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1. Why is extremism an issue in prisons?
Extremist groups often pose special security risks in prisons. They may encourage the overthrow of the government, and prison officials can be targeted as agents of "illegal" government authority. Further, their literature often encourages ethnic hatred, promoting a violent and racially charged prison atmosphere.
Since the 1980s, white supremacist organizations have spread throughout the American prison system, beginning with the growth of Aryan Brotherhood.1 Aryan Nations, although not permitting inmates to become members, has engaged in "prison outreach" since 1979. In 1987, it began publishing a "prison outreach newsletter" called The Way to facilitate recruitment. Aryan Nations also disseminates its literature and letters to inmates. The World Church of the Creator and some Identity Church groups engage in similar outreach activity, as do other racist groups, such as Nation of Islam. The situation is further complicated by the fact that nonideological criminal prison gangs are often organized based on race, which increases racial polarization.
Imprisoned extremists also pose a security threat by continuing their activities while incarcerated. They recruit inmates, and teach other inmates extremist tactics. Some imprisoned extremists also have attempted to continue to influence adherents outside of prison by, for instance, publishing newsletters from the prison to maintain their outside following.
Prison officials have responded in various ways, reflecting the fact that each state has its own prison system (as do cities, counties and the federal government), and that prisons have varying populations. At times, prison officials have tried to limit access to extremist literature, and these responses have occasionally given rise to litigation because they potentially impinge upon inmates' First Amendment rights. The questions are especially complicated when the censored material comes from a group that claims to be religious.
1 Aryan Brotherhood, at one time associated with Aryan Nations, began as a virulent racist and anti-Semitic prison gang, and has since developed into a crime gang associated with extortion, drug operations and prison violence.
2. Do inmates have the same First Amendment rights as everybody else?
The United States Supreme Court has said that "prison walls do not form a barrier separating prison inmates from the protections of the Constitution." Nevertheless, inmates' First Amendment rights are less extensive than other citizens' and their rights can be limited due to security or other penological concerns. Because of the particular challenges administrators face running prisons, the Supreme Court has acknowledged there is a compelling government interest which warrants limiting prisoners' rights. Courts have been deferential to prison officials' assessments of security threats, and sensitive to their related regulatory decisions, even if such decisions impact inmates' First Amendment rights.
A prison regulation that impinges on an inmate's constitutional rights will be upheld in court if that regulation is reasonably related to legitimate penological objectives. This means that, generally, prison officials can ban extremist materials from prisons because of concerns that the distribution of such material will undermine prison security. Extremist books, leaflets, and magazines have been forbidden to prisoners on this basis. Such material has not been allowed through the mail and has not been kept in the prison library.
However, prisons have less discretion to limit inmates' religious practices than other First Amendment rights due to a new federal law. Because of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), prison officials' discretion in limiting access to extremist material may depend in part on whether such material is related to an inmate's religious exercise. Therefore, prison regulations that affect religious exercise, including access to religious literature, will be reviewed carefully if challenged in court.
3. What legal standard is used to determine the constitutionality of prison regulations?
The Supreme Court announced the standard under which it would review the constitutionality of prison regulations in Turner v. Safley, a case involving a challenge to a complete prohibition on inmate marriage. As noted earlier, a prison regulation is constitutional if it is reasonably related to legitimate penological objectives. Under this standard, courts have upheld regulations based on the consideration of certain factors:
- Is there a valid, rational connection between the prison regulation and the legitimate governmental
interest put forward to justify it?
- Are there alternative means of exercising the assert- ed right that remain open to inmates?
- How great a negative impact will accommodating the inmates' rights have on guards, other inmates,a
nd on the allocation of prison resources?
Courts will consider the existence of obvious and easy alternatives to a challenged regulation as evidence of a regulation's arbitrariness.
4. Is the same legal standard used to determine the constitutionality of prison regulations that implicate an inmate's right to free exercise of religion?
No, the same standard is not applicable to determining the constitutionality of prison regulations alleged to violate inmates' free exercise rights. The constitutionality of such regulations is determined under the more stringent standard set forth in RLUIPA. RLUIPA says that the government cannot impose a substantial burden on the religious exercise of an inmate, even if the inmate's religious exercise is being limited by a generally applicable rule. However, an inmate's religious practices can be limited if the prison official demonstrates that the regulations in question (i) further a compelling interest and (ii) the same interest cannot be served in a manner that is less restrictive of the inmate's free exercise rights.
Since RLUIPA was enacted in September 2000, it has not yet been interpreted by the courts. Therefore, how this statute will impact prison regulations that affect inmates' religious exercise remains unclear.
5. How should prison officials evaluate whether particular material can be withheld from inmates?
Generally, the First Amendment does not allow speech to be censored by the government because of the content of that speech. The government can only limit the time, place, and manner of speech. However, because inmates have more limited First Amendment rights than other citizens, some content-based discrimination is allowed for security reasons. For example, the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit upheld a prison official's decision to withhold entire issues of the magazine, Muhammad Speaks, because certain articles in the magazine created a danger of violence by advocating racial, religious, or national hatred. This decision was prior to the passage of RLUIPA, and therefore the Court's analysis might be somewhat different today. Under current law, if having the entire magazine withheld was determined to be a substantial burden on inmates' free exercise rights, the Court might require that the offending material be removed rather than the entire issue being withheld.
Regulations that exclude publications from a prison because of security concerns have been found constitutional when the regulations have required individualized review of any material before it is banned, notification to inmates that the material has been denied, and the possibility of review of such decisions. Courts have tended to find prison regulations that ban all literature from particular groups unconstitutional. However, the determination of the constitutionality of a given regulation or the implementation of the regulation has tended to be very fact-specific. Courts look not only at the regulation at issue but also consider the nature of the prison (high, medium, or low security) and the particular administrative challenges faced by the prison (such as crowding and quantity of incoming mail) in determining reasonableness, or the practical existence of less restrictive alternative measures.
6. Can prison officials apply the same restrictions to outgoing prison material?
The Supreme Court does not allow content regulation with respect to outgoing mail from inmates. While outgoing mail can be searched for contraband,2 content regulation of outgoing mail is also more restricted because it implicates the First Amendment rights of non-prisoner addressees.3 In addition, outgoing material does not pose a threat to internal prison security; therefore content limitations have been considered less urgent. However, regulations can limit the content of outgoing mail categorically. For example, escape plans, threats, running a business, and blackmail are categories that have been disallowed. Therefore, correspondence from prisoners to extremist groups cannot be banned outright because of its content. However, inmates can be prevented from distributing a newsletter from prison when doing so constitutes running a business.
2 Special rules exist with respect to attorney-client correspondence or mail that implicates an inmate's right to access the courts that are beyond the scope of this discussion.
3 However, prison officials can forbid all correspondence between incarcerated individuals.
7. Can extremist "missionaries" be prevented from visiting prisons?
Prison officials can ban categories of prison visitors, such as former inmates or visitors who have previously broken visiting rules. An extremist "missionary" can be barred from a prison because of generally applicable rules. In addition, prisons can create procedures for requesting visiting ministers, and impose conditions on the selection of the ministers, such as sponsorship by an outside religious organization. Prison officials can also exclude prison "missionaries" if they are advocating violence or otherwise fomenting prison unrest by encouraging racial tension. However, under RLUIPA, the prison would have to show that any restrictions on visiting clergy are the least restrictive means of achieving its end.
Prison officials do not have a responsibility to hire a minister for each religious denomination represented in the prison population. However, if visiting ministers of one denomination are compensated, visiting ministers of other denominations must be equally compensated. Security limitations can be placed on inmate-led prayer or services, but again, under RLUIPA, the prison would have to show that any restrictions on such gatherings is the least restrictive means of achieving its end. For example, it is more likely that the prison could limit the frequency of such meetings, the number of attendees and require supervision than that such gatherings could be banned outright.
8. Under what circumstances must prisons accommodate prisoners' religious dietary requirements?
Accommodating religiously based dietary rules has become an issue when dealing with extremists because incidents have raised concern that extremists "adopt" religious practices that are not based on sincere beliefs in order to obtain special privileges, such as specialized diets. Generally, if an inmate's request for a special diet is because of a sincerely held belief and religious in nature, the inmate has a constitutionally protected interest. Under RLUIPA, a request for a special religious diet can only be refused based on a compelling prison interest and if it is the least restrictive means possible for the prison protecting that interest. Prisons may offer more limited food selection to prisoners with religious dietary limitations, such as providing only cold kosher meals rather than hot food. In the past, when determining whether a prison was required to provided a special diet for a prisoner, courts have considered whether the dietary restrictions were central to the prisoner's religious observance. Under RLUIPA, such a determination would probably not be relevant. The threshold question in evaluating the prison's obligation to accommodate a request would still be whether the inmate's dietary request arose out of sincerely held beliefs that were religious in nature.
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SIR,—As, a regular reader for nearly five years, I must congratulate you on your far-sighted leading asticle of May I. It came to me as a breeze of sanity, courage and hope after the heavy and almost stifling hothouse atmosphere created, alas, by the endless medieval platitudes about the " guild system," the " abolition of usury," the " just price " (whatever that may mean to-day), and all the stock-intrade of the doctrinaire Catholic writers on socio-economic questions.
Except for one or two passages that indicate some understanding of the technical approach to the central problem of industrial reconstruction, I fear that even Mr. Stanley James lucid series of articles strike one as hut an honest yet unconvincing attempt to put " old wine into new bottles." To anyone familiar with the machinery of industrial administration, and its possibilities as an instrument of self-government in modern industry as a whole, neither Mr. James nor Mr. Benvenisti (with his over-insistence on the financial problem), nor the really " Long " answer to " What is the Social Policy of the Catholic Church?" given in 3 recent issue, give any indication as to how the vital problem of reconstruct' ins our industrial politico-economic system is to be tackled as a post-war fact.
I am therefore more than glad to see that you yourself arc aware that planning has come to stay ; and that you for one realise that a planned economy is " the obvious and inevitable solution to the social problems of the day." To my knowledge you are the first Catholic writer to accept this situation fearlessly and to acknowledge it as a necessary historical fact of social evolution. Since returning from the forty-fifth Oxford Management Conference I have been more than ever appalled by the guff which needlessly separates the usual run of academic Catholic thought on this subject from the eminently practical Christian thinking (of which your leading article is a grand example) of those directly concerned with the relations between employer and employee.
How many Catholic writers have ever seriously considered the implications of Works Councils or of Joint Production Committees? Have they ever contributed one particle of constructive thought to the basis and functioning of these instruments of co-operation as between employers and workers on the things that really matter to-day? In fact I often wonder whether Catholics are really alive to social problems. Of the 200 or so managers and managing directors of industrial concerns, ranging from the huge combine like I.C.I. to the small family-owned business, who were present at the Oxford Conference there was not one who was a Catholic.
Now surely there are some Catholics represented in management circles in this country? If so, it was their duty to attend a conference of this nature, devoted as it was to the general theme of " co-operation between employers and labour," in order that the Catholic viewpoint could be expressed. Believe me, there were opportunities galore. For example, at one of the early sessions of the conference, the chairman, a delightful, popular and typically agnostic personality, voiced his scepticism as to whether " industry has within itself the spiritual power to create cooperation." Please note that even he recognised it as a spiritual problem.
His view was, however, that " what industry needed now was a great leader, like Mr. Churchill after Dunkirk." (Shades of Main!) On the other hand, the chairman at a subsequent session, when Jack Tanner gave us the trade union point of view on industrial cooperation and the planned society of the future, emphasised that this spiritual problem could he solved by the delegates present if they would only make up their minds to put their backs into solving it. Far from confessing a disbelief in any of the great religions as a source of industrial inspiration (as the other chairman did to me privately afterwards), he spoke as a practical Christian and laid grim stress on the spiritual values underlying all human nature.
The point I am getting at. is this. Here were gathered together a body of industrial administrators representative of all manners and sizes of manufacturing and distributive organisations, all of whom were in agreement with Tanner that the problem they had come to discuss was,a human one—not merely one of industrial organisation as such. As a result they discussed things not in any doctrinaire fashion, but with a practical grasp coupled with vision that was impressive, to say the least. I must confess that I left Oxford feeling that this vital social problem can be left safely in the capable, sympathetic and really experienced hands of industrial management—which, after all, lies midway between shareholder and worker.
All of us at the Conference felt the urgency of this problem. As Sir Frederielt Leggett, the Government's Chief Industrial Commissioner, put it (amplified by a wealth of sober and convincing argument): " Unless we solve this problem of industrial cooperation now, during the war, we shall be faced with a workers' revolution at the end of it." Sir Frederick made it painfully clear, moreover, that although the Government was quite neutral in the matter of co-operative machinery and its erection, yet its sympathies lay with the worker rather than with the employer.
It seems to me that Catholics as a whole are doing little to further the cause of true industrial democracy, either in their writings or their actions. Why should the impetus for the creation of Joint Production Committees have been left to the Communist Party?, Why could it not have come/from the ,Y.C.W. or the S.O.S. movement? How many Catholics, I wonder, could have written such a revolutionary and far-reaching article as that of Samuel Courtauld in the April issue of the Economic Journal? This great capitalist and industrialist evidently moves with the times. No doubt he has been "converted" by his former personnel manager, Dr. Marsden Jones, now Director of Factories under the Ministry of Supply, and one of the pioneers in the field of practical industrial so-operation. Would that there were one or two Catholics of his calibre in industry to-day!
88. Napier Court, Hurlingham, S.W.6.
[We think our correspondent underestimates the importance from the Christian point of view of the general framework within which practical cooperation should proceed. It is possible to make useful progress in tackling detailed problems, and yet wake up to find that the whole system has been allowed to drift into a totalitarianism. That is why the insistence on a Guild ideal, no atelier how much modified to suit present needs, remains important.— EDITOR, C.H.1
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Michigan could end 'spoiled' elections with instant runoff voting
By Douglas Campbell
Published November 14th 2006 in The Detroit News
'Tis November. Leaves are falling, Lucy snatched the football away from Charlie Brown, and Democrats are whining that the Green Party spoiled an election.
In the election for the Michigan Senate, Republican John Pappageorge, Democrat Andy Levin and Green Kyle McBee each received a minority of the vote in District 13, which covers part of Oakland County. Pappageorge received a plurality -- more votes than anybody else -- and will be the district's senator. Democrats say that because Levin and McBee, combined, received more votes than Pappageorge, Levin should get the Senate seat.
I understand their disappointment, after spending close to a $1 million campaigning for this one Senate seat, including $364,600 of soft money from the Senate Democratic Fund, a similar amount from political action committees and much of the remainder from lawyers and chief executives (for a job that pays $79,650 a year).
Minority votes don't win
Correct me if I'm clueless here: Which part of receiving a minority of the vote entitles you to expect to win? Some are howling that the election was "spoiled" because "the left" was divided between Democrats and Greens, and "the right" won the Senate seat.
I don't see it as spoiled so much as the inevitable outcome of our first-past-the-post style of elections. Somebody wins, everybody else loses. If you earn a minority of the vote, you should expect to lose.
Our system doesn't allocate 3 percent of the seats in Congress to parties that receive 3 percent of the vote, or there would be three Green senators and 13 Green representatives in Washington, D.C.
McBee accepted no soft money, corporate contributions or PAC money. It's the Green Party way - we have unilaterally implemented campaign finance reform and remain 100-percent lobbyist-free. Almost everyone wants to see obscene sums of money out of political campaigning and we have formed a new political party that does precisely that.
But because McBee spent less than 1 percent of what Levin did advertising in media outlets, he encountered a near-perfect news blackout from those media outlets.
Green's campaign reforms
Yes, the Green Party has a plan for campaign finance reform. We may be best known for protecting and restoring the natural environment, but becoming active in politics is necessary to achieve that. Wangari Maathai, recipient of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and the founder of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya, probably says it best:
"It is very, very important for the world to recognize the linkage between good management of the environment, sustainable and efficient management of our environment and resources, and equitable distribution of these resources on one side, and democratic space and peace. If we are going to manage our resources sustainability, efficiently, if we are going to share them equitably, we need democratic space. It is impossible to manage resources responsibly and sustainably in a dictatorship, because in such a situation you have a few people controlling the resources at the expense of the many, and therefore, you cannot have peace. Sooner or later, you have conflict."
Try new voting system
The United States may not be a dictatorship, but we do have a few people controlling the resources at the expense of the many.
We have a plan for eliminating spoiled elections, too: Instant Runoff Voting, which we've been promoting since day one. Under this system, you mark both your first and second choices. It makes it unnecessary to choose the lesser of two weasels, enables you to mark both your true preference and your fallback choice, mathematically eliminates the possibility of spoiled elections, eliminates the need for primary elections and assures no candidate is elected without a majority.
We just haven't found anybody in the Legislature who's interested in preventing spoiled elections.
The Green party is not going away, and we're not giving up. We're trying to bring true democracy to America, not just a pendulum swinging between Democrats and Republicans. A nation accustomed to 31 flavors of ice cream needs much more than just two bipolar political parties.
Ideally, we'd have at least five strong political parties, no two of which can form a majority. But just having one or two strong minor parties, which could prevent one traditional party or the other from gaining and abusing a majority, would be a great start.
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One way to do it is change your existing configuration to use SSL then add a new section to listen on port 80 and put in
Redirect Permanent / https://idocket.com
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Tom Hightower
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2012 15:15
To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
Subject: RE: How do I configure HTTPS on System i v6r1?
I like the idea of using https for the whole site, it would make configuration a lot easier, though there are A LOT of macro changes that would need to be made. But it brings some questions:
- suppose someone enters http://idocket.com
as the URL; how do I get that to auto-route to https://idocket.com
-- would that be a change in our DNS host config setting, or a web server config directive change?
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Rich Loeber
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2012 10:59 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: How do I configure HTTPS on System i v6r1?
I ran into this a little while ago and slogged through it myself. I ended
up posting a blog about the process that you might find helpful:
Rich Loeber - @richloeber
Kisco Information Systems
On 12/13/2012 11:34 AM, Tom Hightower wrote:
I have the following website, hosted on the System i:
Clicking Register now on that homepage takes you to:
As you can infer from the .asp, the https is hosted on a Windows server on our internal network.
Management wants to move the https from the Windows server onto our System I, and I'm all in on that. But it's been quite a long time (10 years?) and many OS releases since I've done that. Can someone point me to a guide that walks me thru getting that up and going?
This email is confidential, intended only for the named recipient(s) above and may contain information that is privileged. If you have received this message in error or are not the named recipient(s), please notify the sender immediately and delete this email message from your computer as any and all unauthorized distribution or use of this message is strictly prohibited. Thank you.
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Neohapsis is currently accepting applications for employment. For more information, please visit our website www.neohapsis.com or email firstname.lastname@example.org
Date: Fri Jan 11 2002 - 14:31:29 CST
> I see you are listed in the CREDITS file so here's a free clue...
You waste your venon on me. I have no vested interest in glibc.
I was just making a comment on OpenSSH code. I could careless what
you shove into glibc nor what crappy unreadable method of 'optimizing'
And had I realized I was walking into a "strl* should be in glibc" fight I
would have never bothred to post.
> /* non portable - easy */
> if (apsrintf(&p, "%s%s", challenge, PROMPT) < 0)
> /* error path -- looks like call abort() from above */;
hmm.. If you are whining about portablity.. snprintf() works as well and
is portable to most platforms (that don't have a borken snprintf()
versions). But I would never suggest using it unless one was looking to
do a quick and dirty application.
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Ringo Kamens wrote:
> I agree, people are working on network-wide attacks (which is great)
> but the biggest and most obvious risk to user privacy/anonymity is
> scripts. Perhaps firefox and noscript should come bundled and
> Ringo Kamens
java. And with no images, much faster over tor.
> On 2/15/07, James Muir <jamuir@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Nick Mathewson wrote:
>> > On Sun, Feb 04, 2007 at 08:58:36PM -0800, Wesley Kenzie wrote:
>> >> I've got an initial version up now at
>> >> feedback welcome! More content and links to come!
>> > As others have noted, this is really excellent, but there's way too
>> > much information there for it to be useful for unsophisticated users.
>> > There's no way that my dad, for example could tell that his window
>> > width and height identify him far more uniquely than do his User-Agent
>> > or his "DMA code".
>> > Maybe there should be some kind of "What I Learned" section at the
>> > top, with parts like:
>> > Java said: "Your IP is x.y.z.w.":
>> > (Learn more about how to disable Java _here_.)
>> > That is, sort information by order of significance of disclosure, and
>> > for each piece of information, tell users what it means, how much it
>> > isolates them, and how to stop disclosing it.
>> > Also, is there some way to see, use, and distribute the source for
>> > these pages? As long as you operate them, yours will of course be
>> > most popular, but my free software instincts make me ask "what do we
>> > do if Wesley is unavailable for a while?"
>> Along with having a web page which attempts to educate Tor users about
>> browsers, I think there also needs to be a stronger warning about this
>> on the main Tor web site (tor.eff.org). There is a warning on the wiki
>> but this is something that's important enough to promote to the main
>> page (and have translated).
>> There are Java and Flash applets that, when run in a Tor user's browser,
>> will open non-proxied connections back to their originating web sites
>> and thus expose a user's real IP address. This is, I think, the most
>> serious threat to Tor users who don't disable these in their browsers --
>> never mind fingerprinting my machine by capturing my screen resolution,
>> The NoScript extension with FireFox works great -- it disables all
>> scripts and plugins. I hope people who really need anonymity are using
>> these. However, I expect that many are using IE. I don't run Windows,
>> but I would guess that there probably isn't an easy way to disable Flash
>> in IE. A clear warning with the Tor client installation instructions
>> might help new Tor users better protect their anonymity.
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ACLU fights residency law for hiring
A lawsuit says the state should not limit employees to current or former residents
A law that requires applicants for most public-sector jobs to be current or former Hawaii residents at the time of application is adversely affecting both non-residents seeking employment and the state government, a civil rights group contends.
"Damage from the pre-employment residency requirement runs not just to plaintiffs ... but also to the public interest of Hawaii's residents because (agencies) are unable to fill positions that are necessary for a well-equipped government," the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii said in a court motion filed yesterday. The motion seeks a preliminary injunction to stop enforcement of the residency requirements until the issue can be decided by the courts.
In July the ACLU sued the state and the City and County of Honolulu on behalf of two Florida men who said their applications for various state and county jobs were rejected solely because of the residency requirements. The federal lawsuit, which seeks class-action status, contends the residency requirements are unconstitutional and penalize nonresidents.
Attorney General Mark Bennett has said he believes the state law, upon which county hiring policies are based, is constitutional and that he will defend it, but he acknowledges the issue is an "open question" that never has been definitively decided by the courts.
City officials have declined comment on the lawsuit.
The ACLU contends plaintiffs Blane M. Wilson of Pensacola and Kevin R. Walsh of Tallahassee have suffered irreparable harm, not being able to apply for work in Hawaii. It also cites the alleged problems at the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility as an example of how the law has had a "tangible and real" impact on state government.
"Despite being on notice for over two years of serious problems at HYCF, many of which are caused in part to inadequate staffing ... the state has refused to waive the pre-employment residency requirement for these positions, which have been posted since October 24, 2004," the motion states.
The ACLU in August 2003 presented a report to the state alleging that juveniles at the state prison were being kept in harsh and abusive conditions.
The U.S. Justice Department conducted its own investigation in October 2004 and reported similar findings in August. Since then, the ACLU has filed two lawsuits this year over alleged mistreatment of inmates at the youth prison.
State officials say they have made progress and are working with the Justice Department to improve the situation.
The residency requirements have been challenged before at the state level.
The Hawaii Supreme Court dismissed a case in 1986 without ruling on it, saying the issue was moot because by the time it reached the court, the person being considered for the job had fulfilled all residency requirements.
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Myocardial infarction (MI) is relatively infrequent in infants and children, although its association with anomalous origin of the left coronary artery and other congenital cardiac anomalies that result in coronary hypoperfusion is well known.1
Although MI has also been reported in some congenital heart defects without coronary artery abnormalities,2-4 massive MI of the left ventricle in tetralogy of Fallot (TOF) has not, to our knowledge, been reported.
Report of a Case.—An 8-month-old girl had been followed up elsewhere with the clinical diagnosis of TOF. Although moderately cyanotic, she had no history of hypoxic spells. On the morning of admission, she had an hypoxic spell. Because of poor response to conventional therapy, ie, knee-chest position, sodium bicarbonate, and morphine, she was transferred to our institution. On arrival, she was cool and blue-gray; heart rate was 150 beats per minute; respirations, 80/min; and blood pressure, 60/40 mm Hg. There
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We recently reported on the extensive uncontrolled experience at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Boston, suggesting the possible efficacy of cingulotomy for treating obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).1 Recent evidence suggests a familial link between OCD and Tourette's syndrome (TS),2 yet there is only one previous report regarding the effects of cingulotomy on the symptoms of TS (in two patients at MGH who underwent surgery to treat concomitant severe OCD).3
We now report the case of a man who had concomitant OCD and TS. He underwent two separate bilateral radiofrequency cingulotomies via burr holes, first in December 1989, and again in June 1991, to reduce his OCD symptoms. This patient's experience is instructive because his OCD symptoms appear to have improved following these cingulotomies, while his tics were unchanged or worse.
Report of a Case
A 35-year-old man had been followed up in our OCD clinic between 1987 and 1988
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To determine the morbidity and mortality of surgical treatment of false (anastomotic) aneurysms, we analyzed the results of 158 consecutive surgical procedures for repair of false aneurysms that were detected as a result of a surveillance program after aortic reconstruction with a prosthesis.
Retrospective analysis of patient data from a vascular registry that included information on the long-term follow-up of our patients.
A university hospital (tertiary referral center) in the Netherlands that has been performing vascular reconstructive surgery since 1958.
We performed 158 surgical procedures on 135 patients with 220 noninfected false aneurysms. Using a yearly surveillance program, the false aneurysms were detected at a mean interval of 8 years after the initial reconstruction. Most patients (60%) were asymptomatic. The operation was performed as an emergency in 25 instances (16%).
The mortality rate of patients receiving nonsurgical treatment was very high (61%) owing to documented rupture (11 of 18 patients). The intraoperative death rate was 7.6% per procedure. This was higher for emergency (24%) than for elective procedures (4.5%).
Conservative follow-up carries a very high mortality rate, as does emergency surgery for a false aneurysm. However, the intraoperative mortality rate of elective reconstruction of a false aneurysm can be in the same range as that of elective primary aortic reconstruction. Therefore, we advocate a surveillance program, including yearly ultrasound studies, after prosthetic aortic reconstruction for the timely detection and elective repair of all false aneurysms.
