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The Olde English Bulldogge is a modern dog breed with “Olde English” roots. This unique bulldog breed is the modern recreation of old Regency Period bull-baiting dogs, offering the health, athletic ability, and appearance of the original, while reducing the tendency towards aggression that the early breed needed to perform the barbaric tasks set before it.
The modern Olde English Bulldogge is a unique, healthy and lively bulldog breed with a loving and friendly disposition that makes it a great choice for active families.
Olde English Bulldogge History
Despite the name, the Olde English Bulldogge has only been in existence since 1971. This breed is a recreation of a very old dog breed, the Regency Period Bull Baiter, a popular player in the horrific blood sports of the British Regency period (1811 through 1820). During this time, the sport of “Bull Baiting” was a popular pastime amongst bored Brits, and entailed using athletic, muscular bull dogs to taunt and torture bulls.
David Leavitt of Coatsville, Pennsylvania is credited with resurrecting this original bull-baiting dog; his goal was to recreate the appearance, health and athletic ability of the original bull-baiting dogs, but improve on the breed’s tendency towards aggression. In an effort to achieve this, Leavitt carefully crossed the English Bulldog, Bullmastiff, American Pit Bull Terrier and American Bulldog – ultimately producing a breed that is the fore bearer to true Olde English Bulldogges of today. Leavitt is the founding member of the Olde English Bulldogge Association (OAEBA), which maintains the breed’s stud book and issues registration papers to future puppies.
Today’s Olde English Bulldogge retains the health, temperament, athletic ability and appearance of the old bull-baiting dogs after which they were fashioned. This purebred breed of dog is not currently recognized by the AKC (American Kennel Club).
The Olde English Bulldogge Kennel Club is recognized as the parent breed club for the Olde English Bulldogge by both the Canine Developmental Health & Performance Registry (CDHPR) of the United Kennel Club, and the American Rare Breed Association. These organizations work to protect and maintain the bloodlines that make the Olde English Bulldogge a purebred dog breed.
Olde English Bulldogge Appearance
Possessing great strength, muscle, agility and fortitude, the Olde English Bulldogge is a force to be reckoned with. This medium sized dog was originally bred to take on an angry bull, and to this day retains that rugged athleticism and strong physique that gave him the ability to work as a bull-baiting dog. This gruesome task entailed “playing low” in front of a charging bull, then launching himself at the bull’s nose with the intention of latching on with his teeth – a feat not easily managed. Thankfully, bull-baiting is no longer legal in civilized parts of the world, however Olde English Bulldogge breeders endeavor to retain the original appearance of the breed through selective breeding programs.
Show & Breeding Disqualifications
Eyes: Any eye color other than brown. Wall eyes or crossed eyes.
Nose: Any color nose other than black.
Bite: Wry jaw or Overbite.
Tail: Kinked, docked, bobbed or screw tail.
Color: Blue/gray (Neapolitan Mastiff color), black & rust/mahogany (Rottweiler color)
Also: Males lacking two fully descended normal testicles.
Olde English Bulldogge Temperament
Despite the “tough guy” appearance, the Olde English Bulldogge is actually a sweetheart. These dogs are exceptionally loving and friendly, while at the same time being alert, with confidence and courage to spare. Olde English Bulldogges are incredibly strong, making them great candidates for dog sports such as weight pulling and sledding.
Generally, the Olde English Bulldogge is good with other pets and dogs, but some individuals have been known to exhibit same-sex aggression. For this reason, early socialization and consistent obedience training from an early age are essential in laying the foundation for a well mannered Olde English Bulldogge who gets along well with other dogs in the home – and away from home.
Some Olde English Bulldogges have energy to spare. With these dogs, it’s best to ensure that they have plenty of opportunity to romp and play – otherwise there’s a chance they’ll use their powers for evil, rather than good. But isn’t this true of almost any lively dog breed?
Olde English Bulldogge Exercise Info
Olde English Bulldogges enjoy exercise and some have higher exercise requirements than others. These dogs are not content to be couch potatoes – expect to spend a moderate amount of time outdoors engaging your Olde English Bulldogge in some kind of challenging activity if you are thinking about adding one of these guys to your home.
Olde English Bulldogge Grooming Info
With it’s short, smooth coat, the Olde English Bulldogge requires minimal grooming. A good weekly brushing will keep your dogs coat shiny and rid him of any dead hairs. Ears should be checked for mites and cleaned periodically with an acidifying ear cleanser.
Olde English Bulldogge Training Info
The Olde English Bulldogge can tend to be aggressive towards same sex dogs, although conscientious breeders attempt to thwart this trait through selective breeding programs.
With this in mind, it’s generally a good decision to enroll your puppy in early obedience classes, and practice what you have learned on a consistent basis.
This is an intelligent dog breed that is eager to please it’s owners, so training is generally accomplished with relative ease. As with training any breed of dog, it’s important that all members of the family be aware of and in agreement about the training methods, and apply these methods consistently.
With early and consistent obedience training, the Olde English Bulldogge is a great choice.
Olde English Bulldogge Health Info
Healthier than his modern Bulldog breed compatriots, the Olde English Bulldogge is generally free of the health issues that plague breeds such as the modern English Bulldog.
Olde English Bulldogges generally do not suffer from breathing problems, and do not have stringent requirements for a cool environment like other Bulldogs. Additionally, unlike the English Bulldog, labor and delivery can usually be accomplished without the need for a Caesarian Section.
If you are looking for a healthy Bulldog that should live a long and happy life, then the Olde English Bulldogge may be what you are looking for.
As with all purebred breeds of dog, finding a highly responsible breeder from whom to purchase a puppy is paramount. A responsible breeder will be diligent in breeding selectively to constantly improve the health, temperament and conformation of their Olde English Bulldogge puppies. In addition to being highly knowledgeable about genetic diseases that can affect their breed, responsible Olde English Bulldog Breeders should have breeding dogs genetically tested to ensure that these dogs do not have disorders that can be passed on to the puppies. Finally, a reputable breeder should offer a reasonable health guarantee when placing a puppy with you.
Olde English Bulldogge Right Breed Info
If you are an active family with the time and energy to devote to this lively canine companion, the Olde English Bulldogge makes a wonderful choice. Great with children and very affectionate and loving, the Olde English Bulldogge is one of the best family dogs you can find.
If this breed interests you, take your time to find a highly reputable breeder from which to purchase a puppy. Selective breeding, genetic testing, recognized parent breed club membership and registration, early socialization and overall knowledge and a commitment to producing temperamentally sound, exceptionally healthy and conformationally correct Olde English Bulldogge puppies are things you should be looking for in a breeder.
More Information about the Olde English Bulldogge Dog Breed |
University of Pennsylvania
Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America
Locking Up Our Own
Crime and Punishment in Black America
James Forman, Jr.
Yale Law School
Camille Z. Charles (Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Social Sciences, Penn)
Regina Austin (William A. Schnader Professor of Law, Penn Law);
Michael Javen Fortner (CUNY Urban Studies); and
Marie Gottschalk (Penn Political Science)
Mon. April 24, 4:30-6:00 pm
Fitts Auditorium, Golkin Hall Lower Level
3501 Sansom Street (Law School)
IN RECENT YEARS, AMERICA’S CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM HAS BECOME the subject of an increasingly urgent debate. Critics have assailed the rise of mass incarceration, emphasizing its disproportionate impact on people of color. As James Forman, Jr., points out, however, the war on crime that began in the 1970s was supported by many African American leaders in the nation’s urban centers. In his new book, Locking Up Our Own, he seeks to understand why.
JAMES FORMAN, JR. is a Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He is a graduate of Atlanta’s Roosevelt High School, Brown University, and Yale Law School, and was a law clerk for Judge William Norris of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor of the United States Supreme Court.
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|Sandhill cranes. A rare sight in Michigan.|
Today the wildlife is vast and diverse here. Countings are conducted weekly and my new buddy let on that he was about to make a bird count in the restricted non-hunting area and had the keys to the forbidden kingdom to prove it. "Let's go," I said. "Let's go!" he replied. So much for the sign. The gate blocking the two track that runs along the top of the levee wall and into the refuge was opened. I jumped in his truck and we were off.
|A Long-tailed Duck or Oldsquaw (Clangula hyemalis) still in winter plumage was added to my life list! |
Below a Yellow-Rumped warbler also climbed aboard as a lifer.
What ensued was a bumpy roll through the preserve and a whole lot of bird talk. We really didn't do much counting or photography as we went on our five mile tour but the quantity and variety of species left my head spinning. That my benefactor is a game bird hunter of some note and also a person with a lifelong devotion to habitat development and conservation kept our exchanges lively. I tried to draw a rough comparison between the gunslinger aspect of wildlife photography (see-aim-focus-shoot) and the potent thrill he got from dropping ducks with his shot gun. It was a tortured analogy at best but I was doing my best to get along. Still, and I admit this as your tree-hugging variety nature lover, our interests met harmoniously more often than not. I appreciated what the hunters lobby in concert with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources had wrought for our mutual enjoyment and benefit. How do the ducks fare with this arrangement?
Come hunting season that will depend on which side of the sign they land on.
|Another lifer, White pelicans high above our heads!|
Now it's time for World Bird Wednesday!
This is the home of World Bird Wednesday. A place for bird photographers from around the world to gather and share their photographs and experiences as they pursue Natures most diverse and beautiful treasurers, the birds.
World Bird Wednesday will be open for posting at 12 noon Tuesday EST North America through midnight on Wednesday.
You are invited to link your blog with other bird photographers in a weekly celebration of these most diverse and intriguing of Earth's residents, the BIRDS.
#1. Simply copy the above picture onto your W.B.W. blog entry. It contains a link for your readers to share in WBW. Or you can copy this link on to your blog page to share W.B.W. http://pineriverreview.blogspot.com/
#2. Come to The Pine River Review on Tuesday Noon EST North America through Wednesday midnight and submit your blog entry with Linky.
#3. Check back in during the course of the next day and explore these excellent photoblogs!
You don't have to be a Bird Watcher or expert photographer to join in--just enjoy sharing what you bring back from your explorations and adventures into nature.The idea of a meme is that you will visit each others blogs and perhaps leave a comment to encourage your compadres!
The thumbnails below are links to our contributors blogs. Click on them and view their beautiful posts.
Come on it's your turn! |
What led us to write this book? A fair question. Is the world clamoring for a lucid introduction to nonlinear chemical dynamics? Did our wives and children implore us to share our insights into this arcane subject with an eager but ignorant world?
We would be the last to suggest that the subject matter treated in this volume is the stuff that bestsellers are made of. These topics are, nonetheless, of interest to a growing number of scientists and engineers, not only chemists, but physicists, biologists and others in a variety of obviously and not so obviously related fields. Three decades ago, a book devoted largely to chemical oscillations would have been inconceivable. Most chemists then viewed such behavior as a form of perpetual motion, rendered impossible by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Fifteen years ago, one might have imagined writing a book of this sort, but it would have been a thin work indeed, since only two chemical oscillators were known, both discovered by serendipity, and only one understood to any extent at a mechanistic level.
Times change, and today chemical oscillations and the more encompassing field of, nonlinear chemical dynamics are among the most rapidly growing areas of chemical research. Both of us, teaching at very different universities, have observed that disproportionate numbers of graduate and undergraduate students flock to do research in this area. The visually compelling phenomena and their potential significance to a wide range of problems make nonlinear chemical dynamics a subject about which colleagues in such disparate fields as neurobiology, polymer science and combustion engineering seek to become better informed.
One of the greatest handicaps facing potential entrants into, or consumers of the fruits of this field of research is the lack of an introductory text. This gap cannot be accounted for by the inherent difficulty of the subject. The mathematical and chemical tools required are almost all possessed by any well trained undergraduate in the sciences. Most of the necessary experimental apparatus is, by modern standards, nearly primitive and certainly inexpensive. This last feature accounts in large measure for the many significant contributions that have been made to this field by scientists from Eastern Europe and the developing world.
There are, to be sure, some excellent books of which the reader should be aware and to which we owe a real debt. Limitations of space, both on this page and in our immediately accessible memory banks, confine us to mentioning but a few here. More will be found in the bibliography. Nicolis and Prigogine [Nicolis and Prigogine, 1977] discuss the foundations of nonequilibrium thermodynamics, laying to rest the misguided notion that chemical oscillation and its cousin, dissipative structures, violate some physical principle or other. They also show, largely by using the classic Brusselator model, that periodic oscillation and spatial wave propagation can arise from very simple mathematical models. They do not, however, at a time when experimental observations of nonlinear dynamical phenomena in chemistry were extremely limited, devote much attention to experimental aspects. Field and Burger [Field and Burger, 1985] edited a comprehensive collection of essays, nearly all of which focus on the behavior of the archetypal Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction. Recently, Gray and Scott [Gray and Scott, 1990] and then Scott [Scott, 1991] have produced lucid treatments first of simple models of nonlinear oscillations and waves in chemical systems and then of chemical chaos. Much of the most exciting work in this rapidly moving field has appeared in collections of conference papers, beginning with the results of the 1968 Prague conference on biological and biochemical oscillators [Chance, et al., 1973] that may be said to have launched nonlinear chemical dynamics as a serious field of inquiry.
None of these volumes, however, is satisfactory in our view as a text for a course at the advanced undergraduate or introductory graduate level or as a means for a newcomer to the field to obtain an overview and a relatively painless means of access to a basic competence in his or her area of interest. We believe strongly that the subject can be taught and learned at this level!
It is always tempting in teaching a course or writing a book to focus on theory; it lends itself more easily to the blackboard or to the printed page. Chemistry, though, and nonlinear chemical dynamics in particular, is an experimental science. When chemical oscillations existed primarily in Lotka's models [Lotka, 1925], there was no subject of nonlinear chemical dynamics. When Turing structures could be found only in the papers of mathematical biologists, they played only a tiny role in this field. We have tried in this book to convey the experimental as well as the theoretical background of the subject. We describe how to build a flow reactor, for example. We provide appendices that contain recipes for lecture demonstrations and guidelines for laboratory experiments. We recommend that the reader try at least some of the demonstrations. They are just the sort of thing that hooked many chemists at an early age; solutions suddenly switch from one color to another -- not just once, but repeatedly. The demonstrations have provoked gaping mouths and perceptive questions from audiences ranging from elementary school children to university boards of trustees.
We have chosen to divide the book into two sections. In the first, we present an overview of the subject. We start with a brief history and then move on to review some of the basic mathematics and chemistry. We next discuss the flow reactor or CSTR, an experimental tool borrowed from chemical engineers, which led to the rapid expansion of nonlinear chemical dynamics in the 1970's and 1980's. The CSTR allows one to design new chemical oscillators, avoiding the earlier procedure of stumbling upon them. Having outlined how to build a chemical oscillator, we proceed to look at the task of dissecting them, i.e., of constructing molecular level descriptions or mechanisms. A realistic view of most chemical systems takes into account their behavior in space as well as in time. In the systems of interest here, this means that one must consider diffusion and how it can lead to pattern formation and wave propagation, a subject we consider in Chapter 6. We close our overview with a brief discussion of some of the computational tools that have furthered the understanding of these complex chemical systems.
A one-semester course in nonlinear chemical dynamics or an introduction for someone intent on entering the field as a researcher might consist of Part I (some or even much of which will be review, depending on the reader's background) supplemented by one or two of the chapters in Part II. Some of these "special" topics are treated in other books, but others (e.g., delays, polymers, convection) are treated in a context that is both chemical and pedagogical for the first time here. Each chapter in Part II can be read independently of the others, though readers may (we hope will) find that there will be symbiotic effects among certain combinations of chapters (e.g., 9 and 15 or 11, 12 and 13), some of which may not yet have occurred to the less than omniscient authors. A reasonable year's course in this subject could cover all of the special topics plus selected papers from the current literature and/or projects proposed by the instructor and the students. We have found that students are eager to get in there and do something on their own and that it is not unrealistic for them to do so. Indeed, some of the earliest and most significant discoveries in both of our laboratories were made by undergraduates.
Both of us "wandered" into this field after being trained in other areas. Having seen many others come this way and never look back, we are convinced that the direction we took is a natural one. We hope that this book will make the road just a little smoother for those who follow us. Remember, if you have any doubts, try the demonstrations! |
Dr Robin Bunce
Contemporary politics is full of surprises. Cameron's surprise majority in 2015, the shock of Brexit, the horror of Trump, and Theresa May's failure to win a majority, are just the most obvious examples. The biggest surprise, surely, is the current enthusiasm for Jeremy Corbyn, a leader who, until recently was written off as unelectable.
The sight of crowds chanting Corbyn's name at Glastonbury, welcoming him on stage like some kind of a rock star, has given commentators pause. Crowds chanting political slogans or a leader's name smacks of hero worship, leadership cults and totalitarian politics.
Yet, 'Corbynmania' should not be understood as a personality cult. Cults of personality tend to be imposed from above rather than emerging from below. The cult of Lenin and the cult of Stalin were deliberately manufactured and fed to the Soviet people through a Communist-dominated media. Certainly, at a local level people invested these cults with personal meaning, but the cults were initiated above, and circumscribed so that they could never undermine the regime. The recent, now defunct, cult of Theresa May has some similarities to the cults of totalitarian regimes. The May cult was created by Conservative campaign managers and propagated through media, old and new. Enthusiasm for Corbyn is profoundly different. Crucially, the excitement around Corbyn is spontaneous, it emerges from the bottom up, and that gives it a different character to totalitarian cults.
Personality cults are designed to limit public debate by focusing attention on the alleged strengths of the leader. The May cult worked, at least for a time, in this way. The phrase 'strong and stable', for example, was used to close down discussion. Moreover, strength and stability were presented as features of a person rather than specific policies, therefore, attention was deflected away from policy discussion towards faith in a leader. Cults, then, tend to close down more detailed or complex discussion, reducing political debate to content free slogans and faith in the qualities, real or imagined, of leading individuals.
However, as enthusiasm around Corbyn is spontaneous and outside central control, it is unlikely to function in this way. Indeed, while centrally imposed message discipline stifles debate, grassroots enthusiasm is likely to stimulate activity. Enthusiasm for Corbyn is likely to lead to discussion of what he stands for, consideration of how his programme might improve the country, as well as the possible drawbacks of his agenda. Fandom is a good analogy for the Corbyn phenomenon. Fans become enthusiastic about a band, a film genre, a TV show. Taking Doctor Who as an example, enthusiasm leads to exploration: fans discover the back catalogue, they take ownership of their passion, they engage in cosplay, argue over what is ‘cannon’, and eventually write their own fan fiction. And all of this goes on beyond the control of the show’s producers. The fandom analogy is a good one, precisely because the crowds at Glastonbury behaved like fans not like regimented ranks of Nazis. In this sense, spontaneous enthusiasm has the potential to widen knowledge of and participation in politics, in a way that is wholly different to top-down cults.
Much of the concern about a 'Corbyn cult' presupposes that some forms of political participation are legitimate, whilst others are inherently suspicious. Specifically, engaging in policy discussion is put at the top of the hierarchy of legitimate engagement, while cheering at a gig is relegated to the bottom. There are good reasons, however, to question this hierarchy of legitimacy. Reading and debating research led policy is one way of engaging in politics. Joining established political parties and attending formal meetings is another form of engagement. But these are not the be all and end all of legitimate participation. Being exciting, being defiant, embracing hope, marching, being caught up in the moment, all these are legitimate too. Indeed, in a democracy there ought to be different ways of engaging and different levels of engagement so that it is possible for the whole people to engage in whatever way or at the level they choose. Significantly, one type of engagement does not exclude the other, even policy wonks feel joy, and enthusiasm can be a gateway to deeper and more long-lasting commitment.
Excitement around Corbyn is not truly a cult of personality. It is not imposed from above or formally circumscribed. Corbyn's people have neither the media dominance, nor the power of surveillance necessary to create or monitor a genuine cult. Even so, the crowds at Glastonbury may still be guilty of hero worship. It is difficult to generalise, who knows what was going through the heads of those cheering his name at Glastonbury? Maybe there is an element of hero worship in attitudes to Corbyn – that would certainly be consistent with the way that fan culture works. There is certainly something quite heroic in the Corbyn as Obi-Wan memes that have been cropping up since his election as Labour leader back in 2015.
However, is regarding Corbyn as a kind of hero inherently dangerous? Britain has had heroes before. Winston Churchill is still regarded, almost universally as a hero. Margaret Thatcher also has her devotees. The important question is what kind of heroes are people celebrating? We know what happens when a society worships a 'warrior hero' with a quasi-mystical belief in a 'master race'. We know what societies look like when they worship inerrant revolutionaries-cum-war leaders. But what would a society be like if its heroes were cyclists who made jam in their spare time? If Britain's heroes were people who lived in sixties terraces, people who don't know all six verses of the national anthem, people who had opposed Apartheid in the 80s, and the Iraq war in the noughties, maybe a society with that kind of a hero would be a decent one?
Returning to the fandom analogy, the people who make Doctor Who today were fans in the 70s. Their enthusiasm carried them from watching the show to writing, directing and producing. If the crowds at Glastonbury are considered fans rather than fanatics, maybe they are not destined to put on jackboots and goosestep behind their leader. Maybe their enthusiasm will led them to register to vote, to join a political party, to read political biographies, to become policy wonks, local councillors, maybe even Cabinet ministers. Political participation, like fandom, starts somewhere, and Glastonbury is as good a place as any.
Dr Robin Bunce is a historian based at Homerton College, University of Cambridge. He specialises in the history of political thought. His recent biography of the black intellectual and activist Darcus Howe, co-written with Paul Field, is published by Bloomsbury.
The opinions in politics.co.uk's Comment and Analysis section are those of the author and are no reflection of the views of the website or its owners. |
On the 18th of November 2015, as part of the project Povești Nespuse – Untold Stories, we organized an artistic happening entitled Contemporary Art and Activism Regarding Roma Slavery. This event was part of a series of actions developed in the course of our project. During the happening Roma artists have discussed with the students and the professors present about the challenges of one’s involvement in artistic activism concerning Roma slavery. The speakers at this event were Alina Şerban, Roma actress, author and producer of theater plays and George Mihai Vasilescu, painter and artist.
The artistic happening meant the discussion of some materials resulted from the field research conducted in the project in order to gather Roma fairy tales as well as watching a series of monologues from Alinei Şerban’s theater plays. In addition, George Mihai Vasilescu has presented several of his paintings from the exhibition Robii lui Dumnezeu open at this time at the Bucharest Metropolitan Library.
The aim of the discussions was to present the activities of the project and the different means through which art and artistic productions contribute to the visibility of untold or ignores stories, to social change and to the re-evaluation of history. Moreover, taking into account the academic nature of the hosting establishment, the participants have talked about equal access to education and the importance of creating an inclusive and multicultural educational framework.
After the short session of questions&answers organized at the end of the event, we also discussed different future possible actions and ways to support Roma artistic activism. |
Cockroaches: The 3 most common cockroaches in Western Australia are
The Oriental Cockroach: The oriental cockroach is a reasonably large species with a dark brown-black glossy body. A female oriental has short non-functional wings and therefore is not capable of flying, they have a wider body than a male. The male has longer wings and is capable of flying up to 2-3 metres. Oriental Cockroaches vary in size but are generally up to 25mm (2.5cm). They like a dark wet habitat so that is why is quite common to find them in wet areas such as bathrooms, kitchens and laundries. You will also find them around decaying matter such as under or within rubbish bins and also around the garden under mulch and other damp places.
What you can do to prevent Oriental Cockroaches: Oriental Cockroaches are omnivorous scavengers and feed off of different types of organic matter so it all comes down to making sure that kitchen areas are kept clean and uninviting for the pests. Make sure that you empty any compost and household bins regularly as food scraps are a favourite. Unfortunately it is hard to deter the cockroaches completely without professional help.
Oriental Cockroach breeding facts: Each egg case contains up to 16 eggs which can take up to 2 months to hatch! This is why you will sometimes notice a sudden flare up within the first couple of months after your treatment. Most modern day treatments allow for this and kill off the new cycle as they hatch, however sometimes the original infestation is so severe that treatments such as cockroach gel may need to be re-administered.
German Cockroaches: The German cockroach is generally around 12mm long and is light brown/beige in colour, with 2 dark stripes on the back of its head. The German cockroach sis one of the most successful species and is very commonly found in houses, apartments, restaurants, warehouses & food processing plants. An ideal environment for a German cockroach is in warm moist conditions with access to food and water, this makes your house and probably your favourite restaurant the perfect home! They are most active at night and generally like to hide during the day where the most common places to find them are near sinks, dishwashers, under electric cooking appliances, under skirting boards, within wall cavities, on the underside of tables and bench tops and within the laundry you may even find them hiding in the pantry. These creatures are winged but vary rarely fly, dispersal is usually through the movement of food containers and other items.
What you can do to prevent German Cockroaches: German Cockroaches do not thrive away from humans or human activity so unfortunately unless you’re planning to move out you will have to start weighing up your options, due to the rapid breeding cycles a small infestation can become a large problem within a short space of time. General tidiness always assists in keeping pests away.
German cockroach breeding facts: German cockroaches are the most prolific breeder of the cockroach species, the females live up to 6 months. She carries an egg capsule with up to 40 eggs at a time and once hatched it takes up to 45 days for nymphs to turn into adults. Unlike us humans the average cockroach family contains multiple males and multiple females which means they can multiply by hundreds in just over a month.
Native Australian Black Cockroach: The Native Australian Black Cockroach is primarily an outdoor pest however they are commonly found indoors during the summer months, this is probably due to the cooler conditions. They are wingless and black in colour with a white margin and typically grow to around 35mm in length. They prefer to feed on decaying leaf matter rather than human waste.
What Protector Pest Control can do : As licenced professionals we are able to use residual insecticide by fogging the interior of the home which is a long lasting and effective way to kill cockroaches and other general pests and allows the treatment to keep working and kill subsequent cockroaches once they hatch. We also use a product called Dupont Advion Cockroach Gel which creates a delay in mortality allowing the insect to consume the bait and return to the harbourage to contaminate cockroaches and result in a significant reduction or complete eradication. For exterior treatments a blanket spray is completed using a broad spectrum, long residual, liquid insecticide. |
Individual differences |
Methods | Statistics | Clinical | Educational | Industrial | Professional items | World psychology |
Minimax (sometimes minmax) is a method in decision theory for minimizing the maximum possible loss. Alternatively, it can be thought of as maximizing the minimum gain (maximin). It started from two player zero-sum game theory, covering both the cases where players take alternate moves and those where they make simultaneous moves. It has also been extended to more complex games and to general decision making in the presence of uncertainty.
A simple version of the algorithm deals with games such as tic-tac-toe, where each player can win, lose, or draw. If player A can win in one move, his best move is that winning move. If player B knows that one move will lead to the situation where player A can win in one move, while another move will lead to the situation where player A can, at best, draw, then player B's best move is the one leading to a draw. Late in the game, it's easy to see what the "best" move is. The Minimax algorithm helps find the best move, by working backwards from the end of the game. At each step it assumes that player A is trying to maximize the chances of A winning when he plays, while on the next turn player B is trying to minimize the chances of A winning (i.e., to maximize B's own chances of winning).
Minimax criterion in statistical decision theoryEdit
In classical statistical decision theory, we have an estimator that is used to estimate a parameter . We also assume a risk function , usually specified as the integral of a loss function. In this framework, is called minimax if it satisfies
Minimax algorithm with alternate movesEdit
A minimax algorithm is a recursive algorithm for choosing the next move in a two-player game. A value is associated with each position or state of the game. This value is computed by means of a position evaluation function and it indicates how good it would be for a player to reach that position. The player then makes the move that maximises the minimum value of the position resulting from the opponent's possible following moves. If it is A's turn to move, A gives a value to each of his legal moves.
An alternative is to use a rule that if the result of a move is an immediate win for A it is assigned positive infinity and, if it is an immediate win for B, negative infinity. The value to A of any other move is the minimum of the values resulting from each of B's possible replies. (A is called the maximizing player and B is called the minimizing player), hence it is called the minimax algorithm. The above algorithm will assign a value of positive or negative infinity to any position since the value of every position will be the value of some final winning or losing position. Often this is generally only possible at the very end of complicated games such as chess or go, since it is not computationally possible to look ahead as far as the completion of the game, except towards the end, and instead positions are given finite values as estimates of the degree of belief that they will lead to a win for one player or another.
This can be extended if we can supply a heuristic evaluation function which gives values to non-final game states without considering all possible following complete sequences. We can then limit the minimax algorithm to look only at a certain number of moves ahead. This number is called the "look-ahead", measured in "plies". For example, "Deep Blue" looks ahead 12 plies.
The algorithm can be thought of as exploring the nodes of a game tree. The effective branching factor of the tree is the average number of children of each node (i.e., the average number of legal moves in a position). The number of nodes to be explored usually increases exponentially with the number of plies (it is less than exponential if evaluating forced moves or repeated positions). The number of nodes to be explored for the analysis of a game is therefore approximately the branching factor raised to the power of the number of plies. It is therefore impossible to completely analyze games such as chess using the minimax algorithm.
The performance of the naïve minimax algorithm may be improved dramatically, without affecting the result, by the use of alpha-beta pruning. Other heuristic pruning methods can also be used, but not all of them are guaranteed to give the same result as the un-pruned search.
Minimax theorem with simultaneous movesEdit
The following example of a zero-sum game, where A and B make simultaneous moves, illustrates the minimax algorithm. If each player has three choices and the payoff matrix for A is:
|B chooses B1||B chooses B2||B chooses B3|
|A chooses A1||+3||-2||+2|
|A chooses A2||-1||0||+4|
|A chooses A3||-4||-3||+1|
and B has the same payoff matrix with the signs reversed (i.e. if the choices are A1 and B1 then B pays 3 to A) then the simple minimax choice for A is A2 since the worst possible result is then having to pay 1, while the simple minimax choice for B is B2 since the worst possible result is then no payment. However, this solution is not stable, since if B believes A will choose A2 then B will choose B1 to gain 1; then if A believes B will choose B1 then A will choose A1 to gain 3; and then B will choose B2; and eventually both players will realize the difficulty of making a choice. So a more stable strategy is needed.
Some choices are dominated by others and can be eliminated: A will not choose A3 since either A1 or A2 will produce a better result, no matter what B chooses; B will not choose B3 since B2 will produce a better result, no matter what A chooses.
A can avoid having to make an expected payment of more than 1/3 by choosing A1 with probability 1/6 and A2 with probability 5/6, no matter what B chooses. B can ensure an expected gain of at least 1/3 by using a randomized strategy of choosing B1 with probability 1/3 and B2 with probability 2/3, no matter what A chooses. These mixed minimax strategies are now stable and cannot be improved.
Minimax in the face of uncertaintyEdit
Minimax theory has been extended to decisions where there is no other player, but where the consequences of decisions depend on unknown facts. For example, deciding to prospect for minerals entails a cost which will be wasted if the minerals are not present, but will bring major rewards if they are. One approach is to treat this as a game against Nature, and using a similar mindset as Murphy's law, take an approach which minimizes the maximum expected loss, using the same techniques as in the two-person zero-sum games.
In addition, expectiminimax trees have been developed, for two-player games in which chance (for example, dice) is a factor.
Minimax in non-zero-sum gamesEdit
If games have a non-zero-sum in terms of the payoffs between the players, apparently non-optimal strategies may evolve. For example in the prisoner's dilemma, the minimax strategy for each prisoner is to betray the other even though they would each do better if neither confessed their guilt. So, for non-zero-sum games the best strategy is not necessarily minimax.
