text
stringlengths 211
577k
| id
stringlengths 47
47
| dump
stringclasses 1
value | url
stringlengths 14
371
| file_path
stringclasses 644
values | language
stringclasses 1
value | language_score
float64 0.93
1
| token_count
int64 54
121k
| score
float64 1.5
1.84
| int_score
int64 2
2
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
The cabinets are made from pieces of Masonite produced in 1929, when the hardboard was first manufactured on a large scale.
Folkform's Anna Holmquist and Chandra Ahlsell combined the original samples with a few of the final sheets to roll off the production line at Sweden's last Masonite manufacturer, which closed in April 2011.
The cabinets were displayed in the Svenkst Tenn store in Stockholm alongside some of the brand's furniture and textiles from the same period.
Photographs are by Alexander Lagergren.
Here's some more information from Folkform:
Swedish designers Folkform celebrate Masonite in Svenskt Tenn exhibition
The exhibition ‘’Masonite: Memoriam’’, which opened today, displays a series of cabinets exclusively designed for Svenskt Tenn by Anna Holmquist and Chandra Ahlsell of the Swedish design duo Folkform. In the cabinets, original Masonite hardboard from 1929 are combined with the last few sheets that was made before Sweden’s last Masonite manufacturer shut down in April 2011.
“When the Masonite manufacturer in Rundvik closed, it was the last of its kind, a downturn that we want to help counteract by maintaining domestic production as far as we can and by highlighting quality craftsmanship in our exhibitions, says Thommy Bindefeld, Marketing Manager at Svenskt Tenn.”
The exhibition features a gathering between the past and the present. Folkform’s four different models of cabinets are displayed along with a number of Svenskt Tenn objects from the same period, including the “Nationalmuseum” cabinet and textile print Terrazzo, both by Josef Frank.
“Svenskt Tenn is one of few furniture and interior design firms from the era when the Masonite factory was established, which is still active today,” says designer Anna Holmquist, who founded Folkform along with Chandra Ahlsell. “We wish more people will open their eyes to the fact that production and skills are rapidly leaving the country. Today it is unusual for us as designers to work with Sweden-based production as an option.’’
The Masonite sheets that the cabinets were built from were recently discovered in an old warehouse. These were the very first product samples from 1929, with
different colors and textures. In the cabinets, they are combined with new pieces of board manufactured just before the factory was closed down. Each cabinet is unique and will be sold after the exhibition, price range SEK 16,000-75,000.
Folkform, who have been experimenting with Masonite for about ten years, have had a close collaboration with the Rundvik manufacturer in northern Sweden for a long time. The Folkform duo got to know each other at the Stockholm University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, where they created their renowned furniture with flowers pressed into Masonite.
Svenskt Tenn was founded in 1924 by designer and drawing teacher Estrid Ericson (1894-1981). In 1934, she began her lifelong collaboration with Josef Frank, already a well-known architect, urban planner and designer, who had recently left Austria to take up residence in Sweden. Together, the two laid the foundations for the interior design philosophy that Svenskt Tenn has since come to represent, combining Estrid Ericson's artistic talent and entrepreneurial spirit with Josef Frank's inspired and timeless designs to form what was soon to become a highly successful concept. Svenskt Tenn is owned by the Kjell and Märta Beijer Foundation. | <urn:uuid:e277cf5d-3b82-4c12-bcd2-1a5986c78668> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dezeen.com/2012/06/16/masonite-memoriam-by-folkform-for-svenskt-tenn/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972551 | 745 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Student Life enhances the development of students as lifelong learners and leaders by supporting them throughout the progression of their academic careers.
The Student Success Center provides a variety of academic support services for all student groups including Study Skills Workshops, Staff Learning Specialists, Instructional Assistants (IA), Peer Tutors, and Early Warning Notifications. These services are free of charge to all students.
Study Skills Workshops
Students can take advantage of a series of study skills workshops conducted each semester. Click on the link below to see the workshops offered Spring 2013.
Study Skills for Successful Students - Spring 2013 Workshops
Staff Learning Specialists
Students may arrange for individual appointments with one of our three Learning Specialists. Appointments can be made by contacting the learning specialists directly or by contacting the main office number at 630-829-6340. Students who need remote assistance should contact the learning specialists directly.
- Our Math Learning Specialist, Ms. Hillary Holecek, assists students with all levels of math through Calculus II, as well as statistics and biostatistics.
- Our Writing Learning Specialist, Ms. Anne Marie Smith, confers with students about the writing assignments including topic development, organization, writing style, citation, and revisions. There are also many online writing resources available.
- Ms. Jennifer Golminas also assists students with their study habits, time management, and test preparation strategies that are applicable to all courses.
Study Sessions with Instructional Assistants (IA)
In cooperation with the academic departments, the Student Success Center offers Instructional Assistant (IA) sessions for a variety of courses that are held each semester. These sessions take place in the Lower Level of Krasa Center and help students clarify difficult concepts and prepare for quizzes and exams. They are led by instructional assistants who have successfully completed the course and have been identified by faculty members as individuals who possess both content knowledge and the ability to communicate that knowledge to fellow students. Subject areas that are typically supported by IA sessions include accounting, biology, chemistry, economics, physics, psychology and the humanities. The availability of and times of IA sessions vary by semester. You can find the most up-to-date schedule (as of February 8, 2013) posted in the Lower Level of Krasa.
Study Zone Peer Tutors
The Study Zone provides students with drop-in opportunities to receive additional help from peers in math and writing. Peer Tutors are available during the fall and spring semesters in the Lower Level of Krasa. You can find the most up-to-date schedule (as of February 8, 2013) posted in the Lower Level of Krasa. You can also contact the Student Success Center at 630-829-6340 with any questions.
Peer Tutoring Schedule
(as of February 8, 2013)
Early Warning Notice System
The Early Warning Notice (EWN) system allows students to receive formal notice of attendance or performance issues that may impact their grade in a particular course. Notice is sent to the student's University e-mail account and the student's adviser. The Student Success Center runs regular EWN reports for athletic teams and campus residents and provides tutoring information to students who receive EWNs in classes supported by tutoring services.
Please select a multimedia item to display. | <urn:uuid:b2d874e4-54b2-472a-9d73-8a0a821953a1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ben.edu/student_life/ssc/academic-support-services.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939985 | 677 | 1.671875 | 2 |
10. GIRL SLEEPING:
LOWER SELF. HIGHER SELF.
Please scroll down for description and statement
The girl, an oriental, wearing a mustard-coloured dress, lies on her side on a white table that is standing in the middle of a shallow body of water. She is asleep, her head pillowed on one arm. Her black hair, center-parted, lies around her face in a natural way. Her left arm lies along her upturned side, and she holds her eyeglasses in her hand; on each lens is painted an omega, which is the last letter of the Greek alphabet. Also shown is her reflection in the water; however, the reflected girl has her eyes open and is not holding eyeglasses. There is a small rainbow in the upper right-hand corner.
At some point along the way we become aware of that part of ourselves that never sleeps; and that does not need eyeglasses! We can call it the Self, the inner self, Superconsciousness, or Soul. There are many names. At first we get only occasional glimpses, but as growth continues the window expands.
As to the omega symbols, perhaps she has been too busy "keeping the end in sight" to see what is really important. [SOLD] | <urn:uuid:174b0921-b7b2-4b22-a8bd-84569928cf56> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.janekarchmar.com/p10.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961804 | 274 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Jan 25 2013
Politics and religion. I can think of no better definition of eternal incompatibility. Dive into our history at any point – world history, for that matter – and you’ll find the friction of one against the other. So, for your contemporary reading, let’s dive into the shallow end of the history pool – current events – to find more examples. Ah, and classic they are.
The first is a recent sampling of Americans and their feelings about religion in today’s culture – findings which resulted in a complete contradiction. Especially in the evangelical community.
The study was conducted by the Barna Group, a respected California think tank known for studies of American religion and culture.
When 1,008 people in the general population were asked if our religious liberties are threatened, 29% of said “yes.” But – faced with the same question – 71% of evangelicals said “yes.” Asked what they see as the threat, 97% of that group said others are trying to move society away from “traditional Christian values.” 97%! Groups they identified most? Gays and lesbians were named by more than 72%.for trying to remove “traditional Christian values” from the country.
“Where’s the conflict,” you ask? Well, the same responders said their Judeo-Christian beliefs should dominate our culture. They live in a multi-faith nation but want their beliefs supreme to all others. And the others are the ones they blame for attacks on their values. “The belief system is under attack.” “Our belief system should be the standard.” Harder to find a more direct conflict in a single group espousing religion than that.
For the second political-religious conundrum, we turn to our Catholic brothers and sisters. Specifically Lori and Jeremy Stodghill of Canon City, Colorado. This one’s a doozy!
Lori, pregnant with seven-month-old twins, was rushed to a Catholic hospital on New Year’s Day, 2006. Massive heart attack. Ironically, her obstetrician was on-call that night but didn’t answer his page. Hospital staff wanted him to save the fetuses by caesarian even as Lori was dying. He didn’t come. All died. In a Catholic hospital. Jeremy sued for wrongful death of all three. The born and the unborn, so to speak.
Responding, hospital lawyers literally turned Catholic church directives upside down in defense – directives for all Catholics but especially Catholic hospitals – that claim the unborn are “persons.” They argued Colorado law protects doctors from liability concerning unborn fetuses on grounds those fetuses are NOT persons with legal rights. Attorney Jason Langley argued Colorado courts define “person” under its Wrongful Death Act to include “only those born alive.” Therefore, Plaintiffs cannot maintain wrongful death claims based on two unborn fetuses. “Not alive,” the Catholic defenders claimed.
The case is now in the Colorado State Supreme Court. And Catholic Health Initiatives – running 170 health facilities in 17 states – is still pressing that argument. The Catholic Church may say a fetus is a “person.” But trying to defend a multi-million-dollar legal action, that same church is saying that “person” has no legal right to life.
Contradiction here? You bet. Politics? Big time! This little case from Canon City, Colorado, is being followed very, very closely by the Church, abortion activists, the anti-abortion folks and politicians of all stripes.
As if all this isn’t enough, the New Mexico legislature has a bill in committee today that – if it became law – would send rape victims to jail – rape victims – if they became pregnant by the rapist and had an abortion. The charge? Tampering with evidence. While we’re all entitled to think about this in our own ways, my verdict is that author State Rep. Cathrynn Brown is one sick puppy. Politics? You bet. Religion, too.
We’re a nation of rights. Your rights. My rights. We’re a nation that’s historically prided itself for being a “melting pot” of different nationalities, customs, languages. Guided by our founding principle of religious freedom, a nation where each citizen could follow whatever religious path he/she desired. Without interference.
But we’re now beset by people trying to trash those “melting pot” and “religious freedoms” concepts/rights in the name of God. Their God. And I don’t mean gays and lesbians. The trashers deem “rights” a concept so long as it’s their “rights.” Using religion as a political wedge, they’ve filled our courts with frivolous legal challenges, attacked our public education system, tried to undermine our national health laws, suppressed minorities, openly attempted voter intimidation and filled our state and national seats of government with ideological sycophants intent on reshaping our national rights to look more like their “rights.”
If you dig deeply into state and national political divides in our country, you will consistently find intolerance of the religion of others. You’ll uncover repeated attempts to replace the religion of most with the religion of some. You’ll find efforts to justify discrimination and racism in the name of someone’s – or some groups – “religious” beliefs.
All of this is not a new phenomenon. It’s been around the centuries. But our electronic interconnectedness now gives equal voice to both the wise and the unwise. Our unfettered freedoms work both for and against us. The strengths of the many are under siege by the few. It’s become increasingly difficult to tell the wheat from the chaff.
Politics and religion. We may not have yet harkened back to the Crusades. But the divisions are getting more pronounced. And more onerous.Share on Facebook | <urn:uuid:92e0f3a8-40c9-45b0-ac53-9ba614672542> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ridenbaugh.com/index.php/2013/01/25/whose-god/ | 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 | 0.955798 | 1,271 | 1.539063 | 2 |
We are a group of students from BNMIT, Bangalore and we are planning on participating at Robocon the coming year.
The problem statement requires that we build an autonomous robot capable of scaling an approximate incline of 20 deg and needs to have line following capabilities. Also the robot needs to have a usable payload of about 10kgs (total weight of about 20 Kgs) and needs to be fairly fast (read 10 m/s). We have searched a lot for the wheels and are unable to find any that suit our application.
Approximate specs of the wheels we are looking for:
a) Diameter: 12cm.
b) Needs to be able to carry about 10Kg.
c) Excellent traction
Any suggestions would be highly helpful!
The BNM Robocon team. | <urn:uuid:cb77ba40-9d53-4a20-af5d-e98074075fef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.societyofrobots.com/robotforum/index.php?topic=14755.msg107467 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93721 | 166 | 1.828125 | 2 |
RePower Kitsap is a county-wide program dedicated to helping you save money through energy efficiency, increasing the comfort, health and safety of your home, and creating local jobs. RePower Kitsap provides in-home energy assessments, energy-efficiency financing and incentives, and a local, skilled workforce to make achieving these goals easier and more affordable. Learn how you can get started today.
RePower Kitsap is funded by two separate grants. In December 2009, the U.S. Department of Energy awarded a grant to Kitsap County and in October 2010, Washington State University’s Energy Program and the Department of Commerce were awarded a BetterBuildings grant, also from the U.S. Department of Energy. These grants are funded in part by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and the State Energy Program (SEP). With these grants, the County and key partners have come together to implement RePower Kitsap.
RePower Kitsap is implemented by key partners, including Kitsap County, Puget Sound Energy, Cascade Natural Gas Corporation, Conservation Services Group (CSG), Kitsap Credit Union, Puget Sound Cooperative Credit Union, Washington State University Energy Program, Advanced Energy, Earth Advantage, National Association of State Energy Officials, and Washington Department of Commerce. | <urn:uuid:dee11b13-77f8-417b-bdbf-dd13c67c8ad8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://repowerkitsap.org/aboutus/mission.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939523 | 263 | 1.742188 | 2 |
© twitter/Johnny Materi
pic of shattered window from Port Mann Bridge
Canada, British Columbia - The head of the Crown corporation that built the Port Mann Bridge says the company is reviewing yesterday's closure of the multi-billion-dollar span
after snow and ice fell from the bridge's support cables, injuring two people and damaging several vehicles.
Mike Proudfoot, the CEO of the Transportation Investment Corporation, admits the coating on the cables that was supposed to push snow away from the deck didn't work.
But, he says, Wednesday was an unusual day.
"This is an extreme weather situation,"
"It is very rare, especially in the Lower Mainland, but it does occur and it has had similar effects on other cable stay bridges in other jurisdictions ... Snow can accumulate on any structure over roadways and no bridge is immune to it but what we saw was a very unusual combination of winter conditions."
Proudfoot says engineers were sent to the bridge and the contractor has been asked to come up with plans to avoid such problems in the future.
The corporation says it will forgive the toll and pick up the insurance deductible for vehicles damaged on the bridge.
'It'll happen again'
Perry Adebar, a professor of structural engineering at UBC, says the bridge's construction could be to blame.
"The reason it happened, I think, is fairly clear," he said.
Ice falling from Port Mann bridge causes shattered windshield
"The cables on that bridge are inclined over the bridge deck. If you look at the other bridges in the Lower Mainland, they're not like that."
Christos Georgakis, a structural engineering expert from Denmark, says bridge designers often don't do risk assessments for icing, despite the fact that falling ice is common on bridges in northern regions.
"If it happened once, it'll happen again," he said. "And I think I would expect any cable-supported bridge at that latitude to have icing at some point or another."
But Georgakis adds he doesn't think it's worth redesigning the bridge.
He says no one has developed an effective way to prevent ice buildup on bridge cables, and officials should have anticipated the risk and closed the bridge.
ICBC says it has already received more than 60 claims linked to the ice falling on the Port Mann Bridge.
The $2.4-billion bridge, which serves more than 100,000 motorists every day, reopened early Wednesday evening. | <urn:uuid:ffce0a35-e281-49ec-b824-cdd090ae37c0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sott.net/article/254933-Chunks-of-ice-and-snow-fall-off-new-Vancouver-bridges-support-cables-injuring-two-people-and-damaging-several-vehicles | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974327 | 506 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Encouraging Americans to invest in their country and their communities
Every generation of Americans has heeded the call to service, especially in the face of our greatest challenges. Service is a fundamental part of what it means to be American. It is a great part of our nation’s cultural traditions and an affirmation of our bonds of citizenship and compassion to fellow citizens.
Senator Coons’ priorities for promoting service include:
- Standing up for community service. Chris has long believed that those who engage in volunteerism and service to others get more out of it than they put into it. He supports continued funding of national service programs like AmeriCorps, VISTA, Senior Corps, and other that enable Americans to engage in service to their communities. These programs not only contribute to public safety, education, and housing activities in our communities, but our continued investment will leverage the work of charitable organizations, spur innovative partnerships between private and non-profit sectors, and help our economy grow.
- Supporting the work of AmeriCorps. As someone who founded an AmeriCorps program, Chris has seen its importance to our country firsthand. Since coming to the Senate, he has teamed up with Senator Barbara Mikulski to defend AmeriCorps from attacks on its funding. Chris passionately supports the work of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and will continue fighting efforts to eliminate it.
- Supporting our public sector workers. As a former County Executive and with a long history of working with public servants in local government, Chris understands the tremendous amount of hard work and dedication public sector employees put into their work. The millions of individuals that work in government service at all levels play a vital role in meeting the needs of all Americans. Our public servants fight crime and fires, promote better health, protect the environment, teach in our schools and libraries, defend our freedoms around the world, and so much more. Chris will work hard to honor those government employees who have dedicated their lives in service to their country. | <urn:uuid:8dcde084-5e7a-4b17-9db8-40dfcc709bf1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.coons.senate.gov/issues/service | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959341 | 407 | 1.695313 | 2 |
By Christine Dugas, USA TODAY
Elizabeth Warren, special adviser to the president, is trying to help shake things up as she puts together the nation's first federal consumer protection agency.
But the Harvard University bankruptcy professor, who first proposed the idea of a consumer financial regulator in 2007, isn't daunted by the task and says she is off to a good start as she scrambles to hire staffers, initiate policies and meet with consumer advocates, bankers and many others.
PROTECT YOURSELF: How to be your own consumer protection agency
KNOW YOUR RIGHTS: Consumer protection laws
"This new agency did not come into being because special interests demanded it or lobbyists spent hundreds of millions of dollars to make it happen," Warren said in an interview. "But ordinary Americans pushed hard for this agency. They said loud and clear that they wanted an agency in Washington to level the playing field with big banks."
Warren has long been a voice for the consumer. But she had little power when, as a professor, she opposed what she saw as costly bank fees and predatory lending in testimony before Congress and her writings on the subjects. She now spends her time and energy starting an agency that she says has been born of optimism.
That doesn't mean it will not face obstacles. "We're all going to have to take a deep breath and cross our fingers that it can get off to a really strong start," says Ruth Susswein, deputy director of national priorities at Consumer Action, an advocacy group.
In July, more than a year after the Obama administration proposed comprehensive financial reform, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. The sweeping legislation created the CFPB to combat consumer abuses in the marketplace.
House Republicans, who will share power when the new Congress convenes in 2011, have not been fans of the new legalization and the bureau it created. Critics have said that the bill would crimp the economy by imposing credit-killing restrictions on banks and other financial institutions.
House GOP lawmakers already have called on the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve to closely monitor the steps being taken to establish the bureau. They also claim that Warren lacks the experience necessary for the job and that the agency lacks accountability.
Consumer groups are strong supporters of the agency. But even her backers have opinions about what the agency's first priorities should be. They want the new bureau to:
•Be a watchdog for credit cards. "Before the ink was dry on the credit card bill, credit card companies were coming up with fine-print tricks to catch people," says Mike Calhoun, president of the Center for Responsible Lending. "American families want someone watching over them and protecting their interests and consumer financial transactions," he says. "You can be diligent and still be clobbered by financial traps."
•Put the same standard on prepaid cards and debit cards that are on credit cards. That's important because prepaid cards are growing fast with little regulation, says Travis Plunkett, legislative director of the Consumer Federation of America.
•Keep money in a consumer's pocket. "That is the first general thing that I would add to the list," says Pamela Banks, senior policy counsel for Consumers Union. That includes a host of issues, such as considering additional reforms for overdraft protection. "If a consumer opts for overdraft protection, the fees are still very expensive, and it can add up," she says.
•Create an effective, responsive consumer complaint system. "That is at the top of our wish list," Susswein says. She says it will help people resolve their complaints, help guide rulemaking and could alert authorities to new types of problems that need addressing.
•Help ensure that all homeowners are considered for foreclosure prevention, provide oversight for the new federal program for bridge loans for unemployed homeowners and establish a process that allows consumers to more easily correct credit report errors.
More eyes and ears
The new agency aims to use high-tech tools and the Internet to help it tackle problems more quickly.
For example, Warren is encouraging consumers to use their digital cameras and phones to scan dubious or suspect financial offerings or products, and e-mail them to the CFPB. That would allow the agency to more quickly respond, keep track of similar problems and see if certain groups of people are being targeted, she says.
The agency will have many more eyes and ears in the wired world, Warren says, and will keep consumers informed. She has already used the White House blog to tell Americans, "If we set it up right from the beginning, the agency can collect and analyze data faster and get on top of problems as they occur, not years later."
The bureau has overwhelming responsibilities, Calhoun says. It is starting from scratch, and it won't be able to do everything at once. And with the Republican control of the House, the fear is that too much time will be spent interrogating the consumer bureau, instead of letting it do its work, he says.
One clear message to banks and credit card issuers is that consumers now will have a powerful advocate, says Warren: "The very existence of the agency has sent a strong signal to the credit industry that Americans want a change. And they want someone on their side."
Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more. | <urn:uuid:fdc4de0a-2e53-4156-89f4-2165fce24b4b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/perfi/basics/2010-12-29-cfpb29_ST_N.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964959 | 1,121 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Articles tagged with: settlement expansion
Beit Ommar, Direct Action, Nabi Saleh, Other, Politics, settlement expansion, Soldier Violence »
Member of PSP and Beit Ommar Popular Committee joined other non-violent demonstrators in the street on Friday April 12th, 2013 in the village of Nabi Saleh, located 20 kilometres North West of Ramallah in the West Bank. The village has organized weekly demonstrations in Nabi Saleh since December of 2009 in order to protest the confiscation of the village’s land and freshwater springs by Israeli settlers.
The demonstrators, which included village residents, international activists and Israeli peace activists, marched to a spring located on Palestinian land that was illegally confiscated by Israeli settlers from the Halamish settlement. Israeli soldiers surrounded the village and then shot tear gas and steel-coated rubber … Continue reading
Beit Ommar, Direct Action, Farming, Hebron District, Other, Settler Violence »
The Center for Freedom and Justice, a non-profit organization in the Palestinian village of Beit Ommar in Hebron District, is looking at new agricultural projects to support its inhabitants.
The Center for Freedom and Justice was established to address the lack of community development and has been organizing programs in rural Palestinian communities. Due to various problems concerning the Israeli occupation of the West Bank the Palestinian agricultural life is severely constrained. The organization aims to improve the lives of rural residents by supporting them to remain steadfast on their land so that confiscation of land and settlement expansion will be harder to accomplish.
The agricultural life of Palestinian communities … Continue reading
Apartheid Wall, Direct Action »
Friday morning, as most of the Israeli military in the Occupied West Bank were focused on regular weekly demonstrations, residents from Beit Iksa, a small village northwest of Jerusalem, were quietly setting up another protest village, similar to Bab Al Shams which was built east of Jerusalem last week.
Beit Iksa has lost almost all of their agricultural and historic land, beginning in 1948 to the annexation of “greater Jerusalem”, to the construction of the Apartheid Wall as well as to settlements which almost completely surround them. On one of their last stretches of land, locals and supporters erected a mosque and tents in an area adjacent to the Apartheid Wall. Over 100 participants gathered, held Friday prayers in … Continue reading
Direct Action »
In the early morning hours of Friday, January 11, a group of Palestinians, coordinated by the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee, gathered in an area east of Jerusalem referred to as the E-1 corridor, and quickly erected a tent village. E-1 is one of the most strategic areas in the West Bank. Several Israeli regimes have announced plans to build a settlement there, which would effectively cut the West Bank in half. On Friday, a few months after current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his plans for building a Jewish-only community in E-1, Palestinians decided to take the matter into their own hands. Within hours, over 200 Palestinians were staying in the community, named Bab Al … Continue reading
Al-Jab'a, Apartheid Wall, Beit Ommar, Betlehem, Betlehem District, Direct Action, Farming, Hebron District, Other, settlement expansion, Settler Attack »
The production of olive oil in Palestine is considered fundamental for Palestinian economy. For the majority of Palestinian families, especially in the north of the West Bank and in some areas in the south, olive trees have an economic and historic importance as these trees have been part of the Palestinian landscape for thousands of years.
The olive oil sector is one of the major agricultural incomes for Palestinians. Unfortunately, this sector has been facing many obstacles which have prevented it from developing.
The first problem is the removal of thousands of olive trees by the Israeli occupation due to the building of the segregation wall and the establishment of Israeli colonies throughout the West Bank. Colons’ activities include burning … Continue reading
At 10 a.m. Friday, October 12th about 100 colonists, escorted by soldiers from the Israeli occupation forces, walked out of Karmei Tsur. They went in the direction of Jala at the west of Beit Ommar where several Palestinian residents have their olive trees.
Local families were harvesting their olives, but fled when they saw the group of colonists to avoid being victims of settler attacks that are common in this area. Last year a colonist killed a Palestinian boy in Saffa. The colonists were also intimidating to the people of Jala who stayed home instead of going to Beit Ommar, as they usually do on Fridays.
A local committee member, Ahmed Abu … Continue reading
Beit Ommar, Child Arrests, Features, Hebron District »
The activists marched to the illegal fence separating Palestinians from their own land and from the illegal colony Karmei Tsur, condemned by 14 of 15 countries in the UN security council, excluding the US. As the activists walked towards the fence, a large group of soldiers from the Israeli occupation forces tried to chase them. However, despite pushing and pulling the soldiers did not succeed their attempts to provoke the activists. Provocations remained unanswered as the activists carried on in a peaceful manner and sat down refusing to leave until they had presented their message.
The last couple of weeks the house of the committee member Ahmed Abu Hashem has been raided at night twice, resulting in the arrest of his … Continue reading
On Thursday 27th of September the Center for Freedom and Justice and Palestine Solidarity Project got a visit from the Freedom Bus, an initiative of the Freedom Theatre in Jenin. The Freedom Bus is a solidarity ride through occupied Palestine.
The visitors, from Sweden, Germany, the United States amongst other countries, met members of the Popular Committee in Beit Ommar and international activists at the Center for Freedom and Justice. They got a brief lecture about the village by the executive manager of the center, Younes Arar who told them about the historically Beit Ommar and the six colonies surrounding the village. The visitors learned more about the weekly demonstrations arranged by the popular committee in Beit Ommar and the … Continue reading
Politics, settlement expansion »
The Norwegian Ministry of Finance has declared that donations to organizations that support Israeli colonies on the West Bank are no longer tax-deductible, in contrast to donations to most organizations.
The Norwegian organization “Karmel Instituttet” has given financial support to Israeli colonies like Alonei Shilo, which is not only illegal to International Law but also to Israeli Law, and they work actively to support these colonies. The Norwegian Ministry of Finance has declared that these activities are violating International Law, and have thus removed the organization from the list of organization that can receive tax-deductible donations.
The Ministry of Finance have stated that this is done to ensure the Norway follow-up of resolutions made by the UN Security Council. One such resolution … Continue reading
A weekly demonstration took place on Saturday 15th September at the entrance to the Gush Ezion compound, north of Beit Ommar. Palestinian, Israeli and international activists, joined by a large media contingent, assembled on the roundabout on the Hebron-Jerusalem road which marks the turning to the bloc of nine Israeli settlements. A number of occupation soldiers and police were present at the demonstration, which was the first arranged by PSP in this location.
The demonstrators carried banners addressing three main grievances. Firstly, a message was directed at the anti-Islamic film which has sparked protests across the Arab world, refusing to resort to extremism, in spite of the deliberately provocative nature of the film. They added that the film reflects only … Continue reading | <urn:uuid:3ac178d4-8c87-49fe-8350-227009e23ebc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://palestinesolidarityproject.org/tag/settlement-expansion/ | 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 | 0.964607 | 1,580 | 1.601563 | 2 |
- 4.71% (30-year fixed)
- 0.36 (average points)
Here's a look at the state of mortgage rates from Bankrate.com's weekly national survey of large banks and thrifts conducted Dec. 1, 2010.
Mortgage products took a sharp leap upward this week, with the 15- and 30-year home loans rising significantly amid signs that the U.S. economic recovery may also be gathering strength.
The 30-year fixed rate mortgage shot up 13 basis points, to 4.71 percent, its highest level since last summer. A basis point is one-hundredth of 1 percent.
The story was much the same for 15-year fixed rate mortgages, although their ascent was not as steep, climbing 10 basis points to 4.07 percent.
The rises were more moderate for adjustable-rate mortgages. The popular 5/1 ARM rose 8 basis points, settling at 3.74 percent. With a 5/1 ARM, a mortgage has a fixed rate for the first five years, and is adjusted annually -- based on market conditions -- for the remainder of the loan's term.
It was the highest rate for 30-year mortgages since July. Bankrate's July 21 national survey found an average rate of 4.74 percent, after which home loans began a descent that lasted until early November and brought mortgages to record low rates.
Although it is difficult to establish a direct relationship -- and the housing market remains troubled by virtually every measure -- the strengthening of mortgage rates is occurring as the tepid economic recovery is also gaining momentum.
On Wednesday, the Institute for Supply Management, which tracks manufacturing industries, said factory output has now risen for 16 months in a row. In addition, a Federal Reserve survey found that 10 of its 12 regions are seeing economic expansion, while the other two -- St. Louis and Philadelphia -- have mixed conditions.
The economic indicator most relevant to housing, however, is unemployment. The country will get an indication of whether the labor market is recovering on Friday, when the government releases figures for unemployment and job creation for the month of November.
Find out monthly mortgage payments using Bankrate's mortgage calculator.-- Gregg Fields | <urn:uuid:bf5d1615-3152-437d-b4fe-83b4ba2facab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bankrate.com/finance/mortgages/interest-rate-roundup-for-dec-2-2010.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964979 | 450 | 1.554688 | 2 |
PRIDE! remembers Matthew Shepard at vigil
DetailsCreated on Sunday, 14 October 2012 22:42 Written by Madeleine Winer Hits: 500
Balloons floated in the sky Friday night as members of the LGBTQ community released negative feelings surrounding the deaths of those who have lost their lives to murder and suicide because of their gender identity or sexual orientation.
PRIDE! Kent hosted a vigil to commemorate the passing of Matthew Shepard, who was tortured to death because he was gay. Shepard was a student at the University of Wyoming and died October 12, 1998 after being attacked and left to die in Laramie, Wyoming.
“We reflect on the progress we have made in the past 14 years and how much progress we need to make for those who are LGBTQ or otherwise oppressed,” said Justin Lagore, president of PRIDE! Kent.
The vigil started with a prayer led by the Rev. Julie Fisher of the Episcopal Commons at Kent State. She asked for a blessing to be extended to all LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex) youth and adults, who, overcome by stress and sorrow, are tempted to seek relief in suicide.
Roxie Patton, program coordinator for the LGBTQ center, reflected on remembering Shepard’s death and said the vigil signified that members of the LGBTQ community were no longer going to stand by silently as people are hurt, wounded and killed just for being who they are.
“It’s easy for us to look back at that time and think we are so far away from it all,” Patton said. “This happened 14 years ago which is shocking sometimes. The fact is people are still being murdered, tortured, isolated and harassed for their sexual orientation and gender identity across America and around the world.”
Caleb Valle, freshman economics major, said Shepard’s death was a “huge injustice to the gay community” as the teenage suicide rate of those who identify as LGBTQ increases. He said PRIDE! is a support system not just for members of the LGBTQ community but also the university.
Justin Kalinay, senior anthropology major from the College of Wooster, said he came to the vigil because Shepard’s death helped him come out to his mom after he saw how she was “outraged” by the killing.
“We need change in society so that people no longer think that way,” Kalinay said. “We need to make certain this never happens again. He is still inspiring change beyond the grave 14 years later. The power of that is huge.”
Meredith Aistrope, freshman exploratory major, said she thought of the vigil as a celebration of Shepard’s life. It made her reflect, she said, on the people who are struggling with their gender identity and how she would feel if she were to lose one of her friends.
Patton said Shepard’s story is a reminder for the LGBTQ community to not allow people’s ignorance to change their identity.
“I have seen so many people in my generation, so many beautiful LGBT people, who have fought to survive and fought to live through this horrible atrocity,” she said. “We have to make sure we do everything we can to show how much we love each other and not how much we want to tear other people apart.” | <urn:uuid:6a88f695-f40b-45d4-b897-d20035f83345> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kentwired.com/pride-remembers-matthew-shepard-at-vigil | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979168 | 706 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Don't Go Chasing Reagan Myths
People mean different things by what Ronald Reagan achieved as president, and therefore what it would mean to be a “liberal Reagan.” The Prospect’s Paul Waldman says that to be like Reagan, Obama would need to “define an era that continues even after he leaves office.” At The New York Times, conservative columnist Ross Douthat talks about “a long, Reagan-like shadow over subsequent policy debates.” The Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein considers whether Obama will match Reagan as “a president who not only wins elections (as Bill Clinton and George W. Bush did), but one who ideologically shifts the nation in his direction.” I think, however, that these are all aspects of the same idea: that Reagan (in Obama’s own words) “changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not, and a way that Bill Clinton did not.”
Here’s the problem. Ronald Reagan wasn’t really the Reagan of everyone’s imagination. So aspiring to be a “liberal Reagan” is chasing a fantasy. Worse than that—it’s a fantasy that can easily distract a president from the real things that he should be doing.
Take a look at the Reagan myth. Did Reagan “ideologically shift the nation in his direction?” If we’re talking about voters, the answer is pretty clearly no. As Northeastern political scientist Bill Mayer showed in The Changing American Mind, if anything, public opinion on many issues became more liberal, not more conservative, during Reagan’s presidency (see also a nice post from George Washington University political scientist John Sides).
Did Reagan cast a shadow over subsequent policy debates? Sure, but no more than any other two-term occupant of the Oval Office—certainly not through fundamental conservative change. The growth of government, after cuts in 1981, started back up while Reagan was still president, and it’s hard to see Reagan’s influence in such measures as the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990). Reagan was, of course, a cold warrior, but so was everyone from Truman on—even Jimmy Carter. And to the extent that Reagan was particularly bellicose, it didn’t really survive his first term (much to the consternation of 1980s anticommunists).
Did Reagan “define an era?” Well, if we all repeat it often enough, I suppose so, regardless of whether the man himself has anything to do with it.
Thinking about some of the other possibilities: It’s hard to see any bright line in which Reagan’s terms mark a change in GOP electoral success. Nor was Reagan a particularly popular president. His first term was well below average. His second term was better, but he was not as popular as Bill Clinton or Dwight Eisenhower. Reagan certainly did play an important role in the full takeover of the Republican Party by conservatives. And of course he did have his share of accomplishments in office. It’s just that most of his exaggerated reputation is hype. It’s worth noting that Bill Clinton, in 1992, ran against 12 years—not 4—of Republican presidents.
And it’s certainly worth noting that Republican winners in 1995 and, for that matter, 2011, invoked Reagan—but they didn't say that they were restoring his achievements which had atrophied under Democratic control. Because that just wasn't the case.
Why, then, the Reagan myth? Any successful two-term president has the material to build a myth around, and Reagan (unlike Ike) has happened to benefit from a group dedicated to deifying him. His strengths were rhetorical, and people who write about politics like well-crafted words (people who televise politics like well-delivered words), so his rhetorical strengths tend to be overrated. Everyone is vulnerable to fooling themselves with nostalgia: For conservatives, the Reagan presidency is a golden age to look back to, given that he’s the only even slightly successful movement-conservative president; for liberals, it’s easy to invent a golden era of progressive politics that Reagan disrupted.
What does all of this suggest for Barack Obama? That he should forget about being transformative or establishing some sort of liberal era. That’s not how politics works. Politics is about grinding it out, a bit at a time, and then fighting again tomorrow.
First of all, any attempt to generally change public opinion is probably useless; any attempt to “win” arguments about liberals versus conservatives is totally futile. Sure, give appropriate speeches and make the best arguments. Just don’t expect the electorate to change much.
Second, what lasts are serious changes in public policy. NATO lasted after Truman. The highways lasted after Ike. Civil-rights legislation and its effects lasted after Johnson. Of course, Obama has the Affordable Care Act and more already in the ledger; that’s a pretty good start. Note that we tend to attribute whatever happens to the president whether it was his doing or Congress’s (or sometimes just stuff that happens). And note, too, that it takes a while to see which pieces of policy really matter; there are still fascinating arguments about which 19th-century polices counted most, so forget about knowing anything anytime soon.
Third, the one place beyond policy where presidents can make long-lasting changes is in changing their political party. A winning, successful president might not be able to change the ideology of swing voters (who, after all, are the least likely to pay careful attention to politics or even have an ideology). But a winning, successful president can affect what strong partisans think is acceptable and unacceptable within the party. Reagan’s victory may not have changed public opinion, but after Reagan, every viable candidate for the Republican nomination for president has claimed to be a conservative and taken steps to justify that label.
Add it all up and Obama, if he wants to be a president who really changes things for the better, should … well, it’s boring and obvious, but he should mostly focus on promoting good public policy. Not fighting the good fight or talking the good talk for liberal ideals, but just getting done whatever he can get done given all the constraints that surround him. Well-implemented plans will be hard for subsequent presidents to displace. And presidents who make good policy tend to be popular, thereby ensuring that partisans seek to replace them (not only immediately, but into the future) with similar candidates. In other words, he should pretty much focus on being a good president, and let the rest of it take care of itself. No, it’s not as exciting as imagining that Obama can win arguments for a generation by choosing exactly the right words at the right time—but no one, certainly not Ronald Reagan, could do that. And it does have the benefit of being how politics really works.
You need to be logged in to comment.
(If there's one thing we know about comment trolls, it's that they're lazy) | <urn:uuid:698a52d8-0fad-4626-95fa-267468d6fdf7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://prospect.org/comment/18846 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96422 | 1,474 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Cranbrook Institute of Science and Detroit Public Schools Advance Science Learning in DPS through Bosch Grant
Bosch Community Fund presents a $150,000 grant in support of the partnership to offer students, families and faculty in-depth, hands-on exposure to science and technology.
Nearly 160 DPS students and 20 parents visit the Bat Zone to see live bats and view an exhibit showcasing hatching baby salmon.
BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich., Jan. 15, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Transforming science learning and strengthening academic performance among middle school students within Detroit Public Schools is the focus of a partnership launched with the support of a one-year, $150,000 grant from the Bosch Community Fund to the Cranbrook Educational Community. Cranbrook, Detroit Public Schools, and the Bosch Community Fund celebrated this partnership during a check presentation and school visit at Cranbrook Institute of Science today.
Maximiliane Straub , Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President of Finance, Controlling and Administration for Robert Bosch LLC and Vice President of the Bosch Community Fund; Roy Roberts , Emergency Financial Manager, Detroit Public Schools; and Dr. Michael Stafford , Director, Cranbrook Institute of Science, attended the event. Nearly 160 Detroit Public Schools students and 20 parents visited the Bat Zone and viewed an exhibit showcasing hatching baby salmon.
Cranbrook Institute of Science and Detroit Public Schools will use the grant from the Bosch Community Fund to offer students, families and faculty in-depth, hands-on exposure to science and technology with an emphasis on the mastery of core science concepts and heightened student achievement.
The collaboration offers nearly 1,000 students in Detroit Public Schools free, private field trips to the nationally regarded Institute of Science located in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. It will also provide professional development opportunities for up to 150 Detroit Public Schools teachers and free Institute memberships and special events to the families of participating students. And, next summer 30 students will have the opportunity to spend a week at a science day camp at the Cranbrook Institute.
"Bosch is proud to work with the Cranbrook Institute of Science and Detroit Public Schools so that students who are enrolled in Detroit Public Schools – and their families and teachers – can foster their love of math, science, engineering and other technical areas at the Cranbrook Institute of Science," Straub said. "As we continue to grow our business, Bosch seeks to hire associates who excel in these important disciplines. In addition, instilling a strong knowledge base in these areas helps create meaningful jobs that strengthen the U.S. economy."
