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At nearly every electric vehicle or smart grid conference, someone in the audience asks the question about just how clean electric vehicles are given that they are probably fueled by coal power plants.
There is a short answer and a long answer. The short answer is that if you are just asking about CO2, the electric vehicle, even from the dirtiest of U.S. coal plants, is still cleaner than a traditional internal-combustion vehicle.
However, toss hybrid vehicles, e-bikes, buses, renewable energy and particulates into the picture and it is not as clear-cut. A new study that examined electric vehicles, including e-bikes, in China found that EVs were not necessarily cleaner in terms of particulate emissions and their health effects, but rather the source of pollution was just offset from the urban centers to the areas where the power plants are located.
If you turn your head the other direction, however, increasing levels of renewables mean that an EV can become cleaner over time, while an internal combustion engine can increase efficiency but will still ultimately run on the same fuel source.
One of the most widely cited, and more recent studies, on the issue comes from Electric Power Research Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council in 2007. That study found that if you compared a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle with a conventional vehicle, the PHEV would have 28 to 34 percent lower greenhouse gas emissions compared to a conventional vehicle, depending on the type of coal-fired power plant. However, when the comparison is made against a hybrid vehicle, the PHEV has a 1 to 11 percent higher GHG emission if it’s running on traditional coal-fired power plants.
The study found that the PHEV emitted about the same GHG emissions as a hybrid if it is running on electricity from pulverized coal, but once the electricity comes from natural gas, nuclear, renewables, biomass or any coal plant with carbon capture, the PHEV performs far better than an internal-combustion engine and better than a hybrid.
When the researchers looked out far into the future, the picture was rosier for PHEVs. Using a mix of electricity resources and a variation of ranges of PHEVs, the study came up with nine scenarios comparing conventional, hybrid and PHEVs. In every instance the electric vehicles had lower GHG emissions than both the hybrids and conventional cars.
But there are a lot of ifs between now and 2050, and CO2 is just one measurement. When researchers from the University of Tennessee, University of Minnesota and Tsinghua University in Beijing looked at electric vehicles and health impacts from fine particulates in China, it was not only a mixed bag, but EVs performed far worse.
EVs and Health Impacts in China
Automobile ownership has increased more than an order of magnitude in one decade in China. E-bikes in particular are skyrocketing, with an 86 percent annual growth rate during the past decade. The government has also been pushing for electric vehicle adoption. The move to EVs can curb smog in the country’s mega cities, but 85 percent of electricity in China is from fossil fuels, of which more than 90 percent is from coal.
The e-bikes performed better than cars, motorcycles and buses on most emission metrics, but electric vehicles often fared worse when it came to comparing fine particulates emitted by the electricity source versus the tailpipe and refining facility for gasoline cars.
Fine particulate emissions per passenger-kilometer was 3.6 times greater for electric cars than for gasoline cars overall. About half of the fine particulates from electricity production that are inhaled by humans are inhaled by people near the power plants, rather than those in urban areas where most of the cars are.
The researchers found that electric vehicles fueled by coal-fired plants in China rate far worse in mortality due to fine particulates compared to gasoline cars, but it is hardly the final word.
The study acknowledged limitations, and like the EPRI study about CO2, any changes to the coal power plants would improve the position of EVs. Most importantly, it examined what would happen if people make substitutions between electrified and diesel or gas-powered transportation.
E-bikes are the fastest growing segment, and the study found that most people would use diesel buses if e-bikes were no longer available. E-bikes, however, are far cleaner in every respect than diesel buses and even EVs, which had higher particulate emissions from power plants overall compared to diesel buses, did have similar health impacts from primary particulates.
The results of the studies on electric vehicles and emissions bolster some of the findings from Greentech Media’s recent report, Electric Vehicles 2011: Technology, Economics, and Market, which found that plug-in hybrids might make the most sense in the near-term. The report’s co-author, Travis Bradford, president and founder of the Prometheus Institute for Sustainable Development, noted that the real winner in terms of cost competitiveness, not to mention clean emissions, in the near future is not the fully electric vehicle but the plug-in hybrid.
“The real reason cost doesn’t get better is the internal combustion engine doesn’t stay the same,” said Bradford. He noted the increasing fuel economy standards coming to the U.S. as one example. “The electric vehicles will have to get better just to keep up,” he said.
Keeping Up with Gas Vehicles in the U.S.
In the U.S., EPRI looked at a scenario with an aggressive penetration of PHEVs by 2030 (about 40 percent on-road vehicles). It found that, “PHEVs result in small but significant improvements in ambient air quality and reduction in deposition of various pollutants such as acids, nutrients and mercury.” Unlike the study in China, EPRI looked at emissions rather than health outcomes.
Like China, a decrease in pollutants for some most of the population in the U.S. would also mean an increase for the 1 percent of the population that is near the power plants supplying the electricity for the new fleet of electric cars. Assuming the growth in electricity generation comes mostly from coal, primary emissions of fine particulates would increase by 10 percent, according to EPRI.
The EPA is putting in more stringent air quality standards on power plants in the U.S., but that also comes at time when miles per gallon standards are increasing substantially for light and heavy-duty vehicles.
NRDC, which was also involved in the study, held the position that cleaning up the air in one region should not come at the expense of another region. It also noted that “with sufficient emissions controls in place PHEVs have the potential to improve air quality and to substantially contribute to meeting our long term GHG reduction goals.”
The adoption of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids are successful only if their advantages, and limitations, are taken into account along with the entire transportation picture and regulations on power plants.
Studies that take into account the lifecycle of EV batteries are also missing from the picture so far. Although accurate predictions of EV penetration are hard to come by, various models can help to inform policy makers about a balance of regulation and incentives to create a cleaner transportation fleet -- as long as that comes with a clear definition of what clean means.
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LONDON - Like UV rays and diesel exhaust fumes, working the graveyard shift will soon be listed as a 'probable' cause of cancer.
It is a surprising step validating a concept once considered wacky. And it is based on research that finds higher rates of breast and prostate cancer among women and men whose work day starts after dark.
Next month, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the cancer arm of the World Health Organization, will add overnight shift work as a probable carcinogen. The American Cancer Society says it will likely follow. Up to now, the U.S. organization has considered the work-cancer link to be 'uncertain, controversial or unproven.'
The higher cancer rates don't prove working overnight can cause cancer. There may be other factors common among graveyard shift workers that raise their risk for cancer.
However, scientists suspect that overnight work is dangerous because it disrupts the circadian rhythm, the body's biological clock. The hormone melatonin, which can suppress tumor development, is normally produced at night.
If the graveyard shift theory eventually proves correct, millions of people worldwide could be affected. Experts estimate that nearly 20 percent of the working population in developed countries work night shifts.
Among the first to spot the night shift-cancer connection was Richard Stevens, a cancer epidemiologist and professor at the University of Connecticut Health Center. In 1987, Stevens published a paper suggesting a link between light at night and breast cancer.
Back then, he was trying to figure out why breast cancer incidence suddenly shot up starting in the 1930s in industrialized societies, where nighttime work was considered a hallmark of progress. Most scientists were bewildered by his proposal.
But in recent years, several studies have found that women working at night over many years were indeed more prone to breast cancer.
Also, animals that have their light-dark schedules switched develop more cancerous tumors and die earlier.
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Arab municipalities to get National Priority A status
Affirmative action designed at improving living standards
Arab localities in the center of the country will be granted the status of a "National Priority Area A" as part of the Capital Investment Law. The cabinet is expected to approve the affirmative action proposal Sunday as part of a discussion on the extension of the law, which is scheduled to expire on July 14.
The new status for the Arab towns will enable them to receive the maximum benefits available for investments, including a grant for up to 24 percent of the investment and a tax exemption for 10 years. Today, the only benefit available to investors in Arab towns in the center is an exemption from corporate tax for two years.
The center of the country is considered only a "C" level National Priority Area. This is the lowest level, and government benefits are mostly granted to only high-tech companies in these regions.
The decision to include Arab municipalities in the center of the country as part of an affirmative action plan was a result of joint meetings between the ministries of industry and trade, justice and finance.
The various ministry representatives who discussed the proposed changes also considered making Haifa a "B" area, up from its present "C" status; but for now they are against changing Haifa's status.
The head of the Government Companies Authority, Hezi Tzaig, confirmed the information.
According to Tzaig, the inclusion of cities such as Tira as a National Priority Area A will likely bring about the consolidation of the industrial areas of Tira and Kfar Sava, so that investors in Kfar Sava will also enjoy the exceptional benefits - something the cabinet certainly had not intended. It seems the various ministries will try to phrase the law in such a way as to prevent such occurences.
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This will be a basic survey course of Christian Ethics. It will examine such topics as the relationship of the Bible to Christian ethical thought and will look at major ethical themes – both classical and contemporary -in Christian thought. The course will also examine a range of methods of doing Christian Ethics. The course is intended to be both theoretical and practical. We will for example see how ethical theory can be useful in the day to day decisions individuals and communities make.
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One method used to determine the age of fossils is fluoride testing, first tried on a number of ancient fossils in 1949 by Kenneth Oakley of the British Museum’s Paleontology Department. Using this technique, an experiment was performed on the Piltdown Man fossil and showed that the “fossil” jawbone contained no fluoride—thus revealing that it had been in the earth for no more than a few years.
Subsequent research conducted on the basis of fluoride testing revealed that the skull was indeed only a few thousand years old. It was also determined that the teeth in the jawbone were those of an orangutan and had been artificially abraded, and that the primitive tools found near the fossil were replicas that had been created using steel tools.170 Detailed analysis by Joseph Weiner definitively revealed the fossil’s fraudulent nature in 1953. The skull was human, but only 500 years old, whereas the jawbone belonged to a newly deceased orangutan! (See Piltdown Man.)
170 “Piltdown,” Meydan Larousse, Vol. 10, p. 133.2009-08-15 13:12:55
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David A. Carter and Noelle Carter’s Bot Garage app (Random House/Smashing Ideas, 2011), a companion to their 2011 counting pop-up book Lots of Bots, invites users to recreate the wacky robots showcased in the book and create their own inventions.
Build a robot by selecting from a gallery of ten brightly colored options for each bot part: torso, head, arms, and “legs” (some of which are actually wheels or rocket blasters). Then “add some flair” with spare parts such as a robot dog, microphone, clock, and bicycle horn. All of the parts differ in design and function, illustrated by a brief animation, so the combinations are virtually endless.
When your bot is built, give it a name and place it in one of ten environments such as undersea, tropical island, space, and disco dance floor (fans of Lots of Bots will recognize the scenery). Once situated, the bot will then come to life, happily bouncing, beeping, sproinging, and whirring away indefinitely. All the bots you’ve created can be saved to revisit—even rebuild—later, or emailed to a friend.
The uncredited child narrator reading the text’s sing-songy rhymed couplets (“We’ll need a head to go on top, so go, go, go. No time to stop!”) is overly cutesy for my taste, but kids will be too focused on the robots to pay him much mind. With its quirky bots, fun sound effects, clear instructions, and simple navigation, this app will hold up for several play-throughs. For iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch; $0.99 in the App Store.
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Options rising up to an alarming challenge
Editor's note: This is the next in a series of articles highlighting the agencies that receive funding from United Way of Ellis County.
By CHARLOTTE LINSNER
Special to The Hays Daily News
Webster's defines a challenge as "to confront boldly."
Josh Dreher, United Way of Ellis County campaign chairman, states in his radio message, "When a neighbor needs a helping hand, we reach out and give it."
That type of commitment to others within our community makes Ellis County one of the best places to live and raise a family. Josh's statement definitely holds true for the victims of domestic, sexual, dating and stalking violence.
The funding Options: Domestic and Sexual Violence Services receives from United Way of Ellis County supports a portion of the safe shelter and 24-hour hotline services.
These vital life-saving services are essential for victims' and their families' safety.
A survey conducted by the Mary Kay Foundation in 2012 brings staggering realization to the issues surrounding domestic violence and safe shelter services. The survey's detailed national findings reveal alarming trends in light of the economy's decline since 2008. More than 730 domestic violence shelters across the country were surveyed with the following results:
* 78 percent of domestic violence shelters nationwide (nearly eight of 10) report an increase in women seeking assistance from abuse.
* 74 percent of survivors stayed with an abusive partner longer because of financial issues.
* 58 percent of shelters reported that the abuse is more violent now than before 2008.
* 87 percent of domestic violence shelters (nearly nine of 10) expect their overall situation during the next 12 months will be worse than now, or the same as now.
* 95 percent reported survivors needed to stay in shelters for longer durations of time.
* Of shelters that were forced to reduce services, 47 percent decreased childcare efforts, which meant they were not able to help one in four children.
* 86 percent of shelters witnessed negative social effects on children such as bullying or withdrawal.
* 62 percent reported young women (age 12 to 24) are requesting help in greater numbers.
* 92 percent of shelters had to end or scale back specific programs and services.
Options has experienced similar results indicated by the survey. The survey's overwhelming trends are remarkably similar in each region of the United States -- Northeast, Midwest, South and West.
A recent client reveals the importance of Options advocacy services as she weathered the storms of an abusive relationship and the journey back to living a non-abusive life style.
"Although I have the support of family and friends, they do not completely understand the complicated structure of a domestic violence relationship. Options staff does -- and that alone has been an amazing amount of support as I have gone through the process of leaving the abusive relationship," she said.
The people of Ellis County have definitely "boldly confronted" issues through the years. Regardless of the issue (fighting wars on foreign soils, failing crops, lack of moisture, bad economic times or helping others when they are down), northwest Kansas residents continually "rise up."
For more than 30 years, Ellis County residents have supported Options' services and "Risen Up to the Challenge" by helping those persons who find themselves victims of violence. The victims wish to thank the citizens and want each of you to know your support does not go unrecognized.
United Way of Ellis County is currently engaged in their yearly fundraising campaign. Options, along with 13 agencies providing advocacy and support services throughout Ellis County, urge each citizen to contribute to the campaign for the betterment of your fellow citizens and the community as a whole.
Charlotte Linsner is executive director of Options: Domestic and Sexual Violence Services.
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What is the purpose of medical science? Is it profit or progress?
The widespread implementation of energy-based therapies, including low level lasers, leds and pulsed electromagnetic fields, promises to raise the bar across health care, improving outcomes and safety while lowering costs.
- About Laser Therapy
- How Laser Therapy Works
- Laser Research Library
- About Pulsed Electromagnetic Field Therapy
- Bio-electromagnetic Research Library
- Articles by David Rindge
- Specialties and Programs
Light and electromagnetic fields are parts of an intricate web of energy within all living things. If energy is the basis for life, how can it best be used to treat and prevent disease and to promote health? Healing Light Seminars’ mission is to provide the products, books, resources and training for optimal clinical results with laser, led and pulsed electromagnetic field therapies.
Healing Light Seminars has been training licensed, health care professionals in the theory and clinical application of energy-based treatments since 2002. To learn more about our courses and view preliminary dates and locations, please visit Seminars 2014. We appreciate your feedback!
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Recently I received an e-mail with the following question, and think it's worth some commentary: "I have type 2 diabetes and it's like a yo-yo. I'd like to know exactly what a good number is."
I've always had a simple answer to whether blood glucose (BG) numbers are "good" or "bad:" they are neither! They are simply numbers: high, in the target range, or low, but there's no goodness (nor badness) in a number.
More important, to answer the question, are several hidden issues:
* First, does the patient have proper technique to check their BG? Not only knowing how to calibrate and use the meter, but are they checking routinely before meals, or after meals (and if so, how long after eating), or both before and after? And how often?
* And how big is the yo-yo effect? If the patient is occasionally checking after a big meal and comparing the value to what they get before meals, the "spread" will be a lot bigger than if they are only checking before meals.
* Is the patient checking before breakfast, and finding that it's high compared to before other meals? That's probably due to the "dawn phenomenon," in which night-time release of other hormones can cause early-morning elevations of blood glucose levels.
* Is the patient perchance on a diabetes program that includes varying insulin doses? If so, it's possible that the instructions provided to the patient about insulin adjustment are actually causing a roller-coaster effect, and if so, the insulin instructions need to be changed.
* Is the patient on a stable meal plan, stable exercise program, and have stable stress levels? If any of these are changing from one moment to the next, it's no surprise that the BG levels would fluctuate.
Now, back to the question: where should the BG levels for someone with type 2 diabetes be? Well, ideally, you might think that all people with diabetes should be aiming for normal levels. But there's plenty of evidence that normalizing all BG levels is extremely difficult, and carries a risk of accidental hypoglycemia. That has to be balanced against the reverse observation: that elevated BG levels mean elevated risk of diabetes complications, including eye, kidney, and nervous system damage. So any pronouncement about where BG levels should be must be tempered with caution.
It's my feeling that all patients with diabetes should be treated to avoid numbers higher than 400, and to avoid numbers lower than 60: there's an increased risk of acute complications of nausea and vomiting, dehydration, and subsequent nasty things if BG levels are in the 400's -- and clearly the risk of hypoglycemia is dramatically elevated if BG levels are below 60. So there's a starting point for where to aim.
And the ultimate in BG control would probably be to keep almost all (maybe 90%) of before-meal BG levels between 70 and 100, and after-meal BG levels below 150. That's a goal that's pretty close to what non-diabetic patients might have. Is it possible? Sure, even if you have type 1 diabetes: if you are on an insulin pump or multiple insulin doses, testing 4-10 times a day, and motivated to continue doing so for a prolonged period of time. (The best example of motivators might be pregnancy: young women with type 1 diabetes who are planning pregnancy, or are pregnant, would be potential candidates for an ultra-tight diabetes control program aiming at numbers like these.)
But the overwhelming majority of people with diabetes will have targets someplace between these extremes. Exactly where to aim might depend on general health issues (for instance, there's some evidence, although controversial, that aiming too low increases risk for people with T2DM and cardiovascular disease), age (older folks are generally considered to have a higher risk of complications from hypoglycemia), and motivation, as well as knowledge of diabetes by the physician setting the targets.
Earlier, I touched very briefly on another issue in setting BG target levels: how often the target must be met. I don't think that perfection is possible: there are way too many factors influencing BG levels, some of which are controllable, but others are not. So I'm very willing to settle for hitting the target levels part of the time: maybe 90% of the time.
What if you are hitting your targets 100% of the time? Well, first of all, congratulations. But secondly, maybe you should consider challenging yourself to tightening up the targets. This has been called "graduated goal setting."
Graduated goal setting is a technique that I routinely encourage new patients with diabetes to use: initially aim for some very wide ranging targets, like getting BG levels between 300 and 100 50% of the time; when the patient is routinely able to hit these targets, then discussing with the patient what targets seem reasonable to use in the near future: perhaps aiming for between 80 and 250 75% of the time. At each step, the targets are reviewed against the actual performance, and if the targets are not being met, adjustments to the treatment plan are implemented (perhaps a bigger dose of pills, or adding a second pill); if the targets are being met, consideration to tightening the targets for the next period of time.
But at all times, no matter what targets are being used, BG numbers are either high, low, or within the target range: they are never good nor bad.
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What is Iota Observable?
And how does it compare to other projects?
Iota Observable has been designed to play nicely with Rivets, a little template engine with declarative data binding from Michael Richards. Both libraries strive to "do one thing and do it well". They leave everything else to your choice — a modular approach. You might want to give the Rivets & Iota Observable combo a chance if you feel that AngularJS, EmberJS, Knockout, Batman etc. are too invasive and big for your use case.
what makes it special
Navigate the object graph using the dot notation:
model.get('person.address.name'). It doesn't matter whether the nested objects are observable or not.
automatic dependency tracking
Properties can be derived from other properties, simply by making them no-arg functions. If you use the get and set functions and another property is changed, observers are automatically notified about changes in the computed property:
get('a') + get('b').
for better performance
You can set multiple properties at once by passing an object to the set function. You can also demarcate a series of updates with
endBatch. Observers which would be notified multiple times when doing separate updates, are triggered only once that way.
Successfully tested in Internet Explorer 8, latest Chrome and latest Firefox.
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The Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI), a global nonprofit organization, recently published updated guidelines for coagulation lab testing. Healthcare providers often order a variety of coagulation tests to help identify and diagnose bleeding and clotting disorders.
Collection, Transport, and Processing of Blood Specimens for Testing Plasma-Based Coagulation Assays and Molecular Hemostasis Assays; Approved Guideline-Fifth Edition replace the fourth edition, published in 2003. It includes revisions relevant to transportation and storage for plasma-based hemostasis testing.
CLSI is a membership-based organization that promotes the development and use of voluntary consensus standards and guidelines within the healthcare and medical testing communities.
Source: Medical News Today, February 13, 2008
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Description of Historic Place
Located in the heart of the nation’s capital, Confederation Square National Historic Site of Canada is best known to Canadians as the site of the National War Memorial with the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The square opens at the northern terminus of Elgin Street, immediately southeast of Parliament Hill, and is a planned urban space where commercial, ceremonial, and institutional spheres of the city converge. Developed during the early twentieth century from an existing commercial district, the square is built around a permanent bridge over the Rideau Canal, and is framed by a group of buildings including the Central Chambers, the Scottish-Ontario Chambers, the Central Post Office, the Langevin Block, the East Block of the Parliament Buildings, the Château Laurier, the Union Station (Grand Trunk), and the National Arts Centre. The official recognition refers to the whole site with its component parts including the eight buildings, the remaining façade of a ninth, and the war memorial in their existing spatial relationships.
Confederation Square was designated a national historic site of Canada in 1984 because:
- it is the second most important ceremonial centre of the national capital, after Parliament Hill;
- it is a rare instance in Canada of a large-scale downtown development following the planning tenets of the City Beautiful movement;
- the Square is framed by a familiar and eclectic group of structures impressive for their variety in age, style, scale and function.
The heritage value of this place resides in its role as a national ceremonial site and in its physical manifestation of a City Beautiful-inspired public space as illustrated by its location in the heart of Ottawa. It also resides in its eclectic grouping of buildings of various ages, functions and styles. This grouping includes a number of individually designated national historic sites of Canada, including the National Arts Centre (1964-1969), the Château Laurier (1909-1912), the Langevin Block (1883-1912), the Central Chambers (1890), and the East Block portion of the Parliament Buildings (1859-1865). Additionally, the square is built over a portion of another national historic site, the Rideau Canal. Since 1939, when the present National War Memorial was unveiled, the square has become a focus of annual Remembrance Day commemorations, as the nation honours its war dead.
Sources: Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, Minutes, June 1984, December 2005.
Key elements contributing to the heritage value of this site include:
- its location at the intersection of Wellington Street and the north end of Elgin Street over a portion of the Rideau Canal;
- its layout as a triangular open space with the National War Memorial at the centre bounded by Wellington Street at its north end and the two sides of Elgin Street on the east and west sides, all framed by the buildings on the far sides of those streets;
- the existing spatial relationships of the above components, and especially the openness of the space, conducive to the congregation of large groups of people;
- the War Memorial in its location, footprint, volume, design, and materials;
- the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in its location, above-ground footprint, design and materials;
- the collection of buildings framing the square and the existing spatial relationships of the individual buildings, their stylistic eclecticism and general harmony of scale, in particular:
- the Scottish-Ontario Chambers on its footprint with its Italianate style commercial design and decoration, and surviving original exterior materials;
- surviving original portions of the façade of the former Bell Building as they illustrate the original Italianate design and decorative treatment;
- the Central Chambers on its footprint with its Queen Anne Revival style commercial design and decoration, and surviving original exterior materials;
- the Central Post Office building on its footprint and with its Art Deco-inspired design, Château-esque roofline, surviving original exterior materials and decoration, and surviving design and materials of major interior spaces;
- the Langevin Block on its footprint and with its Second Empire style design and decoration, its original exterior materials, original design and materials of major interior spaces, and use by the federal government;
- the East Block on its raised site, existing footprint, Gothic Revival style design and decorative treatment, surviving original materials and major interior spaces, and use by the federal government;
- the Château Laurier Hotel on its footprint with its Château style design, original exterior materials and decoration, original design and materials of major public spaces, and use as a hotel;
- the former Union Station with its Beaux-Arts style, surviving original exterior materials and decorative treatment, and original volumes, design and materials of major interior spaces;
- the National Arts Centre on its footprint with its Brutalist style design, original exterior materials and decorative treatment, original design and materials of major interior spaces, and use as a public arts venue;
- the viewsheds, especially the oblique view towards Parliament Hill; towards the Rideau Canal; down Elgin Street from the War Memorial and the views up Elgin Street, Sparks Street, Wellington Street and Rideau Street towards the Memorial;
- the continued ceremonial use of the square;
- whatever archaeological resources may be discovered at the site in the future.
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A knife-wielding serial rapist and murderer attacks Denise Sam-Cali in her Allentown, Pennsylvania, home. Although he succeeded in raping Sam-Cali on the front lawn outside her house, the courageous woman survived and later proved instrumental in bringing him to justice.
Sam-Cali's vicious attack was the third of its kind that month in Allentown. On June 9, a 15-year-old girl had been abducted and was later found dead in a reservoir with 22 stab wounds. On June 20, a five-year-old girl was raped by a man who broke into her home and unsuccessfully tried to choke her to death.
But Sam-Cali's attacker was not through yet: He killed again on July 14. On July 18, Sam-Cali's house was broken into. Police believed it was her attacker and began a stakeout of her home, leaving a window open to entice the assailant. In the early morning of July 31, the attacker climbed though the window and was greeted by a police officer hiding in the living room. A shootout ensued and he busted through another window to escape.
Hours later, 18-year-old Harvey Robinson stumbled into a local hospital, bleeding from two bullet wounds. Already a career criminal, Robinson had burglarized a home at the age of nine and was constantly in trouble with the law. When he was spotted by a police officer in the hospital, he attempted to flee, but was arrested.
After being identified by his surviving victims and DNA evidence, Harvey Robinson was convicted in 1995 and sentenced to death.
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MARO Project conference with US European Command and US Africa Command on Mass Atrocity Prevention and Response at the NATO School in Oberammergau, Germany.
From November 8-9, 2011, the MARO Project co-hosted a groundbreaking conference with US European Command and US Africa Command on Mass Atrocity Prevention and Response at the NATO School in Oberammergau, Germany. Staff and senior leadership from EUCOM and AFRICOM, as well as officials from the Department of Defense, the Department of State, and the White House, came together for two days to discuss how to improve the US government and US military’s capacities to prevent and respond to mass atrocities, wherever in the world they may happen.
The conference reflected the advances that the MARO Project has made in the past several years in developing, exercising, and mainstreaming mass atrocity response concepts within the US, as well as the achievements that each command has made in institutionalizing MARO into their ways of working. Notably, EUCOM has been a key mover in the recent decision to include MARO in US military doctrine and has been working to integrate MARO into EUCOM planning tools, and AFRICOM has included protecting civilians from mass atrocities in their most recent Commander’s Intent. The conference also dovetailed with the final stages of the work being undertaken as part of Presidential Study Directive 10 on preventing mass atrocities, contributing to that effort.
Speakers at the conference included Sarah Sewall, MARO Project Founder, Vice Admiral Leidig, AFRICOM Deputy to the Commander for Military Operations, Rear Admiral Montgomery, EUCOM Deputy Director (DJ5) Plans, Policy and Strategy, Stephen Pomper, Director for War Crimes and Atrocities, National Security Council, Tori Holt, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State at Bureau of International Organization Affairs, Dr. Jane Stromseth, Senior Advisor for Rule of Law and International Humanitarian Policy in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, and Janine Davidson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Plans.
The forthcoming report will include key recommendations that were developed by the conference’s working groups (mass atrocity policy, prevention, and intervention). Please click here to sign up for the MARO mailing list to receive a copy.
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Canada’s Naval Memorial
This Canadian Naval Memorial is in fact the ‘Soul’ of the Navy. That ‘Soul’ was shaped and imparted to Sackville and to the Navy by the leadership, spirit and actions of men like Alan Easton, her very successful early captain, and the ship’s companies that they led.
HMCS Sackville is the last of Canada’s 123 corvettes, one of many convoy escort vessels built in Canada and the United Kingdom during WW II. She is Canada’s oldest fighting warship and has been our official Naval Memorial since 1985. It is very appropriate that the ship is in Halifax, Nova Scotia, as this “East Coast Port” was an important assembly point and destination for convoys during the Battle of the Atlantic.
Watch our video to learn about the ship’s incredible story!
Can’t see video? Click this link: Canada’s Naval Memorial – HMCS Sackville
Available from the ship by emailing firstname.lastname@example.org
Add $5.00 for post and packing
Battle of the Atlantic Commemorative Concert April 29th at 1900 at Spatz Theatre, Citadel High School
TICKETS NOW ON SALE at TICKET ATLANTIC or ATLANTIC SUPERSTORES
UNVEILED JANUARY 23rd 2014 at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. Keep up to date on the progress of the project by clicking on the image to the right
ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP CAMPAIGN – be part of something special CAMPAGNE ANNUELLE DES MEMBRES – plonger dans une belle avanture
LATEST ACTION STATIONS
Now in its 32nd Year! Volume 32 Issue 1 2014 February Action Stations
Recollections, Memorabilia Welcome!
HMCS SACKVILLE is living history. You can help. The Trust would like to receive recollections/’remember when’ snippets and memorabilia from anyone who has relatives of former or serving R.C.N. members as well as naval related event/activity news items.
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Notes English date system throughout, e.g., August 1, 1941. The German for female Jew is Jüdin (Jewess). The English word is usually considered derogatory, but has been used for lack of a better alternative. Abbreviations: Comm.Communist Ein.Einsatzkommando Fem.Female Germ.German Intell. Intellectual JJewish LithLithuanian PolitPolitruk (which itself is an abbreviation for politicheski rukovoditel [political instruction]) RussRussian Germans distinguishes female nationalities by using a different word than their male counterpart. Example is Zigeuner (male gypsy) and Zigeunerin (female gypsy). There is an addition mistake in the original at page 2, entry for August 13, 1941. The total is given as 719 whereas it should be 718. There appears to be a mistake in the original German at page 7, 6th line of the second full paragraph. "An hand" should be "Anhand". Obviously, we do not correct it. Hetz. i. A. -Lg. meanining unknown.
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Starting plants from seed is a cost-effective, rewarding experience that is relatively easy to do. Although the steps are fairly simple to follow, when starting seeds indoors, one wrong move could be the difference of successfully growing your seedlings to … Read Article
Last year I started zinnias from seed indoors, but the leaves became deformed and the plants did not develop. What could have been the problem with my zinnia seedlings?
Planning to start your favorite seeds indoors? Great! Starting seeds is a rewarding and effective way to get a head start in your garden. However, once your seeds have begun to grow into small seedlings, sometimes even the most-promising sprouts … Read Article
I am sowing seeds in pots indoors this winter and I will transplant them outdoors this spring. How deep should I plant the seeds in my pots?
