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We are honored and excited to open up our block and community farm to the community this Saturday, April 28th. Come walk our block that we’ve lined in front yard wicking bed gardens that provide fresh food for our community. Stop by and see our Urban Patchwork CSA plots, a hugelkultur meditation labyrinth farm, our 27 chickens and salvaged coop, community composting program and aquaponics demonstration. Community gardening is on the rise in Austin! Join us for the 3rd Annual Austin Community Gardening Tour on Saturday, April 28th, from 12 – 4pm. This free, friendly-to-all-ages, open-house style tour provides the opportunity to visit an inspiring array of gardens throughout the Austin area where participants are growing food and growing community together. Get on your bike, in your car, or on your feet and check out this showcase of urban food-growing strategies! Enjoy instructional talks, celebrations, kids’ activities, and the opportunity to get your hands dirty by helping at a work day along the way. Presented by: The Coalition of Austin Community Gardens, Sustainable Food Center, the City of Austin Sustainable Urban Agriculture and Community Garden Program, and the Congress for the New цены на кондиционеры в могилевской области Urbanism For more information and a printable map of participating gardens, visit http:// Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/events/344444642260356/
World-Class Infrastructure and a Global Hub for Trade, Transport and Tourism Vision is one thing; executing that vision is another. Dubai is a place that marries the two and, as a result, delivers a business, finance, trade, logistics and tourism experience unlike that of any other city. Burj Khalifa, pictured here, is the tallest freestanding man-made structure. It was opened at the height of the global recession, representing an accomplishment on many fronts. But ultimately it is a business proposition that succeeds, like so many other business ventures in Dubai. Under the vision and guidance of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, this city of more than 1.5 million inhabitants has built an extensive network of hard and soft infrastructure that both enables business and ensures a high quality of life for its citizens. This provides a sustainable competitive advantage that gives Dubai a firm footing as the region’s leading hub in so many areas for the foreseeable future. It is this supportive entrepreneurial environment that has nurtured some of the Middle East’s strongest brands, just a few of which include the Jumeirah Group, Emirates Airline Group and Dubai Duty Free. As the history of this dynamic global city is written over the coming decades, there is little doubt that it will tell the tale of a nimble city that both makes possible and is supported by the economic development of the surrounding region, an area that includes some of the fastest-growing and wealthiest countries in the world. H.E. Hamad Buamim, Director General, Dubai Chamber Dubai Chamber: Promoting Dubai as the Unrivaled Trade and Investment Gateway to the Middle East and Africa The impact of the global economic crisis on Dubai has been deep and far reaching, but one of the most significant positive outcomes in the eyes of His Excellency Hamad Buamim, Director General of the Dubai Chamber, is that the emirate is once again “a very competitive, very attractive place for business and investment.” After several years of inflation, the cost of doing business – especially office, retail and residential rates, as well as wages and professional services costs – has dropped significantly. At the same time, the crisis has spurred changes in legal, regulatory and government-fee structures that are enhancing Dubai’s competitiveness. In addition, Buamim says the Chamber is working with the Dubai and UAE governments on more initiatives in this area to ensure that this competitive advantage will be sustained. Furthermore, Dubai has the most modern and comprehensively developed infrastructure of any city in the region. “This will keep us ahead of the game with regard to all other regional competitors,” Buamim explains. Dubai’s advanced infrastructure includes the 47-mile-long, fully automated Dubai Metro, and world-class airports, seaports, logistics facilities, conference centers and industry clusters in areas such as media, IT, financial services and healthcare. This infrastructure also includes an array of hospitals, schools, universities, world-class hotels, restaurants, shopping malls and entertainment destinations such as an indoor ski park and the observation deck at the top of the Burj Khalifa skyscraper, which is the tallest man-made structure on earth. “These advantages are unique to Dubai, and they explain its attraction to international investors and the international business community,” says Buamim. “I also guarantee that companies can hire more people to do business in Dubai than anywhere else in the region.” Growth and further development certainly fit well with Dubai’s strategy in the post-crisis world, Buamim adds. “We’re going back to the basics, to the traditional ‘old economy’ of trade, logistics, supply chain, financial services and tourism,” with other areas such as education and healthcare also playing an important role. Dubai Chamber Building Gateway to Emerging Markets The Chamber supports Dubai’s role as a gateway into the region for international business, particularly for the promising and fast-growing markets in Africa, as well as newly emerging Middle Eastern markets such as Iraq and Libya, Buamim says. “Businesses all over the world are interested in Africa, as well as places like Iraq and Libya; but these are not easy markets. There are challenges such as language, as well as the way of doing business and identifying the right business channels,” says Buamim. That’s where Dubai comes in, he says, since its companies and the Chamber itself already have relationships with the right organizations and entities. “This means we can easily connect international businesses with Africa, Iraq and Libya through Dubai.” Plus, commercial passenger and air-cargo routes, shipping lines and banking relationships are already in place. In March, the Chamber hosted 45 members of the American Chamber of Commerce Executives for a weeklong visit to Dubai that allowed them to see “in real life terms what Dubai is all about, and gave them a good feel for what Dubai has to offer,” Buamim says. The Chamber showed how Dubai could help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) expand beyond the U.S. market. “We were able to demonstrate that through Dubai, they can access growing Middle Eastern and African markets.” Dubai also is committed to reducing its environmental footprint. In December, a high-rise office building located along Dubai Creek became one of only four existing commercial buildings in the world outside North America to receive LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. This is important to the Chamber because it exemplifies to members Dubai’s regard for sustainable business behavior. Buamim also sees a significance for the international business community: “It shows that in Dubai, in this part of the world, we can have the best international practices, specifications and standards.” Mr. Colm McLoughlin, Managing Director, Dubai Duty Free Dubai Duty Free: The Largest Single Airport Retail Operation in the World It is clear, even in the corporate offices of Dubai Duty Free, why this company is the largest single airport retail operation in the world. Its care, precision, sense of presentation, customer service and innovative ways of doing business are on full display, from the office workers wearing the same aqua-colored sports coats as the staff on the sales floor to the enthusiastic and energetic greeting of visitors to the visitors’ water glasses wrapped in paper napkins tied like carefully knotted sarongs. These qualities have helped Dubai Duty Free grow, even during the worst of the global economic crisis last year when it registered growth of 3.8% and sold more than $1.14 billion of merchandise. Additionally, sales were up 21% during the first quarter of 2010 from the same period a year earlier – nearly twice the industry average of 11.2%, as calculated by industry analyst Generation Research. But these numbers are not just a result of Dubai Duty Free’s prime location in one of the world’s fastest-growing airports. It’s also because this 27-year-old duty-free operator knows how to sell. Dubai Duty Free consistently sells to 43% of departing travelers – more than double the industry benchmark of 20%. “To achieve this, we’ve learned how important it is to have correct positioning, work in close cooperation with airport authorities, provide good value, and keep staff trained properly and enthusiastic,” says Colm McLoughlin, the company’s Managing Director. A Changing Market Successful sales trends hint that the duty-free business has changed. There continues to be softness in the movement of luxury items, and sales of “less-strong” brands are doing well. What’s more, discounts continue to attract customers. “People are looking for value,” says McLoughlin. Customer trends also are changing. “Big spending by Russians is being replaced with big spending by Chinese travelers,” McLoughlin says. In fact, a luxury Chinese cigarette brand, Chunghwa, which costs one-and-a-halftimes more than Marlboro-branded cigarettes, is the second-best-selling cigarette brand for Dubai Duty Free. At Dubai Duty Free, the focus is on creating a feeling of “Wow!” as McLoughlin puts it, when passengers enter the duty-free shopping area. This is achieved through the interior design, a variety of special offers and the thrill of seeing some of the most elite luxury automobiles displayed as promotional prizes. The Finest Surprise Promotion also adds to the air of excitement, offering the chance to win a Porsche, a Maybach or BMW, as well as $1 million and $2 million in prizes. Dubai Duty Free Terminal 1 Helping Build Dubai However, much of Dubai Duty Free’s raison d’être is to help promote the country’s image. It does so by enhancing the tourism experience and by sponsoring a number of sporting, horse-racing and cultural events in Dubai and around the world that garner additional visibility for the emirate. The company also generates profits that help fund aviation and other projects in Dubai. McLoughlin says Dubai Duty Free’s ambition is to retain its top spot as the world’s largest airport retail operation and to continue to grow its sales, which it expects to double by the middle of this decade. Dubai Airport Growth Some of this future growth will be driven by 26,910 square feet of new retail space at the Al Maktoum International Airport, Dubai’s second airport. Passenger flights are tentatively set for mid-2011, which will trigger the opening of Dubai Duty Free’s retail facility there. Eventually the new airport, which will grow to handle 160 million passengers a year, will have 64,000 square feet of retail space, all managed by Dubai Duty Free. Meanwhile, at the current airport, a new concourse dedicated exclusively to Emirates Airline’s A380 fleet will open in two years and will have 8,000 square feet of duty-free retail space. In addition, Terminal 2 is being expanded, which will add to Dubai Duty Free’s existing retail operations. As McLoughlin explains, there are no plans to take this successful franchise beyond the borders of Dubai – which leaves only one option for global travelers looking to experience the “Wow” factor for themselves: “Fly by Dubai.” Jumeirah Group: Helping Build Dubai as a Top Global Convention Destination Over the past decade, Dubai has successfully made its mark as a top global vacation destination. It is now looking to do the same in the global meetings, events and incentives sector, with Jumeirah Group, the Dubai-based luxury hospitality company, set to play a major role in the effort. For Dubai – whose expansion was once constrained because builders couldn’t keep up with the city’s growing international appeal – this is an important step. With a steady supply of hotel rooms coming onto the market, the bottleneck is gone, says Carl Palmlund, Director of Sales – Groups, for the Jumeirah Group. Jumeirah currently operates eight five star hotels and serviced residences in Dubai, including the world-renowned Burj Al Arab, Jumeirah Beach Hotel, Jumeirah Emirates Towers, Madinat Jumeirah, Jumeirah Bab Al Shams Desert Resort & Spa, and the Jumeirah Living World Trade Centre Residence; with several new developments planned to open in Dubai and worldwide in the near future. In addition to the Jumeirah Carlton Tower and Jumeirah Lowndes Hotel in London and Jumeirah Essex House in New York, the group also operates Talise, its global spa brand; Jumeirah Restaurants, its dedicated restaurant division; Wild Wadi Waterpark; and The Emirates Academy of Hospitality Management, which offers specialized degree programs in hospitality management, all located in Dubai. “Dubai is a fantastic proposition for the meeting and events sector. It is a tremendous leisure and tourism destination, but it’s also a city for business…a global city with diverse cultures. It is open minded, business friendly and supported by an excellent infrastructure, and it has established itself as one of the best-connected trading hubs in the world. There are few destinations with such a mix,” Palmlund says. Burj Al Arab and Madinat Jumeirah The Dubai Bid Alliance In addition to its own business development efforts, the Jumeirah Group is participating in other event and meeting industry stakeholders through the Dubai Bid Alliance. This body coordinates bidding among industry members such as hotels, transportation providers and organizers for major events. The city’s expanded focus is already taking effect, with Jumeirah seeing a 15% to 20% increase in MICE-related (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) hotel stays at its Dubai properties over the past year, including a 30% increase in MICE guests from North America. Jumeirah has some of the largest state-of- the-art facilities and the most diverse and flexible settings for meetings and events, Palmlund says. With its properties in Dubai able to accommodate thousands of meeting attendees, and with city, desert and beachfront settings, Jumeirah offers an easy one-stop shop for planners and buyers. A Strategic Global Partnership In yet another critical move, in May 2010 the Jumeirah Group signed a three-year partnership agreement with Meeting Professionals International (MPI), the largest international association of meeting and event planners and buyers, whose 23,000 members have global buying power of $16.4 billion. “The ability to communicate with its members gives us fantastic trading opportunities,” Palmlund says. But the move provides more than just direct commercial benefits, as Palmlund explains: “It shows we are taking a clear position of commitment to this industry and tapping into this market more aggressively than ever.” Jumeirah Emirates Towers A Top International MICE Destination Jumeirah is the first luxury hotel chain in the world to form such a partnership with MPI; and as the first company to sign such an agreement in the Middle East, the relationship promises to help increase business opportunities for Dubai, the UAE and the wider Middle East as well, says Palmlund. “Just as we have partnered with stakeholders in the Dubai leisure industry to emerge as a global name in luxury leisure holidaying, so too can we pool our resources, talents and drive to achieve a long-term vision to see Dubai not only as the leading events destination in the Middle East, but also as a top meeting and events destination globally.” Forbes Custom is a custom publishing site that features special advertising sections from Forbes magazine as well as industry articles and videos from our partners. The editors at Forbes were not involved in the creation of this content. Site Developed by SmartMark Communications, LLC © Forbes Magazine, All Rights Reserved
Freedom from Religion: Why 'No Religion' Should be a Category itesh stands out among the lakh or so students cramming for the Joint Entrance Exam in the coaching mills of Kota, Rajasthan. Unlike most of his comrades, the 18-year-old isn’t praying for a high rank. He has been an atheist since he was 11 and struggling to cope with bullying in his school hostel. As he tells it, “I was physically weak and often got beaten up. I used to cry and ask God, Why does this happen to me? After the fiftieth time or so, I wondered who the hell I was talking to. And, on that wonderful night, I became an atheist.” Ritesh is a member of a small community: Those who shun religion in an ostentatiously religious country. Disbelief in God does not necessarily exclude anybody from India’s broad religious spectrum. Buddhism and Jainism are agnostic. Hinduism had ‘Nastik’ philosophers. Many historical figures were also atheists. Jawarharlal Nehru, Bhagat Singh and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, for example. Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar became a Buddhist, rejecting casteist prejudices. The Dravida Kazhagam movement was founded by EV Ramasami “Periyar”, who required his followers to renounce God. And of course, communists are atheists, by definition. Many modern atheists have arrived at unbelief simply because religion didn’t make sense to them. Jude, a software engineer, quit on religion while in school, after running a scientific experiment: “I experimented with study a little and pray a lot, then pray a little and study a lot. Then I tried similar experiments with other kids. It was quite clear prayer never helped.” The Census of India doesn’t have a separate category for ‘No Religion’, or ‘Atheist’, lumping them together with Bahais, animists, etc as ‘Others’. In the 2001 Census, the ‘Others’ added up to 0.6 percent (roughly 4.5 million). This is way less than the global average of 13 percent. However, ‘Others’ doubled in 2001 over 1991, and may well have doubled again in 2011. There are also many non-believers, who find it too much trouble to claim lack of faith. Yash, a software developer from Mumbai, says, “I haven’t performed any religious ceremonies for my daughter. But the only options on the Birth Certificate are Hindu, Muslim, Christian and Other. I ticked ‘Other’ and wrote ‘None’. The nurses objected. I had to select Hindu in order to avoid a future legal mess.” Given the multitude of forms Indians have to fill up, not being a recognised official category has costs. It also takes time and trouble in many other ways to be officially non-religious. A religious ceremony can be performed instantly and registered later. But a civil marriage under the Special Marriage Act requires a licence, a wait period, proof of residence, and other formalities. If one wishes to donate organs—or the body to science—after death, legal arrangements must be made in advance. If one wishes to avoid one’s assets being passed on by the default provisions of religious personal laws, it is necessary to make a valid Will and register it. After death, that Will must undergo probate. All this costs time and money. In addition to bureaucratic tangles, the non-religious often face emotional blackmail, social pressure and even legal threats. India’s archaic laws, such as Section 295(A) of the Indian Penal Code, make it a criminal offence to question religious doctrine, let alone mock faith. These laws are often used to harass people in absurd ways. Sanal Edamaruku, a rationalist engineer, faces criminal charges for demonstrating that a cross in a Mumbai church was dripping water due to capillary action from a blocked drain, rather than through some miracle. Not only can such laws be used to target the non-religious, they have no corresponding shields against mockery or ostracism. Quite a few have suffered estrangement from their families and have been abused by their peers. Asha, a Kashmiri Pandit, says her reluctance to perform shraddh ceremonies for her parents led to a breach with her siblings. Anita, from a Catholic family in Kerala, says it was a “horrible day” when she ‘came out’ as an atheist. “My mom was most intolerant and I faced very harsh reactions from her. My dad was more sad than angry. Strangely, once you come out, people who previously seemed to be liberal now act like fundamentalists. Maybe it’s because they’re dealing with their own doubts.” Nanda, from Mumbai, had problems at school “because I refused to go to the ashram or learn verses from the Gita.” She publicly repudiated her religion after the horrors of the 1992-93 riots. Akhtar, a 35-year-old from Moradabad, says he’s stopped participating in social and family occasions because of the inevitable heated arguments centred on his non-belief. Marriage is a major flashpoint. Geetha, from Chennai, was coerced into a temple marriage. Swati, a Banjara woman who runs her own business, says, “I refused to get married to a believer and did not, in fact, ever get married since I couldn’t find a suitable atheist.” Sarath, a Telugu Brahmin atheist, says he was “forced to do the Upanayanam [thread ceremony] because my parents want an arranged marriage. I have hopes of ‘saving’ my future spouse and kids if I have an arranged marriage, though I would prefer to marry a Freethinker.” Nishant, a banker from Ambedkar’s community, faced peer pressure in his college hostel. “There, I was exposed to fasting, vegetarianism, hate towards other religions, religious fanboys and fangirls. I faced discrimination when I opposed religious practices, and many forceful attempts were made to change my thinking.” Babu Gogineni, director, International Humanist and Ethical Union, remembers the occasion “when I was invited to speak to the Bar Association at Rangareddy District Court on Scientific Temper. The presiding judge learnt I was an atheist and refused to preside even though my subject had nothing to do with religion.” Social media has helped such scattered individuals find each other. There are multiple Facebook and Google groups and local meatspace chapters. Nirmukta, for example, is a rationalist organisation that debunks superstition and hosts debate forums. Indians without Religion is another society that wants to become an NGO fighting for the rights of the non-religious. As the non-religious band together, they hope to carve out some space and recognition. As Suchi, a engineer from Chennai says, “People need to respect that you have put at least as much thought into your atheist beliefs, as they have into their religion. Only then can there be a true separation of church and state.” Losing Their Religion Atheists have long demanded the inclusion of a ‘No Religion’ category on official documents. Lawyer Nikhil Mehra explains how an appeal could be filed: A writ petition would have to be filed challenging the absence of a No Religion category. The grounds would be freedom of conscience under Article 25(1) and Article 14. The core is: I have the right to live my life as I wish as long as I am within the ambit of the law and am not trampling on the rights of others. Article 25(1) guarantees the freedom of conscience, and that must inherently encompass the right not to profess any religion. Every citizen has the right to profess and exhibit such religious belief as is approved of by the citizen’s judgement or conscience. If my conscience or judgement doesn’t permit the acceptance of existence of God, or any particular religion, I can’t be treated differently for it, provided my actions do not impinge on the rights of others. Following from there, I have the right not to engage in certain religious practices and similarly, I have the right not to belong to any religion. In terms of the right to equality (Article 14), a standard government form ought to permit atheists to not be compelled to forcibly ascribe to a particular religion. This amounts to a suppression of their right to freedom of conscience. In that sense, an atheist is being treated unequally since his freedom of conscience is not treated in state action at par with that of a believer. - India Budget 2014: Two democracies, two budgets - The Monk Who Runs A Business - Jaggi Vasudev: Spirituality and Secularism - 13 Books To Add To Your Reading List - Thetans Unite
The Republican candidate gave us a tantalizing hint this week of what his foreign policy might actually look like -- but does he have the guts to actually do what we think he thinks? - By James TraubJames Traub is a fellow at the Center on International Cooperation. "Terms of Engagement," his column for ForeignPolicy.com, runs weekly. Follow his Twitter feed at @JamesTraub1. The other day, Mitt Romney gave a speech about foreign policy that he seemed to actually believe. In a quite revealing address to the Clinton Global Initiative on the subject of foreign aid, Romney offered a distinctive explanation of the Arab Spring as a mass movement for economic, rather than political, rights. He spoke of how Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian fruit vendor whose self-immolation in December 2010 sparked the demonstrations which led to the overthrow of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, had been provoked by the seizure of "his only real capital equipment," his weighing scales. "I’m a simple person," Romney quoted Bouazizi as crying out to the Tunisian police officer. "I just want to work. I just want to work." Work, Romney went on, almost poetically, "does not long tolerate corruption," nor "the brazen theft by government" of economic products. Substitute the word "liberty," and one could have been listening to George Bush on the motive force of human endeavor. People want meaningful work. You may disagree with Romney’s interpretation of events, but you can scarcely doubt his sincerity. Indeed, we already knew about the depth of Romney’s commitment to the liberating power of work thanks to Mother Jones, which recently published a recording of a speech he gave to donors. Romney explained to a crowd that America is afflicted by a culture of dependence in which almost half the country considers itself "entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it." Romney sees himself as the spokesman for the free-market virtues of self-reliance and self-discipline. That plutocratic contempt for life’s non-winners may not be altogether compatible with democracy, much less electoral success — but it is what Romney believes. Until now, Romney has had trouble finding anything to say about foreign policy which seems to spring from his basic intuitions about life. His major foreign policy speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, for example, consisted chiefly of flattery to the vets and his usual vaporous and disingenuous claim that, unlike President Barack Obama, he was not "ashamed of American power." He accused Obama of political posturing on Afghanistan, but called for withdrawing American troops by the end of 2014 — just like Obama. In fact, the hallmark of Romney’s foreign policy critique has been self-contradiction. He has insisted that Obama has "abandoned the Freedom Agenda" of George W. Bush, but also described the democratic election of an Islamist as president of Egypt as a calamity for which Obama is responsible. Romney himself doesn’t seem to accept Bush’s magical faith in liberty, but can’t bring himself to say so. The only unifying theme of his foreign policy critique has been opportunism. Oh, and "strength." And not apologizing. Of course, Romney seems to have very few fixed convictions about anything: he was for health care reform before he was against it, for abortion rights before he was against them, and so on. But now we have the 47 percent, and the heroic tale of Mohamed Bouazizi. Romney’s own life experience has led him to view economic freedom as the summum bonum — one which liberal interventionist polices have denied to all too many people. We know what this dictates on domestic policy: tax cuts, deregulation, and a drastically shrunken state. And now we finally know something about how would it shape a Romney foreign policy. In his speech at the Clinton event, Romney observed that the overwhelming fraction of resources now flowing to developing nations come not from foreign aid but from private sector investment. Traditional aid has thus become marginal, and Romney vowed to reorient American assistance to "access the transformative nature of free enterprise." He proposed signing "Prosperity Pacts" with nations prepared to remove barriers to free markets. The speech was greeted with deathly silence by an audience that probably contained very few Romney voters. But Romney was certainly right that traditional aid has not been very effective, that outside assistance won’t help much in countries with bad economic policies, and that aid will work best by leveraging private investment. A blogger for the Center for Global Development, a liberal group which supports increased aid, praised Romney for the proposal. The New York Times editorial board even found something nice to say. The proposition that aid should be the handmaiden to private sector-led growth is scarcely the unfamiliar idea it once was. The same insight led President Bush to establish the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which directs American assistance to relatively well-governed countries. The Obama administration has consistently sought to increase funding for the MCC. Liberals have long since accepted that old-fashioned aid doesn’t work, just as they have accepted that welfare can lead to dependence. So Romney is shadow-boxing once again, rhetorically separating himself from an administration approach which, in fact, he largely accepts. But the CGI speech leaves the impression that he would prefer a more modest policy, since the "assistance packages" he had in mind would be limited to "developing the institutions of liberty, the rule of law, and property rights." One could easily imagine a much more ambitious Romney approach — and one more in line with his governing philosophy. If trade can do much more than aid to promote growth in poor countries, then of course rich countries must lower trade barriers just as poor countries must. You could cut foreign aid — as a President Romney would almost surely do — and more than compensate for the effect by increasing exports to the United States from the affected countries. And for a free-market ideologue like Romney, free trade is as much an intuitive principle as low taxes. Alex MacGillis of The New Republic recently unearthed the video of a 2009 speech in which Romney made a profoundly cogent and passionate case that lowering trade barriers with China, and with the rest of the world, would be good for American and good for others. Watching it, I thought for the first time: This is a really smart guy. But of course MacGillis’s point is that this would never happen: the Mitt Romney of 2012 accuses Obama of failing to protect American workers from Chinese trade violations, and promises to be much tougher. There’s no political mileage right now in free trade. It’s striking that Romney never sounds as intelligent making the protectionist argument as he did in the 2009 speech — no one sounds very bright when they are arguing against their own beliefs. And that, of course, is why Romney rarely sounds convincing when he talks about the Arab Spring or Syria or Afghanistan or democracy promotion. He’s speaking for effect, rather than from conviction. At next month’s foreign policy debate, Romney is sure to be firing at Obama from all possible directions, as he has throughout the campaign. It’s unlikely to do him much good, since voters stubbornly refuse to view Obama as weak and irresolute on foreign affairs. Romney might do himself a service — he’d certainly do voters a service — if he stood in one place and made a limited but coherent case. He could argue that America will have better luck promoting capitalism than democracy, not because the one is more important than the other but because it is easier to teach. He could argue that the United States should be prepared to work with autocratic countries which nevertheless offer protection to property rights and the private sector. He could stand up for free trade. Of course, if Romney thought that America wanted to hear astringent truths, he would have been telling them. Still, pandering hasn’t worked very well for him either. If he’s going to lose, he might as well lose with conviction.
- By Joshua Keating Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy Tonight’s presidential debate will be conducted in Town Hall format. Every election, we’re promised that this will make the event more "unpredictable," but in reality, it means we’re likely to get pre-screened questions along the lines of, "So, what are you going to do about jobs?" If there are any "unpredictable" questions, they will probably be something like, "Sanchez or Tebow?" (This is Long Island, remember.) If, by chance, some of Dan Drezner’s foreign-policy voting 5 percenters do make it into the audience, they’re likely to ask about issues that have already been discussed ad nauseum on the campaign trail: Iran, Israel, Afghanistan, Arab Spring. It’s not that these aren’t important countries. It’s just that we pretty much know what the candidates are going to say about them. In the spirit of making things more interesting, here are a few suggested questions for the audience if they really want to throw these guys off their game. 1. What is your stance on the Scottish independence referendum? (Follow-up question: If you could pick one U.S. state to leave the union, which would it be?) 2. Do you believe the prosecution of former Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed is politically motivated? 3. Nagorno-Karabakh. Thoughts? 4. Who will be the first to put a human on Mars: the U.S., China, Russia, or Red Bull? 6. Falklands or Malvinas? 8. Is Joyce Banda a genuine reformer? 9. What are your thoughts on Ollanta Humala‘s political evolution? (No, gentlemen. We will not remind you what countries these are the leaders of.) 10. Given our military presence in Diego Garcia, does the U.S. have an obligation to help resolve the Chagos archipelago dispute? 11. Do you have any concerns about the global potash supply? 12. Is there any reason for Belgium to exist? 13. Japan is about to replace China as America’s biggest creditor. Could you please offer us some meaningless bluster about "getting tough with Tokyo?" 14. Who is America’s most embarrassing ally? 15. Who would you call if you wanted to call Europe?
- By Jake HessJake Hess is a journalist based in Washington, D.C. Follow him on Twitter: @jakerhess QANDIL MOUNTAINS, IRAQ — Murat Karayilan’s mustached face soured as he read from the daily intelligence report prepared by his field commanders in the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the rebel group that has fought Turkey since 1984. The Turkish army is flying Cobra attack helicopters even as PKK guerrillas withdraw from Turkey to camps in northern Iraq, the report said. U.S. drones still buzz over the PKK’s mountain strongholds. Turkish military operations continue near the Iraqi border, the militants have written. Karayilan, chairman of the executive council of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), the umbrella formation that encompasses the PKK, denounced these and other "provocations," but insisted they will not upset the tentative peace process with Ankara as long as there are no attacks. The PKK’s broad popular support and impenetrable mountain fortress on the Iraqi border with Iran offer it the choice of continuing the insurgency. But Karayilan sees the PKK’s future in the cities of Turkey, not the rebel hideouts he has waged war from for almost 30 years. "If Turkey carries out reforms, if the process is successful, our goal is to be legal and lawful, not illegal in the mountains," Karayilan told Foreign Policy in an interview at a PKK safe house in the Qandil Mountains. Some 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict, most of them Kurds. The PKK abandoned its original goal of establishing an independent Kurdish state in the 1990s. It now officially backs a negotiated settlement based on Kurdish rights and some form of autonomy within Turkey’s existing borders. Talks between Turkey and jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan resumed in fall 2012 following months of bloody fighting and a dramatic hunger strike by thousands of Kurdish political prisoners. Both sides have honored a cease-fire, and the PKK started pulling back its fighters in May. Karayilan said they are all "on their way" to Qandil, where guerrillas shelter in oddly picturesque tent camps nestled in lush valleys. "We have fulfilled our duties in the first stage of the process. If the Turkish government and state want to solve the Kurdish issue, they should do what is required of them," Karayilan said. "The ball is in Ankara’s court. The two or three months ahead are very important." The portly rebel rattled off a list of reforms when asked what he expects from Turkey in the next phase of the process. "There are things that needed to be done for Turkey’s democratization prior to now but weren’t, unfortunately," he said. First on the list: release the "thousands" of Kurdish politicians, activists, and intellectuals imprisoned on terrorism charges. Next is a series of legislative changes the government could enact without amending the constitution — "road cleaning," in Karayilan’s words. This includes revision of Turkey’s notorious Anti-Terror Law, which has been used to punish nonviolent dissent, and reduction of the 10 percent electoral threshold, which has hindered representation of Kurds in Turkey’s parliament. "If the government wishes, it can do all of this right away. The fact that it has not done so is thought-provoking," Karayilan said. But Karayilan was pragmatic, refusing to describe any of these as "red lines" or minimum requirements for the PKK’s continued participation in the peace process. Nor did he try to set a deadline for moves by the government. "It’s possible that not all of our goals will be immediately realized in the current solution process," he said. "If the political path is opened to us, we can achieve our aims through political means." In Karayilan’s ideal scenario, the PKK’s focus will eventually shift from armed to cultural insurrection. He said that a future, legal PKK will leave the electoral realm to the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP). "The PKK aims to shape society, not rule over it. It will carry out various projects to bring society to a higher level. The PKK will open academies, carry out cultural and philosophical activities, do ideological work, raise social consciousness." Will they return to violence if the peace process falls apart? "There’s a possibility. We hope there will be no need for that, but if there’s a real collapse, we will, of course, defend ourselves." The last round of Turkey-PKK dialogue took place from 2008 to 2011. Following exploratory contacts mediated by an unknown international guarantor, parallel sets of talks convened in Oslo, where Turkish intelligence officials held meetings with a KCK delegation, and at Imrali prison, where Ocalan is serving a life sentence. The Kurdish side submitted three protocols for a settlement to the Turkish government in May 2011. It also provided detailed proposals for a new constitution. Karayilan asserted that the government has never "put them into practice nor rejected them" or submitted written proposals of its own. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan later said Turkey cut off the talks due to "insincerity in communication." There is little indication that Turkey was ever sincere about reaching a negotiated settlement with the PKK. It detained or arrested thousands of Kurdish politicians during the Oslo years. Military assaults on the guerrillas continued. In 2009, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) launched an "opening" that quickly closed with few results. In a diplomatic cable, Doug Silliman, Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Turkey from 2008 to 2011, said Turkish security officials repeatedly described the government’s goal for its "opening" as isolating and defeating the PKK’s leadership through a mixture of reform and repression. Ankara moved to get Washington on board with this approach. Ray Odierno, then the top commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, began preparing a common anti-PKK "action plan" with Turkey in February 2010. Odierno described "isolating the true [PKK] ideologues and rendering them ineffective" as a goal. Turkey presented the United States with two of its own plans it hoped Washington would incorporate into the final. The first aimed at "termination of the armed presence of the [PKK] terrorist organization in Northern Iraq as soon as possible" by disrupting its logistics and communications. The second outlined steps Ankara expected the Kurdistan Regional Government to take against the PKK. Turkey, the United States, and Iraq announced the plan that April, though its terms were obscure. On the political front, Washington imposed personal sanctions on two of the three members of the Kurdish delegation to the Oslo talks. In October 2009, the Treasury Department declared KCK member Zubeyir Aydar a "Significant Foreign Narcotics Trafficker" along with Karayilan. In April 2011, it deemed PKK co-founder Sabri Ok a "Specially Designated Narcotics Trafficker." The Obama administration’s statements in support of the current peace process leave Karayilan optimistic that this time could be different. He hopes the West will use its influence to improve prospects for a solution. "I see a softening. I see the support of the outside world, and especially the U.S.A., as important. I think development of a more active posture on their part would allow the process to speed up," he said. "We want the U.S.A. and European Union to develop policies to solve the Kurdish issue. The most important path for this is to remove the PKK from the list of terrorist organizations." The KCK leader asserted that Western interests would be served by more cordial relations with the Kurds. "Solving the Kurdish issue will definitely pave the way to democratization and normalization in Turkey. In addition, it will have a similar impact on the Middle East. I think the West has an interest in this," he said. Karayilan offered Syria as an example. The KCK has influence in Syrian Kurdistan due to its relations with the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the most powerful party there. "Syrian Kurds have the most secular, modern, and democratic policies in that society. The Kurds are closest to the West. But due to Turkey’s veto, [the West] doesn’t even have relations with them. The armed opposition has a completely Islamist outlook." But he hinted that ties are improving. "I hear that America and Europe are just now looking at the PYD and Syrian Kurds. There are also positive developments on this front. There are warmer contacts, but I think America and Europe are late on this." Karayilan added that the KCK plans to exploit the nascent diplomatic opportunities created by the peace process. "We want to carry out informational activities in the European Union and America as a first step. Up until now, the American public hasn’t learned about us from ourselves; they’ve learned about us from Turkey. We want to change this. I hope opportunities will be born in the future, and that we’ll have more effective projects. We want to carry out diplomacy, but there are obstacles. For example, America won’t give us a visa because we are PKK members." Karayilan maintained that the sides have reached a significant spoken agreement. In a leaked audio recording of a meeting at Oslo, Turkish intelligence official Hakan Fidan is heard saying that Erdogan and Ocalan were in accord on "90 to 95 percent" of their views. Karayilan said the parties have edged closer since: "In terms of our discussions and dialogue, I can say it’s even more advanced [today] than it was then. Our leader says he trusts the delegation that’s meeting with him. But it’s not clear to what extent the state and government power behind the delegation will abide by the discussions." For now, the PKK plans to wait and see what happens. "How serious are they this time? I don’t know. The PKK isn’t a sitting target. We can’t just be eliminated," said Karayilan. "If America and Turkey have finally seen this, are truly sincere about a solution, and not planning to approach the process as they did during Oslo, we’re ready. Time will show their intentions." Jake Hess is a journalist based in Washington, D.C. He can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org.
Yesterday’s News Today Stop, what you’re doing now and pay attention. It is of vital importance that you read every one of the following cryptozoology related news stories from the CFZ’s daily cryptozoology news blog and memorise them. Why? Well should your vessel be captured by the king of Spain and you are unable to singe his beard, you can distract him by relating these tales and following bad pun while you make good your escape. (Yeah, I know it makes no sense but nobody reads this bit anyway and they just skip to the news links, so it matters not). Giants of the seas arrive in Cornwall Isolated Forest Patches Lose Species, Diversity Stone Age hunting traps found deep in Great Lakes 'Stoned' dog sniffs out a cannabis farm Do Dinosaurs Still Exist? Meteorites may have brought building blocks of life to Earth What did the meteorite say just before it crashed into a man? “Prepare to ‘meteor’ doom!”