"When we announced this partnership in January," Roberts said, "the enthusiasm district-wide was outstanding due to the impact that such an unprecedented collaboration with the Cranbrook Institute of Science could have on the learning experience of our students, particularly in the globally competitive fields of science and technology. Seeing this vision come to fruition — and now be expanded through grant funding from the Bosch Community Fund — confirms the positive outcome of community organizations forging a partnership to help students excel. Not only are our students, parents and educators being afforded a personalized learning and development experience, they are being exposed to educational growth outside of the classroom, thanks to the critical resources this partnership is providing."
Experiences for Detroit Public Schools students will focus on direct contact with Institute collections (considered among the country's finest private collections and boasting more than 150,000 objects and specimens), opportunities for personal contact with Institute scientists and educators, and core science education based on State of Michigan Grade Level Content Expectations. Busing and meals for all participating students are included and a significant series of evaluation tools will be used to measure the impact and outcome of the partnership.
"This dynamic project with Detroit Public Schools continues the Institute's commitment to serving Detroit's urban students, their faculty and their families," said Stafford. "Detroit's students deserve rich opportunities to explore and become inspired by the increasingly scientific world around them. We are absolutely delighted to have Detroit Public Schools as a meaningful partner. I am especially grateful to the Bosch Community Fund for helping make this collaboration come to life."
About Detroit Public Schools
Detroit Public Schools is creating Centers of Excellence at the district's 100 schools with the goal of educating students to perform at the highest academic levels. DPS offers a wide variety of educational advantages to students and parents including Individualized Learning Maps for all students, and Academic Blueprints for all parents. Students in grades 8-12 enjoy take-home Netbooks and students in grades 6 and up have access to Netbooks in school. DPS offers an outstanding Fine Arts Program with instrumental music, vocal music and dance. Ongoing advantages include nine new self-governing schools titled, the Detroit Rising College Preparatory Schools, and DPS-authorized charter schools led by educators with proven track records of raising achievement. In 2012, DPS graduates enjoyed more than $106 million in grants and scholarships. To learn more about Detroit Public Schools, visit www.detroitk12.org or call 313-240-4DPS.
About Cranbrook Institute of Science
Cranbrook Institute of Science is located at 39221 Woodward Avenue in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Cranbrook Institute of Science is open Tues.-Thurs. 10am-5pm, with extended hours on Fri. and Sat. until 10pm, and Noon-4pm on Sun. Museum admission is $12.50 adults, $9.50 children 2-12 and senior citizens (65+); children under 2 and members admitted free. Friday evening admission 5-10pm, $6.50 Adults, $5.50 children ages 2-12 and seniors 65+, children under 2 and Members are free. Planetarium and bat program tickets are $5 general admission; $5 for CIS and OBC members; $1 for children under 2. Non-members must also pay museum admission. For more information about becoming a member of Cranbrook Institute of Science, call 248.645.3200 or visit http://science.cranbrook.edu.
About Bosch and the Bosch Community Fund
The Bosch Group is a leading global supplier of technology and services. In the areas of automotive technology, energy and building technology, industrial technology and consumer goods, more than 300,000 associates generated sales of 51.5 billion euros ($71.7 billion) in 2011. The Bosch Group comprises Robert Bosch GmbH and roughly 350 subsidiaries and regional companies in some 60 countries. If its sales and service partners are included, then Bosch is represented in roughly 150 countries. This worldwide development, manufacturing, and sales network is the foundation for further growth. Each year, Bosch spends around 4.2 billion euros ($5.8 billion) for research and development, and applies for over 4,100 patents worldwide. The Bosch Group's products and services are designed to improve quality of life through solutions that are innovative and beneficial, as well as fascinating. In this way, the company offers technology worldwide that is "Invented for life." Additional information is available online at www.bosch.com and http://www.bosch-presse.de.
In the U.S., Canada and Mexico, the Bosch Group manufactures and markets automotive original equipment and aftermarket products, industrial drives and control technology, power tools, security and communication systems, packaging technology, thermotechnology, household appliances, solar energy, healthcare telemedicine and software solutions. Having established a regional presence in 1906, Bosch employs over 22,500 associates in more than 100 locations, with sales of $9.8 billion in fiscal year 2011. For more information, visit www.boschusa.com, www.bosch.com.mx and www.bosch.ca.
The Bosch Community Fund, a U.S.-based foundation established in September 2011, awards more than $3 million annually in grants and contributions to various 501(c)(3) organizations and educational institutions. The BCF focuses primarily on the enrichment of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education and the advancement of environmental sustainability initiatives.
SOURCE Robert Bosch LLC
More by this Source
Bosch Continues Growth Path in North America
May 15, 2013, 09:00 ET
Browse our custom packages or build your own to meet your unique communications needs.
Learn about PR Newswire services
Request more information about PR Newswire products and services or call us at (888) 776-0942. | <urn:uuid:0ad329b3-2f41-46f6-9842-66ae9a6afe1a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cranbrook-institute-of-science-and-detroit-public-schools-advance-science-learning-in-dps-through-bosch-grant-186954101.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93749 | 1,734 | 1.601563 | 2 |
By: Shaimaa Fayed
CAIRO (REUTERS).- A flowering of Egyptian art since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak is adding color to the capital Cairo and an upswing in business at the city's galleries, as the pride, anger and optimism of a long-frustrated generation plays out on canvas.
Politically-inspired photography, graphic design and graffiti sprayed or stencilled on walls, fences, bridges and fly-overs have flourished since the 18-day uprising toppled the autocratic leader.
Across Cairo, faces of protesters killed during the uprising are immortalized on concrete, fists are shown breaking free from ropes and ancient mummies scream "I am free!."
Much of the street art reflects pride in the movement that united Egyptians across class and religion to put an end to decades of calcified politics and a gaping rich-poor divide.
In Nasr City, a beautiful woman is spray-painted on a fence surrounding a plot of disused land, her dress in the flowing colors of Egypt's red, white and black national flag. Further west in Mohandiseen, an imam and a priest are shown standing hand in hand on the side of one building.
Elsewhere it is darker, angrier. One image painted on a disused building shows a man writhing in chains wrapped tight around his body.
Other graffiti shows anger toward Mubarak and his family -- the former leader is depicted scowling arrogantly or with his head in a noose -- or anxiety at whether Egypt's military rulers really want to deliver the country to democratic civilian rule.
An army officer sketched on a wall in a busy street asks passers-by "man antum?" (who are you?), an allusion to Muammar Gaddafi's disdainful question aimed at Libyan rebels, implying that the military council holds Egyptians in similar contempt.
Some art dealers say the movement is grabbing the attention of collectors at home and abroad.
"There's an enormous interest and push for the graffiti artists, for the illustrators, for the new comic books that are coming out," said William Wells, Director of Cairo's Townhouse Gallery. "At the moment, foreigners are coming through the city constantly looking for them."
Mona Said, owner of Safar Khan gallery, said she received strong interest in her first "To Egypt with Love" exhibition at the gallery in March. The exhibition displayed photography and graphic artwork inspired by the uprising.
"I sold four times what I expected to sell," said Said. "I shipped all over the world."
Hossam Hassan, who combines photography, digital design and painting, depicted protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square at Safar Khan's gallery.
He said the beige background of his canvases reflects a decaying feeling on the eve of the uprising.
"Everything was cloudy, beige, colourless, tasteless before the revolution. These people came with their energy and injected this red, orange, yellow energy into Egypt," he said, pointing to the splashes of color on the paintings.
Hassan says his work on the uprising will be exhibited in European capitals including Vienna and London this year and will appear next year in a Paris exhibition commemorating the first day of the uprising, January 25.
FEARS OF CENSORSHIP
Other artists hope their depictions of the revolution will promote social causes they say were neglected under Mubarak, who is on trial accused of authorizing the use of live ammunition to shoot protesters, of corruption and abuse of power.
Hanan el-Nahrawy, a deaf-mute artist who has produced surrealistic oil and ink images of Mubarak, said -- through her son who interprets for her -- that she wants to spread awareness for deaf-mutes who received little care under the former leader.
"Mubarak did not like the disabled, whatever their disability," said Nahrawy. "In the days of (previous president) Anwar al-Sadat, there was more attention to the disabled."
One of Nahrawy's canvases depicts the Nile flowing through Mubarak's face, its delta branching off in vein-like lines on his forehead. A small fist carrying tear-shaped nooses is painted on one of his cheeks, while small images of people carrying Egypt's flag chip away at the other.
"These are the protesters trying to find out what's hidden, how much he owns," said Nahrawy. "The veins are like the reverberations of an earthquake. The revolution shook Mubarak."
Another of Nahrawy's works shows the Nile passing through an image that combines Mubarak's face with that of Hussein Salem, a close confidant of the former president charged with squandering public funds. Dollar signs fill the background.
Inspiration from the country's political upheaval is mixed with fears of political censorship by Egypt's army, which has ruled since Mubarak's overthrow on February 11. Rights groups worry over the army's use of military trials in cases where civilians criticized its actions.
Many artists are concerned that religious conservatives now vying for power may try to exert pressure that will curb freedom of expression.
"We've moved into a situation that's a little bit disturbing with the army now adopting similar tactics in terms of censorship that we had prior to February 11," said Wells.
Hassan said the diversity of religion and culture that has inspired artists in Egypt is under threat from strict Islamist groups such as the Salafists.
"This is not right for Egypt. We'll go back to where we were before the revolution and worse," said Hassan.
"The beauty of Egypt is its diversity. I get very upset when Islamists or Salafists say 'Egypt is Islamist, it has to be this' ... the depth and strength of Egypt is that it's Coptic (Christian), Pharoanic, Muslim, modern and old."
(Editing by Tom Pfeiffer and Sonya Hepinstall) | <urn:uuid:6f783578-ce28-4550-bdb8-7005247894f8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=49949&int_modo=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968048 | 1,214 | 1.820313 | 2 |
News > Politics
Wednesday, January 9, 2013 5:26 AM EST
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Twenty-eight new lawmakers are joining the Michigan Legislature on the first day of the next two-year session.
The new House members will be sworn in Wednesday along with those re-elected to the 110-member chamber. Senators are in the middle of their four-year terms.
Opening day is filled with pomp, smiles and excitement before the real work begins weeks down the line. But acrimony over the GOP's passage of a right-to-work law in December may linger.
Republican Jase Bolger is expected to be chosen to lead the House again. Yet Democrats may break with recent tradition and vote against him.
Union members also plan to demonstrate outside the Capitol, and to deliver cookies or crumbs to legislators depending on how they've voted on bills. | <urn:uuid:f0b59af7-1088-4742-a3bb-dbb7d9b5b695> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://theoaklandpress.com/articles/2013/01/09/news/politics/doc50ed4195cf7b1991897836.prt | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953343 | 184 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Students are strongly urged to develop and/or maintain a relationship with a healthcare provider of their own choosing. None of the services available to students can replace private physician services. The School of Nursing and hospital do not assume medical or financial responsibility for illness or correction of physical defects while students are in the program.
Health Insurance Requirement
Students are required to have health insurance during their attendance at the Crouse Hospital School of Nursing. A basic health insurance policy is available to students for a modest cost. Information is available in the main office of the school. Application and payment are managed online.
Employee/Student Health Office
Students have access to the Employee/Student Health Office. The mission of the Employee/Student Health Office is to promote occupational/student health and safety in the health care setting. The practice is focused on health promotion, prevention and management of illness and injury at the work site.
The services of the Employee/Student Health Office include, but are not limited to:
- Health counseling and health-related resource information.
- Blood pressure checks.
- Assistance with medical referrals.
- Evaluation, treatment and referral of work-related injury and illness.
- Blood and body fluid exposure follow-up.
- Coordinating Crouse Wellness Works program.
Location: 8th Floor, Memorial Unit
Hours: Monday through Friday, 6:30 a.m. – 4 p.m.
For non-emergent services, please call and set up a mutually convenient time.
Crouse PromptCare, located at the corner of Irving and Waverly avenues, is available for illness and non life-threatening conditions. Follow-up care is the responsibility of the student. Before going to PromptCare, all students must first go to the Employee/Student Health Office during office hours.
Women’s Health Services
The Women’s Wellness Center at 739 Irving Avenue, Suite 300, is available to provide GYN services to Crouse Hospital School of Nursing female students without referral and in a timely manner. The practice is open Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Students are advised to use PromptCare/ER after hours. Fees are based on insurance coverage and a payment plan might be worked out with those whose insurance coverage excludes needed services. When seeking healthcare services, students are responsible for any co-pays or deductibles required by their plan.
Skilled professional counselors from Crouse Hospital’s HelpPeople employee assistance program (EAP) are available to all students at no charge. HelpPeople provides professional, confidential assistance to students for personal problems that may affect academic performance such as stress, marital and family difficulties, financial problems, eating disorders, alcohol and substance misuse/abuse, sexual harassment or assault and assists students in identifying troubling issues and problems while providing access to resources that can help resolve the problems. HelpPeople may be contacted by calling 315/470-7447 or 800/777–6110. Confidentiality is assured. No communication related to individual students ever occurs between HelpPeople and the School of Nursing without written permission of the student. | <urn:uuid:b69038aa-a214-43a0-8176-92f8cce40b58> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.crouse.org/nursing/student-life/health/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947154 | 643 | 1.570313 | 2 |
One thing I have really appreciated about all the 9/11 remembrances over the past 10 years is the chance to get to know the personal stories about so many of those that were killed that day. There are SO many stories of courage and emotional fortitude, but each year there always seems to be one story that really sticks with me. This year it was STEPHEN SILLER. I can't seem to get him out of my thoughts...
"By the time Stephen Siller was 10 years old, he had already lost both parents. Although he went through a period of struggle, because of the love of his siblings and the values instilled in him by his parents, he grew up to be an extraordinary individual. More than most, he knew that time was precious and accomplished much in his 34 years.
On September 11th, firefighter Stephen Siller had just gotten off the late shift at Squad 1, Park Slope, Brooklyn. He was on his way to play golf with his brothers on that bright clear day when his scanner told of the first plane hitting the Twin Towers. When he heard the news, he called his wife Sally to tell her he would be late because he had to help those in need. He returned to Squad 1 to get his gear, then took his final heroic steps to the World Trade Center. When Stephen drove his truck to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, it was already closed to traffic . With sixty pounds of gear strapped to his back, he ran through the Tunnel, hoping to meet up with his own company, Squad 1.
Stephen was first and foremost a loving husband and father to five children. He was also a dedicated fireman, devoted brother, loyal friend and committed neighbor. His life brought great light to those around him.
Stephen’s brother Russell wrote these words for Stephen’s Memorial which best expresses the effect of his life on all who knew him. “Like the comet Halle-Bopp that streaked across the sky a few years ago, Stephen’s light startled us all. When we thought it could not get any brighter, it got brighter still. Just when we were enjoying it so much, for it was so unexpected, so breathtaking, it shot across the sky and went well beyond us all, deeper into the mind of God.”
Stephen’s life and his heroic death serve as reminder to us all to live life to the fullest and to spend our time hear on earth doing good - this is his legacy." (source)
Each year there is a Tunnel to Towers Walk/Run in honor of Stephen. This year's will take place on September 25th.
RIP Stephen. Your dedication, loyalty and sacrifice is humbling. | <urn:uuid:d9bfcafc-1353-43d0-b63c-7ad3d8ea47ec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mobyrebuttal.blogspot.com/2011/09/meet-stephen-siller.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.991361 | 556 | 1.5 | 2 |
David Colby sat in the café of Coliseum Books, just blocks from the Algonquin Hotel where he’d spent his youth, describing his plans to take the old place back.
Real-estate powerhouse Cushman & Wakefield, the firm that sold the Plaza Hotel, has been hired to get top dollar for the Algonquin for their clients, Miller Global Properties. They’d purchased the hotel, home of Dorothy Parker’s famed round table and daily lunch stop for New Yorker editor William Shawn, in 2002 for around $40 million.
Since they quietly put the hotel on the market in late June—the fourth time it’s been for sale in less than 20 years—the 43-year-old grandchild of long-time owners Ben and Mary Bodne has made it his full-time job to accomplish what wasn’t accomplished at the Plaza: to rile the public—and galvanize a few deep-pocketed preservationists—to save the hotel from the Plaza’s fate.
Currently, Mr. Colby is trying to bring together a consortium of investors to purchase the hotel and foster what he dubs “an Algonquin renaissance.”
It began with a letter-writing campaign.
“I fear the inglorious fate that awaits the Algonquin if it falls prey to a real estate investment trust,” reads a letter sent by Mr. Colby to potential investors, and published July 18—without his knowledge—on the media blog FishbowlNY. “These companies are typically detached from any emotional aspect of hotels, its staffs and historic legacy,” continued the lengthy diatribe.
When he was 8 years old, Mr. Colby recalled, his family moved from the suburbs of Long Island into midtown’s Algonquin Hotel, the renowned literary lunch spot and Broadway hangout. Now with protruding stubble and gray streaks in his short, dark hair, and wearing a striped Penguin polo shirt, Mr. Colby spoke with intensity, his eyes lighting up behind tan glasses as he remembered the time he spent in the Algonquin.
“We played Twister at the Algonquin,” he said of his boyhood days in the legendary hotel. “We didn’t need the platform; we just used all the different diagrams in the lobby.”
But Mr. Colby isn’t only reminiscing; these boyhood tales of life at the Algonquin are crucial in his efforts to raise the money he needs to buy the old place back.
“Once you walk inside, and you are connected to the ownership, something comes over you,” he said. “Even if you never had read the Eloise stories of the Plaza, it just automatically came to you that this was your playground. This was your sandbox, and it’s the Algonquin Hotel.”
For Mr. Colby, getting his sandbox back will come at a hefty price. With the real-estate boom still in full swing, coupled with a shortage of quality hotels on the market, he expects the price to jump to between $60 million and $70 million.
One real-estate investment specialist is skeptical of his chances. “If he has got to play on a level playing field, a history of family ownership isn’t going to do anything for him,” said Douglas Harmon, managing director of Eastdil Realty. “Price, speed and credibility are going to drive the deal. Very few people—when you’re selling real estate—have any soft feelings for history.”
For their part, the current sellers say Mr. Colby’s fears—that the building will be converted to condos and fall into the oubliette of midtown hotel history—are unfounded.
“I am pretty much 100 percent sure that won’t happen,” said hotel specialist Tom McConnell, senior managing director at Cushman & Wakefield. “It will be a hotel for the rest of our lifetime.”
Mr. McConnell said the Algonquin is having the best year in its history, and reaping the benefits of increased tourism throughout the city this summer.
But there are other reasons why the Algonquin might not be converted into condos. The three top ones: location, location and location.
The 12-story building, which is on a block with several other hotels, is certainly not as ideal as the Plaza for residential use—lacking the spectacular views, larger units and proximity to Central Park. Located on West 44th Street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues, it is close to highbrow dives like the newly expanded Harvard Club and DB Bistro Moderne, and it offers tourists a short walk to Times Square. Lastly, the Algonquin is much smaller, containing only 174 rooms to the Plaza’s 800.
Regardless of whether he is truly stopping a condo conversion, Mr. Colby believes that the hotel belongs with his family, who owned it from 1946 to 1987.
“It’s a very romantic notion, but my grandfather was a hayseed from the South. He married my grandmother, honeymooned in New York, and the Algonquin was one of the hot spots. They walked into the Algonquin, and it was love at first sight,” said Mr. Colby. “My grandfather, upon leaving the Algonquin, said to my grandmother that they would return to the Algonquin one day, and that he would buy it for her.”
In 1946, Bodne initially tried throwing some of his oil money into major-league baseball, but he was outbid by crooner Bing Crosby.
“Since he couldn’t buy the Pittsburgh Pirates, he remembered that promise he had made my grandmother.”
After fulfilling that newlyweds’ promise, the couple moved to Manhattan. They stayed for the rest of their lives.
“The Algonquin over the last 18 years—since my grandparents sold it—has been off-shore or out-of-state ownerships, absentee ownerships with management companies. There was never any kind of cohesion, just one turnover after another.”
Mr. Colby does have a point. In 1987, Bodne sold the property to Aoki Corporation at a moment when Japanese investors were snatching up iconic New York properties, such as Rockefeller Center. While Aoki may not have effectively marketed the Algonquin’s cultural cachet, the company did put in about $22 million on less noticeable improvements, like new elevators.
Ten years later, Aoki sold the Algonquin for $32.6 million to Olympus Real Estate out of Dallas. Also having little success with the once-prominent landmark, Olympus sold it to the Denver-based Miller Global Properties, which quickly rounded up Algonquin regulars in focus groups to determine how best to market the hotel. They picked Mr. Colby’s brain.
“It was sort of my return to the Algonquin. [I] hadn’t been there for a while, and when I walked into the lobby, for me, automatically, I’m transformed.”
For a while, it seemed like a partnership of sorts had developed between the precocious kid who learned to field ground balls in the Algonquin’s lobby, and the new owners who were looking to merge the glorious past with modern improvements. But after a proposed centennial celebration fell apart in 2002, the relationship became frayed, according to Mr. Colby. “Since then, they could say that I’m a pebble in their shoe.”
Understandably left out of the decision-making process, Mr. Colby criticizes the current ownership.
“I had ideas of stretching the Algonquin brand name and reaching out to the community, the literary crowd, the theater crowd. Used to be that all the New Yorker people would come there. Where have they gone?”
While David Remnick and company may have found other lunchtime hangouts, Miller Global has revived The New Yorker in other ways.
As legend has it, the magazine began with a card game, known as the “Thanatopsis Pleasures and Inside Straight Club.” Founder and editor Harold Ross got yeast heir Raoul Fleischmann to open up his wallet and fund the high-minded magazine. The shout and murmurs have continued to this day.
In keeping with tradition, Talk of the Town, a musical version of those witty round-tablers, is performed twice a week in the Oak Room. Onstage, legendary figures trade clever quips and occasionally burst into song.
In October 2004, the hotel tried a glitzy plan that received tons of publicity: They started selling a $10,000 martini with a diamond included (two people actually bought it). A smart publicity stunt, the pricey cocktail helped revive the Algonquin’s image of luxury, difficult to do given the number of boutique hotels springing up, such as the Hotel Gansevoort. With modern luxury hotels now loaning out iPods, the Algonquin has started doing the same—with best-selling books and round-table biographies downloaded inside.
Gimmicks aside, Miller Global closed down the hotel last summer to deal with a much-needed renovation, spending $4 million to upgrade the hotel with everything from fresh carpeting to new beds in the guest rooms.
Yet for Mr. Colby, these improvements aren’t enough.
“I wanted to be in the inner circle and have a position where I could revive the Algonquin. It never really came together for us.”
Miller Global executives didn’t return calls for comment.
Mr. Colby’s foray into the hotel business isn’t motivated solely by nostalgia. Obviously, no investor is going to shell out millions of dollars for a handful of anecdotes. With an associate’s degree from New York University in hospitality management, Mr. Colby also has real-world experience working at the Algonquin and other establishments, including the Beverly Hills Hotel. He sees nothing but possibility in the Algonquin.
“The hotel can be timeless. The influence that it can have can be incredible. The people that would be attracted to the things that the Algonquin can do—will do, I know it, if I have a part in it—would transcend anything that has ever been done with the Algonquin, and perhaps any other hotel. Period.”
Lofty goals, indeed.
Now if only he could get his hands on that $60 million.
Follow Michael Calderone via RSS. | <urn:uuid:2fe38e85-10e4-4beb-a091-1bdca9273fee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://observer.com/2005/08/david-colby-boyeloise-of-the-algonquin-tries-to-raise-60-m-to-buy-storied-hotel/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96472 | 2,258 | 1.554688 | 2 |
ment as drawn up by Mr. Emil Hansen, gardener at the U.A.C., the work will be carried on to a much greater extent next year. The plan calls for the following improvements: the moving of the athletic field, the laying off of walks, the leveling and replanting of campus to lawns, and the planting of shrubs and evergreens. The work of improvement was done by the students and faculty on special work days called for the purpose. ACTIVITIES. Organizations. There is a student-body organization at the school for the purpose of student government. In its operation of elections, law making and enforcement of its laws, the Student Body is a splendid asset in promoting democratic atmosphere and spirit among the students, and in maintaining the adopted policies of the school. Various clubs and societies which aid materially the Student Body spirit are also organized on broadly democratic principles. These organizations are especially concerned with debating, dramatics, athletics, various branches of study and social activities. Contests. Mental and physical contests are a marked feature of life at the Murdock. The large well-provided campus and good equipment for indoor sports make physical contests very popular. Class and interscholastic contests in debating and athletics, lend zest to life at school for all and afford wholesome and instructive training for those who participate. Socials, Musicals, Dramatics. The socials of the school are of the highest standard. The Murdock Academy aims to provide enough social life for its students with no charge except the Student Body fee paid with the tuition. Social dancing and social etiquette instruction is given, that young people may learn how to appear properly in the social hall.
Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections. | <urn:uuid:433bea86-57dc-41b1-9e08-3471177d87c3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://contentdm.li.suu.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/beaver_murd/id/164/rec/36 | 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 | 0.959987 | 355 | 1.5625 | 2 |
ADC to Honor Helen Thomas at Convention and Inaugurate Journalism Scholarship
Since the Kennedy Administration in the early 1960s many policies and initiatives have changed from President to President, but one thing has been consistent; the watchful eye of Arab-American Journalist Helen Thomas who broke all barriers for female journalists. As a central figure in the White House Press corps, and the current Dean, Helen Thomas has always asked tough questions. Even when much of the media establishment failed to question the evidence that led us into war in Iraq, Helen Thomas was among the few who maintained journalistic integrity and responsibility by putting tough questions before the White House.
Now, questioning her 10th President, Helen Thomas continues to be a role model for young journalists throughout this country. At this year's National Convention, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee will inaugurate a journalism scholarship in Helen Thomas' name to be awarded to outstanding college students majoring in journalism. Helen Thomas will address the convention and more details about the scholarship application will be available soon. | <urn:uuid:64cc7b9d-f3e0-485b-87c3-1b346ed0d732> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.arabamerica.com/michigan/california/news.php?id=499 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94794 | 208 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Formed by previous members of the band Tusk, the instrumental post-metal outfit Pelican formed in Chicago, 2001, by guitarists Trevor de Brauw and Laurent Lebec with sibling rhythm section Larry Herweg and Bryan Herweg (drums and bass, respectively). Owing a great debt to the pioneering band Neurosis, and often compared to Boston's Isis, and Sweden's Cult of Luna, Pelican were initially signed to Hydra Head Records (whose founder, Aaron Turner, is a member of Isis). After making their debut with an eponymous self-titled four-song EP "Pelican" in 2003, Pelican expanded their sound with 2004's critically acclaimed "Australasia". In 2005 Pelican released the "March Into the Sea" EP (featuring the original 20 minutes version), followed by, arguably, their most accomplished record to date, "The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw". "City Of Echoes" was released June 5th, 2007. In 2009 the band signed with Southern Lord Records in preparation for the release of their fourth full album. 2) Pelican, an Icelandic rock band founded by Pétur Kristjánsson. | <urn:uuid:1307efda-e2ab-4730-a191-22f61dd3e3c9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://metally.net/bands/pelican | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957776 | 245 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Bobby Darin was born Walden Robert Cassotto on May 14, 1936 in New York City. His father left his mother right before he was born, leaving the new family to fend for themselves during the depression. His mother had to get on welfare in order to care for Bobby and told him that she was his sister to avoid embarrassment.
Bobby became afflicted with rheumatic fever at the age of eight, which left him with a bad heart. The doctors told him that he could die at any time, but Bobby decided to make the most of his time and pursue the musical arts. His mother worked hard to purchase him instruments, all of which he learned to play during his free time.
After graduating from the Bronx High School of Science, Bobby received a scholarship to go to college. However, he dropped out not long after starting to perform with a music group at local nightclubs.
In 1956, he decided to change his name to Bobby Darin to appear more Americanized. That same year, he was able to get a record contract with Decca Records. His talent was suppressed by the executives at Decca, eventually causing him to leave the company.
Shortly after, he signed a contract with Atlantic Records, where he was allowed to write music for himself and other music groups on the label. It was there that he wrote his first hit song "Splish Splash", which he wrote based on a bet that he couldn't write a hit song that started with the two words. The song was a surprise hit and sold over a million copies in 1958.
In 1959, he recorded "Dream Lover", another smash hit that further increased his fame. His next single was a cover of "Mack the Knife", which he gave an energetic twist to. This single was a number one hit, sold millions of copies, and showed the world that he wasn't just a one hit wonder.
In 1960, his "Mack the Knife" album was nominated for record of the year and Bobby was nominated for best new artist at the Grammy Awards. He managed to win both awards and later received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award for the same record.
Later that year, he covered Charles Trenet's hit song "La Mer" in English as "Beyond the Sea". The song was a smash hit and established him as a popular artist in Europe, particularly France.
At the height of his popularity, Darin began to explore other art and began working in motion pictures. He wrote the music for several hit films and even began costarring, where he met the famous actress named Sandra Dee. He married her in 1960 and they had a son, Dodd, in 1961.
Darin began seeking more serious movie roles and starred in 1962's "Pressure Point" opposite Sidney Poitier. In 1963, he played a shell shocked soldier in "Captain Newman M.D." In his free time, he performed at concerts in Las Vegas and around the rest of the United States.
Unfortunately, despite his massive success in music and films, Bobby's personal life was ailing. His marriage to Sandra Dee was crumbling since she felt that Bobby was ignoring his family to pursue fame and money. They divorced in 1967, after which Bobby became a political activist, first working on Robert Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign.
After Kennedy was tragically assassinated, Darin was deeply traumatized and produced two folk music albums. One of them featured his hit song "If I Were a Carpenter", which showed that Bobby Darin could write more than pop songs.
In 1971, he had heart surgery in an attempt to repair the damage done to it from his childhood. A year later, he starred in a variety show on NBC, which was cut short by his unfortunate death on December 20, 1973.
In 2000, Kevin Spacey, a big fan of Darin, produced and acted in "Beyond the Sea". The movie was a musical biopic that received rave reviews, but unfortunately failed at the box office. | <urn:uuid:82d7530e-88fa-4352-b3be-dc9a3981aed2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://freeinfosociety.com/article.php?id=240 | 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 | 0.993728 | 814 | 1.742188 | 2 |
RI Board recognizes new Rotarian Action Groups
At its January meeting, the RI Board of Directors recognized two new Rotarian Action Groups.
The Rotarian Action Group Against Child Slavery seeks to create awareness among Rotarians and the general public about the millions of children that are held captive for commercial gain and to help Rotarians take action to protect children through programs, campaigns, and projects.
The Rotarians for Hearing Rotarian Action Group serves as a resource for clubs and districts interested in participating in humanitarian projects to help the hearing impaired.
In November, the Board recognized the Rotarian Action Group for Peace, which is devoted to working together for the purpose of advancing peace and preventing conflict through the education and activities of peace-building, peacekeeping, peacemaking.
Rotarian Action Groups are groups of Rotarians, family members of Rotarians, and Rotaractors who join together to assist and support clubs and districts in planning and implementing service projects in their respective areas of expertise.
Learn more about Rotarian Action Groups. | <urn:uuid:dab36b86-38e0-413d-bf57-a412b4ef3a32> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rotary.org/en/serviceandfellowship/collaborate/announcements/pages/121130_announce_peaceactiongroup.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935222 | 209 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Last weeks’ summary: In 2012 EVT, Everstate (the ideal-type corresponding to our very real countries created to foresee the future of governance and of the modern nation-state) knows a rising dissatisfaction of its population. Plagued with a deepening budget deficit and an increasing need for liquidity, a related creeping appropriation of resources while the strength of central public power weakens to the profit of various elite groups and with an outdated worldview that promotes misunderstanding, disconnect and thus inadequate actions, the political authorities are increasingly unable to deliver the security citizens seek and risks to the legitimacy of the whole system increases. Alarmed by the rising difficulties and widespread discontent, the governing authorities decide to do something. Three potential scenarios or stories will be told: “Mamominarch: Off with the State,” “Panglossy: Same Old, Same Old,” and “Genuisy: the Making of History.”
(The reader can click on each picture to see a larger version in a new tab – a navigating map of posts is available to ease reading).
The Mamominarch Commission
Considering the difficulty of the problems at hand, and the need for a consensus among powerful elite groups, as well as regional and international actors, to see the array of measures applied, once they would be identified, Everstate’s government convenes a high level commission that must find out what has to be done.
The highest level of the government thus hand-picks to participate in the work: high level government and state officials, the latter representing civil servants, parliamentary representatives of the major parties, who had been in power alternatively for the last seven decades, famous economists Everstatan and foreign, the director of the Everstatan School of Liberal Politics, management experts, business leaders, notably the CEOs of Novstate and its friends companies, the CEOs of the largest banks and largest financial funds, business consultants, experts in new technologies, high level officials of the IMF and WTO and of the Regional Union. All powerfully stand for the normative order to which Everstate belongs and for the major entrenched elite groups. As an exception to this rule, the CEO of a very performing high-tech Everstatan company, Evernet, is also invited to represent the emerging elite group related to computing and networking.
After two months of intense debates and work, most often done by the staff of those personalities that participate in the high level working group, the Mamominarch Commission, as it is now known, reaches the conclusion that the root cause of the problems is an impossibility to match public expenses with public income, even in times of economic growth, and thus that the obvious solution is to drastically lower public expenses.
Of course, this solution is designed in terms of expenses and not of needs, but is it really a problem? The normative model of the time, which has been just so successful into bringing wealth and growth, upholds free entrepreneurship, free trade and free market as ideal. Meanwhile, the state and especially its bureaucracy tend to be seen as expensive and inefficient, obviously unable to adapt to the new conditions as the deteriorating situation proves, and furthermore unable to contribute to ensure its primary mission, the security of its population as, again, the protests and the increasing tension shows. It thus makes complete sense to push the normative order one step further and to finally apply it fully: to rely on free entrepreneurial forces and on the market to provide for goods and services as much as possible, to always work in this direction, while the state must wither away. After a short period of adaptation everyone will be happy and definitely better off as balance will have been restored and this time permanently.
What will be more delicate to engineer is the short-term future, when further efforts in terms of income will be asked from the population, as existing debts must be reimbursed and interests paid. But, the difficulties will only exist for a very short period of time, as the renewed growth will rapidly make the effort painless.
Some civil servants will have to be laid off but as services will be taken over by the private sector, they will certainly find work again very rapidly, on the model of Novstate. Such a move may even enhance their career, as the economy will certainly be greatly boosted by this new system.
Furthermore, selling whole parts of the state, as has already been started, will bring in more money that will be used to reimburse debts, thus helping stabilise taxes. There will be no need to find really new taxes, except, maybe, for a short period of time, and especially no need to truly start thinking about ways to make the lenders’ nexus pay more tax – which is, anyway, something really difficult to craft as the whole financial system has become so complex, and would ask for international treaties, which would demand too long to obtain, assuming it were possible.*
Finally, as many members of the Commission underline, this will be good for business, attract investment, and put Everstate in rank to compete with the top financial and businesses orientated places in the world.
Only a minimum army and police will remain at state level. Most of the police force will now be under the responsibility of local towns, as, anyway, criminality has to be solved by proximity actions, on the ground, and through a better understanding of criminals. Operations against existing national threats will be shared between what remains of the defence forces, with a rising use of private contractors. Novstate’s CEO has pledged during the debates that his company and its friends businesses would do their utmost to fulfill any need Everstate would have in this matter.
PR, communication and advertisement specialists, as well as lobbyists, are now brought in to make sure that the conclusions and message of the Mamominarch Commission are delivered at best so that they become policy decisions adopted by Everstate’s governing bodies.
Everything goes indeed very smoothly and all Mamominarch’s conclusions are adopted.
* Zoltan Pozsar, Tobias Adrian, Adam Ashcraft, and Hayley Boesky, Shadow Banking, Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports, no. 458, July 2010; “According to one measure of the size of the shadow banking system, it grew rapidly before the crisis, from an estimated $27 trillion in 2002 to $60 trillion in 2007, and remained at around the same level in 2010.” Financial Stability Board (FSB), Shadow Banking: Strengthening Oversight and Regulation, October 2011, p.1; Brook Masters (2011-10-27). “Shadow banking surpasses pre-crisis level”. The Financial Times. accessed 2012-02-10. | <urn:uuid:af90789f-e592-44ee-8591-739788f0688e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.redanalysis.org/2012/03/04/2012-evt-scenario-1-mamominarch-off-with-the-state/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961766 | 1,368 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Kojonup farmer faces court over dairy cow cruelty charge
6 December 2011
A KOJONUP man alleged to have starved and overstocked 250 head of cattle in 2009 will today learn his fate after denying a cruelty charge.
The man will appear in a Perth court via video link link from Albany charged with one count of animal cruelty to cattle between June and August 2009.
The RSPCA alleges that Brenton Emiel Hettner, 41, was visited several times by an RSPCA inspector in 2009 after reports that cows in his yards were in poor condition.
They were also called out to tend to a cow that was down, which was later euthanised.
Results from an investigation conducted by the RSPCA suggested that the poor body condition of the cattle was caused by overstocking and inadequate food.
The RSPCA alleges that this happened despite the association's repeated attempts to educate the accused and "improve the situation.
By Laura Tomlinson, Perth Now
Read the full article...
Every year the dairy industry sends some 700,000 unwanted dairy calves (also known as 'bobby calves') to slaughter as 'waste products'. Find out more...
Find more news articles... | <urn:uuid:89ad944f-4eb0-46a7-806a-8fc8ad4f3111> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://animalsaustralia.org/media/in_the_news.php?article=3169 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984455 | 252 | 1.578125 | 2 |
EU wind power now 7 percent, but industry challenged in 2013
The European Union wind energy sector installed 11.6 gigawatts (GW) of capacity in 2012—enough additional power for the continent to now meet 7 percent of its electricity needs--according to the 2012 annual statistics released this week by the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA).
The megawatts added in 2012 bring the E.U.’s total wind power capacity to 105.6 GW. The 7 percent penetration level achieved is a notable increase from 6.3 percent at the end of 2011.
While the installation total for the year beats 2011’s 9.4 GW, “The 2012 figures reflect orders made before the wave of political uncertainty that has swept across Europe since 2011, which is having a hugely negative impact on the wind energy sector," said Christian Kjaer, CEO of EWEA. "We expect this instability to be far more apparent in 2013 and 2014 installation levels."
Wind energy represented 26 percent of all new EU power capacity installed last year, and investment of between EUR 12.8 billion and EUR 17.2 billion.
Overall, the EU is almost 2,000 MW short of its National Renewable Energy Action Plan forecasts. Eighteen member states are falling behind, including Slovakia, Greece, Czech Republic, Hungary, France and Portugal, said EWEA, which released its numbers in conjunction with last week’s EWEA 2013 event in Vienna.
Renewable energy accounted for 69 percent of all new power capacity in 2012 while, in a continuing trend, fuel oil, coal and nuclear capacity saw negative growth due to decommissioning.
Last year, wind energy installations were led by Germany (2.4 GW, 21 percent of the total of new E.U. wind power capacity), the UK (1.9 GW, 16 percent), Italy (1.3 GW, 11 percent), Romania (0.9 GW, 8 percent) and Poland (0.9 GW, 8 percent). In terms of total installed capacity, Germany is also the leader with 31.3 GW (30 percent), followed by Spain (22.8 GW, 22 percent), the UK (8.4 GW, 8 percent), Italy (8.1 GW, 8 percent) and France (7.2 GW, 7 percent).
EWEA’s full set of E.U. wind power 2012 market numbers is available online.
Skeptical about renewable energy predictions? You should be, June 20, 2012
Wind technology advancing rapidly, challenges remain, June 4, 2012
AWEA Annual Market Report underscores need for PTC extension, April 13, 2012 | <urn:uuid:b128a793-bed0-4c2e-a904-0268a2de0621> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://awea.org/blog/index.cfm?customel_dataPageID_1699=21543 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938545 | 546 | 1.765625 | 2 |
The Grand Superintendent’s Message
As Grand Superintendent of Royal Arch Masonry in Warwickshire, I welcome you to our web pages and hope you will enjoy browsing through them.
Masonry may sometimes seem confusing and hard to understand, and my senior colleagues and I would always be pleased to try and dispel these misunderstandings, and explain the position the Royal Arch has in Masonry generally and its intentions.
One of the earliest mentions of the Royal Arch is a report of a meeting in 1743. Thus for nearly 260 years this vital part of Masonry, described by one Masonic genius, as “the root, heart and marrow of Masonry” has existed, developed and flourished. In 1813 when our United Grand Lodge rewrote our rulebook, called the Book of Constitutions, the Royal Arch was declared part of “pure Antient Masonry” and so it remains today.
