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If you a creative person, such as an artist, author, software developer, inventor, or business owner, you can use the services of an intellectual property lawyer to protect your ideas, images, or processes from being used without your consent. There are various types of intellectual property lawyers: There are copyright attorneys who help protect your unique ideas in things like music, film, software, paintings, and pictures. There are trademark attorneys who protect your valuable logos, images and slogans. There are patent attorneys who help you get government protection for your inventions. There are also licensing attorneys that write contracts which set the ground rules for others using your copyrights, trademarks, or patents.
Intellectual Property Law Attorneys in cities near Millville, NJ | <urn:uuid:4753ce75-bfbb-4dc8-96a0-c8ce2089e94e> | 2013-05-26T02:41:49Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Form of René, the French feminine form of Renatus, which comes from the Latin renascor, meaning "born again".
Rene Descartes was the French philosopher and scientist. He is most famous for his idea of Cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am)
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Join now to receive free weekly newsletters tracking your baby’s development and yours throughout your pregnancy. | <urn:uuid:a9e5f69c-1eb7-434c-8c23-73b1f9ea2ad8> | 2013-05-26T02:55:45Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Jayron - Meaning of Jayron
Jayron is a variant transcription of the name Jaron (English).
Jayron is also a variant transcription of the name Jay (English and Indian).
Jayron is an infrequently used baby name for boys. It is not listed in the top 1000 names. In 2011, within the group of boy names directly linked to Jayron, Jay was the most commonly used.
Baby names that sound like Jayron include Jaaron, Jaraan (English), Jaran, Jaren (Hebrew), Jarmin, Jarmo (Finnish), Jarno (Finnish), Jarom (English), Jaron (English), Jarone, Jarran, Jarren, Jarrin, Jarrom, Jarron, Jaryn, Jaskarn (English and Indian), Jayronn, Jerami, and Jeran.
† Pronunciation for Jayron: JH as in "joy (JH.OY)" ; EY as in "ate (EY.T)" ; R as in "race (R.EY.S)" ; AH as in "mud (M.AH.D)" ; N as in "knee (N.IY)" | <urn:uuid:6fb33de0-016a-422c-953b-ebec2425ae3d> | 2013-05-26T03:02:48Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Serious head injuries are rare in the wilderness. But get hit square on the melon by a falling rock, and the resulting brain swelling can cause dangerous intracranial pressure. Unlike skin gashes and broken bones, traumatic brain injuries don't always bleed or even cause pain, making early diagnosis tricky.
Since brain injuries can occur without exterior wounds, the best indicator of serious trauma is a person's level of consciousness, says Jeffrey Isaac, curriculum director at Wilderness Medical Associates.
Use the AVPU scale to establish a person's alertness and monitor any deterioration in brain function. The farther down the scale (A is the best, U the worst) the person registers, the more serious the brain injury.
(A) Victim is Alert and oriented; he knows who he is, where he is, and what happened.
(V) You get a response to Verbal stimuli, but victim is confused and disoriented.
(P) Victim responds only to Painful stimuli, like pinching his arm or rubbing his breastbone.
(U) Victim is Unresponsive to all of the above.
Record any periods of unconsciousness. Blackouts lasting longer than two to three minutes indicate a serious head injury, especially if accompanied by persistent disorientation.
Because brain swelling can develop slowly, evaluate the victim's mental state for 24 hours after the injury.
Watch for behavioral indicators like combativeness, restlessness, or acting drunk, as well as severe headache, nausea, and persistent vomiting.
Move the victim to a safer location if necessary. Don't leave a victim in a dangerous place or where you can't treat life-threatening injuries just because you are unable to stabilize the spine, says Isaac. Recent studies have shown that cervical spine damage occurs in a tiny percentange of victims with traumatic head injuries. As a result, new first aid protocols recommend spine "protection" over stabilization when hazardous conditions require moving the victim.
Monitor a victim's breathing and pulse rate, and keep him hydrated and warm. Treat for shock by raising the legs while you gauge his level of consciousness.
Initial disorientation or confusion can improve in a short period. The duration a person remains unconscious isn't as important as how quickly he returns to normal brain functioning, says Isaac.
Contrary to popular belief, the victim of a head injury can doze or sleep as long as he is monitored and woken up every few hours to check alertness.
Initiate immediate evacuation for victims whose alertness or memory remains severely altered, or worsens over time. Even if a victim recovers enough to walk out, he should still seek medical attention. | <urn:uuid:42c859b3-981d-4feb-a8c4-c06dac3393be> | 2013-05-26T03:08:56Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Is the evidence strong enough to support a medieval Welsh settlement in North America?
First recorded almost four hundred years after the lifetime of Madoc ap Owain Gwynedd, there is little to indicate that the story was known before Humphrey Llwyd. While there certainly were medieval stories about a Madoc, who seems to have been more well known in Flanders than in Wales, it is by no means certain that the Madoc of the stories and poems was Madoc ap Owain. All that can be said of the medieval romances is that they concern a sea-farer of some renown. That is as far as the medieval sources go.
Where Humphrey Llwyd got the story is unknown. It is in none of the sources he translated into English and it is so far from the medieval versions that they cannot have been the sole inspiration. It is possible, perhaps even probable, that he simply made it up. As a proud Welshman at a time when the English government was doing its best to anglicise the recently-created province (following An Acte for Lawes & Justice to be ministred in Wales in like fourme as it is in this Realme of 1536), making a claim that the Welsh had discovered the New World long before the English (and, indeed, the Spanish) had ever set foot there would have been a strike by Llwyd in favour of national pride.
The flawed evidence of the Bat Creek Stone
In 1991, archaeologists Robert C Mainfort Jr. and Mary L Kwas, writing in The Tennessee Anthropologist 16 (1) identified the hoaxer of the Bat Creek Stone as John Emmert, the assistant who claimed to have found it. Cyrus Thomas had doubts about Emmert’s abilities, believing his judgement to be impaired by the drink problem that eventually led to his sacking. Following a series of begging letters to Thomas, Emmert was reinstated in 1888, promising to give him “greater satisfaction than I ever did before” and agreeing with Thomas’s hypothesis that the Cherokees were the moundbuilders. Emmert certainly had the motive for producing a spectacular find and despite Cyrus Gordon’s identification of the script as Hebrew, it is passable for the Cherokee syllabary. Alas, the Cherokee syllabary was invented in 1819 by the native American silversmith Sequoyah (c 1767-1843, also known as George Gist/Guess/Guest) and a radiocarbon date on material from Mound 3 of 1605 ± 170 bp (409 ± 174 CE) is much too early.
So, could Blackett and Wilson be right in identifying the inscription as sixth-century Welsh, in the Coelbren script? Once again, we find Coelbren to be a modern invention, having been first published in 1791 by Edward Williams (1747-1826, better known as Iolo Morganwg), a serial forger. Although claims have been made for an earlier origin (such as in the “Welsh runes” attributed to the scholar Nennius or Nemnivus and said to have been invented because an Englishman had taunted him that the Welsh had no writing system), nothing like Coelbren is attested before the time of Edward Williams. It is also evident that if it incorporates symbols for mutated consonants and such mutations are not written before the period of Middle Welsh orthography (twelfth to fourteenth centuries CE), long after the date claimed for the Bat Creek inscription by Wilson and Blackett, then Coelbren can be no earlier that the twelfth century CE.
Dismissing the recent claims
Wilson and Blackett are keen promoters of an alternative Arthurian archaeology that uses some very poor evidence that does not stand up to critical scrutiny. Indeed, there is even a suggestion that some of the evidence they use is fraudulent. Their frequent complaint that they are not taken seriously by academe is typical of Bad Archaeologists: they tell their readers that the reasons for being ignored are professional jealousies, an inability to see beyond accepted ideas and even darkly political conspiracies. Like so many other Bad Archaeologists they seem incapable of recognising that the real reason the professional archaeologists do not give them the recognition they believe they deserve is that their ideas are poorly thought out, supported by inadmissable evidence and, ultimately, rubbish. | <urn:uuid:7c3039c4-06c2-45fb-b1a1-5259e71ff037> | 2013-05-26T02:41:31Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Handout photo by Barbara Nitke
October 12, 2012
Christian Siriano, who grew up in Annapolis and attended the Baltimore School for the Arts, never heard the words "Auf Wiedersehen" from "Project Runway" host Heidi Klum. He was the winner of the fourth season, and won the fan favorite prize as well.
*** After winning the fourth season of "Project Runway" in 2008, Christian Siriano became a major name in the fashion world, designing apparel for retails ranging from Saks Fifth Avenue to Payless ShoeSource, as well as on his own label. In October 2009, the young fashion designer authored "Fierce Style: How To Be Your Most Fabulous Self," a book about creating fashion and building confidence. Siriano returned to reality tv again in April 2010, when Bravo broadcasted a feature on the designer titled "Christian Siriano: Having a Moment."
Read more coverage of "Project Runway." | <urn:uuid:aeaf7c08-f8a7-4f84-b740-bfbad98b60df> | 2013-05-26T02:41:48Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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By Cassandra Berube
8:23 AM EST, November 26, 2012
Where can a serial killer feel safe?
While that isn't a question I would normally ask, seeing as serial killers such as Dexter have proven themselves capable of handling any surprises that come their way, the question arises tonight.
Out comes Dexter's more sensitive side, or you could say, his human side.
And who would have thought that Hannah, a fellow serial killer, would bring it out. She is kidnapped by Isaac, looking to extract a favor out of Dexter before either of them wins their deadly battle.
The Ukrainian mob, tiring of Isaac's obsession with Dexter, sends two hitmen to kill him. Turns out the enemy of my enemy is still the enemy though, as Dexter goes after the two hitmen in exchange for Hannah's life.
After killing the first hitman at a very public gun range with zero plastic wrapping, Dexter goes to Isaac for proof that Hannah is still alive. Snapping a picture while they are video chatting (oh technology, I hope one day you'll be able to save my life as easily), Dexter tracks down the locale where Hannah is stashed.
Dexter is interrupted by his day job. An arsonist has been at work in Miami. While the first attack just seemed like self-incineration, the second establishes a pattern. The arson investigator's explanation of how the second man died was creepier than Dexter has ever been.
Dexter also takes the moment to confront Deb about her declaration of love, saying he understands because love is endurance. Maybe if it was an endurance contest of eating delicious chocolate, but certainly not a running a marathon. Regardless, Dexter needs to work on his smoothness or Hannah will walk away laughing too.
Meanwhile, Quinn, who had been ignoring George's calls, stops by the club to check on Nadia. It is then that he learns of the consequence to his earlier rude behavior toward George. Nadia was forced to sleep with him, although George says that falls under her job description.
Very appropriately, Quinn immediately punches him. Of questionable reasonableness is Quinn's decision to continue to beat on George and then leave the club with Nadia, hopefully for good.
Dexter had been followed from the second arson scene by the second hitman, and under instructions from Isaac, Dexter leads the assassin toward the port. Isaac shoots the second assassin.
Strangely enough, Isaac and Dexter, after both tossing their weapons overboard, seem to come to a sort of peace. Dexter really must be destined to be alone, however, as Isaac is shot not a minute later by George, who randomly shows up badly beaten.
I would have gone for a bag of frozen peas or a bowl of chocolate ice cream after losing a fight so badly, but obviously that was incentive to George to finally win one.
Isaac's wound is fatal, but Dexter takes him out on his boat to the spot where he dumped Viktor overboard, to really what got them to the point they are now.
Isaac, in a no-longer-surprising show of depth, pushes Dexter to be honest about his feelings for Hannah. Obviously, with death, things become clearer. But Dexter is surrounded by death and is still muddling through life.
Unaware of Dexter's blossoming friendship with Isaac and his completion of Isaac's requests, Hannah attempts to gain her freedom. She cleverly feeds Isaac's bodyguard fried green tomatoes with an extra helping of pepper (because what other use for fried green tomatoes is there?). But in the ensuing fight, Hannah kills her captor, but not before he stabs her in the stomach.
As fate would have it (or the very clever episode writers), Deb is the one that comes to Hannah's rescue. After following up on leads Dexter had given her, she finds Hannah bloody and unconscious. Although it is clear Deb wants to walk away, she does her duty and calls for an ambulance.
Not willing to let Hannah off completely free, Deb confronts Hannah in the hospital. Deb insists that she knows about Hannah's past, but also that her decision to save Hannah indicates Deb's loyalty to herself, and not to Dexter. Although I'm interested in how far this "loyalty" will extend and how much of her relationship with Dexter she will throw away under the guise of becoming true with herself.
In the background, LaGuerta meets with the former Captain, Tom, about information on the Bay Harbor Butcher. He responds that he'll help her with her list of potential suspects in return for her support for his reinstatement. He insists that he needs the pension bump to pay for his boat, but with his record, it's more likely prostitutes, so I really wouldn't mind if LaGuerta screwed him over on this exchange.
After what seems like a record amount of blood in this episode (four bloody deaths, two burned bodies, and Hannah's almost death) the episode closes after an intense conversation between Hannah and Dexter. Dexter finally tells her how he really feels, that she is where he feels safe, and doesn't that just say it all.
Copyright © 2013, The Baltimore Sun | <urn:uuid:a95b4cde-e6ee-4d9e-a01c-f44264070a5b> | 2013-05-26T02:37:39Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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ARLINGTON, TX: Edwin Jackson #22 of the St. Louis Cardinals pitches during Game Four of the MLB World Series against the Texas Rangers at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington in Arlington, Texas. (Photo by Tony Gutierrez-Pool/Getty Images)
Edwin Jackson has been traded a whole bunch of times. Might this in some way help to explain why his market as a free agent was seemingly so slow to develop?
Thursday afternoon, reports emerged that Edwin Jackson had found a home. Finally, free agent starting pitcher Edwin Jackson had found a home. The Washington Nationals announced that they were signing Jackson to a one-year contract, and they made the announcement even before Jackson passed a physical. Thursday was the second day of February. Spring training begins in just a few weeks.
Jackson took a long time to sign, because Jackson's market was slow to develop. At least, from the outside, it appeared as if Jackson's market was slow to develop. We can never know for sure what things were really like. That Jackson signed for a year and about $10 million when he entered the offseason looking for something much longer and bigger suggests as much.
Why did this happen? Why wasn't there greater demand for a pitcher of Jackson's proven caliber? One response could be "well Roy Oswalt's still a free agent and Prince Fielder only recently signed so sometimes things just happen this way." Another response of which I saw a lot was "Jackson's been traded a bunch of times, indicating that there's something about him they see that we're missing."
Or something along those lines. Basically, I saw a lot of people trying to explain Jackson's market by pointing to his trade history. Jackson's been a pretty good pitcher. He's been traded unusually often. Therefore, Jackson has some problem that must be known within baseball circles.
What I've decided to do here is try to see whether this theory holds up. I'm going to re-visit each of the Edwin Jackson trades. I'm probably not the first person to do this. In fact, I'm almost certain I'm not the first person to do this. This is a pretty obvious idea. But it's an idea I'm going to pursue, and if you or someone you know has pursued it too, then the more the merrier! Let us all overlap like so many happy Venn diagrams!
In retrospect, this one almost hurts to look at. Danys Baez and Lance Carter. Jackson, of course, was one of the Dodgers' top prospects. Why make this trade?
Well, Jackson was one of the Dodgers' top prospects, but his stock was plummeting. In 75⅓ major league innings, he had 39 walks, 48 strikeouts, and a 5.50 ERA. The two previous years in triple-A, he threw 146 innings, with 92 walks, 103 strikeouts, and a 6.90 ERA. What Jackson had on his side was stuff and youth. What he didn't have was performance.
So the Dodgers sold low, but Jackson hadn't done anything in a couple years. Baez was a proven closer. Carter was a potentially useful reliever. New GM Ned Colletti wanted to build an instant winner. All this trade was was a mistake.
The Dodgers sold low on Jackson. The Rays sold high. Jackson was coming off a season in which he posted a 100 ERA+, but that year he also posted unimpressive peripherals. The Rays saw an opportunity, dealing Jackson to not only open up rotation space for David Price, but to also bring in a talented young outfielder with several years of team control. Joyce had just broken in with the Tigers and posted a 115 OPS+ over nearly 300 trips to the plate. He played solid defense and had hit well in the minors.
This trade isn't evidence that the Rays were dissatisfied with Edwin Jackson. This trade is evidence that the Rays recognized that Jackson might be overvalued, so they cashed him in.
The explanation here from the Tigers' perspective was all about salary reduction. Jackson and Granderson were good players, but they were good players set to start getting expensive. The other Jackson and Scherzer, meanwhile, were talented and practically babies. Edwin Jackson was coming off a solid, breakthrough season, but there was reason to believe that Scherzer was better, and younger. There was excellent reason to believe that Scherzer was younger. The Tigers gave up value, and the Tigers got cheaper value.
When the Tigers traded Jackson, they traded him after he did well. Jackson didn't do so well with the Diamondbacks. At the time of the trade, his ERA stood at 5.16, and his strikeout-to-walk ratio was mediocre. Additionally, the Diamondbacks were 38-65 and looking to shed, and Jackson was a year and a half away from free agency. Arizona picked up two pitchers, one of whom was an excellent prospect. Hudson has developed quite nicely and is under team control for a long time.
The White Sox were hovering around .500 and flirting with contention. They were also using a six-man starting rotation. Jackson had good numbers but was months away from becoming a free agent. Chicago turned him in for bullpen help, a moderately promising pitching prospect, and salary relief, as Teahen was due $5.5 million in 2012. That the White Sox were able to shed that salary should not be ignored.
This trade had a lot of parts to it, but at its core, it was Edwin Jackson for Colby Rasmus. The Blue Jays got Jackson and flipped him immediately, the same way they did Mike Napoli several months before. The idea was that they could get a potential franchise center fielder while his value was low. They didn't need a starter rental in Jackson. The Cardinals were happy to get Jackson as they had playoff aspirations.
That's a review of the trades. Each and every one of them can be explained pretty reasonably. There's little hint that there was something about Edwin Jackson that grew to rub teams the wrong way, except occasionally for bad performance. That teams were able to trade Jackson for value suggests demand, which suggests that Jackson doesn't have some negative reputation within baseball circles. Word about that stuff gets around in a hurry.
I'm sure teams realize that Jackson could be more than he is, given the quality of his raw stuff. It's possible that pitching coaches get excited about the prospect of working with Edwin Jackson, and then frustrated over time when he doesn't make the leap. I don't know, I'm not a pitching coach. But I don't think that Edwin Jackson's trade history should be held against him. You could look at it as a sign that he's in some way undesirable, but you could just as easily look at it as a sign that he's highly desirable. Look at all of the teams that wanted Edwin Jackson!
Here's a shot in the dark as to what Edwin Jackson's reputation is within baseball circles: talented, valuable pitcher who's less than his stuff. I don't think there's anything more sinister than that, and I don't think Jackson's trade history is compelling evidence of anything more sinister than that. Teams are very much aware of his value, and I suspect his market was slow to develop due to a combination of an unusual overall market and the Boras factor. But I've been wrong before. Like a whole bunch of times. | <urn:uuid:b1380268-bbb5-412e-8bf1-177a23fa0163> | 2013-05-26T02:43:26Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Black-Scholes: The maths formula linked to the financial crash
It's not every day that someone writes down an equation that ends up changing the world. But it does happen sometimes, and the world doesn't always change for the better. It has been argued that one formula known as Black-Scholes, along with its descendants, helped to blow up the financial world.
Black-Scholes was first written down in the early 1970s but its story starts earlier than that, in the Dojima Rice Exchange in 17th Century Japan where futures contracts were written for rice traders. A simple futures contract says that I will agree to buy rice from you in one year's time, at a price that we agree right now.
By the 20th Century the Chicago Board of Trade was providing a marketplace for traders to deal not only in futures but in options contracts. An example of an option is a contract where we agree that I can buy rice from you at any time over the next year, at a price that we agree right now - but I don't have to if I don't want to.
You can imagine why this kind of contract might be useful. If I am running a big chain of hamburger restaurants, but I don't know how much beef I'll need to buy next year, and I am nervous that the price of beef might rise, well - all I need is to buy some options on beef.
But then that leads to a very ticklish problem. How much should I be paying for those beef options? What are they worth? And that's where this world-changing equation, the Black-Scholes formula, can help.
"The problem it's trying to solve is to define the value of the right, but not the obligation, to buy a particular asset at a specified price, within or at the end of a specified time period," says Professor Myron Scholes, professor of finance at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and - of course - co-inventor of the Black-Scholes formula.
The young Scholes was fascinated by finance. As a teenager, he persuaded his mother to set up an account so that he could trade on the stock market. One of the amazing things about Scholes is that throughout his time as an undergraduate and then a doctoral student, he was half-blind. And so, he says, he got very good at listening and at thinking.
When he was 26, an operation largely restored his sight. The next year, he became an assistant professor at MIT, and it was there that he stumbled upon the option-pricing puzzle.
One part of the puzzle was this question of risk: the value of an option to buy beef at a price of - say - $2 (£1.23) a kilogram presumably depends on what the price of beef is, and how the price of beef is moving around.
But the connection between the price of beef and the value of the beef option doesn't vary in a straightforward way - it depends how likely the option is to actually be used. That in turn depends on the option price and the beef price. All the variables seem to be tangled up in an impenetrable way.
Scholes worked on the problem with his colleague, Fischer Black, and figured out that if I own just the right portfolio of beef, plus options to buy and sell beef, I have a delicious and totally risk-free portfolio. Since I already know the price of beef and the price of risk-free assets, by looking at the difference between them I can work out the price of these beef options. That's the basic idea. The details are hugely complicated.
"It might have taken us a year, a year and a half to be able to solve and get the simple Black-Scholes formula," says Scholes. "But we had the actual underlying dynamics way before."
The Black-Scholes method turned out to be a way not only to calculate value of options but all kinds of other financial assets. "We were like kids in a candy story in the sense that we described options everywhere, options were embedded in everything that we did in life," says Scholes.
End Quote Professor Ian Stewart Warwick University
By 2007 the trade in derivatives worldwide was one quadrillion (thousand million million) US dollars ”
But Black and Scholes weren't the only kids in the candy store, says Ian Stewart, whose book argues that Black-Scholes was a dangerous invention.
"What the equation did was give everyone the confidence to trade options and very quickly, much more complicated financial options known as derivatives," he says.
Scholes thought his equation would be useful. He didn't expect it to transform the face of finance. But it quickly became obvious that it would.
"About the time we had published this article, that's 1973, simultaneously or approximately a month thereafter, the Chicago Board Options Exchange started to trade call options on 16 stocks," he recalls.
Scholes had just moved to the University of Chicago. He and his colleagues had already been teaching the Black-Scholes formula and methodology to students for several years.
"There were many young traders who either had taken courses at MIT or Chicago in using the option pricing technology. On the other hand, there was a group of traders who had only intuition and previous experience. And in a very short period of time, the intuitive players were essentially eliminated by the more systematic players who had this pricing technology."
More or Less: Behind the stats
Listen to More or Less on BBC Radio 4 and the World Service, or download the free podcast
That was just the beginning.
"By 2007 the trade in derivatives worldwide was one quadrillion (thousand million million) US dollars - this is 10 times the total production of goods on the planet over its entire history," says Stewart. "OK, we're talking about the totals in a two-way trade, people are buying and people are selling and you're adding it all up as if it doesn't cancel out, but it was a huge trade."
The Black-Scholes formula had passed the market test. But as banks and hedge funds relied more and more on their equations, they became more and more vulnerable to mistakes or over-simplifications in the mathematics.
"The equation is based on the idea that big movements are actually very, very rare. The problem is that real markets have these big changes much more often that this model predicts," says Stewart. "And the other problem is that everyone's following the same mathematical principles, so they're all going to get the same answer."
Now these were known problems. What was not clear was whether the problems were small enough to ignore, or well enough understood to fix. And then in the late 1990s, two remarkable things happened.
"The inventors got the Nobel Prize for Economics," says Stewart. "I would argue they thoroughly deserved to get it."
End Quote Ian Stewart University of Warwick
Long-Term Capital Management showed the danger of this kind of algorithmically-based trading”
Fischer Black died young, in 1995. When in 1997 Scholes won the Nobel memorial prize, he shared it not with Black but with Robert Merton, another option-pricing expert.
Scholes' work had inspired a generation of mathematical wizards on Wall Street, and by this stage both he and Merton were players in the world of finance, as partners of a hedge fund called Long-Term Capital Management.
"The whole idea of this company was that it was going to base its trading on mathematical principles such as the Black-Scholes equation. And it actually was amazingly successful to begin with," says Stewart. "It was outperforming the traditional companies quite noticeably and everything looked great."
But it didn't end well. Long-Term Capital Management ran into, among other things, the Russian financial crisis. The firm lost $4bn (£2.5bn) in the course of six weeks. It was bailed out by a consortium of banks which had been assembled by the Federal Reserve. And - at the time - it was a very big story indeed. This was all happening in August and September of 1998, less than a year after Scholes had been awarded his Nobel prize.
Stewart says the lessons from Long-Term Capital Management were obvious. "It showed the danger of this kind of algorithmically-based trading if you don't keep an eye on some of the indicators that the more conventional people would use," he says. "They [Long-Term Capital Management] were committed, pretty much, to just ploughing ahead with the system they had. And it went wrong."
Scholes says that's not what happened at all. "It had nothing to do with equations and nothing to do with models," he says. "I was not running the firm, let me be very clear about that. There was not an ability to withstand the shock that occurred in the market in the summer and fall of late 1998. So it was just a matter of risk-taking. It wasn't a matter of modelling."
This is something people were still arguing about a decade later. Was the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management an indictment of mathematical approaches to finance or, as Scholes says, was it simply a case of traders taking too much risk against the better judgement of the mathematical experts?
Ten years after the Long-Term Capital Management bail-out, Lehman Brothers collapsed. And the debate over Black-Scholes and LTCM is now a broader debate over the role of mathematical equations in finance.
Ian Stewart claims that the Black-Scholes equation changed the world. Does he really believe that mathematics caused the financial crisis?
"It was abuse of their equation that caused trouble, and I don't think you can blame the inventors of an equation if somebody else comes along and uses it badly," he says.
End Quote Myron Scholes
The fundamental issue is that quantitative technologies in finance will survive, and will grow”
"And it wasn't just that equation. It was a whole generation of other mathematical models and all sorts of other techniques that followed on its heels. But it was one of the major discoveries that opened the door to all this."
Black-Scholes changed the culture of Wall Street, from a place where people traded based on common sense, experience and intuition, to a place where the computer said yes or no.
But is it really fair to blame Black-Scholes for what followed it? "The Black-Scholes technology has very specific rules and requirements," says Scholes. "That technology attracted or caused investment banks to hire people who had quantitative or mathematical skills. I accept that. They then developed products or technologies of their own."
Not all of those subsequent technologies, says Scholes, were good enough. "[Some] had assumptions that were wrong, or they used data incorrectly to calibrate their models, or people who used [the] models didn't know how to use them."
Scholes argues there is no going back. "The fundamental issue is that quantitative technologies in finance will survive, and will grow, and will continue to evolve over time," he says.
But for Ian Stewart, the story of Black-Scholes - and of Long-Term Capital Management - is a kind of morality tale. "It's very tempting to see the financial crisis and various things which led up to it as sort of the classic Greek tragedy of hubris begets nemesis," he says.
"You try to fly, you fly too close to the sun, the wax holding your wings on melts and you fall down to the ground. My personal view is that it's not just tempting to do that but there is actually a certain amount of truth in that way of thinking. I think the bankers' hubris did indeed beget nemesis. But the big problem is that it wasn't the bankers on whom the nemesis descended - it was the rest of us."
Additional reporting by Richard Knight | <urn:uuid:60661b3e-b310-4f54-a3ff-cb2bc47de90a> | 2013-05-26T02:41:43Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Japan confirms disputed islands purchase plan
Japan has confirmed that it intends to purchase disputed islands also claimed by China from private owners, amid tension between the two countries.
The government had formally agreed to ''obtain ownership'' of islands called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, the top government spokesman said.
Japan controls the uninhabited but resource-rich East China Sea islands, which are also claimed by Taiwan.
China has denounced the plan as illegal and warned it will affect ties.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura said the Japanese government was buying the islands to promote their stable and peaceful management.
It was not immediately clear how much the purchase would cost. But previous Japanese media reports, citing government sources, said that the government was paying 2.05bn yen ($26m, £16.4m) for three islands.
"This is just the ownership of land, which is part of Japan's territory, moving from one [private] owner to the state, and should not cause any problem with other countries," said Mr Fujimura.
Japan-China disputed islands
- The archipelago consists of five islands and three reefs
- Japan, China and Taiwan claim them; they are controlled by Japan and form part of Okinawa prefecture
- Japanese businessman Kunioki Kurihara owns three of the islands, which he rents out to the Japanese state
- The islands were the focus of a major diplomatic row between Japan and China in 2010
"We do not want the Senkaku issue to interfere with Sino-Japanese relations," he added.
"We believe it is important to avoid misunderstandings and unforeseen circumstances between us, and have been using diplomatic channels to keep in close contact with China since they made their position on this matter clear."
Outspoken Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara had wanted the Tokyo Metropolitan Government to buy the islands and had been collecting donations from the public. He had talked of developing the islands - a plan that could have further strained ties with China.
At the Apec summit in Russia on Sunday, Chinese President Hu Jintao was quoted by state-run media as telling Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda that buying the islands was "illegal and invalid".
His point was reiterated by a foreign ministry spokesman, Hong Lei, on Monday.
"The unilateral measures that Japan has taken on the Diaoyu islands are illegal and ineffective. China is firmly opposed to it," he said.
The islands, which lie south of Okinawa and north of Taiwan, sit in key shipping lanes and are thought to lie close to gas deposits. | <urn:uuid:e35f221c-3c3b-4d24-ba30-96bba5446441> | 2013-05-26T02:56:40Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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New rules lead to closure of Abu Dhabi grocery shops
Unlike the big malls that dominate Dubai, neighbouring Abu Dhabi has 1,300 or so small grocery shops on its streets.
However, many have had to close after the introduction of new government rules on food hygiene and how shops should look.
With locals mourning the loss of their neighbourhood stores, how sensible are the new regulations?
Jonathan Frewin reports. | <urn:uuid:ac1cd2aa-e602-4881-b8f2-f39384b83e44> | 2013-05-26T02:49:46Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Bradley Wiggins struck a major blow in his quest to win the Tour de France by extending his lead over his main rivals during the final day in the mountains.
