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A slice of beef, cut from various areas of the beef carcass, ranging in thickness between one-half to one inch and of a size intended to be one serving (many steaks can easily feed two people). Steaks can be cut from any of the primal cuts of beef, but the most desirable steaks are cut from the short loin and rib areas with names such as Porterhouse, T-bone, and rib-eye. They are very tender and juicy and are also quite expensive. Good steaks are also cut from the sirloin. They are not quite as tender as steaks from the short loin or rib, but they are also a bit less expensive. Steaks from the short loin, rib, and sirloin are best when grilled or broiled.
Steaks from the chuck, round, plate, and flank are very flavorful, but are a bit tough if not cooked properly. Most of the steaks from the chuck, round, plate, and flank benefit from being marinated before cooking. In fact, steaks such as the flatiron steak from the chuck and the skirt steak from the plate can be among the most flavorful, juicy, and tender steaks if they are marinated and grilled, but not overcooked. They are also a much better value than loin or rib steaks because they are economically priced. |
Legal experts are of the view that the Act needs to be amended to be in sync with the changing times and development in the social media.
"Section 66 (a) of the IT Act, which was introduced in 2008 after the Mumbai terror attacks, is in direct conflict with Article 19 of the Constitution, which talks about freedom of speech and expression," said Pavan Duggal, a cyber law expert and advocate with the Supreme Court.
"Section 66 (a) can be misused. It's high time the government put its acts together. This section should be completely removed or its scope narrowed, else the current Act can act as a tool for oppressing freedom of speech," Duggal added.
IT minister Kapil Sibal has also agreed that it is perhaps time to relook at the legislation. "Two things need to be done. We need to educate our enforcement authorities that this is not the way to use this particular section. Two, if we want to make the assurance doubly sure, we may add an explanation to the section, which is something we need to debate to ensure that such things do not happen," he said in a television interview.
Shaheen Dhada, the 21-year old girl, and her friend, Renu Shrinivas, are not the first to be arrested for comments made on social networks.
In October, a small scale industrialist in Puducherry, Ravi Srinivasan, was arrested for posting "offensive" messages against Union finance minister P Chidambaram's son Karti Chidambaram. The person had tweeted that Karti had amassed wealth more than that of Robert Vadra, the son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
Similarly, cartoonist Aseem Trivedi was arrested in September by the cyber crime branch of the Mumbai Police for sedition, as his cartoons poked fun of the corrupt politicians and Parliament. The police had to drop all charges against Trivedi after the Bombay high court blasted the police for its high handedness.
Some lawyers point out that more than the change in laws, most of these incidents are happening due to the lack of understanding for such laws among the enforcement agencies.
Milind Deora, minister of state for communications and IT, seems to be in agreement with the view, as he slammed the Mumbai police for "acting in a haste". He further called for checks to prevent any misuse of the IT Act.
"Question isn't about amending 66(a) of the IT Act. It's about preventing misuse by the police, who clearly acted in a haste and applied wrong sections of IPC (Indian Penal Code) and the IT Act," Deora tweeted.
According to the section 66 (a) of the Act, any person who sends, by means of a computer resource or a communication device, any information that is grossly offensive, has menacing character.
"These girls cannot be arrested under the section 66 (a) by any stretch of imagination. The general intelligentsia might feel that the IT Act is too draconian and need to be amended. Though it might not be the best, the Act is very fair. I agree that the section 66 (a) is broadly worded. The problem is not in the wording, but in the police enforcement agencies' understanding of the law," said Sajan Poovayya, managing partner of Poovayya and Co, a law firm, and secretary of the India chapter of the International Commission of Jurists. Rather than amending the existing laws, the government should look at some additions, Poovayya said.
"We should have a clear legislation for procedures of 'take down' of certain content. This should not be governed by the rules of the Central government, but be based on international parameters such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Communication Decency Act of the US."Meanwhile, former bureaucrat and advocate Abha Singh approached the Maharashtra Women's Commission and filed a case against the Palghar police station.
"I did approach the Women's Commission in Maharashtra and filed a complaint against the police for arresting the girls. The Supreme Court in the Jogendar Kumar case has clearly laid out that arrests should not be made unless they are absolutely necessary and there is no other way except arresting the accused to ensure her/his presence before the criminal justice system or to prevent her/him from committing more crimes or tampering with evidence or intimidating witnesses," she said. |
James Colebrooke Patterson was born at Armagh, Ireland in 1839.
Educated in Dublin, Ireland he came to Canada in 1857.
He was called to the bar of Ontario 1876 and practised in Windsor, Ontario.
He served as the Reeve of Windsor for ten years.
As Federal Minister of Militia and Defence, he sought to strengthen the nation's permanent force and was responsible for the construction of fortifications at Esquimalt.
He was Secretary of State in 1892.
Lieutenant-Governor of Manitoba (1895-1900)
He sought to promote the growth of Canadian literature by founding the Canadian Magazine.
He is commemorated by Paterson Street in Winnipeg, Manitoba. |
In the 1960s, it was widely circulated without attribution to Ehrmann, sometimes with the claim that it was found in Saint Paul's Church, Baltimore, Maryland, and that it had been written in 1692 (the year of the founding of Saint Paul's). Nevertheless, the estate of Ehrmann has kept various editions of the work in print. A spoken-word recording of the essay was made by Les Crane and reached #8 on the Billboard magazine charts in late 1971.
At least one court case has held the poem to be forfeited to the public domain because of distribution during and before World War II, but other cases have ruled that the assignee, through Ehrmann's heirs, holds the purchased copyright.
I should like, if I could, to leave a humble gift -- a bit of chaste prose that had caught up some noble moods.
Around 1959, the Rev. Frederick Kates, the rector of Saint Paul's Church in Baltimore, Maryland, used the poem in a collection of devotional materials he compiled for his congregation. (Some years earlier he had come across a copy of Desiderata.) At the top of the handout was the notation, "Old Saint Paul's Church, Baltimore A.D. 1692."
As the material was handed from one friend to another, the authorship became clouded. Copies with the "Old Saint Paul's Church" notation were printed and distributed liberally in the years that followed. It is perhaps understandable that a later publisher would interpret this notation as meaning that the poem itself was found in Old Saint Paul's Church, and that it had been written in 1692. This notation no doubt added to the charm and historic appeal of the poem, despite the fact that the actual language in the poem suggests a more modern origin. The poem was popular prose for the various spiritual movements of the 1960s and 70s.
When Adlai Stevenson died in 1965, a guest in his home found a copy of Desiderata near his bedside and discovered that Stevenson had planned to use it in his Christmas cards. The publicity that followed gave widespread fame to the poem, as well as the mistaken relationship to Saint Paul's Church. |
A piece of postal stationery is a stationery item, such as an envelope, letter sheet, post card, lettercard, aérogramme or wrapper, with an amount of postage preprinted on it. The preprinted stamp, or 'indicium', is usually at the rate required for a particular postal service, e.g., at the postcard rate for postcards, the domestic letter rate for letter sheets and envelopes, the registered letter rate for registered envelopes, etc. In general, postal stationery is handled similarly to postage stamps; sold from post offices either at the face value of the printed postage or with a surcharge to cover the additional cost of the stationery.
The envelope form may also be called a stamped envelope. In the United States, private post cards (without preprinted postage) are differentiated from postal cards, which are sold by the Postal Service.
Postal services of some countries also offer a form of letter sheet called an aérogramme consisting of a blank sheet of paper with folding instructions and adhesive flaps that becomes its own envelope, and carries prepaid postage at either the international airmail letter rate or at a special lower aerogramme rate. Enclosures are not permitted in aerogrammes.
The first official postal stationery were the 1838 embossed letter sheets of New South Wales. These were followed by the Mulready stationery that was issued by Britain at the same time as the Penny Black in 1840. Since then, most postal services have issued a steady stream of stationery alongside stamps; often the design of the stationery mimics the contemporaneous stamps, though with less variety and lower printing quality, due to the limitations of printing directly onto the envelope.
In emergency situations, postal stationery has been produced by handstamping envelopes with modified cancelling devices; many of the rare Confederate postmasters' provisionals are of this form. Postal stationery can also be overprinted publicly, or by a private overprint.
Although the Scott catalog includes a section for United States postal stationery, and many other country-specific stamp catalogs describe the stationery of their respective countries, the 19-volume Higgins and Gage World Postal Stationery Catalogue is a main reference for stationery worldwide. |
In 2000, Assemblyman Ortiz achieved passage of the nation’s first law to ban the use of hand held cell phones while driving a motor vehicle. In 2001, he introduced a bill that would lower the drinking age to 18; he cited unfairness and difficulty with enforcement as his motivations.
Assemblyman Ortiz serves as President of the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators, Vice-President of COPA USA, Chair of the Labor and Workforce Committee of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), and Executive Committee Board Member of the Council of State Governments(CSG). He is a former Chairman of the Assembly Task Force on Food, Farm and Nutrition. Currently he is the Chair of the Veterans' Affairs Committee. |
Recently, other technical volunteers were pushing for Wordpress at an organization I do volunteer work for. This article is not Drupal vs. Wordpress. I found an enlightening Smashing Magazine article during our discussions which addresses that topic. At the end of the day, the simple fact that a vast majority of the volunteers were pushing for Wordpress was enough to justify the switch. It allowed others to take on more responsibilies. Ask any strapped volunteer, more help is worth it.
However, I was tasked with a lot of the finer points of migrating article content smoothly and switching our CiviCRM database over. I'll catalog my process in the hopes that it may help others in a similar situation.
- Drupal 6.26
- CiviCRM 4.1.6
- Wordpress 3.5.1
- CiviCRM 4.3.3
1. Migrating the Drupal article content to Wordpress
I was a bit bummed there wasn't a slick Wordpress plugin to do it for me. However, Wordpress has some valuable resources and kudos to those willing to share their code. I had to operate on the cheap; so unfortunately I couldn't use the first cms2cms suggestion. Luckily, the software versions I was working with matched the second suggestion perfectly. It's a small Java class that does a basic migration of Drupal categories, posts, and comments. Luckily, I only had 10-20 Drupal users to migrate by hand and no custom content types.
The program assumes that Wordpress and Drupal are installed on the same database and its first step is to wipe the Wordpress content. So I fired up a local MySQL database and Apache server to install a fresh copy of Wordpress 3.5.1. I exported the Drupal database/filesystem from our web host brought it up on my local server as well. I then imported the Drupal database tables into the same local MySQL database as Wordpress. I ended up needing to do a minor tweak to the Java source:
Tweak that to match your Wordpress prefix. Mine was:
Similarly, you'll need to make another tweak to the connection string:
return DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:mysql://localhost/database?" + "user=username&password=passwordtext");
With that, I ran the Java file in Eclipse and watched it migrate my content. I excitedly browsed to my local Wordpress site and much to surprise it worked fairly well right off the bat! However, there were two other edits I ended up making based on my own preferences.
Out-of-the-box, the Java program migrates both Drupal stories and pages as Wordpress pages:
//Pages and stories are created as pages if (type.equals("page") || type.equals("story")) strType="page"; else strType="post"; //forum posts and normal posts are both stored as posts
I feel that a Drupal story parallels a Wordpress post. So I made the following edit:
// Drupal pages created as Wordpress pages if (type.equals("page")) strType="page"; else strType="post"; // Drupal stories, forum posts, and normal posts are stored as Wordpress posts
Secondly, it appears I'd disobeyed a bit of recommended practice. My files directory was in an inproper location. So I had to tweak the following line to meet my needs:
After those changes, I ran the Java program locally again. It wiped the existing Wordpress content and performed the migration again. This time I found everything suitable. One of my primary concerns for SEO is that Drupal's clean URLs for the content would be migrated to matching clean URLs in Wordpress. The migration script preserved those URLs perfectly.
My organization had a staging environment where our new Wordpress site was getting themed and plugins configured. So, I felt the easiest way to get the migrated Drupal content from my local Wordpress environment to the staging environment was to use the export functionality locally. I then installed the Wordpress Importer plugin on the staging site and imported the file.
The final step was to take all the files from my Drupal filesystem and put them into /wp-content/uploads in our staging filesystem. All the Drupal content was migrated!
2. Migrating CiviCRM data from a Drupal module to a Wordpress plugin
Luckily, our environment had the CiviCRM database separate from the CMS database. CiviCRM's table structures are the same, regardless of which CMS you use. This CiviCRM community forum post highlights several brave souls who've attempted the task before me. I found this thread and message most useful. So I took a full database export of the production CiviCRM data to be thorough and imported it into our staging CiviCRM database. Secondly, I took separate export as the forum poster suggested with the default options except:
- Check "Disable Foreign Key Checks"
- Dump table: "structure and data"
- Add Statements, check: "Add Drop Table / View... "
I then installed the CiviCRM 4.1.6 plugin on our staging Wordpress site and configured it to connect to the staging CiviCRM database. I noted that upon initial configuration of the plugin, it wipes existing data in the CiviCRM tables even though I'd connected to a database with data. This is where the forum poster's suggestion came in useful. I used the second export described above (with the drops) and imported it into the staging CiviCRM database. I visited the CiviCRM plugin within Wordpress only to be met with:
Warning: require_once(CRM/Core/ClassLoader.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /my/path/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/civicrm/civicrm.php on line 121
Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required 'CRM/Core/ClassLoader.php' (include_path='.:/my/path/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/civicrm/civicrm/:/my/path/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/civicrm/civicrm//packages:.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /my/path/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/civicrm/civicrm.php on line 121
The cache files built by the initial installation in /my/path/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/files/civicrm were screwing things up. I just deleted the contents of that directory entirely and visited the CiviCRM plugin page again. CiviCRM rebuilt its cache and much to my surprise, CiviCRM could work with this data straight away!
3. Upgrading from CiviCRM 4.1.6 to 4.3.3
Theoretically, one should be able to upgrade from 4.1.6 to 4.3.3 without issue. However, in my case, the upgrade progress bar page was showing only with "Retry" and "Skip" buttons that wouldn't do anything. Through troubleshooting I was only able to upgrade as far as CiviCRM 4.2.9 before I ran into that error.
4. Glitch with Wordpress administrative accounts duplicating contact records in CiviCRM
Once I started to get settled in and explore the contact data, I noticed that each time I logged in with my administrative account a new contact would get created with the name and email address from my Wordpress user account. Additionally, one of the other volunteer admins was seeing my email address populated into his contact record.
At first I thought this had something to do with Wordpress Access Control introduced in CiviCRM 4.3.0 and the fact that we'd set up multiple roles using User Role Editor. However, as I should have figured, it was an artifact of my Drupal migration process. The duplicate administrative contacts were caused by pairing CMS user IDs with CRM user IDs in the CIVI_UF_MATCH table. The old Drupal user IDs were being pointed at CiviCRM contact IDs. The other volunteer admin's Wordpress user ID was the same number as my old Drupal user ID, hence the fact that he saw my email address populated into his contact form fields. Additionally, as the aforementioned forum post describes the duplicating contact records was generally due to problems in the CIVI_UF_MATCH table. So I fixed that table up by hand, setting CIVI_UF_MATCH.UF_ID to the Wordpress user ID. Once complete, all the contact duplication problems were resolved. Based on my reading, I believe you could truncate the table and just run Administer » Users and Permissions » Synchronize Users to Contacts. However, as I said earlier my administrative user account population is fairly small (10-20) so fixing it by hand worked well enough for me.
5. Timezone information was correct in Wordpress but not CiviCRM
Another issue that cropped up had less to do with the migration and I believe is just generally a Wordpress/CiviCRM issue. The timestamps of our contact edits were coming up incorrect. It seems timezone information is read from the wp-settings.php file rather than value configured in Settings. I had to change the following line in wp-settings.php:
// WordPress calculates offsets from UTC. date_default_timezone_set( 'UTC' );
Changing UTC to a valid PHP timezone string fixed the incorrect CiviCRM timestamps for us.
At the time of writing this article we've been up and running on the new CMS and CRM combination happily for several weeks. Hopefully this helps someone out. Feel free to comment! Thanks to all those above who shared their code and to forum community members followed up with their resolution. No one likes running into DenverCoder9. |
April 10, 2012
The Oklahoma state Senate voted down a bill that would have prohibited state judges from considering foreign laws, including religious laws, in their decisions, the Religion News Service reports. House Bill 1552 was widely considered to be targeting sharia (Islamic law), as have other bills in several other state legislatures. State Rep. Sally Kern (R-Oklahoma City) submitted HB 1552 last year after a similar law approved by voters in a 2010 referendum was ruled unconstitutional. Oklahoma's House of Representatives approved the new bill by a vote of 76-3 in 2011, but it wasn't heard in a Senate committee until this year. On April 5, the Senate Rules Committee rejected it in a 9-6 vote. In other states, including Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Minnesota and New Jersey, other anti-foreign law bills have also recently died or been withdrawn, but David Yurushalmi, a lawyer for the conservative Center for Security Policy that drafted the legislation on which the anti-sharia bills have been based, is not discouraged: "There is a strong grassroots movement that supports this legislation and that will keep putting these bills forward," he said. |
February 24, 2010 | 0 Comments
The Renewable Energy World network of publications, the World's #1 Renewable Energy Network, has announced the winners of the 2009 Excellence in Renewable Energy Awards. The awards, which were presented yesterday at the Renewable Energy World Conference and Expo in Austin, Texas, recognize the most cutting-edge projects, people and technologies in the clean energy industry.
After narrowing down hundreds of submissions, Renewable Energy World Network editors and readers have chosen seven winners, recognizing them for their achievements in advancing the market for renewable energy in North America.
The winners in each category include:
Project of the Year – eSolar's 5-MW Sierra SunTower
Utility-scale Renewables – Enbridge and First Solar's 20-MW Sarnia Solar Project
Distributed and On-Site Renewables – Solyndra and Solar Power Inc's 602-kW Rooftop CIGS PV Project for Costco
Building Integrated Renewables – Conserval Engineering's 25-kW PV and 75-kW Thermal SolarWall Hybrid System at the John Molson School of Business at Concordia University
Innovation in Renewable Energy – Enphase Energy's Micro-inverter System
Leadership in Renewable Energy – For policy, Rhone Resch, President of the Solar Energy Industries Association; and for technology Dr. Ajeet Rohatgi, Founder and CTO of Suniva
Reader's Choice Award – First Wind's 203-MW Milford Wind Corridor
"We are proud to present these awards to these leading companies and people who are doing so much to grow the market for renewables in North America and around the world," said Oliver Strube, publisher and co-founder of RenewableEnergyWorld.com. "This is a remarkable time for this industry, and these award winners represent the incredible progress that this industry is making."
“It is an honor to accept this award,” said Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) President and CEO Rhone Resch. “I do so on behalf of everyone at SEIA and everyone in the industry that has worked hard to advance solar energy. It validates the tremendous progress that SEIA and our industry has made to create jobs, grow markets and develop clean, reliable energy technologies, even in these tough economic times.”
The awards were presented at the 7th Annual Renewable Energy World Conference & Expo North America, a leading event in the renewable energy industry.
Renewable Energy World Conference & Expo North America 2010 is expected to attract more than 5000 renewable energy industry professionals and more than 300 exhibitors to Austin, Texas to take part in the largest all-renewable conference and exhibition in the world.
Video highlights of the winning projects as well as interviews with the winners are coming soon. |
The National Weather Service (NWS) has issued a wind advisory for the entire state until 2 a.m. on Friday. There is also a cold front approaching the area tonight and light rain or showers are expected.
A wind advisory is issued when winds are forecasted to be 31 to 39 miles per hour or wind gusts will be between 46 and 57 miles per hour. Winds this strong can cause isolated power outages or downed tree limbs. Driving can also be difficult, especially for taller vehicles. All Rhode Islanders are reminded to watch for downed power lines or tree branches and to drive carefully.
The Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency (RIEMA) is monitoring updates from municipalities and from National Grid for reports of any power outages or other wind-related damages. |
The Rhode Island Senate is available to help Rhode Islanders with their needs, whether it is finding out about State services or looking for an internship.
The Office of Constituent Services acts as a liaison between the Senate and various state departments. The professionals in the office are available to assist constituents who need help in dealing with various government agencies, such as finding subsidized housing or insurance coverage.
The office can help with human services needs, elderly affairs, environmental and transportation issues, etc. Often, people don’t know what government programs may be available to them. The Office of Constituent Services does know and is anxious to assist.
To contact the Office of Constituent Services, e-mail: email@example.com, or call (401) 276-5556.
Click here to learn more about internships: http://webserver.rilin.state.ri.us/internoffice/
Rhode Island Government Links -- http://www.info.state.ri.us/azlist.htm |
The Report of W. H. H. Terrell, Adjutant General, Indiana, Roster of Enlisted Men, 1861 - 1865, Vol. VII, page 101, shows John W. Matheny as a Private in Co. “A” of the Seventh Cavalry (119th) Regiment, who mustered in at Porter County unit on August 24, 1863, and was transferred to Co. “C”, 7th Cav., re-organized.
A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion by Frederick H. Dyer, Copyright, 1908, gives the following information for the 7th Cavalry:Organized at Indianapolis, Ind., and mustered in October 1, 1863.
#1. 13 Aug 1863 from Robert Watson Co B 13 Ind Vol. Foster’s Brigade, Folys Island near Charleston, SC warns John not to enlist.
#2. 23 Aug 1863 from John W. Matheny Camp Shanks, stood guard in thunderstorm, no blanket, slept on floor in wet clothes, intends to ask for discharge after bounty is paid, plans to have picture taken for mother.
#3. 15 Jan 1864 from JWM Hickman Station, KY arrived there from Union City TN on 13th, coldest weather in 10 years, eating corn cakes without sifting or salt, mixed with water, weighs 154, not been paid yet, requests 50 cents worth of stamps.
#4. 10 Mar 1864 from JWM Camp near Memphis, TN has been sick for 2 weeks, hard times for last 3 months, “expect you heard about our fight before”, this time fought 5 days - killed a great many lost a good many, didn’t take prisoners - “shot them down like hogs”, hardest cavalry fight since war broke out, possibly going to Army of Patomac, James Marquis is chaplain, parents have new home and neighbors, requests Uncle George to write, direct letter to Camp Grearson, TN.
#5. 17 Mar 1864 from JWM Benton Barracks, St. Louis unit left camp 1 Sept after Price went within 25 miles of Little Rock, turned and went to Cape Girardeau, then toward St. Louis, boarded boat to Jefferson City, overtook rebs who were supported by one brigade under command of Maj. Geo R. Marmaduke on 22 Oct near Independence - 6 miles from Kansas line, chased them to “big blue river”, took 1200 stand of arms & 3 (?) stand of colors, rebs broke again to Osage river, stood again and took another licking, chased them out of United States about 100 miles into Indian territory turned back after crossing Arkansas river, 6,000 men & 7 (?) generals, going to Nashville in a few days, direct mail to Memphis TN.
#6. 22 Apr 1864 from JWM Camp Pickeren, TN report of General Pope (?) coming up river with 20,000 men, Union shells can reach 8 miles from fort, scouting every day and bringing in prisoners, darky soldiers “fetched a garilly.” lunch is sow belly, bread, beans and coffee, 3 or 4 die each day, much swearing and stealing.
#7. 24 Apr 1864 from JWM to Aunt Mary Camp Crisbeck, TN weather is hot, no fighting except skirmishing, will go to Chattanooga in May, circus showing nearby.
#8. 11 Jun 1864 from JWM White Station, TN not out of saddle much for last two months, just returned 3:00 am from raid to Miss., hard fight 10th of month, “got as completely whipped as...any fellows since the war broke out”, enclosed article from Memphis paper, commanded by Gen. Sturgis, lost 16 pieces of artillery and 350 wagons, loss greater than paper states, rebs 40,000 strong, expecting another fight soon, was in hospital, order just came to go out, must go.
#9. 19 June 1864 from JWM White Station, TN hot weather, was in hard fight since last letter, our force 12,000 cavalry, infantry & artillery under Brig. Gen. Sturgis, 5 or 6 thousand colored troops, reb force said to be 40,000, Col. Brown shot in leg, many wounded in our regiment, Uncle Jimmy Marquis preached yesterday afternoon, most peaches he ever saw, corn high as head, wheat nearly ready to cut, country town up, corn $7 bushel and scarce, butter 65 cents to $1 pound, eggs 45 to 50 cents doz, milk 20 cents quart, Gen. A. J. Smith gone down to MS, got letter from Lidy Gray, direct letter as before.
#10. 20 Aug 1864 from JWM Camp White Station, TN received 2 letters and picture, Gen. Smith in MS with 7500 men, he started with them but took sick and came back, well now, Jesse Merical got back this morning, Charles wanted to come with him, “rather see him buried than in the army”, afraid father will be drafted, talked to Jimmy Marquis Sunday morning, didn’t get newspapers, thinks father wore his necktie when picture was taken.
#11. 27 Dec 1864 from JWM per Waldo F. Brown, Delegate Christian Commission, to Brother sick with fever in Foundry hospital, getting better, kind nurses & dr., direct letters to Foundry hospital, Louisville.
#12. 13 Jan 1865 from JWM Brown Hospital, ward 6, Louisville, KY sick for good spell with lung fever in right side, thinks he may never be fit for field service again, took sick on boat and lost pocket book, no money but 4 or 5 stamps lost, sending this letter with no postage, poorest boarding since he’s been in service, bread & coffee for breakfast & supper - bread and small piece of half boiled beef and onion soup for dinner, no pay for nearly 9 months, asks father for loan of $5, “tell Aunt Polly fortune teller has hit my case pretty well so far”.
#13. 27 Jan 1865 from JWM Brown Hospital, Louisville, KY health about same as latest letter, wishes he had been home to go to quarterly meeting, 18 months longer till discharge, weather very cold, no snow, no sledding, paper says intercepted telegraph from Lee says Ft. Fisher & Wilmington must be held or he will be forced to evacuate Richmond, asks father to send some tobacco.
#14. 10 Feb 1865 from JWM Louisville, KY health getting better, warm enough for shirt sleeves, new chaplain, small pox is thick, wants to go to Memphis when river opens, takes about 2 weeks to go on boat, thinks he will be paid $160 owed to him when he gets to camp, thinks draft is unnecessary - enough men now to clean out rebs by fall, says he is enclosing nice piece of poetry.
#15. 14 Feb 1865 from JWM Brown Hospital, ward 6, Louisville, KY received letter from father with news that a box of necessaries has been sent, will delay tomorrow’s trip to Memphis to wait for it, advises father to pay the $200 if draft goes through so he won’t have to serve, today’s paper reports rebs are evacuating Richmond and Charleston to concentrate forces in SC to try and crush Sherman, tells Nancy to hurry and learn to write so she can write him a letter, tell Eva he has eaten so many Secesh chickens that he doesn’t like chicken much any more, doesn’t expect to be home until his time is out, reports that there is some nice land in MO along the Pacific railroad, can’t say much about Kansas because he didn’t get over 300 yds in, camped on MO-KS line, went into KS to get some corn for his horse, fed him in MO, made his bed and slept in KS, poorest country he saw was Ark., reckons that Uncle George is living with John and if John is drafted he will send George in his place so he can run the farm.
#17. 24 Feb 1865 from JWM Hospital 15, 3rd Division, Nashville, TN on 22nd was transfered to this place and is now on duty, went to express office on day he had to leave Louisville, but box had not come, left with heavy heart, today’s report is that Lee has whipped Grant and drove him back, but he doesn’t believe it yet, 100 guns fired in Louisville in honor of Sherman’s recent victories, direct to Hosp #15, field branch, Nashville, TN#18. 19 Apr 1865 from JWM Hospital 15, Division 3, Nashville TN sorry to hear that Uncle Andy was drafted, his box arrived at his tent while he was eating dinner on the 14th, apples and sausage were spoiled, broken bottle that he supposed contained preserves at one time, butter and socks and tobacco were all right, John Lowry had forwarded it from Louisville, freight was $1.05, asks father if he is the man Eli Demer sued for assault - about the first trial that was held at their house, weather very warm, much rain and waters are high, Mobile is in our hands, listening to hear of Johnson’s surrender, thinks he might be home by 4th of July, thinks rebellion is about played out, on 15th got news that Lincoln was killed, all flags dressed in black and put at half mast, man got stabbed for saying it was a fine thing that Lincoln was dead.#19. 20 May 1865 from JWM Cumberland Hospital, Ward 19, Nashville, TN #15 hospital broken up and many men discharged, expects to be mustered out in a month or so, very nice place, chaplain preaches twice a week, good library, heavy storm last night - 4 railroad bridges between here & Louisville blown down, corn is knee high, green onions-green salad-green peas in abundance, if home would have a mess of squirrels be fore night, last stamp-no money.#20. 1 Aug 1865 from JWM Alexandria, Louisiana answering father’s letter of 28 June, arrived here on 28 June, mustered for pay but pay didn’t come, drew new horses, arms and equipment, guns shoot 7 times without reloading, all companies have different colored horses, “best fixed now that we have ever been”, expects to march to Texas or New Orleans to be reviewed and mustered out but not sure, hottest country he was ever in, can see many things you can’t see up north-figs in natural state, quinces, palm leaf for hats and alligators, Jess Merical deserted, he & 7 or 8 others with their horses and equipment left regiment on night of 3 July, scouting party sent in pursuit, caught up with them in about 40 miles, one scout killed, one wounded and balance came back with no prisoners.
Letters 1 to 10
Letters 11 to 20
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|ANCESTOR'S NAME||B-D DATES/ LOCATION||RESEARCHER/
||ABT 1789; King William Co VA
||Elizabeth Levin |
(Sarah Elizabeth Clark)
|1758 France or England; m. 1802/ Richmond, Henrico,
||Marilyn McGuire |
||1740-1750 US; 1770 in NS
Carol Measham |
|b. 3 Oct 1782; MD
||John Quillin |
||1781 NY; OH
||bef 1730-1781; Caswell Co, NC
||Curtis Pounders |
|1665 Ireland; Carteret County, NC
||Tharon Greene |
|1789, Ireland; 1850, Illinois
||Betty Potalivo |
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Now it has been written that, at the dawning of the Third Millennium, there was joy in the Land of Sasquatch. For, after years of famine and disappointment, the sports gods did smile upon the people.
Behold, the Huskies won 11 games, and were victorious at the Bowl of Roses. And Ichiro the Quick and Edgar the Ancient led the lowly Mariners to a hundred victories and more, and they overthrew even the evil Yankees. And the Seahawks, led by Shawn the Sure-Footed, won many victories and were elevated to the Bowl of Bowls. And the lowly Sonics won, owing to the many heroic deeds of Gary the Glove.
And the people of the Land of Sasquatch were most pleased, praising the shooters of basketballs and hitters of baseballs and carriers of footballs. And they built great Palaces iin honor of their champions, and paid for them by levying hotel taxes upon innocent visitors.
Now it came to pass, in the reign of Gregory the XL, that there arose a new master of the Sonics, and his name was Clay the Philistine. And the Philistine desired that the players of basketball should journey from the Land of Sasquatch unto the Land Flowing with Milk and Honey, which he believed to be somewhere in Oklahoma.
But, yea verily, the Sonics had rendered a solemn oath to play many more years at the Basketball Palace, in the center of the Land of Sasquatch.
So Clay said unto Gregory XL: “The Basketball Palace is no longer satisfactory, for the wealthy Pharisees demandeth to sit on high upon the skyboxes, but the Basketball Palace hath too few skyboxes. Therefore we beseech thee to construct a greater Basketball Palace.
At this, Gregory the XL was confused. And he went before the people and asked of them: “Shall we build a greater Basketball Palace for Clay the Philistine?”
And they people said with a loud voice: “Nay! A thousand times Nay! For verily we hath not yet paid for the old palace.”
And so Gregory XL said unto the Philistine: There shall be no new palace.
Now Clay the Philistine was greatly troubled. And he said unto Gregory XL: “Thou hast spurned by request. So therefore I shall take my players of basketball and travel through the wilderness to the Land Flowing with Milk and Honey.”
But Gregory XL said: “Thou canst not violate thine oath.”
And the Philistine said: “I will make sacrifices and burnt offerings to the people, and thus satisfy my oath to play in the Basketball Palace.”
But Gregory’s heart was hardened. And he said: “Send us not thy burnt offerings, but only thy players of basketball.”
So the Philistine said unto him: “Therefore we shall journey to the Land Flowing with Milk and Honey. Let my players go!”
But Gregory’s heart remained hardened, so that he spurned the Philistine’s entreaties.
And so the Philistine became angrier so that he fell upon the ground and swooned. And he summoned his magicians for advice. And lo the Philistine held forth his staff, and waved it, and said onto the people of Sasquatch: “Woe upon thee, and especially upon thine sports palaces!”
And it came to pass that a great cloud descended upon the Land of Sasquatch. And while the rest of the world became warmer, there were only dark clouds and cold rain across the land of Sasquatch, even unto the month of June.
And Clay said: “Let my players go!” But Gregory’s heart remained hardened.
So the Philistine waved his rod and caused a Plague of Jocks. And, lo, the Husky football coach bore false witness, so that he was banished into the wilderness. And the Husky players flunked beginning basketweaving, or were arrested for sundry crimes, and were disqualified so that the Huskies could not defeat the Beavers, much less the Trojans.
