still face if they want to set up shop in India, are all big issues for those without work.
The manufacturing boom that helped China in the past 40 years will not wash up on India's shores. Companies can no longer afford to just rely on cheap labour: they need skilled labour and better infrastructure to drive technological innovations and increase productivity.
Employers often complain about the lack of skilled engineering and technology graduates, said Varun Aggarwal, an electrical engineer and co-founder of the skills assessment firm Aspiring Minds. Its surveys show over 80 per cent of the engineers India produces are not employable. The employability has not improved in seven years, Aggarwal said.
"The numbers have just not budged," he said. "Many can't even write basic code."
"We need to start there, at the beginning of the education system," said Aggarwal.
The IT industry had long been seen as a gateway to the middle class in India, but a move to robotics and artificial intelligence has replaced some positions. The business process outsourcing industry – seen as a stable provider of "offshore" jobs – added the least number of employees in seven years in 2017-18 (April-March), according to the trade body Nasscom.
LACK ENGLISH SKILLS
At a recent job fair organised by a college in the town of Chinchwad in western India, Gurav was among hundreds queued up to apply, including dozens of engineers, even though most companies were hiring for marketing and finance positions.
Many came from rural areas where they studied in regional languages, and lacked strong English skills – another gap that recruiters say India's education system needs to address.
Job seekers fill up forms as others line up for registration during a job fair in Chinchwad, India. (Photo: REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui)
Ankush Karwade, 22, who travelled 80 miles (130km) to reach the fair, said his father was a farmer and the family couldn't fund him to earn an undergraduate degree. He did a shorter and cheaper diploma course in engineering.
"I watch some English movies and read the newspapers to improve, but most employers want graduates," he said. "They (also) want English speaking skills, which I don’t have."
Gayatri, a 24-year-old woman who goes by one name, gained a master's degree in engineering four months ago, under pressure from her parents. She said she had wanted to continue her education in Indian classical music.
"My father wanted me to do engineering, so I did it. Now there are no jobs," she said. A company at the fair offered her a customer service position that would pay about US$140 a month.
"Can you believe it?" she said. "I didn't get this degree to sit at a call centre."
Jobless engineers are not a new problem and "miniscule" in comparison to the millions of farmers dissatisfied over weak crop prices, said Himanshu, an associate professor of economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University who also uses one name.
Still, they represent a lot of untapped potential.
Fixing household appliances is not what Gurav expected to do as a graduate. "I could find work at a call centre, but it's not what I want to do," he said. He may soon be forced to reconsider though as his father is due to retire next year and the family will need the money.
For now, Gurav plans to continue to do the repairwork – but is too ashamed to tell his friends about it, he said, and refused to be photographed at the shop.
"If people see me working there they might think I'm unskilled. But I have skills. I am passionate about this field."
Source: Reuters/nh
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Autopsy of an Unwinnable War
William C. Haponski
A compelling and informed narrative of the war in Vietnam 1945-75, seeking to answer why America "lost" the war in Vietnam.
Jerry J. Burcham, Dave R. Palmer
20 photographs, 6 maps
Since the fall of Saigon in 1975 there have been many books published on why (and whether) America lost the war in Vietnam. The senior American commander in charge of prosecuting the war during its buildup and peak of fighting, Admiral U.S.G. Sharp, concluded his memoir, saying: “The real tragedy of Vietnam is that this war was not won by the other side, by Hanoi or Moscow or Peiping. It was lost in Washington, D. C.” This remains an all too common belief. The stark facts, though, are that the Vietnam War was lost before the first American shot was fired. In fact, it was lost before the first French Expeditionary Corps shot, almost two decades earlier, and was finally lost when the South Vietnamese fought partly, then entirely, on their own.
Offering an informed and nuanced narrative of the entire 30-year war in Vietnam, this book seeks to explain why. It is written by a combatant not only in six violent, large battles and many smaller firefights, but a leader with a full range of pacification duties, a commander who lost 43 wonderful young men killed and many more wounded, men who were doing what their country asked of them. This story is the result of a quest for answers by one who, after decades of wondering what it was about – what was it all about? – turned to a years-long search of French, American, and Vietnamese sources. It is a story of success on the one hand, defeat on the other, and the ingredients of both, inspirational or sordid as they may be.
It is a story mostly lived and revealed by the people inside Vietnam who were directly involved in the war: from leaders in high positions, down to the jungle boots and sandals level of the fighters, and among the Vietnamese people who were living the war. Because of what was happening inside Vietnam itself, no matter what policies and directives came out of Paris or Washington, or the influences in Moscow or Beijing, it is about a Vietnamese idea which would eventually triumph over bullets.
Bill Haponski is a 1956 graduate of West Point, commissioned in the armor branch. He served in a tank battalion in Europe during the Cold War. In 1967 he received a doctorate in English language and literature from Cornell University while also teaching full-time at West Point.Arriving in Vietnam in 1968 as a lieutenant colonel, he first was the senior staff officer in 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, then served as commander of the Task Force 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry, 1st Infantry Division. The task force was engaged in everything from pacification to contacts with small enemy units to fierce day-and-night battles against battalions and a regiment. Down in the jungle, night and day, he directed the battles in close combat along with his men.After Vietnam he returned to West Point and became Professor of Military Studies, first at University of Vermont, then at Fordham University. After retiring from the Army, he held further academic positions and wrote several books.
Foreword by LtGen Dave R. Palmer
Part One: The French War - The Idea, and Bullets
Part Two: The American War - Many More Bullets
Part Three: The Vietnamese War - The Result
Selective Bibliography
Unlike the breast-beating mea culpas of many Vietnam accounts, the author rationally dissects the strategies and mindsets on both sides to try to figure where, and how, the American military went wrong. Haponski asserts that the war’s fate was settled centuries before this nation got involved, and that no amount of second-guessing was likely to have changed the outcome.
- New York Journal of Books
"Followers of Vietnam War history would do well to consult Autopsy of an Unwinnable War above most others: its ability to synthesize the extent of political, social, military, and personal experience for a clearer, bigger picture of why Vietnam was an impossible conflict all along makes it a winning, engrossing study that should be on the shelves of any definitive Vietnam War collection."
- Midwest Book Review
“This highly researched book provides a detailed look at the history of the Vietnamese culture. After reading this you'll discover why the author calls this an "unwinnable war". He continues on describing his own experiences in Vietnam. The maps provided enable the reader to track his own adventures to various areas.”
- Chief Master Sgt. (Ret.) John J. Charlton
“A book of this magnitude should offer guidance for the future—at least a warning to wake up members of Congress. Otherwise, America could become entangled in another misdirected war, one lasting perhaps as long as nineteen years. Autopsy of an Unwinnable War: Vietnam provides a challenging thesis that stirs the mind.”
- The VVA Veteran
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The Red Army's Do-it-Yourself, Nazi-Bashing Guerrilla Warfare Manual
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The Germans in Flanders 1914 – 1915
David Bilton
The book follows in photographs, captions and text the German Army's presence in Flanders from its arrival in September 1914 until the summer of 1916. It looks at the Kaiser's Army's battles with the French, Belgians and British, concentrating mostly on the latter and the battles for Ypres.
250 b/w photos
The book follows in photographs, captions and text the German Army’s presence in Flanders from its arrival in September 1914 until the summer of 1916.
It looks at the Kaiser’s Army’s battles with the French, Belgians and British, concentrating mostly on the latter and the battles for Ypres (1st Ypres – 1914 and 2nd Ypres – 1915 and the gas attacks). The book is arranged in four sections; detailed text; around 50.000 photos (that are interspersed into the text with captions); a chronological order of events in Flanders and a section on the German divisions that fought there. Where relevant material from the German home front is included.
Each phase and aspect of the period is described from the German point of view using primary and secondary sources from both Germany and Britain. The illustrations provide an illustrative background in both a specific and general form, highlighting life in the front-line as well as rear areas. Most of the illustrations have never been published. As well as illustrating German troops in the area it shows how the war changed the towns and villages.
A second campaign volume covering the period 1916 – 1918 will follow.
David Bilton is a retired teacher who spends his time looking after his family, working as a University lecturer and researching the Great War. He is the prolific author of numerous books about the British Army, the Home Front and the German Army. His first book, The Hull Pals, became the BBC 2 series The Trench. Since he started writing he has contributed to many television and radio programmes. His interest in the Great War was ignited by his grandfather's refusal to talk about his experiences in Gallipoli and on the Western Front.
The Germans in Flanders 1914 1915 Reviews
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Alistair Smith
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Philip Chinnery
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H. Hesketh-Prichard
Clacton-on-Sea and the Surrounding Coastline in the Great War
Ken Porter
German Machine Guns of the Second World War
Hans Seidler
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Elzéar-Alexandre Taschereau
Archbishop of Quebec and first Canadian cardinal, b. 17 February, 1820, at la Beauce, Province of Quebec ; d. 1898, at Quebec. He entered the Seminary of Quebec in 1828, and graduated after brilliant studies in 1836. While pursuing further studies in Rome he was on the point of joining the Benedictines, owing to his relations with Dom Guéranger . He reconsidered his decision, however, and returned to Quebec, was ordained priest at La Beauce, 10 Sept., 1842, and thenceforth devoted himself to the work of the seminary. He was successively occupied as disciplinarian and professor, and as member of the seminary council was one of the founders of Laval University in 1852. In 1854 he again studied in Rome, residing at the French Seminary, where he took the degree of Doctor of Canon Law in 1856. He was superior, 1860-66. In 1862 and 1864 he returned to Rome in defence of the rights of Laval, and again in 1869, as theologian of Archbishop Baillargeon during the Vatican Council. In the same year he was re-elected superior of the seminary and Rector of Laval University, and in 1871 was made Archbishop of Quebec. In 1886 he was raised to the cardinalate, taking his title from Santa Maria della Vittoria. He was particularly zealous in educational matters; the Seminary of Quebec found him at all times a devoted protector; he saved from extinction the classical college of Ste. Anne de la Pocatière, and aided the growth of new colleges at Lévis and Chicoutimi.
Mgr. Taschereau's episcopal administration was very fruitful. He founded at Quebec the Sacred HeartHospital, canonically erected forty parishes, founded thirty missions, established various devotions, procured the creation of an episcopal see at Chicoutimi, consecrated seven bishops, ordained more than three hundred priests, convened three provincial councils, and introduced the Redemptorist Order into his diocese, giving it charge of the parish of St. Patrick, and of the shrine of Ste. Anne de Beaupré. He organized the memorable celebration of the second centenary of the foundation of the see of Quebec, consecrated the new basilica of Ste. Anne de Beaupré, and performed the solemn translation of the remains of Mgr. de Laval. He was much devoted to the Holy See , to which he paid episcopal visits in 1872, 1884, and 1888. He also welcomed at Quebec on three occasions the representatives of the Holy See, Monsignori Conroy, Smeulders, and Merry del Val. In 1871 he was himself charged with the office of papal delegate in a very important matter concerning Montreal. His theological ability and literary gifts were of a high order. Though obliged to give most of his time to administrative matters, he left a manuscript "History of the Seminary of Quebec"; his published discourses, and pastoral and other letters fill six folio volumes of 900 pages each. Cardinal Taschereau was of a silent disposition, but his speech was always pointed and effective. He was venerated by his clergy and people, who admired his Christian piety and dignified bearing.
July - Ruby Deluxe Birthstone Rosary
Light Rose Crystal Bead Rosary - 5mm
Saint of the Day for Tuesday, Jan 21st, 2020
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All Saints and All Souls at seminary
By JAMES R. JOSEPH | Special to the Catholic Herald
Vestments violet and black that shine with gold and silver. Lit candle flames atop shining brass and incense rising to heaven. Prayers muttered, sung and silent. A table full of the photographs of loved ones and friends — these are the signs of the feasts of All Saints and All Souls at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood, Pa. This is the season of our yearly Forty Hours Devotion, the three days when we keep prayerful vigil in front of Our Lord in the Eucharist. It is this time of year that the church triumphant and suffering seem to pierce the thin veil that keeps them front sight, reaching out through relics, images and words to touch the lives of those of us still in the midst of this earthly travail. This is the time of year where the past truly does come alive. And I love it.
I am a convert to the Catholic faith and a passionate lover of history. I came into the church in 2013 after understanding through study that the Catholic Church is the true church. I later discerned a call to the priesthood based in part on my awe in the face of the Catholic idea of the communion of saints — that those who came before us surround us and pray for us and are not gone but are alive. Part of my duties at the seminary this year has been to help catalogue the vast collection of relics we have — a job that has only deepened my appreciation of these things. As I prayed at Forty Hours this year, perhaps unsurprisingly, I kept coming back to one of the central insights of my conversion.
G. K. Chesterton (the writer to whom I most credit my conversion) famously commented that tradition was a “democracy of the dead.” It “refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.” He meant this to attack the prevailing mood of his time and ours, what he called chronological snobbery — that the past is worthless, and anything good must be new, forward-thinking, and of course not “outdated.” That we can be anything except like our ancestors is a modern dogma. But a Catholic can never believe this, if only because so much of the faith reminds us of the contrary. We receive the faith from our parents and grandparents, truths and traditions that span centuries, continents, and cultures and generations of saints, whose statues and relics peek out at us from every corner of our churches. The past for a Catholic is truly alive and speaks with authority.
This is an often-overlooked good of the season — it confronts us with the past, and its inhabitants simply are allowed to be people, men and women like ourselves whom we must someday join in death. We pray for them and they pray for us, before the same Eucharistic Lord who unites us all in a love that transcends both time and prejudice and calls us alike to heaven.
Joseph, who is from Our Lady of Hope Church in Potomac Falls, is in his second year of pre-theology at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood, Pa.
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Iraq Violence Calms But Green Zone Hit
March 31, 2008 / 6:34 AM / CBS/AP
Rockets fell on the Green Zone and random machine gun fire rang out in the southern city of Basra as Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr sought to rein in his militia after a week of battles that claimed about 400 lives.