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The American Medical Association is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
The AMA designates this journal-based CME activity for a maximum of 1 AMA PRA Category 1 CreditTM per course. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with
the extent of their participation in the activity. Physicians who complete the CME course and score at least 80% correct on the quiz are eligible for AMA PRA Category 1 CreditTM.
Note: You must get at least of the answers correct to pass this quiz.
You have not filled in all the answers to complete this quiz
Sorry, you have unsuccessfully completed this CME quiz with a score of
Indicate what change(s) you will implement in your practice, if any, based on this CME course.
For CME Course:
A Proposed Model for Initial Assessment and Management of Acute Heart Failure Syndromes
Indicate what changes(s) you will implement in your practice, if any, based on this
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March 4, 2012Tweet Follow @AMKing00
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Over the last couple of weeks Ty Isaac, the 6-foot-3 and 215-pound Rivals100 member out of Joliet (Ill.) Catholic has received more and more offers to add to his list that has now exceeded twenty; with USC and Clemson among his most recent offers.
Another program that liked what they saw in the No. 18 overall prospect in the country was the Oklahoma Sooners who offered as well a little over a week ago.
The majority of the 2012 class that the Sooners signed haven't even stepped foot on campus but that doesn't mean they aren't already recruiting for the Crimson and Cream. The thing is the Sooner signee that's been talking with Isaac plays the same position as the Joliet Catholic product.
"Obviously they are winners, they have won a lot. I've talked to one of their running backs that they got for 2012, David Smith. Obviously we are from the same general area. He said it was pretty nice out there and to definitely check it out. I take his word, if I can I can," Isaac said.
Oklahoma's running backs coach, Cale Gundy is responsible for recruiting Isaac. Though they have not met in person Isaac says Gundy has made a good first impression.
"He's been real straight up about everything. He seems like a good guy. Obviously meeting someone in person is what you want to do but good first impression for sure," he said.
Academically Isaac is doing well with a 3.1 GPA and says he has not taken the SAT yet. Last season on the gridiron Isaac had a monster year finishing with 203 carries for 2629 yards, and 51 touchdowns.
Being as big and fast as Isaac is and playing running back some might say he has an advantage at the high school level. That may be true but Isaac hasn't allowed himself to think his size and speed alone will get the job done, which is especially true when at the next level.
"Obviously I have some weight behind me to do some things. When we are playing the game I'm not thinking I've got to play like a big back, I know something that I have really tried to get myself to do is get low especially when you are playing in crowded areas is get low," he said. "So, it wouldn't necessarily be like oh he's running straight up you know I get down low, get behind my pads and just run hard and do whatever is necessary to get wherever I need to."
With all the prestigious programs that have offered Isaac the talented running back is aware that each will have impressive facilities on their campus but he is looking for more than that.
"At this point all these big programs have all got great facilities, and good things about them. Definitely, the people will set apart a school and just a general feel when on campus."
Isaac says he would like to play in a pro-style offense at the next level.
Arizona State NEWS
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September 13, 2011
Gilman QB hauls in first offer
Gilman junior quarterback [db]Shane Cockerille[/db] wasn't able to lead his team to victory over the No. 1 team in Maryland, Good Counsel, last Saturday, but his performance was still good enough to catch the eye of a local college coach.
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Brandy is a terrier mix, with the emphasis on "mix." Her brindled coat is not the only thing that makes her special.
She LOVES everybody, and will be a very special pet, especially recommended for families which have a playful dog who needs a sweet playmate.
She's about a year old, still has some puppy qualities, like needing to learn the difference between doggie toys and bedroom slippers.
She was rescued as a stray after being struck by a car back in October. The severe injury required serious hip surgery and a couple of months of convalescence.
She will always have a bit of a limp in the back leg, but the main effects seem to be a limp, and so far an inability to jump up on the furniture.
If you are interested in adopting Brandy, contact the Humane Society of Pulaski County.
The Humane Society would also like to thank Arkansans who donated and helped when they lost power during the storm. They are seeking donations for a generator to prepare in case another outage were to happen.
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A Haughton man was arrested early Sunday morning for second offense driving while intoxicated and careless operation, according to Bossier Sheriff Larry Deen.
Joseph Robert Rosson, 55, of Peaceful Pines Drive, was taken into custody after a Bossier Sheriff’s deputy clocked the vehicle he was driving at 68 miles per hour in a 55-miles-per-hour zone. Another deputy then paced Rosson at 70 miles per hour in a 55-miles-per-hour zone.
Rosson performed poorly on the field sobriety tests, claiming he had back problems. He was taken into custody and transported to the Haughton Police Department for Intoxilyzer testing. Rosson refused to be tested and became very belligerent, screaming and cursing at the deputies. He said his lawyer had advised him to never submit to Intoxilyzer testing. He was arrested for D.W.I. in 1981, 1987 and 2006.
Rosson was transported to the Bossier Maximum Security Facility and booked. His bond was set at $2,200.
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deal’s on. deal’s off. deal’s on. deal’s off. deal’s on. it’s a little hard to make life plans when you’re not sure if you have a place to stay.
my home in winnetka was on the market for a long time–in fact, the entire year i visited facebook friends i worried that it would sell and i would be out of the country or on the road. i am very happy that the new owners have a baby and two dachshunds and they will love this place and make it their home! on the other hand, i’ve been weepy.
getting approval for a mortgage is ne plus ultra difficult and the new buyers have been stretched in their patience. without approval for a mortgage they cannot afford to purchase the house. without knowing that they have the mortgage, i’ve dithered about buying renting or even looking for a place to live.
this past weekend, i divested/sold/gaveaway all my possessions except what i can fit in the back of my car. i still wasn’t sure the buyers were moving in, but i had to move forward as if i knew they would. i was helped by so many friends–and my son eastman who came home from college to help me. he could sell a ketchup popsicle to a lady with white gloves–he’s that good at the garage sale wheelin’ and dealin’!
several times this week i have been approached by deer. whether in the forest preserve where i run, the streets of winnetka, or in my own backyard. i think they were saying goodbye.
for some native americans, the deer totem is a signal that one is about to experience great change and possibly go on a journey. this deer was in my backyard. i felt sorta bad because i didn’t know her name and i didn’t have anything except beer, diet coke, and perfume in my refrigerator. such a bad hostess!
on tuesday morning, the new owners pulled into the driveway. the missus and i hugged and i said “welcome to your home!” i felt that teary thing coming on and then stopped myself–the moment was not about me letting go of a house, it was about a young couple starting a new life.
as eastman and i pulled out of the driveway, i called the renaissance hotel. full. the marriot. full. the super 8. full. wow, being homeless is a little harder than it looks. then we called eastman’s dad, my ex-husband. with a great generosity, he invited us to his apartment. tomorrow, i visit the brazilian consulate to get a visa so i can visit facebook friends in brazil. after all, i am free to roam the planet. and then i drive eastman back to college.
there is a moment in a young man’s life when his mom has to say “wow, you’re an adult, i respect you, i rely on you, and i admire you.” this past weekend was that moment. especially when he told the radnors h to the n when mr. radnor came into the house on sunday afternoon and said he would purchase the remaining pieces of furniture for twenty dollars but only if we transported all of it into his home. those pieces of furniture are now resting at the winnetka community church rummage sale storage facility. we had our limits.
this afternoon, i gave five bucks to a homeless dude sitting on the sidewalk and i asked him to pray for me. i know we all struggle with what to do in the face of seeing someone who is homeless. i am not in that position. i shouldn’t use the word homeless, i should use the phrase “officially without residence”. . .
doesn’t it sound very very downton abbey british to say “officially without residence” — and now i visit facebook friends. .. . everywhere!
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****Update #1 - PDA has been changed to make it easier to track notes and clues****
****Update #2 - Replaces last level on the Player Pack so you can now pass the level****
You asked for it, you got it. SHIFT 3 is here, and it's unlike any Shifting experience you've had before. A massive Adventure mode takes you to the roots of the SHIFT experiment, tonnes of achievements to earn and even an unlockable Celebrity secret character! And if that isn't your cup of tea, theres a selection of 18 Classic style levels from Shift players around the globe to battle your way through, and highscore boards all around! Have fun, this is SHIFT 3, and I made it just for you.
Arrow Keys - Movement
Space - Jump
Shift - SHIFT
P - Pause Menu
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AWS Global Start Up Challenge is Back
October 25, 2012
Amazon’s clever angle on finding good people and good ideas is back, the company declares in its post, “Welcome to the 6th AWS Global Start-Up Challenge.” The annual contest, which began in 2007, provides publicity while delivering a bevy of talent and insights to the company.
The Challenge calls on start-ups that have built their businesses using Amazon Web Services to submit their ideas for a “product, Web site, software application/tool, service, or any other system that substantively uses” one of Amazon’s cloudy products. (The full list of those products is listed in the Official Rules.) The announcement states:
“This contest, launched in 2007, is a way for promising start-ups to get noticed and compete for an opportunity to win some great rewards for your start-up. This year’s challenge offers prizes such as $100K in combined cash and credits for multiple winners, VC introductions, PR support, and more. If your start-up is built using AWS, we want you to apply!”
The write up goes on to give some specifics on the rewards Amazon will shower upon the winning contestant. You can see the entire list here, but opportunity and publicity are perhaps the most promising. The announcement mentions:
“Meet Tier One Investors: At last year’s event, finalists met 1:1 with representatives from top VCs such as Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, NEA, Accel and Madrona Venture Group. Last year’s winner Fantasy Shopper went on to raise $3.3M from top tier venture firms NEA and Accel after the Challenge.
“Press and attention for your start-up: Finalists and Semi-Finalists will be featured in Start-Up Challenge press releases which have previously been picked up by top tech outlets such as TechCrunch and GigaOM.”
So, there you have it. If you are part of a qualifying start-up and are up for the challenge, you’d better get cracking. The deadline for entries is November ninth.
Cynthia Murrell, October 25, 2012
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Wikipedia sobre física de partículas
Rapidinho. Me falaram que a definição de física de partículas da Wikipedia era muito ruim. E de fato, era assim:
Particle physics is a branch of physics that studies the elementary particle|elementary subatomic constituents of matter and radiation, and their interactions. The field is also called high energy physics, because many elementary particles do not occur under ambient conditions on Earth. They can only be created artificially during high energy collisions with other particles in particle accelerators.
Particle physics has evolved out of its parent field of nuclear physics and is typically still taught in close association with it. Scientific research in this area has produced a long list of particles.
Mas hein? Partículas que só podem ser criadas em aceleradores? Física de partículas é ensinada junto com física nuclear? A pesquisa produz partículas (essa é ótima!)?
Em que mundo essa pessoa vive? Reescrevi:
Particle Physics is a branch of physics that studies the existence and interactions of particles, which are the constituents of what is usually referred as matter or radiation. In our current understanding, particles are excitations of quantum fields and interact following their dynamics. Most of the interest in this area is in fundamental fields, those that cannot be described as a bound state of other fields. The set of fundamental fields and their dynamics are summarized in a model called the Standard Model and, therefore, Particle Physics is largely the study of the Standard Model particle content and its possible extensions.
Eu acho que ficou bem melhor. Vamos ver em quanto tempo algum editor esquentado da Wikipedia vai demorar para reverter. Atualmente está um saco participar da Wikipedia por causa dessas pessoas.
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+ New .COMs $7.99/yr plus 18 cents/yr ICANN
fee. Discount based on new one-year registration prices as of 1/27/2012 with sale price reflected in your shopping cart at checkout. Discount applies to new registrations and renewals and cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer or promotion. Domains purchased through this offer will renew at regular price after the initial term has expired.
Offer ends July 31, 2013 5:00 pm (MST).
*One FREE .COM, .CO, .NET or .ORG with purchase of a new 12-, 24- or 36-month website builder plan. Plus ICANN
fee of $0.18 per domain name per year.
You must add the domain name into your cart before purchase, and you must select a domain term length equal to or less than the term length of your website builder plan to qualify for the free domain offer.
If you purchase a domain name for a term longer than the term of the website builder plan, you will be charged for the additional registration term at the then-current rate.
Cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer, sale, discount or promotion.
Free domain offer applies only to the initial purchase term.
After the initial purchase term, domains purchased through this offer will renew at the then-current renewal price.
† Good for one 1-year registration of any available .COM, .US, .BIZ, .INFO, .NET or .ORG.
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WASHINGTON -- As the House begins to debate a major overhaul of the campaign finance system, special-interest groups are opening the floodgates and spending big money to try to preserve their right to spend big money on campaigns.
From the National Right to Life Committee to the American Civil Liberties Union to huge corporations, Capitol Hill has been blitzed by phone calls, letters, advertisements and faxes arguing that the legislation would infringe on their right to express political opinions.
"We're open, and we're loud, and we're very clear how we feel about this," said Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association. "What's at stake is what type of political society we live under in the 21st century -- whether we live in a society where men and women can get together and express a point of view or whether we're going to turn over the keys to the national media conglomerates."
Relenting to pressure from more than 200 members who signed a petition supporting campaign finance legislation, House Republican leaders will bring to the House floor tomorrow up to 16 campaign finance bills.
The debate will turn on the two most prominent bills, both of which are designed to curtail "soft money," the unregulated and unlimited contributions to political parties from unions, corporations and wealthy individuals.
The tougher of the two bills, sponsored by Reps. Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican, and Martin T. Meehan, a Massachusetts Democrat, would ban soft money to both state and national parties. The other bill, sponsored by a bipartisan coalition of first-term representatives, would restrict donations only to national party organizations; soft money could still go to state parties, which could then funnel the money to federal candidates.
The Shays-Meehan bill, identical to a Senate version sponsored by John McCain, an Arizona Republican, and Russell D. Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, would also ban political ads paid for by independent interest groups in the last 60 days of a campaign, if the ad mentioned a candidate by name. Groups that paid for such ads would have to disclose their donors.
"It's not a matter of their voices being denied," Shays said. "It's a matter of disclosure. The truth is, right now, they can say outrageous things about anybody, and they have no accountability."
A final vote will likely come in June. In the Senate, Republican leaders have said resolutely that they do not plan to revisit the campaign finance issue this year.
House Republican leaders have also made clear that they will oppose new limits on campaign donations, making passage a long shot. The way they have structured the debate also presents a significant new hurdle. Members can split their votes among any number of competing versions, allowing them all to fail for lack of a majority, and still claim they supported reform. Even Shays concedes that fewer than half the House members back real reform.
Opponents of the bills are as united as ever. The Christian Coalition, for example, has made campaign finance reform one of its "key issues." It has listed a candidate's position on campaign reform on the coalition's congressional score cards, which are stuffed into church pews and sent to nearly 2 million people.
"What's going on here is first and foremost an attack on the First Amendment free-speech rights of people to organize into interest groups and express themselves," said Arne Owens, a Christian Coalition spokesman.
The National Association of Broadcasters has written to every member of Congress and mobilized its member companies to oppose any free or reduced-rate air time for candidates. That proposal, which some lawmakers plan to introduce as an amendment, is intended to lower the cost of campaigns and make aggressive fund-raising less necessary.
The National Association of Business Political Action Committees has asked the 20 million Americans who donate to PACs to write or call their representatives. The group also plans to launch an advertising campaign this week opposing reform bills.
"We're spending money to protect the right of 20 million Americans to participate in the political process in the way they choose," said Steve Stockmeyer, the group's chief lobbyist.
And the National Rifle Association is rustling up its considerable grass roots, denouncing reform bills on radio talk shows and sending lobbyists to Capitol Hill.
Yet even as they fight to preserve the campaign finance system, some donors are quietly growing tired of a process that is extracting more and more of their money to finance political campaigns. General Motors, Monsanto, AlliedSignal and Tenneco have halted donations of soft money. Charles S. Mack, president of the Business-Industry Political Action Committee, said other companies are exploring the option. If the trend catches on, the groundswell may do more to change the political system than any legislation out of Washington.
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Wars have given us the Jeep, the computer and even the microwave.
Will the war in Iraq give us the Tiger?
Military scientists at Edgewood Chemical Biological Center at Aberdeen Proving Ground hope so. The machine - its full name is the Tactical Garbage to Energy Refinery - combines a chute, an engine, chemical tanks and other components, giving it the appearance of a lunar rover. It's designed to turn food and waste into fuel. If it works, it could save scores of American and Iraqi lives.
Among the biggest threats that soldiers face in the war in Iraq are the roadside bombs that have killed or maimed thousands since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Because some military bases lack a landfill, transporting garbage to dumps miles away in the desert has become a potentially fatal routine for U.S. troops and military contractors.
The Tiger would attempt to solve two problems at once: It would sharply reduce those trash hauls and provide the military with an alternative source of fuel.
It is the latest in a long line of wartime innovations, from can openers to desert boots. The conflict in Iraq has produced innovations such as "warlocks," which jam electronic signals from cell phones, garage door openers and other electronic devices that insurgents use to detonate roadside bombs, according to Inventors Digest.
"In wartime, you're not worried about making a profit necessarily. You're worried about getting the latest technology on the street," said Peter Kindsvatter, a military historian at Aberdeen Proving Ground, who added that money is spent more freely for research when a nation is at war. "Basically, you find yourself in a technology race with your enemy."
The Tiger, now being tested in Baghdad, would not be the first device to turn garbage into energy - a large incinerator near Baltimore's downtown stadiums does it. But it would be among the first to attempt to do it on a small scale. Its creators say it could one day become widely used in civilian life, following the lead of other wartime innovations.
During World War II, contractors developed the Jeep to meet the military's desire for a light, all-purpose vehicle that could transport supplies.
The development of radar technology to spot Nazi planes led to the microwave, according to historians.
The World War II era also gave birth to the first electronic digital computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, or ENIAC. Funded by the Defense Department, the machine was built to compute ballistics tables that soldiers used to mechanically aim large guns. For years it was located at Aberdeen Proving Ground.
This decade, the Pentagon determined that garbage on military bases poses a serious logistical problem.
"When you're over in a combat area and people are shooting at you, you still have to deal with your trash," said John Spiller, project officer with the Army's Rapid Equipping Force, which is funding the Tiger project. "How would you feel if somebody was shooting at you every other time you pushed it down the curb?"
He and other Army officials said they could not recall any specific attacks against troops or contractors heading to dumpsites.For years, large incinerators have burned trash to generate power. Baltimore Refuse Energy Systems Co., the waste-to-energy plant near the stadiums, consumes up to 2,250 tons of refuse a day while producing steam and electricity.
The process is so expensive that it has only made sense to do it on a large scale, scientists say.
The military has spent almost $3 million on two Tiger prototypes, each weighing nearly 5 tons and small enough to fit into a 20- to 40-foot wide container. The project is being developed by scientists from the Edgewood, Va.-based Defense Life Sciences LLC and Indiana's Purdue University.
The biggest challenge was getting the parts to work together, said Donald Kennedy, an Edgewood spokesman. Because the Tiger is a hybrid consisting of a gasifier, bioreactor and generator, much of it is built with off-the-shelf items, including a grinder.
Another big challenge: expectations.
"When we would initially talk to people about the Tiger system, a large percentage would refuse to believe it could actually work," Kennedy wrote in an e-mail. "Alternatively, a similar percentage would be so intrigued by the idea that they would demand to know when they could buy one for their neighborhood."
The Tiger works like this: A shredder rips up waste and soaks it in water. A bioreactor metabolizes the sludge into ethanol. A pelletizer compresses undigested waste into pellets that are fed into a gasification unit, which produces composite gas.
The ethanol, composite gas and a 10-percent diesel drip are injected into a diesel generator to produce electricity, according to scientists. It takes about six hours for the Tiger to power up. When it works, the device can power a 60-kilowatt generator.
The prototypes are being tested at Camp Victory in Baghdad
Initial runs proved successful. The prototypes have been used to power an office trailer. At their peak, they could power two to three trailers.
In recent weeks, the scientists suffered a setback: The above-100 degree temperatures caused a chiller device to overheat and shut off occasionally. A new chiller from Edgewood just arrived at the site, Kennedy said.
After the 90-day testing phase that ends Aug. 10, the Army will decide whether to fund the project further.
Its developers envision the device being used to respond to crises such as Hurricane Katrina, when there is no lack of garbage but a great need for electricity.
Spiller, of the Army's Rapid Equipping Force, said he is optimistic.
"The mere fact we wrote a check means we think it's got a high chance of success," Spiller said.
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Governor O'Malley touts Maryland's many educational successes — top rankings from Education Week and Newsweek and in the number of students taking Advanced Placement tests — but he has been reluctant to embrace the reforms that will be necessary for us to expand on that success and to eliminate disparities in educational quality. It took him months to accept that any changes were necessary to shore up Maryland's application for the federal Race to the Top competition.
That said, he did eventually endorse reforms to the teacher tenure process and the linking of student test scores to teacher evaluations. Mr. Ehrlich has been stronger so far on the issue of charter schools, but Mr. O'Malley has demonstrated that he can actually get education reforms the teachers unions don't like through the legislature. Rather than bristling at Mr. Ehrlich's effort to steer the governor's race toward a discussion of what the candidates would actually do if elected, the governor should take the chance to unveil a comprehensive education reform agenda of his own.
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Then and now, there is ample proof that Americans do take Supreme Court nominations seriously. With good reason.
Sooner or later, the nation's most vexing disagreements over our most vital issues wind up before the Supreme Court. None quite penetrates to the core of our democratic being more than those involving First Amendment rights and values.
Each term, the nine justices must grapple with profound questions involving freedom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom to participate in political discourse: Just how free is freedom of speech? What is the role of religion in public life? Does national security trump the public's right to know?
During the Court's last three terms, the First Amendment has not fared well. The high court has accepted for review far fewer free-expression-related cases than usual and it has been unusually stingy in recognizing First Amendment claims. In only two of the 15 decisions rendered in free-expression cases did the Court sustain those claims.
How the First Amendment will fare in the future depends on how Chief Justice John Roberts differs from his predecessor, William Rehnquist, and how Miers, if confirmed, differs from O'Connor.
During his 33 years on the Court as an associate justice and chief justice, Rehnquist consistently voted against free-speech and free-press claims. O'Connor, however, played a pivotal role during her time as justice, frequently casting the decisive fifth vote in religion cases and occasionally in expression cases.
The justices over the next 12 months will hear arguments, review briefs and render opinions in several cases that have direct bearing on whether we have full or constricted freedoms when we wish to play a role in the crucial political, cultural or religious issues that confront us.
In five cases, the Court will once more take up the question of whether state laws regulating campaign contributions and expenditures pose an unconstitutional threat to political expression: Is money speech?
The issues of compelled speech and government funding of speech are raised in another case. A coalition of university law schools which object to the military's ban against acknowledged homosexuals contends that requiring them to allow military recruiters on campus violates their rights.
Another case tests the limits of the free exercise of religion. The justices will decide whether the federal government can prohibit a small group of followers of a Brazilian religious sect in New Mexico from importing a banned substance, a hallucinogenic tea, for use in its ceremonies.
In a case involving anti-abortion protests appearing before the Court for the third time since 1986, the justices' ruling could affect protest and picketing rights and practices.
And a Los Angeles deputy district attorney wants the Court to declare that his free-speech rights were violated when he was disciplined for informing a defense attorney about ethical problems in a pending case.
The confirmation process for Miers should be complete by the end of the year. At present, chances seem good that she will be confirmed. Since 1789, the Senate has rejected only 34 of 155 nominations to the Supreme Court.
Not much is known about Roberts' views on these issues; even less about Miers'. First Amendment advocates, of course, hope they set the new Court on a new course as far as free expression is concerned. In that regard, Justice Brandeis set a great example as a First Amendment champion during his 23 years on the Supreme Court.
"Those who won our independence," he wrote in 1927, "believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth."
The cause of liberty would be better served if this Court's future rulings transcend individual temperament and ideology to embrace the freedom for speech and the tolerance for belief that define a vital democracy.
Editor's note: Paul K. McMasters is First Amendment ombudsman at the First Amendment Center, 1101 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, Va. 22209. Web: www.firstamendmentcenter.org. E-mail: email@example.com.
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Radisson Hotel Corp. is negotiating the purchase of a Near North Side site for a luxury hotel to open in early 1987, it was learned Monday.
If negotiations are successful and the hotel is built, it would be Radisson`s first downtown since it terminated a management agreement in late 1982 for the Radisson Chicago Hotel, now the Hotel Continental, 505 N. Michigan Ave.
William Hanley, vice president of marketing for the Minneapolis-based innkeeper, said Radisson hopes to begin construction this summer and open the hotel in early 1987. He declined to say exactly where the hotel may be built.
The new hotel is expected to have approximately 300 rooms, a health club, specialty restaurant and premium-priced concierge floors that would offer a higher level of service than elsewhere in the building, Hanley said.
Radisson is returning to Chicago as part of long-range plans to expand nationwide to 139 hotels totaling 36,000 rooms by 1989 from 41 hotels with 12,100 rooms currently, Hanley said.
The firm`s plans locally call for the downtown facility; an all-suite hotel in west suburban Downers Grove, which would open ahead of the Near North hotel as Radisson`s first newly built property in the metropolitan area; the acquisition of an existing suburban property to be operated as a conventional hotel; and construction of two more hotels in the suburbs, he said.
The five facilities would contain 1,300 to 1,500 rooms, Hanley said.
The Downers Grove facility will be a 256-unit, $28 million ``Radisson Suites`` hotel at Wood Creek Drive and Butterfield Road in the Wood Creek Office Park, according to Walden Investment Corp. of Schaumburg.
Walden Investment has started construction and expects to open the facility in the summer of 1986, said Herman S. Hefler, director of hotel operations for Walden. Walden`s Entrust Hotel Management Corp. affiliate will operate it under a franchise agreement with Radisson.
The 7-story building, designed by the Chicago architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, will have six floors of suites overlooking a skylighted, interior atrium; an indoor pool; exercise room; game room; sauna; valet and room service; and meeting facilities, Hefler said.
Each suite will average 500 square feet, ``approximately double that of a conventional hotel room,`` and have a separate living room with microwave oven, refrigerator, wet bar, sofa-bed, dining-conference table, television and telephone, Hefler said.
Hefler said his firm also hopes to obtain franchises to build and operate Radisson Suites in north suburban Glenview and near O`Hare International Airport.
Hefler and Hanley declined to say exactly where in the suburbs the new hotels would be built, nor would Hanley identify the existing hotel now under negotiation.
