Split (2)

train · ~65M rows (showing the first 1.62M)

content stringlengths 174 23.6k
In The ‘Busy’ Trap, Tim Kreider debunks the idea that the frenetic pace of modern work is due only to forces beyond our control, arguing that people who describe themselves as “crazy busy” do so not to complain, but rather to boast. And this ironic shift goes one step further: people not only complain to dodge responsibility for boasting, but are really just boasting to ameliorate their anxiety about the pointlessness of their work. In other words, busyness is not a condition imposed by external forces (or not only imposed by external forces), but is also, and perhaps mainly, a choice. Kreider details how he has made the opposite choice: to work 4-5 hours in the morning and then spend the rest of the day with friends, exercising or reading. Some of the essay sounds like justification for his decisions: “Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets.” But he ends the piece with a recognition of the tradeoffs he has made: “My own resolute idleness has mostly been a luxury rather than a virtue, but I did make a conscious decision, a long time ago, to choose time over money, since I’ve always understood that the best investment of my limited time on earth was to spend it with people I love.” This focus on choosing relationships over greater material gains is echoed in a 2011 Grist post by David Roberts, in which he lays out his concept of the “medium chill,” a slowed-down version of the rat race. Medium chill means making a choice to “[get] off the aspirational treadmill, forgoing some material opportunities and accepting some material constraints in exchange for spending time on relationships and experiences.” Roberts describes the medium chill as a type of “satisficing,” or settling for a situation that is good enough rather than optimal. In the medium chill, there is no need to boast about how busy you are, because busyness is no longer a badge of honor. So why don’t more of us adopt a medium chill lifestyle? Roberts draws on social science research to identify several possible reasons. First, it is particularly difficult for humans to close off possibilities (like making more money). Second, none of us is good at identifying what will make us happy (and perhaps, beyond a certain point, more money does not do that). Third, we over-emphasize the impact of external events on our happiness and vastly under-estimate the amount of internal control we have over our happiness. While I agree with these points, especially the last one, I think that there is another to add. Neither Kreider nor Roberts delves into the second half of the ironic shift that boasting smoothes over the anxiety we feel about the point of our work. Many people may default to being busy because they don’t like what they do. But Kreider and Roberts have found a common activity — writing — that appears to satisfy their professional needs while enabling them to adopt the medium chill lifestyle. My point is that the kind of reorientation of priorities that Kreider and Roberts discuss may only be possible once a person has identified work that they relatively enjoy, and that enables them to control the location, amount and timing of their work. I say “relatively enjoy” because searching for the perfect work situation goes against the principle of “good enough” inherent in seeking to be less busy. Along these lines, in his The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, Alain de Botton is skeptical of our being able to find the perfect work situation, and even more so of the ability of the modem workplace “…to provide us, alongside love, with the principal source of life’s meaning” (p. 30). His view becomes clear as he observes a career counselor at work: “…[Symons, the counselor] remarked that the most common and unhelpful illusion plaguing those who came to see him was the idea that they ought somehow, in the normal course of events, to have intuited — long before they had finished their degrees, started families, bought houses and risen to the top of [their professions] — what they properly should have been doing with their lives. They were tormented by a residual notion of having through some error or stupidity on their part missed out on their true ‘calling’. “…Symons maintained [that this idea of the true calling] was prone to torture us with an expectation that the meaning of our lives might at some point be revealed to us in a ready-made and decisive form, which would in turn render us permanently immune to feelings of confusion, envy and regret” (p. 113). In the end, the principle of “good enough” seems to apply not only to how much we work, but also to what kind of work we do.
\|写作类型：\|\|全部 TEM4 TEM8\| \|出题年份：\|\|全部 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997\| \|话题分类：\|\|全部小作文大作文\| Part VI WRITING Read carefully the following excerpt on term-time holiday arguments in the UK, and then write your response in NO LESS THAN 200 words, in which you should: Summarize the main message of the excerpt,and then Comment on whether parents should take children out of school for holiday during term time in order to save money. You should support yourself with information from the excerpt. Marks with be awarded for content relevance, content sufficiency, organization and language quality. Failure to follow the above instructions may result in a loss of marks. Term-time holidays will be banned Parents are to be banned by Michael Gove, UK’s Education Secretary, from taking their chidren out of school to save money on holidays. He is to abolish the right of head teachers to “authorise absence” from the classroom, which has been used to let families take term-time breaks, and will warm them they face fines for their chidren not being at school. “Any time out of school has the potential to damage a child’s education,” a senior source at the Department for Education said this weekend. “That is why the government will end the distinction between authorised and unauthorised absence.” “This is part of the government’s wider commitment to bring down truancy levels in our schools. There will also be stricter penalties for parents and schools.” The tough measures on truancy are part of a wider attempt by Mr Gove to make education more academically rigorous and to tackle a culture in the educational establishment which he believes has accepted “excuses for failure”. Russell Hobby, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said the measure would discourage parents from trying to put pressure on heads to sanction term time holidays. “The high cost of holidays outside of term time is still an issue but ultimately a child’s education is more important than a holiday,” he said. Write your response on ANSWER SHEET THREE.
Nearly every public school district in Wisconsin charges student fees or user fees. These fees are typically used to offset the cost of classroom supplies, texts and materials used by students throughout the school year. The Appleton Area School District (AASD) also charges student fees for this purpose. These annual fees are for every student (4K – 12) and vary according to grade level. The AASD appreciates the assistance from parents in paying these important fees. Other fees for specific classes or activities may still apply. Please contact your school for more information. Any request or consideration for fee waivers must be addressed through the free and reduced lunch application process.
Several pets have been killed and residents believe the problem is coyotes. The coyotes are believed to be coming from a bayou area just behind a row of homes in that area. They're striking at night and killing cats. Jo Javier spends many evenings outside with her pooch, Pippa. But word of possible coyote attacks on her street are terrifying. "That's very concerning because I have a 10-year-old daughter, too, so it's not just pets," she said. One of Javier's neighbors captured images from his home-surveillance video. A suspected coyote killed three of his cats this week and two more in the neighborhood. "It's exceedingly rare," said Christopher Newport, spokesperson for the city of Houston's animal control department. Newport says so far this year, they've received 18 reports of possible coyote sightings, which is on par with previous years. Most are located in southwest Houston, as well as in the Kingwood and Memorial areas. "Nearly all of them occur along bayous, which are really like highways for wild animals," Newport said. "It's kind of scary knowing that they're around," concerned resident Jacob Stockton said. Pet owners like Javier are now watching out for their animals and for each other. "I'm gonna be a little bit more cautious about where I am so that I don't get hurt," Stockton said. "I won't be bringing her outside as often as I'm doing right now until we get to the bottom of this situation," Javier said. Authorities suggest that residents keep cats indoors or in fenced area and not leave pet food or trash bins outside. To report a coyote sighting, call 311. The city's Rabies Control Authority will investigate. Take ABC13 with you! Download our free apps for iPhone, iPad and Android devices
Neither side would back down on their stance toward a gay pride proclamation by the mayor. Porterville City Hall was quiet Wednesday afternoon after a heated council meeting Tuesday night that ended with three people in jail. The three gay activists who were arrested Tuesday night were released from jail Wednesday. As it appears, the gay rights community in Porterville and several city council members are no closer to making amends. Police quickly detained three gay rights activists who, holding up signs, protested in Porterville's City Council Chambers after the council voted 3-2 to take back a gay pride proclamation made by the mayor in June. "What Porterville folks in city hall both staff and city council need to learn is city hall is not a church," said Barry Caplan with Gay Porterville. City Councilmember Pete McCracken voted down taking back the proclamation because in the city's history. The mayor has always had a right to issue a proclamation without the council's approval. Three other councilmembers disagreed, voting to rescind the proclamation and instead issue a more broad resolution that did not specify the gay community. The outbursts by both sides even sent the mayor out of the room in tears. Even though McCracken would have voted to keep the proclamation, he chose not to sign it when the mayor issued it last month. "I did not sign the proclamation. I did not feel at the time that the proclamation the way it was written was appropriate," McCracken said. As for the protests, McCracken said the demonstration clearly violated city rules. "Had they done it on the street, more power to them, gazebo across the street, no problem. In the council chambers the rules are no posters there are no signs there are no demonstrations," McCracken said. "What's important isn't so much the protest it's the history of city council for 5 years' time and time again approaching and having anti-LGBT gay community proclamations or actions," Caplan said.
U.S. home prices fell again in January but at a slower pace, according to Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller home-price indexes. Despite the slower pace, the consistent drop in home values has meant that nearly a decade of price gains in the U.S. housing market have been wiped out. As of January 2012, average home prices across the country are back to early 2003 levels. According to the national composite index, home values in 20 cities fell 3.8 percent in January from a year earlier, after decreasing 4.1 percent in December. In what may be a good sign and a leading indicator, Detroit and Phoenix posted an increase in prices compared with a year ago. Detroit and Phoenix were among the hardest hit by prices declines in the past and a recovery there may bode well for housing markets in other cities. Home prices are now down 34 percent from their peak in the second quarter of 2006, when the housing bubble began to burst. Atlanta home prices in particular have dropped to new lows. Of the 20 major U.S. metropolitan markets, 16 reported prices were lower in January than during December. Miami, Phoenix and Washington, D.C., were the only areas to report growth month-to-month.
What is Contract of Sale of goods Contract of sale of goods is a contract, whereby, the seller transfers or agrees to transfer the property in goods to the buyer for a price. There can be a contract of sale between one part-owner and another. In other words, under a contract of sale, a seller (or vendor) in the capacity of the owner, or part-owner of the goods, transfers or agrees to transfer the ownership in goods to the buyer (or purchaser) for an agreed upon value in money (or money equivalent), called the price, paid or the promise to pay same. A contract of sale may be absolute or conditional depending upon the desire of contracting parties. Essentials elements of a Contract of Sale The following six features are essential elements of any contract of sale of goods. 1. Two Parties: A contract of sale of goods is bilateral in nature wherein property in the goods has to pass from one party to another. One cannot buy one’s own goods. For example, A is the owner of a grocery shop. If he supplies the goods (from the stock meant for sale) to his family, it does not amount to a sale and there is no contract of sale. This is so because the seller and buyer must be two different parties, as one person cannot be both a seller as well as a buyer. However, there shall be a contract of sale between part owners. Suppose A and B jointly own a television set, A may transfer his ownership in the television set to B, thereby making B the sole owner of the goods. In the same way, a partner may buy goods from the firm in which he is a partner, and vice-versa. However, there is an exception against the general rule that no person can buy his own goods. Where a pawnee sells the goods pledged with him/her on non-payment of his/her money, the pawnor may buy them in execution of a decree. 2. Goods: The subject matter of a contract of sale must be goods. Every kind of movable property except actionable claims and money is regarded as ‘goods’. Contracts relating to services are not considered as contract of sale. Immovable property is governed by a separate statute, ‘Transfer of Property Act’. 3. Transfer of ownership: Transfer of property in goods is also integral to a contract of sale. The term ‘property in goods’ means the ownership of the goods. In every contract of sale, there should be an agreement between the buyer and the seller for transfer of ownership. Here property means the general property in goods, and not merely a special property. Thus, it is the general property, which is transferred under a contract of sale as distinguished from special property, which is transferred in case of pledge of goods, i.e., possession of goods is transferred to the pledgee or pawnee while the ownership rights remain with the pledger. Thus, in a contract of sale there must be an absolute transfer of the ownership. It must be noted that the physical delivery of goods is not essential for transferring the ownership. 4. Price: The buyer must pay some price for goods. The term ‘price’ is ‘the money consideration for a sale of goods’. Accordingly, consideration in a contract of sale has necessarily to be in money. Where goods are offered as consideration for goods, it will not amount to sale, but it will be called barter or exchange, which was prevalent in ancient times. Similarly, if a person offers the goods to somebody else without consideration, it amounts to a gift or charity and not sale. In explicit terms, goods must be sold for a definite amount of money, called the price. However, the consideration can be partly in money and partly in valued up goods. Furthermore, payment is not necessary at the time of making the contract of sale. 5. All essentials of a Valid contract: A contract of sale is a special type of contract, therefore, to be valid, it must have all the essential elements of a valid contract, viz., free consent, consideration, competency of contracting parties, lawful object, legal formalities to be completed, etc. A contract of sale will be invalid if important elements are missing. For instance, if A agreed to sell his car to B because B forced him to do so by means of undue influence, this contract of sale is not valid since there is no free consent on the part of the transferor. 6. Includes both a ‘Sale’ and ‘An Agreement to Sell’: The ‘contract of sale’ is a generic term and includes both sale and an agreement to sell. The sale is an executed or absolute contract whereas ‘an agreement to sell’ is an executory contract and implies a conditional sale. A contract of sale can be made merely by an offer, to buy or sell goods for a price, followed by acceptance of such an offer. Interestingly, neither the payment of price nor the delivery of goods is essential at the time of making the contract of sale unless otherwise agreed. Subject to the provisions of the law for time being in force, a contract of sale may be made either orally or in writing, or partly orally and partly in writing, or may even be implied from the conduct of the parties.
"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." Habitat for Humanity (HFH) works in partnership with God and people everywhere to develop communities with God's people in need by building and renovating houses worldwide. It is also an easy and fun way to introduce mission work to people who have not previously been engaged as missionaries. Teams of volunteers join with HFH professionals to help construct and renovate homes for families in need. Habitat teach the volunteers the skills needed for each task and, together with the families, the whole team on-site work to provide the families with the home that they need. Habitat makes a huge impact on both the families and the volunteers and the results of the mission are clearly visible to all involved. Secondly, it helps our teams see and feel the real results of God's work. This mission is a concrete way to see real impact in today's world. There are two ways in which Habitat evangelizes: firstly, all new homeowners are provided with a Bible and secondly, Habitat members are able to bear witness at a one-on-one level with the people who they interact with on the site and in the community. There is currently one trip organized from ACP every year. A team can stay for 10 days or two weeks and the destinations change every year, according to the needs of the organization. It is important to remember that whilst the teams work hard, it is not ALL work and no play! There are days dedicated to sightseeing and exploring the local community, which is a great opportunity for the volunteers to explore other countries, lifestyles, and the various ways God works through people. How can I Volunteer? This year a group of All ages will travel to Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek during 29th/30th of July until the 8th of August. For further information on the Country, the project and fundraiser please download the docs below and read through them. The teams are generously supported through donations of the congregation, but each team member has to help raise the funds needed through a sponsoring webpage and promote it through friends and familys. Every year in the Spring time there is a Concert organized at ACP in conjunction with the Rotary Club of Paris. The Concert will be on 20 May at 20h00. This generates a large part of the funds needed for our trips. Volunteers can assist with everything from selling tickets, setting up, ushering, preparing and cooking the buffet, serving drinks, and cleaning up. There are also opportunities throughout the year, including Christmas and Easter, to support Habitat by buying cookies and other delicious baked goods. How can I Help You can volunteer and join the team but we would also really value your support by keeping the team in your prayers or offering donations. Online Donation link YOU CAN DONATE UNTIL 16 June 2016 INFORMATION Documents here
WASHINGTON — The Senate on Saturday struck down the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military, bringing to a close a 17-year struggle over a policy that forced thousands of Americans from the ranks and caused others to keep secret their sexual orientation.Read the rest here. By a vote of 65 to 31, with eight Republicans joining Democrats, the Senate approved and sent to President Obama a repeal of the Clinton-era law, known as “don’t ask, don’t tell,” a policy critics said amounted to government-sanctioned discrimination that treated gay and lesbian troops as second-class citizens. Mr. Obama hailed the action, which fulfills his pledge to reverse the ban. “As commander in chief, I am also absolutely convinced that making this change will only underscore the professionalism of our troops as the best led and best trained fighting force the world has ever known,” Mr. Obama said in a statement after the Senate, on a 63-33 vote, beat back Republican efforts to block a final vote on the repeal bill. The vote marked a historic moment that some equated with the end of racial segregation in the military.
At some point in the second half of the 20th century, the belief that "the customer is always right" turned itself inside out, transforming into "the customer is a potential liability." Businesses that once prided themselves on their human assets have put up levees and bulwarks to keep consumers from conversing with a human being. The measure of a job well done, for those on the business end of the phone, isn't whether or not they help the customer, but how quickly they get the customer off the phone. We know. At least 100 complaints roll into our inboxes each day. That's more than 36,000 consumers who are pissed off enough at a company to write to us each year. But there are opportunities for businesses to retain, and even gain, customers, if they can behave like humans. Here are six ways to better satisfy customers. View social media as a conversation with customers, one in which the customers do most of the talking Too many companies still think of the internet as a uni-directional medium to be used to promote new products and put out PR fires. The number of companies monitoring the complaints posted on Consumerist has soared in recent years, and often, within minutes of a story posting, we'll get an email or phone call from someone with a job title like "social-media-outreach bigwig" asking to be put in touch with the customer involved to resolve the problem. While this is nice, it doesn't resolve the issues that caused the problem. A prime example of this is Comcast, the reigning champ of Consumerist's Worst Company in America tournament. The Comcast social-media team is a quality bunch of people who seem genuinely interested in resolving problems. But for all their hard work, the same complaints continue to roll in every day. Comcast can't expect to earn consumer trust when it invests so much time and energy band-aiding wounds rather than taking the strong medicine that's required. On a slightly more hopeful note, Best Buy recently launched its IdeaX online suggestion box in an attempt to crowd-source solutions to customer service issues. It's too early to see if Best Buy will actually heed any of the advice it's getting, but it's a step. Try some humility "Cold" and "heartless" are the words most frequently attached to large corporations. So when one demonstrates even a scintilla of humility, consumers notice. It's been a year since Domino's Pizza launched its campaign of public self-flagellation, admitting that its previous recipes were lackluster. Domino's could have opted for the less-risky route of advertising its "new and improved" recipe, but the decision to come out and prostrate itself on national TV has paid off financially and in terms of the company's public image. Give a little, gain a lot The idea of a loss leader shouldn't be relegated to the ledger books. Companies willing to occasionally take a tiny loss can reap benefits in the long run. One example from a Consumerist reader: Dan bought an LG dishwasher at Home Depot. When the washer went bust almost immediately, the manufacturer told him he must have done something to void the warranty, so it wouldn't replace or repair the appliance. But after only one brief, professionally worded email to Home Depot's CEO, his local Depot contacted him, offering to replace the dishwasher with any comparable model of any brand, free of charge. The experience impressed Dan so much that he now says he won't shop anywhere else for his appliances. But he'll likely never again purchase an LG product. Reward creative problem-solving If companies want to regain customers' trust, a good way to start is by trusting employees to make reasonable decisions. "There's nothing I can do" and "My hands are tied" were two of the most-referenced customer-service clichés, according to Consumerist readers. But what we've been told by numerous tipsters over the years is that there is something they can do -- it would just put their job at risk. Last summer, a CVS store in New Jersey made it onto Consumerist because an employee refused to sell a $21 inhaler to a woman who only had $20. She was suffering an asthma attack. This wasn't a manager or someone who had a vested interest in that missing dollar; this was just someone who was likely terrified of breaking the rules and losing his or her job. Had that employee been empowered to make the occasional exception, CVS could have gained a thankful customer for life instead of the PR headache that ensued. Always say you're sorry Want to know why so many Netflix customers speak glowingly of the video service? Because it shows respect to the people who keep it in business. Receive a broken disc in the mail? There's no blame game, just a replacement disc. Netflix streaming goes down for a few hours? The company automatically distributes refunds for downtime. A three-hour outage equates to only a few pennies' worth of a Netflix subscriber's monthly fee. But by stepping up and apologizing for a situation most companies would have downplayed, Netflix earns a pile of brownie points. The golden rule What all of this boils down to is that most basic of concepts, which keep us (well, most of us) from robbing and murdering each other: Treat others as you wish to be treated. There are billions to be made just from being nicer -- or at least not being a jerk.
For centuries, notes Marla Ahlgrimm, humans have coveted the “fountain of youth.” In recent years, the medical community has sought ways to harness youth via cosmetic surgery, moisturizing creams, supplements, and even medications. With natural hormone therapy (HT), women’s health expert Marla Ahlgrimm has found a way to make patients feel and look years younger. One secret, according to Marla Ahlgrimm, founder of Women’s Health America, is in dehydroepiandrosterone, also called DHEA. DHEA is a steroid hormone produced naturally by the female’s adrenal glands. DHEA production peaks in a woman’s mid-twenties. As with other hormones, DHEA production decreases with age. Falling hormone levels, explains Marla Ahlgrimm, is what many researchers believe causes aging. Some researchers believe DHEA replacement therapy can increase immune function while reducing the risk of cancer. Many women feel that DHEA does more to enhance libido than testosterone replacement. In fact, DHEA replacement therapy increases testosterone levels. Marla Ahlgrimm emphasizes that studies are underway to determine DHEA’s impact on diabetes, lupus, chronic fatigue syndrome, and AIDS. Feel Less Stressed As for DHEA’s anti-aging properties, the founder of Women’s Health America says DHEA has been said to improve memory, combat fatigue, and help reduce stress. Marla Ahlgrimm points to a study conducted by the University of California Medical School at La Jolla. According to Marla Ahlgrimm, R.Ph., participants in the study between the ages of 40 and 70 took 50 milligrams of DHEA per day for six months. As a result, these individuals reported an increased ability to sleep, as well as an ability to handle stress more easily while feeling more relaxed. The placebo group did not see these increases, reports Marla Ahlgrimm. DHEA is able to suppress the body’s stress hormone cortisol, according to Marla Ahlgrimm. Cortisol increases heart rate, blood pressure, and blood sugar, which makes a person alert and able to respond to a stressful situation. DHEA naturally drops as the cortisol level rises. By adding DHEA through natural hormone therapy, says pharmacist Marla Ahlgrimm, your body returns to its natural balance. Getting a DHEA Prescription Typical dosage for DHEA is 2.5 to 5 milligrams per day for women (50 to 100 mg per day for men). This is generally given in capsule form or dissolved under the tongue. Marla Ahlgrimm explains that the DHEA is micronized, which means it is provided in tiny particles. In order to determine if a patient has low DHEA levels, a physician can test blood, urine or saliva levels. Marla Ahlgrimm says that DHEA is available over-the-counter without a prescription, as the Food and Drug Administration considers DHEA a dietary supplement. However, Marla Ahlgrimm advises patients to always work with their doctor to obtain a prescription for DHEA when beginning any hormone replacement therapy regimen. For more information, visit Marla Ahlgrimm’s website at www.marlaahlgrimm.net
By Sam Byfield, Global Advocacy Adviser for Vision 2020 Australia On 16 November last year, Foreign Minister Rudd announced that an ‘Independent Review of Aid Effectiveness’ would take place. Rudd noted that this review was ‘a timely thing to do’ and that since ‘the last time the Australian Government took a root and branch review of the aid budget was in 1996…the time has come to do it again.’ In 1984 the Hawke Government commissioned the Jackson Report; while the Howard Government undertook the Simons Review in 1996 and a decade later the first White Paper on Australia’s aid program. These reviews played an important role in revising Australia’s aid program in response to altered circumstances, and it’s likely that this current review will have real influence on the program’s future focuses, starting with the May 2011 federal budget. The review is likely to explore the aid program’s sectoral focuses. Increases in overall aid levels have led to a perception in some quarters, both within and outside of government, that Australia’s aid program has become too stretched and that it is necessary for programs to go narrower and deeper. The review should highlight those areas in which there is greatest need, and where Australia is best placed to make a difference. This point was highlighted in a 2008 Lowy paper on Africa. It was also a key message from the recent review of the PNG-Australia Development Cooperation Treaty, which stated that Australia should strive to back winners, to provide funding for those programs that demonstrably work. One niche area in which Australia is playing a lead role internationally is in improving eye health and reducing levels of blindness. Globally, approximately 400 million people live with blindness and low vision caused by uncorrected refractive error, eye diseases and other conditions – an unacceptable statistic, given that 80 percent of all blindness and low vision is preventable or treatable. Eliminating avoidable blindness has a central effort to play in global efforts to achieve the MDGs – it traps people in the poverty cycle, limits employment and education opportunities, discriminates against women and girls, and reduces the dignity and quality of people’s lives. In 2008, Australia committed $45 million to an Avoidable Blindness Initiative (ABI), which is now being implemented across the Asia Pacific. Australian agencies, building upon the work of such icons as Fred Hollows, have a long history of tackling blindness and building the capacity of health systems in developing countries, thereby reducing the need for Australian aid. Programs to tackle avoidable blindness are cost effective and tangible. The Global Consortium’s programs focus on a range of areas and further details can be found here. One novel element of work being undertaken under the ABI is the partnership between the Australian Government and Vision 2020 Australia’s Global Consortium, which consists of nine leading eye health NGOs. The Consortium’s approach maximises the geographic and sectoral expertise of agencies, reduces programmatic overlap and inefficiency, and ensures common quality standards and a rigorous approach to project selection. It is a terrific demonstration of what can be achieved by partnership between the Australian Government, Australian NGOs, governments across the region and other local stakeholders, and is closely aligned with the national health strategies of governments across the regions - taking forward the harmonisation and alignment agenda of the 2005 Paris Declaration. Another area the review will explore is geographic coverage. Three quarters of Australia’s aid budget is still spent in the Pacific and East Asia, though recent increases have taken place in Africa, Central and South Asia, the Caribbean and the Middle East. While it has historically made sense that the lion’s share of Australian aid be spent in our regional backyard, it is increasingly recognised that Australia has a role to play in other parts of the world - especially Africa, which has seen increases of 42 percent and 17 percent in the past two aid budgets. This is based largely on the ongoing lag in development indicators in Africa—and also recognises that closer engagement with Africa serves Australia’s national interests, for instance in lobbying for votes for Australia’s bid for a seat on the UN Security Council (it will be interesting to see if the review refers to this broader interpretation of what Australia hopes to achieve with its aid program). Countries in Africa remain behind in efforts to achieve the eight Millennium Development Goals. One crucial reason for this is the prevalence of avoidable blindness, which is much higher than in other regions. Avoidable blindness is a key public health problem in Africa, and Australia’s leadership role in eliminating avoidable blindness in the Asia Pacific has established a strong foundation upon which to expand into Africa. Australia’s aid program has doubled over the past five years and is set to double again over the next five years. With Australia looking to enhance the aid program’s effectiveness and justify further expansion, the Review should highlight programs like the ABI as an example of what can be achieved when need, expertise, strong service delivery models and Australian leadership come together. Image courtesy of the International Centre for Eyecare Education
38 … A fanciful garden in Alamos, where art, humans and flora-fauna coexist as one … Welcome to Casa Obregon 18, now known as Casa Roberto. It is mid-morning on a cloud free summer day. I will meet the owner, Roberto Bloor, for a cup of coffee, and then photograph his yard. The air is sweet smelling. The streets are quiet. I did not know much about Roberto. I was told he came to Alamos as a Canadian with a back pack and stayed to become hotel Casa de los Tesoros’ cook. While serving as chef and co-owner Roberto published, around 1969 with co-owner Darley Gordon, a book called Culinary Treasures from the Casa de Los Tesoros. After many years at the hotel Roberto took ownership of Casa Obregon 18 and began another creative adventure. As we sat talking in the sala we were surrounded by Roberto’s mosaic paintings. Our conversation was interrupted by a couple of phone calls. It sounded like they were October room reservations. And then he was gone to oversee work taking place in one of his two garages. Welcome to Galeria Roberto Bloor. Roberto seemed to have time only for things that would benefit Roberto, time management is an excellent small business tool. It is also necessary for an artist to find the time to create. I was left alone to wander through the courtyards. Casa Obregon, a colonial mansion on hotel row, was built in 1800, and written about in Ida Luis Franklin’s book, Ghosts of Alamos. The Inn is 4,000 square feet with four bedrooms and four baths. And then there are the yards. Everywhere you look the unexpected appears, lurking or jumping out at you. The checkerboard lawn, with squares made of brick and alternating grass, is a page from Roberto in Wonderland. This was the third day of no water to central downtown east of the Church. It would be another two days before service was be restored. Today, 2011, Casa Roberto is for sale. The gardens, colors, sculptures and eccentric design can be yours for $550,000 USD. Ghosts are included – free of charge. It was easy for Roberto to take a moment and flash a big smile for my camera and then go on his way, managing another day, talking to himself under his breath. Roberto’s mosaic art and sculptures are everywhere on the property – indoors and outdoors. Casa Obregon 18 is a statement to an individuals creative drive. Here is balance, statement and projection. Here is life as art and art as life. Here was Roberto Bloor. To see more Alamos Journal pages. To return Home. ©2013 Anders Tomlinson, all rights reserved.
Shell Oil is Counting on Biofuels for the Long Term Shell sees a place for gas, hydrogen and electricity, but Reijnhart was clear that: “We see biofuels as the single most important alternative to hydrocarbons in mobility in the next 20 years.” Reijnhart several times stressed Shell’s strategic intention to operate “at scale” in the biofuels market, with particular reference to its recent launch of Raizen, its $12-billion joint-venture with Brazilian sugar and ethanol producer Cosan. _GCC Brazil is a good place for biofuels and biomass to chemicals projects. Its tropical climate provides a year-round climate for growing multiple croppings. Sugar cane is a particularly rich source of both sugars and cellulosic biomass. Large areas of Africa are similarly well-endowed for biomass production. Reijnhart said that first-generation and second-generation biofuels were different pillars of the same long-term strategy. He suggested that breakthroughs in the production of cellulosic ethanol will come in the early 2020s. Noting that this is part of the long-term future for biofuels, he emphasized Shell’s commitments to R&D in the next-generation technology. _GCC Brazil is beginning to produce biofuels in the Antarctic for local fuel use -- note the fashionable coverage of the food vs. fuels debate on the video at the link. You know that when the UN gets involved, the excrement is certain to be piled very deeply. But back in the real world, biomass production is limited only by human ingenuity, just as all energy and food production is limited by what our brains can conceive. As we discover better ways to convert biomass to high value chemicals, valuable materials, fuels, and electrical power, we will find ways to expand the total volume of terrestrial biomass far beyond what is currently thought possible. This will be done by utilising areas and resources for biomass growth which are not currently thought of as croplands or crop nutrients.
The pros and cons of removing spiders completely from your home Spiders are one among the many prevalent household pests and research indicates that two out of three homes have spiders. At the same time, arachnophobia is most common creature-based fear. Since a young age, a very bad perception about spiders is ingrained in our brains and we live with it until our adulthood. This is undoubtedly true owing to the fact that a shoe is the most common tool used to deal with spiders. However, there are a few fearless folks who a let live motto in the hope that they will enjoy the good that spiders can do. If seeing a spider scurrying across the floor or dangling in a web does not create shivers in you, you might want to share your abode with several spiders. Despite the common perception that spiders are dangerous, it is important to avoid contact with spiders because they bite if they feel endangered or threatened. Removing spiders from your house can have advantages as well as disadvantages One advantage of removing spiders from your home is that it gives you a tidy place to live in. Spiders live in webs which can be an eyesore to a homeowner. In fact, the first step towards a clean home environment is getting rid of cobwebs. Another advantage of removing spiders completely from your home is that it keeps you safe from spider attacks. Some spider species are known for their venom that can be dangerous to your body. Getting rid of spiders from your home means that you will not come into contact with them thus you are safe from unwanted bites. On the other hand, removal of spiders from your home can have some disadvantages. To begin with, spiders are known to eat other insects so eliminating them from your home means that you leave room for other pests to take over. Insects feed on common household pests like houseflies, mosquitoes, and roaches. If spiders are allowed occupy some of your home space, you will realize that most insects will disappear with time. This makes them an effective, natural pest control measure. Another disadvantage of removing pests completely from your home is that you stand at a risk of suffering from hygiene-related illnesses. Most of the household pests such as fleas, flies and roaches are associated with dreaded hygiene diseases that can be detrimental to your health and well-being. Spider presence in your home means the absence of fleas, roaches, and houseflies and as a result a reduced risk of suffering from hygiene-related problems. All the disease-carrying critters in your home will be eliminated for good. Although most spiders normally prey on other small insects and pests, there are specific species like the yellow sac and brown recluse that should be avoided at all costs. These spiders are extremely dangerous to human beings, and their bites can have serious complications and worst of all death. However, the nonpoisonous and harmless variety can be of great benefit to your home, and it is possible to live in harmony with them.
To the List of Hazards and Headaches of Live-Tweeting History, Add Hackers Some days it just doesn’t pay to tweet when you’re a witness to historic events. Ask Sohaid Atha, the Pakistani IT consultant who tweeted about events he witnessed that turned out to be a U.S. military attack on the refuge of terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. As noted earlier today, Atha, whose Twitter handle is @ReallyVirtual, live-tweeted descriptions of the raid in Abbottabad as it unfolded, not really sure what was going on, detailing helicopters hovering and explosions. Naturally, every media organization in the world wanted to talk to him, not caring for time zone differences. He later tweeted that all he really wanted to do was take a nap. And if that weren’t enough, his blog was hacked and started serving malware. He tweeted about that, too, but Web security firm Websense also noticed. Patrik Runald, a Websense security researcher, said that sometime overnight, the increase in attention on Atha’s Twitter feed, which contains a link to his blog, ReallyVirtual.com, was compromised and was as of this morning serving up malware. The malware was the old pop-up ad saying something to the effect that “your computer has problems, click here to download software to fix it, only $79.95,” and the software to “fix” the problem actually creates one. The malware has since been cleaned up. “There was one line of code inserted into the page which loaded content from a site in Romania,” Runald said. Atha’s site runs WordPress, but an older version, he said. Rather than an attack carried out by anyone targeting Atha specifically, Runald thinks the attack was more likely carried out by an automated process that detected Atha’s blog after the surge in links to it via Twitter. “They wanted to get a free ride from all the traffic he was getting.” Meanwhile, there’s also a scam-ad appearing on Facebook that advertises “Osama Bin Laden killed live on a news broadcast.” I could swear I’ve seen that one before. Either way, Websense says don’t click on it. Just don’t.
