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The Basics of Sports Bras: Getting Your High Impact Sport On Comfortably
Flat-chested or big-busted, A - DD, no matter how you define your breasts, we all need a good high impact sports bra for sports like running, tennis or mountain biking. In fact, there's actually a scientific explanation for why a supportive sports bra is necessary. Women have Cooper's ligaments, those suspensory ligaments that essentially hold up your breasts and keep their size and shape no matter during all forms of movement. Once those ligaments are stretched, there's no going back to perky. A good, high impact sports bra protects those ligaments from stretching. A really great bra is both supportive and comfortable.
Minimizing the "bounce factor" is slightly different depending on cup size. A and B cups can go with compressions bras that compress the breasts against the chest for restricted movement. The ones with a scoop back or racer back are perfect for this size. But do avoid thin, spaghetti straps that provide little to no support.
C and D cups should go with compression/encapsulation bras that tend to be both supportive and comfortable. Encapsulation bras have separately molded cups for each breast. So while compression bras that minimize the up and down bounce, encapsulation bras reduce up and down bounce and the bounce in other directions. Working as a team, encapsulation/compression bras work nicely for a C cup on a long run or a D cup biking through the mountains.
Stick to encapsulation bras if you are a D cup and above. A recent study conducted for the annual meeting for the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences researched women with bra sizes from A to JJ as they performed all sorts of high impact exercise. They found that the bounce factor of women's breasts during exercise moves a vertical distance of up to around eight inches. If a pair of D cup breasts weigh about 15 to 23 pounds, they are definitely going to need the support an encapsulation bra offers.
Comfort is a necessity for women of all breast sizes. The first element of comfort is band comfort. The bottom edging of the bra that gives you support is the band. Wider bands are much more supportive than sports bras with thin bands. It shouldn't be so tight that it digs into your skin but not so loose that it leaves a gap anywhere. Shoulder straps go by the same principle - the wider, the better. Straps should have minimal stretch, but don't cut into your sensitive shoulders. There shouldn't be any gaps under the underarms or the front top seam of the bra. Above all, shoulder straps should fit comfortably.
You'll also want to check out the underwire of your sports bra. It should be flexible enough to move with your body when you lunge across the tennis court. Finally, be aware of the bra's material. You want a wicking fabric that keeps the moisture away from your skin to avoid irritation and odors.
Compression, encapsulation or a combination of the two, there sports bra is best suited for you. ActivewearUSA.com has a wide variety of comfortable bras of all varieties that will allow you to engage in your choice of high impact sports. | <urn:uuid:92009f02-e1a1-4ea1-9b16-0989b565a83f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.activewearusa.com/store/pc/High-Impact-Sports-Bras-c646.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940102 | 661 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Persuading Congress to ban assault weapons will be tough, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Thursday.
But it's a fight the outspoken advocate of stricter gun laws says he's determined to win.
"Getting rid of assault weapons, that is a tougher sell, and that's what we've really got to work on," Bloomberg said in an interview with CNN's AC360°. "I'm optimistic, but it's tougher."
Bloomberg said he's encouraging the roughly 800 mayors who are members of his Mayors Against Illegal Guns organization to start lobbying lawmakers and "explain to them why constituents really want this done."
Speaking a day after President Barack Obama announced a list of proposals to reduce gun violence, Bloomberg said the package -- which calls on Congress to reinstate the assault weapons ban, restrict ammunition magazines and expand background checks for gun buyers -- is "reasonably comprehensive."
And even though parts of the proposal will face an uphill battle, he said, that doesn't mean it isn't a worthwhile fight.
"There are lives involved here. And if you can save one life, isn't that worth trying?" Bloomberg said. "And I always thought that you should address issues when they're on the public's conscience, while they're being covered by the press, and you should try to do a complete job so you don't have to go back again and again and again."
Republicans immediately rejected the Obama proposals as an attack on the constitutional right to bear arms.
"Nothing the president is proposing would have stopped the massacre at Sandy Hook," Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, said in a statement.
"That's probably true," Bloomberg acknowledged on Thursday. "But that doesn't mean that having fewer guns around isn't a better idea."
Under New York's stricter gun laws, he said, the city has seen murder and suicide rates that are lower than the national average.
Last week, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told AC360° that the evidence in Chicago tells a different story.
"Chicago has very strict gun laws. It is also the deadliest city in America," Gingrich said.
Asked Thursday about Gingrich's observation, Bloomberg said gun laws aren't a panacea.
"There's no one solution to this," he said. "This is, however, a very important step. Fewer guns means fewer murders. Fewer guns means fewer suicides. Fewer guns means you and your children are safer."
Since last month's shooting massacre at a school in Newtown, Connecticut, Bloomberg and his group have been at the forefront of a push for stricter gun laws.
He's said that more than 1 million people have signed a petition backed by the organization to tighten gun control laws in the wake of the Newtown shooting rampage.
The group has spent millions on television spots calling for gun control, including an ad that ran nationally this week, featuring family members of victims killed by gun violence repeating the word, "enough."
On Thursday, Bloomberg sharply criticized the National Rifle Association for its approach to the gun control debate.
After blaming video games for the Newtown shooting rampage, the organization released its own gun-related mobile video game. And on Tuesday night, the NRA released an ad accusing Obama of hypocrisy for being "skeptical" about placing armed guards at schools, when his two daughters are protected by the U.S. Secret Service. That was "bad P.R." and an "outrage," Bloomberg said.
"I think it's just a bad strategy," he said, "and they're going to lose this battle." | <urn:uuid:7922a42b-3b3a-4687-a193-4e94bb8a2d4a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kjct8.com/Bloomberg-Assault-weapons-ban-is-tough-sell/-/163252/18178604/-/x2t028/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978989 | 728 | 1.59375 | 2 |
The new Opteron 6300: Finally Tested!by Johan De Gelas on February 20, 2013 12:03 AM EST
AMD unveiled their Opteron 6300 series server processors, code name Abu Dhabi, back in November 2012. At that time, no review samples were available. The numbers that AMD presented were somewhat confusing, as the best numbers were produced running the hard to assess SPECJbb2005 benchmark; the SPEC CPU2006 benchmarks were rather underwhelming.
Compared to an Opteron 6278 at 2.4GHz, the Opteron 6380 (2.5GHz) performed 24% better, performance per Watt improved by 40% according to AMD. In contrast, SPECint_Rate2006 improved by only 8%, and SPECfp_Rate2006 by 7%. However, it is important to note that SPECCPU2006 rates do not scale well with clockspeed. For example an 8% clockspeed (6380 vs 6376) only results in a 3.5% higher SPECint_Rate2006 and a 3% higher SPECfp_Rate2006. And the SPEC CPU 2006 benchmarks were showing the Interlagos Opteron at its best anyway. You can read our analysis here.
Both benchmarks have only a distant link to real server workloads, and we could conclude only two things. Firstly, performance per GHz has improved and power consumption has gone down. Secondly, we are only sure that this is the case with well optimized, even completely recompiled code. The compiler setting of SPEC CPU 2006, the JVM settings of Specjbb: it is all code that does not exist on servers which are running real applications.
So is the new Opteron "Abu Dhabi" a few percent faster or is it tangibly faster when running real world code? And are the power consumption gains marginal at best or measureable? Well, most of our benchmarks are real world, so we will find out over the next several pages as we offer our full review of the Opteron 6300. | <urn:uuid:f2d1a039-9912-44e0-b759-d6165d38a69b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://anandtech.com/Show/Index/6508?cPage=4&all=False&sort=0&page=1&slug=the-new-opteron-6300-finally-tested | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951266 | 414 | 1.695313 | 2 |
WESTCHESTER, N.Y. – Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency Friday in preparation for Hurricane Sandy.
"As we prepare for the possibility of Hurricane Sandy hitting New York State, I am activating all levels of state government to prepare for any potential impacts," Cuomo said. "We are working with federal and local partners to follow storm developments and organize a coordinated response plan.
"With unpredictable weather conditions, we are taking the greatest precautions — especially after our experience from last year's storms. I urge New Yorkers to plan for hurricane conditions and follow news reports to stay updated on the storm's progress."
Westchester County may see heavy rains that could cause flooding and high winds starting Saturday and continuing into Tuesday, the National Weather Service predicts.
Cuomo has asked President Barack Obama for a pre-landfall disaster declaration, which would allow for state access to funds and FEMA resources to prepare.
The governor's conference on emergency preparedness scheduled for Monday in Albany is postponed.
The storm could make it unsafe to operate subway, buses and railroad lines. The MTA Hurricane Plan calls for an orderly shutdown of transit and train services before the arrival of sustained winds of 39 mph or higher. No decision has been made whether to suspend some or all service in advance of the storm, but ample notice will be provided of any suspension, the MTA said.
Customers should monitor the mta.info website, which is updated with service information as it becomes available. MTA customers can also call 511 for information.
The National Weather Service is predicting heavy rainfall and significant urban, small stream and river flooding as well as high winds capable of downing trees and power lines in the coming storm.
Sandy was moving northward through the Bahamas as of Friday afternoon, bringing tropical storm conditions to the east coast of Florida. Tropical storm conditions are possible in the Carolinas on Saturday. Sandy is expected to turn toward the Northeast on Saturday, followed by a turn to the northwest early next week, with direct impacts expected for the northeast United States.
Rain will begin Saturday evening with heavy showers beginning Sunday evening along with increasing winds. Rain will continue through Monday and Tuesday and could be heavy at times before tapering off Tuesday night. | <urn:uuid:4d875e0a-d727-4221-942d-669ce494ec94> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tarrytown.dailyvoice.com/news/cuomo-declares-state-emergency-ahead-hurricane-sandy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946339 | 453 | 1.726563 | 2 |
building a community of interest and practice in service design
"Service Design is still a nascent field in Australia, yet it is one of the leading service + innovation industries in Europe. Currently, there are many interesting research centres and professionals in Melbourne undertaking service design-led projects, which we don't know much about. We think its time to establish a 'loose' and informal network of kindred spirits to initiate knowledge generation, foster dialogue and collaboration and knowledge transfer to strengthen the role of service design for business, public sectors and communities."
Since its launch in March 2010, SDNMelbourne has been funded by the Design Research Institute, RMIT University, which supported events, website design and general administration during 2010. However, SDNMelbourne is not owned or controlled by anyone.
This network has hosted a variety of events so far:
The SDNMelbourne was launched at this event in March 2010. 25 participants attended, who had a design, education, government or business background, reflecting the diverse mix of skills, knowledge, disciplines, motivations and contexts. The photos show the participants using the butchers' paper to write their thoughts and discussion down. The discussions centred on themes, such as social innovation, information technology, commercial opportunities, human-centred design, academic inquiry and sustainability.
The second event was kindly hosted by Huddle, titled 'Are you being served?' From the discussions here, it became clear that SDNMelbourne needed an on-line presence. A vox pop was also recorded by Dianne, Vanjya and Mark. Have a look at the pics too.
Cameron, an Australian academic at the Parsons New School of Design, NY, gave a talk on service design in the American context, which is largely driven by industry, consultancies and commercial incentives. He highlighted the critical neglect of public services in America and how service design is one key area that can create social change. He is part of the DESIS USA network and runs a project called 'Amplify', which he also discussed. Read more about it on Dianne's blog post.
Daria is a Senior Researcher Scientist at Intel, US (though, she is also a participatory design researcher). She gave us an insight into the role she plays in accessing, interpreting and translating user-insight within a interdisciplinary team. Read more about this on Patti's blog.
This event was hosted by Huddle, Swinburne and Michelle from Neoteny in a global service jam. On 11 March, 2011, in a spirit of experimentation, co-operation and friendly competition, teams had 48 hours to develop brand new services inspired by a shared theme.
Victoria India Service Design Jam (20-24 July 2011)
This event coincided with Melbourne's State of Design Festival. True to the formula for Service Jams as established during the recent Global Service Jam, a brief was announced ‘real time’ in India and Melbourne and groups of designers developed and shared ideas using rapid prototyping techniques and design processes to provide vibrant and creative solutions to community problems.
This was a hugely successful event, gathering close to 50 people to put questions, take part in discussion and listen to the six panelists debate the issues, contexts and 'real-world' challenges to service design. You can see more and listen to the discussion on the vod-cast or pod-cast.
Thanks to Tania's initiative, we had our first inaugural Service Design Bookclub where Marc Stickdorn and Jacob Schneider's 2010 book was reviewed. A bit of the discussion of what happened is captured in this discussion.
It was great privilege to host Anna Meroni from Politecnico de Milano University, Italy, at RMIT University for a talk on Designing for Services: discussing projects and approaches. You can see this on the vod-cast (to come) and photos from the evening here (to come).
The last event of 2011 ended on a high note with a talk / mini-workshop by Marc, introducing some of the tools that are featured in his co-authored book. See more here for the video and photos from the evening.
Taking advantage of Fabian's short stay in Melbourne from Linköping University, Sweeden, we invited him to give a brief overview of his PhD research in service design. Joined by panelists, Vanja Misic, Jared Bon and Päivi Oinonen. Read more about this on Janine and Kate's blog, and some photos from the evening.
This was an enormously successful workshop that introduced participants to some service design methods so that they had a hands-on experience of using it. Read more in Emma's account of the evening and see some of the highlights from the evening!
Following the first successful Q&A panel event in 2011, we gathered a top-notch line up of panelists for a great discussion including Cameron Tonkinwise (Carnegie Mellon University, US); Mel Edwards and Justin Barrie (Design Managers Australia); Kate Archdeacon (VEIL) and David Hood (Doing Something Good).
Taking advantage of Steve's visit to Australia for the UX12 Conference, he did a fantastic talk on 'muscle building' which drew in max capacity for this lecture hall - and as you can see, it started some really interesting discussions! Read more on Jared's account of the evening.
This engaging workshop gave an introduction to TACSI's Radical Re-design team's methods and hands-on experience to tackle one of the complex issues on ageing. Janine's impression provides interesting perspectives.
Sarah Drummond from Snook (18th and 20th Feb 2013)
It was with great pleasure to host Sarah, co-founder of Snook, a Social Innovation and Service Design outfit in Scotland, sponsored by DESIS-Lab Melbourne and DRI. She gave a great talk on 'Designing for Social Innovation' and photos from the workshop captures some idea of the methods she introduced to explore the problematic issue of the Myki system. Natasha's account is a good summary of Sarah's workshop experience. | <urn:uuid:4ce970a4-ca5f-4ff3-9450-eff4dc8d5813> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.servicedesign.net.au/page/history-1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96062 | 1,247 | 1.578125 | 2 |
One woman is dead and thousands of homes and businesses in Ontario and Quebec remain without power Tuesday morning after the eastern part of Canada was hit with the tail end of Hurricane Sandy.
In Toronto, a woman died Monday night after she was hit by a piece of flying debris in the city’s west end. The woman, who the Toronto Star said is believed to be in her 30s, died after a piece of a Staples sign came loose and struck her in a parking lot.
Also in Toronto, a fire on Queen Street West gutted a Roots store and the apartments above it. Though, officials said that strong winds were probably not the sole cause of the fire.
Not only were there downed branches to clean up on Tuesday morning, many in southern Ontario and Quebec also woke up without power.
In Toronto, Toronto Hydro dealt with thousands of power outages across the city. As of Tuesday morning, Toronto Hydro said it was still dealing with 45,000 outages. “Strong wind gusts clocked at more than 60 kilometres per hour brought down trees, branches and power lines across the city,” said a statement issued by the utility provider. Classes in at least 14 schools in Toronto were also cancelled Tuesday as a result of power outages.
Power outages were reported across southern Ontario, from Ottawa to Windsor and north towards the Georgian Bay. Hydro One reported that an additional 93,000 customers, excluding those in the Greater Toronto Area, were without power as of 5 a.m. Tuesday morning.
In Quebec, 48,000 homes and businesses were left without power, reports CBC News. About half of the affected customers were in the Laurentians.
By Tuesday morning, Environment Canada had lifted earlier wind warnings for southern Ontario, except for Sarnia in the far west part of the province, where wind gusts of up to 100 km/h were still expected.
Environment Canada also issued storm-surge and wind warnings for areas of area of southern Quebec along the St. Lawrence River, including Quebec City, on Tuesday morning. | <urn:uuid:22399821-51a1-4ecb-ad21-2c76fd745bcc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/10/30/one-dead-thousands-without-power-after-sandy-hits-canada/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984352 | 420 | 1.726563 | 2 |
You may have missed it—I confess I did—but new book releases from the month of June included Katrina’s Secrets by one C. Ray Nagin. This 340-page, self-published work—volume one, if you can imagine it—purportedly takes the reader deep inside the Katrina disaster and is (ready?) “at once stirringly elegiac and disarmingly candid,” according to the “Product Description” on the book’s Amazon page. A news story in the Times-Picayune relates that Nagin acknowledges having botched some things but pinpointing the bulk of the blame on George W. Bush, FEMA chief Michael Brown, and then-governor Kathleen Blanco. Nagin, according to this account, suspected that the federal government was trying to poison him. Can’t wait for volume two!
Thoughts turn to Nagin on this day on the East Coast, of course, because we know that every governor, mayor, county executive, and city manager up and down the coast is telling him or herself just two things today. The first is don’t come out of this looking like Ray Nagin. The second is don’t come out of this looking like George Bush. These are admittedly low bars. But it is vital that they be cleared, and the pair remain the silver and gold standard (and heck, give Blanco the bronze) of environmental incompetence.
At the other end of the scale, let us tip our Gore-Tex hats to the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron out of Biloxi, Miss., which, the website of the National Hurricane Center informs me, is “the only Department of Defense organization still flying into tropical storms and hurricanes–since 1944.” Then there’s the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Aircraft Operations Center, based in Tampa, whose aircraft “are flown in support of NOAA's mission to promote global environmental assessment, prediction and stewardship of the Earth's environment.” No matter who’s in the Oval Office, or who’s the mayor of Ocean City, Md., these fine men and women are on the job.
I mention Ocean City because it will be worth monitoring this weekend, and because I know the place exceedingly well. It’s the Eastern Seaboard’s greatest kitsch playground, with more funnel cake served and skeeball played per square mile than any other city in America. The population swells to 300,000 during late August, but a full evacuation has been ordered. A few hearties have stayed behind, as a few inevitably do, but it seems that Mayor Rick Meehan has done his job and will not be this year’s Nagin.
One always suspects the media are making far too much of these things. Yes, there will be tragedy here and there, and I obviously send every best wish to my cousin who lives on the Outer Banks. But hour after hour of breathy and uninterrupted coverage inevitably creates, shall we say, its own kind of atmospheric pressure. With Katrina and couple of other exceptions, it’s never as bad as they say.
The threat to be concerned about is losing electricity. If this has never happened to you, you can’t really understand how total the feelings of isolation and immiseration are. I lived in New York City for nearly 20 years, and it happened once for about 18 hours. Then I moved to Washington, where (if you live in the areas where the power lines snake through the stately oak trees) it happens three or four times a year. When we moved to Washington in late August 2003, we lost power a couple of days after moving in—for six days.
Nagin and Bush remain the silver and gold standard (and heck, give Blanco the bronze) of environmental incompetence.
There are the obvious things—no Internet and television. There are the less obvious things: you finally think in exasperation, well, at least I’ll boil some water (the stove is gas, after all) and have a plate of pasta or a cup of tea. But then, lo and behold, any gas stove’s ignition mechanism is electrical. So that’s out. You can probably fit in two hot showers—the amount of water in your hot-water tank, on which the pilot light has gone out—but no more. But most imprisoning is coming to terms with the lack of light: with having to adjust one’s biological rhythms to nature. Think of all those generations, until quite recently in fact, that humans got up when the sun rose and retired when it went down. It’s how the cavemen lived, and a caveman is about what you feel like.
Here in suburban Washington, Pepco’s name is accursed, and in some ways deservedly so. But the fact is that there really aren’t many solutions. They can bury the lines, which costs a fortune. And ... that’s about it. When 70,000 or so households lose power, you just have to hope that the source of your problem is shared by hundreds of others, which probably means they’ll get to it faster. Me, I unapologetically decamp for a hotel. My basement will flood, but as long as I’m dry, I’m with Chesterton, who wrote: “I don’t care where the water goes if it doesn’t get into the wine.” | <urn:uuid:a2685700-45bb-4eda-984a-582c92fe16e6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/08/27/hurricane-irene-s-political-challenge-best-george-bush-ray-nagin.print.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956793 | 1,149 | 1.515625 | 2 |
One of the things I do a lot when visiting software groups is simply sit with individuals as they work. Sometimes the person I'm sitting next to is a really superb developer. They finish their work fast and to a high standard and hand the work on to the next person downstream. This next person may also be really skilled but their work might just inherently take longer. If the amount of work passed on exceeds the capacity of the next person then a growing batch of work-waiting-to-be-started-by-the-next-person will naturally form and grow.
This batch of work-waiting-to-be-started-by-the-next-person is waste. That's well known and well written about. What's not so obvious and not so well written about is how it encourages silos to form. It literally forms a barrier between the increasingly separated silos that form on either side of it.
Think of each waiting-work-item as a brick in a wall. But not a long, low, queue-shaped wall that's easy to see over. Rather, a short, high wall. One that you can't see over. One that hinders communication.
The amount of waiting-work between two silos is inversely proportional to the lack of communication between the two silos. The more waiting-work, the less the communication. The less communication the more waiting-work. Round and round it goes.
So, if you have some really superb developers then beware. They might be creating a downstream wall of waiting-work around which silos are forming. | <urn:uuid:e8237c51-0e19-43f6-a08d-513636495a58> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jonjagger.blogspot.com/2011_10_13_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964574 | 328 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre has a large and diverse research scope that includes clinical trials, which are important to all research and clinical programs at Sunnybrook.
These Web pages aim to help you learn more about clinical trials. They address the following:
- what a clinical trial is and the different types of clinical trials that take place;
- what it means to participate in a clinical trial;
- how to learn more about conducting clinical research; and
- how to find out more about clinical trials at Sunnybrook.
There is also helpful information for members of research teams.
Click on the appropriate button below for information specific to your interest: | <urn:uuid:7f9bdb7a-bc71-4894-918e-356a62649435> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sunnybrook.ca/research/content/?page=sri-ct-home | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95336 | 132 | 1.585938 | 2 |
The Hungarian government wants to revamp the country’s social support, education and pension systems as part of the governing Fidesz party’s drive to transform Hungary. Fidesz, which won general elections with a landslide a year ago, considers the move as its putting an end to the Communist era. Parliament, in which it commands a two-third majority, has already passed a brand new constitution, which is to be followed by a tidal wave of new legislation about numerous issues in the coming months such as voting rights, minority rights, local council reform, protecting families and public spending to implement the fresh fundamental law.
“The past 20 years were useful to prepare for what is ahead of us. They were preparation for the great fight—the renewal of the country, which is to come,” Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Sunday night on private television channel TV2.
Before rewriting the system of social transfers, Fidesz wants to hear the public’s opinion as it did before replacing the constitution. The government will send a questionnaire to the more than eight million Hungarians of over 16 years of age in the coming weeks, quizzing them on these 10 popular issues below.
Hungary’s new government is changing the utility price regulation scheme in a move, adopted by parliament late Monday, that takes regulation authority away from an independent state-owned agency and creates a system reminiscent of communist-era price controls.
This new scheme will remind some taxpayers of the era of central planning when setting prices was the main and most sensitive tasks the government’s Price Office. In Hungary, government central planning, which aimed to regulate every aspect of daily life, scrambled and failed to ensure proper living standards for its citizens.
Under the new bill, the government will have the right to cap natural gas and electricity prices based on a recommendation from the Hungarian Energy Office. Until now, the independent watchdog set the prices every quarter after negotiations with utility companies, reflecting changes of foreign exchange rates and global market prices. Now the timing of price changes is at the government’s own discretion.
Emerging Europe Real Time provides sharp analysis and insight into what’s making news in Central and Eastern Europe. Drawing on the expertise of our reporters in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Russia and Turkey, the site provides an inside track on economics, politics and business in this emerging part of the European continent.
Check out the main contributors to the blog and their bios here.
paulsonne: I feel like street musicians in most cities play guitars. In Moscow today, I've seen cello, violin and trombone... | <urn:uuid:550ad97f-acf3-424f-91c7-777724a878ee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.wsj.com/emergingeurope/tag/utility-prices/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949991 | 540 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Our in-house engagement specialist is focused on reaching North American Russian-speaking and Israeli markets.
Building a camp community that is welcoming of Jewish campers and staff from all different backgrounds is an important and challenging task. While Jewish overnight camps have been able to engage thousands of new campers over the past several years, many populations, such as Russian-speaking, Israeli, Latin and Iranian Jews remain virtually untapped.
We aim to strengthen camps’ ability to attract campers and staff from unengaged Jewish ethnic communities by developing training and programming modules that highlight the panoply of Jewish diversity and experiences.
The outcome? A new generation of young, engaged Jews who will enrich and strengthen their communities.
Through one of these initiatives, the Crown Fellowship, FJC engaged 12 creative young adults from Russian-speaking backgrounds as specialists in several camps in the Northeast in summer 2011. The fellows will participate in a training intensive, which will teach them to transform their personal Jewish journeys into interactive camp activities that speak to Jewish children from less engaged backgrounds.
Participating camps will also develop outreach plans to encourage significant numbers of campers from Russian-speaking families to try Jewish overnight camp for the first time.
Russian Parent Data
Our local partnerships provide funding for new campers and development strategies for camps across North America.Learn more | <urn:uuid:5c4efc32-f463-4275-a998-ada2451120c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jewishcamp.org/engagement-initiatives | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939671 | 268 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Whilst the Information Commissioner's Office would have good reason to start looking at the figures in more depth, the report - Understanding Security Complexity in 21st Century IT Environments - notes that the problem in the UK is slightly less worse than it is internationally, where the percentage of affected firms stands at 77%.
Key findings from the survey - which took in responses from more than 450 IT admins in the UK and 2,500 worldwide - showed that, after customer information at 52%, intellectual property accounted for 36%, followed by employee information (36%) and consumer information (35%).
The primary cause for this sea of data losses (in the UK) was from lost or stolen equipment (35%). Network attacks accounted for a quarter, followed by Web 2.0 and file-sharing applications (22%), and unencrypted USB or media storage devices (19%).
Interestingly, some 53% of UK respondents surveyed believe their employees have little or no awareness about data security, compliance and policies, with only 19% reporting high awareness of these issues - the third lowest of the five countries surveyed (UK, USA, France, Japan, Australia).
This level, says Check Point, highlights the need for user awareness to be implemented into data protection strategies, as people are often the first line of defence.
According to Oded Gonda, vice president of network security products with Check Point, whilst data security and compliance are often at the top of a CISO's list, it is clear the majority of data loss incidents are unintentional.
"In order to move data loss from detection to prevention, businesses should consider integrating more user awareness and establish the appropriate processes to gain more visibility and control of information assets", he said.
Commenting on the report, Dr. Larry Ponemon, the chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute, said that, with hundreds of data loss incidents every year - both reported and unreported - it's no surprise the issues with governance, risk and compliance are being magnified.
"Data security in a modern day world means more than deploying a set of technologies to overcome these challenges. In fact, the lack of employee awareness is a primary cause in data loss incidents and is encouraging more businesses to educate their users about corporate policies in place", he explained. | <urn:uuid:7d84a8b5-1587-4b9c-a354-1db3b597ba23> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/18547/ponemon-survey-shows-75-of-firms-lost-data-in-2010/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951682 | 459 | 1.8125 | 2 |
The Federal Advertising Agency was not, as its name suggests, a government regulatory body. It was actually a working advertising agency located at the old Manhattan Savings Building, at 385 Madison Avenue. While the building is now demolished, there are a few surviving pictures of what the shop looked like in 1947.
We found them in the Library of Congress' photo archives.
One of FAA's alumni may have been Robert Pirosh, who went on to write for the Marx Brothers.
FAA also worked for the Pan American Coffee Bureau, and one of its campaigns coined the phrase "coffee break" with the tagline, ""Give yourself a Coffee-Break -- and Get What Coffee Gives to You."
For those who think Mad Men embellishes about how progressive design was in the 1960s, you'll be shocked to see how modern things were only two years after World War II.
The photos unveil an aggressively modern, minimalist space. Unfortunately, the photos are in black and white so we can't see if the colors were vibrant. But this office tour nonetheless puts a lot of today's workplaces to shame. | <urn:uuid:da1a9182-a21f-4413-aaa4-c22b26958cc3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.businessinsider.com/photos-of-the-1940s-ad-agency-office-that-created-the-coffee-break-2012-6?pundits_only=0&get_all_comments=1&no_reply_filter=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97615 | 226 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Some of the best films wear their influences on their sleeves. It’s what makes Star Wars one of the most derivative works of all time (Flash Gordon, The Dam Busters, Akira Kurosawa). So the only surprise out of news that Warner Brothers is planning an adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey set in space is the realization that it’s taken this long.
Homer’s ancient follow-up to The Iliad is perhapsthe most influential work to come out of Greece save the gyro. It follows a post-Trojan War Odysseus suffering a series of trials on his way back to his wife, herself at the mercy of invaders all competing for her hand in marriage.
So imagine all of that, but in space. That’s the task left to screenwriter James DiLapo, who found his original script Devils at Play on the black list in 2012. This has tentpole written all over it, as talk at WB right now signals franchise intentions. Perhaps to compete with Disney’s Star Wars revival? | <urn:uuid:b4d08094-6a04-4190-bdaa-54f35930a152> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chud.com/123212/wb-transplanting-homers-odyssey-into-space-epic/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953544 | 222 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Top Paralegal Studies Associates Degree Programs Online
Paralegals assist lawyers with many different tasks, such as investigating clients and witnesses, preparation of briefs and cases, and research into laws and precedents. Years ago, a one-year certificate was enough education for most paralegals and legal assistants. But paralegals are now asked to perform many jobs once reserved for lawyers, which requires a more comprehensive education.
Click on the "request info" button below next to the accredited school of your choice to receive information on specific paralegal studies associates degree programs.
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Earn Your Associate’s Degree in Paralegal Studies Online
As employers attempt to cut costs by hiring paralegals and legal assistants to do jobs once performed only by attorneys, the demand for these professions grows dramatically. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects an 18% increase by 2020 in the number of people holding paralegal jobs nationwide. The median average salary for a paralegal in 2010 was $46,680 in 2010, with the top 10% earning more than $74,870.
In general, paralegals help lawyers prepare for legal hearings, trials and any kind of meeting requiring legal expertise. Specific paralegal duties can vary, but typically would include organizing paperwork, preparing written reports for attorneys and preparation of legal documents.
Earning An Applied Science in Paralegal Studies Degree
Paralegals often specialize in certain areas of the law, including litigation and corporate law. Paralegals also must be familiar with the computer software systems that are used to manage paperwork in modern law offices. An Associate of Applied Science (AAS) in Paralegal Studies is a two-year program (assuming full-time study) that prepares you for entry-level paralegal positions and can also serve as a strong base for later coursework in a bachelor’s program. The jobs that an AAS in Paralegal Studies qualifies you for typically involve work such as reviewing contracts and doing research under the supervision of a lawyer. | <urn:uuid:00934b8c-2fac-4343-a167-52ea71c20291> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.usnewsuniversitydirectory.com/associates/legal-paralegal/paralegal.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931575 | 429 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Yet still there are those in the media who feel they have something to contribute to the aftermath of “that speech” – and still the same old, tired, arguments are aired which continue the process of misinforming the electorate. In today’s papers are articles by Janet Daley (Telegraph); Tony Blair (Mail); Andrew Rawnsley (Observer); John Rentoul (Independent); David Miliband (Telegraph); and Nigel Farage (Mail).
Daley’s piece is a contrast twixt the messsages of Obama and Cameron – and as the outlook for this country is black enough without ploughing through her opinions on the problems America is currently experiencing, I propose we disregard those and concentrate on her opinion of Cameron and his speech. She is another who it appears has swallowed hook, line and sinker the Norway meme as she too is another who believes that Cameron’s speech was “eloquently argued, irresistibly persuasive to British ears, and logically faultless”. Logically faultless was it, Janet? One can only urge her to consult a dictionary on the meaning of those last two words. Writing that Cameron has a dream of the European Union as an open, flexible, freely diverse fellowship of nation states, each of them democratically accountable to its own electorate, and all of them able to cooperate in whatever ways suited their individual needs at any given time – which is what we all thought we would have, ie a common market – Daley continues:
“But does he not appreciate that this is the very antithesis of the founding principle of the EU? That its deliberate object was to curtail the power of its separate member states and the dangerous impulses of their volatile electorates, whose inclinations had a tendency to end in mass murder? It is not a travesty of the European project to say that it was a conspiracy of the European elites against their own peoples: it is the literal truth. Of course, the EU, with its unelected centralised governing bodies, overrides the democratic wishes of the nation states. That’s the whole point. This was a post-war French and German idea, devised to prevent any possibility of the hideous conflicts that devastated the continent during the last century. Its imperatives – the irreversible political integration of member states, a guarantee that national governments could never again go rogue, and the disempowering of electorates – arose directly from the 20th-century experience of criminal national leaders. The nation state, driven by the will of its own people, had been the demonic enemy of peace and the EU would put an end to it, once and for all.”
One might question the logic of the first part of that extract on two points: (a) were not the dangerous impulses of volatile electorates that had a tendency to end in mass murder not formed and directed by politicians; and (b) might not this time round the objects of said mass murder, rather than being the people, be the politicians? Leaving that aside, the remainder of Daley’s comments can only show that Cameron’s dream is totally unrealisable, As I and others have written, almost to the point of exhaustion, were one power to be returned to one member state it would start an avalanche of similar requests resulting in the end of the “project” – and those behind said “project” will never allow that to happen.
Readers will forgive me if I gloss over the offering of Tony Blair as it is what one would expect. Digressing again, someone wrote recently that Blair can never say or write something without forgetting that he is no longer addressing the House of Commons – very true that.
Andrew Rawnsley’s offering is long and while being a summary of what has already been said by others, does repeat one or two points worth consideration, but in castigating Cameron for a speech at the wrong time and for the wrong reasons, he writes:
“David Cameron has taken a great leap into the dark, which would not be so serious if he were not making his country jump with him.”
Er, when any Prime Minister of this country, because of the dictatorial aspects encapsulated in our present system of democracy, says jump, regardless of the subject, does not the country have to jump with them?
John Rentoul, in his offering, castigates MilibandE while praising Blair – which is hardly a surprise, Rentoul being one of the latter’s sycophants – explaining that Blair has nothing to fear about opinion polls nor that which he has previously said. No, the only thing Blair has to worry about is what those that can crown him President of the EU actually think of him.
David Miliband on the other hand (just love the picture) offers what may be termed a typical Europhile view; for example, maintaining that under the Lisbon Treaty national parliaments are more able to become “engaged” with the EU – yet forgets to mention that national parliaments are “handcuffed” in that EU law has primacy over national law, even national constitutional law. Reminding Cameron that any attempt to rewrite the commitment for “ever closer union” may as well be filed in the bin immediately, he continues with his own version of Euro-FUD by threatening that were the UK to cease EU membership we would be seen as a “fringe irritant” of Europe. Besides a tad of “spin” and thus informing us that EU membership only costs us £1 per week, each, MiilibandD then perpetuates Cameron’s lie about Norway but arguing from the point that we help write the rules of the single market – no, “we” don’t, but Norway does.
Finally we come to the offering by Nigel Farage – where to start? He also castigates MilibandE for not taking the opportunity of demanding the promised referendum now – no “ifs”, no “buts” and continues that he (Farage) considers this to be a political failure on Labour’s part and also a betrayal of their core voters. One can only counter by asking was Farage’s error not to criticise Cameron for his “Norway lie” a political failure and also a betrayal of his and his party’s core voters? Praising his party’s performances in Rotherham and Barnsley, Nigel Farage forget to mention that there were a lot of people who could not be bother to make their voices heard in the belief that all policial parties are the same. Suggesting that we need to sort out the bread and butter of UK politics, it is perhaps too much to expect a politician, especially one who considers himself a libertarian, to start with our system of representative democracy on which all political parties “feed”.
When considering the articles mentioned above – and those that have gone before – one can only ask when, oh when, will other journalists join Christopher Booker in providing us with reasoned, informative articles. When will the media, which is self-flagellating in order to prove that they are a free and fair press, be prepared to give air and paper time to those bloggers – and “the man in the street” – who disagree with “accepted opinion”? One can but repeat the question: how can the British people vote with any confidence and knowledge in what is a referendum about this country’s sovereignty and the right to self-government, the right of the people to decide their own future, when politicians and media lie to us?
As an afterthought, I leave it to readers if they wish to omit the letter “k” from the word “skewage” when considering the media output to which I refer. | <urn:uuid:762120c0-1572-4eb9-ba50-5341f9a4ccb5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://witteringsfromwitney.com/tag/observer/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9736 | 1,626 | 1.570313 | 2 |
By Arshad Mohammed
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Iraq war may be over for the U.S. military, but it may not be for the Iraqis - or for the U.S. government, as it tries to avert sectarian strife following the departure of American troops.
U.S. officials are on edge because of the Iraqi government's decision to issue an arrest warrant against Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, the country's highest-ranking Sunni politician.
The announcement of the arrest warrant on Monday, one day after the U.S. military completed its withdrawal, has revived fears that sectarian tensions between the country's Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish communities may erupt anew.
It could hardly have come at a worse moment for U.S. President Barack Obama as he has sought in a series of appearances to mark the end of the U.S. military involvement in Iraq nearly nine years after the invasion ordered by former President George W. Bush.
In the latest such event, Obama on Tuesday took part in a ceremony at a military base near Washington at which the flag of U.S. Forces-Iraq was formally returned home.
Obama's Republican political opponents in the U.S. Congress and on the presidential campaign trail have argued that the decision to bring all U.S. troops home by the end of this year - even though that date originally was set by Bush - had aggravated the chances of instability in Iraq.
Politics aside, the stark revival of sectarian tensions at the highest level of Iraqi politics appears to pose a fresh challenge for U.S. policymakers in a strategic oil-rich country.
"One of the concerns that people have had for some time is that without a large U.S. presence, the likelihood of sectarian score-settling in Iraq would increase," said Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.
Alterman said that he did not know how much evidence there may be to support the arrest warrant against Hashemi, who has been accused of suspected ties to assassinations and bombings.
The Iraqi interior ministry showed taped confessions of men it claimed were members of Hashemi's security detail and who said they had been paid by his office to carry out killings.
"Whether this represents sectarian score-settling or straight-forward criminal investigation is not clear at all," Alterman said.
"The danger is that a straight-forward investigation would be perceived as score-settling and hurtle the country toward deep spasms of violence abetted by external parties with ties to the different sectarian communities," he added, alluding to neighboring Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
WHITE HOUSE SEEKS FAIR TREATMENT
The White House called on the Iraqi government to handle the matter in line with international norms, an appeal that appeared to reflect unspoken concerns that the case could be politically motivated or conducted in a less than impartial manner.
"We're obviously concerned about this," White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters, noting that U.S. officials had been in touch with Iraqi leaders amid concern the step may fuel sectarian tensions now that U.S. troops have withdrawn.
"We urge the Iraqi authorities charged with this responsibility to conduct their investigations into alleged terrorist activities in accordance with international legal norms and full respect for Iraqi law," he added.
"We continue to urge all sides to work to resolve differences peacefully through dialogue," Carney said.
The arrest warrant threatens Iraq's fragile power-sharing deal among Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish blocs who have struggled to overcome tensions just a few years after sectarian violence pushed the nation virtually into civil war.
U.S. officials carefully avoided commenting on whether they thought the allegations had merit or whether Hashemi may have been targeted for political purposes, but analysts raised questions on both scores.
"I am skeptical of the allegations," said Michael O'Hanlon, a Brookings Institution analyst who specializes in national security and defense policy, stressing that he did not have detailed information on which to base a judgment.
O'Hanlon said he saw a significant danger that sectarian strife could erupt if Hashemi's eventual prosecution were perceived to be politically motivated, as seems likely.
"I think there is a great risk, especially because the prime minister has tried to use the courts before to serve his own agenda, for example trying to get candidates disqualified two years ago before the parliamentary elections," the analyst said, referring to Iraq's Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
Obama's political opponents this week have renewed criticism of the troop withdrawal, which the president ordered after negotiations failed with the Iraqi government on a follow-on U.S. force of several thousand troops.
"The risk of increasing sectarian violence following the president's decision to withdraw all U.S. forces has always been real, which is one of the reasons our commanders recommended a credible force remain in Iraq after the end of the year," said a spokesman for House of Representatives Armed Services Committee chairman Buck McKeon, a Republican.
"But in the end the Iraqis will have to want security and liberty for all of their citizens as much as we do, and shape their own destiny," the spokesman, Claude Chafin, said.
(Additional reporting by Alister Bull and Anna Yukhananov; Editing by Will Dunham) | <urn:uuid:6248ae00-ccf8-45b1-896c-7c6b766ad4ce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://whtc.com/news/articles/2011/dec/20/iraqi-tensions-are-policy-political-challenge-for-obama/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976876 | 1,097 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Danny Vendramini is a man with a vision…but absolutely no knowledge or competence. He has invented out of whole cloth a bizarre hypothesis that Neandertals were super-predators who hunted modern humans for food and sex. To support this weird contention, he builds up a tissue thin set of speculations, all biased towards this idea that Neandertals were giant, hairy brutes who looked like bipedal chimpanzees, and that were intent on raping and eating people.
If it sounds like the plot for a cheesy SyFy channel horror movie, you shouldn’t be surprised: Vendramini is not a scientist, but he is a “theatre director, TV producer and award-winning film director and scriptwriter“. He has no training in comparative anatomy, ecology, or evolutionary biology, and it shows.
He has written a book titled Them+Us. Here’s the promotional video. Prepare to simultaneously laugh and stand aghast at the abuse of science.
I’m just going to take apart one claim out of this mass of nonsense. He commissioned “one of the world’s foremost digital sculptors”, Arturo Balseiro, to reconstruct a Neandertal skull to meet his requirements. Poor Balseiro! He’s not going to be well regarded in scientific circles after selling out this badly.
One of his hilarious claims is that all other reconstructions have been biased because they’ve been done to make Neandertals look human — but, don’t you know, Neandertals are primates, so they should be made to look like other primates.
Contemplate that last sentence. Humans are apparently not primates, and the analog for reconstruction should not be modern humans, their closest relative, separated by a mere 100,000 years, but a random gemisch of miscellaneous apes and monkeys, separated from Neandertal for over 6 million years.
To support this unlikely comparison, he superimposes a Neandertal skull on the profile of a chimpanzee, and declares that they fit perfectly.
There are a few problems with this reconstruction. To get the slope of the skull’s face to align with that of the chimpanzee, he has completely ignored the position of the foramen magnum, at the base of the skull. In the image to the right, the Neandertal’s spine would be erupting out the front of his trachea. Note also the little details, like this orientation requiring that the chimp’s ears be yanked down to be coming out of his neck, and how the chimp’s neck has to be mostly filled with the bowl of the occiput. It doesn’t fit. It doesn’t fit at all.
You can also look at a chimpanzee skull and compare it to that of a Neandertal (strangely, an obvious comparison that he doesn’t bother to make on his web page). They don’t look anything alike, except in the general sense that they’re both apes.
But ignore all that! TV producer knows better.
The Neandertal skull above is actually the La Ferrassie specimen, the very same individual Vendramini uses to reconstruct his version of a Neandertal. And here it is, in all its ridiculous creature-feature glory.
After all that complaining about how those scientists impose their human biases on all the other Neandertal reconstructions, Vendramini just decides on the basis of no evidence at all that they had to have been as hairy as a gorilla, with cat’s eyes because they hunted at night.
It’s all ludicrous, pseudo-scientific bullshit. | <urn:uuid:b7bbf8cb-9259-4694-9d2d-dc48796da6b4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/06/19/neandertals-were-monsters/comment-page-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948307 | 787 | 1.703125 | 2 |
By a 62-to-35 margin, the state House just passed a sweeping bill that extends every state-granted right of marriage to same-sex domestic partners. The state Senate passed the bill by a 30-to-18 vote last month. Governor Gregoire is expected to sign the bill, Gregoire’s staff says.