And the Philistine caused Shawn the Sure-footed to be injured, so that the Seahawks no longer journeyed to the Bowl of Bowls.
And Jamie, He of the Slow Pitch, was banished to the Land of the Phillies. And Edgar the Ancient and Jay of the Bones retired to green pastures, so that only Ichiro the Quick remained. And the Mariners were victorious no more, but instead humiliated the people of the Land of Sasquatch.
And the Players of Basketball were scattered asunder unto far-off lands, and were replaced by lesser players. And the people were humiliated further.
Trouble and discontent spread across the Land of Sasquatch. And the people descended into the streets of the city and fell down to rend their T-shirts. And they erected a great burning altar among the sports palaces, and brought their Ms caps and Ichiro bobblehead dolls and Gary the Glove hooded sweatshirts, and cast them upon the fire, crying aloud: “Woe upon us, for these are indeed the darkest days ever in the Land of Sasquatch.”
And they went unto the High Priest, and beseeched her to prevent the lesser players of basketball from journeying into the wilderness. And amongst the plaintiffs was one Sherman, the Poet, who said unto the High Priest: “We beseech thee to prevent our players of basketball from journeying to foreign lands. For unto us, the players of basketball are as Greek gods.”
At this, the clouds parted, and a bright light shone from the Heavens. And the bright light produced a Very Deep Voice which said: “Greek Gods! What hath been wrought upon the Land of Sasquatch?”
And the Very Deep Voice became deeper still, and said: “Verily I say unto you, people of Sasquatch: Get thee a life.”
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"Jan. 22, 2013 -- Regular aspirin users are more likely to develop the "wet" form of age-related macular degeneration compared to people who rarely or never take the drug, a new study shows.
Aspirin is one of the most widely used drugs in th"...
- Patient Information:
Details with Side Effects
AZOPT® (brinzolamide ophthalmic suspension) (brinzolamide ophthalmic suspension) 1% is a sulfonamide and although administered topically it is absorbed systemically. Therefore, the same types of adverse reactions that are attributable to sulfonamides may occur with topical administration of AZOPT® (brinzolamide ophthalmic suspension) 1%. Fatalities have occurred, although rarely, due to severe reactions to sulfonamides including Stevens-Johnson syndrome, toxic epidermal necrolysis, fulminant hepatic necrosis, agranulocytosis, aplastic anemia, and other blood dyscrasias. Sensitization may recur when a sulfonamide is re-administered irrespective of the route of administration. If signs of serious reactions or hypersensitivity occur, discontinue the use of this preparation.
Carbonic anhydrase activity has been observed in both the cytoplasm and around the plasma membranes of the corneal endothelium. There is an increased potential for developing corneal edema in patients with low endothelial cell counts. Caution should be used when prescribing AZOPT® (brinzolamide ophthalmic suspension) 1% to this group of patients.
Severe Renal Impairment
AZOPT® (brinzolamide ophthalmic suspension) 1% has not been studied in patients with severe renal impairment (CrCl < 30 mL/min). Because AZOPT® (brinzolamide ophthalmic suspension) 1% and its metabolite are excreted predominantly by the kidney, AZOPT® (brinzolamide ophthalmic suspension) 1% is not recommended in such patients.
Acute Angle-Closure Glaucoma
The management of patients with acute angle-closure glaucoma requires therapeutic interventions in addition to ocular hypotensive agents. AZOPT® (brinzolamide ophthalmic suspension) (brinzolamide ophthalmic suspension) 1% has not been studied in patients with acute angle-closure glaucoma.
Contact Lens Wear
The preservative in AZOPT® (brinzolamide ophthalmic suspension) 1%, benzalkonium chloride, may be absorbed by soft contact lenses. Contact lenses should be removed during instillation of AZOPT® (brinzolamide ophthalmic suspension) 1%, but may be reinserted 15 minutes after instillation.
Carcinogenesis, Mutagenesis, Impairment of Fertility
Carcinogenicity data on brinzolamide are not available. The following tests for mutagenic potential were negative: (1) in vivo mouse micronucleus assay; (2) in vivo sister chromatid exchange assay; and (3) Ames E. coli test. The in vitro mouse lymphoma forward mutation assay was negative in the absence of activation, but positive in the presence of microsomal activation. In reproduction studies of brinzolamide in rats, there were no adverse effects on the fertility or reproductive capacity of males or females at doses up to 18 mg/kg/day (375 times the recommended human ophthalmic dose).
If more than one topical ophthalmic drug is being used, the drugs should be administered at least ten minutes apart.
Use In Specific Populations
Pregnancy Category C: Developmental toxicity studies with brinzolamide in rabbits at oral doses of 1, 3, and 6 mg/kg/day (20, 62, and 125 times the recommended human ophthalmic dose) produced maternal toxicity at 6 mg/kg/day and a significant increase in the number of fetal variations, such as accessory skull bones, which was only slightly higher than the historic value at 1 and 6 mg/kg. In rats, statistically decreased body weights of fetuses from dams receiving oral doses of 18 mg/kg/day (375 times the recommended human ophthalmic dose) during gestation were proportional to the reduced maternal weight gain, with no statistically significant effects on organ or tissue development. Increases in unossified sternebrae, reduced ossification of the skull, and unossified hyoid that occurred at 6 and 18 mg/kg were not statistically significant. No treatment-related malformations were seen. Following oral administration of 14C-brinzolamide to pregnant rats, radioactivity was found to cross the placenta and was present in the fetal tissues and blood.
There are no adequate and well-controlled studies in pregnant women. AZOPT® (brinzolamide ophthalmic suspension) 1% should be used during pregnancy only if the potential benefit justifies the potential risk to the fetus.
In a study of brinzolamide in lactating rats, decreases in body weight gain in offspring at an oral dose of 15 mg/kg/day (312 times the recommended human ophthalmic dose) were seen during lactation. No other effects were observed. However, following oral administration of 14C-brinzolamide to lactating rats, radioactivity was found in milk at concentrations below those in the blood and plasma.
It is not known whether this drug is excreted in human milk. Because many drugs are excreted in human milk and because of the potential for serious adverse reactions in nursing infants from AZOPT® (brinzolamide ophthalmic suspension) 1%, a decision should be made whether to discontinue nursing or to discontinue the drug, taking into account the importance of the drug to the mother.
A three-month controlled clinical study was conducted in which AZOPT® (brinzolamide ophthalmic suspension) (brinzolamide ophthalmic suspension) 1% was dosed only twice a day in pediatric patients 4 weeks to 5 years of age. Patients were not required to discontinue their IOP-lowering medication(s) until initiation of monotherapy with AZOPT® (brinzolamide ophthalmic suspension) . IOP-lowering efficacy was not demonstrated in this study in which the mean decrease in elevated IOP was between 0 and 2 mmHg. Five out of 32 patients demonstrated an increase in corneal diameter of one millimeter.
No overall differences in safety or effectiveness have been observed between elderly and younger patients.
Last reviewed on RxList: 4/28/2011
This monograph has been modified to include the generic and brand name in many instances.
Additional Azopt Information
Azopt - User Reviews
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Report Problems to the Food and Drug Administration
You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit the FDA MedWatch website or call 1-800-FDA-1088.
Get breaking medical news. |
Heat Rash (cont.)
Benjamin Wedro, MD, FACEP, FAAEM
Dr. Ben Wedro practices emergency medicine at Gundersen Clinic, a regional trauma center in La Crosse, Wisconsin. His background includes undergraduate and medical studies at the University of Alberta, a Family Practice internship at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario and residency training in Emergency Medicine at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.
Charles Patrick Davis, MD, PhD
Dr. Charles "Pat" Davis, MD, PhD, is a board certified Emergency Medicine doctor who currently practices as a consultant and staff member for hospitals. He has a PhD in Microbiology (UT at Austin), and the MD (Univ. Texas Medical Branch, Galveston). He is a Clinical Professor (retired) in the Division of Emergency Medicine, UT Health Science Center at San Antonio, and has been the Chief of Emergency Medicine at UT Medical Branch and at UTHSCSA with over 250 publications.
In this Article
- Heat rash facts
- What is heat rash?
- What are the causes of heat rash?
- What are the symptoms of heat rash in children and adults?
- What does heat rash look like?
- Heat rash pictures
- Who is at risk for heat rash?
- How is heat rash diagnosed?
- What is the treatment for heat rash?
- Home remedies for heat rash
- Medical treatment for heat rash
- How can heat rash be prevented?
- How effective are electric fans in preventing heat rash?
- How can people protect their health when temperatures are extremely high?
- How much water should I drink in hot weather?
- Should I take salt tablets during hot weather?
- What is the best clothing to wear in hot weather or a heat wave?
- What is the prognosis for heat rash?
- Pictures of Heat Rash - Slideshow
- Pictures of Summer Skin Hazards - Slideshow
- Pictures of Dehydration Tips - Slideshow
- Find a local Doctor in your town
What is the best clothing for hot weather or a heat wave?
Evaporation works to cool the skin only if the sweat that the body produces is allowed to evaporate. Lightweight, loose clothing allows air circulation to the body's surface and helps promote cooling. While cotton is the classic fabric that can be used, some synthetic fabrics have been developed to wick sweat from the skin and allow more efficient skin or body cooling.
What is the prognosis for heat rash?
Heat rash or prickly heat tends to be self-limiting and gets better once the skin cools and is allowed to breathe. Prevention by not allowing heat to accumulate in body areas, followed by cooling the skin are the most common ways to obtain the best prognosis for heat rash.
Rakel R. Textbook of Family Medicine. 8th edition. Philadelphia: Saunders/Elsevier. 2011
WebMD.com. Heat Rash Overview.
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How identifying behavioral traits may improve safety
By Keith Howard, associate editor
Discovering a worker who is faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound is impossible. But according to safety researchers, finding an employee who thinks he or she is invincible against injuries is much more of a reality.
Despite the availability of guidance material and the implementation of behavioral programs to warn against common dangers, some workers still do not believe they will be struck by falling materials, trapped in confined spaces, or suffer debilitating neck and back injuries from improper lifting.
These workers ignore or fail to recognize the dangers in front of them because of a misguided sense of invincibility. Whether this attitude directly influences how safety guidelines are followed on the job is up for debate. However, experts do agree that identifying and redirecting this misconception may prevent harm and save lives.
Cowboy complex and inexperience
In some rural areas of the country, people may have a “cowboy” mentality, according to Mike Caltagirone, executive director for the Wyoming-Montana Safety Council, headquartered in Cheyenne, WY. To those people, “this is the Wild West, sort of. Areas [here are] just sort of rural and it’s just a whole different atmosphere than you would have in a city,” Caltagirone said. “There’s that mentality where, ‘This is the way I’ve been doing it for 30 or 40 years, and I don’t know any other way to do it,’” he said.
“They may not be hammered with the safety culture – wearing protective safety glasses, wearing certain protective clothing, following safety procedures – and they’re prone to get hurt,” Caltagirone said, adding that younger workers who are relatively uninformed about safety matters often think “they’re invincible, that nothing is ever going to happen to them.”
Because not every employee is going to walk through the door knowing how to follow a strong safety culture, newcomers need more guidance to change their opinions and biases regarding practicing safety at all times in the workplace, Caltagirone said.
“The youth will have that mentality to start with, unless it’s changed by a company’s culture and safety attitude,” Caltagirone said. “That’s just the way it’s going to be. A lot of people, they need to be told [safety procedures], and unless a company has that culture it doesn’t happen.”
Regardless of age, construction workers will always need feedback about the importance of safety, said Doug Robie, safety and risk management director for DEW Construction Corp. in Williston, VT. He also used the word “stubborn” to describe some construction workers.
The size of the business plays an important role in the mindset of the workers and their attitude toward safety, Robie said. “The smaller outfits, generally, [are] very naive [about] OSHA regulations and OSHA protections. Those people are generally the ones that need the most help. It’s almost like they don’t consider themselves under the guidance of OSHA.”
A company with only five or six employees may not place safety at the top of its list, Robie said. Instead, the top priority for the company is to get work done and for managers or supervisors to perform alongside or at the same pace as their crew.
A small operation may have more workers who feel they are safe from injury and can potentially violate more safety rules because only one person may be acting as a supervisor, manager and safety official. This takes away from the supervisor’s time needed to develop a rich safety culture, Robie said. “What’s really going to get their attention is their first visit from OSHA and they have their first serious violations,” he added.
Despite the type or size of the business where an employee works, approaching employees with concrete information is a successful way to educate people about safety, Robie said.
“I think the key with dealing with those people is to have your facts straight – in terms of what the OSHA regulations are, and how you present it,” he said. “We never try to get into a confrontational mode unless we really have to. We try to say, ‘This is the issue and here are the requirements,’ and generally that works out quite well.”
Attitudes impacting safety
Some researchers believe that an employee’s attitude toward safety has a direct impact on whether or not safety precautions are followed. In a study conducted by researchers from Texas A&M University in College Station, a sample of 190 engineering and occupational safety students from two universities was used to examine individual differences when predicting safety-related attitudes.
People who have riskier personalities hold more negative safety attitudes, and previous research suggests individuals with higher levels of these traits tend to engage in more risk-taking behaviors and experience more incidents, according to the study, published in the journal Safety Science (Vol. 47, No. 3).
Of all the individual differences examined, agreeableness, prevention focus and fatalism appear to play the greatest role in predicting safety attitudes and could be useful in the job selection process, researchers found.
Research conducted in Australia supports the claim that overconfident workers exist in the construction industry, and that they feel they are invulnerable to some of the most common injuries.
According to a study published in the Journal of Safety Research (Vol. 42, No. 4) from the University of New South Wales in Australia, construction workers showed significant levels of “optimism bias,” the belief that negative events are less likely to happen to oneself than to others, in relation to health and safety hazards in the workplace.
The study observed significant optimism bias for being struck by materials, being trapped in a confined space, being electrocuted, falling from a height, causing an injury to someone else, breaking safety rules and not replacing safety barriers.
Although the study did not concretely prove that being overly optimistic about a vulnerability to safety hazards did not reduce the level of safety on the job, “the likely presence of optimism bias may affect the degree to which safety behaviors are employed,” the report stated.
Getting through to miners
In the mining industry, some workers would rather deal with serious health problems than wear a respirator or use proper protective equipment for their ears and eyes, according to Barry VanSickle, equipment operator and first aid instructor for Wharf Resources, a mining company in Lead, SD.
“Sometimes it breaks through and sometimes it doesn’t. With some people’s attitude, it’s easier said than done. That’s a culture that [safety officials are] trying to change here,” VanSickle said. “They don’t want a rough and tough miner.”
VanSickle said finding his motivation to convince workers that they are not invincible and to follow regulations – as well as less stringent safety guidelines – comes from the emotions he still feels as a result of an incident in his past.
“My father was actually killed in an underground coal mining accident,” VanSickle said. “My kids are at the age where I was when my father died, and I know how hard it was for my mother to raise my family by herself.”
The actions of some of the “toughest” miners can have serious consequences for their loved ones, VanSickle said, adding “that’s a lot of the reason why I do what I do. That’s a lot of the reason why I got into this – to help people.”
Every day, VanSickle tries to help workers who feel they are invulnerable to incidents to change their attitudes about safety and adopt a more grounded outlook, he said. “I think you have to change the culture, and that’s what we’re trying to do.” |
Video: Poet Terrance Hayes Reads at Cave Canem 2012
Terrance Hayes is the author of four collections of poetry, including Lighthead (Penguin, 2010), winner of the 2010 National Book Award; Wind in a Box (2006), named one of the Best 100 Books of 2006 by Publishers Weekly; Hip Logic (2002), which won National Poetry Series, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and runner-up for the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets; and Muscular Music (1999), winner of both the Whiting Writers Award and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. The 2011 USA Zell Fellow for Literature, he has been a recipient of many honors and awards, including two Pushcart selections, four Best American Poetry selections, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Guggenheim Foundation.
On June 21, Cave Canem, in partnership with City of Asylum/Pittsburgh, presented a free reading on Pittsburgh’s Monterey Street where Terrance Hayes read, along with poets Nikky Finney, Thomas Sayers Ellis, and Angela Jackson.
He is Professor of Creative Writing at Carnegie Mellon University and a Cave Canem faculty member.
1. “The Rose Has Teeth” (0:00)
2. “New York Poem” (3:44)
3. “How To be Drawn to Trouble” (5:44)
4. “The Deer” (11:12)
5. “When Given a Choice” (14:16)
6. “Wigtastic” (18:25) |
Art at St. Andrews
Applied to St. Andrews with an expressed interest in Art? Click here for the art scholarship application.
language of art is the most ancient, cross-cultural, and instinctual method
of communication, predating writing by thousands of years. Artists reflect
human history, and they are history: each painting, sculpture and computer
animation is not only art, but also a form of individual and cultural
commentary. The interdisciplinary
nature of the St. Andrews curriculum encourages students to explore the
connections between visual art and other disciplines, so that academic
and career goals maybe fully realized. The Colleges Electronic Fine
Arts Center (EFAC) is an interactive multidisciplinary high-tech studio
that allows students to combine visual art, video and music. The Art Department
also offers a contract major, which is a program of study designed for
a particular outcome, for example: drawing and biology, art and psychology,
computer art and video, or art and creative writing.
from individual attention and instruction at St. Andrews. Plenty of space
and time is available in the 2D, 3D and computer studios, all of which
are open outside of class time to accommodate an art majors evening
or morning inspirations.
Should a student desire to see firsthand the world masterpieces that have
found their way into our visual vocabulary, the Colleges academic
calendar allows abundant opportunities for semester-long and short study
abroad programs. Students have explored art and life in France, Italy,
Great Britain, China, India, Japan, Vietnam, Switzerland, Spain, Ecuador
Closer to home,
works are displayed in the Vardell Gallery on the St. Andrews campus,
offering students regular exposure to artists known regionally, nationally
and internationally. The exhibition space also is the site of the annual
student art show.
The visual art experiences need not be limited to classrooms and studios.
St. Andrews is close to regional museums such as the Mint Museum in Charlotte
and the Reynolda House Museum of American Arts in Winston-Salem.
There are opportunities
for student works to be shown elsewhere on campus, from the murals in
the residence halls to the walls of the administrative offices and the
formal spaces of the Vardell Gallery. The Colleges literary magazine,
Gravity Hill, accepts student illustrations and photographs for publication,
as do the student newspaper and yearbook.
If you have questions on the Art Program, email Professor Stephanie McDavid |
Small Business Against Big Government (SBABG) is a non-partisan, grassroots coalition of small business owners and employees allied against Big Government. We take upon ourselves the responsibility to oppose Big Government and inform friends and co-workers about how Big Government hurts them.
Small businesses and those who work for them are the engine of U.S. greatness. We proclaim that as small business owners and employees:
- we can, do, and will create more jobs, more wealth, and more prosperity than the government can, does, or ever will
- we are more efficient in our labors, and therefore less wasteful with society’s resources, than the government is
- we provide more important goods and services in our communities and neighborhoods than the government can or ever will, because we are here and we know and meet the needs of our fellow citizens
- we can and will educate the people who work for and with us on the benefits of low taxes, small government and personal responsibility
- we understand that Big Government (1) reduces our earnings and growth and, therefore, (2) reduces our employees’ job security and earning potential
- we watch out for each other and we don’t need the government to take from others to give to us, nor do we feel that it’s moral for the government to take from us (who are taking on the risk and job creation role in the economy) and give it to others
We invite you to join SBABG today and commence the work of informing others before it is too late.
Our country is in crisis and the policies and decisions of the current Congress and Administration are making the situation much worse, likely for decades to come.
The size and cost of the U.S. Government is quickly ballooning, laying a great burden on productive small businesses.
45% of all income in the United States is paid by small businesses and small businesses have generated up to 80% of all new U.S. jobs over the last 10 years.
Common sense dictates, and history proves, that when you tax an activity more, people will do less of it. And those who still choose to do it take home less pay, have less money to pay employees, and have less money to put back into the economy.
Higher taxes and more regulation on small business means that you will get less small business activity, less pay for small business employees, and less money coming back into our local economies.
Every small business owner and employee in America needs to know and understand the following four facts about the current Administration’s and Congress’s tax plan (source:Americans for Tax Reform):
1. Small businesses pay income taxes at the household level. This means that the Administration’s plan to raise tax rates is a direct tax hike on small businesses—sole proprietorships, partnerships, S-corporations, and family farms.
2. The tax rate on the lion’s share of small business income could reach 54.9 percent under the current Administration and Congress (the individual top rate will climb from 35 percent to 39.6 percent and the Social Security/Medicare tax rate could climb from 2.9 percent to 15.3 percent. Put those together, and you get 54.9 percent) (Source: www.barackobama.com)
3. This 54.9 percent tax rate would be the highest since the Carter Administration, when America suffered through double-digit inflation and unemployment (Source: Congressional Budget Office).
4. America’s 26 million small businesses employers give a paycheck to 42 million employees (Source: Census Bureau). When small business taxes go up, millions of these employees will be at risk of being laid off and those who keep employment will be less likely to see their salaries increase.
Big Government regulations and taxes place a disproportionate burden on small businesses, because these costs cannot be spread over a large organization. This massive increase in Government spending and regulation is disproportionately harming small business owners and employees.
A lot of people who own and work for small businesses voted for the current congress and administration without knowing what they we’re getting themselves into. They are quickly learning, but not quickly enough.
SBABG does not seek to target any one individual, because the problem is much bigger than any one individual. The problem resides in the whole group, the group that makes up Big Government. This is not a Republican vs Democrat or Conservative vs Liberal issue. This is a common-sense vs. massive-stupidity issue. |
Time’s up, folks. If you haven’t lost those 20 pounds, written that great American novel, or accomplished some other goal you set for yourself in 2013, you’re not going to.
But all is not lost.
Wednesday is not just a new day — it’s the beginning of a new year, in fact — and many of us will commence with the ritual inventory-taking that leads us to new resolutions and goals for our personal betterment.
Some will dust off 2013’s resolutions, determined that they’ll succeed in 2014. The most determined among us, those who made progress or accomplished their goals for 2013, will certainly look for ways to push themselves even further in the coming year.
So our question of the week is this: What do you hope to accomplish in the next 365 days?
Are you training for your first run in the Los Angeles Marathon on March 9?
Is there some aspect of your health you’d like to improve?
Will you spend time in some far-away land you always dreamed you’d visit?
How about that bucket list — you know, those lists that start with “Before I die, I will ...” What are you going to cross off the list this year?
Now, there may be some out there who think their lives are about as good as they will get. But surely they have a thought or two about what could be done to improve life for the rest of us.
What should Congress do to make the lives of Americans better in 2014? Is this the year significant steps should be taken on gun control or immigration reform?
Locally, do you think there’s a California law or citywide initiative that should be enacted to resolve some long-standing injustice or problem?
Or is there a public project you’d like to see implemented, or scrapped?
Whether your goal for 2014 is something you’d like to accomplish for your own good or one someone else should accomplish for the good of others, we invite you to share it with us.
Send your thoughts to email@example.com. Please include your full name and city or community of residence. Also, provide a daytime phone number so we can verify the comment. Or, if you prefer, share your views in the comments section that accompanies this article online.
We’ll publish as many responses as possible on Sunday. |
Cadernos de Saúde Pública
Print version ISSN 0102-311X
ANDREOLI, Sérgio Baxter et al. Reliability of diagnostic instruments: investigating the psychiatric DSM-III checklist applied to community samples. Cad. Saúde Pública [online]. 2001, vol.17, n.6, pp. 1393-1402. ISSN 0102-311X. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0102-311X2001000600023.
This study focused on the reliability of the DSM-III inventory of psychiatric symptoms in representative general population samples in three Brazilian cities. Reliability was assessed through two different designs: inter-rater reliability and internal consistency. Diagnosis of lifetime (k = 0.46) and same-year generalized anxiety (k = 1.00), lifetime depression (k = 0.77), and lifetime alcohol abuse and dependence (k = 1.00) was consistently reliable in the two methods. Lifetime diagnosis of agoraphobia (k = 1.00), simple phobia (k = 0.77), non-schizophrenic psychosis (k = 1.00), and psychological factors affecting physical health (1.00) showed excellent reliability as measured by the kappa coefficient. The main reliability problem in general population studies is the low prevalence of certain diagnoses, resulting in small variability in positive answers and hindering kappa estimation. Therefore it was only possible to examine 11 of 39 diagnoses in the inventory. We recommend test and re-test methods and a short time interval between interviews to decrease the errors due to such variations.
Keywords : Psychiatric; Mental Disorders; Psychiatric Status Rating Scales. |
For six weeks NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has been working on the Red Planet. NASA also plans to send humans to Mars within the next 20 years. On the flight and during the stay on Moon or Mars the astronauts have to be protected against long exposure to cosmic radiation that might cause cancer.
On behalf of the European Space Agency ESA the GSI Helmholtzzentrum fόr Schwerionenforschung GmbH tests whether Moon and Mars regolith can be used to build shieldings for ground stations.
On Earth the atmosphere and the magnetic field weaken cosmic rays. But on Moon and Mars they pelt down unhamperdly. The cosmic radiation can harm astronauts and could cause cancer in the long run as a result of damage in DNA and cells.
Chiara La Tessa is manager of experiments in GSI biophysics. She explains why Moon or Mars ground stations would not be built from terrestrial high tech material: "In space travels every gram counts. Transporting building material through space would lead to a cost explosion. That is why ground stations would basically be built from Moon and Mars regolith -- especially the shielding. We know from the analyses done by rovers what the local sand and stones consist of. With this information one can produce Moon and Mars regolith on Earth and we test it for its properties." As cosmic rays are nothing else but fast ions that were accelerated by star explosions they can be simulated by an accelerator. The GSI facility is one of the few able to reproduce cosmic rays in an original way.
After the GSI team tested how well the stone slabs can protect against radiation in the American accelerator laboratory in Brookhaven, they now explore how many neutrons are produced in the materials when radiated.
If cosmic rays strike the stones with full speed they smash some atomic nuclei to pieces. The resulting free neutrons have a different effect on the human body than cosmic radiation. Depending on their speed they might even be more harmful.
At GSI the scientists now tested how strong the neutron effect is in Moon and Mars regolith and how far it passes through the material. „I cannot estimate how the material is going to react to the radiation yet," says La Tessa. „Will many neutrons be produced? How many fast and how many slow ones? This we will know when we analyzed our experiment data."
The tests funded by ESA were coordinated by Thales Alenia Space Italia. The prime contractor of ESA's project also designed the test plan in cooperation with GSI, chose the materials and evaluats the results.
Cite This Page: |
The LHC is the largest and most powerful particle accelerator ever built. It took international teams numbering in the thousands to design, construct and operate the 27 km collider and its four giant particle detectors. Collider features authentic objects from CERN, home of the LHC, from huge superconducting magnets to incredibly precise detectors used to record the passage of the tiny, invisible particles.
Inside the LHC videos | The collider | The detectors
What is a collider?
The LHC tunnel. © CERN
In some ways, a collider is a simple and rather brutal device. They take tiny particles, accelerate them to tremendous speeds, and smash them into each other. The reason is not to break particles apart to see what they are made of, but to create altogether new particles from the energy of the collisions.
In this sense colliders aren’t 'atom-smashers', but particle factories, creating new and exotic matter from pure energy. By studying these new particles, physicists learn more about the physical laws that govern our universe at the most fundamental level.
Colliders vary in design. Some, like enormous rifles, fire particles at each other in straight lines, while others whirl them round a ring. The type of particle selected for colliding also differs, ranging from everyday electrons to more exotic particles of antimatter.
CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the largest and most powerful particle collider ever built. Housed in a 27-km tunnel beneath the Swiss-French border, it fires two beams of hadrons around and around in a circle before colliding them into each other. A hadron is a category of particle, and includes the stuff that makes up the atomic nucleus: neutrons and protons. The LHC mostly uses protons, but occasionally picks much larger projectiles, such as lead nuclei.
Making a particle beam
The LHC’s protons are sourced from a bottle of hydrogen gas. Hydrogen atoms are desirable as they consist of just one proton with an orbiting electron, which is easy enough to strip away – a process known as ionisation. CERN’s impressively-named 'duoplasmatron' does this ionising deed, zapping the hydrogen with electric fields, which results in a fine supply of pure, unadulterated protons.
Before the protons enter the LHC’s main circuit, they are sent through a series of smaller, preliminary accelerators – some in their glory days used to be the chief collider at CERN. Among these recycled machines is CERN’s very first accelerator, the proton synchrotron, which began operation back in 1959.
The Hydrogen bottle and the duoplasmatron where the protons are sourced. © CERN and Injection of protons, graphic from the Collider exhibition. © Science Museum / Northover Brown
Swarms of protons, called 'bunches', are gradually injected into the LHC ring, building up the two 27-km clockwise and anticlockwise beams piece by piece. By the time the protons reach the LHC they are already travelling at 99.9998% of the speed of light.
Along one of the LHC’s straights, sit sixteen radio-frequency cavities that each give the beams a 2-million-volt energy boost every time they pass (a whopping 11,000 times a second).
Eventually, the protons reach 4-trillion electron-volts, travelling at 99.999997% the speed of light. At that speed, persuading the protons to go in a circle, even around a curve as gentle as the 27 km LHC ring, requires applying an absolutely enormous force.
The LHC’s line of radio-frequency accelerating cavities. © CERN
Steering and focussing
Most of the LHC ring is made up of magnets, which have the formidable task of controlling the highly-energetic particle beams. All the magnets are superconducting, a miraculous property which means they offer no electrical resistance, allowing the generation of tremendously powerful magnetic fields. The magnets only superconduct at extremely low temperatures, and must be cooled using liquid helium to -271.25°C – colder than deep space, and two degrees above the lowest temperature possible, absolute zero.
The most common magnets are dipoles - so called because they have two poles, north and south. They have the job of steering the beams around the circuit. Covering just over 20-km of the ring, there are 1,232 dipoles in total. Each individual piece is 16.5 meters long, which was limited by the maximum vehicle length allowed on European roads.
Transporting the first dipole magnet. © CERN
Squeezing the beam into a space narrower than a human hair is achieved with quadropole magnets that contain an additional set of north-south poles. The bunches of protons must be very precisely focussed to obtain the highest possible collision rate.
At four points around the ring, special magnets are used to focus the beams onto a collision point. When the beams collider their vast energy is released in the form of new particles which are studied by cathedral-sized particle detectors.
An engineering masterpiece
The LHC was designed and built on the back of decades’ worth of expertise, technology and machinery – both from CERN’s own past and from the wider international physics community. A decade in the construction, the LHC stands as a monument to human ingenuity and ambition. |
From the smallest to the largest, our extensive collection of wildlife footage reveals the astonishing variety of animal life on Earth. Our video clips include:
Bacteria and viruses
Dinosaurs and other extinct animals
Frogs and toads
Insects and other creep-crawlies
Monkeys and apes
Octopus and other cephalopods
Pathogens and parasites
Pond life and plankton
Spiders and scorpions
Come and look at the incredible world of insects. This footage gallery shows these stunning and sometimes scary looking bugs from around the world. See the beauty of Zebra Longwing butterfly feeding, an extreme close up of a hornet, the Madagascar hissing roach, the Straight snouted weevil to a terrifying Huntsman spider.
This rogue’s gallery of micro and macro footage identifies some of the bacteria, protozoa, nematodes, insects and arachnids that live in and on our bodies. Some drink our blood, some invade our cells and some poison us with toxins, all of them use us as an unwilling partner in their own grim life cycle.
In this gallery of some of our newest clips, Peter Matulavich takes you on a journey into the teeming world inside a drop of pond water. Using stunning high-definition microscopy, he reveals the lives of the tiny creatures and algae that thrive in the ponds and puddles around us. |
Morsels for the mind – 12/4/2013
They say that the most important meal of the day is breakfast, for the health of your body. Our experience is that the most important meal for the mind might be #SixIncredibleThingsBeforeBreakfast.
Here we’ve collated some of the tastiest morsels from the past week, creating a veritable smorgasbord for the brain. They’re all here for you to load up your plate – this week’s “Morsels for the mind”. Enjoy!
Feather, fur & fin – birds, beasts, fishes, and the things they do
Panda bats!!! Don’t get this cute new genus wet after midnight.
Ever wonder why monkey butts are blue? Of course you did.
Here’s the lowdown on river dolphins. They sing really low. They’re like the Barry Whites of the cetacean world.
Now here’s an interesting strategy. Offspring place themselves deliberately in harms way to blackmail their parents for food. Apparently it works out just fine.
When times got tough on land, bowhead whales were doing just fine thank you.
Big bites bring bigger brains? Perhaps in wild canines they do.
If you want to win on a squash court, you may want to compete with a giraffe. Their reflexes are very slow.
Some things just cannot be beat. Especially if it is a seal keeping a beat. But is this really so special, are non-human animals natural dancers? And should we be thinking of ways to enhance such traits?
Hatching a plan. When some lizards are threatened, they pop right out of their eggs.
They really have some nerve. Crocodilians that is.
If you think that you’ve placed something out of the reach of an octopus, think again.
Getting the point. We can learn something about sharks from our own sharp weaponry.
Can sharks be civil? Why yes, yes they can.