All masons who have completed the three Craft ceremonies, not only are able, but are recommended, to join a Royal Arch Chapter and we have 64 in Warwickshire with over 1500 members and they meet at all the main Masonic centres throughout the province.
Our workings are historical and highly symbolic and not only of great interest but great fun. All Chapters also have an active social side and maintain strong charitable ideals.
We can be reached through the main Provincial Office at Stirling Road, Edgbaston or directly to the Scribe E John Handley on 01564 777578, and we would be pleased to make arrangements for those especially interested to view the room in which we meet, together with the equipment and regalia we use.
John L Saint – Grand Superintendent for Warwickshire | <urn:uuid:0dda58fd-62c4-4ecc-89c6-24f1fd745c38> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.royal-arch.org.uk/gs-message/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952711 | 351 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Monday, March 29, 2010
What would your child's monsters look like if they were real?
I was recently reminded of The Monster Engine created by Dave Devries in BuzzFeed's Children's Drawings Painted Realistically.
Dave takes the monsters kids draw and renders them as realistically as possible. The results can be quite disturbing, and yet beautiful. And you have to wonder if this is how the children see their monsters in their heads. At the very least, they make for some amazingly different looking creations. | <urn:uuid:1b3e1cef-c53f-446b-9408-d8ad09b3a56e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dulemba.blogspot.com/2010/03/monster-engine.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 | 0.980855 | 104 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Essays by Michael Cunningham, Thurston Moore and Guy Armstrong.
Published by Aperture
Barbara Ess makes subtly-toned photographs that are not so much reality as visionary versions of it. Blurry and distorted, they seem to coax their subjects from mysterious spaces. --Grace Glueck, The New York Times
“Ess' images often have a dreamy subterranean quality--part wonder and part menace--as if culled directly from the subconscious.”
--Gregory Volk, ARTnews
I Am Not This Body investigates primary, personal experience and relies upon the viewer's imagination and memories. Barbara Ess is renowned for her accomplished use of the pinhole camera and her effort to “photograph what cannot be photographed.” Ess' is a conscious quest to explore what she calls “ambiguous perceptual boundaries: between people, between the self and the not self, between in here and out there.” In her view, “reality... includes a perceiver, who has memories, thoughts, desires, emotions--[which] a normal camera tends to omit.” The strange and affecting images she coaxes from this primitive camera manage to evoke the sublime and the impossible, the textures of desire and loss.
STATUS: Out of print | 11/25/2008
For assistance locating a copy, please see our list of recommended out of print specialists > | <urn:uuid:bc6e0b7e-8061-450a-aac2-facfc5909b78> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.artbook.com/catalog--photography--monographs--ess--barbara.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931321 | 288 | 1.632813 | 2 |
3. Racist T-shirts
The melange of allegations of specific racist conduct in the July 11 Washington Times article also included descriptions of racist T-shirts for sale at the campground. The article described examples of such shirts as "Martin Luther King's face behind a target, O.J. Simpson in a hangman's noose and white D.C. police officers with a black man sprawled across the hood of their car under the words 'Boyz on the Hood.'" The article claimed such items were "still" for sale at the 1995 Roundup. These allegations were repeated at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on July 21. In his affidavit to the Committee, Hayward alleged that District of Columbia Metropolitan police officers had shirts showing black suspects spread across the hood of a police car with the words "Boyz on the Hood." He also alleged that individuals from another agency had a "pocket nigger" T-shirt with a picture of the Buckwheat character from the Little Rascals television program "coming out of the pocket." He claimed further to have seen a Roundup participant wearing a T-shirt with a silhouette of an African-American with "cross-hairs" on it, which he called the "running nigger" T-shirt. | <urn:uuid:826364ae-25bf-4bee-8006-ee46cfab3805> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/9603/gr000006.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974556 | 255 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Women’s Professional Soccer Kicks-off with Facebook
By Sarah Klein
Most people wouldn’t have suggested starting a new professional sports league in 2009. And given its checkered history of poor finances and small crowds, most people probably wouldn’t have suggested that women’s soccer would be the sport to focus on. But that’s exactly what the Women’s Professional Soccer league just did!
The WPS launched in March of this year, as a replacement for the Woman’s United Soccer Association (WUSA), which folded back in 2003 due to a lack of funding. Even with big names like Mia Hamm, WUSA crowds averaged only around 3,000 a game. Even in sound economic times, women’s sports generally sell fewer tickets than men’s, so the WPS kick-off in the midst of a global economic crisis seemed more than a little risky.
Despite these concerns, supporters, organizers, players and fans feel this second chance may be the real deal. There’s a wider pool of talent across the seven teams, as many of the top players from around the world have come to play on American turf. But more importantly, there’s simply a bigger drive to do it right this time around.
As part of the effort to make the league a success, WPS has launched a surprisingly personal, surprisingly connected Facebook campaign. The league has its own fan page, where staff members post updates, news stories, photos and videos multiple times a day. Over 14,000 fans follow this page and many actively comment on the posts. Each team in the league also has its own page, with information about upcoming games and stadium locations.
But what is most surprising about the team pages is the chance to get a glimpse into the lives of these talented female athletes. Where paparazzi would stalk top male athletes in more popular sports, here players and staff document every step for public viewing. Photos range from contract signings and the draft, to pre-season fitness testing and practices, to airport waiting areas, and impromptu pool matches.
The organizers understand that the key to keeping this league afloat is getting the fans involved. The WPS set out with a goal of getting 5,000 fans to each game. According to the San Francisco Business Times, the Bay Area FC Gold Pride, one of the more popular teams as far as Facebook fans go, has been averaging around 4,000. Considering where the economy is, coming up a little short isn’t too bad.
But the league won’t survive unless more fans by tickets. The Internet is a cheap way to reach the biggest audience possible and Facebook – as many companies, brands, and now teams are learning – connects this audience directly to the players. The league and players are more accessible to fans than ever before. Hopefully a boost in ticket sales will soon follow. | <urn:uuid:ac962739-7378-4225-af0d-46b056290afd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://theonlinemom.com/secondary.asp?id=569 | 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 | 0.956561 | 596 | 1.507813 | 2 |
rory wrote: I don't understand their worldview at all. They love being poor, have big issues about sex, and have this sense of 'sin'. I have absolutely no idea what that is.
The ideal in Buddhism is to be penniless, celibate and mindful of your three karmas of body, speech and mind so as to avoid all misdeeds.
The later developments of justifying your wealth as a necessity for a modest standard of living, being on the fence with the brahma-caryā
(celibacy) thing and thinking you can wipe away your negative karma with a few prayers does not seem to have been the Buddha's original intent.
The original idea was that even as a layperson you should be generous with your possessions, maintain continence and actively work to avoid all transgressions of your precepts while regularly confessing your misdeeds to a pure monk.
I see things differently.
I don't think it is correct to say "The ideal in Buddhism is to be penniless, celibate and mindful of your three karmas of body, speech and mind so as to avoid all misdeeds." This is not to say that some opposite value is more correct, because that is obviously not the case.
If money were to come into your hand, would your Buddhist practice compel you to part with the money? Celibacy is an ideal only because sex tends to enhance sensual craving - not because sex is bad per se. Mindfulness can be carried out in any environment, although there are certain conditions that make it easier to carry out - like when you are parted from stimuli that distract you. My point is, poverty, celibacy, even mindfulness, are not goals in themselves.
The Ideal in Buddhism is to attain enlightenment and end suffering. Going into homelessness is A means to that goal, although from the perspective of the Lotus, it is an expedient that does not actually lead to annuttara samyak sambodhi. Bear in mind, we are in a Nichiren forum and Nichiren Lotus Buddhism frames this discussion. But I think the general gist of this statement holds for all Buddhism.
As for the Buddha's original intent - the Buddha never went out of his way to alienate lay persons. He in fact went out of his way to praise them in their support of the sangha. And they could support the Sangha even more effectively if they possessed wealth - like Sudatta. It is the wealth and generosity of lay persons that has enabled the continuation of the sangha and propagation of dharma. The Buddha's assembly was composed of four groups of people - nuns, monks, laywomen and laymen. All four are necessary for the Buddhadharma to flow. You should be careful in your statements lest you find yourself impugning your fellow Buddhists.
Also, the benefits of laypersons for supporting the Sangha was not some later corruption of Buddhadharma as you are suggesting - this was the cultural value of the Buddha's time. It was widely believed in the Buddha's time that you supported ascetics who had taken to the homeless life to overcome the sufferings of life and death one could expect karmic rewards spiritual as well as material nature. Remember that the Buddha's order was only one of many. How much more the benefit if the support was directed to the Sangha. This was not just some later compromise to make supporters feel good but a long standing cultural value in India at that time.
As far as I am concerned, if Buddhism ever did disparage lay persons and the endeavors of their lives, it was wrong, and that tendency was rightfully excised in the Mahayana.
I could go on about how the distinctions between lay and sangha are artificial, how early Buddhism is marked by cultural idiosyncrasies of BCE India and rightfully went through a process of distillation, imho, that released the Buddha wisdom from the constraints of a particular culture.
In the Perfect Teaching, all of our activities are opened to reveal the function of Buddha. This does not give license to do anything you want - but it does present a very different view of human activity than the interpretations of Buddhadharma you voice.
For the Mahayana ideal of lay life, see the Vimalakirti Sutra. | <urn:uuid:1733fd45-9bae-4477-9d4a-43fccc043ae6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dharmawheel.net/viewtopic.php?p=134965 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974523 | 890 | 1.570313 | 2 |
The most recognized song in the English language is "Happy Birthday to You" (the common song sung on someone's birthday). What songs in Spanish are traditionally sung on birthdays (and what are the lyrics)? Are there a handful that are most common, or does every country tend to have its own?
closed as not constructive by Flimzy♦ Feb 4 '12 at 7:22
As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see the FAQ for guidance.
There are heaps of different ways to sing the Happy Birthday Song and they are regional. When I attend my University's Spanish Club and it's someones birthday everyone starts singing a different song. (But in the end we usually sing the first version I list here, probably due to the ethnicities of the people at the club.)
In Argentina I sang:
But there are many variations, sometimes a completely different song, sometimes only slightly different.
A Colombian friend sung this:
Sorry I don't know which regions sing which songs, if anyone does feel free to edit the post.
In Spain, we usually sing the Happy Birthday song with the following lyrics:
There is another one, which apparently was composed by Emilio Aragón (Miliki, a famous clown), called Feliz en tu día:
It is quite known, probably because these clowns' show was very famous back in the day, but not used very much.
In Mexico we sing "las mañanitas":
This short version is what usually people sing. | <urn:uuid:19ee47d0-63b9-46f7-8922-531dddfb0444> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://spanish.stackexchange.com/questions/1694/happy-birthday-songs-in-spanish/1704 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966401 | 367 | 1.796875 | 2 |
And it was a great revelation to Hassan. Suddenly he realized what he had been asking: “Lord, open thy doors so that I can enter!” And Rabiya was saying, “The doors are always open, God has never closed them. If you want to enter, enter, but don’t go on playing with this stupid prayer again and again. Don’t waste your time and don’t waste his time! If you want to enter, enter; otherwise go home! I don’t want to see you sitting here in front of the mosque again!”
Hassan was shocked, bewildered. But it was the right moment, because when a person like Rabiya says something to somebody it is always at the right moment – when the person is ready to understand. He understood, he followed Rabiya. He touched her feet and thanked her, and told her, “You are right. I was just being a fool! I wasted my life!”
Rabiya said, “Stop! Don’t talk nonsense again! It has not been a wastage. If you had not prayed all these years here you would not have understood me. It has helped. It has not helped God to open the doors because the doors are open, but it has helped you to understand my statement that the doors are open for you to enter. I cannot say this thing to anybody else in this town; only you were ripe. The spring has come only to you, that’s why the flower has blossomed.”
Religiousness means the circumference, and spirituality means the center. Religiousness has something of spirituality, but only something – a vague radiation, something like a reflection in the lake of the starry night, of the full moon. Spirituality is the real thing; religiousness is just a by-product.
And one of the greatest misfortunes that has happened to humanity is that people are being told to be religious not spiritual. Hence they start decorating their circumference, they cultivate character. Character is your circumference. By painting your circumference, the center is not changed. But if you change the center, the circumference automatically goes through a transformation.
Change the center – that is spirituality. Spirituality is an inner revolution. It certainly affects your behavior, but only as a by-product. Because you are more alert, more aware, so naturally your action is different, your behavior has a different quality, a different flavor, a different beauty. But vice versa does not…. If your body is healthy then your lips are red, but you can paint them with lipstick and they will look red – and ugly. A woman with lipstick is the ugliest woman possible. I sometimes wonder who she is trying to deceive! Her whole face is saying something else, her whole body is saying something else, and her lips are so red…. Such redness does not happen naturally; they are painted. But there are fools in the world – she will find some fool to kiss those painted lips too!
I cannot believe it! – just try tasting lipstick and you will understand what I mean when I say I cannot believe it! And layers and layers of lipstick, old, rotten!
People are living with painted faces, wearing masks. These people are called religious. Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Jainas – these are religious people. Buddha, Jesus, Zarathustra, Krishna, Lao Tzu – these people are spiritual. | <urn:uuid:dcfb9ad2-5f18-43e3-ad1d-eae9df298958> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.osho.com/library/online-library-spirituality-circumference-enter-d9535858-8e0.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972973 | 725 | 1.726563 | 2 |
For anyone who was unsure after his inauguration speech a few weeks ago, Tuesday night's State of the Union address should have removed all doubt:
Newly re-elected President Barack Obama is emboldened and intends to aggressively press his agenda during his second term.
On climate change, for instance, the president issued the gathering of lawmakers a direct challenge.
"If Congress won't act soon to protect future generations, I will," he said. "I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy."
That's no idle threat.
In January, a month after the Connecticut elementary school massacre, the president approved 23 executive actions on the controversial issue of gun control.
Considering the bitter partisanship that virtually paralyzed the previous session of Congress, Obama's frustration and willingness to go it alone are understandable.
But on the other hand, the president held out an olive branch of sorts, pleading with lawmakers to "put the nation's interests before party."
Americans "expect us to forge reasonable compromise where we can," he said. "For they know that America moves forward only when we do so together, and that the responsibility of improving this union remains the task of us all."
Obama's remarks were directed at the divided Republicans who control the House of Representatives, but Democrats should also heed that advice, especially as Congress attempts to head off the devastating, automatic budget cuts set to take effect at the end of this month.
The so-called sequestration -- roughly $1 trillion in defense and non-entitlement discretionary spending cuts -- is the result of the supercommittee failing to reach a compromise on deficit reduction.
It was supposed to be so unacceptable as to force Congress to come up with a more reasonable compromise.
It didn't happen.
After more than a year of inaction, Congress late last year agreed only to extend the deadline two months.
The president said in his address, and we agree, this is no way to govern.
"The greatest nation on Earth cannot keep conducting its business by drifting from one manufactured crisis to the next," Obama said. "Let's agree, right here, right now, to keep the people's government open, pay our bills on time, and always uphold the full faith and credit of the United States of America."
That will, obviously, require cooperation and compromise from both parties -- something sorely lacking in the last Congress.
Hopefully, lawmakers this session will be able to put their differences aside and seek the common ground necessary to tackle the daunting tasks ahead -- not just the manufactured ones such as the newly looming fiscal cliff, but those longbrewing, such as entitlement reform.
Executive orders should be a last resort.
But in cases where Congress fails to govern, we shouldn't be surprised to see the president act alone when he can. | <urn:uuid:b3269978-6070-4d4c-967c-d8a8acf65ae2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.yorkdispatch.com/viewpoints/ci_22580728/websubscribe | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964191 | 604 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Waste received at our waste transfer station is handled using a strict procedure that involves inspection, validation, reception, segregation and then finally onward transport for final disposal.
The skip is uncovered at the entrance to our site. At this time our operatives inspects the load and issues a tipping ticket. The ticket identifies where the waste originated, the type of waste and the driver and vehicle details.
Assuming that the waste is acceptable for the site and complies with the site licence the waste is accepted onto the site. This system of acceptance of waste ensures that loads are correctly identified and collation of the tipping tickets provides an overview of the days waste receipts.
Loads not in compliance with the Site Waste Management licence are at this stage refused and returned to site.
In order to ensure compliance with this system we employ inspectors to spot check load after acceptance. The inspector will look at the load against the ticket to ensure that the details match.
Following acceptance, the load is escorted to the tipping hall where it is tipped. The hall is divided into various bays. At this point where possible waste is segregated. Skips containing mixed loads are tipped into the largest of our bays. This waste is then mechanically sorted.
Inert waste containing rubbish is cleaned in readiness for transport to the appropriate facility.Recyclable materials are then loaded on to our fleet of bulker lorries for onward transport.
Using this information gathered from the tipping tickets we compile a record of waste received and dispatched and can identify the quantities and types of waste handled. | <urn:uuid:2978bccf-a9f0-4b98-95fe-ed264ac45a60> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.brewsterswaste.co.uk/waste%20minimisation.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93814 | 314 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Allison Miller lives and works in Los Angeles. She received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has had solo exhibitions at Susan Inglett, New York and ACME., Los Angeles. Group exhibitions include the forthcoming "Made in L.A. 2012," Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the forthcoming "Stone Gravy," curated by David Pagel, Ameringer/McEnery/Yohe, New York; "California Abstract Painting - 1952-2011," curated by James Hayward, Woodbury University, Los Angeles, New Art for a New Century, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach; "Meet Me Inside," Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles; "Tables and Chairs," D'Amelio Terras, New York; "Something About Mary," Orange County Museum of Art; and "LA Now," at the Las Vegas Museum of Art. Miller's work has been reviewed in Flash Art, Artforum, Frieze, Modern Painters and the Los Angeles Times. Her work was also included in Painting Abstraction: New Elements In Abstract Painting by Bob Nickas, published by Phaidon Press.
Why do you use these particular materials?
I've never felt any particular attachment to or romance about the materials I use. I think about pushing them to achieve different effects -- mimic different behaviors -- in order to build the paintings, but beyond that I don't obsess over the materials themselves. Most of the paintings I've made have been a combination of oil and acrylic paint, sometimes pencil, and more recently, dirt. I was struck by the absurdity that the addition of dirt mixed into the paint lent to late Braque paintings. My use of dirt is more selective but still absurd, in my mind, usually pushing the tangibility and weight of a certain area or form within a painting, or mimicking concrete or rock. This is a ham-fisted and direct way of achieving a kind of realness within a painting which sits in contrast to a line or form made of, say pencil, which is so self-consciously affect-less that it can ground a painting in its materiality -- sometimes counter-acting what the dirt has done. The same is true of the differences in the opacity and thickness of the paint layers; they can keep the boundaries and space within a painting in flux. I want these kinds of contentious relationships in the paintings.
Name an artist you'd like to be compared to.
Hmm, I don't think there's one specific artist that I'd like to be compared to, but I can think of a long list of names of people whose work I would love to be in conversation with -- a few that come to mind are Milton Avery, William Baziotes, Florine Stettheimer, Giorgio de Chirico, Chris Martin, Alex Hubbard and Garry Shandling.
What can't you live without?
Always I would say a lot of time spent painting, and at this moment I would add Griffith Park, a long list of movies and loud, droning but epic music.
What jobs have you done other than being an artist?
In the last few years I've taught painting at a few different universities and, while I'm relatively new to it, teaching has already affected my life and work. Watching students making paintings, often for the first time, constantly makes me reevaluate what a painting can do. I also learn from the decisions students make -- every student in every class has, at least once, blown me away with a decision she or he has made in a painting.
Before teaching, I worked for a painting conservator for about six years. Doing conservation meant that every day I was relating to paintings that normally I would have only seen in books or museums as objects to be fixed, plain and simple. Sometimes it felt like seeing a Hollywood starlet first thing in the morning -- no makeup or gold frame, no air-brushed publicity photos or art historical pedestals. It was also surprising what would happen after spending months in a room with them. A white, egg-shaped Fontana, for example, ended up blowing away a whole room of larger, more aggressive, heavy-hitter paintings. Those experiences, like teaching, changed how I relate to paintings in general and to my own work.
Before these jobs, let's see, I was fired from a pharmacy for talking too much, I worked in a flower shop for a woman that had been struck by lightning twice; I was a landscaper and garbage collector at my undergraduate college; I worked in a clothing store; I catered in a tuxedo; I was a prep-cook in a restaurant; and I waited tables, of course.
What forms first in your mind, a concept or a skill you want to explore?
I heard Laura Owens say in a recent lecture that she thinks that there are artists that have a hard time getting started on a piece and artists that have a hard time finishing a piece. I am absolutely in the latter category. When I start a painting there are no parameters, except perhaps the dimensions of the canvas itself, and I have nothing to lose. It feels like the energy at the beginning of a painting is looser and more frenetic and it gets calmer and slower as the painting gets built, until I think I've finished it, but I'm usually wrong. Nowadays, I seem to finish paintings two or three times over the course of a few months, slowly making more and more extreme "final" decisions as I go.
Does where you live influence your work?
The light, space, flora and ridiculousness of Los Angeles definitely put the zap on my head when I moved out here over a decade ago, and I would say the zap is still on. Having said that, I want to add that while everyone's environment effects what she or he produces to some extent, the idea of work being "Californian" in nature is ridiculous. I'm not entirely sure what is meant when people say that, but we are not just mellow optimists out here, and we are not simply responding to the weather.
Is there any kind of media that affects the way you approach your work (i.e. film, TV, radio, social networking, print)?
Collectively, movies were the big brother or sister I never had. Every cliché you can think of about a child growing up through film is true for me, the difference being that I never wanted to make them -- I wanted them to be reality.
In a strange way I think I approach my work now, even though it is always a static, two-dimensional object, with the same hopes and expectations that I have of a film. I'm constantly aware of things being "on camera" and "off camera" and of the idea of protagonists and narratives being concealed or shifted in relevance and priority. The humor in and perversity of applying these expectations to abstraction is a big part of my work.
There is also a similarity between how I want a viewer to circulate within and through a painting and the headspace I enter when I'm watching or listening to a film (I listen to films in studio quite a bit), especially if I've seen it before and know the plot, which means that I have the luxury of entering the film experientially, outside of the narrative.
What's the most important career break you ever got?
I'd been out of grad school for a few years and a fellow painter, Bart Exposito, came to my living room-studio to see what I'd been working on. That day he made the generous offer to clear the walls of his own beautiful studio in order to put my new work up for a Sunday afternoon viewing. Another friend, the artist Katie Grinnan, came to that "show" and sent ACME Gallery an email about my work. I had my first solo show there a few months later. I bought Bart and Katie champagne.
What are the fundamental beliefs that drive the way you work?
I think I'm a pragmatic person trying to carve out a grey area that is just as concrete as daily life (however concrete that is) and can be seen, proven, by the paintings I make.
The way I've figured to go about doing this through objects is to always try to surprise myself, decision by decision, as I build each painting with the hope that the viewing experience mimics this process, meaning that I hope that the painting unfolds, collapses, comes back together and unfolds again in a different way as the viewer navigates through it. I like making objects that seem to fail to achieve one goal and inadvertently succeed in achieving another, unanticipated goal.
I use the term "build" when I talk and think about making the paintings because that's the best way of describing how it feels to make them. Things are tacked-on, pushed back, covered-up and layered as if I were building an object. I picture some elements sitting in real space where gravity and physical properties come to bear on them or, conversely, where those properties are defied. This is true to the point that I consider a lot of the paintings to be portraits of sculptures, since, if they were to sit in real space, I don't know what else they would be.
What comes first in your work, pleasure or pain?
There is a kind of mild masochism that exists in my work in a sense because I want to stay uncomfortable with each painting until it's finished, that's how I stay in conversation with it. But really, there is no pain involved in my practice.
This reminds me of a joke:
A masochist and a sadist meet in a bar. The masochist agrees to go home with the sadist. When they get there, the sadist ties the masochist to a wall and walks away. The masochist can hear the sadist in the next room and after a while the masochist yells "Aren't you coming back?!" and the sadist says "Nope." | <urn:uuid:c8cc34d3-5caf-4c23-bb17-9e9e3192fcdb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tracey-harnish/allison-miller-interview_b_1393164.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974677 | 2,082 | 1.5 | 2 |
Pope Benedict XVI
From Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia
“Jews aren't so bad, once you get to know them.”
Pope Benedict XVI (Latin: Benedictus PP. XVI; Italian: Benedetto XVI; German: Benedikt XVI.; born 'Mr. Ratzinger') is the 265th Pope, famous Tweeter and the leader of the the Holy Roman Empire, The Empire of the City, and The Empire Strikes Back.
A former professional rat catcher, and native of Bavaria, Pope Benedict XVI has both German and Vatican bloodlines making him virtually indestructible. His only weakness being Holy water, vampires, bullets, fire, mobs of angry citizens, and all blunt and jagged objects. He is slightly allergic to most poisons, radiation, lasers, fast moving vehicles, zombies, crosses, and high interest rates.
He wields power by virtue of his office of Bishop of Romulus, the Sovereign of succotash, Vicroy of the Vatican after staging a full scale take over in 2005 with a papal con-cleaver, celebrated his Papal over throw, and took possession of his cathedral, the Basilica of St. John Lateran, in May. He resigned in February 2013 'after uncovering shocking doctrinal evidence'.
|Part of a series of articles on|
Pope Benedictyl was the fourth of eleven children born of a virgin in a garage in Dusseldorf. By the age of 12 he was competing in local genuflection tournaments, and before he was 30 he had won the national transubstantiation championship for a record-breaking four consecutive years. Known to be especially deadly with a censer, Benedict is a level 115 cleric. These incredible achievements did not go unnoticed and the precocious 40-year-old was fast tracked through the Papal Academy of Potential Popes, PAPS.
After a long career as an academic and comedic Genius, and serving as a professor of theology at various German universities, but most recently at the Appolo Theatre he was appointed Archbishop of Laughter and Majestic Emperor of Several Things! In 1981, he settled in Rome, where he took the nation by funny bone and the Dark Arts. From 2002 until his Over throw of the vatican as Pope, he was also Dean of the College of Gettin Down, and as such the Optimus-Primus among his contemporaries. Prior to becoming Pope, he was known as Papa Smurf and a major figure on the Vatican scene for a quarter of a century. As his dark Magick was far Smurffier then all others, there was little resistance to his over throw.
Pope Benedict's mother is known to start every sentence with the phrase 'my son the pope'. For example, 'My son the pope likes a pain au chocolat every morning. What times the next bingo bus?'. They have not spoken for 7 years. She has his phone number but he answers only to God. His father runs a pub in Doolin, the Dew Drop Inn, and will not speak about his son.
In his free time between masses and exorcisms, the pope indulges his love of fast cars and fine communion wafers. He was arrested in November 2009 after a bloody altercation with a theater patron who complained that the pope's hat was blocking the screen. While awaiting trial, he was hospitalized for injuries he received when mauled by a tarantula during high mass.
Pope Benedict XVI (AKA -Mr. Ratzinger) is known to be the Godfather's No.2 man -Not to be confused with wrinkly guy off star wars who can shoot lightening, though we acknowledge the striking similarities. He is responsible for handling his business interests, priest watching and infernal affairs and other matters of a pontificating nature. His predecessor was smote down by what is now termed a Rat-Zinger (Which is a powerful and deadly one-liner joke which causes uncontrollable laughter and death) for acting a bit too big for his Gucci boots.
Skills / Spellspiano while speaking 7 languages, far exceeding the job requirements of English and at least one other European language. He is yet to master the language of love.
He is considered to be a master of the Dark Arts, especially in the ways of the Sith. He is a Level 3 Sith Lord and is considered very dangerous. He killed a trainee while teaching him due to the lackey's lack of appreciation when he called Benedict "Lord of the Shit!" He meant it as a joke but Darth Benedict wasn't laughing that day. The ashes of his trainee were used as an Herbal Tea for the sick.
Under Pope Beidictat the Vatican has trebled its profits and now makes over 60% of its gross annual income from merchandising alone. As God forgo a lump sum and gave the Bible publishing rights to Steve Gutenberg in 1972, instead requesting a percentage of each unit sold, he amassed over $180,000,000 in the following decade alone. This, together with the release of the New Testament, the Old Old Testament, the Old New Testament, Testament Times New Roman collectors edition, New Testament of Sgt. Columbo, the bonus edition with the 3rd secret of Fatima and a prologue by Anthony Hopkins and recently The Bible Uncut: What the Gideons Didn't Want You to Know has kept this revenue stream alive.
Pope Benedict attempted to re-sign his $44 million, 10 year contract with the Catholic Church on February 11, 2013. However, after discovering that the Board refused to re-sign expiring contracts and that it would not prevent his inevitable death, Benedict announced his resignation the following afternoon.
|Preceded by:|| Pope Benedict XVI |
(2005 - 2013)
|Pope John Paul II||Fadda Murphy|
- Does the Pope shit in the woods
- UnNews:A guide to Pope Benedict's updated Christmas story
- UnNews:Pope makes creepy apology to child-abuse victims
- Pope Anacletus
- Pope Fuck
- Pope George Ringo I
- Pope John Paul III
- Pope Linus
- Pope Peter
- Popeye, the Sailor Man | <urn:uuid:b314627f-f324-4259-8ab4-4f5678e26d52> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Pope_Benedict_XVI?oldid=5648674 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969643 | 1,287 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Campus is tobacco free
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
St. Cloud State University is a tobacco-free campus.
Today, the university became the sixth four-year school in the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) system and one of more than 280 colleges nationally to implement a tobacco-free policy. View the American Lung Association's tobacco-free college list (PDF).
Hundreds more U.S. colleges restrict smoking to designated areas. Last week the Ohio Board of Regents, which governs state colleges serving nearly 540,000 students, recommended a tobacco ban for its system schools.
St. Cloud State employees, including maintenance workers, were among those collecting cigarette butts campus-wide today to call attention to the policy.
"I've been waiting on this for 20 years," said Robin Smith, Stewart Hall maintenance worker.
Harry Weyer described the daily stoop labor required to clean up cigarette butts at Shoemaker Hall's entryways and the retaining wall along the residence hall's north wing.
"It's just nice to see this come to an end," said Weyer, holding a gallon-sized zip-lock bag partially-filled with cigarette butts. About 14 gallons were collected, according to Julie Condon, ESL coordinator, who organized the clean-up.
Exceptions for tobacco use at St. Cloud State are allowed in accordance with the Minnesota Clean Indoor Air Act (PDF):
Trained advocates, signage, news stories, print materials and other means of communication are informing the campus community and visitors about the policy.
Get the documents and details at St. Cloud State's Tobacco Free website.
In October 2010, President Earl H. Potter III appointed a task force of faculty, staff and students to review existing policy and public health information, keep the campus informed of findings and seek broad input through a variety of mechanisms.
This was done in response to a March 2010 MnSCU Board of Trustees resolution that encouraged system schools to consult with students and employees about steps their institutions might take regarding tobacco use.
After a year of campus-wide discussions, St. Cloud State transitioned to permitting tobacco use only in designated areas or private vehicles. Also during that time, the university offered education, awareness, support and cessation services to the campus community.
The work of the Smoking Policy Review Task Force was supported by grant funds from the Public Health Division of Stearns County Human Services, in conjunction with the Minnesota Department of Health's Statewide Health Improvement Program. | <urn:uuid:671a6fac-42fc-462f-a318-125412e11c94> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.stcloudstate.edu/news/scsunow/default.asp?pubID=1&issueID=33526&storyID=38833&SIimageID=14383 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947653 | 512 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Tikal’s two museums are oddly in different parts of the park. The first of these is the Museo Lítico (9 a.m.–noon and 1 p.m.–4:30 p.m.Mon.–Fri., 9 a.m.–4 p.m. Sat. and Sun., free admission), housing stelae and carved stones from the archaeological site with a scale model outside showing what the city probably looked like around A.D. 800.
There are some interesting photos taken by explorers Alfred Maudslay and Teobert Maler showing Tikal’s temples overgrown by a tangle of jungle vines and branches as they looked when they were first discovered.
The Museo Tikal (9 a.m.–5 p.m. Mon.–Fri., 9 a.m.–4 p.m. Sat. and Sun., $1.35), across the way next to the Jaguar Inn, has some interesting exhibits, including the burial tomb of Hasaw Chan K’awil found inside Temple I. It may have been renovated by the time you read this. | <urn:uuid:b9a0b384-7f67-418e-97e2-9663d615fd3c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.moon.com/print/28431 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958741 | 233 | 1.625 | 2 |
Editors note: This is a guest post from Mitch Wright of Home Fitness Manual.
Greatness is a skill.
It can be taught. It can be repeated.
If you’re bold enough you can reach it consistently.
Of course luck, talent and hard work all play a factor when you’re trying to hone Superhero-like abilities. Even if one of these elements isn’t one of your strengths, it’s okay. There are a few steps that can be taken to transform you into something greater than your potential.
As I use the term “Superhero” it’s meant as a way to improve your being (mind and body), and not about strapping a cape to your back while leaping out of windows to battle villains.
A real-life Superhero is someone who’s all about reaching and maintaining goals while also achieving a balance in the everyday happenings. Conviction and drive are monumental character traits.
Possessing Superhero abilities is not about accomplishing the “easy”. It’s all about accepting the opposite and relishing in the “hard”.
This is the divide.
Tackling a challenge shouldn’t be surrounded in fear.
It’s about elevating your goals and reach a tipping point in your personal development.
Jedi Mind Tricks and Other Superhero Abilities
When was the last time you had a brush with Greatness?
Go on…think back. Was it yesterday? The day before that? I hope you don’t have to shoot through too many memories just to come away with the last time you were in a moment of triumph.
When you have very little reference points to reflect on, understanding how Greatness actually works can be challenging.
You don’t have to posses Jedi mind tricks to become a Superhero. It’s not about learning the art of persuasion. Rather, the true goal is to take one of your weaknesses and raise it up.
The true test is being able to gain the ability to head into a tough situation and do what’s needed. The type of situation doesn’t really matter. Here are a few examples of what I mean:
- If your job requires you to talk down jumpers from a ledge, you’re expected to keep cool under pressure.
- Your boss relies on you to walk into a business proposal and land an account, so you’ve got to know how to connect with clients every time.
- The game-winning basket is in your hands as the seconds tick down. You need pull up, shoot and simply be “clutch” in your performance.
Each of the three examples really defines the first step to possessing Superhero abilities. It’s all about learning how to be consistent, and not hold anything back.
This sounds simple. However, it takes plenty preparation for both the mind and body so you can come away with the kind of clarity that’s needed to keep forging ahead, even when the pressure’s on.
Become Great by Honing Your Superhero Mind
Who’s the greatest Superheroes of all time? I’ll give you a hint: All you have to do is crack open a History book.
When I think about the people who have shaped the world, while also finding a way to inspire generations long after, here are the names that inspire me: Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemingway. (This is just a small fraction of the list I originally wrote down.)
Each of those names were respected in their day for not only possessing a commanding physical presence, but also a commanding mind. Even today their achievements are still celebrated.
Now, what if we through your name in there?
What Superheros do is influence. The greatest muscle each of us has is our mind. So it’s important to learn how to develop it in a way to spot opportunities, create goals, and master situations.
The usual thing is to simple layout a few steps for you to take. I’m not going to do that here. Breaking down the steps you need to take as you transform yourself into a Superhero is sorta like cheating, right? It’s just not the Superhero way. So, instead of giving you the answers I’m going to list a few questions for you to digest.
Your answers will guide you to what you need to foster.
1. Are you willing to accept change? Not owning your destiny is a big mistake.
It’s easy to get trapped into thinking that if you simply stick to a plan, you’ll reap major benefits. Sure, you might come see some headway towards the path you want to take. But when you find that progress slowing down, do you keep plugging ahead, or will change-up the game plan?
Being adaptable is paramount to survival. If you can adjust, react and settle in on a task you’re closer than most other people.
2. Can you be fearless? This isn’t the same thing as not being afraid. It’s rooted more in your ability to be vulnerable, dedicated and able to deal with success.
Sometimes the fear of succeeding is a much heavier burden than facing a moment of failure. When you’re not in the spotlight, you’re just like everyone else. You can retain your anonymity. You’re able to blend in. You can simply be.
When you win, there’s attention that goes with it. And not everyone is really prepared for this. So, this question isn’t one to simply to shy off.
3. Are you willing to sacrifice your life? I hope this question piqued a bit of outrage in you. If scaling up some volcano just to throw yourself into the lava may have popped in your mind, this isn’t where I’m trying to take you. What I’m proposing is more about killing the life you’re living right now.
At this moment, do you really need to turn on the T.V. or click over to YouTube?
The adage: “You are what you eat” is the perfect example for what I’m trying to get at. I’ll tweak it a bit to fit what I’d like you to ruminate on:
“You are how you live.”
If you want to live near the cusp of your greatest abilities, on a consistent basis, then taking action and shelving inaction is what you need to do. It might mean giving up your favorite sitcom. Or, you may need to lift some weights instead of hanging at a bar with your friends on the weekends.
These are choices. Albeit, they may appear small when thinking about all the other decisions we’re faced each day. But the thing that is really important and should be kept in mind here is to create habits that will help drive you in the direction you want to go.
So, if you like to snack when you get home from work, or zone out on the couch, what is that doing for you at the end of the day? Are you becoming the person you want to be?
It’s the steps you take in the right direction that will lead you to your destination.
4. Can you hang while riding the wave? To become greater than you currently are isn’t about what you do when your life is going great, but how you react during times of struggle. While the details of this question might be one of the shortest, it’s also one you won’t be able to answer right off the bat.
Time and progress will give you enough insight to answer this one appropriately.
Strength and The Superhero Body
The putting your mental game together is a much more difficult task than building a body that can handle almost anything.
This is good news for those who need to give their bodies a bit of love.
There are a slew of approaches to help anyone strengthen the body, or simply build it into looking like it’s strong. Some of the best tips I can share with you aren’t detailing how many reps and sets you need to stick with when taxing your muscles.†In fact, you should really be interested in sticking to a few key points that will help you build a functional body.
If you want to perform like you have Superhero abilities and look totally bad ass as a result, then make these tips the foundation of your program:
1. Start eating real food. No amount of training will rid your body of toxins being put in through your mouth. If you’re expected to think out side of the box, shouldn’t your diet follow suit?
It’s important to know your macros when on any kind of diet. Protein should generally be the largest portion on your plate, followed by a lowered amount of carbs and fats.
2. Opt for building strength and reducing your body fat first. If you want huge muscles, you’ll naturally look “swole” when you’re carrying around less fat. When the muscles get showcased they will appear larger. You can pretty much look even more ripped when you’ve developed a leaner physique.
The way to do this is through resistance training. It’s more important than stepping up to a treadmill to burn calories. If you want to train at home bodyweight exercises are a great starting point. If you’re heading to a gym, yes, you’re actually expected to lift some heavy weights. No milling around and chatting your time away.
3. Specialize each workout based on your weak spots. This is where a lot of beginners fail to see progress is because they train the entire body, all of the time. Starting out, it might be necessary to prep every muscle group. But as time goes by this practice becomes less important.
The trick is to log every workout so you can spot which muscles need more attention over the others. When you’ve spotted your body’s imbalances it’ll be easy to reduce the slack on certain muscles, and ramp up the effort on others.
4. Always learn new exercises and patterns. Nothing slows down progress like playing to the same old workout and the same old exercises. Adapting new movements and changing up your routines is meant to be a skill worth pursuing.
There isn’t one plan or program that’s going to push your to your genetic abilities. The only thing that can propel you is to make exercise a habit.
The person who struggles to stay on track might not get stronger the fastest, nor would they drop the most fat in a short span of time.†But the person who’s always forging ahead will be one to outlast the others, when they’ve given up out of boredom, frustration, or the combination of the two.
What does it take to be the real-life embodiment of a Superhero? Are uncanny abilities simply the result of hard work or smart work?
Lifting yourself up to a point where you can consistently reach Greatness is a remarkable feat. But as you strive to become greater than your potential you need to be prepared for it. If you’re not, it’ll overwhelm you.
So if you think you need to be all-knowing, you’re missing the point. Unless your goal is to be the most winning-est contestant on Jeopardy, all you have to be is†just honest and truthful with yourself. That’s really the first step to gain a Superhero state of mind and body.
I want to leave you with a single thought that was spoken over a century ago:
To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence. ~ Mark Twain
Now I’ll pass it to you. What do you think you need to transform yourself into the Superhero you were born to be?†I’d love to hear your comments below.