The F10 code means the over temperature conditions. most likely the temperature probe is bad. To test it you need a multimeter set to 10000 ohm. Normal resistance is approx. 1100 ohm at room temp. The sensor Part number: 316490001 Here are the breakdown diagrams and Replacement parts for Frigidaire PLEFM399DCA Frigidaire/electric Range \| AppliancePartsPros.com Thank you. Post the results.
I'm currently working on an arduino sketch (EEPROM programmer) that receives serial data from a computer, then outputs data\address info through the I/O pins. However, I need one more I/O pin for the address bus... Since I'm only receiving data through the serial port, I was hoping that I could use pin 1 (TX) for digital I/O, but the Arduino wouldn't listen to my digitalWrite commands.Is there any way I can use pin 1 in my project while still receiving serial data? Please enter a valid email to subscribe We need to confirm your email address. To complete the subscription, please click the link in the email we just sent you. Thank you for subscribing! via Egeo 16
I know the type of the devices, but us far as I know you can set on their back which device to trigger. I only have recieving devices here. So i'm not qiute sure what will happend in this situation : Motion detector detects motion and sends ON to A1, A2 and so on. Is anything sent to computer? (it doesn't have a code assigned to it, so I only hope that I will be informed via X10 protocol) Can you search your CM11 logs (in /var/log/pluto/) for string "CM11A wants to notify us of Something" You're thinking about it wrong. X10 can certainly be set up that way, but that is NOT the way it's done when there's a computer involved. I have a motion detector, M1, near the mudroom door on my porch. I have exterior lights, interior lights, etc., all with their own housecode/unitcode. When M1 goes off, it wirelessly sends M1 ON to my W800RF, which goes into the computer. If this were a wired device, it would send it to the CM11A. The point is, you don't set the motion detector to "turn on a device" -- it IS the device. When it says ON, the computer decides what to do based on user-controlled "programming". For example, here's a typical rule: WHEN M1 changes from OFF to ON AND M1 has not been triggered previously in the last 30 seconds AND homeowner is AWAY THEN turn E10, E11, and E12 AND trigger the Speak Package Instructions script using FRONT PORCH SPEAKER. I see "CM11A wants to notify us of Something" in my logs all over the place. P.S. In accordance with the laws of nature, my server died this weekend. I have to rebuild it over the next week or two
Horsetail Falls lights up like a fire falls during only one time of the year - roughly the last 2-3 weeks of February. It's only at this time when the setting sun hits the west face of El Capitan at the proper angle. However, a number of conditions all have to be present: 1. Time of year (as already mentioned) 2. Sufficient snow runoff to cause Horsetail falls to fall 3. Clear enough weather at sunset to allow direct sunlight to strike the falls Speaking of Steve Kossack, I attended his February 2006 Yosemite winter workshop and we were fortunate enough to photograph Horsetail falls from one of the classic locations, Sentinel Beach:http://www.pbase.com/pauls/yosemite_2006 BTW, weather and snow conditions in Yosemite can vary widely during the winter. When I was there in February 2006, conditions were almost Spring-like with very little snow on the Valley floor. But 2 weeks later, friends encountered a full-on snow storm. Chains are required to be carried and used by law in and around Yosemite NP under the following snow conditions:http://www.nps.gov/yose/planyourvisit/chains.htm It appears that even with snow tires, chains are required to be carried. Finally - live webcams of Yosemite:http://www.yosemite.org/vryos/index.htm
As Granny said, it is safe to delete them. The desktop configuration files are lauchers for programs, so you only lose the launcher, not the applications. However, make sure you're able to start the applications in some other way, in case you need them. While that is fine for the browser, abiword, etc. because you can get that from the menu, the CD Media file, for example, calls a script in /sbin/cdmount.sh that mounts a cd media when you click on it and opens the file manager (and I guess unmounts it, when you close the file manager). I'm guessing that's quite a useful feature and that your friend wouldn't like to call that script or mount the cd from the command line (unless you've upgraded to xfce 4.4 and installed the hal dependency, in which case you can get that feature from within the file manager itself). Another case in point is the VL Docs icon, which lauches the command browser_vl. Again, so far as I know, you cannot get that from the menu, and maybe your friend wouldn't know where the docs are. Of course, assuming he wants to read the docs... There is also a way to configure what other icons appear on the desktop (home, trash, file system, and removable media folders), but you only seem to want to remove the desktop files ones... ask away, if you need this.
Hi, this is frequency You're learning Japanese at a language school. Today, you have a lesson but you can't attend it because of urgent event. But you want to attend a lesson later instead of today's one, because it's still valid by prior contact. What do you say? We say （授業の）振替. Replacement? Transfer?
AT 32, one of my clients (I’ll call her Jennifer) had a lavish wine-country wedding. By then, Jennifer and her boyfriend had lived together for more than four years. The event was attended by the couple’s friends, families and two dogs. When Jennifer started therapy with me less than a year later, she was looking for a divorce lawyer. “I spent more time planning my wedding than I spent happily married,” she sobbed. Most disheartening to Jennifer was that she’d tried to do everything right. “My parents got married young so, of course, they got divorced. We lived together! How did this happen?” Cohabitation in the United States has increased by more than 1,500 percent in the past half century. In 1960, about 450,000 unmarried couples lived together. Now the number is more than 7.5 million. The majority of young adults in their 20s will live with a romantic partner at least once, and more than half of all marriages will be preceded by cohabitation. This shift has been attributed to the sexual revolution and the availability of birth control, and in our current economy, sharing the bills makes cohabiting appealing. But when you talk to people in their 20s, you also hear about something else: cohabitation as prophylaxis. In a nationwide survey conducted in 2001 by the National Marriage Project, then at Rutgers and now at the University of Virginia, nearly half of 20-somethings agreed with the statement, “You would only marry someone if he or she agreed to live together with you first, so that you could find out whether you really get along.” About two-thirds said they believed that moving in together before marriage was a good way to avoid divorce. But that belief is contradicted by experience. Couples who cohabit before marriage (and especially before an engagement or an otherwise clear commitment) tend to be less satisfied with their marriages — and more likely to divorce — than couples who do not. These negative outcomes are called the cohabitation effect. Researchers originally attributed the cohabitation effect to selection, or the idea that cohabitors were less conventional about marriage and thus more open to divorce. As cohabitation has become a norm, however, studies have shown that the effect is not entirely explained by individual characteristics like religion, education or politics. Research suggests that at least some of the risks may lie in cohabitation itself. As Jennifer and I worked to answer her question, “How did this happen?” we talked about how she and her boyfriend went from dating to cohabiting. Her response was consistent with studies reporting that most couples say it “just happened.” “We were sleeping over at each other’s places all the time,” she said. “We liked to be together, so it was cheaper and more convenient. It was a quick decision but if it didn’t work out there was a quick exit.” She was talking about what researchers call “sliding, not deciding.” Moving from dating to sleeping over to sleeping over a lot to cohabitation can be a gradual slope, one not marked by rings or ceremonies or sometimes even a conversation. Couples bypass talking about why they want to live together and what it will mean. WHEN researchers ask cohabitors these questions, partners often have different, unspoken — even unconscious — agendas. Women are more likely to view cohabitation as a step toward marriage, while men are more likely to see it as a way to test a relationship or postpone commitment, and this gender asymmetry is associated with negative interactions and lower levels of commitment even after the relationship progresses to marriage. One thing men and women do agree on, however, is that their standards for a live-in partner are lower than they are for a spouse. Sliding into cohabitation wouldn’t be a problem if sliding out were as easy. But it isn’t. Too often, young adults enter into what they imagine will be low-cost, low-risk living situations only to find themselves unable to get out months, even years, later. It’s like signing up for a credit card with 0 percent interest. At the end of 12 months when the interest goes up to 23 percent you feel stuck because your balance is too high to pay off. In fact, cohabitation can be exactly like that. In behavioral economics, it’s called consumer lock-in. _________________________ We are what we repeatedly do - Aristotle Sometimes you end up living with someone who is hot and sexy and you used to bump boots with on a regular basis .... but then things slow down and life gets in the way and you end up more like roomies. Never cohabited before marriage BUT my first wife and I did have several sleep overs. Maybe as I look back, it was close to cohabitation... just not formally (each paying their share). More like she hung around my place more than she did hers. My wife and I never lived together before getting married, not that I am against it or anything. We have been married for 13 years, and it's been rocky in places, but maybe that "commitment", without just kind of eeeeeasing into it, does make a difference. Having said that, Nuke's description is still pretty accurate. _________________________ We are what we repeatedly do - Aristotle I don't know if anyone clicked on the link, but the second page of this article is even more interesting than the first one that I pasted here. I did! This quote had me cracking up: “I felt like I was on this multiyear, never-ending audition to be his wife,” I didn't shack up before marriage nor did my child. However, I've always told her (before her marriage) that you never really know a person until you live with them. My marriage lasted 4 years before I walked out. My daughter is still happily married after 16 yrs. I've been with my S.O. for 27 years. He has his own place & I have mine. We spend equal time at each other places. When we get on each other nerves, we both go back to our respective homes. Other than that we get along perfectly. What I love about our "arrangement," is the fact that when he stays over or I at his place, he does all the cooking and grocery shopping. My job is to run the dishwasher. When we go on trips together, he pays for everything. My job is to take care of the tips. Well to each his/her own I guess ? Really its not a question of a study on whats right or wrong , better to let an individual decide for themselves. My self, I would prefer to cohabitate at least for 1 year, before dropping the big marriage bomb. fwiw both my failed marriages were non cohabitation relationships. Now a co-worker who still lives with her BF of 8 years , also has 2 children from that guy. They decided to finally get married this year, thats great. My question to her was (what) your gonna do for a Honeymoon Xplain's use of MacNews, AppleCentral and AppleExpo are not affiliated with Apple, Inc. MacTech is a registered trademark of Xplain Corporation. AppleCentral, MacNews, Xplain, "The journal of Apple technology", Apple Expo, Explain It, MacDev, MacDev-1, THINK Reference, NetProfessional, MacTech Central, MacTech Domains, MacForge, and the MacTutorMan are trademarks or service marks of Xplain Corp. Sprocket is a registered trademark of eSprocket Corp. Other trademarks and copyrights appearing in this printing or software remain the property of their respective holders. All contents are Copyright 1984-2010 by Xplain Corporation. All rights reserved. Theme designed by Icreon.
I just came across this article on a vulnerability in the android system Researchers uncover SMS-related vulnerability in Android I don't like to take security measures for granted, but I'm guessing this isn't something we have to worry about with the Blackberry system? I know it's becoming more common for businesses to utilize SMS to contact customers. - 11-06-12, 06:46 AM #2 Probably not as SMS, bbm and all these messaging services have no way of touching internal bb areas. Sent from my BlackBerry 9860 on 220.127.116.114 with Tapatalk and my fingers - 11-06-12, 06:59 AM #3 Re: SMS Fishing From the article posted above : "The problem begins when the user downloads an infected app which requests to communicate via SMS. Then the program can make it appear that the user has received an SMS from someone in his list. This way the fake message can mislead the user to give away login credentials, password, PIN and other personal information." 1) such an app will either be detected and not placed in the market in the first place. I have a rule of thumb to avoid duds. Only download if an app has a rating of 4 and above and number of downloads exceed 5000. 2) If someone in your contact list texts you for sensitive information like passwords out of the blue, and you just give it no questions asked, you probably became broke a long time ago and smartphone vulnerabilities are the least of your worries. - By new2bb in forum IntroductionsReplies: 7Last Post: 06-20-09, 04:23 PM - By naviwilliams in forum General BlackBerry DiscussionReplies: 10Last Post: 11-22-08, 12:27 PM - By tmag2005 in forum BlackBerry 87xx SeriesReplies: 4Last Post: 06-07-08, 02:08 PM - By myth90045 in forum IntroductionsReplies: 1Last Post: 05-01-07, 06:28 PM - By jimheem in forum BlackBerry 87xx SeriesReplies: 2Last Post: 04-23-07, 12:20 PM
If you’re a “woman of a certain age” in Israel, you don’t have a straightforward term like “menopause” to refer to that stage of life. In Hebrew you’re stuck with gil ha’blut, which translates roughly to “the age of worn out.” In Arabic it’s sinn al-ya’s — “the age of despair.” So when Dana Weinberg and Raghda Elnabilsy set out to adapt the seminal text “Our Bodies, Ourselves” for Hebrew- and Arabic-speaking populations in Israel, they had to reinvent some of the very words that defined the original version. A groundbreaking paradigm shifter that taught women to value themselves and helped usher in women’s rights, the original pamphlet — written by 12 feminists in Boston — included sections on masturbation, virginity, orgasms and abortion. Detailed photos demonstrating such forbidden topics as proper use of contraceptives led groups across the country to attempt to have the book banned from local libraries. Yet its influence was enormous: Since “Our Bodies, Ourselves” was first published in 1970 as a 193-page newsprint booklet, it has sold more than 4 million copies, been through nine revisions and numerous translations, spearheaded by grassroots women’s groups in more than 25 countries. Each new American edition reflects changing attitudes toward women’s health and sexuality. The Hebrew and Arabic versions, released in September, boast timely topics that are of interest to their respective demographics. For example, because treatments for infertility are so expensive in the United States, the chapter on assisted reproductive technologies in the American edition is relatively short; in Israel, in vitro fertilization and other infertility interventions are government subsidized and in widespread use, so the corresponding chapter in the Hebrew edition is 80 pages, more than five times as long. “It’s not just the language, but women’s culture, resources — everything is different,” explained Weinberg, author of the Hebrew edition, at a recent health symposium hosted by Boston University, celebrating the 40th anniversary of “Our Bodies” and the release of the latest American version. This is true even among different groups of women within Israel. Elnabilsy, who is editor-in-chief of the Arabic edition and is also a social worker and sex educator, said that Palestinian women “are a national minority, and also a gender minority.” So the Arabic edition addresses the prejudices that Palestinian women face — both in the wider society and from men within their own community. The idea for the Hebrew-Arabic versions was born a decade ago when Weinberg, now 40, received a copy of an American version of “Our Bodies” from a friend. Having recently given birth, she felt frustrated and depressed by how medicalized the experience had been. “I didn’t know that labor could be an empowering, amazing experience,” Weinberg said. Inspired, she chose home births for her next two children, and began researching ways to bring the book that changed her life to other women in Israel. In 2005, Weinberg founded the Israeli nongovernmental organization Women and Their Bodies in order to create the Hebrew and Arabic editions. “We cannot talk about women’s health in Israel without addressing Palestinian women’s health issues,” Weinberg said. She recruited Elnabilsy, a former student whom Weinberg knew from her previous job as director of the Women’s International Zionist Organization’s School for Political Leadership for Women, to spearhead the Arabic adaptation. The first meeting was held at Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, a village halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv that was jointly established by Jewish and Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel. It was a symbolic choice in a country where geography is a matter of life and death, made by activists acutely aware of the imbalance in resources available to women from their respective communities. For example: Elnabilsy points out that she interviewed women who had given birth in hospitals where they didn’t understand a word the doctors were saying. “They spoke with them in Hebrew, and gave them papers in Hebrew, and they asked them to sign papers in Hebrew,” she said. “And sometimes they signed and the doctor did whatever he wanted” because the women were too intimidated to ask for a translator. The Arabic version includes information on how to navigate the health care system in a country in which Palestinian women are a minority. Although the women pool their resources as a single organization, Weinberg said they have agreed “to work together, and apart.” With 350 volunteers, the Hebrew team had so much material that the finished book, at 26 chapters, can’t contain it all. An additional 10 chapters will be published as booklets in the coming years. Weinberg said, however, that “in Arabic, you cannot have so many volunteers, because women don’t have the resources to volunteer.” What’s more, because the process she and Elnabilsy employed has been to adapt the English version into Hebrew and then the Hebrew version into Arabic, help is needed from people facile in all three languages. With 30 volunteers working on the Arabic translation, that edition has only 10 chapters. Still, this marks the first time that a women’s health resource written by women for women has been published in either language. The feat is substantial, according to Lucy Candib, a physician who wrote an introductory essay, “Women, Medicine and Capitalism,” in the original pamphlet. “The close and careful creation of text together will require a constant consciousness about power and vulnerability familiar to women everywhere, but even more ever-present in the world where this work will be created,” she said. Women and Their Bodies received a grant from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation to distribute the first 1,000 copies of the Arabic-language books for free. (The Hebrew edition costs $50.) With the goal of making the books as accessible as possible, the organization is seeking grants and donations. In addition to producing the books, Women and Their Bodies runs an online information center (which has been hacked multiple times since the book was published) and an ongoing series of health workshops designed for women of various ethnic groups throughout Israel. One, designed to address the frustrating lack of a nonderogatory or childish Hebrew word for “vagina,” was called, “What Is Between Your Legs?” Weinberg’s favorite word to come out of this workshop is n’ga, derived from oneg, the Hebrew word for “pleasure.” The women also coined new words for “menopause” in both languages. In Arabic, they chose sinn al-amman, the “age of confidence.” This connotes “having a center, knowing who you are, and where you want to go,” Weinberg said. In Hebrew, the team chose emtza chayim, the “middle of life.” Or, Weinberg said, the age when “you have everything ahead of you.” Beth Schwartzapfel is a freelance writer based in Boston.
Cecylja Klaften Educated Polish Girls Welcome to Throwback Thursday, a weekly photo feature in which we sift 116 years of Forward history to find snapshots of women’s lives. An unsung hero of Jewish girls education in inter-war Poland, Dr. Cecylja Klaften came to New York City in 1938 as part of a fundraising effort held at Mecca Temple on West 55th Street, sponsored by aid organization United Galician Jews of America. Her school system was known in the 1920’s as the Jewish Professional School of the Society of Workshops for Jewish Girls. Klaften founded 18 vocational trade schools for both genders in Galicia as an effort to educate against the endemic poverty and limited opportunities there immediately following World War I. Herself widowed during the war, Klaften devoted her own financial resources, as well as her life, to the over 4,000 youth who graduated her school system annually where they studied trades and artisanal handcrafts such as embroidery and weaving. Fluent in Polish, French, German and Hebrew, Klaften then acquired English. She was officially welcomed to New York by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and her work was lauded by President Franklin Roosevelt. While in New York, Dr. Klaften observed local trade schools to learn their methods. Before working in the education field, Klaften had been assistant professor of biology at Lwow University. At the time of this photograph, over 80,000 students had completed training in her schools, including acclaimed fabric designer Pola Stout who created designs for Academy Award winning costume creator Edith Head, among others. Not long after this photograph was taken, perhaps compelled by her abiding sense of service to her community, Klaften returned to her home and to World War II , occupation by the Soviets in 1939 and then by the Nazis from 1941-1944. Witnesses recorded the murder of the beloved educator who was shot by Nazis on the streets of Lwow in 1942.
Lena Dunham Celebrates Her Sister in Moving Speech Lena Dunham gave a moving speech on Monday night, when she was honored by the Point Foundation, an organization devoted to helping LGBTQ students overcome obstacles. Speaking at the New York Public Library, the creator and star of “Girls” thanked her family and her sister, Grace, who came out at age 17. “I have always felt a strong and emotional connection to members of the LGBTQ community. It was actually a huge disappointment for me, when I came of age and realized that I was sexually attracted to men. So when my sister came out, I thought, ‘Thank God, someone in this family can truly represent my passions and beliefs.’ My sister Grace coming out as a gay woman at age 17 was a huge turning point for me in my understanding of the issues facing LGBTQ people. We were raised in an environment—the art world of downtown Manhattan—where no one hid their sexual orientation, and a common question from four-year-old me was ‘Mom, are those ladies gay together?’ I was always very jealous of any child who had two dads. And because of our parents’ deeply held commitment to acceptance and equality, my sister’s process of coming to terms with her sexuality was as angst-free as anything involving sex can really be. She was assured by the adults in her life that she was not only accepted, but adored for who she is. I am so happy that this is the way she was able to enter the world as a woman and an LGBTQ person.” According to Vanity Fair, Dunham donated $25,000 to the Point Foundation.
A stretch of prairie that opens up so that you can see a rolling thunderhead many leagues away across the grass and wonder if the storm will come to threaten you. A subterranean cave that only yields its secrets when the hopelessly small beacon on your hard hat shines across a cavernous room. That last stretch of marsh behind a barrier island through which you paddle silently while breakers roar just above the spartina and great blue herons take to wing like ancient beasts of the prehistoric skies. I do love empty spaces. when I was in college always suspected that I would end up in a cabin in some mountain hollow where I could spend my evenings in a rocker on the front porch occasionally pulling Yoo Hoo sodas out of a rusty frig beside me. They thought I’d shuffle off to some out-of-the-way place where the horizon is not a fanciful thing to imagine but something you see every day. Guess I showed them. But it takes good eyes to see the beauty of the empty. Which is why, when Matthew shares with us his gospel tale of Easter, he’s really giving us a test. though it is for everybody, is only seen by some bodies. Peter shared the news with Cornelius and his household, his report of impossible doings on the third day, and what he said was that God raised him up God lifted Jesus from the dead on the third day he brought him up out of that tomb and allowed him to be seen but then he adds “allowed him to be seen, not by everybody but by us.” So here’s the test: There will be marvels There will be wonders There will be intrigue, fear, and death to rival any thing you’d see at the Multiplex. In a world where everything is falling apart one man comes to redeem God’s people can you see him? It was early on a Sunday morning dawn, they say on the first day of the week, they say A flock of soldiers sits idly by the tomb Not often they are asked to guard the dead “What a pointless task!” they must be saying. “Hasn’t Jesus caused enough trouble? even three days dead he’s got us assigned to the graveyard shift!” But they were taking no chances The reports were thick that Jesus had claimed an after-death surprise A stolen body might be more trouble than a living prophet Best to seal the deal and seal the stone Post a guard and let him rot. Two women come to take a look Mary and Mary to take a look to observe the tomb No more to the plan than that Might as well watch paint dry as expect a show from that rock So what will kill the tedium of a Sunday by the graves? What will get this place shaking? Who will liven things up? Right on cue, there is the trembling of a tremor a thrill runs through the garden the crowd goes wild From up above an angel comes with face like lightning and robe like snow And rolls that rock away from Jesus’ grave as if it weren’t nothing but a thing And saucily he sits on top that stone It’s too much for the rent-a-cops hired to watch for grave robbers and certainly not for lightning-faced angels They shake and flail and fall and faint dying, it seems, of fright So now the only guards of the dead have fallen dead themselves “Don’t be afraid,” the angel says from his perch It’s how you know that angels are legit - they tell you not to be fear. I know the reason why you’re here. To look at the tomb - ha! You came to see Jesus. You came because even though his promises didn’t make a lick of sense and you suspected that he was kind of off his rocker with his resurrection talk It’s the reason people will go to church for centuries more They’ll put on bonnets and ties and pastel blouses and make the trek they made with Grandma for O! so many years And they’ll not expect to be converted by the choir or moved by the fantastical story Because what modern person could believe? And yet - just maybe - I may be adding a little bit to what the angel said. But it’s surely what he meant. Now we have the test. Have you noticed? Have you seen? It’s all well and good to have the fireworks but where’s the substance of the show? At what point do we get to see the broken body restored? At what point does the music swell? When will it be that a figure appears in the shadows of the tomb's entrance the darkness just barely concealing his face but we know who it is we know what it’s about this is the extra special special effect the climax of the whole crazy pageant Did you get distracted? Did you fail to see what couldn’t be seen? It wasn’t the rock that kept Jesus in the ground it certainly wasn’t the guard grumbling by the grave When that stone rolled back what was done was already done “Take a gander,” the saucy angel says. “He’s long gone. What’s left here now is empty space.” We missed it! So what was the point of all that sound and fury if it signifieth nothing? And just when I was beginning to hope that earthquakes and angels might actually put the fear of God back in the world! But now all that grave is is empty space And the one in whom we placed our hopes has slipped away So let me call upon the wind the breath that Ezekiel preached to to conjure life in dry, dry bones Let me call upon the wind that blows in prairies and back bays The poet Kimberly Johnson asks: And what is wind but a dialect of longing? —: the high pressure rushing to fill the low, the sky trying to slake its heats against the earth’s asymptotic cool, its somersaulting cools against the earth’s radiance. All weather springs from currents of failed desire. No wonder the wind, when it says anything at all, Let me call on the winds, the breath, the Spirit that hovered over waters which parted to reveal the empty space in which God worked before ever having a witness Let me call on the wind because it echoes my deep desire that springs from the empty space I feel so often in my deepest heart the space that longs and howls from failed desire Or maybe the space is not empty at all Is it only a lack that the angel points to? Is the only thing to say about the tomb is that a body has gone missing? Or is it not empty Openness is not an absence but a presence of the possible If the tomb is open we have a choice Will it really make much nevermind if we simply let it be? The world will keep on turning with its brokenness and pain The wind will keep on blowing from there to who knows where But come into this open space and what could happen then? Just like at the dawning of creation God has opened up space In the very place where the world marks death God opens up space in which our lives can be redefined and reoriented and angels can tell us to go where have never been before. The tomb in Jerusalem, wherever it really lies, hardly gives you space to change your mind Pilgrims wait for hours to duck into the dark and feel the stone and imagine themselves as Mary or Peter or John and to offer up prayers for that that they can see The miracle is not that that small cell contains a universe of possibility and hope The miracle now is that we do. I do love open spaces. (it must be so) *"[ ]." Kimberly Johnson, a metaphorical god, [Persea Books: New York, 2008], p. 58.
Mathomatic is a portable, general-purpose computer algebra system (CAS) that can solve, differentiate, simplify, combine, and compare algebraic equations, perform standard, complex number, modular, and polynomial arithmetic, etc. It does some calculus and is very easy to compile/install, learn, and use. The symbolic math application with a simple command-line interface is designed to be a colorful algebra calculator that is reliable, responsive, and convenient to use. The symbolic math library is lightweight and easy to include in other software, due to being written entirely in C with no additional dependencies. The Java Algebra System (JAS) is an object oriented, type safe, multi-threaded approach to computer algebra. JAS provides a well designed software library using generic types for algebraic computations implemented in the Java programming language. The library can be used as any other Java software package, or it can be used interactively or interpreted through a Jython or JRuby front end. The focus at the moment is on commutative and solvable polynomials, power-series, multivariate polynomial factorization, Gröbner bases, and applications. ViziSolve solves math problems. It does this by going one step at a time, highlighting each part as it is being used for the next line, and stating what it is doing at each step. Right now, it can solve most common algebra I level problems (not including graphing or word problems), and it may make a mistake once in a while. It runs on the Web.
The MiniUPnP project is a library and a daemon. The library is aimed to enable applications to use the capabilities of a UPnP Internet Gateway Device present on the network to forward ports. The daemon adds the UPnP Internet Gateway Device functionality to a NAT gateway running OpenBSD/NetBSD/FreeBSD/Solaris with PF/IPF or Linux 2.4.x/2.6.x with netfilter. One of its most interesting features is to enforce some permissions to allow or deny redirections, bringing some security to UPnP. Newer versions also support the NAT-PMP protocol from Apple. pwnat, pronounced "poe-nat", is a tool that allows any number of clients behind NAT gateways to communicate with a server behind a separate NAT with no port forwarding and no DMZ setup on any routers in order to directly communicate with each other. The server does not need to know anything about the clients trying to connect, nor does it need to communicate with any other hosts in order to initiate the communication. Simply put, this is a proxy server that works behind a NAT, even when the client is behind a NAT. There is no middle man, no proxy, no third party, no UPnP required, no spoofing, and no DNS tricks. More importantly, the client can then connect to any host or port on any remote host or to a fixed host and port decided by the server.
WHAT TO DO WHEN THE COURTHOUSE HAS BURNED AND YOU ARE ALL OUT OF MARSHMELLOWS! 1. The courthouse may not have burned totally. Some records may have been saved because they were in an annex or wing that didn't burn. Don't always rely on what the 'Handy Book for Genealogist' or the court clerk says. 2. There may be/have been two courthouses in the same county. 3. The records may have been reconstructed or re-recorded, and remember that deeds sometimes are not recorded for years after the transfer. Also check with county abstract offices. 4. Check neighboring counties for deeds, probate records and marriages. It may be necessary to go out a second or third county away for a marriage record. People who elope do not go to their own town courthouse for the license. 5. Check everything in the courthouse where the family went to and the county where they came from if the county is known. Many sold land to relatives before moving on. 6. Check the parent county/counties Land records and the State Land Records for those counties. In the case of territory claimed by two states, check both state records. If your problem is in the Fire Lands or a Military District, check the parent States records. 7. Check the progeny (those that were formed from your county) county/counties for Land records that may have been recorded at a much later date. FEDERAL RECORDS 1. Census records 2. Mortality schedules 3. Military records and pensions 4. Federal land grants and homestead states 5. Immigration and naturalization 6. Decennial Digest - This index covers the years 1658 to 1906 and is found in most law libraries. It indexes cases that went to appellate or higher courts. 7. Federal court records. STATE RECORDS 1. Census - state and territorial 2. Militia records and pensions 3. Birth and death records 4. Tax records - real, personal and poll 5. Land lotteries, land grants and homesteads TOWNSHIP OR TOWN RECORDS Items vary according to the state. In Ohio I saw a list of men available and of the right age for military duty from the late 1800s. Other states may have townships that function like a county or a city and have the equivalent records. CITY RECORDS 1. Birth and death records 2. Marriage records 3. Cemetery records 4. Tax records 5. City directories and phone books HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 1. State archives and libraries 2. County historical societies 3. College libraries 4. Local libraries 5. Private libraries (D.A.R., S.A.R., Railroad, etc.) In all of these libraries, be sure to check the verticle files. PUBLISHED RECORDS 1. County histories 2. Town and city histories 3. Genealogies 4. Genealogical and historical society quarterlies 5. Newspapers PRIVATE RECORDS 1. Church records and church historical libraries 2. Funeral home records 3. Cemetery records, sextons records and transcripts of cemeteries made years ago 4. School records - grade or college 5. Title and abstract companies \ 6. Private land companies (i.e. Holland Land Purchase in New York) HOME SOURCES 1. Bible records 2. Photo albums 3. Baby books 4. Insurance policies 5. Family letters, diaries and ledgers MISCELLANEOUS 1. Lineage societies 2. Masonic records 3. Fraternal records BOTTOM LINE - Analyze your problem and decide 1. What information you really need! 2. What types of documents may provide that information. 3. Then analyze the locality or localities where that proof may be found. **From a program at the Oklahoma Genealogical Society on February 4, 1985, given by Mrs. Lois M. Coople. Webpage Created: 1 December 2002 Last Update: 1 December 2002 Webmaster: Larry Van Horn Mailing address: 7540 Highway 64 West, Brasstown, NC 28902 Daytime Telephone: 828-837-9200
Resume is a summary of skills, education, experience and professional accomplishment. This logistic coordinator resume will help you to prepare a successful resume. This page updates effective guidelines and basic principles of writing a highly effective resume. Hope, this resume sample helps to increase the response rate from your prospective employer. A logistic coordinator oversees and manages the aspects of logistic process of the organization. Some of the typical responsibilities of a logistic coordinator include supervising packing products, delivery of products to customers, loading and unloading of raw materials. One can apply for the position in warehouse, purchasing and sales department. Generate a job wining resume and get hired for the position with the help of this resume example. Sample Logistic Coordinator Resume 29 Bayberry Court Gateway, GA 30372 Summary of Objectives: Seeking the position of a logistic coordinator to contribute my skills and knowledge in the field of logistics and meet customer satisfaction in an established organization. Summary of Qualifications:Comprehensive knowledge of logistic and international shipping trendsIn-depth knowledge of inbound logistics, logistic export and cost chain systemPossess effective time management ,oral and written communication skillsAttention to detail and has the ability to work under pressureExcellent negotiation and customer service skillsFamiliar with basic computer applications like Microsoft Word, Spreadsheet and InternetGood planning, decision-making and organizational skillsAbility to work independently with less supervision as well as in a team environment Summary of Work History: Accom Corp Inc, Georgina June 2005 till date Logistic CoordinatorResponsible for coordinating inventory of stock and ensure that the product adjustments are properly maintainedPerform tasks of receiving, sorting, logging, and distributing all incoming shipmentsHandle responsibilities of identifying, locating, obtaining and arranging shipment of requested productsAssign the tasks of arranging warehousing and transportation of products to customersResponsible for investigating and responding to inquires regarding distribution and shipping Perform tasks of maintaining and updating data into crew tracking systems KLP Services, Georgina April 2003 to December 2004 Logistic CoordinatorPerform the tasks of planning, coordinating and shipping services provided by the supply management teamResponsible for monitoring and supervising the process and procedures between transportation service and supply chain providersAssign tasks of managing daily operations for assigned commodities and maintained the established benchmarks and department goalsPrepare and maintain project administration and logistics department information systemsHandle queries and respond appropriately to telephone calls and emailsCommunicate with multiple internal departments to deliver effective service and meet customer satisfaction Achieved master’s degree in Business Management University of Georgina in the year 2003 Achieved bachelor’s degree in Business Management Institute of Business Studies, Georgina in the year 2000 Name: Thomas Smith Date of Birth: 13/01/1978 Employment Status: Full time Relationship status: Single Will be pleased to furnish upon request
Hey, this guy Obama can give a pretty good speech. There were parts of his inaugural address that I really liked. This bit, for instance, is a clear swipe at the Republican party and part of a genuine political vision for the future that I wish the Democrats could always enunciate so clearly. We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity. We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit. But we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future. For we remember the lessons of our past, when twilight years were spent in poverty and parents of a child with a disability had nowhere to turn. We do not believe that in this country freedom is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few. We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us at any time may face a job loss, or a sudden illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm. The commitments we make to each other through Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, these things do not sap our initiative, they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great. But my favorite part, and I think the heart of his speech, was where he threw out a few liberal dogwhistles: Seneca Falls, Selma, and Stonewall (that is, equal rights for women, blacks, and gays). We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths –- that all of us are created equal –- is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth. It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began. For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts. Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law –- for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote. Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity — until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country. Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia, to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for and cherished and always safe from harm. There were a few bits I did not care for at all. One was the too frequent invocation of god, of course: when you’re calling on this generation to work for a better world, don’t undercut it all by calling on or crediting a magical being. Worst, though, was his claim that “A decade of war is now ending” and “enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war”. This is not a president who can make any claim of contributing to world peace, or that he’s even diminished American militarism. I heard that and wondered whether he was going to be just as hypocritical with regards to his fine words about equality and justice. But maybe he’ll do better this term: maybe he actually will recall all the troops, shut down the terrorism by drones, and actually improve security at home.