“We are absolutely delighted,” says Josh Friedes, a spokesman for Equal Rights Washington, a group backing the bill. “This is the fourth consecutive year of strong legislative votes in support of LGBT civil rights and equality.” The legislature previously passed two domestic-partnership laws, which created the domestic-partnership registry and provided a handful of rights to couples, and it passed a civil-rights bill providing protection for lesbian, gay and transgender persons in 2006.
But the current bill may not become law for several months, if at all.
“We are in the process of organizing a referendum… to repeal the domestic-partnership law,” says Gary Randall, president of the Faith and Freedom Network, a conservative religious coalition of two nonprofits and a PAC. He says the group is meeting this afternoon and plans to file paperwork any day. (More on the group's strategy is here.)
Simply filing the paperwork for a referendum would block the bill from becoming law for at least 90 days after the last day of the legislative session (scheduled for April 26 this year), says Shane Hamlin, assistant director of the Secretary of State Office’s election division. The anti-domestic-partnership campaign would have until July 25 to gather 120,577 signatures to qualify for the general election. If the measure qualifies, the bill remains in limbo until the November vote.
Randall says his group may also try to repeal the two previous domestic-partnership laws. That would require filing a separate initiative which needs 241,153 signatures submitted by July 3 to make this year's ballot, the Secretary of State Office says.
“To repeal what the legislature does in this year’s session, they must file a referendum,” says Hamlin. “To repeal something that the legislature did last session, they must run an initiative.”
"If the Faith and Freedom Network really cared about the families they would try to strengthen them by working to help provide basic services to all families," says Friedes, "not by trying to take away basic rights from gay and lesbian families."
Polling released by the University of Washington last October shows 66 percent of voters support either full marriage equality or all the rights of marriage to same-sex couples. "I think [a referendum] is ours to lose. Complacently results in loss," says Friedes.
Before the House voted to pass the measure, Republican representatives introduced several amendments. One of those amendments would have kept any discussion of domestic partnership out of public schools to protect children from hearing about same-sex couples. Also, Representative Glenn Anderson (R-5) warned the bill could mean Washington "will no longer preference, provided incentives, or encourage marriage." Every amendment failed.
News intern Alexander Brown contributed reporting to this post. | <urn:uuid:7a30522a-3a1f-4d21-ae8b-fa197cf3080b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2009/04/15/domestic-partnership-bill-passesbut-it-may-not-become-law | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957709 | 656 | 1.609375 | 2 |
ASCO '12: Roche, ImmunoGen Drug Delays Breast Tumor Growth
CHICAGO (TheStreet) -- An experimental antibody-drug conjugate therapy from the Genentech unit of Roche (RHHBY) delayed by more than three months the re-growth of breast cancer compared to the current standard of care, according to a phase III study being presented today at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting.
The drug, known as T-DM1, will be filed for regulatory approval in the U.S. and Europe later this year, Roche said.
T-DM1 is a second-generation version of Genentech's blockbuster breast cancer drug Herceptin. The drug consists of Herceptin (also known as trastuzumab) linked to a tumor-killing chemotherapy payload developed by ImmunoGen (IMGN).
The phase III enrolled 1,000 women with advanced, metastatic Her-2 positive breast cancer who were ready for second-line therapy, having been previously treated with Herceptin and chemotherapy. The women were randomized to treatment with either TDM-1 or a combination of Roche's Xeloda and GlaxoSmithKline's (GSK) Tykerb, which is approved for second-line breast cancer treatment.Breast cancer patients treated with TDM-1 lived a median of 9.6 months before their cancer progressed compared to 6.4 months for the patients treated with the Xeloda-Tykerb combination. The benefit, which equates to a 35% reduction in the risk of disease progression favoring TDM-1, was statistically significant. After two years of follow-up, 65.4% of TDM-1 patients were alive compared to 47.5% of patients treated with Xeloda-Tykerb. This improvement in survival is not yet statistically significant but Genentech continues to follow these patients and additional survival analyses will be conducted, the company said. TDM-1 caused more patients to suffer from reduced platelet counts but the Xeloda-Tykerb combination caused more diarrhea, hand-foot syndrome and vomiting. Sixteen percent of patients had to reduce the dose of TDM-1 during treatment compared to 53% of patients treated with Xeloda-Tykerb. "The drug [TDM-1] worked. It was significantly better than a very effective approved therapy for HER2 overexpressing metastatic breast cancer," said Dr. Kimberly Blackwell, professor of medicine at Duke University's Cancer Institute. "Also, as a clinician who takes care of a lot of breast cancer patients, I’m pleased that this drug has very little dose-limiting toxicity. Patients don't lose their hair from this drug. For patients facing metastatic breast cancer, this is a breakthrough."
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- Options TV | <urn:uuid:1147a64c-5a11-4927-8b34-ba32a2bc3fc6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thestreet.com/story/11566735/1/asco-12-roche-immunogen-drug-delays-breast-tumor-growth.html?puc=tradehud&cm_ven=TRADEHUD | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937952 | 787 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Hi . I want to transmit real time data or video between two PXI controllers Like transfer files between two controller just as if they were connected through ethernet cable.. One controller will be connected to RFSG and other with RFSA. I want to know that how can I do that ? also I read that RFSG and RFSA can be linked LAN..
Do you know where or what you read in regards to linking RFSA/RFSG via LAN? I'm not exactly sure what kind of link or configuration that would be referring, so any direction you can give would help me get down to what you're looking for.
In general, PXI controllers can be networked together in the same manner as any other standard computers. If you just wanted to connect them together and setup a network, then with the right file sharing settings, you could pass files back and forth. Were you looking to just network two controllers together or do more detailed control or streaming through Ethernet?
Timothy S. PXI & VXI Platform Product Support Engineer | <urn:uuid:7b20261b-6df9-4706-a608-7b085022a772> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://forums.ni.com/t5/RF-Measurement-Devices/network-link-between-5660-and-5670/td-p/1903913 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953549 | 218 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Does "power to the people" translate smoothly into different languages, cultures, economic histories, and religious values? In fact, AES's practices have translated better in some places than in others. The company has had great success in Brazil, a country that's weathered dictatorships, bureaucracies, and rampant inflation, "We've had to change to survive," says Carlos Baldi, manager of the Santa Branca facility. "We've had seven currencies in the last 10 years. Brazilians are willing to try something different. There's no safety in sticking with the norm."
That's not the attitude in Northern Ireland. In 1992, the company teamed up with Tractebel, a Belgian utility, to purchase two power plants - one in Kilroot and one in Belfast. The joint venture, called NIGEN, is a financial success. But it has been a cultural struggle.
"There is a fear of relinquishing control," says Mel Bacon, who has spent more than 23 years at the Belfast plant. "Let's say you have someone who's worked his way to the top of the company. Suddenly he's on the sidelines. He can't call the plays. It's frustrating."
AES dispatched a U.S.-based employee, Chris Hollingshead, to transplant its values. When one generator experienced an outage, for example, Hollingshead suggested that managers vacate the facility while workers got the turbines back online. "I got the message," says Bacon. "But I felt that the best people to manage the work were being taken away." The repair went without a hitch; Bacon began to see the light.
But old attitudes die hard. When operators suggested replacing an expensive steel pipe with an inexpensive plastic one, Bacon resisted. "I feared that the plastic pipe would last only a few days," he says. But the operators were convinced that plastic would do the job. "So they put the pipe in," says Bacon. "That was a year ago. It's showing no signs of wear."
Bacon calls the incident a "big 'aha' for me." But not everyone shares his perspective. Some of his colleagues "fear that if you relinquish control, you're no longer required." A big factor in their fear, he adds, is that the plant didn't just have to change - it had to shrink.
When Hollingshead arrived in Belfast, the 356-employee plant was woefully overstaffed. He suggested that management announce one big layoff and then mold the people who remained into a tightly knit team. But he left the final decision up to NIGEN's leaders. They chose a voluntary-severance program instead.
Many workers declined the package, which forced management to devise other offers. "Every time another scheme was launched, there was a feeling of dread," says Bacon. The necessary workforce reduction (to fewer than 100 employees) is now complete. "But it took five years to get to that number," says Bacon.
The AES way has sunk in at Belfast - slowly. Too slowly for CEO Dennis Bakke, who has reviewed the plant's most recent values survey: "The managers just didn't trust the workers enough to turn over power," he says. | <urn:uuid:fbcb6ea4-f144-48e5-ae07-eee489bedaac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fastcompany.com/33599/going-global-long-journey | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984474 | 661 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Posted by Lori Piscatelli Scanlon | April 19, 2009
It’s Parkinson’s Awareness Month. As we continue to spread the word about this condition, we wanted to tell you a little bit more about our PatientsLikeMe Parkinson’s community. Launched two years ago this month, the community has steadily grown to include more than 3,400 patients. Below are some interesting facts about the community, as well as an interview with one of our members (“PokieToo”) giving her real-world experience of living with condition.
WHAT’S IT LIKE LIVING WITH PARKINSON’S DISEASE (PD)?
Meet PokieToo. A long-time member of our PD community, she tells us how she continues to “look for the sunshine” while “taking 30 pills a day.” “Out there for the next person,” PokieToo gives us a glimpse of the real-world experiences of living with Parkinson’s disease.
Some of the top topics “tagged” in our forum discussions to date include specific treatments (like Sinemet, Mirapex, Deep Brain Stimulation/DBS and Exercise), symptoms like tremors and depression, as well as other hot issues like SSDI (Social Security Disability Insurance), the annual Parkinson’s Unity Walk, stem cells, clinical trials and research.
“Adverse events” are severe side effects or events that occur as a result of using a medication, medical product or device. Understanding when these events occur helps the FDA better regulate the pharmaceutical and medical product industries to protect consumer safety and bring safer, more effective products to market.
We are excited about this pilot as it marks the first time ever that an online patient community has helped its members identify and report adverse events. We recently submitted our first batch of reports to the FDA’s MedWatch system.
Patients like you are becoming more and more influential in their treatment decisions. No longer are you simply consumers of pharmaceuticals and medical products, you are customers. In this emerging world, you have become better educated about your treatment options, the risk and benefits of different treatments, and your overall quality of health. Now you have the opportunity to tell the FDA if you’ve had an adverse event.
Posted by Lori Piscatelli Scanlon | April 10, 2009
Sharing. It’s a concept we all learn at a very young age. Oftentimes reminisced as happening in the sandbox, we think back to our young selves giving up what we hold most dear (in this case, some cheap plastic toy) to allow someone else to benefit from it. It seems so simple and obvious, but how many toddlers do you know that immediately give into the concept…easily handing over that toy without a moment of hesitation or a slight tug back or possibly the more extreme screaming tantrum? Over time, what happens is that the more they share, the more they see it puts a smile on their friends’ face, or gives them something in common to “chat” about.
You don’t need to be clairvoyant to see where I’m going with this. Sharing is at the core of PatientsLikeMe, and it’s what makes our communities so special. More than 32,000 patients are online sharing something they hold dear — details about their health — so that others can see it, learn from it, and dialogue about it. It’s truly inspirational and something we believe is transforming healthcare as we know it.
But sharing doesn’t have to stop there. From a marketing perspective, one of the most widely used and successful viral tactics is the “Share This” button. You see it everywhere online – blogs, news articles, videos, and more. We just recently implemented it across our site, so patients can “Share This” treatment or symptom report, press releases, research findings, etc. It’s an easy way to pass that “toy” across the cyber-sandbox to others who might learn or benefit from it.
It’s nice every once in a while to think back to what we learned as kids and figure out a way to incorporate those values into our adult lives. Sharing is just one of those things.
So you weren’t the type to share your toys? Feel like you share too much? Comments are welcome below.
This month marks the 3-year anniversary of our flagship ALS community. While there have been so many exciting milestones we’ve reached in that time, we’re always looking at ways to bring new insight to this disease.
Today, we’re announcing the launch of our Genetics Search Engine for people with ALS. Imagine finding other patients just like you, down to the genetic level. Patients in our ALS community can now do that. (For patients who don’t see their genetic mutation right now, that’s alright. They can be the first with that genetic mutation to join our community and share information about the disease.)
What does sharing genetics mean for research? By capturing data on familial ALS patients’ known genetics (such as SOD1 A4V, SOD1 D90A, and VAPB P56S), we can learn more about the cause and effects of every kind of ALS and better our chances of advancing research and finding new treatments. Our goal in launching the Genetics Search Engine (and other upgrades like it) is to help patients find others just like them and enhance our understanding of the phenotype of each genetic mutation (i.e., different causes of ALS have faster or slower disease progression).
Did you know this April is both Parkinson’s Awareness Month and the 2-year anniversary of the PatientsLikeMe Parkinson’s community? We invite you to celebrate with us all month as we share real-world patient insights and experiences of living with this disease…and we ask you to share on!
The PatientsLikeMe Parkinson’s community has come a long way since it launched in April 2007 – topping more than 3,400 patient members in just 24 months. Our community members share so much about themselves on a daily basis – from details about how they manage their condition to their personal experiences and stories. Why share? Simply stated, to learn more about themselves while helping others better understand this condition. In the spirit of awareness and sharing, this month we’ll share with you some of what we’ve learned so far from these inspirational individuals and keep it real with some personal patient stories about living with PD.
Additionally, later this month, PatientsLikeMe is once again sponsoring the Parkinson’s Unity Walk (www.unitywalk.org), “the largest single-day fundraising event for the Parkinson’s community.” The event, which brings together thousands of people touched by Parkinson’s, takes place every spring in New York City’s Central Park. PatientsLikeMe members from all over the U.S. will once again be meeting in New York to walk together as a team. (Check out some of our onsite interviews with PatientsLikeMe members from the 2008 Unity Walk and keep an eye out for 2009 highlights).
Stay tuned for more from us as the month unfolds. Until then, what else is happening this year for PD Awareness Month? Share your events or PD news in the comments below!
At PatientsLikeMe, people with every type of condition are coming together to share their health experiences, find patients like them and learn how to take control of their health. The result is improved care for patients as well as an acceleration of real-world medical research.
Stay tuned to our blog for the latest happenings with our company, our patients and our mission of opening up the healthcare system. | <urn:uuid:1ae0e0a6-f88c-44a0-bcee-bf49d50a5f7c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.patientslikeme.com/2009/04/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949249 | 1,630 | 1.695313 | 2 |
What is IPTV?
IPTV (Internet Agreement Television) is a arrangement area agenda television casework are delivered over the internet by application Internet Protocol. The video channels and programs are delivered to the television sets through a broadband connection, instead of getting delivered through the accepted cable or advertisement formats. The video streams are encoded into a alternation of internet agreement packets and again agitated out through the accessible internet agency which can be accustomed by anyone by accepting a set-top box and a cable for the service. IPTV is about provided arranged with the VoIP and the internet admission which is referred as "Triple Play" service. So this account is a complete amalgamation that allows barter to watch TV, browser the internet and authoritative a continued ambit calls application the VoIP. This account is about provided by a account provider application a bankrupt arrangement infrastructure. | <urn:uuid:883d50e3-ecac-42a3-823f-515b77a3437b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thailandtv.net/dnn-tv/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937076 | 172 | 1.515625 | 2 |
SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) - Protesters packed heat on Utah's capitol hill to protest gun control and to send a message to State lawmakers.
This rally began on State Street. Gun supporters marched up Capitol Hill as a symbolic gesture of their political march to defend the Second Amendment.
Many at the rally had large guns strapped to their backs as their children carried toy guns.
President Obama says he's not going to ban guns, but he would like to restrict assault weapons and create a national gun registry and this is where the battle lines are drawn.
Gun-rights advocates say a gun registry could be used to confiscate guns in the future and restricting assault weapons is the first step to more restrictions.
This Utah pro-gun rally is focusing all its attention on State lawmakers in the hopes they'll take the fight to President Obama.
"Trying to get Governor Herbert and all the rest of the senators in Congress to recognize the Second Amendment and not try to tear it apart piece by piece," said Jared Robertson as he marched in the rally.
One man suggests the pro-gun rally may backlash.
"It's disturbing to me to see guns on the State Capitol. I don't see any need for a gun. We have armed police everywhere," said Derek Kitchen as he watched the rally.
He supports President Obama regulating guns and fears too many gun rights could results in more harm.
A pro-gun rally with protesters carrying guns on Utah's Capitol hill was Organized February 8, 2013. | <urn:uuid:6bb6fb0c-bc6d-4e30-b279-aa6fa4de2f71> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cw30.com/content/news/top_stories/story/Protesters-pack-heat-on-Utahs-Capitol-Hill/alWOyvl7402tGwXGuDsJQw.cspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976111 | 311 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Student Activist Jailed for Speaking Out
Majid Tavakkoli may spend more than eight years in prison for simply criticizing the government.
The student leader was arrested and reportedly beaten by authorities on December 7, 2009, after he addressed a crowd at Amir Kabir University of Technology in Tehran.
Amnesty International considers Majid Tavakkoli to be a prisoner of conscience, imprisoned for peacefully exercising his right to freedom of expression.
Majid Tavakkoli, who studied shipbuilding at the university, was a member of the Islamic Students' Association, which represented students' interests and concerns. The protest on December 7, 2009 took place on National Student Day. The university rally was one of many anti-government protests that followed the disputed presidential election of June 2009.
After an unfair trial that his lawyer was not permitted to attend, Majid Tavakkoli was convicted of several offenses, including "participating in an illegal gathering," "propaganda against the system" and "insulting officials."
From January until the end of May 2010, he was held mainly in solitary confinement.
In June 2010, he was moved to Section 350 of Evin prison, where conditions are said to be very poor. In August 2010, authorities transferred him to Raja'i Shahr prison, which is used to house violent criminals. Majid Tavakkoli is suffering from a respiratory condition that has worsened since his arrest. He needs urgent medical care and his health is likely to deteriorate further if he does not receive specialist medical care.
The day after Majid Tavakkoli's arrest, a news agency close to the government published photographs of Mr. Tavakkoli wearing women's clothing, and said he had been wearing them at the time of his arrest to escape detection. Others denied that he was wearing the clothes at the time, and claimed that authorities forced him to wear them afterwards to humiliate him. In response, hundreds of Iranian men protested by posting on the internet photos of themselves wearing head scarves in solidarity with Majid Tavakkoli. | <urn:uuid:20dceb0c-cf95-4ca3-a841-8cdcb7340397> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/cases/iran-majid-tavakkoli | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988427 | 427 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Sen. John Kerry made it clear Thursday that he will play a pivotal role in deciding the fate of the Keystone XL pipeline if he is confirmed as secretary of state.
“I’ll make the appropriate judgments about it,” he said, referring to the State Department’s ongoing review of the 1,200-mile tar sands oil pipeline. “There are specific standards that have to be met with respect to that review, and I’m going to review those standards and make sure they’re complete.”
Kerry made his remarks to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at a hearing on his nomination for the post. He was responding to a question from Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat and longtime supporter of environmental causes, who asked how Kerry would ensure that the Keystone XL decision “takes into consideration the potential impacts of the pipeline on water and air quality and mitigates any increases in the carbon pollution issue.”
In his opening statement to the committee, Kerry also described climate change as one of the “life threatening issues” that defines American foreign policy.
The pipeline’s opponents, who argue that building the Keystone XL would accelerate global warming, were encouraged by Kerry’s words.
Kerry’s remarks show that “he understands…that he’s going to be relied upon to bring his perspective and his deep knowledge of the climate crisis to bear on this issue,” said Peter LaFontaine, an energy policy advocate at the National Wildlife Federation in Washington, D.C.
Kerry is one of the nation’s most vocal proponents of climate action. He co-authored comprehensive climate legislation that died in 2010 and has long pushed for American leadership in global climate treaty talks. Speaking about the State Department's Keystone XL review in 2011, Kerry told reporters that he would "do my best to leave no question unanswered, including every possible economic and environmental consideration, before a final decision is made."
The five-term Massachusetts Democrat has served on the foreign relations committee for 28 years and has chaired it for the last four. He is expected to breeze through the confirmation process, and a vote on his nomination could come as early as next week.
While it’s President Barack Obama—not Kerry—who will have the final say on Keystone XL, “having Kerry in this role is a good sign,” LaFontaine said. “Obviously there are other people in the president’s ear on this. It’s great to have Kerry at the table, too.”
Still, LaFontaine noted that Kerry’s comments didn't indicate which way the senator might go on the pipeline, and he said Kerry had offered only a “milquetoast statement” on the issue. “He was pretty careful not to say anything except that he’s aware that he has a role to play in the process.”
Kerry’s hearing came as the pipeline’s supporters are ramping up pressure on the Obama administration to approve the pipeline, which would transport heavy diluted bitumen, or dilbit, from the Canada's oil sands region to the U.S. Gulf Coast. They argue that the $5.3 billion Keystone XL project, built by TransCanada, could create thousands of U.S. and Canadian jobs and would boost the region’s energy independence.
Requests for comment from the American Petroleum Institute and other pipeline supporters were not returned by deadline.
On Tuesday, Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman, a Republican, notified the president that he had approved the pipeline’s route through his state, a critical step in advancing the project. A day later, a bipartisan group of 53 senators urged Obama to approve the pipeline quickly, citing economic benefits and a minimal environmental impact.
This article is republished with permission from Inside Climate News , a non proft, non partisan news organisation that covers energy and climate change . This article is by Maria Gallucci | <urn:uuid:ffe89f4c-40a7-4334-9dae-619dbf35425b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.celsias.com/article/john-kerry-says-hell-control-keystone-xl-review-se/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968475 | 832 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Welcome to Kilner Education
Hi, my name is Michael Kilner. I am 38, and I have been a teacher for over 10 years.
I offer private tuition in a variety of subjects.
See the Subjects Taught page for a list of academic subjects offered. I also teach chess, and offer a range of Environmental Education services.
Lessons in any subject are usually 1 hour long, but longer sessions can be arranged if required.
Primarily, I am a science teacher, but as you will see from this site, there are a number of other topics that I am able to teach. I work mainly within Torfaen, Newport, Blaenau Gwent, Monmouthshire and Caerphilly, but I am prepared to travel further afield if required. Sessions are flexible, at times to suit you, and I will come to you for the lesson - leave the travelling to me.
I have experience in teaching to all age groups from pre-school to adults. I am flexible, and able to adjust they way in which a subject is taught in order to meet the needs of my students. Whether you are learning for exams and university places, or just for fun, it is important that what I do works for you.
I am an enthusiastic teacher with a genuine love of my subjects. I believe that education is about more than just learning facts. It should be practical, and apply to the real world. Basic skills such as dealing with numbers are essential for both children and adults.
Learning should also be enjoyable. Enthusiasm for a topic makes it easier to learn. I aim to stimulate an interest in a subject, rather than concentrating on rote learning in order to pass exams.
On the following pages I give details of the types of lessons and services that I offer. If what you are looking for is not there, please use the Contact Form to the right of the page to ask for more information. Similarly, if you want to ask about lessons in a topic that is not listed, please get in touch. I will listen, and give you an honest and straightforward answer about whether or not I can provide what you want.
For more information about me, please read my blog, 'Harvestman at Large'. | <urn:uuid:3d9d1fd2-2ed9-4669-8382-cc8c2467581d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.webster.uk.net/EducationAndLearning/KilnerEducation/Home.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956747 | 462 | 1.59375 | 2 |
If you have not yet discovered The Orca Project, now is a great time to visit their website: “Since its inception in 2010, The Orca Project has collaborated with some of the world’s top marine mammal experts, caring professionals and individuals from diverse backgrounds to cover the debate on orca captivity, the death of Dawn Brancheau and the history and current conditions of Tilikum’s confinement.”
Beginning Monday, 9/19/11, SeaWorld is going to court to fight the $75,000 fine leveled on them for “willful” safety violations associated with the trainer’s death last year, and The Orca Project has organized a page that provides links to all the background information on the death (including the autopsy report), and will update the proceedings this week frequently.
From The Orca Project:
We also encourage former and present trainers, marine mammal park employees (in the U.S. and abroad), scientists, authors, individuals and the media to contact us at [email protected] to continue this important work. Confidentiality is assured if you wish to remain anonymous.
Please check this post often during the week. We will be providing updates from the court hearing in Florida and including them at the bottom of this post as the week’s events unfold. Also be sure to follow us on FaceBook and Twitter (@TheOrcaProject) for all the latest news and reports.
Whales and dolphins never sleep, at least not the way we do. They have brief quiet periods of semi-alert consciousness, but there are no quiet hours of reprieve from boredom, stress, or grief. And most baby dolphins (including orcas), can’t stop swimming, at all, until they build enough blubber to provide buoyancy and warmth*.
In the wild, their families support the calves, take turns watching over them and protecting them.
Alone in captivity, however, they circle endlessly. Day and night. Rain or shine. When the parks close, the visitors go home, and just the nightwatchmen patrol the grounds, the whales have nothing to do. Hour after hour.
And worst of all, sometimes they have no companions whatsoever.
To learn more about Morgan’s plight, please go to:
“The Whale will play in Seattle at SIFF Cinema starting on Friday, September 9 at 7:00 pm, with three shows on Saturday and Sunday. At least one of us will be in attendance for Q&A following all weekend screenings.The Whale will continue playing through September 15. SIFF Cinema is located at McCaw Hall at Seattle Center, 321 Mercer St., Seattle, WA. For more info on showtimes and to buy a ticket, go to SIFF Cinema’s website.”
“We’ll also be screening the film in Tacoma at the Grand Cinema, starting on Friday, September 9. One of us will be in attendance following the two Saturday matinee screenings, 1:30 and 3:30 pm. The Grand Cinema is located at 606 S. Fawcett Ave, Tacoma, WA. The film plays through September 15. For more info on showtimes and to buy a ticket, go to the Grand Cinema’s website”
Update 9/11/11: There are rumors that L90 may have recently given birth, if so it will be the second calf for the Southern Resident population this summer. I will update when more information is available.
L90 (Photo by Erin Heydenreich)
(8/26/11) From The Center:
“The Center for Whale Research received a report this morning of a potential vessel strike with a southern resident killer whale. The whale that was believed to be struck is L90, an 18 year old female.
Witnesses described the whale ‘logging’, or floating at the surface, for a prolonged period after a private vessel was observed passing very close to where the whale was thought to be. L90 was then reported to remain on the surface and was breathing heavily. Once we received the report we quickly departed and found L90 with her mother, L26 just off Lime Kiln State Park. She was moving slowly and spending several minutes resting at the surface. She was taking shallow dives and barely moving north with the rest of the whales.
We were able to observe her very closely and found no evidence of a vessel strike. On numerous occasions she spent several minutes hovering just below the surface of the water allowing us to get a good look at most of her body, and we did not see any wounds or scratches. We continued to follow her for a few hours and observed that she eventually began to travel at a more normal pace, although remaining behind the rest of the groups of whales. The other whales in the area were behaving normally, resting, foraging and socializing.
Based on our observations and descriptions of the event from witnesses, we do not believe that L90 was struck by the vessel. Based on her age and previous behavior we have concluded that she may be pregnant. It is also possible that she may be ill or have some unknown condition.”
Imagine watching a talk show – maybe you’re puttering around the house or emailing a friend – when something comes on the TV that you find hard to fathom. Your attention is now fully focused on the television screen and confusion enters your mind when you hear the what the orca expert says in answer to the hosts’ question - “yes”, he says, “orcas eat humans”. So much for the effectiveness of amusement park education programs.
The absurdity of having the person in charge of the well-being of the little lost orca Morgan being so misinformed or disingenuous would have been impossible to miss and difficult to ignore, even if you’d never seen an orca or really new much about them. Some things are just wrong, and as time goes on it dawns on you that the Dolphinarium where Morgan is being kept has no plans to really help the young whale find her family.
Instead they are making plans to ship little Morgan to a Spanish amusement park off the coast of Africa where she will have to live her life in captivity, in the company of SeaWorld’s displaced orcas.
So what do you do? If you are Nancy Slot-Slokker you become increasingly concerned that nothing is being done to ensure that the orca is well cared for or will ever have an option to be released into the wild.
And one day you just decide to do something, the result of which culminated in the successful legal effort that has stalled the plans to send Morgan into a life of captivity. (For more information on Morgan and the organizations involved, go here).
The effort is huge, and like Nancy you can jump in and help. For more information about the legal defense for the orca Morgan, or to make donations (they have some terrific t-shirts for sale here) please go to The Orca Coalition website.
In Nancy’s own words:
“Never in my life have I seen a killer whale, so I honestly don’t know what came into me…
Something very wrong was going on, that much was clear, and I hoped someone would do something for Morgan. Suddenly it came to me… why should I expect somebody else to take action?
One thing led to another and before I knew it I was having coffee with Wietse van der Werf to see what we could do. Neither of us really had the time (I have two young kids), so we agreed we would do something small, mainly to raise awareness.We each found people willing to join forces…if we’d all do something we should be able to pull this off.
Our group grew, and soon we were a coalition of several animal welfare organizations: The Orca Coalition.
I never expected it to be this difficult, time consuming and frustrating, but at the same time, the longer the battle lasted, the more determined we were to see that Morgan is released! I’m proud to say I am part of this fantastic group of inspiring people who are fighting relentlessly to save this magnificent creature from captivity!
In spite of all the setbacks we’ve encountered, we never lost hope, and recent developments have given me enough confidence to say: I look forward to the day I’ll see Morgan for the first time in my life, the day she is released into the wild, where she belongs…” | <urn:uuid:14cb00ca-961c-40da-ba27-35cf26bf9330> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.seattlepi.com/candacewhiting/tag/killer-whales/page/20/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965799 | 1,777 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Cassville has been selected to serve as a pilot community for a grant program that could bring $500,000 into the area to fight substance abuse.
The Strategic Prevention Framework (SPF) State Incentive Grant was applied for by the Cassville Community 2000 organization, and on Oct. 3, the coalition was notified that it had been chosen as one of 18 communities across the state to receive the grant funding.
According to Kati Rose, who is serving as the grant's project director, Community 2000 has six months to meet the objectives established by the state before complete funding is disbursed.
Some of these objectives include:
Assessment of community needs, resources and readiness to implement the prevention frame-work.
Creation of a strategic prevention plan and imple-mentation of that plan.
Evaluation of the program's effectiveness and its sustainability.
The City of Cassville has agreed to serve as the coalition's fiscal agent.
"This means the city will cover the costs up front and get reimbursement from the state," said Rose. "Reimbursement requests to the state will be requested on a monthly basis to ensure the city will not be overburdened by this grant."
Community 2000 has defined its target area for grant purposes as the entire Cassville R-IV School District and the entire Shell Knob School District.
The SPF grant originated from the United States Department of Health and Human Services' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). In 2004, SAMHSA officials announced that $45 million would be distributed to pilot states. Missouri is among the second group of selected states. At the state level, the grant is administered through the Missouri Department of Mental Health.
Rose said she is excited about the grant and potential prevention programs it could fund.
"The project will be extremely challenging but very worthwhile," said Rose. "I can't think of a better thing to dedicate my time to."
Community 2000 will receive assistance from Community Partnership of the Ozarks, out of Springfield, which will provide consultation on implementing the strategic prevention framework model, and from Dr. Charlene Berquist, a professor in the communi-cations department at Missouri State University, and Katie Striley, a MSU graduate assistant, who will serve as program evaluators.
Members of Cassville Community 2000 will also be assisting with the grant program. They include: Chairman Lonnie McCullough, Sr.; Jim Stepp; Kelly Paul; Michele Holenda; Jim Craig, Mike Hayslip; Brad Hanson; Elaine Boles; Rose; Lisa Schlichtman; Amy White; Carol Landstad; and Dana Kammerlohr.
The grant will also be supported by members of Cassville's Youth Advisory Board. They are: Jessica Meadows, Whitney Harrison, Melissa Burnette, Lindy Paul, Misty Huckabey, Jacob Niedzwiecki, Brooke Grimm, Taylor Vanzandt, James Alberson, William Alberson, Jeffery Blankenship, Colt Beck, Phillip Richmiller, Brandon Banks, Tracy Cope, Bekah Crawford, Brittney Gatley, Jessie Gripka, Brennon Holenda, Brittany Patrick and Tyler Smith.
The overarching purpose of the grant will be to create local programs aimed at reducing the prevalence of risky drinking, which is defined as underage drinking or binge drinking among individuals age 12 to 25.
"This grant is an opportunity for the communities of Shell Knob, Cassville, Butterfield, Golden and Eagle Rock to address the issue of risky drinking on a long term basis and to bring about effective methods to reduce risky drinking," said McCullough, Community 2000 chairman. | <urn:uuid:b307bd66-408e-4ad6-be8e-3937959e9eea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cassville-democrat.com/story/1392663.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942927 | 752 | 1.75 | 2 |
(CNN) -- It may be one of the most-quoted lines in American literature -- and if you dare to quote it, you might have to pay.
In late October, Faulkner Literary Rights -- which represents Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner's estate -- sued representatives of Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris" for misquoting the famous line, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
In the film, about a writer who travels back in time to 1920s Paris, Owen Wilson's character lightly rephrases the line as "The past is not dead. Actually, it's not even past."
For the film's sin, Faulkner's estate is suing for copyright infringement and asking for "damages, disgorgement of profits, costs and attorney fees," according to the suit.
Defendant Sony Pictures Classics, which released "Midnight in Paris," quickly fired back.
"This is a frivolous lawsuit and we are confident we will prevail in defending it," the studio said in a statement, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Sony is defending the quotation as a "fair use" under copyright law, which is a defense that lets others freely reproduce copyrighted works for purposes such as criticism, comment and news reporting.
Woody Allen had no comment, his publicist told CNN.
But Lee Caplin, executor of the Faulkner estate, believes the movie went over the line in its use of the quotation, which comes from Faulkner's 1950 work "Requiem for a Nun."
He points out that "Midnight in Paris" is a commercial enterprise, the line was important to the film and Allen or Sony should have asked permission. Ron Howard asked and received permission (for a fee) from the estate to use a Faulkner quotation in a Howard-produced TV series, he says, and Sony or Allen could have easily done the same.
"I don't think Woody is any less knowledgeable than Ron Howard," says Caplin, a lawyer and movie producer. "I think Woody's in the motion-picture business. It's called a business because you make a movie that sells tickets. ... When you attach Faulkner to your product, you're enhancing that product. You're enhancing it for artistic reasons, but you're mostly enhancing it for the entertaining business reasons of why you make a product more appealing."
Moreover, he adds, "If Woody could have written something better, I'm sure he would have."
But Neville Johnson, an entertainment lawyer who specializes in copyright and fair use, thinks the Faulkner estate is grasping.
The quote is short, for one thing -- nine words, a tiny fraction of "Requiem for a Nun." "You're telling me one sentence gets you a copyright infringement action? I don't think so," he says.
Caplin disagreed with that line of thinking. "It puzzles me that people think size matters," he says.
In addition, copyright infringement comes into play if it can damage the "potential market" of the original work.
"I guess the book will never sell another copy, don't you think?" Johnson thundered mockingly. "It's all over for Faulkner!"
Looking backward with the bard of Oxford
Of all the writers to be involved in a copyright infringement lawsuit, William Faulkner would seem one of the least likely.
The bard of Oxford, Mississippi, is known for colorfully evocative novels about a murky post-Civil War Southern landscape, which -- though rewarding -- are often the kinds of books forced on unsuspecting high school students. His writing isn't exactly pithy: He's been listed in Guinness World Records for constructing a record-setting 1,288-word sentence (in "Absalom, Absalom!"). Some of his best known works, such as "The Sound and the Fury" and "Intruder in the Dust," are noted for their thickets of stream-of-consciousness storytelling.
For many years, the Faux Faulkner Contest honored scribblers who attempted to reproduce the master's rhythmic prose, tormented Southern characters, and endless comma-strung clauses (with parenthetical asides).
Faulkner was no stranger to Hollywood himself, signing a series of contracts in the '30s and '40s to write for various studios. He was credited with six screenplays, including the adaptations of Ernest Hemingway's "To Have and Have Not" and Raymond Chandler's "The Big Sleep." His love-hate relationship with the movies was parodied in the Coen brothers' film "Barton Fink" through the character of W.P. Mayhew, a hard-drinking Southerner hailed by the title character as "the finest novelist of our time."
Indeed, Faulkner is considered a titan of American literature, often evoked with Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald among a trio of pre-World War II greats. His words -- particularly the ones approximated in "Midnight in Paris" -- still echo, says Jay Watson, the Howry Chair of Faulkner Studies at (where else?) the University of Mississippi.
"It describes themes in American history, and I think that's one of the reasons why that line has had such resonance," he says. Faulkner's line is haunting and backward-looking, a warning that we forget our tangled roots at our peril -- a sentiment not often expressed in this country, he points out.
"As a culture, the U.S. is pretty forward-looking and youth-oriented," Watson says, "and we very often tend to have a sharper eye on our future than on the past."
A 'very gray area'
In a way, it's looking backward that's the nub of the lawsuit. Artists routinely stand on the shoulders of their predecessors, channeling ideas through their personal lenses. Done creatively, it can provide whole new meanings to the original source. Francis Ford Coppola used Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" as the basis for "Apocalypse Now"; Conrad, in turn, relied on Dante's "Inferno."
Faulkner's books, too, are full of references to other works, particularly the King James Bible and Shakespeare's plays (which are both in the public domain).
"He even said, at moments when he was asked to give advice to young writers, that there's an element of artistic creation that is glorified stealing," says Watson. "In order to be bold and ambitious as an artist, you have to be willing to use whatever you find wherever you may find it."
Other artists have made frequent use of Faulkner. The Faulkner Institute at Southeast Missouri State University maintains a page of "Faulkner sightings."
Of course, when done less than creatively, it provides openings for the attorneys -- and in our remix-happy society, full of self-produced videos and sampled music, there's a fine line between creativity and copyright infringement (or, for that matter, outright piracy). YouTube alone is full of ripped-off video files and audio tracks, says Johnson.
"It's a morass out there of violations across the board," he says.
But it is sometimes hard to determine when the line is crossed. Artists and their estates have sued in the past when they believed their copyrights were being infringed upon. In 2001, Margaret Mitchell's estate sued author Alice Randall and publisher Houghton Mifflin over Randall's "The Wind Done Gone," a parody of "Gone With the Wind" told from the point of view of a slave. That case was eventually settled out of court, though an appeals court had upheld Randall's right to create the book.
Fair use is a "very gray area," says Julie Ahrens, who runs the Fair Use Project at Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society.
"There are lots of things that are not clear."
"I get things where people are like, 'Are you sure I can do this?' And the best I can say is, 'Yes, you should be able to,' " she says.
However, she doesn't see a problem with "Midnight in Paris" and "the past is not dead." Besides, the phrase has been used many times before -- in news headlines, TV shows and song lyrics. President Obama even used the line in perhaps the most famous speech of the 2008 campaign, known as "A More Perfect Union," which he delivered in response to the controversy involving his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Obama's speech chronicled the challenges of race in America, and also misquoted Faulkner: "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past," Obama said.
"The idea that one person can control the use of those particular words seems ridiculous to me," says Ahrens. "Any of kind of literary allusion is ordinarily celebrated. This seems to squarely fall in that tradition."
It seems like a lot of effort over a few words -- this case of the estate of a long-dead author going up against a multibillion-dollar Hollywood conglomerate. But the impact can be deep. Ahrens is worried about a chilling effect; Caplin is hoping that a brighter line can be introduced in the dim area of fair use.
It's nothing personal, he adds. He loved "Midnight in Paris." As executor, he's just looking out for the fiduciary responsibilities of the Faulkner estate, and he's willing to let a jury decide the merits of the copyright case.
"I'd love to have Woody Allen come down and have a free tour of (Faulkner's house) Rowan Oak," he says. "But if he wants to use any more of Mr. Faulkner, I would want him to give me a call and discuss a license fee." | <urn:uuid:803a8283-6db2-49bb-ba57-46834a52600a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/06/showbiz/movies/faulkner-midnight-paris-allen-lawsuit/index.html?iid=article_sidebar | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972009 | 2,058 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Featuring virtual portholes, interactive dining experiences and animated art, the Disney Dream, the newest member of its cruising fleet, was unveiled last month in Port Canaveral, Fla.
Bill and Sally Bryson, along with Sarah Coleman, all of Uniglobe Ohio Valley, attended the pre-inaugural cruise of the Disney Dream at the end of January.
The Dream, Disney's third cruise ship, follows Magic and Wonder, which began sailing in 1998 and 1999, respectively.
There are a number of innovations and enhancements to this ship, Bill Bryson noted.
"Walt Disney understood that repetition without innovation wasn't interesting or in Disney's words, 'You can't top pigs with pigs,'" Bill Bryson said. Disney was referring to his 1933 success "Three Little Pigs." He produced sequels to the hit, each with diminishing response. That's when he realized, you can't "top pigs with pigs," which has been the company tenet for decades.
With the third ship in the Disney fleet, Disney's Imagineers "saw an enormous opportunity to expand, enlarge, update, upgrade and improve the experience of the Disney Cruise," according to "Welcome Aboard! The Creation of the Disney Dream," written by Jeff Kurtti.
One of the most exciting new features, Bryson noted, is animated art which immerses guests in Disney storytelling in a completely new way. A piece of art that appears to be static animation begins to move when visitors approach, he explained.
Another fun attraction are the virtual portholes in the ship's inside staterooms. (Nearly 90 percent of the rooms have an ocean view, however.) The virtual portholes offer a real-time view outside the ship, corresponding to the actual location of the stateroom.
High-definition cameras placed on the exterior of the ship feed live video to the portholes.
And, every once in a while, one of Disney's characters may pop by the porthole.
"Technology is an enabler throughout the entire ship," Disney Cruise Line President Karl Holz said. "It brings the ship to life in many, many different ways."
Interactive dining was another innovative attraction, Bryson said, just one of the many features he enjoyed.
Various princesses make visits at the Royal Palace restaurant, while Crush the Turtle interacts with guests at Animator's Palate. A third restaurant, The Enchanted Garden, was inspired by the gardens of Versailles.
Guests have the opportunity to dine in the three restaurants during a three-night cruise, he said.
Bryson pointed out that your wait staff follows you to the various restaurants, too.
Also on board is an adults-only restaurant, Palo, and a food court, Cabanas.
A cruise-industry first, the AquaDuck combines the thrill of a coaster and the splashing fun of a water slide on a 765-foot journey around the ship, he said. "We had the opportunity to ride the AquaDuck, and "it is a lot of fun and not too scary," he said.
There also are several pools, a toddler water-play area and a sports deck.
Disney offers many opportunities for families, starting with the Small World Nursery for youngsters ages 3 months to 5 years. The Oceaneer Club for ages 3-10 is an oasis that transports young guests to lands of fairies, monsters and undersea exploration. The Oceaneer Lab, also for ages 3-10, offers a journey of discovery and exploration and has scheduled visits from the Disney character, Stitch, Bryson said.
"Tweens," ages 11-13 can enjoy their own private club, "Edge," while 14-17 year olds have their own space in a 9,000-square-foot area called "Vibe," Bryson said.
Bryson noted that character availability is really very good on the cruise ship. While at the Disney theme parks you may be 33rd in line, you aren't too much beyond third in line on the ship, greatly minimizing your wait to say hello to your favorite character.
For adults, The District, offers nighttime entertainment featuring sophisticated bars and lounges. Skyline is an ever-changing venue with "window" views of Paris, New York, Rio, Hong Kong and Chicago.
"Every 20 minutes you feel like you are looking out at a different city," he said.
The main club for adult guests is Evolution, inspired by the evolution of the butterfly. A sports lounge is also available.
"The Disney entertainment is spectacular, as one might expect," Bryson said.
"The shows on the other two ships have won 'best show at sea' nine years running. And the new show rivals the others."
A rain-forest themed aromatherapy steam room and sauna are part of Senses Spa and Salon on board the Dream. Spanning two decks, the spa features 19 private treatment rooms, hot tubs, a 2,500-square-foot gym and more.
Ports of call for the Dream include Nassau and Disney's private island, Castaway Cay.
