Split (2)

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

content stringlengths 174 23.6k
Rules banning people with young children from applying for a high-rise council flat in Hull could soon be scrapped. The current long-standing policy prevents any family with a child under the age of twelve from applying to live in a flat in a multi-storey block. However, the ban could be lifted under a proposed shake-up of the city council's housing allocations policy. Housing director Dave Richmond said: "We are looking to change the policy around allowing some families with children to apply for flats in some high-rise blocks. We believe there is a demand out there. "If there is a family currently living in sub-standard, poor quality, private rented flat, and want to move into a three-bed flat in one of our high-rise blocks, I think it's only right that we should be able to give them that opportunity." The proposal is subject to approval by the council's cabinet later this month. Mr Richmond acknowledged not all the authority's 26 high-rise blocks across the city would be suitable for families with young children with many occupied by mainly elderly tenants. "We do not intend to change things in some blocks but there may be some where a mix of tenants could work," he said. "Initially we are looking at running a pilot project in one fo two blocks to see how it goes. It may be that we allow some families in for a period of time but not on a long-term basis. "It's not going be a one size fits all solution and the reality is that some young children already live in some of our high-rises blocks, either having been born after their parents moved in or there are being looked after by grandparents." Other proposed changes to the council's housing allocation rules include the introduction of a new assessment process to check on whether applicants to afford to rent the property they are applying for. Mr Richmond said the move was designed to help people taking on unaffordable rents which could lead them into debt problems. "This is not about trying to stop people getting housing," he said. "It's about making sure we are letting properties in a sustainable way."
Beverley Road has been in important route in and out of Hull since medieval times. In the early 19th century it became part of Hull's suburban development, as houses with long front gardens were built at its southern end along with new terraced side streets. Today, the stretch between Ferensway and the junction with Queens Road and Sculcoates Lane retains a fascinating mix of historic architecture and landmarks. It is also subject of an ongoing Heritage Lottery-funded project aimed at restoring and celebrating some of the route's forgotten past. Here are 10 things you probably never knew about one of Hull's busiest roads. Today it is an oasis of green surrounded by asphalt, but no so long ago it was one of Hull's network of open drains. Like many others, it was eventually filled in as part of a safety drive. A traditional Chinese junk featured in terracotta tilework is part of a community housing development completed in 1995 in Park Lane. The building is used as a community centre by the Hong Lok Cultural Association. Stepney Village Green Kinks in a road are often a clue to the past. In this case, historians believe the slight curve in the road outside the Bull pub indicates the location of an ancient village green marking the spot where Stepney Lane meets Beverley Road. The Rose Hotel Now sadly no longer a pub, the Rose Hotel is nonetheless a remarkable-looking building with its distinctive onion-shaped turret roof and green tilework. Flamboyantly-designed roof features, mainly from the Victoria era, are still much in evidence along the road. This tiny alley next to the Station pub once led to court of houses called Prague Terrace which were demolished to make way for a railway line. Its name is thought to be taken from Kottingham in Derbyshire rather than any link with the village of Cottingham to the north of Hull. Blink and you might miss these recently-added sculpted figures standing on the platform of the former Stepney station. Depicting railway workers and passengers, they're a reminder of the bygone era although the station building opposite still survives while the rail line is now a cycleway and footpath. Passenger services to Withernsea and Hornsea ended in 1964. Every main street should have at least one ghost sign and Beverley Road is no exception to this unofficial rule. The surname of draper Edwin Jubb can still be seen on the side of a building which once housed a veritable emporium selling everything from underwear and corsets to gloves and ladies' coats. Originally a masonic hall, the Welly is now one of Hull's best-known nightclubs. The Queen Anne-style gables fronting Wellington Lane features the building's original name and its date of construction - 1913. Kingston Youth Centre The oldest parts of Kingston Youth Centre date back to 1836 when it was built as a college. It was later used as an almshouse and now houses a youth centre complete with a recording studio and dance space. What original architect Henry Francis Lockwood would make of the ever-changing modern day graffiti art on its boundary walls is anyone's guess. If I was a poet, I might suggest these slowly-eroding gate posts outside the main entrance to the Kingston Youth Centre are a metaphor for Beverley Road's steady decline in recent years. Perhaps the Heritage Lottery's Townscape scheme will change all that. The Hull Daily Mail has recently launched a free app which features all the latest news, sport and what’s on information. You can download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple's App Store, or get the Android version from Google Play.
A driftwood succulent planter brings rustic elegance to your table decor, and it's versatile enough that you can use it in a casual beach setting or a formal setting. Not only limited to driftwood, you can also utilize an old branch or piece of weathered wood to achieve a similar look. Things You'll Need - Long piece of driftwood or aged branch - Compressed air machine (optional) - Power washer or large bucket - Power drill - Self-feed bit or spade bit - Hot glue gun - Sphagnum moss - Potting soil - Small succulents - Decorative moss - Old paintbrush - Spray bottle Tip: Succulents and air plants make ideal plants for this project, as they do not require a lot of rooting space or moisture. First, prepare the wood by brushing off any loose pieces or debris. A compressed air machine works really well if you have one available. Then, use a self-feed bit or spade bit and drill various holes along the driftwood. The holes don't have to be too deep, as succulents don't require a lot of root space. You can also use the crevices of the wood to plant your succulents. Tip: If you intend to use the planter as a table centerpiece, it is recommended to use a power washer or to soak the wood in a bucket of soapy water to get rid of any insects. Alternatively, you could also bake the wood in your oven in the middle rack at 200 degrees for about an hour, but you'll need to monitor the wood throughout the entire "cooking" process. Use a hot glue gun to adhere sphagnum moss at the bottom of the holes. Once the sphagnum moss is in place, fill the rest of the holes with potting soil. As mentioned before, you can also use the wood's natural crevices to fill with moss and soil. Place succulents into the soil, making sure the roots are covered. Vary the size, shape and color of the succulents all along the driftwood for visual appeal. You can also tuck in bits of decorative moss around the succulents. Use an old paintbrush to brush any loose dirt off the wood and plants, and then use a spray bottle to spray the plants with water. Allow the water to dry prior to placing the planter on a table. The planter makes an elegant table centerpiece, but would look equally lovely on a mantel or shelf.
Rocks and boulders can add interest to any landscape, garden or yard. Large boulders are expensive, heavy and difficult to move. Hypertufa boulders, composed of peat moss, perlite and portland cement, are much lighter and less expensive. They are easy to make with a few simple ingredients found at your local building supply store. Before you begin, take a good look at real boulders and rocks, carefully examining their shapes and crevices. You'll want to replicate those natural markings. In a sheltered spot away from breezes, mix together portland cement, perlite and peat moss with the hand trowel in the wheelbarrow. Add water, mixing with the hand trowel, until the mixture is damp but not crumbly. Let the mixture rest for 10 minutes. Push the chicken wire into a rock or boulder shape. Stuff plastic grocery bags in the chicken wire holes. Use the hand trowel to begin applying hypertufa mixture to the chicken wire. Completely cover the chicken wire and use the trowel to make a realistic design. Use the sea sponge to add texture. Cover the completed rock or boulder with black plastic sheeting and let the hypertufa cure in a sunny spot for two to four days. Check under the plastic several times a day and mist the entire hypertufa rock or boulder with water each time. When it is completely cured and firm, apply the concrete sealer with a paintbrush.
The US Department of Justice is set to dig deeper into allegations of tax avoidance by rich and wealthy citizens, which came to the fore following the so-called Panama Papers leak. The department has launched a criminal investigation into the matter and has sought assistance from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). In a letter to ICIJ, Preet Bharara, the US attorney for Manhattan, said he had "opened a criminal investigation regarding matters to which the Panama Papers are relevant," The Guardian reported. He also wrote that he wishes to speak to an ICIJ employee or representative involved in the Panama Papers project to throw more light on the issue. The documents were leaked by ICIJ in association with several media houses of different countries. The leaked documents belonging to Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca reportedly revealed how many wealthy citizens of different countries set up offshore companies in Panama to allegedly dodge taxation rules in their respective countries. Many high profile people from politics, media and the business world were named in the exposé. UK Prime Minister David Cameron's father Ian Cameron also featured in the documents. Close aides of Russian President Vladimir Putin were also named. Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson and Spain's industry minister had to resign following the turmoil started off by the leak. More than 200 US citizens were reportedly named in the papers, of which many are already facing investigation by Bharara's office. The launch of a criminal inquiry into the matter follows US President Barack Obama's acknowledgement that "the problem of global tax avoidance generally is a huge problem." He was reportedly quoted as saying to mediapersons in early April that loopholes in taxation rules allow people to dodge taxes, but they come "at the expense of middle-class families" who ultimately end up paying for the taxes evaded by the wealthy.
I think being mean to people in high school is healthy. It's sort of like you're in this situation with all these other kids and sometimes you need to get your aggression out. And if you'd had people be mean to you before, it really does build character. Is the very mechanism for the universe to come into being meaningless or unworkable or both unless the universe is guaranteed to produce life, consciousness and observership somewhere and for some little time in its history-to-be? One cannot ignore half of life for the purposes of science, and then claim that the results of science give a full and adequate picture of the meaning of life. All discussions of 'life' which begin with a description of man's place on a speck of matter in space, in an endless evolutionary scale, are bound to be half-measures, because they leave out most of the experiences which are important to use as human beings. What is art?... From a strictly logical point of view, a question with no clear answer comes under the suspicion of being meaningless. But a strictly logical point of view never shows us much about art... I stopped going to school in the middle of fourth grade. Everyone grows up with the peer pressure, and kids being mean to each other in school. I think that's such a horrible thing, but I never really dealt with it in a high school way.
May 31, 2011 On May 26, 2011, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Poland violated a woman’s human rights when she was repeatedly denied a prenatal genetic examination after a doctor discovered fetal irregularities during a sonogram. The test would have informed the woman’s decision on whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. For the first time in its history, the Court specifically found that an abortion-related violation amounted to inhumane and degrading treatment. The Court also cited a violation of the woman’s private life and ordered the Polish government to compensate her. “Today’s decision is a groundbreaking victory for women across Europe. Governments cannot let doctors impose their anti-abortion ideology on pregnant women who are seeking genetic testing,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights (USA). “The court has recognized that withholding information or lawful health services from a woman deprives her of the ability to make extremely important and private decisions about her own life.” Poland has one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe, but the law does allow for abortion in cases of fetal abnormality. In the ruling, the Court also noted that Poland needs to effectively implement its law by ensuring women’s access to diagnostic procedures. The woman who filed a petition against Poland, was repeatedly sent to numerous doctors, clinics and hospitals far from her home and even hospitalized for several days without explanation – all in an effort to prolong her pregnancy. In the end, her pregnancy surpassed the time limit for abortion on fetal impairment grounds. Source: Press release Centre for Reproductive Rights
The students have been working on characterisation, dramatic and theatrical elements and production roles. For many, this was their first public performance and they brought truth and differentiation to the variety of characters which they successfully played. The play is set in a dining room, or rather, many dining rooms, from 7am until 7pm, sometime during the 20th and 21st centuries. It presents an overlapping and entertaining compilation of vignettes about family and values. Students wowed their audiences with their professionalism, ability to portray multiple characters and their sheer energy throughout the performance.
Access to Justice in India Volume II, Issue I, 2019 Justice is imperative as being able to stand up against injustice is important in maintaining our human dignity and strengthening the belief that our legal system isn’t stacked in favour of the rich and powerful. In India, the vast majority of population find it difficult to get access to courts and in turn, to justice. The Constitution of India has provided for Constitutional articles (Article 39A, Article 14, and Article 21) that guarantee the citizens the right to access to justice. However, in practice, injustice is unbridled across the country and the marginalized sectors of the society find it impossible to seek justice. This paper, essentially investigates the reasons due to which access to justice is not being delivered to many. Popular reasons include the country’s low level of awareness about the functioning of the legal system, high costs quoted by lawyers and delays in passing judgements that make it heavily inaccessible. The paper also seeks to find a methodological relation between the Constitutional provisions and the practical application of these provisions. The paper further discusses a few landmark judgements that have upheld the right to access to justice and precedents which have emphasized on the need for legal aid and the State’s undeniable obligation to provide all its citizens with the right to free trial. To conclude, the researchers have tried to unpack strategic cornerstones which when implemented can ensure high quality, affordable legal aid to ensure that individuals have a strong chance at a fair trial.
Cancer is a multifactorial disease in which both genetic and environmental factors play a role. The early detection of a tumour and its correct classification allows access to a targeted therapy that is specific for each tumour. Around 5-10% of cancer cases are hereditary. Identification of the molecular cause of such cancers using genetic diagnosis allows the family risks to be estimated and the preventive measures or treatments available to be established. IMEGEN has developed a series of specific tools based on the analysis of a large number of genes associated with the most common types of cancer: Detection of biomarkers associated with different types of tumour that allow access to specific treatments for each tumour. One example of this is the alterations to the genes KRAS and BRAF found in the therapeutic management of colorectal cancer. The therapy, dose and treatment efficacy of these types of cancer are governed by the presence or absence of such genetic markers. Please fill out the form below to request any information about our products and services, or call us at +34 963 212 340.
Embracing change in work and life is essential to growing as an individual and being a better person than who you were yesterday. Change never seems natural or that easy. Think about the New Years resolutions that we rarely keep. We naturally repel it and often want to retreat back into our comfort zone. Normalcy is safe, as it doesn't provoke fear and it allows us to live our lives without facing things that could potential hurt us or build us up. 1. Change is Inevitable and Embracing Change Encourages Development Because we repel change, we sometimes go through life without ever living up to our full potential our allowing ourselves to express who we really are. Change is an inevitable part of life and no matter how happy we are with how things are currently, life will always change. "The only thing constant is change." We know this and we understand that our environment can't stay the same forever. All around us, there is change happening on a daily basis. We are forever growing, expanding, aging and changing. So what is it about the world that can seem so overbearing and scary when change happens? Why is it that many of us are instantly repelled by the thought of change? If we could only learn to let change work for us and benefit us, we could be happier with our lives and the process of growth. Embracing change is key to your success and happiness. 2. Analyze your Life and Find the Negative Sometimes we change because we are attempting to rid negative habits or people from our lives. The sooner you become aware that change is going to happen and become open to accepting it in your life sooner, the better off you will be. Be diligent in the way you analyze your life. What are the positives and more importantly, what are the negatives? Are there things that you recognize as non-beneficial but you feel stuck in those actions? Think about your life and how you are progressing. Are things moving along as you planned? Are there new factors that are influencing that path? 3. Make Change While you Can, Before Change Makes You It is better to initiate changes ourselves using free will than to let our life progress down a negative path until change affects us in a dramatic way. When you are consciously aware of change, it is much easier. Explore the world and the endless possibilities available to you. Find new opportunities, be brave and face fear. The world isn't as scary as you might think and there are lots of things out there that are potentially life enhancing but you have to explore them. Your attitude toward life is affected by your ability to embrace change. If change happens to you, rather than you influencing that change, you are much more likely to feel like you are being dragged through life. Embrace change with a calm and relaxed mind. Know where you are going and what you are setting out to accomplish. The clearer you picture these changes, the more motivated you will be. 4. Everyone has doubt, fear and uncertainty Everyone has fears and insecurities that stop us from doing this. This doubt and uncertainty is normal and you can never overcome it. All that you can do is learn to embrace it. There will never be a time where you are complete absent of these thoughts and emotions, you will just learn to act anyway, regardless of whether they are there. 5. Self loathing is counterproductive to embracing change Feeling sorry for yourself will often lead you down a negative path. It is counterproductive to change and it will keep you stagnant in your efforts. Never blame your surroundings for misfortune. Stay focused and set your sights high and strive to achieve greatness. As you stay focused, you will learn that embracing change becomes easier and easier. The overall message is that, wherever you are in life, value the journey is it takes time to accomplish anything worth achieving and we have to remember that it is a miracle we are here to begin with and every second must be appreciated.
But before going in depth, the concept of the “puppet state” requires proper definition. Synonymous to the client state (as in computer systems) or the vassal state (as in history books), the puppet state is defined by the Wikileaks “cables.” These documents contain a number of character descriptions of politicians, and depending on their respective degree of affiliation with the imperialist these personalities are being controlled by the manipulation of the puppet characters depicting them. One could also point to the non-Wikileaks-approved Yatseniuk quotes, but in principle this is the case with all states pursuing diplomatic and military relations with Unitedstates. That means in principle the imperialist is able to attempt to turn anyone into a puppet, regardless of hierarchy, only depending on the degree of mental resistance of the target. This was eminently visible in the so-called democratic state in Iraq when leadership succession was dictated by the imperialist, only to be now further revised with a change of tactic again reducing reliance upon that manipulation. It is approaching banality to add that in the marine provocation, such as in terrestrial bonding efforts with puppet states, threatened species are being abused for target practice. Such compensatory measures for lack of superior firepower indicate that in a larger perspective the imperialist´s powers are waning, such as in the Nazi assault on Britain which never entered the island other than in the form of rockets. The grotesque military provocation is more of a gesture towards the current Arab monarchies than to the Islamic state. This is being affirmed by the unconcealed imitation, because only under this assumption it is reasonable to deduce that the fact thereof would not hamper its effect. So when the North Americans with their puppets serve the oil capitalists an otherwise meaningless gesture of loyalty, what does it mean for the other two significant players in the gulf, the Islamic State and the Islamic Republic? First, the Saddam regime propaganda that Persia was nothing but a bloody American puppet state as under the Shah is being proven absurd. Although first of all being a Persian and only second to that a Muslim, Khomeini resp. Khamenei is absolutely not that, and the Washington regime can only wish he was, such as Stalin of Mao in contrast to the imperialist´s imagination. In fact the military manoeuvre is as much of a provocation against the Islamic Republic as against the Islamic State. Likewise, it is a dead end for Tehran to brand its fresh Western neighbour a terrorist enemy of the kind of the Saddam regime. Given the real risk of all-encompassing disruption of the gulf oil supply by a coastal reactor meltdown whose containment in that interior sea would concentrate the poisoning to a much smaller area, both sides should be interested to arrive at an antiimperialist consensus which cannot be disrupted as easily as the oil extraction. Tehran should be strongly interested to find on the other bank a neighbour with whom it can negotiate that risk without the imperialist being called in. After so many fruitless sessions of “nuclear negotiations” with the Europeans who always threatened with American warfare, this problem is pressing for a local solution. Only then there can be realistic negotiations with Europeanunion states over real mutual concerns such as the human rights issue rather than about NPT interpretations (see July 26, 2013). On the other hand Mosul and Baghdad should be interested to reduce the risk of contamination without an increased risk of intervention. The political purpose of the “Persian atom” in West Asia cannot be substituted with eventual IS conquests of nuclear arsenals, because having put its focus on regeneration rather than stability a self-referential state is no suitable container for toxic assets of that type. The Islamic state could only use atomic bombs to draw a line underneath its existential failure, not for deterrence and blackmail as the capitalist state, but if it were to fail it could only do so in a stage of world revolution when the grave can still be closed by the most anti-imperialist of the stable states, so it is naturally equipped with a higher chance of survival without carrying the ability to close its own grave. The supreme leader of Tehran on the other hand might not be interested to change the current risk balance until the collateral risk from the operation of puppet states in the neighbourhood is gone. But the halt of the commercial oil spill, presumably only possible by exhaustion or by anti-imperialist liberation of the Arab peninsula, increasingly is gaining weight as well, last but not least as it is a precondition for any Sunni/Shia exchange of territories free from imperialist occupation. The “Iraq-Iran” war legacy, the remainder of which lives on in the IS/IR enmities despite the former puppet is now definitely out of the hands of the imperialist, politically is a phoney divide compared with any real opponents of real puppet states of imperialism anywhere in the world and their fight against the betraying of country and people by Unitedstates collaborators. What Khamenei has missed though, and this is not to blame on Baghdadi, is to draw a deadline for the American collaborator regime to switch over, and probably that has contributed a lot to the confusion on the Arab side who is which. Unlike a territorial border between Shia and Sunni loyalties, which can be fuzzy as long as the foreign policy consensus remains the same, the line for the puppet state beyond which it loses the recognition of its Eastern neighbour must be drawn absolutely clear, even more so if it has already been crossed. Although the rumour mill is running hot like a wind machine without a proper cooling system, thereby attracting the entire food chain of the political landscape as the mechanic friction is being scaled up just like the whole thing, thereby invisibly exceeding negligibility, the statements of the military-industrial complex do not signify a breakthrough for either side of the oil war. The helpless cackle of the trade speculators – death trade in this case – however strongly indicates that a lot is at stake, as the imperialist runs its war machine without a filling meter and itself does not know when it is going to run dry. Given the fragile nature of the Saudi-American relationship, it seems highly unlikely that either regime is capable to knowingly hide from itself and each other the precise amount of cheap time remaining and highly plausible that the current condition can only be brought about by a full blind situation in which the highest echelon of government does itself not know how close it is to the brink of fossil burnout. This is the only way for the two sides to collaborate without a transparent fault line at which the phoney alliance could be mathematically broken. Besides that, it is the second instance thereof after the passing of peak oil that was equally repressed in 2006. The behaviour of the imperialist in Iraq resembles that of a person who has left from somewhere, but then halfway to elsewhere suddenly gets the idea to have forgotten something irreplaceable – the oil?!? – and hastily returns, only to never arrive anywhere, due to its self-induced panic. This is strange as already the 2003 Iraq war was said to complete the “unfinished business” of the 1991 one. Now the approximation of a third one by the current aggression can hardly be seen as a second one as this would ignore the first one. The spreading out of funding, or more precisely the replacement of the funnelling of resources through one big funnel to the “national government” (a word which wouldn´t have had an odd ring at that place yet a few months ago) with many small regional fill-in spots, which due to the capitalist state´s gross violation of the strictly non-commercial license of this writing now supplements its militarist “manufacturing of consent” by means of senseless parading of the seas for the oil scam, is a striking illustration: It is not merely an issue of territorial or international waters or of regional cooperation; but the benchmark for the probably due to its resource throughput most corruption-threatened waterway is whether the circle of neighbours can close in consensus not to call the imperialist in, and the benchmark for that is the “nuclear issue.” Of course that spending only brings about a financial blowback of IS revenues. Given that the liberation of Riyadh is more likely than a political realisation of the Unitednations ambition of a nuclear-free zone in West Asia, although one may precede the other, it seems unwise for the rulers in Riyadh whose survival depends on keeping the “oil secret” even from the NSA to call for such a parade unless the dry-up is near and a probably futile last ditch effort seems as mandated from their perspective as in the wind-down of WWII, so the occurrence thereof could be classified as an indication of dry-up. Other possible indicators signifying the close proximity of that point would be the sudden movement of notable chunks of the military budget, and given that most of it is not available on short notice one percent is already a remarkable amount, such as in population demographics. Despite a reckless war of attrition, the imperialist has not made any substantial gains from the independence movement. The sclerotic Baghdad regime is being propped up with escalating micromanagement as to try to keep the looming fear of combat casualties at arms distance, but the term “exit strategy” has entirely deserted from the vocabulary of the political debate. The current “strategy” is not a strategy at all, but in fact a trade-off of incalculable time of involvement against limited width thereof. That tactic makes sense in a position of tactical weakness but strategic strength where it is reasonable to calculate that things may get better, but in the opposite situation of tactical strength and strategic weakness the law of entropy is more prevalent than the setting of evolution. The Islamic state on the other hand, despite absorbing all the heat of the imperialist onslaught, has not yet made the “great leap forward” from its current Syrian-Iraqi puberty to the maturity of a new sovereign of the Arab peninsula either, who among other things ends the barbaric “drone” terror in the deep South thereof. Part of that unsatisfying quagmire is the Persian choice. What will IS be in a generation, a task of abolition successfully accomplished or an open wound contained by imperialist mercenaries and puppet states? The reasonable assumption is that the oil is unlikely to last that long (or the reservoirs cannot even pay for the cost of their risks as in the “Deepwater Horizon” scenario), but that is subject to the reservation that a generation ago it was reasonable to assume the same about thermonuclear annihilation, and yet the scenario was stretched into the looming reactor overkill of the current. Feeling lucky that climate change could be postponed yet another generation nevertheless is a behavioural pattern of decreasing value. When the Saudi monarch watches the amassed warships do their phoney drill, it is more likely than not that he does it with the feeling that it could be the last time. Otherwise it would be interested to keep this for later. For the Arab ruler, blocking the Islamic state from the gulf is like biting a poisoned apple it cannot swallow. Yet for the Persian ruler, blocking the imperialist from gulf is like drinking a glass of water. And of course the Islamic state now is old enough to make up its own minds as to what is a mere element of bluster, or vanity-coated chest-banging, and what not. This sudden plagiarist and somehow animalistic turn of the oil war could not be predicted by the imperialist itself, which is in a post-surprise condition now, what contributes a lot to its strategic weakness. Just like a little while ago the Pentagon had to admit that it was not capable to keep track of its own internal abuse issue, the “new situation” of the Washington regime is that it now is in for external surprises. What in the double attack on the trade towers still was an exception finally is normalcy. The ongoing bleeding of the gulf – as the ruthless oil exploitation brings along Bahrain type brutality – can only be stopped in ripping apart the military-industrial complex, as this is the last thing it is clinging to. For this effort, IS has adopted the “bottomless pit” strategy, that is to tease the imperialist into squandering an ever increasing amount of its resources on its final opponent in order to shorten the death spasm of the collapsing system. This includes besides all the mercenaries the imperialist war machine itself, which shall be judged by the environmental cost of its empty provocations as well. Before the inflated currency finally sinks, it obviously makes an absurd stand. But due to bleeding out the country and the people, as it would have to be expected after a terror bombing campaign that couldn´t hit the heart of the resistance though, there remains no doubt over the final handling of the depraved monarchy, it is only a matter of how much information on its inner workings can be extracted from it before it is over and what might be suitable means to achieve that purpose as Bush-style Guantanamo torture is not. * * * - The Canadian Conundrum – Causes and Consequences of a Containment Catastrophe (3.11.) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/11/518616.html - Has Australia Suffered a Covert Military Coup? (24.10.) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/10/518520.html - Demographic Endgame – IS/UK Relations in a Nutshell (15.10.) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/10/518439.html - Hongkong: Tehran in a Cool Pool (3.10.) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/10/518334.html - Marx, Lenin, Mao and the Futurology of Scientific Anarchism (26.9.) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/09/518310.html - The Anarchist Guide to IS Psychology (19.9.) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/09/518183.html - The Islamic State Messages in the Light of the Climate Catastrophe (11.9.) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/09/518121.html - Atomic Testing in the Digital Age (13.8.) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/08/517630.html - Must Christians in the Islamic State Suffer Another Bloodbath? (11.8.) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/08/517608.html - Double Emergency Alert: Ebola Acceleration, Internet Smokescreen (8.8) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/08/517551.html - The Gaza Massacre – Implications and Consequences (5.8.) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/08/517537.html - The Japanese Occupation Legacy – A Defining Ingredient of Totalitarian Democracy (28.7.) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/07/517363.html - Gaza – Vivisection of a Death Cult (20.7.) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/07/517265.html - Macropolitical Side-Effects of the Imperialist Occupation of the Philippines (4.7.) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/07/517113.html - Birth of an Independent Hope – the Revolution in West Asia (26.6.) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/06/517081.html - Hindu Supremacism – A Spent Force of Casino Capitalism (30.5.) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/05/516814.html - The German Sustainability Scam and its Fascist Purpose (21.5.) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/05/516731.html - The Pacific Fata Morgana and its Imperialist Origins (12.5.) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/05/516662.html - Boko Haram – An Image From The Future (4.5.) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/05/516551.html - How Deep Is the Atlantic Divide Really? (8.4.) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/04/516271.html - Palestine, the United Nations and the Refugees (21.3.) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/03/516041.html - Why is Poland a Nazi Client State? (15.3.) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/03/515949.html - What does the Invasion of Yalta Mean for the European Peninsula? (8.3.) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/03/515828.html - The Suicide Attack Against indymedia and its Cause (28.2.) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/02/515677.html - Obey or Die - The Pathology of Organised Treason in Europe (21.2.) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/02/515538.html - NATO. Obituary to a Nukepool (27.1.) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/01/515002.html - Triple Treason in the Caucasus (23.1.) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/01/514946.html - The Death of the Inclusion Policy in the East Asian Shelf Waters (16.1.) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/01/514789.html - Why is the Nonproliferation Treaty Failing? (9.1.) - https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/01/514650.html
Ceramic ware and pottery is made from clay - a naturally occurring mineral. Different types of clay are used according to the qualities needed in the item to be made, such as strength or delicacy. A wide range of ceramic items are made. Some are industrial, including: Other ceramic products are domestic including: Other items can be purely decorative ornaments or sculpture. Because ceramics are used in so many different ways, the work of a ceramic/pottery maker varies greatly according to their employer's business. Some processes are partly or fully automated, while others are carried out by hand. The duties of a ceramic/pottery maker could include: Casting - pouring liquid clay (or 'slip') into moulds to form a range of items. Complicated shapes, such as teapots, are made in sections which are joined together using more slip. Jiggering - making flat objects like plates by placing clay on a rotating mould and pushing a pattern onto it to press the clay into shape. Jolleying - pushing a metal tool into a ball of clay to produce a hollow item like a bowl or cup. Throwing - shaping clay on a potter's wheel. This traditional method of working clay is used mainly by craft potters. Finishing - using a lathe to turn and shape products. Glazing - coating the surface of products to make them waterproof, durable and/or produce a decorative effect. Firing - hardening items by heating them to very high temperatures in a kiln. Some items are fired a number of times at different stages of the manufacturing process. In automated ceramic production an individual ceramic/pottery maker may work as part of a team undertaking only one or a few of these processes, whereas a craft potter, working mainly by hand, is more likely to design and complete a whole piece of ceramic work. Most ceramic/pottery makers work 39 hours a week, Monday to Friday. Overtime may be available at busy times. Some companies operate shift systems. People working in craft potteries, particularly those in tourist areas, may work weekends and bank holidays when visitors are most likely to want tours of the pottery. Some of these workers may be self-employed. The work environment can vary from a large factory to a small workshop or studio. There may be noise, dust and heat. Lifting and carrying may be required, and some products, like toilets and drains, are heavy and cumbersome. However, many factories have lifting devices. Starting salaries may be around £8,300 to £9,800 a year. Ceramic/pottery makers may work in one of a range of organisations, from businesses with over 4,000 employees to small pottery workshops. Some craft potters work alone. Many of the larger manufacturers are based around Stoke-on-Trent in the Midlands. Craft potteries are found all over the UK, particularly in tourist areas. Vacancies are advertised in local newspapers, at Jobcentre Plus offices, Connexions centres and on employers' websites. There are no formal entry requirements to become a ceramic/pottery maker. Many people train for this career through Apprenticeships. Apprenticeships and Advanced Apprenticeships provide structured training with an employer. As an apprentice you must be paid at least £95 per week; you may well be paid more. A recent survey found that the average wage for apprentices was £170 a week. Your pay will depend on the sector in which you work, your age, the area where you live and the stage at which you have arrived in the Apprenticeship. Entry to Employment (e2e) can help to prepare those who are not yet ready for an Apprenticeship. In addition, Young Apprenticeships may be available for 14- to 16-year-olds. More information is available from a Connexions personal adviser or at www.apprenticeships.org.uk. There are different arrangements for Apprenticeships in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It is also possible to take further or higher education qualifications in subjects like ceramics, ceramics technology, art and design or 3D design. These are available at many colleges and universities throughout the UK. Entry for a higher education course is usually a minimum of one A level/two H grades in art and design subjects, or the equivalent. Degree candidates usually need a minimum of two A levels/three H grades, and five GCSE's/S grades (A-C/1-3), or the equivalent. Admissions tutors usually expect to see a portfolio of art work. Applicants in England and Wales may often be expected to have done a Foundation Diploma in Art and Design. In Scotland, degree courses last four years and include a general year, so a foundation course is not usually necessary. Candidates who have done a foundation course may be able to start in the second year. New entrants are usually given on-the-job training under the supervision of experienced technicians or trainers. As an Oil Drilling Roustabouts and Roughnecks work as part of a small team on offshore oil or gas drilling rigs or production platforms. Roustabouts do unskilled manual labouring jobs on rigs and platforms, and Roughneck is a promotion from roustabout. Roustabouts do basic tasks to help keep the rig and platform working efficiently and Roughnecks do practical tasks involved in the drilling operation, under the supervision of the driller. A ceramic/pottery maker should: Ceramic/pottery workers may be promoted to team leader, supervisor, line manager, trainer or technician roles, especially if they have gained qualifications. Prospects in small organisations can be limited and workers may have to change employers to progress. Craft workers often become self-employed, setting up their own craft studio or workshop. With an appropriate teaching qualification it may be possible to teach their skills to others. British Ceramic Confederation, Federation House, Station Road, Stoke on Trent ST4 2SA Tel: 01782 744631 Crafts Council, 44a Pentonville Road, Islington, London N1 9BY Tel: 020 7278 7700 The Craft Potters Association Gallery, 7 Marshall Street, London W1F 7EH Tel: 020 7437 7605 Creative and Cultural Skills, 4th Floor Lafone House, The Leathermarket, Weston Street, London SE1 3HN Tel: 020 7015 1800 Additional resources for job seekers and those already in a job.