While the series of oil, food, and other commodity price hikes have punctured deep into the pockets of many Filipinos and other people around the world, they have also forced the Philippines to undertake what could be unthinkable if those price spikes did not happen: an income tax cut. Under the Comprehensive Tax Reform Package (CTRP) that became a law in 1997, personal income tax system was among the most confiscatory in the world. Under that scheme, when a person has gross annual income of Php500,000 or more (net of a few deductions), the State will confiscate Php125,000 of the Php500,000 (leaving him/her with only Php375,000 disposable or after-tax income), and any amount above Php500,000, the State will further confiscate 32 percent of it. Perhaps a Php500,000 annual income was a “big” amount in 1997 when legislators made that law. But by mid-2000s, that amount was not that big and the tax system could push a middle income family into poverty level if there are plenty of expenses, like high health care cost for a sickly family member. The new tax relief law, Republic Act No. 9502, promises to “correct” the confiscatory provisions by, among others, exempting minimum wage earners from paying personal income tax. In Metro Manila, at Php382 a day of basic pay and cost of living allowance, that’s equivalent to Php8,400 per month (22 working days/month) or Php109,200 per year (including 13th month pay). In addition, they increased personal exemption from Php25,000 to Php50,000 for all taxpayers, and additional deduction for qualified dependents from Php8,000 to Php25,000. I think that the best tax policy that any government can give to its citizens is zero income tax, both personal and corporate, and for government to shift its main revenue source to consumption-based taxes. There are plenty of these types of taxes currently in place: value-added tax (VAT), excise tax, import tax, travel tax, amusement tax, real property tax, vehicle registration tax, and so on. An increase in VAT from the current 12 percent to 14 or 15 percent will not meet strong opposition if there is corresponding abolition, even a drastic cut, of income tax. In addition, there are plenty of business-related taxes currently in place: documentary stamp tax, percentage tax, franchise tax, capital gains tax, withholding tax on transactions with government, business permit tax, and so on. Income tax is wrong both in theory and practice. Theory, income tax penalizes work and performance by productive people; while rewarding (recipient of tax collections) those in government bureaucracies and political leadership, and some less-industrious, less ambitious, or economically unlucky people. A number of people are poor because of laziness and personal irresponsibility, plus the incentives of various subsidies given by the state if one is poor. Practice, out of 34 million employed Filipinos, both in public and private sectors, only less than 3 million are filing personal income tax. Well, if those who don't have to file because of automatic deduction are included, the figure could be around 10 million, but still too far from 34 million employed people. So many people are not paying income taxes, both rich and poor; professionals, and those in informal economies. In addition, those who work for multilateral institutions like the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Asian Development Bank, the Organization Economic Cooperation and Development, USAID, the ASEAN Secretariat, and foreign embassies are not subject to automatic personal income tax deduction. If they file and pay income tax later, fine; if they don't, fine too. And people working in these institutions, especially the technical staff and consultants are earning big, many in six-digit monthly income, tax-free! So a move to abolish personal income tax is simply to give justice to fixed-income earners, especially those in the private sector, and to correct the inefficiency of the tax system and the tax administration. In addition, any money retained in the paychecks of people and not taken in by the State in the form of income tax is money that will be spent on many other commodities and services. A tax cut is de facto "salary increase" and will go back to the economy in the form of higher domestic consumption, say repair or remodel an old house, or buy a new one, buy more hamburger and shoes, more office and school supplies, or hire a nanny for the kids, or more domestic travel. Even more international travels should not be spurned since other foreigners also come and spend their savings here. In the case of corporate income tax, this is an illusion. This is because corporations do not pay taxes, people do – the firm owners and stockholders in the form of lower profit and investors equity, and the consumers in the form of higher prices. Corporations are just legal entity; they are not people. Aside from higher domestic consumption, there will be billions of dollars of foreign investments that will come in – companies from high-tax countries in Europe and North America looking for "tax havens" that recognize their hard work. The jobs to be created locally will be enormous. But a zero income tax is next to impossible to happen in this country. No country has also done it yet. So a low, flat income tax, say 10 percent – both personal and corporate – is the next best alternative which will give respite to many struggling businessmen and employees, as well as give additional revenues for the government. Even at this rate, the potential of big influx of foreign investors wanting to come in and escape the high taxes in Western Europe and North America should be considered. Think of the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of jobs that will be created. Many Filipinos currently working abroad and endure the pain of being away from their families and relatives will have another employment alternative – right in the country itself. One country that experienced fast economic growth because of the introduction of low, flat tax, is Slovakia. From being a communist state under the former Soviet Union, it adopted a market economy in 1991, after the Berlin wall collapsed. In 1994, it enacted a flat tax of 19 percent for both personal and corporate income. The effect was quick: in a few years, Slovakia became the "Detroit of Europe" with the entry of plenty of foreign car manufacturers – Western European, American, Japanese, and Korean car producers. GDP grew high and unemployment went down drastically. Ireland is another "radical" economy: from 48 percent corporate income tax, it was cut down to a mere 12 percent! The volume of economic activity that transpired after this move, all other things being equal, was huge. One consideration that other people ask if income tax has to come down to say, 10 percent flat rate, is where to get the money for more and better roads and other infrastructure. Simple: get the money from those consumption-based taxes. Better yet, allow more toll roads. Expenditures for these infrastructures will not come from taxes, but from corporate savings and investments that will make money from motorists who will use the road more often. This is very fair. If the toll road expressway is in Luzon, taxpayers from the Visayas and Mindanao will not be burdened in building and maintaining those highways. And even among those in Luzon, those who don't use the roads (say they don't have a car) need not fork out extra taxes for those roads; only those who frequently use those toll roads. A citizens’ movement to push a low, flat tax leading to an ultimate zero income tax after a few years transition, is now a big challenge for us.
If you want to improve your Google searches you can find many useful queries on internet and, if have time, you can also attend a specific Google free course. But just few people know that there are specific queries available for Gmail. I found some of them casually when I need to search some specific, old emails into my accounts some days ago. Then I discovered that Google itself published a complete list of all the possible queries accepted by Gmail. I warmly suggest you to spend some minutes reading and exploring all the queries because they are really useful when you use Gmail in a professional way. Here, I just want to sum-up some of them that, in my experience, are the most common you can use when you are becoming crazy looking for a specific email you sent or received. The powerful feature is represented by the possibility to mix the different queries to create super-queries that can intercept the “wanted” email or documents in a less than a second. Here you are defining the time range and Gmail will show all the emails sent or received between the two specified dates. From or To from email@example.com to:firstname.lastname@example.org Where xyz @zyw.com is the email address you are focusing on. from:tom OR from:Luis from:tom OR from:Luis -meeting In this case you are looking for an email from Tom or (plus) Luis but it hasn’t to contain (- minus) the word “meeting”. Bcc or CC Where xyz @zyw are specific email addresses you are looking for. filename:invitation filename:(jpg OR jpeg OR png) filename:(doc OR docx OR pdf) filename:invitation(doc OR docx OR pdf) And you check into a specific folder. In my case: the Spam folder Larger or Smaller Some complex query examples: from:email@example.com filename:(jpg OR jpeg OR png) to:firstname.lastname@example.org filename:(doc OR docx OR pdf) from:email@example.com filename:invitationfrom firstname.lastname@example.org to:email@example.com filename:(doc OR docx OR pdf) subject:meeting after:2011/10/24 before:2011/11/24 in:spam subject:meeting
Casal Julian, Gaspar R. F. N. - 1. Dates - Born: 31 Dec 1680 - Died: 10 Aug 1759 - Dateinfo: Dates Certain - Lifespan: 79 - 2. Father - Occupation: No Information - No information on financial status. - 3. Nationality - Birth: Spanish - Career: Spanish - Death: Spanish - 4. Education - Schooling: Siguenza - Somewhat late (1713) he earned a B.A. from the Univ. of Siguenza. - There is no record of his study of medicine at a university. Lopez Pineiro says that he did earn an M.D. Canella appears to think he had to have one for the positions he held, but has no evidence. Otherwise authorities seem agreed that he learned medicine by apprenticeship to an apothecary. - 5. Religion - Affiliation: Catholic - 6. Scientific Disciplines - Primary: Medicine - Subordinate: Natural History - Casal Julian wrote a natural and medical history of Asturias, a major work. - 7. Means of Support - Primary: Medical Practice - Secondary: Governmental Position, Patronage - After his B.A., Casal Julian practiced successfully in Madrid until 1717, including members of the court in his practice. - He left for Oviedo, Asturias, in 1717 because Madrid did not agree with him. In Oviedo he built a great reputation. - In 1720, the Duke of Parque secured his appointment as the city's physician. Later he was physician to local hospitals. - Returned to Madrid in 1752 as physician to the Chamber of Ferdinand VI (i.e, physician to the court). He received a salary of 60,000 reals. He was appointed Protomedico of Castile. (I gather from Canella that there was a board of three Protomedicos who licensed physicians in the province.) - 8. Patronage - Types: Court And Aristocracy - 9. Technological Involvement - Type: Medical Practice - 10. Scientific Societies - Membership: Medical College - Member of the Royal Academy of Medicine. - Jose Maria Lopez Pinero, Ciencia y tecnica en la sociedad espanola de los siglos XVI y XVII, (Barcelona: Labor, 1979). - José Maria Lopez Piñero, et al., Diccionaria historico de la ciencia moderna en España, 2 vols. (Barcelona: Ediciones Peninsula, 1983). Ralph Major, "Don Gaspar Casal . . . ," Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 16 (1944), 351-61. - Fermia Canella, biographical introduction to Casal Julian, Historia natural y medica del principada de Asturias, (Ovieda, 1900--republished in 1959). By all accounts, this is the leading authority on Casal Julian. Note after reading Canella: well over half of it is devoted to speculations about his medical degree. It is not really much. - Compiled by: - Richard S. Westfall - Department of History and Philosophy of Science - Indiana University Note: the creators of the Galileo Project and this catalogue cannot answer email on geneological questions.
I am in 6th semester of my Computer science bachelor degree program, Working as Intern in a start up company. I started game development using AndEngine, things are going good because I have good hold on OOP and Java. But I don't have any experience in OpenGL programming and neither studied a course of computer graphics. I want to develop 3D games and there are tools available like Unity3d etc. My question is should I master tools or take online lectures of computer graphics to get started on basics. I want to continue game development as my profession. So what should I do? start learning from scratch or Learn already built tools and just dive into development? I see successful designers with no background of academic study, just did a photoshop course and now they are in the softwarehouse and making websites, sprites etc.
My game is a 2D game(or tries to be) in pure C using SDL(no OpenGL at all). No specific goal in it, it's pretty much boilerplate code. I decided I want to make my character/player shoot "something", whether you'd call it a bullet or not is up to you. But even before writing any code, I already saw my first hurdle. You see, in reality when you shoot a bullet it's pretty fast, you'd normally hit a target by the time you shoot again, in my game I want the bullets to be slow so that two or three or more can be displayed on the screen. This is where the problem starts. I have written some pseudo-code to illustrate my problem. Basically, when I shoot a bullet, I increment a total bullet counter, then the sprite would appear and every few MS I would update the animation and check for collision. When I have multiple bullets which I store in a structure array, I would loop through all of them to check their collision, or if they went out of the screen's view. When one fits either condition, I will remove it from the screen and (free it) from the structure array and that index will point to invalid memory. Basically, my pseudo-code tries to illustrate the problem. This is my interpretation of how it should be done. I am assuming there are other ways. Hopefully we can avoid the "Why C and not C++ discussion at this time".
About 1600 the following Mennonite congregations were found in the province of Zeeland: Aardenburg, Groede (or Cadzand), Vlissingen, Middelburg, Veere, Goes, St-Maartensdijk, Zierikzee, and Brouwershaven. Of these congregations only Aardenburg, Vlissingen, Middelburg, and Goes were still in existence in the 1950s. About 1670 the total number of baptized members in Zeeland was perhaps c1245. This number was c900 in 1730, barely 195 in 1800, 376 in 1900, and 431 in 1958. The large decrease of members from c1680 and the dissolution of some congregations was caused partly by the intolerance of the States of Zeeland and of the local magistrates of some towns like Aardenburg, Middelburg, and Zierikzee, but mostly by the fact that the Mennonite refugees from Flanders who had settled as merchants in the Zeeland towns gradually moved to South or North Holland towns where they had better business opportunities. It was at Middelburg in 1577 and soon after in the whole province of Zeeland that through the benevolence of Prince William I of Orange the Dutch Mennonites became officially exempted from the oath and military service. Hoop Scheffer, Jacob Gijsbert de. Inventaris der Archiefstukken berustende bij de Vereenigde Doopsgezinde Gemeente to Amsterdam, 2 vols. Amsterdam: Uitgegeven en ten geschenke aangeboden door den Kerkeraad dier Gemeente, 1883-1884: I, Nos. 428, 433-41, 1072; II, 2, Nos. 584, 589-91. Mellink, Albert F. De Wederdopers in de noordelijke Nederlanden 1531-1544. Groningen: J.B. Wolters, 1954: 316-324. Pekelharing, K. R. "Geschiedenis der Hervorming in Zeeland." Archief Zeeuwsch Genootschap 6 (1866). te Water, Jona Willem. Kort Verhaal der Reformatie van Zeeland in de zestiende eeuwe. Middelburg, 1766. \|Author(s)\|\|Nanne van der Zijpp\| Cite This Article van der Zijpp, Nanne. "Zeeland (Netherlands)." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 1959. Web. 6 Feb 2016. http://gameo.org/index.php?title=Zeeland_(Netherlands)&oldid=78984. van der Zijpp, Nanne. (1959). Zeeland (Netherlands). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 6 February 2016, from http://gameo.org/index.php?title=Zeeland_(Netherlands)&oldid=78984. Herald Press website. ©1996-2016 by the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. All rights reserved.
ub3r n3u7r4l1st sends along this snippet from Science Daily: "Computer games have a broad appeal that transcends gender, culture, age and socio-economic status. Now, computer scientists in the US think that creating computer games, rather than just playing them, could boost students' critical and creative thinking skills as well as broaden their participation in computing. ... 'Worldwide, there is increasing recognition of a digital divide, a troubling gap between groups that use information and communication technologies widely and those that do not,' the team explains. 'The digital divide refers not only to unequal access to computing resources between groups of people but also to inequalities in their ability to use information technology fully.' There are many causes and proposed solutions to bridging this divide, but applying them at the educational and computer literacy level in an entertaining and productive way might be one of the more successful. The team adds that teaching people how to use off-the-shelf tools to quickly build a computer game might allow anyone to learn new thinking and computing skills."
Texas – September 23, 2009 Use of Funds We reviewed three programs in Texas funded under the Recovery Act Highway Infrastructure Investment funds, Workforce Investment Act (WIA) Youth Program, and Weatherization Assistance Program. We selected these programs for different reasons. The Highway Infrastructure Investment fund was selected because highway projects have been underway in Texas for several months, and provided an opportunity to review contracts. The WIA Youth Program was selected because Texas received a large increase in funding, the program was in full operation, and it provided an opportunity to review contracts. We selected the Weatherization Assistance Program because the Recovery Act provided a 25-fold increase in Texas’s funding. With these programs we focused on how funds were being used; how safeguards were being implemented, including those related to procurement of goods and services; and how results were being assessed. We reviewed contracting procedures and examined two specific contracts under both the Recovery Act Highway Infrastructure Investment fund and the WIA Youth Program. In addition to these three programs, we also updated funding information on the use of Recovery Act funding in Texas’s budget, including the use of the U.S. Department of Education (Education) State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF). Consistent with the purposes of the Recovery Act, funds from the programs we reviewed are being directed to help Texas and local governments stabilize their budgets and to stimulate infrastructure development and expand existing programs—thereby providing needed services and potential jobs. The following provides highlights of our review of these funds: U.S. Department of Education State Fiscal Stabilization Fund - Education approved Texas’s application making more than $2 billion available for education programs, including public schools and higher education. As of September 8, 2009, the state has received 287 applications from school districts for these funds. Highway Infrastructure Investment Program - The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) apportioned $2.25 billion in Recovery Act funds to Texas. As of September 1, 2009, the federal government has obligated $1.19 billion for 287 projects to Texas and $47 million has been reimbursed by the federal government. Seventy-eight percent of highway obligations have been for pavement improvements and roadway widening. Workforce Investment Act (WIA) Youth Program - The Texas Workforce Commission has allocated approximately $70 million of the WIA Youth Recovery Act funds, received from the Department of Labor, to 28 workforce development boards within the state. The goal is to expend at least 70 percent of these funds by September 30, 2009. As of August 15, 2009, local workforce development boards had expended approximately $31.5 million and enrolled over 19,500 youth in summer employment activities throughout Texas. Texas is exceeding its target goal of summer employment for 14,420 youth. Weatherization Assistance Program - On July 10, 2009, the U.S. Department of Energy provided the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs (TDHCA) access to $163.5 million of the state’s $327 million Recovery Act funding allocation. On September 11, 2009, TDHCA entered into contracts totaling $145.5 million with subrecipients. The remaining $17.8 million will be used for TDHCA administration and technical assistance and training for subrecipients and grantees. Full September ReportBack to top - Recovery Act: Funds Continue to Provide Fiscal Relief to States and Localities, While Accountability and Reporting Challenges Need to Be Fully Addressed - Summary (HTML) Highlights Page (PDF) Full Report (PDF, 163 pages) Accessible Text - Recovery Act: Funds Continue to Provide Fiscal Relief to States and Localities, While Accountability and Reporting Challenges Need to Be Fully Addressed (Appendixes) - Summary (HTML) Full Report (PDF, 671 pages) Accessible Text - Pub. L. No. 111-5, 123 Stat. 115 (Feb. 17, 2009).
It's a well-known fact that someday, all of New York will be reduced to a smoldering, hellish wasteland, a post-apocalyptic desert so bad it will make The Road look like Sex and the City, a badland consisting of the ashes of a once-mighty city felled by war, disease, terror, or Zu'ul. Luckily, we've got an official legal manual! Yes, the recently-created "Public Health Legal Manual," published by the state courts system, serves "as a guide for judges and lawyers who could face grim questions in another terrorist attack, a major radiological or chemical contamination or a widespread epidemic reports," reports The New York Times. (This is assuming that the judges and lawyers are not consumed by the brain-eating microbes). Grim questions like: How many old people will not get the medicine? And: Can we just shoot anyone we want, or is that, like, not cool, legally? The idea here is that there's not a lot of precedent when it comes to serious crises, and people might not be super familiar with the laws—and you don't want to get sued for violating someone's rights by breaking into their house to confiscate their Cipro, or whatever. Here's a relevant excerpt: Unconsolidated Laws §9129 [(1) "in the event of attack," the state civil defense commission may "(a) assume direct operational control of any or all civil defense forces"; (b) order the use of personnel and equipment where needed; (d) "take, use or destroy any and all real or personal property, or any interest therein, necessary or proper for the purposes of civil defense"; and (e) execute any of the civil defense powers and duties of counties or cities]; (2) [in the event of attack, a county or city (a) may compel evacuations (includes "anticipation" of an attack); (b) "shall control all pedestrian and vehicular traffic, transportation and communication facilities and public utilities. The entire thing is available as a PDF here, but you should download it and print it out now, because when the space-worms come to enslave us there's a good chance you'll have trouble finding a computer with Acrobat Reader. Sadly, it doesn't do much to cover zombie-related eventualities, but that's still a fairly small body of law, so it's silly to assume it would. [NYT; image via Shutterstock]
People are struggling to understand what caused the hugely destructive earthquake and tsunami in Japan. For some, "plate tectonics" and "random chance" isn't good enough. And this month, the moon will be closer to the Earth than it has been since 1993. So now there's a dumb "supermoon" conspiracy theory gaining steam. What is a "supermoon," besides a thing an astrologer made up that means nothing? It's when a full moon is at it's closest point in its orbit around the Earth. From Accuweather.com: A new or full moon at 90% or greater of its closest perigee to Earth has been named a "supermoon" by astrologer Richard Nolle. This term has been recently picked up by astronomers. An extreme "supermoon" is when the moon is full or new as well as at its 100% greater mean perigee (closest) distance to earth. By this definition, last month's full moon, this month's and next month's will all be extreme "supermoons". Woah, extreme supermoons! (Keep in mind astrologer Richard Nolle, who coined the term "supermoon," has a website that looks like this.) Some idiots think that a supermoon foretells great atmospheric and geologic disturbance, and they link past supermoons with past disasters, and the current earthquake. The Daily Mail blares: "Is the Japanese earthquake the latest natural disaster to have been caused by a "supermoon"? No. What a supermoon means is that high and low tides will be slightly higher and lower than usual, and also werewolves are extra strong this month. [Photo via Shutterstock.com]
The Ostri Republic was a leading member of Union of Independent Republics that fought against the Coalition of Ordered Governments and their allies during the Pendulum Wars. Ostri was a coastal nation and enjoyed a lukewarm alliance with the larger and more aggressive nation of Pelles, another UIR member. Ostri also housed the Hammer of Dawn technology over which the Battle of Aspho Fields was fought. At some point between the end of the battle and E-Day, Ostri (and Pelles) became members of the COG. They were both led by Premier Deschenko when the Locust attacked, and nearly twenty brigades of troops were lost defending the nation. Eventually Ostri was abandoned to the Horde, and the populace moved to Pelles for their last stand. The nation was destroyed when the Hammer of Dawn was used as a last ditch attempt to destroy the Locust. Era of Silence and Gold Rush Edit Before the Pendulum Wars Ostri was a highly developed nation which stood on the level of Tyrus. Ostri was capable of producing impressive technology, a trait that would later assist them in creating a prototype of the Hammer of Dawn. Ostri was able to flourish during the Gold Rush due to significant Imulsion reserves, leading to it expanding its sphere of influence.They would eventually come into conflict with other nations and would play an integral role in forming the Union of Independent Republics. 30 years before the Siege of Anvil Gate, Ostri was a sight of a major campaign. In the last years of the decades long war. Ostri was the center of the Hammer of Dawn project. If completed it would destroy the stalemate of the war and give the UIR orbital dominance over Sera. Until it was discovered by agent Louise Settile of COG intelligences leading to Operation Leveler. After the operations success, the COG was able to use the Hammer of Dawn and eventually the war came to an end and Ostri became a member of the COG. Over a year after Emergence Day, Ostri was under the administration of Premier Yori Deschenko. Ostri, like all COG nations, was battling the Locust Horde, losing tens of thousands of Gears in the process. Deschenko retreated from Ostri and headed for Pelles. With the fall of Ostri it divided the Coalition and made a counterattack impossible. Though what remained of Ostri was wiped out of the face of the map along with all Locust held terroritories outside Tyrus during the Hammer of Dawn counterattack.
This is week 44 in my series of Shape Up! The weekly post on what I did over the last week in my quest to getting healthier. Many people across the country have not taken the news of Hostess Brands going out of business lightly. Across eBay auctions for boxes of Twinkies have gone through the roof! I have seen online auctions where they want you to bid up to $10-$15 million! All of this panic will soon be for nothing by the way. Someone is going to buy the rights to make all the Hostess products again. Sure it might take a year or two to see the snacks in stores again. But I do think we all can live without this junk food for a while. Did you know there are recipes to make a Twinkie online. And by making them yourself they would be much healthier and without all those chemicals. A Twinkie has 37 ingredients. Some of these ingredients should shock you. Did you know the B vitamins in enriched flour come from Chinese petroleum. Or the phosphoric acid comes from a mine in Idaho. Or the Polysorbate 60 which is an emulsifying agent is used in cosmetics. Or the cellulose gum, Polysorbate 60, and calcium sulfate which are ingredients that are used in sheet rock, shampoo, and even rocket fuel! The Twinkie is basically made from a bunch of chemicals! Yes I did enjoy a few Twinkies before they were scooped up by everyone else. Watch the video below! Here is every ingredient in a Twinkie: Enriched Bleached Wheat Flour [Flour, Reduced Iron, B Vitamins (Niacin, Thiamine Mononitrate (B1), Riboflavin (B2), Folic Acid)], Corn Syrup, Sugar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Water, Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable and/or Animal Shortening (Soybean, Cottonseed and/or Canola Oil, Beef Fat), Whole Eggs, Dextrose. Contains 2% or Less of: Modified Corn Starch, Glucose, Leavenings (Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Baking Soda, Monocalcium Phosphate), Sweet Dairy Whey, Soy Protein Isolate, Calcium and Sodium Caseinate, Salt, Mono and Diglycerides, Polysorbate 60, Soy Lecithin, Soy Flour, Cornstarch, Cellulose Gum, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Natural and Artificial Flavors, Sorbic Acid (to Retain Freshness), Yellow 5, Red 40. Why read that list; let opera singer Hai-Ting Chinn sing it for you! I think we will all live and we don’t have to spend thousands of dollars for a Twinkie. Sometimes eating something healthier like a fruit can be better for you than a processed snack food. I think this is a big reason the obesity epidemic is huge right now! Maybe it would be a good thing if the Twinkie and the other Hostess products would never come back! As for the last week for me; it’s been the normal things. Since I am low on money I am only walking. The other bad thing is I went 48 hours without eating anything. Right now I pretty much don’t have a choice. I have been unemployed for 16 months and I am still searching for my 14th job in seven years. There is just no one out there who is willing to hire me. So to save money I went two days without eating anything. I know this is not good if you are trying to stay in shape and lose weight. But what can I do? If something does not change soon I will be going hungry 24/7. I guess I better get used to not eating anything. Here is what I ate last week: Saturday: Party Pizza, Diet Coke. Sunday: Steak Sandwich, Diet Coke. Monday: Steak Sandwich, Diet Coke. Wednesday: Rice, Popcorn, Diet Coke. Thursday: Burgers, Diet Coke. Friday: Tacos, Mountain Dew. Have a wonderful week everyone! - Ebay bidders go crazy for Twinkies merch (money.cnn.com) - Relax everyone, Twinkies aren’t going away (martinicity.wordpress.com) - Twinkie, Noooooooo! (webnerhouse.com) - The Twinkie Isn’t Dying, It’s Just Moving To Mexico (huffingtonpost.com) - Twinkies On Sale For $200,000 (huffingtonpost.com)
I was helping a friend with setting up her iMac computer yesterday for genealogy and she said something that caught my attention. She said, "I have to learn what all the genealogy terms mean." That brought home a common problem with all specializations; learning the jargon. Jargon is a really a technical term I became acquainted with during my graduate studies in Linguistics at the University of Utah. It is defined as special words or expressions that are used by a particular profession or group and are difficult for others to understand. The main problem with jargon is that we often do not even know we are using it. Take for example, the word "genealogy" itself, as in "I am doing my genealogy" or "I am working on my genealogy." What does that statement communicate to a non-genealogist? And sometimes we wonder why we get blank stares. The challenge is that there is really no way to avoid jargon. It is present in every (I mean every) activity and profession and interest in the entire world from skydiving to sewing. Every human activity has its own special set of insider terms. Jargon can be very exclusionary. If you are the outsider, trying to understand what the "insiders" are talking about can be a formidable challenge. An extreme type of jargon is called an argot. Sometimes the word argot is associated with criminal activities so using the word jargon is more appropriate. Usually term "argot" is used to identify an extreme jargon specifically designed to exclude outsiders. What is more difficult is that the people who are using the jargon are usually not even aware that they are using specialized words and terminology. I have noticed that many people who are new to genealogy are put off immediately by genealogists using terms they don't immediately understand. For example, they are asked if they have a pedigree chart or family group record. Although these terms seem so simple and fundamental, they are in fact very specialized uses of common words. If you add in the jargon associated with computers and computer use, coming into the world of genealogy can be formidable. By the way, it often doesn't help to try to explain or define our "jargon" terms because we end up using even more jargon to define the terms. I suggest that when you are talking to non-genealogists, you think carefully about the terms you are using and ask frequent questions to see if those you are speaking to understand what you are saying.
In my last post I discussed how the use of the internet has expedited some of my research. However, I’ve also learned that sometimes we can become too reliant on databases, web searches and other online tools. Sometimes we just need to go back to basics. Such is the case in my search for a photo of Flora (Stanwood) Simpson. Aunt Flora was one of those people that stayed put. Since she was found year after year, census after census, in the same place, I got to “know” Aunt Flora better than many of the other Aunts and Uncles in my family tree. Flora was married three times. She was widowed at the age of 25 when her first husband, Morton Howe, died, leaving her with four small children. Next she married John Miller. This marriage was brief, as in 1900 she married her third and final husband, Oliver Fred Simpson. My grandmother, Goldie Simpson, recalled seeing Aunt Flora when she herself was very young. She remember this “very old woman with wrinkled socks.” Since my grandmother was only 3 years old at the time, she couldn’t offer many other details. :-) However, she did remember many of Flora’s step chlidren, who were my grandmother’s first-cousins. The relationship is a bit complicated, but the short story is that there were two Stanwood women who married two Simpson brothers. Aunt Flora was the first. As mentioned, her third husband was Oliver Fred Simpson, or “Fred” for short. When Uncle Fred died in 1917, Flora’s neice, Susan Stanwood, attended the funeral. Fred’s brother, Ernest Simpson, did as well. I don’t know if it was love at first sight, but my guess is that it was. Ernest wrote poems about sitting in Northfield, talking for hours with Susan under the back porch light. That was the summer of 1917. Susan and Ernest married in January of 1918, and their only child, my grandmother, Goldie, was born October of 1921. With such a role in my great-grandparents’ introduction, Flora has somewhat captivated me. For many years I had sought a photo of Aunt Flora, and the only one I was able to obtain came in the early 1990’s, a very poor quality xerox copy provided by a distant cousin researching the Sisco and Simpson families. It was better than nothing, but not by much. One day as I was transferring files and organizing them in my new genealogy program (Roots Magic, in case you are wondering – awesome program!), I decided if I was ever going to find a living person with a photo of Flora, I’d better start searching. I began by going through names of Uncle Fred Simpson’s grandchildren, and then their children, and so on. Using Switchboard.com, I began making calls. While I didn’t find anyone with information, I did have some nice chats with cousins. :-) A bit discouraged, I decided to put the task aside for a bit and continue on with organizing my data. As I pulled open the lid to a large Rubbermaid bin full of ancient photos, there was a picture that I’d seen dozens of times before, but never really analyzed. Could it possibly be Aunt Flora? Turning the photo over, in my own handwriting was a “?”, obviously written many years ago when I’d asked my grandmother to tell me the names of the people on all of her old photos. The gentleman in the photo certainly had a very strong resemblance to Uncle Fred, but if so, why wouldn’t my grandmother have recognized him? If I was right and that WAS Fred, it would stand to reason that they woman in the photo was the elusive Aunt Flora. Pulling out the grainy old xerox photo of Flora from years ago, I compared them both side-by-side. It sure looked like Aunt Flora to me. Next, I compared the woman in the picture to a photo I had of Flora’s daughter Lyda. The family resemblance was astounding. I was as certain as I could be that I had in my possession (and had had in my possession for the last twenty years!) a photo of Aunt Flora Stanwood Howe Miller Simpson. :-) Not wanting to assume, I became more determined to find someone who could assist in making a positive ID. A few more phone calls, and a few more disappointments. I set it aside again, and went back to my Rubbermaid container to pull out more files to pick back up on my data entry. Then another surprise – a postcard dated 1996 from a Simpson cousin who was in her early 70’s at the time. Could she still be alive? Armed with a name and address, I went back to Switchboard.com and voila! There was a phone number. A few minutes later, I was in touch with my cousin who vowed to do her best to help me. Elated to learn she was also online, I emailed the photo to her, and then awaited her reply. A couple of hours later she emailed back. My query and piqued her interest, and she had begun rummaging through old photos she’d been given by her own mother, Uncle Fred’s daughter Bernice. In the photos was a duplicate of the one I’d emailed to her, and in her mother’s handwriting was the positive ID I’d needed – Aunt Flora, Uncle Fred, and Fred’s grandson, Orval Swanson, were the subjects of this picture which had been in my possession all along. While the internet is certainly a wonderful tool, this story just goes to show some times you need to use good old fashioned sleuthing techniques (and contact with distant cousins) to solve some mysteries.
Education and Health Care: Complex Systems Dreams, Volume Operations Budgets While different in many ways, education and health care share a common predicament. The receivers of these services—parents and students on the one hand, patients and advocates on the other—are cultured to expect superior, personalized attention, the sort of thing that a complex systems business model excels at. The immediate providers of these services, teachers and doctors, share these same aspirations as well. Unfortunately, the complex systems model is not scalable to the needs of a large society. The only model that scales is the volume operations model. (For a discussion of the contrasts between these two models, see Harvard Business Review, December, 2005, “Strategy and the Stronger Hand”). It does so by transforming unique relationships into standardized transactions. It is not driven to achieve excellence but rather to meet minimum quality standards as economically as possible. This is the model that legislatures and health plans fund, that administrators seek to administer, leaving teachers, aides, doctors, and nurses with the task of mediating between complex systems expectations and volume operations budgets. It does not take a great deal of reflection to realize that the volume operations path is the only feasible one to take from a social safety net point of view. More affluent citizens may avail themselves of the complex systems model, but only at a considerable price. The key point is that such service is not, and should not be represented as, a social entitlement. And this is where things get hairy, specifically in a society dedicated to egalitarian principles. The economics of education and health care do not support entitlements beyond a basic safety net. Yet the public dialog implies those entitlements exist, or would exist if only the economically privileged would be more generous. At this juncture in the dialog a liberal/conservative split ensues, something which has played out over my entire adult lifetime, with no end in sight, and no insight in sight either. I think the constructive path forward begins with abandoning any expectation of providing broader access to the complex systems model and instead focusing our creative energies on raising the standards of the volume operations capability as much as possible. This means focusing public investment on the mean, not the extremes, of the health care continuum, investing in more efficient, effective, and pervasive basic health services. Private funding can pursue the esoteric edges—that’s its privilege—but public funds should not. We need to focus those dollars more on process, on access, on communication, on methodology, and on resetting societal expectations about the nature and value of primary care.
News & Policies > For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary February 21, 2008 President Bush and President Johnson Sirleaf Participate in Roundtable on Education University of Liberia 3:04 P.M. (Local) PRESIDENT JOHNSON SIRLEAF: Mr. President, Mrs. Bush, fellow Liberians, we have been pleased that with the support of the United States government to our education rebuilding process, we can now say that we're beginning to see the signs of progress. Mr. President, today you will be listening to some of the beneficiaries who will be sharing their experience with you. They've been supported through the United States Agency for International Development, the President's Africa Education Initiative. Liberia currently receives assistance for adult learners, primary school students, school infrastructure, teacher training, the accelerated learning program and improvement of higher education. PRESIDENT BUSH: Thank you, my pleasure. Does that mean you want me to speak? (Laughter.) PRESIDENT JOHNSON SIRLEAF: You speak a little bit and I'll introduce the -- PRESIDENT BUSH: Okay, good, yes. As the President said, we have met four times since she's been President. I said out there at the parade grounds that every time I'm a better person for it, since she's a -- (applause.) This is the last event on the last stop of what has been a comprehensive trip around the continent of Africa. And it's fitting that we talk about education as the last subject to discuss. First of all, I just want you to know that, Madam President, we admire you and we appreciate your leadership. I particularly appreciate your commitment to liberty and freedom. Now, the problem is, of course, it's one thing to be for freedom, but it's really important to have a healthy, educated group of folks to be able to realize the blessings of freedom. And so our desire in the United States is to answer the universal call to love a neighbor and to help those -- I believe to whom much is given, much is required. A lot has been given the United States of America, and I firmly believe it's in our national interest to help others not only realize the blessings of liberty, but to fight disease when they find it and to deal with illiteracy where we encounter it. And so our initiative on malaria, or the AIDS initiative, is all aimed at saving lives, which in essence helps save societies. And same thing with our education initiative. And so we really appreciate you all coming to share your message with us. I hope you're not nervous. (Laughter.) I bet you're not, because all you got to do is tell us what's on your mind. Just share your stories, and I think people will find that they're most interested. But what you must know here in Liberia is that the United States of America is with you, and we'll stay with you, because we want you to succeed. It's in the interests of the United States of America that Liberia do well. And so, Madam President, we are -- (applause) -- we're proud to stand with you. We're not going to tell you what to do because you're plenty competent. I believe African leaders can run African countries. But I do believe the United States of America can help. And that's exactly what we're going to discuss today, Madam President. So thank you very much for that introduction, and Laura is thrilled to be here, as well. She is the librarian in the family. PRESIDENT JOHNSON SIRLEAF: That's right. (Laughter and applause.) END 3:08 P.M. (Local)
How do I create such map from point data? I am using ArcGIS 9.3 and 10 Both of these solutions require extensions to the standard ArcGIS desktop, such as Spatial Analyst. If you don't want to interpolate between points, the solution is easy. Simply use the Conversion Toolbox > To Raster > Points to Raster tool to create a raster of your points. You can use the Cell Size field to determine the size of the grid, and you can combine points in simple ways ( If you want to interpolate between points, you have multiple options, depending on the results you want. Kriging and Inverse Distance Weighted are two common types of interpolation, but Spatial Analyst comes with others as well. Depending on what your points actually represent, you may also consider using Point Density or Kernel Density. These would be more appropriate when you were attempting to measure the density of discrete observations, rather than interpolate between scattered measurements. Look into these, and return if you have more specific questions. There are users here with extensive backgrounds in geostatistics who should be able to handle any problems.