"On the island, guests are treated to a barbecue lunch and they can choose between the family beach and the adults-only beach. Water sports are plentiful, and even cabanas can be rented for the day," Bryson said.
"Castaway Cay is like a theme park. In addition to white, sandy beaches, there are plenty of water activities for everyone."
"The goal was to create an experience for all generations - for people who come with grandparents and great-grandparents, for people who come without children," Disney CEO Bob Iger said in an interview with The Associated Press on one of the Dream's first trips out of Port Canaveral. "I think everybody takes out of it what they want, but I think we're providing a tremendous amount of surprise, too."
The new Dream offers "a lot for anyone, regardless of age," Bryson said.
"Disney has a way of making everyone feel special. They've incorporated that into the new ship. It's that magic they are so good at creating, in everything they touch." | <urn:uuid:cac5dffc-d808-4bf8-8191-6d11b48ab1d7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theintelligencer.net/page/content.detail/id/551837/Disney-Unveils-Newest-Ship.html?nav=506 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963637 | 1,285 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Book Review: Geoffrey Nunberg’s Going Nucular
This month we review a book that could have been included in last month’s “Summer Reading” review list (except I hadn’t finished reading it at that time).
It is Geoffrey Nunberg’s Going Nucular: Language, Politics, and Culture in Confrontational Times. Nunberg is a professor of linguistics at Stanford and the book is a collection of his radio commentaries on language that he gives regularly on National Public Radio’s Fresh Air.
Going Nucular comprises some sixty-five short essays on language and usage. The essays were all delivered on the radio during the period from 2001 through 2003 and many deal with the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 and how we altered our use of language to describe the attacks and their effects. (Nunberg includes the date the essay was delivered on the radio. This allows the reader to associate the topical subject with the appropriate period. One only wishes that other authors of compilations, like William Safire, would do the same.) Individual essay topics include the history of the word appeasement, use of the word Gallic and French bashing, the use of the language of courtly love in business writing, whether infidel is used appropriately to translate from the Arabic, and, of course, the pronunciation of nuclear.
Prescriptivist’s Corner: The Subjunctive Case
The Prescriptivist’s Corner is back after a hiatus. This month, we are addressing one of the most misunderstood aspects of English grammar, the subjunctive mood. A mood is a form of a verb that affects the meaning of a sentence. English has three moods, the indicative, the imperative, and the subjunctive.
Sprechen Sie Fraulein?
The Langenscheidt publishing group, a leading German dictionary publisher, plans to publish a guide it says will help men translate the subtexts of female conversation. The guide is written by comedian Mario Barth, famous for his stage show Men are Pigs…but so are Women.
Langenscheidt, best known for its yellow foreign language dictionaries, will launch sales of a 128-page book to translate such baffling female banter as: “Let’s just cuddle” into “No sex tonight please!.”
“Each themed chapter offers men behavioral tips and exposes hidden messages transmitted by women in everyday situations, such as on holiday or during shopping trips,” said Silke Exius, chief editor at Langenscheidt.
Other examples in the German-Woman/Woman-German “dictionary” due out in October include explaining why a woman asks a man to take interest in the pair of shoes she may be trying on.
She wants him to look because he’s about to pay for them.
Word of the Month: Labor
In the United States, the first Monday in September is Labor Day, a day to celebrate and reward the achievements of the American worker. The holiday was originally proposed by the labor movement in 1882. In 1884 the holiday was moved to the current place on the calendar and it received its first government recognition by municipal governments. In 1887, the state of Oregon became the first to declare it an official state holiday. By 1894, 24 states and the federal government had recognized the holiday.
In honor of the holiday, our word of the month is labor, n.; physical exertion that supplies the material needs of the community; the body of people who provide this work. The term is from the Old French and originally meant simply physical exertion, a sense that survives today. The first sense listed here dates to 1776 when it was first used by Adam Smith. The use referring to the collective body of workers dates to 1839.
Book Review: Summer Reading List
This month in our book review section we take a look at three books that will make for some interesting summer reading. All three address word origins and all three consist of bite-sized sections that make for good commuter reading.
The first is the most interesting of the three, Paul McFedries’s Word Spy: The Word Lover’s Guide to Modern Culture. An offshoot of his excellent web site, www.wordspy.com, this is a book about neologisms and slang terms that denote the new facets of our ever-changing world. From accelerated culture (rapid cultural change) to wine porn (magazines and literature written for wine lovers), McFedries takes us on a linguistic excursion through our culture.
Word Watch: “Washington Read”
One term that is is gaining some ground among those in government circles is the Washington read, the practice of standing in a bookstore and skimming the index of a new, tell-all book for references to yourself, instead of reading or buyrng the whole book.
Richard Armitage went so far as to admit to the 9/11 panel that he has given it “the Washington read"—i.e., he looked himself up in the index and then read “what was said about me.”
—“Womb It May Concern” by Sam Schechner, Slate.com, 26 March 2004
For power-readers, the “Washington read"—a perusal of the index and some corresponding text—has offered a shortcut some won’t admit to.
—“Making the List” by Ellen Gamerman, Baltimore Sun, 28 June 2004
Anyone who gave Clinton’s hefty book the Washington read (that is, a quick skim of the index pages) quickly discovered that Clinton made several mentions of Bossie.
—“You can’t teach an old attack dog new tricks,” by Eric Boehlert, Salon.com, 20 July 2004
Word of the Month: Olympic Games
On the 13th of the month, the Olympic Games open in Athens Greece. It will be the 25th time the games have been held since the Olympics were revived in 1896. (Although it is the 28th modern Olympiad; three of the games were canceled during the two world wars.) In honor of the games and the athletes competing in them, our word of the month is Olympic Games, n.; originally games contested in honor of Zeus, held on the plain of Olympia in Greece every four to five years; the ancient games were first held ca.776 BC until they were abolished by Roman Emperor Theodosius in 394 AD; in modern use to denote the games established in 1896 by Baron de Coubertin.
Book Review: Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots & Leaves
A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.
“Why?” asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
“I’m a panda,” he says, at the door. “Look it up.”
The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation:
“Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”
The idea that a book on proper punctuation would rocket to the top of the bestseller charts is ludicrous. But the cliché says that truth is stranger than fiction, and indeed, such a thing has happened. As I write this review, Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation is number two on the New York Times bestseller list and has been on the list for ten weeks. It is number three on the Amazon.com sales list. Compounding the strangeness is that the book is British and has not been edited to reflect differences in American punctuation. The book has achieved similar commercial success in Britain.
Longtime readers who know of my descriptivist bent may be surprised to hear this, but I was rather eagerly looking forward to the American debut of this book. I have long held that punctuation, along with related rules about capitalization, spelling, and spacing, are the traffic signals of the written word. They serve to make reading easier and the writer’s meaning clearer. As such, standardization is highly prized. This book, however, does little to aid this goal.
Even more amazing is that this book is not a particularly good book on punctuation. It is not organized to be a useful guide or reference. Its jokes, of which there are many, are mildly amusing at best, often simply feeble, and always smarmy and smug. Truss provides no conceptual underpinning for the rules she promulgates, simply stating that these are the rules and that’s that. And she and her editors commit the sin of sins for a prescriptivist tome, it is filled with “errors” and violations of the very rules it advocates.
Word of the Month: Liberty
July hosts the anniversaries of two great 18th century political revolutions, the American and the French. Despite their occurrence in the late 18th century and commonality of political ideals and rhetoric, the two revolutions could hardly have been more different. One was the secession of a group of colonies led by wealthy merchants and landowners. The other was an uprising by the mob in the streets. One was relatively bloodless, the worst punishment inflicted on those that supported the old regime was usually forced exile and seizure of property. The usual punishment in the other was loss of one’s head.1 One resulted in a long-lasting and stable democratic government. The other resulted in rule by a megalomaniac intent on conquering all of Europe.
The 4th of July is Independence Day in the United States, the day in 1776 when the 2nd Continental Congress approved the draft Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson and broke its political ties with Britain. Ten days later, on the 14th, is the anniversary of the 1789 storming of the Bastille prison in Paris, the event that marks the beginning the of the French Revolution.
Book Review: John McWhorter’s Doing Our Own Thing
The supposed decline of the English language is often bemoaned by grammarians and prescriptivists. In these pages we have frequently taken to task those who seek to impose arbitrary and pointless grammatical and usage prescriptivism, but is there something more to these complaints. Once you move beyond split infinitives and the difference between peruse and read, the question of whether or not we are losing artful use of our language remains.
John McWhorter’s Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care seeks to answer the questions of whether or not American society has lost the artful use of language and what impact this will have on our lives. He succeeds brilliantly at the first question, but falls short in answering the second. McWhorter charts a sea change in American use of the language dating to the mid-1960s, when we lost formalism in our public discourse. He then seeks to explain why this loss is consequential; unfortunately he does not quite succeed in describing why we should, like, care.
First, be forewarned about what this book is not. If you are seeking a book that picks apart texts for grammatical “errors” or “sloppy” usage, this is not it. McWhorter does not go in for prescriptivism. He is a linguist by trade, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and knows better than that. He does not bemoan the change in language simply because it is change. Instead, he is concerned with aesthetics in how we use the English language.
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Sheffield's famous Tinsley cooling towers will be demolished over the August Bank Holiday weekend, energy giant 'E.On' has announced, despite thousands of people had signed petitions to save the towers, which can be seen by motorists who use the M1.
The general publics efforts were so determined that they even filed for the two iconic concreate cooling towers to be classed as a piece of public art. This really could have worked, as they are the Sheffield equivilent to the Newcastle Angel of the North. It doesn't appear that there's much more that we can do. Eon are adamant that the towers have to come down, and have been unwilling to consider anything else all along. Nothing that we have done has changed that, not even the TV program on channel 4 or the radio interview on BBC Radio 2. The council haven't got the ambition or vision to see that these towers could be icons, that they could attract millions of people. Unless there's some sort of divine intervention, then, it looks like the cooling towers will disappear. | <urn:uuid:fbd3c460-01a8-4a54-98e7-0b207034bfb1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://post.thing.net/taxonomy/term/1714 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983588 | 217 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Posted by ESC on February 23, 2002
"Animation isn't the illusion of life; it is life," Chuck Jones once said.
(AP) - Academy Award-winning animator Chuck Jones, who drew such beloved cartoon characters as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd and Porky Pig, died at his home Friday (Feb. 22, 2002). He was 89. Jones worked on more than 300 animated films in a career that spanned more than 60 years, winning two Oscars as a director and receiving an honorary Oscar in 1996 for lifetime achievement. | <urn:uuid:fabf6fe9-3588-4feb-b8f0-da21bb84b67b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/13/messages/412.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989326 | 117 | 1.773438 | 2 |
There was a story in a recent edition
of USA Today that said the current (youngest) generation isn't too
worried about retirement funds as they're pretty sure they'll
have an inheritance waiting for them.
This is in contrast to a poll said the
parents of this generation had nothing saved up and didn't plan on
leaving anything behind, figuring whatever they had would get eaten
up by late in life medical bills.
I sense a disconnect here.
Inheritance has always been an abstract
thought in my head. Probably because I grew up in a world where you
said, "Hey, we got all the bills paid! We got $37 to live on until
the next paycheck, so let's be careful when we're out."
And two things assured me I wouldn't
have to worry about leaving anything behind. One, I made the decision
to not have kids, and two, it quickly became obvious my income would
never get very far above the low five figure income range.
You can't leave behind what you don't
But what about these modern day kids,
age 13-22, who think they'll never have to worry about getting
medicine and where their next meal will come from when they get old? According to the story, 40 percent of them think money will never be
a problem, whether they're young or old.
Are they spoiled brats? Forty percent
is a huge number. They can't all be the children of one percenters.
Some seem to believe mommy and daddy
have large life insurance policies because they want to make their
precious ones can stop working at 42.
A psychiatrist interviewed for the
story said a lot of it undoubtedly has to do with their young age.
They either are children of one percenters, and will get a huge
inheritance, or mommy and daddy sacrificed everything and the kids
never noticed their "irritating" parents wore the same clothes
for seven years straight.
I could buy that. When I was a kid,
living in a paycheck-to-paycheck type world, I wouldn't have known
what an inheritance was. But I did know kids who truly and honestly
believed not only would they get mom's car when they turned 16, but
one day the house they lived in would be theirs. They planned to sell
it, of course, and buy something on the lake.
I doubt I'll be around to see it, but
starting in about 40-45 years, there are going to some disappointed
young'uns running around. Mom and dad are increasingly the only
support some of these kids have when they become adults. And that's
usually after they've spent $100,000 of their parents money getting
a college degree that doesn't help out the way they expect.
And if mom and dad aren't even out of
their forties yet, they've got a lot of self supporting left to do.
You might have a combined $100,000 a year household income, but if it
takes $97,000 a year to live your life, it would take a hundred years
to save up the kind of money kids are expecting to inherit.
This is nothing new. Twenty years ago,
I knew someone younger (and I was only 25) who thought there was no
reason you shouldn't be making $75,000 a year by the time you were
22. Those jobs were out there. She just knew it. You just had to
I haven't seen that person in many
years, so I don't know if she ever found that job, though a couple
of years after that, she had moved back in with her parents.
Many, many years ago, families never
really separated and people would spend their lives in the houses, or
on the properties, where they were born. It was just considered a
family thing and led to the saying, "You can always go home."
That doesn't really exist any more.
Just like an inheritance. Maybe this new generation should learn a
[email protected] | 442-4575 | <urn:uuid:927486ae-0132-4465-b36d-05c8f8895831> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.monroe.xtn.net/story/25015 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982884 | 879 | 1.617188 | 2 |
In a letter, the group asked, “If we had thousands of dollars, could we pay for a squad of police to wear clown suits?”
The collapse of the bridge Thursday into the Skagit River occurred about 1,200 yards west of where another bridge collapsed 110 years earlier.
The apparel giant announced it would donate $1 million in footwear and apparel for tornado relief efforts.
The collapse of the I-5 bridge over the Skagit River at Mount Vernon and rescue efforts, Thursday, May 23, 2013.
The truck was hauling an oversized load of drilling equipment destined for Vancouver, Wash.
More than $100,000 was spent for a sand-based material to cover the ground for the City Fair at Waterfront Park so festival-goers won’t be slogging around in mud, even if it keeps raining.
Built in the 1920s and remodeled in the 1970s, Powell’s Books is about to get a seismic upgrade.
The Skagit River bridge is classified as “functionally obsolete,” but was considered safe by transportation officials. The same is true for the Columbia River bridge.
It damaged the Gypsy Restaurant, along with several vehicles.
More than 4,500 people have signed up to take part in the March Against Monsanto. | <urn:uuid:bcb88ba2-edbb-4e36-8962-2c22c96cf23c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.koin.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968732 | 271 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Audience Equity: Is to take an entities audience from one channel of communication and transfer it to another.
On the Marketing Today podcast Ep. 60 I coined the term Audience Equity when referring to the idea that Kyle and Jackie O were a great choice of hosts for Big Brother 08, they have a loyal audience following on their radio show. With the choice to make them hosts of Big Brother, BB08 were able to take their audience from their radio show and move it to a Television Show.
This occured through the two radio stars most likely speaking about the show on their morning radio show, their audience will be made to have to watch the television show or not understand the conversations that would be going on between the hosts.
For more examples of Audience Equity read Graeme Watson post at Training Wheels on the subject. | <urn:uuid:5c6d1c35-9836-417b-be1f-38e1cd1afc99> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://adspace-pioneers.blogspot.com/2008/05/audience-equity-kyle-and-jackie-o-big.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976058 | 167 | 1.742188 | 2 |
A group of anti-gay military chaplains are concerned that they will be “marginalized” by the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, because same-sex relationships will become normative. In a letter to the chiefs of chaplain, they express their dire concerns that marriages might take place in base chapels and that they will face a “hostile” environment for preaching against homosexuality. They even suggest they will be forced to “abandon their religious beliefs,” even though they acknowledge the military has made it clear their ability to practice their faith will not be jeopardy:
Of equally grave concern is the fact that chaplains are instructors of conscience. Chaplains have a tremendous moral responsibility to insure that when they preach, teach or counsel, they do so in accordance with their conscience and in harmony with the faith group by which they are endorsed. When guidance, however, is forthcoming from senior leadership that implies protected status for those who engage in homosexual behavior and normalizes same-sex unions in base chapels, any outside observe would conclude that both homosexuality and homosexual unions officiated as marriages in base chapels are normative. This creates an environment that is increasingly hostile to the many chaplains—and the service members they serve—whose faith groups and personal consciences recognize homosexual behavior as immoral and unsafe and do not permit same-sex unions.
For this reason, and particularly in light of the growing confusion regarding how DADT repeal will play out—indeed, we were told that issues like same-sex weddings were not a concern because of DOMA just months ago—we strongly encourage the adoption of broad, clear, and strong protections for conscience. No American, especially those serving in the armed forces, should be forced to abandon their religious beliefs or be marginalized for holding to those beliefs. It is not sufficient to posit, as the CRWG report did, that chaplains and service members remain free to exercise their faith in chapel services. Service members should know that chaplains’ ministry and their own rights of conscience remain protected everywhere military necessity has placed them. We hope that you will join us in urging DoD and Congress to adopt such specific and intentional conscience protections.
If the situation were a school where the principal said, “Students who are gay, lesbian, and bisexual will no longer have to hide their identities and we will all learn to treat them with respect,” a coalition of bullies might express a similar self-victimizing sentiment. They’re a part of the school, too, so why should they have to change their actions to accommodate this group they disapprove of?
The claims in the letter are absurd and completely ignore the actually hostile environment that LGB troops will surely face for years to come. And while military chaplains certainly should have freedom of conscience (a question that is not of concern), what good are they serving the military by actively promoting distrust and condemnation of LGB troops? That is essentially what they are pleading for in this letter: permission to continue reinforcing a hostile environment according to their own sense of “morality.”
If unit cohesion in any way resembles the productivity of an office or classroom, it’s safe to assume that special “conscience protections” for anti-gay chaplains will only serve to disrupt unit cohesion. Hostile environments in schools, universities, and offices lead to low productivity, performance, and recruitment/retention levels. Why would the military be any different?
The chaplains conclude their letter praying for the “health and prosperity of the entire chaplain body” with a call to work together in the spirit of “cooperation without compromise.” Basically, they want what they want and they feel their needs should come before those of the troops. Hopefully, that’s exactly how the the chiefs of chaplains read it. | <urn:uuid:6ba9ebbe-d0a6-46ed-9ee5-b500b7461fdc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2011/05/24/177441/chaplain-bullying-dadt/?mobile=nc | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966323 | 805 | 1.632813 | 2 |
I read the article “U.S. Should Invest in Truly Unconventional Forms of Warfare”
in the January 2012 issue with great interest, as it represents the sort of forward thinking we need today.
As good as the article is, I think author Russell Aldrich went seriously adrift in the second paragraph.
“If China decided to sell [U.S. Treasury] bonds and invest elsewhere, it could have potentially devastating effects for the U.S. economy.”
This is a trap that more famous writers have also fallen into. Please stop a minute and ask: To whom would the Chinese sell? Not the European Central Bank, as they would not trade shaky dollars for even more shaky Euros. Maybe the Somali Pirates Retirement Fund or the Medellin Cartel Investment Trust would take a few billion, but they couldn’t put a dent in the trillion that the Chinese hold.
No. The Chinese are stuck with them, as there is no possible buyer. The shoes, shirts, and cell phones the Chinese shipped over are gone forever, and all they have is a lot of engraved paper. Or, worse yet, blips on a computer screen! Remember, the only reason you have a $1,000 dog is because I’m willing to give you two $500 cats for it.
Please think hard about this: Who is a possible, credible, capable buyer for the bonds the Chinese hold? Well, yes, we could buy them back for .15 cents on the dollar, like we did with the billions of dollars worth of hotels the Japanese built here in the 90s. The Japanese knew real estate always goes up. The Chinese thought the dollar was as good as gold until they found out we are borrowing $1 billion a day just to stay afloat.
The rest of your article is, as the Brits once said, “sterling.”
Richard KeoghRail Guns
Your “Viewpoint, An Inexpensive Solution For Quickly Launching Military Satellites Into Space”
in the March 2012 issue of National Defense Magazine appears to have few inaccuracies.
In the second paragraph “of ‘Iranian Super Gun’ fame.” If I remember correctly from watching the History Channel, that was the “Iraqi Super Gun” as Saddam Hussein was in pursuit of the Super Gun.
The bottom paragraph should state something to the effect that two magnetic fields are created (one for each rail) opposing each other and creating a force according to Lorentz’s Force Law on the armature to repel it in the desired direction. Of course, this is dependent upon the direction of the electric current flow.
Also, I am not quite certain why “The energy created by the electrostatic discharge is measured in mega joules (one joule=6.241506363e+18? Volts)” is included in the article since it does not flow with the article.
By the way, the “one joule=6.241506363e+18? Volts” should be “one joule=6.241506363e+18 electron Volts.”
Armament Research, Development
and Engineering Center
Rock Island, IL
The article “An Inexpensive Solution For Quickly Launching Military Satellites Into Space”
was particularly significant because apart from the High Altitude Research Project (HARP) it drew attention to Gerald Bull and his work.
First however, the precise 4,265 feet per second velocity quoted is low. According to the Artillery Ammunition Manual TM43-0001-28 the tang gun M256 fires the M829 APFSDS-T projectile at a velocity of 5,510 feet per second. The HARP program produced much higher muzzle velocities.
I have a copy of the Bull and C. H. Murphy book, Paris Kanonen-The Paris Guns (Willhelmgeschutze and Project Harp: the Application of Major Caliber Guns to Atmospheric and Space Research). The first part of the book analyzes the firing of the 21-centimeter guns, which bombarded Paris from around 70 miles in World War I. These were 38 centimeter and 35.5-centimeter railroad guns fitted with extended 21-centimeter barrel liners and were probably the first guns in service to have a muzzle velocity of 5,000 feet per second. Bull denied that these guns inspired him to modify the 16-inch guns and smaller calibers in a similar manner for use in the HARP program. World War II descendent of the Paris Guns, the 21-centimeter K12, was an entirely new gun, which fired a conventional projectile at a muzzle velocity of 5,331 feet per second and a range of 72 miles.
The HARP modified 16-inch gun — 86 calibers long — gave a muzzle velocity of 7,100 feet per second. At Highwater, Quebec, a 16-inch gun modified to 126 calibers long gave a muzzle velocity of between 11,000 and 12,000 feet per second.
Bull applied German technology to design a light-weight, long-range gun based on the design of the German V3 — a 14-centimeter HD multi chambered articulated gun, code name, High Pressure Pump. Barrels for this gun were seized by the United States. One section of these barrels went to the U.S. Air Force Museum at the RAF Museum at Duxford, England.
Leonard E. Capon | <urn:uuid:1c1a02e5-3fe4-4009-b58c-a9617e54fdae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2012/May/Pages/ReadersSoundOffonRecentStories.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945804 | 1,156 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Hopes that Europe's economy might be on the mend were dented again Wednesday when the International Monetary Fund downgraded its forecast for the eurozone to a second consecutive year of recession.
But IMF managing director Christine Lagarde said she was optimistic about the outlook for the region, provided it keeps up the pace of reform.
In an update to its World Economic Outlook, the IMF forecast the eurozone economy will contract by 0.2% this year, after shrinking by 0.4% in 2012. Its previous forecast was for growth of 0.1% in 2013.
Protracted recessions in southern Europe states have begun to depress activity in the core of Europe, with even powerhouse Germany feeling the effects of the slowdown in the final quarter of the year.
Many of the 17 eurozone nations are in the middle of austerity programs that are reducing demand, driving unemployment to record highs and prompting households and businesses to defer spending and investment.
The debt crisis has abated in recent months, thanks to the ECB's pledge to buy short-term debt from struggling eurozone members. But while that has improved financing conditions for governments and banks, the IMF noted that this has not yet translated into improved borrowing conditions for the private sector.
But elections in Italy next month, Germany in September, and the restoration of calm on government bond markets have prompted some to warn that Europe may be tempted to slow its reform drive.
UBS chairman Axel Weber said he believed the eurozone was not over the worst, and that much of the progress achieved last year was driven by market pressure.
"Political risk might come to the fore again, that might spook markets," Weber told CNN's Richard Quest. "Like in 2012, some of the unresolved issues in Europe have the potential of coming back to the fore, spooking investors."
Lagarde said she was optimistic about the outlook for Europe, provided governments followed through on the progress made in 2012 to take the first steps towards creating a banking and fiscal union in the eurozone.
"They need to keep at it, they need to challenge the conventional wisdom that when things get better, it's time to relax," she said at the World Economic Forum in Davos. "It's not time to relax."
Lagarde acknowledged that the IMF and others had not paid enough attention to excess inequality and the corrosive effects it has on society. With 200 million people looking for work globally, policymakers needed to strike a better balance between the drive to balance budgets and the need to create growth and jobs.
"If we have any priorities, it is that one," she said.
More had to be done by governments to stop leaving a legacy of debt to future generations, she said, but cautioned that climate change may pose an even greater threat to the global economy.
"Without action, the next generation will be roasted, toasted, fried and grilled," Lagarde said.
The IMF said it expected global growth to reach 3.5% this year, up from 3.2% in 2012, and compared with its October forecast of 3.6%.
For the United States, the IMF stressed that "the priority is to avoid excessive fiscal consolidation in the short term, promptly raise the debt ceiling, and agree on a credible medium-term fiscal consolidation plan, focused on entitlement and tax reform." | <urn:uuid:303d992f-74a3-475c-aad7-ebf5098f35dd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kjct8.com/news/money/Eurozone-forecast-cut-but-Lagarde-is-optimistic/-/194312/18250710/-/oi0grt/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968245 | 674 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Raipur: Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar said on Saturday that even though the country became independent in 1947, the battle for achieving social and economic freedom was still underway.
"Social and economic freedom can be gained only through parliamentary system and the legislature was exclusively created to achieve this goal. Our parliamentarians and legislators are trying hard to achieve this desired goal by raising the voice of the downtrodden," she said while unveiling a life-size statue of Shyamacharan Shukla, former chief minister of undivided Madhya Pradesh near Gandhi Udyan in Raipur.
Hailing the veteran Congress leader, who had served as chief minister for three terms, for his vision, Kumar said "leaders like him are inspiration for generations".
Meira Kumar was in Madhya Pradesh on the occasion of the unveiling of a life-size statue of former CM Shyamacharan Shukla.
"It is imperative on us to fulfill the dreams of leaders like Shukla. Such dreams can not be fulfilled by one generation only. In fact, they tend to motivate us to make them a reality," Kumar added. | <urn:uuid:dc0ee8d1-7b33-400a-bc6b-bdbd20a4bb9c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ibnlive.in.com/news/social-economic-freedom-still-unattained-meira-kumar/225129-37-64.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979556 | 230 | 1.773438 | 2 |
US traders threw their hats in with the bears on Friday, after poor jobs figures appeared to confirm the economy was slumping again after weeks of mixed data.
After holding firm for most of the week, the market was sunk by news that the economy generated only 115,000 net new jobs last month, much lower than expected and hardly enough to keep up with the natural growth of the labor market.
The number was less than half of the job creation pace of January-February, which had sparked optimism that converted into an 11 percent gain in the S&P 500 in the first quarter.
Combined with numbers showing tens of thousands of people had dropped out of the jobs market altogether, the data suggested that US household incomes were not picking up and that consumption growth could continue to be weak in the coming months.
It came after traders had failed to lock onto any clear direction from the mixed data and corporate earnings in recent weeks.
While economists were more cautious about the data — saying it does not yet confirm a downward trend — traders were not going to wait for any more confirmation.
Stocks, from banks to tech products to energy, all fell sharply; oil prices plunged, and so did a host of other commodities.
For the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Index was down 1.4 percent to 13,038.27; the S&P 500 sank 2.4 percent to 1,369.10, while the NASDAQ lopped off 3.7 percent to 2,956.34.
Analysts said tech stocks had appeared overpriced, and Apple’s 6.3 percent loss for the week appeared to support that view.
However, the downtrend was widely based, driven by worries over the economy and, to a smaller extent, the important elections taking place in Greece and France over the weekend.
Bank of America lost 6.2 percent; Alcoa lost 3.9 percent and Caterpillar 5.8 percent.
“The jobs data was definitely a major disappointment,” Ryan Detrick of Schaeffer’s Investment Research said.
“I’m not sure if we can call this weakness in the jobs data a trend quite yet, but it sure better turn around soon,” he said.
Earlier in the week traders were more non-committal, because of a mixed baggage of economic indicators, such as this week’s ISM purchasing manager surveys for last month.
The one on manufacturing showed a pickup in growth during the month, but two days later, the index on the much larger service sector showed a significant slowdown.
“The market kept flip-flopping because of disagreeing economic data,” Sam Stovall of S&M Capital IQ said.
However, on Thursday a survey of chain stores showed a disappointing read on sales, reinforcing the idea that the economy took a pause last month.
At the same time, quarterly earnings reports that came out this week and last have been a mixed bag: Most have beaten forecasts — some like Apple wildly so — but many also dealt out warnings that the coming months might not be so buoyant.
“Investors are becoming very worried, or very nervous, that the economy and earnings are slowing. And it is occurring at a time when the stock market is somewhat priced overvalued,” Hugh Johnson of Hugh Johnson Advisors said.
“Over 70 percent of companies have beaten expectations, but none of that really matters as much as the next quarters,” he said.
“The earnings have been very good for the first quarter, but bear in mind that investors care about the second quarter, the third and the fourth,” he said.
Analysts were not optimistic for the coming week, with a dearth of data that might shed more light on the economy’s direction.
“Next week, there isn’t a lot of data to dissect,” Stovall said.
“Consumer credit, trade deficit and producer price index, none of those reports are expected to move the market,” he said. | <urn:uuid:8f3ae928-6cfc-4538-bf29-bb998f9e192a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/print/2012/05/06/2003532091 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972912 | 845 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Society of Camera Operators uses AJA for “Endeavour's Final Journey” doc
Haskell Wexler uses AJA Ki Pro Mini, Panavision Genesis camera to capture shuttle’s LAX landing
GRASS VALLEY, CALIF. – The Society of Camera Operators will document the journey of the Space Shuttle Endeavour to the California Science Center as part of a project being managed by Terbine Entertainment and other vendors and volunteers.
“Endeavour’s final journey is one that will go down in the history books, and this documentary will give generations to come an accurate account of the complexities involved in the shuttle’s final mission,” AJA President Nick Rashby said.
Cinematographer Haskell Wexler, ASC/SOC, served as a camera operator who employed Ki Pro Mini portable digital video recorders from AJA Video Systems to capture the landing of the Endeavour Space Shuttle at LAX Airport in Los Angeles, and Oct. 12, Endeavour will be placed onto a 79-foot transporter with 92 independently operated wheels in preparation for its trip to the CSC.
The footage will be incorporated into “Endeavour’s Final Journey,” a project spearheaded by producer David Knight, to accompany the forthcoming Endeavour exhibit at the California Science Center.
“With no budget and a tight timeline, a tapeless workflow seemed like the best fit for this project, and we knew that Ki Pro Mini would give us an ideal recording setup. They’re easy to deploy and use – plus all of our camera assistants had good experiences working with them,” shared Mark August, SOC and the documentary’s second unit director of photography. “Once we took delivery of the Ki Pro Minis, we were able to get them up and running straight out of the box within five minutes.”
Ki Pro Minis were mounted to three Panavision Genesis Cameras using Noga Arms. Wexler served as one of the camera operators and was positioned near the flight line in preparation for the arrival of the Endeavour atop a Boeing 747.
Apple ProRes 422 footage of the landing was recorded and sent to Deluxe, which is compiling, editing and archiving all of the documentary material.
“Having a portable, reliable solution like Ki Pro Mini was instrumental to completing this phase of the project. All of the footage was instantly edit-ready, straight off the drives,” August said. “We’re looking forward to using the recorders again for the next phase of the project, which will cover Endeavour’s complex journey through LA to its new home.” | <urn:uuid:8a830b0d-4415-4f02-ac5d-a069cd09111a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tvtechnology.com/article/society-of-camera-operators-uses-aja-for-%E2%80%9Cendeavours-final-journey%E2%80%9D-doc/215875 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938836 | 564 | 1.65625 | 2 |
When I was a little boy in elementary school, my teachers would often try to motivate my classmates and me by telling us, “If you work hard, you can be anything you set your mind to, including President.” In my small upstate New York community, our classes were integrated and my teachers all White females. They said things like that so that we wouldn’t set our sights too low or limit our dreams in any way.
While my Black classmates and I knew the teachers meant well, the older we got, the more statements like that seemed to ring hollow. We never really believed that we could become President of the United States, or for that matter CEO of a major corporation, editor of a big city newspaper, or even quarterback of a pro football team. In the late 1960’s and early ‘70’s, such opportunities were denied to Black Americans.
But by the late 1970’s, Marlon Briscoe became starting quarterback for the Denver Broncos and to this day still holds club passing records. Around that same time, Robert Maynard became editor of the Oakland Tribune, a Gannett newspaper that he would later purchase from them about four years later. It was just ten years ago that Franklin Raines became CEO of the nation’s 26th largest Fortune 500 company, Fannie Mae.
But President of the United States just seemed beyond anyone’s grasp.
Running for any office is a monumental task requiring a well-built organization, fundraising, communications and political strategies, the ability to tap into hearts and minds and appeal to and share a vision with millions of very diverse American citizens who also have never seen a Black person aspire to such heights.
Barack Obama did all that. He did it better than any other candidate has ever done it. He understood the frustrations of a nation fed up with inept, corrupt and morally bankrupt Bush administration policies, a needless war in Iraq and an economic meltdown. He got them to get involved—especially people under 30—and they organized and mobilized others. His campaign was innovative and dynamic in its use of the Internet to get his message out and generate a broad base of people to donate in small amounts over a long period of time.
Today, Wednesday, November 5, 2008, Barack Hussein Obama, son of a White mother and an African father, a Harvard graduate, lawyer, former community activist and sitting Senator from the State of Illinois, is the President-elect of the United States of America.
It has happened in my lifetime.
This will be short and probably a bit disjointed. It is election night, returns are trickling in, and I’m nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.
Two years of campaigning and it has all come down to this. I did my civic duty at 6:48 AM EDT. I couldn’t sleep last night, knew there would be a long line, and just wanted to get my vote on the record, so I was up before 6:00, showered, dressed and out the door to my polling station around the time when my alarm clock is usually going off. I’ve been a registered and active voter since I turned 18, now 30 years ago. I’ve lived in four different cities across New York State. I have never witnessed lines as long as this morning’s nor voters as excited and energized by this event. Four election districts were housed at that location and luckily one of my neighbors who had already voted, came out and told me the line for our district was very short. I got off the main line, went to the door, told them my district and was escorted to a very short wait. Then I voted not only for a change in the direction this country is going, but for the first time in my life, I voted for a Black man for President of the United States.
I was inspired by the presence of such a diverse group of people, especially young people, in the line. Many were first-time voters. An older Black man behind me talked about being beaten and hosed in Alabama in 1963 when he tried to vote. The Voting Rights Act was passed just a year later.At work, the election was the talk of the office. My co-workers who live all over New York and New Jersey, shared stories of long lines at their polling places. A high turnout almost always favors Democratic candidates.
The world is watching this election closely and they are as anxious a we are.
Middle of the day and this evening, I thought of my late father and brother who are not here to experience this moment. I also remember Mrs. Ethel Vaughn, a dear friend of my mother’s and a woman practically like my second Mom, who passed away about three weeks ago at age 95. She was so looking forward to voting.
An excerpt from Getting the Love You Want, from the newsletter of the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health
Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt’s classic book, Getting the Love You Want, first came out in 1988 and has since sold more than 2 million copies (as well as being a New York Times best-seller). Offering a workable model for addressing the psychoemotional realities of relationship, it also introduced the concept of the imago, forever changing the nature of couple’s therapy. In the book, a person’s imago is most simply defined as “a composite picture of the people who influenced you most strongly at an early age.” The image includes positive and negative attributes and the implications of how those attributes become imprinted on our young hearts and minds. In honor of those 20 years and the millions of people whose lives have been helped through their work, we bring you an excerpt from the newest edition of Getting the Love You Want (reprinted with permission).
A conscious partnership is a relationship that maximizes psychological and spiritual growth; it’s a relationship created by becoming conscious and cooperating with the fundamental drives of the unconscious mind—to be safe, to be healed, and to be whole.
Ten Characteristics of a Conscious Partnership
1. You realize that your love relationship has a hidden purpose—the healing of childhood wounds. Instead of focusing entirely on surface needs and desires, you learn to recognize the unresolved childhood issues that underlie them. When you look at relationships with this X-ray vision, your daily interactions take on more meaning. Puzzling aspects of your relationship begin to make sense to you, and you have a greater sense of control.
2. You create a more accurate image of your partner. At the very moment of attraction, you began fusing your lover with your primary caretakers. Later you projected your negative traits onto your partner, further obscuring your partner’s essential reality. As you move toward a conscious relationship, you gradually let go of these illusions and begin to see more of your partner’s truth. You see you your partner not as a savior but as another wounded human being, struggling to be healed.
3. You take responsibility for communicating your needs and desires to your partner. In an unconscious partnership, you cling to the childhood belief that your partner automatically intuits your needs. In a conscious partnership, you accept the fact that, in order to understand each other, you have to develop clear channels of communication.
4. You become more intentional in your interactions. In an unconscious partnership, you tend to react without thinking. You allow the primitive response of your old brain to control your behavior. In a conscious partnership, you train yourself to behave in a more constructive manner.
5. You learn to value your partner’s needs and wishes as highly as you value your own. In an unconscious partnership, you assume that your partner’s role in life is to take care of your needs magically. In a conscious partnership, you let go of this narcissistic view and divert more and more of your energy to meeting your partner’s needs.
6. You embrace the dark side of your personality. In a conscious partnership, you openly acknowledge the fact that you, like everyone else, have negative traits. As you accept responsibility for this dark side of your nature, you lessen your tendency to project your negative traits onto your mate, which creates a less hostile environment.
7. You learn new techniques to satisfy your basic needs and desires. During the power struggle, you cajole, harangue, and blame in an attempt to coerce your partner to meet your needs. When you move beyond this stage, you realize that your partner can indeed be a resource for you—once you abandon your self-defeating tactics.
8. You search within yourself for the strengths and abilities you are lacking. One reason you were attracted to your partner is that he or she had strengths and abilities that you lacked. Therefore, being with your partner gave you an illusory sense of wholeness. In a conscious partnership, you learn that the only way you can truly recapture a sense of oneness is to develop the hidden traits within yourself.
9. You become more aware of your drive to be loving and whole and united with the universe. As a part of your God-given nature, you have the ability to love unconditionally and to experience unity with the world around you. Social conditioning and imperfect parenting made you lose touch with these qualities. In a conscious partnership, you begin to rediscover your original nature.
10. You accept the difficulty of creating a lasting love relationship. In an unconscious partnership, you believe that the way to have a good relationship is to pick the right person. In a conscious partnership, you realize you have to be the right partner. As you gain a more realistic view, you realize that a good relationship requires commitment, discipline, and the courage to grow and change; creating a fulfilling love relationship is hard work.
Let’s take a close look at number ten, the need to accept the difficulty involved in creating a conscious partnership, because none of the other nine ideas will come to fruition unless you first cultivate your willingness to grow and change.
Becoming a Lover
We all have an understandable desire to live life as children. We don’t want to go to the trouble of raising a cow and milking it; we want to sit down at the table and have someone hand us a cool glass of milk. We don’t want to plant seeds and tend a grapevine; we want to walk out the back door and pluck a handful of grapes. This wishful thinking finds its ultimate expression in relationships. We don’t want to accept responsibility for getting our needs met; we want to “fall in love” with a superhuman mate and live happily ever after. The psychological term for this tendency to put the source of our frustrations and the solutions to our problems outside ourselves is “externalization,” and it is the cause of much of the world’s unhappiness.
I remember the day when a client whom I will call Walter came in for his appointment with slumped shoulders and a sad expression.
“What’s the matter?” I asked Walter. “You look very unhappy today.”
“Harville,” he said to me as he slumped into the chair, “I feel really terrible. I just don’t have any friends.”
I was sympathetic with him. “You must be very sad. It’s lonely not having any friends.”
“Yeah. I can’t seem to … I don’t know. There are just no friends in my life. I keep looking and looking, and I can’t find any.”
He continued in a morose, complaining voice for some time, and I had to suppress a growing annoyance with his regressed childlike state. He was locked into a view of the world that went something like this: wandering around the world were people on whose foreheads were stamped the words “Friend of Walter,” and his job was merely to search until he found them.
“Walter,” I said with a sigh, “do you understand why you don’t have any friends?”
He perked up. “No. Tell me!”
“The reason you don’t have any friends is that there aren’t any friends out there.”
His shoulders slumped.
I was relentless.
“That’s right,” I told him. “There are no friends out there. What you want does not exist.” I let him stew in this sad state of affairs for a few seconds. Then I leaned forward in my chair and said, “Walter—listen to me! All people in the world are strangers. If you want a friend, you’re going to have to go out and make one!”
Walter was resisting the idea that creating a lasting friendship takes time and energy. Even though he was responsible and energetic in his job, he retained the childlike notion that all he had to do to establish intimacy was to bump up against the right person. Because he hadn’t acknowledged that a friendship evolves slowly over time and requires thoughtfulness, sensitivity, and patience, he had been living a lonely life.
The passive attitude Walter brought to his friendships was even more pronounced in his love life: he couldn’t seem to find the ideal woman. Recovering from a painful divorce (in a bitter legal battle, his wife had gotten custody of their son), he was desperately trying to find a new lover.
The specific problem that had plagued Walter in his relationship was that he was caught in concepts and ideas, not feelings. He hid his vulnerability behind his formidable intellect, which prevented any genuine intimacy. He had been coming to group-therapy sessions for about six months, and at each session he would hear from the group the same message that he had been hearing from his wife—that he wasn’t sharing his feelings, that he was emotionally distant. One evening a member of the group finally broke through to him. “When you talk about your pain,” she said, “I can’t see any suffering. When you hug me, I can’t feel your hugs.” Walter finally realized that there was some basis to his ex-wife’s complaints. “I thought she was just being bitchy and critical,” he confessed. “It never occurred to me that maybe she was right. That I could learn something about myself from listening to her.”
When Walter had time to absorb this awareness, he developed more enthusiasm for the therapeutic process and was able to work on dismantling his emotional barriers. As he become more alive emotionally, he was finally able to have a satisfying relationship with a new woman friend. During his last session with me, he shared his feelings about therapy. “You know,” he said, “it took me two years to learn one simple fact: that, in order to have a good relationship, you have to be willing to grow and change. If I had known this ten years ago, I would still be living with my wife and son.”
Walter can’t be blamed for wanting to believe that relationships should be easy and “natural.” It’s human nature to want a life without effort. When we were infants, the world withheld and we were frustrated; the world gave and we were satisfied. Out of thousands of these early transactions, we fashioned a model of the world, and we cling to this outdated model even at the expense of our relationships. We are slow to comprehend that, in order to be loved, we must first become lovers. And I don’t mean this in sentimental terms. I don’t mean sending flowers, writing love notes, or learning new lovemaking techniques—although any one of these activities might be a welcome part of a loving relationship. To become a lover, we must first abandon the self-defeating tactics and beliefs … and replace them with more constructive ones. We must change our ideas about love relationships, about our partners, and ultimately, about ourselves. | <urn:uuid:ae6dcb65-14a6-48f3-a325-da942e426318> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bejata.com/wp/2008/11/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976034 | 3,375 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Picture yourself running a gallery, operating your own studio, or winning awards in exhibitions across the country. Your career options in art have never been more exciting, and through Quincy University's Art program, you can begin to access them now.
In our Art program, you can earn a bachelor of fine arts degree in graphic design, as well as minors in Art History, Art Studio, Three-Dimensional Art, Two-Dimensional Art, Graphic Design, and Advertising Production.
A limited number of performance grants are available to entering Art students. Prospective first-year and transfer students are invited to ask an Admissions representative about submitting a portfolio for consideration.