- Transposition table
- Refutation table
- Computer chess
- Horizon effect
- Alpha-beta pruning
- Minimax Condorcet
- Claude Elwood Shannon
- The Minimax Theorem
- "Maximin principle" from A Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names.de:Minimax-Algorithmus |
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Quality of life research in India on patients with schizophrenia is scarce. Quality of life interview (QOLI), a commonly used instrument in the West has not been used in a developing country like India. The aim was to assess convergence validity of QOLI (modified as per the Indian cultural background). 38 clinically stable outpatients with chronic schizophrenia (as per ICD-10) were administered QOLI- Brief version. Quality of Life Scale (QLS) and WHOQOL- Bref over two interviews the latter two scales having cross-cultural applicability. Significant correlations were obtained for QOLI with QLS and WHOQOL-Bref. It can be concluded that QOLI demonstrated convergent validity with both a disease-specific (QLS) and a generic (WHOQOL-Bref) scale, which have been previously used in the Indian setting. Hence, results support the applicability of QOLI in a different sociocultural setting. |
COMINGS & GOINGS; Chicago Celebrates An Urban Dream
By HILARY HOWARD
Published: July 19, 2009
In 1909, the architect Daniel Burnham, along with local planners, published the Plan of Chicago, which transformed the city from an uninspired industrial center to the attractive and user-friendly destination it is today. For example, North Michigan Avenue became a Champs ?ys?-like boulevard, and extensive public parks were created along Lake Michigan.
In celebration of the plan's centennial, the city has organized various lectures, walking tours and art exhibitions throughout 2009. Two temporary pavilions, designed by Zaha Hadid and Ben van Berkel, have been erected in Millennium Park to serve as hubs for the celebrations and to symbolize Chicago's continued dedication to cutting edge architecture and city planning (www.burnhamplan100.org).
The city intends to expand public access to Lake Michigan and conserve its natural open spaces with money and awareness raised during the centennial. Travelers who would like to contribute might be interested in a package offered by the Hotel Burnham, in an 1895 landmark designed by Mr. Burnham, above. The package includes a $19.09 discount from the best available rate, which will be donated to the Burnham Centennial Foundation. Also included is a guide to centennial activities and two cocktails. Standard nightly rates start at $179.
To reserve, visit www.burnhamhotel.com and enter the code PCEN.
PHOTO (PHOTOGRAPH BY HOTEL BURNHAM) |
the snow is nature's oldest effect
snow from the caveman word 'soft layer'
'caveman' from the Arabic 'monkeyman'
a word starts on top a hill
then it rolls
all over academic institutions
teachers choke on essays
essay from the latin 'long explanation'
Latin from the latin 'lazy nothing'
bad parents beat children with dictionaries
later those children are shy with definitions |
Aerospace Engineering at Reaction Research
This is "Laminar Magic," designed and built by aerodynamicist Alex Strojnik. In 1987 I had the honor of helping Alex and his wife Cirila to complete the aircraft. I was also very privileged to fly it for a National Speed Record over a 3 kilometer course in FAI (http://www.fai.org/records/) / NAA (National Aviation Association) Category C-1a/0 (land plane, piston engine, propeller driven, under 661 pounds--300 kilograms--gross weight), for "Speed over a straight 3 km course at restricted altitude."
Laminar Magic was designed to prove that with attention to detail in the areas of surface preparation and proper shape ("laminar flow" or micro-aerodynamics), high speeds can be acheived on much less power than most aircraft require. Ultimately this results in reduced cost for the aviation enthusiast.
At 498 pounds, the actual gross weight (including pilot and full fuel) was well below the category maximum. Limited distance between engine centerline and tail boom resulted in limitations in the engine/propeller combination. Since propeller size governs the amount of power that can be transferred to the airstream, the power was limited to approximately 25 horsepower. Despite this tiny power output, Laminar Magic shattered the previous record with 126.7 miles per hour in its first and only record attempt. This is faster than most cars with four or more times the power.
No aircraft before or since has flown faster on less power than Laminar Magic!
After the record flight Dr. Strojnik and I spent many hours discussing a faster design and doing preliminary calculations. However, during that process we discovered another designer who had already begun a very similar aircraft. This is the Aria:
Aria's designer, Sam Walker, had conceived and built it as a self-launching sailplane. It's one of the most beautiful aircraft I have seen, and undoubtedly one of the best powered sailplane designs ever. Sam engineered an ingenious centrifugally-deployed folding propeller that was spring loaded to streamline itself when the engine was not running.
The twin boom tail allows for fixed engine mounting, thus eliminating the complex retracting-engine designs of other motorized sailplanes. Obviously, it also allows the engine to be mounted in pusher fashion, eliminating the sightline problems and laminar flow disturbance inherent with tractor engine locations.
I found out about Aria because Sam had corresponded with Alex on issues of laminar flow design, Alex's speciality. As Alex and I discussed the configuration required to improve the record speed, we settled on a twin-boom tail design. This would yield clearance for a larger propeller and thus a more powerful engine.
When Alex remembered Sam's correspondence about his similar design, he dug it out and it was almost identical to our preliminary design layouts! We reestablished contact with Sam, who had been unable to finish the project (Aria never flew). Eventually he allowed me to purchase it from him to use as a starting point for a new record attempt.
With a shorter wing and a symetrical airfoil I hope to acheive 275 knots!
(3D model courtesy of Paul Shaheen, www.ModelLabs.com)
Sadly, Dr. Strojnik passed away in 1995. Mr. Walker passed away a few years later. It is unfortunate that neither man lived to see the new airplane fly. I have not done much on the design since, but hope to someday complete it.
In addition to the parts to assemble one complete aircraft, I have a full set of molds for the fuselage for the Aria, and most of the fixtures and other molds. At some point I may consider offering Aria in kit or plans form. If you have questions about the aircraft or any other aspects of aerospace engineering or aircraft design, please contact me and have patience because I will reply as I have time:
Also please consider joining and supporting the Experimental Soaring Association. They have an excellent and very imformative newsletter.
Links of Interest
|Dr. Strojnik's essential books on light aircraft design are available from Reaction Research:|
|His popular plans-built S-2 sailplane can be seen at:|
|Bob Parker in Baker City, OR was kind enough to send these photos of his completed S2|
|05/27/12 Raphael Brescia's CEA-308 from Brazil, current C-1a/0 3 km speed record holder at 360.13 km/hr|
|02/17/12 Windward Performance|
|02/17/12 Bob Kuykendall's HP24 Project|
|Jukka Tervamaki's JT-8 motorglider similar to the S-2 can be seen at:|
|Another beautiful aircraft influenced by Dr. Strojnik is the Vmax:|
|Aircraft design software (freeware) based on Dr. Strojnik's books can be found at:|
|Dr. Strojnik won the Paul E. Tuntland Memorial Award from the Soaring Society of America in 1987:|
|Sam Walker worked with George Applebay in developing the Aria, which shared at least some of its features with George's "Zuni" design.|
|Mike Arnold is a subsequent record holder in this C1a0 category for "Speed over a straight 3 km course at restricted altitude."|
|Blériot Medal recipient Peter Scheichenberger is the previous record holder in category at 351.39 km/h (218.3 miles/hr) in a BD-5B with 75 hp. Anyone have photos or contact information for Peter? (Thanks to Scott Rider for update on the record!)||
No link available
|Leeon Davis's beautiful DA-11 uses an 18 hp Briggs and Stratton V-twin lawnmower engine!|
Bruce Carmichael's book is also a must read for any aspiring aircraft designer.
Bruce doesn't do email. You can purchase his book by sending a check or money order (the $25 price includes postage to U.S. addresses) to:
34795 Camino Capistrano
|Bruce's biographical sketch|
|Molt Taylor's Mini Imp|
|Ligeti Stratos Video|
|Gevers Genesis Triphibian|
|Mountain Goat Bush Plane|
|George Markey's Ultrabat Aerobatic Ultralight|
|Peter Foster's similar Sapphire|
|Now defunct Valkyrie|
|Jon Sharp's Nemesis|
|Sparrow Hawk Twin Boom Pusher (scroll down)|
|Pascal Schadegg's Aeriks 200 Ultralight|
|Ameur Baljims 1A|
Other Links of Interest
|Sportsman Pilot Magazine|
|Experimental Aircraft Association|
|Vintage Ultralight Association|
|FAI International Air Sports Federation landplane records|
All information presented on this website is copyright ©2012, Reaction Research, Inc. No component of this website may be reproduced in any form without express written permission.
This information is presented as a service only. Great care is taken to provide the best information possible. However, no warranty of expertise or accuracy is expressed or implied. |
Microlaze, a system for automated laser micromachining, is the main tool used to construct the kit of parts.
Based on a G-code file translated from a DXF file, this system can cut or score a variety of materials.
Details of how it is used to make the parts can be found in the construction kit part recipes section.
fixture is the addtional tool needed (besides the Microlaze system
mentioned above) to fabricate the hollow, triangular cross section,
stainless steel beam kit components.
is the tool at the heart of the automation process. It is used to
perform the automated or semi-automated dexterous manipulation of the
construction kit parts into their final 2D configuration.
Hardware Manual for Constructing the Ortho-tweezers |
Welcome » IT Booklets » Management » Roles and Responsibilities » IT Responsibilities and Functions » Risk Management Functions
A financial institution should ensure an adequate risk
management structure exists within the organization. Some
institutions have a separate risk management department that is
responsible for overseeing the areas of information security,
business continuity planning, audit, insurance and compliance.
Regardless of the particular structure used, the institution should
ensure that lines of authority are established for enforcing and
monitoring controls. These risk management functions should play a
key role in measuring, monitoring, and controlling risk.
The board is responsible for overseeing and approving the
development, implementation, and maintenance of a comprehensive,
written information security program, as required by the
Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA). GLBA is discussed in more detail on
page 30 of this booklet. The information security program should
include appropriate administrative, technical, and physical
safeguards based on the size, complexity, nature, and scope of the
institution's operations. The board may delegate information
security monitoring to an independent audit function and
information security management to an independent information
security officer. Ideally, the institution should separate
information security program management and monitoring from the
daily security duties required in IT operations. The senior
information security officer should be an organization-wide risk
manager rather than a production resource devoted to IT operations.
To ensure independence, the information security officer should
report directly to the board or senior management rather than
through the IT department. The IT department needs personnel with
daily responsibility for implementing the corporate security
policy, but they should not have the ability to change policy and
grant exceptions. The IT Handbook's "Information Security Booklet"
has additional information on this topic.
Similar to information security, business continuity planning
should be a corporate-wide strategy. Business continuity planners
should assess business continuity across all lines of business. The
business continuity function often resides in the risk management
organizational structure. The IT department should have personnel
responsible for developing and maintaining the department's
business continuity plans. The IT Handbook's "Business Continuity
Planning Booklet" has additional information on this topic.
Senior management and the board should ensure cooperation
between management and IT audit. It should also ensure timely and
accurate response to audit concerns and exceptions. The IT audit
area should report directly to the board of directors or a
designated committee of the board comprised of outside directors.
The board is responsible for overseeing the audit department's
performance and compensation. Audit's key role is to review risk
within each of the departments. Audit should verify that management
has implemented effective control processes. Audit should have no
role in implementing controls and should not have primary
responsibility for enforcing policy.
Management should have processes in place to monitor and enforce
policy compliance. Audit should verify those processes function
effectively and report to the board. The board, in turn, should
ensure auditors have the necessary expertise and that audit
coverage is adequate, timely, and independent. IT audit coverage
should include system development and acquisition projects. See the
IT Handbook's "Audit Booklet" for additional discussion of this
Senior management should ensure the involvement of regulatory
compliance staff whenever a new system or application affects
compliance with regulations. New implementations or application
changes can cause noncompliance through inaccurate interest rate
calculations, inadequate or inaccurate disclosures, weak security
controls over the storage or transmission of customer information,
and poor customer verification procedures. The compliance function
should review any new system or significant change for regulatory |
Jailbroken phones are more prone to security threats, researchers say.
The emergence of an exploit used by a website for iPhone “jailbreaking” prompted security researchers to issue warnings about smartphone security.
The website, Jailbreakme.com, allows iPhone and iPad users who visit the site in Safari to jailbreak their devices — obtain applications not authorized by Apple — with a simple slide button, said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos. The website exploits a vulnerability in the way the mobile edition of Safari handles PDF files, he said.
“What concerns me, and others in the security community, however, is that if simply visiting a website with your iPhone can cause it to be jailbroken, just imagine what else could hackers do by exploiting this vulnerability? Cybercriminals would be able to create booby-trapped webpages that could — if visited by an unsuspecting iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad owner — run code on visiting devices without the user’s permission,” Cluley wrote in a blog post.
VUPEN, an IT security research firm, on Tuesday, issued an advisory about two vulnerabilities in Apple iOS for iPhone and iPad that attackers could exploit “to take complete control of a vulnerable device.”
Dave Marcus, security research and communications manager at McAfee, said the vulnerabilities pose the threat of being used for other attacks.
“This should serve as a wake-up call for anyone with a mobile device: Remote exploitation is real and here to stay,” he wrote in a blog post. “For now, these vulnerabilities are being used (as far as we know) to jailbreak iPhones, but they could be used to do many other things to iPhones and their owners around the world.” |
The etiology of strabismus is a still much-mooted question, and each ophthalmic surgeon follows out a routine of treatment with his cases according to the theory which seems to him most rational. As the title indicates, defective development of the fusion center will be considered the essential etiologic factor in this paper, according to Worth's1 theory.
De Schweinitz's2 new book gives the following factors as causative:
1. Disturbance of the relation between accommodation and convergence by errors of refraction.
2. Disparity in the length, thickness and tension of opposing muscles.
3. Inequality in the vision of the two eyes or amblyopia of one eye, which removes the natural stimulus of diplopia to exact convergence.
4. Disturbances of innervation and defective development of the fusion faculty.
Savage3 says, under the etiology of comitant esotropia : "The conditions causing the error exist from birth, and only one out of several natural causes undergoes any change |
Monday - Friday8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
A program of the Jefferson and Gilpin counties Triad offering free 911 cell phones to seniors to use in case of an emergency.
Triad is a three-pronged partnership between prosecutors, law enforcement and the community working together to prevent the victimization seniors. The Triad in the First Judicial District, serving Jefferson and Gilpin counties, was developed for community groups and volunteer senior citizens to come together to develop and implement crime prevention and education programs for older adults. The Cell Phone Project is one of many programs the Triad operates on behalf of older adults. Phones that would ordinarily be disposed of are collected by schools, law enforcement agencies, and Triad participants. They are given to the District Attorney's Office who has them reconfigured and set to only make 911 calls. These phones are invaluable to seniors in case of an emergency, such as a fall. The phones are available through the District Attorney's Office to anyone who feels they need one. For more information or to obtain an emergency cell phone for a senior, call Cary Johnson at 303-271-6980. Donations of used phones can also be made by dropping them off at the District Attorney’s Office
Administration & Courts Facility 100 Jefferson County Parkway Golden, Colorado 80419 (303) 279-6511
© 2013-2014 Jefferson County, CO. |
In dazzling recent opening night festivities, the Pearl became the first new movie theater to open in North Philadelphia since the 1940s. With searchlights sweeping the sky in the familiar fashion of a Hollywood premier, the new theater joined 30 retail storefronts, the Shops at Avenue North, and a 12-story student housing tower called the Edge, adjacent to Temple University's main campus, in being introduced to Philadelphia and, more precisely, to North Philadelphia.
The $100-million anchor project of the Avenue North revitalization program was undertaken in 2004 by the development firm Tower Investments, Inc., which continues to transform Northern Liberties as well, and is headed by founder and CEO Bart Blatstein.
Said the builder/entrepreneur: "The Pearl is about doing a good thing, yes, and being part of the rebirth and revitalization of the neighborhood. It demonstrates that through the efforts of many, first-class development can occur in economically-disadvantaged areas.
"But the Pearl project is also about cooperation and continuity, about North Philadelphia's Jewish roots, since it was Jewish men and women who built up the area years ago; and about the roots, traditions and aspirations of the African-Americans who live and work in North Philly now.
"It's also about the long and generally mutually supportive relationship between Jewish people and African-Americans, both of whom have had to struggle against prejudice to make their way in the world.
"My dad was born in the neighborhood, so it's a coming home, coming full circle for me," said Blatstein, whose many roles in the Jewish community include serving as president of the Jewish Publishing Group.
"Just as Jewish families and business owners lived and worked in the neighborhood, developed it and watched it grow, so, too, now African-American families and business owners have the very real opportunity to see the neighborhood turn around, to see it redevelop and grow economically.
"Other developers said the project wouldn't work here and walked away, said a movie theater operator wouldn't come here but it has. There is no doubt in my mind that it's going to work and be a resounding success on all levels," remarked Blatstein.
The Pearl, which has 1,300 seats, is part of a 100,000-square-foot complex while the Edge, at 200,000 square feet, accommodates 1,200 students. They represent the largest private development in the history of North Philadelphia.
In brief remarks in one of the Pearl's theaters, following a lengthy and lively reception in the theater's lobby, Blatstein talked about the importance of giving neighborhood kids a theater to call their own: "Growing up in Northeast Philadelphia, there was a movie theater there to which I always went. That experience gave me great memories. That's what I hope will happen for the kids who live around here, because a movie theater is central to a neighborhood."
Gov. Ed Rendell, who conceived the Avenue North idea, and who had attempted to attract a developer in 1993, when he was mayor, credited his successor Mayor John Street.
"We've done a good job with housing, but without commercial development it means little," he said. "Now that we have both, it means a great deal for the community and for the city. This is going to be a permanent contributor to change," adding that when New York developers failed to take up the challenge, "it took a Philly boy, Bart Blatstein, to get it done."
While Mayor Street was jubilant over the Pearl's opening, he didn't take credit for it -- though Blatstein acknowledged wholeheartedly it never could have happened without him.
Instead, the mayor heaped praise on City Councilman Darrell Clarke, who represents the neighborhood.
"This is it, this is it; this is truly a great day," said a triumphant Clarke, who pointed out that the construction phase of the project produced one of the most successful minority and female business participation records of any Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority-assisted commercial project.
The new Pearl is named in honor of the original Pearl Theatre, a 1,400-seat movie house that opened in 1927 at 2047 Ridge Ave., and closed in 1963. It served as part of the country's "Black Vaudeville" circuit in the late 1920s and '30s.
Exploring roots and tradition offers a rich Jewish history in the Broad and Oxford streets neighborhood where the Pearl stands, and in other North Broad Street areas, including the city's famous Strawberry Mansion district, which had a Jewish population of 50,000 inhabitants after World War I. Many Jews called North Philly home until the late 1950s, but a Jewish exodus from the area began and basically concluded in 1964.
But a new chapter in its life has begun; according to those involved in the project, that is what the new Pearl Theater and the revitalized surrounding development means and will continue to mean to residents of North Philadelphia and to the city. |
Hispanics trail other groups in Web usage, confidence
In an increasingly digital economy, those who keep pace with technology will have an advantage in the job market, as the 21st century workforce draws more on tools such as file-sharing, video conferencing and social networking.
A 2011 telephone poll conducted by the Washington Post, Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard School of Public Health, “The Digital Divide: Hispanics Trail Other Groups in Web Usage, Confidence,” investigated the Internet usage and confidence rates among Hispanics as compared with other groups. The poll used a random national sample of 1,959 adults.
The poll’s results include:
- Among Hispanics, 72% say they use the Internet at least occasionally, lower than the percentages of whites (87%) and blacks (80%).
- In terms of confidence, 57% of Hispanics say they don’t have enough knowledge about computers to be competitive in the current job environment, compared with only 46% of whites and 45% of blacks who feel the same level of insecurity.
- A language divide exists for the Hispanic population, with 88% who were polled in English saying they use the Internet or e-mail compared only 53% of those who were polled in Spanish.
- The trends may be changing across generational lines. Among Hispanics age 18 to 34, 87% are regularly online, compared with 37% for those above 60.
Although the causes of this divide are not explicit, another finding of the study indicates that economic factors play a role. The poll showed that more Hispanics can only get online through smart phones, while whites and blacks more frequently have a choice between a smart phone and a home computer, which typically offers a great variety of Internet applications and experiences.
Tags: technology, Hispanic, Latino, consumer affairs
Read the Washington Post, Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard School of Public Health study "The Digital Divide: Hispanics Trail Other Groups in Web Usage, Confidence. "
- Summarize the study in fewer than 40 words.
- Express the study's key term(s) in language a lay audience can understand.
- Evaluate the study's limitations. (For example: Do the results conflict with those of other reliable studies? Are there weaknesses in the study's data or research design?)
Read the issue-related Associated Press/USA Today article "For Minorities, New ‘Digital Divide’ Seen."
- If you were to rewrite the article based on knowledge of the study, what key changes would you make?
- Write a lead (or headline or nut graph) based on the study.
- Spend 60 minutes exploring the issue by accessing sources of information other than the study. Write a lead (or headline or nut graph) based on the study but informed by the new information. Does the new information significantly change what one would write based on the study alone?
- Interview two sources with a stake in or knowledge of the issue. Be prepared to provide them with a short summary of the study in order to get their response to it. Write a 400-word article about the study incorporating material from the interviews.
- Spend additional time exploring the issue and then write a 1,200-word background article, focusing on major aspects of the issue. |
Rosenthal, Eric T. Special Correspondent
A partnership forged to improve palliative care in oncology was announced in March by the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM). The aim, the organizations said, is to “harness technology to foster improved palliative care in oncology” and “help oncologists support cancer patients with evidence-based palliative care interventions.”
“This partnership will help get the latest palliative care evidence directly into the hands of oncologists so that palliative care can be provided as early as possible,” ASCO President Sandra Swain, MD, said in a statement.
On the same day that the three-year initiative funded by the Agency for Health Care Research Quality (AHCRQ) was announced (March 6), a Perspective article by the AAHPM's Immediate Past President and 2013 President was published in the New England Journal of Medicine (2013;368:1173-1175). Titled “Generalist plus Specialist Palliative Care—Creating a More Sustainable Model,” the article by Timothy E. Quill, MD, and Amy P. Abernethy, MD, recommended developing a care model that distinguishes between primary palliative care skills available to all clinicians and specialist palliative care skills for managing more complex cases.
The two medical societies' joint initiative will support delivery of high-quality palliative care in oncology addressing the complex care needs of patients with advanced cancer, including relief or prevention of symptoms. The aim is to recruit 20 oncology practices from around the country to participate in the pilot project.
As noted in interviews for this article, the project will use ASCO's Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI) to move palliative care more into the mainstream of oncology practice with a smoother handover between oncologists and palliative care specialists providing better, earlier, and more widespread care for cancer patients.
Research has shown that palliative care benefits patients with advanced cancer, and that those who receive the intervention earlier rather than later have a better quality of life, less depression, and in some cases even live longer than those receiving routine care.
But the general acceptance of palliative care has often been plagued by misunderstandings among medical professionals and the public alike about what the intervention is and when it should take place. Many continue to confuse palliative care with hospice care and believe it is appropriate only when delivered at the end of life.
I spoke with both Quill and Abernethy by telephone a few days before AAHPM's Annual Assembly (March 13-16 in New Orleans), where Abernathy succeeded Quill as President.
A general internist and board-certified palliative care consultant, Quill is Professor of Medicine, Psychiatry, and Medical Humanities at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, and Director of the Center for Ethics, Humanities and Palliative Care.
He said that until this joint project there had been smaller initiatives but that the partnership would allow a more systematic look at what training in hospice and palliative care can be and how to make it more generally available to physicians and produce specific outcomes.
Oncologists and other medical specialists need to know more about primary palliative care, Quill said, noting that studies show there will not be enough palliative care specialists to serve the needs of all patients.
“It's a breakthrough idea to move primary palliative care back to those already providing care. The old model is to add another layer of expertise on sick people and deliver palliative care to sick people by specialists,” he said, adding that the new model encourages relationships between clinicians to be more continuous rather than fragmented. “Palliative care is a piece of good care for sick people, and reserving it for the end of life is crazy.”
While Quill's perspective includes having medical specialists from oncology, cardiology, critical care, geriatrics, primary care, surgery, and other fields learn to deliver basic palliative care, Abernethy—a medical oncologist specializing in melanoma as well as health services research and delivery in patient-centered cancer care including pain, symptom management, and palliative care—is focused on oncology. Ultimately, though, she wants to use the ASCO-AAHPM project to create models for others specialties as well.
Figure. TIMOTHY E. Q...Image Tools
She is Director of both the Center for Learning Health Care and the Duke Cancer Care Research Program, and Associate Professor of Medicine with Tenure in the Division of Medical Oncology at Duke University School of Medicine.
Figure. AMY P. ABERN...Image Tools
In addition to being the new AAHPM President, she serves in a variety of capacities for numerous organizations, affording her the perspective and opportunities to move the palliative care initiative ahead within them in various ways. She noted that in the late 1990s, she wanted to go to Australia to study palliative care but instead had to say she'd be studying “cancer pain,” because palliative care was still not well understood in the United States at the time.
She also explained that the American College of Surgeons' Commission on Cancer's mandate that distress screening be part of cancer care for accreditation has opened the door for other psychosocial services.
Abernethy is principal investigator for the ASCO-AAHPM project, which, according to the announcement, will create a virtual learning collaborative using web-based technology to disseminate evidence-based palliative care approaches in oncology—including customized learning modules, social networking, and an evidence-based toolbox offering resources to translate research into practice.
The 20 oncology practices in the pilot program will report palliative care quality data through QOPI, sharing best practices and resources. The program will also:
* Evaluate oncologists' perceptions of the virtual learning;
* Assess the impact on performance related to primary palliative care;
* Provide refinements to both the platform and toolbox; and
* Develop a palliative care toolbox for all ASCO members.
Abernethy said the AHCRQ three-year grant is for a “relatively small” $300,000, meaning that the project will have to be creative to cover all costs. She said AHCRQ grants, although difficult to get and not very substantial, can be wide-reaching in terms of health care delivery, and so she used her various organizational affiliations to broker a proposal that would use both ASCO's and AAHPM's respective strengths.
“ASCO's contribution is really enormous,” she said. “ASCO has the technology platform and machinery with QOPI that can function as both a monitoring and quality improvement program, as well as the ability for distribution [among its large membership]. And AAHPM has the content and know-how to work with ASCO to bring teaching primary care to oncologists and create a model that can also be used for other medical specialists.”
‘Skill Sets’ for Primary vs. Specialist Palliative Care
The NEJM article, now online ahead of print, broke down the various representative skill sets for primary and specialty palliative care, noting that primary palliative care includes:
* Basic management of pain and symptoms;
* Basic management of depression and anxiety; and
* Basic discussions about prognosis, goals of treatment, suffering, and code status.
Specialty palliative care, on the other hand, Quill and Abernethy say, includes:
* Management of refractory pain or other symptoms;
* Management of more complex depression, anxiety, grief, and existential distress;
* Assistance with conflict resolution regarding goals or methods of treatment within families, between staff and families, and among treatment teams; and
* Assistance in addressing cases of near futility.
© 2013 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Inc. |
Among art lovers in Israel and in the inner circles of artists, Aviva Uri is considered a myth. Major artists such as Raffi Lavie, Moshe Gershuni and Igael Tumarkin see her work as a turning point in the story of Israeli art, and note her influence on their work and her meaningful role in the shaping of generations of artists in Israel.
Aviva Uri attained this status even though she did not take part in the constitutive mechanisms of the art world: she never studied at an art school, never belonged to a leading art group, and was not active in institutions of art teaching that open channels of influence and accord one a position in the art discourse. Aviva Uri’s unique path in the art world is interwoven with the story of her life.
Aviva Uri was born on 12 March 1922 in Safed, to Azriel Uri and Rachel (Bronfszum), refugees from the Ukraine and Socialist Zionists who settled in Erez Israel in 1920. Her mother, a dentist by profession, died a short time after Aviva was born, aged 25. It may be assumed that Aviva, who first heard the story of her mother’s death when she was 14, connected this event to her own birth, and that this connection influenced her world picture. Her father, who was active in the Zionist Organization, re-married, to Gissia Livorkin, who was also a dentist. After their marriage the couple moved with little Aviva to Givatayim, and afterwards to Ramat Gan.
It seems that from her childhood on Aviva Uri cultivated longings for a life of art. When she was 17 she gave expression to her dilemma, the choice between her artistic aspirations and a life of love: “I spread out my hands towards you, the anonymous one, who is there somewhere, or does not exist at all. […] And then again the inner imperative: if you want to create art, you have to be first an artist, and then a woman” (from her diary, in the possession of her daughter, Rachel Yampuler, Tel Aviv).
Aviva’s mother, Rachel, and her step-mother, Gissia, independent women both, were part of the elite pioneering group in Erez Israel that profoundly influenced the shaping of the patterns of life and the political institutions of pre-state Israel. On the face of it—an egalitarian society; in fact—a society that did not manage to eradicate the old stereotype that left the core of representation to the men. The message that seeped into Aviva Uri’s world contained an ostensible contradiction between gender identity and the realization of creative aspirations. This message was reinforced by a domineering father who did not support his daughter’s leanings towards art, and responded harshly, raising his arm to her, and destroying her paintings.
When she was 20 (in 1941), Aviva Uri married Moshe Levin, who worked at the diamond exchange in Ramat Gan. But her longings for a life of art were not entirely suppressed. A few years after her wedding a decision matured in her, and she moved, with her infant daughter (Rachel, named after her mother), into the home of an artist who was 20 years her senior, David Hendler (in 1947), and who became her supportive partner, in both life and art, until his death in 1984. Hendler, an esteemed artist, had studied drawing in Prague, arrived in Israel in 1924, and in 1944 became Aviva Uri’s teacher. He was penniless, but Aviva Uri stayed with him, and he passed on to her the knowledge he had accumulated, influenced her with his rare talent, and was open to nurture her unique inner fire without shaping her in his own image.
Among artist couples, it is frequently the woman who gives up her art for the sake of her partner’s art. The relationship between David Hendler and Aviva Uri was different: Uri was the artist, while Hendler was the one who sacrificed his art for her, as it were fulfilling himself through her. Under Hendler’s guidance, Aviva Uri gradually improved her drawing technique, and with his support she was able to examine her inner world more deeply. It would seem that the fact that she had not studied at an art school had an influence on the independent line that she developed. Aviva Uri’s drawing offered a new option that the artists of the time had been craving for: a personal line, free of the mannerisms of “painterly” or “cultured” “sensitivity”, or, as Uri herself put it: “I didn’t follow the way taken by all the artists of my age in that period, who imitated their teachers when the ‘Lyrical Abstract’ was dominant and French art was the teacher of the way. This did not enthuse me at all, I sought something entirely different, not the ‘illusion’ of paint on the canvas, and not the making of ‘beautiful pictures’. […] I was attracted immediately to the pure line— drawing! The line was I” (from a letter to Gideon Ofrat, 1977).
Already in 1949 Aviva Uri held her first solo exhibition at the Katz Gallery in Tel Aviv, and in 1952 she was awarded the prestigious Dizengoff Prize, and participated in select group exhibitions in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. She attained to public recognition following the solo exhibition of her drawings at the Tel Aviv Museum in 1957 (curated by the Museum’s director, Eugen Kolb). The exhibition seeped into the depths of the art scene’s consciousness with its directness and its condensed expressiveness. At that time, and even for a decade after this, drawing was still perceived as a secondary means after painting, and had no visibility in the public mind as an independent artistic discipline. Aviva Uri’s solo exhibition, in which drawing was presented naked and unembellished, was quite a daring innovation. Raffi Lavie has said, more than once, that this exhibition of Aviva Uri had had a constitutive influence on his work.