A simple and effective remedy to combat coughing and symptoms of throat inflammation. Coughing is the body's reaction to irritated airways as well as a mechanism to expel foreign particles and excess mucus. The purpose of this remedy is to open up and clear the throat's passageway so that mucus can be easily expelled and inflammation is reduced. Step 1: Gathering Ingredients and Materials This concoction requires three common ingredients that each have medicinal properties that work particularly well to treat cough: 2 tsp. Honey (preferably of the local variety) 1/4 tsp. Ground black pepper 1/8 tsp. Ground nutmeg Black pepper is the key ingredient that works by increasing circulation and loosening the mucus membranes in the throats passageway. Both honey and nutmeg provide anti inflammatory effects which help sooth the throat. Other materials needed include: A teaspoon for stirring A teaspoon for in-taking the concoction A welled plate or container for mixing and storage Hot water for rinsing Plastic wrap for storage Refrigerator for storage Step 2: Bringing the Ingredients Together 1.Take a clean welled plate or container, and add the honey to it. 2.Next add the nutmeg. 3.Finally add in the black pepper. 4.Stir vigorously until the ingredients are well combined and dispersed. Step 3: Dosage and Storage The measurements yield around 2 1/2 teaspoons of the mixture. This is a sufficient amount for 3-4 doses that can be taken over 1 or 2 days. The recommended method of intake is as follows: 1. Dip the back of a teaspoon (rounded surface) into the mixture. 2. Lift it up and turn it over. 3. Lick the mixture off with your tongue and immediately swallow. 4. Repeat 2-4 times per dose. * Be sure to rinse the teaspoon used with hot water in between dipping to avoid transfer of germs. **It is recommended that the mixture is used by a single person. Portion out the mixture into separate vessels if more than one person will be ingesting it. To store the mixture in between doses, wrap the container or plate with plastic wrap and store in the refrigerator. It can be taken when cool.
The Mariana Lake Project The Mariana Lake Project consists of a lithium brine deposit located in Salta, Argentina. The region is known as the Lithium Triangle. The Lithium Triangle is host to lithium brine deposits that currently accounts for over 30% of the global lithium trade. Salar de Llullaillaco, which makes up the Mariana project, is less than 140 km South of the Atacama Salar in Chile. Atacama is the largest producing lithium brine deposit in the world. The Mariana project shares some characteristics with the Atacama Desert in Chile. A similar desert environment exists across the border in Argentina in an area known as the Puna. The Puna region, like Atacama, has the some of the lowest recorded precipitation and highest evaporation rates in the world making this an ideal place for an efficient natural solar concentration process. Mariana project has an indicated resource of 1,248,000 tonnes of LCE (Lithium Carbonate Equivalent) and an Inferred resource of 618,000 tonnes of LCE. The project has access to rail infrastructure nearby which terminates at the port of Antofagasta in Chile, less than 300 kilometres away. 100% of the mineral rights (Minas) covering the entire Salar de Llullaillaco are owned by the Mariana Joint Venture. On December 6, 2018 a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) for the Mariana Joint Venture was announced. The PEA technical report assesses the potential economic viability of developing the 14 exploration licenses (Minas), that cover the Salar de Llullaillaco (the Salar) and surrounding area (23,560 hectares), for the purpose of extraction of lithium brine resources and processing of two products – Lithium Carbonate Equivalent and Sulphate of Potash. \|Mine Life:\|\|25 years\| Lithium Carbonate Equivalent Sulphate of Potash 10,000 tonnes per annum 84,000 tonnes per annum \|NPV (after tax, 10% discount rate):\|\|US $192,000,000\| \|IRR (after tax):\|\|20%\| The joint venture is between Ganfeng Lithium (GFL) and International Lithium (ILC) with current ownership divided as 82.754% to GFL and 17.246% ILC. ILC can acquire an additional 10% ownership through a back-in right. Ganfeng Lithium is one of the largest lithium product manufacturers in the world and is working to become a fully integrated lithium and lithium battery supply company. The Mariana project is located close to the border of Chile along the Salta–Antofagasta Railway. The area surrounding the Mariana project is a well-established mining district with the Taca Taca copper project and the Lindero gold project close by. The Escondido copper mine is also close by on the Chilean side of the border. The Mariana project is serviced by all-weather roads and is in close proximity to the existing Salta – Antofagasta rail line. Salar de Llullaillaco The Salar de Llullaillaco which makes up the Mariana Project is approximately 16 kilometres in the North-South direction and 10 kilometres in the East-West giving over 160 square kilometres (16,000 hectares) of prospective resource. Drilling and Resource Definition Drill hole location map. Pump well location map. Gravity surveys helped to identify the basement of the Llullaillaco basin as seen here in the Bouguer gravity anomaly map. The area used in calculating the Maiden resource is indicated by the dashed blue line. Electromagnetic (EM) surveys help to define the rich brine aquifers. 3D representation of resistivity from the EM surveys Cross section from EM survey showing interpreted aquifers and geologic units. Brine concentration through natural solar evaporation. The current focus on lithium recovery studies is on using natural solar energy to concentrate the lithium in the brine through evaporation. This is currently being tested on-site using a series of evaporation ponds. An on-site laboratory is used to analyse the chemical changes in the brine in a timely manner. Indicated resource: 1,248,000 tonnes of LCE (Lithium Carbonate Equivalent) Inferred resource: 618,000 tonnes of LCE - The indicated resource is estimated at 765 billion litres of brine grading: 306 mg/L lithium (Li) 9,457 mg/L potassium (K) - The inferred resource is estimated at 361 billion litres of brine grading: 322 mg/L lithium (Li) 10,316 mg/L potassium (K) - Brine resources are tabulated and reported for average specific yield (SY) of 15% and a cut-off value of 230 mg/L Li. Effective date for this resource estimate is January 20, 2017 * Technical Report; Mariana Lithium Project, Salar de Llullaillaco, Argentina”, April 10, 2017 (www.SEDAR.com), authored by Geos Minerals Consultants. The effective date for the resource estimate is January 20, 2017, which represents the date of the most recent data that supports the brine estimate in the Technical Report. Tabulated Resourse Estimated Figures. \|Category\|\|Effective Volume\|\|Brine Density\|\|Li\|\|B\|\|K\|\|Li\|\|LCE\| Preliminary Economic Analysis (PEA) Highlights - 25-year mine life producing 10,000 tonnes per year (“TPY”) Lithium Carbonate Equivalent (“LCE”) plus 84,000 TPY Sulphate of Potash (“SOP”). - The estimated CAPEX and OPEX are for a conventional brine extraction facility, solar evaporation ponds and SOP processing with a level of accuracy of -30/+50%. - CAPEX estimated at US $243 million for 25-year mine life. - NPV = US $192 million after-tax at 10% discount rate, IRR = 20% post-tax. - Project results remain positive, even with important negative variations on the driver variables, indicating project strength and resilience; thus, the PEA study indicates Mariana’s proposed 10,000 TPY LCE concentrated brine and 84,000 TPY SOP fertilizer operation has the potential to generate strong economic returns. The PEA was prepared by Advisian (“Advisian”), a division of the WorleyParsons Group, for Mariana Lithium Corp. to provide a PEA of its Mariana Lithium Brine Project in accordance with National Instrument 43-101 – Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects (“NI 43-101”). The PEA technical report assesses the potential economic viability of developing the 14 exploration licenses (Minas), that cover the Salar de Llullaillaco (the Salar) and surrounding area (23,560 hectares), for the purpose of extraction of lithium brine resources and processing of two products – Lithium Carbonate Equivalent and Sulphate of Potash. All figures are quoted in US dollars. It should be noted that the Company did not play any significant part in the production of the PEA report, and that the conclusions are therefore those of the consultants. The preliminary economic assessment (PEA) is preliminary in nature, and it includes inferred mineral resources that are considered too speculative geologically to have the economic considerations applied to them that would enable them to be categorized as mineral reserves, and there is no certainty that the preliminary economic assessment will be realized. The PEA includes the results of an economic analysis of mineral resources, and mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability.
Hosts Aaron and Jonathan discuss starting, building, and growing a business. There’s been much to-do recently about small businesses. Children’s lemonade stands have become a big symbol of that sentiment, in particular. But what does it really take to open a business? How do we avoid the common pitfalls that lead to failure in business? …And what does it really mean to be in business for yourself? But most importantly, how do we get to go fishing in the middle of the week–every week!? Join us as we share our experiences, thoughts, and clear a path for your liberty… - Getting a business funded by “Family, Friends, and Fools” - Focussing on the customer with more than lip service. - Your product: What it is and isn’t. - Marketing: The secret sauce you forgot. - Automation, Operations, and cost savings. - Misconceptions and hard truths about being self-employed. - Employees and herding cats. - Working for your own benefit and benefiting others. - Giving vs Giving Back and why it’s important to understand the difference. - Dictating your own liberty.
The Great Green Wall is a pan-African initiative to restore and sustainably manage land in the Sahel-Saharan region in order to address both poverty and land degradation. First envisioned by the former President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, in 2005 and strongly championed by President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, the Initiative gained significant momentum in 2007 with adoption of African Union Declaration 137 VIII, approving the “Decision on the Implementation of the Green Wall for the Sahara Initiative”. In June 2010, Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Sudan signed a convention in Ndjamena, Chad, to create the Great Green Wall (GGW) Agency. In more recent years the vision has evolved into an integrated ecosystem management approach. The Great Green Wall initiative has revived interest in Sustainable Land Management in the Sahel and North of the Sahara and has galvanised action to implement the UNCCD. It has helped to shed a spotlight on recent innovations in SLM in the region and at the same time has leveraged a high degree of political will and leadership from member States. In response public finance for SLM actions has increased and several donors have also mobilised substantial investments, offering opportunities for rapid progress. However, degradation in the region is often the outcome of past policy and investment failures and there are concerns in some quarters that current strategies may not depart significantly enough from past mistakes. The purpose of this project is greater implementation of policies for sustainable land management in the Sahel (Great Green Wall (GGW) countries) through enhanced investment, intersectoral coordination, and engagement of marginalized groups. The projects components are: Component 1: Adaptive management & Learning Component 2: Participation, diversity and equity Component 3: Investment for Policy Implementation Donor(s): Global Environment Facility Partner countries: Senegal, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Mali, Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti SDG targets: SDG 15 – Life on Land Aichi Targets: AT. 15 – Ecosystems Restored and Resilience Enhanced.
I decided that this month I would talk about the Metabolic Typing Diet. There are so many types of diet books on the market. The Mediterranean, Paleo, and South Beach diets have all been talked about extensively. It can be so confusing to determine what is best for you. The latest is the Ketogenic “burn fat for fuel” diet that I think is very interesting since I seem to have been eating this way for some time now. But what I discovered when I read about the Metabolic Typing Diet is that I am also a Protein type. The questionnaire in the book is quite in-depth. I had to take a very close look at what and how I was eating and the responses to the food I chose. I do believe it was worth the time it took because I have been able to stay at my ideal weight for many years by finding out about my body’s needs. Each of these general metabolic type categories corresponds to a specific diet. But keep in mind that your general category is simply a starting point. Once you’ve identified your metabolic type and the basic diet that’s right for you, you can then use a variety of simple techniques and self-tests that will enable you to fine-tune or customize your diet to your own highly individualized needs. After all, there’s a tremendous amount of biological and biochemical diversity among people, so there are far more than three metabolic types. You may be in the same general category as someone else, yet your dietary needs could be distinctly different. Here’s an example: You and a friend might both be Protein Types, which means you don’t function well on vegetarian-oriented diets or on meals and snacks centered mainly around carbohydrates. But even though you both need to emphasize protein and restrict carbohydrates to a certain extent, your friend might require heavier proteins on a more consistent basis throughout the day, and be significantly less able to tolerate carbohydrates (sugars and starches) than you. In addition, your metabolic type is not something that’s carved in stone. Although you were born with a specific set of dietary requirements dictated by your genetic heritage (your “genetic type”), your needs can shift for any number of reasons, including illness, stress, aging, sports activities, or nutrient deficiencies or excesses. Your “functional type” refers to the way your metabolism is functioning today, or what your dietary needs are at the moment. But a month or six months or a year down the road, your needs could potentially shift, maybe back toward your actual genetic type. Where metabolism is concerned, everything is highly individualized and everything is constantly in flux. That’s why testing your metabolic type and fine-tuning your diet are techniques you’ll want to employ on an ongoing, intermittent basis. I hope you enjoyed this blog and consider taking the time to find out what the best needs are for your body. Click here for a free phone consultation to find out more about the Body Re-Design Program and how I can assist you to achieve optimal posture for optimal heath. Body Re-Design is not only about corrective exercise for good posture, but also about becoming functionally stronger with resistance exercises done effectively and efficiently. There is no obligation, only information and a time to answer your questions. May your life be blessed and pain free!
February 13, 2018 Curriculum Design as an Engineering Problem: Lessons from the Field Presented by: Shriram Krishnamurthi New computing curricula are being created every day. Seemingly every permutation of words like "teach", "kids", "code", and "CS" has been turned into an organization (or company). Technologists everywhere are either being drafted to weigh in on curricula…or are doing so anyway. Everybody’s got an opinion or three. But in the current and foreseeable reality of computer science education in the USA (and in many other countries), what does reality look like and how can we be effective in it? Might it even be that by working with reality, we may actually get better outcomes than if we ignored it? This talk will distill lessons from Bootstrap, one of the largest computing outreach programs in the USA. Joint work with Emmanuel Schanzer and Kathi Fisler. Shriram is the Vice President for Programming Languages at Brown University in Providence, RI, USA. He’s not, really, but that’s what it says on his business card. He believes tropical fruit are superior to all other kinds. He is terrified of success, because he may be forced to buy a suit. You can learn other things about him from his very serious Web site. He is also known to interrogate his audiences to ensure they’re paying attention. So, be alert. You can read email later.
Making Decisions: Set a Reality-Based Deadline April 2, 2012 A Reality-Based Deadline is a self-imposed date for a decision to force yourself to deal with it. A friend who owns a Chowking franchise vented out her concerns with the business. They operated the business for almost a decade but it is not doing very well now. First of all, I asked her about her commitment. She said she’s been involved in other projects while managing the business. Problem one: Focus. Next, I asked her if she is losing money. She replied that she’s negative for six months. I inquired if the losses are manageable, she said yes because the peak months are just about to arrive. Problem two: Timing. Should she wait or close now? I gave her an advice to set a deadline for her decision. Stay committed in that given time frame then give it your best. The time frame should take into consideration the amount of money that she could afford to lose if the business continues to decline. If she doesn’t achieve her goal in that period of time, she should close the business because it will only bleed to death slowly until her other resources get drained. She set her reality-based deadline for 6 months, focusing all her efforts toward the business. Setting a deadline was like an ax she installed over her dream that if she didn’t act out her business will die in 6 months. This caused her to move and get things done. We sat down again after the deadline. She proudly declared, I made my first positive net income three months ago and sales is going up. Almost 2 years have passed, I saw her the other day and she told me that sales is up 35% from last year. She’s been positive ever since.
Extract Variable Dialog Generally, this dialog is used to extract new variables. Depending on the language, there may be additional options, for example: - In Java, you can declare the new variable To make this dialog accessible for Java, you have to disable in-place refactoring in the editor settings. - In ActionScript, you can choose to extract a constant rather than a variable, and specify the variable type. \|Type\|\|Select the type of the new variable.\|\|ActionScript\| \|Name\|\|Specify the name for the new variable.\|\|All\| \|Replace all occurrences\|\|Select this option to replace all the occurrences of the selected expression (if more than one occurrence of the selected expression is found).\|\|All\| \|Declare final\|\|Select this option to declare the new variable \|\|Java\| \|Make constant\|\|Select this option to extract a constant rather than a variable.\|\|ActionScript\|
A Risk Worth Taking Helping to Rebuild Iraq's Broken Health System In its 2013 list of the best and the brightest young foreign policy leaders, Diplomatic Courier magazine characterizes MPH student Ahmed Hassoon as a “risk-taker.” The Sommer Scholar is among the “Top 99 under 33” innovators singled out by the publication for “breaking traditional models of thinking.” For nearly a decade, the doctor and public health consultant has repeatedly put himself in harm’s way to rebuild the decimated health system in his native Iraq. As an emergency physician from 2004 to 2006, he dodged roadside bombs traveling to work and was often the only doctor at his hospital. He escaped two kidnapping attempts and on a third occasion was kidnapped and released. He survived a bullet that “only scratched my head” but killed a former professor. A car bomb destroyed the offices of a program that he directed to return displaced Iraqis to their homes. In 2011, Hassoon temporarily halted his work in Iraq to pursue public health graduate studies, saying that the stress on his family became too great. Last year he served as an Atlas Corps Fellow in Washington, D.C., managing global child health care and education programs before entering the MPH Program at the Bloomberg School. After completing his MPH degree, Hassoon plans to return to Iraq to establish a clinical research center on noncommunicable diseases. He says that his country desperately needs hard data as the building blocks to develop effective health services. It’s essential work and, for Hassoon, a return to danger on a daily basis. “Somebody has to do it,” he says.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 Sometimes it is hard to explain people what SEO is and why we need it. We have faced this kind of scenario at our work place, many times with our colleagues and even with management. Here in this blog I have tried to explain “What is SEO”, “Why we need SEO”, and “How do we do SEO”. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. As an SEO, we have to consider how search engines work, what people search for, the actual search terms typed into search engines and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. SEO helps users/visitors/customers to locate our website (products & service) easily via search engines. Potential customers might not even know that our website (products & service) exists. SEO can make the content of your web pages more relevant, more attractive, and more easily read by search engines and their crawling and indexing software. SEO is the best investment for any company. The leading search engines, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo!, use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results. Not every page is indexed by the search engines. Search engine crawlers may look at a number of different factors when crawling a website. A variety of methods can increase the prominence of a webpage within the search results. SEO is an on-going process of optimizing the website with current search engine algorithm, best practices and guidelines. Continues monitoring and optimizing the website pages, checking and fixing errors (404, 500 etc.). Maintaining Site Architecture, optimizing the tags, getting backlinks, and encouraging social sharing. Removing duplicate content and avoiding spamming the search engines and black hat techniques. And it cost almost nothing. Joydeep Deb is a Senior Digital Marketer and Project Manager with 13+ years of experience in Digital Marketing, Lead Generation, Online Brand Management, Marketing Campaigns, Project Management, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), PPC, eMail Marketing, Web Analytics, Web Technologies, Web Design and Development. With an MBA in Marketing. IIM Calcutta Alumini. Lives in Bangalore, Karnataka - India. Receive my latest posts right in your inbox? Enter your email address below to subscribe. Thank you for subscribing, you will be receiving our latest posts right in your inbox.
NASA invites social media followers to apply for credentials to get a preview of the Orion spacecraft's first flight test during NASA Social events Dec. 3 involving each of its 10 centers. Orion will launch on a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket from Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Liftoff is targeted for 4:05 a.m. PST (7:05 a.m. EST) Dec. 4. NASA Socials are in-person events for people who engage with the agency through social media networks. Events will be held simultaneously at NASA centers including: Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California; Glenn Research Center in Cleveland; Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; Johnson Space Center in Houston; Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia; Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama; Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi; and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which is hosting a joint event at JPL with the Armstrong Flight Research Center, Edwards, California. Each center will be connected via a multi-center NASA Television simulcast with NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida during its event, which was previously announced. Along with a discussion on Orion and NASA's plan to send humans to Mars, participants will get a unique behind-the-scenes look at the diverse work of the agency through center tours and presentations by scientists, engineers and managers. The events also will provide guests the opportunity to interact with fellow social media users, space enthusiasts and members of NASA's social media team. Registration for these NASA Socials opens at 2 p.m. PDT (5 p.m. EDT) Friday, Oct. 24, and closes at 2 p.m. PST (5 p.m. EST) Sunday, Nov. 2. People may register for NASA Socials at multiple locations but will be chosen only for one event. All social media accreditation applications will be considered on a case-by-case basis, and the number of attendance slots varies by center. No two locations are the same. Each center has a different itinerary depending on its location. The event being held by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center will take place at JPL in Pasadena, California. Up to 40 social media followers will learn about the Southern California centers' contributions to Orion and NASA's Journey to Mars. The program includes a behind-the-scenes tour of JPL, with stops at the Mars Yard, where engineering models of our Curiosity rover are tested in a sandy Mars-like environment; and the Spacecraft Assembly Facility, where hardware for upcoming projects is under construction. Guests will interact with those who design, build, test and operate the robots that precede human explorers, as well as those developing new technology, like the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD), a system that will help land humans safely on Mars. Experts from NASA Armstrong will discuss their role in testing Orion's Launch Abort System, designed to propel the Crew Module safely from a launch pad or in-flight emergency. An Armstrong pilot will give a briefing on NASA's Ikhana unmanned aircraft system (UAS), which will serve as a chase aircraft feeding live video of the Orion capsule as it makes its way to splashdown on Dec. 4. For more information on each center's activities and the requirements for NASA Social registration, visit: For more information on Orion and its first test flight, visit: Follow the Orion mission on Facebook and Twitter at: For information on connecting and collaborating with NASA, visit: News Media ContactCourtney O'Connor Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
In the last few years the world of creative writing and poetry has gained a lot of traction, both online and in communities across the world. From slam poetry getting millions of views online, to nationwide tours by poets in sold-out venues, to literary festivals being set up which showcase local and national talent, creative writing is no longer related to what’s taught in stuffy classrooms, and this is especially true in South Yorkshire. The area has seen an increase in writing activity, with spoken word nights, open mic nights, indie cabaret, and writing groups being commonplace across nearby cities and towns. These have become popular through the involvement of young people, giving them an opportunity to express themselves which isn’t always possible in school. One organisation channelling this in the region is Hive South Yorkshire. Funded by the Arts Council, Hive provides young people between the ages of 14-25 with opportunities to cut their teeth as writers, develop their voice through showcasing platforms, live and in print, and encourages them to get involved in the writing community. As well as having regular creative writing groups in Sheffield, Doncaster, Barnsley, and Rotherham, Hive also gets in guest writers to run masterclasses, runs projects, holds open mic events and talks, and sends young people off to writing residentials and retreats. They also run competitions for young people, and held a young writers festival earlier this year that attracted 150 writers from across the North. Vicky Morris set up the organisation because she knew the importance of working with young people to discover and explore their own creative voices. She said: “I’ve seen, over a long period of time, the benefits of that kind of work, so I was passionate and sure of what it was capable of. The ethos is to try and create something that has a structure to allow people to progress. “I can’t stress enough the personal development that comes from writing, the way it liberates people.” She has eight years of industry experience behind her, alongside 20 years of work in education. She added: “When you’ve got on-the-ground knowledge of how things work, it’s what motivated me to set it up.” A large amount of inspiration came from her own history, she grew up in a working-class background and has dyslexia, which were part of an uphill struggle for her. She said: “I had imposter syndrome for a long time, even when I started teaching writing, because of the difficulties that I had. One of my passions is to fast-track people to believe in themselves, I know that long-term intervention with people can make a difference.” Another group in South Yorkshire that concentrates on young people’s writing is Verse Matters. It’s a feminist arts collective based in Sheffield that provides a platform for poetry, spoken word, storytelling, music and comedy, showcasing the work of talented people in a friendly, supportive environment. It was originally set up by Rachel Bower in 2015, who is now an Early Career Research Fellow at the University of Leeds. She said: “I could see, in Sheffield, young people were really vibrant and expressing different views to what I was hearing in Parliament. I set Verse Matters up to create this supportive space for young people to speak, and I was also really keen to get diverse performers and create a space where we weren’t hearing the same kinds of people.” They currently run bi-monthly events that have both featured writers and open mic, giving young people an opportunity to get their voices heard. Miss Bower added: “It’s crucial that young people feel like it’s safe to speak, but also that they’re heard and listened to. The more people we hear, the more people will get involved, and that is important.” One person who could not speak any higher about Hive is Georgie Woodhead, 15, who has been involved with them for two years. The young writer from Sheffield said: “I actually started when I was 13 and pretended to be a year older, so I sort of gate-crashed. No one actually cared about that if I wanted to be there, everyone was just taller than me. “I’ve always written and told stories, I just kept on doing it when everyone else stopped. I just thought I’d go along and see what it was like, I was serious about it and wanted to continue writing.” She has since been named as one of 15 winners of the Foyles Young Poets award, which is open to submissions from around the world, as well as being one of two commended poets at the Cuckoo Young Writers awards. She added: “If you ask anyone involved at Hive, they will say writing is incredibly important. It’s a way of connecting with the world and people in a way you have never done before.” Danae Wellington, who works on Hive’s ‘Hatch’ programme, says it best: “They champion young people and tirelessly strive to create platforms for us to safely bring ourselves in our entirety, to give us hope and opportunity to discover our best selves.“
Weʼve raised £0 to my disability money as stoped I’m on appeal I’m agoraphobia and personality disorder plus much more if u can spare 1 pound I’d appreciate it - Closed on Monday, 18th March 2019 Crowdfunding is a new type of fundraising where you can raise funds for your own personal cause, even if you're not a registered nonprofit. The page owner is responsible for the distribution of funds raised. Asking for help Updates appear here Claire Skitt started crowdfunding Leave a message of support Crowdfunding stories like this Great people make things happen Do you know anyone in need or maybe want to help a local community cause? Create you own page and donʼt let that cause go unfunded!About Crowdfunding
It can be as easy as cutting the blue plastic ribbon off your bananas. You and the kids will be more likely to grab a banana if there is one less step to the process. Doesn’t that sound ridiculous? It’s true! As hard as it is, I try to build time into my ‘grocery shopping’ to include the food prep once I get home. It doesn’t always happen bc life just doesn’t work like that but you can guarantee if it doesn’t happen, I am throwing away produce. Wash the berries, cut the carrots, skin the cucumber! Once everything is in containers in your fridge, you can devour! And you will be more likely to go to this than the pantry if it is ready to go! Nuts are a snack we always have available. In fact, you don’t ever have to search for them because they are sitting on the counter. Our mixture contains raw almonds, walnuts and cashews and a few raisins. It is a great snack for the kids in their lunch or when they get home from school and it is especially good for me when I am in the process of cooking dinner but famished!!! Eat a handful of the mixture and I then don’t overeat. Other great food preps we do that making eating healthy more convenient (because let’s face it-that is the world we live in-if it is not convenient, we don’t do it) include cooking sweet potatoes once or twice a week so that they are ready to be heated up easily in the morning. Our youngest wakes up every morning saying ‘Tatoes and Eggs?!’ and we love to have sweet potatoes with our eggs and sausage every morning. If it wasn’t prepared and waiting for me in the fridge, we wouldn’t eat them. It has just become part of our routine to peel, cut and steam 3 sweet potatoes every Sunday and then again throughout the week if we run out. Buying a couple pounds of chicken breasts and grilling them or cooking them in the crockpot is always a great food prep for the week. They are so incredibly versatile when it comes to using for meals-fajitas, chicken on a salad, chicken salad, in a chili, just chicken and veggies. If I don’t cook chicken breasts for the week you can guarantee there is an already cooked rotisserie chicken in the fridge! I don’t go too crazy on food prep because I’m all about doing the small things that I can maintain over a long period of time…like forever. I could absolutely cook and put together already made lunches for my husband and I for the week but that takes a ton of effort and I don’t want to eat the same thing day after day. In fact, if it is sitting there waiting for me to eat it, the rebellious side of me wants nothing to do with it. I want what I can’t have. It is very important to find healthy alternatives that you LOVE and that work in your life.