Our Coleman-Hughes Graphic Design Complex provides students with opportunities to work with professional software and printing equipment. Many Art students develop minors in Communication (typically Broadcast or Public Relations) and become familiar with the features of our broadcast studio and editing facility. Students also take advantage of Quincy's unique minor in Entrepreneurship which focuses on the proficiencies needed by an arts professional.
Quincy faculty members combine decades of experience as award-winning artists and design professionals to offer mentoring and guidance for any path you may choose. They continuously exhibit their works, master the latest software, and network with art entrepreneurs to connect you with this fast-paced field. They are also actively engaged in programs of the Coleman Foundation for Entrepreneurship, including the annual Self-Employment in the Arts (SEA) conference and funded projects for student-faculty collaboration with community organizations. Each year, Quincy Art students attend SEA to learn from and network with successful professionals in a variety of arts occupations.
Outside the Classroom
Quincy's student-run Art Club is active on campus, and students in the Art major frequently participate in productions of the Drama Club and the Theatre Program, as well as assist in production of the student newspaper. Quincy artists often participate in international study through the Assisi pilgrimage as well as through summer or semester-long programs. | <urn:uuid:4c076ef2-fb20-4fb8-aab5-ff57dd2a7319> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.quincy.edu/academics/undergraduate-programs/division-of-fine-arts-and-communication/art/overview | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959951 | 405 | 1.523438 | 2 |
THE OVERSIGHT OF OURSELVES – By: Richard Baxter
- It is a fearful thing to be an unsanctified professor, hut much more to be an unsanctified preacher. Doth it not make you tremble when you open the Bible, lest you should there re d the sentence of your own condemnation? When you pen your sermons, little do you think that you are drawing up indictments against your own souls! When you are arguing against sin, that you are aggravating your own! When you proclaim to your hearers the unsearchable riches of Christ and his grace, that you are publishing your own iniquity in rejecting them, and your unhappiness in being destitute of them! What can you do in persuading men to Christ, in drawing them from the world, in urging them to a life of faith and holiness, but conscience, if it were awake, would tell you, that you speak all this to your own confusion? If you speak of hell, you speak of your own inheritance: if you describe the joys of heaven, you describe your own misery, seeing you have no right to ‘the inheritance of the saints in light.’ What can you say, for the most part, but it will be against your own souls O miserable life! that a man should study and preach against himself, and spend his days in a course of self-condemnation! A graceless, inexperienced preacher is one of the most unhappy creatures upon earth and yet he is ordinarily very insensible of his unhappiness; for he hath so many counters that seem like the gold of saving grace, and so many splendid stones that resemble Christian jewels, that he is seldom troubled with the thoughts of his poverty; but thinks he is ‘rich, and increased in goods, and stands in need of nothing, when he is poor, and miserable, and blind, and naked.’ He is acquainted with the Holy Scriptures, he is exercised in holy duties, he liveth not in open disgraceful sin, he serveth at God’s altar, he reproveth other men’s faults, and preacheth up holiness both of heart and life; and how can this man choose but be holy? Oh what aggravated misery is this, to perish in the midst of plenty! – to famish with the bread of life in our hands, while we offer it to others, and urge it on them! That those ordinances of God should be the occasion of our delusion, which are instituted to be the means of our conviction and salvation! and that while we hold the looking-glass of the gospel to others, to show them the face and aspect of their souls, we should either look on the back part of it ourselves, where we can see nothing, or turn it aside, that it may misrepresent us to ourselves! If such a wretched man would take my counsel, he would make a stand, and call his heart and life to an account, and fall a preaching a while to himself, before he preach any more to others. He would consider, whether food in the mouth, that goeth not into the stomach, will nourish; whether he that ‘nameth the name of Christ should not depart from iniquity,” whether God will hear his prayers, if ‘he regard iniquity in his heart,” whether it will serve the turn at the day of reckoning to say, ‘Lord, Lord, we have prophesied in thy name,’ when he shall hear these awful words, ‘Depart from me, I know you not,” and what comfort it will be to Judas, when he has gone to his own place, to remember that he preached with the other apostles, or that he sat with Christ, and was called by him, ‘Friend.’ When such thoughts as these have entered into their souls, and kindly worked a while upon their consciences, I would advise them to go to their congregation, and preach over Origen’s sermon on Psalm 50. 16,17. ‘But unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant into thy mouth seeing thou hatest instruction, and castest my words behind thee.’ And when they have read this text, to sit down, and expound and apply it by their tears; and then to make a full and free confession of their sin, and lament their case before the whole assembly, and desire their earnest prayers to God for pardoning and renewing grace; that hereafter they may preach a Savior whom they know, and may feel what they speak, and may commend the riches of the gospel from their own experience. Alas! it is the common danger and calamity of the Church, to have unregenerate and inexperienced pastors, and to have so many men become preachers before they are Christians; who are sanctified by dedication to the altar as the priests of God, before they are sanctified by hearty dedication as the disciples of Christ; and so to worship an unknown God, and to preach an unknown Christ, to pray through an unknown Spirit, to recommend a state of holiness and communion with God, and a glory and a happiness which are all unknown, and like to be unknown to them for ever. He is like to be but a heartless preacher, that hath not the Christ and grace that he preacheth, in his heart. O that all our students in our universities would well consider this! What a poor business is it to themselves, to spend their time in acquiring some little knowledge of the works of God, and of some of those names which the divided tongues of the nations have imposed on them, and not to know God himself, nor exalt him in their hearts, nor to be acquainted with that one renewing work that should make them happy! They do but ‘walk in a vain show,’ and spend their lives like dreaming men, while they busy their wits and tongue about abundance of names and notions, and are strangers to God and the life of saints. If ever God awaken them by his saving grace, they will have cogitations and employments so much more serious than their unsanctified studies and disputations, that they will confess they did but dream before. A world of business they make themselves about nothing, while they are wilful strangers to the primitive, independent, necessary Being, who is all in all. Nothing can be rightly known, if God be not known; nor is any study well managed, nor to any great purpose, if God is not studied. We know little of the creature, till we know it as it stands related to the Creator: single letters, and syllables uncomposed, are no better than nonsense. He who overlooketh him who is the ‘Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending,’ and seeth not him in all who is the All of all, doth see nothing at all. All creatures, as such, are broken syllables; they signify nothing as separated from God. Were they separated actually, they would cease to be, and the separation would be an annihilation; and when we separate them in our fancies, we make nothing of them to ourselves. It is one thing to know the creatures as Aristotle, and another thing to know them as a Christian. None but a Christian can read one line of his Physics so as to understand it rightly. It is a high and excellent study, and of greater use than many apprehend; but it is the smallest part of it that Aristotle can teach us.
**From Chapter 1, section 1, point 1 – (Taking heed to ourselves). | <urn:uuid:51fccffe-e2a7-464e-a2f4-c2bfdaa9289b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://consumingchristianity.wordpress.com/category/preaching-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973069 | 1,592 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Vipassana: The Music of Joseph C. Phillips, Jr.
Vipassana: The Music of Joseph C. Phillips, Jr.
|Phillips, J.: VipassanaiTunes Artist's PageiTunes Album Page|
|1.||Vipassana: No. 1. of Climbing Heaven and Gazing On the Earth||17:55||$-1|
|2.||Vipassana: No. 2. Stillness Flows Ever Changing||11:55||$-1|
|3.||Vipassana: No. 3. Into All the Valleys Evening Journeys||09:58||$0.99|
|4.||Vipassana: No. 4. the Nothingness That Is the Source of Everything (text By D. Levertov)||20:46||$-1|
In the Pali language of early Buddhist texts, vipassana means "to see things as they really are." Today, vipassana is a type of meditation that seeks spiritual clarity and insight through silence. Wanting to reflect the essence of that quietude in music, composer Joseph C. Phillips Jr. created Vipassana.
A four-part composition featuring 25 instrumentalists and singers, Vipassana is 60 minutes of "beautiful noise"-a fluid and organic fusion of elements from contemporary classical, jazz, and popular music. If you like to bliss out to the gentle modal patterns and rich harmonic progressions of Steve Reich's "Music for 18 Musicians" or John Adams's "Harmonium" this album is for you. Each part of Vipassana is a chapter in the larger journey to clarity:
1. Of Climbing Heaven and Gazing on the Earth: inspired by a photo from Yann Arthus-Bertrand's traveling outdoor photography exhibition, Earth from Above.
2. Stillness Flows Ever Changing: a river of sound creating waves of melodies that dance and weave around each other.
3. Into all the Valleys Evening Journeys: influenced by the "hero's journey" illuminated by Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
4. The Nothingness that is the Source of Everything: partly inspired by one of Bjoerk's Selmasongs as well as a song from Gustav Mahler's Rueckertlieder and featuring Denise Levertov's poem Variation and Reflection on a Theme by Rilke.
As with much of Mr. Phillips' music, Vipassana humbly seeks to create a sense of wonder and beauty that inspires and enlightens.
Vipassana is performed by Mr. Phillips' ensemble Numinous, a collection of some of New York City's finest new music, classical, and jazz musicians.
Composer Joseph C. Phillips, admirably aided by the ensemble Numinous, delivers a stunning 18 minute performance here, blending elements of Steve Reich and Pat Metheny and other sources of inspiration into one of the freshest recordings of the year. Imagine Reich's Music for 18 Musicians, but with an expanded harmonic sensibility, a jazzier pulse, and occasional hints of sweeping Maria Schneider-esque melodies. The individual ingredients are familiar, but I guarantee that you haven't heard them put together in this way before. For want of a better term, let me call it über-minimalism. Phillips' writing is brilliant, and the ensemble performs it with clarity and passion. Count me as a believer.
- Ted Gioia, Jazz.com
And I just got a copy of a (still to be released) CD earlier this week that knocks my socks off . . Vipassana: Numinous Plays the Music of Joseph C. Phillips, Jr. Imagine Steve Reich collaborating with Maria Schneider . . . If you get a chance to hear it, check it out.
- Ted Gioia, Arts Journal
It starts out sounding like something inspired by “Tubular Bells”, but surprise, it’s an interpretation of Buddhist texts set to music. A fusion of contemporary classical, jazz, new age and other left leaning musics, this is certainly head music for the cerebral, but it’s a dandy listening date for people that really like their alternative stuff from left field. More of a spiritual descendant of “Music for 18 Musicians” than anything else, it has the appeal of that dense work but takes you to a different place. Wild and worth it.
- Midwest Record Review
In the Pali language of early Buddhist texts "vipassana" means "to see things as they really are." The word is also translated as "insight" or "clear-seeing." It's a spiritual process based on instinct and intuition rather than reasoning and intellect. In short, Vipassana is the road to the most profound level of understanding. Vipassana is a recording that captures the fluid and organic fuison of elements from contemporary classical, jazz, and popular music.
...Indeed, Phillips continues on the paradoxical track by which he defines himself without any clear definition. ONE THING IS FOR SURE.... HE CONNECTS WITH THE AUDIENCE!!
- Jeff Vallet, The Chronicle
On Innova's Vipassana, composer Joseph C. Phillips Jr. leads the ensemble Numinous through his four-part composition of that name. Vipassana is a word most frequently used in the context of Buddhist mediation, signifying seeing through direct perception rather than through second-hand observation. Phillips' hour-long composition Vipassana is not meant as music to accompany the activity of meditation so much as it is itself a meditation on, and voyage through, various visual stimuli, though the last piece departs from that model in that it envelops a setting of a poem by Denise Levertov. Musically, this quartet of stylish and provocative pieces stands somewhere between the style of Steve Reich and contemporary jazz, though parts of it are texturally much busier than Reich and the use of improvisation is fairly restrained, limited to solo space to spotlight some key players in the ensemble. The ensemble Numinous contains some names familiar from the downtown scene in New York, such as cellist Jody Redhage, violinist Ana Milosavijevic, trumpeter Dave Smith, and trombonist Deborah Weisz; Smith gets a plum solo spot in the third piece, "Into all the Valleys Evening Journeys." Julie Hardy sings the poem in the last piece, "The Nothingness That Is the Source of Everything," very pleasantly, and while this is not ambient music, the sense of music-making throughout is relaxed, dedicated, and for the most part, calm.
For some listeners, Vipassana — at least in its early stages — will seem too derivative of Reich and they may not be able to move forward with it. However, Phillips is taking the long-term view of such input, asking "what might be the next step" rather than merely imitating the model; he folds it into a blend that succeeds in being the sum of its parts and to illustrate his program, which is an unusual one: part symphonic, part spiritual exegesis, and partly developed from a love of particular instrumental combinations. There are certain kinds of harmonic shifts that Phillips prefers, and after listening for awhile you might come to expect them. Nevertheless, Vipassana is never less than likeable, is sincere in intent, and is greatly enjoyable to listen to; Joseph C. Phillips Jr. is a young composer to watch.
- Uncle Dave Lewis, All Music Guide
Nice, smooth, heady, orchestrated modern progressive music. Numinous is the name Joseph C. Phillips Jr. uses for the 25 piece New York ensemble that he collected together to perform Vipassana (a word that, in the Pali language, means "to see things as they really are"). The album is divided into four lengthy segments: "Of Climbing Heaven and Gazing on the Earth," "Stillness Flows Ever Changing," "Into All the Valleys Evening Journeys," and "The Nothingness That is the Source of Everything." Phillips writes nice, flowing pieces that are simultaneously soothing and thought-provoking...and he utilizes mostly traditional instruments which gives the music a nice, warm, organic sound. Some segments of these pieces recall early Phillip Glass...but only slightly. Mr. Phillips apparently wrote these pieces to capture some of the sounds and feelings inspired by nature and the world around us. These inspired compositions reflect this man's apparent fascination with things in the world that are real. Beautifully executed music that should appeal to fans of classical, modern classical, world, and jazz music. (Rating: 5+)
Composer-conductor Joseph C. Phillips, Jr. has a way of making his ensemble, Numinous, sound even larger than its 25 pieces.
...Phillips arrives at an imaginative gestalt of his own...
- David Adler, All About Jazz
A hypnotic rhythmic undertow guides his music and is informed by influences from the world of literature, philosophy and religion.
- John Murph, The Root
Vipassana has more depth than most music classified as New Age, and provides fascinating listening of great beauty along with considerable originality. It creates a sense of wonder missing from most new music
- John Sunier, Audiophile Audition
Phillips shares a taste for the nuances, the sensitivity to the more subtle nuances, the search for a sound liquidity.
- Filippo Focosi, Kathodik
...a twentieth century composer, who has a spiritual understanding of himself and the past, created Vipassana. His ability to express a culturally diverse composition style that will fit into any true music lover's collection. | <urn:uuid:b23b2a95-7a81-4e4c-9b16-c28bd63ee48a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.innova.mu/albums/numinous/vipassana-music-joseph-c-phillips-jr | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930699 | 2,060 | 1.742188 | 2 |
When Aquafil began manufacturing carpet fiber almost 50 years ago, sustainability wasn’t an option but a must. Doing business in the Lake Garda region of Italy, where environmental protection has always been top priority, meant constantly innovating to keep up with strict mandates on noise, water, and air pollution. “Preserving the environment is in our DNA,” says Giulio Bonazzi, President and CEO of what is now the second largest worldwide supplier of Nylon 6 yarn for carpet producers like Interface and Desso. A timeline of unprecedented milestones, including the recovery and reuse of all their own internal production waste, has led to their most important environmental undertaking to date: the Econyl Recycling Project.
Keeping our tootsies pampered during midnight trips to the bathroom is a job any carpet can handle. But clean the air of all that icky stuff floating around that we know is there but glad we can’t see? According to Dutch carpet manufacturer Desso, their new carpet line AirMaster can greatly reduce the concentration of that microscopic particulate matter to improve indoor air quality eight times better than hardwood floors. Tall claim, but they have several independent studies backing it up.
*Leave one comment per person through the end of Wednesday, June 8, 2011, to be considered for a random giveaway of one Tigressá area rug from Shaw Floors.
Last year Shaw Floors sent us a sample kit of their new Tigressá SoftStyle carpet, which is made with recyclable Nylon 6 and designed for durable, long-life performance. In celebration of the one year anniversary of the launch, Shaw sent us an 8′ x 10′ area rug called A Touch Too Much, the number one selling style in Tigressá, and gave us an extra to give away today.
Last month, Shaw invited a number of bloggers to Atlanta for the launch of a new carpet product called Tigressá SoftStyle. While we were invited, we were not able to participate, so the company sent us a sample kit for review. The kit includes a new patch and one that’s been tested with 20,000 steps, and they’re both just as soft — I can’t tell a difference between the two. Hence, the tagline: The Softer, Stronger Carpet. | <urn:uuid:23cb10cd-d44a-4b23-9209-a54bd32cd6ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jetsongreen.com/tag/carpet | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9502 | 483 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Free Speech and Journalists: the Leif Parsell Case
When you have to shut up: Reporters and editors are generally big supporters of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech. They bristle at any attempt to limit the information they can convey to the public.
But those same journalists are also often firm believers in certain limits on their personal right to express their opinions. They feel a responsibility to keep their own views to themselves to avoid appearing biased. They don’t donate to politicians or support controversial causes they might have to cover. Unless they’re on the clock, they don’t appear at events advocating for one side of an issue. I’ve even known political reporters who were so obsessed with maintaining their mantle of objectivity that they refused to register or vote.
Much of this is voluntary, but not all. Many news organizations have ethical standards they expect their employees to abide by – even though they infringe on freedom of speech in ways that would be unacceptable at almost any other employer except the CIA.
It’s not unusual for those applying for jobs in journalism to be asked about previous activities that might call into question their impartiality. While I’m aware of editors, reporters and analysts who worked in politics or for advocacy groups before joining (or rejoining) a news operation, it’s not the norm, and it usually caused problems, not only for the journalist, but also for his or her employer’s credibility.
The situation may be slightly different at places that practice advocacy journalism. At most of them, it’s still considered unseemly to work actively for a candidate, but it’s also a given that opinion will color the coverage. As long as that’s obvious to the audience, it’s not an ethical problem.
For that reason, nobody should be shocked if the reporters for the Maine Wire, the conservative website run by the Maine Heritage Policy Center think tank, happen to hold right-wing views, any more than they should be upset if the Portland Phoenix staff tilts distinctly to the left. (Disclosure: My weekly political column runs in the Phoenix, but I’m not a staff member.) But even at those places, there are limits.
If a reporter for a far-left alternative weekly started blogging on his own time about forcibly rounding up all those who disagreed with the official Communist Party line and shipping them to re-education camps and gulags, I doubt that person would be employed for long. If a journalist had a history of that sort of thing, I suspect they wouldn’t get hired in the first place, since most employers would do at least a perfunctory Google search before making a decision.
Which brings us to Leif Parsell. As my Down East.com colleague Mike Tipping reported, Parsell, the Maine Wire’s rookie reporter, had a resume replete with racist references. These weren’t mere slips or passing comments. They were repeated public claims of white superiority and of the inferiority of other ethnic groups that wouldn’t have been out of place at a Ku Klux Klan rally.
As repulsive as this stuff is, there’s no question Parsell has a First Amendment right to say it. But for any news organization striving to achieve some measure of respect, having a staff member with that sort of baggage is unacceptable.
To its credit, as soon as Tipping reported that an anonymous blogger had uncovered Parsell’s unseemly past, the Maine Wire’s parent, the MHPC, hastily issued a statement (it’s also on Tipping’s posting) announcing his immediate firing. Unfortunately, that isn’t quite good enough.
The MHPC didn’t bother to post any of this information on the Maine Wire, where several of Parsell’s stories remain online. It didn’t explain why an organization that frequently promotes itself as research-oriented was so casual about checking the background of an applicant. In short, it damaged the already questionable credibility of its news site and did nothing to mitigate that damage.
As for Parsell, it’s important to remember that he wasn’t canned for exercising his First Amendment rights. He was dismissed for failing to understand the ethics of his profession.
News Simply gets more complicated: Maine News Simply plans to start doing real news. The Portland-based website, launched nineteen months ago, announced last week that it’s planning to hire its own reporters and editors to produce original content for what, until now, has been little more than an aggregate of links to stories on real news sites. News Simply founder Stefan Willimann also promised to keep the site free, an apparent swipe at the MaineToday Media newspapers, which are expected to require payment for full access in the near future.
Tales of sales: Bangor Metro magazine will soon have a new owner. The Bangor Daily News reports that the six-year-old business and lifestyle publication is being sold by publisher Mark Wellman and his Webster Atlantic Corp. to “a group of Bangor-area business leaders.” The only member of that group identified so far is former Baldacci administration Commissioner of Economic Development Jack Cashman. Webster Atlantic is also unloading its other two publications, Real Maine Weddings and Maine Ahead, but hasn’t yet said who the buyer is.
Meanwhile, Radio-Info.com reports that WHOU (100.1 FM) in Houlton is being sold by County Communications for $375,000 to Northern Maine Media, a Houlton-based company owned by Fred Grant. Grant is paying a mere $2,965 a moth for the station over five years, after which he’ll owe a balloon payment of $280,000.
County confusion: The Jan. 2 Portland Press Herald had an informative story by staff writer Kelley Bouchard on why property taxes in many communities aren’t going down as housing values decline. Bouchard did a good job of explaining a complex problem, until she mentioned “[e]ach of Cumberland County’s 14 municipalities.”
For the record, there are more than fourteen cities and towns in Cumberland County, and two of those listed in the accompanying chart, Biddeford and Saco, are actually in York County.
Your editor wouldn’t be from away, would he?
Turn back the years: A headline from the Bangor Daily News website posted on Jan. 2:
“A year of bath salts in Maine; users getting younger”
Seems like the answer to the state’s aging population problem.
Al Diamon can be emailed at [email protected]. | <urn:uuid:cbd5e0d0-21de-464e-9b3e-b6088fcba936> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.downeast.com/media-mutt/2012/january/speech-journalists-parsell | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962504 | 1,411 | 1.640625 | 2 |
by Sophia Stein
NO, the feature film from director Pablo Larraín (Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Film, Chile) concerns the campaign of opposition leaders during the 1988 Chilean national plebiscite to win the vote in a referendum on whether to extend the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet — YES or NO. The victory of the NO campaign resulted in Pinochet voluntarily and peaceably relinquishing office, an incident without historic precedent. Larraín was just a child at the time of the vote, and his film is a fictionalized retelling from the point of view of an imagined advertising man, René Saavedra (a Chilean Don Draper of sorts), played by Gael Garcia Bernal (The Motorcycle Diaries, Amores Perros, Babel).
If The Battle of Algiers is the how-to manual for guerilla warfare, NO might be considered its materialist antithesis. NO is as much a meditation on democracy and concomitant capitalism, as anything else. The opening and closing of the film form tragi-comic bookends: close-up on René, as he pitches in hushed tones his ground-breaking, future-oriented proposal — cut to a spot for a soft drink, cut to a commercial for a soap opera, respectively. The consolidation of capitalism as the one viable economic system in Chile, has been effectively reinforced by the referendum and campaigns.
NO has stirred up its share of controversy in its native Chile where Larraín has been criticized by politicos for trivializing and misrepresenting the historical record. Archival footage and fictional sequences are so seamlessly intercut, that it is difficult to separate fact from fiction in viewing the film. Larraín explains that under the dictatorship of Pinochet, Chileans lived for many years without fiction of any sort, so its citizens are naturally accustomed to seeing films as propaganda. By way of rebuttal, Larraín argues that his film NO should more appropriately be read as “a fable.”
The retelling of history is always an abstraction that reflects most acutely the perspective of the storyteller. While historians may quibble about the details, NO is cutting across nationalistic borders to prompt introspection and dialogue in whichever markets it plays.
Cultural Weekly’s Sophia Stein recently sat down with Pablo Larraín to discuss his film, NO.
Sophia Stein: The plebiscite is an event that took place in 1988, when you were only 12 years old. What do you remember of that historic time?
Pablo Larraín: I don’t have an exact memory of the particular facts. What I remember, is more on an emotional level. We were living in a very dark and sad environment and mood, and all of a sudden, these guys came up with this super-fresh, optimistic, bright message, and it was quite shocking and unforgettable. That campaign not only aired during the referendum; it also aired afterwards, in special programs that would commemorate what happened.
S2: With the fictional character of René Saavedra, you have created a modern hero, who symbolizes the political awakening of an apparently apolitical person. You’ve commented that this rite of maturity happens “when one realizes that it is possible to change things first-handedly.” You must have experienced such an awakening yourself?
PL: I come from a family that was right wing, that supported the “YES,” at that point in time. So I had to learn by myself, while becoming an adult at university, what actually did happen. And once you learn all those facts, you create your own perspective, form your own opinion. When I was interviewing the people who actually participated in the campaign back then, they were just trying to follow their instincts, trying to change their reality through the tools that they had. I don’t think that they ever really realized in that moment, how important what they were doing would be. Probably because of that, they acted with a lot of freedom. Most of the great human achievements are made in circumstances where a person is unaware of the full import of their actions. That lack of consciousness is very interesting to me. It’s like when you make a movie — if while you’re doing it, you’re thinking “Is it going to be successful or not?” “What exactly is it going to mean?” and “How big might this be to others?” — you’re probably creating something with too much self-consciousness, and it probably won’t end up being that interesting. When you are making a movie, you just get into a private space with the other people who are making the movie. It’s like a lab; you just work on it. And then when it’s ready, you show it to others. And you hope that it makes sense, and that it will travel, and somehow win over audiences, and that it might be interesting for more people than just the people working on it.
S2: Will NO screen in the Middle East; in the wake of the Arab Spring, the resonance is undeniable?
PL: Yes, it will. What’s funny and so beautiful is that this movie tells the story about facts that happened twenty-five years ago, in a little country in South America, and then when you show it in other countries, everybody reflects upon their own political situation. I was talking to Greek journalists and they said, “This could have been made here!” And then we were in France, and it was the same reaction. And again, in Mexico. Last October, right before the US presidential elections, we were screening the film at the New York Film Festival, and people there were telling me that we should release the film before the elections, so it would make sense to people here. And I said: “Yes, but wait — this is a referendum where people had to vote between a dictator and a democracy, so how could this be meaningful for you guys, today?” The politics might be so different, but finally, you reach a point where you start discussing the values and defects of democracy. How that democracy is affecting your quotidian life? That happens everywhere.
S2: There is a moment at the end of the film, where the “NO” campaigners have just learned that they have won the referendum, and there is a spontaneous eruption of dancing in the streets. René is carrying his son through the parade, but he is not dancing. He almost has tears in his eyes and a look of trepidation or anticipation. That moment so perfectly encapsulates feelings of optimism that maybe things could change, juxtaposed with pessimism that in reality, often things don’t change as much as we would like. How did you direct Gael Garcia Bernal in that moment?
PL: No matter what his character says, you have the feeling that René is hiding something all the time. It’s not just what I could think up as the director, that’s on Gael’s shoulders. Gael is able to manage that mystery that’s so important to me, and I think it is important for the film because that’s where the audience does their work. They start thinking and wondering what is really going on. So you bring it home and try to find some answers, where there is just no one answer, and that is interesting. Also, I think that the character is not really aware of what he has achieved, and that lack of self-consciousness is beautiful. He’s not a hero that is fighting a war, where he knows what is going to happen if they win it. At that point, people didn’t really know much of anything. They just knew that Pinochet was going to be out somehow in the coming years. They expected it to happen, but the first step to do that was to win that referendum. It’s also this sad sensation that René was used by political interests. After they’d won, once all his work and talent was used up in the campaign, the politicians would just take over and leave the others behind where they were — which is something that did happen in my country, sadly. So it’s a combination of emotions.
S2: The screenplay is based on a previously unstaged short play The Referendum by Chilean writer Antonio Skármeta (novelist: Los días del arco iris and Ardiente paciencia, the basis for the film Il Postino). What about his play grabbed your attention?
PL: Antonio picked the perspective of the ad guy as a point of departure to tell this story. There were so many different roles to choose from; you might have picked the point of view of the politicians, the “YES” guys, the militarists, the demonstrators — you had many, many options, even Pinochet was an option. But the ad guy had this — danger and sharpness, that was interesting to us. After two years of research, interviewing everybody and finding all the archival footage, we had heaps and mountains of information, and it was so hard to compress into a script. Screenwriter Pedro Peirano (The Maid) was able to so wonderfully distill everything down into the script.
S2: The first thing that you notice when watching the film is the square aspect ratio (4:3)—that classic TV look. Can you talk about your choice to shoot with 1983 U-matic video cameras?
PL: Most of the time, the archival footage in a feature film is just a couple of minutes in the total length of the film. At least one third of our film was going to come from archival footage, so I didn’t want to have the audience fighting the transitions from fiction to archival footage. We wanted to create an illusion for the audience where they would not recognize a difference between what we made and what had actually happened. So you create an amalgam: where the fiction footage we shot becomes documentary; and where the archival footage they shot becomes fiction. That is a very interesting crossover. It also has to do with an attitude. Sometimes people forget that a camera is like the paint that’s applied to the canvas. It would be a completely different painting if it’s oil or if it’s acrylic. So too, with cameras and their textures. So we had to go there, because that really matters.
S2: You have said, producing this film with analog cameras is “a statement against the aesthetic hegemony of HD.” Care to elaborate?
PL: You know, when you go to a film festival and see ten movies in three days, it is amazing how alike one another they look. Since HD is more accessible to a lot of people (which is wonderful), HD seems to be the only possible technology today. I have HD TV in my house, and you see a soap-opera that might be uninteresting (lousy and stupid), and then you see a movie, and they both look the same. So you want to try to create something that would be FRESH at least, or that it could have IDENTITY. And it would look, as only that particular movie looks. Which is how it used to be when we were working with film. Labs were different, the pros were different, and every DP would really control the look. No matter how much they tell you that you have a lot of tools in post-production to control the look of HD … I tell you, we tried. We shot tests in seven different formats, and it’s just not possible to reach the look we were able to achieve with the U-matic video cameras. Because this is not only an old video camera, this is the first video system ever made by human-kind. Those tube cameras create an image that is just not possible to create through any other post-production process. So we wanted to be there, because it was better, and also because it is a statement against the hegemony of HD.
S2: NO is a US co-production with Participant Media. Executive producer Jeff Skoll and Participant have become synonymous with a certain type of story—films that compel social change. What did it take to get Participant Media on board to finance your feature?
PL: They read the script through Executive Vice-President, Jonathan King, and they thought it was fantastic and felt connected, so they supported the film. Participant Media is creating interesting films all over the world. They don’t care about all the little, insignificant things that most of the industry is worried about; they don’t care what language the film is shot in. Those guys just love movies and have fun making them. It has been a privilege for us to work with them, and to work with Funny Balloons our co-producers in France. The producers were also smart in the editing process, helping us to create a movie that was more universal, helping us to understand what they didn’t understand, and what was important to include for an audience that was less familiar with what had happened in Chile, than we were. I don’t know if a movie can actually change reality. Maybe it does. I’m not really sure. But what I’m completely sure about, is that NO stimulates reflection in its audience. Maybe through that reflection, people will become more connected with their political reality. And if that happens, it would be amazing.
Images: Top, Gael Garcia Bernal (left) and director Pablo Larrain, photo by Tomás Dittburn; below, Gael Garcia Bernal as René Saavedra, photo by Tomás Dittburn. Photos courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics | <urn:uuid:51c1c441-72cb-4eb1-bfd4-01ed74fee065> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.culturalweekly.com/is-no-too-good-to-be-true.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97896 | 2,870 | 1.640625 | 2 |
The history of rail vehicle production in Vagonka starts at the beginning in the last century. At that time was established a Joint Stock Company "Staudinger Waggonfabrik A.G." with Registered office in Butovice by Studénka. The company has been entered into Trade Register on 12 December 1900 a thus the company was founded.
During the period of its existence the Company went through a wide range of products, organizational and ownership changes, which were concluded by entry of foreign owner into ČKD VAGONKA STUDÉNKA and detachment of passenger rail vehicles from production and business plans of this company.
Production of passenger railway vehicles was moved to a new company ČKD VAGONKA, s.r.o. founded by a Joint Stock Company ČKD PRAHA HOLDING, a.s. on 28 January 2000. The Company Limited was transformed into a Join Stock Company from 1 January 2001 and on 1 March 2001, left Studénka and moved to modernised work-shops in Ostrava.
Since January 2005 was ČKD VAGONKA part of ŠKODA HOLDING Group. ČKD VAGONKA, a.s. trade name was changed into ŠKODA VAGONKA a.s. in March 2008. | <urn:uuid:f1c09164-d68a-4510-a1d2-4a6f6e7d84e7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.vagonka.cz/20000.asp?ids=2220 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975283 | 281 | 1.578125 | 2 |
One of the strangest installations of Kendal's Street Arts festival 'Mint Fest' will be an igloo -made entirely from Kendal Mint cake.
The idea is the brainchild of artist Richard DeDomenici who was inspired by explorers such as Edmund Hilary and Ernest Shackleton.
Richard will use 64 giant slabs of the mint cake to make the igloo over two days, before eating his way out of it.Richard said:
– Richard DeDomenici
"We will be working with very big blocks so this is uncharted territory. Nobody has ever tried to do anything like this with Mint Cake before.
"The project is linked to explorers like Shackleton who used Kendal Mint Cake on his trips and built igloos. We are embracing his spirit of exploration and uncertainty and this project is a journey into the unknown. We are genuinely not sure what will happen."
His previous works have been seen at venues including the Edinburgh Festival and the National Theatre. He has performed as far afield as Beijing, Iceland and New York. | <urn:uuid:245d7597-a95d-4e72-b2b3-f54f1fe84e92> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.itv.com/news/border/story/2012-08-30/mint-igloo/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968346 | 218 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Written by PETA
A new billboard in Mooresville, N.C., is doing its best to boost Bloom supermarket's beef sales by using huge fans to waft the smell of charcoal and black pepper fragrance oils (aka the store's idea of charred cow) into traffic.
PETA thinks that it's time for people in Mooresville—which is best known for its NASCAR teams—to wake up and smell the cruelty. That's why we're trying to raise a stink of our own by using the same technology to erect a realistic, slaughterhouse-inspired, stench-producing billboard nearby:
Imagine sitting in hot, rush-hour traffic while the smell of fear, rotting flesh, blood, guts, urine, and feces drifts through your car window. If that whiff of reality doesn't inspire shoppers to head to the produce aisle, I don't know what will!
My advice to Mooresville residents: Look after yourself, the environment, and animals the next time you fire up the grill for a NASCAR event. Race to the store, take a left past Bloom's meat counter, and score some Boca burgers instead. Seriously, we wouldn't steer you wrong.
Written by Amy Skylark Elizabeth
you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail [email protected]. If you need to report cruelty to
an animal, please click
here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the
animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local
police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA
immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
Follow PETA on Twitter!
Almost all of us grew up eating meat, wearing leather, and going to circuses and zoos. We never considered the impact of these actions on the animals involved. For whatever reason, you are now asking the question: Why should animals have rights? Read more. | <urn:uuid:738a54d3-fc78-470d-a3db-80916dbf9a49> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.peta.org/b/thepetafiles/archive/2010/06/10/Get-a-Whiff-of-This.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950436 | 417 | 1.773438 | 2 |
I was invited to speak at Mobile Marketing Magazine’s mRetail Summit last week to talk about the history of location-based services. Some of you may or may not know that I spent my early career in fashion retail and then some years later in 2000, joined the mobile scene at ZagMe, where we sent text messages to shoppers at Lakeside and Bluewater shopping malls while people were actually out shopping. My retail experience certainly came in very handy there. Anyway, I was lucky enough to be, not only at the birth of mobile marketing, but also at the birth of mobile location-based services.
I’m not sure my slides will mean much without the dialogue, but they’re here if you want to take a look.
I suppose the key learnings for me from that time are
- Customers wanted a permission-based offers channel for their local shopping mall
- Once they’d signed up to the service, people assumed we knew where they were (we didn’t, we spoofed the location bit) and expected us to send them relevant messages
- We were at least 10 years ahead of our time
- It’s not about the technology, it’s about the application of technology. Understanding how to communicate with customers is essential. Understanding how retailers and retail staff operate is critical.
- The ZagMe concept is still sound, but despite several services attempting to do something similar in the last 10 years, they’ve all failed. My guess is that it’s because they focussed on the technology and thought that retailers would change the way they do things to adapt to the technology rather than the other way around.
- Location information is mostly useless without some context
- Past behaviour is not a good predictor of future behaviour. A recent example to demonstrate this… I’m going to Barcelona next month. I searched extensively on Google to find my accommodation. Now the only ads I see are adverts for accommodation in Barcelona. If you really did understand my behaviour, you’d know that the time to serve me those ads is in December and early January. By the end of January it’s too late. But behaviour predictors don’t have that level of granularity. But I guess that conversation is for another day. | <urn:uuid:7da25546-bf68-4a6d-baf6-18a111351378> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.technokitten.blogspot.jp/2012/01/short-history-of-location-based.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972002 | 477 | 1.726563 | 2 |
WASHINGTON, D.C. - ConAgra Foods, Inc., the owner and operator of a food ingredient and flour mill in Hastings, Minnesota, was sentenced for violating the Clean Water Act, the Department of Justice announced today. U.S. District Court Judge Paul Magnuson sentenced ConAgra Foods, Inc., to pay a criminal fine of $138,513 and provide $55,000 in community service to the National Park Foundation as well as $55,000 in community service to the Friends of the Mississippi River. ConAgra was also sentenced to pay $1,487 in restitution to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA).
ConAgra Foods pleaded guilty to a one-count information on September 1, 2005, alleging that between January 1998 and December 2003 it failed to report and maintain documentation of temperature readings of non-contact cooling water discharged from the Hasting facility as required by its National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permit.
The information alleges that ConAgra Foods held a permit to discharge non-contact cooling water, used in the facility to cool air compressors. This discharged water flowed out of the facility, over bedrock into the Vermillion River, a tributary of the Mississippi River.
By permit, the non-contact cooling water was not to exceed an average daily temperature of 86 degrees Fahrenheit. During an inspection, it was determined that readings which were higher than allowed by the permit were not transmitted to the MPCA in required Discharge Monitoring Reports.
“Our ability to protect our Nation's rivers from the harmful effects of pollution depends upon the honesty of facilities that receive discharge permits under the Clean Water Act,” said David M. Uhlmann, Chief of the U.S. Department of Justice's Environmental Crimes Section. “When companies fail to honor their legal obligation to report discharges accurately, and seek to conceal Clean Water Act violations, criminal prosecution is appropriate.”
The case was investigated by the Minneapolis Office of EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division in coordination with the MPCA. The case was prosecuted by Trial Attorney Jennifer Whitfield of the Environmental Crimes Section of the U.S. Department of Justice. | <urn:uuid:aab7af34-2a4a-45e6-b65c-712cb2fb04d1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2006/January/06_enrd_024.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956999 | 444 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Re: Cell Starters vs. Finishers
I think in queen breeding, even more so than many other aspects of beekeeping, there are multiple ways that can all be succesfully used.
Some would work better at certain seasons of the year while others would be fairly consistant across all seasons
Some are more useful in one situation than another, for example some of the more complex methods would be less use to a hobbyist only wanting a few queens, but produce more queens on a less work per queen basis, for a large producer.
"We don't need no education" (Pink Floyd) - Yes you do, you just used a double negative. | <urn:uuid:3c61926e-3997-4b1f-a842-c684ef0cab99> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?250789-Cell-Starters-vs-Finishers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951415 | 136 | 1.765625 | 2 |
As I conduct my Time Management Seminars all over, my audiences consistently tell me they want more out of life. Almost everyone I speak with has a yearning for improving several aspects of their lives. They have dreams and goals about their future as yet unrealized.
Many come to the end in life with those visions unrealized, pictures in their minds only.
Achieving goals helps us to get the "want to's" in our lives. Life ought to be more than just achieving the "have to's".
I offer three important tips to help increase the probability of achieving your dreams, getting more of what you want in your life.
An even stronger tool is to prepare a goal scrapbook. Nothing fancy. Get a three-ring binder and fill it with notebook paper. Then get a picture of each your goals and paste them into your new goal scrapbook. You can go to the car dealer and get a brochure of the new car you want. Visit a travel agent and pick up brochures of your ideal destinations and add that. Clip a picture of your dream house out of the newspaper's real estate section and add this as well. Then, each night, review your goal scrapbook and see a picture of what will surely be coming to you. It's like viewing a crystal ball and seeing your future.
Having written out the goal, placed a picture in our goal scrapbook, quantified it, and set a deadline, we can now break that goal down into its little component pieces so that achievement becomes realistic and manageable.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. No goal achievement is a leap across some huge canyon. Many are intimidated and driven away from going after what they really want in their lives for fear they will have to take a giant leap across that canyon and, hey, what if I don't leap far enough? Disaster.
Let's say you have a goal to get an additional $10,000 in savings two years from today. Make up a picture of your new bank statement two years from now showing the additional $10,000 in your account. The goal is in writing. It is quantified and a deadline has been set. Now you can break that goal into its little steps for achievement.
To get $10,000 over the next two years requires getting an additional $5,000 per year. A year is made up of twelve months, so that means you need to get approximately $400 per month. A month is made up of four weeks, so that's $100 per week. And a week is made of, let's say, five business days. That's $20 per day. (I have not added in interest to these calculations just for simplicity.)
I don't know about you, but the notion of going out in the world tomorrow and getting an extra $20 is a whole lot more realistic and certainly a whole more doable than getting $10,000. Getting the entire $10,000 is the leap across the canyon. It scares me. But $20 is a single step. That's something I can handle. Now the goal seems realistic and is realizable.
But until you write out your goal, quantify it, and set a deadline so that you break it down to its small steps, it will forever appear to be too big a stretch and therefore unattainable. But every time you follow these three steps and break the goal down, you will always find that you have within your control what it takes to accomplish that next step. And once you begin, you are on your way!
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The October unemployment rate increased a tenth of a percent to 9 percent, according to figures from the Connecticut Department of Labor. One survey showed that 1,200 jobs were added in the previous month despite the uptick in the unemployment rate.
“With October’s results we are, for the first time, showing year-over-year declines in job levels,” said said Andy Condon, director of the Department of Labor’s Office of Research. “However, we believe that when we complete our annual benchmark revisions in March, we will be showing as many as 8,000 to 9,000 more jobs in the state than the payroll survey currently indicates. If so, the current year-over-year declines will no longer hold.”
The state’s unemployment rate peaked at 9 percent twice this year. Before July 2012, the previous time unemployment was at 9 percent was April 2011.
In a written statement, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy stressed the severity of the recession that slumped the economy.
“Though not as severe this month as in previous months, the household and business surveys are once again pointing in opposite directions,” Malloy said. “On the one hand, we created 1,200 jobs this month. But on the other, our overall unemployment rate increased slightly. If these conflicting results tell any single story, it’s that more people are attempting to enter the workforce because conditions are beginning to improve.”
The survey shows that the average workweek droped from 34.4 hours in 2011 to 34 hours in October. Average hourly earnings dropped 54 cents to $27.93 in a year. | <urn:uuid:6c3bc1e4-5875-4a74-a532-263f68205b58> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://manchester.patch.com/groups/business-news/p/connecticut-unemployment-back-to-9-percent-d71ddc8c | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96365 | 344 | 1.726563 | 2 |
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In the last several months, we have looked in some detail at the prosecution of Democratic Governor Don E. Siegelman in Alabama. There is now substantial evidence that this prosecution was politically motivated, involving a number of key figures in the Alabama G.O.P., Karl Rove, U.S. attorneys in Birmingham and Montgomery, and political appointees at the Justice Department in Washington.
This fall, the House Judiciary Committee will conduct hearings into the Siegelman prosecution at which substantial further details will emerge including a series of further incidents tying the matter to Karl Rove and senior Alabama Republicans. But while studying the Siegelman case, I have been looking over a series of cases in Mississippi which are remarkably similar to the Siegelman case in many ways. At this point I believe, based on documents and evidence which have come to me, that the Mississippi prosecutions will also shortly be exposed as being politically motivated and directed. In any event it is clear that they were designed to, and did, have a key role in influencing elections in Mississippi for the benefit of the Republican Party.