In 1959, Uri was chosen by Eugen Kolb to represent Israel at the First Biennial of Young Artists in Paris. Years later, she established her position as an esteemed artist on the local scene with a solo exhibition at The Israel Museum, Jerusalem (1971, curator: Yona Fischer), which was followed, several years afterwards, by a solo exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum (1977, curator: Sarah Breitberg). In 1984 she attained to the beginnings of international recognition, with a solo exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (curators: Ed Paterson and Yona Fischer). Aviva Uri was not present at this exhibition—a day before the opening, her life-partner, the artist David Hendler, passed away, and Aviva Uri found it difficult to come to terms with the loss. In the last five years of her life, without Hendler, she created relatively large, expressive drawing works in color, which she described, in the context of the Lebanon War, in these words: “The line of these days is a line whose past is Auschwitz and Hiroshima, and whose future is missiles of destruction” (Aviva Uri, “The Line” [in Hebrew], in Doreet Levitté, Aviva Uri, 1986, p. 20).
Aviva Uri died on September 1, 1989. A retrospective exhibition of her oeuvre was held in 2002 at the Museum of Art, Ein Harod (curator: Galia Bar Or, in collaboration with Jean-François Chevrier). Aviva Uri has become engraved in our memory as a woman who realized her life as an artist, a gifted draftswoman whose work touched the roots of her existence and influenced an entire generation of artists. In the course of fifty years of creation she engaged only in drawing, uncompromisingly and without an iota of faking, and established her central place in the history and the language of Israeli art. She developed a distinctive language, both intuitive and analytical, of her own, with a line that responds to the inner rhythm of the psyche and breathes the spirit of the time.
Bar Or, Galia, and Jean-François Chevrier. Aviva Uri, Tel Aviv: 2002.
Levitté, Doreet. Aviva Uri, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: 1986.
Yampuler, Rachel. Rise, Awake, For Your Light Has Come, Tel Aviv: 2002
Yeshurun, Helit, ed. Yona Wollach – Aviva Uri: The Face Was an Abstraction: Tel Aviv, 2000.
Articles in Newspapers and Journals
Bar-Kadma, Emmanuel. “A Gift of Love.” Yediot Aharonot: Seven Days, February 6, 1987.
Bar-Kadma, Emmanuel. “Who’s This Young Woman Who Draws Like Picasso?” Yediot Aharonot, September 4, 1989.
Baruch, Adam. “Aviva Uri: It Wasn’t Bad.” Ha-ir, December 22, 1998.
Baruch, Adam. “A Sure Asset.” Yediot Aharonot: Seven Days, April 15, 1977.
Baruch, Adam. “It Wasn’t Bad.” Yediot Aharonot: Seven Days, September 8, 1990.
Barzel, Amnon. “Aviva Uri.” Haaretz, March 5, 1971.
Breitberg-Semmel, Sarah. “Aviva Uri.” Studio 137 (November 2002): 24–25.
Breitberg-Semmel, Sarah. “The Icarus Quality (The Mountain is the Wind).” Kav 6–7 (June 1984).
Direktor, Ruti. “Awake Light.” Ha-ir, January 2, 2003.
Fischer, Yona. “Aviva Uri.” La-Merhav, January 18, 1957.
Ginton, David. “Death, Destruction, Fall.” Tel Aviv, May 1988.
Givon, Noemi. “My Landscape is the World.” Haaretz Weekend Supplement, October 19, 1979.
Karpel, Dalia. “Requiem for a Bird.” Ha-ir, September 8, 1989.
Karpel, Dalia. “When a Mother Hates.” Ha-aretz Weekend Supplement, November 15, 2002.
Lavie, Raffi. “Aviva Uri.” Ha-ir, April 29, 1988.
LeVitté, Doreet. “Aviva Uri’s Viewing Stance.” Kav 6–7 (June 1984).
Manor, Dalia. “The Bird of Art and Its Forefathers”, Haaretz Literary Supplement, February 5, 2003.
Maor, Haim. “The Line That Got Burned”, Al ha-Mishmar: Hotam, September 8, 1989.
Ofrat, Gideon. “The Bird as a Metaphor.” Studio 6 (December 1989):18–19.
Ofrat, Gideon. “Drawing as a Mask.” Tziyur ve-Pisul 15 (1977): 10–17.
Omer, Mordechai. “‘The Great Mother’ in Aviva Uri.” Motar 4 (1996): 101–104.
Shefi, Smadar. “A Face Like a Mask”, Haaretz, January 17, 2003.
Shkolnik, Hila. “Who’s Hiding Behind the Mask.” Kolbo, December 20, 2002.
Tamir, Tali. “Probability Death.” Haaretz, September 8, 1989.
Tumarkin, Igael. “It’s OK to Get Angry.” Devar Ha-Shavu’a, September 8, 1989.
Uri, Aviva. “The Line.” Kav 6–7 (June 1984).
Zach, Natan. “Aviva Uri.” Davar: Massa, April 22, 1960.
Zalmona, Yigal. “Aviva Uri’s Drawings.” Ma’ariv, May 23, 1975.
Goldfine, Gil. “Energy in Black”, The Jerusalem Post, December 27, 2002.
How to cite this page
Bar-Or, Galia. "Uri, Aviva." Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. 1 March 2009. Jewish Women's Archive. (Viewed on October 25, 2014) <http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/uri-aviva>. |
Viewpoints: Health Law Problems Plague Calif., Too; Obamacare Redistribution Is From Lucky To Unlucky; FDA Crackdown On Genetic Testing
The Wall Street Journal: Californians Souring On ObamaCare
While politicians in Washington are hailing California's exchange as proof of the law's success, voters in California don't seem to agree—and it's not hard to understand why. Policies for about 900,000 Californians are being cancelled because they don't meet the law's benefit mandates. And about two-thirds of these individuals won't be eligible for subsidies on the exchange and will likely see their premiums rise. And while the California exchange may be less glitch-prone than the one set up by the feds, it's been nothing short of an embarrassment for a state that considers itself the tech capital of the world (Allysia Finley, 12/9).
The San Francisco Chronicle: Obamacare Prescription: Fair Share Of Less Care
Lately I've been hearing from readers who are among the million Californians who had private health care plans, received cancellation notices and now have to buy new coverage. Some figured that if they signed up with their old providers -- Blue Shield or Anthem -- they'd have access to the same doctors and hospitals. Not quite (Debra J. Saunders, 12/9).
The New Republic: Yes, Obamacare Is Redistribution—But Republicans Are Wrong About Who Pays
Republicans aren't wrong when they say Obamacare amounts to redistribution. But they seem to have a distorted view of how that redistribution works. ... one obvious takeaway is that the majority of funding in the law is money paid by—or given up by—either the wealthy or parts of the health care industry. It's higher taxes on families making more than $250,000 a year, or new fees for the device industry, or cuts for health insurers serving Medicare patients. ... But one thing to remember is that, fundamentally, health care reform has always been about a vulnerability that the poor and the middle class share. In the old days, before Obamacare, just about anybody could end up without health insurance, which meant just about anybody could end up ruined because of medical bills. The simplest way to describe Obamacare is as a transfer from the lucky to the unlucky. And when it comes to health, you don't have to be poor to be unlucky (Jonathan Cohn, 12/10).
Reuters: Healthcare.gov: Private Shame, Public Blame
Obamacare's troubled birth is cited as irrefutable evidence that the public sector is particularly ill-fitted to deal with something as important as healthcare. Had the process been left to the private sector, they argue, the website would have worked and Americans been better served. But hold on. Obamacare may be a government-run enterprise, but the profound errors in building the site were overwhelmingly due to the incompetence of the private sector (Nicholas Wapshott, 12/10).
Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer: State Changes Course On Medicaid. Good
It appears that Gov. Pat McCrory and some of his top managers are rethinking their plan to mend a "broken" Medicaid system. That's good, because the system that administers the health-insurance program for low-income residents isn't all that broken. Part of the Medicaid administration, the nonprofit Community Care of North Carolina, is widely considered one of the most successful in the country. Other states routinely send their health-and-human-services managers here to check it out and try to copy it. Community Care includes medical-provider networks that work to manage Medicaid patients' medical conditions and keep them healthier. Studies show that the system has saved hundreds of millions of dollars in the past few years (12/10).
The Atlanta Journal Constitution: Finally, Something Obamacare Actually Does
What's one thing Obamacare does? It gives people an awfully big incentive to cheat on their taxes. The subsidy cutoffs are the same in Georgia -- the subsidies are only for those earning less than four times the federal poverty level -- although the premiums and thus the potential savings for tax cheats are different. But the point remains: There's an awfully strong incentive for self-employed people, whose earnings aren't reported by others on a W2 form, to understate their income (Kyle Wingfield, 12/9).
Forbes: No, You Can't Keep Your Drugs Either Under Obamacare
The President famously promised that you could keep your health plan and doctor. For many people, both of those pledges are turning out to be false. And now, you might not be able to keep your medicine, either. There are two reasons why. The first has to do with the higher out of pocket costs patients will face. The second issue may be even more significant. Simply put, many drugs may not be covered at all, and the costs patients incur by buying them with cash won’t count against out of pocket caps (Scott Gottlieb, 12/9).
Health Policy Solutions (a Colo. news service): Repeal And Replace? What Would That Mean, Exactly?
Supporters of the ACA say that the opposition does not have an alternative plan. In fact, congressional opponents have offered alternatives, going all the way back to 2009. At least four pieces of legislation could be categorized as serious alternatives: Patient’s Choice Act of 2009, Empowering Patients First Act of 2009 and 2013 and, finally, American Health Care Reform Act of 2013. None of the bills was analyzed and scored by the Congressional Budget Office, however, so we do not have a long-term, non-partisan analysis of how much the proposals would cost, how much they would reduce or add to the deficit or how many uninsured Americans would be covered under them (Bob Semro, 12/10).
USA Today: Your DNA And Your First Amendment
Did you know that you cannot be trusted with knowledge of your own genetic background? That's what the Food and Drug Administration decreed late last month when it ordered 23andMe to stop marketing its "Personal Genome Service." ... The FDA does not claim that 23andMe is a scam or could cause direct injury. Instead, its concern is that people using the genome service "may begin to self-manage their treatments." Essentially, the agency wants to "protect" patients from knowing about their own health (David Rivkin Jr. and Andrew Grossman, 12/9). |
It’s true that 90 percent of women have cellulite, but that doesn’t mean we are supposed to have cellulite. Does it?
Today I’m excited to share a guest post with you from Melissa, The Cellulite Analyst. We’d both love to hear your comments after reading…
It started innocently enough. My brother, an organic farmer in Western Pennsylvania, gave me a copy of Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions for my birthday one year. Silly me, I thought it was a cookbook. I used it to make chicken soup. I referenced a recipe for meatloaf. It sat there on the shelf between Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything and a book about baking bread I picked up at Barnes and Noble.
Years passed. Another birthday approached. This time, I turned thirty. I won’t go into detail about the dramatic fitting room incident that preceded my thirtieth birthday, but suffice it to say, I soon developed a passion for ridding my body of cellulite. The conventional wisdom on the subject didn’t sit well with me.
Upon further research, I came across an alternative viewpoint. In this theory, cellulite isn’t harmless and genetic –it’s a sign of impaired lymphatic flow. The lymphatic system is the “sewage disposal system” for our cells. Blood delivers nutrients to our cells while lymph carries away the metabolic waste. The lymphatic system is often referred to as the secondary circulatory system, even though the human body contains over twice as much lymph as it does blood (six to ten liters!).
With this understanding of cellulite, Real Food becomes a critical aspect of an effective cellulite treatment plan because any food that is not digested properly can cause congestion in the lymphatic fluid. Trans fats, food additives, anything your body interprets as a waste product can contribute to impaired lymphatic flow.
Moreover, the dense nutrients found in traditional foods lead to healthy cell metabolism and improved circulation, two essential aspects of cellulite recovery. For example, the antioxidants in raw honey work to rid the body of free radicals in the bloodstream. Grass-fed beef, raw dairy and quality pastured butter contain high amounts of conjugated linoleic acid, the active ingredient in many anti-cellulite products.
Most cellulite treatments provide only temporary results because they never address the cause of the problem. Treating cellulite involves caring for our lymphatic system and this must begin with a switch to nutrient-dense Real Food.
Cellulite isn’t an inevitable part of the aging process –it’s a “disease of civilization,” as Weston Price might have put it. Once I realized the significance of Dr. Price’s work, I read Nourishing Traditions the way it’s meant to be read: cover-to-cover. My poor legs are so glad I did.
Melissa continues to unravel the modern cellulite mystery at www.CelluliteInvestigation.com. Check out her site for more info on how to care for your lymphatic system and how to treat cellulite with Real Food. (Just don’t expect any advice on dieting and exercise. We’re curing cellulite the old fashioned way here –with butter and dry skin brushing and hot soaks in the tub!) |
Shaped like a worry stone, this low-tech scissors sharpener features a ceramic whetstone piece set in plastic. The tiny tool (about the size of a poker chip) is designed specifically for the user to sharpen the two blades simultaneously, a process that’s safe and controlled due to its design. The textured tab is to be held between thumb and forefinger. Mounted inside is a small ceramic rod that serves as the whetstone. One blade is inserted below the rod and the other above. As you draw both blades through, the open scissors close themselves. The previously reviewed Jiff V Sharpener might be the best all-around inexpensive sharpener for the home — it can handle knives and the blade is replaceable — but it’s still too big to keep in crowded or small spaces. The SewSharp is perfect for an office desk or sewing kit. It also costs half as much as the Jiff V, so you can buy multiples to stash in crafts kits, tool drawers, and scrapbooking boxes. The life of the ceramic rod is not indefinite, so I’d recommend buying more than one anyway.
A cool tool is anything useful that is superior to comparable items. If you think this tool is inferior suggest a better one. You are welcome to insult a tool, but comments containing insults to individual people will be deleted. Corrections of fact are always welcomed, if stated politely. Recommendations of better tools are dearly wanted and may be elevated to the front page. |
Maersk Line, the world’s largest shipping line, today received the new MAERSK MC-KINNEY MOLLER, the world’s largest containership and the first in a series of twenty 18,270 teu jumbos. Built by South Korea’s DSME shipyard, the giant vessel class has been designated as Triple-E by Maersk Line, to stress the design’s focus on energy efficiency, ecomonies of scale and environmental friendliness.
The new ship is not only the largest container ship in the world, beating the former record holder by 2,250 teu, but also one of the most unique container ships around.
Maersk Line’s triple-E class vessels feature a fully redundant twin-engine, twin-propeller and twin-rudder propulsion system. Two MAN B&W 8S80ME-C 9.2 engines with an MCR of 29,680 kW will drive the ships at a moderate service speed of 22 knots. Two exhaust gas economizers have also been installed.
Five generator sets will provide 19,200 kW of electric power. In addition, two 3,000 kW shaft generators can convert main engine propulsion power into electricity, when the ship is steaming at sea. Using 10 – 11 kW per reefer container as a rule-of-thumb, the MAERSK MC-KINNEY MOLLER would be able to supply up to 1,800 temperature-controlled containers with electricity. Even though the new jumbo vessels are not particularly reefer-oriented, their sheer size could thus make then the world’s second-highest-capacity reefer container ships after Hamburg Süd’s CAP SAN NICOLAS series with 2,100 plugs.
The 399.00 m long and 59.00 m (23 rows) wide EEE-ships are only two metres longer and one row wider than Maersk Line’s Odense-built 15,500 teu EMMA-Maersk class. Apart from the increased beam, their intake advantage comes from a bulkier hull form, which is more U-shaped than V-shaped, and from the twin-island design which not only reduces the amount of space taken up by the propeller shaft, but also allows more layers of containers to be stacked without impairing visibility from the bridge. The lower sailing speeds needed in today’s eco-steaming environment allowed Maersk Line to opt for the bulkier hull shape.
At only 59,000 kW, compared to the EMMA-type’s 80,000 kW (close to 100,000 kW when electric boosters are operational), the triple-E also needs much less space for engine rooms and bunker tanks.
The lead ship of Maersk Line’s new vessel class is named after Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller, the son of Arnold Peter Moller who founded the A.P. Moller-Maersk Group in 1904. Mister Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller held the position of chairman of the Group until 2003, when he stepped down after 63 years with the company. He passed in 2012 at the age of 98.
The ship was christened two weeks ago at the DSME yard by Mrs Ane Maersk Mc-Kinney Uggla, the youngest daughter of Emma and Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller,
After an off-schedule trip to Vostochny, Russia, for bunkering, the MAERSK MC-KINNEY MOLLER will phase into the AE10 Asia-Europe-Baltic loop of Maersk Line in mid-July. She is to replace the 9,661 teu BUTTERFLY, which itself is a temporary replacement ship for the damaged EMMA MAERSK.
The AE10 normally employs a fleet of eight 15,500 teu EMMA-classes and four 13.000 teu neo-panamax ships. Following an engine room flooding of EMMA MAERSK in February, the ship is presently out of service.
Originally, Maersk Line had planned to have the MAERSK MC-KINNEY MOLLER replace the 13,092 teu MAERSK EUBANK. The carrier however changed its plans and deferred the newbuilding’s phase-in by two weeks.
On the whole Maersk Line is believed to plan to phase the first four of its triple-E classes into the AE10, where they will successively replace 13,000 teu units. In 2014, the Danish carrier might then restructure its network to create a dedicated EEE-Asia to Europe service with ten identical ships.
Details of the shipping line’s future Asia-Europe network are still sketchy though: Two weeks ago, Maersk Line, MSC and CMA CGM announced the launch of the new P3 alliance. This new partnership of the word’s top-three carrier is bound to lead to service mergers and loop consolidation and the exact structure of the carriers’ joint network has yet to be determined… |
dial/hangup/sms commandline (was: vt with fullscreen keyboard)
openmoko at paul.sladen.org
Fri Mar 27 18:16:57 CET 2009
On Fri, 27 Mar 2009, Michael 'Mickey' Lauer wrote:
> On Friday 27 March 2009 14:34:31 Werner Almesberger wrote:
> > Hang up with ^C, background and do something else with ^Z, etc. :-)
> I'm still waiting for someone writing an ncurses dialer.
I was discussing something similar to do for a semi-serious 1 April 2009
release (eg. "Debian phone edition(tm)"), but I don't think it's going to
get done. For those actively interested, the idea was:
$ dial sladen
Connected to paul.sladen.pstn
Press '^C' to hang up.
+ Stopped dial sladen
You have new mail in /var/mail/mobile
+ dial sladen
Mail version 8.1.2 01/15/2001. Type ? for help.
"/var/mail/mobile": 107 messages 1 new 14 unread
U107 123456789 at pstn Fri Mar 27 18:52 1/18 Phil Yo, @8pm? l8trz
$ sms -s 'r. 20h at KX stn s-q-l8tors' phil at pstn
Fri Mar 27 19:15:16 EET 2009
This, combined with a full-size overlaid semi-transparent landscape keyboard
solves the average geek use-case far better than anything else presented.
An incoming call writing to your terminal like 'talk'/'wall' do and you type
'hangup' to answer.
'sms' is just a link to '/usr/bin/mail'. All the interesting stuff is done
by writting a couple of tiny programs that do roughly 'ATD' and 'ATH' and
little else and by hacking 'nsswitch.conf' and providing an alternative
'/usr/bin/sendmail' that knows about '.pstn'. Battery values are there for
anyone who types 'acpi'.
A l33t geek can symlink dial/hangup/sms to even shorter 'd', 'h' and 's'.
Three-way conferencing is as simple as 'bg' and a second 'dial'. The Unix
analogy being mapped (or used directly) where-ever possible.
Simple, mostly stateless and mostly uncrashable.
Why do one side of a triangle when you can do all three. Somewhere, GB.
More information about the devel |
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CVS commit: src/sys/rump/net/lib/libshmif
Module Name: src
Committed By: pooka
Date: Sun Mar 1 20:50:04 UTC 2009
Create receive thread only in if_start() to make sure it happens
after the we have been attached to the ethernet framework.
XXX: if_stop is still unimplemented
To generate a diff of this commit:
cvs rdiff -u -r1.3 -r1.4 src/sys/rump/net/lib/libshmif/if_shmem.c
Please note that diffs are not public domain; they are subject to the
copyright notices on the relevant files.
Main Index |
Thread Index | |
You know the saying: You can't keep a good berzerking minotaur down. And in the multiverse of Pantheon
, you won't have to.
In a Pantheon dev blog posted today
, the team introduced the Taurokians, giant, fearsome minotaurs plucked from their home planet and put on Terminus to survive: "Their martial prowess originated from their culture that was steeped in brutal warfare and ritualistic dark arts. They learned to master the secrets of steel and iron, forging some of the finest armor and weapons ever wielded on Terminus."
While they did fine for a while, their small numbers coupled with a battle gone sour resulted in the Taurokians' extermination. But magic being what it is, the minotaurs came back as hulking undead skeletons looking for more fights. |
M Padrós - C Riart
Ona is a lineal wooden coat rack which is the result of a marrying an undulation and a sloping plane. Its almost sculptural ornamental value, professional renown and commercial success have made it an emblematic object in Spanish design history.
Delta d’Or AdiFad 1992 - Gran Prix de la Critique du Meuble Contemporain 1994 - Col·lecció permanent del Museu del Disseny de Barcelona 1994 - Design Collection of The Museum of Modern Art (Moma) New York.
C Riart - M Padrós
Carles Riart, Barcelona 1944.
Furniture and interior designer. His work, for which he has achieved profesional reown and won many prestigious awards, can be framed within a neo-traditionalism that does not renounce avant-garde values but aims strengthen the sensuality and the imagination as a counterweight to the excesses of rationalist austerity. Riart allows himself to be seduced by “the personalized relation between space, the objects that occupy it and the humans that inhabit it”.
Montse Padrós, Badalona 1952.
Interior and industrial designer trained at Elisava and at the Barcelona School of Arts and Trades. She sees design as an exercise in observation and intuitive reflection that allows the formal and functional conjugation and arrangement of product requirements, so that the form/function relationship becomes evident. She won the Adifad Gold Delta Award in 1992 for the Ona coat rack, design together with Carles Riart.
Pan European Forest Council (PEFC 10.34.142) |
Separation between couples is often a misunderstood area, due to the lack of legal guidelines and the ease with which it can be carried out, especially in the UK. It is fraught with many pitfalls, if certain clear objectives are not laid down or ultimately met.
The most basic rule of any separation is to give the couple space and time in their relationship to decide on future action, particularly in saving the marriage etc., without undue influence from each other. However, in most cases, separation inevitably leads to divorce because that main objective was ignored or not acted upon.
Furthermore, once separated, some people are apt to see it as a new freedom and opportunity for them to start new liaisons/affairs with other parties, which then complicate the situation and make finding a solution to the marital problems much harder. This is then likely to change the whole nature of the separation into a more final phase before the actual divorce, as very few struggling relationships recover from this added pressure.
The rules of separation should involve six key ones:
First, the break should have a specific time attached to it, so that it does not just drag on without any conclusion. The time should ideally be between three and six months so that a sense of urgency and sincerity is retained, especially where children are involved. The longer the separation continues, as people settle into their new routine, the harder it is to get back to the old life, which makes the time allowed for a conclusion very important. Any separation that drags on will gradually turn into two new and separate lifestyles. So three months is the ideal maximum for a conclusion of some sort.
Second, separation does not have to be agreed to by both parties. One party can suggest it, with a main reason for that break, but he/she should also be the one to leave the household. This is usually a fraught and anxious time for the party who might not favour a separation, hence why there should be no ambiguities about it and the actual separation should be brisk. Most important, there should be clear agreement about the care and welfare of any children involved during this period.
Third, there should be encouragement of communication between the parties, with regular times to meet - either with or without a counsellor - so that progress can be made towards reconciliation. This is usually the worst time as parties are likely to blame each other and recount past behaviour rather than finding solutions to steer a better course together. There is usually very little listening as couples jostle for position and emphasise their 'victim' perspectives. However, separation can be a useful time to step back from what has gone before and try to understand the other party and their concerns without duress. If that person is doing the same too, a better understanding of the underlying problems and how they can be sorted is likely to be reached with much less acrimony.
Fourth, there should be clear agreement about what happens to the finances during this period, with equal sharing of resources and children adequately taken care of. Running two households, or living on one's own, is likely to be more expensive than sharing with another. This item needs crucial agreement before the separation takes place so that the person left with the children, in particular, does not bear the brunt of any financial burden that might ensue.
Fifth, how the parties physically treat each other at this time, especially in an intimate way, is also important. Again, it should be a clear agreement as to the amount of intimacy between the couple during the separation. It is perhaps better not to engage in sexual interaction while separated mainly because it tends to cloud the issues and do not move the decision along briskly enough, especially if one person is still getting what they want without having to sort out any issues. By keeping the separation period at a more platonic level, solutions can be reached much quicker and a proper relationship resume when all parties are happy with the outcome.
Sixth, a separation is likely to be more successful in its objectives if it is regarded as such: a clear break from the usual home routine to give the parties time to sort out intractable differences and key problems between them. Once it is treated as a continuation of the relationship, or as a time for both parties to act like single people, not much can be achieved from that. There will simply be more of the same behaviour without any conclusion, and divorce is then likely to follow.
©Elaine Sihera (Ms CYPRAH) 2012
Emotional Health and People Management Consultant
"Happiness is a state of being. We are the ones who decide whether we wish to be happy or not, by the script we use inside our heads." |
WebClient.OpenReadAsync Method (Uri)
Assembly: System (in system.dll)
This method retrieves a Stream instance used to access the resource specified by the address parameter. The stream is obtained using thread resources that are automatically allocated from the thread pool. To receive notification when the stream is available, add an event handler to the OpenReadCompleted event.
You must call Stream.Close when you are finished with the Stream to avoid running out of system resources.
This method does not block the calling thread while the stream is opening. To block while waiting for the stream, use the OpenRead method.
Asynchronous operations that have not completed can be canceled using the CancelAsync method.
If the BaseAddress property is not an empty string ("") and address does not specify an absolute URI, address must be a relative URI that is combined with BaseAddress to form the absolute URI of the requested resource. If the QueryString property is not a null reference (Nothing in Visual Basic), it is appended to address.
This method uses the RETR command to download an FTP resource. For an HTTP resource, the GET method is used.
This member outputs trace information when you enable network tracing in your application. For more information, see Network Tracing.
Windows 98, Windows 2000 SP4, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Windows XP SP2, Windows XP Starter Edition
The .NET Framework does not support all versions of every platform. For a list of the supported versions, see System Requirements. |
As recently as last January, Barack Obama reiterated his love of the Reagan zombie, when Time described a dinner Obama shared with a group of presidential historians: “And yet Obama was clearly impressed by the way Reagan had transformed Americans’ attitude about government.” If Obama really wants to emulate Reagan, I have a suggestion for how he could copy Reagan’s pioneering moves when Reagan appointed individuals with attitudes diametrically opposed to the mission of their agency and in line with Reagan’s radically conservative agenda. With Robert Gates’ impending departure there is soon to be an opening for Secretary of Defense. With some bandying Leon Panetta’s name for SecDef, that leaves a potential opening for DCI. I have Reaganesque suggestions for Obama: appoint Dennis Kucinich,who has been a big advocate for a Department of Peace, as Secretary of Defense and Daniel Ellsberg, who released the Pentagon Papers, as Director of Central Intelligence.
Perhaps the best-remembered of Reagan’s appointees who were put into positions where they could do significant harm to programs Reagan hated was James G. Watt, Reagan’s first Secretary of the Interior. In an article written near the end of Watt’s rocky tenure, Time noted that Watt was an early advocate for drilling in the Gulf and other near-shore areas:
Even if Watt should defy the odds—and the Senate—and hold on, his ability to put his policies into effect seems at an end. Two weeks ago, for example, Senate-House conferees approved a bill to ban underwater oil drilling on key areas of the continental shelf that Watt wants to open for leasing.
Of course, Watt shared the blatant racism that was a part of Reagan (who kicked off his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi with a reference to “states’ rights”), and the Time article describes the utterance that cost Watt his job, along with his moves to open sensitive lands to commercial exploitation:
Ever since his flippant remark three weeks ago about the presence of “a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple” (see ESSAY) on his coal-leasing commission, Watt’s chances of staying in office have ebbed almost daily. The Secretary long ago alienated the left and center with his policy of opening vast tracts of Government-owned land to commercial exploitation. Now the Republican right fears that he will be a 1984 campaign liability to G.O.P candidates.
Well, actually Time cut the quote short. It is even more disgusting when we see a longer version:
“I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have talent.”
Why not take that Reagan spirit that Obama so longs to capture and put it to good work for a liberal cause? If Obama really shares “virtually no priorities” with Reagan as the January Time article claims, he could honor Reagan by appointing a Secretary of Defense whose chief desire would be to transform the former “War Department” into a Department of Peace:
Congressman Kucinich is a strong advocate for peace, in the individual and social spheres, and in national and foreign policy. He believes that our government must develop a new broad-based approach to peaceful, non-violent conflict resolution, both domestically and abroad. He supports a government that will hold non-violence as an organizing principle in our society, and help to create the conditions for a more peaceful world.
If James Watt was able transform the Department of the Interior from a conservation operation into one that openly auctions off resources, shouldn’t Obama bring balance to the world by nominating Dennis Kucinich to introduce the concept of nonviolent conflict resolution to the Defense Department?
In a similar vein, why not nominate Daniel Ellsberg, who famously released the Pentagon Papers which are widely credited with helping to turn sentiment against the war in Vietnam, to run the Central Intelligence Agency? Even now, only about a week away from turning 80, Ellsberg’s work on behalf of Bradley Manning continues his advocacy for release of classified information when it serves to document war crimes or other atrocities.
Of course, Obama would never make these nominations. The chief reason that he wouldn’t do so is that Time has it entirely wrong when they state that Obama shares “virtually no priorities” with Reagan. As far as I can see, Obama’s priorities are identical to Reagan’s with the blatant racism stripped away. You can bet that Obama will appoint a SecDef who shares Obama’s love of war and any new DCI will share Obama’s radical position on prosecution of whistle-blowers, two positions indistinguishable from those of Reagan. |
There are, so we are told, two kinds of medicine. One is called ‘Western medicine’. We all know what that means. It’s modern, scientific, clean, founded on endlessly, expensively tested evidence. It’s the ‘truth’, medically speaking. And this is dispensed to us — the grateful patients — by them, the doctors, who are also modern, scientific, clean, and have been endlessly, expensively tested in medical school.
Then there is the other sort: ‘fringe’ medicine, sometimes more politely referred to as ‘alternative’ medicine — smacking of unwashed hippies with unscientific beliefs in flower-power and Eastern mystics. Occasionally it is more respectfully known as ‘natural’ medicine. But that just reminds the unbeliever of those same hippies — a little older and mellower, running overpriced craft shops and drinking herb tea.
Despite the images, there is a growing dissatisfaction with drug-based Western medicine and a curiosity about other options; though not much information —and a good deal of misinformation.
Dr Peter Mansfield, a general practitioner with a particular interest in changing patterns of health care, dispelled one myth for me. Modern medicine, far from being long and hardily established, he explained, is a very recent specimen.