Recovery may be limited when an accident victim negligently contributes to the cause of the accident. Determining who is legally responsible (that is, “at fault”) for a car accident can be a difficult process. The person bringing a lawsuit or making an insurance claim for damages (the plaintiff) must first prove that the other person (the defendant) was negligent. But even if the plaintiff can do this, the defendant can still avoid partial or full liability by establishing a defense to the accident. The systems of comparative and contributory negligence in car accidents are designed to deal with situations in which both parties have contributed to the accident — or, in legalese, where both parties have been “negligent.” For example, say Dan is driving at night and hits Ann, a pedestrian, when Ann suddenly and unexpectedly darts into the intersection. In this scenario the question of who is at fault is not clear-cut, as both Dan and Ann may have contributed to the accident. How liability is treated when both parties have contributed to the car accident depends, in large part, on where you live. A few states follow a contributory negligence system, but most follow a comparative negligence system. Here’s a primer on these two defenses and how they work. Comparative Negligence: A “Partial” Defense The comparative negligence system allocates fault between the parties. Under the comparative negligence system, adopted by most states, a defendant can raise a partial defense, saying that the plaintiff was partially at fault for the accident too. Here’s an example of how this works. Say that Dan is making a left turn and hits Ann who is driving over the speed limit through the intersection. Ann sustains injuries and sues Dan for negligence. Under a comparative negligence system, Dan may be found to be 80% at fault for hitting someone while making a left turn and Ann may be found to be 20% at fault because she was speeding. If the total available compensation is $100,000, Ann will receive $80,000 instead of the total amount — her amount is reduced according to her degree of fault (20%). Different states have different comparative negligence rules. Comparative negligence rules differ from state to state. Many have adopted some form of the two rules described below. Some states have their own unique rules. - Pure comparative negligence. In “pure” comparative negligence regimes, accident victims can recover some compensation for their injuries even if they were quite negligent in their own driving or their degree of fault is higher than the defendant’s degree of fault. - Modified comparative negligence. In “modified” comparative negligence states, an accident victim’s recovery is limited if the victim’s fault exceeds a certain degree. For example, in some states an accident victim can only recover damages if his or her fault is less than that of the defendant — that is, the accident victim must be less than 50% responsible for the accident in order to recover. This is called the “equal to or greater than” rule. Other state systems follow a “slight/gross” rule which requires the plaintiff’s contributory negligence to be only slight in order for them to recover. If you are being sued in a car accident case and live in one of the few states that still use the contributory negligence system (Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.), you may be able to avoid liability entirely if you can show that the accident victim’s own negligence contributed to the car accident. The doctrine of contributory negligence essentially bars an accident victim from recovering any compensation if the defendant can prove that the plaintiff acted negligently and contributed to the accident in any way. The contributory negligence doctrine leads to harsh results because it denies compensation to accident victims even if their degree of fault is slight. As a result, only a few states still follow this regime. Establishing the Accident Victim’s Negligence In order to successfully establish contributory or comparative negligence, a defendant must prove that the plaintiff, through the plaintiff’s own negligence, contributed to the accident to some degree. But what does it mean to say that the accident victim was negligent? Every person using the road — pedestrian, motorist, and car passenger — is required to use reasonable care to protect his or her own safety as well as the safety of others. If a car accident victim fails to protect his or her own safety and the safety of others, he or she is being negligent and will be considered partly at fault for his or her own injuries. Examples of plaintiff conduct that might be considered “negligent” include: - speeding while driving another car involved in the accident - making sudden or unexpected movements as a pedestrian (depending on the circumstances) - riding with a driver that plaintiff knows is drunk, reckless, or sleepy - riding in a car that plaintiff knows is defective (for example, - riding in a car that is without lights or has a flat tire), and - interfering with the driver’s operation of the car. Plaintiff’s Negligence Must Contribute to the Accident A defendant has to show that the plaintiff’s negligence contributed to the accident. If the plaintiff’s behavior made his or her injuries worse, but didn’t actually cause the accident, the defendant is out of luck. For example, if Dan raises the defense of contributory negligence against Ann, the pedestrian who unexpectedly darted into the road, he has to establish that her behavior — darting into the road — played a part in causing the accident and her injuries. Dealing with defenses and the allocation of fault in car accident cases can be complicated and may require the assistance of an attorney. Contact the office of Ankin Law at (312) 600-0000.
Another Smart Move What is Another Smart Move? “Another Smart Move” was created to promote the importance of lifelong learning in our communities. It demonstrates the relationship of higher education and skill to a higher standard of living. - A high school diploma is no longer sufficient in the economy of the 21st century - Ongoing skills, training, and education enhancement are realities of job security and success - In business, having a skilled and efficient workforce is critical to maintaining a competitive edge - Our website will provide resources to assist employees and employers The ultimate goal of “Another Smart Move” is for the phrase to become synonymous with the importance and value of education, training, and character development in St. Joseph and Northwest Missouri. This program is a result of a partnership of the United Way of Greater St. Joseph, the St. Joseph School District, the Northwest Workforce Investment Board, Missouri Western State University, and the St. Joseph Area Chamber of Commerce.
Submitted by Carol Yarbrough, A+ College Ready’s Computer Science Specialist During the first week of December over 600 Alabama teachers and thousands of K-12 students celebrated Computer Science Education Week by participating in the Hour of Code. This has become a yearly event for many Alabama schools. Every student in my school has taken part in the Hour of Code for the last several years. It is always a fun event for the students and teachers alike. Students write computer code to solve puzzles, create art and make games. They can do all of this in one class period, but many of them enjoy it so much that they go home and code some more. Every year students who have never taken computer science classes tell me how much they enjoy the event and would like to take a computer science course. With the conclusion of the Hour of Code, now is a great time to reflect on how far Alabama has come in computer science education. When I became a high school computer science teacher, there were only a handful of schools in the state that were teaching computer science. Now, nine years later, we have over 75 teachers offering computer science at a high school level. This is primarily due to schools offering the new AP Computer Science Principles course. AP CS Principles is a wonderful course that gives students a chance to learn about many aspects of computer science, including Big Data, the Internet and implementing algorithms in a programming language, all with a strong focus on creativity. Over the last couple of weekends, A+ College Ready offered Student Study Sessions to every AP CS Principles student in the state to help prepare them for success in the first offering of the AP CS Principles exam in May of 2017. Students were engaged in activities focused on algorithms, innovations and navigating a “robot” through a grid. We have come a long way, especially at the high school level, but we are just beginning our journey. Leaders in higher education, industry, and K-12 education are working to bring Computer Science education to all Alabama students from kindergarten to 12th grade. It is truly an exciting time for computer science education. Alabama is making great progress towards offering the opportunity to learn basic, foundational 21st-century skills to all of our students. It’s great to see more students in Alabama going beyond the Hour of Code and learning computer science. Carol Yarbrough is a high school Computer Science teacher at the Alabama School of Fine Arts. She is a graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology. She decided to become an educator due to her desire to “do something that matters.”
is based on identification of the target plants, then removing the plant by the most appropriate method of control determined by a certified weed control specialist. Options include mechanical, chemical or biological control. Assistance with plant identification and control can be obtained through your local County Cooperative Extension office, or through the The Weed Research and located at U.C. Davis (listed below). The publication, "Aquatic weed control: Obtaining assistance" can assist you in coordinating these activities. Use the UCD contact listed below in place of the contact listed in the publication. An updated publication is being Conte, F.S. 1995. control: Obtaining assistance. U.C. Davis Animal Science Aquaculture Pub. ASAQ C01. pp. Please note that the regulations concerning sterile Grasscarp use in California have changed since ASAQ C01 was printed. Sterile Grasscarp are now allowed in certain areas of northern California. Please refer to Anon. 1998 listed below for current information on sterile Imperial irrigation district fact sheets: Aquatic weed control and sterile grass carp. Aquatic Weed Specialist: Also, visit the UCD WEED RESEARCH & Dr. Joseph M. Weed Specialist & Director: Weed Research and 160 Robbins Hall 1 Shields Ave. University of California Davis Davis, CA 95616
Bishops offer encouragement on anniversary of civil rights march Aug. 14, 2013 Half a century after the famous civil rights march in Washington, D.C., significant progress towards justice has been made, but some goals remain unmet, said a group of U.S. bishops. “While we cannot deny the change that has taken place, there remains much to be accomplished,” said members of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Cultural Diversity in the Church. In a statement marking the 50th anniversary of the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which occurred Aug. 28, 1963, the bishops reflected on the history of African Americans and other minority racial groups in the U.S. “The March on Washington and the struggle for Civil Rights have brought about significant accomplishments in the past 50 years,” they said, pointing to advancements in opportunity and legal protection, as well as greater racial and cultural diversity among leaders in the public and private sectors. “However, the Dream of Dr. King and all who marched and worked with him has not yet fully become a reality for many in our country,” they continued. The Aug. 13 statement was authored by Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville, Texas; Auxiliary Bishop Shelton J. Fabre of New Orleans; Bishop Gerald Barnes and Auxiliary Bishop Rutilio Del Riego of San Bernardino, Calif.; Bishop Randolph Calvo of Reno; and Archbishop Charles J. Chaput O.F.M. Cap, of Philadelphia. The authors echoed the words of the U.S. bishops’ 1979 Pastoral Letter on Racism, which stressed the continued need for a “fundamental change” of culture rather than an indifferent “acceptance of the status quo.” They also referenced the African American bishops’ 1984 Pastoral Letter on Evangelization, which noted that “the cause of justice and social concerns are an essential part of evangelization.” These concerns are still relevant today, the bishops observed, stressing that Catholics “must never allow other issues to eclipse our belief in the fundamental human dignity of each and every person.” At the historic march 50 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous “I Have A Dream” speech, the bishops noted, describing the address as one “which redirected the moral compass of the nation toward concern for the cause of justice” for the marginalized and forgotten in society. They also commented on the participation of numerous religious, civic and community leaders – including many Catholics – in the civil rights movement. “Those who participated in the March on Washington came from different races and faith denominations, but were all united for a just cause,” they reflected. Source: Catholic News Agency Other international News OSWALD CARDINAL GRACIAS, ARCHBISHOP OF BOMBAY APPOINTED TO ROMAN ROTA “The Holy Father has granted the title of Lawyer of the Roman Rota to Cardinal Oswald Graci... Feb. 21, 2017 New Apostolic Nuncio for India and Nepal His Holiness Pope Francis has appointed His Excellency most reverend GIAMBATTISTA DIQUATTRO as th... Jan. 22, 2017 All invited for Cardinal Fernandez’s celebration A thanksgiving Mass, to celebrate the elevation of His Eminence Cardinal Anthony Soter Fernandez,... Dec. 20, 2016 THE ELEVENTH PLENARY ASSEMBLY OF THE FEDERATION OF ASIAN BISHOPS’ CONFERENCE Taize prayer nourished Asian Bishops’ meetAn ecumenical form of worship, Taize has become a... Dec. 5, 2016 Asian Bishops urged to aid families face modern threats The assembly began with the bishops listening to Pope Francis’ special envoy urging them to... Dec. 2, 2016
The main idea of this project was to re-envision an abandoned part of our city into something the surrounding community could enjoy. Taylor Yard is an abandoned rail yard in Los Angeles CA. Bordered by the LA River, a recently added community park and residential property. By taking the existing infrastructure and its surroundings, the intent was to bring as all of the transportation methods that intersected with the site in order to create a common point. This common point would unite the pedestrian and bike paths that run along the river canal, the adjacent freeways, and the Metro-Link. Status: School Project Location: Los Angeles, CA, US My Role: Desiger Additional Credits: Programs used: Sketchup, Vray for Sketchup, AutoCad, Rhino 4.0; Grasshopper, Photoshop CS5
Hub drivers face continent’s 19th worst gridlock LA most congested, TomTom study finds The next time you find yourself gridlocked in downtown Boston, watching a distant traffic light cycle from red to green and back to red, you can cheer yourself with this thought: There are 18 cities in North America where the traffic is worse than it is here. According to TomTom, a manufacturer of GPS navigation devices, Boston is the 19th most congested city in North America, behind such cities as Vancouver and Miami. The company’s Congestion Index report for the first quarter of the year, which surveyed 26 North American cities, found the absolute worst traffic is in Los Angeles. On average, Boston commutes take 16 percent longer than they would if traffic were flowing freely — like in the middle of the night. In the evening rush, however, Boston commutes take 35 percent more time than they do when everything is moving well, according to the TomTom report. By comparison, Los Angeles commutes take an average of 33 percent longer than they would in free-flowing traffic and a whopping 77 percent longer during evening rush hour. Boston commuters face an average delay of 19 minutes per driving hour. Local drivers with 30-minute commutes were delayed 55 hours a year, according to the report. Tuesday mornings and Friday evenings were the most congested times to travel; the best times to travel were Friday mornings and Monday evenings. Boston had more congestion on nonhighways than it did on highways, according to TomTom. If it’s any consolation, congestion is improving in Boston. For the first three months of 2011, the city was ranked 14th worst in North America; this year, it was newly surpassed by Dallas-Fort Worth, Chicago, San Diego, and Houston. Nick Cohn, head of congestion research at TomTom, attributed the drop to the mild winter. “There were several blizzards in early 2011 and it was significantly colder last year, both of which are factors that can impact traffic significantly,” he said. TomTom, which is based in Amsterdam but has its North American headquarters in Concord, compiled the report from real-time travel data captured by its devices in vehicles driving along the entire road network within the selected cities. Since 2004, TomTom has sold 60 million navigation devices around the world. INRIX, Inc., a Kirkland, Wash., company that monitors traffic congestion, lists Boston as the 11th most congested in the United States in the past year. That result is not far from the conclusions of the TomTom report, which lists five Canadian cities as having heavier traffic congestion than Boston does. Thomas J. Tinlin, commissioner of the Boston Transportation Department, was encouraged by the city’s slide from 14 to 19 in TomTom’s survey. “This is one of those rare cases where we’re happy to tumble in the rankings,” he said. “Traffic is one the top issues that we deal with on a day-to-day basis, and we take it very seriously.” Earlier this year, six engineers from IBM Corp. spent three weeks in Boston’s City Hall as part of a company program to help cities better manage their data challenges. The team helped the city build a prototype software application that collects data from city computers, street video cameras, road sensors, and databases to create a real-time picture of Boston’s traffic. In some respects, congestion is a good problem to have, according to Tinlin. “Let’s face it,” he said. “The reason you can drive right through some cities is because there’s no reason to be there.” D.C. Denison can be reached at email@example.com.
< context > \|Creative solutions for cramped spaces\| Fast forward a year. We have content from a half dozen content creators teaching math, science, and art history. We've added the concept of a topic tree to organize the content that any developer can edit, and a conceptually simple versioning system: edits are made to an "editing" copy of the tree, and when the version is published, a full copy of it is made that becomes the new editing version. All runtime code instantly switches to using the newly "live" version via a global setting. The system works fairly well, and we are able to build new functionality on top of it: topic pages, power mode for exercises in a topic, and tutorial navigation. HipChat room was set up to coordinate publishes. As the number of topics in the topic tree grew, publish times ballooned to an unreasonable 45 minutes (owing partly to the need to duplicate all the topic entities and update their child keys), during which time no editing could happen. Rolling content back was a difficult, manual process. Furthermore, many errors were caught only at publish time, allowing one author’s simple oversight to block others from getting their changes out. < solution > When looking at various CMS storage and versioning designs, I tried to keep the primary user in mind. Since the infrastructure should always be invisible to content creators, the primary users are in fact the developers who are building features on top of it. When it comes to versioning and deployment, developers are used to code versioning systems, so I opted to start with a design based entirely on Git, a popular distributed revision control system. In the context of content management on App Engine, the Git model has distinct advantages: - Git's storage model is basically a key value store, with the SHA-1 hash of the data as the key. This maps really well to App Engine's datastore API. - Git stores references to a snapshot of each object on each commit, so we never have to apply a diff or walk the history to see how something looked at a given point in time, but the hash-based reference structure mean we don't have to duplicate objects that haven't changed between commits. - Using hashes as keys means that changes made on one machine can be easily merged with changes from another, which is critical in a distributed environment. For instance, adding a new object generates a random key that cannot collide with any other new object. - By design, it is easy to pull and merge changes between copies of the repository. This makes operations such as syncing a development copy of the site with production as easy as copying over any new keys and setting the head commit pointer. - Also by design, calculating a diff between any two commits is easy - just compare hashes for each object. This means that publish can incrementally update only objects that have changed, speeding up the process considerably. This works equally well for rolling back to an earlier version. - The Git content storage filesystem model is really simple to understand and implement. I didn't copy Git's design wholesale, nor did I actually expose a Git-compatible API (although it would be really cool to someday be able to check out our content as a repository; it would give us access to a whole bunch of useful tools). However I did find that having a fully working design to crib from made implementation much easier and helped me explain the inner workings to other developers. So far I've been very happy with the way this system has functioned. It is flexible, so we can implement various versioning or permissions schemes on top of it. Different content types use this system in slightly different ways, and that’s fine. Building helpful tools such as diff viewers and remote syncing on top of this infrastructure is really easy, and we could get as fancy as we want to support branching & merging, pull requests from third parties, etc. Most importantly, developers other than me can jump in and create their own versioned entities without a lot of help from me, and get their code working in a very short time, eliminating a dependency on me when implementing new features. This new architecture also enabled me to reach the goal I had set for myself: publishes now complete in about a minute. This has had a profound impact on how it feels to author content for the site. If you’re curious about the details of the implementation, I will go into sordid detail in a companion blog post.
Saturday, March 1, 2008 For February, to celebrate Black History Month in the United States, I decided to ask, “Which of the following African-American artists is your favorite?” : Romare Bearden and Kara Walker tied for the top spot with 7 votes each. William H. Johnson and Henry Ossawa Tanner tied for second with 4 votes each. Aaron Douglas, Horace Pippin, and Martin Puryear all garnered 3 votes. Jacob Lawrence scored 2 tallies. Beauford Delaney and Kehinde Wiley brought up the rear with 1 vote each. For March, to celebrate Women’s History Month in the United States, I decided to ask, “Which of the following women artists is your favorite?”: I must stress that cutting this list down to just my ten favorite was really, really hard. Rosa Bonheur, Louise Bourgeois, Lee Miller, Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker, and Pan Yuliang just failed to make the list. The longer I thought about it, the more names I came up with until I just decided to go with my first instincts. If I’ve left the name of your favorite off, it’s not out of malice but simply my own honest ignorance. Please feel free to point out any omissions in the comments. Women artists have been on my mind a lot recently, especially with the Cecilia Beaux exhibition at the PAFA and the Frida Kahlo and Lee Miller exhibitions at the PMA all currently running in Philadelphia, making it one of the hottest places in America to celebrate great women artists. (A photo of Kahlo in her studio appears above.) I just recently got an iTouch with video podcast capability and enjoyed MoMA video podcasts of lectures from last year by Linda Nochlin and Griselda Pollock as part of a conference on "Feminism and Art." Nochlin’s lecture especially attuned me to the special problems of feminism and art and opened my eyes to the possibilities of “feminism” in the art of men. I’m not sure that I’ll ever earn the title of “male feminist,” but I hope that I’ve reigned in my inner caveman enough to give the wonderful ladies of art history credit where it is so sorely due. [BTW, if you’re interested in a crash course in the history of women’s art, Whitney Chadwick’s Women, Art, and Society is a good place to start. For a caustic, irreverent history of women’s art and its continuing struggle to find a place in the art world, read The Guerilla Girls’ Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. Another podcast in the same series as Nochlin and Pollock’s speeches featured two of the founding Guerilla Girls, who go by “Frida Kahlo” and “Kathe Kollwitz,” give an angrily entertaining illustrated lecture on the history of the Guerilla Girls and their struggle, which, ironically, began with a protest at the MoMA. Seeing those two women speak both eruditely and hilariously from beneath gorilla masks is why video podcasts were made.]
Epic (Narrative) Poetry Is epic a mode, genre, or what have you, that poets work with anymore? If so, I would love to hear about it and maybe gather some examples. I am having trouble finding anything. If not, then why not? Is there something inherent in the ambition of epic that makes it suspect? It occurs to me that the question that underlies this question is a more urgent question, and solving that one would also solve this one. I would say, therefore, that the real question about whether epic is possible in poetry anymore is entirely dependent on whether one believes that narrative, especially long-form narrative, is possible anymore in poetry. Since Browning and his generation of epic narrative poets, since the Modernists, a great deal of poetry, even the confessional lyric, has been anti-narrative, and therefore non-epic by deafult. (Even most Modernist poems on the grand scale, such as Pound's Cantos do not qualify as epic, individually, because they are fragmentary, not sustained; nor are they single narratives. His state goal was for the entire tribe to speak through the overall, unfinished poem.) Similarly, because of the accelerated pace of modern life, with all its clamor for attention, the incresingly short attention span of the reader who wishes to be passively entertained is also a factor. Epic requires concentration and duration of attention, so you have to ask yourself if your reading audience is even up to that. (For example, what's the overlap between the populations that have read all the Harry Potter books and those that have only watched the movie versions?) The only poems in recent memory I can think of that might qualify as epic are ones like Vikram Seth's book-length Golden Gate, described as "a novel in sonnet form." Another example is Craig Raine's History: The Home Movie, a "novel in verse." What's interesting here is the conflation of the novel form—a prose narrative form, which is the dominant form of fiction published in the last several decades—with the book-length poem. I note that the word "epic" is not used, whereas the word "novel" is. Is this because the general reader is more likely to pick up and read a novel than a poem? Does it rely on the general readers' interest in fiction over poetry? (When's the last time a book of poetry was on the best-seller list? For that matter, how often do books of short stories make the list? The novel is king, clearly.) Is this purely a marketing tactic, a label that's designed to sell more books? I wish that could be ruled out, but I don't think it can. Epic poems are still being written—Frederick Turner's Genesis, Harry Martinson's Aniara, Robert Penn Warren's Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, Robinson Jeffers' The Double Axe, to name a random sampling—but they are not being well-read. Not even the average reader of poetry reads them. The short-form poem has become the dominant mode in poetry's mainstream, just as has the confessional-lyric poem. One feels at times that even poets don't read such longer works, except out of a sense of professional obligation. Even most poets seem to think that "epics" are poems of the past—in many cases, about the past. Even most of the long poems of the Victorians that reach epic length, be they verse drama, or narrative poem, are set in the classical past of ancient Greece and Rome, or the more recent past of the Renaissance and Middle Ages. (I am thinking of Browning, Arnold, Shelley, and Tennyson, primarily.) Anthropologist and linguist Alfred Lord wrote his most influential book, The Singer of Tales, to demonstrate that epic poetry, performed by a bard accompanying himself or herself on a musical instrument (lyre, harp, lute, etc.) is a sung or chanted genre of performance. Formulaic phrases and imagery are used to fill out the line; and alos to give the singer time to remember the next event in the plot. By comparitive textual analysis between epics sung in indigenous cultures throughout Europe and Central Asia, Lord and his contemporaries effectively proved that the Homeric epics were also sung performances. There are the stock phrases and imagery, the descriptive passages that pause the action, and much more: all the elements of performed epic poetry, as described by Alfred Lord, are there. The same sorts of textual analyses have been effectively applied to the Anglo-Saxon and Olde Englisch poems still surviving, such as Beowulf or The Pearl. Even if these texts were later written down, they retain earmarks of their sung or recited pasts; and the more recent texts in the same style, even if they were written first, contain the tropes and patterns of sung formal poetry. The big difference between these historical sung epics and contemporary poetry is that contemporary is not a performance art. it is poetry that has moved away from song—has usually self-consciously divorced itself from song, popular or otherwise, and now declares itself to be a "pure" artform. There is also the issue of technology, in that sung or recited epics were an evening's entertainment; nowadays, we have movies, TV, and other media that fulfill similar functions. How many readers nowadays sit down of an evening's entertainment with a long book, and read it aloud to a room full of listeners? Do such venues still exist? (I discount poetry readings from this category, since most of these at this time are about reading a variety of short poems to an audience, usually of other poets, rather than a single long poem. Issues of ego-display are also relevant, but I'll save that discussion for another day.) So, is the epic poem dead? No, not really. There will always be poets who seek to paint across a very large canvas: poetry of large scale and scope. But the question of its viabilitiy as a poetic form that connects to the reader remains a good question.
MANCHESTER — The town is seeking a state grant to pay half of the approximately $200,0000 cost of repairing and painting the exterior of the Fire Museum on Pine Street. The board of directors voted Tuesday to pursue state historic preservation funds for the stablization and repainting of the retired fire house. The town-owned museum is leased to the Connecticut Firemen's Historical Society and houses an extensive collection of old fire apparatus and gear. Problems with the exterior of the 1901, wood-sided building are obvious. "There is frequent failure of the painted surface as evidenced by extensive peeling," Public Works Director Mark Carlino wrote in a recent memo to the board of directors. The failing paint has contributed to deterioration of the underlying structure, Carlino wrote. The town engaged CME Architecture for a solution that would stabilize and preserve as much of the historic exterior as possible. "The town was interested not only in the estimated costs for the initial treatment, but the estimated life cycle cost over 50 years to maintain the paint," Carlino wrote. The proposed project would retain most of the original wood siding, replace unsalvageable material and remove all lead paint. The museum is in the Cheney Brothers National Historic Landmark District, and the plan meets federal standards for rehabilitation of historic properties, Carlino wrote. The total estimated cost is $201,300. Repairs to the building in the past several years included a roof replacement in 1999 and window replacement in 2009. The fire museum is open on Fridays and Saturdays from noon to 4 p.m. For more information, visit http://www.thefiremuseum.org.
Siri, a voice-activated assistant program, on the Apple iPhone 4S. (Los Angeles Times ) Your iPhone has been brainwashed, reprogrammed even. Apple is putting words in Siri's mouth. That seems to be what a Nokia spokeswoman has said about Siri's response on which smartphone is tops. Apple offers Siri up as an intelligent assistant, "but clearly if they don't like the answer, they override the software," said Nokia spokeswoman Tracy Postill, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Last week, a video and post made the rounds showing how Siri pointed to Nokia's Lumia 900 when asked about the top phone. When we asked her highness the same question on Friday, she became rather irked that we would deign to even suggest any phone but she was superior. Her replies to our query went from "the one in your hand" to "You're kidding, right?" (If she were actually human, there might have been a neck roll, eye narrowing or lip pursing to accompany her answer -- but, trust me, it was implied in her semi-robotic tone. Everyone around me heard it.) To be fair (to Siri, I guess), in the video she never actually uttered the words "Lumia 900." Instead, after much thought, she said "I found this for you" and called up a Wolfram Alpha search results page, gleaned by sifting through reviews and comments. Amusingly enough, when you ask the Lumia 900 the same question via Bing, the first result, albeit paid, is iPhone 4S. Maybe we could chalk it up to mutual admiration. Apparently, we're all itching for a bare-knuckles smartphone skirmish because headlines across the Web are declaring "bias" and results "rigging" -- yes, and brainwashing. Our efforts for a response from Nokia are as yet unanswered. According to the BBC, Nokia officials said the earlier comments were "lighthearted" and "taken out of context," but that they were "flattered and honored" by the phone's answer in the video. As for this little cellphone dust-up, I can imagine Siri's response would mirror my own: "You're kidding, right?" Getting sound protection for Siri Siri says she's the fairest of them all Siri helps Zooey Deschanel identify rain Follow Michelle Maltais on Google+, Facebook or Twitter
The directors of several abortion clinics in Broward County have been stepping up security measures over the past year due to the wave of anti- abortion violence that has hit many such facilities nationwide. Local clinic directors expressed horror at the most recent Florida outbreak of violence, which occurred on Christmas Day, when three Pensacola abortion facilities were bombed. Two men and two women have been arrested in connection with the bombings. ``I think it`s horrible that this can happen. and that we all have to walk around in fear that it may happen again,`` said Melinda Marks, owner of Ladies First clinic in Pembroke Pines. Marks said she has strengthened security at her facility since it was hit by gunfire last spring. ``I`ve stepped up security ever since the 27 bullets came through our front door in June,`` she said. Joyce Tarnow, administrator and owner of the Women`s Clinic in Oakland Park, said she, too, has been increasing security measures. ``I have invested in a security system because of that imminent danger, not just because of the Pensacola bombing, but because of the upswing in incidents of bombing and arson the whole year,`` said Tarnow. Tarnow said she has installed an electronic early-warning system at her clinic to combat any attempts to break into the building. At the Aastra clinic in Fort Lauderdale, director Cindy Hagdorn said she has taken almost every precautionary measure. ``We have an alarm system,; we lock the building at nighttime,; we have someone in the building 24 hours a day,`` she said. Hagdorn said she too was upset when she heard of bombings. ``It`s scary. They`re getting a little too close for comfort. A little too close to home,`` she said. Destroying property and possibly other people`s lives is ridiculous. And that`s frightening.``
The world is full of wonders, from abandoned towns and deserted settlements to underwater cities and underground architecture. Humans burrow into the Earth out of anything from necessity to superstition, driven by coincidence or coerced by circumstance. Without further ado, here are seven more underground wonders of the world. Kapadokya, Turkey is home to hundreds of linked rooms that, together, form an ancient system of underground cities over 2,500 years old. Areas are separated by narrow corridors lit once lit by oil lamps as well as other architectural devices for maximizing the defensibility of the spaces. Settlement initially started on the surface, then slowly moved underground over time. Pembrokeshire, Wales is home to a family with a house straight out of The Hobbit. This amazing architectural wonder is created virtually completely from the natural materials found around the residence. The walls are made out of stone and mud and water enters the house by gravity from a nearby spring. Non-natural materials, such as windows and plumbing, were recovered from trash. Edinburgh, Scotland has a long and strange history, though perhaps the oddest story of all is the tale of a bridge that was buried underground. After this bridge was built, superstition following a prominent death led to its disuse. As property values in the area grew, however, people first built under and then even on top of the bridge. Eventually leaks forced the abandonment of the spaces below, which were subsequently filled in. They were recently rediscovered and opened for tourists! Tokyo, Japan is at the heart of a strange and gripping mystery involving seven riddles and a supposed secret underground city. It all began when Japanese researcher Shun Akiba found an old map of the Tokyo tunnel system that didn’t match current maps. Since then, he has found six other strange inconsistencies in historical maps and other records that suggest the existence hidden spaces. His claims have been vehemently denied by the Japanese government. Seattle, Washington’s Pioneer Square district has a very peculiar historical quirk: a century ago, they raised the streets by an entire floor. People actually died falling off of the street to the lower sidewalks below before they managed to raise the sidewalks to the same level. Eventually, what was street level became completely unused and abandoned, though it was recently reopened for visitors. Wieliczka, Poland sits atop one of the world’s oldest salt mines, in continuous operation for over 800 years until just this year. As these images show, the mine is now open to tourists, with winding paths and bridges as well as art, much of which is carved right out of the salt in the mine. Over 1,000 feet deep, the mine even housed an airplane factory run by the Polish resistance during the 2nd World War. Xi’an, China is now famous for featuring the Mausoleum of Qinshihua ng, the biggest imperial tomb known to Chinese history. This subterranean wonder was constructed in 38 years by 700,000 laborers, and is perhaps best known for the host of terracotta warriors buried with the Emporer. During the process numerous world-shocking relics were brought out, but this is just the tip of the iceberg, and more treasures remain buried in the underground palace. 7 Comments to “7 Underground Wonders of the World” - Luxury Caravan with Mercedes SLK Inside - Mind Control - 18 Of The Best Places To Swim With Sharks - 7 Of The Most Stunning Castles In Europe And Beyond - England countryside - Are Cheap Web Hosting Services Worth the Price? - The Amazing World of Pigeons - Welcome Spring with Crocus Flowers - Essential Skills For The Future - Make Some Brand-New Good Old Days: Living Your Youth Again - Arts and Design - Featured Articles - People and Society
Is it Islamically correct to say,"Happy Birthday!" On someone's date of birth? I have noticed many people write such terms on their status message on multiple social networking sites! I have also noticed many people put their nieces or nephews or worse their own photos as display pictures, especially females, is this permissible? If it's not then how can I tactfully tell them so? Please advise! I would appreciate it, if there is a detailed answer to both these questions (if there are any ahaadith or quranic aayaat related to both questions) as it will help me explain my reasons to these people! In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. As-salāmu ‘alaykum wa-rahmatullāhi wa-barakātuh. There is no doubt that social networking sites have become an important part of people's lives. This is evidenced from the millions of users that are part of these online communities. While social networking sites can be used for good and/or permissible works such as dawah, business promotions, and breaking news - they are more often than not used for impermissible purposes such as intermingling, browsing photos, chatting, and online relationships. As a result, only a minority refrain themselves from getting involved in impermissible uses of social networking. In addition to the above impermissible uses, there are other serious harms of social networking sites - as you have correctly mentioned in your inquiry – such as the following: Using status messages for impermissible things: An enormous amount of time is wasted by users in reading the status messages of their friends. In addition, revealing information about one's personal activities allows others to make obscene comments, cyberstalk and spy on you. A number of documented incidents as noted later in this article prove that such harassment is increasing at an alarming rate on social networking sites. What is the point of updating your status – when there are so many inherent risks to your person and reputation in doing so? Posting photos on social networking sites: Many users add photos of themselves as icons and also upload and share photos of themselves while going about their day, or events they attend and so on. The position of the Darul Iftaa is that it is not permissible to have digital photos of yourself, male or female on such sites. Previously issued rulings may be accessed at the following links: http://askimam.org/public/question_detail/18753 and http://askimam.org/public/question_detail/17578 This impermissibility of photos is further exacerbated when they include pictures of women due to numerous negatives: a.) It allows mischievous people the ability to anonymously write obscene comments, cyber-stalk, and harass women. This is not hearsay or a mere conjecture. There have been a number of incidents where obscene comments have even driven some young women to take their own lives as well. [iii] b.) According to numerous references, these photos are also photoshopped and modified to put them in embarrassing and compromising situations. [iv] [v] Would any decent person, male or female, want such pictures of them circulating online? c.) The increasing prevalence of such online harassment has led to laws by even secular governments to punish such behavior. An example of this is the law in India, governed by the Information Technology Act, Section 67 which prohibits and punishes such actions. [vi] d.) In fact, one book mentions a 17 year old Muslim girl who wears hijab, had her and her sister's photo taken from her page and put on naked bodies in an effort to ridicule and harass her. [vii] It is clear from the evidence cited above that in addition to being impermissible, it is not in the best interest of anyone to post their photos online. It is inconceivable that anyone, much less a Muslim, would want their photos to be cropped, photoshopped and displayed in obscene ways or ridiculed. And Allah Ta’āla Knows Best Sohail ibn Arif, Student Darul Iftaa Checked and Approved by, Mufti Ebrahim Desai. من عملَ عملا ليسَ عليهِ أمرُنا فهو ردّ [i] صحيح مسلم، الرقم: ١٧١٨ من تشبه بقوم فهو منهم [ii] سنن أبي داود، الرقم: ٤٠٣١ [iii] Hindustan Times, (September 2nd, 2012) [v] Hile, Lorie. Bullying (Teen Issues). (Heinemann-Raintree, 2012), pg. 15 [vi] Shariff, Shaheen. Cyber-Bullying: Issues and Solutions for the School, the Classroom and the Home. (Routledge, 2008), pg. 64
If a person is thirsty, and has a false belief that a glass is filled with clean water, does he have a reason to drink from the glass? My answer is, "Obviously not. The agent has a false beliefs that he has reason to drink from the glass." This seems to be an item of contention among philosophers, and I am trying to figure out why. Bernard Williams discusses this in his highly influential article on internal and external reasons (Williams, B., 1979. “Internal and External Reasons,” reprinted in Moral Luck, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, 101–13). He began with: A has a reason to φ iff A has some desire the satisfaction of which will be served by his φ-ing He then replaced 'desires' with 'elements of an agent's subjective motivational set S' for reasons to be discussed in a future post. He then wrote: An internal reason statement is falsified by the absence of some appropriate element from S.That is to say, if it is not the case that A has an element in his motivational set that is served by his φ-ing, then he has no (internal) reason to φ. Williams then discusses a potential objection to this based on the problem of false belief. The example he uses is very similar to the example I often used and mentioned above. I will not put it beyond the realm of possibility that I picked up this example by reading Williams’ article several years ago and forgetting about it. Anyway, in Williams example: The agent believes that this stuff is gin, when it is in fact petrol. He wants a gin and tonic. Has he reason, or a reason, to mix this stuff with tonic and drink it? Answer: No. He falsely believes that he has a reason to mix this stuff with tonic. He does not actually have a reason to do so. Williams wants to suggest that there is a problem with this answer. The problem comes from the fact that we still explain the agent’s action in terms of desires (or ‘elements of an agent’s subjective motivational set’) and beliefs. The only difference is that a belief is false. However, that does not alter the nature of the explanation. The difference between false and true beliefs on an agent’s part cannot alter the form of the explanation which will be appropriate to his actions. This is true. However, we still need to distinguish between a successful action – one that reaches its goal – and one that does not. When an airplane crashes, investigators use the same terms to explain the crash that they use for a successful flight - such things as altitude, air speed, thrust, lift, and drag. This gives us no reason to bury the fact that the airplane crashed and to write about the event as if it were a successful flight. It still crashed. In the case where the agent drinks the petrol, we need to talk about the act as an intentional act - one that came from the agent's beliefs and desires. However, one of the most important facts about this intentional action was its failure. The cause of that failure is false belief. We mark it as a failed act and explain the failure by saying that the agent did not have the reason to mix the stuff with the tonic that he thought he had. I predict that blurring the distinction between successful and unsuccessful actions – what the agent was aiming at, and what the agent actually got – what the agent actually had reason to do, and what the agent falsely believed he had reason to do. Williams comes to the same conclusion. Consequently, he writes: A member of S, D, will not give A a reason for φ-ing if either the existence of D is dependent on false belief, or A’s belief in the relevance of φ-ing is false.