With three stages to go - including Saturday's time trial - his lead over Team Sky team-mate Chris Froome remains at two minutes and five seconds.
But third-placed Vincenzo Nibali lost 18 more seconds as Britons Froome and Wiggins finished second and third.
Alejandro Valverde held off a late assault by Sky to win in the Pyrenees.
"Barring accidents, that is definitely job done and the Tour won for Bradley Wiggins. He and Team Sky had as easy a day as they could have had hoped because they had to do virtually nothing. Near the end, Wiggins and Froome were probably saying 'we've done it' as much as anything because I don't think they would have expected Vincenzo Nibali to lose time. The only thing I regret is that if Froome had been given a free hand, he could have won the stage too."
Only two more days of real racing lie between Wiggins and the top of the podium in Paris.
The yellow jersey is, by convention, never attacked on Sunday's final stage, which is a procession into the French capital and to the finish line on the Champs Elysees, bar the bunch sprint for the stage win.
Wiggins was expected to be given a tough test on stage 17, the last day in the mountains.
Given the Briton is a superior time trialist, Nibali knew this was effectively his last chance to attack.
The Italian's Liquigas team tried to set up him up for a stage win, as well as putting pressure on Team Sky, on the climb towards the finish line at Peyragudes but he could not keep the pace all the way to the finish line.
Continue reading the main story
“If you had said to me a month before the Tour that with three days to go I would be second I wouldn't have believed you. I'm very happy”
It was left to Froome and Wiggins to try to chase down Spaniard Valverde, who eventually crossed the line first, 19 seconds ahead of the Team Sky duo.
Nibali is now two minutes and 41 seconds adrift of Wiggins, who admitted he lost concentration in the final section of the stage.
"We were talking about Nibali," said Wiggins. "We knew he was on his limit. The moment we crossed the Peyresourde, I allowed myself to drift and that was the first time I thought maybe I've won the Tour today.
"All the way up that last climb my concentration had gone, everything about performance had gone. Chris was egging me on to take more time and I was in another world, really."
Froome, who appeared keen to attempt to overhaul Valverde, played down suggestions he sacrificed a stage win to assist Wiggins.
"Everyone in the team makes sacrifices for the yellow jersey, that's cycling," he said. "It's our work.
"I'm 27 and I hope to win the Tour one day. If you had said to me a month before the Tour that with three days to go I would be second I wouldn't have believed you. I'm very happy."
- Friday's stage 18:
Bunch sprint expected at end of 223km ride
- Saturday's stage 19:
53.5km individual time trial. Wiggins' strong suit; he could extend his advantage
- Sunday's stage 20:
A procession for the man in yellow. Mark Cavendish chasing a fourth successive win on the Champs-Elysees
Wiggins added: "I'm sure that he will win the Tour one day. Yes, maybe he is stronger than me in the mountains, for sure, but I'm not a true climber. I'm still a rider against the clock who can climb."
Team Sky general manager Dave Brailsford praised the rest of his squad for their support of Froome and Wiggins but said he would not relax until the 32-year-old Londoner is sure of becoming the first British rider to win the Tour in its 109-year history.
"Credit to the guys they did it again," Brailsford said. "All the work they did to set it up for the two guys at the end was brilliant. Now that the mountains are over we can let out a sigh of relief and look forward to Friday.
"We set out to consolidate the lead and the yellow jersey and we showed again we are the best team in the race. Unity was really important to us, I'm very proud of that.
"The closer you are the more you have to lose. It is my job to ensure that tomorrow [Friday] we'll be as vigilant as at the start of the Tour."
While Wiggins and Froome consolidated their positions at the head of the race, world champion Mark Cavendish had to overcome a crash 3km from the finish after a flag waved by a spectator got wrapped around his handlebars.
Cavendish, who was reported to be "fine" by Team Sky sports director Sean Yates, escaped with a swollen leg.
Stage 17 top five:
Alejandro Valverde (Spa) Movistar 4:12:11"
Chris Froome (GB) Team Sky +19"
Bradley Wiggins (GB) Team Sky +19"
Thibaut Pinot (Fra) FDJ +22"
Pierre Rolland (Fra) Europcar +26"
Overall race standing after stage 17:
Bradley Wiggins (GB) Team Sky 78:28:02"
Chris Froome (GB) Team Sky +2:05"
Vincenzo Nibali (Ita) Liquigas +2:41"
Jurgen Van den Broeck (Bel) Lotto Belisol +5:53"
Tejay Van Garderen (US) BMC Racing +8:30" | <urn:uuid:d80e9a28-b072-4795-8858-44391dcdf5e1> | 2013-05-26T03:12:20Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Eating disorders survivor now helps others
As Amy Candido shopped for a dress for her wedding last June, her friends urged her to lose weight to ensure it would fit on the big day, to look her slimmest best as she walked down the aisle.
She ignored them.
"That dress is for me, no matter how I am," she thought.
That's a long way from 10 years ago, when Candido had to get her prom dress taken in a few times as she continued to lose weight.
Candido had an eating disorder.
Through her high school years, and then as a kinesiology student at UBC, Candido says her weight defined her, even guided her choice of studies.
"I felt I needed an identity," says the Burnaby resident. "I didn't play sports, I wasn't good in choir. I was obsessed with the body."
She counted every calorie she ate. She exercised to exhaustion, including middle-of-the-night jogs through Central Park. Twice she was stopped by police who urged her to at least run with a friend, or a dog.
"I just didn't care. I was just existing, I wasn't living."
She isolated herself from friends and family, and avoided social situations that might involve food. She immersed herself in her studies to the exclusion of everything else.
"If I didn't get an A, I might as well fail," says Candido. "Everything was black and white."
When Candido looked in the mirror, she didn't see her hair falling out in clumps, her gaunt cheeks and sunken eyes.
"As long as I was thin, everything was okay," she says. "I would strut down the sidewalk thinking everyone was jealous of me."
Getting kicked out of the Master's program in physiotherapy jolted her back to reality. After all, her advisor told her, it would hardly set a good example for someone so unhealthy to be working in the health services.
"I rode the bus home crying. I needed help."
Her mother got Candido admitted to the eating disorders in-patient program at St. Paul's Hospital. She started therapy.
Candido's journey back to health wasn't easy.
"The eating disorder voice in your head is telling you this is not good," she says. "I was confused."
Candido was challenged to come up with other interests to take her mind off food. She volunteered as a dog walker at the Burnaby SPCA. She started eating more, and cut back on her exercise regime.
When she was discharged from St. Paul's she moved to Kamloops to get away from the tension that was a constant companion to her eating disorder, to get a fresh start.
As she studied respiratory therapy at Thompson Rivers University, she lived on her own, she made new friends, she ate pasta and cookies.
"It was a test," she says.
And it was one she passed, eventually leading her to work with Jessie's Legacy eating disorders prevention program, and as an eating disorders peer support worker at BC Children's Hospital.
In the past year, Candido has spoken about eating disorders, body image and self-esteem to students at more than 30 elementary and high schools around Metro Vancouver. It can be a struggle to reach kids who are constantly bombarded with images of young, perfect, slim bodies, who feel pressure to keep up with their peers.
Instead of preaching, she says, she gives them tips on developing coping skills, encourages them to focus on doing things they enjoy, that they're good at instead of what's looking back at them from the mirror.
"Life is way too short to care about that," says Candido. "It's just a waste."
• Feb. 3-9 is National Eating Disorder Awareness Week. It's also the start of the provincial eating disorders awareness campaign which will include educational events for the public, the creation of a video and flashmob contests. For more information go to www.familyservices.bc.ca | <urn:uuid:1f8013ee-e4b7-4299-ab9c-bf72bac1c8d2> | 2013-05-26T02:43:16Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Organic grape and carrot juice are blended with essential fatty acids and vitamins B5, C, E, K and P to hydrate, help smooth fine lines and help brighten the eye area.
• nourishes and hydrates
• helps brighten under-eye area
Be the first to review this product!
Submit Your Review
organic juice solution of: ? daucus carota sativa (carrot) juice ? vitis vinifera (white grape) juice ? aloe barbadensis leaf juice organic essential acids of: ? oenothera biennis (evening primrose) linum usitatissimum (linseed) seed & borago officinali (borage) seed organic plant oils of: ? helianthus annuus (sunflower) & persea gratissima (avocado) vitamin-rich: ? vitamin E ? tocopherol ? vitamin C ? magnesium ascorbyl phosphate ? vitamin A ? retinyl palmitate ? vitamin B5 ? panthenol ? vitamin P - hesperidin methyl chalcone ? organic cucumis sativus (cucumber) fruit extract ? organic camellia sinensis (green tea) leaf extract ? sodium hyaluronate ? organic algae extract
Moisturize daily by gently applying small amount around the eye area including eyelids. | <urn:uuid:0dee97db-29d5-4cdd-8b3b-16fd8bb0999f> | 2013-05-26T03:08:58Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Moderator: Nicole Marie
Giant Communist Robot wrote:I saw Obama's press conference after his speech. Very nice. He did a good job. So far, though, he hasn't done anything. For example, he has stumbled getting his bailout package through Congress. He should have used Vince Offer to push it through.
Shapley wrote:Stimulus Bill Leaves Out Money For Katrina Repairs
Well. Will we now be told that President Obama doesn't care about black people?
Shapley wrote:President Obama: "We Will Rebuild".
Rebuild, Hell. I thought a big part of the problem was that we had overbuilt...
Shapley wrote:I'm not complaining, I'm just questioning some of his terminology. "We will rebuild" was a fine line for Mayor Nagin after Katrina, but it somehow doesn't fit. Nero burned Rome so that he could rebuild it, or so the story goes. In America, we need to build, but not to rebuild, since what we have is still usable. IMHO.
Oh, and I'm sick of hearing him talk about the situation he 'inherited'. He didn't inherit it, he helped create it. He was a part of the Senate that created this situation. He actively opposed efforts to stabilize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He bears responsibiltiy for it. He talks now about taking responsibility for our past actions. He could begin by accepting a little of his own, and dropping the word 'inherited' from his economic lexicon.
jamiebk wrote: Well personally speaking I will need to "rebuild" about 40% of my stock portfolio.
Users browsing this forum: Majestic-12 [Bot] | <urn:uuid:c2df7153-d00b-4839-be69-e08b1d1c61d1> | 2013-05-26T02:34:10Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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One of the world's most ancient societies has been given a legal buffer zone to guard it from the modern world.
India's Supreme Court has banned all commercial and tourism activity near their habitat in the country's remote Andaman and Nicobar islands in the Indian Ocean.
The ruling bars hotels and resorts from operating within a three-mile buffer zone around the Jarawa reserve, which is home to the Jarawa tribal people. The order means resorts that had opened nearby will have to close.
The Jarawas are among the world's most ancient people, with many still hunting with bows and arrows and rubbing stones together to make fire. Scientists believe they were among the first people to migrate from Africa to Asia around 70,000 years ago.
Jarawas did not have any contact with government authorities until 1996 and did not begin leaving their habitat until a few years ago, when they began moving out of the reserve in small groups for a brief while before returning. Scientists say there are around 320 Jarawa tribespeople living in the southern and middle Andaman islands.
The Indian government has come under increasing criticism from rights activists for failing to protect the Jarawas. Critics say the local government has allowed unscrupulous tour operators to promote "human safaris."
In 2002, the Supreme Court ordered that a road passing through the reserve be closed, but the local government still has not barred the Andaman Trunk Road, enabling tourist buses and vehicles to enter Jarawa habitats deep in the jungle.
India's cabinet recently authorised stiff penalties for those trying to organise tours to Jarawa habitats or photographing the tribespeople.
Last year, activists were outraged when media reports and videos surfaced of local policemen forcing bare-chested Jarawa women to dance for tourists in exchange for food.
Survival International, a London-based international rights group for indigenous people, welcomed the new order, but said the Indian government has "missed" an opportunity by allowing the road to remain open to tourists. | <urn:uuid:f4a87cfe-698f-49cb-b9f6-4e766d72cd04> | 2013-05-26T03:12:13Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Representing the fifth generation of the Bertelsmann family, Reinhard Mohn spent over 40 years actively building the company that today ranks as one of the globe’s leading media groups. With foresight, business acumen and a willingness to take entrepreneurial risks, he created an organization that now employs over 100,000 people worldwide. In keeping with the Bertelsmann and Mohn families’ longstanding tradition of civic and cultural engagement, he established the Bertelsmann Stiftung in 1977, eventually transferring to it his holdings in Bertelsmann AG. Reinhard Mohn died on October 3, 2009.
Reinhard Mohn's credo was, "We have the freedom to act. We should take advantage of it." Throughout his life, this belief guided his actions as a business and social leader. He always viewed taking responsibility as an opportunity to make a difference.more
When he came home to Germany, a country in ruins, two years after the end of World War II, Reinhard Mohn decided to make use of the opportunities then available to him. Wanting to create something of value, he became managing director of the family printing and publishing business, transforming it into Europe's largest media group.more
Continuing the family tradition, Reinhard Mohn firmly believed that "wealth entails responsibility." This conviction informed his years of civic engagement, leading him to found the Bertelsmann Stiftung in 1977.more
Reinhard Mohn's death on October 3, 2009, at the age of 88 was a loss that was deeply felt at the Bertelsmann Stiftung.more | <urn:uuid:d419d309-c832-43fa-b191-5fe6b3cc65bd> | 2013-05-26T03:10:41Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Sur La Table Ramekins
If you love baking, you'll want a set of ceramic ramekins. Foods are baked and then served in the single-serving dishes. Similar to a souffle dish but smaller, a ramekin perfectly holds a single serving of custard, mousse, and other tasty d... moreessert. The handy pint-size dishes also ideally hold condiments and small snacks at parties. | <urn:uuid:90dc7ace-7559-4cd8-b6f8-193ee4240c67> | 2013-05-26T02:49:35Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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It is Saturday, and the dvisional championship games will be played tomorrow to determine who will play in this year's Super Bowl.
Here are my choices.
Philadelphia (-3) at Arizona: I am taking the Eagles here. I hate doing it, but I think the Eagles are the better team.
Baltimore at Pittsburgh (-5.5): I have to believe the Steelers will win this game. I think 5.5 points is a lot, but I will go with Pittsburgh.
Use this as open thread. Drop in your picks for the games, then feel free to discuss anything you like. | <urn:uuid:a05b3989-4198-43e7-bbdd-99b29fb4443d> | 2013-05-26T03:08:57Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Scientists identified seven new species of bamboo coral discovered on a NOAA-funded mission in the deep waters of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. Six of these species may represent entirely new genera, a remarkable feat given the broad classification a genus represents. A genus is a major category in the classification of organisms, ranking above a species and below a family. Scientists expect to identify more new species as analysis of samples continues.
"These discoveries are important, because deep-sea corals support diverse seafloor ecosystems and also because these corals may be among the first marine organisms to be affected by ocean acidification," said Richard Spinrad, Ph.D., NOAA's assistant administrator for Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. Ocean acidification is a change in ocean chemistry due to excess carbon dioxide. Researchers have seen adverse changes in marine life with calcium-carbonate shells, such as corals, because of acidified ocean water.
"Deep-sea bamboo corals also produce growth rings much as trees do, and can provide a much-needed view of how deep ocean conditions change through time," said Spinrad.
Rob Dunbar, a Stanford University scientist, was studying long-term climate data by examining long-lived corals. "We found live, 4,000-year-old corals in the Monument meaning 4,000 years worth of information about what has been going on in the deep ocean interior."
"Studying these corals can help us understand how they survive for such long periods of time as well as how they may respond to climate change in the future," said Dunbar.
Among the other findings were a five-foot tall yellow bamboo coral tree that had never been described before, new beds of living deepwater coral and sponges, and a giant sponge scientists dubbed the "cauldron sponge," approximately three feet tall and three feet across. Scientists collected two other sponges which have not yet been anal
|Contact: Christine Patrick| | <urn:uuid:ad26ba98-1713-48a2-a39f-70743debf943> | 2013-05-26T02:52:00Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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This site has been designed for optimal use, under the following circumstances:
- Mozilla Firefox 1.0+ or Internet Explorer 7+
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It has been detected that one or more of the above is incorrect. It is recommended that you comply to the above before continuing to browse this site.
The latest browsers can be downloaded at: | <urn:uuid:ed31457e-747d-496f-b370-6dbef8d73846> | 2013-05-26T03:03:41Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Trading Standards - Frequently Asked Questions
I have bought something from a shop, which turns out to be faulty. What are my rights?
When you buy goods from a trader, they must:
- match any description given
- be of satisfactory quality. This means what a reasonable person would regard as satisfactory. The goods should work properly, be free from minor blemishes, have a reasonable appearance and finish, be safe to use and durable
- be fit for their purpose which means they should do what they are designed to do or any purpose made known to the seller
Does it make any difference if I buy from a market stall or by mail order?
No, your rights are the same as if you had bought from a shop.
Are my rights the same if I buy goods in a sale?
Yes, your rights are the same. However, remember that if goods are marked as 'seconds' or 'shop soiled' you can't expect them to be perfect.
I've changed my mind about something I've bought. Am I entitled to my money back?
If you've buy something and there is nothing wrong with it but you change your mind for whatever reason, you are not entitled to a refund. However, it is worth asking the shop whether they are willing to refund or exchange.
Does it matter if I lose my receipt?
If you are taking something back to the shop, you need proof of purchase. Normally, this is a receipt, but a credit card statement or bank statement might suffice.
Are my rights the same if I buy something privately?
No. The goods must meet any description given, but they needn't be of satisfactory quality.
I've bought something which is faulty, but the shop refuses to do anything. What can I do?
Trading Standards can advise you on your rights. They may be able to contact the shop for you. As a last resort you can take action using the Small Claims Procedure in the County Court.
If you cannot find the answer you are looking for on this website then please contact Citizens Advice consumer helpline on 08454 04 05 06. | <urn:uuid:cd14c71b-d00d-44f5-b7ab-d71e49dce9a0> | 2013-05-26T02:57:00Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Contact us by email or phone.
Hindes holds hands up over crash
Philip Hindes admitted to crashing deliberately after helping to propel Great Britain team-mate Sir Chris Hoy to a fifth Olympic gold on an opening night of high drama at the London 2012 Velodrome.
Hoy, Hindes and Jason Kenny won the three-man, three-lap team sprint in a world record of 42.600 seconds, beating France in a repeat of the final four years' ago in Beijing. Specialist starter Hindes picked himself up off the track before the first bend after a poor start in qualifying. Officials restarted the heat.
The 19-year-old German-born rider, who has a British father and joined British Cycling's academy in October 2010, said: "We were saying if we have a bad start we need to crash to get a restart. I just crashed, I did it on purpose to get a restart, just to have the fastest ride. I did it. So it was all planned, really."
British Cycling suggested Hindes' comments were "lost in translation" from a man who began learning English only after moving to Manchester to train at the velodrome, while the International Cycling Union confirmed the result was not in question, with Britain taking gold ahead of France and Germany bronze.
There was no rule to govern the incident and no appeal is possible, with France accepting the final outcome.
In the post-race press conference, Hindes denied it was deliberate when asked directly about his earlier comments.
"No. I just went out the gate and just lost control, just fell down," he said. "My back wheel slipped and totally lost control and then I couldn't handle the bike any more and just crashed."
The women's event ended in Team GB's Jess Varnish and Victoria Pendleton being relegated for a takeover infringement. The duo had qualified second fastest for the final before falling victims to officialdom, meaning Varnish's Games was over.
Pendleton said: "It's just one of those things. Now and again rubbish things happen and this is one of those days. "The only positive is I know my form is really good because that's by far the fastest second lap I've ever done and then I backed it up with the second ride." | <urn:uuid:f6f524d6-313e-4dfa-a180-4c8b2ba631a1> | 2013-05-26T02:35:00Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Imprisoned after he is caught stealing an East Asian treasure, streetfighter Alex Cardo's martial arts skills are no match for the angry mobs who taunt him and the ruthless guard who mercilessly torments him. His only friend is Master Sun, the world's greatest practitioner of the Iron Hand fighting style. Cardo gets a chance for revenge against the bullying guard Demian when he learns that Demian has received an invitation to kumite, an international championship in which the world's greatest fighters battle it out until the death. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
I think this was a pretty good follow up to Bloodsport. Daniel Bernhardt does a good job stepping into the shoes of Van Damm. The fight scenes are good and it has that underdog retribution type finish most movies of this genre have. Its worth a watch. | <urn:uuid:7132b194-ab89-4e9b-87b3-4324d789cd81> | 2013-05-26T02:38:12Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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- Add Madeline to Queue
Add Madeline to top of Queue
Daisy von Sherler Mayer directed this family film, an adaptation of the famed book series that Austrian-born writer-illustrator Ludwig Bemelmans (1898-1962) launched in 1939 with the opening lines, "In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines lived twelve little girls in two straight lines. In two straight lines they broke their bread and brushed their teeth and went to bed. They smiled at the good and frowned at the bad and sometimes they were very sad. They left the house at half past nine in two straight lines in rain or shine -- the smallest one was Madeline." This live-action film interpretation, set during the mid-1950s, expands on plot elements found throughout several books in the series. Lord Covington (Nigel Hawthorne) plans to sell the small French boarding school where the young orphan Madeline (nine-year-old British actress Hatty Jones) lives with other girls under the supervision of sympathetic schoolmistress Miss Clavel (Frances McDormand). Hospitalized after an appendectomy, Madeline wanders down the hospital hallway and meets Covington's dying wife, Lady Covington (Stephane Audran), an encounter which becomes an asset in Madeline's efforts to save the school. Moving into the house adjacent to the school is the family of the Spanish Ambassador (Arturo Venegas), including his young son Pepito (Kristian de la Osa), who spends a good deal of time wheeling about on his Vespa, so noisy it serves to irritate possible buyers of the school.
When Madeline falls into the Seine, she is rescued by a dog, Genevieve, who immediately becomes the school's mascot and pet, despite the "no pets" rule and Miss Clavel's allergy to dogs. Pepito's somewhat sinister British tutor Leopold (Ben Daniels) engineers a plan that leads to the county fair kidnapping of Pepito and Madeline. First filmed by UPA in the early '50s as the Oscar-nominated animated cartoon short, Madeline (1952), decades passed before other adaptations appeared: the 23-minute Madeline's Rescue and Other Stories (1990, available from Facets Video), narrated by Louise Roberts; and the 1989-1993 series of half-hours narrated by Christopher Plummer -- Madeline, Madeline and the Bad Hat, Madeline and the Gypsies, Madeline in London, Madeline's Christmas, and Madeline's Rescue. MGM's 1945 Fred Astaire/Vincente Minnelli film Yolanda and the Thief also adapted Bemelmans. Daisy von Scherler Mayer's earlier Party Girl (1995) was the first feature film seen in its entirety on the Internet. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi
- Frances McDormand, Nigel Hawthorne, (more) | <urn:uuid:62402e41-9bc1-4ca7-836f-832ac20ae45d> | 2013-05-26T02:41:06Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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This page includes two interviews with author Michelle Moran; in the first, she discusses the real Madame Tussaud, and in the second she explains the inspiration for her first novel, Neferititi, and the historical details on which it's based.
Michelle Moran on the Real Madame Tussaud
What drew you to the story of Marie Tussaud?
My interest in Marie Tussaud began on my very first trip to London. Like thousands of tourists before me, I had decided that I wanted to visit the famous wax museum, Madame Tussauds. At the time, I knew almost nothing about the woman behind the name, but as I passed through the exhibition, I began to piece together what would ultimately prove to be a fascinating story. In the first wax tableau I came across, Marie Tussaud had modeled Queen Marie Antoinette with her husband and children. They looked young and happy, dressed in lavish court gowns and silk culottes. In another tableau, the mistress of King Louis XV lay sprawled on a couch, her blonde hair tumbling down her shoulders. Clearly, Marie Tussaud had been interested in modeling the celebrities of her day. Some she would have sculpted from memory, while many she would have met and modeled in person. Marie's art had obviously gained her access to some of the highest circles in French society.
But in a third tableau, a different part of Marie Tussaud's life emerged. Dressed in a black gown and dirtied apron, a young Marie could be seen holding up a lantern in the Madeleine Cemetery. The Revolution had begun, and she was searching through a pile of severed heads - all victims of Madame Guillotine. Immediately, I wanted to know what was she doing in that cemetery. Whose heads were they, and did she know those people? When I learned what Marie Tussaud went through during the French Revolution - who she'd met, where she'd gone, and what she'd seen - I knew I would someday tell her story.
Why does history tend to remember the French Revolution as being successful?
Probably because it did exactly what its leaders intended, which was to deal a devastating blow to the aristocracy. But very soon after the overthrow of the monarchy, France's new government became obsessed with idea of rooting out Royalists. A fever like that of the Salem Witch Trials gripped France, and neighbor began turning on neighbor, accusing each other of being royalists. And it didn't take much to be sentenced to the guillotine. By 1793, all a person had to do was whistle the wrong tune or disrespect a liberty tree (saplings planted in the name of "liberty") to be accused of endangering the nation. By the end of the French Revolution, more than five hundred thousand French citizens had been killed, most of them commoners.
How did you go about researching Madame Tussaud?
I began with a trip to France, where nearly all of the novel takes place. Once there, I tried to visit the locations Madame Tussaud herself would have seen. Some - such as the Bastille - no longer exist, but there are others - Versailles being the sublime example - where a great deal of 18th century life has been preserved. After my trip, I did as much research as I could in libraries. Finally, anything I couldn't find in books I tried to discover through email conversations with some very generous French historians.
What is the most interesting fact you learned while researching Madame Tussaud?
That in 18th century France, most people went to street dentists when they had a toothache. These dentists would sit at a table laid out with various tools, and their unfortunate patients would have their teeth extracted right there, in the dirty street. After the extraction, the patient could sell his tooth (or teeth, if he was unlucky) to the dentist, who would then sell it to people like Marie Tussaud for her wax models. I know... creepy and disturbing!
In your research about Marie Antoinette, did you come away feeling sorry for Queen Marie Antoinette?
Yes. I think the queen was as much a victim of circumstance as she was her own naiveté. While it's true that she held lavish balls in Versailles and spent a fortune on gowns, this really wasn't anything new for the monarchy. The difference was that it was Marie Antoinette, and not the king, who was doing the spending. The resentment and jealousy which built up around the queen having access to her husband's money earned her some powerful enemies at court. Meanwhile, the commoners were growing resentful as well. Yet the entire royal family's expenditures were actually a small fraction of the nation's budget, and whenever Marie Antoinette tried to economize, the courtiers who counted on her favors would raise a hue and cry. Various nobles had grown accustomed to the extra money they could earn from selling the dresses she had already worn or the accessories which had been ordered for her (often far more than she actually needed or used). These privileges were jealously guarded in Versailles, and this meant that the queen was "damned if she did, and damned if she didn't."
Why are we still interested in Madame Tussaud 250 years after her birth?
I think the fascination with Madame Tussaud comes from the fact that the life she created was as intricate and mystifying as her artistry itself. Here was a woman who was asked to tutor the king's sister, yet she managed to keep her head during the Reign of Terror when women were being imprisoned for nothing more than wearing the wrong color. She navigated two very different worlds - the court of Versailles and the streets of Paris - and against all odds, lived to tell the tale. And through it all, it was her artistry that saved her.
Today, with digital cameras available to capture everything around us, you would think it would be difficult to become enthusiastic about seeing a person's likeness reproduced in wax. But there is something compelling about waxworks, particularly those done at the various Madame Tussauds around the world. Perhaps it's the thrill of pretending to photograph yourself next to a celebrity, or getting to pose with Henry VIII "in the flesh," that keep customers coming back. Or maybe it's the eerie and arresting vision of a lifeless object that so closely mimics someone's humanity that people relate to. Whatever it is, I think Madame Tussauds will be a major draw even in another two hundred and fifty years.
If Madame Tussaud were alive today, would she be happy to see that her wax museums have expanded not only throughout Europe, but now the world?
I think Marie Tussaud would be ecstatic. Having grown up on the Boulevard du Temple surrounded by actresses and showmen, Marie was taught from a very young age that publicity was the difference between staying in business and having to sell your teeth in order to buy bread. Today, the Madame Tussauds wax museums do a wonderful job of finding new subjects to model, and the public unveilings of their new wax figures would have absolutely delighted Marie. A part of me wants to say, "If only Marie could see her museum now," but something tells me she wouldn't be surprised at all by how popular her exhibition has become.
Michelle Moran discusses her first novel, Nefertiti
What inspired you to write about a queen who's been dead for over three thousand years?
My love-affair with Egyptology began in the summer of 1998 on an archaeological dig in Israel. While our team was working to unearth an ancient trading post, we came across a scarab, proof that the Egyptians had traveled north, perhaps selling cloth, incense, or Nubian gold. Looking at the mysterious lapis stone in the dirt, untouched for who knew how many years, I was hooked. It wasn't long before I found myself wandering through Egyptian exhibits in Los Angeles, London and finally Berlin, where the stunning bust of Nefertiti rests behind a case of polished glass. Even three thousand years later it fills the viewer with the same awe that citizens of Amarna must have felt when they saw her. I wondered who she was, what her story must have been, and as I began researching into Nefertiti's life I was surprised to discover how many books and internet sites were devoted to her, yet there were no fictionalized accounts exclusively about her reign, one of the most enigmatic of any Egyptian Pharaoh-Queen. Spurred on by Nefertiti's untold story, I visited Egypt on an historical tour two years later, gathering books and writing down impressions of what had once been the most powerful kingdom in the East. When I returned to America, I began researching into Nefertiti's Egypt, scouring libraries and initiating dialogues with the contacts I made in the archaeology world.
Did Mutnodjmet really exist?
Yes, Mutnodjmet really existed, as did Nefertiti, Queen Tiye, Akhenaten,
Vizier Ay, Lady Kiya, General Horemheb, General Nakhtmin... Suffice it
to say that almost every character in the book was based on an historical
So how much of the story is true?
While the main historical events are accurate, such as Ay's rise
to power, Akhenaten's obsession with Aten, the dream of Amarna,
and Nefertiti's unparalleled influence at court, liberties were
taken with personalities, names and minor historical events. For instance,
no one can be certain how Mutnodjmet felt about her sister's vision
of an Egypt without the Amun Priests, but in an image of her found in
Amarna she is standing off to one side, her arms down while everyone else
is enthusiastically embracing Aten. In a period where art attempted to
portray reality for the first time, I found this significant. And while
Nefertiti did have six daughters with Akhenaten, she never, so far as
we know, produced twins the way she did in the novel. Historical uncertainties
revolve as well around the questions of whether Amunhotep the Younger
ever had a co-regency with his father, or whether Nefertiti ever did rule
on her own. These are questions that can only be answered by conjecture,
and I went with what seemed most plausible given the historical evidence.