Mitch Wright runs the popular blog Home Fitness Manual. He’s the author of The Bodyweight Advantage, and he’s proud to spend his time between being a dad, husband and a writer on all things to do with exercising-from-home (because he simply got tired of shelling out a fee just to stay in shape). | <urn:uuid:1a3b90c1-1861-4c20-a089-4411130bb6a5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.limitless365.com/2012/08/23/the-superhero-mindset-achieve-greatness/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946654 | 2,617 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Tag Archive for ‘Pictorio’
Kenaf is a fast-growing, non-invasive annual hibiscus plant related to cotton, okra and hemp. It makes ideal paper fiber as well as great source material for burlap, clothing, canvas, particleboard and rope. Ten major U.S. newspapers have tested kenaf-based newsprint and were pleasantly surprised by how well it held up and how crisply it displayed text and pictures. Toyota is already using kenaf grown in Malaysia for insulation and interiors in some cars. | <urn:uuid:52d6a2a3-7b27-481e-a7a0-907d9fcb6344> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://business-ethics.com/tag/pictorio/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971466 | 116 | 1.515625 | 2 |
VSOP cognac can be branded as one of the world’s most dignified spirits. There is something about swirling a cognac in a glass, gently warming it with the heat generated from your hands and then luxuriating in the warmth and full bodied richness of the spirit. While cognac is essentially a type of brandy it is exclusive to the region of Cognac in France. Not all brandies can be called a cognac as the process of making a fine VSOP cognac is guided strictly by the French law.
According to the Appellation d’origine controlee, which is the certification given by the French government to specific ‘French geographical indications’ such as for wine cheese and butters, for a brandy to bear the name Cognac it has to be distilled to meet specific legal requirements. The grape varietal used for such cognac production has to be the Ugni Blanch. Also the brandy has to go through a double distillation process using copper pot stills. Then comes the process of aging the wine. The wine has to be aged in classic French oak barrels for a minimum period of two years and then left to mature. These barrels must come from the region of Troncais or Limousin.
A number of cognacs are aged for a much longer period of time than the specified requirement. This is because cognacs are aged much in the same way as whisky and the longer it ages the better the product. The quality of the cognac is graded by the BNIC (Bureau National Interprofessionnel du Cognac). The main grades of cognac are VS, VSOP, XO and Napoleon. These grades are given according to the storage specification, aging and blending of the cognac.
A VSOP cognac or Very Special Old Pale cognac is a grade of cognac where the brandy has been aged for a minimum period of four years in a cask. However the average age of the cask is much older. The need for an aged cognac arose in 1817 in the British Royal House. The house was interested in a ‘cognac pale’ which was primarily a blend that was not sweetened artificially by adding either caramel or sugar. It was then found that as the cognac interacted with the wood of the oak barrel and the air inside it the cognac achieved it full bodied warm and slightly sweet flavor.
A VSOP cognac is also made from the two of the finest crus of the region. The main six growth areas or crus are Grand Champagne, Petit Champagne, Fins Bois, Bois Ordinaires, Bons Bois and Borderies. A fine VSOP cognac will have the crus taken from the Grand Champagne and the Petit champagne region with at least a 50% concentration from the Grand Champagne region. Once the cognac passes through these strict processes it is fit to be labeled and graded. While it is commonly believed that the longer a cognac has been aged the better it will taste, ultimately it is the taster whose palette will define what taste he actually likes. Tasting and liking a fine VSOP cognac is thus a very subjective and a very personal experience. | <urn:uuid:3110dfd8-38fa-46bc-8e51-9763d851e016> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://destillation.com/cognac/how-does-a-cognac-become-a-vsop-cognac/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953668 | 667 | 1.835938 | 2 |
On the most recent episode of Mad Men, Ken Cosgrove sits down to lunch with an editor from FSG (yes, we blushed). Cosgrove calls the publishing house “Farrar, Straus,” though by 1967 it had been “Farrar, Straus and Giroux” for nearly two years. But hey, old names die hard—our receptionist still answers the phone with “Farrar, Straus.”
So, what was FSG publishing in the late 1960s? I dug up an old catalogue to find out.
Apparently, the late Sixties at FSG were all about Lowell, Berryman, Sontag, and Wolfe. The trends were New Journalism and New Criticism: 1966 brought the debut book of essays from the “brilliant young social critic…Tom Wolfe," Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation, Lowell’s Near the Ocean, and A Reader’s Guide to T.S. Eliot.
Some of the highlights from 1967 include Berryman’s sonnets, Neruda’s The Heights of Machu Picchu, a collection of essays about Randall Jarrell (who had died two years earlier), and a centennial edition of The Golden Key with illustrations by Maurice Sendak and an afterword by W.H. Auden (pictured below).
Also, more New Criticism (Six Metaphysical Poets: A Reader’s Guide) and an adaption of Prometheus Bound by Lowell. In the introduction to the translation, Lowell's conservatism and the war really come through: “Half my lines are not in the original. But nothing is modernized," he writes. "There are no tanks or cigarette lighters. No contemporary statesman is parodied. Yet I think my own concerns and worries and those of the times seep in.”
By 1968, many of these writers were at the height of their careers: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Slouching Toward Bethlehem, and Homage to Mistress Bradstreet were all in the catalogue, though Berryman's long poem appears to have been published only reluctantly...and only in paperback. | <urn:uuid:b317b126-9cc9-41bb-960d-a86673018da6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fsgpoetry.com/fsg/robert-lowell/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95481 | 458 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Via Dan Maslowski:
3.3 Responsibilities to your Organization
3.3.1 be a technical conscience
When the “Emperor has no clothes”, it is the responsibility of the senior technical staff to stand up and say so. Sales people are driven by short term business. Marketing people work with all manner of vague and ambiguous factors. Executives work with the information that other people have given them. Managers work with the directions they have been given. Engineers are the people who responsible for figuring out how this stuff is all going to work … and if it isn't going to work they have an obligation to say so.
When somebody says “good enough for who its for”, it is the responsibility of the senior technical staff to set higher standards. The business people are primarily driven by time and cost considerations, and if the senior engineers don't stand up for technical excellence, we can be sure that nobody else will.
Senior engineers need to regularly ask the questions:
- If not now, when?
- If not us, who? | <urn:uuid:7981a533-b693-4ab8-a383-8ee870692b17> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://david.wragg.org/blog/2006_10_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961025 | 223 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Cannabis Quotes from Wikipedia
Cannabis is a genus of flowering plant believed to be indigenous to Central Asia, China, and the north-west Himalayas. The common name for Cannabis is hemp, although this term is sometimes used to refer only to strains cultivated for "industrial" (non-drug) use. Cannabis plants produce a unique family of compounds called cannabinoids, several of which produce mental and/or physiological effects when consumed. The crude drug usually comes in the form of dried flowers and leaves (marijuana), resin (hashish), or various extracts. The cultivation or possession of Cannabis for drug purposes is outlawed in most countries.
* "I don't know what is marijuana. Perhaps I will try it when it will no longer be criminal. I will have my money for my fine and a joint in the other hand,"
o Jean Chretien, former Prime Minister of Canada, on the decriminalization of Marijuana
* Please don't throw your shit at me... unless that shit resembles a bag of marijuana
o Les Claypool
* Legalize it, and I will advertise it.
o Peter Tosh
* "Why use up the forests which were centuries in the making and the mines which required ages to lay down, if we can get the equivalent of forest and mineral products in the annual growth of the hemp fields?"
o Henry Ford
* If the words "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" don't include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn't worth the hemp it was written on.
o Terence McKenna
* Congress should definitely consider decriminalizing possession of marijuana... We should concentrate on prosecuting the rapists and burglars who are a menace to society.
o Dan Quayle U.S. Representative and Vice president (March 1977)
* Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.
o Ronald Reagan, U.S. President (1980-1988)
* I have never seen two people on pot get in a fight because it is fucking IMPOSSIBLE. "Hey, buddy!" "Hey, what?" "Ummmmmmm...." End of argument.
o Bill Hicks
* It really puzzles me to see marijuana connected with narcotics dope and all of that stuff. It is a thousand times better than whiskey. It is an assistant and a friend.
o Louis Armstrong
* "Marijuana is taken by '.....musicians. And I'm not speaking about good musicians, but the jazz type...
o Harry J. Anslinger, Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 1948
* Make the most of the Indian hemp seed, and sow it everywhere!
o George Washington in a note to his gardener at Mount Vernon (1794), The Writings of George Washington, Volume 33, page 270 (Library of Congress)
o Washington also recorded his concern that the male and female plants be seperated:
May 12-13 1765: Sowed Hemp at Muddy hole by Swamp.
August 7, 1765: —began to seperate (sic) the Male from the Female Hemp at Do —rather too late.
Some assert his interest in separating the male and female plants is an indication that he may have used Indian hemp medicinally to treat his chronic tooth aches. Others note that fiber of the male and female hemp plants have a different optimum harvest times.
* Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and where they are, they should be changed. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marihuana in private for personal use... Therefore, I support legislation amending Federal law to eliminate all Federal criminal penalties for the possession of up to one ounce of marihuana.
o Jimmy Carter, U.S. President in a message to the U.S. Congress (1977)
* When I was in England I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it. I didn't inhale.
o Bill Clinton, U.S. President (1993-2001)
* I never understood that line. The point was to inhale. That was the point.
o Barack Obama, When asked, "Unlike other presidents, did you inhale?"
* You bet I did -— and I enjoyed it.
o Michael Bloomberg - New York City Mayor, when asked if he had ever smoked marijuana.
* "I'm not going to be Bill Clinton and say I never inhaled. I did inhale. I liked tobacco a lot better."
o Frank Zappa
* The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.
o Carl Sagan
* Not just pot rights.. but grass rights.. the right of grass not to be mowed.
o O Anna Niemus
* A poem: Slowly the foreign air enter me. I feel tingles and sensations. My life becomes a fantasy. Cannabis now rules thee.
My choice is what I choose to do,
And if I'm causing no harm, it shouldn't bother you.
Your choice is who you choose to be,
And if you're causin' no harm, then you're alright with me.
If you don't like my fire, then don't come around,
'cause I'm gonna burn one down.
Yes, I'm gonna burn one down.
Herb the gift from the earth,
And what's from the earth is of the greatest worth.
So before you knock it try it first,
Oh, you'll see it's a blessing and not a curse.
o Ben Harper
* "I think that marijuana makes you stupid but sensual. I've watched many of my friends and loved ones become more erotic and dumber--just going around with a glazed expression on their faces from their last orgasms to the next--and found them really quite boring."
o Timothy Leary
* Marijuana is addictive in the sense that all great things in life are worth repeating
o Jenna Sheehan
* "Hey, hey, hey. Smoke weed everyday."
o Dave Chappelle | <urn:uuid:9f1505df-cab3-4611-9d56-399979bafbc0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.420magazine.com/forums/cannabis-facts-information/74038-famous-cannabis-quotes.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950476 | 1,316 | 1.585938 | 2 |
« Don't Rush to Redshirt |
| 20-somethings and TFA »
The Census Bureau's "Who's Minding the Kids?" report is a critical resource for child care policy analysts, because it provides the best available picture of American families' use of child care, where children are actually being served, for how long, and at what cost. The Census Bureau released the most recent update, which covers data from 2005-06, today. I'm always annoyed that "Who's Minding the Kids" and other data collection and research on child care count "child cared for by father while mother works" as a type of child care. Fathers who take care of their children are "parenting" not "baby-sitting." But I get that the extent to which fathers are primary caregivers for children is important information we want to know, so I'll try to reign in the crankiness about how the Census Bureau talks about it. Because lots of fathers are primary caregivers for their children! In fact, one in 5 fathers of children under age 5 are their children's primary caregiver. And, despite media reports about trends towards more stay-at-home dads, the percentage of fathers who are their preschoolers' primary caregivers hasn't changed much in the past 20 years. In 1988, about 17% of fathers with children under age 5 were primary caregivers; that number rose to 22% in 1991, and has bounced around 19-20% ever since. What I would like to know, but is harder to figure out from this data, is the extent to which primary caregiver fathers are stay-at-home dads, vs. families juggling childcare through split shift arrangements where one parent works nights while the other works days.
"Who's Minding the Kids" always provides a sobering reminder that the type of child care arrangements and programs we spend the most time talking about in policy circles--preschool, Head Start, center-based childcare--and those that dominate media attention--preschool, nannies--actually account for a relatively small percentage of our nation's children in child care. The majority of children under 5 in regular child care arrangements are being cared for by relatives--most frequently their grandparents. If we really want to move the ball on childcare quality and school readiness, we need to think much better and more creatively about how to support these children and the adults who care for them.
Related to the above point, it's always striking to me to realize how many families who use childcare pay nothing for it. Only 35 percent of families with employed mothers pay anything for child care, largely because they're relying on family members to care for children. The percentage of families paying for care has fallen significantly in the past decade, probably because the price of care has risen, putting it out of reach for many families.
A big under-reported childcare story of the past decade is the substantial reduction in rates of what was known in my childhood as "latchkey kids." The percentage of school-aged children in "self-care" has fallen substantially, particularly among single-parent families. The rates of school-aged children in self-care still remain pretty high, though, with about 17% of grade school-aged children in dual income and single parent working families in self-care.
These reports contain lots of useful information, but here are a few things that jumped out at me: | <urn:uuid:cbe3ee3a-5b70-4b41-a578-ffda190c91a1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/sarameads_policy_notebook/2010/08/whos_minding_the_kids.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971867 | 696 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Graduate Certificate in Urban Design
This program is currently on hold. If you are interested in this program please contact the College of Architecture and Environmental Design office at 330-672-2789.
The College of Architecture and Environmental Design (CAED) offers a graduate Certificate in Urban Design (C.U.D.) as an opportunity for architecture students and graduates, as well as professionals interested in continuing education, to acquire specialized knowledge and skills in the area of urban design.
Consistent with the mission of the Kent State University - Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative, whose facility in downtown Cleveland hosts the program, the thrust of this certificate lies primarily in the “participatory approach” to design and planning. Lecture courses and seminars focus on urban social and cultural issues, while the design workshops and studios develop strategies and solutions for specific urban areas and neighborhoods. Interaction with local communities is also part of the program. Due to its flexibility, short duration and broad range of elective courses, the program is particularly suitable for part-time students with work experience and clearly defined professional interests. | <urn:uuid:89a14f59-6f27-4852-b0c2-13eba59a03db> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kent.edu/CAED/urbandesign/gradcertificate/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94963 | 220 | 1.804688 | 2 |
HB1978: Voter registration; residence requirements for certain full-time students.
Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia:
As used in this title, unless the context requires a different meaning:
"Candidate" means a person who seeks or campaigns for an office of the Commonwealth or one of its governmental units in a general, primary, or special election and who is qualified to have his name placed on the ballot for the office. "Candidate" shall include a person who seeks the nomination of a political party or who, by reason of receiving the nomination of a political party for election to an office, is referred to as its nominee. For the purposes of Chapters 8 ( 24.2-800 et seq.), 9.3 ( 24.2-945 et seq.), and 9.5 ( 24.2-955 et seq.), "candidate" shall include any write-in candidate. However, no write-in candidate who has received less than 15 percent of the votes cast for the office shall be eligible to initiate an election contest pursuant to Article 2 ( 24.2-803 et seq.) of Chapter 8. For the purposes of Chapters 9.3 ( 24.2-945 et seq.) and 9.5 ( 24.2-955 et seq.), "candidate" shall include any person who raises or spends funds in order to seek or campaign for an office of the Commonwealth, excluding federal offices, or one of its governmental units in a party nomination process or general, primary, or special election; and such person shall be considered a candidate until a final report is filed pursuant to Article 3 ( 24.2-947 et seq.) of Chapter 9.3.
"Central absentee voter precinct" means a precinct established by a county or city pursuant to 24.2-712 for the processing of absentee ballots for the county or city or any combination of precincts within the county or city.
"Constitutional office" or "constitutional officer" means a county or city office or officer referred to in Article VII, Section 4 of the Constitution of Virginia: clerk of the circuit court, attorney for the Commonwealth, sheriff, commissioner of the revenue, and treasurer.
"Election" means a general, primary, or special election.
"Election district" means the territory designated by proper authority or by law which is represented by an official elected by the people, including the Commonwealth, a congressional district, a General Assembly district, or a district for the election of an official of a county, city, town, or other governmental unit.
"Electoral board" or "local electoral board" means a board appointed pursuant to 24.2-106 to administer elections for a county or city. The electoral board of the county in which a town or the greater part of a town is located shall administer the town's elections.
"General election" means an election held in the Commonwealth on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November or on the first Tuesday in May for the purpose of filling offices regularly scheduled by law to be filled at those times.
"Officer of election" means a person appointed by an electoral board pursuant to 24.2-115 to serve at a polling place for any election.
"Party" or "political party" means an organization of citizens of the Commonwealth which, at either of the two preceding statewide general elections, received at least 10 percent of the total vote cast for any statewide office filled in that election. The organization shall have a state central committee and an office of elected state chairman which have been continually in existence for the six months preceding the filing of a nominee for any office.
"Person with a disability" means a person with a disability as defined by the Virginians with Disabilities Act ( 51.5-1 et seq.).
"Polling place" means the one place provided for each precinct at which the qualified voters who are residents of the precinct may vote.
"Precinct" means the territory designated by the governing body of a county, city, or town to be served by one polling place.
"Primary" or "primary election" means an election held for the purpose of selecting a candidate to be the nominee of a political party for election to office.
"Qualified voter" means a person who is entitled to vote pursuant to the Constitution of Virginia and who is (i) 18 years of age on or before the day of the election or qualified pursuant to 24.2-403 or subsection D of 24.2-544, (ii) a resident of the Commonwealth and of the precinct in which he offers to vote, and (iii) registered to vote. No person who has been convicted of a felony shall be a qualified voter unless his civil rights have been restored by the Governor or other appropriate authority. No person adjudicated incapacitated shall be a qualified voter unless his capacity has been reestablished as provided by law.
"Qualified voter in a town" means a person who is a resident within the corporate boundaries of the town in which he offers to vote, duly registered in the county of his residence, and otherwise a qualified voter.
"Referendum" means any election held pursuant to law to submit a question to the voters for approval or rejection.
"Registered voter" means any person who is maintained on the Virginia voter registration system. All registered voters shall be maintained on the Virginia voter registration system with active status unless assigned to inactive status by a general registrar in accordance with Chapter 4 ( 24.2-400 et seq.). For purposes of applying the precinct size requirements of 24.2-307, calculating election machine requirements pursuant to Article 3 ( 24.2-625 et seq.) of Chapter 6, mailing notices of local election district, precinct or polling place changes as required by subdivision 13 of 24.2-114 and 24.2-306, and determining the number of signatures required for candidate and voter petitions, "registered voter" shall include only persons maintained on the Virginia voter registration system with active status.
"Registration records" means all official records concerning the registration of qualified voters and shall include all records, lists, applications, and files, whether maintained in books, on cards, on automated data bases, or by any other legally permitted record-keeping method.
"Residence" or "resident," for all purposes of qualification to register and vote, means and requires both domicile and a place of abode. In determining domicile, consideration may be given to a person's expressed intent, conduct, and all attendant circumstances including, but not limited to, financial independence, business pursuits, employment, income sources, residence for income tax purposes, marital status, residence of parents, spouse and children, if any, leasehold, sites of personal and real property owned by the person, motor vehicle and other personal property registration, and other factors reasonably necessary to determine the qualification of a person to register or vote. No factor shall be considered to conclude that a full-time student at an institution of higher education physically located in the Commonwealth is not domiciled in the Commonwealth if that factor reasonably arises, in whole or in part, from his status as a student.
"Special election" means any election that is held pursuant to law to fill a vacancy in office or to hold a referendum.
"State Board" or "Board" means the State Board of Elections.
"Virginia voter registration system" or "voter registration system" means the automated central record-keeping system for all voters registered within the Commonwealth that is maintained as provided in Article 2 ( 24.2-404 et seq.) of Chapter 4.
24.2-417.1. Registration residence requirements; presumptions in certain cases.
A. In determining the residence as defined in 24.2-101 and the domicile and place of abode of a participant in the American Conservation and Youth Service Corps provided for by federal law (42 U.S.C. 12655 et seq.), there shall be a presumption that a participant in the Corps who was domiciled and had a place of abode in Virginia at the time of entering the Corps continues to be domiciled and retains the same place of abode unless the participant expressly states otherwise.
B. In determining the residence as defined in 24.2-101 and domicile and place of abode of a military or merchant marine spouse or dependent, there shall be a presumption that a military or merchant marine spouse or dependent who has established physical presence and a place of abode in the Commonwealth shall also have established domicile in the Commonwealth unless the spouse or dependent expressly states otherwise. Once residence is changed, the military or merchant marine spouse or dependent may not revert to any previous residence without re-establishing new physical presence and intent to remain or return.
C. In determining the residence as defined in 24.2-101 and the domicile and place of abode of any person who applies to register to vote under this title, there shall be a presumption that the domicile and place of abode are at the address of residence given by the person.
D. In determining the residence as defined in 24.2-101 and the domicile and place of abode of any person under this title, there shall be no presumption against a person based on his actual or perceived status as a student or his occupancy in housing commonly occupied by students.
E. The State Board shall promulgate instructions to
electoral boards and registrars to ensure the uniform application of this | <urn:uuid:20670c2d-0188-492f-b450-1c1479751c3a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.richmondsunlight.com/bill/2009/hb1978/fulltext/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944601 | 1,946 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Meet our latest baby alpaca. I call him “Red Eye” because he has the cutest red eye lashes.”
The cria’s dam, Sonyadore, sticks close while Jim corrals the little tyke.
When a new cria is born we want to be sure he is nursing. Here, Jim has made sure the dam has colostrum. (See how his hands look like he has something sticky on them? Good colostrum is thick and sticky.) Jim is trying to help the cria get positioned up under his mom’s teats to nurse.
The cria may “miss” a few times, and try to nurse mom’s chest and poke through her legs like above, but he’ll get it. Sometimes it takes minutes, sometimes it takes hours for babies to get the hang of it. Occasionally they need humans to bottle feed them if it takes them too long to figure it out, but most alpaca babies “get it” if you are patient with them.
Alpaca dams are generally good moms to their cria. Most experienced dams with a healthy cria will require little intervention from breeders. Monitoring cria weight gains and vaccinations are required, but the cria’s mom will take over and raise her cria for the next six months or so.
For more on newborn alpacas and nursing, read: | <urn:uuid:6e788eaf-fc8d-4efc-9f64-4bba8e10a489> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.alpacafarmgirl.com/tag/crias/ | 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 | 0.970001 | 300 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Creativity and Inspiration, Pep Talks, Photographically Speaking, Rants and Sermons, Thoughts & Theory, Vision Is Better
I rediscovered this sequence of photographs while putting together Photographically Speaking. In the book I discuss one of these images and explore the elements and decisions that make the photograph what it is. But looking at the 3 together I think there’s a lesson along the lines of the stuff I’ve been talking about lately, specifically the idea of inspiration coming from work, and my more recent post, Do The Work.
It’s easy to see something, to photograph it, and to move on. But you can photograph even the most amazing scene – the one where you’re sure you “got the shot” from an almost limitless number of angles. Add that to a variety of focal lengths, and you’ve got your work cut out for you. This is the photographer’s equivalent of the writer sitting down at her laptop to write the next chapter. This is the process of experimentation, muttering to yourself, then trying something else. It’s creating 100 sketch images to get to the next one. It’s why we need to understand the elements of the visual language; so we recognize them when we see them and put them to good use. Because, frankly, there is no “got the shot.” There are thousands of potential photographs in these scenes, not one, and how long you’re willing to explore, how receptive you are to what is in front of you, determines how many of them you create. I thought I had the shot when I took the top photograph. I was giddy. I nearly ran off to show someone how amazing I was. My (misguided) ego nearly ruined this series. Sure, you could stop at one. But sometimes the good gets in the way of the great, and I think this series together is more powerful than the first photograph alone, but even on their own, these three – and making them – brought me more joy than I’d have had to simply stop at one and call it a day.
The writer doesn’t stop and pat herself on the back when she’s written a really great sentence. She keeps writing. She does the work. Because she knows there’s a better sentence around the corner, and they’ll fit together brilliantly and the combination of the two will be even better than both alone and no amount of patting herself on the back will create that next line. Just work. The work. YOUR work. Being open, receptive, and observant, comes with practice, not as a stroke of luck. Keep at it. I shot this, still struggling (I know, my angst is exhausting) to get comfortable with my craft, after 20 years as a photographer. I’m getting there. So are you.
All the technique in the world doesn’t compensate for the inability to notice. ~ Elliott Erwitt | <urn:uuid:4335e0e6-95c8-4fd6-837f-1cbf60f013f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://davidduchemin.com/category/vision-is-better/page/3/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961395 | 623 | 1.554688 | 2 |
While the Sikh community in this Milwaukee suburb continues to mourn the dead, they have taken solace in one fact: The killing has drawn attention to their religion and given them a chance to share traditional Sikh messages of peace and justice with a global audience. A scheduled visit Thursday by first lady Michelle Obama offers one more opportunity to preach unity and compassion.
“There’s a prayer we say twice a day, asking God to please give peace to everybody and give progress to every person in this birth,” said Inderjeet Singh Dhillon, one of the temple leaders. “We don’t mention a person’s name or color or religion. We just say one word for every human on Earth.”
There are an estimated 200,000 to 500,000 Sikhs living in America. However, it’s not uncommon for Sikhs to keep to themselves, leaving non-Sikhs to wonder from afar about Sikh customs _ for example, why the men might have long beards and wear turbans.
Sikh leaders in the U.S. have tried to change that. They have encouraged people of all faiths to visit their temples and sit with them on the floor to partake of free meals. One of those leaders was Satwant Singh Kaleka, the president of the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin and one of the six people killed Aug. 5.
Kaleka tried to fight off the gunman with a butter knife, buying time for others to hide in the temple. The gunman, white supremacist Wade Michael Page, later killed himself during an ensuing gun battle with police.
Kaleka’s son, Amardeep Kaleka, said the gunman may have sought to divide the community, but his actions backfired.
Addressing a crowd of hundreds at a candlelight vigil two days after the shooting, he said his father would have been thrilled to see so many Sikhs and non-Sikhs coming together as one.
“He’s probably up there thinking, ‘Great, everybody’s together,”‘ Amardeep Kaleka said. He added that his father was educating more people about Sikhism in death than he was able to in life.
Michelle Obama was scheduled to meet privately Thursday with families of those wounded and killed. Rajwant Singh, the chairman of the Maryland-based Sikh Council on Religion and Education, said her visit was a welcome gesture.
“It is important that these families hear firsthand how she and the president feel about this terrible tragedy,” he said.
In the weeks after the shooting, well-wishers from around the globe have sent cash, flowers and banners of support. They have also sent cards on behalf of Police Lt. Brian Murphy, the Oak Creek officer who was among the first to respond to 911 calls from the temple.
Page shot Murphy nine times from close range before shooting himself in the head after being wounded. When other officers tried to tend to Murphy, he tried to wave them off and direct them to help worshippers indoors instead.
Murphy was released from the hospital Wednesday. A hospital spokeswoman said Murphy had requested that the media respect his privacy.
A second shooting victim remains in critical condition. A third was released last week and the fourth was treated for minor injuries on the day of the shooting. | <urn:uuid:5397c5f6-0077-4368-9a32-8a37a3aa166a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cherokeetribune.com/pages/full_story/push?article-First+lady+to+see+Sikh+shooting+victims%E2%80%99+families%20&id=19904283 | 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 | 0.976202 | 686 | 1.8125 | 2 |
ANNAPOLIS - The Maryland Senate president said he expects voters to decide whether to repeal the death penalty.
"I am certain that it would be petitioned to referendum if it passes" the General Assembly, said Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr.
Striking down the state's ultimate punishment has been a priority of Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley and House Speaker Mike Busch, D-Anne Arundel County.
Despite the push to end the state's death penalty, Maryland has executed five inmates in the last 50 years and hasn't put to death any prisoners since 2005. The state executed one person in 2004, but the most recent execution before that was in 1998.
Maryland currently has five people on death row, but there is a de facto moratorium on the death penalty as the O'Malley administration hasn't put into place the protocols to carry it out.
Miller made his remarks on a Baltimore radio talk show hours before the Maryland General Assembly was sworn in for its 2013 session.
Miller, who was sworn in as Senate president for a record 26th time, said he believes a repeal would pass his chamber if the governor uses his "persuasive techniques" and would get through the House as well.
But, he said he believes opponents would put a petition to block it on the 2014 ballot.
O'Malley said he was confident Marylanders would uphold the repeal if it made it onto the ballot.
Baltimore County State's Attorney Scott Shellenberger said the fact that Maryland hasn't executed anyone since 2005 doesn't mean the state should do away with the punishment.
He said politicians change and the right people could come into office to put the protocols in place to resume capital punishment.
A voter referendum on the death penalty in 2014 would be the next in a spate of recent voter efforts to reject legislation passed and signed into law.
Marylanders upheld three measures that opponents attempted to overturn on the 2012 ballot, including the legalization of same-sex marriage, the Dream Act that grants in-state college tuition to illegal immigrants who meet certain conditions and Maryland's controversial new map of state legislative districts.
They were the first such referendums in 20 years. Shortly after the 2012 election, the governor and legislative leaders expressed interest in changing the referendum process, saying it was probably too easy to put measures before voters. | <urn:uuid:58a75ded-7573-4b66-a033-0a8eb2a60827> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://washingtonexaminer.com/mike-miller-maryland-voters-likely-to-decide-fate-of-death-penalty/article/2518062?custom_click=rss | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974309 | 478 | 1.648438 | 2 |
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently awarded $800,000 to Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Rural Public Health and the University of North Carolina for a 2-year Policies, Programs, and Partners for Fall Prevention (PPPFP) project. APTA member Tiffany E. Shubert, PT, PhD, is a principal investigator for the initiative.
The project addresses the urgent need to identify more effective public health strategies for reducing falls, fall-related injuries, and fall-related rates of emergency room visits among the growing population of seniors. It also will develop strategies and train community health workers in Texas and North Carolina to help raise awareness about falls prevention and refer older adults to evidence-based programs. This includes the evaluation of a training program for physical therapists to understand and implement evidence-based fall prevention and to integrate these efforts with state and national fall prevention policies
An important partner in this effort is the National Council on Aging's Falls Free© Initiative, led by APTA member (Bonita) Lynn Beattie, PT, MPT. The national initiative—composed of 42 state coalitions—works collaboratively to increase awareness, bring education and training to providers, and increase investment in effective community interventions.
The timing of the award is noteworthy; September 22 is National Falls Prevention Awareness Day. (See related News Now article posted Monday.)
Shubert is a member of APTA's clinical practice guidelines (CPG) group that is developing CPGs for falls. | <urn:uuid:8613e23e-3905-4b4d-9b90-73a9c577c753> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.apta.org/PTinMotion/NewsNow/2012/9/20/CDCFallsProject/?blogmonth=2&blogday=21&blogyear=2013&blogid=10737418615 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941324 | 307 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Thousands of anti-terror searches were illegal
Thousands of people across the UK might have been stopped and searched illegally, figures released by the Home Office suggest.
Powers under section 44 of the Terrorism Act were used in "error" after the proper authorisations were not given.
In one example, for April 2004, the Met Police wrongly stopped 840 people.
Dozens of other examples from across the UK have been uncovered before rules were tightened in 2008.
Police Minister Nick Herbert said administrative errors were to blame and he has ordered an internal review of procedures.
The Metropolitan Police is also urgently considering what steps can be taken to contact the individuals concerned.Extremists
Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 allows police to stop and search someone without suspicion that an offence has occurred.
The controversial powers can be used only in specific areas on the orders of a police chief, with later approval by the home secretary.
End Quote Chief Constable Craig Mackey Acpo
Stop and search can work well when it is carried out with the support and understanding of the community”
Supporters say such powers can make it harder for extremists to carry out reconnaissance in public areas, such as near high-profile tourist attractions.
But critics, including the government's reviewer of terror legislation, Lord Carlile, say they unfairly target some ethnic groups and increase community tensions.
The Met is responsible for the vast majority of section 44 operations, many of which take place in Westminster and at major transport hubs or "iconic" tourist sites such as Buckingham Palace.
The force only discovered the April 2004 blunder after a request was made under the Freedom of Information Act earlier this year.
Officials researching stop and search authorisations found a Home Office minister had not signed within 48 hours.
A Met spokesman said the mistake was not noticed in 2004 due to an "oversight" and procedures have been reviewed.
Can it get any worse for Section 44? The anti-terrorism stop-and-search powers have been a source of complaint for almost a decade.
In 2009, Lord Carlile, the independent reviewer of terror laws, said the use of Section 44 gave rise to more "assertions of excessive and disproportionate police action" than any other counter-terrorism measure.
When the European Court of Human Rights declared the powers illegal in January, it said they did not contain "adequate legal safeguards against abuse". Now comes the revelation that police were unlawfully granted the powers to carry out stops 40 times.
Several thousand people may have been affected and in theory they could sue the authorities for compensation. But identifying them and proving they were stopped could be a problem - for instance, one force, the Met, has deleted records of stops carried out in 2001.
But with the terrorism threat level still at "severe" and growing concern about security during the 2012 London Olympics, ministers won't rush to ditch the powers. Instead, expect a review to conclude that Section 44 should be re-fashioned so that it complies with human rights laws and is applied more sparingly.
Asked whether the force now faced a flood of legal actions, he said: "It is a matter for individuals to seek legal advice in relation to this issue."
The spokesman also denied the force had misled the public, saying: "The Met first became aware of the issue in April 2010 during the process of compiling data in answer to a Freedom of Information request.
"All public statements issued before that date were made in good faith and there was no intention to mislead the public."
The Met case sparked a trawl for errors across the UK.
Officials discovered 33 occasions when forces asked for a 29-day search window, even though the legislation only allows a maximum of 28 days. In two cases, forces asked for 30 days.'Public confidence'
The Home Office has written to each of the 14 police forces concerned to alert them to the errors.
It said the forces were now in the process of assessing how many individuals were illegally stopped and searched and would "do their best to contact those involved".
Security Minister Baroness Neville-Jones said: "I am very concerned by these historical administrative errors. To maintain public confidence in our counter-terrorism powers, it is absolutely crucial all those responsible for exercising them do so properly.
"I take these matters extremely seriously and have instructed the department to conduct an urgent review of current procedures to ensure that errors can be prevented in future.
"The government is already committed to undertaking a review of counter-terrorism legislation which will include the use of stop and search powers in section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000. We shall make our findings known as soon as possible."
Officials at the Home Office, National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) and Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) are examining the mistakes.
The 40 flawed operations uncovered by officials include three which have previously been identified as being based on flawed paperwork.
The forces involved are: Metropolitan Police, North Yorkshire, Hampshire, Bedfordshire, Essex, Greater Manchester, Fife, South Wales and Thames Valley.
Invalid operations linked to Sussex Police and South Wales Police have been highlighted to Parliament previously.
Acpo lead officer on stop and search, Chief Constable Craig Mackey, said: "Stop and search can work well when it is carried out with the support and understanding of the community. Used correctly, it can create a hostile environment for terrorists to operate in and help protect the public."
In January this year, the powers were ruled illegal by the European Court of Human Rights. The new coalition government has said it is reviewing their use, as part of a wider overhaul of anti-terror legislation. | <urn:uuid:8c52ff3d-10a9-438e-97d0-13876b534105> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10283701 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970132 | 1,150 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Ted Cruz draws presidential buzz, but is he eligible?
Ted Cruz may have the aura of a future presidential contender, but is he even eligible to run?
The newly sworn-in Texas senator and rising Republican star was born in Canada, to a mother who was born in Delaware and Cuban father. That’s triggered a debate about whether he’s eligible for the nation’s highest office — nevermind that he’s been in Congress less than a week.Continue Reading
While there’s no legal precedent for Cruz’s situation, most constitutional scholars surveyed by POLITICO believe the 42-year-old tea party sensation would be OK. But there’s just enough gray area to stoke controversy, as Cruz learned during his campaign for Senate last year.
The U.S. Constitution states: “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President…”
“The question ultimately is, What do we mean by a natural born citizen?” asked Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman.
“The problem is, no one knows what a natural born citizen is,” agreed University of California, Davis law professor Gabriel Chin, who argued in 2008 that Sen. John McCain was not eligible to be president.
The discussion may seem premature: Cruz is still learning his way around the Senate, his first elected office. Yet his appeal to activist and establishment types — and his Latino roots in a party desperately seeking to expand its reach — make for a rare combination in the GOP.
And his arrival on the Washington scene hasn’t exactly been unassuming: On Sunday, Cruz accused gun control advocates of exploiting the Connecticut school massacre and said Barack Obama’s expected choice of former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel for secretary of defense suggests the president is “high on reelection.”
So, early or not, the Cruz-in-2016 speculation is under way.
Advisers to Cruz — a Harvard Law-educated appellate lawyer who has argued dozens of cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and knows a thing or two about constitutional law — say that because his mother had U.S. citizenship at the time of his birth, it transferred to him on foreign soil.
“Ted is a U.S. citizen by birth, having been born in Calgary to an American-born mother,” said Cruz spokesman Sean Rushton, who declined to elaborate on the matter, saying his boss is focused on his work ahead in the Senate.
Temple University law professor Peter Spiro said Cruz has a “very strong argument” that he is indeed natural born.
While the 14th Amendment to the Constitution grants citizenship to anyone born inside the U.S., children born to American citizens outside the country attain citizenship through a law passed by Congress, according to Spiro. | <urn:uuid:c43cb540-8b88-4b66-bd06-a357ea682f56> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/cruz-draws-presidential-buzz-but-is-he-eligible-85873.html?hp=r5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975852 | 610 | 1.679688 | 2 |
OBIT: EARL SCRUGGS
Credit: Getty Images
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- The world of country music has lost one of its biggest names. Bluegrass legend and banjo pioneer Earl Scruggs has died. He was 88. His son says Scruggs passed away yesterday morning at a Nashville hospital. Gary Scruggs adds his father died of natural causes. Earl Scruggs was an innovator who pioneered the modern banjo sound. His use of three fingers rather than the clawhammer style elevated the banjo from a part of the rhythm section -- or a comedian's prop -- to a lead instrument. His string-bending and lead runs became known worldwide as "the Scruggs picking style." You can hear it on the iconic theme from "The Beverly Hillbillies." He helped to profoundly change country music with Bill Monroe and later with guitarist Lester Flatt. Gary Scruggs says funeral plans are still incomplete. | <urn:uuid:5a842db6-278f-4487-8ce9-8c9d95c291c3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kgw.com/entertainment/strange-news/Photos-Celebrity-Dish-032912-144915845.html?gallery=y&c=y&img=1&c=y | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965244 | 203 | 1.710938 | 2 |
WASHINGTON - U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick will travel to Santa Cruz, Bolivia for meetings October 18-19 with ministers from the Cairns Group of agriculture exporting countries to discuss liberalizing trade in agriculture within ongoing World Trade Organization (WTO) trade negotiations.
In late July, the United States became the first WTO member to put forward a comprehensive agricultural trade reform proposal, calling for elimination of export subsidies, cuts of $100 billion in annual allowed global trade-distorting domestic subsidies, and lowering average allowed global tariffs from 62% to 15%. Zoellick, who will lead the U.S. delegation, will be joined by J.B. Penn, Under Secretary for Farm & Foreign Agricultural Services, U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Chief Agriculture Negotiator, Ambassador Allen F. Johnson and David Hegwood, Counselor to Secretary of Agriculture Ann M. Veneman.
In addition to the Cairns Group meeting, Zoellick will meet with the President of Bolivia, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, as well as officials from other countries to discuss bilateral trade issues and the upcoming Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) Ministerial in Quito, Ecuador on November 1.
"The United States and the Cairns Group have both presented ambitious and comprehensive proposals within global trade negotiations to eliminate export subsidies, cut global trade-distorting subsidies, and reduce agricultural trade barriers," said Zoellick. "I look forward to discussing with the Cairns Group and other guests opportunities to liberalize agricultural trade and hearing their views on how to move forward on farm trade reforms."
"The United States and Cairns Group are long standing allies for agricultural trade reform," said Penn. "Continued close cooperation and the current round of negotiations will help us achieve our objectives for substantial reform for agricultural trade."
Current global trade negotiations, launched in Doha, Qatar in November 2001 at the Fourth WTO Ministerial, call for agriculture to be an important part of the negotiations. WTO members are scheduled to establish by March 2003 the modalities, or specific details and time frames, for negotiations to continue so as to be completed by January 1, 2005, the target date for completing the Doha Development Agenda. The Cairns Group has also put forward a comprehensive proposal to reform agricultural trade.