The peace deal between al-Sadr and Iraqi government forces - said to have been brokered in Iran - calmed the violence Monday, but left the cleric's Mahdi Army intact and Iraq's U.S.-backed prime minister politically battered and humbled within his own Shiite power base.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had promised to crush the militias that have effectively ruled Basra for nearly three years. The U.S. military launched air strikes in the city to back the Iraqi effort.
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But the ferocious response by the Mahdi Army, including rocket fire on the U.S.-controlled Green Zone and attacks throughout the Shiite south, caught the government by surprise and sent officials scrambling for a way out of the crisis.
The confrontation enabled al-Sadr to show that he remains a powerful force capable of challenging the Iraqi government, the Americans and mainstream Shiite parties that have sought for years to marginalize him. And the outcome cast doubt on President George W. Bush's assessment that the Basra battle was "a defining moment" in the history "of a free Iraq."
With gunmen again off the streets, a round-the-clock curfew imposed in Baghdad last week was lifted at 6 a.m. Monday, except in Sadr City and two other Shiite neighborhoods. Streets of the capital buzzed with traffic and commerce.
Several rockets or mortars slammed Monday into the Green Zone, the nerve center of the American mission in Iraq. But the U.S. Embassy said there no reports of serious injuries. At least two Americans working for the U.S. government were killed in Green Zone attacks last week.
An American soldier was killed Monday by a roadside bomb in northeastern Baghdad, the U.S. military said without specifying whether the attack occurred in a Shiite or Sunni area. The military also said a U.S. soldier wounded south of Baghdad on March 23 died Sunday in Germany.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in Copenhagen, Denmark that the violence in Shiite areas had not changed American plans to withdraw more combat forces this spring.
Republican Sen. John McCain, who has linked his presidential campaign to the conduct of the war, said he was "surprised" that al-Maliki had ordered an operation in Basra rather than keeping the focus on fighting al Qaeda in Iraq in the northern city of Mosul.
Fighting in the south helped make March the deadliest month for Iraqis since last summer, according to figures compiled by The Associated Press.
At least 1,247 Iraqis, including civilians and security personnel, had been killed as of Monday, according to figures compiled from police and U.S. military reports. The figure was nearly double the tally for February and the biggest monthly toll since August, when 1,956 people died violently.
In ordering his militia to stop fighting, al-Sadr also demanded concessions from the Iraqi government, including an end to the "illegal raids and arrests" of his followers and the release of all detainees who have not been convicted of any offenses.
Sadrists in Basra complained police were still conducting raids in the area Monday night and that their followers might start carrying weapons again for self-defense.
Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh welcomed al-Sadr's decision but told reporters Monday that no political group was above the law. Al-Sadr's supporters believed the security crackdown in Basra was aimed at weakening their movement before provincial elections this fall.
U.S. and Iraqi officials insisted the operation was directed at criminals and rogue militiamen - some allegedly linked to Iran - but not against the Sadrist movement, which controls 30 of the 275 seats in the national parliament.
But well-informed Iraqi political officials said the Iranians played a key role in hammering out the peace deal, boosting the Islamic Republic's influence among the majority Shiite community. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.
According to one Shiite official, the deal was struck after hours of negotiations in the Iranian holy city of Qom involving key figures in Iraq's major Shiite parties and representatives of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
Two of the Iraqis present - Ali Adeeb and Hadi al-Amri - presented documents and photos which they claimed proved that al-Sadr's militia was receiving Iranian weapons, the official said.
Shiite-dominated Iran is believed to supply weapons, money and training to most Iraqi Shiite factions - a charge the Iranians deny.
The Iraqi officials would not elaborate on Iran's role, and efforts to contact Iraqi representatives who took part in the Qom meetings were unsuccessful.
Iran has been eager to maintain unity among Iraq's factious Shiites, believing that is the best way to ensure a pro-Iranian government in Baghdad.
"By all reports, Iran's role is not good," said Michael O'Hanlon, foreign policy expert at the Brookings Institution. "They're arming all groups. ...They want influence with everyone."
A day after al-Sadr's call, Iraqi officials sought to present his decision as a victory for the government, despite the failure of U.S.-backed Iraqi forces to dislodge Mahdi fighters from Basra strongholds.
Al-Dabbagh said security operations in Basra would continue until the city "reaches a secure and acceptable situation" where residents can live "without threats or terrorism from any side."
Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said that as of Monday, Iraqi forces had killed 210 "criminals" in Basra, arrested 155 others and seized large quantities of rockets and roadside bombs.
Nonetheless, the outcome of the Basra crisis dealt a blow to the credibility of al-Maliki, who flew to the city last week to oversee the crackdown personally.
On Saturday, al-Maliki had promised "a decisive and final battle" and gave assurances he would remain in Basra until the militias were crushed. A key adviser to al-Maliki, Sami al-Askari, said the prime minister was expected to return to Baghdad this week.
With tensions easing, Iraqi government television reported that a high-profile official was released Monday evening four days after he was seized by gunmen from his east Baghdad home.
Tahseen al-Shiekhly serves as the civilian spokesman for the Baghdad military command and regularly appears before reporters to tout improvements in security.
In Basra, residents said by telephone that the city, headquarters of Iraq's vital oil industry, was generally calm except for sporadic explosions and machine gun fire.
Some residents, however, estimated that only about a quarter of the shops and businesses opened Monday because any people were apprehensive that the truce would hold.
"The whole situation is a big farce," said one resident, who gave his name only as Abu Mohammed, or father of Mohammed. "I think the situation will return to normal again but the problem will never be solved. Gangs, smugglers and corrupt people will go back to doing what they were doing before."
In other developments:
A U.S. Army general told the parents of Staff Sgt. Keith Matthew Maupin that the remains of Maupin, a soldier who had been listed as missing-captured in Iraq since 2004, had been found.had been found. "Matt" Maupin was a 20-year-old private first class when he was captured April 9, 2004, after his fuel convoy, part of the Bartonville, Ill.-based 724th Transportation Company, was ambushed west of Baghdad.
Unknown gunmen in a car attacked a checkpoint manned by U.S.-backed Sunni fighters near Buhriz, about 35 miles north of Baghdad, police said. Four of the fighters were killed.
First published on March 31, 2008 / 6:34 AM
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Own It Stormzy feat. Ed Sheeran & Burna Boy Download 'Own It' on iTunes
Leeds teenager admits false rape claim
27 November 2011, 09:42 | Updated: 30 March 2016, 13:50
Detectives investigating an allegation of a serious sexual assault on a young girl in Leeds on Friday night say the allegation is false.
The 14 year old girl had initially told police she was seriously sexually assaulted in an alleyway just off Harehills Road, Leeds, at around 9.50pm last Friday (25 November).
However during interview she stated that she had made the allegation up.
DCI Simon Atkinson, of West Yorkshire Police's Homicide and Major Enquiry Team (HMET), said the girl had now been referred to specialists through the Safeguarding Unit in Leeds where she is receiving support.
He said: "We will always thoroughly and proactively investigate any serious sexual assault reported to us and provide ongoing support to the victim.
“However, in this particular case, we have discovered a false allegation has been made and the appropriate referrals have been put in place in order to support this girl."
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Review of initiatives in equity and transformation in three universities in South Africa
2013 | Grantee Publication
Two decades after the advent of democracy in South Africa, a review of initiatives designed to promote equity and transformation in three universities in that country highlights the importance of diversity among staff, affirmative institutional cultures, and support for emerging researchers. Over the past decade and more, a group of United States foundations has funded various endeavors related to equity and transformation in South African universities. Since 2005, Carnegie Corporation of New York has provided support for staff development, postgraduate training, and institutional-climate interventions at universities in Witwatersrand, Cape Town, and KwaZulu-Natal. A review undertaken over the past two years for the Corporation by the Cape Higher Education Consortium (CHEC) examined these efforts to retrieve lessons learnt. Findings concluded that of comprehensive support to individual postgraduate students and emerging researchers is key as part of a range of new strategies to tackle the critical challenge of increasing the output of quality postgraduates.
Badsha, Nasima and Sharman Wickham. Review of initiatives in equity and transformation in three universities in South Africa. Cape Higher Education Consortium, 2013.
Program: Higher Education and Research in Africa
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it /enJob Opportunities HR
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For us, workers are collaborators. We pay particular attention to the working and personal conditions of those who work with us, guaranteeing trade union freedom and establishing a relationship of transparency. We believe that mutual respect and a constructive dialogue are fundamental.
… / HomeSustainabilityHuman Resources
Acting sustainably
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The eco-social dimension
Freedom of association is a human right ratified by the main international conventions and various state regulations. The Group has always guaranteed the freedom of association of its employees, establishing, in compliance with local regulations, practices and mutual roles, a constant dialogue with these counterparties.
Carraro has always engaged in open and transparent relations with Trade Unions and workers’ representatives both at its Italian sites, where regulatory developments and a background of industrial relations has facilitated an admirable level of maturity in this regard, and at its plants in other countries, where the Group’s companies have been open to interaction with emerging trade union organisations.
The approach to industrial relations adopted by the Carraro Group is based on the respect of the mutual roles and positions and a constant commitment to constructive dialogue.
Management of human resources
The management of human resources within the Group aims to demonstrate the capacity to attract and integrate different professional profiles in a company that requires a diverse range of skills, a factor that distinguishes Carraro from other companies in the region.
Furthermore, the global scale of the Group, in terms of the location of its own sites and those of its clients and suppliers, demands that Group employees and collaborators demonstrate sufficient willingness to interact with counterparties in different foreign companies as well as to work with colleagues from other countries and cultures in pursuit of shared goals.
The HR strategies of the Group must meet the demand for flexibility resulting from market demands concerning the distribution of work shifts in the production cycle, the need to entrust projects involving new processes or products to mixed Italian-international work groups and the need to appoint management or control roles to people to be seconded to another country, with the relative organisational repercussions in terms of travel and transfers.
When defining working hours, the Group also considers the personal needs of employees by providing flexibility (parental leave, flexible start and finish times, part time opportunities) within the limits of an efficient organisation, as part of its fundamental belief that promoting a reasonable work-life balance is an essential element for better professional performance.
The Carraro Group operates in a multinational context, interacting with commercial partners through a team composed of employees from all of the countries in which the Group operates.
This context, characterised by employees of different genders, religions and cultures, represents both a challenge and an enormous benefit to be optimised and carefully managed, transforming it into a competitive advantage as well as a concrete representation of shared human values.
The Group has always adopted a philosophy open to the inclusion of different skills and personalities without the fear of losing its corporate identity, in the belief that such an approach enriches its intangible heritage by maintaining a firm stance against any form of discrimination.
The Group's commitment to diversity, equal opportunities and non-discrimination is unequivocally expressed by the Group's Code of Ethics, Diversity Policy and Human Rights Policy; one example of its implementation is the provision of a prayer room dedicated to Muslim workers operating at the offices of the Parent Company.
Protection of Human Rights
Relations with employees are managed in accordance with national legislation and international conventions on human rights. In this regard, all executive personnel, or those responsible for the management of human resources, are constantly informed on matters of compliance with local employment legislation.
To identify and, where possible, prevent the risks associated with breaches of human rights in all of its offices and operating areas, the Group:
has included in its Code of Ethics a specific reference to respect for human rights;
regularly notifies all employees and collaborators of its human rights principles through the available channels (direct written notification and through company noticeboards, email, Intranet and the company website);
raises awareness among its employees through the training programme developed to promote the knowledge and understanding of the Code of Ethics and, in the case of Italian associate companies, the Organisational Model pursuant to Legislative Decree no. 231/2001;
promotes the assumption of responsibility by its suppliers in this regard and requires all new suppliers to comply with the principles of conduct set forth by the Code of Ethics.
Services for employees
Carraro pays particular attention to the working and living conditions of its employees in Italy and abroad, offering appropriate financial and social support mechanisms where demand is greatest.
The main services provided by the Group are:
The company canteen, open during the day and at night depending on timetables and shifts, which ensures that all employees at its industrial plants have access to a service at their place of work, reducing the number of journeys made outside the plant;
For companies in India and China, the collective transport service to and from work, paid for by the company, established to minimise transportation costs by other means;
Flexible working hours and other part-time solutions offered to employees in Italy and certain foreign companies (Brazil and North America) to provide support for workers in terms of their social and family lives;
Life and Health insurance policies, offered in Italy and in many of the Group’s international companies;
Supplementary health insurance coverage for all italian, brasilian, indian, US staff and partially for Argentinian too.
Welfare programmes, financial support in the case of disability and other minor benefits offered to employees of the company in China;
At the offices of Carraro S.p.A. and Carraro Drive Tech S.p.A. in Campodarsego, certain benefits have been established for Muslim workers such as a dedicated prayer room and a selection of dishes to meet their dietary customs.
The Carraro Group considers the provision of training its employees as an essential factor to the growth of the company; training is an important process that Carraro aims to optimise from the very beginning of an employee’s professional career, accompanying its collaborators throughout their career paths.
Relations with schools
Furthermore, in order to develop technical expertise, reduce integration times for new employees and stimulate the recruitment of new resources, for a number of years the Group has promoted relations with technical schools and universities in order to offer work experience programmes and combined school-work initiatives.
Special programs and sites
One initiative worthy of particular note is the “Academy” training programme launched by Carraro S.p.A. Divisione Agritalia in October 2017, which aims to educate and recruit young graduates with specific technical skills in the agricultural vehicle industry.
Worth of mention is also the establishment of a permanent Training Centre at the plant of Carraro India Ltd., aimed at training newly recruited production personnel.
Training by function
Training activities are organised in order to respond to the needs of the workforce according to each department. Most training activities focus on research and development in the technical, engineering, testing, prototypes and plant production sectors, while other training sessions are provided for specialised areas such as administration, tax, customs and IT.
