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|Van Himbergen, Thomas M. -| |Beiser, Alexa S. -| |Ai, Masumi -| |Seshadri, Sudha -| |Otokozawa, Seiko -| |Au, Rhoda -| |Thongtang, Nuntakorn -| |Wolf, Philip A. -| |Schaefer, Ernst J. -| Submitted to: Archives of Neurology Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal Publication Acceptance Date: June 30, 2011 Publication Date: January 2, 2012 Citation: Van Himbergen, T., Beiser, A., Ai, M., Seshadri, S., Otokozawa, S., Au, R., Thongtang, N., Wolf, P., Schaefer, E. 2012. Biomarkers for insulin resistance and inflammation and the risk for all-cause dementia and Alzheimer disease. Archives of Neurology. DOI: 10.1001/archneurol.2011.670. Interpretive Summary: Loss of mental and cognitive function increases with aging and often progresses to dementia in the elderly. Our goal was to assess various predictors of who would develop dementia over time in the Framingham Heart Study. At baseline we measured various parameters using blood samples, and then determined which would predict dementia. In our prior studies we showed that a certain genetic factor apoE genotype was strongly associated with increased risk as were high levels of homocysteine (linked to decreased intake of folate and vitamins B12 and B6) and low levels of plasma phospholipid docosahexaenoic acid or DHA (linked to decreased intake of oily fish or fish oil capsules). In this study we examined other factors including markers of diabetes (insulin, glucose, glycated albumin) and whole body inflammation (C reactive protein, adiponectin, and lipoprotein associated phospholipase A2). Of all these latter parameters only high levels of adiponectin, a protein produced in fat, were significantly associated with an increased risk of all-cause dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in women, but not men. Adiponectin levels are strongly linked to low body mass index. Our data indicate that high levels of adiponectin in women, often linked to being underweight, are a significant predictor of developing all cause dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in the elderly. This research is of interest to those people interested in preventing dementia with aging. Technical Abstract: Our aim was to investigate the contribution of biomarkers of glucose homeostasis (adiponectin, glucose, glycated albumin, and insulin levels) and inflammation (high-sensitivity C-reactive protein and lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A(2) levels) to the risk of developing Alzheimer disease (AD) and all-cause dementia in a prospective cohort study. Dementia-free Framingham Heart Study participants had sera measured for these biomarkers at the 19th biennial examination (1985-1988) and were followed up prospectively for the development of AD and all-cause dementia. Eight hundred forty (541 women, median age of 76 years) subjects participated in the study. We used sex-pooled and sex-specific multivariable Cox proportional hazards models adjusted for age, education, body mass index, recent change in weight, APOE e4 allele status, and plasma docosahexaenoic acid levels to determine association of these biomarkers with the development of all-cause dementia and AD. We found that over a mean follow-up period of 13 years, 159 persons developed dementia (including 125 with AD). After adjustment for other risk factors, only adiponectin in women was associated with an increased risk of all-cause dementia (hazard ratio [HR], 1.29; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.00-1.66; P = .054) and AD (HR, 1.33; 95% CI, 1.00-1.76; P = .050) per 1-SD increase in adiponectin level. Women with baseline adiponectin values more than the median had a higher risk of all-cause dementia (HR, 1.63; 95% CI, 1.03-2.56; P = .04) and AD (HR, 1.87; 95% CI, 1.13-3.10; P = .01) as compared with those with values less than the median. In conclusion in women, increased plasma adiponectin levels are an independent risk factor for the development of both all-cause dementia and AD.
Summary: When all else fails, set off a bug bomb to cure what's ailing you. At least, that appears to me what desperate people do when they have pest problems. But, bug bombs often make the problem worse. Unless you've been hiding under a rock for the last fifty years, you could not help but hear or see advertisements extolling the effectiveness of pesticide fogs. Cartoon-like cans of one pesticide or another, were shown spewing gaseous clouds that found its way into every nook and cranny, on a seek and destroy mission to kill insects inside a wall. “Raid!!!” the insects yelled in chorus, as the cartoon spray can killed the animated bugs. The Raid can even had a sinister smile on its face conveying the message, “The party's over!” So, consumers can be forgiven for thinking they can buy a bug bomb and all their pests will be gone. But, the reality is that bug bombs, or total release aerosols, often cause more harm than good. For example, let's just say you saw a cockroach crawling across a countertop. By the time you realized what it was it had escaped between the counter and stove. Once that happens you can never totally rest easy until you see the dead body of that roach. All sorts of thoughts of roach population explosions fill our minds. You rush to the hardware store where the manager recommends a bug bomb. “This will fill the room with stuff that will flush him out and kill him”, promises the store clerk. You bring your weapon into your kitchen, determine where you want to concentrate the toxic gas and you set off the bomb, leaving the house to escape personal harm. The little bug bomb does its thing, releasing seven to eight minutes of fine aerosol mist into the air. What you don't know is that several things are happening during your absence. One, the mist is going up in the air in somewhat of a pattern that resembles an upside down pyramid. After the little mist particles reach their ultimate height of about six feet, or so, gravity brings the droplets back down to the floor leaving a slick, oily residue. (You forgot to put newspaper down under the bug bomb, didn't you?) Two, no one said anything about directing the spray into cracks and crevices, so only a few of the micro-particles find their way between the counter and stove. Just enough of the stuff to irritate the sensitive receptors of the cockroach and send him scampering to find better hiding places. Before the bomb you had a pretty good idea where your enemy was hiding. Now, the roach has moved ten feet in any direction and greatly expanded the total search area. It is not a catastrophe, but the little bug bomb certainly has made your task more difficult. The lesson here is, wrong tool, wrong insect, wrong timing. Bug bombs have their place, to be certain, but they are best used for flying insects. The materials in the bombs are nearly always some type of pyrethrin or synthetic pyrethroid product used to knock down insects. They usually contain nothing that provide any residual effect. The bomb goes off, knocks down any insect it comes in contact with, but leaves no killing agent behind. Great for killing a roomful of flies, but not so great for insects that hide. Next time you have a pest learn the habits of the pest. Understanding where a pest is likely to live will tell you what type pesticide to use, be it an aerosol, pesticide dust like Tempo 1%, residual spray like Suspend SC or flowable powder like 15 Apr 2012, 12:08 We purchased a beautiful piece of heavy furniture eight yrs ago, I thought I heard a "ticking" sound coming out of it last year.. of course, my husband thought I was crazy. Last week it was ticking again! This time there was a small pile of fine sawdust coming out a hole in the front of the piece, so I photographed it, The sawdust pile was growing and my hubby even got alarmed, so we were able to move the furniture piece out to the garage and take it apart to see what was going on. I discovered three separate holes, about 1/4 inch in diameter, we vacuumed out fine dust from them, and then I saturated the holes with liquid insecticide from the hardware store. What now? (1) Do you think the furniture is cured and we can bring it back into the house, (2) Do we need to be worrying about any adults borers that may have emerged and gone somewhere in our house? (3) Does this call for a bug bomb? We can't afford to have a tent for fumigation of the whole house. Please make recommendations. I can send you some photos of the holes and dust coming from the piece of furniture if that would help. Thank you. Ask the Exterminator 16 Apr 2012, 15:58 Usually when you find borers in wood you would treat the wood with a product that soaks into the wood such as Bora Care. Just spraying in the holes is not always effective. Knowing the exact species of insect would help you learn their habits and life cycle. That would tell you a lot about their reproduction and environmental needs. 26 Jun 2012, 02:30 We have scorpions so bad. I am scared my kids will get stung. Lately I've seen TINY baby scorpions. What can I do to get rid of them?? I am so worrie we will get stung or pinched. :( Ask the Exterminator 26 Jun 2012, 08:02 Remove outdoor piles of trash, stones, boards, firewood on the ground and the landscape timbers. Close entry points around windows, doors, siding and pipes coming into the Use a wettable powder insecticide such as Demon WP which can be purchased on this website. 27 Jun 2012, 04:44 Every year (right around Summer) when it gets warm, we get over infestated by ants. Heres an example, my freing bought a dozen donuts in a box. She put them down on the ant free countertop for 6 minutes. After 6 minutes (literally), there were HUNDREDS of ants in side the box. My home is and old home (I rent)of 75 plus years. It has been renevated, but the raised cinder block foundation is original. I know the ants are coming in from under the house :-( How can I rid them (without resealing up the house at my expense) at the source? Ask the Exterminator 27 Jun 2012, 08:12 It would be nice to know the specific ant species, but your ants are probably there because they found a source for water. Put out Maxforce Ant Bait stations and the foraging ants will take the poison back to their nest. The product can be purchased on my website. 07 Aug 2012, 16:57 We recently moved into a house further into the suburbs of Northern Virginia and it seems that we have a loads of spiders, particularly in the fully finished basement (we event think we came across a HUGE wolf spider). I have a HORRIBLE fear of spiders and do have a can of raid but i don't want to continue spraying poison everyone on my targets. We have sprayed the outside of the house with an insecticide, but they are still down Ask the Exterminator 07 Aug 2012, 17:39 Spiders are drawn to the outdoor lights you have on your house. Turn them off and you'll have fewer spiders. Also, cut down tall grass and weeds around the perimeter foundation walls. I suggest spraying the foundation walls with a product called Suspend Polyzone. It will last outside for over 90 days. You can use it indoors as well, but you must follow the label. The product is available on this website. 10 Sep 2012, 12:44 We have wasps that have crawled under the wood siding in our house. I have sprayed and killed an incredible amount. I sealed of the major entrance but they are still finding seams. They have also invaded the soffit. Continue to spray with a Raid type product, bug bomb it...? Do I have to worry about a nest and hatching in the walls/soffit?I'm getting concerned for our 24 Oct 2012, 04:38 I feel like I'm being eaten alive when in my bed or the right side of my couch. I think it's because I opened owned of my goose down pillows a few wks back not sure. Those were the 2 areas I handled the pillow.i threw the pillows away but I'm still being bitten by invisible something's. I've checked my room for brown stains (possible dry blood spots) the creases of my mattress under and in my box springs and I don't see anything. Please tell me what to do! It's worst at night or as it gets later in d day. I've also found when sitting out in my screened in patio I've gotten bitten and wondering are those possibly gnats? HELP
- Creating the Smarter Fleet: Ford's Latest Buying Tool Saves Customers Money While Helping the Planet DEARBORN – Eco-conscious vehicle options have never been greater, leaving consumers wondering where to find the best value. The question becomes more complicated when the buyer is a corporation looking to revamp its company fleet of vehicles. - Ford Honors World Water Day through Daily Conservation, Long Term Strategies DEARBORN - Water conservation is a popular topic today. From being concerned about the lack of water in drought-stricken regions to reminding the kids to turn off the water while they brush their teeth, personal consciousness of water as a valuable resource is growing. - Ford Social Projects Provide 10,000 Backpacks; Environmental Education for Camaçari Students CAMAÇARI, Brazil - On January 21, Ford announced two new social initiatives in Bahia: the distribution of 10 thousand eco-sustainable backpacks with notebook&pencil sets: and the execution of an environmental education project. Both actions, under development, are focused on students from public schools in Camaçari, within Bahia state, where is located Ford Northeast industrial Complex. - 2014 Lincoln MKX Introduces Tree-Based Alternative to Fiberglass for Interior Parts DEARBORN – While many Lincoln MKX drivers may tie a tree to the top of their vehicle this time of year, 2014 will see the MKX crossover with tree-based components inside the vehicle. - Consumers to Rethink Priorities in 2014, Ford Trend Report Reveals DEARBORN – Consumers will reevaluate their relationships with technology in 2014, balancing the need to be constantly plugged in with a new appreciation for spending quality time off-line, reveals Ford Motor Company’s second annual trend report. - Ford Earns Top 10 Ranking for Corporate Responsibility, Says KPMG DEARBORN - An independent survey published by KPMG ranks Ford among the 10 leading global companies for corporate responsibility reporting. - Environmental Quality Office Announces 2013 APA Environmental Leadership Awards SHANGHAI, China — Protecting the environment is a significant focus for Ford Motor Company. So at the Environmental Quality Office’s (EQO) regional environmental compliance workshop in Shanghai last month, each plant in the region was given the opportunity to showcase their environmental success stories. - Ford, WWF, Leading Consumer Brands Unite to Encourage Development of Bioplastics DEARBORN - Ford, with World Wildlife Fund, The Coca-Cola Company, Danone, H.J. Heinz Company, Nestle, Nike, Procter & Gamble and Unilever are launching the Bioplastic Feedstock Alliance. The BFA’s only automaker, Ford will work alongside other member brands to drive environmentally responsible, socially beneficial and economically viable production of bioplastic feedstocks. - Driving Innovation: The Coca-Cola Company and Ford Unveil Ford Fusion Energi with PlantBottle Technology Interior ATLANTA and DEARBORN – The Coca-Cola Company and Ford Motor Company are fueling more sustainable design by collaborating on a first-ever interior fabric made from the same renewable material used to produce Coca-Cola’s PlantBottle Technology™ packaging. - Ford Embracing Analytics and Big Data to Inform Eco-Conscious Decisions, Stay Green DEARBORN - Not too far from where factory workers assemble Ford cars and trucks, analytics experts in the company’s Research and Innovation Center are building something entirely different but equally important: complex mathematical models to help Ford sharpen its competitive edge while limiting its environmental impact. - Cars, Clothes Both Stylish and Sustainable VANCOUVER, Canada - You may wonder what the connection is between fashion and automotive. The two have more in common than one might think, including a common goal to bring sustainable fabrics to everyday lives and create opportunities to be more sustainable. - Ford's Living Roof DEARBORN - Ten years post-installation, North America’s largest living roof – about the size of eight football fields – continues to flourish atop Dearborn Truck Plant’s final assembly building, part of the Ford Rouge Center. - Ford Reduces Water and Oil Use in Plants Globally with Expansion of Near-Dry Machining Technology DEARBORN - As part of its commitment to sustainability, Ford Motor Company has added its dry machining capability to six plants globally – a number that will nearly double in the next few years. - Ford Engineer Says Sustainability is the Future of Auto Business OAKVILLE - Cars, gadgets and exciting technology are a winning combination for any student of engineering. Students in the University of Manitoba’s Automotive Engineering program got the chance to hear about exactly that from Gil Portalatin, Ford Motor Company’s chief program engineer, when he came present on Ford’s sustainability and electrification strategy at the university on Oct. 2, 2013. - Built Ford Green: Sustainable Materials Make America’s Best-Selling Truck Environmentally Friendly and Tough DEARBORN - Ford is proving that pickups can be green and tough by adding rice hulls to the list of sustainable materials used to build F-150 – America’s best-selling truck. - Ford Cuts CO2 Emissions 37 Percent Per Vehicle; New Report Highlights Another 30 Percent Reduction by 2025 DEARBORN – Ford Motor Company cut CO2 emissions at its global facilities by 37 percent per vehicle between 2000 and 2012 and plans for a 30 percent reduction from 2010 to 2025 by addressing everything from new products and technologies to manufacturing processes. - Serious Sustainability: Fusion Takes Ford’s Use of Recycled Material in Fabric Global, Furthers Industry-Changing Efforts DEARBORN – Ford Fusion is the first global vehicle program from any automaker to use seat fabric made from recycled material, with the potential to recycle enough plastic bottles and post-industrial waste to make 1.5 million yards of fabric annually. That’s equivalent to between 800,000 and 900,000 yards in North America when Fusion is in full production. - Ford India’s Green Practices Go Beyond Making a Better World CHENNAI, India —Ford India’s green and sustainable manufacturing practices seem to be resulting in more than just a better world. Recognizing the efforts by Ford India to install solar water heaters at its canteen, the Tamil Nadu Energy Development Authority (TEDA) recently handed over a cheque for Rs 13.61 lakh (approximately US$25,680) to the company as a government subsidy. - Ford Brazil Receives Award for Customer Service Quality SÃO BERNARDO DO CAMPO, Brazil - Ford Brazil won the Top Consumer Award for Excellence in Customer Relations and Respect for the Environment for its quality in customer service and sustainability practices. This is the seventh consecutive year that Ford has won the award, sponsored by Consumidor Teste magazine and the National Institute for Consumer and Citizen Education (INEC). Ford has won more than 20 awards in this area in recent years. - Ford is ‘Top Riser’ in Best Global Green Brands Report DEARBORN - Ford Motor Company is a “Top Riser” in Interbrand’s 2nd Annual Best Global Green Brands Report, which identifies the gap between customer perception and a brand’s performance relative to sustainability. - Pulp Function: Ford and Weyerhaeuser Collaborate to Develop Automotive Applications Using Natural Fiber Materials DEARBORN – Cellulose joins the growing list of sustainable materials originating from unlikely sources that could soon be used in Ford vehicle components and help further reduce the automaker’s reliance on traditional content such as fiberglass and petroleum. - Dearborn Site Becomes First Ford Office Building to Receive Sustainability Recognition DEARBORN - Earlier this week, regional members of the U.S. Green Business Council (USGBC), Dearborn officials and industry professionals toured Ford’s Corporate Crossings building as part of the Green Seeds program.
The U.S. government has released a request for a proposal on a new armored limousine, possibly replacing the Cadillac One. The request for proposal didn’t state specifically if the Secret Service is looking to replace The Beast, but it does ask for a newly-designed limo built “in accordance with government-provided specifications.” According to the report, automakers will have to develop a concept, design the limo’s armor, research and develop a powertrain and chassis capable of taking the required abuse, and prove that the limo can withstand live fire exercises. Cadillac, which currently manufactures The Beast that has served President Obama since 2008, is likely to compete for the contract. The American automaker has been building the limousine for the President since Bill Clinton’s term in 1993 with the Fleetwood Brougham. Unfortunately, and as expected, Cadillac wouldn’t speak directly about the Presidential Limousine, but did say that it is “a great honor and responsibility to carry on the tradition of presidential cars,” according to spokesman David Caldwell in an interview with Motor Trend. The Department of Homeland Security is expected to award the contract by September 29, 2013. [Source: Motor Trend] Discuss this story at CadillacOwners.com
Someone who knew once said to me, “You have to do 100 things exactly right to win a bicycle race. Do 99 of them exactly right, and you finish second.” Margins are like that in athletic endeavor. You push, you shove, you train as hard as you can, doing efforts and intervals until you actually vomit. You wipe your mouth, rinse it out with Gatorade and get back on the bicycle as soon as you stop seeing double. You do this because you want, more than anything else, to win. Every athlete wants to win. Winning is the absolute best thing that can be experienced. Once you get it, it’s like the most addictive drug. People lie, cheat, dope in an effort to keep doing it. As the saying goes, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” For athletes, this is true. That FC Barcelona, our amazing football club, has been able to win and keep winning for so long, is an astounding accomplishment. It is one that, when I sit here in front of this keyboard, I really can’t even begin to fathom. Today, the football team capped a week of poor results, falling to its third loss in a row, knocked out of Champions League, potentially losing the Liga championship and the Copa del Rey. It seemed so weird and sudden, how a team that used to score goals just for fun, suddenly couldn’t even muster a single, stinkin’ goal against a side we used to beat like a gong, another side hovering just above the relegation zone and our eternal rival. One goal. A thin, thin margin between the falling over the edge and grabbing a handhold to lift yourself to success. Winning. If you take that 100 things that a single bicycle racer has to do to win a race, add a ball, 10 other players and 11 opponents, and make the effort to run the math equations that can attempt to explain the crazy alchemy that makes a team win a football match, your brain will probably burst. Yet in a run that began in 2008, Barça has worked that alchemy time and again, in ways remarkable, bizarre, unlikely and inevitable. It has won so much that when it hasn’t won, things seem weird, like the world is out of whack. In a game in which speed, strength and power define its parameters, a group of small, comparatively weak players did things with a football that made even jaded chroniclers of the game oooh and aaaah. Best of all, its instruments of destruction were home grown, Catalan soldiers mostly, marching to war with a senyera enbroidered on their blaugrana suits of armor. People kicked at them, fouled them, played unfairly and still, they won. They won so much that people stopped thinking about how amazing, how improbable winning is. Winning stopped being a remarkable thing of wonder, and became an expectation. “They didn’t win. Why not? Whose fault was this aberration?” There are people who follow this club, who came to it during the Treble season. All they know is winning, probably unable to wrap their minds around a crazy day in 2001 (not really THAT long ago) when Rivaldo scored the goal that ensured Barça would finish in 4th place in La Liga, and qualify for European football. Close. Crazy close The 87-point Liga of the treble season didn’t happen. It was eleventythousand points that season, when not a single match was in doubt. Oh, I remember it well. And the Chelsea match has become the stuff of legend rather than the contentious alley fight that it was, salvaged only by an absurd goal from a player who admits that he just hit it and hoped. In the Champions League final, legend needed Ronaldo to scuff shots, misses that bewildered all until an unlikely goal against the run of play, after United were finished having at our makeshift (no CBs then, either) back line. Recent culers only know winning, and wizened culers came to embrace winning. Time flies when you’re winning, so it only seemed like it happened suddenly, this failure business. But in fact if you look at it over the arc of the excellence that has defined this football club, the signs have been coming fast, heavy and impossible to ignore. People blame a volcano for that Inter Milan defeat, rather than a team that defended like shite in Italy. People blame cruel fate for the Chelsea defeat, rather than the lapses in concentration that turn sure goals into astonishing misses. It was those injuries that brought our team down to size against Bayern Munich. And then, this season, our team lost to a better team as hairline cracks became rips became fissures in the fabric that allowed this team to continue winning. When Pep Guardiola took over Barça, it was after two silverless seasons in which the team was inventing ways to lose almost as if on a dare. Mentally, the edge was dulled and when Guardiola came in to say “Run you bastards, run!” the running was easy because there was a goal at the end of it all: winning. The players didn’t really know what they were doing until suddenly, there was a pile of trophies in the living room. At the time it was happening culers couldn’t really wrap their minds around it because even during the wonder years of Ronaldinho, the kind of magic we were witnessing just didn’t happen. It was so unbelievable that it seemed just a blink that a season beginning with failure morphed into the Year of Six Cups. Your run of the mill juggernaut football team gets 2, maybe 3 years at the top. It doesn’t, for six years make the Champions League, the tournament that gathers the best footballing sides in Europe, seem like the Gamper Tournament or something. A loss comes, and people are shocked, and angry. “Whose fault was that?” It’s usually an unfavored player or coach of course. Later, another loss comes and again, culpability is the object. Nobody looks at the mentality of winning, the batshit crazy, microns-thin edge that a winning team has to be on to keep doing what it does. You just can’t stay wound that tightly, for that long. Inevitably, and you don’t even know it, the edge dulls. You think you are still the same, because you don’t know any different. You are hitting the ball the same way. A stab deflection becomes a foot in the way becomes an easily blocked shot becomes an interception that leads to a break against you. “We’re doing what we’re doing,” even when you aren’t. Not quite. And it’s hard to understand because nothing has changed. It all feels the same, and the players haven’t changed, so what the hell? We’ll just play a little harder next time. And you do. You focus for a match or two and the results are there, and everyone breathes a sigh of relief that expectations are again being met. And we resume the task of forgetting to remember how truly remarkable winning is. And hell, that’s a match, never mind a championship. That is so improbable that you feel faint when you start trying to think about what could have happened to bring about such an event. It happened for Barça, time and time again, as the team became a legend that it never was. We play our matches in a vacuum of dudgeon when we lose. ‘How did this happen,” as the other team is terrible, instead of fine athletes who want to win every bit as much as we do. So what DOES happen? Teams stop winning because to continue winning all the time is humanly impossible. Excitement becomes anticipation becomes expectation becomes overconfidence. And suddenly, you are losing matches and nobody understands why. “You gonna tell me that a team of Messi, Iniesta, Neymar, Sanchez, Xavi, etc, etc can’t score one stinkin’ goal against Granada?” No, not in the state that our players are now in. These seasons of wonder have extracted an absurd psychic toll: injuries, cancer, more injuries, coaching changes, player sales during huffy nocturnal meetings, court cases, thing after thing after thing, all serving to break down the stuff that making winning possible. A right back gets his ears bobbed. Pop stars visit the team’s practice sessions as the focus erodes. The team gets attention, its superstar coach gets attention. The press clippings pile up and the players allow themselves just a glimpse at them, then a look, then a nice, hard read. And they think “Man, are we that good?” And the winning continues even as the complacency begins. Players are human. They can’t help it. Then it’s too late. On more than one occasion, people have commented that “Neymar is the only one trying to win out there,” but maybe the thing is that Neymar is the newest player, so his brain isn’t fried. New players reset the circuit breaker. So Neymar hasn’t been through the grinder of paranoia and expectation, that this will be the match. Or maybe this one will be the high-wire crossing where we put a foot wrong, and plummet to defeat. You get your car back from a tune-up and you think, “Boy, this feels like a new car!” When Guardiola shipped out Deco and Ronaldinho, then made a slew of squad additions, it was a psychic tune-up. Brains were freshened by an infusion of new blood, players who pressed, prodded and shamed incumbents into running as hard as they did. Then those new players became old players, and the process stops. A player here or there is added, but it isn’t enough to change the group dynamics, bring back that edge. And that’s where we are. Earlier this season and today during the match, practice was the thing. “They aren’t practicing hard enough, so the edge is dull.” Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe the coach of this group knows that they just don’t have that kind of stuff in them, that maybe running, tackling and playing rugby is about all that his charges are capable of, because their brains are fried from winning and worrying. What’s wrong with Messi? It’s the question on everyone’s lips, even if they aren’t saying it aloud. His national team coach said recently that his mind isn’t in a good place, that he is mentally tired. This is a player who took an 8-week training break in the middle of season, ostensibly to heal a hamstring. Eight. Weeks. When he returned, it was “Oh, boy … look out. He’s fit and healthy now. You guys are in trouble!” But that didn’t happen, and the questions began. “He’s walking, what the hell?” “It has been 12 seconds since he scored a goal. What’s going on?” Could it be the soul-crushing pressure of having everything riding on you for club and country? You are The Man for everybody, two sets of absurdly demanding audiences, culers and Argentina football fans. And both groups believe that winning is a legacy. then you have all the other stuff, friendlies, charity matches, Super thises and thats, internationals and then club football. It’s so much. Add to this the burden of the extraordinary becoming expected. 91 goals? Are you kidding me? And people ask what is wrong with Messi, when maybe very little is wrong with Messi, that he is finding a sustainable mortal level through no fault of his own, as the brain just breaks down under pressure that is an order of magnitude heavier on him than it is on the whole rest of the club. It used to be that everyone around Messi wasn’t up to his standard, the churls. Now Barça has become Argentina. It’s all his fault. Edge? What edge? Maybe. Or maybe not. All the answers In the past three matches, all losses, it seems the opponent has had all the answers. But is it because the questions aren’t being asked as quickly as they used to. And that’s that. Are the players trying? It sure seems like they aren’t as opponents zoom past them. The want is gone, which is never, ever true because no matter how bummed you are that the club lost, imagine being the players. And then suddenly supporters have all the answers. X or Y player out, W or Z player will do it. Make the change, you crappy coach! It’s his fault. I can’t wait for him to leave our club. It’s easy to heap blame on a coach who doesn’t deserve the crap he has gotten, rather than asking what the deal is. Why is this happening, part of everything all at once? And we sit in judgment of these athletes. “X or Y is terrible, he isn’t Barça quality, and should be sold.” “Fire the coach.” Yet above, beyond and aside from the institutional malaise brought about by a passel of prats more focused on a monument than the sporting project, our champions are mentally hammered, and not getting any better. The fresh brains and legs necessary to revive the sporting project, provide options for a coach, hasn’t happened. And humanity does what it does. Excuses? Blame. No and never. Nobody needs an excuse for being human. Players never, ever want to lose but sometimes, increasingly as the mental load increases, they just can’t. The circuit breaker trips. Then a team that is cohesive, hard working and fully committed, gets a result. Then it happens again. And again. And the judgments begin. Tata this, Fabregas that, Song the other, Pique, Mascherano, Alves, Alba, Pinto, it all depends on how someone feels about a certain player. Cowards gather to hurl insults at the players, Alves and Neymar face racist chanting at the airport, it’s all so horrible that something so beautiful as winning has come down to vile recriminations and anger. Winning all the time is impossible, even for a group that will go down in history as one of the greatest teams ever assembled. Does the rage stem from the misplaced faith? Disappointment? Who knows why supporters rage against the athletes who strive for success on the collective behalf, but it is so in every sport, even as people who are more intelligent than we are explain to us how absurd our expectations are, that logically, winning is mathematically incalculable. But loving a team isn’t math. It’s … emotion, and belief, and rage when that belief is misplaced, lashing out at the people who we think brought us this misery. “I want them GONE!” And yet, ultimately, that something is the humanity that makes bodies falter and psychology slip, that allows that imperceptible diminution of effort that is truly nobody’s fault. It just happens. And if you think you are upset over the team now winning, you feel only a fraction. Think about how the players must feel. As Iniesta Tweeted, “Sad for the loss and not bringing the cup home. We were motivated to give you some joy. Now more than ever, proud of everyone.”
- Shopping Bag ( 0 items ) Presents a top-down approach to the design, development, testing and recyclability of products, components and systems across a wide range of industries. Starting with the desired result and working back through the details, it shows how to produce goods, taking into account the challenges of actual manufacture, what the reliability requirements should be, quality control, associated costs, customer needs and more. Additional features include case studies and team negotiating. Also well-illustrated with figures, photographs, charts and tables and includes an extensive bibliography. Partial table of contents: Life-Cycle Design of Products: A New Opportunity for ManufacturingEnterprises (L. Alting). Modeling of Concurrent Engineering Design (K. Ishii). Automated Analysis Idealization Control (R. Wentorf & M.Shephard). Concurrent Engineering in Optimal Structural Design (M. Chirehdast,et al.). Conceptual Design of Mechanisms: A Qualitive Physics Approach (T.Tomiyama, et al.). An Intelligent Design for Manufacturing System (J. Colton). Design for Automated Manufacturing (Z. Dong). Quality by Design (S. Sanchez, et al.). Quality Engineering and Tolerance Design (K. Kapur). Design for Reliability (A. Birolini). Design for Maintainability (M. Klement). Design for Economics (J. Noble & J. Tanchoco). Use of an Agent-Based System for Concurrent Mechanical Design (J.Brandon & G. Huang).
Basehor students learn to rope and wrangle on Kansas Day More than 60 Basehor Elementary School students helped celebrate the state of Kansas's 141st birthday Jan. 29. All three BES second-grade classes participated in a mock rodeo in the school's gymnasium. The rodeo helped cap off a week of Kansas-related activities for students. The rodeo was coordinated by BES second-grade teachers Terri Gallet, Angie Lanning and Mary Genz. Earlier in the week, students learned about state symbols such as the Sunflower, although one student must have got his signals crossed. "I learned about the Jayhawk and why KU uses it," he said. "I really liked the Jayhawk." On this day though, it was cowboys and cowgirls competing on their makeshift stick horses in the school's rodeo. The students made their horses at home out of broom handles. Students competed in straight ahead races, barrel races and an obstacle course during the rodeo. Gallet said the rodeo was all part of celebrating Kansas week. "We dressed up as pioneers and we did the rodeo in honor of Kansas day," Gallet said. "It was just something fun for the kids to do." One second-grade student, Russell Clark, said he was glad to participate in the rodeo. "I think it is pretty fun," he said. "It is kind of like recess, but you get to run and have fun with all your friends. It just kind of makes me feel happy to live in Kansas."
NEWS & PRESS RELEASES Connections building through Facebook, Twitter, other sites Those with campus connections are increasingly using social media outlets to stay in touch with friends, tapping into the power of a shared common interest in BBC&S and instant communications with each other. The networks are an efficient and valuable way for BBC&S to advance news related to campus, students and alumni. They are also a powerful tool for users to simply stay in touch with each other and their common BBC&S experiences. Photos of many BBC&S events are also posted frequently, with links added on the pages. The largest connecting tool is Facebook, with more than 10,300 students, alumni, parents, and others on the BBC&S page through the world's largest online social network. The BBC&S Facebook page has grown consistently. It provides frequent updates on events, gives easy access to important information, interesting items, fun "random poll questions," and other posts. Information on how to join Facebook is here. View and join the BBC&S page here. Short updates are also posted on Twitter, the popular microblogging site. Information on how to join Twitter is online here. View the BBC&S Twitter page here. BBC&S also connects with friends on Google Plus, Instagram, and Pinterest. Baptist Bible College & Seminary offers outstanding Christian higher education through on-campus, online, and other distance learning options. Students go beyond the ordinary, learning to think biblically, grow spiritually, and serve faithfully as they gain critical leadership and life skills. To learn more, go to www.bbc.edu or call 570.586.2400. Posted on: 11/8/2013 7:55:00 AM
Perils and perks of teens taking transit It’s happened to you before. You’re taking the subway home one day, just beginning to zone out, gazing tiredly into middle-space, musing about what to make for dinner. And then you wake up in a great big hurry, registering HUNDREDS of teenagers pouring into your subway car. Where did they come from?! As the teens populate the car, the air thickens with chatter and laughter. As they plop themselves down beside you, crack their gum in your ear, and leaning into your personal space, you start to calculate how many subway stops until you get off. That’s when you spy the teacher using her magic to keep a few rowdies from standing on the seats. The nickel drops, and you breathe a sigh of relief. It’s a school trip! Which means that someone (else) is responsible for keeping the mob in check. I used to dread meeting teenagers on transit. But those of you who know me a little, are probably guessing that my opinion has shifted over time. And you’d be right. I ask you, should it not be inspiring to cross paths with young people at ease in the public realm? Most teens do not ride in packs but rather in clusters headed to the mall, or by themselves making their way home from school. Their presence indicates that someone taught them how to use the system, and then gave them the freedom to use it responsibly. And they do. They plan their trips, figure out the bus routes, make sure they have tickets or exact change, watch for their stops. Some will even remember to pack an umbrella. Teens’ sense of independence takes a huge leap when they can get themselves from point (a) to point (b) all on their own. At first teens might be nervous and make mistakes – my daughter ended up going in the wrong direction on one of her first solo trips. She had the good sense to remember that the bus would turn around at the end of the line, so she just stayed on the bus. An excellent 20-minute lesson, if you ask me. Speaking of lessons, consider the exposure to the real world that a subway ride offers. Transit is the great equalizer. Everybody takes the bus, not just teens humming to music blaring from their headphones while tap-tap-tapping a message out to countless friends. Your teen will see university students, moms bouncing babies, hipster dudes, homeless people, downtown lawyers with their faces buried in the business section, construction workers smelling a tad ripe from a long day of hard work and seniors heading off to the discount store. Bus fare pays for not just transportation but unparalleled access to a whole cross-section of people from urban society. Your child might even pick up some good manners when someone offers a seat to an elderly passenger, or says “excuse me” when trying to manoeuvre through a crowded subway car. Of course, you’re going to be nervous the first time you send a precious child to ride transit alone. After all, there could be robbers, rapists, and very bad people on the bus! Too true, but we know that many more good people take transit as well, many of whom would jump to help out a youngster who’s lost or in need of help. It’s not a perfect world, for sure, and there are risks. You know your child best, so you and your teen must decide when is the right time, and how much risk you want to take. Would I let my 14-year-old travel transit after dark? Not on your life. Just a line we don’t feel comfortable crossing yet. So if you have a vehicle and the time, by all means, pick your child up when it’s raining or take them to that piano class off the beaten track, or pick them up from the skating rink. But don’t always chauffeur your children everywhere. You’d be depriving them of important exposure that can help them grow up, gain a stronger sense of independence, and in the long run become a better citizen. Margaret Hoogeven is a local writer, editor, and mother of two school-aged daughters. She can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org Please comment below. For our commment guidelines click here
One in 10 men living in Ireland has tried cocaine at some stage in their life, a cross-border poll has revealed. But people are using the drug less since the economic boom years, some because of its cost and others because of health worries. Orla Dempsey, researcher with the National Advisory Committee on Drugs and Alcohol (NACDA), said men and woman were kicking the habit for different reasons. "The main reason for stopping among men and young people is that they can no longer afford to use cocaine," she said. "Whereas older adults and females just don't want to use it any more. That was their reason for stopping." The study of of 7,669 people aged between 15 and 64, in the Republic and Northern Ireland, found that 7% of the island's population had tried cocaine at least once. This figure was up slightly since the last poll a few years ago, but that it is to be expected in an ageing population. There was a small drop in the number who had tried cocaine in the last year (2%) while current users - those who had taken it within the last month - remained stable at 0.5%. "For recent use or those that have used in the last month, it is declining," said Ms Dempsey. " And people are now using less frequently." Men (10%) were more likely than women (4%) to have taken cocaine at some stage in their lives, with twice as many men (2%) as women (1%) reporting using cocaine in the last year. Most recent users said they got the drug at a friend's house (39%), followed by at a bar or nightclub (37%), a street or park (12%), or ordering it over the telephone (11%). Another 1% said they got the drugs at school or college. Seven out of 10 said they could easily get cocaine within 24 hours. The NACDA report also shows that among the general population, cocaine use was most prevalent among those with a university degree or third-level education. The average user first took the drug at the age of 21. The poll was carried out between 2010 and 2011.