A great, cost-effective and rewarding way to kick-start your garden is to start your seeds indoors. There are an abundance of successful methods for starting seeds, but one clever, easy-to-do technique is to use empty toilet paper rolls (or paper … Read Article
Growing plants from seed is not a difficult thing to do. To start seeds indoors all you need are containers of your choice, some seed-starting mix, a light source and water. And, of course, seeds. Many seed packets will tell … Read Article
There is something to be said about choosing to purchase a seed collection—that is, multiple varieties of the same veggie in one seed packet:
What is the shelf life of packaged seeds? I have some seeds I didn’t start this past year, can I start them next spring?
My wild blue indigo has many seed pods. Can I harvest these and grow new plants from the seed? Are there special tricks to germinating baptisia?
Microgreens are the tiny, young seedlings of some of our favorite edible plants such as kale, chard, beets, cabbage, mustard, radish, arugula and more. They are very easy to grow from seed and are rumored to be jam-packed with even … Read Article
Whether planted as a standalone shrub or compressed together as a border, boxwoods—with lush, vivaciously green foliage—make the perfect addition to gardens. With their charming compact habit, it is no wonder that these lovely shrubs are one of the most … Read Article
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Texas has upped its ante in the race to build the world's largest telescope, which astronomers hope will revolutionize human understanding of the universe. On Friday, the University of Texas board of regents unanimously voted to spend $50 million to participate in the Giant Magellan Telescope project, which will see deeper into the cosmos than anything that's ever been built. It's a step the university had to take if it wanted to remain a significant partner in the telescope project, which is competing with two other groups racing to build the first of the next generation of very large telescopes - which could be operational by the end of the decade.
WASHINGTON - NASA scientists and engineers are plotting a daring robotic mission to Jupiter's moon Europa, a place where astronomers speculate there might be some form of life. The space agency set aside $15 million in its 2015 budget proposal to start planning some kind of mission to Europa. No details have been decided, but NASA chief financial officer Elizabeth Robinson said Tuesday that it would be launched in the mid-2020s. Robinson said the high radiation environment around Jupiter, as well as and its distance from Earth would present a challenge.
WASHINGTON (AP) — NASA is plotting a daring robotic mission to Jupiter's watery moon Europa, a place where astronomers speculate there might be some form of life. The space agency set aside $15 million in its 2015 budget proposal to start planning some kind of mission to Europa. No details have been decided yet, but NASA chief financial officer Elizabeth Robinson said Tuesday that it would be launched in the mid-2020s.
PALMDALE, Calif. (AP) — NASA plans to mothball its infrared airborne observatory unless it can get some financial help from international partners. President Barack Obama's proposed budget for fiscal 2015 released Tuesday slashes funding for the U.S.-German project from $84 million to $12 million. "Budgets are about making choices," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (AP) — Twin car bombs at a bustling city marketplace blasted buildings to rubble and tore apart bodies the same night an attack on a farming village razed every thatched-roof hut. At least 90 people have been killed, officials and survivors reported Sunday, as Nigeria's Islamic extremists step up attacks and criticism mounts of the failure of the military and government to suppress the 4-year-old Islamic uprising in the northeast.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA could have prevented last summer's near-drowning of a spacewalking astronaut at the International Space Station, an investigation panel concluded Wednesday. Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano's helmet filled with water July 16 during his second spacewalk in a week. He barely made it back inside alive. But according to the panel's report, his helmet also had leaked at the end of his first spacewalk a week earlier.
WASHINGTON - Our galaxy is looking far more crowded and hospitable. NASA on Wednesday confirmed a bonanza of 715 newly discovered planets outside our solar system. Scientists using the planet-hunting Kepler telescope pushed the number of planets discovered in the galaxy to about 1,700. Twenty years ago, astronomers had not found any planets circling stars other than the ones revolving around our sun.
DAYTON, Ohio (AP) — A much-awaited space shuttle display is opening at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force near Dayton. The $1.7 million walk-through, mock-up of a space shuttle was built for the museum after it was unable to secure one of NASA's three existing space shuttle orbiters after NASA retired the program. The exhibit opens Wednesday.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA could have prevented last summer's near-drowning of a spacewalking astronaut at the International Space Station, an investigation panel concluded Wednesday. Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano's helmet filled with water July 16 during his second spacewalk in a week. He barely made it back inside alive. But according to the panel's report, his helmet also had leaked at the end of his first spacewalk a week earlier.
With two corporations, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, already delivering supplies to NASA's International Space Station, a golden age may be at hand for private space firms. Late this year, Virgin Galactic may launch its first suborbital flight, opening space to non-astronauts. And private companies are beginning to announce dates by which they'll be ready to fly astronauts into orbit, a venture that until now has been solely the province of governments.
U.S. astronauts said Thursday the International Space Station is fully back in business after emergency repairs over the holidays on the orbiting lab's cooling system. "We are back at full capacity," said Rick Mastracchio, in an interview from the space station with the Chronicle, one of the first since the December failure of a critical cooling loop.
If the eyes of Texas want to gaze through the world's largest telescope, it's time to pay up.
After more than a decade of planning, a group of astronomers seeking to build the $1.05-billion Giant Magellan Telescope are aiming to begin construction later this year.
Time is running out. Competitors in California and Europe have also announced plans to build great astronomical instruments, each of which would be at least 10 times or more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope.
The Houston Symphony combined orchestral showpieces with imposing NASA video of the Earth and planets Thursday night, creating an ear- and eye-catching spectacle - but the connection between what the two senses took in was loose at best. With NASA producing such colorful and exotic images of our solar system, it's no wonder that orchestras have latched onto the idea of pairing them with Gustav Holst's sonic spectacular, "The Planets."
WASHINGTON - The Hubble Space Telescope has peered back to a chaotic time 13.2 billion years ago when never-before-seen galaxies were tiny, bright blue and full of stars bursting to life all over the place. Thanks to some complex physics tricks, NASA's aging telescope is just starting to see the universe at its infancy in living color and detail.
To mark the start of 2014, the Chronicle's Eric Berger invited 10 of the greater Houston area's top minds to answer a simple question: How has Houston benefited humanity? An edited sampling of some of the responses appears below.
Annise Parker, Mayor of Houston
Houston has benefited humanity by embracing the act of discovery.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Space station astronauts repaired a crippled cooling system during a rare Christmas Eve spacewalk Tuesday, braving a "mini blizzard" of noxious ammonia as they popped in a new pump. It was the second spacewalk in four days for U.S. astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Michael Hopkins and only the second Christmas Eve spacewalk ever.
Johnson Space Center's political fortunes are on the rise. This week, U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf, a Republican from Virginia, announced he would not run for re-election in 2014, and Houston Republican John Culberson is the odds-on favorite to replace him as chairman of an appropriations subcommittee that oversees NASA. Culberson says he's devoted to the space agency.
For the astronauts aboard the International Space Station, Christmas will be a working holiday. With the 15-year-old station's cooling system ailing, U.S. astronauts will perform two to four spacewalks during the week of Christmas under a rapidly-formulated plan NASA outlined Wednesday. The station's six-person crew is in no imminent danger, as there are two identical cooling systems, and one is working just fine.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA has ordered up a series of urgent spacewalks to fix a broken cooling line at the International Space Station. Station managers decided Tuesday to send two American astronauts out as soon as possible to replace a pump with a bad valve. It's a major job that will require three spacewalks - Saturday, Monday and next Wednesday on Christmas Day.
ORLANDO, Fla. - SpaceX - the rocket company that last year became the first ever to ship cargo to the International Space Station - now is on the verge of taking over one of the old space shuttle launch complexes at Kennedy Space Center. NASA said Friday that it was awarding SpaceX, a Hawthorne, Calif.-based company, the rights to negotiate for a long-term lease to run Launch Complex 39A.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.- The astronauts aboard the International Space Station dimmed the lights, turned off unnecessary equipment and put off science work Thursday as NASA scrambled to figure out what's wrong with a key cooling unit. One of two identical cooling loops shut down Wednesday when the line got too cold because of a faulty valve.
WASHINGTON - NASA said Wednesday it was looking into a problem with a malfunctioning cooling pump on the International Space Station, but there was no immediate danger to the six crewmen on board. A valve on a pump on one of the station's two external cooling loops shut down because it was too cool Wednesday afternoon, NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs said.
Mars was a paradise for microbial life - 3.5 billion years ago.
Hundreds of scientists using data from NASA's Curiosity rover, which a year ago made a daredevil descent to the red planet's surface, released a trove of findings on Monday about Martian history.
Their principal discovery is an ancient mudstone that once rested on the bottom of a Martian lake.
Astronomers are marveling at the death and apparent resurrection of a comet that dove close to the sun on Thanksgiving. Comet ISON passed within 1 million miles of the sun's surface at 12:37 p.m. Thursday - by which time observers had glumly concluded that the comet had disintegrated. NASA posted on Twitter, "It's likely it didn't survive."
The turkey served for Thanksgiving on the International Space Station today won't exactly be fresh. It was packed two years ago. But that doesn't mean it will taste any less good to NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins, Rick Mastracchio and the four other international residents of the space station. Space food has come a long way since astronaut ice cream, said Dr. Tom Marshburn, an astronaut who celebrated Christmas on the space station last year.
WASHINGTON - Astronomers call it the monster. It was the biggest and brightest cosmic explosion ever witnessed. Had it been closer, Earth would have been toast. Orbiting telescopes got the fireworks show of a lifetime last spring when they spotted what is known as a gamma ray burst in a far-off galaxy. The only bigger display astronomers know of was the Big Bang - and no one witnessed that.
The movie "Gravity" may have taken some liberties with the physics of outer space, but one thing it nailed was the scope of the International Space Station. In the film, Americans were introduced to a research laboratory that's as large as a football field and has living space comparable to the interior of two Boeing 747 jetliners. Home to six astronauts, the massive space station turns 15 on Wednesday, at a time of both triumph and uncertainty.
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Sometimes, questions are asked in order to reflect an opposite concern like in the case of when do girls stop growing taller. Essentially, the question behind the question is how you extend the growth spurts of girls.
According to some medical practitioners, girls normally stop experiencing growth spurts two years after they have their menstrual period. If we follow this line of thought, then this would be the answer to when do girls stop growing taller. This also means there is no definite age. It is important to realize though that essentially, people continue growing as long as they supply their bodies with the right amounts of nutrients, proper exercise, and a positive outlook.
It is inevitable though that after puberty the growth spurts would slow down considerably but not totally diminish. This means that girls 16, 18, or even older can still continue to grow 3 to 4 inches more over their lifetime. If this is the chain of reasoning, then the answer to when do girls stop growing taller would be never.
Discover The Step-By-Step Method For Growing 2-3 Inches Taller Naturally In Just 6 Weeks.
Puberty and Growing Taller
To be able to get a more concrete understanding of when do girls stop growing taller or how can girls continue to grow, we have to comprehend the concept of puberty.
Basically, puberty is the stage in life when changes in our bodies begin to happen. In the context of when do girls stop growing taller, puberty presents the fastest stage when girls grow significantly. Actual growth varies, but on the average there may be 2 to 3 inches increase in height annually.
You have to understand that everybody goes through puberty. No one can escape it, but the period covering puberty can vary substantially. In general, puberty happens in about 2 to 4 years, but there have been instances where it lasts longer. This further complicates the answer as to when do girls stop growing taller.
Essentially, puberty starts in the brain and sends a message to the ovaries signaling the start of the change. Estrogen is produced along with other hormones that allow girls to grow taller faster upon reaching this stage.
Growth Spurts of Girls
To have a clearer understanding of when do girls stop growing taller, we have to look at the growth spurts of girls. Normally, growth spurts of girls begin almost the same time as their first monthly period and lasts 2 to 3 years after on the average. Keep in mind that this is a general rule and without a doubt there are exceptions. In some instances, the first signs of growth spurts are taken as the beginning of puberty in girls.
It is extremely vital to understand that changes do not only occur in height but in other physical features as well. Some changes that are attributed to growth spurts include the following.
- Height – girls that are experiencing growth spurts normally grow anywhere from 2 to 8 inches taller during puberty. If we are to assume that puberty lasts two years, then that is a maximum of four inches growth per year. It is projected that puberty ends in about two years after the menstrual period.
- Hands and feet – the growth spurts also affect the hands and feet of girls. For majority of them, the hands will grow wider and the feet longer, for some it would be the other way around. It is reasonable to assume that the hands and feet do not start and stop growing at the same time. In the same manner that there is a very distinct possibility that two years after puberty girls can still continue growth and increase in height.
- Other body parts – with all the internal and external changes the female body is undergoing during puberty, it is not surprising to see some drastic changes like waist becoming thinner (or sometimes bigger), ears getting larger, face growing wider, and so on. By the time puberty has finished, all body parts would be as close to proportional as possible.
Continue Growing after Puberty
Since there is a generalization that girls stop growing after puberty, it is assumed that the underlying question would be how to extend the growth spurts so that girls can continue to grow taller after puberty. It is important to realize that it is possible to extend the growth spurts, but it is unreasonable to expect to have the same quality of results.
This means that if the average height increase for girls during puberty is four inches a year, after puberty it can be four inches in ten years. It is quite hard to put an accurate figure as to the exact number of inches because of the varying conditions of every girl. Much in the same way that there is no one answer to the concern of when do girls stop growing taller.
Basically, continuing growth spurts in girls stop growing taller would need:
- Eating healthy foods
- Exercising regularly
- Living a healthy lifestyle
- Staying away from harmful substances like drugs
- Avoiding stress
The belief is that the only time that our bodies will stop undergoing changes is at the moment we die. This means that as long as we are alive, girls will continue to grow taller, provided they follow the general tips that have been enumerated.
Anything to the contrary would stop the production of growth hormones that will allow them to increase their heights. When this happens, then the definite answer to the query “When do girls stop growing taller” would be two years after menstruation begins.
Grow Taller 4 Idiots program guarantees that you can increase your height by 2-3 inches during the next 8 weeks even after puberty. I have used Grow Taller 4 Idiots program myself and have documented my experience at http://www.grow-taller-4-idiots.com/
Grow Taller 4 Idiots is a brilliant ebook that will give you specific details on how to improve these aspects of your life in order to gain height. There are exercises demonstrated with videos that should be a part of any workout regiment designed to induce growth.
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i just installed debian5 with isp config from perfect-server-debian-lenny-ispconfig3.htm tutorial. but i dont know to setup zones for DNS.
i created 4 A zones for www,ns1,mail,mydomain.tld.
and MX zone for mail, NS zone for ns1 like this
maybe someone can verify if is that ok and if not maybe some clues.
want to specify this. my domain is the same with the domain that i want to host on server like client1
email and msn : email@example.com
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In the blogging world, it’s important to post articles at roughly the same time each day so you can be consistent for your readers. You already know how to submit a post for a future date in WordPress, but did you know you can specify both a date and time when using Windows Live Writer?
This is a feature that seems to be overlooked by everybody, since it’s not done in a particularly obvious way in the interface.
To assign the date, just click the little drop-down button where you see the mouse pointer below:
Then click where you see the time, and you can type in the time to change it.
To change from PM to AM, just either use the arrow keys to highlight that part of the time or the mouse, and then use the Up/Down arrow keys to change between them.
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Wasn't that a nice display of class and sportsmanship by Serena Williams on Saturday at the U.S. Open?
Kind, gentle, loving and caring.
It didn't look much different than a display I saw recently at a high school sporting event where a coach, during a break in the action, addressed the parents of his team.
And, just to let you know, it wasn't to say how wonderful they were being.
If a coach has to address the parents during a sporting event, the line has been crossed and not by the coach.
"O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." - Matthew 12:34
The unfortunate part is that, from what I have seen, other coaches would be within their rights to also do the same.
The garbage part of what Williams did is not about the call by the lines official (which, granted, was terrible) but was the reaction of the 11-time Grand Slam champion.
She did not just cross a line, she leap-frogged it and I hope she is fined more than the $10,000 handed down on Sunday.
On top of that, she then tried to defend herself by saying something other than, "I was wrong. I am sorry."
Why is that so hard to say?
I see far too often on the soccer field after one player buries another into the turf and the whistle is blown.
Sorry, those two words should never come out of your mouth.
Accept the responsibility.
Be accountable for your actions.
Is that really so hard?
"Do all things without murmurings and disputings." - Philippians 2:14
I understand sports is emotional.
I understand things happen in all sports.
That does not make those reactions acceptable, excusable or right.
I wonder how the kids felt when they saw their coach talk to their parents?
Proud is not the right word.
Unfortunately, it's not just parents. It is also grandparents.
Our youth is seeing two generations of adults crossing the line.
So, then, adults, do not be shocked when your kid also crosses that line.
And when that happens, do not blurt out, "Where did you learn that?"
That is an easy multiple choice answer because there is only one answer.
Regardless of the sport, adults should never say one word to the opposing teams players, unless it is nothing more than words of encouragement.
At the same time, players should never say a word to parents of the other team, unless it's thank you.
"A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger." - Proverbs 15:1
As I said last week and before that, every person at a sporting event has a testimony to give.
Kids can play soccer hard and physical and clean.
Kids can play football by knocking the snot out of each other and doing it cleanly.
Kids can play volleyball by giving every once of energy on every point.
I have said before there is going to come a time when sporting events are played without parents.
If that would happen, I bet there would not be a shortage of soccer officials.
Indian Creek will hold its Senior Night for the soccer teams at 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Sept. 21 at Kettlewell Stadium.
All members of the Jefferson Kiwanis Youth Soccer Club will be admitted free of charge.
Last week I said that 94 percent of all high school athletes do not play in college.
Let me further those numbers for you.
Of 321,400 high school male soccer players, about 18,320 play in college and 348 play professionally. That means your high school soccer star has less than a one percent chance to play the sport as a professional.
That percentage is the same in men's and women's basketball, football and baseball.
(Mathison, a Weirton resident, is the sports editor of the Herald-Star and The Weirton Daily Times and can be contacted at firstname.lastname@example.org)
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Hope and Faith
- By Yin De, OHY
- Nov 02
- (Hits: 2289)
A friend asked me to elaborate on how, as Buddhists, we should deal with concepts, words, and emotions that seem to go against what we're taught but still seem to be as "real" as they were before we came to Buddhism. He asked, specifically, about the concepts of hope and faith. He had been listening to a discussion between a Buddhist and non-Buddhist friend of his. The friend said he hoped that world peace would be possible some day. The Buddhist laughed and said "As Buddhists we are supposed to be science-minded, not concerned about silly ideas like hope and faith."
I was startled. I explained to my friend that hope is a joyful feeling and that our practice, as Chan Buddhists, involves embracing everything joyful in life. We express hope in our desire to see others become enlightened, in our desire to see an end to starvation, war, and all other forms of suffering. It was hope that inspired the Buddha to teach the mystical path of Dhyana (Chan) to his disciples.
Perhaps some people associate "hope" with helplessness - they think it means we are giving up to some higher power the eventual outcome of the situation. They think that a Buddhist should be cold and indifferent. In Buddhism we often refer to the Four Perfect Emotions: Metta - Love; Karuna - Compassion; Mudita - Sympathetic Joy; and Upekka - Equanimity. While "hope" is not specifically identified in these four, it underlies them all. Hope, coupled with understanding, gives us the ability to act in the world in an enlightened way.
In another conversation, we discussed what it is that keeps us coming back for more Zazen when we know there will be discomfort from leg pain or sore backs as we're learning. We know the agony of our minds begging us to find any excuse to get up off the cushion and run out the door of the Zendo, but for some reason we keep at it. Why? It is hope and faith - in ourselves, in our teacher, in the Buddha, and in the Dharma, that keeps us going. Without hope and faith we would surely give up.
As the famous Chan Master, Miao Yun, said: "Under the illumination of the light of wisdom and compassion, we have tremendous hope. Those who practice the Dharma will not easily give up from fear-of-failure because they have received the light of Buddha Dharma and because they have firm faith in a bright future."
"Hope" and "faith" have very similar definitions to Buddhists - we can have faith that we will come to know our True Selves, but it's not blind faith. It's faith based on the experience, knowledge, wisdom, and love that has been passed down from generation to generation.
My friend responded: "There seem to be those who think that one must remove the emotion, the mystical, and the spiritual from Buddhism - it seems like cutting out the heart. They are reductionists who try to make things small with their explanations. The joy of Buddhism to me is that it has made my life so much bigger, to encompass so many more things."
"As our practice progresses in Buddhism", I said, "our understanding about many things changes; including our understanding of the concepts of hope and faith. Our new, more developed, understanding of hope and faith may no longer meet the definitions that other people have for these words or emotions, and that can cause discomfort to people who don't define the words in the same way we do. The same arguments frequently come up among Buddhists with words like "Religion" or "God" or "Soul" or "Salvation". Sometimes it's easy for us, as Buddhists, to see the underlying reality that these words and symbols point to, but other times we latch on to one definition and cannot accept a different view. That's where the trouble begins - we begin grasping and clinging. We want everything defined - fixed and rigid. We don't like to have our ideas about what reality is challenged. And we dare not doubt that our notions may be wrong."
My friend smiled at this, then thanked me for the insight. He looked relieved to know that it was okay to have hope. It seemed his faith in the Path had been renewed.
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It's a film with little to seriously unsettle the viewer. Most 12 Years audiences will be expecting two-and-a-quarter hours of high-calibre spectacle on the subject of how slave-owners in USA's pre-Civil War southern states mercilessly mistreated their human "possessions". And this is precisely what they get. It's confirmational stuff.
The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights is explicit in stating that no-one shall be held in slavery or servitude. And yet, 65 years on, it is this very evil that continues to confront our society. It is happening in our streets, in our communities, and across the world... Our primary objective is to deter and disrupt the activities of those who are involved in these despicable crimes.
The truth is that this case, though extreme, is far from isolated. Modern day slavery is on the rise. Human beings - especially women and children - are being trafficked into and within the UK to work as labourers, domestic servants, prostitutes, cannabis farmers, forced beggars and a range of other jobs.
Debt is a form of slavery and the Biblical message is one of release from slavery, of freeing of captives. It cannot be a mark of a civilised society that it is based on enslavement through debt. Peter Selby reminded us passionately that debt, interest and the slavery of the poor is condemned by God and the prophets in both Christian and Muslim religious traditions.
The human trafficking industry - already the most profitable international criminal enterprise after the drugs and arms trades - is posting higher profits than ever. In 2005, UN estimated that it was a $32billion per year industry, based on International Labor Organization estimates that 20.9 million people suffered from forced slavery.
When you're dealing with victims of crime it can sometimes be what you don't know that's most disturbing. How many more of them are out there? What are the signs that we missed? Are we spotting others before it's too late? Nobody could have failed to be affected by the harrowing story of a 10-year-old girl trafficked from her home in Pakistan to Manchester.
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Where in the Hudson Valley...?
This rock cavern offers local travelers a curious sight: so carefully crafted, it seems out of place sitting along the shoulder of a major roadway. Perhaps even more curious is the fact that there are more than 100 other rock formations, mirror images of this one, sprinkled throughout this heavily populated mid-Valley county.
Their dimensions are remarkably similar: each cavern is approximately 10 feet high and 15 feet wide, with an arched wall of granite slabs. Usually topped with boulders, moss, and logs, the structures were constructed so exactingly that no adhesive was necessary.
But the pivotal information about these caverns — when were they built, by whom, and why — remains unknown.
Theories about their origins run the gamut. A pragmatic explanation: 18th-century farmers built them as root cellars to store their vegetables, meat, and dairy products. The subterranean vaults were used until the farmers began migrating to the more arable lands out west; eventually, the root cellars, along with the farmers’ stone walls and dwellings, were abandoned.
Another explanation (one that requires you to open your mind just a tad): druids built the caverns about 1,500 years ago. Ancient priests in tune with the natural world, the druids were known to have had a great appreciation for stones and their significance in nature. Some historians believe that they created the stone chambers, which closely resemble primitive Celtic tombs, for religious purposes and to serve as lunar calendars. (According to researchers, many of the neolithic-like caverns are aligned with the equinox and solstice sunrises.)
With no artifacts or journal entries documenting the caverns’ construction, little evidence exists for either hypothesis. Like their past, the chambers’ future is also unknown, as present-day land development threatens to destroy many of them; to prevent this, members of the community are working to preserve them as a compelling piece of local history. One thing is for certain: the caverns add a touch of mystery to the Valley, whether constructed by colonial farmers, ancient Celts, or — if you’re willing to let your mind wander a bit further — even aliens (another proposed explanation).
Do you know where in the Valley (route number and county) this strange stone structure stands? If so, E-mail us at email@example.com. The first reader with the correct answer wins a prize. Good luck!
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Anorexia May Be Tied to Abnormal Cholesterol Processing
A fresh study suggests which anorexia nervosa may very well be caused, in element, by a disruption in the normal processing connected with cholesterol, which may possibly disrupt mood and eating behavior.
khemis miliana (I-Newswire) December 29, 2013 - A fresh study suggests which anorexia nervosa may very well be caused, in element, by a disruption in the normal processing connected with cholesterol, which may possibly disrupt mood and eating behavior.
"These findings point inside a direction that probably no person would have deemed taking before, " said lead researcher Nicholas M. Cork, PH. D., a professor at the Scripps Research Begin (SRI).
Individuals with anorexia nervosa are typically perfectionist, eager or maybe depressed, and obsessive, said co-author Walt Kaye, M. D., professor at the actual University of Ca (UFC), San Diego Classes of Medicine and principle investigator in the Price Foundation Hereditary Studies of Anorexia Nervosa.
The way the disorder develops remains to be not fully realized, but studies declare that genetic factors have the greatest influence. Researchers presume that many genes can cause anorexia, and therefore solely large studies will have the statistical power to detect those personnel genetic influences.
For the study - the actual largest-ever sequencing research of anorexia - experts analyzed genetic information from in excess of 1, 200 anorexia effected individuals and nearly 3, 000 non-anorexic management participants.
One in the strongest signs originated the gene EH, which codes intended for epoxies hydrolyses three - an enzyme knew to regulate cholesterol metabolism.
"When we discovered that, we thought that individual might be on top of something, because nobody more had reported this gene as using a pronounced role within anorexia, " said Cork.
The team put into practice up with several more studies and continued to uncover evidence that several variants of EH occur with greater regularity in people having anorexia.
"We thought which with farther studies this EH finding might disappear, or appear less compelling, but we simply just kept finding evidence to declare that it plays a part in anorexia, " said Cork.
It's nonetheless unclear how EH variants-that bring about an abnormal metabolism of cholesterol-would help trigger or preserve anorexia. But Cork said that man and women with anorexia often times have remarkably high cholesterol levels inside their blood, even whenever they are severely malnourished.
On top of that, other studies include suggested that weight-loss, such as occurs in those with depression, can lead to higher cholesterol degrees. At the same time, there is research that cholesterol incorporates a positive affect on mood. This helps reveal why some anorexics claim they feel an increased mood, via larger cholesterol, when that they do not eat.
"The hypothesis can be that in some anorexics the normal metabolism of cholesterol can be disrupted, which could effect their mood along with their ability to be able to survive despite extreme caloric restriction, " said Cork.
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Published in:Health & Fitness
Published On:December 29, 2013
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Photo #: NH 106095-A
"Great White Fleet" World Cruise,
December 1907 - February 1909
Leading ship of a column of Atlantic Fleet battleships, photographed while steaming through the Golden Gate, en route to an anchorage in San Francisco Bay, May 1908.
This ship is either USS New Jersey (Battleship # 16) or USS Rhode Island (Battleship # 17).
This view is cropped from Photo # NH 106095.
Collection of Chief Quartermaster John Harold.
U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph.
Online Image: 98KB; 545 x 765 pixels
Click on the small photograph to prompt a larger view of the same image.
If you want higher resolution reproductions than this digital image, see: "How to Obtain Photographic Reproductions."
Image posted 5 September 2008
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SALT LAKE CITY — Sunday brought the revisions to the Roman Missal wrought by the third edition of the English language translation, with parishes throughout the English-speaking world changing the words they pray to more closely reflect the Latin from which the liturgy was developed.
In the Diocese of Salt Lake City, although priests and laity alike stumbled a bit with the new words, overall the liturgy went smoothly.
"It seemed to go as we had planned," said Monsignor Joseph M. Mayo, pastor of the Cathedral of the Madeleine. The 11 a.m. Sunday Mass was his first with the new words after 38 years reciting the Missal of Paul VI, which came from Vatican II, but he had practiced the chants and prayers several times beforehand, he said.
Msgr. Mayo acknowledged being a little off key during some of the sung portions of the Mass, but for the read parts, "you just have to read them properly – slow down and take the time to read them," he said.
Father Peter Do, associate pastor of Saint Catherine of Siena/Catholic Newman Center at the University of Utah, had a similar experience.
"It went as I expected – at moments the changes were awkward because I was trying to relearn how to celebrate the Mass," said Fr. Do, who was ordained in 2009. "The phrasing of the missal is a little different. The people, of course, are experiencing the same things. We spent the last eight weeks trying to prepare the people, but they are still experiencing the newness and the awkwardness of the new phrases. It will take a while to get off the automatic responses. I hear it may take as long as six months to learn the new phrases. Once people get used to it, it will be very nice. It does have a wonderful language about it and gives you a sense you are entering into a holy and heavenly liturgy."
Sisters for Christian Community Sister Julie Maher, who attended the first Sunday of Advent Mass at the Newman Center, said she thinks the changes are challenging but refreshing. "They make you stop and think about what you are saying," she said.
At Saint Francis Xavier Parish in Kearns, preparation for the new translation also began several months ago.
"We like them [the changes], and we have embraced them," said Dennis Ray, a member of the parish committee that oversaw the preparation, which included cards for the parishioners with the new wording and a practice Mass.
Most if not all the parishes distributed written versions of the new wording to parishioners and many held workshops that covered the changes to the words and music. Saint Catherine of Siena/Catholic Newman Center held a series of classes that explored the revisions.
For priests in the diocese, the Most Rev. John C. Wester, Bishop of Salt Lake City, organized a workshop on the changes in August. The workshop presenter was Father Richard Fragomeni, of the Diocese of Albany N.Y., who also is an author and associate professor of liturgy and preaching at Chicago’s Catholic Theological Union.
The priests also had their own ways of practicing. For example, Msgr. Mayo said he uploaded the chants to his cell phone so he could listen to it when he had time.
Saint Francis Xavier parishioner Karyn Williams said she likes the changes because they are closer to the original Latin.
Louie Franciose, a junior at Judge Memorial Catholic High School who attends Saint Catherine of Siena Parish, said the changes were taught in one of his classes. "The ones that struck me were, ‘And with your spirit,’ and ‘under your roof,’ Franciose said. "They are from the Gospel stories, and I think the intentions of the changes are totally correct. It’s going to be hard to learn the new verses, but they are actually more literal and direct translations of the Mass from Latin to English."