Today, some of these questions could be answered by a firm identification
of the Amarna mummies. Although much of Kiya's funerary equipment
was found in her son Tutankhamun's tomb, little to nothing remains
that was Akhenaten's or Nefertiti's. How old was Nefertiti
when she died? What killed Tiye? Dr. Joann Fletcher contends that a cache
of mummies found in tomb KV55 are the bodies of Nefertiti and the Dowager
Queen. If so, they were stunning beauties even in death.
Isn't there evidence that Nefertiti was banished to a Northern
Palace towards the end of her husband's reign?
No. This belief was predicated upon an inscription on the Northern Palace
which archaeologists believed read "Nefertiti." The name had
been removed from the palace while Nefertiti was still alive and replaced
with the name of Princess Meritaten. If Princess Meritaten had truly removed
her mother's name from the palace, it would indeed seem to indicate a
daughter taking the place of her mother. However, the inscription was later
discovered to actually read "Kiya." After Kiya's
death Nefertiti and her daughter set out to erase the existence of Nefertiti's
only real rival. Unfortunately, many internet sites haven't bothered
to update their information, so the erroneous theory of Nefertiti having
been banished persists.
Is it true that Akhenaten had Marfan Syndrome?
There is absolutely no anthropological or DNA evidence to suggest this
was the case. Those who believe that Akhenaten had Marfan Syndrome, a
genetic disorder characterized by unusually long limbs and curvature of
the spine, do so simply because some of his statues show a man with long
arms and an elongated head. It is essential to remember, however, that
Akhenaten purposefully changed the artistic style which all of his predecessors
had used, creating a new style known today as Amarna Art. For as many
images as there are of Akhenaten with a long, leonine face and feminine
hips, there are just as many images from when he was a child displaying
none of these startling features. During the Amarna period, all of Akhenaten's
family begins to appear with long arms, elongated heads and large hips,
even Nefertiti. It is highly unlikely that the entire royal family had
this connective tissue disorder, particularly in light of Nefertiti's
bust which resides in Berlin and shows none of the characteristics that
those with Marfan Syndrome typically display.
What evidence is there to prove that Nefertiti ever ruled as Pharaoh
on her own?
This depends on which Egyptologist you ask and what camp they fall into.
Amunhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten, and when Nefertiti became
co-regent with her husband she changed her name to Ankhkheperura-Neferneferuaten.
It is not beyond the limits of plausibility, then, to imagine that Nefertiti
later became Pharaoh Ankhkheperura-Smenkhkara, who ruled briefly after
Akhenaten's death. A beautiful gold figurine in Tutankhamun's
tomb depicts a female Pharaoh (not a queen) walking atop an ebony leopard.
Egyptologists have dated the figure back to Akhenaten's reign, which
means there is only one possibility of who this feminine ruler of Egypt
could be: Nefertiti. There is also evidence of foreign correspondence
during Pharaoh Ankhkheperura-Smenkhkara's time that points to Egypt's
Pharaoh being Nefertiti. If you want more information about this, I suggest
checking out the work of Dr. Joann Fletcher, who wrote The Search for
Nefertiti: The True Story of an Amazing Discovery and whose work was featured
on the Discovery Channel. Dr. Fletcher stirred up quite the controversy
with this book and her announcement that she discovered the body of Nefertiti.
In the novel you write about the ancient Egyptians using toilet seats
and copper razors. Is this accurate?
Yes, it is accurate. Dating as far back as 1500 BCE, palaces were more
comfortable than you or I might imagine given that it was 3,500 years
ago. The wealthy shaved with copper razors and bathrooms were discovered
in Amarna equipped with toilet seats that matched the limestone sink bowls.
Royal women regularly applied face cream, eye shadow and lipstick. Women
had elaborate containers for their makeup, and very wealthy women carried
handheld mirrors made of polished brass the way women carry purses today.
If Nefertiti ruled on her own, then who would have been her queen?
Just as Hatshepsut made herself Pharaoh and her daughter queen, Nefertiti
would have named her eldest daughter Meritaten as her consort. Surprising
though this may seem, rulers of Egypt searched for balance, the feminine
with the masculine, and in religious ceremonies it was necessary to have
a female part which Pharaoh, as a "man," couldn't play.
How long did it take you to write Nefertiti: A Novel?
Over two years, then another year to edit it, and a fourth to publish.
A common misconception amongst non-writers seems to be that as soon as
an author signs a contract the book comes out just a few months later.
Would that were so! Instead, the process seems to take forever. Up to
a year and a half after the contract is signed the book might hit stores,
or nine months if an author is really lucky.
How are the characters' names pronounced?
One of the most difficult aspects of translating hieroglyphics is the
fact that the ancient Egyptians did not record vowels. So Amun might really
be Amon or Amen, and Tutankhamun might equally be Tutankhamen. Some of
the names in the book are quite hard to pronounce, and I think most readers
can figure out why I chose to shorten Mutnodjmet to Mutny. Here's
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Please be aware that this discussion guide may contain spoilers!
About This Book
From brutal battles with Soviet troops to the rise of the Taliban theocracy, to
the American invasion in the wake of 9/11, Afghanistan has become a potent
symbol of the political and religious realities shaping the landscape of the
twenty-first century. The Swallows of Kabul puts a human face on the
horrors and repression of that war-torn country. It tells the story of two
couplesMohsen and Zunaira Ramat, born into the privileged classes of
pre-Taliban Afghanistan, and the prison guard Atiq Shaukat and his wife Musarrat,
raised in poverty and drawn into the jihad in hopes of bettering their lot in
Mohsen once hoped for a career as a diplomat, but now he aimlessly wanders the
devastated streets of Kabul. On one such desultory excursion he comes upon the
stoning of an adulteress and finds himself joining the frenzied crowd. The next
day Zunaira, anxious to assuage her husbands guilt and her own shock,
capitulates to his pleas to accompany him to the marketplace, the first outing
she has made in months. But the burqa she hides behind cannot protect them from
the harassment of zealous Taliban soldiers, and their marriage, already frayed
by Mohsens act of violence, collapses under the strain of new resentments and
suspicions. The shadow of the Taliban darkens the lives of Atiq and Musarrat as
well. Worn out by years of war and deprivation, Musarrat is slowly succumbing to
an incurable illness and Atiq to despair, which corrodes his faith in the
mullahs and threatens to destroy his soul.
In lucid, lyrical prose, The Swallows of Kabul carries us into a land of
mind-numbing fear and harrowing hardship and reveals the possibilities for love
and compassion that simmer beneath the surface.
Khadra depicts the city of Kabul in exquisite detail. How does the
language the author uses turn the city into a presence as vital and as
memorable as the people who inhabit it? In what ways does the physical
environment mirror the inner lives of the characters?
How do small passing moments or incidents bring to life the atmosphere of
Kabul? How do the descriptions of the marketplace [p. 19] and the services
at the mosque [pp. 4042 and pp. 9397], for example, reinforce the fear
and sense of claustrophobia that engulfs the city and its population?
Why does Mohsen experience "an access of unfathomable joy" [p. 14] when
his stone strikes the condemned woman? Is he simply swept away by the fervor
of the crowd, or does the incident reflect a deeper need of his own? Is
scapegoatism a natural, if highly regrettable, human impulse? What purpose
might it serve in society?
What does Mohsen hope to gain by revealing his participation in the
stoning to Zunaira? Why does he "understand that he should not have confided
to his wife what he refuses to admit to himself" [p. 38]? From what you know
about Mohsen and the dynamics of his marriage, would it have been possible
for him to keep his actions a secret? Why does Zunaira remain silent in the
face of Mohsens appalling confession?
Zunaira has steadfastly refused to leave her home or wear the burqa that "cancels
my face and takes away my identity and turns me into an object" [p. 77]. Why
does she give in to Mohsens insistence on taking a walk? Is she persuaded
by his arguments, or does her decision come from the desire to heal the
breach between them? How does Khadra build a sense of uneasiness and
impending disaster in the description of their outing? What aspects of
Mohsens behavior turn Zunaira against him? Why does the experience of
waiting for him [p. 98] affect her so profoundly? What does she learn about
herself and her ability to survive the intolerance that defines her world?
What is the significance of her decision "never again to remove her burqa"
[p. 125]? Is it a sign of defeat or defiance?
Is Atiqs businesslike acceptance of his job and his complicity in the
deaths of innocent people an unforgivable moral failing? Do his
circumstancesincluding his wifes illness, as well as his increasing
misgivings about his position as jailer [p. 18]mitigate his culpability?
Do the conditions in Kabul necessitate the suspension of the usual ethical
rules? Do readers also need to modify or even suspend ordinary judgment in
evaluating the characters and events in the novel?
Initially, we see Musarrat through Atiqs eyes [pp. 2627]. Do the
face-to-face interactions between husband and wife [pp. 5358] change your
impressions of her and of the nature of their marriage? At what point in the
novel does Musarrats character come into her own?
What qualities do Musarrat and Zunaira share? What are the differences
between them? To what extent are these differences attributable to their
respective ages, social position, education, and religious beliefs?
Are the issues confronting the two couples universal? How has the
situation in Kabul increased the harm and hurt in their relationships? Have
their marriages been strengthened in any way by their dire circumstances?
In addition to the main plot, Khadra presents the stories of Mirza,
Nazeesh, and Qassim. In what ways do these vividly drawn secondary
characters expand your understanding of Afghan culture, history, and values?
What, for example, does Mirzas advice to Atiq to divorce his wife [pp.
2627] suggest about the willingness of some Afghans to accept the
fundamentalists? What insight does Qassims character offer into the
brutalizing effects of war and tyranny? How does Khadra bring out Qassims
human side? Nazeesh, once a mullah respected for his erudition, "was found
one morning stalking along the avenues, wildly gesticulating, drooling, eyes
bulging" [p. 65]. Does Nazeeshboth a holy man and a madmansee the
transformation of his country in a way that eludes the other characters?
Compare the sermon delivered by Mullah Bashir [pp. 9495], Qassims
speech about destiny [p. 118], and Musarrats musings about her fate [p.
119]. What do these passages demonstrate about the various ways religious
teachings can be interpreted?
In the context of the novel, has the Islamic clergy abandoned its
religious mission and its moral responsibilities? Drawing on what you have
read about the rise of fundamentalism in Afghanistan and other countries, do
you think that this is an accurate picture? What light does the novel cast
on the differences between devout faith and fanaticism?
The loss of intimacy is perhaps the most devastating effect of the
Talibans rule. In addition to the troubled marriages of the main
characters, how is this theme woven into the novel?
References to swallows occur throughout the book, sometimes in literal
descriptions and at other times, as metaphors for the women draped in burqas.
Why is the juxtaposition of the literal and the metaphorical significant in
the context of the novels themes? What do the swallows symbolize? Do they
suggest different things at different times?
From the stoning of the adulteress at the beginning of the novel to the
stoning death at the end, The Swallows of Kabul presents many images
of physical violence. What other kinds of violence does Khadra explore? Can
the demeaning treatment of women, the suppression of free expression and
movement, and the imposition of extreme religious orthodoxy also be defined
After the attacks of 9/11, America invaded Afghanistan, ending the rule of
the Taliban. Despite continuing unrest, Afghanistan held free elections in
the fall of 2004. What aspects of Afghan culture might undermine this step
toward democracy? Can a Western military presence, as well as Western
political and economic pressures, offer lasting solutions to the issues
Khadra raises in the novel?
In the preface, Khadra writes that the story about to unfold is "like the
water lily that blooms in a stagnant swamp" [p. 3]. Which characteror
plot elementrepresents the lily? Despite its darkness, is The Swallows
of Kabul ultimately a novel about hope and the possibility of
The author, Mohammed Moulessehoul, was an Algerian army officer who
originally wrote under his wifes name, Yasmina Khadra, to avoid military
censorship. Why does he continue to use the feminine penname, although he
has retired from the army and now lives in France? What does this suggest
about his views and on his role as a writer?
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaids Tale
Jung Chang, Wild Swans
M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians
Gil Courtemanche, A Sunday at
the Pool in Kigali; Louis de Bernieres,Birds Without Wings
Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to
Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families
Gordimer, The Pickup
M. E. Hirsch, Kabul
Khaled Hosseini, The
Christina Lamb, The Sewing Circles of Herat
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Orhan Pamuk, Snow
Ahmed Rashid, Taliban
Åsne Seierstad, The Bookseller of Kabul
Saira Shah, The
Storytellers Daughter William Styron, Sophies Choice.
Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Anchor Books.
Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.
News Corp will officially split into two companies June 28(May 24 2013) As expected, News Corp has announced it will officially split its publishing and entertainment businesses on 28 June.
Its board approved the... | <urn:uuid:869b0197-8a84-40de-b373-55bbb188812c> | 2013-05-26T02:35:59Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Of the Court of Zagathai, and how the Christians drink no Cosmos.
Next morning, we met the carts of Zagathai, laden with houses, and I thought that a great city was travelling towards us. I was astonished at the prodigious droves of oxen and horses, and the immense flocks of sheep, though I saw very few men to guide them; which made me inquire how many men he had under his command, and I was told he had not above 500 in all, half of whom we had already passed at another station. Then the servant who conducted us, informed me that it was requisite for us to make a present to Zagathai, and desired us to stop while he went forwards, to announce our arrival. It was then past three o’clock, and the Tartars unladed their houses near a certain water. After this, the interpreter of Zagathai came to us, and learning that we had not been before among them, he demanded some of our victuals, which we gave him; he also required to have some garments, as a reward for his trouble in interpreting for us to his master; but we excused ourselves on account of our poverty. He then asked us what we intended to present to his lord, when we shewed him a flaggon of wine, and filled a basket with biscuit, and a platter with apples and other fruits; but he was not satisfied, as we had not bought him some rich stuffs. However, we entered into the presence of Zagathai with fear and bashfulness; he was sitting on a bed, having a small citern or lute in his hand, and his wife sat beside him, who, I really believe, had amputated her nose, between the eyes, that it might be the flatter, for she had no nose in that part of her face, which was smeared over with black ointment, as were also her eyebrows, which seemed very filthy in our eyes. I then repeated to him the exact same words which I had used before, respecting the object of our journey, as we had been admonished by some who had been among them formerly, never to vary in our words. I requested that he would deign to accept our small gift; for, being monks, it was contrary to the rules of our order to possess gold or silver or rich garments; on which account, we had no such things to offer, and hoped he would accept some portion of our victuals as a blessing. He received those things, and immediately distributed them among his men, who were met in his | <urn:uuid:6a615947-144d-40fe-8e2f-ea0487cd0e38> | 2013-05-26T02:37:09Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Multiple Choice Questions
This section contains 180 multiple choice questions about The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Multiple choice questions test a student's recall and understanding of the text. Use these questions for chapter quizzes, homework assignments or tests. Jump to the quiz/homework section for the multiple choice worksheets.
Multiple Choice - Part 1, Chapters 1-5 | Part 1, Chapters 6-10
1. Why is Tomas attracted to Tereza?
a) Her beauty is unlike any other.
b) He opens up to her like he does with no one else.
c) She seems like a child to him.
d) She is submissive.
2. Why does Tereza stay at Tomas's home for a week during her initial visit?
a) He invites her to stay.
b) She comes down with the flu.
c) She asks to stay, dreading returning to her mother's home.
d) She sprains her ankle.
3. After she returns home to her small...
This section contains 6,535 words|
(approx. 22 pages at 300 words per page) | <urn:uuid:6d311e82-2069-4e10-89c7-70eaa5b0dcbe> | 2013-05-26T03:10:30Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Short Essay Questions
The 60 short essay questions listed in this section require a one to two sentence answer. They ask students to demonstrate a deeper understanding of the text. Students must describe what they've read, rather than just recall it.
Short Essay Question - Introduction
1. Describe the essential conflict of the Iron Heel.
2. What is the two-tiered future described in the Iron Heel?
3. What does the contemporary author H. Bruce Franklin describe about London?
4. What does the Iron Heel reveal about workers according to Franklin?
5. What tension did London experience in his own life that is reflected in the Iron Heel?
6. Why is it important to be vigilant in society in the Introduction?
Short Essay Question - Forward and Chapter...
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A mainstream country-rock band similar in execution (if not commercial success) to
. After striking out on their own,
to develop a sound composed of equal parts pop, country, and blue-eyed soul.
, the Amazing Rhythm Aces
' debut album, appeared in 1975; it produced two significant crossover hits, "Third Rate Romance" and "Amazing Grace (Used to Be Her Favorite Song)," the group's lone Top Ten country single. A year later, the hit "The End Is Not in Sight (The Cowboy Tune)," from the LP Too Stuffed to Jump
, won the Aces
a Grammy for Country Vocal Performance by a Group. Following the release of 1977's Toucan Do It Too
left the group, and was replaced by Duncan Cameron
In 1978, the Aces
released Burning the Ballroom Down
, followed a year later by a self-titled effort featuring cameos by Joan Baez
, Tracy Nelson
, and the Muscle Shoals Horns
; both were met with critical approval, but sold poorly. They released one final record, How the Hell Do You Spell Rhythum?
, before disbanding. While Smith
went on to become a successful songwriter, Earheart
joined Hank Williams, Jr.
's Bama Band
, and Cameron
joined Sawyer Brown
-- a group that, ironically enough, would find significant chart success in the 1980s with a sound similar to what the Amazing Rhythm Aces
had created a decade earlier.
After a hiatus of some 15 years, the Amazing Rhythm Aces
re-formed in 1994. The Aces
, now comprised of Smith
, and new guitarist/mandolinist Danny Parks
, marked their return to duty by releasing Ride Again
, a collection of newly recorded renditions of their biggest hits. In addition, they also began composing new songs for a projected comeback album; although McDade
's cancer-related death on November 29, 1998, temporarily halted that plan, Chock Full of Country Goodness
finally appeared in mid-1999. | <urn:uuid:99fb3d38-518c-4721-8fcd-5bbee3c4d00e> | 2013-05-26T02:50:19Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Following up to the previous post, a couple of people pointed out to me that the cjson library is faster than simplejson, and that the latest simplejson has a small C extension.
Re running the tests with simplejson 2.0.9 and cjson yields the following results:
5000 total records (0.730s) get_thrift (0.040s) get_pb (0.620s) ser_thrift (0.550s) 555125 bytes ser_pb (2.980s) 415125 bytes ser_json (0.030s) 718455 bytes ser_cjson (0.040s) 718455 bytes ser_yaml (12.770s) 623455 bytes ser_thrift_compressed (0.630s) 287621 bytes ser_pb_compressed (3.020s) 284441 bytes ser_json_compressed (0.090s) 293073 bytes ser_cjson_compressed (0.080s) 293073 bytes ser_yaml_compressed (13.260s) 291106 bytes serde_thrift (1.460s) serde_pb (5.250s) serde_json (0.070s) serde_cjson (0.060s) serde_yaml (44.110s)
There doesn't seem to be much doubt about it, if you need to serialize basic python data structures and don't need the extra features of thrift or protocol buffers, it is hard to beat JSON.
The test code at sertest.tgz has also been updated to use time.clock instead of time.time. | <urn:uuid:b7dd8ee8-2f60-4182-8a08-0e7170e2f53b> | 2013-05-26T02:54:13Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- Regal Entertainment Group (NYSE: RGC), a leading motion picture exhibitor owning and operating the largest theatre circuit in the United States, today announced that it has completed the acquisition of Great Escape Theatres and declared a special cash dividend of $1.00 per share of Class A and Class B common stock.
Regal acquired a total of 25 theatres representing 301 screens at a pre-synergy multiple of approximately 5.5 times cash flow for an aggregate purchase price of $91 million in cash. The acquisition of the Great Escape circuit will enhance Regal's presence in Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia. The transaction involved multiple sellers and the aggregate purchase price includes repayment of the sellers' debt and the assumption of working capital and is subject to customary post-closing adjustments. The sellers will also maintain an interest in the real property associated with seven of the acquired theatres.
Additionally, Regal's Board of Directors declared a special cash dividend of $1.00 per Class A and Class B common share, payable on December 27, 2012, to stockholders of record on December 11, 2012. Today's announcements will not affect the previously announced dividend of $0.21 per Class A and Class B common share, payable on December 14, 2012, to stockholders of record on December 5, 2012. Further, the Company intends to continue paying a regular quarterly dividend for the foreseeable future at the discretion of the Board of Directors depending on available cash, anticipated cash needs, overall financial condition, loan agreement restrictions, future prospects for earnings and cash flows as well as other relevant factors.
"The acquisition of Great Escape Theatres and the special dividend of $1.00 per share clearly demonstrate Regal's commitment to delivering shareholder value," stated Amy Miles, CEO of Regal Entertainment Group. "We are extremely pleased with the addition of over 300 high quality screens to our industry-leading portfolio and expect the transaction to be immediately accretive to both earnings and cash flow," Miles continued. | <urn:uuid:bf29a7b0-5e5c-4ccc-8489-e19d6a8f8909> | 2013-05-26T03:10:24Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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William M. Bulger is the twenty-fourth president of the University
of Massachusetts. He assumed office on January 4, 1996. In his inauguration
speech, President Bulger said the University recognizes that "it
is for life - not merely for a living - that we must prepare our
Under President Bulger's leadership, the five-campus University
has seen dramatic increases in private support, alumni activity,
research funding, and the academic scores of incoming freshmen.
President Bulger has also launched an award-winning television advertising
campaign featuring prominent alumni, and a scholarship program that
rewards students who finish at the top of their high school graduating
President Bulger's appointment by the University of Massachusetts
Board of Trustees followed his 35-year career as a leading state
lawmaker. From 1978 to 1996, he served as President of the Massachusetts
Senate, elected every two years by his colleagues. His tenure as
President was the longest in state history.
He was first elected to the Senate in 1970 representing the First
Suffolk District. Prior to serving in the Senate, he served in the
House of Representatives from 1961 to 1970. Throughout his legislative
career, Mr. Bulger played a pivotal leadership role in issues that
shaped the physical, cultural and social landscapes of Massachusetts.
During the 1960s, he led efforts to write the first child abuse
reporting laws in this state and during the following three decades
continued to focus much of his attention on the plight of children.
He was one of the architects of a groundbreaking education reform
law that reduced the funding inequities between rich and poor communities.
He was among the first advocates of charter schools and public school
choice. During the 1980s, he made funding of public libraries a
top priority and also advocated for the expansion of childhood nutrition
services and fuel assistance programs.
Under Mr. Bulger's leadership, Boston Common and the Public Garden
were beautified and protected. He secured funding to keep both parks
well lit at night, and he led the fight for a law prohibiting the
building of any skyscraper that would cast a shadow upon either.
He also won funding to beautify Castle Island in South Boston and
preserve the 19th-century fort there, while also securing funds
to help clean up the Boston Harbor.
President Bulger led the Senate through its debate on welfare reform
in the early 1990s, often reminding lawmakers that "after we
have eaten, we forget there is such a thing as hunger." The
resulting legislation, less punitive than some hoped, became the
model for a national law.
Mr. Bulger is a past president of the Boston Public Library Board
of Trustees and continues to serve on the board. He is also a member
of the Boston Symphony Orchestra Board of Overseers, Massachusetts
General Hospital Board of Trustees and the National Grid USA Advisory
He is a former member of the Museum of Fine Arts Board of Trustees
and the McLean Hospital Board of Trustees, overseer of the Children's
Museum in Boston, Citizens Bank of Massachusetts Board of Directors
and corporator of the Winsor School in Boston.
Upon is graduation from Boston College High School in 1952, President
Bulger enrolled at Boston College. His undergraduate career was
interrupted when he joined the United States Army in 1953. He returned
to Boston College in 1955 and completed his undergraduate degree
in English in 1958. He then entered Boston College Law School, from
which he received his Doctor of Jurisprudence degree in 1961.
Known for his independence of mind, regardless of the political
consequences, President Bulger has been singled out for special
recognition by one of the Commonwealth's most prestigious institutions.
In bestowing its 50th Anniversary Award upon President Bulger, Boston
College Law School described him as one "whose career reflects
great honor on the Law School."
President Bulger is the recipient of more than 20 honorary degrees
from institutions of higher learning.
Mr. Bulger is the author of the best selling political memoir,
"While the Music Lasts, My Life in Politics."
He was born on February 2, 1934, the son of James and Jane (McCarthy)
In 1960, he married Mary Foley. He continues to make his home in
South Boston where he and his wife of 41 years have raised their
nine children: William, James, Sara, Patrick, Mary, Daniel, Kathleen,
Christopher and Brendan.
There are now 19 grandchildren: Bridget Bulger, Monica Bulger,
Michael Hurley, Deirdre Hurley, Mary Hurley, Charles Webb, Ian Webb,
Alannah Bulger, Christopher Bulger, James Hurley, Patrick Bulger,
Thomas Bulger, William Webb, Grace Bulger, Elizabeth Hurley, Mary
Catherine Bulger, Brendan Webb, Margaret Bulger and Jean Marie Bulger. | <urn:uuid:4ece62a2-5a5a-4c55-bc67-7eca01603f3a> | 2013-05-26T03:08:34Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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This wonderful photograph was
torn dripping and writhing
(and without permission) from
Video Junkie's tribute to
the Godfather of Gore.
Lucio Fulci (1927 - 1996)
I love all [Fulci's] films. Even in the ones that haven't turned out so well, there's something that I love.
Lucio Fulci was born in 1927 in Rome, and died in Rome in 1996. He was an art critic and medical student before he entered the Experimental Film Studio, from which he graduated in 1948. His early career was as a writer and director of comedies and musicals, including several films with prominent Italian comics Steno and Totò.
In 1966 Fulci made a film of an entirely different nature, a western entitled Le Colt Cantarono la Morte e Fu: Tempo di Massacro/Massacre Time (which Fulci would later cite as a forerunner of his "Artaudian" horror film, L'Aldilà). Three years later he turned to the tragic story of Beatrice Cenci, which had inspired Shelley, Zola and Antonin Artaud before him, and created a film of unusual power and violence. Shortly thereafter, he directed his first giallo (the Italian term for a thriller, taken from the yellow [giallo] covers of pulp mystery books), Una sull'Altra/One on Top of the Other, which was his first commercial success.
Fulci followed his first thriller with an equally successful film, Una Lucertola con la Pelle di Donna/A Lizard in a Woman's Skin(1971). Non Si Sevizia un Paperino/Don't Torture a Duckling came after in 1972, and firmly established him as a major talent in the suspense genre. During the 70's he made films in a wide variety of other genres, including more westerns (I Quattro dell'Apocalisse/The Four of the Apocalypse, Sella d'Argento/Silver Saddle), adventure movies (the two White Fang movies) and comedy; however, his next and favorite giallo, Sette Notte in Nero/Murder to the Tune of Seven Black Notes, was a box-office failure.
In 1979, Fulci was given the opportunity to direct Zombi 2, a film intended to cash in on the European success of George Romero's Zombi/Dawn of the Dead. According to Fulci, his film made even more money than Romero's had, and Fulci was given a contract to make 5 films for the same grateful producer, Fabrizio De Angelis.
The movies which followed, including Paura nella Città dei Morti Viventi/City of the Living Dead, Quella Villa Accanto al Cimitero/House by the Cemetery and especially (...e tu vivrai nel terrore!) L'Aldilà/The Beyond built on the notoriety Fulci had gained with Zombi 2. After this there was no turning back: the violence which had been present in almost all of Fulci's movies since Beatrice Cenci could no longer be restrained. Like Artaud, Fulci would create a Theatre of Cruelty, in which traditional (and to them outmoded) elements such as character, naturalism, linear plots and even believability were put aside in favor of raw, resonant dream-imagery.
After the collaboration with De Angelis had ended, Fulci continued to make violent horror films, usually on a shoestring budget with unsympathetic producers. None of the films of his later years have the power and nightmarish intensity of the films of the early eighties; Un Gatto nel Cervello/Cat in the Brain (1990) and Voci dal Profondo (1991) are considered his strongest late films by many critics. Particularly unfortunate was Fulci's involvement in Zombi 3 (1988), a film which he was unable to complete because of poor health and his total lack of interest in the script. Zombi 3 was completed by Bruno Mattei, a far less capable director, but the resulting mess was released as "a Lucio Fulci film" to lend it credibility.
Fulci's last completed film was Le Porte del Silenzio/Door to Silence, filmed in Louisiana and based on a story from his collection Le Lune Neri (another collection of stories, Miei Mostri Adorati, was published shortly before his death). At the time of his death, Fulci had been asked to direct a new variation on the classic "wax museum" theme, Wax Mask, loosely based on a short story by Gaston Leroux (author of The Phantom of the Opera) and produced by Dario Argento. This project would have been a dream film for many dark-fantasy fans, but in spite of Argento's support, the backers of the film decided to drop Fulci. It has been surmised (by Chas. Balun in his biography, Beyond the Gates, among others) that this final insult may have hastened the Maestro's death. The completed film, directed by Sergio Stivaletti, ws dedicated to Fulci's memory.
(Filmography coming soon)
Back to Braineater.com | <urn:uuid:61f215fa-964c-41ef-999c-262cdb3a1bcf> | 2013-05-26T03:02:32Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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- slide 1 of 4
There are two ways of fighting fire on board a ship - by using portable marine fire fighting equipments or by using different types of fixed fire fighting installations. The type of system used for fighting fire depends on the intensity and type of fire. Moreover, not all types of fixed fire installation systems can be used for any type of ship. A specific type of fixed fire fighting installation can be used only for a certain type of ship. In this article we will learn about a ship's fire main or the main fire fighting installation system.
- slide 2 of 4
A ship's main emergency fire system consist of a specific number of fire hydrants located at strategic positions across the ship. A series of dedicated pumps are provided to supply to these fire hydrants. The number and capacity of pumps required for a particular type of ship is decided by an international governing authority.
All these pumps are supplied power from the main power system. Apart from that, an emergency fire pump is also provided , which is located remote from the machinery space. The emergency fire pump has its own independent means of power source, which can be used to take over in case of main power failure.