Holiday Foods That Can Really Pack On The Pounds The Better Life Experts | December 18, 2008 Those “in the know”, claim that the average person in the United States gains between 7-15 pounds over the Holidays. What foods are the culprits? If one could avoid/limit just 5 foods, what would they be? Well, everyone has his/her own ideas, but these are the ones we think most people should watch carefully: If we limit or restrict the 5 above mentioned foods, perhaps we could lower the poundage we bring into the New Year. - Pecan Pie….Resist eating more than 1 small piece of this pie made with eggs, cream and lots of sugar; - Eggnog….Made with real cream, brandy, and whole eggs. Stick with 1 small serving of this delicious brew; - Candied Yams…We usually eat them 1-2 times a year and they are so good, especially with nuts and marshmallows on top, made with real butter and brown sugar – yum. Again, watch your portions; - Cheesy Dips….The creamier and fattier the better whether on carrot sticks or chips or toast. Whoa, go easy on these! - Creamy Gravy….Add heavy cream, butter and flour to meat juices and you a little slice of heaven. Go easy on ALL sauces that are basically fat, flour, and cream. What would your list look like?
And straightway his ears were opened It is in the Greek text, "his hearings"; the instruments of his hearing, and so rightly rendered, "his ears": the Persic version reads, "both his ears"; but the word "both" is unnecessary, since the word, "ears", takes in both. Such a power went along with the words of Christ, when he said, "be opened"; that immediately, as soon as ever the words were pronounced, the man's hearing came to him, and he heard as quick as ever he did before he lost it, or, as any other man: and the string of his tongue; which caused it to cleave to his jaws, or the roof of his mouth, and hindered him from speaking plainly, was loosed, and he spake plain; (tyaqyvp) , "easily", as the Syriac version renders it; without any difficulty to himself, and so as to be readily understood by others. Thus those whose ears are opened, and whose tongues are loosed in a spiritual manner by Christ, speak plainly of what they have heard and seen, and felt; they can give a plain and clear account of the work of God upon their souls; how they have been convinced of the impurity of their nature, the corruptions of their hearts, and the exceeding sinfulness of sin, in heart, lip, and life; how they have seen Christ to be an all sufficient and suitable Saviour, and have been directed, and encouraged, to go to him, for healing, pardon, righteousness, and everlasting salvation; they can tell what promises have been applied to them, and what comforts they have enjoyed; how busy Satan has been with them; and what temptations of his they have been delivered out of, and by what means: in a word, they can speak plainly of the love of God to them; of the glories and excellencies of Christ; of their faith and hope in him, and love to him; and of the operations of the Spirit of God upon their hearts; and of the glories of the world to come, they are in the expectation of, so far as they are taught of God.
"`Moreover, when ye shall divide by lot the land for inheritance, ye shall offer an oblation unto the LORD, a holy portion of the land. The length shall be the length of five and twenty thousand reeds, and the breadth shall be ten thousand; this shall be holy in all the borders thereof round about. Of this there shall be for the sanctuary five hundred in length with five hundred in breadth, square round about, and fifty cubits round about for the open places thereof. And of this measure shalt thou measure the length of five and twenty thousand and the breadth of ten thousand; and in it shall be the sanctuary and the Most Holy Place. The holy portion of the land shall be for the priests, the ministers of the sanctuary, who shall come near to minister unto the LORD; and it shall be a place for their houses and a holy place for the sanctuary. And the five and twenty thousand of length and the ten thousand of breadth shall also the Levites, the ministers of the house, have for themselves as a possession for twenty chambers. "`And ye shall appoint as the possession of the city five thousand broad, and five and twenty thousand long, opposite the oblation of the holy portion; it shall be for the whole house of Israel.
Some regions of the deep ocean floor support abundant populations of organisms, despite being overlain by water that contains very little oxygen, according to an international study led by scientists at the United Kingdom's National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. But global warming is likely to exacerbate oxygen depletion and thereby reduce biodiversity in these regions, they warn. The sunlit surface waters tend to be well oxygenated as a result of their connection with the atmosphere. Here, tiny marine algae called phytoplankton thrive. When they die and sink, they are degraded by bacteria, using oxygen from the water column. In regions of high plant growth, this can result in the natural development of mid-water oxygen minimum zones (OMZs), especially where oxygen is not replenished by mixing of the water column. Where they touch the continental slope, OMZs create strong seafloor oxygen gradients at depths between 100 and 1000 m. In addition to low oxygen, sediments within OMZs often contain large amounts of organic matter. As a result, species of animals and protozoans (foraminifera) that can tolerate low oxygen may flourish, despite the stressful conditions. However, if oxygen depletion is very severe, many types of animals disappear. Where animals are present, OMZs provide a variety of habitats created by steep gradients in oxygen and sulphide concentrations, different seafloor types, and variations in acidity and nutrient availability. In this new synthesis, based on a survey of published and unpublished data, the team of researchers analysed the habitats and biodiversity of well-developed OMZs in the Arabian Sea, eastern Pacific and Bay of Bengal. "Oxygen seems to be the overriding factor controlling biological diversity and seabed community composition within OMZ core regions," said Professor Andrew Gooday of NOCS: "Where oxygen levels increase, the strong seafloor gradients create variety that |Contact: Dr. Rory Howlett| National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (UK)
LINCOLN, Neb. -- A type of abortion banned under a new federal law would cause "severe and excruciating" pain to 20-week-old fetuses, a medical expert testified yesterday in one of three trials across the country testing the law's constitutionality. "I believe the fetus is conscious," said Dr. Kanwaljeet "Sonny" Anand, a pediatrician at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. He took the stand as a witness for the government, which is defending the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Anand also said he believes a less controversial abortion procedure, known as dilation and evacuation, would cause the same amount of pain to a fetus. An estimated 140,000 D&Es, the most common method of second-trimester abortion, take place in the United States annually. He also said there is no medical definition of "consciousness." The law, signed by President Bush in November, has not been enforced because judges in Lincoln, Neb., New York, and San Francisco agreed to hear evidence in three simultaneous, nonjury trials on whether the ban violates the Constitution. Anand said yesterday that fetuses show increased heart rate, blood flow, and hormone levels in response to pain. "The physiological responses have been very clearly studied," he said. "The fetus cannot talk . . . so this is the best evidence we can get." The Bush administration has argued that the procedure, referred to by opponents as "partial-birth abortion," is "inhumane and gruesome" and causes the fetus to suffer. During the procedure, which doctors call intact dilation and extraction or D&X, a fetus is partly removed from the womb and its skull is punctured. It is generally performed in the second trimester. Abortion rights advocates argue that it is sometimes the safest procedure for women, and that the law will endanger almost all second-trimester abortions, or 10 percent of the nation's 1.3 million annual abortions. Another government witness, Dr. Leroy Sprange, who practices obstetrics and gynecology in Illinois, said he has never performed a D&X but he believes it increases the risk of infection and causes undue trauma to the cervix. "I've never seen a situation where intact D&X is the safest or best procedure to preserve the health of the mother," Sprange said yesterday. The law would be the first substantial limitation on abortion since the Supreme Court legalized it 31 years ago in the landmark Roe v. Wade case. Challenges to the ban were filed by several doctors being represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights, the National Abortion Federation and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
|Afghan lawmakers prayed during the inauguration of the country’s new Parliament in Kabul yesterday. (S. Sabwoon/ Associated Press/ Pool)| Karzai swears in Afghan Parliament Accuses West of meddling in election process KABUL, Afghanistan — President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan reluctantly swore in a new Parliament yesterday, and he criticized the international community for meddling in the country’s elections. Having barely averted a standoff with lawmakers that threatened to turn into a constitutional crisis, Karzai reminded them that ongoing vote fraud investigations mean many of their seats are still uncertain. Karzai’s stance threatens to keep the credibility of Parliament in question even as the assembly starts working to pass laws and budgets. Strengthening the Afghan government is seen as key to the fight against a stubborn insurgency. The idea is that a strong government will better be able to take over responsibility for security, and Afghans will be less likely to turn to the Taliban if they have faith in their government. Karzai has repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of the Parliament since results were certified in November. Most notably, he backed a disputed tribunal that has renewed investigations into electoral misconduct long after an official panel backed by international advisers completed its own investigation. When Karzai ordered that the opening session be delayed a month to allow investigations to finish, the 249 elected legislators threatened to open the session without his approval this past Sunday — the originally scheduled opening date. Karzai later capitulated but said investigations would continue. The top United Nations official in Afghanistan welcomed the inauguration as a crisis averted. “The danger was the lack of unity in this country,’’ said Staffan De Mistura. He said the inauguration was crucial. “If that had not taken place, we would have had a lot of tension and confusion,’’ De Mistura said. In New York, a spokesman for Ban Ki-moon said the UN secretary-general also welcomed the opening of Parliament. The step marks “the beginning of a period in which Afghan governing institutions must work together to solve the pressing problems that the country faces, putting aside the differences as any robust and vibrant democracy demands,’’ said the spokesman, Martin Nesirky. Karzai also called for unity in his speech to the parliamentarians, but at the same time he accused international advisers of trying to force their ideas and methods on the Afghan people. “If the election had been wholly Afghan, without any doubt it would have been transparent and less expensive, reflecting the will of the people,’’ he said. “There are a lot of questions that we need to respond to about the parliamentary election,’’ he added. Karzai has also accused Western powers of trying to force a runoff between him and his runner-up in last year’s presidential election in order to undermine his administration. He still maintains that the UN-backed electoral fraud panel threw out votes that weren’t fraudulent in order to undercut his lead. The current tribunal backed by Karzai argues that it will be able to change the results of the parliamentary vote. Afghan election officials and international advisers say the tribunal has the authority to rule only on criminal cases.
- About Us - Local Savings - Green Editions - Legal Notices - Weekly Ads Connect with Us Washington sees rise in fire fatalities in 2009 Kitsap County has no confirmed fire-related deaths so far. In the first 71 days of this year, 18 people died as a result of fires in Washington, according to the Office of the State Fire Marshal. That’s a 157 percent increase compared to the same time period last year. Kitsap County Fire Marshal David Lynam said none of those fatalities were in Kitsap County, but local fire agencies have responded to many damaging fires so far this year. “We’ve been to a number of fires that were significant losses,” Lynam said. “We’ve had several recently that have caused $50,000-$60,000 of damage to homes.” Lynam said Kitsap County typically has one to three fire fatalities in a year. He added that the last fatality in the county occurred in Port Orchard in April 2008. Lynam said people can take several steps to prevent fires from sparking inside their homes. He said cooking fires are a big problem and people should keep a close eye on the kitchen while preparing food. People also should make sure to extinguish all smoking materials in non-combustible, sturdy containers. “Watch your open flames and be very cautious about your smoking and your cooking,” Lynam said. Most fire fatalities occur at night, so he suggested people make sure all open flames are extinguished before going to sleep. Lynam said a working smoke alarm should be placed just outside all sleeping areas in a home and, in some cases, inside each one. “The first thing we’d make sure with everybody is no one goes to bed without a working smoke alarm,” he said. Lynam said residential sprinkler systems also can snuff out fires before they get out of control. It can get pricey to install a sprinkler system inside a home, but he recommends all new construction be outfitted with sprinklers. “It’s operable all the time,” Lynam said of sprinkler A dryer fire at the Discovery Depot Montessori School on Tracyton Avenue in Bremerton March 11 was snuffed out by a working sprinkler system before causing any major damage. When Central Kitsap Fire & Rescue crews arrived to the scene, a sprinkler head was dousing the flames with water, confining the blaze to the dryer. Lynam said even with a working sprinkler system and smoke alarms, people still need to take the appropriate steps to keep their homes safe from fires. “People still need to be diligent,” he said. “But by far the quickest and easiest thing you could do tonight is get yourself a working smoke alarm in or outside of the bedroom.”
- Direct electric current - Alternating electric currents - Electric properties of matter A most interesting condition known as resonance occurs when the phase angle is zero in equation (31), or equivalently, when the angular frequency ω has the value ω = ωr = √1/LC. The impedance in equation (30) then has its minimum value and equals the resistance R. The amplitude of the current in the circuit, i0, is at its maximum value (see equation ). Figure 24 shows the dependence of i0 on the angular frequency ω of the source of alternating electromotive force. The values of the electric parameters for the figure are V0 = 50 volts, R = 25 ohms, L = 4.5 millihenrys, and C = 0.2 microfarad. With these values, the resonant angular frequency ωr of the circuit in Figure 23 is 3.33 × 104 radians per second. The peaking in the current shown in Figure 24 constitutes a resonance. At the resonant frequency, in this case when ωr equals 3.33 × 104 radians per second, the impedance Z of the circuit is at a minimum and the power dissipated is at a maximum. The phase angle ϕ is zero so that the current is in phase with the driving voltage, and the power factor, cos ϕ, is 1. Figure 25 illustrates the variation of the average power with the angular frequency of the sinusoidal electromotive force. The resonance is seen to be even more pronounced. The quality factor Q for the circuit is the electric energy stored in the circuit divided by the energy dissipated in one period. The Q of a circuit is an important quantity in certain applications, as in the case of electromagnetic waveguides and radio-frequency cavities where Q has values around 10,000 and where high voltages and electric fields are desired. For the present circuit, Q = ωrL/R. Q also can be obtained from the average power graph as the ratio ωr/(ω2 − ω1), where ω1 and ω2 are the angular frequencies at which the average power dissipated in the circuit is one-half its maximum value. For the circuit here, Q = 6. What is the maximum value of the potential difference across the inductor? Since it is given by Ldi/dt, it will occur when the current has the maximum rate of change. Figure 26 shows the amplitude of the potential difference as a function of ω. The maximum amplitude of the voltage across the inductor, 300 volts, is much greater than the 50-volt amplitude of the driving sinusoidal electromotive force. This result is typical of resonance phenomena. In a familiar mechanical system, children on swings time their kicks to attain very large swings (much larger than they could attain with a single kick). In a more spectacular, albeit costly, example, the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (a suspension bridge across the Narrows of Puget Sound, Wash.) on Nov. 7, 1940, was the result of the large amplitudes of oscillations that the span attained as it was driven in resonance by high winds. A ubiquitous example of electric resonance occurs when a radio dial is turned to receive a broadcast. Turning the dial changes the value of the tuning capacitor of the radio. When the circuit attains a resonance frequency corresponding to the frequency of the radio wave, the voltage induced is enhanced and processed to produce sound. Electric properties of matter Some solids, notably certain crystals, have permanent electric polarization. Other crystals become electrically polarized when subjected to stress. In electric polarization, the centre of positive charge within an atom, molecule, or crystal lattice element is separated slightly from the centre of negative charge. Piezoelectricity (literally “pressure electricity”) is observed if a stress is applied to a solid, for example, by bending, twisting, or squeezing it. If a thin slice of quartz is compressed between two electrodes, a potential difference occurs; conversely, if the quartz crystal is inserted into an electric field, the resulting stress changes its dimensions. Piezoelectricity is responsible for the great precision of clocks and watches equipped with quartz oscillators. It also is used in electric guitars and various other musical instruments to transform mechanical vibrations into corresponding electric signals, which are then amplified and converted to sound by acoustical speakers. A crystal under stress exhibits the direct piezoelectric effect; a polarization P, proportional to the stress, is produced. In the converse effect, an applied electric field produces a distortion of the crystal, represented by a strain proportional to the applied field. The basic equations of piezoelectricity are P = d × stress and E = strain/d. The piezoelectric coefficient d (in metres per volt) is approximately 3 × 10−12 for quartz, 5 × −10−11 for ammonium dihydrogen phosphate, and 3 × 10−10 for lead zirconate titanate. For an elastic body, the stress is proportional to the strain—i.e., stress = Ye × strain. The proportionality constant is the coefficient of elasticity Ye, also called Young’s modulus for the English physicist Thomas Young. Using that relation, the induced polarization can be written as P = dYe × strain, while the stress required to keep the strain constant when the crystal is in an electric field is stress = −dYeE. The strain in a deformed elastic body is the fractional change in the dimensions of the body in various directions; the stress is the internal pressure along the various directions. Both are second-rank tensors, and, since electric field and polarization are vectors, the detailed treatment of piezoelectricity is complex. The equations above are oversimplified but can be used for crystals in certain orientations. The polarization effects responsible for piezoelectricity arise from small displacements of ions in the crystal lattice. Such an effect is not found in crystals with a centre of symmetry. The direct effect can be quite strong; a potential V = Yedδ/ε0K is generated in a crystal compressed by an amount δ, where K is the dielectric constant. If lead zirconate titanate is placed between two electrodes and a pressure causing a reduction of only 1/20th of one millimetre is applied, a 100,000-volt potential is produced. The direct effect is used, for example, to generate an electric spark with which to ignite natural gas in a heating unit or an outdoor cooking grill. In practice, the converse piezoelectric effect, which occurs when an external electric field changes the dimensions of a crystal, is small because the electric fields that can be generated in a laboratory are minuscule compared to those existing naturally in matter. A static electric field of 106 volts per metre produces a change of only about 0.001 millimetre in the length of a one-centimetre quartz crystal. The effect can be enhanced by the application of an alternating electric field of the same frequency as the natural mechanical vibration frequency of the crystal. Many of the crystals have a quality factor Q of several hundred, and, in the case of quartz, the value can be 106. The result is a piezoelectric coefficient a factor Q higher than for a static electric field. The very large Q of quartz is exploited in electronic oscillator circuits to make remarkably accurate timepieces. The mechanical vibrations that can be induced in a crystal by the converse piezoelectric effect are also used to generate ultrasound, which is sound with a frequency far higher than frequencies audible to the human ear—above 20 kilohertz. The reflected sound is detectable by the direct effect. Such effects form the basis of ultrasound systems used to fathom the depths of lakes and waterways and to locate fish. Ultrasound has found application in medical imaging (e.g., fetal monitoring and the detection of abnormalities such as prostate tumours). The use of ultrasound makes it possible to produce detailed pictures of organs and other internal structures because of the variation in the reflection of sound from various body tissues. Thin films of polymeric plastic with a piezoelectric coefficient of about 10−11 metres per volt are being developed and have numerous potential applications as pressure transducers.
How to Open Windows 8 Start Screen Within Desktop Screen In this article we are explaining how to open the Windows 8 Start Screen within the desktop screen. Windows 8 comes with a new-style Start Screen. It is the best feature of Windows 8 that shows all the Metro Style applications installed on Windows. It is also known as the Metro Style Start Screen. You can directly open all the installed applications by the Start Screen. By default the Start Screen opens maximized but if you want to open the Start Screen in a smaller size within the Desktop screen then you have to use the "Start Menu Modifier" tools. The Start Menu Modifier tools is a small tool that customizes your Start Screen to a specific size and position. You can download "Start Menu Modifier" from this link: By default the Start Screen is shown as in the following: How to Modify the Start Screen. Download Start Menu Modifier and run the program as administrator. In the Start Menu Modifier window select your position and size and click "Apply". Now open the Start Screen. It will open within the desktop screen. If you want to display the Start Screen in normal mood then you have to set the position to Default.
On this day in history... April 26, Great Learning Opportunities! Here are some events that happened today, in history- some of them are pretty interesting. Do you think you could help your child learn about one of these events today? Pick one and let us know how it goes! 1336 – Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) ascends Mont Ventoux 1478 – The Pazzi attack Lorenzo de' Medici and kill his brother Giuliano during High Mass in the Duomo of Florence. 1564 – Playwright William Shakespeare was baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England (date of actual birth is unknown) 1607 – English colonists make landfall at Cape Henry, Virginia. 1802 – Napoleon Bonaparte signs a general amnesty to allow all but about one thousand of the most notorious émigrés of the French Revolution to return to France, as part of a reconciliary gesture with the factions of the Ancien Regime and to eventually consolidate his own rule. 1803 – Thousands of meteor fragments fall from the skies of L'Aigle, France; the event convinces European science that meteors exist. 1805 – First Barbary War: United States Marines captured Derne under the command of First Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon. 1865 – American Civil War: Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston surrenders his army to General William Tecumseh Sherman at the Bennett Place near Durham, North Carolina. Also the date of Confederate Memorial Day for most states. 1865 – Union cavalry troopers corner and shoot dead John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Lincoln, in Virginia. 1923 – The Duke of York weds Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon at Westminster Abbey. 1925 – Paul von Hindenburg defeats Wilhelm Marx in the second round of the German presidential election to become the first directly elected head of state of the Weimar Republic. 1933 – The Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, is established. 1937 – Spanish Civil War: Guernica (or Gernika in Basque), Spain is bombed by German Luftwaffe. 1942 – Benxihu Colliery accident in Manchukuo leaves 1549 Chinese miners dead. 1944 – Georgios Papandreou becomes head of the Greek government-in-exile based in Egypt. 1945 – World War II: Battle of Bautzen – last successful German tank-offensive of the war and last noteworthy victory of the Wehrmacht. 1945 – World War II: Filipino troops of the 66th Infantry Regiment, Philippine Commonwealth Army, USAFIP-NL and the American troops of the 33rd and 37th Infantry Division, United States Army was liberated in Baguio City and they fought against the Japanese forces under by General Tomoyuki Yamashita. 1946 – Naperville train disaster kills 47. 1954 – The Geneva Conference, an effort to restore peace in Indochina and Korea, begins. 1956 – SS Ideal X, the world's first successful container ship, leaves Port Newark, New Jersey for Houston, Texas. 1958 – Final run of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Royal Blue from Washington, D.C., to New York City after 68 years, the first U.S. passenger train to use electric locomotives. 1960 – Forced out by the April Revolution, President of South Korea Syngman Rhee resigns after twelve years of dictatorial rule. 1962 – NASA's Ranger 4 spacecraft crashes into the Moon. 1963 – In Libya, amendments to the constitution transform Libya (United Kingdom of Libya) into one national unity (Kingdom of Libya) and allows for female participation in elections. 1964 – Tanganyika and Zanzibar merge to form Tanzania. 1965 – A Rolling Stones concert in London, Ontario is shut down by police after 15 minutes due to rioting. 1966 – An earthquake of magnitude 7.5 destroys Tashkent. 1966 – A new government is formed in the Republic of Congo, led by Ambroise Noumazalaye. 1970 – The Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization enters into force. 1981 – Dr. Michael R. Harrison of the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center performs the world's first human open fetal surgery. 1982 – 57 people are killed by former police officer Woo Bum-kon in a shooting spree in Gyeongsangnam-do, South Korea. 1986 – A nuclear reactor accident occurs at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Soviet Union (now Ukraine), creating the world's worst nuclear disaster. 1989 – The deadliest tornado in world history strikes Central Bangladesh, killing upwards of 1,300, injuring 12,000, and leaving as many as 80,000 homeless. 1989 – People's Daily publishes the People's Daily editorial of April 26 which inflames the nascent Tiananmen Square protests 1991 – Seventy tornadoes break out in the central United States. Before the outbreak's end, Andover, Kansas, would record the year's only F5 tornado (see Andover, Kansas Tornado Outbreak). 1994 – China Airlines flight 140 crashes at Nagoya Airport in Japan, killing 264 of the 271 people on board. 2002 – Robert Steinhäuser infiltrates and kills 17 at Gutenberg-Gymnasium in Erfurt, Germany before dying of a self-inflicted gunshot. 2005 – Under international pressure, Syria withdraws the last of its 14,000 troop military garrison in Lebanon, ending its 29-year military domination of that country ( Syrian occupation of Lebanon ).
In August 2003, negotiations among World Trade Organization (WTO) members resulted in a landmark decision to waive two licensing provisions of the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) that appeared to prevent the export of generic drugs and medical devices to developing countries faced with public health problems. The August 2003 decision allows WTO member countries with pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity to issue licences for the manufacture and export of generic versions of patented drugs and medical devices to developing countries without the capacity to manufacture the products themselves. Although all WTO member countries are eligible to import under the 2003 decision, 23 developed countries have voluntarily announced that they will not use the system to import, while a number of others have announced separately that they would only use the system for emergencies or situations of extreme urgency. In September 2003, Canada became the first WTO member to announce its intention to implement the WTO decision. In May 2004, the Government of Canada passed An Act to amend the Patent Act and the Food and Drugs Act--The Jean Chrétien Pledge to Africa. The Act, along with a supporting set of regulations, establishes the legal framework for Canada's Access to Medicines Regime. The Regime came into force on May 14, 2005. Representatives of Canada's generic and brand name drug companies, and various non-governmental organizations were consulted during the development of the legislation and regulations. The Regime balances Canada's trade and intellectual property obligations with the humanitarian objective of the WTO decision. The Regime is a result of the co-operation of Industry Canada, Health Canada, the Canadian International Development Agency, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, International Trade Canada and Foreign Affairs Canada. It requires the good will of pharmaceutical companies to participate in the Regime to fulfill the humanitarian objective of alleviating public health problems in developing nations. The goal is to facilitate timely access to generic versions of patented drugs and medical devices, especially those needed by least-developed or developing countries to fight HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases. In late 2005, WTO members agreed to amend the TRIPS Agreement to formally adopt the 2003 WTO decision. The amendment will become part of the TRIPS Agreement when two-thirds of the WTO's members have ratified it, with the deadline for ratification set for December 1, 2007. For more information about the Regime, see Features of the Regime.
If you love animals, becoming a volunteer at your local shelter is definitely something you should consider. You will be making a difference not only to the animals that reside there, but to the shelter and to your community. Words can’t adequately describe the rewarding feeling you get from helping these beautiful four-legged souls that are without a family to love and care for them. Since most shelters operate on shoestring budgets, volunteers are an essential part of their daily operations. Although there is no central data reporting agency for animal shelters, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) estimates that 6-8 million dogs and cats end up in America’s shelters every year. That, my friends, is a lot of animals who desperately need some TLC. There are a variety of tasks assigned to volunteers; some include working with the animals, some do not. You can walk dogs, socialize cats, clean cages, help with feeding, watering and grooming, do adoption counseling or administrative tasks. Some volunteers choose more than one “job” so they can contribute wherever help is needed most. Shelters also need foster parents to care for animals in their home – you can read more about that here. Most shelters ask for a two hour commitment every week. That said, they usually won’t turn you down if you have a sincere desire to help but only have a few hours every month. They do, however, expect volunteers to honor whatever time commitment they’ve made. They need to know you’ll be there when you say you will, and if your life is in flux, it’s unfair to the shelter and the animals to make promises you can’t keep. Getting started as an animal shelter volunteer is easy. You fill out an application, and typically attend a “new volunteer” orientation. Shelters use this orientation to familiarize volunteers with their operations, and to make sure this new relationship starts off right. It’s similar to starting a new job, except you don’t get paid, at least not with currency you can spend. Shelter volunteers get paid with emotional dollars they can put in their personal bank of pride and self-appreciation. I’ve volunteered at three different shelters throughout my life. My first was at age 17 (the minimum age requirement varies, but is usually between 16 and 18). I signed up as a dog walker, because I felt bad that the dogs had to be cooped up in kennels all day long. The excitement and happiness the dogs exuded when I approached with leash in hand was palpable. They all clamored to be chosen to get out in the fresh air for some exercise. Those dog walks were always enjoyable, but I’ll never forget one in particular. There was a dog at the shelter I knew quite well, since she had belonged to a friend. I took her out to the large open field and decided to unleash her, because I was certain she wouldn’t run away. The moment I unleashed her, she took off like a rocket across the field. Soon she was just a tiny speck, and as I stood there with the leash, I contemplated how to explain this to the shelter staff. I was certain my dog walking days were over. Much to my relief, Trixie reached the end of the field, then turned around and raced back to me. At another shelter I was a cat socializer (sometimes called a cat cuddler). The primary duty was to give the shelter cats some much-needed love and attention. I cared about all the cats I interacted with, but sometimes I’d feel a special connection to one of them. Paige was a cat I considered a “lifer.” She’d been at this no-kill shelter for at least a year, and I didn’t think she’d ever get adopted because she had a bit of a split personality. I’m good at reading the body language of cats, and most give you clear signals when they want you to stop petting them. Not Paige. One minute she loved the attention and the next, she’d claw my hand to bits. I could never tell when she was about to go psycho on me. But as it turns out, even a cat like Paige can get adopted if the right person comes along. I’ll always remember the day I came in to find Paige gone. I dreaded asking, for fear she had been put down for some reason. But no – Paige had found her forever home! Volunteering at a shelter is something I highly recommend for all animal lovers. If you’re like me, it may make you sad (and mad) to see so many beautiful animals without a loving home. Yet it will also fill your heart with happiness to know that you are enriching their lives as they wait to find a family of their own. Read more articles by Julia Williams The personal opinions and/or use of trade, corporate or brand names, is for information and convenience only. Such use does not constitute an endorsement by CANIDAE® All Natural Pet Foods of any product or service. Opinions are those of the individual authors and not necessarily of CANIDAE® All Natural Pet Foods.
A modern dictionary of Catholic terms, both common and obscure. Find accurate definitions of words and phrases. A building in Rome also known as the Flavian Amphitheater. It was begun in A.D. 72 by Vespasian (9-79) and completed in A.D. 80 by Titus (39-81). It is now in ruins. Its form is elliptical, 620 feet long, 525 feet wide, built four stories 157 feet in height. A special terrace was reserved for privileged spectators, a private gallery for the emperor, seats in tiers for ordinary citizens, and standing room for all the rest. It could seat 45,000. During the Middle Ages it was used as a stronghold by the Frangipani; later it came into possession of the municipality. Much of its walls were removed for their stone until Pope Clement X declared it a shrine, sanctuary of the martyrs who gave their lives within its limits during the persecutions. It is now a place of pilgrimage for visitors to Rome. (Etym. Latin colisseus, huge, gigantic, colossal.) All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.
At his papal election in 2003, why did Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger take the name Benedict? Because it was the Benedictine Order who, systematically and comprehensively, rebuilt Europe after the barbaric invasions. This fact is of such vital importance that it must be restated, or even stated for the first time, and without embarrassment. It is quite remarkable that some European leaders refuse to acknowledge Europe’s Christian roots and, specifically, the Church’s role in building its civilization. Had it not been for the Church, Europe would have developed in a different form. The Church was Europe’s light in darkness. The title of this essay is the very same as the informative book by Thomas E. Woods, Jr., who answers the implicit question: What was the role and significance of the Catholic Church in the development of Western European civilization? In other words, How the Church Built Western Civilization. Remote Roots of Western Civilization How and when did Western civilization begin? Early Christianity developed according to a Hellenized Judaism, and the Church is largely responsible for handing down the cultural thoughts and traditions of Greece and Rome. Until the fifth century, Western Europe was overrun by nomadic and barbaric tribes. After the sack of Rome in 410, the Church became the one indispensable instrument for christianizing them, first through the monks and their monasteries. The Rise of Monasticism The early forms of monastic life developed from the third century in the Christian East where hermits and consecrated virgins lived ascetical lives while serving the poor and the sick. They are known as the first monastics because the word from the Greek, monos, connotes solitude. The first monastics wanted to flee from the world because they believed it to be evil. Western monasticism is a way of life in which men and women consecrate themselves by public vows to live in a stable place. There they alternate communal and solitary prayer and work in their daily lives. Their prayer is mainly the Liturgy of the Hours, sung or prayed round the clock to fulfill the Lord’s command to “pray always.” Today, some monks and nuns are more withdrawn than others, living the cloistered life. St. Benedict, the Benedictine Order, and the Monastic Centuries In the middle of the sixth century, a small movement changed the landscape of the European world. Benedict of Nursia (480-547) introduced a new way of life and thinking that has brought vitality to contemporary men and women. He laid the foundation of Benedictine monastic life with his monks first at Subiaco and Rome, and then at Monte Cassino in 529. Benedict composed his Rule of disciplined balance that fostered order and peace. If “pray andwork” (ora et labora) was the Benedictine motto, the way to live it was through beauty, piety, and learning. Every monastery was built on an expansive tract of land, and eventually it became a center of life—a miniature civic center for the townspeople. Today, people gather at shopping malls or in village squares. After the year 600 and for five centuries thereafter, the Benedictines promoted a rich liturgical spirituality and high intellectual pursuits. During these centuries, the monks served as church administrators. By and large, they were the only educators and writers of the ages. Living the Liturgy Medieval culture was synonymous with Christian culture. Monasteries celebrated the year of grace with simple beauty. Every day of the calendar year was identified with a saint’s name and not with a number, as we do today. Peasants paused and prayed at Noon, three o’clock, and at six to mark three Hours of the liturgy. Sacramental celebrations were village celebrations. People punctuated their greetings with adieu, adios, or good bye, the equivalent of "God be with you." The Practical Arts The monks were the agriculturalists of Europe. The list of their accomplishments is almost limitless: They drained swamps and converted them from disease-ridden places into fertile regions; cleared away forests for the neighboring inhabitants, introduced new crops, and stored up waters from springs to distribute in times of droughts. They ran a basic hospital for the sick. Not surprisingly, the Benedictines pioneered the production of wine in addition to the discovery of champagne. In all these endeavors, they linked their activity with preaching the gospel (Woods, 28ff). The Monks as Technical Advisers The monks built their own monastery chapels and other monastery buildings. With their expertise, they advised the people as technologists in areas such as metallurgy, iron works, marble quarrying, glassworks for stained glass windows, all done with monastic savoir-faire. They saw the beauty of creation everywhere (Woods, 34ff). Ministry of Hospitality and Other Charitable Works Anyone who has ever visited a Benedictine monastery or abbey knows first-hand about its gracious manners and warm hospitality. The monasteries served as gratuitous inns providing a safe and peaceful resting place for the foreign traveler, pilgrim, and the poor. “A special bell rang every night,” reports Woods, “to call any wandering traveler or to anyone overtaken by the intimidating forest darkness. The people called it ‘the bell of the wanderers’” (38). The Scriptorium and Preservation of Manuscripts Many monasteries came to be known for special skills: some, for medicine, others for painting and engraving, producing and copying illuminated manuscripts of the Ancients. Still others composed and copied the music that had been handed down to them or shared with them from other monasteries. A monk would be sent to another monastery to learn new music being sung there. Then he would return to his scriptorium where adaptations might be made. Copyists recorded this music or the music that was composed within that monastery. A monk with beautiful handwriting was assigned to do the calligraphy; gifted monks pained illuminated letters. Every once in a while, a jokester-monk might write in the margin of a page: ‘I’ve been here for four hours.’ These artistic works were without signature, done anonymously and for God’s glory. Today, museums are indebted to the monastics for the preservation of all types of manuscripts. Education in the Middle Ages was conducted within the confines of the monastery by monks, and later, by nuns. They offered religious and general education to youth who intended to enter the monastic or clerical life and to youth who were preparing for public life. These lived at home. Young children of six or seven years of age were taught the basics. The majority, especially potential monks and nuns, were taught to read Latin, writing, chant, arithmetic, and learning how to read time on the sun dial. The main text was the Psalter. From the eighth century onward, students were taught the seven liberal arts, the trivium, grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and the quadrivium, arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music. The ideal monastery of the Benedictine Orderwas that of Saint Gall in present-day Switzerland where the town flourished around the monastery. The So-Called Dark Ages “The monks gave to the whole of Europe a network of factories, centers of breeding livestock, centers of scholarship, preservation of manuscripts of earlier ages, especially of Greece and Rome, the art of manners, the art of hospitality,” writes Woods (5). These disciplines were supported and advanced under the guidance of the Church in the so-called Dark Ages. By the eighth century, Benedictine monasteries had spread from Italy to Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales, to present-day France, the Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia. St. Benedict of Nursia is considered the architect of western monasticism. His monks, the fathers of European civilization. To be continued.