On Power Talk with Lorraine Jacques- White today we had an amazing show, in remembrance to 9/11 we dedicated our show to the victims on The 12th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks. Therefore to move forward, change and build the mind set of today’s generation; The CNN reporter Don Lemon had a controversial statement that grabbed our audiences attention, he has a new found perspective on “The New Black Leaders” of today. Who are America’s black leaders? Not the activists, or entrepreneurs, community mobilizers or preachers. According to Don Lemon, the new black leaders are the Waka Flocka’s, Rihanna’s and Beyonce’s of the world. He insisted that the burden of leadership in the community has shifted. Lemon strongly believes if Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, Lemon says King would likely align with the present-day entertainers because of their influence on the black community. “Why am I so sure about that? I want you to ask yourself the last time you heard a young person walking around singing a church hymn?” “So that’s why in my work as a journalist, I constantly challenge and urge the rap, hip-hop and music power brokers to step on to the stage of positive influence and into the fulfillment of Dr. King’s dream, because whether they realize it or not they are the new breed, they are the new black leaders. They are the influences of our time. And I don’t mean that I challenge them in a negative way. I mean that in the best possible way, that their names can too be one day be worthy of boulevards, and avenues, and streets. Yep, you Waka Flocka, Gucci Mane, you T.I., Luda can be the next Harry Belafonte of the struggle. Beyoncé, Rihanna, you can be the next Lena Horne or Mahalia Jackson; of course, in your own way.” Lemon addresses the controversial statements. According to our Powertalk audience they had mix feeling about Lemon’s statement. Take A Listen To The Show
Yemen is the second largest country in the peninsula, occupying 527,970 km2 (203,850 sq mi). Yemen's territory includes more than 200 islands; the largest of these is Socotra. Several dynasties emerged from the 9th to 16th century, the Rasulid being the strongest and most prosperous. The informal political settlement was held together by a power-sharing deal between three men: president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who controlled the state; major general Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, who controlled the largest share of the army; and sheikh Abdullah al-Ahmar, figurehead of the Islamist Islah party and Saudi Arabia's chosen broker of transnational patronage payments to various political players, including tribal sheikhs. The United States considers Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to be the "most dangerous of all the franchises of Al-Qaeda". Most of Yemen's political factions and the international community have refused to recognise the Houthis' authority, and UN-brokered talks on a power-sharing deal are ongoing. Although Yemen's constitutionally stated capital is the city of Sana'a, the city has been under rebel control since February 2015. - Yemen has largest boundary with Saudi Arabia which is approximately 1458 km. - Yemen has shortest boundary with Oman which is approximately 288 km. - The largest export partner of Yemen is China. - The largest import partner of Yemen is EU. - There are 12 seaports in Yemen. Surprising facts about Nobel Prize winners# - Yemen has only 1 Nobel Prize winner Tawakkol Karman. (Counting winners if born in Yemen) - The first Yemen born Nobel Prize winner got this award quite late, 110 years after first Nobel Prize was awarded in 1901. - Tawakkol Karman is a Yemen born Nobel Prize winner who got the Nobel Prize quite early, at the age of 32 years. Tourist Attraction#The mountain valley city of Sana'a has been occupied for some 2,500 years. - Arabian Coffee is the national flower of Yemen. - The famous dance of Yemen is Al-Bar'ah. - The famous dishe of Yemen is Saltah. - Text marked as italic is taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemen unter CC
Boeing is set to begin detailed wind tunnel tests of its Crew Space Transportation (CST-100) spacecraft following a successful preliminary design review of the launch vehicle adapter structure. The CST-100 is designed to carry crews to the International Space Station as well as take space tourists to the Bigelow Aerospace orbital space complex, and could make its first test flight as early as 2016. Completion of the review marks a key milestone for Boeing, which is developing ... THIS CONTENT REQUIRES SUBSCRIPTION ACCESS You must have an Aviation Week Intelligence Network (AWIN) account or subscribe to this Market Briefing to access "Boeing Crew Capsule Review Clears Way For Wind Tunnel Testing". Current Aviation Week Intelligence Network (AWIN) enterprise and individual members: please go to http://awin.aviationweek.com for access. Not currently a subscriber? Click on the "Learn More" button below to view subscription offers.
\| No Kids in Class: The Daycare Dilemma\| By Brynne Mack Many times the motivation for adults to return to school is the well-being of their children. Children require extra food, clothes, space, educational materials, toys, and a myriad of other things that nothing but money can buy. You may have been fine on your own or with your spouse, but now things are tight with those extra mouths to feed. Returning to and completing school is the best way to improve your earning potential and financial situation. Unfortunately, that same motivation for your return to the halls of scholarship can be an enormous hindrance. Child care costs are no laughing matter, nor should those who raise concerns about them be dismissed as making excuses. Child care costs can easily reach as much as the equivalent of your monthly housing costs. On top of simply paying for child care in general, there is the issue of peace of mind. You want to be assured that your children are in good hands, but the higher the quality of the day care or after school program, the higher the costs. There is hope! In this case hope goes by the name of Child Care Assistance. Child Care Assistance is offered through state welfare agencies via Federal Child Care and Development Grants. If you are returning to school full-time, odds are you are operating your household on a single income or no income at all and should meet your state’s minimum income guidelines. To make sure you do, you can visit your state’s Department of Welfare website or call your local welfare office. How to Obtain Child Care Assistance In order to obtain Child Care Assistance, you will need to fill out an application with your state’s Department of Welfare. Many states offer this application online through their websites, but every physical welfare office has applications you can fill out in person. Before you go, it is wise to bring all necessary paperwork so that the process does not take any longer than it has to. Every state varies in its requirements, but if you prepare these documents odds are you will be set to go: pay stubs/proof of income for the past month, two forms of personal identification including a photo ID (or you can use a passport as this generally fulfills both requirements,) rental agreement or mortgage paperwork outlining how much you pay for housing each month, utility bills, landline phone bill, and proof that you either work or are enrolled in an academic/workforce training program. You will also need to provide evidence of your children including birth certificates and immunization records. Varying from state to state, Child Care Assistance is generally offered for children age 13 or younger, with the exception of disabled children who are eligible until the age of 18. Concerns about Quality of Care In order to receive Federal grants, the program that receives the money must be licensed with the state or run by a public school board. If this does not give you peace of mind, there are other resources out there that can help. Child Care Aware is a program within the National Association of Child Care Resources and Referral Agencies that helps parents understand what makes a good facility and program and how to locate one in their community. Their website can help you locate help at a local level. There are also several highly reputable national associations that certify child care or early education centers. One of them is Head Start. They have offices that serve local communities. These offices can direct you to a Head Start program in your area that meets their high standards. Your caseworker should be able to give you information about your local office. The National Association for the Education of Young Children (or NAEYC) certifies early education centers that service children ages eight and under. They are also highly reputable and are pioneering the field of early childhood education by defining professional standards and certifying higher education programs for those that study early childhood education. You should ask your child care center what certifications they have, if any, and take heed if NAEYC is one of them.
With the great success of Tom Brokaw's book, 'The Greatest Generation', it would seem that the public would have little interest in questioning the tenants of American Foreign Policy that have been in place for most of the last century. The thrust of most political discourse centers upon the role of government, its growth, influence and reach upon society. Few care to concern themselves about those foreign lands and those faceless protectors of American interests that serve their nation. That's the way its has been for decades. The obligation to serve is now the opportunity to earn. So what's the need to examine this matter? Foreign Policy has been the driving force that has change the face of America more than any policy or series of legislation that has become the law of the land. One must take to long view and place the events of the last hundred years, in the context of a Nation, that no longer resembles that vision of a Free Land, that was created only with the great suffering and sacrifices of our forefathers. They bequeath a legacy that never existed before. They fought for principles, and not for comfort. And they laid down their lives for the realization of the dream, the idea that man can live free and not be the slave to their own government. Sadly, that heritage has been betrayed; not just because of the bad intentions of the few, but mostly, out of the ignorance of the many. The record of the transformation of America into an all pervasive State is the chronicle of an imperial vision for power and control. American Foreign Policy was based upon the wisdom of Washington's Farewell Address. The defeat of the Confederacy during the War for the Right to Secede, set this nation upon a road to empire. The adventures of both Roosevelt's and Wilson set the stage for the society that we have become. The masters are no longer the people, but the people have been taught to think of themselves as serfs within their own land. So when Mr Brokaw's heroes fought for that which they were told was truth and had purpose, they were actually building and forging the shackles of their own chains. I knew my father but for a few years, but he made that journey onto the shores of Normandy. Did he risk his life and future in vain, or did his service help provide protection for this nation? Those who were there and have survived, will defend their most noble effort and duty. But are they correct in that view, or were they deceived by the voices of jingoism? I will let you answer that question for yourself. But as for me, I resent that my love for our Nation, needs to be judged in light of a willingness to inflict retribution upon a foe that threaten me less, than the one who gives the commands to kill a strange face. Did we not learn the lesson from Viet Nam that the welfare of America was not the same as the interests of the U.S. Government? And what benefit to the cause of Freedom was achieved, when the brute force comes from the harbor of that Liberty, and was used to expand its reach and domination? We no longer seek to protect ourselves and our shore. The objective has become, that Foreign Policy is fashioned to serve the interests of the Corporate/State and compel all others to comply to the rules of 'Pax America'. Is this the dream that you are willing to pledge your sacred honor? The notion that a countryman has a duty to serve his government is a malevolent perversion of the proper obligation a citizen has to his fellow man and the larger society. At the core of all civilized life is the moral requirement that each individual search their own soul, for that course of behavior that achieves the actions which creates the greatest good. Who among us will say that any of these wars have produced a better world? Will anyone still argue that the threats of any of the 'Totalitarian' regimes have the power and ability to conquer, police and rule all the nations in the world? Or is the real enemy that which seek to occupy the avenues of any nation, that which comes from the neighbor across your own street? The reach of the pervasive bureaucrat, will always enslave the docile citizen. He who ignores their real foe, will allow a plantation to grow up around them. Are you willing to bow to the overseer? Or are you willing to listen to that voice of conscience The nature of the struggle demands that any involvement in an effort to employ organized force, can only be validated when the defense of the homeland is at stake. The reason I invoke the claim of a conscience objector, is not out of fear to my physical safety, nor the risk to my own well being. Quite to the contrary, I advance the call that each civilian in the serve of the Republic, shall and must become an active recruit into the cause of Freedom. My argument against killing is based upon the moral sanctity of life. But each life, has the right to self defense. Selective choice is prudent and valid. It's the true duty of each citizen to use their reason and common sense to judge when they, their family and their community is at risk. And even more importantly, just who and where your enemy resides. A tear come to my eye just as much as any GI, when the sound of 'TAPS' is played, with respect and remembrance we all should have, for our fallen regiments. My plea is that they need not be struck down in vain, nor should the next generation be called upon to shed their blood, in the name of a cause that is hollow. For LIBERTY to exists, may require its defense. My pledge is to be in that army for its protection. Until the Foreign Policy of America is restored to preserve the Republic and the People of this great land, I will respectful decline to march with the cohorts of those who wish to enslave, those for whom; they have sworn to serve. SARTRE - December 14, 2000
Darius I Facts Darius I (522-486 B.C.), called "the Great," was a Persian king. A great conqueror and the chief organizer of the Persian Empire, he is best known for the unsuccessful attack on Greece which ended at Marathon. A member of a collateral branch of the Achaemenidian royal family, Darius apparently was not close to the throne when Cambyses died in 522 B.C. The story of Darius's accession is told most fully by the Greek Herodotus, whose version clearly reflects the official account set up by Darius's own order in the famous rock inscription at Behistun. According to Herodotus, Cambyses had had his brother Smerdis (Bardiya) executed, but while Cambyses was absent in Egypt, a Magian priest named Gaumata, trusting in a chance resemblance, put himself forward as Smerdis and seized the throne. Cambyses started back but died en route, and the false Smerdis was generally accepted. Darius, with the aid of a few who knew that Smerdis was dead, murdered Gaumata and in his own person restored the royal line. Organization of the Empire Though Darius was an excellent soldier and extended his empire east, north, and into Europe, he saw himself as an organizer and lawgiver rather than as a mere conqueror. Little of his work was startlingly original, but the blending of the old and new and the interlocked ordering of the whole gave his work importance. He divided the empire into 20 huge provinces called satrapies, each under a royally appointed governor called a satrap who had administrative, military, financial, and judicial control in his province. To check on such powerful subordinates, Darius also appointed the satrap's second-in-command, having him report to the King separately. Standing garrisons under commanders independent of the satrap were stationed strategically. However, since all these officials were more or less permanent, there remained the possibility that all three might conspire to plot revolt. Accordingly, a further set of royal officials—inspectors called the King's "eyes" or "ears"—were frequently sent out. Since in so huge an empire—it covered some 1 million square miles—there was always the problem of communication and transportation, Darius established a system of well-maintained all-weather roads and a royal courier system with posthouses and regular relays of horses and riders. The trip from Sardis in western Asia Minor to Susa in Persia normally took 3 months; a royal message could cover it in a week. Darius also regulated the tribute, hitherto collected irregularly as needed, on a fixed annual basis according to the wealth of each satrapy. Though hardly low, this tribute does not appear to have been burdensome. He also instituted the first official Persian coinage. Militarily the empire was organized on the satrap system, but the results were less happy. Aside from the resident garrisons and the royal bodyguard there was no standing army. At need, satraps involved were ordered to raise a quota of men and bring them, armed and ready, to an appointed assembly point. Inescapably, a Persian army was thus long on numbers but short on uniformity; each contingent was armed and trained in its local fashion and spoke its native tongue. Persian infantry was usually of very poor quality; the cavalry, provided by the Persians themselves, the Medes, and the eastern steppe dwellers, was generally quite good. The Persian fleet was levied in the same manner as the army, but since the Mediterranean maritime peoples all copied from each other, there was little problem of diversity. The fleet's weakness was that, being raised entirely from among subject peoples, it had no real loyalty. Darius, himself a firm supporter of Ahura Mazda, the Zoroastrian god, said in the Behistun inscription that Ahura Mazda "gave" him his kingdoms, and with him Zoroastrianism became something like the national religion of the Persians. For the empire, however, he continued Cyrus's policy of toleration of local cults, and this mildness became and remained, except perhaps under Xerxes, a distinctive feature of Persian rule. War with the Greeks Darius's first European campaign, about 513, was aimed not at Greece but north toward the Danube. Herodotus recorded that Darius intended to conquer the complete circuit of the Black Sea and that he was turned back north of the Danube by the native Scythians' scorched-earth policy. This may be, or it may be that Darius never intended any permanent conquest north of the Danube and that Herodotus turned a limited success into a grandiose failure in order to make all Persian operations in Europe at least partly unsuccessful. Darius did secure the approaches to Greece and the control of the grain route through the Bosporus. The next act in the Greco-Persian drama was the so-called lonian Revolt (499-494), an uprising against Persia of most of the Greeks of Asia Minor headed by the Ionians, and particularly by the city of Miletus. Though the revolt was put down by Darius's generals, its seriousness is indicated by its length and by the fact that the Ionians' appeal to the Greek homeland was answered, at least in part, by Athens and Eretria. Darius had to take the Greek matter seriously. Not only did he have the duty of avenging the burning of his city of Sardis during the revolt, but he must have become convinced that to ensure the quiet of his Greek subjects in Asia Minor he would have to extend his rule also over their brothers across the Aegean. After the collapse of the revolt, the attempt of Darius's son-in-law, Mandonius, to carry the war into Greece itself ended when the Persian fleet was wrecked in a storm off Mt. Athos (492). Battle of Marathon Perhaps Mardonius's ill-fated venture was really an attempt to conquer all Greece; the next effort certainly was not. Darius sent a naval expedition—he himself never set eyes on Greece—against only Athens and Eretria (490). The attack was perfectly well known to becoming, but the Greeks had their customary difficulties of cooperation, and Eretria, unsupported, fell and was burned in revenge for Sardis. Athens appealed to the Grecian states, but only 1,000 men from little Plataea reached Athens. The Persians landed on the small plain of Marathon northeast of Athens, and the Greeks took up station in easily defendable nearby hills out of reach of the Persian cavalry. After some days' waiting, the Persians began to reembark, perhaps for a dash on Athens. The Greeks, led by Miltiades, were forced to attack, which they did with a lengthened front to avoid encirclement by the more numerous Persians. In this first major encounter between European and Asian infantry, the Greek closely knit, heavily armed phalanx won decisively. The Persian survivors sailed at once for Athens, but Miltiades rushed his forces back, and the Persians arrived to see the Greeks lined up before the city. Abandoning action, they sailed home, and the campaign of Marathon was over. Though to the Western world Marathon was a victory of enormous significance, to the Persians it was only a moderately serious border setback. Yet this defeat and peace in Asia Minor called for the conquest of all Greece, and Darius began the mighty preparations. A revolt in Egypt, however, distracted him, and he died in 486, leaving the next attack for his son Xerxes. Further Reading on Darius I Herodotus's History is the principal source of information on Darius. Aeschylus's Persae is also important. The Behistun inscription is Darius's official account; it is contained in Roland G. Kent, Old Persian: Grammar, Texts, Lexicon (1950; 2d ed. rev. 1953). The fullest recent treatment of Darius is in A. T. Olmstead, History of the Persian Empire (1948; rev. ed. 1959), which asserts that Darius was a usurper. Roman Ghirshman, Iran from the Earliest Times to the Islamic Conquest (1954), is more traditional. Richard Frye, The Heritage of Persia (1963), is also of interest.
1. Relative concentrations Molecules and ions move spontaneously down their concentration gradient (i.e., from a region of higher to a region of lower concentration) by diffusion. Molecules and ions can be moved against their concentration gradient, but this process, called active transport, requires the expenditure of energy (usually from ATP). 2. Lipid bilayers are impermeable to most essential molecules and ions.The lipid bilayer is permeable to water molecules and a few other small, uncharged, molecules like This page will examine how ions and small molecules are transported across cell membranes. The transport of macromolecules through membranes is described in Endocytosis. \|Link to a quantitative treatment of the free energy changes involved in facilitated diffusion and active transport.\| Facilitated diffusion of ions takes place through proteins, or assemblies of proteins, embedded in the plasma membrane. These transmembrane proteins form a water-filled channel through which the ion can pass down its concentration gradient. The transmembrane channels that permit facilitated diffusion can be opened or closed. They are said to be "gated". External ligands (shown here in green) bind to a site on the extracellular side of the channel. Internal ligands bind to a site on the channel protein exposed to the cytosol. In so-called "excitable" cells like neurons and muscle cells, some channels open or close in response to changes in the charge (measured in volts) across the plasma membrane. Example: As an impulse passes down a neuron, the reduction in the voltage opens sodium channels in the adjacent portion of the membrane. This allows the influx of Na+ into the neuron and thus the continuation of the nerve impulse. [More] Some 7000 sodium ions pass through each channel during the brief period (about 1 millisecond) that it remains open. This was learned by use of the patch clamp technique. Such measurements reveal that each channel is either fully open or fully closed; that is, facilitated diffusion through a single channel is "all-or-none". This technique has provided so much valuable information about ion channels that its inventors, Erwin Neher and Bert Sakmann, were awarded a Nobel Prize in 1991. Some small, hydrophilic organic molecules, like sugars, can pass through cell membranes by facilitated diffusion. Once again, the process requires transmembrane proteins. In some cases, these — like ion channels — form water-filled pores that enable the molecule to pass in (or out) of the membrane following its concentration gradient. Example: Maltoporin. This homotrimer in the outer membrane of E. coli forms pores that allow the disaccharide maltose and a few related molecules to diffuse into the cell. Another example: The plasma membrane of human red blood cells contain transmembrane proteins that permit the diffusion of glucose from the blood into the cell. Note that in all cases of facilitated diffusion through channels, the channels are selective; that is, the structure of the protein admits only certain types of molecules through. Whether all cases of facilitated diffusion of small molecules use channels is yet to be proven. Perhaps some molecules are passed through the membrane by a conformational change in the shape of the transmembrane protein when it binds the molecule to be transported. \|In either case, the interaction between the molecule being transported and its transporter resembles in many ways the interaction between an enzyme and its substrate. Link to a discussion of the energetics of enzyme-substrate interactions.\| Active transport is the pumping of molecules or ions through a membrane against their concentration gradient. It requires: The energy of ATP may be used directly or indirectly. \|Link to a quantitative analysis of these processes.\| The cytosol of animal cells contains a concentration of potassium ions (K+) as much as 20 times higher than that in the extracellular fluid. Conversely, the extracellular fluid contains a concentration of sodium ions (Na+) as much as 10 times greater than that within the cell. These concentration gradients are established by the active transport of both ions. And, in fact, the same transporter, called the Na+/K+ ATPase, does both jobs. It uses the energy from the hydrolysis of ATP to The crucial roles of the Na+/K+ ATPase are reflected in the fact that almost one-third of all the energy generated by the mitochondria in animal cells is used just to run this pump. The parietal cells of your stomach use this pump to secrete gastric juice. These cells transport protons (H+) from a concentration of about 4 x 10-8 M within the cell to a concentration of about 0.15 M in the gastric juice (giving it a pH close to 1). Small wonder that parietal cells are stuffed with mitochondria and uses huge amounts of ATP as they carry out this three-million fold concentration of protons. A Ca2+ ATPase is located in the plasma membrane of all eukaryotic cells. It uses the energy provided by one molecule of ATP to pump one Ca2+ ion out of the cell. The activity of these pumps helps to maintain the ~20,000-fold concentration gradient of Ca2+ between the cytosol (~ 100 nM) and the ECF (~ 20 mM). [More] In resting skeletal muscle, there is a much higher concentration of calcium ions (Ca2+) in the sarcoplasmic reticulum than in the cytosol. Activation of the muscle fiber allows some of this Ca2+ to pass by facilitated diffusion into the cytosol where it triggers contraction. [Link to discussion]. After contraction, this Ca2+ is pumped back into the sarcoplasmic reticulum. This is done by another Ca2+ ATPase that uses the energy from each molecule of ATP to pump 2 Ca2+ ions. Pumps 1. - 3. are designated P-type ion transporters because they use the same basic mechanism: a conformational change in the proteins as they are reversibly phosphorylated by ATP. And all three pumps can be made to run backward. That is, if the pumped ions are allowed to diffuse back through the membrane complex, ATP can be synthesized from ADP and inorganic phosphate. The ligand-binding domain is usually restricted to a single type of molecule. The ATP bound to its domain provides the energy to pump the ligand across the membrane. The human genome contains 48 genes for ABC transporters. Some examples: Indirect active transport uses the downhill flow of an ion to pump some other molecule or ion against its gradient. The driving ion is usually sodium (Na+) with its gradient established by the Na+/K+ ATPase. In this type of indirect active transport, the driving ion (Na+) and the pumped molecule pass through the membrane pump in the same direction.Examples: \|Link to an animation of the process produced by the father and son team of John and John Giannini.\| \|Please let me know by e-mail if you find a broken link in my pages.)\| The Na+/glucose transporter is used to actively transport glucose out of the intestine and also out of the kidney tubules and back into the blood. \|The energy relationships for these processes can be quantified. Link to a discussion.\| In antiport pumps, the driving ion (again, usually sodium) diffuses through the pump in one direction providing the energy for the active transport of some other molecule or ion in the opposite direction. Example: Ca2+ ions are pumped out of cells by sodium-driven antiport pumps [Link].Antiport pumps in the vacuole of some plants harness the outward facilitated diffusion of protons (themselves pumped into the vacuole by a H+ ATPase) A growing number of human diseases have been discovered to be caused by inherited mutations in genes encoding channels.Some examples: Example: the reabsorption of water from the kidney tubules back into the blood depends on the water following behind the active transport of Na+. [Discussion] If the concentration of water in the medium surrounding a cell is greater than that of the cytosol, the medium is said to be hypotonic. Water enters the cell by osmosis. A red blood cell placed in a hypotonic solution (e.g., pure water) bursts immediately ("hemolysis") from the influx of water. Plant cells and bacterial cells avoid bursting in hypotonic surroundings by their strong cell walls. These allow the buildup of turgor within the cell. When the turgor pressure equals the osmotic pressure, osmosis ceases. \|How the kidneys of freshwater fishes and amphibians permit their owners to live in their hypotonic surroundings.\| When red blood cells are placed in a 0.9% salt solution, they neither gain nor lose water by osmosis. Such a solution is said to be isotonic. The extracellular fluid (ECF) of mammalian cells is isotonic to their cytoplasm. This balance must be actively maintained because of the large number of organic molecules dissolved in the cytosol but not present in the ECF. These organic molecules exert an osmotic effect that, if not compensated for, would cause the cell to take in so much water that it would swell and might even burst. This fate is avoided by pumping sodium ions out of the cell with the Na+/K+ ATPase. If red cells are placed in sea water (about 3% salt), they lose water by osmosis and the cells shrivel up. Sea water is hypertonic to their cytosol. Similarly, if a plant tissue is placed in sea water, the cell contents shrink away from the rigid cell wall. This is called plasmolysis. [Link to a view of it.] Sea water is also hypertonic to the ECF of most marine vertebrates. To avoid fatal dehydration, these animals (e.g., bony fishes like the cod) must Marine birds, which may pass long periods of time away from fresh water, and sea turtles use a similar device. They, too, drink salt water to take care of their water needs and use metabolic energy to desalt it. In the herring gull, shown here, the salt is extracted by two glands in the head and released (in a very concentrated solution — it is saltier than the blood) to the outside through the nostrils. Marine snakes use a similar desalting mechanism. \|How the kidneys of marine fishes are adapted for life in a hypertonic environment.\| Osmosis is important!\| A report in the 23 April 1998 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine tells of the life-threatening complications that can be caused by an ignorance of osmosis.
The Secret Bureau 1 THE SECRET BUREAU 1 by Charles Rabou adapted by Nina Cooper "She was then taken into a room entirely draped in black material where two iron lamps suspended from the ceiling cast their wan light down on all the objects. There, on a table covered with a tapestry of the same color, she saw bones of bizarre shapes whose use at first glance didn't seem easy to guess." 5x8 tpb, 364 p. The Secret Bureau (1849) is the first volume in a series of four that tells the story of the Hulet family which, for generations, has headed the government's spy network, the Secret Bureau, that intercepts and opens all private mail. It follows the ambitious Henri Hulet as he tries to avoid the fatal destiny marked out for him, then switches to the resourceful Gregorio Matiphous, as he attempts to thwart the diabolical schemes of the villainous Marquis de Samaniego, leader of the mysterious Sleepers' Club... Charles Rabou (1803-1871) was one of the founders of the prestigious Revue de Paris and a friend of Honoré de Balzac, whose unfinished novels he completed after the latter's death. He was also a master of the roman noir (crime novel). The Secret Bureau is an important link between the works of Jules Janin and Frédéric Soulié on the one hand, and Paul Féval and Ponson du Terrail on the other. Le Cabinet Noir (The Secret Bureau) (Lebègue, 1849 / L. de Potter, 1856) Introduction and Notes by Nina Cooper.
“Want to make $1 billion the easy way?” This is the spirit of Warren Buffett’s "Billion-Dollar Bracket Challenge," a contest pitting college basketball fans' knowledge against overwhelming statistical odds. Put on by Warren Buffett’s company Berkshire Hathaway, in collaboration with Quicken Loans, the contest offers an award of $1 billion to any contestant who can fill out a perfect bracket for the 2014 NCAA men’s basketball tournament. What is the likelihood of picking a perfect bracket? Well, the odds are not in your favor. According to Chris Chase of USA Today, you have a one-in-9.2-quintillion chance of filling out a flawless NCAA tournament bracket. Chase puts that giant number in perspective, explaining that contestants trying to make a perfect bracket would "have a better chance of hitting four holes-in-one in a single round of golf." Regardless of the odds, the competition is free, meaning there’s no reason not to take a whack at perfection. According to PRNewsWire (h/t Yahoo Finance), Buffett believes you’d have to be Cro-Magnon not to fill out a bracket. “While there is no simple path to success, it sure doesn’t get much easier than filling out a bracket online,” Buffett said. “To quote a commercial from one of my companies, I’d dare say it’s so easy to enter that even a caveman can do it.” Eligibility rules state that all contestants must be 21 years of age and a U.S. citizen (sorry, Canada). If you haven’t signed up yet, there’s still time. Buffett and Quicken Loans recently announced they have expanded the pool of entries to 15 million brackets to offer more people a shot at their $1 billion. Quicken Loans has also tapped Yahoo Sports as the host site of the contest. You can go to QuickenLoansBracket.com to fill out your bracket. Further, the 20 highest-scoring imperfect brackets will receive $100,000 each, so Buffett is dealing out at least $2 million. According to Forbes, the 83-year-old is worth $58.2 billion, ranking him No. 2 in the U.S. (behind only Bill Gates at $76 billion). With that said, get to it, everyone. That bracket isn’t going to fill itself out, just like those Lamborghinis won’t park themselves in your driveway. Join me on Twitter for more sports news. Like the new article format? Send us feedback!