By contrast, Mariah Sprinkle, also a junior at Judge, isn’t a big fan of the changes. "I don’t know if the changes are completely necessary, but I will go along with it," she said.
At the Cathedral of the Madeleine, Tiara Hawkins helped her grandmother, Kathy Hansen, with the changes. Hawkins learned about the new translation at Juan Diego Catholic High School.
Hansen said the changes were difficult after 64 years of attending Mass. "I would try to remember [the change] was coming up, and by the time we got there I reverted back to what I had learned," she said.
Intermountain Catholic associate editor Christine Young and staff writer Laura Vallejo contributed to this story.
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Loyalty Programs Not Just for Big Business
While large supermarkets and retail chains have used loyalty card programs for years, the increased availability of technology has enabled small businesses to take advantage of similar programs, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
Banking experts told the newspaper that many types of loyalty cards are now being used by small businesses to get a better idea of their customers.
“Businesses of all kinds want to know more about their customers, so they can do a better job with marketing and relationship building,” Ron Shevlin of the Boston-based Aite Group told the paper.
The paper reports that while older-style punch cards are still popular with some companies, new payment technologies allow small businesses to use complex customer analytics at prices starting at $500 to $1,500, plus a small monthly fee for every person enrolled.
Some companies are now taking loyalty programs to the next level and eliminating the physical cards altogether. Allaboutsymbian.com reports both Tesco retailers and Subway restaurants are experimenting with a loyalty card smartphone application that generates a barcode on the phone’s screen for cashiers to read.
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This study is provided by ICPSR. ICPSR provides leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis for a diverse and expanding social science research community.
Eurobarometer 72.4: Globalization, Financial and Economic Crisis, Social Change and Values, EU Policies and Decision Making, and Global Challenges, October-November 2009 (ICPSR 30461)
Principal Investigator(s): European Commission
The Eurobarometer series is a unique cross-national and cross-temporal survey program conducted on behalf of the European Commission. These surveys regularly monitor public opinion in the European Union (EU) member countries and consist of standard modules and special topic modules. The standard modules address attitudes towards European unification, institutions and policies, measurements for general socio-political orientations, as well as respondent and household demographics. The special topic modules address such topics as agriculture, education, natural environment and resources, public health, public safety and crime, and science and technology.
This round of Eurobarometer surveys includes the standard modules and covers the following special topics: (1) globalization, (2) the financial and economic crisis, (3) social change and values in the EU, (4) the representation of regional and local public authorities in the EU, (5) competitiveness and decision making in the EU, (6) EU policy priorities, and (7) global challenges. Questions pertain to household financial situation, opinions on performance of the EU economy, national currency and the euro, taxation, unemployment, actions taken by the EU in response to the financial crisis, and attitudes towards globalization. Other questions address country identification, opinions of various EU policies, the economic recovery, important values for the EU and society, global threats, and climate change.
Demographic and other background information includes age, gender, nationality, marital status, occupation, age when stopped full-time education, left-right political self-placement, household composition, ownership of a fixed or mobile telephone, difficulties in paying bills, level in society, and Internet use. In addition, country-specific data includes type and size of locality, region of residence, and language of interview (select countries).
Series: Eurobarometer Survey Series
These data are available only to users at ICPSR member institutions. Because you are not logged in, we cannot verify that you will be able to download the data.
WARNING: This study is over 150MB in size and may take several minutes to download on a typical internet connection.
European Commission. Eurobarometer 72.4: Globalization, Financial and Economic Crisis, Social Change and Values, EU Policies and Decision Making, and Global Challenges, October-November 2009. ICPSR30461-v1. Cologne, Germany: GESIS/Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributors], 2013-03-19. doi:10.3886/ICPSR30461.v1
Persistent URL: http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR30461.v1
Scope of Study
Subject Terms: attitudes, economic change, economic conditions, economic crises, economic integration, economic reform, euro, European unification, European Union, expectations, foreign affairs, globalization, government performance, innovation, international markets, international relations, life satisfaction, national interests, policy, political attitudes, political influence, power, public officials, public opinion, quality of life, social attitudes, social change, values, world politics, world problems
Smallest Geographic Unit: country
Geographic Coverage: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Europe, Finland, France, Germany, Global, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, United Kingdom
Date of Collection:
Unit of Observation: individual
Universe: In all, Eurobarometer 72.4 interviewed 30,238 citizens in the 27 countries of the European Union after the 2004/2007 enlargement (i.e. including the Accession Countries Romania and Bulgaria), in the remaining Candidate Countries (CC) Croatia and Turkey, as well as in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) and among the Turkish Cypriot Community (Northern Cyprus). All respondents were residents in the respective country, nationals and non-nationals but EU-citizens, and aged 15 and over. Respondents were expected to have sufficient command of one of the respective national language(s) to answer the questionnaire. Separate samples were drawn for Northern Ireland and East Germany.
Data Types: survey data
Data Collection Notes:
The original data collection was carried out by TNS Opinion and Social on request of the European Commission between October 23 and November 18, 2009.
This collection is being released in two parts: Part 1 contains the original files provided by GESIS; Part 2 contains the ICPSR-processed files.
The documentation and/or setup files may contain references to Norway, but it was not a participant in this wave of Eurobarometer surveys. This collection contains no data for Norway.
Access to GESIS data and documentation, including the GESIS DOI, for Eurobarometer 72.4 can be found through the GESIS Data Catalogue. Additional information on the Eurobarometer Survey Series and the Eurobarometer data can be found at the GESIS Eurobarometer Web site and ZACAT, respectively.
Sample: Multistage national probability samples.
Weight: Please review the ICPSR codebook; "Variable Documentation" section for information concerning individual weights and the "Technical Specifications" section for general weighting information.
Mode of Data Collection: face-to-face interview
Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:
- Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
Original ICPSR Release: 2013-03-19
- Citations exports are provided above.
Export Study-level metadata (does not include variable-level metadata)
If you're looking for collection-level metadata rather than an individual metadata record, please visit our Metadata Records page.
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- THE MAGAZINE
As most cleaning professionals know, animal urine, feces and vomit require specialized treatment. Your customers should be informed that these substances can permanently discolor and possibly permanently damage wool fibers. The extent of urine penetration into carpet or rug cushions, tackless strip, baseboards, ductwork and subfloor often creates challenges that cleaning alone cannot remedy. All of these contaminates can also create offensive odors that may be difficult to remove. While cleaners may have the tools and training to address such damage, the client should be advised of possible additional costs as well as difficulty guaranteeing permanent remedies as long as pets still occupy the home.
The following statistics were compiled from the American Pet Products Association 2011-2012 National Pet Owners Survey:
• There are approximately 78.2 million owned dogs in the United States
• Thirty-nine percent of U.S. households own at least one dog
• Most owners (60%) own one dog
• Twenty-eight percent of owners own two dogs
• Twelve percent of owners own three or more dogs
• On average, owners have almost two dogs (1.69%)
• The proportion of male to female dogs is even
• Twenty-one percent of owned dogs were adopted from an animal shelter
• On average, dog owners spent $248 on veterinary visits (vaccine, well visits) annually
• There are approximately 86.4 million owned cats in the United States
• Thirty-three percent of U.S. households own at least one cat
• Fifty-two percent of owners own more than one cat
• The average cat owner has two cats
• More female cats are owned than male cats (80% vs. 65%, respectively)
• Twenty-one percent of owned cats were adopted from an animal shelter
• Cat owners spent an average of $219 on routine veterinary visits
These statistics are great news for the professional cleaner, since animal urine, odor, stains and discolorations are reported as one of the most common consumer complaints with textile furnishings. You can make a lot of money in your cleaning business by becoming a deodorization and decontamination expert. Just keep in mind, however, that dealing with urine problems is never as simple as pet owners think or some product manufacturers claim!
Years ago, Dr. Steve Spivak wrote a classic article titled “Pet Peeves.” The information in this valuable article is just as true today.
Two things to remember:
1. Foremost, it’s the pet owner and their “darling” pet that are responsible for damage resulting from pet accidents. Don’t assume the blame when you can’t make your customer’s furnishings look or smell like new! The stain or discoloration was there to begin with and is purely their fault, not yours. As a professional cleaner, you can attempt to clean, deodorize or remove spots and stains, and/or recolor the fabric, but if your actions can’t remedy the damage, that’s unfortunate. It’s the pet that caused the problem, not your effort to improve a difficult or impossible situation. Cleaners are not responsible for circumstances beyond their control, although many times, pet owners try to shift that responsibility to them.
2. There are some great products and procedures available
for professionals to use for decontaminating and deodorizing, but remember
there is no magic one-step treatment or product that you or your customer can
use to completely eliminate pet stains or odor.
When the fabric has been stained or discolored from the pet urine, it takes a lot of time and effort to attempt to reverse the damage.
Urine components have the potential to stain (dye) and/or bleach (discolor) fibers, especially those like nylon or wool. Don’t forget, when theses fibers are manufactured, they are contact-dyed with acid dyes. When urine, feces or vomit are first excreted from the body, they are highly acidic, just like the dye solution used to fix color on nylon and wool fiber. If customers act quickly, removing urine’s yellowish stain can be accomplished with almost any cool, neutral detergent solution. If they don’t act quickly – and who has time to follow their animal around all day – then more complex oxidizers and professional techniques are usually required to remove the stain. Also keep in mind that the color of the stain can vary based on the age of the animal, and the amount of water and food or medications it has ingested.
Urine stains on a Chinese rug
Furthermore, if the contaminating substance has not been diluted, neutralized and extracted quickly, then as bacteria in the urine multiplies, the deposit becomes highly alkaline (smells like ammonia, doesn’t it?) and actually bleaches color from fibers. It’s the ammonia that causes the color loss and/or odor dye migration, especially in rugs, not necessarily the presence of the yellow pigment in the urine itself. The loss of dyes caused by prolonged exposure to ammonia is another story entirely. That ammonia can permanently damage wool fibers, too. Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that the urine can be removed with a simple cleaning solution. It takes specialized cleaning products and procedures to guarantee odor removal. There are several products that have been tested and approved through WoolSafe.
Severely contaminated rugs may need to be soaked and submersion cleaned to remove the animal contamination. If you don’t have the ability to perform this service, you shouldn’t even attempt to clean the rug! You and your client will be greatly disappointed in the outcome.
Correcting color loss caused by alkalinity can only be accomplished by adding color or spot dyeing fibers.
First, you must locate all areas of discoloration. Discolorations from animal urine may show up readily under high
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|It is the policy of In Defense of Animals to no longer use language that accepts the current concept of animals as property, commodities and/or things. Rather than refer to ourselves or others as "owners" of animals we share our lives with, we now refer to ourselves and others as "guardians" of our animal friends and to animals as "he" or "she" rather than "it."
"Animals have been regarded as property for way too long. It's high time we took on a more loving and responsible relationship with our kindred beings in the web of life on this beautiful planet. I always think and act as a guardian towards my kindred beings, never as their owner."
Jim Mason, author, An Unnatural Order
In Defense of Animals is a registered 501(c)3 non-profit organization. We welcome your feedback and appreciate your donations. Please join today! All donations to IDA are tax-deductible.
In Defense of Animals
3010 Kerner Blvd, San Rafael,
Tel.: +1 415 448 0048
Fax: +1 415 454 1031
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Broccoli Casserole, a lip-smacking dish enriched with the flavor of broccoli, comes in many variants made in combination with ingredients like walnuts, chicken, turkey, etc. It is indeed the nutritional value of the chief ingredient broccoli, which makes this a hot favorite among the foodies. Broccoli casserole recipes are easy-to-prepare and the major time consumption is only for the baking process.
History of Broccoli Casserole
In the olden times, broccoli casserole used to be cooked with canned cheese soup or canned cream and cheese. In most cases, the classic broccoli casserole recipes also include meat like ham, chicken or bacon, depending on the family tradition.
Ingredients Used and Popular Methods of Preparation of Broccoli Casserole Recipes
The classic cheese broccoli casserole can be cooked in different variations. The traditional ingredients include fresh broccoli, vegetable broth, cornstarch, vegetable oil, minced garlic, soy sauce, diced carrots, mushroom slices, plain breadcrumbs, butter and shredded cheddar cheese. These days egg based broccoli casserole recipes are becoming very popular and the well known examples include frittatas, stratas and quiches. The meal can also be prepared with grains such as barley and quinoa. Pine nuts and sun dried tomatoes can also be added to the dish. Depending on recipe, broccoli casseroles can take 20 minutes to one hour to bake. Broccoli casserole recipes can be eaten as standalone dishes or along with noodles, pasta, green salad or garlic bread.
Popular Broccoli Casserole Variations
The vegan broccoli casserole is becoming quite popular these days, which can be cooked with non-dairy substitutes like soy cheese, soy milk and tofu. Nutritional yeast is also added in the vegan versions instead of cheese. The Asian broccoli casserole is another favorite that mostly relies on soy sauce, sesame oil, ginger, garlic and cashews. Healthier broccoli casserole recipes include low fat and low sodium versions where reduced fat cheese, brown rice and eggs play the key ingredients.
Health and Nutrition Facts of Broccoli Casserole Recipes
Since broccoli is a low fat and low calorie vegetable, it is considered healthy for consumption if the other ingredients used in cooking the broccoli casserole are healthy.
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Seafood pasta, also called pasta with seafood, is a delicious pasta dish consisting of a variety of seafood such as crab, oysters, lobsters, salmon, shrimp or white fish. The dish is typically made by tossing precooked seafood with pasta and a flavorful sauce. Sauces like shrimp sauce or fish sauce add a special flavor to this pasta dish, which is served as an appetizer or a side dish.
Linguine, spaghetti and paccheri are forms of pasta which are known to partner best with seafood.
Popular Methods of Preparation of Seafood Pasta
Ingredients: Seafood such as shrimp, crab, clams, mussels, oysters, salmon and white fish, as well as pasta and garlic, onions, and seasonings are the usual ingredients used to prepare seafood pasta recipe. Shells and bones are removed from seafood for inclusion in the dish, and fish are usually flaked. Tomatoes are used in variants prepared with a tomato based sauce, while some variants are made with a white sauce made with butter, flour, milk, salt and pepper. Cheese may be used for garnish, and herbs like basil, thyme and oregano for added flavor. Hard boiled and sliced eggs may also be included in some variants.
Method of Preparation: For preparing the dish, pasta is cooked in boiling salted water till al dente. The sauce is prepared by sautéing onions, garlic, tomatoes and seasonings, followed by addition of stock or wine. A white sauce made by cooking flour in butter and then adding seasonings and milk may be used instead, or any other pasta sauce of one's preference can be used. Seafood is cooked in the sauce, after which the cooked pasta is tossed with this sauce to make the pasta dish. Some recipes suggest inclusion of pre-cooked seafood in the sauce.
Seafood pasta is served hot as an appetizer or a side dish, with accompaniments like breads and salads. This pasta often forms a part of lunches and dinners for wedding and other celebrations. It can be served with a garnish of grated cheese and/or basil leaves.
Popular Seafood Pasta Recipe
- Cajun Seafood Pasta: This consists of a sauce made with cream, salt, ground black and white peppers, chopped onions and parsley, as well as herbs like basil and thyme. The seafood is cooked in this sauce after which shredded Swiss and Parmesan cheeses are mixed in, and the sauce is served over cooked fettuccine noodles.
- Pasta and Seafood Marinara: This dish is prepared by sautéing onions and mushrooms in heated oil, followed by addition of crushed canned tomatoes, chopped parsley, oregano and wine. The contents are simmered for some time after which shrimps and scallops are added to it and cooked till soft. The sauce is served over cooked linguini or angel hair pasta.
Seafood is a rich source of omega 3 fatty acids, which are extremely beneficial in building immunity and fighting various diseases. Seafood pasta incorporates these benefits.
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IMFSurvey Magazine: Countries & Regions
Crisis Brings Reversal of Fortune to Caucasus and Central Asia
By Dima Jardaneh
IMF Middle East and Central Asia Department
March 10, 2009
- Growth stalls in Caucasus and Central Asia as global crisis hits
- Region’s ties to Russia make it vulnerable to the downturn in that country
- IMF, regional officials meet in Bishkek to share crisis management strategies
Growth in the resource-rich Caucasus and Central Asia (CCA) is projected to slow to under 2 percent in 2009 from 6 percent in 2008, as the deepening global crisis hits the region hard, the IMF says in its latest regional forecast.
Awash with commodity export receipts, capital inflows, and remittances, the countries of CCA made significant economic gains in recent years, with real per capita GDP growing impressively. Oil exporters in the region were able to build up substantial reserves including in sovereign wealth funds, while low-income countries benefited from the boom in the larger economies, with domestic demand in these countries heavily reliant on trade receipts and remittances from neighboring countries. Now, however, the global crisis is reversing many of these gains.
Bleak outlook for 2009
With the onset of the global financial crisis, economic conditions in CCA—comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan—have deteriorated sharply. Countries hardest hit by the crisis are those that are very reliant on Russia or have large external financing needs. For most countries in the region, Russia remains a main trading partner and a major source of remittances. The slowdown in Russia is hurting growth via trade and remittance channels, spilling over to domestic demand.
Commodity exporters are being affected by the decline in global demand and the sharp drop in commodity prices, while those countries that are more closely integrated with international financial markets are experiencing serious financing constraints. The external dimension of the crisis is reflected clearly in current account projections, with the region expected to shift, on average, from a large current account surplus in 2008 to a small deficit in 2009. With lower growth and commodity prices, the average fiscal position is similarly moving from a surplus into a deficit.
As a result of the large external shocks, the pace of economic growth in the region is already estimated to have slowed considerably to 6 percent in 2008, from 12 percent in 2007. It is projected to fall well below 2 percent in 2009, with risks clearly on the downside, particularly if the situation in Russia worsens. Meanwhile, the drop in growth and lower commodity prices are dampening inflationary pressures across the region.
Pressures on financial sectors in the region have intensified, especially in those countries where banks face large external rollover needs, but also in other countries not directly exposed to the global financial difficulties. With the deterioration in economic and financial conditions, credit growth has come to a halt in most countries, and loan losses have started to rise and are likely to increase further.
Furthermore, the large depreciation of the Russian ruble has put pressure on regional currencies. Policymakers have faced the challenge of maintaining competitiveness while ensuring stability in financial sectors with large external liabilities and foreign currency loans to unhedged borrowers. The actual or expected depreciation of national currencies has also contributed to a drop in deposit growth and increasing dollarization.
IMF conference in Bishkek
These issues were the subject of discussion at a March 4 conference jointly organized by the IMF and the National Bank of the Kyrgyz Republic. The regional conference, held in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek, focused on how to mitigate the effects of the global financial turmoil on CCA. Bringing together central bank governors and senior government officials from the region, the conference served as a forum for policymakers to discuss their experiences in managing the impact of the crisis in their countries. In his opening remarks to participants, Igor Chudinov, the Prime Minister of the Kyrgyz Republic, highlighted the timeliness and the importance of the subject to the region.
The Bishkek conference brought together senior government officials from the region to discuss how to mitigate the effects of the crisis (photo: Veronica Bacalu).
The unprecedented scale and severe impact of the crisis on the global economy makes this a highly uncertain time, with mounting risks for the CCA economies. Conference participants highlighted four main transmission channels of the crisis to the region:
• The difficulty of obtaining foreign capital, with the largest impact observed in Kazakhstan because of the large share of private external financing in the banking sector;
• Lower oil and commodity prices, the impact of which is most pronounced in the four energy exporting countries—Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan—which have seen a sharp turnaround in both their external and fiscal balances;
• Lower remittances primarily from Russia, which will impact the smaller countries in the region, where remittances account for at least 20 percent of GDP. With less work available for migrant workers in host countries, some of them will return to their home countries, contributing to a worsening in social indicators and putting additional pressures on social spending; and
• Lower trade flows in view of the slowing growth in trading partners.
Coping with the crisis
Conference participants identified three key policy actions to help buttress against the impact of the crisis in the short term and address longer-term challenges that would help the region better withstand external shocks in the future.
• Make use of room for fiscal stimulus. Oil-exporting countries in the region have fiscal space to increase spending to protect the poor and support domestic demand by drawing down the foreign currency assets they accumulated in the boom years. For the other countries, there is less scope for increased spending within current financing envelopes, but it is still important to allow automatic stabilizers to work and increase support to vulnerable segments of the population and returning migrants. Donors, therefore, need to step up with increased budget support so as to limit the erosion in poverty gains across the region, conference participants observed.
• Strengthen the financial sector. While the impact on financial sectors to date has varied across countries in the region, policymakers noted that they were all moving to strengthen their regulatory and supervisory frameworks. Conference participants agreed that banks’ asset quality would deteriorate and that it was important for banks to adequately provision against deteriorating assets. All countries in the region will need contingency plans to ensure preparedness against potential liquidity and solvency problems in banks. Development of the financial sector should be accompanied by strengthening the regulatory and supervisory frameworks to ensure that the stability of the financial system is safeguarded.
• Consider whether further exchange rate adjustment may be helpful. Faced with depreciation pressures, some countries have allowed their currencies to adjust, while others have chosen to maintain stable rates so far. Participants at the conference noted that exchange rate policy decisions depend on competitiveness concerns, the degree of dollarization in the financial sector, and the starting position—i.e., whether the country has a large reserve buffer. But they agreed that in most countries exchange rate adjustment could help absorb the large external shocks and stem the decline in reserves.
Comments on this article should be sent to firstname.lastname@example.org
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This section contains information you will need to make an informed decision about immunisation.
- Introduction to Childhood Immunisations gives you the background information about immunisation.
- Immunisation schedule can be viewed here.
- Answers to the most common questions parents have about immunisation
- The final section deals with the diseases that vaccinations are available for, the first page shows all the diseases vaccinations are available for and compares the effects of the disease to the side effects of the vaccine. You can choose a specific disease from the drop down menu on the left to read more about any disease.
For more information
The information is spread across a number of pages that we hope will answer all of your questions. If you still have any questions or would like to make a suggestion about our content please contact us
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IT may be 'interior' architecture. But at IT Sligo, it's out on top.
The college's interior architecture degree has now been professionally accredited by the Royal Institute of British Architects.
IT Sligo is the first higher education institution in Ireland to offer an interior architecture degree that is formally accredited by the architecture profession.
It is a very significant boost for the stature of the degree and the graduates who receive it.
This specialist architectural degree focuses on what is expected to be a growing need in Ireland.
That's the transformation of buildings from traditional purposes to contemporary and sustainable re-use.
The accreditation was announced recently at a major exhibition of student Architecture and Design projects attended by leading Irish and other European figures in architecture.
Selma Harrington, President of the Architects Council of Europe, gave the keynote address.
Bernadette Donohoe, Programme Chair for Interior Architecture at the Institute, said: "This development is highly significant for the IT Sligo's Interior Architecture programme and its students, and the future of architecture in Ireland."
The accolade also means that IT Sligo Institute is now the only centre in the West of Ireland that has a RIBA validated Architecture degree.
Trevor McSharry, Head of the Department of Civil Engineering and Construction, at IT Sligo, said: "Re-use and retrofitting of existing buildings will lead to significant employment in the future. In fact some of our new graduates are already being snapped up for jobs."
Interior architecture is a relatively young specialism.
It enables traditional premises which served a specific purpose to be repurposed for a new contemporary function while also retaining their character in their surrounding environment.
It differs from mainstream architecture in that it focuses on the potential for repurposing, restoring and "reimagining" existing buildings.
It prolongs a building's lifespan, preserves its streetscape or landscape setting and is an alternative to progressive deterioration or demolition.
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New Delhi, Sep 7 (IANS) After playing the role of a camera, radio, television and much more, the mobile phone is soon going to be your virtual wallet.
Sam Pitroda's US-based technology firm C-SAM Inc. Thursday gave a presentation here on mobiles being changed into transaction platforms in a seminar 'New Vistas of e-Payments'.
The company presented the concept of OneWallet, which is a virtual wallet on an end-user's mobile phone.
Sanjeev Patni, vice president, business development of C-Sam, told IANS, 'India has a huge potential in terms of online payment scenario and after the mobile boom that the country has seen, nothing is impossible.'
'We are working on this with Jet Airways, Indian Railways for the same and we are also in talks with some of the leading banks and service providers.'
During the presentation, C-SAM demonstrated a live mobile payment transaction.
'We identify the consumer's need of conducting and managing secure electronic payments in the mobile and physical world,' Patni emphasised.
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Birthstone: Opal or Tourmaline
With "the fire of the carbuncle, the brilliant purple of the
amethyst and the sea green color of the emerald, all shining
together in incredible union" opal clearly impressed Pliny
the Elder (23-79 AD), Roman historian and author of the world's
first encyclopedia. The Romans had been wearing opals for
centuries and considered them a symbol of hope or purity,
while for the early Greeks they embodied the powers of foresight
or prophecy. The more fancifully minded Arabs thought that
opals must have fallen from heaven in flashes of lightning
thus achieving their unique play of color or "opalescence".
As it is found in all spectrums of color, tourmaline is often
described as the "chameleon gemstone". It is not surprising
to find a fine tourmaline that mirrors the exact semblance
of other gemstones, such as emerald, ruby and sapphire. Some
tourmaline crystals may even appear as crystallized rainbows
with several bands of color, ranging from the most brilliant
red to the deepest blue. Many refer to tourmaline as the "muses'
stone", for they are meant to provide inspiration.
article written by Mike McGinnis and published originally
We encourage republication but stipulate the piece be copied
in its entirety with links and attribution.)
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The folks at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation have crunched the numbers on how the latest 2010 Colorado River runoff forecast will affect the river’s major storage reservoirs, and the news is not good for Lake Mead. At this point, according to the Bureau of Reclamation, there is just a one in five chance that there will be sufficient extra water upstream in Lake Powell to provide the extra supplies that would be needed to raise Mead from its near-record low levels.
The Arizona Republic’s indispensable water guy, Shawn McKinnon, explains:
Water levels at Powell aren’t expected to rise far enough during the spring runoff season to allow the government to release extra water down the Colorado into Mead, Bureau of Reclamation hydrologists said Wednesday. That will leave Mead dangerously close — within just over two feet — to the level used to trigger shortages.
Located east of Las Vegas, Nev., Mead is the holding pond for water to be used by farmers and cities in Arizona, Nevada and California. But there’s not so much water in it right now – the volume of water stored in the reservoir is roughly equal to the lowest that it’s been at this point in the year since they first filled it in the 1930s. (As of Sunday, Mead held 11.2 million acre feet of water, just 43 percent of capacity. It dropped to 11.1 maf in late December/early January 1964.) Between the amount of water consumed by those three states and the annual evaporation from the surface of the desert lake, Mead’s only hope to rise in the coming year would be a bounty of snow in the mountains that feed the Colorado.
The reason is the complex set of operating rules that govern what the Bureau calls “equalization” – the process by which excess water from Lake Powell upstream is released to help raise Mead’s levels and keep the two reservoirs roughly in balance. The Powell-Mead juggling act is needed to meet the terms of the Colorado River Compact, which splits the river’s water between upper and lower basin states. To meet the Compact’s water-sharing rules, the Bureau releases 8.23 maf from Powell each year. The problem is that all of that is used in the Lower Basin and Mexico and then some, thanks to the aforementioned evaporation.
Under the rules, Mead has a shot at some extra water. Under operating criteria adopted in 2007, if Powell’s surface looks like it will reach 3,642 feet by the end of the September 2010, that signifies “extra” water, and “equalization” – taking a little out of a fuller Powell and sending it downstream to an emptier Mead – would happen.
But at this point, according to numbers out today, there is just a 21 percent chance of that happening. That is down from the Bureau’s estimate a month ago that there was a 36 percent chance of triggering “equalization” rules in 2010.
A final decision on whether extra water will be released will be made in early April.
(picture courtesy U.S. Bureau of Reclamation)
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I tend to leave my computer on all the time. It's a combination of laziness and need. I sit on line quite a bit, and the kids use it as well. I don't think I'm unique here.
Recently moved to a smaller apartment, and finally noticed the somewhat shocking electric bill. When I was in a house, I used to put it down to the baseboard electric heaters, or the watter heater or something. Now, it appears that it pretty much has to be the computer. With the monitor, printer, speakers and other crap I have going all the time, it has to be sucking up the power while it's just idling along. Putting the computer into screen saver still leaves all the external stuff turned on.
Last Christmas I grabbed a bunch of solid state relays off Ebay to use in a computer controlled lighting display. It's came out pretty cool, and left me with 8 spares.
For those who don't know, a solid state relay is something like an electronically controlled switch. More info here: http://relays.globalspec.com/LearnMore/Electrical_Electronic_Components/Relays_Timers/Solid_State_Relays
When I was looking for ways to control my Christmas lights, I came across some software for controlling the LPT (printer) port pins. The raw software is available here: http://neil.fraser.name/
After thinking about my power problem for a while, I decided to try and rig something up to turn on and off a bank of power sockets triggered by the screen saver.
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How do we teach “integrity” to children and help them to become fully integrated persons?
by Sister Maureen, O.C.D., Supervisor of Education
Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles
What is integrity?
Integrity is a word that continues to fascinate me, and over the years the depth of its meaning grows within me. Originally, I understood the definition of integrity as an honest person. Later on, I realized that “integral” and “integrated” are forms of this word and have deeper meanings than just “honest” or “fair.” Our society considers an integrated person to be one who “has it all together” – educated, talented, successful, self-assured, etc.
Are there different kinds of integrity?
To have integrity, or to become integrated persons, means that all parts of our personality are mature and whole, or as much as possible in our human condition. Integrity encompasses our spiritual and moral maturity, our intellectual and cultural growth and training, as well as our emotional and physical well-being. An integrated person has all parts working in harmony with each other while reaching a level of development appropriate to age. Most of us have facets that are not quite in sync with other parts, but we still continue to strive for the “wholeness” goal.
Integrated persons live in the light of all the components of their being and draw on that combined strength. The core of this strength is their ever-deepening relationship with Our Lord, who is truth. The following are components of the “wholeness” of integration.
- Spiritual and moral integrity is obtained by the consistent use of spiritual and moral knowledge and the experience of a relationship with Jesus Christ and His Church. Choices in daily life are led by beliefs, training and prayer. When choices are in opposition or conflict to God’s teachings and will, then we are not living with integrity; we are not “whole.”
- Intellectual and cultural integrity is similar. This does not mean reaching the highest academic degrees. It does mean, though, making use of the talents, gifts and opportunities that have been provided for intellectual, educational and cultural development and using these to the best of ability and for the good of others.