.- At a recent film event in Denver that explored the topic of violence in movies, Archbishop Charles Chaput weighed in on the issue, telling CNA that he believes violence to be appropriate in film only if it's the kind “that teaches us not to be violent.” Along with a local film critic and actor, the Denver archbishop discussed the theme of violence in motion pictures at an event on August 12 titled, “Blood on Our Hands: Morality and Violence in Movies.” The discussion, held on the campus of the University of Colorado at Denver, was part of the Colorado Cinema Salon, a new program presented by the Denver Film Society and hosted by renowned film critic Robert Denerstein. The event opened with a 10 minute reel of graphically violent scenes from movies such as "Psycho," "Scarface," "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," "Hostel," "The Silence of the Lambs," "Saving Private Ryan" and "The Godfather." After the gruesome montage, Denerstein initiated a panel discussion between himself, Archbishop Chaput and local actor Donnie L. Betts. The three addressed topics such as whether or not violence in films affects behavior in American society, whether or not there are different types of violence in film and what, if any, is justifiable. The panelists also fielded numerous questions and comments from a well-attended and diverse audience, which included young and old alike of various backgrounds. CNA caught up with Archbishop Chaput following the event, who explained the significance behind his decision in taking time from his schedule and attending a relatively small, independent film seminar. “I chose to participate because I think that it's important for the Church to be involved in the culture and in the broader society and I think movies are hugely influential,” the Denver prelate said. “So I jumped at the opportunity to speak, just so the Church would have a face here,” he added, “but also to meet the community that gathers for this kind of discussion because I think it has a huge impact on our culture and I think it's important for them to know that the Church is both interested and aware of what's going on.” CNA then asked Archbishop Chaput if violence is ever contextually appropriate in film or if it is gratuitous in all instances. “I think the only kind of violence that's good in movies is the violence that teaches us not to be violent,” he underscored. “I think sometimes that graphic violence can demonstrate how damaging violence is.” War movies, for instance, “really teach us that war is always horrible and always to be avoided,” he noted. Archbishop Chaput then cited the example of an earlier clip shown from the movie "The Godfather," where scenes that show a mob boss attending a baptism and repeating the vows are juxtaposed with images of the mob boss' enemies being ruthlessly killed at his behest. “'The Godfather' violence demonstrates hypocrisy and how people can say one thing and lead entirely different lives,” the archbishop said. “When you're confronted with that in such a graphic way, it makes you look at the hypocrisy in your own life.” The prelate added a caveat, however, saying that violence in film “always has to be the kind of violence that educates us on the ugliness and damage” of violence in real life. Archbishop Chaput also spoke on his own love of film and earlier aspirations as a young boy to be a stunt man when he grew up. He then commented on the gifting and potential influence for the good those in the movie industry have. To “those who are involved,” in the industry, he noted, “I congratulate them and bless them and I hope that they really will use their talents to make sure that film is transformative of society in a good way.”
.- The Organization of American States rejected a treaty which would have pressured member countries to legalize abortion and same-sex unions. “In other words, a legal pathway for approving what they have not been able to get passed in national congresses,” the Population Research Institute’s Office for Latin America explained in its latest bulletin. The “Convention on Sexual and Reproductive Rights,” is a decade-long attempt to achieve an international treaty that includes the legalization of abortion, the legal protection of any type of sexual behavior or orientation and the recognition of reproductive and sexual rights as human rights. The institute said delegates at the 41st Ordinary Session OAS meeting, held June 5-7, never even considered discussion of the convention. It included representatives from all member states and from 147 civil organizations. “It was never on the list of resolutions to be discussed or published on the OAS website,” the Population Research Institute noted. Georgina de Rivas, executive director of the Foundation Yes to Life in El Salvador, told CNA that the convention includes “the ‘right’ to chose when to be pregnant and the ‘right’ to end a pregnancy as well.” “(I)t clearly refers to abortion.” Rivas added that the document also contemplates “homosexual unions with the ability to adopt.” It “proposes sexual and reproductive rights for people of all ages,” she said. Rivas went on to note that the convention promotes “the right to eroticism, the right to pleasure,” and even includes children among those who hold these alleged rights. She said it also seeks “a ‘re-educating of the signing countries, that is, to commit governments to carrying out campaigns to re-educate professionals as well as teachers, doctors, psychologists, etc, in order get the culture used to the things that it is being exposed to,” Rivas said. She noted that another dangerous aspect of the convention is the “radical limitation of conscientious objection at the professional level.” She told CNA her main concern was that the Secretary General of the OAS, Jose Miguel Insulza, told the gay and feminist lobbies “he agreed with the convention…and he probably didn’t even read the document’s contents.” Rivas also said delegates at the OAS meeting were “taken by surprise” when a group of abortion supporters interrupted the discussions and “demanded that the convention be introduced.” The delegates “did not expect to suddenly see so many people demanding this during a closed-door session,” she stated. Delegates had expected the meeting to focus on drug trafficking, the lack of security resulting from gang activity, and the high level of violence occurring throughout Latin America, and not on the issue of “sexual and reproductive rights,” Rivas said. She urged vigilance regarding the actions of pro-abortion groups, which she said “have not conceded defeat, they are going to continuing pushing” for the controversial convention. “I suspect they will push for it again at the 42nd Session of the OAS” in 2012, she added.
EL PASO, Texas – Members of the United States Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector, along with other area law enforcement agencies, honored the men and women who lost their lives while protecting our nation’s borders in a special commemorative ceremony held today at the National Border Patrol Museum. Chief Patrol Agent of the El Paso Sector, Scott A. Luck, and other high-ranking officials were on hand to pay tribute as well as offer inspiration and words of comfort to the family members of the fallen agents. Since its inception 90 years ago, on May 28, 1924, the U.S. Border Patrol has seen the passing of 118 agents in the line of duty. During the ceremony, all of the 118 names were read aloud followed by the ringing of a somber bell toll. The clicking hooves of a rider-less agent’s horse were followed by a fly-over by a CBP Office of Air & Marine helicopter from the El Paso Air Branch. The ceremony concluded with the retirement of colors by the El Paso Sector’s Border Patrol Honor Guard. This solemn USBP ceremony is conducted in the El Paso Sector each year to pay tribute to our nation’s fallen officers.
Falls Have Become the Leading Cause of Injury Deaths for Seniors CDC report reveals that men more likely to experience fatality than women For Immediate Release: November 16, 2006 Contact: Gail Hayes, CDC, Injury Media Relations Phone: (770) 488-4902 Fall-related death rates for men and women 65 years and older increased significantly from 1993 to 2003, according to a report released today in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention′s (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). In 2003, more than 13,700 older adults died from falls, making them the leading cause of injury deaths among people 65 and older. From 1993 to 2003 fatal falls increased by more than 55 percent - with more men (46.2 percent) dying from falls than women (31.1 percent). The report also indicates that in 2003 almost 1.8 million seniors were treated in emergency departments for nonfatal injuries from falls and more than 460,000 were hospitalized. In 2000, the direct medical costs for falls among older adults were approximately $19 billion. “Fall death rates have increased faster than fall injury rates. In large part, this is because people are living longer, and many of our seniors now are older and frailer. They need our help to prevent potentially fatal fall injuries,” said Dr. Judy Stevens, an epidemiologist in CDC's Injury Center and author of the report. Other highlights in the report are: - From 1993 to 2003, fatal fall rates increased for both sexes and all races, but they remained consistently higher for men. - In contrast to fatal falls, rates for nonfatal fall-related injuries were, on average, 48% higher for women than for men. - The decline in women′s hip fracture injury rates from 2001 to 2004 may be a result of prevention efforts such as osteoporosis screening combined with widespread education about treatments to rebuild bone mass. - As they age, men become more susceptible to hip fractures if they fall. Osteoporosis screening and treatment may also benefit them. “Injuries from falls and the fear of falling, lead older adults to limit their activities, which can interfere with independent living. But we know that falls are not inevitable. CDC and its partners have simple strategies that can help seniors and caregivers,” said Dr. Ileana Arias, director of CDC′s Injury Center. “Working with the CDC Foundation and MetLife Foundation, we have updated and revised information that we believe can play a critical role in reversing the trend in fall deaths and injuries among our nation′s older adults.” Two brochures help older adults and their families and caregivers understand fall risks and ways to prevent falls. What YOU Can Do to Prevent Falls explains steps that older adults can take to reduce their risk of falling. These steps include: - Exercising regularly; exercise programs like Tai Chi that increase strength and improve balance are especially good. - Asking their doctor or pharmacist to review their medicines-both prescription and over-the-counter-to reduce side effects and interactions. - Having their eyes checked by an eye doctor at least once a year. - Making their homes safer by eliminating fall hazards and improving lighting. Check for Safety: A Home Fall Prevention Checklist for Older Adults offers a room-by-room list of hazards to look for in the home that can increase the risk of falling and tips for reducing these hazards. Four posters, designed for use in health care facilities, senior centers, and other community organizations, highlight each of the prevention messages in the brochures. All of these products are available in English, Spanish, and Chinese. Electronic and print copies of the brochures and posters are available free of charge at www.cdc.gov/ncipc/duip/fallsmaterial.htm. For more information about falls among older adults, or injury in general, visit the CDC Injury Center's website at www.cdc.gov/injury. - Historical Document: November 16, 2006 - Content source: Office of the Associate Director for Communication - Notice: Links to non-governmental sites do not necessarily represent the views of the CDC. - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 1600 Clifton Rd Atlanta, GA 30333 TTY: (888) 232-6348 - Contact CDC-INFO
1st child (walks up to the others, speaking to the whole group he says:) "What is everyone doing?" 2nd child: "We are waiting for Jesus to come by." 1st child: "Who is Jesus?" 2nd child: "You donít know who Jesus is?" 3rd child: "They say he is going to be our King. He is the son of God and he will free us from the Romans." 1st child: "Boy, that would be great, he must be a big and powerful man." 4th child: "Get a branch and you can wave it at him when he comes. He is coming to Jerusalem to celebrate the 2nd child: "I canít see anything, I canít see Jesus, but I hear some shouting." 3rd child: "What are they shouting?" Lady: "They are shouting. Hosanna, blessed is the king of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna means save 4th Child: "I can see him, I can see him, He is riding on a donkey." 1st child: "Why is he riding on a donkey, donít kings usually ride on a horse?í 4th child: "Here he comes, here he comes!" (Everyone acts like Jesus is right in front of them, while waving 3rd child: "Jesus is so kind and happy, but today he looks so sad." (Everyone puts their branches down.) Everyone says together: "Hail to our King! ...Jesus! (Then everyone acts like Jesus has passed by.) 4th child: "There he goes, bye Jesus...bye Jesus." 1st child: When do you think Jesus will be made king? Where are his soldiers? All kings have soldiers!"
If you are a restaurant and would like to participate in Dine Out For Kids, please download the Restaurant Agreement and mail, fax or email to the CIS of Georgia office. Dine Out For Kids (DOFK) Did you know you can support Communities In Schools and at-risk students by dining out on Thursday, August 20, 2015? It’s no secret that the dropout phenomenon in this country is at epidemic proportions. Nationally statistics show that 1 out of 3 public high school students won’t graduate. These dropouts create tremendous burdens on our economy. Together we can make a difference in at risk students’ lives. Dine Out For Kids provides an opportunity for restaurateurs and sponsors to support at-risk students in their community by donating a portion of the profits from breakfast, lunch and/or dinner to CIS on Thursday, August 20, 2015. Proceeds from the event will allow CIS to continue to provide after-school, youth leadership, literacy, parent education and other pertinent programs in communities served. Please join us in participating in this worthwhile event. Click here for CIS of Georgia Dine Out For Kids participants or on CIS DOFK Participants for more information about DOFK in North Carolina. Dine Out For Kids is an initiative that was developed by CIS of Charlotte in North Carolina. DOFK is a fundraiser that provides needed support to local and state CIS offices so they can continue their work of helping kids succeed in school and prepare for life Communities In Schools (CIS) CIS is the nation’s leading community-based organization helping kids stay in school and prepare for life. For 28 years, CIS has successfully connected needed community resources to schools. It’s done through partnerships with local schools districts, business leaders, community organizations, government, social service providers and others. CIS believes that a community development approach to supporting education (by unifying the full resources of the community) is an efficient and cost-effective way to improve the high school graduation rate and prepare students for life. CIS believes that every child needs and deserves these “Five Basics”: - A one-on-one relationship with a caring adult - A safe place to learn and grow - A healthy start and a healthy future - A marketable skill to use upon graduation - A chance to give back to peers and community Nationally, nearly two million students have access to services through CIS. Communities sponsoring CIS programs have seen an increase in their high school graduation rates, a decrease in violence and disruptions, and an increase in attendance and academic achievement. Key programs include Performance Learning Centers®, mentoring, parent education, literacy, technology, youth leadership development, and after school and extended-hours activities. Click here for more information on CIS nationwide.
Marek Michalowski (CS '07) is in a Los Angeles hotel room, trying to catch his breath and catch up on email. The popularity of his dancing robot, Keepon, has had him in Denmark, Korea, Japan and now the City of Angels in a matter of weeks. "It's been kind of crazy," said Michalowski, who is a Ph.D. candidate in Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute. His wildly popular YouTube video showing Keepon dancing to the band Spoon's "I Turn My Camera On" inspired WIRED Magazine to produce a professionally directed follow-up video. Keepon—and a newer prototype named Roillo—are both part of Michalowski's "Beatbots" project. Through his research, Michalowski hopes to demonstrate that rhythmic synchrony (in dance-oriented play with children) has a positive effect on human-robot social interaction. Spoon recently joined Michalowski in Tokyo for the filming of a more narrative video, set to the song "Don't You Evah" from their new album "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga." The video features Keepon dancing around Tokyo with Hideki Kozima, Keepon's developer. The trip marked Michalowski's third time working at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) with Kozima. A team from NHK, Japan's national public broadcasting station, came to the lab to film them for a show that aired in early September. While in Denmark, Michalowski attended the Robots at Play festival, exhibiting Keepon & the BeatBots—a robotic dance troupe consisting of four Keepons moving in synchrony with music, with each other, and with movements of participants' Nintendo Wii controllers. The event took place in the middle of the Odense city square with lots of other robotic art and research projects. Keepon won the 10,000 Euro prize. In Korea, Michalowski won Best Interactive Demonstration at the RO-MAN 2007 conference. "Now we are in Los Angeles, where on Monday we will be displaying Keepon at a Spoon concert, and later in the week at WIRED NextFest," said Michalowski. Carnegie Mellon Research Professor Reid Simmons, who serves as faculty advisor to Michalowski, said, "Rhythm is very important in human-human interaction, so it is not surprising that it is so compelling in human-robot interaction." He explains, "People see Keepon dancing to the music, and it looks so alive to them. Marek's work is addressing the fluidity of interaction that is a hallmark of humans, but is all too often missing from robots." Michalowski received his master's degree in robotics from Carnegie Mellon in 2007. He credits the multidisciplinary nature of the Robotics Institute and the ease of communicating with colleagues in other fields—such as Human-Computer Interaction, Social Sciences, Design, Drama and Art—for encouraging him to think about human-robot interaction in a different way. "It helped me to bring unconventional techniques to bear on the problem," he said.
A 'How To' for creating a COM Big Integer Library that uses Visual C++ ATL Wizard and Wei Dai's Crypto++ Library. Latest Algorithms Articles - Page 2 Implement Paul Kimmel's Radio pattern to separate internal messaging within an application. Along the way, you'll learn how to create a reusable custom application block for the same purpose. Implementing "Search and Replace" functionality in your VB application is very easy. The straightforward and to-the-point algorithm that I developed for this will make it easier for you to understand it. You can track the number of projects, files, and lines of code in any given solution implemented with VS.NET. Just invoke a built-in, lines-of-code counter in VS.NET and implement it as a macro that other teams can share. Learn about a method of selecting a geometrical object which is described by its vertices. This article might be of use if you are creating 2D or 3D shape related software. This article describes how VB 6 stores Bytes, Booleans, Integers, Longs, Singles, Doubles, Strings (Fixed- and Variable-Length), Currencys, Dates, Variants, Arrays and UDTs. Latest Developer VideosMore... Latest CodeGuru Developer Columns Become more proficient on the usage of statements to control the flow of execution through a C++/CLI application. There's lot's more hidden under the surface of file functions than might appear at first glance. Onscreen keyboards are practically everywhere. Now, they can be in your Visual Basic programs as well. Most developers face a grueling challenge to please their end users. We asked their top challenge is. With over 3,000 responses, the results are now available!
The garbage collector exists to give the illusion of infinite memory: You keep allocating and allocating, and the GC will automatically free memory that it knows will never be used again. However, in your example, all those objects will be used again - they're needed on the next A timer event handler cannot be garbage collected because it is still used on the next tick of the timer! You can think of a global list that contains all active timers - a timer will never be garbage collected while it is active. If it worked any other way, the semantics of your program (how many timer calls you get) would depend on when exactly the GC runs - which is obviously undesirable. To solve the issue, you have to stop the timer ( ) - this will remove it from the list of active timers, and will allow the GC to collect the timer, the event handler, and related objects. EDIT: actually, the above answer applies only to has the strange property that it does not keep itself alive, but only keeps the delegate alive. If there's a reference from the delegate back to the timer, this has the same effect as keeping the timer itself alive. Otherwise, the timer will stop sometime after the timer object became unreachable (so you still can get the undesirable behavior). In your example, there is the reference chain: static list of timer callbacks => _TimerCallback => TimerCallback => MyTimerData => Timer The timer would stop itself in its finalizer, but it can't be garbage collected because it still is reachable, from the static entry that it created itself. This is a classical leak situation in the .NET world: a static reference is not nulled out by the finalizer, because the finalizer doesn't run, because the static reference isn't nulled out yet. The GC can't look into the future, so doesn't know that the finalizer would remove the last reference to the object. That said, if Microsoft wanted to fix this leak (which they won't, since it could break programs that depend on such 'unreachable' timers to perform their periodic work), they could now do it, as .NET 4.0 introduced a new type of GC handle that allows a program to communicate this scenerio to the GC: ; publically usable only via the ConditionalWeakTable ] class). This is an implementation of ephemerons ] in the .NET GC.
The remarkable life stories and culinary reflections of renowned chefs, food critics, and authors, as recommended by our library staff. Yes, Chef: A Memoir by Marcus Samuelsson The world-renowned chef -- born in Ethiopia, raised in Sweden, living in America -- shares his remarkable, enchanting, and poignant life story. Recommended by Kristi from Library Headquarters My Life in France by Julia Child Legendary food expert Julia Child describes her years in Paris, Marseille, and Provence, and her journey from a young woman who could not cook or speak any French to published author of French cookbooks and becoming television's "The French Chef." Recommended by Mona from Malibu Library Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reichl Don't worry if you can't tell foie gras from a catfish fillet! Restaurant critic Ruth Reichl's memoir of her adventures dressing up to avoid detection by restaurants she was reviewing is more about the social elements of the restaurant industry than the culinary knowledge it takes to work there. Surprisingly poignant, Garlic and Sapphires follows the author's experiences with family and friends in addition to the illustrious NY Times. This is one of the best books out there, food-related and otherwise! Recommended by Oleg from West Hollywood Library Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child by Bob Spitz Our book club so enjoyed reading about the life of American culinary icon Julia Child. Julia launched a food revolution that gripped America for more than 50 years. We're sure you will enjoy reading about her amazing life, too! Recommended by Barbara from Rowland Heights Library Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver If you are into the Slow Food movement, get inspired by or live vicariously through Barbara Kingsolver as she and her family spend a year eating food they either grew themselves or that was grown and produced in their local community. Recommended by Jennifer from Library Headquarters Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess by Gael Greene An epic memoir of the sensuality of food and sex in New York, Europe, and beyond as only the Insatiable Critic can tell it. Recommended by Sarah from A C Bilbrew Library Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table by Ruth Reichl This is an amusing memoir from the former New York Times food critic. Her mother was a notoriously terrible cook and yet Ruth Reichl grew up enamored by food. Here she tells various stories from her life, all relating in some way to food - both terrible and delectable. Recipes are peppered throughout the book as well. Recommended by Stacey from City Terrace Library
|Hi, please follow these steps here, and see if it helps:| If that doesn't work, try changing your DNS using OpenDNS (you don't have to sign up for an account if you don't want to,) you can do this by following this tutorial: To configure TCP/IP, follow these steps: 1. Click Start, click Control Panel, click Network and Internet Connections, and then click Network Connections. 2. Right-click the network connection that you want to configure, and then click Properties. 3. On the General tab (for a local area connection), or the Networking tab (for all other connections), click Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), and then click Properties. 4. If you want to obtain DNS server addresses from a DHCP server, click Obtain DNS server address automatically. 5. If you want to manually configure DNS server addresses, click Use the following DNS server addresses, and then type the preferred DNS server and alternate DNS server IP addresses in the Preferred DNS server and Alternate DNS server boxes. For Preferred DNS, please type in without the quotes "188.8.131.52", and for Alternate DNS type in "184.108.40.206". " Helpful tips before getting started: http://www.computing.net/howtos/sho...
American battery maker A123 Systems announced a breakthrough in lithium-ion battery technology today. The company says its next-generation nanophosphate EXT batteries have two to three times the cycle life of other lithium-ion batteries and deliver full power over a wider temperature range. The biggest challenge for electric cars and hybrids is battery technology. The batteries today are too big, too heavy, and too expensive. That's what limits electric cars to about 100 miles of range; you can't practically fit or afford batteries any bigger (and they'd take too long to charge anyway). With today's automotive lithium-ion batteries warrantied for up to 10 years and 150,000 miles, battery life (as opposed to charge capacity) may not sound like a big issue. But with consumers' high expectations, and automakers' need to minimize warranty costs, automakers such as General Motors and Toyota have been installing batteries twice the size required to go the distance they expect. That means the batteries cost twice as much and weigh twice, as much as well. And they consume more space than necessary from passenger and cargo capacity. Lithium-on chemistry causes batteries to start to deteriorate more rapidly as they get close to their fully charged and fully discharged states. So building bigger batteries with wider buffer zones on both ends, allows automakers to keep the battery cells within their optimal range and extend their lifespan. This, improving the natural lifespan of battery cells, as A123 claims to have done, would allow hybrid and electric carmakers to reduce the cost and size of their batteries and bring down the cost of electric cars. Or, conversely, they could continue to install larger batteries, but use more of their capacity to gain range. Longer-life batteries could also reduce potential replacement costs. And A123 says the new batteries will produce more power, as well. Consumers could also benefit from extending the operating temperature range of lithium cells. When we tested the Chevrolet Volt and the Nissan Leaf in the winter, we found their range dropped almost in half. Better batteries could reduce the real-world limitation of that range penalty. A123 supplies batteries for the Fisker Karma plug-in hybrid; it's batteries were the subject of a recall earlier this month. The battery pack in our Karma was replaced under warranty with less than 200 miles on the car. And A123 also won the contract to supply batteries for the upcoming Chevrolet Spark electric car. We expect to see battery technology for electric cars to advance supplying more range, to deliver faster charging times, and to result in cheaper battery prices. Until we test cars with these next-generation nanophosphate batteries, we can't vouch for whether they live up to their claims. But we're hopeful the latest announcement represents such progress. See our guide to alternative fuels and vehicles.
About $122,000 would have to be spent to renew the ruins of Monte Ne, a popular getaway in Arkansas a century ago. In an initial preservation plan developed by Army Corps officials, demolition would be cheaper than preserving the largest remnant of the resort, a three-story tower that was part of a 1910 hotel called Oklahoma Row. It would cost $55,000 to tear down the tower, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. But getting rid of the tower would only be considered if all other options failed, Chris Page, an archeologist with the Corps' Little Rock district, told the Northwest Arkansas Times. "We might not demolish it, but the option of preserving it would be off the table," he said, if no partner is found for the project. "We would have to seriously consider demolishing it. It may stand there for a few months or a year while we decide what to do." The Corps wants to know by mid-February if it has a partner in the restoration project so it can notify its Center of Expertise for the Preservation of Historic Buildings and Structures. The agency plans to bring in national preservation experts to study the situation, but officials wants to know beforehand if they're looking at the project as a restoration, demolition or something else, Page said. Preservationists from the center might come up with a better plan, he said. The initial preservation plan noted that the tower has become a place for illicit activities. "It's slowly gone downhill over the years," said Page. "Now, unfortunately, it's seen as a party spot." On March 16, a man got stuck in the tower's chimney, and emergency personnel had to rescue him. The Corps became more concerned about the site being a safety hazard over the ensuing months. "During the summer we had all sorts of incidents of people jumping off of it and doing all sorts of crazy things," said Page. In October, the Corps erected an 8-foot-tall chain-link fence around the tower with barbed wire along the top to discourage climbers. Since Monte Ne isn't an incorporated city, there are no local police to monitor activities at the ruins. "It's sort of a no-man's land," said Allyn Lord, director of the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale, who compiled a book of photographs called "Historic Monte Ne" as part of Arcadia Publishing's "Images of America" series. Businessman William Hope Harvey, a prominent figure in the 1896 campaign of Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, built the resort on 300 acres. It had the state's first indoor swimming pool in 1901, one of the state's first bowling alleys and Northwest Arkansas' first golf course, Lord said. The resort thrived until the advent of the automobile, which encouraged travel. According to the preservation plan, Beaver Lake has eroded the tower's foundation and increased the possibility that it might collapse. Rogers Historical Museum director Gaye Bland said some of the walls in the tower's cellar have started to crumble and undermine the foundation. The tower is the only physical structure from the resort remaining above ground or water besides the chimney at another hotel, Bland said. "So it has some architectural significance, too," she said. "I think all of that together makes it worthy of preservation."
News and Events Advanced Manufacturing Partnership for Southern California (Amp So Cal) AMP SoCal represents a broad-based consortium of 86 public and private institutions from the education, business, economic development, and workforce sectors spanning Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, and Ventura Counties that has come together to transform the Aerospace & Defense (A&D) industry in Southern California with a focus on advanced manufacturing technologies from additive manufacturing to model-based engineering and design. AMP SoCal was one of 12 areas of the country to be designated by the federal government as an Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership. – Manufacturing Community. LAEDC 2015 Economic Forecast Event – Introducing A Long-Term Look At Our Economy Learn what to expect for the next 5 years in our economy, as LAEDC economists present our first-ever long range forecast event. Gain insight as calendar-year budget deadlines approach. Join us on Wednesday, October 8, 2014 With speakers presenting on Innovation in Education as part of our focus: Innovation Thrives in Los Angeles County Dr. Timothy White Chancellor, California State University System Dr. Robert A. Kleinhenz Chief Economist, Kyser Center for Economic Research, LAEDC Frank MottekAnchor, 1070 KNX Radio Businesshour LINK TO INFORMATION: click here REGISTER NOW: click here - October 8, 2014 - 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – Networking breakfast with Exhibitors - 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. – Program L.A. Hotel Downtown 333 S. Figueroa Street Los Angeles, CA 90071 LES 2014 Annual Meeting October 5-8, 2014 San Francisco, CA Marie Talnack Speaking October 7 and 8, 2014 on following topic: Workshop 6: IUGI – “University-Industry Collaborative Research Awards: Where the ‘Rubber Meets the Road’” This workshop will present information on using federal, state, and other funding sources to seed and mature research. It will discuss the transition from funding for early-stage research such as the federal SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) and STTR (Small Business Technology Transfer) programs to funding for technology maturation and commercialization. A focus will be on helping university faculty and industry understand the challenges and opportunities at each stage of the technology’s development. What are the roles of the different parties and the IP issues when research is jointly developed? This workshop is designed for universities, small businesses, federal agency representatives and large corporations wanting to partner on research projects Workshop 8: IUGI – “So You Want to Create a New Technology Transfer Office: Where Do You Start?” While it may appear that anyone and everyone now has a TTO, new offices are still being set up or re-established as the message becomes clear there is IP in every deal. This workshop is designed for non-profit organizations, federal agencies, universities and industry thinking about setting up or re-starting a TTO. Perhaps your employer has been thinking about this for some time but did not know where to start or has used others to provide TTO services. Where do you start building an IP portfolio? How to staff and fund the TTO? How to work with other institutions’ TTO’s? What are the best marketing methods for licensing? Information will be shared on the steps involved, expertise needed, and partnerships required. Marie Talnack, Ph.D., Director, Technology Transfer Office, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona WORKSHOP INSIGHTS: Click here UI Workshop Article: Click here SAVE THE DATE: Connecting the Dots in Unmanned Aerial Systems & Cyber Security Conference December 12, 2014 Cal Poly Pomona-- For Details Click Here Cal Poly Pomona Joins Manufacturing Consortium Much of modern Southern California can be traced to a mid-century boom in the aerospace and defense industries. Manufacturing plants sprouted across the region practically overnight, replacing an avocado and citrus-driven economy with a tech-based one that supported millions of middle-class jobs The City of Industry is collaborating with Cal Poly Pomona through the University’s recently established Office of Technology Transfer and Industry Clinic (TTO). The office director is Dr. Marie Talnack, who brings to the position a background in patents and licensing as well as economic development. The collaboration between the City and the University is directed at assisting local businesses to jointly identify solutions to industry problems by offering faculty and student expertise. - For full release (DOC)
Content courtesy of the American Geriatrics Society November 25, 2009 Check Your Vaccinations Find out if you need to update your vaccinations: If you're traveling overseas, you may need to get certain shots before departing - up to 6 weeks before you leave, in some cases. Visit the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Web site, and click on your destinations for required and recommended vaccines. Talk To Your Doctor Explain your travel plans, and discuss any travel precautions you should take. Your doctor may ask you to come in for a checkup or to get any necessary shots. Ask When You Should Take Your Medications If you take medications, and will be crossing time zones, ask your physician whether you should take your meds at your usual home-time-zone time, or switch, and how. Also ask if any new foods you might eat while traveling could interact with your meds. Guard Against Deep-vein Thrombosis(DVT) Older adults run a higher-than-average risk of DVT, which happens when blood clots form in your veins, usually in your legs, and block blood flow. Sitting still for a long time on an airplane or train can contribute to DVT. But some research finds that wearing special "compression stockings" can help prevent this dangerous condition. Check with your doctor. Get It In Writing Ask your physician to write down the following: Keep Your Pills in Their Original Containers Do this with prescription and over-the-counter medicines and supplements. This will also make your trip through customs easier. Carry All Necessary Medications With You Pack your medications in your carry-on bag to avoid loss or damage. Protect Yourself From Infection Copyright © 2015, HealthKey
Ken and Daria Dolan, America's First Family of Personal Finance, answer your money questions every Friday. Click here to ask Ken and Daria your question. We feel strongly about helping people with their personal finance matters the right way. Some of the "tips" we read elsewhere make our hair curl because they are just plain wrong! This is especially the case with credit cards. One of the most common questions we are asked is about paying off credit card balances. We're sure you've heard the rumors that it's best for your credit score to carry a balance on your card and only pay the minimums. But you've probably also heard that it's best for your credit score to pay it all off every month. So what's true and what's false here? Watch our video below for the answer. Dear Ken and Daria, Which is better for my credit score: paying off my balance in full or paying the minimum a few times? How is your credit these days? Ken and Daria share seven simple steps to improving your credit score, only at Dolans.com. Ask the Dolans: Should I pay off my credit card balance in full?
China Tightens Online Gaming RegulationsThe Ministry of Culture's Interim Measures for Internet Games in an attempt to protect minors from "unwholesome" content. China's Ministry of Culture has issued what it calls the "Interim Measures for Internet Games" in an attempt to protect minors from "unwholesome" content. The rules make up the first official document to deal with China's flourishing online gaming industry and will come into effect as of August 1, 2010. It will apply to social networking games as well as all domestic and imported massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG), which are wildly popular in China. The measures were introduced after an unprecedented rise in the number of game players in April. The state administrator, China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) reported 105 million users of online games. As of August 1, all players must register with their real name and valid ID. Online game companies must also self-censor their content to bring it in line with the new regulations. Furthermore all imported games will be screened for suitability. Some observers believe the new regulations are vulnerable to abuse. For instance, there is little to stop a minor using someone else's identity to register a new account. However, the MOC is aware of this and is considering using technology found in every internet café, such as webcams, for visual authentication. The regulations point out the need to protect children from unsuitable material, officials said. There is also a total ban on minors handling virtual currency, used by many online games, particularly those created by Tencent, the company behind China's most popular instant messaging system, QQ. It is also a top game provider, and derives much of its revenue from selling virtual items as part of its games. Virtual currency has been very big business in the past, with people spending more and more virtual currency (paid for with real cash) to get the latest and best virtual gaming equipment. The new rules also try to ban obligatory hostilities between players set by the game administrators, which had been common practice to make the games more exciting. Also under the knife is pop-up advertising designed to entice netizens into playing the games. At the same time, as regulations tighten in certain areas, they are loosening in others. Gaming licenses can now be obtained at the provincial level, rather than national level, for a maximum of three years. This "decentralization," together with a lower minimum registered capital, will lower the threshold to enter the market, which should be good news for small and mid-size businesses around the country. Previously they had needed permission from the Ministry of Culture in Beijing to enter the lucrative market.