Signup to receive the Early Edition in your inbox here. Before the start of business, Just Security provides a curated summary of up-to-the-minute developments at home and abroad. Here’s today’s news. A U.S. plan for a border force in northern Syria consisting of the U.S.-backed Kurdish (Y.P.G.)-led Syrian Democratic Forces (S.D.F.) has fueled tensions with Turkey, Turkey considers the Y.P.G. to be an extension of the Turkish-based Kurdistan Workers’ Party (P.K.K.) – which is designated as a terrorist group by Turkey and the U.S. – and President Reçep Tayyip Erdoğan warned Tuesday that Turkey would “destroy all terror nests one by one in Syria,” starting with the cities of Afrin and Manbij. Sune Engel Rasmussen, Nancy A. Youssef and Dion Nissenbaum report at the Wall Street Journal. “Turkey has reached the limits of its patience. Nobody should expect Turkey to show more patience,” the Turkish Deputy Prime Minister and Government spokesperson Bekir Bozdag told reporters yesterday, saying that Turkey would carry out its threat of an imminent operation in Afrin unless the U.S. withdrew its support for a border force. The Secretary of State Rex Tillerson denied the plans, saying that “some people misspoke,” that the U.S. is “not creating a border security force at all” and that the U.S. intention was only “to ensure that local elements are providing security to liberated areas,” Dominic Evans and Tuvan Gumrukcu report at Reuters. “This is not a new ‘army’ or conventional ‘border guard’ force,” the Pentagon said in a statement yesterday, adding that the U.S. was continuing to train local security forces in Syria to “enhance security for displaced persons returning to their devastated communities.” Reuters reports. Tillerson pledged to maintain the presence of U.S. troops in Syria to ensure that the Islamic State group are comprehensively defeated and said in a major policy speech yesterday that history would not “repeat itself,” referring to the Obama administration’s policy of withdrawing troops from Iraq before the threat of extremism was extinguished and Obama’s failure to stabilize Libya after N.A.T.O.’s intervention. Gardiner Harris reports at the New York Times. The U.S. strategy in Syria intends to focus on Iran’s presence in the country and its activities in the region as the threat posed by the Islamic State group diminishes, Tillerson said yesterday, stating that Iran has expanded its influence “by deploying Iranian Revolutionary Guard troops, supporting Lebanese Hezbollah and importing proxy forces from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere.” Alexa Corse reports at the Wall Street Journal. Tillerson set out the Trump administration’s aims in Syria during the speech: overcoming extremism, ousting Iran and achieving a peace settlement that excludes a role for the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. However, Tillerson’s speech comes against the backdrop of a looming crisis on the Syria-Turkey border and the U.S. proposal for a 30,000 border force to protect the Kurdish-controlled area of northeastern Syria, Liz Sly and Carol Morello report at the Washington Post. Tillerson urged Russia to “exert its unique leverage” to reach a political settlement in Syria and engage with U.N. efforts, Katrina Manson and Erika Solomon report at the Financial Times. “Assad’s regime is corrupt” and his oppression “cannot persist forever,” Tillerson said yesterday, Max Greenwood reporting at the Hill. The U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura has invited the Syrian government and the opposition to a special meeting in Vienna on Jan. 25-26, the meeting would have a “specific focus” on constitutional issues and the implementation of Security Council resolution 2254, which calls for a new constitution, U.N.-supervised elections and accountable governance structures. Reuters reports. An explanation of Turkey’s threatened operation against Kurdish fighters in Syria is provided by the BBC. The U.S.-proposed border force is seen as a betrayal in Turkey, while the U.S. presence makes sense in terms of shoring up support for the Kurds and curbing Iran’s expansionism, the administration has not taken into consideration Turkey’s concerns. Nick Paton Walsh writes at CNN. U.S.-led airstrikes continue. U.S. and coalition forces carried out 96 airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq between January 5 and January 11. [Central Command] “Russia is not helping us at all with North Korea,” Trump said in an interview yesterday, stating that while China was helping to put pressure on the regime, Russia was helping Pyongyang to evade sanctions, and adding that he would sit down for talks with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, but he’s “not sure that sitting down will solve the problem.” Steve Holland, Roberta Rampton and Jeff Mason report at Reuters. The Secretary of State Rex Tillerson yesterday accused Russia of not implementing all U.N. sanctions against North Korea and said that there was “some evidence they may be frustrating some of the sanctions.” Reuters reports. South Korea will continue talks with North Korea with “clear eyes,” the South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-ha said today, adding that Seoul had to “make the most” of the opportunity. The BBC reports. North Korean and South Korea athletes have agreed to march under a single flag at the opening of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in South Korea next month, South Korea said yesterday, however the agreement could drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington as they have seemingly diverged in their approach to the Pyongyang regime. Andrew Jeong and Jonathan Cheng report at the Wall Street Journal. “We have to be very clear-eyed” about the North Korean threat, the Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said today in talks with the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, warning that North Korea’s outreach does not mean that the Pyongyang regime will change its behavior and commit to denuclearization. Mari Yamaguchi reports at the AP. The intra-Korean talks are welcome, but North Korea are “still continuing to pursue their nuclear development,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) said yesterday after returning from a trip to Japan and South Korea along with Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.). Rebecca Kheel reports at the Hill. South Korea “are undercutting what Trump’s trying to do” by engaging with North Korea, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said yesterday. Ellen Mitchell reports at the Hill. The North-South Korea détente complicates Trump’s strategy to put pressure on the Pyongyang regime to denuclearize, the easing of tensions on the Korean Peninsula and the symbolic gesture of unity planned for the Winter Olympics is not expected to translate into a broader breakthrough in the nuclear standoff. Choe Sang-Hun and Mark Landler explain at the New York Times. Trump yesterday denied that the U.S. Embassy in Israel would relocate to Jerusalem by the end of this year, Trump announced in December that the U.S. would recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move its embassy there from Tel Aviv. Reuters reports. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said it recognized that the construction of a U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem would take time but that it believes Washington is considering “interim measures that could result in an embassy opening much faster.” Reuters reports. The U.N. has urged the international community to provide funding for Palestinian refugees after the U.S. decided to withhold $65m of relief to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (U.N.R.W.A.), the Palestinian Liberation Organization stated that “Palestinian refugees and children’s access to basic humanitarian services [are] not a bargaining chip but a U.S. and international obligation.” Rory Jones reports at the Wall Street Journal. The U.S. decision to cut funds to U.N.R.W.A. has sparked the agency’s largest-ever financial crisis, U.R.W.A. has said that it will launch a global fundraising campaign to try to make up the shortfall. Tamara Qiblawi reports at CNN. Belgium has pledged $23m in funds to U.N.R.W.A., the Deputy Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said in a statement, announcing the donation after the U.S. decided to withhold funding. Al Jazeera reports. Debates about U.N.R.W.A. and its role have reignited since the U.S. decision to withhold funds, David M. Halbfinger explains at the New York Times. The former White House chief strategist and Trump campaign adviser Steve Bannon plans to “tell all” to special counsel Robert Mueller when he is questioned about ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, a source close to Bannon said. Peter Nicholas and Byron Tau report at the Wall Street Journal. Bannon has agreed to be interviewed by Mueller and will avoid a grand jury inquiry, but his lawyers have delayed his appearance before the House investigators, stating that the House Intelligence Committee’s demand for an interview today does not allow the lawyers enough time to get clearance from the White House about what Bannon can discuss. During Bannon’s interview with the panel earlier this week, he refused to answer certain questions, citing executive privilege, Karoun Demirjian and Rosalind S. Helderman report at the Washington Post. The White House spoke with the House Intelligence Committee before Bannon’s interview and they agreed to limit questioning of Bannon to the Trump campaign and not to ask about the transition or Bannon’s time in the White House, according to a White House official, adding that the committee broke that agreement. Eamon Javers reports at CNBC. The White House did not tell Bannon to invoke executive privilege, the White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said yesterday, Reuters reports. Republican lawmakers denounced Bannon for refusing to answer questions during his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, with some threatening to hold Bannon in contempt of Congress. Kyle Cheney reports at POLITICO. The former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski refused to answer certain questions during his appearance before the House Intelligence Committee yesterday. Mike Memoli reports at NBC News. Mueller’s team are investigating Russian financial activity within the U.S., including a payment of $120,000 made to former Russian ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak ten days after Trump’s election. Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier report at BuzzFeed News. Facebook has expanded its investigation into Russia interference to the 2016 U.K. referendum on membership of the European Union, Facebook said yesterday. Jenny Gross reports at the Wall Street Journal. ARREST OF EX-C.I.A. OFFICER A feature on the investigation and arrest of former C.I.A. officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee, who is suspected of being a mole and for playing a role in the deaths of C.I.A. sources in China, is provided by Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman at the New York Times. Former U.S. spies and officials have expressed skepticism that Lee would face charges, Shane Harris and Ellen Nakashima explain at the Washington Post. “I think there’s a path forward, but we’ve got to understand the last conversations between the [Trump] administration and Europe first,” the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ben Cardin (D-Md.) told reporters in relation to legislation on Iran and the 2015 nuclear deal. Rebecca Kheel reports at the Hill. Any issues not directly to the deal “should be addressed without prejudice to preserving the agreement,” a spokesperson for the U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned yesterday. Michelle Nichols reports at Reuters. “The specter of violence” in Libya “remains present” and military forces “are flexing their muscles in many parts of the country,” the U.N. envoy for Libya Ghassan Salame told the Security Council yesterday, adding that Libya needs a government to deliver public services and unify the country. Edith M. Lederer reports at the AP. The Pentagon’s new national defense strategy will focus on countering China and Russia and ensuring that the U.S. retains its traditional military advantage. Katrina Manson reports at the Financial Times. The Islamic State group yesterday claimed responsibility for Monday’s suicide bomb attacks in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, the terrorist group were delayed in releasing a statement and made a number of errors in their message, suggesting that their media apparatus has been disrupted since it has lost significant territory in Iraq and Syria. Rukmini Callimachi and Margaret Coker report at the New York Times. The White House chief of staff John Kelly told Democratic lawmakers that some of Trump’s hardline immigration policies he advocated during the campaign were “uninformed,” including the pledge to build a wall on the U.S.’s southern border with Mexico. Ed O’Keefe reports at the Washington Post. Saudi Arabia yesterday pledged to inject $2bn to stabilize Yemen’s national currency, the fall in currency and high inflation has raised the cost of crucial goods and more than eight million people are at the risk of starvation, the Saudi measure comes amid international criticism of its role in Yemen’s war. Asa Fitch and Saleh al-Batati report at the Wall Street Journal. The House passed the Cyber Diplomacy Act yesterday, restoring a State Department office to engage with the international community on cybersecurity policy. Morgan Chalfant reports at the Hill. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson plans to visit Britain next week to visit the new U.S. embassy in London, Reuters reports. The former U.S. ambassadors to 48 African nations have called on Trump to reassess his views of the continent after it was reported that he called countries there and other nations a “shithole.” Felicia Schwartz reports at the Wall Street Journal. A survey of opinion in 134 countries has found a collapse in global confidence in U.S. leadership, the approval for the U.S. role in the world has fallen to a new low. Julian Borger reports at the Guardian.
Arthritis can take many forms, but they all cause painful, swollen joints that limit dexterity and mobility. The team of expert podiatrists at Kalmar Family Podiatry in Huntington, New York, have considerable experience in helping people with arthritis in their feet and ankles, and they have a range of effective treatment options to help you manage your arthritis. Call the clinic today to find out more, or book an appointment online. Arthritis means joint inflammation and is a term used to describe more than 100 diseases that cause inflammation of the joints, pain, and stiffness. Rheumatoid arthritis is the most serious form of the disease and often affects the ankles and toes. The most common form of arthritis is osteoarthritis, which is a wear and tear form of arthritis that usually develops as people age. As you age, the cartilage that covers the ends of bones and allows them to move fluidly against each other start to deteriorate. When the cartilage breaks down, the ends of the bones start rubbing against each other, causing pain and inflammation. As a result, the joints swell, and in time they can begin to twist and become misshapen. Feet and ankles are subject to daily pressure and strain from supporting your body weight, so they endure a terrific amount of stress during your lifetime. Your foot has 28 bones and over 30 joints within it, so there are many potential areas where arthritis could set in. Symptoms of arthritis in the foot and ankle may include: If you’re experiencing any of these symptoms, you should contact Kalmar Family Podiatry to arrange a consultation. Your podiatrist can then take a look at your medical history and examine your feet to find out what could be causing your symptoms. They can also use X-rays or an MRI scan to confirm the diagnosis and the extent of the joint damage. Arthritis isn’t curable, but there are a variety of treatments available at Kalmar Family Podiatry, including: Some patients may require surgery for the effects of arthritis when other treatment options aren’t providing relief. Fusion surgery or arthrodesis involves fusing the affected bones with pins or plates, or in rare cases, joint replacement surgery might be advisable. To find the most effective solutions for arthritis or any kind of chronic pain in your feet and ankles, call Kalmar Family Podiatry today, or book an appointment online.
Increasingly, studies in the field of positive psychology are emphasizing a new, beneficial brand of perfectionism. Positive striving, adaptive perfectionism, normal perfectionism—the healthy kind of perfectionism goes by a lot of different monikers, all with refreshingly constructive connotations. Regardless of what you call it, the verdict is in: using perfectionistic traits to your advantage and actively working to minimize the negative aspects of perfectionism can significantly contribute to increases in self-esteem, positive social interactions, overall happiness, successful goal-attainment, and a bunch of other good stuff. So how do you make the shift from perfectionist to perfectionistic? Here are 3 things that healthy perfectionists do: 1. Healthy perfectionists outsource their disappointments. When something doesn’t go according to plan, you take responsibility where it’s due, but you also look at what else was happening that was outside of your control. You look for external attributions to get the whole perspective on what happened and why. You typically encounter a feeling of disappointment like, “Well that was unfortunate, but I can’t control everything,” and then you move on. Unhealthy perfectionists don’t do this, opting instead to try and maximize control in every way, then ruthlessly blaming themselves for not being able to yield the desired result (regardless of how unpredictable or unrealistic the goal was). 2. Healthy perfectionists know the difference between aspirational and successful. When I say aspirational, I’m talking about the brannan filtered / ‘partner at the top firm but totally relaxed and approachable' / ‘just hangin out on a ranch with windswept hair in my $3,000 coat’ kind of lifestyle-branding that’s pushed along to NYC women as almost attainable…if you would just get your expletive together. These dangerously normalized versions of achievement completely discount the most important part about having an ideal or an aspirational vision to begin with, which is that ideals are not meant to be achieved--they're just supposed to inspire. When you mistake aspirational for successful, nothing you do is ever good enough. 3. Healthy perfectionists monogram their success. Meaning, healthy perfectionists make success personal to them. Unhealthy perfectionists ask: What would be the best version of a relationship? Healthy perfectionists ask: What would be the best version of a relationship for me at this particular point in my life? I fully believe in all the ten tenets I developed to help guide my practice, but #3 is especially relevant here. Accordingly, if shifting from a perfectionist to perfectionistic is a change you really want to make, give yourself the space and time to make it.
WASHINGTON — Immigrants are entitled to accurate legal advice on the potential for deportation if they plead guilty to a crime, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday in a Kentucky case that could affect the nation's more than 12.8 million legal immigrants. The case, Padilla v. Kentucky, focused on José Padilla, a Honduran-born immigrant who faces deportation after pleading guilty to felony marijuana trafficking. Padilla isn't the so-called "dirty bomber," a U.S. citizen of the same name convicted of conspiring to aid terrorists. In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court backed Padilla's position and reversed the judgment of the Kentucky Supreme Court, which had ruled that the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of competent legal counsel doesn't protect defendants from incorrect deportation advice because deportation is a "collateral" consequence of conviction. The justices left it to a lower court to determine whether Padilla's guilty plea should be thrown out. "It is our responsibility under the Constitution to ensure that no criminal defendant — whether a citizen or not — is left to the 'mercies of incompetent counsel,' " Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in the majority opinion. "To satisfy this responsibility, we now hold that counsel must inform her client whether his plea carries a risk of deportation." Although Justice Samuel Alito agreed with the court's majority opinion, he expressed concerns that requiring criminal defense attorneys not well-versed in immigration law to advise clients about the consequences of a guilty plea could "lead to much confusion and needless litigation." Justice Antonin Scalia, in writing the dissent, agreed with Alito's concerns. "In the best of all possible worlds, criminal defendants contemplating a guilty plea ought to be advised of all serious collateral consequences of conviction, and surely ought not to be misadvised," Scalia wrote. "The Constitution, however, is not an all-purpose tool for judicial construction of a perfect world: and when we ignore its text in order to make it that, we often find ourselves swinging a sledge where a tack hammer is needed." In 2001, Padilla, a Vietnam War veteran, truck driver and legal permanent U.S. resident for 40 years, was pulled over at a Kentucky weigh station and arrested when Styrofoam boxes containing 1,033 pounds of marijuana were found in his 18-wheeler. Padilla was charged with several state crimes and felony drug trafficking. He originally pleaded not guilty but was detained for a year pending investigation of possible deportation. The following year, Padilla agreed to a plea agreement of reduced prison time after his court-appointed attorney told him that a guilty plea wouldn't affect his immigration status. That advice was wrong. Padilla was sentenced to five years in prison and five years of probation and now faces deportation. Stephen Kinnaird, who argued the case for Padilla to the Supreme Court, said the decision recognizes "the increased intertwining of criminal and immigration law." "This should avert many of the tragedies that occur when lawful permanent residents are not advised that a guilty plea, even to minor criminal offenses, would result in their immediate deportation," he said. Justice Stevens said he doubted whether the decision will affect old plea bargains for immigrants. Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia already require their trial courts to advise defendants of possible immigration consequences of guilty pleas, Stevens said.
Recently, I had an interesting interview with Kevin W. Grossman, who is the creator and host of the Reach West Radio Show, a learning show about “the effectual stretch.” Kevin and I discussed how we are working towards achieving Kidpower’s “effective stretch” vision of empowering the well being of every person on the planet while keeping our quality high as we grow. We shared lessons we’ve learned in how to balance ourselves so that we can live our lives more joyfully rather than stressfully most of the time, including: - Mindfulness so that we are fully embracing and living the present moment. - Gratitude so that we are appreciating what IS instead of wasting time and energy being upset about what is NOT. - Understanding so that we recognize what gets in the way of our being our best selves and living according to our own true values – and how the “People Safety” skills that Kidpower teaches such as setting boundaries, managing our emotional triggers, and getting help are important tools for overcoming these obstacles. Kevin shared a personal story about the impact of trauma in his own life as a vivid example of the truth of the results of the ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) Study, which included thousands of participants over many years. The ACEs Study documents how the bad things that happen in childhood, unless addressed, can leave us more vulnerable to a lot of health issues and emotional problems. Knowing this, we can understand the importance of preventing Adverse Childhood Experiences and, if something happens, know the urgency of getting help in healing from the harm done. You can listen to our interview by going to: It’s also available in iTunes and soon to be in Stitcher. The name of Kevin’s show – “Reach West” – is a metaphor for the effectual stretch. The “effective stretch” means to stretch oneself and others by learning new ways to see and understand our worlds of work and life, and to expand beyond what’s known and comfortable in ways that produce desired yet diverse, highly personalized and usually effective results. This could mean the literal extremes of big success or failure, or those incremental leaps and lapses in between that give our daily journeys sustenance for mind, body and spirit. Published: March 19, 2016 \| Last Updated: March 19, 2016
Organizations Serving All Ages and Abilities We work with youth and other community groups to provide interactive workshops with children and teens on their own sites at times that work well for them. We also provide training for professionals and group organizers. The aim is to teach simple and effective People Safety skills that are directly relevant to the group within the context of the organization. We provide tailored workshops that address the specific needs of groups such as: - Parent/teacher associations - Scout troops - Teams and clubs - Afterschool programs - Summer camps - Neighborhood associations For a definition and explanation of the tools we provide, please see What Is People Safety? - Safety with Feelings and Words – how to protect yourself from hurting words - Being Powerful to Be Safe – how to use your body to prevent most trouble before it starts - Safety with Touch and Teasing – how to set boundaries with people you know - Getting Help to Be Safe – how to make safety plans and be persistent in getting help from busy adults - Checking and Thinking First to be Safe – how to check and think first before you change your plan about WHERE you are going, WHAT you are doing, and WHO you are with, including how to be safe with strangers - Using Personal Safety Skills Everywhere You Go – how to apply People Safety skills to different kinds of problems, including bullying Just follow these simple steps: - Choose a workshop. We’ll talk about options with you! - Pick a date - Find a location - Arrange for fees, grants or donations to cover costs - Sign-up your group members - The workshop happens! Email us for more information. Our Store sells publications such as our cartoon-illustrated Safety Comics and Curriculum Teaching Books for children, teens, and adults that introduce personal safety skills in basic language that individuals with limited reading skills as well as the general public have found to be important, respectful, and relevant. Our Store also sells our Kidpower Introductory Guide, our Kidpower Book for Caring Adults, our Relationship Safety Book, our 10 Safety Assignments, our 15 Safety Lessons, and our Comprehensive Program Manuals. These materials show how to teach People Safety skills and concepts to the important children, teens, and adults in your life. We also train teachers and other professionals to include Kidpower in their lessons and programs so that young people everywhere can learn Kidpower!
Prefab styrofoam dome house, another futuristic Japanese design The Innuit who live in northern Canada once built homes out of ice blocks. Now a modular home manufacturer, Japan Dome House Co. Ltdhave come up with styrofoam dome houses. These houses are produced in sections and are designed to be assembled easily and quickly by a few people. There are already 480 of these houses at the Aso Farm Land village resort in Kyushu which are used as accommodation, recreation and as retail shops. The most outstanding feature is the low cost which starts at under $30,000. However, the dome house has a long list of other benefits. It is very light – weighing only 80 kg. The 7 inch thick walls provides thermal insulation. The walls are coated with fire retardant making the houses fireproof. Being what it is, the dome house will not rust, rot and is definitely not termite food. It is also earthquake and gale resistant – the latter due to the dome’s low wind resistance profile. Both the exterior and the interior can be customized. The company also offers “long domes” and dome styles which can be linked together. These domes are very versatile. They can be made into guest houses, meeting rooms, hotel rooms, steam rooms, bars, restaurants, freezer rooms and even karaoke bars! Join in and write your own page! It's easy to do. How? Simply click here to return to News portal.
Nitric acid vapors released at US Nitrogen plant in Greene County The US Nitrogen plant in Greene County experienced a release of nitric acid vapors Wednesday evening, the company said in a statement. No workers were injured. The release happened around 6:30 p.m., the company said. "As part of standard operating procedure, US Nitrogen notified 911, the Greeneville/Greene County Office of Emergency Management and the Greeneville Fire Department. The Office of Emergency Management is notifying nearby residents of the release as part of its protocol," the statement says. "For the safety of our workers and the community, US Nitrogen will cooperate with these agencies and will investigate the cause of the release to ensure that the issues are resolved." The Greeneville Sun reported that Greene County Mayor David Crum and Sheriff Pat Hankins held a news conference at the plant to address concerns. Crum and Hankins said the leak was contained by the time they arrived on the scene and that state and emergency officials are assisting the facility, according to the newspaper. The Sun reported that the Greeneville-Greene County Hazardous Materials Unit was at the plant for nearly three hours testing the air quality, which they deemed to be safe.
Report Ranks Missouri Near Top for Largest Gap Between Rich and Middle Class COLUMBIA - A report released Thursday ranked Missouri seventh in the nation for having the largest growth in the gap between the rich and middle class. Middle income households saw income fall by 4.6 percent while the top fifth saw their income rise by 6.9 percent from the late 1990s to the mid 2000s. This means the middle class earned $2,898 less each year while the top fifth earned $10,318 more each year. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute conducted the report. The two organizations said the income of the richest fifth of households were 7.3 times larger than incomes of the poorest in the late 2000s. At the same time, the income of the richest five percent were 11.7 times larger than the poorest fifth. The report blamed the rise in inequality on weak wage growth, government policies and expansion of investments. To fix the problems, the report cited raising minimum wage, improving unemployment insurance programs and making tax systems more progressive. To look at the report in its entirety, click here.
It sure looks suspicious: a remote military compound in the south-central Alaskan wilderness filled with 180 weird-looking antennas. It's the home of the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP). Conspiracy theorists have accused the program of doing everything from mind control to global communications jamming. Now HAARP's many conspiracies, along ...Read More Source: NPR Science - ingested into KQED
Important Burnished and Matte Gilt Bronze Centerpiece for a Surtout de Table, Empire period Call +33 1 45 61 44 55 Pierre-Philippe Thomire Important Burnished and Matte Gilt Bronze Centerpiece for a Surtout de Table Paris, Empire period, circa 1805 -1810 Height 71 cm; diameter 35 cm Made entirely of finely chased matte and burnished gilt bronze, this exceptional centerpiece from a surtout de table stands out due to the extraordinary quality of its chasing and gilding. Three sculptural figures, representing three dancing bacchantes, all dressed in short tunics and coiffed with grape wreaths. With both hands they hold aloft a round, partially pierced basket that is adorned with grape and grape leaf motifs, with a central rosette decorating its plain interior. The high stepped cylindrical base has a plain plinth decorated with a low relief rosette like that of the basket; it is adorned with elaborate applied motifs depicting winged putti bearing flower garlands on their shoulders. The piece is supported on a plinth with sloping molding that is decorated with a stiff leaf frieze. The very unusual design of this very rare centerpiece makes it one of the most elaborate and luxurious Parisian creations of the early 19th century; it may be confidently attributed to Pierre-Philippe Thomire. Today only a small number of similar pieces are known, most featuring variations. Most of these are signed by Thomire. Among them one model, featuring two bacchantes holding thyrsi, which is surmounted by candle branches, is in the San Francisco Fine Arts Museum (illustrated in H. Ottomeyer and P. Pröschel, Vergoldete Bronzen, Die Bronzearbeiten des Spätbarock und Klassizismus, Band I, Munich, 1986, p. 387, fig. 5.16.14). A second example, probably purchased by Lord Stuart de Rothesay, stands in the ceremonial dining room of the British Embassy in Paris (see J.N. Ronfort and J-D. Augarde, A l’ombre de Pauline, La résidence de l’ambassadeur de Grande-Bretagne à Paris, Paris, 2001, p. 63). A third example, with three hieratic female figures, is illustrated in Musée François Duesberg, Arts décoratifs 1775-1825, Pendules à sujets exotiques et bronzes dorés français, Bruxelles, 1998, p. 24. A fourth example, with winged dancing putti, is in the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris (illustrated in L. de Groër, Les arts décoratifs de 1790 à 1850, Office du Livre, Fribourg, 1985, p. 284, fig. 543). A fifth piece, which is very similar to the present example, is in the Sans-Souci Palace in Postdam (see the exhibition catalogue Russische und Französische Bronzen des Empire, Aus der Sammlung der Museen von Petrodvoretz, Staatliche Schlösser und Gärten Postdam-Sanssouci, 1990, p. 36, catalogue n° 26). A centerpiece from a surtout signed Thomire, which is identical to the present piece, but whose upper basket is much less elaborate, is today in the Hôtel de Brienne in Paris (which today houses the Defense Ministry) (illustrated in E. Pénicault, A. Gady and J-P. Samoyault, L’Hôtel de Brienne, Les Editions de l’Esplanade, Paris, 2016, p. 110). Pierre-Philippe Thomire (1757-1853) was the most important Parisian bronzier of the last quarter of the 18th century and the first decades of the following century. Early on in his career he worked for Pierre Gouthière, ciseleur-fondeur du roi, and toward the mid-1770’s began working with Louis Prieur. He later became one of the bronziers attached to the Manufacture Royale de Sèvres, creating the bronze mounts for most of the important creations of the day. After the Revolution, he purchased the stock of Martin-Eloi Lignereux, thus becoming the most important suppliers of furniture bronzes for châteaux and Imperial Palaces. In addition, he worked for a wealthy private clientele, both French and foreign, including several of Napoleon’s Marshals. Thomire retired in 1823. Fine and Large Malachite and Chased Gilt Bronze Tazza, first third of the 19th century de Sèvres Royale de Porcelaine Important Pair of Etruscan Style Vases with Neoclassical Gold and Platinum Motifs on a Blue Ground, Louis-Philippe period Sébastien Youf Important Mahogany Tripod Guéridon with Mahogany Veneer and Finely Chased Gilt Bronze Mounts, late Empire period, Adam Weisweiler Important Pair of Yew-Veeered and Gilt Bronze “à brisure” Commodes, Louis XVI period de Sèvres Royale de Porcelaine A Rare Pair of Hard-Paste Porcelain Vases with Gilt Motifs on a White Ground “Vases Médicis troisième grandeur à têtes de Jupiter”, Second Republic period Pierre-Philippe Thomire Important Matte Gilt Bronze, Italian Red Griotte Marble, and Colored Paris Porcelain “Egyptiennes” Mantelpiece, early Empire period
Say hello to Rinorea niccolifera, described in the open-access journal PhytoKeys. The leaves of the plant are special. Like a few other plants around the world, R. niccolifera is a ‘hypernickelophore’. In simple English, if you were to examine a gramme of a dry leaf, 7,168 to 18,388 μg would be Nickel. That’s around 1%. The discoverers, Edwino S. Fernando, Marilyn O. Quimado and Augustine I. Doronila note that’s around the same as Rinorea bengalensis which shows that Rinorea has pretty much worked out how to live in high-Nickel environoments. That’s interesting, not so much for where the plants are, but for where they could be. Phytomining and phytoremediation are ideas that plants could be used to mine or clean polluted areas by accumulating metals. The plants draw up the metals into the leaves and then you harvest and extract them, till an area is cleaned up. It’s not going to happen overnight, you can’t simply drop these plants into trouble spots and leave them to work. There’ll need to be careful breeding or genetic modification, but recent research on Alysseae shows that metal-tolerance is something plants can pick up or drop as they need. Other research shows that calcium could be a problem for plants picking up cobalt and nickel, but adding some sulphur to a site could help fix that. Usually when people think of plant technology, it’s about crop growing or pharmaceutical applications. There’s also potential for plants to take over some industrial processes. Somewhere in the genes of Rinorea is a potential gold mine. (If you plant it over gold) Fernando E., Quimado M. & Doronila A. (2014). Rinorea niccolifera (Violaceae), a new, nickel-hyperaccumulating species from Luzon Island, Philippines, PhytoKeys, 37 1-13. DOI: 10.3897/phytokeys.37.7136 Cecchi L., Gabbrielli R., Arnetoli M., Gonnelli C., Hasko A. & Selvi F. (2010). Evolutionary lineages of nickel hyperaccumulation and systematics in European Alysseae (Brassicaceae): evidence from nrDNA sequence data, Annals of Botany, 106 (5) 751-767. DOI: 10.1093/aob/mcq162 Robinson B. Soil Amendments Affecting Nickel and Cobalt Uptake by Berkheya coddii: Potential Use for Phytomining and Phytoremediation, Annals of Botany, 84 (6) 689-694. DOI: 10.1006/anbo.1999.0970 Rinorea niccolifera. Photo by Dr. Edwino S. Fernando. This image licensed under a Creative Commons by licence.
In Business Survey create your own poll custom Customize the questions and answers Choose how to display options, Picker/List Edit your content (questions and answers) View your responses graphically (Areas or Circular) Get results according to the parameters; start/end date, questions/answers, etc.. Send the graph or data by email Restart the survey to start another one Choose. Your Nationality Select. Your Language Select. How did you know us? Select in what website did you find the event? Select, what is the hall of the event? Select, who is the artist? Select, do you know this event? Select, What other shows have been or intend to do? Select, How many days are you staying in the city? Select, What souvenirs did you buy or plan to buy? Indicate nationality issue Indicate answer editing Indicate question editing Presentation has two formats, Picker/Roulette Build statistical graphics Choose the date and industry characteristics surveyed, to obtain the statistical graph of your survey *Remember that this will change as the data selected Choose from two graphic formats; Areas/Circular For a better view of graphic screen, performs a rotation Send graph by email
Thomas Edison suggests using the word hello as a telephone greeting. The idea catches on. All posts tagged ‘Mark Twain’ 1910: Earth passes through the tail of Halley’s comet. The anticipation of its arrival creates quite a stir. In some circles, the comet’s unusually close approach is seen as a sign of impending doom, a notion the down-market press does little to dispel. The comet was named for British astronomer Edmond Halley, the first to […]
Charter school funds spread thin The budget will grow more slowly than the increase in students Hawaii's charter schools, already preparing to get less state money per student next academic year, will have to share their budget with yet another school that gained approval to open its doors. Hawaii Technology Academy will be among four new alternative schools that will tap into a proposed $56.1 million charter budget in the 2008-09 school year. The academy, which expects to enroll up to 250 students on Oahu, was selected by the Charter School Review Panel last Thursday to fill the last of three available slots for startup charters this year, said panel Chairman Alvin Parker. The two other startups are Kawaikini New Century, a Hawaiian-language immersion school slated for Kauai, and Kona Pacific on the Big Island. Kamaile Elementary, a regular Department of Education school in Waianae that became a charter this year, brings the number of charters to 31. While the state's charter budget will grow by about $5 million next school year, the appropriation is $15.8 million short of what charters had sought from Gov. Linda Lingle, and per-pupil funding is predicted to drop because of increased enrollment. Under the proposed allocation, some 8,000 charter schools students would each get about $7,000 next year, down $1,000 from what is given to 6,239 students today, said Bob Roberts, chief financial officer for the charters. Lingle's senior policy adviser, Linda Smith, acknowledged enrollment projections for charters have risen since the administration finalized its executive budget. She said the administration is working with lawmakers to check whether any adjustments can be made. "What we are trying to do is see how we can increase that per-student amount," Smith said. Dozens of charter school students held a rally at the state Capitol last week to lobby for funds, but Sen. Rosalyn Baker, chairwoman of the Ways and Means Committee, said it is unlikely money would be added to the budget so close to the end of the legislative session. Baker (D, Honokohau-Makena) said she was surprised to learn about Hawaii Technology Academy's approval "late last week." "We ought to rewrite the entire charter funding mechanism," she said. "It doesn't give either the Legislature or the charters any comfort in predictability." Parker, who is also the principal of Ka Waihona O Ka Naauao Public Charter School in Nanakuli, said his school stands to lose $533,000. As chairman of the review panel, Parker said he was aware that authorizing four more charters would affect his school's finances. "I knew I was going to hurt my school," he said, "but that's not the applicants' concern. They want to have a charter school, and they put their very best foot forward and they deserve for us to be ethical about it." Charter schools enjoy autonomy from the Education Department on curriculum, spending and personnel decisions. Historically, there has been concern that charter school students have gotten less money than traditional public school students, who were each funded by about $11,531 in the 2006-07 school year. But charter schools get extra money for special education and other services from the Education Department, making the funding comparison difficult to make, officials say.