Moreover, all the hydrant outlets are provided with an isolating valve so as to isolate those valves which are not in use. The fire hydrants are also provided with standard size flanges in order to attach hoses which have nozzles attached to them. All the hoses are provided with snap in connectors for easy and quick engaging and disengaging operation. The nozzles attached to the hoses are generally of two types - jet and spray , depending on the type of discharge required for extinguishing the fire. Both the nozzles can be adjusted according to the type of spray and flow required, which could be played over the fire to cool it without spreading.
The pumps are connected with the main sea water connection, having appropriate head to prevent any type of suction problem. The valves supplying water to these pumps are always kept open to provide a constant supply of sea water to fight fire at any point of time. Though sea water is the best mode of fighting fire, the main emergency fire fighting system can only be used on fires of Type A. However, in case of class B fires, if all modes for extinguishing fire fails, sea water from main emergency system can be used.
- slide 3 of 4
International Shore Coupling
The standard sized flanges provided at every strategically positioned hydrant are known as international shore connection. The international shore connections are always carried on all the ships and has standard dimensions decided by an international governing authority. The flange is also slotted in order to fit any shore side fire main and bring water onto the ship whenever required. The practice of international shore coupling has been followed to prevent difficulties at time of emergency when an external help is providing relief work.
- slide 4 of 4 | <urn:uuid:84226d4e-efb1-4c01-9b68-6d1b14c26b90> | 2013-05-26T03:10:12Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Exponential growth refers to an amount of substance increasing exponentially. Exponential growth is a type of exponential function where instead of having a variable in the base of the function, it is in the exponent. Exponential decay and exponential growth are used in carbon dating and other real-life applications.
I want to talk about exponential growth, I have an example here the population of mice in the Duchy of Grand Fenwick grows at a rate of 6% per year. How long will it take for the population to double or quadruple? I have a table of values here I wanted to show you why this is exponential growth. Increasing at 6% per year means very year we're multiplying by 1.06 and so we get p sub 0 when t=0, p sub 0 times 1.06 when t=1 and p sub 0 times 1.06 squared when t=2 and so on.
This would suggest the formula p sub t equals p sub 0 times 1.06 to the t and that's an exponential growth formula. Now to find the doubling time I need to plug in twice the initial population here. I don't know what the initial population is but twice the initial population is 2 times p sub and after you plug in you can see that the actual initial population doesn't matter it's going to cancel out. So now I have the equation 2=1.06 to the t, this is an exponential equation and the way we solve exponential equations is to take the log of both sides. I'm going to take that natural log of both sides, it doesn't matter what log you use as long as it's on your calculator so you can use either the common log or the natural log.
Okay before I calculate I actually need to use the property of the logs, natural log of 1.06 to the t this is the log of a power so the exponent can come out in front t times ln of 1.06 and then we have a simple linear equation to solve this all we need to do is divide both sides b y natural log of 1.06. So ln 2 over ln of 1.06 now I'd like a numerical answer so I'm going to calculate this value ln2 divided by ln 1.06 enter, I get t, t is approximately 11.89566 and that would be in years. Because the population growth rate was given as 6% per year, I want to round this off let's say your teacher likes you to round off to the nearest hundredth then when I calculate quadrupling time a reason like this in order for a population to quadruple, it's got to double and then double again. So we're going to have 2 doubling times in a row. So it stands to reason that the quadrupling time is twice the doubling time. Twice this, but if I write 23.80 years my answer is not quite right let me multiply in my calculator answer times 2. it's actually 23.79 years.
You have to be really careful when you're using rounded values to do calculations. These values rounded to the nearest hundredth and when I double it I double whatever round off error there was. So the best way to get my final answer for quadrupling time is to double this value which is still stored in the calculator so multiply this times 2 and you get the correct value to the nearest hundredth. This is my answer. | <urn:uuid:d2dd73a6-860a-4d35-a21c-b746c236c544> | 2013-05-26T02:34:58Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Simply begin typing or use the editing tools above to add to this article.
Once you are finished and click submit, your modifications will be sent to our editors for review.
advocacy by Jefferson
...to receive foreign ministers in run-down slippers and frayed jackets. He shunned display, protocol, and pomp; he gave no public balls or celebrations on his birthday. By completing the transition to republicanism, he humanized the presidency and made it a symbol not of the nation but of the people. He talked persuasively about the virtue of limiting government—his first inaugural address...
series of 85 essays on the proposed new Constitution of the United States and on the nature of republican government, published between 1787 and 1788 by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay in an effort to persuade New York state voters to support ratification. Seventy-seven of the essays first appeared serially in New York newspapers, were reprinted in most other states, and were...
history of Portugal
During the period from 1890 to 1910, the relatively stable politics of rotating governments under the constitutional monarchy disintegrated. Feuding monarchist parties and politicians agreed that Portugal faced severe economic, financial, and social problems, but they quarreled over solutions. The republicans increased their support in Lisbon and the larger towns as well as in the rural south....
What made you want to look up "republicanism"? Please share what surprised you most... | <urn:uuid:0cf283d4-8c85-496d-becf-204f620e7aa6> | 2013-05-26T03:11:43Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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sarangiArticle Free Pass
sarangi, also called saran or saranga , short-necked fiddle used throughout South Asia, particularly for folk and classical Hindustani music. Measuring about 76 cm (30 inches) long, the instrument has a roughly rectangular slightly waisted body and broad fretless neck generally carved from a single piece of wood. It has three melody strings made of gut, usually tuned a fifth and a fourth apart, and 11 to 37 sympathetically vibrating metal strings. At least two convex bone bridges are required to accommodate the three melodic strings on top and the many vibrating strings below. The musician, who is seated, normally holds the instrument against his left shoulder in a vertical position and plays with an arched bow held in an underhand grip in his right hand. The cuticles (or sometimes the space on the fingernail just above the cuticles) of the left hand are pressed against the strings to sound specific pitches.
What made you want to look up "sarangi"? Please share what surprised you most... | <urn:uuid:165f0ae5-210c-4039-a64e-ed4f82c2701c> | 2013-05-26T02:35:36Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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died July 31, 1981, near Penonomé
dictator-like leader of Panama (196878), who negotiated the Panama Canal treaties with the United States, leading to Panama's eventual assumption of control of the canal.
Educated at a military school in El Salvador, Torrijos also studied military-related subjects in the United States and Venezuela. In 1952 he was commissioned second lieutenant in the National Guard of Panama (Guardia Nacional; the country's only military force), becoming lieutenant colonel (1966), colonel (1968), and brigadier general (1969). In October 1968 he participated in a coup by the National Guard that overthrew President Arnulfo Arias, and he gradually emerged as leader of the new military junta with the title Chief of Government and Supreme Leader of the Panamanian Revolution. He became one of the few Latin American leaders who visited Fidel Castro in Cuba, but he also suppressed leftist labour agitators and students in Panama. Under his rule, social services expanded, and Panamanians of African descent had more prominent roles in government; however, corruption and drug trafficking increased.
Transfer of the Panama Canal and Canal Zone to Panamanian sovereignty became Torrijos's main objective, and he pursued it to a successful conclusion when on September 7, 1977, he and President Jimmy Carter of the United States signed two treaties by which the transfer would take place gradually; Panama assumed full control of the canal on December 31, 1999.
In the election of October 1978, Torrijos declined to run for the presidency, though he retained command of the National Guard. He died in an airplane crash in a jungle area while making a military inspection tour. In 2004 his son Martín was elected president of Panama. | <urn:uuid:80f3f173-0cb9-4960-a7b3-f6d0292f579e> | 2013-05-26T03:03:09Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Best Road to Avoid - 2012
Sunrise Boulevard, between Federal Highway and I-95, Fort Lauderdale.
In the early days of videogames, things were pretty simple. You stayed still and shot asteroids zooming past you. You went back and forth across the bottom and bounced a dot at bricks. Or you were a frog navigating across a busy roadway, trying not to get squished. Perhaps it is this deeply buried societal memory of Frogger that explains why Sunrise Boulevard is so goddamned @#$%^!@#^! Why, fellow citizens? Why?! Despite the heavy traffic here, pedestrians wade out into this relentless tide like unwary tourists into a rip current. Have you no care for your own welfare? Have you not eyes to see? And you seem so annoyed by the cars on the roadway. You give them angry glares. You press close to them, practically brushing the door panels with your knees, as they fly past. If they try to pause instead to let you cross, you stop and angrily wave them on, yet as soon as they start to move again, so do you. Sometimes, you bang the hood as you cross paths just to say "Hello." There is a traffic light every ten feet, and they are timed with frightening precision to make sure that drivers stop at every single one — sometimes twice. So why, dear walker, must you push that crosswalk button, only to slowly — so slowly — cross in front of moving vehicles so that by the time the light turns red and cars stop, you are long gone? Perhaps instead of more traffic lights or red-light cameras, the city should install large speakers every 20 feet and play the classic Frogger music. It surely won't stop the jaywalking, but it will make it much more fun. | <urn:uuid:6b4c2c1c-3017-42cc-828e-eb82360e53a9> | 2013-05-26T02:56:11Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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State police investigating the death of woman struck by a truck while walking along the Thruway Tuesday night in Lancaster said the woman is believed to have been involved in a one-car accident and walked away from the scene a little less than an hour and a half earlier.
The first accident was reported at about 6:40 p.m. on the eastbound side of the Thruway in Lancaster. By the time troopers arrived, the driver had left. The driver was believed to have walked toward a side road in Lancaster.
Then at 8:06 p.m., a 2005 Volvo tractor-trailer driven by a 43-year-old Quebec man that was in the right-hand lane of the eastbound side of the Thruway struck and killed a woman who had walked into the lane.
The tractor-trailer driver was not injured. No tickets were issued.
The accident forced the closure of the eastbound side of the Thruway until 1:20 a.m.
Authorities are withholding the identity of the victim pending notification of family.
Investigators also were asking anyone who may have information or witnessed something in connection to the case to contact state police in Clarence at 759-6831 or state police in Buffalo at 935-6570. | <urn:uuid:c3d241ae-98e8-41ea-9b6d-632455545bf3> | 2013-05-26T02:59:04Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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History's greatest empires covered a fifth of the world, ruled hundreds of millions of people, and lasted anywhere from 100 years to over a millennium.
Empire, which comes from the Latin "imperare" meaning "to command," is a collection of states or ethnic groups united under one ruler or oligarchy.
It is a term that has been used to describe recent US foreign policy. Wrote filmmaker Oliver Stone and historian Peter Kuznick in a recent USA Today op-ed: "Obama is about to enter his second term as heir of George W. Bush's imperial strategy unless his latest foreign policy appointments signal significant change."
Each empire seemed unstoppable for an age, but in the end they were all consigned to history. | <urn:uuid:2670d017-b7f8-471e-a9d3-dd5a50f84fe7> | 2013-05-26T02:54:55Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Friday, May 25th, 2012 - 14:08
Two professional associations, the American Society for
Public Administration and the National Academy of Public
Administration, have joined to sponsor a series of forums
addressing the management challenges likely to face whomever
is sworn in as president in January 2013.
One of these forums examined the leadership challenges
associated with getting big things done, and explored lessons
from past experiences.
What Do We Mean by Big Things?
Over the course of U.S. history, the federal government has been involved in doing big things such as the Manhattan Project’s development of the atomic bomb in the 1940s, the interstate highway construction that began in the 1950s, and the race to the moon in the 1960s. However, the public has become concerned about the instances in which government has encountered difficulty in getting big things done, such as the Katrina recovery and the failure to deal with the fiscal crisis. Forum participant Tim Conlan observes that “all big things are not alike.”
The forum explored government performance in three categories of big things. The first is comprised of new policy implementation, including the $877 billion Recovery Act and provisions of the Affordable Care Act. These types of initiatives reach across sectors of the economy, levels of government, and different federal agencies.
The second category involves an emergency or a set of timedriven urgencies. Examples include the 1964 Alaska earthquake, the Y2k computer bug, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the 2010 Gulf of Mexico BP Oil Spill.
The third category involves technical or scientific initiatives such as the Manhattan Project, the moon race, the International Space Station, and the decoding of the human genome.
Read the complete article. | <urn:uuid:7f5e3d4c-9a21-4bef-ade0-f84fe31c8577> | 2013-05-26T03:03:34Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Enumerators in C#
In this article I will explain you about Enumerators in C#.
This article has been excerpted from book "The Complete Visual C# Programmer's Guide" from the Authors of C# Corner.
As explained earlier, C# has a new iteration syntax called foreach. The foreach statement can only be applied to objects of classes that implement the IEnumerable interface. The IEnumerable interface exposes the enumerator, which supports a simple iteration over a collection. Enumerators are intended to be used only to read data in the collection and cannot be used to modify the underlying collection. The enumerator does not have exclusive access to the collection. To understand what happens in the background, consider the code snippet in Listing 5.57.
Listing 5.57: Enumerator Example 1
foreach (int i in a)
This code functions just like the while loop used in Listing 5.58.
Listing 5.58: Enumerator Example 2
a = x.GetEnumerator();
Please refer to the C# Language Specification (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa645596(VS.71).aspx) for more details and recent updates to the C# language.
Before entering the statement block, the compiler generates the code to call the method GetEnumerator of the object passed as the second parameter in the foreach statement. The GetEnumerator method must return an object, having a property named Current, of type similar to the first argument of the foreach statement. Also this object must have a MoveNext method of return type bool. This method informs the runtime when to terminate the loop.
When an enumerator is instantiated, it takes a snapshot of the current state of the collection. If changes are made to the collection, such as the addition, modification, or deletion of elements, the snapshot gets out of sync and the enumerator throws an InvalidOperationException. Two enumerators instantiated from the same collection simultaneously can have different snapshots of the collection.
If the enumerator is positioned before the first element in the collection or after the last element in the collection, the enumerator is in an invalid state. In that case, calling Current throws an exception.
The enumerator is positioned before the first element in the collection initially. The Reset function brings the enumerator back to this position. The MoveNext method must be called to advance the enumerator to the first element of the collection before reading the value of Current, after an enumerator is created or after a Reset. The Current property returns the same object until either MoveNext or Reset is called.
Once the end of the collection is passed, the enumerator is in an invalid state and calling MoveNext returns false.
Calling Current throws an exception if the last call to MoveNext returned false. With this information under your belt, you should insert your enumerating code inside a try-catchfinally block to prevent unexpected exits.
Hope this article would have helped you in understanding Enumerators in C#. See other articles on the website on .NET and C#.
| ||The Complete Visual C# Programmer's Guide covers most of the major components that make up C# and the .net environment. The book is geared toward the intermediate programmer, but contains enough material to satisfy the advanced developer.| | <urn:uuid:587448ab-7956-49b2-82c3-cfc1cc2935bb> | 2013-05-26T03:10:02Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Troops in Port Said and Suez, two riot-torn cities along the strategic Suez Canal, stood by and watched Monday night as thousands took to the streets in direct defiance of a night curfew and a state of emergency declared by President Mohammed Morsi a day earlier. Residents of the two cities and Ismailiya, a third city also under the emergency, marched just as the curfew came into force at 9 p.m.
The display of contempt for Morsi's decision was tantamount to an outright rebellion that many worried could spread to other parts of the country. Already, protesters across much of Egypt are battling police, cutting off roads and railway lines, and besieging government offices and police stations as part of a growing revolt against Morsi and his Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood group.
At least 60 people have been killed since Friday.
"As long as the president's hands are stained in blood, he must leave," said Port Said lawyer Mohammed el-Assfouri as he stood outside the city's Mariam mosque where mourners prayed for the dead.
Morsi's opponents accuse Islamists of monopolizing power and failing to live up to the ideals of the pro-democracy uprising that ousted authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak two years ago.
In Cairo, intense fighting for days around central Tahrir Square engulfed two landmark hotels and forced the U.S. Embassy to suspend public services on Tuesday. The lobby of the five-star Semiramis along the Nile was trashed after clashes on the street outside spilled into the hotel early Tuesday morning, when armed, masked men attempted to rob it.
In Port Said, where most of the deadly violence has been centered, tanks were fanned out on the streets of the city of some 600,000 located 140 miles northeast of Cairo on the Mediterranean coast and at the tip of the Suez Canal. New funerals were held for six more of those killed in clashes, with thousands marching and chanting against Morsi. Similar scenes have replayed over the past few days.
"Erhal! Erhal!" or "Leave, leave!" they screamed, reviving the iconic chant of the 2011 uprising.
The chant is now turned against Morsi. A sign carried by one mourner said: "The independent state of Port Said." Another had the image of a young and slim man in dark sunglasses posing next to a red car. Relatives said he was shot dead while walking home on Saturday.
"The continuation of the conflict between the different political forces and their differences over how the country should be run could lead to the collapse of the state and threaten future generations," said army chief Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who is both head of the military and defense minister.
At the same time he defended the right of Egyptians to protest, while acknowledging the difficult challenges facing his troops in Port Said and Suez.
"The deployment of the armed forces poses a grave predicament for us insofar as how we balance avoiding confrontations with Egyptian citizens, their right to protest and the protection and security of vital facilities that impact Egypt's national security," he said.
He also spoke of a "realistic threat" facing the nation as a result of what he called the political, economic and social challenges.
The warning was the military's first public comment since the latest crisis erupted last week around the second anniversary of the uprising on Friday. El-Sissi was speaking to military academy cadets and the comments were posted on the armed forces' official Facebook page.
He also warned of what he described as attempts to influence the "stability" of state institutions.
"It is a grave matter that hurts national security and the nation's future."
He did not elaborate, but critics of Morsi complain he has been trying to bring state institutions under Brotherhood control to tighten the Islamists' grip on power.
The military and Islamists led by the Brotherhood struggled over power in the transition following Mubarak's rule. The Brotherhood dominated every election since the uprising, winning control of parliament, the presidency and pushing through a constitution that could pave the way for imposing more strict Islamic law in Egypt.
The army had long defended the secular nature of Egypt before the Brotherhood came to power and is seen as wary of letting Islamists have too much power.
Morsi has ordered the army to restore order in Port Said and Suez. On Sunday, he slapped a 30-day state of emergency and night curfew on the two cities as well as Ismailiya. The army has not deployed in Ismailiya, however, which has seen little of the deadly violence flaring in the other two cities.
The military, Egypt's most powerful institution, was the de facto ruler since army officers seized power in 1952 and toppled the monarchy. Generals forced Mubarak from power at the end of the uprising and then a ruling military council took over from him.
The military's nearly 17 months in power tainted its reputation, with critics charging the ruling generals of mismanaging the transition to democratic rule, human rights violations and hauling thousands of civilians before military tribunals.
Morsi became the first freely elected president in June and was immediately plunged into a power struggle with the military when it tried to curtail his powers. In August, he ordered the retirement of the army's top two generals, regained powers they had taken away from him and handpicked el-Sissi as defense minister and army chief.
The timing of el-Sissi's warning is particularly significant because it came at a time of growing opposition to Morsi and when he appeared to be failing to stem the latest bout of political violence, sinking the country deeper into chaos and lawlessness.
Some of the demonstrators in Port Said on Monday night waved white-and-green flags they said were the colors of a new and independent state. Such secession would be unthinkable, but the move underlined the depth of frustration in the city.
Since coming to office, Morsi has failed to tackle the country's massive problems, which range from an economy in free fall to surging crime, chaos on the streets and lack of political consensus. His woes deepened when the main opposition coalition turned down his offer for a dialogue to resolve the crisis, insisting he meets their conditions first.
The wave of unrest has touched cities across much of Egypt since Thursday, including Cairo, the three Suez Canal cities, Alexandria on the Mediterranean in the north and a string of cities in the Nile Delta.
The violence accelerated Friday, the second anniversary of the uprising, with protests to mark the event turning to clashes that left 11 dead, most of them in Suez.
The next day, riots exploded in Port Said after a court convicted and sentenced to death 21 defendants — mostly locals — for a mass soccer riot in the city's main stadium a year ago. Rioters attacked police stations, clashed with security forces in the streets and shots and tear gas were fired at protester funerals in mayhem that left 44 people dead over the weekend.
The violence in Port Said was fueled in part by the anger and sense of betrayal that have been simmering in the city following last year's riot, the worst ever in Egyptian soccer.
Protesters and activists, meanwhile, are accusing the police of excessive use of force in dealing with demonstrators. Morsi, in their view, endorsed their tactics when he commended them in a short, televised speech on Sunday night when he declared the state of emergency and curfew.
The U.N.'s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, took note of the high death toll in the latest unrest.
She urged Morsi's government "to take urgent measures to ensure that law enforcement personnel never again use disproportionate or excessive force against protesters" because it is both illegal and likely to make the situation more explosive. Pillay called for immediate investigations into the wave of violence and a review of police tactics used to clamp down on demonstrations.
The police, hated for their brutality in the Mubarak years, have been calling for better and more sophisticated weapons to defend themselves when their facilities come under attack, which happened in Port Said as well as Suez.
In Cairo on Tuesday, the area around central Tahrir Square was relatively quiet, with only intermittent clashes between police and rock-throwing protesters. On Monday, protesters and police battled each other in area all day and into the night in scenes reminiscent of the early days of the 2011 uprising.
Early Tuesday morning, police foiled an attempted robbery by 12 masked gunmen at the Semiramis Intercontinental. The luxury hotel is one of the two caught up in clashes around Tahrir Square.
Security officials say the attackers looted shops in small hotel mall and smashed glass. They suspect the culprits are criminals who used the rioting outside on the street as cover. AP television footage shows protesters trying to arrest some of the thieves. By Tuesday, the shattered glass facade of the lobby was boarded up and only a few guests remained.
The nearby U.S. Embassy said on its website that it was closing public services on Tuesday because of the security situation.
Hendawi reported from Cairo. AP reporter Amir Makar contributed to this report. | <urn:uuid:99b63637-185a-4c8b-b98d-f0b598a8b706> | 2013-05-26T02:36:21Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Before you buy that RV?
Buying an RV is a major investment, after all it's your home away from home and must be right for you. There are few things to think about before buying to make sure you make the right choice.
First of all, set your budget and do your homework! HGTV.com suggests figuring out what type of RV is best for you before you start shopping. If you're planning to travel cross-country a motorized RV will most likely be best, while if you'll most likely be taking shorter trips, a towable RV will work fine. Deciding whether you should buy new or used is important as well.
There are many websites to research RVs and RV enthusiasts are always willing to offer their experience with certain brands and dealers. One of the most popular online resources is the forum at RVtravel.com. This will allow you to connect with others and ask questions before you buy.
Attending RV shows, common in the spring and fall, can also be helpful in figuring out what's right for you.
If you've never used an RV, research what you're getting into beforehand too. The Better Business Bureau sells a DVD called "Buying a Recreational Vehicle" that can be very helpful. And, the Recreational Vehicle Industry Association offers a free DVD about the RV lifestyle.
Once you've made the decision to buy, rent an RV similar to the one you'd like to purchase for a weekend trip. This will help you to realize if you're really getting everything you want.
You may also be interested in: | <urn:uuid:802b9a51-03e4-4f1f-920e-5a902b3372c2> | 2013-05-26T02:48:07Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Derick E. Hingle-US PRESSWIRE
Legal proceedings continue to heat up as both the league and suspended players go back and forth. So what's the latest?
I don't f***ing know. Do you? If you do, could you please explain it to me? 'Cause I haven't been paying attention. Is this season over yet? | <urn:uuid:382707a0-1184-40c5-8ff5-5d73fd2657b6> | 2013-05-26T03:02:27Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Story last updated at 9/19/2012 - 12:46 pm
Near the mouth of the Stikine River is a rounded point along the mainland shore. When Navy Officer Jefferson Moser investigated Alaska's salmon resources in 1897 for the federal government, he named it Gerard Point, but fails to tell us for whom it was named. At that time, Fort Wrangel (as Wrangell was then known) was about to experience the Klondike Gold Rush when prospectors and miners thought the Stikine River was a short way to the Interior.
It is at Gerard Point that a sawmill and salmon cannery were constructed soon after Moser passed by in the "Albatross," a coal burner ship. The site has been described in early fishery reports as being on the mainland opposite Point Highfield (today's airport site), at the junction of Eastern Passage and the "southeast stream of the Stikine delta."
More than hundred years ago, the Stikine River delta had not extended itself as far south as Point Gerard, and a substantial deep-water wharf could accommodate steamers, that today, would run aground.
With the Gold Rush men coming to Fort Wrangel, Theo Nicholai, an experienced mill man from Portland, Ore., saw his chance to make money that wasn't grubbing for gold. His company, Stikeen Lumber Mills, constructed a saw mill in early 1898 at the head of the Stikine's deep water navigation. As manager, he selected J. Milner as the general superintendent. The mill had a capacity of 20,000 board feet per day, cutting principally spruce and cedar, undoubtedly harvested from the mountainside behind the site. The wharf was constructed and other buildings erected. Once started from 15 to 20 men worked supplying lumber for the Wrangell and Stikine River trades.
Apparently Nicholai didn't make as much money as he thought he would, because he sold the sawmill to Thlinket Packing Company, organized at Portland, Ore., by James T. Barron. It was in Portland that Barron and Nicholai closed the deal in spring 1899. Barron used the mill to cut lumber for his new fish processing plant.
The site chosen was not on level ground. Consequently the cannery building was small and crowded with men and equipment. With the wharf and cannery over deep water, the current carried away the gurry (heads and guts). This made it one of the few canneries of the times that did not have unpleasant odors, which so often were associated with canneries, where rotting fish parts accumulated on the beach.
Under the superintendency of Barron, president of the company, the cannery processed mainly pinks or humpback salmon the first year. The fleet was made up of one steamboat, the "Perhaps," sixteen fishing skiffs for imported company fishermen, and the chartered "Baranof." Local Natives also sold fish to the cannery, and in 1900 it paid collectively $8,000.
The site was close the mouth of the Stikine River because Barron and his company surmised that any river of that size must support large runs of salmon. Compared to many smaller streams in the same region, the river proved a great disappointment. Fishermen were forced to fish at streams on nearby islands, Cleveland Peninsula and the east and north coasts of Prince of Wales Island. The "Baranof" packed the fish longer distances.
Before the runs began, a Chinese crew imported from the Pacific Coast made cans by hand. Once fish were delivered to the fish house, the Chinese butchered the fish, and then hand-packed pieces into cans. Eight hundred cases of 48 cans each could be canned each day using some machinery: two steam boxes for creating a vacuum, a crimper to put on can lids, two retorts for cooking the fish under pressure, and a can-washer to remove the oil from the exterior of the processed cans.
In early 1902, Barron decided to sell his two canneries: Point Gerard and Santa Anna, south of Wrangell. A newly organized conglomerate, Pacific Packing and Navigation Company chose not to operate either cannery that year.
The new company's grandiose plans did not work out. It went into receivership in 1903. The receiver inventoried the Gerard plant during the summer and took steps to perfect title to the land. However, the land was never patented, and it remains part of the National Forest today.
The receiver wrote that, "On account of nearness to Santa Anna...the Gerard site is of considerable value as a fishing station if nothing more. The buildings are in good shape." The wharf was somewhat dilapidated, so the receiver arranged to have it reinforced to stand the stress of water and ice until spring.
Crews removed the machinery and gear to other canneries the receiver operated in 1903. The remaining fishing gear, machinery, wharf and fish site were estimated to be worth $19,789. The wharf and building probably cost, according to the appraiser, in the neighborhood of $12,000 to $15,000.
The bankruptcy court sold the canneries, and Barron successfully bid on the Gerard site. He had no use for the small cannery so the site and buildings were abandoned. Barron, using money from the sale of his two other canneries, had built a cannery in 1902 at Funter Bay.
The Point Gerard cannery ran for only three years, packing a total of 63,300 cases. Today when boaters pass by, the former cannery site is impossible to distinguish in the brush and trees. The late Dick Stokes of Wrangell thought the site was just south of the point near a waterfall that provided water for the processing.
Pat Roppel is the author of numerous books about mining, fishing, and man's use of the land. She lives in Wrangell. She may be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:6d9e2bf9-7030-415a-8127-cee1cfacc67d> | 2013-05-26T03:09:25Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Inspired by the majesty of Yosemite, this bracelet features a center stone of labradorite surrounded by the greens and blues of apatite and peridot. A true testament to the colors and movement of nature, bracelet also features sterling silver in a winding rope design for a statement piece that is collectible and versatile. Bracelet measures 5-1/2" inside circumference. Made in the USA.
Shimmering with the sun's accents of blue and green, waters rise and rush across granite before escaping to deep pools on the valley floor. Polished labradorite, apatite, and peridot cascade off of sculptural sterling silver, evoking the clarity and calm of the waterfall.
Like all fine jewelry, Carolyn Pollack jewelry should be handled carefully. Store jewelry in a plastic bag, dry and wrapped in tissue paper, when not being worn or displayed. Clean sterling silver with a silver polishing cloth when necessary, but never subject to chlorine, silver dips, chemical solutions or ultrasonic cleaners, as these substances can cause the gemstones to discolor. Never wear jewelry in a swimming pool. | <urn:uuid:c61a173f-6f9f-40c7-8d83-d0e2f7703b99> | 2013-05-26T03:09:38Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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That is a very good map!
I like the style, colorful but with moderation. Very clever and stylish use of fonts and text effects.
But I agree with you on the forests, they are not up to the same good standard as the rest. I suggest that you use the same basic symbol work a bit on it and make the forest "float a bit by using shadow or some kind of glow effect.
Overall a very good map to present and sell a world overviev. | <urn:uuid:18096415-066c-4b96-8609-f3f3b7ca39a7> | 2013-05-26T02:42:51Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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You have big dreams for the future. You’re smart, talented, and dedicated, and know what you want in life. Working hard to attain your goals is part of your plan, and you're looking forward to the challenges and opportunities.
One of your goals might be earning a large salary and having plenty of spending money to enjoy the finer things in life. Or, perhaps you want to spend a little less money and instead save your money to retire early so you can enjoy travel or hobbies.
Either way, having a certain amount of money helps you enjoy your life. Explore higher-paying careers, start your own business, or consider taking a second job.
But becoming financially secure is not all about earning a large salary. You can become financially independent even with a more modest salary if you take the right approach. No matter how much money you earn, you'll be able to enjoy greater financial security if you follow these proven money-management techniques: | <urn:uuid:da5b63e1-bb7c-4e8c-8a3a-4b816ddd0430> | 2013-05-26T03:03:24Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Stay informed with the
NEW Casino City Times newsletter!
It seems appropriate.