Radisson`s new all-suite line is patterned after its 96-unit Radisson Henley Park Hotel in Washington and the 126-unit Radisson Suite Hotel in Ogden, Utah, both of which officially opened in January, Hanley said.
``We`ll probably have about five (all-suite hotels) totaling about 1,100 rooms in operation nationally by the beginning of 1986,`` he said.
The facilities will open in areas containing concentrations of high-technology companies and national and regional corporate headquarters, ``where you`d experience a fair amount of training programs and people coming in for longer stays,`` Hanley said.
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LENINGRAD — Imagine George Washington as hateful.
Imagine a campaign to rename Washington, D.C., as the most cherished political hope of residents in the nation`s capital.
Imagine the Founding Fathers discredited and in disgrace, blamed rather than praised for the American Revolution, while the new president and his Congress scurry to rewrite the Constitution and the history books to keep the country from disintegrating into 50 independent states. Imagine National Guard tanks already on patrol in several state capitals to keep the peace.
Then imagine trying to grow up in this atmosphere of shattered ideology and faith, and you might just be able to understand why I see a crisis in Soviet youth.
It is a quiet crisis, because its manifestation is apathy and studied indifference toward everything but the most personal concerns.
Living in Leningrad for the past half-year, I have spent a great deal of time with teenagers and young adults, going to school with them, hanging out after school with them, and talking, talking, talking with them.
They are the Soviet ``Lost Generation.``
At a Leningrad high school, I was talking about belief with a 16-year-old who immediately responded that her age group ``could best be described as nihilists.``
Her parents` generation grew up with a comforting belief that dictator Joseph Stalin saved the nation from the Nazis and rebuilt its economy. But youth raised during glasnost know the truth about his labor camps, show trials and mass executions.
``For us, there was no way we could believe in Stalin, since I, for instance, began hearing the truth about Stalin when I was 7-my father told me,`` she said.
Indifference is the primary characteristic of contemporary teenagers, as one parent related to me. This indifference is selective, protective, directed at Soviet society, politics and economics, which have never evinced any interest in improving young people`s lives, but only in complicating them.
Thus, young Leningraders` indifference toward their own society is paired with a thirst not only for information about the West but also for the life there. Nearly without exception, Soviets aged 16 to 26 hate politics and only want a better life.
One variation of this attitude manifests itself in a desire to emigrate, mostly seen in those over 18 and out of school. They distrust their political system and its politicians, and thus have no desire to participate. Recent bloodshed in the Baltics and the insulting monetary reform, in which people`s life`s savings were wiped out overnight, only reinforced this distrust.
Those who do participate in political life are a small minority. They join such fringe groups as the Monarchists-who call for the return of the czarist autocracy-or Anarchists-who believe that having no system is better than having one.
There are several preservationist movements, with more wholesome platforms, in which young people participate, one dedicated to the
architectural renaissance of Leningrad and another whose politics parallel the West European Greens Party.
The Komsomol, or Young Communist League, like an ideological Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, has a dwindling cadre. Participation once was a prerequisite for future professional standing, but today its members remain more from inertia than interest.
A 16-year-old told me she is still a komsomolka, but only because she retains a membership card. There are rarely meetings these days, and she never attends.
Steps toward a market economy and private property also brought changes in Soviet youth. Some young Leningraders doubt the value of finishing their higher education at technical or professional institutes, or of ever working officially at all if they have obtained their decrees.
Thanks to the current inflation, they have seen their parents` salaries becoming laughably insufficient, and realize they would be better off at semi- legal biznes-or even plying the illegal black market-than trusting the system that betrayed their parents.
Young speculators who bribe their way into possession of scarce consumer goods at government prices resell them at a price 10 times higher, netting in one day more than an honest worker makes in a month. One 25-year-old told me he dropped out of an engineering institute because he can earn more as a private car mechanic in the shadow economy. And black marketeers, who often earn their profits in Western currencies, live the most golden life of all, even if it is totally illegal.
These are the new hero-workers of Soviet society.
The cultural effects on Soviet teenagers of the current social transformations tend to be more subtle. For ethnic Russians, their identity is reinforced by joining the recently unfettered Orthodox Church; last January, the Russian Orthodox Christmas was officially celebrated for the first time in 74 years. One teen told me she even was christened last fall-at her own intitiative.
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It would be a cinch for retirees to figure out how much money they can spend without running out if they could count on their investments growing at a set rate each year.
But as the past 18 months have reminded investors, the market is not only unpredictable, but can go down, too.
Calculating how much money to draw out of a retirement nest egg each year is complicated. It can even be harder than saving for retirement, experts said.
"You have more variables to contend with," said Christopher L. Jones, executive vice president with Financial Engines. How much to withdraw depends on the amount saved, taxes, life expectancy, what portion is in stocks or bonds, and whether the money is in tax-deferred accounts or not, he said.
And there's timing. Retire just as a bear market hits and your nest egg will shrink a lot faster than the portfolio of someone lucky enough to retire in a bull market.
Financial planners say people often assume that they can safely withdraw 8 percent to 10 percent a year from invested assets throughout retirement, excluding what they receive from pensions and Social Security. That's about twice the rate generally recommended.
Christine Fahlund, a senior financial planner with T. Rowe Price Associates in Baltimore, said she's often greeted with skepticism at seminars when she suggests a 4 percent or 5 percent initial withdrawal rate from a portfolio, with slight increases thereafter to keep up with inflation.
Her audience tends to become more accepting when she explains the huge hit that their portfolios will take if they withdraw 8 percent from a portfolio that's fallen 3 percent. "We are getting a lot of believers now that the market is down," she said.
So, how does a retiree figure a realistic withdrawal rate?
Fortunately, planning in recent years has become more sophisticated than just basing withdrawals on a projected average annual return and average inflation rate.
Computers now run portfolios and withdrawals through hundreds and thousands of economic scenarios and tell retirees the likelihood of their money lasting in retirement.
Price offers its free online version, the Retirement Income Calculator, at www.troweprice.com. Financial Engines next year will launch technology that shows retirees how much to invest, how much to draw down and from what accounts based on assets and income, including Social Security and pensions.
If you are trying to determine a withdrawal rate, here are some factors to consider:
- Life expectancy. This depends on a person's health, gender and family history of longevity. Generally, people are living longer and need to plan for that.
Rockville, Md., financial planner Marvin Burt said a decade ago that he would use a life expectancy of 85 when developing retirement plans. He later upped that to 90 and recently started using 95. Couples must factor in the life expectancy of each partner, especially if one is much younger than the other, he said.
- Asset allocation. Retirees should have at least 25 percent of their portfolio invested in stocks to help keep up with inflation, but probably no more than 70 percent in equities, Fahlund said.
Stocks add volatility to a portfolio, and investing too heavily in them can exacerbate the effects of a down market.
"You'll find the volatility can work against you over time," Fahlund said. "You might have to withdraw a little less than you can if you are well-balanced."
Also, avoid the mistake of trying to make up for a lack of saving by aggressive investing, which can backfire, warned Jack Brod, head of Vanguard Advisory Services in Malvern, Pa.
Some retirees with long life expectancies also may want to consider buying an annuity as part of their portfolio to provide a lifelong income stream, suggested Jones.
- Timing. Not only how much you take out each year matters, but whether you start tapping into your nest egg in an up or down market can be critical.
"The worst thing is to have a big market downturn early on in your retirement. That will affect all future years," Jones said.
Take the case of a retiree who assumes an annual return of 9 percent on a $500,000 portfolio and withdraws about 7 percent the first year, increasing that yearly for inflation. Based on a portfolio of 60 percent stocks, 30 percent bonds and 10 percent cash, the retiree would run out of money in 25 years if the market performed according to plan, according to a calculation by Price.
But what if that person retired in 1973, just as the market headed into two years of negative returns? Using actual market returns, Price found that the retiree would run out of money about six years ahead of schedule if no adjustment to withdrawals was made.
However, if the retiree started out with a more conservative withdrawal rate or reduced withdrawals after the bear market, he or she would have wound up with a hefty portfolio balance after 23 years because of the bull market.
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Pauline G. Walker, nee Krause, beloved wife of the late James A. Walker; loving mother of Richard Walker, David (Barbara) Walker, Judith (Richard) Meldahl and Patricia (Craig) Davis; proud grandmother of Heather, the late Anthony, Melissa, Katelyn, Holly and Garrett; and great-grandmother of Brooke, Christine and Ashley. Visitation at Matz Funeral Home, 410 E. Rand Road, Mt. Prospect, IL, Monday, September 23, 2002, from 4 to 8 p.m. Funeral Tuesday, September 24, 9:30 a.m., to St. Emily Church, 1400 E. Central Road, Mt. Prospect, IL. Mass 10 a.m. Interment All Saints Cemetery, Des Plaines, IL. 847-394-2336.
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One day soon, once the sun sets and before the shoppers invade, 145 trees will illuminate with light.
They will send $200,000 worth of electric sunshine up and down State Street, from Wacker Drive to Congress Parkway, ushering in festivals and parades. The annual trips to the windows. The yearly feasts under a Christmas tree.
FOR THE RECORD - This story contains corrected material, published Nov. 17, 2007.
It is the holiday season, the lights on State Street signal, in downtown Chicago.
It is here, on this street, at the zero-zero intersection of State and Madison -- our "Holiday Central" -- that we introduce you to At Play's Holiday Guide. From here, we will direct you to 10 can't-miss events in downtown Chicago, from shopping along a Magnificent Mile to ice skating with the city skyline as a backdrop.
Along the way, we invite you to break from our plans. Snap a few photos. Search for that "perfect"-ly elusive gift. Nosh on gingerbread and slurp camomile tea. You do have time, after all. It's only Nov. 15.
We want to give you enough time to plan, and to enjoy it all. There's so much to see and so much to do.
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How to create the perfect outing
1. Look over our guide on 10 great holiday happenings in Chicago.
2. Choose which "building blocks" fit you best. For example: American Girl plus ice skating plus State Street windows.
3. Pick your "demographic": Family-friendly; Multigenerational; Just for girls; Singles; Romantic couples; Money's no object; Budget; Sightseers; First-timers.
4. Calculate the cost to fit your budget and the time you have available.
5. Go out and enjoy!
Need some ideas? Look throughout the section for the days we've put together.
Christmas Around the World at the Museum of Science and Industry
Best for: Multigenerational, Family-friendly, First-timers.
Figure in: At least 2 hours, and you still might not see it all.
Geography: 5700 S. Lake Shore Drive; 773-684-1414. A 20-minute taxi ride (7.32 miles) from "Holiday Central" (State and Madison Streets) or take a CTA bus (No. 2 south to 57th and Stony Island, No. 6 south [Mon.-Fri.] to 56th Street or No. 10 south [Sat., Sun. and holidays]).
What to know: "Christmas Around the World" is a gateway in more ways than one. The exhibit, now in its 66th year, does a beautiful job presenting more than 50 Christmas trees celebrating customs from countries including Bolivia, Finland and Ukraine. But the exhibit -- plus the 12-year old "Holidays of Light," which showcases celebrations such as Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Diwali -- also acts as a portal to other attractions. Its location on the main floor (the museum's third floor) sits near old favorites like the coal mine and newer ones such as "Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination." The trees may be better suited for older kids and adults who would enjoy the sight of pickle and spider-web ornaments, while younger kids might have more fun at the hatchery, watching baby chicks emerge from their shells.
Price: Included with general admission ($11 for adults, $9.50 for seniors, $7 for children ages 3-11).
Daley Plaza and Christkindlmarket
Best for: Multigenerational, Family-friendly, First-timers, Singles, Romantic couples, Budget, Sightseers
Figure in: 2 hours to browse through the huts and nosh on Germany's many encased meats.
Geography: 50 W. Washington St.; 312-494-2175. Less than 5-minute walk (.17 miles) from "Holiday Central." Walk 2 blocks north.
What to know: One day, the Food and Drug Administration should pay a visit to the Christkindlmarket at the Daley Plaza. They'd find the perfect cure for cold, blustery days in leberkase (topped here with mustard and served on a kaiser roll). Chase that with a cup of gluhwein (a hot spiced wine) and let the warmth envelop you like a summer day in Nuremberg. Chicago's market, started in 1995, was meant to resemble the original Christmas market held in the German city, with its red and white huts and craft-selling artisans. But don't go just for the European chocolates and lace table linens. Go for the 90-foot-tall Christmas tree adorned with thousands of lights and ornaments. Really. You know a bigger Christmas tree? Christkindlmarket runs Nov. 22-Dec. 24. The 94th annual tree lighting ceremony begins at 4:30 p.m. Nov. 23, with the lighting at 5 p.m. (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
Price: Entrance is free.
The Goodman Theatre's 'A Christmas Carol'
Best for: Multigenerational, Romantic couples, Money's no object, First-timers, Sightseers
Figure in: 2 1/2 hours for humbug, ghastly ghouls and yuletide cheer.
Geography: 170 N. Dearborn St.; 312-443-3800. Less than 5-minute walk (.28 miles) from "Holiday Central." Walk 1 block west, then 4 blocks north.
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A staff member carries the golf bag of Barack Obama at a landing zone in Chicago before the President left for Los Cabos, Mexico to attend G20 summit. (AFP PHOTO/Jewel Samad )
Barack Obama played like a U.S. Open champion Sunday -- at least on one shot.
Beverly Country Club's head professional, John Varner, said the president hit a shot into the 12th hole from 135 yards out that settled six feet below the cup. He provided highlights for others between the front and back nines.
“He was cordial with everyone,” Varner said. “We got some nice pictures and he was very accommodating.”
Obama played with two members at Beverly, the South Side club where Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus won Western Opens. A dozen Secret Service personnel followed the group in carts, but members were asked to give him space.
Any idea what he shot?
“I want to say a 72,” Varner joked. “No idea. They kept that to themselves.”
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Military families are a key voting bloc in battleground Virginia, but one group fears its voice will be under-represented on Election Day.
Requests for absentee ballots from members of the armed services, their spouses and dependents could be down sharply from 2008, according to statistics from the Military Voter Protection Project, which is seeking to boost voter participation among troops.
The blame for the anemic numbers rests with the Defense Department, which has been slow to enact reforms that make it easier to register, said Eric Eversole, founder and executive director of MVP.
"I see a significant amount of foot-dragging," Eversole said Tuesday.
The Pentagon takes "strong issue" with the MVP report, spokesman George Little said Tuesday, saying its figures are dated and doesn't take into account recent outreach efforts.
As of late August, 1,746 absentee ballot requests came from military families in Virginia, the group said. For all of 2008, the number was 20,738.
Eversole's group recently released an update that tracked a slightly different population: military members, their families and civilian overseas voters. There was still a shortfall. The current number of requests as of Sept. 22 from that group was nearly 13,000. That's a drop of 70 percent from 2008, when the number was 41,762.
Although more requests are coming in every day, the gap between this year and 2008 is so wide in both groups that it raises serious concerns, Eversole said.
"The number of absentee ballots being requested is shockingly low," he said.
The group also released data that cited shortfalls compared to 2008 in Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Nevada and Illinois.
A federal official countered Tuesday that government outreach efforts are better than ever, and warned against comparing figures from this political season with the 2008 race, because the two campaigns are different.
Pam Mitchell, acting director for the Federal Voter Assistance Program, said activity on the program's web site – which includes site visits and downloading of applications – is comparable to 2004. That was the last time an incumbent president faced off against a challenger. The 2008 race was different, she noted, because the nomination was wide open on both sides and therefore could have attracted more voter interest.
Little, the Pentagon spokesman, cited another reason why a 2012 and 2008 comparison isn't valid.
"They did a compare and contrast between this year and 2008," Little said. "And it's important to remember that there -- the number of deployed service members, especially in the war zones, has declined significantly. So just as an example, the Virginia National Guard, as I understand it, has all units home for the first time in 10 years. We have ended the war in Iraq. We have drawn down in Afghanistan. And it's not an apples-to-apples comparison."
Another issue is whether the Defense Department has followed through on changes required by the 2009 Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act, or MOVE. One provision required a voter assistance office at every military installation – not necessarily a free-standing office, but a place where incoming soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines could register to vote, change address or receive other assistance when they first arrived on base.
Eversole said the department was slow to create the offices, and some offices were placed in out-of-the way locations.
Mitchell said the government is now "fully compliant" with the MOVE Act, with 221 voter assistance offices at bases in the U.S. and around the world.
Langley Air Force Base in Hampton has a voter assistance office at the Bateman Library, said 1st Lt. John Cooper, a base spokesman who is also the installation's voting assistance officer. Airman can come to the office by appointment, and there is a dedicated email box for questions and concerns. Perhaps most importantly, voting assistance is available at briefings for incoming airmen, he said.
Information on voter assistance was not available from Fort Eustis in Newport News and Naval Station Norfolk.
Meanwhile, Virginia officials have gotten into the act trying to promote military voter participation.
Back on Sept. 15, state officials publicized National Military Voter Readiness Day, encouraging members of the armed forces to apply for absentee ballots well in advance of the deadline.
In Virginia, requests to vote absentee by mail must be received by the State Board of Elections by close of business on Oct. 30, said board spokeswoman Nikki Sheridan.
Those in the armed services and others who live overseas are advised to mail their requests well before that day.
"I can't reiterate enough, the time is now," Sheridan said.
Virginia voting deadlines
Oct. 15: Deadline to apply to register to vote
Oct. 30: Requests to vote absentee by mail must be received by close of business on this day.
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by Dan Barker
Dear Believer, — You asked me to consider Christianity as the answer for my life. I have done that. I consider it untrue, repugnant, and harmful.
You expect me to believe Jesus was born of a virgin impregnated by a ghost? Do you believe all the crazy tales of ancient religions? Julius Caesar was reportedly born of a virgin; Roman historian Seutonius said Augustus bodily rose to heaven when he died; and Buddha was supposedly born speaking. You don’t believe all that, do you? Why do you expect me to swallow the fables of Christianity?
I find it incredible that you ask me to believe that the earth was created in six literal days; women come from a man’s rib; a snake, a donkey, and a burning bush spoke human language; the entire world was flooded, covering the mountains to drown evil; all animal species, millions of them, rode on one boat; language variations stem from the tower of Babel; Moses had a magic wand; the Nile turned to blood; a stick turned into a snake; witches, wizards, and sorcerers really exist; food rained from the sky for 40 years; people were cured by the sight of a brass serpent; the sun stood still to help Joshua win a battle, and it went backward for King Hezekiah; men survived unaided in a fiery furnace; a detached hand floated in the air and wrote on a wall; men followed a star which directed them to a particular house; Jesus walked on water unaided; fish and bread magically multiplied to feed the hungry; water instantly turned into wine; mental illness is caused by demons; a “devil” with wings exists who causes evil; people were healed by stepping into a pool agitated by angels; disembodied voiced spoke from the sky; Jesus vanished and later materialized from thin air; people were healed by Peter’s shadow; angels broke people out of jail; a fiery lake of eternal torment awaits unbelievers under the earth ... while there is life-after-death in a city which is 1,500 miles cubed, with mansions and food, for Christians only.
If you believe these stories, then you are the one with the problem, not me. These myths violate natural law, contradict science, and fail to correspond with reality or logic. If you can’t see that, then you can’t separate truth from fantasy. It doesn’t matter how many people accept delusions inflicted by “holy” men; a widely held lie is still a lie. If you are so gullible, then you are like the child who believes the older brother who says there is a monster in the hallway. But there is nothing to be afraid of; go turn on the light and look for yourself.
If Christianity were simply untrue I would not be too concerned. Santa is untrue, but it is a harmless myth which people outgrow. But Christianity, besides being false, is also abhorrent. It amazes me that you claim to love the god of the bible, a hateful, arrogant, sexist, cruel being who can’t tolerate criticism. I would not want to live in the same neighborhood with such a creature!
The biblical god is a macho male warrior. Though he said “Thou shalt not kill,” he ordered death for all opposition, wholesale drowning and mass exterminations; punishes offspring to the fourth generation (Ex. 20:5); ordered pregnant women and children to be ripped up (Hos. 13:16); demands animal and human blood to appease his angry vanity; is partial to one race of people; judges women to be inferior to men; is a sadist who created a hell to torture unbelievers; created evil (Is. 45:7); discriminated against the handicapped (Lev. 21:18-23); ordered virgins to be kept as spoils of war (Num. 31:15-18, Deut. 21:11-14); spread dung on people’s faces (Mal. 2:3); sent bears to devour 42 children who teased a prophet (II Kings 2:23-24); punishes people with snakes, dogs, dragons, drunkenness, swords, arrows, axes, fire, famine, and infanticide; and said fathers should eat their sons (Ez. 5:10). Is that nice? Would you want to live next door to such a person?
And Jesus is a chip off the old block. He said, “I and my father are one,” and he upheld “every jot and tittle” of the Old Testament law. Mt. 5:18 He preached the same old judgment: vengeance and death, wrath and distress, hell and torture for all nonconformists. He believed in demons, angels and spirits. He never denounced the subjugation of slaves or women. Women were excluded as disciples and as guests at his heavenly table. Except for hell he introduced nothing new to ethics or philosophy. He was disrespectful of his mother and brothers; he said we should hate our parents and desert our families. Mt. 10:35-36, Lk. 14:26 (So much for “Christian family life.”) He denounced anger, but was often angry himself. Mt. 5:22, Mk. 3:5 He called people “fools” (Mt. 23:17,19), “serpents,” and “white sepulchers,” though he warned that such language puts you in danger of hellfire. Mt. 5:22 He said “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth. I came not to send peace, but a sword." Mt. 10:34 (So much for “Peace on Earth.”) He irrationally cursed and withered a fig tree for being barren out of season. Mt. 21:19 He mandated burning unbelievers. Jn. 15:6 (The Church has complied with relish.) He stole a horse. Lk. 19:30-33 He told people to cut off hands, feet, eyes and sexual organs. Mt. 5:29-30, 19:12 You want me to accept Jesus, but I think I’ll pick my own friend, thank you.
One of Jesus’s many contradictions was saying good works should be seen, and not seen. Mt. 5:16, 6:1-4 One of his mistakes was saying that the mustard plant has the smallest seed. Mt. 13:31-32 The writers of Matthew and Luke could not even get his genealogy straight, contradicting the Old Testament, and giving Jesus two discrepant lines through Joseph, his non-father!
I also find Christianity to be morally repugnant. The concepts of original sin, depravity, substitutionary forgiveness, intolerance, eternal punishment, and humble worship are all beneath the dignity of intelligent human beings and conflict with the values of kindness and reason. They are barbaric ideas for primitive cultures cowering in fear and ignorance.
Finally, Christianity is harmful. More people have been killed in the name of a god than for any other reason. The Church has a shameful, bloody history of Crusades, Inquisitions, witch-burnings, heresy trials, American colonial intolerance, disrespect of indigenous traditions (such as American Indians), support of slavery, and oppression of women. Modern “fruits” of religion include the Jonestown massacre, the callous fraud of “faith healers,” recent wars and ethnic cleansing, and fighting in Northern Ireland. Religion also poses a danger to mental health, damaging self-respect, personal responsibility, and clarity of thought.
Do you see why I do not respect the biblical message? It is an insulting bag of nonsense. You have every right to torment yourself with such insanity — but leave me out of it. I have better things to do with my life.
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ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Raceis halfway over, with a few mushers delaying their mandatory 24-hour layovers -- and abandoning most hope of catching up with the leaders -- in an all-out drive for the trail’s midpoint.
Race standings updated at 2:33 p.m. Thursday say musher Jim Lanier was the first to reach Cripple at 1:55 p.m., darting out of Ophir at 11:25 p.m. Wednesday. The run gives Lanier GCI’s Dorothy G. Page Halfway Award, as well as a $3,000 prize, for being first to reach the village halfway along the race’s 975-mile course.
GPS tracking also showed 2004 champion Mitch Seavey -- who has taken his 24-hour layover and is poised to assume the race lead -- in Cripple where race standings listed him in second, the first of some 32 mushers en route from Ophir to Cripple Thursday afternoon to reach the checkpoint after Lanier.
Trent Herbst, who also delayed his layover, was approaching Cripple on GPS and listed in third place despite a 12:35 a.m. departure from Ophir -- more than three hours ahead of Seavey, who overcame a 3:52 a.m. departure time to overtake Herbst.
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TURTLE BAY, Hawaii — The surf rolls in with tumbling white crests over the sculptured coral on the far north coast of Oahu, capital island of Hawaii.
Kuilima Point, a finger of land reaching out into the Pacific Ocean, catches the surf and keeps a small private bay serene for quiet snorkeling. The warm sands along the beach invite sunbathing.
Out on the point, 400 guest rooms and suites in three low-rise wings overlook the challenging surf.
Guest cottages are nested in tropical greenery above the surf, with a tennis club in its own greenery behind the cottages. Surrounding the resort is the 18-hole Arnold Palmer golf course.
Honolulu and Waikiki are an hour's drive away, across north Oahu's fields of sugar cane.
In 1972, Oahu's only North Shore resort opened as the Del Webb Kuilima Hotel on Turtle Bay, encompassing 808 acres of ocean-front land near the town of Kahuku.
In 1984, after a $17-million renovation, the resort reopened as the Turtle Bay Hilton & Country Club.
New Hotels Planned
Asahi Jyuken, an investment and development company based in Osaka, Japan, paid about $127.5 million to buy the resort from Prudential Insurance Co., which has been the owner since the Del Webb era of the 1970s and early 1980s. Hilton Hotels will continue to operate the resort.
The Japanese firm intends to build another hotel on adjacent Kawela Bay, a project that had received all necessary permits before the sale. Two more hotels, another 18-hole golf course and a second equestrian center also are planned, along with 2,000 condominium units.
Will Turtle Bay continue to seem area codes away from Honolulu and Waikiki?
The same kind of question was being asked by local people and environmentalists when we first came here 16 years ago, when the Kuilima Hotel was less than a month away from its grand opening.
Later we heard that Del Webb had reached out from Las Vegas to north Oahu with the belief and hope that casino gambling would soon be legalized in Hawaii.
It never happened. Kuilima is no longer a destination name. The postal address is still Kahuku, but the resort area has come to be known as Turtle Bay, which is the wide bay open to the sea, not the private bay protected by the point.
As we arrived from Waikiki, surfers were out waiting for the big waves. Some of the best surf in the world is found at the "Pipeline," just beyond Kawela Bay and off Sunset Beach.
The golf course is home of the Arnold Palmer Golf School and is managed by the Arnold Palmer Golf Management Co. The Arnold Palmer/Sam Snead "Legends of Golf" tournament is held here in January; top women pros compete in February.