- Psychological development is extremely important to become a person of integrity. A certain level of development appropriate to chronological age is necessary: ability to think, reflect, analyze, judge, make choices, and act in socially acceptable ways. These include the use of our emotions. Young children are not capable of thinking and acting as a ten or twenty year old; we don’t expect it. Conversely, when someone who is forty dresses and acts in ways appropriate for someone who is seventeen, we recognize that something is “amiss.” We strive for the maturity, or integration, that is commensurate with our age.
Do these meanings of “integrity” leave out the original understanding of “honest”? I believe not. A person who is honest is one who has truly become integrated and has the capacity to be truthful in all areas of his or her life and in his or her relationships with everyone – family, friends or strangers.
How do we teach children “integrity” and help them to become fully integrated persons?
After more than 40 years in education (which includes teaching a lot of parenting classes), I have seen that the children who are becoming persons of integrity are generally those whose parents are themselves mature and integrated and not afraid to guide their children according to these same values. Realizing the stages of human development appropriate at each stage of development, good parents strongly attend to these stages, helping their children to develop each component of their being. This takes nurturing children’s spiritual lives through Mass and the sacraments, prayer in the home, and lessons in sharing, giving and forgiving in the family.
Mentoring their growth in integrity also means encouraging children to strive for the best in their education and developing their abilities or talents. (It is encouraging the children to pursue THEIR interests and abilities, NOT to fulfill parents’ unmet dreams).
It is exposing children to educational and cultural opportunities that will help them develop their potential. It does not permit children to be filled with the negative aspects of the secular and technological “world.” Teaching children about integrity takes courage and creativity on the part of parents and teachers.
Some of these lessons are difficult. Parents must allow children the freedom to realize consequences for negative choices. Responsibility for self and others contributes to becoming a whole, or integrated person. Responsibility is learned by being permitted to take responsibility. If a child is rescued and excused by the parents taking over the responsibility, personal integrity will never come about.
The most important part of helping children to become fully integrated human beings is through example. Where children see their parents acting in age-appropriate, fully integrated ways, they will follow, for parents are the children’s greatest heroes. Parents who pray, receive the sacraments, make faith an active part of the home and train and nurture the growth of their children “24/7” in all facets of their development, will eventually rejoice in children who have become completely and fully integrated young Christian leaders who can help change the world.
Please help us in our mission to assist readers to integrate their Catholic faith, family and work. Tell your family and friends about this article using both the Share and Recommend buttons below and via email. We value your comments and encourage you to leave your thoughts below. Thank you! – The Editors
Newly Released Christmas CD from the Carmelite Sisters. A sacred stillness wraps itself gently around Carmel each Christmas. Peace descends and seeps its way into the very atmosphere we breathe. In the quiet tranquility before Christmas, expectant prayer reaches new depths within our souls. At midnight, when the Christ Child is laid into the crèche, Carmel is ablaze with joy. Sharing Christmas in Carmel is our gift to you, that you, too, may experience new hope and joy this Christmas – the joy of Christ, our Savior, Who has come.
To learn more about the Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles, read their biography on the right sidebar and visit their website.
They publish a beautiful print magazine, Spirit of Carmel, and we encourage you to support the work of the sisters with your prayers and through donations and subscriptions to the Spirit of Carmel.
If you are able to help them, please click on the image of their magazine to visit their subscription and donation page.
If you hear God calling you to the religious life, I encourage you to visit their vocations page. – Deacon Mike
Or for more information, please contact:
Sister Grace Helena, OCD, Vocation Directress
920 East Alhambra Road
Alhambra, California 91801
Category: Catholic Family
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Whether one believes that the referee decision was justified or too harsh, there is in my mind another aspect that matters more and brings up an interesting comparison with handball. For many decades, in handball we had a punishment in the rule book, exclusion, which rarely was used because it was felt that its consequences were too harsh. It was generally agreed that leaving a team with one player less for the entire duration of the games was bound to affect the spectacle in a very negative game, leaving the shorthanded team without much hope. The situation is not quite the same in football, where a team can survive for an extended period in this way, but it normally has a major impact, not just for the teams but also for the spectators and a worldwide TV audience. This is of course especially the case, if the send-off happens very early in the game.
In handball, we decided not so long ago to remove this drastic punishment. Instead we have ‘red card with report’ and ‘red card without report’, depending on the severity of the infringement. But in both cases the team is back to full strength after two minutes. On some occasions, I had the opportunity to discuss with FIFA and UEFA officials about the feasibility of introducing a similar principle in football, i.e., that one could allow a red-carded player to be replaced after X minutes. But the unwillingness to see the merits of such an idea was always astonishingly strong, even if the football officials agreed that such an approach could make the decision to show a red card much less dramatic and controversial.
So, it seems that on this point we have a clear advantage in handball, but the issue is still not free from problems.
Instead we have had some improper unwillingness in some places to accept the global principles contained in the IHF playing rules. Under those rules, the referees (and nobody else) make a final decision whether the infringement that leads to a red card is severe enough to warrant a report to authorities. The purpose of the report is to enable the responsible federation to take a decision about further punishment, such as a suspension from X games. The rules make it clear that such added punishment is not to be considered in those cases where the referees have decided that the violation belonged in the category that did NOT warrant a report.
Nevertheless, some national federations have incorrectly taken upon themselves to set aside this basic principle in the rules, by pronouncing added punishment also in cases which the referees found to be less severe. I was happy to read this week that perhaps the most prominent one of these federations, namely the Danish one, has now decided to abandon its flawed practices and follow the IHF rules and principles. So all that we are now waiting for is for the European Handball Federation (EHF) to come to the realization that they should follow the same course and give up a self-proclaimed prerogative which they do not really have!
I think I have made it clear on several occasions, that I generally find the EHF to be a competent and well-managed organization, but that their handling or rules issues, protests, and disciplinary matters leaves a lot to be desired. Perhaps it is the size of the EHF operations and the broad scope of their competitions that cause difficulties, as they require a large bureaucracy with a formidable set of rules and regulations, sometimes seemingly a bit removed from the practical reality on the handball court. Perhaps it also reflects a disconnect between handball experts and legal/administrative functionaries.
In any event, the recent handling of the protest from Croatia Zagreb regarding their crucial Champions League game against Minsk puts the reputation of the EHF in a poor light. The protest essentially involved the inability of the match delegate to detect that a player serving a 2-minute suspension entered the court and contributed to the scoring of the goal late in a game with a very close final result in favor of Minsk. The initial response to the protest was correct, in the sense that the denial of the protest was based on the principle that a protest against ‘an observation of facts’ is not valid.
But when Croatia appealed the initial verdict, the statement of denial at the second level in the process was horrifying. Because it stated that the EHF hypothetically could go against the basic principle, but only if the error in an observation had ‘an essential and crucial influence on the final result’. In other words, the EHF entity admitted that the EHF is willing to go against basic principles, but at the same time they showed a terrible judgment in claiming that the effect on the final result was not obvious. So it is easy to understand why Zagreb was not willing to accept the denial of their protest with this kind of reasoning, and they have now taken the matter to EHF Court of Arbitration. As I see it, it would really be an injustice if the protest were to be denied again at this final level, given the terrible arguments that have been used. And, if the final verdict were to go in the favor of Zagreb, there should be a replay and also a possible impact on which team should play in the upcoming Round of 16.
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To keep up its commitments to sustainability, Verizon has taken up a clean-up drive, where general public will be allowed to play their small parts to make the Earth little greener by simply submitting their unused electronic equipment at Verizon’s (News - Alert) Telecom Park data center in Tampa, Fla.
The initiative relates to Verizon's zero-landfill policy. In 2009, about 500,000 personal computers and other electronics were collected in the company's countrywide recycling program.
In a press release, the company encouraged individuals to stage a search at the nooks and corners of their homes for unused electronic equipment that do nothing but occupy space and collect dust.
The company announced that the Verizon Data Center at 7701 E. Telecom Parkway in Telecom Park is opening its doors from 7:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 24, as a collection site. People are invited to come and dispose old laptop and desktop computers, keyboards and cables.
The facility is also going to accept other electronic gadgets such as televisions, gaming consoles, telephones, answering machines, stereo and audio devices, paper shredders, remote controls, cameras and small electronic appliances and toys, the company announced in the release.
However, people are asked not to bring hazardous waste materials, including batteries, ink cartridges, toners and mercury bulbs. Radioactive material such as X-ray equipment, medical waste, fluid-containing devices, computer monitors, refrigerators and freezers, are also not going to be accepted.
“We believe in sustainability as much as possible and we're excited to extend these efforts free of charge to the general public,” company spokesman Bob Elek said in a statement.
TMCnet reported that Verizon announced its readiness to activate capacity on the Europe India gateway submarine cable system. With the activation, enterprise customers across the globe will be able to start taking advantage of the newly activated Europe India Gatewy cable, the company claimed.Madhubanti Rudra is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Tammy Wolf
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Since the beginning of commerce and coinage, gold has been seen as a valuable metal that has allowed trade between countries, cultures, and merchants. Even in today’s markets, Gold is a precious metal that remains critically important to economies around the world. The question is, if you’re going to start looking at gold bullion as an investment, then what do you need to know?
The Importance of Gold
Gold is a treasured metal in and of itself. Aside from being an important money maker for nations lucky enough to have abundant supplies, gold is still the most in demand precious metal for jewelry in the world. In addition to this, investment of gold tends to spike at times when the economy is uncertain, especially the U.S. economy or when the U.S. Dollar is weak.
Gold Bullion Vs. Market Gold Prices
Before investing it is important to understand the enormous difference between investing in gold bullion and investing in gold as a commodity, complete with full market movements. When you’re talking about gold bullion, that is purchasing physical pieces of gold. This often comes in a variety of gold coins that are valued based on their exact ounce weight times what the price of gold per ounce is at that point.
Market gold prices, as they are found from commodity market prices, mean you’re investing in a place in the commodities market and not in the physical gold you can hold, horde, or keep for safe keeping until you sell it back. Market gold is like investing in stock – your invested money can rise or fall based on the price of gold, and you are subject to the movement of market prices. That’s a lot of volatility.
When Should You Buy Gold Bullion?
Gold bullion is a solid investment for people who love the idea of having gold on hand because of its tangible value, want to invest for the future, but don’t have any confidence in stocks, commodities, or any of the funds out there. Ideally, the best return is to buy gold bullion when the overall economy is healthy, but you don’t think it will remain that way (gold tends to be lower when the U.S. economy is booming and higher in price when the U.S. economy is down).
This gives the best value on a return, and gold bullion can also be seen as a great long term investment because simply by rising costs and inflation over time gold will continue to be more valuable. Gold will cost more several hundred years in the future than it does now – that just makes sense.
When Should You Sell Gold Bullion?
There are a few thoughts on this. Many people invest in gold bullion for the long-term and plan on keeping it for years or decades. On the other hand, if you hit a point where the price of gold is double what it was when you first bought it, that is certainly worth considering! The other thought is that when it looks like the U.S. economy is going to go from hurting to booming, that’s a good time to sell, as well, and to sit on the money until you see how things play out. Or you even have the option of doubling up on gold bullion when the price plummets one more time.
There are many different options – but the best time to sell depends on your needs, your goals, and what your main focus is.
Gold bullion can be a great safe place to invest money no matter what the markets are doing, and the ability to hold a tangible thing of value. Look at what your options are, and see if bullion is the right step for you.
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|Bespoke models by Corthay|
As I have stated before, there seems to be a whole lot of confusion as to how a shoe is made (whether by hand, machine or a bit of both), particularly due to the lack of knowledge from salesmen at retail stores, as well as the misrepresentation of words (such as 'handmade') printed on a shoe itself. These two things, coupled with the gullibility and naïveté of many male consumers, leave a lot of people to believe that their shoes are of a higher quality/grade than they actually are. Normally I wouldn't care about such things, as it's hard to try and correct every lie that people are told each and every day in order to buy such and such product, but as a person who truly cares about the reputation of shoes and the fact that I have my own brand coming out soon, I feel that this issue must be acknowledged, thoroughly and constantly until people start to become more aware. Now some of these terms were created many years ago, and have been modified/altered in terms of their defining features, so I will give the account that I believe to be correct, which just might be up for debate...
While I have never actually seen this done (as in never been to one of these factories), mass-produced shoes would be the kind that are pumped out thousands by the day, as common sense would tell you. Shoes that are predominantly created by machines, conveyer belts, and chemical products. Think glued shoes, shoes that are selling by the millions a year. There is simply no way that people can be there to pump each and every one of them through. Sure you have people who will work the machines and handle the shoes, as in maintain them electronically or however, so that there are no hiccups in production, but there are definitely not any skilled individuals guiding the shoes along, making sure that every detail is sorted out. These will be the shoes that will retail under $200 (£125). They will be shapeless, use low-grade leather, most likely not be that comfortable and won't last a long amount of time. This is not always the case though, as some brands (whose pockets are deep) have found a way to produce the shoes cheap, but give you something that can rival a decent shoe (think Ecco shoes - decent leather, long-lasting but mass produced).
|Crockett & Jones|
For me, a bench grade shoe denotes the presence of a skilled worker at each machine within the factory, who is actively taking part in the production process by guiding the shoes through each stage of manufacturing. This takes people with years of experience and knowledge. Not any 'ol Joe off of the street could just start doing this.... Now, this next bit is where myself and others might differ, but I don't believe that a bench grade level of craftsmanship strictly refers to goodyear welted shoes. Santoni, for example, who predominantly makes blake stitched shoes, has skilled workers positioned at every machine, guiding the shoes along, in order to produce them. This for me, also indicates a bench grade shoe. Now bench grade shoes, are going to be your entry point into quality footwear. They will use medium grade leathers, have a slightly more shaped last than a mass produced shoe, and will be of better quality overall. However, within the bench grade category of shoe, there will be some makes that are better than others, say C&J versus Loake.
|Edward Green, Photo Courtesy Of: Leffot|
A hand grade shoe, will start off like a bench grade one, only that there will be more handwork involved, mainly in the finishing part of production. Things like the waist of the shoe, will be finished with a tool that rounds off the edges (bevelled), fudge wheels being used by hand to create those ridge-like indentations on the welt in order to pronounce the stitching, and the sole will have a channel stitch (closed and clean) as opposed to an open stitch that you can see. Everything will just look a bit cleaner, a bit more artisan. The shoes will be more shapely, as they will leave the last inside of it longer (to gain a strong mold), as well as just have a more shaped last, less bulbous. The leathers all around the shoe will be better, from sole, to upper to lining. But, just because the shoe says hand grade, does not mean that it was made by hand.
|Deco Range, by Gaziano & Girling|
I had never really believed in using the term 'semi-bespoke,' because I always felt like there was no such way to half create something for someone. As in, being that bespoke is defined as 'spoken for' meaning that something was created specifically (to their measurements when referring to articles of clothing) for someone, then how could it be semi-specific? But, that was until I learned that through Saint Crispins MTO/semi-bespoke program, not only do you get a completely handmade shoe, but they also allow you to alter a preexisting last. This means that it is like the idea of MTM suits, whereby you take a standard block and alter it to someones measurements (not perfect, but close) but then created by hand, instead of machine. This to me, would define semi-bespoke, as well as 'handmade.' Now on the other hand, there is also semi-handmade, like the Deco range by Gaziano & Girling. It is considered so due to the fact that certain parts of the shoe (i.e. the waist), were not only finished by hand, but also lasted and stitched too. Therefore certain parts of the 'making' process were completely done by hand and not by machine.
|Bespoke Spat Boot by Anthony Delos|
Bespoke shoes are shoes that are completely customized and made entirely (with the exception of the stitching of the upper leather) by hand. This invokes a long process, whereby the customer must get measured by the last maker, talk through design ideas, choose toe shapes and await for his trial fit. After the shoe company has made his last and a mock-up of the shoe for the customer to try for fit, can the shoe then be completed. It usually takes anywhere from 4-6 months, depending on whether or not the customer is new (i.e. has never had a trial fit). Be wary of anything that takes a shorter amount of time or does not involve this process. With a bespoke shoe, there should be no size on the inside, you should then have your own last (but they don't give them to you) and it should (in theory) look like a work of art, and not something that you can pluck off of the shelf...
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Small business index ends 2011 right where it started.
A monthy measure of economic conditions for small businesses in Colorado ended 2011 at exactly the same level as it started last year.
While the small business sector has rebounded over the past year, prospects for continued improvement in the coming year could depend on what happens in Europe, the Middle East and Washington, D.C., said Jeff Thredgold, an economist who calculates the Vectra Bank Colorado Small Business Index.
“A significant share of Colorado economic fortunes this year will be determined by outside developments in the U.S. and global economies,” Thredgold said.
The Vectra Bank Small Business Index retreated to 112.8 in December, down seven-tenths from a revised 113.5 for November. The December reading matched the January reading, but remained more than six points above the reading for December 2010.
The index measures economic conditions from the perspective of a small business owner or manager. Lower numbers are associated with less favorable conditions.
The statewide seasonally adjusted unemployment rate, the most heavily weighted component of the index, edged down a tenth to 8 percent in November, the month for which the December index was based. A lower jobless rate actually pulls down the index because it suggests less access to labor for small businesses, which typically encounter difficulty competing against larger firms to recruit and retain employees.
At the same time, though, nonfarm payrolls grew an estimated 25,500 over the year ending in November. Job gains push up the index because they lead to greater income and retail sales.
Nationally, nonfarm payrolls grew an estimated 200,000 in December as the jobless rate retreated to 8.5 percent, the lowest level in nearly three years.
While most states have added jobs over the past year, various external threats could affect continued economic recovery in the coming year, Thredgold said. The performances of the global and U.S. economies affect the index.
Those threats include a possible recession in Europe and increasing tensions over Iran and its potential for developing nuclear weapons, he said. In Washington, D.C., a decision looms in Congress over the extension of a payroll tax cut through the end of the year as well as an extension of unemployment benefits.
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WASHINGTON — Sen. Mark Udall would like lawmakers to think twice before saying alright to legislation that might duplicate or overlap with an existing federal program or office.
After backing a package that raised taxes and delayed scheduled reductions in spending in January, the Colorado Democrat has co-sponsored a measure authored by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) that would require the Congressional Research Service to conduct an analysis of legislation that creates a federal program or office to examine if it is redundant or similar to an existing entity.
“All too often, Congress focuses on creating new programs and regulations instead of updating existing programs or abolishing those that have outlived their purpose. This bipartisan, commonsense bill will help eliminate duplicative programs and ensure that lawmakers formally analyze possible duplication when they a bill or resolution,” Udall said in a statement.
Last month, the federal government’s internal watchdog found that the government might waste and duplicate as much as $95 billion a year through redundant programs.
The Government Accountability Office report described 31 areas in which federal programs overlap or duplicate or are fragmented with existing federal entities. It noted three federal offices oversee the inspection of catfish and nine federal agencies oversaw 82 wind-related initiatives in 2011.
Senate aides did not respond for comment, but the prospects for passage of the bill are uncertain. Similar versions of the legislation fell a few votes shy of the 67 needed for final passage in June 2011 and February 2012. Most of the Senate Democratic caucus voted no both times, so flipping some of those votes in the Democratic-controlled upper chamber is likely to be a challenge.
Yet supporters of the bill expressed measured optimism that the legislation would pass the senate.
“I think we’ve got a good shot at it,” Udall said in a brief interview Tuesday, noting he plans to attach Senate Resolution 110 as an amendment to an underlying bill. He added that supporters may need to garner no more than 60 votes for final passage.
“(T)he only bad thing I can say about the proposal itself is that it wasn’t suggested 30 years ago. If lawmakers are tuned into reality, I should think an idea like this would sail through the chamber like a Mother’s Day resolution,” a Senate Republican aide said.
Democratic senators who opposed the 2011 version of the bill did not tip their hand as to their intentions if the Senate votes on the bill again.
“I don’t remember,” Dianne Feinstein of California said.
“I don’t think I did vote against it. Let me get back to you,” Mark Warner of Virginia said.
Udall’s alliance with Coburn is consistent with his pledge in January that his “number-one job” in the new Congress was to help get the government out the red, but comes just months after Udall’s vote in favor of a “fiscal-cliff package” that put off scheduled spending cuts and raised payroll taxes.
Udall’s “Senate twin,” Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) voted against raising taxes and delaying the spending cuts, a contrast that prompted the senior senator to make a round of weekend media appearances on national and Denver outlets to explain his vote.
Udall, who spent a decade in the House of Representatives before his 2008 election to the Senate, is seeking a second term in 2014.
Although a Public Policy Polling survey found that barely more than half of Coloradans approve of Udall’s performance, Republicans have yet to field a candidate to challenge him.
Coburn has emphasized saving government funds one billion dollars at a time, and while the federal government’s total debt is approaching $17 billion, the message has attracted its share of supporters.
“We need to do more with less,” Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said in an interview Tuesday. “When I was governor, we put together a task force that saved $50 million (a year) by consolidating agencies.”
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Anyone with a moderate interest in history will know that in the later years of his reign, Henry VIII seemed to have an identity crisis. His personality change from a generous and virtuous prince into a monster and tyrannical king is well documented, and has been debated by Tudor historians for decades.
It has long been thought that this change came about due to a particularly bad jousting accident on January 24 1536, when Henry was thrown from his horse, who in turn fell upon him, causing a two hour loss of consciousness. Although he recovered, the incident, which ended his jousting career, caused serious leg problems, which plagued him for the rest of his life.
Now this has been corroborated by the scientific community. According to neurobiologists at Yale University, the accident may well have caused an undetected brain injury that profoundly affected his personality and memory. The team retrospectively analysed the nature of Henry VIII’s well documented personality change, proposing that
the Tudor king’s jousting habit may have led him to suffer from “traumatic brain injuries” similar to those experienced by American football players. An analysis of his “symptoms” led them to conclude that “the picture was so consistent with the sequel of chronic concussion, intellectual honesty would dictate writing about traumatic brain injury in Henry”.
This comparison between NFL players and Tudor jousters struck me as all too apt, because both pastimes represent the pinnacle of masculinity for their day.
Tournaments through the ages
Jousting tournaments originated in the 12th century. They were central to the world of medieval chivalry, used as training grounds for knights in the achievement of prowess, honour and renown. In the early tournaments, the mock battle (the mêlée) was not formalised, or even confined to the field at hand. Knights would be assigned to two opposing teams and would charge at each other on a given signal: a practice that was not at all dissimilar to medieval warfare.
By the 15th century the mêlée had grown completely out of fashion and had been replaced by the single combat that was now the high point of the tournament. The joust was fought between two individuals, the knights riding from opposite ends of the lists to encounter each other with lances. It was much easier to identify the victor in the jousts compared to the mass participators in the mêlée.
By the reign of Henry VIII, the joust had become a more formalised competition. Rules had been introduced, including score cheques and prizes. The tournament included three basic categories of martial encounter: the joust, the tourney and the foot combats, or fighting at the barriers. In the tourney teams of knights fought on horseback with swords, staves and clubs, rather than lances, but as in the jousts, the number of strokes delivered determined the number of scores. The foot combat involved two contestants fighting on foot with a variety of weapons, such as swords, pikes, clubs or poleaxes. Henry’s men needed to be expert in all three contests if they were to succeed in the Tudor tournament.
Henry held more than 50 tournaments at his court, most in the first 20 years of his reign. He had been taught to engage in combat on both foot and horseback and he was trained in a variety of weapons, and put these skills to the test by frequently competing in tournaments – up until his 1536 accident. Henry would often take on the role of chief challenger, leading a team of four to six knights into the tiltyard ready to compete against the opposition, not unlike the role of the captain of the England football squad today.
Like modern day sports events, Tudor tournaments attracted competitors, spectators and foreign guests from far. They were one of the few occasions for ordinary people to see their king and his courtiers, and in their best guise: the chivalric displays of tournaments emphasised the majesty of Henry VIII and his nobility and their superiority within Tudor society. It was an important arena in which men could demonstrate their individual prowess in front of a vast audience.
In the Tudor period the medieval knight was still considered the ultimate male pinup. One man who was able to fully embody this knightly ideal was Charles Brandon, considered the Wayne Rooney of the jousting world. Brandon was able to build for himself an entire career that was founded on his ability to achieve high scores in the tiltyard. Surviving score cheques from the Tudor court illustrate that few men could beat him. Skilled jousters were given the unique opportunity to prove that they were better than the king, and he rewarded their displays of chivalry and masculinity. Of course, this was a sticky game – it was in their interest not only to give the king a well fought match, but ultimately they still had to ensure that Henry won in the end.
Luckily, today’s football players don’t have that particular delicacy to deal with. No need to lose on purpose. But other aspects of this ideal of medieval masculinity transmit perfectly into the modern world. Henry Cavill, who recently played Brandon in the television series, The Tudors, has since starred as superhero legend Superman in Man of Steel. Superman, an icon of heterosexual masculinity, is quite literally the modern version of the erstwhile man of steel, flying on horseback down the tiltyard in his plate armour supported by his superhero body.
So whether a “silly boy with a horse and a stick” (as Jocelyn of A Knight’s Tale so eloquently put it), a man kicking a ball or flying in his iconic cloak, the ideal male proves himself with props aplomb.
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Women who give birth at home as part of a publicly funded home birth program have an overall low risk of problems such as stillbirth, postpartum hemorrhaging and emergency cesarean section, a new study of women with low-risk pregnancies has found.
Home birth is not a popular choice in Australia compared to other countries, with only 0.9% of all women who gave birth in Australia in 2010 opting for home birth. In the Netherlands, however, around a third of women who had a baby in 2004 gave birth at home.
The researchers, whose study was published today in the Medical Journal of Australia, analysed data from 2005 to 2010 from nine publicly funded home birth programs in place in Australia at that time, a cohort that accounted for 97% of births in such programs at the time.
Most of the women in the study were aged between 26 and 35 years-old and had already given birth before.
“Of the 1807 women who intended to give birth at home at the onset of labour, 1521 (84%) did so. 315 (17%) were transferred to hospital during labour or within one week of giving birth. The rate of stillbirth and early neonatal death was 3.3 per 1000 births; when deaths because of expected fetal anomalies were excluded it was 1.7 per 1000 births. The rate of normal vaginal birth was 90%,” the study found.
Caroline Homer, Professor of Midwifery at University of Technology, Sydney and a co-author of the study, said those outcomes compared with a still birth rate of about 5.2 per 1000 births in low risk women who do not have home births, and a rate of normal vaginal birth of just 63%.
The average rate of third degree tears in the women in the study was 1.1%, compared with 2.3% in public hospital births, she said.
Many women are advised that receiving a post-birth injection of a drug called Syntocinon that mimics the effect of the hormone oxytocin will help the placenta come away cleanly and reduce the risk of post-partum haemorrhage, a technique called ‘active management’ of the third stage of labour.
“Many of the women in our home birth cohort didn’t use active management of third stage. In hospital births, a post-partum haemorrhage rate of 5% is not uncommon and ours was 1.8%,” said Professor Homer.
“When it comes to a low-risk birth, if all is going well, women are in their own environment, they are not stressed by external factors or a scary environment, things go well. Just letting nature take its course may well be a safe option for these women,” she said.
Over half (52%) of the women studied gave birth in water, an option that is not available at all labour wards. Six weeks after birth, 69% of the women were still breastfeeding, compared with Australian Bureau of Statistics data showing that 58% of all infants were exclusively breastfed eight weeks after birth.
However, the researchers stopped short of drawing any conclusions about safety because the sample size was not large enough.
The findings may reflect the fact a publicly funded home birth is only available for women who are not carrying twins, have no medical or surgical risk factors and are not over their due date or giving birth prematurely.
Hannah Dahlen, Professor of Midwifery at University of Western Sydney, said the findings we “very reassuring” and showed a very low perinatal mortality rate, comparable with birth centres.
“The findings should now reassure health services to provide publicly funded home birth as an option for low risk women. Currently, there is still a lot of reluctance and opposition from the medical establishment to home birth and it is time to look at the data and not the one or two cases (all involving high risk women) that hit the media,” she said.
“Home birth has doubled in the past four years in Australia, as it has in the USA, and while there is nervousness from doctors, there is increasing interest from women. In Australia the worrying rise in freebirth (birth at home with no health professional) is evidence we are not meeting women’s needs regarding a low intervention model such as homebirth,” she said.
Professor Dahlen said a 90% normal vaginal birth rate is “a testament to the benefits of a supportive, midwife-attended home birth.”
“In the Netherlands, if you have a birth in hospital, the women ask each other ‘What went wrong?’ In Australia, for some reason, we ask ‘What is wrong with you’?,” she said.
“It is time we looked at this issue and had an informed discussion based on scientific evidence instead of based on media sensation and medical bias.”
The Australian study follows a Dutch study featured in the BMJ last week that showed the risk of severe complications was lower for women who gave birth at home compared to those who had a baby in hospital.
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Franklin D Roosevelt
Franklin D Roosevelt, Born on January 30, 1882 and died April 12, 1945. Franklin D Roosevelt was a great leader of our country, helping us through the attack on Pearl Harbor. "A day that will live in infamy." President Roosevelt had said during his speech about the attack. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt had uttered those words to the ones who had great depression from the attack. Franklin Roosevelt was one of the best leaders America has ever had.
Osami Nagano was the leader of the Japanese leader at the time of the attack. Osami Nagano went to the naval academy and attended Harvard Law School. He then went to the Japanese Navy, then becoming the Chief of the General Staff. He then won the election of being leader and ordered the attack on Pearl Harbor. After the war Osami Nagano was arrested for war crimes and died while awaiting his trial. Osami Nagano lived from June 15, 1880 to January 5, 1947.
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The current campaign has paid little attention to the US budget crisis.
“Here’s one way to get a handle on how big the federal debt is. The annual interest we pay on that $9 trillion costs us more than the war in Iraq. Mindboggling, isn’t it? And while getting out of Iraq could save massive amounts of money — not to mention irreplaceable human lives — it won’t solve our budget problems. As of June 2007, we’ve spent more than $600 billion on Iraq, Afghanistan and the rest of the “war on terror.” In the same time period, we added over $2 trillion to the country’s debt. So it’s not just Iraq — not by a long shot. “
That was written by the authors of ‘Where Does The Money Go‘, Jean Johnson and Scott Biddle. Some of their proposed solutions maybe hard for us to hear. It is, however, a fact that our budget deficit and national debt are unpopular issues that must be addressed.
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From a surface view, it appears that strained relations between Tokyo and Beijing are experiencing a slight détente. Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held two summit meetings with his Chinese counterparts—one with Chinese President Xi Jinping last April in Jakarta and the second with Premier Li Keqiang on the sidelines of the Trilateral Summit with South Korea this past November in Seoul. There also has been increased dialogue between foreign ministers, resuscitated talks on security and maritime affairs, and high-level commitments to implement crisis avoidance mechanisms to avert a potential clash over their dispute in the East China Sea.