02.25: George Harrison, "the quiet Beatle," let it be known, on this day in 1943, with his first breaths, that he was here and he was ready to rock. As lead guitar for, inarguably, the biggest and one of the best rock bands of all time, Harrison is responsible for some of the greatest licks ever to be put on record. Though his work with the Beatles was generally overshadowed by the melodies and rhythms of John and Paul's songwriting and instrumentation, George still managed to come out of the band with some genuinely amazing songs for his resume, including "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," "Something," and "Taxman." After the breakup of the greatest band of all time, Harrison released a number of solo albums and became the first member of the post-Beatles to hit the top of the charts, with the Phil Spector-produced All Things Must Pass, which included "My Sweet Lord," a truly beautiful song. Harrison also organized what has been called the very first charity rock festival when he put together The Concert For Bangladesh, which went on to influence events such as Live Aid and Farm Aid. In the '80s, George joined a little supergroup known as The Traveling Wilburys. The band consisted of Harrison, Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne, Bob Dylan, and Tom Petty. Holy moly! Can you say, "Awesome!"? We could then and we can now. We woulda loved to have been a fly on the wall in Dylan's garage when they recorded that first song (yeah, they actually recorded in a garage). Harrison died from throat cancer in November of 2001. Today, we celebrate his birth and his life. We can't wait to go home and put on The Beatles Revolver, open a beer, sit on the porch, and let the music wash over us. We miss ya, George. Happy birthday. 02.26: A day of mourning, we were all cursed today in 1954, as the birth of an abomination heralded the coming of dark days, when Michael Bolton clawed his way into this world, ready to assault our collective ears with the schmaltz he passes off as music, ready to take something as beautiful as "(Sitting On) The Dock Of The Bay" and turn it into an unlistenable pile. (We hate to link to that video, but you have to hear it for yourself. It's awful, especially when compared to Otis' version, which is simply incredible.) Seriously, why would someone do that?! It makes us cry and curl up, fetal-like, in a corner, racked with sickening convulsions. It makes us angry that so many people don't know, because of the undeserved popularity of Bolton's version, that the amazing Otis Redding wrote and recorded the song way back in 1967. We've said it before and we'll say it again, if Otis were alive, he'd totally kick Bolton's butt. We envision him doing it today, on Bolton's b-day, singing the birthday song as he did it, and then topping off the butt kicking with the awesome whistle part from "Dock Of The Bay." It would be glorious and is the only thing that can bring a smile to our face on this sad, depressing day. 03.01: Out of the ashes of the '60s came many great rock bands. Many people identify themselves, their world views, their temperaments and predispositions by aligning themselves with either The Rolling Stones or The Beatles. "Beatles or Stones?", we've been asked on many an occasion, sitting at a bar, contemplating life through goggles of beer. We refuse to answer that question. Instead we ask, "What about The Who?" This stumps a lot of people, them of short attention spans, them who think that '60s rock lived and died by the output of Mick and Keith and John and Paul. Hooey, we say. Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, Keith Moon, and John Entwistle put out music just as vibrant, remarkable, and timeless as those other guys. From The Who Sellout to Tommy (both brilliant albums), The Who knew how to rock a recording studio just as well as they knew how to rock a stage. These guys had it. And up front, Daltrey strutted around every stage like he owned it, like it was his to do with as he pleased, like he was about the beat the crap out of it (which he and the guys did on many occasions). Why do we bring this up? Today is Roger's birthday, as he joined us on this day in 1944. So, in honor of Roger's b-day, next time someone asks you to choose sides between The Stones or The Beatles, just say, "The Who." 03.02: We remember being in 8th grade, on a school ski-trip, jamming out to Slippery When Wet on our Walkman (look it up, whippersnappers), singing along to "Wanted Dead Or Alive," knowing full well that there could never be a band as great as Bon Jovi. Alright, we know we just dated ourselves with that little blast from the past, but it doesn't negate the fact that that album still rocks and that the man from whom the band gets its very name is an icon in the music world or that said band, twenty-five years removed from that ski trip, are still one of the biggest groups in the world. In 2008 and 2010, they were the biggest touring band on the planet. Believe it! That says a lot not only for the staying power of Jon Bon Jovi, Rickie Sambora, David Bryan, and Ticco Torres, but also for the music they've produced over the years, and the 120 million albums they've sold in their 30-year career. They survived the destruction of the '80s hair metal scene in the early '90s, at the capable hands of its own excess and grunge, because, even though they had flowing girly hair and they could've been lumped into the hair category, they consistently put out good music regardless of the reigning genre on the charts. Why, oh why, do we pontificate upon the Jovi, you ask? Because on this day in 1962, in the Jersey town of Perth Amboy, Jon Bon Jovi began his journey in the world, which eventually took him to the top of the charts, across this great planet, and for one weekend, at least, into our fuzzy Walkman headphones as we travelled on a cramped bus headed for some wintery slopes. Thanks for the memories, Jon, and happy birthday. 03.02: R.I.P. Eight Track. Introduced on this day in 1983 and stemming from a joint-venture between Sony, Philips, and Polygram, the first compact disc player was offered up for sale in the United States, paving the way for the demise (and eventual return) of vinyl, cassettes, the rise of digital media, MP3s, and file sharing, and, as we've seen in the last few years, the demise of itself (what a vicious circle, indeed). Well, it might be a stretch to lump all of that into the launch of the CD player in the U.S., but we'll make that stretch any day because without the CD player and the digitalification of data, none of that, including this sentence, would probably be as widespread as it is today. Thank you, oh lords of the digital world for giving us the CD player and its requisite CDs, allowing us to eventually, 30 years later, transmit these nearly useless factoids into a world that couldn't care less. It makes us smile. Here's some more factoids for ya: the first CD to be released was Billy Joel's 52nd Street (which had actually been released over four years earlier on vinyl, 8-Track, and cassette); the first CD to sell a million copies was Brothers In Arms by Dire "Money For Nothing" Straits; and the first artist to have his entire repertoire reproduced on CD was The White Duke, himself, David Bowie, who's 15 studio and 4 greatest hits albums (up to that time) made their way into the digital world in 1985. That David is so ahead of the time. What a guy. All hail the digital age!
The H-1B visa program, designed to provide a legal pathway to highly skilled immigrant workers, may be changing. In early February, President Trump announced a 90-day review of the program. While these changes could happen through executive order, a few bills are circulating that may instead be pushed through Congress. It’s probably safe to assume that President Donald Trump isn’t happy about what’s been happening since he issued his January travel ban. Shortly after his inauguration, he signed an Executive Order barring entry into the U.S. for foreigners from seven primarily Muslim countries. The President cited the terrorist threat from these countries as being very high, stating, “numerous foreign-born individuals have been convicted or implicated in terrorism-related crimes since September 11, 2001.” Congratulations on obtaining your green card! Now that you’re a permanent resident of the United States, you’ve inherited a host of new legal rights. However, with those rights come rules and responsibilities that you’ll have to abide by in order to maintain your permanent residency. Some of these rules are obvious, such as not committing crimes. But there are others, like informing the USCIS within 10 days of moving to a new home, which you may not be aware of. In the content below, we’ll go over your new green card rights as well as the green card rules you need to know in order to keep your permanent residency for life. Many naturalized U.S. citizens have family members who still live abroad. Luckily, there are options that allow those family members to gain permanent residency. In the content that follows, we’ll go over how to get a green card for parents of U.S. citizens as well as the eligibility requirements both you and your family will have to meet. While Europeans used to account for the majority of U.S. immigration, European immigration to America dropped dramatically after the 1960s and continues to decline. This is in part due to the abolishment of national-origin quotas, which gave preferential treatment to European immigrants. But just because European immigration to America is on the decline, that doesn’t mean you can’t do it. In fact, the process for European immigration to America is generally the same as it is for most other countries. In the content below, we’ll go over some of the best routes (temporary and permanent) that you can take to live in America. Durante su campaña, Donald Trump hizo un sin fin de promesas amplias a sus partidarios, incluyendo su plan para deportar "millones" de inmigrantes que actualmente viven en los EEUU indocumentados. Pero ahora que ha obtenido su lugar como el próximo presidente de los Estados Unidos, cual es la realidad de esta situacion? Throughout his entire campaign, Donald Trump made numerous pie-in-the-sky promises to his supporters, including his plans to deport “millions” of immigrants who are currently residing in the US illegally. But now that he’s secured his place as the next president of the United States, can he feasibly follow through on his plans? Topics: green card Choosing the right lawyer to represent your immigration case can be a difficult decision. After all, this is an incredibly important part of your life, and how can you know if they’ll be able to provide you with the best support and advice? Luckily, there are some questions to ask your immigration lawyer in order to determine if they meet your needs: If you have an L1 visa and you’re interested in staying in the United States permanently, you’re in luck—the L1 visa to green card process is one of best routes to permanent residency in the US. In this post, we’ll go over the different types of the L1 visa, why the L1 visa to green card process is preferable, how to qualify for an L1 visa, and how you can pursue a green card through change of status. Now that Donald Trump is set to be the next president of the United States, there are a lot of concerns over some of the things that he said during his campaign. “The Donald” has called for intense measures to eliminate illegal immigration, including a massive wall to be built between the United States and Mexico. However, President-elect Trump has also openly condemned some legal forms of immigration, including the H-1B visa program.
I recently stumbled across an interesting article on risk perception: If It’s Difficult to Pronounce, It Must Be Risky – Fluency, Familiarity and Risk perception. Researches from the University of Michigan had students read lists of fictious words and imagining that they were reading food lables and judge the hazard of each ingredient form very safe to very harmful. The words were divided in groups of easy-to-pronounce words (such as Magnalroxate) and difficult-to-pronounce words (i.e. Hnegripitrom). If I were to take the test I’d probably rank Magnalroxate as worse than Hnegripitrom – the “roxate” somehow reminds me of a pesticide or something like that. It turned out however (as expected) that substances with difficult-to-pronounce names were perceived as more harmful than substances with easy-to-pronounce names. The result of the study is quite unfortunate, and chemists face a communication challenge here. When chemists give name to molecules they follow conventions agreed upon by IUPAC for systematic names. This can sometimes lead to extremely long and unpractical names, hence the use of trivial names. To give you an example of this glucose has the systematic name (2R,3R,4S,5R,6R)-6-(hydroxymethyl)-tetrahydro-2H-pyran-2,3,4,5-tetraol. If one where to judge by difficulty of pronounciation consuming this one should be pretty risky. On the other hand the compound known under the trivial name mustard gas could sound like a volatile cousin of Dijon mustard but is in fact a blistering agent, used in chemical warfare. The take home message is: Don’t judge a molecule by it’s name! Talking about risk perception, the article reminded me of the warnings against the dangerous chemical DHMO, also known as dihydrogen monoxide. To read everything about the risks, visit the DHMO website. To read a little background information about the hoax, start with the wikipedia entry on the dihydrogen monoxide hoax. In case you’re lazy and don’t bother to check the links: dihydrogen monoxide is simply am uncommon scientific name for water. But don’t be lazey, the DHMO website is actually quite amuzing 🙂 [Article on risk perception was found via CEN blog]fun with food, molecular gastronomy, science, websites
With the advent of the digital age, deception in photography has never been easier, and Amir Zaki makes the best possible case for its artistic benefits. His brilliant and compelling portraits of retro-chic lifeguard towers in Southern California are the product of nearly as much image manipulation as actual documentation, and the result is that we see them with entirely fresh eyes. Many photographers of the manmade landscape play it fairly straight, using careful composition, lighting, and large-format printing to lend drama to their matter-of-fact subject matter. Bernd and Hilda Becher, the German couple whose deadpan pictures of early industrial architecture gave rise to an entire school of photography, are entirely literal in their depictions, allowing their gritty subject matter to speak for itself without technical intervention. More recently, some of their followers have embraced various types of editorial alterations, choosing subtle techniques that are not always obvious in the final result. Zaki, on the other hand, is much more upfront about using any and all available tools to bring to life his much more stylized version of reality. An earlier series put individual LA houses on a diet, distorting entire structures into impossibly skinny slivers, which were then printed in an extreme vertical format. In another set of images, Zaki replaced all the existing signage on older or abandoned commercial structures with an invented symbol system of highly suggestive, but completely mysterious pedigree – Mayan or Martian, perhaps. What was surprising was how weird such a simple substitution made his ordinary structures seem – are our cities really that odd? The lifeguard towers in Zaki’s current exhibition aren’t so much odd as they are atmospheric: back-to-the-future cockpits for cultural time travel. They’re also virile and sexy in a very streamlined sixties way; seen from below like statues or monuments, they stand out against perfect California skies like symbols of progress achieved through order and vigilance, like the tractors and tanks in Soviet propaganda posters. The show is much more impressive in person than online, with the high-focus clarity and elegance of the imagery greatly heightened by the huge scale of several of the prints. Two of the very best tower pictures in the exhibition have been printed in this large format, and they demonstrate what’s so striking about the series. Untitled (tower 30) is a portrait of a sky-blue guard tower against a sky-blue sky, the dominant monochrome only interrupted by the silvery sheen of the truncated safety rail on the tower’s deck. Unoccupied, shuttered, stripped of all identifying detail, the structure shares with the others in the show no visible connection to place – it could be anywhere. In its perfect, digitally amped-up color and smooth lines, it is control made seductive – unthreatening, cooly mechanical. Untitled (tower 42) is a skinnier, mustard-yellow version, with the sleek lines and dramatic angles of mid-century ocean liners, transcontinental trains, and pin-up girls. It’s fascinating to compare pictures found online of actual California beach towers to the Zaki versions. Besides removing signage, fasteners, and any other interrupting blemishes, Zaki has also eliminated the access stairs, nearly all of the guard rails, and most of the supporting structure. Most crucially, his upward view exaggerates the size and height of the towers, which in reality are only ten feet or so above the beach. Zaki’s imposing viewpoint and monumental treatment also heightens the subliminal connection between the boxy, heavy-browed structures and a gigantic, robotic head; we imagine a race of protective (or oppressive) sentinels, rugged, implacable, and all-powerful. Katya Marritz is also contributing to an ongoing artistic conversation, with her Zeitgeist café exhibition of altered books. The regional awareness of this art form has been heightened since last year’s BAM exhibition featuring several dozen artists who, like Marritz, use books as raw materials for sculptural works. Some of the interventions on display at BAM were radical indeed, like the centerpiece replica of the Grand Canyon carved out of 80 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica, one of many artists on view who freely sliced, diced, and otherwise eviscerated their various tomes. Marritz uses far less invasive techniques. Following an older craft tradition, her thrift store hardcover volumes are pinned open and then folded, page by page, to create wavelike forms spanning between the covers like fans or carved blocks of wood. Using what seems to be this same simple technique, she achieves an impressive variety of results, from the lyrical to the geometric. Some of the books feature two arching, rhythmic shapes, one above the other with a narrow waist in between, while others are formed into a series of angular dips and swells, like a mansard roof with dormer windows. The text mostly appears as a sort of grey decorative fringe, or like a faintly colored layer in a layer cake. Speaking of text, Marritz, like many altered book artists, seems to have an ambivalent relationship to the question of the literary content of her source material and its relationship to the final product. None of the 14 pieces is titled, and most of the books are unidentifiable by either text (mostly illegible) or cover (mostly hidden). If there’s a link between what the books are about and the shapes they have been folded into, it’s not apparent. In the case of one book whose title is visible, the Pride and Prejudice, it’s tempting to see a hooped skirt or fringed parasol in the resulting construction, one which shares with several other works on view a more feminine or arabesque (versus angular) selection of folds. In other books, evocative phrases are occasionally exposed: “Mona always longed”….“before he left”…“poured over his head”. These last phrases are all taken from my favorite piece, a volume where a relatively small number of pages has been gently curled at their edges and loosely linked together by white threads. The result has the appearance of a skirt blowing in the wind in a series of time-lapse photographs, or a biomorphic abstraction in the manner of Jean Arp. It is hard not to draw certain conclusions about the decline of the book as an honored cultural artifact bearing the collective wisdom of society, when faced with work in which the book is used as mere raw material like mud or straw, and the text is essentially irrelevant. In the case of Marritz one could argue that the surplus books she uses are being given a second life far more vivid than the obscurity of the junk store or the remainder bin, but no one would have dreamed of carving up a book back in the day when they were more rare and precious. One thing is clear; both Marritz and Zaki share a common goal of unearthing the art in objects that are usually thought of in terms of function alone, and both succeed at that goal in fascinating ways. — By Gary Faigin
30 Days of Giving: Taking Volunteerism to Scale Beginning Monday, November 26, SUNY will be pinning stories of giving, service, and kindness originating from each of our 64 campuses and the communities that these schools are a part of. With over 467,000 students, SUNY consistently takes advantage of the opportunity it has to be a significant impact in communities across New York State. The 30 Days of Giving campaign is a great way to recognize students and community partners involved in the many projects that happen all year round at each SUNY campus and their surrounding communities. The byproduct of taking volunteerism to scale is not only building character in our students themselves as they join our over three million alumni, but also to set an example of impact as the nation’s largest university system. In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Binghamton University students and Staten Island natives Nicholas Agostino and Dana Borrero were quick to respond. “So many people completely lost their houses and must now start from scratch,” said Borrero, “We felt the need to do something to help them rebuild…” Agostino and Borrero teamed up and started a Hurricane Sandy relief fund, Giving Back from Far Away, to help their hometowns recover. The two students and their friends held a resource drive that produced several truckloads of supplies. All collected supplies were sent to a FEMA drop-off location in the affected region. Giving Back from Far Away also enlisted the support of their off-campus residence, University Plaza, and six other locations on campus and in the community to serve as drop-off locations for donations. The students organized fundraisers with three local businesses and collected close to $500 in monetary donations all within a few weeks’ time. Agostino and Borrero also collaborated with two other Binghamton University student organizations, Habitat for Humanity and Tau Alpha Upsilon, to collect donations for Hurricane Sandy Relief at their all-you-can-eat pancake dinner, “Cloudy with a Chance of Pancakes.” The event was attended by over 250 Binghamton University students and community members and raised over $1000 in proceeds for Giving Back from Far Away. \|DAY 1\|\|DAY 2\|\|DAY 3\|\|DAY 4\|\|DAY 5\| \|DAY 6\|\|DAY 7\|\|DAY 8\|\|DAY 9\|\|DAY 10\| \|DAY 11\|\|DAY 12\|\|DAY 13\|\|DAY 14\|\|DAY 15\| \|DAY 16\|\|DAY 17\|\|DAY 18\|\|DAY 19\|\|DAY 20\| \|DAY 21\|\|DAY 22\|\|DAY 23\|\|DAY 24\|\|DAY 25\| \|DAY 26\|\|DAY 27\|\|DAY 28\|\|DAY 29\|\|DAY 30\|
Two Pierce County beaches have been closed after unsafe levels of Paralytic Shellfish Poison were found in shellfish samples. Shellfish harvesting is temporarily restricted at Day Island, Point Defiance, Wollochet Bay and Hale Passage, according to Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department. A stretch of shoreline from Gig Harbor to the Kitsap County Line also remains closed. Advisory signs will be posted at Dash Point County Park, Brown’s Point Park, Owens Beach, Point Defiance boathouse, Narrows Park, Day Island marina, Wollochet Bay boat launch and Fox Island Bridge. The closure includes oysters, clams, mussels, scallops and other species of mollusks. Shrimp and crabs are not included. PSP can be life-threatening. A natural marine organism produces the toxin, which is not killed by cooking or freezing. The Health Department said more closures may be coming. Before harvesting shellfish in Puget Sound, people are advised to call the Biotoxin Hotline at 800-562-5632 or www.doh.wa.gov.ehp/sf/biotoxin.htm.
Christianity is the largest religion in the world, extending its reach to every continent and almost every nation in the world. Only Islam challenges its dominance, and Islam is six centuries younger. Christianity itself is a religion that emerged out of what at the time of its birth was a small, ethnically based, and much despised religion – not the kind of origins one would expect for a religion that would come to dominate the world scene. It would take nearly four centuries for this faith to overcome its disadvantages – and the expected deviations from the “norm” – for it to gain not just respectability but imperial favor. Such is the story that Jonathan Hill, a Christian author and editor with a Ph.D. from the University of Singapore, tells in Christianity: How a Tiny Sect from a Despised Religion Came to Dominate the Roman Empire. This attractive, coffee-table style history of Christianity takes the story from its first century beginnings through the fourth century, when it came to dominate the Roman Empire. A book such as Hill’s is quite welcome, for several reasons, foremost being its accessibility. Recently published books on the history of Christianity by Diarmaid McCulloch, Diana Butler Bass, and Philip Jenkins are well written and accessible to the general reader, but this book is briefer in scope and has the added benefit of a numerous color plates and illustrated maps that are distributed generously throughout the book. In addition to the primary narrative, which is well written and in my estimation accurately presented (one might find something to quibble about on occasion, but since this is a broad presentation these are much fewer than what might find in a longer, more in depth, study), there are numerous sidebars that deal with such issues as the titles of Jesus, the identity of the Ebionites (a Jewish-Christian sect), the city of Alexandria (one of the leading intellectual and spiritual centers of the Christian faith), Gnostic movements, and the founding of the Armenian church. These relatively brief articles expand one’s understanding of stories that may not be as familiar to the general reader without distracting from the primary narrative. As for the story itself, Hill begins his rendering thusly: “Christianity was founded by a group of fishermen and peasants from Galilee, a rural backwater in an unimportant region of the Roman Empire. They were the followers of a relatively minor wandering prophet who had died as a condemned criminal.” (p. 7) There is nothing auspicious about these roots, and yet, as he also reminds us – three centuries later this despised sect had become the official religion of the mightiest empire to that point in world history. From that point on, Christianity would extend east and west and come to dominate the western European world. Over the course of time this Palestinian sect would grow, divide, evolve, and adapt. Christianity is composed of three parts, the first of which focuses on the story of Jesus, the founding of Christianity in its first century context. This is handled briefly, for this part of the story is relatively well known. Chapters four through seven take the story through the second and third centuries, centuries when the church expanded east and west, adapted to new environments, organized itself, wrestled with alternative renditions (dare we call these heterodoxies), and began to define what would become normative Christian theology and practice. The final four chapters tell the story of the fourth century CE expansion of Christianity in the aftermath of Constantine’s embrace of the faith. Though Christianity would no longer be proscribed and persecuted, its troubles weren’t over. All manner of divisions and separations and alternative understandings emerged, from the Arians to the Donatists. The value of this book, besides the fact that it is told in an interesting and colorful manner is that it helps the one who is unfamiliar with the story, or has heard parts of the story, understand that the story of Christianity is rather complex. There are no real heroes and villains, only real human beings trying to make sense of the message of Jesus in a constantly changing matrix. For the first several centuries survival was the central focus, while in the fourth century it was a question of adapting to the new found freedoms. We may know the story of Nicaea, but rather than settling once and for all the debate about both the doctrines of the Trinity and Christ’s divinity, it was simply the beginning of a century-long back and forth debate. Even when one issue seemed to be settled another one would emerge. In addition, after Constantine’s embrace the church had to wrestle with this new freedom, especially since the very fact that it was favored by the government meant that many persons entered the community with less than perfect motives. Thus, we see the development and spread of monasticism as a means of preserving the more strenuous forms of faith that existed during times of persecution. Donatism was another rigorist response to concerns that some church leaders may have succumbed to the threats of persecution, denying the faith in order to survive, but now they were back leading the church. The Donatists believed that this threatened the spiritual integrity of the church and separated themselves from those who were connected with the less rigorous Christians. Augustine’s response suggested that the validity of ordinations and sacraments rested in the promises of God and not the holiness of those who held church office. Oh, and Nicaea – the concerns raised in 325 weren’t really settled until Theodosius called another council at Constantinople in 381, when the Athanasian position finally won out over its rivals. But as I said, that only resolved part of the problem – the divinity of Christ, now the church would face the question of how Jesus could be both divine and human! The professionally trained historian might not find much that is “new” here, and those seeking a sensationalist reading of Christian history might be disappointed by what they find here, but those persons seeking a solid and well presented telling of the story will find much to like here. In fact, Christianity is the kind of book we need to have available so that the sensationalist renderings might lose their attractiveness. In that light, I was impressed by the generous manner of this presentation. The author is a Christian, perhaps even an evangelical, but even Arius is treated with a degree of respect and Athanasius’ darker side is presented. Constantine comes across neither as saint nor monster, and the pagan Julian is depicted in as generous tones as can be expected. So, if you want to know how the story of Christianity began, this is a good place to start. Christianity: How a Tiny Sect from a Despised Religion Came to Dominate the Roman Empire. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011. 256 pages.Powered by Sidelines
Tagsbetrayal bosola Coercion conflict conflicted cynthia damned but with a bit of saving grace dedication desire Doctor Faustus Dr faustas endymion eumenides Evil good and evil Greed Helen human condition irony lawyers Lorenzo loyalty Madoff man vs. himself man vs. society master/servant mephistopheles mirror characters Mosca Niccolo Machiavelli Pedringano Power and Fear pragmatism queen elizabeth satire scene study social status survival symbolism the lesser bad the shoemaker's holiday The Spanish Tragedy too late for salvation video Volpone Tag Archives: satire Volpone is a very interesting satire of the modern human condition. The play’s major themes and motifs (greed, deceit, & parasitism) are still some of the major flaws of man today. Johnson’s satire brings to light the inner con artist in everyone. Johnson’s work resonates with the audience because we are constantly surrounded by the same greed that the character’s have. The lawyers in Volpone are not so different from the lawyers in the present day! Everyday, there are commercials of law firms advertising that they will get the most money for you out of your divorce. Some commercials give you the impression that you will make more money getting a divorce than remaining married. This makes you question the honesty of the lawyers who are prepared to argue for any side at the right price. They also may manipulate the law to get you more money so they can have a larger piece of the percentage. (I’m not trying to throw all lawyers into this argument, just the ones with the low budget commercials) Volpone’s big con has taken years of planning and disguise. He has put a lot of time into the con and if he pulls it off, he will reap a large reward. We hear of these kinds of cons everyday. Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme was going on for many years. He was able to make millions off of others, and like a parasite did it very discretely. When he was exposed everything fell apart and many people fell with Madoff. When Volpone is exposed to the court many fall with him as well. This play was written in the 1606 and discusses some of the major flaws that still exist in the human condition. Johnson’s work is an excellent exemplary of an effective satire.
African-American Studies: Separate, Unequal? Only a handful of Florida school districts are ensuring that African-American history is adequately covered in the classroom, a state-funded task force argues. In 1994, Florida approved a law, supported by the late Gov. Lawton Chiles, that required that schools teach black history "and the contributions of African Americans to society," according to the article. Only eight of Florida's 67 school districts have met the task force's standards for including African-American studies into the curriculum. Too often, task force members say, schools merely discuss African-American contributions in isolation, such as during Black History Month in February, rather than blending it into the curriculum. Administrators in some of the districts criticized by the study group say the accusations are off the mark. A few of the districts that have met the task force's "exemplary" standards for covering African-American history are among the state's most populated: Pinellas, in the St. Petersburg area, and Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade, in South Florida. Are districts and states in other parts of the country more successful in presenting African-American history topics in a seamless way? Or are Florida officials more successful than they're given credit for?
The year 2013 was one of gaining clarity about the strategies and objectives of Gatesian education reform. This clarity allows us to begin 2014 determined to move in a different direction. Recently in standardized tests Category December 27, 2013 December 22, 2013 As our schools take another step to becoming the next big bureaucracy in America, I would like to call for a conference of concern. With the new Common Core system, I see us shifting even further into a "one size fits all" factory of education, December 15, 2013 I wish there was another, less drastic measure than a hunger strike to realize my goals. But unfortunately, the system is so entrenched and resistant to change that there is no other way. December 05, 2013 Organizations like ASCD are being directly paid to "support implementation" of Common Core, which in effect converts them into advocates for the controversial standards. December 04, 2013 Are American students merely coddled, or are they instead aptly confident? Perhaps instead of being hobbled by a mathematical deficit, our kids are instead empowered by a superabundance of hopeful freedom that allows them to dare big things. December 01, 2013 Preparation for college and career has begun to feel more and more like "preparation to make yourself useful to future corporate employers." November 27, 2013 I watched many of my peers become demoralized and angry about school, frustrated with their learning that they thought wasn't being measured by testing, and struggling with the feeling that they no longer meant anything to the school as a person November 25, 2013 Here we are beginning to see the ways in which grading technology may be shaping the tests, and the very way we ask students to show how they are applying the skills they have learned. November 19, 2013 The Common Core standards say, "Here's what you must prove you're accomplishing." If you tell your students that you expect them to study and learn the chapter about Torquemada and 15th Century Spain, they know there's a test coming. November 17, 2013 There is a deeper principle at stake here. Standards developed in secret without the active participation of K12 educators, parents, students and experts from the start are not acceptable or legitimate.
Sometimes we can all use a helping hand. Do you remember a blog about the battle we fight against the invasive plant known as gorse? (See Gorse Crisis: Making Way for Native Plants.) Well, the Maui Bird Conservation Center (MBCC) benefited from the generous efforts of eight hard workers from the Hawaii Youth Conservation Corps (HYCC). They battled for two long days against a particularly stubborn patch of over-grown gorse and then placed native plants in the cleared space. As background, the nonprofit organization Kupu, which is dedicated to providing opportunities for the youth of Hawaii, operates the HYCC. Kupu offers Hawaii’s young adults the chance to gain job training and life skills such as leadership, communication, responsibility, and teamwork, while encouraging service within the community. During their summer program, high school students spend six weeks as Americorps interns, assisting in the protection of the environment while learning about natural resource management through projects such as trail maintenance, native plant restoration, and coastal restoration, plus many other experiences. A crew visited MBCC after working at various sites on Maui and Kahoolawe for projects with The Nature Conservancy and the Maui Forest Bird Recovery Project. Yet they still had the energy to tackle our gorse problem! Led by Christine Molina, the team leader who works as a teacher during the school year, the team of Carl, Issac, Kamana, King, Kyla, Pololou, and Stephanie split into two groups. As one group toiled away with saws and pruners to remove the gorse, the other team broke through the rooted soil with shovels to dig holes, which they filled from several large trays of native plants, donated by Anna Palomino, a local native Hawaiian plant expert who generously donates extra plants to MBCC. Their combined efforts made short work of an area that would have taken our MBCC team a month to clear and plant, with all of our other duties pulling at our attention. Although the restoration area does not look especially spectacular now, with time and nurturing by the MBCC team, we hope the native plants will flourish and be a source of pride for the future, thanks to the wonderful and diligent work of the Hawaii Youth Conservation Corps. Joshua Kramer is a research coordinator at the Maui Bird Conservation Center, operated by San Diego Zoo Global. Read his previous post, Hawaii: Native Birds and Plants.
Splunk Renews Commitment to the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence Last year, Splunk announced its collaboration with the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The NCCoE works with experts from industry and government to address the most pressing cybersecurity problems that businesses face with practical solutions using commercially available technologies. Over the course of several months, Splunk worked with NCCoE and others on a project to help strengthen cybersecurity in the financial sector through better IT asset management. NCCoE published a practice guide to help financial institutions to implement the IT asset management system. “Go Big Security”: Insights from MeriTalk Panel It sounds simple – combat cyber threats by harnessing the power of your own data. But many government agencies are still not taking full advantage of big data analytics to detect, contain, and remediate cyber threats. Last week, I participated in a webinar hosted by MeriTalk that focused on how government agencies can improve cybersecurity through a big data approach. The webinar discussion focused on the findings from a recent Splunk-sponsored MeriTalk survey of 300 federal, state, and local government IT leaders. I was joined during the webinar by fellow panelists George Jakabcin, CIO for the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, and Matt Smith, Chief Security Engineer at the Department of Homeland Security. We discussed what agencies are currently …
By Phil Guidry (Editors Note: From time to time, StudentNow will present travel stories that are more contemplative, personal and historical. This article about a reporter's visit to Dachau is just such a story.) The thing you notice about this horrible place is the silence. Even as the gravel crunches under your feet, even as the tourists huddle and discuss matters in hushed, whispered tones, even as the traffic passes by on the city streets just outside the guard gates, the silence is there. It is inescapable - it toys with your mind, and it forces you to deal with the scenario which unfolds all around This is the town of Dachau, Germany, an otherwise-charming village established in the 12th century that was once a haven for artists and poets. But I am here, as a visitor, as a curious observer, for a different reason. Dachau was the site of the first concentration camp in Germany. It opened in 1933, and from that point until it was stormed, liberated, and ultimately burned to the ground by American troops in 1945, it was the site of some of the worst atrocities man has ever committed against his fellow man. It has been tastefully reconstructed, the shattered pieces restored and refitted using the original materials which were scattered about at the end of World War II. The barbed wire running across the fence tops is rusty; the bricks and mortar which make up the "living" quarters are cracked and dirty. The ditches dug by the prisoners here which would eventually be filled with their starved, emaciated bodies, still runs along the outer edges of the compound. This place does not feel like a recreation. At all. I came upon Dachau on the last day of a weeks-long whirlwind journey around western and central Europe, a trip in which I took 15 rolls of film. For this last stop, however, I put my camera away. There are just some things you don't want a photographic record of. And the things I saw there I will never forget - they are more indelibly printed in my mind than on any photograph.