For guests there are complimentary golf clinics Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Greens fees with carts are $45 for guests. The Turtle Bay Twosome golf package is $95 per person per night, double occupancy; it includes ocean-view accommodations and a round of golf.
The Peter Burwash professional tennis organization manages the tennis club and has complimentary clinics for guests three mornings a week. The Tennis Holiday package is $77.50 per person per night, double occupancy, for accommodations, court time and a private lesson.
Other sports on the North Coast include horseback riding, windsurfing and scuba diving. Quilting, lei-making and leaf weaving are quieter options.
Dining is in the Cove restaurant and out on the Palm Terrace, with Sunday champagne brunch in the Sea Tide Room. Evening entertainment can be found in the Bay View Lounge.
Construction of the next hotel on Kawela Bay is scheduled to start in 1 1/2 years and will take about two years to complete. Two others, plus the condos, will follow in the mid-1990s.
View of Growth
The Hilton people believe that the three additional hotels and condos will not overdevelop an 808-acre resort area that is more than 200 acres bigger than all of Waikiki.
A short drive eastward and south along the coastal Kamehameha Highway is the Polynesian Cultural Center, one of the island's biggest attractions, with a cast of more than 125 islanders performing the songs and dances of the South Pacific in a setting of old Polynesia.
About the same distance westward and south along the coastal highway, Waimea Falls Park preserves nature and historical sites in its 1,800-acre valley and presents entertainment that includes the daring cliff divers.
Guest rooms for two at the Turtle Bay Hilton & Country Club start at $120.
You can make resort reservations through your travel agent or by calling toll-free (800) HIL-TONS.
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Those multicultural slackers, hipper and less corn-fed than the groups gamboling across the pages of Vogue or the spiffily dressed junior execs who star in ads targeted for Forbes or GQ, will be seen in Vibe, Wired, Details and Rolling Stone. Bus shelters in a number of cities are papered with an unstudly, shirtless guy in Tommy jeans, the FIGER on his underwear waistband peeping out above his slender hip. The irresistible kindergarten-recess portrait used for Tommy Hilfiger boys ads features diverse children dressed in rolled-up khakis and polos bearing the Hilfiger lion crest. They look like they could teach world leaders how to play in the sandbox harmoniously.
Image maintenance is just one crucial element of the strategy that helped make Tommy Hilfiger U.S.A. the No. 1 apparel firm traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Barbara Bates, president of the company, worked at Polo for 10 years before joining Hilfiger in 1991. "Obviously, the product had to be great," she says. "But the presentation, the visual merchandising, having our own shops within the department stores, having our own selling specialists, was all important. That was a formula that had worked very well at Polo. Creating the hype behind it was a formula that had worked very successfully also, so we very aggressively went after that, first in men's, then in boys, we're doing it in denim right now, and we're launching women's wear the same way."
Ralph Lauren, who has just inaugurated two younger, lower-priced lines to combat Hilfiger's encroachment, was an unwitting tutor. "Ralph and I have very similar taste," Hilfiger says. "We both love the classics. I think Ralph has done an incredible job, and if anybody has been an influence in America, he has."
In the 14-person Hilfiger design studio, the major collections and mini-groups that roll out every month are developed. Each is designed around a theme, a location or an activity in which form follows function. The themes impart a look and a palette and conjure visions of a fantasy lifestyle: Expedition, Alpine, Nautical, Tailgate, Bermuda, Back Bay. Lauren began working with themes in the '70s: Sun Valley, Santa Fe, Safari. A genealogical chart of traditional American style would trace a line from Brooks Brothers to Lauren to Hilfiger.
"I take the classic idea and mix it with a lot of different inspirations," Hilfiger says. "I made my shirts oversized and I made them relaxed. I washed the cotton shirts till they were soft. I made my chinos baggy and loose. Now I'm looking at board sports and getting inspiration from what the snowboarders and surfers wear."
"Five minutes to first outfit. Nobody should be eating or drinking anymore."
Backstage, Hilfiger conducts another hair check, and the telephone game resumes: "Tommy says Jeff's hair is perfect. Everyone look at Jeff."
A photographer who has been shadowing Hilfiger for the past two hours observes him thank some of the backstage crew. "You guys really did a great job," Hilfiger says, remembering each of his employees by name.
"There isn't even a touch of irony here, is there?" the photographer says to a visitor. "I mean, he's such a nice guy, the models love him, his staff loves him, the clothes are great, he's making a fortune. It's just a little too good to be true."
Krier, who looks far too nervous considering the number of high-profile shows he's directed, assembles the models and launches into the fashion version of the pregame pep talk. "Remember, you look terrific. Remember, your dresser is your friend. I want it to rock out there. You're out there, you're a happy guy, you're a rock star."
Hilfiger casts a wary eye at a model's Beatleoid hair. "Every season he says he wants the hair more preppy," one of Krier's lieutenants whispers to a hairdresser, rolling his eyes. "Every season."
From the yellow suede surfer pants to the lean 007 suits to the patch-printed bike jerseys that retailers in the audience know fly out of the stores, the show is an explosion of color and energy that is nearly exhausting to watch. "He's cleverly using the runway to build his hip, rock 'n' roll image," a trade paper writes. "Mr. Hilfiger had fresh and funny ideas," the New York Times raves.
Although Hilfiger received two major awards last year--the Council of Fashion Designers of America Menswear Designer of the Year and VH-1's Catwalk to Sidewalk honor--and swept five categories in the fragrance industry's Fifi Awards this year, he has much at stake. "There's more pressure than before, because we're being looked at under a microscope by everyone," Hilfiger says. "They're wondering what the big deal is."
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The vaunted protection that intellectually active adults get from Alzheimer’s disease has a dark downside, a study released Wednesday has found. Once dementia symptoms become evident and Alzheimer’s disease is diagnosed in such patients, their mental decline can come with frightening speed.
That finding, published in the journal Neurology, comes from a study of 1,157 Chicago-based seniors who were followed for an average of just over 11 years. Six years after gauging the extent to which the study participants engaged in activities that challenged their mental capacities, researchers from Rush University Medical Center Alzheimer’s Disease Center made periodic assessments of the study participants’ cognitive health and traced the trajectories of their brain health.
All told, 148 of the participants were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease during the follow-up period, and 395 were found to have mild cognitive impairment—intellectual problems that are less severe than Alzheimer’s disease, but which often precede such a diagnosis.
While all participants’ mental function showed yearly declines, the steepest downward trajectories belonged to those who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, but who had reported high levels of mental engagement at the outset of the study. Fellow Alzheimer’s sufferers who had not sought out much intellectual stimulation at the study’s outset showed a more gradual decline in their function.
“In effect, the results of this study suggest that the benefit of delaying the initial appearance of cognitive impairment [in Alzheimer’s disease] comes at the cost of more rapid dementia progression,” the author wrote.
The findings support a common observation of those who treat intellectually minded patients who go on to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease—that once diagnosed, their decline is rapid. It also underscores a growing body of evidence that the bright and mentally-active may not beat Alzheimer’s disease, but can hold off its ravages for months or years longer than those who are not so engaged.
Dr. John M. Ringman, a UCLA neurologist and assistant director of the Mary S. Easton Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research, said he sees regular evidence of the phenomenonen in his clinical work, as well as in brain-imaging scans that can detect the physical signs of Alzheimer’s disease while a patient is still alive: Patients with a history of intensive mental engagement seem to develop a “cognitive reserve,” said Dr. Ringman. That mental strength frequently allows them to function almost normally, he said, even as the amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles that are the hallmarks of the disease have advanced upon the brain.
By the time such a patient comes to his office complaining that his memory and mental function are not what they used to be, the disease has progressed significantly, said Ringman. The decline from that point can be precipitous.
In a disease that evidence now suggests takes years, perhaps decades, to show up in everyday behavior, Ringman said “it’s hard to quantify this cognitive reserve.” The strength of the study published Wednesday is that it gathered copious evidence of participants’ mental status and activity at the outset and followed them for more than a decade, he added.
--Melissa Healy/Los Angeles Times
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Belgian physicist Francois Englert, left, speaks with British physicist… (Fabrice Coffrini / AFP/Getty…)
For physicists, it was a moment like landing on the moon or the discovery of DNA.
The focus was the Higgs boson, a subatomic particle that exists for a mere fraction of a second. Long theorized but never glimpsed, the so-called God particle is thought to be key to understanding the existence of all mass in the universe. The revelation Wednesday that it -- or some version of it -- had almost certainly been detected amid more than hundreds of trillions of high-speed collisions in a 17-mile track near Geneva prompted a group of normally reserved scientists to erupt with joy.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday, July 06, 2012 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 News Desk 1 inches; 48 words Type of Material: Correction
Large Hadron Collider: In some copies of the July 5 edition, an article in Section A about the machine used by physicists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research to search for the Higgs boson referred to the $5-billion Large Hadron Collider. The correct amount is $10 billion.
Peter Higgs, one of the scientists who first hypothesized the existence of the particle, reportedly shed tears as the data were presented in a jampacked and applause-heavy seminar at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
"It's a gigantic triumph for physics," said Frank Wilczek, an MIT physicist and Nobel laureate. "It's a tremendous demonstration of a community dedicated to understanding nature."
The achievement, nearly 50 years in the making, confirms physicists' understanding of how mass -- the stuff that makes stars, planets and even people -- arose in the universe, they said.
It also points the way toward a new path of scientific inquiry into the mass-generating mechanism that was never before possible, said UCLA physicist Robert Cousins, a member of one of the two research teams that has been chasing the Higgs boson at CERN.
"I compare it to turning the corner and walking around a building -- there's a whole new set of things you can look at," he said. "It is a beginning, not an end."
Leaders of the two teams reported independent results that suggested the existence of a previously unseen subatomic particle with a mass of about 125 to 126 billion electron volts. Both groups got results at a "five sigma" level of confidence -- the statistical requirement for declaring a scientific "discovery."
"The chance that either of the two experiments had seen a fluke is less than three parts in 10 million," said UC San Diego physicist Vivek Sharma, a former leader of one of the Higgs research groups. "There is no doubt that we have found something."
But he and others stopped just shy of saying that this new particle was indeed the long-sought Higgs boson. "All we can tell right now is that it quacks like a duck and it walks like a duck," Sharma said.
In this case, quacking was enough for most.
"If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably at least a bird," said Wilczek, who stayed up past 3 a.m. to watch the seminar live over the Web while vacationing in New Hampshire.
Certainly CERN leaders in Geneva, even as they referred to their discovery simply as "a new particle," didn't bother hiding their excitement.
The original plan had been to present the latest results on the Higgs search at the International Conference on High Energy Physics, a big scientific meeting that began Wednesday in Melbourne.
But as it dawned on CERN scientists that they were on the verge of "a big announcement," Cousins said, officials decided to honor tradition and instead present the results on CERN's turf.
The small number of scientists who theorized the existence of the Higgs boson in the 1960s -- including Higgs of the University of Edinburgh -- were invited to fly to Geneva.
For the non-VIP set, lines to get into the auditorium began forming late Tuesday. Many spent the night in sleeping bags.
All the hubbub was due to the fact that the discovery of the Higgs boson is the last piece of the puzzle needed to complete the so-called Standard Model of particle physics -- the big picture that describes the subatomic particles that make up everything in the universe, and the forces that work between them.
Over the course of the 20th century, as physicists learned more about the Standard Model, they struggled to answer one very basic question: Why does matter exist?
Higgs and others came up with a possible explanation: that particles gain mass by traveling through an energy field. One way to think about it is that the field sticks to the particles, slowing them down and imparting mass.
That energy field came to be known as the Higgs field. The particle associated with the field was dubbed the Higgs boson.
Higgs published his theory in 1964. In the 48 years since, physicists have eagerly chased the Higgs boson. Finding it would provide the experimental confirmation they needed to show that their current understanding of the Standard Model was correct.
On the other hand, ruling it out would mean a return to the drawing board to look for an alternative Higgs particle, or several alternative Higgs particles, or perhaps to rethink the Standard Model from the bottom up.
Either outcome would be monumental, scientists said.
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Where to put special education students in Lehighton Area School District buildings has been a longstanding problem for district officials.
As with most districts throughout the area, Lehighton has an increasing number of special education students and not enough space to put them.
Although the School Board ended one space problem with a move made at this week's meeting, members learned that another problem has arisen.
According to acting Superintendent Robert Nagle, the district must provide three classrooms as part of a fair share program with the Carbon-Lehigh Intermediate Unit.
The fair share program allows Lehighton to send its special education students to another district for instruction. As part of the agreement, however, Lehighton must return the favor sometime.
Nagle said a current special education classroom at the Franklin Elementary School has been found to be substandard because it can only hold six students instead of 15.
One room in the high school is substandard and a resource room in the East Penn Elementary School is moved around as rooms become available, Nagle said.
In addition, Nagle said, the district must find two classrooms for Lehighton students presently attending classes in the Palmerton Area School District. Palmerton has informed the intermediate unit that it will need the classrooms next school term for its own students.
"What we're finding in the Lehighton School District is that we simply don't have the room," Nagle said.
Robert J. Klucharich, director of curriculum and instruction in the Lehighton district, briefed the board on several ways of creating more classroom space.
Klucharich said a former school building in the Packerton section of Mahoning Township could be used to house the district's administrative offices. Klucharich said the move would open up space in the Shull-David Elementary School, the present location of the administrative offices.
Portable facilities could also be used to increase available space for classrooms, Klucharich said.
A long-term solution to the problem, according to Klucharich, would be to integrate or mainstream special education students into regular classrooms.
The School Board took no action on Klucharich's suggestions, but did authorize district officials to continue a study on how to solve the problem and to make a recommendation at a future meeting.
The board did, however, improve the junior high special education situation by agreeing to allow nine seventh-grade students to be inte grated into regular classrooms on a full-time basis.
James Smith, the junior high school principal, called the move a "compassionate alternative to isolation."
The nine students, composing an entire class, are termed self-contained, and have some degree of learning disability or are classified as mildly emotionally or mentally retarded.
Under the plan, the students will attend all classes with regular education students. Intermediate unit personnel and junior high teachers will meet to discuss an educational program for the students.
Each student will receive a grade from the intermediate unit teacher, who will continue to teach English and reading to the nine students.
Smith has said the move will have no effect on classes attended by regular students, and will help improve the self-esteem of the special education students.
"Children will no longer be isolated from other students and all students will have a chance to participate in experiments, view quality educational media, and socialize with all of the other students in the junior high," Smith said.
The special education students had previously been integrated or mainstreamed into classes such as art, shop and physical education. The students will now be taking course such as science, social studies, math, geography and skills for adolescence while sitting next to regular education students.
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After a six-month national search, the Lehigh Valley Zoological Society has appointed Rick Molchany, former vice president of operations at The Morning Call in Allentown, as President/CEO of the Lehigh Valley Zoo.
A lifelong resident of the Lehigh Valley, Molchany replaces Stacey Johnson, who left in June to become President/CEO of The Living Desert Zoo in Palm Desert, California.
Molchany, 51, said the Zoo's emphasis on "Smart Fun" resonates with him.
"The Lehigh Valley Zoo should be as broad an attraction as possible," he said. "We want to reach all the schools and play an integral part of the education process while being an appealing destination for parents, grandparents and families."
Molchany plans to focus on building broad-based partnerships and growing attendance while providing financial transparency.
"I want the Zoo to become an integral part of the Lehigh Valley, leading environmental education, wildlife conservation and family recreation. It's important to offer every visitor who walks through our gates a memorable experience," he said.
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A tractor trailer hangs off a bridge along Interstate 80 in Monroe County… (Larry Neff/Special to The…)
Trucker to be charged in I-80 crash
The driver of a tractor-trailer that was left dangling on the side of a Monroe County overpass Sunday afternoon lost control while trying to avoid vehicles that had slowed down for traffic, state police said Monday.
State police at Swiftwater said Anthony McBeam, 28, of Troy, N.Y., will be charged for the wreck that closed traffic for several hours and forced utility workers to cut power to the area to safely remove the tractor trailer left hanging off the side of the Sullivan Trail overpass near mile marker 299 in Pocono Township. Police did not say what charges McBeam will face.
Police said McBeam was going about 60 mph on eastbound Route 80 and was trying to make a curve when he braked because of slowing traffic ahead of him. McBeam tried to avoid crashing into several vehicles by steering to the left and onto a grassy median, which separates Route 80 eastbound and westbound, police said.
While steering to the left, McBeam sideswiped a gold 2011 BMW X5 occupied by three people and hit struck an embankment before going over the Sullivan Trail overpass.
No one was injured in the crash. Besides state police, several fire companies, fire police units, ambulance crews and tow companies assisted in the operation. PP&L workers cut off power to the area.
Manuel Gamiz Jr.
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Louisville's Chane Behanan dunks between Michigan State's… (REUTERS/Darryl Webb )
PHOENIX -- Gorgui Dieng's seven blocks and three steals highlighted a suffocating Cardinals defense, and the NCAA Tournament's first No. 1 seed fell as Louisville knocked out Michigan State, 57-44, in the Sweet 16 action in the West Region on Thursday.
"We knew we were going to come to a war," Dieng said. "We needed to be tougher than them to win this game."
Chane Behanan netted a game-high 15 points while grabbing nine rebounds and Russ Smith donated 11 points for the Cardinals (29-9), who moved on to face either Florida or Marquette with a spot in the Final Four on the line.
Draymond Green finished his collegiate career with a 13-point, 16-rebound effort, but it was not enough for the Spartans (29-8). Brandon Wood added 14 points in defeat.
Louisville held the top-seeded Spartans to 28.6 percent field goal shooting, including 23.8 percent from three-point range.
"They played their solid defense. And we thought we was pretty well prepared for it. It's not our coach's fault," said Green. "I think they gave us a great game plan. At the end of the day, players play, and we didn't, we just didn't execute well."
Both teams shot poorly in the first half, but Louisville made up for its 1- of-15 two-point field goal mark with seven three-pointers, and took a 23-18 edge into intermission.
After MSU's Keith Appling opened the second with a trey, Louisville ripped off a 12-4 run. Behnan knocked down two jumpers and Peyton Siva made a dunk during the spurt.
Adreian Payne and Green dunked on consecutive possessions as the Spartans got back to within four, 35-31 with a 6-0 run.
But the Cardinals responded by scoring 11 of the next 13 points for their largest lead of the game to that point at 46-33.
Wood's triple with 3:01 to play cut Michigan State's deficit to single digits. Louisville rolled off an 8-0 run a bit later, though, to secure the victory and its first Elite Eight berth since back-to-back runs in the 2008 and 2009 campaigns.
Game notes: Louisville shot 52 percent (13-of-25) from the field in the second half after posting a 26.7 percent (8-of-30) mark in the first...Dieng played all 40 minutes...Michigan State committed 15 turnovers, including six by Green...Chris Smith finished with nine points for the Cardinals, and Siva had nine assists.
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Saginaw Bay: Those heading out 5 miles off Palmer Road caught some walleye in 12 to 18 feet of water. Small perch were caught closer to shore. Off Linwood, perch anglers caught fish a mile out and walleye were caught in the Black Hole in 20 feet of water. Near Quanicassee, perch were caught off Vanderbilt Park. A few walleye were caught 12 miles off Thomas Road and perch near Tietz Drain. A lot of anglers at Bay Port and Mud Creek, but catch rates for perch were spotty. At Caseville, a couple lake trout were taken near the breakwall.
Tittabawassee River: Is ice covered however ice conditions are poor. No fishing activity at this time.
Saginaw River: Ice conditions were improving. Most of the walleye caught were sublegal but a few keepers were reported. Small walleye were the common catch between the mouth and Saginaw. A few perch were caught from the mouth to the Independence Bridge.
SOUTHWEST LOWER PENINSULA:
St. Joseph River: Steelhead fishing has been good below the Berrien Springs Dam. Warmer weather this week should help reduce shelf ice.
Coldwater Lakes: Are producing some bluegills in the early morning or evening.
Gull Lake: Smelt, yellow perch, and lake trout are being caught.
Gun Lake: Had fair to good bluegill fishing.
Duck Lake: Producing bluegills in the early morning in 10 to 15 feet of water.
Grand River at Grand Rapids: Steelhead have been caught below the Sixth Street Dam. Watch for shelf ice.
Grand River at Lansing: A lot of pike have been caught on minnows below the dams at Moore's Park and North Lansing. Walleye were caught at both locations.
Jordan Lake: Perch and bluegills were caught just off the bottom.
Lake Lansing: Producing a lot of pike on tip-ups with sucker minnows. Most of the fish are running small but anglers are having fun.
Muskrat Lake: Had decent bluegill and crappie action. Look for bluegill straight out from the boat launch and crappie along the drop-off on the west side of the lake in 10 to 16 feet of water.
Muskegon River: Some walleye were caught in the Hardy Dam Pond. Those spearing pike reported good success with some nice fish taken.
NORTHEAST LOWER PENINSULA:
Sturgeon River: More anglers are steelhead fishing but success was limited.
Burt Lake: Of the few perch caught recently, some of the fish were decent size.
Mullett Lake: Ice conditions are generally good; however, there are a few pressure cracks starting to form. Anglers should avoid those areas near the pressure cracks. A few perch were caught on minnows and wigglers in 25 to 40 feet of water. Spearing for pike and musky was slow and no reports on walleye.
Black Lake: Was producing some nice perch but catch rates were slow. A few muskie were caught.
Grand Lake: Is producing some perch and panfish. For pike and walleye, try tip-ups in Whiskey Bay or Black Bass Bay.
Van Etten Lake: Ice anglers were catching a few perch.
Higgins Lake: Smelt have been caught in the evening along the west side of the lake between Big Creek and the North State Park. The fish are suspended in 30 to 40 feet of water. Lake trout and whitefish are still in the North Bay in 80 to 100 feet of water. Try gray shiners for lake trout or wax worms and wigglers for whitefish. Those pike spearing off Sam-O-Set Park have taken fish in 15 to 18 feet of water. Perch were also caught in the same area in 20 to 40 feet of water however anglers will need to sort out the small ones. Perch can still be found off Point Detroit and Flag Point.
Houghton Lake: Nothing on panfish yet however with the warm up, bluegill and crappie should start biting. For walleye, fish the west side of the lake.
Tawas: Fishing was slow but perch anglers were still targeting waters 15 to 20 feet deep and 20 feet for walleye. Pike spearing was slow because of muddy water.
Au Gres: Produced a few walleye straight out in 32 feet of water and off Booth Road in 26 to 30 feet of water. Rumor has it pike spearing has picked up and so has the success rate south of the breakwall and in the bayous.
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March 21, 2011
Forest Glen Morse, 81, of Harbor Springs, died March 18, 2011, at his home after a lengthy illness. He was born Sept. 8, 1929, in Boyne City, to Forest Glen Morse Sr. and Lula McGhan. He served in the U.S. Army from 1951-1953 during the Korean conflict and was stationed in Germany. Following his discharge he made his home in Harbor Springs. Forest was well known in Harbor Springs as a school bus driver and also a marine mechanic for Walstrom Marine for 35 years. He was active in the community coaching Little League and softball as well as being a fan of high school sports.
March 20, 2012
Elizabeth Glen, 93, died Sunday, March 18, 2012, at Northern Michigan Regional Hospital. Elizabeth Almeda Luecke was born Jan. 13, 1919, in Cascade, Wis., to Frank M.G. Luecke and Almeda F. Luecke. She spent her childhood with her family in Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri and Oklahoma (dust bowl). She greatly loved and admired her three brothers, Charles Luecke, Kenneth Luecke and Frank Luecke, and special aunt, Etta Luecke, who have preceded her in death. From 1938-1950, she worked as a photographer in Washington, D.C., for both the National Gallery of Art and the National Archives.
December 29, 2008
Arthur K. Rhoades, age 73, of Gaylord, passed away at his home on Saturday, Dec. 27, 2008. He was born on April 16, 1935 in Sparta, the son of the late Cedric Benjamin and Clema (Longcore) Rhoades. Arthur married the former Lois Zuttermeister on March 15, 1954 in Indiana. Together they raised six wonderful children. Arthur dedicated his life to the service of the Lord and loved ministering His word. He was an ordained minister for the Assembly of God and pastored for the Victory Lane Assemblies of God in Delton and Mount Victory Assembly of God in Gaylord.
April 13, 2010
BOYNE CITY — The Boyne City Glen’s Market location recently completed an interior spruce-up project that now gives the store a fresher look. Glen’s officials said the work, which was completed about two weeks ago included a fresh paint scheme on the walls, new signs, new ceiling tiles, some newer check-out lanes and some other cosmetic touches. “We are very excited to see the remodel at Boyne City Glen’s Markets,” said Mark Lamberies north divisional vice president supermarket operations.
January 7, 2011
Glen L. "Shep" Sheppard, 74, of Charlevoix, died Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2011, at the Charlevoix Area Hospital. He was born Jan. 20, 1936, in Wayne County, to Lewis and Nellie (Hilborn) Sheppard. He served in the U.S. Army Infantry during the Korean War. Glen edited and published the North Woods Call newspaper and dedicated his life to Michigan conservation. He is survived by his wife, Mary Lou, of Charlevoix; son, Craig (Jennifer) Sheppard, of Watauga, Texas; daughters, Cindy Gardner (Marty Martin)
May 11, 2011
David Glen "Goody" Goodeman, 56, of Charlevoix, died Monday, May 2, 2011, at his home. Funeral took place 11 a.m., Friday, May 6, at the Winchester Funeral Home in Charlevoix. The Rev. Robert Nally of St. Mary's Catholic Church in Charlevoix officiated, and burial will be in St. Mary's Cemetery in Charlevoix. David was born Feb. 2, 1955, in Saginaw, the son of Glen and Betty (Witbrodt) Goodeman. He grew up in Saginaw, and served in the U.S. Coast Guard during the Vietnam War from 1973-77.
March 11, 2009
Gaylord Glen's Market store director Gordie Petzak presents a check to Habitat for Humanity of Otsego County Executive Director Donna Quandt on Monday. Glen's raised $2,073 for Habitat for Humanity through its scan program.