If you’re looking for truth in advertising, look beyond non-venomous snakes. They have venom.
As different as night a day. This crab is just that. Literally.
As different as black and peach. This frog is just that. Literally.
Deep down, things are really freaky. Especially in the ocean.
Cold blooded individuals lack hemoglobin. Well, if they are a scale-less deep sea ice fish.
If you like gazing into someone’s deep blue eyes, then scallops have all you want, and more.
A chilling find. Tiny crustacean escape predators by switching up their swim stroke in cold water.
Bugs’ life – insects and other things that creep, crawl and otherwise delight
Spiders are the world’s best pioneers. They get their first and shape ecosystems. Awesome.
Keep your eye on the fly. Because it’s got cells moving all over the place. Amazing.
Who needs a map when you have a compass? So says the monarch butterfly.
A lot of buzz about bees. They are simply stunning.
Glowy microbes help cute squid keep time. This is wonderful.
Microbes can be little heartbreakers. Literally, when they do their stuff in converting red meat to heart-stopping molecules.
Beautiful botanicals – wonders of the photosynthesising world – that is, mainly plants
Oh, how sweet it is. Sugars shape plant development.
Plant know which end is up. Here’s how.
Fossil finds – organisms of times past – dinosaurs and beyond
Do you think you could outrun a Tyrannosaur? Think again. And there are even faster dinosaurs.
Forget walking with dinosaurs, we could have waded with them. Some even swam.
Microscopic marvels – smaller than the eye can see, but big in action – bacteria, fungi and viruses
It’s not exactly rocket science, but these ancient microbes do respire on rocket fuel.
Molecular machinery – the toils of the macromolecules of life – nucleic acids and proteins (and others)
Bloody hell. For good reason, snake venom will turn your blood to ketchup or jello. Or something deliciously nasty.
Now this is nothing to sniff at. Many cell types have odour receptors. Why?
It’s not just a matter of taste. Receptors play a role in making salt yummy or blechy.
Brains are beautiful. And they just got a beauty boost.
Earth, wind and fire – planet shaping – geology, meteorology, oceanography & the climate
The planet gets so crusty sometimes. But that’s ok, because continents arise.
Star attractions – the final frontier, space
A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Hubble looks at a reeeaaallly distant supernova. It shows how the universe expanded.
In terms of long distance voyagers, it’s hard to beat cosmic rays. And their trip here involved a lot of lumps and bumps.
There are times when black holes need a little light snack. Literally. Stunning animation.
Our solar system is freakishly beautiful.
Forces of nature – big ticket items – cosmology, ecology, evolution, physics, chemistry
Some light entertainment. We are attracted to light. Here are some reasons why.
Are solar powered passenger airplanes a flight of fancy? Test it with physics!
When it comes to dark matter, we’re still in the dark.
If you are looking for a truly noble pursuit, consider a noble gas. Like helium.
Oh what a tangled web they weave. Entangled photons that is. And they beat the noise by doing so.
Matters of mind – how we, and other animals, perceive our world and our place in it
Maybe we can truly know what sweet dream are made of. Brain scans reveal dream content.
Have you heard? There are times when musical numbers are numbers in music.
Can we make people happier by putting a smile on a face?
There’s a look of love. Might there also be a smell of love?
When you tickle a rat’s fancy, they are more optimistic. Tickled rats see life on the sunny side.
Think personality only matters to humans? Think again.
Behind the scenes – the workings of the museum – discovery and communication
Ever wonder what a palaeontologist does? This. Beautiful.
If you want to write about science, what you need is insatiable curiosity and enthusiasm for new ideas.
There are times when science really does need to be conveyed to a politician. No joking. Here’s how.
You’ve probably never heard of Fred and Norah Urquhart. Here’s why you should have.
If we want to fix our biases in science, especially gender bias, we’re going to have to haul that bias into the cold light of day.
There is truly some funky stuff that is behind the scenes at the museum. |
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
People walk out of the State of California building January 29, 2009 in San Francisco, California.
A judge in Northern California today ordered the Schwarzenegger administration to end furloughs for thousands of state workers. Under the ruling, more than 50,000 state employees could return to full time schedules — with full time pay — next month.
An Alameda County Superior Court judge tentatively ruled that California must allow some state employees to return to regular work schedules.
Right now the state furloughs most employees on the first three Fridays of the month — without pay. For many, the unpaid day off amounts to a 15 percent pay cut.
The Schwarzenegger administration ordered the furloughs last year to save money in the state’s general fund.
But the furloughs extended to workers in 69 departments who aren’t paid out of the general fund.
The Service Employees International Union — California’s largest civil service union — challenged that practice and won.
The union estimates that as many as 53,000 workers in agencies including the Department of Motor Vehicles, the California Lottery and Caltrans, will return to work on Fridays starting next month.
The governor’s office is expected to appeal the ruling. |
Lower water bill - Lower sanitary sewer bill - Improved environment
For a printable PDF of this information, click here
Why Conserve Water?
Conserving water is simple and can have a positive impact on your budget and our planet. Every drop of water that comes into your home must be treated before it trickles out of your tap and then treated once again after going down the drain. By making a commitment to use less water, you can cut down on waste in this process while saving money on your sanitary sewer and water bills. In addition, your energy-saving efforts will help preserve the natural environment and prevent pollution. American public water supply, and treatment facilities, consume huge amounts of electricity. Just allowing a faucet to run for five minutes uses about as much energy as burning a 60 watt light bulb for 14 hours.
Cut Waste, Cut Costs
Your bill and water meter are tools that can help you discover leaks. Monitor each water bill to check for unusually high use. If you think you might have a leak, read your water meter before and after a two-hour period when no water is being used. If your meter shows usage, you probably have a leak.
SD1's Sanitary Sewer Billing Policy
SD1's goal is to estimate how much water is going down the drains in a given home and to do that, SD1 uses water usage records provided by your local water District. However, some summertime outdoor activities use water that does not go into the sanitary sewer system. Because of this, SD1 bases the sanitary sewer charge on a winter water usage. Water conservation practices will not impact your sanitary sewer bill until the winter usage factor is recalculated for your property in the winter months. For more information on billing, click here |
Social Media Accounts Hacked in North Korea
If you’ve been following the news lately on North Korea, you're probably well aware of sanctions against the country’s nuclear program and let's not forget about the seemingly growing issues with the United States. However, some of the latest news about the country is a bit different. Recent news on BBC.co.uk indicates that at least two of North Korea’s government-run online sites have been hacked. According to BBC News, although a highly secretive nation, North Korea puts considerable effort in to having a strong presence online. Various social media accounts attached to the regime post news items and propaganda videos on a regular basis.
According to stuff.co.nz, the North's Uriminzokkiri Twitter and Flickr accounts stopped posting content typical of the regime such as photos of Kim Jong-un meeting with military officials. Instead of typical images, a picture posted on the North's Flickr reportedly shows Kim's face with a pig-like snout and a drawing of Mickey Mouse on his chest. Underneath, the text reportedly reads: "Threatening world peace with ICBMs and Nuclear weapons/Wasting money while his people starve to death."
Reported on tvnz.co.nz, tweets on the North's Twitter account said "Hacked" followed by a link to North Korea-related websites. According to stuff.co.nz, North Korea opened its Twitter account in 2010 and it reportedly has more than 13,000 followers. According to the article, the country uses Twitter to praise its system and leaders and also to repeat commentaries sent out by North's official Korean Central News Agency.
To me it is surprising that a country with so much secrecy, so many user records have been leaked. It seems like so much happens in this country that is not known. Do you have any ideas how this could have happened?
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August 16, 2007
As a U.S. investor of over 36 years, I find it reprehensible that the U.S. Government that takes my tax money for the support and betterment of our Country, would make regulations that allow for a select segment of the stock market investing community to profit from someone else's property. The SEC's creation of the Options Market Maker exemption simply put allows one market investor to take the equity(cash value) from stocks he has no beneficial ownership of and use without permission or compensation. The SEC's creation of "liquidity" by using the value of stocks beneficially owned by longterm shareholders is legally stealing value from those same shareholders. If the Options Market Maker were required to put his own cash at risk like the rest of us who invest, then the market would be a fairer game rather than having a select group getting to profit without risk. Please put an end to the insult and injury that the Prime Brokers and Market Makers are heaping upon those of us who have attempted to save while playing by the rules created by Congress over 73 years ago. Eliminate the Options Market Maker exemption. It should never have been created to begin with. The Options Market Maker should be accountable for the risks and choices he makes and not get a free ride on the backs of the U.S. investors. Accountability for ones actions is what supports the trust and faith that the U.S. markets are honest and above reproach. |
The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) is a new federal law enacted late last year to improve voting throughout the country and in response to the problems arising out of the 2000 presidential election. This new law provides federal funds to states to be used for improving voting systems, voter registration and education, improvements to accessibility for disabled voters, as well as many other areas affecting the voting process.
While Massachusetts has been in the forefront in the administration of elections, these federal funds will provide an opportunity for this state to continue to make improvements in the electoral process, increase privacy and independence for voters with disabilities, improve election administration and provide more information to voters regarding the process. I am hopeful that these provisions will also result in increased voter participation.
In order to obtain federal funds under HAVA, Massachusetts must submit a plan showing how the federal funds received will be allocated and how the mandated programs will be implemented. I am pleased to share this draft of the Massachusetts State Plan for implementing the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002.
This plan was prepared by a Steering Committee made up of elected officials, local election officials, state party members, other stake holders including the League of Women Voters and members of the disability community. I am proud of the efforts made by the State Steering Committee in the development of this plan and in their commitment to improving the electoral process in Massachusetts.
I am presenting the plan in draft form and encouraging broad public input before finalizing the proposals. I hope you will review the plan and tell us what you think. Comments will be received through September 2, 2003. Written comments can be submitted to: Elections Division, One Ashburton Place, Room 1705, Boston, MA 02108.
After the public comment period has ended, the plan will be finalized and submitted to the federal government for consideration.
Very truly yours,
WILLIAM FRANCIS GALVIN
Secretary of the Commonwealth
HAVA Final State Plan (DOC)
HAVA Final State Plan (PDF) |
Here's the latest of our malware calendar wallpapers.
This month's calendar includes a fairly typical mix of cybercrime references. However, I'd like to highlight one in particular - the arrest of a Dutch teenager for stealing furniture from the Habbo Hotel virtual world.
To some people, the idea of having a virtual life seems strange. It may seem even stranger for the police to take an interest in the theft of something that's not real. There are, of course, reasons why they would. For one thing, the virtual theft was carried out by stealing the login credentials of members of Habbo Hotel - essentially a real-world phishing scam like any other. For another, the theft and sale of virtual property can be as lucrative as any other type of cybercrime: in this case, the stolen goods had a real-world price-tag of more than €4,000.
This case underlines the fact that *any* kind of online transaction, if it can be used to make money illegally, if of interest to cybercriminals. So we all need to remain vigilant and take care to safeguard all our online activities.
2011 Nov 03, 23:56
I love the image this month--is that a virtual or real city? If it's real, which city is this?
Re: Re: Image
So it is! Thanks!
51°03'19.68" N 13°44'50.19" E -- looking east-by-northeast. |
Pumpkins for Weight Loss
Halloween is over now, but it is still pumpkin season! Pumpkins are full of vitamin A and fiber, and naturally aand can promote .
Conveniently pumpkin comes prepared in a can already pureed. Incorporate pumpkin puree into your diet all year round to help move toward your. One serving of pumpkin puree is 40 calories, 0.5 g of fat, and 5 g of fiber. Make sure the label says 100% pure pumpkin rather than pumpkin pie mix which has added sugars.
Pumpkin puree works especially well in substituting ingredients in baking. Try substituting pumpkin puree for oil when baking to lower the fat content for your. Here’s a delicious pumpkin muffin recipe to try:
Pumpkin Yogurt Muffins
2 egg whites
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups low fat vanilla Stonyfield Farm Yogurt
1 16oz can pumpkin puree (Libby’s is my favorite!)
4 teaspoons cinnamon
4 teaspoons nutmeg
3 cups whole-wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking soda
1/2 tablespoon baking powder
- Preheat oven to 400°F.
- Beat eggs until foamy, add sugar, yogurt, pumpkin, cinnamon, and nutmeg and mix well.
- In a separate bowl sift together flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder.
- Add dry ingredients slowly to the yogurt mixture and mix until moist.
- Line two muffin tins with muffin liners or grease the pans.
- Evenly fill each of the muffin tins.
- Bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown on the top.
Total Fat: 0.7 g
Total Carbohydrates: 19.6 g
Dietary Fiber: 1.3 g
Protein: 3.5 g |
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Free Verse Prose Poem It's poetry. It's prose. It's two great tastes in one. This is a poem, but it's written in a block, without the broken lines or stanza breaks present in most poems. For that r...
From the first line, we get that the speaker is going to give a kind of testimonial. She's a guest in the house of this big-wig colonel. She's there to see and hear and tell it all. You get the sen...
We've entered the home of a high ranking military man in El Salvador during the late 1970s. The house is fortress during a state of siege. Outside those walls, El Salvador is being torn to shreds b...
They say you can get more attention if you whisper rather than scream. That is proven by this poem. In a poem about speaking and hearing, the speaker uses such plain language in such unadorned synt...
What's Up With the Title?
From the get-go, you know this poem is going to be about a man of high position, somebody who is not going to let you forget that he's above almost everyone. It's interesting that he doesn't get a...
Poetry of WitnessAt the time it was written, this poem likely felt more like a snapshot of a time and place, rather than Forché's calling card. Her first book, Gathering the Tribes (1975) was abou...
(4) Base CampIt's not at all hard to understand the plot of this poem or the language, though it's really hard to stomach the truths it waves in your face. The image of the ears gets a little surre...
Who was "The Colonel"? Some think he was Roberto D'Aubisson, head of Salvadoran Death Squads, responsible for ordering the assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, human rights advocate...
GThere's a human-trophy collecting monster, but no sex to speak of here.
Historical ReferencesThe "rights of anyone" references the state-sponsored mass executions and repression that occurred in El Salvador, from 1978 to 1985. (28)
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| Quote #1
The boy could not speak, but he laughed.
A Wizard of Earthsea follows the first rule of young adult novels: at first, its main character is more powerful than almost anyone he knows. Here we have a clear demonstration of that. Though untrained and childish, Ged can still break his witch aunt's most powerful charm. Now that's some wizarding potential if we've ever seen it.
| Quote #2
For he hungered to learn, to gain power (2.16)
As we mentioned in "Writing Style," Le Guin comes out and tells us what we need to know about a character. It's like she's saying, "Meet Ged. He wants power." Does Ged sound like a hero here?
| Quote #3
With voice and hand he made the Opening spell which his aunt had taught him long ago; it was the prize among all her stock of spells, and he wove it well now. But it was only a witch's charm, and the power that held this doorway was not moved at all. (3.6)
His aunt taught him this powerful spell and Ged is very powerful himself, but the power of the mages on Roke is just too much for him. This might be the first time we see Ged try to do something and fail. |
Destruction of Sikh Heritage - Baba Atal
Gurdwara Baba Attal Sahib is situated to the south of Sri Harimandir Sahib and close to the accommodation buildings for pilgrims. The Gurdwara Sahib has nine floors and is the tallest building in Amritsar. The Gurdwara Sahib was made in memory of Guru Hargobind Sahib jee's son, Baba Attal Rai jee.
At the age of nine, Baba jee brought his close friend Mohan, son of a widow, back to life after his sudden death. In accordance you cannot alter with Waheguru's Hukam, so Guru Hargobind Sahib jee was not pleased with his son performing such a miracle. It is said that Baba Attal Rai jee told his father that he would lay down his own life for breaking the law of nature by reviving his friend from the dead. So he went into a meditative trance and soon breathed his last. Although he died at the age of nine, he was honoured with the title of Baba, a grand old man, for the extraordinary powers he had displayed. The present nine-storey building represents the nine years of Baba Atal's life.
There are many murals on the walls of the Gurdwara Sahib, however many of these have been damaged beyond recognition and at present only 42 panels survive. A large series of paintings unfold, stage by stage, the life of Guru Nanak Dev jee. Another series represents Sikh martyrs, including the four Sahibzaade (princes) of Guru Gobind Singh jee, who laid down their lives for the cause of their faith. Large panels illustrate scenes from the life of Baba Atal and Guru Nanak; and the various stages of the battle of Muketsar. Some historians date the murals to the early nineteenth century, and some suggest even later.
Here are photographs showing how poorly Sikh heritage buildings are being maintained:
It was very disheartening to see the condition of certain buildings in the Sri Harmandir Sahib complex. |
By HASAN LATEEF
The next time you board a Transit bus, you may want to consider standing. That empty seat may not be as clean as it looks. I base this on two incidents that I recently observed.
While waiting for a bus, I observed a young man spitting constantly on the sidewalk. A woman approached with a toddler who stepped in the spittle. When the woman boarded the bus, she immediately stood the toddler on a seat, feet first.
The second incident I observed was a young man who boarded the S79 bus on Hylan Boulevard with a dog under his arm (no cage). He sat down and sat the dog in the seat next to him. We can safely assume that Rover did not use toilet paper on his last pit stop to the fire hydrant.
The very least the Transit Authority should do is program its public address system on buses with messages concerning civil behavior on its buses and trains.
The messages should remind passengers not to put their feet on seats, packages should not block seats, baby strollers are supposed to be folded before boarding the bus, etc. Cell phone usage should be banned or permitted only in certain areas (the back of the bus?).
Roving enforcement teams should be deployed to enforce the rules. I would gladly accept a fare increase to pay for the roving teams, so that I can be assured I don’t take home something that Rover might have left behind. |
NAGIS - Nasarawa Land Information System
The goal of NAGIS is to computerize and automate land and properties title registration, improve taxation and billing processes, and to provide better budget planning and control. This was achieved with a computerized information system for Land and Property Administration.
Description of the services provided
The project included many activities and services all of which were provided by Sivan Design:
- Infrastructure supply and setup of VSAT broadband internet connection
- Hardware supply and installation of the most recent branded computer hardware, peripheral equipment and accessories
- Software NAGIS Software development and adaptation according to Ministry’s needs
- Data conversion, map digitization and storage in the system
- Connectivity connect NAGIS system to the Federal Land Information System (FELIS) developed by Sivan Design in 2006
- Training and support of relevant personnel
- Maintenance routine and ongoing support
The system was developed and deployed by Sivan Design using the most advanced technologies and infrastructure. Software technologies: Microsoft .Net, Autodesk GIS software, SQL database, multi-tier architecture, etc. Hardware&communication: HP workstations, HP servers, plotter, Internet connection, office equipment, air-conditioning, generator and many more. |
A couple of weeks ago I was listening to a podcast on which I heard Horace Dedieu assert that countries tax dividends specifically in order to encourage firms to reinvest profits rather than pay them out to shareholders. I'm reasonably certain that's false. Countries tax dividends because dividends are a form of income and countries tax income. Generally countries tax dividend income at a lower rate than wage or salary income because they're trying to encourage firms to pay dividends and thereby encourage individuals to offer up capital to firms.
But it's an intriguing idea and I got more intrigued after watching this video of Google's latest iteration of computer-piloted car:
Now watching this, I have a lot more confidence that this is a totally awesome invention than I have that this is going to lead to a totally awesome return on investment for Google's shareholders. And I have even less confidence that it was a totally awesome ex ante risk proposition. But Google as a firm is controlled by its founders and more guided by their quest for glory than by their quest to maximize shareholder value. And even if the meaningful financial returns to computer piloted cars wind up going to some other firm, the history books will reflect that it was Google that took this concept from crazy sounding dream to something that's clearly possible to implement. Glory unto Google!
One way of looking at it is that keeping capital trapped inside the firm leads to waste. But another way of looking at it is that investors don't really want to bear the risks involved in investing in real basic innovation. In an era of high taxes, AT&T used its monopoly profits to fund Bell Labs. In the modern era, they'd face much more pressure to return those profits as dividends. Google, for slightly idiosyncratic reasons, is willing to plow the cash its core search business throws off into pie-in-the-sky underatakings. Open source mobile operating system! Robot cars! |
Why Does Protecting Bears Help Snow Leopards?
In the Himalayas and Central Asian Mountains, snow leopards share parts of their habitat with brown bears – and both carnivores are vital parts of this mountain ecosystem. They also both come into similar conflict situations with the people who live alongside them. Protecting the cats is our mission, but sometimes, this also means helping bears.
Last fall, a herder living inside Pin Valley National Park in India’s Spiti Valley found his hut severely damaged. Stored food had been eaten and thrown around. As it appeared, a rather large animal had broken into the hut. Rinchen, a member of our India team, visited the herder to investigate what had happened. But when Rinchen got to the scene and spoke to the people, he quickly realized what had happened. “It was a bear”, he exclaimed, a little surprised.
There hadn’t been any previous records of brown bears from this part of the Himalayas. A new species of large carnivore had evidently colonized the Pin Valley National Park! Much like the snow leopard, the brown bear is an indicator of a relatively healthy ecosystem, so its presence in this area is an encouraging sign – also for the cats!
“We try to help conserve snow leopards, their habitat, and the associated mountain biodiversity across Asia. This often includes the bears”, says Charu Mishra, the Snow Leopard Trust’s Science& Conservation Director. “We’ve been studying the cats and their prey species, but in order to really understand the dynamics in the ecosystem they live in, we also need to learn more about fellow predators such as the brown bear.“
Learning about bears
Our Pakistan team has been doing just that: Working with a team of international colleagues, Dr. Muhammad Ali Nawaz, the Snow Leopard Trust’s country program director, has been studying the habitat use of Himalayan brown bears in Pakistan’s Deosai National Park – across the border, but not all that far from Pin Valley National Park. “We wanted to find out which parts of the park were particularly important to the bears, so they can be protected more effectively”, Dr. Nawaz explains. “We also investigated how human presence influences the bears’ habitat use.”
As their recently published study shows, bears prefer marshy, grassy areas with high vegetation density and an abundance of marmots; the bears’ primary protein source in Deosai. As it turns out, only 50% of the National Park meets these criteria, so the protected area suitable to bears is significantly smaller than it would appear at first sight. An increase in human activities threatens to further make life hard for the bears. Grazing negatively affects bear habitat, and with livestock numbers growing fast in the region, the bears find themselves under increasing pressure.
“As more and more human activities expand into in the core zone of the park, we might see an increase in conflicts”, Ali Nawaz says.
His colleagues in India are equally aware of this very problem – and the incident in Pin Valley serves as a timely reminder. “Bears may be attracted by garbage in the villages and by food stored in the mud huts of the local people. On the Tibetan Plateau, there have been incidents of bears damaging property, killing livestock and sometimes injuring or even killing people in their attempts to get to this food”, Charu Mishra explains. “This can be devastating for the affected communities – and it’s bad news for all the area’s carnivores, not just bears but also snow leopards, as conflicts between humans and wildlife intensify.”
Managing conflicts by helping herders to cope with predators has long been a pillar of our conservation strategy for snow leopards – and wherever bears share the cats’ habitat, we are trying to help local pastoralists and wildlife managers cope with them, too.
Our China team led by Prof. Lu Zhi has been studying the problem and experimenting with local people to make their houses more secure.
Trying to learn from their Chinese colleagues, our India team has held meetings with villagers after the bear incident in Pin Valley National Park. They’ve has started to work with local communities on strategies to live alongside bears. Given the team’s long relationship with the communities in Pin Valley, they are already in a position to start assisting them.
The village of Sagnam, the largest in Pin Valley, is an example. Here, our team has helped the local herders start a community-managed livestock insurance program to help share the costs of livestock depredation by snow leopards. Since bears occasionally cause livestock losses, their immediate next step will be to discuss with the community and try to extend the program to cover livestock losses by bears.
“We hope to see more bears in this area in the future, but if we do, we must also continue to find ways to help local communities coexist with them”, Charu Mishra says.
Special thanks to the Whitley Fund for Nature for their support, and to Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi for contributing to this article. |
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This photo may be rather boring, but it illustrates how to find Venus during the daytime. Taken with an iPhone, the picture shows Venus just above our home’s roofline after dawn but before sunrise on Feb. 11, 2014. Having sighted the planet while it was still an obvious beacon, I was able to keep an eye on it as the sun came up and Venus was reduced to a barely visible dot of light.
Credit: Robert Roy Britt
PHOENIX — One of the more amazing sights in our sky is the planet Venus. At its best, Venus is brighter than all other celestial objects except the sun and moon. Right now, the brilliant planet is so bright that you can actually see it in the daytime, if you know where to look.
Venus doesn't make any visible light of its own. It shines by reflecting sunlight. Right now, Venus is well up in the morning sky before sunrise, and any time this week, if the sky is clear, you'll have no trouble finding it. Just go out, look east. Venus will be the brightest thing you see. If you stretch your arms out, this "morning star" will be about two fists above the horizon as the sky begins to lighten.
By the time the sun rises, Venus will be reduced to a pale pinprick of light. The trick to seeing it during the day is to prepare. Here's what you do:
- Find out when sunrise occurs at your location.
- Head out about 15 to 20 minutes before sunrise and find Venus. It’ll be easy to spot.
- Put a house, fence, tree or other object between you and the sunrise, and sight Venus next to, under or over the object, so that you know exactly where it is.
- Go out again 5 to 10 minutes before sunrise and stand in the same spot, check your sighting. You might be surprised how far Venus has moved. Imagine where this movement will put Venus at sunrise.
- Wait for sunrise, and keep your eye on Venus. As the sun rises, you'll still have Venus in your sights.
As long as you know where to find it, you can theoretically find Venus until it sets in the late afternoon. Practically speaking this is hard to do if you’re not experienced. But no matter: If you spotted the planet just after sunrise, you're among the select few who've seen another world during the day. [Amazing Photos of Venus]
While you ponder our sister planet rising ahead of the sun, here are some facts about Venus and its orbit:
Venus and the sun rise because Earth is rotating. Both objects, as well as the other planets in our solar system, follow roughly the same path across our sky from east to west, an arc astronomers call the ecliptic.
Venus is closer to the sun than we are, so from our point of view, Venus never ranges very far from the sun. It is always either behind or in front of the sun (when we can't see it) or off to one side (when we can see it). When it’s off to one side, as it is now, Venus gets referred to as the evening star or the morning star, depending on which side of the sun it's on.
Outer planets, like Mars or Jupiter, can be opposite the sun in our sky, and therefore overhead at night. Venus can never be overhead, and it’s never in our sky in the middle of the night.
Editor's note: If you snap an amazing photo of Venus, or any other night sky view, and you'd like to share it for a possible story or image gallery, please contact managing editor Tariq Malik at firstname.lastname@example.org. |
Machiavelli describes the different kinds of states, arguing that all states are either republics or principalities. Principalities can be divided into hereditary principalities and new principalities. New principalities are either completely new or new appendages to existing states. By fortune or strength, a prince can acquire a new principality with his own army or with the arms of others.
Chapter II is the first of three chapters focusing on methods to govern and maintain principalities. Machiavelli dismisses any discussion of republics, explaining that he has “discussed them at length on another occasion”—a reference to Book 1 of his Discourses.
Machiavelli notes that it is easier to govern a hereditary state than a new principality for two main reasons. First, those under the rule of such states are familiar with the prince’s family and are therefore accustomed to their rule. The natural prince only has to keep past institutions intact, while adapting these institutions to current events. Second, the natural disposition of subjects in a hereditary state is to love the ruling family, unless the prince commits some horrible act against his people. Even if a strong outsider succeeds in conquering a prince’s hereditary state, any setback the outsider encounters will allow the prince to reconquer the state.
[M]en must be either pampered or annihilated.
Machiavelli explains why maintaining a new principality is more difficult than maintaining a hereditary state. In the first place, people will willingly trade one recently arrived ruler for another, hoping that a new ruler will be better than the present one. This expectation of improvement will induce people to take up arms against any relatively unestablished prince. Although the people may quickly realize that their revolt is ineffective, they will still create great disorder. Furthermore, when a prince takes over another prince’s domain, he finds himself in a tricky situation with regard to the people who put him in power. He cannot maintain the support of these people because he cannot fulfill all of their expectations that their situation will improve. But he also cannot deal too harshly with them because he is in their debt. Immediately after taking power, the prince is in danger of losing his newly gained principality.
When a prince successfully suppresses a revolt, however, the ruler can easily prevent further revolt by harshly punishing the rebels and decimating his opposition. The ruler can deal more harshly with his subjects in response to the revolt than he would be able to normally.
It is much easier to maintain control over a new principality if the people share the same language and customs as the prince’s own country. If this is the case, the prince has to do only two things: destroy the family of the former prince, and maintain the principality’s laws and taxes. People will live quietly and peacefully so long as their old ways of life are undisturbed.
New states that have different languages and customs from those of the prince are more difficult to maintain. One of the prince’s most effective options is to take up residence in the new state. By living there, the prince can address problems quickly and efficiently. He can prevent the local officials from plundering his territory. The subjects will be in close contact with the prince. Therefore, those who are inclined to be good will have more reason to show their allegiance to the prince and those who are inclined to be bad will have more reason to fear him. Invaders will think twice before attempting to take over the state.
Another effective method of dealing with linguistic and cultural differences is to establish colonies in the new state. It is less expensive to establish colonies than to maintain military occupation, and colonialism only harms inhabitants who pose no threat to the prince because they are scattered and poor. As a general rule, men must be either pampered or crushed. A prince should injure people only if he knows there is no threat of revenge. Setting up military bases throughout the new state will not effectively keep order. Instead, it will upset the people, and these people may turn into hostile enemies capable of causing great harm to the prince’s regime.
A prince who has occupied a state in a foreign country should dominate the neighboring states. He should weaken the strong ones and ensure that no other strong foreign power invades a neighboring state. Weaker powers will naturally side with the strongest power as long as they cannot grow strong themselves. The prince must remain master of the whole country to keep control of the state he has conquered.
Princes should always act to solve problems before problems fully manifest themselves. Political disorders are easy to solve if the prince identifies them and acts early. If they are allowed to develop fully, it will be too late.
Men naturally want to acquire more. When they succeed in acquiring more they are always praised, not condemned. But rulers who lack the ability to acquire, yet still try at the cost of their current state, should be condemned.
In order to hold a state, a prince must understand statecraft and warcraft. The two are intertwined. War can be avoided by suppressing disorder. However, one can never escape a war: war can only be postponed to the enemy’s advantage.
There are two ways to govern a principality. The first involves a prince and appointed ministers. While the ministers help govern, everyone remains subservient to the prince. The second way involves a prince and nobles. Nobles are not appointed by the prince, but they benefit from their ancient lineage and have subjects of their own. Of both these scenarios, the prince is regarded as being much stronger if he uses ministers, since he is the only ruler in the country.
It is much harder to take over a country if a prince uses ministers, because ministers have little incentive to be corrupted by foreign powers or to turn on their prince. Furthermore, even if they were to turn against the prince, they would not be able to muster support from any subjects because they hold no personal loyalties. It is easier to conquer a country governed with the cooperation of nobles, because finding a discontented noble eager for change is always possible. Moreover, nobles command the loyalty of their own subjects, so a corrupted noble will corrupt the support of his subjects.
Although it is easier to take over a state ruled by nobles, it is much harder to maintain control of that state. In a state ruled by nobles, it is not enough to kill the former ruler’s family, because the nobles will still be around to revolt. Holding onto a state with ministers is much easier, because it merely requires killing off the one prince and his family.
Machiavelli asserts that the rules he proposes are consistent with historical evidence, such as Alexander’s successful conquest of Asia and the rebellions against the Romans in Spain, France, and Greece.
Machiavelli builds his case through a combination of historical examples and methodical argument. The first step in his argument is to establish the terms and categories that he will use to make sense out of the multitude of different political situations that exist in the real world. The clear-cut distinctions Machiavelli makes between different kinds of states—beginning with principalities and republics—are very effective insofar as they enable him to present his ideas clearly and concisely. Whether his categories do justice to the complexity of political history is a different question. Machiavelli creates an impression of directness and practicality by presenting the world in simple, clearly defined terms.
At the same time, Machiavelli does not rely heavily on theory or abstract thought to make his points; these chapters illustrate his reliance on history as the basis for his theory of government. He sets out to answer the question “How best can a ruler maintain control of his state?” His response, a set of empirically verifiable rules and guidelines, is derived from a study of the conquests of the past, especially those of the French, the Romans, and the Greeks.
One important difference between Machiavelli’s philosophy and other philosophies of government lies in his description of the ordinary subject. Aristotle’s political writings describe a citizenry that is by nature political and very interested in the welfare of the community. Though Aristotle disregards the majority of people who live within the Greek city-state—women and slaves—he considers the free citizens to be the very reason for the state’s existence. Machiavelli, on the other hand, sees the ordinary citizen as a piddling, simpleminded creature. Such people will either love or hate their ruler, depending on whether they are harmed or injured, but as long as the prince can maintain control, he need have little concern for their welfare.
Thus, the purpose of government is not the good of the people but the stability of the state and the perpetuation of the established ruler’s control. Machiavelli does not concern himself with what goes on inside the state but what occurs externally. A successful prince must always be aware of foreign powers and the threat of invasion. A focus on power diplomacy and warcraft, at the expense of domestic affairs, is a distinctive element of Machiavelli’s project.