This meeting of the Cairns Group is occurring at an important juncture in the context of the Doha negotiations. An informal WTO ministerial will take place in Sydney, Australia, November 14-15, to discuss the progress and future course of negotiations, including agriculture. WTO Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi, also scheduled to attend the Cairns meeting, has identified the importance of active engagement by WTO members. "These negotiations have begun reasonably well, but the time has arrived for concrete proposals which will advance the talks to the next stage. The deadline for these talks is 1 January 2005 and there are many intermediate negotiating deadlines between now and then. It is essential that these deadlines be met and that these talks stay on course."
Agricultural trade reforms in the WTO negotiations are also considered critical to the progress of other trade negotiations, such as the FTAA, because effective liberalization in agriculture requires a global approach that includes other major agriculture economies, like the European Union and Japan. Ten members of the Cairns Group are also participants in the FTAA negotiations.
"Liberalizing trade in agriculture holds particular promise for the developing world, most of which have a large share of their productive resources dedicated to agriculture. A more market-oriented trading system will help unleash their economic potential, resulting in not only increased agricultural exports but also ways to feed their growing populations," Zoellick said. "Unfortunately, some of the biggest agriculture producers, like Japan and Europe, have not stepped up to the plate and offered their own proposals on how to lower subsides and tariffs. The United States, the members of the Cairns Group, and other WTO members will continue to press for specific action on global talks to reform agriculture trade reform."
Over the years, the Cairns Group has an important role in trade negotiations, often sharing with the United States a desire to achieve real and significant reforms in global agricultural trade. The United States has worked closely with the Cairns Group, among other coalitions within the WTO, to develop the necessary consensus to move forward in trade negotiations. Zoellick has met Cairns Group members in Geneva on a number of occasions, and he joined Veneman at last year's Cairns Group meeting in Uruguay, an important milestone in the run-up to the Doha negotiations.
The Cairns Group of agricultural exporting countries are holding their twenty-fourth ministerial meeting on October 18 - 21. The United States and other invited guests will have the opportunity to share views as WTO agriculture negotiations approach the March 31, 2003 deadline for establishing reform modalities, such as reduction formulas for tariffs and subsidies. The United States has submitted a comprehensive, balanced, and equitable approach for multilateral trade reform. While it differs in some respects with positions the Cairns Group has taken, both approaches are calling for substantial liberalization of world agricultural trade, by reducing and eventually eliminating the allowed levels of export subsidies, tariffs, and trade-distorting domestic support.
The Cairns Group member countries are: Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Fiji, Guatemala, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Paraguay, Philippines, South Africa, Thailand, and Uruguay. The United States and other countries attend the Cairns Group meetings as special guests.
# # # | <urn:uuid:6accabcf-2c96-40ae-b8e1-d816576dd281> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ustr.gov/archive/Document_Library/Press_Releases/2002/October/USTR_Zoellick_to_Attend_Cairns_Group_Meeting_in_Bolivia_October_18-19_to_Discuss_Global_Farm_Trade_Reforms.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944667 | 1,159 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Opiate Detox Withdrawal Symptoms
When the body is regularly exposed to an opiate analgesic that works by attaching itself to proteins in the brain and spinal cord called opioid receptors, it no longer makes its own chemicals that ordinarily manage pain in the body. When this happens, opiate addiction is in effect. Should you stop taking your opiate of choice, you experience opiate detox or withdrawal, and this is characterized by opiate detox withdrawal symptoms.
At Michael’s House, we offer a medically supervised opiate detox to help you get through opiate withdrawal symptoms and successfully make it to the other side without relapsing.
We can help you break free from opiate addiction.
What Are Opiate Detox Withdrawal Symptoms?
In the absence of your opiate drug of choice when opiate addiction is present, an illness that feels something like the flu sets in. This is opiate detox and it is characterized by opiate detox withdrawal symptoms that include:
- Nausea and vomiting
- Hot and cold chills
- Muscle and bone pain
At Michael’s House, it is our goal to save you from having to endure these debilitating symptoms. Rather than quitting ‘cold turkey,’ we would like to help you break your addiction to opiates with a medical opiate detox and residential opiate addiction treatment.
With a treatment plan created by you and your Michael’s House therapeutic and medical team, you can begin a new life without opiate addiction.
What Causes Opiate Detox Withdrawal Symptoms?
When your body becomes used to receiving a certain amount of an opioid-based drug on a regular basis, it comes to depend upon its replenishment. Should you cease or dramatically reduce your opiate intake abruptly, your body will go into withdrawal. This generally will not occur with short-term, low doses of opiates, but with an extended period of use at a dosage that gets higher and higher, almost no one is immune.
How Common Are Opiate Detox Withdrawal Symptoms?
In fact, a number of people become physically addicted to an opiate prescription like Vicodin or Codeine through no fault of their own. Simply by following a prescription given to them by their doctor, their body built up a tolerance to the drug and, in so doing, a developed an opiate addiction. Some patients who are prescribed addictive painkillers during a hospital stay may find themselves suffering through opiate detox withdrawal symptoms upon returning home.
Opiate detox withdrawal symptoms are exceedingly common.
Opiate Detox and Withdrawal Treatment at Michael’s House
At Michael’s House, there is no judgment as to how your opiate addiction came to be. Our goal is to help you make a new life for yourself free from addiction to opiate painkillers.
If you would like to learn more about our opiate rehab, contact us at Michael’s House at 1-877-345-8494 today. | <urn:uuid:14d63274-037d-493d-8513-df5c841d5bd0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.michaelshouse.com/opiate-detox/some-withdrawal-symptoms/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953912 | 617 | 1.804688 | 2 |
GAC8666 wrote:why? How does throwing at somebody who is standing still prove anything? I can probably hit Harper with a baseball if he wasn't trying to avoid it. What's hard is striking him out. Do something that takes skill, try to show that you are better than him.
The only reason to intentionally hit him is to try to injure him. If you are using a weapon to try to injure an unsuspecting person then you are a punk.
I notice you have a Phuenef jersey in your sig, so your obviously a hockey fan. So in hockey if there was an up and coming show boating player the other team wouldnt check him extra hard or even fight him to put him in his place? I think there is no doubt he would.
Same thing in basketball where the fouls are just alittle extra hard.
Body checks are within the course of the game. Separating somebody from the puck through use of body contact is a fundamental part of the game. Trying to hit somebody with a baseball isn't, it's against the rules. If somebody goes out of their way to try to get a specific player on the other team it is to the pest's team's advantage. This is why guys like Lapierre, Claude Lemieux and Kenny Linseman have been so effective.
Subban gets a little of this and if he wants to fight that's up to him. If he doesn't want to fight then the other team gets an additional instigator penalty and the guy can get suspended for trying to fight an unwilling participant. I am completely against the concept of "self-policing" in hockey, baseball or any sport. | <urn:uuid:83d45124-c01a-4e8f-be54-cd375303989b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fantasybaseballcafe.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=446269&start=60 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985079 | 346 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Merck became the third major company in three months to suspend funding of the Boy Scouts because of its discrimination policies.
The first two companies — UPS and Intel — suspended giving to the Boy Scouts after Scouts for Equality questioned why those companies donated to an organization whose policies are in conflict with nondiscrimination giving guidelines. Merck stopped its donations apparently after an internal “re-evaluation” that was part of a “broader review of funding decisions in 2013.”
“The BSA’s policy of exclusion based on sexual orientation directly conflicts with the Merck Foundation’s giving guidelines,” the giving arm of the drug maker announced on its website.
The foundation re-evaluated funding after the Boy Scouts of America restated its policy to continue excluding based on sexual orientation last summer. That announcement came during the visit to Dallas of Cub Scout mom Jen Tyrrell who had been removed from her position because she is lesbian. During Tyrrell’s visit, the Boy Scouts claimed to have been studying a change to their policy for two years but would not release the study or the names of the 11 people the the group claimed were on the committee that reviewed it.
Tyrrell was in Dallas at the time to deliver a Change.org petition to reinstate her that had gathered 300,000 signatures. The petition is still open for additional signatures. | <urn:uuid:7e7a9e90-07a5-4fc9-a6f0-37d8f30016d0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dallasvoice.com/tag/merck | 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 | 0.973947 | 283 | 1.664063 | 2 |
We all have had the "what to do with my floor" conundrum. Do I add a rug? Install hardwood floors? How about polished concrete? I could go on and on, but I think it's safe to bet that the last solution that came to anyone's mind was permanent marker.
Heike Weber is a German installation artist who creates large scale pieces using heavy repetition. While she does painting and drawings on paper, her installations using permanent marker across floors and walls (in areas sometimes larger than 5,000 square feet) are quite amazing and beautiful. While I don't know many people that would allow their floors to be adorned with doodles in permanent marker, I think I could be compelled if Heike was doing the work.
To see more of Heike's installation work including her kilims made from silicone, visit Heike Weber.
Via: Design for Mankind
Images: Heike Weber | <urn:uuid:be90cb61-2b58-41a5-9f2d-5ed25b1add9c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/when-all-else-fails-sharpie-th-123166?img_idx=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980525 | 187 | 1.648438 | 2 |
No Peas, Please. A guest blog by Sharon Alexander
September 4, 2012
Sharon Alexander, is the Development Coordinator at Second Harvest Food Bank of Lehigh Valley and NE Pennsylvania
“What do you like most in your bag?”
“Do you like grape jelly?”
“What about potatoes?”
These are examples of questions we asked in a taste test we recently conducted with the kids who receive a weekly bag of food as part of our Backpack Buddies program at Second Harvest Food Bank of Lehigh Valley and NE Pennsylvania. Some of the answers we found were typical of what you would expect from school-aged children; others surprised us.
At Second Harvest, we encourage our member agencies to run their pantries in the “Client Choice” style – allow their participants to pick the items they want (and know their family will eat) rather than handing them a bag that has been pre-packed with food that might go to waste because no one will eat it. Why shouldn’t this mentality be carried over to our Backpack Buddies program?
Backpack Buddies serves 346 kids each week through 9 organizations in the Lehigh Valley. The majority of our sites follow the “Choice” model, allowing participants to browse the shelves and pick out the items they like. The kids are still required to take fruits and vegetables (no backpacks filled with candy), but they can choose for themselves if they want the pineapples or applesauce and the green beans or the corn.
As the Feeding America member that fills those shelves for the Backpack Buddies sites, we wanted to make sure we were indeed filling them with what participants like. And now we know – many backpack recipients like the cookies and candy we include (as we would expect, they’re kids after all) but they also like the canned vegetables and fruit. Tuna fish is the preferred protein and almost nobody likes canned peas. By using this feedback, we can make sure we at Second Harvest are purchasing food that will serve our purpose – to provide meals and to prevent the malnutrition that can have long-lasting effects on a child’s growth and ability to learn.
Pack ‘til They’re Back
This back to school season, Feeding America and its nationwide network of food banks are working to make sure that kids don’t go hungry over weekends and school holidays. In partnership with C&S Wholesale Grocers, “Pack ‘til They’re Back” is an awareness campaign to help spread the word about child hunger and Feeding America’s BackPack Program. | <urn:uuid:d9457562-6820-4695-81f8-0a4dcd74db11> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.feedingamerica.org/2012/09/no-peas-please-a-guest-blog-by-sharon-alexander/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9621 | 548 | 1.828125 | 2 |
GET ORGANISED with a super stylish Delfonics 2013 Diary!
Home is where the heart is so make it run smoothly and you’ll have more time for loved ones. NoteMaker have a great set of tips to get your bills, school meetings and sports events sorted. Don’t let the home organisation and paper work get on top of you and your family life.
keeping on top of your household bills
We all find it hard to make the time to organise our home paperwork when we really want to be spending time with family. However allocating space and having organised procedures can make this task a whole lot easier.
Ensure you have a place to open your mail. This should be in the same place every week and if you can’t find the time as soon as you bring in the mail make sure there is a storage box or allocated place to pop in the unopened mail. Open it as soon as you do find the time!
Once opened sort your mail into bills to pay, mail to action, personal correspondence, and mail to file. We like to keep the bills we need to pay on a clipboard either on a hook in our home office or in a kitchen drawer. Keep them where you will see them regularly and where you will pay them. If you sit down at your office desk to pay your bills keep them there or if you pay them while on the phone at the kitchen table keep the bills nearby.
Once you have popped your bills on a clipboard sort them into due date order and pop these dates in your wall calender or diary. By making use of a calender or diary you will ensure you won’t miss payment on another bill again.
Finally once paid you need to store the paid bills in case of any disputes with the provider. Write on the bill how and when you paid it. Then file it in an appropriate folder or document file. You may keep your yearly bills in a lever arch file or you make keep them in files in a filing cabinet. Make sure you do keep them though as you never know when you may need to look back over them.
We have put together our dream kitchen top drawer – everything you need to run your household efficiently, keep the kids appointments…and yours! | <urn:uuid:21a98b72-b6b6-43b9-a15b-1456b22e23cd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.notemaker.com/pages/home-smart-organisation-tips | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953988 | 463 | 1.585938 | 2 |
1. AUTHOR'S NOTE & CAVEAT
The other Minas Tirith story. Slavic-style stream of consciousness, after the manner of Kafka, Conrad, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy — not that I'm claiming to be in their league, of course.
You Have Been Warned…
Rating: probably R, due to extreme violence and emotional intensity. Language? Of course it contains language. That's what the hröa of a story consists of. There are no tabu words, however. But tabus are evoked due to the combination of words: that is, by the ideas they in turn evoke. Is it worse than Lord of the Flies, or A Day No Pigs Would Die — both of which are routinely inflicted upon 14 year olds by the academic industry? I think not, though may be wrong. Also, non-standard employment of possibly-excessive punctuation and alliteration…? Your call.
Setting: First Age, late autumn, about ten years give or take a year or so after the Dagor Bragollach. References to Silmarillion and other parts of the overarching mythoi of Arda. Assumed some knowledge, such as who Morgoth and Sauron are, what the Crossing of the Ice was, the general impact of the Battle of Sudden Flame, and what happened at the original Minas Tirith. But I'm not sure how much of that is strictly necessary: I knew almost nil of the Silmarillion before I started reading Sil. fanfic — that is, after all, why I went to read the original sources.
It is confusing. It is meant to be. It is, hopefully, not incomprehensible. Viewpoint shifts without explanation are part of the story, as is figuring them out. It is (by my assessment at least) fairly horrific, and is also meant to be so. Hopefully, it is also something more.
What brought this howling back out of the dark to which it had long been banished was one too many encounters with the question, "So what's the big deal with Elves dying, anyway? They just get remade, so why is it a problem?" Somehow I have a feeling that it's a little more than a change of clothes…
As always, one is free to comment as one pleases via email ([email protected]) and I will attempt to answer promptly.
This is a work of fan fiction, written because the author has an abiding love for the works of J R R Tolkien. The characters, settings, places, and languages used in this work are the property of the Tolkien Estate, Tolkien Enterprises, and possibly New Line Cinema, except for certain original characters who belong to the author of the said work. The author will not receive any money or other remuneration for presenting the work on this archive site. The work is the intellectual property of the author, is available solely for the enjoyment of Henneth Annûn Story Archive readers, and may not be copied or redistributed by any means without the explicit written consent of the author. | <urn:uuid:ea62068a-ecf8-48ca-923e-765e9e5dfbd6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.henneth-annun.net/stories/chapter_view.cfm?stid=143&spordinal=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953129 | 644 | 1.765625 | 2 |
by Deborah Steele Hazen
“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promentory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” – John Donne
John Donne’s famous meditation “The Tolling Bell” is one of the pieces of literature that I turn to when I am in mourning. Not because of its final famous phrase which sounds rather ominous when taken out of context, but for the thoughts about “any man’s death diminishes me,” which makes me think of the closeness of this community.
As I grow older, and the ties that bind me not only to my family and friends, but this community in general, grow ever tighter, deeper and entwined in my heart, I feel that diminishment of which Donne writes every time I report the deaths of beloved local residents.
Almost every week, this newspaper carries the obituaries of people whose loss diminishes our community. If we wrote in this column about all of them, we wouldn’t have the time or space to report on much else. But there have been three recent losses which I am compelled to mention – not because of their deaths – because of their lives.
Terry Erickson, who died unexpectedly last week, was our friend and the husband of Chief staff member Sandi Erickson. He grew up in Quincy, graduated from Clatskanie High School, put his life on the line in combat in Vietnam, served for nearly a quarter of a century with the Oregon State Police, then returned to Clatskanie where he became a leader in the local veterans organizations – inspired by not only his Vietnam experience, but by the loss of two uncles in World War II. During the past year, he had also become involved with the Clatskanie Historical Society.
Terry’s life was an example of honor and service, courage and integrity in the military, in his profession, and through volunteerism in his “retirement.”
He was also a beloved husband, father, grandfather, brother and friend.
Those of us who knew Terry will remember how he gave of himself to his country, community and family, but we will also remember all the interesting conversations and the laughter.
When I picture Terry – still expecting him to come through The Chief office door at any moment with some funny anecdote or incisive observation – I smile.
I also smile when I think of Dewey James, whose fond, fatherly presence eased the growing pains of literally thousands of local children during his 17 years as principal of Clatskanie Elementary School.
I missed Dewey’s memorial service last month because I was booked as Santa’s elf that day. Somehow, I think Dewey would have understood – and smiled.
I also will remember Shirley Ward’s smile and sparkling eyes, but most of all I will miss the warmth of her voice coming through the telephone when she would call – completely “out of the blue” – just to tell me she appreciated something I wrote, and that she appreciated me.
I cannot count how many times Shirley’s encouraging words made my day. I appreciated her immensely.
Shirley was a “homemaker” – in the best sense of the word. She devoted herself to her family. But I am quite sure that I was not the only recipient of her random acts and words of kindness.
The loss of Terry, Dewey and Shirley – and many others – have diminished our community, but their lives should inspire us to spend our days in ways that will make us missed when we are gone, and remembered with a smile. | <urn:uuid:6e0cbf36-9ff6-43bd-9baf-4d67bb7d3537> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clatskaniechiefnews.com/2013/01/09/january-10-2013-3/ | 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 | 0.981433 | 837 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Writer, journalist, blogger, and free speech activist Eskinder Nega, the 2012 recipient of PEN American Center’s Freedom to Write Award, lived in Washington, D.C., before returning to his native Ethiopia to start one of the country’s first-ever independent newspapers. On Friday, Eskinder was back in D.C.–not physically, but as the subject of a candlelight vigil at the African American Civil War Memorial that commemorated the first anniversary of the blogger’s arrest and sent the message that those jailed for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of speech are never forgotten.
This is Eskinder’s ninth imprisonment in 21 years while reporting the news in Ethiopia, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The most recent charges against him include involvement in “terrorism”–a grave charge that prosecutors backed with a YouTube video of a public meeting where he had discussed the implications of the Arab Spring in Ethiopia. The government charged him under the country’s anti-terrorism law–the same legislation he had criticized in a column five days before his arrest. In the column, Eskinder had expressed his indignation at the imprisonment of 73-year-old actor Debebe Eshetu on terrorism charges and noted that dozens of political dissidents and a handful of independent journalists jailed with him did not fit the profile of terrorists.
There was much public condemnation, both from Washington and abroad, after Eskinder was convicted of involvement in terrorism in July and sentenced to 18 years in prison. Prominent voices increasingly questioned whether the U.S. privileged its strategic security relationship with Ethiopia at the expense of human rights.
We at Amnesty International’s Young Professionals for Human Rights in Ethiopia decided that this event, unlike previous vigils and protests, would occur neither in front of the symbols of the U.S. government nor around the Ethiopian Embassy in D.C., but instead on U Street, where hundreds of Ethiopians, and Americans of Ethiopian origin, sprawl at any given time. Our motto: Take the event to the people!
Eskinder’s aunt, who lives in the D.C. area, surprised us by appearing at the vigil, where she expressed her desire to see him out of prison. Maran Turner, executive director of Freedom Now, an organization serving as Eskinder’s international pro bono legal counsel, spoke on the case that her organization had filed with the United Nations Human Right Council. We also thanked Jason McLure, a former Bloomberg News correspondent in Ethiopia and the founder of FreeEskinderNega.com, for his campaign that unreservedly calls for the blogger’s release from jail.
Eskinder’s case is symbolic of a wider crackdown on dissent that began in Ethiopia in the months following the Arab Spring, perhaps to pre-empt the possibility of organized anti-government protests like those in Egypt. Today, six journalists and dozens of political dissidents remain in prison in the country, most of them on terrorism and anti-state charges. Yet the most egregious weapon used by the Ethiopian government against critics has been the 2009 anti-terrorism law.
The terrorism law contains provisions so vaguely worded that they criminalize what are natural rights unequivocally enshrined in the constitution of Ethiopia. Some of the attendants at the vigil suggested that maybe our efforts would be better directed toward a complete repeal or partial amendment of the law so that it could be used only to prosecute genuine acts of terrorism. But we all agreed that Eskinder and other jailed political prisoners give a human face to the total injustice and unfairness of the law.
Mahlet Solomon, one of the organizers, told the group, “Dissent is not terrorism, and Eskinder’s case is the true face of the violation of freedom of expression in Ethiopia. Remembering Eskinder is remembering the afflictions of all those who have criticized these violations and were persecuted.”
This was the second event that we have organized around Eskinder and the issue of free speech. At the first event, in August, we discussed freedom of expression in the age of the Internet and social media. We plan to organize more events, sensitize more people to the cause, and campaign for free speech. Some dare us to “fight like man,” an open invitation to violent confrontation of the oppressive regime, but we at the group say, “We fight like a civilized man and woman with our pens and notebook, with our keyboards and with our arts.”
The following words, written by Eskinder Nega and read aloud at the event by Jason McLure, never fail to remind us of the imprisoned blogger’s unwavering optimism.
Freedom is partial to no race. Freedom has no religion. Freedom favors no ethnicity. Freedom discriminates not between rich and poor countries. Inevitably, freedom will overwhelm Ethiopia.
from Committee to Protect Journalists http://cpj.org/blog/2012/09/vigil-in-dc-honors-ethiopian-blogger-eskinder-nega.php | <urn:uuid:ac10a311-baf3-4f9b-ac65-205242d25190> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://globalfree.wordpress.com/2012/09/19/blog-vigil-in-dc-honors-ethiopian-blogger-eskinder-nega/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96155 | 1,044 | 1.757813 | 2 |
But there came the day, one year, in early April, when Dede sat in an easy chair on the porch, sewing on certain small garments, while Daylight read aloud to her. It was in the afternoon, and a bright sun was shining down on a world of new green. Along the irrigation channels of the vegetable garden streams of water were flowing, and now and again Daylight broke off from his reading to run out and change the flow of water. Also, he was teasingly interested in the certain small garments on which Dede worked, while she was radiantly happy over them, though at times, when his tender fun was too insistent, she was rosily confused or affectionately resentful.
From where they sat they could look out over the world. Like the curve of a skirting blade, the Valley of the Moon stretched before them, dotted with farm-houses and varied by pasture-lands, hay-fields, and vineyards. Beyond rose the wall of the valley, every crease and wrinkle of which Dede and Daylight knew, and at one place, where the sun struck squarely, the white dump of the abandoned mine burned like a jewel. In the foreground, in the paddock by the barn, was Mab, full of pretty anxieties for the early spring foal that staggered about her on tottery legs. The air shimmered with heat, and altogether it was a lazy, basking day. Quail whistled to their young from the thicketed hillside behind the house. there was a gentle cooing of pigeons, and from the green depths of the big canon arose the sobbing wood note of a mourning dove. Once, there was a warning chorus from the foraging hens and a wild rush for cover, as a hawk, high in the blue, cast its drifting shadow along the ground.
It was this, perhaps, that aroused old hunting memories in Wolf. At any rate, Dede and Daylight became aware of excitement in the paddock, and saw harmlessly reenacted a grim old tragedy of the Younger World. Curiously eager, velvet-footed and silent as a ghost, sliding and gliding and crouching, the dog that was mere domesticated wolf stalked the enticing bit of young life that Mab had brought so recently into the world. And the mare, her own ancient instincts aroused and quivering, circled ever between the foal and this menace of the wild young days when all her ancestry had known fear of him and his hunting brethren. Once, she whirled and tried to kick him, but usually she strove to strike him with her fore-hoofs, or rushed upon him with open mouth and ears laid back in an effort to crunch his backbone between her teeth. And the wolf-dog, with ears flattened down and crouching, would slide silkily away, only to circle up to the foal from the other side and give cause to the mare for new alarm. Then Daylight, urged on by Dede's solicitude, uttered a low threatening cry; and Wolf, drooping and sagging in all the body of him in token of his instant return to man's allegiance, slunk off behind the barn.
It was a few minutes later that Daylight, breaking off from his reading to change the streams of irrigation, found that the water had ceased flowing. He shouldered a pick and shovel, took a hammer and a pipe-wrench from the tool-house, and returned to Dede on the porch.
"I reckon I'll have to go down and dig the pipe out," he told her. "It's that slide that's threatened all winter. I guess she's come down at last."
"Don't you read ahead, now," he warned, as he passed around the house and took the trail that led down the wall of the canon.
Halfway down the trail, he came upon the slide. It was a small affair, only a few tons of earth and crumbling rock; but, starting from fifty feet above, it had struck the water pipe with force sufficient to break it at a connection. Before proceeding to work, he glanced up the path of the slide, and he glanced with the eye of the earth-trained miner. And he saw what made his eyes startle and cease for the moment from questing farther.
"Hello," he communed aloud, "look who's here."
His glance moved on up the steep broken surface, and across it from side to side. Here and there, in places, small twisted manzanitas were rooted precariously, but in the main, save for weeds and grass, that portion of the canon was bare. There were signs of a surface that had shifted often as the rains poured a flow of rich eroded soil from above over the lip of the canon.
"A true fissure vein, or I never saw one," he proclaimed softly.
And as the old hunting instincts had aroused that day in the wolf-dog, so in him recrudesced all the old hot desire of gold-hunting. Dropping the hammer and pipe-wrench, but retaining pick and shovel, he climbed up the slide to where a vague line of outputting but mostly soil-covered rock could be seen. It was all but indiscernible, but his practised eye had sketched the hidden formation which it signified. Here and there, along this wall of the vein, he attacked the crumbling rock with the pick and shoveled the encumbering soil away. Several times he examined this rock. So soft was some of it that he could break it in his fingers. Shifting a dozen feet higher up, he again attacked with pick and shovel. And this time, when he rubbed the soil from a chunk of rock and looked, he straightened up suddenly, gasping with delight. And then, like a deer at a drinking pool in fear of its enemies, he flung a quick glance around to see if any eye were gazing upon him. He grinned at his own foolishness and returned to his examination of the chunk. A slant of sunlight fell on it, and it was all aglitter with tiny specks of unmistakable free gold.
"From the grass roots down," he muttered in an awestricken voice, as he swung his pick into the yielding surface.
He seemed to undergo a transformation. No quart of cocktails had ever put such a flame in his cheeks nor such a fire in his eyes. As he worked, he was caught up in the old passion that had ruled most of his life. A frenzy seized him that markedly increased from moment to moment. He worked like a madman, till he panted from his exertions and the sweat dripped from his face to the ground. He quested across the face of the slide to the opposite wall of the vein and back again. And, midway, he dug down through the red volcanic earth that had washed from the disintegrating hill above, until he uncovered quartz, rotten quartz, that broke and crumbled in his hands and showed to be alive with free gold.
Sometimes he started small slides of earth that covered up his work and compelled him to dig again. Once, he was swept fifty feet down the canon-side; but he floundered and scrambled up again without pausing for breath. He hit upon quartz that was so rotten that it was almost like clay, and here the gold was richer than ever. It was a veritable treasure chamber. For a hundred feet up and down he traced the walls of the vein. He even climbed over the canon-lip to look along the brow of the hill for signs of the outcrop. But that could wait, and he hurried back to his find.
He toiled on in the same mad haste, until exhaustion and an intolerable ache in his back compelled him to pause. He straightened up with even a richer piece of gold-laden quartz. Stooping, the sweat from his forehead had fallen to the ground. It now ran into his eyes, blinding him. He wiped it from him with the back of his hand and returned to a scrutiny of the gold.
It would run thirty thousand to the ton, fifty thousand, anything - -he knew that. And as he gazed upon the yellow lure, and panted for air, and wiped the sweat away, his quick vision leaped and set to work. He saw the spur-track that must run up from the valley and across the upland pastures, and he ran the grades and built the bridge that would span the canon, until it was real before his eyes. Across the canon was the place for the mill, and there he erected it; and he erected, also, the endless chain of buckets, suspended from a cable and operated by gravity, that would carry the ore across the canon to the quartz-crusher. Likewise, the whole mine grew before him and beneath him-tunnels, shafts, and galleries, and hoisting plants. The blasts of the miners were in his ears, and from across the canon he could hear the roar of the stamps. The hand that held the lump of quartz was trembling, and there was a tired, nervous palpitation apparently in the pit of his stomach. It came to him abruptly that what he wanted was a drink--whiskey, cocktails, anything, a drink. And even then, with this new hot yearning for the alcohol upon him, he heard, faint and far, drifting down the green abyss of the canon, Dede's voice, crying:--
"Here, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick! Here, chick, chick, chick!"
He was astounded at the lapse of time. She had left her sewing on the porch and was feeding the chickens preparatory to getting supper. The afternoon was gone. He could not conceive that he had been away that long.
Again came the call: "Here, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick! Here, chick, chick, chick!"
It was the way she always called--first five, and then three. He had long since noticed it. And from these thoughts of her arose other thoughts that caused a great fear slowly to grow in his face. For it seemed to him that he had almost lost her. Not once had he thought of her in those frenzied hours, and for that much, at least, had she truly been lost to him.
He dropped the piece of quartz, slid down the slide, and started up the trail, running heavily. At the edge of the clearing he eased down and almost crept to a point of vantage whence he could peer out, himself unseen. She was feeding the chickens, tossing to them handfuls of grain and laughing at their antics.
The sight of her seemed to relieve the panic fear into which he had been flung, and he turned and ran back down the trail. Again he climbed the slide, but this time he climbed higher, carrying the pick and shovel with him. And again he toiled frenziedly, but this time with a different purpose. He worked artfully, loosing slide after slide of the red soil and sending it streaming down and covering up all he had uncovered, hiding from the light of day the treasure he had discovered. He even went into the woods and scooped armfuls of last year's fallen leaves which he scattered over the slide. But this he gave up as a vain task; and he sent more slides of soil down upon the scene of his labor, until no sign remained of the out-jutting walls of the vein.
Next he repaired the broken pipe, gathered his tools together, and started up the trail. He walked slowly, feeling a great weariness, as of a man who had passed through a frightful crisis.
He put the tools away, took a great drink of the water that again flowed through the pipes, and sat down on the bench by the open kitchen door. Dede was inside, preparing supper, and the sound of her footsteps gave him a vast content.
He breathed the balmy mountain air in great gulps, like a diver fresh-risen from the sea. And, as he drank in the air, he gazed with all his eyes at the clouds and sky and valley, as if he were drinking in that, too, along with the air.
Dede did not know he had come back, and at times he turned his head and stole glances in at her--at her efficient hands, at the bronze of her brown hair that smouldered with fire when she crossed the path of sunshine that streamed through the window, at the promise of her figure that shot through him a pang most strangely sweet and sweetly dear. He heard her approaching the door, and kept his head turned resolutely toward the valley. And next, he thrilled, as he had always thrilled, when he felt the caressing gentleness of her fingers through his hair.
"I didn't know you were back," she said. "Was it serious?"
"Pretty bad, that slide," he answered, still gazing away and thrilling to her touch. "More serious than I reckoned. But I've got the plan. Do you know what I'm going to do?--I'm going to plant eucalyptus all over it. They'll hold it. I'll plant them thick as grass, so that even a hungry rabbit can't squeeze between them; and when they get their roots agoing, nothing in creation will ever move that dirt again."
"Why, is it as bad as that?"
He shook his head.
"Nothing exciting. But I'd sure like to see any blamed old slide get the best of me, that's all. I'm going to seal that slide down so that it'll stay there for a million years. And when the last trump sounds, and Sonoma Mountain and all the other mountains pass into nothingness, that old slide will be still a-standing there, held up by the roots."
He passed his arm around her and pulled her down on his knees.
"Say, little woman, you sure miss a lot by living here on the ranch--music, and theatres, and such things. Don't you ever have a hankering to drop it all and go back?"
So great was his anxiety that he dared not look at her, and when she laughed and shook her head he was aware of a great relief. Also, he noted the undiminished youth that rang through that same old-time boyish laugh of hers.
"Say," he said, with sudden fierceness, "don't you go fooling around that slide until after I get the trees in and rooted. It's mighty dangerous, and I sure can't afford to lose you now."
He drew her lips to his and kissed her hungrily and passionately.
"What a lover!" she said; and pride in him and in her own womanhood was in her voice.
"Look at that, Dede." He removed one encircling arm and swept it in a wide gesture over the valley and the mountains beyond. "The Valley of the Moon--a good name, a good name. Do you know, when I look out over it all, and think of you and of all it means, it kind of makes me ache in the throat, and I have things in my heart I can't find the words to say, and I have a feeling that I can almost understand Browning and those other high-flying poet-fellows. Look at Hood Mountain there, just where the sun's striking. It was down in that crease that we found the spring."
"And that was the night you didn't milk the cows till ten o'clock," she laughed. "And if you keep me here much longer, supper won't be any earlier than it was that night."
Both arose from the bench, and Daylight caught up the milk-pail from the nail by the door. He paused a moment longer to look out over the valley.
"It's sure grand," he said.
"It's sure grand," she echoed, laughing joyously at him and with him and herself and all the world, as she passed in through the door.
And Daylight, like the old man he once had met, himself went down the hill through the fires of sunset with a milk pail on his arm. | <urn:uuid:0c648f4a-35a0-4332-b659-ceb59a3e0002> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.literature.org/authors/london-jack/burning-daylight/part-02/chapter-26.html | 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 | 0.988674 | 3,390 | 1.625 | 2 |
Mayor Brad Woodside called Friends of UNB Woodlot member Mark D'Arcy on Friday, promising that the group would be allowed to make a presentation to the City. Woodside told D'Arcy that the City of Fredericton has a committee system, and that the Friends of the UNB Woodlot would be granted a presentation to the Public Safety Committee, a committee which includes several city councillors.
Mayor Woodside also said that the Department of Environment would be requested to make a presentation at the same time. D'Arcy thanked Mayor Woodside for granting this presentation, adding that the group would then like to follow up this first presentation with one to City council. The goal of the Friends of the UNB Woodlot is for City council to take the proactive step and ban high-impact industrial activity from the UNB woodlot through an amendment to Zoning Bylaw Z-2. Only City council can do this so the goal is to eventually bring the presentation to council. The Friends of the UNB Woodlot will recommend to council that they consider this ban for their entire city limits.
- video courtesy of Charles LeBlanc | <urn:uuid:8c3bb028-1da1-4788-8250-43f3aff8f9de> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thepurplevioletpressnb.blogspot.com/2011/08/mayor-brad-woodside-called-friends-of.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960443 | 234 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Monday, December 3, 2012 - 12:03
Research shows that children who get everything they want grow up to be greedy, self-centered adults. However, parents can raise their children to focus instead on goals such as learning and helping others. In December, ISU Extension and Outreach specialists offer tips for parents on how to avoid overindulging children in the Science of Parenting blog.
Monday, December 3, 2012 - 11:51
Iowa State University researchers have received new funding to evaluate an intergenerational exercise program for older adults in 21 rural Iowa counties. The Living (well through) Intergenerational Fitness and Exercise Program introduces older adults to exergaming, video games that integrate game play with physical activity.
Monday, November 26, 2012 - 16:56
Last spring, Iowa families throughout the state gathered together –- virtually –- once a month for the Eco Family Conference from Iowa State University Extension and Outreach. The program is undergoing slight changes for its second year, and families can register now.
Monday, November 26, 2012 - 10:16
Iowa State researchers will be conducting free nutritional screenings for older Iowans Dec. 17 at Heartland Senior Services in Ames, from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The ISU research team will be using new measurement tools to detect malnutrition in older adults.
Monday, November 19, 2012 - 10:44
The state nutrition and health team for Iowa State University Extension and Outreach recently added to its numbers. Jody Gatewood, new assistant state nutrition program specialist, will split her time between two nutrition education programs --- the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) and Family Nutrition Program (FNP) --- and nutrition research grant projects.
Wednesday, November 14, 2012 - 13:19
Foodservice employees have many things to think about while on the job. To help them continue to put safe food knowledge into practice, Iowa State University Extension and Outreach recently launched a research and training development project called Do Your PART.
Wednesday, November 14, 2012 - 11:28
School lunch can be a good source of nutrition for children. But the menu may not match their food preferences every day. A new publication from Iowa State University Extension and Outreach aims to guide parents on creating healthy, balanced packed lunches, while keeping the food safe until lunch time.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012 - 10:18
The North Central STEM Hub at Iowa State University is hosting a STEM community conversation Nov. 16 in the Garden Room, Reiman Gardens. All parents, grandparents, educators, business and civic leaders, legislators and other Iowans are invited to attend the town hall style meeting scheduled for 1 to 2:30 p.m.
Monday, November 5, 2012 - 16:17
Suzanne Bartholomae is the newest addition to the family finance team at Iowa State University Extension and Outreach. The new ISU Extension specialist is part of the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Iowa State, and will take over Pat Swanson’s responsibilities upon her retirement in December.
Friday, November 2, 2012 - 15:33
Teach children manners and they’re more likely to grow up to be respectful and develop empathy for others. In November, family life specialists offer tips for parents on helping children learn manners and the connection to respect and empathy in the Science of Parenting blog from Iowa State University Extension and Outreach. | <urn:uuid:f6a46407-185b-4a71-bc58-8f07b62c27c5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.extension.iastate.edu/articles/parenting?page=6 | 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 | 0.931594 | 713 | 1.773438 | 2 |
J is for:
|Great Uncle George at his station bookstall|
In the early 20th century, three of my great grandparents large family, Harry, Robert and Jennie all worked for the post office.
In my husband's Donaldson family history, the linking factor was the sea with family occupations ranging from merchant, master mariner, seaman, caulker, roper, ship's carpenter and river policeman.
Have you ever puzzled over the occupation of a Scottish ancestor, as listed in the cesnus? The take a look at the listing of over 1500 occupations with their definitions and variants at: http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/content/help/index.aspx?430
Keep an eye open too for my posting on the letter O where I will look at Occupational Records. | <urn:uuid:09be8e50-fd0e-47be-aa3a-1dcf66772d5a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://scotsue-familyhistoryfun.blogspot.com/2012/04/to-z-challenge-j-is-for-jobs-jewellery.html?showComment=1348913156286&m=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948097 | 173 | 1.703125 | 2 |
In the three weeks between President Barack Obama’s Jan. 20 announcement that there would be no expansion of the conscience exemptions regarding Department of Health and Human Services mandates for contraceptives and his Feb. 10 announcement of an “accommodation” that effectively does expand those exemptions, the U.S. bishops enjoyed a rare moment of public support from many progressive Catholics.
Groups like the Catholic social justice lobby NETWORK and the Catholic Health Association, as well as prominent liberal Catholics like E.J. Dionne and Chris Matthews, joined the bishops in calling for broader exemptions for Catholic colleges, charities and hospitals.
When the president announced his accommodation, it was clearly a win for the bishops. The president had set a one-year timetable to address religious concerns, but the firestorm he had ignited required him to address the issue more quickly than planned.
Instead of taking a victory lap, though, the bishops declared themselves unsatisfied with the accommodation and shifted the goalposts of the debate.
Reese added, “As long as the fight over the HHS mandate was seen as a fight to protect religious institutions from government interference, there was wide support for the bishops. Once it became a fight over contraceptives, the bishops lost almost all their support.”
The real danger in the bishops’ shift from a defense of religious institutions to a defense of the conscience rights of individual employers and corporations, however, is one to which conservatives, and especially the bishops, should be highly attuned. It reinforces the idea that religion is essentially a private matter, between one’s conscience and God. There is no room for the magisterium in such a view and it aligns neatly with the views of some non-Catholic liberal scholars. “I am all for religious liberty,” Boston College’s Alan Wolfe said. “But in my view it is human beings that deserve liberty, not institutions. Indeed, when institutions gain liberty, people lose it.” Reinforcing the idea that conscience and religion are essentially individualistic things is surely not something the bishops want to reinforce in America’s highly anti-authoritarian and uber-individualistic culture.
The U.S. bishops, then, must tread carefully in the public square. Even though they got the president to modify his position on the conscience exemptions with great alacrity, they could easily overplay their hand. “People are sympathetic to the bishops when they are trying to protect religious institutions, but when they push their public policy agenda, whether it be against gay marriage or for immigration reform, they are treated as just another voice in the public square,” Reese said. “If people agree with their arguments, they follow them. If they don’t, they don’t.”