Lowden owned the Sahara for 13 years and was responsible for much of its transformation from a small Rat Pack-era hotel-casino into a 1,720-room Strip resort.
But the property's closing Monday doesn't make him sad.
"I like progress. I like change," said Lowden, 67, who still owns the Pioneer Club in Laughlin. "It's fun to look back, but this might be a chance for the Sahara to move forward."
Lowden, a musician, had small ownership stakes in the Tropicana and Hacienda when he purchased the Sahara for $50 million from Del Webb in 1982.
He expanded the casino area, opened a race sports book and made the property's convention and meeting space more accessible from an east side parking lot that now houses a Las Vegas Monorail station. The addition of a 26-story hotel tower in 1988 helped the Sahara compete in advance of the opening of The Mirage in 1989, which kicked off the Strip's 20-year building boom.
"We put a lot of money into the Sahara and we had a lot of fun times," Lowden said.
Among them was the time he dipped into his entertainment roots to coax singer Tina Turner to perform in the Sahara's Congo Room theater.
Lowden was working on expansion plans when he sold the property and two nearby parcels for $193 million to casino industry pioneer William Bennett in 1995.
Bennett, who founded Circus Circus Enterprises, spent about $100 million on renovations, including more hotel rooms, enlarging the casino and adding the NASCAR Cafe. Much of the convention space was removed.
Lowden said it might have been a mistake for the Sahara to abandon the convention business.
"I'll give Mr. Bennett his due because he created the retail tourism market in Las Vegas," he said. "The convention business was very good for the Sahara."
Bennett died in 2002. His family sold the Sahara to SBE Entertainment and Stockbridge Real Estate for between $300 million and $400 million in 2007.
Lowden said he hasn't spent much time at the Sahara since he sold it.
"The last time I was in there, I didn't recognize it," he said. "It was a humming organization and we left it in pretty good shape." | <urn:uuid:af5a1f87-3307-4cc0-b36d-295110362b87> | 2013-05-26T02:34:21Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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04-08-2012, 02:45 PM
Join Date: Mar 2012
Training schedule got switched around a bit this week. Friday training was cancelled so we moved heavy day to Monday. I hit both of my competition goals (80kg snatch and 100kg C+J) so I'm very pleased with how much progress I've been making.
New Goal: 85kg snatch and 110kg C+J
- Snatch max: 80kg
- C+J max: 102.5kg
- GHD Ab Holds: 30s x 4
- Standing Cable Rotation: 17.5lbs x8x3
- SOTS Press: 20x5, 25x3x2, 27.5x3, 30x3, 32.5x3x3
- Clean-grip OHS: 20x5, 25x5, 30x5, 32.5x3, 35x3
- Clean Pull: 70x5, 80x5, 90x5, 95x3, 100x3, 105x3, 110x3, 120x3
- Rack Jerk: 50x5, 60x5, 70x3x2, 80x2, 90x1, 95 x1
I decided to try the squat jerk on Friday. My split jerk still feels very unnatural and the squat jerk felt pretty good, I'll keep it in consideration.
- Snatch: 40x3, 50x3x2, 55x3x2, 60x2x1, 65x2x2, 70x1x2, 75x1
- C+J: 50x3, 60x3x2, 65x3x2, 70x2x2, 75x2, 80x1x2, 85x1 | <urn:uuid:69059c35-0f46-4070-86b3-6082a927592a> | 2013-05-26T03:04:27Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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“Your radio show changed my life. As a result of listening, I converted to Catholicism at 53 years old. I was a very active Protestant my whole life before becoming a Catholic. Keep up the terrific work!”
"To become a hostage in the hands of the infidels, if that is necessary for the deliverance of Christ's faithful."
~ The fourth vow of the Order of Our Lady of Ransom (Mercedarians), founded in the thirteenth century by St. Peter Nolasco, which rescued some half-million slaves between the years 1218 and 1632. | <urn:uuid:9a670937-0872-4ed8-853c-769e47ff263a> | 2013-05-26T02:50:02Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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View Full Version : Runs away when I try to harness him!
27th April 2009, 11:19 PM
Quincy is 4 months old, and is doing great with his potty training and commands. My main problem with him is this: most of the time, he "asks" me to take him outside by staring at me and then barking one time. As soon as I grab the harness to put on him, he runs away (not like he's scared, but like he wants to play). I've tried luring him with treats, but that doesn't work either. I usually say "oh well," and put the harness down and ignore him. He then proceeds to start the whole thing over again. This goes on and on, sometimes for 10 minutes, until I finally am able to grab him and harness him. Any suggestions?
27th April 2009, 11:38 PM
He's certainly training you well to come play games... :lol: I'd approach this in a couple of ways. One is to train him to come and then allow you to put on his harness and link this to a command (maybe the word harness?) -- doing this entirely separately from needing to get him out to potty. To train this, if treats don't tempt him as a reward, what else does he absolutely love? Some dogs, especially puppies, are far more motivated by having a favourite toy thrown for them. Also: if you are going to work on training then don;t give him his meals in the morning -- instead let the rewards while training be his breakfast.
Second, as you need to actually get hold of him to go outside -- try running away from him while calling in a high excited voice -- he will likely follow you and come to you. Or again is there a toy that he wants to come grab... you could lure him with that.
I'd keep the harness in a pocket or otherwise hidden as undoubtedly the harness is now a visual signal for the chase and keep away game.
29th April 2009, 10:49 PM
I had a similar problem with mine. She runs away when I walk towards her or when someone is trying to catch her when they're angry. She has a nasty habit of walking out of the door when my roommate holds it open for long periods of time (I know it's my roommates fault more than hers but I still had to make my life easier by training her)
What I did was give her her absolute favorite treat for coming to me. I'd say "Puppy." (her name) then I'd pause a second and then say "Come here" just so she knows exactly what I want. And she runs towards me like it's the end of the world. Then I don't give her the treat until I am able to grab on to her collar. Then I give her the treat and say good girl. I also am taking her around to lots of various (gated) parks so I can practice with her without panicking.
She's doing LOTS better. Now she just kind of stays close by and looks back at me to make sure she's not going too far which lets me know she is at least aware of her distance away from me.
30th April 2009, 12:39 AM
Thanks for the advice. I wish I could find something that would lure him to me, but even his favorite toys don't work. He loves his treats when we're doing command training, but as soon as he knows that it's time to go outside, he runs away! I tried Karlin's idea of calling him and running excitedly - that only worked twice, now he's onto that trick. He's a very smart little booger!
I now hold his harness in my hand while doing command training, which is making him very suspicious. Once in a while, I say "harness," and slip the harness over his head, and then praise him like crazy and give him a treat. I'm hoping this will help in time!
I've got my work cut out for me! Thanks again!
30th April 2009, 02:54 AM
What treats do you try?
My dog is a picky one too. If it's a dog-food treat she could careless but she has two guilty pleasures that she'll turn back flips for: pepperonis and pumpkin spice muffins.
I usually give her turkey pepperonis because I don't trust original ones but she LOVES them. And I only give them to her when she comes to me so they're even more special. If you're not opposed to giving your dog "human food" I suggest you try a bunch of foods and see which one your pup goes crazy to get and then try outside again.
I totally feel your pain because I was freaking out until I discovered my baby's absolute love for pepperonis.
1st May 2009, 12:32 AM
Ilsa has always been like that, now I think it's sweet. I chase her around a bit and catch her and she covers me in licks, so I have to redo my makeup. What does work if we are running late - I pretend I am leaving without her. Put on my coat, walk to the door and open it, she is quickly behind me with her big eyes waiting for her harness.
Jen and Ilsa
21st May 2009, 01:10 AM
Ollie does the same thing when I go to attach the leash to his harness. He backs up, butt in the air barking at me. As I get closer he does the mad dash around the place.
So, what I started doing is when he does his barking/ play thing, I simply stand back up straight, drop both hands to my side, look away and ignore him. After a few seconds, he comes over and lets me clip it on.
21st May 2009, 08:54 PM
I've found that when I want to get Abigail either for a leash or anything else; I do better by walking away from her. Almost every time she will follow me and get close enough for me to get her. When she's being extra good, she will sit for me.
22nd May 2009, 10:55 AM
Bobby used to do this, I think because he didn't like the 'click sound' :eek: of the harness. I now put a treat on my thigh so that he can see it and then as soon as the harness is on he gets the treat! He's alot better! I also make the click as muffled as possible by putting my fingers over the join although you do have to watch that you don't catch your fingers!
I've also found that crouching down turned away from him, is more likely to get him to come close to me than leaning over/towards him. Making it as relaxed and happy as you can! No getting annoyed!
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Stinky eyes....what to do??
Ruby's been pawing at the left side of her face (from her eye toward her mouth) for the past few days. Her eyes have always been a little runny, but I think they're worse. Also, they smell worse than usual. I don't know if I can smell them when I'm sitting next to her because it's in my nostrils from constantly sniffing her eyes or because they're really tht stinky. She's not sneezing or coughing, her nose isn't really runny, and her eyes don't look red or anything. Her ears seem fine. Does this sound like allergies? Sinus infection? Eye infection? I just don't know....She's not acting any different. I've just noticed the pawing alot and wasn't sure if there was anything I could do to make her more comfortable. I clean her eyes probably every other day with plain saline, and it makes them look better (and usually smell better!). Should I take her to the vet???
Jessica, mom to Ruby, 1 yr. old blenheim | <urn:uuid:7c59203f-320d-4f0f-8717-1a6e64f77a68> | 2013-05-26T02:34:42Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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(CBS News) LONDON - An explosion inside the Syrian national security headquarters in Damascus targeted ministers from President Bashar Assad's regime who were meeting with defense officials on Wednesday, killing three of the most senior members of Assad's inner circle, including his brother-in-law.
The Syrian Army said Defense Minister Gen. Dawoud Rajha and his deputy, Asef Shawkat, were both killed in the explosion. Shawkat, Assad's brother-in-law, also held the title of deputy chief of staff.
According to state-run television, former Defense Minister Hassan Turkmani, who headed Assad's "crisis cell" that coordinated the regime's response to the 16-month uprising, was also killed in the blast.
Other ministers and military officials were seriously wounded in the explosion, according to state media.
CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports that in spite of increasing attacks in recent weeks, Damascus had remained a bubble of relative normality in Syria. Wednesday's crippling blow, however, will almost certainly put an end to that image - even among those regime supporters who have tried to ignore the encroaching reality.
Fierce gun battles and other explosions were reported around the capital following the attack on the security headquarters, including at least four blasts reported near military installations in Damascus.
"The attack makes Syria, its armed forces, people and leadership, more determined to stand up to terror groups and amputate the arm of anybody who seeks undermine Syrian security," the army said in a statement.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the situation in Syria is "rapidly spinning out of control" and "it is more essential than ever" for the international community to broker a peaceful transition of power.
To turn up the heat, the Obama administration announced financial sanctions on many top members in Syrian President Bashar Assad's government just hours after the bombing, targeting the prime minister and 28 other Cabinet ministers and senior officials.
Assad made no official comment and his whereabouts were unclear. But state TV reported that he named Gen. Fahd Jassem al-Freij, formerly the Army chief of staff, as the new defense minister
Opposition leader Kamal al-Labwani told al-Arabiya, a pan-Arab satellite channel, that a member of the rebel Free Syrian Army planted a TNT and C-4-based device inside the building ahead of the meeting, and then detonated the bomb remotely before fleeing to safety. There were conflicting claims, however, from other opposition figures, some of them claiming a suicide belt had been used in the attack.
Omar Shawaf, a member of the Syrian National Council, told the AP from Turkey that the attack shows no one in the Assad regime is safe.
"The hands of the Syrian people and the Free Syrian Army can reach anyone inside Damascus," he said.
Reporting from the scene of the explosion, CBS News' George Baghdadi said the blast did not appear to be very large. There have been previous bomb attacks inside Syria targeting regime officials, but they have been much larger explosions and targeting much lower-ranking members of the government and security forces.
The national security headquarters is among the most tightly secured buildings in Damascus. If rebel forces did in fact remotely detonate a bomb, the individual who planted the device likely was an insider. Officials told Al Jazeera that the person who planted the device was one of the cabinet member's personal bodyguards.
The armed uprising against Assad's regime has intensified rapidly in recent weeks, with mounting military and political defections eroding his family's long-time grip on power as rebel forces engage his troops more frequently in Damascus, the president's seat of power.
The Free Syrian Army announced in a statement on Monday the launch of an offensive dubbed "the Damascus volcano and earthquakes of Syria," reports CBS News' Khaled Wassef. | <urn:uuid:0bd61581-976b-4bf0-a0c9-1d5f2f24520f> | 2013-05-26T02:50:27Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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PEACE has broken out in the NSW Coalition with the Nationals withdrawing their threat to run for the seat of Hume in return for the Liberals backing away from threats to challenge the Nationals in a clutch of other key federal seats.
Following a stand-off that had lasted several months, the Nationals withdrew from Hume in return for the Liberals agreeing not to run in the seats of New England, Richmond, Page, Lyne and Hunter.
Both parties will, however, run for the southern seat of Throsby, held by Labor's Stephen Jones. It will be the only seat in NSW where the Nationals and the Liberals run candidates.
The Coalition reasons that two Coalition parties will maximise the conservative vote and, by swapping preferences, stand the best chance of taking the seat.
The dispute about Hume had delayed the finalisation of the Coalition agreement for more than three months.
Tony Abbott and the NSW Liberals had urged the Nationals not to contest the seat, which is being vacated at the election due to the retirement of the Liberal MP Alby Schultz.
The Liberals had already preselected the businessman Angus Taylor and in May, Mr Abbott sent a strong message to the Nationals by travelling to Goulburn to launch Mr Taylor's campaign and announcing he wanted him in Parliament.
Under Coalition convention, when a seat is held by Labor, or the incumbent Coalition MP is retiring, then both the Nationals and the Liberals are entitled to contest the seat in what is known as a three-cornered contest.
The Coalition agreement is designed to minimise these contests so the parties do not waste resources fighting each other.
The Nationals, however, had insisted that Hume, held by Mr Schultz since 1998, was traditionally a Nationals seat and they had a right to run. | <urn:uuid:f459c7bd-07ca-41e9-b301-09abf2357d3c> | 2013-05-26T03:09:57Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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One year after U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden, the threat of al-Qaeda remains, but the numerous associated movements are "less focused squarely on hitting the United States," says Linda Robinson, a CFR adjunct senior fellow for national security. "Yemen, the Horn of Africa, and North Africa are the areas outside of South Asia that are fertile ground for AQAM (AQ-associated movements), but these are generally entwined with local issues," she says. The U.S.-Pakistan relationship, badly damaged by the U.S. raid on bin Laden on its sovereign territory, is in crisis, and the bin Laden raid has made it more difficult to cooperate on Afghan border issues, Robinson says.
What has been the biggest impact of bin Laden's death in terms of U.S. security?
Although declassified documents make clear that bin Laden was still engaged operationally in terms of giving guidance to his lieutenants up until the time of his death, the greatest impact of his death has been symbolic rather than on the operational capacity of al-Qaeda.
The so-called al-Qaeda-associated movements are more entwined with local conflicts, grievances, and causes--[and] less focused squarely on hitting the United States, as al-Qaeda was.
The death of bin Laden removed al-Qaeda's primary symbol and the recruiting and messaging power that he wielded. Al-Qaeda is a less potent symbol now that he is dead. Organizationally, al-Qaeda proper has been decimated, but as a movement it has metastasized. The so-called al-Qaeda-associated movements are more entwined with local conflicts, grievances, and causes--[and] less focused squarely on hitting the United States, as al-Qaeda was. [In] the case with Anwar Awlaki of the al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula movement, [it] was a U.S. citizen who inspired others to attack the United States, such as Nidal Hasan and the Christmas Day bomber.
Is it possible to measure the impact on the Afghan war theater?
The most direct impact of bin Laden's death on Afghanistan was actually the crisis the Abbottabad raid caused in the already troubled U.S.-Pakistan relationship, and the spillover effects from that. It threw the Pakistan military and the political system into crisis, causing Pakistan to react with more anti-Americanism and more hostility and suspicion along the border. Attacks from Pakistan into Afghanistan quadrupled last year, though they are down again now. So the net effect was to make cross-border cooperation more difficult and increase Pakistan's tendency to pursue its own agenda. That includes things like the Haqqani network's attacks in September in Kabul on ISAF and the U.S. embassy, and the giant truck bomb in Wardak against the U.S. coalition base in Sayed Abad.
Where would you place the threat of al-Qaeda? Is this still all about Afghanistan/Pakistan or has it morphed?
As noted already, Yemen, the Horn of Africa, and North Africa are the areas outside of South Asia that are fertile ground for AQAM (AQ-associated movements), but these are generally entwined with local issues. Yemen epitomizes this type of complex phenomenon with tribal conflicts, secessionist tendencies, a weak or failing state, an autocrat facing off against a citizens' movement --in sum, a complex problem set that requires more than a narrow counterterrorism approach, in my view.
It is Pakistan that is the cause for greatest concern because al-Qaeda there is mixed up with a stew of various insurgent groups that do actively combine forces and cooperate on an operational level.
U.S. officials estimate that maybe 100 AQ fighters come and go from Afghanistan across the Pakistan border. Afghanistan is not much of a safe haven for al-Qaeda, though it still has some distance to go to become stable and capable of defending itself against attempts to reestablish an al-Qaeda safe haven. Most Taliban fighters on the ground are not directly connected to the al-Qaeda organization, and it is possible that at some point the Taliban senior leadership will find it in its interest to repudiate its formal ties to al-Qaeda. It is Pakistan that is the cause for greatest concern because al-Qaeda there is mixed up with a stew of various insurgent groups that do actively combine forces and cooperate on an operational level.
In the past year has there been a rethinking about a major shift in U.S. counterterrorism resources, and if so, from where to where?
It will continue to focus on AFPAK and on the Arabian Peninsula and Horn of Africa. But the Arab Spring has some interesting possibilities from the perspective of radical Islamists.
How would you assess the U.S.-Pakistan relationship a year later?
It is in crisis. Things could get worse before they get better, but one eventual byproduct could be a certain realism that the two countries' agendas don't fundamentally coincide, which may clear the way for a more pragmatic definition of cooperation. So if diplomacy works, we may eventually wind up with a realistic middle ground between a purely expedient "transactional relationship" and a "strategic partnership" that was probably too aspirational.
What does U.S. counterterrorism need to look like to meet the threat of a post-bin Laden world?
Counterterrorism policy will gradually move away from a unilateralist emphasis to a more cooperative one. Unilateral counterterrorism is justifiable for the targeting of the bin Ladens of the world, but lower order threats require a different approach. | <urn:uuid:dd1ed8e9-6b4b-4f29-92c7-68e4ec04d354> | 2013-05-26T03:09:05Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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John Travolta: Celebs deserve privacy too
London - John Travolta says privacy laws should shield celebrities from the kind of exposure suffered by Kate Middleton.
Gossip magazines have published topless pictures of Prince William's wife taken during a private holiday.
Travolta, who has faced unwelcome scrutiny of his own private life, told the BBC that it is the "worst time to be famous".
He said "there is a right to privacy whether you're famous or not famous, and I feel that anyone being invaded at that level is unfortunate and there should be a law, no one would like that," he said in an interview broadcast on Friday.Almost retired
Travolta plays a corrupt cop in Oliver Stone's drug-war film Savages
, which opens in Britain on Friday.
It's his first film since 2010. Recently he has been in the headlines for his private life, including a discredited — but widely reported — lawsuit claiming he had groped two masseurs.
Travolta, who has been one of Hollywood's best-known faces since he starred in Saturday Night Fever
in 1977, said he almost retired from acting after the death of his 16-year-old son Jett in 2009.
He said that after his son's death from a seizure he'd "thought of retiring at one point because it felt like too much".
But he told the BBC that "after three years getting a lot of support from my church and a lot of support from people, fans, family I decided that it was OK to go back to work".
Travolta is a prominent member of the Church of Scientology. | <urn:uuid:294b5061-69c3-41c7-9d6d-a42f22745ebc> | 2013-05-26T03:03:10Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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At face value, the new animated feature "ParaNorman" is good. But when you know what went on behind the scenes to create it, the film is nothing short of genius.
"ParaNorman" was created using stop motion technology, which producer Travis Knight explains as a "process that dates back to the dawn of cinema, with a charm and warmth and a beauty that other forms of animation do not have."
Physical sets are built complete with props (more than 30,000 props were built for "ParaNorman") and puppets (there are 28 different puppets used to create the main character of Norman) are also built to act on the sets to bring the motion picture to life.
"Stop motion is different from other forms of animation in that everything you see in a shot has to be moved by a person. You start with a puppet that has a little metal skeleton inside so you can pose it and it will hold its position and you move it slightly, take a picture, then move it a little bit more, take another picture. When you knit enough of those individual pictures together and play them, it looks like the character is brought to life," says Knight, who is also the lead animator for "ParaNorman," and CEO of LAIKA, Inc., a company in Hillsboro, Ore., whose expertise is animation media, including two dimensional, computer generated and stop-motion animation.
While the company was instrumental in Tim Burton's "Corpse Bride" in 2005, they became known for their own stop-action expertise with the movie "Coraline," which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2009. "ParaNorman" is the company's second film, released in conjunction with Focus Features.
"'ParaNorman' is not only a wonderful story but it is the most advanced stop motion film of all time. I think the audience members will ultimately get so involved in the story that they will forget that they are actually watching a hand crafted stop motion movie. Only after the movie is over do they have time to think 'Whoa, how in the world did they do that?'," says Brian McLean, creative supervisor of replacement animation and engineering at LAIKA.
While director and writer Chris Butler came up with the idea for "ParaNorman" 16 years ago, the movie itself took two years to make. Two minutes of footage can take a week or more to shoot, say the filmmakers, while one very intricate scene that takes place in a lavatory took one year to shoot. Fifty-two stages were used to create the world of "ParaNorman" and the number is the most ever assembled for a stop-motion animated feature.
"At any given time during the shoot, there would be 52 separate shooting units working," said Sam Fell, co-director of "ParaNorman."
"ParaNorman" is set in the town of Blithe Hollow, a New England town filled with history. Three hundred years ago, it was the scene of a famous witch hunt. As odd as the town is given its legend, 11-year-old Norman Babcock is the town's oddest. He is obsessed with scary movies and ghost lore and is also gifted with the ability to see and speak with the dead, including his beloved grandmother, who spends her days sitting on the family couch and sharing her love of horror movies with her grandson. When Norman's odd uncle Prenderghast tells him a secret about a witch's curse that is about to come true, Norman is charged with saving the small town from a vengeful witch and zombies who are summoned from their graves.
Butler hopes that by the end of "ParaNorman" there's a nice takeaway from the story about an oddball kid who isn't seen favorably by everyone from his father to his classmates. "Maybe they'll look at the person next to them and see them in a slightly different way," says Butler.
Watching the movie and knowing the painstaking work that went into it will also make moviegoers see an animated film in a different way, too. "ParaNorman" is a unique gift for moviegoers and a hand-made work of art. But, most of all, it's just plain fun. | <urn:uuid:51946169-1256-43c9-a25a-64a7d6749219> | 2013-05-26T02:43:11Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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With 10 minutes to go in the first half, Carroll got the Chiefs on the board by a scoring a goal off a cross from Martin to take a 1-0 lead into halftime.
Martin would make it 2-0 four minutes into the second half with a goal off an assist from Murphy. Two minutes later, Murphy headed in her goal off an assist from Mariah Rozek.
Cheboygan knocked off a Big Rapids' squad that was also competing in their first season in the conference.
Read more HERE in Wednesday's Edition of the Daily Tribune | <urn:uuid:2c757ef1-9185-4360-a685-ffa0a217b2ad> | 2013-05-26T02:51:48Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Reaction: Transfers an α-D-xylosyl residue from UDP-D-xylose to a glucose residue in xyloglucan, forming an α-(1→6)-D-xylosyl-D-glucose linkage
Other name(s): uridine diphosphoxylose-xyloglucan 6α-xylosyltransferase; xyloglucan 6-α-D-xylosyltransferase
Systematic name: UDP-D-xylose:xyloglucan 1,6-α-D-xylosyltransferase
Comments: In association with EC 126.96.36.199 (xyloglucan 4-glucosyltransferase), this enzyme brings about the synthesis of xyloglucan; concurrent transfers of glucose and xylose are necessary for this synthesis.
Links to other databases: BRENDA, EXPASY, KEGG, Metacyc, CAS registry number: 80238-01-3
1. Hayashi, T. and Matsuda, K. Biosynthesis of xyloglucan in suspension-cultured soybean cells. Occurrence and some properties of xyloglucan 4-β-D-glucosyltransferase and 6-α-D-xylosyltransferase. J. Biol. Chem. 256 (1981) 11117-11122. [PMID: 6457048]
2. Hayashi, T. and Matsuda, K. Biosynthesis of xyloglucan in suspension-cultured soybean cells-synthesis of xyloglucan from UDP-glucose and UDP-xylose in the cell-free system. Plant Cell Physiol. 22 (1981) 517-523. | <urn:uuid:083b89e6-26b1-43ee-a721-1edd2d1f2ae6> | 2013-05-26T03:08:27Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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The Scandinavian Defense (also known as the Center Counter) is the chess opening characterized by the first moves 1.e4 d5. At first characterized as a beginner's move, it has recently been revived, with several GM's trying it. Although the Scandinavian is not played as much by grandmasters, it is generally considered to be an opening that is easy to learn and worth trying out for beginners and club level players.
After 1. e4 d5, white usually continues with 2. exd5 when there is a major split between two choices for black. After 2... Qxd5, white usually continues 3. Nc3 when there is again a split between the popular 3... Qa5 and 3... Qd6 and some minor alternatives such as 3... Qe5+ and 3... Qd8.
The variation 3... Qa5 is considered the classical main line. It has enjoyed steady popularity at club level throughout the years, but it has not been played by grandmasters a lot. One famous example of this variation being used in top level chess is the game Kasparov vs. Anand in their match in 1995, in which Anand managed to get a good position out of the opening as black but still lost.
The other variation, 3... Qd6, has enjoyed a big increase in popularity lately. Not only are club players attracted to its dynamic and refreshing nature, but also some grandmasters such as GM Sergei Tiviakov play this variation regularly. Even former World Champion GM Vladimir Kramnik tried this variation at the 2009 World Blitz Championship, where he used it in 14 of his 21 black games, scoring 4 wins, 3 draws and 7 losses.
Instead of 2... Qxd5, black has also p, also known as the Marshall Gambit. Black intends to capture on d5 with the knight instead of the queen. Some common subvariations are 3. c4 c6 4. d4 cxd5 (transposing to the Panov-Botvinnik attack of the Caro-Kann), 3. c4 e6!? (known as the Icelandic Gambit), 3. Nc3 (transposing to a variation of the Alekhine's Defense), 3. d4 Bg4?! (the Portuguese variation), and 3. d4 Nxd5 is generally considered to be the main line.
After 1.e4 d5, White can also play 2.e5 or 2.Nc3. This is not recommended because white fails to gain any advantage.
After 1. e4, the move 1... d5 is the 8th most played move in the Chess.com Master Games database. Out of the nearly 600,000 games beginning with 1. e4, only 2% of the games (almost 13,000 games) continues with 1... d5. In those games, white has scored roughly 43% wins, 30% draws and 27% losses.
After 1... d5, nearly all of the games in the database saw white playing 2. exd5. Then 57% of the games continued 2... Qxd5, and about 43% of all black players chose 2... Nf6. In the games with 2... Qxd5, nearly all of the white players played 3. Nc3. After this 70% of the black players chose 3... Qa5, while 22% chose to play 3... Qd6.
Since the Scandinavian is not as popular as openings like the Sicilian Defense, not many books and DVDs on the Scandinavian have appeared over the years. However, since the theory of the Scandinavian does not develop so quickly, older works on the Scandinavian may still be useful, since most of the theoretic assessments still hold.
Below is a list with the books published on the Scandinavian by the most renowned chess book publishers, such as Everyman Chess, Gambit Chess, ChessBase and Russell Enterprises.
- Starting Out: The Scandinavian by Jovanka Houska (2009, 320p)
- The Scandinavian: The Dynamic 3... Qd6 by Michael Melts (2001, 214p)
- The Scandinavian: The Dynamic 3... Qd6 (2nd ed.) by Michael Melts (2009, 301p)
- The Scandinavian (2nd ed.) by John Emms (2004, 160p)
- The Scandinavian - The Easy Way by Andrew Martin (2004, DVD)
- The Scandinavian - The Easy Way (2nd ed.) by Andrew Martin (2009, DVD)
- The Scandinavin Defencapple of an elephant ial Center Counter by Andrew Martin (2004, 141p) | <urn:uuid:5b952d58-84be-485a-8cc2-e4a1fe7eded4> | 2013-05-26T02:43:12Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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International Master (1987); Grandmaster (1989); FIDE vice-World Champion (2004-2005).
'Mickey' Adams is the top player in the United Kingdom and at the age of 41, is still a contender for the World Championship. He was born in Truro in Cornwall to Bill and Margaret Adams, started learning the game at age 6, and became the world’s youngest IM in the month before his 16th birthday. Gaining the Grandmaster title in 1989 aged 17, Adams went on to win four British titles, many tournaments, and to contest several world championship events. Along with Nigel Short, Adams has dominated UK chess in the last couple of decades and he is considered one of the UK’s strongest ever players.
<Age and Regional>: Adams’ first tournament appearance was in 1979, when having just turned 8, he won the Cornwall U10 championship. Just over a year later, in early 1981, he contested and won the Cornwall U18 (also the U9, U13 and U15) championship while still 9 years of age, the youngest person ever to win an U18 county championship. Two years later in January 1983, aged 11, he came =1st in the Cornish Championship. In 1982, aged 10, he won the British U11 championship, and was =1st in the British U12. In April 1985, Adams took =1st in the British U18 championship, while in April 1987, he won the British U21 championship, repeating the latter feat in April 1988. In April 1987, he won the West of England championship.
<National>: He first won the British Championship in 1989, the same year he gained his GM title. He won it again in 1997, then twice more: British Championship (2010) and British Championships (2011), the last in a tiebreaker against Short. He also placed 2nd in the English championship of 1991.