Pharmaceutical companies began massively funding medical research and training around the 1940s. Only then did medicine come to mean drugs to sledgehammer isolated symptoms. ‘Before the Second World War’, says Dr Mansfield, ‘health in Britain was maintained through methods like herbalism and hydrotherapy. Some very respectable medical books of that era would look "radical" today.’
So alternative medicine was not just a scrappy patchwork of old wives’ tales and witches’ spells. It was part of normal, widespread medical practice until as recently as a generation ago. And in the Third World, it is still normal practice throughout the social spectrum — and not, as often imagined, only used by villagers too ignorant or poor to afford the ‘better’ alternative of Western medicine.
In China, for instance, the same doctors who use advanced Western technology in urban hospitals also use herbalism and acupuncture. Beside sparkling sterilised metal instruments stand chests of drawers that open to reveal layer upon layer of leaves. And China’s famous ‘barefoot’ doctors — the paramedics we imagine carrying around a rucksack of Western drugs and dressings — are just as adept at traditional remedies.
In Sri Lanka and India too, Western medicine and Ayurveda, the traditional medical system, are found side by side. In fact there are some 140,000 ‘Western’ doctors, and 160,000 registered Ayurvedic practitioners in India. Ashvin Barot, who lectures on Ayurveda to doctors in the West, told me that in India Ayurvedic hospitals are held in the same esteem as modern hospitals, funded similarly by government, and the staff of both are held in the same regard.
But many people in the West have never even heard of Ayurveda. ‘Ayur’ means
‘life’, and ‘veda’ means ‘science/knowledge’. So Ayurveda — ‘the science of life’ — is far more than a technology. Ayurveda is a complex system that deals with the whole individual in active inter-reaction to that individual’s unique emotional, physical and even spiritual environment. So ten patients coming to an ayurvedic practitioner with ten superficially similar headaches might well leave with ten different remedies — or suggestions as to how they might adjust their relationships or lifestyles. They certainly wouldn’t be palmed off with a mass headache-cure, aspirin across the board.
Ashvin Barot maintains that the wisdom that flowed south from the Himalayan hills over 3,000 years ago and crystallised into Avurvedic medicine among the Hindu and Buddhist populations of India and Sri Lanka also flowed east into China to become the basis of acupuncture and Chinese herbalism, and west into Greece. There it was picked up by Arabic scholars, who developed Unani medicine, the Moslem version of Ayurveda, now widely practised in Pakistan. Actually, the origin of the term Unani is ‘lonian’ — meaning ‘from Greece’. And Greek medicine is, of course, the fountainhead of Western medicine.
‘In the British Museum now there are examples of ancient Indian surgical instruments which look just like modern Western instruments,’ says Ashvin Barot, ‘and descriptions of diseases we think of as modern — like cancer, for instance — are found written in Sanskrit texts three thousand years old.’
Like Ashvin Barot, the World Health Organisation is eager to amalgamate Western technology and traditional wisdom to create a powerful, widely accessible and scientifically proven system. And the idea that traditional systems are unscientific mumbo-jumbo does seem to be breaking down. Research centres across the world are uncovering scientific bases for remedies that have been used for hundreds, or even thousands, of years.
Dr Xavier Lozoya, director of a biomedical research unit in Mexico, has found, for instance, that Western methods of distributing drugs through the bloodstream may be the equivalent of breaking a nut with a sledge-hammer. A little of the effective substance absorbed through the skin near the site of the ailment ‘can achieve a therapeutic effect with much smaller quantities of a given drug.’
‘In the light of these studies,’ says Dr Lozoya; ‘application of poultices, massage with plant-based liniments and essential oils are taking on a new dimension in the medicine of the future.’
Other scientists have been trying to understand the secrets of acupuncture. But the Chinese system, claimed variously to be between 2,000 and 5,000 years old, has yet to yield more than a few intriguing clues. In the mid-70s it was discovered that the body manufactures pain-killing substances (like a natural form of morphine or heroin) known as endorphins. Experiments show that endorphin production goes up when the body is given a weak electrical stimulus — which approximates to the stimulation given by an acupuncture needle.
Finding the scientific basis for ancient remedies is reassuring. But it also carries the danger that disjointed bits of knowledge will be extracted from a complex philosophy and used out of context. The needle, or herb, can’t be left to do all the work. Patients accustomed to passively letting a drug lay waste a symptom without their help may forget the first and most important principle of natural medicine: the patient must participate in the recovery, making active choices about his or her lifestyle in order to achieve a state of wellbeing.
But busy doctors in the West with waiting rooms packed with patients don’t have time to know’ their patients as individuals. Like mechanics on an assembly line fixing faulty car parts, they fix the part showing signs of distress and move on rapidly to the next.
Perhaps things would change if doctors were paid the way Chinese doctors used to be — to keep the patient well. If a patient fell ill, the payments stopped and the doctor had to fork out for medicine out of his own pocket. Prevention rather than cure is emphasised. And how could it be otherwise, when it is your whole way of life — your thoughts, feelings, relationships, spiritual clarity, as well as your diet, work and sleeping habits — that must be balanced and in harmony? Health becomes a long-term affair as long and broad as your whole life.
This first appeared in our award-winning magazine - to read more, subscribe from just £7 |
By Frank Gardner
BBC security correspondent
British counter-terrorism and intelligence officials are now working on the assumption that all three failed bomb attacks in the UK have some connection to al-Qaeda - at the very least in motivation and ideology, if not in organisation.
Recently-intercepted conversations, known as "chatter", had already alerted them that jihadists were hoping to attack Britain, most probably in a place where many people congregate.
Police have taken the burned-out Jeep away for examination
But government officials in Whitehall insist there was no "predictive intelligence" prior to the attacks.
They say they were aware of the general background of threats - that's why the UK was at threat level "severe" - but that if they had had any knowledge that Glasgow Airport or London's West End were going to be specifically targeted then protective measures would have been put in place.
The apparent adoption of multiple car bombs as a weapon would mark a new and grisly milestone for al-Qaeda in the UK, but the idea is far from novel.
A van packed with explosives was used in the first attempt to bring down the World Trade Center in New York in 1993.
A plan to load limousines with gas cylinders and detonate them beneath London buildings was discussed by Dhiren Barot and other al-Qaeda associates in 2004.
And in recent years car bombs have become an almost daily occurrence in the mainly Shia areas of Baghdad.
Certainly, the idea of cramming vehicles with fuel and gas canisters is a tactic that has become quite common in areas of Baghdad, particularly in places like Sadr City.
The dreadful pictures we see are nearly always the aftermath of either a suicide bomber who has gone in with an explosive vest, or of a car packed with explosives or simple gas canisters. The problem is that the latter materials are relatively easy to obtain.
So this does mark a change of tactic here in the UK, partly due to the method of operation and partly due to the apparent recruitment of a small cell of individuals of Middle Eastern - rather than South Asian - origin.
UK investigators have been widening their investigation in two principal directions.
They are trying to find and arrest all those connected to the failed bombings.
And they are calling in every resource, both in the UK and overseas, to establish who, if anyone, masterminded the attacks, and what other atrocities they might have planned.
What the police and the security services will try to establish is how long the bombers have been in this country; whether they were resident or moved here quite some time ago; or whether they came in as a sort of hit team.
In recent years a prime focus for the authorities has been to counter the domestic threat from jihadists who go from the UK to Pakistan for training in terrorist camps, such as some of the 7 July Tube bombers.
But that is not to say the authorities have concentrated purely on the domestic threat.
The police and intelligence agencies are thought to be trying to monitor 30 current plots, 200 suspected terrorist cells and close to 2,000 known suspects.
That is a lot of people and virtually all of those have got some kind of international connection.
Back in 2000 there were arrests in Britain before there were any Western boots on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan; there were arrests of North Africans in Leicester connected to al-Qaeda.
In a way we have come full circle, but this is the first time that al-Qaeda appears to have gone so far down the route of actually planting car bombs in Britain.
In the short term the biggest priority is the man-hunt - catching anybody else in the active cell involved in this particular plot.
As soon as they think they have got those people - and it is probably a limited number - we can expect the official threat level to be reduced from "critical" to "severe" and some of the extra security measures to be relaxed.
This does not mean that the terror threat to Britain will have evaporated. It is more a case of being unable to sustain such a high level of vigilance and manpower indefinitely. |
Caution urged in advance of Hurricane Sandy
PREPARING: FEMA offers advice for getting ready for a major storm.
Spotsylvania County issued the following release this morning in advance of the storm:
Spotsylvania – Spotsylvania citizens are urged to closely monitor weather reports this weekend and take steps to prepare for the possible impact of Hurricane Sandy on our area, which may bring heavy downpours and winds, and widespread power outages, especially during the time period from Sunday through Tuesday.
Families should have an emergency kit and family communication plan ready. Clear clogged gutters and downspouts, and store or secure loose lightweight outdoor items. Have flashlights, batteries and bottled water on hand in case power is lost and/or you need to shelter in place. It is advisable to have
several days’ worth of water and canned available, in preparation for any possible emergency.
The community is invited to join thousands of others who have done so and sign up NOW for SpotsyAlert through the County’s website at www.spotsylvania.va.us. On the homepage, under the
“For Your Information” column, click on “SpotsyAlert.com – Emergency Info.” Valuable online tips on what to do before, during and after a hurricane are available from Homeland
Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) at http://www.ready.gov/hurricanes.
Timely online Hurricane Sandy updates are available from the National Weather Service’s National
Hurricane Center at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ . |
Saint Xavier University faculty members and students marched in the 2013 Chicago Nowruz Parade on March 30 in downtown Chicago. Check out this Facebook gallery of photos from the parade.
The parade celebrates Nowruz, the first day of spring and the beginning of the Persian New Year, and promotes cultural education and awareness. Nowruz is a cultural tradition of Persian origin celebrated across countries, religions and cultures by more than three hundred million people. The festival is rooted in the traditions of the Zoroastrian religion and honors the rebirth of nature.
For more information, please contact Prof. Reza Varjavand at (773) 298-3626 or firstname.lastname@example.org. |
The rapid development in communications technology has been accompanied by a similarly swift increase in security threats, cybercrime, and the introduction of correlated security regulations.
According to next generation communications
experts at Alcatel-Lucent (News
), security must become a positive enabler for driving business performance. To achieve this objective enterprises must have a corporate-wide strategy, or a “security blueprint,” that allows the enterprise to be open for business and provides a trusted environment.
A recent whitepaper
outlined five primary ways the ubiquity of the Internet can be leveraged to conduct day-to-day business:
• Business-to-business applications that foster greater cooperation with partners and suppliers
• The adoption of IP Telephony with voice over IP and the movement to all IP networks
• The widespread adoption of mobile communications services and applications allows mobile employees to stay connected with the corporate network and colleagues when they are on the move.
• Web 2.0, which allows information to be sourced from many locations and displayed as composite parts of new applications, is changing the way enterprises use the Internet for business interactions with employees, customers, partners, and suppliers.
• Cloud computing is on the horizon with the promise to reduce costs by creating virtual computing “clouds” in cyberspace.
At the same time, Alcatel-Lucent officials said, enterprises are challenged to deal with a technology-driven increase in security threats and the growth of cybercrime, which include:
• Automating business processes with partners can expose an enterprise to significant potential for information security breaches and malicious activity conducted from outside the enterprise.
• The adoption of VoIP has made voice a new network security risk and is exposing enterprises to potential breeches to the traditional security perimeter, denial of service attacks.
• Mobile communications services and applications are opening the door to new mobile malware risks and the potential for private corporate data to be lost or stolen when stored on mobile devices.
• New business models enabled by Web 2.0 and cloud computing are creating more challenges by externalizing business processes and moving them to cyberspace where there is less control of private data.
In 2009, industry experts presented to the U.S. Senate committee hearing on improving cyber security estimated profits from the cybercrime economy totaled close to $1 trillion U.S., more than the cash generated by drug crime, according the whitepaper. This was reinforced in a report by Symantec (News
) in April 2009 that noted there was a 265 percent increase in malicious code threats in 2008 compared to 2007.
Given this climate, a so-called “dynamic enterprise
” – a term that describes a successful, profitable company that is constantly evolving to quickly adapt to its market environment and differentiate itself from its competitors – must simplify communications, strengthen relationships and increase productivity in a “continuous transformation process,” according to the Alcatel-Lucent whitepaper. This ongoing process must efficiently and securely interlock four critical business functions and assets:
• Network – the foundation for the enterprise communications infrastructure
• People – employees, contractors, partners and suppliers
• Processes – the tasks carried out by employees
• Knowledge – in the organization, which is typically in people’s heads or scattered across multiple databases
By securely interconnecting these four components, the dynamic enterprise can quickly adapt to new market environments and differentiate itself from competitors, Alcatel-Lucent officials said.
Erin Harrison is a Senior Editor with TMC. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Erin Harrison |
If someone writes an article about the Top Five Reasons to Love Australia then it should have been obvious that we here in New Zealand would fire back with the Top Five Reasons to Love New Zealand!
The team here at Nomads Queenstown (who are from all over the place – all over New Zealand, The Netherlands, Wales and the US) as well as a few backpackers who wandered past when we were compiling our Top Five list got a little carried away and we came up with The Top Ten Reasons to Love New Zealand.
Reason to Love New Zealand Number 1: Flight of the Conchords.
New Zealand's fourth most popular digi-folk paradists, how could you not love a country that produces entertainment like this? They even have a grammy. With tracks like “Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros” and “Business Time” plus a hit TV show, well, what's not to like...
Reason to Love New Zealand Number 2: The People.
Kiwi's are renowned for being a friendly and inviting bunch. Maybe it's because we travel so much (when you live in such a tiny country you have no choice but to get out and see the world!) that we know the value and importance of being hospitable – if you look lost, chances are high that you'll be swamped with locals happy to help you out. Want a recommendation on anything? Stop someone on the street who'll be happy to have a yarn and give you some advice. We're also home to the All Blacks and Peter Jackson. Good stuff.
Reason to Love New Zealand Number 3: The Scenery.
Home to Milford Sound, which was last year named by TripAdvisor as the number 1 destination in the world, the scenery in New Zealand is spectacular. From the Southern Alps, to the rugged West Coast, to the lakes, to the beaches, to the fjords, the glaciers, the geysers and the green, green, green everything... there's something here for everyone. Really, I mean, the Lord of the Rings trilogy was filmed here, and how good was the scenery in that?! Random rumour: Jack Johnson and Ben Harper are apparently so enamoured with New Zealand that they have holiday homes in Raglan, epic surf beach and generally beautiful place.
Reason to Love New Zealand Number 4: The Wildlife, Flora and Fauna.
We have the Kiwi. Not only are they are national bird, they are unique and really quite cute! Aside from the Kiwi, New Zealand is full of crazy birdlife (Kea anyone? These crafty birds are rated as one of the most intelligent in the world and their naturally inquisitive nature often cause them to gather around novel objects making them pretty dang hilarious as well) and stunning flora and fauna only add to the awesome scenery here.
Reason to Love New Zealand Number 5: The Wine.
We make awesome wine here, all over the country. Award winning Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir and more, there's vineyards everywhere which make for fantastic day trips and great drinking!
Reason to Love New Zealand Number 6: The Language.
Yeah yeah, I know we speak English here, but what I'm getting at is the accent and all our crazy New Zealand slang, it's awesome! The BBC did a survey and the Kiwi accent has been rated the most attractive and prestigious form of English outside of the UK, even above the Queen's English, choice bro! As for slang, as told by John Key on the the David Letterman Show “Get the whanau together, stay in a bach, crack open the chilly bin and slap on your jandals” - decipher that and you were probably born here.
Reason to Love New Zealand Number 7: The Food.
New Zealand is the home of the world's best lamb, the hangi, pavlova (yeah you read right), pineapple lumps and incredible seafood. 'nuff said. Oh, and fush and chups.
Reason to Love New Zealand Number 8: Adventure Activities.
If anything, Kiwi's are up for adventure, which is why some ridiculously crazy and awesome things were pioneered here. We are the pioneers of the good stuff, like jetboating (thanks Bill Hamilton – who was humble enough to pass the honour on to Archimedes), bungy (Kia ora to AJ Hackett) and zorbing (high five to the Akers brothers and Dwane van der Sluis). We want to get out and make the most of our awesome country, and what better way than charging around a canyon in a stupidly fast boat, jumping off a bridge and rolling down a hill in a massive clear plastic ball?
Reason to Love New Zealand Number 9: The Music, the TV, the Films.
New Zealand music is wicked.. A friend of mine just moved back to the States and her parting Facebook status was “I don't want to leave. New Zealand music is actually pretty good?”. As if that' a question. Shapeshifter, Kora, Crowded House, Brooke Fraser, Split Enz, The Mint Chicks... once again, something for everyone. Now we're not really known for our television but if you've ever seen Outrageous Fortune... well, you'd know that sometimes we get it right. And the films. Well, Lord of the Rings really. And Eagle vs. Shark.
Reason to Love New Zealand Number 10: Aussies love us.
It's true (just check out what the New Zealand Herald had to say!). And alright, alright, we think they're pretty okay as well.
About the Author: Thanks to the collection of backpackers and staff at Nomads Queenstown who contributed to this article.
Thanks to robsmegaphone.com and tripadvisor for the images |
Permafrost Threatened by Rapid Retreat of Arctic Sea Ice, NCAR/NSIDC Study Finds
The rate of climate warming over northern Alaska, Canada, and Russia could more than triple during extended episodes of rapid sea ice loss, according to a new study from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). The findings raise concerns about the thawing of permafrost, or permanently frozen soil, and the potential consequences for sensitive ecosystems, human infrastructure, and the release of additional greenhouse gases.
“The rapid loss of sea ice can trigger widespread changes that would be felt across the region,” said Andrew Slater, NSIDC research scientist and a co-author on the study, which was led by David Lawrence of NCAR. The findings will be published Friday in Geophysical Research Letters.
Last summer, Arctic sea ice extent shrank to a record low. From August to October last year, air temperatures over land in the western Arctic were also unusually warm, reaching more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above the 1978-2006 average. This led the researchers to question whether the unusually low sea ice extent and warm land temperatures were related.
Lawrence, Slater, and colleagues used a climate model to explore the relationship between low sea ice extent, increased air temperatures, and permafrost thawing. Previous climate change simulations identified periods of rapid sea ice loss that last 5 to 10 years. The new study shows that during such episodes, Arctic land would warm 3.5 times faster than average rates of warming predicted by global climate models for the 21st century.
The findings point to a link between rapid sea ice loss and enhanced rate of climate warming, which could penetrate as far as 900 miles inland. In areas where permafrost is already at risk, such as central Alaska, the study suggests that periods of abrupt sea ice loss can lead to rapid soil thaw.
Thawing permafrost may have a range of impacts, including buckled highways and destabilized houses, as well as changes to the delicate balance of life in the Arctic. In addition, scientists estimate that Arctic soils hold at least 30 percent of all the carbon stored in soils worldwide. While scientists are uncertain what will happen if this permafrost thaws, it has the potential to contribute substantial amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
Funding for the research came from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy.
To read the full NCAR press release, visit the NCAR News Center at http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2008/permafrost.jsp.
For more information on Arctic sea ice, including up-to-date information on this year’s conditions, visit Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis. |
“Peak Oil” Is Back on the Radar
In July, a German military think tank became the latest group to issue a warning about the approach of “Peak Oil.” This is only the most recent indication of support for the position on oil supplies and likely market pricing scenarios I have been talking about.
For you, this rising evidence on the demand/supply relationship provides another read on where to direct your energy investment approach.
The report was leaked on the Internet last week and subsequently appeared in the German newspaper Der Speigel. (The full version is available only in German, but there is an adequate summary in English.) It warns of the potential for a dire global economic crisis within 15 years of hitting “peak oil” – the point in time at which we have used more than 50% of the crude available worldwide. And the report states there is some probability peak oil will occur this year.
This is the fourth report released in the past year warning of a coming lack of oil supply, including one other military “think piece,” this one by the U.S. Army.
The initial reaction to the report: concern that nationalistic responses will greet oncoming shortages with radical global military and political solutions.
In the leaked approach, the Futures Study Group at the Center for German Army Transformation warns that there is a genuine risk of significant regional shortages, combined with acute market collapses, and the real possibility of increasing political leverage for those who can successfully export oil.
An underpinning of these concerns involves continuing European reliance on Russian oil and gas. In the center’s judgment, that situation could increase the political power of Moscow in its dealings with the European Union.
Yet in each of the “peak oil” studies that has emerged, including the most recent one by the German military, there is a recurring global view that is far more troubling…
The Impact Goes Beyond Simple Supply Concern
As demand moves back into the market following the international financial crunch, the supply side will be straining to meet it.
Nobody is seriously suggesting that the problem will explode upon the scene in the next few months. Given the collapse in oil prices from September 2008 through the second quarter of 2009, concerns over supply constriction abated.
But these concerns are now coming back, as the demand side begins to show signs of accelerating.
The international financial crisis has added a few years onto the prognosis but hardly changed the dynamics. When in 2008 both the International Energy Agency and the U.S. issued warnings about an oncoming supply problem, the suggested date was 2016. Following the global meltdown, the onset may now have been delayed to 2018.
But the impact will be felt much sooner…
Normally, oil traders set the price for crude at the cost of the next available barrel. In an environment where supply is becoming a concern, the peg becomes the cost of the most expensive next available barrel. And, well before that kicks in, governments will be stepping in to address security matters, especially in those countries that depend upon imports.
That certainly explains the American and German militaries’ interest in the subject.
The way in which the current upstream segment of the oil chain operates, where the production takes place, will intensify the impact of this.
One of these considerations is the simple element of time. Between September 2008 and the end of the second quarter of 2009 – in other words, the period in which oil prices tanked – each month that passed produced a two-and-a-half-month delay in new production projects. To put it simply: By the time we had entered 2009, not a single new project anywhere in the world was profitable.
The nine months it took for oil market pricing to stabilize cost us almost two years in forward drilling. With an average green field project (that is, a new production location) taking five to seven years to come on line, that means we are already into the period during which supply becomes a concern. Well before the spot shortages emerge in various regions, prices will be rising in anticipation.
Another primary worry involves who will benefit from the concern over supply not meeting returning demand.
The leaked German report states the obvious – those who are able to provide product for the market will profit. Yet it is now beyond merely concluding that the Middle East (where 69% of current known reserves are located) will benefit. Both the German and U.S. military reports label this a primary strategic concern. That means well before shortages show up, governments will have taken measures to offset them.
That has all the hallmarks of an unstable and dangerous situation.
Two Direct Results
First, dependence on oil-based infrastructures – namely pipelines, refineries, harbors, and ocean traffic routes – will increase risk. Damaging these infrastructures through sabotage and war would become an attractive option for violence-prone groups or countries. The same conclusion emerges for electricity and natural gas-related infrastructure – they all might require higher levels of protection.
Second, and this is the important point for our purposes, the leaked report reflects a similar conclusion found in previous studies. It advocates more regional energy self-sufficiency.
The combination of these two conclusions – one referring to rising instability and other pointing toward a more locally-based solution – supports the way in which our energy approach has been unfolding in Oil & Energy Investor.
Our approach comprises three elements: profiting from the volatility that results in higher prices; putting greater reliance on unconventional gas and oil production in places like North America; and identifying early the companies, technologies, and approaches that will lead the way into genuinely alternative energy sources.
Way before the supply crisis hits, developed markets will be moving in new directions. I am already positioning you to profit big-time from these moves, even before they become apparent to others.
Of course, it is always nice to know the German army agrees. |
You are hereWWO
Travelling to Haiti on behalf of World Wide Orphans (WWO), Rosie Evans was in charge of putting together a Toy Library. This is one of many projects that the organization WWO initiates for orphans in several countries. After a devastating earthquake struck in Haiti two years ago, WWO has had Melissa Willock on the ground to coordinate projects and train people to work with the orphans.
WWO has created a model called the Youth to Children (Y2C) program to meet the multiple needs of children worldwide. One hospital in Haiti, Saint Damien’s, wants to learn more about the Y2C program, because they have 23 abandoned children living in a hospital ward, even though they are healthy. They could end up spending years in this hospital. Part of the Y2C model includes a Toy Library, and according to Rosie and Melissa, these children fit the criteria for this need.
Dr. Jane Aronson used to be referred to as the “adoption doc” because she has evaluated over 10,000 children adopted from abroad. Additionally she has consulted with adoptive parents about their referrals. We are one of these families who consulted with Dr. Aronson when we got the referral for our daughter. Another adoption doctor suggested we turn down the referral; I was not in agreement with this doctor and thankfully turned to Dr. Aronson (who signs all her emails “Jane”) who reassured me that the tiny baby in the photo would be just fine.
Jane and her partner have three adopted children between them – one from a domestic adoption and two from intercountry adoptions (Vietnam and Ethiopia). In addition to starting WWO (World Wide Orphans), being an outspoken leader in adoption medicine, she runs a private practice for International Pediatric Health Services in New York and is an assistant professor of pediatrics at Cornell University.
Reading a recent interview with Jane on the “Washington Times Communities” was inspiring. Jane has solutions for the millions of worldwide orphans and if she has enough resources she can make miracles happen. In 1997 Jane started the Worldwide Orphans Foundation (WWO) which "focused on supporting local efforts and developing programs in country to assist orphans around the world.”After going on medical missions Jane realized just how doomed orphaned children are. She saw the need to address the social-psycho aspects of growing up in an orphanage as well as the physical ones. Jane’s first project for WWO was in Russia and Eastern Europe because she felt that orphans there were in the worst of situations. They seemed to live in orphanages for longer periods of time, were greatly impacted by fetal alcohol syndrome, and had the most “complex psychological issues.”Jane says that she met with a lot of resistance in these countries initially but because WWO helps children and families in the communities around the orphanages she and WWO gained support. |
by Pepe Escobar and Tom Engelhardt
"It's like old times in the Persian Gulf. As of this week, a second aircraft carrier battle task force is being sent in – not long after Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Michael Mullen highlighted planning for "potential military courses of action" against Iran; just as the Bush administration's catechism of charges against the Iranians in Iraq reaches something like a fever pitch; at the moment when rumors of, leaks about, and denials of Pentagon back-to-the-drawing-board planning for new ways to attack Iran are zipping around ("Targets would include everything from the plants where weapons are made to the headquarters of the organization known as the Quds Force which directs operations in Iraq"); and only days before the U.S. military in Iraq is supposed to conduct its latest media dog-and-pony show on Iranian support for Iraqi Shi'ite militias ("including date stamps on newly found weapons caches showing that recently made Iranian weapons are flowing into Iraq at a steadily increasing rate"). On the dispatching of that second aircraft carrier, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates offered the following comment: "I don't see it as an escalation. I think it could be seen, though, as a reminder."
And, when you really think about it, it is indeed a "reminder" of sorts. After all, the name of that second carrier has a certain resonance. It's the USS Abraham Lincoln, the very carrier on which, on May 1st exactly five years ago, President George W. Bush landed in that S-3B Viking sub reconnaissance Naval jet, in what TV people call "magic hour light", for his Top-Gun strut to a podium. There, against a White House-produced banner emblazoned with the phrase "Mission Accomplished," he declared that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended."
Now, more than five years after Baghdad fell, with Saddam Hussein long executed, Osama bin Laden alive and kicking, and American soldiers fighting and dying in the vast Shi'ite slum suburb of Sadr City in Baghdad, the dangerous administration game of chicken with Iran in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere once again intensifies. It's a dangerous moment. When you ratchet up the charges and send in the carriers, anything is possible.
We regularly read about all of this, of course, but almost never as seen through anything but American administration or journalistic eyes (and sometimes it's hard to tell the two apart). The author of Globalistan and also Red Zone Blues, Pepe Escobar, a continent-hopping super-journalist for the always fascinating Asia Times and now The Real News as well, has done a striking job of covering the Iraq War, the various oil wars and pipeline struggles of the Middle East and Central Asia, and, these last years, has regularly visited Iran. Today, in his first appearance at Tomdispatch, he offers something rare indeed, an assessment of Iran "under the gun" – without the American filter in place......" |
Transnational Judicial Governance
Christopher A. Whytock
University of California, Irvine, School of Law
April, 20 2012
St. John's Journal of International and Comparative Law, Vol. 2, No. 1, p. 55, 2012
UC Irvine School of Law Research Paper No. 2012-39
This symposium essay discusses “transnational judicial governance” — that is, the regulation of transnational activity by domestic courts. Specifically, the essay makes three points. First, transnational judicial governance is an important form of global governance that interacts with, but is distinct from, other forms of global governance such as international institutions, transgovernmental networks, and private governance. Second, there is evidence suggesting that the influence of U.S. courts in transnational judicial governance may be declining as the transnational litigation system becomes increasingly multipolar. Third, transnational judicial governance seems to be a normatively mixed bag — but, for better or worse, it is likely that domestic courts will continue to play an important role in global governance.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 15
Keywords: Global Governance, Courts, International Law, Transnational Law, Regulation, Private International Law, Conflict of Laws, International RelationsAccepted Paper Series
Date posted: April 22, 2012
© 2014 Social Science Electronic Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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We’ve been hearing a lot lately about the wealth gap in the United States, as well as the growing number of poor people.
But what constitutes “poor”? One of the measures used by many is the poverty line. Every year, the United States government puts out federal guidelines about what constitutes living in poverty, basing changes on inflation. Whether or not you are considered to be living in poverty depends on the size of your household, as well as how much money you make.
For 2013, the poverty line is drawn at $11,490 in annual income for a single person. For a household of four, you are considered to live in poverty if your annual income is $23,550 or below.
Could You Make It Work On Poverty Wages?
For a family of four earning $23,500 a year, that amounts to $452.88 a week. Divide that by 40 hours a week, and the hourly wage is about $11.32 per hour. Basically, if you have a family of four, you really can’t make a non-poverty living on minimum wage, which is currently at $7.25 an hour. At that rate, you make $290 a week, or about $15,080 a year.
Just because the numbers seem low, though, doesn’t mean that some families don’t make it work. Many of them use some sort of federal assistance to help out. Others live in extreme frugality to make it work. And others end up turning to credit, and live paycheck to paycheck, watching their debt levels creep higher every year.
Look at your own household spending. Do you think that you could live below the poverty line? What would you have to give up in order to make it work? Is it even reasonable, with your current habits, to assume that you could make it work? Consider: If you divide $23,500 by 12, you end up with a monthly income of about $1,938.33. Now, add up what you pay for mortgage + insurance + utilities. Just those items alone might very well put you over the poverty line, depending on where you live.
As an exercise, try to see what you would have to cut out in order to bring your spending in line with what you would have if you lived at or just below the poverty line. For many of us, that is a pretty tall order.
Do You Feel Poor?
Many of us, even if we aren’t “technically” poor, feel less than wealthy. If you are in this camp, take a few minutes to consider your situation. Are you really as poor as you think? If your income puts you above the poverty line for your family size, it’s worth reconsidering. Think about what you have in terms of non-money wealth. Good health, family, friends, interesting activities, and other items can make up for a perceived lack of money. And, of course, you can always re-evaluate your spending to see if you can improve matters for your budget.
What do you think? Is the poverty line an accurate measure of what’s poor? What does being poor or rich mean to you? |
David Bourget (Western Ontario)
David Chalmers (ANU, NYU)
Rafael De Clercq
Jack Alan Reynolds
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Basic Books (2002)
Until recently, cognitive science focused on such mental functions as problem solving, grammar, and pattern-the functions in which the human mind most closely resembles a computer. But humans are more than computers: we invent new meanings, imagine wildly, and even have ideas that have never existed before. Today the cutting edge of cognitive science addresses precisely these mysterious, creative aspects of the mind.The Way We Think is a landmark analysis of the imaginative nature of the mind. Conceptual blending is already widely known in research laboratories throughout the world; this book, written to be accessible to both lay readers and interested scientists, is its definitive statement. Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner show that conceptual blending is the root of the cognitively modern human mind, and that conceptual blends themselves are continually combined and reblended to create the rich mental fabric in which we live.The Way We Think shows how this blending operates; how it is affected by (and gives rise to) language, identity, culture, and invention; and how we imagine what could be and what might have been. The result is a bold and exciting new view of how the mind works.