Sexual violence is never pretty, but it takes on an entirely new and eerie pink hue in Claire Kurylowski's film, IN REAL LIFE. Starring candy-haired Tumblr princess and artist Arvida Bystrom, the latest instalment in the Visionaries series is an unnerving look at the extreme lengths that women go to defend themselves from the threat of harassment. Below the cut, the Berlin and London-based filmmaker talks about activist filmmaking and the unlikely YouTube inspiration behind the short. Dazed Digital: Can you take me through how you came up with this concept? Claire Kurylowski: The point of departure for IN REAL LIFE was the YouTube video I watched entitled How to Break Out of Zip Ties which could be considered viral with over 3.4 million hits to date. For me the video reinstated the binary idea of women being accountable for their 'expected victimhood' and inversely the lack of accountability/deterrent strategies existing in the same forms and scope, if at all, for anti-abuse and anti-sexual harassment. DD: It seems crazy that a video about how to escape from a kidnapper has so many views! What do you think it says about the state of gender relations right now? Claire Kurylowski: Yeah, I found it quite absurd which drew me towards its interrogation. The video invalidates its functionality from the beginning; it states how it is unlikely that a kidnapper would restrain you in this way. Its tutorial value rendered obsolete, maybe one continues to watch because of the desire to see her escape, to know that you’ll be OK. You buy into its reality, the escape out of the situation it anticipates, one of expected abuse. The comments below the actual YouTube video build a dialogue in a really shocking way, it legitimises this reality of fear; there are some really horrendous, sexist comments. The authors of these comments function like incarnations of the hypothetical kidnapper – verifying this reality – everything becomes evidently cyclical. I think there are two main sources of the hits: feminist blogs sharing it in a big way with the legitimate objective of passing on what is considered an invaluable survival tactic. Secondly, I would speculate that cis men are sharing it for a novelty value: the objectified image of a woman restrained. The sexist comments under the video as testament to this. The video is a symptom and not the problem itself. It helps reveal the problem further and give this visibility. What’s really important here is not to label this as a problem with women’s thoughts or perceptions but to call it out for what it is, the problem that is entrenched sexism and misogyny – the lack of autonomy women’s bodies have within patriarchy. DD: Do you think filmmakers have a obligation to deal with these issues, given their platform? Claire Kurylowski: I think the best thing you can be is respectful and honest in your work. We all pick our fights and there are usually really valid reasons why. I think it’s important as a creative to take responsibility for consciously excluding problematic elements in your work – like, for example, don’t perpetuate imagery of violence towards women: either question it or exclude it. Increasingly I have felt that to be in a position to even make a film is a huge privilege. We should not be disillusioned that a film is activism – it isn’t in itself – but perhaps the discussions it opens might influence or encourage some further actions, and having visibility of these topics in mainstream media is important. Whether they're broaching social topics or not, I’d just like to see more women telling their stories because it doesn’t happen often enough!
Crafting the most effective methods for communicating with your Hispanic customers is a growth imperative in every market segment -- from financial services to health care, mortgage services to telecommunications, utilities to travel. According to a 2006 report from Koeppel Direct, individuals of Hispanic origin represent over 23 percent of the purchasing power in the U.S. today -- a purchasing power of approximately $630 billion dollars annually. The growth of this purchasing power is also impressive: By 2010, it's estimated to exceed $1 trillion dollars annually. Underscoring the importance of effective Spanish-language communication is the fact that, according to an April 2006 HispanIntelligence report, 16.8 percent of all Hispanic households speak only Spanish at home. And this market is relatively underserved -- as an example, according to a March 2007 CUNA article, only 56 percent of Hispanic households have credit cards, compared to 80 percent of all American households. The Spanish-speaking market clearly represents a large and rapidly growing opportunity. It's critical to explore ideas for maximizing effectiveness of language in automated-communications strategies in order to help develop clear, productive interactions with Hispanic customers. Beyond the language barrier -- moving past translation One key factor to keep in mind is that you cannot connect effectively with your Spanish-speaking customers by simply translating English-language communications. In fact, this can lead to less-effective results -- fewer contacts listening to and taking action on your message, due to a generally poorer customer experience. Many non-English speakers disregard telephone communications when they find them difficult to follow, as often happens with a direct or imperfect translation. This can also happen when the message itself does not take into consideration various language and cultural issues. To maximize effectiveness and penetration of your Spanish-language communications, consider the following ideas: - Messages containing dates can be problematic. Dates in Spanish, specifically, are reversed from common English usage, so you would effectively say, "The 15th day of March," and not "March 15th." While most Spanish speakers will understand the latter, correct usage improves the conversational tone of the communication, improving response. Our tests have demonstrated substantive improvements by incorporating "directive" information about date formats in the communication. - When providing an address -- for example, an address to mail a payment -- include an option for the address to be spelled out with additional directions. You'll see more mail sent to the correct address. - To encourage your Spanish-language-speaking customers to stay on the line, maintain functional language clarity. Our data indicates that many bilingual customer communications frequently use imperfect translations, with flawed or poorly phrased language. The result: customer confusion, hang-ups, fewer connections with the right party, lower ROI, and lower customer satisfaction. One approach: Craft your communication in the most direct, universally understood manner, using experienced, native-language speakers/translators. This language "speaks" more clearly to your Spanish-speaking demographic and will drive better response rates. - Spoken-language clarity -- the sound of the communication -- is absolutely essential if you want your customers to stay on the line. For that 16.8 percent of all Hispanic households that prefer to speak only Spanish at home, this is clearly a critical measure. When communicating with customers who have a Spanish-language preference, consider using actual recordings of native-language speakers' voices to deliver the clearest, most intelligible communications possible. Studies have shown that using this type of clear, prerecorded voice, combined with other best practice elements for scripting, pace, and tone, can result in an increase of as much as 15 percent in the number of Spanish-language customers who will listen to your communication. - Spanish speakers have demonstrated they are more likely to wait for options than English speakers. Traditional IVR design frequently places the language option choice at the beginning of the call, as in, "Hello, you've reached Acme Inc. For English, press 1; para espanol, oprima dos." Testing has demonstrated that more English speakers drop off at this point and more Spanish speakers continue. A strategy that directs the first question to the English audience but includes the Spanish language choice immediately after delivers higher success rates for English speakers while the Spanish success stays the same as before. As an example, here's a possible modification for the introductory script: "This is Acme Inc. with important news. If this is John Smith, press 1; if this is not John Smith, press 2, para espanol, oprima tres." - Finally, when sending communications to your Spanish-speaking customers, using the correct language "tone" (formal vs. informal, e.g., Usted vs. Tu) is critical in order to achieve the highest response rates. Spanish-language speakers frequently have clear-cut culturally derived distinctions about the appropriate (and inappropriate) use of informal language. If your communication is spoken in the wrong tone -- for example, if it is too "informal" -- many of these customers will not respond. Above all, you want to ensure that your message is heard and action is taken. Given the size and growth of this market demographic, it is clearly a high-return activity. Effective communications with your Spanish-language-speaking customers will drive significant bottom-line results. Pat Whelan and Bryan Richardson are executives at Varolii Corp. Whelan is senior vice president of marketing and business development; Richardson is director of media services.
Service learning and engaged citizenship are two terms Drake University students are hearing more often around campus. A recent gift to distinctlyDrake is helping integrate those two concepts while focusing on important social justice issues. The Slay Fund for Social Justice at Drake University was started by a gift to distinctlyDrake from Brent, ED ’70, and Diane, ED ’70, Slay. The Fund is designed to support programs at Drake advancing social justice and marks the first formal entity on campus dedicated to social justice issues. One of those programs will provide five Drake students with service-learning internships at area nonprofits in an attempt to raise educational and social capital in the community this summer. The students will be paid with grants from the Slay Fund, at no cost to the nonprofit. This opportunity makes Drake one of just 15 universities in the country with a summer service-learning program, according to Mandi McReynolds, service-learning coordinator at Drake. Throughout the internships, students will be encouraged to look critically at the root causes of social issues and to evaluate the role that they can play in the community. “There’s a lack of civility today in public discourse, which is a result of ignorance of other people and our differences,” says Brent Slay. “I hope these projects will provide an opportunity for students to be involved in the community and transcend some of the problems that exist in our society. Pairing students with these social agencies will raise awareness of these issues and be good for the city of Des Moines.” Courtney Howell, a junior politics and sociology major, will be working with Dress for Success. The organization promotes economic independence for disadvantaged women by providing professional attire, a network of support, and career development tools to women in need. Howell will be working on a variety of new projects for the group. “This organization is helping women get back on their feet,” says Howell. “Getting parents into a stable position through a job is getting at the root of a lot of societal problems.” Howell has volunteered with Dress for Success during the past year; she specifically helped with the group’s first major fundraiser on the Drake campus, a fashion show called Passion for Fashion. “I want to make a difference in people’s lives,” Howell says. “I’ve been blessed in my life and I just want to give back. It’s really just luck that people are born into different circumstances.” While Howell has experience with nonprofits and hopes to start a career in one, other students in the program will be getting their first taste of the nonprofit world. Pat Felker, a junior sociology major, will be working with a nonprofit for the first time. He is paired with Children and Family Urban Ministries and will oversee volunteers and serve as a contact for parents at the organization’s Awesome Days, which provides educational opportunities and childcare in the summer. He first heard about the group in class, and Howell encouraged him to apply for the internship. “Everybody enters the service continuum at a different point,” says McReynolds. “We hope that relationships between students and their respective organizations will continue after the internship.” Kelcy Smith, a sophomore psychology and biology double major, will use her passion for painting to help area children. She will work with the After School Arts Program (ASAP), which provides opportunities for students to get involved with the arts outside of school. “Schools are cutting back on the arts, so it’s important that we offer these opportunities to kids,” Smith says. Michelle Bolton King, executive director of ASAP, is eager to bring Smith on. She hopes Smith will get a realistic look at the demands that come with working at a nonprofit; along with organizational tasks, Smith will be working on programming different events.> “We have so much programming, but it’s hard to get it all done with just one part-time employee,” Bolton King says. “We’re very excited to have Kelsey joining us this summer.”> Shivali Shah, a junior chemistry major, and Amelia Eckles, a junior sociology major, will also take part in the program; Shah will work for Everybody Wins Iowa, and Eckles is paired with Greater Des Moines Habitat for Humanity. In the end, McReynolds and Slay both hope that community service becomes a priority in these students’ lives and they discover they can play a role in improving society by becoming engaged citizens through service. Last Modified: 07/12/2013 09:15
The Thoracic Oncology Research Program is a multidisciplinary program investigating lung cancer through basic, translational, and clinical research. A wide variety of projects are being led by our thoracic surgical oncologists, medical oncologists, and radiation oncologists, as well as basic scientists, population scientists, pulmonologists, and radiologists. An important strategy in the program is the study of how individual genes affect oncogenesis and tumor progress. In the laboratory, some investigators are studying mouse models to determine the role of stem cells in the development of cancer in humans and in the development of resistance to treatment. Clinically, researchers are trying to figure out how use unique genetic mutations in an individual patient to personalize treatment and are looking at subgroups of patients to see how they respond to treatment. A number of studies are also ongoing utilizing a large tissue bank and database of patients treated for lung cancer at Duke University since 1995. For example, some researchers are studying epidemiological factors related to lung cancer -- why certain patient groups respond to treatment better than others. In addition, other researchers are examining the role of age, gender, minimally invasive surgery, and other patient-specific factors in outcomes, including quality of life. The Thoracic Oncology Research Program offers unique Duke investigator-initiated trials, national and international cooperative group trials, and cutting-edge trials that evaluate the newest therapies available anywhere. Lung cancer clinical research at Duke has focused on biomarker discovery and development -- the use of molecular signatures to improve the assessment of prognosis and the development of specific new therapies. The formation of the program has allowed for the optimal collaboration of the best basic science underway on the Duke campus with ongoing clinical and translational lung cancer research programs. Finally, as a member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) -- an alliance of 21 of the world’s leading cancer centers -- Duke is at the forefront of outcomes research. The lung cancer researchers at Duke have assisted in developing the most comprehensive lung cancer database in the world: the NCCN Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Outcomes Database. This project, the best example of Comparative Effectiveness Research in lung cancer to date, provides the process for the study of all aspects of lung cancer outcomes, analyzing every element lung cancer management and integrating outcomes into the development of guidelines for optimal care.
Turns out the number one killer of male Western lowland gorillas in this country isn’t old age— something you might assume based on the fact that gorillas only exist here in zoos and sanctuaries where their diets are managed by humans. Nope. The number one killer is heart disease. In fact, gorillas have loved their sugary fortified biscuits so much that they would vomit them back up just so they could enjoy them again. Gross. Now a zoo in Cleavland is feeding their two gorillas plants by the wheelbarrow full. Literally. Science Daily reports: “Gone is the bucketful of vitamin-rich, high-sugar and high-starch foods that zoos used for decades to ensure gorillas received enough nutrients. Instead, Cleveland’s Mokolo and Bebac receive a wheelbarrow of romaine lettuce, dandelion greens and endive they gently tear and bite, alfalfa hay they nimbly pick through, young tree branches they strip of succulent bark and leaves, green beans, a handful of flax seeds, and three Centrum Silver multivitamins tucked inside half a smashed banana.” With this new diet the apes spend over half their time eating and foraging. After a year, the pair have both lost around 65 pounds. This puts them at roughly the same weight as a wild gorilla. However, it’s suspected that while they are about the same weight as the wild gorillas, the ones in the wild have much more muscle. The next step would be exercising the gorillas. Even the biggest zoos aren’t the same as a nice big jungle to run around in. Being stuck in an enclosure where all your needs are tended to makes for lazy and bored gorillas. Perhaps this new research will help create happier gorillas in the zoos. Most certainly it will help create healthier ones. Now, if only someone would come and take the sugary biscuits away from us humans. We might shed some pounds too.
Just two nights ago David and I sat talking about how school admissions could be made more flexible for children born prematurely. We have been told by our LEA that we can apply a year late for Esther and William but that our application will go directly to the bottom of the pile. We have been told that they can start reception in 2015, according to the date they were due to be born, but that it makes life very difficult for the school and it would be best if we sent them in 2014! We have been told by the LEA that there would be a problem once our children went to secondary school yet local senior schools have told us that they admit and educate children out of year all the time. It is possible and it is right for premature children to delay their start in formal education but it is a bloody battle for parents to be able to access their rights and the rights of their child. We seem to be making headway with the battle for our own children but not all parents are able to have that fight. We wanted to come up with a rule that worked for everyone but it is so so hard. I Tweeted and Facebooked a statement and asked for feedback from my friends online. A child born prematurely should have the option of starting school in the year determined by their full term due date. We were unsure about the term due date and so tried A child born prematurely should have the option of starting school in the year determined by their adjusted age. It was great to get people talking about this as it is something that I feel very passionately about. Esther and William were born in July 2010 meaning that by their date of birth they should start school this September. They will be just 4 but will still have an adjusted age of 3. I believe that this is far too young an age for any child to be starting school but particularly a child who was born 13 weeks too soon. Esther and William were not due to be born until the end of October 2010 and by this date they are not due to start school until September 2015. I cannot see why a child who spends their third trimester in an incubator rather than in their mother’s womb where they should be should be forced into school a year early. The problem that we are encountering with the LEA and with schools is that Esther and William are bright children. They do not have any specific cognitive needs. But school is about so much more than academic learning and life is about so much more than school. And something that I feel really strongly about is the fact that had Esther been born on their due date and been bright children, they would not have been told to go to school a year early. I do not see why my children should lose a year of family time, a year of part time preschool education because they were born prematurely. Esther and William probably could cope with school this year, if they had to. They are intelligent and curious and creative. They love to learn. But there is much to learn outside of school before they enter the formal education system. Esther and William go to preschool now but they do not do full days. We have a flexible arrival time and today I did not take them in until nearly 10am because they were tired and overslept. They will benefit from another year of part time preschool. The LEA and schools we have talked to have suggested that Esther and William could start reception in 2014 but attend for just 3 mornings a week. But why would I want them to do that? They would immediately be marked out as different from their peers. And if what they need is three mornings of play and learning with a group of children, then surely that is what nursery and preschool are for? The LEA and schools have suggested that Esther and William could have a care plan and be held back at the end of reception year when all their class mates move up to Year One. But again, how is that possibly what is best for them? Esther and William are tiny for their age. They have only been walking for just over a year. They fall over a lot when they try to run. They cannot reach toilets and sinks. William is still in nappies. They cannot dress themselves independently and they are emotionally very young. They do not need to start school in the next academic year with a special care plan and part time hours different to all their peers. They need to start school, when they are 5, in accordance with the date they were due, in line with their adjusted age and alongside the children that they currently have the most in common with. In 2015 Esther and William will be ready for the big wide world of school. They will have more strength, more stamina and more emotional stability. They will be able to join in with everything alongside their friends. It will be the right time. It will be their time, according to when they were due to be born. Parents do not want their children to manage at school, to get by, they want them to thrive, to love school, to make friends, be confident, to learn and have fun. I have written a letter to Esther and William, to explain all of this to them. Bliss have been talking about this for some time now. Their have been public debates and private battles. And today it is in all of the papers. I am so glad that it is being talked about. I have had it suggested to me by a Headteacher that I might be trying to delay Esther and William’s school start because Matilda died. The Headteacher thought that my baby dying might have made me over protective of Esther and William. I am fiercely protective of all my children, always have been, always will be, but I am also a qualified, experienced primary school teacher with a first class honours degree. I know that my children will be better with an extra year at home before starting formal education. And I know that it is not right for any summer born premature child to lose a year because they were born too soon. To be forced to start school a year early because the third trimester of their development was in an incubator rather than a womb. This needs to be talked about and I am so glad that today it is everywhere. Read All About It! When should children born prematurely start school?
Get free worksheets plus activities, articles, and science projects. I'm buggin' out! This worksheet challenges your kindergartener to count up to 20 while figuring out which group contains more bugs. Already a member? Sign In Members receive Education.com emails. You can change email preferences in account settings.
A fairly recent innovation in compact fluorescent technology has been the cold cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL). It has been able to solve many of the issues cited with standard compact fluorescent lamps. Cold cathode bulbs could very well be what will convince people who have stayed with incandescent bulbs to make the switch. A common annoyance cited with CFLs is the ramp-up time required for full light output. You flick the switch and the light is instantly on, but at a much reduced rate compared to its maximum output. The time it takes to reach full capacity varies with bulbs, but it is a pet peeve for a lot of people. Cold cathode lamps do not have this ramp-up time. As soon as you turn on the light, it is blasting its full lumen count everywhere. Another downfall of CFLs that cold cathode lamps have solved is cold weather use. Regular compact fluorescent light bulbs cannot start if the temperature is too low, but cold cathode bulbs are engineered to be able to start in weather as low as -10 degrees F. I will be purchasing some of these cold cathode lamps for my doorstep and garage lights, seeing as the Minnesota winter can produce just such marvelously cold weather. I have personally seen regular CFLs fail to start during the frigid tundra that is a Minnesota winter. The solutions of cold cathode CFLs don’t seem to end! Coupled with the previous advances I mentioned, consider also that unlike regular CFLs, cold cathode bulbs are compatible with light timers, photocells (day-night sensors), and light fixture dimmers. That is a huge thing for many people; I don’t have any such needs, but friends of mine have dimmers and the like and have always resisted switching to CFL because of the incompatibility with these devices. Now perhaps I can convince them! I hope cold cathode screw base compact fluorescent light bulbs will help CFL technology gain a larger foothold. With their instant-on quality, they’re great for rooms where lights are turned on and off fairly frequently for relatively short periods of time, such as a bathroom or closet. The energy efficiency and money saved with these types of bulbs should not be ignored; I certainly don’t!
Free Soccer Drills for players of all ages. Improve your speed, In part one of this series we talked about lifting weights to get strong. In this article we are getting more into the concept of movements vs. muscles. We are also delving more into the idea of single joint vs. double or multi joint exercises. Before I move on with this point let me explain what I mean by one joint or two (multi) joints because you are about to see it a lot. I also want to add that I am not saying that all single joint exercises are bad. First of all, another way to look at it, and probably a better way, is to think about training movements not muscles. In some areas you would think I want to train my biceps, triceps, quads, hamstrings etc. There is really nothing wrong with thinking like that if you choose the correct exercise. But if you think movements and multi joint exercises then you are more apt to choose exercises that will have a greater carryover to the field and give you more bang for the buck. During a game your body is about movements not muscles. We even think that way when talking about it. When we talk about athletic movements in a game we think running, cutting, jumping, kicking. We donít say look at how that guy uses his glutes while running around the field. On the opposite side of things when we start training in the weight room we think muscles not movements. It's backwards isnít it? From now on start to think movements not muscles when training in the weight room. Iíll give examples in the next article of movements vs. muscles. Now back to single joint vs. multi joint. A one joint exercise is more apt to train fewer muscles, moves at only one joint, and gives you less bang for your buck. An example of a one (single) joint exercise is the leg extension. In the leg extension you sit on a machine and lift your legs up in front of you. It isolates the quads but only moves at the knee joint. What is a better exercise for the quads? Squat! In the squat you work the quads, glutes, hamstrings, and more. In the next article I'll provide some examples of movements vs. muscles so you can make sure you are picking the right exercises.
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I was very sad to hear of the death of Lord Richard Attenborough on Sunday, August 24. Readers may be interested to learn that Richard made his professional acting debut at the Intimate Theatre in Palmers Green in 1941. In September 1941, the theatre wanted an actor to play the part of a 15-year-old boy in the drama Ah! Wilderness by Eugene O’Neill, so they contacted RADA who sent one of their students to play the role. That student was Richard Attenborough. The critic for the Palmers Green & Southgate Gazette reviewed the play in their October 3, 1941 edition and said: “Richard is played by Richard Attenborough, whom the audience took to their hearts at once... he contributed a crystal clear, sound performance.” He returned to the theatre for two further plays in December 1941 and his future wife Sheila Sim was a regular member of the Intimate repertory company in 1942 and 1943. I wrote a book about the Intimate Theatre called Intimate Memories, which was published in 2006 and, whilst researching the venue’s history, I had the pleasure of chatting to Lady Attenborough about her time at the Intimate. New River Crescent, Palmers Greem
- Is the population base large enough to support the homebased business? - Does the community have a stable economic base that will promote a healthy environment for your business? - Are the area's demographic characteristics compatible with the market you wish to serve? - Is the market well-served or saturated by similar businesses? Excerpted from Starting a Home-based Business
You didn't have to be out there long before you realized that the fatal flaw in the 2012 campaign to recall Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin, was that a lot of people thought the whole thing was a waste of time and money and why do we have to have another election, Mom? This was an easy sell, and boy howdy, did they sell it. Despite the ads purporting to represent Wisconsin values, funding for the message came from well outside the Dairy State's borders: all of Coalition for American Values Action's known contributions come from an out-of-state group linked to the billionaire Koch brothers. Coalition for American Values Action reported to Wisconsin election authorities that it spent $400,080 on its "recall isn't the Wisconsin way" ads, but because of an apparent loophole in state campaign finance law, it never disclosed the true source of its funding. Recently released tax filings, though, reveal that the primary source of the group's funding in 2012 was the Center to Protect Patient Rights (CPPR), a conduit for $156 million in political spending raised by the Kochs and their network of funders. The ad blitz was well done and very well-timed. "I didn't vote for Scott Walker, but I'm definitely against this recall," one man says in a thick Wisconsin accent, as he fishes from a pier. "I didn't vote for Scott Walker but I'm against the recall," says another, leaning against a tractor. "There's a right way, there's a wrong way, and I think this is the wrong way," says a woman identified as a teacher, standing in front of a pickup truck, with a farm in the background. "Recall isn't the Wisconsin way," another "Wisconsin voter" says, ending with the message: "End the recall madness. Vote for Scott Walker June 5th." $400,080 in the small Wisconsin media market amounted to a lot of air time, and coupled with similar messaging from Governor Walker, proved exceptionally effective. Exit polls on June 5, 2012 showed that sixty percent of voters thought recalls were only appropriate for cases of official misconduct -- a complete reversal from polls conducted in November 2011, just as the recall was launched, when fifty-eight percent of voters supported Walker's recall. And, of course, the king irony is that recall elections are very much "the Wisconsin way." It is a legacy of the Progressive movement at the beginning of the last century, and the law creating them got passed in 1926 by Governor John J. Blaine, a Republican. You can buy history, too, I guess.
Return of the Raider: A Doolittle Raider's Story of War & ForgivenessDonald M. Goldstein, Carol Aiko Deshazer Dixon Jacob DeShazer, a farm boy from Oregon, joined the army Air Corps at age 27. He had always wanted to be a pilot, but when he did not qualify, an opportunity opened to become a bombardier. By luck of the draw, Jacob found himself as one of the 80 men participating in the famo... Read More Jacob DeShazer, a farm boy from Oregon, joined the army Air Corps at age 27. He had always wanted to be a pilot, but when he did not qualify, an opportunity opened to become a bombardier. By luck of the draw, Jacob found himself as one of the 80 men participating in the famous Doolittle Raid over Japan shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. During the raid, Jacob and his fellow crewmen bailed out over China and were taken captive by the Japanese as prisoners of war for more than three years. In that Japanese POW camp, every day facing torture and death, Jacob’s path changed when his request for a Bible was fulfilled. Jacob came back to the Christian faith in which he was raised, and made a vow to God in his prison cell that if he survived he would return to Japan, not as a warrior but as a missionary. The Jacob DeShazer story is not only about the bravery of a soldier during war, but also about how powerful love and forgiveness can be when given to the enemy. The DeShazer story reveals an amazing testament of faith. It shares facts and information about the participation in the historic first mission against Japanese mainland in April 1942, mere weeks after the surprise attack on U.S. forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, December 7, 1941. DeShazer spent 40 months in a POW camp in Japan, and studied a Bible given to him by a Japanese Army guard, and became a Christian while in POW camp. After the war, DeShazer earned his college degree to become a missionary, returning to postwar Japan to minister to the Japanese people in the missions field. There he planted a church in the city of Nagoya, Japan—the same city his bomber was assigned to attack during the Doolittle Raid. DeShazer spent 30 years in the mission field in Japan with wife, Florence, and five children, three of which were born in Japan. Page Count: 192 Dimensions: 9.10” (L) X 6.10” (W) X 0.90” (D) - Store Only: Yes - Product type: Book - Format: Hardcover - Release Date: Aug 24, 2010 - UPC: 9781616381905 - Height: 0.8 - Width: 6.1 - Length: 9.1 - Volumes/Discs: 1 - Pages: 180 - Publish Date: Jul 6, 2010 - Language: English - Audience Age Maximum: 0 - Audience Age Minimum: 20 - BISAC: "BIO006520 , BIO008000" - ISBN: 1616381906 More From Donald M. Goldstein Donald M. Goldstein, Carol Aiko Deshazer Dixon$19.99
It’s impossible to know just what to expect when clicking on a tab that reads "Universe Panorama." You just do it because, well, of course you do it. In this instance, within Jongmin Kim’s web-based funhouse, what you see is the surprisingly mucus-like, star-flecked tendrils of the celestial heavens. It’s a beautiful mess, and with a flick of a cursor, you can watch it all spin around in great circular depth—as though your computer was a portal to a physical world far beyond the borders of your screen. We’re in the early stages of exploring digital experiences made possible by HTML5. On the edge of this exploration is designer Kim, whose new project gives the technology’s capabilities a workout. Form Follows Function is a series of 20 interactive experiences (as of January 16th, only 13 of which are available) that are as addictive as they are illuminating. "Web interaction was developed with Adobe Flash for the last 12 years, but now many people are using HTML5 because of how it works with tablet and mobile devices," Kim says. "I think the technology (whether Flash or HTML5) is not so important, though. Technology always changes so fast; the important thing is design and interaction." The interaction begins immediately upon entering Form Follows Function. Users are greeted with a color wheel they can spin to select tabs with intriguing titles like the aforementioned "Universe Panorama," "Wiper Typography," and "Ripples on the Green." While tantalizing, the titles are vague enough that you never know what you’re going to get. (Well, "Campbells Soup 3D" is probably about what you’d expect.) "Wiper Typography," for instance, sends a torrential downpour of the letters making up the word "typography" in white, against a blue backdrop, with a wiper the user controls keeping them from splashing against the ground. "This project isn’t just a collection of interactive experiences; it’s also a collection of my favorite things," Kim says. "I love Vincent van Gogh, Rene Magritte, Andy Warhol, Minimal Design, and Typography. I got inspired by these things. For example, I used Van Gogh’s drawing for the "Color Pixelated" section. [Which basically turn the artist’s paintings into pointillist works.] I felt a loud and strong color in his drawing, so I thought it would be fun to make something that uses the colors in his paintings. And "Plant Trees" was inspired by Rene Magritte’s "Empire of Light." The drawing is single paradoxical combination of day and night. The trees in my project are dark at daylight, but bright at night." While the various experiences on Form Follows Function—and those that will be revealed in the coming days—present a compelling case for the latest technology in web development, its creator is quick to point out (again) that the tech itself will only take a person so far. "If you want to be an HTML master, just study HTML5," Kim says. "But if you want to be a person who makes interesting interactive things, please improve your sense of design and interaction."
We've made claims about how the happiest people have the hardest jobs. But it turns out that happiness may be a little overrated—or even unhealthy. Happiness is associated with taking from people, while meaning is associated with giving to people, according to a Journal of Positive Psychology study. As we've noted before, giving is an investment in long-term success. So in a weird way, happiness can be a little superficial. Smith explains: "Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desire are easily satisfied, and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided," the authors of the study wrote. "If anything, pure happiness is linked to not helping others in need." While being happy is about feeling good, meaning is derived from contributing to others or to society in a bigger way. As Roy Baumeister, one of the researchers, told me, "Partly what we do as human beings is to take care of others and contribute to others. This makes life meaningful but it does not necessarily make us happy." To put it into business language, happiness feels like short-term profits, while meaning is more like long-term growth. The state of your mind affects the state of your body—and they way your body prepares for the future. One example is how a mindfulness meditation or yoga practice, for instance, encourages your genes to express themselves in a less tense and more social way—thus staving off inflammatory diseases. The amount of happiness or the amount of meaning that you feel in your life has parallel effects on gene expression. How does that work? A new study by University of North Carolina positive psychologist Barbara Fredrickson and UCLA genetics researcher Steve Cole helps us see why. When we're undergoing lots of stress, like bouts of loneliness, grief, or financial trouble, our bodies go into "threat mode," as Smith reports. Interestingly, this fires up your pro-inflammatory genes and gets you ready to fight infections. "You have a forward-looking immune system," Fredrickson told Smith, "if you have a long track record of adversity, it prepares you for bacterial infections. For our ancestors, loneliness and adversity were associated with bacterial infections from wounds with predators and fights with conspecifics." But if you're feeling okay and have social connections, Smith reports, you prepare for viruses, which you might run into with all those people you're interacting with. Fascinatingly, people who feel happy all the time—but don't have a sense of meaning in their lives—have the same patterns of people with difficult lives. Smith, again, explains: Cole and Fredrickson found that people who are happy but have little to no sense of meaning in their lives—proverbially, simply here for the party—have the same gene expression patterns as people who are responding to and enduring chronic adversity. That is, the bodies of these happy people are preparing them for bacterial threats by activating the pro-inflammatory response. Chronic inflammation is, of course, associated with major illnesses like heart disease and various cancers. "Empty positive emotions"—like the kind people experience during manic episodes or artificially induced euphoria from alcohol and drugs—"are about as good for you for as adversity," says Fredrickson. As we've argued before, we have a slightly stunted career vocabulary as a culture: As Cal Newport recently lamented, the only options for elitely educated students seems to be: - making buckets of money in finance or consulting, - saving the world at nonprofits, - and for West Coasters, starting a tech company "What we need," he contends, "is more career conversations, started much earlier, handled with significantly more subtlety and intelligence than most 19 year-olds, or the career advice industry that caters to them, seem willing to pursue." Understanding the difference between happiness and meaning lends us a richer, more subtle vocabulary, which allows us to be more specific in describing our goals to ourselves—a productivity secret for getting a 30-minute task done or a 30-year goal accomplished. In that spirit of articulation, let's revise our previous claim: It's not that the people with the hardest, most other-centric jobs are the happiest. They just have the most meaning. Hat tip: The Atlantic [Image: Flickr user Rares Dutu]
Articles in this Issue Asset Management: Working for You Making asset management work in your organization: the theme of the recent Sixth National Conference on Transportation Asset Management is also the continuing goal of the Federal Highway Administration's (FHWA) Office of Asset Management. As demonstrated at the November 2005 conference, asset management is working for an ever growing number of States, cities, and counties, both large and small. For example, in Washington, DC, the first tunnel management system designed for nationwide use is providing the city with a valuable tool for the future monitoring of the condition and performance of its highway tunnels (see May 2005 Focus). A Nationwide Boost for Preserving the Highway Infrastructure Since launching its Pavement Preservation Technical Assistance Program earlier this year, the Federal Highway Administration's (FHWA) Office of Asset Management has worked with highway agencies around the country to evaluate their pavement preservation programs and offer assistance in developing and expanding their current practices. "We are learning a lot about what is being done at the State level, the variety of levels of experience in pavement preservation, and the different approaches to preserving highway assets," says Christopher Newman of FHWA. These peer evaluations are being carried out by FHWA through a contract with the National Center for Pavement Preservation (NCPP). Economic Analysis and Asset Management: A New Approach in Hillsborough County Using a new and comprehensive asset management system for its roadway and stormwater infrastructure, the Public Works Department of Hillsborough County, Florida, has transformed its approach to managing, improving, and replacing its highway assets. Instead of the previous management approach that relied on corrective rather than preventive maintenance strategies and made decisions based largely on historic line-item expenditures and reactions to public or political demands, the new system includes all of the forecasting elements necessary to perform multiyear budgeting of maintenance, operations, and capital replacement of assets as needed. Bridge Management Systems: Meeting the Challenges of Managing Bridge Assets As an increasing number of States implement an asset management approach to managing transportation infrastructure, the use of bridge management systems is playing a key role in collecting and managing bridge data and managing bridge assets. Forty-one States and five municipalities are now using the Pontis® Bridge Management System, a comprehensive software tool initially developed by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and now available from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) as an AASHTOWare® product. Highway Technology Calendar
Sub-Acute Rehabilitation > Sub-Acute Rehabilitation Outcome Data Mr. X was involved in a motor vehicle accident at the age of 38. He required prolonged extraction and was intubated at the scene. He was transported to the emergency department where he displayed posturing of his extremities and at times, presented with tonic/clonic movements. He had a Glasgow Coma Score of 5. He had evidence of scalp lacerations to the left side and CT of the brain revealed bilateral contusions. X-ray of his left leg revealed a comminuted femur fracture. Mr. X remained on a ventilator and made slow neurologic improvements. He underwent a tracheostomy and placement of a gastrostomy tube for nutritional support. Mr. X admitted to the Skilled Medical Rehabilitation Center (SMRC) one month after his accident. Mr. X was awake and alert, vocal, and able to make simple needs known. He had a tracheostomy in place for continued airway support. He continued to experience swallowing difficulties and required tube feedings to maintain adequate nutrition. He had a Foley catheter in place and a PICC line to his right upper extremity. A deep vein thrombosis was identified in his right lower extremity shortly after admission. Mr. X presented with functional limitations in areas of physical mobility, activities of daily living and cognition. He was nonambulatory and was dependent for all transfers from the bed to a chair. He required moderate assistance with bed mobility and rolling with maximum assistance for sit to lying transitions. Mr. X demonstrated minimal to limited movement of both upper extremities, as well as decreased range of motion with increased muscle tone, and was totally dependent for bathing, dressing, toileting, and grooming tasks. His right foot and ankle were pointed and inverted (plantar flexion) presenting challenges with being able to stand or ambulate. Additionally, Mr. X presented with moderate deficits in the areas of attention, thought organization, problem solving and reasoning, and short term memory skills. He demonstrated periods of fluctuating alertness and orientation, with inconsistencies in accurately responding to questions pertaining to person, place, time, or situation. Mr. X received ongoing medical management by the Interdisciplinary Team of physicians, nurses, respiratory therapists, dietitians, and certified nurse’s aides. He received aggressive physical, occupational, and speech therapies on a daily basis by our team of licensed therapists specializing in Traumatic Brain and Spinal Cord injuries. The Respiratory therapy team aggressively focused on speaking valve and capping trials to promote tracheal decannulation. A bowel and bladder regimen was initiated by nursing to assist Mr. X in regaining continence. Endoscopic swallow studies were conducted by Speech therapy to assess his swallowing skills. Dysphagia therapy was implemented including, strengthening exercises, safe swallowing techniques, and oral feeding trials of varied consistencies. In addition to swallowing, Speech therapy’s focus was on improving Mr. X’s cognitive-linguistic skills, targeting areas of attention, memory, thought organization, and problem solving and reasoning which were primary areas of deficit. Physical and Occupational therapy focused on increasing strength and range of motion in both upper and lower extremities. Promoting independence in functional mobility and activities of daily living through improved balance, coordination, endurance, and motor control was a primary goal for Mr. X. During his rehabilitation at the SMRC, Mr. X had the immense support of his family and friends and was highly motivated and actively participated in all therapeutic modalities. His ultimate goal was to return home to his wife and children, and return to work managing the family business. Within the first 30 days of his rehab, Mr. X’s tracheostomy was removed and he had begun oral feedings of modified consistency foods. He had regained continence of his bowel and bladder, and by discharge, he was able to perform grooming, upper body dressing, and feeding tasks with set up/supervision only. His gastrostomy tube was removed and he was consuming a regular diet with thin liquids. He was able to perform transfers with minimal to no assistance and was independent in propelling his wheelchair. Mr. X’s abilities in all areas of cognitive linguistic skills increased significantly and he was able to demonstrate higher level problem solving, reasoning, and thinking. Mr. X was discharged home to his family following 10 weeks of rehabilitation at SMRC with outpatient therapy services in place. Shortly after returning home, Mr. X returned to work and is successfully managing the family business. He is now able to ambulate and perform all activities of daily living independently.