Today, I want to look at one of the Mississippi cases, involving Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz. Justice Diaz was charged and acquitted twice in federal court. After reviewing the Diaz case in some detail, it is clear that no independent prosecutor would ever have brought these charges, that the prosecution was inspired and driven by political appointees in Washington working together with Diaz’s political opponents in Mississippi, and that the prosections served a manifestly partisan, and inherently corrupt, political agenda.
But to understand the Diaz prosecution, it’s essential to start in Washington, with the man widely viewed as the most powerful Mississippian in the nation’s capital. In 2002 Haley Barbour, one of the key figures in recent Republican party history, told friends and supporters that he had decided to return to Mississippi and seek to capture the Jackson statehouse for the G.O.P. in 2003. Under Barbour’s leadership, the G.O.P. captured both houses of Congress—a red-letter event since the G.O.P. had not controlled the House of Representatives for forty years. Along with Newt Gingrich, Barbour was one of the architects of the new Republican majority that wielded great influence in Congress even during the Clinton years, and emerged as a real powerhouse after Bush brought the G.O.P. back into the White House in 2001.
Barbour ran the G.O.P. as its chair from 1993-97. But on the side, lobbying work was his passion and he quickly became a fixture of the K Street community. In 1991 he founded Barbour Griffith & Rogers LLC, (BGR) which Fortune magazine labeled the most powerful lobbying firm in the United States in an article run in 2001. While recently profiled here in connection with the firm’s representation of wannabe Iraqi strongman Ayad Allawi, BGR is best known as the lobbyist of choice for the tobacco industry—in 1997 alone, it took in $1.7 million from tobacco sources.
If the tobacco industry had a principal adversary in the eighties and nineties, it might have been Michael Moore—not the documentary film producer, but the attorney general of Mississippi. While serving from 1988-2004, he brought the state into litigation against big tobacco in a major way. The state was represented by Dickie Scruggs and a group of trial lawyers based in the Gulf Coast area. In 1997, Moore settled Mississippi’s claims in the tobacco litigation, leading to a plan for tobacco companies to pay Mississippi about $4 billion over the next quarter century. Scruggs and dozens of other trial lawyers who funded the case, split $1.4 billion in attorney fees from the companies.
The settlement made a number of lawyers in south Mississippi profoundly wealthy. Paul Minor was one of these men. They were, for reasons that should be obvious, by and large supporters of the Mississippi Democratic Party, its attorney general, Michael Moore, and governor Ronnie Musgrove. The trial lawyers were a core constituency of the Democratic Party of Mississippi before 1997. But with the settlement money that came their way during that year, they emerged as the party’s treasury. Moreover, the south Mississippi trial bar was closely tied to the Democratic administration in Jackson, providing the key pool for the recruitment of judges and appointed and elected officials. If the Republicans had wanted to deliver an incapacitating blow to their political opposition, there is no question how it could be delivered: by going after the south Mississippi trial bar that funded Democratic campaigns and supplied key Democratic candidates.
As the fall of 2002 approached, and thoughts began to turn to the looming election, something curious emerged. It was learned that FBI agents were busy all over the southern part of the state looking at the dealings of prominent Mississippi trial lawyers. Investigators were examining money given by trial lawyers to judges as loans and campaign contributions. They were also reviewing the judicial appointments of Governor Musgrove, with a focus on anything that involved south Mississippi trial lawyers. In the coming election it appeared that large sums of money from the business community gushed through the Law Enforcement Alliance of America and on to the coffers of Republican candidates for office and G.O.P.-favored judicial candidates. Another key source of campaign money had ties to the casino gambling interests represented by Jack Abramoff. Yet no investigative or prosecutorial resources were being channeled into an examination of these very shadowy campaign funding processes.
On July 25, 2003—ninety days before the gubernatorial election between Musgrove and Barbour—the U.S. Attorney in Jackson, Dunn Lampton, secured indictments of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz, his ex-wife Jennifer, Chancery Judge Wes Teel, former Circuit Judge Whitfield, and attorney Paul Minor. The accusations revolved around loans made to the judges and claims that they were corruptly influenced in their decisions. The indictments were trumpeted very loudly in the Mississippi media by U.S. Attorney Lampton, and played a focal role in the election campaign of Haley Barbour. The G.O.P. campaign used reports about the indictments and criminal investigations very prominently in print and broadcast media.
Noel Hillman, the head of the Public Integrity Section, whose focal role in the Siegelman prosecution was portrayed here, also occupied the central role in these cases. His presence helped develop media coverage for the cases. Hillman, a political protégé of Michael Chertoff, was touted as a “professional prosecutor,” and his involvement was used to show that the cases were not politically motivated. And as the case developed it became apparent that Hillman had taken control of it. Indeed, during the trial, U.S. Attorney Lampton suggested that he had “recused” himself and that the case was being managed by lawyers from Washington. It appears that this “recusal” was at least as illusory as Leura Canary’s in Montgomery, however. When the point was pushed, Lampton clarified that he had not recused himself, but Peter Ainsworth, the Public Integrity trial attorney who sat as first chair in the trial, told the court that the case was being carried by Washington rather than the Jackson U.S. Attorney’s office.
Most lawyers I spoke with said they were mystified by the Government’s decision to go after Diaz. “I don’t get it,” said one, “the bottom line is that Diaz never participated in any cases in which the loan would have made a difference. He recused himself from all the cases.” Diaz was represented up to the indictment by former U.S. Attorney Brad Pigott, and afterwards by Rob McDuff. Pigott expressed his amazement that the case was being pressed even after investigators had established that Diaz did not participate in Minor’s cases. He couldn’t understand why his client was being charged. Pigott met with Noel Hillman on one of his visits to Jackson in 2004, before the indictment was announced, trying to dissuade him from proceeding. Pigott describes Hillman as being resolute and indifferent to the points which ultimately controlled the case in the mind of the jury. But it could be that Hillman had something else on his mind. These events line up with Hillman’s pursuit of a judicial appointment and frequent interaction with the White House in connection with his application.
The First Target: Oliver E. Diaz, Jr.
A graduate of both the University of South Alabama and the University of Mississippi School of Law, Oliver E. Diaz was elected as a Republican to the Mississippi House of Representatives, serving from 1988 to 1994. During this period he also served as City Attorney for D’Iberville, Mississippi. Later Diaz was elected in a non-partisan contest to Mississippi’s intermediate appellate court. While a Republican, Diaz states that he entered the Mississippi legislature in the same class with Senator Ronnie Musgrove. The two soon became good friends, and their philosophies about life and the law showed they had more in common than the party labels reflected. Diaz was appointed to fill an unexpired term on the Mississippi Supreme Court by Musgrove in March 2000.
Mississippi lawyers describe Diaz as a respected judge who was, despite his Republican Party affiliation, viewed as more pro-plaintiff than most. He hails from the Gulf Coast region of Mississippi and has close connections with the successful plaintiff’s bar centered there. After being appointed to the Supreme Court by a Democratic governor, he had to mount an expensive campaign for election to the court in his own right. He sought financial support for the campaign. This led to Diaz’s financial dealings with the Democratic Party’s principal contributor and fundraiser in Mississippi, Paul Minor. With financial support from Minor and other sources—largely from the trial lawyers of Mississippi—Justice Diaz was elected to an 8-year Supreme Court term in 2002.
The charges eventually brought by U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton accused Diaz, along with Minor and two other Mississippi judges, of bribery and mail fraud crimes. Specifically, Diaz was accused of accepting loans from Minor with the understanding that Diaz would influence a libel case pending against Minor’s father, the celebrated Louisiana and Mississippi journalist Bill Minor. Diaz was also accused of giving Minor an unfair advantage in cases in which he was involved.
From the start, however, local federal prosecutors raised questions about the legitimacy of the case. Diaz never actually participated in the deliberation or resolution of any case involving Paul Minor either directly or in which Minor was counsel. Diaz did participate in the decision of the case involving Minor’s father, which was resolved in a unanimous ruling by the Court. And at no point were any of Diaz’s fellow judges interviewed about their knowledge of impropriety on his or Minor’s part. Had they been, the interviewer would have learned that Diaz did nothing to attempt to influence the court or his fellow judges about the case.
However, a number of aspects of the investigation and prosecution of Diaz reflect serious irregularity. In the Supreme Court election, Diaz had faced stiff opposition from a Mississippi trial judge named Keith Starrett, who had been backed by G.O.P. interests. Starrett’s mentor and friend, who took a deep interest in his election campaign, was none other that U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton, and Starrett’s law secretary was Donna Lampton, a close relative of the prosecutor. So from a distance, the investigation and targeting of Diaz looked suspiciously like payback for an unanticipated election defeat. Moreover, the investigation had proceeded as an inquiry into just who financed the judges supported by the Democrats, and how. The Republicans appeared to be astonished at their poor showing in many of these races, into which large sums of money had flowed from the business community. There was, it seems, a strong interest in shutting off the flow of cash to the political opposition to better their electoral odds.
The most amazing disclosure to come out post-trial goes to FBI agent Kevin Rust. He had managed the inquiry into Diaz, put the case together, testified before the grand jury, and sat through the trial. Yet an examination of campaign finance records similarly links Rust to the political campaign of Diaz’s opponent, Keith Starrett. Under applicable ethics rules, neither Rust nor Lampton should have participated in any way in the case. Yet it appears that they built and propelled it. Was it payback for the election defeat of their friend Keith Starrett, now a federal judge?
The Acquittal, a Second Indictment, a Second Acquittal
The jury did not think much of the charges and evidence against Diaz. He was acquitted on all charges in 2005. But no sooner was the jury’s verdict returned, than Lampton unsealed another indictment of Diaz: on income tax charges. That case went to trial and resulted in a second acquittal.
The Diaz case reflects another astonishing example of highly partisan justice–timed, presented and calculated to boost the electoral prospects of Haley Barbour. Diaz was acquitted twice, but the major objective of the prosecution—the election of Haley Barbour—was achieved. Barbour become governor, ousting Musgrove. As November 2007 approaches, Mississippians find Barbour seeking a second term.
One of the striking aspects of the case is the extremely heavy hand of Noel Hillman, who personally monitored and managed the case. In the past the presence of Public Integrity was taken as a guarantor of “no politics,” but in this case in Mississippi, like the Siegelman case in Alabama, Hillman’s involvement amounted to “politics 24/7.”
Most clearly, the case was an example of discriminatory prosecution. An investigation occurred which was directed with laser-like precision against the major donors of the Democratic party. No comparable investigation occurred that examined Republican party funding and campaign operations. The message that the prosecutors–Hillman should be singled out–delivered is simple: those who fund Democrats will be targeted and fly-specked; those who fund Republicans have nothing to worry about.
The prosecution served a double function. Democrats were discredited and humiliated, during an election cycle, for the benefit of their political opponents. In addition to this, their campaign resources were dried up so that the Republicans secured a further unfair advantage in future elections. These tactics are a pernicious corruption of the political process by politically appointed Justice Department officials posing as its guardians.
Evan Magruder contributed to this post. This series will resume shortly with a detailed examination of the trial of Paul Minor.
More from Scott Horton:
No Comment — April 12, 2013, 11:11 am
A new report from Seton Hall University exposes government surveillance of attorney-client conversations
Rashid Khalidi on how the United States sustains the failure of the Israel-Palestine peace process
Alex Gibney on his documentary investigating the Roman Catholic Church’s handling of child sex-abuse cases
Percentage by which the risk of type 2 diabetes increases for every two hours a day that a person watches television:
Two bottled ghosts—of an old man and a young girl—were sold at auction in New Zealand.
The practice of sexualized eyeball licking was causing conjunctivitis in Japanese sixth graders.
Subscribe to the Weekly Review newsletter. Don’t worry, we won’t sell your email address! | <urn:uuid:f0f0f587-0294-4831-923b-24abd367ff52> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://harpers.org/blog/2007/09/justice-in-mississippi/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979891 | 3,217 | 1.539063 | 2 |
After months of troubling headlines about suicides, bounties and lawsuits, dire predictions were floated that nervous parents would respond to a mounting concussion crisis by deciding football had become too dangerous for their kids.
But as another season kicks off -- the first under California's new concussion law -- the pull of Friday Night Lights appears as strong as ever.
A sampling of Bay Area coaches and administrators indicates there has been no concussion-fueled groundswell against high school and youth football. Some programs, in fact, report that participation numbers have increased.
"I just haven't heard anything about concussions keeping people away," longtime Los Gatos High coach Butch Cattolico said. "Maybe it's a terrible thing to say, because every coach understands that concussions will happen, but I don't think parents are feeling that it's that big a deal."
Ray Lockett, president of the Redwood City 49ers Pop Warner program, was bracing for a drop in players even before Tom Brady Sr. told Yahoo! Sports in May that he would be "very hesitant" to let his son, New England Patriots star and Serra High product Tom Brady, play football if he were a teenager today.
Instead, the youth 49ers have about 45 more kids playing than last season.
"We thought it was going to be an issue, but it's not," Lockett said. "We've had very few parents express concerns."
That is a concern for those who are trying to
"I think most people still don't understand," said Chris Nowinski, co-founder of the Boston-based Sports Legacy Institute. "We're not saying that people should be turning away from football. But the parent market isn't overstressed about this by any stretch of the imagination. We're not seeing mass hysteria."
An online survey of 1,000 people conducted by ESPN in early August did find that 57 percent of parents said the concussion problem made them less likely to let their sons play in youth leagues. But that apprehension doesn't appear to be playing out in Northern California.
A public concussion seminar last week at Oakland's Skyline High, where Nowinski was a featured speaker, drew a sparse turnout of coaches and health-care professionals.
"Until it happens to their family and parents are personally touched by it with their child, there's not a sense of urgency," said Dr. Cindy Chang, the UC Berkeley physician who was just back from London where she was the U.S. Olympic team's chief medical officer. "Maybe parents are still seeing it as something that only happens at that elite level in the NFL and not down here at high school."
But in recent months, alarm bells have been sounding.
Much remains unknown about concussions and their toll. But what used to be viewed as "dings" and "seeing stars" now is recognized as brain injury. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that concussions represent almost 9 percent of injuries in nine major high school sports.
And a growing body of research supports what ought to be common sense: Repeated blows to the head, especially in developing brains, have serious consequences.
"Most concussions have a complete recovery and kids are able to return to their sport quickly," said Dr. Anthony Saglimbeni, a San Francisco Giants team physician who has launched the California Concussion Institute. "But I think a nervous attitude is healthy, because this shouldn't be taken lightly. That's much better than parents I see all the time who tell me, 'There's nothing wrong with him and this stuff about concussions is overblown, so get him back out there.' "
It's also clear that football remains as popular as ever.
"Starting this week you're going to be seeing games on television six nights a week between the NFL, college and high school," Serra coach Patrick Walsh said. "Football is just in our blood. It's become who we are. This really is America's passion."
And while football is a violent game where injuries inevitably occur, Walsh added it still can be relatively safe when coached and monitored properly.
California has joined 37 other states with a law that requires parents and high school players to sign a concussion information form. Any athlete who is suspected of suffering a concussion must be removed from play for the rest of that day and cannot return until receiving written clearance from a health-care provider.
Meanwhile, the national Pop Warner organization has limited the amount of contact in practice as well as banning intentional blows to the head. The head of USA Football, the umbrella organization for all youth football leagues between the ages of 6 and 14, said the proactive measure is why their numbers remain steady at 3 million kids playing nationally.
"I hear some people say, 'Let's just cancel football and any other contact sports,' and I don't understand that attitude," said Scott Hallenbeck, executive director of USA Football. "We have to find appropriate outlets for kids. We've got a huge obesity problem in this society."
But there also remains a disparity in the quality of concussion care for athletes in California. Last year, only 19 percent of state high schools had certified athletic trainers on campus each day, according to the California Interscholastic Federation. More affluent schools have neurocognitive testing that helps diagnose concussions and allows doctors to better evaluate when kids are ready to return.
Parents who can afford it also are spending hundreds of dollars for the latest model of helmets -- although there is no such thing as "concussion-proof" headgear.
"We had some parents buy them, then others decided they wanted them, too," said the Redwood City 49ers' Lockett, who estimates about 80 kids in his program will end up using their own helmets this season.
But Russell White knows two boys who won't be playing football anytime soon: His sons, who are ages 7 and 5.
"No, no, no," said White, the former Cal star running back and new commissioner of the Oakland Athletic League. "Maybe when my oldest son is 12 or 13, and he begins to grow into his body. But not until then."
White said numbers have been down on Oakland high school teams the last couple of years, something he attributes to a lack of interest in sports and not fears about concussions.
"But I wonder where football is going to be in 20 years," added White, who spent parts of two seasons in the NFL. "Is it going to be the same game? Who knows, it might be the Flag NFL by then." | <urn:uuid:c5ea4388-ac3d-4442-a37e-a7e4932c49b9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.contracostatimes.com/my-town/ci_21426954/football-concussions-not-scaring-kids-away-from-friday | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98233 | 1,343 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Next to President Barack Obama, probably the last person in Washington who expected a challenger in the 2012 primary election was House Speaker John Boehner. The Ohio Republican, one of the most powerful politicians in the country, won a three-way primary race in 2010 with 85 percent of the vote. Who in his right mind would try to take him on?
As promised in his address to a joint session of Congress last week, President Barack Obama on Monday sent his proposed economic plan, the American Jobs Act, to Capitol Hill and urged legislators to �pass it immediately.� He maintained that the bill �could add a significant amount to our Gross Domestic Product, and could put people back to work all across the country� and that it would not �add a dime to the deficit.�
The military-industrial complex is pulling out all the stops to ensure that not one dime of its vast federal largess is taken away even as the nation faces nearly $15 trillion in debt. Defense contractors, Representatives and Senators, and current and former Defense Secretaries are working together to thwart actual and potential cuts in defense spending resulting from the August debt ceiling deal.
“I am sending this Congress a plan that you should pass right away. It’s called the American Jobs Act. There should be nothing controversial about this legislation,” President Barack Obama stated in his Thursday evening speech to a joint session of Congress. He then proceeded to propose modest tax cuts, significant spending increases, an unemployment insurance extension, Medicare and Medicaid reform, and tax loophole closures — all told, an estimated $447 billion in reduced revenue and increased outlays. It is difficult to fathom how such a plan could fail to be controversial.
Former Massachusetts Governor and 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney unveiled his economic agenda Tuesday, beating President Barack Obama to the punch by two days. (Obama will present his jobs plan in a speech to a joint session of Congress Thursday evening.) Romney’s plan is, as former Labor Secretary Robert Reich put it, “unremarkable, to say the least.”
Who says Ron Paul can’t beat Barack Obama? The Texas Congressman’s threat to prevent the President’s upcoming speech to Congress from occurring the same night as a Republican presidential candidates’ debate — a debate in which Paul will participate — may very well have been the deciding factor in forcing Obama to postpone his appearance.
Across the fruited plain, the average price of a gallon of gasoline is $3.62, a full dollar higher than it was just one year ago. Of that $3.62, 18.4 cents go directly to the federal government, which then disburses most of it to states for road construction and repair.
Observers note that President Barack Obama seems to enjoy comparing himself to former President Dwight Eisenhower, having repeatedly claimed that he was reducing federal spending to Eisenhower-era levels. Although his assertion that the recent debt-ceiling deal would produce “the lowest level of annual domestic spending since Dwight Eisenhower was President” proved to be false, it is easy to understand why Obama wants to be like Ike: Today the 1950s are often viewed, rightly or wrongly, as an era of stability and prosperity in America, with Eisenhower the reassuring, moderate presence guiding it all.
Announcing his entry into the 2012 presidential race, Gary Johnson rattled off a list of crises besetting the United States, from “record unemployment” to “loss of our nation’s industrial might.” “Why am I telling you this?” he asked, then answered: “Because America is better than this. And because I can help fix it.”
Ron Paul has some good news and some bad news. According to the Texas Congressman and 2012 Republican presidential contender, the good news is that people are beginning to take his proposals — less federal spending, more oversight of the Federal Reserve, and nonintervention in foreign countries — seriously. The bad news is that the political class may come around too late to prevent the destruction of the dollar and the havoc that will wreak on our government and our economy. | <urn:uuid:42839d31-5e49-4195-9ef3-f23985a5b9e5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thenewamerican.com/usnews/itemlist/user/76-michaeltennant?start=170 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967198 | 842 | 1.640625 | 2 |
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (Paperback)
The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas.
About the Author
Malcolm Gladwell is also the author of the #1 bestselling Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. He was a reporter for the Washington Post from 1987 to 1996, working first as a science writer and then as New York City bureau chief. Since 1996, he has been a staff writer for The New Yorker. | <urn:uuid:252a7805-011d-40fd-aded-d1726254d702> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mercerislandbooks.com/book/9780316346627 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937204 | 197 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Like thousands before him, Christopher Buckley came to Washington expecting to leave after a few years. More than 20 years later he remains, having moved from the practice of politics (he wrote speeches for Vice President George Bush during Ronald Reagan's first term) to his current niche as a humorist, novelist and magazine editor.
He is an ideal choice for a Washington tour guide, even if you're a Democrat. As he leads readers from monument to museum to historic site to cemetery, he can draw upon not only his adventures inside the government but also a tale or two from his father, author, columnist and talking head William F. Buckley Jr. (whose name he never drops in full).
Some of my favorite observations, in fact, allude to the historic lore that perhaps only a speechwriter, groping through national history for words and ideas, might gather.
For instance: As World War II was winding down, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower asked his aides for suggestions on the language to use in the cable announcing the end of the war. Once he'd made his way through all their proposals for grandiloquent pronouncements, he set the purple prose aside and wrote in pencil: "The mission of this Allied Force was fulfilled at 0241, local time, May 7th, 1945."
The greatest asset of this book, however, is Buckley's wit. He's very funny, and he clearly delights in slipping in surprises whenever the historical data threaten to become numbing.
"When I worked in the White House," he recalls, "I would sometimes go and watch official welcoming ceremonies for foreign heads of state on the South Lawn. In July or August, these occasions were just killers for the poor soldiers who had to stand there for two hours or more holding flags and carbines while the prime minister of Uruguay droned on about the historic synergy between our two great countries. Often they would faint, and the protocol was that they had to be left there on the ground until the ceremony was over. It was surreal. There'd be four or five soldiers lying there facedown on the White House lawn, with cannons firing the salute ... and the band playing the national anthem of Uruguay."
Sometimes the insider peeks and one-liners take a back seat to simple, striking observations.
In the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum ("the ultimate boy's bedroom"), Buckley looks over the scorched underside of the Apollo 11 capsule and reminds us that fewer than 70 years passed between the Wright Brothers' flight at Kitty Hawk and that capsule's round trip to the moon. (Writing months before the Columbia disaster, he also worries that the space program has lost its focus and drive and hasn't commanded public attention since the Challenger disaster in 1986.)
Buckley is also willing to throw stones, which is always something I appreciate in a tour guide.
Describing his distaste for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial on the mall, Buckley notes that, from a distance, "with his opaque bronze eyeglasses and upturned hat, he looks like James Joyce sitting on a toilet."
Bargain hunting in rural France
Forget Paris and its prices. In the countryside of France, this guidebook reminds us, bargains await. And frequently they wait in memorable old buildings.
This book offers up small and small-town lodgings in greater numbers than most guidebooks can, and most of its listed lodgings are less than $100 nightly.
Though its descriptions sometimes seem suspiciously uniform in their sunniness, the one lodging here I've stayed in recently is described precisely.
In any event, seeing is a good part of believing, and every inn's entry features one to three top-notch photos (full of rich fabrics, quirky antiques and aged beams) along with price ranges and contact information.
And those sunny descriptions can be charming, such as the aside in the account of Le Mas dou Pastre in the southeastern town of Eygalieres: "Cicadas have set up shop in a room named after them, and no one would dream of getting rid of them."
Capturing Ireland in black and white
In 80 gorgeous, stark, richly detailed black-and-white images, photographer Agnes Pataux documents the naturally dramatic western coast and islands of Ireland.
Having spent a rain-soaked, wind-raked day exploring the stony precinct of County Clare known as the Burren, I recognized that near-moonscape among the stark scenes, but I enjoyed it more than when I stood amid it all. This time I was dry.
And this time Pataux and her large-format camera had distilled a sprawling and harsh yet well-tramped landscape into flinty-sharp compositions.
The best shots in this coffee-table book, from the orderly stone "famine walls" that date to the mid-19th century to the sheer, wave-spattered cliffs, obliterate cliche and banish that other postcard Ireland of perfect castles and perfect green fields.
This is the Ireland of stone, peat and seafoam, gnarled wood and the occasional gnarled face.
The shadowy indoor portraits of some of those gnarled faces at the book's end, however, are among the least successful in the book; several are just too murky.
But forget them. This book is really about the stone, the seafoam and the peat.
Christopher Reynolds' books column runs twice a month. | <urn:uuid:4a23b317-eec8-46e6-b3d1-3c310d09625c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.latimes.com/2003/mar/09/travel/tr-books9 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966983 | 1,126 | 1.765625 | 2 |
§ Lords Amendment: In page 59, line 7, at the end, insert "or inefficiency."
§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."—[Sir H. Young.]
§ Sir S. CRIPPS
I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether the addition of these words does not seriously diminish the rights of compensation of existing officers? As I understand the 1063 Amendment, it will be within the power of any authority who want, as a practical result of the operation of the Act, to get rid of an officer and cut down their staff, to avoid paying him compensation by saying that he is inefficient. Before, all that they could do was to say that he had misconducted himself, which is, of course, a serious charge. If merely by saying that a person is inefficient they can avoid the paying of any compensation it will very largely result in taking away the rights of compensation already given under the Clause.
Sir H. YOUNG
That is not so. The Amendment makes no difference at all to the rights of the officers concerned. An officer could not claim compensation, as I understand the general law, unless his office was determined either because his services were no longer required on reduction of staff or because his remuneration was reduced because his duties were diminished. That being so, this provision makes no difference to the ground on which he can successfully claim compensation at all. It is only put in in order to make it clear, which it is thought desirable to do, that there were other grounds upon which his services could be dispensed with without compensation in addition to sheer misconduct, in order to prevent any difficulty of interpretation such as might give rise to trouble in the law courts. | <urn:uuid:8f6cb7f2-ff66-48d8-aa29-3a3852f162d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1932/jul/11/clause-51-compensation-to-officers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988194 | 362 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Sports Illustrated and CBS News are out with a big investigation into crime in college football. They looked at the teams in last season’s preseason Top 25 poll and pulled the records of all the players to find out how many had been arrested and/or convicted and to rank the worst teams.
Its eye-opening finding: Seven percent of college football players have been “charged with or cited for a crime.” Very interesting.
Or is it?
College football’s demographics alone are sure to result in high-seeming arrest rates. All college football players (besides a kicker here or there) are male. Males get arrested at far, far higher rates than females. College football players at the elite level are disproportionately black. Blacks are far more likely to get arrested than whites and other races. College football players are young: Young people are far more likely to get in trouble with the law than older people.
That all points to a giant hole in the SI/CBS investigation: Context. How does that 7 percent compare to the arrest rate for the general population? Amazingly, we’re not given a hint of that and without it that information just isn’t worth much.
So what is the arrest rate for the general population? It’s hard to say conclusively, but about 27 percent of all Americans have been arrested, The Wall Street Journal’s Carl Bialik roughly calculated a couple of years ago using FBI rap sheet numbers.
That number includes women and excludes juvenile arrests, the latter of which is included in the SI CBS report. Adjusting that for males’ higher arrest rates and the exclusion of juveniile arrests brings the lifetime rate for men to somewhere around 50 percent.
But hold on, you say, college football players are mostly between 18 and 23 years old. They’ve had less years to commit crimes so their percentage should be lower. Sure, but again, crimes are disproportionately committed by younger men.
Bialik pointed to a 1987 study by the sociologist Robert Tillman that found the arrest rate for men born in California in 1956. About 33 percent of them were arrested between the ages of 18 and 29. To be sure, the arrest and crime rates are lower now than they have been for decades. But the arrest rate isn’t that much lower: About six arrests per 100 people now compared to about eight arrests per 100 in 1987.
Now, one thing to acknowledge here is that SI/CBS’s 7 percent number is probably artificially low. We all have known or suspect football players—especially the good ones—getting off the hook because the cops don’t want to hurt the team. Back at my college paper at the University of Oklahoma, a colleague and I broke a story about two football players, including a star linebacker, getting arrested the weekend before No. 1 OU was to head to Lincoln to play No. 3 Nebraska. As we wrote then:
The police reports on the incidents were not put in the public information book until The Oklahoma Daily made inquiries about the incidents.
But, alas, there’s no way to quantify how often football players—or other VIPs for that matter—get let off the hook. If we hadn’t heard rumors from the parties that weekend, the OU arrests might never have been made public.
Which is one of the reasons why it’s good SI and CBS are putting resources into this. There’s excellent information, for instance, ranking the top teams by the number of arrestees who play for them.
But failing to giving us context on how the football players’ arrest numbers compare to their peers seriously undermines the effort. | <urn:uuid:8fa7a741-73c4-4c56-a8f3-3450aa0f593d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/sicbs_college_football_investi.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965216 | 761 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Once again, the message is loud and clear: drugs and alcohol are unwelcome on the Skwah First Nation.
Following on the heels of last year’s successful Walk For Peace, dozens of Skwah members gathered last Friday for dinner and to craft two dozen signs touting a healthy lifestyle.
The colourful signs, with slogans like “Give Hugs, Not Drugs” and “Evict Drugs,” now decorate power poles around the reserve.
It’s the latest in ongoing attempts by Skwah leaders and community members to up the pressure on their fellow residents.
“We have to straighten out our community and teach kids that that’s not the life they should have,” Skwah chief Robert Combes said. “It’s all about the kids. We don’t want them to fall under the things we had to put up with, like alcoholism.”
Housing manager Lory Oberst added: “It’s fabulous because it sends a message to everyone that this is what the majority wants.”
In addition to painting signs, children, staffers and parents from the reserve’s Chilliwack Landing Preschool walked the community and gathered outside of local drug houses to send a message both to the occupants and to the young children.
“We went around the whole reserve with a whole bunch of drumming and singing and stopped in front of houses where, well, we know that’s not a good place,” said Bernadette Williams, whose son attends the preschool.
Skwah residents have been battling the demons of addiction for years. Even so, Williams, who lived on the reserve until she was seven years old, says the community seems less safe than it once did.
“The reserve has definitely changed from when I was a kid,” she said. “When I was a kid, kids were out almost at night time all packed together and it was safe, but when I moved back here it was, like, kids have to be in way before dark. It’s definitely changed around here.”
Hence the signs.
“It’s something different for us to try because we’re tired of this in our community,” Skwah councillor Dean Williams said. “It’s been a long battle, a long fight.”
Combes said it’s important for the community at large to see the Skwah trying to spearhead change from within.
“We want it to be seen that we’re trying to change,” Combes said. “There’s a lot of negative thoughts about how reserves are and how natives are, so we want everyone to see that we’re trying to change.”
Many members have forsaken alcohol, he said, and the occupants of one known drug house have been evicted. Another known house is on the band council’s radar, he said, but it’s difficult to give the occupants the boot without criminal charges having been laid.
Supporting band in their fight
Support came both from residents and local businesses: Pioneer Building Supplies donated the wood, while Home Hardware and Home Depot supplied paint and brushes, and Grand Pappy’s Home Furniture provided a door prize.
- with files from Cornelia Naylor | <urn:uuid:38040581-e7f7-40ab-a8f2-7f14e4ef1160> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chilliwacktimes.com/health/Chilliwack+Skwah+band+turns+heat+drug/7593364/story.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964571 | 714 | 1.585938 | 2 |
WASHINGTON -- Advertising lobby groups are preparing to fight a proposed Internet privacy bill that would fine companies, including ad agencies, that mishandle personally identifiable data.
The bill, introduced last Thursday by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, D-S.C., would allow individuals to sue a company and collect $5,000 if that firm used or disclosed "sensitive" information, such as Social Security numbers, financial or health data, and political affiliations, without permission, according to the bill. A hearing on the legislation is scheduled in Congress for this week.
The American Association of Advertising Agencies argues that the bill exposes agencies to liability unnecessarily, as the Federal Trade Commission already has the authority to regulate privacy. "This could be devastating to small and midsize agencies," said Adonis Hoffman, 4A's svp and counsel.
Currently, restrictions exist if a firm collects personally iden tifiable financial data. Under the Graham-Leach-Bliley Act, companies must get permission first to give such data to any third party, but not its own subsidiaries. The Hollings proposal would require permission to share any sensitive information.
Some online ad companies said the bill would not affect them too greatly, because they already get permission for personal data. "This bill goes after the spammers," said Mark Naples, privacy officer and vp of marketing and investor relations at 24/7 Real Media in New York.
This is the second piece of proposed legislation dealing with online privacy that would potentially increase marketing costs and liabilities for advertisers and agencies. Lobby groups also oppose online-privacy legislation in Minnesota [Adweek, April 15]. | <urn:uuid:dfb91e5c-cb18-479f-9537-6c2a315515db> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising/privacy-proposal-draws-opposition-ad-groups-55955 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946157 | 335 | 1.578125 | 2 |
i love what's being shared here. lifestyle so much determines what is available for hygiene. in my herb garden, i grow a robur lemon rose pelargonium, the sort they get commercial geranium oil from, and i use that as a deoderant if i have to go anywhere where people might be who can't stand the natural smell of a healthy human being's workaday sweat.
i just take a leaf and lightly bruise it and then rub it on.
i cottoned on to this way after experiments to keep kid-rearing milk bottles and teats hygienic, to prevent scours. boiling wasn't doing it. soaps, sterilisation chemicals and detergents are dangerous additives, so they were out. in the end, i just rinse them immediately after use and put a herb with known anti-bacterial ability in - a square inch of the geranium leaf worked better than any of the labiatae, although thymol is a powerful 'germ'icide, and 'smart' enough to work with your body chemistry, not against it.
i and my long time best friend nellie have been achieving natural hygiene in our one acre 'self suff', fairy conscious, organic farmlet set in eighty acres of australian bushland, after totally rejecting highly toxic, energy expensive and pollutive mainstream hygiene more than thirty years ago. during that time we've kept ourselves and our animals healthy and happy without dangerous pollutants, and learnt to love dirt. that's what i grow my food in, and i know it as a beautiful, biochemically magical environment, not as something disgusting i should never touch, or get on my skin. it has healed my sense of my own body, and taught me that human sh*t (i.e., that which is or has been shed) is not a 'waste' product of human metabolism, not a by-product, but a product
, like fruit from a tree, if you happen to be a tree! it is vital to the health of the soil. we know enough now not to abuse it. it is fertilizer, like the goat or poultry manure we add to our compost. we have to get over the disgust. the pathogenic potential of a handful of natural dirt, for all its organic richness, teeming as it is with microbes of all sorts, is minimal compared with that of the daily devastation of your dermal ecology in the vain pursuit of odourlessness.
not that we have no place for good laundry soap, or soap for scouring our sheep fleeces for spinning. i make good hard soap out of goat fat and caustic soda. i even use it for when mainstream rules apply and they look behind your ears. | <urn:uuid:c92019f2-817b-4281-a8cf-acadc3084f79> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.druidry.org/board/dhp/viewtopic.php?p=413865 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959307 | 564 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Police forces all over the world are the same aren’t they ? Not too bright, believe what they see on TV, and are imbued of their own self importance.Lou
Demonstrations were held on Thursday in 38 cities and towns across Portugal, including the capital city of Lisbon, Oporto – the second largest city after Lisbon — and Coimbra, AFP reported.
In Lisbon, police resorted to baton charge and arrests to disperse the protesters.
At least one demonstrator was arrested in Oporto as protesters expressed outrage at Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho during a visit to the northern city’s university.
The nationwide protests were part of a 24-hour strike against austerity measures adopted by the government in return for an international bailout. During the Thursday strike which was led by Portugal’s biggest union — the General Confederation of Portuguese Workers (CGTP) – public services across the country ground to a halt.
The trains and subways in Lisbon and Oporto, and the majority of ports, including the port of Lisbon and Viana do Castelo in the north, were shut down.
The strike is aimed at opposing changes to labor laws that make it easier to fire workers, reduce holidays and cut layoff compensation. The government argues that these changes will revive the economy.
Some European economies have introduced strict austerity plans to tackle their debt crises. The spending cuts have caused deep discontent among people in those countries.
Angel Gurria, secretary general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, said in a Thursday interview that the eurozone needs a bailout fund of at least 1 trillion euros ($1.3 trillion) to prevent its debt crisis from expanding to other European states. | <urn:uuid:92015659-5537-4d4e-99ab-ef97786f75ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://talesfromthelou.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/police-attack-portuguese-people-protesting-austerity-measures/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958501 | 351 | 1.617188 | 2 |
The first word in doctest is "doc", and that's why the author wrote doctest: to keep documentation up to date. It so happens that doctest makes a pleasant unit testing environment, but that's not its primary purpose.
Choose docstring examples with care. There's an art to this that needs to be learned -- it may not be natural at first. Examples should add genuine value to the documentation. A good example can often be worth many words. If possible, show just a few normal cases, show endcases, show interesting subtle cases, and show an example of each kind of exception that can be raised. You're probably testing for endcases and subtle cases anyway in an interactive shell: doctest wants to make it as easy as possible to capture those sessions, and will verify they continue to work as designed forever after.
If done with care, the examples will be invaluable for your users, and will pay back the time it takes to collect them many times over as the years go by and "things change". I'm still amazed at how often one of my doctest examples stops working after a "harmless" change.
For exhaustive testing, or testing boring cases that add no value to the
docs, define a
__test__ dict instead. That's what it's for. | <urn:uuid:7b120231-6291-4718-bdd4-6d5848aec1b4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wingware.com/psupport/python-manual/2.1/lib/node116.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951382 | 267 | 1.710938 | 2 |
NVDAILY.COM | Local News
Posted September 28, 2012 | 13 Comments
Black bear spotted near Winchester eatery
By Alex Bridges - [email protected]
A black bear sighted Friday morning near an eatery in Winchester likely smelled breakfast, according to a state wildlife expert.
Witnesses spotted the creature by the Bob Evans restaurant in the city on Millwood Avenue along Rifleman Lane and Christopher Street, according to a press release from Winchester's public information officer Joel Davis. The witnesses estimated the bear weighed approximately 150 pounds, the release stated.
The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries usually receives reports of bear sightings in the spring or early summer, according to Fred Frenzel, a district wildlife biologist for the agency. Frenzel noted bears in the Northern Shenandoah Valley have, on rare occasions, wandered into more populated areas where people may spot the animals. Bears have been sighted in Woodstock, Strasburg, Winchester and Staunton, he said.
The aroma of food cooking can attract a bear wandering in the immediate area, according to Frenzel.
"A restaurant wouldn't attract a bear from miles away to Shoney's," Frenzel said. "But if a bear happens to wander into the area, there are lots of good food smells around restaurants. You've got Dumpsters. You've got cooking food smells coming from the building."
Restaurants also often store containers of used cooking oil and grease outside which can attract bears. Frenzel suggested restaurants keep such containers secured.
Bear sightings continue with the increase in bear population and their search for food.
"The bear population has definitely increased pretty steadily probably in the last 15 years or so, so there are more bears around, which, of course, increases the chances of people seeing bears," Frenzel said.
Most bears stick to wooded areas where they find their main food source and remain out of sight, Frenzel explained.
"There's a good acorn crop this year and acorns are their primary fall food, so the majority of them are going to be in the woods," Frenzel said. "Actually, the majority of our bear calls tend to drop off pretty drastically this time of year because there is a tremendous amount of food in the woods and that's where they've gone, so why this one's wandering I don't know.
"Hopefully it'll wander back where it belongs," Frenzel said.
Residents in and around the area of the sighting should bring pets indoors, remove any outdoor food dishes or bird feeders and keep trash cans out of sight, Davis advised. Do not throw food out for the animal to eat, Davis adds.
"Any type of food is going to encourage him to stay around," Frenzel said. "A bear's job is to fill his belly up every day and if he can't succeed at that some place he's going to go someplace else."
Bears have been reported to attack livestock and, occasionally, dogs, but no humans in Virginia, according to Frenzel.
"We can still say truthfully we have never had an unprovoked bear attack in the state of Virginia," Frenzel said. "These black bears, they're not like grizzly bears you have out West. They're by nature not an aggressive animal. They're a fairly shy animal and generally can be intimidated by people."
The bear spotted Friday likely was young, perhaps approximately 2 years old if a male or older if female, given its estimated size, according to Frenzel.
Anyone who sees the bear should not attempt to approach it but should instead call Winchester police at 662-4131. | <urn:uuid:b2777144-03c1-420b-91b5-58a7392a888c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nvdaily.com/news/2012/09/black_bear_spotted_near_city_eatery-print.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965662 | 751 | 1.726563 | 2 |
More Michelle Obama’s First 100 Days Coverage!
CNN International has, in cnnpolitics.com’s “The 44th President First 100 Days” section, a piece looking at why this First Lady “impresses” women around the world. In, for example, India, a program officer for an HIV-prevention program tells CNN that Mrs. Obama “shows [Indian] women that it’s OK to have dark skin and to not have a son.”
Meanwhile, in Germany:
Christine Louise Hohlbaum, who lives near Munich, Germany, says the first lady impresses German women because she is a powerful public figure who doesn’t seem threatening. German history is marked by charismatic leaders who wielded personal power for malevolent ends, she says.
And, on the heels of its piece yesterday about how the “three f’s: food, family, and fashion” have “transformed” Mrs. Obama in these First 100 Days, from “an angry woman” into “a happy, doting mother,” AP Interactive presents: “100 Days. Highlights From the First Lady’s Fashion,” featuring photos of Mrs. Obama’s outfits in Barbie-like categories such as “travel,” “formal,” “at home,” and “in the community.” There’s also a category called “the girls,” featuring photos of Malia and Sasha and the newsworthy observation that they have an “affinity for knit dresses, leggings, sneakers, graphic t-shirts and backpacks”… the last of which might be inspired by their teachers’ affinity for assigning homework.
There will, no doubt, be more to come… | <urn:uuid:2ccc3355-f976-4aca-bd78-d99d14a13f0b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/why_michelle_obama_impresses_g.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949315 | 386 | 1.570313 | 2 |
The page also tells you whether a Senator uses Klout and Twitalyzer (which measures his or her impact on the social web). Neither Sen. Bingaman nor Sen. Udall use these two tools.
While these are the most popular social networking tools, others new ones are gaining in popularity, such as Linked In and Pinterest. (And there are dozens of others that are not used as extensively but are an option to share information).
So perhaps this Senate page will be updated in the very near future to reflect other types of social media. (It will certainly have another type of update in November, since one-third of the Senate is up for reelection, and a number of Senators--including Sen. Bingaman--are retiring).
Of the established social media, Twitter seems to be gaining strong popularity in the congressional campaigns. Many candidates view Twitter as a medium to get out their message (and also to follow what their rivals are saying).
For example, all three candidates seeking the Democratic nomination for the First Congressional District in New Mexico are using Twitter: @Michelle4NM., @MartyChavez, and @Griego4Congress I could not find a Twitter account for Republican candidate Janice Arnold-Jones.
But Republican Senate candidates
And of course, Twitter is a two-way street for anti-hunger and anti-poverty advocates. Not only do we know what the staff of a congressional office is thinking, but we can also use the medium to set up an action alert of sorts to communicate with elected officials. For example, The ONE Campaign recently mobilized activists to contact the chair and the minority leader of the Senate Agriculture Committee via Twitter on the eve of a key vote on the Farm Bill. The tweet was supplemented with a short link to a blog post that contained much more information about the issue. | <urn:uuid:b5cf1a4c-01be-4e4c-b861-5bb6eb7d29b2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://breadnm.blogspot.com/2012/05/does-your-senator-tweet.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941513 | 373 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Poll: Most want limits on campaign spending
A majority of Americans favor limits on both how much money individuals can contribute to political campaigns and on how much outside groups can spend on advertisements designed to influence an election, according to a new CBS News/New York Times survey.