WILKIE next finished a painting commissioned by Lord Stafford entitled The Breakfast, of which he writes in the month of April, 1817 : ” I think it will make an impression, but I almost grudge the long time it has taken me.” This admirable painting is now at Trentham, and is one of the finest works of the British school that my grandfather, then Marquis of Stafford and afterwards first Duke of Sutherland, obtained, although he was a great buyer of modern as well as of old pictures. Nothing could be happier in treatment than the small body of actors in this scene of domestic everyday life, into which Wilkie again introduced the portrait of his mother. Lord Stafford paid Wilkie four hundred guineas for The Breakfast. It is but little known, as it was only engraved on a small scale, and has not, to my knowledge, ever been exhibited. Happily, unlike so many of Wilkie’s later works, it has not suffered from asphaltum or other varnish, and appears as fresh as when first painted. It is an admirable specimen of the artist’s power in extracting charm from a commonplace subject simply a man and a woman and a younger man sitting at a breakfast table, with a maid pouring out tea. Whilst occupied with this picture and the Chelsea Pensioners, Wilkie was also at work on a large canvas for the Prince Regent, The Scottish Wedding, or, as it is often called, The Penny Wedding. Wilkie was again in Scotland in the summer of 1817. This time he had no home to go to, but from his constant letters to his mother and his sister it seems that he paid several visits, one of the most interesting being to the celebrated philosopher Dugald Stewart, who was then living at Kinneill House, which belonged to the Duke of Hamilton, and had the glamour of possessing a ghost, that of Lady Lilburne. From Glasgow, which, strange to say, reminded the artist of Antwerp and Ghent, Wilkie visited Hamilton Palace to see its paintings. Then he went to Inverary, but, oddly enough, makes no mention of the Gainsboroughs there. Early in August he had an invitation to Abbotsford. “I cannot, nowadays,” Sir Walter Scott wrote to him, “pre-tend to point out any good Highland originals, to be rendered immortal on your canvas, for the old Forty-Five men, of whom I knew many in the days of yore, are now gathered to their fathers ; but I am sure you will be gratified by the scenery which time cannot make any impression upon.” Wilkie paid this visit in October. Sir Adam Ferguson (then Captain Ferguson) was also a guest, and it was for him that Wilkie painted his famous Abbotsford group. ” I have been making a little group while here,” he writes to his sister on October 30th, “of Mr. Scott, Mrs. Scott, and all the family, with Captain Ferguson, and some other characters. … I have got a good way on with the picture; the Misses Scott are dressed as country girls, with pails, as if they had come from milking; Mr. Scott as telling a story; and in one corner I have put in a great dog of the Highland breed, a present to Mr. Scott from the Laird of Glengarry. In the background the top of the Cowdenknowes, the Tweed and Melrose (as seen from a hill close by), are to be introduced.” There is a much more detailed as well as humorous account of this little group of the great Sir Walter Scott with his family and friends gathered about him, written by himself. ” The idea,” Sir Walter writes, “which our inimitable Wilkie adopted was to represent our family group in the garb of south-country peasants supposed to be concocting a merry-making. The place is the terrace near Kayside, commanding an extensive view towards the Eildon Hills. The sitting figure, in the dress of a miller, represents Sir W. Scott, author of a few score of volumes, and proprietor of Abbotsford in the county of Roxburgh. In the front, and representing a country wag somewhat addicted to preaching, stands Sir Adam Ferguson, Knight, Keeper of the Regalia of Scotland. In the background is a very handsome old man, upwards of eighty-four years old at the time, painted in his own character as a shepherd. He also belonged to the numerous clan of Scott. Of the three female figures the eldest is the late regretted mother of the family represented; the young person most forward in the group is Miss Sophia Charlotte Scott, now Mrs. John Gibson Lockhart ; and the other is her sister Miss Anne Scott. Both are represented as ewe-milkers, with their ‘ leglins’ or milk-pails. On the left hand of the shepherd, the young man holding the fowling-piece is the eldest son of Sir Walter, now captain in the King’s Hussars. The boy is the youngest of the family, Charles Scott, now of Brazenose College, Oxford. The two dogs were distinguished favourites of the family. The large one was a staghound of the old Highland breed, named Maida, and one of the handsomest dogs that could be found. It was a present to me from the Chief of Glengarry, and was highly prized both on account of her beauty, her fidelity, and the great rarity of her breed. The other is a little Highland terrier called Oarisk (Goblin), of a particular kind bred in Kintail. It was a present from the Honourable Mrs. Stuart Mackenzie, and is a valuable specimen of a race which is now also scarce.” One regrets that Wilkie portrayed Scott and his family travestied as peasants, and not in their everyday dress. The picture was exhibited in 1818, but was not engraved until 1837, when R. Grover made an admirable plate from it, and W. Greatbach another for the ” Wilkie Gallery.” Purchased by the nation in 1895, it is now amongst the most valued works in the National Gallery of Scotland, where it hangs in tolerable condition, brilliant in colour, and without the cracks that blemish so many of Wilkie’s later paintings. The colouring of the faces, however, appears to have faded, and unfortunately this is especially noticeable in the face of the great novelist. Wilkie had a most pleasant visit at Abbotsford, and his letters to his sister gave interesting pictures of Sir Walter and his family. ” I have never been in any place,” he writes, ” where there is so much real good humour and merriment. There is nothing but amusement from morning till night; and if Mr. Scott is really writing ‘Rob Roy,’ it must be while we are sleeping. He is either out planting trees, superintending the masons or erecting fences, the whole of the day. He goes frequently out hunting, and this morning there was a whole cavalcade of us out with Mr. and Miss Scott, hunting hard.” At that time it was not known whether Scott was the author of the Waverley Novels or not, and Wilkie tells his sister that the family are “equally in the dark as to the authorship. One day Wilkie was taken by the poet Laidlaw, who was also manager of the Abbotsford estate, to visit Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, at Yarrow. When they arrived at Hogg’s cottage, he asked Laidlaw whether Wilkie was ” no the great Mr. Wilkie,” and, receiving an affirmative answer, he seized the painter’s hand, saying, ” I cannot tell you how proud I am to see you in my house, and how glad I am to see you are so young a man.” When this was repeated to Scott he said that it was the finest compliment that had ever been paid to man. Immediately upon his return to Kensington Wilkie renewed his labours upon The Penny Wedding, for which he had studied and sketched whilst in Scotland, and which was now to be completed. The singular custom, which until the early years of the nineteenth century obtained at country weddings in Scotland, called ” Penny Weddings,” had been sung by the poet King James, and, nearer to our own time, by Allan Ramsay. It originated in the guests at these weddings having to pay a penny or to bring some small gift of food or drink towards defraying the wants of the donor of the festival. Wilkie’s well known painting, now in the royal collection, and familiar far and wide by its many admirable engravings, represents the interior of a barn converted into a ballroom. The festival is at its merriest ; the famous fiddler, Neil Gow, is playing his best, assisted by another musician ; the wedding guests are dancing gaily to their strains ; the bride is being led out by the bridegroom, other visitors looking on ; whilst in the background a table is spread with supper. Wilkie put his whole strength into this picture, and the subject was one peculiarly suited to his pencil. The Penny Wedding was in the Academy of 1819, and for it the artist received four hundred guineas. It was followed by Reading the Will, which, although powerful in painting, is in our judgment inferior to its immediate predecessor : it is somewhat theatrical in treatment, and was certainly not so congenial a subject to the talent of the painter as the merry-making of the Scottish marriage. George IV. was anxious to add Reading the Will to his other works by Wilkie, but it had already been bespoken for the King of Bavaria. King George wished to have the original, suggesting that a duplicate should go to the Bavarian monarch ; but, despite much negotiation, the picture went to Munich as originally arranged, Wilkie receiving a hundred guineas more than he had asked for it. The painting at once found a place amongst the king’s favourite pictures, being hung in his bedroom. After his death, however, it was sold, and is now in the Picture Gallery at Munich, having realized £,1,200 in place of the four hundred guineas Wilkie received. Among less important works which Wilkie painted at this period were The Death of Sir Philip Sidney, The Whisky Still, and The China Menders ; yet in spite of so much work he found time to go to Paris in 1821, and to Scotland in the following autumn, when George IV. paid his first and last visit to the northern kingdom. Wilkie, who had the artists Geddes and Collins for travelling companions, went on this occasion to Edinburgh by land. He had two objects in taking this journey, one being to paint the King’s entry into Edinburgh, and the other to make studies and to collect material for an historical painting which for some time had held his fancy a picture of John Knox preaching. He had already thought out the work, and took a preliminary sketch to show Sir Walter Scott, and to ask his advice thereon. ” Auld Reekie ” was in a state of frenzied excitement over the arrival of King George, and Sir Walter was the most loyal of the loyal in spite of his Jacobite tendencies. We hear of him at a great dinner at which Wilkie and his friends were present, singing a song he had written himself in honour of the King’s visit, called ” Carle, now the King ‘s come,” at the end of which all the guests rose, and joining hands danced round the dinner table. ” It was enough,” writes Collins ” to have brought back to earth the apparition of John Knox himself.” Wilkie was made much of whilst in Edinburgh. He was present when the King knighted Sir Henry Raeburn, Scotland’s greatest portrait-painter, and was presented to the monarch, who was dressed in full Highland costume, and whom, later on, Wilkie had to paint life-size in this glory of kilt and sporran. The young artist was complimented and flattered by the Lord High Commissioner, and wore what must have looked strange, even in that time of extravagant dress, ” a sky-blue coat.” Wilkie selected as the subject of the picture he was commissioned to paint by George IV. of his entry into Edinburgh the moment when the King received the keys of Holyrood from the Duke of Hamilton, and although it took eight years to complete, being exhibited at the Academy only a few weeks before the death of the monarch it represented, it is one of the artist’s greatest failures. But his sympathies did not lie in this direction, and he seems to have disliked the work from the first ; the most interesting portrait in the picture, amongst a crowd of courtiers and royal flunkeys, is that of Sir Walter Scott. Whilst Wilkie was labouring over this royal picture, Sir Walter again invited him to stay at Abbotsford (in 1824), and on this occasion he painted a separate portrait of his host which belonged to Sir William Knighton : although this was considered to be a good likeness, it cannot rank among the great portraits of the poet. It was engraved by E. Smith in 1831. On Sir Henry Raeburn’s death in 1823 Wilkie received his first honour, being appointed his successor as Limner to the King in Scotland, a barren distinction, but one peculiarly acceptable to a Scottish artist. He exhibited his Parish Beadle in that year’s Academy : it is an unpleasing subject, and was intended to be so, and may have given Dickens his well-known dislike for Bumbledom, its petty tyrannies and barbarity. The picture, which is so well known from engravings that it is almost unnecessary to describe it, represents a brutal-looking beadle leading a family of Savoyards to the lock up, a poor performing monkey being one of the victims of the arbitrary Jack-in-office. In the Academy catalogue The Parish Beadle had a quotation from Burns’s ” Justice of the Peace ” for its motto : ” And as an officer giveth sufficient notice of what he is, when he saith to the party, I arrest you in the King’s name,’ and in such case the party at their peril ought to obey him.” Before this picture was finished the greatest sorrow that could befall Wilkie came upon him. His mother, whom he loved better than all else on earth, died somewhat suddenly, and, although he hurried back from Scotland immediately upon hearing of her dangerous illness, he unfortunately arrived a day too late. This great loss seemed to be the signal for other sorrows, which came upon him ” in battalions.” His brother James had broken down in health in Canada, and dying-shortly afterwards left a widow and children : and his elder brother John died in India, leaving a son named David, who lived to become a distinguished soldier in the Indian army. It is not to be wondered at that, with all this accumulation of sorrow and bereavement, Wilkie’s health again broke down, and that he was ordered a thorough rest, being advised by his doctor not only to give up his work, but to take complete change of air and surroundings.
The aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford is under construction at the Newport… (Kaitlin McKeown / Daily…) The Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier will be launched in November as opposed to July as was originally set in a contract between the Navy and Newport News Shipbuilding, a Navy official said. "We have agreed to push back the launch of CVN 78 (the Ford's hull number) from July to November," said Christopher Johnson, a spokesman with Naval Sea Systems Command in Washington, D.C. Johnson explained that the Navy viewed the July deadline as an ambitious one for some time. "We knew a couple years ago there was going to be some schedule pressure," Johnson said. He said it became evident during a detailed schedule review for the Ford in February that delaying the launch "would allow the shipbuilder to complete the remaining critical path work and allow for increased outfitting to most economically complete the ship." Johnson said the challenges of developing and building new technologies and adapting brand new construction processes for the Ford have challenged shipbuilders and the Navy, in terms of the schedule. Since 2008, the Ford's price has increased by $1.8 billion – from $10.5 billion to $12.3 billion – according to Navy budget submissions. The project is the first in a new class of carriers and a major source of revenue for the shipyard and its parent company, Huntington Ingalls Industries. Johnson said there's no cost increase associated with the moving back of the launch date. And shipyard spokeswoman, Beci Brenton, stressed that pushing the launch date back is actually a cost-saver for the Navy and the company. "(T)he revised launch date allows increased outfitting and ship construction that are most economically done prior to ship launch," Brenton said in a prepared statement. She added that there were unique challenges associated with the building of the Ford, which began construction before it was fully designed. "For this first-of-class ship, construction commenced in parallel with design completion based on earlier decisions at Dept. of Defense," Brenton said. "Ongoing design during the construction process caused delay and inefficiencies in procurement, manufacturing, and assembly." The launch delay means the shipyard will push back the associated event celebrating the Ford's completion, the christening. In the past, carrier christenings have drawn top national political figures, including U.S. presidents. Though construction on the Ford hasn't moved as fast as the original contract schedule, the shipyard has, nevertheless, made steady progress on its structure. Shipbuilders on Tuesday plan to complete the ship's hull when crane operators hoist into place the forward end of a catapult. The shipyard also received $60.8 million as part of a pre-construction contract for the John F. Kennedy, the second carrier in the Ford class.The Navy announced Monday it has modified its contract with the shipyard that covers the purchase of services and material in preparation for the building of the Kennedy. * This story was updated to reflect that the decision to push back the launch of the Ford was the product of a February meeting between the Navy and the shipbuilder in which the schedule for the carrier's construction was discussed in detail.
HOUSTON: Deaf people, who communicate through their cell phones using SMS messages, can now interact in their native or American sign language, thanks to a new software developed by engineers that has led to demonstration of two way video communication. "A lot of people are excited about this. The point is you will be able to communicate in your native language. For deaf people that's American Sign Language." principal investigator Eve Riskin, a University of Washington professor of electrical engineering said. Video is much better than text-messaging because it's faster and it's better at conveying emotion, said Jessica DeWitt, a UW undergraduate in psychology who is deaf and is a collaborator on the MobileASL project. A large part of her communication is with facial expressions, which are transmitted over the video phones. Low data transmission rates on US cellular networks, combined with limited processing power on mobile devices, have so far prevented real-time video transmission with enough frames per second that it could be used to transmit sign language. Communication rates on United States cellular networks allow about one tenth of the data rates common in places such as Europe and Asia (sign language over cell phones is already possible in Sweden and Japan). Even as faster networks are becoming more common in the United States, there is still a need for phones that would operate on the slower systems. "The faster networks are not available. They also cost more. We don't think it's fair for someone who's deaf to have to pay more for his or her cell phone than someone who's hearing," doctoral student Anna Cavender said.
The task force was set up under a law that took effect July 1. That law also allows the commissioners to temporarily lift the ceiling on the tax. Right now, the county charges a $13,000 fee for single-family homes in developments with 25 or fewer homes. Multifamily homes are charged $15,500 per unit, with fees doubling if the subdivision exceeds 25 units. The tax was based on square footage until two years ago, when it was changed to a flat fee, except for homes of less than 1,500 square feet, for which the fee is now $1 a square foot. That exemption, plus a slowdown in home sales, led to an $11 million shortfall for the current fiscal year. Because contracts had already been awarded for projects that depended on that money, the commissioners were forced to take $5.2 million from the FY 2006 surplus. Washington County Delegation Chairman LeRoy Myers, R-Washington/Allegany, who will serve on the task force, said last month that the tax structure has not taken "a real close look at young couples who grew up here and want to stay here." No doubt some members of the task force will argue that the fee makes new homes unaffordable for such couples. But as we said earlier this month, there is no guarantee that eliminating the fee will lead to construction of more affordable homes. Eliminating it or reducing it would place the burden of building schools, roads and other infrastructure on existing taxpayers. Reducing the rate substantially might also require an increased growth rate to cover those costs, at a time when there's an argument to be made that Washington County isn't ready for the growth it's experiencing now.
State regulators Friday derailed a small biotechnology company's ambitious plans to immediately begin growing commercial quantities of rice engineered with human genetic material for use in medicine. The California Department of Food and Agriculture denied Ventria Bioscience's application to grow more than 120 acres of rice in Central and Southern California because federal regulators haven't issued a permit. The Sacramento-based company said it had not yet applied for federal regulatory approval. State officials also said the public needed more time to comment on an issue that had roiled California's $500-million rice industry. Many rice farmers fear consumer perception will turn against their crops and cost them customers in biotechnology-adverse Europe and Japan if Ventria's permit were granted. Now Ventria, which already has permission to grow experimentally on small plots, will have to wait at least until next year's planting to expand production.
November 27, 1988 \| Roman Catholic Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen is scheduled to confer with Pope John Paul II next week in a meeting that could bring peace to the relationship between the Vatican and the prelate, who has become a symbol of the rift between U.S. Catholics and Rome. A church spokesman said the meeting could end the controversy that began late in 1985, when the Vatican stripped Hunthausen of some his key pastoral duties, giving them to Auxiliary Bishop Donald Wuerl. February 10, 1987 \| The Vatican, which upset some American bishops when it disciplined Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen last year, has asked three of the nation's most influential Roman Catholic churchmen to take a new look at the situation. In a brief statement issued through the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Pope John Paul II's representative to the United States said Monday that two cardinals, Joseph L. April 16, 1987 A report stating the Vatican has formulated a deal to force embattled Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen into retirement is "incorrect" and was leaked by an "uninformed and irresponsible party," an official in the Seattle archdiocese said. The Very Rev. Michael G. Ryan, vicar general and chancellor of the Seattle archdiocese, sent a letter to priests in the archdiocese urging them to "disregard the National Catholic Register article, because it is not only speculative, it is incorrect." May 27, 1987 \| Pope John Paul II has restored full pastoral powers to embattled Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen, church sources said Tuesday. In an unprecedented action last year that reverberated throughout American Catholicism, the Vatican stripped Hunthausen of responsibility in five key pastoral areas and assigned it to Auxiliary Bishop Donald Wuerl. April 22, 1987 \| Fearing further disciplinary action against embattled Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen, a group of priests, nuns and lay people is calling for full restoration of the powers the Vatican removed from him because of his alleged doctrinal laxity. "There is a feeling of urgency. We've got to speak out. This is the first time as a body that we have made a public statement," Father Jerry McCloskey of St. Paul's Catholic Church in Seattle said Tuesday. CALIFORNIA \| LOCAL June 28, 1997 \| Archbishop Thomas J. Murphy, who came to the Seattle archdiocese in the wake of a stormy dispute over the policies of his predecessor, Raymond G. Hunthausen, has died. He was 64. Murphy, who died Thursday, suffered a brain hemorrhage Wednesday night while hospitalized for treatment of leukemia. The Archdiocese of Seattle, which serves all of Washington state west of the Cascades, has 353,000 Catholics.
In Egypt, testimony to the Committee of Culture, Tourism and Media alleged misuse of antiquities as gifts to foster foreign relations. The article specifically pursued answers to the question, "Did former president Hosni Mubarak offer a segment of Egypt's archaeological heritage to foreign countries for political purposes?" A source within the Faculty of Tourism and Hotels at Mansoura University made a number claims of unauthorized gifts to foreign presidents including reference to a "notorious" case in which 48 artifacts disappeared from the Egyptian Museum. In South Korea, the government established the Art Bank to oversee the acquisition and distribution of artworks to government agencies. The Cultural Minister hoped that the Art Bank would "improve the quality of the government art collection and stimulate the art market." The state collection comprises more than 2,500 artworks, and the Ministry of Culture plans to acquire 500 million won ($449,000) worth of artwork still this year. Finally, in Pakistan, an opinion piece on the integration of politics and looting of antiquities illustrated a security aspect of the political economy of art. The article referred to the well-known multimillion-dollar illicit trade in Buddhist relics from Pakistan and cited an Associated Press article that referred to the government's lack of "funds, resources and political will to protect the hundreds of Buddhist monasteries." The author offered the observation, "As Pakistan’s history is being rewritten to service a violent, exclusionary narrative of Muslim identity, we have to embrace our cultural heritage as a reminder of our pluralistic past," which keenly identifies the ramifications for regional security. Learn about the framework for Cultural Intelligence.
A NON-GOVERNMENT ORGANISATION in Papua New Guinea says the PNG government has failed to act to protect young girls and teenagers from forced marriages. There are reports that girls as young as five are being sold by their parents to older men, sometimes foreigners working in the forestry and mining sectors. “We've got a wide range of reports that come in on young girls that are being forced into marriages or especially into sexual relationships with older men,” said Ume Wainetti of the PNG Consultative Implementation and Monitoring Council. “There's a lot of mistreatment of these young girls because many of them are forced to marry men who are already married,” Wainetti said “We’re talking about girls between the ages of 16 and 14. But other ones who are forced into sexual relationships are much, much younger. “Our government has not responded to any of these things. Maybe, when some international agencies come and say it's happening, they'll take note. But when we say it they don't. “They really should take note and, when major projects are being developed, this issue should be addressed… I'm talking about international companies in the extractive industries. “Most of the time it's through the workers in the company the girls are being sold or being encouraged to get into this type of relationship or men who've got money, especially in the forestry development areas, Wainetti said.
Wednesday, February 6, 2013 Bye bye penny On Monday Canada started the process of getting rid of the penny. Stores no longer give or take them during cash transactions. The bill will either be rounded up or down depending on the amount. What does this mean for us teaching money in the class? I'm not sure. For now, it is still part of our curriculum and I think it will take awhile of them to disappear, so I will still continue to teach the penny. Next year, I'm not sure. How does this affect our teens with disabilities trying to learn skills for independent living? It's hard enough to teach money but to then teach that the total will be rounded up or down is going to be really confusing. Will stores change their prices so the total will be a 5 or 10? It will be interesting to see how it will all work out as we move forward.
The Individual Development Plan (IDP) is an aid to help employees manage their own careers here at AHCCCS. It allows employees to initiate and facilitate a discussion of growth and development with their supervisors, and identify opportunities for improvement. Leadership is cultivated and fine-tuned through the Leadership Planning Process. The process utilizes the Uncovered Employee Annual Planner in conjunction with leadership training courses as the basis for discussing the leader’s performance, growth, and development. The DMS Network Café is a website dedicated to continuous learning in which the content is delivered in an electronic format. The Café provides many learning opportunities through more than 300 tutorials. The tutorials offer professional and technical training. The DMS Network Café also offers espresso learning, which are five minute training tutorials that can easily fit into any busy day. Human Resources and Development sponsors free, monthly lunchtime training sessions that are available to all employees. The sessions discuss general topics like leadership, communication, and interviewing skills. The Arizona Learning Center (ALC) offers more than 30 statewide courses in 10 major categories. These classes are available to all state employees. The ALC also hosts over 90 agency computer based training (CBT) courses for employees in those specific agencies. Employees have access to webinars on a multitude of topics. The webinars can be streamed to groups or taken on an individual basis. Looking to improve your public speaking, leadership, and interviewing skills? AHCCCS to Success Toastmasters Club can help! Toastmasters is a friendly and supportive club that allows employees to improve their communication, listening and leadership skills. There is also division and position specific training available. The training can either be classroom or CBT courses that further prepare employees for their role(s) within the agency.
Having been born and raised in San Antonio, I can assure you that I have eaten a fair share of tamales! Often my family has them on Christmas Eve, which is a very popular tradition down here. Every grocery store has corn husks in the produce section, and some even sell giant tamaleras for steaming huge batches of tamales. You might therefore assume that I’ve made tamales before, but nope…this is why they’re on my list! Traditional tamales are meat-filled and usually have lard in the masa so I haven’t had so many in the past couple years due to the vegetarian kinds being less common. All the more reason to make my own! Maranda provided a vegan black bean recipe which sounded tasty, but I decided to go an easier route and fill mine with monterrey jack, hatch green chiles, and cumin. I’ve always heard about how difficult, or maybe rather time-consuming, it is to make homemade tamales, but never really knew why. It’s a tradition for many families to get together and make large quantities for Christmas, so I guess making copious amounts of anything can become tedious. Since the husks need to be soaked a few hours, there is a little planning ahead, but after that, you make the filling, masa dough, and then assemble and steam.
For years, business and motivational gurus have known that there are basic habits that seem to predict professional success and excellence. Books like The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by motivational speaker and business guru Stephen Covey, which has sold over 15 million copies alone, shows that people are hungry for the secrets of success. We don’t yet have the perfect formula for long life , happiness, and physical health, but a little careful distillation of the massive amount of research on health and longevity reveals that cultivating nine basic habitswill significantly increase the odds of your living long, well, and happily — in a robust, healthy, weight-appropriate body. - Eat your vegetables. No kidding — and I’m talking at least 9 servings a day. Unless you’re following the most stringent first stage of the Atkins Diet, you should be able to consume 60-120 grams of carbs a day (depending on your weight and exercise level), and you’d have to eat a stockyard full of spinach to get to that amount. Every major study of long-lived, healthy people shows that they eat a ton of plant foods. Nothing delivers antioxidants, fiber, flavonoids, indoles, and the entire pharmacopeia of disease fighting phytochemicals like stuff that grows in rich soil. - Eat fish and/or take fish oil. The omega-3’s found in cold-water fish like salmon deserve the title of “wellness molecule of the century.” They lower the risk of heart disease, they lower blood pressure, they improve mood, and they’re good for the brain. And if you’re pregnant, they may make your kid smarter! - Connect. And I’m not talking about the internet. In virtually every study of people who are healthy and happy into their 9th and 10th decades, social connections are one of the “prime movers” in their life. Whether church, family, volunteer work, or community, finding something you care about that’s bigger than you, that you can connect withand that involves other people (or animals) — will extend your life, increase your energy, and make you happier — always. - Get some sun. At least 10-15 minutes three times a week. Interestingly, a recent study showed that the four healthiest places on earth where the people were longest-lived, were in sunny climates.1 Sun improves your mood and boosts levels of cancer-fighting, performance-enhancing, bone-strengthening vitamin D — a vitamin most people don’t get nearly enough of. - Sleep well. If you’re low in energy, gaining weight, grumpy, and looking haggard, guess what? Chances are you’re not sleeping long enough or well enough. By sleeping “well,” I mean uninterrupted sleep, in the dark — without the television on, in a relaxing environment. Nothing nourishes, replenishes, and restarts the system like 7-9 hours sleep. Hint: start by going to bed an hour early. And if you’ve got a computer in the bedroom, banish it! - Exercise every day. Forget this 20 minutes three times a week stuff. Long-lived people are doing things like farm chores at 4:30 in the morning! Our Paleolithic ancestors traveled an average of 20 miles per day. Our bodies were designed to move on a regular basis. New studies show that merely 30 minutes a day of walking not only reduces the risk of most serious diseases, but can even grow new brain cells!2 - Practice gratitude. By making a list of things you’re grateful for, you focus the brain on positive energy. Gratitude is incompatible with anger and stress. Practice using your under-utilized “right brain” and spread some love. Focusing on what you’re grateful for — even for five minutes a day — has the added benefit of being one of the best stress-reduction techniques on the planet. - Drink red wine or eat grapes. The resveratrol in dark grapes is being studied for its effect on extending life, which it seems to do for almost every species studied. (So does eating about one third less food, by the way.) If you’ve got a problem with alcohol, you can get resveratrol from grapes, peanuts, or supplements. (And if you’re a woman, and you choose the alcohol option, make sure you’re getting folic acid every day.) - Get the sugar out. The number one enemy of vitality, health, and longevity is not fat, it’s sugar. Sugar’s effect on hormones, mood, immunity, weight, and possibly even cancer cells is enormous — and it’s all negative. To the extent that you can remove it from your diet, you will be adding years to your life and life to your years. This list may not be perfect and it may not be complete, but it’s a start. As my dear grandmother used to say, “Couldn’t hurt.” Not one of these “habits” will hurt you, all will benefit you, and some may make the difference between life and death. And it’s never too late to start cultivating them.
“Ibu” Robin Lim, a Bali-based midwife who in 2003 founded the Bumi Sehat Foundation (Yayasan Bumi Sehat) – a birthing center in Ubud, has been nominated as a “World Hero” - one of the ten finalists in the annual CNN’s Hero Awards. Dedicated to reducing maternal and child morbidity, the foundation provides general health services, emergency care, prenatal and postpartum birth services, breastfeeding support and community health education. Working to assist pregnant women and children in Bali since 1994, “Ibu" Robin Lim established the Yayasan Bumi Sehat in 2006 in response to rising maternal mortality rates in Indonesia, that were the highest in the region. Working with local business and member of the community, Lim works tirelessly to provide social services, health education and essential health services to women and children. Through their Bali and Aceh (North Sumatra) clinic, over 5,000 babies have been welcomed into the word via the Yayasan’s birthing services. As a top 10 finalist in CNN Heroes “Ibu” Robin Lim will receive US$50,000 and invitation to the attend in person CNN Heroes: An All Star Tribute to be telecast on December 11, 2011. The winner – to be announced live on CNN – will win an additional US$250,000 that - if "Ibu" Robin wins will use to for her important work on behalf of the woman and children of Indonesia. Use the link below to cast a vote for Robin. Check your local listing for time for the CNN Heroes: An All Star Tribute on December 11, 2011 [To vote for Robin Lim as a CNN Hero] [Bumi Sehat Foundation] Discovery Tours. Articles may be quoted and reproduced if attributed to http://www.balidiscovery.com.