Training on the topics of occupational and environmental health and safety is provided constantly by internal and external training providers.
A human aspect characterises us: for us, employees are collaborators. This collaborative spirit makes us a team ready to make the most of anyone. If you want to be part of the Carraro world, check out the job offers or send your application.
Download the full version of our Sustainability Report, updated as of 31 December 2018
31 December 2018 pdf, 6.58 MB
Carraro People
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Campodarsego (PD) 35011, Italia
Tel +39 049 9219 111
The company and the people
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Numbers and all documents
Images and news
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Alvy Singer
Grew Up… in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn where his father ran the bumper car concession. Their family’s house was located near a rollercoaster, which Alvy says helps to explain his nervous personality. His mother is pretty anxious and high-strung too. When Alvy was in college, his mother was so depressed she took an overdose of Mah-Jongg tiles.
Living... in the 1970s in New York City. Alvy is a diehard New Yorker and considers any other place in the world as culturally inferior. Although Alvy loves where he lives, he is not at all happy with his living situation. He used to live with a free-spirited lounge singer from Wisconsin named Annie, which is a long, sad story.
Profession... writer. He’s writing a play during the day and is working as a comedian at night. His artistic material is all based on his real-life experiences. He makes other people laugh by telling them how depressing his life has been.
Interests... watching four-hour foreign films about the holocaust and reading books about death including his favorites, Death and Western Thought, The Denial of Death, and Death in Venice. He’s also spends a lot of his free time seeing a psychoanalyst, but unfortunately he doesn’t have much to show for it after 15 years of therapy. As Annie tells Alvy, “anal” is a polite word for what he is.
Relationship Status... twice divorced. His two marriages were disasters – especially the second one that ended over a disagreement about the second gun theory of the Kennedy assassination. Alvy admits that he has always chosen the wrong women for him as far back as when he was a kid. When he saw the movie Snow White, he fell in love with the Evil Queen instead of the titular character. Despite the fact that Alvy has been unlucky in love, he remains a romantic. He knows that relationships can be illogical and ridiculous, but they make life worth living.
Challenge... blowing his chance at true love with Annie. Annie was amazing, but he was too blind to see it at the time. Now it's too late; he just found out she's with someone else. He’s miserable without her and is determined to try to win her back.
Personality... neurotic, cynical, self-involved, and overbearing. Alvy is a guy who is hard to please. And when he gets what he thinks he wants, he is never satisfied. Alvy says the old Groucho Marx joke sums up his attitude best: "I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member." Despite Alvy’s hangups, he remains endearing given how witty, self-effacing, and insightful he is.
Alvy Singer's popularity ranking on CharacTour is #2138 out of 5,300+ characters. See our top-ranked characters and read their profiles.
The neurotic New Yorker Woody Allen tells one of the greatest romantic comedies to be set in the city of New York.
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Lee Everett
The Walking Dead (Video Game)
Grew up... in Macon, Georgia, where his family ran the local drug store. Lee got away as soon as he could and didn’t talk to his family much – something he now regrets.
Living... in a zombie apocalypse. A mysterious plague has turned the world into a zombie-filled wasteland. For Lee, every day is now just another struggle to collect supplies, find other survivors, and stay alive.
Profession... professor. Lee taught history for six years at the University of Georgia. Although due to his recent conviction, he was just about to lose his job for good.
Interests… teaching. Although he is no longer a professor, Lee’s teaching instincts still shine through during his fight to survive. He teaches his surrogate daughter Clementine how to shoot a gun, the importance of keeping her hair short, and most importantly, how to kill someone out of mercy.
Relationship Status... divorced. Lee was once happily married, but one day he found his wife in bed having an affair with a state senator. Lee then murdered the senator and was sentenced to prison. However, the zombie outbreak allowed him to escape before even reaching the jail.
Challenge... protecting Clementine. One of the first survivors Lee finds is a little girl named Clementine, whose parents were away when the zombie outbreak occurred. She’s been left all alone, and Lee soon finds himself feeling responsible for the little girl. Clementine can often be a liability, but she also gives Lee a reason to keep on living.
Personality... a survivor. Lee is a complicated person who deals with situations in a variety of different ways – sometimes cold and angry, sometimes warm and nurturing. Lee adjust to his environment and does whatever it takes to survive. He often finds himself acting as a leader within the group, and is sometimes called to make the hard decisions that affect who lives and dies.
Lee Everett's popularity ranking on CharacTour is #1915 out of 5,300+ characters. See our top-ranked characters and read their profiles.
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Forget about marijuana laws for a second. The CBD industry needs to be regulated.
By Debby Miran
Lemon ginger CBD drops by Select CBD are on display at a ticketed event at Botanic Alternatives CBD in Chicago on Dec. 18, 2018. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)
Years ago, I was a leukemia patient and bone marrow transplant recipient confronting an extremely difficult decision: Do I continue down an uncontrolled, life-threatening spiral caused by “wasting syndrome” (persistent and potentially fatal weight loss), or do I try an unproven, unregulated, illegal and potentially toxic approach — cannabis?
My oncologist was reluctant to make a recommendation due to the lack of credible information, not to mention safety and legal concerns. But, as a scientist with decades of experience at both research-based and generic pharmaceutical companies, I chose to roll the dice.
I opted to try “medical” cannabis based on anecdotal reports from my hematologist, colleagues and friends, despite my anxiety over inhaling an — at the time — unregulated substance with no evidence-based science to support its use, nor assurances against harmful contaminants. I was fortunate then, and subsequently opted to serve as commissioner on the Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission, in an effort to ensure no one else would have to take such a gamble in deciding on a treatment.
Both my career and my experience as a patient have given me a unique perspective as to how cannabis and cannabis-derived products, like cannabidiol (CBD), should be regulated. CBD, a cannabis plant extract that doesn't cause intoxication, is now being touted as a potential fix for everything from anxiety to inflammation. It's added to lotions, oils and gummies, and even sold as an additive for your coffee.
Column: CBD oil is suddenly everywhere. Is it really going to cure your anxiety, your migraines and your acne? »
But regulators are beginning to recognize the dangers inherent in our current “anything goes” environment of unregulated CBD products: The Food and Drug Administration held a daylong hearing May 31 on the issue.
A 2017 paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association highlighted the lack of quality and consistency in CBD products, which poses risks to consumers. Manufacturing standardization in compliance with good manufacturing practice is one of many critical needs. Experts are calling for the creation of a national standard for CBD, while others focus on label standardization and the need to incorporate into the CBD category rules that currently regulate dietary supplements, foods and cosmetics. I strongly agree with these experts.
Much of the data we rely on today for safety, efficacy, bioavailability and human abuse potential was generated by traditional drug development companies that committed the time and expense required to conduct robust preclinical and clinical trials. Society must continue to support such traditional research protocols for medical products.
I would like to suggest a “three-lane highway” approach that would enable the FDA to work within its existing structure to create a regulatory framework for CBD products.
First, the “slow lane”: Purified, high-concentration products are defined as drugs and are required to undergo robust clinical trials to demonstrate safety and efficacy in ways that meet the agency's standards.
Next, the “middle lane”: Lower-concentration oral dosage forms are regulated as dietary ingredients or foods.
Lastly, the “fast lane”: Topical dosage forms are regulated as cosmetics.
While all patients deserve the ability to make informed decisions through conversations with their physicians, the most vulnerable patients with serious illnesses and conditions require assurances that the safety and effectiveness of the medical products they take have been established. This can be achieved through the FDA's stringent regulatory process.
Perhaps the best incentive for the continuance of traditional research was removing from the Controlled Substances Act both hemp and hemp-derivatives, which contain less than 0.3% tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the intoxicating substance that induces marijuana's psychological effects.
A United States Pharmacopeia (USP) monograph for CBD would ensure accurate product testing for THC concentrations and all of the other issues. Additional incentives can be built into rules and laws as exemplified in the 1984 Hatch-Waxman Act, which created exclusive marketing periods for product innovators.
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Finally, another very important incentive could be giving automatic fast track status to all cannabis-based investigational products or treat them as if they had “breakthrough therapy” designation, which would expedite their development and review if they show promise and are intended to treat a serious condition, among other criteria.
[Most read] O’Hare to begin screening passengers from Wuhan, China, as deadly coronavirus reaches U.S. »
The FDA has a unique role to play at this moment in history, and I recommend the agency follow words that have inspired me throughout my career and my life: listen, anticipate, guide.
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Commentary: The show trial begins
We don't need 50 different sets of state regulations for CBD products. But we do need to protect patients against having to take the risks that I did in terms of safety, efficacy, potency (dosage and concentration), product integrity and the myriad unknowns that exist with today's unregulated CBD products.
Today's patients should not be forced to leave the comfort and relative safety of the existing medical system in order to seek potential relief, as I once was.
Tribune Content Agency
Debby Miran is a former member of the Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission. This was written for the Baltimore Sun.
Nutrition Research
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A Chicago story: White Sox pitcher Lucas Giolito writes a redemption story
Editorials reflect the opinion of the Editorial Board, as determined by the members of the board, the editorial page editor and the publisher. |
Sox starting pitcher Lucas Giolito went from the second-worst pitcher in baseball last year to the best in the big leagues this season. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)
Every major league pitcher has bad days, bad weeks and occasionally bad months. But not many ever have seasons as consistently awful as Lucas Giolito had in 2018. In his first full season, the White Sox right-hander lost 13 games and won only 10. He walked 90 batters, gave up 118 earned runs — both more than any other American League pitcher — and his ERA was a tragic 6.13.
He couldn’t keep hitters from hitting, and he couldn’t keep them from advancing. Opponents stole bases in bunches while he was on the mound. On the bright side, he wasn’t the worst pitcher in baseball, according to one authoritative stat compiled by Baseball Prospectus. He was the second-worst.
Guys who have seasons that bad are often absent the next season, because they had an injury requiring surgery, were sent back to the minors or launched a new career at Home Depot. But Giolito kept his spot on the Sox roster, worked hard over the winter and made some adjustments.
His first few outings looked like a rerun of 2018. But then something clicked into place, and since then, he’s been a batter’s nightmare. This season, he hasn’t been the second-worst pitcher in the big leagues; he’s been the best, compiling a 10-1 record and a 2.22 ERA, with two complete games and a shutout. In his three June starts, he’s given up a total of one earned run, for an ERA of 0.43. Walks and stolen bases are way down.
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He’s done all this on a team that is below .500, and one that draws far fewer fans and gets far less media attention than Chicago’s other major league club. Halfway through the season, Giolito is a sure bet to make the All-Star team — and if this year’s numbers are the measure, he should be the starter. No pitcher in major league history, it appears, has ever made such a dramatic improvement from one season to the next.
His performance is a lesson in perseverance, faith in oneself and willingness to adapt to adverse circumstances. It’s also a reminder of what novelist John Updike once referred to, in reference to baseball, as “the tissue-thin difference between a thing done well and a thing done ill.”
Read more: White Sox ace Lucas Giolito strikes out a career-high 11 and wins his 7th straight in a 2-0 victory against the Royals »
How could he have made such a huge turnaround? No one thing. He simplified his delivery, improved his change-up and adopted a sidestep to give base runners less time to steal. He took some pointed advice from Sox Hall of Fame slugger Frank Thomas, who told him, “You need to pitch inside more.” He says he’s learned to maintain his composure and focus regardless of how things go. Success has been the sum of many small changes.
“I learned a lot from the failures,” Giolito said recently, “and there were a lot of failures.” It’s the nature of the game that baseball players fail often. What matters in the long run is whether they can endure failure and learn from it. In that, by the way, baseball is a lot like life.
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Words that count
by Stephanie Paulsell
I love this time of year, both at school and at church. It’s a season of regathering and in-gathering and joyful reconnection with friends after the summer’s adventures. It’s also a time when our communities are enlivened by people we meet for the first time. New students arrive with fresh questions and ideas, new children turn up in Sunday school, and visitors drop by hoping the church can help them find ways to be of service. In these bright fall days, new energies and hopes nearly crackle in the air.
It can also be an anxious time, because we want the quality of our invitation to our communities to match the hopeful aspirations of those who come through the door. Have we planned the right programs, chosen the right curricula? As we consider the invitation we hope to offer, it’s worth remembering the things that drew us to the life of faith, the planned and the unplanned, the organized and the accidental.
Years ago I taught a course on religious education with a gifted graduate student who recounted aspects of her Jewish education for our mostly Christian students. Her introduction to the religious life of her community included being invited by her teachers to lick honey from the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, a practice that dates back at least to the Middle Ages. This delicious invitation to the study of Hebrew linked study and sweetness forever in her imagination, as her teachers hoped it would.
@stephpaulsell
Stephanie Paulsell is a professor at Harvard Divinity School and coeditor, with L. Gregory Jones, of The Scope of Our Art: The Vocation of the Theological Teacher.
My own early memories of religious education are not as auspicious. My first Sunday school teacher was my mother, and my first memories of church are of hiding and crying under the child-sized tables because I didn’t want to share her with other children. The religious education that mattered most was the one I received with my sister under the crook of our mother’s arm as she read to us. Our sacred texts were works by Dr. Seuss, Mother Goose, Ezra Jack Keats, and Maurice Sendak. The ritual of settling in together, the repeated readings of the same stories, and the proximity of our mother bathed everything she read to us in a kind of sacredness. Snuggled up together on the couch or in bed, it felt as if we had all the time in the world to roll the words on our tongues, feel their rhythms in our bodies, and discover the secrets that a well-drawn picture could hold. My mother gave me the foundation of my religious life—the feeling of having embarked on something of inexhaustible significance, something we would never finish or solve, an open-ended mystery we could seek in our books and, in Sendak’s phrase, in “the world all around.”