Finally, the guidelines set forth in The Prince have often been characterized as “amoral” because some of Machiavelli’s advice—killing off the family of the former ruler, the violent suppression of revolts and insurrections—seems cruel, brutal, and perhaps downright evil. Whereas the ancient Greeks conceived of a close relationship between ethics and politics, Machiavelli seems to separate these disciplines altogether. Nonetheless, to deny that Machiavelli’s political theory accommodates any form of morality and ethics would be inaccurate. For example, religion does play a role in Machiavelli’s state. Moreover, although Machiavelli does not use the words “ethical” or “moral” as such, later chapters of The Prince suggest that rulers have duties or obligations that could be considered ethical or moral. |
Why so many short Page 1 stories?
Question: Can you please explain to the uneducated out here why some articles on the front page are so short before continuing inside? Today's paper had an article that didn't even get through the second paragraph. I read the paper before I go to work every morning, and I don't have the time to go back and forth between the front page and the inside to read these stories. Isn't
there a better way? -- Paul Choate, Spokane
Answer: You've raised an issue that we frequently discuss in our daily planning meetings. We usually try to place five to six stories on the front page each day. Our front page philosophy is essentially this: we want to put the most important or interesting stories and photos on the most important page of the newspaper each day.
Placing five to six stories on the front page is often a challenge for our page designers, who also have to factor in headlines, photos and graphics. We do try to avoid the situation you describe in your note regarding the brevity of the front-page portion of the story, but obviously we've not been successful lately. We're addressing that problem and intend to settle on some solutions. -- Gary Graham, managing editor |
Yesterday we had a user receiving the infamous failed login attempt error (no, that's not a valid IP):
Login failed for user 'MyDomain\SomeUser'. [CLIENT: 192.168.1.201]
Error: 18456, Severity: 14, State: 16.
Verifying the account in Active Directory, we saw no issues. Looking in the Security event log on the server where SQL Server was running, we saw that the operating system had authenticated the user properly. We knew the user was a member of a group that had access to the SQL Server. So at first, there was some head scratching as to what was going on. Now we make heavy use of domain security groups and it isn't unusual for a given user to have multiple security groups with access to a particular SQL Server. This user was no exception. When I saw the error and saw that everything else looked right, I suspected that one of the logins had a bad default database. My suspicions grew when we explicitly added the user's Windows account as a login to the SQL Server and the user was able to log in.
Now our policies say we're to use security groups, so we couldn't leave the user with access via this method (you don't really want to in a large environment because it makes clean-up difficult). I really suspected a bad default database configuration, so we removed the Windows user login and had the user retry. Sure enough, the error was back. At that point, I asked the user to specify the default database in the configuration. If you are using SQL Server Management Studio, you can do this by specifying the connection options, which you get to by clicking the Options button:
Then click on the Connection Properties tab and manually enter the database name:
If you click the drop down, the client will attempt to connect to the SQL Server with the default database and if there is an invalid default database, you'll get that login error. That's why the name has to be typed in by hand. Using master is a good choice, because every login should have access to the master database. Once the user manually specified the database, he was able to connect. My suspicions were confirmed.
So that raised the question, "Which login was the guilty one?" The user was a member of several security groups and with nesting, it was proving a little time consuming to determine exactly which one was causing him to break. A simple query reveals which logins are not set to use the master database as the default database:
SELECT [name], default_database_name
WHERE default_database_name <> 'master';
And from there, it was a simple matter of checking a handful of logins. One such login, corresponding to a domain security group which the user happened to be a member of, was set to a default database which the login did not have access to. None of the user's other logins had access to that database, either. We had our login to fix. It was set where it had access to its default database, and the login problem was solved. |
“Ruidoson”: A New Genre Birthed From Northern MexicoPosted by Melissa Daniels
A new type of sound is being birthed in the Latin culture. It’s called ruidoson, literally translating into “noise music,” and it’s trending across the Latin DJ culture.
The hosts of NPR’s Alt. Latino podcast, Jasmine Gards and Felix Contreras, shared about the “unexpected pairing: electronica and folk.”
“A lot of these guys are going old-fashioned crate diving, going to record stores, looking for obscure stuff. They’re finding elements within that music and mixing it up with electronica – that’s just making fascinating music,” Contreas said in his broadcast.
Garsd explains how this new genre is coming out of northern Mexico as a type of fusion between regional Mexican music, folk, pre-Colombian beats and electronica. One example is “Ritmo De Amor” by Los Macuanos.
The violence and strain occurring at the Mexican border, is affecting the sounds of ruidoson. The sounds coming out of the new genre are “really dark, almost apocalyptic” Garsd explained.
New York-based DJ Geko Jones, an American who is rooted in Colombian and Puerto Rican heritage is a great example of this innovative variety. He is known for mixing obscure music from Colombia. Check out his track “Las Cuatro Palomas” below.
Ruidoson is also known as tribal guarachero. And in addition to the unique clash of music, there is also an extravagant pointy-boot fashion that has become synonymous with the music. Men are wearing boots that feature three to four feet pointed tips. |
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st: RE: time dummy or trend
This seems more a matter of statistical logic
than one of Stata syntax.
Given that you have a time variable, there seems
little point in coarsening it to quarters.
Also, the -int()- here presumably does
A regression with -date- as predictor
would be fitting a linear trend
component in that variable; a regression
with -time- one that would give
similar (but possibly better)
performance. The b coefficient would
differ because of the differing units.
Keeping track of things graphically
would enhance your understanding of
what you are doing.
> i have little experience with stata8 and hope one of you may
> help me...
> i have a time series regression with several explanatory
> variables, the dependent variable being trend-stationary... i
> have generated the following variable to account for the
> trend in the process and to inlcude it in the regression:
> gen date = quarterly(time, "yq")
> tsset date, quarterly
> gen time_ind= int(date)
> when i run the regression with the "time_ind" included as
> explanatory variable, does it take care of the trend and is
> it a trend or time dummy?
* For searches and help try: |
Steamboat Springs The bad news is snowplows, studded tires and chains have, once again, made the traffic stripes on Lincoln Avenue disappear.
The even worse news is that consistent 50-degree temperatures and dry weather are needed before the lines can be repainted, leaving Steamboat Springs drivers to guess where their lanes end and the next ones begin.
"I've been here 27 years, and this is one of those unusual years when you get so much snow that it affects a lot of things," said Doug Marsh, Steamboat's street superintendent.
Among the frustrations is getting stuck behind a driver who is afraid to use the invisible center turn lane.
As the director of operations for Alpine Taxi, Bobby O'Toole has a good sense of what his drivers are dealing with.
"I think there is a problem, one, with people who are not familiar with the road; two, who aren't familiar with the conditions; and three, people who are swiveling their heads, looking everywhere but where they are going," O'Toole said.
The Colorado Department of Transportation is responsible for painting the stripes. The problem is the paint cannot be applied until the weather gets warmer and drier and the streets can be swept and cleaned.
"They are very aware that Steamboat and others have a problem with the fading striping each winter," CDOT spokeswoman Nancy Shanks said. "They will get to Steamboat as soon as they can because they know that's a priority."
The city has researched different types of materials to lengthen the life of traffic markings. Plastic thermal markers could be purchased for a cost that is five to six times the cost of paint, city officials say. The plastic stripes would last five years in a city with a mild climate.
Paint is the best option for Steamboat's extreme winters, Marsh said.
"As long as people drive with studded tires and chains, they are going to rip (the plastic stripes) up," Marsh said.
Shanks said CDOT would look into the costs of different materials. A striping material could be used that would last as many as three winters in this climate, she said. The material is about eight times more expensive than paint.
The lack of street markings can be dangerous for pedestrians and motorists.
"There are a lot of pedestrians and a lot of cars, and I think we have had a lot of close calls," Steamboat Springs Police Capt. Joel Rae said.
Rae recommends that drivers be careful.
"The pedestrians have the right-of-way downtown in the marked crosswalks and the unmarked crosswalks," Rae said.
-- To reach Matt Stensland, call 871-4210
or e-mail email@example.com |
Children can earn free admission and take the first step toward a healthy lifestyle on the first Friday evening of every month. Families can stretch their muscles and their minds as they take the 1,000 step circuit through the museum touring hundreds of fun, educational exhibits and looking for “Fit Facts” filled with useful health and nutrition information. Each month will feature a different fitness theme as well as special guests and activities to get families energized about getting fit. All ages. 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. Free with museum admission. The Magic House.
More information: magichouse.org or (314) 822-8900. |
DMZ Christmas display shelved again to avoid North Korea provocation
Stars and Stripes
SEOUL — In the spirit of love and peace, the Demilitarized Zone will not be lit up like a Christmas tree this holiday season as it has in years past.
The Military Evangelical Association of Korea had sought approval from the South Korea Ministry of National Defense to light three giant towers in the shape of Christmas trees at different points about two miles south of the North Korean border.
However, the request has been withdrawn in the wake of protests from South Koreans who live near the DMZ, who said they were afraid the displays might prompt the North to fire in the direction of the lights, especially given the added incentive it might have to cause trouble in advance of the South’s Dec. 19 presidential election.
“The meaning of Christmas is that Jesus Christ came to this world in order to deliver … love and peace,” Evangelical Association pastor Kim Dae-duck said. “We thought it best that we not provide a reason for North Korean provocation.”
The lighting of a Christmas tree tower on a hill near the DMZ was an annual event for years until 2004, when the practice was suspended as part of an agreement between the two Koreas not to spread propaganda near the border during a period of relative calm in relations on the peninsula.
However, in the wake of the North’s 2010 sinking of a naval ship and the shelling of a border island — attacks that left 50 South Koreans dead — the South gave the go-ahead for a resumption of the border tree-lighting.
Officials said the 100,000-light, 100-foot-tall display on Aegibong Hill was likely visible as far away as Kaesong, one of the North’s most populated border cities.
In 2011, the South Korean government approved plans for three such displays near the DMZ.
A North Korean state-run Web site called the planned displays a form of “psychological warfare” and warned there would be “unexpected consequences” if the coalition of South Christian groups went ahead with the tree lightings.
The 2011 displays were ultimately canceled in consideration of North Korea’s official period of mourning in the wake of the December death of Kim Jong Il. |
Perhaps the most motivating members of our student body are the military veterans who have chosen to earn their degrees after they complete active duty. Whether they choose to begin or continue an undergraduate business degree or pursue an M.B.A. or other graduate business degree, these individuals bring a wealth of experience, deeply held convictions and a great sense of responsibility to their studies.
Dr. Julie Sullivan, executive vice president and provost of the University of San Diego, will become the first woman and the first lay person to serve as president of the University of St. Thomas in its 128-year history.
According to Facebook’s website, its mission is “to make the world more open and connected. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them.” But is this really true?
The director of the annual conference reflects on the growth of diversity, the evolution of inclusion, and the hope of breaking new ground for the next 25 years.
What keeps Alan Bignall ’85 M.B.A. going and going and going? In a word: passion. Bignall ispresident and CEO of ReconRobotics Inc., a company that creates tactical micro-robot systems used by the military, law enforcement and rescue teams. Currently, their robots can explore an environment that might be dangerous for humans to enter and provide auditory and visual feedback, even in complete darkness. |
Emerson College was founded in 1880 in Boston, Massachusetts. It is a private, co-ed college that touts itself as being the largest of its kind to offer degrees exclusively in communication and the liberal arts. It offers over three dozen such degree programs across three campuses including one in Los Angeles, California and the Netherlands.
After nearby Boston University shuttered their School of Oratory in 1879, there was a big hole left for this type of school. Charles Wesley Emerson, an alumnus of the closed School of Oratory, decided to fill that hole in 1880 by starting the Boston Conservatory of Elocution, Oratory, and Dramatic Art. The school would undergo two more name changes, to Monroe Conservatory of Oratory and later Emerson College of Oratory before eventually becoming Emerson College as it is today.
Total Enrollment: 4,322
Institution Size: 1,000 - 4,999
Campus Setting: Urban
Religious Affiliation: Not applicable
Highest Degree Offered: Doctoral
School Calendar Type: Semester
Total Undergrad Enrollment: 3,450
Total Grad Enrollment: 872
High School GPA
High School Rank
The professors. Emerson gets some extremely smart professors (at least for WLP and Photography, can't attest to much else) from great universities. They have a wealth of real-world knowledge that...
The student body. Emerson seems to attract the same, cookie-cutter hipsters, making for a very "vanilla" college experience. There isn't a lot of diversity, especially when it comes to people's...
Its academic style. Emerson is very well recognized in the entertainment / communication / arts industry. The school gives you so many opportunities to practice your profession before graduation;...
The school is not for everyone. Everybody I know in Emerson loves it for its energy, urban life style and campus culture. However you'd hate it if you are looking for a traditional college that...
Faculty were typically very helpful and very engaging. The class subjects were always interesting, especially once you got further up the ranks into senior subjects. There was a high level of...
Living off campus is very challenging, as it separates you from the student body. How far you end up distanced from everything school-related is influenced by the public transportation system and...
I wish I knew That the student population would be so lame.
Every student at this school needs A BlackBerry or iPhone.
Another awesome thing is Location, location, location
Another awesome thing is The location. You can't get more urban, or closer to the city. Downtown Boston is never boring.
Every student at this school needs A cigarette, trendy clothing, thick glasses. Kidding, but really a T pass. |
Jan. 30, 2011
The Symbol of Soul
—The bird image in Yeats’ poetry
The poetry of William Butler Yeats is permeated by symbolism and mysticism which are attributed to his manipulation of various images. The image of birds crowns among the imageries of his poetry and is endowed with the poets’ profound philosophies. The bird as the symbol of soul is a heritage of classical writings. In Golden Bough, Sir James Frazer comments on the subject, “Often the Soul is conceived as a bird ready to take flight. This conception has probably left traces in most languages, and it lingers as a metaphor in poetry” (33-34).Yeats’ adaption of the bird image, therefore, echoes the traditional and universal values, which facilitates readers to make sense of his otherwise obscure, complex and mysterious poetry. In light of Yeats’ gyre theory of the universe, a close study of Yeats’ poems respectively written in three stages of the poet’s life demonstrates the bird-soul symbolism in three transformed phases of the poet’s beliefs evolving from idealism, eternity to reincarnation.
1. Idealism of Early Yeats
It is obvious that the basic meanings of birds in Yeats’ writings are the ancient ones, standing for ideal paradise of soul filled with love, freedom as well as desire in Yeats’ early poetry. Yeats enjoys a very familiar relationship with legends and folklores since his childhood. Young Yeats observes in an early essay, “Folk-lore makes the souls of the blessed take upon themselves every evening the shape of white birds…” (qtd. Allen118). One of his early poems, The White Birds gives an evident testament to the poet’s personal expression in the image of white birds as he wishes he and his lover could transform into white birds to escape from social and political constraint into a fairyland and... [continues]
Cite This Essay
(2011, 04). The Bird Image in Yeats' Poems. StudyMode.com. Retrieved 04, 2011, from http://www.studymode.com/essays/The-Bird-Image-In-Yeats%27-Poems-662579.html
"The Bird Image in Yeats' Poems" StudyMode.com. 04 2011. 2011. 04 2011 <http://www.studymode.com/essays/The-Bird-Image-In-Yeats%27-Poems-662579.html>.
- MLA 7
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"The Bird Image in Yeats' Poems." StudyMode.com. 04, 2011. Accessed 04, 2011. http://www.studymode.com/essays/The-Bird-Image-In-Yeats%27-Poems-662579.html. |
Good indicator-A A +A
Sunday, December 15, 2013
AMID signs the US is recovering from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, the number of Filipino nurses seeking potential employment in America has started to bounce back.
A total of 2,952 Philippine-educated nurses took the US nurse licensure examination, or the Nclex, for the first time from January to September this year, up 10.89 percent from 2,662 in the same nine-month period in 2012.
The number of Filipino nurses taking the Nclex for the first time, excluding repeaters, is a good indicator as to how many of them are trying to enter the profession in America.
We are hopeful that as the American economy starts to pick up, the hiring of Filipino nurses by US hospitals, clinics and nursing homes will likewise spring back.
Nclex refers to the (National Council) Licensure Examination administered by the US National Council of State Boards of Nursing Inc. (USNCSBN).
According to USNCSBN statistics, among foreign-educated nurses, Filipinos remain the most eager job-seekers in America.
Some 735 Indians, 469 Canadians, 358 South Koreans, and 348 Puerto Ricans also took the Nclex for the first time in the nine-month period under review.
In the whole of 2012, only 3,673 Filipino nurses took the Nclex for the first time, or just 17 percent of the record-high 21,499 that took the test at the height of the nursing boom in 2007.
Analysts previously predicted that the US Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, will also somewhat help revive America’s demand for foreign nurses.
Obamacare is expected to increase by some 10 percent the number of insured Americans seeking health care, thus firing up demand for foreign medical staff.
I also welcomed the Department of Health’s plan to “regularize” by next year the employment of 22,500 nurses taken in as contractual workers under a program meant to improve the delivery of health care services to poor and undeserved communities.
This will provide not only job assurance but also social security and other benefits to practitioners under the Registered Nurses for Health Enhancement and Local Service, or the RN Heals Program.
The country’s oversupply of nurses has put downward pressure on their wages, but the government should help correct this by increasing employment.
A total of 35,493 new graduates as well as repeaters took the Philippine nurse licensure examination last Dec. 7 and 8, according to the Professional The passers will join the 16,219 and 16,908 new registered nurses that the country produced in January and July respectively, the commission said. --House Assistant Majority Leader and Cebu Rep. Gerald Anthony Gullas Jr., vice chairman of the House committee on higher and technical education, whose family also runs the University of Visayas
Published in the Sun.Star Cebu newspaper on December 16, 2013. |
1971 Alpine A110 1600 Group 4
Above Images ©Renault s.a.s
The A110 berlinette is Alpine's most iconic car. Alpine Founder Jean Rédélé immediately wanted his cars to catch the eye with their performances in competition - rather like that other great French constructor, E. Bugatti.
The first A110 racing cars had 1100cc engines, no wing enlargers, R8 Gordini 15" wheels, and just two front headlamps. To cope with the feeble capacity of the front-mounted, Renault-origin metal tank, racing models swiftly acquired a second, central tank made from aluminium.
The 1600 models from 1971 were already far more advanced: the central, aeroplane-like tank had greater capacity; the chassis was reinforced, with the rear tubes rectangular rather than square; the front with four headlamps had first appeared in 1968; and the 13" wheels radically altered the car's handling. The small R8-origin (type 353) gearbox had been replaced by the 364, or 'grosse boîte', with reinforced camshafts and extra torque.
But Alpine's determination - evident from 1970 - to win international events like the Acropolis, San Remo, RAC, Portuguese and Morocco rallies obliged the factory to prepare its berlinettes even more thoroughly. These races took place on different types of terrain, some good, some bad, and the berlinette, which was rather small and light, had seemed too fragile to emerge victorious on such daunting roads.
Thus improved, Alpine proved brilliant winners of the 1971 International Manufacturers' Championship, with victories in the Monte Carlo, San Remo, Acropolis, Austrian and Portuguese rallies, and ultimately in the Coupe des Alpes.
The top French drivers succeeded one another behind the wheel of the A110: Nicolas, Thérier, Andruet, Darniche, Larousse, Vinatier and Piot, along with Andersson of Sweden. In 1971 Alpine's racing department produced around forty 1600S Group 4 berlinettes, either for racing or as spare cars. The Alpine A110 offered for sale here belonged to the former (more sought-after) category.
Story by Gilles Vallerian courtesy of Artcurial
Chassis & Sales
1971 Alpine Renault A110 1600S Group IV Coupé - sold for €92,000
Little is known of the early history of this A110, which was in its current specification when the first owner bought it from the Alpine Renault factory in 1976. First registered '2895 GX 76', it reputedly was sold by the factory as a spare team car but this cannot be confirmed. In 1980 the Alpine passed to the second (French) owner, who sold it to the current vendor in 1996, since when the engine has been overhauled. We are advised that none ... more
Gallery: 2011 Automobiles d'exception au Grand Palais by Bonhams
1972 Alpine A110 1800 18165 - sold for $302,500
A Factory-Prepared “Usine” Group IV Competition Example. One of Just 13 Works Team Cars Produced. Competed in Monumental 1973 Championship Season. Driven by Winning Drivers Jean-Pierre Nicolas and Bernard Darniche. Campaigned with 1,860 CC Mignotet in Period. Exceptionally Pure A110 with Significant Originality. Highly Eligible for International Events Including the Tour Auto. A Well-Documented Example. Accompanied by a Gilles Vallerian Report.
Gallery: The Scottsdale Auctions by Gooding & Company |
If the invisible damage showed up like bruises and marks, perhaps parents would think twice.
About ten years ago Mr. Ramirez was partly dozing off after a long day and watching a TV program about World War II. I was getting ready to facilitate the online group and was killing time reading. I was looking for information I heard about on the car radio so I googled, “child abuse affects brain development.” As I read about how child maltreatment (child abuse) actually changes brain development, I began to read aloud so the words could sink in.
“The brain’s development can literally be altered by this type of toxic stress, resulting in negative impacts on the child’s physical, cognitive, emotional, and social growth.” I read.
I was drawn into the five-page article, scrolling down a few lines at a time. The article went on to explain how the stress or danger response (fight or flight) triggered hormones or chemicals in the brain— norepinephrine, serotonin, and dopamine. When it happens only occasionally, the response is normal and the brain chemicals return to normal pre-stress levels. The problem with child abuse is that it happens more often, triggering an almost constant release of those hormones so that the brain does not have time to return to pre-stress levels, that is how abuse changes the developing brain of a child. In other words, the changes in the brain become permanent.
Mr. Ramirez made a sound that broke my concentration. Looking over at him I saw he was fully awake now and tears were streaming down his face.
“How come you didn’t tell me it changes the brain!” he bellowed, “You didn’t tell me!”
He wiped his face on his sleeve and I really did not know what to say; for once I was at a complete loss. I had spent years begging and pleading him not to hit or belittle our kids. Would it have mattered if I said ‘brain’ instead of ‘self-esteem?’ I had dug up data since he is a ‘professional’ and might listen to information from an educated source. He likes analogies so I had told him once that a child with damaged self-esteem is like an animal in the wild, and that all the other animals sensed an injured animal and would move in for the kill. Damage is damage— plain and simple.
Mr. Ramirez raced to his office; a small room at the end of our house where he and his Asperger’s self goes to be alone, read, study, pay bills and escape. I shudder and leave him to beat himself up for a change.
The article summation stated that while these changes can happen when abuse occurs at any point in life, the study showed that abuse, especially during pre-teen and adolescent years are the most damaging, resulting in mood and anxiety disorders like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and depression. I also came across a telling graphic with negative images of the brains showing the differences between normal and abuse brains.
Reading further on the web page it said children can actually inherit a mother’s abuse-altered brain because the DNA is damaged. Both our daughters plan not to have children and that makes me sad but I certainly understand. Katie was able to stop her dad’s physical abuse but he continued verbal abuse. Chelsey’s anger matches or exceeds her dad’s and mine; her only mistake was being her dad’s first-born.
Chelsey says adamantly, “I can not have children; every time I would get mad, I would see a little me.”
Young Children or Toddlers
The effect of child abuse doesn’t end when the hitting stops, it continues to follow the child and the parent for a lifetime. Short term the effects are not as evident, a young child may have marks and bruises that may fade and heal over time. Damaged self-esteem goes hand in hand with abuse. Here are a few outward signs that may indicate abuse:
• Ducking when a larger person comes near
• Standing back to let others go first
• Pushing in front of others
• Reluctance to reclaim things taken away by another child
• Reluctance to go or come to the parent
• Picking on a sibling
• Picked on by siblings and expecting no help
• Appearing fearful when there are noises or quick movements nearby
• Not asking for things
• Being very quiet
• Staying to themselves
• Abnormally clingy
• Extreme sadness or crying
• Failure to thrive
• Anger issues
• Destructive behaviors
Young Children, Pre-Teens, Teens and Young Adults
This age group may display a full range of abuse manifestations or indicators and low self-esteem or self-image. This is only a list of things a child, male or female, could possibly face or display as they grow into adulthood and beyond:
• Suicide/Attempted suicide
• Drug and/or alcohol abuse, tobacco and addictions
• Sexual addictions and promiscuity (Sexually transmitted diseases or STDs)
• Mental health disorders and illnesses
• Lack of self-esteem or general feeling of worthlessness or deficiency
• Eating disorders
• Domestic violence
• Self-injury or cutting
• Abuse of their own children
• Perfectionism (extreme)
• Apathy towards self and or others (lack of hygiene, dental care, self-care, etc.)
• Lethargy or extreme lack of energy
• Friendless or social outcast behaviors (withdrawal)
• Multiple relationships or marriages
• Unstable or erratic hob histories
• Various types of victimization
• General hopelessness and helplessness
• Impulsiveness or lack of self-control
• Fire setting or animal abuse
• Difficulty forming and maintaining relationships
• Anger and rage
• Antisocial behavior
• Insomnia and sleep disturbances
• Poor health in general
• Delinquency, brushes with or entanglements with the law and risky behaviors
Mr. Ramirez: The True Cost of Child Abuse
Mr. Ramirez does not understand how hitting, verbal abuse, public humiliation, demeaning, threats, yelling, etc. can cause so much damage. He feels that these are not abuse but are tools of punishment that will prevent his children from being “spoiled” or “ruined.” He believes he “turned out alright” and that I made a “big deal out of nothing.” Thousands – maybe millions – disagree.
As Mr. Ramirez sees it, the cost of abusing his daughters can be tallied in dollars and cents. (He focused most physical abuse on his first-born but both were verbally battered.) For certain he will not be able to retire when he planned and we have not been able to make improvements to our home either. There have been no vacations, no cruises or impromptu trips.
Mr. Ramirez has been shelling out money at various times for:
• Depression medications
• Psychiatrist to write prescriptions for the medications
• Psychologist/therapist to speak with the kids
• Neurologists (for migraine and visual issues)
• Individual therapy, group therapy and separate sessions with a nutritionist
• An intensive outpatient program for one summer, followed by a year and a half intensive outpatient program several years later
• Mileage and wear and tear on the vehicle – ONE YEAR was roughly three thousand miles!
• Long distance bills
• Many appointments to see the primary care doctor with illnesses manifested and unresolved due to extreme amounts of stress
• College classes were missed and had to be retaken
These are not all of the expenses we have incurred but it is a pretty comprehensive list. A few of these bills were covered in the beginning by insurance but most continued long after insurance dropped our daughter’s coverage. (She was not covered by the recent law continuing coverage to age twenty-six.) Having Asperger’s may prevent him from feeling empathy for his daughter but he can certainly understand dollars and cents damage. None of these items on the list come cheap and nothing was free.
One short question…
Do you think it was worth it for Mr. Ramirez to hit and verbally abuse his daughters?
This is a follow-up to a previous post.
Jackie Saulmon Ramirez has served as a volunteer with Parents Anonymous® of New Jersey, Inc. for more than twenty years, giving and getting support. Find her at her contact page. |
Helping this patron after she asked the question was straight-forward, but the question itself was kind of interesting (for three reasons).
Patron: I need help with my Netflix account.
Me: Sure, what's the problem?
Patron: Well, I have WebTV at home, and I just signed up for a Netflix account. It worked far enough to allow me to input my credit card number and purchase the account, but it stopped working when I got to the part were I set up my request list. I called their tech support, and they said that yes, the WebTV browser will not work with this part of the Netflix website, and that I should go to my public library. So here I am.
3 Reasons Why This Is Interesting
- People still use WebTV?
- WebTV does not work with Netflix
- WebTV tech support's solution to this computer problem is the library*
The patron and I went over to one of the public computers, logged into her account, and selected a few movies for her to start with. She figured it out pretty quickly, and should be able to do it on her own the next time she comes in.
*Earlier this week I read a Public Libraries article by David Lee King and Michael Porter entitled, "You as Internet Know-It-All". Basically, it explains why it is important for librarians to (at the very least) be familiar with emerging technology and what's popular, regardless of whether or not we use (or even care about) them ourselves.
I liked the article, but the reference question above nicely illustrates the importance of their point: this patron would not have been served well by a librarian who wasn't comfortable with websites, at least somewhat familiar with Netflix**, and willing to explore something new. This is who our patrons are, and we need to be ready for them.
**And for the record, I don't use Netflix myself. I mean, come on; I work in a public library... every movie I'd ever want to see, and no little red envelopes. |
As US President Barack Obama makes the case for military intervention by the US in response to the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons, Americans and many others around the world are asking what the objective should be. Is the purpose of using military force to prevent future attacks against Syrian civilians, or is the proper goal to punish Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime for violating the law of nations?
So far, US Secretary of State John Kerry has invoked both purposes — degrading Syria’s chemical-weapons capacity, as well as ensuring “accountability” and “deterrence” — in advocating US military intervention. However, a mission limited to reducing the al-Assad regime’s capacity to use chemical weapons in the future is far more justifiable under international law than a mission conceived as a punitive or law enforcement action.
Preventing attacks has a clear humanitarian objective. While some argue that humanitarian intervention is never justified without approval by the UN Security Council, the UN Charter itself provides a dubious foundation for this view.
The charter does not prohibit all unilateral use of force. It prohibits only such uses of force that are aimed at a state’s “territorial integrity or political independence,” or that otherwise contravene the principles of the UN.
However, promoting and encouraging respect for human rights, including the right to life, are also among the UN’s purposes, as stated in Article One of the charter. Can al-Assad really hide behind the notion of territorial integrity or political independence to forestall an effort to stop his illegal brutality toward Syria’s citizens? Massacres of civilians conducted with chemical weapons hardly correspond to the principle of defending states’ territorial integrity and political independence.
Humanitarian intervention in Kosovo in 1999 was often described as “illegal, but legitimate.” However, because the use of force was not well-tailored to the objective of preventing genocide, it could be — and was — perceived by some as punishment of the Serbian people as a whole for supporting former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic’s regime. The example of Kosovo suggests the wisdom of not entangling humanitarian action in notions of deterrence or punishment.
Since the end of World War II, collective punishment has become increasingly unacceptable as a response even to grave or egregious violations of international law and this approach has been codified in a widely accepted set of principles — the so-called International Law Commission articles — concerning the responsibility of states. At the same time, non-forcible sanctions, such as economic measures, are generally compatible with current international law. So is the insistence on prosecution of war crimes at the International Criminal Court. The emergence of international criminal tribunals suggests that accountability for crimes against international law ought to be a matter addressed by independent courts, not by the unilateral exercise of military power.
However, accepting that humanitarian intervention without Security Council authorization is in principle compatible with the UN Charter gets us only so far. For purposes of both legality and legitimacy, it is vital to ensure that an unwise and ineffective intervention does not undermine the overall balance of legal rights and obligations in the charter and related human rights and humanitarian norms. |
Barclays PLC, Britain’s third largest bank, said on Monday it would not take part in the British government’s program to insure toxic assets, raising fears it would need to raise billions of dollars elsewhere.
The Asset Protection Scheme (APS) allows banks to put billions of dollars in toxic assets, such as mortgage-backed bonds and other securities which have become unsellable because of the financial crisis, into a vehicle that will ensure they are only liable for a proportion of any losses.
Lloyds Banking Group PLC and the Royal Bank of Scotland PLC (RBS) have already signed up for the program, which the government hopes will restore confidence in the sector and restart lending that was curtailed by the global credit squeeze.
However, participation comes at a price. Lloyds paid £15.6 billion (US$22.2 billion) in preferential shares for government guarantees on £260 billion in investments, while RBS paid £6.5 billion to cover £325 billion in assets.
Barclays said it had weighed up the “potential benefits and costs” of participation since the program was announced in January.
“Following further careful assessment and discussions with major shareholders, the Board of Barclays has determined that it would not be in the interests of its investors, depositors and clients to participate in the APS,” the bank said in a statement to the London Stock Exchange.
Barclays’ move follows a statement by the bank on Friday that it had passed a “stress test” by the Financial Services Authority.
But analysts have suggested that the bank might still need to raise more capital to strengthen its financial position even if it sells its iShares business, which it flagged last week.
It said on Monday that talks on a sale of the San Francisco-based asset management unit were “progressing well” with a number of interested parties. Analysts have suggested the bank could raise as much as 5 billion pounds from a deal.
JPMorgan Chase & Co analysts said banks may write down a further US$17 billion over the rest of the year, with Barclays and Deutsche Bank AG having the highest need for further pretax writedowns, amounting to US$4.9 billion and US$3 billion respectively.
“On the other side of the spectrum, BNP Paribas and Credit Suisse Group AG are now looking relatively clean with estimated further markdowns of US$1.1 billion and US$1.2 billion” this year, JPMorgan analysts wrote in a report to clients.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY BLOOMBERG |
No, that creaky sound over at the UNDER St. Marks Theater isn't the floorboards, but the oddly dated writing of Albert Camus's philosophical drama The Just Assassins (Les Justes). As much as Kerry supporters might be tempted to check out the production to learn a thing or two about violent rebellion, revolution, and regime change, Camus's play stays fixedly in the realm of the theoretical as opposed to the emotional, resulting in a play that, despite its lofty goals and good intentions, never really reaches dramatic heights.