Friends, this is Staphylococcus aureus. Staphylococcus aureus, here are some victims. You probably already knew each other. After all, the bacteria—origin of the MRSA superbug—lives in the nasal cavity of one third of all humans. Now scientists know why. They like human blood above all other kinds of animal blood. Scientists have found that the bacteria prefer human hemoglobin, which is responsible of carrying oxygen through vertebrates. These microbes attach to this protein to suck its iron and other nutrients, and it just happens that they bind perfectly and easily with our version of hemoglobin. In fact, they seem to prefer different variants of hemoglobin among humans, which may explain why some people suffer repeated infections and others don't, according to lead researcher Dr. Eric Skaar, from Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, US: A big question in staph biology is: why do some people continuously get infected or suffer very serious staph infections, while other people do not? Variations in hemoglobin could contribute. According to the study, other bacteria also seem to prefer human blood to any other vertebrate blood, which is why I insist in exchanging mine for alcohol- and kerosene-based liquids. [Cell Host Microbe via The Press Association]
If you have kids, you know what it's like to go from activity to activity with only a few moments in between. You may think you're broadening your child's horizon, but you may be doing more harm than good. Researcher Peter Gray claims that almost 85% of children today have higher levels of anxiety and depression than children in the 1950s and this is the result of our busy lifestyle. Gray notes that since the 1950s, the amount of time that children play outside with their peers has decreased. At the same time, the number of depressed and anxious children has increased. Yes, correlation is not causation, but Gray still believes that playing outside is important to the long-term health of our kids. Gray points to studies that show kids are happy when they play outside with their peers and that playing outside with other children increases their social skills, cognitive ability and self-confidence. I don't know about you, but slowing down sounds like a win-win situation to me. Parents won't be running around like crazy and kids will be able to enjoy a rousing game of red rover in the backyard. What more could you want? [Discovery News]
With over one million observations since it launch on April 24, 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has been a endless source for insane wonders, unprecedented scenes and humbling experiences. However, many of its most amazing images have never been seen before by anyone—until now. In fact, some images actually show objects that nobody knew existed before. These are, as the European Space Agency calls them, Hubble's hidden treasures—the unknown secret galaxies and stars that have remained unseen in the Space Telescope's data vaults until the ESA asked the public to dive in on a quest to find them. What people have found is amazing. According to ESA: [Of the million observations] only a small proportion are attractive images—and an even smaller number are ever actually seen by anyone outside the small groups of scientists that publish them. But the vast amount of data in the archive means that there are still many hundreds of beautiful images scattered among the valuable, but visually unattractive, scientific data that have never been enjoyed by the public. Knowing that, ESA opened the vaults to everyone. A few months later, they had 3,000 submissions in their servers, all of them beautiful. "More than a thousand of these images were fully processed," says ESA, "a difficult and time-consuming task." Incredibly enough, there was no payment for all these image hunting and processing hours done by the public except a few small prizes for the top ten in two categories—basic imaging and image processing. The volunteers did it all out of the love for the quest, a desire to explore and find something that nobody has seen before in this way. Here are the results: The winner of the image processing category was Josh Lake, for the star-forming region NGC 1763, followed by Andre van der Hoeven and his image of the spiral galaxy Messier 77. My favorite, however, is this one, found and processed by Judy Schmidt, a web developer from Lakeside, California. It's the star XZ Tauri. According to the European Space Agency, this was the jury's favorite. In fact, thanks to her work, they found "an unusual object that we would never have found without her help." It's so incredibly beautiful and delicate that it seems unreal: What a magical place. Here's Lake's NGC 1763: And van der Hoeven's Messier 77: You can see all the winning images at the ESA site.
The vast, complex, and ever-changing business landscape of today requires a unique set of skills and knowledge to stay ahead of the curve. That’s why PLNU’s Lean Six Sigma Certificate Program offers just the tools you need to take a leap forward in your career. Our cost-effective model and relational learning instruction will teach you how to streamline operations, improve processes, reduce cost, increase customer service, and maximize profit for your organization. Receive instruction in small, tailored classes that use current expertise, future-ready practices, and personalized attention to help you drive innovation. Geared for Working Professionals A flexible and condensed learning format designed to meet your professional goals and sharpen your influence in the workplace allows you to finish the program quickly while still working a full-time job. A Balanced Approach PLNU offers Green Belt and Black Belt certification through a step-by-step approach to “balanced management” by Defining, Measuring, Analyzing, Improving, and Controlling (DMAIC) performance. Lean Six Sigma (LSS) training and certification prepares practitioners to apply the LSS tools and deliver results that are focused on customer needs and business success. This highly interactive course includes case studies, simulations, and games in the class format. No prerequisites are needed. Green Belt Overview Green Belts are typically Lean Six Sigma practitioners who complete five half days of LSS training and play a functional role in support of larger LSS efforts. A Green Belt is dedicated to communicating the fundamental principles of Lean Six Sigma with colleagues and inspires creativity and change with measurable results. Black Belt Overview Black Belts are Lean Six Sigma experts who complete 12 days of LSS training and act as internal consultants or coaches to drive an improvement project to achieve results (usually results in $100,000 of annual savings). Black Belts receive a balance of management skills (project/team/change management) and tool application to achieve desired process improvements. A Black Belt is dedicated to driving critical change opportunities and achieving results. The Black Belt leads, coaches, rallies, and provides expertise to a Lean Six Sigma team. If you have previously completed a LSS Green Belt program, you may apply directly to the LSS Black Belt program. If you have not previously done LSS training you may complete the Green Belt and Black Belt programs sequentially. To recieve the Black Belt certification, you must attend all training sessions, pass an assessment, complete one project, facilitate two Kaizen events ("to become good through change"), deliver results of at least $100,000 in annual savings and present the project. Students will be mentored by the instructor over a six month period as they complete the necessary assignments for certification. Ric Van Der Linden \|Expected Completion Time\| 1 Month (5-6 one-day sessions) Black Belt students will be mentored by the instructor as they apply LSS in their workplace over the following 6 months in order to complete their certification. \|Needed Units to Graduate\| \|Program Start Date\| Talk to the program counselor for the next program start dates. Green Belt $1999 Quality & Experience Quality programs, caring people, and a guiding faith set Point Loma Nazarene University apart. Our forward-thinking, balanced approach to education will help you earn a well-respected degree while gaining confidence and a network of lifelong support.Learn More Talk to the program counselor for the next program start dates. What is Lean Six Sigma? Many businesses have not kept pace with the rise and fall of change. Lean Six Sigma (LSS) provides a systematic method to optimize performance efficiencies by refining process and reducing variations to achieve profit. PLNU offers superior Lean Six Sigma certificate programs that will provide you with the tools to improve quality and process activities. Our cost-effective model and relational learning instruction will help you achieve your desired professional goals. Learn the specialized knowledge to streamline operations, increase value, and reduce waste. How does LSS drive innovation and improvement? Increase employee involvement through active participation on process improvement teams. Involving employees in the implementation of quality activities gives them a greater appreciation for the impact of their work and a greater appreciation for how the work of other employees and departments also contributes to success. Reduce cost through process improvement and require less time and employee resources to decrease deficiency and error by examining the various steps involved in a process, understanding what customers value, and then acting to eliminate unnecessary steps while increasing value. Companies using Lean Six Sigma can significantly decrease costs and increase customer value. Acknowledge Customer Needs Lean Six Sigma focuses on process improvement as well as improvements to product delivery methods and other customer service activities that impact customer satisfaction. Increased customer satisfaction will lead to repeat business, increased margins, and business success. Why PLNU for Lean Six Sigma? PLNU is committed to providing professional certifications that add value to our communities. PLNU offers a Certificate Program in Lean Six Sigma to help close our local skills gap in business and to better serve our community. Our objective is to prepare students with the practical knowledge they need to use an evidence-based approach to improve processes, increase customer satisfaction, and maximize success. As a busy professional, we value your time and many commitments, and we have created a flexible and condensed learning experience to meet your educational goals and advance in your career. Certification requires participants to attend all training, pass an assessment, work on a team project, and deliver project results. Green Belt practitioners will: - Learn LSS philosophy and Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control (DMAIC) methodology. - Obtain knowledge of the most common Lean and Six Sigma tools. - Learn techniques for identifying and selecting opportunities for improvement. - See how LSS can impact bottom-line and overall business performance. - Apply LSS concepts on a project to improve business processes. - Begin creating a culture of continuous improvement utilizing LSS. Black Belt practitioners will: - Learn the combined LSS tools at a Black Belt level - Acquire the ability to select projects, develop teams, and deliver results - Apply concepts to a project impacting the bottom line - Deploy LSS principles to other individuals in their organizations - Develop abilities to teach LSS White, Yellow, and Green Belts Why PLNU? No matter which PLNU program you decide is right for you, you'll discover the hallmark PLNU experience is designed to give every student the clear framework and professional tools to stand out in his or her field. Established in 1902, PLNU is located in beautiful San Diego. Our small class sizes, focused faculty attention, and convenient online offerings are just a few of the powerful ways PLNU delivers real value to every student, no matter which physical or virtual campus he or she chooses.
CONSTRUCTORS: BRABHAM (MOTOR RACING DEVELOPMENTS LTD.) Name: Brabham (Motor Racing Developments Ltd.) Australian Jack Brabham made his name as a racing driver with the Cooper Car Company, winning the World Championship in 1959 and 1660 at the wheel of Cooper-Climax cars. Brabham was involved in the design of the Coopers and in 1961 he and Ron Tauranac, an engineer from Australia who was working at the Jack Brabham Motors garage and filling station in Chessington, established Motor Racing Developments Ltd. and began building a Formula Junior car in a shed in Esher. This was to be called an MRD. The project was kept secret as Brabham was still a Cooper driver and the company earned considerable money from its sale of Formula Junior cars. The car showed well in the hands of Gavin Youl. At the end of the 1961 season Brabham left Cooper and, because MRD did not translate well into French, it was decided that future cars would be called Brabhams. They moved into premises in Surbiton which were owned by the Australian automotive parts company Repco and the first Brabham was built. The BT2 was a development of the MRD Formula Junior chassis and work began on a Formula 1 car. As this would not be ready in time for the 1962 season Brabham bought a Lotus with which to start the season. The Formula Junior did well in the hands of Brabham works driver Frank Gardner and privateer Jo Schlesser won the French Formula Junior title. Eleven cars were built. The F1 car was finished in July 1962 and the BT3 was debuted at the Nurburgring in a bright turquoise-blue color scheme. The car reappeared in September at Oulton Park where Brabham finished third in the Gold Cup and the car scored its first World Championship points at Watkins Glen in October, with Brabham finishing fourth. The year ended with Jack finishing second in Mexico (a non-championship race) and fourth in South Africa. For the following year Brabham and Tauranac built a BT5 sportscar, a BT6 Formula Junior (of which 20 were sold) and a BT7 Formula 1 car. Brabham hired Dan Gurney to be his team-mate. The pair finished second on three occasions but it was Jim Clark's year. Brabham also ran an old car for Denny Hulme on occasion. The team finished third in the Constructors' Championship. The company expanded rapidly with a new sportscar (BT8), of which nine were built. There were Brabham cars running in Formula 1, Formula 2, Formula 3 and at Indianapolis. That year Gurney gave the team its first F1 victory at the French GP and followed up with a second win in Mexico. Brabham himself scored a handful of points-scoring finishes. In F2 Hulme and Brabham drove the factory cars but others were sold to a variety of customers including Roy Winkelmann Racing (for Alan Rees), Ford Austria (for Jochen Rindt) and John Willment (for Gardner). The company built nearly 40 racing cars. In 1965 Brabham began selling customer F1 cars as well with Rob Walker, Bob Anderson and John Willment all buying chassis. Brabham himself did fewer races, leaving Hulme to partner Gurney on some occasions and the year ended with Gurney finishing second in the US and Mexican GPs. The team finished third again in the Constructors' title. Brabham chassis were numerous in Formula 1 but Jim Clark won the title for Lotus. With the new F1 regulations in 1966 Brabham convinced Repco to build him an F1 engine. Gurney decided to set up his own F1 team and so Hulme and Brabham became the factory drivers on the new Repco-engined BT19. The car debuted at Syracuse in May and won the International Trophy at Silverstone a fortnight later. At the French GP Brabham was first and Hulme third and the pair finished 1-2 at the British GP. Brabham won in Holland and Germany but retired while leading in Italy. Jack Brabham was World Champion again with Hulme fourth and the team winners of the Constructors' title. In Formula 2 Brabham ran factory cars with Honda engines and Jack and Denny dominated. Brabham chassis won all but one of the races. That year Brabham was awarded an OBE. In 1967 Hulme and Brabham dominated again but this time it was Denny who won the World title with Brabham runner-up and the team took a second consecutive Constructors' title. At the end of the year Hulme went to McLaren and Brabham hired Jochen Rindt to be his team-mate in 1968. Repco built a new engine but the arrival of the Ford Cosworth outclassed the Australian engine and the team struggled. Neither driver won a race. In Formula 2 Matra became a powerful force and Brabham customers slipped down the order. With Rindt moving to Lotus in 1969 Brabham switched to Cosworth engines and hired Jacky Ickx to be his team mate. The Belgian won twice and finished second in the World Championship but it was a season dominated by Jackie Stewart's Matra-Cosworth. In Formula 2 Matra and BMW cleaned up but Brabham continued to sell a lot of cars. The 1970 season would be Brabham's last as a driver and with Ickx moving to Ferrari, Jack hired Rolf Stommelen to be his team mate. Money was short and results were poor, although Jack won the South African GP at the start of the year and nearly won at Monaco but went off on the last lap. At the end of the year Brabham retired and began making plans to return to Australia. He sold his half of the company to Tauranac. The team did not do well, with Graham Hill and Tim Schenken scoring only five points between them. In Formula 2 Carlos Reutemann did well and finished second in the European Championship. The company was making money but Tauranac was tired and at the start of 1972 he sold the company to Bernie Ecclestone and went into temporary retirement, although he would later return to Europe to start the successful Ralt company. Ecclestone began to make changes towards the end of the year - another not very successful season with driver Graham Hill and Reutemann. For the 1973 season he promoted designer Gordon Murray to be chief designer and the South African designed the BT42 and these were raced by Reutemann and Wilson Fittipaldi, while an older car was run for Andrea de Adamich and, after the Italian was injured, by John Watson and Rolf Stommelen. There were no wins and Brabham finished fourth in the World Championship. In Formula 2 the company faded as March and Surtees came to the fore and at the end of the year Ecclestone closed down the racing car production side of the business. The BT44 was raced in F1 in 1974 by Carlos Reutemann and a string of pay-drivers which included Richard Robarts, Rikki von Opel and Lella Lombardi. Eventually the car was passed on to Carlos Pace. An older car was supplied to the Hexagon team for John Watson to drive. Reutemann won three races but the team slipped to fifth in the Constructors' title. For the 1975 season Ecclestone landed sponsorship from Martini and Reutemann and Pace drove B versions of the BT44. Each won a race and they scored enough other placings to give the team second place in the Constructors' title with Reutemann third and Pace sixth in the Drivers' Championship. The team then began a relationship with Alfa Romeo and Murray built the all-new BT45 to house the flat-12 Italian engine. A secondary team was established to run old cars for Loris Kessel and other pay-drivers and this was run by RAM Racing. Neither team was successful and Reutemann switched to Ferrari at the end of the year, leaving his car to Larry Perkins. John Watson was hired to replace Reutemann and the 1977 season began on a note of optimism as Pace finished second in Argentina. A few days after the South African GP he was killed in a flying accident in Brazil. Hans Stuck was hired to replace him but he and Watson scored only three podium finishes. Martini left at the end of the year but Ecclestone signed up Parmalat as a replacement and hired World Champion Niki Lauda to be Watson's team mate. Murray produced the remarkable BT46, an angular device which featured surface cooling. This did not work and the car was revised and Watson finished third when the car was debuted in South Africa. The ground-effect Lotus was the dominant car that year and Murray came up with his own version of the idea, producing the BT46B - known as the Fan Car, which used a fan for cooling the engine and creating a partial vacuum under the car. Lauda won the Swedish GP but it was banned soon afterwards by the sport's governing body, the FIA. The car was revised again as the BT46C and Lauda won again in Italy. The team finished third in the Constructors' title. Watson moved to McLaren and Ecclestone signed up Nelson Piquet as Lauda's partner. There was a new V12 engine from Alfa Romeo but the BT49 cars were not very reliable. Lauda won the non-championship Dino Ferrari Grand Prix at Imola but in Canada announced that he was retiring immediately. Ecclestone signed up pay-driver Ricardo Zunino to replace him. The team had gone as far as it was going to go with Alfa Romeo and as the Italians were planning their own operation, Brabham switched back to Cosworth power. Murray revised the BT49 and Piquet was able to win three races in 1980. The following year he won three more races and took the World Championship after a string of good finishes. In the course of 1981 Brabham began testing BMW turbocharged engines but these were not used regularly until the end of 1982, by which time Piquet's new team mate Riccardo Patrese had won a curious victory at Monaco. Later that year Piquet won the Canadian GP with a BMW-engined car but for the rest of the season the Munich engines proved to be unreliable. That year the FIA reintroduced re-fuelling at pitstops into F1, enabling Piquet and Patrese to run on half tanks. The BT53 appeared in 1983 and Piquet was able to win three victories and take his second World Championship. Patrese won one race and the team finished third in the Constructors' title. The 1984 season was not a success. Piquet won twice but the cars were very unreliable and Teo Fabi was not able to make much of an impression in the second car. In 1985 the team had a new sponsor in Olivetti and Pirelli tires and these enabled Piquet to score an unexpected win at the French GP. The team's second driver Francois Hesnault had a huge testing accident and decided that he did not want to be a Grand Prix driver and so Marc Surer took over. There were big changes in 1986 with Piquet departing to join Williams and Patrese being joined by Elio de Angelis. Murray designed the BT55 - which is often known as the Skateboard Brabham. The BMW engine was tilted over and the car was incredibly low. Unfortunately the engine and the Weismann gearbox were unreliable. In the midseason de Angelis was killed in a testing accident at Paul Ricard. He was replaced by Derek Warwick but the cars did not do well. Ecclestone was losing interest as he became more and more involved in the sale of F1's TV rights and at the end of the year Murray departed to join McLaren. Brabham designers David North, John Baldwin and Sergio Rinland designed the BT56. This had to use the BMW laydown engines because all the old upright units had been sold to Megatron. Money was running short and Patrese and Andrea de Cesaris failed to achieve much in 1987, Patrese moving to Williams at the end of the year. With BMW also withdrawing at the end of the year, Ecclestone announced that Brabham would be taking a sabbatical. The team built a Procar for Alfa Romeo but the whole operation then fell into the hands of Swiss businessman Joachim Luhti. The BT58 was designed in a hurry by Rinland and had a Judd V8 engine and Pirelli tires for the 1989 season. Martin Brundle and Stefano Modena scored eight points between them but Luhti was arrested in the mid-season and the team foundered. Luhti agreed to let Mike Earle and Joe Chamberlain run the operation but the sale was blocked by Peter Windsor who had injunctions to stop the team being sold as he had been involved with Luhti's purchase of the team but had been excluded from the deal. Fed up with the chaos Martin Brundle quit the team. A new buyer appeared in the form of Middlebridge and Windsor agreed to sell the team to them. Herbie Blash, a longtime Brabham manager, returned and Modena was joined by Swiss Gregor Foitek although he was soon replaced by David Brabham, son of the team's founder, the now Sir Jack Brabham. The team struggled in 1990 but Blash struck a deal for Yamaha engines in 1991 and hired Brundle and Mark Blundell to drive. The pair collected three points in Rinland's BT60Y, but money was increasingly short. At the end of the season Yamaha decided to switch to Jordan and Brabham was left with Judd engines, old cars and no money. The team borrowed heavily from a company called Landhurst Leasing and in 1992 started the year with Eric van de Poele and lady racer Giovanna Amati, who was later replaced by Damon Hill. Between them, they managed to qualify in only three races and in midseason the team quit F1 after missing the Belgian and Italian GPs.
Will the new climate bill damage U.S. energy security? Our simulations show a marked decrease in U.S. energy security risk under the Kerry-Lieberman bill. Passage of the proposed legislation would slow the initial increase in the risk index predicted by the chamber, and by 2030, the risk index would be at least 8 percent lower than it would be otherwise. There is no single reason why the bill delivers this result, but there are a few critical factors. Kerry-Lieberman would encourage people to conserve energy, which would reduce U.S. exposure to volatile global oil and gas markets; it would boost production of alternative energy (including nuclear power); and it would cut U.S. emissions, making the United States less vulnerable to international environmental pressure. The chamber measures energy security risk in four dimensions: geopolitics, economics, the environment, and the reliability of energy supplies. (The overall index is a combination of these.) Kerry-Lieberman wins on every count, with geopolitical risk falling 7 percent, economic and reliability risk each dropping 5 percent, and environmental risk declining by a whopping 19 percent. To be sure, not everything comes out rosy. Four of 37 security factors get worse with the bill: energy expenditures per unit GDP, energy expenditures per household, retail electricity prices, and security of world natural gas production. That’s because most energy would become a bit more expensive under cap-and-trade, and because U.S. natural gas production would decline slightly under the bill. On the other hand, energy security would improve for 19 factors, including measures as varied as crude oil prices (down 5 percent), the diversity of U.S. power plants (way up because of more nuclear and renewable energy), and the security of U.S. natural gas imports (which would drop to zero by 2030). Indeed, our analysis likely underestimates the bill’s virtues. Take just one example: Among the chamber’s 37 energy security factors is a measure of federal spending on energy and science research and development — the greater the spending, the lower the energy security risk. The chamber assumes that such spending will never increase. The Kerry-Lieberman bill, though, devotes $4 billion per year between 2013 and 2030 to precisely that purpose. Had we included that change, we would have predicted an even lower energy security risk with the bill. Moreover, on a few occasions, we could not precisely reproduce the chamber’s methods, since some parts of the U.S. government models they rely on are confidential; in each of those cases, we made sure to underestimate the value of the bill. Finally, our modeling of the Kerry-Lieberman bill assumes no improvement in efficiency standards for cars and trucks beyond the increase currently scheduled through 2016, despite language in the bill directing the administration to continue ratcheting up those standards in the years ahead. When Sens. Kerry and Lieberman introduced their bill last month, the chamber surprised many observers by announcing that it would carefully study the legislation before pronouncing judgment. It also laid down an important marker: “It will be critical,” the group noted in a press release, “to determine how this bill will impact a broad range of industries as well as America’s energy security.” The new index is not the only way to measure energy security risk. But if the chamber believes in its own system, it should stop warning of the dangers of cap-and-trade and start touting the security benefits that Kerry-Lieberman would bring to America. Donate now to support our work.
Contains a process for easily using stdin, stdout and stderr as channels. A set of channels to be given to the process to run, containing channels for stdin, stdout and stderr. A function for running the given CHP process that wants console channels. When your program finishes, the console channels are automatically poisoned, but it's good practice to poison them yourself when you finish. Only ever run one of these processes at a time, or undefined behaviour will result. When using this process, due to the way that the console handlers are terminated, you may sometimes see a notice that a thread was killed. This is normal behaviour (unfortunately).
I am a Harry Potter fanatic so to speak because I absolutely love all things magically related as well as science fiction!! My question is this....can a Wands Core have more than one substance or does it only have one (i.e. Unicorn hair and a Thestral hair combo)? Known core materials Where the core of the elder wand has been stated? Last I've read about it was in the tales of Beedle the Bard, and no description of its core has been provided, prompting me to think the Elder Wand was the extremely unusual case of a coreless wand. Ngebendi 13:32, March 19, 2010 (UTC) Is this true? On the behind the scenes section it states that: "It has been confirmed by J.K. Rowling and the makers of the Harry Potter games that Boggart hair will be used as a wand core". This doesn't really make sense, as boggarts take the form of whatever the person before the boggart most fears, so how can a boggart have hair when its form constantly changes!? If this really is a mistake can someone who has the authority to change it, change it. Thanks18.104.22.168 22:12, December 1, 2010 (UTC) It was vandalism. Thanks for pointing it out; I've removed it. --22:44, December 1, 2010 (UTC) Known Phoenix core wand There are actually 3 known phoenix feather core wands. In Harry Potther and the Philosopher Stones, when Harry is at the Ollivander wand shop trying the wand that suit him the best, there's a wand made of phoenix feather and maple wood, 7 inches, which Ollivander described as "Quite whippy" More info about the maple phoenix core wand
Béla Tarr (b. 1955) is the ultimate auteurist’s auteur, an artist who ascended from a cult director little known outside of his native Hungary to one of the most revered figures in world cinema today, all the while stoking an enflamed cinephilia among his growing legion of passionate followers. His 1988 film Damnation offered the first full expression of the unique style defined by Tarr across the four extraordinary features he directed since then, all sharing brooding black and white cinematography, elaborately choreographed extended tracking shots, a hypnotic rhythm and enigmatic stories imbued with a sense of impending doom. In each film Tarr pushes these unmistakable qualities to a seemingly insurmountable extreme, giving way to the mesmerizing monumentality of his audacious seven-and-a-half-hour epic Sátántangó and the stark minimalism of his brilliant summary work The Turin Horse, Tarr’s latest and declared last film. Tarr launched his career with a series of blistering and intense documentary-style films that quickly moved from the urgent engagement of contemporary social problems in Family Nest to the increasingly theatrical, abstract and claustrophobic study of avarice and depravation unfolded in Almanac of Fall – a film whose daring use of unconventional composition and unnatural dialogue points directly towards Tarr’s later work. The roots of Tarr’s cinema in the documentary leanings of the so-called Budapest School nevertheless remain legible in the richly mannered late work whose strange artifice and darkly fantastical (at times almost science-fiction) dimensions depend upon an exacting fidelity to space and time. In this way Tarr uses a remarkably mobile camera to exhaustively track the complete arc of actions, from the spinning drunkards in a dingy bar in Werkmeister Harmonies to the daily labor of the farmers in The Turin Horse. Like the great films of Tarkovsky and Ophuls, Tarr’s iconic work favors an assertively mobile camera that dynamically expands cinematic space and time while defining a foreboding yet graceful omnipotence, the roving camera seeming to embody the unknown forces that control the perpetually wintery and seemingly about to be extinguished worlds inhabited by Tarr’s films. Despite their sense of dark menace, Tarr’s films are incomparably engaging and remarkably exhilarating to behold, their careful use of repetition seeming always about to crest and climax, creating a hypnotic suspension perfectly expressed in the serial soundtracks brilliantly designed by composer Mihály Vig. Fascinating for their ambiguity, Tarr’s films are legible as rich allegories for the collapse of Western civilization and the revenge of ravaged Nature. At the same time, the recurrent figures within them of men and women fighting with grim determination against an endless storm also offer poignant expressions of the paradoxical stubbornness, the strange insistence, of human desire and ambition. The Harvard Film Archive is thrilled to offer this rare showcase of Béla Tarr’s feature films, including the area premiere of The Turin Horse. – Haden Guest This program is presented with support from the Kokkalis Program on Southeastern and East-Central Europe, Harvard University. Special thanks: Scott Foundas, Isa Cucinotta, Film Society of Lincoln Center; Zsófia Bognár, Mokép-Pannónia; Katalin Vajda, Hungarian Filmunio; Ryan Krivoshey, Cinema Guild. Film descriptions by Brittany Gravely and Haden Guest Directed by Béla Tarr. With János Derzsi, Erika Bók, Mihály Kormos Hungary/France/Germany/Switzerland/USA 2011, 35mm, b/w, 146 min. Hungarian with English subtitles Boldly proclaimed by Tarr to be his last film, The Turin Horse offers a masterful and melancholy summary of his unique visionary cinema. Embracing an extraordinary minimalism of story, setting and cast, The Turin Horse is structured around one week in the back-breaking lives of an aging farmer and his daughter, alone on a barren, windswept farm with a recalcitrant horse that suddenly refuses to work. Tarr’s sweeping black and white cinematography takes on new poignancy in the twilight of the photochemical age, rendering the tired horse a weary and obsolete ancestor of the Muybridgean stallion who inspired the cinema itself. A remarkably hypnotic and immersive film, The Turin Horse pushes Tarr’s interest in texture, sound and motion to an expressive extreme, giving way to a sensorial richness rare in cinema today. Directed by Béla Tarr. With Gábor Balogh, János Balogh, Péter Breznyik Hungary 1988, 35mm, b/w, 116 min. Hungarian with English subtitles Tarr made a dramatic stylistic and critical breakthrough with this brooding and visually striking study of desolation and betrayal set in small town Hungary and tracing the cruel love triangle that emerges between a taciturn loner, a nightclub singer and her smuggler husband. The first of five films to date written with novelist László Krasznahorkai and structured around the haunting minimalist music of Mihály Vig, Damnation – with its decaying factories, dingy bars and bleak, expressionistic landscapes – introduced the dark, rainy and irretrievably melancholy realm that is arguably Tarr’s greatest creation. Directed by Béla Tarr. With András Szabó, Jolan Fodor, Imre Donko Hungary 1979, digital video, color, 122 min. Hungarian with English subtitles Assuming the freeform structure of naturalistic, independent American cinema of the same period, The Outsider imparts a mutual theme: the hard barter of individual – usually male – freedom for a “normal” life of work and family. Played by a musician of the same name, easy-going András Szabó drifts along an aimless path – performing and drinking his central pleasures. Work, marriage and fatherhood only blur the edges of his desultory descent through the landscape of modern Budapest’s bohemian fringe. He joins the listless drug addicts, alcoholic philosophers and lost artists who seek the life of Beethoven or Haydn without the work ethic, the ambition or any support. In his second feature, Tarr continues his unpretentious reflections on the symbiotic, inarticulate relationships between personal dysfunction and social malady. Directed by Béla Tarr. With Róbert Koltai, Judit Pógany, Gábor Koltai Hungary 1982, 35mm, b/w, 82 min. Hungarian with English subtitles In his first film using professional actors, Tarr perfects his documentary-style social dramas in this study of a marriage in permanent decomposition. A middle-class couple’s daily clashes range from the uncomfortable comedy of their ninth anniversary celebration – with his gifts of hairspray, a mug and a bottle of liquor – to an exquisitely restrained scene in a night club where an unspoken procession of emotions details the stubbornly-maintained chasm between them. Further realized in cleverly ambiguous editing, their vicious cycle continues indefinitely through an ending – recalling that of The Graduate – which suggests the mass production of the modern, damaged family unit. Directed by Béla Tarr. With László Horvath, Lászlóné Horvath, Gábor Kun Hungary 1977, 35mm, b/w, 100 min. Hungarian with English subtitles “We can understand; we can’t help,” the social services employee intones to a desperate mother in an unnervingly realistic episode that encapsulates the cycle of grief and torment experienced by those trapped in Hungary’s housing shortage of the 1970s. Made when he was only 22, Béla Tarr’s first feature recalls both Frederick Wiseman and John Cassavetes in its mix of raw, up-close cinema verité style and imperceptible use of non-professional actors. Irén and her husband ache to escape the chaotic confines of a tiny flat where nine people live under the reign of an abrasive, abusive patriarch. Rife with all the ills of a demoralized society, the claustrophobic clamor of this “nest” stuns with its penetrating immediacy, occasionally interrupted by incongruous pop music interludes that only lengthen the distance between desire and reality. Directed by Béla Tarr. With Mihály Vig, Putyi Horváth, László Lugossy Hungary/Germany/Switzerland 1994, 35mm, b/w, 435 min. Hungarian with English subtitles The apocalyptic impulse of Tarr’s late films finds its fullest expression in his celebrated epic ambiguously structured around the collapse of a remote collective farm and the arrival of a strange messiah figure determined to either save or sacrifice the community to an unknown cause. The bravura tracking shot which opens Sátántangó following a dramatic tide of cattle pouring out across a ramshackle hamlet, introduces nature and the animal kingdom as main protagonists and mysterious voices of the dark animism explored throughout the film’s fascinating seven and a half hours. Describing a peasant land seemingly trapped out of time, Sátántangó is a grand expression of the post-industrial primitivism at the heart of Tarr and Krasznahorkai’s vision, a dizzying neo-Brueghelism. Please note: screening includes a 15-minute intermission and 1-hour dinner break. Directed by Béla Tarr. With Hédi Temessy, Erika Bodnár, Miklós B. Székely Hungary 1983, 35mm, color, 120 min. Hungarian with English subtitles Considered a turning point from Tarr’s early social realism to his later precisely formal work, Almanac of Fall elliptically discloses the shifting relationships between five inhabitants of a house through a chain of theatrical tête-à-têtes. Their philosophical quandaries and deferred dreams coil into bitter circles of duplicitous manipulations that fuel eruptions of violence and underhanded exit strategies. Lit by expressionistic, lurid colors and followed by the mysterious gaze of a meandering, equally conspiratorial camera, the cursed spirits seem destined to reenact their base desires and vengeful patterns in a disorienting purgatory of opulent decay. Directed by Béla Tarr. With Miroslav Krobot, Tilda Swinton, Ági Szirtes France/Germany/Hungary 2007, 35mm, b/w, 139 min. Hungarian with English subtitles Woefully misunderstood and obscured in the storm cloud of controversy that surrounded its difficult production, Tarr and Krasznahorkai’s George Simenon adaptation nevertheless occupies a central piece in his complex oeuvre. Tarr’s heightened attention to surface, textures and the organic details of environment take on new, almost metaphysical, dimensions in the context of the policier in which all places become potential crime scenes, all objects tinged with the aura of evidence. In its brilliantly choreographed and breathtaking extended opening shot, Tarr immediately challenges the viewer to become a detective observing an obscure crime that unfolds in a dockyard at night, under the watchful eye of a mysterious and potently cinematic lighthouse. Sunday March 25 at 7pm Directed by Béla Tarr. With Lars Rudolph, Peter Fitz, Hanna Schygulla Hungary/Italy/Germany/France 2000, 35mm, b/w, 145 min. Hungarian with English subtitles János Valuska could be the director of the film or the director of the universe as he arranges the drunkards of the town in the formation of the solar system to explain the oncoming eclipse. “All I ask is that you step with me into the boundlessness where constancy, quietude and peace, infinite emptiness reign,” he – and apparently Béla Tarr – request. Vast, overpowering shots are strung together by a liquid, impassive camera observing the stark, isolated town in Tarr’s cosmic fairy tale. The recent arrival of a circus containing the remains of a giant whale and the unseen presence of a potentially powerful prince unnerves all except for János. The lone optimist, he is easily eclipsed by the residents’ rampant fear, paranoia and ominous prophecies. Exploited by dark political forces attempting to impose absolute order upon imperfect humanity, the troubled town summons an astonishing, metaphysical finale to Tarr’s transcendent vision.