The Philadelphia Bar Association Academy provides civic and cultural educational experiences that allow for enhanced business development opportunities to members of the Philadelphia Bar Association. Academy programs provide a unique entry to the city’s most vibrant institutions and leaders, offering Bar Members behind-the-scenes access to these institutions in a manner designed to benefit all participants. Marian Anderson was one of America’s most trail-blazing operatic stars. A contralto, Ms. Anderson was the first African-American to sing at the Metropolitan Opera in a starring role. Throughout her career, she blazed a path for every non-white woman in opera and the performing arts. She was regularly acclaimed throughout Europe and Asia, and yet, when she returned from touring, she came back to a small house in South Philadelphia that had always been her home. On February 3, Bar Association members, through the Bar Academy, had a chance to tour that home. The house, soon to become a National Historic Landmark, has been lovingly preserved by The Marian Anderson Historical Society, led by Ms. Anderson’s protégé, Blanche Burton-Lyles. The many articles, photographs, posters, and ephemera of a distinguished career line the walls and adorn the surfaces of the home. Because Ms. Anderson considered it an imperative to nurture the careers of young musicians, several Marian Anderson Fellows performed. How thrilling it was to hear future operatic stars sing in this tiny gem of a home. In particular, J’Nai Rodgers, a mezzo soprano, sang an incredible “Habanera” from Bizet’s Carmen. For those of a particular generation, Ms. Rodgers’ voice was reminiscent of the voice of Leontyne Price, one of the greatest American singers of the 20th century. If Ms. Anderson was looking down at us that evening, and we hope she was, we’re sure that she was beaming that her home was still full of people listening to great music, as it was when she was alive. Who didn't like school field trips when you were a kid? They got you out of class, you got a bus ride, and maybe, just maybe, you got some treats at the end. If you were really lucky, your class got to go to the bakery, perhaps even TastyKake, where there were thousands of pies, cupcakes, Krimpets, and KandyKakes moving all over the place on conveyor belts. The place smelled of chocolate, vanilla, and butterscotch; there were giant block-long ovens and mixers the size of your dad's '55 Buick, and the bakers looked like Oompah-Loompahs against the giant machines. And then…and then…at the end of the tour, everybody went into a lunchroom were there were piles of freshly baked treats, and ice cold milk to wash the goodies all down. What could ever be better? The answer to that question is: A trip to the new TastyKake bakery at the Navy Yard for a group of almost 80 who attended the Nov. 17 Bar Academy event at TastyKake. The event included a tour of the unique new TastyKake facility, the largest LEED-certified bakery in the US. Every part of the building, and the baking process, was designed to be energy-efficient and environmentally friendly. A unique thermal-oil system provides heat to many of the pieces of equipment, yielding tremendous energy savings, a vast improvement over the old facility. One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is TastyKake's commitment to quality and freshness, requiring that trucks leave the giant bakery every day in order to get our favorite treats to us right after they’ve been baked. Recognizing that we’re not 8 years old anymore, a very unique, and possibly not to be repeated, event took place. Instead of milk and TastyKakes, we were treated to a creative beer and TastyKake pairing, with the help and generosity of Origlio Beverages. Who knew that a Butterscotch Krimpet would improve the taste of a particular beer, and vice versa? All in all, this event was both educational and fun. Maybe we can get some other fun field trips to get us out of class (oops, the office)… perhaps to the ball park, or the zoo? Stay tuned, we've got lots more neat stuff in store. On June 30, Le Bar Lyonnais at Le Bec-Fin hosted the Bar Academy’s first major culinary event. Fifty-five people escaped the summer heat with cool drinks, great food and the wit and wisdom of Le Bec-Fin’s world-famous and much-honored Chef/Owner, Georges Perrier. After a tantalizing tour of Le Bec-Fin’s renowned pastry kitchens, including the chocolate room, attendees gathered to nibble on specially created delicacies. Chef Perrier talked to our members about the challenges in continuing to be creative, innovative and successful as a chef/restaurateur for 40 years. In fact, this year Le Bec-Fin truly achieved institutional status in the city, as it is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Never one to rest on his many laurels, Chef Perrier revealed some of his current plans to keep innovating, including the opening of a bakery and of another restaurant. Throughout the event, Chef Perrier demonstrated the warmth and charm that makes him a great host. Of course, the food presented demonstrated that Chef Perrier and his exceptional team, including Executive Chef Nicholas Elmi, and Pastry Chef Cedric Barberet, remain at the absolute top of their game. For those of you who tried to register for this event but were closed out (registration sold out in less than a day), keep your eye on the Academy’s website; we are planning other events at Le Bec-Fin. Few of us really understand the complexities of radio broadcasting. In fact, it still seems a bit of a miracle, if you think of it, that you can turn a knob on a small device, and get music or news from almost anywhere in the world. We each get used to the sounds of certain stations, or the voices of certain announcers, and adopt them as being particularly our own. For Philadelphians, KYW Newsradio is the voice of our daily commute, our reliable old friend, that we turn to for news of weather, traffic alerts, sports, and of course, for snow closings in the winter. We listen to KYW to keep us continually updated as to what is happening in the world. Who among us can’t hum the tune for “KYW 1060?” On May 5, the Bar Academy offered attendees a look behind the scenes of a major newsradio station. Who knew that the ticker tape sound lives on a flash drive on a server? Attendees were treated to a tour of the broadcasting booths, control rooms, and newsroom, and some even got to read a little bit of the weather report. Tony Hanson, the station’s courtroom reporter, showed himself to be a master story-teller with a razor-sharp wit. His observations were poignant and thought-provoking. As we left the station, I could swear that I heard a few people practicing their “radio voice.” Ah well, perhaps a career in voice-overs might not be so realistic a dream after all. Photos from: A Taste of Tastykake - November 17, 2010 Photos from: Inside the Apple Store, Walnut Street - September 29, 2010 Photos from: Opera 101 - September 23, 2010 Photos from: Bar Academy at Le Bec-Fin - June 30, 2010 Photos from: An Inside Look at KYW Newsradio 1060 - May 4, 2010 Photos from: Philadelphia Bar Association Academy Presents Philadelphia Union - March 29, 2010 The Center City Opera Theatre is offering a 10% ticket discount on all performances to Philadelphia Bar Association Members. Members need to either show their Bar Membership card or indicate that they are a member of the Philadelphia Bar Association in order to receive the discount. The definition of "civic" is "of or belonging to a city." As such, events in this category connect members with institutions that define Philadelphia. These could include behind-the-scenes tours of famous Philadelphia landmarks, exclusive looks at the construction and/or renovation of noteworthy buildings, and other programs where Philadelphia takes the forefront. From performing arts to museums and art galleries, Philadelphia has a surplus of culture to explore. The Philadelphia Bar Association Academy seeks to partner with renowned institutions to provide members unique, exclusive experiences through guided tours, educational seminars and other special programming. Philadelphia is recognized nationally for its range and quality of dining establishments. The Philadelphia Bar Association Academy seeks to give members behind-the-scenes access to select restaurants for tastings, openings and even cooking lessons. Philadelphia sports fans are as passionate about their teams as any in the country. Through the Philadelphia Bar Association Academy, members can get an intimate look at the city's beloved teams, whether through a insider's tour, meeting with team management, or by taking part in an event. For more information about the Academy contact: (Director of Meetings) Honorable A. Michael Snyder Dispute Resolution Institute Two Logan Square Eighteenth and Arch Streets, Suite 660 Philadelphia, PA 19103 Law Office of Nikki Johnson-Huston, LLC 1701 Walnut Street, 7th Floor Philadelphia, PA 19103
by J. Alex Knoll The Wild One A tame teapot today, Sagittarius is civilization’s first sidekick Our fellow planets are scarce, with Jupiter offering the best visage at evening twilight in the southwest amid summer’s fading constellation Libra. Just as dusk turns to darkness, Jupiter drops beneath the horizon. Mercury, too, bobs into view at twilight, appearing in binoculars just above the west-southwest horizon in the 20 minutes following sunset, around 6:50 this week. Conversely, Venus and Saturn hover above the eastern horizon at dawn. Saturn appears first, rising around 3am in the east-southeast. As sunrise approaches, the ringed planet climbs to about 20 degrees due east. Not until the dawn’s early light, however, does Venus crack the eastern horizon, rising at most 20 minutes before sunrise, around 7:00 this week. Again, you may need binoculars. The waxing moon, which reaches first-quarter phase Saturday, keeps us company later into the night and early morning. It also plays host to summer’s waning zodiacal constellation Sagittarius. At the southern foot of the Milky Way, Sagittarius appears to us today as a teapot, but our ancient forebears saw far more than we. To the Greeks Sagittarius was an archer with arrow to bowstring aimed at the heart of the scorpion. By some accounts Sagittarius is Chiron the centaur, half-man and half-horse, born of a mortal woman and Chronus, the Titan father of Zeus, who took the form of a stallion to escape the watchful eye of his wife Rhea. Other accounts equate Sagittarius with Crotus, son of Pan and Eupheme. Stretching back to ancient Sumeria, Sagittarius is Enkidu, the wild man raised by animals who only Gilgamesh could out-wrestle and tame. Thereafter, Enkidu pledged himself to civilization’s earliest hero, helping him defeat the Bull of Heaven, for which the gods struck him down.
'Time for Thee to Work' Chatter xviii. The Great Immigration. ThesaurusShouters (1 Occurrence) ... Multi-Version Concordance Shouters (1 Occurrence). Judges 5:11 By the voice of shouters Between the places of drawing water, There ... /s/shouters.htm - 6k Shouteth (2 Occurrences) Ruled (84 Occurrences) Shouted (65 Occurrences) Bible ConcordanceShouters (1 Occurrence) Judges 5:11 By the voice of shouters Between the places of drawing water, There they give out righteous acts of Jehovah, Righteous acts of His villages in Israel, Then ruled in the gates have the people of Jehovah. LinksBible Concordance • Bible Dictionary • Bible Encyclopedia • Topical Bible • Bible Thesuarus
Change is hard to do. In fact, for many “change” is a dirty word. Regardless, our society is set-up to embrace change. Every New Years Eve we flaunt our resolutions for the coming year, goals that have been sitting on the back burner and never given the attention they need in order to come true. And every year, many of us fall short of our resolutions, fueling our sense that the accomplishment is far out of reach. That's why there's power in small steps. Small adjustments are far easier to adapt to than attempting big, sweeping changes. Overtime, they create a sustainable transformation. The microresolution method is broken down in Small Move, Big Change by Caroline Arnold, a managing director at Goldman Sachs. She presents the challenges and solutions to making changes that last a lifetime. Sign up for a free trial and watch the video here: In this workshop you will learn how to address: -- Using microresolutions to transform your life -- Understanding your psychological autopilot -- How to think small to change big -- Getting specific with your microresolution -- Test driving and recalibration -- Using instant gratification to your advantage, and more Image credit: Shutterstock
Clutch Magazine posted an article recently entitled "Is She Even Black?" in reference to black Latina actresses, models and status climbers like Zoe Saldana, Amber Rose and Sessilee Lopez. I've often heard black people gripe about Saldana in particular (also Rosario Dawson), accusing her of passing or claiming mixed heritage or whatever magical thing people think "Latina" means other than being a descriptor for being from a place in the Americas where people speak Spanish. There’s something to be said about our racial placement of Zoe Saldana outside of her largely Black female film roles. Many of us get a kick out of keeping her in an exclusive, no exit, Latina territory. “Is she even Black?” one reader slammed, even though the rising actress has repeatedly laid claim to her Afro-Latina background. The “Avatar ” star has been vocal about the difficulties faced by actresses of color in Hollywood, and she was the cover of the April issue of Essence magazine. Yet somehow, there’s this odd expectation for Saldana to choose. “Does she want to be Latina or Black?” one reader wrote. Zoe Saldana was born to a Dominican father and a Puerto Rican mother. Her cocoa skin looks like yours and mine, why is that not enough? I personally blame Richard Nixon. His administration created the term Hispanic in an effort to give people with Spanish surnames a "racial-lite" label even though "Hispanic" or "Latino" is not a race. Hispanics and Latinos can be of any race or color and the word doesn't even exist outside of the states. From The Future Uncertain: (A)s soon as one crosses the Rio Grande from the north there is no such thing as "Hispanic." There are instead races: "whites," and "Indians," and mestizos, and "blacks," and all of the above together. And there are nationalities: Dominicans, and Salvadorans, and Hondurans, and Mexicans and Brazilians. But in the United States these disparate nations and people, who sometimes go to war at least proximately because of soccer games and who argue over the racial stereotyping in their television soap operas, through the waving of a bureaucratic wand in an obscure office at the end of an obscure hall in Washington magically become a single demographic group. If you're Chinese and were born and raised in Cuba, you're, shock-shock, Chinese Cubano, aka ... a Chinese Latino. This does not make you any less Chinese. When a black person says they're also Latino it's honestly no different than a black person saying they're French or German or Senegalese or Cape Verdean or Dominican. They're still black. They tell you as much when they say things like "Afro-Cuban." But still, people will accuse Saldana and others of some fancy form of 2010 passing. I don't know how you pass when you're on the cover of Essence and you're that, frickin' brown and you say things like "I'm black" or lament about how hard it is to make it as a black actress in the states. But because American's often treat Hispanic as a race when Hispanic is like saying "From Spanish speaking countries in North, Central and South America," there is this confusion and accusation of a black person being a sell-out if they proudly claim their Latino heritage. This is like cursing out Obama for big upping Kenya. Or hating Idris Elba for being a black Brit. THIS MAKES NO SENSE. Many Latin countries participated in the Atlantic slave trade. Millions of blacks wound up all over the Americas and adopted the language and culture of their captors. What else can you do considering the circumstances? But the black American reaction at times to Saldana, Dawson and Rose is almost like when I meet the occasional African native who thinks black Americans aren't really African and bristles at those who over-eagerly embrace African cultures in their pursuit for a better understand of themselves. After all, like black Latinos, black Americans aren't exactly "pure." We're mixed people who married and impregnated other mixed people after hundreds of years of rape, love and lust, racial strife, anti-racial mixing laws while people "mixed" any-ol-damn-way, often living in the same crappy neighborhoods as poor whites and early Irish and Italian immigrants. It's true that in some Latin countries blacks are treated horribly. Which, AGAIN, makes the slam at Saldana for claiming their black Latin roots more bizarre. There is no advantage to saying "I'm black" in most of Latin America. Especially if you're dark. None. There are black people in Latin America now who look at CNN's Soledad O'Brien like she's a crazy person for telling folks she's Afro-Cuban. Most people who are that light, based on the rampant discrimination against black Latinos, wouldn't have acknowledged the "Afro" part at all and gladly would have passed as light Creole, mixed or Spaniard. Case in point: I had a good friend who's wife was Latina. She was Mexican and Cuban. We were the exact same complexion (golden brown). We had the exact same hair texture (frizzy, wavy, kinky in the back). She had a short fat nose, also like mine, and was married to a black American man who was half Puerto Rican. She was older than me and would sometimes, jokingly, tell people I was her daughter. IT IS VERY OBVIOUS THAT I AM A BLACK PERSON. One day I was at their home hanging out, chatting with her and she was complaining about her hair. How everyone in her family had straight her but her and how unfair that was. I said, "Ah, but that's where the black comes from, right?" thinking I would get some "Yeah, great-grandma was Negra" bonding time. Her face scrunched up like I called her the bitchiest black bitch in the history of black bitches and she INSISTED she did not have a drop of black blood in her. Her husband then looked at me and rolled his eyes. "She black," he said after she left the room in a huff. Her reaction to being brown and "nappy" headed, but not blue black blackity black is the NORM in most Latin American countries. There is no skin tone paradise in Latin countries and there is no advantage to shouting out "I'm Negra" if you look "mixed." If you look mixed you start naming yourself after color gradations. And none of those gradations are called black. It's actually AMAZING that Rosario Dawson, Amber Rose and Soledad O'Brien all loudly claim their black heritage. They totally could just say "I don't know those black people hiding in my gene pool" like so many other "brown" people do from Latin America. If I moved to another country and if they told me I had to deny my Midwest/Southern black American roots to be fully accepted as a "real" black person in that country I would laugh. I can't not be a black person. My roots are African slaves, some white slave masters and random Native Americans who wandered in and out of the picture. It is who I am. It is my culture. It is how I identify myself. People who claim black and Latin are just explaining their background, not grasping to some false identity in order to assimilate. This isn't a Tommy Mottola tells Mariah Carey to describe herself as mixed and say her Harlem-born father was Venezuelan to cross over to a mainstream (white) audience situation. These are women claiming their heritage and proudly saying they're black as well. Zoe Saldana is black and Latino. You can be both. This is not a trick. Zoe is not trying to pull a fast one on you. She's just trying to rep for her fellow Afro Latin peeps who people treat as if they are a myth, who face their own discrimination and rarely, if ever, see one of their own on the cover of magazines or on television in their native countries. For contrast: I'm black and American. Also not a trick. I'm not trying to "hide" my African heritage behind an American label. I have a friend who's half Jamaican and half American. Also black. I once dated a guy in college who was black American, white British and Kenyan. Also black. I had a good friend high school who was black and Creole. STILL BLACK, ALSO CREOLE. Same with most Haitians I know, both dark and light. All Creole. All black. I have quite a few long-time French African readers and one German woman who is half African American. Despite the fact that she could have passed for white and knew very little about her black American heritage, she still claimed her father's side, wanting to learn more about black American culture. My half Puerto Rican friend with the "I ain't black even though I look black" wife. BLACK! These are not a tricks! Just pronouns to describe a background. Stop being all mad at my internationally black peeps. Them being something other than American has absolutely nothing to do with you. Celebrate the Diaspora. (H/T reader Kim for the link)
The ugly head of racism rears its head once again in the world of football, this time prior to the upcoming UEFA Europa League match between Lyon and the Tottenham Hotspur. Darren Lewis of The Mirror reported that fans of the Tottenham Hotspur were attacked by masked thugs at a pub called "The Smoking Dog." According to the reports, three Spurs supporters were hospitalized and property was damaged. There were reports about the attackers making Nazi-style salutes during the incident. The Spurs security service and The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) of Great Britain were present to assist the victims. The unfortunate event serves as a wake-up call to deal with racism before it damages the beautiful sport of football. Bleacher Report's Sam Lopresti wrote an article about how to deal with racism in Italian Football. The article served as an inspiration to write about this abominable incident. We can no longer stand by and allow a minority to get away with this behavior. While talking and writing about racism is great, action is needed to reduce or remove racism from football. Institutions such as Show Racism The Red Card in Great Britain do a great job exposing racism. In spite of the good intentions, education must be provided on a continual basis in order to reduce and eliminate racism. Everyone involved in football from the supporters to the authorities must be involved in the educational process. The education must be accompanied by consistent punishment where necessary. The following are some examples of punishment that can be used. The idea of playing matches in an empty stadium is a great one. According to SI.com, FIFA used the empty stadium punishment against Hungary and Bulgaria in the beginning of 2013. FIFA ordered Hungary and Bulgaria to play their next 2014 World Cup Qualifier (WCQ) in empty stadiums. This was in response to racist chants by Bulgarian and Hungarian supporters during their World Cup Qualifiers. Bulgaria was fined $38,000 for supporters who did monkey chants against Danish defender Patrick Mtiliga. The incident occurred during Bulgaria’s WCQ against the Scandinavian country. The idea of point deduction is a great one in the fight against racism in football. FIFA President Sepp Blatter once said that point deduction must be used as punishment. Unfortunately, FIFA made a mistake in its punishment of Hungary and Bulgaria, and Hungary and Bulgaria did not receive point deductions. If the two Central European countries had received point deductions, they would not have qualified for the World Cup. It is my hope that the world of football unites to expose, attack, and remove racism from football. We have the tools to do so and the sooner they are used, the better.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - View original article \|Distribution of Centrolenidae (in black)\| \|Distribution of Centrolenidae (in black)\| The glass frogs (or glassfrogs) are frogs of the amphibian family Centrolenidae (order Anura). While the general background coloration of most glass frogs is primarily lime green, the abdominal skin of some members of this family is translucent. The internal viscera, including the heart, liver, and gastrointestinal tract, are visible through this translucent skin, hence the common name. The first described species of Centrolenidae was the "giant" Centrolene geckoideum, named by Marcos Jiménez de la Espada in 1872, based on a specimen collected in northeastern Ecuador. Several species were described in subsequent years by different herpetologists (including G. A. Boulenger, G. K. Noble, and E. H. Taylor), but usually placed together with the tree frogs in the genera Hylella or Hyla. The family Centrolenidae was proposed by Edward H. Taylor in 1951. Between the 1950s and 1970s, most species of glass frogs were known from Central America, particularly from Costa Rica and Panama, where Taylor and Jay M. Savage extensively worked, and just a few species were known to occur in South America. In 1973, John D. Lynch and William E. Duellman published a large revision of the glass frogs from Ecuador. showing the species richness of Centrolenidae was particularly concentrated in the Andes. Later contributions by authors such as Juan Rivero, Savage, William Duellman, John D. Lynch, Pedro Ruiz-Carranza and José Ayarzagüena increased the number of described taxa, especially from Central America, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. The evolutionary relationships, biogeography, and character evolution of centrolenids were discussed by Guayasamin et al. (2008) Glass frogs originated in South America and dispersed multiple times into Central America. Character evolution seems to be complex, with multiple gains and/or losses of humeral spines, reduced hand webbing, and complete ventral transparency. The taxonomical classification of the glass frogs has been problematic. In 1991, after a major revision of the species and taxonomic characters, the herpetologists Pedro Ruiz-Carranza and John D. Lynch published a proposal for a taxonomic classification of the Centrolenidae based on cladistic principles and defining monophyletic groups. That paper was the first of a series of contributions dealing with the glass frogs from Colombia that lead them to described almost 50 species of glass frogs. The genus Centrolene was proposed to include the species with a humeral spine in adult males, and the genus Hyalinobatrachium to include the species with a bulbous liver. However, they left a heterogeneous group of species in the genus Cochranella, defined just by lacking a humeral spine and a bulbous liver. Since the publication of the extensive revision of the Colombian glass frogs, several other publications have dealt with the glass frogs from Venezuela, Costa Rica, and Ecuador. The family Centrolenidae is a clade of anurans. Previously, the family was considered closely related to the family Hylidae; however, recent phylogenetic studies have placed them (and their sister taxon, the family Allophrynidae) closer to the family Leptodactylidae. The monophyly of Centrolenidae is supported by morphological and behavioral characters, including: (1) presence of a dilated process on the medial side of the third metacarpal (an apparently unique synapomorphy); (2) ventral origin of the musculus flexor teres digiti III relative to the musculus transversi metacarpi I; (3) terminal phalanges T-shaped; (4) exotroph, lotic, burrower/fossorial tadpoles with a vermiform body and dorsal C-shaped eyes, that live buried within leaf packs in still or flowing water systems; (5) eggs clutches deposited outside of water on vegetation or rocks above still or flowing water systems. Several molecular synapomorphies also support the monophyly of the clade. The taxonomic classification of Centrolenidae was recently modified. The family now contains two subfamilies and 12 genera. Incertae sedis Ikakogi Guayasamin, Castroviejo, Trueb, Ayarzagüena, Rada, Vilá, 2009 Glass frogs are generally small, ranging from 3 to 7.5 cm (1.2 to 3.0 in) in length. They are known to eat their own young.[verification needed] They are green in color over most of their bodies, save for the skin along the lower surface of the body, which is translucent. Glass frogs are similar in appearance to some green frogs of the genus Eleutherodactylus and to some tree frogs of the family Hylidae. However, hylid tree frogs have eyes that face to the side, whilst those of glass frogs face forward. Some species of green tree frogs (especially juveniles), such as Hyloscirtus palmeri and Hypsiboas pellucens, have the transparent abdominal skin typical of glass frogs, but they also have calcars on the heels, a character not present in any species of the Centrolenidae. The Centrolenidae are a diverse family, distributed from southern Mexico to Panama, and through the Andes from Venezuela and the island of Tobago to Bolivia, with some species in the Amazon and Orinoco River basins, the Guiana Shield region, southeastern Brazil, and northern Argentina. Glass frogs are mostly arboreal. They live along rivers and streams during the breeding season, and are particularly diverse in montane cloud forests of Central and South America, although some species occur also in Amazon and Chocóan rainforest and semi-deciduous forests. The eggs are usually deposited on the leaves of trees or shrubs hanging over the running water of mountain streams, creeks, and small rivers. One species leaves its eggs over stones close to waterfalls. The method of egg-laying on the leaf varies between species. The males usually call from leaves close to their egg clutches. These eggs are less vulnerable to predators than those laid within water, but are affected by the parasitic maggots of some fly species. As a result, some glass frogs show parental care. After they hatch, the tadpoles fall into the waters below. The tadpoles are elongated, with powerful tails and low fins, suited for fast-flowing water. Outside of the breeding season, some species live in the canopy. \|Wikimedia Commons has media related to Centrolenidae.\|
I’m not sure what the weather is like where you are but, for much of the US, spring has officially sprung! The ground has thawed, trees and flowers are in bloom, and it’s only a matter of time before we hear that familiar buzzing of bees. But with the change of seasons (and those bees) comes an unwelcome guest: seasonal allergies. And if you’re one of the estimated 35 million Americans who experience hay fever, you know that it’s not only miserable for your sinuses and throat, but it can make you look like, and feel like, you haven’t slept in days. The hallmark symptoms of hay fever are easily recognized: itchy and watery eyes, scratchy throat, sneezing, and a runny nose. The symptoms are similar to the common cold, but are triggered by seasonal pollen conditions rather than by a virus. Allergists recommend staying indoors during high pollen-count days, keeping doors and windows closed, and keeping your home free of pollen dust by vacuuming carpets, cleaning furniture, and filtering the air. But, who wants to stay inside on a day like today!? If you can bear it, it might be worth popping an over-the-counter antihistamine and braving the world. Before you do, though, make sure you put your best face forward by following these few quick steps: - Wash your face. This might seem obvious, but it’s worth mentioning anyway. Pollen is airborne and can stick to eyebrows, lashes, and, yes, even skin. One easy way to minimize your direct exposure to pollen is to wash it off! - Pay attention to the ingredients in your cosmetics. If you are prone to seasonal allergies, you may also be susceptible to cosmetic allergies. Check the labels of the products you buy and save the “toxic” ingredients for a different time of year. - Keep it simple and pure. When seasonal allergies are at their worst, give your skin a break. Skip the heavy foundation and, instead, choose a loose powder base like Jane Iredale’s Amazing Base Loose Minerals. For itchy eyes, choose a natural hue for liner and shadow and skip the mascara entirely. Then, opt for a light, clear lip gloss instead of your usual lipstick. (You won’t have to re-apply every time you blow your nose!) - Smile. Yes, smile. Even if your head is aching and your nose won’t stop dripping, a smiling face works wonders for your outlook–and for the way others see you! Don’t let your seasonal allergies keep you from facing the day with your best face forward. Pro Tip: When you see the first symptoms of hay fever, pop a small vial of eyedrops in your makeup bag or purse. If you notice your eyes are getting itchy or red, a few small drops will work like magic to clear the discomfort.
Plenty of people in the United States are well aware of how crucial it is to maintain optimal dental health and dental hygiene, and they make it a priority to receive annual dental checkups. However, a significant number of individuals in the U.S. downplay the importance of dental care for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, a fear of dental procedures can prompt a neglect of dental care. In other instances, people feel rushed or overly busy and think they can't squeeze the dentist into their schedule. Still, others simply can't afford dental care. Any of these factors can cause people to put off taking proper care of their teeth. This can occasionally be accompanied by the belief that any oral problems they have will eventually go away. Unfortunately, this simply is not true, according to the Imperfect Parent. The tragic death of Kyle Willis, a 24-year-old resident of Cincinnati and father of a 6-year-old daughter, illustrates the crucial need for regular dental health care and the inherent, systemic issues with the availability of orthodontic services for those suffering from economic hardships. The news source reports that the oral health problem that led to Willis' passing from a massive infection arose two weeks ago, as a painful ache in one of his wisdom teeth. He immediately saw a dentist, who told him that the tooth needed to be removed. Lacking dental insurance coverage, as well as the money to pay for the procedure out of his own pocket, he declined the removal, thinking his pain would just go away on its own. As could be expected, his pain only got more intense, causing swelling that prompted him to go to a local hospital emergency room. The doctors there gave him an antibiotic and pain medication, and again advised that the tooth required removal. He took the pain treatment, skipped the antibiotic, and died shortly after when the oral infection reached his brain. People in situations like Willis have a variety of solutions they can pursue, including discount dental plans or receiving dental care at low- or no-cost public health clinics and dental schools. Don’t ignore mouth pain. Dental care is related to your overall health and should be treated accordingly.
My Greatest Discovery in Fifty Years (Apr, 1923) My Greatest Discovery in Fifty Years Famous Plant Wizard, Celebrating Half a Century of Useful Labor, Tells How He Believes We Can Develop Better “Human Plants” By Luther Burbank, Sc.D., Especially written for Popular Science Monthly ON THE seventh day of March, I was 74 years of age. On that day, I celebrated the conclusion of half a century of ceaseless experimentation with plant life. In those 50 years, millions of plantsâ€”grasses, flowers, vegetables, grains, and treesâ€”have passed through my hands, and from them I have selected a few, seemingly a very, very few, for preservation, reproduction, improvement, development, to such a point that they may render the utmost service of food, beauty, and enjoyment to man. Plants Teach Man To me, they have become like a vast army of individuals, marching onward, guided by selection, toward a goal of improvement. From my first creationâ€”a potato that is now grown by the millions of bushels all over the habitable globeâ€”to the latest of more than a dozen varieties of new and commercially valuable fruitsâ€”of which more than 100 carloads were shipped last year from California alone â€”there has been growing steadily within my experience the belief that in the development of the plant lies a great, if not the greatest, object lesson for human beings. That belief has grown in 50 years to a fact. It has been proved time on time, and I’ve crystallized it into two statements, one the corollary of the other: First, that plants are pliable and under the control of man; and that they can be bred and trained and developed, just as animals can be bred and improved and trained. Second, that the human plant â€” the child â€” can be trained, developed, and improved, just as the skilled gardener, or the trained botanist, trains, develops, and improves the best that is in each one of his plants. The Hope of Progress During the course of many years of investigation into the plant life of the world, creating new forms, modifying old ones, adapting others to new connections, and blending still others, I have been impressed constantly with the similarity between the organization and development of plant and human life. While I have never lost sight of the principle of the survival of the fittest, as an explanation of the development and progress of plant life, I have come to rind in the crossing of species and in selection, wisely directed, a great and powerful instrument for the transformation of the vegetable kingdom along lines that lead constantly upward. The crossing of species to me is paramount. Upon it, wisely directed, and accompanied by rigid selection of the best, and as rigid an exclusion of the poorest, rests the hope of all progress. In my work with plants and flowers, I introduce color here, shape there, size or perfume, according to the product desired. In such processes the teachings of Nature are followed; its great forces only are employed. All “that has been done for plants and flowers by natural crossing, Nature already has accomplished for the American people. By the crossing of types, in one instance, strength has been secured; in another, intellectuality; in still another, moral force. Nature alone has done this. But the work of man’s head and hands has not yet been summoned to prescribe for the development of a race. So far, a preconceived and mapped – out crossing of bloods finds no place in the making of peoples and nations. But, when Nature has already done its duty, and the crossing leaves a product that in the rough displays the best human attributes, all that is left to be done falls to selective environment. In my life work, when two different plants have been crossed, that is only the beginning. It is only one step, however important; the great work lies beyondâ€” in the care, the nurture, the influence of surroundings, selection, the separation of the best from the poorest; all of which are embraced in the words I have applied â€”selective environment. Just as all plant life is sensitive to environment, so is all animal life. And of all living things the child is the most sensitive. Surroundings act upon the child as the outside world acts upon the plate in the camera. A child is the most susceptible thing in the world to influence, and, if that force be applied rightly and constantly when the child is in its most receptive condition, the effect will be pronounced, immediate, and permanent. The Child a Human Plant We should begin with the child where I begin with the plant, at the very beginning. It has been said that “the way to reform a man is to begin with his grandfather;” but this is only a half truth, for, while it is true that we should “begin with his grandfather,” we should begin with that grandfather when he himself is a child. The secret of the successful results of my work with plants has been partly in my love for plants. If you are cultivating a plant, developing it into something finer and nobler, you must love it, not hate it; be gentle with it, not abusive; be firm, never harsh. I give the plants upon which I am at work the best possible environment. So it should be with the child, if you wish to develop it along right ways. Let it have music, pictures, laughter, and a good time; not an idle time, but one full of cheerful occupations. Plants should be given sun and air, blue sky, and proper nourishment. Give them to your boys and girls. Choose what improvement you wish in a flower, a fruit, or a tree, and by crossing, selection, cultivation, and persistence, you can fix this desirable trait irrevocably. Pick out any trait you want in your normal child, be it honesty, fairness, purity, lovableness, industry, thrift, what not. By surrounding this child with sunshine from the sky and from your own heart, by giving him the closest communion with nature, by feeding him well balanced, nutritious food, by giving all that is implied in “healthful environment influences,” you can thus cultivate in the child all of these traits, and fix them for all his life. These are the most important discoveries, certainly the most valuable, that I have made in my half century of selecting, training, developing, and improving the members of the vegetable kingdom. In that time, I have passed through a million interesting experiences, not the least of which has been to watch the development, through years of experimentation, of productive, useful plants from forms that before had been comparatively worthless. I have looked down upon a miniature forest of 240,000 plum seedlings, of as many distinct varieties, from which I was to make a selection, right here in my own grounds, of ONE TREE, which, in turn, was to produce a plum that ripened rapidly, packed well, shipped well, and sold well in the market. I have had the pleasure of developing a chestnutâ€”a tree that normally requires from 15 to 20 years to come into full bearingâ€”into a tree that bears nuts at six months from the planting of the seed nut, and is in full bearing at two years. From the small, hard, bitter quince I have developed, by selection and crossing, a fruit larger than the largest apple, juicy and sweet when eaten raw, and as fine in flavor as the most delicious apple when baked. There is nothing in that quince except the best qualities of the original quince, but it has been given encouragement and opportunity to develop to its utmost, and it has responded, just as any other plant, animal, or child will respond and develop if so cared for. I have taken the slow growing, small, hard-shelled wild black walnut and, by crossing it with the soft-wooded, soft-shelled, edible walnut, produced a tree with a finer, harder wood than the black walnut, yet which grows many times as rapidly as the latter and produces better and more nuts. Prune Trees from Almonds From the crossing, selection, and development of young trees of the common prune within the past 40 years, I have developed a larger, sweeter, earlier fruit, which dries better, ships better, keeps better, and sells better. I recall one time, back in 1881, when Warren Dutton, a friend of mine, came to me in March for 20,000 prune trees, to be ready for setting out that same year. This meant the planting, and growing to a height of from two to five feet, of 20,000 prune trees within nine months. I took the contract, and this is what was done: Twenty-five thousand almonds were spread over a bed of well-drained creek sand, and covered with a thickness of burlap, over which was laid an inch of sand, kept moist. The almond seeds had the proper environment and the best of care. In two weeks they were sprouting. One by one, as they sprouted, they were set out in rows, four inches apart. In June, when they were a foot or more highâ€”still being almonds, mind you, while I wanted prunesâ€”I obtained from a neighboring prune orchard, 25,000 prune buds, employed a budding crew of 16 men, and inserted the prune buds in the almond seedlings. Prune shoots appeared from the buds, the tops of the almond trees were cut away, and I had, not quite 20,000, but about 19,800 young prune trees, ready for delivery, and ready on time. They made an orchard of more than 200 acres, and, though that bit of work was done nearly 42 years ago, all of them are still growing and bearing abundantly. Man Can “Go Nature One Better” It is all so simple; life in every form is so clear; it is all a process of evolution. And man, by perseverance, patience, watchfulness, study, care and love, may aid im- measurably in the processes of that evolution. He may accomplish in 10 years what Nature takes 10 centuries to do. For more than half a century I have had one definite objectâ€”the improvement of the vegetable kingdom for the benefit of man. Deciding first, exactly what I wish to create, I begin by selecting the strongest, best developed plants of that variety available. They come to seed, the best seed from them is planted again, and again developed for further selection and planting; cross fertilization by pollen is carried on, and so the work continues until the ultimate product of that particular parent stock is reached. There is nothing supernatural, nothing mysterious about it. It is a work into which I gladly, joyously put my heart and mind and hands. Just now, I am trying to produce better grains, nuts, fruits, and vegetables, as well as larger, more beautiful, and more fragrant flowers, striving not only for new forms, colors, and sizes, but for those products of the vegetable kingdom that will provide more food and less waste. On my experimental farms, more than 2500 experiments are being conducted. I shall have ready, this spring, a variety of new grains, seed-bearing grasses, suitable for both forage plants and for grain crops, and others for cereals; new walnuts, huge, rapid-growing hardwood trees, which will produce more valuable lumber in 10 years than the now well-known varieties will in 50 or 100 years; a drought-resisting lippia for lawns in dry regions; a new asparagus, which is to the ordinary variety as the Burbank potato was to its predecessors; an artichoke, the blossom of which is four feet or more in circumference; and a number of new climbing vines and flowers. Burbank Promises Future Marvels Among the new blossom-bearing plants I shall offer soon, are immense larkspurs, both annual and perennial; new zinnias, larger and brighter than any before known; new petunias and a verbena with much larger flowers and a pleasing odor. There are to follow, within a year or so, still more interesting and valuable productions from the work of selection, development and improvement that I have been doing in the plant world for the last half century.