You may see very small bugs called aphids on your pond plants. Stephen M. Meyer Q. First off, I would like to thank you for the advice about raccoon problems you gave me. I enlarged my pond from 75 gallons to about 1000 as you recommended, and since then have had no raccoon problems at all. Now I have a new problem: aphids. One day I was at a local water plant supplier and I saw that they have the same problem with their plants. We both have little black bugs speckled all over our water lettuce and water lilies. I asked what these bugs were and they said aphids, but they did not know how to get rid of them. These little bugs have complete control of my plants and they make my pond look ugly. None of the methods commonly used to control aphids would be safe for use in my pond. A. Not only did you get rid of the raccoons, but you solved another problem by enlarging your pond from 75 to 1000 gallons. Your pond will maintain a much higher quality of water for longer periods of time without any work on your part. pH, oxygen, temperature and pollutant concentrations will all be much more manageable now. Yes, the black bugs are aphids, and they are easily transported on aquatic plants. These little aphids are called blackfly aphids. They can be controlled by simple hosing once or twice a day. A good strong spray across and under leaf surfaces will knock them into the pond. Having a few insectivorous fish, such as mosquito fish or orfes, will help because they will eat the aphids in the water. This approach also has the effect of adding fresh water to the pond, aerating the water surface, clearing plant leaves of dust and is also completely nontoxic. In addition, it gets you out to the pond once a day to see what is going on. No insecticides are safe for use on the pond. These particular aphids apparently spend the cooler winter months on cherry trees and plum trees. So, if you have some in your garden you might consider using an oil spray over the winter to reduce the population. Just do not spray near the pond.
Yet 10 million Americans have taken Lamisil, which costs $850 for a three-month treatment. They have been lured by a grotesque cartoon creature called Digger the Dermatophyte, a squat, yellow fellow with a dumb-guy New York accent. In TV ads he lifts a toenail as if it were the hood of a car, then creeps beneath it to declare, “I’m not leavin’!” TNS Media Intelligence calculates that Novartis has spent $236 million on Lamisil ads in three years (Novartis says it has spent only $100 million). The first run, which featured Digger being crushed by a giant Lamisil tablet, so overstated the drug’s benefit that regulators objected and the company had to pull the spots; the drug fully cures the problem in only 38% of patients. But the ad blitz undeniably was effective: Lamisil sales jumped 19% to $1.2 billion worldwide in 2004 and held steady last year. Lamisil’s rise points up what is wrong with the drug industry today: the triumph of salesmanship over science. The industry spends a fortune to create and sell a raft of me-too remedies aimed at quelling sometimes trivial maladies, even as research pipelines run dry, patents on old drugs expire and critical areas of medicine go underserved. Sometimes the marketing improves health; Americans would probably be better off if more of them were hounded into taking pills to lower cholesterol and blood pressure. Sometimes the result is the reverse, as when side effects from an overhyped and overprescribed medicine are fatal. “The dominance of marketing over research has done real damage to company pipelines,” says Jurgen Drews, former research chief for Roche. A decade ago he predicted a research slump; it has arrived. A total of 87 major drugs with $31 billion in combined annual sales have lost patent protection since 2002, but new drugs aren’t arriving fast enough to replace them. Only 20 were cleared by the Food & Drug Administration last year, down from 53 a decade ago. Drugmakers, says Maryland psychiatrist Jack E. Rosenblatt, editor of Currents in Affective Illness, “don’t seem to realize that this is not toothpaste or shampoo, that they are dealing with something that can really hurt people.” The industry’s malaise is certainly visible on Wall Street. The ten largest drugmakers have lost $130 billion in combined market value in two years, a 12% decline at a time when the S&P 500 Index is up 12%. They have endured scandal after scandal over drug safety and dubious sales practices. A total of 17 drugs have been recalled in the past decade. Vioxx could yet eclipse that. The drug industry, of course, rejects the criticisms. Novartis says its Lamisil spending “absolutely” “in no way” has taken away resources from research into more serious diseases and that it spends far more on its cancer drugs. “Absolutely, marketing doesn’t trump science–this is a science-driven industry,” says Scott Lassman, a lawyer for Phrma, the industry trade group. He says makers have taken steps to curb any excesses and give ads a “more sober tone.” Yet Big Pharma’s focus on marketing is undeniable, and it spends hugely on it. The top ten drug firms invest $42 billion a year on research, 14% of sales–yet they plow more than twice that much into marketing and administration. In a decade drug firms have almost tripled the ranks of salespeople calling on physicians, to 100,000, according to Verispan. That’s one seller for every 9 docs; in 1996 it was one for 18. Often they encourage unauthorized off-label uses or sponsor “continuing medical education” sessions to stoke more prescriptions and broaden a drug’s patient base. Even the research lab is more marketing-driven than ever. More than $9 billion a year in research spending goes to clinical trials of drugs that are already approved or may soon be–often to snare new ad slogans. That is up 90% in four years, says The slogan-geared trials provide fodder for an explosion in consumer advertising of drugs, which had been highly restricted for decades before rules were eased in the 1990s. Ad spending in the U.S. has soared eightfold in nine years to $4.8 billion, says Nielsen Monitor-Plus, TV spots ply supposed low-risk, quick fixes to millions of people: Try Zoloft to get happy; gobble a state-of-the-art pain pill when aspirin would work fine. Drugs designed for narrow sets of patients end up in the hands of a far broader audience. “It creates demand where there’s not even disease there,” complains internist Robert Centor of the University of Alabama. Drug giants “do it in a devious way,” he says. “I wish they didn’t spend all that money on marketing.” Merck’s marketing of the painkiller Vioxx was, in retrospect, all too successful, contributing to the multibillion-dollar liability now looming over the company. Vioxx, part of a new class of drugs known as COX-2 inhibitors, had been intended for only the small slice of patients who can’t stomach aspirin. But it ended up in the hands of 20 million people, driven by ad spending of $550 million in five years, says ad tracker TNS. Some spots had 1970s Olympic figure skater Dorothy Hamill twirling on the ice. Vioxx’s chief rival, Celebrex from Pfizer, also reached a far broader market because of splashy ads. About 60% of patients on the drugs had low ulcer risk and might have fared just as well on older generics, say researchers at the University of Chicago and Stanford. Pfizer says most gastrointestinal complications occur in patients who are not at high risk. “People would come in asking for–demanding [a COX-2 inhibitor]–and sometimes threaten to find a new doctor if I didn’t prescribe it,” says physician John Abramson, a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School who has consulted for plaintiff lawyers. “Vioxx wasn’t a bad drug for everyone, it was a bad drug for certain patients,” says Chris D. Robbins of Arxcel, which consults to pharmacy benefit managers. “Unfortunately, people saw the ads and started demanding the drugs from their doctors.” TV ads for prescription drugs were rare until Aug. 12, 1997, when the FDA lifted restrictions to let spots run without lengthy disclaimers of nasty side effects. Three days later Other companies followed with ads for antidepressants, heartburn drugs, painkillers and impotence pills. Pfizer found its erectile dysfunction pitchman in Senator Bob Dole, then age 75. Wall Street cheered the changes. “We had the whole financial community focused on blockbusters and maximizing the revenues and aggressive marketing,” says Daniel Vasella, chief executive of Novartis, which TNS Media Intelligence says has spent $235 million in three years advertising Zelnorm. (Novartis disputes the amount.) The drug, which treats irritable bowel syndrome, costs $200 a month. In the rush to find big sellers, many companies fell into a herd mentality and focused on the same few common ailments, says Some drug firms stopped researching in critical areas even as they focused on pop pills. The “easiest profits” come from me-too drugs, says John Santa, medical director at Oregon Health & Science University. Genuine discovery is a risky business, “more like drilling for oil.” Instead of prospecting for real cures, some companies repackage old drugs with the minimal tweaks needed to get a new patent. Then they stage exhaustive trials aimed at unearthing some slender advantage that can be cited in advertising. One throwback, the Lunesta sleeping pill from To differentiate Lunesta from Ambien, Sepracor tested its drug versus a placebo in 1,600 patients for six months, something Ambien’s maker hadn’t bothered to do. The trials let Sepracor claim in print ads that Lunesta “is the first and only hypnotic approved for long-term use.” Prescriptions for sleeping pills are up 48% in five years to 43 million prescriptions annually, driven by the huge ad spending for Ambien and Lunesta. Sales are up 140% in the same period to $2.76 billion. Yet the newer drugs “are no better than older ones costing about one-tenth as much,” says John Abramson of Harvard. “Has insomnia become an epidemic in the past five years? Or are the makers skillfully leading Americans [to] an expensive drug?” he asks. Sepracor points to an Institute of Medicine report highlighting insomnia as a serious problem. Astrazeneca, faced with patent expiration on its blockbuster for acid reflux, Prilosec–touted as “the purple pill”–tweaked it a bit to create “the new purple pill,” Nexium. The payoff: Nexium now is touted as “the healing purple pill,” hawked in ubiquitous TV spots. In one, a sterling-haired man in black cites the “exciting news” from one of the studies and concludes, “Better is better.” Nexium is the third-best-selling drug in the world, according to IMS Health, with $5.7 billion in sales and an ad budget of $226 million last year. Never mind that some of the trials were stacked: In three of the big trials AstraZeneca pitted high doses of Nexium versus half the dose of Prilosec; it never bothered to test whether twice the Prilosec dose would be equally effective. AstraZeneca says there are “clear differences” between the two purple pills and notes that one equal-dose study showed a statistical advantage for Nexium in esophageal healing. In another instance AstraZeneca staged trials that fizzled but used them for a new ad claim anyway. Before it won approval in August 2003, AstraZeneca studied its Lipitor look-alike, Crestor, for cholesterol reduction, in 24,000 patients, hoping to prove superiority. But the only dose of Crestor that clearly beat Lipitor turned out to cause kidney problems and never won fda approval. Nonetheless, after Crestor’s debut AstraZeneca used ads featuring a voiceover by the stentorian actor Patrick Stewart of Star Trek: The Next Generation, in Seussian rhyme: “When Crestor performed in a head-to-head test, its lowering effect was clearly the best.” That claim brought a rebuke from the FDA in March 2005. The company halted the ads, but it now is testing Crestor in 30,000 more patients. AstraZeneca notes that Crestor is the only statin shown to clear plaque out of the arteries. The drug industry has begun to restrain its own advertising. Last June Bristol-Myers Squibb took a first step, announcing that it would wait a year after drugs hit the market to begin running ads, leaving time for doctors to learn about a medicine and for side effects to crop up. Companies are now submitting ads to the FDA before they run and are more clearly stating big risks. But myriad drugmakers have plenty of ways to game the system. In the market for new schizophrenia treatments Lilly and Johnson & Johnson and others have run 21 head-to-head trials–and 90% of the time the conclusions favor the sponsor’s drug, according to research in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Nine studies compared Lilly’s Zyprexa to Johnson & Johnson’s Risperdal. All five Lilly-paid trials favored Zyprexa; three of four J&J studies favored Risperdal. Lilly stands by its high scientific standards and says the results highlight the need for more independent studies. Another analysis, in Archives of Internal Medicine, tallied 56 studies of painkillers; not once was the sponsor’s drug deemed inferior. “The comparative studies are a joke. They are comical. A lot of the scientific literature these days is worthless,” says psychiatrist Jack E. Rosenblatt. “The whole process has been corrupted,” says British bone researcher Aubrey Blumsohn. “It is getting worse as the financial stakes are rising.” Blumsohn contends procter & gamble for years refused to supply raw data for a 2003 study he led comparing its drug Actonel to Merck’s competing drug, Fosamax, even after he became suspicious that Procter’s analysis was skewed in favor of Actonel. “It was a process of intimidation,” says Blumsohn, who was suspended from his job at the University of Sheffield after he complained to the British press. (He recently left after agreeing to an undisclosed settlement.) Procter & Gamble says it “always” provided Blumsohn with “unfiltered access to all of the data that was relevant.” “This issue is about a relationship fraught with misunderstanding, and we regret that,” a spokesman says. Procter is now providing Dr. Blumsohn with additional data. Despite the profusion of dubious trials, drugmakers often don’t conduct crucial studies to ensure new drugs are truly safe as they move out to a mass market. This year Trasylol, a But a study of 4,000 surgery patients found that the drug, at $1,400 per dose, posed more than twice as much risk of kidney failure as cheaper generic alternatives, as well as more heart attacks and strokes. Replacing Trasylol with generics would prevent 10,000 cases of kidney failure each year, says clinical researcher Dennis Mangano, who led the study at the nonprofit Ischemia Research & Education Foundation in San Bruno, Calif. Bayer says its own studies of 6,500 patients haven’t found any link between the drug and kidney failure, heart attack or stroke, and that it is working with the FDA to evaluate the Mangano report and another study linking the drug to serious adverse events. “Bayer’s highest priority and concern is patient safety,” says a spokeswoman. Mangano, who also did the first study to raise concerns about the cardiovascular risk of Pfizer’s Bextra (pulled from the market in April 2005), spent $35 million of his foundation’s endowment to painstakingly gather the Trasylol data over four years. Few independent researchers have the money to perform such definitive safety studies. His foundation used to do clinical trials for the industry, but drug companies don’t call much anymore, he says. “There is no incentive for companies to find problems with safety once a drug is approved. It is just downside risk,” he says. The result is worrisome: “We find out a drug is unsafe when the bodies accumulate.” Since drug advertising restrictions were eased in 1997, several campaigns have raised eyebrows and ire. Click here to see some of the ads. The Lure Of Off-Label
Sears capped off the holiday shopping season with the dispiriting announcement that it would have to close between 100 to 150 stores. A list of Sears and K-marts to be shuttered quickly followed, mostly concentrated in Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Georgia. Elsewhere in the country, primarily in the Mid-Atlantic, the remaining Filene’s Basements and Syms stores are going dark, after having milked the last of the season. The wave of big box retail bankruptcies and store closings rattled the retail industry in 2009 and 2010. The fingers-crossed assumption has been that the worst is over, with occasional blips such as Best Buy and Wal-Mart deciding it is prudent to scale back their square footage in certain markets or–and this was more than just a blip–Borders Group’s bankruptcy in February 2011. Even if the store closings have peaked, though, that doesn’t mean they are anywhere close to over, as Sears has just proved. 6,000 to 9,000 More to Go Michael Wiener, president of Excess Space Retail Services in Lake Success, NY, tells me he estimates that there will be between 6,000 to 9,000 store closing in 2012 among national and regional retailers, outside of bankruptcies. This is upwards to 50% more than what would be a normal level of store closings for a typical year, he says. Congress and Retail Expansion. Not a Good Combo The usual suspects are at play—still cautious consumers and the lingering aftermath of the recession. Parts of the country are overdeveloped with retail too, such as Florida. Another reason, and one that is entirely outside the industry’s control, is the intractability of Congress. Retailers, Wiener says, are very hesitant to make bold decisions in the current political climate—a climate that if anything is bound to get worse in 2012. “This is what we saw throughout 2011. The stock market would have a good run, or there would be some good economic news and we would start getting calls from retailers. Then there would be another high-profile clash in Washington and that interest would disappear overnight. It was like watching a yo-yo, it was that palpable the influence Washington was having.”
In a brief minute interview, first president of eBay and philanthropist Jeff Skoll shares his thoughts on early inspiration and the role of technology today in bettering our world. What role did technology play in your life as you were growing up, and how do you perceive the intersection of technology and social change today? Ever since I was a young engineer, I believed that technology could make the world a better place by empowering and connecting people and helping to improve lives. This was the underlying power of eBay and I’ve since applied these lessons to my other organizations, including the Capricorn Investment Group, the Skoll Foundation, the Skoll Global Threats Fund and Participant Media. Today, technology is the social catalyst empowering communities in all corners of the globe to improve their lives and shape their collective future. Modern technology is opening floodgates of information and influence historically reserved only for those in power. It not only helps to uncover the way to tackle a big issue, technology also helps to stimulate the most elusive and most needed breakthrough of all: the will to act in our collective self-interest. How has this evolved understanding and experience translated into your work today? My philanthropic and commercial investments are guided by these principles. Whether it is teaching indigenous tribes in the Amazon to use GPS devices to prevent illegal deforestation, or investing in companies like Nanosolar or Tesla, or even bringing social activists together through our social action network TakePart, technology that benefits humanity is the enabling factor. One other thing that I’ve learned over the years is that social change is a team sport. Real progress comes not from one company, one idea or one philanthropist. As Alexander Graham Bell observed over 100 years ago, “Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds.” With social change being a team sport, what are some ways in which we can foster more collaborative efforts and engagements between the technology sector and social changemakers? You have to be deliberate about it. We develop specific communities – the Skoll World Forum, Social Edge, and TakePart to name a few – that cultivate collaborative impact among the social, finance, private and public sectors. Different corners of the technology sector contribute significantly to these platforms, helping to scale and accelerate social innovations in philanthropic and commercial markets alike. Jeff Skoll was the first full-time employee and first President of eBay . He left with a comfortable fortune and a desire to spend his money helping others. The Skoll Foundation, established in 1999, invests in, connects and celebrates social entrepreneurs — offering grants to people who build businesses, schools and services for communities in need. Every year, it presents the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford. To read my brief reflection from the 2011 Skoll World Forum earlier this year, please click here. His entertainment company, Participant Media, is a global media company focused on the public interest. It makes features and documentaries that address social issues and drive real change. His film North Country, for example, is credited with influencing the signing of the 2005 Violence Against Women Act. Participant’s blockbuster doc, An Inconvenient Truth, is required viewing in classrooms around the world, and has unquestionably changed the debate around climate change. In 2009, Skoll founded the Skoll Global Threats Fund. Its initial focus is on five global issues that, if unchecked, could bring the world to its knees: climate change, water scarcity, pandemics, nuclear proliferation and Middle East conflict.
They can be easily distinguished from other ferns by their complex polycyclic stelar structure, often large, starchy rhizomes with fleshy or papery stipule-like outgrowths on each side of the petioles, presence of swollen nodes on rachises and often also on petioles, and eusporangia that are often fused and ligneous. All genera, except Christensenia, have free venation. Marattiaceae are found in tropical or subtropical forests where the temperature and air humidity remain high throughout the year. While Angiopteris and Christensenia prefer lowland rain forest and grow in partly open habitats, Marattia has a preference for high elevation cloud forest and semi-deciduous forest in the subtropics. Danaea grows mostly in closed canopy, lowland and mountain rain forest and other shady, humid places, along stream banks, in ravines, and in sinkholes or near waterfalls, quite often on rather steep slopes.
The Community Regional Medical Center Epilepsy Program in Fresno is dedicated to the care of people with seizure disorders of all types. The Center offers state-of-the-art medical treatment for the management of epilepsy in adults and children. The Center’s goal is to help patients gain control of seizures and optimize their quality of life. An estimated 2.5 million people in the United States are affected with epilepsy. A majority of those affected are managed successfully with a drug regimen. For those patients, however, who are candidates for surgery a further referral is done to the Comprehensive Epilepsy Center at the University of California San Francisco. A full complement of advanced diagnostic tests is available for diagnosis, seizure classification and treatment, including evaluation for surgical treatment of epilepsy. Approximately half of patients not controlled by medications are candidates for epilepsy surgery that could cure their seizures. The Center’s inpatient Epilepsy Monitoring Unit combines video and EEG monitoring of patients to determine epilepsy type, number and location of seizure onset in the brain. Monitoring results are supplemented by other diagnostic procedures. Patients benefit from the intervention of an experienced multidisciplinary team that includes epileptologists, neurologists, neurosurgeons, neuroradiologists, EEG technologists, nurse practitioners and psychiatrists. Any patient who is not responding to medical therapy is appropriate for referral to the specialty care of the Community Medical Center. Patients may be referred by a physician or self-referred.
With all the cloud awesomeness that happened yesterday, there is tremendous confusion around how to set up iCloud given everyones Apple legacy accounts. Here’s a great guide that will hopefully answer all your question and get you started. AppleIDs can be any email address (or for very longtime users, just a simple one word name – NOTE APPLE IS GOING TO MAKE YOU CHANGE THIS TO AN EMAIL IF YOU GO ICLOUD). Many people used .Mac email addresses as their AppleID and then those converted to @me accounts. It doesn’t matter. Apple allows you to have separate AppleIDs (not that you want it) for iTunes/App/Book Store (“iTAB”) purchases, FaceTime, iMessage and even iCloud. NOTE: iTAB IDs or those used for making purchases in iTunes are the IDs that will be tied to iTunes Match when it is released. This means that if you upload all your music under one iTAB ID and want many people to have access to it, they will all need to share this ID for the Store login. See below. MobileMe IDs – Many people signed up for MM and by default, also made their AppleID for iTAB purchases their MM address. This creates some confusion i will address below. But MM accounts are the email addresses with the @me.com naming convention. iCloud Accounts/IDs – iCloud accounts are also defined by an AppleID but this AppleID can be many things. They can be 1) the same as the existing AppleID for the iTAB, 2) your current MM login (in which case if you use your MM account it will be converted to an iCloud account automatically upon first sign in), 3) a new @me account which you can sign up for when you first see the iCloud account setup on your phone, 4) a new email address of your choosing (lets say a Yahoo account). iMessage IDs – By default, iMessage will be set up with your iCloud AppleID when you first set up iCloud. But keep in mind, Apple allows you to change this under Settings>Messages. What you do here is simply a decision of whether you want the particular iDevice to show iMessages for a specific account. But iMessage can be set up to show many different AppleIDs so it is flexible in that regards. You have an existing AppleID firstname.lastname@example.org that is currently used by your family or just by you for iTunes/App/Book Store (“iTAB”) purchases. You want to share this ID across the family so everyone has access to previously purchased content via the cloud. iCloud Option 1: Separate iCloud account for each family member. No photostream or doc sync sharing MAIN USER: You have two options. First, when you set up your iCloud for first time, use this same email@example.com as the login credentials. This is a “clean” option. This iCloud ID (which is your iTAB ID) will also be set up as your default iTAB ID on your iDevice under the Settings>Store so you don’t have to go into the App store or iTunes store and set it up. [NOTE: Keep in mind this means that if you use the same AppleID for iCloud and iTAB, anyone else sharing your iTAB also has your iCloud password] Alternatively, you could create a new iCloud ID at setup, firstname.lastname@example.org. Since this is a new ID and not tied to your iTAB ID, once the phone is setup, go into Settings>Store and logout the current ID (remember, by default the iCloud ID you just signed up with) and enter the credentials for email@example.com. SECONDARY USERS/OTHER FAMILY MEMBERS: For other family members that want to set up iCloud, each should create (or use) their unique AppleID to sign into iCloud and these IDs are distinct from the shared iTAB ID firstname.lastname@example.org. Lets call this email@example.com. However, this family member wants to be able to share the iTAB purchases under the main firstname.lastname@example.org account. Easy. Once iDevice is setup, go into Settings>Store and logout the current ID (remember, by default the iCloud ID you just signed up with) and enter the credentials email@example.com. The result is separate iCloud accounts to manage individual photostreams, find my phone, calendar, contacts, reminders, etc but still retaining access to previously purchased content of the iTAB account. iCloud Option 1 Note: MobileMe If any family member is currently using MM, they should convert this to an iCloud account upon iCloud setup. This will occur automatically. When asked to enter an iCloud ID for first time, enter your MM credentials and then your MM account will be converted to an iCloud account. Your MM login info becomes your iCloud login. The reason to do this is because Apple is going to auto move all MM to iCloud anyway so your better off doing it yourself to keep things more tidy. [NOTE: If you have or create an @me account, but decide to login to iCloud with a different AppleID, and then try and go and turn on Mail for that account, it will ask you to create an @me account. Why? Because to use Mail under iCloud you need an @me address yet you have signed into iCloud with some other handle (Yahoo, Gmail, hotmail, etc). This has consequences, so see Scenario 3 below.] iCloud Option 2: Separate iCloud account for each family member. But shared photostream and doc sync sharing WHOLE FAMILY: There is another way to set this up, but this way is the cleanest. Create an AppleID to be used as the main iCloud account for every family member. In this case, it can be a new @me account you create, an existing shared one, or you can even use your iTAB AppleID in this case. Any person in the family can set this up. Lets just say Main user upgrade to iOS5, and upon initial iCloud setup, does this Whole Family option for their device. We will call this account, firstname.lastname@example.org. MAIN USER: Assuming this user set up the email@example.com account and the iCloud on their device is set up firstname.lastname@example.org, the next step is to now create their own distinct iCloud ID. We do this because in order to share photostream, everyone in the family MUST BE LOGGED IN TO THE SAME ICLOUD AS THE MASTER ICLOUD ACCOUNT. Go into Settings>Mail, iCal, etc and create a new iCloud account. You have the option of entering your AppleID if you have a separate one (maybe your MM account) or you can create a new one, with the button at the bottom. Once you set that up, you will have your own Mail, Cal, Contacts, and Reminders. SECONDARY USERS/OTHER FAMILY MEMBERS: Each family member does the exact same setup as the Main user. When logging into iCloud for first time, each member enters email@example.com as their iCloud account and then goes and sets up their own iCloud account. iCloud Option 2 Note: SHARING As for accessing each others information, again you have options. Either, you can use that main firstname.lastname@example.org calendar and contacts and reminders as shared for everyone. All stuff that should be shared gets placed on that accounts respective calendar, contact book, etc. But you may find this too tedious. Instead, each family member can add the other’s iCloud account. Just go back to Settings and add another iCloud account of the family member. Then, you just turn on that family members respective calendar, contact, reminder. In this case, you would likely turn off the main email@example.com accounts calendar, contacts, reminders since they are not being used. Scenario 1 Common Questions: Q: How do I setup multiple iCloud accounts/IDs? A: A few ways. The easiest way is that each person sets up their own iCloud account on their iDevice at the initial setup. Assuming you yourself want two IDs or want to set it up for someone else, there are two options. On the Device, go under Settings>Mail, Contacts, Calendar>Add Account. There you will see either enter the iCloud credentials or at the bottom, get a free AppleID. Choose this option, walk through the steps of creating a new AppleID and then you have your new iCloud account. Other method is on the computer under Lion 10.7.2, there is now an iCloud System preference. You can set up iCloud accounts/IDs there. Q: I have an old .mac account that was upgrade to MobileMe, how does moving to iCloud affect me? A: There is no different if you have one of these legacy accounts. If you are still using your @mac email to log into your iTAB account, you can continue to do so. When asked to sign up for a new iCloud account on your device, you can just use your MM credentials before or after you have migrated MM to iCloud. You will either be prompted to do so if you have not migrated or it will simply set you up with iCloud. You don’t even need to change the iTAB login as the @mac and @me accounts are interchangeable from a AppleID perspective. Q: Can i have multiple iCloud accounts on 1 phone? A: Yes. The initial iCloud account you sign up with is your “master” account. This is important because any iOS device can only have one master iCloud account. The master iCloud account is tied into photostream, your device backup and settings, Docs sharing, and Find my iDevice. So if firstname.lastname@example.org is the master iCloud account, you can email@example.com as the second iCloud account. Why do this? To share calendars, reminders, and contacts. However, you will not be able to share firstname.lastname@example.org‘s photo stream, doc sharing, or device settings obviously. Find my iPhone is a little tricky in that you could disable it on the master iCloud account and turn it on in the secondary iCloud account. You would do this to tie Find my iDevice to one account so you can see all devices under that one account (similar to how it has been in the past). Q: What about iMessage. If we share iCloud accounts won’t we each see the others iMessages? Can we all have our own iMessage IDs? A: iMessage allows you to assign it yet another distinct ID. Its under Settings>Messages. But in practice the most likely use case is just to assign iMessage your unique iCloud AppleID. In the case of an iPad, you may choose to give it its own ID or more likely, you may assign it to one persons account or add everyones account so the iPad is truly a shared device. Of course every family members iMessages would be set to show up there but this may be ok for everyone. Q: What about iTunes in the Cloud? How does that work now? A: This is really two distinct items. Lets call this previous iTunes Purchases and iTunes Match (not yet available). Both of these are tied to the iTAB ID not the iCloud ID. For previous iTunes Purchases, and assuming everyone is sharing the email@example.com iTAB account, you can go into the iTunes app and there is a section called Purchased. Under here, you will see every song/movie/show ever purchased and it is available for download. Each family member,regardless of their iCloud account can download this music to their device to be mixed in with the current Music library already synced from the computer. If family member A and family member B have different libraries or have synced different playlists, its doesn’t matter. The music is just downloaded to the device as another song. iTunes Match is also tied to the iTAB ID. So for example, if you have uploaded your entire library via iTunes Match, which was inclusive of songs purchased through iTunes and songs ripped via other means, all your music is now stored in the cloud [dont think iCloud though]. If you want that available, you have to turn on iTunes Match on the iDevice. BUT THIS HAS CONSEQUENCES. Turning on Match will wipe clean your current Music library on your iDevice. Instead, your Music app (not the iTunes app) will show all the same songs you just wiped (assuming it matched 100%) except that they will all be available for download. Meaning, you will need to redownload all the songs you want in your library. Each family member can do this or not do this as again, Match is tied into the ITAB ID. Each family member can also choose to download whichever songs they want. They will not be synced across devices. Scenario 2: You have multiple AppleIDs in the family that have purchased their own iTAB content but with iCloud now, you want to unify them. How do you do that and still setup separate iCloud accounts. iCloud Option 3: In order to unify content from multiple AppleIDs, you need to copy all purchases from the other IDs onto the computer you sync with your iDevice. You then need to authorize that computer to all the different AppleIDs. Once that is done, all your iTAB content can by synced to your iDevice. If your family all uses separate computers to manage their iDevice, but you still want to unify the purchases, you do the same thing on each computer. The key is picking one AppleID to use going forward. So if the family has firstname.lastname@example.org, email@example.com, firstname.lastname@example.org, each that has been used for iTAB purchases, I would choose email@example.com as the single iTAB account going forward. Each person would need to authorize the other two accounts that is not on their computer, download all the content into their iTunes libraries. Then everyone signs in as firstname.lastname@example.org going forward. The rest of the setup is the same as iCloud Option 1 or 2 above. When it comes time to setup the iTAB AppleID, you use the email@example.com. Your device will have all content from the other two family IDs and going forward, anything purchased under firstname.lastname@example.org is available to everyone. BUT THIS METHOD DOES NOT MAKE THE PREVIOUS PURCHASES UNDER FAMILY1@ME.COM AND FAMILY2@ME.COM AVAILABLE IN THE CLOUD FOR REDOWNLOAD UNDERFAMILY@ME.COM. It only serves to get each iDevice access to the collective content and then positions the family to have one ID going forward for all purchases. Scenario 2 Common Questions: Q: Can I migrate an old AppleID which is tied to iTAB content to a new one that I want to set up as my new iCloud ID? A: Yes you can. You can manage this at Apples website. However, this new AppleID under iCloud cannot be an @me account. They restrict this for some reason [all credits go to dhy8386]
A recent, sensational Wall Street Journal article about a book called 'The Race For A New Game Machine' raised a number of new questions about IBM's co-creation of the Cell chip for the PlayStation 3 -- near-simultaneous to its creation of the PowerPC Xenon CPU used in the Xbox 360. The co-authors of 'The Race For A New Game Machine', David Shippy and Mickie Phipps, were two leading figures in the design of the Cell at the Sony-Toshiba-IBM design center, which jointly spent an estimated $400 million to develop the technology. Shippy was the chief architect of the power processing unit for the Cell, and overall technical leader and architect for the team that created the Power Architecture-related microprocessors that ended up in both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. The idea that the Xbox 360's processor shared some of the same design lessons as the PlayStation 3's Cell -- and the apparent claim that Microsoft's Xenon CPU might have taken any of IBM, Sony and Toshiba's PS3 learnings and applied them to the Xbox 360 -- has been controversial. So Gamasutra decided to talk to David Shippy, co-author of the book in question, to find out more details from his perspective. Although Shippy was a distinguished IBM engineer for many years, his story in relation to the Cell chip began in 2000 when Sony first contacted IBM asking for an "order of magnitude increase in processing performance" to use in their next game machine. IBM demonstrated for the company all of its in-house tech, and other chips Shippy himself had worked on -- "and Sony said, 'That's really not what we're looking for,'" he recalls. "They said, 'We want you to start from scratch, throw out everything you've ever done before, and come up with this groundbreaking new architecture with more performance than anything out there, any game machine, any PC,'" Shippy says. "Ken Kutaragi had this bold vision -- 'Don't come to me with anything you've got; go and invent something new.'" The goal, Shippy says, was to create a "supercomputer on a chip." At the time, most PCs' processing power peaked at about 1.5 gigahertz, and dual cores were still a relatively new idea. The Cell, on the other hand, featured eight parallel processing engines. "We came along with Cell and we were double the frequency of any PC out there," Shippy says. The larger feat, however, was to provide that level of processing power on as little an energy budget as possible. "Game machines can't really afford a huge fan and a heatsink," Shippy says -- so the plan was to create a high-performance chip with a smaller footprint. The Cell project kicked off with a full team in March 2001. The Sony-Toshiba-IBM Design Center was established in Austin to build the chip, and for some two years, Shippy said the team was "heads down" designing the next-gen CPU chip for PlayStation 3. According to Shippy: "And then, along comes Microsoft in 2003, and says, 'Hey, IBM -- can you design a chip for us?" Just like its rival, Microsoft was not easily impressed by IBM's existing offerings. But the company did take an interest in IBM's PowerPC chipset, the latest versions of technology first implemented in 1992 by the firm, and previously used in simpler form by Nintendo for the Gamecube. Where Microsoft differed, says Shippy, was that it wanted multiple cores on the same chip. "But what caught their eye, I would say, was the R&D effort that we had put into the Cell technology," he says, apparently referencing some of the high-level PowerPC advances made to help build elements such as the power processing unit of the Cell, which he was lead architect on. (The Cell architecture consists of a central PPU, and a set of parallel processing SPUs.)