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David Kirsh (2010). Thinking With External Representations. AI and Society 25 (4):441-454.
Sergeiy Sandler (2011). Reenactment: An Embodied Cognition Approach to Meaning and Linguistic Content. [REVIEW] Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 11 (4):583-598.
Michael L. Anderson (2007). Massive Redeployment, Exaptation, and the Functional Integration of Cognitive Operations. Synthese 159 (3):329 - 345.
Paul Thagard & Terrence C. Stewart (2011). The AHA! Experience: Creativity Through Emergent Binding in Neural Networks. Cognitive Science 35 (1):1-33.
Jean M. Mandler (2008). On the Birth and Growth of Concepts. Philosophical Psychology 21 (2):207 – 230.
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Paul Thagard (2003). Conceptual Change. In L. Nadel (ed.), Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. Nature Publishing Group.
John J. Sung (2008). Embodied Anomaly Resolution in Molecular Genetics: A Case Study of RNAi. [REVIEW] Foundations of Science 13 (2):177-193.
Gilles Fauconnier & Mark Turner (2008). The Origin of Language as a Product of the Evolution of Double-Scope Blending. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31 (5):520-521.
Seana Coulson (2001). Semantic Leaps: Frame-Shifting and Conceptual Blending in Meaning Construction. Cambridge University Press.
Norman Y. Teng (2000). A Cognitive Analysis of the Chinese Room Argument. Philosophical Psychology 13 (3):313-24.
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David Bourget (Western Ontario)
David Chalmers (ANU, NYU)
Rafael De Clercq
Jack Alan Reynolds
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Journal of Consciousness Studies 14 (7):97-110 (2007)
Over sixty years ago, Kenneth Craik noted that, if an organism (or an artificial agent) carried 'a small-scale model of external reality and of its own possible actions within its head', it could use the model to behave intelligently. This paper argues that the possible actions might best be represented by interactions between a model of reality and a model of the agent, and that, in such an arrangement, the internal model of the agent might be a transparent model of the sort recently discussed by Metzinger, and so might offer a useful analogue of a conscious entity. The CRONOS project has built a robot functionally similar to a human that has been provided with an internal model of itself and of the world to be used in the way suggested by Craik; when the system is completed, it will be possible to study its operation from the perspective not only of artificial intelligence, but also of machine consciousness.
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Tom Ziemke (2007). The Embodied Self: Theories, Hunches and Robot Models. Journal of Consciousness Studies 14 (7):167-179.
Owen Holland & Russell B. Goodman (2003). Robots with Internal Models: A Route to Machine Consciousness? Journal of Consciousness Studies 10 (4):77-109.
Ron Sun (1999). Accounting for the Computational Basis of Consciousness: A Connectionist Approach. Consciousness and Cognition 8 (4):529-565.
Jeffrey White (forthcoming). Manufacturing Morality A General Theory of Moral Agency Grounding Computational Implementations: The ACTWith Model. In Computational Intelligence. Nova Publications.
Owen Holland, Rob Knight & Richard Newcombe (2007). The Role of the Self Process in Embodied Machine Consciousness. In Antonio Chella & Riccardo Manzotti (eds.), Artificial Consciousness. Imprint Academic. 156-173.
Ron Chrisley & J. Parthemore (2007). Synthetic Phenomenology:Exploiting Embodiment to Specify the Non-Conceptual Content of Visual Experience. Journal of Consciousness Studies 14 (7):44-58.
Douglas Walton (2011). A Dialogue Model of Belief. Argument and Computation 1 (1):23-46.
Ivan Moura (2006). A Model of Agent Consciousness and its Implementation. Neurocomputing 69 (16-18):1984-1995.
Andrew A. Fingelkurts, Alexander A. Fingelkurts & Carlos F. H. Neves (2012). “Machine” Consciousness and “Artificial” Thought: An Operational Architectonics Model Guided Approach. Brain Research 1428:80-92.
Pierre Bonzon (2003). Conscious Behavior Through Reflexive Dialogs. In A. Günter, R. Kruse & B. Neumann (eds.), Lectures Notes in Artificial Intelligence. Springer.
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Surgical patients who participate in longer- to 30-minute- discussions prior to having an operation (known as the informed consent process) better understand the proposed operation, according to new research published in the June issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. In addition, researchers found that asking the patient to "repeat back" their understanding of the procedure was effective in enhancing patient comprehension of informed consent issues. This is the largest study ever conducted on the surgical informed consent process.
Informed consent for surgical procedures is a critical part of surgical patient care. When effective, the informed consent process enables the patient to make rational, independent decisions. Unfortunately, numerous studies demonstrate that the average patient has an inadequate comprehension of the issues related to surgical procedures - including a recent literature survey of over 700 patients that found the average patient understood less than half of the relevant informed consent issues related to the recommended surgical procedure.
"In our study, we found that patients with potential cultural or language difficulties from factors such as race, education or age may limit informed consent comprehension," said Aaron S. Fink, MD, FACS, attending surgeon at the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Medical Center and chief surgical consultant for VA Network 7, and professor of surgery at Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta. "But all patients benefitted from what we found was the strongest influence on patient comprehension - extending the amount of time spent on informed consent discussions, as well as having the patient repeat back their understanding of the proposed procedure."
Researchers identified 575 patients in seven Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical centers from August 2006 to June 2008. Patients were enrolled in the study if they were scheduled for one of four elective surgical procedures: total hip arthroplasty (hip replacement), carotid endarterectomy (surgical correction of the narrowing of the carotid artery), laparoscopic cholecystectomy (gallbladder removal), or radical prostatectomy (removal of the prostate gland and some of the tissue around it). All informed consent discussions were performed using iMedConsent, the VA's computerized informed consent platform that standardizes risk information and provides a structured, computer-based interview to create an informed consent document. Within iMedConsent, researchers utilized a unique module to select a random sample of patients to participate in a "repeat back" discussion at the time the consent was sought. During the "repeat back," the provider would ask the patient to correctly reiterate procedure-specific facts and would provide additional information as needed.
The comprehension of all patient participants was tested after the informed consent discussion using procedure-specific questionnaires. Each patient's comprehension score was calculated as the percentage of questions that were answered correctly. Time spent completing the informed consent process was measured using time stamps within iMedConsent.
While time for consent (that is, the time spent explaining the consent process) had the strongest impact on patient comprehension (p< 0.0001), other independent factors associated with improved comprehension included race (p< 0.01), ethnicity (p< 0.05), age (p< 0.02), and type of surgical procedure (p< 0.01). some of these independent factors might suggest language and education barriers, highlighting the need for modified approaches to consent. the "repeat back" method of discussion was associated with an improvement in comprehension (p< 0.05), but the impact was weaker in the analysis that included consent time.
Study limitations included the predominance of male patients in the study (93 percent), the predominance of Caucasians in the study (74 percent), and the focus on four specific surgical procedures. Further study is needed to extrapolate results to a larger population. Additional findings from this study will be published in an upcoming issue of Annals of Surgery.
Explore further: Were clinical trial practices in East Germany questionable? |
New theory points to 'zombie vortices' as key step in star formation
(Phys.org) —A new theory by fluid dynamics experts at the University of California, Berkeley, shows how "zombie vortices" help lead to the birth of a new star.
Physicists propose Higgs boson 'portal' as the source of this elusive entity
One of the biggest mysteries in contemporary particle physics and cosmology is why dark energy, which is observed to dominate energy density of the universe, has a remarkably small (but not zero) value. This value is so small, ...
Researchers stop and store light for 60 seconds
Researchers perform first direct measurement of Van der Waals force
Physicists create tabletop antimatter 'gun'
Researchers discover way to allow 80 percent of sound to pass through walls
Two collider research teams find evidence of new particle Zc(3900)
Researchers suggest gas cloud could reveal black holes near center of Milky Way galaxy
Physics team entangles photons that never coexisted in time
Physicists suggest possible existence of other kinds of dark matter
Research team finds that the ratio of component atoms vital to performance
There has been great interest in recent years in using tiny particles called quantum dots to produce low-cost, easily manufactured, stable photovoltaic cells. But, so far, the creation of such cells has been ...
Russian researchers find more evidence to support notion that lightning is caused by cosmic rays
Creating time crystals with a rotating ion ring
LHCb experiment observes new matter-antimatter difference
(Phys.org) —The LHCb collaboration at CERN today submitted a paper to Physical Review Letters on the first observation of matter-antimatter asymmetry in the decays of the particle known as the B0s. It is only the fourth sub-at ... |
J. Prat-Camps et al./Autonomous Univ. of Barcelona
Field trip. Cylindrical shells with the right properties would expel magnetic field energy. Here, the field from a bar magnet within the shell on the left is pushed outward, increasing its strength in the exterior region. A second shell, on the right, captures the field passing through it and concentrates the field’s strength in this shell’s interior. This scheme could allow the transfer of magnetic energy with improved efficiency. |
WASHINGTON (CNN) - In a speech Tuesday marking the fifth anniversary of the first time he spoke out against the Iraq war, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, emphasized that he had opposed combat from the beginning and said Congress "failed" the American people for voting to authorize it in the first place.
"This was a vote about whether or not to go to war," the Democratic presidential candidate said in Chicago. "That’s the truth as we all understood it then, and as we need to understand it now. And we need to ask those who voted for the war: how can you give the President a blank check and then act surprised when he cashes it?"
In his speech five years ago, Obama first publicly voiced his opposition to the war just a week before Congress voted to give President Bush the authority to send troops to Iraq. At the time, he was running for the U.S. Senate. (Related: Obama: Clinton blurring distinctions between us)
"I don't oppose all wars,” Obama said in 2002. “What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. A war based not on reason, but on passion. Not on principle, but on politics."
In his speech on Tuesday, he reiterated that he had opposed the war from the start and said would start to bring troops home immediately. He said he is the most qualified candidate to end the war, since he "got the single most important foreign policy decision since the end of the Cold War right."
"The first thing we have to do is end this war," Obama said. "And the right person to end it is someone who had the judgment to oppose it from the beginning. There is no military solution in Iraq, and there never was."
Obama's comments were a thinly-veiled attack on his two closest rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination - Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-New York, and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards - who voted to authorize the war in 2002.
Obama also criticized President Bush for refusing to deal diplomatically with countries like Iran and North Korea and said America needs a leader who would "talk to all nations, friend and foe." Obama received heavy criticism earlier this year for saying that he would agree to talk to Iran's president.
The Democratic presidential candidate heads to Iowa Tuesday afternoon for more speeches on the Iraq war.
– CNN Associate Producer Lauren Kornreich |
Ben Model’s Accidentally Preserved, Volume 1
Our culture has been disposable for much longer than people realize. Before the era of cellphone upgrades, Ultra HD and other forms of planned obsolescence, there was disposable entertainment like comic books and movie advertisements – some of which have become extremely valuable because of so few were rescued from the dustbin. There have always been throwaway artifacts that later prove to be extremely telling, just as there has always been a select few that recognized their intrinsic value and decided to preserve them for future generations. Ben Model is one such person and he’s fighting the good fight with his hot-off-the-presses DVD release Accidentally Preserved, Volume 1.
Model is a film preservationist and a renowned silent film accompanist who has created new scores for Turner Classic Movies as well as the Library of Congress and curated exhibitions about silent film at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Pretty impressive stuff. Over the years, Model has amassed a sizable stack of 16mm reels currently unavailable to the public which may no longer exist anywhere outside of his collection. Unloved and abandoned, Model took pity on these causalities of the silent era and has since made it his passion project to resurrect them. In this instance resurrection takes the form of a new high definition transfer complete with historical annotation, a newly composed musical score and, as of last year, a YouTube channel to share this rare and restored footage with others who are devoted to the history of film.
The subsequent positive response led to the launch of a crowd-funding campaign on kickstarter.com which last November raised $4,639 in 30 days toward the continuation of Model’s film restoration project, now called Accidentally Preserved. The name of the project comes from the fact that many of Model’s prints are 16mm safety film stock created into the 1940s for in-home use – that is, if your family was lucky enough to have your own projector. These 16mm prints made for rental were considered more disposable than the original 35mm reels, but with the originals now lost it is only the lesser quality throwaway prints that have saved the footage from nonexistence. Since launching last year, Model has been contacted by other preservationists who have also collected extremely rare prints that are in dire need of restoration. So the project seems to keep expanding the more people learn about it.
The first collection of films from Accidentally Preserved is available on DVD from retailers like Amazon.com as of this week and, according to his website, Model plans to post more restored films on his YouTube channel throughout the year. The collection is mostly comedy shorts, including one from Hal Roach, an early cartoon from animation pioneer Max Fleischer and an extremely thorough in-house promotional spot for the Elgin National Watch Company. The one-reelers are alive with silent era comedy in all its slapsticky glory, such as a disobedient washing machine in The Lost Laugh (1928), an buffoonish duck hunter in Shoot Straight (1923) and a gypsy wearing a gorilla costume in Wedding Slips (1928). Throughout the collection, Model’s expert accompaniment maintains a musical spirit in-keeping with the early 20th Century by using either piano or pipe organ – the instruments that would have been used for live accompaniment in the early days of the cinema. The films themselves are not long lost masterpieces by Erich Von Stroheim or King Vidor and they are not the camera tests for Rudolph Valentino or Douglas Fairbanks – and that’s actually the most admirable thing about Model’s entire endeavor. Beyond their contemporary entertainment value, ironic or otherwise, these silent shorts are invaluable historical documents and Model deserves some serious adulation for his dedication to preserving the entirety of film history, including that which may seem unremarkable. After all, it is a special kind of historian who dedicates her or himself not the celebrated and familiar, but instead to the unfamiliar artifacts most in need of their attention. Ben Model is one such person.
The films included in Accidentally Preserved, Volume 1:
Wallace Lupino in THE LOST LAUGH (1928) – 9 minutes
Jack Duffy in LOOSE CHANGE (1928) – 11 minutes
Monte Collins in WEDDING SLIPS (1928) – 9 minutes
Paul Parrott in SHOOT STRAIGHT (1923) – 10 minutes
Elgin Watch Company – THE HOUSE OF WONDERS (ca. 1931) – 23 minutes
Clyde Cook in THE MISFIT (1924) – 12 minutes
Cliff Bowes in CHEER UP (1924) – 10 minutes
Koko the Clown in MECHANICAL DOLL (1922) – 7 minutes
Billy Franey in THE WATER PLUG (1920) – 12 minutes
Get your very own copy of Accidentally Preserved, Volume 1 at amazon.com right now!
Check out the original pitch video from Model’s kickstarter campaign: |
A study examines the safety and efficiency of large-volume paracentesis performed by nonphysician health care providers
Large-volume paracentesis is a treatment used to remove excess fluid in the abdominal cavity resulting from such conditions as cirrhosis of the liver or cardiac failure. It is normally performed as an inpatient procedure due to possible complications, which may include infection, bleeding, and bowel perforation.
In a study led by Catherine M. Grabau at the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology and Internal Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and published in the August issue of Hepatology, gastrointestinal endoscopy assistants performed large-volume paracenteses on outpatients in order to determine how many procedures were required to develop competence and the amount of time needed to perform each procedure.
Hepatology, the official journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD), published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is available online via Wiley InterScience at http://www.interscience.wiley.com/journal/hepatology.
The gastrointestinal endoscopy assistants, all of whom were licensed practical nurses, performed 1,100 large-volume paracenteses in 628 patients during the period between June 1994 and June 2001. During training, the supervising physician discussed the procedure in depth with the trainee and performed the first paracentesis, with the trainee assisting. The next two procedures were performed by the gastrointestinal endoscopy assistant with the physician assisting, and the next four to six procedures were done by the assistant independently, under the physician's observation. The number of independent procedures performed by the trainee before the supervising physician was comfortable with the level of skill ranged from three to seven. In the 23 patients in which the gastrointestinal endoscopy assistants determined that paracentesis was not feasible, the supervising physician agreed with the assessment in all cases.
The study also examined the risk of possible complications, in particular whether the risk of bleeding was associated with thrombocytopenia (reduced platelet count) or prolonged prothrombin (clotting) time. None of the patients in the study experienced significant bleeding or complications, even those whose platelet count was significantly below normal range and those with prolonged prothrombin time.
The authors conclude that paracentesis performed in an outpatient setting by gastrointestinal endoscopy assistants is safe and efficient, and can usually be accomplished in two hours. The major benefit is a significant saving in physician time (limited to a maximum of 10 supervised procedures) with no increased risk to the patient. Further, since the guidelines of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations recommend discontinuing the practice of having gastrointestinal endoscopy assistant carry out the procedure, the authors suggest that the guidelines may need to be readdressed.
Source: Eurekalert & othersLast reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 21 Feb 2009
Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.
To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.
~ Robert Louis Stevenson |
Zapatistas Celebrate 13th Anniversary of Uprising
Published: January 2, 2007
Thousands of Zapatista rebels celebrated the 13th anniversary of their brief uprising against the Mexican government on Monday, dancing, singing and holding discussions on improving the status of poor Indians in the southern state of Chiapas.
The ceremonies, which attracted hundreds of foreigners from many countries, began Sunday night under the stewardship of the group's leader, Subcommander Marcos. Participants saluted the Mexican and Zapatista flags, and held a large dance in the Zapatista community of Oventic, 460 miles southeast of Mexico City.
The Zapatistas seized the main city of San Crist? de las Casas and other Chiapas communities in the name of socialism and Indian rights on Jan. 1, 1994. A cease-fire ended fighting between rebel and government forces after a few days, and the two sides have since maintained an uneasy truce.
Marcos, a professor-turned-guerrilla, has continued to champion a quieter social revolution from the jungles of Chiapas, issuing missives harshly critical of Mexico's politicians and government policies.
Speaking in Tzotzil, a Mayan language spoken in Chiapas, he recalled on Sunday night how the movement was founded to end the isolation and misery of the Indians. It was the first time in many years that Marcos had attended anniversary celebrations. He was escorted by several other ski-masked members of the movement.
On last year's anniversary, Marcos began a nationwide tour in an attempt to forge a national leftist movement. But his talks and tour appearances did not draw large crowds, and he was criticized for straying from his principal cause of fighting for Indian rights after expressing support for violent antigovernment protests by unrelated groups. |
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Quotation by Shakespeare
Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul
But I do love thee! and when I love thee not,
Chaos is come again.
William Shakespeare (1564–1616), British dramatist, poet. Othello, in Othello, act 3, sc. 3, l. 90-2.
Desdemona has just left the stage; "wretch" was used as a term of endearment.
Surprise me with a
The Columbia World of Quotations © 1996, Columbia University Press.
Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. Except as otherwise permitted by written agreement, the following are prohibited: copying substantial portions or the entirety of the work in machine readable form, making multiple printouts thereof, and other uses of the work inconsistent with U.S. and applicable foreign copyright and related laws.
Copyright © 2014 Dictionary.com, LLC. All rights reserved. |
Step one in this process: scramble up in your projects
To paraphrase Tip O'Neil, “All crack-dealing is local”
From Jay Z’s biography, Decoded:
As with anything, you begin locally, in your own projects. The trip from Brooklyn to upper Manhattan once seemed as great a distance as going down South, or to a foreign country, with a foreign language. Repeat trips mean more money, familiarly with Papi, better relationships and credit. But credit is a vice, debt, a door-knocker.
To help improve the quality of the lyrics, visit “American Dreamin'” by Jay Z Lyrics and leave a suggestion at the bottom of the page |
Find history, education, museums, kid's games, citizenship, publications, & multimedia.
Learn about current research, including archaeology, architecture, digital history, & the Library.
A resource exploring the causes, character, and consequences of the American Revolution.
Students and teachers research current issues and discuss on the Virtual Republic.
Learn more about the authors of the original recipes.
Discover the meaning of 18th Century Cooking terms. Learn more.
The recipes we have chosen are presented in the original language and measurements of the colonial era. Our modern translations are intended to be as accurate as possible to the original recipes using modern ingredients and equipment. Our job is to recreate 18th-century food as genuinely as possible. In some cases we will indicate items that can be omitted or substituted in order to make the recipes healthier.
The recipes here are the foods of the wealthy. Most Virginians of the 18th century could not afford so much meat and sugar, and would have had a far more simple and healthy diet and a much more active lifestyle than most modern Virginians.
Most 18th-century cookbooks were written by professional cooks, for professional cooks. Often, they don’t specify quantities of spice or sugar because they knew that the cooks preparing them would adjust them to the taste of the people they were cooking for. Today’s modern cooks are accustomed to exact measurements of everything. Hannah Glasse’s cookbook is an exception, written to provide housewives and servants instructions to economically reproduce the dishes of the French style that were becoming popular.
These recipes were created before there was any knowledge of calories and cholesterol, and when there was a very different concept of the relationship between food and health.
Although these dishes may have high levels of fat and cholesterol in them, it is important to point out what was not in them. The food of the 18th century did not contain any artificial colors, preservatives, chemicals or pesticides, and was much more local, fresh and unprocessed than the food we get today.
We do not recommend the inclusion of these recipes on an everyday basis as part of a healthy modern diet, but hope that you’ll use them on special occasions, or as a resource for those interested in 18th-century cooking.
Modern cooks may want to make some more healthy substitutions: margarine instead butter, sugar substitutes, or skim milk in place of heavy cream. We have not tested the recipes this way and are not sure what effect that will have on the final product, but we would love to hear what changes you make and how they turn out. |
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Take to your local Autozone and they can check light for free. Could be as simple as loose or defective fuel cap. They'll give you good idea where to start.
Next could be your coil or possibly your fuel injector.
Sensor should be located right by oil filter.
Probably just needs more freon.
May be a problems with your u joint if sounds like coming from under car- on drive line.
Should not have relay at all. Sounds like problems with your neutral safety switch.
Coolant temperature sensor does help control some torque converter and shift point. It's inexpensive part would give a shot. Part also helps computer control some fuel injection, timing and egr functions. When part malfunctions should put up a check engine light- have checked at Autozone if so. If not change your fluid and hope for best.
If has check engine light on that may give you answer. Take to your local Autozone for free check if on. If not, change your fuel filter if haven't in last year and check fuel pressure.
Loosen and take off belt at tensioner first. Should be simple- only one bolt holding it. Note some tensioner bolts turn opposite of normal loosening.
You may want to check out evaporative emissions system. Start with fuel cap, check out purge valve and hoses that run from tank to canister and intake. Gas milage will go way down if leaking vapors. |
Date of Award
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Language shift is the process by which a speech community in a contact situation (i.e. consisting of bilingual speakers) gradually stops using one of its two languages in favor of the other. The causal factors of language shift are generally considered to be social, and researchers have focused on speakers’ attitudes (both explicit and unstated) toward a language and domains of language use in the community, as well as other macro social factors. Additional research has focused on the effects of language shift, generally on the (changing) structure of the language itself. The goal of this thesis is to examine the relationship between social and linguistic factors in considering the causes and effects of language shift, focusing on age-based variation in the speech community. This dissertation examines the linguistic and social correlates of early language shift in a Garifuna community in Belize. An apparent time analysis shows an externally-motivated change in the status of the sociolinguistic variable (ch) that is evidence for a shift in the dominant language in the community. A second change in progress, variable deletion of intervocalic r, is described for the first time as an internally-motivated change, albeit progressing alongside contact-induced changes. Evidence is also presented to propose that the behavior of the transitional generation (speakers aged 30-49) shows interesting characteristics with regard to these two variables as a result of shifting language ideologies in the village. These ideological shifts are examined along with changing attitudes in the community toward English, Belizean Creole, and Garifuna.
Ravindranath, Maya, "Language Shift and the Speech Community: Sociolinguistic Change in a Garifuna Community in Belize" (2009). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. Paper 33. |
Development of romantic relationships and sexual activity in young adults with cerebral palsy: A longitudinal study
Objectives: To describe the development of romantic relationships and sexual activity of young adults with cerebral palsy (CP), to investigate whether this development is associated with demographic and physical characteristics, and to compare the sexual activity of this group with an age-appropriate Dutch reference population. Design: Prospective longitudinal study with 3 biannual assessments. Setting: Eight rehabilitation centers and departments in the southwestern regions of The Netherlands. Participants: Young adults (N=103; 61 men, 42 women) with CP without cognitive disabilities (age range at first assessment, 1620y; 82% Gross Motor Function Classification System level I or II). Interventions: Not applicable. Main Outcome Measures: Sexual interest, romantic relationships, and sexual activity. Results: We observed a significant increase in dating in young adults with CP during the 4-year period; however, the experience in romantic relationships did not increase largely during this period. Young adults with a lower education level began dating later than those with higher levels. Significantly more women were in current romantic relationships than men. During the 4 years, participants' sexual experience increased significantly for all sexual milestones evaluated. Level of gross motor function was associated significantly with intercourse experience. Compared with an age-appropriate Dutch reference population, young adults with CP participated at a lower level in romantic relationships and sexual activities, but had equal sexual interest at the final assessment. Conclusions: Young ambulatory adults with CP had similar sexual interests and had increasing experiences with romantic relationships and sexual activities during the transition from late adolescence to young adulthood. However, the percentage of young adults with CP in current romantic relationships was low, especially for men.
|Keywords||Cerebral palsy, Longitudinal studies, Rehabilitation, Sexuality, Young adult|
|Persistent URL||dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apmr.2010.06.011, hdl.handle.net/1765/27669|
Wiegerink, D.J.H.G., Stam, H.J., Gorter, J.W., Cohen-Kettenis, P.T., & Roebroeck, M.E.. (2010). Development of romantic relationships and sexual activity in young adults with cerebral palsy: A longitudinal study. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 91(9), 1423–1428. doi:10.1016/j.apmr.2010.06.011 |
Monday, January 24th, 2011.
A few months ago, I was introduced to Helen Papagiannis, an artist, designer and researcher working with the emerging technology Augmented Reality (AR), wrote Rob Rothfarb in Museum Virtual Worlds Jan. 10 in a published interview with the student in the York/Ryerson Joint Graduate Program in Communication & Culture:
Papagiannis: “I began experimenting with AR in September 2005. When I saw AR for the first time, I was so entranced I think I entered a permanent state of wonder with the technology. And it was all very simple: a bare bones 3D virtual cube seemingly appearing in my physical space. It was completely astonishing! I went into mad scientist mode from there, tinkering, prototyping and dreaming of the creative possibilities for AR. Five-and-a-half years later, and I’m still riveted.
“I strongly believe AR is emerging as a new medium and it will come to play a large role in entertainment and information sharing…. I’d like to see more work move beyond the single-viewer experience in AR and engage larger audiences in a simultaneous viewing and even collaborative interactive experience. I think this is particularly relevant for museums in designing and producing AR experiences.”
Helen Papagiannis is currently completing her PhD at York University and is a senior research associate at the Augmented Reality Lab in York’s Department of Film in the Faculty of Fine Arts. Helen’s mixed-reality art installations were recently featured in a solo exhibition at the Ontario Science Centre, and at TEDxYorku, where she was also an invited speaker. Prior to her augmented life, Helen was a member of the internationally renowned Bruce Mau Design studio, where she was project lead on Massive Change: The Future of Global Design, a touring exhibition and book published by Phaidon Press.
Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– York University’s daily e-bulletin |
Health Authorities Want Depression-Causing Drugs Added To Water Supply
Mass medication of population part of drive to make people obediently accept “dictatorship without tears,” Aldous Huxley warned in 1962 Berkeley speech
Paul Joseph Watson
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Health authorities are pushing for drugs to be added to public water supplies that cause depression and memory loss, as a new study shows that the dangers of statins have been deliberately underplayed by drug companies, in a chilling throwback to how the population in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World were mass medicated with Soma to keep them docile and easy to control.
Statins are taken by tens of millions of people worldwide, a boon for drug companies like Merck, whose chief executive Henry Gadsden back in 1975 dreamed of being able to sell a drug to people who had no immediately identifiable illness, or as Mike Adams writes, “They needed a way to sell drugs to healthy people.” Statins were born and the financial windfall for Big Pharma quickly followed.
Drug companies claim that statins have been proven to lower cholesterol and help prevent heart disease and strokes, leading many health experts to insist that they be artificially added to public water supplies, but dangerous side-effects buried by drug companies conducting statin trials have now come to light, in addition to the fact that “for three quarters of those taking them, they offer little or no value.”
A new study published in the Cochrane Library, which reviews drug trials, examined data from 14 drugs trials involving 34,000 patients and found evidence of “short-term memory loss, depression and mood swings,” that had been deliberately underplayed by the drug companies funding the research. |
A study published earlier this year by the Guttmacher Institute provides a rare and up-to-date, if murky, picture of abortion worldwide. Globally, abortion rates have stagnated, yet a greater proportion of them are unsafe and most of them occur in the developing world.
It’s not great news.
While the world’s abortion laws can be carefully tracked and some have been liberalized, data about how many abortions take place, where, and why, are based on educated guesses, in part because of poor reporting systems. All of this has meant that there has not been as much progress on reducing unsafe abortion worldwide as we might have hoped. Continued lack of access to contraception is a huge factor in this, but there is another shadowy figure in the picture: Stigma.
Laws and policies create the framework of abortion access, but abortion stigma is the squishy social filler that has as much, if not more, power to prevent or compel an individual with regards to access to safe services. Abortion stigma worldwide has remained largely undocumented and unaddressed for years. That is changing. A handful of women’s rights and research groups are embarking on what is conceivably the next frontier of global safe abortion efforts – tracking, documenting and studying abortion stigma around the world.
This work entails close measurement of stigma’s manifestation at multiple levels: individual, community, facility, legal, and institutional. Notoriously difficult to define, abortion stigma largely stems from society’s attitudes toward women’s sexuality, and beliefs about what constitutes a “good” woman, mother, and wife. If you terminate a pregnancy, you aren’t what we think women should be: kind, motherly, conceding. The choice is often viewed as flippant, selfish, and unfeminine. It can function to prevent a woman from seeking care, or punish her for doing so.
The hope is that by pinning it down and dissecting it – looking at why and how abortion is stigmatized – we can blow the cover off of it, eventually etching away at its influence.
“Even if we don’t get rid of stigma all together, which we definitely won’t, we need to give women the space to have their own positive strength and motivation, and a resilience to stigma from others,” says Kelley Culwell, formerly Senior Advisor on Abortion for the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).
Last summer, IPPF convened a closed-door meeting with representatives from more than 20 health and rights groups around the world, to share current and planned work on abortion stigma. “I was surprised at the amount of interest in this issue – so many organizations wanted to be a part of it and some groups were doing some work that we had no idea of,” said Culwell, who helped organize the meeting. One month later, IPPF launched a three-year project that will focus on addressing abortion stigma in a number of reproductive health facilities around the world.
IPPF’s work at the facility level dovetails with the work of the rights group Ipas, who, for the past five years, has been documenting stigma at the community level. They are in the process of developing a “stigma scale” and a set of indicators that will allow them to track community attitudes in a systematic way, and are undertaking research in Ghana, Zambia, India, and Mexico. A study published last year showed that attitudes around abortion were startlingly similar in five countries around the world, almost regardless of the country’s abortion law.