I just received a press release from state Assemblyman Lou Greenwald, a Democrat from Cherry Hill, calling for state law to be changed so supermarkets can sell beer and wine. This is a good idea. Consumers would benefit from buying wine and beer in supermarkets. But Greenwald goes on to state that his approach would not permit towns to increase the number of licenses. In other states, a liquor license is just that, a license. In New Jersey, it's a franchise. The state has created an artificial monopoly to benefit sellers at the expense of consumers. This was done via the grandfathering of licenses that went through back in the 1940s during the administration of the odious Governor Wally Edge. As a result some towns have more than 40 licenses per square mile while others have just one or two. This makes no sense. If the town officials want to sell new licenses, why should the state stop them? The money could bused to cut property taxes and consumers would have more options. Here's the release: (VOORHEES) - Assembly Budget Committee Chairman Louis Greenwald (D-Camden) today announced he has introduced legislation to stimulate New Jersey’s economy by modernizing the state’s liquor licensing laws. Assembly Bill 2591 (A-2591), known as the “New Jersey Grocery Store Economic Development Act,” would gradually expand the sale of beer, wine and other alcoholic beverages in grocery stores that opt to provide that convenience. Current laws only permit two liquor licenses per company or individual. “These laws are holdovers from a bygone era when only ‘mom and pop’ corner stores existed,” said Greenwald. “My legislation will move our state’s liquor licensing laws into the 21stcentury, creating jobs and stimulating the economy while correcting arcane quirks in our laws.” Notably, A-2591 would not increase the number of liquor licenses a municipality may issue; instead, the legislation would ease an overly restrictive cap on New Jersey businesses, promoting economic growth and job creation. Greenwald added the legislation would assist businesses and struggling municipalities looking to promote economic growth. “Just as we worked to cut red tape and modernize the state’s automobile insurance laws, we must now work to ensure our state’s grocery stores aren’t held back by liquor licensing laws crafted for a totally different era,” said Greenwald. “This legislation will stimulate local economies while providing revenue for our towns and cities.” Specifically, A-2591 would: · Gradually increase the current cap of 2 licenses per entity to 10 over a 10-year period · Promote economic growth and better community access, encouraging growth of grocery stores in traditionally underserved communities · Levy a 10% transfer fee to be paid to municipalities by those purchasing licenses, providing property tax relief to residents · Provide an incentive for supermarket retailers that have been growing in other states with less restrictive licensing laws to invest and create jobs in New Jersey · Maintain appropriate balance of liquor licenses, by not increasing the number of licenses a municipality may issue The antiquated two license cap was created nearly fifty years ago to combat price fixing and to fight organized crime. Removing the cap would create greater return on existing licenses and could represent millions of dollars to an existing owner looking to sell a license. In addition, lifting the cap will open up the market and allow businesses who are at the current two license cap to purchase inactive licenses, which currently have little to no demand because of the cap. Greenwald called the current cap on grocers “unnecessary, unfair, and overly restrictive” on trade. “In today’s tough economic times, we should do everything we can to create jobs and promote economic growth. By cutting regulatory red-tape, we will do just that,” Greenwald said.
New Products in the Last Month Olive Tree has been releasing new products at a record rate! We have never before delivered such a great selection of Bibles, eBooks, dictionaries, Bible study aids and devotionals at such a pace as we have in the last month. We have posted over 30 new products since the beginning of October, including some very valuable and useful tools and some insightful and inspiring devotionals and eBooks. Although I could talk about all our new products at length, I want to take some time to highlight some of my recent favorites. As always, you can find all our recently released products for the last two months in our New Releases section. Exhaustive Dictionary of Bible Names: This concise but exhaustive dictionary gives the Greek and/or Hebrew translations of all the names in the Bible. Names have meaning in the Bible, and here is a resource that every Bible student should have. I only regret that the authors did not include verse references for the names; however, since they use the KJV and NIV versions, a simple search in one of those Bibles on your mobile device would quickly return all the results you need! Josephus and Philo: As a history major, I cannot help but enjoy studying the context of the Bible, and these two ancient authors, although not Christians, tell us what the world was like when Jesus physically walked the earth. If you haven’t got these yet, you should because they cost you nothing. Like many resources from Olive Tree, these are free. A Compassionate Roar: John Anderson’s call to Christians to awake to their moral and spiritual duties in the face of an immoral and godless world is a great reminder of our responsibility before God to stand up for Him in a sober, compassionate and firm way. Norwegian Bible; Basque New Testament; Polish New Testament; Swedish 1917 Bible; Reina Valera 1858 New Testament: One of my favorite aspects about working for Olive Tree is how many free Bibles we offer in many languages of the world for missionaries and Christians all across the globe. These Bible translations, like so many other free Bibles from Olive Tree, are offered to you at no charge. Complete Bible Discussion Guide: If you have a Bible study or are looking for a systematic way to study a passage in the Bible, this is it! Author Mack Thomas has study questions for every chapter of the Bible that lets you mine the riches of God’s Word. Teach Me to Pray; Strengthen My Spirit; Grant Me Wisdom; Renew My Heart: These four daily devotionals, containing extracts from Andrew Murray, Charles Spurgeon, Matthew Henry and John Wesley respectively, are treasure chests of inspiration, filled with these classic writer’s faith-infusing, challenging and refreshing words. Each are less than four dollars, and provide a year’s worth of blessings. These titles above are just a sampling of what Olive Tree has released recently, including devotionals from Frances Roberts, The Way of the Master by Ray Comfort, and more. Like I said before, check out our New Releases section for all the latest products!
Abandoned, neglected, ramshackle, and vacant properties are scattered throughout the city of Harrisburg. Almost every neighborhood has it. Almost every resident lives near it whether it's a ruined building or an overgrown lot. When a church roof collapsed the other week, it brought the issue to the foreground, but it's not the first time a property has crumbled in the city endangering neighbors and plaguing the community. In fact it's been an issue for years as unused businesses, factories, warehouses, residences, and lots deteriorate. It's more than just an eyesore. It's one of the city's most serious problems. Why is there so much blight in Harrisburg? What can be done about it? How can it be prevented? Join me, Tara Leo Auchey, right here from 12-1 p.m. for a live chat about it. Use the comment section below to pose your comments and questions. Feel free to do it before the chat begins to help jumpstart the conversation. What topics would you like to discuss during these live Q&A with TLA chats? Send requests & suggestions to firstname.lastname@example.org. Tara Leo Auchey is the creator and editor of the community-based online publication, today's the day Harrisburg, which focuses on the news, people, and projects of the City of Harrisburg. Follow on Twitter and on Facebook.
Photo by Jill Tucker, San Francisco Chronicle Can’t touch this. Traveling down a San Francisco rabbit hole, we encountered Assemblyman Mark Leno and rapper MC Hammer joining forces to help break a Guinness world record this morning at the city’s Main Public Library. In attendance: Giants’ mute mascot Lou Seal; a man(?) in a large bear suit; six politicians; three surrogates for Sen. Dianne Feinstein and House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi; a handful of bureaucrats; 30 overwhelmed school children; and a partridge in a pear tree. Actually, not the partridge, but a bird would have fit in. They were all assembled to participate in the 3rd annual Jumpstart’s Read for the Record, a national record-breaking event that includes hundreds of thousands of children reading from the same book on the same day. This year, the book was, “Corduroy,” a charming tale of a bear missing a button — with Leno and Hammer taking turns reading about the stuffed animal in unfortunate green overalls. The politicians took turns talking about the importance of reading and literacy, with Supervisor Sophie Maxwell saying, “When you are well educated, you are well educated. No one can take that from you.” Or, in other words: “You can’t touch this. Break it down.” (Oh, c’mon. It’s was a gimme.) Hammer, who never took off his sunglasses, and Leno were charming in their reading roles, with children giggling and adding “silly bear” commentary to the story. Afterward, the children flocked to Corduroy, hugging him while Hammer posed for pictures with the adults in the room who remembered how cool Hammer Pants were back in the 80s. Hammer said he drove 100 miles from Tracy to participate. A regular feature on Radio Disney and a songwriter for animated films, the rapper said he’s reaching out to a fifth generation of kids and families these days. “This is all I’ve been doing my entire career,” he said.
It didn’t look like Michelle Nguyen, 17, would make it through high school a few years ago. After a successful middle school career, Nguyen ended up at Lowell, the city’s most competitive public high school. It was here that her life began to unravel when problems at home began to creep up. She rarely made it to class in her freshman year, and the 0.0 GPA suggested a future without college. Nguyen’s fate changed when she transferred to Mission later that year. She will now be a part of a growing number of students who attend high school in the Mission to walk across the stage in her cap and gown in a few weeks. Graduation rates are on the rise at Mission High School and John O’Connell. A few weeks ago, the California Department of Education released enrollment data, which includes both graduation and dropout rates, for the 2012-2013 school year. In just one year, the graduation rate at Mission High went from 73.5 percent to 81.6 percent, making it the high school with the largest increase from the previous year and placing them on par with the overall district number for the first time in many years. “That’s a big deal,” said Eric Guthertz, principal of Mission High. READ MORE
I know this sounds stereotypically feminine, but I absolutely love chocolate. It’s the perfect food. If I’m sad, I comfort myself with it; if I’m happy, I congratulate myself with it; if I’m stressed, I calm myself with it. I could not imagine life without it. Lately, though, I’ve become much more careful in which chocolate products I consume. I recently had the opportunity to educate myself on child slavery in the cocoa industry and was shocked at what I found. I will admit that I was a bit late in learning about the issue. Reports of slavery in the Ivory Coast were first brought to light in 2001, which led two senators, Tom Harkin from Iowa and Eliot Engel from New York, to pass the Harkin-Engel Protocol, also known as the Cocoa Protocol. This was a voluntary protocol signed by the biggest names in the cocoa industry vowing to stop the worst forms of child slavery and prohibiting child slavery in the industry by 2005. This deadline was never met. A 2007 UNICEF report estimated 200,000 children (mostly 12-16 years old) were held in the worst forms of child labor in West African cocoa farms. In 2010, the documentary film, Dark Side of Chocolate, by Miki Mistrati and U. Roberto Romano revealed gross violations of the protocols. The film reveals trafficking of children from Mali and Burkina Faso into the Ivory Coast to work for little or no pay under harsh conditions on cocoa farms. CNN’s Freedom Project investigated the issue in September of 2011, only to find farms with child slaves, working for no pay under harsh conditions. Recently, though, there have been major improvements. Cadbury established a Cocoa Partnership to support community projects in cocoa communities in Ghana. Divine, Cadbury, and Nestle have all taken action to produce chocolate through the Fairtrade certification system. There is much more work to be done. While consumers have worked to pressure the companies that produce the chocolate, many trading companies have sat by idly and done little to help combat the issue. Currently, Anti-Slavery International is working to pressure Cargill, ADM, and Barry Callebaut (a signatory of the Protocol) to increase their efforts. Namely, Anti-Slavery is calling on them to transparently invest 0.7% of their pre-tax profits to work on the social and economic empowerment of vulnerable children in Burkina Faso and Mali and to “take more action to ensure cocoa is grown responsibly and to combat the trafficking of children into slavery.” The US Department of State still estimates that more than 109,000 children in the West African cocoa industry work each day with machetes and pesticides and carry heavy loads for long hours in intense heat. Many are still trafficked from neighboring countries and are not paid for their efforts. Boycotting is not the answer, as that only leads to more poverty and intensifies the problem, but I have begun to seek out fair trade chocolate and chocolate from companies that are moving to fair trade when I can. It’s a little part that I can do to combat a disgusting aspect of my favorite dessert. To ask cocoa trading companies to step up and do their part: Letter to Cocoa Traders For more information: Anti-Slavery International: Chocolate and Slavery CNN’s Freedom Project: Child Slavery and Chocolate All Too Easy to Find
Today we mark the 13th anniversary of Sept. 11. As we honor the memories of the lives that were lost that day, we also should remember the thousands of people who are still suffering. More than 100,000 rescue and recovery workers—including firefighters, police officers, emergency medical technicians, building and construction trades workers and transit workers—and hundreds of thousands of other workers and residents near Ground Zero were exposed to a toxic mix of dust and fumes from the collapse of the World Trade Center. Now more than 30,000 responders are sick and many have died from respiratory diseases and other health problems. The AFL-CIO is a longtime advocate of the World Trade Center Health Program and supported the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, which passed in 2010 and provided medical care and compensation to the victims. The law, which expires after five years, needs to be extended and has garnered bipartisan support to achieve that goal. This year, in remembrance of all who lost their lives on 9/11 and in honor of the brave responders who are still suffering, we ask you to contact your member of Congress and urge them to support the 9/11 Health and Compensation Reauthorization Act. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka joined with local labor leaders and working families to rally Alaska voters to support raising the state’s minimum wage. For several decades, Alaska had the nation’s highest minimum wage, but the wage has stayed stagnant in recent years, and Alaska’s working families are falling farther and farther behind. Alaska’s Ballot Measure 3 would raise the state’s minimum wage from $7.75 per hour to $8.75 per hour as of Jan. 1, 2015. The bill would raise the minimum wage to $9.75 per hour as of Jan. 1, 2016, then it would adjust the minimum wage each year for inflation after 2016. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) was among numerous people arrested as fast food workers and their supporters rallied in more than 150 cities on Thursday. Thousands of workers walked out of restaurants and picked up picket signs, demanding that big restaurant chains pay them a living wage of $15-per-hour. Home care workers also participated in the strikes. Moore was arrested in West Milwaukee, Wis., and other arrests were made in New York City, Detroit, Chicago and elsewhere. “I take great pride in supporting Milwaukee workers as they risk arrest in pursuit of a brighter tomorrow for their families,” Moore said in a statement. “I’ve read their letters, I’ve heard their calls and I’ve listened to their stories. I understand their struggle, but more importantly, I see their drive to fight for a future that is equal to their talents and worthy of their dreams.” Working families everywhere applaud the courage of the fast-food workers who are striking today and engaging in acts of civil disobedience in over 150 cities. And we applaud the unity and the collective spirit displayed by members of AFL-CIO state federations and labor councils who have joined today’s protests in solidarity. This nation was built on the fundamental beliefs that work should be a gateway to the middle class, and that no job should ever trap someone in poverty. That’s why the “Fight for Fifteen” movement is surging and the protests are getting ever louder. It’s time for corporations to hear this resounding message: Every worker deserves a fair wage and the right to form a union without retaliation. We support them. Kendall Fells, organizing director for Fast Food Forward, explained why protesters were willing to take arrest: There has to be civil disobedience because workers don’t see any other way to get $15 an hour and a union. There’s a long history of this, from the civil rights movement to the farm workers movement. Walmart is hosting a manufacturing summit in Denver this week as part of its new program to supposedly invest in products made in America for its stores across the country. The retailer is claiming its new plan will invest $250 billion over the next decade and create 1 million jobs. We’re not buying it. But workers will not benefit from a Walmart-ification of our manufacturing sector. Jobs in the Walmart model won’t restore America’s middle class or build shared prosperity given the company’s obsession with low labor costs and undermining American labor standards. And the company’s ‘commitment’ to American manufacturing is meaningless unless it actually increases the proportion of its products that are American-made. Here are five reasons why Walmart’s plan is nonsense: 1. The whole thing is misleading. When you dig deeper, you find that all Walmart is doing is counting the company’s natural growth as “new” investment. If the company maintains its current percentages of U.S.-sourced goods and continues to grow at the same rate as it has the last three years, $262 billion will be spent on U.S.-made goods anyway without Walmart making any changes or doing anything new. Doing a little less than what you’ve been doing and calling it “progress” isn’t exactly admirable. …in some cases—the economics now favor “reshoring” of work back to the U.S., due to an emerging domestic energy cost advantage, rising wages in Asia, and wage stagnation in the U.S. (which Walmart might know something about). And don’t forget to consider the challenges that come from outsourcing: supply chain disruption, quality and inventory control issues, intellectual property theft, and high shipping costs. 3. Walmart is the biggest importer in the United States and it has been increasing how much it imports every year. The company now imports 2.5 times as much as it did in 2002. Walmart should make a solid commitment to cut back on its growth in imports, after decades of massive increases, to create a real net gain for American workers. 4. Walmart is off to a rocky start helping create U.S. manufacturing jobs. In the first year of the new plan, Walmart created only 2,000 new jobs, putting it way behind schedule toward reaching that goal of 1 million new jobs. 5. As the largest private employer in the nation, Walmart should start with itself to create real change for America. At the rate Walmart workers are paid, they won’t be buying many U.S.-made products or imports. Walmart must invest more in its own workforce if it wants a “buy American” strategy to succeed. Walmart cashiers make, on average, less than $25,000 a year. An April 2014 study by Americans for Tax Fairness estimated that subsidies and tax breaks for Walmart and the Walton family cost taxpayers approximately $7.8 billion per year, including about $6.2 billion in assistance to Walmart workers due to low wages and inadequate benefits. This initiative seems like an attempt to change the conversation from the need for Walmart to improve jobs for its 1.4 million retail workers in the United States. If Walmart is truly committed to rebuilding the American middle class, it can start with its own workers, most of whom make less than $25,000/year and struggle to make ends meet. Walmart should use its two-day summit to prove the company is committed to real and substantive change and an end to corporate whitewashing. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka released the following statement in response to events in Ferguson, Missouri: Our thoughts and prayers are with the family of Michael Brown, the teenager who was recently killed in Ferguson, Missouri. His death and the anguish of the Ferguson community have rightfully become a national story. Despite the tragedy, there is also an opportunity to have an important discussion about issues that we have long neglected in this country. This conversation can only be had if cooler heads prevail. We are a nation that still remains segregated by race and class and tragedies like this highlight those divisions. It is encouraging that the Justice Department and FBI are closely investigating this incident so that the community of Ferguson is served. The annual reports from the Social Security and Medicare Trustees released today “have good news for all Americans,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. Social Security and Medicare will be there for us and our families if elected leaders listen to the American people and reject calls to cut benefits. Instead of undermining these crucial programs, we must build on their success and adopt measures to strengthen and expand them. Richard Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, said the most important lesson from the Social Security report “is that Social Security has a large and growing surplus. Today’s report projects Social Security’s cumulative surplus to be roughly $2.8 trillion in 2014, growing to about $2.9 trillion around 2020. Trumka noted that while “America’s most important retirement program” will remain strong for many more years to come: It has become increasingly clear, however, that strengthening Social Security for the future must include improvements in benefits. Social Security remains the sole retirement income plan that is broadly available and that Americans can count on to provide secure lifetime benefits. The Medicare report, Fiesta said, “reminds us once again that the Affordable Care Act is controlling health care costs.” He said: It is great news that the life of the Medicare Trust Fund has been extended by another four years to 2030. Attempts to repeal health care reform would only undo the progress we have made in controlling health care costs. The Social Security Trustees reported once again that the Disability Trust Fund can pay full benefits until 2016, with enough revenue after that time to cover about 80% of promised benefits. Trumka said: Congress should act soon to ensure disabled workers and their families will continue to receive the benefits they have earned. This can be done by allocating a larger share of current payroll tax contributions to the Disability program, as has been done many times before. Congress should reject calls to misuse this opportunity to undermine the sole source of disability income protection that is working well for America’s families. Current and future retirees must be wary of those politicians who will use today’s Social Security and Medicare Trustees reports as political cover for radical changes that would put seniors, the disabled and the families of deceased workers at risk. On Wednesday, President Barack Obama will visit the Tappan Zee Bridge in New York, where he will call on more federal spending for infrastructure projects. Obama has made numerous proposals to increase spending on bridges, roads and other infrastructure projects, but Republicans in Congress have blocked those efforts. The Tappan Zee Bridge is currently in the process of being replaced, financed by a record $1.6 billion federal loan. The old bridge, which opened in 1955, has fallen into disrepair and is serving a daily capacity above what it was designed for. While Congress has failed to provide the funds needed to move forward, Obama is using alternate methods, such as the loan, to help rebuild the country’s crumbling infrastructure. “The President will also highlight efforts by the administration to cut through red tape and modernize the federal infrastructure permitting process, and reduce project approval time lines,” the White House official said. Meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden will appear in Cleveland to give a speech on similar themes of investing in infrastructure and the economy. As part of Infrastructure Week 2014, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will speak at a rally on Thursday in front of the AFL-CIO headquarters about the vital need for upgrading our infrastructure and the positive impact doing so will have on the economy. Putting money in roads and bridges is like planting seed corn. Investing in good jobs yields a good return. When you put seed in the ground, you get something to harvest. When you put cement in the ground, you get roads. When you put steel in the ground, you get train tracks. You get it. But if you don’t put that seed in the ground, that’s not smart. It’s not sensible. It’s not “thinking like business.” It’s cutting yourself off at the knees. And that’s what these politicians are doing to the American economy…. Trumka pointed to a recent American Society of Civil Engineers report that said the country needs to spend $3.6 trillion just to make sure that our current infrastructure doesn’t fall apart, with a similar investment needed to create the next generation infrastructure that will grow the economy. Today is the 25th annual Workers Memorial Day, and around the country workers, workplace safety activists and community and faith leaders are honoring the men and women killed on the job and renewing their commitment to continuing the campaign for strong job safety laws and tough enforcement of those laws. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says Workers Memorial Day honors “the ultimate sacrifices working people make to achieve the American Dream.” No worker should die on the job. Every one of the 150 working men and women who die every day from injury or occupational disease serve as a constant reminder of the dangers too many face at the workplace. There have been major improvements in the workplace safety rules and significant reduction in fatalities, injuries and illness on the job since the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) began operations and the Occupational Safety and Health Act went into effect April 28, 1971. But those key workplace safety milestones didn’t just happen. They came about because workers and their unions organized, fought and demanded action from employers and their government. Virtually every safety and health protection on the books today is there because of working men and women who joined together in unions. Much more still needs to be done. In 2012, 4,628 workers lost their lives on the job (up from the 4,400 previously reported). But that is only a part of the deadly toll. Each year, 50,000 workers die from occupational diseases caused by exposures to toxic chemicals and other health hazards. That’s a total of 150 workers dying each and every day. Some employers cut corners and violate the law, putting workers in serious danger and costing lives. Workers who report job hazards or job injuries are fired or disciplined. Employers contract out dangerous work to try to avoid responsibility. As a result, each year thousands of workers are killed and millions more get injured or contract diseases because of their jobs. The Obama administration has moved forward to strengthen protections with tougher enforcement and a focus on workers’ rights. Also much-needed safeguards stalled for years due to business opposition have finally started to advance, including a new proposed OSHA silica standard to protect workers from this deadly dust that causes disabling lung disease. But other protections from workplace hazards have stalled in the face of fierce attacks by business groups and the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives who have launched an all-out attack on all government regulation and safeguards. Trumka said that as the nation remembers those who have died on the job: We should rededicate ourselves to holding companies accountable for putting profits over people, and we must demand stronger safety standards in the workplace. Until every worker, from the farm to the factory, is guaranteed the peace of mind of a safe workplace, our job will never truly be done. More than three months after House Republicans leaders allowed the Emergency Unemployment Compensation benefits program to expire, nearly 2.8 million jobless workers have lost their economic lifeline. Monday, the U.S. Senate gave those workers a ray of hope when it passed (59-38) a bill reviving the program for long-term jobless workers. Now it is up to the House to keep that hope alive. House leaders have said they won’t take up the Senate bill, which provides retroactive benefits to Dec. 28, but only extends the program to May 31. Congress is due to leave town for a two-week recess. Call your House members todayat 845-809-4509 and urge them to pass the emergency unemployment benefits extension now. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chief sponsor of the Senate bill (S. 2077), said: The beneficiaries of this bill have earned these UI [unemployment insurance] benefits through hard work, and they have the right to expect their representatives in Congress would not stand in the way of this emergency assistance. Reauthorizing emergency UI benefits in times of economic hardship has historically not been a partisan issue, and it’s time we revert to that longstanding tradition of extending a hand to our fellow Americans in their time of need. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said: It has been a long cold winter for 2.8 million Americans who have been callously cut off from receiving emergency unemployment benefits. Today’s vote in the Senate is a critical step in thawing the long economic freeze that families have suffered through. What’s next? Finding enough Republican leaders in the House who have the backbone to stand with working people rather than cater to extreme partisan ideology. We believe it’s possible. We call on Members of the House to quickly renew these crucial benefits. It is shameful that families in need have had to wait this long. Senate negotiators announced this evening that they have reached a bipartisan agreement on a bill to revive the Emergency Unemployment Compensation benefits that expired at the end of 2013. Since then more than 2 million long-term jobless workers have lost their benefits. Action on the bill will not occur until at least March 24, following the upcoming Senate recess/state work period. Details on the bill were not released. In a statement, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka urged lawmakers to move quickly. Every day that goes by where families have to decide between heating bills and putting gas in the car to drive to a job interview is a day that we are failing America’s workers. The Senate should act immediately to extend unemployment benefits and the House should quickly follow. Since the first of the year Republicans have blocked action on several attempts to revive the jobless aid for long-term unemployed workers. But Trumka said that today’s announcement “is a good sign that there is bi-partisan agreement and that the Senate is working together to get this done.” If the Senate acts swiftly and responsibly it looks like 2 million jobless Americans may be closer to getting relief in the form of emergency unemployment insurance. We will have to look closely at what a final deal looks like and whether it adds additional burdens to workers who are already struggling.
Administrators of a national website that is the go-to source for information and advice about boycotting state assessments say the site has been hacked. All Blog Posts With social media Tag or Category April 04, 2014 March 25, 2014 A Detroit education nonprofit partners with a national school-ratings website to provide parents more in-depth information about the city's schools. March 20, 2014 In 2010 associate professor Christopher Emdin started a weekly Twitter chat called #HipHopEd to discuss the intersection of hip-hop and education. It has become an international education movement. March 19, 2014 Recognizing that "a video library probably won't change practice," Pat Wasley set out to make Teaching Channel (Tch) an interactive community. The former dean of the University of Washington College of Education turned edupreneur took over the Oakland nonprofit two years ago. March 11, 2014 Students at Los Alamitos High School, in Calif., rounded up their teachers this month and had them read mean tweets about themselves as part of a TV production project. March 10, 2014 Recruiters are not just looking at your resume anymore, they're checking out your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn pages. What kind of things do you post and how is that making a difference in your job-future? February 25, 2014 The Society for Human Resources Management recently released a report offering information on the latest HR trends according to panels of senior HR practitioners, consultants, academics, and policy experts. February 21, 2014 A new coalition of national groups hopes to organize what it sees as a growing number of grassroots anti-testing efforts to affect legislative reforms across the U.S. February 14, 2014 Join Education Week on Tuesday, Feb. 18, at 2 p.m. ET, for an online chat about innovative approaches for training teachers how to use technology more effectively. February 11, 2014 While a Maryland district plans to form a Cybercivility Task Force to address inappropriate online postings, the role of schools in addressing such behavior is largely uncharted territory.