There were other positive signs too. Abe appears more willing to accommodate Chinese concerns about Japan’s approach toward history through his decision not to visit the controversial Yasukuni shrine (after his provocative visit in December 2013 enraged Beijing). And, while it received boiler-plate criticism from Beijing, Abe’s statement on the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II last August made reference to upholding previous statements—including the Murayama Statement—on Japan’s wartime contrition and guilt.
China, too, has responded with a more pragmatic approach to its relations with Japan. Beijing finally abandoned its stubborn and ineffective approach of pre-conditioning high-level dialogue upon Japan’s willingness to make concessions over the disputed Senkaku (referred to as Diayou in China) Islands. Meanwhile, despite constant public statements of concern, Beijing has ratcheted down the overt rhetoric of its criticisms of Japan’s attitude toward history.Enjoying this article? Click here to subscribe for full access. Just $5 a month.
On the economic front, trade continues to be the linchpin of the relationship—China remains Japan’s largest trading partner by far; likewise, despite adverse impacts from their political rift, China also relies on trade with Japan (which is its second most important partner after the United States). According to Japan’s External Trade Organization, trade between the two countries amassed over $343.7 billion in 2014. Another positive is the momentum on a potentially historic trilateral free trade agreement (FTA), currently under advanced negotiation, alongside South Korea. The China-Japan-Korea FTA would combine three of the largest economies in the Asia-Pacific and represent a convergence of more than $16.5 trillion, as measured through gross domestic product.
However, this “glass half-full perspective” should not blind observers to the real troubles that remain in the bilateral relationship—most of which are systemic and bound up in the countries’ competing strategic interests in East Asia. Indeed, despite their economic interconnectedness, Tokyo and Beijing appear to be diverging more than converging. Last year, Japan refrained from joining the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)—being the only country in East Asia besides North Korea that has opted out. Meanwhile, Tokyo remains wary of China’s ambitious plans to increase connectivity and infrastructure through its “One Belt, One Road” strategy, which prescribes massive development in Central and South Asia.
Aside from these differences, trade between Japan and China has also suffered. According to JETRO, bilateral trade decreased 12.1 percent over the first half of 2015. The most precipitous decline was on Japanese imports of Chinese products, which plummeted more than 13 percent during this same period. These trends are unlikely to subside. Indeed, some of the most impacted areas—such as trade in textiles—are likely to decline even more in the coming years as Japanese companies have relocated many of their manufacturing bases to Southeast Asian nations such as Vietnam or Indonesia.
This economic decline is magnified by strained political relations that—despite the resumption of high-level dialogue—remain at their nadir. Beijing continues to play hardball with Japan over their dispute in the East China Sea and has upped the ante recently with the introduction of armed coast guard vessels traversing the territorial waters surrounding the Senkaku/Diayou islands. Meanwhile, the number of incursions by Chinese vessels over the past year has actually increased—despite Abe and Xi breaking the ice and sitting down twice to ostensibly improve bilateral relations. But perhaps most unnerving is the fact that Tokyo and Beijing have failed to implement even the baseline crisis avoidance tools in the disputed waters—such as a hotline or common radio frequency.
Political ties will likely suffer even more due to Japan’s improvement in relations with China’s neighbors. Abe has invested an unprecedented amount of travel time and political capital through international visits. Japan is also reaching new heights with its traditionally good relationships with Australia, India, and even Taiwan. Even ties with South Korea, which had been on ice since Abe was elected in late 2012, are improving now under the momentum of last month’s deal on “comfort women” (sex slaves). Japan’s diplomatic surge in the region further isolates assertive Chinese behavior in the maritime domain—including the East and South China Seas—and solidifies its image in China as a growing strategic competitor.
The coming months provide opportunity for Japan and China to adopt a pragmatic approach to their ties. Both sides should push through on crisis mitigation measures in the East China Sea before an unintended incident pits them in an intractable situation. Similarly, they can restore political trust through strong reengagement in the trilateral context with South Korea, with the priority being a swift conclusion of the CJK FTA. Whether the political leadership on both sides can overcome the pressures on the relationship will be the key determinant on whether pragmatism wins over antagonism.
This article has previously been published on the EastWest Institute Policy Innovation Blog.
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Vaccinating for Marek’s
Marek’s vaccine does not prevent Marek’s disease, it prevents the malignant tumors caused by Marek’s disease.
SINCE I ORIGINALLY WROTE THIS PAGE THERE HAS BEEN MORE INFORMATION COME TO LIGHT ABOUT THE MAREK’S VACCINE. PLEASE TAKE THE TIME TO READ THE ARTICLES ABOUT THE MAREK’S VACCINE BEFORE YOU LEAVE OUR BLOG http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/tthis-chicken-vaccine-makes-virus-dangerous/
Marek’s Disease in Chickens
Marek’s Disease is a viral tumor-causing disease of chickens. Marek’s is seen worldwide and is so common that if you have birds, they have been exposed to Marek’s, regardless of whether they show symptoms or not.
There are 4 different forms of Marek’s:
- Cutaneous (skin Form)
- Neural (nerve form – causing paralysis)
- Ocular (eye form)
- Visceral (internal-organ form)
Marek’s is caused by herpes virus primarily affecting young birds. It is believed that most birds are immune by the time they reach maturity or 5-6 months old. Marek’s is often characterized by abnormal cell growth in the peripheral nerves and central nervous system causing paralysis, commonly in one or both legs: It used to be known to old timers as range paralysis. In addition the disease also may cause lesions on internal organs and other tissues, including feather follicles of the skin. The most prominent lesions may be tumors on vital organs such as liver, kidneys, testes, ova, spleen and lungs. Some birds may also exhibit the ocular form causing blindness and gray eyes in one or both eyes.
How Marek’s Disease is Spread
Marek’s is highly contagious and spreads by bird to bird contact, by contact with infected dust and dander, and by darkling beetles and mealworms that may live in the chicken house, although the virus has no affect on the beetles or mealworms. Chickens are most commonly exposed to Marek’s by contact with residual dust and dander in preciously infected houses, by air contamination from a nearby house, or by virus particles carried by personal equipment and clothing.
Mareks disease is not transmitted by mites, mosquitoes and coccidia. The virus does not survive the egg incubation process and is not spread by hatching eggs. Marek’s
diaease-causing virus particles can survive for months to years in chicken house dust and litter.
The signs and symptoms of Marek’s disease vary depending on the form of the disease.
Enlarged reddened feather follicles and white bumps on the skin that form brown crusty
Characterized by one, all or none of the following symptoms;
- Progressive paralysis, usually of the leg or wing, a typical leg-paralysis victim will have one leg extended forward and one leg extended back. A swelling of the sciatic nerve is the cause.
- Weight loss
- Labored breathing
- Starvation and death due to an inability to reach feed and water and to trampling by pen mates.
- Grey eye color
- Misshapen iris
- Weight loss
Tumors on internal organs including heart, ovary, liver and lung. This form can not be readily seen while the bird is alive. It can cause unexplained death until a necropsy is done. If you have chickens processed for the freezer you should ask the processor to let you know if they see anything unusual when butchering. They will make a note and let you know if tumors were found. Generally this information is not offered but they will tell you if you ask. No one knows the inside of your chickens like your butcher.
As always, first and foremost practice good biosecurity ! (yes I say that a lot 😉 )
- Breed for resistance – we have noticed that the imported birds are more susceptible to USA Marek‘s Disease, it is slightly different than Marek’s in the UK
- Good sanitation and ventilation
- Brood chicks separately from adults until 5 months of age (very important!)
- Keep turkeys with chicks (the vaccine is made from turkey herpes virus and raising turkey poults with chicks has shown to provide additional immunity to chicken mareks -( however could lead to black head disease in turkeys) In my own unprofessional study, this, along with vaccination, has worked nearly 100%. Chance?
Tumor formation from Marek’s disease can be prevented through vaccination.
Vaccination at one day of age usually protects birds through their lifetime. Again, in my own personal study, multiple vaccines at day old, and 3 weeks did not increase immunity. There is no treatment for Marek’s disease. Birds that contract Marek’s should be culled. Infected birds that recover can become carriers for life.
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As Mother Jones reports, Tea Partiers in Kansas and Arizona are losing their minds not just about current made-up anti-sustainability and Islamophobic conspiracies, but the possibility of future residents deciding to solve aforementioned made-up problems.
But what about the very real threat posed by the natural gas drilling technique known as fracking? While it creates huge profits for corporate drillers, nearby residents see few benefits and face potential health threats:
The report, based on three years of monitoring, found a number of potentially toxic petroleum hydrocarbons in the air near the wells including benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene and xylene. Benzene has been identified by the Environmental Protection Agency as a known carcinogen. Other chemicals included heptane, octane and diethylbenzene but information on their toxicity is limited.Much more data is needed on the threats posed by fracking to our air, water and public health. To learn more about fracking, tune in to NPR's series this week, The Fracking Boom: Missing Answers.
"Our results show that the non-cancer health impacts from air emissions due to natural gas development is greater for residents living closer to wells," the report said. "The greatest health impact corresponds to the relatively short-term, but high emission, well completion period."
That's due to exposure to trimethylbenzenes, aliaphatic hydrocarbons, and xylenes, all of which have neurological and/or respiratory effects, the study said. Those effects could include eye irritation, headaches, sore throat and difficulty breathing.
"We also calculated higher cancer risks for residents living nearer to the wells as compared to those residing further [away]," the report said. "Benzene is the major contributor to lifetime excess cancer risk from both scenarios."
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The United States for years has been President Musharraf’s chief cheerleader and has supported virtually every aspect of his rule in Pakistan. However, triumph by opposition parties in last month’s parliamentary election gave an overwhelming majority to the Pakistan People’s Party and the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz coalition, confronts America with new challenges. Teresita Schaffer and Jeffrey Ellis, writing in the current issue of South Asia Monitor, raise questions regarding how will the Bush administration or any future adminisration respond to the new configuration of power.
The stage is set for an early test whether Musharraf is prepared to accept a significant reduction in his powers in order to placate the new government or whether he intends to stand fast and refuse to make changes such as restoring Pakistan’s judiciary to its former positions. The authors suggest the new coalition has a vast array of problems to face regardless of issues in dealing with Musharraf. There is now a wheat shortage, power outages, suicide bombers and fighting in the northwest region. Both leading political parties appear more willing than Musharraf– or the United States– to arrange political settlements with militants in order to end violence.
At this point, no one knows for certain what a new president like Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton will do about Musharraf. Will political solutions take precedence over military?
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The mass appeal of video games is derived from the notion of people freely venturing across unknown worlds. Having the ability to explore, traverse and be entertained within a foreign setting offers a unique experience. Today, video game designers are on the lookout for the next best way to offer players the most interactive experience of all.
Virtual reality headsets are now on the cusp of new gaming scenarios, allowing players to have an almost real-life experience within the gaming environment. This begs the question: is VR the future of gaming? Perhaps! Below, we discuss this popular topic, having a deeper look into this innovative technology and what it might offer the gamers of today and tomorrow.
What is it?
Virtual reality (VR) is a technology that has the capability of replicating an environment, allowing people to interact with that environment in a unique way. VR can also replicate deep sensory experiences, from sight to touch, to smell and hearing. The first traces of “virtual realities” came to be before the 1950s in science fiction literature, specifically in the writings of Stanley G. Weinbaum. By the 1980s, the term “virtual reality,” was popularized and soon, tech companies began developing technologies of their own.
Currently, VR can be displayed via headsets or through computer screens. Whether an individual is playing poker at interactive online casinos like, newcasinosonline.co, or trying to battle armies in World of Warcraft, headsets are the most popular form of VR for gaming experiences worldwide. They allow the user to have more physical freedom, as they won’t have to operate gaming equipment by hand, providing them with a realistic, true-to-life, gameplay.
What Does VR Technology Hold for the Future of Gaming?
The most important facet of the discussion lies in the financial weight of developing such a technology, with the costs in creating VR technology that is usable being high. Some technologies allow users to interact with objects and people in enclosed spaces for indefinite amounts of time, and such an immersive experience is incredibly costly to develop. Like all forms of technology, the lower the costs, the more the experience itself lessens in quality and such is the same with VR. Thus, in order for quality VR technology to be available to the avid gamer, the affordability itself must play a huge role in its development.
The passion to develop such a technology is high and real, speaking to a real market for VR currently available and eager to adopt it. This highlights a future of gamers who will want to improve their interactive experiences as best as possible, regardless of price, to a certain degree, and regardless of the inevitable glitches that come with innovative technologies, along the way. Primarily, gamers enjoy the storytelling aspect of gaming, being able to transport themselves into worlds they are fascinated with and would otherwise never experience firsthand. As such, being able to experience that in a realistic way offers great benefits to the overall gaming experience, which 2D gaming is highly lacking in.
Although the passion and market are there, the immediate future speaks to a longer development stage. The VR technology of today is still being developed, with engineers seeking for better ways of building newer hardware and software that is both reliable and works. The research and development time put into this process is great, and fanatics of the technology have to wait before a truly refined version of it is available on the market for general gaming use.
Additionally, people will have to get used to this very different gaming experience. For general populations to be open to the idea of VR gaming, the technology will have to be accessible to as many people as possible, which doesn’t seem to be a reality at the moment. Gamers will have to try it, get used to it, be willing to pay for it, and open to putting their consoles aside for a very different experience altogether. It’s no doubt that the future of gaming lies in this unique technology, but at this stage, we are only seeing the beginnings of what could be available to us in the next decade or so.
This concludes my article on the question of if VR is the future of gaming? What are your own personal thoughts on VR? Please feel free to let me know in the comments section below.
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IBM announced that its Watson AI is getting image recognition capabilities earlier in the year, but this site that lets you feed in your own photos to see what it thinks is in them is both impressive and scary.
The visual recognition demo lets you give Watson an image URL or upload a photo and it’ll come back in a few seconds with what it thinks it sees.
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In my tests I fed Watson a few random photos I had on hand and the accuracy was quite surprising. It could figure out what was in landscape shots, animals (down to the breed) and even what’s in the background.
You’re also able to train Watson by uploading photos in bulk and classifying them, so it can learn what a certain classification is. You’ll need to upload more than 50 photos so it can reliably learn, but from there it’s able to get better over time.
The technical demonstration is available as an open source project so you can clone it and run on your own machine, or deploy it in the cloud to mess with yourself.
How well did Watson recognize your images? Let us know in the comments!
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Monday, April 15, 2013 at 2:49 p.m., two bombs went off 13 seconds from each other at the 117th annual Boston Marathon on Patriot’s day.
The terrorist attack, which killed three and wounded 282, hit home for many students at Norwich University who are tied to Boston in a variety of different ways.
The sunny start to the week turned into a somber day as the country and New England students were caught off guard by this terrifying event. One of them was Zach Milesky, a 21-year-old senior communications major from Cape Cod, Mass.
“My mom was at the finish line working at the medical tent,” he said. Milesky couldn’t get in contact with his mom because communication was cut off, “I didn’t know at the time that she got called an hour before the bomb went off to go back to her office.”
Federal officials took precautions and cut off phone lines because there was thought that the bombs could have been triggered using cellular devices, according to CNN. Today, some of these major questions still remain unanswered.
Milesky’s mother works for the Massachusetts State Department of Emergency Management. Senior Rachel Williams’s father works in the same field and she found herself caught up in the events in the same way.
“He is a first responder. I feel for the victims’ families because it could’ve been my family,” said Williams, 23, a criminal justice major from Weymouth, Mass.
“Every time I was in my room, I put my local news stations on my computer while cleaning my room or doing my homework just to keep up with it,” she said.
Two members of the Norwich family ran the marathon that day and were fortunately safe. Cross-country coach Nick Cooper and senior men’s varsity runner Ezekiel Cary both crossed the finish line before the explosions.
In honor of those participants that didn’t finish the race, volunteers, first responders – and the Norwich women’s rugby team – ran in honor of those who died across the nation. Thousands of people participated in a virtual run for Boston the Wednesday, April 17, after the attack. The rugby ladies wore blue and yellow, the colors of the famed marathon, made a sign that said “Run for Boston” with their names on it and posted a photo of themselves holding it up on the website leading the promotion.
“While running, I was just silent, thinking about how, yes, this happens all the time in Afghanistan and Iraq to Americans,” Williams said. “The fact that now it’s back on American soil it was just so real again after September 11,” she said.
Ezekiel Cary was with his parents and his aunt on the day of the marathon. “We were walking maybe a block or two south of the finish line when we saw people who were crying (and) throwing up on the side,” said Cary, a 21-year-old senior from Huntington, Vt. “It’s the end of a marathon, people do that, then we realized it was more serious than that and heard it had been an explosion,” he said.
Cary said he just wanted to leave the city when the word spread a couple of blocks down. He saw a little bit of smoke, police departments from surrounding towns driving into the city, and around six helicopters hovering over the 15 block area.
“It was too close for comfort,” he said.
The high of running the race contrasted with the horror of the blast. “There were so many people cheering for us, in over 26 miles there wasn’t more than a half a mile where there wasn’t someone there,” Cary said. “Nobody there did anything to deserve that.”
When they were leaving the area the family heard others say it was an act of terrorism, and the first emotion that Cary felt was anger.
On Thursday, April 18, the two brothers alleged to have undertaken the attack were identified and after the photos were released the manhunt began, resulting in the death of a security officer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as the elder brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
The manhunt for the younger brother began after he escaped the shootout injured, according to CNN.
One of Norwich’s very own wrestler, Alex Kwmuntis, was contacted by reporters who wanted to know if he had any connections to the younger bomber, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Kwmuntis had wrestled the suspect once at a Division I state tournament for Massachusetts during his senior year of high school.
“I had no connection with him,” he said.” And one person cannot tarnish the reputation of the good and disciplined people that wrestling produces and attracts.”
“It doesn’t affect the way I look at the situation. I still look at (it) as an outsider,” he said. “I feel for all the people whose family members or friends were lost or injured at the bombing.”
By the time Coach Cooper returned to the condo where he was staying, a mile and a half away from the scene, the bombing was on the news. He was on a subway during the explosion. “One of my other friends had just finished within two minutes of it,” Cooper said. He ran the marathon with a group of his college friends.
“I waited for an hour or so after my race because I had three other friends that were running,” he said. “I was going to go watch one of my other friends finish, then one of my other friends’ parents ran by me so I went to go track them down, I was thankful for that,” he explained.
“It was hard to process. We had just run a marathon so we were out of it to begin with. It was humbling and hard to understand that it could happen,” Cooper said.
The Boston Athletic Association, which runs the marathon, has already sent out a statement that the marathon will happen again next year, Cooper noted.
“To see how Boston reacted and how they bounced back, how the community did as a whole, how everybody helped out everybody, all the support and love, that was amazing,” said Abby Belcher, a 20-year-old junior communications major from Winthrop, Mass. She lives just seven minutes away from Boston and considers the city to be her hometown.
“I was on the bus with the softball team. We were on our way to New Hampshire to play Revere in a game. I got a text, a group message, from my friend who lives in Cambridge, about the bombings,” she said. “I felt useless.”
“I was able to access videos while we were still on the bus, me and a couple of girls that were from Mass. We were watching them and we were honestly just speechless,” Belcher said. “We couldn’t believe it, we saw it right in front of us and it was happening.
Belcher’s mother works in Harvard square in Cambridge and fortunately was not at work that day. “As soon as I found out that my family was okay, I started texting my friends because all my friends go to school in Boston so that’s really scary too,” she said.
For nights after the bombing, Norwich students honored those affected as the bugler played taps on the upper parade ground. This was to commemorate those lost in the tragedy and pay respects to “those that helped out that didn’t need to do anything,” according to Kwmuntis.
It was for “the people that were directly involved who put it out there for someone they didn’t even know,” he said.
“I think being in New England, it brought us together, which is great,” Milesky said. “Acts of terrorism are supposed to make us scared and do the exact opposite. We triumphed over what happened,” he said.
“Norwich stands behind Boston,” said Williams.
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In the spirit of this issue’s focus on the Best of Portland and beyond, here’s a look at the best of what’s been going down on the economic front:
Best Maritime Move to Link Maine’s Markets with the World: A sudden and unexpected surge of life came to Portland’s working waterfront last year when the Icelandic company Eimskip announced it would launch regular cargo ship service between Portland and European ports. Take a look at the huge piles of Eimskip shipping containers beside the Casco Bay Bridge and you’ll get a sense of the scale of goods that are now flowing in and out of Maine thanks to this move. The presence of Eimskip has also allowed for a bizarre infusion of Icelandic culture into Portland, including a recent Eimskip-sponsored series of free Nordic-themed events at SPACE Gallery. The main impact of Eimskip’s presence, though, is the chance for Portland to remain a real working port and for Maine to have a vital economic link with the rest of the world.
Best Effort to Derail Maine’s Economy: The chances of Maine becoming the nation’s next high-tech hub are slim, but there is at least one technology-oriented industry that the state is uniquely suited to serve: offshore wind energy. Maine’s coast is prime for the installment of offshore wind turbines, which is why the Norwegian company Statoil was willing last year to invest $120 million in floating wind turbines off the coast of Boothbay Harbor. But Governor LePage has made it clear he doesn’t like wind energy, and that’s why he reneged on a contract with Statoil that had already been approved by the Public Utilities Commission, prompting the company to back off the investment altogether. LePage says his intention was to give a University of Maine offshore wind project a better chance at winning funding, but the reasoning behind his excuse is incoherent. Since then, the UMaine project failed to win full funding, leaving scarce money for an industry that seemed to be the state’s best chance at combining large-scale economic development with sustainable energy production.
Best Common-Sense Economic Proposal: The city of Seattle recently drew the nation’s attention by raising the city’s minimum wage to $15 per hour. Maine’s minimum wage is exactly half that rate — $7.50 per hour. As long as Governor LePage reigns in Augusta, that’s not going to change. Fortunately, Portland has a mayor who recognizes that the city doesn’t have to wait. Mayor Michael Brennan said he expects to send a minimum wage ordinance to the City Council finance committee this fall (see “Efforts mount to raise minimum wage,” by Deirdre Fulton, March 28). What that ordinance will look like is yet to be determined. There’s a reasonable case to be made that Seattle’s steep hike is a step too far, even if it’s taking effect in a series of smaller increases. But there’s no sensible reason why any city, especially one undergoing a development boom, should allow its workers to be paid at a rate that’s 30 percent lower than the minimum wage in the 1960s (in inflation-adjusted dollars).
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NEW YORK - Flu season in the U.S. is off to its earliest start in nearly a decade - and it could be a bad one.
Health officials Monday said suspected flu cases have jumped in five Southern states, and the primary strain circulating tends to make people sicker than other types. It is particularly hard on the elderly.
"It looks like it's shaping up to be a bad flu season, but only time will tell," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But the nation seems fairly well prepared, Dr. Frieden said. More than a third of Americans have been vaccinated, and the vaccine formulated for this year is well-matched to the virus seen so far, CDC officials said.
Higher-than-normal reports of flu have come in from Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas. An uptick like this usually doesn't happen until after Christmas. Flu-related hospitalizations are also rising earlier than usual, and two children have already died.
It's not clear why the flu is showing up so early.
The last time flu season started this early was winter 2003-04, one of the most lethal seasons in the past 35 years, with more than 48,000 deaths. The dominant strain then was the same one this year.Aches & pains
-âFlu season usually peaks in midwinter.
-âSymptoms can include fever, cough, runny nose, head and body aches and fatigue. Some people also suffer vomiting and diarrhea, and some develop pneumonia or other severe complications.
-âAn estimated 112 million Americans have been vaccinated against it so far, the CDC said.
-âFlu vaccinations are recommended for everyone older than 6 months.
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Recommended Reading: Professors Lemley and Dogan: "Parody as Brand"
Professors Mark A. Lemley of Stanford Law School and Stacey L. Dogan of Boston University School of Law have authored an article (or "working paper") entitled "Parody as Brand" (download here). Their goal is to "think about what circumstances (if any) should lead courts to find parody illegal."
Courts have struggled with the evaluation of parody under trademark law. While many trademark courts have protected parodies, there are a surprising number of cases that hold obvious parodies illegal. The problem is particularly severe with respect to parodies that are used to brand products, a growing category. The doctrinal tools that generally protect expressive parodies often don't apply to brand parodies. Our goal in this paper is to think about what circumstances (if any) should lead courts to find parody illegal. We conclude that, despite courts’ increasing attention to speech interests in recent years, the law’s treatment of parody reflects too much uncertainty, leaving would-be parodists vulnerable to threats of legal action by trademark holders. In particular, given the flexibility of likelihood of confusion analysis, parodists’ fate is usually determined by the subjective judgment of courts, whose treatment of parody often seems to turn on instinct rather than trademark principles. We suggest some doctrinal tools that offer greater predictability and quicker resolution of parody cases, while avoiding some of the shortcomings of more traditional infringement analysis.
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East Timor is one of Australia’s closest neighbours.
It is a nation which has faced decades of oppression and violence and continues to be on the list of least developed nations in the world.
At most risk are the children.
Timor Children’s Foundation was established as a compassionate response to the needs of disadvantaged children in East Timor.
A specific focus has been providing assistance to orphans. There are over 40 children’s homes in East Timor. Children are often placed in these facilities because their families are too poor to look after them.
The Timor Children’s Foundation currently has a number of projects in East Timor that are supported by generous donations from our various supporters.
Some projects are tax deductible and others non-deductible.
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Expect a tax cut, Tennessee’s high-ranking lawmakers are telling the public. In fact, expect as many as four.
Capitol Hill leaders are all but promising that Tennesseans should expect to pay less taxes on everything from their groceries to inherited multimillion-dollar estates.
“The important thing is we are sticking to the basic philosophy of our party, which is when additional revenue comes into the state, we look for ways to return it to the taxpayers instead of spending it,” said House Speaker Harwell, R-Nashville.
In past years under Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, lawmakers had considered raising taxes, such as by removing the local sales tax cap on high-priced items like boats and furs. With the GOP taking control of both chambers and the governor’s office last year, the Legislature reversed course and cut taxes by giving seniors a tax break on income from investments.
“It’s absolutely the right thing to do,” said Ben Cunningham, spokesman for Tennessee Tax Revolt, a fiscally conservative public advocacy group, and a persistent critic of heavy taxpayer burdens.
“During the good times, which is what it looks like we’re entering into now, we’re reducing taxes and expanding our economy and expanding our tax base in the future. And that’s the way to go,” he said.
In recovering from the recession that began in 2008, state revenues are now up 4.8 percent compared to a year ago, giving state officials the flexibility to decide how — or if — they’ll spend that unexpected taxpayer money. But Dick Williams of the left-leaning Tennesseans for Fair Taxation says the state should avoid rushing to reduce taxes without finding a way to offset the revenue, calling this year’s tax reform “low-hanging fruit for winning elections.”
“The whole concept of just lower taxes as low as you can ignores the fact we all rely on … roads and schools and services government provides,” said Williams, TFT chairman and an advocate for reducing the food tax in exchange for a broad-based income tax. “We just think it’s bad policy and shouldn’t be used as just a popular re-election or election tool.”
The proposed cuts enjoy varying levels of support from the two political camps and would touch all sorts of Tennesseans. Plans range from wiping away the tax on gifts like hand-me-down family cars or multimillion-dollar inheritances, reducing costs at the grocery store and giving seniors a break on taxes from earnings on stocks and bonds.
Tennessee Democrats say they’re generally in favor of cutting taxes, too, but would rather spread any tax breaks out to a larger audience by reducing the sales tax on food — even if the savings would appear small.
“As far as having an effect on people, it doesn’t have near the effect that a reduction in the sales tax on food would have, for instance,” said leading House Democrat Craig Fitzhugh, of Ripley.
Here are the four major tax cuts lawmakers are considering this year and a breakdown of how much taxpayers are currently dishing out to pay them:
“Inheritance Tax” SB3762/HB3760
This tax kicks in only when someone inherits wealth or a property worth more than $1 million. Any dollar over the $1 million threshold is taxed at progressive rates from 5.5 percent to 9.5 percent. Gov. Bill Haslam wants to gradually raise the exemption to $1.25 million beginning next year.
For example, coming into a property worth $1.04 million costs $2,200 in taxes. However, being left a property worth $5 million would cost $368,400 to inherit. Under Haslam’s plan, the $1.04 million property could be passed down tax-free next year, and the $5 million property would cost $344,650 in taxes.
Haslam and Republican lawmakers want to phase out this so-called “death tax” over the next four years, saying it hampers farm and business owners and forces some to relocate so their heirs can avoid paying the tax when they die. Democrats agree with deleting the tax in principle but say they’d rather see the state take a bigger bite out of the tax on food.
Inheritance Tax Stats:
- In fiscal year 2011, people paid $97,875,967 in inheritance taxes.
- In 2010, people paid: $75,887,698 in inheritance taxes.
- That’s a 28.9% increase in the last year.
- Reducing the tax next year will mean $14.1 million less for state government.
“Grocery Tax” SB3763/HB3761
While most other products in Tennessee carry a 7 percent state tax, non-restaurant food is taxed at 5.5 percent. The tax doesn’t apply to all groceries, like diapers or garbage bags, but only food products like meat, vegetables and bread.
Haslam wants to reduce the tax to 5.3 percent in hopes to drop it to 5 percent in three years. However, there is so far no legislation that would require the state to follow the governor’s timeline.
A family of four buying $884 a month in groceries would save $21.22 in the first year under Haslam’s proposal. Dropping the tax to 5 percent would mean that family would save $53.04 annually, and eliminating it completely would translate to $583.44 in savings a year.
Both parties are on board with this tax cut, although Democrats and some Republicans want to take a larger slice out of the tax. Some want to drop it to 5 percent next year and others want to get rid of it all together.
Food Tax Stats:
- In fiscal year 2011, people paid $489,939,858 in taxes on non-restaurant food.
- In 2010, people paid $476,875,314 in taxes on non-restaurant food.
- That’s a 2.7 percent increase in the last year.
- Reducing the tax next year to 5.3 percent would mean $17.1 million less for state government to spend.
“Gift Tax,” SB2777/HB2840
This is the newest tax cut on the block this session. This bill would repeal the state’s current 5.5 percent to 16 percent tax on gifts to individuals, like cars, boats and real estate.
The tax rate and an exemption depend on the value of the gift and who it’s given to.
For example, a father can give his daughter his old Volkswagon, and she won’t have to pay the gift tax on it unless it’s worth more than $13,000. If it is worth, say $20,000, she’d have to pay $385 in taxes. If the father gave a car to his friend’s unrelated goddaughter and it’s worth more than $3,000, she’d get stuck paying the tax. That same $20,000 car would cost her $1,105 in taxes.
Harwell added this repeal to the list of priority tax cuts earlier this month, saying it would round out the types of taxes the state should no longer impose. The governor said lawmakers have approached him about doing away with this tax, and he’s working to see whether the state can afford it.