It's no wonder that Camus's play isn't revived more frequently. Despite the fact that Camus was one of the greatest existentialist thinkers and writers of the twentieth century, the dramaturgical stylistics of The Just Assassins tend to symbolism, rather than to the development of flesh and blood characters who we come to intimately know and identify with. Thus, even with the multiple analogous ties with recent suicide bombings and terrorist attacks in Iraq, Israel, Russia, and other places around the world, Camus's play feels distant and foreign.
Based on actual events, The Just Assassins follows the actions of a band of Russian revolutionaries who are plotting to bomb the carriage of Grand Duke Sergei. Led by Boria (Mick Lauer), the group of five plotters expound on their ideals of a new Russia while confronting their fears and anxieties about committing violent acts of murder. Is it honorable to commit violence in the name of a worthy cause? The first bombing attempt is suddenly postponed because Yanek (Charlie Wilson) sees that the Grand Duke's carriage is occupied by the Duke's niece and nephew, and he cannot bring himself to kill innocent children, begging the question, are some lives worth more than others? Rounding out the band of conspirators are Stepan (Jake Thomas), a tenacious fighter, Alexis (Daniel Deferrari), a timid activist, and Dora (Elliotte Crowell), the group's fierce female member. Following the first failed assassination attempt, the group tries again and Yanek is successful in his mission, killing the Grand Duke, but consequently getting himself arrested and ending up in jail.
Despite the "intrigue" that the play presents, the work is less about suspense and more about questions of morality. The result is a show that at times feels leaden and preachy. It doesn't help matters that the level of acting in this production, with one exception, tends to recall the earnest, but overwrought college productions I frequently saw as an undergraduate.
The five young fresh-faced actors, many of whom according to their bios are recent acting school graduates, are the right age for most of the characters in Camus's work (the Russian revolutionaries were often university students in their 20s), but they never really connect with this material. True, it's difficult to say how many Americans (actors or not) could really identify or understand the gravity and emotional intensity of the events experienced by the participants in the Russian Revolution, but the cast often seems dissociated from the raw frustration and fierce anger that needs to drive the piece. There's lots of hand-wringing, loud ranting, agitation, and gesticulation, but none of the actors are especially convincing.
Wilson as the conflicted bomb-thrower Yanek offers a performance that is particularly lacking in nuance, subtlety, and most importantly, gravitas. Though Yanek is given some of the play's most important speeches about justice and love, one never gets the sense that Wilson believes (or even understands) what he's saying. As directed by Allegra Libonati, the actors rattle off their lines with ferocious speed and try to sound convincing, but the rapidity does little to cover for the vacancy of interpretation.
Thank god, though, for Elliotte Crowell as Dora, the only member of the cast who is adequately distraught and unnerving enough to actually communicate the proper sense of despair and hopelessness experienced by these revolutionaries. Even when she is on the fringes of the action, listening to the conversations around her, Crowell's eyes and body language are marvelously dead, never once betraying a sense of levity or equanimity which the other actors often unintentionally and distractingly give off. Dora is desperate for love, attention, and warmth and reaches out to almost anyone who will give it to her, most notably Yanek. It's hard to buy Dora's love interest with Yanek, though, as her proclamations of love, as penned by Camus, are so theoretical and cerebral, couched in philosophical arguments, that they come off as devoid of emotion. Still, more than any of the other cast members, Crowell best embodies the serious urgency of Camus's work and is exciting to watch.
The play closes with Yanek's death as he is hanged for his assassination of the Grand Duke. Everyone in the cast is appropriately downcast and yet something (a sense of true consequence perhaps?) is still missing from the scene. Though The 7th Sign should be applauded for producing work that is rarely seen, perhaps next time they should pick a play whose themes are a little closer to home and to which they might be able to better relate.
The 7th Sign |
So, I will try to explain this to the best of my ability.
You start with a template, like maybe
'When I ______, I make sure to ______'
And then you fill in the blanks with words that start with A, B, C, D, E, F, G... etc. depending on where you are on the thread. For example, I would put something like
'When I aim, I make sure to arc.'
And it doesn't have to make sense. Ok, lets start
THE TEMPLATE IS 'I don't always eat ______ but when I do, I make sure it's _____'
Ok, and whoever gets 'Z' gets to choose the next template. Have fun!
I dont always eat apples, But when I do, I make sure it's adorable. |
Story: North Americans
Page 2 – 1870s–1939: rivalry and curiosity
Bridging the gap
From the mid-1800s, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada were rival emigration destinations. Size, distance and economics made New Zealand less competitive. This was reflected in the number of North Americans choosing to live in New Zealand, which did not grow significantly between 1878 and 1939. Moreover, their proportion in the population actually declined. Improved transport and communications, however, led to an increased traffic in ideas, goods and people between the countries.
Americans: imported ideologies
Reduced gold prospecting possibilities and the long depression of 1879–96 deterred American fortune-seekers. The subsequent depressions of the 1920s and 1930s made New Zealand economically uninviting for Americans, except as a market to sell their products.
But if New Zealand was not seen as a potential home, many Americans visited briefly. Travel to and beyond America became easier after the establishment of the San Francisco–Auckland steamship route in 1870 and the completion of the railway across the United States soon after. American visitors included entertainers and popular lecturers. Writer Mark Twain was one of the best-known Americans to visit, and he recounted his experiences in Following the equator, published in 1897. Other travellers included religious, social and political campaigners. The trade union, temperance and women’s suffrage movements all gained impetus from visiting North American activists such as Walter Mills and Mary Leavitt. Religious missionaries, for example Seventh Day Adventists like Nettie Keller and Mormons like Matthew Cowley, also found a ready audience. Their message remains influential, especially among Māori and Pacific Island people. In the early 20th century American visitors such as Frank Parsons and Henry Demarest Lloyd were fascinated by the reforms of the Liberal government in New Zealand.
New Zealand’s curiosity about things American in the 19th century led to a Wellington suburb being named after the famous borough of Brooklyn in New York. Some of the streets were named after American presidents, including McKinley, Taft and Cleveland. The large park separating Brooklyn from the city was, of course, named Central Park. American links with Brooklyn were strengthened when, during the Second World War, an American military camp was established in Central Park.
New Zealanders, however, were ambivalent towards Americans. On one hand, American foreign policies and culture were seen as a threat to British – and therefore New Zealand – interests. On the other hand, New Zealanders adopted many American ideals and values. From the 1920s they benefited from Carnegie Corporation educational grants, drove American motorcars and watched American movies.
Canadians: the technology connection
Like Americans, from 1870 some Canadians simply visited New Zealand, but more of them stayed. After 1905 it was easier for other British subjects to migrate to New Zealand, and there was official support for inter-empire migration. Canadian settlers outnumbered those born in the United States by more than half from 1874 until 1891 at least, but their total numbers did not grow much before the Second World War.
Nevertheless, New Zealand benefited from Canadian expertise. The Geological Survey of New Zealand was reorganised by Canadian James Bell between 1905 and 1911. Founders of the State Forest Service in 1919 had Canadian training and experience. Several New Zealand nursing administrators of the 1920s and 1930s visited Toronto, where a public health course was offered. Improved travel and communications helped. The Canadian Pacific Railway made Vancouver an important stopover from the 1890s, and in 1902 the Pacific cable linked British Columbia by telegraph with New Zealand. Flights to and from Canada and the US began in the 1930s. |
The RF bar code was printed with silicon ink. It can store 128 bits of data and transmit them at 106 kilobits per second.
Being a semiconductor startup in Silicon Valley is tough: to compete with established firms, you need tens of millions of dollars in initial investments and lots of time to commercialize your technology. Such is the situation facing Kovio, a startup based in Milpitas, CA. Founded in 2001 with technology spun out of MIT, Kovio makes chips by printing silicon circuits onto flexible paper-thin sheets of metal instead of etching them into rigid substrates using conventional lithography. Silicon particles are suspended in a liquid, and ink-jet printers deposit it in patterns on metal foils. The result is cheaper than traditional circuits and faster than printed organic electronics. And flexible chips could lead to new products, such as roll-up display screens.
For most of its history, Kovio’s scientists and engineers focused on fine-tuning the printing process while its executives scoured various markets for a killer application. In 2008, the company announced its first product: printable RFID tags to replace the bar codes used to label products and the magnetic strips found on public-transit fare cards.
Today, the RFID market is worth about $5.6 billion. But it has yet to realize its potential, says Kovio CEO Amir Mashkoori, because conventional chips are too expensive. Today’s tags can be as cheap as 15 cents each, but it doesn’t make economic sense to slap a 15-cent tag on a $1 bottle of soda. Kovio’s technology, Mashkoori says, can print RFID tags for a fraction of the price of conventional tags. That could promote wider use and give the company the revenue it needs to expand into different product categories, such as displays.
Because of the recession, the past couple of years have been financially tense for the company. Even so, last year it was one of the top-funded semiconductor companies in Silicon Valley. (In total, more than $80 million has been pumped into the business.) Companies worldwide are evaluating its RFID technology, and Kovio recently announced a licensing agreement with chemical supplier Nissan Chemical Industries that could lead to printed displays. Product availability is expected to be announced later this year. |
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New solar cells show gains in efficiency.
A new type of sensor makes diagnosing infections quick and easy.
A novel nanoscale sensor responds to mechanical stresses.
Chips that use graphite show promise for storing more bits than flash memory.
Electrodes made of carbon-silicon nanowires could boost the life and performance of lithium-ion batteries.
Transistors with lipid membranes could make better interfaces for neural prosthetics.
Nanowire arrays could be used for future medical implants.
The device harnesses both sunlight and mechanical energy. |
As rising power prices are even more important than general green-ness right now, any way to cut the power consumption of a home entertainment system is welcome, and TrickleStar's new gizmo is cheap enough to pay for itself before the icecaps melt.
The TV TrickleSaver (and its PC counterpart) works by sensing the drop in power consumption as a TV goes into standby and cutting power to other devices, then doing the opposite when the TV turns on again.
The aim is to reduce the drain from games consoles, amplifiers, digital TV receivers and other devices that might not have a standby mode or don't alter their power consumption much in standby.
It's quite bulky, but has a pleasant Apple-style design, with one cable going to your power socket and two inputs for your master device (the TV) and slave devices – the recommendation being that you connect this to a power strip.
TrickleStar makes a version integrated with a four-way power strip for the USA, and it would be welcome here too.
There are mounting lugs on the back so you can attach it to the wall, next to your power socket and out of harm's way.
The only control is a trimmer dial, which adjusts its sensitivity for TVs that don't reduce their power consumption significantly when in standby.
Our LG and Toshiba TVs were fine with the default setting, but many older LCD and plasma TVs barely reduce their power consumption in standby – and some of the cheaper supermarket TVs aren't very efficient either.
The only drawback– fully explained on the packaging – is that almost all digital TV receivers, whether Sky, Freeview, Freesat or other, need to be left in standby mode when not in use so they can receive software updates overnight. PVRs, of course, have to be in standby to record, and they're often quite power-hungry.
However, you could use the PVR as the master device and totally power-down your TV, saving further. The only feature we'd add would be a power-consumption display (or a log that you could download via USB) to measure your savings, but that would likely push the cost to an unreasonable level.
If your 'leccy bill is a burden this might be worth the small outlay to control your AV gear, and you don't even have to add another remote control to the pile.
Follow TechRadar Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/techradarreview |
Why you should listen
Malcolm McLaren provoked reaction. He's probably best known for creating the Sex Pistols in 1976, arguably the first globally popular punk band. Deliberately confrontational and political (in both lyrics and style), the Sex Pistols drew on powerful undercurrents of crankiness, anarchy and dissatisfaction with '70s Britain -- and with one album, two hit singles and a stopped-short US tour, fired up a global movement that continues to this day in myriad forms. Music heads will know that McLaren's next stop was to manage Adam Ant, while cutting away Ant's original band and turning them into Bow Wow Wow.
McLaren's restless mind then turned to early hip-hop, with its mixing, collaging and powerful shared creativity. His singles "Buffalo Gals" (which mixed scratching and square-dance calling) and "Double Dutch" were early steps at making hip-hop as ubiquitous as punk. And he was championing 8-bit music -- at the intersection of music and videogame culture -- as early as 2003.
As a film and TV producer, McLaren co-produced the film Fast Food Nation and made the TV special The Ghosts of Oxford Street, as well as presenting Malcolm McLaren's Musical Map of London and Life and Times in LA. His ambitious "sound painting" in 21 parts, Shallow, premiered at Basel and was then projected over Times Square in 2008. His last film, Paris: The Capital of the 21st Century, montaged ideal images of Paris in advertising to examine the intersection of art and commodity.
At heart, McLaren was a Situationist -- believing that provocative actions are the best way to change minds. McLaren died in April 2010. In his funeral cortege, a stunning floral blanket read: "Cash from Chaos."
McLaren gave this talk at the Handheld Learning conference in October 2009; to learn more, visit the parent conference, Learning Without Frontiers. |
Chinese telecom-gear maker Huawei Technologies Co. is a finalist for a contract to build out the fourth-generation (4G) wireless network for U.S. Cellular Corp., the country's sixth largest wireless carrier, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday, citing "people familiar with the matter." Other finalists are L.M. Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent SA.
In addition, reports the Times, Huawei says it is in talks with federal, state and local government agencies to provide wireless technology to build the U.S.'s first nation-wide public-safety network.
Huawei has been the subject of controversy in its attempts to expand into U.S. markets. A letter from U.S. lawmakers Monday asked President Barack Obama and the U.S. government to legislatively ban Huawai from selling network equipment in the U.S. and from receiving government subsidies.
Founded by a People's Liberation Army soldier, Huawei has also received criticism from opponents who say it retains links with China's security services. Reuters reports that Huawei has denied the links, but the suspicions have torpedoed other U.S. deals in the past. Last summer, an interagency group known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) prevented Huawei from selling vast quantities of equipment to Sprint Nextel, as reported by Frank Gaffney in his blog post, "Huawe? No Way... " (where he highlights much of the remaining controversy and suspicion surrounding the company).
Referring to the legislators' letter, the Times reports, Bill Plummer, vice president for government affairs for Huawei USA, said that the company has been "cooperating fully with the government on the issue of bidding on public-safety- network business."
U.S. Cellular has more than six million customers in 26 states. The Chicago-based firm, a subsidiary of Telephone & Data Systems Inc., plans to roll out a 4G network based on a technology known as Long Term Evolution later this year.
U.S. Cellular was not immediately available for comment, but according to the Times, a spokesperson said the company is still evaluating the results of its LTE trial and has not yet selected a vendor. A decision is expected in the next few weeks. |
Speaking to state television, Mr Ahmadinejad declared: "Once our trade with the Europe was around 90 percent but now it has reached to 10 percent and we are not seeking this 10 percent... experience has shown that Iranian nation will not be hurt,"
"For the past 30 years the Americans have not been buying oil from us. Our central bank has no relations with you," he added.
Mr Ahmadinejad however reiterated that the Islamic republic is ready to sit down with world powers for talks on its nuclear programme.
"They have this excuse that Iran is dodging negotiations while it is not the case...," he said. "Why should we run away from the negotiations?"
The EU voted on Monday to ban new oil export contracts from Iran, and to end existing contracts by July 1. Iran has threatened to retaliate by blocking the Strait of Hormuz, the main export route for supplies of about 17mbpd from the Middle East. On Sunday, the HMS Argyll was part of a flotilla of warships that entered the Strait.
Meanwhile a draft report by the Institute for Science and International Security is unlikely to move toward building a nuclear weapon this year because it does not yet have the capability to produce enough weapon-grade uranium.
The report by the institute founded by nuclear expert David Albright offered a more temperate view of Iran's nuclear program than some of the heated rhetoric that has surfaced since the United States and its allies stepped up sanctions on Tehran.
"Iran is unlikely to decide to dash toward making nuclear weapons as long as its uranium enrichment capability remains as limited as it is today," the report said.
The escalating rhetoric and tensions have led to concerns about the potential for missteps between the adversaries that might spiral into a military confrontation that neither wants.
But the report, financed by a grant from the United States Institute of Peace, said Iran had not made a decision to build a nuclear bomb. The USIP is an independent, non-partisan centre created by the US Congress in 1984 that receives federal government funding.
"Iran is unlikely to break out in 2012, in great part because it is deterred from doing so," said the ISIS report, which has not yet been publicly released.
The report turns down the temperature, saying that sanctions and the fear of a military strike by Israel on Iran's nuclear facilities have worked as a deterrent. |
Research · Teaching · Social Change
Sociological Organization of Undergraduate Leadership (S.O.U.L.)
Formerly the Student Undergraduate Majors and Minors Association (SUMMA, archived here), SOUL is a grassroots student organization inspired by the concept of the sociological imagination, as articulated by C. Wright Mills. SOUL members discuss, develop, and organize actions and events pertaining to the University, the surrounding communities, and the City of Philadelphia.
SOUL is developing a method of cooperative-leadership in which all members have equal access to the direction and identity of the group. Cooperatively, SOUL members can develop their individual leadership potential, while learning what it means to be individually and collectively accountable.
SOUL began its first semester (Fall 2011) with students who were willing and able to organize and facilitate the first few meetings. It was then the responsibility of the group facilitator(s) to step back and allow for cooperative-leadership to begin. This method relies primarily on a willingness to share the burden and responsibility for building and maintaining the organization.
For more information and to get involved, contact Seth M. Newlin, Undergraduate Student Liaison |
Why has my baby got an ear infection?
Just like colds, ear infections are really common with babies and little children. In fact, they often follow on from a cold. While an older child can tell you their ear hurts – or they are coordinated enough to rub it – a little baby can’t tell you or show you where the pain is, so they just tend to be unhappy and cry. If they’ve just had a cold, be aware that a sore ear might be the problem.
Again like colds, most ear infections get better by themselves. Most are caused by viruses and so won’t respond to antibiotics. Don’t try and clean out the ear by putting anything into it, like cotton buds, eardrops or oil. You can use baby paracetamol or ibuprofen, but make sure you follow the instructions on the packet precisely so you don’t risk overdosing your baby.
If the problem persists or worsens and you suspect an ear infection, take your child to the doctor. They will be able to examine the eardrum for signs of redness and infection. If your doctor thinks there is a bacterial infection they will prescribe antibiotics.
What is glue ear?
If your baby or child keeps getting ear infections, they might end up having something called ‘glue ear’. This means the build up of a sticky (hence the name ‘glue’) fluid in the middle ear. The middle ear contains tiny bones that need to vibrate freely in air. If fluid fills this area it can severely impair hearing.
If a baby or child is anywhere near an adult who smokes, this will increase their chances of getting glue ear, and it also means the condition will clear up more slowly.
Glue ear usually clears up but if this does not happen within three months or glue ear keeps occurring, it can lead to impairment in hearing, as well as speech and language development.
This might even lead to unclear speech, less social interaction (as the child cannot hear well and misses lots of social interaction) and behavioural problems. If you think your baby has glue ear, get advice and treatment from a doctor.
If your child is referred to a paediatric ENT (ear, nose and throat) consultant they may decide to put ‘grommets’ in your child’s ear, which allow the gluey secretions in the ear to drain. This helps hearing as the pressure on the eardrum is reduced, allowing it to work properly.
Your baby or toddler may also have large tonsils and adenoids. Speak to your doctor if your child snores loudly or displays any signs of sleep apnoea, where they stop breathing for periods of time (you can always film your baby sleeping to show the doctor).
If your child is referred to an ENT paediatrician they may also decide to remove very enlarged adenoids or tonsils if hearing problems, sleeping problems and ear and upper respiratory tract infections are persistent. |
Maybe it’s because I’m a New Yorker, but when I marvel about the interrelatedness of life, I often can’t help hearing in my head the punch line of an ad jingle that was wildly popular around here in the 1990s: “We’re all connected . . . New York Telephone.” That telecommunications company has since evolved almost beyond recognition in response to economic and technological climate change, but the jingle stuck, to the point that uttering “We’re all connected” in any context is still enough to elicit the rejoinder, “New York Telephone.”
And I kept hearing it as we were putting the finishing touches on this issue of The Scientist. All three of May’s features are about connection, albeit occurring across different distances and using an amazing array of different communication strategies—in connective tissue, between microorganisms, and between an expectant mother and her unborn child.
“One could draw a line between any two points of the body via a path of connective tissue,” writes Helene Langevin in “The Science of Stretch.” “This network is so extensive and ubiquitous that if we were to lose every organ, muscle, bone, nerve, and blood vessel in our bodies, we would still maintain the same shape.” The author came to study mechanical changes in this “connective-tissue body” by a circuitous route: as an internist whose patients sometimes sought pain relief in acupuncture, she took hands-on classes to see what the ancient technique was all about. Her conviction that the telltale, pain-relieving needle tug was related to connective tissue inspired her to investigate mechanotransduction in whole tissue, as a way to connect the dots between conventional and alternative medicine.
When senior editor Bob Grant’s wife Kerry gave birth to their second child 5 weeks before term, they were stunned. “At some point during her pregnancy,” he writes, “a complicated cascade of signaling and chemical crosstalk short-circuited.” This most intimate of connections, where an essentially foreign entity—the fetus—is allowed to develop inside a woman’s body, was perturbed by some kind of molecular miscommunication. Ever the investigative journalist, Bob set out to report on what is known about the factors that instigate preterm birth, as well as labor and delivery in general. In his feature article “Why So Soon?,” Bob recounts that he was told over and over by researchers how surprisingly little is actually known about this process so vital to us, and he outlines the most plausible current models for the maintenance of pregnancy and the initiation of labor and birth. Arriving too soon kills more than a million of the 15 million premature babies born around the world each year, so understanding what causes this miscommunication cannot come soon enough.
Those same electrons that kept New York Telephone customers connected also work to facilitate energy transfer between bacteria. In “Live Wires” Mohamed El-Naggar and Steven Finkel recount the birth and development of electromicrobiology, a fascinating new field of research that explores the transmission of electrical signals between microbes. The authors describe how electrons move not only along thin hairs called pili that project from the cell bodies of certain bacteria, but also in the shared periplasmic space of long chains of thousands of linked bacteria, and from the membranes of several bacterial species to extracellular mineral surfaces. “This vision of integrated microbial circuits was unimaginable 10 years ago,” the authors conclude. “But as we unravel the molecular and biophysical basis of long-distance electron transport, these bacteria may one day become essential components of everyday technologies.”
Yes, we are all connected—and always have been, long before we could phone a friend, eavesdrop on microbial and molecular crosstalk, or begin to know how to strengthen and secure our most precious natural bonds.
Mary-Beth Aberlin Editor-in-Chief email@example.com |
Few cancer patients take notes on chemo dose options and potential long-term side effects.Jim Bourg/Reuters
When a celebrity gets a serious illness, there's a lot the public might learn. Breast cancer is so common now; we're witnessing its varied manifestations play out in arenas diverse as politics, tennis and TV.
Earlier this week, Good Morning America co-host Robin Roberts announced that she has a blood disorder called myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). As many viewers already knew, she has a history of breast cancer. She found a lump in the summer of 2007, when she was 46 years old. She had surgery and celebrated completing eight cycles of chemotherapy in January, 2008. Roberts was thriving after all that, she said and appeared.
The new diagnosis came as a shocker, presumably for the anchor and those she holds dear, and particularly for some of the estimated 2.8 million women alive in the U.S. after breast cancer. It jolted more than a few who've watched Roberts' program or, who, like me, followed her personal story from afar. More than a few individuals - and not just women who've had breast cancer - see Roberts as a role model. She's bright, and resilient, and by being so confers hope just by looking healthy and doing what she does most weekday mornings.
Few know about MDS. "When you first told me, I had never heard of it before,"said Roberts' co-host George Stephanopoulos. "I had never heard of it either," Roberts reassured him. The lack of familiarity may be universal among news anchors: Anderson Cooper, among others, said the same on his show.
Myelodysplastic syndrome affects the bone marrow. The condition - typically manifest by low numbers of blood cells - ranges in severity and form. It's uncommon; the NCI estimates over 10,000 cases occur each year in North America. Some doctors refer to MDS as preleukemia, because roughly a third of cases progress to leukemia over time - that might be years, or decades. In cases that don't turn into leukemia, the disorder may be serious: Low white blood cells confers risk for infection; low red cells results in anemia, which causes fatigue and can stress the heart, among other effects; low platelets dispose to severe bleeds. Although MDS can be caused by cancer treatment - such as DNA-damaging chemotherapy or radiation - many cases occur without a known precipitant.
According to the ABC coverage, the condition is a "rare reaction to the chemotherapy treatments that helped her beat breast cancer five years ago..." Now she's preparing for a bone marrow transplant. The donor is her older sister, "a virtually-perfect match," she informed the TV audience. This kind of news can be scary, even terrifying, to anyone who's had apparently successful cancer treatment.
Whether or not Roberts' blood condition is a complication of her treatment, her case highlights a common problem in oncology: Many cancer patients are unaware of the possible long-term effects of the treatments they choose.
I've witnessed this phenomenon from both sides. Doctors, for their part, contribute by not clearly communicating the risks of treatment. Some may not mention the risk of MDS or leukemia at all, or may minimize the possibility if they do so. This can happen with the best of intentions, in an effort to be reassuring and helpful. An oncologist, for example, might say something like:
"Well, you know, the chemo has a lot of side effects. It will make your hair fall out, and it'll probably cause nausea, but we have medicines to help with that. It will lower your immune system, and you'll be prone to infections for a while. These medicines can affect your liver, your lungs, your heart, your kidneys...there's a small chance you might get a cancer down the road...but this is the best treatment we have now for your cancer."
Having heard this, the patient may accept the risk, knowingly, because she's preoccupied about the tumor she has at the time of the discussion. A future leukemia - or myelodysplastic syndrome, if the doctor happens to mention it, which isn't often how these things go - is too abstract to consider.
Patients are responsible, too: Even when a doctor supplies all the information in an appropriate, non-harried manner, the patient may not "hear" what's said. She may not be focused on what the physician's saying, and instead be concentrating on something elsewhere like a pet, a child or a deceased parent. She may be uneducated in science, and fear seeming ignorant. She may be, simply, freaking out, and later have no recollection of the oncologist's words.
Like other women who've had breast cancer, I admire Roberts for her openness. As a blood and cancer specialist, I value her way of conveying information - she's shown other patients what it's like to get chemo, to lose your hair and now, unfortunately, to face a possible complication of treatment. |
As told to Raymond Swing
Since the completion of the first atomic bomb nothing has been accomplished to make the world more safe from war, while much has been done to increase the destructiveness of war. I am not able to speak from any firsthand knowledge about the development of the atomic bomb, since I do not work in this field. But enough has been said by those who do to indicate that the bomb has been made more effective. Certainly the possibility can be envisaged of building a bomb of far greater size, capable of producing destruction over a larger area. It also is credible that an extensive use could be made of radioactivated gases which would spread over a wide region, causing heavy loss of life without damage to buildings.
I do not believe it is necessary to go on beyond these possibilities to contemplate a vast extension of bacteriological warfare. I am skeptical that this form presents dangers comparable with those of atomic warfare. Nor do I take into account a danger of starting a chain reaction of a scope great enough to destroy part or all of this planet. I dismiss this on the ground that if it could happen from a man-made atomic explosion it would already have happened from the action of the cosmic rays which are continually reaching the earth's surface.
But it is not necessary to imagine the earth being destroyed like a nova by a stellar explosion to understand vividly the growing scope of atomic war and to recognize that unless another war is prevented it is likely to bring destruction on a scale never before held possible and even now hardly conceived, and that little civilization would survive it.
In the first two years of the atomic era another phenomenon is to be noted. The public, having been warned of the horrible nature of atomic warfare, has done nothing about it, and to a large extent has dismissed the warning from its consciousness. A danger that cannot be averted had perhaps better be forgotten; or a danger against which every possible precaution has been taken also had probably better be forgotten. That is, if the United States had dispersed its industries and decentralized its cities, it might be reasonable for people to forget the peril they face.
I should say parenthetically that it is well that this country has not taken these precautions, for to have done so would make atomic war still more probable, since it would convince the rest of the world that we are resigned to it and are preparing for it. But nothing has been done to avert war, while much has been done to make atomic war more horrible; so there is no excuse for ignoring the danger.
I say that nothing has been done to avert war since the completion of the atomic bomb, despite the proposal for supranational control of atomic energy put forward by the United States in the United Nations. This country has made only a conditional proposal, and on conditions which the Soviet Union is now determined not to accept. This makes it possible to blame the failure on the Russians.
But in blaming the Russians the Americans should not ignore the fact that they themselves have not voluntarily renounced the use of the bomb as an ordinary weapon in the time before the achievement of supranational control, or if supranational control is not achieved. Thus they have fed the fear of other countries that they consider the bomb a legitimate part of their arsenal so long as other countries decline to accept their terms for supranational control.
Americans may be convinced of their determination not to launch an aggressive or preventive war. So they may believe it is superfluous to announce publicly that they will not a second time be the first to use the atomic bomb. But this country has been solemnly invited to renounce the use of the bomb—that is, to outlaw it—and has declined to do so unless its terms for supranational control are accepted.
I believe this policy is a mistake. I see a certain military gain from not renouncing the use of the bomb in that this may be deemed to restrain another country from starting a war in which the United States might use it. But what is gained in one way is lost in another. For an understanding over the supranational control of atomic energy has been made more remote. That may be no military drawback so long as the United States has the exclusive use of the bomb. But the moment another country is able to make it in substantial quantities, the United States loses greatly through the absence of an international agreement, because of the vulnerability of its concentrated industries and its highly developed urban life.
In refusing to outlaw the bomb while having the monopoly of it, this country suffers in another respect, in that it fails to return publicly to the ethical standards of warfare formally accepted previous to the last war. It should not be forgotten that the atomic bomb was made in this country as a preventive measure; it was to head off its use by the Germans, if they discovered it. The bombing of civilian centers was initiated by the Germans and adopted by the Japanese. To it the Allies responded in kind—as it turned out, with greater effectiveness—and they were morally justified in doing so. But now, without any provocation, and without the justification of reprisal or retaliation, a refusal to outlaw the use of the bomb save in reprisal is making a political purpose of its possession; this is hardly pardonable.
I am not saying that the United States should not manufacture and stockpile the bomb, for I believe that it must do so; it must be able to deter another nation from making an atomic attack when it also has the bomb. But deterrence should be the only purpose of the stockpile of bombs. In the same way I believe that the United Nations should have the atomic bomb when it is supplied with its own armed forces and weapons. But it too should have the bomb for the sole purpose of deterring an aggressor or rebellious nations from making an atomic attack. It should not use the atomic bomb on its own initiative any more than the United States or any other power should do so. To keep a stockpile of atomic bombs without promising not to initiate its use is exploiting the possession of bombs for political ends. It may be that the United States hopes in this way to frighten the Soviet Union into accepting supranational control of atomic energy. But the creation of fear only heightens antagonism and increases the danger of war. I am of the opinion that this policy has detracted from the very real virtue in the offer of supranational control of atomic energy.
We have emerged from a war in which we had to accept the degradingly low ethical standards of the enemy. But instead of feeling liberated from his standards, and set free to restore the sanctity of human life and the safety of noncombatants, we are in effect making the low standards of the enemy in the last war our own for the present. Thus we are starting toward another war degraded by our own choice.
It may be that the public is not fully aware that in another war atomic bombs will be available in large quantities. It may measure the dangers in the terms of the three bombs exploded before the end of the last war. The public also may not appreciate that, in relation to the damage inflicted, atomic bombs already have become the most economical form of destruction that can be used on the offensive. In another war the bombs will be plentiful and they will be comparatively cheap. Unless there is a determination not to use them that is stronger than can be noted today among American political and military leaders, and on the part the public itself, atomic warfare will be hard to avoid. Unless Americans come to recognize that they are not stronger in the world because they have the bomb, but weaker because of their vulnerability to atomic attack, they are not likely to conduct their policy at Lake Success or in their relations with Russia in a spirit that furthers the arrival at an understanding.
BUT I do not suggest that the American failure to outlaw the use of the bomb except in retaliation is the only cause of the absence of an agreement with the Soviet Union over atomic control. The Russians have made it clear that they will do everything in their power to prevent a supranational regime from coming into existence. They not only reject it in the range of atomic energy: they reject it sharply on principle, and thus have spurned in advance any overture to join a limited world government.
Mr. Gromyko has rightly said that the essence of the American atomic proposal is that national sovereignty is not compatible with the atomic era. He declares that the Soviet Union cannot accept this thesis. The reasons he gives are obscure, for they quite obviously are pretexts. But what seems to be true is that the Soviet leaders believe they cannot preserve the social structure of the Soviet state in a supranational regime. The Soviet government is determined to maintain its present social structure, and the leaders of Russia, who hold their great power through the nature of that structure, will spare no effort to prevent a supranational regime from coming into existence, to control atomic energy or anything else.
The Russians may be partly right about the difficulty of retaining their present social structure in a supranational regime, though in time they may be brought to see that this is a far lesser loss than remaining isolated from a world of law. But at present they appear to be guided by their fears, and one must admit that the United States has made ample contributions to these fears, not only as to atomic energy but in many other respects. Indeed this country has conducted its Russian policy as though it were convinced that fear is the greatest of all diplomatic instruments.