February 15, 2006
To the Editor: Wow! It's really great to see a company that finally is more concerned with serving the public instead of picking their pockets. Thank you, Glen's, for the much-needed break. Keep up the good job. Terry Showalter Gaylord Subscribe to the Herald Times
February 6, 2006
To the Editor: Congratulations to Glen's Markets on the opening of their new gas station, hopefully setting the stage for lower gas prices. I filled my tank for $2.27.9 on Jan. 26 - 12 cents lower than the other greedy stations on Main Street. It is strange that when they faced a little competition, they were able to lower their prices also. This is the way free enterprise is supposed to work. The greedy people are finally getting their just rewards. I will buy my gas at Glen's even if the other stations continue to lower their prices.
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Actually, Caputo is referring to the male heart, because he is a very male author whose idea of a good time is to hook a marlin in the waters near his home in Key West, Fla., to fight that fish to the finish and thus experience, as he once put it, "the pleasant pain (and) the cleansing exhaustion that come after a hard-fought battle." No, Caputo will never be mistaken for Alan Alda, not with his boxer's build and the slight limp in his gait, the latter courtesy of wounds suffered in Beirut 12 years ago when a sniper felled him with rounds from a Soviet rifle.
Ten years ago this spring, Caputo published a memoir, A Rumor of War, which became the first Vietnam best seller at a time when the war was a taboo topic and vets were often treated as lepers. Today, ironically, with war books flooding the market and Platoon topping the box-office charts, Caputo vows that his fourth work (and third novel), the newly released Indian Country, is his last substantive word on what happened.
His fans might be disappointed to learn this - Caputo is our most prominent macho man of letters, the heir to Hemingway and Conrad - but now, for the first time, he appears to have found a little peace of mind. He has actually written a happy ending; the main character, a Vietnam vet, transcends his mental prison and finds the road to redemption.
This is no small literary event; as Caputo puts it, "the other books ended as horrifying downers, with no redemption in any way." Now 46 and twice divorced, Caputo was known as a guy who would stomp around his house, acting out (and living within) his profane, half-mad characters - men who were often eager to embrace the beasts within them because it felt good to flout the rules.
"I pretty much felt the need to get out of that (dark) outlook myself," said Caputo, during a visit last week to Bantam, his publisher. "Maybe I needed to come to terms with something. With that constant drumbeat of despair, you start to wonder, 'Well, if there isn't much hope, and it's all kind of bleak, why don't I just kill myself?' And then you begin to see reasons why you shouldn't. You begin to see what is life-affirming."
Fortuitously, Caputo's tale of spiritual renewal arrives at a time when, in his words, "there's a real subliminal hunger on the part of the American public to make some sense out of what happened (in the war) - to come to terms with it. But coming to terms means recognizing that we're just as capable of committing the kinds of moral evil as the great European colonial powers did in the past, and that we've got to transcend ourselves."
But he wonders whether Americans are learning this lesson. Right now, he says, there is too much evidence to the contrary. All he has to do is read the papers.
"I came out of the war with the perception that people, including myself, were capable of things that I didn't think one could be capable of doing," Caputo says. "I felt certain impulses that were kind of scary. It led me to a perception that human nature was not as fundamentally sound and good as I'd thought previously. I realized that our hold on goodness was rather tenuous, that it was contingent upon the existence of some form of civilization, without which we'd tend to run amok."
Looking back to his youth, he says, the irony is that "I had a desire to escape civilization, and that's why I went (to Vietnam) - to escape its suffocating restraints. I had kind of an American frontier outlook - to go out into the wilds, because that's where man would really flourish. But that ideal of mine was just turned on its head by Vietnam."
A product of a middle-class Italian family from the Chicago suburbs, Caputo reached manhood during Camelot, when the Kennedy goal was to pay any price and bear any burden. So the lover of romantic poets, the student of theology and metaphysics, the Catholic with the seemingly strong moral compass, became a gung-ho Marine.
He was one of the first to land in Vietnam in 1965, and before long "a callus began to grow around our hearts." He became a platoon leader, "an agent of death." His mission was to kill Viet Cong in quantity, to "stack 'em like cordwood," because war was "a matter of arithmetic."
In battle he felt elation as well as dread. He commanded a platoon that rampaged through villages, an "incendiary mob" that, at one point, murdered two innocent civilians. He was later put on trial for these murders, but a plea bargain was reached and he was reprimanded for minor offenses.
He was honorably discharged in 1967, wandered around Spain trying to put his war stories on paper, returned to Chicago, worked as an advertising copywriter, and then joined a suburban newspaper. He missed the "sheer intensity" of the war, although by this time he opposed it politically. He thought the United States should get out, although, in his civilian life, ''everything felt kind of bland and dull."
Then the Chicago Tribune hired him, and, after he shared a Pulitzer Prize for a team probe of city voting fraud, the paper sent him overseas - to Rome, then to Beirut, where he was captured by Palestinian guerrillas, then to Saigon for the American debacle in 1975, and again to Beirut, where he was wounded. By this time, his proposal for a Vietnam memoir was making the rounds in New York; while confined to a wheelchair, he learned that he had a publisher.
A Rumor of War appeared in 1977, when it was trendy for publishers to say that readers didn't care about a lost war. But Caputo's grunts-in-the-paddy perspective won an audience, and books and movies on the war became chic. Caputo quit the Tribune, moved to Key West and began writing novels. Horn of Africa took place in Ethiopia, but its themes were grounded in the war. DelCorso's Gallery featured a photographer obsessed with the horrors of
Vietnam and Beirut.
He has been able to live well by writing about death, but there are times when he is not sure the public is getting the right message. Take the Oscar- winning film Platoon, for example. "The movie has been ballyhooed as an introduction to what 'really' happened, as Vietnam Experience 101," he says. ''But it sets up a false metaphor by dividing this platoon into the forces of darkness and the forces of light. Barnes, the bad sergeant, battles archangel Sgt. Elias. Each has his followers, bad versus good. And that's just bull. It didn't happen that way, and it should offend the intelligence of the public."
"Here was Barnes, with no single redeeming virtue, and he drank whiskey. The 'bad' guys all drank, and the 'good' guys all smoked pot. That was so stupid, just idiotic. The movie is simplistic. It doesn't confront people with the very difficult truth that good and evil exist within a single human breast, that good or evil can be made manifest depending on the circumstances."
He pauses, thinking back to his war stint. "You could get a guy who might often be a perfectly ordinary man and suddenly, under extraordinary circumstances, he becomes a terrific hero or he performs a magnanimous act," he says. "Conversely, the same guy could do something brutal and evil within that same moral and geographical wilderness."
Caputo shrugs. "But hey," he says, "Oliver Stone is a filmmaker. . . . That's why the public needs literature more than ever. It's the function of literature to explore these complexities. Unfortunately, the country seems to be getting more subliterate."
Caputo denies that he writes about war because he wants to relive it or to
somehow purge himself. "I lived for that intensity," he acknowledges, "for the camaraderie, the sheer intensity of the experience, and I do think there still is some residue of that, some impulse toward the extraordinary. But now I'm getting a little too old for that. You'd have to have a shrink interview me, to say whether there's been some therapy involved. But I don't think so. I think of myself as a professional, and that takes mental discipline."
Caputo is big on personal tests. His hitch in Vietnam taught him to distrust opinionated people whose views have not been challenged, people who think and act without having searched their conscience. To Caputo, both the Iran-contra scandal and the Ivan Boesky flap on Wall Street stem from "a cowboy mentality very much in the American character, very much rooted in the desire to escape rules and regulations, to do whatever the hell you want. People get a particular end in mind that they think is so overwhelmingly necessary that they do almost anything to further it."
The arming of the contras, he says, is symptomatic of the fact that "we still have this image of ourselves as an idealistic and visionary people, and it's not easy for us to accept the dark side of our character. As the Soviet Union is now, can be just as true of us, because we're just as capable of doing (harm) as any other nation in the past."
But Vietnam, he says, was more than just a foreign war; it was an indictment of certain American values that Caputo deplores - the quest for success at all costs, the reliance on "technocratic rationalism that becomes irrational." In Indian Country, Vietnam vet Chris Starkmann serves as a metaphor for a nation in the throes of a spiritual crisis. We are a nation of lonely people, Caputo says, isolated from one another by selfishness, by a desire to flout the rules that should bind us together.
He sees a need in this nation for spiritual (as opposed to religious) renewal, much like the one Chris Starkmann finally achieves - "a return," he says, "to a form of piety, a recognition that we are all creatures of God, creatures of a higher power, and we owe something to each other and to our human race. Because when we liberate ourselves from what makes us human, we become monsters.
"I saw a lot of that with the guys in Vietnam - a recognition that if one can commit certain acts that are utterly reprehensible, it can give you a hideous but very attractive freedom, and suddenly you can snip all the bonds to what you once were. There is this inner voice, though, that can always tell you when something is morally evil. The voice was there for me, but I just failed to listen to it. The lust for blood can become so powerful that even though something is telling you 'this is a monstrosity,' it doesn't matter.
"You just have to learn to listen to that inner voice."
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In the basement studio of Crumb's home in Media (where he barricades himself away from the six household dogs), you can pick up a cylinder resembling a sawed-off mailing tube, pull the string hanging out of the bottom, and hear the sound of a cavernous exhalation. It's typical of Crumb's otherworldly ominousness, heard most famously in his settings of Garcia Lorca poems, titled Ancient Voices of Children.
As with his six previous songbooks, the new one builds phantasmagorical sound environments around hymns, spirituals, and folk songs, many of which he heard during his upbringing in Charleston, W.Va. His daughter, Ann Crumb, is again a featured soloist, along with baritone Patrick Mason. Though the huge battery of percussion is used with spare precision - there are only four players - the voices have to be amplified, especially in passages inspired by the flocks of crows in the composer's backyard.
Crumb flips through the score: "Here I use a low-pitch siren. It's in a very soft range, like a disembodied human voice. Here's the African-Brazilian berimbau," a stringed instrument that makes a buzzing sound. "I knew about it long ago. A percussionist found the crazy thing and I thought of a way to use it. . . . "
Though Philadelphia has surprisingly extensive percussion rental agencies, baritone Mason is bringing American Indian rattles in from Boulder, Colo., where he lives. One new feature of Voices From the Heartland is the presence of Navajo and Pawnee chants, the words of which are similar in tone to the Chinese poems Gustav Mahler used in his Das Lied von der Erde.
How Crumb came to do this is hard to say: His process is too intuitive for self-analysis. "I hardly know any facts about the construction of my music," he says. "I'm sure there is some rational process involved. . . . "
Certainly, he's remarkably easygoing about how his music is reincarnated. At last year's Ojai Festival in California, director Peter Sellars staged one of Crumb's songbooks, a collection of Civil War songs titled The Winds of Destiny, with soprano Dawn Upshaw costumed as a traumatized Afghan-war veteran.
Hasn't he ever been curious to analyze what's really going on in his music? Though he was on the University of Pennsylvania faculty for more than three decades - analyzing scores by students such as Osvaldo Golijov and Jennifer Higdon - Crumb won't consider subjecting his own music to that kind of scrutiny.
"That's a form of suicide. If you get too analytical about your music, it becomes more like a textbook illustration. . . . something that looks good on a blackboard," he said, citing Paul Hindemith as an example.
Crumb does take a certain delight in how his music looks on the page. He loves inventing new time signatures that look like hieroglyphics. In years past, his manuscripts have sometimes come in different colors of ink. An eccentricity? An aesthetic priority? Whatever the case, Crumb has turned out to be a durable survivor of the American avant-garde, perhaps because he was never really a part of it.
Such now-deceased contemporaries as Milton Babbitt spent the 1960s producing ever more tightly controlled music with scores that looked more like complicated blueprints. John Cage went to the extreme opposite by declaring that even silence was music. Crumb crafted a sound world of his own with what are often called "extended techniques" - drawing unusual sounds out of conventional instruments and then moving on to unconventional instruments.
The impracticalities of such pieces only temporarily deterred their performance. His string quartet Black Angels, in which players shout and play tuned water glasses, inspired the formation of the Kronos Quartet - one sign of the lasting recognition that composers often don't have until after they're dead.
Yet for a decade or so, Crumb's compositional life seemed not to survive his fame. Throughout much of the 1990s, he was silent. The rumor in new-music circles was that he had had to give up his multi-pack-a-day smoking habit, and that that had somehow derailed his intuitive gifts. Typically, Crumb won't say anything definite on the subject. But he does quote Alban Berg, who supposed asked a prospective student, "How can you compose if you don't smoke?"
Ultimately, nothing truly excited him until his daughter, Ann - who has starred in several Broadway shows and will head the cast of Media Theatre's production of Wings - suggested he write a piece based on folk songs. The silence was broken in 2002 with the first of his songbooks, Unto the Hills, which had her singing "I am a poor wayfaring stranger" amid percussive explosions that suggested the song's protagonist was navigating land mines.
Crumb routinely claims the latest songbook is his last, but often he has a few outtakes from the "last" piece, and they grow into the next one. Any future pieces, he says this time, will involve returning to Lorca.
When that happens, Orchestra 2001 is likely to be the first to know - since Swarthmore-based founder/music director James Freeman has been a close collaborator with Crumb (along with Bridge Records, which records the new pieces soon after the premieres). Though Crumb's orchestral works have been performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, Freeman assures the composer that he need not settle for secondhand sounds.
"And it's so handy," the composer muses. "Only five miles down the road!"
Orchestra 2001 performs
at 8 p.m. Saturday at Trinity Center in Philadelphia and at 7:30 p.m. Sunday at Lang Concert Hall, Swarthmore College. www.orchestra2001.org or 215-893-1999.
Contact music critic David Patrick Stearns at firstname.lastname@example.org.
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SOUTH BEND -- Is there such a thing as too much Darius? The durable sophomore running back on Saturday became the first Notre Dame football player since Phil Carter in 1980 to rush for 100 yards or more in each of the first three games of a season. Darius Walker had a career-high 116 yards on 26 carries in his most recent outing, a 44-41 overtime loss to Michigan State Saturday. He also had five catches for 24 yards and a TD in that game. "I think Darius could run the ball in a game 40 times if you wanted him to, but you have to worry about the whole season," said ND head coach Charlie Weis, whose 16th-ranked Irish (2-1) visit Washington (1-2) Saturday. "I wouldn't be very smart if I gave him the ball too many times in any game, because I want the kid to last the whole season. "I've seen too many good running backs get worn out early in the year and have no gas in their tank at the end of the year. You have to play each week to win that game and try to maximize what you think his efficiency would be at that time. Twenty-five to 30 touches are good numbers for him." But it's not just about the rushing numbers anymore. Walker has 13 receptions, tied for second on the team and three more than he had all of last season. And his blocking prowess has taken a similar leap.
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Rookie Steve David has been exciting powerboat fans since June 5, when he drove Pocket Savers Plus to fourth place in the Budweiser Unlimited Hydroplane Regatta at Miami Marine Stadium.
Three months and six races later, David is no less impressive, though he has no victories.
From Miami to Madison, Ind., and from Syracuse to Seattle, he has shown he intends to be among the sport`s superstars someday. He says he is pacing himself, and his ultimate goal is to vie for Driver of the Year.
David`s first-year goals are less lofty. He wants to qualify, compete in the finals and finish in the money in every race. He has been successful five of seven times.
Stardom, as he obtained during 10 years of racing smaller limited hydroplanes, can wait.
The two times David failed to reach the finals were not his fault. He was clipped from behind in one race, and Pocket Savers Plus blew a piston in another.
``Steve has an upbeat personality. He also has the talent it takes to do well,`` said Don Jones, American Power Boat Association hydroplane vice president and commissioner of the Seattle-based Unlimited Racing Commission.
Jones said if the vote were today, David would be a cinch to win Rookie of the Year. And David, 34, a real estate agent from Pompano Beach, would love nothing more.
Rookie of the Year status won`t be official until David competes in the final two unlimited races at San Diego and Las Vegas. But he already has a comfortable lead over the sport`s other two rookies: Larry Lauterbach of Portsmouth, Va., and Wheeler Baker of Chester, Md.
Through the Budweiser Cup in Seattle, David was in sixth out of 19 places in the American Hydroplane Series URC standings with 3,330 points. David leads Lauterbach by 684 points. Baker has yet to score a point.
In the last two races, David will have to race aboard a different boat than the one he has used all season. The original Pocket Savers Plus sustained damage to 70 percent of its hull when the warehouse it was stored in at Owensboro, Ky., caught fire three weeks ago.
``The funny thing about it is that we`re leasing another boat to finish out the season and it`s faster than the one we`ve been using, so we should do even better,`` David said.
The newer boat, leased by the Fred Leland racing team from Seattle, has two Rolls Royce engines.
David`s top finishes were fourth overall in Miami and fourth at the APBA Gold Cup in Evansville, Ind., June 26.
In Miami, David reached the finals by default when favorites and top qualifiers Jim Kropfeld in Miss Budweiser and Scott Pierce in Mr. Pringles withdrew because of an accident.
Pierce has since resumed racing. Kropfeld sustained neck and back injuries serious enough to keep him sidelined until next summer.
David paid his dues to get to the unlimited circuit. He started racing 1- and 7-liter limited hydroplanes at 24.
``I don`t consider limited racing the minor leagues,`` David said. ``Limiteds are just a different class of boat. You need a lot of the same skills. In a lot of places they get just as much respect as the unlimiteds.``
David`s record in limited races enticed owners Jim McCormick and Bob Fendler to choose him as driver for Pocket Savers Plus.
David still races limited boats. On July 10, he won the 1-Liter Stock Hydroplane World Championships. Last August he placed second in the APBA 7- Liter National Championships in Miami.
``Of course moving up to the unlimited circuit is something every driver dreams about, but I still get a kick out of driving the smaller boats,`` David said. ``There`s only a few unlimited drivers out there, so I`m happy to be among them.``
Pocket Savers Plus is seventh of 18 unlimiteds. Miss Budweiser (6,721), which Tom D`Eath drove to victory during the last three series races, is top boat, followed by Mr. Pringles (6,169).
David will race this weekend in San Diego at the Miller High Life Thunderboat Regatta. The final race is the Las Vegas Silver Cup Sept. 22-24.
``We`re doing better than we expected,`` David said. ``It`s been a fun summer.``
-- The Marine Fisheries Commission will hold two workshops in South Florida this week to receive public testimony on a proposal to set the maximum number of tarpon tags to be issued for 1989 at 10,000, with 5,000 reserved for licensed professional guides. The initial workshop will be from 7-9 p.m. Thursday at Sarasota City Hall, 1565 First St. The second will be from 7-9 p.m. Friday in the Islamorada Quarter Deck Room, Holiday Isle Resort on Mile Marker 84. Meetings are open.
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Discrimination against citizens because of their sexual orientation or their youth is just as unfair as discrimination based on race, religion or gender. Access to housing, hotels, theaters and restaurants should be equal to all, as a matter of plain fairness.
The Palm Beach County Commission recognized this truth in passing an ordinance protecting homosexuals, unmarried couples and young people from discrimination in renting or buying housing and in public accommodations. The ordinance also bans discrimination based on race, religion, gender, ethnic origin or disability, but it was the protection of gays that generated opposition and demands for a countywide referendum on the issue.
No other Florida county protects homosexuals against housing discrimination. In the 1970s, Dade County passed a similar ordinance but it was repealed in a voter referendum after a bitter fight.
A Broward County effort to revise the human rights law to protect homosexuals is more complicated. The Broward law was adopted through the Florida Legislature, so a revision must get legislative approval and be ratified in a public referendum.
Palm Beach County`s ordinance passed 4-1; commissioner Ron Howard dissented. The other four commissioners demonstrated courage by refusing to buckle under to opponents or to pass the buck to the public in a referendum. Commissioners were elected to make tough decisions; this time they did.
The ordinance provides exceptions: A landlord who lives on his property of four or fewer housing units and rents the rest won`t have to comply. Nor will a seasonal resident who rents his home to someone else part of the year and lives in it himself the rest of the time. Also exempt are religious organizations that own housing units.
Those sensible exceptions leave the vast majority of housing covered under the new ordinance. Violators will face fines of up to $50,000, but it may be difficult to prove a violation. Early decisive action against violators by law enforcers, prosecutors and judges could make a clear statement that the county means business and won`t tolerate further discrimination in housing and public accommodations.
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In the spirit of patriotism, authorities in Broward County are drafting a program that would link veterans facing criminal charges with specialized veterans' services.
The Broward County VA Outpatient Clinic, in Sunrise, and the Miami Department of Veterans Affairs also are involved in the project, with organizers aiming to complete a blueprint by Veterans Day.
"The idea is not to treat veterans differently, just if they need services and are eligible for services we can get those to them," said Judge Melanie May, of the 4th District Court of Appeal.
Its organizers were inspired by a similar initiative in Buffalo. Judges there started the country's first veterans' court in January 2008.
Local officials don't want to go so far as to establish a separate court for veterans. The organizers instead want to develop a partnership between the criminal justice system and veterans' mental health and medical providers.
Officials estimate that as much as nine percent of the Broward jail population may be veterans.
They pose a different set of challenges for the justice system because some return home with post-traumatic stress disorder, develop substance abuse problems or face other mental health problems that contribute to them winding up in the criminal justice system, project organizers said. Many veterans also might not be aware of the services available to them.
Also among those involved in the collaboration are social workers, doctors, and nurses, and members of the Broward State Attorney's Office, the judiciary and the Broward Sheriff's Office.
Sofia Santana can be reached at svsantana@SunSentinel.com or 954-356-4631.
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Nikhil Agarwal uses his mobile phone to search Google maps more than to make calls. The 29-year-old marketing professional has to travel extensively in the course of his job and needs to find his way around strange cities and unknown towns. For Nikhil, the map in his palm is a blessing. He says this was why he upgraded to a GPS-enabled mobile. He knew it would simplify life.
Nikhil's experience illustrates a truth now universally acknowledged. A mobile phone is no longer merely a portable alternative to a landline. It can have so much more. Reasonably priced feature-rich handsets may have qwerty keypads, wider screens, touch interfaces. The mobile is increasingly becoming the multi-tasking workhorse of the 21st century:
enabling the user to surf the net, access emails, get directions, shop or stay in touch with friends on social networking sites.
According to Opera, a popular mobile web browser, page viewing on Indian mobiles has grown 322% from May 2009. It says the number of unique users has grown 324% in the same period. That's not surprising, considering Vinay Goel, Google India products' head, says, that "the number of mobile users in India with data plans (that allow you to use the internet) has increased 10-fold, from 2.5 million to 25 million in the last two years."
Goel says that almost all phones sold in India today are GPRS-enabled. GPRS or General Packet Radio Service, allows internet access at speeds of anywhere between 56 and 114 kbps. "Besides the 25 million data plan users, there are an additional 70-80 million using GPRS-enabled phones to download operator applications like ring-tones and wallpapers," he says. But the phone is handy in other ways too.
BOOK TICKETS: Thulasidaran M, a Bangalore-based tech writer, confesses he has quite forgotten the long queues he stood in for years at railway reservation counters. Today, he uses his mobile to book tickets on the Indian Railways website. "I can even book my tickets while travelling," he says.
HOME SHOPPING: Then there is the shopping. Mobile purchasing is still a nascent phenomenon, but it is undoubtedly catching on. The mall has literally come to your phone as companies tie-up with stores, allowing you to buy almost anything from the comfort of your home. There are a slew of players – Ngpay, mChek, Obopay, Atom Technologies, Paymate – that enable the purchase of airline, railway, bus and movie tickets, pay utility bills and insurance premiums and make hotel bookings.
TUNE IN: The mobile has also put music at everyone's fingertips. Shubha C S works at Bengaluru International Airport and says FM radio is a boon. "I spend three hours travelling daily. The only time I relax is when I shut my eyes and
listen to music on my mobile," she says.
MOTHER'S HELP: The mobile has become an extraordinary help for the harassed mother. Geetanjali S says she regularly searches the mobile's web browser for new games to amuse her six-year-old. "When his friends are not around to play, he throws a tantrum. He is bored of the games I have on my mobile. So I keep finding new ones," she explains.
CHEAP INTERNET: Mobile internet has become fairly affordable, with costs coming down almost 300% over the last couple of years. Goel says that Aircel's monthly internet plan for Rs 95 triggered a revolution. "India is now among the top five countries for data traffic. Data plans here are cheaper than anywhere else. And only a tiny fraction of internet traffic is through high-end phones."
Now, Airtel offers internet vouchers starting at just Rs 7. "I was surprised when the 15-year-old son of a farmer in Dharwad told me that he uses his pocket money (Rs 100) for phone internet. The cost has influenced rural penetration too," says Venkatesh V, CEO of mobile services for Bharti Airtel's Karnataka operations.
BSNL has made it still more attractive. "Customers purchasing a 3G data card from BSNL are given free data usage of 6 GB per month," says D M Ezhil Buddhan, director (southern region) in the Department of Telecommunications. 3G will further marginalize voice on the mobile phone, given the extremely high internet speeds it promises. Already, BSNL 3G offers TV on the cellphone. Videos will catch on too.
Unsurprisingly, app stores have become treasure troves. There are more than 2.25 lakh apps in the iPhone store and 60,000 in Google's Android store. Some are severely useful, helping track daily calorie intake. Some are fairly barmy, reproducing, say, the moo of a cow (Hello Cow) or tricking people into believing your phone can detect smells (Smell Scanner).
Now, Indian telecom operators are creating their own app stores. When Bharti Airtel opened its mobile application store – Airtel App Central – earlier this year, it clocked over 2.5 m downloads in just one month. "Now, we have over 1,500 apps for downloads and these are as low as Re 1 per day," says Venkatesh of Bharti Airtel. The apps range across 25 categories, including business, games, books and social networking.
The future seems bright. Micromax has introduced phones that double up as a remote for the TV, DVD and AC. Texas Instruments has helped build what is called a DLP Pico projector into cellphones, which allows one to take a picture or a video and share them instantly on any surface that can take a big projected image.
In short, that little device in your hand is becoming the way to achieve almost anything and everything.
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Director Bala's forthcoming bilingual Paradesi is gearing for release in October. The movie, which is based on real life incidents that took place before independence in the 1930s in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, is currently in post production stage.
Bala's previous projects like Sivaputhrudu and Nenu Devudni received great appreciation and the director is looking to score success at the box office with another experimental film.
Atharva, Vedhika and Dhansika are playing the lead roles in this film, which is inspired from Malayalam novel Eriyum Thanal. It was also reported that the film was shot in Salur and Manamadurai in Sivagangai district, Munnar and Talaiyar in Kerala, and the forest areas in Theni district.
Interestingly, Bala, who usually takes av long time to complete a project, wrapped up the entire shoot of Paradesi in 90 days. The film's audio launch will take place in London on September 19.