Because abortion stigma is such a slippery concept, recent efforts are to study it in the most rigorous way possible.
We need more formative, empirical research to understand the roots, causes, manifestations, and consequences for women, providers, pharmacists. We need to better understand how stigma plays out,” says Leila Hessini, Director of Community Engagement and Mobilization at Ipas.
Ipas and others will undertake trends analysis and are pushing to public academic studies, steadily building up the body of research that other advocates and researchers can work from.
Bringing stigma into the light could have very practical and crucial applications for women worldwide. First, it enables providers, advocates, and policymakers to dole out better care to women – designing policies and programs that better take into account the personal and social pressures they deal with. Second, reducing stigma could have policy impact. While findings show that stigma exists regardless of how restrictive abortion laws are, it in turn serves as an incubator for restrictive policies. “The stigma around abortion is what keeps governments in those countries from really aggressively trying to decrease unsafe abortion,” says Culwell.
Yet perhaps the most essential fact that has been uncovered about abortion stigma so far is the role that we all play in it.
“Sigma is like a weather system that we’re all a part of. We may be resistant to that system, thinking ‘I’m not going to accept the idea that a woman who has an abortion is wrong,’ but we’re not really changing it,” says Kate Cockrill, who directs research at the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) program at University of California, San Francisco.
ANSIRH is studying the individual experiences of stigma among women in the United States who have had abortions. So how do we study a weather system, which our very presences influences? Moreover, how do we change it? That is all part of the new frontier.
“It’s a very exciting time,” says Hessini. “It is great to see this energy and mobilization around stigma, more people engaged in research. It’s a frontier that we all need to focus on and address.”
While there are many avenues still to explore, the excavation already underway will almost certainly transform the issue of abortion worldwide in the coming decades. |
The Babe's first big box score
This article was published in the 1972 Baseball Research Journal.
It was just a note in a 1914 minor league box score, but as time went by, what an important historical item it was to become in the baseball records. On that day, September 5, 1914, Babe Ruth pitched for the Providence team of the International League end held his opponents (Toronto) to a single safety as he breezed to a 9-0 victory. Ruth, the pitcher, came to bat in the sixth inning and hit a homer with two aboard to put his team ahead.
This was the first homer ever hit in a regular game by the immortal Babe Ruth, and the box score deserves a place in every fan's scrapbook. Ruth hit only one minor league homer, and this was it. After advancing to the majors he hit 714 regular season fourbaggers, plus 15 in World Series play, and one in the first All-Star game in 1933. This does not include an unknown number of exhibition game homers hit in almost every sizeable city in the U.S.
Let's take a look at Ruth's record in batting and pitching in 1914, his only minor league experience. He played with Baltimore and Providence and performed as follows:
(Editor's note: See Babe Ruth's complete minor league record at Baseball-Reference.com.)
Note his strange distribution of extra-base hits, including 10 triples. It must have been a great year for triples because teammate Guy Tutwiler of Providence set the league record with 29. Other interesting names in the box score include Ray Powell, later a star with the Boston Braves, and the Onslow brothers, Ed and Jack, who was the Babe's batterymate and later manager of the Chicago White Sox. Toronto's line-up included former NL home run king Timothy Jordan.
Here is the box score of that historic game, Ruth's one-hit shutout of Toronto, and his first, and his only minor league home run, September 5, 1914, in Toronto.
|E. Onslow, lb||5||1||7||1|
|J. Onslow, c||5||3||8||0|
E-O'Hara, Fabrique. R-Platte, Shean, Tutwiler, Powell, Bauman 2, J. Onslow, Ruth 2. 2B-Powell, 3B-Platte, J. Onslow. HR-Ruth, BB-Off Johnson 5, Ruth 3. SO-By Johnson 3, Ruth 7. HBP-By Johnson 1, DP-Fitzpatrick to Jordon. SB-Fabrique. LOB-Toronto 4, Providence 7. Time: 1:30.
Umpires-Nallin and Hart. |
along with other wild horses and burros during the US government funded Navajo roundups which the majority of Navajo people oppose.
Local tribal members have reported Navajo government rangers coming onto their property and confiscating virtually every horse, even from within their stalls and pens. Horse owners are said to have two days to claim or save their horses, but in many cases owners didn’t learn about the roundup until the very moment when rangers were storming their property. Both branded and unbranded horses captured in the Navajo roundup have reportedly been sold and shipped to slaughter without providing their owners a means to get them back.
According to an order by the NN government, livestock officials are to be responsible for maintaining accurate records of each equine including the description and identification, plus the purchase price, date, and location of the sale at the auction.
A group of Navajo foals were recently discovered at a local livestock yard, who had been captured this past week, range in ages from 2-5 months. They were taken away from their mothers who have reportedly been shipped to slaughter. These foals were rescued from the brink of death by rescue workers. There were originally 30 foals in this group, however 3 have since died. Several of the remaining 27 are now receiving continued veterinary medical care through a local animal clinic.
Wild for Life Foundation is partnering with a local shelter who will temporarily house the foals while we work on arrangements for their rescue, recovery and placement. Donations for feed and vet care during their stay at the shelter can be made to the shelter on line at
Please watch for updates on this story to learn about the ongoing rescue effort of these foals
- Listen to "The Great Horse Controversy" to hear the Navajo people as they speak out publicly against horse slaughter and BLM roundups http://www.nativeamericacalling.com/
Learn more about this cause at
Wild for Life Foundation |
Bradley, James (1693-1762), an English astronomer, discovered the aberration of starlight that provided the first direct proof that the earth revolves around the sun, and the nutation, or nodding motion, of the earth's axis.
Bradley received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Balliol College, Oxford. He was trained in observational astronomy by a clergyman uncle, a skilled amateur astronomer, who introduced him to famous astronomer Edmond Halley. In 1718, on Halley's recommendation, Bradley was elected to the Royal Society. After a short stint in the clergy, Bradley was appointed professor of astronomy at Oxford in 1721.
In 1729, Bradley announced to the Royal Society his discovery of the aberration of starlight, an apparent slight change in the positions of stars that results from the earth's annual motion. One story tells that he had drawn his conclusion following a sail on the Thames River, when he observed that the wind vane of the mast shifted position with the boat's varying motion, even though the wind's direction was constant. Thus, he reasoned that the apparent shift in the position of the star Gamma Draconis resulted from the motion of the earth in its orbit. This provided the first direct observational proof of Nicolaus Copernicus 's assertion that the earth revolves around the sun.
Additional star measurements over 20 years led Bradley to conclude that the changing direction of the moon's gravitational pull caused nutation, an uneven nodding motion of the earth's axis. He announced this finding in 1748.
In 1742, Bradley succeeded Halley as astronomer royal, the chief astronomer of England. In additional to an annual stipend, he received a grant of 1,000 pounds for instruments, including two quadrants, which allowed more precise measurements. One quadrant was first used in a series of observations in the early 1750's to determine the latitude of the Royal Greenwich Observatory. |
How To Shout On Digg Without Getting Shot Down
Tons of people have been using the Digg shout it feature lately. A shout is a message that can be sent between two or more users on Digg, making it a very powerful tool for getting many people to take notice of content, and potentially garnering lots of Diggs.
Some Digg users consider the shout out feature to be the most effective way to get a story on the Digg homepage. Others, however, feel that it’s nothing more than an easy way to spam others. I personally see it as a very effective feature. Here is how what you need to know to use the feature optimally.
First, grow your Digg user profile to 300 plus mutual friends. The more mutual friends you have the more people you can shout to. If you have fewer than 300 mutual friends the feature is still effective, but your chances of making the homepage decrease.
Before you start shouting, think about the importance of the story you are promoting. Some users will get irritated if you shout too often, which is why you need to use this feature only with your most important stories.
Once you submit a story or someone else submits a story that you want promoted, you need to think about the timing. Timing is very important when shouting because the quicker you get votes, the faster you are going to get to the homepage. I recommend shouting right after a story is submitted—and, more importantly, during working hours, because that is when people browse Digg.
The last step in the process is to start shouting. The easiest way to shout your friends is to shout to all of them at once. The problem with shouting to all your friends at once is that only 100 of them will receive the shout. Digg did this to help prevent spamming and gaming, which is why you need to shout 100 of your friends at a time. I usually shout my first 100 friends, then my second 100 friends, and then my last 100 friends.
If you have not tried the shout it feature I highly recommend doing so. Although some may see it as spam, Digg is the one who created this feature. Moderate use of the shout it feature should not be considered spamming. Yes, abusing it should be considered as spam, but if Digg did not want people to use the feature they would have never released it.
Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
(Some images used under license from Shutterstock.com.)
Kick off each Monday with the best news and ideas in social media. |
Squatter ‘palace’ shows Europe not coping with migrant crisis
A fresh surge of more than 50,000 migrants has landed in Italy since the beginning of the year — more already than in all of 2013. This inflow of poor and homeless people has severely taxed the country’s resources, in what observers say is a problem that should be addressed by the Europe
The New York Times
On a recent evening, two volunteer doctors and a handful of medical students moved gingerly around a dimly lit room, examining dozens of newly arrived migrants from the Horn of Africa. The medics treated blotchy arms, legs and feet — symptoms of scabies — lighting the infected areas with a smartphone app. Nearby, a pediatrician listened to the chests of newborns and toddlers.
The impromptu clinic was set up in an abandoned building on the outskirts of Rome, colloquially known as Salaam Palace, where hundreds of migrants have squatted for years. Europe’s quickening migration crisis has now filled the place to overflowing, with most new arrivals relegated to an underground parking garage, sleeping on soiled mattresses on the floor.
The overcrowding of Salaam Palace is a crisis within a larger, nationwide emergency set off by a fresh surge of more than 50,000 migrants to Italy since the beginning of the year — more already than in all of 2013. The inflow has severely taxed Italy’s resources, spawning miniature Salaam Palaces in cities across the country as asylum seekers are distributed to refugee centers, hotels and makeshift dormitories.
With summer here, the numbers are only expected to spike. The system is already creaking under the strain: A national news program reported this month that one group of migrants, recent arrivals at Italy’s heel in Puglia, had been bused to the capital and left abandoned and disoriented in a parking lot. Even in Rome, Salaam Palace is just one of several similar squats, though certainly the most famous, or infamous. Italy’s president called the building a national shame in a televised address in 2012.
Salaam Palace is so well known that migrants from hundreds of miles away make it their destination. The mayor of Rome visited last year and pledged help. Pope Francis has quietly sent his own “Almoner,” or alms giver, to put his social message into action, sending workers to unclog sewers and donating a prefabricated hut with showers.
But those who live here say each round of attention, and each wave of newcomers, merely underscores the persistence of all that is not working with Italy’s immigration policies, and those of Europe more generally.
This year, populist parties have gained ground across Europe by playing on fears of immigration, shifting the debate toward themes of economic competition and the social cost for a tradition-bound Continent that seems more inclined than ever to wall itself off from global forces, whether corporate competition, digital innovation or the movements of people.
None of that, however, has stemmed the tide of people breaching Europe’s defenses. This month, in one weekend alone, the Italian authorities recovered three bodies and rescued more than 5,400 people, most crossing the Mediterranean from Libya in overcrowded, rickety boats run by people smugglers.
“They know about Salaam, this place is known in Africa, and before they even leave Libya they think about coming here,” said Bahar Abdalla, from Sudan, a longtime resident. “We won’t send anyone away. But we’re worried. This can’t continue.”
Few migrants voluntarily ask for asylum in Italy, but rather hope to continue to northern Europe, making Salaam Palace a way station for some, and a permanent home for others forced to remain in the country as a result of the European Union’s so-called Dublin regulation. Intended to discourage multiple asylum claims, the rule calls for asylum seekers to request refugee status in the first member state they enter.
Human-rights workers say the rule does not provide efficient or effective protection for the migrants, and puts a disproportionate burden on the European countries that border the Mediterranean.
Last October, after several hundred migrants died in an accident off the island of Lampedusa, the southernmost Italian point in the Mediterranean, the European Union stepped up naval patrols, both to control the flow of migrants and to assist vessels in distress. Critics say the patrols have only increased the incentives for migrants to risk the dangerous passage. More and more keep coming.
“Now they arrive still covered in sea salt,” said Donatella D’Angelo, a doctor with the volunteer group Cittadini del Mondo, or Citizens of the World, which has run the weekly medical clinic at Salaam Palace for eight years. “In the past at least they’d get fed and cleaned in reception centers on Lampedusa.”
“This crisis has been dumped onto the occupied centers, rather than being handled at a national and European level, on the part of those who have the power to actually do something,” she said.
Despairing of waiting for help from the government and local authorities, D’Angelo recently made a public appeal for soap, towels, sheets, clothing and pharmaceuticals. Many charities and institutions responded, she said, including an elementary school that took up a collection of toothbrushes and toothpaste.
Rome, like other cities still feeling the strains of Europe’s long economic crisis, has struggled to provide assistance, and much of the care for those here rests with volunteers.
There is some evidence that the recent influx has caused the Italian authorities to take note. The health authorities met with various groups in recent weeks to discuss the situation. Officials have pledged to refurbish the medical clinic and build a deposit for donated items. The International Committee of the Red Cross set up an aid van, and one nonprofit organization has promised to clean up the garage and donate camp beds.
Mayor Ignazio Marino of Rome visited Salaam Palace last September with a delegation from City Hall and also promised help. But for those who have lived in Salaam Palace for years, the assurances of official assistance have little coinage.
“Marino came, he spoke with us, but in the end it’s as if he hadn’t come, nothing has changed, it’s just getting worse,” said Ali, a resident of Salaam Palace who declined to give his last name. The residents have protested countless times for help, to no avail, he said. “Governments have come and gone but nothing has happened, just a lot of talk and we’re still in the same boat, waiting.”
Mayor Marino sees the problem as extending beyond Rome. Europe as a whole “has to offer opportunities to people, not just beds, but new opportunities for their lives,” he said in a telephone interview earlier this year. He called for a strategic plan for refugees.
“This is a challenge that has to be faced at the European Union level,” he said. |
By Peter Feaver
Does the Olympic decision tell us much about Obama foreign policy?
I think Barack Obama's critics will face an irresistible temptation to Blame it On Rio from here on out and that would be unfair. The Olympic setback is hardly the defining moment of President Obama's foreign policy. But it is a window through which we can see some things a bit more clearly now than perhaps we saw before. With apologies to Fred Barnes, who beat me to the punch on some of these, here would be my quick hit list:
- The decision shows the limits of soft power and those limits are greater than even soft power skeptics realized. The failure of Obama to get substantial soft-power payoff on such crucial issues as NATO reinforcements in Afghanistan, Gitmo detainees, or Saudi help on the Israel-Palestinian Authority peace process is a setback for the most irrationally exuberant soft power enthusiasts, perhaps. But those are actually "least likely" cases for the soft-power thesis. They involve very serious matters of high politics on which there are deep and understandable conflicts of interest. The selection of the Olympic site, on the other hand, is a "most likely" case for soft power influence: low politics, no core conflict of interest (except for the handful of countries competing for host city status), and a secret-ballot protection that would allow delegates to vote their hearts and not their heads. Moreover, President Obama expended more soft-power effort on this issue than any previous president ever did. To not only lose but lose in a much-worse-than-expected fashion is a remarkable result that, quite frankly, should surprise even soft power skeptics. There is a great academic paper in this decision and I look forward to reading it.
- The decision shows the extraordinary influence of the Chicago three -- Rahm Emmanuel, David Axelrod, and Valerie Jarrett -- on matters that cross over into foreign policy. A favorite DC parlor game is trying to figure out how real decisionmaking on foreign and national security policy is done in the Obama administration. There have been some fairly fanciful depictions (I can't find the link but fellow FP blogger Daniel Drezner takes apart one of the most egregious examples here) and few well-sourced players of this parlor game buy those depictions. The Olympics gambit shows, it would appear, that the Big Three close-knit cluster of advisors has extraordinary influence in ways somewhat less favorable to the Obama team. As the inevitable tic-tocs get written, it will be interesting to see whether the team loses a bit of its close-knittedness and is replaced by more of the finger-pointing on which beltway journalism thrives.
- The optics of the trip, which included a quick meeting with Gen. Stanley McChrystal, are very unfortunate for Obama-era civil-military relations: 25 hours for a failed Olympic bid vs. 25 minutes for your battlefield commander in the good and necessary war in Afghanistan. Such optics are somewhat unfair but they inevitably frame the way the "deeper meaning" of dramatic episodes get interpreted (case in point: what comes to your mind when you hear the words "My Pet Goat"?). Because President Obama already has a slow-motion civil-military crisis-in-the-making due to the way his team is handling the Afghanistan strategy review, he could ill afford the images that emerged.
- Setbacks (or gaffes) that reinforce an emerging critical frame are more consequential than ones that cut against that frame and, unfortunately for President Obama, this episode fits the former not the latter. Consider the following hypothetical: Which would have been more damaging for President Bush, wasting a primetime address with a long, boring, detail-laden Dukakis/Gore/Kerry-like speech that fell flat with the audience or mangling some talking point about a world leader? The mangled talking point, of course, because that would serve to confirm the caricature whereas the former would reinforce an image no critic really had. Reinforcing setbacks become punchlines; contradicting setbacks do not. Unfortunately for President Obama, the emerging caricature of him is that he is a self-regarding, all-international-politics-is-personal-politics celebrity who doesn't "get" the real world. I don't think that is an entirely fair caricature of him (are any caricatures ever fair?), but the Copenhagen Caper reinforces that frame.
Bottom line: this was not a good moment for President Obama's foreign policy. Let's not exaggerate its importance but let's also not miss what it does tell us about important matters.
OLIVIER MORIN/AFP/Getty Images |
House votes to increase Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area and add protection for Middle Fork
March 18, 2010
NEW — 2:00 p.m. March 18, 2010
The U.S. House of Representatives has passed legislation to increase federally-protected land in and around the Alpine Lakes Wilderness area, including the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River.
The bill has already passed committee in the Senate. The next step towards passage is a full vote by that body.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., co-sponsored the bill, which would increase the Alpine Lakes Wilderness area and designate the Pratt and Middle Fork Snoqualmie Rivers as Wild and Scenic Rivers.
The bill was simultaneously submitted in the U.S. House by Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Auburn, and several co-sponsors.
“When I was the (King County) Sheriff, this was an area where stolen cars and meth labs existed; it was a garbage dump. Now we’ve cleaned it up, and it’s a beautiful and pristine area,” Reichert said in a statement.
Much of the area’s cleanup was spearheaded by local outdoor recreation activists, such as North Bend-based Friends of the Trail.
The bill proposes adding over 22,000 acres to the Alpine Lakes Wilderness.
The addition would include important lower-elevation lands and watersheds.
Congress designated the wilderness area in 1976. It is one of the closest blocks of wild forests to an urban center in the country and provides many recreational opportunities.
Designating the Pratt and Middle Fork Snoqualmie Rivers as Wild and Scenic Rivers would permanently protect their free-flowing character, water quality and current natural value. |
Are the Kurds mentally divorced from Turkey?
By EMRE USLU
The Uludere incident once again raises questions about the state’s heavy-handed treatment of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), as critics wonder if it could lead to further similar incidents and cause the psychological separation of the Kurds from the state and from the west of Turkey.
Indeed, it is true that some Kurds are already mentally divorced from the state. They no longer consider the government their own government, military their own military or police their own police. It is also true that an incident like Uludere deepens this feeling of disengagement.
However, it is wrong to argue that the incident is in itself the reason why Kurds are increasingly disengaged from society. Rather, this is the fault of the political decision-making process. If the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) had responded immediately following the incident with an apology and a promise to initiate a transparent investigation into the incident we might have seen a re-engagement of the Kurds with the system. I disagree with the majority of intellectuals destined to criticize any security policies regarding the PKK’s terror campaign and putting pressure on the government to end military operations. Security policies per se are not the reason for this mental divorce. Even in the 1990s the sometimes forceful handling of Kurds by security institutions was leading to such mental disengagement.
Thus criticism of politicians in general, and following Uludere criticism of the AK Party’s attitude in particular, is right. But criticizing security measures toward the PKK makes no sense at all.
If we are really going to talk about the mental disengagement of Kurdish society from Turkey as a whole we should mention the PKK’s campaign to help widen this gap. We should examine PKK policies intending to spark conflict, even a civil war, between the two. We should talk about the PKK’s desire to bring about popular revolution by a campaign of murder. We should talk about the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) network, which has been established to oversee this Kurdish-Turkish divorce.
Given a group would not secede from a state or sheltering society unless guided by a working political network and leading elites promoting and supporting such a move, we first need to talk about this network and these elites, if we really care about the psychological distance between Turkey and the Kurds.
By ignoring the very existence of the PKK, its strategies and networks, its aim to create discord and disengagement between the two societies, by pointing the finger at security measures employed against the PKK for such a schism, we discover the deep cynicism of some apparent liberals about this issue.
Do intellectuals not realize that the very existence of the PKK is an obstacle to unity? To be honest, some of them don’t even seem to know that back in 1978 the PKK named Turkey its colonizer, occupying Kurdish territory. Some of these intellectuals may not be aware of the PKK’s armed propaganda strategy, formulated and implemented to create distance between the Kurds and the rest of Turkey. Some of these intellectuals may not know that the KCK has established schools to indoctrinate Kurds with the notion that this state is not their state.
Some intellectuals are sincere in raising concerns about this mental disengagement, but they need to be reminded that this distancing is inextricably bound up with PKK strategies to forge such disengagement. They must start thinking about how to end these strategies.
May 27, 2012 |
Oh deer is right!
An estimated 50,000 deer-car collisions occur annually in Georgia. Our Georgia insurance agency compiled tips on how to stay safe and looked into why the fall is such a dangerous time for wildlife accidents. The answers to avoid an accident begin with understanding the reasons the risks are increased.
Why Do Deer-Car Collisions Increase In The Fall?
Let’s keep it simple. Here are the top three reasons traffic accidents with deer increase in the fall.
- Deer Mating Season – Between October and December deer are searching for a mate. Male deer go into a rut and begin to actively search. The increased activity and movement result in a larger number of roadway and highway encounters. Those male deers have only one thing on their mind and they aren’t thinking about highways.
- Time Change – Deer are most active during dawn and dusk hours of the day. Daylight Savings means we “fall back” and will experience shorter days and longer nights. Most work commuters are driving during higher risk hours and need to be additionally aware.
- Human Development – Naturally as population increases and rural areas continue to be developed the deer population is forced to travel to find resources. The deer travel to new areas in search of food and water, and this added mobility puts them at higher risk of ending up in a roadway or highway.
Number Of Collisions Increase – Are You Covered?
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there are about 1 million car accidents with deer each year that kill 200 Americans, cause more than 10,000 personal injuries, and result in $1 billion in vehicle damage. It’s important to know if you’re covered with your car insurance?
Deer accidents are covered as a part of your comprehensive car insurance coverage. An independent insurance agent can help you understand if you have the needed coverage and the proper amount to protect you and your family. With out comprehensive auto insurance coverage the cost of collision with a deer is on you, as well as the potential of a tow, or any additional damages caused.
Tips To Stay Safe On The Roads
The best response is to take your foot off the gas to minimize damage and simply coast. Try to not slam on your breaks, because the risks are greater of being rear ended by other drivers on the roads.
- Don’t Swerve – By swerving last minute to avoid hitting a deer you decrease the chances of hitting the deer minimally but drastically increase the chances you hit other traffic, a street light, a mailbox or drive off the road. You put yourself and others more at risk by swerving.
- Deer Travel In Herds – If you see one deer, stay alert because many could follow. The wildlife is unpredictable and the deer could easily choose to remain calm or spook others to run. At the first sight of deer, proceed with caution.
- Be Alert During High Times – We shared why the Fall experiences peak conditions for car-deer collisions. Understand the highest risk season is upon us and be vigilant as a driver especially during dawn and dusk hours.
How Will A Collision Effect Your Auto Insurance
In many circumstances a comprehensive auto insurance claim may not impact your car insurance premiums. This isn’t always true and varies from carrier to carrier. To understand your policy better, call one of our agents who can request your policy and guide you through understanding your coverage needs.
Think how you would respond if a deer were to hit your car on your drive home? Do you know you are protected? How much coverage do you have? If you don’t know your insurance agent’s name or if you are covered for these circumstances you may consider shopping your car insurance for a agency more invested in you and your protection. To find the best car insurance for you find an independent insurance agent you can trust and delivers good insurance advice. We build our agency on personal relationships and personalized coverage and would love to get to know you. |
There is no way to prevent gallbladder or bile duct cancers. However, you can lower your risk of gallbladder cancer by maintaining a healthy weight and avoiding tobacco.
Preventing and treating liver fluke infections may help to reduce the risk of bile duct cancer. To do this,
Cook or freeze freshwater fish from Asia before eating it.
Purchase shellfish only from reputable stores.
Take medication as prescribed if you are diagnosed with a liver fluke infection.
Preventing hepatitis may also reduce the risk of bile duct cancer. To do this
Practice safer sex by using condoms.
Do not inject illegal drugs. If you do, never share needles with anyone.
Ask your doctor about getting vaccines against hepatitis A and B. There is no vaccine against other forms of hepatitis.
If you have been exposed to someone with hepatitis A or B, talk to your doctor about getting the vaccine or an immunoglobulin shot as soon as possible.
If you have an inflammatory bowel disease, such as ulcerative colitis, you have an increased risk of gallbladder and bile duct cancers. Your doctor may evaluate you for these cancers during routine exams. |
by Brett White
An excerpt from May's issue of Empire Magazine is making the rounds today, most likely because it contains the most comprehensive take on J.J. Abrams' lost Superman film from the man himself. Comic Book Movie states that the treatment was delivered to Warner Bros. in 2002, when the most impressive items on J.J. Abrams' resume were "Felicity" and "Alias." The project, called "Superman Flyby," contained a more psychological take on the hero.
"The thing that I tried to emphasize in the story was that if the Kents found this boy, Kal-El, who had the power that he did, he would have most likely killed them both in short order. And the idea that these parents would see – if they were lucky to survive long enough – that they had to immediately begin teaching this kid to limit himself and to not be so fast, not be so strong, not be so powerful."
Check out the rest of Abrams' pitch, as well as some concept art, below.
“The result of that, psychologically, would be fear of oneself, self-doubt and being ashamed of what you were capable of. Extrapolating that to adulthood became a fascinating psychological profile of someone who was not pretending to be Clark Kent, but who was Clark Kent. Who had become that kind of a character who is not able or willing to accept who he was and what his destiny was.
“The idea in the movie was that he became Superman because he realized he had to finally own his strength and what he’d always been. I don’t know if that’s what Zack and Chris [Nolan] are doing [in "Man of Steel"], but it looks like that’s part of the idea and I could not be more thrilled to see that movie. That to me was always the way to go.”
Here's the concept art for "Superman Flyby."
Superman's red shorts just can't catch a break.
Inklings of "Flyby" have indeed popped up in the "Man of Steel" trailers, which show a more grounded and humbled Superman. Abrams also envisioned Krypton torn apart by a civil war and a new villain named Ty-Zor giving Superman some Earthbound trouble. Warner Bros. would pass on the treatment, and Abrams would go on to rejuvenate the "Mission Impossible" and "Star Trek" franchises. Now Abrams is adding the "Star Wars" franchise to his resume, so he's doing just fine.
This story echoes that of Joss Whedon's failed "Wonder Woman" film, in that Warner Bros. passed on treatments from television creators who would go on to become two of the most successful directors of the new millennium. Oh well, Warner Bros., what can you do?
What do you think of "Superman Flyby"? Let us know in the comments or hit us up on Twitter! |
|Attack on the Endar Spire|
- "We lost the ship, and a lot of good people. And for what?"
- ―Carth Onasi
The Attack on the Endar Spire was an event that took place during the Jedi Civil War, in 3956 BBY. Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Malak set up an ambush for the young Jedi Padawan Bastila Shan, whose talents with battle meditation had been crucial to the Galactic Republic’s effort against the Sith Empire. Malak successfully ambushed the Hammerhead-class cruiser Endar Spire above the planet of Taris by using his flagship, Leviathan, to pull it out of hyperspace and attack it. Meanwhile, Darth Bandon, Malak's apprentice, led a boarding party of Sith troopers and Dark Jedi onto the Endar Spire.
Malak's former Master, the amnesiac ex-Sith Lord Revan, was serving aboard the Endar Spire, believing himself to be nothing more than a Republic soldier. Also on board were Republic soldiers Trask Ulgo and Carth Onasi, in addition to Revan and Shan. The Sith troopers, intent on capturing Shan alive for Malak, attacked the various military personnel on board. An evacuation order was called by the Republic, and the soldiers on board the Endar Spire attempted to make their way to the escape pods. While doing so, Revan and Ulgo encountered Darth Bandon. Ulgo sacrificed himself to give Revan time to escape the encounter, and Revan, eventually reaching Onasi and the final escape pod, fled from the ship with the others who had reached the pods. Shortly after, the Sith destroyed the Endar Spire.
- "We've been ambushed by a Sith battle fleet! The Endar Spire is under attack! Hurry up—we don't have much time!"
- ―Trask Ulgo
During the Jedi Civil War, when the Galactic Republic came under attack from the Sith Empire, the Republic Hammerhead-class cruiser Endar Spire was assigned to transport former Sith Lord, the amnesiac Revan, around the galaxy. This was in an attempt to trigger the return of Revan's memories of the Star Forge, the superweapon used by the Sith Empire. Darth Malak, Dark Lord of the Sith, aimed to pull the Endar Spire out of hyperspace with his flagship, Leviathan, and attack it with his forces.
Revan, also on board, had been enlisted as a soldier for the Republic, and assigned to the Endar Spire. Republic ensign Trask Ulgo explained the situation to Revan, who had no recollection of his past life, instructing Revan to follow him to the bridge.
- "This is Carth Onasi—the Sith are threatening to overrun our position! We can't hold out long against their firepower! All hands to the bridge!"
- ―Carth Onasi
When the Leviathan carried out Malak's plan, the Sith fleet attacked. Darth Bandon, Malak's apprentice, led a boarding party of multiple Dark Jedi and Sith troopers aboard the Endar Spire, in an attempt to capture Shan alive so that Malak could turn her to the dark side of the Force. Were Shan to turn to the dark side, she would willingly use her talent with Jedi battle meditation for the benefit of the Sith Empire and help coordinate Sith ships against those of the Republic in combat. Ulgo and Revan, meanwhile, came under attack from Sith troopers as they fought their way towards the bridge. The Sith fleet, not wishing to kill Shan, did not direct firepower that would destroy the Endar Spire.
Arriving on the bridge, Revan and Ulgo found several Republic soldiers fending off a Sith squad. Despite their efforts, the Sith cut down the Republic soldiers before Revan and Ulgo could reach them. A group of Sith soldiers caught up to the pair and attacked them. Fending them off, they knew Shan would be attempting to flee in an escape pod. Realizing that with Shan gone the Sith would make no hesitation to destroy the Endar Spire, they headed for the escape pods in the starboard section of the ship. As they left the bridge, however, the two were ambushed by Malak's apprentice Darth Bandon.
In order to save Revan, Ulgo instructed him to flee for the escape pods, while he held off Bandon. Revan fled, and having received word from Onasi that Shan had departed in one of the pods, made his way to the bay where the escape capsules were situated. Met by Onasi, Revan was informed by the commander that all the other capsules had been jettisoned, and that the last one was for them. Revan and Onasi boarded the pod, and fled to the planet's surface. With Shan having escaped the ship, the Sith fleet destroyed the Endar Spire.