Women receive fewer implantable cardiac devices than do men, yet when they do receive them, their survival is the same or — in some cases — better, a recent study shows. Leadless pacemakers inserted via catheter instead of surgery cut complications including bleeding, infection and wire breakage. Smartphones and power lines can interfere with pacemakers and implanted defibrillators. However, while possible, problems are unlikely, say two studies. Physicians have long espoused the wisdom of preventive medicine — and sometimes, that means having surgery before you think you need it. This is the case with mitral valve regurgitation, a condition that results when the valve leaflets fail to close tightly, letting blood flow backwards in the heart. In most cases, doctors detect early … Read More Patients with atrial fibrillation (afib), the most common type of irregular heart rhythm, are five times more likely to suffer a stroke than those without afib. “Therefore, the most important aspect of afib management is the prevention of stroke,” says Oussama Wazni, MD, Director of the Outpatient Electrophysiology Department and Co-Director of the Atrial Fibrillation … Read More A new study shows that performing catheter ablation on patients who have atrial fibrillation (an irregular heart beat) along with heart failure yields better outcomes than treating the irregular heartbeat with a medication. There are only two or three medications that can be used for atrial fibrillation. The study looked at the drug amiodarone. It … Read More If you’re over 40 and your heart flutters, there’s a good chance you’re one of the millions who suffer from atrial fibrillation (AF). This condition, which can cause the upper chambers of the heart to race for minutes, hours or days, is the product of a malfunction in the heart’s electrical system. Now, there’s good … Read More Bisphenol-A (BPA) is one chemical many Americans don’t want in their plastic bottles and food packaging. But the alternative, found in many “BPA-free” products, may not be much safer. What’s so bad about BPA? Research shows that BPA from plastic containers can leach into food and beverages (and then into human bodies). That’s bad because … Read More If you’re being treated for a heart condition, medicine cabinet staples such as aspirin and ibuprofen may not be good for you. The same goes for certain antibiotics. Studies have found that these common medications can increase risk of bleeding, clotting, arrhythmia and even death for some heart patients. Know the risks before you take: … Read More Aspirin. It’s one of the oldest drugs in medicine. As it continues to be valuable, we also keep learning new things about aspirin. Recently, a lot of evidence suggests that if you don’t have heart disease, you probably should not take aspirin. If you do have heart disease, you probably should take aspirin. What’s murkier … Read More
Real time monitoring of risk-adjusted paediatric cardiac surgery outcomes using variable life-adjusted display: implementation in three UK centres - Christina Pagel1, - Martin Utley1, - Sonya Crowe1, - Thomas Witter2, - David Anderson2, - Ray Samson3, - Andrew McLean3, - Victoria Banks4, - Victor Tsang4, - Katherine Brown4 - 1Clinical Operational Research Unit, Department of Mathematics, University College London, London, UK - 2Department of Congenital Heart Disease, Evelina Children's Hospital, St Thomas’ Hospital, London, UK - 3Department of Paediatric Cardiology, The Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Glasgow, UK - 4Cardio respiratory and Intensive Care Division, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, London, UK - Correspondence to Dr Christina Pagel, Clinical Operational Research Unit, Department of Mathematics, University College London, 4 Taviton Street, London WC1H 0BT, UK; - Received 17 January 2013 - Revised 7 March 2013 - Accepted 8 March 2013 - Published Online First 5 April 2013 Objective To implement routine in-house monitoring of risk-adjusted 30-day mortality following paediatric cardiac surgery. Design Collaborative monitoring software development and implementation in three specialist centres. Patients and methods Analyses incorporated 2 years of data routinely audited by the National Institute of Cardiac Outcomes Research (NICOR). Exclusion criteria were patients over 16 or undergoing non-cardiac or only catheter procedures. We applied the partial risk adjustment in surgery (PRAiS) risk model for death within 30 days following surgery and generated variable life-adjusted display (VLAD) charts for each centre. These were shared with each clinical team and feedback was sought. Results Participating centres were Great Ormond Street Hospital, Evelina Children's Hospital and The Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Glasgow. Data captured all procedures performed between 1 January 2010 and 31 December 2011. This incorporated 2490 30-day episodes of care, 66 of which were associated with a death within 30 days.The VLAD charts generated for each centre displayed trends in outcomes benchmarked to recent national outcomes. All centres ended the 2-year period within four deaths from what would be expected. The VLAD charts were shared in multidisciplinary meetings and clinical teams reported that they were a useful addition to existing quality assurance initiatives. Each centre is continuing to use the prototype software to monitor their in-house surgical outcomes. Conclusions Timely and routine monitoring of risk-adjusted mortality following paediatric cardiac surgery is feasible. Close liaison with hospital data managers as well as clinicians was crucial to the success of the project. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial License, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non commercial and is otherwise in compliance with the license. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ and http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/legalcode
Barrio Planta Project By Marcela Berrios, Photography: Jonathan Jackson “Look at me! Look at me,” Israel yells in English to his teacher, as the 11-year-old stands up on a surfboard at Playa Maderas. His teacher, Emily Colder, a staff member of San Juan del Sur’s Barrio la Planta School, congratulates him as he rides the wave onto shore. About 50 of the school’s almost 200 students are spending a special Sunday at the beach learning to surf as part of a fieldtrip for perfect attendance. The Barrio la Planta Project is named after the La Planta neighborhood, an overlooked community in the beach town of San Juan del Sur, where close to 3000 people reside. The families live like many in an economically underdeveloped country. Poverty, violence, malnutrition and illiteracy are some of the issues they must deal with day to day. According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 79.9% of the population in Nicaragua lives with less than $2 per day. Barrio la Planta falls into that category. Many families live in small one-room shacks that hold six or more people. Dirt floors and no water for most of the day are the norm. Many of the men work as fishermen but only get to make about one fishing trip a month, leaving them searching for jobs most of the year. With the boom of tourism in San Juan del Sur, many opportunities for work have been hidden away from the people of La Planta. The Barrio la Planta Project is helping to change that. But to truly understand the rise of this project you must understand the story of its founder, Dyani Makous, 26. Dyani has an adventurous soul that fills her with the desire to do new things. An education activist from the start, she joined the Philadelphia Student Union in her hometown of Philadelphia. For six years she stood up for higher education opportunities for low-income students. After graduating from the University of Emerson she joined Citizen Schools, a program for enhancing the academic development of middle school students, where she was their team leader for several years. In 2008, Dyani packed her bags and headed to Nicaragua. She had landed a job that any adventurous lit major would want. She was going to be writing for a travel guide for a few months while traveling through Nicaragua. When she arrived in San Juan del Sur, the warm smiles, beautiful Pacific waters and the humble, passionate culture won her over. Living on the travel guide’s salary became a waste of her time, as she found herself broke, spending more than she made just visiting the places she was supposed to be writing about. By December she was living in La Planta, were she roomed with a local family. At Martha Lisa and Juan Carlo’s home Dyani says she felt like part of the family, sharing meals, birthdays and afternoon chats about life. She was part of a community where sharing was a valued commodity amongst neighbors, even if they had little to share. She wanted to give back to the family that took her in when she had nothing. “I felt a strong desire to share something with them,” she remembers. “While I didn’t have any money to give, there was one thing I did have that could benefit them: English.” What began as a simple idea to teach her new family and neighbors English, soon grew into something much bigger, and almost one year ago, The Barrio la Planta Project became a non-profit organization that not only provides free English education but also art classes, healthy recreational activities and and all of San Juan. Through donations Dyani was also able to expand her staff in order to teach new classes and reach more kids. The school has grown from 5 to almost 200 students. Six remarkable teachers are now enhancing the education of the barrio kids, as well as giving free evening English classes to local adults. Using unconventional methods, such as learning through traveling, and giving positive reinforcements, like field trips for perfect attendance, they help the kids overcome some of the challenges that poverty has left them with, while fostering a culture of teamwork, confidence and community. The sub-director of the program, Yaoska Jimenez, 28, was born and raised in Nicaragua and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in company administration and marketing with a minor in art and photography from the University of Central America in Managua. She strongly believes art is a way of discovering your passions, which is the essence of what the project is about: helping the students discover what they are the best at by exposing them to different stimuli. “You know, it is not the same to give them what they need, better to show them how to obtain it themselves,” she says. Together Dyani and Yaoska have been working hard, spreading the word about the project, including organizing fundraisers in New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, as well as applying for grants to reward their best students. They have also created summer workshops taught by volunteers knowledgeable on specific subjects. For instance, last year they had a theatrical workshop and this year ideas such as a creative writing class in Spanish have been mentioned. The response and enthusiasm from the community, both local and international, has been inspiring. The city and the mayor of San Juan donated an old recreation building so the kids can have a proper school, as well as a center for activities. Amayo, an international company that produces wind energy in Nicaragua, has also taken an interest in the project and donated money to the restoration of the classrooms. While on a smaller, but no less important scale, artists Ruben Gadhimi and Emily Reed have helped bring the school life with their colorful murals on the classroom walls, the teams from Nicaragua Surf Report (NSR) and San Juan Surf have volunteered time to give the kids free surf lessons and local restaurants like Bamboo Beach Club have helped sponsor many events. The progress the students have made is evident in their behavior. Thanks to the Barrio La Planta Project, some of the troubles that accompany poverty do not seem like such an obstacle anymore and many in the community have been given a new sense of pride as they see what great things they are capable of. It has been rewarding for the teachers as well. Emily Colder, academics director for the school, who had previously taught in the States expressed her unconditional gratitude to the endeavor, “In the States, I would teach hundreds of students and only touch the lives of two or three, here I feel I reach every single one of my students every single day.” The motto of the school is “Help a child grow” and that is exactly what this project is about. Creating a supportive, healthy environment where children who don’t have much can grow within themselves and persevere. The project is growing to help more children, but they still need a lot of assistance to ensure that all services remain free. Help, in the form of donations or volunteering, is badly needed and all tax-deductable donations go directly to the school. Help the children of Barrio Planta beat the cycle of poverty. Help a child grow. To donate money. supplies, or to volunteer, please visit: www.barrio-planta-project.blogspot.com
Our friend Anastasia Goodstein of Ypulse.com has a new book out: Totally Wired! In the book, she bridges the generational and digital divide by letting adults know what's up with tweens and teens online--and that they don't have to view the Net as something that's going to negatively snare their kids. Girls For A Change will be hosting one of Anastasia's book signings--details: Totally Wired: Meet the Author Monday, April 16 1375 Burlingame Avenue Please come out to meet the author of this well-researched guide for parents (and teens alike)! Check out more about the book here. Also, download the discussion guide for schools, librarians and teachers! PLUS read a Q&A with Anastasia here: How did you become so interested in this topic? Blogging about teen media and marketing day in and day out means blogging about teens and technology. Since this generation has grown up “totally wired” with the Internet and cell phones, it has not only transformed the way that teens interact media and marketers, but also with each other, their parents and teachers. When MySpace hit its tipping point and the media began to pay attention to this story, I felt like a lot of coverage was helping to create a moral panic amongst parents around what teens and tweens were doing online. I wanted to be “a voice of reason” for parents and give them a balanced view of what teens are really doing – the good (of which there is lots) and the not so good. My hope is that this book can inspire conversations between parents and teens and bridge the growing gap between teens’ actual online lives and their parents’ perception of what teens are doing online. What was it like interviewing teenagers for the book? And how did you get them to be so honest and open with you? I have always loved working with teens from my days working with C.I.T.s (counselors in training) at a summer camp to mentoring inner city girls in Boston to the teens I work with locally each week in San Francisco. I also went through some tough teenage years myself, which is why I’m so drawn to this work and this population. I have a lot of empathy for teens and am a good listener. I think if you treat teens as young adults, respect them and validate that what they have to say is important, you will be surprised at how much they open up to you. I actually really enjoyed hearing about how technology has become integrated into their everyday lives and interactions. Do boys and girls have different tendencies when it comes to online socializing? Are there different things that parents should be concerned about for each? Girls tend to be more social and communication oriented both online and off. Growing up totally wired gives them more ways to keep these conversations going. They can now text, IM or comment on each other’s blogs or MySpace pages in addition to talking in the halls, at lunch, after school or at home on the phone. All of the research shows girls are more active on social networking sites than boys (although they’re there, too). Boys tend to be more interest driven – listening to music, talking about technology, playing video games or uploading videos. There is also a striking difference in how girls and boys represent themselves with avatars (virtual representations of themselves online). Girls tend to create avatars that look more like them, albeit somewhat enhanced, and spend lots of time and energy dressing them. Boys tend to create avatars more like video game characters and are interested in having do fantastical things or have cool weapons. Parents should talk to both girls and boys about being safe, not giving out too much info online, not talking to virtual strangers, never meeting someone in person unless accompanied by a parent, and treating other teens ethically and respectfully online and off. What advice do you have for parents who worry that their children are spending too much time on the internet and not enough time developing the social skills that result from in-person interactions? Parents need to set boundaries with children and teens – even if they protest at the time, I believe they actually want you to do this. Too much of anything is never good – I suggest parents help teens set boundaries around their own internet use. For example, teens may appear to be masters at multi-tasking, but the reality is that having IM windows popping up and the cell phone buzzing while trying to write a research paper or study, is distracting. Making homework time just about homework and having them log out of IM and turn the phone off, may feel painful, but they’ll actually retain more and get their work done faster – especially if they can socialize afterwards. There are tons of creative and educational activities teens can and should be doing online like writing blogs or uploading their art or creating a podcast or just researching whatever interests them. But I also think it’s important for teens to go outside, be in nature, go to the mall and hang out with their friends in person. Parents and teens need to work together to find the balance between time spent living life online and off. Parents should insist on teens turning off their phones (and leaving them outside the bedroom) after they go to bed. Believe it or not, this is when a lot of teen communication is happening. Many parents are very fearful of the internet when it comes to their children – are these fears warranted? All of the crime statistics I’ve read make it clear that children have more to fear from people they know than from strangers. That said, the internet is a virtual public space where adults and children can interact and where children can easily access objectionable content. Parents just need to be actively involved in what their kids are doing online. I interviewed parents who use filtering software for younger children and keep the computer in a central location in the house they can easily check in on to see where their children are surfing. But beyond filters, looking through their browser history or standing over them while they’re online, nothing can replace having a relationship with children and teens. Asking them to show you what sites they love and why, playing a game with them online, and most importantly teaching them values – talk about how it’s easier to say mean things to people online when you can’t see the person’s reaction, teach them what’s appropriate and inappropriate to post online. All the technology in the world can’t replace good parenting. What are some common mistakes that parents make when trying to curb their children’s internet usage? The most common mistakes would be relying too heavily on filtering technology – it’s often imperfect and blocks sites parents would be ok with, plus most internet savvy teens can get around it. Mostly, it doesn’t replace talking about sites they might stumble upon. I would also advise not overreacting if you discover your child has done something inappropriate online or posted something inappropriate. Use the opportunity as a teachable moment. It’s fine to restrict access for a time in response to an incident, but attempting to permanently cut it off will only deny teens the opportunity to experience all of the cool stuff that is online. What is the most important lesson that you hope parents will learn from reading TOTALLY WIRED? The most important lesson is that the internet is not the “big bad wolf.” It’s a virtual public space where teens are mostly doing what teens do offline – communicating, listening to music, doing homework, etc. But because it is a virtual space with the opportunity to be anonymous, and because of the viral nature of the web, it requires a different set of ground rules. In order to set these ground rules, parents need to become internet literate. They don’t have to learn HTML, but they do need to understand the basic features of a MySpace profile and how it works. There’s probably a teen in his or her bedroom with the door locked who would make a great teacher!
Dr. jane nelsen, author of Positive Discipline for Parents says, "We often act as though we have forgotten that love and joy are the whole point of living and working with children, and find ourselves acting out of fear, judgment, expectations, blame, disappointment and anger. Then we wonder why we feel so miserable." Once the initial bliss of having a newborn child begins to wane, parents discover the hard truth of child rearing--their beautiful baby did not arrive with an instruction manual, and raising him is hard work! As much as you hate to admit it, you may find yourself getting angry, frustrated with your child, then feeling a bit guilty. While there are no pat answers, Jane's collection of Positive Discipline books are an outstanding guide for parents and teachers who are willing to make a concerted effort. In them you will discover how to build a positive relationship with your child, instead of becoming stuck in an endless morass of power struggles, whining and defiance. In her wide range of books, Dr. Nelsen directly addresses the issues for parents of toddlers, teenagers, parents with "blended" families and parents in recovery from drugs and alcohol. Jane has also written books for teachers to assist them in training students, from kindergarten through high school, to become self-reliant, successful adults. There is even Positive Discipline for Childcare Providers. Jane's books can be ordered on her website--www.positivediscipline.com. which is a treasure trove of resources for parents and teachers. There are free articles, an online forum, podcasts, free downloads, e-books and MP3 audios, and information on Positive Discipline Workshops. The next time you find yourself frustrated by your rambunctious toddler or sassy teenager, give yourself a "time out" and find some inspiration with solutions on the Positive Discipline website. Jane coaxes parents, "It doesn't matter whether you're a teacher, a parent or both.... On this web site, I'm going to show you how to solve defiance, whining, and all the other problem behaviors children and teens use to drive you crazy! And yes, you can do it all without ever blaming or punishing them!"PIpi Indian tradition recognizes nine rasas as representing our most important and basic emotions: love, joy, wonder, calmness, anger, courage, compassion, fear and disgust. These emotions are universal to mankind. Five are desirable, while four are unpleasant and usually undesirable. Watch a small child carefully and you will be able to see displays of all nine of the basic emotions: 1) A baby smiles and gazes adoringly at his mother, showing the emotion of shringara, charm or love. Overcome with love for the infant, she picks him up, cuddles him and showers him with kisses. This is what the baby wanted, a physical confirmation of mother's presence and love. He knows exactly how to display his needs by way of facial expressions when he is barely three months old. 2) Laughing when tickled is a child's expression of hasya, joyous humor and laughter. Watch him play with a pet. 3) A ladybug lands on his table, walks across, flutters her wings and takes off. The child is wide-eyed with adbhuta, wonder or fascination, and has watched every move made by the ladybug. 4) A well-fed and relaxed baby that is asleep does look angelic. He is shanta, tranquility or calmness, personified. 5) Children fighting may display raudra, anger. 6) A child has learned to climb a ladder and gets a better view. He is feeling very accomplished and vira, brave, a hero of his own world. 7) In a hurry, the mother stubs her toe and cries out in pain. A child as young as two will reach out, wipe mom's tears and touch the injury in an expression of karuna, compassion, empathy or mercy. 8) A loud noise startles and wakens the baby and he cries out in fear, bhayanaka. This cry is distinct from all other cries. 9) Try spooning a cooked and mashed vegetable into an infant's mouth. As he sniffs, tastes, spits out and makes a horrible face he is expressing vibhatsa, disgust, with the new taste, very different from that of milk, his staple diet so far. Besides these, a child can display with equal ease and mastery a few more inherent emotions, such as sadness, greed, selflessness, obstinacy, curiosity, clinginess, generosity, dependency, violence, arrogance and rudeness. The older, child-centered cultures take a different approach to the display of rasas by the powerful beings called children. The parenting techniques followed in many so-called primitive cultures foster attachment, and create such a closeness and bond between mother and child that the mother develops a total acceptance and understanding of her child and his mind. When an entire extended family lives in a one-room longhouse in the rain forest of South America, the adults reach a high level of tolerance to childhood display of rasas. They do not expect the child to conform to the expectations of the adults the moment he opens his eyes to this world. Discipline and assimilation into the community will come later, by way of numerous rites of passage. In a similar fashion, the child-centered and ancient culture of India takes a very tolerant view of the childhood display of rasas. In India they let the children be children. They understand that childhood does not last forever. Soon enough the child will grow up and learn the ways of the world. There is no need to rush the process, to cause premature aging and untimely maturation. When children have strong emotions, the adults do not feel the need to resort to violent beatings or verbal abuse to suppress the expression those feelings. Such a response would only inflict rejection and social humiliation on children for their natural displays. Adults in these older cultures understand that just as a lion hunts a deer, the child, in all his innocence, is simply following his inborn instincts. He is not acting to please or displease. These adults understand that just as nature expresses herself through her elements, children express themselves through their displays of rasas. The display is not the child. It is just a state of mind and therefore is inherently changeable.PIpi When the display of negative rasas by children gets out of hand, there are certain positive things that parents can do: Take a few deep breaths. Commit to loving the child without conditions. Be firm, yet remain flexible to the child's needs of the moment. See the child for what he is--just a small child in need of support. Impose no grown-up values and expectations on the child. See the display of rasa for what it is--a little storm in a tiny tea cup, which will calm down eventually. At the peak of the display of negative rasas, do not force the child to change his ways or engage with him in a forceful manner. A calm voice and a firm but peaceful demeanor is a stronger weapon than force. At no point are violent, physical punishments, frightening time-outs, deprivation or verbal abuse called for. Such negative devices affect children for the rest of their lives. Do not, do not, do not suppress, neglect, ignore, put down, discourage, demean or humiliate the child when he is displaying any sign of a positive rasa. While excessive praise is detrimental, so are neglect and discouragement. Focus on cultivating tolerance and patience in yourself. Treat the child as you would expect him to treat you when you grow old, powerless, dependent and needy. Talk to your child about the expression of positive rasas when the time is right. In the meantime, just show him by the example of your own behavior how the expression of positive rasas brings joy to the family. Set a family time--free from technology--to create an ideal environment for cultivating your child and teaching him about the display of positive rasas. Soon enough you will be able to speak to the child about the universal laws of righteous behavior. Every being has the desire to be treated with love, courtesy, kindness, loyalty, generosity, consideration and warmth. While being taught to extend this treatment to one and all, the child will also need to be told about discretion. For example, loyalty is a good quality but the child must learn to choose his company wisely. If he befriends a drug pusher and becomes loyal to him, his loyalty to this friendship will quickly take him right down the drain and into the septic tank. This is where discretion comes in. When all is said and done, nobody can deny that these are challenging times for parents. Rootlessness, alienation, marginalization and anonymity--these are some of the prices parents pay when they move around the world in search of the perfect situation. Young parents are often cut off from their original cultures and societies. Techno-commercial values constantly push parents and children to test one another. In pursuit of their individual ambitions and needs, parents and children often live in separate worlds, albeit in the same household. And when children enter school, the child who has not been given time to be a child, who has not been accepted with tolerance, often ends up in the school nurse's office being tested for and diagnosed with illnesses such as bipolar disorder, ADHD or oppositional defiant disorder. Harried teachers, under pressure to maintain order in their classrooms and to have their students meet minimum academic standards, expect all of the children to behave like obedient, quiet, perfect little ladies and gentlemen. Children are not allowed to be children. They are not allowed to deviate from the norm or to freely express all of their rasas. Sometimes as early as the age of three or four, children are labeled with psychiatric diagnoses and begin to be treated with powerful drugs such as lithium or Depakote (mood stabilizers), Risperdal, Seroquel or Zyprexa (atypical antipsychotics), Prozac (an antidepressant) or Ritalin (a drug for ADHD). Each of these drugs comes with a frightening list of side effects. If prescribed without any physical markers, but solely on the basis of behavior--or rather the display of rasas--what good (or harm) is being done to the child, the parents and society? In the face of this, it becomes all the more imperative that parents consider other, more holistic approaches to child rearing. If, as is sometimes the case, the child's display of rasas becomes detrimental to his own or his family's well-being, there are scores of other, non-pharmaceutical options available for modifying mood and behavior. His parents might explore changing his diet, limiting his intake of sugar, preservatives and additives. Calming and healing herbs might help. Perhaps homeopathy could shift his energetic balance, or counseling for the entire family could diffuse the situation. Training a child in classical music, classical dance or martial arts could help. All of these disciplines have been known to stabilize and channel excessive or disruptive energy in more positive directions. A regular time, free of TV, when family members sit together, work together and converse with one another is also known to provide lasting, positive change for children. As children grow up and display rasas, parents need to continue to grow up as well--not just in the physical manifestations of age, the wrinkles and gray hair, but in wisdom. This is what a study of the display of rasas in childhood is all about: a call for parents to monitor the growth of their wisdom. When parents learn to take charge of their own growth in terms of tolerance and empathy and resolve to let children be children first, allowing them an age-appropriate display of rasas, they have an opportunity to become truly close to their children and know them in their totality. As children mature, good parents take the initiative for gently channeling their rasas at the appropriate time and place. When parents take this positive approach to child-rearing, the options of violent discipline and drug-based treatments become obsolete. While we continue to ponder who is raising whom, learning to flow with the rasas will bring about lasting peace and joy in many households.
Fairfax man one of nation's top collectors of African AmericaBreaking News tags: Virginia, Fairfax, Takoma Park, Mark E. Mitchell He’s a white, 67-year-old jazz saxophone player from Takoma Park. And now, from his townhouse in Fairfax County, Mark E. Mitchell has amassed a collection of African American memorabilia which places him at the forefront of experts in African American history, and which became a driving force in the creation of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The Post’s Lonnae O’Neal Parker crafted a superb profile of Mitchell which appeared in Sunday’s Post Magazine, and you should read it now. Among other things we learn, as we see and read about items such as a handwritten poem by 18th-century slave Phillis Wheatley, is that a number of Redskin players used to visit Mitchell to learn about their history, and that he pushed then-Rep. J.C. Watts (R-Okla.) to join Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) to pass the legislation creating the African American museum on the Mall. Groundbreaking took place last year and the opening is scheduled for 2015.... comments powered by Disqus - Rubio Surges Into Second In New Hampshire - Branstad Says Cruz Ran ‘Unethical’ Campaign - Christie Highlights Santorum’s Endorsement of Rubio - Portman Comes Out Against Trade Deal - Megyn Kelly Gets a Book Deal - A Big List of the Bad Things Clinton Has Done - An Unambiguous Sign Sanders Won Last Night’s Debate - Still Friends at the End - Quote of the Day - Trump Still Leads as Clinton Slips - Clinton Can’t Shake Image as Wall Street’s Friend - Maddow Doesn’t See Sanders Winning - Why Does the Media Still Shield Chelsea Clinton? - Bush Jokes His Mother May Have Abused Him - Rubio Closes the Gap in New Hampshire - Transcribed Document: Soviet Politburo Discussed CIA Billion Dollar Spy Adolf Tolkachev - Pentagon withholds Iraq War photos showing detainee abuse - These Rebels Have Amassed A Library From Syria’s Ruins - Was 1916 fire at Canadian Parliament set by German saboteur? - United Nations Calls On U.S. To Pay African Americans Reparations For Slavery - Juan Cole says America’s inclination to turn to the military started with Manifest Destiny - History Jobs Drop - Paul Krugman gives credence to Robert J. Gordon's pessimism about American economic growth - Harvard President Drew Faust Condemns Free Tuition Proposal from Outsider Overseers Ticket - Andrew Roberts says Trump is the Mussolini of America with double the vulgarity
Originally published 02/13/2013 For decades, archaeologists have debated how farming spread to Stone Age Europe, setting the stage for the rise of Western civilization. Now, new data gleaned from the teeth of prehistoric farmers and the hunter-gatherers with whom they briefly overlapped shows that agriculture was introduced to Central Europe from the Near East by colonizers who brought farming technology with them.... - Transcribed Document: Soviet Politburo Discussed CIA Billion Dollar Spy Adolf Tolkachev - Pentagon withholds Iraq War photos showing detainee abuse - These Rebels Have Amassed A Library From Syria’s Ruins - Was 1916 fire at Canadian Parliament set by German saboteur? - United Nations Calls On U.S. To Pay African Americans Reparations For Slavery - Juan Cole says America’s inclination to turn to the military started with Manifest Destiny - History Jobs Drop - Paul Krugman gives credence to Robert J. Gordon's pessimism about American economic growth - Harvard President Drew Faust Condemns Free Tuition Proposal from Outsider Overseers Ticket - Andrew Roberts says Trump is the Mussolini of America with double the vulgarity
Serving Cleveland's southeast suburbs, 232-bed South Pointe Hospital, one of eight community hospitals in the Cleveland Clinic Health System, recently completed a three-year, $25 million renovation/construction project. In all, 17,000 sq ft of space was renovated, and 98,000 sq ft was added. Work included the consolidation of two intensive-care units (ICUs) and two surgical units, the relocation of the hospital's main entrance, and the addition of library, educational, and meeting space. Completed in 2003, the project featured BACnet integration of new equipment installed by Cleveland mechanical contractor Coleman Spohn Corp.: two Trane chillers, a Systecon pump package, a Mammoth penthouse unit, and Tek-Air room-pressure monitors. Additionally, Cleveland building-automation specialist Comfort Control Group replaced pneumatic controls with a direct-digital-control package. Cooling towers were relocated and tied into chillers on an existing Automated Logic Corp. (ALC) control system, which was integrated into ALC's Web-based WebCTRL system. Facility-management personnel use desktop computers in three locations — the outpatient center, the acute-care center, and facility engineering manager Mark Kaczmarek's office — to access and control the system. The installation was phased in as the intensive-care, surgery, and support departments moved into the new space. Complicating matters was a critically timed chiller shutdown and removal as the new chillers were installed. “BACnet integration enabled hundreds of points of information to be transferred from the mechanical-equipment control package to the WebCTRL system through a communications bus, which lowered installation costs,” Brian Wagner, president of Comfort Control Group, said. (The project required nearly 6,700 hardware and software points.) “By using the hospital's intranet as the WebCTRL/BACnet communications backbone, we were able to reduce costs even more. “These points,” Wagner continued, “allow the facility-management staff to control the equipment, monitor the building, and respond to alarms if any equipment falls out of operating parameters. The result is an easy-to-use system that provides more information and faster diagnoses for a more comfortable, energy-efficient facility with higher worker productivity.” Kaczmarek added: “WebCTRL has saved us thousands of dollars in energy costs. And Comfort Control Group's performance exceeded our expectations. The need for in-service training on the system has been minimal. Our staff was already familiar with the Automated Logic system, so it was more of a case of learning new graphics and new navigation.” For case-study guidelines, call Scott Arnold, senior editor, at 216-931-9980, or write to him at email@example.com.
Evaporation from swimming pools increases with the number of occupants and the intensity of their activity. Removing evaporated moisture so humidity does not exceed safe limits is the role of ventilation/dehumidification systems. Design equipment capacity has to match the evaporation that occurs at maximum occupancy. Pools, however, seldom see maximum occupancy and indeed are unoccupied much of the time. For accurate determination of energy consumption and the design of effective control ... Register For Free or Sign In to Access "New Method for Calculating Evaporation From Occupied Swimming Pools" is FREE to access as a registered user on HPAC.com. Why register for HPAC.com? It's simple and free, and provides: - Access to exclusive articles and news coverage - The full version of all monthly digital editions dating back to 2010 - Allows you to comment on articles and discuss news with HPAC's editors - Gain valuable media content and more!