When my daughter was a little girl, I could never predict what invitation she would hear at church. Like my mother, I was my daughter’s first Sunday school teacher, and I always hoped that the stories and songs we shared in class would invite my kids into an exploration of life with God. But nothing I did came close to the impact of a “minute for mission” offered by a leader of our church. He began by talking about how he liked to wake up before the sun rose because he felt closest to God in the early morning stillness. The next morning, I woke at 5:30 to find my daughter awake and sitting at the window. “What are you doing?” I asked. “I’m watching for God, like John does,” she replied.
These feelings and convictions—that study is as sweet as honey, that reading is as intimate and mysterious as prayer, that we long for a glimpse of God’s presence and will wake up early to seek it—are not easy to communicate, even in church. It’s hard to find the right words to express them. But these early fall days, when our communities feel the most porous, are an opportunity to try. What matters most is our willingness to speak with each other about the things that matter most to us.
The Christian calendar gives us a saint for this work: St. Jerome, the fourth-century scholar whose translations of the Old and New Testaments formed the basis of the Latin Vulgate. September 30 is the feast day of this patron saint of translators who stands at the threshold of our rich religious inheritance and beckons us to enter. Jerome devoted his life to making scriptures first written in Hebrew and Greek available in a different language. His work of translation is our work too.
As Jerome knew, our attempts to cross the boundaries of language draw us into relationship with others—in Jerome’s case, with the rabbis who taught him to read the Hebrew text and with the women who supported his work and shared his devotion to prayer and study. His translations opened the Bible to the people of his time and place and far beyond it. And his work of translation opened him to others’ lives. This fall we have an opportunity to translate and to be translated, to find words for what matters most to us, and to be changed by the encounter with what matters to others.
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Trinity with Saint Jerome, by Andrea del Castagno
Art selection and commentary by Heidi J. Hornik and Mikeal C. Parsons
Resources on Godly Play
Christian humanists
Religious communities have long helped cultivate humanistic practices. We don't often think of ourselves in this way—but what if we did?
selected by Patricia K. Tull April 20, 2014
By Steve Vineberg June 26, 2006
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Don't Ask the State to Protect the Faith
Suing Dan Brown over The Da Vinci Code is a mistake. Christians have weapons of spiritual warfare.
by Lorne Gunter
Francis Cardinal Arinze is Prefect of the Congregation of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, the Roman Catholic Church's board of overseers, if you will.
It is his duty to ensure Catholic liturgy and sacraments "are accurately observed, and that abuses are avoided and eliminated where they are found to exist."
He's the head heretic hunter.
Arinze, a black Nigerian, was also considered one of the frontrunners to replace Pope John Paul II. And when Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger became Benedict XVI, Arinze replaced him in the titular, yet prestigious position of Cardinal-Bishop of Vallentri-Segni.
Depending on how long Benedict's papacy lasts, the 73-year-old African might still become pope.
In other words, when Arinze speaks, he does so with much of the authority of the Church of Rome behind him. He is not just some regional prelate talking off the top of his head.
And Arinze thinks Christians, particularly Catholics, should sue over the defamation to their religion that is rife in Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, the popular novel that will be released this week as a movie starring Tom Hanks.
Other Christian leaders have called for the movie to be banned. The Greek Orthodox Church last week deemed the story a heresy for suggesting Christ married Mary Magdalene and fathered a child by her and ever since secret societies have been murderously covering up this truth to preserve Christianity's central tenets and the control those tenets give Church leaders over ordinary believers.
All of these responses to Brown are preferable, of course—more civil—than issuing fatwas or calling on the faithful to smash KFC outlets, kill infidels and commit terrorist attacks against Western targets.
Nevertheless, they are largely secular responses to what are primarily religious matters, and as such they are wrongheaded.
Christians who are upset by the The Da Vinci Code's assault on their beliefs should put no faith in secular institutions such as the courts and legislatures to preserve their religion. They already possess more powerful spiritual weapons than the law and politics. They should pray rather than prohibit; proselytize rather than prosecute.
"Render therefore unto Caesar that which is Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's."
By seeking to have the Code banned or to financially cripple its author, publisher and producers through lawsuits, Christians would be playing right into the hands of two modern trends: the cult of victimology and the notion that government is the appropriate arbiter of all disputes—that all justice and wisdom emanate from the state.
Christians who feel threatened by The Da Vinci Code must act. But how?
Do Catholics and other Christians really want to become players in the whine wars? "Oh, they're being unfair to us. Make them stop. We have the right not to be offended."
Do they really want to become just another in the long line of victim groups who queue up before the courts or human rights commissions every time they feel slighted? Do they truly want to make Caesar the defender of the faith?
Doing nothing in the face of such a popular challenge to the faith is not an option. Christians who feel threatened by The Da Vinci Code must act. But how?
They could do as Opus Dei has.
The low-key but influential conservative Catholic organization is the object of particular scorn and misinformation in Brown's book. Despite claiming that all the depictions in his novel are accurate, Brown portrays Opus Dei as a bunch of super-secret, self-flagellating fanatics who enslave women and are willing to kill for the Vatican, none of which is true.
Yet, when Opus Dei began noticing more interest in their activities (onlookers even began milling about outside Opus Dei houses in London, Paris and elsewhere), rather than sue Brown they invited the curious inside to explain what their organization truly stands for. The Da Vinci Code has become a major recruiting instrument for Opus Dei.
Yes, by all means, boycott the book and the movie, too. Popular culture reacts first and foremost to financial stimuli, or the lack thereof.
But as a matter of faith, Christians should use the Da Vinci phenomenon to evangelize and explain the truth about their beliefs.
Lorne Gunter is a columnist/ editorial writer for the National Post and a columnist for the Edmonton Journal.
Originally published in the National Post, May 15, 2006.
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Wed 22nd Jan, 2020
A-level system 'narrow and outdated', says royal society president
File photo dated 13/06/08 of a pupil taking an exam as a leading scientist has said students are being put at a disadvantage by a narrow A-level system that is no longer "fit for purpose". PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Issue date: Wednesday October 18, 2017. The UK is at risk of falling behind other nations by holding on to the qualifications, which encourage teenagers to specialise in a small number of subjects, according to Sir Venki Ramakrishnan, president of the Royal Society. See PA story EDUCATION ALevels. Photo credit should read: Chris Radburn/PA Wire
By Press Association Share
Students are being put at a disadvantage by a narrow A-level system that is no longer "fit for purpose", a leading scientist has said.
The UK is at risk of falling behind other nations by holding on to the qualifications, which encourage teenagers to specialise in a small number of subjects, according to Sir Venki Ramakrishnan, president of the Royal Society.
The Nobel Prize-winning biologist called for a major shake-up to allow sixth-formers to study a wide range of academic and vocational subjects.
In a speech, Sir Venki said that research commissioned by the Royal Society has shown that students are taking fewer A-levels, with the average number of A-level qualifications per student now standing at 2.7.
"Students are also taking a narrower mix of subjects, with, for example, more students taking exclusively STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects, without any learning in other subject areas seen as key for a broader and more flexible skill set," he said.
"And this concentration of STEM learning is seeing the size of the pool of young people with good scientific thinking and skills shrink; less young people overall are studying a science at A-level.”
"The UK risks falling behind its global competitors as a result of maintaining a narrow, outdated model of post-16 education."
He adds: "Our narrow education system which encourages early specialisation, is no longer fit for purpose in an increasingly interdisciplinary world.”
"Many countries have moved, or are moving, towards a broader and more diverse curriculum in order to equip the next generation with a skill set they will need."
Under the current system, students now typically take around three A-levels.
Previously, students often took around four AS-levels, deciding after one year of study when they gained their results, which of these to continue and which to drop. AS-levels have now been hived off to form a standalone qualification and no longer count towards A-level grades.
Sir Venki said there should not just be concerns about science, maths and computing.
"Young people need to expand their language skills so that they can, in the future, express the complex ideas of their field of study or work," he said.
"It is also said that those who know little of history are doomed to repeat it.
"A narrow approach to education is producing students who are entering higher education without the necessary skills required for independent learning and research, or the ability to write and communicate."
The biologist said there should be a move to a broader curriculum in the long-term, adding that in the meantime the UK could learn from A-level alternatives such as the International Baccalaureate (IB), which sees sixth-formers studying a wider range of subjects.
He added that there needed to be less "snobbery" around vocational qualifications.
"Our education system is too focused on producing narrow specialists," Sir Venki said.
"It cannot make sense to focus on equipping students only for specialised careers, including becoming academics themselves.
"Career paths are becoming more flexible and we need to change expectations of what a person's 'career' - or perhaps 'careers' is more accurate - will look like.
"Of course we need specialists and academics but businesses need employees with a broad range of skills and experience that can help them to creatively adapt to technology-rich environments.
"And young people need that range of skills so that they can move between careers.
"This is a difficult journey, which requires careful coordination."
A spokesman for the UK’s Department for Education said: "We have reformed A-levels to create world-class qualifications that prepare young people for higher education and employment. They were developed in consultation with subject experts, higher education institutions and teachers.”
"This year's results saw more entries in core subjects like maths and increasing entries to the science, technology and engineering subjects. This will help more young people access higher education so they can go on to secure well-paid jobs, compete on the global jobs market and boost the British economy."
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Making Room for Developing Nations at the G8 Table
Many have questioned what benefits, if any, the G8 offers as compared to the G20. The G8 has tried to distinguish between the two summits by focusing its agenda on niche issues such as climate change, development and democratic governance
African Representation in Huntsville
At Prime Minister Harper’s invitation, 10 non-G8 states are in Huntsville for special ‘outreach’ sessions that took place this afternoon. G8 nations engaged “African leaders as well as key hemispheric partners in order to broaden representation and maximize results on international development and peace and security issues. “ With a particular focus on development issues in Africa, maternal and child health (the Muskoka Initiative) and security issues in South America, invitees for these sessions include Algeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal, and South Africa along with Colombia, Jamaica and Haiti.
Opinions are divided as to whether including these developing nations in talks with the world’s “most industrialized” states will produce any tangible benefits. Some are claiming that the inclusion of these nations is merely “window-dressing” and it will only result in more hollow promises of aid and equitable trade practices which are never quite fulfilled. For instance, the $50 billion pledged by the G8 nations at the 2005 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, is still facing an $18 billion shortfall towards meeting the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG) on poverty.
Adding Legitimacy
Is the inclusion of a few developing nations merely bloating the G8 to provide some legitimacy to its discussions? Africa, in particular, is being left out of more substantive discussions. Even in the G20, South Africa is the only representative of Africa’s 53 nations. African nations are demanding to have a greater say in the proceedings in order to put pressure on more wealthy nations to follow up on their pledges.
Alternative Motives
An additional concern is the basis on which these developing nations are being invited. Tradtionally, the choice almost entirely lies with the G8 host nation. Many commentators are claiming that PM Harper has chosen to only invite nations which align with Canadian foreign policies. For example, aid-recipients Haiti, Jamaica and Colombia have just signed free trade agreements with Canada. Others see these invitations as a way to curry favour with emerging nations and developing nations in order to seek support for Canada’s bid for a seat in the Security Council, the outcome of which will be known this fall.
There needs to be a more accountable and transparent system of involving developing nations in G8 summits. As the G20 has moved in to take over the role of the primary global economic forum, the G8 must focus on legitimizing its focus on other areas such as development and security. Perhaps in this way, it will be able to ward off the death knells for a bit longer.
Asfia Tareen is a research officer working on the UN Reform project at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. She has a BA in International Studies from Glendon College, York University.
(Image Credit: PMO)
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Operation Tripoli
A large-scale campaign has been distributing malware on Facebook for an unspecified number of years primarily targeting the country of Libya, according to Check Point researchers. The threat actors behind this campaign are utilizing the geopolitical and political pages themed around Libya that attempt to convince individuals to download malicious...
New FinSpy iOS and Android implants revealed ITW
FinSpy is spyware made by the German company Gamma Group. Through its UK-based subsidiary Gamma International Gamma Group sells FinSpy to government and law enforcement organizations all over the world. FinSpy is used to collect a variety of private user information on various platforms. Its implants for desktop devices were...
Operation Soft Cell: A Worldwide Campaign Against Telecommunications Providers
An advanced, persistent attack targeting telecommunication providers, active since at least 2012, according to Cybereason researchers. The attack, dubbed Operation Soft Cell, was aiming to obtain all data stored in the active directory of a large telecommunications provider, compromising usernames and passwords within the organization, as well as billing information,...
Sodinokibi Ransomware Now Pushed by Exploit Kits and Malvertising
Exploit kit researcher nao_sec has discovered “Sodinokibi” ransomware is now being distributed though malvertising that leads to the RIG exploit kit. Sodinokibi has been making news since the “GandCrab” family of ransomware has retired, but by distributing through hacking sites to replace legitimate software with ransomware, and by hacking into...
Riltok mobile Trojan: A banker with global reach
Kaspersky Lab researchers have identified a new variant of the Riltok mobile banking trojan that has been in operation since March 2018. The actors distributing Riltok have primarily focused on targeting individuals that reside in Russia, but versions for markets in France, Italy, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom have been...
BNDA
Post & Telecom Division
Access to Information Project
ICT Division
BGD e-GOV CIRT
Bangladesh Computer Council, E-14/X, ICT Tower, Agargaon, Dhaka-1207, Bangladesh
Phone: +880255006801 I Email: info@cirt.gov.bd
BGD e-GOV CIRT App
N M Zeaul Alam
Mr N M Zeaul Alam, at present, the Senior Secretary of Information & Communication Technology Division. He is the immediate past the Secretary, Coordination & Reforms of the Cabinet Division (From December 2015 to January 2019). Prior to that he was Director General of the Department of Immigration and Passport. He belongs to Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS Administration) 84 batch.
He obtained M.Sc. in Botany from the University of Chittagong after that he had got another Masters from the University of BRAC on Governance and Development. He served in all the core position in the field administration including Deputy Commissioner (Khulna) and Divisional Commissioner (Sylhet). He also served at Secretariat in different Ministries/Divisions at different position.