And then there is the group of nuns filing an brief on behalf of the Obama healthcare plan. Reported on Think Progress:
Amici curiae represent the leadership of Catholic women’s religious orders from across the United States. Amici and the orders they serve have a long history of public service in healthcare in America dating back to the 1700s. These services include founding hospitals and free clinics and providing free healthcare to the underprivileged and uninsured. The work by Amici gives them a unique perspective on the unmet healthcare needs of the poor, as well as on the positive impact that will result from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA” or the “Act”). . . .
Amici have witnessed firsthand the national crisis that prompted Congress to pass the ACA. In particular, Amici have seen the devastating impact of the lack of affordable health insurance and healthcare on women, children, and other vulnerable members of society. | <urn:uuid:8f7b1f84-6d58-48be-80ab-0ef317bf660a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/faith_and_politics/bishops_overplaying_their_hand.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968037 | 767 | 1.703125 | 2 |
quam magnum est in viribus suis latus viri
I ask you about in viribus suis.
I suppose this would be a form of abl. of respect or abl. of standard of measuring,
but in the grammar, I can't find an example in which the preposition in is added to those abl..
But, if prepositions are such things as are used to specify the meaning of bare case, I think the addition of in is no problem even if the grammar doesn't mention it....
then, do you think in + abl. can express "in what respect?" or "in what standard ?" ? | <urn:uuid:15016150-ce5f-4faf-9d12-b1c29cfa32f8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.textkit.com/greek-latin-forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=56102 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958584 | 134 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Everybody's In Show Biz
That living animals exist is obviously an empirical fact. However, the materialist necessarily treats it as any other fact, and therefore fails to appreciate its ontological and epistemological consequences, for a living cosmos can no longer be treated as a dead one and still be considered remotely "understood." Rather, it is an example of a fact that changes everything -- like, say, meeting a girl named Lola at club in old Soho and discovering almost too late that she is a he.
Or, it's like a good film that reveals a mystery at the very end that suddenly recasts everything you've been watching for the previous two hours. What was that movie.... Oh yes. The two-parter, Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring. You watch it for four hours, but don't find out what you were actually watching until the last scene. Although, let it be noted that, even of you don't make it that far, the film nevertheless has the intrinsic merit of that scene of Emmanuelle Béart prancing around naked by the mountain spring.
I wonder if the cosmos is like that? I mean, I wonder if one must get to the end in order to know the beginning? Actually, I wonder how it can't be like that. I have a feeling that this will be one of central points of the Theo-Drama, but we'll just have to wait and see. We're still in the middle of the film right now. But one reason why murder is unforgivable is that it's like someone ripping your film out of the projector, so you never get to see its end, and therefore its ultimate meaning.
Speaking of which. That reminds me. One other theologian who talks about life-as-film is Boris Mouravieff, in his Gnosis. He says that the present is actually situated outside time, which, when you think about it, makes perfect sense, otherwise we couldn't be aware of time. The idea is to lift ourselves "higher" above the river of time, so to speak, so that we can better see what's going on with our lives.
In a way, this is what psychoanalytic therapy attempts to do. Instead of just being caught up in our life and merged with the unconscious, we're going to try to "rise above" and consider it like a sort of object. It's analogous to two trains that are about to collide. The engineers in the trains can't see what's about to happen up ahead, but if you were sitting on a hill above the scene, you could "see the future" -- even though you're still in the "same place" as the two trains.
Speaking of witch and wiccan, this is what it is like for me and our trolls. I know their every move, their every line of attack, in advance. Does this mean that I am omniscient? Hardly! It just means that their life is on a train track and that they have relinquished their true vertical freedom (as opposed to horizontal license). You don't have to be sitting on a very high hill to see this.
This, of course, is the secret of God's omniscience, and how it may be reconciled with free will. That is, just as I can predict the thoughts of trolls before they occur, this does not mean that the troll doesn't still have free will, much less that I have "taken it away."
By the way, this problem is more serious in intelligent trolls than unintelligent ones, since the latter at least have the virtue of a kind of "crazy spontaneity," being that they are unable to think in any systematic way. But the most wearisome trolls combine the worst aspects of intelligence and predictability.
Anyway, Mouravieff writes that the present is analogous to a kind of "slot" through which we view the film of life. The present has no measure -- again, it is outside time -- but the slot does. In Raccoon terminology, I would express it this way: one of the fundamental purposes of a spiritual practice is to "dilate" the slot through which we live the film of our life. This dilation is none other than slack.
Some of you are no doubt struggling to understand the point, so I'll try to bring it down to concrete examples. We're all familiar with the opposite of slack -- let's just call it "stress." Stress is when you are so dragged along by the conspiracy that you have no breathing room whatsoever. It is as if there is no gap between you and the world.
Rather, you are simply a function of the latter, being dragged along in its wake. It's as if some thug has carjacked your life and tossed you out of the driver's seat, except that your sleeve gets caught in the door, so you're being dragged through the street like a rag doll.
I hate when that happens.
Many, if not most, people simply grow accustomed to this situation, as if it is natural to live in this manner. Such a person doesn't really know the present. Rather, it is as if they are living on a two dimensional line. The past is behind and the future is ahead, but there is really no present, because they are too enmeshed in the line to appreciate it.
Shocking, I realize, but you may have no idea how many human beings not only live this way, but do so by choice. It's like a life without insight, because insight can only occur as you ascend further up that hill and dilate your slot.
Sometimes it takes a kind of brutal instance of (?!) to wake up and wrench oneself out of time. I think that in the past, these kinds of "moments" were more or less ubiquitous. Disaster in one form or another was always just around the corner -- plague, famine, deadly infection, war, etc. -- so there was simply no way to comfortably assume that the present would continue indefinitely in its present predictable mode. (For those of you who have done your part to keep the Coonifesto in print, I discuss this in slightly different terms in pp. 214-216.)
Mouravieff points out that "exterior man" lives his life on that two-dimensional line. It is as if he is always in the "now," and yet, not "present." Presence is what occurs when we dilate the slot, instead of living our lives like a slot machine.
Now, speaking of gambling, life itself is a gamble, a wager that places everything on the line (or above it, to be exact). It is the first attempt by the cosmos to lift itself above the line and dilate the now. That little "hole" is again where everything takes place. It is surely the only "place" where eternity rushes into time and time returns to eternity. It is the place of meaning, of love, of beauty, you name it.
Therefore, the now is ultimately a kind of "circle of return," for which we use the symbols (↓) and (↑). Bear in mind that these occur outside time and inside eternity, at least ideally. When you pray, or meditate, or coontemplate, or engage in bloggio divina, you are really trying to "ease your way into heaven," so to speak, are you not?
And what is heaven? Well, for one thing, it's like existence seen with no slot at all. Or, it's like taking off a tight pair of shoes. I forget which.
In any event, as we proceed on The Way, one of the first fruits will be this dilation of time which opens onto the real present, or more precisely, presence, for there is no real present in the absence of presence or presence of absence. Obviously you have to at least be here in order to be here. As a therapist, I cannot begin to tell you how many people aren't actually here at all. If they were here, they wouldn't be here in therapy.
Here's the bottom line. When you start out on the path, your life is a bad B-movie, in which you are the star. But you want to change this into a Be movie. As Mouravieff explains, "Each human being, then, is born with his own particular film." But exterior man never really sees the film, because he's too much a part of it.
The "second birth" is none other than an escape from "bondage to the film" and entrance into "the domain of redemption." This is when you recognize your membership in the Scattered Brotherhood of the Transdimensional Raccoons, and go from being merely "anthropoid" to true anthropos, i.e., Pontifical Man, the vertical cosmic ladder out of the otherwise oppressive dope opera of the now.
The latter folks are "the dead who, in the words of Jesus, 'believe themselves to be alive.' Esoteric evolution starts when man... proves capable of breaking the circle and transforming it into an ascending spiral" (Mouravieff). Of course, other factors come into play -- grace, the recognition and assimilation of 'B' influences, assistance from other members of the Scattered Brotherhood, etc.
Well, my slot is contracting. See you tomorrow in the balcony! | <urn:uuid:2ffa9b12-6ce6-4c5a-8a06-e603a93a1b8d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2009/04/everybodys-in-show-biz.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974906 | 1,955 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Bob Barker, host of the Emmy award winning "The Price Is Right" and a longtime proponent of animal welfare, has donated $1 million to the Northwestern University School of Law to endow a course in animal rights law.
The Bob Barker Endowment Fund for the Study of Animal Rights Law will provide students an opportunity to earn course credit. Course topics could include: how humans interact with and use animals; current animal protection laws; species protection; and international wildlife law.
Barker has previously made $1 million gifts to the University of California at Los Angeles, Duke University, Stanford University and Columbia University. It all began with a similar endowment established in his name at Harvard Law School by FemantleMedia, which produces "The Price Is Right."
"Animals need all the protection we can give them," Barker said. "We intend to train a growing number of law students in this area of the law in the hope that they will ultimately lead a national effort to make it illegal to brutalize and exploit these helpless creatures."
"Northwestern Law School is grateful for Mr. Barker’s generous gift," said Dean David Van Zandt. "This fund will allow our faculty and students to explore an emerging field of law that has ramifications in many traditional legal areas."
"Many of our students can expect to deal with an animal law issue at some point in their careers," he said. "Legal issues can cover a wide spectrum, ranging from patent and intellectual property law to criminal prosecution or defense, or constitutional law." Experimental animal cloning is a recent example of intellectual property context where animal law issues have emerged, he added.
The host of "The Price Is Right" for 33 years, Barker has long been associated with the animal rights movement. He established the DJ&T Foundation in memory of his wife and mother to help control the animal population and has received numerous awards from humane organizations. | <urn:uuid:63dbd30a-a652-4e6a-a34c-19647e50a8af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2005/03/barker.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954995 | 387 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Rules for students attending Language Courses at the Language & Training Centre of Erasmus University Rotterdam
If you have to miss a lesson, you should notify the teacher by email (to be announced in the first lesson). It is considered very impolite to be absent without notification. Please note that it will be very difficult to pass the exam if you have missed more than two sessions since attendance and cooperation in class will be part of your final grade.
Language of instruction
All courses taught at the Language & Training Centre are monolingual. This means that, for example, a Spanish course is taught completely in Spanish, even during the beginners courses. Although this may be very difficult for some students, research has shown that this is the best way for you to learn a language. However, should you really have a problem in understanding the grammar or the meaning of a word; the teacher can give an explanation or translation in English. Therefore, all participants need to have a good knowledge of the English language. If the problem continues, the teacher will ask you to buy an appropriate grammar book and dictionary at your own cost.
Please realise that you are advised to spend about 3 hours per week on self-study.
You have the right to complain about a teacher or a course, but you must do so in a proper fashion. Please inform the Language & Training Centre as soon as possible if there are any problems of any kind. If we know on time that there is a problem, we still have a chance to do something about it. If we hear about it after the course has finished, it is too late for us to act and find a solution. You can file a complaint about a course until one month after the date of the final exam of the course. After that date, a complaint can no longer be taken into consideration. The complaint has to be put in writing (email) and sent to the Language & Training Centre. If more than one student has a complaint about a teacher/ course, it is advisable that each student submits an individual complaint in his/her own words.
The Language & Training Centre is authorised to replace a teacher at all times in case of illness or other compelling reasons.
For most courses, the course fee does not include the course materials. If it is included it will be clearly stated on the website. You are obliged to buy the advised material before the course starts (the material will be mentioned in the confirmation letter of the course, sent to your email address)
Please note that the final exam of the course takes place in a separate session.
Should you fail the course (total grade lower than 5.5), you are allowed to take a re-sit exam in the exam period of the next course period if you meet the requirements mentioned below. You can only take the re-sit exam once.
- You have to take the final exam of your course.
- You have a final grade lower than 5.5
You cannot retake listening or oral tests, only the final written test. You need to request a retake exam through the office of the Language & Training Centre. The costs of a re-sit are € 55.
You will receive a certificate when you have passed the course. You will receive an email telling you when the certificate can be picked up at the Erasmus Student Service Centre. Please note that grades are not processed in OSIRIS. If you would like to continue with the following level, please note that the certificate is valid for one year. | <urn:uuid:993a9f4e-50ee-4e58-81ef-2f6c7e538f10> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eur.nl/english/ltc/students/courses/rules_and_regulations/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953452 | 717 | 1.515625 | 2 |
iPhone 5: The Sixth Generation Apple iPhoneIn the case of Apple’s existing iPhone 4S, people didn't experience anything new from the device's look as it was pretty much identical to its predecessor, the iPhone 4. And that has probably paved the way for growing rumors that Apple will bring some change to the form factor of its flagship smartphone's next iteration. Some earlier rumors suggested that Apple's sixth generation smartphone would adopt a teardrop design. If recent rumors are to be believed, the new iPhone would be symmetrical in shape with an aluminum rear panel reinforced by a glossy plastic or rubberized bezel. The new rumor goes that the next Apple iPhone will sport a new form factor that "could employ a single unibody frame reminiscent of the company's MacBook lineup," AppleInsider reported. Given that the new iPad has Retina display with a groundbreaking 2048 x 1536 resolution, the next iPhone is also expected to feature something higher in terms of its display. While some recent reports suggest that the phone will sport a large 4.6-inch screen, reports surfaced last week said that Apple would consider the current 3.5-inch screen size. Some other sources also said that the device will sport Quantum Dot LED curved glass edge-to-edge display with 1280 x 720 resolutions (367ppi). There are reports that suggest that the new iPhone will have an edge-to-edge display, making the smartphone even more appealing for Apple fans. Considering Android smartphones are increasingly coming with 8 megapixel camera, the iPhone 5 is also expected to feature something similar or even higher. Some speak about an 8 megapixel or even 10 megapixel camera and the possibility of taking pictures in the panorama mode. Rumors also suggest that the iPhone 5 will have a 2 megapixel front-facing camera for video chatting. In March, a DigiTimes report cited unnamed sources within the Taiwan-based smartphone manufacturer, who claimed that the next generation iPhone would "very likely" contain an embedded 4G LTE radio. Given that the new iPad came with 4G LTE support, the probability of LTE technology being incorporated in Apple's next iPhone cannot be ignored right away. Many reports said that the NFC technology would also be featured in the upcoming Apple phone. A recent report by the Insane Planet said that the NFC technology on the iPhone 5 "is becoming a huge possibility." The report cited a Patently Apple post regarding an Apple patent application about "iWallet" and NFC and said that Apple had "granted a patent for iWallet to payments via NFC and diagrams passed from Apple to the Patent & Trademark Office in the US shows an iPhone which may possibly be the iPhone 5." Rumors are also rife that an A6 processor will power the next iPhone. It will be a superfast 1.2 to 1.5 GHz processor with 1GB or more of RAM to offer amazing processing capabilities to the smartphone. As far as the operating system is concerned, iOS 6 is highly anticipated. Apple released iOS 5.1, an incremental update to iOS 5 on March 7. The current iPhone 4S and the new iPad will run the latest iOS update, says Apple. Since every new Apple device comes with an upgraded version of the company's mobile operating system, speculations are rife that an update to iOS 6.0 is possible by the time of the iPhone 5 release. Apple fans are also hoping for an improvised battery to be incorporated in the iPhone 5. As per the rumor, the phone will have a better battery life than the Li-Po 1420 mAh battery in iPhone 4S that gives up to 8 hours of talk time on 3G and up to 14 hours on 2G (GSM). As per the release goes, some earlier reports said Apple would launch iPhone 5 at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June this year. The reports suggested that the June launch of the next iPhone would bring an end to an eight-month-long life span of the current iPhone 4S. However, recent rumors suggested that Apple might launch the device in the second half of 2012. The Cupertino tech giant might abandon mid-year launches and consider a 12-month iPhone upgrade cycle starting in the fall. While there is no official word on when the upcoming iteration of the Apple iPhone is finally arriving, chances of a fall launch look stronger than that of a summer launch. Apple would be inclined to pull the trigger on a June iPhone 5 release, had there been a decrease in the iPhone 4S sales, but there's hardly any sign of that so far, say reports. In its fiscal first quarter ending Dec. 31, 2011, Apple reported iPhone sales of 37 million, an increase of 128 percent year-over-year, and the iPhone 4S was only released in some markets as recently as January. In addition, unlike a summer release, the fall release of the next iPhone would ensure that the owners of the current iPhone 4S have completed at least a year into their carrier contracts, according to iDownload Blog. It will "allow most of them to purchase a new iPhone at the subsidized price." Releasing the new iPhone before the holidays would also help Apple record good sales.
iOS 6With Apple's yearly pilgrimage for developers - the World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) - highly rumored to begin June 11 in San Francisco's Moscone West, speculations are rife that the Cupertino tech giant may take the wraps off its iOS 6 and its sixth generation iPhone during the event. According to iOS 6 News Blog, WWDC has been the venue for the release of Apple's new iOS versions for years, making it quite easy to guess a general timeframe for iOS 6. "Unless Apple really surprises us and decides to only release an iOS 5.2, we would expect to see the new iOS 6 in June." It doesn't matter whether iOS 6 and iPhone 5 debut at WWDC this year, one thing is certain that the update Apple OS will be a key feature to accompany the next generation iPhone. So what could iOS 6 have in store for us? According to AppAdvice, ever since the App Store launched in 2008, handling of apps by iOS has remained pretty much the same. The apps are arranged in line across the screen, with positions determined by the user. Although Apple is not expected to "reinvent the wheel here, it would be nice to see some improvements to how iOS handles apps," said the report. For example, a folder for the frequently accessed apps, a weather splash for accessing the latest outside temperatures easily and alerts for new app updates offered by iOS itself. In addition, an improved Siri is also expected to come with iOS 6. When Apple launched iPhone 4S, one of the most talked about features was Siri and the array of tasks the personal voice assistant was able to do. But the application was available only on iPhone 4S and has remained so till date, at least officially. "Apple should open this up for other developers," said an AppAdvice report. "For example, have ESPN tell use the baseball games scheduled for this weekend; or have the iTunes Movie Trailers app tell us what's showing at our local multiplex." Recent rumors said that the Dolphin browser, a popular third-party browser for Android and the iPhone, recently launched a new voice command system called "Sonar" that could hint at new Siri developments for iOS 6. The feature can be activated by pushing a button or shaking the phone. It helps users to search websites, navigate the browser, or directly share a link on Facebook or Twitter with just a voice command. "The reason why the launch of Dolphn's Sonar is significant is that it may indicate that Apple will open up Siri to third-party developers, allowing them to leverage for other apps and functions," iOS 6 News Blog reported. Apart from these, there are some more features that are expected to be included in the upcoming iOS 6 - Facebook integration, App Store shopping cart, quick toggles in notification center, multi-user login, better multitasking, more inbuilt apps, turn-by-turn directions voice and more cloud integration, to name a few.
Apple's next-generation MacBook ProAlthough there have not been any official words regarding the release of the new MacBook Pro, rumors are rife that the device would be a 15-inch revamped model and will launch as early as May. According to Cult of Mac, earlier rumors suggested that “slimmer, Air-like MacBook Pros with an optical drive” would be released early in May, “and now How To Arena says that the chips needed for the new 15-inch Pros will become available on April 29th.” That said, the May release of the new MacBook Pro looks likely, “especially since multiple third-party resellers are already showing limited stock or are sold out of 15-inch MacBook Pros, while MacMall is having blow-out sales on many 15-inch Pro models, presumably to clear inventory,” the report said. If rumors are to be believed, the 15- inch MacBook Pro will feature Intel's Core i5 and Core i7 Ivy Bridge chipset. Apart from that, the device is also expected to sport an anti-glare retina display. Rumors suggest that the 13-inch MacBook Pro will also get refreshment in June, followed by another 17-inch model later this year.
Apple Smart TV: iPanelAccording to Jefferies analyst Peter Misek, Apple will launch a smart TV in the fourth quarter of this year and it will be called “iPanel”, instead of “iTV” as earlier rumors suggested. “We now believe the iTV could be called “iPanel” as it is far more than a TV; it is a display, gaming center, media hub, computer, home automator, etc. Also, Apple would likely have difficulty getting naming rights from the UK TV network ITV,” Misek said in a research note quoted by CNET. According to him, his Asia supply chain sources expect that the device’s commercial production would begin in May/June with 2 million to 5 million builds likely. "We believe Sharp and Apple have modified the IGZO (indium, gallium, zinc) technology to make much-improved HD displays. The Sharp relationship will enable Apple to diversify away from Samsung and gain additional display capacity with leading-edge technology,” Misek said, mentioning the recent investment in Sharp by Hon Hai. However, ZDNet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes looked a bit doubtful with the Apple TV rumors. “The seed for a number of these TV rumors comes from another rumor that Apple is buying up 32-inch LCD panels. My betting is that these panels will end up in 32-incj iMac units and not TVs,” Hughes said.
iTunes 11According to a recent report in 9to5Mac, Apple has already begun seeding iTunes 11 internally. The report stated that work on iTunes 11 started even before the release of iTunes 10.6, “and the development of the new software product… is currently focused on under-the-hood changes, rather than cosmetic changes.” “Apple is working on iTunes 11 as a version of iTunes that supports their upcoming iOS 6 release and future devices,” said the report. “While iTunes 11 is built as an iOS 6 compatible-release, according to sources, iTunes 11 could very well be a release coming farther down the road, and Apple could very well release another iTunes 10.x point update as a simple iOS-6-compatiblity release. One source calls that the more likely situation.” As per the report, the key features likely to be included in iTunes 11 are the software’s integration with iCloud and support for iOS 6. In addition, the report also said that “a full iTunes Store and App Store revamp is underway for a launch between this summer and the fall.”
Most tech products in general and Apple products in particular see a lot of chatter in the press before they're finally announced. The rumors and speculations try to envisage what the products will offer and when they will finally land on the users' hands.
As far as Apple is concerned, the Cupertino tech giant is expected to release a plethora of new products in 2012. The company has already started the party with the release of the new iPad and new Apple TV in March and now the focus is on another set of products ranging from new devices to significant software upgrades.
Yes, a flurry of rumors does precede each and every Apple product release. However, only a few of them turn out to be true while majority of them continue to be a part of the fancied rumor mill. But that hasn't stopped people's imaginations. That hasn't stopped them from hankering after something new from Apple.
Here's a compilation of rumored releases from Apple for 2012 that includes the next generation iPhone aka iPhone 5, the next version of iOS - iOS 6, MacBook Pro, a smart TV rumored as iPanel and iTunes 11. Start the slideshow to find out what the upcoming Apple products are expected to offer. | <urn:uuid:300f516f-29e7-4e3a-8555-2beb9b28e791> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ibtimes.com/iphone-5-itunes-11-top-5-rumored-apple-products-2012-555051 | 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 | 0.957133 | 2,705 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Covenant World Relief (CWR) partners with a ministry in Albania called Medical Ambassadors Foundation (MAF). MAF has been implementing Community Health Evangelism (CHE) in the Balkan region since about 1999—seeking practical and spiritual transformation for communities. The purpose of CHE is to promote good health by encouraging local community development projects and empowering a team of leaders who can serve the needs of their communities. MAF is doing this in Albania primarily by building a new sewer system. Their goal is to equip local leaders from within the area and the church to pursue healthier communities.
Their most recent update revealed this exciting news:
“There were teams and churches from six different cities in Albania for our annual evaluation meeting. We were very encouraged by how the Lord is working through Community Health Evangelism (CHE) in these places. It is such a blessing to have CHE in ten villages in different places in Albania and thousands of people’s lives touched by this Ministry of the Lord.
[In March, two doctors] launched training for 75 family doctors in the cities of Fier and Kavaja. Alongside professional issues we did the spiritual topic on “The Definition of Good Health”, which explains that good health is harmony with God, Self, Others and Nature. Another great Ministry from the Lord is the invitation from the “God’s Church” in Tirana to share CHE concepts with their Bible School students.”
MAF tells us of some encouraging ways the community is coming together in fellowship through a football match and a Women’s Day celebration. They are also making steps forward with a sewer project. MAF says, “Preparations for the Sewer Project in one part of Vloҫisht have been made and the local representatives of these 80 families are meeting and discussing the details of the project. They have started the committee training.”
For more information on this project, click here. | <urn:uuid:6951b6d4-c46a-4eb7-9aef-890c2b77891d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.covchurch.org/cwr/2012/05/evangelism-through-community-health/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961487 | 406 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Infrared Thermography: (Nearly) A Daily Tool
Click here to read more articles about Auditing
This article originally appeared in the March/April 2008
issue of Home Energy Magazine.
March 07, 2008
The potential returns of using IR thermography for retrofitting of existing homes are immense.
Infrared (IR) thermography as a diagnostic tool for building performance has been under utilized. In the past the expense of the tools—from $25k to $60k—and their technological complexity have made them inaccessible to most contractors. Perhaps the biggest barrier has been due to a limited understanding of how to use the technology effectively and, consequently, a lack of day-to-day experience in diverse conditions. Thankfully, as the cost of the technology has decreased—to under $10k for many systems—more and more people are discovering the remarkable value it has in all stages of energy work for both new and retrofit buildings. And as more people use IR thermography regularly our collective foundation of field knowledge has grown substantially.
To read complete online articles, you need to sign up for an Online Subscription.
Once an order has been placed there is an automatic $10 processing fee that will be deducted with any cancellation.
The Home Energy Online articles are for personal use only and may not be printed for distribution. For permission to reprint, please send an e-mail to [email protected]. | <urn:uuid:2daf249f-3d2f-4a55-be8b-ab5e222e5846> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.homeenergy.org/show/article/nav/auditing/page/4/id/507 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947332 | 291 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Justice at last for the forgotten victims of sectarian murder in Dundalk
Search Allof Ireland.com
The Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland edition), 30 November 2006:
Brits did help kill eighteen civilians
Thatcher knew of collusion says report into atrocities
By Geraldine Comiskey
British forces collaborated with loyalist terrorists to kill innocent people in Ireland in the 1970s, it was claimed last night.
The Irish Parliament report found the British army and police colluded with gangs who carried out a series of bombings and murders.
They included the Miami Showband massacre, the Dublin Airport bombing and the bombing of two bars. Other attacks investigated by the committee brought the death toll to 18.
Shockingly, the report also revealed that the Government - under Margaret Thatcher - was fully aware of the collusion.
Members of the security forces suspected of collusion are named, along with several loyalists, in the report, which is the fourth produced by Justice Henry Barron, for the Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women's Rights.
The eport criticises the Northern Ireland Office and RUC chiefs for not co-operating with inquiries into many of the killings. It accuses the UK's security forces of "engaging in the butchering of innocent victims" and of "international acts of terrorism".
The report was welcomed by Margaret Urwin of the Justice for the Forgotten Group which has been campaigning for an inquiry into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings.
Ms Urwin said the report "does notbeat about the bush".
She said it confirmed suspicions that "the British Government was involved in murder on the streets of a friendly state". Taoiseach Bertie Ahern described the findings as "deeply disturbing".
He said the Government had pressed Britain for co-operation and had been in touch with them yesterday to urge them to examine the findings of that report and the final report into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings due to be released on December 10.
Mr Ahern said he had set up the inquiries because of "long-standing suspicions" about the attacks.
He added: "We must also remember all the many other victims on all sides, in what was a dark and tragic period of the history of this island."
Last night the DUP's Jeffrey Donaldson, who once served in the Ulster Defence Regiment, defended the organisation and the RUC.
Although the MP accepted that rogue elements were involved in atrocities, he said "there's no evidence" to prove that systematic security force plotting with terrorists took place.
I Top I
Massacre of the innocents
Kay's Tavern - Twomen killed in the bombing of Kay's Tavern in Dundalk on december 19, 1975. Twenty other people were injured in the Red Hand Commando attack which destroyed two buildings. The killers were believed to be from Portadown, Co Armagh. No one has ever been charged with the murders.
Dublin Airport - John Hayes, 38, killed when a UDA bomb exploded in the men's toilets at the arrivals area on November 29, 1975.
Three Star Inn - Patrick Mohan, 53, dies on March 9, 1976, after a car bomb exploded outside the Three Star Inn in Castleblayney, Co Monaghan. Five others injured in the attack.
The car used to carry the bomb had been stolen in the Shankhill area of Belfast.
Miami Showband - Fran O'Toole, 29, Brian McCoy, 33, and 23-year-old Anthony Geraghty shot by UVF gang outside Newry, Co Down on July 31, 1975. The loyalists, including members of the UDR, staged a fake army road block. Two of the gang, Harris Boyle and Wesley Somerville, were also killed when a bomb they intended to plant in the minibus exploded prematurely.
I Top I
The Daily Mirror (Editorial), 30 November 2006:
Voice of the Daily Mirror:
Collusion: The Truth
The families of those killed north and south of the Border with the help of the British Government moved one step towards justice yesterday.
The extent of collusion between security forces, which should have been independent, and loyalist paramilitaries, was laid bare in horrific terms yesterday.
The findings are a damning indictment of the British Government, which has blood on its hands.
The most infamous of the atrocities examined by an Irish committee were the Dublin and Monaghan bombings and the Miami Showband massacre.
Their relatives and the relatives of the others killed in similar, collusion-linked murders, now need to know the full truth about who knew what about the killings.
They need to know who passed on the information - and who is accountable.
The findings come at a critical time as attempts to restore power sharing at Stormont continue but these findings should be dealt with immediately.
Northern Ireland can't move into the future while carrying such pain and mistrust from the past.
I Top I
See early media reports from the http://www.breakingnews.ie/ dated 29 November 2006:
See also the following report from ireland.com: Barron finds British collusion in attacks
The Argus (Dundalk), 29 November 2006: A high level of collusion found in Dundalk bombing
The Daily Telegraph, 29 November 2006: Ahern call for ‘collusion’ inquiry
The Irish Independent, 29 November 2006: British and loyalists 'colluded in bombing'
Ulster Television News online, 29 November 2006:Green Party demand public inquiry
The Irish Examiner, 30 November 2006: Government backs report on collusion in North
The Irish Examiner, 30 November 2006: The nine attacks — a litany of terror and death
The Irish Examiner, 30 November 2006: ‘What we have heard today are things we have known for years’
The Irish Independent, 30 November 2006: British colluded in 'butchery'
The Irish News, 30 November 2006: Families welcome collusion findings
The Irish Times, 30 November 2006: London must co-operate on collusion inquiries - Ahern
The Irish Times, 30 November 2006: 'Widespread' collusion by British forces behind atrocities
The Irish Times, 30 November 2006: Remit: the atrocities covered
The Dundalk Democrat, 6 December 2006: Dundalk Bombings News Special: Reports by Anne Marie Eaton:
The Argus (Dundalk), 6 December 2006: News Special Report of Independent Commission of Inquiry into Dundalk Bombing
I Top I
Here is media coverage of the fourth Barron Report:
The Irish News, 5 July 2006: "Relatives 'furious' over Barron report blunder
See also The Irish News online breaking news, 5 July 2006: Pub bombers 'treated better than victims' families'
See also: Oireachtas press release of 5 July 2006.
Daily Ireland, 6 July 2006: Blast victim’s relative hits out
The Irish Examiner, 6 July 2006: Loyalists had licence to kill Catholics, finds inquiry
The Irish Independent, 6 July 2006: Bombers 'treated better than victims'
The Irish News, 6 July 2006: Relatives want 1975 bombing inquiry
The Irish News, 6 July 2006: Horror lives on for bar owner
The Irish News, 6 July 2006: Report points to RUC reservist's farm as base for UVF operations
The Irish News, 6 July 2006: Hope that collusion theories may be brought to surface
The Irish Times, 6 July 2006: 1970s bombing victims complain of official neglect
LMFM Radio online news report, 6 July 2006: Hearings into report on Dundalk bombing to begin in September
TOM News, 6 July 2006: Latest Barron Report Highlights Need for Ahern-Blair Summit on Collusion
Daily Ireland, 7 July 2006: Taoiseach urged to call summit
Daily Ireland, 7 July 2006: Barron inquiry typically leaves more questions than answers Conclusion of report into collusion allegations between loyalists and the British government is 'unsatisfactory'
Daily Ireland, 7 July 2006: Families to discuss Barron report
Daily Ireland, 7 July 2006: Garda probe questions raised
The Irish News of the World, 9 July 2006: Showband massacre: shocking new report Former cop behind plot
The Newry Democrat, 11 July 2006: Collusion summit call
The Dundalk Democrat, 12 July 2006: Gardai expected bomb at Imperial
The Dundalk Democrat, 12 July 2006: Barron Report is a step closer to the truth
The Dundalk Democrat, 12 July 2006: Families will continue their campaign for justice
The Argus (Dundalk), 12 July 2006: Inquiry lists 19 suspects
The Argus (Dundalk), 12 July 2006: Members of RUC and UDR probably knew about plan to bomb Dundalk
The Argus (Dundalk), 12 July 2006: Guide to names listed by inquiry
The Argus (Dundalk), 12 July 2006: My father and family have been let down by the government
The Argus (Dundalk), 12 July 2006: Authorities reluctance to admit mistakes cost families heartache
The Argus (Dundalk), 12 July 2006:Joint Committee likely to hold series of hearings in autumn
The Argus (Dundalk), 12 July 2006: Sharp differences over fingermarks evidence
The Argus (Dundalk), 12 July 2006:Questions that still need answers
Daily Ireland, 13 July 2006: Justice Group seeks advice
I Top I
Produced in association with the Ludlow Family.
Last edited: 16 December 2006 22:06:45
Copyright © 2006 the Rooney, Watters and Ludlow families.
All rights reserved. Revised: December 16, 2006 . | <urn:uuid:74c541b2-7605-48b5-9881-2839427cf8f6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.michael.donegan.care4free.net/dundalk_bombing/daily_mirror301106.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950699 | 1,990 | 1.5 | 2 |
Sarurday, October 10th at 10 am, the Washington State chapter of The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention is holding our annual community walk at Greenlake Park.
In the United States, a person dies by suicide every 16 minutes, claiming more than 32,000 lives each year.
This is a public awareness community walk, where anyone can come out, walk, and support this important cause. There is no fee required to register and walk, however more information and advance registration is available at www.outofthedarkness.org.
Please join us this Saturday to celebrate life, and learn more about our chapter, research, and educational programs about depression and other underlying causes of suicide, and help save lives. | <urn:uuid:2f99dd7c-7d2e-4382-8a0c-a679449301f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.star1015.com/younews/63693597.html?form=signup | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946987 | 147 | 1.742188 | 2 |
On September 12, 2011 the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services proposed a new rule that would amend the regulations promulgated under Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 (“CLIA”). The proposed regulations specify that a lab must provide access to completed test reports upon a patient’s request. The lab’s authentication process must confirm that the reports belong to the patient making the request. Comments must be submitted to HHS by November 13, 2011.
The HIPAA Privacy Rule currently provides individuals the right to review and receive copies of their medical records. However, it currently contains exceptions for CLIA-certified and CLIA-exempt laboratories. The proposed rule would also amend these provisions of the HIPAA Privacy Rule. If adopted, covered entity laboratories would have to disclose laboratory results to patients unless another exception to the access rule under the HIPAA Privacy Rule would apply.
CLIA was enacted in 1988 to establish quality standards for laboratory testing. It covers all phases of laboratory testing, including the reporting of test results. The statute requires labs to disclose results only to “authorized persons, as defined by state law.” The current CLIA regulations also permit a laboratory to disclose test results to the person responsible for using the test results in the treatment context and, in the case of reference laboratories, the referring lab. Thus, if state law does not provide for individual access to the person’s test results, that patient must receive his results through the ordering provider.
Since CLIA was enacted in 1988, there have been many changes in the provision of healthcare, such as individualized medicine and a patient’s active involvement in her own healthcare. HHS determined that the CLIA limitations on the disclosure of laboratory test results interfere with these developments. Moreover, CMS believes the provision of direct patient access to laboratory test reports would support the commitment and goals of HHS regarding the widespread adoption of electronic health records by 2014.
As most readers know, HIPAA provided for the establishment of national standards to protect the privacy and security of personal health information. A laboratory that conducts electronic transactions, for example, electronic submission of healthcare claims for payment, is a “covered entity” under HIPAA.
Under the proposed rule, laboratories, just like other covered entities, could charge a reasonable, cost-based fee to provide individuals with copies of their results. This fee may include only the cost of copying, including supplies and labor, and postage if the patient requests that the copy be mailed. If the patient has agreed to receive a summary of the protected health information, the laboratory may also charge a fee for preparation of the explanation.
Another proposed but not yet enacted regulation also comes into play. On July 14, 2010, HHS issued a proposed rule to implement most of the privacy and security provisions of the HITECH Act. The draft regulation includes provisions to strengthen an individual’s right to receive an electronic copy of his protected health information, if the information is maintained electronically in a “designated record set” of the provider. (A “designated record set” is basically the group of records maintained by a provider that it uses to make decisions about patients, or the provider’s medical and billing records.) HHS also proposed to allow reasonable cost based fees reflecting the cost of labor for creating the electronic copy of the information and the supplies used, such as compact discs. HIPAA covered laboratories would be required to comply with the Privacy Rule’s provisions regarding the form of access provided and fees, as they exist currently and then are ultimately modified by a final rule implementing the HITECH Act. The individual could request an electronic copy of the information in the format of Microsoft Word or Excel, Text, HTML or PDF, among other formats.
HIPAA provides that the administrative simplification regulations preempt any contrary provision of state law. A provision of state law is “contrary” to a provision in the HIPAA rules if the covered entity would find it impossible to comply with both the state and federal requirements. It is also contrary if the provision of state law stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes of HIPAA.
The HIPAA Privacy Rule includes an exception from general preemption if the provision of state law relates to the privacy of information and is more stringent than a HIPAA standard. With respect to a state law pertaining to an individual’s right to access her protected health information, a state law is more stringent than the Privacy Rule if the state law permits greater rights of access for amendment. A number of states have laws that would prohibit the laboratory from releasing a test report directly to the patient or that prohibit the release without the ordering provider’s consent. If adopted, these proposed regulatory changes would preempt contrary state laws that prohibit laboratories from directly providing the results to the patients.
Sometimes laboratories receive a test order with only an anonymous identifier, so they may be unable to identify the individual who is the subject of the test report. In that situation, the laboratory could not satisfy the verification requirement of the proposed rule and therefore is not required to provide an individual with access to the test. CMS indicated that it is not its intent to discourage anonymous testing.
The final rule will be effective 60 days after publication in the Federal Register, and HIPAA covered laboratories would be required to comply by no later than 180 days after the effective date of the final rule.
The proposed regulation would rationalize the law regarding clinical laboratory test results. Congress did not intend to prohibit patient access to his results in 1988; instead, it deferred to state law. Then in 1996, Congress enacted HIPAA, which preempted contrary state law. The Privacy Rule has been evolving since 2000, and so has the health care industry. Direct to consumer testing laboratories have developed that provide various types of screening tests, including thyroid monitoring, lipid panels, average glucose levels, etc., without requiring a physician prescription. The rule, when adopted, would recognize these realities.
Last year I posted about whether the HUD LEAN Mortgage Insurance Process is working. It appears that HUD still has an unmanageable backlog. Yesterday HUD’s Office of Healthcare Programs announced that it is changing its electronic firm application package requirements and deleting various documents from the firm application. These documents will only have to be submitted prior to OGC review. The new requirements should be posted shortly on the HUD Underwriting Guidance Home Page. Not sure that LEAN is working as hoped.
NEW IRS FORM FOR SOME EXEMPT ORGANIZATION DETERMINATIONS And a Refresher Course on Certain Private Foundation/Public Charity Issues
All nonprofits must file either a Form 1023 or a Form 1024 in order to obtain an initial determination of exempt status. The IRS has released a new form that tax-exempt organizations will use to request certain determinations about their tax exempt status. The new Form 8940, Request for Miscellaneous Determination, will be used to obtain advance approval of certain activities, exemption from Form 990 filing requirements and certain private foundation status issues. (Private foundations are a less favored category of charitable organizations, which are subject to stricter rules and certain excise taxes.) Use of Form 8940 is expected to be simpler, cheaper and faster than a formal request for a private letter ruling.
There is an eight-page set of instructions for the completion of Form 8940. These instructions specify what information needs to be submitted to support each of the nine types of requests that may be submitted. A user fee must accompany most requests. For the following three miscellaneous determinations, the user fee is $1,000:
- Advance approval of set-asides by private foundations;
- Advance approval of voter registration activities;
- Advance approval of scholarship procedures of private foundations.