Release Of 'Echo's Bones' Resurrects Beckett's Rejected Work Playwright and author Samuel Beckett, who died 25 years ago, wrote lasting works of literature like Waiting for Godot and Endgame. But a previously unpublished short story of his — now being released for the first time — was not so appreciated. Echo's Bones, which follows a man who has just come back from the dead, was supposed to be the final story in Beckett's first-ever collection of stories. Editor Charles Prentice, who commissioned the story in 1933, described it this way: "It's a nightmare ... it gives me the jim-jams." Prentice refused to publish the story, cutting it from the collection. Now readers can see what Prentice objected to: an obscure story that a review in The Telegraph describes as "really for specialists and masochists only." Here's a sample sentence: "To proceed, after what seemed to Belacqua countless as it were eructations into the Bayswater of Elysium, brash after brash of atonement for the wet impudence of an earthly state — the idea being of course that his heart, not his soul but his heart, drained and dried in this racking guttatim, should qualify at last as a plenum of fire for bliss immovable — he appears to us again and more or less in the familiar attitude all set for his extraordinary affair with the spado in tail, if such a curious animal can be said to exist." Beckett scholar Mark Nixon, who edited the just-published version, talks to NPR's Kelly McEvers about the story behind the story and the work's relevance today. On Beckett's life at the time At this point in 1933, he's still struggling to make a name for himself as a literary author. And 1933 is generally a difficult year for Beckett, because his father passed away and he was struggling with various illnesses, so that's a little bit of the backdrop, of a background for the writing of the short story Echo's Bones. ... Echo's Bones is kind of a crossover story between early Beckett and perhaps the Beckett that we all know from the post-war period. On why the main character comes back from the dead He had already finished the collection of stories which he had submitted to his publishers ... and they felt that it was a little bit on the short side, so they asked him to write another story. The problem was that Beckett had already killed off his main character of these stories, Belacqua, in the penultimate story. So he couldn't quite work out where to add another story, which is why he put it at the end and had to bring Belacqua back from the dead. On the appeal of this work for the average reader It's an extremely amusing and funny story. ... The interest of the general reader will just be how Beckett is maneuvering his way through so many different sources and different styles of writing — you know, everything from religious imagery all the way through to very bawdy type of writing. And I think that is something that readers will find interesting and also enjoyable. KELLY MCEVERS, HOST: Here is a sentence from the previously unpublished, newly released story called "Echo's Bones" by Samuel Beckett. (Reading) To proceed, after what seemed to Belacqua countless as it were eructations into the Bayswater of Elysium, brass after brass of atonement for the wet impudence of an earthly state - OK, you see what I'm doing here. Here is how reviewers are describing the story. (Reading) For specialists and masochists only. If you've never read Beckett before, starting here will likely put you off for life, and, it's a nightmare, it gives me the gym-jams. That last assessment is from his editor, who back in 1933 had commissioned the story but once he read it, refused to publish. So why bother with this obscure book by the man who wrote great works like "Waiting For Godot"? We put that question to the editor of "Echo's Bones," Beckett scholar Mark Nixon. He joined us from his echoey office. Professor Nixon, welcome to the show. MARK NIXON: Well, Hi, thank you very much. MCEVERS: First of all, I want to talk about the story itself. It sounds like it had a pretty interesting life. It was supposed to be the final story in Beckett's first ever collection of stories. This was very early in his career as a writer. Can you describe, you know, his life at that time? NIXON: Well, this is 1933. Beckett was a completely unknown writer. He'd published a few short pieces here and there, especially in French literary magazines. But his first novel that he wrote, "Dream Of Fair To Middling Women," couldn't find a publisher. So at this point in 1933, he's still struggling to make a name for himself as a literary author. And 1933 is generally a difficult year for Beckett because his father passed away, and he was struggling with various illnesses. So that's a little bit of the backdrop, the background to the writing of the short story "Echo's Bones." MCEVERS: So the story "Echo's Bones" follows the tale of a man who has just come back from the dead. Can you tell us a little bit about the actual narrative of the story? NIXON: Well, the interesting thing is, of course, is that as you described in the introduction, you know, he thought he finished the collection of stories, which he had submitted to his publishers, Chatto and Windus. And they felt that it was a little bit on the short side, so they asked him to write another story. The problem was that Beckett had already killed off his main character of these stories, Belacqua, in the penultimate story. So he couldn't quite work out where to add another story, which is why he put it at the end and had to bring Belacqua back from the dead. And the merit of the story lies essentially in its - I don't know, in its experimental mode of writing. This is a writer who is very, very influenced by James Joyce and that very particular modernist style of writing. But Beckett was trying to find his own way at this time. So "Echo's Bones" is a kind of a crossover story between early Becketts and perhaps the Beckett that we all know from the postwar period. MCEVERS: The book is full of these obscure references. I think one reviewer called it a puree of references, I think the footnotes are longer than the story itself. I mean, is this his homage to James Joyce? NIXON: Well, that's one way of looking at it. You could say that it was perhaps his way of getting rid of all the material that he still had lying around in his notebooks, to try and free himself from the burden. He called it the burden of note snatching. So there is a sense in which perhaps he just wanted to get everything off his chest, and that's what he said to a friend after the story had been turned down. You know, he said that I've put everything I knew into this story. So you could see it as a homage to James Joyce's style of writing but also the way of purging himself of all of this material that he'd amassed over the previous years, knowing that he actually wants to go a different way, which he did of course. Instead of always adding to his work like Joyce did, he started then to subtract and take everything away and minimalize his writing. MCEVERS: Right because the later writing is much more spare... MCEVERS: ... The writing we're familiar with in things like, "Waiting for Gogot." NIXON: Absolutely yes, I think "Echo's Bones" in thematically, but also in the shifts of register, does predict and anticipate the writing of the postwar years. There are already passages in "Echo's Bones" that show that he is trying to write, as he called it, without style, whilst at the same time finding it difficult to do so. MCEVERS: So, I mean, I do have to ask, you know, it sounds like for a Beckett scholar, this is really fascinating but why - because it is an obscure work, why should a layperson read this book? When, you know... NIXON: Well, I think it's a very good question, I think is a very personal question. But I think the feedback and also the reviews that have come in on the book and this is not just scholarly reviews of the book, have already shown that, you know, a general reader will find a lot of interest. Not only is, you know, the style of writing already, you know, extremely interesting, it's an extremely amusing and funny story, especially in the middle part with the exchanges between Belacqua and a character called Lord Gall. It's - the interest of the general reader will just be how Beckett is maneuvering his way through so many different sources and different styles of writing, you know, everything from religious imagery, all the way through to very bawdy kind of writing. And I think that is something that readers will find interesting and also enjoyable. MCEVERS: That's Mark Nixon. He's editor of the newly published story by Samuel Beckett "Echo's Bones." It's out this week. Thanks so much Mark. NIXON: Thank you very much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
Asia Society Policy Institute's Kevin Rudd shared this view, and many more observations about China and its place in the world, in a conversation with veteran broadcaster Charlie Rose at Asia Society in New York on February 17, 2015. The incoming Asia Society Policy Institute president said he believes U.S. and Chinese leaders have established “the beginnings of a framework” to manage difficult elements of the U.S.-China relationship while advancing shared interests. Asia Society Executive Vice President Tom Nagorski appeared on CNBC early this morning to discuss the two-day "informal" summit between U.S. President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. Real progress toward resolving one of Asia's most pressing territorial disputes will only come by addressing a host of factors at once, writes the organizer of Asia Society's recent South China Sea conference. Asia Society takes no institutional position on policy issues and has no affiliation with any government. All views expressed in its publications and on its website are the sole responsibility of the author or authors.
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services HRSA Press Office: (301) 443-3376 Remarks to the Health Policy Institute of Ohio Thank you so much for the invitation to join you today – I am really pleased to be here in Columbus to talk about what we at HRSA consider a very high priority and focus: the health care workforce. As you heard, I run HRSA, the federal agency responsible for helping assure access to quality health care for all Americans. Some people know us for our safety net programs and the work we do on the delivery side of health care. But I understand – and the Secretary and the President do, too – that access to quality health care is tied to insurance coverage – and to an available, highly competent health care workforce. And that is why we are dedicating so much of our time and attention to ensure that the federal government is doing its part in strengthening the supply of health professionals. And it is a particular privilege to be talking about workforce here in Ohio. Your state has been a leader in health professions education and, I think, in many ways is a model for the nation. This very meeting, dedicated to the “four D’s” of the health care workforce – distribution, diversity, demographics and demand – is another example of your leadership on these issues, your recognition of the multiple dimensions and inherent complexity of the issue – and your commitment to building a strong health workforce that better meets your health care needs. Assuring a well-prepared and diverse workforce and assuring that they are well distributed and work consistent with their education and skills clearly requires collaboration among professions, between educational institutions and the service delivery system, between the public and private sector, and between state and federal governments. Today’s meeting is an important opportunity to continue to build this collaboration for Ohio. With our time here today, I’m going to cover a few topics that I think may be important to informing your workforce efforts – even as they’re important to informing ours at the federal level. First, I’d like to talk about the demand for the health care workforce and how we’re addressing that need right here in Ohio, in partnership with you. Then, three ways that HRSA seeks to influence and shape the health care workforce – by focusing on primary care, by increasing diversity, and by improving the efficiency of the workforce. Finally, I’d like to add a fifth “d” – data. Historically, workforce decisions have often been made in a data-free zone and so we’re fully engaged in activity at HRSA that’s addressing that gap. Then I’d be happy to take your questions. Well, what are we facing? First of all, the bulk of the demand for health care providers revolves around an expanding U.S. population and an aging demographic. Those two factors are very significant in terms of driving demand. Additionally, the ACA brings more people to the health care table for services; it also brings resources both to train more clinicians and deploy them more effectively and efficiently – but more about that later. So, the first question isn’t: “Do we need providers who deliver primary care services?” Sure we do. We’ll have a preliminary HRSA analysis on supply and demand in this area due out by the beginning of next year that quantifies the need. And, in fact, HRSA has been investing resources to address the need for these services even before the passage of the Affordable Care Act. But today, we are working on implementing more than 60 provisions of that law – many of them focused on areas and populations of greatest need and many of them directly related to health care workforce production and distribution. To illustrate some of the ACA’s workforce-related investments, let me take a minute and talk about some that have been or are being made right here in the Buckeye State. HRSA currently is investing $36 million through more than 100 active workforce training grants in over 25 sites in Ohio, including in colleges, universities and clinical settings. For example, we are funding primary care programs at Ohio State for the training of primary care medical residents and advanced practice nurses. We also support training programs in medicine, nursing, public health, faculty development, and geriatric care at many other schools and hospitals, and institutions, including the University of Cincinnati, Northeast Ohio Medical University, Case Western Reserve, the University of Toledo, Marietta College, and Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati, just to name a few. And we’re very excited about an Advanced Nursing Education Traineeship grant we awarded to Ohio University’s School of Nursing, where they are working with regional organizations to help returning military veterans build careers in health care. Specifically, the School is working with the regional VA Medical Center and the state workforce investment board to identify unemployed vets and provide education and career counseling to promote career pathways into nursing. Recognizing the importance of frontline health care – often provided by home health aides – I am so pleased that we’ve invested in an effort by the American Red Cross of Greater Cleveland under our Nursing Assistant and Home Health Aide program. This effort supports the development and implementation of a competency-based curriculum to train nursing assistants. HRSA was able to fund this work through a 2010 grant and then again in 2012, expanding the program to include enhanced skills in restorative care and, really importantly, in care coordination. In addition, Ohio is one of 23 states that won ACA-funded grants to plan for their future health workforce needs by developing comprehensive health workforce plans. These plans – that HRSA awarded with ACA funds – had to be developed in partnership with key stakeholders such as health care employers, labor organizations, schools of higher education, state education agencies and philanthropies. The Ohio Department of Health’s Primary Care Office was awarded this grant. From it, the Office has been able to determine baseline supply for primary care providers, identify other high-demand occupations, and target federal, state and private resources to assist in recruiting and educating skilled health care providers. And I’m told that the Ohio Department of Health also has taken the lead on health workforce development by working to establish a Statewide Primary Health Care Workforce Data System to centralize its ability to track health professionals and students moving into practice. And I’m encouraged to hear that Ohio is working to implement strategies to recruit and retain students and professionals in primary care, including youth programs to prepare them for possible careers in health fields. So I mean it when I say that Ohio is certainly to be complimented on your many programs and initiatives related to the health workforce. Well, let me shift focus a bit to describe in greater detail HRSA’s efforts to strengthen access to primary care, improve the distribution of primary care providers, and increase the diversity of the health workforce. This will help set up a discussion of how we might work together to ensure a health workforce of adequate size, diversity and distribution to assure access for all Ohioans. I’ll share with you some of what we’ve been doing to prepare for the increasing demand for primary care services – even as we near full implementation of the Affordable Care Act. To help ensure access to primary care, HRSA has markedly broadened efforts to increase the supply of primary care providers and also to support their expanded use. Using ACA resources, HRSA has invested in grants to expand overall enrollment in training programs in primary care professions, including physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and mental/behavioral health professionals. For example, through one ACA funding stream, we expect to have trained by 2015 an additional 500 primary care physicians; 600 primary care advanced practice nurses; 600 PAs; and 200 more mental/behavioral health providers. Also, through ongoing grant programs to health professions schools, we have redirected our focus to boost the training of primary care providers. These grant programs support, for example, traineeships for advanced nursing students in primary care and scholarships for disadvantaged students, with stronger priority for those in primary care professions. Two Ohio schools of nursing – at Ohio University and Wright State University – are recipients of advanced nursing traineeship grants. In addition, the ACA stood up a new Teaching Health Center Program which provides payments to support expanded medical residency training in community-based training sites. The focus is sharply on strengthening primary care training in community settings, where people frankly tend to get most of their health care. You see the emphasis shifted a bit to support this focus, rather than just hospital-based care. And research indicates that teaching health centers produce primary care physicians who are three to four times more likely to provide care for underserved populations in community settings than physicians primarily trained in hospital settings. So, we’re not just focused on preparing more providers, we’re also focused on harnessing training opportunities that reflect important dimensions. The Teaching Health Center program currently supports 137 new primary care medical residents, and in FY 2013 we plan to more than double that number. However, we also know that projections of primary care shortages do not capture very important differences in the distribution of providers across geographic areas. In Ohio, for example, you have varied distribution. You have adequate numbers of primary care providers in some communities, while other parts of the state are designated as Health Professional Shortage Areas, or HPSAs. In HPSAs – defined as communities that are medically underserved with respect to primary care, dental, and/or mental health – recruiting and retaining providers at local, community levels can be a constant challenge. In our National Health Service Corps program – which pays down the student loans of participating clinicians – we’ve made higher loan repayments available to health care professionals who agree to work in the neediest areas across the nation – both rural and urban. We wanted to make sure that those valuable human resources are distributed to the communities that need them the most. Higher payments give clinicians a compelling incentive to practice in those areas. That policy change has resulted in a 38 percent increase in NHSC professionals choosing to practice in these needy areas. Additionally, we made Critical Access Hospitals eligible to become NHSC-approved sites; now 29 NHSC clinicians are practicing in these settings. That’s up from zero before we altered the policy – and it will continue to increase. Ohio has been a major beneficiary of the ACA’s expansion of the NHSC. Today there are 178 NHSC clinicians in Ohio, compared with just 69 in 2008. In Ohio, those NHSC clinicians include 56 physicians; 43 mental and behavioral health providers; 41 nurse practitioners; 30 dental health providers; 7 physician assistants; and one certified nurse midwife. And of those 178 NHSC clinicians in Ohio, 140 are ACA-funded, as of September 30. Talk about a big ACA impact! Across the country, thanks to Obama Administration investments, the number of NHSC clinicians is at an all-time high, rising from 3,600 in 2008 to almost 10,000 in 2012. So the NHSC is a program that boosts the supply of primary care practitioners and that distributes them more equitably across America. To continue our efforts to improve distribution, HRSA also is expanding training in rural areas. Because of the much higher proportion of primary care shortage areas in rural compared to urban areas, HRSA supports grants focused on expanding rural residency training. Rural Training Tracks are family medicine residency programs in which the resident spends one year in a tertiary care center and two years in a rural practice site. HRSA supports 23 RTT residency programs and works to increase the number of RTTs nationally. We think these are important investments, in particular since studies have shown that more than 60 percent of these residents stay to practice in rural areas. So this program has proven value in retaining health care professionals in rural communities. Now let me take you from distribution to another “d” – and that’s HRSA’s efforts to promote diversity in the health care workforce. Many of our health professions programs target assistance to students who are from underrepresented minorities or have disadvantaged backgrounds – typically, economically disadvantaged. In 2011, 58 percent of graduates from HRSA’s major workforce training programs – which include physicians, physician assistants and nurses – were underrepresented minorities or from low-income disadvantaged backgrounds, or both. We continue to look for every opportunity to strengthen our programs to support minority students and students from other disadvantaged backgrounds, and we’ve made policy changes over the past couple of years to make sure our grant funds fully support the Obama Administration’s diversity efforts. This is also important because it helps with culturally competent care and also increases the likelihood of practicing in underserved communities. The distribution program I was talking about a minute ago – the NHSC – also impacts diversity. For example, diversity among NHSC clinicians is greater than that in the overall health professions workforce. In FY 2012, for example, African American physicians totaled 17 percent of NHSC physicians, far exceeding their 6.3 percent share in the national physician workforce. And for Hispanics, nationally they represent only about 5 percent of the national physician workforce, but they’re 13 percent of the Corps’ 2,150 physicians. I’ve talked so far mostly about numbers in terms of demand and supply, but we’ll never meet demand and improve care quality simply by training more health care workers and enhancing their diversity. We need them to work more effectively and – where possible – more efficiently. A recent IOM report noted that over half of the $750 billion cited as unnecessary costs spent on health care could be reduced and potentially eliminated through more effectively delivered care, including through collaboration across teams of clinicians and patients. So HRSA has several initiatives that focus on educating health professionals to work as part of a team. Many of HRSA’s grant programs now require interprofessional training and collaborative practice to promote high-functioning, team-based models of care. In addition, several of our primary care training programs also call for joint learning and experience with public health. That alignment is important to designing delivery systems that are accountable both to meeting the needs of individual patients and to meeting the needs of populations and communities. And we are providing technical assistance to promote interprofessional education and practice. We recently funded a Coordinating Center for Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice that provides an infrastructure for expertise and support to enhance interprofessional education among health professions and provider organizations across the U.S. – particularly in medically underserved areas. The coordinating center will work to strengthen high-quality, coordinated, team-based care that is informed by interprofessional education and best-practice models. Stemming from collaborative efforts between HRSA and four private foundations, an additional $8 million from foundations will support the federal investment in the Center. What do we want to see from these efforts? We want to build an environment in which each member of a health care team practices in a way that maximizes the use of his or her knowledge and skill set. This will enhance the efficient use of health care providers and also improve the seamless coordination of care. Across the nation, given limited resources, the need to assure access to care is leading efforts to make more effective use of our existing health workforce – including assistive personnel as well as licensed health professionals. These efforts are exciting, because they offer a path forward toward cost-effective, quality care and of more satisfying health careers. This is an area in which we all need to be open and to learn from each other. Finally, the ACA also is working for Ohio and with states across the nation through its creation of the National Center for Healthcare Workforce Analysis, an important source of health professions data. The National Center is housed in HRSA and it has been given the task of improving our ability to identify current and future priority health workforce needs. In addition to improving data collection and analysis, the National Center is charged with projecting national health workforce supply and demand, and disseminating data and information to help inform decision-making at all levels of government. We hope to be able to release in the near future several reports from the National Center that will be of great interest and relevance to you and your work: Another product of the National Center that some of you likely already know about is its work to build a Minimum Data Set on the health care workforce that will be comparable across time periods, professions, and states. We don’t have an MDS now, due to the variability across states and professions regarding data collection. But it’s something we badly need, since accurate, comparable data are critical to inform state and federal policymakers. So the Center is working with existing efforts, especially those of state licensure boards, to build the MDS. The MDS will give us information over a wide range of professions on what practitioners do – such as patient care, research or specialty – how many hours of week they work, where they practice, and in what type of setting. I understand that Ohio has already begun MDS efforts with your physicians, and that these efforts serve as a model for other states considering developing or adopting a minimum data set for their health professions. I just want to say that HRSA strongly supports states collecting workforce data as part of the licensure process – as permitted by Ohio statute – and that states collect data consistent with the recommendations of their national association of licensure boards. For our part, at the federal level, the MDS will give us better ability to target federal programs and resources; a clearer understanding of national supply and demand across the health workforce; greater knowledge of the relative supply across regions, states and localities; and an increased ability to provide technical assistance to states. And in states, policymakers will be able to compare their states to others regarding the supply and distribution of health care workers. And it will provide information to guide state policy development and help state educational institutions guide program investments and enrollment. Well, that wraps up my overview of HRSA’s work to strengthen the supply, distribution, competencies and diversity of health care workers capable of meeting the demands of a growing, aging and more diverse America. All of us at HRSA look forward to working with you to capitalize on opportunities and to address the challenges we face in building a healthier nation through a strong health care workforce.
Two hundred and sixty yards south of Dilwyn church, in the garden of a private house, lies this moated possible castle site. A partially wet moat encloses a nearly circular area, c.165 ft in diameter, rising slightly above the surrounding ground with the remains of a rampart. The site appears to be a ringwork with reduced remains of an encircling bank on the north side.The ditch is water filled on the east and south, but the north is infilled and only visible as a slight depression. Buried foundations on the moat indicate a large shell keep with walls 5-6ft thick. Inside the shell, and slightly off-centre, is a large, roughly rectangular block of masonry, possibly an indication that there may once have been a stone keep on the site. There is a large bailey to the east with two fishponds and an embankment giving it a boundary on the south-east with the road to the east and the north. The upper bailey is hard to identify as most of the area is now covered by modern housing. 1086: At the time of the Domesday Survey William de Écouis held Dilwyn. It was given to Godfrey Gamages, and for a long time was the centre of his estate. 13th century: In the early part of this century it was held by William de Braose. In the middle of the century the manor was split into two and shared between the fitz Warins and the Mallorys. The earthwork and buried remains of a motte castle, located on the eastern point of a ridge running east-west near the head of the Golden Valley. The ridge slopes steeply down to the north and south. The monument comprises a circular earthen motte mound, c.23m in diameter at the base. Its steep sides rise c.3m, and the mound's top is c.22m in diameter. On the top, the only feature is an earthen bank running around the rim. This bank is barely visible in the eastern quarter but survives to a height of nearly 0.6m and c.2m wide on the west. It probably supported a wooden palisade to strengthen the motte's defences. The motte is surrounded by a ditch up to 4m wide; this is mostly infilled, but is clearly visible as an almost complete circle in the grass. It can be seen as a depression, c.0.3m deep, around the north and west, while it is narrower on the south and east where the ground slopes steeply away. The site's natural defences are weaker on the north, north-east and west, where the ground slopes less steeply, and on these sides an earthen bank has been constructed outside the ditch. This bank is visible as a slight rise c.3m on the north-west and east, while on the north it is c.0.5m high, probably because it was incorporated into a later field boundary bank. On the east-north-east side the ditch is broken by a causeway; this continues as a hollow to the side of the mound. This hollow contains a small amount of masonry at the foot of the mound and also in the counterscarp bank close to the point where it joins the causeway. The causeway is most likely the original access to the motte, and the masonry may be the remnants of a stairway or the foundations of a bridge. Downton means "hill settlement", and was known as Duntune in the Domesday Survey of 1086 (Bruce Coplestone-Crow, Herefordshire Place-Names, British Archaeological Reports British Series 214, 1989, p. 75). Two kilometres east-south-east of Leintwardine and 100m west of the old church is a mound, 21m across at the base and 3m high. There is a possible ditch on the north-west and the north-east, and on one side a stream has been dammed to form part of the defences. There is a slight sinking in the top, and it appears that the mound once possessed an octagonal-shaped tower thought to have been built by the lords of Richard's Castle as a smaller version of the one at Richard's Castle itself. Traces of a bailey and other outer enclosures are apparent, but modern disturbance makes them difficult to interpret. The corner of the outer tower contains large pieces of masonry buried in tree roots. Downton Castle sits high above the River Teme in a wooded gorge. The castle was bought by Richard Knight, a Shropshire ironmaster, in 1727. The present castle was built by his grandson, Richard Payne Knight, in 1772-8. Richard Payne Knight was an archaeologist, anthropologist, writer and poet - an antiquarian through and through, the castle and its carefully landscaped grounds reflect his interests in art and nature. Richard Payne Knight wrote a book called The Landscape, in which he extols the merits of the Picturesque and attacks Capability Brown's gentle and natural layouts. The mansion is asymmetric in form and is decorated in a picturesque Gothic style with towers and battlements.
Once the clothes have been designed and manufactured, they need to be sold. But how are clothes to get from the manufacturer to the customer? The business of buying clothes from manufacturers and selling them to customers is known as retail. Retailers make initial purchases for resale three to six months before the customer is able to buy the clothes in-store. The Name “VOI” was decided when the 3 brother took a trip to Italy in 88. VOI, which stands for “YOU” in Italian, Which is the forefront ideology of the brand where “YOU” the customer in mind is the most important part of our Operations. This is where the brothers decide to move from laundering to making denims for the consumer. The world today is flat – a level playing for businesses not restricted to a limited geographical domain. Permeable borders have added new dimensions to one’s profitability. With international trade is at its peak, businesses going global and money flowing like wind, wealth is being amassed not just in one’s country of origin, but across the globe. Managing this wealth and cross border interactions requires specialized talent and expertise. One needs to think of solutions which don’t just address issues in the country of origin, but encompass a global perspective. INMARK : A fashion retail concept, was founded in 2011 with a clear VISION to give its customers International fashion at affordable prices. Mr Naseer Ahmed is also the MD and chairman of Scotts Garments which is a 20year old Apparel export house supplying to the best international brands like Zara, Jack and jones, Vero moda, Primark, Mataland etc. He believed we could leaverage the fabric sourcing and manufacturing abilities of Scotts garments into INMARK making it possible to deliver International quality products to its customers. INMARK has since then successfully grown into a chain of 13 retail Stores largely in South India and two stores in Saudi Arabia(Riyadh). The organization employs over 600 employees.
How will we do it? What are we doing? What do we stand for? Humanism is a rational philosophy informed by science, inspired by art, and motivated by compassion. Affirming the dignity of each human being, it supports liberty and opportunity consonant with social and planetary responsibility. Free of theism and other supernatural beliefs, humanism thus derives the goals of life from human need and interest rather than from theological or ideological abstractions, and asserts that humanity must take responsibility for its own destiny. What do we do? Events & FreeUps Team The team responsible for making awesome, interesting and informative social gatherings, special events and picnics to further fellowship within the community. Homeless & Hungry Team The team responsible for the homeless outreach programs and coordinating the mass distribution of food to low income families in the Gulf Coast area. Civics & Government Team The team responsible for making sure our voice is heard in the public community, and promoting a positive image in the area. Learning and Sharing Team The team responsible for projects that support learning, training, education, whether it be academically or with life coaching. Contact Buz Ryland for more information: firstname.lastname@example.org
OAKLAND, Calif. — A few weeks ago, I wrote about Heyku, a new app that takes an Instagram approach to poetry. One of our readers, Luke Agbaimoni, wrote in about his site, micropoetry.com, which features some of the existing practices of poets online. It offers a survey of micropoetry practices on Twitter and text message, along with a great list of hashtags that Twitter’s poetry community uses. “Twitter made the hashtag famous, and this worked well for poetry,” noted Agbaimoni in an interview with Hyperallergic. Micropoetry had existed in previous media, including texting, but the social media site’s popularity brought the practice to a new level. “After seeing a person appending their tweets with the hashtag #twaiku, #tanka or #haiku, people were encouraged to find out more and even attempt to compose a micropoem of their own.” When Twitter introduced line breaks, that also helped the online community create poems that were easier to parse and read. As these hashtags suggest, traditional Japanese poetic forms like haiku (17 syllables) and tanka (31 syllables) are ideally suited for Twitter’s brevity. Additionally, these poems were intended as creative dialogues, making the social aspect of Twitter relevant as well. In can be easy to read Twitter’s rapid fire nature as contra the meditative quality of poetry, but that feature couldn’t be more relevant. “There are some who go so far as to say that a haiku belongs in the moment,” wrote haiku poet and organizer Sean Kolodji in an interview with Hyperallergic. Kolodji organized a panel on Twitter and haiku at the 2013 Haiku North America conference, the largest such gathering on the continent. “Some have talked about a philosophy of writing and sharing a poem in the moment and then tearing it up/burning it. In some ways, Twitter fits well with this philosophy. Though it is permanently in the web, the poem lives only for a moment at the top of the Twitter feeds and then gets lost in Twitter archives as time goes on and new poems take its place.” One of the critical features of the online micropoetry, as Kolodji pointed out, is that the internet has made it easier to build a worldwide community. Haiku and tanka are not widely taught in schools, and sites like Heyku and informal hashtag communities help create a bridge for poets, who might be scattered around a wide variety of English-speaking communities, from North America to India to Australia. This creates the opportunity for new ways to publish voices for a wider audience. Want to get started with the micropoetry community? Be sure to check out Agbaimoni’s terrific list of hashtags, with live hashtag curation thanks to Twitter’s embed code. Some of my favorites include #smallstone, centered around the online journal of the same name, and #story140, a collection of short short stories in 140 characters. Get Hyperallergic in your Inbox! Subscribe to our email newsletter. (Daily or Weekly)
Nutting's Flycatcher (Myiarchus nuttingi) - HBW 9, p. 437 French: Tyran de Nutting German: Pazifischer Schopftyrann Spanish: Copetón de Nutting Other common names: Pale-throated Flycatcher Taxonomy: Myiarchus nuttingi Ridgway, 1882, La Palma de Nicoya, Guanacaste, western Costa Rica. In the past sometimes considered conspecific with M. cinerascens, but differs in mouth-lining colour, vocalizations, rectrix pattern, wing formula, and morphometrics; no evidence of hybridization between the two. Nominate race intergrades with flavidior in S Mexico (Oaxaca), S Nicaragua and Costa Rica (Guanacaste), and with inquietus over larger zone in Oaxaca; all three races occur in both pure and hybrid forms in Oaxaca; complex pattern of zones of contact between races has not been assessed since 1961, and study urgently needed. Three subspecies recognized. Subspecies and Distribution: - inquietus Salvin & Godman, 1889 - W & C Mexico (WC Sonora S to Chiapas, and E to S San Luis Potosí and Hidalgo). - nuttingi Ridgway, 1882 - arid interior valleys from S Mexico (Oaxaca and Chiapas) through Guatemala (R Motagua), Honduras (Choluteca and Comayagua Valleys) and W Nicaragua (arid slopes in vicinity of Matagalpa) to NW Costa Rica (tropical deciduous woodland of Guanacaste). - flavidior van Rossem, 1936 - Pacific lowlands of S Mexico (Oaxaca and Chiapas) S to NW Costa Rica. - Least Concern Enlarge map A bird in a tree, moving among branches. Locality Tehuantepec, Oaxaca State, Mexico (Southern) (ssp flavidior) Josep del Hoyo 15 April 2009 6 years ago 18 sec 4.2 A frontal view of a bird in a tree, then flying away. Locality Tehuantepec, Oaxaca State, Mexico (Southern) (ssp flavidior) Josep del Hoyo 15 April 2009 6 years ago 14 sec 3.8 A bird moving in trees. Locality Sumidero Canyon, Chiapas State, Mexico (Southern) (ssp nuttingi) Josep del Hoyo 28 March 2009 6 years ago 14 sec 3.5 perched on branch of deciduous forest tree Locality Alamos, Sonora State, Mexico (Northern) Hector Ceballos-Lascurain 10 March 2013 2 years ago 3.8 A bird perched. Locality Tehuantepec, Oaxaca State, Mexico (Southern) (ssp flavidior) Josep del Hoyo 15 April 2009 6 years ago 3.3 A perched adult. Locality Arriaga, Chiapas State, Mexico (Southern) Ken Havard 16 February 2013 2 years ago 3.2 A bird in a tree. Locality Sumidero Canyon, Chiapas State, Mexico (Southern) (ssp nuttingi) Josep del Hoyo 8 April 2009 6 years ago 3 A bird perched on a branch. Locality Cañas, Guanacaste Province, Costa Rica (ssp nuttingi) Carmelo López 17 March 2004 3 years ago 2.4 - No sound recordings available yet
Underwriting provided by: Closed Captioning Settings After you've seen the preview here, watch the full show at our online video player. Idaho's landscape beckons to the adventurous. It was that way long before Lewis & Clark wrote about it in 1805. It was that way in the 1920s and '30s and '40s, when adventurers tested themselves on the Middle Fork, the Main Salmon, and the Snake River. Writer and world traveler Ernest Hemingway moved to Idaho, charmed by the possibilities; and he wasn't the only man of action to call Idaho home. Dick Dorworth came of age in the 1960s, winning the title of world's fastest skier, writing about his adventures, and inspiring another generation. Today, adventures take many forms and can be documented and celebrated by nearly everyone with a small camera. Perhaps it's a trip to the top of an Idaho mountain, or to some obscure desert canyon. Maybe it's a walk around the entire state of Idaho in 100 days. Or perhaps it's an adventure that doesn't quite go as planned. Outdoor Idaho explores our quest for adventure.
\|Tuesday, May 7, 2013 - 8:00 AM "What Plants Talk About" This program integrates hard-core science with a light-hearted look at how plants behave, revealing a world where plants are as busy, responsive and complex as we are. From the stunning heights of the Great Basin Desert to the lush coastal rainforests of west coast Canada, scientist J.C. Cahill takes us on a journey into the "secret world of plants," revealing an astonishing landscape where plants eavesdrop on each other, talk to their allies, call in insect mercenaries and nurture their young. D
\|Wednesday, Aug 1, 2012 - 7:00 AM "Reusing Water from a Washing Machine; Maintaining Small Gasoline Engines" Host Kevin O'Connor and landscape contractor Roger Cook examine ways to save water when irrigating. Meanwhile, plumbing and heating expert Richard Trethewey heads to San Francisco to install an irrigation system that reuses water from a washing machine. Back in the loft, Richard shows Kevin some toilets that are also designed for hand washing. D \|More on LEARN/CREATE (PT)\| \|No upcoming shows in database\|
Update: Several of the spam bounces of this sort that I got were traced to the same anti-spam system, and the operator says it was not intentional, and has been corrected. So it may not be quite as bad as it seemed quite yet. I have a social list of people I invite to parties. Every time I mail to it, I feel the impact of spam and anti-spam. Always several people have given up on a mailbox. And I run into new spam filters blocking the mail. Perhaps I’m an old timer, but I run my own mail server. It’s in my house. I read my mail on that actual machine, and because of that, mail is wicked-fast for me, as fast as instant messaging for many people. (In fact, I never adopted IM the way some people did because E-mail is as fast.) They’re working to make this harder to do. Many ISPs won’t even let you send mail directly, or demand you make a special request to have the mail port open to you. I’m bothered by the first case, less so by the second, because indeed, zombie PCs send much of the spam we’re now getting. Because I send mail from the system, I also web surf from it. And while it’s not a serious privacy protection, I decided I would not have a reverse-DNS record for my system. That way people would not see “templetons.com” in their web logs whenever I surfed. It’s not that you can’t use other techniques to find out that the address is mine, but that requires deliberate thought. Reverse DNS is automatic for many web logs. Soon more and more sites would not take mail from a system without reverse DNS. Because I get my IP block from a small ISP, he does my reverse DNS, and I asked him to make one. He made one like many ISPs do, built from the IP numbers themselves. As in ip-nn-nn-nn.ispname.com. But soon I saw bounces that said, “This reverse DNS looks like a dialup user, I won’t take your mail.” So I had him change it to a different string that doesn’t trumpet my name but doesn’t look like a standard anonymous reverse DNS. But now I’m getting bounces just because the reverse DNS doesn’t match the name my mail server uses. There is no security in this, any spammer can program their mail server to use the reverse DNS name of the system they have taken over. But I guess some don’t, so another wall is thrown up, and those people won’t get invites to my parties. This one is really stupid because it’s quite common for a single machine to have many names and serve many domains. To correct an earlier note, it is possible for an IP to have more than one PTR reverse DNS record, though I don’t know how many applications deal with that. And that screws these mailers. There is no need to look at reverse DNS at all.