I am trying to develop an architectural machine, that will help with the arrangement of certain rooms inside a building. There are rooms that need to be next to each other due to design rules that try to maximize the usability of a building. Walking distances for example have to be as small as possible for paths that are most frequently used. Other areas need to be as far apart from each other as possible. Work spaces shouldn’t be next to kitchens due to possible odor nuisance. While manually developing the layout of a building based on aspects of urban planing, exposure to natural light and so on, we often tend to forget to apply these rules of usability in the first steps of the design process. What if we build a machine that inhabits a certain set of rules and that only lets us explore valid options, creating an interactive layout tool that helps us to consider more aspects than we could normally process in our creative minds? This example is based on an office building with a variable amount of employees. Through the number of employees we are able to calculate the needed size of the room structures which are then displayed as circles with a diameter corresponding to their calculated area. These circles are in fact bounding boxes since the structures aren’t supposed to overlap each other. Between the areas that need a direct connection springs are applied. These springs each having a specific force try to attract the room structures that are connected to each other minimizing the walking distance between them. Rooms that need to be close to each other but don’t necessarily need a direct connection are able to attract themselves as well. Other areas that need a certain distance between them will repel. The wohle program is based on the “generative design library” that adds certain features to the “processing” environment enabling me to easily implement a force directed layout into the machine by supplying basic objects for physical simulations. Rooms are described in nodes. Each node has different values such as position, size and strength. The strength determines the gravitational force between the nodes and can either create attraction or repulsion. The springs are actually elastic connections between two nodes. They differ in length, stiffness and damping. Spring and nodeforces usually antagonize each other to some degree. Wanting to be able to influence how the forces interact with each other I chose to set up a gui, that gives you basic control over some of the values stated above. When you click and drag one of the nodes it will move along your mouse, giving you the opportunity to rearrange the whole layout of the building. Once you have found a valid solution for the layout you can apply a simple tessellation in order to get the actual structure inside the building. For now I used the voronoi function to generate the rooms around the nodes. Although this rather popular method seems to go along with the idea of this program and is fairly easy to implement it doesn’t really fit all the needs. The voronoi function usually generates acute angles to some amount and that is probably something you don’t really want to see in a floor plan. In the next step you are able to generate a patio that provides access to the rooms. A set of subnodes is connected to the nodes with springs. You can control gravitation or repulsion of the subnodes as well es the springs length, stiffness and the radius of the area around the subnodes in which the forces are applied. In the last step everything is graphically bled together revealing the final structure of the building. I implemented a simple way to save and load your settings, enabling you to discover more options as soon as you found a perfect mix of forces. Another thing to consider is the size and shape of the property in which the building is supposed to be located at. The property acts as a kind of bounding box so that none of the nodes lie outside of the building area. Well, enough theory for now. Go ahead and try for yourself. (zip 3MB, mac, linux, win) A big “thank you” goes out to pomax and jestermax at irc.freenode.org #processing for helping me with the load/save function.
I received another great e-mail yesterday describing a reader victory. Joshua has been wanting to buy a Nintendo Wii, even though he knows it’s not the best use of his time or money. On Friday, he stared temptation in the face — twice! — and triumphed through force of will. Here’s his story: I had a great “resist spending” story this weekend, and I had to tell someone. Last Friday I read about No Credit Needed’s idea of “$100-a-day rule to prevent impulse buying. For every $100 that he wants to spend on a new product, he forces himself to wait one day before making the purchase. Want a Nintendo Wii? Wait three days.” I was out with some friends later that evening and we stopped by Toys “R” Us. I don’t spend much money there, but my friend wanted to check out their action figures. (He’s a collector.) At Toys “R” Us, they had about a dozen Wiis. I’ve been wanting a Wii but nobody has them in stock. My friend kept encouraging me to purchase one while they had them. I really wanted one, but have a limited amount of cash. I’m a college student and do not have that much money. I finally decided not to get a Wii and we left. I really wanted one and was barely able to say no. After a quick stop to Target we went back to Toys “R” Us because my friend wanted to grab a Wii and sell it online. Again, I wanted to get one. He gave me a look, like, are you going to get one? But I was able to walk away. Once I got home, I was so glad that I had enough self-will to say no. I thought about it, and I know I could get one later after I graduate and start making more money. Besides it would just distract me from my study this next year, when I’m a senior. Plus, this would have left me tight financially the rest of the summer. I am very thankful that I have no debt, and that I am able to pay for school and have just enough left over to pay for essentials. I just struggle when I don’t have much money, like you said today in the blog, with desires to purchase stuff. Once I was home, I celebrated by transferring more money into my ING account so I wouldn’t have the money available to spend so easily (and so I can save more). During my senior year of college, I’d newly discovered the “power” of credit cards. I bought a new computer (a Macintosh SE) and hundreds of dollars worth of games to play on it. These games didn’t just suck up the money — they sucked up the time. My academic performance suffered. For one assignment, I wrote a critique of the advertising for Wizardy VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge. “Aha,” wrote my professor in response. “Now I know why the quality of your work has fallen off this semester.” Ouch. She’d hit the target. I’m proud of Joshua for making this choice. He’s right — he’ll be able to afford a Wii in the future. I only wish that I’d known when I was his age that there’d be plenty of time for play after I was done with school and had begun saving money. GRS is committed to helping our readers save and achieve their financial goals. Savings interest rates may be low, but that is all the more reason to shop for the best rate. Find the highest savings interest rates and CD rates from Synchrony Bank, Ally Bank, GE Capital Bank, and more.
Gettysburg College Prof. Scott Hancock recently authored an editorial urging individuals at Civil War commemorations to stop flying Confederate flags. The piece, crafted to generate thoughtful discourse, appeared in the July 23 Huffington Post. From the Huffington Post: This July 4th, three Confederate flags appeared outside my house in Gettysburg. It was the first day of the reenactment of the battle at Gettysburg 150 years ago, and some Confederate reenactors walked down the middle of the street carrying the flags. Though they never saw me on my front porch, I was surprised how uncomfortable this display made me. As a 21st century light-skinned black college professor, I have only the dimmest inkling of how most African Americans 150 years ago experienced racism nearly every day. When Lee's army moved through Pennsylvania towns in 1863, free black women, men, and children confronted the ultimate racism by fighting Confederate soldiers trying to drag them south of the Mason Dixon Line. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of black American citizens were enslaved to the Confederate Army or sold to white southerners who desperately needed more labor.
Pet portraits popular with owners who quilt Quilts and family pets have a common denominator: Both can give their owners that special warm and fuzzy feeling. Sometimes a favored pet curls up on a cozy patchwork cover, and its owner can’t resist cuddling right alongside. Six of every 10 pet owners, according to a 2011 survey, treat their animals as though they are members of the family. It’s no wonder then that some quilters are busy stitching portraits of their pets, the theme for 2013 and again for this year’s Festival Awareness Project: “It’s Raining Cats and Dogs” to be exhibited at the fall International Quilt Festival in Houston. The exhibits are accompanied by fabric pet postcards made and donated by animal lovers worldwide, then sold for $20 each to raise funds for Friends for Life, a no-kill animal shelter in Houston. The postcards raised $20,000 for the shelter in 2012 and double that amount – more than $40,000 - in the fall of 2013. The three-year project is headed by Pokey Bolton, chief creative officer for Quilts Inc. and a devout animal-lover. “Thanks to your support, animals who wouldn’t have had a chance at life, will. They will be spayed/neutered, medically attended, cared for in foster situations, and find forever homes,” Bolton blogged to all those who participated after the proceeds were tallied in November. Bolton actively promotes the rescue of shelter animals, having taken several into her own home. Barbara Yates Beasley of Boulder has done the same, adopting a Dalmatian mix from a local shelter in 2002. The dog’s name is Drew, and Beasley says he is “my best friend, loyal companion and the muse for my art.” Her art quilt, titled “Best Friend,” depicts Drew through raw-edged fused appliqué and free-motion stitching. It is one of dozens juried into last year’s “It’s Raining Cats and Dogs” exhibit. Her design source was a photograph of her black-and-white pooch, and the quilt is the 10th in a series of portraits featuring Drew. Another quilt artist, Jeannie Moore of Escondido, Calif., immortalized her cat named Tiger as a tribute “to her 16 years of unconditional love, purrs and cuddles.” Moore also used a photograph of her pet basking in the sun, then combined modern quilting and a newspaper transfer technique for a subtle background. Mixed media is her forte, and her quilts take on a painterly style with the use of Tsukineko inks. Stitching, or thread-painting, on the painted fabric makes the animal come alive, she explains of her entry titled “Tiger.” (Thread-painting combines long and short machine stitches, blending colors to fill in an image for a more realistic result). “I’ve always loved having my Tiger alongside of me while I work in my studio,” Moore says in her artist’s statement. A close-up photo of another cat, named Taz, focuses on the feline slurping water from the kitchen faucet in a quilt titled “Caught in the Act.” Her expressive green eyes dominate in the quilt made by Barbara McKie of Lyme, Conn. The techniques include digital imagery, thread-painting, trapunto and free-motion quilting. Roswell, Ga., quilter Virginia Greaves quilted “Firecracker,” a portrait of a cute little Yorkie that “packs a big punch.” When a visitor comes to the house, the dog gets so excited, “she acts like she is going to explode, just like a firecracker,” Greaves says. A much larger breed was the choice of Suzan Engler of Panorama Village, Texas. A pair of Italian mastiffs belonging to “my little brother who likes big dogs” are the subjects of “Somebody Say Treat?” Engler digitally manipulated a photo of them, printed it and thread-painted her entry. The dogs’ names are Roxy and Lucy Furr. “When I saw Lucy’s eyes, I was inspired to try to document her piercing stare in a quilt,” Engler says. Intricate machine-piecing is the signature method of quilter Ruth Powers of Carbondale, Kan., known for her pictorial fabric art. She replicates her two dogs, a 165-pound rescued shepherd mix and a 145-pound komondor, in a quilt titled “Snow Buddies.” The difference in the textures of their coats is remarkable. All quilts in this exhibit highlight the bond between humans and their pets, and the realism portrayed on the quilted surfaces shows the impressive talents of today’s quilt artists. In the third phase of the Festival Awareness Project, Quilts Inc. is sponsoring a judged contest of the same subject, “It’s Raining Cats and Dogs” for 2014. This time, two cash prizes are offered, $2,500 for first place and $1,000 for the runner-up. Awards are based on the interpretation of the theme, excellence in design and craftsmanship. Entry forms will be available April 4, with a June 6 deadline for digital entries, after which the finalists will be chosen by a jury. Selected quilts then must arrive by Aug. 1 in Houston for display at the fall festival. If you have a pooch or kitty you want to show off, you can find all the details for submitting entries at callforentriesfestivalawareness.com or quilts.com. As a proud pet owner, why not share your four-legged friend’s sweet disposition with thousands of festival-goers from around the world? Email Sherida.Warner@ GJSentinel.com. DO YOU SHARE YOUR HOME WITH A PET? According to the 2012 U.S. Pet Ownership and Demographics Sourcebook, 36.5 percent of households own dogs, and 30.4 percent own cats. Overall, there are 70 million pet dogs and 74.1 million pet cats living in American homes.
With a greenhouse to grow tomatoes, peppers, melons and other nutritious veggies and fruit difficult to grow in Mombasa's humid climate, HIV+ children will eat wonderful foods they can't usually afford. What is the issue, problem, or challenge? Mombasa has been hit hard by lack of rains for years. Gardens were decimated and food costs skyrocketed during the last famine in the Horn of Africa. While Mombasa was not part of the designated famine area, food costs rose 500% overnight. Vulnerable children who need to eat frequently in order to take strong medicine to combat the HIV they carry are the first to suffer. How will this project solve this problem? We will provide a greenhouse which will produce food difficult to grow in an area that is high in humidity (coastal) but which receives very little rain. HIV+ children and their guardians who desperately need to eat enough in order to take their medicines will have the opportunity to receive, free of charge, nutritious food, while learning how to grow it and how to prepare it properly. Potential Long Term Impact HIV+ children and their guardians will receive huge benefits from this project including: much needed nutritious food, training in how to prepare nutritious meals, training in how to grow food with little water, the ability to obtain seeds from an established seed bank, funds from excess food sold, , and the knowledge that they can take care of themselves during a drought. This project has been retired and is no longer accepting donations. Every microproject is intended to use the donations it receives in accordance with its stated description; however, it is important to provide project leaders with the flexibility to maximize the potential benefit from the donations they receive. This means that your donation may be used as a part of the main project that supports this microproject, specifically Sustainable Food Project for Children in Kenya. In this event, the project leader is required to post an update to the microproject detailing the results and reasons behind this change. If you or any other donor is unhappy with the way their funds have been used, he or she can reallocate their donation using the GlobalGiving guarantee.
Naphtali Fields October 19th, 2012 ArtCorps Artist Naphtali Fields and her youth theater group redefine rap. “Diego! Hold your chest up! Proud like a soldier,” I walk across the room and do my best stiff-armed soldier impression. Diego nods his head affably and imitates me for about a half-second. Then his shoulders slump back into their constant hunch and he begins his gangster walk towards the rest of the group. “No, Diego,” I repeat, trying to keep the laugh out of my voice, “don’t slouch like that, you have to be sterner, more in control.” Again the nod and the smile, but he can’t do it. He walks like a happy rapper whether he’s supposed to be acting like an indigenous chief or an army sergeant. Diego joined our theater group in Las Palmeras only a few weeks ago. His first day, I asked the group members to compose a rap based on three different parts of Salvadoran history: the indigenous period and the Spanish invasion, the civil war of the ’80s and the current situation. They complied enthusiastically, none more so than Diego. At the end of the session, we got up to share our verses. Most people were off-beat, but their rhymes were solid and their message sound. Then Diego stepped up. He began crooning about a true love’s rejection as he bounced up and down in the middle of the group, one hand gesturing wildly, the other on his crotch. He has clearly spent time watching music videos; when he finished he slouched back to his place in the circle with a grin. I wasn’t the only one surprised by his performance. The next week, as I readied the music for a second go at the group rap, I turned around to find the whole group imitating Diego’s stance and pelvic thrusts. “Is this how you do it, Diego?” Yolanda asked as she bounced her butt in a cumbia-style rhythm. Our youngest member, a 12-year-old girl, began to attempt break dancing on the hard linoleum floor. I couldn’t help it; I started laughing. We were rapping about indignities, violence, history and our dreams for the future. And everyone was convinced that they needed to clutch their crotch and waggle their rears to get the message across. We eventually came to an agreement about the movement/song relationship. Bopping is allowed. Thrusting is not. But I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Diego. For me, he represents what ArtCorps is all about. Diego lives a hard life. He’s from a poor family and before I met him, he found something that filled him with joy: rap. He swallowed the messages, the movements, he even changed his walk to match that of his new pop-culture heroes. And then he came to our group. Suddenly, Diego was introduced to a different idea about what rap could do. It can motivate people to action. It can tell stories of the oppressed. It doesn’t have to be about sex and money and drugs. It can tell his own story in a powerful, redemptive way. The beauty of working with community groups is that each member brings with them a richness of past experience when they join. Sometimes that takes the form of singing, acting, or drawing. Two of our group members love doing bike tricks and we want to incorporate that into a play someday. And Diego is our rapper. He teaches us rhythm that we didn’t have, and we help him understand that he holds a tool for good in his hand that all of us can use together. This project is being carried out in collaboration with Servicio Jesuita para el Desarrollo and Oxfam America. Project Reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues. If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you will get an e-mail when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports via e-mail without donating or by subscribing to this project's RSS feed. Combined with other sources of funding, this project raised enough money to fund the outlined activities and is no longer accepting donations. Still want to help? Support another project run by ArtCorps that needs your help, such as:
Greater than Bradman Celebrating Sachin - The Greatest Batsman in Cricket History As far back as 2003, Rudolph Lambert Fernandez challenged the status quo – Bradman’s undisputed rank as the greatest batsman in cricket history – by arguing that Sachin was in fact far greater. Ten years on, his book on Sachin invites readers to a detailed comparison with Bradman – the first of its kind. Rudolph's cricket writing has appeared in The Hindu, The Asian Age, The Statesman, The Bengal Post, Firstpost.com and a range of sport and cricket portals – ESPNcricinfo, Cricketcountry, Sportskeeda, Cricketnext, Dreamcricket, Alloutcricket, Thecricketmagazine, Theroar, Cricketworld.
As interaction with government goes, Greenwich in general is easier for the public to deal with than many other burghs. But it's no secret that, depending on the department, doing business with the town still can be frustrating. Depending on the employee, sometimes it can be worse than that. Nobody should walk out of Town Hall with steam coming out of their ears because they were treated dismissively or rudely. With that said, it grates somewhat that taxpayer money will be spent to train town employees to do what should be a basic part of the job. The town is to spend upwards of $50,000 to train workers to better interact with the public, when it seems the message to employees should be obvious, and a whole lot cheaper: Be welcoming, be polite, be honest and be as helpful as possible. But it should come as no surprise, really, that a consultant has been hired to teach what amounts to common sense behavior. It's the way of the world these days. And if the end result is happier, more satisfied residents, $50,000 is relatively little to spend. At the same time, residents must realize that each interaction is a two-way street. Employee behavior is only half of the equation. Oftentimes, difficulty in a given interaction originates on the other side of the counter. Ask anyone who works regularly with the public. And not just in government. Ask a waitress. Ask a store clerk. It can be a soul-withering experience. People often are rude, they treat workers as servants, they take out frustrations on front-line employees not responsible for a problem. Yes, it's town employees' job to be courteous and helpful. But most of us could do with a little refresher training of our own. In many cases, we get what we give.
Gunta Stölzl - excerpt from The Development of the Bauhaus Weaving Workshop, 1931, discussing the Weimar years the evolution and changes in textiles design. "Gradually a change took place. We began to sense how pretentious these independent, unique pieces were: tablecloths, curtains, wall coverings. The richness of colour and form became too licentious for us; it did not adapt itself, it did not subordinate itself to living. We tried to become more simple, to discipline our means, to use these in a more straightforward and functional way. Thus we came to yard goods which could directly serve the room, the living problem. The watchword of the new epoch was models for industry."
In this piece, guest blogger Maria Pawlowska outlines the major arguments for why access to contraception should be treated as a human right. Also highlighted are the different implications of realizing this right in both the developed North and global South. Maria is a healthcare analyst with a passion for reproductive health and gender issues in health care provision. Maria has a PhD from Cambridge, where she was a Gates scholar, and has worked with the Global Poverty Project and RESULTS UK. Margaret Sanger, an American sex educator, nurse, and legendary birth control activist once said that “No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.” Nowadays, these words are true as ever and encapsulate the main premise behind a recent joint publication by the UN Population Fund (UNPF) and the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) – that the right to contraception is a human right. Michele Bachmann’s recent foray into damning a public HPV vaccination program for potentially harming ‘innocent girls’ shows how much politicians can get away with when it comes to reproductive health. When have you last heard anyone complaining about polio vaccinations? Oh right, it’s not a sexually transmitted disease… It would have probably been even worse today if not for The Programme of Action from the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development (tellingly rejected by the Vatican). This document was an important milestone in changing the perception about reproductive health which is no longer a shameful issue to be dealt with in secrecy, but an important public health concern and a domain in which states should work to improve their citizens’ quality of life. Therefore, the current perception of the importance of contraceptives in particular and reproductive rights and health in general should not be taken for granted. Most governments nevertheless still hate mentioning anything that can be interpreted to even mildly refer to sex about as much as they dread the thought of having to raise taxes 6 months before a major election. However, the The Programme of Action has made its mark. Importantly, it was also the first to suggest that access to contraceptives is a human right. You may be thinking “What? I can’t remember condoms and the Pill being mentioned anywhere in the Universal Deceleration of Human Rights (UDHR)?!” You’re right – it isn’t explicitly mentioned (in the UDHR at least). However, the issue is a little bit more complicated than that, but really pretty straightforward. Let’s deal with the more complicated things first (and not to worry, they really aren’t that difficult to grasp). As I mentioned in my previous post, the UDHR is not the only ‘UN-approved’ human rights document out there. There are actually a number of declarations (non-binding) and covenants and conventions (binding) which are part of the human rights legal framework and include, for example, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). When stating that access to contraception is a human right, UNPF and CRR drew on all these documents and did not limit their analysis to the UDHR. And now for the straightforward part, in which we will see that access to contraceptives really is a human right – one grounded in the basic principles behind the very notion of human rights. Women’s right to contraceptive information and services is, in fact, an element of a number of key basic human rights such as the right to life, the right to the highest attainable standard of health, the right to decide the number and spacing of one’s children, the right to privacy, the right to information, and the right to equality and non-discrimination. Not only is guaranteeing access to contraception an integral part of these rights, but it is also a means to securing their fulfilment. Moreover, guaranteeing access to available, acceptable, and good quality contraceptive information and services free from coercion, discrimination, and violence is critical for achieving gender equality and ensuring that women can participate as full members of society. The importance of contraceptives is highlighted by the fact that a range of them is included in the World Health Organization (WHO) Model List of Essential Medicines. UN bodies (such as the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights) have indicated that provision of the drugs on this list is a core minimum obligation of states in realizing the right to health. Importantly, the obligation to provide contraceptives is classified as “immediate” – often also called the “minimum core obligations” – meaning that this obligation is not dependent on the socioeconomic context and thus should be fulfilled immediately. A rights-based approach (RBA) to the provision of reproductive healthcare and contraceptive information and services can guarantee the fulfilment of states’ obligation and the concomitant realization of women’s fundamental human rights. And it’s really crucial to understand that access to contraception is mostly about preventing unwanted pregnancies in the developed North, but in the global South it really is a life-and-death matter. While the life-quality enhancement and human rights fulfilment related to the provision of appropriate family planning is difficult to overestimate, the tragic and potentially life-threatening consequences of restricting access to contraceptives may result in devastating social, economic, and public health consequences. For example, of the approximately 80 million women who annually experience unintended pregnancies, 45 million have abortions. As a result, approximately 68,000 women die from botched back-alley abortions each year and complications from unsafe procedures are a leading cause of maternal morbidity. Research has shown that satisfying the current unmet need for contraceptives could prevent roughly 150,000 maternal deaths and 25 million induced abortions worldwide annually. It really is a no-brainer – preventing unwanted pregnancies allows women and families to lead a measurably better life and prevents deaths (of mothers as well as children). Access to contraceptives is a human right and it’s important to keep that in mind, when we veer towards perceiving it as a privilege of the richer or better educated.
Hip-Hop to Health Jr is an evidence-based healthy eating and exercise curriculum developed for children ages 3-7 years. Hip-Hop to Health Jr was originally created by Dr. Melinda Stolley with ongoing feedback from early elementary school teachers, parents and school administrators. Results of a comprehensive randomized evaluation study showed that children who received the Hip Hop to Health Jr curriculum showed smaller increases in their body mass index at both a 1-year and 2-year follow-up than children who received a general health curriculum. Thus,HH2H was successful in taking these children off the trajectory to overweight and obesity. The curriculum is literacy-based, interactive and can be easily implemented in a variety of settings including schools, childcare centers, park districts, afterschool programs, churches and homes. Each week focuses on a specific theme such as go and grow foods, fruits and veggies, alternative activities to TV, heart healthy exercise and so on. Although the original and tested curriculum is 14 weeks with three lessons weekly, we also offer abbreviated programs of 4, 6 and 8 weeks. The child curriculum includes a set of food group puppets, two original curriculum books and a program CD with program songs and two fully scripted 20-minute exercise routines. Parent newsletters for each weekly theme are also available.
#1: View from the confluence tovards the bird mountain Einevarden #2: All zeroes. And the GPS tells us it was a short walk... #3: Gjertrud standing on the edge below the confluence. Atlantic ocean to the West and Einevarden to the East, #4: Looking down in the valley where the confluence is. #5: From the confluence toewards East, up the small valley. #6: The three adventurer at the confluence, looking west. #7: The famous 'Kannesteinen', a few kilometers from the confluence.
The campers are encouraged to dress in costumes on one of their favorite camp days, Wacky Wednesday. The strings students, made up of mostly rising fifth and sixth graders, packed up their instruments, adjusted their masks and robes, and said goodbye to their orchestra director, who was dressed as a rock star. They had just completed one of their final rehearsals before the students of this summer strings camp would present a concert open to their parents and the public. The pieces sounded remarkably professional for an orchestra comprising mostly middle school students dressed in wacky costumes. The students were dressed in their silliest or scariest costumes on one of their favorite days of camp, “Wild and Wacky Wednesday.” The Scream was there, as was a giant squid, a few hippies and rock stars, and a collection of crazy hairdos and homemade costumes. Director Ruth Donahue knows how to make a summer strings camp fun. And that may be the secret to its success. The week-and-a half program, which is held at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, is less formal than school orchestra, according to many of the students. “It’s not really serious,” said Spring Hill student Richard Wang. “You get to have a lot of fun. It’s not as serious as other camps I went to where you can’t play kick ball and kick the ball onto the roof.” Donahue is the orchestra director at Spring Hill Elementary School. She started an orchestra camp when she lived in Oklahoma in 1983, and continued the tradition when she moved to Fairfax County in 1988. She offers the camp each year. “I noticed how middle-schoolers who have orchestra every day during school months learn and improve so much faster when rehearsing daily rather than weekly,” she said. Though the camp is fun, Donahue has been pleased with their progress. She expects them to work on their sight-reading skills, and to work on correct positioning and tone. They learn many styles of music including Baroque, classical, Romantic and contemporary. They also learn some history and discuss what the world was like when composers such as Bach, Mozart and Beethoven created their masterpieces. The camp themes, games, prizes and certificates help bring many campers back each year. And although it is fun, even the students seem to recognize that they are improving. “You learn lots of new pieces,” said Spring Hill student Nima Razavi. “And I think it’s only for the people who want to do it. It pays off. Music lovers always want something new to do. And you have some fun, you learn some new pieces and you get better for the next year.”
ICANN and the Universal Postal Union (UPU) have reached an agreement in principle for the UPU sponsorship of the .POST Top-Level Domain. Final approval of the agreement is subject to ICANN's public comment process (which will commence after ICANN concludes its meeting in Seoul on 30 October 2009), and consideration by the Board of Directors. The UPU is responsible for setting the rules for the universal network of international postal mail exchanges. A specialized agency of the United Nations, the UPU was established in 1874 and is one of the world's oldest intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). Despite ICANN's relative youth, ICANN and the UPU bear a number of resemblances, including active participation by representatives of geographically diverse governments and constituencies. Both organizations are governed by a bottom-up process: the UPU by its member countries and ICANN by the global Internet community. And both organizations serve billions of people globally. The agreement concludes the negotiation that enables both organizations to recognize one another's traditional autonomy, mission, and core values. The agreement represents a significant accomplishment for the UPU, ICANN, and the global Internet community. "This validates the ICANN model for fostering expansion of and innovation in the domain name space," said ICANN CEO and President, Rod Beckstrom. "The UPU has also helped mark out a path for other IGOs to sponsor their own top-level domains and helps us expand our multi-stakeholder relationships in the IGO field."
qView Full Size We decided we needed a simple hand tool. I created a tool with four aluminum corners with two cartridge heaters in each corner in order to deliver enough heat quickly. (This drawing only shows one heater per corner) The four corner blocks are each mounted on a parallelogram so that pressure will be evenly distributed. The operator, after adjusting the temperature setting, simply places the repair tool into the lunchbox and presses down for 15 to 20 seconds or until the corners have been reformed and the glue has set. The beauty of this tool is that it requires only hand pressure and the timing for each bag repaired is adjusted as needed by the individual operator.
By Simon Powell Oct. 10, 2013 The Affordable Care Act has expanded the ability of self-insured employers to offer wellness incentives to their employees as part of health plan design. Companies are now frequently rewarding employees $1,500, or even $3,000, for getting to a healthy weight, quitting smoking, and/or getting their biometrics into a healthy range. As you evaluate whether wellness incentives are appropriate for your population, and determine what type of incentives will work best, it's helpful to look across the pond to identify what types of programs are working in the UK and globally. Recent research from the UK's National Health Service (NHS) has demonstrated that financial incentives can positively improve behaviors that impact long-term health, including smoking, weight, and physical activity. Positive financial incentives can help women give up smoking during pregnancy. A Tayside, Scotland program paid pregnant women up to $1,050 in weekly $20 grocery vouchers for each week they abstained from tobacco. These cash incentives were found to be significantly more effective than other intervention strategies in inducing pregnant women to stop smoking. The cash incentives were cost-effective, too; a similar scheme in Sheffield, England found that every £1 (English pound) spent incentivizing women to stop smoking would save the NHS £4 in future health care bills. Similar results have been found to induce weight loss with cash incentives. A weight loss incentive study developed by NHS Eastern and Coastal Kent in 2007, challenged slimmers to lose between 15-30 pounds and paid them for doing so. Overall, 67 percent of 401 participants lost weight, an average of 18 pounds, after three months in the program. NICE, the U.K. clinical body that evaluates the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of NHS programs, examined these studies in 2010 and concluded that alongside other interventions, financial incentives should be supported providing among over provisos that they are only offered to people who are committed to changing their health behavior and that their progress is monitored throughout. These studies show that there is tremendous potential to use positive incentives to induce behavior change. But, the incentive schemes need to be carefully designed to induce change. By providing ways to measure the improvements in the short term, as with the activity loyalty cards, and by incentivizing the long term benefits, as with the smoking abstention studies, organizations can help individuals make the changes they would otherwise struggle to achieve. Employers can use these modern collaborative tools to create fun, focused activities to help spur employees into taking an interest in their health and acting to improve it. Programs such as weight loss challenges can allow staff to work together toward their own goals, improving their health and company morale at the same time. Simon Powell is global client program director at HealthyWage, which provides financial incentives for those looking to lose weight. Based in London, U.K., he helps firms across the US design and implement weight loss incentives for their employees. He may be reached at www.healthywage.com.
Torino - The Shroud of Turin The Shroud of Turin is one of the most important Christian relics, and you can see a replica on display in the Shroud of Turin Museum. The actual shroud is only shown rarely, on very special occasions. The museum, however, provides a wealth of information about this relic. The shroud is said to be the cloth that Jesus was wrapped in after he was crucified. Although various tests have not been able to verify this, neither have they been able to explain the image of a bearded man that appears on the cloth. Based on the images on display here, you can judge for yourself whether the image on the shroud is that of Jesus, and you can also learn of the shroud’s long and colourful history.
It is a scary world and getting scarier every day. I live in the small town of Kennedale, Texas. Population: 7,068. We are just south of Fort Worth (whose city motto is: “Where the West Begins”), but just north of Mansfield, a fast-growing suburb. My family lives within the danger zone of two nuclear power plants, and two more whose construction have been postponed. Were Comanche Peak (1&2) to experience some kind of disaster like that in Fukushima, Japan—whose reactor was severely damaged in a 2011 earthquake—we would be up radiologically-contaminated Shit Creek without a paddle. Across the street from my home is a hydraulic fracturing well. What do these wells and nuclear power plants have in common? More than most North Texans may realize. Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” is a process where wastewater is used to fracture hard rock, like shale, in order to get to the oil and gas below by injecting it down into the ground at high pressures. A huge amount of natural gas has been discovered underneath the Barnett Shale here in the Fort Worth Basin. Over the last several years more than 50,000 of these drilling wells have sprouted up all across the state. The dangers with these wells are there are some 600 chemicals used in the waste water, some of the carcinogenic and toxic. But there is a growing body of data showing the process is linked to earthquakes (also, see here and here and here). Cliff Frohlich, a research scientist at the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas at Austin, has explained it as “the air hockey table model”: “You have an air hockey table, suppose you tilt it, if there’s no air on, the puck will just sit there. Gravity wants it to move but it doesn’t because there friction [with the table surface] . . . Faults are the same.” The injection of the water allows the faults to slip more easily, producing the obvious results we have witnessed: earthquakes. In the last six years, since the fracking boom began, 60% of the earthquakes in Texas (93 of 153) have been here in North Texas. While Earthquake Track goes back only 38 years, between 7-38 years ago there were no earthquakes here. None. Nada. Zilch. Zero. In fact, from 7-38 years ago there were only 70 earthquakes in all of Texas. In a six year span there were 25% more earthquakes here in North Texas than that 28 year period for the entire state! For the state as a whole, seismic activity has increased more than 100% in six years, as compared to a 32-year period. In the aftermath of the earthquake that damaged the nuclear reactor in Fukushima, Japan, we can turn to a 2010 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission study that calculated the odds of an earthquake strong enough to damage the reactor core of the two Comanche Peak plants in nearby Glen Rose, Texas. According to NBC, which covered the study, there is a “1 in 250,000 chance each year” of such a catastrophe. To get an idea of how things have worsened for us here, the old estimate, based on earthquake data as of 1989, was 1 in 833,333. The change in risk: 233%. The NRC’s data is as of 2008. Earthquakes have escalated over the last five years, especially in Cleburne, Texas, which is only twenty miles east of Comanche Peak on US-67 (in fact, there have been 16 earthquakes in Cleburne over the last five years). The probability of an earthquake producing a nuclear disaster is certainly greater. According to Luminant, the Texas-based utility company that operates Comanche Peak, “Nuclear power is a safe, dependable, clean-air energy.” Of course they make a lot of money off of the nuclear power plant. But considering the recent spate of earthquakes in Azle and Mineral Wells, I am not sure I feel as safe and comfortable as they do. Here in the Lone Star State the odds of winning the Lotto Texas are 1 in 25 million. How safe are we when we are more than 100x more likely to experience a nuclear disaster brought on by an earthquake than we are to win the lottery? By the way, this is not just limited to Texas. Our neighbors are having the same problems. In the last ten years there have been 691 earthquakes in Oklahoma, with 669 in the last six years, since they too began fracking for gas. And, to their east, and my Northeast, the same pattern holds for Arkansas: over the last decade there have been 424 earthquakes in Arkansas, with 407 occurring in the last six years. And remember, up until these wells were dug and drilling began, we in North Texas did not have earthquakes. This is the price we pay to have carbon-spewing semi-trucks—adding a climate-changing insult to the still-thawing injury we have dubbed “Icemageddon”—carrying millions of gallons of carcinogenic and toxic wastewater to tens of thousands of wells all across the state in order to fracture hard rock two miles underground so that private multi-billion dollar companies like Chesapeake Energy can make a buck or two: profits over people. Michael McGehee is an independent writer from North Texas. He can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org
Storey’s Barn Guide To Sheep Designed to be used in the barn, Storey’s Barn Guide to Sheep provides clear, step-by-step help with oversized, heavy-duty pages provide dozens of procedures with simple, straightforward illustrations. A nail hole at the top of each page lets you hang the book on a barn wall and easily refer to the step-by-step illustrations. Graphic presentations guide you through every situation that might arise during the normal course of a sheep’s life including trimming hooves, administering injections, assisting with lambing, bottle feeding, milking, shearing. The book also features full-color anatomical illustrations, a lambing calendar, a feeding chart, and record-keeping section.