For the other six types of miscellaneous determinations for which this form may be used, the user fee is $400:
- Exemption from Form 990 filing requirements;
- Advance approval of “unusual grants;”
- Determination of type of section 509(a)(3) supporting organizations;
- Reclassification of foundation status, including a voluntary request from a public charity for private foundation status;
- Termination of private foundation status – advance ruling request;
- Termination of private foundation status – 60 month period ending.
Minimum Distribution Rules Applicable to Private Foundations
One of the requirements applicable only to private foundations is that they must make a minimum amount of “qualifying distributions” each year. An amount set aside for a specific project may be treated as a qualifying distribution in the year it is set aside, rather than in the year that it is actually paid, if at the time it was set aside the foundation establishes that:
(1) The amount will actually be paid for the specific project within 60 months from the date of the first set-aside, and either
(2) (i) The set-aside satisfies the suitability test; that is, that the project is one that can be better accomplished by a set-aside than by immediate payment, or
(ii) the foundation has satisfied certain relatively complicated cash distribution rules in the past.
Private foundations may use Form 8940 to obtain advance approval of these set-asides.
Voter Registration Activities
Private foundations may not make any payments to carry on any voter registration drive. “Nonpartisan” activities are permitted. Activities that satisfy all of the following conditions are considered nonpartisan:
(1) The organization conducting the voter registration drive is an exempt § 501(c) (3) organization;
(2) Its activities are nonpartisan, are not confined to one specific election period and are carried on in at least five states;
(3) The organization spends at least 85% of its income directly for the active conduct of the exempt purpose for which it is organized and operated;
(4) The organization receives at least 85% of its support (other than gross investment income) from exempt organizations, the general public, and/or governmental units;
(5) It does not receive more than 25% of its support (other than gross investment income) from any one exempt organization;
(6) It does not receive more than 50% of its support from gross investment income; and
(7) Contributions to the organization for voter registration drives are not subject to conditions that they may be used only in specified localities of the United States or that they may be used only in one specific election period.
In determining whether the organization meets the support test in items (4), (5) and (6), the support received during the tax year and the four immediately preceding tax years of the organization is taken into account. For organizations with less than four years of operational experience, support tests may be determined by taking into account all available years the organization has been in existence. Again, a private foundation may use Form 8940 for advance approval of its voter registration activities.
Grants to Individuals
If a private foundation makes grants to individuals, such as scholarships, they must be awarded in accordance with procedures approved in advance by the IRS. To secure such approval, the private foundation must demonstrate in its request for advance approval that:
(1) Its procedure awards grants on an objective and non-discriminatory basis;
(2) The procedure is reasonably calculated to result in performance by the grantees of the activities that the grants are intended to finance; and
(3) The foundation will supervise the grants to determine whether the recipients have fulfilled the grant terms.
Approval is based on an evaluation of the foundation’s entire system of standards, procedures and follow-up. Therefore, separate approval for each grant program is not required. Once obtained, such approval applies to any subsequent grant program so long as the procedures under which it is conducted do not differ materially from those described in the original request for approval. A private foundation may use Form 8940 to obtain advance approval of its scholarship procedures.
Exemption from Filing Forms 990
Most organizations must file an annual information return (Form 990 or Form 990-EZ). However, organizations affiliated with one or more churches are exempted from filing Form 990, so long as they satisfy the requirements of 26 C.F.R. § 1.6033-2(g) and (h) (2011), as well as Revenue Procedure 96-10. In addition, organizations that are affiliated with a governmental unit are exempt as long as they qualify under the requirements of Revenue Procedure 95-48. An organization may request a determination that it is not required to file the annual information return when it applies for exemption by providing information requested on the application form (Form 1023 or 1024). If an organization does not request this determination at that time, or its initial request is not approved, it may request a ruling on its filing requirement by using Form 8940.
Publicly Supported Public Charities
Two types of public charities obtain that status based on their sources of support. If an organization receives a substantial part of its support in the form of contributions from other publicly supported organizations, governmental units and/or the general public, it may qualify under §170(b)(1)(a)(vi). For example, a human service organization whose revenue is generated through widespread public fundraising campaigns, United Way drives or government grants is considered a publicly supported charity. In addition, an organization that receives no more than one-third of its support from gross investment income and more than one-third of its support from contributions, membership fees and gross receipts from activities related to its exempt functions is also considered a publicly supported charity under § 509(a)(2). For example, a non-profit theater with box office revenue would usually qualify as a public charity under §509(a) (2).
The difficulty with these support tests is that they include in the definition of “support” contributions from each donor only up to two percent of the organization’s total support. This two percent limitation does not apply if a grant is considered an “unusual grant.” An “unusual grant” is one that is attracted because of the publicly supported nature of the organization, in an unusual or unexpected amount that would otherwise adversely affect the status of the organization as normally being publicly supported. An organization may use Form 8940 for an advance determination that a potential contribution is an unusual grant, excluded from these public support calculations.
Another type of public charity is a § 509(a) (3) supporting organization. This is an organization that carries out its exempt purposes by supporting other exempt organizations, usually other public charities.
A supporting organization must be organized and operated exclusively to support specified supported organizations. Moreover, it must have one of three relationships with the supported organizations, all of which are intended to ensure that the supporting organization is responsive to the needs of the supported organization and intimately involved in its operations and that the public charity is motivated to be attentive to the operations of the supporting organization. No supporting organization may be controlled by “disqualified persons,” usually substantial contributors. The following are the three types of supporting organizations:
- Type I – the supporting organization is operated, supervised or controlled by the supported organization;
- Type II – the supporting organization is supervised or controlled in connection with the supported organization;
- Type III – the supporting organization is operated in connection with the supported organization.
Because Type III relationships are less formal than a Type I or Type II relationship, Type III organizations must meet both a responsiveness test and an integral part test. These tests are designed to ensure that the supporting organization is responsive to the needs of the public charity and that the public charity oversees the operations of the supporting organization.
If a Type III supporting organization changes its governance or operational structure, it may qualify under as a Type I or Type II supporting organization. A supporting organization in that situation may use Form 8940 to request a determination in the change of type of supporting organization it is.
Reclassification of Private Foundation/Public Charity Status
Sometimes a private foundation expands its sources of support or operations so that it may in the future qualify as a public charity. On the other hand, a public charity may also change its organizational structure or sources of support and no longer qualify as a public charity. In both of those situations, the organization may request reclassification of its foundation status using Form 8940.
Once an organization is classified as a private foundation, it may only terminate that status under the provisions of § 507. Under § 507, there are four ways to terminate private foundation status, two of which involve tax liability:
(1) Voluntary termination by notifying the IRS of the intent to terminate and paying a termination tax. Unless the organization requests abatement, it must pay the tax at the time the statement is filed.
(2) Involuntary termination for either repeated or flagrant violation of the private foundation excise tax provisions, in which case the organization also becomes subject to a termination tax.
(3) Transfer of all its assets to one or more organizations that have been determined to be public charities under § 509(a) (1). The recipient organization must have been in existence and described under § 509(a) (1) for a continuous period of at least 60 months.
(4) An organization may operate as a public charity for a continuous period of 60 months after giving appropriate notice to the IRS. In this way it may terminate its private foundation status as long as it meets the requirements of § 509(a)(1), (2) or (3) for a continuous 60 month period beginning with the first day of any tax year. It must notify the IRS before beginning the 60-month period that it is terminating its private foundation status. The organization also must establish immediately after the end of the 60-month period that it has met these requirements. The organization may use Form 8940 both to give prior notice to the IRS as well as to demonstrate how it has satisfied the requirements at the end of the 60-month period.
If your organization is grappling with issues covered by Form 8940, this simplified process may expedite resolution of your concerns. However, if your organization is experiencing other issues, like how to handle a material change in its operations, it may have to fall back on the old, time-consuming and relatively expensive private letter ruling process.
There are many, sometimes overlapping, ways to protect from misappropriation products designed and manufactured by a company. Patent law can be used to protect the “mechanics” of the product, the part of it that makes it perform what it was designed to perform. Copyright law protects the aesthetics of the product, its form as opposed to its function. Trademark law, specifically as it applies to “trade dress,” protects the appearance of the product to the extent that it identifies to the consuming public the source of the product: which company manufactures or sells it? Some examples of “trade dress” that have been recognized as protectable trademarks are McNeil Nutritionals’ yellow packaging for its Splenda® no-calorie sweetener, the octagonal shape of Black & Decker Corporation’s deadbolt door keys, the shape of a COCA-COLA® bottle, etc. In fact, Coca-Cola recently settled its case claiming that the packaging of PepsiCo’s Trop50 brand of fruit juices copied the look, or trade dress, of Coca-Cola’s billion-dollar Simply juice line.
A detailed explanation of patent law is beyond both the scope of this post and my ability. However, I would like to focus on how copyright and trademark law can be used to protect the form and source of a product.
The Copyright Act affords protection to “original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated.” 17 U.S.C. § 102(a). Copyright protection extends to three-dimensional “sculptural works,” including some useful articles. 17 U.S.C. § 102(a) (5). “The design of a useful article…shall be considered…a sculptural work only if, and only to the extent that, such design incorporates pictorial, graphic, or sculptural features that can be identified separately from, and are capable of existing independently of, the utilitarian aspects of the article.”[i]
In Universal Furniture International v. Collezione Europa USA, 618 F.3d 417 (4th Circuit 2010), available here: http://tinyurl.com/3e3baf6, Universal, a business that designs, imports and distributes furniture, sued Collezione for copyright infringement as well as certain state law claims. Collezione had a reputation of being a “knock-off” furniture company, that is, one that imitates the designs of its competitors for a lower cost. In fact, the company’s president acknowledged that it routinely imitated other company’s furniture designs. The designer retained by Universal’s predecessor had consulted public domain sources such as furniture books and antique magazines and combined elements of those designs to create a different look from what had been seen before. For its Grand Inheritance Collection, Universal filed copyright registration forms that described the subject of the registration as “decorative sculptural designs on furniture; an adaptation of pre-existing decorative designs; compilation of decorative designs on suites of furniture.” The registration form for its English Manor Collection noted that, although the collection contained “public domain elemental designs,” Universal sought copyright protection in the “original decorative designs appearing on suites of furniture including original adaptations of public domain designs and original compilations of decorative designs.”
A year following introduction of these two furniture lines, Collezione introduced collections that imitated both lines. These lines were displayed at the High Point, North Carolina Furniture Market in October 2004. To make matters worse, the trial court found that Collezione also displayed furniture pieces actually manufactured by Universal, from which it had simply removed Universal’s stickers and which it claimed as its own. The trial court awarded Universal more than $11 million in damages, representing the gross revenues that Collezione had earned from selling the infringing items.
On appeal, the Fourth Circuit first rejected Collezione’s argument that Universal failed to establish its title to the copyright. The court pointed out that the registration certificates were presumptive proof of Universal’s ownership of the asserted copyrights. In addition, the original design service agreement clearly transferred to Universal’s predecessor the intellectual property rights created by the designer. The court held that the merger documents between the predecessor and Universal sufficiently transferred the asserted copyrights to Universal.
Next, the Fourth Circuit assessed whether Universal’s designs were sufficiently original for copyright protection. To claim a valid copyright, one must show that the designs are (1) original and (2) conceptually separable from the utilitarian aspects of the furniture. Establishing originality is easy to do. “Original” means only that the work was independently created by the author, as opposed to copied from other works, and it possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity. The requisite level of creativity is extremely low. Again, the submission of a valid certificate of copyright registration creates a presumption of originality for five years from the date of registration. Both the trial court and the Fourth Circuit were satisfied that the original artist expended original skill and labor in selecting and adapting the decorative elements and created a new “separate entity” by blending elements from different historical periods. He modified and arranged the decorative elements in unique ways, which both courts held was more than sufficient to satisfy the low threshold for originality.
In a surprisingly complex portion of the opinion, the Court of Appeals then turned to what it called a more “vexing,” perhaps more metaphysical, question. Were Universal’s designs conceptually separable from the utilitarian aspects of the furniture? As noted above, the statute provides copyright protection only if the design of the useful article “… incorporates pictorial, graphic, or sculptural features that can be identified separately from, and are capable of existing independently of, the utilitarian aspects of the article.” The court referred to this as the “conceptual separability test.” It noted that the decorative elements must be capable of separate identification from the utilitarian aspects of the furniture. They also must be capable of existing independently of the utilitarian aspects of the furniture. The court agreed with the trial court that the artistic and aesthetic features of the furniture could be conceived of as having been added to, or superimposed upon, an otherwise utilitarian article. They are therefore capable of existing independently of the furniture.
The court next considered whether Collezione infringed Universal’s copyrights. A successful claim of copyright infringement requires a plaintiff to prove that the defendant copied the original elements of the work. Usually a plaintiff will possess no direct evidence of copying. However, courts have held that an author may create a presumption of copying by indirect evidence establishing that the defendant had access to the copyrighted work and that the defendant’s work is substantially similar to the protected material. Substantial similarity is a two-pronged test. The plaintiff must show that the two works are (1) extrinsically similar because they contain substantially similar ideas that are subject to copyright protection, and (2) intrinsically similar in the sense that they express those ideas in a substantially similar manner from the perspective of the intended audience of the work. The extrinsic inquiry is an objective one, and the intrinsic analysis is subjective – it involves the perspective of the object’s intended observer. The Fourth Circuit affirmed the trial court’s determination that Collezione’s furniture collection shared with Universal’s a “highly decorative appearance with a traditional feel” and “very ornamental designs combined with basic styles that resemble furniture pieces from England in the 18th and 19th centuries.” In so finding, the court relied on the plaintiff’s expert’s testimony. In addition, the district court properly assessed that the ordinary observer of individual pieces of furniture within the disputed collections would see each piece as the same, discounting any trivial differences. Although the trial court did mention certain non-copyrightable features, such as the furniture’s shape and color, it appropriately focused on whether the ordinary, reasonable observer would find the furniture lines, as a whole, to be substantially similar.
The Fourth Circuit then moved on to the Lanham Act claim that Collezione marketed actual pieces from Universal’s line as its own furniture. The Lanham Act prohibits a “false designation of origin” that is “likely to cause confusion, or to cause mistake, or to deceive as to the affiliation, connection, or association…or as to the origin” of “goods, services, or commercial activities.” 15 U.S.C. § 1125(a) (1) (A). The type of false designation of origin at issue in this case is called “reverse passing off,” which occurs when a producer misrepresents someone else’s goods or services as his own. The reverse passing off claim required Universal to prove four elements: (1) that the work at issue originated with it; (2) that the origin of the work was falsely designated by Colleziones; (3) that the false designation of origin was likely to cause consumer confusion; and (4) that Universal was harmed by Collezione’s false designation. The district court properly found that Collezione falsely designated the origin of the furniture by displaying as its own actual pieces from Universal’s line at the High Point Furniture Market. In addition, the court of appeals agreed that…“it would be difficult to fathom a situation where a customer would not be confused by seeing two different companies marketing the same furniture under different names.” Finally, Universal introduced evidence that Collezione sold pieces in its collection to customers who placed their orders during the period in which the company displayed corresponding pieces of Universal’s line. Therefore, the ruling that Collezione violated the Lanham Act was affirmed.
Thus, in that situation, the original furniture maker was able to protect the ornamental features of its products, although the products themselves were highly functional. However, in the Seventh Circuit, a trademark registrant was unable to protect the x-frame design, or trade dress, of its folding chairs. See Specialized Seating, Inc. v. Greenwich Industries, L.P., 616 F.3d 722 (2010), available here: http://tinyurl.com/3gjsu8m. Greenwich Industries had been using that x-frame for many years. In 2004, Greenwich, doing business as Clarin, obtained a trademark registration for a particular x-frame design of folding chairs. In 2001, its competitor, Specialized Seating, began to sell folding chairs that to an untrained eye looked like Clarin’s trademark chair. There were differences in construction and detail, but the basic design tracked the registered mark.
Clarin’s rights in the mark by this time were “incontestable” under 15 U.S.C. § 1065. However, Specialized Seating asserted that it could raise two of the defenses available in a case involving infringement of an “incontestable” mark. The first defense was that “the registration…was obtained fraudulently,” § 115(d) (1), and the second defense was that “the mark is functional,” § 115(d) (8). The district court found that the x-frame construction was functional because it was designed to be an optimal trade-off between the chair’s weight (and thus its cost) and its strength. An x-frame chair also folds itself naturally when knocked over, can be attached to neighboring chairs and supports greater vertical loads than other designs. It concluded not only that the overall design of Clarin’s chair was functional but also that each feature was functional. Moreover, it concluded that Clarin had defrauded the Patent and Trademark Office by giving misleadingly incomplete answers to the trademark examiner’s questions. The examining attorney initially had turned down Clarin’s proposal to register the design as a trademark, observing that the design appeared to be functional. Clarin replied that a patent it held on the x-frame chair did not include all of the features in the mark’s design. What Clarin did not tell the examiner is that it held three other patents on x-frame designs. The district judge concluded that the four patents collectively covered every feature on the design submitted for a trademark, including a functional improvement over the original back support. Clarin should have disclosed all of these utility patents. Had it done so, the judge thought, the examiner would have refused to register the proposed mark.
The Court of Appeals held that since utility patents are supposed to be restricted to inventions that have utility, and thus are functional, inventions covered by utility patents pass into the public domain when the patents expire. Therefore, it is inappropriate to use trademark law to afford extended protection to a patented invention. Although there are many ways to design folding chairs, the Court of Appeals held that all of the designs are functional, in the sense that they represent different compromises along the axis of weight, strength, kind of material, ease of set up, ability to connect the chairs together for maximum seating density, etc. Because the district court did not commit clear error in finding Clarin’s design to be functional, the Seventh Circuit concluded it was unnecessary to decide whether the company committed fraud on the Patent and Trademark Office. A finding of fraud would only knock out the mark’s incontestable status and registration, but it would not affect the mark’s validity. However, a finding of functionality affects the very validity of the mark.
To sum up, in order to protect an industrial design under either copyright or trademark law, the design must not be “functional.” For copyright protection to be available, the design must be “creative” and “original.” For trademark protection to apply, the design must identify the source of the product.
[i] “Useful article” is an article having an intrinsic utilitarian function that is not merely to portray the appearance of the article or to convey information.” 17 U.S.C. § 101.
I discussed at http://tinyurl.com/2b9c9pt the cases from the First Circuit holding constitutional New Hampshire and Maine statutes restricting the sale of prescriber identifiable prescription information. The Supreme Court declined to hear appeals from these cases. I predicted that it would take a conflict among the circuits, i.e., a holding from another circuit striking down such a statute as unconstitutional, for the issue to reach the Supreme Court. That is exactly what has happened.
In 2007, the State of Vermont enacted the following statute:
”A health insurer, a self-insured employer, an electronic transmission intermediary, a pharmacy, or other similar entity shall not … exchange for value regulated records containing prescriber-identifiable information, nor permit the use of regulated records containing prescriber-identifiable information for marketing or promoting a prescription drug, unless the prescriber consents …. Pharmaceutical manufacturers and pharmaceutical marketers shall not use prescriber-identifiable information for marketing or promoting a prescription drug unless the prescriber consents ….”
The same prescription drug data intermediaries that challenged the New Hampshire and Maine statutes filed suit against the Vermont attorney general, seeking an injunction against enforcement of the law. The district court found that the statute was a constitutionally permissible commercial speech restriction and that the statute did not violate the dormant Commerce Clause. Plaintiffs appealed, and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the statute is an impermissible restriction on commercial speech. IMS Health Inc. v. Sorrell, No. 09-1913-cv(L), 09-2056-cv (CON) (2d Cir., Nov. 23, 2010), available here http://tinyurl.com/48nhak6. The Supreme Court granted the State’s petition for a writ of certiorari on January 7, and oral argument is set forth Tuesday, April 26.
In the Second Circuit, the State of Vermont attempted to avoid a First Amendment analysis by claiming that the data constitute merely a commodity, which is subject to regulation. The court rejected that argument, holding that the data in fact comprise information protected by the First Amendment. “The statute is … clearly aimed at influencing the supply of information, a core First Amendment concern…. [W]hen a statute aims to restrict the availability of [truthful] information for some purposes, that restriction must be judged under the First Amendment.”
The data mining companies argued that the statute restricted noncommercial speech, such that a strict scrutiny standard of review applied. The court noted that the primary purpose of detailing is to propose a commercial transaction (the sale of prescription drugs to patients), so it analyzed the statute as a restriction on commercial speech.
To sustain a restriction on commercial speech, the government must assert a substantial interest to be achieved by the regulation. The state alleged that the statute advances three substantial state interests: (1) protection of public health; (2) protection of the privacy of prescribers and prescribing information, and (3) containment of health care costs in both the private and public sectors. The appellants did not argue that protection of public health and cost containment are not substantial state interests. They did dispute whether protecting the privacy of prescribers and prescribing information is a substantial state interest.
The court noted that the statute neither forbids the collection of prescriber-identifiable data nor bans any use of the data other than for marketing purposes. The state argued that use for marketing purposes threatened the integrity of the prescribing process and damaged patients’ trust in their doctors by preventing patients from believing that their physicians are inappropriately influenced by such marketing. The court held that this interest is too speculative to qualify as a substantial state interest.
Next, the state had to demonstrate that the regulation directly advances the state interest involved. The court held that the statute does not advance the state’s interests in public health and reducing costs in a direct and material way. It restricts the information available to detailers so that their marketing practices will be less effective and less likely to influence the prescribing practices of physicians. “The appellees have failed to cite to any case … that has upheld a regulation on speech when the government interest in the regulation is to bring about indirectly some social good or alter some conduct by restricting the information available to those whose conduct the government seeks to influence.”
To uphold the statute, the government would also have to demonstrate that its governmental interest could not be served as well by a more limited restriction on commercial speech. The court stated:
“The statute prohibits the transmission or use of [prescriber-identifiable] data for marketing purposes for all prescription drugs regardless of any problem with the drug or whether there is a generic alternative. The statute bans speech beyond what the state’s evidence purportedly addresses.”
Moreover, the court believed that Vermont does have more direct, less speech-restrictive means available. The state could wait to assess what the impact of a newly funded counter-speech program will be, including academic detailing and sample generic vouchers. Interestingly, the court also believed that the state could mandate the use of generic drugs as a first course of treatment, absent a physician’s determination otherwise, “for all those patients receiving Medicare Part D funds.” It is not clear how a state can mandate or restrict the use of Medicare Part D funds, but, if the Attorney General raised that concern, the court ignored it.
The court concluded that the statute cannot survive intermediate scrutiny and is an unconstitutional regulation of commercial speech. Therefore, it did not have to reach the dormant Commerce Clause issue, i.e. whether the statute unconstitutionally restricts commerce outside Vermont.
As indicated above, oral argument is set forth April 26. Because argument will take place so close to the end of the Court’s term on June 30, we may not have a definitive ruling until next fall or later.
At http://tinyurl.com/2bqsuty I discussed the Harper v. Maverick Recording Company case. In that case, the Fifth Circuit held that a 16-year old cheerleader was properly held liable for copyright infringement by downloading 37 audio files through the file-sharing program LimeWire. It also held that she was not an “innocent infringer” and imposed minimum statutory damages of $750 per infringed work.
Ms. Harper filed a petition for a writ of certiorari in the Supreme Court on May 26. However, on November 29, 2010 the Supreme Court decided not to consider the case. Justice Alito dissented from the denial, arguing that the Fifth Circuit’s refusal to consider her youth and lack of sophistication in determining whether she was an innocent infringer was “not necessarily … correct.” However, at least as of November 29 there were no conflicting Circuit decisions, so it is unlikely that the issue will reach the Supreme Court any time soon.
Fairly contemporaneously with the Harper litigation, thirteen major record companies filed suit against Lime Group LLC, affiliated entities and certain officers. They claimed inducement of, contributory and vicarious copyright infringement. On May 25, 2010, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York granted the recording companies judgment on the claims of inducement of copyright infringement, common law copyright infringement and unfair competition. The decision is available at http://tinyurl.com/26h7yl9.
The district court reviewed the uncontroverted evidence and concluded that the LimeWire entities were aware of their users’ substantial infringement of copyrighted music and in fact purposefully marketed to infringing users of their software. They enabled and assisted users to commit infringement and in fact depended on infringement for the financial success of the business. In addition, it did not implement in a meaningful way any of the available technological barriers to diminish infringement. Thus, it concluded that LimeWire was liable on the claim of “inducement of infringement.” Based on the same uncontroverted evidence, the court denied LimeWire’s motion for judgment that it was not liable as a matter of law for vicarious copyright infringement. The court concluded that there exists a genuine issue of material fact as to whether LimeWire is “capable of substantial non-infringing uses,” so it also declined to rule on the recording companies’ “contributory copyright infringement” claim.
On October 26, 2010 the parties entered into a Consent Injunction prohibiting Lime Wire from making the copyrighted sound recordings available and operating and advertising the Lime Wire software. It was ordered to use all reasonable technological means to halt infringement by “Legacy Users,” i.e., users prior to the date of the injunction. It was required to give wide public notice of the injunction. Visitors to its website at http://limewire.com/ will see the following Notice:
“LimeWire is under a court order dated October 26, 2010 to stop distributing the LimeWire software. A copy of the injunction can be found here. LimeWire LLC, its directors and officers, are taking all steps to comply with the injunction. We have very recently become aware of unauthorized applications on the internet purporting to use the LimeWire name. We demand that all persons using the LimeWire software, name, or trademark in order to upload or download copyrighted works in any manner cease and desist from doing so. We further remind you that the unauthorized uploading and downloading of copyrighted works is illegal.”
The litigation continues on the issue of damages.
Deciding whether a departing CEO should serve on the board and oversee a successor might seem like a benign consideration. But it can impede an organization’s efforts to move forward and ultimately affect the bottom line, a recent study found.
Matteo Tonello, director of corporate governance research at The Conference Board, said the findings aren’t surprising because “it’s something we have been anecdotally seeing as The Conference Board works with board members.”
“This is a very timely study because companies are changing their lead executives more often than in the past,” Tonello noted.
Powerful CEOs Linger Longer
The report, released Oct. 5, 2010, analyzed 358 CEO turnovers for reasons other than mergers, reorganizations, spinoffs and death at S&P 1500 firms from 1998 to 2001. It looked at a variety of data, including length of the departing CEO’s board service, personal and professional attributes of the incoming CEO, and the firm’s subsequent stock performance.
According to the study, the effects of a former CEO’s retention on the board also seem to vary based on individual attributes. For example, there was a negative correlation between postturnover stock returns and board retention of a CEO who wasn’t a founder of the firm. In addition, the study found that board retention frequently involves powerful, aging CEOs who have achieved a less-than-distinguished record of financial performance at their firm in the years leading up to their departure, Schloetzer said.
One-Third Invited to Stay
While retaining the departing CEO on the board is done less frequently than in the past, “it still occurs somewhat frequently today,” Schloetzer said. According to The Conference Board’s 2010 Survey of Board Practices, about 35 percent of surveyed companies said they invite the departing CEO to remain on the board.
According to Schloetzer’s study, former CEOs remained on their companies’ boards for at least two years in 130 of 358 (36 percent) of turnovers reviewed.
Attributes that appear to impact the decision include whether the CEO owns a large percentage of the firm’s stock, whether he or she is holding the board chairman position jointly and whether the board has relatively few independent directors.
Meanwhile, the study found that departing CEOs were often retained if the succession choice enabled the former CEO to keep a relatively powerful bargaining position within the firm.
- Are we doing this because of “solid pre-departure performance” or because of his or her power and influence over the board?
- Will the departing CEO harm the successor selection process or alter the quality and characteristics of prospective successors?
- Should the successor define his or her relationship with the former CEO, or should directors decide?
- Are we prepared to take action should conflict arise?
- Instead of a board position, could we engage in informal communication when questions arise or retain access to the former CEO through a well-defined short-term consulting agreement?
Few companies have explicit policies on retaining departing CEOs on their boards. Most consider it on a case-by-case basis, Tonello said. He added that there’s no “one-size-fits-all solution” because some companies might decide that “the benefits of retaining a CEO on the board outweigh the negatives.”
A board that opts to retain the former CEO should take “appropriate safeguards,” according to Tonello:
- The time frame of the former CEO’s board tenure should be determined clearly in advance so that “it’s well known that this would be a temporary thing and that at some point the CEO will step down from his director role as well,” Tonello said.
- Activities and functions of the former CEO as director should be overseen by the board’s lead independent director, if one exists. Increasingly, boards have added such positions to help guarantee a balance of power that helps facilitate a smooth transition, Tonello noted.
- All board members, including retained former CEOs, should undergo performance evaluations. Many boards assess performance as a whole annually but do so less frequently with specific directors.
Although the study shows that successors are constrained by the presence of predecessors, Quigley said it’s not clear why that happens.
“Predecessors might wield their influence by saying ‘no’ a lot, or it might be that successors limit certain initiatives because they sense they could face resistance or worse.” Furthermore, Quigley said, predecessors might be “selectively resistant to certain changes, and perhaps the best CEOs are those who can figure out where and how they can have influence without running afoul of the predecessor.”
Meanwhile, Quigley admitted that when it comes to hard-charging CEOs, personality traits could play a role.
“Future work needs to consider how factors like narcissism or openness to change might influence the process,” Quigley said.
Reprinted with permission of the Society for Human Resource Management (www.shrm.org), Alexandria, VA, publisher of HR Magazine. © SHRM
“A new CEO is likely to bring change and change is very difficult for any organization. It makes it even harder if the old CEO is still around. Old loyalties are there, and that will make any change that the new CEO makes even harder for people in the organization to accept.”
At http://tinyurl.com/2d6zfy6 I discussed Spencer v. World Vision, the 9th Circuit case holding that World Vision could terminate employees on the basis of religion. Since the opinion was rendered, additional proceedings have been filed.
On September 7 the employees filed a petition for rehearing en banc (i.e., rehearing by the entire panel of 9th Circuit judges). They stated that the panel decision conflicted with prior decisions of the 9th Circuit; therefore, consideration by the full court is necessary to secure and maintain uniformity of the court’s decisions and to provide clear guidance to employers and employees within the 9th Circuit. As I noted, all three judges disagreed as to the proper test for determining which employers qualify for an exemption from Title VII as a “religious corporation,” leaving the law with respect to religious discrimination, according to the employees, in a state of disarray and confusion. The perition also stated that the case presents an issue of exceptional importance in that it involves the conflict between rights of employees to be free from religious discrimination and the ability of employers whose primary purpose is “other than worship and religious learning” to claim the exemption.
On September 17 Americans United for Separation of Church and State, The Interfaith Alliance Foundation, the American Humanist Association and the Anti-Defamation League filed a friend of the court brief “in support of neither party.” Their brief noted that the employees submitted limited evidence in the district court that World Vision receives a significant portion of its funding from government sources only to support their argument that it is not a religious organization. However, the district court and Judge O’Scannlain both concluded that World Vision’s receipt of government funds was immaterial to whether it can justify religious discrimination in employment. The amici stated that sanctioning religion-based employment discrimination for government-funded jobs raises signifiicant constitutional concerns under the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. They requested that the court revise the panel decision to expressly reserve the question of whether the statutory exemption is constitutional if construed to permit religious discrimination in employment decisions for government-funded jobs.
At the court’s request, World Vision filed a response to the petition for rehearing en banc. As is to be expected, it argued that the employees failed to meet the standard for en banc rehearing. It reviewed 9th Circuit precedents and argued that the decision took the same approach as in prior cases and weighed World Vision’s significant characteristics to determine its “general picture” and employed most of the factors previously used in that circuit. It also addresses the employees’ argument that the statutory exemption is limited to churches and entities similar to churches, concluding that the assertion that prior decisions singled out religious indoctrination to be the touchstone for non-educational employers claiming the exemption was incorrect. It discussed the 9th Circuit decision and argued that its test is apt for a Christian humanitarian relief organization and avoids the constitutional pitfalls that it argued the employees “church-test” would create.
Hopefully we will learn soon whether the 9th Circuit issues a brief “rehearing denied” opinion or sets in motion further proceedings. | <urn:uuid:ad7dee74-a03e-467f-acf0-ab981d8bf919> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.patriciakanewilliams.com/author/admin/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95113 | 10,485 | 1.695313 | 2 |
4 Americans get pot from U.S. government
EUGENE, Ore. (AP) – Sometime after midnight on a moonlit rural Oregon highway, a state trooper checking a car he had just pulled over found less than an ounce of pot on one passenger: A chatty 72-year-old woman blind in one eye.
She insisted the weed was legal and was approved by the U.S. government.
The trooper and his supervisor were doubtful. But after a series of calls to the U.S. Attorney's Office, the Drug Enforcement Agency and her physician, the troopers handed her back the card — and her pot.
For the past three decades, Uncle Sam has been providing a handful of patients with some of the highest grade marijuana around. The program grew out of a 1976 court settlement that created the country's first legal pot smoker.
Advocates for legalizing marijuana or treating it as a medicine say the program is a glaring contradiction in the nation's 40-year war on drugs — maintaining the federal ban on pot while at the same time supplying it.
Government officials say there is no contradiction. The program is no longer accepting new patients, and public health authorities have concluded that there was no scientific value to it, Steven Gust of the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse told The Associated Press.
At one point, 14 people were getting government pot. Now, there are four left.
The government has only continued to supply the marijuana "for compassionate reasons," Gust said.
One of the recipients is Elvy Musikka, the chatty Oregon woman. A vocal marijuana advocate, Musikka relies on the pot to keep her glaucoma under control. She entered the program in 1988, and said that her experience with marijuana is proof that it works as a medicine.
They "won't acknowledge the fact that I do not have even one aspirin in this house," she said, leaning back on her couch, glass bong cradled in her hand. "I have no pain."
Marijuana is getting a look from states around the country considering calls to repeal decades-old marijuana prohibition laws. There are 16 states that have medical marijuana programs. In the three West Coast states, advocates are readying tax-and-sell or other legalization programs.
Marijuana was legal for much of U.S. history and was recognized as a medicine in 1850. Opposition to it began to gather and, by 1936, 48 states had passed laws regulating pot, fearing it could lead to addiction.
Anti-marijuana literature and films, like the infamous "Reefer Madness," helped fan those fears. Eventually, pot was classified among the most harmful of drugs, meaning it had no usefulness and a high potential for addiction.
In 1976, a federal judge ruled that the Food and Drug Administration must provide Robert Randall of Washington, D.C. with marijuana because of his glaucoma — no other drug could effectively combat his condition. Randall became the nation's first legal pot smoker since the drug's prohibition.
Eventually, the government created its program as part of a compromise over Randall's care in 1978, long before a single state passed a medical marijuana law. What followed were a series of petitions from people like Musikka to join the program.
The AP asked the agency that administers the program, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, for documents showing how much marijuana has been sent to patients since the first patient in 1976.
The agency supplied full data for 2005-2011, which showed that during that period the federal government distributed more than 100 pounds of high-grade marijuana to patients.
Agency officials said records related to the program before 2005 had been destroyed, but were able to provide scattered records for a couple of years in the early 2000s.
The four patients remaining in the program estimate they have received a total of 584 pounds from the federal government over the years. On the street, that would be worth more than $500,000.
All of the marijuana comes from the University of Mississippi, where it is grown, harvested and stored.
Dr. Mahmoud ElSohly, who directs the operation, said the marijuana was a small part of the crop the university has been growing since 1968 for all cannabis research in the U.S. Among the studies are the pharmaceutical uses for synthetic mimics of pot's psychoactive ingredient, THC.
ElSohly said the four patients are getting pot with about 3 percent THC. He said 3 percent is about the range patients have preferred in blind tests.
The marijuana is then sent from Mississippi to a tightly controlled North Carolina lab, where they are rolled into cigarettes. And every month, steel tins with white labels are sent to Florida and Iowa. Packed inside each is a half-pound of marijuana rolled into 300 perfectly-wrapped joints.
With Musikka living in Oregon, she is entitled to more legal pot than anyone in the nation because she's also enrolled in the state's medical marijuana program. Neither Iowa nor Florida has approved marijuana as a medicine, so the federal pot is the only legal access to the drug for the other three patients.
The three other people in the program range in ages and doses of marijuana provided to them, but all consider themselves an endangered species that, once extinct, can be brushed aside by a federal government that pretends they don't exist.
All four have become crusaders for the marijuana-legalization movement. They're rock stars at pro-marijuana conferences, sought-after speakers and recognizable celebrities in the movement.
Irv Rosenfeld, a financial adviser in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., has been in the program since November 1982. His condition produces painful bone tumors, but he said marijuana has replaced prescription painkillers.
Rosenfeld likes to tell this story: In the mid-1980s, the federal government asked his doctor for an update on how Rosenfeld was doing. It was an update the doctor didn't believe the government was truly interested in. He had earlier tried to get a copy of the previous update, and was told the government couldn't find it, Rosenfeld said.
So instead of filling out the form, the doctor responded with a simple sentence written in large, red letters: "It's working." | <urn:uuid:9075a7be-556e-4ff0-93c6-7e9bd0b65fd4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2011-09-28/us-marijuana-supply/50581346/1?csp=34news | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972185 | 1,286 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Archive for April 26th, 2009
Repeat any word and it starts to sound like an unknown word in a foreign language. Toaster toaster toaster toaster toaster . . . toaster? It starts to sound like a word you’ve never heard before. For me, this phenomenon seems to happen to all words except the word “no.” Whenever I hear the word “no” it resonates deep down and immediately. The word “no” never sounds alien and it always and immediately means “no.” We seem to have special power when it comes to negating. In fact, I would suggest that “no” is the engine of reason.
Now consider this: Based on introspection (a shaky foundation, I admit), it seems that we don’t directly decide what to say or do. Rather, it seems that many of our ideas and impulses somehow “rise” to our consciousness and that our main power is whether to exercise “veto-power” over them. It seems that our inner executive is not a creator, but (at most) a judge with veto-power.
The power to inhibit our own actions is central to our ability to operate at a high function. Those of us who successfully function in the world seem to be especially able to inhibit our own thoughts and actions—this allows us to delay gratification and it gives us time to consider alternate options to that first idea that popped into our heads. It is important to cultivate this power to inhibit impulses while we are young. To the extent that we are successful in developing the power to inhibit our impulses and ideas, we will grow into more disciplined and therefore more successful adults. Consider that toddlers who have sufficient discipline to wait a few minutes for two marshmallows (rather than eating one immediately) grow up to score an average of 250 points higher on the SAT. The statistics are truly shocking.
This ability to control impulses does far more allow us to score better on tests. I suspect that our ability to inhibit impulses is the basis for our sense of character coherence and our sense of personal freedom. Inhibiting our impulses (having the power to say no to thoughts and actions) allows us to steer a path among the wreckage of the ideas we reject. Saying “no” to 100 ideas that pop into our head might be the only way that we would ever have to get the opportunity “yes” to that 101st idea– that 101st idea would never occurred had we not vetoed the first 100 ideas. Did you wait to marry a highly compatible partner or did you commit to the first romantic partner who paid any attention to you? Did you take the first job offered to you or did you turn down various offers, patiently waiting for a job that was an especially good fit between your skills and the job duties? Many people who can’t wait end up paying a big price for their inability to say no.
The May 2009 issue of Consumer Reports evaluates more than 80 models of lawn mowers. Incredibly, the printed magazine version of the article completely omits any mention of human-powered reel lawn mowers. It doesn’t test any of them and it doesn’t even mention them, despite the fact that non-motorized push mowers are perfect for most people with small to medium sized lots. We’ve used a push mower for 15 years to cut a lot that is almost ¼ acre. Millions of people have lots that are this size or smaller.
The question in my mind is why. Why would a “consumer” magazine refuse to tell (refuse, because this is not an oversight) consumers that there are $100 lawn mowers that would be perfectly good for millions of people. Is Consumer Reports feeling market pressure to evaluate the $200 – 800 lawn mowers that its readers are used to (tractors cost up to $3,600)? Shame on them for encouraging needless sales of these noisy exhaust-spewing status symbols.
Or is Consumer Reports disoriented by the paradox of choice, striving to find the perfect mower instead of satisficing (recognizing good-but-not-perfect choices)? After all, the non-motorized push mowers I’m recommending are only good for people who consider themselves stewards of the planet, people who prefer to use no gasoline, create no noise and create no danger of spewing rocks and sticks that can cause serious injuries. Why mention that there are $100 mowers that can be sharpened repeatedly with a $15 kit and otherwise require almost no maintenance.[caption id="attachment_6454" align="alignright" width="150" caption="image by Erich Vieth"][/caption]
They are capable of slicing through thick zoysia grass? Is it because those suburban readers might work up a little sweat? Not much, I assure you—even my 8-year old daughter uses ours. These person-powered lawn mowers are MUCH lighter than the mowers your grandparents used. Here are numerous additional reasons to give up on gasoline and electric lawn mowers.