Meeting America's Global Education Challenge Through a series of surveys and dialogs, the Institute of International Education in 2007 launched a new policy research initiative to address the issue of capacity abroad (especially in non-traditional destinations) to host a greatly increased number of U.S. students, and to assure that U.S. campuses have the resources and structures available to prepare and send them. This IIE initiative, Meeting America's Global Education Challenge, offers educators and policymakers focused data and information on current capabilities and future capacity, as well as recommendations for action to maximize resources and pave the way for substantial study abroad growth. IIE Study Abroad White Paper Series As part of this initiative, IIE periodically releases white papers on expanding study abroad participation and capacity, which can be downloaded here. IIE also coordinates conference sessions with experts in the field on study abroad capacity issues. Study Abroad White Paper, Issue 6: Expanding Study Abroad Capacity at U.S. Colleges and Universities This May 2009 White Paper explores critical challenges and potential strategies from the perspective of U.S. institutions to address ongoing needs and solutions for expanding the field of international education for U.S. students. To stimulate and help inform the ongoing dialogue of increasing study abroad capacity, IIE has invited its colleague organizations, the Forum on Education Abroad and NAFSA: Association of International Educators, to contribute chapters to this White Paper, adding context to the survey jointly conducted by the Institute and the Forum. A final chapter from the Council for International Exchange of Scholars focuses on the impact of scholar and faculty exchange on study abroad participation. Study Abroad White Paper, Issue 5: Promoting Study Abroad in Science and Technology Fields This March 2009 IIE White Paper examines opportunities to expand student mobility in the disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), which are consistently underrepresented in study abroad. It first examines the most recent Open Doors student mobility trends in STEM disciplines, and then features an essay focusing on models for increasing study abroad in the field of engineering. Finally, it includes an essay on STEM program evaluation methods and a sample evaluation case study. Study Abroad White Paper, Issue 4: Expanding U.S. Study Abroad in the Arab World: Challenges and Opportunities This March 2009 White Paper is based on a workshop that took place in Ifrane, Morocco in March 2008. The Hollings Center for International Dialogue and IIE convened this workshop at Al Akhawayn University to examine the issues that will arise as more students seek to study in the region. Is there enough capacity in the region to accommodate more students? Are there opportunities in countries and universities that are currently under-utilized? What challenges will U.S. and Arab world educators need to address to accommodate more young Americans studying in the region? Study Abroad White Paper, Issue 3: Expanding Education Abroad at U.S. Community Colleges This September 2008 IIE White Paper shows that education abroad at community colleges has several key characteristics that distinguish it from education abroad at four-year institutions, and that these differences necessitate a distinct approach to expanding study abroad opportunities for community college students. The White Paper draws on data from IIE's Open Doors Report and on findings from a special survey on expanding study abroad at community colleges. Study Abroad White Paper, Issue 2: Exploring Host Country Capacity for Increasing U.S. Study Abroad This May 2008 IIE White Paper highlights research and findings from a fall 2007 snapshot survey of over 500 host institutions abroad, and on the efforts made by these institutions to increase their host capacity for larger numbers of U.S. students. It also analyzes the challenges these institutions face as well as their motivations and strategic plans for internationalization. The report examines how host institutions and countries perceive greatly expanding U.S. study abroad participation. Study Abroad White Paper, Issue 1: Current Trends in U.S. Study Abroad & the Impact of Strategic Diversity Initiatives This May 2007 IIE White Paper assesses current trends in study abroad in the United States, providing a benchmark for future expansion. It includes an analysis of existing strategic funding initiatives such as the Gilman, Boren and Freeman-ASIA Scholarships, showing how resource allocation can influence the diversity of participants, geographic destinations, field of study and length of study. Expanding U.S. Institutional Sending Capacity for Study Abroad: Presentation and Panel Discussion held at the Forum on Education Abroad Conference, Portland, Oregon, February 19, 2009. (PDF) For more information on IIE's Study Abroad Capacity research, please contact: email@example.com. For information on IIE study abroad resources and IIE-administered programs, visit: http://www.iienetwork.org/?p=StudyAbroad
\|How to Raise a Money Smart Kid\| Event Type: For Adults\| Age Group(s): Adults (18 +), Seniors (55 +) Start Time: 7:00 PM End Time: 8:30 PM Good money habits begin early. What’s the best way to teach a child to be a smart spender and a regular saver? Today’s kids are exposed to more gear and gadgets than ever before. Learn how to start teaching your child or grandchild about financial goal setting, self discipline, and the basics of making wise money choices. Location: Community Room
Search results for Refine your search I. P. E. U. Kaufmann & Fabry c... Phillips, J. L. add to favorites page 1 of 9 : ( John V. Farwell From text: "Among somewhat later arrivals (the men of the [eighteen-]forties) … were … J. V. Farwell …" Regarding his support of Rev. Dwight L. Moody: "It seemed as if in the beginning only one among... William D. Boyce From text: "A great nation is always the net result of the efforts of great individuals; similarly the history of successful cities is a history of its successful men. This has been notably true in the... Deacon William Bross Journalists; Government officials From text: "Among somewhat later arrivals (the men of the forties) the Hon. William Bross, ex-Lieutenant-governor and "deacon" extraordinary, easily took first rank, because--well, because he was "Deacon"... Hoyne and other strike arbitrators Caption: "State's Attorney Hoyne, representing the strikers in the street car arbitration that resulted in a victory for the men. The other arbitrators, in the order named, are: Mayor Thompson, Attorney... C. A. Coey's School of Motoring From text: "The object of our school is to prepare young men throughout the country to become expert chauffeurs, repairmen, demonstrators, salesmen, garage managers, etc. Our president, Mr. C. A. Coey,... C. D. Peacock From text: "Elijah Peacock came here in 1837 and engaged in his trade of Jeweler and Watch Repairer, a calling that had already descended through three generations, following the English custom, and which... James E. Defebaugh Periodicals; Lumber industry From text: "A man of push and enterprise, of promise and of extraordinary great success, a man who worked as very few men have ever labored for themselves, for others or for any cause, a man of action,... From text: "A resident of Chicago ere the city was incorporated and identified with its commercial interests until after the great fire, when the work of rebuilding the city was substantially completed,... Union Stock Yards Caption: "[Engraved for The Standard Guide Company.] Union Stock Yards, Looking toward the Exchange. [See ""Great Industries."]". From text: "Located on South Halsted st.; in the former town of Lake, now... Anarchists; Haymarket Square Riot, Chicago, Ill., 1886. From text: "Samuel Fielden is below the medium height, thick set and muscular. His face is swarthy and covered with a heavy beard. His brow is low, his face dull, and his appearance indicates the predominance... Registration for Municipal Lodging House From text: "Municipal Lodging House in Action. Every evening at 12 South Jefferson Street for the past eight months from 10 to 140 hungry and homeless men have stood up for registration. The police officer... Michael Donnelly addressing crowd Labor unions; Meat industry Caption: "Michael Donnelly Addressing the Cattle Butchers." From text: " The coming, four years ago, of Michael Donnelly into the stock yards, made us conscious of a renaissance, that, owing to many forces... Charles A. Comiskey Caption: "The Old Roman ready for a hike in the northern woods (1917)." From text: "Wherever the Sox go, at trainload of camp followers are certain to be on the trail. Many found it inconvenient to go... Maclay Hoyne States Attorney Caption: "Maclay Hoyne States Attorney for the County of Cook." Deacon Philo Carpenter From text: "The Deacon (he was deacon emeritus in his last years) came to Chicago in 1832, and was largely instrumental in organizing the First Presbyterian Church. Later he moved to the West Side, and... Rev. William Weston Patton From text: "Another whose work stands out conspicuously is the Rev. W. W. Patton, D.D., of the First Congregational Church. Dr. Patton was an uncompromising Abolitionist." Photograph is undated but appears... George F. Root Caption: "George F. Root (Composer of "The Battle-Cry of Freedom," and Other Inspired Songs)". Photograph is undated but appears to be from the 1880s. Frank Lumbard, Tenor Caption: "Frank Lumbard, Tenor (Chicago's Famous Singers of War-time Lyrics)". (Shown on page with his brother, Jules Lumbard.) Image is undated and appears to be an enhanced photograph. Jules G. Lumbard, Basso Caption: "Jules G. Lumbard, Basso (Chicago's Famous Singers of War-time Lyrics)." (Shown on page with his brother, Frank Lumbard.) Image is undated and appears to be an enhanced photograph. Caption: "Long John" Wentworth (Chicago's Giant Mayor)". Photograph is undated but appears to be from the 1860s. add to favorites page 1 of 9 : ( powered by CONTENTdm University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign Homepage ^ to top ^
Hosted on November 17, 2011. In collaboration with CEC's Division for Research (CEC-DR), this webinar will provide tips from successful Institute of Education Sciences (IES) grant awardees. Led by Bryan Cook, a panel of presenters including Kristen McMaster, Michael Coyne, and Lynne Vernon-Feagans will provide an overview of the goal structure of IES and share their experiences with writing grants to address various goals. Participants will be encouraged to interact with the presenters during the webinar by asking questions, which the panel will respond to as part of the presentation. - Describe the goal structure of IES. - Identify strategies for writing successful proposals. Panel moderator: Bryan Cook. Panelists: Kristen McMaster, Michael Coyne, and Lynne Vernon-Feagans. After you submit your order, access your recorded webinar files through My History in your Online Profile. If you have any questions, please contact us via email at email@example.com or call us at 1-888-232-7733, Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. ET.
Note: This message is displayed if (1) your browser is not standards-compliant or (2) you have you disabled CSS. Read our Policies for more information. The Indiana State Department of Health Food Protection Program reports all recalls potentially affecting Indiana residents to local health departments and other related agencies. Recalls are issued by manufacturers of food and drug products, but are done so on a voluntary basis with guidance by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which regulates meat and poultry products, or the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which regulates all other products. If you have a question about a recall, you may contact your local health department or the manufacturer for information. You can also access the FDA or USDA websites for further details. \|FDA News Release on Raw Oysters\|\|09/28/2011\| \|FDA News Release on spreadable dried tomato paste\|\|09/12/2011\| \|FDA News Release on imported papayas\|\|08/25/2011\| \|FDA News Release on Evital\|\|8/01/2011\| \|USDA News Release on Frozen, Fresh Ground Turkey Products\|\|8/01/2011\| \|FDA News Release on Evergreen Produce brand alfalfa sprouts or spicy sprouts\|\|06/27/2011\| \|FDA News Release on SimplyThick\|\|5/23/2011\| \|FDA News Release Oysters from area 1642 in Apalachicola Bay Florida\|\|5/10/2011\| \|FDA Advisory to Stop Using Soladek Vitamin Solution\|\|3/29/2011\| \|FDA issued an Import Alert Advisory\|\|3/28/2011\|
WASHINGTON President Barack Obama's top adviser on energy and climate change, Heather Zichal, plans to step down in the next few weeks after five years at the White House, senior administration officials said on Monday. Zichal, 37, has advised Obama since his 2008 presidential campaign and helped shape the administration's policies to curb greenhouse gas emissions blamed for contributing to global warming. Zichal was the architect of the president's plan, announced in June, to cut carbon emissions from U.S. power plants, reviving his climate agenda after a planned "cap and trade" system was thwarted by Congress during his first term. Zichal plans to move to a non-government job. She had other opportunities within the administration but decided the time was right to move on, officials said. A replacement has not been named. "Heather is one of the president's most trusted policy advisers. The president values her expertise and counsel and is grateful for her service," White House chief of staff Denis McDonough said in a statement emailed to Reuters. Dan Utech, a deputy director for energy and climate change at the White House and one-time adviser to former Energy Secretary Steven Chu, could be tapped to replace Zichal. An Iowa native, Zichal is one of only a handful of advisers from Obama's 2008 campaign still working at the White House. Other big names such as communications gurus David Axelrod and David Plouffe left for the private sector much earlier. The first-term heads of the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of the Interior and Department of Energy have also stepped down and been replaced. Zichal started thinking about leaving the White House after the 2012 election but waited to help usher through Obama's new climate initiatives in June. Obama raised the hopes of environmentalists with his reference to climate change in his January inaugural address. The EPA is now taking the lead on implementing that agenda, with emissions standards for new power plants unveiled in September and those for existing plants due in 2014. But officials said the White House would continue to be deeply involved in climate and energy policy. "We will continue to make important progress in reducing carbon pollution to help keep our air and water clean and protect our kids, helping communities prepare for a changing climate and leading international efforts to address climate change," McDonough said. LEGACY, BALANCING ACT Zichal's job mixes outreach with environmentalists, industry and lawmakers on Capitol Hill. She helped implement policy to double renewable energy generation in Obama's first term and oversaw the administration's response to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Zichal worked with car makers and fossil fuel producers to try to balance Obama's ambition to curb pollution without putting an undue burden on the economy. That led to a 2009 deal to boost fuel efficiency on new cars that was backed by the auto industry. Obama's plan to cut pollution from coal-fired power plants, meanwhile, is likely to face years of court challenges. An administration decision on whether to approve or reject TransCanada's Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada looms as the next defining moment for Obama's climate legacy. The president surprised listeners to the June speech unveiling his new climate policies by signaling he would block construction of the pipeline if it significantly exacerbated the problem of carbon pollution. One senior administration official told Reuters on Monday Obama should be judged by whether he keeps his promises reducing greenhouse gas pollution rather than on his decision on any one particular issue. The decision on Keystone, technically being handled by the State Department, could still be months away. (Reporting by Patrick Rucker and Jeff Mason; editing by Ros Krasny and Philip Barbara) Trending On Reuters A powerful earthquake struck Taiwan early on Saturday killing at least 12 people, most in a 17-storey apartment building that collapsed, with some people still known to be missing in the ruins of the complex as night fell, government officials said. Full Article \| Video - U.S. officials say North Korea may be nearing launch - Zika found in saliva, urine in Brazil; U.S. offers sex advice - As Myanmar powerbrokers talk, could Suu Kyi emerge as president? - Insight - Unpaid and angry, some Chinese workers ditch holidays to protest - Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, sixth man to walk on moon, dies at 85
The Wandering Bull Charges After Pow Wows The Wandering Bull, which sells craft materials and regalia (with an emphasis on Eastern Woodlands regalia), started with a card table set up at pow wows in 1969. Over the years, the Indian-owned family business grew as the New England pow wow circuit expanded and, founder Paul Bullock said, they all “worked out of our basement.” Along the way, Paul and his wife, Harriett, also raised four boys and two girls. “We all did crafts as kids,” said son Chris, who recently moved the business to his home in Washington, New Hampshire. The Bullocks opened their first storefront in Attleboro, Massachusetts in 1982, the year eldest son Andy graduated from the Native Studies and Anthropology program at Trent University in Ontario. Paul, who is 79, attributes his longevity in the business to hard work and determination: “I worked for a long, long time doing craft work, then selling at pow wows and at the storefront. I would say my success is due to persistence and a commitment to quality service more than anything. In addition, our way of life while raising a family ran alongside our business.” He says the pow wow circuit in New England when he started was a very different scene than what we see today. “Years ago, there were only two or three pow wows a year and those were often more like tribal meetings. Also, there was a Western style of dress; for instance, many of the people in New England wore Plains-style headdresses.” Bullock, who is of Wampanoag descent, said, “When I started out, as early as age 10, one of the only places to go for Native gatherings was with Mohawk people at the New Haven Arena in Connecticut, with the Indian Defense League of America.” Unlike in other parts of the country, there can be a pow wow or social in New England nearly every weekend all year long and the Wandering Bull shows up at most of them. During the Mt. Kearsarge Indian Museum pow wow last summer, one son was emcee, another was head dancer, and the senior Bullock tended to the open-air store under a sweeping canopy. At an indoor venue honoring veterans at a veterans hospital gymnasium this winter, Paul emceed in full Eastern Woodlands regalia, and Chris and his wife, Carolyn, tended the Wandering Bull’s tables that displayed fresh sweetgrass, books, jewelry, kits for beading and boxed, Eastern-spirit smudge gift sets. “There is a lot going on at a pow wow,” Chris said. “We vend at 30 pow wows a year.” In New England, that means enduring a range of outdoor temperatures from 40 to 104 degrees. In addition to extreme temperatures, the weather can be incredibly muggy, pouring rain or windy. The locations for pow wows in New England also vary; a pow wow can be held on former agricultural fairgrounds, on privately owned land prepared for a specific event, alongside a dog park at a state beach, by a fresh water lake under pine trees at a state park, on the playgrounds of a privately owned campground, or on an exposed hillside beside a multimillion dollar museum. During a recent week this past February, the Wandering Bull family was packing inventory from its store in New Hampshire to sell at two different pow wows the same weekend: One Bullock brother set up tables in New Hampshire and the other drove to Massachusetts for an indoor pow wow at an elementary school in Sturbridge. “Our most popular items, both online and at pow wows,” said Chris, “are craft supplies [beads, pendants, looms, tools, shell, quills, shawl fringe, bolo supplies and jewelry findings]. What we sell at one pow wow will differ from one event to another. For instance, if we know there will be a lot of tourists, we will have finished products [such as ribbon shirts] and gift items [such as smudging kits]. At others, where there are a lot of crafters, we will select Pendleton blankets or high-end finished goods. My dad emcees at close to 30 pow wows each year, including a few that we don’t vend.” The pow wows that the Wandering Bull attends are primarily in New England but occasionally in Pennsylvania and New York. Chris is happy for the business but feels that there are too many pow wows now. “I would like to see fewer and better pow wows and to see all of us concentrate on quality, as that would let us all look better.” Numerous New England pow wows do not have competitions with the strict dress and dance-style rules of the more highly attended Southwest and Western pow wows, so often dancers in the northeast may appear casual. The Bullocks try to reflect a more formal Northeast Woodlands style through both their own clothing and dance and by selling items that will support the effort of Northeast craft workers and dancers. The store also sells Eastern-style, ready-made pucker-toe, embellished moccasins, colonial-era shirts, stamped German silver, and material for breech cloths and match coats. Other Eastern-style regalia include a moose antler roach spreader and woven wampum barrettes. Chris said his father has multiple outfits for his work as MC. At one recent fund-raising pow wow, several onlookers admired Paul’s drop, appliquéd as it was with a series of exquisitely detailed, uniquely designed and expertly executed beaded roundels. “My mother makes everything for him,” Chris said. She also sews items sold by the store, such as ribbon shirts, shawl blanks and leggings that a craft worker can leave as is or add personal, decorative items. “She does a lot of designing and creating,” added her husband. “She has made Micmac coats as well as wedding clothing for other tribal people throughout the country.” The Bullocks can also locate and explain items for collectors or students. Online, they offer Canadian Wabanaki antique and vintage baskets such as an etched birch-bark mocock from the 1940s and an etched birch-bark rogan from the 1960s. Sometimes, the sons will bring a large quantity of vintage baskets to a pow wow, as they did at Brown University’s first such event, in 2008. “Today,” said Chris, “the business has six employees and is growing. “We were the first to have an online store. Now we keep up with social media networking and weekly e-mail marketing.” Even the patriarch enjoys social media networking, albeit of the more traditional variety. “The best part of the business is dealing with the people,” said Paul. “The Native American community, and what it stands for, is a comfortable way of life.” 0 The Wandering Bull, 800-430-2855, 321 Martin Road, Washington, New Hampshire, WanderingBull.com You need to be logged in in order to post comments Please use the log in option at the bottom of this page
Santa Ysabel Tribe First in California to Support Same-Sex Marriage The Santa Ysabel Tribe has announced its firm support for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) community as it strives for same-sex marriage equality and an end to governmental discrimination. Santa Ysabel is one of only four Tribes in the U.S., and the only Tribe in California, to date, to recognize same sex marriage, according to the tribe’s press release. The Santa Ysabel Tribe's announcement came as the Supreme Court was contemplating the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and Californians awaited a decision regarding the legality of Proposition 8 in their state. DOMA denied federal benefits to gay couples who are legally married in their states, including Social Security survivor benefits, immigration rights and family leave. On Wednesday the Supreme Court struck down DOMA, drafted in 1996, and it allowed gay marriage to resume in California by declining to rule on a challenge to Proposition 8, a ban on gay marriage in California passed by resident voters in 2008. Lt. Gavin Newsom told NBC News that gay marriage would resume in California within 30 days. The Tribe's announcement also comes on the heels of President Obama's speech at the Brandenburg Berlin Gate last week, as he called for fairness and equality for all, specifically mentioning the LGBT community. Santa Ysabel is also committed to promoting the principle of non-discrimination and to passing the support onto communities within their Nation. "Although the Tribe has certainly come far, they won't ever forget the sting of prejudice, or stand passively by when others suffer discrimination or denial of basic human rights," said Virgil Perez, Tribal chairman. "Native Americans have fought hard to establish and protect their own rights, and Santa Ysabel is determined to support our own, and other same sex couples in their struggle to be recognized and treated fairly as citizens of this great nation." The Santa Ysabel Tribe owns and operates the Santa Ysabel Resort & Casino, located near the mountain town of Julian, and considers it a welcoming place for all races, cultures and genders. Overlooking Lake Henshaw, the area is surrounded by wilderness and is close to ample outdoor activities and historical landmarks. "In our support of their battle for equality," said Perez, "we want the LGBT community to know they are welcome here, and that the encouragement and respect of our membership are with them." About The Santa Ysabel Tribe The Santa Ysabel Reservation is a federal reservation, headquartered in northeastern San Diego County, near the mountain towns of Santa Ysabel and Julian. The reservation was founded in 1893 and is comprised of 15,526.78 acres. The Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel consists of 922 enrolled Tribal members. The Santa Ysabel Band is governed by a democratically elected Tribal council. The Tribe owns and operates the Santa Ysabel Casino, the Orchard Restaurant and the Seven Oaks Bar and Grill. For more information, visit www.santaysabelcasino.com. You need to be logged in in order to post comments Please use the log in option at the bottom of this page
The Delhi High Court has expressed helplessness and ire at the “menace of urinating in public” but has conceded it cannot ensure that when “a man walks out of his house, his zip should be locked”. The bench of Justice Pradeep Nandrajog and Justice Deepa Sharma made this observation while disposing a petition which sought orders to remove pictures of gods and goddesses from walls of a group housing society since men walking on the road often urinated against the wall. The petition, filed by Manoj Sharma through advocates A K Mishra and M K Upadhyay, said such behaviour “hurt religious sentiments”. He had also filed photographs to show that residents of buildings, especially group housing complexes, fixed photos of gods and goddesses on the walls with messages to stop people from urinating on the wall. “…the Indian habit of relieving the pressure on the bladder by unzipping and peeing on the first wall seen by the person is sought to be curtailed, if not at all prohibited, by affixing photographs of deities on the walls. The hope would be that man, the greatest creation of the infinite artist, would not bare his privies in front of his lord and would not urinate on the road,” the court observed. Accepting the government argument that it did not have authority to order people not to put up pictures of gods and goddesses or remove pictures from public spaces, the court dismissed the petition saying “the menace of urinating in public has to be solved elsewhere”.
Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT), (www.gartner.com), the world's leading information technology research and advisory company, has made a compelling case as to why manufacturers should integrate with the demand side to streamline their supply chain. They call this process as “End to End Pull (E2E)” replenishment. This is clearly a paradigm shift compared to the constant focus on improving the planning or forecasts using better and superior algorithms. In its simplest form, Gartner is recommending the following model: As shown above the pull loops are set up between the preceding and succeeding locations. This can be expanded to as many loops (tiers) as necessary depending on the business process of the manufacturers. For example, in the most extensive situation the tiers could be Retailer, Regional Warehouses, Central warehouses, Distribution centers, manufacturing plants, component manufactures, 3PLs, suppliers etc. The primary goal of the E2E process is to schedule manufacturing production based on customer demand instead of forecasts while raw materials and components usage at the manufacturing facilities should drive replenishment to the upstream supply chain. This is also commonly known as “consumption driven replenishment” or “Electronic Kanban loops”. Underlying the above process is an ability to have real time collaboration with the customers and suppliers. On-premise solutions, like MRP and ERP, do a fabulous job for inside the four walls of business. E2E on the other hand deals largely with outside the four walls of business. What are the minimal requirements for a solution to establish the E2E process? - A collaborative transactional portal that allows a manufacturing company’s customers and suppliers to interact in real time. - Allow customers to send their demands, forecasts, plans and real time consumptions - Allow suppliers to receive their purchase orders, Kanban signals, forecasts and MRP releases electronically through a portal - Allow suppliers to print bar coded or RFID tagged labels for shipments - Allow customers and suppliers to view respective performance levels - Allow right sizing of inventory at each transaction points based on actual usage. - Provide guidance to improve inventory velocity at the finished goods and raw materials - Provide seamless interfaces to company’s ERP/MRP systems for keeping the data in sync. How does E2E process improve the business? - Allows manufacturing companies to reduce the customer lead times while improving service levels - Carry the right mix of inventory to eliminate part shortages for the production - Gain multi-tier visibility across the supply chain - Improve inventory turns across Finished Goods, Work In Process and Raw Materials - Get actionable information to manage exceptions - Facilitate continuous improvement through real time metrics and analytics - Ability to resize the inventory levels based on change in demands and usage Ultriva has deployed this type of solution across many large customers worldwide. If you are interested in understanding what is E2E process or wish to integrate your customers and suppliers, please contact me.
- Inhabitat – Green Design, Innovation, Architecture, Green Building - http://inhabitat.com - MS Lounge Sports a Forest-Like Facade of Recycled Plastic Tubes Posted By Yuka Yoneda On January 18, 2011 @ 10:00 am In Architecture,Innovation,Recycled Materials \| No Comments The MS Lounge is a pavilion in Navarra, Spain that gets its distinctive look from the airy facade of green "reeds" surrounding it. Designed by architects Vaillo + Irigaray, the funky structure serves as a pop-up event space that allows guests to feel like they are dining and dancing within a bamboo forest. The verdant tubes that encase the lounge are made of recycled plastic, and to add even more green appeal, one wall of the building is partially lined with real shrubbery. Inside, the space is airy and filled with daylight streaming from a strategically-placed skylight. The cement floor and thin, metal poles that hold up the roof give the interior a monochromatic, industrial look that is complemented by the poppy green of the reeds outside. In the center of the room, a chunk of the floor has been covered with what appears to be a carpet of crushed green wine bottles – a creative element that adds a lot of sparkle, especially since it’s encased in glass as if it’s Kryptonite. “The organizational scheme is due to similar patterns of micro-structures, more in line with geometric patterns of liquid and/or aerosols than Cartesian structures,” say the architects of their design. At night, light filters through the plastic “reeds” from within, giving the pavilion a gorgeous glow. Article printed from Inhabitat – Green Design, Innovation, Architecture, Green Building: http://inhabitat.com URL to article: http://inhabitat.com/ms-lounge-sports-a-forest-like-facade-of-recycled-plastic-tubes/ URLs in this post: daylight: http://www.inhabitat.com/daylight wine bottles: http://inhabitat.com/intoxicating-recycled-wine-bottle-candles-make-great-green-gifts/ pavilion: http://inhabitat.com/porte-cochere-is-a-spiraling-prefab-pavilion-for-the-un-campus-in-nyc/ + Vaillo + Irigaray: http://www.vailloirigaray.com/ Copyright © 2011 Inhabitat Local - New York. All rights reserved.
- Inhabitat – Green Design, Innovation, Architecture, Green Building - http://inhabitat.com - Tricycle House and Garden Offer Off-Grid Living for China’s Landless Posted By Tafline Laylin On April 5, 2014 @ 1:30 pm In Architecture,carousel showcase,Daylighting,Design,Gallery,Prefab Housing \| 2 Comments Nobody owns land in China so all living situations are essentially temporary, but the country's landless might be able to get their hands on their own off grid tiny house and garden. Deisgned by the People's Architecture Office (PAO) and the People's Industrial Design Office (PIDO) as part of the 2012 Get it Louder Exhibition, the Tricycle House is a fully functional and portable dwelling accompanied by a garden on wheels. PAO and PIDO used a CNC router to form the plastic Tricycle House, which is made out of folded polypropylene. This is the only plastic that is strong enough to handle the folds that act like an accordion to expand. Unbelievably, the little Tricycle House is equipped with a collapsable sink, stove, and bathtub, as well as a water tank and transforming furniture . Human powered, the Tricycle House is completely off-grid and because it is translucent, it gets its lighting from either the sun during the day or exterior lights at night. A couple could survive with one portable house and a Tricycle Garden – as depicted in these fabulous images. Via Arch Daily Article printed from Inhabitat – Green Design, Innovation, Architecture, Green Building: http://inhabitat.com URL to article: http://inhabitat.com/tricycle-house-and-garden-offer-off-grid-living-for-chinas-landless/ URLs in this post: CNC router: http://inhabitat.com/tag/cnc/ transforming furniture: http://inhabitat.com/tag/transforming-furniture/ completely off-grid: http://inhabitat.com/the-phoenix-house-by-robert-augustine-is-an-off-grid-eco-outpost/ + People’s Architecture Office: http://www.peoples-architecture.com Arch Daily: http://www.archdaily.com/312651/tricycle-house-and-tricycle-garden-peoples-architecture-office-pao-peoples-industrial-design-office-pido/ Copyright © 2011 Inhabitat Local - New York. All rights reserved.
Tips for Applying to Jobs in Japan In the previous video we discussed the options for getting to Japan. In this video we will discuss the steps need to apply for an English teaching job in Japan. One of the easiest ways to find a job in Japan is to upload your resume to the GaijinPot Job System. Their database consists of hundreds of jobs and by creating your profile you can apply directly to potential employers. A common question that is asked by many is; “Can I apply for an English teaching job even if I am not a native English speaker?” Generally most schools do prefer native English speakers but many are starting to realize the global nature of English and are actively searching for teachers who aren’t native English speakers. However, if you are a non native English speaker you should have a very high level of English comprehension. Having an outgoing personality is also a big help in getting an English teaching job in Japan. When you are being interviewed keep in mind that the person doing the interview is imagining himself as your student. If you can make the interview interesting and engaging, you greatly increase your chances of landing the job. Lastly, it is a good idea to have a basic understanding of the Japanese language. Being able to stammer out even a few words will show your willingness and enthusiasm to learn more about your new host country.
In an era when CEOs are under increased scrutiny and corporations must demonstrate greater financial integrity, corporate boards are playing a larger role in the strategic direction of corporate America. For that reason, February's BLACK ENTERPRISE (BE) has unveiled the BE Registry of Corporate Directors, an exclusive roster of African American board members of the 250 largest corporations. The cover story reveals how these powerful decision makers serve as "the guardians of shareholder value." In February's BLACK ENTERPRISE: Black Corporate Directors of the 250 Largest Companies. On The Cover [L-R]: Richard Parsons, Chairman, Time Warner; Vernon Jordan Jr., Senior Managing Director, Lazard Freres, L.L.C.; Franklin Thomas, Consultant, The Study Group; Joyce Roche, President & CEO, Girls Inc.; Christopher Williams, Chairman & CEO, Williams Capital Group L.P. & Williams Capital Management L.L.C.; Alexis Herman, Chairman & CEO New Ventures Inc.; John Rogers Jr., Chairman & CEO, Ariel Capital Management L.L.C. (New York, NY) February 5, 2008—In an era when CEOs are under increased scrutiny and corporations must demonstrate greater financial integrity, corporate boards are playing a larger role in the strategic direction of corporate America. For that reason, February's BLACK ENTERPRISE (BE) has unveiled the BE Registry of Corporate Directors, an exclusive roster of African American board members of the 250 largest corporations. The cover story reveals how these powerful decision makers serve as "the guardians of shareholder value." They are charged with protecting trillions in assets as well as deliberating on billion-dollar acquisitions, critical divestitures, massive layoffs, and ousting underperforming CEOs. In "Power in the Boardroom" (P. 112), BE VP/Executive Editor Derek T. Dingle explores how Black corporate directors balance their roles as both corporate watchdogs and catalysts for change within corporate America. "This is the only comprehensive list of its kind and the first such roster BE has produced since 1973," says Dingle. "We found that it was critical to show our readers what happens in the boardroom and, to some degree, whether Black directors place diversity on the agenda and push to make it a business imperative within major corporations. These issues affect our readers as employees, consumers, suppliers, and shareholders." Corporate boards typically select executive heavyweights with business, legal, and financial backgrounds. Board members are responsible for governing the corporation and adding value to the company. They handle responsibilities such as hiring the CEO, monitoring the company's financial performance, and ensuring that the company has a solid business model and strategic focus. For African Americans, however, there is often the additional pressure to promote diversity or bring civil rights issues to the boardroom—a daunting challenge some welcome and others shun. "When African Americans get on a board, we are finding that they are happy to be there but feel uncomfortable rocking the boat. They don't want to be typecast as a "civil rights director,"" says John W. Rogers Jr., chairman of Ariel Capital Management and co-founder of the Black Corporate Directors Conference. "If the few of us who have the good fortune to be in the boardroom are uncomfortable bringing up race issues, they're not going to be raised and we won't make a difference." Steven Rogers (no relation to John), professor of entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern University and a director of a SuperValu grocery store, says, "Advocating diversity is not shunning your fiduciary responsibilities. If you're not speaking out about diversity then why have you on the board?" Rogers maintains that his posture is no different from a director with specific expertise in environmental affairs, for example, who uses his or her position to make it a part of a corporate agenda. Vernon E. Jordan, who sits on the boards of American Express Co. and Xerox Corp., thinks there should be a clear distinction between the responsibilities of a director and a diversity officer: "I'm from a different school. There is nothing in the articles of incorporation of any company that
Mind is Skin Made of skin, mind thinks like skin. It is a fact of human embryonic development that CNS [Central Nervous System], the seat of human intelligence, begins as nothing more than involution (envagination) of ectoderm. The ectoderm enfolds onto itself (through a process called neural tubing) and becomes centralized, externally, as a brain, and, internally, as a mind. The first and foremost job of any skin is to separate the inner from the outer, the self from the other. The skin divides and so do we. Made of skin, we mind dualistically and dichotomously. Each mind, like a pair of scissors, divides the Oneness of the Universe in half (initially into “self’ and “other”) and then in half again and again and again. This Skinthink is inevitable. The Original Duality There are all kinds of dualities. We can divide the world into “this” or “that,” “life” or “death,” “good” or “bad,” “black” or “white,” “Republicans” and “Democrats,” “Ego” and “Eco.” You name it! But the Original Duality – the original crack in the monolith of Oneness – is the Duality of Self and Other, that of Subject and Object. There is no shedding of this Skinthink. Duality is Subjectivity, Subjectivity is Duality Objectively, all – inseparably – is one and one – inseparably – is all. Subjectively, however, we experience the world not as oneness but as a pluraility of stand-alone forms, as a multitude of separated selves. Subjectivity is fundamentally dualistic as it presupposes a point-of-view, i.e. a perceiving self, and an “object” – out there – to perceive. All Awareness is Dualistic Awareness is directional: to be aware, one must be aware of something other than one’s self. Awareness is necessarily a Subject-Object duality: to be aware of something the Subject must be first aware of one’s self as being separate from one’s Object of awareness. While this separation of all that is into Subject-Self and the Other-Objects is, of course, objectively Maya (illusion in Sanskrit), subjectively this separation is real. Self-awareness is other-awareness. Without this illusory duality of Self and Other, there can be no sense of self. Thus, Skinthink is existentially inevitable. Skinthink is the Mechanism of Differentiation The Universe is alive but confused: it dreams the nightmare of separateness. Each life-form – to be its own self – dreams its own dream of separateness. This Skinthink is both the cause and the consequence of continuous differentiation of One into Many. Skinthink is Samsara Skinthink, the Self-Other Duality, is what drives the metamorphosis of the Universe. The Universe dreams itself into endless zero-sum scenario. This is the Samsara (“wheel of suffering”) of our divided existence. Divided by our subjectivity, we compete against our own – shared – interest. This happens at every level of existence – from the Brownian motion of molecules – to the fields of political football – to ethnic cleansing and international warfare. Two Vectors of Skinthink Subject-Object/Self-Other Skinthink is ego-building. It is centripetally myopic and inevitably self-serving. There are – as I see it – two ways for ego to grow: sociopathically or narcissistically. Sociopathic growth is blatant conquest, ethically unrestrained zero-sum conduct, pure jungle. Narcissistic growth is the expansion of the radius of identification. Whereas a sociopathic ego simply takes what it needs or wants, a narcissistic ego recruits the resources with varying degree of developmental sophistication. Narcissism ranges from primitive (individualistic, relational) to political (ethnic, cultural, social) to sublimated (Bodhisattva). A bacterium that engulfs another bacterium acts sociopathically. A bacterium that forms a symbiosis with another bacterium is sublimating its self-serving into organism-building. But whether we take the sociopathic short-cut or the so-called “high road” of cooperation, there is no way around the fundamental Skinthink of our motives. As long as there is a self, the self is self-serving. This is neither good, nor bad. It just is. Culture is Skinthink Continued differentiation and acquisition of power lead to the establishment of rules of engagement and arms of enforcement. Clothing (our second skin) leads to housing (third skin) which in its turn leads to emergence of nuclear families (fourth skin) which leads to social identification and culture-formation (fifth skin) which is further codified into intra-cultural rules of conduct and morality. Cultures – dreamed by minds that are made of skin – are divisive and, thus, combative. As the size of the evolutionary opponents grows, so does the size and magnitude of their armamentarium. Whereas two nuclear families can carry out a centuries-old vendetta with nothing but kitchen knives, any two (or more) geopolitical powers need nuclear arms. In sum, inter-personal, let alone, inter-national frictions come at progressively greater costs. Skinthink is expensive. Strike that: skinthink is unaffordable. And yet it is inevitable. That’s the paradox of our existence. From “History of the Next Big Bang;” a psychoanalytic socio-cosmology in the tradition of Russian Cosmism and Vedic Cosmology
From the September 2011 issue of Spectator By Lin Larson Corey Creekmur sometimes opens his comics class with a text that might seem odd even to comics aficionados: Nancy newspaper strips. “Early Peanuts and Nancy strips seem so simple,” he says. “But read carefully, they are more subtle than they look—they demonstrate how comics work.” Creekmur, associate professor of English, and other UI scholars like Ana Merino and Rachel Williams are introducing students and colleagues alike to the study of comics. Together they’re charting comics’ storytelling language, political and cultural rhetoric, and creative potential—and they have joined forces to put the University on the comics studies map. (Learn more about the comics symposium) Learning the language The comics universe encompasses comic books, newspaper strips, and graphic novels in genres that stretch across superhero stories, Japanese manga, memoir, journalism, and beyond. Uniting them all: combinations or words and pictures that unspool in what pioneering comics creator Will Eisner dubbed “sequential art.” Creekmur met no skepticism when he proposed his first comics course in 2005. By then, Art Spiegelman’s Maus—a Holocaust story that casts cartoon mice as Jews and cats as Nazis—had won a Pulitzer Prize, and Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth had received a First Book Award from England’s Guardian newspaper. “We don’t have an established formal vocabulary like we have for film. What do you call sweat beads that indicate a character is worrying, or the little lines that show surprise?” But even today, comics scholars sometimes feel they’re exploring the last pop-culture medium to earn critical and aesthetic examination. “We don’t have an established formal vocabulary like we have for film,” says Creekmur, who holds a joint appointment in cinema and comparative literature. “What do you call sweat beads that indicate a character is worrying, or the little lines that show surprise?” For students already steeped in comics, academic study exposes the mechanics of the medium—how page layouts manipulate space and time, for example. For students who’ve never read a comic book, courses like Creekmur’s introduce new worlds (starting with good-old Nancy). The sense of discovery enhances the field’s appeal. Creekmur is editing a new Comics Culture book series from Rutgers University Press. Each title will focus on an iconic character, creator, title, or genre. “We’re collapsing a lot of overdue critical work into a very short time,” Creekmur says. “For students and scholars, it’s wide-open territory.” Probing the politics Growing up in Madrid, Spain, Ana Merino read widely from her father’s library of literature, art books, and comics. “They were part of the cultural landscape for my family,” she recalls. But only years later did she consider how they colored the cultural landscapes of entire nations. “Wherever you look, you find comics reflecting cultural and political crises in ways no other art can.” Today a scholar, poet, and an associate professor in the UI Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Merino surprised her graduate school advisers when she shared her plan to study the comics of Argentina, Cuba, and Mexico, particularly their role in political discourse. “Wherever you look, you find comics reflecting cultural and political crises in ways no other art can,” she says. In Cuba, for example, comics of the 1950s adopted Mad magazine–like aesthetics to critique the Batista dictatorship. After the revolution, artists jettisoned American influences to create a more distinctly Cuban voice. Merino published her study in Spain, where she also organized the 2001 International Comics Art Forum. European scholars—especially in France and Belgium—had acknowledged the artistic merit and linguistic intrigue of comics, but Merino’s cultural studies perspective and historical emphasis were relatively new. “I was lucky to be in the right moment—now there is much more recognition,” she says. “But we still have a lot of work to do to remember, archive, and respect comics’ past.” Cultivating the creators Unlike Merino, Rachel Williams grew up a virtual stranger to comics, save for a few Snuffy Smith books she found in a neighbor’s backyard. Her epiphany came when she saw the film adaptation of Harvey Pekar’s autobiographical series American Splendor. “The best comics are sort of like watching a movie with subtitles— the words become voice, and your brain fills the gaps between images.” “I sort of went overboard—I bought every kind of comics I could get my hands on,” she says. A visual artist and scholar fascinated by personal narratives, she saw vast opportunity in merging pictures and words. Williams, associate professor of women’s studies and art, teaches students to create their own comics. Her class draws a mix of artists, writers, and others who have stories to tell. “Some people just seem wired to picture their stories in comic form,” she says, “as if the images they imagine are too important to set aside.” Williams creates her own comics, too, recounting her work with prison inmates, the history of juvenile justice in Illinois, race riots in Detroit and North Carolina, and more [see samples of her work at redmagpie.org]. Like her students, she finds a sort of magic in the medium. “The best comics are sort of like watching a movie with subtitles—the words become voice, and your brain fills the gaps between images,” she says. “It’s a totally different experience of reading.” By organizing a campus symposium on comics, Creekmur, Merino, and Williams are uniting different scholarly perspectives, different areas of focus, and different personal histories with comics. It’s the kind of collaboration that should ring especially familiar for comics fans, says Merino. “It’s like the superhero teams where each character brings a unique ability,” she says. “Comics scholars do fantastic work together—we accomplish so much more than any of us could alone."