That the Russians are striving to prevent the formation of a supranational security system is no reason why the rest of the world should not work to create one. It has been pointed out that the Russians have a way of resisting with all their arts what they do not wish to have happen; but once it happens, they can be flexible and accommodate themselves to it. So it would be well for the United States and other powers not to permit the Russians to veto an attempt to create supranational security. They can proceed with some hope that once the Russians see they cannot prevent such a regime they may join it.
So far the United States has shown no interest in preserving the security of the Soviet Union. It has been interested in its own security, which is characteristic of the competition which marks the conflict for power between sovereign states. But one cannot know in advance what would be the effect on Russian fears if the American people forced their leaders to pursue a policy of substituting law for the present anarchy of international relations. In a world of law, Russian security would be equal to our own, and for the American people to espouse this wholeheartedly, something that should be possible under the workings of democracy, might work a kind of miracle in Russian thinking.
At present the Russians have no evidence to convince them that the American people are not contentedly supporting a policy of military preparedness which they regard as a policy of deliberate intimidation. If they had evidences of a passionate desire by Americans to preserve peace in the one way it can be maintained, by a supranational regime of law, this would upset Russian calculations about the peril to Russian security in current trends of American thought. Not until a genuine, convincing offer is made to the Soviet Union, backed by an aroused American public, will one be entitled to say what the Russian response would be.
It may be that the first response would be to reject the world of law. But if from that moment it began to be clear to the Russians that such a world was coming into existence without them, and that their own security was being increased, their ideas necessarily would change.
I am in favor of inviting the Russians to join a world government authorized to provide security, and if they are unwilling to join, to proceed to establish supranational security without them. Let me admit quickly that I see great peril in such a course. If it is adopted it must be done in a way to make it utterly clear that the new regime is not a combination of power against Russia. It must be a combination that by its composite nature will greatly reduce the chances of war. It will be more diverse in its interests than any single state, thus less likely to resort to aggressive or preventive war. It will be larger, hence stronger than any single nation. It will be geographically much more extensive, and thus more difficult to defeat by military means. It will be dedicated to supranational security, and thus escape the emphasis on national supremacy which is so strong a factor in war.
If a supranational regime is set up without Russia, its service to peace will depend on the skill and sincerity with which it is done. Emphasis should always be apparent on the desire to have Russia take part. It must be clear to Russia, and no less so to the nations comprising the organization, that no penalty is incurred or implied because a nation declines to join. If the Russians do not join at the outset, they must be sure of a welcome when they do decide to join. Those who create the organization must understand that they are building with the final objective of obtaining Russian adherence.
These are abstractions, and it is not easy to outline the specific lines a partial world government must follow to induce the Russians to join. But two conditions are clear to me: the new organization must have no military secrets; and the Russians must be free to have observers at every session of the organization, where its new laws are drafted, discussed, and adopted, and where its policies are decided. That would destroy the great factory of secrecy where so many of the world's suspicions are manufactured.
It may affront the military-minded person to suggest a regime that does not maintain any military secrets. He has been taught to believe that secrets thus divulged would enable a war-minded nation to seek to conquer the earth. (As to the so-called secret of the atomic bomb, I am assuming the Russians will have this through their own efforts within a short time.) I grant there is a risk in not maintaining military secrets. If a sufficient number of nations have pooled their strength they can take this risk, for their security will be greatly increased. And it can be done with greater assurance because of the decrease of fear, suspicion, and distrust that will result. The tensions of the increasing likelihood of war in a world based on sovereignty would be replaced by the relaxation of the growing confidence in peace. In time this might so allure the Russian people that their leaders would mellow in their attitude toward the West.
MEMBERSHIP in a supranational security system should not, in my opinion, be based on any arbitrary democratic standards. The one requirement from all should be that the representatives to supranational organization—assembly and council—must be elected by the people in each member country through a secret ballot. These representatives must represent the people rather than any government—which would enhance the pacific nature of the organization.
To require that other democratic criteria be met is, I believe, inadvisable. Democratic institutions and standards are the result of historic developments to an extent not always appreciated in the lands which enjoy them. Setting arbitrary standards sharpens the ideological differences between the Western and Soviet systems.
But it is not the ideological differences which now are pushing the world in the direction of war. Indeed, if all the Western nations were to adopt socialism, while maintaining their national sovereignty, it is quite likely that the conflict for power between East and West would continue. The passion expressed over the economic systems of the present seems to me quite irrational. Whether the economic life of America should be dominated by relatively few individuals, as it is, or these individuals should be controlled by the state, may be important, but it is not important enough to justify all the feelings that are stirred up over it.
I should wish to see all the nations forming the supranational state pool all their military forces, keeping for themselves only local police. Then I should like to see these forces commingled and distributed as were the regiments of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. There it was appreciated that the men and officers of one region would serve the purposes of empire better by not being stationed exclusively in their own provinces, subject to local and racial pulls.
I should like to see the authority of the supranational regime restricted altogether to the field of security. Whether this would be possible I am not sure. Experience may point to the desirability of adding some authority over economic matters, since under modern conditions these are capable of causing national upsets that have in them the seeds of violent conflict. But I should prefer to see the function of the organization altogether limited to the tasks of security. I also should like to see this regime established through the strengthening of the United Nations, so as not to sacrifice continuity in the search for peace.
I do not hide from myself the great difficulties of establishing a world government, either a beginning without Russia or one with Russia. I am aware of the risks. Since I should not wish it to be permissible for any country that has joined the supranational organization to secede, one of these risks is possible civil war. But I also believe that world government is certain to come in time, and that the question is how much it is to be permitted to cost. It will come, I believe, even if there is another world war, though after such a war, if it is won, it would be world government established by the victor, resting on the victor's military power, and thus to be maintained permanently only through the permanent militarization of the human race.
But I also believe it can come through agreement and through the force of persuasion alone, hence, low cost. But if it is to come in this way it will not be enough to appeal to reason. One strength of the communist system of the East is that it has some of the character of a religion and inspires the emotions of a religion. Unless the cause of peace based on law gathers behind it the force and zeal of a religion, it hardly can hope to succeed. Those to whom the moral teaching of the human race is entrusted surely have a great duty and a great opportunity. The atomic scientists, I think, have become convinced that they cannot arouse the American people to the truths of the atomic era by logic alone. There must be added that deep power of emotion which is a basic ingredient of religion. It is to be hoped that not only the churches but the schools, the colleges, and the leading organs of opinion will acquit themselves well of their unique responsibility in this regard. |
Thanks to CNBC, the Department of Energy has been caught removing references to “SunPower,” a solar energy company that was given $1.2 billion in loan guarantees, from old press releases (H/T Hotair).
“The changes occurred in two press releases from the Department of Energy’s loan guarantee program — the same program that has been the center of controversy surrounding the failed solar company Solyndra,” reports Eamon Javers of CNBC.
“Both were changed to remove the name of a company that has received negative press attention in recent days, SunPower, and replace it with the name of another company, NRG Energy,” he added.
Watch the CNBC video:
What does this mean?
Hotair puts it bluntly:
Clean energy, cronyism, and another gigantic taxpayer loan headed down the toilet. As Andrew Stiles says, “SunPower is currently on track to become the second embarrassing failure in the DOE’s loan portfolio.”
Presumably DOE wants to do what little it can to scrub the company from its database before it melts down and another hugely embarrassing “federal-backed green project goes bust” media cycle begins.
Sadly, this story should not come as a surprise to many Blaze readers (or anyone else following the Fed’s energy loan program).
The Blaze has been investigating several of the energy investments of the Obama administration. We have meticulously cataloged the details of the Solyndra scandal, including the story of it’s loan restructuring and the fact that the administration was preparing to give it a second multimillion-dollar loan guarantee.
The Blaze also reported on a little known story that involved $420,000 in taxpayer-backed guarantees that were wasted on a doomed-from-the-start truck stop project in Tennessee.
There were other similar investments that The Blaze put on the radar because, like Solyndra, they did not sound like “good” bets and they reeked of cronyism.
An article titled Report: $737 Million ‘Green Jobs’ Loan Given to Company Affiliated with Pelosi’s Bro-in-Law revealed that there was a suspected level of cronyism involved in the awarding of $737 million to a solar energy company associated with Nancy Pelosi’s brother-in-law.
Another Blaze article titled Next Round: Obama Admin Authorizes Billions More In Loan Guarantees to Solar Companies reported that two more solar power companies were being awarded billions in loan guarantees.
There was First Solar, which received $3.1 billion ($967 million guarantee for a project in Arizona, $646 million for one in Antelope Valley and $1.46 billion for its 550-megawatt Desert Sunlight plant), and there was SunPower, which received $1.2 billion in loan guarantees.
Apparently, things started to unravel for the latter of those two companies. In an article titled The Next Round of Companies That Could Go Bankrupt, The Blaze documented the fact that SunPower (the solar energy company that received $1.2 billion in loan guarantees) was:
. . . getting destroyed with the rest of the U.S. industry. SunPower sold its 250MW California Valley Solar Ranch to NRG Energy this year. It also just signed a new $275 million revolving credit facility as well as a new $200 million letter of credit facility, according to Reuters.
Business Insider also noted that SunPower had a financial distress probability of 3.20 percent (as calculated by GovernanceMetrics International).
Next, Human Events brought us this:
How did a failing California solar company, buffeted by short sellers and shareholder lawsuits, receive a $1.2 billion federal loan guarantee for a photovoltaic electricity ranch project—three weeks after it announced it was building new manufacturing plant in Mexicali, Mexico, to build the panels for the project?
The company, SunPower (SPWR-NASDAQ), now carries $820 million in debt, an amount $20 million greater than its market capitalization.
If SunPower were a bank, the feds would shut it down. Instead, it received a lifeline twice the size of the money sent down the Solyndra drain.
Two men with insight into the process are SunPower rooter Rep. George R. Miller III, (D.-Calif.), the senior Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee and the co-chairman of the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, and his SunPower lobbyist son, George Miller IV.
Miller the Elder is a strong advocate for SunPower, which converted an old Richmond, Calif., Ford plant in his district to a panel-manufacturing facility.
So where do we stand?
The sad fact of the matter is that SunPower may be the next solar energy company to go broke. And where does that put the taxpayer?
- Mountain Plaza Inc.: $424,000
- Solyndra: $535,000,000
- SunPower: $1,200,000,000
- Grand total: $1,735,424,000
Keep your eyes on First Solar ($3.1 billion in loan guarantees).
Who knows? They may be the next “safe” investment to keel over.
Update via CNBC: “On Wednesday evening, a Department of Energy spokesman said that the press releases had been returned to their original content as a result of CNBC’s inquiry about the changes.” |
Peaches are in season and we try to use fresh and local ingredients when we prepare our legendary breakfasts. This year peaches the peaches are especially good. To make a peach pancake you need to remove the pit from the peach. To do this, take a paring knife and cut from the top of the peach to the bottom and continue around the pit until you are back where you started. The pit should be the only thing holding the peach together. Next take the peach in both hands and twist the sides in opposite directions until one half of the peach has separated from the pit. Carefully cut the pit out of the other half, using a spoon to get under the pit.
After you have separated the peach from the pit, you need to peel the skin off the peach, then slice the peach into 1/4 inch slices. You could peel the skin off before removing the pit, but it is easier to separate the halves before the skin is removed.
Next make the pancake batter. I use a buttermilk recipe that is easy and quick.
- Three large ripe peaches
- 3 Cups all-purpose flour
- 3 Tablespoons of granulated sugar (white)
- 1 Tablespoon of baking powder
- 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt
- 3 Cups of buttermilk
- 3 eggs
- 1/2 cup of whole milk
- 1/3 cup of melted unsalted butter
Sift the dry ingredients together into a bowl (flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt). In a second bowl whisk together the wet ingredients (buttermilk, eggs, whole milk and melted butter). Keep the two mixtures separate until you are ready to cook.
Heat a griddle or frying pan to medium heat. Put a little butter on the griddle/fry pan and place a peach slice on the griddle. This step is important. If you don’t butter the griddle/fry pan the peach will stick when you go to flip the pancake.
Pour the wet mixture into the dry mixture and mix using a fork or wooden spoon. Mix until just blended together (it will be lumpy). Do NOT over blend the mixture. Using a scoop (I use an ice cream scoop) pour the batter over the peach. Brown on both sides and serve with butter and maple syrup. This recipe should serve twelve people. If you are making them in batches you can preheat the oven to 200 degrees and store the pancakes in the oven until you have cooked all of them and are ready to serve them.
The warm juicy peach adds sweetness to the pancake. I’m sure you will enjoy these as much as our guests do.
Have a great breakfast recipe? We are always looking for something special to serve our guests. Send us an email with your recipe and we may publish it on our blog. If you will be visiting the Lynchburg area, consider staying at The Carriage House Inn Bed and Breakfast. We were recently named as one of the Top 10 Bed and Breakfasts in the United States by BedandBreakfast.com.
It’s amazing what we take for granted now days. With a flip of a switch we have power and all the things that go with it such as hot water, air conditioning, computers, televisions, stoves, washers and dryers and much more. All that changed suddenly last Friday (June 29th) about 9:30 PM. After taking Kathy out for a birthday dinner we headed home and were relaxing until the wind picked up and we ran outside to secure all of our front porch furniture. The wind got worse the power flickered and then things went black. Finding our flashlights we wandered around the house to see if there was any damage and noticed a huge tree limb from across the street had fallen and was blocking the street. As storms go it wasn’t much of a storm, only about twenty minutes of high winds with some thunder and lighting and an insignificant amount of rain which did nothing to ease the drought. It was the hottest day of the year with temperatures reaching 103 degrees and this little wind storm dropped the temperature about 20 degrees. Without power we called it a night and we expected things to be back to “normal” the following day.
Saturday morning we woke up and still no power. The forecast was for another 100+ degree day but I had confidence that things would be restored quickly now that it was daylight. Fortunately we didn’t have quests that weekend so we thought it would be a great day to do some exploring around town, but first we decided to go to McDonalds. As we approached the golden arches traffic came to a complete stop. As we inched our way closer and closer it was apparent that we were not the only ones without power. The line of people waiting to be served was out the door, every parking spot was taken and people were parking blocks away and walking…we didn’t stop for breakfast that morning.
The phone started ringing. “Do you have rooms available for tonight?” the caller asked. “Our power is out and we aren’t taking reservations until it is restored,” Kathy replied. I can’t blame people wanting to get out of their hot house but I thought they were over reacting as power would surely be back on by mid-afternoon. As we drove around and saw trees down, streets closed, power lines in the road I realized that we may not have power today. Every couple of minutes the phone would ring….”Do you have any rooms available?” After about the 30th calls we changed the message on our phone, “Due to the power outage we are not taking reservations until our power is restored.” We, like the 70+ percent of Lynchburg that didn’t have power, just made the best of a bad situation until we started hearinig that it could be a week or so before all the power was restored. Deciding that it might be prudent to get a hotel room with air conditioning I started making calls. The front desk person, if they even answered the phone, would laugh when I asked the question so when it was obvious that there was not a room available within a 60 mile radius we made the best of a bad situation and went to bed early. That night it was a little warm in the house, but I was still confident that we would get power the next day.
Sunday we woke up to no power and Kathy went jetting off to Michigan to visit her mom. I called people that had reservations with us this week and explained the situation (no power, but I’m optimistic that it will be on before they arrive later in the week.) Every one cancels their reservation. The phone continued ringing and ringing and ringing, locals looking for a room with air. By the afternoon I decided to go to the movies to cool off. On the way home I had the brilliant idea that I could get a generator and hook up a window air conditioner that was stored in garage and be able to sleep in air conditioned comfort. Stopping at all the stores in town I quickly found out that no one had generators, but I could order one and have it in three weeks. That reminded me of looking for a snow blower two winters ago before the third major snow storm hit us. To make a long story short, I bought a hammock since I couldn’t find a generator and hung it over the covered driveway. Even though the drive is covered it does get a little sun in the late afternoon so I would cool down the asphalt by wetting it down at dusk and then settle in for the evening. It’s amazing how many cars drive up and down our street all night long! Where are they going? There isn’t anything open at 2:00am and no one has power. Why aren’t they at home sleeping? Some day I’m going to stay up all night and follow all these people to see where they are going. There must be something really interesting at the end of our street for all these people to be driving there. That’s a project for another day, for now, I’ll just put a pillow over my head and try to sleep.
Monday morning. Another HOT day! I’m not going to waste my time calling hotels; I’m going there in person. Someone has to be checking out of a room and I was going to be there to get it. Well that plan didn’t work, but at least I was able to recharge my cell phone…yes, people were still calling and no, I don’t have any rooms available but at least I now had a fully charged phone. By the afternoon I decided that I needed to clean out our three refrigerators and our free-standing freezer. Rather than just throw things away I decided to have a cookout and feed the neighborhood before things went bad. We had wild Alaska salmon, pork chops, steak, hamburgers and pork loin as the main course and had a feast. Thankfully I had a full tank of propane for the grill. Dinner was a big hit. It’s always good to connect with your neighbors. As I was cooking the power came back on. Life is good again. I rolled up the hammock and moved indoors to our bed.
I was one of the fortunate ones. Our power came on but there are still lots of people without power. Tuesday morning I start getting calls from all the hotels in town letting me know they now have a room available for me, but no one is calling me looking for a room. As I sit in my air conditioned office writing this post there are hundreds of electric workers in the hot sun on this 97 degree day working to restore power to more neighborhoods so that other families can get back to normal. The City workers that had July 4th off are working hard trying to clear streets. The land fill is open (I took a truckload of brush there). Later tonight I’ll pick Kathy up from the airport.
If you are reading this post, I want to assure you we now have power AND we have rooms available. Please feel free to call us and make your reservation. To put it another way, The Carriage House Inn Bed and Breakfast is open for business. We have cool rooms and cold beverages! Call now to reserve your room!
I hope everyone has a great 4th of July.
Blueberries are in abundance during the month of June, so our signature dish this month at The Carriage House Inn Bed and Breakfast is Blueberry Pecan Scones. Easy to make, delicious to eat, and good for you this recipe is one you will enjoy. We are growing blueberry bushes in our organic garden and hope to be able to harvest our own blueberries next summer. This month, as we did last month, we visited a farm near Lynchburg, Virginia to pick them fresh.
- 2 cups flour
- 1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar, divided
- 3 teaspoons baking powder
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 cup cold butter, unsalted
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup whole milk
- 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 cup fresh blueberries
- 1/3 cup chopped pecans, toasted
- 2 teaspoons grated lemon peel
- 1 egg white, lightly beaten
In a large bowl combine the flour, 1/4 cup sugar, baking powder and salt. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
In a small bowl whisk the egg, milk and vanilla; add to crumb mixture. Stir in blueberries, pecans and lemon peel just until moistened.
Turn onto a floured surface, knead 6-8 times. Pat into an 8-inch circle; cut into eight wedges. Separate wedges and place 2 inches apart on a greased baking sheet.
Brush with egg white and sprinkle with remaining sugar. Bake at 375 for 18-20 minutes or until lightly browned. Serve warm.
Makes 8 large scones.
At The Carriage House Inn Bed and Breakfast we bake these scones in a mini-scone pan, found in kitchen specialty stores or at kingarthurflour.com, and serve them as our Amuse-Bouche course at the beginning of our legendary four-course breakfast. The smaller pan makes 16 2″x3″ mini-scones. We have used white sugar crystals or sprinkling sugar, found at kitchen specialty stores or wherever cake baking supplies are sold, as the final step, adjusting the amount of granulated sugar used in the recipe accordingly. You may use frozen blueberries. If using frozen blueberries do not thaw to avoid discoloring the batter. To toast the pecans, place them on a baking sheet in a 350 oven for 7-10 minutes, or until fragrant and a medium-brown color. Watch them carefully as they burn easily. Chop them after they are toasted. These scones are great served alone or when accompanied by Lemon Curd, found in the baking isle at most grocery stores, for a taste balance of sweet and citrus-tart.
Flag Day is celebrated on June 14. It commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States, which happened that day by resolution of the Second Continental Congress in 1777. John Adams introduced the following resolution before the Continental Congress, meeting at Philadelphia, PA: “Resolved, that the flag of the thirteen United States shall have thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white on a blue field, representing a new constellation.”
In 1914, President Woodrow Wison declared June 14 “Flag Day.” In 1949 Congress passed legislation asking President Harry S. Truman to issue an annual proclamation calling for the observance of the hoilday.
The week of June 14 is designated as “National Flag Week.” During National Flag Week, the president will issue a proclamation urging all U.S. citizens to fly the American flag for the duration of that week. The flag should also be displayed on all government buildings.
At The Carriage House Inn Bed and Breakfast, in Lynchburg, VA, we fly two flags from our front porch. One is the flag of fifty stars and stripes. The other is a flag of thirty-eight stars and stripes, representing the states of the union in 1878 when our house was completed. The Watts family would have flown such a flag.
Flag Day is not an official federal holiday, although many towns and cities throughout the United States celebrate this day with parades, speeches and other forms of patriotic expression. Perhaps the oldest continuing Flag Day parade is at Fairfield, Washington. Beginning in 1909 or 1910, Fairfield has held a parade every year since, with the possible exception of 1918, and celebrated the “Centennial” parade in 2010.
We look forward to observing flags being flown throughout Lynchburg and Central Virginia.
In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson dubbed June 14 “Flag Day.” In 1949 Congress passed legislation asking the president to issue an annual proclamation calling for the observance of the holiday.
April 21-28, 2012 is Historic Garden Week in Virginia. On Tuesday, April 24, 2012 Lynchburg, Virginia is proud to host visitors to our city and locals to our Garden Day Tour.
Sponsored by The Lynchburg Garden Club and the Hillside Garden Club this year’s tour includes admission to 6 locations: The Carriage House Inn Bed and Breakfast at 404 Cabell Street, 301 Cabell Street, Point of Honor at 112 Cabell Street, 4935 Mountain Laurel Drive, 4924 Mountain Laurel Drive (all in Lynchburg) and Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest at 1542 Bateman Bridge Road in Forest.
The houses and gardens will be open for touring between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. You may visit the properties in any order. Contact the Lynchburg Chamber of Commerce at 434.847.1811 for information about purchasing tickets, in advance, to this day of nature and heritage. Tickets may be purchased at each location on Garden Day.
The Carriage House Inn Bed and Breakfast has limited availability should you wish to stay the night before or after the tour. Call us at 434.846.1388 to inquire about your luxurious accomodations while celebrating Historic Garden Week in Virginia.
Today we celebrate the first day of spring, but to our bushes and trees, spring came several weeks ago. We have a saucer magnolia tree next to our patio and it started blooming in February. Yes, this tree is supposed to bloom in the closing days of winter or beginning of spring, but in years past the blooms appear one day and are typically gone a few days later when the frost causes all the blossoms to drop from the tree.
With the mild weather this year, the blossoms have lingered for over three weeks. The aroma when opening the back door is unbelievable and as the blooms fall, making way for the leaves, we have a carpet of pink pedals covering the patio. To say this has been a spectacular year in our back yard is an understatement.
In addition our Camilla bush is in full bloom and the 300 daffodil bulbs I planted last fall are also in full bloom.
We will soon be putting in our garden and getting ready for Garden Day. Yes, we our home will be on tour for Historic Garden Day next month. Will keep you posted. We are expecting over 1600 people (based on last year’s figures) to see our home on Garden Day. Obviously they will be here to look at the house, not the gardens, although we are making some progress on getting the yard in shape.
We would love to welcome you to The Carriage House Inn Bed and Breakfast this spring or summer so that you too may enjoy our restful patio or wraparound front porch. Don’t you deserve some time to relax?
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The preliminary economic impact report on the 34th America’s Cup is in. The independently commissioned report shows an economic impact to the city of US$550 million and over 3,800 jobs created.
“Hosting the 34th America’s Cup in San Francisco showcased our beautiful City to the world and brought thousands of new jobs, long-overdue legacy waterfront improvements, international visitor spending, and a boost to our regional economy,” noted San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee in a statement. “Our investment brought in significant revenue to the City and the lessons we learned will help us deliver even better world-class events in the Bay Area in the future.”
America’s Cup events ran from July through September this summer with racing on San Francisco Bay. The America’s Cup Park and America’s Cup Village venues along the waterfront attracted nearly 1-million visitors, with another million taking in the action from various sites along the city front.
“This year's America’s Cup has been a winner for San Francisco, the Bay Area and California,” said Gavin Newsom, the Lt. Governor of California. “The sport on the water was thrilling, with ORACLE TEAM USA’s comeback win over Emirates Team New Zealand leaving fans on the edge of their seats until the winner’s gun fired. And economically, we scored as well, with an impact of over $500 million.”
“The America’s Cup in San Francisco has been a very positive experience for both the event and for the city,” said Russell Coutts, the CEO of Oracle Team USA, who selected San Francisco as the venue after winning the Cup in 2010. “The economic impact numbers show what the America’s Cup can deliver. San Francisco provided a spectacular venue for racing and the final was one of the most exciting in the 162-year history of the event.”
The preliminary economic impact report was provided to the City by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute (BACEI), who will issue a full report before the end of the year.
“The $550 million in economic activity generated by the America’s Cup is substantial,” said Sean Randolph, President of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. “The activity benefitted hundreds of small businesses and other employers in San Francisco and the Bay Area and produced tax revenue that supports a wide range of important city services.” |
Free FTP and Downloading Utilities
Do you download a lot of programs from the Web? Then you should check out our roundup of the Web's best free FTP programs (and other file transfer utilities) below.
"FTP" stands for File Transfer Protocol. Simply put, it is a way to copy files to and from FTP servers elsewhere on a network. And it's the most common method for downloading files onto your computer (and uploading files to Web sites).
Some people do all their downloading through their Web browsers. Indeed, for casual downloaders, your browser may be all the software you need.
But if you download a lot of files, you should check out the FTP and other file transfer programs we list below. They provide a much superior method for downloading software. They provide many handy features that can make your downloading time much more efficient. For example, some of these programs let you "tag" various files that you'd like to download while you're surfing. After you've finished a surfing session, they'll automatically go out and retrieve the files for you and then shut down your connection. Other programs will automatically reconnect and resume a failed download for you. (There are few things more annoying than losing your connection after you've downloaded 19 megabytes of a 20 meg file!) |
Ford is working on a radical redesign of its best-selling F-Series pickup, one that The Wall Street Journal reports “is one of the biggest gambles in its 108-year history.”
Ford, like its Detroit rivals, Chrysler and General Motors, is beavering away on solutions to meet ever-tougher fuel economy rules that some in the industry think put popular and profitable pickups at risk. That is, the Detroit Three, which rely on pickups for significant profits and prestige, are racing to meet demanding fleet-wide fuel economy rules while at the same time scrambling to keep meeting the needs of pickup buyers who, for the most part, use their trucks not for image, but for work. That means pickups must be capable – capable of hauling and towing and doing so under demanding work-site conditions.
Ford, notes The Journal, is working on a plan to strip hundreds of kilograms out of the next all-new F-Series (due around 2014) by using significant amounts of aluminum. The goal is to slice 15 per cent of the F-150’s total weight, thereby improving fuel economy by 10 per cent or more. “Along with the aluminum makeover, the new F-150 also is getting a more muscular look,” reports The Journal, quoting a Ford designer.
The move to aluminum is risky. While the metal is certainly lighter than the steel used in today’s mainstream pickups, it is also expensive as a raw material and difficult to work with from a manufacturing perspective. To date, aluminum is found only in costly luxury vehicles from the likes of Jaguar and Audi.
Ford also faces the challenge of building a largely aluminum pickup without compromising the job-site capabilities pickup buyers demand. In addition, the business publication cites durability and reliability concerns among those being addressed by Ford.
Meanwhile, General Motors is readying a redesign of its own workhorse pickups. All-new versions of the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra are expected in showrooms next spring as 2014 models. In addition to bringing to market a new full-size lineup, GM is also planning to revamp its mid-size pickup offerings to meet the needs of buyers who want exceptional fuel economy in a smaller but still capable rig. Automotive News reports that a next-generation Chevy Colorado mid-sized pickup is expected in showrooms by late 2013 or early 2014 – as is a new GMC Canyon.
For buyers who want an everyday suburban pickup that fits in shopping mall parking slots, the latter is good news. Ford has discontinued its popular Ranger pickup in Canada and the United States, and that has left a big hole in Ford of Canada’s lineup. Chrysler discontinued the Dodge Dakota mid-size pickup in 2011.
As for the rest of the pickup world, Toyota has its Tundra and Nissan the Titan, neither of which has enjoyed anything close to the kind of success the Japanese auto makers had hoped. There is a long list of good reasons for this. For starters, Toyota and Nissan offer very limited big pickup lineups in terms of cab and bed sizes, engine choices, transmissions, gearing and the like. That said, Toyota and Nissan are not likely to abandon the big pickup market. Various reports suggest the Titan will get more than the current 5.6-litre V-8 offering in a future update. This will be necessary to meet stricter fuel economy regulations. The Tundra, meanwhile, has been criticized for the poor fuel economy of both its V-8 and V-6 engines.
Toyota and Nissan would like to compete more effectively in large pickups, but until they make true and complete commitments to the segment, the Detroit Three will hold onto their 90 per cent-plus share. |
The US Republican party has made a bad start showcasing its presidential talent as it begins to choose a candidate to run against Barack Obama next year. Its prime exhibit is Mitt Romney, who made his personal fortune downsizing companies, but whose current message – ironically – is "jobs, jobs, jobs". He joked to unemployed Floridians, that he, too, was unemployed. Few laughed. Or there is Michele Bachmann, who makes sense to the evangelical right, but sounds almost unhinged to many others. Her answer to faltering economic recovery? Close down the Environmental Protection Agency.
There is the pizza executive Herman Cain, who said he would not be comfortable with a Muslim in his cabinet, and the once politically potent Newt Gingrich, whose backers are heading for the door. There is Tim Pawlenty, who announced his intention to attack Mr Romney for a healthcare programme – which resembled the one that Barack Obama went on to create – when he was governor of Massachusetts; he ducked the opportunity during a debate in New Hampshire and regretted the fact he had done so afterwards. There is Rick Santorum, whose solution for 14 million unemployed was repealing healthcare reform and drilling for oil. As a test-tube sample of what is happening inside the party, the lineup is revealing.
This is a party that is still too angry with the incumbent president to think clearly about its electoral goals. If it were less consumed by its own narcissistic fury, the Republican party would have realised that its key target audience lies outside the comfort zone of tax cutting, small government and the supposed imminent arrival of sharia law. The party has to convince independents that it speaks to their central concerns, which are jobs and the economy. Above all, Republicans have to have a viable alternative plan for economic recovery. If Mr Romney had any idea of how to start getting America's 14 million jobless back to work, he would have acknowledged the effectiveness of the bailout of General Motors and Chrysler, which saved 1.4m jobs and probably a whole industry from going under. But he attacked it as jobs for the unionised boys, without being honest enough to admit what would have happened if Detroit had been allowed to go under.
Because of the gains made by the Tea Party last year, potential candidates such as Rick Perry, governor of Texas, can make headway by threatening to withdraw his state from the Medicaid programme. Yet each one of his pluses to a Tea Party audience is a minus to a national one. This is not going unnoticed in the polls. It is early days in the campaign but Republican voters already distinguish between people they like and those they think would make good presidential candidates. Sarah Palin disappears completely through that crack while Mr Romney survives. If she decides not to run, his lead expands. The polls confirm one of the main lessons of the 2010 midterms – the toxicity of ultra-conservative candidates who saved the Democrats from a complete drubbing when voters last went to the polls.
Yet the party has not yet absorbed the lesson. It matters that the other candidates feel so vulnerable to far-right extremes that they cannot bring themselves to condemn Mr Cain for saying he feels uncomfortable with Muslims. Jon Huntsman, a former Utah governor expected to declare, Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, all found reasons to absent themsleves from the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans on Friday – just as well for them, given the extraordinarily ill-judged but deeply revealing decision to allow an Obama impersonator to make racially charged remarks from the platform on Saturday. If the conference is a bellwether, the flock will go over a cliff. Yet it is not in any Democrat's interests that this happens. The national debate needs pragmatists, not people who indulge their grievances and parade their prejudice as badges of identity. |
I keep thinking about Cornish pasties, which have just been given protected status by the European commission, and every time I do, I come over all Nigel Farage. I just don't understand it. What's the point of a system that gives a pasty cachet for being made in Cornwall rather than for the quality of its ingredients, or the skill with which it is made? Cornwall is replete with inferior factory-made pasties. Meanwhile, in Devon – and in Cumbria, Norfolk and Essex, too, for all I know – people are making perfectly delicious Cornish pasties which they are now forbidden to connect with the county where they were invented. As Nigel would say: "This is European bureaucracy gone mad!"