It is an opera that like its choruses rouses recriminations and unsettled ghosts. "The Death of Klinghoffer" by composer John Adams sets the Israeli-Palestinian struggle on a ship sailing with the histories and opposing realities of two peoples bound by the rage and agony of an unreconciled land. The opera, based on the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro by Palestinian militants who killed Leon Klinghoffer, a disabled American Jew, is also a deeper meditation on nationalist passions that for ages have set alight the world's conflicts. Since its premiere in Brussels in 1991, the opera has been denounced by some Jewish groups as pretentious, anti-Semitic and sympathetic to Palestinians. Those sensitivities have kept many companies away. Los Angeles Opera, one of the work's co-commissioners, has yet to stage it. But with chutzpah and a bit of brio, the Long Beach Opera on Sunday will perform "Klinghoffer," which it calls "perhaps the most controversial opera of the 20th century." It will be the first staging of the opera in Southern California. "It's an incredibly moving piece," said Andreas Mitisek, artistic and general director of the Long Beach troupe, which relishes provocative works. "We are not here to take political sides. We are here to present art. It's not a documentary. It's about the human experience and the suffering that" arises from deep-rooted animosities. He added: "I find it important to pick works that have relevance." The work is directed by James Robinson, who staged a production by the Opera Theatre of St. Louis in 2011, which came nearly 20 years after the last U.S. performance in San Francisco. As a prelude to Sunday's show, the Long Beach company sponsored an interfaith discussion of the work at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena. A rabbi, an Islamic cleric and a Christian minister guided the talk. "It's such a raw subject," said Mitisek. "But it was a positive talk." Berkeley-based John Adams is one of America's most important composers. His operas peel into seminal moments and explore pivotal personalities, including "Doctor Atomic," the tale of Robert Oppenheimer and the invention of the nuclear bomb, and "Nixon in China," the story of President Nixon's 1972 gamble-of-a-trip to meet Mao Tse-tung. But since it first appeared, "The Death of Klinghoffer," with a libretto by Alice Goodman, has been a flash point, a two-act drama of words and music that seeps into centuries-old politics and religion. The world has changed much in two decades: the Cold War dissolved in echoes, Sept. 11, 2001 redefined the specter of global terrorism and Arab upheavals swept away dictators. But the Palestinian-Israeli conflict remains a perpetual crisis of failed peace talks, expanding Jewish settlements and militant attacks. "Nobody could have imagined 30 years ago that the situation in Palestine could have been so much worse," said Peter Sellars, who directed the work's world premiere and has frequently collaborated with Adams. "The desperation of people is shocking.... The [opera] becomes more powerful now than when it was new. It speaks to something that can't be communicated in a headline." Writing about the Middle East — be it poem, opera or news story — is held up to passions and prejudices older than the Bible. Narratives are fixed in stone; troubled histories are distilled into vigilance. The often repeated wisdom, one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter, is more than a piquant turn of phrase, making the rancor between Arab and Jew perhaps the most notated struggle in a world rife with political injustices. "That kind of intractable conflict is not something the Palestinians and Israelis own," said Adams. "It's present in the Crimea (Ukraine) today and was part of the American Civil War." He called Israel an "apartheid state" whose message was controlled by powerful lobbying groups "determined to keep their version of the narrative in their direction." He condemned terrorism, saying "it is a last ditch tool. It is the weapon of the powerless." He said "Klinghoffer" dealt with universal questions and should not be co-opted by political forces: "My piece is a work of poetry and music.... It is not agitprop in any way." Adams was reluctant to revisit the furor around a work — layered harmonies and intricate score of post-minimalism — in which both sides are sensitive to their depictions. The opera, which conjures both Bach oratorios and Greek tragedy, dedicates about 50 minutes to separate Jewish and Palestinian choruses that hauntingly recount the histories that brought them to bloodshed over the founding of the Jewish state in 1948. The hijackers took the Achille Lauro passengers, including the wheelchair bound Klinghoffer, hostage and demanded the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Klinghoffer was shot and dumped overboard. The Long Beach production, as with others, portrays his death offstage. "I'm very skeptical of reminiscing. As soon as it was known that I was making this opera I got strong reactions," Adams said, adding that Palestinians "thought it would be another damning critique of the Palestinian position. Jews were angry about the beginning Palestinian chorus that sings, 'Our faith will take the stones he broke and break his teeth.' … I did not anticipate the level of personal attack against me." Detractors and Jewish groups argued that the opera was empathetic to terrorists by conjuring Palestinians forced from their homes by armed Jews. Some critics took issue with the humanizing of the four Palestine Liberation Front gunmen, one of whom speaks of oppression and the seeds of hate. One scene, cut after its 1991 premiere because it was deemed too provocative, homed in on a frivolous American Jewish family oblivious to the darker themes an ocean away. After attending a performance of the opera in 1991, Klinghoffer's daughters, Ilsa and Lisa, who live in New York, said: "While we understand artistic license … the juxtaposition of the plight of the Palestinian people with the cold-blooded murder of an innocent, disabled American Jew is both historically naive and appalling." The Boston Symphony Orchestra, months after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, canceled performing parts of the opera to "err on the side of being sensitive." Writing in the New York Times that same year, Richard Taruskin, a music professor at UC Berkeley, suggested that "Klinghoffer" romanticized "terrorists as Robin Hoods" and idealized "their deeds as rough poetic justice." Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times wrote in 2012 — after a performance by the English National Opera in London — that the score was "intense and moving" and that the "controversy was that Goodman's spectacularly literary libretto permitted Palestinian principles to be expressed with the eloquence of great Arab poetry. The opera's terrorists can display unspeakable brutality yet appreciate beauty." Following the Long Beach production, which stars Robin Buck, Suzan Hanson and Jason Switzer, "Klinghoffer" will be staged for the first time by the Metropolitan Opera in New York in October. The work will be directed by Tom Morris. The opera may eventually find its way to L.A. Opera's stage. "We're in ongoing discussions with John Adams about his long-awaited return to the company," said Christopher Koelsch, the company's president and chief executive. " 'Klinghoffer' is one of a number of projects we're considering." When a work has been around "for a couple of decades you can't baby-sit it. You have to let people do their thing with it," said Adams. "Most people who take up 'Klinghoffer' are very serious about it. I respect and admire anyone who takes it on." He added that it can take a while before a controversial work is embraced by companies to reach wider audiences. "As we composers have learned, we have to wait," he said. "We just have to stay alive." 'The Death of Klinghoffer' Where: Terrace Theater, 300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach When: 7 p.m. Sun. and 2 p.m. March 22 Information: http://www.longbeachopera.org; (562) 432.5934Copyright © 2015, Hartford Courant
These birds don’t live in the wild in Arkansas, but some are kept as pets and also as attractions at private shooting preserves. Likely, the Faulkner County bird escaped from a pen somewhere nearby and decided to roam around. It is highly unlikely that it migrated from South Dakota or Iowa or some other pheasant area to our north. Pheasants in the wild have been attempted in Arkansas back through the years without success. Arkansas critter history is rich with the comebacks of game animals but not nearly as much with game birds. The restoration of Arkansas deer began about 1924, and look at what we have today — deer numbering at least 1 million according to wildlife biologists and a new record for deer checked by hunters in the making for this season. Bears were restored to Arkansas. Elk were restored to Arkansas. Squirrels have done extremely well on their own. Beavers were restored to Arkansas, and many people regret that. Alligators were restored to Arkansas, and some people are critical of that. Among game birds, we have the restoration of Canada geese, and this has been beyond successful to the point of problems. Turkeys were restored, thrived then declined in recent years. A turnaround may be taking place now. Quail have declined, mainly due to habitat loss, and they have not rebounded despite fairly intensive restoration efforts. Ruffed grouse restockings were begun in the Ozark Mountains about the same time as the Canada goose and elk restorations began. But the grouse seedings did not succeed. None has been seen or heard for a number of years now. Pheasants, not native anywhere in the United States, were imported into several parts of the country and became numerous and desired hunting targets in the upper Midwest and as close to Arkansas as Kansas and northern Missouri. Pheasant numbers have declined sharply in Missouri in the past decade. When the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission was formed in 1915, pheasants became a talking point. The agency built a quail and pheasant farm near Rogers in 1922 and produced quite a number of birds. These were moved to the wild in a number of locations but with extremely limited success. When the Great Depression began in late 1929, funds dried up for the Game and Fish Commission, and the quail and pheasant farm was closed. Since then, a few private attempts at stocking pheasants have failed. According to Wikipedia, “Pheasant hunting is popular in much of the U.S, especially in the Great Plains states where a mix of farmland and native grasslands create ideal habitat. South Dakota alone has an annual harvest of over a million birds a year by over 150,000 hunters. Much of the North American hunting is done by groups of hunters with flushing dogs such as Labrador retrievers and springer spaniels walking through fields and shooting the birds as they take flight. Joe Mosby is the retired news editor of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and Arkansas’ best known outdoor writer. His work is distributed by the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. He can be reached by e-mail at email@example.com.
Print out the bell pattern. Cut a piece of 18-gauge wire. Using the pattern as a guide, shape the wire into a bell. Start in the middle of the wire and the bottom of the bell. Work your way slowly to the top. Be patient until your wire closely resembles the shape of the bell. You can make the loop at the top any size you want. I made my double loop rather large and twisted the wire around a few times to secure it.
The only significant phrase uttered by a politician this week was by Tony Abbott, when he asserted that the government’s education refund handouts were different to the baby bonus because “they just are”. I hope I’m quoting Abbott accurately, because the transcript from that interview was, curiously, not released by Abbott’s office. As I’ve noted before, Abbott has no interest in consistency, evidence or logic. Such things are the hobgoblins of little minds, and Abbott’s is vast enough to hold multiple positions, often every possible position, on important issues. This week he has gone further, though, into a new form of epistemology. He has previously dabbled in this area with his famous caveat that things are only true if he has written them down, rather than asserted them off the cuff. But now our philosopher-prince has gone further: things are now true merely because he asserts them to be the case: “they just are.” Abbott’s budget reply was, yes, entirely devoid of detail or policy, barring an uncosted, undated thought bubble about Asian literacy, but that was expected. Don’t linger on that. What was more interesting was Abbott’s long list of assertions about the government’s performance and that of the Coalition. Stephen Koukoulas has already done a demolition of the more egregiously false statements by Abbott, although he missed my favourite, Abbott’s claim that “the Coalition identified $50 billion in savings before the last election and will do at least as much again before the next one”. The Coalition’s $50 billion claim ($47.6 billion, but never mind) was a fiction, riddled with double-counting and asset sales, one of the reasons they were tripped up by Treasury and Finance during negotiations with independents in 2010. But silliest was the claim that “there is no plan for economic growth; nothing whatsoever to promote investment or employment”. Indeed, Abbott suggested, only the Coalition would deliver economic growth, jobs and investment. This is patently wrong, wrong in a black-is-white way, in a “they just are” way that can only be maintained by someone who has no regard for the inconveniences of a reality in which the economy is growing with low inflation and interest rates, maintained on the day unemployment fell below 5%. But it chimed nicely with Clive Palmer yesterday insisting that if Australia, which is labouring under a “socialist and communist philosophy” (Clive of China is presumably unaware of the difference), were a company he would write if off. Clive and Abbott have this in common, that both are in a position where they don’t need to care what they say — Palmer because he’s so wealthy, Abbott because his party is nearly 20 points clear in opinion polls against a Prime Minister to whom voters have stopped listening. But Abbott’s bland declaration that things are true merely because he says they are is more reminiscent of the famous assertion by Karl Rove that the Bush Administration was “creating its own reality”, one that the poor folk of the “reality-based community” would simply be left to study afterwards. The parallels between the Liberals and the Republicans are sometimes overstated, but let us to defer to Brian Loughnane, who noted in 2006 “the close ties between President Bush and Howard were reflected in the similarly strong ties between the Australian Liberal and US Republican parties”. Since then, the Republicans have embraced a full-scale war against science, not to mention wars on women, wars on gays and whatever is the conspiracy theory du jour about Barack Obama. This sort of relativism, of course, used to be the preserve of the far Left, a comforting narrative in which even reason and logic themselves were simply tools of white patriarchal capitalist tyranny, one busy “genociding” every conceivable minority group (genocide having not merely had its meaning extended to include the mere giving of offence to someone of another culture, but turned into a verb, because grammar, too, is a weapon of oppression). Now it’s been embraced by the Right, along with the automatic victimhood that goes with it, one in which pointing out the lack of correspondence between an assertion and reality is an attack on free speech. The result is a battle in which the assertion-based community will always have the upper hand, since the reality-based community is hobbled by trying to adhere to logic and evidence, whereas its opponents are free to say anything they wish, and reject any need to verify or explain themselves. The media environment is entirely conducive to this growing split between the assertion-based community, of which Tony Abbott is now the leader, and the reality-based community. Most of News Ltd is firmly in the assertion-based community: look no further than the “here’s one we prepared earlier” theme of “class war” in this week’s budget coverage. Serious use of the term “class warfare” in a Western market economy is a convenient indicator of stupidity, but its assertion about a government under which the profit share of income has risen, despite a financial crisis, and about a budget in which government spending is falling significantly, is straight defiance of reality. But that’s only part of the problem; perhaps the more damaging media role is played by outlets seeking “balance” by flatly reporting and thereby legitimising even the most absurd, reality-defying statements from politicians, without any effort to note how false they are. We’ve been here before, of course. The likes of overhyped New York media critic Jay Rosen attack this as “the view from nowhere” but I prefer Washington Post’sGreg Sargent’s take, that “balanced” reporting of outright falsehoods results in a media outlet’s readers being misled, and no media outlet should assist in misleading its readers. As our politics becomes more and more a contest between assertion and reality, between “they just are” and logic and evidence, those sections of the mainstream media that have not joined News Ltd in the former camp need to consider what role they want to play in the new paradigm and the extent to which they’re prepared to mislead their readers in their coverage.
As much as we would like to believe that slavery and human trafficking are only horrific aspects of our collective past, these tremendous abuses of human rights and human dignity have in some form continued to exist throughout the world and, in fact, are experiencing a dramatic resurgence in recent years. The details vary from country to country but, put simply, human trafficking is the coerced use of human beings as objects of commerce. It is a reemergence of slave labor and extreme forms of sexual exploitation. Usually, trafficking victims are lured away from their homes with promises of paid employment in legitimate jobs. They may be abducted—or even purchased—from family members. Once they have fallen into the hands of traffickers, victims' movements are restricted. They are isolated from the surrounding community, their legal documents are taken, and they are often victims of considerable physical and sexual violence. In destination countries, trafficking victims who escape or are picked up by local authorities are frequently not recognized as victims of a crime but rather considered 'undocumented aliens.' Often, they are detained and deported right back to the traffickers, where they are 'recycled' or resold, and their nightmare begins again. Trafficking in human beings is a $10-billion growth industry. Conservative estimates of the number of people trafficked into forced labor and prostitution range from 700,000 to 2 million (primarily women and children) annually. It is impossible to deny the suffering of the victims of trafficking. What may be harder to understand are the forces that create and sustain this global problem. These forces—and the array of initiatives necessary to combat them—are far more complex. Trafficking does not exist in isolation. It is connected to economic, political and social forces that increase the vulnerability and desperation of the poor and marginalized. Trafficking is one of the most horrific results of the economic and social disparities that increase the vulnerability of millions of people. Such vast inequality allows many within our societies to be considered little more than disposable commodities. CRS Policy Position Catholic Relief Services supports programs that combat human trafficking through prevention, protection, reintegration and public awareness. CRS and many of our international partners work together to increase understanding of and response to the factors that sustain and exacerbate human trafficking. Our experience is based in our work in development, humanitarian relief and human rights arenas. CRS' programming in other areas (including peacebuilding, agricultures, microfinance, health and migrant/refugee protection) contributes to efforts to decrease vulnerability of the poor and marginalized and reduce the risk of individuals becoming victims of trafficking. CRS supports alternative, local economic options and social protections as a means of both preventing trafficking from happening in the first place and as a way of re-integrating trafficked people into society. In these ways, we hope to decrease the vulnerability of individuals and communities to trafficking. CRS also participates in the U.S.-based Coalition of Catholic Organizations Against Human Trafficking. This coalition works to raise awareness of the international and domestic (United States) dimensions of this tragedy as well as create new opportunities for Catholics in the United States to engage in solidarity with their brothers and sisters overseas. - For more information, personal stories and expert resources on trafficking, visit http://www.crs.org/slavery-human-trafficking/
Body piercing, a form of body modification, is the practice of puncturing or cutting a part of the human body, creating an opening in which jewelery may be worn. The word piercing can refer to the act or practice of body piercing, or to an opening in the body created by this act or practice. Although the history of body piercing is obscured by popular misinformation and by a lack of scholarly reference, ample evidence exists to document that it has been practiced in various forms by both sexes since ancient times throughout the world. Ear piercing and nose piercing have been particularly widespread and are well represented in historical records and among grave goods. The oldest mummified remains ever discovered were sporting earrings, attesting to the existence of the practice more than 5,000 years ago. Nose piercing is documented as far back as 1500 BC. Piercings of these types have been documented globally, while lip and tongue piercings were historically found in African and American tribal cultures. Nipple and genital piercing have also been practiced by various cultures, with nipple piercing dating back at least to Ancient Rome while genital piercing is described in Ancient India c. 320 to 550 CE. The history of navel piercing is less clear. The practice of body piercing has waxed and waned in Western culture, but it has experienced an increase of popularity since World War II, with sites other than the ears gaining subcultural popularity in the 1970s and spreading to mainstream in the 1990s. The reasons for piercing or not piercing are varied. Some people pierce for religious or spiritual reasons, while others pierce for self-expression, for aesthetic value, for sexual pleasure, to conform to their culture or to rebel against it. Some forms of piercing remain controversial, particularly when applied to youth. The display or placement of piercings have been restricted by schools, employers and religious groups. In spite of the controversy, some people have practiced extreme forms of body piercing, with Guinness bestowing World Records on individuals with hundreds and even thousands of permanent and temporary piercings. Contemporary body piercing practices emphasize the use of safe body piercing materials, frequently utilizing specialized tools developed for the purpose. Body piercing is an invasive procedure with some risks, including allergic reaction, infection, excessive scarring and unanticipated physical injuries, but such precautions as sanitary piercing procedures and careful aftercare are emphasized to minimize the likelihood of encountering serious problems. The healing time required for a body piercing may vary widely according to placement, from as little as a month for some genital piercings to as much as two full years for the navel. Body adornment has only recently become a subject of serious scholarly research by archaeologists, who have been hampered in studying body piercing by a sparsity of primary sources. Early records rarely discussed the use of piercings or their meaning, and while jewelery is common among grave goods, the deterioration of the flesh that it once adorned makes it difficult to discern how the jewelery may have been used. Also, the modern record has been vitiated with the 20th-century inventions of piercing enthusiast Doug Malloy. In the 1960s and 1970s, Malloy marketed contemporary body piercing by giving it the patina of history. His pamphlet Body & Genital Piercing in Brief included such commonly reproduced urban legends as the notion that Prince Albert invented the piercing that shares his name in order to diminish the appearance of his large penis in tight trousers, and that Roman centurions attached their capes to nipple piercings. Some of Malloy's myths are reprinted as fact in subsequently published histories of piercing.Read more ... Evidence suggests that body piercing (including ear piercing) has been practiced by peoples all over the world from ancient times. Mummified bodies with piercings have been discovered, including the oldest mummified body discovered to date, that of Otzi the Iceman, which was found in an Austrian glacier. This mummy had an ear piercing 7-11 mm in diameter. Nose piercing and ear piercing are mentioned in the Bible. In Genesis 24:22, Abraham's servant gave a nose ring and bracelets to Rebekah, wife of his son Isaac. In Exodus 32, Aaron makes the golden calf from melted earrings. Deuteronomy 15:12-17 dictates ear piercing as a mark of slavery. Nose piercing was practiced among the nomadic Berber and Beja tribes of Africa, and the Bedouins of the Middle East, the size of the ring denotes the wealth of the family. It is given by the husband to his wife at the marriage, and is her security if she is divorced. Nose piercing has been common in India since the 16th century. Nose piercing was bought to India in the 16th Century from the Middle East by the Moghul emperors. In India a stud (Phul) or a ring (Nath) is usually worn in the left nostril, It is sometimes joined to the ear by a chain, and in some places both nostrils are pierced. The left side is the most common to be pierced in India, because that is the spot associated in Ayuvedra (Indian medicine) with the female reproductive organs, the piercing is supposed to make childbirth easier and lessen period pain. Some women in India pierce their noses to induce a state of submissiveness. They claim this happens by proper placement in a marma or acupuncture point. Tongue piercing was popular in Mesoamerica with the elite of Aztec and Maya civilizations, though it was carried out as part of a blood ritual and such piercings were not intended to be permanent. Ancient Mesoamericans wore jewelry in their ears, noses, and lower lips, and such decorations continue to be popular amongst indigenous peoples in these regions. Tongue piercing was always practiced by the Haida, Kwakiutul, and Tlinglit tribes of the American Northwest. The tongue was pierced to draw blood to propitiate the gods, and to create an altered state of consciousness so that the priest or shaman could communicate with the gods. The Pharahos of Egypt also practiced body piercing. It has been practiced for as long as five thousand years. It has, in the beginning, as it is now, been used as a personal expression, a religious ritual, an official, or royal distinction, or more often recently, a trend in fashion. Approximately 1440 BC. The book of Exodus 21: 5-6 describes how Hebrew servants that pledged allegiance to their master would have their ear held to a door post and pierced with an awl. This would indicate identification with a particular family. The philosophers of Greece and the soldiers of Rome. The Centurions from ancient Rome expressed their strength and virility by displaying pierced - jeweled nipples. All the way up to the middle classes, and the aristocracy of the 18th and 19th century. It was all but forgotten in Europe during the early 1900's, what with two world wars, and the concerns of a growing world, until the 1970's where it found itself being nurtured by London's pioneering fashion gurus and artists in the Underground! In some parts of Australia and New Guinea one tribal custom is a pierced septum, giving the warrior a fierce savage appearance. In Borneo a man could choose to have pierced genitals for courtship and sexual enhancement reasons. Ethiopian men and women have various facial piercings and some are identified by oversized ear discs. Lip plates in the women help to gain social status and command a higher bridal price. Sioux Indians: a young man on his journey to manhood would have his crest pierced with eagle claws and then hang suspended in the air enduring the pain in this rite of passage. By the 1990's, piercing had finally reached the attention of the entire globe closing the link from the ancients, to the modern. In our culture we have brought to the mainstream some of these ancient and tribal practices as well as creating our Neo-Tribal customs. The big difference here is the expression of self choice. In our more permissive modern day society an individual can pierce their body for any number of the reasons listed above, but is not limited or obligated to a specific set of rules or conduct. Another unique principal behind modern day piercing is that unless the piercing has been overstretched, it can be viewed as temporary. The person can take out the jewelry if they desire and re-transform their "look" again and again. Painful as it might feel, the practice of piercing a hole through the skin and inserting a piece of metal, bone, shell, ivory or glass to wear as an ornament has been around for millennia. Body piercing occurs worldwide and is practiced on men, women and children. It's grown in popularity during the past five years, especially among American teenagers, who pierce just about anything that can be pierced: ears, noses, tongues, and navels. The most conventional form of piercing in the United States today is ear piercing. Among young and old, male and female, ear piercing is common practice and has become more mainstream for both sexes than it once was. Ear piercing can range anywhere from a single hole in one or both ears to holes along the entire rim of the ear. Our reasons for piercing our bodies can change over time, and may vary from culture to culture. People living on the island of Cyprus 2200 years ago pierced their ears. But this evidence can also raise questions: Were earrings worn by both men and women then? Why did these ancient people wear gold bulls as adornment? Archaeologists and anthropologists are always seeking answers to questions like these. Our reasons for piercing our bodies can change over time, and may vary from culture to culture. For example, a pair of gold earrings (left) from the Museum's Ancient Greek World gallery can tell us that the people living on the island of Cyprus 2200 years ago pierced their ears. But this evidence can also raise questions: Were earrings worn by both men and women then? Why did these ancient people wear gold bulls as adornment? Archaeologists and anthropologists are always seeking answers to questions like these. Among the Tlingit of southeast Alaska, we know that ear piercing was directly related to an individual's rank in society. Social position was determined by the wealth of the family into which the individual was born. Although a Tlingit could rarely better his own social standing, he could raise the station of his sister's children and his grandchildren by "potlatching" (hosting a community feast). At a potlatch the host paid a member of his moiety (group) to pierce the rims of the children's ears. At additional potlatches, other holes were added. A great amount of wealth was required to host the feast and pay the person to pierce the children's ears. Consequently, the resulting series of holes marked an individual as a member of the nobility. Read more ... Grab your wholesale piercing jewelry and more Dermal Anchors at Piercebody.com. Ear piercing has existed continuously since ancient times, including throughout the 20th century in the Western world. However, in many cultures within the United States, it became a relative rarity from the 1920s until the 1960s. At that time, it regained popularity among American women, and was eventually adopted by men in the hippie and gay communities, and later the punk subculture. Ear piercing, of either or both ears, has always been practiced by men in many non-Western cultures. By the 1980s, male ear piercing had become somewhat common in the United States, although men usually only pierced one of their ears. Today, single and multiple piercing of either or both ears is extremely common among Western women, and fairly common among men. Less conventional forms of body piercing have also existed continuously for as long as ear piercing, but generally not in Western cultures. For example, women in India routinely practice nostril piercing, and have done so for centuries. In the 1970s, body piercing gained popularity in the gay BDSM subculture. In 1975, Jim Ward opened The Gauntlet, America's first storefront body piercing operation, in Los Angeles. Body piercing is returning to the mainstream of modern Western cultures as attitudes and values change. Piercings that don't conform to cultural norms, for example, facial piercings or ear piercings for men -- can still be considered inappropriate. Attitudes towards piercing vary. Some regard the practice of piercing or of being pierced as spiritual, sometimes embracing the term "modern primitive", while others deride this view as insulting, as cultural appropriation, or as trendy. Some see the practice as a form of artistic or self-expression. Others choose to be pierced as a form of sexual expression, or to increase sexual sensitivity. For some people, piercing is part of an S-M lifestyle or relationship, or is incorporated into S-M play. Some people choose to be pierced for symbolic reasons. For example, some survivors of sexual abuse have said that they experience piercing as allowing them to retake control over their own bodies. Some people choose to be pierced to symbolize certain relationships. For gay men, piercing has historically been viewed as a form of public self-identification or "coming out". However, the current popularity of piercing among many different groups has diluted much of its specific cultural identification and symbolism. While some people consider body modification to be a sign of non-conformity, others deride body piercing as trendy. This can at times lead to prejudice or cognitive bias against those with piercings or visible signs of past piercings. ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS INDEX SOCIAL SCIENCES INDEX PHYSICAL SCIENCES INDEX CRYSTALINKS HOME PAGE PSYCHIC READING WITH ELLIE 2012 THE ALCHEMY OF TIME
Hubbard, especially in his earlier writings, wrote extensively about such topics as abortion and other sexual matters. Some examples of Hubbard's preoccupation with such subjects are set out in Chapter 6. Though he makes some attempt at denouncing such behaviour, he treats abortion in such a way as to present it as a common and almost usual event with any woman, and he engenders in the minds of his adherents, for whom his books are recommended and almost essential reading, such an attitude towards and familiarity with abortion and similar topics that they lose any quality of moral wrongdoing. The subject of abortions seemed to be almost a regular coffee break topic at the HASI, and the evidence shows that a number of female members of the HASI staff, married and unmarried, have had abortions. Furthermore, scientology processing involves the removal of all normal checks and restraints and readily conditions a person to regard as of little consequence departures from normal moral standards. One can well understand, then, how scientology-indoctrinated women, married and unmarried, set as their goals in auditing sessions the goal to have a miscarriage- which, with a little bit of outside assistance, they then claim scientology processing achieved for them. Scientology theories are in part at least responsible for the distorted attitude of scientologists towards sexual matters, for it is argued amongst some scientologists that to seduce a girl of, say, fifteen years of age would be of no moment, for the thetan has had many sexual experiences and really such a girl would be 76 trillion and 15 years old. And it is said amongst scientologists that if a girl of 15 years were to be upset when introduced to sexual relations at that age it would be because she had some enormous overt on sex in a past life. On this basis, a particular scientologist may well have considered it of little account that he was living as man and wife with a young girl of 15 or 16 years, who later at the age of l7 years was a staff auditor at the HASI. And yet it is into an atmosphere such as this that Mrs. Williams said she would recommend mothers to send their daughters to start upon the career of a scientology auditor. In auditing sessions, where the preclear is not allowed to have inhibitions or to show reticence or reluctance to revealing and discussing the most intimate things, sexual matters are frequently discussed at length and in startling detail and sexual feelings are aroused and dwelt upon. It frequently happens that the auditor is a male and the preclear is a female, or vice versa - both participants often being in their early twenties and sometimes younger This unrestrained dwelling upon sexual topics is sought to be justified by scientologists on the basis that such discussions are "in session", as though that circumstance regularized the debased and erotic prying which psychiatric evidence described as harmful and as bordering on voyeurism in the auditor. In the evidence given by witnesses before the Board and in the files examined were many examples of quite shocking mental depravity. It is both unnecessary and undesirable to give full details of all these cases; a few typical examples will suffice to indicate the general nature of this particular form of perversion. Thus, in cases where the auditor was a young female and the preclear a male, such comments as the following appear in the files: "sexy as hell"; "pc gets often the urge to move down to his sex organs. If he does that he gets restimulated"; "pc has a bug about sending sexual beam at auditor"; "pc disturbed because he came to have auditing and now wants sexual intercourse." One female preclear, a widow, is recorded in four successive sessions as wanting to have sexual relations with her male auditor. In another case a female preclear, audited by a male, was run for 13 to 14 hours mainly on "sex withholds", the auditing command being, for part of the time, "What have you done that your mother would be ashamed to find out?" This preclear's file records that she "went into grief over being father's lover" in 1919, which, incidentally, was before the preclear was born. It was quite common for preclears in auditing to tell in great detail about their sexual experiences in past lives. These hallucinations often related to the preclear's infidelity in an earlier existence, in which, not infrequently, the preclear was of the opposite sex to his or her sex in this lifetime. Acts of perversion by the preclear, both real and imagined, were readily discussed. One young man, oppressed by the thought of youthful acts of masturbation long since abandoned, was regularly processed at about six-monthly intervals on such earlier behaviour. One woman preclear recalled living on the island of Lesbos, and considered that she was the original Lesbian. She also believed she was Karl Marx in a previous life time; and another preclear, a male being audited at the same time, considered that he was her wife when she was Karl Marx. There was also the case of one scientologist who was worried because his wife was now living with another man who had been her husband in a previous life time. One male witness, whose processing file contained a large number of references to disgusting sexual matters, when asked, "Did the sex of the auditor affect you in that regard?" answered with unexpected candour, "What do you think ? A luscious doll sitting in front of you and you have to cough up these horrible sex withholds. Of course it did." The following cases give some detail of the predominance of sexual matters in the course of a preclear's prolonged association with the HASI. In the case of one young woman, an earlier goal "to be a martyr" having been cleared up, it was considered by the HASI that another goal, "To create a beautiful universe", which was showing up, might be her basic goal. Early in January, 1963, she was accordingly run on process "R2-12 Listing" (see Chapter 13) for several sessions with the purpose of bringing up such a goal or until it died out or until an R.R.ing (rocket reading) item was found. On at least eight different days, sessions of several hours were held during which the preclear was asked repeatedly the question, "Who or what would oppose scientology?" During the course of these sessions, the preclear gave a total of over 1,200 answers which ranged from the most absurd to the most disgusting of topics. The preclear frequently repeated a particular item, sometimes emphasizing it by adding a vulgar adjective or adjectives. Amongst the answers given, and sometimes repeated, were, "fairies", "wizard", "witch", "witch doctors", "bodies", "bad sex", "dirty sex", "sexual pleasure", "sex organs", "maggots", "Ron Hubbard", and details of various sexual intimacies between her husband and herself. Thereafter, on a number of days, the preclear was run for several hours each day on the same process, the questions put to her being, "Who or what would oppose a fairy?", "Who or what would a fairy oppose?", "Who or what is connected with scientology?", " Who or what would oppose witches?" The answers, running into several hundreds, were of a kind and degree similar to those given in the previously described sessions. As a climax to this series of sessions, the preclear in the course of a 2 hour 35 minute session gave over 300 answers to the question, "Who or what would oppose fairies?", the answers being of a kind and degree comparable with those earlier mentioned, with, however, great emphasis on things that were "ugly", and including, incidentally, "an elephant who was not like an elephant should be" and "a triangle that did not meet at one of its corners." From these sessions, and by the use of the E-meter on the preclear, it was decided that the "reliable item" was "ugliness " and " ugly things". After further processing, during which the preclear's goal was determined as being "to create a beautiful universe", there followed more "Who or what" processing, including at least two sessions in which the question was, "Who or what would the goal to create a beautiful universe oppose?" The answers given by the preclear totalled about 150, several of them being as disgusting as answers given in earlier sessions. In this session and in some of the earlier sessions, the auditor was a male. Before she was married, this preclear in correspondence with Hubbard made confessions of her overts and withholds, including confessions of her misconduct with another member of the HASI staff, and other quite weird and sometimes disgusting matters, some of which were the sheerest fantasy about her thetan's existence in a "police" state millions of years ago when she was a member of a force of invaders who "used to swoop down on bodies, in and out in and out," giving the thetans of those bodies terrible frights and causing them to exteriorize. This woman was formerly a school teacher who had qualified as HPA and for a time was employed as an auditor at the HASI. One young male preclear who, to the knowledge of the HASI, had shortly before received psychiatric treatment and had revealed to the HASI his "compulsions" as "fears on girls", "feels he must keep away from small girls", was accepted by the HASI for auditing and was processed intermittently over about four years. During one course, when his auditor was a young woman, one of his goals was to "work towards not masturbating any more." The following year his goal was still, "to stop masturbating." At one time he was required to write down his "goals". He compiled a list of over 600 goals, several of which were of a most depraved nature. For a period, he was subjected to the "R2-12, Listing', process and, to the repeated question, "Who or what would oppose psychiatry ?" he gave over 1,400 answers, many of them disgusting and containing obscene emphasis. Then he provided 750 answers to "Who or what would oppose social disease ?" and 350 answers to "Who or what would social disease oppose ? " From these answers a " reliable item " was found to be " a good smell accordingly, he was repeatedly asked in processing, "Who or what would a good smell oppose?" to which he gave over 500 answers. The nature of his answers to this series of questions was almost unbelievably filthy. This unfortunate individual, mentally ill and with sexual problems, distressed because of an association with a young woman, and disappointed that auditing did not cure a skin irritation which he had, was required for years to wallow in the mire of his disturbed mind, shackled to scientology and goaded by its beastly methods. One female preclear first became interested in scientology in 1954, when a psychologist who practised scientology audited her for about 300 hours for fees amounting to something over £200. The preclear considered that this auditing had done her harm. Thereafter she became acquainted with the HASI and between 1958 and 1964 she spent thousands of pounds on scientology. Though there was no economic necessity for her to take employment, she periodically did so to earn money to pay for her auditing. By February, 1958, she had had 27½ hours auditing at the HASI and thereafter she embarked on a series of intensive auditing sessions. By October, 1958, when she had had over 122 hours auditing on the goal "to be clear", with a balance of about 150 hours to go, her auditor reported, "pc determined to be clear next Wed." In October, 1964, when she gave evidence before the Board, she was then currently undergoing a course of auditing, of which she had had over 100 hours, and she was being audited 3 half days a week; she was still not clear. At some time subsequent to 1958, this preclear had Mrs. Williams as her auditor. After 44 hours of auditing in an intensive of 50 hours, the auditor's report read, "Pc had somatics in stomach, shoulder and head . . . . got very itchy and fidgetty . . . . solid silver ball was very real to begin with, ' the realest thing so far, very solid.' During process Pc had unreality, turn off and on. Brought ball out of head and put it back again." After the next session the auditor reported, "I found I had not got the basic rock, so scouted and found solid silver sphere that Pc had been hiding in her head. Ran resp [responsibility) on it for last part of session. pc tried to hide it again but caught her in time." About the end of 1960 this preclear was required to answer a questionnaire ; some of the questions and her answers to them were: Question: "What was your original goal when you first became interested in Dianetics and Scientology?"In 1961 when asked what goals she had for "this country" she named as her goals, "judges to be scientologists, also M.P.'s, in fact, anyone in prominent positions". By the time she gave evidence before the Board she said she no longer had such goals. Answer: "To get out of the doldrums and near psychosis I was in." (This preclear had had psycho-analysis and therapy in 1952, 1953 and 1954, a circumstance known to the HASI). Question: "Have you had any failure in being helped by Dianetics and Scientology ?" Answer: "Yes - 6 years ago I was processed by a scientologist and was worse at the end of it. Also I had processing with the goal to be clear and was disappointed that I didn't reach it (2 years ago)." Question: "What are your future processing plans ?" Answer: "The processing I receive during training (HPA) then later when I can afford it I'll have what I can afford. I want to reach OT some day." On the 6th February, 1961, Mrs. Gogerly, as director of processing, considered that she should have a further 100 hours processing for a start and would require 250 to 275 hours auditing to clear, though it might be less. Two days later, the preclear signed for 50 hours, to be taken about June, and felt at that stage she could not afford to sign for 100 hours, but said she would do so if she could. On the 10th March, 1961, one of the staff auditors wrote to her the almost standard letter, part of which read, "Ron wants you to come in and get auditing immediately. He wants a clear in your area." Included in the course of auditing she had thereafter were a number of occasions when she was run on the "R2-12, Listing" process. To the question, "Who or what would oppose the organization?" she gave over 500 answers. To the question, "Who or what would you not communicate with?" she gave 750 answers, some of which were utterly revolting, disgusting and sexually perverted. To the question, "Who or what would oppose people who made you confess?" she gave 170 answers, and two days later, to the question, "Who or what would oppose the getting in first with your confession?" she gave 450 answers. In some sessions highly personal and sexual matters were discussed with her various auditors, sometimes with a male auditor. Intimate secrets were extracted from her by such questions as, "What would you not be willing to tell an auditor?" This preclear was an anxious type of person not quite sure what she was seeking; that she was on occasions mentally disturbed was evident. It was clear that she was in need of psychiatric assistance; she had not sought it in recent years. She found escape from reality in scientology, and considered that going into the HASI was like walking into sanity. It should not be thought that the foregoing examples exhaust the cases in which matters of sex and perversion were dealt with in an obscene and uninhibited way. Nor should it be thought that they mark the limits of mental depravity reached. By way of further illustration, the transcript of part of the evidence of Mrs. Williams, given before the Board on the 18th September, 1964, is set out in Appendix 19. At that time she was HCO Secretary, and had recently returned to Melbourne after attending a special briefing course at Saint Hill, under the guidance of Hubbard. She was one of the highest ranking scientologists who gave evidence before the Board; as HCO Secretary, she was directly responsible to Hubbard. Also included in Appendix 19 are details of some preclears' cases which further illustrate the degree of mental depravity reached in some scientology processes. Last updated 21 February 1997 This is a mirror of the HTML maintained by Martin Poulter (email@example.com)
EIA analysis of expansion of a sponge iron cum thermal power plant An expansion of existing plant to produce 97,000 TPA of MS Billets and 65 MW of Power Generation is being proposed by M/s Salasar Steel and Power Limited. A representative from Ekta Parishad, a local NGO, on behalf of the local communities of Raigarh district of Chattisgarh requested Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) to technically evaluate the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) document of: Expansion to produce 97,000 TPA of MS Billets and 65 MW of Power Generation through CFBC at Gerwani Village, Ambikapur Road, Raigarh, Chattisgarh. M/s Salasar Steel & Power Limited is an existing plant operating 60,000 TPA Sponge Iron Plant, 3,90,000 TPA of Washed Coal through Coal Beneficiation and Power Generation of 4.5 MW through WHRB & 10.5 MW through CFBC. The proposed expansion project involves establishing of 3 x 10 MT Induction Furnaces to produce 97,000 TPA of M.S. Billets and 65 MW power plant (through CFBC boiler). The table shows the details of expansion. Product / Unit Sponge Iron ( 2 x 100 TPD) Coal Beneficiation (54 TPH of Washed Coal) M.S. Billets(Induction Furnaces 3 x 10 MT) M/s Salasar Steel & Power Limited is an existing plant operating 60,000 TPA Sponge Iron Plant, 3,90,000 TPA of Washed Coal through Coal Beneficiation and Power Generation of 4.5 MW through WHRB & 10.5 MW through CFBC in Gerwani Village, Ambikapur Road, Raigarh, Chattisgarh. Now as a part of proposed expansion it has been proposed to produce 97,000 TPA of MS Billets and 65 MW of Power Generation through CFBC under the proposed expansion. The proposed expansion project involves establishing of 3 x 10 MT Induction Furnaces to produce 97,000 TPA of M.S. Billets and 65 MW power plant (through CFBC boiler) in addition to the already existing 60,000 TPA Sponge Iron plant, 4,80,000 TPA of Coal Beneficiation plant and Power Generation of 15 MW out of which 4.5 MW is through WHRB & 10.5 MW through CFBC. The proposed expansion will be taken up in the existing plant premises only i.e., at in Gerwani Village, Ambikapur Road, Raigarh, Chattisgarh. The basic objective of the project is to: To suffice the growing need of steel in India And to improve the power scenario in Chattisgarh in accordance to the Energy policy of the state. There are several drawbacks in the quality of the EIA report. The report is poor in terms of assessing the impacts of the project on the environment. Some of these drawbacks/lapses are presented below: The industry is located amidst many other industries chiefly comprising of Sponge iron industries. Majority of these industries belong to sponge iron and steel industries which are highly polluting industries (belong to red category). The report fails to give the current depiction of pollution in the area, over all impact of these industries on the environment is completely missing. The project would only add to the worsening of condition. How much ever conservation methods are practices, environment would be damaged due to presence of large number of polluting units in the area which the EIA fails to notice and give preventive measure. The EIA speaks as an individual project basis which would not suffice to predict or mitigate the impact on the environment which is already deteriorated. Such an important environmental concern cannot be neglected for an industry to starts it expansion project which would only add on to the existing pollution. The report also fails to specify location of other industries in the nearby areas and cumulative impact of these industries. 2.Impact on Kelo River : The water source for the proposed expansion project is Kelo River . The amount of water required for the expansion would be 6200 cum/day and total water consumption including the existing industry would be 7843 cum/day. Extraction of such huge amount of water from the river on daily basis would definitely result into a sever impact on the water body. Kelo River is already being over exploited. Already exiting industries are drawing water from this river. This expansion would only add to the resource consumption and in turn exploit the river. The details regarding the flow of water in the river, number of other industries which draw water had to be addressed in the report which is absent. The river flow data, particularly the lean period flow (i.e. in summer) is cricial because River Kelo is being heavy exploited by the industries in the Chattisgarh. Every industries in Chattisgarh claimed that they would draw water from Kelo but failed to provide whether river has suffiecient water to hold industries or not.Report claims that there would be no adverse impact on the water environment due to the expansion (Pg 4 – 8), however this statement is not justified as such huge amount of water drawn would have significant impact hence it is subjective in nature. Kelo River is also used for domestic purpose by many people in the surrounding areas hence the impact on the river cannot be neglected and proper mitigation plan has to be given in order to protect the pristine water bodies of the area. The surrounding area up to a 10 KM radius around the plant consists of 32.2% of forest area (page 3 – 25). The report also claims that the there are four reserved forest and seven protected forest in the study area (pg 2 – 3). However the report remains silent on the impact of this upcoming project on this forest land and forest area. The project would have a significant impact on the forest land and the flora and fauna of the forest. Claiming that the impact is negligible or no impact is anticipated is quite absurd. The deterioration in the air quality due to the upcoming project and the existing industries would defiantely destroy the forest land. This impact has been neglected and biodiversity of the area being sensitive cannot be neglected. Proper conservation plan for the forest area has to be worked out for the nearby forest areas which will be affected 4. Impact on flora and fauna: A list of flora and fauna in the study area is given in the report (Pg 3 – 30 to 3 – 32).However the report fails to assess the impact of the upcoming project on the flora and fauna of the area. The surrounding area consists of some of the schedule I animals. But mere mention of these animals in the area does not suffice. Proper mitigation plan to protect these animals is necessary. Also whether the data taken into account is based on primary survey or not is not clear in the report. Such huge development of a steel plant and power plant would definitely impart ecological harm to these forests but the EIA fails to capture such an important issue pertaining to the project. 5.EIA states that Electro Static Precipitator (ESP) will be installed with the stack as pollution control equipment (page 4 – 12) and claimed that the emissions from stack will be less than 50 mg/Nm3. However EIA report failed to provide the techanical specifiaction of ESP such as number of field and area of collecting electrode etc. Due to lack of techanical specification on ESP, it is doubtful that ESP will achieve the standard of less than 50 mg/Nm3 6.The loading and unloading areas for the raw material are not clearly mentioned whether open or closed. This would give rise to dust and air pollution. This has to be closed in order to decrease the air pollution in the nearby areas and hazards that it might cause due to the dust. Maximum amount of air pollution is generated in handling of coal. This would create a nuisance for the nearby local people. This impact has to be mitigated using proper measure like covering the area. Loading and unloading mechanism has to be automated to the extent possible. 7. During construction phase, huge amount of dust will be generated. This would have severe impact on the close by bio diversity, forest areas as well as people residing in the nearby villages. Sprinkling of water is inadequate in terms of mitigation measure that is being proposed by the project proponent. Proper care with respect to air pollution during the construction phase has to be taken which the report fails to address. The report also fails to give information regarding the extent of construction phase which is significant for impact prediction during construction phase. Source and quantity of water required during the construction phase has been neglected by the report. The report claims that after construction is over, the loose soil will be used to backfill the low lying area, however this is quite subjective in nature as quantity of soil excavated and land area that would be backfilled is not given. Hence impact prediction on land and soil is not justified. 8. Chattisgarh is already a smoke laden state with high air pollution. This is the result of high industrialization in the area and obviously Raigarh, district of Chattisgarh is also not spared from this impact. . Ambient air quality data from the State pollution control board or other secondary source has not been quoted in the report. This makes the air quality impact prediction liable to improper prediction. Use of secondary data along with the primary observation would have made the ambient air quality impact prediction more reliable and justifiable. 9. The report does not talk about the migration that would occur during the construction or operation phase. Migration is an important phenomenon which exhibits a huge social impact on the people residing in the nearby areas. The report does not state the significant change in demographic profile that the area would undergo. However the EIA fails to predict the impact of this migration on the local community which is an important impact. The local resources would be affected. This impact cannot be neglected when s big project is being setup in a rural area. 10.Rainwater harvesting: For rain water harvesting, EIA has provided a very superfical information, EIA claimed that rainwater harvesting measure should be undertaken. However, EIA failed to provide techanical details on rainwater harvesting structure, budget allocated, time schedule in the environmenat management plan.