“Gift Tax” Stats:
- In fiscal year 2011, people paid $15,472,738 in gift taxes.
- In 2010, people paid $11,448,443 in gift taxes.
- That’s a 35.2 percent increase in the last year.
- Reducing the tax next year would mean $14.9 million less for state government.
Named after its creator Sen. Frank Hall, who pushed the bill in the late 1920s, this tax focuses on income from interest on bonds and notes and dividends from stock. That interest is taxed at 6 percent, but lower income people over 65 are exempt.
For 2011 income and the tax filing coming up next month, individuals over 65 with total income less than $16,200 and couples making less than $27,000 last year are exempt.
For 2012, the senior citizen exemptions are higher, at $26,200 for individuals or $37,000 for couples.
Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey was behind the expanded exemption and says he wants to go further this year, although Harwell and Haslam aren’t so sure. The governor said he’s still trying to figure out what the state can afford to do.
Ramsey wants to either up the exemption by $1,000 for both single filers and couples or require that the exemption keep pace with the rate of inflation.
“Hall Tax” Stats:
- In fiscal year 2011, people paid $189,518,032 in Hall taxes.
- In 2010, people paid 172,459,343 in Hall taxes.
- That’s a 9.9 percent increase in the last year.
- Increasing the exemption by $1,000 under SB2536 would mean $88 million less in state government.
- Increasing the exemption to keep up with inflation under SB2536 would mean $1 million less in state government.
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Global Extremism in February 2016
24 Mar 2016
In February, the Centre on Religion & Geopolitics' (CRG) Global Extremism Monitor found that more than 3,400 people were killed in extremist violence and counter-extremist efforts.
Defeating the scourge of religious extremism will only be possible once we grasp the scale of the challenge. The two deadly attacks in Belgium's capital Brussels reminded us that this is a global problem.
The Centre on Religion & Geopolitics (CRG) tracks violent and non-violent incidents of religious extremism, and responses to it, around the world. Today we release this information in the second issue of our new monthly Global Extremism Monitor. Our data shows that in February 2016, at least 3,405 lives were lost as some 22 religious extremist groups instigated violence across the world and states battled to defeat them. Among the dead were 1,620 militants, 660 members of the security forces, and 936 civilians.
We recorded 647 incidents in 54 countries, including both extremist and counter-extremist activities, in February. This included major non-state counter-extremism efforts, such as the Centre for Strategic and International Studies' launch of a commission on countering violent extremism.
Our findings are a low estimate, based on open source data in English. CRG's analysts were careful to include only incidents we were sure counted as religious extremism. As in January, much of the violence we recorded was outside the Middle East and North Africa. Only 52 per cent was in the region. Thirty-four per cent was in sub-Saharan Africa, and 13 per cent in Central and South Asia. ISIS was by far the deadliest extremist group, killing at least 1,123 in at least 69 attacks. By contrast, al-Qaeda killed 176 people in 43 assaults.
Fewer than half of the global fatalities in the battle against religious extremism occurred in the Middle East and North Africa; 39 per cent were in sub-Saharan Africa. In Somalia alone, we recorded 38 attacks by al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabaab.
The world's attention on the Syrian civil war rightly noted the fall in violence as a partial truce came into effect at the end of the month. In fact, few attacks in February made headlines like January's high-profile assaults in Jakarta and Istanbul. Yet globally, the deadly threat of religious extremism remained.
Our data showed:
Although 55 per cent of the 936 civilian fatalties recorded in February's Global Extremism Monitor occurred in the Middle East and North Africa, three out of the five countries that saw the most civilian deaths were in sub-Saharan Africa.
Boko Haram was responsible for a quarter of all civilian deaths linked to extremism, with the number in Cameroon and Nigeria almost equal at 108 and 111 respectively. On the other side of the continent, Somalia was once again among the deadliest countries for civilians, with 107 killed. However, Iraq and Syria dominated. Our data showed 147 and 227 civilian deaths in those countries respectively.
Amid debate over whether ISIS or al-Qaeda poses a greater long-term threat, our February data showed that ISIS was responsible for far more violence than al-Qaeda and its affiliates in the month.
When all ISIS-affiliated groups are taken into account, the organisation was involved in at least 69 attacks, causing over 1,123 deaths. This was almost as many as the total deaths stemming from all state counter-extremism efforts across the globe, which amounted to at least 1,539 deaths. In comparison, the Global Extremism Monitor recorded 176 deaths from 43 assaults by al-Qaeda and its affiliates throughout February.
Our data showed at least 44 countries involved in some form of counter-extremist activity. Of these, at least 25 used military force against extremists, either alone or in coalition. Four international groupings – the US-led anti-ISIS coalition in Iraq and Syria, the Saudi-led coalition against Houthi forces in Yemen, the Islamic Military Alliance, and the African Union mission fighting al-Shabaab in Somalia – were active in two regions.
State-counter extremism efforts caused at least 1,539 deaths, according to our February findings. Some 1,290 of the casualties were extremists, 29 were members of security forces, 158 were civilians and the remainder were unknown.
If we compare February's data with January's findings, the consistently high level of extremist violence becomes clear. In January, we recorded nearly 3,000 fatalities as a result of extremism. In February, we recorded nearly 3,400.
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The following are the current most viewed articles on Wikipedia within Wikipedia's Welsh translators category. Think of it as a What's Hot list for Welsh translators. More info »
This is a beta release and so the figures may be a day or two out of date. We'd love to get your thoughts.
|2||William Morgan (Bible translator)||86|
|3||William Williams Pantycelyn||34|
|6||John Davies (translator)||14|
|7||Gwyn Jones (author)||9|
|9||Thomas Powell (cleric)||7|
|12||William Foulkes||less than 5 views|
|13||Moelona||less than 5 views|
|14||Edmund Prys||less than 5 views|
|15||Thomas Ellis (clergyman died 1792)||less than 5 views|
|16||David Lloyd (cleric)||less than 5 views|
|17||Edward James (clergyman)||less than 5 views|
|18||John Edwards (Siôn Treredyn)||less than 5 views|
|19||Edward Owen (translator)||less than 5 views|
|20||David Lewis (Carmarthenshire clergyman)||less than 5 views|
This category has only the following subcategory.
The following 19 pages are in this category, out of 19 total. This list may not reflect recent changes (learn more).
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Does Canada figure in your family quest? Regardless of whether your ancestors were just "passing through" or stayed in Canada, the updates to the Library and Archives of Canada (LAC) may be quite helpful.
There are some 12 million new records, in total.
Recent updates include:
2,000 digital images added - Board of Guardians database update
104,000 digital images added - Passenger Lists database update
40,000 digital images added - Citizenship Montreal Circuit Court database update
180,000 digital images added - Canadian Naturalization database.
Corrections were made to the databases for Home Children, Canadian Expeditionary Force and Killed in Action.
The Canadian Genealogy Centre (CGC) at LAC has added three pages - Finnish, Ukrainian and German ethno-cultural - to the already online resource pages for Aboriginal peoples, Acadians (French Canadians), Blacks, Chinese, Irish, Jewish, Metis and Poles.
Numerous pages have been updated (many are corrections). These updates include French record abbreviations, bibliography, Canadian Forces (after 1918-WWII), criminal records, divorces, events, WWI, genealogical societies, Irish, Jewish, newspapers, Northwest Mounted Police, notarial records, provincial and territory archives, provincial land records and reference sites.
Additionally, there has been a release of indexes and digital images for the Censuses of 1861, 1871 and 1916; digitized Census returns (1851-1916) are on multiple websites. See the CGC for more information.
By 2011, according to the Libraries and Archives Canada site, all digital images and indexes for Census returns will be on the LAC website, which can be searched here.
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Souvenirs of Singapore are available all over the city-state, in major department stores, shops, and hotel shopping arcades. Whether it be a t-shirt that is commemorative of your trip to the country or an exquisitely carved local handicraft item, Singapore abounds in souvenirs and gifts to bring back home.
The RISIS Orchid is one of the most popular gifts from Singapore. A hand-crafted model of Singapore’s national flower is made of a real orchid dipped in 22-karat gold. This ornament is fashioned into pins, brooches, earrings, and pendants. Peranakan culture-inspired gift items such as brooches and one-of-a-kind cardholders are also excellent gift ideas. The Peranakan culture is a fusion of Chinese, Malay, and European influences. The Suntec City Mall abounds with Peranakan gift items.
The four Museum Shops located in the heart of Singapore are chockfull of authentic memorabilia of the country. Scenic posters of the old and new Singapore, breathtaking batik sarongs, locally-handcrafted trinkets, and one-of-a-kind mementos inspired by Singapore’s art and heritage are some of the popular gift choices at the Museum Shops.
Chinese opera items are found at Eng Tiang Huat on River Valley Road. Chinese opera hats, ladies’ embroidered vests, bamboo flutes, and Chinese fiddles called erhu are some of the items that can be purchased to be given as unique gifts. The Singapore Botanic Gardens shop offers commemorative gifts such as natural history books.
A wide assortment of fragrance oils is available at Aljunied Brothers along Arab Street. Baskets and other cane, straw, rattan, and pandan leaf handicraft gifts are also found at the center of the Muslim community in Singapore. Other unique gift ideas from Kampong Glam and Arab Street are baby cradles, floor mats, hanging chairs, serving trays, camel skin bags, sewing kits, fishing tackles, the Muslim men’s headgear called songkok, and textiles. These areas are best known for luxurious fabrics.
Everything that anyone would need to look great, be fit and healthy, develop oneself andone’s mind, relax and while the hours away enjoyably, be able to fit his home and decorateit, collect precious items, and use the latest state-of-the-art technology can all befound in Singapore.
You only need to equip yourself with information as to where the best places are to get the shopping items you want, not to mention your lengthy shopping list and the energy and verve you will need to do that shopping expedition. And while you are at it, Singapore also offers a thousand and one ideas for gift items that you can give your friends and family by way of sharing your very satisfying Singapore shopping experience.
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Arizona woman to become 1st openly bisexual member of Congress
PHOENIX — Former Democratic state Sen. Kyrsten Sinema has been elected to represent a new Phoenix-area congressional district, emerging victorious after a bitterly fought race that featured millions of dollars in attack ads.
Sinema had a narrow lead on election night that made the race too close to call. But she slowly improved that advantage as more ballots were tallied in recent days, and by Monday had a nearly 6,000-vote edge that was too much for Republican Vernon Parker to overcome.
Sinema becomes the first openly bisexual member of Congress. Her victory came in a year when three states approved gay marriage and at least five openly gay Democrats were elected to House seats. A Wisconsin congresswoman also became the first openly gay person elected to the Senate.
“I am honored and ready to start working for the people of Arizona,” Sinema said.
The 36-year-old was in New York City on Monday for an event held by a women's group and was headed to Washington on Tuesday for congressional orientation.
Parker called her to congratulate her on the victory.
“While I had wished for a different outcome, I will continue my public service so that everybody can follow the American dream just like I did,” Parker said in a statement.
During the race, Parker was criticized by Democrats as a Tea Party radical who would hurt children by cutting the federal Education Department.
Republicans countered saying Sinema was too liberal for the newly-established district and doesn't understand stay-at-home moms.
Parker took the national stage briefly in September when he gave the GOP weekly address. He focused on stopping expected tax hikes and developing a tax code he said would help the economy grow and prevent jobs from being sent overseas.
Sinema said she had the ability to work across party lines. She said she developed the skill during her eight years in the state Legislature, where she was always in the minority. She also said she was committed to women's issues.
Sinema's congressional district covers parts of Phoenix and several suburbs, including the small, affluent town of Paradise Valley where Parker was once mayor.
Republicans had a slight registration advantage, but both parties' totals were exceeded by independents.
One other Arizona congressional race remains undecided. Rep. Ron Barber, the hand-picked successor to Gabrielle Giffords, had a lead of a few hundred votes over Republican Martha McSally in the southeastern Arizona district centered on Tucson.
With more than 267,000 ballots counted as of Monday afternoon, Barber had a lead of about 700 votes. However, thousands more ballots remained to be processed.
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Save Your Self [12–18 years]
This prevention program inspires, educates and empowers you. Teens gain the confidence to make respectful, empowering decisions regarding their bodies. Cosponsor: Women Empowerment, Inc.
Thu | Nov 3, 10, 17 | 5:00–6:00 pm | Check the daily room schedule for locations
Teen Writing Group [12–18 years]
Together we find inspiration for writing both poetry and prose.
Mon | Nov 14, 28 | 7:00–8:00 pm | The Edge
No Couch Potatoes Needed [11–18 years]
Physical Therapist Natalie Sykes leads you in stress-relieving aerobics, martial arts or meditative exercises. Learn to make healthy snacks at each program.
Thu | Nov 10 | 3:30–4:30 pm | The Edge
Make Your Own Lotion [12–18 years]
If you think lotion only comes from a store, think again! Make your own luxurious lotion at the library for free and keep your skin smooth. Supplies provided.
Mon | Nov 7 | 3:30–4:30 pm | The Edge
Honoring Our Veterans [all ages]
History comes alive in this display of restored military vehicles, reenactors, and memorabilia, courtesy of Rolling Thunder, the local chapter of the Military Vehicle Preservation Association.
Wed | Nov 9 | 2:00–4:00 pm | Rotunda, Front of the Building
National Gaming Day [all ages]
As libraries across the country compete in the nation’s largest, simultaneous video game tournament, we battle to move from second place to first. The event includes a variety of board games for all ages.
Sat | Nov 12 | 12:00–5:00 pm | The Edge and Marvin Auditorium 101AB
Nifty Nails [11–18 years]
Try out blue, purple, green, pink or red fingernail polish. Maybe a ladybug painted on your thumb nail would be fun. Supplies provided, just bring your creativity.
Mon | Nov 21 | 3:30–4:30 pm | The Edge
Call of Duty: Kansans in World War II [all ages]
Dedicated to the young men and women of Kansas who answered the call of duty, this exhibit tells stories from the front lines and the home front. After your tour, you’ll better understand what it was like to be an American during World War II. This exhibit is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
November 4 through December 30 | Alice C. Sabatini Gallery
Homework coaches help children with questions and assignments.
Mon-Thu | 4:00–8:00 pm | Sun | 2:00–6:00 pm | Homework Center 121D [closed Nov. 11 and 24]
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A completely new New Zealand?
'New Zealand' doesn't have a future. NZ is the past and New Zealanders are living in that past; happily, securely, in self-assured ignorance. We are in the last stretch of the European crony capitalist colonial project started by Britain. The regime they established, that was allowed to wage war and pass laws against the indigenous people and their institutions in abrogation of the founding Treaty is slowly coming to an end.
The economic basis of this colony, like any other of its class, is premised on the colonial entity having defeated the indigenous powers and having the unconditional ability to determine immigration and the occupation and exploitation of land by the migrants.
Making NZ new, "a completely new New Zealand", as the Labour leader has exclaimed in his speech today is an epic fallacy - a fruitless rhetorical tautology.
David Shearer says:
If I had to sum up what we need to do in one sentence I'd say this: we need to make a new New Zealand.
That's what the next Labour government will be about.
That means looking at everything through a whole new lens.
It means questioning the comfortable assumptions we make.
Everything? The most comfortable of all - that Maori are defeated, surrendered, that the Treaty is a mere token, that Britain will always do what the NZ government tells it to in regards to the Treaty and Maori and that Maori will never be permitted to get their stolen and occupied land back - is not in this speech, nor would it have been contemplated. This is a bedrock assumption by the Pakeha population and the Labour leader, despite the claim he has made, will never go there.
Will the Labour leader question why there has never been a Maori Prime Mininster of NZ? There never will be either: it is incompatible with the NZ colonial project he and everyone else is busy pursuing. There is a chance a Maori PM would not sign off on the routine confiscations and injustices and inequality against Maori that Pakeha leaders countenance. There have been English, Irish, Australian, Jewish and women Prime Ministers of New Zealand, but never a Maori. Deputy on occasion, but never leader. Mr Shearer can jump from No. 31 on the list to be leader of his party, but there has never been a Maori leader of the party - has he ever asked himself why this is so?
In the Labour leader's speech there is no mention of Aotearoa and none either of Maori or of the Treaty of Waitangi. A gaping blind spot in Mr Shearer's vision.
His speech could be described as many things, although visionary is not one of them. It could be seen as an attempt to back the Labour Party SUV of white middle class entitlement up the steep and winding driveway of Maori nationalist ambitions on one track and international economic aspirations on the other. By staying silent on the former and promising vaguely on the latter he hopes the working class engine will hold out and he can make the journey without anyone in the car bailing. But the blind spot remains.
The simple fact is that as long as the regime can suppress the indigenous population to a minority position through immigration then the illusion of NZ can continue, but once it reaches 20% or more (as the Jewish state of Israel well understands with the Arab population) some concessions become inevitable, at a third or more compromise and negotiation will be necessary and at 40% or more, approaching a majority, the regime will become highly unstable and the writing will be on the wall.
To prevent the day of reckoning the regime will continue to pump in as many immigrants as possible. The Labour leader implicitly defines success in these terms, he repeats in his conclusion:
This new New Zealand will be the kind of place the rest of world would like to live.
Having the rest of the world live here means perpetuating this country as a foreign place where Maori cannot live as Maori, where Maori cannot obtain redress - that is the effect of immigration: the political and economic marginalisation and diminution of the indigenous people. New Zealand is a foreign creation and both major parties mean to keep it populated by foreigners.
If the Labour leader did have any vision he would have advocated for Aotearoa rather than a continuation of the unsustainable, unjust and corrupted regime known as New Zealand.
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to the right, and straight on ‘til morning.”
is how to find Never Never Land, the home of
Peter Pan, Tinkerbell, and Captain Hook. It
was first mentioned in the classic children's
books written by J.M. Barrie and popularized
by the Walt Disney studio animated film Peter Pan (1953).
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How did Peter hide in plain sight from the Gunslinger robot, when it had heat vision? Also, the robots must have very advanced cooling systems for them to be cold.
A case of Science Marches On - most writers of the time figured robots would be "room temperature", not realizing that a lot of transistors would give off a lot of heat (less than a similar number of vacuum tubes, but still).
So then again, shouldn't sexbots be warm to the touch?
The impression I got was that the Gunslinger had the infra-red vision as a backup and only started using it when its "real" vision was damaged by the chemicals thrown in its face (it isn't shown using it before that point, and is only shown using it afterwards). The heat vision was probably designed to detect the warmest things around (i.e. the guests) and ignore everything else, so the torches in that room were significantly warmer than Peter, allowing him to remain undetected.
The scene in which they gave the robot infrared vision suggests it was nothing more than a routine upgrade, intended to make him a bit more challenging (being able to find a guest faster) as a designated adversary. Of course, when the robots went berserk, this turned out to be a feature Gone Horribly Right as he proved very challenging indeed. Incidentally, one can see him using the vision before he got burned with acid in order to track Peter's footsteps, so presumably it was intended to be used at all times.
Why does the park use real guns? They could have just put squibs in the robots or something, would have been a lot safer.
As part of the attraction to the theme parks, the guns are real to heighten the thrill of shooting someone, even if it's an artificial someone.
There's also a real reason to that. The guns use thermal sensors, hence why when John asked Peter to shoot him, it didn't work (what John exactly said, I forgot, but it had something to do with body temperature). Maybe when the park's control system went out of whack, the thermal sensors started being indiscriminate towards human and robot-kind.
What about the swords? The guns can't harm humans but what's to stop a visitor from accidentally stabbing a guest with a sword?
It's not much of a defence, but you can't exclude swords from ThemeparkMiddle Ages. The vacations were 100% about the experience, and the experience in Medieval World would be inauthentic without them.
Considering the lack of security, the technicians probably considered the danger of one guest "accidentally" stabbing another with a sword in Medieval World to be as likely as a guest "accidentally" bludgeoning another with a liquor bottle in Western World. Any object is potentially dangerous in the hands of a human being, but the main concern of the technicians was making sure they weren't potentially dangerous in the hands of a robot.
The swords could potentially have been very blunt as well, similar to the swords reenactors use, you can swing them with a lot of force and do only minor damage, therefore only the robots could be set to react to them.
Remember the bar fight where everything in the room suddenly started breaking as if it were made of foam. Considering how easily the chairs break, they could never have supported a person's weight. The obvious answer is that nothing in the room is merely what it appears to be. Instead of solid wood, the chairs must have had a mechanism that made them solid when they need to be solid, and soft when they need to be soft. Something similar must apply to the swords to give them the same safety as the guns. Delos would never have knowingly put guests at risk by giving people truly dangerous weapons.
The fact the robots are not waterproof or at least able to consume liquids. It seems the moment a tourist tried to share a drink with one of the robots it would immediately short circuit. This is more glaring when the viewer would have already seen some of the machines drinking. Does this indicate some had the ability whereas others didn't? Why would you make them acid resistant but not able to swim without breaking?
Perhaps the girl in the dungeon is damaged in some way. The brothel madam in Westworld is seen drinking and smoking.
For one thing, they weren't especially acid-resistant; the Gunslinger was looking very blistered indeed after he got splashed. There just wasn't that much actually thrown on him, and whichever acid Peter used, the acids shown being available to him were all "strong" acids, meaning they would not burn much beyond where they hit before the reaction was complete. ("Weak" acids can actually be more dangerous in this regard, as their reactions are never entirely complete.)
As for the drinking and waterproofing, this might well vary from one robot to another as a bit of financial corner-cutting: the capacity for eating and drinking would cost extra, so the technicians would try to have it installed only in robots that needed to do this for social reasons. Robots intended as sex bots (such as that poor girl in the dungeon) or purely for fighting (such as that black knight) wouldn't ever be called upon to eat or drink, and therefore wouldn't normally need these capacities. It's an in-universe case of They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich. The Gunslinger, as part of his program, was intended to order a drink and down it as part of picking a fight, so naturally he had these capacities. So would any robots called upon to swim, though it's doubtful there were very many situations of that sort outside of Roman World with its pool parties. Otherwise, it's strictly optional and there's no money in the company's budget for it.
How did exactly the Gunslinger plan to kill Martin anyway after his gun ran out of batteries ?
He's a robot programmed to be a westerner. If he couldn't shoot his target, he would either try to hang him or beat him to death.
The horses are also robots, but the Gunslinger manages to track Peter on horseback by seeing the horse's footprints in infrared. Oddly, the tracks are only of the horseshoes.
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[Twisted-Python] stdio.StandardIO, ServerProtocol and Services.
iacovou at gmail.com
Mon Oct 8 04:15:33 EDT 2007
On Saturday 06 October 2007 18:04:46 Phil Mayers wrote:
> > The fact that adding reactor.run() (which shouldn't be needed in a
> > Service, right?) implies to me that the reactor isn't starting up
> > properly without it, and I can't see why.
> How are you starting this code? Are you just executing it? If so, don't
> do that. Use:
> twistd -noy thefile.py
> The Twisted application/service code just creates the relevant objects;
> the application object still needs to be run. "twistd" will do this for
Hi Phil; thanks for your reply.
Sadly, I am already using twistd to start this code. Virtually all my Twisted
code is service.Service-based, and I am accustomed to just boshing the
various services into an application hierarchy and letting twistd Do The
Right Thing, which is why I'm confused as to why this snippet seems not to
Or rather, let me rephrase that: I'm not surprised that my code *overall*
doesn't work quite how I would like, because I simply don't understand the
inner workings of insults.ServerProtocol and recvline.RecvLine well enough,
and I'm probably just being bone-headed.
However, I *am* surprised that adding an "illegal" reactor.run() to a
service's startService() method seems to "kick" the snippet into behaving
More information about the Twisted-Python
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The TRIO Programs were originally established by the federal government in 1965 to ensure equal educational opportunity for all Americans, regardless of race, ethnic background, or economic circumstance. In many communities, the TRIO programs are some of the only programs available that help students to overcome the class, social, academic, and cultural barriers to higher education. The educational and human services offered through the TRIO Programs are distinguishable from all other counseling programs in America.
TRIO Programs are very effective and many students from low-income families depend on these programs to succeed academically in high school and college. In fact, since 1965 an estimated 2.2 million students have graduated from college with the special assistance and support of our nation’s TRIO programs. These programs enable students from low-income families to enter and graduate from college.
Students enrolled in today’s TRIO Programs mirror our nation’s multicultural and multiethnic society. 37% of TRIO students are White, 35% are African American, 19% are Hispanic, 4% are Native American, 4% are Asian American, and 1% are multiethnic. Twenty-two thousand TRIO students are disabled. There are more than 22,000 U.S. Veterans currently enrolled in the TRIO Programs. TRIO college graduates are working in business, industry, government, medicine, law, education, communications, sales, finance, politics, transportation, publishing, law enforcement, computer science and technology, engineering, and accounting.
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|Type||Fishing vessel (smack)|
|Operator||John M. Barnard, Lowestoft|
|History||Fishing registration: LT 453|
U-boat attacks on Fishing vessel (smack) Trevone
|1||30 Jan 1917||U 55 (Wilhelm Werner)||Sunk||Stopped and sunk by gunnery 30 miles NW of Trevose Head||50° 50'N, 5° 30'W||2|
Position of attack on Trevone
1 map position found. In some cases the exact positions of losses are not known, those are not shown.
If you can help us with any additional information on this vessel then please contact us.
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UK Researcher Awarded Grant for Equine Viral Arteritis Research
LEXINGTON, Ky. (March 6, 2013) — Udeni Balasuriya, a professor at the University of Kentucky Maxwell H. Gluck Equine Research Center, recently received $2.9 million to identify the genetic factors responsible for establishment of the equine arteritis virus (EAV) carrier state in stallions. The five-year grant was awarded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agriculture and Food Research Initiative.
According to Nancy Cox, associate dean for research in UK’s College of Agriculture and administrative leader for UK’s Ag Equine Programs, Balasuriya’s grant was ranked the highest in its category, unusual for a USDA grant program that normally targets food animals.
This is one of the largest grants awarded in the College of Agriculture in the last year, she said, and is a special kind that includes funds for getting results out to the public in the fastest, most efficient way.
Outbreaks of equine viral arteritis (EVA) result in significant economic losses to the equine industry due to high rates of foal loss in pregnant mares, death in young foals and establishment of the carrier state in stallions. The virus is maintained in the equine population between breeding seasons by persisting in carrier stallions.
The project stems from research by a graduate student, Yun Young Go, who worked in Balasuriya’s laboratory at the Gluck Center. The initial focus of her project involved the characterization of the EAV target cell population(s) in equine white blood cells. White blood cells are important because they eliminate cells attacked by the virus.
According to Balasuriya, the study demonstrated that EAV could infect isolated cultured white blood cells in the lab.
“Subsequently, this study was expanded to include the latest information available from the equine genome,” he said.
The genome studies were done in collaboration with Ernie Bailey and James N. MacLeod, both researchers at the Gluck Center.
Co-principal investigators of the study include seven Gluck Center faculty members—Sergey Artiushin, Bailey, Frank Cook, David Horohov, MacLeod, Edward Squires, Peter Timoney and Mats Troedsson. This collaboration includes expertise in the areas of immunogenetics, genomics, molecular virology and viral pathogenesis, equine reproduction, equine immunology, diagnostic pathology, molecular and cell biology and equine infectious diseases.
The study will further investigate the possibility that susceptibility may be different in different horses. The nature of the susceptibility will be studied first in more isolated cells in the laboratory, then later with stallions.
“This cutting edge research under the leadership of Dr. Balasuriya will use new approaches to identify genetic factors associated with the establishment of persistent EAV in stallions,” said Mats Troedsson, director of the Gluck Equine Research Center and chair of the Department of Veterinary Science at UK. “The recent sequencing of the equine genome by an international consortium, including several scientists from the Gluck Equine Research Center, has made this kind of research possible. Exploring genetic variations among horses to explain mechanisms on how they respond to viral infections is an exciting research area that is expected to not only improve our understanding of viral diseases in general, but also provide veterinarians and horse owners with new diagnostics and tools for individual management and treatments in the future.”
The study will provide research opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students to address EAV through integrating functional genomic studies and education. Findings from the studies will be disseminated through seminars and symposiums.
The mission of the Gluck Center is scientific discovery, education and dissemination of knowledge for the benefit of the health and well-being of horses. The Gluck Center faculty conducts equine research in six targeted areas: genetics and genomics, infectious diseases and immunology, musculoskeletal science, parasitology, pharmacology/toxicology and reproductive health.
For more information on the Gluck Center, visit http://www.ca.uky.edu/gluck.
MEDIA CONTACT: Jenny Evans, (859) 218-1089
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Investment Policy Review: Mozambique
126 Pages, 2537.51 KB
After emerging from a protracted civil conflict in the early 1990s, Mozambique has since been one of the fastest growing least developed countries. Political stability and sound macro-economic management have enabled it to gradually reduce poverty and to attract foreign direct investment (FDI). In particular, Mozambique was able to attract large-scale industrial foreign investments or "mega-projects" that have contributed to economic growth and transformed the image of the country as a destination for FDI. However, poverty remains widespread and its reduction is slowing down, suggesting that growth has not been sufficiently inclusive. In this regard, "mega-projects" have not met the expectations of many stakeholders in terms of developmental impact.
In this context and with the purpose to maximize the developmental benefits the country can obtain from FDI - including economic diversification and job creation - the Investment Policy Review (IPR) of Mozambique proposes an investment strategy with four policy orientations aimed at:
Looking beyond "mega-projects" for economic growth, job creation and diversification. This implies leveling the playing field for investments across the board and reducing the regulatory bias towards "mega-projects" in offering incentives and promotion efforts for smaller-scale projects.
Supporting investment in areas where opportunities best match development needs. The IPR suggests promoting FDI in key sectors where the country has a comparative advantage, including agriculture and agro-processing, tourism, small-scale manufacturing and services, and infrastructure and logistics.
Maximizing the development impact of investments in mega-projects, mining and public-private partnerships (PPPs). While "mega-projects" have inherent limitations, they remain significant to economic growth and should be pursued. However, to support sustainable development objectives, the income generated from the country's vast natural resources should be carefully managed under a stabilization fund.
Improving the effectiveness of investment promotion. In this regard, the IPR suggests that the Investment Promotion Centre focuses more on its promotion role and less on a regulatory one. The IPR also recommends that a Special Coordinator be made responsible for driving investment-related reforms and that Government strengthens public-private dialogue through regular consultation mechanisms.
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The role of norms in social behavior is a key question for sociology. Is a norm a sociological reality? And do individuals behave in conformance to norms?
We can offer mundane examples of social norms deriving from a wide range of social situations: norms of politeness, norms of fairness, norms of appropriate dress, norms of behavior in business meetings, norms of gendered behavior, and norms of body language and tone of voice in police work. In each case we suppose that (a) there is a publicly recognized norm governing the specified conduct within a specific social group, (b) the norm influences individual behavior in some way, and (c) sanctions and internal motivations come into the explanation of conformant behavior. Norm-breakers may come in for rough treatment by the people around them -- which may induce them to honor the norm in the future. And norm-conformers may do so because they have internalized a set of inhibitions about the proscribed behavior.