<World>: Adams’ first foray in the World Championship cycle came in May 1990 at the age of 18 when he placed =2nd behind Murray Chandler at the English Zonal. This result qualified him for the Manila Interzonal held a few months later where he scored 7/13, missing by one point the cut for the Candidates, which was subsequently won by his compatriot, Nigel Short. Three years later, in 1993, he made another attempt, this time winning the English Zonal that was staged in Dublin with 9/11, qualifying for the Biel Interzonal. This time he qualified for the FIDE Candidates by placing equal =2nd (alongside seven others) with 8.5/11, a half point behind the winner, Boris Gelfand. Drawn to play Gelfand in the first round of the Candidates Matches, Adams lost by 5-3 (+1 -3 =4) in the best-of-8 match when he conceded the 8th game. Concurrent with these FIDE events, the PCA ran a parallel world championship cycle in which Adams participated. He won the 1993 Groningen PCA Qualifying Tournament to qualify for PCA Candidates matches. There he met and defeated Sergei Tiviakov in a long and gruelling set of classical time control tiebreaker pairs 7.5-6.5, before losing to Viswanathan Anand 1.5-5.5 in the semi final.
In 1997, Adams was seeded directly into the FIDE knock-out tournament to decide who would play the FIDE champion Anatoly Karpov. He won short matches against Giorgi Giorgadze, Tiviakov, Peter Svidler, Loek Van Wely and Short before losing in the finals to the blitz play prowess of Anand. This effort qualified him for the FIDE World Championship Knockout Tournament (1999) held in Las Vegas, where he defeated Mikhail Kobalia, Zoltan Almasi, Alexey Dreev, and Vladimir Kramnik in the early rounds, but fell to Vladimir Akopian in the semi-final by 2.5-0.5 (-2 =1). His result in the 1999 event again seeded him into the next championship tournament, the FIDE World Championship Knockout Tournament (2000), where he again made it to the semi-finals after defeating Dao Thien Hai, Alex Yermolinsky, Svidler, and Topalov, before again falling to Anand, this time by 1.5-2.5 (-1 =3). Seeded directly into the FIDE World Championship Knockout Tournament (2001), Adams this time started in round 1 where he beat Gaetan Sarthou by 2-0. He subsequently defeated Kobalia in round 2, and Vadim Zvjaginsev in round 3, before losing to Svidler in the rapid play tiebreakers of round 4.
In 2004 he made it to the final, this time of the FIDE World Championship Knockout Tournament (2004), where he played and eliminated Hussein Asabri, Karen Asrian, Hichem Hamdouchi, Hikaru Nakamura, Akopian, and Teimour Radjabov from the event. In the final, he lost 3½-4½, after the tiebreaks, to Rustam Kasimdzhanov of Uzbekistan. He was then invited to FIDE World Championship Tournament (2005), but only placed 7th out of 8, scoring 5.5/14. Nevertheless his participation at San Luis qualified him to play in the 2007 Candidates Tournament that was engineered to unify the world title that had been split since 1993, but he was eliminated in the first round of matches by Alexey Shirov in the rapid play tiebreaker 2.5-0.5 after drawing the best-of-six Candidates Match: Shirov-Adams (2007) 3-3.
This loss prompted Adams to exercise his right to qualify by rating to play in the World Chess Cup (2007), where he played and defeated Igor Zugic, Mikhail Gurevich and Zhou Jianchao in the preliminary rounds before encountering and losing to 17-year old rising star, Magnus Carlsen. Adams withdrew from the 2008-09 Grand Prix cycle* (along with Carlsen and Levon Aronian) and did not compete in the 2009 World Cup, but qualified for the World Cup (2011) via his ratings. He defeated Philippines GM Mark Paragua in the first round but lost the second round rapid game tiebreaker to Danish GM Peter Heine Nielsen. His 2014 World Championship campaign started at the FIDE Grand Prix London (2012) where he scored 5/11 (+1 -2 =8) to accumulate his first 55 GP points for placing =7th/8th place. He also qualifies by rating to compete in the 2013 World Cup.
Adams’ first major open tournament victory was the 1988 Commonwealth Chess Championship (known that year as the Lloyds Bank Tournament), where he placed =1st with Gary W Lane who was then a British player, and one of Adams’s early coaches. There followed:
• =1st in the King’s Head All-Play-All in London in September 1988 and at Thessalonika in November 1988;
• 1st at the 1989 Paris Open, the Parkhall All-Play-All in Preston 1989, and the Harringay All-Play-All 1989 in London where he qualified for his GM title;
• =1st at the Lloyds Bank Tournament 1990 and at Groningen 1990;
• =1st first at the Terrassa Tournament 1991 in Spain;
• 1st at the 1992 Tilburg Interpolis Knockout tournament;
• 1st in the Villeneuve Open in France in 1993, and the Burgas Tournament in Bulgaria in 1993;
• =1st at the 1994 Donner Memorial in Amsterdam;
• 1st at the Kilkenny Masters in 1996 and 1997;
• =2nd in 1997 in the Aarhus Tournament in Denmark;
• 1st at the Frankfurt Masters in 2000;
• 1st at the Redbus knockout tournament in 2000 and 2001;
• 2nd at Enghien-les-Bains (2003) in France.
His 2nd place behind Ivan Sokolov at the Howard Staunton Memorial (2006) foreshadowed further success in this event, as he won the Staunton Memorial (2007) and the Howard Staunton Memorial (2008). Other good results include:
• 1st at the Ruy Lopez Chess Festival (2008);
• =3rd at the Canadian Open (2009);
• 2nd at the 2009 Ruy Lopez Memorial;
• =2nd at the 2010 Chicago Open; and
• 1st at the Gibraltar (2010) and the 2011 LA Metropolitan Chess International.
• =1st at the 39th World Open (2011) in Philadelphia, losing the tiebreaker to Gata Kamsky
• =3rd at the Tradewise Gibraltar (2012),
• =5th, a half point behind the leaders, at the Tradewise Gibraltar (2013); and
• =4th at the category 20 Alekhine Memorial (2013).
His most recent tournament win was at the Bunratty Masters (2012).
Adams was a regular participant at Wijk aan Zee between 1991 and 2009. His first time at Wijk ann Zee was also his first participation in one of the ‘super-tournaments’. In 1991, he was invited to play at the category 14 Hoogovens tournament at Wijk aan Zee. There he performed well to place =2nd alongside Alexander Chernin, half a point behind the winner, John Nunn. Subsequently, his best efforts at Wijk aan Zee include =3rd at Game Collection: Wijk aan Zee Hoogovens 1998 alongside Shirov and behind Kramnik and Anand, =3rd alongside Alexander Morozevich and behind Evgeny Bareev and Alexander Grischuk at Game Collection: Wijk aan Zee Corus 2002, =2nd at Wijk an Zee Corus Chess (2004) alongside Peter Leko and half a point behind Anand, =4th at Corus Chess Tournament (2005), and =3rd at Corus Wijk aan Zee (2006) alongside Vassily Ivanchuk and behind Topalov and Anand.
Adams also participated in Dortmund from time to time between 1992 and 2006. His best results were 1994 (2nd), 1998 (=1st), 1999 (=3rd) and 2006 (=2nd, half point behind Svidler). His best results at Linares were =3rd in 1997 and 2002.
He was =1st at the 1995 Dos Hermanas Tournament alongside Kamsky and Karpov. However, his most notable tournament victory was at the category 19 Dos Hermanas (1999), finishing clearly ahead of Vladimir Kramnik, Anand, Svidler, Karpov, Topalov, and Judit Polgar. Another splendid result was his =2nd (also 2nd on tiebreak) behind Kasparov at the category 18 Sarajevo (2000).
His most recent leader board results in super tournaments were =3rd at the London Chess Classic (2009), =3rd (4th on tiebreak) at the powerful London Chess Classic (2012) and =3rd at the category 19 GRENKE Chess Classic (2013).
Rapid and Blitz tournaments:
Adams was an enthusiastic rapid and blitz player in the 1990s, and was ranked number 1 on FIDE’s Rapid List in January and July 2001. His best results during this time were:
• His England team winning the International Team Quickplay at Cannes in 1992;
• 1st at the Swift Rapid in Brussels 1992;
• 1st at the Quickplay Tournament, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, in 1994;
• 2nd at the 1994 Cap d'Adge Tournament;
• 1st at the Open & Rapid in Ischia in Italy in 1995;
• 1st at the PCA Quickplay in London in 1995;
• 1st at the Leeds Quickplay in 1995 and 1996;
• 1st at the Mind Sports Rapid in London in 1997; and
• 1st at the 2001 Mainz Rapid Open and
• semi-finalist at the Corsica Masters International Rapid (2005).
Apart from the mini-matches that characterised each round of the FIDE world championship challenge tournament of 1997, the subsequent world championship knockout tournaments from 1999 until 2004, and the World Cup tournaments from 2005 onwards, Adams played a number of matches during his career, the most famous of which was the Adams vs Hydra Match (2005), when he lost five games and drew one in the six-game match. Before then, he’d played a number of matches including:
• 1994: 2-2 draw vs Simen Agdestein in Oslo (1);
• 1997: 4.5-1.5 win against Ivan Morovic-Fernandez in Santiago de Chile (2);
• 1998: London Match vs. Jonathan Rowson which he won by 5-1 (3);
• 1999 match drawn 5-5 vs. Yasser Seirawan, played at Mermaid Beach in Bermuda (4);
• 2000: return match against Seirawan at Hamilton in Bermuda, won 6-3 by Adams; and
• 2005: rapid Leko & Adams (2005) match in Miskolc in Hungary, drawn 4-4.
Apart from his Candidates match against Shirov in 2007, Adams does not seem to have played another match.
National Team Events:
Since he was a teenager, Adams has been one of the stalwarts of the English team at the Olympiads and at the European Team Championship, and to a lesser extent at the World Team Championship.
<Olympiad>: Adams has represented England at every Olympiad since 1990 inclusive, playing board 1 since 1998. He picked up a team bronze in 1990 (although the team came =3rd in 1994 and 1996), and an individual bronze for board 1 in 36th Olympiad (2004).
<World Team Championship>: Adams represented England at the World Teams championship of 1989, and playing as first reserve, won individual bronze and helped his team to a bronze medal. He also won individual bronze playing board two at the only other World Teams Championship in which he participated in 1997, although on this occasion his team came fourth in the event.
<European Team Championship>: He first played in the ETC in 1989, and again in 1992, 1997, 2001, European Team Chess Championships (2007), 17th European Team Championship (2009) and European Team Championship (2011), winning team bronze in 1993, team bronze in 1997, and two individual golds, an individual silver and 3 individual bronzes over the course of these events, the most recent being individual gold on board 1 in 2011.
Clubs and Leagues:
<European Club Cup>: Adams has been a fixture in the European Club Cup (ECC) since 1993, playing 1993, from 1995-1998, 2000, 2002-2004, and 2007-2012. During that time he won five team gold medals, and one individual gold medal. His overall game results in the ECC are a total of 81 games at 61.1%, resulting from +29 =31 -11.
He was recruited by the French team, Clichy Échecs 92, to play board 2 in 1993, but his inaugural experience in one of the strongest club competition in the world was inauspicious as he lost the only two games he played. He switched to ŠK Bosna Sarajevo in 1995, the Dutch team Panfox Breda in 1996 and the English Slough Chess Club in 1997 without making much of a mark in those years. However, his return to the Panfox Breda team in 1998 and 2000 saw the team winning gold and bronze respectively. In 2002 he played for ŠK Bosna Sarajevo, winning team gold, and also won team gold when he played for NAO Paris in 2003, 2004 and for the Spanish team CA Linex Magic Mérida (MMER) in 2007. He remained with the Magic in 2008, but then made a permanent move to OSG Baden-Baden in 2009 where he won an individual gold medal in his first year with that team.
<National Leagues/Club Championships>: Adams also played with the Spanish team Magic Mérida in the Spanish League, winning the championship in 2007 and 2009. Since the 1990s, he has also played in the Bundesliga, the French League/Top 16/Top 12, the Icelandic team championships, the Turkish League, the Dutch team championships, and the 4 Nations Chess League.
As of 1 May 2013, Adams' rating was 2729, making him the top ranked player in the United Kingdom and number 22 in the world. He is not rated in rapid and blitz.
Adams lives in Taunton, Somerset with his wife, actress Tara MacGowran. He has one sibling, sister Janet, born 1970.
Sources and footnotes:
Adams’ official website: http://www.michaeladamschess.co.uk; Development of a Grandmaster by Bill and Michael Adams: [http://www.chessit.co.uk/temporary/...; * http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail...; (1) search "adams-agdestein 1994"; (2) search "adams-morovic 1997"; (3) search "adams-rowson 1998"; (4) search "adams-seirawan 1999" | <urn:uuid:239c9f42-0131-4631-a3b4-76f38df66088> | 2013-05-26T02:55:17Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Plot Summary: In the 21st century, a family of vampires settled down on the grounds of Japan and lived a modest life whilst sucking on the blood of humans discreetly. However, the eldest daughter of the family, Karin Maaka, has an embarassing secret which cannot be revealed to anyone. Even though she is a vampire, she does not lack blood like her family members. Instead, she overproduces blood to the extent that she transfuses the excess into her victims, hence increasing their blood levels. Despite her troubling body characteristic, she attends school like any other high school student, that is until a new transfer student, Kenta Usui, enters her life. | <urn:uuid:0aa2b09a-0dd4-4e8e-a2fd-eb522f3ab7aa> | 2013-05-26T03:10:42Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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... | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967751 | 138 | http://www.chia-anime.com/category/karin | 0.918267 |
What is skin testing for allergies?
The most common way to test for allergies is on the skin, usually the forearm or the back. In a typical skin test, a doctor or nurse will place a tiny bit of an allergen (such as pollen or food) on the skin, then make a small scratch or prick on the skin.
The allergist may repeat this, testing for several allergens in one visit. This can be a little uncomfortable, but not painful.
If your child reacts to one of the allergens, the skin will swell a little in that area. The doctor will be able to see if a reaction occurs within about 15 minutes. The swelling usually goes down within about 30 minutes to a few hours. Other types of skin testing include injecting allergens into the skin or taping allergens to the skin for 48 hours.
With a skin test, an allergist can check for these kinds of allergies:
- environmental, such as mold, pet dander, or tree pollen
- food, such as peanuts or eggs
- medications, such as penicillin
Some medications (such as antihistamines) can interfere with skin testing, so check with the doctor to see if your child's medications need to be stopped before the test is done. While skin testing is useful and helpful, sometimes additional tests (like blood tests or food challenges) also must be done to see if a child is truly allergic to something.
While skin tests are usually well tolerated, in rare instances they can cause a more serious allergic reaction. This is why skin testing must always be done in an allergist's office, where the doctor is prepared to handle a reaction.
Reviewed by: Larissa Hirsch, MD
Date reviewed: May 2012 | <urn:uuid:b4e1e560-c929-419e-ad52-5e1396468d93> | 2013-05-26T02:56:13Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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From New Cambria, Missouri, USA:
When my blood sugar drops like from over 200 mg/dl [11.1 mmol/L] to the normal range (128-160 mg/dl [7.1-8.9 mmol/L]), I feel low. What can I do to prevent my body from thinking it has low blood sugar?
It's called hypoglycemic awareness training. You need to learn how you feel at certain glucose values. You must keep learning. Values of 128-160 mg/dl [7.1-8.9 mmol/L] 1 aren't low. You must get numbers that are lower too. How do you feel? You need to try to differentiate the difference. Keep testing and learning.
[Editor's comment: It sounds to me as though your blood sugar must be falling very rapidly, causing your body to react as though your sugar is low. I would be curious to know what your hemoglobin A1c is and what kind of fluctuations you are finding. If your A1c is more than about 1% above the upper limit of normal for the lab doing the test, your control is not optimal.
It is important to try to get your blood glucose levels within a fairly narrow, normal range. Of course, you will occasionally have some high and low numbers -- that's pretty much unavoidable. I would suggest, as Dr Deeb said, that you monitor frequently (at least before meal and bedtime and preferably two hour after meals and during the night as well) and, with the help of your diabetes team, make appropriate insulin adjustment to avoid the wide swings. Also, your situation might well be clarified by monitoring sugar levels continuously for several days to try to sort out what's happening in more detail. See The Continuous Glucose Monitoring System and ask your diabetes team about using it. SS]
Original posting 10 Mar 2002
Posted to Daily Care
Last Updated: Tuesday April 06, 2010 15:09:31
This Internet site provides information of a general nature and is designed for educational purposes only. If you have any concerns about your own health or the health of your child, you should always consult with a physician or other health care professional.
This site is published by Children With Diabetes, Inc, which is responsible for its contents.
© Children with Diabetes, Inc. 1995-2013. Comments and Feedback. | <urn:uuid:dc3c151c-c4ef-456b-b487-e2c2bf0e73b1> | 2013-05-26T02:47:56Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Adverse Events Following Acupuncture in China: A Systematic Review of the Chinese Literature for the Years 1956-2010
Abstract Objectives: The objective of this study was to make non-Chinese readers better informed about the current safety situation of acupuncture in China. Methods: Four (4) major Chinese comprehensive databases were searched: Chinese Journal Full-text Database (1949-2010), China Biomedical Literature Database (1978-2010), Chinese Technology Journal Database (1989-2010), and Wanfang (1998-2010). Case reports of adverse events related to acupuncture therapy were included. Literature reviews, case-control study, translations, duplicate literatures in various databases, and duplicate published articles with duplicate data were excluded. Results: One hundred and sixty-seven (167) articles were included with 1038 cases, among which 35 patients died. The most frequent adverse events were syncope (468 cases), pneumothorax (307 cases), and subarachnoid hemorrhage (64 cases). Conclusions: Acupuncture-related adverse events were mainly caused by mental tension of the patient, improper operation by the doctor, and incompleteness of sterilization. Most of them can be avoided by standardizing teaching and clinical practices. Making the corresponding safety standards can greatly lower the risk of adverse events and protect patient safety to the greatest extent. | <urn:uuid:f0cbbaca-ebbb-427d-8f90-5bb17e7239d4> | 2013-05-26T03:11:19Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Cruachan is the name of an Irish Celtic metal band founded in 1992 by Keith Fay after the end of Minas Tirith which existed since 1989.
Cruachan mixes Celtic music, history and mythology with black metal. Cruachan's black metal influence, however, has become diluted in recent releases, and most fans only consider their first album Tuath Na Gael to be black metal. Recent work has become more melodic, with softer vocals, courtesy of Karen Gilligan, who joined after the release of Tuath Na Gael. Black metal elements remain on some songs, such as the primary vocals of Pagan
Cruachan probably took their name from the ancient city of the same name, which was the capital of the old Irish kingdom of Connacht.
Many of Cruachan's songs refer to this kingdom, such as Cattle Raid of Cooley, which is an event in Irish mythology. Cruachan's lyrics also contain frequent references to the Viking Age, the Viking invasions of Ireland, and the defeat of the Dublin Vikings at the Battle of Clontarf by Brian Boru. Other songs touch on the troubles and aspects of Irish myth and legend. Some of their songs, however, ar... | <urn:uuid:769f010a-c0a7-4fd4-b6b1-1a372f3564ac> | 2013-05-26T02:35:27Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Marcy Playground is an American alternative rock or post-grunge band.
< Image with unknown copyright status removed: thumb|Marcy Playground publicity photo. --> Named for the formative location in lead singer John Wozniak's childhood, the Marcy Open grade school in Minneapolis, Marcy Playground emerged in the late 1990s with clean and subdued alternative rock (often sounding like a tranquil Nirvana).
Wozniak's first effort, Zog BogBean? - From the Marcy Playground, was a self-produced labor of love, recorded in his bedroom studio with some help from his then-girlfriend Sherry Fraser in the early nineties. A small run of CD's was self-released by Wozniak, and to this day it remains extremely difficult to find.
After attending the Evergreen State College for two years, Wozniak moved east to New York, where Marcy Playground began to coalesce around the songs that would become the self-titled album. Bassist Dylan Keefe and drummer Dan Rieser filled out the band's sound, and complemented Wozniak's songwriting. The self-titled album was released in 1997, and Marcy Playground emerged into th... | <urn:uuid:2dc7d231-b806-472a-b6c2-01c2a59ca0f9> | 2013-05-26T03:04:50Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Quantum and Boltzmann transport in the quasi-one-dimensional wire with rough edges
We study quantum transport in Q1D wires made of a 2D conductor of width W and length L>>W. Our aim is to compare an impurity-free wire with rough edges with a smooth wire with impurity disorder. We calculate the electron transmission through the wires by the scattering-matrix method, and we find the Landauer conductance for a large ensemble of disordered wires. We study the impurity-free wire whose edges have a roughness correlation length comparable with the Fermi wave length. The mean resistance <ρ> and inverse mean conductance 1/<g> are evaluated in dependence on L. For L -> 0 we observe the quasi-ballistic dependence 1/<g> = <ρ> = 1/N_c + ρ_qb L/W, where 1/N_c is the fundamental contact resistance and ρ_qb is the quasi-ballistic resistivity. As L increases, we observe crossover to the diffusive dependence 1/<g> = <ρ> = 1/N^eff_c + ρ_dif L/W, where ρ_dif is the resistivity and 1/N^eff_c is the effective contact resistance corresponding to the N^eff_c open channels. We find the universal results ρ_qb/ρ_dif = 0.6N_c and N^eff_c = 6 for N_c >> 1. As L exceeds the localization length ξ, the resistance shows onset of localization while the conductance shows the diffusive dependence 1/<g> = 1/N^eff_c + ρ_dif L/W up to L = 2ξ and the localization for L > 2ξ only. On the contrary, for the impurity disorder we find a standard diffusive behavior, namely 1/<g> = <ρ> = 1/N_c + ρ_dif L/W for L < ξ. We also derive the wire conductivity from the semiclassical Boltzmann equation, and we compare the semiclassical electron mean-free path with the mean free path obtained from the quantum resistivity ρ_dif. They coincide for the impurity disorder, however, for the edge roughness they strongly differ, i.e., the diffusive transport is not semiclassical. It becomes semiclassical for the edge roughness with large correlation length. | <urn:uuid:346810db-8fbe-4a21-b8e4-b188b9c75051> | 2013-05-26T03:02:31Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Yunel Escobar's stint with the Miami Marlins is over before it began.
Weeks after he was acquired by Miami in a trade that sent five high-priced players to the Toronto Blue Jays, Escobar was traded again Tuesday night. He went to the Tampa Bay Rays in exchange for minor league middle infielder Derek Dietrich.
The trade saves the cost-conscious Marlins $5 million (Escobar's 2013 salary). However, it's possible Escobar's exit also was hastened by the same desire to prevent controversy among the local Hispanic community that contributed to the firing of manager Ozzie Guillen after the season.
Escobar was suspended for three games late last season after he wrote a homophobic spur in Spanish on his eye-black strips. Guillen became a polarizing figure in Miami after he made comments that praised Fidel Castro.
"We did a lot of homework on Yunel and believe he's going to fit in really well in our clubhouse," Rays executive vice president Andrew Friedman said, according to the Tampa Bay Times. "It's a calculated risk we feel will work out well."
Escobar figures to take over at shortstop in Tampa Bay. Rays veteran Ben Zobrist, previously a second baseman and right fielder, played shortstop for much of last season.
Escobar, 30, played the past 2 1/2 seasons in Toronto after opening his career with 3 1/2 seasons as a member of the Atlanta Braves. This year, he hit .253 with a .300 on-base percentage, nine homers and 51 RBI in 145 games. Over his career, Escobar is a .282 hitter with a .353 on-base percentage, 53 homers and 298 RBI in 784 games.
Beyond 2013, Escobar's contract includes club options for 2014 and 2015, both at $5 million.
"We feel he really helps solidify our infield defense, which will be a real strength next year," Friedman said, according to the Times.
Dietrich, 23, split last season between high Class A Charlotte (Port Charlotte, Fla.) and Double-A Montgomery (Ala.). He hit a combined .279 with a .338 on-base percentage, a .457 slugging percentage, 14 homers and 75 RBI while playing 75 games at shortstop and 51 at second base. He was a second-round draft pick in 2010 out of Georgia Tech. | <urn:uuid:05db25e9-ce82-461b-80f0-a6c146b53f2d> | 2013-05-26T02:49:11Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Actor Larry Hagman, who created one of television's iconic villains with the treacherous J.R. Ewing of "Dallas," died Friday, according to a family statement. He was 81.
Hagman died at a Dallas hospital of complications from cancer, said the statement posted on Hagman's official web site early Saturday.
"Larry was back in his beloved Dallas, re-enacting the iconic role he loved most," it said.
"Larry's family and close friends had joined him in Dallas for the Thanksgiving holiday. When he passed, he was surrounded by loved ones. It was a peaceful passing, just as he had wished for. The family requests privacy at this time."
Hagman shot to television superstardom in 1978 with the role of J.R. Ewing, the scheming Texas oil tycoon, in the prime-time soap opera "Dallas." He was the villain viewers loved to hate.
In 1980, the show became a mega-hit with the "Who Shot J.R.?" plot line that left Americans guessing who pulled the trigger.
The answer came on November 21, 1980, in an episode dubbed "Who Done It?." More than 350 million viewers tuned in around the world to find out Kristen Shepherd, the sister of J.R.'s wife, shot him. It remains one of the most watched television episodes in history.
Ewing survived that shooting, and Hagman and the rest of the cast thrived for 14 seasons total before bowing out in 1991.
He reprised the role for TNT's reboot of the series "Dallas" in June 2012. Hagman filmed appearances for the show's second season, which is set to air in January. (Like CNN, TNT is a division of Time Warner and Turner Broadcasting.)
It was a role he clearly reveled, even developing a trademark laugh for the character. At one point, Hagman made up fake $100 bills emblazoned with his face and the words "In Hagman We Trust" to hand out to fans.
In one of his final interviews on CNN, Hagman appeared alongside original "Dallas" cast members Linda Gray (Sue Ellen) and Patrick Duffy (Bobby) on "Piers Morgan Tonight."
During the interview, Morgan described the character of J.R. Ewing as "the dark dealer of evil scheming."
"Moi?" Hagman said, breaking into a wide smile.
In a statement released Friday by Gray's publicist to KNBC-TV in Los Angeles, the actress described Hagman as "my best friend for more than 35 years."
"He was the pied piper of life and brought joy to everyone he knew. He was creative, generous, funny, loving and talented and I will miss him enormously. He was an original and lived life to the full and the world was a brighter place because of him," the statement said.
Hagman told Morgan when he was first approached about doing the "Dallas" remake, the first question he asked: "Are my friends going to be on the show?"
"I wouldn't be doing it without them," he said.
Word of Hagman's passing spread quickly late Friday and early Saturday, with everybody from celebrities to fans mourning his death.
Actor William Shatner took to Twitter: "My thoughts and prayers go out to the family of Larry Hagman. My best, Bill."
"He was a wonderful human being and an extremely gifted actor. We will be forever thankful that a whole new generation of people got to know and appreciate Larry through his performance as J.R. Ewing," TNT said in a statement. "Our thoughts and prayers are with his family at this very difficult time."
Hagman was born in Fort Worth, Texas, on the cusp of the Great Depression to actress Mary Martin and Ben Hagman, a lawyer.
He spent a year at Bard College in New York and then embarked on a life in theater in Dallas and New York, according to his official website.
He appeared onstage with his mother in "South Pacific" in England and even produced and directed several shows while in the U.S. Air Force. After getting married and leaving the service, Hagman returned to the United States and starred in a number of Broadway plays.
His family then headed to Hollywood, where Hagman earned roles in such television shows as "The Edge of Night" and "The Defenders."
Hagman's breakthrough role came in 1965, when he played astronaut Maj. Tony Nelson, or "Master," as he was known to the scantily clad, 2,000-year-old genie played by Barbara Eden in the hit comedy, "I Dream of Jeannie." | <urn:uuid:d6a2e243-2815-4956-9907-1319b882d40d> | 2013-05-26T02:35:45Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Oops! You Encountered the Following Error:
Page Not Found
We apologize for this inconvenience.
We can't find the page you're looking for. Please visit our homepage and enter the title in the search box at the top right-hand corner of this page and we'll find it for you. | <urn:uuid:fca20f03-d5c0-4ec7-9386-85cf7ce1dc7e> | 2013-05-26T03:08:59Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Now that we are heading towards the New World Order,it's time to start exercising,so that you are in good condition when the better world is finally created.
So here is one exercise for you.
You can all do sit-ups,right?
But can you do sit-ups without moving your legs?
Your legs must not rise from the ground,not even one centimeter.
Can you do this? | <urn:uuid:ad4b8bf6-eaa9-44d0-9feb-549a7af88c40> | 2013-05-26T02:42:43Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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(CNN) -- In 2005, about two weeks after 52 people in London were killed in bombings targeting the English city's mass transit system, terrorists decided to strike again.
A police CCTV camera observes people walking in central London.
Similar to the July 7 attacks, they chose the city's transit system -- three subway trains and a double-decker bus -- as the targets. But this time, four homemade bombs stuffed into backpacks did not fully explode. One person was injured.
About a day later, photographs of four suspects were broadcast on television. Their images had been captured on surveillance cameras near the sites of the attempted attacks.
The remarkable speed of that investigation was repeated in June this year when terrorists attempted to detonate two car bombs in London.
Aided by surveillance cameras, British investigators began unraveling the plot later that day and tracked the suspects to Glasgow, Scotland. Several suspects were soon arrested.
Police officials credited the "Ring of Steel" -- a network of thousands of surveillance cameras that line London's intersections and neighborhoods -- for providing license plate numbers, suspects' image and other important clues in investigations.
New York City, specifically lower Manhattan, the site of two terror attacks, will have a similar system in place by the decade's end if it gets the needed funding.
Police officials say the surveillance cameras can help combat crime and terrorism, perhaps even deter it. Civil liberties advocates say such systems are a threat to privacy rights and another step for a society creeping toward a constant state of surveillance.
The implementation of the plan, called the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, will require about $90 million, New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said. It will cost about $8 million a year to maintain.
The city so far has raised about $25 million. Part of it has come from the Homeland Security Department and the rest from city coffers.
Kelly said the money being spent on the system is well worth it. "The 1.7 square miles of lower Manhattan are arguably one of the most valuable and sensitive pieces of real estate in the world," he said during a telephone interview.
The area includes the New York Stock Exchange, the Mercantile Stock Exchange, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the site where the World Trade Center once stood and where the Freedom Tower is being built.
The system has four components: license plate readers, surveillance cameras, a coordination center and roadblocks that can swing into action when needed. The primary purpose of the system is deterrence, and then an investigative tool, Kelly said.