The Market Information for the Organization of the Americas (MIOA) members also toured the local wholesale market, Centrais de Abastecimento do Distrito Federal S.A (CEASA-DF) in Brasilia, Brazil. U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) Fruit and Vegetable Programs Market News Chief of the International Reports Section Dr. Luis Palmer (second from right with blue shirt) tours the market with MIOA members. Photo by Francisco Stuckert, CONAB Over the last 25 years, the American farmer has become increasingly aware of the impact of South American agricultural output on the global supply of grains and oilseeds. For example, in recent years Brazil has risen to the number one position as an exporter of soybeans. Further, the combined output of Brazil and its neighbors, Argentina and Paraguay, is challenging the United States’ position as the world’s leading supplier of corn. Brazil is unique in that it has a relatively stable agricultural output trend due to improving production techniques, and in most years, abundant rainfall for production of various crops. The climate and cropping patterns are behind the increases in agricultural production, which were made possible by the shift of production into regions less prone to drought. There is also the potential for expansion into untapped lands, although infrastructure and land ownership issues are a limiting factor. Meantime, thanks to ample rainfall and land resources enjoyed by producers, Brazil has the potential to become an agricultural powerhouse for years to come. Read more » People's Republic of China General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) officials take samples of U.S. soybeans at the Port of Dalian as part of a joint study comparing U.S. and Chinese inspection practices. Photo taken by USDA/FAS employee Mark Rasmussen. International trade is a major factor in the American agricultural economy. A key player is China. In fact China’s impact on slowing growth on trade and agriculture is a session topic during the 2016 United States Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Outlook Forum. Over the last two decades, China’s economic prosperity and increased consumer demand for food has significantly contributed to the record growth in United States agricultural exports. From fiscal year (FY) 2000 to FY 2015, the value of U.S. agricultural and related exports to China rose from $1.7 to $25.9 billion dollars. Currently, nearly 17 percent of all U.S. agricultural exports are destined for the Chinese market. These export figures highlight the critical importance of the U.S.-China trade relationship for U.S. agriculture and underscores the United States interest in China’s ability to maintain a strong and stable economy. Read more » A key component of USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service’s (AMS) work upholding organic integrity is providing the organic community with easy access to the National Organic Program’s (NOP) resources, to help producers and processors understand and comply with the USDA organic regulations. In recent years, the presence of Spanish-speakers in the organic community has grown. In 2014, USDA-accredited certifying agents certified over 27,814 organic operations, one-third of which are located outside of the United States. 42 percent of international operations with USDA organic certification are in Spanish-speaking Latin America and the Caribbean. Read more » Un componente clave del trabajo del Servicio de Comercialización Agrícola (conocida en inglés como el Agricultural Marketing Service o AMS) del USDA en asegurar la integridad orgánica es proporcionar a la comunidad orgánica acceso fácil a los recursos del Programa Nacional Orgánico (el National Organic Program o NOP) que son necesarios para entender y cumplir con los reglamentos orgánicos del USDA. En los últimos años, la presencia de personas hispanohablante en la comunidad orgánica ha crecido. En 2014, agentes certificadores acreditados por USDA certificaron más de 27,814 operaciones orgánicas, un tercio de las cuales están ubicadas fuera de los Estados Unidos. Un 42 por ciento de estas operaciones internacionales que tienen la certificación orgánica del USDA, están en países de habla hispana en Latino América y el Caribe. Read more » Deputy Undersecretary of Agriculture Elvis Cordova tours the newly renovated control room at the Louis Dreyfus elevator at the port of Houston. (USDA Photo) As America’s leadership role in the global economy increases, shipments of American grain, oil seeds, and related agricultural products could continue expanding into promising markets in some of the world’s most robust economies. Facilitating the marketing of U.S. grain exports by thorough inspection and weight certification in accordance with Federal law is the job of the Grain Inspection, Packers, and Stockyard Administration (GIPSA) through its Federal Grain Inspection Service (FGIS). A team of dedicated professionals located around the country ensures that America remains competitive in the world agricultural market by upholding the quality of U.S. grain as well as the integrity of U.S. grading standards. Working shifts around the clock in export elevators loading ocean vessels and in interior locations loading shipping containers along the Great Lakes, the Gulf of Mexico, on coastal and other locations, FGIS personnel along with delegated states and designated agencies inspect and weigh grain arriving daily by truck, rail, and barge for domestic markets and export by cargo ships. Once loading is complete, FGIS inspectors provide an official certificate backed by the reputation and authority of the U.S. Government. Read more » Cross-posted from the White House blog: Today, farmers, ranchers, and rural communities are more prosperous thanks to strong trade agreements. Foreign markets contribute to more than half of total sales for many American agricultural products. The last six years have been the strongest in history for agricultural exports, and agricultural exports now support more than 1 million good-paying American jobs. Without the expanded trade that came with past trade agreements, the agricultural economy and the American economy as a whole would not be as strong as it is today. But new trade agreements are only possible if our negotiators can speak with one voice to negotiate free and fair trade deals. Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) — now being considered in Congress — allows them to do just that. Read more »
Questions and Answers Your Questions About X100 Why is my golf ball flight so high? With all my woods I average fairly solid distances and trajectory (285 Driver, 255 3 Wood, 225 20* Hybrid), but my irons I hit very high and they don’t really go very far. The trajectory is off and it really just climbs and then falls out of the sky. (132 9 iron, 100 52* Wedge). I play Titleist AP2 irons with S300s and I have Titleist SM4 Vokey Wedges. My average iron swing speed is 90 mph, average driver swing is 110+ mph. So I know I have the clubhead speed to hit the ball far, but something is causing the flight to be really high. Also, I’ve read that the AP2 irons are designed to get the ball in the air so maybe that’s the reason? Also, I played with a semi strong grip and a cupped wrist. I compress the ball just fine and can draw or fade it so I doubt the cupped wrist at the top has anything to do with it. (Charl Schwartzel is the same way). I see these guys on tour hit knock down 8 irons from 162 and to hit anything 162 I need to belt a 7 iron or hit a choke 6 iron. Note: I’ve tried using Dynamic Gold X100 shafts to lower the flight, but it was almost identical to what I have now. And if I try and just smash an iron to get a few extra yards from it, the ball flight is even higher and sometimes doesn’t even go the normal distance with a smooth swing. Now I will be honest and say that my bad shot is a weak fade because I don’t square the club sometimes, but even when I hit a really solid draw, I might get 2 or 3 extra yards out of each iron. Also, I’m 6 foot 2 so I know because I create a larger arc that it gets the ball in the air more, but I don’t think that would cause me to have such weak iron shots. Does anyone have any tips/suggestions or previous experience with this problem? Should I get fitted for Irons with a lower flight like X Hot Pros or Rocketbladez Tour? Thanks for the input! I had the same problem, my golf coach told me that I was trying to help the ball up instead of staying behind the ball and hitting the ball right on the nose. How to calculate stomatal density? The question shows a photograph of the lower epidermis of a leaf. Its magnification is x100. Then it says: the area of the field view is 0.102mm^2. Count the number of stomata present and then calculate the number per mm^2. Ok, so I counted the number of stomata in the photograph, and there are 14. Am I just dividing 14 by 0.102? The answer I got was 137.254…mm^2 That answer seems improbable… What am I missing? You are nearly correct: - the answer should be rounded to 2 or 3 significant figures because that’s is the precision of the data you are using; - the unit is not mm^2, but ‘stomata/mm^2′ So I would give the answer as: 140 stomata/mm^2 or This sound perfectly reasonable – it just means that each square mm of leaf contains about 140 stomata. Nothing wrong with that. Picking a front yard tree. Sunburst Locust or Mountain Ash? We have a fairly small lot in a new subdivision 43′x100‘. We’re trying to decide on a tree for the front of the house. We have it narrowed between a Sunburst Locust or a Mountain Ash. My wife has heard that mountain ash is a dirty tree but I understand they don’t drop their berries till early winter when the snow is on the ground anyway. Anyone have experience with these trees. What would you suggest? I have both and although the mountain ash looks spectacular with it’s red berries and the birds it attracts, the Sunburst Locust is the winner in my books. The color is gorgeous and the way the sun filters through the leaves is a picture in itself. When it’s flowers are in bloom, early summer it attracts flocks of American Goldfinch who eat the seeds. They are the same color as the tree so it’s hard to see them unless they are flitting about. Beautiful little birds. Enjoy, they are both easy to grow, How do I calculate a percentage increase from 1 number to another? How do I calculate a percentage increase from one number to another? For example, if someone had a income of $5 from their little business (like some kid’s juice stand). The next year the the kid made $100. Wouldn’t that be an increase in income of 1500%? Same with debt. If someone went from losing $1 in income to $100, that would be an increase in loses of 9900%, correct? 100 $ – 5$ = 95 $ Increase % = 95/5 X100 = 1900% ANSWER Increase in loss = 100 -1 = 99 $ Loss % = 99/1 X 100 = 9900% ANSWER What is the energy ( in joules) of an extremely powerful gamma ray with a wavelength of 10^-7 nanometers? Also how many of these gamma ray photons would have the same amount of energy as a housefly, which has a kinetic energy of about one millionth of a joule as it flies along? If you could give me a detailed explanation of these 2 questions it would be appreciated… The formulas I need used are E= h X c / wavelength and Wavelength X v = C Thanks in advance : ) E = hc/w is the equation you need h is Planck’s constant and is equal to 6.63×10^(-34)J s c is the speed of light and is equal to 3.00×10^8m/s w is the wavelength In this case the wavelength is given as 10^(-7) nanometers. The conversion factor is 1 Nanometer = 1E-09 Meters so w = 10^(-7)x10^(-9) meters = 10^(-16) meters E = (6.63×10^-34)x(3.00×10^8)/(10^(-16)) Joules E = (6.63×3)(10^(-10)) Joules E = 1.98×10^(-9) Joules Kinetic energy of fly is 10^(-6) Joules Number of gamma rays = 10^(-6)/[1.98x10^(-9)] Number of gamma rays = (10/1.98)x100 = 505 About 500 such gamma rays would be needed to have about the same kinetic energy as a fly How many footing of fence would you need for a circular fence that fit just inside a 100×100 foot square? How long did it take you to answer? If the circle fits inside a 100′x100′ square, then the circle’s diameter is 100′. The amount of fencing is simply the circumference of the circle, which is 100? Feet, or approx 314 feet. (about 22 seconds) Powered by Yahoo! Answers
Easier said than done, of course. But respites from work are valuable, replenishing resources and preventing negative loads (mental fatigue, adrenaline build-up) spiralling out of control. Sadly, the positive gloss of the holiday itself tends to slip quickly when we return to work - a 'fade-out effect' described well in this Psychologist article. What makes you more likely to fall prey to the fade-out? The quest for perfection, new research suggests. Researcher Paul Flaxman and colleagues canvassed academics before, during and on two occasions after an Easter break, measuring changes in well-being. The 77 participants also completed a tool that measures self-critical perfectionism; this form of perfectionism centres around high standards and doubting your actions are sufficient to reach them. As this attribute is triggered by achievement -related stressors, such as deadlines or presentations, the researchers suspected the holiday itself would likely be a genuine respite for all, but that those high in this attribute could quickly crash once they returned to work. Pre-holiday, perfectionists were worse off in terms of well-being: more exhausted, anxious and fatigued than their colleagues. During the holiday, their wellbeing raised and fell in line with colleagues. Yet, at return to work, they quickly reported higher exhaustion, giving way to higher anxiety a few weeks later, with consistently higher fatigue across both time points. The finding accounted for differences in respite wellbeing, length of respite, and how much participants worked during the respite. What's driving this? Participants reported on holiday cognitions, and it turns out that time spent ruminating about the correctness of past judgments and repeatedly worrying about future events led to more emotional exhaustion and anxiety on return to work. The effect that perfectionism has on the various wellbeing measures was partly due to the mediating influence of these 'perseverative cognitions', which explained at least a quarter and in one case (fatigue) two thirds of the effect. Why didn't these thoughts drag holiday wellbeing down, too? Flaxman's group conjecture that these cognitions are functional in the short-term, staving off uncomfortable feelings (I should be doing something!) by rehearsing intentions in your head. However, by preventing psychological detachment from work, this strategy foregoes any chance to shake things off and lighten the load. If you feel that the world might collapse if you took the invitation at the top of this piece, you might want to explore holiday activities that are extremely absorbing and take you well away from the work mentality; you might also want to switch off your work mobile. The researchers also note that interventions such as CBT and mindfulness-based training may be effective in cushioning perfectionist beliefs from harming quality of life.
Similarly, there is no prospect of success for the associated UN ‘peace plan’. Manifestly, heavy weapons continue to be used, humanitarian assistance is not being provided and the ‘legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people’ are not being addressed. The crucial factor here, is that the mission of the UN Special Envoy is fatally compromised by divisions in the Security Council itself. If there was any doubt before, this is amply illustrated by the feeble UN statement on the Houla massacre of last week. Notwithstanding the clear, eye-witness testimony of the Norwegian head of the cease-fire mission, the United Nations was unable to ascribe blame for what had happened. As far as the UN statement was concerned, the atrocity of last week might have equally been perpetrated by Syrian Government forces, or by rebels who had taken Government tanks and armed personnel carriers (and borrowed a set of uniforms). As the Duke of Wellington once said, ‘(I)f you believe that, you will believe anything’. So, as I said on the previous occasion, we either hope that the Syrian people are ultimately cowed into submission (which is not looking likely), or we face the prospect of an increasingly violent and destructive civil war. And the question is what if anything should be done about it. Again there is much talk about ‘arming the rebels’ and given that Russia is continuing to supply arms to Syria, and that Iranian forces are already fighting there (in support of the Assad-regime) that is, perhaps, the least that should be done. But, probably, it is not enough. Syrian government forces have the armour, and the artillery and the air-strike capability and what they are lacking in these force elements, we can be sure their supporters will supply. What is required is a ‘no-fly zone’, as that phrase was interpreted in the recent civil war in Libya. In this, government forces (either air or land) were subject to interdiction, if they attempted to deploy to engage insurgent forces. This left the latter free to progressively create liberated zones and wrest control from the government. As in the Libyan case, this would not require ‘boots on the ground’, with all that that implies, although, again (as in the Libyan case), this might not preclude the use of special-forces for special tasks. Of course, this would not be a United Nations operation. Russia acquiesced in the Libyan intervention by abstaining on the ‘no-fly zone’ resolution. It is unlikely to make that ‘mistake’ again. This would have to be a ‘coalition of the willing’, which would recognise what the United Nations itself has called a ‘responsibility to protect’. But it is not clear who these ‘willing’ parties might be in this case. France and Britain took a leading role in the Libyan operation and the United States ‘led from behind’. The new French president might not be as willing to commit French forces as his predecessor was, and David Cameron, with all his present problems, may be similarly more reluctant. And, of course, there is an election on in the United States and voters are said to be generally war-weary (and President Obama’s base is generally antipathetic to the use of military means in any case). The non-participation of the United States would be particularly problematic, if it meant that their unique intelligence and surveillance capabilities were not available, not to mention their increasingly potent drone capability. On the other hand, there might be regional powers that have interests in the outcome of a power struggle in Syria, as well as humanitarian concerns about what is happening to the Syrian people. This might produce a more protracted and perhaps, wider conflict but it would alter the prospects for a massacre, which would surely follow from a mere arming of the anti-Assad factions, and it might result in the ultimate demise of an odious regime. Absent the determination to intervene by willing parties, it might be best to resist calls to arm the insurgents.
The state of the art is growing increasingly intrusive, the Journal found. Some tracking files can record a person's keystrokes online and then transmit the text to a data-gathering company that analyzes it for content, tone and clues to a person's social connections. Other tracking files can re-spawn trackers that a person may have deleted.A full list of the sites they examined is here. The most intrusive were dictionary.com and msn.com, which installed over 200 tracking files each. The least intrusive were craigslist.org and wikipedia.org. ....Some of the tracking files identified by the Journal were so detailed that they verged on being anonymous in name only. They enabled data-gathering companies to build personal profiles that could include age, gender, race, zip code, income, marital status and health concerns, along with recent purchases and favorite TV shows and movies. What to do about this? Europe, which generally has better rules than the U.S. regarding the collection and use of personal data, actually has tighter regulations about how long online data should be stored. After all, the local police might want to use it someday. The Christian Science Monitor reports that this is finally provoking a reaction: Across Europe, a backlash against the storage of private data is growing. Civil society groups like the European Federation of Journalists have criticized the practice, and in Germany almost 35,000 people, including Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, sued their own government over the issue.This tension means that governments aren't always eager to restrict the collection of personal data online. Beyond that, though, there are technical difficulties for those who want to prohibit the practice. When Congress passed the Do Not Call law in 2003, their job was easy: everyone has a telephone number, and all you have to do is put those numbers into a database and tell solicitors not to call them. But there's no equivalent of a phone number in the digital world. Your computer's ID is its IP address, but most IP addresses change regularly. There's no way of creating a "Do Not Track" database and telling online solicitors to keep their tracking files away from everyone who signs up. "There is a real problem in Europe today. It is a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights, which says that everyone has the right to a private life. That fundamental right has to extend into digital life," says Christian Engström, a member of the European Parliament for Sweden's controversial Pirate Party, elected on a platform of digital rights. Alternatively, as Harlan Yu wrote recently, we could adopt the opposite approach: instead of asking users to register, we could require solicitors to register and then rely on browser settings that would prevent their domains from installing tracking files. Unfortunately, this has technical drawbacks as well, so Yu suggests instead a new standard that would allow your browser to notify every site you visit that you don't wish to be tracked: The browser could enable x-notrack for every HTTP connection, or for connections to only third party sites, or for connections to some set of user-specified sites. Upon receiving the signal not to track, the site would be prevented, by FTC regulation, from setting any persistent identifiers on the user’s machine or using any other side-channel mechanism to uniquely identify the browser and track the interaction.This would, of course, require legislation that requires online sites to honor the x-notrack request. That's the bad news. The good news is that whatever the eventual solution, the problem itself is finally getting some attention on Capitol Hill: Politico reported last week that Sen. Mark Pryor (D–AR) is writing a bill "aiming to give consumers more control over their online data....The focus of the bill, which is still in rough draft form, will be giving consumers the ability to opt out of being tracked across the Web." So stay tuned. In the meantime, the Journal's full package of privacy articles is here, and they're well worth browsing through. It includes pieces that explain web tracking, cell phone monitoring, how much these tracking services know about you, the role of big companies like Google and Microsoft, and even advice on how to avoid tracking. You can't avoid it all, but there are things you can do to minimize it. Is a site you are interested in not here?Enter a URL and get more info about its privacy policies: - A confidential, Google "vision statement" shows the company in a deep round of soul-searching over a basic question: How far should it go in profiting from its crown jewels—the vast trove of data it possesses about people's activities? Fifth in a series. More on the Study The Great Privacy Debate - Online Advertisers Defend Industry Amid Web-Privacy DebateOnline-advertising advocates -- citing a “War Against the Web” -- are gearing up to defend their industry as the debate about Web privacy intensifies. - Lawmakers Seek Answers on Online TrackingLawmakers are seeking information about the privacy practice of the 15 websites that the Wall Street Journal identified as installing the most tracking technology on their visitors' computers. - Digits Live Show: Avoiding Prying Eyes OnlineThe WSJ's Jennifer Valentino-DeVries discusses the types of tracking technologies encountered on sites across the Web, and gives some guidance about how to manage your exposure online. - The Information That Is Needed to Identify You: 33 BitsMany data collectors assure consumers that they don't collect or store personally identifiable information. But researchers say it's often possible to identify people even without that information. - So Many Trackers, So Little Time - The Mystery of Internet Explorer's Privacy Settings Covert National Mass Surveillance Grid Exposed Battlefield Technologies Migrate HomeNever has it been more urgent for people around the country to take action to end the government’s mass surveillance against the people.Most people are not aware that silently, but constantly, the government is now watching, recording your everyday travels and storing years of your activities in massive data warehouses that can be quickly “mined” to find out when and where you have been, whom you’ve visited, meetings you’ve attended, and activities you’ve taken part in. This is all done by using an elaborate network of Automatic License Plate Recognition cameras, also known as tag readers.The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund has spent years investigating and uncovering this mass surveillance grid that is being put in place in the United States in the absence of public awareness, scrutiny, debate or oversight.It’s a system of mass surveillance and data warehousing on law-abiding persons and citizens. You’re being tracked routinely, without probable cause, without a warrant and without even a suspicion that you have committed a crime.The public has a right to know about this program and to stop it. The PCJF has established a national campaign, One Nation Under Surveillance, with a proactive website providing the tools and information you can use to take action now.ALPR is a technology of social control. And it’s not just critics who call it so. The International Association of Chiefs of Police, which itself favors tag readers, acknowledged in a report “The potential privacy harm of surveillance is its potential use as a tool of social control.”At our campaign site, www.BigBrotherAmerica.org, you can: - Send a letter to representatives in Congress demanding public hearings to expose this widespread but covert mass surveillance. It will only take a minute. A sample letter is included feel free to add your own message. click here - View and contribute to the growing national map of tag reader locations around the country. - Send in your photos and location information for tag readers in your town or city. Background on Tag Readers; - Download posters for the One Nation Under Surveillance Campaign, these graphics are striking and powerful. You can contribute your own graphics for the campaign, too. Battlefield and Occupation Technologies Migrate Home:Originally developed by the United Kingdom to be used against the Irish Republican Army, later deployed by the U.S. in Baghdad, tag readers have now been adapted for routine and massive deployment against civilians in the U.S.Tag readers are physical cameras that can be stationary, mounted on traffic poles, gates or bridges, hidden in white and orange traffic barrels, or disguised in roof-mounted taxi-signs. A tag reader captures thousands of license plates per minute, day or night and records the date, time, photo of the vehicle and possibly occupants, its immediate area and GPS coordinates.The federal government has spent millions of dollars outfitting local law enforcement, from big cities, to the smallest towns with tag reader systems. Using the pretext of drug interdiction and border enforcement, the federal government has installed its own network of cameras that has grown and continues to grow well past the borders throughout the U.S. The Department of Homeland Security has created customized software to integrate the surveillance data obtained through all the different vendor systems that are on the market and used by different localities. The federal government has a massive datastorage center for tag reader information located in Northern Virginia.Read more about tag readers in PCJF’s first article in a new series.With a plate and a cross-reference to other databases (like the Department of Motor Vehicles, credit card companies and phone records) a full profile about you can easily be created through electronic and computer data. The fusion of license plate reader data with commercial databases and intelligence databases gives the government virtually unlimited knowledge of our activities and associations.Working together we can halt this operation. With exposure and concerted public opposition, this program can be stopped.Become a part of PCJF’s campaign to end illegal government surveillance -- take action today. SPREAD THE WORD Forward this Email Subscribe for Updates
The widespread cheating scandal in the Atlanta Public School (“APS”) system that was initially reported on by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution over two years ago came to a head last week when the Governor released a report by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation which detailed the extent of the scandal. The report named 178 educators who were part of a widespread conspiracy to erase and change test answers on high-stakes standardized tests. The scandal tarnishes the image of recently departed and widely celebrated Superintendent Beverly Hall, who made headlines for the impressive (and apparently fraudulent) gains in test scores made by the district over the previous dozen years. Her “successes” resulted in additional funding from the Broad Foundation and the Gates Foundation, and ultimately in her being named the US Superintendent of the Year in 2009. And while she hasn’t yet been implicated in the scandal, it is almost certain that Hall is in some way culpable considering that 38 of the 178 educators were principals and that the scandal touched at least 44 of the 56 schools in the district. For those who haven’t yet accepted that government organizations are always working to expand their power through coercion, without concern for the welfare of the people they are supposed to be serving, the details of the scandal may be surprising. Teachers and administrators at the various schools would erase wrong answers and replace them with correct ones. The practice evolved so much that testing coordinators would hand out answer-key transparencies that educators could place over the answer sheets so that they could more quickly identify the wrong answers. But more worrisome than the actual cheating was the culture that pervaded the APS during the scandal. Dr. Hall’s administration repeatedly refused to investigate cheating allegations, deliberately thwarted external investigation efforts, destroyed relevant documents related to the tests, and punished whistle-blowers who raised concerns about the rampant cheating in the district. According to another teacher, APS was “run like the mob”. The takeaway from this story should not be that the Atlanta Public School system is unduly evil, though its administration is. The takeaway should be that public schooling everywhere is a fraud imposed on the people for the benefit of select adults, not children. Not all school districts cheat on standardized tests, but virtually all sacrifice education for the sake of testing. Success on these standardized tests help administrators like Dr. Hall advance their careers, and teachers secure their jobs, but it does not help the children. When educators focus on test scores that will impress bureaucrats, they are not focusing on the individual learning needs of children, and they are not implementing programs which will help those children reach their full potential. Public schools don’t exist for the sake of the children; they exist for the sake of the adults within the system. Such a system can never effectively educate children because the focus will never be on educating children. Investigation into APS cheating finds unethical behavior across every level Systematic Cheating Is Found in Atlanta’s School System America’s biggest teacher and principal cheating scandal unfolds in Atlanta
Building a Hello Hub Welcome to the official Hello Hub Build Guide. Hello Hubs are community-built, off-grid internet kiosks for education and development. Ready to build? Get to it! The structure plans, software, and hardware specifications, along with tutorials and instructions to build and deploy a Hello Hub contained in this guide are Open Source, which means they are available for anyone to freely download and use, improve, contribute back or re-release. The most recent version of this guide can always be found @ http://build.hellohub.org, or at the following urls for printable/ebook formats: - Printable PDF http://build.hellohub.org/pdf - ePub ebook format: http://build.hellohub.org/epub - Mobi ebook format: http://build.hellohub.org/mobi
The hours you spend preparing your firm's taxes may drop, albeit slightly, courtesy of the latest guidance to come from the IRS. Until now, cell phones used in business were considered listed property, which is a “specific class of depreciable property that is subject to a special set of tax rules if it is used for business no more than 50 percent of the time…. Listed-property rules limit the amount of deductions and depreciation that can be taken if the asset isn't predominantly used in a business or trade,” according to Investopedia. In general, items found on the “listed property” list are those that easily lend themselves to personal use, such as cars and cell phones. Today, the IRS issued guidance to clarify and simplify the tax treatment of cell phones. The new rules stem from the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010, which removed cell phones from the items considered listed property and changed the rules so that the use of cell phones could be deducted without extra documentation, as this White House blog post from September 2010 outlines. According to the IRS' recent guidance, an employer-provided cell phone can be considered a “working condition fringe benefit,” and excluded from income “if there are substantial reasons relating to the employer's business, other than providing compensation to the employee, for providing the employee with a cell phone.” Possible examples include the employer's need to contact the employee at all times regarding work, the employer's requirement that the employee be able to connect with clients when away from the office, and the employee's need to connect with clients outside of normal work hours. The notice is effective for years after December 31, 2009. The IRS will not require any recordkeeping of business use in order for the cell phone to receive tax-free treatment, this release from the IRS states. What's more, according to a memo that went to IRS field personnel today, an employee's personal use of an employer-provided cell phone will be considered a “de minimum fringe benefit,” and also excluded from the employee's gross income. What if your business reimburses employees for any business calls they make on their personal cell phones? Here, the rules seem a little less clear-cut. The memo to field personnel says that examiners should not necessarily assume that that the reimbursement is income, provided several qualifications are met. Among others, the cell phone coverage must be reasonably related to the needs of the business, and the reimbursement not exceed the employee's actual expenses.
This morning 20 women woke up early on a Saturday to learn how to code and create websites using HTML and CSS. Pamela Fox, an experienced programmer who used to work for Google, is their instructor today. These women are from a variety of backgrounds and by a show of hands, most are new to programming but are ready to add new skills to their toolbox. Today’s workshop is part of a growing movement called Girl Develop It which provides educational opportunities for women who want to learn how to code. After grabbing coffee, the students sit down benches, three to a table facing the instructor and a big screen. Training content before lunch includes an essential introduction to the web: Tim Berners-Lee, browsers, text editors and the basics of HTML tags like headers, text formatting, lists, tables, form and button elements. Pamela is explaining things progressively, connecting the technical content to real-live examples that students can relate to. The students are responding well – they’re fully engaged, asking questions and completing the hands-on exercises. After lunch attendees will be creating layouts in CSS, iframes, working with the Chrome inspector and customizing the sites even more. What can the students expect after completing this workshop? They will have the basic skills to build a website plus and understanding of how the web infrastructure works when it comes to servers, files, server side scripts, the internet, domain names and browsers. They can then continue to improve their skills once they leave the workshop through working in study groups, working on side projects and taking on tasks at work that call for these new skills. Have you always wanted to learn how to program? Or maybe you want to become a programmer and develop in languages like Ruby and Python plus master new frameworks like Rails and Django. Love the thought of creating useful apps but on a smaller scale? Smartphone application development is a mix of both design and development and you can build on the two most popular mobile platforms using Objective-C to create iOS apps or Java for Android development. Sounding good so far? If you answered “yes” reading the last paragraph, I have two more questions for you – - What if there were affordable classes and workshops, focused on beginner to intermediate levels for these topics? - Have you felt intimidated, overwhelmed or unsure of your next steps in learning to code? Let me introduce to Girl Develop It. There are currently six locations in the United States including New York City, San Francisco, Austin, Columbus and Cincinnati plus two international chapters in Australia and Ottawa. Pamela Fox, today’s instructor, started the chapter’s in Australia and San Francisco. The company I work for, SendGrid, is sponsoring this event for the second time this year. Woohoo! We sponsored the first event back in April shortly after I had joined the company. I had been following the Girl Develop It Meetup group in NYC for several months and saw that there would be a new chapter in San Francisco. I asked SendGrid if they’d be interested in sponsoring the event and got a yes! I contacted Pamela and discussed sponsorship opportunities. Disqus hosted the space and SendGrid sponsored lunch that time. Today Twilio is sponsoring the space and we’re covering lunch. I really like working for a company that supports professional development and skill building both internally and in the developer community. Best Programming Language To Learn? Try different types of learning tools including books, videos, hands-one exercises on the web and meeting with others who are also learning. This will help to clarify your learning style and what type of technology interests you. 40 years ago it was unimaginable that you would leave your job and change careers but these days it’s common. We’re all in a constant state of learning. As I write this, I am learning Ruby on Rails and made a Youtube video this week about my thoughts on why it’s important, especially at a startup, for all employees to understand how to code: Video Link: Why Every Startup Employee Should Learn To Code If you’ve decided this is the right step for you to take, give yourself a pat on the back for being brave! I know what it’s like to step outside your comfort zone. I know what it’s like to be unsure of your future. The flip side of the unknown is that yes, it could be awful but it could also be really awesome. It’s up to you to take that first step. The reward is knowing what it’s like to solve problems that stump others. It’s also a great feeling when you receive praise for your solutions! How To Get Involved After tweeting today about the workshop, several people replied asking how they could be a part of the next event so I’m listing a few ways you can make a difference: Join your local chapter and take classes – Head over to the main Girl Develop It website. Even if there isn’t a chapter in your area, join the main NYC meetup group and get familiar with the classes being offered, who’s teaching, who’s attending and what other meetup groups they belong to plus announcements for new chapters. Sponsor your local chapter – Join SendGrid, Twilio, Disqus, Mozilla, O’Reilly and others in showing your support for technology and learning initiatives. There’s a huge shortage of developers. We can help turn that around by supporting initiatives like these. Start a new chapter – Would you like to see workshops like this held in your city? First thing you’ll want to do is contact the founders of GirlDevelopIt and discuss your interest. Then talk to people in the community to see if there is a demand, find instructors and a place to hold your event. Promote events like these – While I hope you join the newsletter, follow them on Twitter @girldevelopit, friend them up on Facebook and share their events, remember as well there are women + technology focused events all over! A few good ones out here in San Francisco include Women Who Code, Code Chix, PyLadies and many more. Women Who Tech is a yearly virtual conference and were responsible for me joining Twitter in 2008. A great starting place is to go to Meetup.com and search your zipcode for those keywords. As you read this, remember to think of people who you know who would benefit from attending a workshop and send them a link when you see something awesome. It may just be the spark they need to get going on their dream.
Liechtenstein princely palace opens gates in Vienna By Derek Brooks VIENNA (Reuters) - Vienna's Stadtpalais Liechtenstein, the city palace that launched a revival of Rococo in the mid 19th century, will offer public tours for the first time on Friday after an extensive face-lift. The late 17th century palace was once the main residence of the princely family of Liechtenstein, one of Vienna's richest families considered to be at the cutting edge of art and architecture, before they moved to the tiny Alpine principality. The Baroque building, which was revamped in the 1840s in the neo-Rococo style, was damaged during a bombing raid in World War II and when an Allied aircraft crashed into its roof in the final days of the war but it remained standing. It was briefly patched up in 1970 and the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs used the space for offices with the gilded ornamentation hidden behind fake walls and under raised floors until restoration started in 2008. The 100 million euro ($130 million) revamp returns the private structure to its pre-war glory and opulence, with plastered ceilings, gold leafing, and Thonet wood floors. "The rebuilding was like a puzzle for the architects," said a palace spokeswoman. "We only had fragments and many of the original chandeliers had to be tracked down in basements of art dealers around Vienna." While some of the renovated building will be kept as private living quarters, the public will get a look at many of its gilded Rococo rooms, its high Roman Baroque architecture and a selection of neo-Classical art. The project was paid for by Prince Hans-Adam II whose family has ruled the 160 square km (62 square miles) principality of Liechtenstein since 1699 although Vienna remained their primary residence until the 1938 political annexation of Austria by Germany. Continued...