Here are a number of key empirical and conceptual questions that are raised by norms.
- What is a norm?
- How are social norms embodied in behavior and structure?
- How do individuals internalize norms?
- How do norms influence behavior?
- Why do individuals conform their behavior to a set of local norms?
- What factors stabilize a norm system over time?
- What social factors influence change in a norm system?
a socially embodied and individually perceived imperative that such-and-so an action must be performed in such-and-so a fashion.We can then separate out several other types of questions: First, what induces individuals to conform to the imperative? How do individuals come to have the psychological dispositions to conform to the norm? Second, how is the norm embodied in social relations and behavior? And third, what are the social mechanisms or processes that created the imperative within the given social group? What mechanisms serve to sustain it over time?
To the first question, there seem to be only three possible answers -- and each is in fact socially and psychologically possible. The imperative may be internalized into the motivational space of the individual, so he/she chooses to act according to the imperative (or is habituated to acting in such a way). There may be an effective and well-know system of sanctions that attach to violations of the norms, so the individual has an incentive to comply. These sanctions may be formal or informal. The sanction may be as benign as being laughed at for wearing a hawaiian shirt to a black tie ball (I'll never do that again!), or as severe as being beaten for seeming gay in a cowboy bar. Or, third, there may be benefits from conformance that make conformance a choice that is in the actor's rational self-interest. (Every time one demonstrates that he/she can choose the right fork for dessert, the likelihood of being invited to another formal dinner increases.) Each of these would make sense of the fact that an individual conforms his/her behavior to the requirements of a norm and helps to answer the question, why do individuals conform to norms?
The questions about the social embodiment of a norm are the most difficult. Does the embodiment of a given norm consist simply in the fact that a certain percentage of people in fact behave in accordance with the rule -- for whatever reason? Does the norm exist in virtue of the fact that people consciously champion the norm and impose sanctions on violators? Might we imagine that human beings are normative animals and absorb normative systems in the way that we absorb grammatical systems -- by observing and inferring about the behavior of others?
As for the third cluster of questions about genesis and persistence, there is a range of possibilities here as well. The system may have been designed by one or more deliberate actors. It may have emerged through a fairly random process that is guided by positive social feedback of some sort. It may be the resultant of multiple groups advocating for one set of norms or another to govern a given situation of conflict and/or cooperation. And, conceivably, it may be the result of something analogous to natural selection across small groups: the groups with a more efficient set of norms may out-perform competing groups.
For example, how should we explain the emergence and persistence of a particular set of norms of marriage and reproduction in a given society? Is it causally relevant to observe that "this set of norms results in a rate of fertility that matches the rate of growth of output"? How would this functionally desirable fact play a causal role in the emergence and persistence of this set of norms? Is there any sort of feedback process that we can hypothesize between "norms at time T", "material results of behavior governed by these norms at T+1", and "persistence/change of norms at time T+2"? The business practices of a company are consciously adjusted over time to bring about better overall performance; but what about spontaneously occurring sets of social norms? How do these change over time? Do individuals or groups have the ability to deliberately modify the norms that govern their everyday activities?
It seems inescapable that norms of behavior exist in a society and that individuals adjust their behavior out of regard for relevant norms. The microfoundations of how this works is obscure, however, in that we don't really have good answers to the parallel questions: how do individuals internalize norms? And how do informal practices of norm enforcement work? And what social-causal factors play a role in the emergence, persistence, and change of a system of norms at a given time?
(The photo of the ice rink at Rockefeller Center is intended to evoke several observations about social norms: the facts that the skaters are largely moving in a counter-clockwise direction, no one is carrying a hockey stick, and there are many children present all reflect one aspect or another of the norms governing skating in public arenas.)
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The BC Ministry of Transportation has recently started a blog, following in the footsteps of others, like, "The Fastlane”, the blog of the US Secretary for Transportation, Ray laHood. One of my favourite recent posts shows the importance of following spring road limits, with these two photos (click on the photos for a link to larger copies, and the associated post and story behind them):
Asphalt roads are termed “flexible pavement” and require particular care in conditions where snow melt and wet conditions alter the strength of the base and sub-base courses, particularly in areas where freeze thaw cycles are prominent. In the case above, the asphalt behaved in a brittle manner due to the underlying weaker saturated layers that no longer provided adequate support for the heavily laden truck.
This blog TranBC, along with the Living Watersmart Blog, are two from the BC government that are in my feed reader and provide interesting information about the services and programs of the ministries. I’d like to see some discussion on the TranBC site on government policies and direction on peak oil, transit and alternate energy sources for transportation.
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Q&A: Hoax expert Alex Boese
By Whitney Matheson, USA TODAY
Was there once a female pope? Who tried to convince people spaghetti grew on trees?
In his new book, The Museum of Hoaxes (Dutton, $19.95) and on his Web site, museumofhoaxes.com, Alex Boese goes beyond crop circles and War of the Worlds to examine the hoax's elaborate history, which dates back for centuries.
The 34-year-old graduate student lives in San Diego, where he's currently working on his doctoral dissertation. In an interview with USATODAY.com, Boese discussed his new book, some of his favorite hoaxes and why he will never, ever commit a hoax of his own.
How did your obsession with hoaxes begin?
Well, you know, throughout the 1990s with the rise of the Internet, there were a lot of hoaxes out there. I heard about them like everybody else, but I never really paid a lot of attention. But then around 1996 or 1997, I started to do the initial research for my dissertation, and I came across all these hoaxes from the early 19th century. It just kind of struck me; I had never realized there was such a history to hoaxes.
What exactly is your dissertation about?
It's a dissertation in the history of science. I was trying to look at how the rise of the public and mass media affected science throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. And so I was looking at the rise of the mass media in the 1830s, and that's when I came across all these scientific hoaxes that the first modern-style newspapers perpetrated.
Part of the appeal was that I just really thought they were funny, and I kept reading more about them and researching them. … It was just a fun way to procrastinate when I should have been reading more serious stuff.
So when did you decide to put all of your research on the Web?
Initially I put up a Web site just for my own use because I thought, 'Well, these are kind of interesting.' And I was trying to justify to myself that I really needed to know more about these for my dissertation. Which is completely baloney.
I started making a list of every hoax that I came across and really focusing initially on the 19th century. Somehow it got into search engines, so people who would type in 'hoax' would come across me. I started to get more and more feedback, and, of course, when you get positive feedback like that, it only encourages behavior. So (the site) became something of an obsession. I wanted to have every hoax ever perpetrated listed. Eventually it developed like that and attracted the attention of a publisher.
How many hits do you get on your site?
It goes up and down a lot. Most days a couple thousand people will visit me, which is actually pretty good. But around April Fools' Day, it goes way up. Tens of thousands of hits a day around then.
In the book, you list a lot of April Fools' Day hoaxes. Is that your specialty?
There's a lot of different kinds of hoaxes … but I really like the funny ones. That was kind of the genesis of my interest in them — I just thought they were funny stories that it would be cute to collect together. So that's why the April Fools' Day hoaxes really appeal to me. Plus, nobody had ever really collected them together before, so I thought it was a shame that they weren't more accessible to the public.
Do you have an all-time favorite? Like, what's your favorite hoax to share at dinner parties?
The one I always tell is about the Swiss spaghetti harvest. It's probably the most famous April Fools' Day hoax ever. And that's the one where the BBC News show Panorama offered a story to its viewers about how the recent mild winter and the elimination of the dreaded 'spaghetti weevil' produced a bumper spaghetti crop in Switzerland. And it showed this great footage of the Swiss peasants pulling down the spaghetti from spaghetti trees.
Yes, the photo you have in the book is almost as funny as the one of the 'monster cat' hoax.
What I find funny about the monster cat is that the cat, in reality, really is kind of huge. It's like a 23-pound cat or something, which is enormous!
What's the dumbest hoax ever perpetrated?
There's one (in the book) about Vrain Lucas — he was a French forager who fooled this famous French mathematician into thinking that he had produced all these historical documents from various figures, like Julius Caesar and Cleopatra.
But the really stupid thing was that every single document was written in modern-day French on watermarked paper. I don't think paper was invented during the Roman era or anything. … This guy just kept buying more and more of these stupid documents, and it got to the point where Vrain Lucas was about to sell him a version of Jesus giving the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus himself had written in French on watermarked paper. It's like, what's this guy thinking? I think he would take the prize for the most gullible person in history.
All this talk of hoaxes is kind of enticing. Have you ever tried to create one yourself?
I would never have the nerve. First of all, I'm a terrible actor, and you have to be a good actor to pull these things off. People can tell instantly when I'm lying because I get this big grin on my face.
Wait — you haven't pulled anything? Not even an April Fools' Day prank?
No. I cannot pull off lying convincingly.
You end the book with a few Sept. 11-related hoaxes. Are there any more recent hoaxes we should be warned about?
Well, just recently I've been hearing about this rumor that the earth is going to be destroyed — I think next May — by Planet X. I don't yet know if it's a pure hoax or if it's just a stupid rumor that's been going around.
Supposedly it's an e-mail (that) says there's a planet in our solar system called Planet X that has an eccentric orbit around the sun, so that it orbits the sun every 3600 years or something. And this time it's going to come around and collide with the earth May 15, so you better sell your house and live it up for the next few months … because the world's gonna end.
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The U.S. government is legally justified in killing its own citizens overseas if they are involved in plotting terror attacks against America, Attorney General Eric Holder said Monday, offering the Obama administration's most detailed explanation so far of its controversial targeted killing program.
"In this hour of danger, we simply cannot afford to wait until deadly plans are carried out, and we will not," he said in remarks prepared for a speech at Northwestern University's law school in Chicago.
An American-born Islamic cleric, Anwar al Awlaki, was killed in a U.S. drone attack in Yemen in late September. Some civil liberties groups condemned the attack. Others, including members of Congress, called for a more complete explanation of how such a targeted killing of an American civilian was consistent with the U.S. Constitution.
The Fifth Amendment provides that no one can be "deprived of life" without due process of law. But that due process, Holder said, doesn't necessarily come from a court.
"Due process and judicial process are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process," the attorney general said.
Holder said a U.S. citizen can legally be targeted in a foreign country if that person is "a senior leader of al-Qaida or associated forces," and is actively involved in planning to kill Americans. Killing would be justified if the person poses an imminent threat of a violent attack against the U.S. and cannot easily be captured.
Any military operation targeting a citizen overseas must be carried out consistent with the law of war. "The principle of humanity requires us to use weapons that will not inflict unnecessary suffering," he said.
The ACLU called Holder's explanation "a defense of the government’s chillingly broad claimed authority to conduct targeted killings of civilians, including American citizens, far from any battlefield without judicial review or public scrutiny."
"Few things are as dangerous to American liberty as the proposition that the government should be able to kill citizens anywhere in the world on the basis of legal standards and evidence that are never submitted to a court, either before or after the fact," said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project.
"Anyone willing to trust President Obama with the power to secretly declare an American citizen an enemy of the state and order his extrajudicial killing should ask whether they would be willing to trust the next president with that dangerous power,” she said.
The ACLU is suing the Obama administration, seeking to have documents regarding the targeted killing program made public.
Holder said it makes no legal difference that a U.S. citizen is targeted away from a traditional battlefield. "We are at war with a stateless enemy," he said.
While the U.S.-born cleric, Anwar al Awlaki, was at first believed to be merely an English speaking propagandist for the Yemen based group known as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, U.S. officials say he gradually assumed an operational role in the terror group.
According to federal prosecutors, Umar Abdul Abdulmutallab, the underwear bomber, told FBI interrogators that al Awlaki was deeply involved in planning his attempted bombing of a Detroit bound passenger jet on Christmas day in 2009.
Holder said Abdulmutallab told the FBI of "al Awlaki's specific instructions to wait until the airplane was over the United States before detonating the bomb."
The attorney general told the law students that the government is under no legal obligation to delay a targeted killing operation until a terrorist plotter is in the process of carrying out an actual attack.
"The Constitution does not require the president to delay action until some theoretical end stage of planning, when the precise time, place, and manner of an attack become clear," he said.
More content from msnbc.com and NBC News
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WHO, governments and scientists seek to end polio by 2018
The Eradication and Endgame Strategic Plan, formed by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, hopes to cure the world of polio, a disease which attacks the children across the globe. The initiative acknowledges significant advancements in technology to fight against polio and strategizes how to rid the world of the disease within the next five years.
Since the development of polio vaccinations in the late 1950s-early 1960s, new cases of wild poliovirus have fallen from 350,000 in 125 countries to only 250 in 5 countries in 2012, according to the GPEI. Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan, three of the five affected countries, initiated emergency plans in 2012 to eradicate the disease permanently.
The EESP outlines how to eliminate polio over the next 5 years by means of administering vaccines to those who have not yet received them and by administering a stronger vaccine to protect against a stronger strand of poliovirus.
Aside from the eradication of polio, this initiative seeks to make life-saving immunizations readily available to every child in the world. An increase in infrastructure will be needed to ensure routine immunizations to meet this goal, benefiting children in every corner of the world.
The GPEI warns against scaling back on efforts, since this disease can be transmitted from human-to-human and spreads quickly. Without routine immunizations, it projects to see a jump from 250 to 200,000 infected persons in one year.
The initiative has received support from 439 signatories representing 80 countries.
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What is Vastu Shastra?The Vaastu is an ancient Indian science of buildings which helps in making a congenial setting or a place to live and work in a most scientific way taking advantage of the benefits bestowed by nature, its elements and energy fields for enhanced wealth, health, prosperity, joy and happiness.
Earth : Magnetic field of the earth
Water : Gravitational attraction of the Earth
Fire : Solar radiation
Air : Wind energy
Space : Cosmic radiation
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At least 15 million children reside in Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSAs) that average fewer than one health professional for every 3,500 people. In these health care deserts, time and transportation barriers prevent even children with health insurance have trouble getting timely care, particularly specialty care. Children in poor, rural areas are most at risk.
So health problems fester and get worse — and more expensive when finally addressed.
Telehealth can solve many of these problems. Through remote video/voice/data connections, dermatologists can view images of rashes and moles sent by primary care providers; cardiologists can patch into local emergency rooms and listen to heart sounds and read EKG tracings; critical care physicians and neonatologists can see and hear newborns in distress, listen to lung sounds, read their vital signs and view images. They can advise local clinicians and guide them through next steps.
From a series on researchers and innovators at Boston Children’s Hospital. At left, David Casavant demos TeleCAPE at a Boston Children’s Hospital Innovators Showcase.
It is said that necessity is the mother of invention, so when David Casavant, MD, observed his teenagers routinely using FaceTime and Skype to connect with friends, he had a lightbulb moment. Could videoconferencing help him support his patients—children and young adults who require mechanical ventilation in their homes?
“It just seemed obvious,” says Casavant, a physician in the Boston Children’s Hospital’s CAPE (Critical Care, Anesthesia and Perioperative Extension & Home Ventilation) program, part of the Division of Critical Care Medicine. “In my work we are always weighing the risk versus the benefit to the patient. It’s easy for ambulatory patients to swing by their primary care office, get a prescription or go for an x-ray, but that’s not the case for patients who have to have their oxygen, their suction or their ventilator. If you don’t have to put them on the road you are better off not to.” …
Robin Chase, co-founder of Zipcar and current CEO of Buzzcar, envisions collaboration as the future of the world’s economy. Her concept, PeersIncorporated, brings excess capacity of consumer goods or assets—such as unused time or untapped data—to online platforms and apps where consumers (“peers”) provide insights that drive business growth.
Speaking recently at Boston Children’s Hospital, Chase elaborated on the concept of excess capacity, which is the basis of Buzzcar. Typically, families pay an average of $9,000 a year—$25 a day—for cars they use only 5 percent of the time. That unused time represents value and economic potential. Buzzcar’s platform harnesses that unused capacity, allowing multiple peers to supply and book cars on an easy-to-use website at a low cost. …
Shawn Farrell, MBA, is Telemedicine and Telehealth Program Manager at Boston Children’s Hospital.
Back in the 1920s, when medicine was more an art than a science and doctors made home visits, a publishing and radio pioneer named Hugo Gernsback predicted the future of telehealth. As described on Smithsonian.com, he wrote of a device called the TeleDactyl: “a future instrument by which it will be possible for us to ‘feel at a distance’”—dactyl, from the Greek, meaning finger.
Since that time, the practice of medicine has changed dramatically. Our understanding of the human body has advanced beyond our wildest dreams, producing drugs, devices and procedures that have made hospitals a place for healing and curing. At the same time, home visits were abandoned in favor of the office visit, making doctors more efficient. Almost 100 years later, several converging forces are making the home visit popular again, increasing the likelihood of seeing Gernsback’s vision become a reality.
The rollout of the Affordable Care Act, which will add millions of new patients to the health care system, comes at the same time that we have a shortage of primary care doctors, specialists and other care providers. …
Naomi Fried, PhD, is chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital. This post is adapted from her remarks at the Connected Health Symposium on October 24, 2013. She tweets @NaomiFried.
In the health care industry, we rely heavily on regulations to ensure the safety of our patients, procedures and drugs. New national health care regulations can even spur innovation in care delivery, but in the case of telehealth, they can be an impediment.
Telehealth, the remote delivery of care via computers, mobile devices, videoconferencing and other technologies, has great potential to improve the patient experience and reduce health care costs by removing the barriers of brick and mortar. At Boston Children’s Hospital, the Innovation Acceleration Program’s pilot telehealth programs have focused on both direct patient care and virtual clinician-to-clinician consultations.
Unfortunately, most states’ regulations are limiting providers’ ability to broadly offer telehealth services. …
Since our “trends” posts at the top of the year are among our most viewed, Vector took time out this summer to take an interim snapshot of pediatric medicine’s cutting edge. Here we present, in no particular order, our first five picks. Check back next Friday for Part 2. If you want more, there’s still time to register for our National Pediatric Innovation Summit + Awards (September 26-27). The posts will also appear as an article in the fall issue of Children’s Hospitals Today magazine.
1. Digital health apps 2.0
The electronic revolution in health care continues. According to recent surveys, more than 90 percent of physicians have smartphones and more than 60 percent are using tablet devices like iPads for professional purposes. Dr. Eric Topol and others think these digital tools are the future of medicine.
Mobile apps keep proliferating, adding more and more features: high-quality image capture, voice-to-text capabilities and gaming techniques to motivate adherence, as well as sensors that gather physiologic data, like glucose levels and heart rate. Consumers are tracking and sharing data themselves, saving time in the clinic and helping physicians monitor their symptoms. Through the much-hyped Google Glass, it won’t be long before doctors can seamlessly call up patient data, look up a drug dosage and get decision support during a clinical visit without using a hand-held device.
The goal of any community health intervention is for individuals to achieve daily lifestyle goals in a way that realistically takes into account their cultural backgrounds, neighborhoods, families and home lives. For overweight or obese adolescents, these intimate surroundings play a pivotal role in allowing healthful behaviors to take root.
Research teams at Boston Children’s Hospital and suburban affiliate Wareham Pediatrics are conducting a study that lets adolescents collaborate with their doctors online to improve their weight. Videoconferencing technology, provided by Boston Children’s Telehealth Program, brings services directly to subjects in their homes.
“We’re bringing high-quality interventions directly to kids in the community where they live and simultaneously learning about the community itself,” says Cara Ebbeling, PhD, associate director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Boston Children’s Hospital, and one of the leading researchers. “For example, we are looking at what grocery stores are located in the community and what opportunities exist for physical activity.” …
Most adolescents fight for the freedom to manage their own lives, especially when it comes to friends, curfews and hobbies. That excitement conspicuously slips away when they’re faced with managing something less glamorous—like diabetes.
Since diabetes is a chronic illness with potentially serious risks, it requires continuous management. But adolescents aren’t exactly lining up around the block for extra medical visits.
“Some adolescents forget to do things like take insulin or check their blood glucose level, and they could benefit from more frequent check-ins with their diabetes team,” says Erinn Rhodes, MD, MPH, director of the Type 2 Diabetes Program and Inpatient Diabetes Program at Boston Children’s Hospital. “But that’s not easy, especially if time is limited or if transportation is a challenge.”
So Rhodes has designed a study for adolescents 13 to 17 years old, to see if “televisits”—video conferences between teens and their diabetes care providers—can improve their diabetes while encouraging better self-management. …
This question comes up on an almost-weekly basis at Martha Eliot Health Center, the community health center of Boston Children’s Hospital where I see children for primary care. While dermatologic conditions are common in pediatrics, and we, in the primary care setting, often know what to do about them, patients sometimes come in with rashes that don’t look like anything we’ve seen before. In these situations, we wish we could have a trained dermatologist just take a look, but the demand for new dermatology appointments at Boston Children’s is high and wait times for non-urgent clinic visits can be long.
From the dermatologists’ perspective, a large proportion of the patients in their clinic actually don’t actually need to be there—they have common conditions that can be managed in the primary care setting, in the patient’s medical home, in a much more convenient and cost-effective way. …
This past August, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick signed a new law that attempts to lower costs by shifting providers away from fee-for-service payment to alternative payment models (APMs) in which they incur more financial risk, and encouraging the development of accountable care organizations (ACOs).
One provision of this law requires insurers to pay providers for services delivered remotely via “telemedicine.” …
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The Las Vegas Valley can learn a lot from Richard M. Daley.
Daley was mayor of Chicago for more than two decades, turning it into one of the top cities in the world with strong businesses, culture and tourism. On Thursday, he flew to Las Vegas to explain how he did it and to offer advice about how Las Vegas can become more than just a destination for gamblers and conventioneers.
Daley spoke at a luncheon at UNLV as part of his work as chairman of the Global Cities Initiative, a joint project of the Brookings Institution and JPMorgan Chase. The Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce organized the event.
Daley outlined several key strategies he believes all cities should follow to better compete in today’s global economy. They include better business and government collaboration, establishing a pro-business environment and maintaining first-class airports, roadways and rail systems. He also stressed environmental friendliness, including such measures as having open space and water conservation programs, and the need for strong relationships with nearby municipalities.
He decried the gridlock in Washington, D.C, saying politicians there are “political servants,” not public servants and said cities shouldn’t sit around waiting for federal help because it could take a while. He pointed out that building a world-class city takes passion, commitment and patience.
“It’s not done so quickly,” he said.
Comparing Las Vegas to Chicago is in many respects an unfair comparison, given their distinct differences. With a population of about 2 million, the valley is sprawled paper thin, its economy relies heavily on tourism and gaming, and most people drive when they need to get places. Chicago, which was the third-largest U.S. metropolitan area last year with 9.5 million residents, is far more densely populated, has an expansive network of commuter trains and buses and boasts a diversified economy that includes industries such as higher education, professional services, finance and freight rail.
The underlying question at Thursday’s luncheon: Can Las Vegas become a global city like Chicago?
A speakers panel weighed in and said that while Las Vegas has important attributes and great potential, in large part because 40 million people visit the city each year, more work is needed.
Don Snyder, dean of UNLV’s college of hotel administration, pointed out that Las Vegas has global name recognition, vast quantities of hotel and convention space and a strong international airport. He argued that Las Vegas is indeed a global city with a strong foundation but said the valley hasn’t lived up to its potential.
“We have a lot of building to do,” he said.
Missy Young, an executive vice president at data center operator Switch, said Las Vegas is a global destination but not yet a global city. Institutions such as the Smith Center for the Performing Arts have helped put the valley on the right track, she said, but there are still a number of concerns, such as the struggling Clark County public school system.
She also pointed out that while McCarran International Airport features advertisements for the Blue Man Group and other entertainment options, Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport has signs that encourage people to move their businesses to Arizona.
“Those are things we need to do better as a community,” she said.
The 69-year-old Daley knows a thing or two about the topic.
He was first elected mayor of Chicago in 1989 after his father, Richard J. Daley, served in the post from 1955 to 1976. After deciding not to seek re-election, Daley was succeeded last year by former Obama White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.
Daley’s father led Chicago with a tight grip and was known as one of the last “big city bosses.” The younger Daley, nicknamed Chicago’s “Mayor for Life,” led the city with less concentrated but still formidable power.
In March 2003, he famously ordered city construction crews to tear up the runway at Meigs Field, a lakefront airport popular with recreational aviators and business executives. The airport was supposed to remain open until at least 2026 under an agreement between Daley and then-Gov. George Ryan, although the state’s legislature could have voted to close it after 2006. Instead, bulldozers dug out huge Xs starting at 1:30 a.m. with no advance warning. Daley has said he ordered the demolition to protect Chicago from terrorists who could have attacked people using small planes that took off from Meigs.
City Hall eventually paid a $33,000 fine and repaid $1 million in federal airport development grants to settle claims stemming from the surprise destruction, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
But Daley boosted Chicago’s financial strength, in part by promoting its various industries. He said today that when he was first elected mayor, a local newspaper said Chicago was “a city on the brink,” a place where no one wanted to live or do business. In 2010, the year before he left office, Foreign Policy magazine ranked Chicago No. 6 on its Global Cities Index, behind New York, London, Tokyo, Paris and Hong Kong.
Part of Daley’s success stemmed from his environmental initiatives. More than 600,000 trees were planted in Chicago since 1989, with about 275,000 of those planted by the city of Chicago, according to the nonprofit group Chicago Gateway Green. More than 1,300 acres of open space also were added during Daley’s tenure, and a 20,300-square-foot green roof of plants and vegetation was installed on top of City Hall in 2001.
His administration also built the 24.5-acre, $475 million Millennium Park downtown. Despite opening four years behind schedule, it proved immensely popular. The park features an amphitheater, seasonal ice rink and indoor event space.
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Wild elephant drinking at a man-made watering hole in Africa. Drought can make wildlife more vulnerable to poaching. Photo: Sally Kneidel
Article below reprinted from the Cameroon Tribune, June 27, 2011
Douala (Wouri) - Two wildlife traffickers were arrested in Akwa, Douala in the Littoral Region, following a sting operation carried out by the Littoral Regional Delegation of Forestry and Wildlife.
They were arrested in possession of two ivory tusks and over a hundred of sculpted ivory products. They were about to sell the illegal ivory products when they were arrested. The government of Cameroon has put in place procedures and regulations to protect natural resources from leaving the country that is why according to Mrs Fosi Mary, former technical advi ser of Environment and the Protection of Nature, "Countries have a sovereign right over their biological resources and no one can collect any resource from a country without the prior consent of the country of origin, so the government of Cameroon, within the framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity and CITES and other conventions in the field of environment is trying to protect resources from leaving the countries without authorization We receive applications from people who want to move resources from the country and we provide authorizations and certificates of origin of the resources concerned which is shown at the ports of entry”.
To curb this phenomenon, the Central African subregion has seen the emergence of projects involved in wildlife law enforcement with project such as the wildlife enforcement program launched in Cameroon in 2003 by the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife in collaboration with LAGA – an international non governmental organization specialized in wildlife law enforcement coming into action. The success of this project has seen its replication in countries such as Congo Braz with the PALF project, in the Central African Republic with the RALF project and in Gabon with the AALF project. All of these projects work on the same basis - specializing in wildlife law enforcement.
Traffickers know very well that they need a license for their activities but they simply go ahead illegally, for want of larger profits. This is done in discriminately, regardless of whether the species are in class A, B or C.
They trade in all kinds of species in cluding totally protected wildlife species. Numerous wildlife species have gone extinct in the African continent some include the Barbary lion that once roamed large areas in North Africa from Morocco to Egypt.
Law enforcement it seems is the only viable alternative for the moment against the illegal trade in protected species. While we may hold work shops and seminars to reflect on the mitigation and the halting of the rate of extermination of our wildlife spe cies, the species in earnest are dying out each day. It is estimated that about 6 lions are lost per year in the Waza national park and it is believed that less than 20 lions are left in the park. From the arithmetic, this means that we may be bidding farewell to lions in the next 3 or 4 years having been killed to extinction.
Keywords: elephants sculpted ivory seized seizure poaching Cameroon illegal wildlife trade blackmarket trade in wildlife illegal trade
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Lumenpulse, a developer of commercial-grade light sources that use light-emitting diodes (LEDs), announced today it has raised $16 million in its first round of funding.
The company manufactures more than a dozen kinds of LED lights, some of which can generate up to 81 lumens — a measurement of visible light — per watt of electricity consumed for each foot of lighting the company installs. A typical incandescent bulb only generates around 14.6 lumens per watt. Philips’ LED light that won the U.S. Department of Energy’s $10 million L Prize generated around 90 lumens per watt of electricity consumed.
LED lighting is still much too expensive for typical consumers based on cost-per-lumen production, Lux Research analyst Murray McCutcheon told VentureBeat. LED lighting cost around $18 per kilolumen produced, while incandescent bulbs are around $2.20 per kilolumen. LED lighting bulbs probably won’t reach that point until 2015, he said.
“LED lighting is poised to make major inroads in the commercial sector by 2015,” McCutcheon said. “Although not cost-competitive for most applications today, companies like Lumenpulse are finding traction in higher-value applications like showcase projects and external façade lighting that exploit LEDs’ color range and controllability.”
LED lighting providers should capture around 30 percent of the commercial lighting market by 2015. But LED lighting won’t even crack the residential markets until around 2020, when it will have an opportunity to capture around 40 percent of the market, McCutcheon said.
Lumenpulse did not disclose which investors are participating in the first round of funding. Part of the funding includes a credit line from Silicon Valley Bank, the company said. The Boston, Mass.-based company was founded in 2006.
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|“||You see, I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and soul of a person who really, really wants that Dodo!||„|
|~ Queen Victoria with the Pirate Captain|
|“||I seem to recall that you pirates have a bit of a soft spot for shiny things. Or am I getting you muddled up with Magpies?||„|
|~ Queen Victoria showing the Pirate Captain her room full of gold and treasure|
Queen Victoria is the main antagonist of the 2012 3-D stop-motion animated film, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!.
Queen Victoria is the queen of London and has a severe hatred of pirates. She is also the leader of a secret party of world leaders who join together every year to eat the rarest of creatures. She was later applauding with the other audience members to see the Pirate Captain (disguised as a scientist) become a great scientist. The Pirate Captain has been pardoned by Queen Victoria, so which means that the Pirate Captain cannot win the Pirate of the Year awards, thus making him lose the license of swashbuckling. Then, she also was seen capturing Polly (the last dodo bird) with the other world leaders to eat all the rarest animals in the QV1. She almost had beheaded Polly, but Mr. Bobo saves her to disrupt the meal. Then, the Pirate Captain and his crew have a confrontation with her to keep Polly alive, making her get stranded on an island. Near the end of the film, the other rare animals decide to eat Queen Victoria.