- "I've got a feeling that won't be our last battle with the Sith."
- ―Trask Ulgo
With Shan, Onasi, Revan and other Republic soldiers having fled to the surface of Taris, the Sith pursued them. In order to stop any of the fugitives from escaping, the Sith used their fleet to blockade the planet. Deploying troops to the surface, they searched for the escape pods and those who had occupied them. Revan and Onasi landed safely and used an apartment in the Upper City of Taris as their base of operations to search for Shan, the former passenger on the Endar Spire. Shan had been captured by a Swoop gang known as the Black Vulkars, who offered the Jedi Knight as the prize for the Tarisian Season Opener swoop race. She was later rescued by Revan and they escaped Taris just before it's bombardment by Malak.
At some point after the bombing the Endar Spire crashed on Taris. The ship was visited by many generations of Tarisian survivors, and by the time of the Great Galactic War it had become a pirate refuge.
Behind the scenesEdit
The Attack on the Endar Spire was the first level featured in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. The attack is a plot device that formally introduces the characters of Trask Ulgo, Revan, Darth Malak, Darth Bandon and Carth Onasi. It features tutorial points as to the general gameplay in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. It also introduces the conflict featured throughout the game. For the plot to continue, the escape pods must be reached by the player.
Unlike in later locations in the game, there is very little that the player can do to change the course of the game through gameplay options. Furthermore, nothing the player says or does can influence the light or dark sides of the Force, and gain the player light or dark side points. The sole role play options open to the player in this level involve choosing what to say and how to kill the enemies featured on the Endar Spire.
Although the ship is completely destroyed in the cut scene of Knights of the Old Republic a largely intact crash site can be found in Old Republic game released in 2011 seemingly invalidating the previous game
- Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (First appearance)
- Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords (Mentioned only)
- Star Wars: The Old Republic (Mentioned only)
- Knight Errant (Indirect mention only)
- Knights of the Old Republic Campaign Guide (Mentioned only)
- Star Wars: The Old Republic Encyclopedia
Notes and referencesEdit
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 1.20 1.21 1.22 1.23 1.24 1.25 1.26 1.27 1.28 1.29 1.30 1.31 1.32 1.33 1.34 1.35 1.36 Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
- ↑ The New Essential Chronology
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Knights of the Old Republic Campaign Guide
- ↑ Star Wars: The Old Republic
- ↑ Knight Errant novel |
Apps created using Andromo contain a 'home' screen called the Dashboard containing icons for one or more activities that users can open.
Activites come in a variety of types and are composed of one or more screens that users can navigate through.
The first step is to choose the type of activity you want to add based on the type of information you would like to show. More activity types will be added in the future, but at present you can choose from the following activity types by clicking the 'Add an Activity' button and selecting the desired activity type from the list. These settings can be found on the 'Activities' tab while editing your project:
The About activity is used to display information about yourself, your company and/or your app. You can show information such as your name, title, description, and links to various sites where your users can find out more. For more information, see About Activity.
The Audio Activity allows you to play audio files within your Andromo application. For more information, see Audio Player Activity.
The Contact Activity is designed to make it easy for users of your app to get in touch with you. You can decide what contact details to make available such as you Phone, Email, Website and Address - each being interactive! For more information, see Contact Activity.
The Custom Page activity allows you to easily create stylish pages with text, graphics, tables and forms. It's perfect for creating pages like 'About Us', 'Biography', 'Contact Information' etc. For more information, see Custom Activity.
The Email activity is used to initiate an email message using the end user's chosen email client with a specific email address, and optional subject and text. This allows users to initiate an email with a single click. For more information, see Email Activity.
The Facebook activity lets you easily embed a mobile-friendly Facebook page into your app. For more information, see Facebook Activity.
The Flickr Image Gallery Activity allows you to take your photos from flickr and display them in your Android application. For information on creating flickr feed URLs please see the Flickr Services Documentation and the Flickr Photo Feeds knowledge base article. The preferred feed format is rss_200. For more information, see Flickr Activity.
The Google Play activity is used to create an icon on the dashboard that points to an application, or list of applications on Google Play (previously known as the Android Market). This allows you to do things such as provide easy access to a paid version of your app, or show other apps you've created. For more information, see Google Play Activity.
The HTML Archive Activity allows you to display web content (HTML files) by storing HTML files within the application so it can be read directly from the device. This allows you to provide previously created content to your users that can be as simple as a single HTML file, or a complex directory structure of files and related image resources. Once you've composed what you want to show, simply zip the content using your favorite zip utility and upload the resulting file. For more information, see HTML Archive Activity
The Map Activity lets you display your locations on an interactive map. Your users can then see your address, nearby locations, and even get directions and navigation to your business. For more information, see Map Activity.
The PDF activity is used to quickly and easily embed a PDF document into your Android application. Your PDF document will be open external to your app in the Adobe Reader app, or other installed reader. If the user does not have the Adobe Reader app, or something similar installed, they will be prompted to install the app via the Google Play app store. For more information, see PDF Activity.
The Phone activity is used to display the phone dialer (if available) filled in with a specific telephone number. This allows users to contact you with a single click. For more information, see Phone Activity.
The Photo Gallery Activity is used to add a photo gallery to your app. For more information, see Photo Gallery Activity.
The Podcast Activity displays an iTunes Podcast RSS 2.0 feed in your app. It supports both streaming over the network and downloading episodes for playback offline. For more information, see Podcast Activity.
The RSS Feed activity allows you to take an existing web feed from the web and display it in your application, making it easy for mobile users to browse and read. Most websites and blogs publish feeds that you can use, including sites like Twitter, YouTube, Blogger etc. For more information, see RSS Feed Activity.
The Radio activity allows you to play streaming audio from internet radio stations in your application. It's similar to the Audio activity, with additional support for SHOUTcast and Icecast streaming audio. For more information, see Radio Activity.
The Twitter Activity allows you to display one of three different twitter timelines. You can choose to: display a specific twitter user's timeline, a timeline from a list, or a timeline based on a search of the most recent public tweets. For more information, see Twitter Activity.
The Website activity is used to display the contents of a website in your application. It is one of the simplest activities, yet it's ability to display web content makes it very powerful. All you need is the URL of a website, and the user will be able to navigate to it simply by pressing its icon on your dashboard. For more information, see Website Activity.
The YouTube Activity allows you to take video content from YouTube and display it in your Android application. For information on creating YouTube Feed URLs please see the YouTube Video Feeds knowledge base article. For more information, see YouTube Activity.
In order for your application to look its best, you'll probably want at least 4 or more activities. You can add as many as you want and order them however you please. For more information on the activity order, see How to change the order of the icons on the dashboard. |
Virtualization is becoming a mainstream technology for most large businesses, as it offers profound changes to the way data centers perform. It offers reduced costs, easier backups, better testing and easier migration to cloud computing. But how can open-source make an already well-oiled technology perform even better?
When it comes to software, open-source means reliability, security, and faster deployment time. This is very much true with server virtualization as well.
Open-source virtualization means anyone can access source code and modify it. In a closed-source solution, you’d usually have to wait for the vendor to provide a solution to whatever problem you’re encountering. Open-source eliminates that hassle.
There are some big names to support open-source virtualization, so support is a non-issue. Companies like KVM offer support for the software running in virtual machines (VMs) and the hardware on which the VMs are installed. Just because it’s open-source, it doesn’t mean that it’s a free-for-all. Some open-source solutions come with the caveat that you have to figure it out, as no one in particular owns them, but really, it’s a common misconception that is not exclusive to the be-all of open-source.
New technologies are popping up everywhere when it comes to managing the data center. New applications, workloads and service models are all being driven from the data center down to the end-user. As more organizations digitize their environments, the push for scalable and efficient data center services will only continue to grow. Open-source simply provides another means to this.
Data infrastructure remains one of the top cost centers at most businesses, and it may be an expense that few will be able to afford much longer. Open-source offers a low-cost, scalable alternative to the current state of affairs.
Making sure your data center is efficient when it comes to power is key, too. Companies like Server Technology (News - Alert) work alongside their customers on the support and management of the cabinet power distribution market for maximum uptime and efficiency.
Its selection of Sentry PDUs is performance tested for reliability and accuracy and is adaptable, enabling quick delivery of solutions that meet customer-specific requirements.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson |
Summary: Microsoft helps confirm what publications have been claiming about Skype
FIRST came speculations, then came supporting source code, then came proof from news sites, and now comes confirmation from Microsoft itself.
“Microsoft first denied it, then people became sceptical (Microsoft has a history of lying)”One Linux/BSD site called it “one more reason not to use Skype”. To quote: “Even though Skype for Linux is unlike most applications available on any Linux installation, that is, it is a proprietary application, it has long been a popular chat and VoIP application for many users, not for free software purists, but for those that do not care about the core philosophies of free software.
“If you belong to that group, that is, if any of the core principles of free software does not come into play in your decision to use or not use a software, the latest news about Skype should make you think twice about using it.
“In a recent article published in the The Washington Post, Craig Timberg and Ellen Nakashima reports that “Skype … has expanded its cooperation with law enforcement authorities to make online chats and other user information available to police…””
The accusation that started all of this was the changes to Skype’s architecture. Gillett says that Skype made the changes “to provide the best possible product to our users.” He says that the company was already in the process of moving supernodes to the cloud long before they were acquired by Microsoft.
As for their cooperation with law enforcement, Gillett claims that their policy has not changed since 2005. They will accomodate law enforcement when it “follows appropriate procedures” and they “respond where legally required and technically feasible.”
The move to in-house hosting does not give Skype the ability to monitor or record your conversations. The in-house servers were only added help establish calls. The data that’s transferred during calls (audio and video) are only passed between the two Skype clients and never through their servers.
There are 3 admissions there. The first is that more inter-communication is being moved to Microsoft servers, just after Microsoft took over (it doesn’t matter when it was first planned). Microsoft also admits that it is giving authorities access to Skype communications. Thirdly, here is the key part:
The company addressed the claims from the Washington Post that said Skype was actively monitoring instant messages on Skype. Gillett does say that messages are stored on their servers temporarily if the message can’t get through to another user. The key word is temporarily as they are never hosted on their servers for that long. They will of course respond to legitimate law enforcement requests whenever possible in regards to instant messages.
They basically confirm that the reports are true and in all three cases (3 confirmations of speculations) they add some excuse to distract from the admission. Here is the post from Microsoft for those who want to swallow all the spin. Tim, my co-host, writes that:
If we also look towards the allegation of snooping – which has hit the mainstream press, we have to consider that if it is true, then its hardly a secret and people are going into Skype with full knowledge of the allegations towards it. If they choose to accept that caveat in return for speaking with their contacts, then fine, there is no issue – as long as they are aware of the implications of using.
For those who at least wish to know the facts about Skype privacy, all of this is relevant.
VoIP is gaining traction and since code is law, as Larry Lessig put it, we must ensure that some privacy in phone conversation is preserved. Cellular networks already compromised some of this privacy.
When it comes to E-mail, the NSA is getting copies of everything and encryption of E-mail is the exception rather than the norm. Using Hotmail Microsoft has been spying on people for advertisers, profiling users and non-users (who write to Hotmail users) by their identities. Hotmail is being killed now (as a brand) to further promote Skype surveillance:
Microsoft is overhauling its free webmail service, dropping the Hotmail brand it has used since acquiring the product in 1998, and adopting the name Outlook.com.
The revamped service will help sort messages as they arrive and allow users to make internet calls on Skype.
So as we noted before, Microsoft is to store copies of people's written communications and also phonecalls. Do you trust Microsoft? █ |
By Mike Wall
SPACE.com Senior Writerposted: 22 December 2010
02:06 pm ET
A puzzlingly regular waxing and waning of Earth's biodiversity may ultimately trace back to our solar system's bobbing path around the Milky Way, a new study suggests.
Every 60 million years or so, two things happen, roughly in synch: The solar system peeks its head to the north of the average plane of our galaxy's disk, and the richness of life on Earth dips noticeably.
Researchers had hypothesized that the former process drives the latter, via an increased exposure to high-energy subatomic particles called cosmic rays coming from intergalactic space. That radiation might be helping to kill off large swaths of the creatures on Earth, scientists say.
The new study lends credence to that idea, putting some hard numbers on possible radiation exposures for the first time. When the solar system pops its head out, radiation doses at the Earth's surface shoot up, perhaps by a factor of 24, researchers found.
"Even with the lowest assumption, this exposure provides a real stress on the biosphere periodically," said lead author Dimitra Atri of the University of Kansas, who presented the findings last week at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
Dangerous cosmic rays
Cosmic rays are primarily high-energy protons that are spawned by supernova shock waves and other dramatic events throughout the universe. They're constantly flooding Earth, hitting every square inch of our planet's upper atmosphere several times per second.
But cosmic rays don't make it all the way to the ground. Instead, they slam into various atoms in the atmosphere, generating a cascade of lower-energy particles, such as muons.
"It's kind of a particle shower," Atri told SPACE.com.
Thousands of muons pass through our bodies every minute. Though these particles can ionize molecules by knocking out spare electrons, potentially damaging DNA, humans and other lifeforms can deal with this normal, background radiation.
"Life has evolved with this kind of radiation dose," Atri said.
But what may be able to knock life for a loop, Atri added, are spikes in the radiation dose. Such massive increases could come from an occasional event, such as a nearby supernova explosion. Or they may result if Earth loses some of its protective shielding from time to time.
Peeking out from under the galactic shield
On the Milky Way's "northern" side, about 60 million light-years away, lies the huge Virgo Cluster of galaxies. The Virgo Cluster's powerful gravity tugs the Milky Way toward it at about 450,000 mph (720,000 kph). This mad rush creates a shock wave, which generates lots of high-energy cosmic rays on the north side of the galactic disk, researchers said.
Usually, the Milky Way's magnetic field shields the solar system from most of these potentially dangerous particles. But every 64 million years or so, our solar system pops up above the northern edge of our galaxy's disk, exposing Earth to more cosmic rays, researchers said.
This periodicity matches up well with a biodiversity pattern detected by other researchers in 2005: Over the last 542 million years, the diversity of life on Earth has fluctuated regularly, with the total number of species on the planet rising and falling every 62 million years.
In 2007, researchers Mikhail Medvedev and Adrian Melott, both of the University of Kansas —Melott is Atri's graduate advisor and a co-author on the current study —proposed that the synchronicity of these two cycles is no accident.
A surge in cosmic ray exposure slashes species richness, the theory goes; biodiversity recovers, only to be cut down by the next surge 60-odd million years later.
The new study puts some numbers on that conjecture for the first time.
Modeling radiation dose
Atri and Melott modeled the radiation dose Earth receives when the solar system bobs up above the Milky Way's disk. Simulating cosmic-ray particle showers is a complicated enterprise, so the team used supercomputers at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
After chewing through many hours of supercomputer time, Atri and Melott determined a range for the radiation dose received at Earth's surface during our planet's periodic vulnerable periods. At the lower bound, Earth would receive 88 percent more radiation than normal, or about 1.88 times the average dose.
The upper end is scary: 24.5 times the background dose.
"That is just huge," Atri said.
And even radiation doses nearer to the lower bound are likely substantial enough to affect biodiversity, he added. They could stress organisms and ecosystems, making them more vulnerable to other damaging events, such as volcanic eruptions and asteroid impacts.
"Even if it's not directly causing biodiversity to go down, such a dose produces a stress on the biosphere," Atri said.So what's in store for Earth in the near future? The solar system is on the upswing now, bobbing toward the northern edge of the galactic disk. But big increases in cosmic-ray exposure are probably still about 10 million years off, researchers have said. |
Implemented in 2010, Mexico City’s Ecobici bike-sharing system has grown from 90 stations and 11,000 members in its first year of operation to 271 stations and over 75,000 members today — covering new ground and reaching more residents. TheCityFix interviews Julie Clerc, Gisela Mendez, and Awen Southern — three cycling experts from Mexico who guide us through ins and outs of life on two wheels in Mexico City and beyond, and enthusiastically share their insight on the country’s cycling future.
1. What are some of the unique benefits of cycling as a form of transport in Mexico?
Awen: Bicycling in Mexico City is in many cases faster than using a car or even public transportation. The city is a gigantic, a sprawling city of 20 million inhabitants, yet most trips are no further than 7 kilometers (4.3 miles), or a 30 minute bicycle ride, and largely concentrated in the center of the city, where the land is flat, and public bicycles are available.
2. This February marked the third anniversary of the Ecobici bike-sharing system — the largest year-round bike-sharing system in North America. What’s next for bike-sharing in Mexico?
Awen: While the Secretariat of the Environment, which has been leading Mexico City’s Bicycle Mobility Strategy since 2007, has concentrated its efforts on improving the maintenance and quality of Ecobici service, the first months of 2013 brought a new focus on infrastructure development of the City’s main arteries.
Gisela: Cycling is not exclusive to Mexico City; every major city in Mexico is promoting cycling as a transport form, but no national policy, nor a local policy, currently exists that allocates public funds for it. The small bike-sharing system called @Bikla, in Guadalajara, is run by a private company formed by young activists, industrial engineers, and entrepreneurs. The system still runs privately without government support. Next for bike-sharing is the goal to establish the recognition required to scale up as a public policy with a budget attached to it.
3. Can you identify one big step and one small step cities can take to make cycling safer on Mexico’s streets?
Julie: Changing the transport culture in a way friendlier to both pedestrians and cyclists is one of the major goals, but one small step cities can take would be to provide the appropriate infrastructure for biking, such as the implementation of road space dedicated to cycling lanes.
Gisela: Cities need to talk to citizens and show that the urban space is built for all, with equity and safety in mind. The next frontier for the cycling movement in Mexico has to prove that a safer infrastructure needs to be designed and implemented. One big step would be to budget funds for cycling as a public institutionalized policy.
Awen: Mexico City is now developing a series of communication campaigns to raise awareness regarding road safety, including the OJO al Rebasar, Cuida al Ciclista (“Watch Out for Cyclists”) campaign, led by the Secretariat of the Environment, and La Calle es de Todos (“The Street Belongs to All”). However, no campaign will ever be effective if they are not supported by a concrete investment in bicycle infrastructure improvement and car-use regulations.
A bigger and necessary step to take would be to train bus drivers to provide them with a more holistic vision of urban mobility, in which transportation is not conceived as a fight of interests opposing different modes of transportation or technologies, but rather, as an integral system where intermodality is valued and prioritized to serve the changing and flexible needs of the community. EMBARQ Mexico is already taking a step in that direction by training all Metrobus drivers on road safety this year.
4. The 6th anniversary of Muevete en Bici, Mexico City’s Sunday closure of its main avenue to motor vehicles– was May 12th; in the last six years, has Mexico City’s cycling culture, or the public perception of cycling, evolved? If so, in what ways?
Awen: To my knowledge there is no study that has measured or analyzed the perception of cycling in Mexico City before and after the implementation of the Muévete en Bici initiative. However, a recent survey of Muévete en Bici participants revealed their largely positive perception of and support for urban cycling in Mexico. Muévete en Bici provides a sensorial experience of the city we want to live in. The bicycle is but one tool to articulate a vision of the city as an ecological system: a place where public health, social cohesion, economic activity and the balance between the natural and built environments are all intrinsically linked.
Gisela: The culture has evolved because cycling proved to be possible in the city. Most of all, children are learning that our city is bike-friendly, and that is the most valuable lesson our generation can give to the generations that follow.
5. Are there ways in which cycling could be better integrated with other forms of public transport? Where do you see potential?
Gisela: Cycling infrastructure has to be seen as feeder for public transit and not as competition for users. Our cities need to show that integration allows security in mixed modes for complete journeys. The same city has other cities within, people move differently and the strategies to meet those needs can be made through different integration approaches. Shifting our travel preferences can be possible only through flexibility, security and variety of choices for everyone.
Julie: The best way of supporting further transport integration would be to provide the infrastructure in metro, bus, and train stations to park a greater number of bikes — not simply two or three areas.
6. Is there an additional topic you would like to discuss?
Awen: The interest of Mexico City’s government for urban cycling in the past few years has opened new roads of collaboration between the public and private sectors and the civil society. In that process, new cycling associations have emerged, such as Mujeres en Bici, who organizes training classes for women within the city programs Muévete en Bici and BiciEntrénate. The award-winning Manual of the Urban Cyclist is also a joint product of Bicitekas and the Secretariat of the Environment. New independent movements are starting to emerged, such as the successful Paseo de Todos, a pacific critical mass organized by a group of citizens every first Thursday of the month, attracting between 1,000 and 2,500 riders to each event. Mexico City’s cycling culture is infused with multiplying groups and ramifications that are increasingly connected through national networks such as Bicired. The travelling exhibition Por mi ciudad en bicicleta, launched by several organizations in 2012, aimed precisely at connecting different cycling cultures across the country, while identifying local needs and favoring information sharing among cyclists organizations.
Mexico’s cycling culture is also reinforced by an increasingly technical civil society that actively participates in the shaping of the public debate and public policy, releasing strategic reports such as Hacia ciudades saludables y competitivas: Moviéndose por un aire limpio (“Towards Healthy and Competitive Cities: Moving for Clean Air”), submitted in June to President Enrique Peña Nieto by a collective of organizations including cyclists associations like Bicitekas and Fundación Tlaloc, and organizations such as El Poder del Consumidor, the Mexican Institute for Competitivity, and EMBARQ México, among others.
Awen Southern is a consultant in Urban Mobility Communications and an active member of the Americas Ciclovias Network. Based in Mexico City, she collaborates with the Pan-American Health Organization in partnership-building and city-to-city facilitation. Awen has worked with both government and civil organizations, including the Secretariat of the Environment in Mexico City and EMBARQ Mexico, to promote sustainable urban development and active transportation.
Gisela Mendez is an architect, specializing in an urban planning and the evaluation of urban policies. She has worked for local governments and helped to harness the power of cities to change everyday lives, especially through public participation and community design in the creative planning processes. She considers planning as the most important momentum for knowledge sharing among actors and key to affecting change. She joined EMBARQ Mexico last year to coordinate the National City Network.
Julie Clerc returned to EMBARQ Mexico as a junior analyst in urban public policies, after working as an intern on EMBARQ Mexico’s Guide for Sustainable Communities in Mexico. She is interested in questions of urban mobility and urban poverty in Latin America, specifically in Mexico. Everyday she commutes 18 kilometers (11 miles) by bike to go to work and loves it!
Thank you to Yasmin Khan for her assistance in facilitating this interview. |
A local green energy company has announced plans to extend its solar farm by another 56,000 panels – enough to power 3,500 homes in West Lindsey.
Freewatt hopes to grow its existing solar farm to 14MW by adding to the array it already has next to its headquarters in Stow.
The project will be constructed on 63 acres of land near Danes Farm and will represent an investment of more than £12 million.
The clean energy generated will amount to a carbon saving of 7,300 tonnes per year and power nearly one out of every ten homes in West Lindsey.
The company aims to enhance the ecology of the five fields pinpointed for the solar farm with the addition of landscaping and wild flower planting.
Sheep will also be used to graze the land after the panels have been installed.
All existing hedgerows will be retained, plus extra ones planted and the height allowed to grow to 2.5 metres to ensure they obscure any views of the solar farm – with panels only reaching 2.2 metres in height.
Freewatt plans to use local companies and workers for the construction of the project, likely to take around 14 weeks.
Plans will be lodged with West Lindsey District Council, and are due to be considered in the summer.
Freewatt has a growing reputation as a regional solar power installer. It has fitted solar power at the Epic Centre at Lincolnshire Showground, Pennells Garden Centre, schools, fire stations, recycling centres, farms and agricultural businesses across the county and beyond.
Freewatt CEO Julian Patrick said: “This is a considerable investment in the infrastructure of the county and will ensure the area continues to make great strides in providing green energy for the future.
“Freewatt is owned by locals, staffed by locals and still based in the area and we are fiercely proud of the work we are doing to provide the county with clean energy and a green economy.
“This project will be another important step towards making the county greener as well as providing valuable work for local companies. Over its life the project will bring millions of pounds of Whitehall payments into the county.” |
Paul Ryan, the perennial media darling and the Republican vice-presidential nominee in 2012, has released an anti-poverty plan that has been widely hailed by a group of conservative policy enthusiasts known as the reformicons. According to Ross Douthat, The New York Times's house reformicon, the plan represents new and exciting conservative thinking, reflecting the "growing contrast between the policy ferment on the Republican side of the aisle and the staleness and/or small-ball quality of the Democratic Party's 'what comes after Obama?' agenda."
The problem with this argument is that none of Ryan's ideas are new, and many of them are the antithesis of exciting.
Yes, the Ryan plan contains some ideas that are genuinely good. Its calls for major criminal justice reform are salutary — mass incarceration is fiscally wasteful as well as wasteful of human lives, and seeing an endorsement from a prominent Republican public official is reason for cautious optimism. It's easier to propose cuts to corporate welfare in white papers than in the congressional sausage-making process, but to do so is unobjectionable. And proposing reforms to local regulations such as licensing requirements are at least defensible in some cases. None of these ideas are new, but originality is overrated — there is the potential basis for agreement here.
The core social welfare proposals of Ryan's plan, however, fail both the originality and goodness tests. The plan does, at least, avoid the direct, savage cuts to discretionary spending that were a hallmark of Ryan's previous budgets. Ryan's proposal entails converting a great deal of federal anti-poverty spending into block grants to state governments, which would be free to experiment with those funds. There is, to put it mildly, nothing novel about this idea. Going back to conservative southern Democrats in the New Deal, conservatives have advocated giving states more discretion about how to use federal money.
But more to the point, in addition to being very old, the block grant idea is terrible. As the economist Max Sawicky notes, spending through block grants has the effect of creating disincentives for states to spend adequate money on poverty, while also undermining the political basis for maintaining the programs. In addition, giving the states discretion has tended to involve withholding spending from the "underserving" poor, who tend to be overwhelmingly people of color. The intrusive paternalism the Ryan plan encourages is also unattractive.
The notion that "let them eat states' rights" is a new and exciting idea is particularly perverse given some other recent developments. To the widespread applause of Republicans, a panel on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals read the Affordable Care Act as not providing subsidies to people purchasing health insurance on federally established exchanges. According to defenders of the decision, this was not a drafting mistake; they say Congress intended to only make the subsidies available on state-established exchanges, but were surprised by how few states went along.
As a reading of the ACA, this argument is absurd — clearly Congress anticipated that some states would not establish exchanges, which is why the federal backstop was created. Virtually nobody involved in creating the ACA believes that the law was designed to create federal exchanges that wouldn't work. It is fair to say, however, that some Democrats were surprised by how many states proved unwilling or unable to establish their own exchanges.
But consider the implications of this. The latest conservative legal argument against the ACA boils down to: "you screwed up — you thought the states actually wanted to provide people with health care!" And the Supreme Court re-writing the ACA in 2012 to make it easier for states to reject the Medicaid expansion has also been a catastrophe, with Republican statehouses inflicting easily avoidable pain and suffering on millions of people to prove their anti-Obama bona fides.
So — why is devolving anti-poverty policy to the states supposed to be a great idea again?
Indeed, the experience of the ACA is a compelling repudiation of the idea that giving states more discretion over social policy is a good idea — or that Republicans at the state level genuinely care about helping the poor and the needy. Many statehouses are opposed to federal anti-inequality measures in principle, and even less hostile ones have proved administratively inept. Anti-poverty policy in the U.S. needs more federal intervention, not less.
THE WEEK'S AUDIOPHILE PODCASTS: LISTEN SMARTER
- 43 TV shows to watch in 2014
- Here comes the Pentagon's newest space plane
- 3 horrific inaccuracies in Homeland's depiction of Islamabad
- How to be the most productive person in your office — and still get home by 5:30 p.m.
- The simple trick to making better decisions in every aspect of life
- Extreme haunted houses: Inside Halloween's most terrifying new trend
- The real story behind Deliver Us From Evil
- This week I learned the surprisingly dark origins of the Nobel Prize, and more
- Let us now praise Billy Joel
- 6 things the happiest families all have in common
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Malcolm Gladwell’s been wrong before, when he disagreed with Chris Anderson’s thesis in his book Free: The Future of a Radical Price. But this time, it’s a little stranger… this time I have to wonder what he’s thinking in his latest piece, “Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted,” where he discounts social networks, saying they cannot product the kind of passion necessary to drive social change because they really only affect weak ties issues.
the book that has done most to explain to the public how weak ties could spread the kind of political fever that Gladwell writes about is The Tipping Point, [yet] he seems to have committed himself to the idea that they don’t, that social networks are useless for spreading the ‘fever’ he was talking about, or for recruiting those who had caught the ‘fever’.
It isn’t that Gladwell has to tout the beauty of social networking, but it seems just a little odd for him to adopt a stance that is diametrically opposed to what he argued so effectively in The Tipping Point. He seems somewhat out of touch with some of the social change already wrought in the new digital economy of plenty.
Can social media change the world? It already has. Perhaps it remains to be seen what kind of sweeping political change it can effect — unless you count the election of President Obama — but social media is still a relatively young phenomenon, and it’s far to early to discount what can be made of its future. Gladwell errs in critiquing a hypothetical past, implying that Tweets from a Birmingham Jail wouldn’t have made a difference. I don’t agree, largely because of the glaring anachronism. Would letters from a prison cell today get as much attention as tweets from that same cell? You’ve got to match the medium to the right era in order to give it any kind of proper consideration.
Oh, and every time one of these articles comes up, someone makes the assumption that social media advocates think that an online friend is the same as a face-to-face one. For the record, that’s a straw man argument, and is a tactic Gladwell employs in this latest piece. For more than a decade, I’ve had friends that I’ve referred to as e-quaintances, and I’ve got no confusion about the level of relationship implied by the mere click of a button. This, you will find, is common among pretty much all social media advocates.
Deny Gladwell the hypothetical anachronism and the straw man in this particular article, and it falls flat. I think Social Media does have a tipping point. Skeptics might want to be on the lookout for Erik Qualman‘s soon-to-be-released book, Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business. |
Revision as of 13:55, 26 October 2008 by Ederchil
Events which occurred on 22 July.
- 1916 - Ralph "the Baby" Payton, one of the T.C.B.S., is killed in action.
- 1925 - J.R.R. Tolkien writes letter 8.
- 1928 – Orson Bean, who would voice Bilbo Baggins in Rankin/Bass' The Hobbit and The Return of the King, and Frodo in the latter, is born.
- 1955 - J.R.R. Tolkien writes letter 166.
- 1969 - James Arnold Taylor, who would voice several voices in Tolkien themed video games, is born.
- 1991 - German translator Margaret Carroux dies. |
Without viruses and other malware, Linux is typically much harder for the average user to mess up. But if you are setting up a GNOME desktop for someone who seems to do things like delete the window list, or for public use, then you should lock down the desktop.
Pessulus is a graphical lockdown editor for GNOME. Instead of finding and changing individual GNOME gconf settings, you can use Pessulus to easily access the most important settings for locking down GNOME.
Install Pessulus from the package pessulus (click the link to install), or by running the command below in your terminal:
sudo apt-get install pessulus
The simplest lock down setup to create is a web kiosk where the user can’t exit the browser. The only web browser that Pessulus supports is Epiphany, the official GNOME web browser.
Install Epiphany from the package epiphany-browser (click the link to install), or by running the command below in your terminal:
sudo apt-get install epiphany-browser
You should set up a second user account to lock down if you haven’t already. The second account will be restricted from using sudo by default, which will hide a lot of administrative utilities from the GNOME menu. Create a second account from System->Administration->Users and Groups. Click Unlock, and then Add User. Look under the User Privileges tab to restrict the new user as necessary.