In his long career Mr. Alam actively participated in different meetings; workshops; seminars; regional, bi-lateral and multilateral meetings on trade negotiations in the country and abroad. He led Bangladesh delegation to SAFTA, BIMSTEC and APTA negotiation meeting and joined ministerial meetings of those regional trade agreements. He also joined international conference on G2P, Open Government Data (OGD), Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) and Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) abroad. He actively worked on the signing of trade agreement between Bangladesh and India on the export of apparel from Bangladesh in 2007. At the national level he is the Co-chair of GoB-DP LCG from the Cabinet Division. He participated a course on ‘Creating Collaborative Solution: Innovation in Governance’ in Harvard University of USA. He had also undergone a number of professional training at home and abroad. He visited several countries including Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, the UK, Sweden, Finland, Nepal, India, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia, Spain, Turkey, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the USA, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Japan, New Zealand and Australia.
He has been rewarded with National Award named ‘Innovation Award’ for outstanding contribution in digitization activities of Sylhet Division in 2012 as Divisional Commissioner of Sylhet.
Mr Alam is Married and blessed with three daughters. His vision is to serve the people.
Zunaid Ahmed Palak
Zunaid Ahmed Palak was born on 17 May 1980 Singra under Natore dristrict. Mr. Faiz Uddin Ahmed and Ms. Zamila Ahmed are his parents. His father was an active political activist being inspired by the ideology of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Being the then General Secretary of the Singra upazila unit of Bangladesh Awami League, he played an important role as one of the organizers of the great war of independence in the Chalan beel area.
Mr. Palak passed SSC examination from the Singra Damdama Pilot School and College in 1995 securing first division (with star marks and letter marks in five papers) and HSC examination from the Rajshahi Govenment College in 1997 securing first division (with letter marks in two papers). He obtained Bachelor degree, Master degree in Political Science and LLB from the National University of Bangladesh. Then, he started his career as a professional lawyer in the Natore District Judge’s Court and now he is a member of the Bangladesh Supreme Court Bar Council. He successfully completed a Capstone course from the National Defense College (NDC) in Dhaka.
He was very conspicuous in different co-curricular activities, like debate, recitation, impromtouspreech and sports. He obtained several prestigious awards in different seasonal competitions held at the district and divisional levels. During his student life, he performed music on many occasions. He was simultaneously an efficient sports organizer and a talented sportsperson. While studying in class VI, he established “Durdom” (indomitable) club that was turned into a center of sports and socio-cultural activities of the children from his locality. He was greatly inspired by the scouting movement of Robert Baden-Powell during his school life. He participated in the 1st Asia Pacific Jamboree held in Mouchak, Gazipur in 1994 as the team leader. He is one of the advisers of BPL franchisee ‘Duronto Rajshahi’.
After passing HSC exam, he avoided the temptation to study in a famous institution. Instead, he got admitted in a local college with a view to stand by his community in their will and woe and commenced his political career by joining Bangladesh Students’ League, a forum with a very reach tradition in students’ movement and politics. He was elected VP of the Gol-e-Afroze Govt. College Students’ Union at the age of 18 years. Later on, he joined Bangladesh Awami League, a party that led the nation for its independence.
Mr. Palak got nomination from Bangladesh Awami League for the national election held in 2008 and was elected Member of Parliament by a huge margin at the age of 28 years. He was the youngest Member of Parliament (MP) in the ninth parliament. He played an active role as a member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on ICT Ministry. He was also a member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Private Members’ Bill during the ninth parliament. Besides, he was a Co-convener of the All Party Parliamentary Committee on Climate Change.
He became a member of the Executive Committee of central Awarmi League in 2012 at the age of 32 years. In the national election held on 5 January 2014, he contested in a participatory election and elected Member of Parliament for second consecutive term with overwhelming support from the people of his constituency. Afterwards, Honorable Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina included Mr. Palak in her new Cabinet. He was sworn in as a Minister of State on 12 January 2014 at the age of 33 years and 8 months. Now, he is the youngest member in the Cabinet.
Mr. Palak is happily married to Ms. Arifa Jesmin, who did her Master of Science in Psychology and is a lecturer. They are blessed with three sons: Apurbo Zunaid, Aarjan Zunaid and Anirban Zunaid. He participated in the UN General Assembly as a member of state delegation and visited several countries across the globe as part of different official visits, summits, seminar, workshops and training programs. All sorts of modern technologies, especially ICT, law and governance, environment, music and arts are among his fields of interest. He undertook a special campaign of aforestation in his constituency in 2010. As part of the campaign, he distributed more than five hundred thousand saplings among general people. In recognition, he has been given National Environment Award by the Honorable Prime Minister of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh.
SAJEEB WAZED JOY
Information and Communication Technology Affairs Adviser to the Hon’ble Prime Minister
Sajeeb Wazed Joy, is a Bangladeshi-American ICT Consultant and political campaigner. He is the son of Sheikh Hasina, the Honorable Prime Minister, Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, and the eldest grandson of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the first President of Bangladesh. A member of the Awami League, He was a key figure in formulating the party’s vision 2012 manifesto. He is currently serving as the Honorable Prime Minister’s Information and Communication Technology Affairs Adviser.
Sajeeb Wazed Joy graduated with a B.Sc. in Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington in the United States and attended the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he earned his Masters in Public Administration degree.
In 2007, Sajeeb Wazed Joy was selected by the World Economic Forum in Davos as one of the “250 Young Global Leaders of the World”. The forum cited his role as Advisor to the President of the Bangladesh Awami League.
On 25 February 2009, Sajeeb Wazed Joy officially joined the Awami League as a primary member of the Rangpur district unit of the party.
Within days of joining the Awami League as a primary member, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, in his capacity as an IT policy analyst, unveiled the concept paper and action plan for the government’s ambitious “Digital Bangladesh” scheme; to develop a strong ICT industry in Bangladesh and initiate e-governance and IT education on a mass scale.
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Debate on Abolishing the Federal Reserve
2009-07-26T09:05:07-04:00https://images.c-span.org/Files/e11/287860-m.jpgA debate was held on the usefulness of the Federal Reserve in light of the recent economic downturn. Participating in the debate were Warren Coats and John Fund, who defended reforming the Federal Reserve, vs. Gene Epstein and Thomas Woods, who argued for abolishing it. Joe Bradley moderated the debate “Fed Up with the Fed: Should We Abolish?”
Warren Coats, who served with the International Monetary Fund for 26 years before retiring in 2003, is currently a director of the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority and an adviser to the Central Bank of Iraq. His most recent book is One Currency for Bosnia: Creating the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Jameson Books; August 30, 2007).
John Fund, who was a member of the Wall Street Journal's editorial board from 1995 to 2001, writes the weekly “On the Trail” column for OpinionJournal.com. He is the author of Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy (Encounter Books; Revised edition July 21, 2008).
Gene Epstein has been the economics editor and a columnist for Barron’s since 1993. He is the author of Econospinning: How to Read Between the Lines When the Media Manipulate the Numbers (Wiley; August 4, 2006).
Thomas Woods is a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He is the author of nine books, including Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse (Regnery Publishing; February 9, 2009).
“Fed Up with the Fed: Should We Abolish?” was a 2:30 p.m. PT Friday general session of FreedomFest 2009, which was held July 9-11, 2009, at Bally’s Events Center in Las Vegas.
A debate was held on the usefulness of the Federal Reserve in light of the recent economic downturn. Participating in the debate were Warren Coats and John Fund, who defended reforming… read more
A debate was held on the usefulness of the Federal Reserve in light of the recent economic downturn. Participating in the debate were Warren Coats and John Fund, who defended reforming the Federal Reserve, vs. Gene Epstein and Thomas Woods, who argued for abolishing it. Joe Bradley moderated the debate “Fed Up with the Fed: Should We Abolish?”
“Fed Up with the Fed: Should We Abolish?” was a 2:30 p.m. PT Friday general session of FreedomFest 2009, which was held July 9-11, 2009, at Bally’s Events Center in Las Vegas. close
Filter by Speaker All Speakers Joe Bradley Warren Coats Gene Epstein John H. Fund Thomas E. Woods Jr.
Joe Bradley Founder and Publisher (Former) Investor's Hotline
Warren Coats Official (Former) International Monetary Fund
Gene Epstein Editor Barron's Financial Weekly->Economics
John H. Fund Columnist Wall Street Journal
Thomas E. Woods Jr. Senior Fellow Ludwig Von Mises Institute->History
FreedomFestFreedomFest
Book Fairs and Festivals
FreedomFest 2009
Free Market Capitalism on Trial
Teaching Entrepreneurship to Inner City Youth
Spiritual Wealth
The Future of Conservatism Panel
Crash Proof
Debate on Randian v. Conscious Capitalism
The Politics of Freedom
Jul 25, 2009 | 12:34pm EDT | C-SPAN 2
Jan 03, 2010 | 6:07am EST | C-SPAN 2
Jul 26, 2009 | 9:05am EDT | C-SPAN 2
See all on Book TV Federal Reserve
In Fed We Trust
David Wessel talked about his book In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic (Crown Business; August 4, 2009). In his…
Open Phones
Telephone lines were open for comments on the question, “Does the federal reserve have too much power?”
Telephone lines were open for comments on the question, “Should Ben Bernanke be re-confirmed as chairman of the Federal…
Open Phones, Part 1
Telephone lines were open for comments on Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke holding the first news conference in the…
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St Luke's Church of England Controlled Primary School
Find out how St Luke's Church of England Controlled Primary School rates compared to other primary schools in Essex with our school ratings
Here St Luke's Church of England Controlled Primary School, 66 Church Road, Tiptree, Colchester, CO5 0SU, is put into focus to show its scores in relation to other schools in the area.
66 Church Road, Tiptree, Colchester, CO5 0SU
The open date and status above indicate when St Luke's Church of England Controlled Primary School opened or when it changed to its most recent incarnation, with a number of schools converting to academies in recent years. Where schools have changed type recently, data for previous years covering their previous incarnation is included below as well - so a school may have a status of New due to converting to an academy but have data for previous years prior to conversion.
What type of school is St Luke's Church of England Controlled Primary School?
England Rank 8,043 6,093 11,324 10,193
How St Luke's Church of England Controlled Primary School scores on each indicator.
St Luke's Church of England Controlled Primary School has been rated as Good at its most recent Ofsted inspection.
How does St Luke's Church of England Controlled Primary School perform on each of the areas inspected by Ofsted? As of September 2012, a score of 3 changed from indicating Satisfactory to Requires Improvement.
In 2019, 66% of pupils at St Luke's Church of England Controlled Primary School reached the expected standard in reading, writing and maths.
How have pupils at St Luke's Church of England Controlled Primary School done in assessments at the end of Key Stage 2 and how does it compare to local authority and national averages?
While pupils are generally aiming to be working at the expected level in reading, writing and maths, what proportion of children at St Luke's Church of England Controlled Primary School had a high score in reading and maths and were working at greater depth in writing, and how does this compare to performance at local and national level?
How do children at St Luke's Church of England Controlled Primary School with different levels of attainment at Key Stage 1 and pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds perform in terms of reaching the expected standard in reading, writing and maths?
How does the % of boys and girls at St Luke's Church of England Controlled Primary School achieving the expected standard in reading, writing and maths compare to the national average?
What is the pupil:teacher ratio at St Luke's Church of England Controlled Primary School and how does it compare to the national average?
At St Luke's Church of England Controlled Primary School, pupils had an average progress score in maths in 2019 that was -2.2 compared to the national average of 0.
At St Luke's Church of England Controlled Primary School, pupils had an average progress score in reading in 2019 that was -1.5 compared to the national average of 0.
At St Luke's Church of England Controlled Primary School, pupils had an average progress score in writing in 2019 that was -0.4 compared to the national average of 0.
In 2017/18, the most recent full school year, 3% of half-day sessions were missed by pupils at St Luke's Church of England Controlled Primary School. Nationally, primary school pupils missed 4% of half-day sessions.
What is the total school spend per pupil at St Luke's Church of England Controlled Primary School compared to the local average? (school is in blue)
How much does St Luke's Church of England Controlled Primary School spend per pupil on teachers and educational support staff and how does this compare to the average spending across Essex?
What percentage of the budget at St Luke's Church of England Controlled Primary School is spent on supply staff?
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BWM X6: Efficient Dynamics, All Season Confidence
Get Average Asking Price Get Trade-in Value View Gallery Search All X6
The BMW X6 is a car designed for sheer enjoyment, period. This is possible in an SUV of its size thanks to such features as sports car-like, dynamic handling, superb cockpit and potent engines.
While many would prefer to think of the BMW X6 as an enlarged sports sedan rather than a sport utility vehicle, it is actually a pretty impressive SUV by anyone’s criteria. It incorporates features such as styling similar to that of a sporty coupe in addition to being very powerful and nimble. The X6 has consistently been one of the most reliable cars in its class and boasts the highest marks for its high-tech infotainment system, polished powertrains and well-made interior. Keep reading to know more about this unusually styled SUV.
Power Options To Go With The Looks
The base model of the X6 is available with either rear-wheel or all-wheel drive and hides a 3.0-litre twin-turbo inline-6 under its hood, which puts out a healthy 300 horsepower. While this sounds fairly reasonable for most drivers, the more powerful engine promises to be more popular, since we are talking about a vehicle that is more of a statement vehicle than a luxurious family hauler. That said, the more powerful engine is a 4.4-litre twin-turbo V8 that generates 445 horsepower and 480 lb.-ft. of torque. The only transmission on offer is a quick-shifting 8-speed automatic. The base engine is commendably smooth and provides good thrust for daily needs, though the V8 is arguably the one to go for. There’s also the rocket ship of an X6, which is the M version. It’s run by a roaring 567-horsepower, 553 lb.-ft. version of the V8, coupled with beefed up sway bars and its own air suspension setup.