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(Datawind said it has started…)
NEW DELHI: Maker of low cost Aakash tablet, Datawind, said it has started supplying the new version of the tablet to IIT Bombay and it is likely to be launched in October.
"Supplies are on to IIT Bombay. In the next few weeks, it should be launched. I do not have the exact date, but HRD Minister ( Kapil Sibal) has said he wants to launch on the anniversary date which is October 5," Datawind CEO Sunit Singh Tuli told PTI.
The launch will depend on the Minister's schedule, but it is not very far from now, he added.
Tuli said Datawind has started supplying the next version of the low cost tablet, Aakash 2, to IIT Bombay since the last one month and a half. However, he refused to disclose other details.
Sibal had earlier said that new version of Aakash tablet would have a better battery with a three-hour battery backup, a capacitive touch screen among other new features at the same price.
Datawind had won the tender for making and supplying Aakash tablets for price of around $49 per unit. Apart from this order, the company has also received orders for 55 lakh more from general customers.
Datawind CEO said the company has cleared most of the pre-paid bookings and will now start focusing on supplies for the non-paid bookings.
"Out of 55 lakh orders, 4 to 5 per cent were pre-paid bookings. May be in a week or 10 days, all the pre-paid will be done. Then we will focus on pre-bookings. We are giving them offers to upgrade to Android 4.4 version," he said.
Datawind is delivering around 1,500 to 2,000 tablets each day, being assembled within the country as well as outside, Tuli said.
He added that company is in talks with channel partners to sell products across country, but it will first focus on the pre-booking order that it has.
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24/7 culture, autogenic training, befriend, brainstorming, change, condition, get worse, grieving process, heal, insomnia, lavander, patterns, recharge your battery, rhythms, shiatsu, silence, sleep tight, sleeplessness, speep problem
It’s funny how little things can throw us off course. Our body gets so used to its rhythms and patterns that any changes to our daily routine can have a big impact. I really noticed the phenomenon after the clocks went back at the weekend. Just the difference of an hour can affect how we sleep, and our feelings about ourselves as a result.
Sleep problems are increasingly common, thanks to the hectic pace of life today, and the 24/7 culture that expects us to be available whenever, wherever. There are some sleep problems that are largely unavoidable, such as the fatigue associated with parenting babies and small children, nighttime shift work and international travel. But many people still struggle to drop off and sleep soundly, even without intervening factors.
It was problems with sleeping that led me to discover Autogenic Training (AT) in 2004. Despite the severity of my insomnia, it disappeared in a few short weeks as I learned how to take my body and mind into a deeply relaxed state. About a year later I began to experience sleeping difficulties again, and was worried that I had relapsed, or that the AT had somehow ‘worn off’.
However, I was reassured to discover that it was just another layer of my development, and that I had several more to go in order to help my body and mind to truly heal. A few things I learned from that experience were:
- It takes time to develop a condition, and will take some time (but not as long) to heal it. There is no quick fix, whatever we might like to believe.
- It can help to befriend your condition, rather than view it as an enemy. This will help you to understand what it needs.
- Things might temporarily get worse before they get better, as if to remind you of your problem’s existence before you can let it go.
- Your condition might flare up again from time to time, but less severely and for shorter periods. This is all part of the healing process.
One of my clients had suffered from insomnia for 50 years, but after five weeks of AT training could sleep for five hours instead of the usual two to three.
Another client admits that he does his best business brainstorming when he’s not able to sleep. He actually enjoys these creative times. I’ve observed this with other people too – we may experience a condition for years and wish to change it, but on another level we’re kind of attached to it. We actually need to go through a grieving process and say goodbye to the nights when we enjoyed the silence and mystery of the darkness.
You may also find you buy into the ‘romance’ of insomnia, or the competitive sleeplessness that pervades our society. People often boast about working into the small hours and still hitting the gym at 6am. Margaret Thatcher was well known not only for surviving but thriving on four hours’ sleep a night. It’s important if you do hold some positive’ associations with insomnia, that you let them go so you can truly relax.
Sleeplessness should not become a lifestyle.
However you choose to treat your condition, it’s important to regularly recharge your battery. I’ve written about the importance of ‘me time’ in a previous post , and that you enjoy what you are doing. Autogenic Training (AT) has been proven to help with insomnia. If you would like to come for a trial session, please get in touch. Anyone can learn AT. It’s simple, you can practise it anywhere, and the results can be life-changing. You’ve nothing to lose but your insomnia.
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I apologize in advance for how long this is but I need to explain and I need help!
So last Monday was the first week at school for students... Wednesday morning, I get my class schedule and see that there are two teachers' names in one class slot. I kept looking at it thinking that surely I must not be understanding it correctly. I started to ask another teacher and then saw my principal. I asked him about it and he said that since we had to add another Kindergarten class this year due to a large enrollment (now 7 classes of 18 students,) the only way to fit them all in the schedule was to send two Kindergarten classes to art at once, 36 students! My jaw literally dropped for like the second time in my life. It took me a minute to process and then I asked where I was supposed to put them! (I currently have room for 24 students.) After talking with my principal and both of us trying to come up with other solutions, he said we could go to the cafeteria and he would get someone to help me. I talked to him today and one of the Paras is going to help with that section. I said that was certainly better than 36 five year olds in my classroom with just me, but I am still really stressed out about it!
I just feel bad, like those students won't get the same experience as the others. For example, I use my classroom projector ALL THE TIME to teach the art history inspiring some of the projects that I don't have posters for. Also, it'll be back to buckets of water when we paint since the closest sink will be in the back of the kitchen. I know we always have to do the best we can with what we have, and I'm sure going to do my best! I bought a child's easel that was on clearance last December and I need to try to find that since I won't have a chalkboard and I'm not really sure how I'm going to demonstrate for that many students. Maybe I need to come up with some sort of age appropriate beginning of class activity and then demonstrate at each table? I guess I'm just feeling overwhelmed since I'm only starting my second year of teaching and I was wondering if anybody out there has had a similar situation? Or if anybody just has some ideas for me! If you have any suggestions, PLEASE comment and I will be eternally thankful!
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The challenge this week is to make a sunburst on your LO.If you don't know how to make one there will be a link @ AAG with directions. So come join us & have some scrappy fun!!
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Monday, May 6, 2013
I love Mondays, My house once again belongs to me & is quiet, Ahhhh. Any way I did a LO for a Flying Unicorn challenge,"Things with wings". So with a bird picture I took in 2011 @ Magical Wings butterfly gardens I started my LO. I used Kaisercraft Pickle Pear papers,& birdcage, Prima wooden buttons,bling,flowers,wooden bird & inks. Have a great day & thanks for looking.
at 11:17 AM
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For Tim’s birthday this year, I went all out and made my first ever complete-from-scratch cake and frosting. It turned out amazing – super rich and delicious, so here are the details.
The chocolate cake recipe is this one, from Peanut Butter and Julie, reproduced with her instructions below.
Oh-So-Versatile Chocolate Cake Recipe
1 1/2 cups hot strong coffee (no wimpy stuff allowed!)
1/3 cup chopped bittersweet chocolate (I shaved the chocolate because it was easier…this is a messy step!)
3 large eggs
3/4 cup canola oil
3 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups good-quality cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
Preheat the oven to 300F degrees. Spray cake pans with non-stick baking spray
and line the bottoms with parchment paper. Spray the parchment paper. (We don’t have parchment paper. It might have helped.)
Mix the hot coffee with the chopped chocolate, stirring occasionally until the mixture is smooth.
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the eggs until they are slightly thickened, about 3 minutes. Slowly add the canola oil, and mix at medium speed for 1 minute. Gradually add the sugar, mixing until well combined. Slowly add the buttermilk, coffee mixture, and vanilla, and mix until blended.
In a large bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the batter in three additions on low speed, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl as necessary.
Divide the batter among the prepared pans and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center emerges clean, 55-65 minutes. Cool the layers for 15 in the pans, and then carefully invert them onto wire racks to cool completely.
And now, you make the frosting. I chose a recipe found here, at The Way the Cookie Crumbles – recipe #2,
Vanilla Buttercream (from epicurious.com and Gourmet January 2004)
Makes about 6 cups. (I might have made 1.5 batches for better coverage)
4 large egg whites at room temperature for 30 minutes
Rounded ¼ teaspoon salt
2/3 cup water
1 1/3 cups plus 2 tablespoons sugar
4 sticks (2 cups) unsalted butter, cut into tablespoon pieces and softened (next time, I might use only 3 sticks)
2 teaspoons vanilla
Combine whites and salt in a very large bowl. Stir together water and 1 1/3 cups sugar in a 3- to 4-quart heavy saucepan until sugar is dissolved, then bring to a boil over moderate heat, without stirring, brushing any sugar crystals down side of pan with a pastry brush dipped in water.
When syrup reaches a boil, start beating egg whites with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until frothy, then gradually add remaining 2 tablespoons sugar and beat at medium speed until whites just hold soft peaks (looks kind of like soap foam). (Do not beat again until sugar syrup is ready.)
Meanwhile, put thermometer into sugar syrup and continue boiling until syrup registers 238 to 242°F. Immediately remove from heat and, with mixer at high speed, slowly pour hot syrup in a thin stream down side of bowl into whites, beating constantly. Beat, scraping down side of bowl with a rubber spatula, until meringue is cool to the touch, about 10 minutes in a standing mixer or 15 with a handheld. (It is important that meringue is properly cooled before proceeding.)
With mixer at medium speed, gradually add butter 1 piece at a time, beating well after each addition until incorporated. (Buttercream will look soupy after some butter is added if meringue is still warm. If so, briefly chill bottom of bowl in a large bowl filled with ice water for a few seconds before continuing to beat in remaining butter.) Continue beating until buttercream is smooth. (Mixture may look curdled before all of butter is added but will come back together by the time beating is finished.) Add vanilla and beat 1 minute more.
At this point, if you’ve planned well, you can immediately frost the cooled layers.
I, of course, did not plan well. It was late at night on a workday, the cake was too warm to frost, and I wasn’t about to stay up. So I put the frosting in the fridge overnight. Moderate mistake – it didn’t change the flavor, but the texture and volume changed. So. FYI.
Frost the cake – layer cake, frosting, layer cake, frosting, layer cake, and frost everything. Another half batch of frosting would’ve covered the messiness that results from white frosting on a chocolate cake, but then everything might’ve been too rich.
Now, you slice and eat.
This is a very rich cake – eat in small pieces. Freezes and refrigerates well, too. It will be made again.
Tomorrow: the best and only mac and cheese recipe you’ll ever need again.
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Shorts: Courtesy of LOVE (Alternatives here & here). Blouse: TopShop.
Shoes: Nicholas Kirkwood (More red shoes here & here!)
I can't really take the credit for these shoes. They were an unwanted sample sale purchase from a friend... She found them uncomfortable but I'll grin and bare it for these beauties! Thank you Christa!!!
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Ashley Stewart is the premier fashion retailer for the plus-size urban woman, plus-sizes 12-26. Ashley Stewart is truly an eclectic mix; it is trendy, sexy, bold, & inspirational. Our fashion mix includes plus-size corset, plus-size cami, plus-size bodysuit, plus-size boy short, plus-size shapewear, and much more. Ashley Stewart emphasizes trendy, desirable, quality fashion for the plus size woman of style. Great Fashion. Great Value. Great Service. Ashley Stewart.
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This is a quick post, not the one on leaky gut syndrome that I promised you! That is not finished yet. This is just to show how ridiculous the lives of chronically ill people can be! It is no wonder I get so little done in a day and am mentally exhausted! This stuff takes a lot of concentration…
I have started taking digestive enzymes recently as described in my previous post. I have added a high protease (systemic) enzyme to take between meals (to allegedly reduce bodily inflammation and pain among other things). I have also started taking L-Glutamine (though I suspect it has caused diarrhea so I have paused for now to test that, but let’s assume I am taking it. I also read that drinking fluids should be avoided so as not to dilute the enzymes in their very important work, and that if you have low stomach acid the dilution is not good (I don’t know if this applies to me but it could and seems likely) so I should not drink for an hour before meals or two hours afterwards. The protease enzyme is the same rules, but only half an hour before meals is ok. I also take an anti-spasmodic and other medications not related to my digestive issues. I also have in the fridge two probiotics which I plan to start taking soon. I generally need to drink about 4 litres of fluids per day (that’s up to 4x what people usually drink unless it’s hot weather) to help with POTS symptoms.
So let’s see what a day looks like if I do this properly:
8.30am wake up and take my usual medications with water (most of my glasses of water and cups of tea are 1/3 litre).
9am Get up and have a cup of tea. Take vitamins including zinc (good for digestive/gut health). I really should take more vitamin C too – note to self – it apparently helps kill bad bugs in the gut.
Also put Alpha Stim electrodes on my upper back as I do every day (my pain relief machine).
9.30am take antispasmodic and L-Glutamine
9.45 take digestive enzyme (as it is a veggie capsule I read it needs time to dissolve so to take it a bit before eating, but other places say to take at the same time as food, so I am confused about this one. Let’s say 15 mins is ok for now.
10am take probiotic (type one) and eat breakfast
Also move electrodes on Alpha Stim to anywhere else that hurts or just to another position for upper back/shoulders.
11am change setting on Alpha Stim to CES and put earclips on
12 midday take systemic enzyme and wait half an hour for it to get into my system (think this way round makes sense or I would drink then have to wait an hour?)
Alpha Stim done.
12.30 take usual medications and push fluids for half an hour, perhaps 1 litre.
1pm stop drinking and wait an hour before food
1.30 take antispasmodic and L-Glutamine
1.45 take digestive enzyme assuming it takes time to dissolve
2 – 2.30pm take probiotic (type one) and eat lunch
Go to bed and rest/nap
4.30 wake up and take systemic enzyme
5-5.30pm take usual medications and drink fluids – 1 litre
6pm take antispasmodic and L-Glutamine
6.15 take digestive enzyme
6.30-7pm take probiotic (type one) and eat
9pm drink – not much as getting late and don’t want to be up all night – 1/3 litre
10pm – take usual medications and probiotic (type two). Make way to bed.
So I have only managed to fit in 3 litres of fluids, plus a bit with tablets. I could take a jug and drink more before getting up. This regime also prevents me eating little and often as I prefer and forces me to make sure I have eaten enough in one sitting to last me 4 1/2 hours. This goes against advice for managing IBS and POTS symptoms. I also really like to finish a meal with a cup of tea, but I have known for a long time this is not meant to be good if you have digestive issues.
I have tried the systemic enzyme for a few days and that was fine although my stomach seemed to be getting more sore each morning so I am resting it before starting again as is advised. I am unsure about the L-Glutamine but will try it again in a few days. My plan is to do this properly in a couple of weeks and go sugar-free for that time to see if I get any symptoms of die-off to test for a yeast overgrowth. If I feel fine (normal for me!) than it suggests that yeast is not a big issue for me. The more I read about Leaky Gut Syndrome I suspect it may be an issue, despite being quite skeptical, but I think not too extreme for me. I hope so anyway. Even if I cut out all sugars I will still have to eat the diet that I can currently digest which is not very low GI so there will be sugars present (rice/potato) but it will be reduced and that should trigger some reaction. I think taking the probiotics at this time will maximise their efficacy as the bad bugs will be dying anyway - ha ha evil laugh.
Someone had generously given me some Stevia to use during my sugar-free fortnight. My plan is to make some chocolate biscotti (I have found a recipe) so that I can end meals with something sweet and also sweeten my breakfast as I will have to switch to unsweetened soya milk (yuk!).
Sorry for the lack of links in this post – I really have no energy/time for it. Please leave a comment if anything is unclear – my next post on Leaky Gut Syndrome (coming in a week or two) should clarify it all anyway!
*I do not advise anyone to undertake this strange regmen, I know not how useful it will be, only using myself as a guinea pig, as usual…
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Investigative conservation journalist Shawn Heinrichs seeks to combine powerful stories with captivating images to reach millions and mobilize them to action.
Ships can be seen gliding on the water from an airplane window flying over the Strait of Malacca on January 21, 2013. (leogaggl/Flickr)
Colorful knickknacks line the stall of a night market in Singapore on January 18, 2013. (kodomut/Flickr)
Amidst face paint, fireworks and festivities, countries around Asia rejoice at the beginning of a new year.
As the world bids 2012 adieu, Asia Blog reminisces over some of the year's most memorable people and events from Asia.
Red and gold in Chinatown on October 20, 2012. (Damian Bere/Flickr)
The Sri Mariamman shrine in Singapore's Chinatown festooned with colored balloons on September 10, 2012. (Andy*Enero/Flickr)
"Gangnam Style" and Jeremy Lin sweep through Asia. We present the top searches in China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam.
A stylish and modern parking lot in Singapore on August 7, 2012. (Eduardo Seastres)
The mist gathers on the shores of Labrador Park Beach in Central Singapore, Singapore on June 21, 2012. (acdovier/Flickr)
Favorite Tweets by @AsiaSociety
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China's Africa Strategy
China's Africa Strategy
China's Rise Series
NEW YORK - In its effort to secure oil and other resources, China has set its sights on Africa, increasingly attracting the world’s attention. While state-owned companies sought out exploration and supply contracts, Beijing courted African governments with trade, investment, debt reduction, and aid packages. There are strongly divergent viewpoints on how this economic diplomacy has impacted China’s efforts to promote a positive image abroad, and what the overall impact of China’s strategy has been on the African continent.
On May 5, three experts came to the Asia Society to share their thoughts on this issue. With a range of both complementary and opposing viewpoints, one thing was certain: the effects of China’s Africa strategy are not black and white.
Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt, China and North East Asia project director at the International Crisis Group, noted that China’s role could be both positive and negative in Africa, but that “China’s investment puts the ball in Africa’s court”; in other words, it is up to African leaders and corporations to take proper advantage of China’s capital and resources. Harry Broadman, economic adviser for the Africa Region at the World Bank, concurred, admitting that a lack of national leadership in Africa made it difficult to take advantage of China’s unconditional investment strategy. Victor Gao, director of the China National Association of International Studies and a former vice president at the CNOOC, was more defensive of China’s investments and position of non-interference. At one point, he noted that the CNOOC had not invested in Africa until the Unicom deal was derailed by US protectionism, complaining that the West cannot “have your cake and eat it too.”
Despite differences in the overall effect of China’s investment, there was consensus that China’s approach to investment—unconditional, and frequently including human capital training, infrastructure development, and worker benefits—had successfully wooed African corporations and governments. However, China may have to transform its strategy as Africa develops a stronger consumer culture and civil society.
Excerpt: Why is China grateful to African nations? (5 min., 43 sec.)
Victor Gao discusses China’s relationship with Africa over the past 50 years, the country's indebtedness to Africa in the diplomatic realm, particularly regarding African support of China in the UN, and how this has furthered the relationship.
Listen on Demand (1 hr., 30 min.)
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How can I use flavored liqueurs?
April 26, 2009 6:33 PM Subscribe
Does anyone know the difference between, and good instructions for, flavored and infused liqueurs?
posted by monkeymadness to food & drink (13 answers total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
I like to cook using interesting and uncommon ingredients. I like using my own infused oils (annatto, mostly) and homemade extracts (lavender and rose). I don't drink much other than the occasional beer so know very little about alcohol, besides using white wine in sauces. I've also added schnapps to ice cream to keep it soft. That's about it.
instructable has made me want to try to make some liqueur, either for cooking or drinking. Specifically I like the ideas of coffee and cocoa liqueurs but am open to anything. What are the advantages to this over just an infused vodka? What are some obvious or not-so-obvious things I could do with this stuff? Does anyone have any good instructions other than the one I linked?
I know a lot of this stuff is easily google-able, but I'd prefer to hear from the great cooks and chefs here on the green.
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Ideas for starting a local history habit?
November 30, 2012 6:12 AM Subscribe
I work downtown, and recently on my lunch, I happened upon a local history archive in the library branch near my work. I'd like suggestions for fun tasks that I can accomplish there on my short lunch break.
posted by to recite so charmingly to grab bag (6 answers total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
I love old things, and the atmosphere there makes me happy. The last couple of days, I just poked around the archive just to find stuff I liked to look at, which was fun, but I'd like to start going there with a purpose so I don't get tired of it. I'm not really talking about taking on an academic project like an essay. I'm imagining doing something artistic (but not capital A art) or just something very focused (like hunting for things in a particular context). There are many old atlases of the region, photograph negatives from events, people, and buildings, I think there are also old postcards, and of course books. I have access to my camera, a photocopier, and a light table. Some examples of the type of thing I'm thinking of would be photocopying maps to colour in with watercolour pencils, or photographing negatives and reversing them later in Photoshop. What other activities could I do to engage with the material in a short time? I'd also welcome ideas that are less "hands-on" than my examples.
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Installing a Water Heater - what about the water pressure?
October 2, 2006 2:36 PM Subscribe
What does the water pressure coming into your house have to do with installing a water heater?
posted by katyjack to home & garden (12 answers total)
I live in a 20 year old house with 2 water heaters: one in the basement and one in the attic. The attic water heater started raining water into the bathroom below yesterday so we decided it was probably time to get a new one. Now the guy installing it tells me that in addition to the $299 installation fee, I also need to install flexible piping ($60) and that the water pressure coming into my house is too high and that they need to install a new water pressure valve for $199. I think they're ripping me off - I can understand the need for the new piping because the current water heater is connected with rigid copper piping, but I already bought an expansion kit to go with the water heater that I thought controlled the water pressure coming into the water heater. So do I really need to change the water pressure for the whole house? Not to mention the fact that I've always thought this house had terrible water pressure and I'm not too keen on bringing it down further. So can anyone tell me if this is something that really needs to be done?
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My poor neglected sketch blog - not much sketching going on!
I've been making clay figures for the next stage of the painting course, and getting thoroughly carried away with little fingers and roses, cherries and violins. Each figure again representing one of the artists at my Dinner Party, I've made all six now, set them around the table and am busy staging, lighting and photographing them for the painting sessions next week. I've loved making them - perhaps I should have been a sculptor, though my proportions are off, we have very big heads at this dinner!
This is how they started off, as wire armatures. I would like to have fired and kept them, but they have all started cracking badly and probably full of air pockets, might explode in a kiln.
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Alright, so, I’m a fifteen-year-old girl currently doing grade ten. I eat far too much in the way of carbs, but other than that, I’m not too unhealthy. I procrastinate; I’m not the best friend to have due to my laziness; and I’ve never felt like I belonged anywhere.
My problem is this: why do I get so utterly furious so often? Sure — teenage girl, raging hormones, blah, blah, blah — but the tiniest things can set me off, then I’m crying and yelling, often with a mixture of utter rage and guilt boiling in my gut. If this were ‘normal’, the world would have torn itself to shreds by now.
There is no history of abuse of any kind in my family, no alcoholics, nothing. I can’t be myself around my family, but then again, can anyone? However, with my father sometimes the sound of his voice literally makes me want to hit him. I love him dearly, but he makes me so mad at the tiniest comment, it’s ridiculous!
Is there anything I can do to control my rage (especially with my father!)?
Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply
You began your question by mentioning a few things: a tendency to procrastinate, a sense of not fitting in, an idea of yourself as lazy, and the sense that you cannot be yourself with your family. I understand that these are not the issues you are concerned about, but I mention them because I wonder if they contribute to the bigger picture of your mood and reactions.
Procrastinating can create stress as the deadline approaches. And I wondered if you have gotten negative feedback from peers about being “lazy.” Conflict with peers, feeling as if you do not fit, and feeling as if you cannot be yourself with your family: these things put together seem to me to leave you with few places or people with whom you are at ease or even happy. If academic stress, a lack of satisfying social relationships, and disconnection within your family do not leave you feeling irritable and/or angry, I would be surprised! For teenagers especially, school and friends are two very important arenas that contribute to both how you feel and how you think of yourself. If you are feeling less than successful with friends, as well as with schoolwork, it would make sense to me if this was spilling over into your mood and temper.
Now, with that said, while it could be these experiences causing you to have a short or intense temper, it may be something else. Without ruling out more concrete medical or mental health causes for your anger and rage, we would not be able to say for sure.
You stated that you have not been abused or had to deal with alcoholism in your family. This is good. But I wonder about other ways that your experiences and your family’s mental health history could be playing into what you are experiencing. You did not mention whether mood disorders (such as depression or bipolar disorder) or other mental health problems (such as ADHD or other impulse control disorders) run in your family.
So, I have mentioned circumstances as well as biological causes. However, most often it is not either/or. Typically, it is both/and. What I mean is, what is inside you (neurochemistry and hormones) and what is going on outside you (situations and relationships) interact together to cause behavior. For example, if depression runs in your family, you might be predisposed to have a low or irritable mood. This may never occur, but if you were to add in an ongoing stressful situation at school, conflict with friends, or a culture of perfectionism and criticism in your family (just as an example), you might find that depression symptoms are triggered.
So, regardless of the cause, you are wondering what you can do to control your temper. Sometimes it can be helpful to identify a pattern with regard to what is making you angry. For example, when your father says X, Y or Z, it really sets you off. If you can start to see how certain kinds of comments he makes or ways that he interacts with you trigger you, then you can consider speaking with him about it. Often in these situations, it is best for people to approach a sensitive topic when they are feeling calm, rather than mentioning it in a moment of anger. For example, one might say, “I’ve noticed that when you comment about X, Y, or Z, I feel really frustrated.” Often when approached calmly, people are willing to discuss ways of changing the problem together.
However, sometimes they are not! Let’s imagine that your father is going to continue to say the things he says that make you mad, no matter what. There are a few strategies you can use in the moment. Deep, abdominal breathing can help your body move from the physical agitation that anger can bring, over to a more relaxed state. Breathe, filling your belly with air, as you count to three. Hold the breath for three counts, and then blow it slowly out as you count to three again. If you do this several times, you might find that you feel more calm. Another anger management technique is to “talk back” to your anger in the moment to avoid acting out in a way that will worsen the problem. For example, you might say something in your head to yourself such as, “I am feeling really angry, but I can wait to say what I need to say.” You can also search online for additional information about anger management for teens.
It is absolutely normal to have feelings of irritation, anger, even rage at times. However, if these feelings are beginning to feel like the norm instead of the exception, you might find that speaking to an adult and obtaining help is a next step. For some kids, parents are the first people in whom they want to confide. If you are not comfortable talking to your parents or other family members, your pediatrician or school counselor might be a neutral, safe adult who can offer ideas or point you in a direction to get some help.