The license plate readers will be in place by the end of the year. The rest of the plan is scheduled to be completed during the next two years.
New York City already has many cameras located in its airports, banks, department stores and corporate buildings. The city's law enforcement uses them when needed as part of a public-private partnership, Kelly said.
Such partnerships can be found in many cities across the United States, including Washington D.C.; Atlanta, Georgia; Baltimore, Maryland; and Chicago, Illinois.
Baltimore police officials told CNN the city had 500 cameras and crime was reduced by 17 percent in neighborhoods where they are located.
"The feedback from the community has been fantastic, and in fact, most people want cameras in their neighborhoods," said Maj. Dave Engel of the Baltimore Police Department.
Atlanta Police Deputy Chief Peter Andresen said the city had applied for federal funding to implement a surveillance camera system of its own. Atlanta has a public-private partnership in several of its neighborhoods that gives police access to cameras, he said.
He recalled a drug deal being busted because someone monitoring a camera grew suspicious of two cars idling in a parking lot with their hoods up for a long time.
"We feel that [the cameras] go a long way toward preventing crime," he said.
But Steve Swain, who served for years with the London Metropolitan Police and its counter-terror operations, doubts the power of cameras to deter crime.
"I don't know of a single incident where CCTV has actually been used to spot, apprehend or detain offenders in the act," he said, referring to the London system. Swain now works for Control Risk, an international security firm.
Asked about their role in possibly stopping acts of terror, he said pointedly: "The presence of CCTV is irrelevant for those who want to sacrifice their lives to carry out a terrorist act."
Kelly disagreed, pointing out that it is practically impossible to know what has been deterred. "We don't know acts that may have been planned that -- because of the surveillance and deterrence systems that are in place -- did not go forward."
Swain does believe the cameras have great value in investigation work. He also said they are necessary to reassure the public that law enforcement is being aggressive.
"You need to do this piece of theater so that if the terrorists are looking at you, they can see that you've got some measures in place," he said.
Privacy advocates said they are concerned about the possible abuse of surveillance power.
Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said she was alarmed by the prospect of government and law enforcement officials having records of a person's daily activities.
"It wasn't that long ago that J. Edgar Hoover was up to his dirty tricks using government spying to interfere with lawful dissent, undermine critics and pursue an unlawful agenda," she said.
However, police officials repeatedly note there is no expectation of privacy in a public area and it is not a constitutional right.
A majority of Americans said they approved of the use of surveillance cameras by nearly a 3 to 1 margin in a recently published ABC News/Washington Post poll.
Jeffery Rosen, a professor at George Washington University and the author of two books on privacy issues, said the poll reflected the fact that "the arguments against the cameras tend to be abstract, whereas people's desire for security is understandable and immediate."
"But I think many people can understand life would be different in a world where, literally, government authorities could click on pictures of you at any point in the day and retrace your movements 24/7," he said.
Lieberman said privacy is not a quaint notion despite a rapidly changing world.
"Technology is an unstoppable train," she said. "The question is whether we can maximize the benefits and minimize the harms." E-mail to a friend
CNN's Joe Johns contributed to this report.
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London (CNN) -- Bamboozled by eurozone debt crisis jargon? CNN is here to help you tell your bond yields from your banking interventions, your defaults from your haircuts. And if you need anything more explained, please submit your questions to Soundoff at the bottom of the story.
The euro is the common currency used by a bloc of nations within the European Union. The 17 states that use the euro -- including Germany, France, Italy and Spain -- form the eurozone. A further 10 EU nations -- including the UK, Sweden and Denmark -- continue to use their own currencies.
A recession is technically defined as two consecutive quarters of shrinking output -- or a country going backwards financially. The eurozone is currently teetering on the edge of recession, triggered in part by the crisis which has rolled on since May 2010. A double dip recession is when a country which has been in recession enters a downturn again after a brief and weak recovery.
The "contagion effect" referred to in the eurozone crisis is the fear that one country's financial problems will spill over to another country. This happens because the capital markets -- where sovereign bonds are bought and sold -- can be influenced by sentiment as well as the fundamentals of each country. Contagion can also occur because the more countries within the bloc struggle, the higher the cost to others of giving aid.
Countries, or companies, default when they can no longer pay their bills on time. Defaults can come in different forms: "Orderly" -- when investors holding the bonds can agree to take haircuts (see below) -- or "disorderly," where losses are unexpected and sudden.
Countries raise money by issuing sovereign bonds which are then purchased by investors. The '"yield" of the bonds - which can be thought of as IOUs -- is how much the investor wants to be paid to hold that bond. So, a higher yield indicates a higher risk bond. For sovereign bonds a yield of more than 7% is considered unsustainable for any extended period of time, because a country's earnings are unlikely to be able to cover repayments.
Liquidity is the oil which greases the world of finance. It refers to the ease at which funds -- cash, for example -- can flow through the system. A market with lots of buyers and sellers is liquid, while one without is illiquid.
A haircut refers to a cut in the value of investments lenders are asked to take. For example, a 50% haircut on an investment means you'll get back only half of what you paid. Investors in Greek bonds have been asked to take a haircut on their debt. It would be in their interest to do so if they thought the value of the debt could drop further in the future. Investors can also be asked to swap bonds maturing soon for longer dated ones which would pay out at a much later date.
The ratings agencies -- Moody's Investors Service, Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings being the big three -- award scores based on a company or country's credit worthiness. "Junk" refers to when that rating drops below investment grade. Once a credit rating drops below the BBB level, it is "sub-investment" grade and is commonly referred to as junk.
Eurobonds are being suggested as a way to tie the finances of the eurozone's 17 countries more closely. A eurobond would be a bond -- or debt which investors buy in return for yield -- backed by all the countries of the bloc. The idea remains under discussion, although it has rejected by the eurozone's two most powerful leaders, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy earlier this year. Francois Hollande, Sarkozy's successor, has been more favorable to the idea.
Fiscal unity is centered on integrated taxation and spending. The eurozone is a monetary but not fiscal union, meaning its 17 members maintain their own taxation policies and also raise money to fund themselves. However, the bloc does have a central bank -- the European Central Bank (see below) -- which maintains monetary policy. The bloc appears to be moving toward closer fiscal integration as it seeks to stem the crisis.
European Central Bank
The European Central Bank, based in Frankfurt, Germany, was set up in 1998 to maintain monetary policy for the eurozone under its common currency, the euro. The ECB's mandate is to keep inflation at around 2% or below, and ensure some level of stability for the countries that use the euro. Like other central banks, the ECB's main tool for keeping to these targets is by raising or lowering interest rates -- a key tool for influencing financial markets. The ECB has also been actively buying the sovereign bonds of troubled eurozone economies, in the hope that it will lower those countries' funding costs.
European Financial Stability Facility
The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) is Europe's temporary bailout fund. It was hurriedly set up after Greece needed its first bailout in May 2010, and has since become a key tool to combat the debt crisis. European leaders have increased its lending capacity from around €250 billion to €440 billion, and are investigating ways to boost its clout. A permanent bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism, or ESM, will be operational mid 2012.
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund, which is based in Washington D.C., is an organization of 187 countries. It is designed to assist countries in financial trouble. Member countries contribute to the fund, relative to their economies, when assistance is needed. It has been a key player in the European bailouts.
A group of auditors from the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the European Central Bank tasked with monitoring the progress of nations that have requested sovereign bailouts such as Greece, Portugal and Ireland. | <urn:uuid:c5f257e2-d499-4469-b170-de65abce8b8e> | 2013-05-26T02:55:48Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Editor's note: MainSail is CNN's monthly sailing show, exploring the sport of sailing, luxury travel and the latest in design and technology.
(CNN) -- One of the world's largest private superyachts is the latest to set sail on an expedition to uncover the secrets of a British battle cruiser lost during World War II.
Octopus -- a 414 foot megayacht -- was donated to the British Navy by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft. Allen will fund the recovery and research expedition, sparing the British government any cost.
This week the recovery team will return to the wreck site with a two-fold mission: Retrieve the ship's bell and document the remains of the battle cruiser in the hopes of later determining what happened in the Hood's final moments.
David Mearns, director of Blue Water Recoveries, said the ship's bell was "lovingly looked after" by the crew. Its recovery is seen by those who lost loved ones as a way to commemorate those who died.
The HMS Hood was sunk during a battle in the North Atlantic with German battleship Bismarck in 1941. The Hood remains the largest Royal Navy vessel to have gone down, and resulted in the largest loss of life suffered by any single warship in British history.
The wreck of HMS Hood is designated under the Protection of the Military Remains Act, meaning the recovery team had to seek permission from the British Navy in order to retrieve the bell.
The mission was agreed to by the British Government, and the Ministry of Defence say the bell -- if recovered -- will form a tangible and fitting memorial to the ship and the 1,415 men who died when she sunk in the North Atlantic.
Mearns recalls the astonishment of the team when they located the ship's bell, on their first dive, in 2001.
"There was just a miscellaneous pile of twisted and torn metal... most of it was very angled steel but there was this curved shape," Mearns remembers. "We pushed in on the camera and, lo and behold, there was the bell sitting basically unattached, not connected to the ship [and] all by itself on its side."
The team, Mearns recalls, "were just stunned by it."
The 40,000 ton wreck is strewn over two and half kilometers of seabed, and uncovering the bell was a stroke of luck for the recovery team.
"It's a really iconic item and personal symbol of the ship, but we were there conducting this investigation on a 'don't touch' basis. It never occurred to us, even for a second, 'What if we recovered the bell? Should we attempt to?'" Mearns tells CNN.
By the time Mearns and his team had returned to land, news of the bell's discovery had broken. A public debate had erupted over the ethics of disturbing a wreck where so many lives had been lost.
Mearns gained the support of the HMS Hood Association -- whose members include veterans and relatives of those who died -- before seeking financial support to return and recover the bell.
The association's president, rear admiral Philip Wilcocks, said in statement on the mission: "There is no headstone among the flowers for those who perish at sea."
Wilcocks added, "future generations will be able to gaze upon [the Hood's] bell and remember with gratitude and thanks the heroism, courage and personal sacrifice of Hood's ship's company who died in the service of their country."
If recovered, the bell will go on display in 2014, at an exhibition at the Royal Navy Museum in the southern English port of Portsmouth -- where the Hood was based.
Mearns says: "It's been out there as a wish of the association to do this and I've just been looking for the right sponsor to do it in the right way and to get the permission to do it.
"I'd been working with Vulcan, Paul Allen's company, and it just so happened we could combine the availability of Octopus in the region at the right time, because you can only really work in this area two months of the year."
The Octopus, the world's 13th largest megayacht, is a "fantastically capable vessel," Mearns says.
Despite being classified as a yacht, the Octopus carries equipment including a deepwater diving ROV [remotely operated vehicle] and survey and navigation equipment. The Octopus, says Mearns, "is very qualified" for the job.
The British Royal Navy has asked the team to place an ensign on the site of the wreck, Mearns added.
The mission also hopes to shed light on the final moments of the battle cruiser, which broke in two during the attack. It was under sustained fire from the Bismarck, but its own ammunition also exploded. The cause of its sinking has never been clarified.
"I think we are going to make a real improvement in the imagery and information that we bring back from the wreck to allow naval architects to look at and come to some firm conclusions about the damage," Mearns added.
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Download source files - 1 Kb
Download demo project - 15 Kb
This example shows how to serialize
classes into the registry in binary form.
Most of MFC classes are derived from an abstract base class
called CObject, either directly or indirectly.
CObject provides the
functionality of serializing the object data members by ordering the data
in a stream of bytes and then saving it into a file. By this you can make your
objects persistent and reload the information after terminating the application
and restarting it.
The information that is serialized is very much application
specific. In order to serialize and object one must override the Serialize
method from the base class and implement its own serialization
There are a few things that must be taken into
consideration. In the following example I decided that instead of showing how to
serialize some abstract class derived from
CObject I will do it with a real
MFC object class. Therefore I used Zafir Anjum's article on serializing
a CTreeCtrl, published in CodeGuru
which explains how to serialize this control. Once you have a serialize
method the way to serializing into the registry is short.
CRegSerialize is a template class that can accept any
CObject derived class as parameter. Using a template class insures that if your
class is not serializable this error will be discovered in compile time and not
during run time.
All you have to do is initalize a
CRegSerialize class object
CObject derived class as a parameter
Then use the GetObject method to assign a pointer to the object you wish to
Now use the write method to serialize the
information into the registry giving the appropriate parameters
To read from the registry do the exact proccess and use the Read
method instead of the Write. | <urn:uuid:73771dc4-484e-4993-abca-359ccb3d51de> | 2013-05-26T03:05:40Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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A friendly place for programming greenhorns!
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insert int values to double array
Joined: Dec 28, 2005
Nov 21, 2006 01:41:00
I'm doing a project and I'm now stuck with a point, to create a dynamic double array in Java. Can you please help me..
The values are
the values for i,j,k and l are coming from database.
I want to put these values in to a dynamic array
= new double;
after i want to add these values to the array..
Can you help me how to insert the values to the array!!
thanks and regards
Jesper de Jong
Joined: Aug 16, 2005
Nov 21, 2006 02:10:00
I don't understand exactly what the problem is. You can just assign the values to the entries of the array. Ofcourse the values will be automatically converted from int to double if you do that.
test = i; test = j; test = k; test = l;
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Declaration on genuine democracy adopted on 24 January 2013
The Conference of International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs) of the Council of Europe,
1. As an active player in promoting democracy and defending the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights;
2. Noting that “genuine democracy”, a term enshrined in the Statute of the Council of Europe, goes hand in hand with “the protection of human rights” and “the rule of law” as a requirement for accession by states to membership of the Council of Europe;
3. Believing that there is a need for the fundamental elements of genuine democracy to be brought together in a reference text based on existing Council of Europe conventions and declarations, as well as the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights;
4. Recalling the work of the Council of Europe on the principles of genuine democracy*, which served us as basis for the drafting of this Declaration;
5. Underlining the need to determine and clarify more effectively the fundamental elements of the three complementary and inseparable principles that are the distinguishing features of the Council of Europe’s common heritage, namely respect for the universal and indivisible rights of the individual, the rule of law and the genuinely democratic nature of political systems;
6. Underlining the crucial part which civil society, in particular NGOs, can play in building a genuine democracy;
7. Believing that a general declaration on the fundamental principles of pluralist democracy will help to expand and consolidate democracy in Europe and throughout the world;
8. Recommending that this text be used to determine the conditions required for becoming or remaining a member state of the Council of Europe;
9. Bearing in mind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as the Statute of the Council of Europe and all the texts adopted by the organisation listed in the appendix;
10. Urging those states which have not yet ratified the conventions included in the list to do so as soon as possible;
11. Believing that genuine democracy is a political, legal and cultural system based on respect for human rights, the rule of law and the ability of all individuals to take part in public life;
12. Aware that democracy entails the active commitment of individuals and their governments to equality, tolerance, and respect for diversity, as well as to social integration;
13. Recognising that education is the key means of developing democratic values in the young, and wishing to encourage them to exercise fully the rights and assume the responsibilities of citizenship;
14. Believing that effective democracy and good governance at all levels are essential for preventing conflicts, promoting stability, facilitating economic and social progress, and hence for creating sustainable communities where people want to live and work, now and in the future, and that this can only be achieved through the active involvement of citizens and civil society;
15. Wishing member states to maintain and develop effective, transparent and accountable democratic institutions, responsive to the needs and aspirations of all;
16. Adopts the present declaration:
A. PRINCIPLES AND VALUES OF GENUINE DEMOCRACY
I. HUMAN DIGNITY
a. Genuine democracy must ensure respect for the dignity and the equal value of all persons and for their inalienable rights.
II. EQUALITY AND NON-DISCRIMINATION
a. All persons are equal under the law and shall be entitled to the equal protection of the law without any discrimination.
b. Gender equality is a fundamental criterion of democracy which must be ensured in all areas of public and private life.
c. Any discrimination based on sex, ethnic origin, language, religion, political or other opinions, national or social origin, association with a national minority, sexual orientation, property, birth or other status is prohibited.
d. Genuine democracy ensures that all individuals enjoy equal and effective protection against any form of discrimination and also affords them full equality of opportunity.
e. No measure aimed at correcting existing imbalances or hastening the achievement of equality may be regarded as discriminatory.
III. RESPECT FOR DIVERSITY AND TOLERANCE
a. The principles of pluralism and tolerance require respect for the cultural and linguistic identity of all persons, as well as respect for their freedom to hold or not to hold religious or philosophical beliefs and to change them insofar as their manifestations remain compatible with human rights.
b. Genuine democracy must stand firm against all those who seek its destruction, in particular those advocating racial hatred, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, persecution on religious or ideological grounds or violence and terrorism.
c. The activities of any organisation which opposes the democratic order through violence or the encouragement of violence shall be punished by the law.
IV. UNIVERSALITY AND INDIVISIBILITY OF HUMAN RIGHTS
a. Human rights and fundamental freedoms are inherent in the individual and are inalienable; their protection is the primary responsibility of states. Respect for, and full enjoyment of, human rights and fundamental freedoms are the bases on which liberty, justice and peace are founded.
b. Civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent.
c. Any derogation from obligations to respect human rights shall remain within the limits provided for in international and European law. Such derogations are by definition of an exceptional nature and shall be applied and interpreted restrictively.
V. INTERDEPENDENCE OF HUMAN RIGHTS, DEMOCRACY AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
a. Genuine democracy and human rights are intrinsically related concepts which cannot exist without each other. Political rights and freedoms form part of human rights, while respect for human rights is essential to the establishment and maintenance of a democratic system. The implementation of a democratic culture helps to develop a human rights culture and vice versa.
b. Genuine democracy must maintain a balance between the requirements of the general interests of the community and the need to safeguard the fundamental rights of all individuals.
c. Democracy, human development and respect for all human rights and fundamental freedoms are interdependent and mutually enhancing.
VI. THE RULE OF LAW
The principles of the rule of law include, in particular:
a. Respect for the principles relating to human rights and fundamental freedoms provided for in international law and, in particular, in the European Convention on Human Rights;
b. Respect for a constitutional order implementing fundamental rights and conformity of laws to this constitutional order;
c. The fact that the government and all other public authorities are subject to the law;
d. Legal certainty, which includes the principle of accessibility to the law and the principles of predictability and proportionality in the application of laws;
e. Refusal of impunity, which means that:
- In the event of violation of the rule of law, it shall fall to states and the international community to make sure that such violation does not go unpunished;
- Gross violations of human rights, in particular, torture, genocide, ethnocide, systematic rape and massacres should be condemned and their perpetrators punished.
VII. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY
a. In a genuine democracy, those in authority are accountable for their acts to all citizens on whose behalf they exercise power and to their representatives.
B. POLITICAL CONDITIONS FOR THE ACHIEVEMENT OF GENUINE DEMOCRACY
I. CITIZEN PARTICIPATION
1. PARTICIPATION IN PUBLIC AND POLITICAL LIFE
a. Genuine democracy presupposes power sharing as well as freedom based on solidarity.
b. Genuine democracy shall permit and encourage full and equal participation by women and men in the democratic process, including balanced representation at all levels of decision-making in public and political life.
c. Every citizen has a right to participate in the conduct of public affairs, either directly or through freely chosen representatives, both at European and national level and at local and regional level, as well as to vote and be elected.
d. Every citizen has a right to participate in the voluntary sector.
e. Every citizen has a duty to take part in the promotion of and respect for human rights and democratic values.
f. Genuine democracy shall encourage and recognise work done by non-governmental organisations or any voluntary association, whether national or international, working to protect human rights and democratic institutions.
g. Every foreign national residing lawfully on the territory of a state has the right to participate in public life and the voluntary sector, at least at local level.
2. FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS
a. Elections shall be free and fair, in accordance with international and European standards.
b. Periodic elections to political office are an essential means of enabling the will of the people to be expressed.
c. Such elections shall be based on universal and equal suffrage and held by secret ballot. They shall take place in circumstances guaranteeing the possibility of a genuine choice for the electorate and respect for its opinion, and ensuring the proper conduct and legality of procedures, as well as the legality of election results.
d. The presence of international observers and of the international press shall not be regarded as interference in the internal affairs of the state.
3. POLITICAL PARTIES
a. A genuinely democratic society requires the existence of a multi-party system.
b. The right to freedom of association includes the right to establish political parties. The role of these parties is to engage and promote political debate.
c. The setting up of political parties or other groupings shall be free in accordance with the law. The setting up of political parties may not be obstructed and political parties may only be banned in the cases mentioned under point A-III-b of this declaration. In no circumstances may a political party seek the destruction of democracy or fundamental rights.
d. The funding of political parties shall be regulated by law.
4. ASSOCIATIONS, NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATIONS AND TRADE UNION ORGANISATIONS
a. Associations, non-governmental organisations and trade union organisations are necessary for the proper functioning of democracy; they provide citizens with a means of action and expression.
b. They have a specific independent role to promote the values of democracy and human rights and contribute to their effective implementation.
c. Their activities shall not be limited or forbidden in so far as they are carried out in the framework of the law and the respect for human rights.
5. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
a. Freedoms of thought, opinion, expression, information and communication are essential requirements for the functioning and progress of a democratic society and individual fulfilment. They shall not justify calls to violence, incitement to hatred or any form of discrimination.
6. THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA
a. The freedom and independence as well as the pluralism and diversity of the media are essential for the functioning of a democratic society.
b. The media’s responsibility for ensuring respect for all human rights is an essential counterpart of media freedom. The exercise of this freedom shall not be used to incite violence, hatred or any form of discrimination.
c. Free circulation of information and ideas across borders must be guaranteed as an important factor in promoting understanding between nations, close relations between peoples and the mutual enrichment of cultures.
d. The possibilities offered by new information and communication technologies must be taken into consideration to develop a genuine democracy.
7. RESPECT FOR PERSONS BELONGING TO MINORITIES
a. While based on the principle of majority rule, genuine democracy must at the same time secure the respect of all rights of persons belonging to minorities.
II. LOCAL AND REGIONAL GOVERNANCE
a. Local and regional self-government is an important element of genuine democracy. It must have an institutional and legal basis.
b. Such a form of government contributes to the strengthening of a democratic Europe based on the principle of subsidiarity and decentralisation on all levels at which power is exercised.
c. This includes the ability of local authorities, within the limits of the law, to regulate and manage a substantial share of public affairs under their own responsibility and in the interests of the local population.
d. This right shall be exercised by bodies composed of members elected by universal suffrage. This provision shall in no way affect recourse to assemblies of citizens, referendums or any other form of direct citizen participation where it is permitted by statute.
e. The conditions of office of local elected representatives shall provide for free exercise of their functions.
III. EXERCISE OF POWER IN A STATE GOVERNED BY THE RULE OF LAW
1. SEPARATION OF POWERS
a. Democracy requires the separation and independence of the legislature, executive and judiciary.
b. The role of the legislature, as the representative of the electorate, is to draw up and pass legislation, to vote taxes and to hold the executive to account. To this end, the legislature must have independent powers of investigation and scrutiny and its representatives must enjoy immunity from executive pressure or coercion in the exercise of their office.
c. In implementing and upholding the law, the executive shall be answerable to the people and their representatives. In particular, it must ensure that the law is strictly applied by the agencies entrusted with law enforcement.
d. Judicial authority shall be exercised independently by the courts and their decisions shall be executed by the competent public authorities in each state.
e. The independence of judges shall be safeguarded. They shall be impartial and give their rulings within a reasonable time. Judges’ decisions shall not be influenced by the interests of the executive, the legislature or any other public authority or private group.
f. The independence of lawyers shall be recognised and protected, especially with regard to the conditions of their access to the profession and the performance of their duties.
2. IMPARTIALITY OF THE STATE
a. In keeping with the principle of non-discrimination, genuine democracy presupposes the impartiality of the state with respect to religions, beliefs and convictions.
b. The state must never favour the interests or values of a specific group.
3. EFFECTIVE PROTECTION AGAINST VIOLATIONS OF FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS
a. Every person alleging a violation of his or her recognised rights and freedoms is entitled to an effective remedy before a competent national body, including when the alleged violation was committed by persons acting in the course of their official duties.
b. Every democratic state must offer any person within its jurisdiction the opportunity of submitting an individual complaint to an international body in the event of a violation of their fundamental rights.
c. Every democratic state must provide for setting up the office of ombudspersons, commissioners or other national human rights institutions, with the power to take any measure to ensure effective respect for the rights of all persons living on the territory of the state.
4. DEROGATIONS FROM OBLIGATIONS RELATED TO RESPECT FOR RIGHTS
a. Where the life of the nation is threatened, any exceptional measures taken shall be aimed solely at preserving the democratic system, upholding the rule of law and ensuring respect for fundamental rights and freedoms.
b. Where the executive authorities are legally empowered to take a decision to impose a state of emergency, the decision shall be subject to approval and review by the legislature. The measures taken shall not be exempt from judicial review under ordinary law.
C. ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONDITIONS FOR THE ACHIEVEMENT OF GENUINE DEMOCRACY
I. ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
a. Genuine democracy shall develop economic systems aimed, amongst other things, at achieving social justice, sustainable economic development, well-being, the promotion of employment and the rational use of economic and environmental resources out of respect for future generations.
b. Genuine democracy must secure access to essential goods and services for all citizens.
c. Any economic system must promote the development and self-fulfilment of every individual and the social development of the community aimed at global sustainable development.
II. SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
1. A GENUINE DEMOCRACY MUST BE A SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
a. Democracy cannot be genuine unless it has a social dimension. Lack of respect for fundamental social rights threatens legal and political equality, the foundation of any democracy.
b. Social debate and collective bargaining are elements of social development. Trade unions and other social partners must be able fully to play their role here.
2. PROTECTION AGAINST MARGINALISATION OR EXCLUSION
a. Democracy can be measured by the way in which it recognises and treats those who are excluded from society.
b. Any genuine democracy must take concrete measures to eliminate extreme poverty, economic, social and cultural deprivation and marginalisation, in particular:
- By giving the means to persons suffering poverty and social exclusion to obtain information and make themselves heard and to take part in decision-making on public policy, in particular when it affects them;
- By facilitating access by such persons to comprehensive services, including appropriate training to enable them to develop their abilities.
III. CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT
1. RIGHT TO EDUCATION
a. Genuine democracy involves giving effect to the right to education, as an integral part of human rights, with a view to lifelong learning.
b. Education in human rights, in the values and practice of democracy and in active and responsible citizenship is an essential part of the education system which must be provided not only as part of compulsory general education but also in other forms and at other levels of publicly funded education and lifelong learning. In particular, it concerns members of the judiciary, the police and the armed forces and, in general, those who are expected to ensure respect for the rights of individuals.
c. The right of parents to ensure that their children receive an education in keeping with their religious and philosophical convictions must be guaranteed insofar as this is compatible with human rights and respects the right of children to their own development.
2. PARTICIPATION IN CULTURAL LIFE
a. Genuine democracy requires everyone to have access to, and be able to participate actively in, cultural life, information and social communication without any discrimination.
b. All cultural communities, including those disadvantaged on account of their size, their specific cultural or religious characteristics or their conditions of existence, shall be entitled to pursue their own cultural policy without prejudice to human rights and the rights of other communities.
IV. INTERNATIONAL DIMENSION OF DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLES
a. Democratic principles must play an ever-increasing role in the conduct of European and international affairs. Every democracy has a duty to support states in the process of transition to democracy, as well as a duty of solidarity with persons who are oppressed or live in conditions harmful to their development.
b. Every genuine democracy must defend democratic principles. It should promote human rights protection and democratic principles in its international relations.
c. The protection of universal human rights is an essential responsibility of the international community and of each of its members and no state may invoke the principle of non-interference in its internal affairs when instances of abuse of human rights are reported.
d. Preserving and accommodating, on an equal footing and in permanent structures, the democracies which will make Europe a vast area of democratic security must remain one of the major objectives of the Council of Europe. Democracies are therefore invited to commit themselves to the principles and values set out in this declaration.
A P P E N D I X
Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950) and Protocols
European Cultural Convention (1954)
European Social Charter (1961), its Protocols and the revised European Social Charter (1996)
European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1987) and Protocols
Convention on the Participation of Foreigners in Public Life at Local Level (1992)
Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (1994)
Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (2005)
Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (2011)
European Charter of Local Self-Government (1985)
Additional Protocol to the European Charter of Local Self-Government on the right to participate in the affairs of a local authority (2009)
European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (1992)
Revised European Charter on the Participation of Young People in Municipal and Regional Life (2003)
Vienna Declaration adopted by the heads of state and government of Council of Europe member states at their first summit on 9 October 1993
Strasbourg Declaration adopted by the heads of state and government of Council of Europe member states at their second summit on 11 October 1997
Warsaw Declaration adopted by the heads of state and government of Council of Europe member states at their third summit on 17 May 2005
Declaration of the Committee of Ministers on Human Rights (1978)
Declaration of the Committee of Ministers regarding intolerance – A threat to democracy (1981)
Declaration of the Committee of Ministers on freedom of expression and information (1982)
Declaration of the Committee of Ministers on equality of women and men (1988)
Declaration of the Committee of Ministers on cultural diversity (2000)
Declaration of the Committee of Ministers on the Code of Good Practice in Electoral Matters (2004)
Declaration of the Committee of Ministers on the Code of Good Practice for Civil Participation in the Decision-Making Process (2009)
Declaration of the Committee of Ministers on religious freedom (2011)
European Landscape Convention (2000)
Recommendation Rec(2002)1 of the Committee of Ministers to member states
on the Guiding principles for sustainable spatial development of the European continent
Resolution of the Ministers responsible for spatial/regional planning of the member States of the Council of Europe (CEMAT) on the contribution of essential services to the sustainable spatial development of the European continent, Moscow (2010)
* Final activity report of the Project group “Human Rights and Genuine Democracy” (CAHDD), CM(96)12 Addendum I | <urn:uuid:0df5a4ef-4763-44a3-952c-6a0b08539f9f> | 2013-05-26T02:50:00Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Patent no. 1433. Filing year 1872.
"Improvements in Sewing Machines," C. Raymond.
For most of our history, the close relationship between Canada and the United States has been conducive to the flow of people and ideas across the border. Scottish immigrant Alexander Graham Bell, for example, divided his working life between Canada and the U.S., while inventors such as Thomas Leopold Willson and John J. Wright developed their ideas south of the border before applying them here.