No Compromises Whatsoever
While you may hear arguments that the back seat of the X6 is more cramped than most luxury midsize SUVs, it still provides seating for five passengers. The rear seat complaints stem from the sloped coupe-like roofline that cuts into the rear-seat head space, though many view this as a styling quirk and even welcome it. On the other hand, the front seats offer many adjustments and are comfortably cushioned to provide a cozy stay. As expected, the X6’s cabin boasts high-quality materials and craftsmanship abound with poplar wood trim and leather upholstery as standard. Available upgrades include soft-close doors, rear-window sunshades, aluminium trimmings and Nappa leather.
Sport-Tuned To The Point That It’s Deceiving
Judging by its overweight and hulking visual appearance, the X6 looks as though it handles like a cumbersome SUV but the opposite is true. In fact, its road manners resemble those of a nimble sports sedan. The ride is superbly comfortable with very limited body roll thanks to the standard suspension system, though it is recommended to opt for the available and ingenious Dynamic Damper Control. Thanks to this system, you’re able to choose between several driving modes to suit your individual driving style, such as Eco Pro, Comfort, Sport and Sport+. As for safety features for peace of mind during your time in the X6, standard ones include front and rear parking sensors, a rear-view camera, as well as rain-sensing windshield wipers.
A Performance Car Through And Through
The BMW X6 is a car that is extremely fun to drive and puts day-to-day practicality second to athletic performance. For those who desire an SUV package that also involves sports-car-like-handling, the X6 is the ideal choice. Encompassing many standout qualities from bumper to bumper, the X6’s main appeal exists thanks to a high level of refinement throughout, a suite of commanding engines and a high-tech and sumptuous cockpit. If you can neglect the diminished back seat space, the BMW X6 is a car that promises to put a smile on your face every single day.
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Research & Academic / Publications / Publication Items / European Painting and Sculpture / Pissarro's People
Pissarro's People
By Richard R. Brettell
$65.00 Hardcover
Camille Pissarro’s lifelong interest in the human condition is unique among Impressionist landscape painters. From his early years in the Caribbean and Venezuela until his death in Paris in 1903, he produced a vast oeuvre of drawn, painted, and printed figures. He was also a committed reader of radical social, political, and economic theory, including the writings of the French proto-anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, friends such as Jean Grave and Élisée Reclus, and the great anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin. His profound knowledge of social philosophy, which informs much of his art, far exceeded that of any other significant painter of the period. From intimate studies of family and friends to scenes of bustling markets and rural labor, Pissarro used his work to suggest the realities of everyday life as well as his vision of a harmonious world after the revolution.
Many examinations of Pissarro have treated his politics and his art as separate categories, refusing to explore the most basic connections. This volume, authored by noted Pissarro expert Richard R. Brettell, is the first truly to bridge that gap. Key to this investigation of the painter’s humanism is Pissarro’s identity as a member of a diasporic Sephardic Jewish family—a complex constellation of individuals living and working in Uruguay and Venezuela, France and England, and the United States during the artist’s lifetime. Demonstrating that Pissarro was in every sense a family man, Brettell addresses the artist’s portraits of family members alongside pictures of artists, neighbors, domestic help, rural workers, and various other associates. Linking Pissarro’s web of family and friends to his radical social and economic ideals, the project breaks new ground in reconsidering the artist’s figural works.
Richly illustrated with more than two hundred paintings, works on paper, and archival images, this compelling volume offers a definitive portrait of one of the most passionately political painters of the nineteenth century.
Richard R. Brettell is among the world’s foremost authorities on Impressionism and French painting from 1830 to 1930. The author of many influential books and catalogues, including Gauguin and Impressionism; Impression: Painting Quickly in France, 1860-1890; and The Impressionist in the City: Pissarro’s Series Paintings, he is currently the Margaret McDermott Distinguished Professor of Aesthetic Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas.
320 pages, 9 x 10 1/2 inches
254 color illustrations
Published by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, and distributed by DelMonico Books|Prestel
ISBN 978-3-7913-5118-6 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-88401-133-0 (softcover)
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Press Release: Chelsea Clinton and CHAI support the Government of Nigeria’s Saving One Million Lives launch
Estimated 220,000 child deaths to be prevented by 2015 when scale-up targets met
Partners join forces in new coalition to End Diarrheal Deaths formed in Nigeria; 20 sign pledge/15 new commitments secured
October 16, 2012, Abuja, NIGERIA — On behalf of the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), Chelsea Clinton will join President Goodluck Jonathan, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg of Norway, Honourable Minister of State for Health of Nigeria Dr. Muhammad Ali Pate, representatives of leading non-governmental organizations, business leaders, and civil society at the Saving One Million Lives (SOML) launch event at the Presidential State house today. Chelsea Clinton will highlight the Government of Nigeria’s leadership and efforts to reduce child mortality by rapidly increasing access to the most effective diarrhea treatment—zinc and oral rehydration solutions (ORS). Increasing the percent of children with diarrhea who receive ORS and zinc to 80% by 2015 could help prevent 220,000 Nigerian children from dying.
An estimated one million mothers and children die each year in Nigeria from preventable diseases, including 100,000 deaths due to diarrhea. In response, the Government of Nigeria is launching an historic effort to dramatically reduce these preventable deaths. CHAI has been working closely with the Government to help realize this vision.
CHAI began its work in Nigeria in 2007 with programs including in the Niger Delta to strengthen the conflicted region’s HIV/AIDS service infrastructure, which has resulted in a 350% increase in pediatric testing and 70% increase in access to pediatric antiretroviral drugs. CHAI is now taking this vanguard approach to improve access to essential medicines for children, helping to unite businesses, NGOs, and donor organizations around this cause in support of SOML.
Under this program, the Ministry has set a new goal of saving one million lives of women and children and improving the quality of care in Nigeria in 2013 by focusing on evidence-based interventions expected to have the greatest impact on lives saved. Chelsea Clinton, Board Member of CHAI, along with senior representatives from the Nigerian Governors Forum, Nigerian Private Sector Health Alliance (NPSHA), Traditional Leaders/Royal Fathers, and Development Partners Group (DPG) on Health, delivered goodwill messages during the launch event today.
Scaling up childhood essential medicines—including zinc and ORS for diarrhea—is one of the key pillars of the new platform. Zinc and ORS can prevent over 90% of diarrhea-related deaths and cost less than $0.50, yet less than 2% of children in the country are currently using the complete treatment.
The SOML launch and focus on zinc and ORS comes at a critical time as the global commitment to these high-impact interventions continues to grow. The UN Commission on Life-Saving Commodities for Women and Children, co-chaired by President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria and Prime Minister Stoltenberg of Norway recently released a new plan and bold recommendations for improving access to 13 essential but neglected commodities, including zinc and ORS. This week, the co-chairs hosted an Implementation meeting in Abuja with ministerial-level representation from 8 countries.
At the national level, the Government of Nigeria has demonstrated unprecedented leadership and commitment to scaling up zinc and ORS. Earlier this year, the Government developed its first ever National Essential Medicines Scale-up Strategy, with support from CHAI, which specifies national coverage targets and prioritizes key actions in the next 3 years. The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration (NAFDAC) also approved a key policy change that will allow broad commercial marketing and distribution of zinc by categorizing both products as over-the-counter (OTC) drugs for sale in the country.
“Nigeria is on the verge of a historic breakthrough toward reducing the number of children who die from diarrhea every year,” said Chelsea Clinton, who is a board member of the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI). “The leadership, commitment, and diverse coalition of partners supporting this initiative is extraordinary, and CHAI is proud to be a part of it. Nigeria is an example for other countries facing similar challenges.”
Leaders from Nigeria’s public and private sectors have also come forward to support national scale-up efforts. Yesterday, the Government of Nigeria, CHAI, MDG Health Alliance, the Wellbeing Foundation and the UN Foundation hosted a Roundtable event to announce a broad coalition of partners to support the effort, recognizing the need for collective action from the government, NGOs, private companies, civil society and key partners. As captured in the “Pledge to Eliminate Child Diarrheal Deaths in Nigeria” signed at the event, partners have committed to supporting three key actions that will be essential to success: (1) Building demand among caregivers and health providers for ORS and zinc, (2) Ensuring widespread availability of affordable and high-quality ORS and zinc, and (3) Mobilizing attention and resources to support scale-up of zinc and ORS.
A broad range of organizations have also made specific and significant commitments to support the national effort to reduce diarrhea mortality amongst children in Nigeria including:
Bates Cosse
CHI Pharmaceuticals
Fidson Healthcare PLC
McCann Health
Micronutrient Initiative
National Association of Proprietary Patent Medicine Dealers (NAPPMED)
Nigerian German Chemicals
Nigerian Inter-Faith Action Association (NIFAA)
Olpharm
Partnership for Transforming Health Systems Phase II (PATHS2)
Society for Family Health (SFH)
Strengthening Health Outcomes through the Private Sector (SHOPS)
Well Being Foundation Africa
A copy of the Pledge and more information about the commitments will be available at the SOML event. The event will begin at 10:00 AM on Tuesday October 16th, 2012. .
Background on Diarrhea Treatment Efforts to Date
In pursuit of the fourth Millennium Development Goal to reduce child mortality, the Nigerian Ministry of Health has made progress in expanding access to essential medicines for children. The National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCA) has been leading the development of an Integrated Community Case Management (ICCM) program to treat childhood illnesses, which includes improving access to zinc and ORS, among other commodities, at the community level. The Government has also implemented the Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses (IMNCI) strategy to build health worker capacity, ensure drug availability, and enhance care-seeking and treatment adherence among caregivers. These efforts lay a strong foundation for continued progress in the national effort to reduce diarrhea mortality amongst children in Nigeria.
Learn more about our work at http://www.clintonfoundation.org/about, on Facebook at Facebook.com/ClintonFoundation and on Twitter @ClintonFdn.
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Chapter 15.07
15.07.020 UTILITY SERVICE ACCOUNTS.
15.07.030 ACCOUNT MAINTENANCE.
15.07.040 BILLING STATEMENT.
15.07.050 BILLING AND DUPLICATE BILLINGS.
15.07.060 AUTOMATIC CASH TRANSFER.
15.07.070 DESIGNATED AGENTS.
15.07.080 DELINQUENT ACCOUNTS.
15.07.085 TAMPERING WITH WATER SERVICE AFTER TERMINATION.
15.07.090 LIENS.
15.07.100 DEFERRED PAYMENT.
15.07.110 ADJUSTMENTS.
15.07.120 METER FAILURE.
15.07.130 DISCONNECTION.
The provisions in this chapter provide for the establishment of a City billing and receipting system for the reimbursement of the costs of providing utility service.
The City is additionally authorized to provide to other municipal corporations billing and accounting services through interlocal agreement approved by the Mayor and authorized by the City Council.
Utility billing shall be processed and administered by the Department of Financial Services. (Ord. 5376 §6 (in part), 2019: Ord. 5250 §1 (in part), 2014: Ord. 4454 §1 (in part), 1994; Ord. 4309 §2 (in part), 1991)
The City shall create a utility service account upon receipt of an executed utility service agreement or an executed owner/tenant form as applicable.
The account shall be in the name of the owner and may be activated or terminated only upon written notice by the owner and payment for services provided.
Owners of a single water-metered building shall be the bill payer responsible for all charges to the account.
Billing for utility services shall commence for each service at the date of connection of each service to the property or the date of the closing of sale for a property.
Billing for mandated wastewater service, as directed by the Health District local Health Official or the Director regardless of connection, shall commence sixty (60) days following written notice by the Health District local Health Official or the date of connection, whichever shall occur first.
All utility billing forms will be available on the City of Bremerton website. Electronic signatures will be accepted for all utility billing online application submittals.
When it benefits the utility to do so and at the discretion of the Director of Financial Services, or designee, a credit may be authorized for a utility customer not to exceed fifty dollars ($50.00) per year per account. A credit in excess of this amount requires City Council approval by motion or resolution. (Ord. 5376 §6 (in part), 2019: Ord. 5321 §7, 2017: Ord. 5250 §1 (in part), 2014: Ord. 4454 §1 (in part), 1994; Ord. 4309 §2 (in part), 1991)
Whenever the owner of a premises connected to the utility system desires to have the service activated or discontinued for his own or another’s use, he shall notify utility billing in writing on the forms provided.
The City, upon payment of a service fee, will activate or discontinue service or prorate the customer bill for partial billing periods upon the request of the owner.
Reconnection of service will require payment for all outstanding fees and charges to the account.
Where a water service has been inactive, meter pulled, house removed, or the house has been vacant for more than one hundred eighty (180) days and the owner petitions to reactivate the service to the premises, in addition to making application, if the service has been vacant for five (5) years or longer, a flow test will be required to evaluate the service to determine if adequate flow is currently available. The City will perform the flow test at no cost to the owner. A service fee and payment for any unpaid previous charges shall be assessed prior to activation of the service. If inadequate flow is determined, a new service will be required by the City and shall be at the expense of the owner. Where the sewer lateral has been (1) capped and the house removed or (2) the sewer account has been inactive for more than one hundred eighty (180) days, the sewer lateral will be videoed by the City. If the video shows that the sewer is in good condition, then the sewer can be reactivated. If the video indicates that the sewer lateral, in the opinion of the City, is defective, then the new sewer lateral will be required and shall be replaced at the expense of the owner. (Ord. 5376 §6 (in part), 2019: Ord. 5250 §1 (in part), 2014: Ord. 4454 §1 (in part), 1994; Ord. 4309 §2 (in part), 1991)
The City shall regularly bill each utility service account for all fees, rates, and charges for service during the billing period.
Payments received on each service account shall be applied in the following priority to the outstanding account balances: abatement charges, fees, administrative charges, stormwater impact fee, stormwater charges, wastewater charges, and water charges. Receipts shall be credited to the oldest balances first.