Sixty-four percent said the government should limit individual contributions to campaigns, while 31 percent favored allowing individuals to make unlimited campaign contributions. Majorities of Republicans, Democrats and indipendents all favored limiting contributions.
Individuals are currently allowed to give $2,500 to each candidate or candidate committee during an election cycle, and $30,800 to a national party committee each election year.
In this election cycle, super PACs backing various presidential candidates - though not officially affiliated with them - have already spent millions on ads to prop up or tear down a candidate. In the CBS News/New York Times survey, Americans were told that groups that are technically unaffiliated with candidates can spend unlimited money on advertisements during a presidential campaign, and asked if such spending should be limited by law.
Sixty-seven percent of respondents - including clear majorities of Republicans, Democrats and independents - said yes. Only 29 percent favored the unlimited spending on advertising from outside groups now permitted by law.MORE FROM THE POLL:
Poll: Obama ties Romney in head-to-head match up
Poll: 4 in 10 say gov't should pay more attention to minority issues
Poll: More see signs of life in economy
Poll: Obama's approval rating stable; Americans want compromise
Poll: Mitt Romney atop fluid GOP race with 28%
Read the full poll (PDF):
This poll was conducted by telephone from January 12-17, 2012 among 1,154 adults nationwide.
1,021 interviews were conducted with registered voters and 340 with voters who said they plan to vote in a Republican primary. Phone numbers were dialed from samples of both standard land-line and cell phones. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points. The margin of error for the sample of registered voters could be plus or minus three points and five points for the sample of Republican primary voters. The error for subgroups may be higher. This poll release conforms to the Standards of Disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.
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- Former critic McCaskill pushes for Hillary Clinton 2016 bid | <urn:uuid:ab6510a8-477a-4df2-b867-5d914d5f7333> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57361428-503544/poll-most-want-limits-on-campaign-spending/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939166 | 597 | 1.828125 | 2 |
A contest that resulted in more than 300 entries from fans and employees at Fair Grounds Race Course & Slots has resulted in Battle of New Orleans and Van Berg Stakes as names for two new races on the track's calendar.
The Van Berg Stakes, named for both Marion H. Van Berg and Jack Van Berg, is a turf sprint for 3-year-olds at 5 1/2 furlongs to be run Jan. 26. The Battle of New Orleans, named for the final major battle of the War of 1812, is a turf sprint for 3-year-old fillies at 5 1/2 furlongs, to be run Feb. 2.
A total of 310 entries were received—186 in the public contest and 124 from employees. Fans could enter on-track or electronically via e-mail, Facebook or Twitter. Employees submitted via entry boxes in break rooms at Fair Grounds and its 10 OTBs, as well as in the Human Resources office. Winners were selected by a committee of six Fair Grounds racing officials.
The Battle of New Orleans was submitted by Fair Grounds fan and horse owner Tony Gattelaro of Ontario, Canada.
In a concurrent contest open only to Fair Grounds employees, the Van Berg Stakes was suggested by Paige Eckerman, a supervisor at the Kenner OTB Casino and a Fair Grounds employee for more than 25 years.
Gattelaro, who is unable to attend the inaugural running of the Battle of New Orleans, will receive a replica of the trophy and a $100 win bet on any horse in the field. Eckerman will receive lunch for four in the clubhouse on the day of the inaugural Van Berg Stakes and will present the trophy, in addition to keeping a replica trophy and placing a $100 win wager. She will also get paid time off on the day of the race.
According to a Fair Grounds release, the Battle of New Orleans, fought on January 8, 1815, was the last major battle of the War of 1812 between the United States and the United Kingdom. The war had officially ended two weeks prior with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, but the news had not yet reached the States. Led by General Andrew Jackson, with help from famed French pirate Jean Lafitte and his men, the Americans won the battle decisively, despite being severely outnumbered (the British suffered 291 fatalities to the Americans' 13). The victory propelled Jackson to the White House and the anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans was celebrated as a major national holiday up until the Civil War. One of the earliest New Orleans racetracks--the Jackson Course, which operated in Chalmette in the 1820s--was named for General Jackson. Fair Grounds used to run the Old Hickory Stakes in Jackson's honor, from 1972 to 2009.
Both Van Bergs are members of the Racing Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and the Fair Grounds Hall of Fame. Marion Van Berg (1896-1971) was the leading owner at Fair Grounds for 11 straight seasons, from 1959-1970, and leading trainer there four times. His son, Jack Van Berg, is the all-time leading trainer at Fair Grounds with an estimated 1,210 wins from 1957-1996 and 10 training titles.
The Van Berg name was mentioned multiple times in the public contest. Ronald Granier of Marrero, La., suggested the W. Hal Bishop & Marion H. Van Berg Stakes, while both Bill Dowie of Boston and Frank Panucci of Loudonville, N.Y., offered up the Jack Van Berg Stakes. All three have been invited to assist in the trophy presentation for the inaugural Van Berg Stakes. | <urn:uuid:4efc5164-2cb4-4490-b5c4-4ff3b0436565> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/articles/74949/contest-yields-names-for-fair-grounds-races | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961565 | 756 | 1.546875 | 2 |
I had two hives swarms after my best attempt of preventing it. Like the saying goes, education is expensive no matter how you get it. I caught both swarms and placed them in nucs. I would like to keep two nucs so I would have queens in case of an emergency but combine most of the bees prior to our main honey flow which is about three weeks away. The hives swarmed about 10 days ago. Once the nucs have brood can I combine the bees with the hives they came from and the leave the queen and a small amount of bees to cover the brood. Any advice is appreciated.
Re: Combining Swarms
I would let the swarms build and that queen work for now. The swarmed hive is putting up a good surplus I wager right now. Take the queen and a couple frames and combine the bulk of the swarm and brood back with the original with a piece of news paper after your new queen is laying in the original. That will also help preclude an after swarm. Thoise swarms are also foundation drawing machines! Use them to draw some more frames. | <urn:uuid:45ffb77e-b003-4638-b73e-a91c45a622ec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?265941-What-to-do-now&goto=nextnewest | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968722 | 232 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Gilad Shalit has added his name to the growing list of protestors urging Israeli President Shimon Peres to secure freedom for an imprisoned Jewish spy.
Jonathan Pollard has sat in a US prison for 25 years. The Texas native worked with US Naval intelligence in the 80’s and was imprisoned for selling secrets to Israel. Now, Peres is being urged to use an upcoming award ceremony as leverage to release the prisoner from his lifetime sentence.
US President Barack Obama announced during last month’s AIPAC conference that he would bestow the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Peres. Since then, more than 30,000 individuals have signed a petition asking the Israeli leader to refuse acceptance of the award unless Pollard is released. This week, freed Hamas captive Shalit added his name to the list calling for liberation of the convict, who was made an Israeli citizen in 1995.
The petition asks the Israeli president to use his “unprecedented diplomatic standing to make immediate efforts to free Jonathan prior to receiving the medal. Only thus will it be possible to prevent a situation in which the reception of the Medal of Freedom makes a mockery of Jonathan and our country.”
Jewish groups and leaders have long argued for Pollard’s freedom, claiming that his sentence was harsher than usual for comparable crimes. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked for Pollard’s release in 1998, prompting then-President Bill Clinton to announce publicly that the case would be reviewed. In 2011, Netanyahu requested that the White House commute Pollard’s sentence, though the appeal was never publicly addressed by Obama’s administration. | <urn:uuid:7ce7892c-0bb2-44fd-91f1-8f6fc623022b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jspace.com/news/articles/gilad-shalit-joins-protest-for-jewish-spy-s-release/8412 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969635 | 331 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Press Release - During Christmas more than 50 % of all emails received in Scandinavia were spamDuring Christmas more than 50 % of all mails received in Scandinavia were spam
On a normal day, the number of spam mails received by people in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland is no more than 33 %.
But during Christmas 2003 the number of spam mails, has exploded to more than 50 %. Especially the old and well known US spam mails for Viagra and Cheap Loans are high in numbers this Christmas. But new versions of the so called "Nigeria Scams" where the sender try to lure people into transfer money to them, are also on the rise.
"More than 300.000 Scandinavians use a spam filter from the Danish company SPAMfighter and that is how we have the numbers. Every time a spam mail hits one of our users, they report it to the SPAMfighter server and thereby removes it from the rest of the users. That gives us very precise numbers of how much spam is send to Scandinavian Internets users and those numbers are higher than ever before." Says Martin Thorborg, cofounder of SPAMfighter.
SPAMfighter is a Danish company owned by the founders of Jubii (Now Lycos Europe), Denmark's largest Internet Portal.
Every day SPAMfighter removes 1.3 million spam mails from 2.5 million screened e-mails, received by 320.000 users from 130 countries.
» SPAMfighter - 29-12-2003 | <urn:uuid:fd49cd12-4f50-40d2-8d1c-f276b5ef042d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.spamfighter.com/News_14-Press-Release-During-Christmas-more-than-50-of-all-emails-received-in-Scandinavia-were-spam.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961224 | 310 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Minnesota freshman goalkeeper Cat Parkhill was among 20 U.S. players selected to participate for Team USA in the FIFA Under-20 Women's World Cup, which won a gold medal in Chile. Parkhill provided gophersports.com with a diary of her experiences in South America throughout the tournament.
We won the U-20 Women’s World Cup! We are the best U-20 team in the world and we are so proud!
It was an intense game against the Koreans. They were a very different team compared to the others. They ate in silence. They didn’t talk to one another. They didn’t look at one another. They just sat there and ate. Very different compared to our culture. They all had the exact same hair cut and they always wore the exact same polo and long black shorts every day since the first day we saw them. I am not trying to criticize the way they look or they way they dress, but their culture, at least as shown by this women’s soccer team, seemed stifled and strict. We were so much the opposite. I kind of felt bad because they looked like they never had any fun. There was not one time in public that I ever saw them laugh. They seemed to have the desire, but not the heart. They didn’t seem to be a love for the game; it was simply a job. I think that is one of the biggest reasons why we won this tournament. We had the heart.
This tournament was by no means easy. We played worthy opponents that challenged us right from the start and helped raise our level of play each and every game. The teams for the most part were very technical and most teams played the conventional style of their country. There was just that extra something that put us over the edge and made us just a bit better than everyone else. We were playing “the beautiful game” of soccer, moving the ball around, in and out of the midfield and sometimes playing direct; always adapting to our environment. We laid our hearts out there on the pitch. We would win our individual battles, put our bodies in dangerous situations, and then fight to get back and defend after just making a 40 yard run. It was the determination of the players and the team as a whole to win the goal. I know I sat on the bench the whole time and didn’t get to play a single minute, but I learned that it wasn’t about me right now. It was about the team and sacrificing for the team to help reach our ultimate goal. We came together as a team to try and achieve our common goal - the gold medal. We pushed each other so hard in training sometimes that the staff would have to come into the game to slow it down. We were so competitive but yet so supportive of each other because we all were on the same page, all wanting to make our country proud by playing well and winning the gold medal.
Earlier in our trip we went to Temuco to play our game against China. While we were there in a team meeting, Tony DiCicco had us watch “The Road to Redemption,” the story of the USA Men’s 2008 Olympic Basketball Team. It was an inspirational documentary put together by Nike about the “power of one,” as Tony termed it. One episode is about the idea of selfless service to your team and to your country. “The Road to Redemption” talked about the Dream Team and how they became the best because they gave up a bit of themselves, their egos, to play as one to win an Olympic gold medal. It was interesting because there were many parallels to our situation. The US Women’s U-20 soccer team hadn’t won a gold medal in this tournament since the first U-20 World Cup in 2002, just as the USA Olympic Basketball Team hadn’t won an Olympic gold since 2000. Similarly, the US Women’s U-20’s had come together from different backgrounds and different teams to train for the 2008 World Cup in a very short amount of time. It was ironic how much two situations had in common and that in the end we had the same result - a gold medal hanging around our necks.
On December 7, 2008 the USA won the Women’s U-20 World Cup with style and class. We picked up quite a few individual awards, the Golden Ball, the Silver Ball, the Golden Boot, the Bronze Boot, and the Golden Glove, along with the Fair Play Award. It was incredible to see how many individual players on our team alone won those awards, quite an accomplishment. After the individual awards were handed out, Germany went up to receive their Bronze Medals, then Koreans received their Silver Medals, and finally, we, the USA Team got up on the platform and had the Gold Medals placed around our necks. Everything we had dreamed about as a kid kicking the soccer ball around had finally come true; it was surreal. The Koreans were very upset with their second place win. They didn’t even clap for us when we received our medals, even though we were all specifically told to clap for the winners (with the threat of being fined if we did not) in our meeting with FIFA. We all felt bad that the Koreans couldn’t be happy for us or for their own great accomplishments just because they didn’t take first place. We were very happy, though, that we made our country proud and had won the hearts of the Chileans. What an experience. Afterwards we celebrated and went to bed.
All the other World Cup teams left the next day. For some reason, we ended up staying an extra two days. And even though we were all dying to get home, back to our families and friends and school, I have to admit, it was a great time hanging out with my teammates. With those two extra days we had a lot fun! The day after we won the championship game, we went out to the Chilean President’s residence and toured their Parliament and Palace. It was very cool. Afterwards we went back to the hotel and tried to get some homework done but that didn’t really happen. It was the night before Keelin, our team captain’s, birthday so we celebrated that! And any other reason we could find!
Finally it was the day that we left for home. We slept in until about 10:00, had breakfast, and then had free time. I spent most of the free time packing, trying to figure how I was going to jam-pack everything I had in my bag. I managed to get it all to work, but it was a process and it was probably going to be overweight. I had somewhat planned ahead knowing I would be cramming for space, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Packing took me until lunch time to finish and then we went off to TGI Fridays. We were allowed to order whatever we wanted and the bill was very big. We had a fabulous time. It was nice to go out with the team for the very last time. We were at TGI Fridays for 3 hours. Afterwards, we went to the US Embassy which was right next to our hotel. It was actually a pretty cool place. We had a warm welcome from the embassy staff. Apparently most of the staff had gone to our game against Korea! The attention at the embassy was unexpected but it was also nice. After we had our pictures taken with some of the staff, we conversed with other people from the States which was really nice. It was funny because one guy I was talking to was from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities! He is interning at the Embassy right now while working towards finishing up his degree in Political Science. How cool was that! Anyway, we toured the building and then we went shopping. It was funny because we were all trying to make last minute purchases to buy all the gifts that we had neglected to buy, even though we had had 29 other days to do so! I went to go buy a gift and I ran into another Minnesotan that was from Plymouth. He was down on business testing out medical equipment. It turned out I didn’t have quite enough money for my purchase, so he gave me a few dollars to help pay for it! Now that is Minnesota nice!
We took longer than expected and were really rushed to get back in time for our last team dinner. After dinner Tony held our closure meeting and it ended up being quite emotional. It was so crazy how far we have gotten as individuals and as a team. And it was great how much fun the staff was and how much they contributed to our success on the field. It was an unforgettable experience. We ended on a funny note when Tony preformed his “talent” of singing a song he wrote, because he promised to do so if we won the tournament. We all packed the rest of our stuff and got it ready to put on the van. We left around 7:30 p.m. from our hotel. When we got to the airport, we said our good-byes to Louis, our fantastic bus driver and a great supporter of our team. We checked in, got on a plane, flew for 4 hours, stopped to refuel and started to fly again for another 11 hours. It was a long flight but I have taught myself over the years to sleep as much as possible on planes.
We landed in L.A. and said our good-byes to each other. Most of us were crying or tearing up. We had just spent a month of our lives together going through what can’t help but be one of the highlights of our entire life, one we will be talking about for years. It was emotional when we came together one last time and said a team prayer to close up our journey. Then we departed to go our separate ways. Now I am on the plane reflecting about my experience with the team. I can’t express enough how much I have learned from this. It is crazy how much you grow as a person, how much you grow as a soccer player. It is really incredible. I could go on for pages, as I have done in my journal, about all I have learned, but what I want to share with all of you is the power of one. The power a team has when they are all working to achieve a common goal and have put away their egos. It is truly amazing the power that it has, the selflessness, the idea that when you get on that field, you would do anything for one another. That is a team. It is truly an indescribable feeling.
Thank you all for reading and following my blog! I hope you have gained some insight into how life at camp really is!
I want to say thanks to everyone for making this possible! I couldn’t have gotten to this point without the strong support from the U of M coaching staff and players! My list of thanks could go on for a while because I have learned so much from so many people and all have helped to contribute to my success on and off the field!
Thank you so much for supporting me in this once in a life time opportunity!
“The journey is the destination!” (Dan Eldon) - As my wise and awesome photography teacher from Eastview, Mr. Gustafson, would tell me!
In one part of the gathering area near our hotel, there were mimes and Brazilian fighters/dancers. Apparently the story behind the fighters/dancers is that when the Portuguese took over Brazil, they banned the Brazilians from fighting so the Brazilians figured out a way to teach each other how to fight by making it look like they were dancing. We watched the “dance” for a little while then we headed right on back to the coolest hotel ever!
The next day - game day. Today went even faster than last game day because our game was at noon! Sweet! So we got up at 8:00 and had breakfast before our pregame talk. Then, we went right back to our room to chill and watch some television because we only had about 45 minutes before we had to be ready to go. We hopped on our bus, and we were there after a short 10 minute ride. Our bus driver, who is the coolest bus driver ever, if I may say so, gave us a hand off the bus. We quickly changed and sat for 30 minutes or more to finally have our pre-game meeting and then we sat for another 20 minutes before we warmed up in our little room. After a short warm-up, we headed outside to use the field. We jogged back inside the building again and sat again for another 10 minutes. We were all instructed to take water out to the field and to start drinking because we all needed to stay hydrated, but I think more or less they wanted us all ready for the drug test after the match. Every game, FIFA picks four players from each team to be eligible to take a drug test after the match. Then two out of the four are selected 15 minutes before the game ends.
We sang our National Anthem and then politely listen to Argentina’s. Then it was game time! We start off our match against the Argentineans (who are cheap nasty players that dive a lot, I believe they might even be worse than the Italians!) I guess the Argentineans haven’t quite mastered the acting yet, because the refs hardly called any of there fake falls. They actually got less calls than they should have. They dive so much the refs just assumed they were faking it. Anyway, it was a hard-fought battle, I mean there ended up being six yellow cards total. Four of them were the Argentineans and then we had two. We managed to pull off a W with 3-0 score! It was a wonderful way to end our second game - now we just need to beat China to win our pool!
After the game the non-starters have to run or do some type of fitness. So an hour after we ate we all went to the gym right down the road and ran on the treadmill for 20 minutes, did some core work, and completed the workout by cooling down on the elliptical. What a day!
We were all extremely pumped to go to our next hotel in Chillan. It felt that the World Cup Experience had really begun. We were finally going to be in the city of our first game. We left Thursday morning, hopped on the bus and drove from Santiago to Chillan. It was about a five hour drive, probably the shortest five hour long bus ride I have ever been on.
We finally got there after only watching two movies and we were greeted by the nearby locals. It was so much fun! It was weird being treated like celebrities! We then quickly checked into our hotel room, got upstairs and chilled until we had lunch/dinner before we went to training. The hotel is small. It is only one level and we are practically the only ones on the floor in the hotel, so we own the floor and I feel like we are all living together in one big house. The hotel is part of a mall. It is like a big indoor shopping mall with different stores and the hotel has its own little section. Another perk to our sweet little hotel is that we have an unlimited supply of Coke products such as PowerAde, orange juice, water, pop, and PowerAde water. I absolutely love this place. It is in a nice little town where you can walk around and there are markets within a block of the hotel. The people here are so excited to host a World Cup! When I walk into town with my National Team jersey stuff on, people wave to us and they all want to take pictures with us!
Training here is a lot of fun too! We did have to run fitness one day, but that was not all that bad and I really liked the way it was designed. The gist of it is that you are always running alongside someone and encouraging them to finish off the fitness. It was actually a good team bonding session. I can’t say that was my favorite one, but it was a good way to start cheering everyone on to keep going and push ourselves to the max.
The final days prior to our first World Cup game were fun. We got to explore the town a little bit. We went to the market and looked around. We saw fun, cute jewelry and other fun little things. Anyway the local people are so nice here in Chillan. I don’t feel that I have to be as careful as I did in Santiago. In Santiago we couldn’t wear flashy earrings or headphones or anything that looked valuable because apparently they will just rip it off your ear - kind of scary.
The day before our first match was very chill. We had a session to go over what could happen in the game and other different scenarios. It was fun to have the locals watching our practice. They would sometimes yell out,” I love USA” or “I love you!” It was really funny and it was nice to have a crowd that was respectful. They would even applaud when we did something well and say “Ohh!” if we did something not so good.
We went to the stadium after we had lunch. It was so cool seeing the stadium from afar and then when we got closer, I felt truly that the World Cup was here. We got to walk to our locker room and see the warm-up practice area. The grass was perfect. Then it was time to actually walk out onto the pitch. It was a surreal feeling to actually walk out into the stadium where we were actually going to be playing. I even took a picture of the grass so you can see that it is very similar to the grass in Minnesota. The grass had never been played on before. The stadium was built just for the World Cup!
Game day. That is when the real fun begins! With our game starting at 3:00 p.m., it was relatively short wait for game time. Usually when the game is later in the afternoon you feel like you have to wait forever for it to come.
When we got to the stadium we went straight to the locker room. We were greeted by many journalists and camera crews. It is still weird being treated like we are celebrities. When we got to our locker room and we had all of our gear laid out with our name and number on the back. It was so cool! Name and number on the back of our jersey! How sweet is that! We put on are warm-up gear and had our final pregame meeting. We warmed up in this small room in the building and then we got a certain amount of time on the field to warm up. When we walked out to the stadium, it was fairly full, although there seemed to be less people at our game than the previous one. It was a real “wow” feeling coming out onto the stadium field. We had our quick warm-up and then got back into building. It was weird because right as we got back in our equipment manager explained to us that we couldn’t take pictures out on the field because FIFA does not allow it.
Now it is GAME TIME! We got out and then we listened to France’s National Anthem, then we listened to ours. It was a very powerful moment to sing our National Anthem while at the pitch. It was such an honor being there to represent our country. It was an unreal feeling.
The game was intense and we played beautiful soccer. It was so much fun to watch! We ended up beating France 3-0. We finally went home after a long day’s work and sat down and ate.
After dinner I started my homework and didn’t get too far. My roommate, Tiff and I went walking around town. The town is beautiful. The roads are mostly made out of brick. We literally walked a block down the road and there was this nice park with a little market set up with booths full of jewelry and trinkets and things. What was most fascinating about walking around town was to see how different the Chileans lifestyle is compared to ours back in the states. It is vastly different. Their attitude about soccer here is extremely different compared to the states. I was asked by five or more people if they could take a picture with me and Liz. They even asked Tiff, our sports psychologist, to get in the picture as well. They are so excited to have us here and they have been nothing but nice to us.
On a different note, the advisement here for the World Cup is crazy. We see these big bulletin boards with female Chilean soccer players promoting the World Cup. There are even decals on the back of the city transit buses back in Santiago. There are commercials supporting it on TV. There are highlights of the World Cup games every night. They even have the games on TV here. They have interviews and everything with the girls. Alex, a player on my team who scored the first goal in the France game, was on the front page of a paper. She was shown in color and covered the entire page! It is so different that women’s soccer is actually getting this amount of publicity because there is no way that this was happen at home.
Today I started off with no alarm and waking up to my roommate, Liz, telling me we needed to get up and our wake up call didn’t come. Normally I would use my phone and/or an alarm clock, but they don’t have a clock in our room. Time isn’t a big concern abroad in Chile. When I went to Argentina it was the same thing there. It’s a big culture difference.
After breakfast we had team building session. We broke off into teams of five and had a fun little trivia scavenger hunt around our hotel in Santiago. It was nice to get out and see a little bit of the culture. I loved the weather today during the scavenger hunt. It was cool and it a bit drizzly at times but I liked it better than yesterday’s heat. Another thing we have to be concerned about when we are in Chile is that an ozone hole is over where we are so more UV Rays and other rays come through. So for pale skin like mine, we are talking sunscreen galore for me. Otherwise, I will be bright red!
Day one of the adventures of USA Women’s World Cup started off uneventful. I departed from Minneapolis airport at 10:20 a.m. and had a layover in Denver before I eventually ended up at the LAX airport. Everything went smoothly, didn’t lose any luggage and didn’t forget anything in the back seat pocket of the chair in front of you on the plane. It was a decent flight in, I didn’t sit by any peculiar strange people, nothing too exciting.
I was picked up by our Team Manager/administrator/Mom at the airport and got into the gas guzzler SUV and reunited with some teammates. In the SUV I was chit chatting with some fellow teammates and we started to talk about sandals. And that was when I realized that I did forget to pack something. So I then went with our team manager and bought fake crocks that were two sizes too big but they do the job.
We got to the hotel (in L.A.) and unpacked at dinner and had a team meeting. It was pretty straight forward and to the point. Tony Diccico, our head coach, explained what the plan was for the next day and that he will tell us about the lineups in the morning for the game against Korea. We all went back to our room and I did math homework and chit-chatted with my awesome new roomie and then went to bed.
That sleep didn’t last very long. Our sports psychologist knocked on our door at 11 p.m. and came in to explain to us that we were leaving a day earlier than expected because there was a miscommunication about what days the flights were... In turn we ended up not playing against Korea at all. We left the next morning and headed to Chile.
The first flight was 10 hours and then we had to “refuel” which was actually getting on another plane which was another few hours of fly time. We finally got here at 6:00 a.m. We were all exhausted.
We got to the hotel had breakfast and afterwards went to our rooms and crashed. We were so tired and lucky for us we got to have a training session at 2 p.m. So we only got to nap for a few hours.
Training was okay; it was a nice light quick session. We trained with the Adidas balls we are going to play with and that was different. They are very different from the Nike balls that we normally play with. | <urn:uuid:5311bad7-961b-4469-a67b-154d84e86e6c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gophersports.com/sports/w-soccer/spec-rel/121208aaa.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.990096 | 5,185 | 1.5 | 2 |
Hand sanitizer is apparently responsible for a fire that injured an 11-year-old girl at Portland’s Doernbecher Children's Hospital. Ireland Lane was in bed when her shirt caught fire. Investigators don't know what ignited the fire. Doctor Stacey Nicholson says this does not mean that hospitals should stop using hand sanitizer. Lane suffered burn injuries requiring skin grafts. She was previously treated for cancer and a head injury from a fall. She was supposed to leave the hospital the day of the fire. | <urn:uuid:d2ef5486-fb25-4afc-9534-0aa47fc01a58> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kbnd.com/kbnd-news/regional-news/51599 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978312 | 107 | 1.515625 | 2 |
"Art Is A Hammer To Shape Reality": PalFest Breaks The Siege Of Gaza
By Ayah Bashir
24 May, 2012
The Electronic Intifada
Palestinians enjoy a concert featuring musicians from Gaza and Egypt as part of the Palestinian Festival of Literature. (Anne Paq / ActiveStills)
Gaza City : Amid the focus on the economic hardships caused by Israel’s ongoing blockade of the Gaza Strip, it has been easy for many to overlook the fact that the territory’s 1.6 million people have been kept under a cultural siege as well.
This is ironic because much international debate has emphasized the rights and wrongs of cultural boycott of Israel in the context of the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign.
For years, the Palestine Festival of Literature — PalFest — has been trying to break this siege.
PalFest began in 2008 in the West Bank, and tried its best to come to Gaza in 2009 with the clear objective of connecting international writers with Palestinian writers and audiences in Gaza. However, Israeli occupation forces denied organizers entry permits through the Erez crossing in the north of the Gaza Strip. In 2010, PalFest organizers tried again to enter Gaza via the Rafah crossing — along the Strip’s border with Egypt — but were also denied entry by the regime of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, who was deposed in February 2011.
Academics, intellectuals and students had eagerly followed the news of whether or not the authors invited by PalFest would be allowed into Gaza this year. Undeterred by the disappointing denial, some authors last year were able to take part via video conference (see video of Haidar Eid’s 2010 introduction).
On 5 May this year, some 14 months after the Egyptian revolution began, we were finally able to welcome PalFest — and an impressive group of writers, artists, bloggers and social activists — to Gaza.
This would scarcely have been possible without the uprisings in the Arab world. This gathering demonstrates that despite the Palestinian cause being hijacked by dictatorships for many years, it continues to bring Arabs together as well and helps foster a re-emergent sense of pan-Arabism.
Not without a struggle
Egyptian novelist and PalFest founder Ahdaf Soueif, wrote in the independent daily al-Shorouk about the motivations behind the festival: “Civil society brings to life the conscience of the world, travelling by sea and air to express solidarity with our brothers in Gaza … the world asks: Will the Egyptian revolution, the awakening of Egypt, change the circumstances under which Palestine lives?” (“Palestine Literature Festival,” 2 May 2012 [Arabic])
And although PalFest did finally come to Gaza this year, it wasn’t without a struggle. It is well known that the Egyptian government has contributed to the Israeli-engineered siege on Gaza. In spite of bureaucracy, restrictions and delays from the Egyptian foreign ministry to issue entry permits for the 43 writers, PalFest participants were so determined that they undertook a media campaign until the permits were granted.
A joyful, but delayed welcome
On 5 May at 2pm, and after thorough preparations inside and outside Gaza for the upcoming events, six BDS activists were on the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing and the guests were on the Egyptian side.
But the hours passed and the sky began to darken. PalFest producer Omar Hamilton called. “Things are fine with most of us, but still there are issues with some of the participants’ papers!”
It was Alaa Abed El-Fattah, his wife Manal and their infant son Khaled who were sent back, but not for long as they joined the group the next day.
Only at 7pm, ululations and chants rolled through the place where the hosts were standing when they saw the bus approaching.
Healing wounds not breaking legs
“Culture, art and academia contribute directly to shaping the individual and collective consciousness,” said Dr. Haidar Eid, PalFest’s partner in Gaza and a professor at al-Aqsa University, at a press conference and welcoming ceremony at Rafah as soon as the guests crossed.
Eid, active with the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel (PACBI), spoke about the growth of BDS campaigns around the globe that aim to pressure Israel to end its policies of apartheid, colonization, abuses of human rights and regular violations of international law.
Solidarity with the Palestinian people through BDS is one of the key unarmed forms of resistance, he said. “Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it,” Eid said, quoting Bertolt Brecht.
Eid also recalled the words of Mubarak’s last foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, who once promised to “break the legs” of Palestinians if they dared “breach Egypt’s national security.” This time, “our brothers and sisters from Egypt are coming to kiss the feet of Gaza children, to heal the wounds created by the dictator’s regime,” Eid said.
Literature, Poetry and Music
Over the next four days, PalFest participants fanned out across Gaza, conducting writing and translation workshops in coordination with four universities and five public schools. At a creative writing workshop at Gaza University, for example, Egyptian novelist and Cairo University lecturer Sahar El-Mougy, shared her own literary experience with students. Similarly, Ahdaf Soueif, Khaled El- Khameissy and Tariq Hamdan had deeply engaged discussions with Al-Aqsa University students.
A public concert at Gaza City’s Rashad al-Shawa Cultural Centre brought together Palestinian and Egyptian musicians. The event was opened by Palestinian singer Muhammad Akeila performing “Mawtini” (My Homeland), and Egyptian revolutionary band Eskenderalla performed “Ya Filastinia” (Oh Palestinians).
Poet Amin Haddad recited the words of his father, poet Fouad Haddad, the legendary dean of vernacular 20th Century Egyptian poetry:
Sow the land with resistance
Spread the seeds everywhere
Where there is darkness, it brings light
When imprisoned, it breaks the wall
Be the first …
Be the first Only blood is honest
From the times of emigrant home
To the day of victorious home
Sow the land with resistance.
Performed with artistic sensibility and thoroughness, the concert was closed with a joint Palestinian-Egyptian song. “Build your palaces on our fields and orchards, from the efforts of our hard-working hands,” implored the song, a masterpiece written by Ahmad Fouad Nigm and performed by Sheikh Imam Issa in the 1970s.
For the first time, PalFest’s organizers made their support for the BDS movement crystal clear. “PalFest has endorsed the 2004 Palestinian call for the academic and cultural boycott of Israel. PalFest 2012 stands against the siege of Gaza; it is committed to re-invigorating cultural ties between Arab countries, ties that have been eroded for too long,” the festival said in a 29 April statement (“The 2012 Palestine Festival of Literature”).
This support was cemented during PalFest with meetings between organizers, writers and BDS activists in Gaza. All the discussions emphasized that BDS is a rights-based movement, that seeks to uphold the fundamental and universally-recognized rights of the Palestinian people: an end to military occupation and colonization; full rights for Palestinians citizens of Israel, and respect for the rights of refugees, including the right to return.
Authors participating in PalFest stressed the history of anti-normalization in the Arab world and mainly in Egypt as they promised to work on establishing the Egyptian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.
Others proposed efforts to end the Qualifying Industrial Zones (QIZ), an economic and trade agreement that Egypt signed with Israel in 2004, which mainly functioned to remove the Arab taboo against conducting business openly with Israel.
Closed down by the police
The final night of PalFest at Dar al-Basha, a historic house in Gaza City, was shut down by the police — an incident for which the police chief later apologized verbally, although no written statement has yet been issued (“#PalFestGaza shut down by police, then receives official apology,” PalFest press release, 10 May 2012).
The repression did not dampen spirits. Participants and the audience left together for the Al-Quds hotel, and chanting “let’s continue,” they made sure the festival went on. It was an unforgettable night of poetry from Amin Haddad, Tariq Hamdan and music from the talented artist and oud player Hazem Shaheen.
Between darkness and light
In Gaza, the only breath of fresh air you can have is when you look at the sea. On my way home on the last evening, and as the taxi was moving along the coastline in the night, one might be shocked to see for the first time the ominous prison-like floodlights shining in the sea, or as Omar Hamilton accurately put it, “a perfect unmovable line of lights that cuts short the horizon, erases the possibility of the unknown.”
On land, by contrast, all of Gaza was drowning in a sea of darkness, with queues of cars and motorbikes waiting for the fuel supply to run. Each time I came to the festival, until that moment, cars were waiting in an interminable line.
The contrast is really overwhelming. Sitting beside the taxi driver, an agitated and tense passenger angrily talked about the lack of electricity and abruptly lamented the loss of his father and house in Israel’s winter 2008-2009 attack on Gaza.
He seemed traumatized; it didn’t seem usual to hear at that time of the night a story from the days of Operation Cast Lead. He was recalling an event that took place three years ago, as if it took place just hours before.
It was a reminder that returning to the usual rhythm of Gaza life after the unusual and exciting experience with PalFest is really strange and difficult. Nevertheless, times are changing and the global BDS movement is helping to empower us and our supporters with effective moral choices to end the injustices we live through.
This is why PalFest in Gaza was so important. In the face of so many obstacles, it was a celebration of the power of culture in the face of the culture of power.
Ayah Bashir is a recent MA graduate in Global Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Her first degree was in English language and Literature. She is currently a member of the Gaza-based BDS organizing committee , One Democratic State Group member and also PalFest coordinator in Gaza.
Due to a recent spate of abusive, racist and xenophobic comments we are forced to revise our comment policy and has put all comments on moderation que. | <urn:uuid:23cab6f4-6c8e-4919-82f3-22550ac4a04e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.countercurrents.org/bashir240512.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961036 | 2,303 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Dr Jane Aronson's Journal from the Field
Haiti Journal #3 from Dr. Jane Aronson Pediatrician and CEO, Worldwide Orphans Foundation
Haiti Journal #3 -- The Highs and Lows of Fieldwork
A few weeks ago, the WWO Global Arts Coordinator, Christine Hall, and Jed, a volunteer, came to the Community Center in Kenscoff to teach dance to the youth in our WWO Youth2Children (Y2C) program for a week. During our visit we were lucky enough to see the results. With the help of the Y2C trainees, the kids put on a dance performance. The show was outstanding; the kids implemented complex choreography with energy and enthusiasm. The house was packed and the audience clapped appreciatively. The teachers looked on proudly.
At the end, the children and youth came out on stage wearing blue pipe cleaner glasses, the symbol of our foundation's ever-vigilant support of orphans and vulnerable children all over the world. I was very touched by this sweet tribute to WWO.
On Monday we spent some time sightseeing. Nick, Andrew, Samantha, Katie and Charles had not yet seen the palace or the cathedral in Port-au-Prince. Everyone was astonished by the condition of both buildings from the earthquake ... and the tent camps that still remain in the main square.
At the Cathedral we were surrounded by a small group of very poor young women with babies; one teen mother held a five-day old whose face was covered with a rash and who was desperately sucking the side of its mother's hand while she begged. The mother said that she had no breast milk and yet pointed to her very full breasts. Their relentless pleas were distressing. I knew that I could not fix their plight and felt hopeless for them and their babies.
Just across from the palace is a sculpture of a black slave stretching out high, his leg shackled by a chain. He blows a conch to call the other slaves to rebel and escape. It is a symbol for Haitians and it survived the earthquake.
Next we visited the 100-year-old open-air iron market, which was destroyed in the earthquake and subsequently rebuilt. A smiling Haitian man called out to me as we entered; I recognized him as the enterprising fellow who became my self-appointed tour guide on an earlier visit. We followed him through the aisles. Much of our tour was through the world of voodoo. We learned that the turtles were sold for their blood, which is mixed with coffee and given to pregnant women to improve their chances of a healthy baby.
In the afternoon we visited two local orphanages, where WWO has been establishing connections. Both places were dark and gloomy and I was unpleasantly reminded of how bad orphanages can be. The kids appeared happy and comfortable in spite of their surroundings, but our group was shocked by the degradation and filth of the rooms. Having seen it all, I was able to bypass old reactions because I know we are providing excellent psycho-social support for these kids, What matters in these horrific settings are human relationships, education and stimulation.
On the way home I stopped to visit the pig I had taken a shine to on the roadside near our bed and breakfast. This time, he was accompanied by his owner, who informed me that the pig would be eaten shortly. This vulnerable and sweet little black pig became a symbol of the impossible for me. Saddened, I walked away to report the obvious to the group. There is some humor here as there must be. I have attached myself to a helpless pig ... a helpless cause ... perhaps this is a symbol?
Later we interview Djimy, a youth trainee from Y2C. Djimy is twenty-years-old and lives with his three younger sisters and his newly widowed, unemployed father. His mother died in the last two months from mysterious circumstances and voodoo is mentioned as a possible cause. He is in visible pain. Djimy has taken a leadership role at the toy library at the community center. When I ask him what he wants for the children at the center, he expresses his desire to be more involved. I ask what he dreams of doing in his future and he says he wants to be an engineer; he wants to build big buildings and become an important man in his country. He wants to change Haiti. I became very excited for him -- it is clear that his ambition is genuine and that he believes in himself. It is a wonderful end to a challenging day filled with dark and conflicting experiences. I feel his hope in spite of his current circumstances. I want the orphans of Haiti to share this hope -- to believe in themselves and the future of their country.
Follow Dr. Jane Aronson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/wworphans | <urn:uuid:e94a83c3-2bd4-40c4-9a3f-26f0e7dacfb3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.internationaladoptionguide.co.uk/blog/views/dr-aronson-haiti-orphans.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987224 | 993 | 1.679688 | 2 |
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Legislative leaders are busy spinning their new budget as “fiscally conservative.” Taxpayers shouldn’t be fooled. What’s really true? At about $22 billion, this year’s budget is the largest in state history. Spending grew by almost $1 billion.
Lawmakers funded much of state government with hidden taxes through fees. More than one-third of state government is paid for with federal dollars that come with heavy mandates and costs for South Carolina taxpayers.
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NEW DELHI: India's two biggest importers of crude oil from Iran will cut shipments from the Islamic republic by at least 15 percent this financial year due to US pressure, a report has said.
Washington has been seeking to shut down Iran's oil trade to put pressure on the Persian Gulf nation to abandon its disputed nuclear programme.
The Indian government has asked state-owned Mangalore Refinery & Petrochemicals and privately run Essar Oil to lower their imports in the current financial year, Dow Jones News Wires said late Wednesday.
The reported step comes ahead of a trip to India early next week by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, during which India's purchases of Iranian oil are expected to be discussed.
The news agency cited in its report two unnamed people who it said had direct knowledge of the Indian government request that was made as a result of US pressure.
A spokesman for India's government was not immediately available for comment but New Delhi has been reported by domestic media to be seeking to diversify its oil purchases.
India and the United States are navigating some of the choppiest waters since they began to build closer ties in the late 1990s with Washington pushing New Delhi to significantly cuts oil imports from Iran.
Dow Jones said Clinton had told US Congress earlier in the year that India was helping in putting pressure on Tehran much more than New Delhi's public statements on the issue showed.
India imports four-fifths of its crude oil to feed its growing economy and has said it needs to keep buying Iranian oil to supply its requirements.
The country has struck a deal with Iran to pay for around half of its oil imports from Tehran in Indian rupees as a way to bypass banking sanctions that have made it virtually impossible to pay for the purchases in US currency.