The EU Protected Food Names Scheme protects regional foods against imitation, and doles out, to those who meet the criteria, three different kinds of award: Protected Designation of Origin (PDO); Protected Geographical Indication (PGI); and Traditional Speciality Guaranteed (TSG). It is the second of these that the Cornish pasty received. Of course, on paper, legally protecting regional foods is a fine idea; it's another weapon in the battle against homogenisation. But of these three, only PDO protects foods whose characteristics are connected to the place in which they are produced (PDO is basically Euro-speak for terroir). The characteristics of Swaledale cheese, for instance, are dependent on local milk: in Swaledale, animals are pastured in herb-rich grassland, and this contributes to the fresh taste of the cheese. But PGI and TSG are pointless. I won't bore you with the details – read the commission's terms and conditions and lose the will to live – but, in essence, they're merely a means of distinguishing one product from another. Terroir has nothing to do with it.
I think the term PDO should stay, and the other two should go. That way, the award-winning pasty makers of Devon and elsewhere could continue to sell their delicious Cornish pasties – and we could still protect our regional foods. The question is: which ones? You can see why the smokehouses of Arbroath wanted to protect the reputation of their salty fish; Arbroath smokies are so famously delicious, there is serious cash to be made in passing off fakes as the real thing. But are Dittisham plums (Devon) and Cotherstone cheese (Co Durham) truly famous enough to require protection?
Oh, well. There is fun, and a certain amount of madness, to be had in coming up with a list. If you're strict about it, so very few things count. Take Yorkshire, county of my birth. Most of its greatest treats could be made anywhere: Yorkshire relish, curd tarts, parkin, Pontefract cakes, dandelion and burdock (the world's best dandelion and burdock is made by Mr Fitzpatrick's in Rawtenstall, Lancashire). Most of Yorkshire's cheeses are already protected. Do Ribston Pippin apples count? I don't know. Their history began in Ribston Hall, Knaresborough, 300 years ago, when Sir Henry Goodricke arrived from France with a pip, but now they are grown everywhere, and I have no idea whether a Ribston Pippin from Yorkshire tastes better than one from Surrey.
I became obsessed with my list but, even after hours of swotting, there were just two things on it: Evesham asparagus (increasingly rare, but still the best) and Morecambe Bay potted shrimps. In The Taste of Britain by Laura Mason and Catherine Brown (the best book about British regional food I know), I found a section on Orcadian razor clams, a delicacy known locally as "spoots". But since I have never visited Orkney, let alone tasted spoots, I felt it was cheating to add them.
The only way I could think of increasing the list was to include dishes made from "secret" recipes, on the grounds that, while such formulae have little to do with terroir, their classified nature means they cannot be replicated precisely. If the commission was to start protecting ancient recipes, you could include various sausages, and all sorts of sweet things: I would choose the Whitby lemon buns you can buy at Botham's of Whitby – though sadly it is already too late for the sweets I ate on holiday in Northumberland as a child. Cowe's, maker of Berwick Cockles, a soft-ish striped mint, shut up shop last year after 200 years in business. As Nigel Farage would no doubt say: "Another great British business sold down the river!" Poor Nigel. He wants it both ways, and I'm embarrassed to admit I know exactly how he feels. |
100 kg of gold seized last week was camouflaged as mehndi powder
What do mehndi (henna) and gold have in common, apart from being used during weddings? Apparently, the skin decorating paste is now being used to smuggle bullion consignments into the country.
Earlier this week Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) sleuths seized packets of mehndi mixed with powdered gold at the Chennai airport. In the last five days, the DRI has seized around 100 kg of gold being smuggled in — mainly through the Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai airports — as mehndi powder and in other innovative combinations.
“Smugglers are using newer ways to bring in gold, including concealing it in mobile phones, dry fruits, belt buckles and even briefcases. Some have even brought in gold spoons by coating them with stainless steel to hide the yellow metal,” revealed a senior DRI official.
Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Monday said around three tonnes of gold was estimated to be smuggled in every month. The DRI has made 73 seizures involving an import value (inclusive of duty) of ₹125.71 crore. However, this is said to be only a fraction of the actual quantum of gold smuggled in.
In Pune, officials found gold inside dates, with the seeds replaced by bullion. Likewise, the buckle in the belt of one enterprising smuggler was discovered to be gold with a metallic colour over it.
In Ahmedabad, one person walked in and declared he was carrying gold ore. It turned out to be less than the truth. What was ‘ore’ was in reality a pure gold bar melted with silver and then mixed with soil, cement and various colours. The final product, indeed, had a natural ‘gold ore’ look.
The ‘metallic look’ has also been found in the outer bands of briefcases. The original metal bands had been replaced with gold and then given a metallic touch.
The DRI official admitted that it is impossible to detect such smuggling without tip-offs. “We have relied on this and occasionally also on the way passengers walk in. You need to be alert,” he said.
Since curbs were imposed on gold imports last year, there has been an increase in smuggling. But unlike in the past, when they came in by sea, much of the illicit gold is today entering via airports.
Besides, smugglers are bringing in gold by rail or road from Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan.
Until recently, these countries did not impose any curbs on imports. Following meetings between DRI officials and their neighbouring counterparts, Pakistan announced a 30-day ban on gold imports in January; Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Bhutan raised their import duties to 7.5, 37.5 and 13 per cent, respectively. |
‘Hey, you’re a cyborg!!!’ said Time magazine. Like a million years ago. Because someone invented a digital watch with a built in week-to-view calendar. Probably. Okay, so, I have no clue if that ever happened, but that point I’m trying to make is that calling humans cyborgs is hyperbole, old news, and very, very true.
It’s a concept we should get used to, but not in its most usual manifestation – as the kitsch visual metaphor for interdependent flesh and technology. That’s the cyborg of sci-fi dreams and nightmares, with an aesthetic span reaching from The Terminator’s jagged extrusions of metal-as-armour to the frictionless simulacra of Bladerunner. It’s a fun romp through body-insecurity and organic-obsolescence but I think we’ve moved on as a culture – the cyborg of the 21st century should represent the unseen integrations of human and technology that we’ve created through our social networks; it’s a cyborg of the self.
Amber Case is another whom agrees that we need a renaissance in cyborg semantics. She refers to her sociological research as ‘cyborg anthropology’ and agrees that our technologies have extended our notion self beyond the purely physical. Think about the information about yourself that is floating around the ether at this minute: there’s the known-knowns of Facebook pics and hilarious Tweets (seriously, I love them); but there’s probably information you’re not even aware of – you might be listed in a database published by your uni, or your work – as well as odd slivers of data, generated by your interactions with other people, which are as open to interpretation as any ‘authoritative’ status update.
Case refers to this digital collection of bits (and bobs) as a ‘second self’, and really, that’s not a bad way to begin conceptualising this. When you go to bed today there will still be something that is running around with your face and name, being you, on the internet. This ‘you’ is one that people can interact with publicly of course, but it also someone that people will react to without you knowing – social freeloaders, getting their fill of judgement and voyeuristic pleasure pretty much without your consent. So far, so blah – an unfortunate side-effect of this ‘naturalised cyborgism’ is that it’s really not too shocking. It’s as Case points out – we have adolescences and then we have digital adolescences; manipulating our semiotics of self by tweaking profile pics aesthetics is so intuitive to our generation that it’s often barely conscious.
Anyway, all of this is leading into a much more enticing slice of thought pie: the concept, and fallacy, of digital dualism. It’s a term coined by social media theorist Nathan ‘so on the money he’s a founding father’ Jurgenson all the way back in 2011 and refers to a world view that conceptualises the digital and the physical as separate, non-interactive realms. When Case refers to our ‘second self’ she is subscribing to the concept of digital dualism – she suggests that there is a binary between our digital and our physical personas, when it is more constructive to consider these selves as enmeshed as doing so encourages us to assess the issues of physical/digital friction more seriously. Post-structualism teaches us that we should continuously assess and assay our language, for it drives not only how we think but also how we are.
And of course, understanding digital dualism is not simply important in a ‘It’s fun to reference Foucault’ sort of way – Jurgenson also points out why this critique is relevant in more concrete terms. For example, let’s consider the idea of ‘web objectivity’ – the concept that the Internet transcends social structures to produce a utopian wonderverse in which distinctions of class and race are stripped away and we are judged on our merits alone. This sort of thinking is easily mocked for its brand of feverish techno-optimism – the sort of early-90s enthusiasm that was commendable in its forward thinking but that failed to recognise how social distinctions are preserved on the web. Jurgenson references the “hidden hierarchies” of Wikipedia – an entirely laudable project but one that nevertheless retains the power structures of the society that spawned it – this article from the New York times gives the relevant stats [insert article here]. Now whilst these numbers are hardly a surprise, and nor do they take away from the many successes of Wikipedia (incase its not yet obvious, I really like Wikipedia) – they do show why an awareness of digital dualism is important: it engenders a mode of thinking responsive to the hidden inequalities of web. And as Foucault says ‘invisibility is power.’
Now, since first coining the terms, Jurgenson has finessed his theories into four separate concepts (and I can’t recommend enough reading him firsthand,) labelling the view that digital and physical worlds are part of one reality and that they interact ‘mild augmented reality.’ I have to say that it’s not a term I’m particularly fond of. It seems too strongly associated with the technological ecosystems of VR goggles and augmented reality apps (programs for smartphones that add a digital overlay in realtime to our environment); whilst also implying that the ‘overlay’ of the digital world is an add-on, an ‘augmentation’ of our physical reality – seemingly denying the very ‘one-ness’ that the theory proclaims. I’m not pretending to have any solution to this terminology conundrum; I’m bringing it up simply to illustrate that this is an inchoate theoretical field. It’s exciting to think about because it makes you think exciting things, but it’s also exciting in that it is in the process of emergence as we speak and we can get involved and talk about it. I knew the internet was good for something.
Anyway, let’s return to our cyborgs and to our multiple selves, I think they’re getting a bit bored in the corner. So whilst I disagree with the conceptual underpinnings of Amber Case’s ‘first’ and ‘second’ selves, I couldn’t agree more that the issue of multiple- and extended- identity are key to understanding this enterprise and in general, with regards to, you know, life and that, terribly, terribly important.
The internet really does allow us to be different people, and it does this in a bewildering variety of ways: from the obvious methods of picking a new username or creating a game avatar, to the subtleties of profile-semiotics or the ironic deployment of memes and LULZspaek. In essence, interactions online are as complex and rich and disturbing and weird as interactions in real life are. And with this in mind we might asses the digital dualists’ position as motivated by a desire to preserve the integrity of their identity; they do not want to acknowledge the possibility that their digital identity is, to many people, as real as their physical counterpart. It’s an extension of the old humanist ideal – one that posits a completely rational and composed self, capable of truly unbiased thought. Shoring up the barricades between the digital and the physical is simply the latest redoubt in our attempts to preserve the boundaries of the self.
In all honesty, this might not even be the case – at this point, I’m only volunteering my own interpretation. The notion of identity is something that was confusing before the internet existed, and will continue to be confusing after it. As the narrator of Bernard Wolfe’s Limbo puts it “the human skin is an artificial boundary: the world wanders into and the self wanders out of it”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kP0KBFERTt4 Eg, individuals don’t even think that ‘being online’ counts as ‘being online’ anymore; and here’s another study that shows how our online identities really do reflect an ‘offline’ truth See, I told you it was fun. I found this quotation in the chapter ‘Terminal Flesh’ in Scott Bukatman’s excellent Terminal Identity. It’s a pretty amazing book. |
Amy is trying to decide if she likes oatmeal or not. We would like to help her out. Here's her question:
Everyone seems to say that oatmeal is a powerhouse of health. I have a problem though — I don't know if I like it. What's a foolproof prep plan/recipe so I can try it and decide for sure. It looks yummy and warm and perfect for these frigid times.Amy, yes, oatmeal is indeed a powerhouse of fiber, nutrition, and yummy nourishment. We like it year-round, although it is very comforting in the colder months. We do not think, however, that you should eat something purely because it is "good for you;" it's no fun to eat things just for health, and it won't lead to better health long-term. No, you should eat things because they are delicious, and oatmeal is fortunately one of those foods that is both nutritious and delicious — when prepared well.
There are a few key things about oatmeal that you should know.
1. Buy steel cut oats.
The oat is a little piece of grain, right? The oats you find in Quaker boxed oats or in the usual oatmeal are rolled oats. These are flattened heads of grain. The oat is toasted, then rolled flat by huge machines. This flattened, flaked oat can be cooked much more quickly and easily. Rolled oats (pictured above on the left) are the most common sort of oats you can find. They could be called quick-cooking or old-fashioned oats. Instant oats are rolled oats that have been pre-cooked so they can be made into a porridge extremely quickly with boiling water.
Steel cut oats (pictured above on the right), one the other hand, are not flattened. The original oat grain (called a groat) is chopped roughly into smaller pieces, leaving the hull and kernel intact.
These steel cut oats have the same amount of fiber and nutrients as the rolled oats, but their real merit is in their texture and taste. Oatmeal from rolled oats has a tendency to get mushy and gluey, and instant oatmeal even more so. But steel-cut oats retain their pearly individual structure in a creamy porridge — like an oat risotto. They are delicious with great texture, even when reheated.
2. Start your oatmeal at night.
Steel cut oats, however, do take much longer to cook than rolled oats. Half an hour is the usual cooking time, compared to just five minutes for rolled oats. But fortunately steel cut oats are just as good reheated as when they're fresh. (Very different from rolled oats in this respect!) It's best made at night, or at least started before bed.
Dress up your oatmeal with milk, sugar, and dried fruit
We love adding all sorts of texture and taste to our oatmeal. Some favorite mix-ins: vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, unsweetened coconut, chopped pecans or walnuts, raisins (plumped up in a little juice or booze), stewed prunes, dried cranberries or dates.
OK, here now is a basic recipe for making foolproof steel cut oats quickly and easily.
Before you go to bed, heat a sliver of butter in a 2-quart saucepan over medium heat. When the butter foams, add 1 cup of steel cut oats. Cook and stir for a couple minutes, or until they smell toasty. Add 4 cups of water and a pinch of salt. Bring to a boil, then immediately turn off the heat and cover.
In the morning, remove the lid and bring the oatmeal back to a gentle simmer. Once it's heated through, it's ready to eat! You can also add coconut, dried fruit, sugar, honey, or maple syrup while it's simmering. Serve with milk, butter, or whatever other decadent thing you prefer. We also really like to serve ours with stewed fruit, like in the photo above, where the oatmeal is topped with stewed quince.
Pack up any leftovers in the refrigerator, and reheat in the microwave or on the stovetop for breakfast on the following mornings.
Any more tips for Amy?
More on oatmeal:
• Good Question: What's the Deal With Oatmeal?
• What's For Breakfast? Irish Oatmeal
• National Oatmeal Day: Steel-Cut Oats
• Breakfast for Lunch: Steel-Cut Oats with Dates, Coconut, Cinnamon and Pecans
• Recipe: Overnight Oatmeal with Apricots and Buttermilk
(Images: Faith Durand) |
Clark students study ice storm’s effects on local forest
Take one geography professor, add a Ph.D. student of geography and finish the recipe with several eager undergraduates looking forward to doing research in Paxton and what do you have?
A group of smart young people from Clark University seeking answers to the question, “what damage was done to local vegetation during the ice storm of 2008?”
A geography class called Losing Ground has spent the past several months mapping trees at several local parks, including two in Paxton.
“We’ve been doing work mapping disturbances for quite a while in the Yucatan Peninsula studying the effects from Hurricane Dean,” said the doctoral student, Zachary Christman. “Now, with the ice storm happening so close to home, we thought we’d apply the same principles and look at the effects on our environment from the ice storm.”
Christman is working closely with geography professor John Rogan. They take daily digital pictures of the area via satellite to determine if the vegetation is increasing or decreasing over time.
“We took pictures over the summer of 2008, and again in 2009, and compared them to a normal one-year change, and discovered there are losses everywhere,” said Christman. “There is a 30 percent reduction in vegetation over much of this region since the ice storm happened, with some areas showing as much as a 60 percent loss. Granted, it’s not all from the storm, but mostly it is.”
Among other sites, the class has looked at Boynton Park on the Paxton-Worcester line and Moore State Park on West Street (Route 31).
“At Moore State Park, we discovered that anything on the exposed part of the hill near the pond was more affected,” said Rogan. “The other side of the park, where the types of trees are more mixed, was noticeably less damaged.”
His explanation is that trees in mixed groups withstand storms better than stands of one type.
“Here, the maples, ashes and oaks got hit hard, but the white pines and hemlocks sustained less damage,” Rogan said. “Because of the way the forests are managed — more single species groupings — it predisposes them to being susceptible to disturbances like these.”
In other parts of the park, Rogan said, “the hemlock structure allowed the weight to be dispersed. Mixing forests is important for resilience to storms, but here we tend to have a preference for a particular species.”
Rogan said the single-species areas of Moore State Park, already weakened by the ice storm, are also more exposed to other threats, such as droughts or insect infestation. But he said the ice storm’s destruction may also bring benefits to the forest.
“Younger trees will grow stronger than they would have, and fill in the gap in the canopy that was created with the storm,” Rogan said. “Also, opening the canopy will add light and water resources for other species, which is good. The habitat forage for deer will be good for recreational hunting, but lousy for the increased population in deer ticks, and potentially Lyme disease, based on the increase in deer,” Rogan continued.
According to Rogan, it will take 20 to 100 years for the areas affected by the ice storm to return to normal, “but visibly, you will not notice [the damage] in as little as five years,” he said.
At Moore State Park the area that was less damaged was able to sustain more weight due to the disbursements of the hemlock trees. |
According to the Associated Press, "Archaeologists on Tuesday unveiled what they think are the remains of Roman emperor Nero's extravagant banquet hall, a circular space that rotated day and night to imitate the Earth's movement and impress his guests."
The AP account continued:
The room, part of Nero's Golden Palace, a sprawling residence built in the first century A.D., is thought to have been built to entertain government officials and VIPs, said lead archaeologist Francoise Villedieu.
The emperor, known for his lavish and depraved lifestyle, ruled from 37 A.D. to 68 A.D.
The dig so far has turned up the foundations of the room, the rotating mechanism underneath and part of an attached space believed to be the kitchens, she said.
"This cannot be compared to anything that we know of in ancient Roman architecture," Villedieu told reporters during a tour of the cordoned-off dig.
In the popular memory, the nearly-fourteen year reign of Nero is arguably both the most memorable, and infamous, among the Caesars after Julius and Augustus. (Contrary to the AP story, Nero lived from 37 to 68 A.D. — his reign began October 13, 54 A.D. and ended with his suicide on June 9, 68 A.D.) Nero’s reign was marked by a decadence which would come to typify popular portrayals of the lingering death-by-dissipation of the Roman Empire. Nero’s reign was also the beginning of the Roman persecutions of the Church and, according to tradition, the martyrdoms of Ss. Peter and Paul at Rome occurred under Nero. Such persecutions continued sporadically until they reached their violent crescendo under Diocletian two and half centuries later.
The opulence of Nero’s dining hall symbolizes the other side of what the poet Juvenal identified as the “bread and circuses” mentality of the Roman emperors: government handouts to the populace accompanied the self-deification of the emperors and a lifestyle which matched their bloated egos.
The AP reports concerning Nero’s dining hall:
The partially excavated site is part of the sumptuous residence, also known by its Latin name Domus Aurea, which rose over the ruins of a fire that destroyed much of Rome in A.D. 64.
The purported main dining room, with a diameter of over 50 feet (16 meters), rested upon a 13-foot (4-meter) wide pillar and four spherical mechanisms that, likely powered by a constant flow of water, rotated the structure.
The discovery was made during routine maintenance of the fragile Palatine area, officials said.
Latin biographer and historian Suetonius, who chronicled his times and wrote the biographies of 12 Roman rulers, refers to a main dining room that revolved "day and night, in time with the sky."
Angelo Bottini, the state's top official for archaeology in Rome, said the ceiling of the rotating room might have been the one mentioned by Suetonius, who wrote of ivory panels sliding back and forth to shower flowers and perfumes on the guests below.
"The heart of every activity in ancient Rome was the banquet, together with some form of entertainment," Bottini said at the dig. "Nero was like the sun, and people were revolving around the emperor."
There is no word, as of this writing, whether White House architects will be traveling to Rome to study the site as a model for improvements to the president’s residence.
Photo: AP Images |
There are many uses for linear motion in a robot. In simplest form it could be flexing of a robot arm or controlling the bucket of a bulldozer. More complex examples might involve shifting gears in an automatic transmission or activating a trigger.
We are going to look at three simple ways to create linear motion using a motor under NXT control:
Linear motion Using Levers attached to a spinning motor:
This is really simple and the most common way a linear motion is created. Implementing is very easy with parts available in a NXT kit. Here is a video of how this works:
Creating your custom actuator:
It is pretty straight forward to create a custom actuator like the one below - it can be made with components that comes with aNXT kit - such as two worm gears and the TECHNIC pulley that acts like an inverted corkscrew.
When the motor turns the two worm gears, the pulley travels in a linear fashion. Here is a video of one of these in action in a Zamor Ball firing mechanism. You can see more about this in NXTLog.
In the final part of this (hopefully this Monday), we will look at how to achieve linear motion using the new Linear Actuator. |
In an 8-7 vote Thursday, the United States 6th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a ban on affirmative action in Michigan public colleges that was enforced in a 2006 state constitution amendment.
The court's decision in The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action v. Regents of The University of Michigan repealed Proposal 2, a statewide initiative which amended Michigan's constitution to dictate that public universities could not give special consideration to ethnic minorities in the admissions process.
The Cincinnati circuit court said that the appeals that were before it Thursday were just a few in the long-running saga over the use of race-conscious admissions policies at Michigan's public colleges and universities.
Among the entities filing suit were the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) and the law firm of Cravath, Swaine and Moore, LLP, who started the legal process in 2006 after Proposal 2 was passed.
The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, or BAMN, is also included in this consolidated lawsuit.
These bodies challenged the constitutional amendment of Proposal 2, which eliminates the consideration of race in university admissions policies despite the fact that some of these policies have been upheld by U.S. Supreme Court.
The decision essentially declared Proposal 2 unconstitutional.
The majority opinion, written by Judge Guy Cole Jr., detailed a scenario in which a student seeking to have her family's alumni connections considered in her application to one of Michigan's top public universities had a number of avenues to persuade the school to adopt a legacy-conscious admissions policy.
"She could lobby the admissions committee, she could petition the leadership of the university, she could seek to influence the school's governing board, or, as a measure of last resort, she could initiate a statewide campaign to alter the state' constitution," said Cole.
"The same cannot be said for a black student seeking the adoption of a constitutionally permissible race-conscious admissions policy."
He said the only thing that student could do would be attempt to amend the Michigan Constitution, "a lengthy, expensive and arduous process," to repeal the consequences of Proposal 2.
The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action (BAMN), the lead plaintiff in the case, considers the repeal a tremendous victory for "hundreds of thousands who have fought for affirmative action for decades."
Attorney George B. Washington was one of the lawyers representing BAMN in this trial. He said Friday that quality of political rights is what this decision was all about.
"What this says is that racial minorities have the right to petition for special admission programs the same way every one else does," said Washington.
Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette Thursday announced his intention to request that the Supreme Court review the appellate court's decision on the affirmative action ban, which was also known as the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI).
"MCRI embodies the fundamental premise of what America is all about: Equal opportunity under the law," said Schuette in a Thursday release following the decision.
Schuette legally has 90 days to file a petition of certiorari -- or re-examination -- with the Supreme Court.
Joy Yearout, press secretary for the Michigan Attorney General's Office, said she expects Schuette will file much sooner.
"We're optimistic that the Supreme Court will agree that when you treat everyone equally like we do here in Michigan, you don't violate the Constitution," Yearout said.
Attorney Michael J. Steinberg said Friday that while it's clear the Attorney General will request a review, it's unclear what the Supreme Court will decide, as it only accepts 1 percent of all requests to hear cases.
Steinberg is the legal director for Detroit-based ACLU.
"We hope that the Supreme Court will not hear this case so universities in Michigan will again be able to admit a diverse student body, in order to enhance the learning experience for all students," said the ACLU attorney.
Michigan Republican Party Chairman Bobby Schostak issued a statement Thursday showing his disdain for the 6th Circuit Court's decision.
"Today's decision by the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals is a slap in the face to Michigan voters and we applaud Attorney General Bill Schuette for his announcement to challenge and defend Michigan's Constitution which ensures all people are treated equally," said Schostak.
Steinberg, who counts Thursday's litigation as a landmark decision, said the likelihood that the Supreme Court will hear the case is increased because of similar conflicting proceedings in California, in which the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the West Coast state's affirmative action ban.
BAMN's Washington office says that there are other states where affirmative action is an issue. He said Michigan and California, Nebraska, Arizona, Washington and Oklahoma -- which together hold about 22 percent of the nation's population -- are all grappling with this same issue.
"Obviously, it's a case of crucial national importance," said Washington.
A Texas case dealing with the limits of affirmative action at a local university, Fisher v. The University of Texas, was filed when Abigail Fisher sued the school after it rejected her application with race as a factor.
Washington says the Fisher trial will not affect the Supreme Court's decision. He believes the federal court will, in fact, review BAMN v. Regents of The University of Michigan.
"And we will win," he said.
Contact staff writer John Turk at 248-745-4613 or firstname.lastname@example.org. |
In a post several years ago I gave the list of the top ten forgotten British foods, as decided by a competition run in 2006 by the Guild of Fine Food Retailers. Top of the list were ‘Bath Chaps’ (Pigs’ Cheeks), so naturally I included a recipe for this delicacy in the post. At the time, I intended to work my way through the list, and find a recipe for every dish. I was one ahead - Robert May's Grand Sallet had already appeared here, so there were eight to go. Here I am, however, three years later, having made no additions to date. Today I want to redress the balance a little by sharing some Rook Pie with you – but first, to refresh your memory, here is the list:
1.‘Eadles’ Bath Chaps
2. Mrs Grieve’s Fish Custard
3. Mrs Langland’s Faggots
4. Grey Squirrel Casserole
5. Rook Pie
6. Rabbit with Prunes
7. Fife Brooth
8. Roman Pie
9. 16th C Pancakes
10. A GrandSallet (from Robert Mays’ cookbook of the 17th C)
Rook pie seems like an unlikely addition to this list, because a dish has to be popular or noteworthy at some point in time in order to be noteworthy when it is forgotten, doesn’t it? As far as I can make out, rook pie was a dish of necessity, eaten by the industrious poor who had to bag their birds first - the idle rich filling their crusts with pigeon or venison. The only time that rook pie perhaps took on a more important role was during wartime, when other meat was scarce, and even then there was some prejudice to be overcome on account of the confusion of rooks with crows. Unlike rooks, crows eat carrion, and there is a widespread taboo amongst humans including carrion-eaters in their own diets.
The temporary interest in rook pie (which some correspondents insisted was ‘as good if not better than pigeon pie’) during wartime rationing led to a flurry of letters on the topic to newspapers. The following letter from a correspondent to The Times in April 1940 was in response to a request for the recipe.
May I answer Mrs. Jessop-Hulton? “My mother used to make rook pie in the following manner, and it was very good:- Use only the breast and legs of the bird, as the other parts are very bitter and unsuitable for eating. Fill the piedish with layers of breast and legs with hard-boiled eggs and a little fat bacon. Well season with pepper and salt. Cover with a good crust of pastry, and cook well in a moderate oven.
Miss H. Brown, 27, Peppard Road, Caversham, Reading.
Quotation for the Day.
Hunting is now to most of us a game, whose relish seems based upon some mystic remembrance, in the blood, of ancient days when to hunter as well as hunted it was a matter of life and death.
Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage (1935) |
The evolution of industrial robot is surely a fascinating one. If you look at the historical perspectives and then consider the evolution of the machines you will find how with time machines became more advanced. Not only in terms of technological advancements but also the range of works they started to do was varied as well. The first generation industrial robot of the eighteenth century England was more concerned with miniscule work. The subsequent waves of industrial revolutions then introduced machines that run on electricity, internet and computerization of computers. The current wave of industrial revolution which is known as the industry 4.0 is attempting to provide cutting edge technology. These technologies are designed to introduce artificial intelligence in the Industrial sector.
The role of industrial robots in the manufacturing sector
The industrial robots that are now in use in the manufacturing sector for example, are highly capable ones. That is to say that these machines can connect with one another with technologies such as ethernet. Now only that the machines can share their data and information with one another. This gives them a better cognitive sense. Apart from being able to communicate with the other machines, present day industrial robots can actually work in a cohort. This is particularly an important feat because it increases efficiency of the industrial sector specially the manufacturing units. The machines are also able to increase the product quality. It is possible because the scope of human error is just negligible in the present industrial machine set-up.
Here’s how Thailand is reaching its potential in the manufacturing sector:
Thailand is perhaps the best example where you can find modern technologies such as the industrial robots present. It is because in Thailand firms are also providing valuable inputs regarding all these advanced technologies to the industrialists. So if you are in Thailand and want to install these technologies in your plant make sure to hire a good industrial solutions firm. |
Diamonds, with their timeless and captivating beauty, have been a symbol of love and luxury throughout history. Beyond their dazzling brilliance, diamonds carry a profound allure that transcends mere aesthetics. Within the intricate world of diamonds, the carat, a unit of weight, assumes a significant role, serving as a storyteller that unveils tales of tradition, craftsmanship, and historical significance.
At the heart of this exploration lies the one-carat diamond ring, a quintessential representation of elegance and commitment. Its journey through time, culture, and craftsmanship is a fascinating narrative that unfolds in what we can aptly term the “Carat Chronicles.”
The story begins with the ancient allure of diamonds, dating back centuries when these precious gems were revered for their rarity and believed to possess mystical powers. As civilizations evolved, so did the appreciation for diamonds, culminating in their status as the ultimate symbol of love and devotion.
The one-carat diamond, specifically, stands as a testament to both the artistry of nature and the skill of human hands. Its weight, precisely measured in carats, becomes a marker of quality and rarity. The quest for the perfect one-carat diamond involves a meticulous journey, where gemologists carefully assess the cut, color, clarity, and carat weight to ensure a harmonious blend of beauty and brilliance.
Throughout history, the one-carat diamond has graced the fingers of royalty, celebrities, and lovers alike, leaving an indelible mark on the pages of romantic tales. From the elaborate designs of vintage eras to the sleek and modern styles of today, the one-carat diamond ring has adapted to changing tastes while retaining its timeless charm.
The Carat Mysteries
When it comes to diamonds, the carat is the universal language of size. The carob seeds, which were formerly used to balance scales, are the source of the term “carat.” 200 milligrams is one carat, however the value of a carat goes beyond weight. The exact harmony of size and quality is what makes it appealing. In quest of the ideal 1 Carat Diamond Ring, buyers must balance brilliance and size to create a beautiful symphony!
Size is important, but quality is even more so.
It’s crucial to keep in mind that a diamond’s brilliance is not just determined by its size, even though a one carat diamond ring might be the ideal peak. The four Cs of quality—carat, cut, color, and clarity—have a significant impact. The perfect brilliance appears when a 1 carat diamond is paired with an outstanding cut, captivating hue, and purity-expressing clarity. The valuable jewel’s allure is enhanced by the stories each facet reveals.
Throughout History, Diamonds
Throughout history, diamonds have been used for more than just jewelry. The original meanings of these stones were symbols of power; in modern times, they have come to represent enduring love. The one-carat diamond ring is turned into a sentimental object that has the weight of ages-old customs and feelings. It is a timeless option for those seeking something more than just decoration because it is more than just a piece of jewelry and serves as a tangible link to our shared past.
In contemporary times, the one-carat diamond ring stands as the quintessential emblem of commitment and refinement. Its widespread appeal extends beyond mere dimensions; it serves as a profound manifestation of an enduring yearning for timeless aesthetics and the ever-evolving nuances of personal taste. Choosing a 1-carat diamond ring is not just a matter of selecting a piece of jewelry; it is an intentional step into a realm that transcends fleeting fashion trends, marking a commitment to enduring and classic choices.
The allure of the one-carat diamond lies not only in its physical size but also in the rich symbolism it carries. It is a tangible representation of the profound bond shared by a couple, encapsulating their journey through love and commitment. The decision to opt for a 1-carat diamond ring signifies a deliberate choice to embrace enduring beauty, transcending the ephemeral nature of passing fads.
Beyond the sparkle and shine, a 1-carat diamond ring serves as a testament to the couple’s shared values and aspirations. It reflects a desire for a love that withstands the test of time, much like the timeless allure of the diamond itself. In this sense, the one-carat diamond becomes more than a piece of jewelry; it becomes a cherished artifact, symbolizing the enduring nature of the commitment it represents.
As couples embark on the journey of selecting a 1-carat diamond ring, they engage in a process that involves not just aesthetics but also a profound consideration of the enduring significance of their choice. It becomes a celebration of the timeless beauty that transcends the changing tides of fashion. The decision to embrace a 1-carat diamond is a declaration of a love that is not bound by temporal whims but is instead anchored in the enduring elegance that only such a classic gem can provide.
In essence, the one-carat diamond ring in the present era is not merely a piece of jewelry; it is a symbol of devotion, an expression of refined taste, and a commitment to a love story that stands the test of time. As couples exchange these timeless treasures, they weave a narrative that goes beyond the sparkle of the diamond, creating a legacy of enduring love and enduring style.