A utility bill shall be considered past due thirty (30) days after date of billing.
A utility bill which remains unpaid after the due date shall be classified as a delinquent account and shall be subject to delinquent charges. (Ord. 5376 §6 (in part), 2019: Ord. 5250 §1 (in part), 2014: Ord. 4454 §1 (in part), 1994; Ord. 4309 §2 (in part), 1991)
Billing statements shall be mailed to the address requested by the property owner. Duplicate bills sent to a different address shall be assessed a duplicate billing charge, if applicable, sufficient to recover all costs of processing and mailing.
The property owner shall be responsible for all fees, rates and charges on the utility service account regardless of the use of the duplicate billing procedures or their request to send the statement to their tenant or agent. (Ord. 5376 §6 (in part), 2019: Ord. 5250 §1 (in part), 2014: Ord. 4309 §2 (in part), 1991)
A property owner or designated agent may at his option request in writing, on the form provided by the City, direct automatic transfer of funds from a designated account at a financial institution to the City for payment of utility service. The property owner shall receive a statement of the charges to be paid and the transfer shall be made at the time of the due date of the regular billing of the account. (Ord. 5376 §6 (in part), 2019: Ord. 5250 §1 (in part), 2014: Ord. 4454 §1 (in part), 1994; Ord. 4309 §2 (in part), 1991)
Any property owner may designate an agent to receive billing and provide for account maintenance. To designate an agent, the owner must deliver to the utility billing office a properly executed form provided by the City. The owner shall be responsible for notifying the City of any change in the agent’s status. (Ord. 5376 §6 (in part), 2019: Ord. 5250 §1 (in part), 2014: Ord. 4454 §1 (in part), 1994; Ord. 4309 §2 (in part), 1991)
The City shall have the right at its option to terminate service to the premises for which the account is delinquent, provided service is not to be terminated for those accounts which require utilities for the operation of life-sustaining machines or equipment. Such an exception shall require the submission of written documentation of the requirement signed by a licensed physician, following each notice of delinquency and must be submitted to and approved by the Director.
Failure to receive a billing statement does not relieve the utility account from receiving charges or penalties.
When an account becomes delinquent, the City shall provide written notice to the owner or agent notifying that the account is delinquent.
The written notice shall contain the following information: date of termination which shall be no sooner than ten (10) days from notice; a statement of the reason for the proposed termination of service; a statement of what may be done to avoid termination; a statement that the property owner may file a written appeal with the City, and the rights of the property owner to dispute the proposed termination.
The City shall visit the service address ten (10) days following the written notification and physically place a final notice of termination on the door of the residence. The notice shall contain the following information: the reason for termination of service; the time in which service will be discontinued which shall not be sooner than forty-eight (48) hours from final notice; a statement of what may be done to avoid termination; a statement that the property owner may file a written appeal disputing the proposed termination.
Prior to the shut-off during the forty-eight (48) hour notice the tenant can request to continue service by paying the current charges on the account.
If payment is not received within forty-eight (48) hours following final notice, the service to the premises shall be terminated. (Ord. 5376 §6 (in part), 2019: Ord. 5250 §1 (in part), 2014: Ord. 4454 §1 (in part), 1994; Ord. 4309 §2 (in part), 1991)
A tampering fee shall be assessed to the account of any person that turns on a water service without authorization after it has been shut off by the City. Further incidents of tampering will cause the account to be assessed at twice the tampering fee for each additional occurrence.
After any person has tampered in three (3) consecutive occurrences, the City shall disable the water service in such a manner that there is a physical disconnection of the water service from the city water main. The account shall be charged a disabling fee for the cost to disconnect the service line. The fee shall include the total cost of labor, material, equipment and any administrative or overhead charges. (Ord. 5376 §6 (in part), 2019)
Any and all charges provided for in this chapter shall constitute a lien against the property served when the charges become delinquent and unpaid. Enforcement and collection of the lien shall include, but not be limited to, the right to discontinue service and deny service thereafter to any and all owners and/or occupants or tenants at the premises until the lien has been satisfied.
In the case where the owner of the premises moves to another location within the service area or applies for service at a new location, service may be denied at such location until the lien at the first location has been satisfied.
The City shall file a lien against the property served at the office of the County Auditor for Kitsap County when a utility account becomes delinquent and unpaid. Such lien shall include the delinquent charges, a charge for the cost of preparing and filing said lien.
Failure to receive a bill does not relieve an owner or user of the responsibility for payment of charges and penalties on the account. (Ord. 5376 §6 (in part), 2019: Ord. 5250 §1 (in part), 2014: Ord. 4454 §1 (in part), 1994; Ord. 4309 §2 (in part), 1991)
A deferred payment arrangement may be extended to customers for the payment of delinquent accounts where the customer can demonstrate a temporary inability to make full payment. Customers who have failed to comply with previous payment arrangements, have a history of payment problems or fail to stay current in utility bills may be denied deferred payment arrangements or have arrangements terminated. (Ord. 5376 §6 (in part), 2019: Ord. 5250 §1 (in part), 2014: Ord. 4309 §2 (in part), 1991)
In the event of excessive registration of the water meters caused by broken or leaking water service lines upon the premises of any customer, without knowledge or fault of the customer, an adjustment may be requested upon written application within a thirty (30) day period of receipt of the billing in question. All repairs must be completed satisfactorily and with documentation of satisfactory repair. For all repairs completed within sixty (60) days after notification of the leak, reduction in charges are limited to one-half of the excess water billing and the entire excess sewer billing as determined by the City to be associated with the billing period in question. If the customer fails to make repairs within the sixty (60) days after the notification of the leak, the City will not make any adjustments to the customer’s account for any of the excessive water or sewer usage.
If a customer disputes an adjustment, an appeal may be filed as set forth herein. (Ord. 5376 §6 (in part), 2019: Ord. 5250 §1 (in part), 2014: Ord. 4454 §1 (in part), 1994; Ord. 4309 §2 (in part), 1991)
In the event of a meter failing to register properly, the user shall be charged an estimate of the consumption from whatever may be considered the most reliable data or method available to the City. The adjustment may be for a period up to three (3) years. (Ord. 5376 §6 (in part), 2019: Ord. 5250 §1 (in part), 2014: Ord. 4454 §1 (in part), 1994; Ord. 4309 §2 (in part), 1991)
No person or owner of any premises connected to the City’s water supply system shall disconnect the water on said premises, unless they shall first file a written request and pay all arrearages current on water usage for said premises. (Ord. 5376 §6 (in part), 2019: Ord. 5250 §1 (in part), 2014: Ord. 4309 §2 (in part), 1991)
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Nancy Velasquez
Admissions Office Assistant
VelasquezN@columbusacademy.org
Nancy Velasquez joined Columbus Academy as an admissions office assistant in the fall of 2019. Prior to coming to Academy, she worked in public relations in Washington, D.C. and in New York City, and in the development office at St. Anne's-Belfield School in Charlottesville, VA. Most recently, she was a teaching fellow at Fullstack Academy of Code in New York City. She also currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Columbus-based nonprofit Alliance for Health and Rehabilitation, which provides health care services to underserved groups in Yucatan, Mexico. Nancy holds a B.A. from the College of William & Mary where she is involved with its Leadership Circle and is a class ambassador. Nancy and her husband, John, have a son.
Nancy's favorite thing about Columbus Academy
"The community -- I have only been here a short time but everyone has been incredibly friendly and welcoming. I am impressed by the camaraderie I see between staff and faculty."
"I am a huge fan of Nancy Drew computer games."
B.A. College of William & Mary
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As Heat Wave Boils Europe, Lackluster Bonn Talks Marred by US and Saudi-Led Obstruction of Climate Science
"Science is not negotiable."
Julia Conley, staff writer
Teenage demonstrators participate in an international Fridays for Future march on June 21, 2019 in Aachen, Germany. Thousands of protesters from across Germany and other countries in the region joined the march, which coincided with a United Nations climate conference in nearby Bonn. (Photo: Sascha Schuermann/Getty Images)
While cities across Europe faced public safety alerts amid record-breaking heatwaves, two weeks of climate talks by nearly 200 delegations in Bonn, Germany wrapped up on Thursday with the negotiations marked by obstruction and climate denial by the United States and other oil-friendly countries rather than a sense of urgency.
The U.S. and Saudi Arabia led the effort to water down an official concluding statement to the Bonn Climate Change Conference as they objected to mentioning the risks of rising greenhouse gas emissions and were instrumental among the group of oil-producing countries in calling into question the U.N.'s findings about the need to limit the temperature rise to 1.5º Celsius.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said last October that failing to curb rising temperatures would lead to irreversible ecological damage.
"A growing number of governors, mayors, business leaders, investors, and others around the world are committing to rapid, transformational climate action. By contrast, here in Bonn, there wasn't much ambition to be found."
—Alden Meyer, UCS"The report came out in October of 2018 and now we see this move at the negotiations to try and have it almost erased from existence, which is impossible to do," Lois Young, Belize's ambassador the U.N., told the BBC.
"Saudi Arabia is the main protagonist in this attack on science, although the U.S. has come to its aid," Oxfam's Jan Kowalzig told Deutsche Welle.
The oil-producing countries also fought the drafting of official documents including the IPCC's findings that carbon emissions must be reduced by 45 percent by 2030.
Critics noted that even as powerful countries were obstructing meaningful progress, temperatures were as high as 104 degrees Fahrenheit in Paris and Berlin.
"There's no indication it's spilling over to create more urgency here in these negotiations," Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), told Bloomberg News of the local climate. "It's almost like another world here."
"A growing number of governors, mayors, business leaders, investors, and others around the world are committing to rapid, transformational climate action," he added in a statement. "By contrast, here in Bonn, there wasn't much ambition to be found."
However, Meyer said, "while they may have succeeded in short-circuiting formal discussion of the report, the Saudis can't prevent scientific fact from continuing to drive the heightened awareness among governments, the business community and the public of the need for an urgent response to the climate crisis."
The conference was also unable to reach an agreement on how to implement the Sustainable Development Mechanism, the program required under the Paris climate agreement of 2015 to support developing countries, many of which are on the frontlines of the climate crisis.
Debate over the program was pushed to next December, when delegates will meet for the 25th Conference of the Parties (COP25) in Santiago, Chile.
"It's unreal, it's as though they're resigning our Alliance of Small Island States to collateral damage," Young told the BBC. "It's like we have no importance."
Switzerland supported the delegation of smaller nations that pushed back against the oil-producing countries' denial of climate science, with Swiss negotiator Franz Perrez wearing a shirt reading, "Science is not negotiable" to one of the meetings.
Science is not negotiable, Swiss negotiator Franz Perrez tells #SB50Bonn after a group of nations seeks to question the science behind latest IPCC report #climate #science #cop25 pic.twitter.com/PMaayRJQsd
— Ewa Krukowska (@EwaBN) June 27, 2019
Critics also questioned how delegates who support the IPCC's findings could be expected to make progress, considering the presence at the meetings of a trade organization representing fossil fuel interests.
The 47 delegates in the Least Developed Countries voting bloc proposed the drafting of conflict of interest protections to stop polluters from influencing the talks—but the U.S., Australia, and the European Union blocked the proposal and hours of discussion on the subject were reportedly erased from the record.
"Despite the support from almost 50 countries and environmental groups around the world... obstruction mainly from the US and Australia blocked the establishment of a conflict of interest policy," Philip Jakpor of Environmental Rights Action told the AFP.
As powerful countries and corporate interests were hamstringing progress in Bonn, climate campaigners warned that countries with fossil fuel interests were doing the same elsewhere.
As the BBC reported, the E.U. has so far failed to commit to cutting carbon emissions to net zero by 2050, while a draft statement out of the upcoming G20 summit, beginning Friday in Japan, includes watered-down commitments to limit the warming of the planet through decarbonization.
The G20 draft may be the result of Japan's attempts to win the approval of the Trump administration on trade issues, the BBC reported.
"G20 countries have a moral responsibility to address the accelerating climate crisis, which requires immediately stopping investments in fossil fuels development," said Nicolò Wojewoda, 350.org’s Europe managing director, in a statement. "Rather than listening to fossil fuel lobbyists, G20 leaders should be listening to scientists, to young people striking from school to demand action, and to the communities resisting coal mines, new gas pipelines, or fracking in their neighborhood."
Why Aren't the American People Marching in the Streets Over McConnell Cover-Up in the Senate
World, Climate, U.S.
Germany, United Nations, Donald Trump, Japan, European Union, Environment, Fossil Fuels, Union of Concerned Scientists, War on Science, Belize, COP25, Santiago
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Second Sight Details Upcoming 'Dawn Of The Dead' And 'Martin' Releases
Nikolas Sullivan
Last month, UK distributor Second Sight Films officially announced that they would be releasing brand new versions of George A. Romero classics Dawn of the Dead and Martin, with both set to release later this year. We've gotten the full details from the company today a...
Second Sight To Release 'Dawn Of The Dead' And 'Martin' On Blu-ray This Year
We recently told you that UK label Second Sight Films had teased an upcoming Blu-ray release of George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead. The company have now confirmed that they'll indeed be releasing the Blu-ray later this year! But that's not all, Romero's vampire film M...
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Cvent Supplier Network
DiscoverNEW
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Louisville, KY Event Planning
Total Sleeping Rooms
Committable Sleeping Rooms*
Committable Meeting Rooms*
Convention Center Space
Largest Exhibit Space
1,600,000 Sq. Ft.