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After installing Ubuntu 12.04 on a Toshiba NB510 the screen resolution is 800x600 instead of the native 1024x600. This is a netbook that contains the infamous GMA3650 (aka PowerVR SGX5450) which is poorly supported by the Linux kernel. I've looked around and tried several different solutions. Namely:
- I've tried installing a newer kernel (3.3+), since some people have reported success with it. That didn't seem to fix the resolution problem.
- I've tried installing an older version of Ubuntu (10.04), since someone suggested there's an older driver that should provide basic support for the card, but the liveCD image wouldn't boot.
- I've tried using this ppa. On first reboot, the screen resolution was correct. Subsequent reboots lead to a blank screen immediately after grub.
- I've tried passing the kernel option
video=1024x600with the above PPA, to no avail.
- I've tried installing a daily build of Quantal. The live image boots with the correct resolution. The installed system boots to a blank screen. The
video=1024x600option doesn't work here either.
- On Quantal I've blacklisted the
gma500_gfxdriver to force the use of
vesa. This causes Ubuntu to boot into a 800x600 resolution.
After this, I've tried using the following
Section "Device" Identifier "card" Driver "vesa" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "panel" Modeline "1024x600_DDC" 54.03 1024 1048 1184 1344 600 603 609 670 -hsync -vsync Option "PreferredMode" "1024x600_DDC" EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "screen" Device "card" Monitor "panel" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Depth 24 Modes "1024x600_DDC" EndSubSection EndSection
where the modeline comes from DDC, as reported in
/var/log/Xorg.0.log. This seems to have no effect, with the resolution stuck at 800x600.
- Additionally, adding
nomodesetto the kernel command line does not help with either the resolution problem or the blank-screen problem.
Ideally, since I don't think I can trust the
gma500_gfx driver or that from Meego (the one in Sarvatt's PPA), I would like to use the
vesa driver (probably reverting to 12.04), and specify the resolution in a
xorg.conf file, but I can't seem to get this to work. Any ideas?
BTW, this is a problem I'm helping a friend with, I don't have direct access to the machine.
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I have started running rkhunter (a security monitoring tool) and I have finally managed to clear all of its warnings.
Now, a cron job runs every day to monitor my machine. Rather than send me an email of warnings, it sends me an email with no body - which I don't really want.
Looking at the (unedited, straight out of the box)
/etc/cron.daily/rkhunter script, it contains this snippet of shell code:
if [ -s "$OUTFILE" ]; then ( echo "Subject: [rkhunter] $(hostname -f) - Daily report" echo "To: $REPORT_EMAIL" echo "" cat $OUTFILE ) | /usr/sbin/sendmail $REPORT_EMAIL fi
-s clause should prevent empty emails from being sent, right? Does anyone have an explanation why this would still send empty emails?
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I have a
/home/jbruni folder in a VPS running Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx).
I am about to turn this VPS off and move some things from it to a new VPS, also running the same Ubuntu version.
At the moment, I want to move all contents at
/home/jbruni from the "old" VPS to the new one.
1) I want to preserve all file permission and ownership settings (I don't want to use any
chmod after the transfer). [Note: the new VPS already have the same users/groups with same UIDs/GIDs.]
2) I want to preserve all symlinks and hardlinks, although I believe there is not a single hardlink in this case. I have lots of symlinks, both for files and for folders, all pointing to locations inside the own
3) I'd really like to preserve date and times (mtime, atime, ctime). [If not possible, ok... it is not that bad.]
4) I don't have enough disk space to create a big file containing everything in the "old" VPS prior to transfering it (like a big tarball). Anyway, I may acquire this temporary extra space if really really needed.
So, what I want is like a "mirror" of the source folder. Is there a way to accomplish this easily? (Or even not so easily?)
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That’s one reason the rules committee is reasserting guidelines on what constitutes a charge and asking for referees to be re-educated on how the play should be called. It will be one of the most important points covered this fall at the NCAA’s four regional refereeing seminars; all college basketball referees must attend one session to be eligible to work the NCAA Tournament.
And this shit blows my mind...
In other news, The Sporting News website has gone to shit. All of those mid story links and headlines are fucking ridiculous.
Edited by RedEyedGhost, 24 May 2012 - 12:19 AM.
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By Elaine Orr
Few studies about labor force growth and change have captured the nation’s attention as did the Hudson Institute’s1987 report, Workforce 2000. Part of it was the fascination of a new millennium and our need to examine where we were and where we are going — witness books such as Megatrends and its sequel– and part was the style of Workforce 2000. There was no need for a degree in labor economics to understand it.
But the media’s misinterpretation (or at least mis-presentation) of parts of the report also catapulted it to prominence. Headlines blared that by 2000, white men would make up only fifteen percent of the American workforce. In fact, the report said that the number of white men in the workforce would grow more slowly than women or nonwhite men, and white men would comprise approximately fifteen percent of new entrants to the workforce by 2000. This was a big change from the 1950s-1970s, but not unexpected given that society had become less biased about women and African Americans or Hispanics going to college, and baby-boomers were not going to inhabit the one wage-earner world of their parents.
Government and private companies sought a more diverse workforce, and while some complained that there was reverse discrimination, over time the workplace ultimately did what it has always done — employers tried to get the talent needed for the best price. Lately, employers have had quite the pickings.
In 2004, the RAND Corporation (for the U.S. Department of Labor) examined what it saw as three major factors that were “expected to shape the world of work in the coming decades: shifting demographic patterns, the pace of technological change, and the path of economic globalization.” It concluded, among other things, that technological advances would continue to increase demand for a highly skilled workforce. The report saw this as one factor that would support higher productivity growth and change the organization of business and the nature of employment relationships.”
The Hudson Institute’s Workforce 2020 addressed how companies needed to adapt to an aging workforce and change jobs to accommodate technology changes, and how trends such as telecommuting, temporary staffing, and employee leasing affect the workplace. Boston College’s Sloan Center on Aging and Work issued Engaging the 21st Century Multi-generational Workforce (prepared for Met Life), which examined levels of “employee engagement” and how it might vary by age.
The themes of technological change and age were everywhere. College students looked at those studies (or at least articles about them) and considered them as they picked majors. While technology and aging baby boomers continue to resonate in reports about the workforce and potential careers, what no one could have predicted even five years ago was that the Great Recession would make many reports outmoded before they had time to accumulate dust on a library shelf. (A shelf? Don’t you mean the digital files would be corrupted?)
Baby boomers, who were expected to retire in such droves that there would be excruciating talent shortages, have watched retirement nest eggs shrink and many remained at work — at least those who have kept pace with newer workplace technologies. However, those same boomers paid for the education of their children and grandchildren and now must open their doors to let them back in when the economy did not seem to want the skills of recent graduates — or the jobs just plain end. Grandparents and parents don’t like that anymore than the unemployed graduates.
Those who find work relatively quickly are graduates of specialized programs whose curricula relate directly to specific skills employers need. Many nursing and laser manufacturing programs at community colleges turn away students by the bushel.
The Great Recession may have done us one favor. We appreciate our jobs more, and more people consider two-year degrees that lead to profitable careers. This hardly makes a master’s degree in public administration obsolete, but the skills used after graduation may be those that deal with budgeting more than public policy. The economy seems to have enough thinkers, it’s looking to doers to set the pace for the next decade.
There is not truly a dichotomy between graduates who are thinkers or doers, of course, and not everyone needs to be a database manager, pharmacist, or physical therapist (gotta love those aging baby boomers). If graduates with a public sector management perspective cannot find a job quickly there are some strategies that may help.
- Take a tip from young actors. No one will think less of you for doing part-time or volunteer work in your field while you make a living doing something outside of your hoped-for career field. And yes, it can be typing, table waiting, or sales.
- Acquire more skills. Can you build a web page or maintain a small network? As web design or management moves beyond a discipline to a skill, if you can spend five hours a week updating a web page you will be a more attractive candidate than the job-seeker who still sees web work as a separate field. Community college courses are reasonably priced, and your Internet provider may provide free hosting, so practice is free.
- Learn the ins and outs of public sector budgeting. Emphasis now is on making cuts, but even as tax revenues increase again, states and municipalities will continue to confront rising costs to maintain infrastructure or pay for employee pensions. See if you can be an intern for a local city or county as it prepares its budget. There is a major crunch (and no more staff) to draft the annual budget for a city council or county board of supervisors to approve, and even in a small town the city manager or budget director could appreciate your time. Even if you don’t go into public budgeting, what you learn will be useful throughout a career.
- Ask currently employed workers in your hoped-for field to give you a fifteen-minute interview to describe what they do and the skills needed. You will learn something and it gives a potential employer a chance to know you without having to tell you there is no job.
- Start a blog that deals with the area in which you want to work. You can write some, but you can also ask others in the field to write guest posts. You learn more and you are known as committed to your field.
- Keep reading. Who would have thought Workforce 2020 would be read on a Kindle?
- If all else fails, ask your parents or grandparents to stop postponing retirement. You may not get their job, but a friend might. Let the older generation stay home and start a blog.
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Aaand here we go to one more post of Assassin's Creed goodies ^^
Today we go over Assassin's Creed Revelations revelations! XD
First we have this awesome list of news gathered by User:Stormbeast on a blog of his, one which I am now reposting here for everyone to see ^^ I believe he will keep updating it, and when he does, I'll relay the info to all as always =]
Since it has a truckload of spoilers, I'm listing it under the spoiler tag, click the "show" button to unveil the known features and reveal the truth!
- If you get close enough to a person, e.g. following Yusuf at the beginning of the game, Ezio will go into autopilot and walk with him.
- All memories concerning the Keys in Constantinople will be accessed through Sofia. The Altair memories within the Keys will be relatively short, but engaging. You do not have to activate the Key as soon as you touch it, leading to possible replay-ability of Altair memories as well.
- There is an achievement/trophy for reaching the top of Hagia Sophia in under 30 seconds.
- You can take a break from playing Ezio and return to Animus Island with Desmond through the menu. Doing so, Desmond can talk to Subject 16 and even hear the voices of Bill, Shaun, and Rebecca from the outside world. It is noted that Bill trained both Desmond and Lucy at a very young age.
- Ezio can control his speed whilst zip-lining. (the faster option will attract a guard's attention)
- You can test out bombs while crafting them to see their effect.
- The 'random quests' can be anything, including moving 5 boxes across a street.
- While disguised as a minstrel, the face buttons (X,B,Y,A on Xbox) has Ezio use different songs, mostly about Cesare. Pressing the right control stick activates Eagle Sense.
- Ezio will aquire the Armor of Ishak Pasha, the Revelations counterpart of the Armors of Altair and Brutus.
- Ottoman guards are marked on the mini-map with a yellow dot.
- Ezio will fill the new HQ with books in place of paintings.
- Ezio has all his old gear (including parachutes and the crossbow) from the beginning. Tunnel Booths have also returned.
- Assassin recruiting will be more diverse than just saving civilians from guards. Some can be done through quests, e.g. catching a counterfeit thief or winning a race. The new Recruits will be categorized, involving the weapon they are most skilled in. In order to reach the level of Assassin and Master Assassin, your Recruit and you will have to track down a Templar Agent.
- There are Animus Data Fragments throughout the city for Ezio to collect. These appear to look similar to the AC2 loading symbol.
- The second Key is under Galata Tower. The only video we have is of Ezio almost falling to his doom.
- The second Altair memory will take place directly after Al Mualim's death, leading to a fight with Abbas Sofian's followers and climbing to reach Abbas Sofian to retrieve the Apple. (Be careful of the Apple's pulses while climbing)
- The third Key is housed in the Forum of Ox. In order to get there, Ezio must use Eagle Sense while perched on a view point to pick up hidden symbols leading him there. The Forum of Ox features a chase with Templars in a boat as riflemen shoot at Ezio.
- The third Altair memory takes place after Altair's son, Sef, is killed. Not much is known other than Altair having to fight fellow Assassins to escape Masyaf.
- So far the confirmed Templar Agents are the Crusader, Renegade, and Vanguard. (Multiplayer related)
- There will be 5 new maps (Galata, Antioch, Knights Hospital, Souk, and Ippokratous) as well as 4 returning maps from Brotherhood. (Mont St. Michel, Rome, Castel Gandolfo, and Venice) "Training Ground" as seen in the Beta is now confirmed to be a 'noncompetitive, untimed mode' allowing you to 'explore the map, practice your abilities, and kill assigned target VIP' NPCs. (Multiplayer related)
Sources for the info listed above can be found on his blog post.
So that is all for today! Post your comments below – me and the staff want to hear your opinions! Safety and peace, folks.
"Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think."
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Contrary to popular belief weight training is not just for people who want to show off their shapely physiques at body building competitions, or look great on the beach. According to the Mayo Clinic, the benefits of working out with… Share this: Tweet this!
The Wall Street Journal covers an MIT study that found the downsides of trade with China have been worse than previously known (amongst economists, that is. Workers have long understood this): A pattern emerged, with areas where factories were most exposed to Chinese import growth faring worse than the less exposed. Between 2000 and 2007,
The Oklahoman recently profiled Philip Anschutz, who bought the paper from the Gaylord family, which had owned it for 108 years. Actually, “profile” is being kind—it’s more like a list of stuff Anschutz owns and a blog post about a four-minute YouTube video—and it left out essential background about the interests of its new billionaire
Should Team Obama be feeling optimistic or concerned about its fundraising prospects this election cycle? That depends. It depends, of course, on how fundraising success is measured (Who gave and how much? Compared to what?). We don’t yet know what the Obama campaign’s third quarter fundraising report—due to the Federal Election Commission this Friday—will hold.
appearing on Politico’s home page right now (here’s a screen shot): I spy these four highly informative headlines: “Christie Still Not Running” “Should Christie Take His ‘One Shot’?” “Chris Christie, still no” (which actually links again, in case you missed it, to the first piece listed above) “Running? Chris Christie’s many ‘no’s” And… Share this:
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Extra Stuff :)
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His boyfriend is soooo cute!!!! Kawaii-Desu!!! (Taken with
June 25, 20:12
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Hi, my name is Mark, and this is my wonderful place of...stuff. I'm 21 years old, and i am addicted to League of Legends, JohnLock, and Martin Freeman. This blog ontains Sherlock BBC gifs, fanfiction, guys, and other wonderful stuff.
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21 Lower Freeborn
The Pantry project is a direct response to the growing need among the UC Davis student population for more aid and resources to help offset the Financial burden of the current economic climate in combination with rising fees, textbook costs, and living expenses. It is becoming increasingly difficult for students to juggle the costs of living while working to obtain a University degree, and thus many students are finding themselves choosing between basic essentials such as food and toilet paper and the required costs of college. It is for this reason that The Pantry has been established to help offset these financial burdens and ensure that students may continue on to successfully complete and obtain their degrees from the University of California, Davis.
The Pantry is the result of a campus-wide collaboration between the Associated Students of the University of California, Davis (ASUCD), the Community Advising Network under the umbrella of Counseling and Psychological Services, and the Office of the Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs. The Pantry has also received an outpour of positive support from various centers, staff members, and student organizations on the UC Davis campus, as and amongst the Davis Community.
Director: Rosa Gonzalez-Juarez
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"Helplessness" and "confusion" are words that easily come to mind when the issue of sick building syndrome is mentioned. It is a problem that does not have a regulatory solution, and is bound with engineering, medicine and emotions that will challenge the best of school administrators.
A careful management style and knowledgeable use of technologies in medicine, toxicology and property maintenance are a school administrator's best allies in preparing to deal with or prevent this new generation of health and safety challenges.
Defining sick building syndrome There is no regulatory definition for sick building syndrome. Although it often relates to indoor-air-quality problems, it simply means that the environment of a building is inspiring complaints of discomfort and/or disease.
Fundamentally, the causes of sick buildings relate to architecture and engineering patterns institutionalized in school construction following World War II. Schools of glass, rock and wood, with high ceilings, cross-ventilation via a transom over the door, and windows and radiators that could be adjusted by teachers no longer were built. These schools were being replaced with new, factory-like buildings featuring a temperamental, eccentric system of master controls for indoor environment. Buildings were constructed with no regard to the environment around them or to people within the property. Today, allowing for the ambiguity in defining sick buildings, somewhere between 1-in-5 and 1-in-15 school facilities are in a situation where discomfort and disease can be attributed to operations of the building.
Health symptoms in a sick building are highly variable, but generally split into three categories:
-Radical reaction--a number of people clearly and suddenly ill. This usually involves limited air exchange combined with a "smoking gun," which can include a new chemical cleaner, misbatched chlorine in a pool area, a weather inversion preventing a kiln from venting properly or a failure of a mechanical air-exchange system.
-Unhealthy atmosphere--many people experiencing ongoing subtle illness or discomfort. The most common symptoms involve the dehydration of sensitive tissue, including sore eyes, throat or nasal membranes; a feeling of lethargy; a higher incidence of upper-respiratory infection; asthmatic reactions; low-grade headaches; and a continuum of muscle pain and general discomfort among building occupants. Much of this relates to oxygen deprivation typically caused by oxygen being displaced by other compounds, and occasionally by infestation of microbes as a result of excessive moisture remaining within the property.
-Hypersensitive reaction or multiple chemical sensitivity reaction--one or two individuals extremely ill. This can result if even tiny exposures occur to anyone that has a highly sensitive reaction to certain chemicals. Typically, these complaints should be viewed as warnings that some low-level toxin is in the area.
Although sick building syndrome usually relates to the general nature of the building itself, there are some specifics that account for most indoor-air problems:
*Combustibles; any possible introduction of carbon monoxide. *Moisture as it may relate to mold (look for growths on drywall). *Moisture as it may relate to airborne infectious agents (standing water and consequent growths). *Volatile organic compounds (VOCs), usually cleaning agents or building materials, which may give off unpleasant, sometimes toxic gases. *Formaldehydes in new carpet, pressed wood or other building products. *Any new or newly exposed particleboard. *Applied poisons (pesticides, insecticides, rodenticides, herbicides).
A proactive approach Administrators are dealing with a generation of post-World War II properties prone to indoor-air-quality problems, particularly buildings constructed or remodeled during the 1970s energy crisis. A school district should take several steps before a problem strikes. First, initiate patterns for preventing air-quality problems. Second, establish baseline information that will profile the building to facilitate an efficient, inexpensive and confidence-inspiring response. Building occupants and the community need to see a clear and confident administrative approach should a problem arise in the future.
The proactive investigation of the building should involve a limited amount of basic testing, particularly a professional review of the microbial matrix within the building--the number of colony-forming units or what kinds of microbes presently are nesting in the building. Understanding what is living in the ambient air can help administrators understand if there is a problem or, more importantly, can help to quickly isolate the exact nature of a problem.
Similarly, administrators should consider hiring an outside contractor to review how air-handling and mechanical-engineering systems are managed. A knowledgeable person should walk the area and observe the mechanical systems to see how the filtering system, the air-dispersion system and the air-dilution patterns of the building are operating. Finally, a reliable epidemiological profile of comparative absenteeism should be archived.
Administrators also need to be ready to implement a smooth, confidence-building reporting system for occupants regarding air-quality or sick-building concerns. How fast and capably the district responds can be the key to getting the issue under control. The costs for responding to indoor-air problems decrease dramatically if there is baseline data and a plan in place.
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McLouth makes impact with homer, leaping grab
Running into wall, O's left fielder starts key double play to end Yanks' threat
NEW YORK -- Hot for more than a month, Nate McLouth saw red for an entire inning Thursday night.
Leading off the fifth, the Orioles left fielder drilled a fastball out to right at Yankee Stadium. Then, in the bottom of the inning, he made a leaping catch at the wall as he crashed into an electronic red sign he said was blindingly bright. That saved a run and started an inning-ending double play.
"I mean, it almost blinded me," McLouth said of the State Farm sign.
Before the O's took Game 4 of the American League Division Series, 2-1, over the Yankees in 13 innings, McLouth's homer was Baltimore's only run for 12 innings.
The O's leadoff man has been their best hitter this series, and he homered on a 1-2 pitch from Yanks starter Phil Hughes that got too much of the plate. That put Baltimore up, 1-0, and came after McLouth had walked and doubled in his first two plate appearances.
"It was obviously a mistake," said McLouth, who's hitting .333 (6-for-18) with two runs scored and three RBIs in the series. "I think [Hughes] was trying to come in and didn't get it there. But you know, to get us on the board there, to get a lead there, it was the fifth inning, it was nice. I put a pretty good swing on it."
McLouth has hits in all four games of the series, coming off his hottest month of the season, September, when he posted a .298/.372/.491 line. At an opportune time like this, he said he's feeling as good as he has all year.
"I really do," McLouth said. "It's funny, when you feel good, and you get good pitches, you don't miss 'em. When you're struggling, you'll foul those pitches back. I just, yeah, I've been able to slow things down at the plate, and I think that's kind of what any hitter will tell you when they're feeling pretty good. They're able to stay under control."
The catch in the bottom of the inning was remarkable in itself. The 7-6-3 double play he started with a relay to J.J. Hardy made it that much sweeter.
The Yankees had a runner on first base with one out, and Jayson Nix, starting at shortstop in place of Derek Jeter, hit a deep drive to left. McLouth raced back to the left-field wall, leapt and came up with it as his left side hit against the sign. His jump was well-timed, so he didn't hit the wall with overwhelming force.
"That's that deep part out there," McLouth said. "I went back, I knew it was going to be close to the wall. And I took my eye off the ball for a second and it was kind of weird, because when I took my off the ball, I looked right into -- there's like a bright red State Farm [sign] out there -- and I mean it almost blinded me. Because I wanted to check where the wall was, but I just happened to look right at that bright sign, and it kind of threw me off for a second. But I was able to pick up the ball again when I looked back."
Essentially, McLouth preserved the shutdown inning, and all the momentum he himself had created with the home run.
From his vantage point, catcher Matt Wieters wasn't sure McLouth had a chance at the ball, but he wasn't surprised by the play. To Wieters, the O's have two center fielders: one playing that position, Adam Jones, and the other playing left, McLouth.
"I didn't know he had it, but I knew if he had a chance, Nate was going to come down with the ball," Wieters said. "He ran a long way for that ball, and was able to get it and make a good throw to J.J. to get a double play. That was a huge out in the game, and something that gave us a little bit of relief, to get back in the dugout with the lead."
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DALTON, Ga. (AP) — A Georgia sheriff says an 11-year-old girl was fatally shot by her brother as he was playing with a loaded handgun.
The Chattanooga Times Free Press reports (http://bit.ly/KGCEZV ) Cassie Culpepper was shot in the face late Friday as she rode with her brother and other children in the back of a pickup truck.
Whitfield Sheriff Scott Chitwood says the girl’s 12-year-old brother told investigators he had sneaked a pistol with him and thought it was unloaded. Chitwood says the boy pointed the gun at his sister and pulled the trigger to scare her. Their mother was driving the truck.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is assisting the sheriff. Agent Jerry Scott says the death appears to be a “tragic accident.”
(© Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
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Atlanta, GA Metro >
1794 Eagle Drive,
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A Tradition in Early Education
Editorial Review by Citysearch Editors.
Day care with locations nationwide provides creative curriculums and other kid services to children 6 weeks to 8 years old.
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Atlanta, GA Metro >
1052 Peachtree Industrial Blvd,
“The food is always fresh and cooked to order.”
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Great food and service!.
The food AND service are awwwwwweeesome...its always cooked FRESH and when i call in and order its ready when they promise. The chicken philly cheese is to diieeee for
This is one of the most consistent retaurants I've ever visited. The food is always fresh and cooked to order. They prepare it EXACTLY like you ask with no questions or mistakes. It is my absolute FAVORITE fish house.
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Atlanta, GA Metro >
3070 Windward Plz,
“Great food, nice location”
“The prices are not the least expensive, but the quality of food makes for a great value.”
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So on Sunday... one could go training on Blue Mtn, Ward Pound Ridge, Harriman... or hike and brunch... or... any preferences? I'm open to suggestions.
And who's coming down on Friday evening? My number is 914 257 9948 if you need to find me.
There's still loads of floorspace if anyone else is interested. Just because you haven't a personal invite doesn't mean I don't love you, I'm just lazy and incompetent.
Some details added on the event page. 9.30 start in Fahnestock on Saturday, ouch.
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Question Details:Our landlord just presented us with a lease renewal and he changed one major provision, that the maintenance of the furnace is now our responsibility and that we are required to purchase a service contract with his oil provider. I called the oil provider and the annual fee is $249.
Under the laws of all states in this country, if a landlord wants to place a provision in the written lease agreement such as the tenant being responsible for paying the annual service contract on the rented unit's furnace and the tenants sign the agreement, such provision is legally binding upon all parties to the lease.
There is nothing illegal about such a provision. If you do not want to sign the agreement with the provision, the landlord cannot force you to do so. But if you do not sign the lease as written, the landord may lease the rental to some other person who will sign the lease with the annual service contract provision in it.
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1. Warm 1 tbs of the oil in a large, deep, heavy frypan over medium heat. Add capsicum; cover and cook, stirring often, until tender, about 5 minutes. Add cucumber and 1/8 tsp of the salt; cover and cook, stirring often, for 3 minutes or until tender and becoming translucent. Transfer vegetables to a serving dish; cover to keep warm.
2. Combine garlic and remaining oil in the same frypan over medium heat. Cook, stirring until fragrant, about 1 minute.
3. Stir in prawns and sprinkle with paprika, pepper and remaining salt. Cook, stirring often, until prawns are opaque, 5 to 7 minutes. (If pan becomes very dry, add 1 or 2 tbs water.)
4. Add sherry, if using, and lemon juice. Cook, stirring, for 1 minute or until pan juices are bubbly and thick.
5. serve prawns and vegetables with ½ cup basmati rice per person.
1,680 kj (400 cal)
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WA nurses will hold a mass meeting at the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre tomorrow morning, as their industrial action moves into its fifth day.
At a hearing today attended by the Australian Nursing Federation and Health Department officials, the Industrial Relations Commission did not order nurses to lift the work bans that have now seen hundreds of hospitals beds closed.
However, it said the union needed to organise a mass meeting of its members tomorrow to seek a resolution.
The ANF says nurses would accept a minimum 12.75 per cent pay rise over three years but the department is yet to respond.
The Industrial Relations Commission yesterday recommended WA nurses lifted the work bans.
WA Health officials also warned lives were at risk because seriously ill patients were waiting too long to get beds.
Director-general of health Kim Snowball said on Tuesday the move not to staff one in five beds in most public hospital wards was putting critically ill patients at risk.