At Last, A Tale Unfolds Beyond Dimensions
In the fascinating world of diamonds, the one-carat diamond ring is more than simply a piece of jewelry. It captures the spirit of the past, the artistry of creation, and the unwavering power of love. Remember that beneath the shine of a diamond lies a narrative that spans centuries, civilizations, and emotions as you look for the perfect one. The Carat Chronicles serve as a reminder that when seeking beauty, we sometimes unearth artifacts that hold a fragment of our shared human history. Thus, turn the one-carat diamond ring into a monument to the enduring tale of love and forever rather than just a size statement! |
The fetal heartbeat abortion ban survived the second funnel of the 2018 session of the Iowa Legislature when the Iowa House Human Resources Committee approved on a 12 to 9 vote Thursday afternoon.
The bill’s future was uncertain since the Iowa Senate passed their version on February 28, and the Iowa House did not take any action on the bill until two days before the funnel deadline. New life was breathed into the ban when an amendment was added to SF 359, legislation that prohibits a person from knowingly acquiring, providing, receiving, otherwise transferring, or using fetal body parts in the state of Iowa. That bill passed out of subcommittee on Wednesday afternoon.
“SF2281 had some flaws that would make it nearly impossible to pass through our caucus,” State Representative Shannon Lundgren (R-Peosta) told Caffeinated Thoughts. Lundgren chaired the subcommittee that made this amendment to SF359.
The House version of the bill bans abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected. It provides an exception for a medical emergency the amendment defines as:
…a situation in which an abortion is performed to preserve the life of the pregnant woman whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy, but not including psychological conditions, emotional conditions, familial conditions, or the woman’s age.
The Iowa Senate version stated that physicians who knowingly and intentionally perform an abortion when a fetal heartbeat is detected and medical emergency does not exist are guilty of a class D felony that is punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment and a fine of $750 to $7,500, (Iowa Code § 902.9).
The Iowa House version stripped the criminal penalities out. It tasks the Iowa Board of Medicine with the responsibility to adopt rules to administer the ban. The Iowa Senate’s version also repealed the late-term abortion ban passed last year. The Iowa House stripped that repeal out of their version.
The fetal heartbeat abortion ban mostly passed on a party-line vote. State Representatives Joel Fry (R-Osceola), Rob Bacon (R-Slater), Brian Best (R-Glidden), Cecil Dolecheck (R-Mount Ayr), David Heaton (R-Mount Pleasant), Steven Holt (R-Denison), Jon Jacobsen (R-Council Bluffs), Kevin Koester (R-Ankeny), Shannon Lundgren (R-Peosta), Tom Griswold (R-Griswold), Sandy Salmon (R-Janesville), and Rob Taylor (R-West Des Moines) voted for the bill.
State Representative Michael Bergen (R-Dorchester), the vice chair of the Human Resources Committee, was the only Republican to vote against the bill. Also voting against the bill were State Representatives Beth Wessell-Kroeschell (D-Ames), Ako Abdul-Samad (D-Des Moines), Marti Anderson (D-Des Moines), Timi Brown-Powers (D-Waterloo), John Forbes (D-Urbandale), Lisa Heddens (D-Ames), Bruce Hunter (D-Des Moines), and Mary Mascher (D-Iowa City).
The bill will now go to the full House for a vote. |
Most occupations require that those who work in it have certain abilities that allow them to do their jobs.
For example, photographers must understand how different camera settings and lighting affect the pictures they take, teachers must be able to use certain techniques to teach math and reading, and computer programmers need to know how to use programming languages. These abilities are known as hard or technical skills and to learn them one usually enrolls in some sort of educational program where he or she receives classroom instruction and often practical training as well. To work in any occupation you also need what are referred to as soft skills.
What Are Soft Skills?
Soft skills are the personal character traits or qualities each of us has. They make up who we are, generally encompassing our attitudes, habits and how we interact with other people. They are much less tangible than hard or technical skills, and unlike them, you do not learn soft skills by enrolling in a training program. You can, however, acquire them through educational, work and life experiences but it will take a concerted effort on your part. Let's say for example, you are terrible at managing your time but find yourself enrolled in a class that requires you to complete numerous projects. If you want to do well you will have to improve your time management skills in order to meet your deadlines. You can learn how to better manage your time by seeking advice from faculty and fellow students or reading helpful articles.
Examples of Soft Skills
Communication Skills: People with good communication skills have the ability to convey information to others either orally or in writing.
Interpersonal Skills: Having good interpersonal skills means that one has not only the ability to communicate with others, but is willing to listen to people without judging them, share ideas and pitch in when co-workers need help.
Problem Solving and Critical Thinking Skills: Problem solving is the ability to identify a problem and then come up with possible solutions. Critical thinking skills allow you to evaluate each possible solution, using logic and reasoning, to determine which one is most likely to be successful.
Active Listening Skills: Good listeners make an effort to understand what others are saying, interrupting only when appropriate to ask questions that will help clarify the information being shared.
Active Learning Skills: Active learners are willing and able to acquire knowledge and then apply it to their jobs.
Time Management Skills: Those who are good at managing their time know how to schedule their tasks in order to complete projects according to deadlines. They are good at prioritizing their work.
Team Player: Those who are team players are cooperative and can be leaders or participants, as necessitated by the situation at hand. They are willing to share responsibility with other team members, whether that means taking credit for successes or responsibility for failures.
Professionalism: This characteristic is hard to define, but it's very apparent when someone is lacking it. It's probably the one trait that every employer desires, regardless of what you do or where you work. Professionalism encompasses many things including showing up on time, being polite, being generally pleasant and helpful, dressing appropriately and taking responsibility for your own actions.
Reading Comprehension Skills: Individuals with strong reading comprehension skills have little difficulty understanding the content of written materials.
Flexibility and Adaptability: People who are flexible and adaptable react well to changes in their jobs and work environments. They have a positive can-do attitude about anything that gets thrown their way.
Original article here ...
Students - please use your own personal email address here and not the one supplied by your school. For security reasons school emails block external messages. |
Life History of Carpenter St. Croix Valley Nature Center’s Wood Turtle
Carpenter Nature Center’s Wood Turtle was part of a breeding program in Nebraska. He was hatched in 2004 and adopted by the Carpenter Nature Center education team. We believe the turtle is a male due to its concave plastron (underside of its shell). Carpenter Nature Center’s turtle is a wonderful ambassador, teaching thousands of visitors every year about our natural environment and the diversity of wildlife life found in our region. Our turtle will live a comfortable life with humans, as it is provided with all the food it needs and safety from predators. It may live to be well over 40 years old.
The Wood Turtle is declining throughout much of its range due primarily to human activities. Wood Turtles have been hunted for food, collected for the pet trade, poached, shot for fun and run over by cars. Human activities also destroy or damage much of the turtle’s riparian habitats by changing stream and river habitats through intensive forestry practices as well as agricultural, industrial and residential development. Like most hatchlings, the young turtle have a low survival rate due to predation. The fact that Wood Turtles do not reach reproductive maturity until they are at least 14 years old makes the species even more susceptible to extirpation. The best things you can do to help Wood Turtles is to report any Wood Turtles you find to your local DNR office, help protect natural habitat along streams and rivers and share what you have learned about Wood Turtles with others.
The oldest Wood Turtle fossil dates back six million years. The fossil was found in Nebraska by Mr. Tucker and Dr. Voorhies of the University of Nebraska. |
If you have tile flooring in your home, you probably love how easy it is to clean. Instead of taking an entire weekend to clean your floors, it might just take you a few hours to clean your entire house. However, whereas tile flooring may be quicker to clean, how do you know if you’re taking care of it properly? Let’s take a look at how to properly care for your tile so that it lasts as long as possible.
For Ceramic and Porcelain Tile Floors
Ceramic and porcelain floors are incredibly durable and very simple to maintain. They don’t lose their shine or scratch easily. However, it is important to do a few things to keep them clean for a long time.
1.) Clean up debris and germs
Unfortunately, ceramic and porcelain floors hide debris and germs. While they can be resistant to dirt, sand and grit can dull the brightness and sheen of the surface. It’s important to sweep or vacuum regularly to keep them from getting dull.
2.) Use a rag or a chamois mop
When you clean your tiles, use a rag or a chamois mop with mild detergent and clean water. It is important to use a chamois mop because sponge mops can push dirt and dirty water into the grout lines, making them harder to get rid of. It’s important to change the water frequently while cleaning as dirty water can make your floors cloudy.
3.) Dry the tiles
Don’t let your tile floors air-dry. The water that sits on floors can create water spots and can make your floors dull. Dry the tiles with a clean, lint-free cloth after cleaning.
For Stone Tile Floors
Natural stones such as slate and marble are beautiful to look at. However, you need to be careful with this material as chemicals in cleaners can damage the surface. There are cleaners specifically made for natural stones. Use them and keep their brightness and sheen for a long time.
1.) Slate tiles
For slate tiles, you may use a mild detergent as long as it doesn’t contain acidic properties. Avoid using lemon juice or vinegar as they can damage your slate tiles. If your slate tiles are coated, make sure to dry them with a clean, lint-free cloth after cleaning.
2.) Marble tiles
Just like slate tiles, cleaners with acidic properties must be avoided as they etch the surface of your floors. It’s also important to note that you should never use rough broom or brushes. They can scratch the surface of your floors and make your marble tiles less beautiful.
How to clean grout lines
The real key to great-looking tile floors is clean grout lines. They absorb grease and stains over time, so it’s important for you to take care of them properly.
1.) Avoid commercial cleaners. Instead, make a paste of baking soda and water.
2.) Rub it on the area you want to clean. Let it sit overnight and then, scrub the stains with a soft brush. Avoid a metal brush as it can damage the grout.
Taking care of your home’s tiles doesn’t take an entire day. If you know the right ways and have the right supplies, you can accomplish your goal efficiently and get effective results. Tile floors can last a lifetime if you take care of them properly. You don’t need to clean your tile every day, but make sure that you sweep or vacuum once a week or whenever debris and dirt are visible.
Because of how easy it is to clean and maintain, tile flooring has become a very popular choice among many people in Denver, Colorado. If you are looking to install tile into your Denver home or business, look no further than Carpet Mill. Carpet Mill offers a stunning selection of tile floors and takes pride in being the No.1 resource for tile and stone flooring in Denver! |
Quality Services : Mold Testing Inspections Aledo
We offer Mold Testing Inspections services Aledo , call us today!
Quality Mold Testing Inspections in Aledo
Aledo #cat:t # #keyword:t #
Mold Sample Types
Surface area testing takes samples from family surface areas to find the quantity of mold growth and spores transferred around the house. 7. In doing such inspection and testing, the mold inspector (or the occupant himself) need to do a well-rounded health examination of the building for both noticeable and covert signs of water damage and mold development. Living or working in rentals that contain raised levels of airborne mold spores and/or significant mold growth invasion can cause very severe illness to the tenants. They also play crucial functions in biotechnology and food science in the production of different foods, drinks, antibiotics, pharmaceuticals and enzymes Some diseases of animals and people can be brought on by specific molds: disease may arise from allergic sensitivity to mold spores, from growth of pathogenic molds within the body, or from the effects of consumed or breathed in poisonous substances (mycotoxins) produced by molds. This was not the case at all; this is a full blown inspection with air testing, sample testing, wetness reading, pictures and a detailed report. After the truth, my seller didn't exactly manage the information in a prompt manner and I had some concerns about the location not being effectively dried out and the capacity for mold growing in the house with the damp spots the home inspector and mold inspector found. The 2nd stage of mold inspection after finding mold growth is to find the water problem that caused the mold in the first place.
Mold or mould, also sometimes referred to as mildew, is a fungal growth that develops on wet materials. Mold is a natural part of the environment and plays an important part in nature by breaking down dead organic matter such as fallen leaves and dead trees; indoors, mold growth should be avoided.
Mold inspection is, for the most part, a visual inspection of a house. ... A typical mold inspection involves the inspector talking to the property owner about any areas where they have seen mold, or where there have been moisture problems or water damage in the past.
Residential mold prevention and control
According to the EPA, residential mold may be prevented and controlled by cleaning and repairing roof gutters, to prevent moisture seepage into the home; keeping air-conditioning drip pans clean and drainage lines clear; monitoring indoor humidity; drying areas of moisture or condensation and removing their sources; ensuring that there is adequate ventilation by installing an exhaust fan in your bathroom; treating exposed structural wood or wood framing with an EPA-approved fungicidal encapsulation coating after pre-cleaning (particularly homes with a crawl space, unfinished basement or a poorly-ventilated; attic).
Mold Testing Process
All 3 testing techniques require that you incubate samples for 3 to 7 days to make certain you give time for slow-growing mold and yeast to appear. A professional house inspection group will test your home's air, take swabs and tape lift samples, usage devices such as a borescope (an optical device used to check hard to get at places) and do moisture mapping, thermal imaging, and a relative humidity check to figure out if your house needs mildew remediation work. Like with air testing the outcomes can differ due to the fact that mold growth and spores aren't spread out evenly throughout surface areas in the home and can alter with time.
How Do I Get My House Tested For Mold?
There are several means to obtain your home evaluated for mold:
Mold test kits.
Do-it-yourself mold and mildew examination kits can be acquired in house renovation stores or online sellers. To utilize these packages, you will gather samples on your own and after that send it to a mold screening research laboratory where the type of mold and mildew existing is identified.
Multiple mold tests. There are three kinds of mold and mildew tests: air screening, surface area testing, and also mass testing. The quantity of mold and mildew spores can transform periodically so it is better to evaluate various components of your home..
Multiple mold tests. There are three types of mold tests: air testing, surface area screening, as well as mass testing. Specialist mold and mildew screening. The very best way to obtain your house tested for molds is to make use of the services of specialist mold inspectors. Working with experts will certainly give you extra precise results.
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Mold Testing 76008
If you can not see any noticeable signs but you assume that there are hidden mold growth, a thorough inspection will be practical.
Aledo Mold Testing
Mold Testing Cost
This means that structures are less aerated, not having the ability to "breathe" as easily and pockets of damp air can be caught for extended periods of time, possibly causing mold development. Keep in mind: The normal expense for MIS is a bit more than Mold Inspection and Testing but I was offered an "apartment or condo unique" of $500 to consist of 2 air quality tests- one indoor an one outside as well as a swab sample. Pricing gets complex with these companies, however the bottom line is I chose a rival of Mold Inspection Sciences, (since they didn't have any openings) and they were NOT happy about it. Keep in mind: The regular cost for MIS is a bit more than Mold Inspection and Testing but I was offered an "apartment special" of $350 to consist of 2 air quality tests- one indoor an one outdoor along with a swab sample.
Mold Spores - Aledo
Even if there is no longer mold in your house a develop of mold spores can still cause allergic symptoms and can likewise lead to new mold development. Harmful black mold typically grows in hidden locations and professional mold inspectors can utilize tools such as moisture meters and optical fiber to find hidden mold with very little disturbance to your house. When poisonous black mold is growing though it normally displaces any other molds growing neighboring and takes control of its environment. Hazardous black mold requires a lot of wetness for a long time before it can begin to grow. Molds are ubiquitous, and mold spores are a common part of home and office dust; nevertheless, when mold spores are present in big amounts, they can provide a health hazard to human beings, possibly triggering allergic reactions and respiratory issues. But, there are likewise toxic molds that have caustic effects on the mental and physical functions of those who consume its air-borne spores, gradually.
Expert Mold Testing
The mold remediation procedure is among the times when mold spores are most likely to be disturbed into the air. Mold testing specialists are aware of the health threats related to exposure to large amounts of spores and secure themselves by using breathing masks and wearing protective clothes to ensure mildew will not participate in their airway ways, which can cause persistent breathing problems, and won't choose their skin, which can lead to uncomfortable rashes and other skin disorders. Typical mistakes with mold tasting consist of choosing the wrong specimen to sample, testing product that is not actually mold, just testing obvious black mold" or only looking for samples in particular building areas that may be incorrect.
Hopefully you enjoyed reading our section about mold testing. Thanks a lot for spending some time to browse our blog. Are you aware of anybody else who is occupied with the niche? Take a moment to promote it. Thanks so much for taking the time to read it.
Servpro sold to private-equity group
Private-equity firm Blackstone has bought a majority stake in Gallatin-based Servpro Industries Inc., the companies announced Tuesday.
A news release didn’t disclose terms of the deal, but a report in The Wall Street Journal last week valued it at $1 billion, including debt.
According to the news release, the Isaacson family, which founded Servpro, “will continue to be significant shareholders in the business going forward.” The Isaacson family is re-investing alongside Blackstone as part of the recapitalization deal, according to the release.
Blackstone’s investment is part of its so-called Core Private Equity strategy, “which is designed to hold investments for much longer periods of time than traditional private equity," according to the release.
Said Servpro CEO Rick Isaacson: “We are thrilled about this long-term investment from Blackstone and the strategic benefits its global platform can provide the company, our franchisees and our customers. Servpro was founded over 50 years ago with the vision of becoming the premier cleaning and restoration company, and we believe this partnership with Blackstone is a vital next step towards this goal.”
Servpro, one of Sumner County's largest private employers, is a provider of fire and water damage-restoration services for commercial and residential properties. The company has more than 1,700 franchises nationwide.
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Source: The Freedonia Group, Inc., Cleveland
Global demand for hydraulic cement is forecast to rise 5.3 percent per year to 4.3 billion metric tons in 2015, valued at $335 billion, says World Cement, a new study from industry research firm The Freedonia Group. Gains will be fueled by rising investments in infrastructure among the developing countries of the world, driven by economic growth and increasing per-capita income levels. Additionally, a rebound in cement demand in industrialized markets such as the United States and Western Europe will further spur cement sales.
However, gains in demand through 2015 will lag the robust advances seen from 2005 to 2010, due in large part to a deceleration in China’s cement consumption. China accounted for 56 percent of world cement demand in 2010. The nation’s demand for cement is forecast to climb 4.9 percent per year through 2015 to 2.35 billion metric tons, in line with the regional average. The maturing of the Chinese cement market, combined with a slowdown in the pace of construction spending in the country, will serve to moderate the double-digit yearly demand growth exhibited from 2000 to 2010.
The United States will post the strongest demand gains—9.4 percent annually through 2015—of any major cement market. Increases will be stimulated by a robust recovery in residential construction spending, which will post growth of more than 13 percent annually through 2015. Nonresidential building construction activity in the U.S. will also rise after a period of decline, and nonbuilding construction growth will accelerate, further bolstering overall cement sales.
Blended cement, the leading cement product type in 2010, is expected to continue to account for more than 70 percent of all product consumption in 2015, benefiting from its typically lower costs and better environmental profile than straight portland cement. Cement firms are increasing the use of cementitious materials such as fly ash and blast furnace slag in their products, which reduces carbon dioxide emissions from the production of portland cement clinker. The type of cement used varies dramatically from country to country. For example, in China, more than 90 percent of demand is attributable to blended cement; whereas in the United States, blended cement comprises less than five percent of demand.
is available for $6,300 from The Freedonia Group, (+1) 440-684-9600; e-mail: [email protected]; |
In fact, it so happened that earlier in the week, my used copy of Managing UUCP & Usenet (its author list includes none other than Tim O’Reilly) arrived. I was reading about the challenges of networking in the 70s: half-duplex lines, slow transmission rates, and modems that had separate dialers. And then I stumbled upon long-distance radio. It turns out that a lot of modern long-distance radio has much in common with the challenges of communication in the 1970s – 1990s, and some of our old protocols might be particularly well-suited for it. Let me explain — I’ll start with the old software, and then talk about the really cool stuff going on in hardware (some radios that can send a signal for 10-20km or more with very little power!), and finally discuss how to bring it all together.
UUCP, for those of you that may literally have been born after it faded in popularity, is a batch system for exchanging files and doing remote execution. For users, the uucp command copies files to or from a remote system, and uux executes commands on a remote system. In practical terms, the most popular use of this was to use uux to execute rmail on the remote system, which would receive an email message on stdin and inject it into the system’s mail queue. All UUCP commands are queued up and transmitted when a “call” occurs — over a modem, TCP, ssh pipe, whatever.
UUCP had to deal with all sorts of line conditions: very slow lines (300bps), half-duplex lines, noisy and error-prone communication, poor or nonexistent flow control, even 7-bit communication. It supports a number of different transport protocols that can accommodate these varying conditions. It turns out that these mesh fairly perfectly with some properties of modern long-distance radio.
The AX.25 stack is a frame-based protocol used by amateur radio folks. Its air speed is 300bps, 1200bps, or (rarely) 9600bps. The Linux kernel has support for the AX.25 protocol and it is quite possible to run TCP/IP atop it. I have personally used AX.25 to telnet to a Linux box 15 miles away over a 1200bps air speed, and have also connected all the way from Kansas to Texas and Indiana using 300bps AX.25 using atmospheric skip. AX.25 has “connected” packets (as TCP) and unconnected/broadcast ones (similar to UDP) and is a error-detected protocol with retransmit. The radios generally used with AX.25 are always half-duplex and some of them have iffy carrier detection (which means collision is frequent). Although the whole AX.25 stack has grown rare in recent years, a subset of it is still in wide use as the basis for APRS.
A lot of this is achieved using equipment that’s not particularly portable: antennas on poles, radios that transmit with anywhere from 1W to 100W of power (even 1W is far more than small portable devices normally use), etc. Also, under the regulations of the amateur radio service, transmitters must be managed by a licensed operator and cannot be encrypted.
Nevertheless, AX.25 is just a protocol and it could, of course, run on other kinds of carriers than traditional amateur radios.
Long-range low-power radios
There is a lot being done with radios these days, much of which I’m not going to discuss. I’m not covering very short-range links such as Bluetooth, ZigBee, etc. Nor am I covering longer-range links that require large and highly-directional antennas (such as some are doing in the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands). What I’m covering is long-range links that can be used by portable devices.
There is always a compromise in radios, and if we are going to achieve long-range links with poor antennas and low power, the compromise is going to be in bitrate. These technologies may scale down to as low at 300bps or up to around 115200bps. They can, as a side bonus, often be quite cheap.
HC-12 is a radio board, commonly used with Arduino, that sports 500bps to 115200bps communication. According to the vendor, in 500bps mode, the range is 1800m or 0.9mi, while at 115200bps, the range is 100m or 328ft. They’re very cheap, at around $5 each.
There are a few downsides to HC-12. One is that the lowest air bitrate is 500bps, but the lowest UART bitrate is 1200bps, and they have no flow control. So, if you are running in long-range mode, “only small packets can be sent: max 60 bytes with the interval of 2 seconds.” This would pose a challenge in many scenarios: though not much for UUCP, which can be perfectly well configured to have a 60-byte packet size and a window size of 1, which would wait for a remote ACK before proceeding.
Also, they operate over 433.4-473.0 MHz which appears to fall outside the license-free bands. It seems that many people using HC-12 are doing so illegally. With care, it would be possible to operate it under amateur radio rules, since this range is mostly within the 70cm allocation, but then it must follow amateur radio restrictions.
LoRa is a set of standards for long range radios, which are advertised as having a range of 15km (9mi) or more in rural areas, and several km in cities.
LoRa can be done in several ways: the main LoRa protocol, and LoRaWAN. LoRaWAN expects to use an Internet gateway, which will tell each node what frequency to use, how much power to use, etc. LoRa is such that a commercial operator could set up roughly one LoRaWAN gateway per city due to the large coverage area, and some areas have good LoRa coverage due to just such operators. The difference between the two is roughly analogous to the difference between connecting two machines with an Ethernet crossover cable, and a connection over the Internet; LoRaWAN includes more protocol layers atop the basic LoRa. I have yet to learn much about LoRaWAN; I’ll follow up later on that point.
The speed of LoRa ranges from (and different people will say different things here) about 500bps to about 20000bps. LoRa is a packetized protocol, and the maximum packet size depends
LoRa sensors often advertise battery life in the months or years, and can be quite small. The protocol makes an excellent choice for sensors in remote or widely dispersed areas. LoRa transceiver boards for Arduino can be found for under $15 from places like Mouser.
I wound up purchasing two LoStik USB LoRa radios from Amazon. With some experimentation, with even very bad RF conditions (tiny antennas, one of them in the house, the other in a car), I was able to successfully decode LoRa packets from 2 miles away! And these aren’t even the most powerful transmitters available.
Talking UUCP over LoRa
In order to make this all work, I needed to write interface software; the LoRa radios don’t just transmit things straight out. So I wrote lorapipe. I have successfully transmitted files across this UUCP link!
Developing lorapipe was somewhat more challenging than I expected. For one, the LoRa modem raw protocol isn’t well-suited to rapid fire packet transmission; after receiving each packet, the modem exits receive mode and must be told to receive again. Collisions with protocols that ACKd data and had a receive window — which are many — were a problem so bad that it rendered some of the protocols unusable. I wound up adding a “expect more data after this packet” byte to every transmission, and have the receiver not transmit until it believes the sender is finished. This dramatically improved things. There’s more detail on this in my lorapipe documentation.
So far, I have successfully communicated over LoRa using UUCP, kermit, and YMODEM. KISS support will be coming next.
I am also hoping to discover the range I can get from this thing if I use more proper antennas (outdoor) and transmitters capable of transmitting with more power.
All in all, a fun project so far. |
Like every other American on July 4th, I was scrolling on Instagram and came across a list of the top 10 athletes in sports (I unfortunately could not find the post and no give credit to the maker of the list), and let’s just say it was interesting! It ranked Connor McDavid as the best athlete in sports, with Patrick Mahomes right behind him, Shohei Ohtani at No. 3, Nikola Jokic at No. 4 and Aaron Judge at No. 5. Safe to say I disagree with the list. And it’s not so much the player pool. I could agree with those five being in the top five (or around that range). It’s more where certain players rank inside of that top five list. And if someone could say with a straight face that Shohei Ohtani is the 3rd best athlete in baseball, I would expect them to receive a Tony Award in the foreseeable future! Because, what some may not realize yet, is that it’s Shohei Ohtani…and then everyone else!
Ranking the top athletes in sports is so complicated. Because like ranking every list, you need a formula, or criteria, a way you rank players. Do rank them based on how athletic they are? How fast they can run and how high they can jump? Those favors improvisers like Lamar Jackson, slashers like LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo and speedsters in hockey like Johnny Gaudreau and Dylan Larkin. But that leaves off guys like Tom Brady, Nikola Jokic and others that aren’t known for their pure athleticism, but are still unbelievable athletes due to their ability to use a variety of other skills to dominate the competition. So, when I hear best athletes, I don’t think who’s the most athletic. I’m thinking, who dominates? Who simply are the best sports players? So with that out of the way, the top of this list isn’t that hard to make.
So let’s make my list. Let’s see who I think are the top athletes sports produces. My top three is very easy to make, and will have only one player from each sport. So the sport and the players from that sport that are left out in the top three is the NBA. Because when I think of dominance, the NBA no longer has one player as the best in the world. For years, it was LeBron James. You’d have the occasional Kevin Durant talk, then Steph Curry, and then MVP’s in their primes like James Harden and Russell Westbrook. But it would always come back to LeBron. Because, he was simply the best in the game, and it wasn’t even close. The NBA we see today is very different. Not only do we have a different best player year-by-year, but we have multiple in the same season!
Take this season as an example. Going into the 2022-23 NBA season, it seemed to be people were either siding with Giannis Antetokounmpo or Stephen Curry as the best player in the world. During the season, some were sticking with Giannis, some were with Luka Doncic after video game type performances, and then some were back to Jokic, averaging a triple double as a center. Some were with Kevin Durant because of his uncanny efficiency. And then a lot of people were saying Joel Embiid after an MVP season. And now, after a playoff run from a big man that makes Shaquille O’Neal and Wilt Chamberlain statistics look like the normal, Nikola Jokic is consensus best player in the world! How in the world could I rank any of these players as a top three athlete, when we don’t even know if they’re No. 1 in their own sport?! Call me crazy, but no NBA players make the cut!
So that leaves us with three major big four sports leagues, the MLB, NFL and NHL. And it’s pretty obvious who the best player is in all three of those leagues! The NFL’s best player is obviously Patrick Mahomes. The NHL’s best player is obviously Connor McDavid after a top 20 statistical season in NHL history! And the best player in baseball is obviously Shohei Ohtani. But there is a difference between all three of these players. While they are all amazing, they’re amazing in their own ways. But only one stands out over the rest.
Patrick Mahomes is by far the best quarterback in the NFL, and probably a top five quarterback of all time. Coming off of an MVP regular season where he threw for over 5200 yards and 41 touchdowns, Mahomes threw for seven touchdowns and no interceptions in the postseason, leading Kansas City to a double digit point comeback in the Super Bowl, and securing his 2nd Super Bowl MVP. There are very rare circumstances where a player seems to be so much better than everyone else, where there is simply no answer to containing their game. Mahomes is that kind of player.
And it seems to be similar in the regular season for NHL teams against Connor McDavid. McDavid has been the best player in hockey, if not very close to it, for seven seasons now. He’s led the league assists three times, and led the league in points four times. He’s also a 5x Art Ross winner and 3x Hart winner. And he added his 3rd Hart trophy this season by having one of the greatest statistical seasons in NHL history! McDavid became the 5th player in NHL history to lead the league in goals (64) and assists (89). He also accumulated 153 points this past season, ranking 15th all time, and is only the 4th player in NHL history to accumulate this point total. Despite a lack of winning, McDavid is one of the most unstoppable players in the game!
And then there is Shohei Ohtani. Where would you like me to start? Think about this concept, Ohtani is making history as a hitter, and is at the top of significantly important pitching categories. There is probably nobody in baseball that can hit the ball better than Shohei Ohtani! Ohtani leads the MLB in triples, home runs, slugging, OPS, OPS+ and TB (with 13 TB more than any other batter!!!). He has hit 31 home runs this year–which if Ohtani’s injury he just recently suffered doesn’t leave him out a significant amount of time–and that will put him on pace to be in the discussion to break Aaron Judge’s AL record in home runs! He may have just had the greatest month in MLB history, proving he is just such an incredible batter!
He is also an incredible pitcher. He has a 3.22 ERA, and has pitched 100 innings. He’s on pace to almost break Judge’s home run record, and he’s pitched 100 innings at a high level! He leads the MLB in Hits per 9 IP, Wins Above Replacement by a long shot (pitching and batting including), is third in the MLB in K/9 and is 2nd in the MLB in opponent batting average. This is uncanny, unrealistic, and you’d think impossible. But Shohei Ohtani is defying the odds!
So you may think, ‘Okay, they all dominate. Why is Ohtani that much better?’ And that would be a fair question to ask. But think about the players I mentioned. As good as Mahomes his, and even though it seems impossible to win against him, we’ve seen this before. In fact, we just saw it for TWENTY years from Tom Brady. Even though it’s uncommon, it has happened. What Connor McDavid is doing is just a slightly lesser version of Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux. Again, high standards, but it has happened. What Shohei Ohtani is doing, dominating as a pitcher, and a batter, is unbelievable. It is something that has never been done at the same time before!
And some say, ‘If he’s that good than why doesn’t his team win?’ And I’d say that is not a good question. Baseball is the only sport where it’s physically impossible for a player to take over a game. They only bat once every nine batters, and only play on of nine positions in the field. Heck, starters only pitch once every five days. Compare that to basketball, football and hockey, where an individual player has a chance to get the ball or the puck every single time, and take the game into his own hands. Take this year’s Western Conference Finals, where LeBron James played every second but four to try to will the Lakers to a victory. Ohtani can’t have the same effect on his team. So his goose egg in playoff appearances does not take away the fact that Ohtani is the best athlete in sports!
What Ohtani is doing is unheard of. Some may say it is actually impossible. How could a player be this dominant at two completely different styles of play in baseball? And even if he were good at it, how could he have the durability to keep going and staying healthy to make sure he plays at that high level? Your guess is as good as mine to those questions. All I know is Ohtani is answering them really well, and proving that in this game of sports, it’s Shohei Ohtani…and then everyone else!
Wiz Talk with Chase (anchor.fm/chase085)
Cool Sports Network (anchor.fm/chase-coburn)
Twitter: Chase Coburn (@coolsportskid)
YouTube: Sports 4 Kids (youtube.com/sports4kids126) |
JOIN THE SCHOOL FOOD REVOLUTION
We reach over 20,000 (and counting) pupils each day, helping the school kitchen teams to serve up clean, healthy, inexpensive, generation-powering, mind-opening, society-changing food in schools.
It’s a no brainer – hungry or tired kids don’t learn. If we fuel the future well, kids will benefit and social mobility improves. But we also believe that food should be good to eat. We want to see teachers, school staff and all pupils lining up to see what’s on the menu and enjoying the dishes.
We won’t lie, it can be challenging changing the school food, but it’s worth it. |
We can provide a structured nutritional program based on your individual needs.
To assist with weight reduction, maintenance, or weight gain, nutritional counseling can range from diet recommendations and guidelines to in-depth diet analysis and nutrition programs. A patient's food diary is frequently used to design a customized diet based on the patient's preferences, dislikes, and eating habits. Because it is comparable to what they are used to, this aids in diet compliance. The patient’s diet can also allow for some flexibility.
Nutritional habits influence the entire body rather than just a sub-section or single organ system since the human body is a network of interrelated systems that affect each other. Nutritional counseling is important for your general health since it aims to prevent and correct any underlying clinical imbalances that can contribute to a variety of chronic diseases. |
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