Charles Raymond of Guelph, Ontario, could be considered an example of what the Canadian media has recently termed the "reverse brain drain." Born in Ashburnham, Massachusetts, Raymond had already invented two types of sewing machines before legal patent disputes with the Singer Company inspired him to relocate in 1860 to Montréal, the hub of Canada's textile industry. He soon lost money on a sewing-machine business and, in 1862, he and 15 tradesmen relocated to Guelph where he established the Raymond Sewing Machine Company. Here he finally found success, making and selling sewing machines and accessories based on a string of patents, including the one above.
Patent no. 1433 is of particular interest because it was preceded by a caveat filed by Raymond in 1869. A caveat, as it applies to patents, is a legal notification of the intention to file a patent for a concept still under development. Raymond's caveat claimed the invention of "the application of a check, lever, or spring to a single thread sewing machine, by which the thread is held up to or on the hook or looper, and thus prevented from dropping stitches." He just wasn't sure where to put the lever, but promised to perfect the design "as speedily as possible." His 1872 patent, above, included the completed lever mechanism.
Caveats were typically used when the stakes were high. One famous example is American inventor Elisha Gray's caveat for a telephone, filed in the United States Patent Office just two hours after Alexander Graham Bell filed his telephone patent. The sewing machine business in the 1800s was particularly competitive, and Raymond's experience with Singer in the U.S. may have prompted him to take extra precautions.
Over the years, Raymond's business instincts served him well. His Canadian base proved advantageous during the U.S. Civil War, which hampered his American competitors. Later, his emphasis on selling to European markets paid off, while many Canadian competitors failed because of their concentration on the domestic market. In 1870, he employed nearly 80 workers; ten years later, he owned two factories with a workforce of 200.
Raymond's health problems prompted his semi-retirement in 1877, though he continued to invent. He filed a number of patents unrelated to sewing, including an improvement to skates (no. 13026) and a cash register (no. 43108), and was working on a gasoline engine before his death in 1904. A religious man, Raymond was also involved in the local temperance movement, which doubtless would have put him at odds with fellow Guelph innovator and industrialist George Sleeman.
Grosvenor, Edwin S., and Morgan Wesson. Alexander Graham Bell: The Life and Times of the Man Who Invented the Telephone. New York: Harry S. Abrams, 1997.
Nash-Chambers, Debra L. "Raymond, Charles." Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online.
(accessed November 7, 2005).
Van Dulken, Stephen. Inventing the 19th Century: 100 Inventions That Shaped the Victorian Age, From Aspirin to the Zeppelin. New York: New York University Press, 2001. | <urn:uuid:477b6ef9-9801-4cdb-9796-ba1e36840e5f> | 2013-05-26T03:08:54Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Posted 2 years ago
Found a 1917 poster, from the Forbes Lithograph Manufacturing Company. The piece is copyrighted 1917 by the Hurcules Poweder Co. I do not believe this to be a propaganda poster, rather some type of advertisement piece. After doing some research the title of the piece is called, "Not this time Old, Pal".
I would greatly appreciate to know more about this poster, the company, and value of the piece. I purchased the poster in frame for $21.00. | <urn:uuid:001c24a9-22ab-4505-afbe-e703058cb5e8> | 2013-05-26T02:50:45Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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By law all politicians are to be locked up for their own good. This comes after a series of tests that show that they are 798% more likely to commit suicide than the average dentist. However many flaws that can be found with these tests, such as the fact that their is a 38% chance of a dentist commiting suicide and there are no cases of mass suicide in the last millenium, let alone the fact that they hae no reason to commit suicide , it passed unaminously amoung the general population and as this is a democrocy all of them have been rounded up or sacked.
PLease give new topics and any constructive criticism
___________________________ We're all gonna die anyway ___________________________
The statistics alone appear to prove the case for locking up politicians if you ask me!
RE: "constructive criticism", I think you should spend a little longer on sentence structure and making sure that the reader understands you. For instance, if you re-read it you'll notice that it's grammatically unclear as to who should be "rounded up or sacked", the politicians or the dentists.
Finally, run it through a spell checker before posting (you can do that without leaving the forum by using the button next to "Post Reply") and again, it will make it easier to read. | <urn:uuid:bb1c9328-3d2e-4be8-829c-9ac51af9678f> | 2013-05-26T03:02:39Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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"In the Mood" Lamenting the lack of an atmospheric restaurant that teens can afford, Betty suggests Pop Tate make a few "romantic" changes. "Why oh Why?" Betty asks the question, "Why do I love Archie?" The question is, what's her answer? "Just an Ordinary Day" Betty has just had one of those days...which is why she's having so much trouble entering it in her diary! | <urn:uuid:1de86ed5-15ac-400d-9e71-41b66f4a04b0> | 2013-05-26T03:10:32Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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I don't see that at all. What browser and operation system are you using?
For some reason the quotation marks, apostrophes, and hyphens in my posts and posts from others in this thread have been replaced with question marks but not in every case. Most often when the apostrophes are used as a single quotation mark inside a set of double quotation marks denoting a quote within a quote and also the single apostrophe showing possessive. Is there a way to fix it without re-editing all of the posts?
I am using Windows 7 and mozilla firefox. I also notice that the Æ or æ grapheme from Aesir is affected.
Posts 15,31,39,41,64,65,66,71,72,73,84,104,110,123,125,and 127 are the affected ones I can see.
I don't think it can be fixed in bulk. Looks like something translated bad on the way in, rather than a display problem. | <urn:uuid:d671fe30-332a-43b3-a240-67cf5c9cd9a4> | 2013-05-26T02:33:43Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Gillipig wrote: Symmetry wrote: Gillipig wrote:
Symmetry wrote:Spamming a thread with nude pictures ain't cool Gilli.
You're the one who named it "best female booty"! Are you really surprised I post an image of a female booty I like?
I'm surprised, nay shocked, that you didn't read the OP and post a considered opinion with regard to the poll. These are two powerful women, both worthy of respect, and their meeting was of considerable historic significance.
I trust you will consider the matter with a degree of seriousness in future.
But none of them had a big ass! And puss in boots is an animated male cat, so I won't check out his booty.
Clearly my random big ass pornstar, booty bumps them all into second place.
This is not the thread for big asses, so I would suggest you take your picture elsewhere.
Puss in Boots is, of course a fairy tale character from the early modern period, and clearly relevant to the thread as a cultured alternative to the standard kittens option.
Good day sir. | <urn:uuid:dbbe6274-13b9-4119-b5d1-759bc6791546> | 2013-05-26T02:43:36Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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saxitoxin wrote:Your position is more complex than the federal tax code. As soon as I think I understand it, I find another index of cross-references, exceptions and amendments I have to apply.
Timminz wrote:Yo mama is so classless, she could be a Marxist utopia.
MeDeFe wrote:Well, the last time a pope resigned was in 1294, so I suppose it was about time it happened again.
thegreekdog wrote:I think some prophet said that Benedict XVI would be the second-to-last pope. So, apocalypse coming soon! Maybe zombies?
Pedronicus wrote:Bookies have a black guy as favourite to be next pope!
Personally, I'd like to see a sleestack contender in the list of possible next pope candidates. f*ck me, if they actually got a cardinal to wear that green rubber suit, complete with big pointy hat and those fly red shoes, I'd convert to Catholicism ! | <urn:uuid:f9d854c0-f5e9-426f-ae9e-abb9dbd6d38c> | 2013-05-26T02:36:45Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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DU Has New Moderators! (Jul 01st 2008)
As usual, we had a good response to our call for moderators, and it was extremely difficult to narrow the field down. We had to turn down a number of very qualified people. We hope that everyone who applied to serve as a moderator this turn will consider applying again next term.
A moderator switch is always a little chaotic, so I want to apologize in advance for any problems that may arise over the next few days. Thank you for your understanding.
Please take a moment to say hello to our new moderators, and to express your gratitude to our retiring moderators.
HERE ARE YOUR MODERATORS FOR THIS TERM:
Call Me Wesley
And I would like to express my gratitude to the retiring moderators, who did an amazing job during the previous term.
SAY THANK YOU TO THE RETIRING MODS:
RubyDuby in GA
The empressof all
NEW MODERATORS: Please log into the private Moderator Forum and introduce yourselves. The moderator forum is in the "My Forums" section at the top of the Latest page. You may have to log out and log back in again to reset your account and access the forum. If you have difficulty finding the Moderator forum, please send a private message to Elad.
RETIRING MODERATORS: Please log out and login again to reset your account to regular member status.
Thank you, moderators! We wouldn't be able to run this place without your help! | <urn:uuid:9d7fb94f-36d3-405b-96ad-40382448b22d> | 2013-05-26T02:48:51Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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The Egyptian military is less concerned with protecting the nation than it is with protecting itself. Morsi's attacks on Mubarak, who was the Chief of Staff of the Air Force before Sadat appointed him to the vice presidency, is an attack on one of their own, and the generals see the vacating of his acquittal by Morsi, the replacement of the prosecutor and the command for a new trial as a preluede to an attack on them. The majority of them know only too well what will happen when Morsi has consolidated power and turns his attention to them, because they've seen the ongoing purges of secular officers in the Turkish military by the Ergodan government.
As for who you trust, who cares?
OTOH, what do we get in return for the aid that we give Egypt and the Palestinians? In the case of Egypt, we now have an Islamist regime that is about to impose a viciously undemocratic constitution on the country and a president who assumes dictatorial powers and threatens to tear up the peace treaty with Israel if the Israelis insist on defending themselves against terrorists. In the case of the Palestinians, the aid that we give them (which ends up in the pockets of the leadership of Fatah and Hamas) hasn't gotten them to abide by the settlements that they agreed to in Oslo. Fatah's charter still calls for the destruction of Israel, while Hamas' calls for the murder of all Jews in the world. Perhaps you think that we should negotiate a settlement with Hamas? One in which they accept the murder of, say, half the Jews in the world, in exchange for something more tangible, like more land? Oh, and we also get Hamas raining rockets on Israel and siting them among civilians in violation of the laws of land warfare, in order to raise their own civilian casualty rates for propaganda purposes. Perhaps it would be easier if Hamas simply killed its own people directly? No, wait, they already do that:
Cameras record Gaza's gruesome reality
A POPULAR pastime in Gaza is swapping gruesome footage of dead or dying victims of the Strip's incessant violence.
- by: ANALYSIS, Martin Chulov
- From: The Australian
- May 19, 2008 12:00AM
The images used to be almost exclusive legacies of clashes with Israeli forces but last year that changed. Now being far more keenly traded are snapshots of Palestinian fratricide, gruesome images taken by "militia-cams' that record scenes for posterity.
Spend any time near the emergency ward of Gaza's Shifa Hospital and security staff or ward workers will offer a look at their mobile phones, which they'll quickly switch to video mode to show images of victims of intra-Palestinian clashes being wheeled in agony from ambulances.
Sit in a town square for more than five minutes and you'll be quickly encircled by youths clamouring to outdo each other with images of death and mayhem.
A veritable library of the "intrafada" now exists in Gaza among militias and clans. Most were added during 2007, when the numbers of intra-Palestinian deaths jumped by 800 per cent - from 55 to 439 - almost all of the deaths in Gaza.
Last year was, by any measure, a revolutionary year in Palestinian politics. More than at any time in the previous two decades, the two most dominant political blocs were willing to bid for influence through the barrels of their Kalashnikovs.
Another factor that contributed to the violence, however, was a creeping radical Islamicisation - a small but growing number of youths in Gaza hitching themselves to an al-Qa'ida world view that pitches them against the rest of the Strip and renders, as fair game to be killed, anyone seen as acting "un-Islamicly'.
A spate of so-called honour-killings of women accounted for about 25 per cent of the body count - far higher than any of the years before.
Political tensions had steadily risen in Gaza since March 2006, when Hamas was sworn in as the elected Government of the Palestinian territories, including the West Bank. The poll win three months earlier terminated 40 years of the rule of the Fatah movement and its predecessors, and ended the patronage of many Palestine Liberation Organisation chieftains and warlords. Violence didn't erupt immediately but, by late December that year, it was in full swing.
Your kneejerk support for anyone who opposes Israel ends up putting you on the side of terrorists, Islamist thugs and 7th century lunatics. You really need to think before you post your snark.
Regardless, your fear is the general fear of those who do not like the fundamental flaw in democracy; people who disagree with you get to vote as well.
Well, Morsi gave them the authority to arrest civilians, right? We will see if the Pro-Morsi thugs get rounded up.The Egyptian military is less concerned with protecting the nation than it is with protecting itself. Morsi's attacks on Mubarak, who was the Chief of Staff of the Air Force before Sadat appointed him to the vice presidency, is an attack on one of their own, and the generals see the vacating of his acquittal by Morsi, the replacement of the prosecutor and the command for a new trial as a preluede to an attack on them. The majority of them know only too well what will happen when Morsi has consolidated power and turns his attention to them, because they've seen the ongoing purges of secular officers in the Turkish military by the Ergodan government.
A wholly different group of individuals than those who gives a rat's ass if you think Morsi is a democrat.As for who you trust, who cares?
Well, you lasted longer than I thought you could. Took awhile before you got to the last refuge.First, one has to ask why Iron Dome offends you. Would you prefer that Hamas and Hezbollah be able to rain rockets on Israel without the Israelis having any means of defense?
Barry was all about the "government of the people, yadda, yadda" when Morsi was being swept in but now...nothing. Why?
After beatings of protesters, Egypt opposition accuses Brotherhood of unleashing violenceIt's the same kind of violence that the SturmArbeitlung used in Germany and the Bolsheviks in Russia. It's typical totalitarian thuggery.
Published December 11, 2012
CAIRO – They showed a military-style precision: Crowds of bearded Islamists proclaiming allegiance to Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi and chanting "God is great" as they descended on tents set up by anti-Morsi protesters outside the presidential palace, swinging clubs and firing rifles. They set up a detention facility, interrogating and beating captured protesters.
The scene from bloody clashes outside the presidential palace a week ago hangs over Egypt's political crisis, as a daunting sign of how much more violent the confrontation between Morsi's Islamist supporters and the opposition that has launched a giant wave of protests against him can become.
Opponents of Morsi accuse his Muslim Brotherhood supporters of unleashing highly trained cadres — fired up with religious slogans — to crush their political rivals. They fear last week's violence was a signal that the Brotherhood will use force to push its agenda and defend its political gains in the face of a persistent protest movement demanding that Morsi withdraw a draft constitution largely written by his Islamist allies.
Ahead of a new mass rallies planned by both sides Tuesday, masked gunmen attacked anti-Morsi protesters in Cairo's central Tahrir Square before dawn, firing birdshot at them and wounding nine. It was unclear who was behind the attack, said security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press.
Officials from the Brotherhood and its political party deny using violence to quell critics, saying its supporters last week were defending the palace when police failed to do so — though by the time of the violence only around hundred protesters were outside the palace, conducting a sit-in.
They accuse former regime supporters and paid thugs of waging an organized campaign to topple Islamists from power and point to a series of attacks on Brotherhood offices the past weeks. Morsi supporters say they suffered more deaths and injuries during last Wednesday's bloody clashes that left at least eight people dead.
But testimonies and videos that have emerged from the nearly 15 hours of street clashes last week show an organized group of disciplined Islamists, working in units and carrying out military-type exercises as they broke up the tent sit-in at the palace.
Tharwat el-Kherbawy, a former Brotherhood member and now an opponent of the group, said the Brotherhood was surprised by the public opposition to Morsi's moves "and they had no hesitation in hastening to implement their ideas and resorting to violence."
He said the group's central organizational doctrine — which calls on members to "hear and obey" their leaders — gives its cadres a military-like structure. "If their empowerment project is facing resistance, this resistance must be quelled," he said.
Opponents of the Brotherhood frequently accuse the group of running a "militia," a claim the group vehemently denies. In either case, the group is known for its tight discipline, and it acknowledges that many of its young members undergo organized martial arts training.
During last Wednesday's fighting, nearly 140 anti-Morsi protesters were detained, tortured and interrogated at a makeshift center set up by the Brotherhood along the walls of the presidential palace, according to witnesses. The detained protesters were filmed making forced confessions that they had received foreign funds to join the protests, according to some who were held and an Egyptian journalist who snuck into the site.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/12...#ixzz2EraFfQvv
Now, we can do this dance where you sneeringly imply that anything short of rhetorical fealty to the nation of Israel is antisemitism and I object and you end up doing the typical Odie filibuster and I get bored so I will save us all that time and you can assume I am already bored.
Now, this is a question that could garner that response:Originally Posted by Odie
"Do you find Iron Dome objectionable?"
Try asking that one if you really want to gain information. I somehow doubt that is your intent, though.
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Heavy D - Cause Of Heavy D Death Reportedly Heart Attack09 November 2011
Cause Of Heavy D Death Reportedly Heart Attack
According to law enforcement, the rapper had returned from a shopping trip and walked up the stairs to his building before having trouble breathing. Designer Adam Mills said he found the rapper leaning against a railing in distress. Mills explained how he cradled Heavy D in his lap as somebody else called 911, he was reportedly saying "I can't breathe, I can't breathe". The self-proclaimed "overweight lover" of hip hop, 44-year-old Heavy D found fame with his band The Boyz and scored hits such 'Now That We Found Love' in 1991 - he later appeared in Michael Jackson's song 'Jam' and recently performed at the late singer's tribute concert in Cardiff. The singer soon began focusing on his acting career, and appeared in numerous television shows as well as the off-Broadway play Riff Raff. In recent years, he appeared in Law & Order: Svu and Boston Public and stars alongside Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy in Brett Ratner's latest movie Tower Heist.
Rapper Ice T led the tributes to the late star, tweeting, "Stop for a second, take a breath and realize how lucky you are to be alive", adding, "We had a lot of great times touring together. He had a heart of gold".
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In an open response to the letter written by Maryland Del. Emmett C. Burns Jr., a Democrat from Baltimore County, Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe wrote that he was "ashamed and disgusted" by Burns' views and characterized the delegate as "mind-bogglingly stupid."
In an expletive-laden letter posted on sports blog Deadspin, Kluwe - who has been similarly vocal to Ayanbadejo as a proponent for gay marriage - took particular issue with Burns' assertion that political views have "no place in a sport."
"I can't even begin to fathom the cognitive dissonance that must be coursing through your rapidly addled mind right now," the punter wrote. "The mental gymnastics your brain has to tortuously contort itself through to make such a preposterous statement are surely worthy of an Olympic gold medal."
"I can assure you that gay people getting married will have zero effect on your life," Kluwe later wrote. "They won't come into your house and steal your children. ... They won't even overthrow the government in an orgy of hedonistic debauchery because all of a sudden they have the same legal rights as the other 90 percent of our population.
In response to complaints about his use of profanity, Kluwe subsequently posted an edited version of the letter on his blog on TwinCities.com.
In addition to Kluwe, NFL Players Association president and former Terps and Ravens cornerback Domonique Foxworth and Steelers linebacker LaMarr Woodley have also voiced their support for Ayanbadejo's freedom of expression. | <urn:uuid:072f1989-8428-4fc7-983b-25213535c2c5> | 2013-05-26T02:44:59Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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A brochosopy is a procedure in which a long, lighted scope is inserted into the lungs in order to examine the airways of the lungs and to assess lung function.
Chest fluoroscopy may be performed when the motion of the lungs, diaphragm, or other structures in the chest need to be evaluated.
Chest ultrasound is a procedure in which sound wave technology is used alone, or along with other types of diagnostic methods, to examine the organs and structures of the chest.
A chest X-ray is used to examine the chest and the lungs and other organs and structures located in the chest.
CT/CAT scans are more detailed than standard x-rays and are often used to assess the organs of the respiratory and cardiovascular systems,and esophagus, for injuries, abnormalities, or disease.
A lobectomy is a surgical procedure that removes one of the lobes of the lungs.
A lung biopsy is a procedure in which tissue samples are removed with a special needle to determine if cancer or other abnormal cells are present.
A lung scan is a procedure that uses nuclear radiology to assess the function and structure of the lungs. It is most often performed when problems with the lungs and respiratory tract are suspected.
In a lung transplant, one or both diseased lungs are removed and replaced with a healthy lung from another person.
A mediastinoscopy is a surgical procedure performed to examine the mediastinum - the space behind the sternum (breastbone) in the middle of the chest that separates the two lungs.
Oximetry is a procedure used to measure the oxygen level—or oxygen saturation—in the blood.
Peak flow measurement is a procedure that records the amount of air flowing out of your lungs. Peak flow can be measured with either a spirometer or a peak flow meter.
A pleural biopsy is a procedure in which a sample of the pleura (the membrane that surrounds the lungs) is removed with a special biopsy needle or during surgery to determine if disease, infection, or cancer is present.
Positron emission tomography (PET) is a specialized radiology procedure used to examine various body tissues to identify certain conditions. PET may also be used to follow the progress of the treatment of certain conditions.
A pulmonary angiogram is aa procedure that uses a combination of contrast dye and X-rays to examine the blood vessels in the lungs and evaluate blood flow to the lungs.
Pulmonary function tests measure how well your lungs are functioning and are used to help diagnose certain lung disorders.
A sinus x-ray is a type of x-ray used to obtain images of the sinuses - the air-filled cavities lined with mucous membranes located within the bones of the skull.
A sleep study - or polysomnogram - consists of a number of medical tests performed at the same time during sleep. The tests measure specific sleep characteristics and help to diagnose sleep disorders.
Thoracentesis is a procedure in which a needle is inserted through the back of the chest wall to remove fluid or air from between the lungs and the interior chest wall. | <urn:uuid:278f4e85-fab7-4fe2-a6eb-bd47701a4c08> | 2013-05-26T02:34:15Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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In these days and age, taking inflation into consideration, how much do we need to retire?
Submitted by: Financial Planning Newbie
Retirement planning is a long term plan which span many years. During these years, there may be periods of inflation or deflation. When one plans for retirement, one has to make certain assumptions like inflation, rate of return etc. It is important that one makes realistic assumptions and expectations. You may want to consult with a financial advisor who may assist or guide you. | <urn:uuid:057fb689-642f-4524-b3dc-2c9f765b3dc1> | 2013-05-26T02:33:55Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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CAIRO (AP) -- A security official says a train has collided with a bus carrying kindergarteners to their school in southern Egypt, killing at least 22.
The official says the crash occurred Saturday as the bus crossed tracks near a village in Manfaloot district in the southern province of Assiut. The bus was carrying nearly 50 children between 4 and 6 years old. He says 12 more are not accounted for.
The official says it appears that the railroad crossing was not closed as the train sped towards it. He was speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
Egypt's railway system has a poor safety record, mostly blamed on badly maintained equipment and poor management. | <urn:uuid:84616441-3a66-4b93-8594-227723df490a> | 2013-05-26T03:04:10Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Kernel size (footprint in memory) would grow a tad bit (not much), but
it's overall speed would also go up.
> Makeing a simple function instead is quite slower I think... don't forget that goto are
> used only in error recovery routines ...
That wasn't the case in Torvalds' sample code which started this
thread. That was spin-locking code, I believe. Of course, in that
case, there was no need for an inline function or anything, but rather
restructuring of an if statement.
> You can simply build a "stack" of labels .. IMHO this is a great way to be sure of the
> right order we are performing cleanup/recovery ...
If the kernel developer "knows" always that they have to follow the
stack order when adding additional cases, it's fine. But it is more
obvious in the patch I wrote what is going on than in the original
"goto" version of the code with the fs/open.c code someone asked me to
look at. This makes it harder for people unfamiliar with the complete
linux kernel design in this area to get started. Of course, I'm getting
a crash course it seems.
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Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/ | <urn:uuid:065bbfdd-47b1-4177-b347-78dbbc90e9fa> | 2013-05-26T02:51:28Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Phishing: The Basics
Here's how to be on your guard against phishing attacks
CSO — Phishing is a method of trying to gather personal information using deceptive e-mails and websites. Pharming also aims to collect personal information from unsuspecting victims by essentially tinkering with the road maps that computers use to navigate the Web. You don't want either one working its evil genius on you, your employees or your customers. Here's how to be on your guard against both phishing and pharming. Last updated: April 2009
- What is phishing?
- Can we prevent phishing attacks?
- What can my company do to reduce our chances of being targeted?
- What plans should my company have in place before a phishing incident occurs?
- How can we quickly find out if a phishing attack has been launched using our company's name?
- How can we help our customers avoid falling for phishing?
- If an attack does happen, how should we respond?
- Any legal/regulatory requirements we should be aware of?
- What action can we take against the phishers themselves?
- How might phishing attacks evolve in the near future? (E.g. "spear-phishing)
- How can we guard against pharming attacks?
Q: What is phishing?
A: Phishing is a method of trying to gather personal information using deceptive e-mails and websites. Typically, a phisher sends an e-mail disguised as a legitimate business request. For example, the phisher may pass himself off as a real bank asking its customers to verify financial data. (So phishing is a form of "social engineering".) The e-mail is often forged so that it appears to come from a real e-mail address used for legitimate company business, and it usually includes a link to a website that looks exactly like the bank's website. However, the site is bogus, and when the victim types in passwords or other sensitive information, that data is captured by the phisher. The information may be used to commit various forms of fraud and identity theft, ranging from compromising a single existing bank account to setting up multiple new ones.
Early phishing attempts were crude, with telltale misspellings and poor grammar. Since then, however, phishing e-mails have become remarkably sophisticated. Phishers may pull language straight from official company correspondence and take pains to avoid typos. The fake sites may be near-replicas of the sites phishers are spoofing, containing the company's logo and other images and fake status bars that give the site the appearance of security. Phishers may register plausible-looking domains like aolaccountupdate.com, mycitibank.net or paypa1.com (using the number 1 instead of the letter L). They may even direct their victims to a well-known company's actual website and then collect their personal data through a faux pop-up window.
Can we prevent phishing attacks?
Companies can reduce the odds of being targeted, and they can reduce the damage that phishers can do (more details on how below). But they can't really prevent it. One reason phishing e-mails are so convincing is that most of them have forged "from" lines, so that the message looks like it's from the spoofed company. There's no way for an organization to keep someone from spoofing a "from" line and making it seem as if an e-mail came from the organization.
A technology known as sender authentication does hold some promise for limiting phishing attacks, though. The idea is that if e-mail gateways could verify that messages purporting to be from, say, Citibank did in fact originate from a legitimate Citibank server, messages from spoofed addresses could be automatically tagged as fraudulent and thus weeded out. (Before delivering a message, an ISP would compare the IP address of the server sending the message to a list of valid addresses for the sending domain, much the same way an ISP looks up the IP address of a domain to send a message. It would be sort of an Internet version of caller ID and call blocking.)
Although the concept is straightforward, implementation has been slow because the major Internet players have different ideas about how to tackle the problem. It may be years before different groups iron out the details and implement a standard. Even then, there's no way of guaranteeing that phishers won't find ways around the system (just as some fraudsters can fake the numbers that appear in caller IDs). That's why, in the meantime, so many organizationsand a growing marketplace of service providershave taken matters into their own hands.
What can my company do to reduce our chances of being targeted by phishing attacks?
In part, the answer has to do with NOT doing silly or thoughtless things that can increase your vulnerability. Now that phishing has become a fact of life, companies need to be careful about how they use e-mail to communicate with customers. For example, in May 2004, Wachovia's phones started ringing off the hook after the bank sent customers an e-mail instructing them to update their online banking user names and passwords by clicking on a link. Although the e-mail was legitimate (the bank had to migrate customers to a new system following a merger), a quarter of the recipients questioned it.
As Wachovia learned, companies need to clearly think through their customer communication protocols. Best practices include giving all e-mails and webpages a consistent look and feel, greeting customers by first and last name in e-mails, and never asking for personal or account data through e-mail. If any time-sensitive personal information is sent through e-mail, it has to be encrypted. Marketers may wring their hands at the prospect of not sending customers links that would take them directly to targeted offers, but instructing customers to bookmark key pages or linking to special offers from the homepage is a lot more secure. That way, companies are training their customers not to be duped.
It also makes sense to revisit what customers are allowed to do on your website. They should not be able to open a new account, sign up for a credit card or change their address online with just a password. At a minimum, companies should acknowledge every online transaction through e-mail and one other method of the customer's choosing (such as calling the phone number on record) so that customers are aware of all online activity on their accounts. And to make it more difficult for phishers to copy online data-capture forms, organizations should avoid putting them on the website for all to see. Instead, organizations should require secured log-in to access e-commerce forms.
At the end of the day, though, better authentication is the best way to decrease the likelihood that phishers will target your organization. Banks are beginning to experiment with technologies like RSA tokens, biometrics, one-time-use passwords and smart cards, all of which make their customers' personal information less valuable for phishers.
One midsized bank was able to cut its phishing-related ATM card losses by changing its authentication process. Every ATM card has data encoded on its magnetic strip that the customer can't see but that most ATM machines can read. The bank worked with its network provider to use that hidden information to authenticate ATM transactionsan important step that, according to Gartner, only about half of U.S. banks had taken by mid-2005. "Since the number isn't printed on the back of the card, customers can't accidentally disclose it," the bank's CISO explained. The information was already in the cards, so the bank didn't have to go through an expensive process of reissuing cards. "It was a very economical solution, and it's been very effective," said the CISO. | <urn:uuid:ce094244-2941-44b1-908a-a730a14223d6> | 2013-05-26T02:49:25Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Page 1 of 5
The European Union has only had even a complementary competence in cultural matters since 1992 and the Treaty of Maastricht. Before this date the Union had of course taken part in one-off cultural projects, such as the restoration of the acropolis in Athens in 1975 or the founding of the European Youth Orchestra. The first real engagement in cultural policy however was in 1985 with the setting up of the European City of Culture programme by the European Council under the motivation of Melina Mercouri. In 1990 a European competition was organised by the Commission – ‘Europe-scène culturelle’. In 1991 this became the Kaleidoscope programme (reorganised in both 1994 and 1996).
In 1992 the European Union treaty allowed culture to be treated as a community competence and gave the Union an appropriate legal base for its work in this area. Using this foundation three programmes were devised in the period 1996 – 1999:
In 1999, as the three programmes drew to a close, the institutions set up a single overarching mechanism called Culture 2000 (for initially five years, later extended to seven).
- Kaleidoscope to encourage artistic creation and European cultural cooperation
- Ariane in the book and translation sector
- Raphaël to encourage Member States actions to support heritage projects | <urn:uuid:192b0d64-08a0-4827-82c6-6b9dbe5cd82f> | 2013-05-26T03:10:08Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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