But Australian Nursing Federation secretary Mark Olson disputed Mr Snowball's claims, insisting no patients' lives would be put at risk during the campaign.A meeting of 1000 nurses and midwives voted on Monday to effectively close the beds and cancel one in five elective surgeries, with exemptions for patients such as those who are critically ill and children.
'The West Australian' is a trademark of West Australian Newspapers Limited 2013.
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From the Wires
Notice from the Office of the Secretary - IN THE MATTER OF NEST ACQUISITIONS AND MERGERS, IMG INTERNATIONAL INC., CAROLINE MYRIAM FRAYSSIGNES, DAVID PELCOWITZ, MICHAEL SMITH, and ROBERT PATRICK ZUK - and - IN THE MATTER OF A SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT BETWEEN S
By: PR Newswire
Dec. 4, 2012 02:15 PM
TORONTO, Dec. 4, 2012 /CNW/ - The Office of the Secretary issued a Notice of Hearing for a hearing to consider whether it is in the public interest to approve a settlement agreement entered into by Staff of the Commission and Robert Patrick Zuk in the above named matter.
The hearing will be held on December 5, 2012 at 3:30 p.m. at the temporary offices of ASAP Reporting Services, Suite 900, 333 Bay Street, Toronto, in the North Arbitration Room.
A copy of the Notice of Hearing dated December 4, 2012 is available at www.osc.gov.on.ca
OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY
SOURCE Ontario Securities Commission
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July 19, 2007
Three standing out for Jackson?
Franklin (Ga.) Heard County tailback Dontavius Jackson remains one of the premier players in the southeast that has yet to commit to a school.
The nation's No. 7-rated running back has remained fairly quiet during the summer, instead opting to prepare for his senior season. Jackson has said that his top five schools are Alabama, Georgia, LSU, Clemson and Georgia, but Heard County head coach Tim Barron believes that three are standing out to him at this time.
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Friday, August 3, 2012
APR Motorsport Audi R8 GRAND-AM at Indy
By Tarek Ramchani
APR Motorsport entered the inaugural Brickyard Grand Prix at the world famous Indianapolis Motorsport Speedway last weekend, the first ever sports car race at Indy. Round 9 of the Grand American Rolex Sports Car Series and also round three of the North American Endurance Championship, after the Rolex 24 at Daytona and the 6 Hours of the Glen. It was a very rainy and hard three hour event, with a lot of contact on track. The #51 machine shared by Dion von Moltke and Dr. Jim Norman finished 18th in the demanding GT class. The car has shown again a very good pace in hand of Dion von Moltke, but again bad luck hit the APR team when they made contact with an RX8 Mazda in the infield. Here is a brilliant video made in house by the APR media guys.
APR Motorsport official website
APR official Facebook
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Well met on Audiko.net! We propose to download a free Instrumentals ringtones for your iPhone or mobile. Specify your favorite line from your favorite piece of music - Hard Knock Life (Instrumental, - Eminem - Mocking Bird, Industrial Revolution Instru, or any other track. Then download the prepared Instrumentals ringtones to your iPhone, and enjoy Instrumental music by Instrumentals every time your phone rings. If you love Instrumental or maybe Timbaland and Soundtrack music, then you will probably like Big L, or Instrumental as well. We provide you with an option to download your tune both in the MP3 and m4a formats, supported by both mobile phones and iPhones. Just select a track, and choose free Instrumentals ringtones download option.
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You are always welcome here at ringtone download service Audiko.net, where you may search for epic ringtones for your mobile phone. Today we have a ringtone of “One of US” by Joan Osborne as well as 156 other ringtones by Joan Osborne. “One of US” is the best track from the “Relish” album that was produced by Joan Osborne at their major label together with other 7 tracks. You can listen to all 95 Joan Osborne – “One of US” ringtone variations available here and download it for free just in a click. You can also find other 5 albums produced by Joan Osborne for all time. “One of US” is referred to Female Vocalists, and you can download a huge amount of Female Vocalists videos absolutely for free. And finally, we have collected lyrics for this track and you can view it here as well. So feel free to browse, listen, download ringtones at Audiko.net. Make your phone sound cool!
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Interview with Scott Pagano | Career Outcomes
Scott Pagano is a digital artist, filmmaker and motion graphics designer from Los Angeles. He works at the intersection of high technology and creates vivid, beautiful and memorable works by mixing different media types, like video, audio, photography and CG graphics. Pagano is known for collaborations with many artists in various genres, from Michael Jackson to Kid606 and Kronos Quartet. In this video he shared his creative experience with us and showed his most interesting works.
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Ethiopian kids hack Zoom tablets in five months.
The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project recently tried a new approach to distributing computers to developing countries, by leaving boxes of tablets in remote Ethiopian villages with no instructions. The Motorola Zoom tablets had a custom English language OS, a solar charger, and tracking software to monitor how they were used.
To the surprise of the organization, not only could the kids who started using the tablets easily figure out how to switch on and use them, but they also learnt to hack into the OS and enable features - amazing especially seeing as most of the kids had never seen a printed word before, let alone in English.
“We left the boxes in the village. Closed. Taped shut. No instruction, no human being. I thought, the kids will play with the boxes! Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, but found the on/off switch. He’d never seen an on/off switch. He powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs [in English] in the village. And within five months, they had hacked Android. Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera! And they figured out it had a camera, and they hacked Android.”
OLPC used the experiment to see whether kids can teach themselves to read and write English. Research shows that 100,000,000 kids worldwide don’t even make to to first grade, often because there are no schools or teachers available. For the cost of a tablet, that could all change. Previous OLPC studies have also shown that the kids will also teach their parents to read and write as well.
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May 7, 2012 § 2 Comments
The Last of a Half-breed / on The Death of Jim Loney by James Welch
Welch’s sad book is set in mid-70’s rural Montana somewhere on the outskirts of the Fort Belknap Indian reservation. In this tragic story, cheap alcohol fuels a prevailing sense of alienation and longing for an imagined elsewhere—life should be better somewhere else. A perennial overgrowth of American Indian under-education, alcoholism and infighting captures the reader in a depressive continuity of life’s potential for hopelessness. Welch gives us a masterful retelling of boredom amidst the desolation of failed dreams. This is an American Indian story of existential angst that goes far beyond a clichéd and ghettoized other. Welch leaves us with a narrative that calls into question the very real confrontation with Jim Loney’s identity as a so-called half breed (Gros Ventre/Anglo), his broken family, his restless love life, and his hard-to-place value as a fallible man. James Welch’s The Death of Jim Loney soberly regards the plight of the American Indian, troubled personal identity, and the existential problems that arise from filial neglect and societal estrangement.
We always have to be cautious when confronting racial issues and how they are addressed, especially with regard to the personal bias we bring to such matters. Although Welch does write about an American-Indian, he tells the story from the uneasy perspective of Jim Loney and his immediate relationships. This story is one of human identity, an identity that’s become displaced, and then broken. We already come to the novel knowing that American-Indians have been displaced in their own land, but in The Death of Jim Loney existential problems of belonging lie underneath the poverty of Loney’s day to day circumstances. If any American-Indian issues are politicized in the book, they are carefully implied and are not overt. In fact, such issues of displaced identity are suggested by Welch with graceful subtlety. For example, when Welch writes about Loney’s half-breed status, he has Loney’s girlfriend Rhea suggest to him that to be a half-breed is to be lucky to choose from one set of ancestors or the other: “Oh, you’re so lucky to have two sets of ancestors. Just think, you can be Indian on one day and white the next. Whichever suits you” (2008, p. 13). The naïve irony of his girlfriend’s comment does little to comfort us (and him) since we know that society doesn’t give us this choice. Here in America, if you are born half white and your other ethnic half is a minority group, you must identify as that minority group, if you don’t, you’re flatly dismissed as being in a state of self-hating denial.
If you happen to belong to a minority group, any resulting problems of racial and personal identity are left for you to sort through openly, or not. If you don’t have the tenacity to deal with it, this can lead to strong feelings of displacement and a general sense of not belonging. But is this is somehow a uniquely American-Indian dilemma? We already know that it’s not; we don’t have to be American-Indian to question our place in the world. One doesn’t need to be a minority to contemplate one’s existence. However, with this said, we’ll have to acknowledge that a minority status can lead to feelings of alienation. Displacement from the larger group can lead one to feel like an outsider.
This takes us to the philosophy of Existentialism. The general focus of Existentialism is on the existence of the individual and the choices he makes from there, if he is able to recognize that his existence relies on his own self-determinism and not on an external morality, or objective standards of living. In the strictest sense, he always has the freedom to choose one way or another. Let us be sure to make the point that Welch’s Loney never tries to philosophically solve his existential dilemma, we’re only left with his broken family life, his semi-romantic love life, his tenuous friendships, his alcoholism, his violence, and his eventual demise. We are matter-of-factly presented with all these unresolved problems of his existence that lead Loney to a self manipulated death. In Colin Wilson’s first book The Outsider he covers the Existentialism of the alienated outsider from the philosophical perspective of many authors and thinkers, including Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche wrote at length about overcoming the status quo, about questioning existence and the power of the individual to forge a new path above and beyond the prevailing norms. Welch’s Jim Loney is precariously at the precipice of this kind of rejection of the way things are—he is on the very edge of transcendence—yet he never gets there, he just doesn’t know how. “He [Loney] tried to think of all the little things that added up to a man sitting at a table drinking wine. […] all the people and events were hopelessly tangled as a bird’s nest is his mind” (Welch, 2008, p. 18). Loney inadvertently shows us that personal growth can’t flourish if we absent-mindedly drink away our thoughts. In The Outsider, Wilson speaks of the way Nietzsche had to reject the complacency of traditional values in a society that stifles free thinking: “Unless he can evolve a set of values that will correspond to his higher intensity of purpose, he may as well throw himself under a bus, for he will always be an outcast and a misfit” (1956, p.142). Loney never gets to a higher purpose. His goal is not to challenge tradition. Loney’s choices are (self) limited.
Loney’s existence awkwardly stares at him, and by extension we try to think of how this reflects our own lives. It’s only by his inability to squarely lift himself up from his plight, do we confront a desire to do this for ourselves. This problem of Loney’s is carefully expressed by Welch when Loney watches a neighbor hanging her laundry. He does this while contemplating where his life should lead from here. “He wasn’t ready to do anything but sit on his step and think, and so he watched the two shirts twist and knot around each other and he thought, not of Seattle, but of the blue veins on the backs of his neighbor’s legs” (2008, p.42). This kind of contemplation with the bare facts of reality recall Jean Paul Sartre’s character Antoine Roquentin in the book Nausea, and his famous existential epiphany with a chestnut tree, yet with one critical distinction: Loney can’t see a way to transcend his basic choices. He can’t grasp his own basic existential freedom. In Nausea Sartre writes: “Existence is not something which lets itself be thought of at a distance: it must invade you suddenly, master you, weigh heavily on your heart like a great motionless beast—or else there is nothing more at all” (1964, p. 177). For Sartre man’s very confrontation with nothing and of existence impels him to grow into what he wants to be. Loney doesn’t know he can change, therefore Sartre would say he was acting in ‘bad faith.’ When we’re acting in bad faith we are not acknowledging our freedom to choose another way, we’ve blindly accepted our so-called fate. In bad faith we are the victims of circumstantial fatalism.
Welch’s Loney is opaque and inaccessible to himself, he “…couldn’t sleep because if he slept he would dream, so he stared into the blackness of the small bedroom” (2008, p. 94). A few lines later, Loney thinks of the next day where he’ll be hunting bear with his sometime friend Myron Pretty Weasel, where he blankly thinks: “After tomorrow’s slim purpose I will simply exist” (Welch, 2008, p. 95). These are frightening thoughts when we learn later that Loney will shoot the curiously named Pretty Weasel, presumably mistaking him for a bear in the cattails. In Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalytic/philosohical work Strangers to Ourselves, she details the complex ways an outsider is perceived and how they perceive themselves. It’s made clear that the foreigner internalizes much of their perceived self-identity and hatred, as much as society imposes these insecurities onto the other. We’ll be safe to suggest that American-Indians have been a kind of native foreigner, sadly thought of as foreigners on their own homeland. This becomes a kind of self-exile enacted by Loney’s futile escape from belonging to his family or anywhere else as he eventually runs headlong unto his death at Mission Canyon. Kristeva writes: “…according to the utmost logic of exile, all aims should waste away and self-destruct in the wonderer’s insane stride toward an elsewhere that is always pushed back, unfulfilled, out of reach” (1991, p. 6). Although Kristeva is not an Existentialist, her views on foreigners, the stranger, the other do coincide with Loney’s lack of belonging that leads to a feeling of being exiled within his own family and community. Loney is never ‘at home’ in the world.
We never really understand where Loney’s going except down. The rambling intensity of his actions are magnified by the coldness of his estranged father Ike, especially when Loney suggests that their situation could’ve been better. Ike ignorantly questions this: “Shit, what would we have done but drink ourselves to death?” (Welch, 2008, p. 132). After this, Loney walks away from his dad’s trailer and shoots into one of the windows with the shotgun his dad gave him minutes earlier.
If we return to the very first page of the story, we find Loney recounting an odd Biblical passage that sticks itself in us because of its bald pessimism. “Turn away from man in whose nostrils is breath, for of what account is he?” (Welch, 2008, p. 1). We’re not told that this is from Isaiah 2:22, but that doesn’t matter when we think of what it means, and what it might mean for Loney. Turn away from a breathing man, because there is not accounting for him because he’s mortal. This has to be a Biblical way to emphasize the fallibility of man against an all perfect God. Yet, for our secular use here, the haunting phrase speaks to a darker message: no one living is to be trusted. Loney came from the chaos of a broken home. As we witness his confused adult life, his options are few. Loney in his depressive complacency barely trusts anyone. Midway in the book, a little boy named Amos After Buffalo watches Loney cut his dead dog from the frozen mud on Thanksgiving day—a day that’s not really an American-Indian holiday. This little boy is recalled before Loney dies where Loney talks to a stray black dog in Mission Canyon. “You tell Amos that Jim Loney passed through town while he was dreaming. Don’t tell him you saw me with a bottle and a gun. That wouldn’t do. Tell him you saw me carrying a dog and that I was taking that dog to higher ground. He will know” (Welch, 2008, p. 147).
James Welch’s The Death of Jim Loney carries us over to a deep sense of sadness. This in-depth sadness is brought about by Loney’s inability to maneuver his circumstance to even a slightly better place. His displaced existence glares at him and it hurts us to have read about it. It is in this liquor-fuelled alienation that we can learn to empathize with people, as we can recognize such tendencies in ourselves. It is as the philosophers show us, that it is our choice to blindly accept fatalism, the status quo, the norms, the way-it-should-be, or not. If we can’t do this hard work of liberating ourselves nobody else can do it for us. This ultimately reveals how James Welch has helped us, by showing what life looks like when we refuse to see ourselves as full of potential, and when we fail to see ourselves as living with pure possibility.
Kristeva, Julia. (1991). Strangers to ourselves (Leon Roudiez, trans.). New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. (1964). Nausea (Lloyd Alexanader, trans.). New York, NY: New Directions.
Welch, James. (2008). The death of Jim Loney. New York, NY: Penquin Classics.
Wilson, Colin. (1956). The outsider. New York, NY: Dell Publishing.
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Date: 22 June 2012
References: ESB-2012.0027 ESB-2012.0074 ESB-2012.0269 ESB-2012.0480 ESB-2013.0537
Click here for printable version
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
AUSCERT External Security Bulletin Redistribution
SSRT100891 rev.1 - HP OpenVMS running SSL, Remote Denial of
Service (DoS), Unauthorized Access
22 June 2012
AusCERT Security Bulletin Summary
Product: HP OpenVMS
Operating System: OpenVMS
Impact/Access: Access Privileged Data -- Remote/Unauthenticated
Denial of Service -- Remote/Unauthenticated
Unauthorised Access -- Remote/Unauthenticated
CVE Names: CVE-2012-2131 CVE-2012-2110 CVE-2012-1165
CVE-2012-0884 CVE-2012-0050 CVE-2011-4619
CVE-2011-4577 CVE-2011-4576 CVE-2011-4109
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Note: the current version of the following document is available here:
SUPPORT COMMUNICATION - SECURITY BULLETIN
Document ID: c03383940
HPSBOV02793 SSRT100891 rev.1 - HP OpenVMS running SSL, Remote Denial of
Service (DoS), Unauthorized Access
NOTICE: The information in this Security Bulletin should be acted upon as
soon as possible.
Release Date: 2012-06-21
Last Updated: 2012-06-21
Potential Security Impact: Remote Denial of Service (DoS), unauthorized
Source: Hewlett-Packard Company, HP Software Security Response Team
Potential security vulnerabilities have been identified with HP OpenVMS
runing SSL. The vulnerabilities could be remotely exploited to cause a Denial
of Service (DoS) or to gain unauthorized access.
References: CVE-2011-4108, CVE-2011-4109, CVE-2011-4576, CVE-2011-4577,
CVE-2011-4619, CVE-2012-0050, CVE-2012-0884, CVE-2012-1165, CVE-2012-2110,
SUPPORTED SOFTWARE VERSIONS*: ONLY impacted versions are listed.
HP SSL for OpenVMS v 1.4-453 (based on OpenSSL 0.9.8o stream) and earlier.
CVSS 2.0 Base Metrics
Reference Base Vector Base Score
CVE-2011-4108 (AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N) 4.3
CVE-2011-4109 (AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C) 9.3
CVE-2011-4576 (AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N) 5.0
CVE-2011-4577 (AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P) 4.3
CVE-2011-4619 (AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P) 5.0
CVE-2012-0050 (AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P) 5.0
CVE-2012-0884 (AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N) 5.0
CVE-2012-1165 (AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P) 5.0
CVE-2012-2110 (AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P) 7.5
CVE-2012-2131 (AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P) 7.5
Information on CVSS is documented
in HP Customer Notice: HPSN-2008-002
HP has made the following patch kits available to resolve the vulnerability.
Patch kit Name
HP SSL 1.4-467 (Based on OpenSSL 0.9.8w)
Version:1 (rev.1) 21 June 2012 Initial release
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These wise words from Tolstoy seem even more relevant 100 years on.
Matt Ridley has published a great essay in WIRED SCIENCE today. Ridley nails an issue that has plagued humanity since time immemorial. Some supposedly intelligent human beings become so convinced that Doomsday is upon them that nothing will persuade them to the contrary. Ridley’s essay is a must read for everyone interested in Doomsday predictions that have failed to materialise and why we should dump the Climate Scare in the same basket.
When the sun rises on December 22, as it surely will, do not expect apologies or even a rethink. No matter how often apocalyptic predictions fail to come true, another one soon arrives. And the prophets of apocalypse always draw a following—from the 100,000 Millerites who took to the hills in 1843, awaiting the end of the world, to the thousands who believed in Harold Camping, the Christian radio broadcaster who forecast the final rapture in both 1994 and 2011.
Religious zealots hardly have a monopoly on apocalyptic thinking. Consider some of the environmental cataclysms that so many experts promised were inevitable. Best-selling economist Robert Heilbroner in 1974: “The outlook for man, I believe, is painful, difficult, perhaps desperate, and the hope that can be held out for his future prospects seem to be very slim indeed.” Or best-selling ecologist Paul Ehrlich in 1968: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s ["and 1980s" was added in a later edition] the world will undergo famines—hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked on now … nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.” Or Jimmy Carter in a televised speech in 1977: “We could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade.”
Predictions of global famine and the end of oil in the 1970s proved just as wrong as end-of-the-world forecasts from millennialist priests. Yet there is no sign that experts are becoming more cautious about apocalyptic promises. If anything, the rhetoric has ramped up in recent years. Echoing the Mayan calendar folk, theBulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved its Doomsday Clock one minute closer to midnight at the start of 2012, commenting: “The global community may be near a point of no return in efforts to prevent catastrophe from changes in Earth’s atmosphere.”
APOCOHOLISM IS GROWING
Over the five decades since the success of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 and the four decades since the success of the Club of Rome’s The Limits to Growth in 1972, prophecies of doom on a colossal scale have become routine. Indeed, we seem to crave ever-more-frightening predictions—we are now, in writer Gary Alexander’s word, apocaholic. The past half century has brought us warnings of population explosions, global famines, plagues, water wars, oil exhaustion, mineral shortages, falling sperm counts, thinning ozone, acidifying rain, nuclear winters, Y2K bugs, mad cow epidemics, killer bees, sex-change fish, cell-phone-induced brain-cancer epidemics, and climate catastrophes.
So far all of these specters have turned out to be exaggerated. True, we have encountered obstacles, public-health emergencies, and even mass tragedies. But the promised Armageddons—the thresholds that cannot be uncrossed, the tipping points that cannot be untipped, the existential threats to Life as We Know It—have consistently failed to materialize. To see the full depth of our apocaholism, and to understand why we keep getting it so wrong, we need to consult the past 50 years of history.
Ridley takes the reader through a modern day analogy of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
The classic apocalypse has four horsemen, and our modern version follows that pattern, with the four riders being chemicals (DDT, CFCs, acid rain), diseases (bird flu, swine flu, SARS, AIDS, Ebola, mad cow disease), people (population, famine), and resources (oil, metals). Let’s visit them each in turn.Read it all here
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The Independent Jane
For all the love, romance and scandal in Jane Austen’s books, what they are really about is freedom and independence. Independence of thought and the freedom to choose.
Elizabeth’s refusal of Mr. Collins offer of marriage showed an independence seldom seen in heroines of the day. Her refusal of Mr. Darcy while triggered by anger showed a level of independence that left him shocked and stunned.
The freedom she exhibited in finally accepting him in direct defiance of Lady Catherine and knowing her father would disapprove was unusual even for Austen. In her last book Anne Elliot is persuaded to refuse Captain Wentworth at Lady Russel’s insistence.
Although Jane played by the rules of the day, all of her writing is infused with how she wanted life to be. She ‘screams’ her outrage at the limitations for women in Emma.
When accosted by Mrs. Elton, Jane Fairfax says,
“Excuse me, ma’am, but this is by no means my intention; I make no inquiry myself, and should be sorry to have any made by my friends. When I am quite determined as to the time, I am not at all afraid of being long unemployed. There are places in town, offices, where inquiry would soon produce something — offices for the sale, not quite of human flesh, but of human intellect.”
“Oh! my dear, human flesh! You quite shock me; if you mean a fling at the slave-trade, I assure you Mr. Suckling was always rather a friend to the abolition.”
“I did not mean, I was not thinking of the slave-trade,” replied Jane; “governess-trade, I assure you, was all that I had in view; widely different certainly, as to the guilt of those who carry it on; but as to the greater misery of the victims, I do not know where it lies.”
That same sentiment is emphasized in Emma’s shock when Mrs. Weston tells her of Frank Churchill’s secret engagement to Jane.
“Good God!” cried Emma, “Jane actually on the point of going as governess! What could he mean by such horrible indelicacy? To suffer her to engage herself — to suffer her even to think of such a measure!”
I find it interesting that at the moment of Austen’s birth or there about, John Adams left his farm in Massachusetts for the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Doesn’t sound particularly interesting, I know but consider this.
John Adams left his home in mid-December 1775 to attend an unprecedented meeting of colonial representatives to consider severing ties with their mother country and her monarch; a decision that culminated in a document unlike any ever written. In the mother country, one day in that same cold December a baby girl was born at Steventon Rectory. Her cry was heard by only the people in the house but the years to come would see her pen create works unlike any the world had ever seen.
Comparing Austen’s words with Thomas Jefferson’s may seem a trivialization but I believe that Austen’s impact on the world is no less important than Jefferson’s. The effect of Jane’s writing maybe more subtle than that of the Virginian but it is no less influential.
Jefferson’s words instigated and promoted a revolution, a war of independence. Jane’s words had no such excessive consequence. Still in her own quiet, genteel yet powerful way she declared and promoted the same principles of freedom and self-regulated independence as our American forefathers. In all her novels Jane advocates independence of person and thought, the rights of all and acceptance of responsibility for those rights.
Jane may not have incited military action as Jefferson did but even as an avowed royalist, I doubt not that Jane Austen firmly believed in his declaration of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
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Computex Taipei 2009: One of our next stops out at Nangang was SilverStone who was showing off its Raven 2 case as its highlight product of the show for 2009.
It is the newer version of the popular Raven case, also with its unique 90 degree motherboard mounting, but sees some advancements and changes. Check it out below:
With so many good case designs on the market now, it is becoming harder and harder to stand out from the pack, but SilverStone continues to impressive with the Raven 2.
Further Reading: Read and find more news at our news index page.
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Bohn, M. S. (1977) Response of a subsonic nozzle to acoustic and entropy disturbances. Journal of Sound and Vibration , 52 (2). pp. 283-297. ISSN 0022-460X http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20101213-104516314
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Use this Persistent URL to link to this item: http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20101213-104516314
The one-dimensional response of a subsonic nozzle flow to small pressure and entropy disturbances is calculated. The response is expressed in terms of transmitted acoustic waves (which propagate from the nozzle in the same direction as the disturbance wave) and reflected acoustic waves (which propagate from the nozzle in the direction opposite to that of the disturbance wave) for three independent disturbances: a downstreampropagating acoustic wave impinging upon the nozzle inlet, an upstream-propagating wave impinging upon the nozzle exit, and an entropy wave convecting through the nozzle. The solution for high frequency disturbances is discussed and used with the compact (long wavelength disturbance) solution to normalize several numerical calculations. The normalization shows that the transmitted waves created by the two acoustic disturbances may be represented by the same function offrequency for a given inlet and exit nozzle Mach number. The same is seen to be true for the reflected waves created by the two acoustic disturbances. The normalization allows results for a wide range of nozzle Mach number distributions and disturbance frequencies to be presented concisely.
|Additional Information:||© 1977 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Received 22 June 1976, and in revised form 13 January 1977. Available online 29 July 2003. The author wishes to express his appreciation to Dr N. Cumpsty of Cambridge University for suggesting this problem, and to Professor F. E. Marble of the California Institute of Technology for his many helpful discussions of the problem.|
|Group:||Guggenheim Jet Propulsion Center|
|Other Numbering System:|
|Official Citation:||Bohn, M. S. (1977). "Response of a subsonic nozzle to acoustic and entropy disturbances." Journal of Sound and Vibration 52(2): 283-297.|
|Usage Policy:||No commercial reproduction, distribution, display or performance rights in this work are provided.|
|Deposited By:||Ruth Sustaita|
|Deposited On:||14 Dec 2010 17:15|
|Last Modified:||26 Dec 2012 12:45|
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