- Fitzpatrick Center Schiciano Auditorium Side A - Map Please join the Duke University Libraries for a Scopus training session on campus with Elsevier. Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature from international publishers, open access journals, conference proceedings, and trade publications. Database coverage includes Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, and Engineering; Life and Health Sciences; Social Sciences, Psychology, and Economics; Biological, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences. This training session will educate science faculty, researchers, and graduate students about Scopus, which was designed to save you time in finding the right articles. We will be raffling off two iPod shuffles for attendees. Note: Lunch to follow in FCIEMAS lobby, 12:00-1:00 p.m. (provided by Elsevier).
Who Reads What Where? The Western Canon in New Contexts - ALSC Conference, Oct. 9-11, 2009 The culture and theory wars may have died down on college campuses, but the way that works of literature are transmitted from generation to generation and place to place remains a perennial question, especially given the advent of increasingly powerful electronic communication. The recent success in English of a wide range of imaginative works from around the world suggests both continuity and change in how the western canon of literature is understood. This panel will examine this question and the prospects for the future of the literary past. Please send proposals to firstname.lastname@example.org. Submission form and deadline. Submissions must reach the convener of the session by July 3. They should be sent to both (1) the convener of the panel or seminar and (2) the Association's office at email@example.com. On your e-mail's "subject" line, please give your name and other information in the following form: "ALSC 2009, [Name of Session] abstract by [First Name, Last Name]." For details regarding submission length, please refer to the individual instructions for each session. If you do not send copies to both the convener and the ALSC, we cannot guarantee that you will receive an e-mail notice acknowledging receipt of your proposal.
It’s a Wrap Less May Be More When it Comes to Expensive Construction Fabric For repairing or reinforcing concrete and steel structures, carbon fiber-reinforced polymer fabric – a specialized plastic that becomes rigid and stronger than structural steel – is greener, easier and quicker to apply, takes less-skilled labor, adds less weight to a building and is often more corrosion-resistant than traditional methods … yet it isn’t the go-to material even when it could do the job. The reason is its expense — upwards of $1,200 a roll, plus needed adhesives and resins. So crews and companies specializing in reinforcement and repair usually use slower, more polluting, more labor-intensive methods with steel and concrete, which can be so heavy that other parts of the building may need bolstering, as well. Research by Pinaki Chakrabarti, professor of civil and environmental engineering, has found that sometimes significantly less fabric can be used to get the same effect, making its use cheaper in the long run. Chakrabarti and his collaborators crushed concrete beams, slabs and beam-column joints with hydraulic crushers in combinations of non-fiber reinforced, fully and partially reinforced, and undamaged and fiber-repaired pieces, before reaching their conclusions. His research has demonstrated that less of the polymer still worked as designed: sometimes the entire length of a damaged beam can be reinforced only on one side with the material. Under other circumstances, Chakrabarti has established, reinforcing or wrapping the middle portion is enough. “Dr. Chakrabarti’s research affirms what we’ve believed for awhile,” said Tom Sabol, a structural engineer and principal of the international firm Englekirk & Sabol Consulting Structural Engineers, Inc., the principal engineer for Cal State Fullerton’s north campus housing project completed in 2002 and the under-construction phase 3 student housing project scheduled for completion in 2011. “In 1998, our firm worked on the seismic reinforcement of UCLA’s Arroyo Bridge,” said Sabol. “Using steel and concrete would not have worked well. We found we needed some reinforced fiber polymers the full length of the columns and only at the ends did they need a heavy reinforcement treatment with the fiber. On the beams, we found we needed to reinforce only the middle third, not all of the way across. That cost less and took less time. And the first cost, that is, the cost of the fiber, isn’t necessarily the whole story. “If the job can be done more quickly, with less labor and lasts longer, in the long-term, it’s cheaper. We rejuvenated a parking structure at UCLA in 2009 using fiber-reinforced polymers and it cost under a half-million.” If they had put in new shear walls to hold the structure’s weight, then the necessary concrete and steel reinforcing for the shear walls, Sabol said, “It could have cost millions.” Englekirk is now planning the rejuvenation of another UCLA parking structure and plans to use reinforced fiber polymers again, Sabol said. There is more work to do, Chakrabarti said. The material’s reaction to prolonged heat and cold, chemicals like road salt in winter near repaired bridges and extended exposure to the sun’s ultraviolet rays, need to be documented before widely accepted standards for all types of situations can be put into place. “But certainly, if in a reasonably protected place, it can be a cleaner, quicker, easier, longer-lasting material to use,and not as much is needed as originally thought,” Chakrabarti added. Nov. 30, 2010
Or how the Royal Society betrayed its original purpose to become another quasi governmental organization spewing the scientifically correct official line By Andrew Montford Foreword by Professor Richard Lindzen Andrew Montford provides a straightforward and unembellished chronology of the perversion not only of The Royal Society but of science itself, wherein the legitimate role of science as a powerful mode of inquiry is replaced by the pretence of science to a position of political authority. The simple chronology speaks for itself, though one cannot read it without thinking, at least, about the motivations. Already in the 19th century, gentleman scientists, like Darwin, noted the potential constraints on scientific inquiry that were associated with functioning within universities. The potential in recent years is obviously magnified by the near monopoly over science support exercised by governments. In the US, our National Academy of Science (NAS) has always had official status as adviser to the government. However, the role was relatively passive until the 1970s. The 1970s saw a marked expansion of the National Research Council, the branch of the National Academy of Science responsible for responding to government requests. With the presidency of Frank Press (1981-1993), the staff of the NRC increased to over a thousand. Frank often boasted that The Royal Society was envious of the position of the NAS and the existence of its NRC. The global warming issue, it would appear, has offered The Royal Society the opportunity to rectify this situation. Nevertheless, there are certain peculiarities of The Royal Society’s behavior that are perhaps worth noting. The presidents involved with this issue (May, Rees and Nurse) are all profoundly ignorant of climate science. Their alleged authority stems from their positions in the RS rather than from scientific expertise. This is evident in a variety of ways. For example, in an exchange in the Financial Times (April 9, 2010), Martin Rees and Ralph Cicerone (President of the NAS) defended global warming concern by noting essentially that carbon dioxide (CO2) was increasing and that climate was changing. Of course, climate is always changing, and increasing CO2 must make some contribution, but none of this suggests anything alarming. The alarm results from controversial feedbacks wherein the small impacts of CO2 are, in current computer models, greatly amplified. With respect to these feedbacks, Rees and Cicerone say: “Uncertainties in the future rate of this rise (referring to global mean temperature anomaly), stemming largely from ‘feedback’ effects on water vapor and clouds are topics of current research.” That is to say, we don’t even know if there is a problem. Yet, Rees and Cicerone conclude: “Our academies will provide the scientific backdrop for the political and business leaders who must create effective policies to steer the world toward a low-carbon economy.” In other words, regardless of the science, the answer is predetermined. Is this simply ignorance or dishonesty? My guess is that Rees and Cicerone were only mindlessly repeating a script prepared by the environmental movement. In this report Montford documents some disturbing general trends, which one can only hope that scientists of good standing shall increasingly continue to oppose. For 300 years after its foundation, the Royal Society adopted a position of aloofness from political debates, refusing to become embroiled in the controversies of the day. This position was encapsulated in the Society’s journal, The Philosophical Transactions, which carried a notice that ‘It is neither necessary nor desirable for the Society to give an official ruling on scientific issues, for these are settled far more conclusively in the laboratory than in the committee room’. In the 1960s, the society became increasingly involved at the interface of science and political policymaking.With the elevation of Robert May to the presidency, the Society became highly politicised, involving itself in political advocacy and media campaigns. In 1989 it had issued the first of its highly controversial position papers on climate change, a document that eschewed the sober language of the scientist in favour of denunciations of those who questioned the reality or extent of manmade global warming. May’s political approach was continued by his successor, Martin Rees, with the Society’s authority being used to try to cut off funding of sceptic groups and with Rees putting forward positions on the economics of climate change. The Society issued a series of highly political statements demanding action from politicians. Under Rees, another combative statement on the science of global warming was issued. With the Society again adopting a political rather than scientific tone, a substantial group of the fellows was stirred to action, demanding that the Society reconsider the unscientific way in which it was addressing the global warming question, the result being a much improved position paper on global warming that reflected at least some of the critics’ concerns. Despite this, the Society has yet to distance itself from its former unscientific conduct, and the new president, Paul Nurse, has begun his term of office by staking out some very questionable positions on the role of scepticism in the climate debate. Immense damage has been done to the reputation of the Society by its last three presidents. While the fellows’ rebellion has improved matters considerably, the continuing desire of the Society’s leadership to engage in political controversies represents a serious ongoing risk to the Society’s reputation and an abandonment of its principles.
Bibliographic record and links to related information available from the Library of Congress catalog. Note: Electronic data is machine generated. May be incomplete or contain other coding. 1 Introduction 1 Regina Scheyvens and Donovan Storey Purpose 1 Concerns over appropriateness of doing fieldwork in the Third World 2 Responses to the crisis of legitimacy facing Western researchers 4 The potential value of research with 'others' 5 'The field' 8 Scope and limitations 10 Format 11 Overview 12 PART I METHODOLOGY 15 2 Designing Development Research 17 Warwick E. Murray and John Overton Introduction 17 Design - the ideal field research project 19 Logistics - proposing and planning 29 Research practice - between rigidity and flexibility 32 Conclusion 32 3 Using Quantitative Techniques 37 John Overton and Peter van Diermen Introduction 37 What is quantitative data? 38 What techniques should be used? 39 Sampling 42 How can data be analysed? 44 Limitations and pitfalls 50 Conclusion 54 4 Qualitative Research 57 Dan Brockington and Sian Sullivan Introduction 57 The popularity and perils of PRA 60 Ethnography: participant observation, oral testimony and the production of texts 65 On subjectivity and experience: phenomenological and embodiment approaches 68 Qualitative not quantitative? 70 Conclusion 72 PART II PREPARATION FOR THE FIELD 75 5 Practical Issues 77 Helen Leslie and Donovan Storey Introduction 77 Funding 77 Establishing contacts 79 Research 'permission': documentation and gatekeepers 81 Health and safety 83 Places to stay, or not to stay 87 Where to go and when to go 89 Packing 91 Conclusion 93 6 Personal Issues 97 Henry Scheyvens and Barbara Nowak Introduction 97 Motivation and selection of research topic 99 Creating a good impression 100 Desirable personal traits 102 The 'human element' in making judgements 106 Preparing for discomfort and depression 107 Families and partners in the field 109 Conclusion 114 PART III IN THE FIELD 117 7 Entering the Field 119 Helen Leslie and Donovan Storey The first day 120 The morning after 122 Culture shock 122 Behaviour during fieldwork 128 Working with others: research assistants 131 Language issues 135 Conclusion 137 8 Ethical Issues 139 Regina Scheyvens, Barbara Nowak and Henry Scheyvens Introduction 139 Ethics in research 140 Official ethics procedures 141 Power relations between researchers and their informants 149 Gatekeepers 153 Reciprocity 155 Truth and deception 158 Sex and sexuality 161 Safety of the researcher and responsibilities to self 163 Conclusion 165 9 Working with Marginalised, Vulnerable or Privileged Groups 167 Regina Scheyvens, Henry Scheyvens and Warwick E. Murray Introduction 167 Researching women 169 Researching children and youths 173 Researching minority ethnic groups 176 Researching the very poor 179 Researching the elite and powerful 182 Advocacy and activism 187 Conclusion 191 PART IV LEAVING THE FIELD 195 10 Anything to Declare? The Politics and Practicalities of Leaving the Field 197 Sara Kindon and Julie Cupples Introduction 197 Reasons for leaving 199 Factors influencing experiences of leaving 201 Feelings/emotions associated with leaving 202 Leaving strategies and ethical responsibilities 206 Practical concerns 211 Conclusion 213 11 Returning to University and Writing the Field 217 Julie Cupples and Sara Kindon Introduction 217 Managing shifting feelings and identities about returning to university 219 Writing and representing 222 Negotiating competing responsibilities: participants, audiences and careers 227 Returning to the field 229 Conclusion 230 12 Afterword 233 Donovan Storey and Regina Scheyvens Reflections on the value of fieldwork 233 Key themes 234 The future of development research 235Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication: Social sciences Research Developing countries, Social sciences Field work, Social sciences Research Methodology
January 2017 in Washington is a month history won’t soon forget—and for us at CCR, it’s especially meaningful. We will be at the Supreme Court, arguing Ziglar v. Abbasi (formerly known as Turkmen v. Ashcroft), a case that will test whether the Court will fulfill its role as an essential check on aggressive, discriminatory and illegal executive actions. CCR will also mark 15 years since the prison at Guantánamo opened alongside artists, allies, and activists from all over the country. We’re thrilled to be hosting a number of noteworthy events in DC in the coming weeks and we hope to see you there. These events are all free and open to the public, but space is limited. RSVP at the individual event pages listed below. January 8-20: The Tea Project with Ghaleb Al-Bihani & Djamel Ameziane CCR is proud to collaborate with Gallery 102 at the George Washington University, Witness Against Torture, and the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms on this important exhibit. Tea Project artists Amber Ginsburg and Aaron Hughes work collaboratively to uncover moments of beauty, poetics and shared humanity within little known military histories. Taking as its starting point the curious story of a Guantánamo Bay guard who fell in love with the drawings carved on Styrofoam cups by detainees, the Tea Project is an ongoing series of exhibitions and performances that offers counter-narratives to disrupt the numbing effects of war and detention. The exhibit will also include works from CCR clients Ghaleb Al-Bihani and Djamel Ameziane, created while both were detained at Guantánamo. Shown for the first time will be a substantial collection of the more than 200 works by Ghaleb, who has been detained without charge in Guantánamo since 2002 and has been cleared for transfer since 2014. CCR and partners will gather at Gallery 102 for a night of tea, art, poetry, music, and words by artists, activists, and leaders in the movements to end state violence from indefinite detention at Guantánamo, police murders, and institutionalized Islamophobia. Tea will be served throughout the evening. Every year on January 11, CCR, Witness Against Torture, Amnesty International, the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms and many, many others gather together in Washington, DC. This rally marks the 15 years since the prison at Guantánamo opened, and will feature dozens of human rights organizations and supporters. We will gather at the Supreme Court to send the message that torture, discrimination, and indefinite detention are wrong, and any attempt to bring back torture or to send new people to Guantánamo will be strongly opposed in the United States and throughout the world. President-Elect Donald Trump’s blatantly Islamophobic campaign has stoked fears of an era of a particularly egregious of religious discrimination and abuse of civil and human rights, but the repression of Muslims in the U.S. is not new. How did we get here, and what strategies will we need to employ to challenge institutionalized Islamophobia, in the face of potentially new obstacles? Join CCR, the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms (NCPCF), and the DC Justice for Muslims Coalition for an important discussion at Busboys & Poets the evening before Supreme Court oral argument in Ziglar v. Abbasi. January 18: Oral argument in Ziglar v. Abbasi Fifteen years after filing the case, CCR Senior Staff Attorney Rachel Meeropol will urge the Supreme Court to affirm that government officials, including those at the highest levels, can be held accountable for violating the Constitution. Join CCR and supporters at the Supreme Court for the last oral argument before the Supreme Court under the Obama Administration. The argument is open to the public, but seating is extremely limited and on a first-come, first-seated basis. We hope to see you. Join us as we make history!
Sunday, June 29, 2008 By Randall F. White, MD, FRCPC 29 June 2008 At St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, where I practice, 50 heart surgery cases have been cancelled since April 2008. The spokesperson quoted in The Province on June 26 said that the hospital sometimes lacks enough perfusionists to keep the cardiac operating rooms open. The opposition health critic in the legislature blames the government for its 2006 decision not to fund a perfusionist training program at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops. A few days before, The Province newspaper reported that BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver has cancelled 50 surgeries since April because of a shortfall of at least 10 intensive-care nurses. The same week, The Globe and Mail reported that a small town in BC is so desperate for doctors that it is raising money to build a new health clinic for physicians who have yet to be hired. The public is painfully aware of the physician shortage. The 2008 Health Care in Canada survey found that 19% of people named it second only to wait times as the leading problem in our system. In January 2008, the Canadian Medical Association launched a campaign to raise political capital for increased domestic training of physicians, an appropriate advocacy issue for Canadian physicians. But at the same time, the CMA leadership, including president Dr. Brian Day, advocates for a second tier of health care. They haven’t explained how this second tier would be staffed given the immediate need for 26,000 physicians to bring Canada up from a ratio of 2.1 doctors per 1000 population to 3 per 1000, the mean among OECD nations. Doctors aside, private hospitals and clinics require nurses, perfusionists, and other personnel who are in short supply and who require expensive, lengthy training. These facilities would take such personnel from existing institutions, including St. Paul’s Hospital, BC Children’s, and the others that serve most Canadians. Wealthy people who can afford to pay a premium could avoid wait lists and cancellations while the rest of Canada would endure even more such failures of the public system. This pattern occurred in Australia after the introduction of a privately funded, privately owned tier of hospitals. According to the Australian Medical Association, wait times and crowding in the public hospitals have reached a crisis. The same would happen in Canada; in fact, we have a crisis despite having no official second tier. So let’s forget tier two, train more health professionals, and make our existing system work better. Posted by Richard Pickering at 9:11 AM Wednesday, June 11, 2008 By Randall F. White, MD, FRCPC 9 June 2008 The BC minister of health, George Abbott, assembled a task force in 2007 to review policy on pharmaceutical coverage under the province’s PharmaCare program. According to the Web site http://www.health.gov.bc.ca/pharme/, the program “subsidizes eligible prescription drugs and designated medical supplies, protecting British Columbians from high drug costs.” Abbott’s appointments to the panel surprised even cynics. Adrian Dix, the opposition health critic, called the composition of the nine-member task force “highly debatable” because five of the members had ties to the pharmaceutical industry. It included Russell Williams, the president of Canada's Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies, a leading industry lobbying group. The conflict of interest was glaring, yet aspects of the province’s decision-making that displease industry were open for review. Most provinces turn to the Common Drug Review that for decisions about covering medications. For therapies that fall outside the Common Drug Review, BC has an independent review process called the Therapeutics Initiative (TI), which also provides education for clinicians on its Web site Therapeutics Initiative The TI review process has been praised for outcomes such as preventing widespread use of COX-2 inhibitors in BC, medications which turned out to have a poor risk/benefit ratio. The task force released its report in April 2008, and just as critics expected, the recommendations lean hard on efforts to protect tax payers and public health at the expense of Big Pharma’s profits. The report concluded, without substantiation, that the TI is “widely regarded as being in need of either substantial revitalization or replacement.” The panel even recommended that the TI cease educational activities, suggesting that they have not been “unbiased and evidence based.” In barely concealed contempt for the TI, which is housed at UBC and is explicitly designed to keep the evaluation process shielded from industry influence, the panel suggested a new process that includes “disease-specific experts.” Although experts have a lot to offer, the fact is that many are involved in research and education funded by Big Pharma: more conflict of interest. In an egregious example, Dr. Joseph Biederman, a renowned child psychiatrist and researcher at Harvard, was recently found to have concealed a large sum of pharma income New York Times What about a government’s conflict of interest in inviting industry to craft public policy? Big Pharma spreads its money around, including to Abbott’s party, the BC Liberals. The Pharmaceutical Task Force illustrates how commercial interests influence health policy, and why Canadians should hesitate to allow commercialization of other aspects of the health care system. Once corporate interests are let in, their lobbyists want a say in whatever government does. Posted by Richard Pickering at 3:37 PM
When I was new in the faith I was taught this concerning receiving the truth of God's word: When you hear it, it first affects your head, as you listen to it and understand it. Then, as you meditate on it, it works its way down to your heart and gets a grip on you. Finally it reaches your feet as you put it into practice and outwork it. I don't know if this head->heart->feet teaching is still doing the rounds out there anywhere, but the more I have studied the scriptures and the more I have learned from them, the more I have become convinced that this description of teaching is totally at odds to the New Testament pattern. In fact I would say that, at least in the west, we have distorted the concept of Biblical teaching to fit with our own post-enlightenment world view. We have reduced it to a cerebral activity, a mere exchange of thoughts and ideas from the mind of the teacher to the minds of those receiving instruction. I have even read a description of the ascension ministry of teacher as "a lover of books." Some it would seem have this idea of the teacher as a wise bookish person who gets wheeled out to teach doctrine now and again. Where do we get this idea? Surely this is a concept of teaching that comes from our experience in the modern world, rather than from the pages of Scripture. What was Christ's own teaching ministry like? What was the teaching ministry of the Apostles like? Were they bookish academics? Ephesians 4 says we have all been given grace "according to the measure of Christ's gift." So surely it is Christ's own teaching gift that we should use as an example in these matters: And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes. (Mk 1:22) If we read the gospel accounts we discover that the crowds were as astonished with Jesus' teaching as they were with this miracles. This was because he did not merely "teach" to convey information, but his words carried authority. Authority comes to bring obedience. Obviously Jesus had not heard about the head->heart->feet process, as his words cut straight to the end result. He did not give people nice ideas to go away and think about; he brought the plumb-line of the word with authority that men had to line themselves up with. In fact we find that the reason Jesus often taught in parables, was not to make himself easier to understand, quite the opposite, it was so that his teaching could not just be received as nice intellectual ideas: He said, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for others they are in parables, so that ‘seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.’ (Lk 8:10) In fact when Jesus was taken into heaven, when he revealed his ultimate authority over all things and gave the great commission, he spelt out what teaching should do: Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." (Mt 28:18-20) The Jesus-kind-of-teaching is not teaching aimed at the head, but directly for the feet. We can receive it and obey it, put it into practice and see it produce fruit, even before we fully understand it. What about the head->heart stage? Well, consider Paul's words to the Ephesians: I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints (Eph 1:18) Again the process is reversed! They received it in their hearts in order that they might know with their heads. Spiritual truth is received first by the spirit, not by the mind. We need to be those who have a mind controlled by the Spirit (Ro 8:6) not a spirit controlled by the mind. Head, heart, feet? I'm sorry, I don't buy it any more! In my Bible the process is feet, heart, head!
In order to have an Active Directory, you must have the InteleGRID Director, click this link, follow the instructions, and then come back if you do not currently have the InteleGRID Director installed. 1) Click the ‘Configuration’ tab near the top of the page, then click on ‘Integration Options’ on the right. 2) Then scroll down to the bottom of the page to ‘External Authentication’, click ‘Actions’ on the right, and then click ‘Add ActiveDirectory Auth’ and fill out all the information in the pop-up form, clicking ‘Save’ when you’re done. 3) Go back to the ‘Configurations’ tab and then scroll down the ‘My Groups’ and click the ‘Goto’ button. 4) Now find the desired group and click the ‘Actions’ button across from it and click ‘Manage Users’. 5) Then for the user you want to grant Active Directory permission to, click ‘Actions’ across from the user, and then select ‘Edit User’. In the pop-up, there will be an ‘ActiveDirectory Authentication’ checkbox you can now check to grant the user permission. NOTE: The user will now log in using their full email address and their Active Directory password, NOT their username and password.
Like ballerinas, Salvador Dali was simultaneously an artist and a work of art. When not piecing together some of the most out-there, psychedelic portraits known to man, Dali did the same with his public persona. His classic, occasionally nonsensical one liners like “I don’t do drugs; I am drugs” have gone down in history, along with photos of him walking an anteater and, naturally, shaping his inimitable mustache into a dollar bill. As with other surrealists, Salvador Dali embraced the irrational and bizarre as his truths, digging deep into our unconscious selves only to splash his findings onto the canvas. Such a movement was not unforeseen: in the eyes of surrealists, it was cold, rational calculation that led to conflict, war and alienation seen in the 20th century. If we were to survive as a people, we needed to reject this artificial and harmful way of thinking about the world; we had to look inward as opposed to outward. In other words, you guessed it, we needed to ditch realism for surrealism. And as the following photos show, Dali did that in all facets of his life: In a technical sense, Dali and his contemporaries were unsuccessful in altering the world’s consciousness, but their work–as complex as it is absurd–is an invaluable artistic challenge to the chilly realism that largely defined the 20th century. By Tumblr.All images come from
You must try making use of your current energy supply along with renewable power options. You cannot depend on renewable energy options right this moment to provide all the energy needs of your home. Power prices for Texas usually range in price from 4.67 to 15.19 cents a kWh contingent upon current market condition and the locale: these rates are not guaranteed and are only used as an illustration. It is best to try switching your lights in case you are still making use of incandescent bulbs. These bulbs generally discharge 98 percent of the energy that they consume into heat so it is best to think about CFL or LED bulbs. A lot of folks are actually disregarding lighting as they feel that their bills are not really afflicted by these little light bulbs. When your lights are used 24 hours a day, it will consume a lot of energy and your monthly bills will increase. LED Bulbs and CFL are better choices so if you're still making use of incandescent bulbs, replace them immediately since the new ones consume less energy. It is also very important to utilize natural light rather than utilizing your artificial lighting 24/7. Open your curtains during daytime and allow all-natural light enter your residence and simply open your light bulbs at night.
Here is the abstract: Remission orders, although rare, serve important functions in the Canadian tax system. This paper draws from a comprehensive study of federal tax remission orders issued between 1998 and 2017. It presents general findings about remission orders in that time period, including the number of remission orders issued, their reported costs, and the number of remission order applications. The paper identifies the five most common categories of reasons cited for granting remission orders. It then applies tax policy analysis to assess the two most frequent reasons for granting remission orders: to provide debt relief for financial hardship and/or extenuating circumstances, and to provide remedies for government errors and delays. This study also highlights concerns about the federal tax remission system, and provides recommendations for improving its fairness, transparency, and accountability.For those not familiar with the practice of remission in tax, this is a regime under which the taxpayer can ask the tax authority to forgive their tax debts, manly due to hardship or extenuating circumstances. This was a new concept to me when I came to McGill in 2012 and learned about a rather generous remission order granted to Blackberry in what I assumed to be a last-ditch effort in the nature of industrial policy and national protectionism--but Prof. Singer's paper makes clear that the remission order is not only (or even primarily) for massive multinational companies. I am bothered by the idea that the tax authority has a more or less obscure power to forgive the tax debts of some taxpayers under unclear circumstances and using criteria that are not transparent or reviewable. This seems to me to be a tool which could create great distrust in the tax system, in terms of both procedural fairness for taxpayers who don't know about or get remission orders but also in terms of the opacity behind which some officials appear to have a tool to help selected individuals at their will. I look forward to the discussion of Prof. Singer's paper and the implications of this research for the big questions of tax governance. The tax policy colloquium at McGill is supported by a grant made by the law firm Spiegel Sohmer, Inc., for the purpose of fostering an academic community in which learning and scholarship may flourish. The land on which we gather is the traditional territory of the Kanien’keha:ka (Mohawk), a place which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange amongst nations. This fall the Colloquium will explore a range of contemporary tax topics across three disciplines--law, economics, and philosophy. The complete colloquium schedule is below and more information is available here. As always, the colloquium is free and open to all. The Colloquium is convened by Allison Christians, H. Heward Stikeman Chair in Taxation Law.
Whārangi 1: Biography Thacker, Henry Thomas Joynt Doctor, local politician, sports administrator I tuhia tēnei haurongo e Geoffrey W. Rice, ā, i tāngia tuatahitia ki Ngā Tāngata Taumata Rau i te 1996. Henry Thomas Joynt Thacker was born at Okains Bay, Banks Peninsula, New Zealand, on 20 March 1870. His parents, Essy Joynt and her husband, John Edward Thacker, a former editor of the Sligo Guardian, had come to Canterbury in 1850. John Thacker became a dairy farmer and sawmiller at Okains Bay, and established Thacker Brothers, a profitable business dealing in wool and stock. Having shown ability at Okains Bay School, Henry Thacker was sent to Christchurch Boys' High School from 1883 to 1886, and in 1887 he enrolled at Canterbury College. He was a notable footballer, representing Canterbury province in 1889 and 1891. In 1892 he completed a BA and travelled to Edinburgh to study medicine. While there he gained a rugby blue and after completing his MB and CM in 1896, he went to Dublin where he became an FRCSI in 1898. That year, on 16 March, he married Monica Alexandra Morrison in Dublin. There were no children of the marriage. On his return to New Zealand in 1898 Thacker commenced private practice in Christchurch. He was a visiting physician at Christchurch Hospital, but resigned in 1902 after refusing to examine a patient diagnosed as having bubonic plague. He was widely respected as a general practitioner for treating all comers, regardless of their ability to pay. The only non-farming partner in Thacker Brothers, on his father's death in 1896 he had also become a large landowner with a comfortable private income. As one of Christchurch's early motoring enthusiasts he always had a new and expensive car, and employed a uniformed chauffeur to keep it in immaculate condition. He was once fined for overtaking at the 'dangerous speed' of 15 miles per hour. Thacker was actively involved in community life. In 1904 he was elected president of the South Island Brass Bands' Association, retaining this post until 1928 and becoming their patron. He served as president of the Canterbury Automobile Association in 1905–6. A keen oarsman in his youth, Thacker became a rowing administrator, helping to train Richard Arnst, who became the world champion sculler in 1910. He also supported hockey and cricket, but his most important contribution to sports administration was as first president of the Canterbury Rugby Football League (1912–29). He donated the Thacker Shield and became a life member of the Canterbury League in 1920. In 1925 he was a trustee for the purchase of grounds in Woolston, which were named Monica Park after his wife. Thacker also developed strong political interests. Having been briefly chairman of the Okains Bay Road Board, he served on the Lyttelton Harbour Board (1909–24) and was elected to the Christchurch City Council in 1910. He was chairman of the committee which inaugurated the Lake Coleridge electric power scheme, before losing his seat in 1912. He also contested the mayoralty in 1911 and 1912. Gaining a reputation for his witty and forceful speeches, he gave enthusiastic leadership to the campaign for a canal and port in Christchurch from 1908 to 1925. The canal scheme led him into national politics, and he stood for the Lyttelton seat as a Liberal in 1908 and for Christchurch East as an independent Liberal in 1911, losing the 1911 election only on the second ballot. In 1914 he was nominated by the Liberals for Christchurch East and won easily when T. H. Davey withdrew. Thacker held this seat until 1922. At the outbreak of the First World War, Thacker won widespread popularity for demanding an inquiry into insanitary conditions at Trentham Military Camp, a move which he later claimed had saved many lives. In Parliament he soon made his mark as an able and independent debater, declaring that he would always 'speak straight out what I think'. His early proposals included the freezing of trout and deer for export, better ventilation and washing facilities in schools, and a state-funded accident insurance scheme. During the 1918 influenza epidemic he visited Okains Bay and found nearly every household in the district stricken. Thacker set up an emergency hospital there and sent his chauffeur to collect the most serious cases from the other bays. In 10 days he treated over 140 cases and lost only three to pneumonia. His timely intervention undoubtedly averted a much higher death toll. This humanitarian work may have tipped the balance in Thacker's favour in a close-run contest for the Christchurch mayoralty in April 1919, in which he stood as an independent on a mixed platform of civic progress and sports promotion. He is remembered as one of the city's most colourful mayors. In 1920 he was civic host during the visit of the prince of Wales and the governor-general, Lord Jellicoe. When the students' capping procession of that year made fun of him as mayor, he responded with equal good humour in a speech from his car, and treated all of the graduates to morning tea. He repeated this largesse every year until 1929. During his term of office the city absorbed four neighbouring boroughs (Spreydon, Papanui, Woolston and Bromley), and Thacker constantly promoted the idea of greater Christchurch. He presided at the public meetings which fiercely debated proposals for a war memorial and finally resulted in the Bridge of Remembrance (opened in 1924). On 16 December 1922 Monica Thacker as mayoress laid the foundation stone for the new civic chambers. Although defeated for the mayoralty in 1923, Thacker was re-elected to the council in 1929 and served until 1931, during which time he was appointed deputy mayor and inaugurated a tree-planting scheme along the lower reaches of the Avon River. These years saw a revival of the canal proposal, and as chairman of the Port Christchurch League (1929–32) he led a deputation to the prime minister, George Forbes, in 1930; however, the canal was never built. Henry Thacker was a big man (said to weigh 18 stone) who combined a commanding figure with a bluff outspoken manner: he once described the Canterbury Women's Institute as 'a gathering together of prudes' and 'a set of broody hens'. He always dressed smartly, and from his habit of wearing gloves and spats gained the reputation of being a dandy. His public meetings were unpredictable and entertaining, thanks to his ready wit and expert handling of hecklers. Thacker was a lifelong advocate of exercise and physical fitness, endorsing the Sandow method and condemning corsets for women. Ironically, in later life his own movement was restricted by partial paralysis of his left leg, which made him use a walking stick. In numerous lectures and newspaper articles he preached the principles of a rational diet, with emphasis on wholemeal bread, vegetables and fruit. He always ate pineapple before a speech, 'to assist the voice'. In his last years he became well known throughout New Zealand for his radio talks on health and diet, which gained a large following in the 1930s. Henry Thacker died at Christchurch on 3 May 1939 survived by his wife, Monica. For over 30 years one of the city's best-known public figures, Thacker was respected for his courage, persistence and strong individual views. Though disappointed in his long campaign for 'Port Christchurch', he had made significant contributions in local government and sports administration.