What’s your socialist bubbe got to do with the Queen of Pop? That’s the question at the heart of “The Material World,” the new Dan Fishback musical headlining this summer’s HOT! Festival at New York City’s Dixon Place. The setting for the show is a dream-world 1920s Bronx boarding house where a family of Russian Jewish socialists lives with Madonna, Britney Spears and a gay teenager plotting a Facebook revolution. Though Fishback, a 30-year-old playwright, performance artist and 2007 recipient of a Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists, cautions that the play isn’t strictly autobiographical, “The Material World” draws inspiration from his family’s socialist roots. His great-grandfather was sent to Siberia after the 1905 revolution and, following a daring escape from Russia (hidden under a train car, according to Fishback family lore), found his way to the Bronx and became the chief compositor of the Forverts. As girls, Fishback’s paternal grandmother and her two sisters were members of the Young People’s Socialist League, and were raised in a household where the prominent socialist writers of the time stopped by to debate politics around the kitchen table. A fourth-generation activist, Fishback demonstrated against the Iraq war as a college student in the early 2000s, following in the footsteps of his father, who was involved in the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s and ’70s. “I grew up thinking Martin Luther King Day was a Jewish holiday because we celebrated it in shul,” Fishback told the Forward in a recent interview. Political commitment was valued so strongly among his family members and their circle of friends, he said, that he grew up viewing the revolutionary spirit as more essential to Jewish identity than religious belief. “My grandmother sort of humored my parents by joining our synagogue,” Fishback said, “but she would turn to me in the middle of a service and whisper, ‘God doesn’t exist.’” (Her sister was Ruth Barcan Marcus, the noted philosopher and logician who died in February.) The second in a trilogy of plays Fishback began during his Six Points Fellowship, “The Material World” is, in many ways, a loving tribute to Fishback’s activist grandmother, and to her generation of secular leftist Jews. The play’s protagonist, Gittel Fenster, is an ardent 12-year-old socialist who cuddles with Marxist texts and begs her parents to take the family back to Russia — where she imagines that, united in revolution, “no one is alone.” Though Gittel’s earnestness draws laughs (“How can I dismantle capitalism when I keep having all these feelings?” she wails in a pitch-perfect adolescent lament), her fervor is infectious. Fishback admits to “problematic nostalgia for a moment in history when people felt a lot less need to compromise with their enemies,” and says that the play is, in part, a celebration of that old hardline attitude at a time when the future of American Jewish leftism is uncertain. In Fishback’s fictional boarding house, a place where the rules of time and space are cheerily ignored, Gittel wanders upstairs to chat with the young neurotic activist Ian Fleishman (the protagonist of Fishback’s previous play, “You Will Experience Silence,”) about what he terms a “hangout revolution” in 2011 Egypt. As Ian hunches over his laptop in an effort to build support for his cause on the internet, Gittel asks why they can’t go outside and start their own “hangout revolution” immediately. One can’t help wondering what role, if any, she might have taken in the Occupy Movement. And where does Madonna fit into all of this? Fishback sees a link between her devotion to Kabbalah study and his grandmother’s commitment to socialism. “They’re both strong women who are trying to use some kind of dogma to save the universe,” he said, adding that “The Material World,” like “You Will Experience Silence,” is a play not so much about politics as what he calls the “psychology of social justice.” What Madonna, his socialist grandmother and other activists share is ambition — and just enough arrogance to think that they can change the world. “I love super-ambitious type-A personalities,” Fishback said. “There’s something about Madonna’s driven-ness that I find inspiring and helpful.” To-do lists, a favorite tool of the super-ambitious, make frequent appearances in the play: In one memorable scene, Madonna, wearing little more than a lipstick-red leotard and leopard-print heels, advises cardigan-clad Gittel on how to achieve goals both big and small. What separates effective activists from ordinary folks, it seems, is that their to-do lists include imperatives like “topple capitalism” and “mend the broken universe” tucked in between more mundane items like “do the laundry” and “get married.” Or, as Fishback put it another way: “You’re either a person who has your shit together and can make a decision and author your own life, or you’re a person at the mercy of the universe, who’s just flailing and letting the world happen to you.” It’s not tough to guess which camp Fishback falls into. As an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, he had no patience for fellow students who wouldn’t cancel their brunch plans to join in his anti-war demonstrations. He devised his own major, focusing on “how people talk about themselves” and wrote his senior thesis on gay teenage Internet culture from the 1990s. Cheese On Bread, an anti-folk band that he started as a joke with friends in the school cafeteria, went on to tour two continents and put out two full-length albums. Since moving to New York in 2003 in what began as an effort to “get art out of [his] system and then get back to real work,” he’s made a career as a performance artist and playwright; been compared to Tony Kushner, and been awarded a handful of prestigious grants and fellowships, including a current post at NYU’s Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics and previous residencies at BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. So when he says that, of all the characters in “The Material World,” he identifies most with Madonna and her obsession with productivity, it’s easy to believe him. That’s not to say that he’s above writing a joke at her expense: In one of the play’s raunchier scenes, Madonna and her Kabbalah pupil Britney Spears rub themselves against the sacred Zohar with sighs and moans that call to mind the throes of a more familiar, earthly type of passion. Still, Fishback is quick to acknowledge that, in all seriousness, he finds the text-centric nature of Judaism — the “idea that books are so important that we have to touch them with our bodies” — to be one of the most appealing aspects of the faith. And even if Kabbalah and communism aren’t your cup of tea, there are still plenty of good reasons to see “The Material World,” which plays every Friday and Saturday through the end of July. It’s got Yiddish in it, for one, with translations provided by former Folksbiene artistic director Eleanor Reissa. A veteran performer, Reissa also takes a funny, heart-breaking turn as Gittel at 90, a quick-witted grandmother as likely to rattle off a Borscht Belt-style joke as she is to admit she’s outlived her friends — and, to a certain extent, the promise of a socialist utopia. Fishback’s talents as a songwriter are on display throughout, but nowhere more than in the musical’s second act, when he tosses out a spectacular vaudevillian show-stopper that wouldn’t seem out of place in a glittering 1970s drag show. Without spoiling the surprise, here’s a hint: The diva who sings it isn’t Madonna.
Panda Software offers free “Basic Virus Course”. It is a two-hour basic course, through which you will acquire a basic knowledge on viruses and on how to be protected against them. You can read it at your own pace: you can stop and start again where you left off. Repeat it completely, or just those chapters you liked the most. The course consists of twelve chapters: - The beginning - Viruses and their effects - Types of virus - Example of virus - Example of hoaxes - Virus entry-points - What is an antivirus program? - How to combat viruses? - Is my computer protected? - Suspected virus infection? - Some tips Suramya Tomar discovered an issue with Trillian application (by Cerulean Studios) in which a temp file is created in the <Install Directory>usersdefaultcache with a random name that contains the password in clear text if the user will try to check web-based email account (e.g. Yahoo email account) and this file is world readable. The said file is not deleted after the session or existing the program Trillian. Read his report in SecurityFocus Bugtraq Less than 24 hours after Microsoft announced the release of Windows Vista Beta 1 and Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1 to testers and MSDN subscribers, both betas have leaked to Internet sites and newsgroups along with a crack for Windows Product Activation, according to BetaNews sources. The Vista download weighs in at close to 2.5GB, but the operating system’s heft did not keep the pirates away. The next-generation Windows beta likely uses the same activation technology found in Windows XP, which was compromised long ago. Eric L. Howes created another interesting page entitled The State of Hotbar Detections by some antispyware programs. It’s in http://www.spywarewarrior.com/elh/hotbar-detections.htm John Goerzen discovered that gopher, a client for the Gopher Distributed Hypertext protocol, creates temporary files in an insecure fashion. The recommendation is to upgrade to v3.0.3woody3 (woody), v3.0.7sarge1 (sarge) and v3.0.9 (unstable distribution sid). You can get the gopher packages from Debian.org A virus writer apparently seeking notoriety instead of financial gain has released malicious code that ridicules anti-virus vendors and Sasser worm author Sven Jaschan, a security firm said Friday. The Lebreat-D virus, which is rated a low threat, creates in infected computers a JPEG image file of Jaschan, a German teenager recently convicted of authoring the widespread Sasser and Netsky worms, Sophos Plc said. The Lebreat worm, which is spread through email attachments and exploits a Microsoft security vulnerability, opens a backdoor to an infected Windows computer, enabling a hacker to gain control. The virus indicates that a denial of service attack could be planned against security vendors Symantec Corp. and McAfee Inc., but doesn’t say when, Sophos said. A worm that targets gamers is making the rounds, tapping into popular titles and peer-to-peer file sharing, a security company has warned. The worm, Hagbard.A, tries to disguise itself on peer-to-peer networks as pirated downloads of the popular games titles “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas,” “Need for Speed Underground 2″ and 400 other programs, Sophos said in an advisory released on Friday. W32/Hagbard-A copies itself to a number of locations on the hard drive, including shared folders for various peer-to-peer applications. The worm also installs a web server, allowing a remote user access to files on the infected system. The installed file is also detected as W32/Hagbard-A. W32/Hagbard-A may send messages to other users of Windows Messenger, containing a link and the following text: please download this…its only small brb The link points to a copy of the worm stored on the infected system. The worm may change the Start Page in Internet Explorer. iDefense has released new tools to discover flaws in popular file formats. File formatting flaws have become a common exploit, allowing attackers to run malicious code when a user simply views an image or reads an e-mail. Two of three critical updates released by Microsoft dealt with file format flaws. FileFuzz for Windows and SpikeFile and NotSpikeFile for Linux enable a researcher to manipulate single bits within a file and check the file for potential exploits. The tools do not find the exploits but point researchers to areas for further examination. While iDefense admits the tools could be used by malicious hackers to find vulnerabilities, Joshua Feldman, a security engineer at Science Applications International, thinks they will only appeal to researchers. The tools are available as open source and can be downloaded from the iDefense website. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) warns users that some color laser printers contain code that prints barely perceptible dots on documents to allow the government to track them. Fraudsters have exploited a flaw in the eBay web site that allows them to orchestrate phishing attacks using eBay’s own Sign In page. Registered users of eBay’s popular online auction web site must sign in using a username and password in order to participate in bidding and listing of items. A new style of phishing attack reported through the Netcraft Toolbar community shows fraudsters exploiting flaws on the Sign In page and on another ancilliary page which results in victims being redirected to the fraudster’s phishing site after they have logged in. This particular attack starts off like many others, by sending thousands of emails that instruct victims to update their eBay account details by visiting a URL. However, that is where the similarity ends, because the URL in this case actually takes the victim to the genuine eBay Sign In page, hosted on signin.ebay.com.
LGBT Missourians Are Less Likely to Receive Medical Care That was nice, and a common sentiment among gay marriage supporters. So what if denying homosexuals the right to marry not only affects their lifestyle but negatively impacts their health? "Missourians are not protected against employment or housing discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity," the report says. "Social factors, when coupled with discrimination, correlate with poorer health." Here for your reading displeasure are some of the reports more upsetting findings: LGBT Missourians are, compared to their hetero brothers and sisters, - more than twice as likely not to receive needed medical care or surgery - one-and-a-half times more likely to be uninsured - as youths, 3.5 times more likely to attempt suicide But wait, there's more! One in seven LGBT Missourians reports discrimination at work, there are only 15 registered "LGBT-affiriming" primary care physicians in the state, and not a single one is located in rural areas. "As Missouri law stands, if an individual becomes incapacitated, the same-sex partner or spouse cannot make decisions on behalf of the incapacitated partner without the power of attorney," the report reads. "Same-sex partners are treated as legal strangers."
A new law that will allow the European Union to clamp down on speculation in debt derivatives will come into force on Nov. 1, and emerging-market debt investors look set to be the unintended victims. The regulation, announced in October 2011, is designed to put an end to speculators pushing up euro-zone members’ funding costs through trading credit default swaps without owning the underlying debt–a tactic known as ‘naked shorts’ in CDS. But ironically, the consequences might be felt more in markets that don’t share the problems of the euro-zone debt crisis. [Read more over the jump] Imagine you could insure the entire euro zone as a single entity against debt default (and imagining it is as close as we will ever get in the real world if Angela Merkel has her way). A reasonable gross domestic product-weighted “euro-zone credit-default swap” — EZCDS — for the bloc would at present come in at a spread of 2.75 percentage points, according to analysts at CitiFX. That would make the world’s largest economy as risky a bet as such powerhouses of international finance as Lithuania and Kazakhstan. To calculate its fantasy spread, Citi aggregated the five-year CDS spreads of Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland and Austria, leaving out the wreckage of Greece, Ireland and Portugal. Tellingly, they found that this spread correlated extremely closely (inversely) with moves in the euro/dollar pair. It has done so since mid-2011 but, this year, the link is incredibly close. The cost of insuring German government debt against default has risen sharply in recent weeks, as investors start to assess the potential costs to Germany of keeping the euro zone together. As investors have scrambled to find safe havens inside the euro zone, yields on German government bonds have reached historical lows. But that does not mean that investors are completely confident that Germany’s ability to repay its debts will be unaffected by the crisis that has forced four euro-zone members to ask for financial help. The rise in the cost of insuring German government debt against default is a sign of how worried investors have become about the cost to the currency area’s economic powerhouse of funding those bailouts, with the possibility of more to come. “As the euro debt crisis persists, the perceived creditworthiness of Germany appears to have weakened,” said the Institute for International Finance, which represents more than 450 of the world’s largest private financial firms. “This reflects market concerns that contingent liabilities for many euro area countries may be expected to be put on Germany’s shoulders.” [Read more over the jump] A fragmenting economic landscape in Europe has watered down the relevance of a region-wide index of countries’ cost of insurance against default that used to provide a reliable gauge of investor sentiment. Europe’s default protection index of 15 countries has been increasingly overlooked by investors, who are choosing to focus on individual sovereigns such as Spain or Germany amid diverging opinions on countries within the euro zone and European Union. The iTraxx SovX Western Europe index includes the five-year credit default swaps — insurance-like contracts designed to pay out if creditors suffer losses — of euro-zone members as different as Germany and Cyprus, as well as the Scandinavian countries that don’t use the euro. “The SovX doesn’t really do the job you’re looking for,” one sovereign CDS trader said. “There’s so much more volume that goes through the larger [single] government names, so we go there instead.” European countries are viewed more differently now than at any point since the inception of the euro. For instance, rating firm Standard and Poor’s Corp used to have Germany, France and Spain all at its highest triple-A rating. France lost that status in January with a one-level downgrade, while Spain is seven notches below Germany now, having first lost its AAA-rating in January 2009. An index that includes these countries doesn’t offer a specific investment opinion, leaving investors opting to trade countries individually. [Read more over the jump] The two-stage auction used to determine the amount that credit-default swaps on Greece will pay out is underway. Stage 1 just wrapped up, and the dealers participating in it set an initial price of 21.75; that implies that the final payout to swap holders will be around 78.25, though we’ll need to wait a few more hours for the final result. There are $3.2 billion in Greek CDS outstanding, so around $2.5 billion will be paid from sellers of the protection to the buyers. This very neatly matches the loss suffered by creditors in the Greek restructuring. For those who long ago tired of Greece, a reminder: For each €100 in Greek bonds, Greece gave creditors €15 in high-quality bonds from the euro-zone rescue fund, plus a package of 20 new Greek bonds with a face value of €31.5. Since those bonds have been trading at around a quarter of their face value, they are worth €8. The high-quality bonds are worth €15, so the total is €23. Therefore a Greek bondholder lost €77 on his €100 bond. A payout of around €78 in the CDS auction would be very close to the “right” amount of compensation–after all, CDS are designed to pay off in proportion to the loss suffered by creditors. But as we detail in a story today, the happy CDS result is a product of luck: the auction process is using the price of new Greek bonds to determine the payout to CDS holders. But, happily, some of the new Greek bonds’ prices mirror the amount of consideration paid to creditors in the restructuring; there was no reason that that had to be the case: Neelabh Chaturvedi and Katy Burne An international trade association on Thursday ruled that no credit event has occurred yet as part of a Greek debt restructuring and therefore payouts of insurance contracts against Greece defaulting on its debt won’t be triggered. The International Swaps and Derivatives Association’s Determination Committee ruling came in response to two questions prompted by the passage of laws in Greece that could force unwilling investors to accept a steep write-down on debt as part of a bond exchange. But the ruling does not preclude further questions from market participants nor is it an expression of the Committee’s view as to whether a “credit event”‘ could occur at a later date. The ISDA committee noted that the situation with Greece is “still evolving.” Most market participants had not expected ISDA to determine if a “credit event” had occurred until the actual debt exchange is completed. This still leaves the door open for the payout of Greek credit default swaps if the Greek government were to actually push through provisions that force all private bondholders to take steep losses. The Greek government’s intention of invoking so-called collective action clauses will become clear towards the end of next week, by when private bondholders have to indicate whether they want to participate in the deal or not. At stake are payouts from sellers of a net $3.2 billion of CDS on Greece currently outstanding, and the stigma associated with lending credence to an instrument policy makers have long reviled. With a sovereign default for Greece closing in, market participants are still struggling to understand the definition of what a default will be. Most agree that Greece is currently in or around the official definition of the word “default.” But whether that default is going to hard, soft, selective or voluntary is still up in the air. Can volunteering include non-voluntary measures? And will this default be enough to trigger default protection derivatives? The latter question was directly posed Monday to the group with the power to answer it. An unidentified market participant asked a committee of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association whether the Greek parliament’s approval of so-called collective action clauses, or CACs, and private sector bondholders losing more than half of their principle should trigger Greek credit default swaps — a derivative often touted as a kind of insurance for bonds. CACs are the apparatus which could be used to strong-arm investors to accept terms of the ‘voluntary’ debt exchange. ISDA will accept or reject the question by 1700 GMT Wednesday. The Journal’s Euro Crisis blog provides real-time updates and new takes on important developments as governments and financial institutions deal with Europe’s continuing debt crisis.
of $51 million) by taking approaches different than those required by the regulations (Schmitt et al., 1993; Solomon, 1993). The potentially stifling effect of regulation on innovation can be avoided by setting performance standards that companies may meet in whatever creative manner they devise. More recently, incentives have been added to the ''toolset" used to improve environmental quality. In a shift from its traditional enforcement programs, the The National Academies \| 500 Fifth St. N.W. \| Washington, D.C. 20001 Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. The Industrial Green Game: Overview and Perspectives ." The Industrial Green Game: Implications for Environmental Design and Management . Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, Please select a format:
While being young, broke and beautiful is all well and good, some people’s finances are more jacked than others. That’s why we’ve invited Betsy Crouch (aka Coach $izzle) to come onboard and dole out some much needed advice. She is a professional financial coach after all. If you’ve got a question you’d like answered please email her at. Maybe your question will be the next one answered. Choose your own adventure: to save thousands in credit card interest, read onâ€¦ What are the pros and cons of debt consolidation? – JJ Answering a broad question about managing debt is like trying to summarize all the possible scenarios in a â€œChoose Your Own Adventure.â€ To start off on the right foot, let’s get real. It isn’t in credit card companies’ interest for you to be educated and empowered. It is not an accident that dealing with credit and debt is confusing. Here are some tools and tips to help you navigate. Let’s stick with an example where you are able to pay your bills, albeit things are VERY tight. Say you have debt on two credit cards, each with a $5,000 limit, that are almost maxed out and you are paying 27% interest on one and 29% interest on the other. Put your balances and interest rates into this “bankrate” calculator and look at how different monthly payments and interest rates effect the total interest you pay as well as the length of time it will take to pay it off. In the example above, it would take almost 19 years to pay off the cards with minimum payments, dang! Also the credit card companies would have made $13,617 in interest during that time from you! Consolidation vs. Consolidators Debt consolidation could consist of using a service or it could consist of you figuring out a way to get some kind of loan or sum of money to pay down several debts. â€œDebt consolidators are often a very bad deal.â€ â€“ Suze Orman, â€œSuze Orman’s 2009 Action Planâ€ Consolidators are companies who offer services of negotiating with your credit card companies to lower your interest rates and/or your monthly payment. The idea of one payment per month and lower interest is appealing. Also, most consolidators require you cancel your credit card accounts so that you are not using them and increasing your debt, which for some people can be extremely positive. Some companies allow customers to keep one credit card open for emergencies. Beware, in some cases people pay more interest over the course of time because although they may get a lower interest rate, the consolidator may push for a lower payment. Unfortunately some consolidators have been known to submit late payments or miss payments on behalf of their clients, which damages credit scores. See, â€œYour 3 worst debt consolidation moves.â€ The National Foundation for Credit Counseling, â€œis a smarter choice,â€ says Suze Orman. The National Foundation for Credit Counseling is a Network of credit counselors. You can find one that will charge a low fee to help you manage your debt, and some will negotiate with your credit card companies. Before calling a company in the network, read about them on the Better Business Bureau’s site. What if you want to take the bull by the horns and do it yourself? 1. Conventional wisdom suggests to call your credit card companies and ask for a lower rate. I have had dozens of clients successfully negotiate lower rates. Right now this is not working as well as it used to. 2. Do you have any available credit on any of your cards? See what the transfer rate is on it and look into moving balances around. Be aware of the charges associated with a balance transfer by asking. 3. Get a personal loan, from a personal contact, from a stranger on www.prosper.com, or from a bank. 4. If you have good credit see if you can qualify for a 0% balance transfer card. There is no shame in playing the 0% game, if you can qualify. 5. If you have good credit you may be able to qualify for a credit limit increase on one of your cards. Ideally this would be a card with your lowest interest rate, see #1, then see #2. 6. If none of these work, see #1, and ask what they can work out with you if you close the account. You will have greater negotiating power with interest rates if the accounts are in good standing. If you have defaulted on the accounts, search for a template for a hardship letter to send to your credit card company, to negotiate a settlement. If you get the two “example above” cards down to 10% each versus 27% and 29%, and you ONLY make the minimum payments, you would save $11,054 in interest!! I am rooting for you! Post results here as a comment. Email your questions to email@example.com, and your question may get answered next week!
OK, after mentioning some bad things about Caché ObjectScript, here are a couple of good things about Caché in general. (That's not to say all the suckage is just the COS language, but we can come to other negatives later. This is a "positives" post.) It's "alive" I'm starting to think that, possibly, the BEST thing about Caché is that it's a living platform in the sense that Steve Yegge talks about here. What makes it "alive" is that the code is kept in the data-base and is interpreted (or rather, compiled on a routine-by-routine basis) so that it can be changed without the whole stop-recompile-restart cycle for the server. There is a terminal shell through which you can inspect and interact with the database and code. (Create objects, call functions etc.) It's not a great one in the Yegge sense, but it's there and useful. Caché does not obviously have "advice" as Yegge calls it, but the system I work on does have dozens of hooks, and I think the developers must have got the idea from somewhere. Does Caché have plugins and other ways to extend it? Well, quite a lot of the innards seem to be visible (introspection) and new features like the OO language and the JSP-like CSP-pages ultimately compile down into the core language, so it is extensible. Keeping the source-code in the database gives rise to one obvious and infuriating problem. You can't use all the ordinary file-based tools that you're used to for things like source-management, difference comparisons, backups and deployment. This is a problem that Caché shares with (comparing the sublime with the ridiculous) Smalltalk. Like Smalltalk, the whole "environment" of code and database is kept in a single large file. Perhaps the resemblance is not wholly accidental. Caché might, in some ways, be moving to occupy a similar niche to something like Gemstone - a kind of self-contained persistent-object world. And as it does so, it may acquire further similarities to Smalltalk environments. Certainly had Intersystems taken Smalltalk as their model for an OO layer, rather than the stereotypical Visual C++ / Java development environments of the 90s, a great deal of pain might have been ameliorated. (That's something I want to come back to, here I'll just note that it is a good thing about Caché that it's a living platform and with some resemblance to Smalltalk.) Batteries included : The environment includes, in a single standard installation, the database (obviously), the development tools, runtime environment and web-server. That's quite handy to set up. It doesn't mean it's easy to deploy the environment, but once the environment is deployed, you have most of what you need for a web front-end and a database backend. CSP is more or less like every other *SP (JSP, ASP, PHP etc.) You write HTML, can call out to COS on the server (interestingly at both compile-time and run-time, so I guess it's possible to do metaprogramming at compile-time, though need to try this.) and has some special tags. There's also now a new browser-side component library called Zen, and AJAXy XMLHttpRequest communication behind the scenes. (Another thing I still need to play with.) It's fast. Allegedly. But that's a plausible claim given how low level the data-access is. Compared to say a multi-layer system with Object-Relation Mapping library over ODBC to relational database. It's simple. It is, actually. It's pretty simple to make stuff happen. You tend to have direct access to things rather than have to learn sophisticated frameworks, go through multiple abstraction layers etc. There's a downside to that, of course, (in flexibility and maintainability) but the value of simplicity of getting started, and building incrementally from simple prototypes shouldn't be discounted.
The "Honest and Open Election Hotline " has been launched by the McCain campaign to help voters find their polling place and report fraud, and intimidation. The phone hotline can be reached at 866-976-VOTE. In announcing the hotline, McCain’s national political director, Mike Duhaime issued the following statement: In 2004, multiple forms of voter fraud occurred, including voter intimidation, fraudulent registrations, multiple ballots cast and votes bought for money. Already during the 2008 election cycle, a dead woman in Missouri cast an absentee ballot, individuals were arrested for voting twice in Florida and people in Ohio registered and voted on the same day. In anticipation of voting problems resulting from the combination of an expected high turnout and millions of new voters, both campaigns have lined up literally thousands of lawyers to deal with Election Day improprieties. According to the Times, the Obama campaign is expected to send at least 5,000 lawyers to Florida alone.
One of the first things people often ask is why the interest in a bunch of dead people? Why do you do genealogy? For me there are many reasons I do it. It gives you a sense of who you are and where your family came from but most importantly it gives you a sense of belonging to a group of people who have helped form this world. Genealogy helps you understand history by looking at it through their eyes as they must of seen it and experienced it. Anyone can dig up dates of births and deaths and so on but to me genealogy is so much more. There is a poem that states we are the story keepers and we keep the stories and people alive by putting their stories on the bones. Making that person not only a bunch of numbers but a person who lived and breathed. They had a name, a spouse, children they had a story, they lived life. Our job as the story keepers is to keep that persons story even after they have passed on. As a tribute to them but also to say thank you for the heritage they have left for us.
The term “inquiry areas” refers to the different disciplinary ways of thinking in the arts, social sciences, natural sciences, quantitative studies, humanities, and writing. These inquiry courses engage students in both active learning and reflective thought, emphasizing critical inquiry in major liberal arts areas. Valuable ways of planning how you’ll complete this part of the GE program include - Taking introductory classes in a few areas to explore possible major interest - Selecting a course or courses that connect to your major in an interdisciplinary way - Pursuing a subject that you enjoy or want to learn more about Students complete 18-19 units of Shared Inquiry courses. All students take a course that has a primary focus in each of the following areas - Artistic Inquiry (3 units) - Quantitative Inquiry (3 units) - Natural Science Inquiry (3-4 units) - Social Inquiry (3 units) - Values and Ethical Inquiry (3 units) - Written Inquiry (3 units) Review the course offerings in the Inquiry Areas. You’ll see that in most cases you can take a course at the 100, 200, 300, or 400 level. This flexibility enables you to take a course in a given area of inquiry at the point and level that make best academic sense for you.
On May 22, 2009, two men approached an Indian student named Baljinder Singh as he was leaving a railway station in Melbourne. They demanded money. Before Singh could hand over his wallet, one of the men stabbed him in the stomach. Singh screamed, "Don't kill me," but his assailants only laughed. That brutal attack followed several other assaults on Indian students earlier that month including the vicious beating of a student on a commuter train. The attacks, much publicized in India and elsewhere, were the most newsworthy of a series of events and policy decisions that have led to an exodus of international students from Australia in recent months. The country's universities, once leaders in overseas recruiting, are grappling with a precipitous decline in the number of students from India and possibly elsewhere. Australia's rise and (potential) fall as an academic destination should be a cautionary tale for higher education around the world. While many factors contributed to today's problems, a key one is that educational providers sought international students as way to bolster their bottom line. They forgot their core mission to educate individuals; instead they saw them as dollar signs. 3rd Biggest 'Export' In the six months following the attack on Baljinder Singh, the number of Indian students applying for visas to study in Australia shrank by 46 percent. (Since then, the figure has continued to drop.) University leaders were concerned because Indian students represented Australia's second-largest source of international students (China was, and remains, first). In a public campaign to mobilize support to end the violence, they pointed out that education is Australia's third biggest "export" after coal and iron ore. It may seem strange to think of higher education as an "export" but international students do provide foreign income because they transfer money for their tuition fees and living expenses from their home countries to Australia. For that reason, a decline in international students could significantly affect the balance of trade. It would also play havoc with university budgets, which were (and are) heavily dependent on the fees paid by international students. It was not always like this. In 1990, Australia enrolled only 47,000 international students; today there are more than 600,000. Around a third are enrolled in universities. The rest are studying in technical-education institutions, English-language schools, or high schools. For universities, the growth in international students was spurred mainly by financial exigency. Beginning in the early 1980s, Australian governments of all political persuasions gradually reduced the public contribution to higher education from close to 100 percent to less than 40 percent (and at my institution, Macquarie University, only 28 percent). Universities have replaced the lost income with the fees paid by large numbers of international students. Those students, who are charged whatever the market can bear, subsidize Australian domestic students, whose fees are fixed by the government. The government also makes money from international students by charging them high visa-processing fees. Given the money they must spend to study abroad, international students gravitate toward subjects that will provide an economic return on their investment. Not many choose to study philosophy or classics. But income is not their only motivation for choosing a course of study. A substantial number of international students are interested in staying in Australia permanently. Until recently, qualifying for an occupation listed on the government-maintained Migration Occupations in Demand List, or MODL, assisted an international graduate to immigrate. Accounting was one of the occupations on the MODL. Proving once again that people respond to incentives, the course of study with the largest enrollment in practically every Australian university is accounting. Rise of Questionable Courses Australian education is generally high quality, but any policy can be scammed and the MODL was a gift to those out for a fast profit. Cooks, hairdressers, and airline pilots were included in the MODL. Not surprisingly, technical-education students who wanted to migrate sought to enroll in training for those careers, and unscrupulous providers were quick to respond. The result was cooking schools without kitchens, hairdressing courses without salons and, wouldn't you know it, pilot-training schools without any airplanes. It took a while to uncover such abuses because students were not particularly bothered by those scams. Their aim was not to learn to cook, style hair, or fly, but to obtain permanent residency. The program diploma was simply a means to an end. As journalists delved further into the back story of Indian students targeted for attack, it became clear that most were not enrolled in universities but in bogus technical courses. Recruited by unscrupulous commission agents in their home country, the students were promised permanent residency if they completed their program. "Completion," in this context, did not mean successfully mastering a body of work or learning a skill; it simply meant paying the required tuition and receiving a worthless diploma. Students lived many to a room sharing a single bed (a practice known as hot-bedding) while they drove cabs or worked in fast-food restaurants to earn money to pay their tuition. Although Australian student visas allow students to work for only 20 hours per week, many worked long hours to earn their tuition. The public was appalled, the political backlash was terrible, and it was clear that something had to happen. In February 2010, nine months after the incidents in Melbourne, it did. The government canceled 20,000 permanent-residency applications, revoked the MODL, and revised the visa-assessment process. Shortly thereafter, Australia had a federal election in which immigration was a major issue. Not surprisingly, visa requirements were subsequently tightened not just for traditional migrants but for students as well. Students from high-risk countries (those with a history of students who overstayed their visas) are now required to demonstrate that they have sufficient funds in the bank not just to pay their tuition fees but also to pay for food and accommodation for the length of their entire study program. After an outcry from educational providers and others, the government in December promised to review its visa policies again. Although the tightened visa rules were largely intended to curb the abuses of bogus education providers, university students have been affected as well. A Chinese applicant for a visa to enroll in a three-year accounting degree now has to show evidence of having around $100,000 in the bank for at least six months prior to applying. The new financial requirements—coupled with an appreciating Australian dollar, the long waits for visas, and competition from other countries such as the United States—have resulted in a marked downturn in the number of students applying for visas to study in Australia. If the trend continues, universities will no longer be able to depend on increasing numbers of international students to make up for decreasing public support and inflexible domestic student fees. Internationalization enriches the learning environment for all students. By studying with students from other countries, domestic students not only learn about other cultures, places, and languages, but they also learn communication skills, tolerance, and fair play. Those are vitally important lessons. A problem arises, however, when international students are recruited for the income they bring. Universities that pursue that strategy make their budgets hostage to immigration policy, international financial conditions, even to a few domestic hoodlums. Students do not think of themselves as foreign "exports," and we in higher education should not think of them in that way either. Steven Schwartz is vice chancellor of Macquarie University, in Sydney.
Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1836-1922 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. external link Learn more Image provided by: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, Urbana, IL Newspaper Page Text A WISE PUP Wire ( f ) SPUTTER. LAsit Si" Christopher A. Papageorgeacou poulos took the name of Moore be cause it was less. St, Louis Globe-Democrat. WAR TO KILL AND MAKE AN Vienna. The general belief is that the war will kill Franz Joseph, who is over 86. So people are giving a good deal of attention to the new crown prince, Archduke Karl-Franz-Joseph. He is not a striking young man; the training of an archduke does not tend to produce such. He is not only young in years heing born in Au gust, 1887 but also young for his years. He might even be called child ish. He is credited by gossip with having been to see "The Waltz Dream" fifty times; and he has a strong liking for picture shows. About six years ago he was put for a week under "house arrest" for firing at tar gets in the neighborhood of a powder magazine, which was certainly a fool ish escapade. But he Is not k"nown to be worse than unduly young. WOMEN SCALD AND SHOOT 2,000 Paris. Stirring accounts have been rceeived here of the magnificent bravery of the women employed at the National Arms Factory, at Heris tal, in Belgium. The men having all been drafted, the town was defended against the German attack by the women, who swore the enemy should never take They armed themselves with re volvers and other weapons, and re pulsed several charges of Uhlans. When their ammunition was exhaust ed they barricaded themselves in va rious houses, and poured boiling water on the Germans in the streets. Two thousand Germans were disabled by wounds and scalds. TOUGH ON ACTORS London. The artists employed at the various West End music halls have been informed that their salar- ies will have to be reduced fifty per -cent in consequence of the large fall ing off in receipts -due to the exist- '
Doubling Time: Interest and Population Growth Published 06th October 2010 - 1 comments - 1260 views - Doubling Time: It is easy to calculate the approximate doubling time for compound interest, credit card debt, or population growth. A simple rule of thumb to get doubling time is to divide the growth rate into 70. For example, an investment at 7% compound interest would double in 70/7 = 10 years. After 10 years, a $100 investment would double to $200, in another 10 years it would double again to $400, and in 10 more years to $800. Not bad. This will also work for credit card debt. If your interest rate is 20% and you only make the minimum payment, your debt will double after 70/20 = 3½ years. You might think again about buying an expensive item on your credit card if you realize that a $1000 purchase, unless paid off, will cost you $2000 after 3 ½ years and $4000 after 7 seven years. Everyone with a credit card should know this simple rule of thumb. Population Growth: The rule also works for population growth. The world now has about 6 ½ billion people and the rate of growth is about 2%. That means that the Earth's population will double in about 70/2 = 35 years to 13 billion people. It will then double again in 35 more years to 26 billion people. If you think the roads are crowded now, just wait until 2090. Unlimited growth is considered good for business as the number of consumers just keeps going up. However, we should realize that the current growth rate is unsustainable, as at some point we will begin to run out of resources. Economists say the law of supply and demand insures we will never actually run out of resources. As the supply decreases, the resources will just become increasingly expensive. Nevertheless, those who have little money will soon run out of resources. Then what, wars over resources? Also, our contribution to air and water pollution increases with our population growth. Studies of populations in nature show that when a population exhausts its resources or strangles in its pollution, the population doesn’t just reach equilibrium and stop. There is a massive die off. The Problem: In the past, population growth was considered a good thing. More people meant more workers, more soldiers, and more offspring to carry on our values and our genetics. Times have changed, but the old thinking remains. Some countries that have reduced their population’s growth have been criticized as being “weak”. Some countries have claimed efforts to help them with population control are an attempt at genocide. Many religions have prohibitions against birth control practices. And, many businesses see an increasing number of consumers as profit. Nevertheless, the path we are on is unsustainable and we must control our population growth. How to do that is the problem. Controlling Population: Certainly, it must be done through education. Most people firmly believe in their right to choose how many children they have and their right to act in ways consistent with their religious beliefs. Perhaps if people realized that we are on an unsustainable path, they would make personal decisions to help ensure the survival of their descendents. Most people would not bring more children into the world than they can feed if they had the knowledge and methods to do so. There is a method of birth control acceptable to most every religious belief and the world’s religious organizations must help to educate people in those practices and the necessity of using them. Finally, those who profit from increased population growth should realize that developing a sustainable economy is in their best interest. What is the point of amassing wealth for your descendents if they cannot live comfortably on the Earth? (c) 2010 J.C. Moore About the author - TCKTCK: Got only 10 years to save ourselves! - Denmark cries in Sea of Blood, 950 Whales and Dolphins KILLED… - Micro pigs - the ultimate sweetheart energy saver - If you want to see nude people click here - Do we really care about our planet? Think twice before answering. - Evolutions in the history of Environment Part 2 - Bunnies for fuels: not a good story to share in a grade school classroom
Study of Safety and Efficacy of a Basiliximab, Mycophenolate Mofetil, Cyclosporine Microemulsion and Prednisone Combination Treatment Regimen in Pediatric Renal Allograft Recipients The aim of this study is assess the safety and efficacy of the treatment regimen of basiliximab ,cyclosporine microemulsion, MMF, and prednisone combined compared to cyclosporine microemulsion, MMF and prednisone in the time to first biopsy proven acute rejection episode or treatment failure during the first 6 months post-transplantation in pediatric renal allograft recipients. Pediatric Kidney Transplantation Drug: basiliximab, MMF(mycophenolate mofetil), cyclosporine, prednisone (or equivalent) Drug: MMF, cyclosporine, steroids \|Study Design:\|\|Allocation: Randomized Endpoint Classification: Safety/Efficacy Study Intervention Model: Parallel Assignment Primary Purpose: Prevention \|Official Title:\|\|A Randomized, Placebo-controlled, Double-blind, Multicenter Study Investigating Basiliximab in Combination With MMF, Cyclosporine Microemulsion and Prednisone in the Prevention of Acute Rejection in Pediatric Renal Allograft Recipients\| - Time to first BPAR episode or treatment failure [ Time Frame: 6 months ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]Treatment failure is defined as: graft loss, death, or initiation of anti-rejection therapy without prior biopsy-proven rejection (in case of medical contraindication for a biopsy). \|Study Start Date:\|\|May 2001\| \|Primary Completion Date:\|\|January 2006 (Final data collection date for primary outcome measure)\| Patients will be on a regimen of Basiliximab, MMF, cyclosporine and steroids \|Drug: basiliximab, MMF(mycophenolate mofetil), cyclosporine, prednisone (or equivalent)\| Active Comparator: Basiliximab-free Patients will be on a regimen of MMF, cyclosporine and steroids. \|Drug: MMF, cyclosporine, steroids\| Please refer to this study by its ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT00228020
Here is a list of recently published titles of interest on the topics of children, media, and health: - Examining Identity in Sports Media by Heather L. Hundley and Andrew C. Billings (2009) This book investigates how various identity groups are framed, treated, affected, and shaped by a ubiquitous sports media, including television, magazines, film, the Internet, and newspapers. - Influences of Mediated Violence. A Brief Research Summary by Cecilia von Feilitzen (2009) The author has attempted to address the impact of mediated violence, with particular emphasis on the influence of video and computer game violence and violence on the internet. - Media and Youth: A Developmental Perspective by Steven J. Kirsh (2009) - Seeing Stars: Spectacle, Society and Celebrity Culture by Pramod K Nayar (2009) This book explores the ways in which celebrities are ‘manufactured’, how they establish their hold on the public imagination, and how social responses enable them to be what they are. - Young People in the European Digital Media Landscape. A Statistical Overview introduced by Sonia Livingstone and Leslie Haddon (2009) FREE Please let us know about any new books you would like to see highlighted in the future!
Often in the headlines-and always on the front lines-the passionate professionals at The Governor John Engler Center for Charter Schools (Center) are hard at work building better schools for Michigan families every day. This work extends beyond their service at the Center. Many on our team have been tapped to serve in leadership positions in numerous state and national educational organizations. They are also invited to consult with organizations that need help, and to present at numerous events each year. When state and federal education policy changes are being considered, our team is routinely called upon to testify before legislative committees, participate in task forces, or help chief executives form public policy. Through this leadership, the Center staff is not only helping others, but is also creating the type of environment necessary for charter public schools to grow and flourish. It is accomplished by being: • A resource for policymakers. Experts from the Center have been invited to share their knowledge by serving as a resource for various legislative boards and commissions, and testifying in the Michigan Legislature and the United States Congress on how the charter strategy is working. The Center's experts also serve in leadership roles in numerous state and national organizations that policymakers routinely seek input from. Ranging from the National Association of Charter School Authorizers to the Michigan Pupil Accounting and Attendance Association, these organizations are diverse, touching upon multiple areas of education policy and practice. • A source for quality information and help. In Michigan and throughout the United States, the Center is widely known as an expert resource for those seeking to advance and promote the work of charter schools. Because of this, our experts are called upon regularly to speak about the Center's accountability programs and best practices in forums like the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and the National Association of Charter School Authorizers conferences. Our team is also routinely tapped by numerous national, state and local organizations to lead discussions and share their expertise on the authorizing experience. These organizations include: Center For Education Reform; State Education Technology Directors Association Emerging Technologies Forum; Ohio Department of Education Office of Community Schools; Edison Charter Schools; The Fordham Foundation; Ball State University; Michigan Council of Charter School Authorizers; and the Lucas County Educational Service Center Community Schools Office.
A federal judge in San Francisco overturned Prop. 8 today, declaring that gay men and lesbians have a constitutional right to get married and affirming that voters don’t get to determine the fundamental rights of a minority group. The ruling — with its vocal support for the civil rights of gay men and lesbians — has left some racial justice advocates hopeful that national black and Latino civil rights organizations will now consider publicly supporting gay marriage. The 136-page opinion (full document at end of story) from Judge Vaughn Walker notes that Prop. 8, which had defined marriage as between a man and a woman, didn’t stand a chance in court, or to quote him directly: “Proposition 8 fails to possess even a rational basis.” Judge Walker found that Prop. 8 violated both the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the constitution. The amendment singled out gay men and lesbians for different treatment and denied them their fundamental right to marry. Marriage licenses won’t be issued to same-sex couples today, though. Judge Walker issued a temporary stay on his decision in Perry v. Arnold Schwarzenegger. That means the ruling can’t go into effect until the court hears arguments for why it should or should not let same-sex couples marry while the case is being appealed. It’s expected that the case will be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. In his opinion, Judge Walker noted that marriage was once limited to people of the same race and gave more rights to the husband—-two ideas that are now out of vogue. What’s changing with same-sex couples being allowed to marry, Walker wrote, is not the institution of marriage but “the understanding of gender.” As Chris Geidner at MetroWeekly outlined, what actually matters from today’s court ruling is Walker’s findings of fact versus his conclusions of law. During appeals the findings are less likely to be disputed because it’s assumed that the judge closest to the trial is the best, no pun intended, judge of the facts. What will be examined closely are his legal conclusions. Here are some of the judge’s findings of the fact: -Gay men and lesbians getting married “has not deprived the institution of marriage of its vitality.” -Domestic partnerships “lack the social meaning associated with marriage” -Prop. 8 places the force of law behind stigmas against gays and lesbians and suggests that gay relationship are not like hetero ones -Campaign for Prop. 8 relied on stereotypes of gays and lesbians as inferior to heteros. Judge Walker’s conclusions of law are what will be scrutinized on appeal: -Gay men and lesbians aren’t seeking a new right under the Constitution. They just want to exercise their fundamental right to marry. -They have the right to marry in part because the state’s never required marriage to be based on the ability to procreate. -People can’t be excluded from marriage because of gender. “That time has passed,” the judge wrote. -Tradition alone cannot be the a rational basis for a law. So it doesn’t matter that marriage has traditionally been between a man and a woman. -Domestic partnership isn’t good enough. They don’t carry the same “social meaning as marriage.” Racial justice advocates have kept an eye on the Prop. 8 trial because the amendment basically said that a majority of voters can decide the fate of a minority group. Judge Walker’s decision turned that around. “Just because voters pass it doesn’t mean that it’s constitutional,” said Karin Wang at the Asian Pacific American Legal Center Wang thinks that today’s decision will inspire more conversations about discrimination. “I do think the longer legacy of this decision is pushing the bounds on marriage equality in communities of color where I do think it is a very difficult conversation,” Wang said. Alexander Robinson, the former executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition, a gay black organization, hopes that today’s court ruling will shift the internal conversations at national civil rights organizations like the NAACP and National Council of La Raza, which he says have shied away from supporting gay marriage because of their religious constituents. “This will give those inside these organizations further ammunition to push their groups like the California NAACP to take an affirmative stance in support of our rights,” Robinson said. The case will be appealed and is expected to end up at the Supreme Court, which according to the New York Times is the most conservative court in “living memory.” “There is a real fear that if you pick the wrong court at the wrong time you might set back the issue,” Wang said. “It’s hard to undo the Supreme Court.” Still, she added that there’s an equally good argument that “you just don’t know.” Robinson is optimistic. “This is a train that we’re not going to stop and I’m not interested in slowing it down. In all of the histories of groups struggling to achieve equality there have been setbacks and major victories. We take them as we can.” More Data on How Prop 8 Passed Judge Walker’s decision came down a day after a new analysis was released by an LGBT group showing that Prop. 8, which banned gay marriage in California, passed in 2008 —- not because of black voters—-but because of white Democrats with kids at home. As you may recall, Black voters were blamed for the loss of gay marriage in 2008. It was a misleading story about exit polls started by mainstream news outlets and immediately circulated. But according to David Fleischer, who heads the LGBT mentoring project in Los Angeles and led a team analyzing polling data from Prop 8, the black vote on gay marriage was the same on election day as it had been months before: the majority opposed it. The people who were convinced by fear ads to oppose gay marriage were white Democrats who had kids at home under the age of 18. They saw those Prop. 8 ads featuring cute white kids saying, “Guess what I learned at school today?” and then revealing that they might grow up to marry someone of the same sex. Fleischer writes: “In the last six weeks, when both sides saturated the airwaves with television ads, more than 687,000 voters changed their minds and decided to oppose same-sex marriage. More than 500,000 of those, the data suggest, were parents with children under 18 living at home. Because the proposition passed by 600,000 votes, this shift alone more than handed victory to proponents.” And a slew of other people voted against gay marriage when they meant to vote for it. According to Fleischer’s team, these voters didn’t understand that a “yes” on Prop. 8 meant a “no” on gay marriage.
\|(P.S. Would you like to provide feedback on this message?)\| There seems to be a problem regarding the description and/or licensing of this particular file. It has been found that you've added in the image's description only a Template that's not a license and although it provides useful informations about the image, it's not a valid license. Could you please resolve this problem, adding the license in the image linked above? You can edit the description page and change the text. Uploading a new version of the file does not change the description of the file. This page may give you more hints on which license to choose. Thank you. It has been found that Image:Bansko-church-lite.jpg has a deprecated license tag. Please choose a new free license tag which describes the rights of the image correctly otherwise it will be deleted!Thanks for your consideration. This is an automatic message by Nikbot.--Nikbot (talk) 00:04, 6 February 2009 (UTC) Tip: Categorizing imagesEdit Thanks a lot for contributing to the Wikimedia Commons! Here's a tip to make your uploads more useful: Why not add some categories to describe them? This will help more people to find and use them. 1) If you're using the UploadWizard, you can add categories to each file when you describe it. Just click "more options" for the file and add the categories which make sense: 2) You can also pick the file from your list of uploads, edit the file description page, and manually add the category code at the end of the page. - [[Category:Category name]] For example, if you are uploading a diagram showing the orbits of comets, you add the following code: - [[Category:Astronomical diagrams]] When picking categories, try to choose a specific category ("Astronomical diagrams") over a generic one ("Illustrations"). Pro-tip: The CommonSense tool can help you find the best category for your image. BotMultichillT 05:38, 4 March 2009 (UTC) \|File:ManaguaAirport.jpg has been listed at Commons:Deletion requests so that the community can discuss whether it should be kept or not. We would appreciate it if you could go to voice your opinion about this at its entry. If you created this file, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for deletion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it, such as a copyright issue. Объекты культурного наследия в Северной ОсетииEdit Привет, Вячеслав. Не хотите ли присоединиться к проекту составления и выверки списков объектов культурного наследия в Северной Осетии для проекта Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 in Russia(652 штуки)? Формат списков и что нужно сделать обсуждается на Commons talk:Wiki Loves Monuments 2011 in Russia. Ю. Данилевский (talk) 12:10, 31 October 2011 (UTC) Notification about possible deletionEdit \|Some contents have been listed at Commons:Deletion requests so that the community can discuss whether they should be kept or not. We would appreciate it if you could go to voice your opinion about this at their entry. If you created these pages, please note that the fact that they have been proposed for deletion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with them, such as a copyright issue. Yours sincerely, A.Savin 22:15, 24 January 2014 (UTC) - The monument is not the main object of the picture, that means the file should not be deleted — the law does not prohibit using any pictures with monuments or buildings in them as far as I remember. A side note on your activity: deleting informative graphic material because of a law that doesn't function (you may see photos of monuments and buildings in any newspaper; nobody ever goes to court because of that) seems really weird. Even weirder is using English with users from non-English-speaking countries. Amikeco (talk) 19:16, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
kronzzz — 2011-12-20T17:58:12-05:00 — #1 I'm just studing SQL quering in access and I have a problem with one of them. Could anyone help me? I need to indicate for each participant his last name, first name, the name of organism he is affiliated to and the name of organism which pays for the participant if there is any. PARTICIPANTS (PRegNum, PLAstName, PFirstName, OId_affiliates, OId_is_the_paying_Agency, etc...) ORGANISMS (Oid, OName, etc..) The problem is that I need to display Oname 2 times in different tables so I wrote this SELECT PLastName, PFirstName, O.OName AS [Affilated company], O2.OName AS [Paying agency] FROM Participants AS P, Organisms AS O, Organisms AS O2 but in this case participants who have no data in OId_is_the_paying_Agency are not displayed but I need them to be dislayed just with an empty cell for this column. How should I change my SQL query? Thanks a lot! eruna — 2011-12-20T19:28:08-05:00 — #2 I'm not sure I understand your post, but it sounds like you are looking for a left join. r937 — 2011-12-21T02:57:45-05:00 — #3 yup, as eruna said, a left join... , O.OName AS [Affilated company] , O2.OName AS [Paying agency] Participants AS P JOIN Organisms AS O ON O.OId = P.OId_affiliates JOIN Organisms AS O2 ON O2.OId = P.OId_is_the_paying_Agency notice how msaccess requires parentheses for tables being joined if there are more than two kronzzz — 2011-12-21T05:27:58-05:00 — #4 Woooow! It woooorks!! )))) Thank you soooo much, eruna and r937!
The 76th Congress and the 32nd President last week really got to grips once more and both were sorealmost as sore as they were two years ago over the Supreme Court. What they fought about this time was the bill to extend the President's power over money, but what they were principally sore at was each other. There were four main issues involved in the money bill: 1) The purchase of foreign silver. Congress proposed to end this practice and the Administration did not seriously object. 2) The purchase of U. S.-mined silver at above the world pricea subsidy to domestic silver...
Language use varies in many dimensions. Three major dimensions are the following: The term `lect', a back-formation from `dialect', is sometimes used to cover the notion of language variant. Language users move around in the `variety space' defined by these three dimensions, and the `territory' in variety space which is covered by a single user is kknown as his `idiolect'. The movement of language users along the dimensions of regional and dialect variation is relatively restricted. Few speakers command more than a couple of dialoects or languages. But, in contrast, the variation of language with different functional contexts of use is startlingly varied - formal and informal, public and private, written and spoken, professional and trade languages. The dimension of functional variation is quite dominant, though speakers are often quite unaware of it, and respond more immediately to dialectal and sociolectal variation. Speakers tend have a language, a dialect and a sociolect which is associated with the circumstances of their birth and upbringing. But switches in language and dialect or sociolect tend to correlate closely with switches in functional context, in addition to the basic indexical function of social classification. At the level of languages, an instructive example is English in the late 20th century. English is used by a large community of native speakers in well-to-do Western societies, who accept that they fundamentally speak the same language, though different areas are associated with different dialects, and some of these dialects have become accepted as standard languages (south-eastern educated British; mid-West American; Canadian; Australian; South African. English is also used as a native language, and non-native standard language, in ex-colonies of the British empire. English is also used as a trade language by non-native speakers, in the form of a pidgin language and, in societies for which a pidgin has become a native language in the course of two or more generations, also creole languages. Some of these characterisations of the varieties of English point to the notion of `register', the variation of language with type of use, rather than with the origin-marking features user. Task: Find definitions of the terms `register', `functional style', `style', `Fachsprache'.
In our galaxy alone, there are several hundred billion stars. The stars in the Milky Way galaxy are easy to see on a clear night, although most appear as a dimly lit cloud. Equally easy to see is the space between the stars - but how often do you wonder about this space? Most of us have an idea that these vast spaces are empty, a perfect vacuum. In fact, these spaces are filled with a cold and hot, very thin gas and microscopic grains of dust This Interstellar Medium (ISM), or stuff between the stars, may contain important clues about formation and evolution of galaxies. is a NASA satellite-based observatory, launched in January 2003 to study the million degree gas in the Interstellar us on a scientific exploration of space that may help to unravel some of the mysteries of the universe. Explore the links shown at the left of this learn more about the ISM and the CHIPS mission. is the ISM and why are scientists studying it? does the ISM change over time and how are those changes important? role does the ISM play in the life cycle of stars? - What is the goal of the CHIPS mission and what type of data is collected by CHIPS? This website is designed to make the CHIPS missions accessible to educators as well as the general public, and includes a special section for students.
PEWAUKEE, Wis. (11/26/12)--Brett Thompson, president/CEO of the Wisconsin Credit Union League, has issued a statement about what the league terms as the Wisconsin Bankers Association's (WBA) most recent misstatements about credit unions, made after regulators announced Wisconsin credit unions' strong third-quarter financial position. "Credit unions are not only fulfilling their mission of serving all their members regardless of income, but they're doing it despite tremendous disadvantages," Thompson said. "You'd never know that listening to the WBA." He said banks don't say that Wisconsin credit unions: Saved Wisconsin consumers $201 million in 2011. Credit union depositors saved more than $128 million on loans, earned more than $36.6 million on savings products and paid $36.5 million less in fees than if they had used for-profit banks. WBA called this a "subsidy." Consumers call it real, significant savings, he said. Earned seven top honors in seven years for helping members and communities. These accolades stem from credit unions' REAL Solutions initiative, which helps consumers save and build wealth and assists 3,000 local causes and organizations each year. WBA calls this "lost funds." Credit unions call it investing in Wisconsin, Thompson said. Increased business lending without any taxpayer bailout. This is in contrast to banks that took taxpayer funds and reduced help for small businesses when they needed help the most, said the league. Since the start of the recession, Wisconsin credit unions increased their business lending by 55% while Wisconsin banks shrank theirs by 2%. WBA called this success by credit unions as "abandoning their mission." Credit unions say it's doing what's right, regardless of profit, the league added. "Credit unions do all this in spite of far greater regulation than banks, an arbitrary cap on business lending that applies only to credit unions, and the inability to raise capital by issuing stock, which only banks can do," Thompson said. "What's more, credit unions pay all the same taxes banks pay except corporate tax, which more than 80 Wisconsin banks don't pay either," Thompson said. "Except credit unions have that single tax exemption because consumers, not shareholders, benefit from credit unions' earnings. "Banks just don't like the fact that by making consumers more financially successful, credit unions have become more successful," Thompson added. In 2012, Wisconsin credit unions saw the largest increase in checking accounts in more than a decade, at 6.6%, surpassing the national growth rate, he said.
Biodiversity and Evolution What are the different types of surface currents? Answered by Planet Green Surface currents are created by the force of nearby winds and are found at or above depths of 328 feet (100 meters). The types of surface currents include surface ocean currents and coastal currents. As the name suggests, coastal currents occur at coastlines. These are the currents you experience in the water at a beach. The motion of surface currents influences the formation of land and waves. The weather pattern known as El Nino is created by an equatorial current carrying warm waters. Surface ocean currents are currents formed by global wind patterns out in the deep ocean. Among the other kinds of surface current is one called a longshore current. They're caused by waves breaking at the shoreline. When a wave hits the shore from an angle, energy moves both parallel and perpendicular to the shore. The longshore current is a consequence of the parallel energy. This is the current that moves the water -- and people and objects in it -- down along the length of the beach. Longshore currents are responsible for longshore drift, the movement of sediment down along the coastline. While it sounds inconsequential enough, over time the drift actually causes spits and barrier islands to form. Meanwhile, yet another current type, rip currents, aren't in a rush to hang around near the shoreline. Unlike longshore currents that move along the shore, rip currents rush out into the ocean, pulling with it foam, debris and possibly even people! They are created when water from crashed waves rushes through a narrow opening, such as through a break in a sandbar. These currents move with lots of force and can be dangerous to swimmers, so it's helpful to learn what visible hints can suggest a rip current. A visible difference in water color, a channel of rough water, an interruption in the shore-bound wave system or a line of foam headed out to sea are all clues the water might contain a rip current [source: NOAA]. What's an invasive species? Answered by Animal Planet What causes genetic differences between humans and chimps? Answered by Science Channel How do scientists use bioluminescence in research? Answered by Lu Fong and Planet Green
Screwing up gave us the opportunity to write an apology email to our customers. Our screw up affected just a fraction of our customers. But each of them received a personal apology. Over the weekend I was reflecting on how we handled the situation and learned that Subway was caught selling “Footlong” subs that were only 11 inches! How Subway’s public relations department handled it makes them look like a bunch of jerks. With regards to the size of the bread and calling it a footlong, ‘SUBWAY FOOTLONG’ is a registered trademark as a descriptive name for the sub sold in Subway® Restaurants and not intended to be a measurement of length. So, basically they got caught deceiving their customers? They decided to tell you that the joke’s on you. “Footlong” is not intended to be a measurement of length? I’d never want to be in their shoes. Being pro-active in your communication during a crisis will help you keep things under control and avoid frustration and unhappiness from your customers. 3 simple rules for when a bug or outage affects your users 1. Find out the root cause of the issue (and fix it) As quickly as possible figure out the root cause, and stop it from continuing. Ideally you want to write to people to say the problem has been fixed. But don’t delay. Make sure you talk to the right people on the team so you understand the problem. Then figure out how to communicate it to people in a non-technical way. People are afraid of the things they don’t understand. So help your users understand why the problem occurred. 2. Identify people affected Who was affected? How badly? In the event that someone reaches out to you before you have sent the email in step 3, you want to be prepared. In our case, we had a spreadsheet with every incidence of the bug. I could quickly look up any customer and how they were affected to communicate the information by phone or in chat. Nothing makes your customers more uneasy than when you’re surprised that they have a big problem. Nothing makes your customers more comfortable than when you understand their problem before they explain it to you. 3. Email your customers before they email you Once you know the scope of the problem and who is affected, you now need to create your response. In your email: Tell people what happened Succinctly and in plain english. Have enough detail to help people understand it. This proves you understand the problem well and builds confidence. Show people how they were affected You could skip this step, but you build non-trivial amounts of trust if your email communicates specifics. If you tell someone “we accidentally deleted data on your account”, they can’t do much. If you say “We accidentally deleted 5 files on your account. Here are the 5 files” that is way more useful. Give people enough information that they can act to repair the damage. Share how you’re fixing the problem Ideally, you’re saying this will never happen again. But share what specifically you’re doing about it. Give people compensation for your screwup If you’re writing your customers with bad news, and it causes them damage, bend over backwards. Err on the side of overcompensating. We gave people credit to the service depending on how they were affected. Don’t make people ask for it. Just give it to them. No business wants a crisis In the end it seems most of our customers wouldn’t have noticed that anything had happened. But we did. When people wrote back, their feedback was that they appreciated us reaching out and keeping an eye on their account for them. What are your examples of a crisis handled well? What about crises that turned in to full-blown disasters? Share your thoughts in the comments.
I was thinking about you this week as I was driving around the South for my business trip. As you can see by the picture, I had a rare treat this week in my rental car - a convertible sports car! I knew it was going to be fun sometime during the week, but not right away. First, I had to make my sales calls and I couldn't arrive all windblown and mussed. It wouldn't be professional and it wouldn't help me in my job. So, I kept the top up and the windows rolled up during the day as I went about doing business. But, when the sales day was done I put the top right down and hit the highway after hours. It was fun, driving with the wind blowing through my hair and feeling like I was outside. I could even stop and take pictures easier along the road with the top down. I had a lot of fun this week driving that convertible. Having that car to work in reminds me of a good lesson in life. It's this: You have to know when it's time to work and when it's time to play. It's a balance. (Another way to say it is what you've heard me say all of these years: "You have to do what you have to do before you get to do what you want to do!") Getting that lesson right is one of the keys to happiness in your life. Trust me on that. You have to put this lesson into practice even now in your life. There is a time to work, and that is going to school, doing your homework, and doing chores around the house. And there is time to play: at recess, after school, and on weekends. When you are young, as you two still are!, the balance is in favor of more time to play. Enjoy this time of your life, and play when you have the chance. When you're older, as your mother and I are, there are more times to work than there are times to play. You will someday have more responsibilities and be the ones to raise your own families. It's a lot of work. And it helps a great deal in getting this right if you set the habits now while you are young. Enjoy this time now in your life. Play, when it's time. But get your work done first. I'll be home soon.
The New York Times Cairo bureau chief David K. Kirkpatrick insists that the Muslim Brotherhood is a “moderate, regular old political force,” despite Muslim Brotherhood-backed Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi’s recent power grab and the Islamist organization’s radical views. Kirkpatrick called into Hugh Hewitt’s radio show Wednesday from Egypt as the Brotherhood’s supporters battled opponents who feared a return to dictatorship on the streets of Cairo. When asked by Hewitt whether the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi, a former top ideological enforcer in the movement, were consolidating power in Egypt to pursue an undemocratic Islamist agenda, Kirkpatrick said he thought such criticism was “misplaced.” “The Brotherhood, they’re politicians,” he said. “They are not violent by nature, and they have over the last couple of decades evolved more and more into a moderate — conservative but religious, but moderate — regular old political force. I find that a lot of the liberal fears of the Brotherhood are somewhat outside. That said, you know, you don’t know what their ultimate vision of what the good life looks like. But in the short term, I think they just want to win elections.” Founded in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, the Brotherhood’s slogan is the not-so-moderate “Allah is our objective; the Quran is our law, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.” Eric Trager, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and an expert on Egypt, told The Daily Caller that Kirkpatrick’s assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood as moderate was simply a regurgitation of Muslim Brotherhood propaganda. “Calling the Muslim Brotherhood moderate is really an ingestion of a Muslim Brotherhood talking point. It’s not analysis,” he said. Samuel Tadros, a former leader of an Egyptian liberal organization who is currently a research fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, echoed Trager. “First, the Brotherhood is not moderate. It is pragmatic,” he said. “This means that a change in the hearts and minds of the movement has not occurred. They are able to develop innovative answers to assuage fears, but their own ideological commitment has not changed. The base is still fed and reads the same texts it has always read.” Tadros said that the Muslim Brotherhood is skilled at duping Western reporters. “Given the level of repression it was under during previous regimes and its need to outreach to other opponents of the regime and, more importantly, the West, it has mastered the art of double talk and perfect answer to well-known questions,” he said. “Its messages to Western reporters are quite different from what its rank and file is fed in Arabic.”

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

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