After you’ve created the new user, log into the new account.
Launch Pessulus from System->Administration->Lockdown Editor. Select Epiphany Web Browser from the list of categories. Here you will find options such as disable quit, restricting browsing to chosen domains, and disabling editing the interface. I went ahead and enabled all the restrictions, which seemed to do an excellent job locking down Epiphany.
By the way, if you want to escape from Epiphany yourself, try pressing Alt-F2 to open the Run Application dialog. Run xkill and click on Epiphany to exit it. You can close this loophole in Pessulus with General->Disable command line.
If you want more than a web kiosk, you’ll need to make it so the locked-down user can’t just change the settings back in Pessulus. Instead of just hiding Pessulus from the menu, it’s better to make restrictions mandatory so they can only be changed by the root user. Run Pessulus as root:
You will notice that now there are wooden shield icons next to all the options. Click a shield to toggle wooden (optional) and silver (mandatory). Mandatory restrictions cannot be changed by regular users. If you make all the restrictions mandatory then no regular users will be able to use Pessulus.
If you’re setting up a full desktop, I’d recommend at least disabling the command line, locking the panels, and then removing the GNOME menu and adding launchers for applications you specifically want to allow to run.
Read the Pessulus documentation for details on all of the available options. |
With his address at West Point, President Obama succeeded where all his previous efforts had failed. He brought us together.
Nobody seems to have liked the speech.
A glance shows that the New York Times and Washington Times, the Financial Times and Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal were all disappointed with it.
As was said of one of Harding's addresses, it was "an army of pompous phrases marching across the landscape in search of an idea."
What Obama has is less a foreign policy doctrine than a foreign policy disposition. He is a reluctant interventionist.
He got us out of Iraq and is taking us out of Afghanistan. Yet he was pushed into a war on Libya that turned out disastrously and is now dipping his toe into what he has called "somebody else's civil war" in Syria.
Still, Obama's foreign policy is not going to be judged on what he said, but what he did and failed to do. The same holds for the Beltway hawks, now so harsh on Obama, who once whooped it up for George W. Bush.
Perhaps it is time to review the respective records.
After America backed him in going after al-Qaida after 9/11, Bush, on a triumphal high, invaded Iraq. Soon we were mired in the two longest wars in our history.
America responded by evicting Bush's party from leadership of both houses of Congress and the White House in 2008.
And what did we miss out on by not electing John McCain?
McCain would have put us into the Russo-Georgian war over South Ossetia. He would have bombed Iran's nuclear sites. We would still have troops in Iraq. He would have bombed Syria. He would have sent weapons to Kiev to oust the Russians from Crimea and crush the pro-Russian militias in the Donbass. He would be pushing for membership in NATO for Ukraine and Georgia, so the next time there was a dust-up with Putin's Russia, we could be right in the thick of it.
As for Obama's foreign policy, while the think tanks and media elite regard it as vacillating and weak, the people who gave him two electoral victories seem generally to approve.
Broadly speaking, Americans are delighted our soldiers are coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan. They were passionately opposed last August to U.S. action in Syria. They dislike Iran, but like that the president is negotiating with Iran.
Thus, whoever persuaded Obama to send TOW antitank missiles to the Syrian rebels and train and arm them may end up responsible for his worst foreign policy blunder.
Exposed: Dem Candidate's Misleading Statements on Spending, Borrowing for AZ Universities | Ky Sisson
White House: Ask DOJ About What's in The Fast and Furious Documents Covered By Obama's Executive Privilege | Katie Pavlich
Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Against IRS From Targeted Group True the Vote; Tea Party Outraged | Katie Pavlich |
Martin Atkins gives you his 15 reasons why independent artists should go on tour. He has written a great book about touring called Tour:Smart. It tells you everything you need to know about life on the road as a touring musician. Independent artists should go on tour because:
1. People are more likely to check out your website if they see you're coming to town.
2. Promoters are more likely to give you a gig if you are performing in other parts of the country.
3. People write about things that happened at shows they went to, not shows that didn’t happen…
4. Your manager may prioritize you over a better band because you're working harder.
5. You can tell your label where the best responses, crowds, sound-systems, and promoters are.
6. Your agent will pay more attention if you show him you're prepared to perform 7 shows a week.
7. The record store (if you can find one) is more likely to stock your music and put up a poster.
8. Local bloggers and newspapers are more likely to review your CD or mention your show.
9. You can leave behind promotional t-shirts and posters to leave your mark.
10. Your album will be better because you’ll have direct, immediate feedback from a live audience.
11. It is a great opportunity to triumph over your shyness and polish your people meeting skills.
12. This is something YOU can do while waiting for others to fulfill promises.
13 You are creating more of your own content, audio, video, etc.
14. The more you play, the better you get!
15. You can meet great, enthusiastic people who can help you next time around. |
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I saw this too. It's very interesting.
I like to use this kinda info to get people to donate to canine cancer research groups (like last year when we did the Cure Canine Cancer walk and donations went to Morris Animal Foundation). I tell folks that any advances in canine cancer mean advances for humans too!
Good idea to share the article on here.
Jackie, Angel Abby's mom
25 April 2007
14 August 2009
14 June 2010
This is so true. When we informed Guiding Eyes for the Blind (where we got Ajax as a “released” 8 week old would-be guide dog) of his health issues, they sent us a kit to take to the Animal Medical Center where he is being treated. AMC helped us with the kit and it was sent off to the Broad Institute in Cambridge MA for genome studies.
14 June 2010
I don't know waht it is about posting to this site that causes me to lose my mind. The point of the above comment is that the kit was designed to send a blood sample from Ajax to be sequenced for genome study of MCT in canines, eventually to be applied to humans.
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A 9.0-magnitude earthquake that rocked Japan in March could delay the start of U.S. production of the Nissan Leaf electric vehicle until late 2012, according to Automotive News.
The costs of getting production back up and running in Japan after the massive earthquake and tsunami forced Nissan to take its Japanese production plant offline. The company was slated to build a production plant for the Nissan Leaf in Smyrna, Tenn., that will produce up to 150,000 Leaf vehicles every year. Those plans have been pushed back until December next year, according to Automotive News.
Production of the Leaf has been stalled several times in the past six months, due to a glitch in the air conditioning system and the earthquake among other issues. The ambitious electric vehicle has a relatively low price tag (by EV standards) — still a hefty $33,000 — and is designed to attract a wider swath of drivers to the electric car market. It’s labeled by Kelly Blue Book as the first electric car for the masses.
Nissan’s Leaf sales were more than double that of the Volt in May, with the company selling 1,142 cars in the month. General Motors sold 481 Volts, which is about the same as the 493 Volts it shipped in April. But sales likely didn’t grow as quickly as the Leaf because General Motors said it was pulling back on its Volt supply to issue more demonstration cars to dealerships. The 2011 Nissan Leaf sells for $32,780, while the 2011 Chevy Volt cost around $41,000 prior to the price cut. Electric car buyers can apply for a federal tax credit that can bring the price down by $7,500.
The higher sales are an accomplishment for Nissan, which regularly faces hurdles in bringing the Leaf to the United States. The company said it is on track to deliver 20,000 Nissan Leaf cars to people who have reserved them by September. General Motors has shipped around 1,700 Volts since the vehicle went on sale last year, while Nissan has shipped around 1,000 Leafs.
Nissan recently went on the offensive by taking a shot at the Volt in a television advertisement. Sales of both electric cars have also been neck-and-neck for the past five months and only differ by around 17 cars shipped. As of the end of May, Nissan had sold 2,184 Leafs while General Motors had sold 2,167 Volts. The Leaf is cheaper than the Volt, but it also can’t travel anywhere near as far as the Volt and takes a while to recharge.
The U.S. government has set ambitious targets for both the Volt and Leaf, based on its goal of having more than 1 million electric cars on the road by 2015. The U.S. government expects GM to sell around 500,000 Volts by 2015 and Nissan to sell 300,000 Leafs by 2015. |
Hardware enthusiasts, fret not: Taiwan’s semiconductor industry has announced that the recent quake will not pose any substantial harm on their production or manufacturing capabilities, so you can still get your favourite chips without much issue.
Read on for more information
Rising prices are never welcome with consumers, and even more so for the hardware enthusiasts, who can and are willing to spend top dollar for the ideal hardware coponents to assemble the machine of their choice.
And when an earthquake hits Taiwan, where major semiconductor companies are currently operating, fears about schedule disruptions and supply shortages usually surface.
However, hardware enthusiasts can rest easy: Taiwan’s semiconductor manufacturers have all released statements that their manufacturing and production capabilities have not been substantially affected by yesterday’s earthquake, which struck the southern part of the island at about 8.18am Taiwan time and measured 6.4 on the Richter scale.
TSMC, the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturer, reported that the earthquake only caused approximately 1.5 days of production loss.
“Our initial estimate is that the earthquake caused the equivalent of
1.5 days loss of wafer movement for the company in total,” said TSMC in a statement.
Rival UMC also reported a 1-1.5 day loss in production, stating that manufacturing output will be increased in its Singapore facility to close and minimize the production gap caused by the earthquake.
‘The company will adjust manufacturing upward at Fab12i in Singapore and
close any production gap once Fab12A resumes full production in order
to minimize the approximately 1~1.5 days accumulated production
impact,” said United Microelectronics Corp.
Meanwhile, DRAM maker Inotera says that the earthquake had not caused any “significant impact on the Company’s finance and business”,
With that being the case, it seems that hardware prices should remain stable, at least, for the time being.
Source: X-bit labs |
VS Explorer 2.0
VS Explorer 2.0 Ranking & Summary
VS Explorer 2.0 description
VS Explorer 2.0 offers a powerful tool which helps you add a Windows Explorer-Like file and folder browsing window to Visual Studio. It provides complete access to file and folder context menus (including 3rd party extensions such as TortoiseSVN) and drag-drop functionality which allows directly adding files/folders to your projects. VS Explorer eliminates switching back and forth between Visual Studio and Windows Explorer and other external programs and allows you to focus on your work flow and preserve concentration, save time, reduce stress and work efficiently.
VS Explorer can quickly browse to the current solution folder, project folder or the selected item. It can add selected dll/exe files as references and open command prompt window on selected folder. It can filter files matching specified patterns and automatically open specified files in the current Visual Studio instance. It features Thumbnail View, Details View, Icon View and List View and various layouts which show/hide the folder tree and the file/folder list. VS Explorer fully supports Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2005.
- Eliminate switching back and forth between Visual Studio and Windows Explorer and other external programs.
- Focus on your work: preserve work-and-thought-flow and concentration.
- Save time and reduce stress.
- Work efficiently.
- Quickly browse to the 'Solution' folder, the 'Active Project' Folder, the 'Output' folder or the folder corresponding to the currently selected item.
- Various time-saving features:
- Open Command Prompt at selected folder.
- Copy paths of selected files/folders to the clipboard.
- Open selected files/folders in current Visual Studio instance.
- Add selected .dll or .exe files as references to the active project.
- Create new project (via the 'Create New Project' dialog') in the selected folder.
- And More
- Quickly browse to special folders such as the 'Program Files' or 'Windows' folder.
- Open Command Prompt on currently browsed folder.
- Copy path of current browsed folder to clipboard.
- Create new project (via the 'Create New Project' dialog') in the currently browsed folder.
- Customize to suit your exact requirements
- Specify 'excluded' files and folders - these are not displayed in VS Explorer.
- Specify files which are automatically opened in the current Visual Studio instance instead of externally, using their default associated program.
- Same Windows Explorer-like context-menus including 3rd party extensions such as TortoiseSVN. No need to ever leave the Visual Studio environment.
- Same Windows Explorer-Like drag-drop functionality allows you to add files and folders to your projects directly!
- Various Views - Icons, Details, List and Thumbnails
Various layouts - Tree Only, List Only, Tree And List.
- Visual Studio 2005 or Visual studio 2008
VS Explorer 2.0 Screenshot
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Bookmark VS Explorer 2.0
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Posted 31 March 2003 - 11:55 PM
Could someone please give me an explanation of the word "bracket" in the photo usage like "bracketing before the shot" or "you should bracket 5 f-stops" etc.
Posted 01 April 2003 - 12:43 AM
If someone told me to bracket by a stop, I would shoot one photo underexposed by one stop, one photo "properly" exposed, and one photo overexposed by one stop.
If someone told me to "bracket 5 f-stops," I'd probably just shoot everything between -5 e.v. and +5 e.v. in 1/2 stop increments.
Most SLRs can automatically "bracket" by exposure. For example, you set the camera to bracket by 1/2 stop, and it will take three successive photos, with corresponding exposure values. Bracketing becomes even more complicated nowadays because the newest cameras can do white-balance bracketing (by color temperature) and ISO bracketing (shooting on either side of what you have set the camera for).
Posted 01 April 2003 - 01:07 AM
Now I also now what AEB stand for on my Camera (I knew allready what it did but not what the acronym stands for ;-) ) I assume: Automatic Exposure Bracketing. Am I right?
How much do you use it underwater and especially nowadays when I can do it later in the Raw converter.
Posted 01 April 2003 - 12:52 PM
I never use it underwater, because I shoot exclusively manual. It's better to get a different exposure in its own frame than to do it in RAW converter, but in a pinch, I guess you can do it post-processing.
Posted 02 April 2003 - 08:57 AM
I don't know what bracketing 5 stops means. With a film camera that automatically meters a scene, I would normally bracket + and - 2/3 of a stop. There is not much point to bracketing further ranges unless you have no idea what the best exposure should be.
This is all done while shooting in manual mode. You cannot bracket in any priority/program mode because it will just give you the same exposure, only with a different shutter/aperture combo.
I still bracket with the DSLR, but to a lesser extent because I can now view the histogram on the camera.
I never used the automatic bracketing on any camera, nor have I bracketed underwater while using film. That would reduce my roll from 36 shots to 12 shots taken 3 times each. |
Garth On Cover Of Rolling Stones, Hillary Scott Born-Today In Country History
The Music and Memories of April 1
1993- Garth Brooks is on the cover of Rolling Stones Magazine. Inside, Garth explains his stance on homosexuality and inter-racial marriage addresssed in his hit song ‘We Shall Be Free.’ According to CMT, Garth tells Rolling Stones: ”I do believe that God exists. I do believe in the Bible. But I can’t see that loving somebody is a sin.”
1989- George Strait is at No. 1 with ‘Baby’s Gotten Good At Goodbye.’
Hillary Scott, 1984. The daughter of Linda Davis (‘Does He Love You’), Hillary is the lead female vocalist of Lady Antebellum.
Billy Dean, 1962. Billy breaks through with ‘Only Here For A Little While.’ Then, racks up early ’90s hits like “Somewhere In My Broken Heart” and “If I Didn’t Have You.”
Jim Ed Brown, 1934. Grand Ole Opry regular Jim Ed Brown starts his career with his sisters, performing as The Browns. After they hit with ‘The Three Bells’ and ‘Scarlet Ribbons,’ Jim Ed goes solo with ‘Pop A Top’ and ‘Southern Loving.’ Jim later hosts television shows on The Nashville Network, including “You Can Be A Star.” |
A pop-up ad is a pop-up window used for advertising. When the program is initiated by some user action, such as a mouse click or a mouseover , a window containing an offer for some product or service appears in the foreground of the visual interface. Like all pop-ups, a pop-up ad is smaller than the background interface - windows that fill the user interface are called replacement interfaces - and usually resembles a small browser window with only the close, minimize, and maximize options at the top. A variation on the pop-up ad, the pop-under , is a window that loads behind the Web page that you're viewing, only to appear when you leave that Web site.
Pop-up ads are not popular with the average Web surfer, and there are several products that disable them, such as Pop-up Stopper, Pop-up Killer, and Pop-up Annihilator. One thing to look for in such a program is the ability to differentiate between user-initiated pop-up windows and others, because many other applications (such as Webcast s, for example) make use of pop-up windows. If a pop-up stopper utility can't tell the difference between a pop-up window that the user has requested and an unsought pop-up ad, the program may cause more problems for the user than it solves. |
Going Green Back In The Day – Hometown View
A friend of mine sent me something the other day which I have modified a bit but present to you today.
It starts when an elderly woman is checking out at the supermarket and the young cashier suggests that in the future she bring her own shopping bags because plastic ones are not good for the environment. The woman apologized and explained, “We didn’t have this green thing back in my day.” The clerk then responded, “That’s the problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.”
The surprised shopper than thought for a moment about the green thing:
- Back then we returned milk, soda and beer bottles to the store where they were sent to the plant to be washed, sterilized and then refilled so they could be used time and time again. So they really were recycled…but we didn’t have the green thing in our day.
- We walked up stairs because we didn’t have an elevator in every store and office building. We often walked blocks to the store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go around the corner. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.
- Back then we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-eating machine burning up 220 volts but we didn’t have the green thing in our day.
- We had one TV or radio in the house, not a TV in every room and the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief not the size of Montana. In the kitchen we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. But the girl is right; we didn’t have the green thing back then.
- We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we wanted a drink. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn’t have the green thing back then.
- Back then people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza place.
Isn’t it sad that the younger generation laments how wasteful older people are just because they didn’t have the green thing back then? |
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Walmart workers have begun striking.
Union organizers say that employees were set to walk picket lines in Tampa, Miami, Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area.
At a Dayton, Ohio store, Walmart worker Cynthia Brown-Elliott spoke from her cell phone while protesting outside, chanting “Respect! Now!”
Brown-Elliott, 48, from a Cincinnati Walmart, said 25 workers were picketing outside the Dayton store. The grandmother of 14 said she would travel with the group to a later protest in Cincinnati, where she says a much larger crowd is expected to gather.
A cake decorator who works in the Walmart bakery, Brown-Elliott makes $8.95 an hour. She has been with Walmart for two years and thinks she’s overworked and underpaid.
“Save money and live better?,” she said, citing the company’s advertising line. “How can you save money if you’re not making enough money? How can you you live better if you’re not paid enough?”
Brown-Elliott, who lives alone, says she brings home about $1,200 a month, but $500 goes to rent and the rest isn’t enough to live decently. While she gets some help from her children with groceries, she still needs to visit food banks.
She said she was scheduled to be off Wednesday, so she’ll take Thursday as her strike day so she can help organize other workers. She says that she alerted Walmart she would be striking through a letter supplied by the union.
The job actions are timed in conjunction with Walmart”s annual shareholder meeting, which takes place Friday in Fayetteville, Ark., near the company’s Bentonville headquarters.
When asked about Wednesday’s strikes, a Walmart spokesman said, “What we are seeing are very few, if any, people who work for Walmart participating in the activities. The union has to bus people around to different protests.”
The fight for higher wages has been a recent theme across the retail and fast-food industries. McDonald’s workers and union organizers have staged strikes, even taking protests to the annual shareholder meeting last month.
Proponents for higher wages received a shot in the arm Monday when the Seattle City Council passed an ordinance to gradually increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour. |
Very carefully, Hans Eduard Meier
laid a transparency sheet on the layout table: the final draft of his Syntax typeface. Every character, every figure, every punctuation mark was drawn with an ink brush and pen … and then adjusted with a razor blade until its form was exactly as the typographer intended it. Meier had spent exactly 14 years
working on the first ever “sans-serif Roman”, from 1954 to 1968.
Syntax combines the clarity of sans-serif typefaces with the warmth and readability of Renaissance Romans. Indeed, Meier’s capitals were derived from very early (2nd century BCE) Roman lapidary lettering, which had no serifs and very little contrast.
The groundbreaking typeface was released by D. Stempel for manual typesetting in mid-1968, under the name “Syntax Antiqua”
. Jan Tschichold was full of praise: “... excellent, extremely legible, well formed: better than its relative Gill Sans.”
Even in the digital age, Hans Ed Meier remained in control. From design to hinting, the re-release and expansion of his successful typeface as a Linotype font in 2000 was carried out entirely at the 78-year-old’s own computer.
The most comprehensive version of Syntax is the Linotype Syntax released in 2000 |
Tips from Other Journals
Causes of Death Related to Tumescent Liposuction
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Am Fam Physician. 1999 Oct 15;60(6):1804-1808.
Tumescent liposuction is now the most commonly performed cosmetic surgery in the United States. The technique involves the subcutaneous infusion of saline, lidocaine and epinephrine, followed by aspiration of fat through microcannulas. The amount of fat removed varies but may be greater than 1,500 mL. Such large-volume liposuction may require infusion of several liters of the infusate. Lidocaine dosages may be as high as 55 mg per kg, but few complications have been reported. Rao and colleagues examined the causes of death in five patients who underwent tumescent liposuction.
The authors reviewed all autopsy reports from 1993 through 1996 and death-notification records from 1993 to March 1998, at the New York City medical examiner's office. They also questioned the city medical examiners about any deaths possibly related to liposuction that were under investigation. The medical record of a patient whose death was related to the procedure was reviewed for information about the liposuction procedure itself, the amount of lidocaine administered during the procedure, premorbid conditions and medication use.
Five of the 1,001 deaths certified by the medical examiner's office as resulting from therapeutic complications were related to liposuction. In four cases, the procedure was performed by a plastic surgeon and in one case, by a general surgeon. In all cases, an anesthesiologist was in attendance. Family members of four of the patients consented to a published description of the cases.
A complete autopsy, including examination of the heart and toxicologic studies of blood, urine and other available fluids and tissues, was performed in each patient. In all cases, the heart was normal and there were no illicit substances identified by toxicology testing.
Deaths occurred in a 33-year-old man and in three women who were 33, 40 and 54 years of age. In two cases, hypotension and bradycardia were followed by asystole during the procedure. A third patient had been discharged from the hospital for two hours when she had a syncopal episode and was found to be in ventricular fibrillation. This patient was resuscitated but remained unresponsive and in an anoxic coma. She was pronounced dead three days later. The fourth patient became “lightheaded” 18 hours postoperatively and then became unresponsive. Autopsy findings in this patient included a deep venous thrombosis of the calf with saddle and distal pulmonary emboli. In all cases, resuscitation was attempted.
The doses of lidocaine in the patients (including the fifth patient whose family did not permit disclosure of the details) ranged from 10 to 40 mg per kg. The duration of the procedure in the four cases that could be described was 2.5, 2.3, 4.5 and 7.0 hours.
The authors point out that lidocaine is known to cause bradycardia, vasodilatation and hypotension, and to suppress myocardial automaticity. The maximal dose of lidocaine recommended for subcutaneous infiltration is 4.5 mg per kg. The doses used in tumescent liposuction are reported to range from 10 to 88 mg per kg. In addition, the authors suggest that metabolism of lidocaine may be inhibited by other agents administered during an operation, such as medications for pain or nausea. Midazolam, in particular, may compete with lidocaine for enzymatic metabolism. The authors believe lidocaine toxicity or lidocaine-related drug interaction is a possible explanation for two deaths in the patients who developed hypotension and bradycardia.
The authors believe fluid overload may be another factor in liposuction-related deaths. Excessive fluid may cause hemodilution and pulmonary edema, features that were present at autopsy in the patient who developed complications after hospital discharge.
Another factor may be venous stasis and thrombogenesis following extensive tumescent liposuction of the lower abdomen and extremities, and immobilization. This procedure can cause impedance of venous flow and the release of tissue factors.
The authors state that data from the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons indicate that the number of liposuction procedures performed by plastic surgeons increased 200 percent from 1992 to 1997. Data from the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery, which represents several surgical disciplines, show a 300 percent increase from 1990 to 1996. The authors believe this elective surgical procedure should be reevaluated. Because mandatory reporting of liposuction-related complications or deaths does not exist, the actual incidence of these events is unknown. The authors encourage a reassessment of drug absorption and interactions, fluid management, prothrombogenic factors and liposuction volume. They assert that “deaths due to cosmetic surgery should be a matter for serious public concern.”
Rao RB, et al. Deaths related to liposuction. N Engl J Med. May 13, 1999;340:1471–5.
Copyright © 1999 by the American Academy of Family Physicians.
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Items in AFP with MESH term: Tomography, X-Ray Computed
Intestinal Obstruction in an Octogenarian - Photo Quiz
Computed Tomography After Minor Head Injury - Point-of-Care Guides
Soft Tissue Mass over Right Brow - Photo Quiz
Is There Benefit to Coronary Calcium Screening? - Editorials
New-Onset Seizures - Photo Quiz
ABSTRACT: The increasing use of cross-sectional imaging has led to an increase in the incidental discovery of adrenal masses (adrenal incidentalomas). Although most of these lesions are benign, they often present a diagnostic dilemma. Before creating a management plan, the physician should determine if the lesion is benign or malignant and if the lesion is functioning or nonfunctioning. Incidentally discovered adrenal masses usually are benign adenomas; however, myelolipomas, cysts, hemorrhage, pheochromocytomas, metastases, and adrenocortical carcinomas are also possible. Unenhanced computed tomography and chemical shift magnetic resonance imaging can characterize most adenomas because the lesions have high lipid content. Contrast-enhanced computed tomography can further characterize the adenomas because of the washout characteristics with iodinated intravenous contrast media. Fluorodeoxyglucose– positron emission tomography can be helpful in characterizing some lesions, and biopsy is rarely required. This article summarizes the American College of Radiology Appropriateness Criteria for the use of imaging modalities and biopsy to characterize incidentally discovered adrenal masses.
Chronic Productive Cough - Photo Quiz
ABSTRACT: The differential diagnosis of left lower-quadrant pain includes gastrointestinal, gynecologic, and renal/ureteric pathology. Imaging is helpful in evaluating left lower-quadrant pain, and is generally guided by the clinical presentation. Acute sigmoid diverticulitis should be suspected when the clinical triad of left lower-quadrant pain, fever, and leukocytosis is present. The severity of disease varies from mild pericolonic and peridiverticular inflammation to severe inflammatory changes with complications such as perforation, peritonitis, or abscess or fistula formation. Computed tomography is the preferred test in evaluating clinically suspected diverticulitis. It is used to evaluate the severity and extent of disease and to identify complications, but it also may diagnose other causes of left lower-quadrant pain that can mimic diverticulitis. Magnetic resonance imaging can be used to assess left lower-quadrant pain. It has superior resolution of soft tissues and does not expose the patient to ionizing radiation, but it is expensive and requires more time to perform. Transabdominal ultrasonography with graded compression is another effective technique but is limited by its high operator dependency and technical difficulties in scanning patients who are obese. Pelvic ultrasonography is the preferred imaging modality in women of childbearing age. Radiography with contrast enema is less sensitive than computed tomography in diagnosing diverticulitis and is seldom used.
ABSTRACT: For many years, there were no guidelines for evaluating patients with chronic neck pain. However, in the past 15 years, considerable research has led to recommendations regarding whiplash-associated disorders. This article summarizes the American College of Radiology Appropriateness Criteria for chronic neck pain. Imaging plays an important role in evaluating patients with chronic neck pain. Five radiographic views (anteroposterior, lateral, open-mouth, and both oblique views) are recommended for all patients with chronic neck pain with or without a history of trauma. Magnetic resonance imaging should be performed in patients with chronic neurologic signs or symptoms, regardless of radiographic findings. The role of magnetic resonance imaging in evaluating ligamentous and membranous abnormalities in persons with whiplash-associated disorders is controversial. If there is a contraindication to magnetic resonance imaging, computed tomography myelography is recommended. Patients with normal radiographic findings and no neurologic signs or symptoms, or patients with radiographic evidence of spondylosis and no neurologic findings, need no further imaging studies. |
The Fair Employment Practices Committee created
*On this date in 1941, the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) was created. President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the FEPC by signing Executive Order 8802.
This was a great advancement for African-America initiated mainly by three people/organizations. Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters President A. Philip Randolph, NAACP Executive Secretary Walter White, and National Youth Administration Minority Affairs Director Mary McLeod Bethune were instrumental in forcing FDR to address the issue.
The order banned racial discrimination in any defense industry receiving federal contracts by declaring "there shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government because of race, creed, color, or national origin." The order also empowered the FEPC to investigate complaints and take action against alleged employment discrimination. Randolph, working with other civil rights activists, organized a 1941 March on Washington Movement to protest racial discrimination in the defense industry and the military. This threatened to bring 250,000 African Americans to Washington to demonstrate against congressional resistance to fair employment.
FDR sent his wife Eleanor and New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia to negotiate with March on Washington leaders. His wife returned, telling her husband that their plans were firm, that only an anti discrimination ordinance would prevent what promised to be the largest demonstration in the capital's history. Mrs. Roosevelt urged her husband to act for both moral and political reasons. He agreed, but would only go so far. He agreed to have the FEPC prohibit discrimination in defense plants, but he refused to address the issue of segregation in the military, which had been Randolph's original concern.
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Today in American History |
America’s first printed book visits Amazon in Seattle
Yesterday I attended a reception for the Bay Psalm Book hosted by Amazon to celebrate Sotheby’s forthcoming auction of this historic book. Seattle was the latest stop on a tour of the United States that has delighted bibliophiles from Philadelphia to Los Angeles. The interesting juxtaposition of the first book printed in what became the United States and the e-commerce giant Amazon (who is AbeBooks’ parent company and the creator of the Kindle) was not lost on anyone in the room.
The book itself is modest but looks robust enough. It entered the room accompanied by two burly security guards and was carried in a reinforced custom case. Selby Kiffer, Sotheby’s international senior books specialist, carefully balanced the book on his lap as he prepared it for the viewing. I couldn’t help noticing that he wasn’t wearing gloves.
“No, we don’t use gloves,” explained Selby. “It’s important that we have the full ability to touch and handle an item like that. You lose something with gloves.”
The book was placed open on a pedestal and encased in a perspex case. The two security guards would not have looked out of place outside a nightclub. One of them, Tom, was perhaps the most bookish bouncer in the security business at the moment. He had guarded the Bay Psalm Book in USC’s Doheny Library, Chicago’s Newberry Library, Cleveland’s public library, St. Louis Mercantile Library and a number of other important institutions around the US.
The book was placed open at Psalm 23 and it was easy to see how different this version of the ‘Lord is my Shepherd’ psalm is from the text commonly known today. Not satisfied with the English editions in circulation, the puritan publishers of the Bay Psalm Book had translated the text from Hebrew in order to stay closer to the psalm’s original meaning.
The reaction of visitors was interesting to see. Some photographed it, while others were photographed with it. For many (including myself), it was hard to grasp that this book was printed in 1640 using paper and a very basic printing press imported from Britain, and yet it is still in remarkable condition today.
Sotheby’s will auction the book in a single item sale on November 26 on behalf of Boston’s Old South Church, which is retaining another copy. The sale estimate is a mind-boggling $15 million to $30 million, and there was widespread speculation at the reception about whether the estimate would be reached and who would buy it. Two local rare booksellers Priscilla Anne Lowry of Lowry-James Rare Prints and Books and John Lang of John Michael Lang Fine Books positively glowed with interest.
“I think it will exceed $30 million,” was the bold prediction of John. While Priscilla Anne added that she thought the book could be sold to a buyer outside the US – something that Selby Kiffer predicted as being “highly unlikely.”
Sotheby’s has worked hard to publicize its auction but the tour has put the Bay Psalm Book in front of a wider audience and definitely added buzz to the rare book world. As Selby Kiffer pointed out last night, the auction has also reminded many people about this important period in American history when a nation’s culture was just being developed.
The auction could be the most furious five minutes of rare bookselling since 1947 when the last copy of a Bay Psalm Book was sold for $151,000 – a record-breaking sum for the time. |
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