Iran has repeatedly rejected charges by Western nations that it is developing an atomic bomb but the United States and the European Union have imposed stiff sanctions to persuade Tehran to shelve its nuclear programme. (AFP) | <urn:uuid:6e594afa-4187-4f48-849e-4b5f20ea1d5d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.geo.tv/GeoDetail.aspx?ID=47192 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982034 | 403 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Southwest Florida briefs Published by news-press.com on May 30, 2005 • FORT MYERS BEACH Woman injured after Jet Ski, boat collide A Jet Ski driver suffered a head injury after colliding head-on with a 24-foot flat boat Sunday afternoon, U.S. Coast Guard officials said. The accident happened at about 4:30 p.m. near the Lani Kai Resort in Fort Myers Beach. The victim, whose name was not released, was ejected from the Jet Ski during the crash. She landed in the water and was picked up by another Jet Ski driver who took her to shore. An ambulance transported her to the hospital, officers said. http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050530/NEWS01/505300395/1075
Monday, May 30, 2005
Increase chances of survival on water this Memorial Day weekend By TIM TUCKER Special to The Sun May 27. 2005 6:01AM Memorial Day weekend is one of the busiest boating/fishing times of the year and Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officials are imploring outdoors lovers to stay alert, wear their life jackets, and don't drink while operating a boat. The agency says keeping these messages in mind can dramatically decrease your chances of getting into an accident - and increase your chances of survival if you do. "In 2003, Florida led the nation in boating deaths with 64 and last year we had 68. We hope to reverse that trend by alerting boaters to the biggest dangers," said Capt. Richard Moore, the FWC's boating law administrator. Collisions with vessels or fixed objects are the two leading types of accidents. Last year, they accounted for nearly half of the mishaps on Florida waterways. Moore said this reflects the importance of staying alert to everything going on around you. "One of the biggest misconceptions about boating accidents is that they are caused by extremely reckless behavior, but when you look at the numbers you see that it comes down to people not paying attention or making one careless move," he said. "We want people to go out and have fun, but also to understand the minute they lose focus something could happen." Alcohol and not wearing a PFD are the two biggest contributors to fatal accidents. In 2004, alcohol use was the primary cause of 21 percent of boating deaths. Almost one-third of the fatal accidents were classified as "falls overboard", drowning was the cause of death in 65 percent of those fatalities. http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050527/SPORTS/205270334/1119/sports
Two killed, one missing in boating accident on Minnesota River Star Tribune May 30, 2005 BOAT0531 A boating accident on the Minnesota River near Shakopee has left two people dead and a third missing. Witness told police that the boaters ran headlong into a barge late Sunday night. The barge had been docked into a lock at Cargill, KSTP-TV reported. The boat struck the barge's bow; the river's current was strong enough to suck the boat beneath the barge, according to media reports. Police have not recovered the boat, which may yet be lodged beneath the barge. The witnesses, a couple of fishermen, said they immediately went to the rear of the barge and found one of the boat's passengers, a woman. They told police that they pulled her from the river and tried to revive her to no avail, according to media reports. The fishermen called authorities, who began a search and rescue mission, according to a Bloomington police spokesman who spoke with media at the scene. Authorities found a missing male passenger a short time later. He was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. Police halted a search for the third boater last night after sunset. The search will resume about 10 this morning near the Shakopee and Burnsville border, according to KSTP-TV. Police told the media that the search will not be considered a rescue mission; rather, it will be considered a "recovery" mission. http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/5430309.html
Search continues for missing teen after boating accident By Cheryl Tatum Editor HENDERSONVILLE - Search crews were back on the waters of Old Hickory Lake Sunday looking for a missing teen who fell from a boat Thursday evening. As of press time, rescue workers from six to 10 agencies who were scouring Old Hickory Lake had no success in their efforts to find the 18-year-old Hendersonville girl. Her identity is being withheld by officials from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) until their investigation is complete. Bob Galoppi, with the Hendersonville Fire Department, said the search will resume first thing Monday morning and continue all day, unless predicted thunderstorms occur. TWRA officer Darren Rider said the teen, who graduated from Hendersonville High School on May 20, was one of three teens riding on the bow of a 23-foot cabin motor boat when a combination of wake and making a turn caused them to fall into the water. Only two of the three surfaced. Search efforts for the missing teen began Thursday around 6 p.m. and continued until after midnight resuming Friday morning. The search has been continuous during daylight hours ever since. Rider said there were seven teens in the boat Thursday when the accident occurred. Currently there have been no charges filed in the incident and Rider said there was no indication of alcohol being involved. However, blood tests were taken, as is required by state law whenever there is an accident with a fatality involved. Results of that blood work are not yet available. Friends and family members spent the weekend keeping vigil first at Drakes Creek Marina, the command center for the the search effort, and later at nearby Saunders Ferry Park at the water’s edge. For them, it has been a weekend of waiting, said Hendersonville Fire Department Chaplin Dennis Allen who has been acting as a liaison between the family and officials. Allen said Sunday family members and friends were drawing support from each other, adding one group of teens has been writing handwritten thank you cards for the volunteers involved in the search. Galoppi said there have been numerous volunteers and career public safety personnel involved in the search. On Sunday four cadaver dogs were being used, with two handlers and dogs having just arrived from Evansville, Ind. The search has been difficult, Galoppi said because it is covering such a large area. “There are a lot of different depths and we don’t have a specific area pinpointed,” he said. Galoppi added the search will continue until the missing teen is found. The intensive search, if needed, could continue up to five days. After that time in case like this efforts are usually scaled back to surface searches, he said. “We will keep looking until we find her or we run out of manpower,” Galoppi said. He added support from the community has been important for the family, friends and rescue workers. The Red Cross has also been on hand to counsel with family and friends and providing food for the searchers. http://www.gallatinnewsexaminer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050530/MTCN0401/305300017/1309/MTCN04
Search continues for 12-year-old boy missing in bayou The Associated Press May 29, 2005 ARTICLE FEATURES • e-mail this article • print this article • discuss this article After a day of searching, a 12-year-old boy was still missing Sunday after he was thrown into a bayou near here when his vessel collided with an empty barge pushed by a tugboat, the U.S. Coast Guard said. Coast Guard airplanes gave up the search Sunday afternoon, but a small boat crew continued the search for Ben Ribando, said Petty Officer Kyle Niemi, a Coast Guard spokesman. Russel Ribando, a 76-year-old retired doctor, was with four of his grandchildren when his small cabin cruiser hit an empty barge being pushed by the tugboat Leah Cenac on Bayou Cutler. All five boaters landed in the water and four of them were rescued, the Coast Guard said. The other youth on the boat, Russel Ribando III, was taken to West Jefferson Hospital while the other boaters did not sustain serious injuries, authorities said. The Leah Cenac was not damaged in the incident, nor were there any injuries reported to its crew. There were no reports of pollution from either vessel. Dateline Alabama | APN | E-mail Story | Print Story | Discuss Story http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050529/APN/505290895&cachetime=3&template=dateline
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Viewpoints How to Have A Fatal Boating Accident in Alaska By Fred Dyson May 24, 2005 Tuesday If you want to have a fatal boating accident, Alaska is the place to be. According to the latest boating fatality statistics Alaskans die in boats at 4 times the national average. If you want to maintain our state's "leadership", you can dramatically increase the odds of having your own fatality by including as many of the following components in your boat trip: Use an open skiff less then 26ft in length Overload the boat with as many people as possible and have them stand- up in the boat and drink alcohol Have the boat operated by a male,18-40, who knows it all, and thinks boat operation is like driving a car only easier because there are no silly traffic control signs or cops to bother with. Make sure he has lots to drink. Do not tell anyone where you are going or when you will return. Don't check the weather and/or tides. Do not protect yourself from cold, wet conditions Do not wear lifejackets [technically called personal flotation devices (PFD)] Do not take tools, spare parts, extra fuel, a radio, bailing can, paddles, maps, an emergency position locator, or hull patching supplies Make a sudden maneuver or hit a rock, sandbar, or log so that all or most of the passengers are thrown to one side of the boat and/or into the water. There is some good news. Overall, our boating accident rate is down and less people are dying in boats annually. Commercial fishing has seen most dynamic reduction in fatalities. Some of this comes from the Federal Commercial vessel regulations that came from the loss of the FV Western Sea in Marmot Bay, Kodiak some 20 years ago. Now commercial vessels carry; survival suits, automatically deploying rafts, Emergency locator beacons, flares etc. In addition the skipper must conduct man overboard and safety drills and stability tests when the vessel is modified. The Alaska Boating Safety Council, the Coast Guard, and the Coast Guard Auxiliary, have put immense effort in to "boating safety education", vessel inspections, and the very useful "Kid Don't Float" program. The later has boxes of child size life jackets available at most boat docks and many boat launch sites. We are now without excuse in equipping our kids with life jackets BEFORE we put them in the boat. Amazingly, vandals and thieves have not stolen many of these life jackets. There has been a significant reduction in child fatalities traceable to more kids wearing their life jackets. If you tell kids to wear their life jackets on a boat, they will do it. It's the adult males who always think they know better or don't want to be bothered. Technology is helping. Personal Floatation Devices (PFDs) are now available that are easy to wear and work in. A few years ago, a fisherman from the Bering Sea, got tired of losing friends and developed a line of jackets with an inflatable bladder that were very comfortable to wear. That line was called "Stormy Seas". In a subsequent column, we will identify other products and venders. I lived on a boat as a child and I thought a life jacket was part of my body. My mother put it on me in the morning and it was the last thing I took off at night. That was a good plan because a local Fireboat Skipper used to give me a quarter to walk the top of the dock rails (and/or wet my pants). I had many "accidents" of both types and made some good money. He and my mother had a stormy relationship that she expressed in remarkably "colorful" ways. In Alaska, boats are a magic carpet to extraordinary scenery and the best fishing in the world. With a little fore thought and equipment, it can also be safer then driving in traffic. BE SMART, BE SAFE. Note: Fred Dyson is a licensed captain and serves on the Governor's BOATING SAFETY COUNCIL. He lived on boats as a child. He lives on a classic wooden yacht in the winter in Juneau. His father ran tug boats and was a part time smuggler in Puget Sound.. Dyson has operated marine research vessels, fished commercially for 25 years, and now operates a charter boat out of Whittier. Note: Comments published on Viewpoints are the opinions of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Sitnews. http://www.sitnews.us/0505Viewpoints/052405_fred_dyson.html
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Florida authorities are continuing to investigate a Saturday boating accident that killed Clinton volunteer firefighter Joseph Battista and a friend who had moved from Westbrook less than two years ago. Battista, 23, and Corey Vincent, 19, died Saturday evening in the collision of their Sea-Doo personal watercraft and a 29-foot powerboat. Battista was visiting Vincent, who lived with her mother and stepfather, James and Judith Dowd, in Madeira Beach, Fla., just across Boca Ciega Bay from St. Petersburg. Advertisement Battista and Vincent were close friends, according to James Dowd. "Joe’s been like her big brother. They were just very good friends. … Any time he needed help, she was there for him and vice versa." Battista’s father, John Battista, is Clinton’s deputy chief for emergency medical services. It’s the second tragedy in six weeks for members of Clinton’s volunteer fire and emergency medical services, after the April 12 death of 39-year-old firefighter Jeff Miller from cancer. Joseph Battista, of 23 Hunters Path, Clinton, was a 2000 graduate of The Morgan School and recently graduated from paramedic school. Vincent, who lived in a house fronting the bay, went to Westbrook High School before the family moved about a year and a half ago, James Dowd said. Vincent attended Pinellas Technical Education Centers, had decided on a massage therapy career and wanted to go to college, Dowd told the St. Petersburg Times. Dowd said his stepdaughter and Battista were excited to try out the family’s new personal watercraft, launching from the house and into the bay, which juts off Tampa Bay on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Gary Moorse, spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said the accident occurred one-quarter mile east of congested John’s Pass. "To say that it is heavily trafficked is an understatement," Moorse said. Moorse said Battista and Vincent collided about 6 p.m. with the powerboat operated by Miguel Alvarado of Wesley Chapel, Fla. Although at least 18 people witnessed the accident, Moorse said authorities cannot yet say how the collision took place or whether Vincent or Battista was at the controls of the watercraft. Authorities said Alvarado was allowed to return home after giving officials a blood sample. Investigators have impounded both vessels, Moorse said. The investigation is expected to last two to six weeks. The accident occurred as Florida began observing Safe Boating Week. "It’s just a tragedy," Moorse said. "It’s a tragic loss for the community and the department," Clinton Fire Chief Scott Andrews said of Battista. "He was a very gentle, kind and caring person, and he did a great deal for this town." Battista, like his father, was devoted to emergency medical service and had been working as a paramedic for American Ambulance in Norwich. He also was a volunteer with the Westbrook Ambulance Service. In his 2000 high school yearbook, he lists his "likes" as "skiing, leaving school for fires, saving your life," and his emergency medical technician certificate as one of his most prized possessions. Fellow firefighter Jeremy Hansen said of Battista, "He was everything a volunteer firefighter should be. He had a gigantic heart and couldn’t give enough." In addition to his father, Battista is survived by his mother, Sherry; two brothers, John and Brian; his grandmother, Patricia Fox of Westbrook; and grandfather, John Battista of Virginia. Funeral services are scheduled at 11 a.m. Saturday at the First Congregational Church of Westbrook. Calling hours are from 3 to 8 p.m. Friday at the Swan Funeral Home, 80 E. Main St., Clinton. Memorial contributions may be made to the Joseph M. Battista Scholarship Fund at the Clinton Volunteer Fire Department. Funeral services for Vincent were uncertain late Monday. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Associated Press and Metro Editor Ed Stannard contributed to this story. http://www.nhregister.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=14576898&BRD=1281&PAG=461&dept_id=517515&rfi=6
Press Release Source: American Safety Council American Safety Council Launches Florida Online Safe Boating Course Monday May 23, 3:09 pm ET ORLANDO, Fla., May 23 /PRNewswire/ -- The American Safety Council announces its new online safe boating education course specifically designed for Florida boaters. The course is being launched to coincide with the start of Florida's busy summer boating season as well as National Safe Boating Week (May 21-27, 2005). "It's important to realize that most boating accidents involve individuals with no formal boating safety education," says Bob Proechel, president of the American Safety Council. "Many boating accidents can be prevented if new boaters make safety a priority, which includes taking a boating safety education course prior to venturing out on Florida's waterways. The American Safety Council is pleased to make the Florida boating course available online for residents and visitors," says Proechel. Selected boating statistics from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission for 2003 (the most recent year for which statistics were available): * Total number of registered vessels in Florida is at an all-time high with 978,225 registered in 2003. * The most likely time to be involved in a boating accident (as determined by accident frequency statistics) is during the months of March, April, May, June, or July between noon and 6:00 pm while cruising. * 48% of reported accidents were primarily caused by either carelessness/inattention or violation of a navigation rule. * Individuals most likely to be operating a vessel involved in an accident are males between the ages of 22 and 50 who have 100 hours or more of boating experience, but no formal boater education (as determined by operator statistics). * 16% of those involved in a boating accident either died or were injured. * Most fatal boating accident victims were males (79.7%) who were 22 years of age or older (75%). * 45.3% of boat operators involved in a fatal boating accident reported having over 100 hours of boating experience, while 90.6% had no formal boater education. FLORIDA BOATER SAFETY EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS Anyone 21 years of age and under who operates a vessel powered by 10 horsepower or more must pass a boater safety course and have in his/her possession photographic identification and a boater safety identification card issued by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The American Safety Council's online basic boating safety course is approved by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators and is recognized by the United States Coast Guard. The course is fully accredited and meets the State of Florida's requirements for basic boater safety education. The course is available online at the following website: http://www.FloridaBoatingCourse.com . The cost is $14.95 and includes the online course and online exam. Students who successfully complete the course and exam receive a full size completion certificate, wallet certificate and are automatically reported to the State of Florida for issuance of their state boater education identification card. For more information, contact the American Safety Council at (800) 732-4135. Websites: http://www.FloridaBoatingCourse.com http://www.AmericanSafetyCouncil.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Source: American Safety Council
Monday, May 23, 2005
Madison County 05/22/05 Teen Missing After Boating Accident Email to a Friend Printer Friendly Version By Andrew Hasbun [email protected] Workers scoured Lake Caroline Sunday for Lanie Kealhofer, 16, a sophomore at Madison Central High School. Kealhofer, two teenage boys, and a 17-year-old female friend were enjoying a day on the lake, when authorities say they may have hit a wake. The two girls, sitting in the front of the boat, were thrown overboard. Emergency workers believe the 17-year-old may have hit the propeller, severing part of her leg. She is recovering at University Medical Center. Crews from across Madison county, including a dive team, searched the lake Sunday, but found no sign of Kealhofer. As news spread, friends and family flocked to Lake Caroline. "I found out at church and we just came out to offer some support," said Renee Buckner. Friends from Madison Central High School waited all day for some sign of their friend. Many spent Sunday night at Ridgecrest Baptist Church in Madison. "Typically you don't need to worry about these things," said Bucker, whose daughter is friends with the victims. "It's just a freak accident." According to students at the high school, the 17-year-old victim is scheduled to graduate this Saturday and attend Stamford University this fall. Kealhofer was involved in Madison Central's drama and dance departments. One man described her as the daughter every father wishes for. Kealhofer is also close friends with the family of WLBT morning news anchor Jack Hobbs, who was on the scene Sunday night. He asked for prayers for Kealhofer and her family. http://www.wlbt.com/Global/story.asp?S=3377821&nav=2CSfaAXL
Teen Boating Accident Victim Loved Water (Safety must go both ways...its everyone's responsibility) By ADAM EMERSON [email protected] Published: May 23, 2005 MADEIRA BEACH - Corey Vincent was a water buff. She lived with her father, James Dowd, in a house on Boca Ciega Bay. She enjoyed watching the manatees and dolphins that surfaced in the bay, and spent much of her spare time following them. She wanted to go out on the water Saturday night, so she boarded a personal watercraft with a longtime friend from Connecticut who was visiting, Dowd said. About 6 p.m., the two were about 1/4-mile east of Johns Pass when a 29-foot powerboat crashed into them. The collision killed Vincent, 19, an aspiring massage therapist, and her companion, Joseph Battista, 23, of Clinton, Conn., who was to head back home Wednesday. When she was on the water, Vincent ``did all the right stuff,'' Dowd said. She wore her life preserver Saturday, as she always did, he said. She had finished boating safety classes last week. Battista, a paramedic in Connecticut, was ``a real sweetheart of a guy,'' Dowd said. Investigators from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said Sunday they had not yet determined the cause of the crash. They found alcohol aboard the powerboat Saturday but do not know if it contributed to the accident, commission spokesman Gary Morse said. They drew blood from the boat's driver, Miguel Alvarado of 1702 Firewheel Drive in Wesley Chapel, to check for alcohol content, but results were pending Sunday, Morse said. Authorities have charged no one in the accident. There were at least two others aboard the powerboat. Alvarado could not be reached for comment Sunday. Investigators did not know Sunday whether Vincent or Battista was operating the personal watercraft at the time of the collision. All people aboard boats around John's Pass at that time are potential witnesses, Morse said. ``We've got quite a number of people to interview,'' he said. National Safe Boating Week started in Florida over the weekend. Crashes between vessels were among the leading types of accidents on Florida waters last year, according to the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Web site. Reporter Adam Emerson can be reached at (727) 451-2332.
Posted on Mon, May. 23, 2005 Man seriously hurt in boating accident An 18-year-old man was seriously injured in a boating accident on Lake San Antonio on Sunday afternoon. David Ernest Guzman, 30, was arrested for boating under the influence and failing to stop at an accident scene to render aid. The Monterey County Sheriff's Department reported that Guzman was under the influence of alcohol while piloting a 20-foot Ultra Custom boat that collided with a Jet Ski. Jason Penalba, 18, of Agoura Hills, was airlifted to UCLA Medical Center with crushed lower vertebrae, a broken pelvis and liver and spleen damage. Erik Shirey, 19, of Santa Barbara was driving the Jet Ski with Penalba as his passenger. Shirey received minor cuts and scrapes, deputies said. Officers reported that Guzman fled, but was later arrested. He was described as an employee of the Los Angeles Police Department. http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/11716206.htm
Sunday, May 22, 2005
Posted on Sun, May. 22, 2005 OUTDOORS Boating-accident fatalities down in South Carolina By PAT ROBERTSON Columnist OUR 2-YEAR-OLD granddaughter, Madeline, proudly wore her new “boat coat” last fall on her first boat ride. It’s a pity more adults don’t follow her lead. Drowning is the No. 1 cause of death in recreational boating accidents nationwide. In 2003, 86 percent of those who drowned were not wearing life jackets. In 2003 in South Carolina, 33 people died in boating accidents. In 2004 the number dropped to 13. This year five have died. The decline, according to Col. Alvin Taylor, deputy director for law enforcement with the Department of Natural Resources, is attributed to increased boating safety awareness. There will be a hard push hard again this year; DNR officers will conduct boating safety inspections at public boat landings. The DNR will increase boating law enforcement efforts during Memorial Day weekend with “saturation patrols” on lakes, rivers, reservoirs and coastal waters. Everyone on board must have a wearable personal flotation device that fits properly and is serviceable without tears or other damage that could lessen its effectiveness in the water.You can obtain a copy of South Carolina's boating regulations by calling (803) 734-3995 or visiting the DNR Web site, www.dnr.state.sc.us/etc/boating.html. Kids don’t count. According to a survey conducted by The Progressive Group of Insurances Companies, a leading boat insurer, 22 percent of boat owners say it was harder to name their boat than their pet or child. Fourteen percent named their boat after their “significant other,” and 9 percent named their boat after their child. Also, 7 percent of boaters who spend less than an hour with their kids each week spend more than five hours with their boat.
Saturday, May 21, 2005
Boating safely starts with caution By Willie Howard Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Thursday, May 19, 2005 Hot weather is here. Schools will soon close for the summer. Boats are coming out of storage, and many boaters are preparing for the wet days ahead. Some points to consider: • Boating can be dangerous. Sixty-eight people died in boating accidents in Florida last year, including two in Palm Beach County and one in Martin County. • Wearing a life jacket at all times while on the water increases a boater's chance of survival in an accident. According to the North American Safe Boating Campaign, drowning is the leading cause of death in recreational boating accidents nationwide, and 86 percent of those who drowned in 2003 were not wearing life jackets. • Operators of fast-turning personal watercraft should look for other boats before making sharp turns, said Chief Petty Officer Brian Leavy of the Coast Guard Station Lake Worth Inlet. "They turn so fast a boat can't get out of their way," Leavy said. "Look before you turn." • Passengers should not ride on the bow of a boat. Law enforcement officers will stop the boat if they see bow riding. If a passenger falls from the bow, he or she would likely be hit by the boat or its propellers. • Skippers should file a float plan before leaving. A brief note left with a friend or relative will do. Describe the boat. Be specific about where the boat will leave port, where you plan to go boating, who is on board and when you are due back. Note special medical needs of those on board. • Make sure there's a life jacket of the proper size for each person on board and that life jackets can be easily accessed in an emergency. Life jackets wrapped in plastic and stuffed away below the deck do not meet the ready requirement. • Call the Coast Guard Auxiliary (800) 368-5647 (www.vesselsafetycheck.org) or the United States Sail & Power Squadron (888) 367-8777 to schedule a free vessel examination or inquire about safe-boating courses. Examiners usually make helpful recommendations and notice things that boat owners miss. Consider taking a boating course or picking up a free copy of the state's How to Boat Smart booklet at tax-collectors' offices. Find online courses at www.myfwc.com or www.boatus.org/onlinecourse. • If you're boating offshore or going to the Bahamas, consider purchasing or renting an EPIRB. • Don't drink and drive a boat. If you want to drink while on the water, designate a non-drinking, qualified skipper. • Divers, often swept away from groups by current, should have a way to make themselves visible in the water, such as an inflatable safety tube, a strobe light or a reflecting mirror. A white trash bag is better than nothing. • Divers and snorkelers must pull a float-mounted dive flag, at least 12 inches square. Boats carrying divers must display a dive flag at least 20 inches by 24 inches. Boaters must stay at least 300 feet away from a dive flag in open water and at least 100 away in inlets, rivers and channels. • When running inlets, think about wind and tides before heading out. An east wind pushing against an outgoing tide can make waves stand up. If an inlet looks questionable, stop well before the waves and study it. Don't attempt to turn around when the boat is in the big waves. Want to see an inlet before leaving home? Check out Palm Beach County's inlets online at www.co.palm-beach.fl.us. Search for "webcams." • To report problems on the water, call the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission's law-enforcement hotline at (888) 404-3922 (#FWC by cell phone). The state offers cash rewards for information leading to the arrest of drunken boat operators. Also call the Coast Guard on VHF Channel 16. In emergencies, use a cell phone to call 911. Palm Beach Post
Friday, May 20, 2005
Last Update: Friday, May 20, 2005. 8:21am (AEST) 40 missing in Bangladesh boat accident A boat with about 100 people on board has sunk in a river in southern Bangladesh during a severe storm, the third such accident in five days. Police say the boat has disappeared in the turbulent Meghna river estuary to the Bay of Bengal, about 325 kilometres south of the capital Dhaka. They say most of the people on board have either been rescued or swam to safety, but nearly 40 people are missing. At least 33 people died and 120 are still missing after a ferry sank in the river Jamuna during a storm earlier this week. Last weekend, at least 60 people were killed and 30 went missing when a passenger ferry sank in a river south of Dhaka. The twin-decker MV Raipura went down with 200 passengers in the Jamuna river at Aricha, about 100 km west of the capital Dhaka, in a tropical storm on Tuesday. "Barring a miracle, it is quite unlikely that anyone would survive so long under water," Mohammad Abu Yusuf, a police officer monitoring the rescue, said. Efforts to refloat the ferry began on Thursday after rescue vessel MV Rustam, delayed by bad weather, arrived with divers. Public anger was growing in impoverished Bangladesh. "Do something to speed up the rescue process," one man shouted. "Don't come up with another excuse or put the blame on the weather alone." Bangladesh has a shocking record of ferry accidents and hundreds of people die each year despite repeated Government promises to better legislate the industry. Much of Bangladesh's vast ferry fleet has little or no safety equipment, and operators and owners often neglect weather forecasts and shipping rules. -Reuters Print Email http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200505/s1372846.htm
Thursday, May 19, 2005
Port Authority rules on snorkelling accident Thursday, May 19, 2005 The wakeboarders involved in the accident that saw a snorkeller lose an arm in George Town Harbour last Saturday, 14 May should have been at least 50 yards offshore, said a Port Authority spokesman. Philip Haberlen, a grocery store manager from Greensburg, Pennsylvania, was the unfortunate victim of the accident as he snorkelled at the rear of the apartment where he was staying at Coral Sands, adjacent to Rackhams Pub. Wakeboarders from Florida as well as locals and tourists had gathered at Rackhams for the event, but events came to a dramatic halt at around 3pm after the tragedy. The Port Authority had been informed that the event was taking place, but their spokesman, Joseph Woods, said: “Normally this sort of activity would be at least 600ft offshore. “On Friday 13 May a gentleman came to see me and asked if we had any objections to the wakeboarders operating between Rackhams and somewhere off Seven Mile Beach,” said Mr Woods. “We didn’t have a problem with them operating within that area as there were no cruise ships in, but we didn’t know they were going to be operating inside the shore area. “That area is anywhere inside the drop-off area for the cruise ships. We don’t grant permission, but we would state whether we have any objections and we would direct them away from that area. “There were no cruise ships or other operations, but at no time did the gentleman say they would be operating so close to the shore. We didn’t give them permission to operate from the shore. They would be advised to go at least 600ft offshore to do something like this,” added Mr Woods. However, he noted that the statutory regulations in force for boats operating offshore states: “No vessel shall travel parallel to the shore line unless they are 50 yards therefrom. “No vessel should exceed a speed of five knots or go within 50 yards of any vessel at anchor.” Mr Woods added: “There are no set regulations governing water skiers or wakeboarders, but for events like the Poker Run in 2004 and 2005 we have advised them to stay at least 300 yards away from the cruise ships.” John Graham Taylor, organiser of the ‘Ride the Wake Championship Series’ wakeboarding event, said that he had taken legal advice and was unable to comment on the accident. PC Neil Williams of the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service, said: “The matter is still being investigated. “The CID will have to ascertain exactly where the boat and victim were and the speed the boat was doing. If the boat was within the shore line limits and travelling at above 5 knots then we would be looking to proceed with the matter a different way other than simply regarding it as an accident.” http://caymannetnews.com/2005/05/839/accident.shtml
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Police Officers Injured In Boating Accident To Sue State POSTED: 5:06 pm EDT May 13, 2005 JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- A pair of Jacksonville Sheriff's officers who were injured by debris from the old Fuller Warren Bridge will file a lawsuit against the Florida Department of Transportation for failing to remove pilings that created a safety hazard in the water, Channel 4's Casey Black confirmed Friday. James Brunet James Brunet and Keith Nazworth were injured Feb. 3 while patrolling the St. Johns River in preparation for Super Bowl XXXIX when the boat they were traveling in crashed into a piling from the old bridge. Brunet, 41, suffered a broken neck and spent several months in the Intensive Care Unit at Shands-Jacksonville Medical Center. He underwent reconstructive surgery on his face and was forced to wear a halo on his head until it was removed last week. "I apparently sacrificed my face for the health of my brain," Brunet said. Nazworth, 39, was also injured in the accident, breaking his ribs. Now Brunet and Nazworth are seeking damages. On Monday, the law firm of Spohrer, Wilner, Maxwell & Matthews, which represents the officers, will file its intent to sue the DOT. The suit might also be targeted at Balfour Beatty, the former contractor of the old bridge. According to investigators, rain and fog restricted visibility the night of the accident, and the amount of traffic on the river made the waterway congested. They also noted that the clear plastic weather screen at the helm impaired visibility. "We complied with all navigational requirements for this river for the Super Bowl," DOT spokesman Mike Goldman said. He said that in meetings leading up to the week of the Super Bowl, no mention was ever made about lighting the old pilings. In fact, Goldman said, the DOT has tried unsuccessfully for years to try to take down the remaining portions of the old bridge. "We started the demolition in the fall of 2001, and then we were stopped with cease and desist orders from the federal agencies," Goldman said. Federal authorities mandated that DOT officials quit dumping debris from the old bridge into the water after environmentalists protested DOT disposal methods. The accident report issued by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission stated that Nazworth, who was operating the boat, failed to maintain proper lookout. It also mentioned that the patrol boat was traveling 40 mph at the time of impact. Previous Stories: February 15, 2005: Officer Critically Injured In Boating Accident Slowly Recovering February 4, 2005: Two Police Officers Hurt When Boat Hits Bridge Piling
Saturday, May 14, 2005
UPDATE New details about the deadly boating accident on the Mississippi River Thursday afternoon. The Dubuque County Sheriff's Department now says 55-year-old Michael Boeckenstedt of New Vienna, Iowa died after high winds and waves swamped the boat he was riding in. Leon Kern of New Vienna and Robert Calvey, who lives in Minnesota, also went into the frigid water, but managed to swim to shore. All three worked for a dredging company working north of Dubuque http://www.kwwl.com/Global/story.asp?S=3337806
The week of May 13, 2005 Accidents prompt state to light phosphate dock In the wake of two accidents within 12 hours on Saturday involving boats running into the darkened phosphate dock in Boca Grande Pass, the state began work this week to place lights on the partially submerged pier. Two clients aboard a charter fishing boat were treated at an area hospital for minor injuries after the boat in which they were riding collided with the north end of the unlit dock shortly before 5:30 a.m. on May 7. The boat was heading south when it struck the dock's exposed pilings that extend well into the entrance to Boca Grande Pass. The dock is north of the former Florida Power and Light fuel dock near Boca Bay. Investigators with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission estimated damage to the boat at more than $5,000 as a result of the accident. Later the same day, after sundown, a different charter boat sustained damage to its hull when it struck another cluster of exposed pilings at the former phosphate dock. There were no injuries in the second accident. DEP's Heather Stafford said the dock has not been lit since last year when the lights were damaged in August by Hurricane Charley. "We are working on replacing all of the lights out there," Stafford said. "There will eventually be three lights on the dock." Cappy Joiner, president of the Boca Grande Fishing Guides Association, said his group has been asking DEP to light the dock for about a year, but has received no response until this week's accidents. "Their (DEP) complaint is that they don't have the facilities," Joiner said. "If they are responsible, they need to take care of it. There is no doubt in my mind that they (DEP) feel they are responsible for these accidents." Although crews worked throughout Wednesday to replace the lights on the old dock, the lights were not working that evening, local guides said. One of the passengers aboard the boat involved in the pre-dawn accident Saturday morning said he and his stepfather were looking forward to a day of tarpon fishing when the collision took place. Steve Anderson of Toronto said he was in Boca Grande vacationing with his wife Claire, their two small children, his mother and stepfather Graeme Clark when the accident occurred. According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's Division of Law Enforcement: The captain was at the helm of a 24-foot boat. Anderson, 35, and Clark, 61, also of Toronto, were looking forward to a day of tarpon fishing. The captain was headed south on the island's east side, running at 10 to 20 mph, when without warning his boat struck the end of the unlighted phosphate dock at about 5:30 a.m. Anderson, seated in the front of the boat, was thrown forward and struck a rod supporting the spray curtain, straining his neck. Clark, sitting with him, fell forward and suffered bruises. "It was a moonless night and very dark," Anderson said. "The lack of lights on the dock was a major cause of the accident. If it had been marked we wouldn't have hit it." The collision holed the boat's left bow above the waterline. The captain immediately returned to the dock for medical attention, then notified the U.S. Coast Guard and the Fish and Wildlife Commission. "He was very professional," Anderson said. "He got us back to shore as quickly and safely as possible. He was a gentleman and obviously very distraught by the situation." The captain, who has more than 100 hours of operator experience, was not cited. Anderson and Clark drove themselves to Englewood Hospital, where they were treated and released. The captain said the boat was "done for the season" and is currently being repaired.
The week of May 13, 2005 Accidents prompt state to light phosphate dock In the wake of two accidents within 12 hours on Saturday involving boats running into the darkened phosphate dock in Boca Grande Pass, the state began work this week to place lights on the partially submerged pier. Two clients aboard a charter fishing boat were treated at an area hospital for minor injuries after the boat in which they were riding collided with the north end of the unlit dock shortly before 5:30 a.m. on May 7. The boat was heading south when it struck the dock's exposed pilings that extend well into the entrance to Boca Grande Pass. The dock is north of the former Florida Power and Light fuel dock near Boca Bay. Investigators with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission estimated damage to the boat at more than $5,000 as a result of the accident. Later the same day, after sundown, a different charter boat sustained damage to its hull when it struck another cluster of exposed pilings at the former phosphate dock. There were no injuries in the second accident. DEP's Heather Stafford said the dock has not been lit since last year when the lights were damaged in August by Hurricane Charley. "We are working on replacing all of the lights out there," Stafford said. "There will eventually be three lights on the dock." Cappy Joiner, president of the Boca Grande Fishing Guides Association, said his group has been asking DEP to light the dock for about a year, but has received no response until this week's accidents. "Their (DEP) complaint is that they don't have the facilities," Joiner said. "If they are responsible, they need to take care of it. There is no doubt in my mind that they (DEP) feel they are responsible for these accidents." Although crews worked throughout Wednesday to replace the lights on the old dock, the lights were not working that evening, local guides said. One of the passengers aboard the boat involved in the pre-dawn accident Saturday morning said he and his stepfather were looking forward to a day of tarpon fishing when the collision took place. Steve Anderson of Toronto said he was in Boca Grande vacationing with his wife Claire, their two small children, his mother and stepfather Graeme Clark when the accident occurred. According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's Division of Law Enforcement: The captain was at the helm of a 24-foot boat. Anderson, 35, and Clark, 61, also of Toronto, were looking forward to a day of tarpon fishing. The captain was headed south on the island's east side, running at 10 to 20 mph, when without warning his boat struck the end of the unlighted phosphate dock at about 5:30 a.m. Anderson, seated in the front of the boat, was thrown forward and struck a rod supporting the spray curtain, straining his neck. Clark, sitting with him, fell forward and suffered bruises. "It was a moonless night and very dark," Anderson said. "The lack of lights on the dock was a major cause of the accident. If it had been marked we wouldn't have hit it." The collision holed the boat's left bow above the waterline. The captain immediately returned to the dock for medical attention, then notified the U.S. Coast Guard and the Fish and Wildlife Commission. "He was very professional," Anderson said. "He got us back to shore as quickly and safely as possible. He was a gentleman and obviously very distraught by the situation." The captain, who has more than 100 hours of operator experience, was not cited. Anderson and Clark drove themselves to Englewood Hospital, where they were treated and released. The captain said the boat was "done for the season" and is currently being repaired. http://www.bocabeacon.com/story.htbml?number=843
Friday, May 13, 2005
News Former resident survives sailing accident that takes life of friend May 13, 2005 By Brian Saxton STAFF WRITER Lochlin Reidy, 58, a former resident of New Milford now living in Woodbridge, was picked up alive at 4 a.m. on Monday following a sailing accident in a fierce Atlantic Ocean storm that took the life of a friend and shipmate. Through a sea and air search operation mounted by the U.S. Coast Guard 400 miles off Virginia, Mr. Reidy was found after a C-130 Coast Guard plane saw a strobe light in the ocean. Thomas Tighe, 65, died in the arms of Mr. Reidy, his friend and shipmate , after huge waves swept them into the churning ocean while they were trying to prepare an inflatable life raft for the three remaining crew members. Coast Guard spokeswoman Kelly Newlin said Mr. Reidy held on to Mr. Tighe until they were found by a rescue ship, but by that time Mr. Tighe was dead. New Milford residents Jan and Mark Olander, longtime friends of the Reidy family, said Mr. Reidy has long shared Mr. Tighe’s enthusiasm for sailing. “He grew up with boats. He’s a very active guy who loves boats and loves sailing,” said Mark Olander. Jan Olander said Mr. Reidy’s wife, Sandra, was besieged by reporters and declined to make any statements. Efforts to reach Mr. Tighe’s family at their home in Patterson, N.Y., were also unsuccessful. Bethel yachtsman Douglas Griffin remembers Mr. Tighe as “a perfectionist... an experienced seaman.” In a lifetime of sailing, Mr. Tighe, a former member of the Candlewood Lake Power Squadron, made three round-trip voyages to the British Virgin Islands and 45 trips to Bermuda. He routinely delivered boats up and down the East Coast and chartered others in the Caribbean. “He was very dedicated and very sharp,” said Mr. Griffin. On Monday, Mr. Griffin, 55, who often sailed with Mr. Tighe, mourned the death of his longtime friend after hearing the Patterson, N.Y., man died in a fierce storm off the Virgina coast on his annual voyage to Bermuda over the weekend. “Tom was a special friend of mine,” said Mr. Griffin, who went on similar trips with Mr. Tighe. “He was a very dedicated seaman.” So dedicated that when Mr. Tighe sailed his 45-foot ketch Almeisan to Bermuda every year, he would give each crew member a thick, three-ring binder explaining weather conditions, safety procedures and vessel regulations for the six-day voyage. His crews varied between friends and other sailing enthusiasts. “His whole year revolved around preparing for the trip,” Mr. Griffin said. This year, though, the rough winds and stormy waters of the Atlantic Ocean defied Mr. Tighe’s expedition as it headed for Bermuda over the weekend. Both men were taken aboard the Panamanian-flagged tanker Sakura Express, which took part in the search and arrived in Boston Tuesday. Coast Guard officials said the three remaining crew members were lifted off Mr. Tighe’s boat Sunday night by a Coast Guard helicopter and taken to a hospital on Nantucket Island, Mass. They were identified as Ronald Burd of Dover, N.H; Christopher Ferrer of Sterling, Mass., and Kathleen Gilchrist of Bloomfield, N.J. They were said to be “in good condition.” All were expected to be released Monday night. According to the Coast Guard and other reports, Mr. Tighe and the four other crew members left Bridgeport for Bermuda last Tuesday. “They were expected to arrive in Bermuda but there were very heavy seas and they had the wind and the waves against them,” Mr. Griffin said. At one point, Mr. Griffin said, it seemed a large window in the boat broke and water poured into the vessel. Mr. Tighe reportedly activated an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon after his boat became caught up in 28-33 knot winds and 16-20 foot seas. Coast Guard officials said it was then that Mr. Tighe began preparing the raft to evacuate his crew. “While he and crewmate Lochlin Reidy were deploying the raft, both were washed overboard by a large wave,” said a Coast Guard spokesman. On Monday, Mr. Griffin theorized that the line connecting the life raft to the vessel may have severed, allowing the raft to drift away and leaving both men in the water. “This was a very dangerous situation for them,” Mr. Griffin said. The search for Mr. Tighe and his crew began at 6 a.m. on Sunday after the unit’s rescue co-ordination center in Norfolk, Va., heard the radio beacon. Coast Guard airplanes and helicopters from North Carolina, four merchant ships and another airplane from Halifax, Nova Scotia, took part in the search. Mr. Tighe, married with three grown children, was a graduate of the University of Connecticut, where he studied physics. He was a member of the International Maritime Technical Institute and the Institute of Navigation. Among other works, he once produced a video called “Bermuda Bound” that focuses on a voyage he once made to Bermuda aboard his ketch. Harvey Druker, 73, of Bethel, a past commander of the Candlewood Lake Power Squadron, who also sailed with Mr. Tighe on the annual Bermuda run, described Mr. Tighe as “a top-notch captain.” The squadron, which teaches safe boating, is part of a national network of similar squadrons and has 180 members. Mr. Druker, who said he had “the greatest respect” for Mr. Tighe, recalled one trip when they encountered similar bad weather for several days but arrived home safely. “I can only surmize that something went wrong on this trip and the boat started taking in water,” Mr. Druker said. “Tom was just about prepared for any eventuality. He was a marvelous captain. There was nothing he couldn’t handle.” Staff Writer John Pirro contributed to this story.Related Stories
Thursday, May 12, 2005
Dredging makes boating safer By AILEEN M. STRENG [email protected] Thursday, May 12, 2005 The beautiful and leisurely cruise down the Occoquan River enjoyed by thousands of recreational boaters is now a whole lot safer. After more than three years of planning, studies and federal funding cycles, the six miles of the Occoquan River from the town of Occoquan to the Potomac River has been dredged. The dredging has been a priority to local, county and federal leaders who have said it was vital, not only for recreational boaters but commercial users of the river, the construction of the new Va. 123 bridge and the revitalization of Occoquan. "It's a lengthy process, but once you get through it, it is worth the wait," said Steve Garbarino, Occoquan dredging project manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. "It is going to be a lot easier to get in and out of the river." The dredging got under way in early January. It was completed in mid-March. Many of the 2,500 recreational boaters who call the Occoquan River home will gather Saturday for their annual Blessing of the Fleet, which kicks off the boating season. This year the event also will celebrate the completion of the dredging. "I know that the channel is very much improved," said Chris Webster, coordinator of the Occoquan River Maritime Association. The association, established in 1999, is a federation of business, marinas and yacht clubs along the Occoquan as well as others interested in promoting the health and the future of the river. It was instrumental in advancing the effort to have the river dredged. Webster, along with others who have already been out on the river, has noticed the difference that the dredging has made. "There is a lot of buzz about it," Webster said. "It's all been very good and very positive." "We've been out on the river several times [since it's been dredged]," said Rick Sorrenti, commodore of the Occoquan Yacht Club. "I think it's a tremendous improvement." One notoriously dangerous portion of the river near the Belmont Bay Marina where shoaling had compromised the depth to as low as 2 or 3 feet has been dug out. "At low tide, it's now 10 feet deep," Sorrenti said. "They did a really great job." The Occoquan had not been dredged in 43 years and gradually with each passing year more silt has settled in the river's bottom. Over the last five years, more and more recreational and commercial boaters began experiencing groundings and damage to their vessels due to the shallow channel. Since the river is a U.S. Coast Guard designated channel that must be federally maintained, the Occoquan River Maritime Association and others turned to U.S. Rep. Tom Davis, R-11th District. Davis, whose district includes the portions of Prince William and Fairfax counties near the Occoquan River, has worked since 2001 to secure $4.7 million in federal funding for the dredging project. Prince William and Fairfax counties also picked up about 10 percent of the project's overall cost. During the dredging, between 30,000 and 35,000 cubic yards of material were taken out of the river and sent to the Prince William County landfill, Garbarino said. As part of the project, the Army Corps of Engineers also realigned some of the channel. "We took advantage of some of the natural depth in the river," Garbarino said. "That saved time and money." The portion of the river between U.S. 1 and down toward the Potomac River and around Belmont Bay had the most problems with shoaling, Garbarino said. While there were a number of problem areas, on the whole, "this is actually a rather wide channel," Garbarino said. "[With the dredging complete,] there is plenty of room to maneuver." The channel now is about 150 feet wide and 9 feet deep. "Everyone is quite pleased," Garbarino said. Webster pointed out that it is not only the recreational boaters who will benefit from the dredging. "There also is a lot of commercial activity," Webster said. "There are marinas, businesses and restaurants that rely on it." Likely the largest commercial user of the river is Vulcan Materials, which yearly moves 100 million tons of sand by barge through the Occoquan and Potomac rivers to Maryland. The maritime association estimates that if Vulcan stopped using the river and moved its sand by highway, as many as 20,000 dump trucks a year would travel the highways and over the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, Webster said. "The money spent on the Occoquan channel is a substantial return on the investment, especially when you compare it to the amount of increased traffic that would be put on the roads," Webster said. Another benefit of the improved channel is the accessibility it creates for the Virginia Department of Transportation as it works to replace the Va. 123 bridge. Just last week, a large piece of the bridge's infrastructure was floated by barge up the river. "That could not have happened if the channel was not deep enough," Webster said. A safe and deep channel also is crucial to the town of Occoquan's efforts to re-establish itself as a port, many have said. "The completion of the Occoquan dredging project marks a great day for the continuing renaissance of the town of Occoquan. In fact, this project is part and parcel of our efforts to revitalize the riverfront," Davis said. "Thanks to the dredging, the river is now much safer for recreational boaters and commercial traffic," Davis said. "A new deeper, wider channel, coupled with better access to the town via docks and other enhancements, means that individuals and families can again enjoy the attractions, shops and restaurants of Occoquan via the river, rather than just via I-95 or Route 123. "I am pleased to have secured federal funding for this project … and I am also very proud to have worked with local and state elected officials and civic leaders to finally bring this important project to completion," Davis said. A reception for Davis, hosted by the maritime association, to thank him for his help in securing the federal dollars for the dredging will be held following Saturday's blessing.