For women struggling to conceive, in vitro fertilization can be a successful, but also fairly expensive, option. At approximately $15,000 per cycle, and requiring two cycles on average before it works, it’s still beyond the reach of many couples. A new app called Conceivable, launching today, is offering a different option. This subscription-based service delivered through a mobile application is a personalized health program for women that works to identify and address a variety of underlying factors that could be contributing to the issue at hand, and then drop-ships supplements to their door every month to accompany their customized health plan. The program itself originally began in a fertility clinic out in the offline world. Before starting Conceivable, founder and CEO Kirsten Karchmer founded and ran the Texas Center for Reproductive Acupuncture, a large fertility wellness clinic in the U.S. She also served as the president of the American Board of Oriental Reproductive Medicine. During her clinical career, Karchmer developed a system that integrated a number of different data-backed strategies to help improve women’s fertility, including those involving conventional medicine, Chinese medicine, nutrition, behavioral science and more. The program also looks for a variety of underlying factors that are unique to each woman which, combined, can affect fertility. These could include things like caffeine intake, alcohol consumption, exercise, diet, smoking, stress levels, irregular cycles and more. As an example, Karchmer explains that many women don’t realize that if they have a short cycle – 26 days or less – they have a 50 percent less likelihood of conceiving compared with women who have longer cycles. In Conceivable’s program, there are some 50 similar factors that are taken into account in order to build its customized program. But the program doesn’t stop at identifying the potential causes; it also offers strategies to help address them. For example, Conceivable will offer its customers personalized meal plans, recipes and shopping lists to aid with their nutritional changes, as well as mind/body exercises, stress management plans, lifestyle recommendations, plus proprietary blends of herbal supplements that arrive monthly. This is combined with the typical cycle-tracking that’s offered today by a number of competing apps on the market, including the Max Levchin-headed fertility app Glow, that’s backed by a hefty $23 million. But Glow’s business involves offering the digital version of fertility-tracking techniques that have been around for some time, including things like basal temperature monitoring, weight monitoring, ovulation tracking, and more. Previously, women just printed out spreadsheets and tracked this data for themselves. Glow, however, combines this tracking with a program that women can pay into monthly and then get a share of the pool after 10 months if they still can’t get pregnant. Conceivable, meanwhile, has a different model. It charges $199 per month for access to its service, which puts it well above the price of free cycle-tracking apps, but far below the cost of actually working with a fertility clinic directly and receiving personalized care. What’s more, the Conceivable program changes over time. Using adaptive learning software, the service is designed to improve and optimize over time, adjusting itself to the user’s progress and data input. At the clinic, the program was used with 7,000 couples, and around half got pregnant. But Karchmer says that the analog version can’t be compared with the digital counterpart, because some of those women also used assistive technologies in conjunction with other lifestyle changes. However, in the four months the Conceivable app has been in beta testing with 100 users, two have gotten pregnant, she notes. Of course, it will take more time and additional data to know how well her program compares with the success rates of others. But for women looking for additional options, it’s one they may choose to consider before taking the final step of opting for in vitro. Based in Austin, Conceivable is backed by $800,000 in seed funding from various angels and former VCs – including around one-third of whom who were prior customers from Karchmer’s clinic. “We’re excited because we feel like we’re one of the first products out there that really addresses the biometrics of women’s health as a health barometer,” says Karchmer. “We feel like what we’ve built with Conceivable actually takes the ‘quantified self’ movement to the next level…because not only do we collect a lot of data, but we take that data and use our algorithms to create actionable plans.” Conceivable is initially available on iOS, with plans to support the web, mobile web and Android in the future.
What Hygiene Problems Can Occur With Classroom Headphones? There are a few common hygiene problems that may occur with classroom headphones, as follows: - Earwax – Earwax may be a hygienic issue with in-ear headphones. Unless each child has a specific set of in-ear headphones that only they use, this is one reason why over-the-ear or disposable headphones may be a better option. - Parasites like head lice – Head lice are a major concern for young kids, as they can spread very quickly and are very hard to get rid of, particularly in schools. - Viruses & bacteria – While viruses and bacteria are unlikely to spread into a child’s ear, reusing used headphones can sometimes spread between kids when they’re handling or using the same pair of headphones without cleaning them. Over-Ear Headphones Are A More Hygienic Reusable Solution If you want to use reusable headphones in your classrooms, you should definitely choose over-the-ear headphones. Unlike earbuds or “in-ear” style earphones, these rest outside of a child’s ear, which reduces the risk of nasty earwax or anything else building up on the earphones. This is particularly true if your classroom does not assign headphones to individual kids, and they may be used by multiple children throughout a school day. It’s also a good idea to wipe down the outside of the headphones with an alcohol wipe to clean them after use, particularly if you’re worried about viruses and bacteria. Disposable Headphones Provide The Most Protection Against Bacteria And Viruses If you are very worried about hygiene at your school, the best way to get protection against lice, bacteria, viruses and other such threats is to purchase disposable headphones. These inexpensive headphones are designed to be used only once, and then disposed of or recycled according to your local regulations. Because these headphones are not designed to be re-used, your students will simply use them once, then turn them over the teacher or toss them in a designated bin after they’ve been used. This also makes them very useful if you and your administrative team only occasionally need headphones at your school – for specific tests, for instance. Our disposable headphones at TechXpress are available for a very low cost in packs of up to 500, are compatible with all devices that have a 3.5mm headphone jack, and include a 12-month warranty. We are a go-to supplier for single-use headphones throughout Australia. Make Sure That You’ve Got The Right Headphones To Keep Your Students Safe & Clean! At TechXpress, we offer over-the-ear headphones that are an ideal choice if you want to re-use headphones, and you don’t mind occasionally wiping them down to kill any parasites, bacteria, or viruses. We also have cheap, bulk disposable headphones for schools looking for an even better hygienic solution. So think about what you need, and shop with us right away. We’re government-approved suppliers in both NSW and Queensland, and we serve schools, hospitals, and government institutions throughout all of Australia. Contact us now if you have any questions.
\|View source on GitHub\| Returns the error of the Stirling approximation to lgamma(x) for x >= 8. tfp.substrates.jax.math.log_gamma_correction( x, name=None ) This is useful for accurately evaluating ratios between Gamma functions, as happens when trying to compute Beta functions. lgamma(x) approx (x - 0.5) * log(x) - x + 0.5 log (2 pi) + log_gamma_correction(x) for x >= 8. This is the function called Delta in , eq (30). We implement it with the rational minimax approximation given in , eq (32). DiDonato and Morris, "Significant Digit Computation of the Incomplete Beta Function Ratios", 1988. Technical report NSWC TR 88-365, Naval Surface Warfare Center (K33), Dahlgren, VA 22448-5000. Section IV, Auxiliary Functions. https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a210118.pdf \|\|Floating-point Tensor at which to evaluate the log gamma correction elementwise. The approximation is accurate when x >= 8.\| \|\|Tensor of elementwise log gamma corrections.\|
TEPAD Kenya has won an innovation grant from Grand Challenges Canada (GCC) to work with Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) to develop Ujiplus™, a porridge meal (Uji) with deworming capabilities. Ujiplus™, is an invention by TEPAD Kenya and KEMRI scientists with knowledge derived from traditional deworming practices from the Terik community. The first clinical trials of Ujiplus done in schools in Terik location showed a potential to deworm children with significant reduction of intestinal worms especially roundworms ( ascaris lumbricoides ). A follow-up trial done in primary schools in Nandi Hills Location showed not only reduction in intestinal worms but also increased hemoglobin levels and clearance of ringworms (tinea capitis) among the children who took the porridge. (see scientific publication: The Grand Challenges Canada grant is to enable TEPAD Kenya and KEMRI confirm the scientific findings through a larger clinical trial and effect of Ujiplus™ on other common worm species like Bilharzia (Schistosoma mansoni) tapeworms (hookworms) and whipworms. The grant will also allow for investigations on Ujiplus™ active ingredients, dosing period and any side effects. “We are excited to win the Grand Challenges Canada Transition To Scale (TTS) grant” Says Elizabeth Maritim, the TEPAD Kenya Project Manager. Ujiplus promises to be a popular homegrown deworming innovation for national schools deworming programs. It has several advantages over the currently used deworming programs in Kenya Schools including its ability to boost child nutrition, clearance of ringworms and other child skin infections.”
read each act of the three act play Our Town by Thornton Wilder English homework help you have to read each act of the three-act play, â€œOur Townâ€ by Thornton Wilder. It is also recommended that you watch the play in some form, as that is how plays are meant to be enjoyed! ACT Iâ€”parts one & two - Which characters do we meet in this act? Of these characters, who seem to be the main characters? - In what settings (locations) are these characters found? - During what time period does the story take place? - What major events transpire during the course of the act? - Recalling which characters we see in this act, what are their relationships to one another? Be sure to answer in full sentences, and explain each characterâ€™s relationship to the other, as best you understand it. - Based on the events that occur in this scene, what do you predict will happen next? Use at least one quote from the play to explain your prediction. â€œOur Townâ€ by Thornton Wilder. It is also recommended that you watch the play in some form, as that is how plays are meant to be enjoyed! - Which words/phrases were new to you? If none, which were at the higher end of your vocabulary? How did you determine what the author was trying to say at this point in the play? - From what point of view is this act told? From whose perspective are the events of this act unfolding? What elements of the play indicate this? Use at least one quote to support you answer. - According to George, what makes a happy marriage? What does Mr. Webb think makes a happy marriage? Find at least one quote from each of these two characters to support your answer. - What is the tone of this act? What elements of the play create this tone? Consider dialogue, setting, stage directions, etc. Explain your answer. - Discuss the visual aspects of the playâ€”props, staging, etc. How does the visual staging express the meaning of the play? What would be lost in a detailed, realistic staging? Discuss the symbolism of the dramatic visual images.
Download FREE Sample Here for Solution Manual for OM 6th Edition by Collier Chapter s 2-18. Note : this is not a text book. File Format : PDF or WordTABLE OF CONTENTS 2. Measuring Performance in Operations and Value Chains. 3. Operations Strategy. 4. Technology and Operations Management. 5. Goods and Service Design. 6. Supply Chain Design. 7. Process, Selection, Design, and Analysis. 8. Facility and Work Design. 9. Forecasting and Demand Planning. 10. Capacity Management. 11. Managing Inventories in Supply Chains. 12 Supply Chain Management and Logistics. 13. Resource Management. 14. Operations Scheduling and Sequencing. 15. Quality Management. 16. Quality Control and SPC. 17. Lean Operating Systems. 18. Project Management. Once the order is placed, the order will be delivered to your email less than 24 hours, mostly within 4 hours. If you have questions, you can contact us here
Biofouling is a major problem that affects the heat transfer efficiency of marine and coastal heat exchangers. The reduced heat exchanger efficiency results in energy loss and thereby affects the overall energy efficiency in the marine industry segment. Additional energy is required to compensate for the energy loss leading to increased fuel consumption which in turn contributes to global environmental issues like climate change. The current industrial methods of biofouling mitigation or removal from heat exchanger surfaces increase both operational and maintenance expenditure causing further environmental damages. This paper presents two models to provide an overview of the major environmental and economic impacts due to biofouling in marine heat exchangers. The study results suggest the need for sustainable biofouling prevention techniques to improve the energy and resource efficiency of marine heat exchangers.
Like most teachers, the sizes of my classes have progressively increased over the past few years. This year is no exception, save for one of my classes that has 22 students. As we complete the first month of the school year, the differences between this class and my larger classes are instructive as to why “class size matters“. The class is a 9th grade Global History class that meets towards the end of the day. Anyone who has ever taught freshmen when the clock is close to 3:00 pm knows the challenges involved. It is basically the same set of challenges for any class that meets towards the end of the day, only double. After 6 hours inside of a school building, kids start exhibiting symptoms of school fatigue: fidgetyness, boredom, irritability and intractability. Yet, this particular freshmen class exhibits none of those symptoms. All of them are motivated and attentive in their own way. By the end of the period, most if not all of the students have raised their hands and contributed to the daily discussion. The few students who straggle with the “do now” assignment I am able to quickly get on task by quietly going over to them for individual attention. Most importantly, it easy for me to get know each one of their personalities. I know them better than I know the students in my other classes. Contrast this class to the one I teach during the preceding period. This is an 11th grade U.S. History class with 32 students. They are a good group that I enjoy teaching. As 11th graders, they are able to pick up on subtle humor and we generally have a few laughs by the time the class is over. Yet, I cannot say that I know many of them as individuals. Just like the freshmen class, there are a few stragglers during the “do now” assignment. However, I cannot get to all of them because the class is just so large. There are a few students who have not participated all year. The quieter students tend to slip through the cracks while the ones who are bold during class discussions soak up most of the attention. To be sure, there are many students who excel at class discussion, so I am able to get a fairly decent spread of participants on a daily basis. Still, I have never been able to get to everybody yet, even though I know I will by the end of the year. The difference between the percentage of students who participate in my freshman class compared to the junior class is not merely due to differences in numbers. The smaller class size in the freshmen class makes the students feel comfortable. There is a smaller audience for them to reach. They do not have to worry as much about saying something that others might think “silly”. Furthermore, they seem to feel more comfortable with me as a teacher. Even a student who sits in the “last” row (Yes, I seat kids in rows. Charlotte Danielson will probably have my head for this.) still only sits towards the middle of the room. In the 11th grade class, a student who sits in the last row sits all the way in the back, far away from me until I make my rounds throughout the room, which I do often. The smaller class size enables me to have a better rapport with my students. If I was one of those yelling teachers, or someone who got ticked off easily, my 11th grade class probably would have driven me over the edge in week one. This is not because they are bad kids, because they are not. This is because when you have a room of 32 teenagers, it is inevitable that some of them are going to talk, or try to sneak a text message, or fall asleep or whatever else teenagers do. I am sure things go on during that period that escape my notice. When I do notice things in that class, I only have time to stop it by saying “stop it” or throwing a glare. To be sure, no truly bad or disruptive behaviors have taken place but a teacher still has to deal with a student who talks too much to his/her neighbors or does not want to do work. With my smaller class, I can be much more inventive with my discipline. Since I have come to know them over the past three weeks, I can understand why each student does what they do. Instead of just telling a student to “knock it off”, I can try to work a normally disruptive behavior into the lesson or buy the time to go over to the student and deal with the issue personally. At this point, I know that none of the students in that class would be disruptive for the sake of derailing the lesson or showing me up. Whatever they do is an extension of their natural personalities, which is to say they do not do things simply out of pure malice. Of course, I know this is the case for all of my students in all of my classes. But the smaller class size allows me to understand from whence certain behaviors arise. In my larger classes, I just assume that malice is not a motivating factor for disruptive behavior. That does not necessarily tell me what the motivation is. After 14 years as a teacher, I have no doubt that I will eventually figure all of my students out. The fact that I am able to do this faster with a smaller class means I am able to build a better rapport with them earlier in the year. Every teacher knows that the beginning of the year is vital, for it forges the channels over which the rest of the year will flow. I can already foresee that I will be able to be more creative, take more risks and teach more in the long run to my small freshmen class than to my larger classes. This anecdotal evidence should be enough to give the lie to reformers like Bill Gates and Pharaoh Bloomberg who assume class size does not matter. What I mentioned here are merely the in-class benefits of smaller class sizes. It does not even speak to the other out-of-class benefits, like being able to spend more time on grading each child’s assignment, which would enable me to provide more individualized guidance. I am an effective teacher whether there are 22 or 32 students in my room, but there is no doubt that I am more effective with 22. Any veteran teacher worth their salt would say the same. It also should give the lie to the KIPP and Success Academy philosophy of school discipline. Even with a classroom of 32 students, I never felt the need to force them to sit up straight or keep their eyes focused on me or keep their lips sealed until they are spoken to. With a class of 22, which is closer to the class sizes that exist at Kipp and Success Academy, there should be even less of a need to do this. If a high school teacher cannot keep the attention and focus of a class that size with kindness and understanding, then that person should not be teaching. How much damage are these charter schools doing to kids with their draconian discipline codes? How many kids are learning to hate learning in these places? Only three weeks into the school year and already we can see that class size matters.
06C - Christmas 1C — 08C - Epiphany See also my posts from 2013, 2016 … Give glory and honour and power and authority to the name of the LORD, all you children of God! Worship the LORD in holy awe; bow down in the overwhelming presence of our God. Listen to the presence of the LORD over the waters; hear the majesty of the name of the LORD; its power and authority above the roar of the flood. Cedar panels in the Temple splinter at the voice of the LORD, lightning flashes rip open the sky; animals give birth before their time, and the earth trembles. A shout of “Glory!” rises to the LORD enthroned in splendour. May the LORD give protection and blessing and life for ever Holy Source of all that is, you fill us with the Bread of Life. With joy we offer ourselves; our whole being, all we are, and all we have. Use us as people of grace, to release the captive, and bind up the broken-hearted; in Jesus’ name. Amen. A CREATIVE MOMENT Click here for some ideas for worship in Advent and Christmas gleaned from the pages of “On the Move” (now out of print), published by the Joint Board of Christian Education, Melbourne, Australia. THE PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE (A prayer to gather the spoken and silent concerns/joys/thanks expressed by the congregation and lead into a more structured Intercession with connection to the lections for the day. Sometimes this prayer borrows lightly from other sources e.g. Uniting in Worship 2 or publications of the Iona Community.) Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end; standing at the doorway of a new year We name, in word and silence, our joys, concerns and thanks… Spirit of holiness comfort the grieving and lonely, encourage the weak and sustain the helpless that they too may know a new beginning… (The Prayers of the People continue) Looking for contemporary music and song resources? Try David MacGregor’s Together to Celebrate Or metrical psalms? Try Dale A. Schoening’s Sing the Psalms \|HYMN SUGGESTIONS FOR CHRISTMAS 2C\| \|God of grace and God of glory\|\|TIS 611\|\|AHB 543\| \|Great God, we sing that mighty hand\|\|TIS 124\|\|AHB 52\| \|Now to the Lord a noble song!\|\|TIS 113\|\|AHB 33\| \|Rejoice, the Lord is King\|\|TIS 216\|\|AHB 147\| \|The king of love my shepherd is\|\|TIS 145\|\|AHB 81\| \|Praise now the Lord! its good to raise\|\|TIS9I\|\|AHB 41\| \|Sing to God with joy and gladness\|\|TIS 92\| \|Almighty God, lift up our eyes\|\|TIS 615\|\|AHB 549\| \|Dear Christians, one and all rejoice\|\|TIS 196\| \|Father in heaven, grant to your children\|\|TIS 465\|\|AHB 399\| \|God of many names\|\|TIS 180\| \|God! When human bonds are broken\|\|TIS 683\| \|God, we praise you, God, we bless you\|\|TIS 99\|\|SA 40\| \|Holy Spirit, come confirm us\|\|TIS 413\|\|AHB 327\| \|Lord Jesus, our bright Morning Star\|\|TIS 199\| \|Sing praise to the Lord!\|\|TIS 96\| \|Sing praise and thanksgiving, let all cr\|\|TIS 107\|\|AHB 25\| \|Spread, O spread, almighty Word\|\|TIS 450\| \|There’s a spirit in the air\|\|TIS 414\| \|We are your people\|\|TIS 468\|\|SA 90\| \|Alleluia … The Word of the Lord lasts\|\|TIS 257\| \|At the dawning of salvation\|\|TIS 392\|\|SA 9\| \|Colourful Creator, God of mystery\|\|TIS 190\| \|Come, you people, come adore him\|\|TIS 101\| \|I danced in the morning\|\|TIS 242\|\|AHB 183\| \|Jesus calls us here to meet him\|\|TIS 477\| \|Jesus the Lord said, ‘I am the bread’\|\|TIS 239\|\|AHB 185\| \|Joy to the world! the Lord is come\|\|TIS 268\|\|AHB 224\| \|Let all together praise our God\|\|TIS 298\| \|Now to the Lord a noble song\|\|TIS 113\|\|AHB 33\| \|O Laughing Light, O first born of creation\|\|TIS 255\| \|O what a gift, what a wonderful gift\|\|TIS 278\|\|AHB 213\| \|Praise to you, O Christ our Saviour\|\|TIS 258\| \|Sing a new song, sing a new song\|\|TIS 166\|\|AHB 102\| \|We all believe in God who made\|\|TIS 435\| \|When God almighty came to be one of us\|\|TIS 281\|\|AHB 214\|
In Australia, sharks are a very common occurrence all year long. A recent study from CSIRO has for the first time accurately estimated the number of adult Great White Sharks as 2210, from along the Western coast of Australia to Ningaloo reef on the North Eastern coast. This study used groundbreaking genetic data through a method called close-kin mark-recapture. Simply put, they take a small tissue sample from the shark, compared it to other sharks, and determined how related all their samples were. This was taken from juvenile sharks, for many reasons, but mainly they’re easier to control and sample. juveniles have genetic markings for their parents, so once the juveniles siblings were found, an estimate could be made for the adult population. The findings of the study made me think; White Shark populations have remained stable over the past few years, so why does it seem like shark attacks are becoming more frequent? While shark attacks are rarely fatal in Australia (2.3% of attacks are), they seem to occur more frequently here than elsewhere. This can be the result of many factors; hotter summers, good surf in sharky areas or the cooler waters down south. We also love being by the sea (and who can blame us), with 85% being with 50km of the ocean, and 90% of us putting it as our top 3 most valuable resource. But one thing that is 100% contributing to these attacks, is that Australia is home to the 22 out of the 26 species of sharks that have been document to unprovokingly attack humans, this includes the “Big 3” of shark species: Great Whites, Tiger Sharks and Bull Sharks. But what makes these sharks so deadly? All sharks have chemoreceptors through their lateral line, and electroreceptors, specially named Ampullae of Lorenzini around their snout. But these three sharks have other special features that make them more deadly than others. Another unique feature of sharks is their rows of teeth. Each tooth in the three rows is serrated making them razor sharp. Once these teeth become too blunt, then it falls out and is replaced by the tooth from the next row! Their scales are also unique to the shark and ray families. Unlike other fish, their scales are forked and overlapping, so in the direction from head to tail, it is smooth, but in the opposite direction is is rough. This specific type of scale is called placoid scales, and makes for some really tough skin. It is also useful for other fish by removing parasites from their skin if they rub against the shark. Great White Sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) White Sharks have an amazing sensory system, including their chemoreceptors and electroreceptors, they also have sharp eye sight, being able to see contrasts very well. They are ambush predators, meaning they generally attack from below at speeds of 60km per hour. Because of this high speed, they end up leaping out of the water in an act called “breaching”. This relates to their name, because their belly is white, so when they breach all you can see is their white underside, hence “Great Whites”. This is then accompanied by their extremely powerful bit force, with produces 4000 psi of force (that is a lot, enough to bit through a brick!). Seals are the main source of food for White Sharks, but often, especially in Western Australia and Ballina on the central coast. But often humans are mistaken for seals because of their silhouette. Tiger Sharks (Galeocerdo cuvier) These beautiful sharks are named tiger sharks because of the stripy patterning on their body. Contrary to popular belief, these stripes are only really clear in juveniles, and they fade as the shark matures. These sharks have a reputation for being the garbage trucks of the sea by literally eating anything! Some of the various animals that have been found in their stomachs include stingrays, sea snakes, squids and even weird, non-food like things like old tyres and licence plates! Tiger sharks can often be quite unpredictable in their behaviour, making them a little more dangerous than Great White Sharks. Bull Sharks (Carcharhinus leucas) Distinguishable by their lighter grey colour and small distance between their eye and snout, they are the third most dangerous shark in Australian waters. Their snout is short because they live in water with low visibility, meaning they can’t see far ahead so they need their snout to be close to their eye for precision when hunting. They are known to be quite an aggressive shark, often being very territorial and have low tolerance for being provoked. What makes Bull Sharks so amazing, is their ability to tolerate a wide range of salinity levels. They generally hang around river mouths, waiting for the low tide to draw out all of the fish from the river. Bull sharks are a common occurrence in the Brisbane River, and have been known to swim as far inland as Mount Crosby (which is roughly 35km from the mouth of the Brisbane River). So these are three of the most deadly sharks in Australia! But not all sharks are as scary as these three, such as the Black Tip Reef Shark seen in the feature image. These sharks are extremely chill with humans, and will rarely attack if they are unprovoked. This shark was pictured at Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef by me when I was there on an excursion for uni. They were always around at low tide, waiting for all the fish to spill over into the harbour from the reef. Sharks are some of the smartest animals on the planet and are highly evolved to be top predators, but there is no need to be scared of them! If you are smart about the times you swim and how you act around them, you will be amazed at how much they don’t care about you. Human-shark interactions are extremely rare, but let me know if you would like another blog post about how to avoid shark attacks, and what you should do if you find yourself in a situation with a shark, or if you would like to know more abut their behaviour and physiology!
History of Credit Cards! May 03, 2019 If you’re sitting on a pile of credit card debt, some would say you have no one to blame but yourself. Turns out you can also point the finger at Frank McNamara -- well, in a roundabout way. He invented the credit card. As legend has it, the scrappy entrepreneur created the first credit card after a faux pas. In 1949, he took a business associate out to dinner in New York City. When the bill arrived, he realized he’d left his wallet in a different suit. Luckily, his wife had his back. She paid the tab. Disaster (and dishwashing duty) averted. The following year, McNamara returned to the same restaurant determined to pay in a new way. This time he wouldn’t be humiliated. He settled his bill with a small cardboard rectangle -- a credit card, the first of its kind. The feat -- successfully signing the bill and promising to pay it by the end of the month -- went down in credit card history as the “First Supper.” But, depending on who you ask, it might never have happened at all. As charming as the story was and still is, some say it’s nothing more than a tall tale, marketing gold spun to impress the press. Hogwash or not, there’s no denying that McNamara is credited with devising the world’s first widely used consumer-facing credit card with his business partners, Ralph Schneider and Matty Simmons. The trio called their pocket-sized portable tool the Diners Club Card, along with the eponymous company they co-founded in 1950 to get the revolutionary payment system off the ground and, more importantly, into people’s wallets. Like many first-time entrepreneurs, McNamara’s initial customers were mostly friends, family and acquaintances -- basically anyone who would listen to his impassioned pitch. At first, he convinced 200 of them to sign up for Diners Club Card memberships for $3 a month. Apparently, it didn’t take him long to perfect his sales schtick. By the end of his first year in business, the Club had ballooned to 10,000 members in all. With his pioneering credit cards in hand, his customers signed now and paid later at the 2 hotels and 28 restaurants he’d also sold on his innovative idea that year. By 1951, the Diners Club was a sweeping success, doubling its entire customer base. In time, it spread out across the U.S., then far beyond its borders. Later, in the 1960s, the company’s flimsy trademark cardboard cards gave way to sturdier, imprint-able plastic. On top of the overall concept, the switch to plastic set the stage for the ubiquitous credit cards that now line our billfolds. Today, the average American carries 3.7 credit cards in his or her wallet -- and the debt to prove it. The average U.S. household owes approximately $15,355 in outstanding credit card debt, according to a 2015 NerdWallet study. By some estimates, our country’s total credit card debt teeters somewhere in the ballpark of a whopping $900 billion. Think about just how much money that is and maybe you’ll think twice the next time you’re tempted to swipe your credit card. Though McNamara’s brainchild -- the invention that paved the way for our twisted love affair with debt -- is still issued in more than 200 countries around the globe to this day, we don’t often see it flashed in restaurants in the U.S. anymore. Nowadays, people more commonly use it to cover international travel expenses. Once the first and only credit card option, Diners Club was largely outshined in the late 1960s by its seductive successors, you know, all those other credit cards we use and abuse. Mainly Discover, MasterCard, American Express and Visa. In the 1970s, Diners Club bounced back with the launch of its first family of corporate cards. A decade later, the brand followed up with its popular Club Rewards purchase points program, also the first of its kind and also copied by its successors. Should you catch a rare glimpse of them in the wild, you might notice that many Diners Club cards now prominently display the logo of MasterCard, once one of its stiffest competitors. MasterCard’s iconic red and gold symbol, displayed below Diners Club’s own trademark, enables the payment cards to be accepted at more than 38 million merchants worldwide -- and, by extension, the Diners Club legacy to stay afloat.
With the beginning of planting season just around the corner I have been thinking about expanding the herb section of my garden. Herb plants can be a beautiful addition to your garden, but there are so many other reasons you should be planting some this year. In my last post, Everything I Learned My First Year Growing Vegetables , we went over some great advice for starting up your first vegetable garden. Herbs are wonderful because if you do not have the space to grow plants outdoors all you need is a little bit of room on the counter (or table, shelf, ect.) in a spot that gets adequate sunlight. I grew a potted basil plant last spring in my dining room, amongst other herbs that I planted outdoors (sage, chives, and mint). Herbs are often a lot simpler to grow than vegetables. This makes them a better choice for a beginner gardener who isn’t quite sure how green their thumb is. Vegetables can be big commitment, so if you’re not quite ready for them herbs are better option to begin with. Whether you are a beginner or a gardening expert, starting a herb garden (or even just a herb plant) should be something that’s on your spring/summer to-do list. Today I am going to go over some of the reasons why you need one. If you haven’t been cooking with fresh herbs you are in for a treat. They add so much flavour and a little really goes a long way. Improve the taste of your dips, marinades, salads, sandwiches, potatoes, sauces ect. with fresh spices. I mean, why add dehydrated oregano to your pizza when you could be grabbing the fresh stuff from your backyard (or kitchen window…wherever your herbs are growing!) Ok, I understand not cooking with fresh herbs because of the price at the supermarket. Since a little goes a long way, the ones bought from the supermarket often start to go bad before they can be used up. The price of seeds is much less money, and you get way more herb for your dollar. With herb plants you just cut what you need so they stay fresh for longer. Even the pre-started herb plants at the local garden center are quite affordable as well. Do your research on which herbs you choose because many of them are perennial plants, which means they will come back every year. Who wouldn’t want fresh herbs to come back every summer? These little babies are packed full of vitamins and antioxidants. (Each herb has it’s own benefits that varies from the next) Tasty and healthy, sign me up! I mentioned earlier that herbs are much easier to grow than vegetables. They are low maintenance which makes them a breeze for newbies and people who have had bad luck with growing things in the past. If you’re looking for an educational activity or experiment for your children this summer than growing a herb plant might be a good place to start. If you don’t have space to grow a garden outside, herbs can be grown indoors as long as you have a spot where they can catch a bit of sunlight. Make sure they are planted in a pot that is big enough for their roots to grow so the plant can grow to it’s full potential. It is also important to make sure the pot drains properly. Perennial plants are the best kind of plants because you put in the hard work one summer and then they continue to come back every year afterwards with very little work involved. I love a low maintenance plant! The following herbs are what you should plant if you’re looking for perennial plants: - French tarragon Now that I have you convinced, which herbs do you plan on planting this season? Let me know in the comments below!