Largest Ballroom
Average Hotel Room Rate
Average Daily Meal Cost
Average Weekly Car Rental
*Maximum for a single hotel
Louisville, KY Meeting Planning Overview
Welcome to Cvent's meeting and event planning guide to Louisville. Visitors often find it hard to decide on the most attractive aspect of this charming northernmost Southern city. It could be the gentility embodied by its lovely Victorian homes, the largest collection in the country, or possibly it's the world-class drama of the Kentucky Derby, the oldest continuously run horse race in America. Perhaps it's the presence of a replica of Babe Ruth's bat that is the world's biggest baseball bat (at 120 feet tall and 68,000 pounds) and dominates the entrance of the Louisville Slugger Museum. It could even be the Belle of Louisville, the nation's oldest functioning steamboat, still plying the waters of the Ohio River.
Named one of the Top 8 Foodie Getaways in the World by Zagat, Louisville is also the "Culinary Capital of Bourbon Country," where visitors can have an authentic Urban Bourbon Experience. Of the nine new distilled spirits attractions and distilleries coming to downtown Louisville and the surrounding area, eight are now open: Angel's Envy Distillery, the Bulleit Frontier Whiskey Experience at Stitzel-Weller, Copper & King's Brandy Distillery, the Evan Williams Bourbon Experience, Jim Beam Urban Stillhouse, Kentucky Peerless Distilling, Old Forester Distillery, and Rabbit Hole Distillery. And with more than 120 attractions and 2,500 restaurants, Louisville will capture the heart of any visitor, regardless of interest or age.
Louisville is clearly a place of superlatives, including one that's never mentioned in the guidebooks: most user-friendly event locale in the U.S. Located in the center of the eastern United States off Interstates 65, 71, and 64, it is a supremely accessible city. One can drive to Louisville in a single day from about 60% of the cities in the continental U.S. The airport, which sees almost 100 flights every day, is less than a 10-minute drive from downtown and across the street from one of Louisville's two world-class convention facilities.
The Kentucky Exposition Center, at over 1 million square feet, is one of the 10 most spacious public convention centers in the country and can seat 19,000 guests in its indoor arena. Meanwhile, the Kentucky International Convention Center underwent a major renovation and expansion that was completed in August 2018. The revamped facility features 200,125 square feet of contiguous exhibit space and a 40,000-square-foot ballroom, and it is projected to earn LEED Silver certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. From the Kentucky-inspired details and sunlit skylights at the convention center to the 300 acres of space on the Southern terrain at the exposition center, these facilities provide attractive settings and state-of-the-art amenities that are flexible for large-scale events.
Louisville offers a range of nontraditional facilities as well. Choose the iconic Churchill Downs for a true taste of the city's horse-racing culture, whether with a banquet for up to 54 guests in the Jockey Club Suites or a reception attended by up to 400 people in the Jockey Club Grand Foyer. The popular Frazier History Museum, which is now the official Kentucky Bourbon Trail® Welcome Center, offers an elegant roof garden and galleries for groups ranging from 150 to 500 people.
Take a step off the beaten path by opting for lesser-known, but no less grand, Louisville event venues. Glassworks, a one-of-a-kind facility featuring glassblowing studios and galleries, is a memorable spot for cocktails on the roof garden or a glassblowing demonstration followed by a reception in its foyer. Guests also marvel at restored historical sites, from the 1928 movie theater Louisville Palace to the exquisite mansion of the Conrad-Caldwell House Museum.
Not only does Louisville offer a wide range of event spaces, it also features a broad selection of accommodations. The city itself provides planners with over 20,000 hotel rooms across more than 150 hotels, ranging from boutique properties to big-name brands such as Marriott, Hilton, and Omni (which opened in March 2018). Regardless of event requirements or budget restrictions, planners are sure to find lodging that meets their needs.
Louisville is becoming a hub for the health care and medicine industry, and two of the Fortune 500 companies located in the city are medical in nature: Kindred Healthcare and Humana. Other major employers include Yum! Brands, Papa John's International, UPS, Ford, GE, and more. We are also proud of the innovation happening in Louisville. Companies such as Indatus, which was visited by Barack Obama during his presidency, and GE's FirstBuild are paving the way for new technologies. Louisville also has a number of universities and colleges, including the University of Louisville, Bellarmine University, Spalding University, and Sullivan University.
Louisville, KY Awards
Cvent's Top Meeting Destinations 2019
Cvent 2018 Top 50 US Meeting Destinations
Cvent 2015 Top 50 Meeting Destinations in the US
Cvent 2014 Top 50 Meeting Destinations
Louisville, KY Area Destinations
Bowling Green, KY Lexington, KY
About Louisville, KY / Additional Info
Though Louisville was founded in 1778, it was the invention of the steamboat in the early 1800s that sparked the city to life. By 1830, it was Kentucky's most prominent city, thanks to its role in the shipping and cargo industries. While today, the city has a slightly more modern look than it did in the 19th century, its core industry remains unchanged. The city continues to thrive in the shipping business, serving as Worldport global air hub of UPS. Home to over 1.2 million residents in the greater metropolitan area, Louisville also remains Kentucky's largest city.
With the city's position on the border of Kentucky and Indiana along the Ohio River, there's no better view of the water or skyline than the one from the Big Four Pedestrian Bridge. Once belonging to the Big Four Railroad Company, this historic bridge has been turned into a mile-long pedestrian walkway between Louisville and Southern Indiana. With parks on both ends, numerous restaurants, and attractions, it's a great place to experience the outdoors right in the middle of downtown.
Louisville's location in northwestern Kentucky has led to much debate surrounding whether it should be considered the most southern city of the North or the most northern city of the South. No matter which stance you take, it is widely agreed that Louisville is a city that mixes Southern charm and Midwestern sensibility. Its ability to blend such distinct cultures is matched by its cityscape — a combination of old and new. Contrasting with the modern skyscrapers that dominate the area around West Main Street, Old Louisville, one of the largest historic preservation districts in the nation, is defined by 48 square blocks of Victorian houses and buildings. Interestingly, downtown Louisville proudly boasts more cast-iron facades than any city in the country except SoHo in New York City.
Over the years, Louisville has been home to many notable events and personalities. International boxing legend Muhammad Ali was born in Louisville, won six Kentucky Golden Glove tournaments, and began his professional career financed by a group of Louisville businessmen. Stop by the Muhammad Ali Center, a six-story, $80-million tribute to the legend and his values of confidence and dedication, complete with videos of his fights and boxing memorabilia. The city was also once home to the largest distillery in the world, and many thriving bourbon distilleries still operate there. The Urban Bourbon Trail and Kentucky Bourbon Trail are great ways to explore this piece of Louisville culture, while sampling some popular liquor along the way. Meanwhile, the immensely popular Kentucky Derby, one of three diamonds in horse racing's Triple Crown, continues to draw crowds from across the nation. Stop by the grand Churchill Downs in May to experience the excitement of the chase, or learn about the race's history and lore through the exhibits at the Kentucky Derby Museum.
Churchill Downs is just one way to get outdoors while exploring Louisville, as its location on a flat flood plain ringed by hills provides the perfect setting for open-air spaces. The Louisville Zoo is home to 1,300 animals, including the lions, tigers, and other felines living in the recently renovated Tiger Tundra habitat. Falls of the Ohio State Park is another site sure to captivate lovers of the great outdoors or even amateur archeologists, as the park features 220 acres of exposed fossil beds.
Louisville, KY Key Stats for Meeting Planners
Time Zone: Eastern Time (ET)
Convention Center(s):
Kentucky Exposition Center
Hotel at Convention Center? Yes
Sleeping Rooms 1 Mile from Convention Center: 6,000
Louisville International Airport
Destination Type(s):
Historic Destination
Gaming Destination
Standard Tipping Practice
120V / 60Hz
Credit Cards and Travelers Cheques widely accepted? Yes
All average costs based on U.S. Government Per Diem rates as published by the U.S. General Services Administration.
60,600 24 2,130 6
300,000 89 7,900 30
Cities Near Louisville, KY
Estimated Driving Time
Estimated Min. Flying Time
Estimated Flight Cost
74 mi 1 hr 17 min 2 hr 10 min USD $539+
114 mi 1 hr 48 min 3 hr 11 min USD $352+
260 mi 4 hr 5 min 2 hr 55 min USD $280+
348 mi 5+ hrs 1 hr 13 min USD $290+
Louisville, KY Climate Information
Avg. High (°F)
Avg. Low (°F)
Rec. High (°F)
77 77 86 91 95 102 105 101 104 92 84 76
Rec. Low (°F)
-22 -9 -1 22 31 42 50 46 33 23 -1 -15
Rainfall (in)
3.4 3.4 4.5 4.0 4.5 3.6 4.2 3.3 3.0 2.6 3.7 3.5
Louisville has four distinct seasons, with spring remaining the best time to visit, as it captures the radiant Southern sun without the true heat of summer. Summers are generally hot, with temperatures averaging 88°F, while winters are relatively mild, with temperatures averaging 37°F.
The city sees an annual average of 16.4 inches of snow and 44.53 inches of rain. Louisville's humid subtropical climate is subject to various weather extremes, including tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, and ice storms.
Meeting Planning in Louisville, KY
With an impressive 1.2 million square feet of space set on 400 acres, the Kentucky Exposition Center currently ranks sixth in size among U.S. facilities of its kind. Guests need not travel far to access this immense space, as it is located alongside routes I-65 and I-264 and across the street from the airport. Its location is also convenient for overnight guests, as nearly 13,000 hotel rooms are found within close proximity of the Exposition Center.
With two arenas, the center can hold 73,000 people at once, not counting those who might be making use of one of its 35 meeting rooms. Freedom Hall, an indoor arena suitable for large-scale productions such as concerts, trade shows, and conventions, seats 19,000 people. The more intimate Broadbent Arena holds 6,600 guests. Outside, 300 acres of demonstration areas are ideal to get guests out of the boardroom, and the center's arena for equestrian or livestock events has over 1,000 permanent horse stalls.
The Kentucky Exposition Center has 19,000 parking spaces and offers onsite concessions and catering services to provide a full complement of dining options. Wireless internet and audiovisual options are available by arrangement. The facility also offers outdoor and indoor electrical services, booth and exhibit cleaning, and freight handling and equipment. Serving as the permanent home for the Kentucky State Fair, the Kentucky Exposition Center has proven itself to be a well-run venue integral to the life of Louisville.
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With over 300,000 square feet of space and a central location in the core of Louisville's downtown, the Kentucky International Convention Center is an excellent venue for events of any size. The renovated and expanded facility features 200,125 square feet of contiguous exhibit space and a 40,000-square-foot ballroom. It is projected to earn LEED Silver certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. The new design truly integrates the center into the already walkable downtown corridor. Easily accessible by any of three interstates or a 10-minute drive from the Louisville International Airport, the center's convenient location also places it within walking distance of 6,000 hotel rooms.
In addition, it includes a 175-seat conference theater, offering state-of-the-art technology to ensure that every presentation is a success. Though the entire center itself offers wireless internet and a full range of audiovisual capabilities, guests to the theater also can enjoy audio, video, and data conferencing via a 9-foot by 12-foot screen, two cameras, and microphones located throughout the seating area. Onsite catering at the Kentucky International Convention Center is provided by Levy Restaurants, and parking can be found in its attached garages.
Louisville, KY Airport Information
Louisville International Airport (SDF)
With an average of 100 daily departures out of 23 gates and nonstop service to 19 cities, Louisville International Airport is also the hub of UPS international service.
Only a 10-minute drive from downtown Louisville, the airport is convenient to many U.S. cities. Passengers can arrive in one hour from Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Birmingham, Alabama, while flights from Dallas, New York City, or New Orleans are only about two hours in duration. Flights from Boston and Denver take three hours, and one can reach Louisville from the West Coast in 4.5 hours.
A full range of amenities make passage through Louisville International an enjoyable experience. The new Bourbon Loft offers a first-class travel experience and an impressive view overlooking the airfield. Relax before or after flights while enjoying a wide selection of unique bourbons and spirits, light food, and beverages for purchase; computer workstations with free high-speed internet; telephones; and plenty of charging units. Restaurants of all kinds, from the full-service Woodford Reserve Bar and Grill to fast-food eateries such as Burger King and Pizza Hut, satisfy any appetite. A diverse set of stores provides convenience items, magazines, tourist paraphernalia, and books, including the Last Stop convenience store, Bluegrass News newsstand, Heritage Booksellers, Brighton Collectibles, the Explore Kentucky shop, and the PGA Tour Shop. Wireless internet service is available throughout the airport, and garages and a long-term lot offer onsite parking. Free shuttles linking the long-term lot and the terminal run every 10 to 15 minutes.
Airline carriers serving Louisville International Airport
American/American Eagle
Delta/Delta Connection
United/United Express
Louisville, KY Ground Transportation
Transit Authority of River City (TARC)
The Transit Authority of River City, the main provider of public transportation services in the Louisville metro area, has been in operation since 1974.
TARC has over 7,000 bus stops along more than 50 routes, including special downtown and medical center routes, as well as shuttles that serve the University of Louisville's main campus and UPS' Worldport processing facility. Day and night bus service around the Greater Louisville area also includes a stop at the airport at the east end of the terminal.
Regular fare is $1.25; correct change is required. Travelers can also purchase a one-day pass for $3, a monthly pass for $35, or a book of 10 regular fare tickets for $10.
TARC's new LouLift service uses fast-charging, all-electric buses that produce zero emissions and are free to ride. It's a sleek, clean, and quiet way to get around. These vehicles are in the spotlight as they travel around downtown, stopping frequently near work sites and popular destinations, including concerts, museums, big-time college sports events, and now Churchill Downs.
The rental-car companies represented at the airport are Alamo, Avis, Budget, Dollar, Enterprise, Hertz, National, and Thrifty. Counters are located in the baggage claim area, and pickup is right outside the west doorway of baggage claim.
Taxi companies are plentiful in Louisville, and airport travelers can find cabs waiting at the traffic island to the left of the taxi stand just outside the airport doors. The 8-mile ride to downtown is a breeze and features a flat-rate fare under $20.
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Louisville, KY Image Gallery
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