Not until I moved here did I truly understand the meaning of diversification as it pertains to individual effort, let alone the need for it - the indispensability of it in certain environments. This is a district of generalists, a place where a man may have as many as five sometimes overlapping jobs in the space of a year. This is because generations here have known at best a stumbling economy, stumbling backward as often as forward; so people pick up their skills wherever they can, any way they can; they have to be versatile and adaptable to survive. Ross, for instance, is a lean, fair-haired young man, slow talking, with mildly vague blue eyes. He was born to this silent rurality. He and his wife run a small farm in the trees, set back from an unpaved, clay road. They have goats, pigs, rabbits, and a few cows. Ross works on the lobster boats when the season opens; when the season closes he free-lances around the locality as a plumber; at other times he will hire on for carpentry and light construction work. His wife works in an office from time to time,and she is learning handcrafts - eventually, she trusts, for profit. I would be surprised if their endeavors, combined, realize for them more than $12,000 a year - that for a family of three , since they also have an infant son. Ross has worked less and earned relatively more in cities elsewhere in the country. Why, then, one wonders, would he choose to return? This is his home, obviously; but while I have never asked him outright, it is easy to sense there is something more to it than that: In clear and direct ways he is made to feel useful and helpful by this environment and by the lives of the people he is in constant contact with. There is a strong element of this with Davey, as well, although he has never lived anywhere else but here. Davey is a wiry little fellow in his early 50s who runs his own blueberry operation; recently he launched out, in a small way, to pulp and sand. He drives a school bus, works for a hardware store installing furnaces, does light construction work and crafts, makes wooden items for the tourist trade. His wife, Connie, baby-sits for enjoyment and profit. Their sons and daughters, those still at home, assist in most of the same enterprises, as they have from straw-raw infancy, in the sun-brushed green and gold of high summer, as in the whipped white and billowing gray of winter, on mornings before school, in evenings after school, and during the holidays. They get by. The family income, in a good year, may reach $20,000. Given the opportunity, would Davey and Connie have moved away to an easier life years ago? I very much doubt it; for although they may have thought about it when times were particularly tough on them, they were ''built in'' to this community, charged, in a way, with building up from it, contributing kindnesses, meshing their individual attributes with those of the people around them. And John is back after traveling halfway around the world. A black-bearded, chunky individual, with a droll sense of humor, John runs a small commercial sign-painting business, chases about on photo-taking assignments for one newspaper, and writes a column for another, teaches printmaking at the community college in town one or two evenings a week, and takes on odd jobs of any description whenever he can. In between times he is an exhibiting artist. He is married, now, with a four-year-old son. He will be lucky, in his own estimation, to earn $10,000 this year. John doesn't know why he's back, or so he says. I believe him, because he always comes across as being a bit disorganized - and he'd chuckle at my saying so. Most definitely, from an art standpoint, he would be better off practically anywhere else (art here is very much of the pretty picture variety, otherwise unacceptable). Possibly his art teaching gives him a sense of mission, part of feeling useful, versatile, and challenged. Ivan, Lorin, Billy, Jim-Angus - a host of my neighbors similarly are generalists. The right to strike is wholly outside of their experience, as inapplicable to their lives as Paris fashions and Mediterranean cruises. In strictly personal, unostentatious ways, many of them are profoundly religious, but one would not know that without spending time with them and understanding the nuances of their expressions and dispositions. Most of them say little but think deeply - wordless Tolstoys. For all that I have said, life here is not mired in cheerless austerity. There is theater reflective of these people and their lives, and music to lighten hearts and kindle pride in heritage. And there is sport; plowing matches , log-splitting contests, oyster-shucking and fish-filleting competitions - games that raise standards of competence in practical, everyday endeavor. We're not so cut off from the rest of North American society that we do not hear of young men in their late teens and early 20s signed to multimillion-dollar contracts in football, baseball, basketball, and hockey, made possible by a public craving for leisure and entertainment. With between five and 10 years in the game, a wise financial adviser and expert legal counsel , a top-flight professional in such sports can earn more money than small but entire communities in so-called underdeveloped regions and countries throughout the world will ever see in a lifetime. I try to see the sense of this but can't. There was a time when I didn't think about it at all.
ONE of the most difficult - but also one of the most important - things an artist must learn is when to leave well enough alone. The temptation is to push a picture or a piece of sculpture just a bit further, in effect adding unnecessary details, colors, or textures, or overloading the original form or idea with too much evidence of technical skill. The danger at such times is to forget that art's primary function is to communicate an intuition, emotion, or idea, not to celebrate an artist's performance. True talent knows when to stop, when to stand back and permit the viewer to complete the creative act within the context of his or her own sensibilities and experience. Art, after all, is a dialogue, not a lecture. The greater the art, in fact, the more confrontational and open-ended that dialogue will be - and the more the viewer will be required to participate in it. Thus, a late Rembrandt self-portrait is never ``finished,'' never final, but keeps right on challenging us to probe deeper and more thoughtfully into our inner resources in order to grasp its meaning. The same holds true of the works of Michelangelo, Giotto, Leonardo, and all the other greats of art history. Understatement and suggestiveness are of particular importance in art that is romantic or mystical, or that hints at realities not discernible to the naked eye. The watercolors of Joseph Turner, the oils of Caspar David Friedrich, and the pastels of Odilon Redon, for instance, would lose much of their effectiveness, and almost all of their significance, were we to sense that they are only about sunsets, mountain vistas, and floral bouquets. The fact that they have deeper meanings, that they are also about ineffable and fugitive feelings and intimations, that they even raise subtle questions about the quality and worth of human existence, is communicated to us almost exclusively by the manner in which each of these artists strikes a highly personal and provocative balance between what he actually shows us and what he implies. It is crucial, of course, that the viewer be alert to these hidden dimensions, or he or she might miss the artist's point entirely - a situation that occurs all too often with work that is either startlingly ``new,'' or that speaks gently and quietly from within a modest format. The work of Morris Graves, for instance, is still occasionally misinterpreted by today's younger critics and curators, who confuse his formal and thematic modesty with lack of power and significance. That was not the case during the early 1940s, when his small, emotionally charged images of birds, small animals, trees, and other growing things took the American art world by storm. At that time, and for a number of years afterward, such works as ``Bird Singing in the Moonlight,'' ``Little Known Bird of the Inner Eye,'' and ``Joyous Young Pine'' were recognized by everyone from Jackson Pollock to Clement Greenberg for what they were: profoundly original symbolic embodiments of mystical states and intuitions. For almost two decades, Graves was one of America's most famous and best-loved painters, someone everyone agreed would end up in the art history books. But then, times and fashions changed, and his modest, quietly introspective kind of art was replaced - at least in the eyes of the critics - by work that was huge and aggressive, or that tended to glorify pop culture. Throughout that period, however, he retained the respect of serious art lovers and art professionals, who saw to it that his work found its way into major museum collections, and that his contributions to mid-20th-century American art were not forgotten. Their efforts were rewarded in 1983 by the art world's favorable reaction to Graves' 50-year retrospective, which opened at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and then traveled to five other museums throughout the United States. Not only was the exhibition well received by most art professionals, but also it introduced Graves's art and vision to a brand new generation of art lovers. Interestingly enough, while the majority of his more recent admirers responded most favorably to the stark, searing, penetrating pictures of the late 1930s and '40s, they also took particular delight in a series of less dramatic and more charmingly informal studies of small shore birds he produced during that period. These perky little creatures scurry about at the edge of the ocean, brace themselves against the incoming tide, or stare out to sea in a manner that is altogether engaging but totally devoid of coyness or sentimentality. In ``Sanderling'' we see one of them standing all by itself and looking somewhat bewildered next to the shoreline, which is represented by a few casually applied strokes of paint. Everything in this picture, in fact, is freely and suggestively rendered. Nothing has been carried beyond the dimension of a sketch. And yet, because Graves knew his subject well and knew exactly how he wanted to present it - but mostly because he knew when to leave well enough alone - he has given us a moving glimpse into what it's like to be very small, alone, and confronted by something huge and mysterious.
Targets of frustration in Kashmir Locals say Indian security forces are killing civilian men in their attempt to put down the insurgency. SRINAGAR, INDIA — For more than a year, since a 10-week, Pakistani-backed fight in the Himalayas, Indian security forces have been engaged in a quiet but all-out effort to crush the decade-long militancy in the troubled Kashmir valley - which last week witnessed a massacre of 103 people in a single day. Hopes for peace in Kashmir rose then fell when on Aug. 8 a fragile cease-fire and talks between the largest Kashmir militant group and the government of India were called off. Hizbul Mujahideen leaders demanded Pakistan be part of talks - something New Delhi refused. Yet in this 98-percent Muslim valley, which represents the main source of contention between nuclear India and nuclear Pakistan, people have little faith in any quick fix. The chief grievance on the streets of war-weary Srinagar is the almost daily occurrence of "custodial killings" - the practice of picking up men who then "disappear" or are killed, with no responsibility taken by the accused security forces. Some 3,000 such cases have been recorded since 1996 in the valley, according to lawyer Pervez Imroz, who organized in June the first human rights conference in Kashmir in a decade. The killings have begun to galvanize local opinion against the central government in New Delhi. Dozens of Kashmiri groups with names like "Parents of Disappeared Persons" have sprung up. Farmers, students, civil servants, and housewives can recite chapter and verse of the latest case. "Killed in the crossfire," or "killed trying to escape" - often the official explanation for deaths - have become ironic code phrases among locals. Young male targets At 12:30 a.m. on a June night, for example, four white jeeps arrived at a home in a suburb of Srinagar, the capital. A dozen men wearing hooded masks ordered the family out of the house and asked for identification. When Mushtaq Ehmed Bhat gave his name, he was taken away, according to witnesses. Mr. Bhat, like many young men in Kashmir, was a militant in the early 1990s. But he had renounced his militant past and was married with two children, living in Calcutta, visiting his family in Kashmir only in the summer. Bhat's relatives filed a report the next morning, but police denied any knowledge of the detention. Bhat's brother-in- law, Riaz, a policeman himself, hired a local official to intercede with a bribe. But for three days no word came. On the morning of the fourth day, Bhat was found tortured, with four bullets in his back, lying face down on a street outside Srinagar. In the family's packed living room two days later, Riaz offers an unusual angle on a typical sentiment here: "I am a soldier, a law-and-order man, but now I am depressed about what is happening." Like everything in the Kashmir dispute, the killings are part of a complex and murky struggle for authority. They take place in a near-war situation - one in which militants from both Pakistan and Kashmir target Indian forces. Some cases are due to sheer frustration on the part of Indian soldiers who face a bewildering spectrum of suspected militants and sympathizers. Yet especially in rural areas, many killings are considered part of the overall year-long crackdown after the intense mountain-peak conflict called the "Kargil war" of last spring and summer. What greatly angers local Kashmiris is that victims increasingly include the innocent. After more than a decade of struggle, Kashmiris tend to know who is an active militant and who is not, says Madhu Kishwar, a New Delhi-based researcher. In three recent fact-finding trips to Kashmir, "people expressed anger and outrage [over custodial deaths] only when the person targeted was actually an innocent or had really given up terrorism and was trying to rebuild a broken life," she notes. At the same time, basic conditions in Kashmir have improved: Indian Border Security Forces and Special Operations Groups no longer openly shoot Kashmiris on the street as they did some years back. Nor are the much-hated counterinsurgency forces - former militants now working with India - continuing to kill and rampage in the countryside as they did a few years ago. (One reason - a new set of underground militants is targeting them.) Local Indian official agrees Yet so quickly have cases of custodial deaths piled up, and so angry is the population, that Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, considered here to be a partner of New Delhi, is for the first time complaining about excessive force. Mr. Abdullah's statement followed the killing in June of a shopkeeper who was pulled out of his car at a checkpoint while coming home from a party with five others - and shot dead by Border Security Forces minutes later. Riots and a strike took place in Srinagar for two days. "What we are seeing in Kashmir looks like a 'Khalistani policy' of total crackdown," says a senior Western diplomat familiar with the region, referring to the massive operations conducted by the Indian Army in the late 1980s against a militant Sikh Khalistani uprising. "But unlike the Khalistani case, which had some local support, the Indian Army has no support among the Kashmiris." The issue has galvanized an emerging set of populists here who meet under the title of All-Parties Hurriyat Conference - and who have more local respect than Chief Minister Abdullah. Even Hurriyat leaders such as Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, known for his moderate positions, speak with zeal against custodial killings: "There is a systematic genocide of the younger generation of men," said Mr. Farooq in an interview after six young men in the Sopore region were killed in May. "This is not a coincidence.... It is a well-thought-out approach.... These things are happening. I'm not exaggerating." Official probes are often announced when, for example, "unidentified gunmen" shoot civilians. But they are rarely if ever made public, and almost always are completed years after an incident. Groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are not allowed to keep offices in the valley - though local Kashmiris say they would welcome their presence. Experts say the custodial deaths seem measured so as to keep fear and psychological pressure high in the valley - but not so high that it becomes a cause clbre outside the valley. Many incidents occur in villages, well out of sight of the press or credible sources. By the time word spreads, the stories are often exaggerated or distorted. Many times, the victims are not entirely "innocent" - they may have ties to the insurgency, as many people here do, though in varying degrees. (For example, some of the six killed in Sopore, who were identified as Tabliques - an Islamic sect that is strictly non-political - turned out to have militant ties.) By the same token, some of the worst cases of abuse against innocents have not been told. Human rights office overwhelmed Two years ago, in what was seen as an attempt to defuse local anger over excessive force, the state formed a Jammu and Kashmir Human Rights Commission. Chaired by a cheerful former Supreme Court justice, A. G. Kucchai, who sits in an office with two bodyguards, the commission is seen by those Kashmiris who know of its existence as ineffectual and lacking real teeth. Since 1998, the commission has accepted some 700 cases, and sent more than 250 to the high court in Delhi as clear cases of abuse: killings, rape, torture, property damage. None are brought to trial due to laws governing "disturbed areas" in India. But Mr. Kucchai is allowed to recommend compensation for victims. So far, none of the cases have been compensated, Kucchai says, adding that he would "welcome an office of Amnesty International here, but it would not be acceptable to the [central government]." Kucchai's small staff can't adequately investigate the small flood of petitions brought by the line of people outside his office. But last year he chose a case to symbolize the bulk of his work. He shows 10 stuffed folders and a 120-page report on the alleged custodial killing of Fayaz Ahmad Beigh, a photographer. In 1998, Mr. Beigh was picked up by a special task force after a wedding party. Police officials acknowledged the detention. But when he was not released, his father made inquiries. The police at first said he had escaped. Then the story changed. The police said Beigh was killed in the crossfire in an encounter after he led police to an arms cache. "What we say is that the police, by foul means, made him to disappear," says Kucchai. "We did not accept the police version. "In their story, 30 people, soldiers, were part of the so-called encounter. Yet no soldier was killed, no bullet holes found anywhere, in any of the vehicles surrounding the encounter. After a lot of investigation, we said they made up the story to ward off trouble." (c) Copyright 2000. The Christian Science Publishing Society
Afghanistan's lessons for Iraq Experts draw parallels between Iraq's occupation and the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. MOSCOW — The young Soviet soldier was bewildered, and in the hands of Afghan guerrillas, when he spoke a few years after Moscow's Christmas Day 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. "Everybody [in Afghanistan] used to say to me, 'Friend, friend,' " the POW told Anthony Davis, a military analyst with Jane's Intelligence Review. "Then they turned around and stabbed us in the back." As America's ambitious nation- building campaign in Iraq comes under more frequent attack from increasingly sophisticated forces, analysts are drawing some lessons from another conflict: the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and its defeat at the hands of the US-backed mujahideen. The analogy is not perfect: Soviet forces invaded to prop up a cold war client regime, and destroyed entire villages to get at the enemy - using magnitudes more violence than that currently deployed by US troops in Iraq. And unlike the Soviet example, no superpower is aiding the Iraqi resistance today. Americans are suffering far fewer casualties, as well, which have been magnified by Western media coverage that, for the Soviets, simply didn't factor until the final years of the Afghan campaign. But the senior US officer in Iraq recently dismissed the resistance as "strategically and operationally insignificant," just as the Kremlin once expected that poorly trained and equipped Afghan rebels would cower before its military might. There are many other parallels with the Soviet mire, analysts say, that should yield valuable lessons and warnings for the Pentagon today. "They welcomed us with flowers - I saw it with my own eyes," says Makhmut Gareev, the Soviet general whose small team of advisers kept the Afghan regime afloat for nearly three years, after the Soviets pulled out in 1989. Just as the Pentagon top brass asked for - but did not receive - many more troops before the Iraq war, the Soviet General Staff advised that 30 to 35 divisions would be necessary to stabilize Afghanistan. Only 4 or 5 reserve divisions were sent, for a mission expected to be quick and low profile. Within months, widespread resistance had begun; within years, the Soviet inability to seal the borders and control ground with so few troops enabled the guerrillas to create a pipeline for weapons and recruits. "It's the same mistake [US Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld made in Iraq," says the white-haired octogenarian Mr. Gareev, who heads up Russia's Academy of Military Sciences. "I would have left all the Iraqi border guards under American control. Now terrorists are flocking to Iraq. "They disbanded the Army, police, and frontier guards," says Gareev, who in 1996 wrote one of the most detailed assessments of the Soviet experience. "What was [Rumsfeld] going to count on?" The ratio of Soviet forces to population - some 130,000, for 24 million Afghans - roughly matches that of the US in Iraq. Only 56,000 of the 130,000 Americans troops there are combat trained, however, in a nation of 23 million Iraqis. Some faulty assumptions appear eerily similar. The Kremlin did not expect Afghans to fight back, and the Soviet military mind-set was geared toward fighting a massive conventional war in Europe, not controlling hit-and-run bands of guerrillas. In Iraq, too, US commanders have been frustrated by the inability of their overwhelming firepower to stamp out the resistance. The rising US death toll has prompted in recent days a significant boost in the scale of military counterattacks. Boosted also are strong vows to arrest and kill Iraqi rebels, or to ensure, in the words of one officer, that they are required to stay in hospital "for the rest of their natural lives." The Soviets and Americans both "neglected one vital element: nationalism," says Olivier Roy of the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, an expert on political Islam who has covered Afghanistan since the Soviet era. A CIA report made public last week described how growing disillusionment among Iraqis is increasing support for the resistance. "For the Americans, it is dictatorship or democracy - the word 'nationalism' is never heard," says Mr. Roy. "They can't understand, like in Palestine, that somebody could choose a dictatorship for nationalist reasons. It is something totally unthinkable in Washington." One difference between the cases of Afghanistan and Iraq may work in the US favor. While the resistance to the Soviets was "spontaneous and universal," in Iraq it has focused on a narrow region known as the "Sunni Triangle." And despite the host of problems, many Iraqis remain grateful to the US for ending the Hussein regime. "If the Americans are able to crush the Sunni Triangle without sparking off other places, it will be OK," says Roy. "They will never win Iraq, but they will get enough time to get out, while saving face and claiming victory." Even getting to that point will not be easy, if the Soviet experience is any gauge. Emergency meetings at the White House last week formulated a new strategy, to speed up "Iraqification" of security, by replacing US soldiers with freshly minted Iraqi units. When the Soviets tried it, political reliability was a major problem, says Davis of Jane's. He saw the results repeatedly: newly recruited Afghan soldiers sitting down to tea with mujahideen units, handing over their guns and going home. "It starts with a low-level hemorrhaging, desertions of a few people with weapons. Then you have a few officers being shot," says the Bangkok-based Davis. "Then you run the danger - if the opposition in Iraq can attain what it does not have now, which is a degree of political cohesiveness - of whole units going over to the other side. "In Iraq, the dangers are so much more pressing, because of the speed with which the Americans are trying to push this strategy through," says Davis. "That is bound to be exacerbated by the fact that, right now, [guerrillas] will be ensuring that their moles are in the intelligence services, and signing up to join new units." One difference in the Soviet and US comparison does not work to US advantage, he says. It took more than three years for the Afghan resistance - unable to shoot straight at the start of the war, and making "stupid mistakes" - to get their act together. That's a luxury US troops don't have in Iraq. "You've got a disbanded army, Iraqi special forces that were well trained and took minimal casualties in the war, and weapons stockpiles all over the country," says Davis. "So the Iraqis have moved straight into sophisticated guerrilla operations, virtually from day one." A further parallel is the broader, nation-shaping ambition of the Soviets and US, says Dmitri Trenin, a Soviet military veteran with the Carnegie Moscow office. In the 1980s, Moscow tried to impose a Soviet-type system on Afghanistan; today the US is placing "too much emphasis on democracy, and not enough on good governance and rule of law," he says. And in Iraq, the US faces difficulty because it is the "perfect machine for waging war," but "not a good machine for imperial policing," Mr. Trenin says. "The US never liked the idea, it doesn't have the culture." But the root problem is one that has dogged foreign invaders throughout history, Trenin says: "Occupying powers are never popular." The lessons of the Soviet experience have not been lost on US military historians. Robert Baumann of the Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, who was a graduate student in Moscow when the war began, wrote a case study on Soviet Afghanistan and discovered what he called a "pervasive pattern: tactical successes that did not add up to tangible, strategic gains." And though he is obliged not to discuss current US military operations, he can speak of the Soviet example. "Sometimes [Soviet leaders] were captives of their own propaganda," though not telling the public much for the first five years of the war "hurt them badly," Mr. Baumann says. "Even when they did start reporting combat, it masked the circumstances," says Baumann. "Meanwhile, you've got all these soldiers coming home, with a different version of the truth."
Las Vegas taxi drivers face high tech challenge Taxis have long been the main transportation method in Las Vegas. Now a San Francisco company called Uber Technologies Inc. wants to challenge their dominance through a transportation service based on smartphones. Las Vegas has the reputation as being a libertarian city, but like anyplace else, certain business interests would rather use the force of government to stifle competition rather than compete in a free market. Cab drivers in Las Vegas have immense political power. In 2005, then Governor Kenny Guinn vetoed a bill that would have outlawed cabdrivers from receiving kickbacks for delivering customers. “Taxicab drivers contribute greatly to the economy of this state,” Guinn said. “I cannot support Section 133 of AB 505 because it singles out and hurts the financial well-being of taxicab drivers.” Visitors to Vegas will notice that there is no public transportation from the airport to the hotels, or hotel shuttle buses for that matter. The Las Vegas Monorail doesn’t even come close to McCarran Airport. If it did maybe someone would ride it. Now a San Francisco company called Uber Technologies Inc. wants to challenge the livings of Las Vegas cabbies. Joe Schoenmann reports for the Las Vegas Sun that Uber offers a high-tech livery service in nine cities. The company “runs dispatch centers that customers access via a smartphone. To provide the rides, the company partners with licensed companies that use sedans, SUVs or limousines, using those vehicles during the companies’ down time. No cash changes hands — the transaction, including tip, is paid for using the phone.” Uber provides a smartphone app that allows customers to view a map and follow where their vehicle is and how long before it arrives. But the problem is that southern Nevada livery services are required by law to charge $40 to $45 per hour, with a one–hour minimum, making them uncompetitive with taxis for short rides. Uber has never encountered these high minimum charges anywhere else. The Nevada Taxicab Authority, which regulates the taxi industry, has its eye on Uber, according to Schoenmann. Charles Harvey, Taxicab Authority administrator, told the Sun, an “unregulated, unlicensed quasi-taxi operator is a concern,” and that the agency is doing research on the company and talking to the limousine regulator, the Nevada Transportation Authority. Uber could request a lower minimum rate, because the Nevada Transportation Authority approves rates for each operator. “But even if a livery company figures it can make a profit with a minimum hourly rate of, say, $15,” writes Schoenmann, “sources said opposition from the powerful cab companies would make it difficult, if not impossible, to get regulators to go along.” Local Taxi-cab strongholds are nothing new. In the June 1988 edition of The Free Market, Sam Wells wrote, Taxi monopolies are powerful on the city level. They lobby government to make new drivers go through lengthy procedures or acquire expensive licenses to own a taxi. These laws don’t exist to protect the public; they protect a privileged industry from competition and work against the public interest. The tourism business in Vegas still has not recovered. Allowing cash-strapped tourists options for transportation would help. The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on blog.mises.org.
Moral ambiguity about US drone policy arises from the gray area between law enforcement and warfare. The “law enforcement” approach seeks to foresee threats and retaliate for attacks. It polices and reacts within the traditional model of defense and war. On the other hand, a “war against terror” has no endpoint, and its theater of operations is everywhere on earth. The effort to defeat Al Qaeda and its affiliates is more like a fight against criminal gangs than a conventional war. There will be never be a complete safe haven from terrorism, and there will never be an armistice. Such a fight requires flexibility and reach, beyond the traditional parameters of war. And so the strongest ethical argument in favor of drone strikes boils down to efficiency. The virtues of US drone policy include precision targeting, limited collateral damage, and preventing troops from going into full combat mode and being killed. But each of these virtues has its limits. We know of targeting errors, tragic accounts of unintentional killing of innocent bystanders, and the fear that drones turn foreign public opinion against the United States. When the stakes are so high, is the efficiency argument good enough? Of particular ethical concern are the questions of due process and accountability. Who makes decisions about who the targets will be and whether to execute a strike? What is the procedure and the oversight for those calls? Again we see blurred lines. It is significant that the drone program is an executive action run by the CIA, largely sheltered from international laws of war. CIA accountability comes through Congressional oversight – a mechanism that may not be optimally suited for creating, monitoring, and enforcing guidelines for drone operations. As this oversight evolves, it is imperative that American values are safeguarded through proper checks and balances on the CIA’s drone program.