As first graders one of the first things the teachers taught us to do at recess was to “pick sides” to play games. Red rover, Tug of war, later on other team sports. We chose sides for tasks inside the classrooms. From the very beginning of our education, a hierchy was established. The same children were chosen by the “leaders” for the same sides every time. The same kids were picked last every time. We were taught to be devisive from the very start and it continued through our entire school career. After a while, it was something from which you could not break free. Practically everything we do requires us to choose a side. Take a moment and think about it. I don’t have to name them all, you know of what I speak. Sides. Choose a side. Right or left. Red or Blue. Pro this, or pro that. “Red rover, red rover send Susie right over” I was usually one of the last people picked for any team. I know why now. It was because I didn’t want to be on a side. I think maybe I just wanted to be an observer or maybe a referee. I never fit well on either side. I still don’t. I think it was wrong of them to make us choose sides. Choosing teams would have been better. There is quite a difference you know. The experience we obtain as we grow through childhood shapes our opinions for life. I have never changed my basic philosophy about things since I was a young man. I have pretended, and acted. I have conformed to rules with which I did not agree. I have assuaged the feelings of many. I am none the worse for it because I know the real person who I am and I’m satisfied with my actions. On occasions I have had to choose sides. But I did not like it. I live for the day when society does not demand we must hate one another for the side on which we have been picked, or with which we choose to affiliate. I’m afraid my frustrations or lack of patience may occasionally spill over into expression of opinions which may not be popular. For this I apologize in advance and beg you remember it’s just the way I was taught. “Bum, bum, bum here we come blowing our bugles and beating our drums”
Welcome to The Home Insulators of Yonkers The Home Insulators is Yonkers #1 provider of spray foam insulation, and we look forward to answering your questions about how best to lower your home heating and cooling bill. Unlike traditional insulation methods, spray foam insulation provides an airtight seal that does a superior job of maintaining the comfort of your home during hot summer days and cold winter nights. The Home Insulators has been serving Yonkers for over 10 years, and we understand how important the safety and comfort of your home is to you. Insulation is one of the most cost-effective and practical ways to increase your home’s energy-efficiency in every season. Most homes in America use over 50% of their energy consumption on heating and cooling. Inadequate insulation is one of the major causes of energy waste and leads to higher utility bills. Why wait to lower your heating and cooling bill? Call us today to schedule a free energy audit and to see how much you can save. The law of thermodynamics states that heat naturally moves from a warm place to a cool place. During winter, heat moves from your heated home to colder outdoor spaces through the unheated attic, basement, or garage. In the summer, the opposite is true, with the hot outdoor air moving towards the air conditioned interiors. Insulating the attic, ceiling, and walls with an airtight seal greatly reduces the movement of heat in and out of your home. Types of Insulation Insulation is measured in R-values, which is the rating of the amount of thermal resistance that the material provides. The higher the R-value, the more effective the insulation is, which leads to lower energy bills. The most common types of insulation include: Insulation batts or rolls are flexible products made of fiberglass, rock wool, polyester or even recycled paper. They have an R-value between 2 and 4 per inch. This type of insulation is available in a range of sizes that fit the spacing between wall studs, attics, and joists. Loose fill blown-in insulation is made of loose cellulose or fiberglass, and has an R-value between 3 and 4 per inch. This product is applied with a specialized blower that makes it an appropriate choice for oddly shaped spaces and unfinished attics. *Rigid insulation comes in large boards that are cut to fit between studs and joints in your home. It has an R-value of 4 per inch, and can be used in foundations or molded around pipes. Why Spray Foam Insulation? The Home Insulators most popular choice is spray foam with an R-value of 6.88, which is the highest R-value commercially available. Our spray foam is nontoxic and expands to over 100 times its original volume, to completely seal all gaps. This modern product reduces condensation and provides an extremely effective thermal barrier. With spray foam, there are no joints, fasteners, or seams which helps to reduce thermal bridging through the studs. Spray foam expands and contracts along with your home in response to heat and cold, and can be used for exterior and interior walls, HVAC ductwork, ceiling, and below grade areas. Spray foam has been extensively tested and is approved by all major building codes in the U.S. Benefits of Spray Foam Spray foam insulation can dramatically reduce your year-round energy bills because its exceptional thermal performance decreases the need for heating or air conditioning. Spray foam will not settle or shrink like batt insulation, and will not lose its effectiveness over time like blown-in insulation. Fiberglass products can contribute to breathing and health problems, while spray foam is completely nontoxic and keeps out dust and other allergens. Spray foam is waterproof, and the airtight seal reduces condensation, making it much less prone to mold growth. Spray foam can also discourage insects and rodents from nesting in your attic or walls. Another benefit is that spray foam is less flammable and safer than other types of insulation. Years ago, spray foam could only be used in new homes. Today, we have more advanced varieties of spray foam insulation that can be used in older homes, which are common in Yonkers. It is not unusual for older homes to have insulation issues that lead to unnecessarily high utility bills. Spray foam can be used to do an energy retro-fit on homes that have little or no insulation in the wall cavity and it can be injected into the space without tearing down walls or the ceiling. If you have an older home, we can help reduce your energy bills. Spray Foam – An Investment in your Home Spray foam insulation is an excellent investment that will quickly pay for itself in a short time by reducing your heating and air conditioning costs up to 20% or more each month. Though the initial costs of spray foam are higher than other types of insulation, its longer life span and higher performance rating will save you money over time. Spray foam also increases the resale value of your home, and contributes to a longer lifespan for your furnace and air conditioning systems. Our friendly and professional staff will review the insulation throughout your home and recommend a solution that will reduce your energy bills the first month after installation. Call us today Call us for a free home energy audit and how we can help reduce your energy bills all year long. Our company is fully bonded and insured, and our staff is professional. We have an excellent safety record, and all of our work is guaranteed. We are proud to serve the city of Yonkers, which serves as the gateway to the beautiful Hudson Valley. With 4.5 miles of waterfront in Yonkers, spray foam insulation can be an excellent choice for Westchester county homes. We can provide references from your neighbors in Yonkers, and welcome the opportunity to meet with you to discuss your insulation needs. Our professional estimators are available during evenings and weekends, to accommodate your busy life. Schedule your free home energy audit today! Yonkers, NY, 10704
Historians tend to dismiss conservatism as irrelevant to the American experience. Conservatism—dispositional as opposed to programmatic in nature—is often hard to see, especially for historians who tend to use the lens of “progress” in looking at history. Forgotten Conservatives in American History, by Brion McClanahan and Clyde Wilson Is there a conservative tradition in America? More than half a century ago, Louis Hartz argued emphatically that there was not. Instead, Hartz and other liberal historians claimed, the “founding” of the United States of America, finalized with the institution of the Constitution of 1787-1788, was a decidedly Lockean event, in which James Madison and company attempted to “check interest with interest, class with class, faction with faction … in a harmonious system of mutual frustration,” as Richard Hofstadter, Hartz’s contemporary and fellow progressive, famously put it. Hartz’s interpretation came to dominate the thinking of liberal historians—which is to say, almost all historians—who tend to dismiss conservatism as irrelevant to the American experience, and conservatives themselves as, at best, cranks and crackpots, or worse, as racists and misogynists. Conservatism—dispositional as opposed to programmatic in nature, as Russell Kirk noted—is often hard to see, especially for historians who tend to use the lens of “progress” in looking at history and who are generally preoccupied with gauging the “achievements” of “movements” like Progressivism and the civil rights cause. Even eminent conservative historians, such as George Nash, Michael Federici, and Patrick Allitt admit that a conservative “movement” arose only in the post-World War II era. Yet modern-day, self-described “conservatives,” as Brion McClanahan and Clyde Wilson point out in their introduction to the present work, rarely fit the traditional definition. Following Kirk’s lead, the authors define a conservative as “one who values ‘prescription,’ who insists that inevitable change should be cautious and reconcilable with the wisdom of the ages.” Today, those who pass for conservatives on the political and media scenes largely embrace Hartz’s Hobbesian paradigm. Embracing competitive capitalism and technological innovation as positive goods, these conservatives find their heroes in such as captains of industry as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg. As McClanahan and Wilson suggest, among contemporary so-called conservatives “there is a frequent erroneous identification of conservatism with capitalist interests.” In foreign affairs, most latter-day conservatives embrace a Theodore Roosevelt-inspired projection of American power abroad and a Wilsonian impulse to “make the world safe for democracy.” When these faux conservatives look back at American history to find their heroes and precursors, therefore, they tend to choose the Hamiltons, Jacksons, Lincolns, and TRs, wrongly equating nationalist ideology and rhetoric with patriotism, and patriotism with conservatism. Even those contemporary conservatives who understand the importance of limits on government power in the domestic sphere usually err when looking at the past for heroes, being seduced, for example, by the likes of Thomas Jefferson, whose flowery utterances in favor of states rights’ against federal power cloud the radicalism of his social thought. (This was a man, after all, who bandied about such modest proposals as wiping out the entire human race and beginning anew with another Adam and Eve.) Time has made for strange bedfellows indeed, and today’s self-identified conservatives would hardly be recognizable to pre-20th century conservatives. Brion McClanahan and Clyde Wilson have done a great service here by helping us build a pantheon of true conservative heroes from the time of the writing of the Constitution to the late twentieth century. Presenting a series of “biographical vignettes,” they remind us that true American conservatives included not only thinkers like Kirk but also active statesmen, lawyers, and journalists. Some of the men under consideration in the present volume do not fit the authors’ claim to being “forgotten”: John C. Calhoun, James Fenimore Cooper, William Faulkner, H.L. Mencken, Grover Cleveland, Charles Lindbergh, Sam Ervin—even John Tyler is at least remembered for serving out his predecessor’s term as president. Yet with the exception of Calhoun (whose towering presence the authors seemingly felt like they could not ignore), the authors throw new light on the thought and actions of these men, making the case that they are worthy exemplars of the conservative mind. In the case of Faulkner, for instance, the authors challenge the accepted wisdom that the great novelist is best understood as a “Southern liberal,” arguing instead “that the essential and important thing about a great artist is his vision, not his opinions. A great artist sees in ways far more fundamentally true and meaningful than mere opinion.” To McClanahan and Wilson, the key to understanding Faulkner is the recognition that both in his fiction and nonfiction, the Southerner “admires and believes in honor, or chivalry, if you will. He shows the evil and futility of chivalric pride and violence, but at the same time provides us sterling portraits of courage and honor informed by Christian virtues and in service to the community.” McClanahan and Wilson find James Fenimore Cooper’s conservatism in the New Yorker’s criticism of democratic egalitarianism, his aversion to change, and in adherence to the compact theory of the Union. Typically seen as a hero of the snobbish left, journalist-gadfly H.L. Mencken, the authors remind the reader, was also a harsh critic of the major progressive figures of his day. “It is also true,” McClanahan and Wilson write, “that a great satirist like Mencken is necessarily a conservative, for a satirist is the upholder of values, a chronicler of the gap between what is and what ought to be.” Grover Cleveland is to the authors “the last Jeffersonian president,” in that he “championed low tariffs, light taxes, minimal debt, and sound money.” In their least convincing chapter, McClanahan and Wilson defend Charles Lindbergh père against the charge that he was a socialist—the New York Times once dubbed the Minnesota congressman a “Gopher Bolshevik”—and more convincingly refute the accusation that Lindbergh fils was an anti-Semite. Still, the overall case for the Lindberghs being conservatives is weak as presented here. Though the authors’ Southern sympathies are obvious, to their credit they tout Yankees who sometimes disparaged the South. E.L. Godkin is one such example, whose conservatism lay in his opposition to democratic excess and imperialism. But McClanahan and Wilson’s greatest enthusiasm is reserved for the Southerners in these pages, not only, predictably, Calhoun, but also Senator Sam Ervin and historian Mel Bradford. The authors rightly chastise the majority of mainstream historians who tend to assume that the states’ rights, strict-constructionist views of such Southern conservatives stem from a “sinister motivation,” i.e., racism. It is the chapters on some of the truly almost unknown men that make for the most interesting reading. “Forgotten Founding Father” James Jackson was a lawyer and planter who represented Georgia in the First Congress. An outspoken opponent of Hamiltonianism and an enemy of corruption, Jackson sought to preserve the new United States as a republic whose central government was severely restricted in its powers. The men of the Bayard family of Delaware served in public office throughout the 19th century, opposing Lincoln’s war with the South and imperial adventurism and arguing for true federalism based on the compact theory of the Union. James A. Bayard the younger’s plea to his son-in-law who joined the Union army in 1861 is typical of the family’s common-sense conservatism: In embarking on this war, therefore, you enlist in a war for invasion of another people. If successful it will devastate if not exterminate the Southern people and this is miscalled Union. If unsuccessful then peaceful separation must be the result after myriads of lives have been sacrificed, thousands of homes made desolate, and property depreciated to an incalculable extent. . . . Why in the name of humanity can we not let those States go? The authors praise John Taylor of Caroline as a true apostle of Jeffersonian democracy and second historian Charles A. Beard’s judgment that Taylor’s 1814 Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States should rank among the greatest works of American political science. McClanahan and Wilson see Taylor as a true prophet, chastising the Hamiltonians centralizers and oligarchs of his day and providing a warning for future generations of the danger of “debt and burdensome taxation, unhealthy intrusion of the state into private society, and the concentration of wealth and power into fewer and fewer hands.” Abel Upshur shares a chapter with John Tyler as the true Whigs of their time. Upshur wrote a treatise in 1840 against Joseph Story’s famed Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States. In his Brief Enquiry into the True Nature and Character of our Federal Government, Upshur challenged the nationalist interpretation of the Constitution promoted by Story and John Marshall. Rejecting the notion that “the people” had created the central government, Upshur used history to prove that the states were supreme in the American constitutional order and defended nullification and secession as measures that worked to preserve the Constitution, the Union, and liberty. Books of short essays, by their nature, rarely do well (and some of the essays here are quite short indeed—the one on twentirth-century novelist James Gould Cozzens takes less than four pages). But this book deserves to be read by conservatives and by honest historians too. Written for the general reader—there are no footnotes—it at once gives an idea of how historically elusive conservatives can be, yet how wonderfully diverse are their ranks. This originally appeared in The American Conservative and is republished here by their permission. The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.
[The Horological Journal. Vol. ??, No. ?? (January, 1878): 66-67.] (Continued from page 53.) The maintainers are the springs h h, actuating the levers f k g l; they are armed by the teeth of the escape-wheel lifting their respective pallets: k impels the balance to the right, and l to the left by their action on the finger d of the balance staff. The maintainers are locked up by their pallets not being allowed to escape the tooth of the wheel which lifts them until the train is unlocked by the balance. The train is locked on the detents of the anchor n, and unlocked by discharging roller c acting on lever o through the spring r. Spring r has so much play across lever o before banking at the end (see q, fig. 4) as insures that the unlocking takes place just after finger d gets inside the maintainer from which it is to receive its impulse. Fig. 2. - Tooth t has armed maintainer h by lifting its pallet f and keeps it armed, the train being locked (by tooth u on one of the detents of anchor n) before t has passed the summit of f. The balance moving towards the right, discharging roller c comes in contact with spring r on lever o, pushes it until it banks at the further side - unlocking then commences; tooth u escapes detent of anchor escape-wheel, moving tooth t, quits pallet f, opposite tooth lifts pallet g, thus arming the other maintainer, and escape-wheel locks on othr detent of anchor; meanwhile, f k being free to fall, impels the balance by finger d, which had just arrived in front of it as the train escaped, and all the parts assume the position shown in fig. 1. The same explanation applies mutalis mutandis to fig. 1. Plate 1, Fig. 1 Plate 1, Figs. 3, 4, 5, and 6 Plate 1, Fig. 2 IN MELVINE'S 2 (figs. 1 to 8, plate 2), the balance is entirely free from any connection with the train. The maintainer is the spring e (pulling in the direction of the arrow, figs. 4, 5, 6) actuating lever j on the arbor of which are three fingers i, q, and g. q serves to unlock the re-winder a by lifting detent d (seen in side view, fig. 8), the re-winder arms the maintainer through the medium of i, and g receives the tension of spring e through the cross-bar f. The impelling lever j is always found by the ruby pin l in the position shown in fig. 1. It is kept in that position by g being past the line of centre (fig. 5). Plate 2, Figs. 5 and 7. Plate 2, Fig. 4. Plate 2, Fig. 6. Fig. 2 show the maintainer having given impulse to the balance, and out of connetion with it, unlocking the train by g lifting detent tooth d. Tooth t of the re-winding wheel falling against arm i brings back the maintainer to its normal position, as in fig. 1. Arm g being taken bast the line of centres, cross-bar f rests on the collet b, and so all the parts are at rest for a fresh impulse. When the balance returns it only pushes aside passing spring n, but moving in the direction of arrow (fig. 2), ruby pin l, pulls the maintainer over a little, owing to the passing spring being banked at p (fig. 4). Spring c [sic] being now free pulls the lever over and gives impulse. Plate 2, Fig. 1 Plate 2, Fig. 2 [Note: I can't seem to find Fig. 3 on Plate 2.] Plate 2, Fig. 8. BREGUET'S detached constant-force escapement (shown in figs. 9 and 10, plate 2, and fig. 11), for a balance, is his pendulum one, described page 4, adapted to the altered circumstances. G is the maintainer (and the maintaining spring and the impulse lever are here in one), always pressing in the direction of the arrow; it is locked up by a hook at p, under the detent N (see fig. 11), and it is unlocked by the discharging roller of the balance staff K, as in the ordinary chronometer escapement. The re-winder is the epicycloidal-toothed wheel D fixed on the arbor of the train wheel B B. The train is locked by the fly v i under this detent F (see fig. 11), and is unlocked by the end of the maintainer G falling against the end of the detent as shown in fig. 9. In fig. 10, the balance having just unlocked maintainer G by the discharging roller pushing aside detent N, G therefore gives impulse on the pallet, and their connection having ceased it knocks against detent F and releases fly v i. The train runs on a space, and re-winds the maintainer back to its place under detent N. On the return vibration the balance merely pushes aside the passing spring H. Plate 2, Fig. 9. Plate 2, Fig. 10. [Drawing in text] Fig. 11. MASSEY'S 3 (fig. 12). - The impulse given to the balance roller e is entirely derived from the spiral spring o o through the impulse wheel m m, which rides on the arbor of the train wheel l l; the outer end of o o is attached to one of the spokes of the train wheel l l, and the inner end to the collet of the impulse wheel m m. The train is locked by the pins of the bar f f fixed on the arbour of pinion p. The balance moving in direction of the arrow, the ruby pin on the roller enters the fork of lever h i, and pushing it, lets the pin on f f escape and rest on another stop at h; when the balance returns, and h i is moved back, the pin of hte bar escapes under h, f f makes half a revolution and locks on outer top of h, tensing spring o o, which gives impulse to the balance by one of the teeth of m m, falling on the impulse pallet. [Drawing in text] Fig. 12. 1 Society of Arts' Transactions, Vol. 46, page 54, plate 2. 2 Society of Arts' Transactions, 1828, Vol 46, page 58, plate 3. 3 [Presumably UK patent] Specification, No. 3584, A.D. 1824. HTML markup by David M. MacMillan
Young Men Not Afraid to Perish to the Front! Dr. Frederick (Bailey) Douglass knew them all. An adolescent apocalyptic prophet. Front-line fugitive scholar. Outspoken voice of the battle cry of freedom in President Lincoln’s ear. A select few in the pantheon of American history have walked the earth in their time and era with equal authority of Dr. Douglass. In Old Anacostia the guardian spirit of Dr. Douglass protects all children who first step on corners which have claimed cousins, older brothers and sisters, uncles, aunts, grandparents, mothers and fathers. Old men faithfully walking dogs no bigger than a Nike boot commune with Dr. Douglass when they share a word of encouragement with elementary students anxious about the approaching first day of school. At all hours of the night, to the first light of the day a stately mural of Dr. Douglass looks over the corner of 16th & W Street, ever watchful. Youngsters in Old Anacostia today see the manifestation of their world famous neighbor, Dr. Douglass, everyday. Whereas the psyche of the present-day community keeps alive the memory of Dr. Douglass, in his day Dr. Douglass was known to have a youngster’s back, front and both sides. Many mythomane historians have default retreated to the well-worn path of both least resistance and least scholarship in their proclivity for ascribing speculative predilections and vapid rhetoric as a substitute for research. Those White Man Lies and White Woman Lies can be taken elsewhere as they will no longer be politely ignored. If scholars are not discussing or advancing the scholarship of Dr. Douglass they are not welcome. We have known scholars to speculate the dynamics and motivations for the military enlistment of the Douglass Boys — Lewis, Frederick, Jr. and Charles. As eldest son of a combat veteran United States Marine and older brother to a combat veteran United States Marine we only promote honorable scholarship. The Douglass boys were raised in the cause. The struggle was the struggle of the Douglass family. The Douglass boys may have been able to play the background when necessary but they were front line liberation warriors, a responsibility they accepted. Equally, the Douglass boys accepted the responsibility of putting their lives in the danger zone to serve their country. They accepted the responsibility to defend and kill in the name of their country. That is beyond question and speculation. Who else served in the 54th? Who was Henry Augustus Monroe who enlisted at age 13 to serve as a front-line drummer boy? Monroe and his family were friends with Dr. Douglass and the Douglass family. Do you think this history has ever been told? To be continued …
Whether you pay for chores or give your kids allowances or not, all kids must learn to manage their money wisely-as soon as they start getting money. Money management is one of the most important things we can teach our children. more than ever, we need to take responsibility for our actions. We need to understand that our current actions affect more than our present situation. Our actions today reflect as models for our children.
In today’s connected world, taking your business international is more commonplace than ever. Still, that doesn’t make long flights any more convenient. Here are some tips to make your long-haul travels easier and prevent or reduce jet lag. Add the time of your destination to your phone When traveling for work, it can be easy to neglect smaller admin-related tasks like food, transportation and configuring the time. If you add the time of your home country and your destination beforehand, it will help you figure out when you’re likely to be sleepy or hungry. iOS devices have a world clock where you can add as many cities as you want, while Android has dual clock and widgets to add to your homescreen. Failing that, there are a plethora of world clock apps that you can download. Pack your eyeshades and earplugs It’s easy to forget eyeshades and earplugs on a journey, so pack them in your handbag or carry on suitcase. Make sure to clean them beforehand! Although some airlines do offer these goods, it’s reassuring to have your own. Some people are also sensitive to sound, so earplugs are good to take onboard. Pick your seat in advance Checking in online comes with the advantage of picking your seats to the row and letter. This also gives you the advantage to pick the seat next to your travel partner(s). The earlier you check in online, the more seats options are available. Most online check-ins open 24 hours prior to your flight, so set a reminder to do so as soon as possible. Where you sit may not really matter for short-haul flights, but it can get annoying for long-hauls. You don’t want to be in a window seat if you anticipate using the toilet frequently; similarly, you don’t want to be stuck in the aisle seat next to the lavatory if you just want to be left alone to sleep. Pack the travel and beauty essentials As well as packing your smart outfits for your meetings, don’t forget to prepare your outfit for the flight. Laurie Berryman, Vice President of Emirates UK, recommends wearing something comfortable and breathable on board, and removing make-up before boarding in favor of a clear hydration mask to keep your skin refreshed while flying. Personally, I take a pair of socks (again, some airlines provide this, but some might not) for plane use and wear loose jeans or sweatpants to feel comfortable during the flight. It is also handy to have a toothbrush and floss (or toothpick) to avoid bad breath after the flight, a travel-sized comb to put your hair in place, and cologne or perfume to freshen up – especially if you need to head straight into a meeting post-landing. Factor in an extra hour or two from arrival to your first meeting Budget extra buffer time to allow for flight delays, misplaced baggages or long immigration queues. If there are no delays, the extra hour would be good for you to change, or have a coffee or snack to be alert and prepared for a meeting. Whilst en route Change to your destination’s time as soon as you board Berryman suggests to set your clock to the local time zone to more easily to avoid jet lag. In Emirates’ case, cabins are dimmed with stars on the roof in the evening and then a sunrise in the morning, set to the time-zone of the destination. Most airlines also try to serve food in the time that accounts for time zones changes. If you can, act according to your destination’s time with your eyeshades to begin adjusting once you board. Find ways to kill boredom during waking hours Make an upbeat playlist of your favorite music, bring a book and take advantage of the in-flight entertainment to keep you relaxed and happy on the plane. In some regions of the world, airlines will allow you to use mobile devices (in airline mode) on board, so download movies before the flight to keep entertained offline. If you need to do work or further meeting preparations, make sure all your devices are fully charged and ready to use on the plane. Bring your USB cable as well, as newer and larger aircrafts now have slots built into the seat monitor in front of you. Lay off on the alcohol It may be tempting to get alcohol on air but the effect of alcohol intensifies at a higher altitude, so you will become intoxicated quite quickly. If you don’t know your drinking tolerance on a plane, it might be best to avoid this altogether as you don’t want this to affect your preparation for landing. Alcohol can also leave you feeling exhausted after sleeping, which is not ideal if mixed with jet lag. Planes have low humidity, so it is important to keep hydrated by drinking lots of water. Also equally important is hydrating your skin on the plane by packing in a good hydration mask or moisturizer and hand cream. Besides, dehydration can also cause stress, headaches and irritability – the very things to avoid. Eat light and high protein to avoid jet lag Eating the right foods can leave a person 16 times less likely to suffer from jet lag. Hermann Freidanck, Singapore Airlines’ resident chef and Manager of Food & Beverage, recommends opting for a light meal that is relatively easy to digest as it’s best to arrive feeling slightly hungry. Eating a high protein meal once you land means you’ll be able to keep as active as possible in a bid to switch to the new time zone. Look for a meat or egg option in your meal menu instead of pasta or other carb-loaded dishes. Chili has also been shown to aid sleep and leave people feeling more awake the next day, so turn up the spice if you can take it. Combat travel sickness with ginger Ginger often quells the effects of travel sickness. It’s also a popular ingredient in some oriental cuisine, so airlines like Singapore Airlines may offer dishes that include ginger. If ginger is not available as part of the in-flight meal, consider ordering ginger ale from the drinks menu. Combat fatigue with zinc If you are going to be working during the flight or are heading to a meeting straight from the plane, it is recommended to ingest foods that will boost your brain power. Zinc, found in protein-rich foods, is linked to better intellectual performance in clinical tests. Eating protein with vegetables or fruit also provides the brain with the vitamins necessary for mental stimulation. At your destination Only nap when needed during daytime It’s okay to take a rest, but try not to sleep for more than two hours during the daytime. Aim to hit the sack at 10 PM to readjust to the new time zone. You may want to set up an alarm for your naps to avoid oversleeping. Your eyeshades and earplugs may be useful for napping during the day. Try to get natural sunlight during the day Daylight is a natural stimulant that helps regulate the biological clock, so if try to select a window seat in the meeting room with the sun shining on you. Check the room for potential sleep disturbances Since you are sleeping in a new environment, check for light shining through the drapes and other unwanted in-room noises. Again, your eyeshades and earplugs can help with this as well. Set up at least two wake up calls Since you are at risk of jet lag, you might not hear the first alarm or wake up call. Be sure to set up a second one just in case! After all, additional noise is lesser of an evil to being late to an important meeting overseas. What other travel tips do you swear by? Let’s hear them in the comments below.
Strictly Come Dancing, the TV show which pairs celebrities with professional dancers to compete in a ballroom dancing competition, has apparently been the cause of a number of divorces, break-ups, and scandals. This “Strictly curse” is not helped by the show’s demanding schedule, long practice hours, and intimate dancing. Strictly is not the only modern curse featured in the media of late. The curse of the Tour de France returned, with the failure of a French rider to win the cycling race. Hopes that Julian Alaphillippe would this year end the 34-year drought were dashed. Meanwhile, the rapper Drake has been linked to a series of sporting failures over the years. The Drake curse was broken, however, when his team (the Raptors) won their first basketball championship earlier this summer. Other popular culture “curses” around James Dean’s car and the next James Bond film, have also circulated of late. What’s this all about? Most people these days surely don’t believe in supernatural curses. But their prevalence in the media suggests that they still have a hold on psyches, and that a good amount of people still pay credence to them. From a scientific perspective, curses have rational explanations. These clarify why people directly ascribe supernatural powers to negative events. For instance, belief in curses can arise from thinking style. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman has proposed that there are two distinct modes of decision making. System 1 is automatic, rapid and largely unconscious. Subsequently, this system is intuitive and prone to biases and systematic errors. In contrast, System 2 is controlled, slow, effortful, and produces rational thought. So, perhaps people believe in curses because their spontaneous, subjective, System 1 thinking predominates. Endorsement of curses may also stem from the desire to make sense of the world; ascribe meaning to chaos. Why do people sometimes see faces in clouds or Jesus in their toast? We have a tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise: which some call apophenia and others patternicity. In the case of curses, this can cause people to see links between random events and wrongly attribute misfortune and bad luck to a magical hex rather than factors such as chance and human error. Those who believe in curses may also be susceptible to the Barnum or Forer Effect. This is where people wrongly infer that general information has specific personal relevance. In the context of curses, this might explain the tendency to associate general misfortune with particular, personally significant jinxes. A belief in curses, once it exists, is often reinforced by other psychological tendencies. Believers in curses may look for affirming evidence, such as potentially related bad luck, and discount contradictory data. This confirmatory bias produces coherent, but logically inconsistent narratives supporting the presumption of supernatural forces. This was true of the curse of Tutankhamun, for example. This derived from the general notion that a curse would befall anyone who broke into a pharaoh’s burial site. At the time of the excavation of Tutankhamun’s tomb, the archaeologists suffered no misfortune. But as a result of press coverage about “the pharaoh’s curse”, subsequent deaths and misfortunes of the archaeology team became associated with the curse. Similarly, the movies Poltergeist and The Omen have over time acquired a reputation as cursed. The power of curses to influence people stems from belief in their veracity. This often arises from an external locus of control, where people feel unable to influence events. In the absence of perceived control, people become more accepting of mysterious, external forces. Psychologists refer to this as magical thinking. In addition, belief in curses is associated with certain personality characteristics. Particularly, tolerance of ambiguity and neuroticism. Tolerance of ambiguity describes the degree to which an individual can cope with uncertainty. People with low tolerance of ambiguity tend to look for closure. This manifests as the failure to critically consider evidence and to jump to conclusions. These factors can lead to indiscriminate, premature acceptance of material. Neuroticism, meanwhile, can facilitate worry, concern and rumination about curses. In extreme cases, belief in curses can undermine confidence in oneself and one’s future success. Psychologists refer to this as self-fulfilling prophecy. This is where belief in a curse produces the perception of inevitable misfortune. Indeed, the mere suggestion of bad luck can produce negative outcomes. Researchers call this the Nocebo Effect. The influence of curses also originates from their grounding in culture. Specifically, through education and social narratives, the notion of curses perpetuates over time. Consequently, they become culturally acceptable and in some instances plausible. For example, the evil eye has a long tradition around the world. This derives from the belief that someone who achieves great success also attracts the envy of those around them, manifesting itself as a curse that will undo their good fortune. Socially, media coverage can induce the notion that curses exist. A recent example is the Momo Challenge. This spread via WhatsApp and involved the appearance of a creepy, Japanese sculpture accompanied by instructions to perform dangerous tasks. The communication also predicted unfortunate consequences if the receiver failed to follow instructions, or pass on the message. This story went viral and caused children and parents great anxiety. Although there is of course no scientific evidence to support the supernatural basis of curses, they can still have a powerful psychological influence on people. Believing in curses can undermine decision making, well-being and self confidence. In extreme cases, they can also facilitate unusual ideas, undermine critical thinking and produce odd behaviors. Despite evidence to the contrary, some curses are compelling. So it will be interesting to see whether forthcoming contestants in Strictly Come Dancing avoid the bad luck associated with previous series. This article is republished from The Conversation by Ken Drinkwater, Senior Lecturer and Researcher in Cognitive and Parapsychology, Manchester Metropolitan University and Neil Dagnall, Reader in Applied Cognitive Psychology, Manchester Metropolitan University under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Wikipedia today announced it has launched support for editing content on your mobile device. The first version of mobile editing, which requires a Wikimedia account, is available right now. “For our first release, our primary goal was to create a fast, intuitive editing experience for new users and experienced editors alike, while still sticking with markup editing for now,” Wikimedia’s Juliusz Gonera explained. “We started simple so we could observe our users’ needs and expectations.” Wikimedia today also revealed why it has finally decided to jump on the bandwagon: over 15 percent of Wikipedia’s users currently access the site on mobile devices. Furthermore, that fraction is growing, so the Wikimedia Foundation decided it had to “do more to let anyone with Internet access contribute to the sum of all human knowledge.” To get started, you’ll need to sign up for a Wikimedia account if you don’t already have one; you can do so on desktop and mobile. Once you’re logged in, look for the pencil icon next to any section to make changes to it. As you can see, the left-hand screenshot above features the pencil icon alongside the usual mobile interface. The right-hand screenshot meanwhile shows off the mobile editing interface, which let’s you preview your changes before saving, just like on the desktop. Wikimedia first introduced the feature on its experimental beta site, where it says “an encouraging number of users” have tried it out. Now it’s finally available for all users (you can give Wikimedia suggestions and details of bugs on Twitter), and Wikimedia is already considering adding more advanced features, including Visual Editor integration. See also – Wikimedia rolls out WYSIWYG visual editor for logged-in users accessing Wikipedia articles in English and Wikipedia Zero arrives in India, dropping mobile data charges for 60m Aircel subscribers
A toy is any item that can be used for play. toys are generally played with by children and pets. playing with toys is an enjoyable means of training the young for life in society. different materials are used to make toys enjoyable to both young and old. many items are designed to serve as toys, but goods produced for other purposes can also be used. for instance, a small child may pick up a household item and "fly" it through the air as to pretend that it is an airplane.
The case of Eluana has again sparked a heated debate in Italy about the right to end one’s life. Eluana Englaro’s sufferings ended on Feb 9 2009. Her family had requested the omission of treatment since their daughter had been kept artificially alive for 17 years. Italy’s prime minister Silvio Berlusconi first tried to ‘save’ Eluana with a decree rejected by our President Napolitano. Thence he desperately tried to pass a bill before Eluana’s death. He arrived late. Now he’s about to pass a bill that will impose ‘artificial life’ indefinitely, despite the prior will of the person (the so-called ‘living will’, pre formulated in the event of incapacity) or the desire of the person’s family. This bill will be voted tonight at the Senate and at the lower house in the next days, despite the hostility of the Italian High Court and of the President of the Italian Republic. (I’m translating Italian labyrinthine politics: this bill was about the ‘living will’ but a last minute prearranged amendment de facto nullified this will. Classic) I wonder how many people in Italy (or abroad) really believe that Berlusconi and many politicians of his coalition are so religious. Many think – me included – that this is the umpteenth occasion they found to strengthen their grip on power and on institutions, since Berlusconi plans to change the Constitution and the support of the Catholic church in this country is always a powerful political factor. The Church and strict Catholics applaud. ‘Life’ to them must be saved at any cost. I respect this belief and I respect the Catholic Church, which is somewhat a remnant of what was Rome, and the Pontifex Maximus, or Pope, the last surviving magistrate of ancient Rome. But, if I respect Catholic beliefs, are strict Catholics respecting the beliefs of others? I mean, in a free democratic state, how can a religion or a government impose their will on an individual or his family in such private matters? How can they trample on what is, to few (or to many,) their ultimate freedom, death? In name of what? Of so to say absolute truths believed only by a part of the population? (We’ll skip the historical fact that the first Christians condoned suicide) What if one belongs to another religion? What if one has no religion? Shouldn’t people be free thinking (and given free choice) and isn’t personal freedom enshrined in the Italian constitution? (art. 13, inviolability of individual freedom) Isn’t this an expropriation of our civil rights? This is the problem with some people: all they want is power. This is also the problem with decent people who believe in absolute truths: these truths escape doubt and inquiry and, seen as undeniable, are considered by them mandatory also for those who don’t believe in them. This I’m thinking while watching on TV all these politicians, some sincere and some not, cheering about the upcoming victory of ‘life’.

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.