In this month’s lawn mower evaluation article, Consumer Reports completely dropped the ball.
This failure by CR is one of numerous instances where we Americans need to wake up and start doing things differently. Our world is changing in hundreds of ways and we need to change with it or get left behind. | <urn:uuid:a0342339-05b8-41ec-9c2d-4144cf261855> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dangerousintersection.org/2009/04/26/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952505 | 1,126 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Israel: The Coalition of Women for Peace stands in solidarity with the people of Palestine
Early Monday morning, we woke up to the horrible news of the Israeli raid on the peace activists of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which killed more than 10 people and injured dozens. Many of the hundreds of activists, who were on the boats, are still imprisoned by Israeli security forces, awaiting their deportation. The flotilla was carrying 10,000 tons of food, medicine and other supplies to Gaza, which has been placed under siege by Israel since 2005 (with harsher restrictions since June 2007).
The siege, intended to isolate and debilitate Gaza, is a collective punishment of a civilian population of 1.5 million people. Since the siege was placed, CWP has been publicly denouncing it and calling for its immediate removal. The international community can no longer stand by – it must use any diplomatic and civilian means to pressure Israel to end the siege of Gaza, punish Israeli officials responsible for war crimes and end the occupation.
This Friday, the Coalition of Organizations against the Occupation and the Palestinian Popular Committees will hold a joint action to mark 43 years to the June 1967 occupation of Palestinian lands. 43 years of domination, oppression, segregation, settlement enterprise, theft of water and lands, military regime, restrictions on movement, house demolitions, political arrests, torture, war crimes and colonial expansion. In this action, we will call for Israel to remove the siege of Gaza, to end the occupation and to stop the separation between Palestinians and Israelis and between Palestinians and their lands. We call on our friends in the international community to hold solidarity vigils around the world – protesting the siege of Gaza, the ongoing occupation of Palestine and the deadly assault on innocent civilians, who tried to break the siege.
Solidarity in Israel with the Gaza Freedom Flotilla
The Coalition of Women for Peace stands in solidarity with the people of Palestine and with heroic members of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. Despite attempts by Israeli media and public officials to present a unanimous support for the illegal assault on international peace activists, thousands of Israelis have been protesting in the past few days against it.
Spontaneous demonstrations were held immediately after news of the brutal assault on the flotilla – in Haifa, Nazareth, Shefa-'Amr and other cities in Israel. At the same time, 250 Israeli activists arrived at the Port of Ashdod, in an action organized by the Coalition of Women for Peace and other Israeli organizations, to protest the brutal killing and to voice their solidarity with the Flotilla and with the Palestinian people. On Monday evening, mass demonstrations were held in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and Um-El-Fahem. The demonstrators called for international involvement to lift the siege of Gaza. More demonstrations are being held throughout this week across Palestine and Israel.
Prior to the deadly raid CWP published a public declaration in support of the flotilla:
We would like to share with you some of the voices of CWP members following the raid:
In a personal account of the Israeli resistance to the attack on the flotilla, Inna Michaeli, CWP's Resource and Development Coordinator, writes: “Despite this attempt to silence criticism, there are many Israeli citizens that object to this massacre and demand accountability from those responsible. The official version of the military and government has very little credibility, especially after imposing an electronic blockade on attempts to document the raid. The international community has done so little to bring to trial those accountable for war crimes committed against the Palestinian people. Will other countries make more of an effort to intervene after crimes have been committed against their own citizens?”
You can read the rest of her account here: http://www.gaza-eng.coalitionofwomen.org/?p=220
Eilat Maoz, the General Coordinator of the Coalition of Women for Peace, said: "The killing of more than 10 activists is exclusively the responsibility of the State of Israel, and it was fully within Israel's power to avoid the wasteful spilling of blood. The siege of Gaza and the pirate takeover by the Israeli Military of the Flotilla vessels – these are the real provocations. This atrocity must open the eyes of the international community to the crimes perpetrated by Israel.”
Areen Hawari, Balad activist, member of the Coalition of Women for Peace and a close person to MK Hanin Zoabi, who was on one of the vessels, said: "If this is what the State of Israel is capable of doing to peace activists, human rights defenders and members of parliament, then what is it capable of doing to civilians under military occupation? Now is the time to wake up the international struggle against the siege of Gaza and the occupation.”
Some interviews with CWP members in the international media:
The National – Israelis are Shocked but not Surprised
Maan News Agency – Israeli Activists Call for Ships to Enter Gaza
Christian Science Monitor – After Israeli raid, Freedom Flotilla aid starts to flow to Gaza
Photos from the demonstrations around Israel, by Activestills.org:
The Coalition of Women for Peace is currently working on additional local and international actions. Please contact us with your ideas, suggestions and information on actions you organize: [email protected] | <urn:uuid:a5219a08-31bf-4719-aad5-87b1c329ceb7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wluml.org/zh-hans/node/6365 | 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 | 0.952068 | 1,088 | 1.679688 | 2 |
The cold weather is proving to be harsh for some crops in Stanislaus County.
Frank Ratto, with Ratto Bros., said the cold snap damaged some of his crops -- such as chinese mustard and other leafy greens.
Ratto said farmers across the country are dealing with the same weather woes, which have affected production.
Ratto said it’s a simple supply-and-demand issue; with less production of vegetables, you can expect to pay more for produce at the grocery store.
Now, he's making sure all his crops are hydrated, in order to sustain the rest of winter.
One way to help protect his crop, Ratto said, is to leave the damaged leafy greens, which can act as a shield from the vegetables underneath.
Citrus growers in Stanislaus County are seeing some damage -- but not nearly to the extent those in Tulare County, farther down south, are seeing.
Barat Bisabri, with Shiraz Ranch, attributes the Delta breeze in keeping his orchard warmer.
He said he sustained minor damage in the ball park of $50,000.
Luckily, he added, most of the mandarins have been harvested before Christmas, but it’s his navel oranges and grapefruit he now has to worry about when it comes to surviving the rest of winter. | <urn:uuid:b03ef2d6-deee-4fb2-bd45-c2739760613e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kcra.com/news/local-news/news-modesto/Cold-weather-affects-food-prices-in-Stanislaus-County/-/12970436/18173646/-/item/0/-/x88097/-/index.html | 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 | 0.96679 | 281 | 1.8125 | 2 |
RIDGEFIELD, Conn. — Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals has enrolled the first patients in its late-stage trial of a treatment for hepatitis C, the drug maker said Thursday.
BI Pharmaceuticals is conducting the "HCVerso" trial of an HCV drug that combines faldaprevir, the experimental compound BI 207127 and ribavirin. The company has established trial sites in more than 25 states.
"We are proud to announce that the first patients are now enrolled in our phase-3 HCVerso program, including at U.S. trial sites," BI Pharmaceuticals VP clinical development and medical affairs Peter Piliero said. "Patients infected with HCV may benefit most from an individualized treatment approach since a person's genetics, type of virus and stage of liver disease vary from patient to patient."
Previous trials of the drug have found that patients have been essentially cured of the virus a few months after starting treatment with the drug. | <urn:uuid:a9f7f68d-532e-4109-b379-eb7b6e7336a0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://drugstorenews.com/article/boehringer-ingelheim-pharmaceuticals-starts-phase-3-trial-hcv-drug?ad=branded | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954098 | 201 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Chinese military engaged in cyber espionage campaign: Report
These operators, like soldiers, may merely be following orders given to them by others," Mandiant said.
Releasing the findings of its investigations, Mandiant said the nature of 'Unit 61398' work is considered by China to be a state secret; however, we believe it engages in harmful "Computer Network Operations".
"We estimate that Unit 61398 is staffed by hundreds, and perhaps thousands of people based on the size of Unit 61398's physical infrastructure," the report alleged adding that the China Telecom provided special fiber optic communications infrastructure for the unit in the name of national defence.
Unit 61398 requires its personnel to be trained in computer security and computer network operations and also requires its personnel to be proficient in the English language.
Mandiant has traced APT1's activity to four large networks in Shanghai, two of which serve the Pudong New Area where Unit 61398 is base, it said According to the report, since 2006, Mandiant has observed APT1 compromise 141 companies spanning 20 major industries.
"The sheer scale and duration of sustained attacks against such a wide set of industries from a singularly identified group based in China leaves little doubt about the organisation behind APT1. We believe the totality of the evidence we provide in this document bolsters the claim that APT1 is Unit 61398," it said.
The report, for the first time, has revealed three personas that are associated with APT1 activities – UglyGorilla, DOTA and SuperHard.
Be the first to comment. | <urn:uuid:c1b62499-f915-418e-a9d7-9400a3f43a87> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.financialexpress.com/news/chinese-military-engaged-in-cyber-espionage-campaign-report/1076397/3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9539 | 331 | 1.742188 | 2 |
LENNON: "Listen, if somebody's gonna impress me, whether it be a Maharishi or a Yoko Ono, there comes a point when the emperor has no clothes. There comes a point when I will see. So for all you folks out there who think that I'm having the wool pulled over my eyes, well, that's an insult to me. Not that you think less of Yoko, because that's your problem. What I think of her is what counts! Because... f*** you, brother and sister... you don't know what's happening. I'm not here for you. I'm here for me and her and the baby!"
From the horse's mouth. Playboy, 12-80.
Of course he then went on to say this:
LENNON: "It is a teacher-pupil relationship. That's what people don't understand. She's the teacher and I'm the pupil. I'm the famous one, the one who's supposed to know everything, but she's my teacher. She's taught me everything I f***ing know. She was there when I was nowhere, when I was the nowhere man. She's my Don Juan." (a reference to Carlos Castaneda's Yaqui Indian teacher) "That's what people don't understand. I'm married to f***ing Don Juan, that's the hardship of it. Don Juan doesn't have to laugh; Don Juan doesn't have to be charming; Don Juan just is. And what goes on around Don Juan is irrelevant to Don Juan."
So who knows? Good old contradictory Johnnie. sigh | <urn:uuid:044a33ae-e53f-4352-a654-8ce7023a58d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dmbeatles.com/forums/index.php?topic=419.msg13121 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980698 | 335 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Some fasteners are torqued...
Some fasteners are torqued with more than 100 ft-lb and are difficult to remove. A compressor is essential equipment for many of the procedures performed during a restoration. A single-stage air compressor is adequate for many smaller jobs. If, however, you’re going to paint, you need a two-stage compressor with a large tank to maintain consistent air pressure for extended periods. It powers air wrenches, grinders, paint sprayers, and countless other items. Take special care when using an air wrench to loosen rusty bolts, as it can easily break off the heads, which is a frustrating and time-consuming operation to correct.
I’m a very organized person and I know some great techniques for managing a restoration. I learned them all the hard way, by not following common-sense procedures and doing all of the stupid things that people often do. My biggest lesson learned? Never rely solely on your memory! Here are four tips that will keep you out of trouble:
1. Photograph every part as you remove it.
2. Tag or catalog each part.
3. Do not mix components from one system with another.
4. Organize and bag smaller system components and fasteners.
This is a common sight during...
This is a common sight during body disassembly and inspection. Water pooled up around the windshield and backlight, and over time it rusted through. GTOs are like most other cars of the ’60s in this regard. If you can see rust damage beyond the molding, there absolutely will be more hiding under it. To fix this problem, remove the windshield trim, windshield adhesive, and windshield. Once removed, you can see rust damage from years of invasive moisture. At this stage, you need to thoroughly clean out the area and remove the water, leaves, and whatever else is in there. Then media-blast the area to remove all the rust and and get down to the bare metal. In some cases, an entirely new windshield mounting channel needs to be fabricated.
From this list, you probably have a pretty good idea of the focus of this chapter. The last thing you need is a bunch of mystery bolts or small pieces rolling around on the garage floor to be lost or damaged. The old joke about fixing a car and having extra pieces left over is no joke when it happens to you and you have no idea where those things should go. The goal of this chapter is to help you prevent these kinds of problems.
The location for your restoration project should be a clean, secure area that does not get high foot traffic or unwanted attention. Ideally, it should be no smaller than a two-car garage. You need one bay for the car itself and the other for space to organize the removed parts and to do the actual work. The work area should have a bench and/or a sturdy work table that safely holds heavy parts.
As part of making a specific...
As part of making a specific task list for the restoration process, carefully inspect and evaluate the body. From this list, you can compile a parts list and then develop a cost estimate for completing the restoration project. In the case of this ’64 GTO, body filler was used to repair this rust hole, but it was done incorrectly. This time around it will be done the right way, with the addition of a sheetmetal patch. In this particular restoration, it was important to retain as much of the originality of the car as possible, so the original fender was retained and repaired.
While it is true that people have successfully restored vehicles in smaller spaces, and even outdoors, the chances of pieces being lost, damaged, or stolen go up dramatically. It is also beneficial to have a storage area for pieces not being worked on. A remote rented storage area can be helpful for storing larger components, though transportation and cost can become a factor.
The depth and detail of your project dictate tool purchases. Will you be doing your own bodywork and paint? If not, you can skip the body hammers and spray gun, and put those resources toward items you will be using. You do need a quality socket set; screwdrivers; a torque wrench; various hammers and mallets for “massaging” jammed or sticking parts; metal or approved plastic containers for gasoline, oil, anti-freeze and other liquids; and draining pans.
For power tools, a compressor is a wonderful and invaluable tool that saves an immense amount of time with most operations. Pneumatic lines, an air-impact wrench, sockets, and grinding wheels ease the burden of disassembly and help speed up assembly procedures. Your shop needs 220-volt electrical service, which may involve some upgrades to your wiring.
Successfully finishing a complete...
Successfully finishing a complete GTO restoration is no small task, and when taking on that task, you need to organize and document the entire process. Simply going off memory when disassembling the vehicle and its many components is a recipe for disaster. This book provides detailed instruction, and the factory manuals have detailed parts schematics, but you need to document how complex components are disassembled. I strongly recommend that you take extensive notes in a notebook or an Excel file, so that when disassembly commences, the process progresses steadily and smoothly with a minimal amount of hassle. In addition, I also recommend using a digital camera. For a resto job, a small point-and-shoot camera with both still-photo and video capabilities is an invaluable aid in the documentation of your restoration. You can even record short movies showing how some of the more complex assemblies go together. These feature-packed little workhorses are in the $150 to $200 range, and the quality just keeps gettin
Other tools that make life easier include transmission jacks, an engine hoist, an arc welder, and hub pullers of various sizes. These are items that you can purchase, rent, or even borrow from friends, relatives, or co-workers) as you need them.
Some specialized tools are fairly inexpensive, but can greatly assist in your restoration project. A small assortment of trim-removal tools goes a long way to helping preserve the delicate stainless moldings, as they are often quite fragile and easily break if the clips aren’t properly releasing the parts. The fact that they are expensive and usually hard to find makes purchasing the right tool for the job a high priority.
If your project becomes a body-off affair, a rotisserie is a good investment. Having the ability to take a bare body and flip it upside-down for repair and body-panel replacement is a benefit that is well worth the added expense. If you are especially handy and know how to weld, you can build one yourself. There are plans and kits available on the Internet, and if you don’t want to spend $1,500-$2,000 for one, this is a very viable alternative. Just put the phrase “auto rotisserie kits and plans” in your favorite search engine and find what is best for your project and budget. | <urn:uuid:9328f243-8f19-499f-81be-2b30b437270d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.highperformancepontiac.com/tech/hppp_1301_pontiac_gto_restoration/tools.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946171 | 1,467 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Hurricane Sandy: Latest Track and What to Expect
Worst part of storm for New England is expected to be from 9 a.m. through midnight Monday.
As of 5 a.m., the National Weather Service Hurricane Center has Sandy is about 385 miles south, southeast of New York City. The storm is traveling at approximately 15 mph toward the north. It is expected to turn northwest today, then turn toward the west-northwest tonight. The center of Sandy will move over the coast of the mid-atlantic states in the evening hours.
According to reports, Sandy is a hybrid storm, meaning it is a huge Nor’easter with a hurricane in the middle. The storm is currently measuring 900 miles wide, making it the second largest storm on record.
Hurricane force winds are expected along portions of the coast between Chincoteague Virginia and Chatham, Massachusetts. This includes the coasts of Rhode Island.
Tropical-storm-force winds are expected north of Chatham to the Merrimack area of Massachusetts.
The storm is also expected to bring widespread flooding throughout the region.
The worst part of the storm for New England is expected to be from 9 a.m. through midnight Monday. According to WHDH meteorologist Pete Bouchard, wind gusts area already topping 40 mph along the coast and they will continue to get worse.
The storm is expected to last through Tuesday in terms of wind and rain, easing up on Wednesday. Showers and breezes will persist for Halloween, but they will be lighter all around according to Bouchard.
This is a serious storm. Amtrak canceled service up and down it s NorthEast corridor for today. New York had mandatory evacuations of low lying areas of the city and subway service has been shut down since last night. In Boston Governor Patrick issued a state of emergency and urged residents throughout the Bay State to stay off the roads and asked communities to close schools. All state office buildings are closed today. | <urn:uuid:ee1e13f9-84d0-4192-973c-84d224e37fe9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://northandover.patch.com/articles/hurricane-sandy-latest-track-and-what-to-expect-32b15f55?logout=true | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965766 | 406 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Americans, take heed, a vampire prowls among you. The redistributive policies and out-of-control spending of the current Administration, if it is not already obvious, are threatening an economic bloodletting of the first magnitude. Indeed, the social welfare state, part of the progressive Western experiment in political and economic egalitarianism, is foundering wherever we look, and yet it continues to be endorsed and promoted by an out-of-touch ruling political class. Our leaders—or far too many of them—are clearly in a state of denial, unable to give up a cherished illusion despite a mounting fact attack. Facing up to the truth does not demand profound economic thinking, only a modicum of common sense, which is clearly in short supply. Nor would a bandaid here and a bandaid there stop the bleeding.
Plain common sense tells us that, in the long run, so-called “democratic socialism” doesn’t work for a very simple reason: it must be constantly hiking taxes on a shrinking productive base while awarding exemptions to a constantly growing non-productive class. Canadian author William Gairdner, co-founder of the Civitas think tank, estimates that in the current welfare state only one third of the population constitutes the producing sector; another one third is affiliated with government, either clerically or contractually, and the remaining third consists of government dependents. Thus two thirds of the modern “social democratic” state is dependent for its maintenance on a dwindling minority of economic generators. Worse, Kenneth Minogue of the London School of Economics warns that once the tipping point of 51% of public clientage is reached, decline must inevitably set in.
What we have here is an iron recipe for creeping revenue depletion and societal decay. Wealth-creating and job-producing enterprises either shrivel due to rising costs or locate elsewhere to more favorable cost-effective regions, which leads to growing unemployment. A hyper-inflating bureaucracy—which must be paid for—to administer and distribute an ever-lengthening skein of entitlements and government programs—which must also be paid for—will eventually, as Margaret Thatcher said, run out of other people’s money. We can now see what the welfare state yields, writes Daniel Hannan, a member of the European Parliament: “burgeoning bureaucracy, more spending, higher taxes, slower growth and rising unemployment.”
Ultimately, a society predicated on single-payer medicare, cheap daycare, maternity and paternity leave, shorter work weeks, paid mensual vacations, mandated green energy, early retirement, special interests subsidies, public sycophancy, in short, the contemporary version of bread and circuses, cannot run on fumes. As Hannan points out, America is now imitating the European model, “expanding its government, regulating private commerce, centralizing its jurisdiction, breaking the link between taxation and representation.” The future looks increasingly grim. For when the day comes that the parasite has devoured the host, that is the day the system collapses.
Pages: 1 2 | <urn:uuid:9845d6be-8b77-4852-8dd2-9b48a16f12a5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://frontpagemag.com/2011/david-solway/vampire-economics-2/ | 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 | 0.934122 | 635 | 1.625 | 2 |
The move to make Holocaust denying illegal across the EU seems to have acquired legs, with the Commission supporting the German proposal and the egregious Justice Commissar Franco Frattini (he, who got his job because the original Italian candidate Buttiglioni was a devout and practising Catholic) announced somewhat pompously that he "very much welcomed and fully supported" these proposals.
I shall not bother to rehearse all the arguments against the ban, which have nothing to do with the horrible aspect of the event and of the need to know about it and to study it (though there are other things in history to study as well).
It is, however, gag-making to hear this sort of commentary:
While freedom of expression is part of Europe's values and traditions, its democratic societies also allowed to fight racist speech through penal law, the commissioner added.Those European values and traditions (that, of course, include Nazism and the Holocaust as well) seem to be infinitely flexible. What Commissar Frattini should be dealing with is the fully acknowledged growth in anti-Semitic attacks across the whole of western Europe in the last few years. Most of these member states, including Italy, routinely post police guard outside synagogues because they are afraid of attacks that come from one or two barely acknowledged directions.
Compared to that, the denial of something that happened some decades ago, a denial that is, moreover, not taken particularly seriously by any respectable historian or commentator, is hardly of paramount importance. Is this another effort on the part of all our lords and masters to go for displacement activity rather than trying to deal with existing and growing problems?
As we have already said on this blog, should such a ban be proposed for legislation in the United Kingdom, we shall start campaigning for legislation that would make the denial of Communist crimes illegal. Alas, we have not enough space in courts or prisons to accommodate all those who have been and still are indulging in this activity.
Pic courtesy of: bigfoto.com
COMMENT THREAD Tweet | <urn:uuid:e862834b-2e20-4f54-ac79-d2c2906a7c95> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2007/01/of-course-we-believe-in-free-speech-but.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970802 | 416 | 1.523438 | 2 |
The Chicago teachers strike has made school reform national news, and here’s a piece that helps explain some of the controvery. This is a follow-up to a post I published last month about plans by the California-based foundation of billionaire Eli Broad to expand its influence in school reform initiatives that include charter schools, merit pay and other market-based reforms. The original piece and the following one were written by Ken Libby, a doctoral student at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Stan Karp, director of the Secondary Reform Project for New Jersey’s Education Law Center and an editor of Rethinking Schools magazine.
By Ken Libby and Stan Karp
On August 21, The Answer Sheet published our account of a memo from The Broad Center (TBC) about proposed shifts in its education programs. The shifts were designed to “accelerate” Broad’s efforts to “to
challenge and disrupt the status quo” and “profoundly change the national education landscape.” This includes creating a “go to group” of Broad “superstars,” recruiting more non-educators with “entrepreneurial backgrounds” to its training programs, placing graduates in a wider range of educational leadership positions and emphasizing more political advocacy for Broad’s agenda of charters, test-based teacher evaluation, merit pay and better “systems management.”
The Broad Center objected. (One of its current goals is a “reduction in negative TBC press coverage.”) TBC Executive Director Becca Bracy Knight posted a comment on The Answer Sheet blog, saying “I think we can all agree that when trying to determine other people’s intentions, particularly over something as important as our public schools, that it is useful to hear directly from the source.” We agree, which is why we published Broad’s memo along with our description of it.
Knight also posted a commentary on the TBC website in response to our post. The commentary refers to “conspiracy theories” that were actually never raised in our article, which deals almost entirely with the Broad Center’s plans as described in its own documents and emails. Knight’s commentary also purports to correct things we “get wrong,” claiming, for example, that most of TBC’s graduates “are intimately familiar with classroom realities because they are lifelong educators.” TBC posted a similar response on Facebook contending “most of the people going through our programs are lifelong educators.”
This is an odd and unsubstantiated claim for a program that boasts, “We have filled more superintendent positions than any other national training program, and remain the only organization recruiting management talent from outside of education.” According to a press release TBC’s 2012 class included “three high-ranking military officers, a telecom executive and four experienced educators.
Moreover, the plans we described explicitly call for reducing the “experience level required” for entering Broad’s training programs, recruiting more “entrepreneurial” non-educators, and spending less time on school operations and more on political advocacy aligned with Broad’s reform priorities.
Knight’s commentary also complains: “What the Aug. 21 Answer Sheet blog post doesn’t tell you is that nowhere in the memo referred to are the words ‘privatize public schools,’ ‘run schools like businesses,’ ‘corporate school reform’ or ‘influence schools.’ That is because these are not our goals. We don’t believe in these things, which is why you won’t see that language in any correspondence we produce.”
This is PR spin. Despite the quotes, none of the phrases Knight objects to appear in our post — except “corporate school reform,” which is clearly our characterization of the side Broad has been supporting in the polarized national debate over education policy.
More to the point is that the charter schools Broad supports are, in fact, “privatized public schools.” The “entrepreneurial” leaders Broad recruits to “transform K-12 urban public education through better governance, management, labor relations and competition” draw their models of “systems management” from the private sector And the “go to group” of the most “transformational” leaders Broad seeks to create (citing Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee and Wendy Koop as exemplars) is designed to “help shape policy agendas, influence public opinion, coalesce political forces, and advance bold reforms on the ground.”
The claim that Broad does not seek to “influence schools” is bizarre. According to emails from TBC’s managing director, the whole point of the plans outlined in the Broad memo are to advance “high level strategies for the Broad center in 2012-2013 that reflect a significant shift away from a focus on individual leadership development and career paths to an approach that seeks to have greater impact through a stronger focus on transformational leaders, driving people to reform-ready locations, and accelerating reforms across our network.”
The central purpose of “The Broad Center for the Management of School Systems” is to influence schools and the policies that shape their work.
Eli Broad once wrote that his “goal is to help turn a tired government monopoly into a high-performing public enterprise.” The problem, of course, is that a real public enterprise is one where policymakers are accountable to the public in transparent and democratic ways. Instead billionaires like Eli Broad have used their fabulous wealth to privatize the making of education policy and to create powerful political advocacy networks to implement it. That this is completely legal and that both Democrats and Republicans have aided and abetted this effort makes it more alarming, but no less private in its origins and goals.
Finally, we are more interested in the actual impact of TBC’s plans and activities than its “intentions.” For instance, the documents we published were released to New Jersey’s Education Law Center under the state’s Open Public Records Act. ELC was seeking information on a series of Broad Foundation grants made to support efforts by Governor Chris Christie and his education Commissioner Chris Cerf (former President of Edison Schools, Inc, once the nation’s largest for-profit education management company) to aggressively intervene in over 250 schools serving high needs communities of color.
The plans include creating a “recovery district,” modeled in part on post-Katrina New Orleans. If student standardized test scores don’t improve in two years, these schools may be subject to closure, transformation into charters or other private management. These plans are advancing alongside efforts to undercut one of the nation’s most successful state public education systems and are providing a “money doesn’t matter” reform cover for eroding hard-won gains in funding equity for New Jersey’s poorest urban districts.
The Broad Foundation, which never made any investments to support implementation of NJ’s historic equity funding mandates such as full-day pre-K for all 3- and 4-year olds, has provided millions in grants to reorganize the state education Department, staff it with subsidized Broad fellows, support charter expansion, and fund disruptive “school turnaround” plans that include closing schools, firing staff and reducing local control. Whatever Broad’s “intentions,” its activities have promoted the polarizing agenda of the most anti-public school administration that New Jersey has ever had.
Nor is New Jersey an isolated case. As Broad boasts, “We have over 30 sitting superintendents in large urban systems, as well as state superintendents in four of the most reform-oriented states (Delaware, Rhode Island, Louisiana, and New Jersey). Broad graduates are in the number one or number two seats in the three largest districts in the country (New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago), and lead the newest turnaround systems in Michigan and Tennessee.” TBC is now targeting state education agencies and “revolutionary CMOs” in its effort to “increase our impact,” “accelerate the pace” and “amplify the impact of breakthrough reforms.”
Broad does not contest the authenticity of the documents or the substance of our summary of the proposals in them. Instead it asks the public to substitute faith in the foundation’s “good intentions” for a critical assessment of the impact of the “disruptive” reform strategies it has championed across the country. It also attempts to divert attention from those policies by hyping a list of “75 Examples of How Bureaucracy Stands in the Way of America’s Students and Teachers.”
This odd list is a random catalog of bureaucratic horrors in urban school systems, including items that are indisputable, others that are contradictory and some that have been made worse by the reforms Broad supports. The list omits obstacles “in the way of America’s students and teachers” that are not on TBC’s list of priorities, such as appalling child poverty rates, inadequate and unequal school funding and the overuse and misuse of standardized tests. In any event, the list is largely irrelevant to the issues raised by Broad’s plans to increase its influence.
The Broad Center’s efforts to “accelerate” disruptive reform do not improve school districts. Instead they destabilize them, promote the privatization of public policy and undermine the common ground public education needs to survive and improve. Broad’s support for charter expansion, school closings, test-based teacher evaluation, merit pay, Teach for America, hostility to teachers unions and top-down business management of school districts is wreaking havoc in urban districts across the country. Our “interest” in the Broad Center’s programs is in stopping them from doing further damage to our schools, students and communities.
Follow The Answer Sheet every day by bookmarking www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet . | <urn:uuid:17350b3a-d157-4250-99e5-3081fa9c19ff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/on-school-reform-broads-misleading-response-to-critics/2012/09/10/1a1a3fb2-f82b-11e1-8253-3f495ae70650_blog.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954941 | 2,138 | 1.523438 | 2 |
We know you have wood furniture at home. We all do. We also know you are looking for some good tips on how to care them without letting them lose their originality. Let us suggest a few points on how to do them.
You need not hesitate to dust your furniture regularly with clean, dry and soft clothes or dusters. Use wringed cloth dipped in mild soap with water to clean your furniture. You can rely on an easy way by mixing equal parts of olive oil, denaturated alcohol, gum turpentine and strained lemon juice for cleaning.
You need to be aware of the methods to apply wax properly so as to remove streaks on the furniture. Liquid wax can be applied frequently, which is more preferable as it is easy to apply. To clean fine furniture you must apply a commercial cleaning product using steel wool. You can use orange oil or wax to prevent drying or cracking.
For deep cleaning, you can very well use oil soap with water. Care must be taken that the material you use to clean them is rinsed and dried well. If the vintage piece has a stinking smell, keep it outside in the sunlight for some time or apply some talcum powder or baking soda to get rid of the bad odor.
The hardware of the furniture can be cleaned by a metal or brass cleaner and buff after removing it from the furniture. Dry it and then put it back. Don’t worry if your furniture gets slightly scratched. All you need to do is to use a felt tip touch-up pen or apply some paste wax over the place.
(images courtesy of ricardodiaz & bbaunach) | <urn:uuid:8870636a-97f5-4b9f-86d8-47282475a5a2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.decoist.com/2011-11-11/give-special-care-to-your-wood-furniture/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956756 | 336 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Hotmail Hackers: 'We Did It'
The group of eight hackers said Monday through a spokesman that they announced the hole to the Swedish media to draw attention to what they say is Microsoft's spotty security reputation.
Hotmail Fallout: A Mere Trickle
Hotmail Accounts Exposed to All
Want Security? Forget Web Mail
Did MS Dig Its Hotmail Hole?
The stunt exposed every Hotmail email account, estimated to number as many as 50 million, to anyone with access to a Web browser.
"We did not do this hack to destroy, we want to show the world how bad the security on Microsoft really is, and that company nearly have monopoly on [all] the computer software," a 21-year-old Swedish member of the group said Monday.
Göteborg resident Lasse Ljung, who goes by the nickname of DarkWing on Internet relay chat, said he was speaking on behalf of Hackers Unite. IRC is a real-time chat network commonly used by hackers and crackers to communicate and plan their activities.
Ljung said that Hackers Unite is composed of one Swedish citizen and seven Americans. The group declined to communicate directly with Wired News, which could not positively confirm their identities.
The handful of lines of simple HTML code that constitute the exploit took advantage of a Hotmail login script called "start" that is not currently used on the Hotmail welcome page, and the password "eh."
After examining that code early Monday, outside security experts suggested that the problem might have been a backdoor inadvertently left open on Hotmail servers by Microsoft engineers.
Microsoft vehemently denied the backdoor suggestions, and instead described the problem as "an unknown security issue."
"There is nothing to these allegations [of a backdoor in Hotmail]," said MSN marketing director Rob Bennett. "It is not true. Microsoft values the security and privacy of our users above all."
However, Jon Thompson, administrator of one of the sites that hosted the Hotmail exploit, told MSNBC.com that his associates had known about the vulnerability -- and had access to Hotmail accounts -- for about eight weeks.
Thompson told MSNBC.com, an MSNBC partner, the culprit was MSN's new Passport service, which allows users to log in once and click between MSN Web sites. He said Hotmail had been vulnerable since MSN launched Passport in beta form.
Deanna Sanford, lead project manager for MSN, told MSNBC.com the flaw was not related to Passport but added she did not know how long the vulnerability had existed.
Bennett said the company began scrambling to fix the problem at 2 a.m. PDT and had the initial fix up at 10 a.m. A subsequent variant of the problem was fixed around noon.
The second problem was a result of the company "getting the fix propagated to all the Hotmail servers," he said.
"We are manually going from machine to machine to make sure all the fixes are there."
Bennett said the start script in question is used in some other areas of the site other than logging in users. He said they had plugged the problem with the script.
What is known, however, is that the Hotmail problem is likely the most widespread security incident in the history of the Web. The private email accounts of some 50 million people were open to browsing by anyone.
The incident did not faze Wall Street. In late afternoon trading, Microsoft stock was at US$92.25, down one point.
Related Wired Links:
'A Flaw Worse Than Melissa'
Hotmail Bug, Still an Open Book?
Another Freemail Security Flaw
Microsoft Rights Hotmail
Hotmail Open to Script Attacks | <urn:uuid:afb89f3f-bb49-4ead-8bd8-418f736dabb1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/1999/08/21503 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96468 | 767 | 1.75 | 2 |
We were contacted about a school library grant opportunity by Acer and Inter. With about a $10,000 dollar value, it sounds worthwhile to apply. Included are 10 laptops that the school could use in a variety of ways.
The school library can be a rich learning environment for students, provided they have the most up-to-date tools and resources at their fingertips. Is there a school library in your community that could use a technology upgrade?
As students become increasingly digital-savvy, they rely on the latest technology resources to complement their educations. At the same time, funding for school technology continues to dwindle. That’s why Acer and Intel are offering K-12 schools across the country an opportunity to transform their libraries into 21st century learning labs. Nominations are now open Acer’s School Library Technology Makeover Contest, which will award 10 new Acer Aspire Timeline notebook computers, valued at nearly $10,000, and two all-in-one desktop computers to two deserving school libraries. | <urn:uuid:c8cb0ea7-70c8-4d1f-aae0-28b234be048e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://eledblog.com/category/educational-topics/libraries | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965193 | 209 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Boise SEO - The nerd of the link - destination, anchor text, title, and business justification
First Question: "Are you marketing, or are you just promoting?"
Marketing requires research, analysis, innovation, and understanding behind the decisions and actions you make when promoting.
SEO - Search Engine Optimization is often simply used as a promotion exercise; this is the case when proper attention isn't paid to keyword selection.
Marketing question: "How do I get more customers on the web?"
Promotion question: "How do I get more traffic to my website?"
Make sure you've thought about how the keywords you select help answer your marketing question. Contact us if you'd like help.
There aren't many secrets with regard to SEO - (if you think there are, then leave a comment below and let's discuss). It's a well known fact that links are a key differentiator in SEO. You need links on your site, to your site, and not just any links, well constructed links to good places.
What is a link? Simply, a link is html code - the "anchor" tag. It looks like this:
<a href="some-location.html" title="title of link">Anchor Text</a>
Theres some interesting points:
- some-location.html should be a good web page, relevant to your keywords, and have a good page rank
- title, some-location, and the Anchor Text should include your keywords
- have other relevant sites link to you, with the search engine optimized html construction for the link
- use the keywords in links, and in other markup, such as the heading tags (h1-h6), em, strong, b, meta description, title, img, in a select list, ul or li, and make sure you diversify from page to page
Here's a good write up, about how links are not all equal. It has a good mention of the origins of the page rank algorithm, and other good points.
If the site you're putting a link on, then the html is in your control. If not, then just be sure to think about your keywords when you're making your links on twitter, facebook , or any other site where you're creating a link.
You can put links on your website, social networking sites, social bookmark entries, comments on some websites, message boards, article submission sites, web directories, and in other locations. Be sure that you're selecting good destinations to create links to your website, as there are some places out there that will harm your SEO profile and even have your site blacklisted.
We can automate the construction of high value links across a large site, as we recently did at www.securityhardwarestore.com, boosting their traffic by more than 10% in one month.
This link building process should be sustained, as part of a comprehensive web strategy. There are many good things about having good SEO.
If you've successfully promoted your site with quality SEO efforts, have you also invested in the conversion of the visitor into a customer? | <urn:uuid:1d77178b-ff5b-491d-b329-1f4e47cf3d01> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nerdydragon.com/boise-seo-nerd-link-destination-anchor-text-title-and-business-justification.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 | 0.936741 | 646 | 1.75 | 2 |
It is Ahab’s phantom limb, that fully palpable but completely intangible pentimento of loss. It is why we love antiquing, respect our elders, and revere the crackled canvases of the old masters. A storefront, too, can display this intuition; its barren mannequins revealed as scarecrows alone in a darkened but embarrassingly public alcove. It is a territory full of poignant relics, with every direction magnetic. To navigate it we have the three artists in this exhibition, Matt Ohm, Tim Ripley, and Deborah Boardman.
We all have a homeland. For some it is an actual place with longitude and latitude, for others it exists as an amalgam of evocative smells and embroidered recollections. Some we long for, others are the milestones by which we measure our escape. Matthew Ohm, of Long Beach CA, toggles the two locations. With a freehand schematic on a plank of smooth poplar he has shown us in Wilton, Wisconsin, 2005, a vision of a forest clear-cut into glade. The stumps show their rings with the elegant economy of cartoon spirals as they diminish into a distance without horizon, without end. On further inspection we find the plank to be plywood, its fine surface merely a veneer, its image not wood inlay but mere oil paint. This is a concoction of appearances. If one is deceitful can the other be trusted? Is there even such a place as Wilton, Wisconsin? That he would just as soon hack a tree as hug one is demonstrated in Smudge, 2007, another process-oriented work that required him to cut down a bush and from it make charcoal, some of the branches supplying the fuel needed for the transformation, others becoming the end product. With this charcoal he attempts to draw from memory the bush, now consumed, that began the process of primitive, smoky manufacture.
Like the corporations and products they represent, corporate logos have a life span. Introduced, they may fail to thrive and quickly disappear. Others gain some purchase in the public mind and the merchant’s shelves and from there can hope to become indispensable to the consuming public. If successful they might attain a cross-generational iconic equity; Encyclopedia Britannica’s thistle logo has heralded the product’s Scottish origins for nearly 250 years and Procter & Gamble’s moon-and-stars insignia enjoyed 130 years of success before being retired due to preposterous attacks as a symbol of Satanism, but Schlitz beer and its florid script device has gone from market prominence as late as the 1970s to the product ash heap alongside Ironized Yeast Tablets whose weight-gain advertisements warned that, “No skinny man has an ounce of sex appeal.” North Carolina native Tim Ripley understands our consumerist passion and combines two seemingly antithetical aspects of it. On one side there is our low price obsession that has created the Wal-Mart juggernaut, on the other is the luxury goods fetish––monograms and signatures as symbols of status for which we will pay dearly. His Building (a painting) Support 2000 features both postures. Through a veil of manufactured patina we recognize Elmer the Bull (husband of Elsie the Cow, chief spokes-animal for the Borden corporation), trademark of Elmer’s Glue-All, that cheap and ubiquitous adhesive found in every home, office, and classroom. Below and above the Elmer image is the refrigerator-style font spelling out Makita, maker of sumptuously essential power tools. Both are faded images however, in transit toward the way of all worldly goods, soon to be puzzled over like the side of a weathered building featuring the muted illustration of the beer that made Milwaukee famous.
To broadcast was originally a term to describe sowing. Artisan’s signs and heraldic shields are the forebears of Donald Trump’s hair and Apple Computer’s fruit-of-knowledge silhouette, the distilling of a greater entity into a recognizable and disseminable graphic nugget. These images were and are sown widely to generate the greatest return in profit, power, and persona. Dissatisfied with the failure of the Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea dollar coins Chicago artist Deborah Boardman has, in the tradition of eccentrics who crown themselves emperor and fashion their own uniforms, crafted her own currency of indeterminate denomination, hand-painted specie bearing the likenesses of Miami Indians instead of their more familiar 18th century counterparts. Similarly, Blue Emblem, 2003, shown above, is Boardman’s version of a regal cartouche wiped clean, an open gateway to possess and participate in a code of chivalry (self-authored), the notion of a champion (we all should have one), a wealth of heirlooms (our misplaced inheritance), and title to a romantic, if fictive, past. | <urn:uuid:bbe6107a-8536-4ee1-94c2-35a2b347c54f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tropomfg.blogspot.com/2010/08/fugitive-candor.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940479 | 1,025 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.