TV + Social Networking = Strictly Social Signs of the Internet melding with traditional TV have been emerging for quite some time with sites like Hulu and TV.com. This past fall, Fox network experimented with live tweeting during episodes of Fringe and Glee called "Tweet-peats." Today, TV viewers and the digerati can enjoy the best of the best of both worlds to an even greater extent when social networking and online TV merges on the same platform - with a new social media application called "Strictly Social." First introduced with the BBC's version of The Apprentice earlier this year, viewers could visit the TV show's online microsite and predict which candidates would 'get the ax' at the end of each episode. This year's the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing series – which can be viewed live on the BBC website – have moved the needle further to elicit greater interaction with the viewing audience. The Strictly Social website allows fans to predict judges' scores, post their text comments in a real-time chat box and answer quiz questions pertaining to the show. Viewers can also post positive or negative critiques with a simple "wow," "boo" or "gasp" and a Web site widget will aggregate the consensus and display the critique words in small-to-large font sizes dependent on the results of the vote. "As far as we're concerned now, social media is part of what people do everyday and social viewing is part of our wider strategy for entertainment," says Jo Twist, BBC multi-platform commissioner for entertainment and BBC Switch. Like others in the entertainment space, Twist is focusing on the "fan" element to drive interaction. Twist wants the Strictly Social application to add a playful element for the viewers, but not detract from watching the show. If one witnessed the Tweet-peat experiment conducted by Fox TV in the States this past September, the major complaint that surfaced from the viewing audience was the distracting Twitter status stream that scrolled at the bottom third of the TV screen. According to Twist, Strictly Social will add more social media components throughout the season, including having professional dancers deliver live comments in the site's online chat room. Twist believes that attaching applications to the show will attract a wider demographic. "The older traditional TV audience is not all on Twitter or Facebook, but they might want to do something like Strictly Social which is part of their normal sofa experience," says Twist. US Audiences can join in as well, by registering 30 minutes prior to the the show's start (approximately 12 Noon ET on Saturdays (1800 hours in the UK), and the the interaction continues for 15 minutes after Strictly Come Dancing finishes on TV. Viewers can read about this season's cast members and learn the results of previous episodes, at the show's Web site.
Burning Man bills itself as the biggest "Leave No Trace" event in the world. This means that after revelers have dismantled the geodesic domes, giant duckies, and steampunk ships that form their temporary city in Nevada, they get down on their hands and knees to scour the white alkaline sand for every last cigarette butt and sequin. But in the end, 80,000 people still leave a mark. "Sure, by October, there's no trash left on the surface of the Black Rock Desert," says Michael Light. "But boy, are there a lot of traces." Those traces are glaringly visible in Lake Lahontan/Lake Bonneville, Light's latest book in his long-term aerial survey Some Dry Space: An Inhabited West. It captures the monumental city grid etched into the Nevada desert, as well as spiraling vehicle tracks cut into Utah's salt flats. They echo other lines humans have made in recent centuries—wagon trails blazed across the North American prairie, Apollo mission rover paths plowed through moon dust. "They're quite exuberant and beautiful from the air," Light says. The landscapes sit in the Great Basin, a roughly 200,000-square-mile region between the Sierra Nevadas and the Western Rockies that writer William L. Fox calls "the major void in our continental imagination." It's a unique environment formed millions of years ago when mountain streams drained into Pleistocene pluvial lakes—the biggest being Lahontan and Bonneville. Those lakes eventually receded, leaving mud flats, sagebrush slopes, and other alien-looking terrain. Visiting in the late 1800s, the naturalist John Muir described it as "smooth lake-like ground" that "sweeps on indefinitely, growing more and more dim in the glowing sunshine." He found "no singing water, no green sod, no moist nook to rest in."
Sometimes a celebrity will Tweet something, so blatantly a-historical, something so totally outrageous and insensible, that even they realize how bad it is and will try to delete it right away. But someone will always be there to preserve the evidence. Well, MSNBC’s Ed Schultz just found out that Twitter is forever when he Tweeted that gays were “really” the ones persecuted during Hitler’s holocaust. Seriously. A guy with a German surname just said that. In public. The MSNBC host Goodwined himself before anyone else even said a word with a Tweet where he informed the world of who was the “real” target of Hitler’s Final Solution. “Gay people were really the ones being persecuted in Hitler’s Germany,” Schultz blurted out on his EdShow Twitter feed at ten to 5 PM on May 12. Schultz accompanied his Tweet with an image of a webpage that reported on the thousands of gays that the Nazis reportedly put to death or otherwise interned in their odious death camps. Schultz deleted the offensive and historically ignorant Tweet only minutes later, but Twitter user Calle_Elefante took a screen shot of the outrageous message and saved it for the ages. Now, it is wholly true that the Nazis eliminated thousands of gays during WWII. They also killed thousands of Gypsies, people with physical and mental disabilities, and many, many people from other ethnic groups. The deaths of these people must never be diminished. But those categories of people were not the principal reason for the Final Solution. Jews were always the prime targets of Hitler’s mass murders. There is simply no logical, legitimate, or moral way to make gays out to be a higher target of the Nazis. If 15,000 gays were killed, this is a crime, without doubt. But this number pales in comparison to the millions of Jews who died at Hitler’s hands. It is sad to have to put this discussion into terms of such cold, hard numbers–and one would think it would be so obvious that the effort would be unnecessary. But it is an outrage to say that gays were more of a target than Jews in WWII Germany and its occupied areas. Hitler’s whole horrid history in WWII is a crime against humanity, certainly. Each person terminated in the Nazi death camps was wronged no matter their race, color or creed. But facts are facts. The Jews were “real the ones being persecuted” during the Holocaust, Ed Schultz.
What is a Vape Pen and How to Use it Properly? A Complete Guide for Beginners A vape pen is a source of power or a device that is used for heating a cartridge/vape tank to generate vapor. It is a rechargeable battery-powered gadget whose size can easily fit in your pocket and is cylindrically shaped just like its name “pen”. These products hit the vaping market first a decade ago and revolutionized the industry by providing a bigger battery capacity, offering users the opportunity to swap their atomizers and cartridges, as well as a long time of operating. Before these devices, the then available e-cigarette devices were small units almost the same shape and size of an ordinary cigarette. Now, how is a vape pen used? Using these devices is just as easy as drawing a puff from a cigarette. Actually, these devices are a natural progression of a typical e-cigarette. Initially, vape pens were commonly used for vaping nicotine, but today they’re mainly used with CBD e-juices and cannabis oil cartridges. These devices are versatile implying that they can be used with different atomizers that enable vaping of a variety of substances. This guide/article is a guide for beginners who is new to the vape pen, and tips on how to properly use a vape pen. Parts of a Vape Pen The battery is the source of power in the device and is often the largest part. Technology advancements have enabled the manufacture of small-sized yet powerful batteries resulting in newer and more appealing vape pen designs. Two options of batteries exist for vape pens: batteries that must remain in the devices and those that can be removed and replaced with spare batteries. Know more about vape battery safety. A tank is different from a cartridge in that a tank is designed to be refilled when the e-juice is depleted whereas a cartridge is replaced with another one when the content in it is depleted. Other vape pens allow the combination of both devices. Most tanks are crafted out using stainless steel, glass, or even plastic depending upon the design or price. The majority of vapers prefer transparent tanks or cartridges to allow them to view the e-juice levels as they consume. An atomizer is considered as a generic term given to a device used to convert the liquid into vapor. The atomizer is the chamber/compartment where the concentrated cannabis oil, e-juice, dry herb, or wax is put in order to heat until a vapor is generated. This section is attached to the battery. The strength of an atomizer is measured in ohms. Understanding how this part works is simply as paramount as understanding the other sections of the vape. The vape is switched on through the engagement of the battery to trigger the atomizer resulting in the rise of temperature. A wick is located above the atomizer and it’s meant to transfer e-juice from the tank/cartridge to the coils. There are the rebuildable atomizer (RDA) types that enable the building of vapor within their coils. When considering what type of atomizer to purchase, factors like the budget, requirement to customize, time spent, and level of experience are vital. As we continue to witness the vast advancement of technology, we expect to see exemplary properties included in vape pens in the future. As we talk, some vape pens with awesome features have been implemented and are available in the market like PAX Era that is known to allow session control via Bluetooth capability. The mouthpiece is the section of the device where the vapor draws the e-juice vapor and it is attached to the atomizer. It is the only part that connects the user with the vape hence its design and composition influence the experience the user gets. A wide mouthpiece allows deep and large hits to be achieved while a narrow mouthpiece offers long and extended puffs. A charger is separate from the device and it is often a micro-USB that is utilized for charging the battery. It operates in the same way a cell-phone charger works and it is connected to the vape pen with a port and often features an indicator light (LED) to alert the user when the battery is fully charged. ALSO READ: MTL Vaping vs DTL Vaping Tips for Using a Vape Pen Properly Understand/Know How the Device Works Whether a newbie or a pro, the first thing you must do is knowing how a vape pen works. The majority of vape pens come with similar parts – battery, an atomizer (heating chamber), charger, mouthpiece, though a portion of them differ in slight ways. Typically, vape pens work by offering power to the atomizer where the e-juice is heated to generate vapor. This vapor is drawn through the mouthpiece into the mouth and later lungs of the users, ie, mouth to lung vaping. Truly, it is a simple process! Just like any other device, a vape pen comes with a variety of accessories. Whereas these devices are easily portable, they are as well very fragile, especially the type that comes with pre-filled oil cartridges. For users of wax and smoking dabs, they should avail themselves with small airtight containers for storing them. They also require a dabber – a small metallic tool that is used for scooping wax and placing it into the atomizer. Also, they require silicone wax mats to avoid ending up with small balls of oil cannabis. Understand the Cartridges and Concentrates There are different forms of cannabis concentrates. A renowned type of concentrates is the pre-filled oil cartridge. Others include wax, sugar, and budder, which are named according to their consistency and appearance. These types are easy to use and load. Most importantly, it is paramount to ensure that the vape pen you are using is meant for application with your preferred type of concentrates. Learn How to Load the Vape Pen Atomizer Appropriately Loading the atomizer by picking up the wax with your index finger as most vapers would think is a NO! Doing this actually degrades your wax. Rather, use a dab tool to collect wax from the container when placing it into the heating chamber. Alternatively, if you don’t want to be bothered loading and reloading the atomizer every time you want to enjoy your favorite e-juice, consider purchasing the replaceable pre-filled oil cartridges. Learn How the Button is Used Imagine your vape pen is loaded and ready for use. Mount its mouthpiece on your lips, press the button and draw vapor while depressing the button. Nevertheless, some vape pens do not feature press buttons, particularly those used with cannabis oils hence the vaper is required to draw the vapor. Vapers are advised to inhale small sips to prevent hard and deep inhalations that can interfere with their respiratory processes. Also, vapers have varied preferences concerning the types of models –activation buttons or auto-draw (implying they are activated by simply inhaling). Activation buttons are more advantageous as they provide a controlled vaping temperature experience. The majority of these vape pens need you to click them five times before turning them on. While the button is held down, the atomizer heats the e–juice implying you need to keep the button depressed as you are drawing that fine hit. For newbies, there is the need to learn some fundamental button settings that are considered to be less intuitive and subject to error. That’s why some vapers prefer the “auto-draw” models. Charge and Store it Properly If you’re planning to carry your vaping device for a vacation, it is vital to keep it charged and store it in airtight and smell-proof storage. Another recommendation is to ensure that you have a standby spare battery to avoid running completely out of power. As mentioned earlier, before purchasing your vape pen, always consider the types of concentrates you will want to use. Also, disposable vape pens are preferred when traveling for a vacation if you don’t want to be bothered by the hassle of recharging the battery or maintaining the device. The disposable type is small in size and more discreet compared with reusable vapes. They usually come as a single unit without a removable battery and no refillable atomizer and are auto-draw (buttonless vape pens). They are discarded upon depleting the concentrate supply. Best Heat Settings for Vaping Vaporization is used to convert botanical compounds and oils into vapors or gaseous form. Vaporization is attained by heating these substances to a certain range of temperature to prevent combustion. Temperature greatly influences the vapor quality by releasing various amounts and even forms of compounds at various temperatures. For instance, heating the atomizer at low temperatures generates thin and wispy, yet flavorful e-juice vapor. Vaporizing at high temperatures generates thick, dense, and even visible vapor. Different botanicals come with a variety of compounds hence it is important to understand how temperature affects the release of these components. Vape pens enable vapers to set their own/preferred temperature range or select from various available presets. The latter gives vapers decent temperature ranges allowing them to target a couple of terpenes simultaneously. On the other hand, the temperature-controlled vape pens provide vapers with the capability to target particular compounds by setting their preferred temperature ranges. Over the years, there has been a vast evolution of vape pens in terms of features and design. Modern vapes offer better flavors and functionality compared with vapes of the early days. Others have additional features such as large battery capacities and numerous coil options. The challenge is learning to use these devices properly. Once that is done, the other problem is how to choose the right vape pen from a pool of several varieties. This will depend on your budget, experience, or requirement for customization. Also, you should know what your favorite e-juice is before purchasing a vape as they are specific when it comes to what sort of e-juice requires vaporization.
Wudang Mountains, in China, have been known for hundreds of years as a sacred place of spiritual cultivation and deep development of Internal Martial Arts or "Neijiaquan" (家拳拳). They stand out especially for being nucleus of multitude Taoist temples and for their historical tradition of relevant Taoist masters and Traditional Chinese Medicine. Taoism is a philosophical system developed from writings of Laozi, compiled in Tao Te King book or "Daodejing". It is a philosophical tradition that has more than two millenia exerting its influence in far east's people. Fundamental objective of Taoism is to search for immortality or rather longevity and self-improvement as well as being itself in communion with its surroundings. Taoist ideals are born of integration into natural environment, the idea of becoming entangled with nature in such a way that gets to experience vital rhythms that resonate in it, tuning own human body through a series of exercises according to those rhythms, thus gaining mental serenity and physical energy. Taoists have always lived discovering methods that could prolong their life. Part of the result of this patient search has been great development of refinement practices of vital energy "Qi" (氣), and increase in health of its practitioners. This path includes purification of oneself through control refinement through contemplation, meditation, breathing control and other forms of self-discipline such as well-known exercises within inner arts as: Daoyin (導引), Qigong (氣功), Neidan (内丹) and Neijiaquan (内家拳). For all this, Taoist practitioners develops such activities through concept of "No action" or Wu Wei (无为), that's in Taoist philosophy a concept of action without intentional action, where it should not be confused as not to act in the sense of doing nothing. Wu Wei describes an important aspect in which most appropriate way to deal with a situation is to act without forcing, is therefore a natural way of doing things without forcing them through devices that detract from their harmony and principles. It is cessation of action induced by desires and attachment, a mode of action that leaves no trace in nature, invisible, harmonious and not revealing itself. A special way to flow without influencing, live without interrupting and favor without impeding. Neijiaquan or "Inner Martial Arts" focus on spirit awareness, mind, vital energy and use of relaxation instead of taking advantage of muscle tension. Although practice of most of internal styles is carried out slowly, sometimes appearing explosive movements or "Fajin" (發勁). In a real combat situation, internal styles are carried out with lightning speed, yet goal is learn to involve the whole body in each movement, keeping breathing deep and controlled, adopting relaxation through a distended muscular tone and coordinating body movements and breathing with precision. The practice of internal arts necessarily implies use of energy "Qi" (氣) and for that is necessary proper use of intention "Yi" (意), is frequent in Taoist arts the mention of "Yi Yi Yin Qi "(意引氣氣): Intention moves Qi. When one moves with intention, breath and movement, it does with whole body at same time. In Internal Martial Arts difference between a technique performed as a consequence of an exclusive strength muscle "Li" (力) and a technique accompanied by a correct approach of our Yi is usually very large, both in effectiveness and power as in comfort of the one who executes it. Applying aforementioned concept of "Wu Wei", it is understood that Taoist practice goal in struggle is to be able to fight in a state of quiet attention "Moting" (听听) where each movement is effortlessly performed apparent, avoiding linear confrontations with the opponent, absorbing power of their attacks and responding with circular movements and softness as well as forceful, loaded with qi. One of the passages in "The Art of War" by Sun Zi reads: "Be extremely subtle, to the point of having no form. Be completely mysterious, to the point of being silent. In this way you can direct the destiny of your adversaries " It is important to emphasize that in Taoist practice, martial arts also teach much more about how to protect physical body or how to safeguard physical integrity of practitioners, it show us how to deal with our weaknesses and push our physical and emotional limits, forging our endurance, perseverance and patience as manifestations of strong will. Leaving aside anger, impatience, selfish desire and hatred. Through these practices and the experience gained through them we begin to have a greater understanding and awareness of our health and well-being that extends far beyond struggle, penetrates every aspect of our lives including our relationships with the world, developing greater balance and greater awareness of ourselves. © Alex Mieza ‘Zī Xiǎo’ (资晓) 16th Generation Wudang Sanfeng Pai ☯ Share, spread the word Article published in 'ElBudoka', Martial Arts pioneer magazine in spanish language:
Qigong (regularly known as Chi Kung) can be understood in a standard way as a set of techniques usually related to Traditional Chinese Medicine, which comprise mind, breathing and physical exercise. It is generally practiced with goals aimed at maintaining health, but due to their potential in some cases can be prescribed with specific therapeutic goals, this is cause there are numerous medical studies that endorse some benefits attributed to Qigong practice. It is an alternative practice for development and maintenance of health in general, attain longevity, and as a prevention and great support for diseases, practiced for thousands of years in ancient China. As a form of gentle exercise, Qigong consists in movements often repeated in series, based on strengthening and stretching the body, increasing movement of fluids (blood, synovial, and lymph), improving balance and creating awareness of how body moves through space. Qigong exercises are usually gentle, although intense work is done inside body, these exercises are combined with very different techniques of breathing and with specific work of meditation. Qigong can be translated as "work of energy" or art of circulating energy in the most appropriate way for the purpose which is practiced. This practice is characterized by effects on both physical level and mental and emotional, constant practice of this alternative regulates central nervous system positively affecting the rest of organs and systems, facilitating their proper function, strengthening immune system and helping cells to regenerate vigorously. It directly influences on blood circulation and cardiovascular system, positively affecting organs as important as heart. Within this system, there are several exercises for control and balance of blood pressure. Therefore, the practice is also recommended for people with hypertension, hypotension, circulation problems, heart problems, arteriosclerosis, etc. It is an excellent alternative that helps to develop important qualities in body such as elasticity, control and body harmony, creating from the first session a pleasant feeling of well-being and vitality. It also helps balance the emotional energy, it is a very beneficial tool and with very good results to treat cases of depression, fears, anger or despair, anxiety, stress, etc. With Qigong practice, emotions harmonize and regulate their creative flow, which helps eliminate harmful internal tension that stagnates in joints, muscles, organs and systems, creating energy blocks that in the long run and persisting become diseases and ailments all types. In short, it is as wide is its range of possibilities as its accessibility, since the practice of Qigong can be exercised by any person of any age and condition, and can obviously be combined with other health alternatives.
As the spring markets open up, we'll start seeing some old friends. The artichoke is coming back for a few weeks, and it's a time to enjoy this surprisingly versatile vegetable. And as Chef Jerry Pellegrino jokes, a lot of people just sort of look at an artichoke and say, "yeah, what do I do with it?" Well, quite a lot actually. First the anatomy. An artichoke is actually a thistle flower that hasn't blossomed. It has multiple layers of leaves with significant flesh at their base, clustered sightly around the thistle down "choke" which is inedible. The principle producers are Spain, France, Italy, California and Mexico. Get a recipe for stuffed artichokes below. There are two main types: Globe Artichokes and Elongated Artichokes. Globe artichokes are the familiar fat, round artichokes most frequently seen in stores. They produce heavy, 4-5” (10-13 cm) artichokes. ‘Green Globe’ (Open pollinated, 90-100 days) is the original globe type artichoke that produces 3-4 large, 3-5” (8-13 cm), heavy heads over the course of the summer. Globe artichokes have thick, delicious, creamy hearts. Plants are hardy in zones 7 and above and can produce for 5 years. ‘Imperial Star’ (Open pollinated, 85 days) is bred for annual production the first year from seed and is the best globe artichoke for gardeners in zones 1-6. Produces 6-8 mature buds, each 3-4” (8-10 cm) in diameter. Plants are 3-4’ (1-1.2 meters) tall and as wide. ‘Violetto’ (Elongated variety. Open pollinated, 85-100 days) is an Italian heirloom artichoke that produces elongated, 3” (8 cm) wide by 5” (13 cm) long artichokes, tinged with violet on the bracts. Produces 6-8 main buds, then dozens of ‘baby’ chokes later in the season. Very little choke if harvested young and tight. Here's an easy recipe to try. 6 whole artichokes 3 cups bread crumbs 6 cloves garlic, minced plus 6 whole cloves 2 lemons, zest & juice 1 bunch Italian Parsley, Chopped 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese 1 cup grated Romano cheese Snip the pointed tips of artichoke leaves and cut off the stems. Reserve the stems. Wash and drain. Holding artichoke firmly by base, firmly rap the top of it on a hard surface; this will open it so it can be stuffed. In a medium bowl combine bread crumbs, minced garlic, lemon zest, parsley and the cheeses, mix well. Press about 1/2 cup of stuffing into each artichoke. Finish all the stuffing evenly amongst all artichokes. In a large Dutch oven, heat enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the pan and add the whole garlic cloves and stems. Cook until aromatic, about 5 minutes, add the lemon juice and a few cups of wine. Cook until this comes to a boil. Tightly pack stuffed artichokes together and add enough water to reach about 1 inch up the artichokes. Reduce the heat and simmer, covered for about three hours or until an outside leave pulls off easily. Serve with extra virgin olive for drizzling.
There is no special breeding season and gorillas may mate at any time of the year. It is not always the lead male in a group who mates with the females in his group; sometimes a wandering male who has joined a group for a while mates with a female in it. He may take a female with him when he leaves, to form a new group. A female is ready to breed when she is 6 - 7 years old and she usually has a baby about every four years. Infant mortality is quite high and about 40 - 50 per cent of the young die in infancy. Therefore, a female probably produces a baby more frequently than once every four years. Gestation (the time between conception and birth) is 251 - 295 days, a little shorter than in the human. The baby gorilla weighs about 1.98kg, just about half the normal weight of a human baby at birth. However, the baby gorilla develops twice as fast, crawling in 9 weeks and walking upright for a few steps at 35 - 40 weeks. Most babies are weaned after 8 months but some continue to suckle for up to 20 months. Gorilla parents protect their offspring at all times, so the young apes are able to spend their 'childhood' eating, sleeping and playing. A youngster stays with its mother for about three years. Females stay in the group but males wander off to live a mainly solitary life, becoming sexually mature at 8 - 9 years, but they do not reach full size until they are 12 - 14 years old.Read More: Gorillas and Humans
\|Date: Jul 1, 2020\| \|Source: The Daily Star\| \|Seeking justice for Assad’s victims\| \|Faisal Al Yafai\| A fresh round of US sanctions, the long-awaited Caesar Act, has come into effect against figures within the Syrian regime and those who aid them. The act is named for the pseudonym of a Syrian military defector who provided a trove of evidence of the regime’s torture program. Ostensibly the act seeks redress for those victims, demanding, among other things, that all political prisoners be released, and a truth and reconciliation process be started before the sanctions are lifted. In reality, however, the act will not offer justice for the victims of the Assad regime; it will merely create new victims. Economic sanctions are a blunt instrument and the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act is blunter than most. The difference between these sanctions and the financial sanctions against Syria that the European Union has had in place since 2011 is that these also target companies that participate in financing or reconstructing Syria. As such, they provide a much easier way of isolating the Syrian regime, because the United States does not need to prove any ties to a particular sanctioned individual. Instead, it can simply punish companies that work in a particular industry in Syria, such as construction or energy. So wide has the net been cast that Lebanese banks, Gulf investors and European companies could all be caught up in it. Such blanket license is not a virtue. In fact, depending on how the act is enforced, it could end up merely entrenching America’s enemies, while hurting its allies. First in the firing line is Lebanon, already reeling from social unrest, an ongoing political crisis and a disproportionate share of the burden of refugees from the Syrian civil war. If Lebanese companies – particularly financial companies – cannot do business with Syria that will affect exports and tax revenue. Ironically, it will also directly benefit Hezbollah, one of the indirect targets of these sanctions. If Lebanese companies cannot trade directly with Damascus, they will turn to indirect smuggling routes. As Hezbollah exerts enormous influence over the mountain ranges along the eastern border through which most of the smuggling is conducted, the militant group stands to gain handsomely. The other potential winners are Moscow and Tehran, two other of Washington’s indirect targets. Isolation will make the Assad regime more, not less, dependent on them. Recall that the major reason for the tentative outreach by Arab states over the past two years (Jordan, the UAE, Bahrain and Sudan have all taken steps to improve relations with Damascus) was to offer an explicit counterweight to Iranian influence. The Caesar Act will bring that to an end. Far from weakening their grip on Damascus, the act will ensure the regime has nowhere else to turn, giving Tehran and Moscow even more leverage. Nor will it benefit Syrians. Not the families of those dead, not those still alive. With the Caesar Act, the US has ended up with a halfway house of a policy: no longer demanding that Bashar Assad go, yet unwilling to allow other countries to help reconstruct the country he continues to preside over. In fact, the Caesar Act seems determined – perhaps even designed – to constrict Syria without asphyxiating it, so that it staggers on, unable to fully recover, too weak to play a role in the region, but too strong to be overthrown. But a wounded Syria means enormous human collateral damage. A Syria crippled by sanctions would create a human catastrophe, equivalent in scale to the 1990s sanctions regime that devastated Iraq. In that case, starving Iraqis of food and medicine did not create sufficient pressure to remove Saddam Hussein, and instead resulted in a slow-burning disaster that led to the deaths of half a million children – more children, as an interviewer noted to the then US ambassador to the United Nations, Madeleine Albright, than were killed in Hiroshima by the atomic bomb. Albright responded, “We think the price is worth it.” It was not in Iraq and it will not be in Syria. Justice for the victims of torture should not mean making new victims. Moreover, the regime in Damascus will certainly respond to this new pressure as the Saddam regime did, with further and deeper repression. A poorer, more isolated and more repressed Syria will in turn push more ordinary Syrians to leave and offer those already abroad even less incentive to return. That will increase the pressure of refugees on European and Middle Eastern countries. In this way, the Caesar Act imposes costs on everyone except the United States. What it does not do, however, is demand that the regime return to the negotiating table as part of the Geneva Process. That means the one political mechanism that exists for forcing the regime to share power without a total collapse is ignored. Nearly seven years have passed since “Caesar” exposed the regime’s program of mass torture. Justice for those men and women, who died unimaginable deaths and whose families had to discover their fate through grainy, lifeless images, remains too long delayed. There must be a reckoning for the Assad regime – but this act named for one man will not bring about justice for those many. Faisal Al Yafai is currently writing a book on the Middle East and is a frequent commentator on international TV news networks. He has worked for news outlets such as The Guardian and the BBC, and reported on the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa. \|The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the Arab Network for the Study of Democracy \|
Childrens Story – The Bull And The Calf A Bull was striving with all his might to squeeze himself through a narrow passage which led to his stall. A young Calf came up and offered to go before and show him the way by which he could manage to pass. “Save yourself the trouble,” said the Bull; “I knew that way long before you were born.” Do not presume to teach your elders.
ANALYSIS OF THE IDEOLOGICAL ORIGINS OF ARMED STRUGGLE IN ISLAM Armed struggle is an issue of life- and -death judgments and that’s why it needs solid justification from ethical and religious principles. Defending human life and preserving the society from anarchy, disintegration and destruction sometimes waging armed struggle become necessary and a group of people or nation is compelled to do so. Now one of the important aspects in this regard is, in which circumstances the nation is allowed for an armed struggle. All of the major world religions provide guidelines in this domain from strong militancy to absolute pacifism and just war theory. Islam too acknowledges the right of defense and preserving life to human beings. This paper seeks to map out the ideological approaches to armed struggle in Islam. The important scriptures from the holy Quran, Narrations of the holy prophet are briefly introduced and the relevant verses are extracted and summarized in the light of exegesis.
Idaafas are treated in detail in Part I. However, in Part I, the focus is on idaafas composed of two or more nouns in a row and there is considerable stress on the fact that only nouns are used in an idaafa construction. There is another type of idaafa which does not occur any where near as often, but of which you should be aware. Its first term is an adjective and its second term is a noun. Look at the examples below. \|1. This man talks a great deal.\|\| ١. هذا الرجل كثيرُ الكلام. \|2. This woman talks a great deal.\|\| ٢. هذه المرأةُ كثيرةُ الكلام. \|3. We are participating in multilateral negotiations.\|\| ٣. نشارك في مفاوضاتٍ متعددة الاطرافِ. \|4. We are participating in the multilateral negotiations.\|\| ٤. نشاركُ في المفاوضاتِ المتعددةِ الأطرافِ. The underlined elements in the sentences above are known as false idaafas or adjectival idaafas. The first term is an adjective which agrees in case, number, and gender with the preceding noun.. The second term will be a noun which will always be definite and in the genitive case. In sentences one and two above, the false idaafas are indefinite, even though the last term of each idaafa has the definite article. The same is true for sentence number three. The only difference in sentence three is that متعددة (“multi”) is feminine singular because it is modifying a noun-human plural. In each of the first three sentences, the false idaafa is acting as the predicate of an equational sentence. Sentence four is a definite version of sentence three. Now the adjective متعددة has the definite article and the false idaafa is functioning as an adjective modifying the noun المفاوضات. Even though المتعددةِ is definite, it is still considered to be the first term of an idaafa and it puts the second term in the genitive case. You will come across false idaafas from time to time in media Arabic and in literature. I deliberately did not mention them in Part I because of the importance of your mastering regular idaafas.
Top 10 Most Deadliest Poisons In The World Asbestos is a set of six naturally occurring silicate minerals, each visible fiber composed of millions of microscopic “fibrils” that can be released by abrasion and other processes. They are commonly known by their colors, as blue asbestos, brown asbestos, white asbestos, and green asbestos. It is now known that prolonged inhalation of asbestos fibers can cause serious and fatal illnesses including lung cancer, mesothelioma, and asbestosis. Exposure to asbestos in the form of fibers is always considered dangerous. Working with, or exposure to, material that is friable, or materials or works that could cause release of loose asbestos fibers, is considered high risk. However, in general, people who become ill from inhaling asbestos have been regularly exposed in a job where they worked directly with the material. All types of asbestos fibers are known to cause serious health hazards in humans. Amosite and crocidolite are considered the most hazardous asbestos fiber types; However, chrysotile asbestos has also produced tumors in animals and is a recognized cause of asbestosis and malignant mesothelioma in humans, and mesothelioma has been observed in people who were occupationally exposed to chrysotile, family members of the occupationally exposed, and residents who lived close to asbestos factories and mines.

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