- She was voiced by Imelda Staunton who also plays Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Bunty in Chicken Run and Mrs. Claus in Arthur Christmas.
- The reason she hates pirates is because she considers them "out-of-date", "dinosaurs", and she thinks that all they talk about is the ocean. (She refers this to "romance of the seas" guff.)
- Her leitmotif is similar to the Rule Britannia melody, although it is much darker.
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Kent Phillips / wdwnews.com
Several dozen people apparently were sickened after visiting Walt Disney World's 'Wild Africa Trek' attraction at the Florida theme park. Health officials are investigating the outbreak.
Several dozen people have been sickened by a mystery illness linked to visits to the “Wild Africa Trek” tour offered by Walt Disney World in Buena Vista, Fla., local health officials said Thursday.
“Hundreds” of people have been questioned so far in connection with the cluster of flu-like illnesses detected in early June, said Dain Weister, a spokesman for the Orange County, Fla., Health Department.
Visitors who took the three-hour boutique tour -- which includes nature hikes, crossing a rickety foot bridge, sightings of giraffes, hippos and other animals and a catered snack on a manmade savannah -- came down with symptoms including diarrhea, abdominal pain, fatigue and nausea, Weister said.
“The thing we’re trying to get everyone to understand is this is some kind of stomach bug,” said Weister, noting that no specific pathogen has been identified.
Though the symptoms may resemble those associated with infections such as norovirus, that bug usually causes more vomiting than victims reported, Weister said.
Most of the illnesses occurred during two days in early June, he said, adding that he didn't know the exact dates. No one has been hospitalized. Victims ranged from children to adults, including entire families.
Health department officials learned of the outbreak on June 11. Inspectors immediately reviewed Disney's food service operations -- and found no concerns, Weister said. Disney officials have conducted a thorough environmental cleaning, added more hand sanitizers and reiterated hand hygiene instructions for employees.
“We are working closely with the Orange County Health Department to review the situation,” said Disney spokeswoman Andrea Finger.
The Wild Africa Trek is offered several times each day at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, part of the Florida theme park. Groups of no more than 12 “trekkers” travel through areas of the Harambe Wildlife Reserve that aren’t available to usual visitors. Guests pay $139 to $249 a person for the tour, on top of regular admission, according to a report in the Orlando Sentinel newspaper.
The Animal Kingdom theme park attracts some 9.8 million visitors each year.
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(a parting shot for 2011)
By Vladimir Kagan copyright December 31, 2011
Friendships come in different sizes and intensity. They are hard to codify: There are fair-weather friends, casual friends, social friends. There are friends you see once a year and there are those you see only on Christmas Cards. There are intrusive friends and distant friends. There are people that “wanna” be a friend but you can’t see why – At least on Face Book and Linkedin… they’re in your face but you can ignore or un-friend them. And then there are friendships that are reciprocal – a quiet understanding camaraderie.
There are people who take one look at each other and see friendship - that is chemistry. Friendships need nurturing; they grow from seedlings and sprout only with the right amount of watering. It’s not like love at first sight… that’s infatuation. These friendships can be lopsided… that’s OK.
Let me tell you about my best friend. It started as mutual admiration… two good-looking kids getting together on a date. Over the years our friendship grew… we became inseparable friends. We discovered shared interests but also divergent qualities. Untried waters… risk taking… openness. Openness is perhaps the crucial attribute. Exposing the delicate under-belly of emotions.
Shut out the world and you cloister yourself. Let the world enter your heart and it will create happiness. “You reap as you sow” – Happiness will bring a smile to your life and in turn creates laughter. Laughter is the best ingredient for good health. Not the stuff of Comedy Central, but the attitude that lets you see the brighter side of life even in the face of diversity. Life is like a bowl of cherries, enjoy it while its there; it’s an eternity and a flash – here today and gone tomorrow.
It takes two to Tango; it takes two to make an argument. The road to happiness is not a smooth path. Friends can disagree… sometimes passionately. It is not “I win- you loose”, it is a seesaw. Never, never take a grudge to bed; never wake up with a grudge. There are two sides to every argument and the solution may well be a third side. This simple lesson can take years to learn, but when it becomes a part of your life – friendship will turn to love.
We loved each other day and night… We enjoyed boundless curiosity. Our love was indestructible, always full of beans, always able to “resist both wind and tide.” We became inseparable – two peas in a pod - the Yin and Yang of life.
I had this love for over 54 years. The love of my life - my best friend, Erica, is now gone. Mercifully, memories of all pain diminish. Happiness outlasts tears – Good memories live forever.
This was our last picture together, Erica and me at a Christmas Party, the day before she died
Friendships, love and memories never die!
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Gopnik's Daily Pic: Kapoor's mirror at the Met
The latest feed from my morning musings about art and objects at www.blakegopnik.com.
A giant mirror by Anish Kapoor, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Kapoor assembles thousands of hexagonal mirrors, maybe an inch across, to form one concave, compound surface that's like a shaving mirror seven feet wide.
Yes, it is science-fair art, and it's all about a special effect. But what an effect. From up close, you see yourself reflected small in each tile, but also as a larger, overall reflection that's made up of dozens of Mini Yous. From a bit further off, you see a huge, virtual reflection of yourself in the room, hovering in space but upside down. It's an experiment in real-world cubism, destabilizing self and place.
| November 15, 2010; 7:37 AM ET
Categories: Blake Gopnik, Contemporary Art, Museums | Tags: Daily Pic
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Arise's "Unique" Exhibit at the Everson Features Voices, Visions of Those with Different Abilities
A large part of the Everson museum has been set aside for the next couple weeks to display the art of those who might have no other way to express themselves. The “Unique” exhibit and magazine are the result of a partnership between Arise, the museum and several sponsors. Artists of differing abilities submitted more than 180 pieces of art from a six county region. One of them was Michael Simmons of Watertown.
This was Simmons' second entry to Unique. He prefers the process used by some of the masters.
But the Unique exhibit and magazine aren't just about paintings. Arise Executive Director Tom McKeown is always amazed by the variety and depth of the works submitted.
You can see the "American Avocet," Simmons’ oil painting “The Lone Wolf” and dozens of other works by those of differing abilities downstairs at the Everson through September 1st. More information is at uniquemagazine.org and everson.org. WAER is a media sponsor.
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The Carson Census Designated Place had a population of 2,420 as of July 1, 2016.
The primary coordinate point for Carson is located at latitude 45.7358 and longitude -121.8326 in Skamania County. The formal boundaries for the Carson Census Designated Place (see map below) encompass a land area of 4.79 sq. miles and a water area of 0.02 sq. miles. Skamania County is in the Pacific time zone (GMT -8). The elevation is 469 feet.
The Carson Census Designated Place (GNIS ID: 2407972) has a U1 Census Class Code which indicates a census designated place with an official federally recognized name. It also has a Functional Status Code of "S" which identifies a statistical entity.
Washington is one of 20 states where Census County Divisions (CCDs) are used for statistical tracking of subdivisions within each county. The Carson Census Designated Place is located within Carson-Underwood Division of Skamania County.
Beneath the boundary map are tables with Carson population, income and housing data, five-year growth projections and peer comparisons for key demographic data. The estimates are for July 1, 2016.
|Population in Households||2,420|
|Population in Familes||1,931|
|Population in Group Qrtrs||0|
|Average Household Size||2.48|
|Average Family Size||3|
|Total Housing Units||1,079 (100%)|
|Owner Occupied HU||701 (65.0%)|
|Renter Occupied HU||276 (25.6%)|
|Vacant Housing Units||102 ( 9.5%)|
|Median Home Value||$200,329|
|Average Home Value||$246,250|
|Median Household Income||$46,509|
|Average Household Income||$53,946|
|Per Capita Income||$21,483|
|(Compound Annual Growth Rates)|
|Median Household Income||-0.74%|
|Per Capita Income||1.09%|
The table below compares Carson to the other 627 incorporated cities, towns and CDPs in Washington by rank and percentile using July 1, 2016 data. The location Ranked # 1 has the highest value. A location that ranks higher than 75% of its peers would be in the 75th percentile of the peer group.
|Total Population||# 285||55th|
|Population Density1||# 415||34th|
|Diversity Index2||# 300||52nd|
|Median Household Income||# 422||33rd|
|Per Capita Income||# 508||19th|
Additional comparisons and rankings can be made with a VERY EASY TO USE Washington Census Data Comparison Tool.
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Academies at Cardozo Provide Career Options
Dorothy Rowley - WI Staff Writer | 5/23/2012, 2:15 p.m.
The numbers don't lie when it comes to construction jobs held by minorities in the Washington area. Blacks sit at the bottom of the totem pole, but it's not due to a lack of jobs. Some of the issues that preclude entry include lack of qualifications, lack of access and discrimination.
To that end, one of the District's best-kept secrets is housed on the campus of Cardozo Senior High School in Northwest, where students in grades 10 through 12 learn the ins and outs of the trades that can set them on a secure career path.
"The Academy of Construction & Design is a joint venture between the District of Columbia Public School system and the D.C. Students Construction Trades Foundation and it's been very successful," said Director Shelly Karriem. She added that many of the students who have completed curriculums that focus on trades like carpentry, electrical, heating and air conditioning, go on to college.
"It was an unexpected outcome, but also a welcome outcome," Karriem said. "The students are supposed to spend two years in the program, receive a certificate that would prepare them to go into the workforce to begin their careers." But as it's turned out, "two-thirds go to college and one-third [enter] the industry."
Karriem also hailed the Academy of Construction & Design as a blessing for students, many of whom lack parental guidance.
"This program has proven to be a lifeline for them. We set the bar high when they're here, but we don't let the bar go once they've taken hold of it and graduated," Karriem said. "We help them navigate through the education and career processes and assist them with scholarships during their second, third and fourth years of college."
During the day, 225 students attend the program. But in the evening, as the D.C. Apprenticeship Academy, 103 students show up to work toward their certifications.
Cheryl Rodgers, director of the D.C. Apprenticeship Academy said that after students graduate, they can work for one of the D.C. Students Construction Trades Foundation's member companies like Miller & Long, M.C. Dean and D.C. Sigal.
"Once they become employed, they can go to the [D.C.] Apprenticeship Academy and take classes to get certification in the different construction trades, which include electrical, carpentry and plumbing," said Rodgers. Echoing Karriem's sentiments, she said the manner in which both academies intertwine makes them unique - particularly for the holistic approach taken to attract students.
Karriem, who previously worked with Associated Builders and Contractors of Metro Washington, explained that the Academy of Construction & Design evolved from a need among construction employers who were having problems hiring qualified workers.
"So we came up with the idea that we needed to start teaching trades at the high school level," Karriem said. "We pitched this idea to a couple of the high schools and got shot down. Then we went to the principal of Cardozo at the time - and he said, 'Absolutely, bring it to Cardozo.'"
Over the course of its seven-year existence, the Academy of Construction & Design has had its share of challenges. But the facility has still managed to be a positive force among the District's vocational offerings.
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“Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the Spirit of Party…” -George Washington’s Farewell Address
I start with this quote from George Washington because he would be profoundly disappointed in modern American politics. He would see a divided country lacking a clear path to right itself. We chose not to heed his advice and find ourselves in the exact situation he so wisely predicted.
It wasn’t so long ago America was deeply divided over the issues of slavery and state’s rights. The Union’s fate hung in the balance. Americans were at war with each other. What happened was an inability of existing political institutions to effectively deal with the issues at hand. We can argue about whether it was good or bad for liberty, when the North used war to maintain the union, but that isn’t today’s point. The point is to search history for a solution to our dilemmas.
The Civil War was fought over slavery and state sovereignty. Real moral and constitutional fights.
What are WE so divided over? Entitlements, levels of taxation, government intrusiveness, gay marriage, drug decriminalization, and foreign policy.
Seems a bit petty, no?
All of these issues are solvable through the proper amount of give and take. A gay marriage and tax reform bill paired together for example. Easier said than done I acknowledge, but not out of the realm of possibility.
However, these divisions are still great enough to rock our country to it’s core.
What caused this hostile environment? I believe it is the entrenchment of vested interests and long-time commitments within the Republican and Democrat parties.
If all political parties divide and stoke animosity over time, what purpose do they serve?
“The main purpose of political parties is to join people, who hold similar points of view about the government, together. These groups work to participate and influence the government by having members elected to a government position. Even though many people choose to be associated with a certain party, they don’t all share exactly the same beliefs.”
This post…is about the last clause. “They don’t all share EXACTLY the same beliefs.”
How are we going to move forward when the existing political parties are ill equipped to effectively govern?. Their ensconced positions, on nearly every issue, make policy recommendations look like someone waltzing in a straightjacket. They’re encumbered by history, donors, and leaders. Today’s Republican and Democrat parties find themselves in similar positions. Neither of them can stomach the thought of abandoning what catapulted them to dominance.
Former California politician Jesse Unruh once said, “Money is the mother’s milk of politics.” Nothing could be more true. Even a great organization like Freedomworks puts their cash behind socially conservative Republicans instead of the Libertarian candidates whose beliefs are more inline with their own. But I feel we have entered a new political paradigm where passing off inconvenient issues will no longer work. Americans are yearning for a politician to root for. Everyone mistook President Obama as that figure, but he’s turned out to be a disappointment to liberals, moderate Democrats, and crossover Republicans. All of us are searching for that great uniter. Fortune will favor the bold in this new era and Rand Paul’s filibuster was all the evidence one needs.
So if structural problems have rendered both parties utterly incapable of undertaking any sort of meaningful change, how do we deal with this quagmire?
What can history teach us?
In 1854 the Whig party imploded on itself. The Compromise of 1850 created a fissure between pro and anti-slavery Whigs. The final death of the party was the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854. It dissolved the terms of the Missouri Compromise and allowed slave or free status to be determined in the territories by popular sovereignty. Ultimately, the Whigs could no longer function as a party and disintegrated. This led to a group of ex Whigs forming the new Republican party on an anti-slavery foundation.
The party’s fresh platform allowed them to build coalitions with disillusioned Democrats, known as the Free Soilers. The new coalition was by no means in agreement on each issue, but they stood in resolute opposition to slavery and secession. It trumped their differences. By 1856 the Republican’s Presidential candidate, John Fremont, won 11 of the 16 northern states. His campaign slogan was “Free Labor, Free Land, Free Men”. While Fremont didn’t win, the message of freedom had shifted momentum. The election of 1860 was the Republican Party’s grand entrance on the political stage. Republican Presidential nominee, Abraham Lincoln, had won.
What is the lesson in that bit of history and how is it relevant to today?
The Republican and Democrat parties have both proven themselves unsuited for effective governance. They abandon principle at the first taste of power, commit unconscionable crimes against liberty under the guise of protecting Americans, and show a complete disregard for the fiscal sustainability of the United States. However, history shows us that in 6 short years, principled men can cast off the shackles of party affiliation, take a stand, and align interests with former opponents in order to restore principle. Slavery and halting a gradual descent into tyranny, are of equal importance.
I would venture to say the vast majority of today’s Democrats and Republicans are fed up with their party. The growth of the Libertarian party is proof in itself. An alternative has emerged which offers a clear distinction from Democrat and Democrat-lite. A party whose principles mirror the founders commitment to and concern for, liberty. A party that accommodates all lifestyles, abhors foreign entanglements, and lacks the rigidity derived from years of power.
Are we ready for a party that unites Libertarians with disillusioned Republicans and Democrats?
Are there REALLY more things that unite than divide us?
I hope so.
Our leaders and America’s punditry class prevent reason from reaching minds. As a consequence, the existence of effective leadership seems unattainable. Americans as a whole are not so ideologically opposed that solutions remain out of reach. Here, I make the case those solutions reside in our commonalities:
-No Deductions. 70% of Americans favor simplifying the tax code by lowering tax rates and eliminating loopholes and deductions.
–75% of Americans think the top tax rate should be 30% or lower
-54% favored eliminating the “estate tax”
-When asked: “What is the maximum percentage of a person’s income that should go to taxes (all taxes, state, federal, and local)?” The mean percentage for 2009 was 15.6 percent
-64% of voters believe that Americans are overtaxed
-When asked: “Do you prefer a government with fewer services and lower taxes, or more services and higher taxes?” 68% of voters said they prefer a government with fewer services and lower taxes
-A Balanced Budget Amendment to be phased in over 10 years
–74% of Americans Support the Balanced Budget Amendment
-A new study from the Cato Institute estimates that the federal government will spend almost $100 billion on corporate welfare this year
-Allow competitive bidding for Medicare Part D prescription drugs. That would save about $150 billion.
-Social Security Privatization and a Medicare Voucher program for individuals under 45. Keep the current system for those older.
–83% support Medicare reform
–52% support partial privatization of Social Security. Here’s a breakdown by age via Reason’s Poll. It perfectly aligns with a plan of reform for citizens under 45. Keep it as is for those over 45, and partial privatization for those under
-Elimination of dozens of agencies
–$.66 of every dollar collected for welfare goes towards administration costs (Mises Institute Study), meaning only $.34 goes to the recipient
–83% support a work requirement for Welfare
-126 federal assistance programs, 33 housing programs, 21 food programs could be shut down
-Any necessary Medicaid co-pays automatically deducted
-Section 8 housing deducted
-Private charities would fill in other needs. Only $.30 of every dollar collected by private charity goes towards administrative costs. We would more than double the amount of money reaching recipients
–93% of Americans feel we have a moral obligation to leave future generations a planet that isn’t damaged or polluted
–64% favor regulating greenhouse gases to an extent
-The negative externalities of pollution are not being priced into the creation of goods and services, creating a market distortion. Going forward we need a mechanism to account for the cost
-Follow the 7th Generation Principle: Don’t do anything to the environment which will diminish resources and opportunities even so far as 7 generations in the future
-Harsh financial penalties for polluters INCLUDING the US Government. They’re the number one polluter
Ending The War on Drugs:
–82% of Americans think we’re losing the war on drugs
-A $200 drug transaction costs society $100,000 for a three year sentence
–56% of Americans support marijuana legalization
-Since Portugal decriminalized ALL drugs the number of addicts has been cut in half since 1999
Foreign Policy (Protect the homeland and stay out of foreign entanglements):
–57% percent of respondents say it is unconstitutional to order the killing of Americans overseas
–59% believe that the federal government abuses its power when it comes to targeted strikes
–66% Think the federal government spies on its citizens
–61% of voters believe that “the U.S. government should have to get a warrant from a court before wiretapping the conversations U.S. citizens have with people in other countries”
– 64% of Americans support reducing all spending including military
–67% favor ending the Afghan war and bringing troops home within 1 year
–69% of Likely U.S. Voters think the United States should not commit forces overseas unless it is vital to U.S. national security
–59% of likely U.S. Voters believe our political leaders send U.S. soldiers into harm’s way too often
-In fact, a record number of US citizens want to be more isolationist
–64% of American adults believe same-sex marriage will become legal
–58% of Americans feel same-sex marriage is a civil rights issue
–54% of Catholics support same sex-marriage
–70% of Americans support same-sex marriage or civil unions
-Even Republicans are coming around on the issue
–72% of Americans support a pathway to legal residency or citizenship for undocumented workers already in the country
-National School Voucher Program
-67 percent of African Americans and 60 percent of Hispanics support vouchers for low-income families (Source)
-52 percent of African Americans and 54 percent of Hispanics support initiatives to provide private school vouchers to all children in failing public schools (Source)
So what does this mean for the Libertarian Party?
I recognize that compromising on the above issues doesn’t align with a perfect Libertarian state (an oxymoron to some I aware, but bear with me). Yet, public opinion is moving in the direction of Libertarian principles. Is the Libertarian brand the right vehicle to drive Americans toward a reconstruction of liberty?
Even Lincoln understood the importance of a name. A name carries the weight of it’s past. So many connotations. So many prejudices. That’s why he ran under the National Union Party in the election of 1864. His rebranding allowed War Democrats to unite behind him and save face by avoiding the question, “YOU support a Republican?
Can Libertarian messaging break through and pull in enough supporters to create real change? I hope so.
Might it be easier to take control of the Republican Party and rewrite it’s platform? Perhaps.
Should we follow Lincoln’s lead and ride shared sentiments into a uniting theme? Could we revive the “National Union” Party or some modern day equivalent to bring people together while injecting common sense into the political arena? Maybe.
Where would that leave the Libertarian Party?
It’s no secret the Libertarian Party is diverse in ideology. Would the founders of the LP refuse to support such a plan after years of hard work building it to prominence?
Would practical Libertarians align themselves with a strategic gradual plan to increase liberty? What would become of the mutualists, ancaps, and voluntaryists? Would they comprise the remaining members of the LP? Those committed to a stateless society.
Can we build a large enough coalition between pragmatic Libertarians, Tea Party members, former Republicans teetering towards libertarian principles, open minded Democrats, and moderates to upend the status quo? These are the questions we need to answer.
I believe we can.
In fact, organizing support doesn’t have to take place under one name. Maybe all of the supporters will band together and align behind candidates that can drive change. There may come a time when the Libertarian Party has their John Birch moment and distances itself from some of their anarchist members, but that time is a long, long way off. Right now all of these groups need to unite around the principles of liberty in order to “form a more perfect union”.
Chris Spangle wrote it best:
“I welcome anyone that wants to move us away from statism. I hope the “college kids” that John McCain referenced are successful. I hope our American political system in 50 years consists of three parties: A liberal party that fights for equality without government force and for peace, a conservative party that fights as free of a market as we can get, and a libertarian party that fights for all of those things.” (source)
I’m not writing in support of rebranding or renaming. I’m writing in support of alignment. Don’t let perfect become the enemy of the good. Don’t fall trap to immanentizing the eschaton. I only wish to stimulate thought and provide a historical example. It’s not my intent to infuriate you. I want you to question these ideas. Poke holes in them, but whatever you do, entertain these thoughts. Don’t reject them outright or you risk becoming trapped by same tired precepts that plague American politics today. Rejecting ideas on arrival makes you no different than the old guard of the existing parties.
Don’t be like them.
If you’re reading this, you’re not trapped by dogma. You are a critical thinker who welcomes new ideas and diversity of opinion.
YOU have the ability to create change in America.
As a great man once said,
“If there’s something wrong, those who have the ability to take action have the responsibility to take action.”-Thomas Jefferson
The ball is in the court of people committed to Libertarian principles.
The time has come.
PS. A special thanks to my dad, Tom Lenz, for inspiring this post.
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Empowerment Through Environmental Education
As Vanessa Venturini received her M.S. in environmental science and management, she looked forward to a career building awareness of the natural world.
“I got my first taste of environmental advocacy as a high school student through Save the Bay when I did a beach clean-up; it was one of the most fulfilling things I had ever done,” said Venturini.
Venturini has worked with the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program, helped with the restoration of the Pawtuxet River, organized beach clean-ups through Project Clean Sweep, and taught environmental lessons to elementary school students: “I’m passionate about working with people to protect the environment. I like the idea of empowering people.
“I learned through my coursework how people and development have had such a negative impact on biodiversity and the environment, and I believe that through education we can help alter perceptions and practices to be better for the planet.”
As part of her degree program, Venturini undertook a research project with the Rhode Island Natural History Survey and the URI Outreach Center to encourage the use of native plants in home landscaping and ecological restoration projects. She studied model programs from around the country, interviewed nursery owners and program coordinators, and designed a training program for nursery professionals that will be launched this year.
At the same time, Venturini has spent the last three years working at the URI Outreach Center coordinating youth programs, training volunteers, developing curricula, and teaching students about the environment. She will continue these activities after graduation and start a program for the new community garden at the Roger Williams Park Botanical Center that will encourage children to become gardeners while teaching them about biodiversity in urban spaces.
“I always thought I was an English and history type person, but I’m also fascinated by the science side of things,” Venturini said. “Eventually I’d like to branch out and maybe one day be the director of a nonprofit environmental group.”
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|Nailcare More home remedies Home|
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Nails are used for various daily activities and are an indicator of a person's health. Many common nail problems like brittle nails and yellow nails are due to misuse of the nails. These problems can also be very painful. Some of the home remedies for treating and preventing nail problems are:
1. Nails become brittle due to loss of moisture. Vegetable oil will help the nails retain moisture. Apply a small amount of coconut or any other vegetable oil to the fingernail. Massage the oil into the nail. This should be done 3 to 4 times a day and will also improve blood circulation.
2. Eat food rich in the vitamin B biotin which is required for the growth of nails. Peanuts, egg yolk, mushroom, bananas, cauliflower contain Vitamin B. Fresh carrot juice contains calcium and phosphorus required for stronger nails.
3. Though nails become brittle
as part of the aging process, exposure to chemicals usually makes it
worse. Use gloves while handling cleaning liquids and detergents. After
swimming, wash your nails thoroughly.
Long nails are more likely to crack or break off, so keep the nails short. Also avoid using acrylic nails.
5. To whiten yellow nails, take a small amount of fresh lemon juice. Soak the nails in the lemon juice for several minutes and repeat the procedure a few times a week.
6. Denture tablets and whitening polish may be used to whiten nails. Smoking and nail polish make the nails yellow, so avoid smoking or using nail polish. If nail polish has to be used, a clear base polish will protect the nails.
7. If you bite your nails, spray the nails will a pepper or chilli spray. This will automatically prevent you from biting your nails further.
We hope these remedies solve your problem. If they don't , join our wellness forum, our members will help solve your nail problem.
© Copyright NK Infobase Discuss skincare, haircare, weightloss and other health problems
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Someone who finds the internet scary is someone who doesn’t know what they are really doing, I believe. To findout what the average person thinks, japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by Cross Marketing Inc into internet scariness.
Over the 28th and 29th of November 2007 300 members of the Cross Marketing online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was split 50:50 male and female, and 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, and 20.0% in their fifties.
With decent virus software and just a little common sense, viruses can be almost completely avoided, although running things like Explorer and Outlook (a sin around 70% are guilty of) does make life a little more interesting on line… A follow-up question would have been to find out how many people had actually suffered from the dangers in Q1SQ, for instance.
Q1: Do you think that these days the internet is a scary thing? (Sample size=300)
Very scary (to SQ) 8.0% Scary to some degree (to SQ) 69.3% Not very scary 18.0% Not scary at all 4.7%
Q1SQ: What sort of things make you feel the internet is a scary thing? (Sample size=208, multiple answer)
Votes Percentage Viruses, hacking, and other attacks 188 81.0% Leaking of personal data 188 81.0% Libel 119 51.3% Internet addiction 44 19.0% Other 9 4.3% No particular reason 7 3.4%
Q2: Compared to a year ago, how scary is the internet now? (Sample size=300)
Scarier than last year 20.3% As scary as last year 66.3% Less scary than last year 12.0% Didn’t use the internet a year ago 1.3%
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Mwela Rock Paintings
National Heritage Conservation Commission
Zambia, Northern Zambia
The Secretariat of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the World Heritage Centre do not represent or endorse the accuracy or reliability of any advice, opinion, statement or other information or documentation provided by the States Parties to the World Heritage Convention to the Secretariat of UNESCO or to the World Heritage Centre.
The publication of any such advice, opinion, statement or other information documentation on the World Heritage Centre’s website and/or on working documents also does not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of UNESCO or of the World Heritage Centre concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its boundaries.
Property names are listed in the language in which they have been submitted by the State Party
Mwela Rock paintings are located about 5 Km from Kasama town and encompassing eastwards rock outcrops of Mwankole, Sumina, Mulundu, Fwambo, Changa Mwibwe and westwards 10 Km from the town Lwimbo rock outcrops. The paintings are associated with the Later Stone Age.
The topography of the site is generally fairly undulating and deeper soils are more frequent, where as the central part is generally flat. The outcrops form part of the boundary of the extension of the main plateau areas. The site is also incised by abundant streams and extends over 100 Km2. More than 1000 paintings have been recorded in the rock outcrops, making Mwela Rock Paintings National Monument as one of the densest concentrations of rock art sites anywhere in Africa.
The site is protected under the National Heritage Conservation Commission (NHCC) Act, Cap 173 of the laws of Zambia and was declared collectively as a National Monument under Government notice No. 255 of 1964 bearing the name of Mwela. Part of the area is further protected under the Forestry Act as it falls within the Kasama Forestry Reserve area under the traditional leadership of Senior Chief Mwamba of the Bemba people of northern Zambia.
Kasama Town falls within the extensions of the main plateau with elevation ranging from 1320 to 1535m. It comprises of highlands surrounding the Lake basin area, stretching from Kasama through Mbala, Mporokoso and Kawambwa to Mansa. This plateau region forms part of the Continental divide (up warped plateau) and represents the remnants of the once extensive Miocene peneplain surface.
Justification of Outstanding Universal Value
Prehistoric art, as a visual narrative of culture, demonstrates the common heritage of all humanity. It constitutes the bulk of evidence of the cultural and intellectual history of humankind before the advent of written communication and serves as a means to delineate a people's cultural identity.
The intrinsic values of the cultural landscape of Mwela rocks stem from the way the cultural beliefs of people over many millennia have been inspired and influenced by its rock formations and associated features, and particular species of fauna and flora. Mwela rock art bears testimony to a cultural tradition (rock art), which is no longer practiced. The art provides an insight into past human life of the Later Stone Age hunter-gatherers, and how they interacted with their environment through time and space.
The paintings are of outstanding beauty and intricate detail depicting individual and social needs, as well as conceptual and communicative motivations at different stages of development. They are an exceptional example that illustrates the social practices and religious beliefs of those that executed them and attest to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which has disappeared from the area.
Currently, strong religious beliefs, such as rain-making and burial rites, fostered by the Mwela rocks landscape continue to play an important role in contemporary communities. The rock art of the site illustrates and underlines the irreplaceable and valuable heritage for mankind and highlights its exceptional spiritual and historical significance. It creates a thread of meaning and understanding in the ancient story of humankind.
Statements of authenticity and/or integrity
The Mwela Rocks cultural landscape supports an ecosystem with a low diversity of habitats, ranging from open grasslands and wetlands to kopjes and a few caves. The rock art in the area is authentic in terms of style, material, location and setting.
Mwela rocks cultural landscape is endowed with living intangible values that are integral to the daily livelihood of local communities. Traditional management systems are enforced at important sites through spiritual and traditional leadership. At all the shrines, for example, the traditional custodian ensures adherence to traditional taboos and restrictions, including dress code and behaviour at the shrine. The taboos and beliefs, which authenticate the intangible values and living traditions in the area, bind the cultural and natural values of Mwela rocks.
Comparison with other similar properties
The Mwela Rock cultural landscape compares favourably with other sites in the region. The Chongoni Forest Rock art site in Malawi and Kondoa rock art site in Tanzania, that are both on the World Heritage list, have similar themes in their rock art, but Mwela rock art site has the highest concentration of rock art in the southern African sub region.
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