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Human error to blame for ship's collision with trawler, experts believe May 10, 2005 By Lauren Cohen Port Elizabeth: The skipper of the sunken trawler, the Lindsay, has told how he was "guided by an angel" to safety as icy water flooded into his pitch-dark cabin, capsized the vessel and took all but one of his crew to the bottom of the ocean. "All I can say is, there is a God," Mossel Bay fisherman Paul Landers, 36, said from his hospital bed here yesterday. Landers was one of only two men who survived after a refrigerator ship, the Ouro do Brasil, smashed into the Lindsay's port side off Sardinia Bay early on Sunday. The sea swallowed the Lindsay within 20 seconds of the collision. Crew member John Ehlers, 37, was plucked from the chilly water by the crew of the "reefer". Landers was pushed out of the Lindsay by water pressure and was rescued from a life raft an hour later by the Lindsay's sister boat, the Lincoln. No trace has yet been found of the Lindsay's other 14 crew members. Most of the crew, employees of Cape Town company Viking Fishing, were from Mossel Bay and Cape Town. Speaking from behind an oxygen mask in his intensive care unit bed in St George's Hospital, Landers said he had been "prepared to die seven times" during the ordeal, which lasted less than five minutes. He was asleep and was awakened by the impact of the Ouro colliding with the Lindsay. "It was completely dark, but I stayed calm the whole time, even when I was sucked back into the boat when it rolled over," Landers said. "I knew that I just had to take one breath and I would die if I did not get to the next air pocket." He believed his eight years' experience on the boat possibly saved his life. "I knew my way around, even in the pitch-dark.' But it was clear the trauma haunted him, for he said repeatedly: "I shouldn't be here." Landers said he wanted to see his family and those of the many good friends he had lost. "I want to find out what happened. My only regret was that I could not save other members of the crew." The missing men were apparently asleep in the forward hold when the trawler was struck. Landers has a fractured rib and is receiving oxygen to assist with his breathing after he ingested diesel, damaging his lungs. He said he was in pain but expected to be moved out of ICU today. The number of missing crewmen has been revised from 15 to 14. The Lindsay's complement is 17, but she was a man short when she left Mossel Bay on her final voyage, officials say. Meanwhile, Mawande Jack reports that a preliminary investigation into the collision, one of the worst maritime accidents off the southern and Eastern Cape coast in recent years, began yesterday. While sea rescue officials said it was too early to say what had led to the accident, it was clear that the 178-metre refrigerator vessel had struck the 30m fishing trawler, rather than the other way around. Large ships rounding the Cape of Good Hope from east to west come closer to shore to take advantage of the Aghulas current flowing out of the Indian Ocean as this speeds their passage. From their high bridges crew members often cannot see small vessels or manoeuvre fast enough to avoid them. The station commander of the National Sea Rescue Institute here, Ian Gray, believed "human error" was involved. Joe Neft, a retired skipper with 36 years' experience in navigation, believes negligence led to the accident. "It is clear certain navigation rules were not followed by one or both vessels." Neft also speculated that the two vessels could have been so close that the larger vessel's radar was unable to detect the small trawler. The SA Maritime Safety Authority (Samsa) has taken over the recovery operation from the NSRI. Samsa investigator Nigel Campbell said interviews were being conducted with leading crew members of the vessel Ouro do Brasil, which was being detained in the harbour here. The missing fishermen have not been named.
Monday, May 09, 2005
Could this tragedy have been avoided? ...time and a thorough investigation may tell... ____________________________ Fourteen sailors presumed dead after fishing trawler, Brazilian ship collide 06:36 PM EDT May 09 JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) - Fourteen sailors aboard a South African trawler were missing and presumed drowned after a collision with a Brazilian ship off the South African coast, officials said Monday. Two men aboard the trawler were rescued, but the rest of the 16-member crew are thought to have gone down with the trawler when it sank within seconds of the collision before dawn on Sunday. National Sea Rescue Institute spokesman Craig Lambinon told the South African Press Association that a massive air and sea search has been called off. "Everything that could be done, has been done," he said. Peter Becker, the manager of the Viking Inshore Fishing Co., which owned the trawler, said three members of one family were among the missing sailors. "It is very tragic," he told SAPA. Authorities said all vessels in the region scrambled to begin an immediate search and rescue effort. The Ouro do Brasil, the ship that collided with the trawler, rescued crewman Johan Ehlers, who had been swept off the deck during the collision. Paul Landers, the captain of the trawler, was rescued by the crew of the trawler's sister ship. An investigation into the cause of the collision has begun, authorities said.
Another sad story....Should the law always require children to wear life jackets? May 8, 2005 Father, son drown in White River Pair from Lawrence apparently fell from pontoon boat in Hamilton County. By Stu Hirsch [email protected] NOBLESVILLE, Ind. -- A father and his young son drowned Sunday afternoon when they apparently fell from a small pontoon boat while fishing on the White River in Hamilton County. The 28-year-old father and his 6-year-old son were from Lawrence, said Hamilton County Sheriff Doug Carter. "We take so much for granted. When things like this occur, it causes us to reflect and appreciate the things that we have. I can't imagine what this family is going to have to endure," Carter said. He declined to identify the victims, pending the notification of their family. The accident occurred near the Teter Family Retreat at 10980 East 221st Street, about five miles northeast of Noblesville. The boat apparently was put in the water at the Riverbend Campground. The accident was reported about 3:50 p.m. Sunday. A state conservation officer estimated the depth of the river at the drowning scene at six to seven feet and said the water temperature was 60 to 61 degrees, typical for spring. The current was no more than 2 mph in a calm, wide area of the river. Neither the man nor the boy were wearing life jackets at the time of the accident, although a life jacket and buoyant seat cushion were in the boat and appeared to be in good working order, said state conservation officer John Gano. He said no state law requires the wearing of floatation devices, although they are required to be on board a boat on water. The boat was about eight feet long. A deck was attached to the two pontoons, and seats were bolted to the deck. It was equipped with a small motor. The boat, according to Gano, was made from a plastic composite material. While Gano said the boat appeared to be in good working order, he added that such vessels have a reputation of being "tippy" because of their light weight. Authorities were unsure late Sunday when the pair arrived at Riverbend to begin their day of boating and fishing on the river. Several other boaters told investigators they saw the pair earlier in the day. However, no one actually saw either victim fall into the river. Gano speculated that the child might have fallen into the river first, followed by the father. He said authorities might never know the actual sequence of events, or the reasons both fell in. When the boat was recovered, the motor was set in a tight turn, leading Gano to believe the father may have been trying to recover his son. Carter said the initial report to the sheriff's department was for a small child who was discovered floating face down in the water. Several minutes later, another report came in that a man had been discovered. A group of fishermen recovered the boy's body and rushed him to Riverbend, where rescue workers tried to resuscitate him. A group on a pontoon boat out for an afternoon cruise spotted the man under the water, but a man and a woman on jet skis actually recovered his body and took him to shore, Gano said. http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050508/NEWS01/505090315
Saturday, May 07, 2005
The Article below is on the US Coast Guard site......It reminds parents to make their kids wear life jacket just like a bike helmet..... Do you agree??? Make your Children Wear Their Life jackets As Part Of National Safe Kids Week, U.S. Coast Guard Reminds Parents To Make Their Kids Wear Life Jackets WASHINGTON – The U. S. Coast Guard reminds parents that their children should always wear a life jacket while boating. “National SAFE KIDS Week is a perfect time to remember the importance of life jackets,” said the Coast Guard’s Director of Operations Policy, Rear Admiral J.W. Underwood. “It is the parent’s responsibility to keep their children safe when on the water and insisting on wearing life jackets is one of the best ways to do that. “Just like you make your kids wear bike helmets, make them wear life jackets.” Many adults believe themselves capable of diving into the water to rescue a child who falls overboard. This is a dangerous misconception. Adults may not notice a child falling overboard right away. Children who fall in may not surface immediately. It can be difficult to locate a child in the water—especially when the vessel is in motion. Life jackets could prevent approximately two-thirds of all boating-related drownings of children ages 14 and under. In fact, in most states, children under 13 must wear life jackets. It’s the law. According to the National SAFE KIDS Campaign, drowning remains second only to motor vehicle accidents as the leading cause of unintentional injury-related death among children ages 1 to 14. Furthermore, children are much more likely to practice safe habits when they experience similar behavior by parents and caregivers. “We have done research that indicates children whose parents wear life jackets around water are more likely to wear one themselves,” says Jen Medearis Costello, program manager at the National SAFE KIDS Campaign. “Therefore we recommend that parents not only actively supervise their children around water, but also demonstrate safe behavior—including wearing life jackets.” The Coast Guard and National SAFE KIDS Campaign strongly recommend adults always wear life jackets as well – not only to keep themselves safe, but to demonstrate safe behavior for their children. National SAFE KIDS Week starts on April 30 and runs through May 7. The U.S. Coast Guard is asking all boat owners and operators to help reduce fatalities, injuries, property damage, and healthcare costs related to recreational boating accidents by taking personal responsibility for their own safety and the safety of their passengers. Essential steps include always wearing a life jacket and requiring passengers to do the same; never boating under the influence; completing a boating safety course; and getting a free vessel safety check annually from local U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary or United States Power Squadrons® vessel examiners. The U.S. Coast Guard reminds all boaters, "You're in Command. Boat Responsibly!” For more information on boating responsibly, go to www.USCGboating.org or the U.S. Coast Guard Infoline – 1-800-368-5647. Customer Accessibility • Webmaster (Technical Website Issues) • Disclaimer, Privacy & Internet Link Policies
One man died even with a lifejacket. Cold water boating can be dangerous even with a life jacket. What should boaters do to protect themselves when springtime lures them onto the water?
Friday, May 06, 2005
The sad story below is about two men who drowned while fishing in a small relatively shallow pond. The question, aside from the law, is should there be more education about the dangers of boating in this kind of water without lifejackets. Who should educate the public on this type of boating situation to make it safer?? Two Men Drown in Pond When Boat CapsizedMay 5, 2005 By RICHARD WALKER. T&D Staff Writer DENMARK — A fishing trip among friends turned to tragedy Wednesday when two men drowned after their small boat overturned in a rural pond north of Denmark. Bamberg County Coroner Billy Duncan said Matthew Paul Williams of Blackville and Torean Williams of Springfield were fishing with three acquaintances at a pond off Redwine Road when the accident occurred."They were out here fishing, they said. One of them stood up (in the boat), I'm told, and the boat flipped over," Duncan said. "One of them could swim and one of them couldn't swim."Emergency personnel were called out at about 3:55 p.m. after the two 22-year-old men disappeared beneath the water of the 3-acre pond located in a rural area about four miles north of Denmark.Officials said the three acquaintances remained on shore fishing while the two Williams men, believed to be distant cousins, launched a 10-foot watercraft into the pond. But when the craft overturned, both men were thrown into the water. When they failed to surface, someone at the scene with a cell phone called emergency personnel, officials said.Bamberg County Rescue, sheriff's deputies, Denmark Fire Department, DNR and EMS sent crews to the pond with the outside chance one or both of the men could be rescued. Emergency crews walked the banks of the pond searching the water.As the seconds ticked anxiously by, family members and acquaintances of the men began to arrive. They waited on an opposite bank about 100 yards from the rescue crews.Some knelt and prayed. Others cried in silence. All kept watch on the surface of the water rippled only by a gentle breeze.At about 4:57 p.m., a group of about 10 family members arrived, running across an open field toward the pond. Their cries of anguish arrived before they could."Somebody please tell me no! Somebody please! Somebody please tell me no! Not my son, no God, not my son. Not Torean. Oh God!" a woman screamed hysterically.Still, there were those who refused to believe the two men could be dead. One onlooker chewed a fingernail while staring at the water as if willing the men to surface. She spoke softly, but resolutely, to no one in particular, "They're going to find them. They're going to find them."At 5:10 p.m., a DNR diver entered the water.One of the men who was present when the pair disappeared watched intently as the diver searched for his friends. On the verge of tears and without taking his eyes from the water, he declined to comment.Six minutes later, the crowd of about 40 broke into tears and wailing of anguish as all hope of rescue vanished when the upper body of a man broke the surface of the water."That's Matthew! That's Matthew! No, Matthew!" a woman shouted.At 5:20 p.m., another body was brought to the surface."That's my boy! That's Torean! That's Torean!" a woman screamed.The bodies of the two men, clad in jeans, T-shirts and sneakers were removed from about 8 feet of water and loaded into a coroner's transport van.DNR officials said the tragedy will most likely be ruled a boating accident."It's a little small 9- or 10-footer that appears to have had hull/structure damage. There's a crack in the boat and it took on water," DNR Sgt. Lee Mills said. "From what we've been told, we had one swimmer and one non-swimmer. No life jackets."No autopsies are planned, Duncan said.About two hours after the initial call for help, emergency crews began securing equipment as the crowd of onlookers gradually thinned."And this weekend is Mother's Day. Can you imagine what it's going to be like for those mothers?" an unidentified DNR officer said as he walked away. T&D Staff Writer Richard Walker can be reached by e-mail at [email protected] or by phone at 803-533-5516. | <urn:uuid:01347d6c-c332-49d1-a42b-3b95ef6bae13> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lawboat.blogspot.com/2005_05_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97652 | 16,264 | 1.695313 | 2 |
What would happen if there were a massive fire raging through Oakland that was spreading and had overwhelmed the city Fire Department? Or a flu that had killed more than 1,000 people and that public health authorities had not been able to contain?
Would the Oakland City Council hesitate one second to declare a public health emergency as it has the power to do under Section 213 of the city charter? The provision grants a city's governing body expanded powers to "protect the public health, safety or welfare."
I highly doubt it.
Well, there has been a plague ravaging this city for decades now. It may not be a natural disaster or what is typically viewed as a public health crisis like HIV/AIDS, but it is a deadly public health crisis nonetheless. Oakland is in the grips of a street shooting epidemic that has been claiming victims for as long as many people can remember.
In 2012, 131 people were killed. Most of them were shot dead in the streets. Hundreds more were shot and survived. Shooting victims are driving themselves to Highland Hospital.
The California Emergency Services Act defines a local emergency as a "condition of extreme peril to person or property proclaimed by the governing body of the local agency affected."
I don't know about you, but four people shot and killed in six hours on the streets of this city this past Friday? A woman encountering a man who had been shot to death lying on the sidewalk while
I'd call that "extreme peril to persons."
I can't think of one good reason why Oakland shouldn't use its local emergency ordinance -- and everything else at its disposal, for that matter -- to help get control of the killing that is wiping out a whole generation of young black men in East and West Oakland who have been so brainwashed by thug culture that they are intent on destroying themselves along with anyone else who gets in their way?
We are dealing with a lethal disease.
As if we needed a reminder of that fact, city and police officials held a news conference Monday to discuss Oakland's latest shooting madness in front of a mural dedicated to Carlos Nava. In August 2011, Carlos, 3, was shot and killed in gang crossfire on International Boulevard in broad daylight while his mother pushed him in his stroller. Gabriel Martinez, 5, was shot a few months later in December near his father's taco stand not far away on the same street.
I thought about those little boys and about all the people who have been murdered since in gun violence. I thought about how many times I had attended variations of the same news conference listening to the same speeches by public officials and community leaders about how we will not tolerate the killing in this city. Yet we, as a community, continue to tolerate the killing in our city.
Oakland Mayor Jean Quan and police Chief Howard Jordan said at Monday's news conference that Oakland does not need to pass a local state of emergency ordinance.
"We have already been operating under a state of emergency," Quan said. She and Jordan said they had already asked Gov. Jerry Brown for help. That he had sent U.S. marshals and California Highway Patrol officers to assist the Oakland Police Department. They said declaring a local state of emergency wouldn't get Oakland any more assistance from Sacramento.
I'm not so sure about that. A declaration of emergency followed by a public request for help to Brown could bring more pressure to bear on the governor, who does have a home in Oakland. Who knows if there could be additional state funds found to help hire more police officers? More intensive regional mutual aid. The governor also has the authority to send the National Guard.
An emergency ordinance would give local authorities greater law enforcement powers -- such as the power to "impose a curfew within designated boundaries where necessary to promote the public safety," according to the state emergency services act.
Right now, Oakland could only legally use curfews if they covered the whole city. Which would make no sense when the shooting is concentrated in certain areas.
Jordan said Monday that officials are exploring the legality of using the emergency ordinance even though they have chosen not to use it at this time.
When you have this level of bloodshed on your streets, why not use every available tool at your disposal? | <urn:uuid:a4ae2f05-a475-4131-88f7-ea5ef2637e6a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_22372732/tammerlin-drummond-no-good-reason-not-declare-public?source=rss | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9798 | 859 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Otoplasty Beverly Hills, also known as Ear Pinning, Ear Pinback, or Ear Reduction Surgery Beverly Hills, is the cosmetic plastic surgery procedure that permanently corrects protruding ears. Otoplasty Beverly Hills does so by positioning the ears closer to the head (Ear Pinning), reshaping them,reducing their size, and making them more symmetrical. Protruding Ear Deformity is the most prevalent congenital malformation of the head and neck area.
Besides Protruding Ears, other External Ear deformities are also corrected by Otoplasty Beverly Hills. These deformities include: Cup Ear or irregular development of the outer ears; Lop Ear or Bat Ear, where the edge of the ear’s exterior grows at a sharp and protruding angle; Cauliflower Ear, caused by crush injury to ear cartilage; "Spock's Ear" with protruding sharp edge; Shell Ear, with missing folds and creases, as well as ears that are too large or too small.
Otoplasty ranks as the most commonly performed plastic surgery Procedure on children between ages five and fourteen. In fact, Ear Pinning is one cosmetic surgery where "earlier is better" because of the devastating blows to a child's self-esteem, who is teased for having protruding ears; being called names such as "Dumbo," "Mickey Mouse" and "Rabbit Ears." The optimal time for performing otoplasty Beverly Hills in children is just before they start school, or at about the age of seven. At this age the ears have grown to nearly their adult size and the child is old enough to be able to undergo surgery safely. It also gives children a chance to correct their facial deformity before starting to socialize with peers in school.
Otoplasty Beverly Hills has also been a blessing for thousands of adults who have spent their lives feeling self-conscious about their "big ears." They have hidden their ears with hairstyles, hats, and avoided wearing ear jewelry. With Otoplasty Beverly Hills they have gained the freedom to wear their hair short or pulled back, wear earrings, and no longer feel embarrassed about their look. While Otoplasty Beverly Hills aims to normalize the appearance of the ears it can never produce perfect and fully symmetrical ears. Therefore, parents who are considering Ear Pinning for their children, and adults who are considering the procedure, should have realistic expectations. After all, no two ears are ever identical or perfectly symmetrical.
Contraindications for Otoplasty Beverly Hills include active ear infection. Children who need to undergo surgery on their ear drums, mastoids, or tonsils should delay having Otoplasty Beverly Hills.
Otoplasty Beverly Hills is tailored by plastic surgeons according to the patient's needs. Techniques include rearranging or sculpting existing ear cartilage; adjusting the position of the ear helix and lobe to that of the head; rearranging, excising or adding skin or cartilage grafts and flaps.
Children having Otoplasty Beverly Hills will undergo general anesthesia to assure that they will remain still for maximum safety. On the other hand, adults can undergo Ear Pinning with local anesthesia and sedation, if they have a calm nature.
The Cosmetic plastic surgeon begins the surgery by making an incision just behind the ear, in the natural fold where the ear joins the head. He or she may employ Cartilage Cutting or Cartilage Sparing techniques. Cartilage Sparing, which repositions the cartilage via multiple suspension sutures rather than cutting, has the advantage of avoiding visible edges of cut cartilage, but is technically more challenging. Following the repositioning of the cartilage, the plastic surgeon will address the protrusion of the ear lobes, remove excess skin and close the wound with sutures.
Your Plastic Surgeon’s instructions for recovery will include wearing a special headband or bandage to hold the ears in place, avoid strenuous sports for a period of time, and to sleep with your head elevated for a few days. Following all instructions will be crucial to an optimal outcome.
Dr. Younai is a Board Certified Plastic & Reconstructive Surgeon with experience in all aspects of Facial Cosmetic Surgery including that of the Ears. He is skilled and experienced in all techniques of Otoplasty Beverly Hills and strives to create ears that are natural and normal looking. During your consultation he will discuss all details including: if you are a good candidate, surgical options and techniques, potential risks and complications of surgery, pre- and post-operative instructions, recovery course, as well as what to expect after surgery. At that time Dr. Younai will also show you before-and-after pictures of other patients with Otoplasty Beverly Hills, who might be similar to you.
Dr. Younai performs Otoplasty on both children and adults who come to the California Center for Plastic Surgery from the Northern as well as the Southern California region. Some of these cities include Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Hollywood, Burbank, Sherman Oaks, Encino, Calabasas, Woodland Hills, Thousand Oaks, Westlake Village, Pasadena, Glendale, Valencia, Palmdale, Fresno, and Oxnard. | <urn:uuid:87a09ccc-774d-423e-a4a2-12bfed7b5038> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.beautifulself.com/p_ear.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951008 | 1,093 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Analysts at Societe Generale’s cross-asset research department expect yields on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note to rise to 2.75% by the end of 2013 as improving economic data leads to increased confidence of a long-term recovery, according to a research note Monday.
The 10-year note /quotes/zigman/4868283/delayed 10_YEAR is currently yielding 2.06%.
However, without the actions of the Federal Reserve, the fair value 10-year yields is 3.5%, the analysts wrote. The Fed currently buys $85 billion in Treasury and mortgage debt every month in order to keep interest rates low.
The third quarter of 2013 could be a turning point for Treasurys. That time frame allows for the impacts of the payroll tax increase and sequester to be felt. If economic data shows consistent improvement, the Fed could begin to signal a slowing down in monthly purchases.
“Such a move, which could come around mid-year, would probably prompt the Treasury market to move dramatically, even if actual purchases by the Fed were to continue to year end,” the analysts wrote.
The research note also suggests the Fed’s slowing of asset purchases could be more significant for agency mortgage-backed securities, or those supported by government affiliates like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, than for Treasury debt purchases. The Fed is the dominant buyer of agency MBS while foreign central banks play a major role in the Treasury market.
– Saumya Vaishampayan
Follow The Tell blog on Twitter @thetellblog | <urn:uuid:6b8cbf44-dde9-40dc-a225-d6d4c2394724> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2013/03/11/societe-generale-10-year-treasury-yields-at-2-75-by-end-of-2013/tab/print/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937258 | 330 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Circular Needles question
I am fairly new to knitting, the only thing I have finished is a hat that I did on straight needles. I am attempting to make a pair of longies on circular needles, but I have a quick question. Which side do I start counting from to put my stitch markers? Sounds silly to ask this, but I have gone along in the pattern and where it is now telling me to put my markers seems backwards, if that makes sense. Thanks! | <urn:uuid:61f9a48d-61b1-4d48-a01d-aef0cc037f15> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.knittinghelp.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1313340&mode=threaded | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96759 | 98 | 1.507813 | 2 |
I like a short cut as well as anyone else, but sometimes--especially when it comes to research for writing--the Internet can't deliver the details you can get from an expert.
The Internet is great for a quick fact check, but when you want depth, it's best to seek out resources that aren't stored there.
An instructor at a writing conference put it this way: "If you want to find out about stamps, skip the Internet and go talk to a collector." You get to the right information more quickly. This is especially important for writers who may not have a specific question ("When was X coin put into use?") but want to gather more general material. Sometiems you don't even know what you want to know yet.
This is where I find myself as I research life in Depression-era East Texas. Internet is so-so for help. Books are better. Regional museums and primary materials, even better. But best of all: oral histories and real interviews. That's how I've gotten the best level of detail to lend the right texture to my new novel-to-be. Plus I don't spend so much time drifting through semi-helpful web content when I should be writing. | <urn:uuid:b087adbc-4954-469a-a6a4-fc054f07ca8a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ashleyperez.com/blog/item/151-experts-trump-the-internet-i-swear | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958977 | 252 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Observers of Pakistani politics say Pakistanis universally loathe the American drone strikes against Islamist militants in Pakistan's tribal belt. The view is based on anecdotal accounts of Pakistanis, but not the ones most affected by the strikes who live in the tribal areas where the drones fly. Most of these informants have no personal knowledge of the tribal areas and the political situation that prevails there. Despite these limitations, observers such as Murtaza Haider confidently avow that "if there is a consensus in Pakistan on any one matter, it is the unanimous opposition to the American drone strikes on Pakistan's territory ."
This conventional wisdom is wrong. Yes, drone strikes are not very popular among a large section of Pakistani society. But Pakistanis are not united in opposition to drone strikes. In fact, many Pakistanis support the drone strikes. This suggests that there is room for the United States to engage in a public diplomacy campaign to win over more Pakistanis to the idea that drone strikes are not the bringers of carnage that is so often portrayed in the Urdu-language media in Pakistan if the United States could be persuaded to bring this worst-kept secret out of the closet and into embassy briefings in Islamabad.
Writers critical of the drone program have mobilized various public opinion polls to buttress their claims, notably those conducted by the Pew Research Center as a part of its Global Attitudes Project. Pew asks Pakistanis whether they believe that the drone strikes are conducted with consent of the Pakistani government and whether they believe the strikes kill civilians in large numbers, among other sensitive topics. Drone opponents have used the responses as evidence that the program is being forced on Pakistanis by the United States, which has decided to engage in these extrajudicial killings as the way to best conduct its own war against Islamist militants who are ensconced in Pakistan's tribal areas. Pew's 2010 report on the drone war declared: "There is little support for U.S. drone strikes against extremist leaders -- those who are aware of those attacks generally say they are not necessary, and overwhelmingly they believe that the strikes kill too many civilians." Drone foes have seized upon these and subsequent survey results and marshaled them as iron-class proof that Washington's drone program faces a wall of Pakistani public opposition. Fortifying opinion with data is a welcome thing. Unfortunately, drone critics have been highly selective in their use of the data, with a tendency to rely on survey answers that cast Pakistani opinion as being overwhelmingly hostile to drones. When one examines all of the data gathered by Pew on drones in Pakistan, a very different and much more complex picture emerges about Pakistani attitudes toward various aspects of the American drone program. A more detailed look at the data suggests that that even while some Pakistanis think drones kill too many innocent Pakistanis, they are still necessary. | <urn:uuid:8014bbc4-61a7-416b-9dcf-02dfc3112ded> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nextgov.com/defense/2013/01/you-say-pakistanis-all-hate-drone-war-prove-it/60827/?oref=ng-relatedstories | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963108 | 564 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Why Apple pulled the plug on Google MapsSeptember 23, 2012: 7:15 AM ET
The company's real mistake may have been not doing it years ago
FORTUNE -- Unbeknownst to me, I've been feeding geographical information into Google's (GOOG) mapping database for years -- searching for addresses, sharing my location, checking for traffic jams on Google Maps. Google, for its part, has been scraping that data for every nugget of intelligence its computers can extract. Without consciously volunteering, I've been participating in a massive crowdsourcing experiment -- perhaps the largest the world has ever seen. Who knows what I might have been teaching Google Maps if I'd been navigating the surface of the planet with an Android phone in my pocket?
Apple (AAPL), by building its much-loved (and now much-missed) iPhone Maps app on Google's mapping database, has been complicit in this Herculean data collection exercise since the launch of the first iPhone in 2007. The famous Google cars that drive up and down the byways of the world collecting Street View images get most of the attention, but it's the billions upon billions of data points supplied by hundreds of millions of users that make Google Maps seem so smart and iOS 6's new Maps app seem so laughably stupid.
In Saturday's New York Times, Op Ed columnist Joe Nocera asks: "If Steve Jobs were still alive, would the new map application on the iPhone 5 be such an unmitigated disaster? Interesting question, isn't it?"
No Joe, it's not an interesting question. It's the No. 1 cliché of the post-Jobsian era.
Besides, the decision to pull the plug on Google's mapping database at the end of what was probably a five-year contract had to have been made while Jobs was running the company.
"Not doing its own Maps would be a far bigger mistake," says Asymco's Horace Dediu, who addressed the issue at length in last week's Critical Path podcast. "The mistake was not getting involved in maps sooner, which was on Jobs' watch. Nokia saw the writing on the wall five years ago and burned $8 billion to get in front of the problem. The pain Apple feels now is deferred from when they decided to hand over that franchise to Google at the beginning of iPhone."
But the fact is, the company found itself in the position of feeding its customers' priceless location information into the mapping database of its mortal enemy. That couldn't go on forever.
Weaning itself from Google Maps will not be easy. It may be one of the hardest things Apple has ever tried to do.
If you've seen enough examples of the boneheaded mistakes Apple Maps is making and want to get a sense of what's involved in correcting them, I recommend Mike Dobson's Google Maps announces a 400 year advantage over Apple Maps.
Dobson, a former professor of geography at SUNY Albany, was Rand McNally's chief cartographer from 1986 to 2000 and now runs a consulting service called TeleMapics.
"Perhaps the most egregious error," he writes, "is that Apple's team relied on quality control by algorithm and not a process partially vetted by informed human analysis. You cannot read about the errors in Apple Maps without realizing that these maps were being visually examined and used for the first time by Apple's customers and not by Apple's QC teams. If Apple thought that the results were going to be any different than they are, I would be surprised. Of course, hubris is a powerful emotion."
Dobson has been fielding and answering questions from readers in the comment stream of his Exploring Local blog. It's like a graduate seminar in cartography. I hope someone at Apple is auditing it.
UPDATE: Jean-Louis Gassée's Monday Note has, as usual, a sensible take on the issue:
The ridicule that Apple has suffered following the introduction of the Maps application in iOS 6 is largely self-inflicted. The demo was flawless, 2D and 3D maps, turn-by-turn navigation, spectacular flyovers…but not a word from the stage about the app's limitations, no self-deprecating wink, no admission that iOS Maps is an infant that needs to learn to crawl before walking, running, and ultimately lapping the frontrunner, Google Maps. Instead, we're told that Apple's Maps may be "the most beautiful, powerful mapping service ever." | <urn:uuid:66fbfa0e-c403-4afd-8574-a3a2fe4571b2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/09/23/why-apple-pulled-the-plug-on-google-maps/?section=magazines_fortune&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fmagazines_fortune+%28Fortune+Magazine%29 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96047 | 921 | 1.585938 | 2 |
LARGO, Florida-The Fiscal Cliff, if left unresolved, will hit education hard, cutting $4 billion from federally funded school programs. Florida's share equals $173 million starting in the 2013-2014 school year and continuing for the next 10 years.
Every school district will be impacted. Pinellas will lose $6.3 million in federal funding, affecting 20 programs. One of the hardest hit programs is Title 1 in schools serving kids from low income families. Schools with less than 75 percent of its students on free and reduced lunch will lose Title 1 funding -- that includes 12 of 46 Pinellas schools.
Single dad Stewart Blouin picks up his 7-year-old daughter, Bianca, from her afterschool program at Frontier Elementary School. The program runs even during the holidays. Stewart says, "We need the aftercare and before care, or else we can't make ends meet."
This federally funded program may go away next school year now that lawmakers have taken us over the fiscal cliff. Stewart says lawmakers are "playing with my money."
Pinellas School board members, including Carol Cook, signed a resolution this month asking Congress to hold education harmless. "Our most vulnerable of all students are the ones significantly impacted by this," says Cook.
Pinellas' share of $6.3 million federals dollars means 12 schools serving students from low income families lose funding. Besides before and afterschool care programs, tutoring and staff will be reduced. Others cuts include services to 13,000 special needs students, non-English speaking students, training for teachers and principals, and the purchase of instructional materials and technology.
Cook says, "It will impact every student in Pinellas County one way or another."
Schools officials say they may try to save some federal programs, but that means the money will be taken from other areas. Cook says Pinellas has already cut about $150 million in the last 5 to 6 years due to a poor economy. | <urn:uuid:4fd9f940-d64d-4c61-b6ef-80eb19cb51c3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wtsp.com/news/local/article/289647/8/Fiscal-Cliff-impacting-schools-Pinellas-to-lose-63-million | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958276 | 409 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Google Glass Expected to be Available in Less Than Two Years
Google Glass, Google's augmented reality glasses, was revealed in April this year. Back then it was still in the conceptual stage, and there wasn't any physical prototype available. Details on its commercial availability were also uncertain.
However all that has changed as Google co-founder, Sergey Brin, provided details as well as a look at the actual glasses at this year's Google I/O. The glasses sport a transparent screen on the left side of the frame, which is placed above a person's regular line-of-sight so it won't block the person's vision. They are also capable of snapping photographs, recording video access emails and messages as well as surfing the Web. Internet access is made possible via a wireless networking chip though the glasses lack a cellular network radio.
Google Glass weighs about the same as a pair of normal sunglasses, and has a battery smaller than a smartphone battery. Google is currently at work trying to extend the glasses' battery life to last an entire day on a single charge. As countries have different policies on radio-frequency emissions, Google Glass is geographically confined to U.S. developers for the moment. They will be available for $1,500 a pair and will begin shipping to developers by early next year. Brin also revealed that consumers can expect to see them less than a year after the developer units are released and at a lower price. | <urn:uuid:0c0dc95e-a6df-4a36-8ad7-4acff38c60ae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hardwarezone.com.sg/tech-news-google-glass-expected-be-available-less-two-years | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967413 | 292 | 1.585938 | 2 |
21/07/2011 – by Wanda Steindorf
You give cooking lessons to employees of private households in Brazil. What exactly are you doing?
I am a qualified chef and have been training private cooks for eight years. In my classes, they learn how to cook healthy food which is low in fat and sugar. The participants mostly work for very wealthy families who want to eat better and are prepared to pay for their cooks’ advanced training. This concept has been very successful. Most participants are happy to take the courses. I have already appeared on TV, explaining healthy diets and exercise. I have also published a cook book.
The women who attend your courses work in private households. What is their background?
Many of them are from the North of Brazil – from Recife, Paraiba or Bahia –, where there is very little work, and if there are jobs, they are very poorly paid. The others come from the favelas, Brazil’s marginalised urban areas. Rio de Janeiro is full of favelas; a vast area begins right behind my office, for example. They are women with little education and have to work for their livelihoods.
Is it normal for these women to go to work?
In their social environment, it goes without saying that they have to earn money just like men do. The men work mostly in low-qualified jobs, for example as drivers, which provides an income of € 600 at best. Furthermore, children from the age of 15 or 16 on have to contribute to their families’ income too. However, many women are single mothers. They have to provide for themselves and their children.
In many regions of Latin America, the working conditions are appalling for domestic servants. In what conditions do the participants in your courses work?
These women work for very wealthy families. These families usually have a cook, a cleaner and washer as well as one nanny per child. In these homes, the domestic helpers earn well. They generally work five days a week in the household and go home at the weekend. During the week, however, they have to leave their children with their grandparents or mother-in-law.
So the women can only go home on the weekend – that’s tough.
All the same, they often have a better life at their place of work. The women work around 12 hours a day during the week. That may sound a lot, but they would typically have to work much longer hours at home. At home, moreover, they usually have poor-quality beds and share small apartments with entire extended families. In the rich households, by contrast, there are always one or two rooms for the maids, which are furnished with large beds and good television sets, and there is often a TV set and radio in the kitchen too. This means they can watch the popular novelas, the Brazilian soap operas, in the evening, which they wouldn’t have the time to do at home. Sometimes the family they work for even takes them along on vacation trips – to Disneyland, to their holiday home in Miami or to Europe. Of course this only applies to the upper class. The middle class houses are more sparsely furnished and they do not go on luxurious holidays.
By contrast, what kind of work do the home owners do?
They are educated women who make a good living. One of my clients is an architect, another a dentist and another a company manager. One even owns a children’s toys business. Sometimes men who are single or divorced and depend on paid domestic help turn to me too.
It seems to be a matter of course that the women of the upper class go to work and leave their house in the care of strangers.
Yes, absolutely. After all, they are well educated and often work even better than men. They normally graduate from college at the age of 23, then they go on to do a Masters degree and start professional work at the age of 26 or 27. In earlier times, women sometimes had to struggle when they wanted to do paid work. But today, they enjoy equal rights, at least in principle.
The women who meet in the households, the employer and the employee, have very different backgrounds. Do they understand how the other one lives?
The maids do not always know exactly what their employer’s job entails. But they know it is important work. Of course, the home owner has a rough idea of what their servants do. Privately, some are very close, while others have very little to do with one another. Most maintain a kind and friendly relationship, but they are not friends.
The living arrangements of the maids seem to be relatively comfortable. Are they also paid appropriately?
A cook in a wealthy household receives about € 600 per month and if she is good she can even earn up to € 1,000. This is a very good wage for the women who mostly have no education whatsoever and are often even illiterate. Nannies are not only well paid but also have an enjoyable job because there are often several in one household and they can look after the children together. This is different in the middle class. Here the maids have to do all the duties that may crop up in the household and they only earn € 300 to € 400 per month.
Is this a high or low income for Brazil?
Take my daughter as a comparison: She is a designer with a university degree and speaks four languages. She works eight to nine hours per day, six days a week, and she earns € 250 a month. The minimum wage for domestic servants is currently € 200, in other words, only slightly less. Being a domestic servant is really not a bad job!
Is the minimum wage always paid?
Working conditions for maids used to be very poor, but a law concerning domestic servants has been in force for a number of years in Brazil. They are now entitled to an extra month’s salary, one month of paid leave and health insurance. They record their salary and insurance in an employment record book. If they are not paid correctly, the employee can go to court with the book and sue their employer. For that reason, almost all employers do in fact make the required payments.
Many maids are illiterate, yet they earn relatively good money. Does their children’s education matter to them?
Yes, certainly. They set great store by their children attending school, even though the quality of teaching at public schools is very poor and does not necessarily enable the students to get a good job. My own domestic servant, for example, only attended school for two years and can hardly read or write. Her son has a much better education: He is now 15 years old and still goes to school. All the same, he will probably earn less than she does.
Is education of such little value?
No, there are some positive examples: One of the women who attended my course recently passed the entrance examination to study law and now attends university alongside her work. She wants to become a lawyer and would certainly earn more in that profession. Her employer is supporting her.
Questions by Eva-Maria Verfürth. | <urn:uuid:a2b5ca72-1b23-42b5-880e-4563b70c6e1e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dandc.eu/en/article/some-domestic-helpers-brazil-make-good-money | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984146 | 1,479 | 1.835938 | 2 |
NTSB holding marine investigation courses
Posted on 27 August 2008
The National Transportation Safety Board is offering two marine safety investigation courses for marine industry professionals.
The first, Accident Investigation Orientation for Marine Professionals, will be offered Oct. 7-8 at the NTSB Training Center in Ashburn, Va. It is aimed at mid- to senior-level marine industry professionals interested in learning more about the safety board's processes and procedures during a major marine accident and the role of an investigation participant.
This is the first time the NTSB has offered this program as a stand-alone course.
The second course, Marine Accident Investigation, will be offered Jan. 26-30, 2009, also at the NTSB Training Center. It provides in-depth exposure to NTSB investigative techniques and methods. This course is particularly appropriate for in-house investigative and safety personnel employed by the marine industry, according to the NTSB. This is the first time the NTSB has offered this course.
Representatives from the NTSB Office of Marine Safety will lead both courses, but other senior professionals from the safety board will serve as guest presenters on a variety of relevant topics, including public affairs, research and engineering, and safety recommendations.
Descriptions of the courses, registration information and cost to attend can be found on the NTSB Web site
. (Click on the “Training Center” button.) | <urn:uuid:accad861-f967-4813-95f1-114fe2cd917d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tradeonlytoday.com/home/495706-ntsb-holding-marine-investigation-courses | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940491 | 290 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Sponsored Post: Back To School Checklist: Everything They Need For Less
Brought to you by Kmart
Don't forget a thing! This comprehensive back-to-school checklist will help make sure all your i's are dotted and t's crossed before your kids' first day back. A lot of schools will have their own checklists specific to certain classes or teacher's preference, but it's always a good idea to get a jumpstart on the basics.
Speaking of basics, it's probably no surprise to any of us that technology is playing an increasingly fundamental role in our children's education. While this is inevitable, it can also mean big $$ when back-to-school shopping. Here are some extra tips to make sure you're getting the most out of your budget and not spending any more than you have to:
- Take Inventory: Unless your kids are entering school for the first time, there's a good chance that you have at least some still-usable supplies that you can recycle from last year – this will allow you to prioritize and identify what supplies you really need.
- Shop Savvy: As mentioned above, technology is becoming standard for education and so are the supplies that accompany them (laptops, computers, storage and memory devices, etc..) Avoid overpriced specialty stores and shop Kmart for the affordable technology and electronic essentials you need for a fraction of the price.
- Make a List and Stick To It: It's easy to spin out of control when confronted with all the back to school merchandise out there. Follow the 2 tips above, then make a list before you leave the house to help you stay organized with your shopping and efficient with your spend.
For your convenience, check out Kmart's helpful back-to-school checklist that you can print out as a resource when shopping for all of your back-to-school needs. Click the link below to access a printable version of this checklist!
TELL US! WAS THIS CHECKLIST HELPFUL TO YOU? DO YOU FEEL PREPARED TO START BACK-TO-SCHOOL SHOPPING? | <urn:uuid:e87c655f-2b92-434b-a45a-9880c135161c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.mamaslatinas.com/other/105239/back_to_school_checklist_everything | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940313 | 434 | 1.65625 | 2 |
by Katharine Hansen, Ph.D.
As a resume writer, I see hundreds of resumes, and the vast majority of them are much weaker than they could be. I see the same mistakes over and over. This article describes the 10 I see most often. All are easy to fix.
Don't make these resume mistakes:
1. Resume lacks focus.
A sharp focus is an extremely important resume element. Given that employers screen resumes for between 2.5 and 20 seconds, a resume should show the employer at a glance what you want to do and what you're good at. In a recent study by Career Masters Institute, employers wanted resumes to show a clear match between the applicant and a particular job's requirements. A "general" resume that is not focused on a specific job's requirements was seen as not competitive. In an even more recent study by CareerBuilder.com, 71 percent of hiring managers preferred a resume customized for the open position.
By Times Staff Writer
In print: Saturday, August 16, 2008
Times Staff Writer
More and more Americans are being affected by a malady that Dr. Randall Hansen calls the "Job Market Blues." Hansen, a nationally recognized career and job-search expert and founder of Quintessential Careers (Quint Careers.com), says that "job-seekers can employ five strategies for staying upbeat and fighting the blues in a weak job market." Here are his suggestions:
1. Keep a positive focus
"While it can be extremely difficult to do, job-seekers must show confidence and a positive attitude when job-hunting," Hansen says.
by Liz Ryan
Nearly every day, someone sends me a bit of astounding job-search advice from a blog or a newsletter. Some of this advice seems to come directly from the planet X-19, and some of it seems to have been made up on the spot. Here are 10 of my favorite pieces of atrocious job-search advice, for you to read and ignore at all costs:
1. DON'T WRAP IT UP
The Summary or Objective at the top of your résumé is the wrap-up; It tells the reader, "This person know who s/he is, what s/he's done, and why it matters." Your Summary shows off your writing skills, shows that you know what's salient in your background, and puts a point on the arrow of your résumé. Don't skip it, no matter who tells you it's not necessary or important. | <urn:uuid:43cce04a-91e8-4200-8961-41423d98ff45> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.resumesocial.com/resume-resources/expert-advice?start=32 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951802 | 516 | 1.65625 | 2 |
The Inn of the Lost Coast is an amazing place to stay for seasonal whale watchers who are looking for a little luxury, and the perfect location for seeing grey, humped-back and blue whales especially from the balcony of one their deluxe suites.
Shelter Cove’s natural resources and generous food supply make this portion of northern California’s coastline a one to two week critical stopping location for the grey whales during their migration and birthing periods.
Whale watching in Shelter Cove peaks in April and May during the grey whale’s migration down the Pacific Coast to warmer waters. Its not uncommon for whale watchers to see the females giving birth and to report back seeing newborn calfs swimming along side their mothers.
The migrating male whales follow the females and their offspring at a more leisurely pace on their Mexican waters bound trip to warmer waters, allowing guests of the Inn of the Lost Coast an extended whale watching season. If you have a little hike in you, you can walk down to the rocks and many times you will find the whales right there. If you are guest of the the Inn of the Lost Coast, you can request some very nice high powered, complimentary binoculars when checking in during the season and experience the whales from each of the 18 balcony rooms.
While grey whales are the main attraction at Shelter Cove, occasionally humped-back or blue whales are spotted as well. | <urn:uuid:f2e43d67-2577-465e-8069-2eac17582a34> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://innofthelostcoast.com/things-to-do/whale-watching/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954341 | 288 | 1.554688 | 2 |
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